In Gary L. Blackwood's The Shakespeare Stealer, Widge is a fourteen-year-old orphaned apprentice with a special talent. Dr. Bright has taught him a form of shorthand that allows him to transcribe spoken words quickly and accurately. Dr. Bright uses Widge's skill to steal sermons and pass them off as his own, but one day, a man named Simon Bass buys Widge from Dr. Bright through a mysterious man named the Falconer.
Simon Bass has a very important task for Widge. He is to go to the Globe Theatre and transcribe the new play by William Shakespeare, namely, The Tragedy of Hamlet. Bass wants to steal the play and present it under his own name.
Widge has some problems right from the start when he gets to the Globe for the performance of Hamlet . First, he is quite afraid of going in by himself and getting caught. He...
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is also nervous about he playhouse catching fire or collapsing.
As the play starts, however, Widge runs into further difficulties as he tries to take down every word spoken on stage. This, he quickly discovers, is a much different task than copying sermons. The characters attack
their lines as though afraid that, if they did not keep their words in close order, the audience might throw comments of their own into the breach.
In fact, the audience sometimes does just that. Widge has a tough time keeping up with this "pell-mell flow of words."
As he transcribes, Widge also runs into the problem of identifying the speakers on his page. He tries to assign them numbers, but he quickly forgets which number he has assigned to which character. What's more, new characters are constantly coming on stage.
Just when Widge gets to know the characters a little better, he encounters his biggest problem of all. He forgets to transcribe the lines! He is so "caught up in the action of the play" that he no longer thinks about his task. He is entranced by the scenes and characters before him, anxious to find out what will happen next. Every once in a while, he remembers what he is supposed to be doing and quickly writes as much as he can, but then he is drawn back "into the world of the play." His final project has huge gaps in it, and he leaves the theater afraid of being punished.