Directed by Aeron Macintyre
Featuring Kelli Crump, Leon Goertzen & Andre Abrahamians
A sign on a table “Shakespeare Festival GeneralAuditions.” Actors waiting in line for audition, holding headshots, doing warm-ups. Hamlet is trying to memorize her monologue.
HAMLET
To be, or not to be that is the… the…
Hamlet looks at footnote. Oxford and Stratford pop out of footnote. Dusty tweed jackets, walrus mustaches, elbow patches. Stratfordian wears glasses and holds a Riverside edition of Complete Works. Oxfordian has a Folio Facsimile.
STRATFORDIAN
Point.
OXFORDIAN
Question.
OXFORDIAN
Are you kidding? “To be or not to be, that is the question.” It’s Question.
STRATFORDIAN
Not in the first quarto of 1603. “To be or not to be, ay, that’s the point.”
Hamlet talks to audience for “prologue”
HAMLET
Two households both alike in dignity-
OXFORDIAN
Quarto? Psh. The first Folio is the definitive text.
HAMLET
In fair Academia where we lay our scene.
STRATFORDIAN
If you don’t mind a text compiled several years after the playwright’s death.
OXFORDIAN
Who cares how long the playwright was dead? The actors were consulted-
HAMLET
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny
STRATFORDIAN
“Point” scans better.
OXFORDIAN
Oh, don’t bring iambic pentameter drivel into this.
STRATFORDIAN
Drivel?!
HAMLET
Where uncivil comments make civil marginalia unclean.
OXFORDIAN
If you only mind the folio’s long spellings…
STRATFORDIAN
Oh, right. He probably didn’t care if anyone honored his verse.
HAMLET
From forth the fatal footnotes of these PhD mark’d foes/ a star-eyed actor takes the stage/ whose misadventur’d dramaturgical woes/ doth with her passion bury their ill-spent rage-
STRATFORDIAN
“Oopsie, I accidentally wrote in 10 syllable lines with 5 stressed syllables, again. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.”
OXFORDIAN
No one is saying it’s a bloody coincidence, but why you have to get so damned militant. You make up these inane rules…
STRATFORDIAN
Inane rules?!
OXFORDIAN
You butcher punctuation. Bend the meaning to meet the meter-
HAMLET
Sorry to interrupt, but I was just trying to memorize the monologue for an audition, and-
STRATFORDIAN
Shut up.
OXFORDIAN
Shut up.
HAMLET
But which word I should say?
STRATFORDIAN
Point.
OXFORDIAN
Question.
HAMLET
I’ll say “question.” That’s the one I’ve heard before-
OXFORDIAN
Ha! In. Your. Face!
Oxford does victory dance.
STRATFORDIAN
Oh, yes, please by all means, count that as a victory. “The way it’s commonly done” is always the arbiter of good taste and scholarship. I’m sure it’s what Shakespeare would have wanted.
OXFORDIAN
Why do you care what an illiterate actor wanted? How about trying for what the playwright wanted?
HAMLET
Isn’t Shakespeare the playwright?
OXFORDIAN
Oh pleeeeeeeeeease.
STRATFORDIAN
Now you’ve done it.
(The next two lines overlapping)
OXFORDIAN
You believe William Shakespeare, son of a glove maker, wrote these plays? He barely had a 6th grade education! Edward de
Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, would have had an education-
STRATFORDIAN
Hope you’re ready for some elitist mumbo jumbo. “He couldn’t possibly be a commoner.” How many illiterate actors do you know? Ask him when the Earl of Oxford died. Ask him-
HAMLET
O Yet For God’s Sake Go Not To These Wars!/The time was, boys, that you read these words,/ When you were more endeared to them than now;/ When your own Passion, when your own dear love,/ Threw many a northward look to see your father/ urge you to pursue certified public accounting; but he did long in vain./ Who then persuaded you to stay with Lit?/ You, Oxford, what made you mad for the bard?
OXFORDIAN
His rich imagery, rhetoric, and historical context.
HAMLET
Bullshit.
OXFORDIAN
Olivia Hussey in Zefferelli’s Romeo and Juliet. I was entranced.
HAMLET
Stratford.
Stratford breaks down.
STRATFORDIAN
I ALWAYS WANTED TO PLAY PUCK!
HAMLET
Of course you did, honey.
STRATFORDIAN
Timmy got to play Puck because he had dimples. And I had to play Peter Quince because I had glasses-
HAMLET
And you’ve been “playing Peter Quince” ever since.
STRATFORDIAN
From the moment I picked up the book-
HAMLET
It’s not a book! It’s a play! Break out of your bindings, boys! Strap on a ruffled collar! These words were meant to be heard and felt, not read on safe and dusty pages. Bring up the house lights! I’ll have no fourth wall!
Slowly the theme song from Henry the 5th (or Slings and Arrows) starts playing. Rising. The scholars rip off their dusty jackets and get Shakespearean. Both are wearing tights under their suits. Oxford has Shakespeare tats. (Bard
to the Bone, Alas Poor Yorick skull) Through the following speech, Oxford arms himself with a ruffle collar or puffy shirt. Stratford wraps himself in ivy. And glitter. Lots of glitter. Hamlet helps to dress them as if preparing for battle. Other actors who had been preparing for audition construct a makeshift Shakespeare flag. Headshots stapled together, they draw Shakespeare on the back and tape it to a broom handle. (This can be pre-made backstage) They are becoming a Shakespeare army.
OXFORDIAN
If only we had more companies doing the plays justice-
HAMLET
What’s he that wishes so?/ My cousin Oxford? No my fair cousin:/ If plays are mark’d to die, we are enough/ to do our vocation’s loss, and if we thrive,/ the fewer players, the greater share of honor./ By Jove, I am not covetous for gold /(if I were I would hardly choose acting). /But if it be a sin to covet honour,/ I am the most offending soul alive./ If it be a sin to hold the mirror as it were to life, to breathe life into this lofty scene from ages past in these states unborn and an accent then unknown- well if that’s a sin, then I’ll be damned. Give me a bare stage, an inspired actor, some text, and an audience,
and I’ll give you the music of the spheres. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers- and sisters, for he today that sheds his sweat and tears with me shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile an actor, this passion shall gentle his condition. Once more unto the stage, dear friends, once more! Or close your tomes up with verses dead. I see you straining upon your starters. The play’s afoot. Follow your spirit, and upon this charge cry, “God for text work! Passion and Shakespeare!”
Actors fly their Shakespeare banner and cheer!
ALL ACTORS
God for text work! Passion and Shakespeare!
Art and Music in Our Souls 