Title: Another Shakespeare Parody

Author: Tabitha Wexley (Kelly)

Warnings: May get EXTREMELY weird, silly, and quite outrageous at times throughout the play. Harsh language, threat to bodily harm, and mild violence used. No lifeguard on duty. Proceed at your own risk.

Disclaimers: Well, let's see… All those out there who absolutely love Shakespeare are in for a real shock… I love Shakespeare too, but I thought this would be fun, so get ready for a version of "Hamlet" that's a real ride.  Enjoy. Oh yeah, and all the people acting are people I know, and those I don't know I don't own the right to put them in. Well, whoops.

ACT I, Scene 1

----Elsinore. Platform in front of castle.

(Enter BERNARDO *Tonya and FRANCISCO *Paulette)

TONYA: Who's there? (looking paranoid into darkness)

PAULETTE: (on other side of stage, also staring scared into darkness) Nuh-uh. You answer first!

TONYA: ……uh…. Long live the king!

PAULETTE: (in lowered voice) Who *says* that anymore? (normal) Bernardo?

TONYA: Yep, that's me. The one, the only!

PAULETTE: You're way early.

TONYA: No way! It's midnight, dude! Don't you have an early bedtime?

PAULETTE: O_O…. Oh, light!! Thanks so much, Ton—I mean, Bernardo. It's fer-reezing out here!

TONYA: Yeah…. So, anything happen out here?

PAULETTE: Nope, nothin'.

TONYA: Well, see ya later. Oh! And if you see those other two slackers, tell 'em to haul ass!!

PAULETTE: (under her breath) I am *so* glad that's all I have to do… I wouldn't actually say that word anyway….

(Enter HORATIO *Shelly and MARCELLUS *Dave)

PAULETTE: (under breath) Oops! I forgot them… (normal) Um, here they come… I think. Who's there?

SHELLY: Friends! (grin)

DAVE: (glances at script puzzled) How the fuck do you say this??

KELLY: (off stage, smacking self in head) Why, God? Why did I cast *him*?

DAVE: (looking frightened towards Kelly) Uh…

SHELLY: (whispering to Dave) Just say we follow the king! (nudges him hard in the stomach)

DAVE: Ow! (rubs stomach tenderly) We follow the king.

PAULETTE: Night people! I have to get to bed before I collapse!

DAVE: Uh… (very stilted speech) farewell, honest soldier. Who hath reliev'd you?

PAULETTE: (growling under her breath) Can't I just *leave* already!? She let me go!

SHELLY: *ahem* She's playing a he.

PAULETTE: (glare) Whoever's playing Bernardo! Can I get back to Utah now?

KELLY: (off stage shaking head in hands) Just go. We'll see you at Thanksgiving.

PAULETTE: Kay, bye!

(Paulette exits, jumps a plane, and flies to Utah)

DAVE: She was just a little bitchy, wasn't she?

ENTIRE CAST: (glare)

DAVE: (gulps, begins to run from Liz E with axe)

KELLY: (grabs Liz's ponytail and holds her back)

SHELLY: (grabs Dave by his shirt and pulls him back onto the stage) It's your line!

DAVE: (glances at script and brightens) Hey! I get to say holla!

KELLY: (getting very flustered) JUST SAY IT!!!!

DAVE: (sounding like Jay-Z) Holla! Bernardo!

KELLY: (smacks self in head with prop wall)

TONYA: Yo! Wassup, homie-G? Yo! Is that Horatio?

SHELLY: A piece of him.

DAVE: Ewww.

SHELLY: It's just the line! It means I'm here, like, only physically!

DAVE: Oh. (blush)

TONYA: Welcome Horatio and Marcellus!

DAVE: Uh, my name is Dave…

KELLY: (off stage) IT'S WHO YOU'RE PLAYING, DUMBASS!!!

DAVE: Oh yeah… Uh, What, has this thing appear'd again to-night?

TONYA: I haven't seen diddly.

DAVE: Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy, and will not belief take hold of him touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us: Therefore I have en…treated him along with us to watch the minutes of this night; That if again this appa…. appa… yeah… come, he may approve our eyes and speak to it. Hey ,why do I get all the big words??

