SHAKESPEARE AND THE ZOMBIE PLAGUE OF 1590 a play by Richard Henry and Eric Hissom 

BRIEF DESCRIPTION

In 1590’s England, emerging young playwright William Shakespeare is drawn into one of his own plays where Macbeth and his Witches conjure a horde of Zombies to destroy Queen Elizabeth and a cast of the Bard’s most famous characters. This epic adventure follows our reluctant hero as he tries to find his voice as a writer and save the world from the undead in a rock and roll horror comedy mash up.

SETTING

A Globe-like Shakespearean theatre presenting an epic tragicomedy about rivals for the English throne in 1590. Locations include the battlefield, the opposing war tents, and the halls of the decaying Castle Elsinore. 

CAST of CHARACTERS (doubling possible)

Young William Shakespeare; Macbeth, his third wife Lady M, and his daughter Juliet; Queen Elizabeth, her son Romeo, and her trusted counselor and longtime companion Paulina; A Doctor, a couple of Gravediggers, three Witches, soldiers, servants, Lord’s, Lady’s, and super-fast, ravenous Zombies! 

SYNOPSIS

A youthful William Shakespeare begins narrating an epic war play, much like the Chorus in Henry the Fifth, only to be pulled into the action by the tyrant Macbeth, who demands that the young playwright produce a ballad (the news bulletin of the time) that falsifies the battle results. After sending him away, Macbeth calls upon the forces of darkness to conjure up an army to replace his routed troops. Three witches appear and promise such an army in time to attack his rival Elizabeth during a phony peace summit. Macbeth fails to understand, however, that this army will be his own slaughtered men reanimated as super- human, flesh-eating Zombies. Meanwhile, we are pulled into the tumultuous lives of a colorful cast of characters: the misbegotten young lovers, the elderly statesman turned Zombie, the drunken and philosophical grave-diggers, the alchemist doctor, and others, most of whom, along with Macbeth and Elizabeth, find themselves thrown together in the Castle Elsinore, where they attempt to barricade themselves against the growing horde of undead. From there the plot twists and squirms like some evil spawn of Shakespeare and George Romero, culminating with our hero, young William, dispatching the villain Macbeth, in an epic scene of poetically-justified, flesh-munching gore!