Musical Play: “Shakespeare Unshackled”

The Show

We want you to know what you're getting, so the cast list and first third of the script are available here! Bad Wolf shows are written for flexibility and can be edited however you like to meet the needs of your actors, school, curriculum, parents, astrological chart, latest whim, etc. If you have questions about the portions of the script not shown, please contact us.

Casting

Flexible casting from 11-40 students. Use as many Media Consultants, Groundlings, etc. as desired. Actors can easily play several roles, or a single role can be divided between multiple actors. All parts can be played by any gender.

CHARACTERS:

Professor
Otto (Teaching Assistant)
Agnes (resident of Stratford-upon-Avon)
Lionel (friend of Agnes)
Mrs. Smith (teacher of Shakespeare---not)
Manager of The King's Men
Anne (frustrated actor)
Sara (Anne's friend)
Student in audience
Ben Jonson(poet & friend of Shakespeare)
William Shakespeare (you know)
Poets (jealous rivals of Shakespeare)
Hailey (Teaching Assistant)
Richard Bourbage (actor in King's Men)
Groundlings (lower-class theater-goers)
Spectators (higher-class theater-goers)
Media Consultants (marketing gurus)
King James I (King of England)
Attendant (servant of King James)
and a CHORUS comprised of all students who are not playing roles on stage at the time.

Script

This is the first one-third of the script.

Song 1

ENTIRE CLASS (faces audience and sings):
Shakespeare Unshackled
Shakespeare 101
Gonna study hard about the bard
We're gonna learn a ton.

Shakespeare Unshackled
Gotta be a whiz
(pointing to audience at the word you)
This applies to you 'cause when we're through
There's gonna be a quiz.

Let's go back to merry England
In the sixteenth century
What a thrill to chat with Will
And share share share share a cup of tea.

PROFESSOR (steps forward out and addresses audience): Actually, tea wasn't introduced to Britain until the seventeenth century.

MEMBER of CLASS: That's the Professor. She knows EVERYTHING.

CLASS:
Shakespeare Unshackled
Background to the plays
Grab the ink and quill and just ask Will
We're gonna all get A's!

Shakespeare Unshackled
All you need to know
Get your booster shots and set the clocks to
Four hundred years ago.

Let's go back to merry England
When Will Shakespeare was about
Oh how keen to meet the queen
And get get get get a little gout.

PROFESSOR (spoken): Gout is no laughing matter. King Henry VIIIth suffered terribly.

STUDENT: Our professor even knows stuff about royal toes!

CLASS:
Shakespeare Unshackled
Shakespeare 101
Gonna study hard about the bard
We¹re gonna learn a ton.

(CLASS exits or sits down. PROFESSOR and OTTO step forward to audience.)

PROFESSOR (to audience): Welcome. I'm Professor Hammitup, your guide to Shakespeare's life and times. And this is my teaching assistant, Otto.

OTTO (very dramatically):
O perjured woman! Thou dost stone my heart,
And mak'st me call what I intend to do
A murder, which I thought a sacrifice.

PROFESSOR (to audience): Otto takes Shakespeare very seriously.

OTTO: I SAW the handkerchief.

PROFESSOR (to OTTO): So, it's Othello today?

OTTO: Out, strumpet! Weep'st thou for him to my face?

PROFESSOR: That's enough now.

OTTO: Down, strumpet!

PROFESSOR: Otto!

OTTO: Oh, sorry, professor. I'm a method actor.

PROFESSOR: Not now. Come along. We've got a class to teach.

OTTO: Where are we going this time?

PROFESSOR: Sixteenth-century England. Stratford-upon-Avon, a little village 100 miles from London, to be exact. April, 1564.

OTTO: Shakespeare's birthplace!

PROFESSOR (to audience): I've always found it much more exciting to VISIT history rather than just read about it.

OTTO: Me too! Let's get going!
(back to dramatic speech)
I have but an hour
Of love, of worldly matters and direction,
To spend with thee. We must obey the time.

PROFESSOR: We only have 20 minutes, Othello.

OTTO (happy): I'm down with that.

(TWO sixteenth-century Englanders, AGNES and LIONEL, come on stage.)

PROFESSOR: Ah, here are two villagers from Stratford-upon-Avon.

OTTO: Whew! What's that smell?

AGNES: Oh, you must've caught a whiff of Lionel here.

LIONEL: It ain't my fault. I took a bath just last month.

AGNES: That wasn't a bath. You fell in the river.

LIONEL: Same thing.

PROFESSOR: Could you tell us where the Shakespeares live?

AGNES: John Shakespeare, the glove-maker?
(pointing)
Over there, on Henley Street. His wife Mary just had their third child. William.

