Much Ado about Macbeth

by Randy McCharles

  Much Ado about Macbeth

  Published by Tyche Books Ltd.

  www.TycheBooks.com

  Copyright © 2015 Randy McCharles

  First Tyche Books Ltd Edition 2015

  Smashwords Edition 2015

  Print ISBN: 978-1-928025-29-0

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-928025-30-6

  Cover Art by Stefan Lorenz

  Cover Layout by Lucia Starkey

  Interior Layout by Ryah Deines

  Editorial by Andrea Howe of Blue Falcon Editing

  Author photograph: Leonard Halmrast

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage & retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright holder, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third party websites or their content.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead would be really cool, but is purely coincidental.

  This book was funded in part by a grant from the Alberta Media Fund.

  Dedication

  This novel was inspired by my high school days, a trying yet magical time for everyone involved: students, teachers, administrators and, of course, parents. I did take drama in high school and Simon Riordon (the younger version) bears a strong resemblance to one of my teachers. High School is where I was introduced to William Shakespeare, but the greater drama was in the lives of fellow students and their families. Today, as an adult, I have a more realistic vision of the teachers, who during my school days appeared to not have lives outside of teaching. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that they were people too. From the heart of a student of life, this novel is dedicated to educators, parents, and students everywhere. All the world's a stage, and we its players; and nowhere is this more true than in high school.

  –Act I–

  Scene 1: A Desert Place

  Lightning danced across the leaden city skyline, a gleeful counterpoint to the echo of grumbling thunder. Beneath the burgeoning storm, in a vacant lot surrounded by aging, smog-shrouded buildings, three hags huddled together, looking much at home amid the long, wild grass and windblown trash. In the nearby rush-hour streets, traffic lights twitched from yellow to red to green, and the horns of irate drivers and the shriek of too-worn brakes joined the hellish song.

  The first hag raised her thin, grating voice to be heard above the clamour. “When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?”

  The second hag groaned in exasperation. “Cripes, Agatha. It’s the twenty-first century. Must you keep quoting those tired, worn-out lines?”

  “Sisters!” crabbed the third and final hag. “Speaking of tired, worn-out lines, you two have this same argument year after year. Could we just get on with it so that we can get back indoors?” She looked up at the darkening sky. “My corns tell me it’s about to rain.”

  “Well,” harrumphed Agatha, who towered above the others but was so thin that she sometimes seemed to pass through doors without opening them first. “If your corns say it’s going to rain, then who am I to argue?” As if in answer, a large raindrop splatted onto her overlarge and crooked nose.

  Gertrude, the second hag, suppressed a smile. It was no wonder she stood shorter than Agatha. She was horribly misshapen, with one shoulder much higher than the other, and a back so crooked that her chin was buried in her chest. “Very well, the short version. Where will this season’s supplicant meet us?”

  The third hag, Netty, stood no taller than a child and tended to sound as if she were screeching, even when speaking softly. What she lacked in height, however, she made up for in girth. “At the Dairy Queen.” The onion-shaped hag grinned through missing teeth while tapping her fingers together with excitement.

  “The Dairy Queen?” Agatha’s craggy face darkened to match the sky.

  “Well,” said Netty. “The nearest heath is 140 miles away, and our supplicant claims that school bus passes don’t cover that distance. I settled for the Dairy Queen across from his school.”

  “School!” Gertrude’s ancient eyes danced with fire. “We haven’t entertained a university supplicant since . . . Oxford, 1872.” The rumpled witch rubbed her grubby palms together. “I do love universities. Students are so vain. Almost as vain as the professors.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up.” Netty rolled her head on her round shoulders. “We’re not talking university.”

  “What, then?” asked Gertrude. “College? Trade school? Fine arts? Please tell me it’s fine arts.”

  Netty’s voice came as little more than a whisper—screeching still, but a whisper. “High school.”

  “High school!” Agatha and Gertrude crowed together.

  “Is that even legal?” asked Agatha.

  The other two gave Agatha a blank stare.

  “We’re witches,” Gertrude murmured in the soft, reasonable voice that was her trademark. “Everything we do is illegal. Otherwise, what would be the point?”

  “Whatever.” Agatha scowled at Gertrude. “You skipped over when. As in: When shall we three meet again?”

  “Right,” said Gertrude. “I got confused by Netty’s corns.”

  “Don’t go blaming my corns!” The squat hag wagged a plump finger in her deformed sister’s face. “It’s your own fault. You’re the pin-up girl for that attention defy . . . defa . . . defi— Oh, that AC/DC thing where you can’t keep your thoughts in a straight line.”

  Gertrude stared at Netty. Then her lips moved. “What was the question again?”

  Netty smiled.

  “When,” thundered Agatha, “shall we three meet again?” The tall hag’s words were punctuated by loud claps of actual thunder.

  “Later today,” Netty said quietly. “After school.”

  “Right, then,” said Agatha. “We meet again at the Dairy Queen after school. I’m glad that’s settled. Now we can adjourn and go indoors for a nice hot cup of tea.”

