The Show Must Go On

(The stage is empty. The entire cast is milling around backstage or in front. SNAPE is sitting in a chair in front of the stage, looking none too happy about the fact that LOCKHART has decided to be social and has pulled up another chair next to him)

LOCKHART: All right, everyone, we're starting now. The scene is Athens, and you're in the palace of Theseus, the Duke of Athens.

RON: Shakespeare must've had a Duke fetish or something. Duke in that play, Duke in this one... hey, wait. Colin's not playing the Duke in this play, too, is he?

LOCKHART: No, Mr. Weasley, we've taken care of that.

(Enter SEAMUS, COLIN, and GOYLE. COLIN is wearing a flower-print apron over his robes and seems on the verge of tears. GOYLE has a firm grip on his upper arm to keep him from squirming out of it.)

SNAPE: (indicating COLIN) Care to explain that, Lockhart?

LOCKHART: (shrugs) We couldn't find a dress his size in half an hour.

COLIN: (wailing) I wouldn't have worn it anyway! Why do I have to be the girl?

LOCKHART: Hmmm, let's think....

SEAMUS: (to COLIN) Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man's revenue.

(snickers from offstage)

RON: Colin, I think Seamus likes you!

COLIN: (bursts into tears) I don't like this!

DEAN: (offstage, under his breath) Me neither.

LOCKHART: Just say your lines, Mr. Creevey. It'll be over faster that way.

SNAPE: (muttering) God, I hope so.

COLIN: I won't. Everyone always picks on me.

SEAMUS: [grandly] Go, Philostrate,
Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth;
Turn melancholy forth to funerals;
The pale companion is not for our pomp.

(GOYLE looks around for a moment, confused)

LOCKHART: (sighs) What's the matter, Mr. Goyle?

GOYLE: This kid, he's gonna scarper 'f I let 'im go.

SEAMUS: (walks over and takes COLIN's other arm) I got him. Go on.

(Exit GOYLE. SEAMUS takes hold of COLIN's other arm and stares soulfully into his eyes)

SEAMUS: Hippolyta, I woo'd thee with my sword,
And won thy love, doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph and with revelling.

(COLIN looks terrified. Enter NEVILLE, casting nervous looks at SNAPE, GINNY, DEAN, and RON)

HARRY: (offstage) You know, if I were going to spike something, I'd pick now to do it. Everyone's onstage.

HERMIONE: (astonished) It was you, Harry?

DRACO: Don't be ridiculous, Granger. Nobody spiked anything last time.

SNAPE: What are they talking about?

LOCKHART: (innocently) I'm sure I don't know.

NEVILLE: HappybeTheseusourrenownedduke!

HERMIONE: Oh dear, here we go again. Crabbe, what did you do with Bobo? Didn't you have him after last rehearsal?

CRABBE: (looking as innocent as he can) Din't do nothin'.

SEAMUS: Thanks, good Egeus: what's the news with thee?

NEVILLE: F-f-f-f-f... fu-f-f... (points at GINNY) I'm mad at her!

LOCKHART: Riiiight. Close enough, I'd say.

DRACO: We're probably lucky he didn't faint.

HERMIONE: Ignore them, Neville. Just concentrate on your lines.

LOCKHART: Miss Granger, do remember who's the director here.

SNAPE: Why should she? No one else does.

HARRY: (muttering to DRACO) Did he just take Hermione's side?

DRACO: (muttering back) Doesn't count. He was insulting Lockhart.

HARRY: Point.

SEAMUS: (who still has not let go of COLIN's arms) What say you, Hermia? be advised fair maid:
To you your father should be as a god;
One that composed your beauties, yea, and one
To whom you are but as a form in wax
By him imprinted and within his power
To leave the figure or disfigure it.
Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.

RON: Oh no. . . no, no, no. Not again.

DRACO: (offstage) What can we say, Weasley? Something about you just screams incest.

GINNY: [over-indignant] So is Lysander.

SEAMUS: In himself he is;
But in this kind, wanting your father's voice,
The other must be held the worthier.

HARRY: Besides, the Duke really likes your other.

GINNY: I would my father look'd but with my eyes.

DRACO: And now we'll poke her eyes out so he can.

