The Mercutio Problem

by Carol Anne Douglas

  The Mercutio Problem

  Carol Anne Douglas

  Hermione Books

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2019 Carol Anne Douglas

  Published in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-1-7327899-3-7

  Cover Art © 2018 by Gabriella Liv Eriksson

  Cover Design and Interior Layout by Terry Roy

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real people or current events is purely coincidental.

  ~~~

  Publisher’s Cataloging-In-Publication Data

  (Prepared by The Donohue Group, Inc.)

  Names: Douglas, Carol Anne, author.

  Title: The Mercutio problem / Carol Anne Douglas.

  Description: [Washington, D.C.] : Hermione Books, [2019] | Series: The Merlin’s Shakespeare series ; book 2 | Interest age level: 012-018. | Summary: “The immortal wizard Merlin transforms teenage actor Beth Owens to the character Mercutio so she can save him. The time is the present, and the first decade of the 17th century. The main character lives in Maryland, but she is transported to Shakespeare’s England and the worlds of Shakespeare’s characters”--Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: ISBN 9781732789944 | ISBN 9781732789937 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Merlin (Legendary character)--Juvenile fiction. | Teenage actors--Maryland--Juvenile fiction. | Mercutio (Fictitious character)--Juvenile fiction. | Time travel--Juvenile fiction. | Great Britain--History--17th century--Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: Merlin (Legendary character)--Fiction. | Teenage actors--Maryland--Fiction. | Mercutio (Fictitious character)--Fiction. | Time travel--Fiction. | Great Britain--History--17th century--Fiction. | LCGFT: Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3554.O8235 M47 2019 (print) | LCC PS3554.O8235 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54--dc23

  This book is dedicated to

  Nell Quinn-Gibney, Meg Quinn-Gibney, Sophie Marney-Dejanikus, and Claire Marney-Dejanikus. I am grateful to them for being the girls in my life and for listening to my stories. I would never have written this without having known them.

  The book is also dedicated to the memory of my dearest Mandy Doolittle, who encouraged me to write it.

  I also want to dedicate this book to my mother,

  Joan Flannery Douglas,

  who read stories to me and understood that I always wanted to be a writer.

  The Mercutio Problem

  Book Two of the Merlin’s Shakespeare Series

  Carol Anne Douglas

  Hermione Books USA

  The Mercutio Problem

  The Mercutio Problem is a concept propounded by literary critics who say that a playwright may have to kill off a secondary character whose presence is too strong.

  Chapter 1

  NO MORE DANGER, NO more killing, no more other worlds this semester, Beth Owens told herself as she walked to her history class.

  She didn’t want to go through anything more difficult than attending classes at James Dean High School and having good times with her friends. She stepped around a smelly mess of fast food breakfast that some dumb kid had dropped in the hall.

  The history classroom would be refreshingly normal, with pictures of Tolstoy, Rasputin, and Lenin from last fall’s unit on Russia.

  But when Beth entered the classroom, she saw pictures of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and worst of all, Shakespeare. Moscow’s Red Square had been replaced by a map of London circa 1600. Her heart skipped a beat. She had time traveled to Shakespeare’s world—both London in his era and the worlds of some of his characters—the previous semester and she couldn’t bear the thought of having to study about that period again.

  Now she was going to have to revisit Shakespeare. It was all Beth could do not to run away screaming. But other kids were pressing into the room, so she moved along with the crowd and seated herself at a desk. She couldn’t drop out. World history was a required class.

  The other students looked more or less enthusiastic, depending on their personalities. One boy she didn’t know said, “That Henry VIII was quite a dude.” One girl was showing another girl a new bracelet. Beth felt alone. James Dean High featured the performing arts, so she had something in common with many of the other kids, but she felt like they were living in another world because their experience was limited to the twenty-first century USA.

  Her friend Arnie Silver came in and sat in the next desk. He was beaming because he was a Shakespeare geek like Beth, but he hadn’t time traveled except when she had inadvertently pulled him into Shakespeare’s world, and he didn’t have the power to remember it well. Like her, Arnie loved to act in Shakespeare’s plays in drama class. “Are you happy to see the pictures of Renaissance England?” he asked, probably remembering her enthusiasm for that era just a couple of months ago.

  “I can’t tell you how happy,” she said with a voice full of sarcasm.

  Sita Desai, her best friend, would understand why the pictures upset Beth, but Sita didn’t take the same history class. Sita and Ms. Capulet the drama teacher were the only people who knew almost all of what had happened to Beth in Shakespeare’s world.

  Her eyes swelled up at the memory, but she managed to stop herself from crying.

  Kevin Connelly, hearty enough to play Henry VIII (or at least the young, fit Henry), walked in to the classroom and whooped. “Shakespeare’s time! Woohoo! I can’t believe our luck.” He loved to act, but he either pretended not to be a geek or really wasn’t one.

  Mr. Clarke, the history teacher, looking his usual buttoned-down self, came in and shut the door. Although he was barely in his thirties, he was one of the few teachers to always wear a suit—a well-fitting suit that probably strained his budget—and a tie and an immaculate white shirt.

