by Ben Elton
ROBERT GREENE: Excellent! Excellent! Come, Florian, embrace your uncle. (Florian, being dead, be most pale, and his tongue doth droop from his mouth) He looks half dead.
WILL: He is, Master Greene, he is. I did a bit of serious roistering with young Flozza last night. Buckets of oysters, barrels of ale.
ROBERT GREENE: Young sirrah, your hand.
Burbage and Kempe manhandle the corpse of Florian towards Greene and extend its hand. Greene shakes it.
ROBERT GREENE: Good lad. Cold, stiff, unbending. Just as a gentleman should be.
Kate calls out prettily.
KATE: Dinner is served, my masters.
A few moments later all are sat around the table. Florian’s corpse is again supported betwixt Kempe and Burbage.
BURBAGE: So I said to Johnny Hemmings – lovely actor, sweet, sweet man – I said, ‘Johnny, have you ever played Gammer Gurton’s Needle?’ He said, ‘I’ve played Gammer Gurton, duckie, but the needle came from props.’fn35
They all laugh, Burbage moving Florian’s head.
WILL: Brilliant, Burbage! I always say there’s nothing more fascinating than actors talking about themselves. Tell us more!
ROBERT GREENE: What about Florian? Thou hast not touched thy food. Posh boys must quaff and gorge whilst others starve.
Fearful the ruse will be discovered, Will turneth to Kate with utmost urgency.
WILL: Can’t keep this up much longer. Let’s go for it.
Will addresseth the corpse.
WILL: Tell me, Florian, have you seen anything of the fair Rosaline, whom once you did love so well?
Kate leapeth up in anger.
KATE: Rosaline? Who is Rosaline? You said you loved me, your Kate!
Kate slappeth the corpse’s face, whereupon Condell doth leap up, also feigning anger.
CONDELL: Kate?! Young Kate?! Thou said thou didst love me, Mistress Sauce Quickly.
Now Condell smiteth the corpse. Greene doth roar with laughter.
ROBERT GREENE: Bravo, lad! I see you’ve been roistering as a varsity man should. And er, Master Shakespeare, it seems you have cured my nephew of all silly notions of romance.
WILL: Well, yes, I think you could say we’ve done that.
ROBERT GREENE: Bravo!
All applaud most merrily. Burbage and Kempe forget that the corpse is in their charge and Florian falleth forward, his face fully in the dinner.
ROBERT GREENE: Well, look now, what’s this? Why, he’s passed out in his plate! You’d think he was at Cambridge already!
WILL’S STRATFORD HOME – NIGHT
Will and Anne sit before the fire with their pipes, most contented.
WILL: We took him to Cambridge, where not surprisingly they found him cold, uncooperative and expecting advancement without effort or talent. In short, a perfect member of the English establishment. Although he will have decomposed long before he graduates, I imagine he’ll get a first.
ANNE: Amazing tale, husband. Particularly the bit about the maid drugging herself in a tomb only for her young lover to think her dead and killing himself before she wakes up.
WILL: Yes. If only I could think of an ending for my play as easily.
EPISODE 2
THE PLAY’S THE THING
This second transcript is a clear source for the ‘play within a play’ scene from Hamlet. However, no other parts of Shakespeare’s famous tragedy are prefigured in this fascinating episode, so it seems that Shakespeare had yet to come up with the brilliant notion that the world was waiting for a play about a depressed Danish student.
WILL’S STRATFORD HOME – DAY
Will appears to be shouting at Anne in fury. John, Mary, Susanna and the twins sit about the room.
WILL: Ingrate whore! Stinksome strumpet! Foul and false be thy black heart! But blood red will be thy shroud!
ANNE: Argh!
Will appears about to strike his beloved wife but then he pauses.
WILL: Dad, it’s your line.
JOHN: Get one of the women to read it.
WILL: Neither of the women can read.fn1
MARY: And I wouldn’t if I could. It’s a common business.
JOHN: Then, get Susanna to read it. Can’t think why else you taught her.
ANNE: There’s no point asking Sue for help. She be of teening years and thus a grumpy little bitchington.
Susanna doth growl and sneer most moodily.
JOHN: I dunno why you have to write these new plays anyway. What’s wrong with the old plays? The Mumming plays?fn2
WILL: Theatre’s moving on, Dad. There’s only so many times you can laugh at the Lord of Misrule whacking the naughty Turk with a jingly stick while St George shows the dragon his bottom.fn3
JOHN: Oh, gets me every time, that one.fn4
ANNE: Will is trying to do his play, which, believe it or not, I’m actually following. Come on, love, Queen Liz is threatening Queen Mary in the tower.
WILL: Absolutely right, yes. Here we go.
Once more Will commenceth to rehearse.
WILL: ‘Blood red will be thy shroud!’ And then a nobleman rushes in, ‘Majesty, I beseech thee, must not a queen this murder do.’