PANSY: You are sick, do you know that?

SEAMUS: Rather your eyes must with his judgment look.

DRACO: So we're going to poke Longbottom's eyes out?

CRABBE: Eyes... I c'n do eyes....

DRACO: (wearily) I know you can. Just do it on your own script, all right? I like to be able to see my lines.

GINNY: I do entreat your grace to pardon me.
I know not by what power I am made bold-

HARRY: It's called a script, Ginny.

GINNY: Nor how it may concern my modesty,
In such a presence here to plead my thoughts;
But I beseech your grace that I may know
The worst that may befall me in this case,
If I refuse to wed Demetrius.

RON: I'd like to know what'll happen if I refuse!

LOCKHART: Mr. Weasley, you're onstage, so please confine yourself to your lines.

RON: You don't get on Crabbe's case, and he's onstage!

LOCKHART: That's different.

RON: No, it bloody isn't!

SEAMUS: Either to die the death or to abjure
For ever the society of men.
Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires;
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice,
You can endure the livery of a nun,
For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.
Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;
But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,
Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness.

COLIN: [struggling] Let me go, let me go, let me go!

(Everyone ignores him)

GOYLE: Wha'd he say, 'Mione?

HERMIONE: If Ginny doesn't marry Ron, she'll be executed or have to go be a nun.

GOYLE: Oh. In't there somethin' wrong with that?

HARRY: Is he thinking?

DRACO: (shrugs) He does on occasion.

GINNY: [stubbornly] So will I grow, so live, so die, my lord,
Ere I will my virgin patent up
Unto his lordship, whose unwished yoke
My soul consents not to give sovereignty.

RON: You go, girl!

LOCKHART: Mr. Weasley, I won't warn you again.

RON: What're you gonna do about it, huh?

LOCKHART: (smiling sweetly) Do you really want to know?

GOYLE: (scratching his head and looking at the script) So we gotta kill Ginny now, right?

HERMIONE: No, Greg. She's going to be a nun.

SEAMUS: Take time to pause; and, by the next new moon--
The sealing-day betwixt my love and me,
For everlasting bond of fellowship--
Upon that day either prepare to die
For disobedience to your father's will,
Or else to wed Demetrius, as he would;
Or on Diana's altar to protest
For aye austerity and single life.

RON: Relent, sweet Her. . . I'm not going to say that! This is sick!

LOCKHART: This is theater, Mr. Weasley.

COLIN: I wanna go back to the dorms! Let me go, Seamus, I don't want to marry you!

DEAN: You have her father's love, Demetrius;
Let me have Hermia's: do you marry him.

COLIN: (stops struggling, looks with wide eyes at RON and NEVILLE) Really? You two? But I thought-

NEVILLE: Sc-sc-sc-scorn. . . . (faints)

(silence for a beat. GOYLE walks onstage and picks NEVILLE up like a puppet)

SNAPE: Why do you even let Longbottom on stage?

LOCKHART: He'll be fine. This happens all the time.

DEAN: I am, my lord, as well derived as he,
As well possess'd; my love is more than his;
My fortunes every way as fairly rank'd,
If not with vantage, as Demetrius';
And, which is more than all these boasts can be,
I am beloved of beauteous Hermia:
Why should not I then prosecute my right?
Demetrius, I'll avouch it to his head,
Made love to Nedar's daughter, Helena,
And won her soul; and she, sweet lady, dotes, Devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry,
Upon this spotted and inconstant man.

HARRY: Well, Hermione? Do you dote in idolatry?

HERMIONE: (blushing) No, I do not! This is a play, Harry! A play!

DRACO: Acting already, and not even onstage yet. A record, Granger.

HERMIONE: Oh, shut up.

SEAMUS: I must confess that I have heard so much,
And with Demetrius thought to have spoke thereof;
But, being over-full of self-affairs,
My mind did lose it. But, Demetrius, come;
And come, Egeus; you shall go with me,
I have some private schooling for you both.
For you, fair Hermia, look you arm yourself
To fit your fancies to your father's will;
Or else the law of Athens yields you up--
Which by no means we may extenuate--
To death, or to a vow of single life.
Come, my Hippolyta: what cheer, my love?

