It was a bad plan. A wicked plan. We did not know if it came from us or the Devil so full was it of deceit. At home, milling in the library, in perusal of our aim, we selected a volume of Shakespeare’s Comedies since they all ended in marriage and marriage was by and large our end. The Bard, we suspected, had a number of strategies upon the matter.
We set about with quill and ink and put our nib to paper. Sitting cross-legged on the dais of a desk whilst we huddled below in consternation, the oldest clapped us to attention to declaim, feather aloft:
~ Dressing as boys or the boys of us dressing as girls!
We were uncertain as to what this would achieve and thus struck it off.
~ Dressing Adela in disguise so that she can visit Percival and get high-bellied!
We were equally uncertain as to whether Adela was past the fecundating age.
~ Have Adela rescue her love from a lioness thereby making him indebted to her everlastingly!
While there was no doubt in our collective hearts that Adela could, if put to the test, best a lion—was she not the owner of the mighty sword hung on her wall belonging to her long-deceased father?—but we did doubt we could procure a lioness in this part of the country. The second oldest of us elbowed their way up to the desk, chastising the oldest for bothering to scribble down a strategy that was so abominably foolhardy. The oldest sneered back that the second oldest was the one with no veritable sense of Byronic ideals. To which the second scoffed, Airmonger! The oldest merely chose to employ a snub and concluded:
~ Fake Adela’s death and give Percival report of it? Or! Send a false missive to each of them swearing that one loves the other!
Enough, barked the second oldest, crossly claiming that no remedy to our ails could be hit upon in the Comedies. Hence, we began undividedly to search elsewhere in the Canon and quickly fell upon our consensual favorite, Othello. We conferred, then confirmed by a show of hands: we must find Adela a new beau to make her lost love jealous; Percival, in turn, would wrestle with the arrogance of his tortured soul until goaded into a violent show of love which would cure him of the malady of his madness, whereupon they would be wed, us serving as the bridal party.
Our unanimous impetus was thus and thus: one day, someday, one by one, we would leave this village and behind us, Adela, alone—a tawny, companionless outcast. This we found insupportable.