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“No one is afraid of the moon, Quince,” said I.
“Fear not the moon,” Quince continued, “nor by the many grisly deaths and gratuitous bonkings be dismayed, for they are but tricks of the stage. Be not afraid.”
“No one is afraid,” said the duke. “Methinks the players are afraid of the play themselves. Play on!”
“Aye, Your Grace,” said Quince. Then, back to his scroll. “Upon a tossing sea tossed the handsome and clever hero Pocket of Dog Snogging.”
The Mechanicals began to make storm noises. Drool, wearing a skirt made of barrel slats attached in the shape of a boat, came forth from behind the tapestries, with Jeff clinging to his head. “I present boat,” said Drool, “and this, Jeff, presents Jeff.” He swept me up in his great arms and held me like a babe as he rocked me to the rhythm of the imagined waves. Jeff climbed partially down Drool’s face and grasped at my coxcomb as we pitched upon the waves.
“And when all was thought lost—” read Quince.
“Oh no,” said I. “All is nearly lost. We shall have to eat the monkey.”
“—Pocket was tossed upon the fair shores of Athens.”
Before I could instruct otherwise, Drool tossed me onto the stone stage with much more enthusiasm than was required. I was not able to get my feet under me before coming down smartly upon one shoulder. I was able to roll to my feet, but I felt a crack in my chest upon impact and my breath left me in a great explosion. I turned back to shout at Drool but could find no air to push it.
“And so,” read Quince, “the hapless fool found himself wandering in the enchanted forest.”
Drool stood on the stage, well past when he was supposed to exit. Instead he pulled a strip of parchment from the front of his shirt and squinted at it, as did Jeff. “I forgetted me line,” said the oaf to the audience with a curtsy.
“You don’t know how to read, you ninny,” I said, finding my breath at last.
Drool held the scrap of parchment up closer to Jeff.
“He can’t read either.”
Quince had had only enough time to write each actor’s sides, the parchment scraps with each of their lines, so there was no master script from which to prompt Drool. Thus, Robin Starveling, carrying a lantern and a branch, drifted onto the stage.
“I present moonshine, or this lantern is the moon, and I am the man in the moon. Be not afraid.”
“They’re not afraid of the fucking moon,” said I.
“Oh no, someone doth break character and ruin the illusion we have endeavored to create,” improvised Starveling. Once beside Drool, he stretched so that he could read Drool’s line, then whispered to the ninny.
“Alas,” said Drool, in Robin Starveling’s voice, which was twice as annoying coming out of a larger package. “Alas, I am carried out by the surf to be dashed to bits on the rocks.” And with that, Drool backed off the stage, through the tapestry, and tossed out the barrel slats that made up his hull, which clattered on the stones. Robin Starveling found himself standing midstage, alone, lantern in one hand, branch in the other.
“And I, moonshine, am also dashed upon the rocks.” And he backed offstage, between the tapestries, and threw the branch out to signify his dashing.
The audience howled. From backstage, Jeff screeched. He was a performing monkey, after all, and the audience’s laughter meant he had done well.
I climbed to my feet and pantomimed looking around in a dark forest.
Peter Quince returned to the corner of the stage. “So the brave and handsome fool found himself lost in the forest, and soon he happened onto a young woman, who was weeping.”
I don’t know if Francis Flute was an excellent leaper or if Drool had flung him headlong through the tapestries, but Flute came to the stage airborne and landed center stage in a heap of limbs, wig, and veil, where he commenced to weep in the falsetto he had practiced as Thisby and briefly as Juliet.
“Dear child,” said I. “What tragedy hath befallen thee?”
“Oh, good sir,” said Francis, turning his wig around on his head so he could see. “I am heartbroken, for I have been used like the wanton tart that I appear to be by the yellow-haired tosser known as Demetrius. He now loves my friend Hermia, who only has eyes for Lysander, and the two of them have fucked off to the forest to be married in secret, and Demetrius has followed, for I grassed them out to the authorities.”
“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.
In a moment, everyone had stopped fretting about the murder and had turned their attention to the lunatic in the winged donkey outfit, at which point Nick Bottom strode to the edge of the stage and lifted his wings. “Gentle ladies, fear not. Gentle gentlemen, fear not. Fear not, for I am Pegasus, magical horse of mythology and mystery, and I am here to make all things right. This is not blood you see, but stage blood, and that knife but a prop knife.”
I skipped over to Snug and Drool and whispered, “Grab the dead puff toad and drag him to the antechamber, now, and bow before you drag him in the door.”
“And this good gentleman,” continued Bottom, pointing to the quite dead Egeus, “to show his love and appreciation for the duke and his bride, agreed to be part of our romantic comical tragedy. He is playing the tragic victim part, because it didn’t require a special costume.”
Drool and Snug had seized Egeus’s body by the arms and were dragging him past the duke and Hippolyta, leaving a red trail on the stone. When they reached the door, they dropped the body, bowed, then picked up the expired puff toad and dragged him in.
When the door closed I started applauding wildly while nodding at the audience members, who, afraid that they were not important enough to be let in on the joke, began to applaud with me. I applauded at the exiting watchmen, at the lovers onstage, at the newborn Pegasus, and even at Helena, who had come to her senses and smiled as I smiled and nodded to her. Go with me here, love, your life is on it. The two blokes holding her arms let her go and she took a bow and nodded her gratitude around the room.
“And that is act one,” I announced. “There will be a brief intermission, then act two.” Then I took my bow and ran offstage, dragging Bottom out of a flourish of bowing so effusive one of his wings had fallen off. I pulled him by one of his long ears until we were through the entry of the antechamber, where I slammed the heavy door and leaned my back against it.
Peter Quince, standing over the body of Egeus, said, “I have a few notes.”
“That were smashing!” said Cobweb, bouncing on her toes in front of me like a child waiting for a sweet.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
“Having a wee frolic,” she said.
“We were at wit’s end. You were supposed to meet us in Drool’s cell. It’s been hours.”
“It was a long frolic,” said Peaseblossom. “We are not good at time.”