LIONEL: That kid will never amount to anything.

AGNES: You think he'll be a thief?

LIONEL: Or a pickpocket.

AGNES: Or a lawyer!

LIONEL: Or worst of all...

AGNES and LIONEL: A POET!

AGNES: Life in England is tough these days--- it's no place for poets.
(sings)

Song 2

Things are topsy and they're turvy
We've got plague and we've got scurvy

LIONEL:
There are chickens in the kitchen and my bed is one big flea

AGNES:
It is noisy and it's smelly
And there¹s nothin' on the telly

LIONEL:
In the wacky world of England in the sixteenth century.

AGNES:
We've got aches and we've got twitches
That were given us by witches

LIONEL:
We've got Catholics versus Protestants and there's no referee

AGNES:
We've got plots and we've got treason
Looks like it's beheadin' season

LIONEL:
In the wacky world of England in the sixteenth century.

AGNES and LIONEL:
Oh in the wacky world of England in the sixteenth century.

AGNES, LIONEL, and CHORUS:
In the wacky world of England
The stars control our fate
Though my life is a disaster
My horoscope is great!

AGNES:
Queen Elizabeth's our ruler
And there ain't nobody cooler

LIONEL:
She sent Francis Drake around the world to see what he could see

AGNES:
Spain's Armada was a baddy
But she said "Now who's your daddy?"

LIONEL:
In the wacky world of England in the sixteenth century.

AGNES, LIONEL, CHORUS:
Oh in the wacky world of England in the sixteenth century.

(THEY exit.)

PROFESSOR: We don't know much about Shakespeare's childhood or youth.

OTTO: We do NOW, Professor! I found Shakespeare's third-grade teacher, Mrs. Smith.

(OTTO steps over and escorts the elderly MRS. SMITH to center stage)

MRS. SMITH: I remember young Will very well. That boy could certainly twirl a baton. His tap dancing routines were marvelous. And the way he could juggle poodles---three at a time! Such a fine young man.

PROFESSOR: Are you sure you're talking about William Shakespeare?

MRS. SMITH: WILLIAM Shakespeare? Oh, sorry. No. I don't remember him at all. I was talking about his cousin Buster.
(SHE EXITS)

PROFESSOR (gives OTTO a glare, then speaks again to audience): In 1582, when he was just 18 years old, he married Anne Hathaway, an older woman.

OTTO: By 1592 Shakespeare was in London earning a living as an actor and playwright, without his wife and children.

PROFESSOR: London in the 1590s. Professional theater is flourishing. Between outbreaks of the plague, of course, and the censorship of the Master of the Revels.
(MANAGER appears)
Here's a manager of one of the theater troupes. He's looking for a new actor.

MANAGER (to audience): The trouble with actors is that they all want to get paid. It's an incredible nuisance.

(ANNE and SARA enter; SARA is holding a piece of paper)

ANNE (to SARA): There he is!

MANAGER: Oh no. Not them again.

ANNE (to MANAGER): Aren't you the manager of The Lord Chamberlain's Men?

MANAGER: And what if I am?

SARA (waving the piece of paper): Well, we've seen your ad for an actor. And we've come to apply. We want to work with Shakespeare.

MANAGER: Look, I told you last time. And the time before that. You two can't be actors.

ANNE: Just because we're women?

MANAGER: Acting is no job for a lady. It's constant performances: 5-6 afternoons a week, maybe 200 a year. Traveling out of town when there's an outburst of plague.

SARA: Don't give us any of this "weaker sex" stuff. You let teenage BOYS be actors.

MANAGER: It's not my decision. It's ILLEGAL for women to act on stage.
(Takes the ad in his hand from SARA, points to it)
Didn't you read the fine print?

Song 3

MANAGER:
No women
It says right here
No women
The law is clear
No women can take up the acting art.

No women
Upon the stage
No women
Of any age
A teenage boy will play the woman's part.
A teenage boy will play the woman's part.

SARA and ANNE:
A boy plays Cleopatra now?
I'm telling you that's weird
And Juliet will wake one day and have to shave her beard?!

No women?
That really stinks.
No women?
That's wrong, me thinks
The dumbest thing I think I've ever seen.

No women!
Now hold the phone
A woman
Is on the throne
We can't come act but we can be queen?
We can't come act but we can be queen.

MANAGER:
In Shakespeare's As You Like It
It all gets out of hand
A boy will play a woman who pretends to be a man!

MANAGER and HALF of CHORUS:
No women

ANNE, SARA, and OTHER HALF of CHORUS:
No women

MANAGER and HALF CHORUS:
It says right here
No women
ANNE, SARA, and HALF CHORUS:
No women

MANAGER and CHORUS:
The law is clear
No women can take up the acting art
A teenage boy will play the woman's part.