KELLY: YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE READING IT WORD FOR WORD!! (stomps on stage, rips script away from Dave and scribbles a few lines on it) THERE! (throws script back at Dave and stomps off stage)

SHELLY: …………… (glances towards Tonya who shrugs) The ghost's fake. It won't appear.

TONYA: Oh yeah?

SHELLY: Yeah!

TONYA: See for yourself! We saw it twice!

SHELLY: OK, tell me your 'story'.

TONYA: Well, last night, around one…

(silence)

TONYA: (shouting) I said, last night around one…

(still silence)

KELLY: (off stage) LAUREN!! THAT'S YOUR CUE!

LAUREN: Oops….

(GHOST *Lauren drops from the ceiling on wires, dressed all in white and silver shreds of cloth with a metal breast plate symbolizing the armor)

KELLY: Hmm, not scary enough… MAKEUP!!

(a bunch of little scared people in black come out and throw buckets of white powder on top of Lauren.)

LITTLE PERSON IN BLACK: It's not sticking!

LAUREN: (coughing and sputtering, trying to wave the powder away with a sleeve that goes way past her hand)

KELLY: Alright, then get some water.

LAUREN: (looks wide-eyed back at Kelly in the wings)

(little people in black run off stage for a few moments, returning with one bucket of water while the rest of them scoop the powder back into buckets preparing to drop it again)

LAUREN: Is this really necessary? I mean, like, it's just a play.

KELLY: Of course! You're a ghost and you have to scare the bejesus out of them!

DAVE: (under his breath) Then why don't you play the ghost. You're scarier than Death itself…

KELLY: I HEARD THAT!!

DAVE: (shrink)

(little people in black toss one bucket of water on Lauren, who now looks pitiful, then they throw the leftover powder on after – it sticks now)

LAUREN: (looking like an angel dunked in a vat of flour) I don't think I like this play anymore. I wanna be Osric…

KELLY: Too late. You can't be Osric. Liz J is Osric. Now back to the play!

(little people in black scurry off stage)

PLAYERS ON STAGE: …………………………

KELLY: DAVE!!!!

DAVE: Oh, right… (looks at script) Look! Here it comes. (raises a finger and points at Lauren)

TONYA: It looks like the dead king! (cowering over exaggeratingly)

DAVE: You know stuff. Talk to it!

TONYA: Doesn't it look like him? Come on! Say something!

SHELLY: (looking scared and amused at the same time) I'm not gonna speak to it! *You* speak to it!

TONYA: No, you!

DAVE: No, you!

(this goes on until…)

KELLY: SHELLY!!

SHELLY: Oh, yeah. I'm *supposed* to speak to it. (steps forward) Aren't you the dead king of Denmark? (silence) Answer us!….. please.

DAVE: You pissed it off.

SHELLY: No I didn't!

(Lauren, looking used, is being pulled slowly towards the opposite side of the stage)

TONYA: Well, it *is* going away.

SHELLY: Please stay! We wanna talk with you! Tell us the meaning of life! What does the afterlife look like?

TONYA: That's not in the script.

SHELLY: So I'm improvising…

(Lauren is suddenly yanked upwards and out of sight with a loud THUD)

LAUREN: OW!! That was my head! Watch where you're pulling me!

AUDIENCE: (chuckles)

DAVE: It left.

LIZ E: (off stage) Wow, what a brilliant observation. Way to be obvious, Dave!

KELLY: Shut up, Liz! It's in the script!

LIZ E: Oh, sorry…

TONYA: You look scared shitless! Haha! We told you it was real!

SHELLY: OK, I'm all for doing the Shakespeare parody and all, but do we have to use such language? William would be convulsing in his grave right now!

ALEX: (off stage) I thought that was the idea…

KELLY: (growling viciously) Just get on with it…

SHELLY: OK, so I saw it and it's real. I was wrong, alright?

DAVE: And it does look like the king, right?

SHELLY: Yeah, yeah. He was wearing a suit of armor just like when he went to war with Norway, and the expression on his face was the same, too. How weird is that?