  Agatha’s two sisters began hobbling away.

  “Where are you going?” demanded Agatha.

  Netty looked back and screeched against the storm. “We’re adjourning.”

  “We have to say the words,” Agatha called back.

  “No,” murmured Gertrude, her soft words somehow penetrating the wind. “We don’t.”

  “Frizzle frazzle,” Agatha mumbled then hastily uttered the closing words: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.”

  While scuttling to catch up to her sisters, the tall witch muttered, “You’d think that after doing this for four hundred years, it would get easier.”

  “What?” Netty screeched at her.

  “I said—” began Agatha, but her words were drowned out by a sudden downpour.

  Scene 2: The Play’s the Thing

  Paul Samson always enjoyed this time of year. First day of school. Classes not yet started. Nothing gone wrong. Yet.

  He stood alone in Ashcroft Senior High’s five-hundred-seat auditorium, wearing his traditional teaching attire—Paul Stewart sport coat, corduroy pants, and Calvin Klein penny loafers—waiting for his grade-twelve students to arrive for the first drama class of their final year. As he always did when standing in an empty auditorium, Paul felt at peace. Through the drawn-back curtains, he could see out into the risers, row upon row of empty theatre seats, the stage itself bereft of props and backdrops. So quiet. If only
every day, every moment, could be like this.

  “Sir?”

  Paul looked at his watch then turned to consider his senior-year assistant, Lenny Cadwell. Somehow the boy had crept up on him.

  “You’re early, Lenny.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lenny Cadwell was Ashcroft’s rising star. Rail thin; straight, black hair that tended to get in his eyes; and handsome in a standoffish, bad-boy way, Lenny was polite and efficient offstage and a flaming prima donna when in front of an audience. He was exactly the kind of actor no director in his right mind would hire. All efforts to rein him in had not so much failed as gone unnoticed. Lenny was one of those rare people who saw and heard only what he wanted. To everything else he was blind, deaf, and dumb. Of all the candidates from last semester Paul could have chosen as his assistant, Lenny had ranked dead last. Unfortunately Lenny was also the only senior student who took drama seriously and, therefore, the only real candidate. Paul was stuck with him.

  “Well, what is it, Lenny?”

  “Class will be starting soon,” the boy said. “Do we know what play we will be putting on this term?”

  Well, so much for peace. Drama for grades ten and eleven was like a still pond, the only disturbance being the actual students, all of whom thought they were born actors and didn’t need any actual training. Grade twelve, by comparison, was a whirlpool, a maelstrom of decisions and consequences that threatened each year to drag Paul down into oblivion. While the tenth- and eleventh-grade curricula had lists of approved plays from which to choose, twelfth grade was another story. It was up to Paul to select plays that would both challenge and best use the skills of the students, most of them now in their third year of drama instruction. But with so many brilliant plays to choose from . . . Well, Paul always hated making the choice. And no matter what he chose, someone would disapprove—usually quite loudly.

  Even so, Paul had spent the summer mulling over the question of which play his twelfth-grade class should perform for first term. He had narrowed his list down to a dozen popular high school plays that he felt would illicit the least objection. Then he had run out of time. Since breakfast, he had reduced the list to three by the simple means of following his whimsy. But whimsy went only so far. He still had two choices to eliminate.

  “Well, Lenny? What play do you think we should put on?”

  The boy stared at him, surprise breaking his wonted unruffled expression. Paul had to force himself not to laugh or smile. He couldn’t remember ever asking Lenny his opinion. Not once.

  But Lenny recovered quickly, his prima donna persona taking over. “How about Tony and Tina’s Wedding? It’s been playing at the Carousel Dinner Theatre forever, so it must be good.”

  And that was why Paul rarely asked students their opinions. He ran the fingers of his right hand through his thinning brown hair, an alternative to strangling the idiot would-be actor. Never mind that Tony and Tina’s Wedding was not a play. It was dinner theatre. And a musical.

  Calmly Paul said, “That it is playing now, right now, downtown, is precisely why we would not do it here. We want to put on a play that people can’t see somewhere else. Something that they haven’t seen recently.”

  Lenny gave him the look that said I don’t understand what you are talking about, so I am forgetting it right now. See? Forgotten.

  “How about Grease?”

  Another musical. Was that all kids cared for these days? Musicals? Paul shook his head. “And which of our third-year students can sing? Can any of them sing? And what kind of lesson does Grease teach, anyway? Give up being straight laced and join a gang?”

  Again, Lenny gave him the look.

  Paul drummed his fingers against his lips. “A lesson. That’s what we need. Something that educates as well as entertains.” He ran his remaining three plays through his mind then began reviewing the nine he had capriciously dismissed. Did any of them teach a lesson?

  “How about—?” Lenny said, but Paul shushed him.

