by Maria Zambon
Maria Zambon chose and rehearsed this excerpt intending it to be performed for an ADHD audience. They did extensive research on how to accomplish the most accessible performance, including surveying ADHD students on what would make their experience as an audience member most enjoyable.
This performance is the introduction of Robin Goodfellow/ Puck, who tells a fairy of his mischievous deeds just before Oberon, King of the Fairies, arrives. This performance quip was chosen because many people see Puck as neurodivergent, especially because he is seemingly scatterbrained and doesn’t follow standard social cues and expectations.
ROBIN
The King doth keep his revels here tonight.
Take heed the Queen come not within his sight,
For Oberon is passing fell and wrath
Because that she, as her attendant, hath
A lovely boy stolen from an Indian king;
She never had so sweet a changeling.
And jealous Oberon would have the child
Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild.
But she perforce withholds the lovèd boy,
Crowns him with flowers and makes him all her joy.
And now they never meet in grove or green,
By fountain clear or spangled starlight sheen,
But they do square, that all their elves for fear
Creep into acorn cups and hide them there.
FAIRY
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skim milk, and sometimes labor in the quern
And bootless make the breathless huswife churn,
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,
Mislead night wanderers, laughing at their harm?
Those that “Hobgoblin” call you and “sweet Puck,”
You do their work, and they shall have good luck.
Are not you he?
ROBIN
Thou speakest aright.
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal.
And sometime lurk I in a gossip’s bowl
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And, when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she
And “Tailor!” cries and falls into a cough,
And then the whole choir hold their hips and loffe
And waxen in their mirth and neeze and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.
But room, fairy. Here comes Oberon.