DAVE: He's already scared the shit out of us twice at the exact same time each night.

SHELLY: (glare, glances at script) …… This doesn't bode well.

DAVE: (looks puzzled, then at script) So, why are we here? Why are there so many cannons being made? Why isn't anyone resting on Sunday? What the hell is going on? Why am I asking so many questions?

SHELLY: Rumor has it that our former king (the one whose ghost just scared us to death) was provoked into war with Norway by King Fortinbras. Little did old Forty know that King Hamlet would kill him and take all his lands as agreed upon. Now, little Forty, jr. (FORTINBRAS *Melissa steps comically onto the stage, gives a big toothy grin, and leaps backstage) is royally pissed (no pun intended) and he's coming to kick our butts into the next dimension for revenge.

KELLY: (off stage) O_O That summary was better than I could have ever written.

TONYA: It must be true!

SHELLY: You remember all that crazy stuff that happened when Caesar was killed. A whole bunch of bad omens and all that stuff, and now this is happening. What does that say about—

(Lauren drops from the ceiling at an alarming rate, then suddenly jerks to a stop about three feet from the ground, powder flying up in a cloud around her)

SHELLY: Wait! Here it comes again! Talk, ghost! Just talk to me! (Lauren glances at script then opens her arms as if awaiting a hug) Please speak! Gimme a break!

LIZ E: (off stage, singing and doing a little dance) Gimme a break! Gimme a break! Break me off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar!

KELLY: (off stage) LIZ!! (grabs a chair and holds it above head, threatening bodily harm)

DAVE: Wow, you'd think she was a WWF fan, the way she holds that chair!

KELLY: Who do you think I learned it from!

MAY: (off stage) O_O Whoa, she's getting angrier than I did with Romeo & Juliet… (hides behind prop door for protection)

SHELLY: (rolling her eyes) Tell us the secrets that only the dead would know!

(silence)

KELLY: (off stage, sitting on the chair now, turning purple in the face) COCK-A-FREAKIN-DOODLE-DOO!

(Lauren is being slowly pulled away again, looking much like a stale, crumbling pastry model of the messiah)

SHELLY: Wait! Don't go! Marcellus, stop it!

DAVE: What? I wasn't doing anything! (looking guilty as always)

SHELLY: (whispering angrily) You're supposed to try to stop Lauren from leaving!

DAVE: OH! (looks at script, brightens) Should I shoot it?

SHELLY: (sighing) If it doesn't stop, yes!

TONYA: There it goes!

SHELLY: There it goes!

(Lauren is yanked upward again, slamming her head into the ceiling again)

LAUREN: OW~~~~!! Will you stop doing that!

DAVE: It's gone.

KELLY: (claps hand over Liz E's mouth preventing her from commenting on the obviousness of Dave's lines)

DAVE: OK, so it's a paki…. paki…

KELLY: PACIFIST!!!

DAVE: Pacifist! (shrinks down into little ball of gush quivering on the floor)

TONYA: Damn that rooster! Damn it!!

SHELLY: The wandering spirit had to return to limbo at the sound of dawn…

DAVE: (looking at script, squinting) It faded on the crowing of the…. Hehehehehehe… Cock. (chuckles wildly to himself)

KELLY: (realizing her horrible mistake at missing that specific passage, storms onto stage, snatches script away from Dave, scribbles away frantically, hands it back, swiftly whacks him over the back of the head while holding a purely annoyed expression on her face, then proceeds to thump her way off the stage in rage)

DAVE: Ow! (rubs back of head, acts like he would hit her, but when Kelly shoots yet another death glare, promptly straightens up) Some say that just before Christmas, the rooster crows all night, forbidding the ghosts to walk around. Everything's peaceful that night.

SHELLY: I kinda believe it, too. But the sun's rising anyway, look. We have to tell little Hamlet about this. Since it is the ghost of his dad, it has to talk to him. Will you both come with me?

DAVE: I know where to find him. (glancing at Kelly in the wings) Is that all I have to do?

KELLY: Of course not, moron. You have one more scene to do.

DAVE: Damn.

(all exit)