The play had been called The Hunchback King, by Arthur J. Nightingale. It hadn't been very good. In fact, Rincewind had never seen a worse-written play. The Librarian had amused himself throughout by surreptitiously bouncing nuts off the king's fake hump. But people had watched it in rapt fascination, especially the scene where the king was addressing his nobles and uttered the memorable line: 'Now is the December of our discontent -I want whichever bastard is doing that to stop right now!'
A bad play but a good audience, Rincewind mused after they had been thrown out. Oh, the play was a vast improvement on anything the Shell Midden Folk could have dreamed up, which would have to be called 'If We'd Invented Paint We Could Watch It Dry', but the lines sounded wrong and the whole thing was laboured and had no flow. Nevertheless, the faces of the watchers had been locked on the stage. On a thought, Rincewind had put a hand over one eye and, concentrating fearfully, surveyed the theatre. The one available eye watered considerably but had revealed, up in the expensive seats, several elves. They liked plays, too. Obviously. They wanted people to be imaginative. They'd given people so much imagination that it was constantly hungry. It would even consume the plays of Mr Nightingale.
Imagination created monsters. It made you afraid of the dark, but not of the dark's real dangers. It peopled the night with terrors of its own.
So, therefore ... Rincewind had an idea.
'] think we should stop trying to influence the philosophers and scholars,' he said. 'People with minds like that believe all sort of things all the time. You can't stop them. And science is just too weird. I keep thinking of that poor man—'
'Yes, yes, yes, we've been through all this,' said Ridcully wearily. 'Get to the point, Rincewind.
What have you got to say that's new?' 'We could try teaching people art,' said Rincewind. 'Art?'
said the Dean. 'Art's for slackers! That'd make things worse!' 'Painting and sculpture and theatre,'
Rincewind went on. 'I don't think we should try to stop what the elves began. I think we ought to encourage it as much as possible. Help the people here to get really good at imagining things.
They're not quite there yet.'
'But that's just what the elves want, man!' snapped Ridcully. 'Yes!' said Rincewind, almost drunk with the novelty of having an idea that didn't include running away. 'Let's help the elves! Let's help them to destroy themselves.'
The wizards sat in silence. Then Ridcully said: 'What are you talking about?'
'At the theatre I saw lots of people who wanted to believe that the world is different from the reality they see around them,' said Rincewind. 'We could—' He sought a way into Ridcully's famously hard-to-open mind. 'Well, you know the Bursar?' he said.
'A gentlemen of whose existence I am aware on a daily basis,' said Ridcully gravely. 'And I'm only glad that this time we've left him with his aunt.'
'And you remember how we cured his insanity?' 'We didn't cure it,' said Ridcully. 'We just doctored his medicine so that he permanently hallucinates that he is sane.'
'Exactly! You use the disease as the cure, sir! We made him more insane, so now he's sane again.
Mostly. Apart from the bouts of weightlessness, and, er, that business with the—'
'Yes, yes, all right,' said Ridcully. 'But I'm still waiting for the point of this.'
'Are you talking about fighting like those monks up near the Hub?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes. 'Skinny little chaps who can throw big men through the air?'
'Something like that, sir,' said Rincewind.
Ridcully prodded Ponder Stibbons.
'Did I miss a bit of conversation there?' he said.
'I think Rincewind means that if we take the elves' work even further it'll somehow end up defeating them,' said Ponder.
'Could that work?'
'Archchancellor, I can't think of anything better,' said Ponder. 'Belief doesn't have the same power on this world as it does on ours, but it is still pretty strong. Even so, the elves are here.
They are a fixture.'
'But we know they ... sort of feed on people,' said Rincewind. 'We want them to go away. Um ...
and I've got a plan.'
'You have a plan,' said Ridcully, in a hollow voice. 'Does anyone else have a plan? Anyone?
Anyone? Someone?'
There was no reply.
'The play I saw was awful,' said Rincewind. 'These people might be a lot more creative than the Shell Midden People, but they've still got a long way to go. My plan ... well, I want us to move this world into the path of history that contains someone called William Shakespeare. And absolutely does not contain Arthur J. Nightingale.'
'Who's Shakespeare?' said Ponder.
'The man,' said Rincewind, 'who wrote this.' He pushed a battered manuscript across the table.
'Read it out from where I've marked it, will you?'
Ponder adjusted his spectacles, and cleared his throat.
'What a piece of work is, er, this is awful handwriting ... '
'Let me,' said Ridcully, taking the pages. 'You don't have the voice for this sort of thing, Stibbons.' He glared at the paper, and then: 'What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason ... how infinite in faculty ... in form and moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals ...'
He stopped.
And this man lives here?' he said.
'Potentially,' said Rincewind.
'This man stood knee deep in muck in a city with heads on spikes and wrote this?'
Rincewind beamed. 'Yes! In his world, he is probably the most influential playwright in the history of the species! Despite requiring a lot of tactful editing by most directors, because he had his bad days just like everyone else!'
'By "his world" you mean—?'
'Alternate worlds,' muttered Ponder, who was sulking. He'd once played the part of Third Goblin in a school play and felt that he had rather a good speaking voice.
'You mean he should be here but ain't?' Ridcully demanded.
T think he should be here but can't be,' said Rincewind. 'Look, these aren't the Shell Midden people, it's true, but artistically they're pretty low down the scale. Their theatre is awful, they haven't got any decent artists, they can't carve a decent statue - this world isn't what it should be.'
'And?' said Ponder, still smarting.
Rincewind signalled to the Librarian, who ambled around the table handing out small, green, cloth-bound books.
'This is another play he will write ... is ... writing ... wrote ... will have written,' he said. 'I think you'll agree that it could be very important ...'
The wizards read it. They read it again. They had a huge argument, but there was nothing unusual about that.
'It's an astonishin' play, in the circumstances,' said Ridcully, eventually. 'And some of it is a bit familiar!'
'Yes,' said Rincewind. And I think that's because he'll write it after listening to you. We need him to. This is a man who can tell the audience, tell the audience that they're watching a bunch of actors on a tiny stage and then make them see a huge battle, right there in front of their eyes.'
'Did I miss that bit?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, leafing hurriedly through the pages.
'That's in another play, Runes,' said Ridcully. 'Do try to keep up. Well, Rincewind? Let's assume, shall we, that we're going along with your plan? We have to make sure this man exists here and writes this play in this world, do we? Why?'
'Can I leave that to Stage Two, sir? It will become obvious, I hope, but you never know if there are elves listening.'