  He introduced himself to the students who didn’t know him. “I listen to students’ suggestions,” he said in his Jamaican accent. “Last semester, a student wanted to focus on Elizabethan England, so we’ll do that this semester.” He smiled at Beth.

  Smiling back took all the strength she had. Why did he have to listen to her? Focusing on Renaissance England was what she had wanted then, not now. All she wanted now was to hear nothing about Shakespeare’s time for the next few years. She hated to remember how eager she had been when the immortal wizard Merlin first sent her there.

  She had directed Macbeth, but when she prompted one of the actors about the line “Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane,” the kids playing MacDuff and the other insurgents turned into trees and she didn’t know how to turn them back. Merlin, wearing an ordinary sweater and pants, had appeared in the high school auditorium, turned the kids back to humans, and erased everyone’s memories of the strange event.

  After the play ended, only Beth, Ms. Capulet, and Merlin were left in the auditorium.

  “I have a task for you, Beth,” Merlin told her. He sat down on one of the auditorium seats near hers. “There is one great lack in Shakespeare’s writings. I helped him for a reason. I wanted him to write a play about King Arthur.” He paused.

  “But there isn’t any Shakespeare play about King Arthur,” Beth said.

  “There is not. Or there does not seem to be.” Merlin frowned. “I gave Will all he needed. Knowledge of kings, knowledge of battles. But he used bits and pieces in other plays, and never wrote the one I most desir
ed. Or he did not appear to. There may be such a play, but it may be hidden.”

  “A lost Shakespeare play!” Ms. Capulet gasped. “That would be incredibly valuable.”

  “Beyond measure,” Merlin said, “especially to me. Not just any play, but the one that was to be his crowning glory.”

  Beth wanted to giggle, because “crowning glory” in this instance sounded like a pun, but she refrained because Merlin intimidated her.

  “If you, who are so powerful, can’t find it, why do you think I could? I’m just a teenager.”

  “People might tell you things that they would not tell me,” Merlin said. “You have some magical powers—untried and unschooled, it is true—and you love Shakespeare and learn the lines quickly. You also have some talent for acting.”

  She learned that over the centuries, Merlin had sent many young people with magical powers to find the missing play. He had discovered that Beth could perform magic, but unfortunately her magical power was limited to things related to Shakespeare and his plays.

  Merlin had given her the power of simultaneous translation, so she could hear Renaissance English as if people were speaking in her own form of English and they could hear her as if she spoke in their mode.

  She remembered talking to Shakespeare in his plain rented room in Old London, with just a bed, a table, one chair, and a stool. On the wall hung the coat of arms he had pushed for many years to obtain. She could almost hear his voice. She had learned that he had never written a play about King Arthur, and why he hadn’t.

  He sat on the chair and bade her to sit on a stool—the only other furniture—and share his bread. She cut a piece. Then she asked about his plays.

  “It’s incredible that you could have created both comedies and dramas, with characters as different as Bottom and Lady Macbeth, or Richard III.” She tried to say Richard’s name without shuddering.

  “But there is not just one villain in the world, one lover, one fool,” Shakespeare said. “The world holds not just Bottom and Richard, but Falstaff and Macbeth. Not just Juliet, but Portia. And Lady Macbeth.” He drank ale, and his speech became more intense. “They are joined, you see. You cannot have Lear without Bottom, or Bottom without Lear. No fairies without the abyss, no abyss without fairies. No light without darkness, no darkness without light.” His eyes shone as if he were looking on faraway scenes.

  Her heart almost burst at the memory.

  Beth pulled herself together to listen to Mr. Clarke.

  “I realize that, except for watching television shows of dubious accuracy, not all of you are familiar with the Tudors,” the teacher said. “I doubt that you even are familiar with the history of Maryland, our own state, but that isn’t covered in my World History class. So we’ll start by studying the historical background of England in that time. We’ll do that as painlessly as possible by looking at Shakespeare’s plays Richard III and Henry V. Ms. Capulet, the drama teacher, will join us for that part of the class.”

  Beth swayed. No, not Richard, the character she hated and feared. Richard who had insinuated himself into her brain. He had seen her thoughts and even influenced them. When she had tried to go to other places in Shakespeare’s world, Richard had pulled her into his incense-filled great hall.

  Arnie grabbed her before she fell out of her desk.

  “Beth was sick over the holidays,” Arnie said. “I think she still has a touch of flu.”

  Everyone was staring at her, but at least Arnie’s words made her weakness sound normal.

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Mr. Clarke walked over to her. “Would you like to go to the infirmary?”

  Arnie answered for her. “Yes.” He helped Beth out of her desk and walked her out into the hall.

  Now everyone would think he was her boyfriend. Well, that was the least of her worries.

  When they stood in the hall, Beth staggered and leaned against the wall.

  “Are you going to be OK?” Arnie asked. “Do you want to go to the infirmary?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m going to see Ms. Capulet. You can go back to the history class.”

  “If you’re sure you’re all right.” He turned back to the classroom but hesitated.

