Shakespeare for Squirrels: A Novel (Fool #3)(66)
“Why would the authorities care?”
“Hermia’s father has put a sentence of death upon her unless she marries Demetrius, and he is a puff toad of great self-importance, so the authorities will bring her back, and likely arrest Lysander.”
“So your friend will be forced to marry the fellow you are in love with, or she will be killed.”
I was quite impressed with Flute’s ability to deliver the lines I had written for him and was desperately trying not to break character by showing it.
“I suppose. Oh, I am miserable. I am lost. I shall die friendless and alone, a spinster. Oh woe! Oh despair!” Flute wailed and wept with great drama. I glanced into the audience to see Helena, the real Helena, also sobbing into her hands. Had the child no family to comfort her?
“Hold there, knave!” came a voice from offstage. Tom Snout the tall tinker entered wearing a wig made of yellow straw instead of his stupid doeskin hat. “It is I, Demetrius, the piss-haired tosser. What evil do you perpetrate on this maid?”
I stood, met the tinker nose to sternum, as, even in character, he was annoyingly tall. “I am but comforting her.”
“Hold there, knave,” came another voice from offstage, and Robin Starveling, wearing a dark wig over his bald pate that looked suspiciously as if it had been fashioned from the hair of a donkey tail, and a pointy beard drawn on with charcoal, stumbled onstage. “It is I, Lysander, the pointy-bearded tosser. Who makes this maid weep?” He checked his note. “Why, I shall box his ears.”
“But wait,” came a bad falsetto from offstage, and now Peter Quince entered, wearing a long gown, and, for some reason, a veil. “It is I, Hermia, the tiny tosset, who hath defied my father, the aforementioned puff toad of dubious motivations. Who vexes my friend Helena?”
“Oh my love,” said Lysander (Starveling). “Snog me publicly so we may make everyone miserable.”
And Starveling bent Peter Quince over backward and passionately stage-snogged him, hiding the fact that both of them were furiously whispering, “What’s my next line? I don’t know, what’s my next line?” to each other. I shot a glance into the audience. Egeus was very displeased and agitated, but he did not dare stand or voice protest. The reminder of my knife-throwing skill was still buried in the back of his chair by his head.
There was a loud twang offstage and on cue Tom Snout screamed and bent over quickly, then stood holding a crossbow bolt, which he held as if it were stuck in his throat, while squeezing a sausage casing we had filled with beet juice. “Ahhhhh, I am slain, I am slain, I am truly fucking slain, ouch, ouch, ouch, squeeeeeeeeeeeeek!” Snout approximated his last breath’s escaping the hole in his throat even as he sprayed beet juice all over the other players—all but me, that is, as I danced deftly out of range—and Francis Flute screamed a lovely aria of bloody murder. Snout (Demetrius) lowered himself to the floor, checked his line note, and said, “Thud.” Which had been written as a stage direction, but on a stone floor, I suppose saying it worked by way of improvisation.
At which point Peter Quince broke character and walked to the edge of the stage. “Ladies, ladies, do not be dismayed, for that is not a real arrow, but only a stage prop, and that is not real blood, but only beet juice, which Tom Snout’s wife poured into a sausage casing, and this fellow is not slain, and all is well, thank you.” Then he skipped back to his mark and Starveling (Lysander) proceeded to stage-snog Quince (Hermia).
Francis/Helena fell to her knees over dead Demetrius and wailed, “Oh, my love, my Demetrius, who would do such a dread deed? Oh, I shall surely die of grief.”
At which point Drool entered with Snug the joiner, both dressed in uniforms of the watch, both their uniforms comically too small. Snug carried a crossbow. “It was not us,” said Snug.
“Not us,” said Drool. “We are only wandering around the woods like ninnies.”
“Like ninnies,” said Snug. “And despite all appearances, me holding this crossbow with no bolt”—he checked his parchment—“and despite you lot being out here on the edge of nowhere, we just happened by.”
“Aye,” said Drool as Blacktooth, “and we was hired to kill the bloke with the pointy beard, so this fellow is colorful damage.”
“Collateral damage,” Snug corrected, the dim leading the dim. “’At’s right. Egeus, royal puff toad hisself, hired us to kill that bloke over there snogging the carpenter.”
There was a scream of rage in the audience and I thought, There, there it is, Egeus, hearing his name evoked, has lost his mind. But when I looked, in fact, the scream had come from Helena. She had pulled my dagger from the back of Egeus’s chair and had quite smartly driven it through the top of his head. Helena released her two-handed grip on the blade and Egeus slumped over on the floor and commenced oozing fluids as he twitched. Two men in finery caught Helena by the arms, not sure if they were restraining her or holding her as she fainted.
As gasps and screams filled the hall, I stepped to the edge of the stage and said, “Oh well done, love. You’re not the soggy Ophelia we all thought you to be.” Which served to calm the audience not at all. As I considered my next improvisation, because I had diverged grievously from the script, Nick Bottom galloped onto and then around the stage, braying loudly and flapping his arms, affixed to which were wings that seemed fashioned from bits of watchman uniform and the barrel slats that had recently been my shipwrecked boat.