  “Wait, wait, something’s coming.” Paul remembered how last June several eleventh-graders, some in his own drama class, had been suspended for cheating on their final exams. Summer school had caught most of them up, but several were repeating eleventh grade. The affair had blemished Ashcroft’s reputation, but Paul was more concerned about the cheating itself. None of the students had felt bad for doing it, only for being caught. Surely there must be a play about the evils of cheating.

  “Sir,” said Lenny. “It’s almost time.”

  “That’s okay, Lenny.” Paul found himself slowly nodding his head. “I have chosen our play.”

  “Sir? What is it?”

  “Macbeth!”

  “Who?”

  Paul considered the twelfth-grader. “One of Shakespeare’s most famous plays?”

  The boy’s face blanched. “Shakespeare.”

  Paul spoke through gritted teeth. “You can’t be an actor without performing at least one of the Bard’s plays.”

  Again the look. Wisdom: in one ear, out the other.

  A bell rang and the doors at the top of the auditorium banged open. Students began dribbling down the aisles.

  Paul gave Lenny a penetrating look. “Go visit Mrs. Shean in the library. Ask her for Macbeth. She should have several copies of the Penguin Popular Classics paperback edition. We’ll see how far we can read today.”

  Scowling, Lenny slouched off to do as he was asked.

  Scene 3: Full of Scorpions Is My Mind

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  Winston’s beady eyes looked ready to explode, which, for Ashcroft High’s principal, was his normal look. Paul decided that the overweight and habitually unhealthy-looking administrator’s expression would look great on a production poster. He just wasn’t sure which production. Perhaps Mutants from Mars?

  “What, um, seems to be the problem?” Paul asked.

  Winston gave him a one-word answer. “Macbeth.”

  Paul whistled. Word traveled fast. Class had ended ten minutes ago.

  “I found out five minutes after your class started,” Winston said, apparently reading his mind. “I know everything that goes on around here.”

  Everything except half a hundred students cheating on their exams, Paul mused. “So what’s the problem with Macbeth? Schools have been teaching Shakespeare forever. You can’t get more classic than Shakespeare.”

  Winston tugged a handkerchief out of his rumpled suit coat pocket and wiped his face. “The parents will revolt. We can’t have a school play about something as inappropriate as witchcraft.”

  “Witchcraft?” Paul’s heart almost stopped in his chest. It hadn’t even occurred to him that the brief appearances of the witches would be an issue. It’s not as if they flew on broomsticks, sacrificed goats, or performed magic in the story. Macbeth’s witches were little more than cryptic fortune-tellers.

  “Macbeth isn’t about witchcraft. It’s about cheating. Remember cheating? Macbeth is the most appropriate play we could put on right now. As for witchcraft, that’s merely the plot device the play uses to facilitate cheating. If anything, the play is antiwitchcraft.”

  Winston shook his head and had, in fact, had been shaking his head the entire time Paul had been speaking. “The parents don’t look that deep. All they see and remember is ‘bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.’ They’ll surround the school with pitchforks and picket signs.”

  Paul sighed and decided that correcting the flawed quote from the play would not be helpful.

  The school principal smiled. “Why don’t you put on Romeo and Juliet instead?”

  “Romeo and Juliet?” Paul echoed. “A play about teen sex and suicide. The parents will accept that?”

  Winston burst out laughing and dabbed at his face again. “You’re right. A horrible topic. The parents love it, though. Most popular Shakespeare play for high schools, I understand.”

  “Well, I don’t understand,” Paul said. “And I’m a parent. I’d quit before I directed a
high school production of Romeo and Juliet.”

  “I’m not asking you to quit.” Winston folded and tucked the handkerchief back into his pocket. “And you don’t have to do Romeo and Juliet. I’m only asking you to reconsider Macbeth. Be forewarned. If you proceed with that play, you will regret it.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  Paul had stepped out of Principal Winston’s office, only to be cornered by Elizabeth Cadwell, president of the Parent-Teacher Association. She was also the spitting image of her son, Lenny, only thinner and paler. And from Paul’s past encounters with the gorgon lady, as she was adoringly dubbed in the teacher’s lounge, the fruit didn’t fall far from the tree. Paul was not surprised to see her. Winston might think that he knows everything that goes on around here, but the gorgon lady was usually three steps ahead of him.

  The human lizard repeated her question. “Are you out of you mind?”

  “Apparently.” Paul wagged his head. “Winston just suggested that I put on Romeo and Juliet instead.”

  The gorgon smiled. “What an excellent idea. The parents will love Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Especially the sex scenes,” Paul said.

  The gorgon lost its smile. “The what?”

  “You know, thirteen-year-old kids defy their parents and sneak out for hanky-panky. I much prefer the sex over the suicides.”

  “The what!” The gorgon’s blanched face turned an ugly red. “Are you screwing with me? Because if you’re screwing with me—”

  “Or,” Paul said, “we could do A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Great costuming, though skimpy at times. And dancing! Oh, the dancing!”

  “That . . . doesn’t . . . sound . . . too bad,” the gorgon admitted.

  “And the orgies.” Paul clasped his hands together. “Think of the fun the kids will have.”