COLIN: I'm not! I'm not! Let me go, Seamus, I'll help you look for this Hippolyta person, really I will....

SEAMUS: Demetrius and Egeus, go along:
I must employ you in some business
Against our nuptial and confer with you
Of something nearly that concerns yourselves.

GOYLE: (twitches NEVILLE's arms like a puppet's) I dunno the line. Sorry.

(Exit everyone but DEAN and GINNY, who take each other in their arms)

DRACO: Oh God. I'm going to get diabetes just watching this, aren't I?

DEAN: How now, my love! why is your cheek so pale?
How chance the roses there do fade so fast?

SEAMUS: (offstage) Bleach, usually.

GINNY: Belike for want of rain, which I could well
Beteem them from the tempest of my eyes.

SEAMUS: Right, cry about it, like it's really gonna help. He's probably going to stifle you with a pillow later.

LOCKHART: Different play, Mr. Finnegan.

DEAN: Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth;
But, either it was different in blood,--

DRACO: ... And lots of it....

PANSY: You are sick. I'm not speaking to you now.

GINNY: O cross! too high to be enthrall'd to low.

SEAMUS: Snob.

DEAN: Or else misgraffed in respect of years,--

COLIN: But you're only one year older than she is!

GINNY: O spite! too old to be engaged to young.

COLIN: But-!

(HERMIONE sneaks up behind him and gags him out of sight of LOCKHART and SNAPE. She then ties his hands behind him. COLIN starts crying again)

DEAN: Or else it stood upon the choice of friends,--

HERMIONE: Pikachu! I choose you!

(Everyone, including those onstage, gives her a blank stare)

HERMIONE: (blushing again) I did some babysitting last summer.

GINNY: O hell! to choose love by another's eyes.

HARRY: Those eyes, right there in the jar. See them?

SNAPE: Do they ever shut up?

LOCKHART: Not on the first run-through, no. You may as well just enjoy it.

SNAPE: I'd prefer earplugs.

LOCKHART: (insincerely) Oh, poor baby.

RON: (undertone, to HARRY, HERMIONE, and DRACO) I don't know who to root for, Lockhart or Snape.

HERMIONE: firmly) Lockhart.

RON: I thought you were over that.

HERMIONE: I am! It's...well... he's the director!

HARRY: No comment.

DEAN: Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentany as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream;
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say 'Behold!'
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.

DRACO: Did you say anything, or were you just listening to the sound of your own voice?

SEAMUS: (sounding injured) I like Dean's voice!

GINNY: If then true lovers have been ever cross'd,
It stands as an edict in destiny:
Then let us teach our trial patience,
Because it is a customary cross,
As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,
Wishes and tears, poor fancy's followers.

DRACO: How sweet. Trading nonsensical platitudes before you're executed.

COLIN: Mrff! Gnghljj!

SNAPE: (suspicious) What was that?

LOCKHART: (innocently) What was what?

DEAN: A good persuasion: therefore, hear me, Hermia.
I have a widow aunt, a dowager
Of great revenue, and she hath no child:
From Athens is her house remote seven leagues;
And she respects me as her only son.
There, gentle Hermia, may I marry thee;
And to that place the sharp Athenian law
Cannot pursue us. If thou lovest me then,
Steal forth thy father's house to-morrow night;
And in the wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee.

HARRY: Plot point! Plot point! I found a plot point!

DRACO: Good. Now let's go poke Weasley's eyes out with it.

RON: Hey!

DRACO: The other Weasley, stupid.

RON: Oh. Well, that's all- HEY!!

GINNY: (batting her eyes) My good Lysander!
I swear to thee, by Cupid's strongest bow,
By his best arrow with the golden head,
By the simplicity of Venus' doves,
By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves,
And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen,
When the false Troyan under sail was seen,
By all the vows that ever men have broke,
In number more than ever women spoke,
In that same place thou hast appointed me,
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee.

DEAN: Keep promise, love. Look, here comes Helena.

SEAMUS: Finally. I feel sick.

(Enter HERMIONE)

GINNY: God speed fair Helena! whither away?

COLIN: mmmn! (muffled sobbing)

NEVILLE: (he has recovered and is speaking to SEAMUS. Both of them are watching COLIN) That is so sad....

