Chapter 21 Summary

The Duke and the King now make plans for the very next show, which will be Romeo and Juliet. It turns out that Juliet will be played by the King. For an encore, the Duke decides to have the King learn Hamlet's "To Be or Not to Be" speech. After he got some more handbills printed, the Duke and the King began to practice their sword fighting.

A man named Boggs comes to the little town that the Duke and the King have selected for their show. He is a drunken, swaggering, boisterous fool who verbally attacks a Colonel Sherburn, who warns him that he better not say anything beyond one o'clock. When Boggs continues past his deadline, Sherburn quickly dispatches him, raising the crowd's ire, who now want to lynch him. They bring their clotheslines and their outrage and begin their angry...