1 William Shakesbeard

Stink Hamlet and Cheese Megan McDonald illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds

ACT 1 WILLIAM SHAKSBEARD

Spleen face! Canker blossom! Maggot pie! Woo-hoo! Friday at last. Spring break time. Mom dropped Stink off at Sophie's house. He couldn't wait to make a list of all the fun stuff they could do over spring break. Stink rang the bell. Mrs. Woof let him in. He ran downstairs to the playroom. The floor was littered with flying fairies and winged horses and pointy-hatted elves. Sophie of the Elves sat smack-dab in the middle of it all. "What's all this?" Stink asked. Sophie held up a bag of unicorns mixed with action figures. "Look at all this good stuff I found at a yard sale!" she said. "Want to play Last Unicorn on Earth?" Stink picked up a unicorn. "Hey, this one is missing a leg. And a bunch of them are missing horns."

"You just have to love them for who they are," Sophie said.

"Wait. How did a Lady-in-Her-Bathrobe toy get in here?" "Isn't the wacky cat lady awesome? There's more, too. Mustache Guy. And Scary Dead Guy. Here's the best one." She held up a balding guy with a big collar and puffy pumpkin pants.

"Hey, isn't that...? It's William Shakesbeard!" Sophie cracked up. "Close! It's William Shakespeare." "That's what I said," said Stink. "He's that four- hundred-year-old guy who wrote all those plays, right? Webster gave me comic books of his stories. One story has a floating head in it. And a talking ghost." "Some of his plays have fairies," said Sophie of the Elves. "And fairy queens. And kings of fairies. And elves. Ooh, I can't wait for camp." "Camp? You're going to camp? It's not even summer." "I'm going to Shakespeare camp for spring break. It starts Monday at the college. It's called Shakespeare Sprites. You get to dress up and act