SEAMUS: Yeah. Wasting a perfectly good gag like that.

NEVILLE: What?

SEAMUS: Well, it's not like he's enjoying it at all.

HERMIONE: Call you me fair? that fair again unsay.
Demetrius loves your fair: O happy fair!
Your eyes are lode-stars; and your tongue's sweet air
More tuneable, than lark to shepherd's ear,
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear.
Sickness is catching: O, were favour so,
Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go;
My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye,
My tongue should catch your tongue's sweet melody.
Were the world mine, Demetrius being bated,
The rest I'd give to be to you translated.
O, teach me how you look, and with what art
You sway the motion of Demetrius' heart.

RON: No, she doesn't. That's sick.

SEAMUS: (insinuating) So who does sway the motion of your heart, Ron?

RON: You shut up.

SEAMUS: Make me.

GINNY: I frown upon him, yet he loves me still.

HERMIONE: O that your frowns would teach my smiles such skill!

SNAPE: (muttering) Someone needs to teach something, anyway.

LOCKHART: Behave yourself. (laughs) There's a cookie in it for you....

(SNAPE clenches his fists to keep from going for his wand)

GINNY: I give him curses, yet he gives me love.

HERMIONE: O that my prayers could such affection move!

GINNY: The more I hate, the more he follows me.

HERMIONE: The more I love, the more he hateth me.

GINNY: His folly, Helena, is no fault of mine.

SEAMUS: Wanna bet?

HERMIONE: None, but your beauty: would that fault were mine!

SEAMUS: Come on, Hermione! Be Emilia again. I miss all the talk about smiting and whips....

SNAPE: What?!

LOCKHART: That's the other play, Finnegan. Find some other way to amuse yourself.

GINNY: Take comfort: he no more shall see my face;
Lysander and myself will fly this place.
Before the time I did Lysander see,
Seem'd Athens as a paradise to me:
O, then, what graces in my love do dwell,
That he hath turn'd a heaven unto a hell!

DEAN: Helen, to you our minds we will unfold:
To-morrow night, when Phoebe doth behold
Her silver visage in the watery glass,
Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,
A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal,
Through Athens' gates have we devised to steal.

HARRY: Oh, that's smart. Tell your plans to someone in love with the guy you're running away from.

GINNY: And in the wood, where often you and I
Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie,
Emptying our bosoms of their counsel sweet,
There my Lysander and myself shall meet;
And thence from Athens turn away our eyes,
To seek new friends and stranger companies.

HARRY: To boldly go where no Shakespeare has gone before....

GINNY: Farewell, sweet playfellow: pray thou for us;
And good luck grant thee thy Demetrius!
Keep word, Lysander: we must starve our sight
From lovers' food till morrow deep midnight.

SEAMUS: Sweet playfellow? I knew there'd by some kink somewhere! I wanna be one of those 'new friends'.

NEVILLE: No, you have to be 'stranger companies'.

DEAN: I will, my Hermia.
(Exit GINNY)
Helena, adieu:
As you on him, Demetrius dote on you!

(Exit DEAN)

HARRY: Ron, counterpoint?

RON: Shut up. Just shut up.

HERMIONE: How happy some o'er other some can be!
Through Athens I am thought as fair as she.
But what of that? Demetrius thinks not so;
He will not know what all but he do know:
And as he errs, doting on Hermia's eyes,
So I, admiring of his qualities:
Things base and vile, holding no quantity,
Love can transpose to form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing'd Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love's mind of any judgement taste;
Wings and no eyes figure, unheedy haste:
And therefore is Love said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.
As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,
So the boy Love is perjured every where:
For ere Demetrius look'd on Hermia's eyne,
He hail'd down oaths that he was only mine;
And when this hail some heat from Hermia felt,
So he dissolved, and showers of oaths did melt.
I will go tell him of fair Hermia's flight:
Then to the wood will he to-morrow night
Pursue her; and for this intelligence
If I have thanks, it is a dear expense:
But herein mean I to enrich my pain,
To have his sight thither and back again.

DEAN: Traitor!

GINNY: (muttering) Bitch.

LOCKHART: Lovely, Miss Granger.