MANAGER:
A teenage boy will play the woman's part.

ANNE and SARA:
We can't come act but we can be queen.

(THEY exit. BEN JONSON walks on stage. HE notices the audience, stops and addresses them.)

JONSON: Oh, hello. You here for the Shakespeare thing? I thought so. I'm Ben Jonson.

STUDENT in AUDIENCE (shouts out): How do you spell that?

JONSON: Jonson. J-O-N-S-O-N.
(to audience)
I love it when they take notes.

STUDENT: How come there's no H in Jonson?

JONSON: No H? Umm, I don't know.

STUDENT: It looks weird without an H. I'm gonna write it with an H.

JONSON (to audience): It's my fate. I'm a famous playwright too. A good friend of Will's. But most of the rest of us other Elizabethan authors seem to get forgotten in the sands of time.

SHAKESPEARE (entering, holding a quill and piece of paper): Ben! Ben, I need your help.

JONSON (to audience): Ah, here's Shakespeare now!
(to SHAKESPEARE)
Will! Tell me, friend, what can I do for you? An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told.

SHAKESPEARE: Hey, that's good. "An honest tale speeds best, being plainly told." Let me write that down.

JONSON: What's the problem?

SHAKESPEARE: It's my new comedy---I can't come up with a title. I have not slept one wink in nearly two weeks. This was the twelfth night.

JONSON: I'm sure you're making much ado about nothing.

SHAKESPEARE: The whole production has been a comedy of errors.

JONSON: Sounds like a tempest.

SHAKESPEARE: I'm afraid all my love's labor's lost.

JONSON: Stop worrying so much. You'll figure it out. Just title it any way you like it.

SHAKESPEARE: As I like it, eh?

JONSON: As you like it. As long as it has a happy ending it'll be fine.

SHAKESPEARE: You're right---all's well that ends well. Sometimes I feel this huge burden, like every word has to be great.

JONSON: Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.

SHAKESPEARE: That's another good one! Mind if I use it?

JONSON: What are friends for? My nature is full o' the milk of human kindness.

SHAKESPEARE: Hey, you want to come see the rehearsal?

JONSON: I'd love to Will, but I'm meeting two gentlemen of Verona over at the merchant of Venice---we're going dancing with the merry wives of Windsor. I'll catch the first performance, though.
(exits)

SHAKESPEARE: Thanks, Ben!
(to audience)
Great guy, Ben. Spells his last name a bit funny, though.

(from off-stage shouts are heard)

POET #1: There he is! There's Shakespeare!

POET #2: Get him!

SHAKESPEARE: Oh no! It sounds like poets! They're always after me.
(to audience)
Parting is such sweet sorrow. But I gotta fly!

(SHAKESPEARE races off in opposite direction as POETS run on from other side of stage)

POET #1: He got away again!

POET #2: I HATE that guy!

POET #1: You know how hard it is for us poets to come up with any new expressions with Shakespeare around?

POET #2: Every time we think we've coined some clever new phrase, it turns out Shakespeare got there first. It's so annoying.

Song 4

POETS:
"Elbow room" and "catch a cold"
"All that glitters isn't gold"
How many phrases can just one guy make?

"Heartsick" "leap frog" "fancy free"
"One fell swoop" "it's Greek to me"
He made up "goodness' sake," for goodness' sake!

CHORUS:
Ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo

POETS:
He's a phrasemaker

CHORUS:
Ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo

POETS:
He's a phrasemaker
Got that golden touch
Got that golden touch

CHORUS:
The lady doth protest too much!
She doth protest too much!

ONE of POETS (male): Hey, who you calling a "lady"?!

POETS:
"Love is blind" "the game is up"
"Laughing stock" "ay, there"s the rub"
That "green-eyed monster" has me you can tell.

"In a pickle" "flaming youth"
"Break the ice² and ³naked truth"
They're "household words"---but that's his phrase as well!

POETS and CHORUS:

Ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo
He's a phrasemaker
Ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo
He's a phrasemaker
Got that golden touch
Got that golden touch

CHORUS:

The lady doth protest too much!
She doth protest too much!

(POETS exit. PROFESSOR and HAILEY enter.)

PROFESSOR (to audience): Hello, class. I hope you enjoyed meeting Shakespeare. Oh, and this is my other teaching assistant, Hailey.

HAILEY (to audience, very properly): Hello.

PROFESSOR: I haven't seen Otto. I shudder to think what he may be doing, running around London in 1599.

OTTO (runs across stage, shouting dramatically): A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!
(exits)

(This concludes the first one-third of the script.)