William skimmed several acts, pausing now and then to try out a few of Romeo’s lines and consider how he might say them.
It wasn’t all that easy. Romeo, William decided, tended to beat around the bush an awful lot. It wasn’t until near the end of the play that he came to the place where Romeo drinks the poison. That seemed to offer more possibilities.
Imagining an ancient, dust-encrusted bottle, William pretended to uncork it. Sniffing its contents, he recoiled in disgust. Steeling himself, clenching his teeth, squinting his eyes, and jutting his chin, he brought the bottle to his lips once more—closed his eyes, slowly forced his lips to open—and drank.
Shuddering and clutching his throat, William S. Hardison, experienced actor, gurgled, “‘O true apothecary! / Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.’”
After that line, the stage direction said only Dies, but William padded his part, like Mr. Andre had done so often in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Staggering around the room clutching his throat, he returned to embrace and passionately kiss a vividly evoked Juliet more than once, before he keeled over, convulsed dramatically, did it again, and finally went limp.
He was getting to his feet when he suddenly remembered something else he’d meant to do that evening. He looked at his watch, wondering if it was too late to phone Charlie and ask him if he’d like to practice backflips and handstands tomorrow in his dad’s barn.
Eight o’clock. No, that wasn’t too late. Putting Doubleday’s Complete Works on the shelf—for the time being—he headed for the phone.
ZILPHA KEATLEY SNYDER is the author of The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid, and The Witches of Worm, all Newbery Honor Books, and most recently, William S. and the Great Escape, The Bronze Pen, and The Treasures of Weatherby. She was nominated for an Edgar Award for her book The Unseen, which was a School Library Journal Best Book and a Parents’ Choice Silver Honor winner. Zilpha lives in Mill Valley, California.
William's Midsummer Dreams Page 14