Sandy Dennis credited as playing...
Sylvia Barrett
- [Lou Martin gives an oral book report]
- Lou Martin: My book is...
- Sylvia Barrett: [Correcting his grammar] The book you read.
- Lou Martin: Yeah. The title is called "Macbeth," by Shakespeare.
- Sylvia Barrett: [Correcting his grammar, again] The title 'is.'
- Lou Martin: [Finishing her sentence] "... Macbeth."
- Sylvia Barrett: Isn't "Macbeth" required reading for last English term?
- Lou Martin: I ain't never read it before.
- Sylvia Barrett: [Correcting his grammar, again] I' ve never read it.
- Lou Martin: Me neither.
- [Class laughter]
- Lou Martin: In this book, the author depix...
- Sylvia Barrett: [Correcting his grammar, again] "De-picts."
- Lou Martin: Depix how this guy, he wants to...
- Sylvia Barrett: [Correcting his grammar, and beginning to lose track] Who.
- Lou Martin: Him.
- Sylvia Barrett: [Correcting his grammar ,again] He.
- Lou Martin: Yeah.
- Sylvia Barrett: [Giving up trying to correct him] All right, what is the theme of Macbeth?
- Lou Martin: Well, the author narrates this murder.
- [Pretending to be strangled to death]
- Lou Martin: Uhh! Ugh! Ugh! Uhh! Uhh! Strangling! Uhh Ughh!...
- [Class breaks out in laughter, and eventually Miss Barrett does too]
- [Mr. McHabe notices Miss Barrett walking towards class with a homemade suggestion box]
- J.J. McHabe: Oh. Suggestions, Miss Barrett, ahh? I must say you've got guts.
- Sylvia Barrett: It's just an idea, Mr. McHabe. It seems to me that if the students have a chance to speak freely without fear of punishment...
- J.J. McHabe: Listen, you start running this school with ideas, you'll have riots in your rooms. Fear - That's all they understand.
- Sylvia Barrett: The theme of Macbeth is that too much ambition can lead to ruthless ambition, and end up in disaster. That's what words are for - to be used. Who can tell me what "ruthless" means? Joe?
- [Gets no response, decides to ask...]
- Sylvia Barrett: Eddie?
- Eddie Williams: Steps all over.
- Sylvia Barrett: Use it in a sentence.
- Eddie Williams: Steps all over, like white people. I know because I'm colored.
- Sylvia Barrett: If you deny what you know, or what you are, or where you are, you deny the simplest part of being alive, and then you die.
- Sylvia Barrett: When I finally get the chance, the first few precious minutes to talk to them about something I want them to understand, and I find that I am some kind of enemy... the butt of some enormous joke.
- [urging Mr. Barringer to dance with a student]
- Sylvia Barrett: Why do you always say "maybe later"? Maybe sometime, maybe Thursday, and there never is a Thursday.