  “I’m fine. Thanks for your quick thinking.” Beth pulled herself together and hurried in the direction of the drama teacher’s office. Ms. Portia Desdemona Capulet was the one who had brought Beth to Merlin’s attention—leading her to see things that haunted her.

  Beth passed windows showing the piles of January snow outdoors, but she didn’t pause to admire the scene. She passed classrooms where kids were reciting in French and Spanish, but she could scarcely hear the words. She almost ran into some boys who were running down the hall singing songs from High School Musical. She passed a mural depicting James Dean and a photo of the school’s mascot, a guy in a black leather jacket who was riding a motorcycle. She heard someone playing a trombone when she passed the rooms where kids practiced for the band.

  She came to the teachers’ offices. Ms. Capulet’s door was open, so Beth walked in without knocking.

  The office was messy, as usual. There shouldn’t be many student papers at the beginning of the semester, but there were stacks of paper. Posters of Katharine Hepburn and James Dean looked down from the walls. The books in Ms. Capulet’s bookcase were arranged helter-skelter, with some standing up and some lying on their sides. The office smelled like dust. The teacher sat at her paper-filled desk. Her long, gray hair streamed down her back. As usual, Ms. Capulet wore jeans. A t-shirt worn over her turtleneck said “High school is a stage.”

  “I was expecting you, Beth. Please sit down.” Ms. Capulet sounded as if she had heard someone had cancer. She gestured towards the chair reserved for students who came to discuss their work. “I’m so sorry. Mr. Clarke just told me this morning. I didn’t have a chance to warn you.”

  Beth sat down and took a deep breath. “But that play! How could he have chosen that play by chance?” Ms. Capulet would know Beth wasn’t talking about Henry V.

  The teacher shrugged. “He did. It’s an unfortunate coincidence. I know it will bring up horrible memories for you. But I couldn’t tell him not to use the play because one of the students had been hurt by Richard III. All I can do is try to support you.”

  She was with Mercutio in Richard’s hall. The king had reached for Beth.

  “No! Don’t touch Beth!” Mercutio drew his sword.

  “Traitor,” Richard said coldly, staring into a mirror the others could not see and beckoning to someone.

  Tybalt, the character in Romeo and Juliet who had killed Mercutio, appeared, and in a flash stabbed Mercutio in the back.

  “No!” Beth leapt to Mercutio’s aid, but she was too late. Grabbing his arm as he fell, she threw herself on her knees beside him.

  Beth forced herself to concentrate on the present. “I’m not just worried about bad memories.” Her voice faltered. “I don’t want Richard back in my life.” Just saying his name made her stomach heave. “He was able to see into my brain. I’m afraid that he could connect with me again.”

  “We did see Lady Macbeth kill him,” Ms. Capulet reminded her.

  “But not forever. A famous character can’t be killed forever.” The pitch of Beth’s voice rose higher. “We don’t know when or how he could come back.”

  “That’s true. I don’t think he can come back to our time, but we don’t know.” The teacher twisted her hands. “Perhaps we can just arrange for you to miss the class when that movie is shown. Just in case.”

  “But I don’t want to take a class in the history of Renaissance England,” Beth groaned.

  “I know, but you need this class. Mr. Clarke is so proud of taking you up on your suggestion.”

  Beth wanted to bury her history book under one of the piles in the office. “I should know better than to say anything to a teacher
—ever.”

  Ms. Capulet flinched. “Let’s think how you could get more support. Do you have any friends in that class?”

  “Arnie Silver. He realizes that something happened to me in Shakespeare’s England, but he doesn’t know what. And Kevin, but I couldn’t confide in him.”

  “I think you could tell Arnie a little more. And your friend Sita could switch to Mr. Clarke’s history class. I could say she needs to do that because of her focus on playing Shakespearean roles.”

  “If you can get the history class switched for her, why not for me?”

  “When the teacher has specifically focused it on the era you suggested? No way. But I think Sita would be willing to switch if that would help you.”

  “Yes, I guess so.” Beth felt a little cheered, but not totally. She and Sita had had their worst arguments over Shakespeare. Sita had magical powers regarding Shakespeare’s plays herself, though she hadn’t had the chance to test them, and she resented the fact that Merlin had chosen Beth to time travel, and resented even more that Beth wouldn’t tell her Shakespeare’s secrets.

  “Don’t you have another class soon?” the drama teacher asked, looking at her watch.

  “Yes. Thank you for everything.” Beth rose from her chair and left Ms. Capulet’s office. It was time to go to French class.

  Beth lingered as she walked down the hall that had a wall of photos of previous school plays. The only photos of her were from The Taming of the Shrew, where she had played Kate and Kevin had driven her crazy because he kept on playing Petruchio off stage. She saw the photos of Arnie as MacDuff fighting Kevin as Macbeth, and Sita looking evil as Lady Macbeth. Beth had directed that play. Ms. Capulet had said there was too much magic in Beth for her to play a part in any play in which characters were killed because she might inadvertently get them killed in real life. And there were photos of Kevin and Arnie hamming it up in The Comedy of Errors. Beth hadn’t been able to act in that play because she was so busy supposedly taking a special studies class in Shakespeare from Ms. Capulet, but she had actually been traveling to Shakespeare’s time.