ANNE: Shouldn’t that be, ‘A queen must not do this murder’?
WILL: Well, yes, it should, but I always think a sentence sounds better if you mix up the words a bit. It’s one of my best tricks.fn5
SUSANNA: Sounds really try-hard to me.
WILL: Or, put more poetically – ‘to me sounds, hard try really’. See? Much better.
JOHN: Queen Elizabeth didn’t chop Mary’s head off herself, you daft wurzel. She were topped at Fotheringhay.
ANNE: Granddad is right – about the beheading. Queen Liz never done it.
WILL: Yes, my love, I am aware of the facts, but as a dramatist, I take the view that a fat man with an axe saying, ‘Close your eyes, love,’ thwack, isn’t quite as compelling theatre as frigid Liz bitch-slapping her cutesome Caledonian cuz Mary in a bit of queen-on-queen action.fn6
SUSANNA: So creepy, Dad!
ANNE: It does sound a bit creepy. You’re better than that, doll.
WILL: Look, I work in showbusiness, girls. Sex sells. We need bums on seats. Or in this case, bum on throne. Because, mark this, Her Majesty has commanded Burbage to produce a play for her feast on the first Sunday after Lamington Eve.fn7
ANNE: The Queen. That is posh.
WILL: Which is why I’m writing my history of Gloriana and her traitorous cuz. It doth flatter Her Majesty most shamelessly. Now, can I please get on? I only came home for some peace and quiet so that I could finish my play. And where is my quill? Or must I pluck another from the chicken’s arse?
A chicken runs off.
ANNE: Don’t you dare! Poor Mistress Clucky. Whenever you come home with the muse upon you we get no eggs for a week. Her arse be going bald faster than your bonce.
WILL: I am not going bald, I have low eyebrows.fn8
ANNE: Yeah, my dumplings aren’t droopy, I’ve just got a very high belly button.
SUSANNA: Oh shut up, Mum! You’re so gross!
ANNE: Here’s your quill on the table where you left it.
WILL: Oh, wondrous wife, whene’er I lose a thing you always know its place.
ANNE: Not so much being wondrous, doll, as not being a clueless futtocking arsemongle.
MARY: You’re a common woman, Anne Shakespeare. A very common woman!
JOHN: Why do you wanna write about Scots Mary anyway?
SUSANNA: Yeah, Dad, why don’t you write a play about normal people?
WILL: Because normal people are boring. The crowd wants plays about posh people. They want gangs of geographically named dukes who wander on at random and say, ‘Come, Sussex, Oxford and Northampton, let us to York, there to do battle with Surrey, Cornwall, Solihull and Basingstoke.’fn9
ANNE: People might enjoy something a bit more realistic. There’s plenty of drama in real life. If you want to write tragedy, why not write about the plague?
/> WILL: The plague? Huh, yes. I can see people just flocking to watch a drama about crowds of the living dead, wandering around with their flesh falling off.fn10
ANNE: I’d go.
WILL’S LONDON LODGINGS – DAY
Kate doth practise her acting in front of Bottom.
KATE: ‘Caesar, I beg you, go not to the capital today. Woe! Woe! Woe!’ Right, what do you think? Come on, I can take it. I welcome criticism.
BOTTOM: It’s crap, if I’m honest.
KATE: I know, I know. I need to dig deeper, explore further. Really feel the role.
BOTTOM: Kate, drop it. You can’t be an actor.
KATE: Why? Because I’m only the landlady’s daughter?
BOTTOM: No, it in’t that. You just don’t sound like a girl.
KATE: But I am a girl.
BOTTOM: Yeah, but you can’t act one, love. We’ve been through this. It takes a bloke. Women aren’t clever enough.
KATE: Vae mihi quia ego stulta.
BOTTOM: You what?
KATE: It’s Latin for ‘Such a shame to be an ignorant woman’.
BOTTOM: Live with it, love.
KATE: Can you at least give me some performance notes?
BOTTOM: All right. Well, your voice for starters, it’s too nice. Needs to be all raw and squeaky like this. (Bottom doth put on a horrid squeaky voice) ‘Caesar, I beg you, go not into the capital today.’
KATE: Well, what about my physicality? Surely at least I move like a girl?
BOTTOM: Well, I suppose. A bit. Although it’d be better with two half coconuts shoved down your bodice. Except they wouldn’t fit, would they? No room for falsies cos of your realies.
KATE: Such cruel irony.
Will entereth, his raiment spotted from travel.
WILL: Ah, Kate! Are you here? Splendid. Bottom, ale and pie.
BOTTOM: Good morrow’d be nice.
WILL: Terrible journey! Some pasty-brained arsemongle decided to kill himself on the track.
KATE: Oh, I hate that!
WILL: So selfish! I mean, jump in a lake, eat some hemlock, fall on your sword. Agitate a large bear with a small stick. Just don’t throw yourself under the bloody carriage in front of mine!fn11
Bottom serveth ale and pie.
BOTTOM: Selfish bastable.
KATE: They didn’t close the road?
WILL: Of course they closed the bloody road! I mean why, for God’s sake? Just why? The man is dead. There is a large cart track running from his crotch to his cranium.
BOTTOM: Scrape him up and put him in a bag.
WILL: Just scrape him up and put him in a bag! But oh no, that would mean passing up the opportunity to drive the public insane with frustration. And, let’s face it, this is England, so that ain’t gonna happen.
KATE: So frustrating.
WILL: And to top it all, our stalled coach had to take on passengers from the one under which the selfish bastable will have hurled himself. Suddenly I find myself squeezed next to an oafish groundling who spent the entire journey stroking his porker.
BOTTOM: Suppose it passes the time.
WILL: A pig, Bottom, a pig. He did carry home bacon for his daughter’s dowry and the beast crawled with vermin. ’Twas not so much a pig that had fleas as fleas that had a pig!
Will hurls down his cloak and stampeth upon it.
KATE: Whenever I crush fleas I always use the time to practise my dancing. (Kate danceth on Will’s cloak whilst playing a flute) As you know, music and dance are key skills for actors.
WILL: Kate, stop it now. We go through this seventeen times a week. I know I’ve said I’d help, but you can’t be an actor. You’re a girl. Where would you put the coconuts?
BOTTOM: That’s what I said.
KATE: So unfair!
The dashing blade and naughty rogue Kit Marlowe entereth.fn12
KIT MARLOWE: Morning, all. Let myself in. Kinda go where I please. It’s just easier.
Marlowe lounges, putting his boots upon the table most arrogantly.
WILL: Oh, Kit, no, no, always welcome. Always.
KATE: Good morrow, Mr Marlowe.
KIT MARLOWE: Mistress Kate.
WILL: Make yourself at home.
KIT MARLOWE: Yep. Did that.
WILL: It’s brilliant to see you, Kit. You’re so cool and confident. Being your mate always makes me feel a bit more cool and confident.fn13
KIT MARLOWE: Of course it does! So, whisper is you’re writing another play? Good work that, man. I can’t think how you find the energy.
WILL: Actually I have several on the go at present – alongside my teen romance. Mainly just ideas. ‘The Taming of the Vole’, which I quite like. ‘Seventeen Gentlemen of Verona’. That needs trimming. ‘A Midsummer Night’s Whimsical Old Tosh’. Still looking for the big idea there.
BOTTOM: I’ve told ya, just say it’s a dream. You can get away with any old dung balls if you say it’s a dream.
WILL: Exactly, Bottom, and I hope my quill does wither on Miss Clucky’s arse before I resort to such a lazy cop-out.fn14
KIT MARLOWE: It’s all a bit so-what so far, Will. You got any more?
WILL: ‘The Merchant of Guildford’? Kinda works?
KIT MARLOWE: Kinda doesn’t.
WILL: Er, ‘A Not Very Funny Story About Errors’.fn15
KIT MARLOWE: Ouch.
WILL: Well, they all need work, of course, but I have one finished and I’m really pleased with it: ‘The Tragical History of Mary Queen of Scots’.
KIT MARLOWE: Yes! Now we’re talking. I’m loving that!
KATE: And such a strong part for a woman.
KIT MARLOWE: Well, you mean for a man playing a woman. Women can’t act, obviously.
BOTTOM: That’s what I said.
KIT MARLOWE: Where would you put the coconuts?
BOTTOM: No room!
KATE: Please, Mr Shakespeare. I would work so hard. I know I am only an ignorant woman, but I have read Historia Gentis Scotorum and so know something of the Stewart Queen’s back story.
KIT MARLOWE: Clever girl’s an ugly girl, Kate.
WILL: Kate, let it lie. Women are not allowed to act.
KATE: It’s so cruel to live in times when women are denied everything! Huh! (Stormeth out)
KIT MARLOWE: Birds, eh? So emotional. They’re second-class citizens, get over it.
WILL: Anyway, Kit, I was telling you about my new play. It is to be presented to the Master of the Revels, that it may be performed before Her Majesty.
KIT MARLOWE: Oh yes! That’d be great, except probably better if I presented it. Just a thought.
BOTTOM: Here we go, master, be strong.
WILL: Marlowe, I’ve told you I’m not writing you any more plays.fn16
KIT MARLOWE: Come on, Will. You owe me. It’s me that got your work before the public in the first place.
WILL: By sticking your name on it.
KIT MARLOWE: It was the only way. What were you? A country bumsnot fresh off the coach. Nobody took you seriously.
WILL: Exactly, I was but a jobbing actor when I gave you Tamburlaine and Doctor Faustus, but now I want credit for my own work.fn17
KIT MARLOWE: A bit selfish, Will. Not very attractive.
WILL: Kit, be reasonable. Mine is a unique voice.
KIT MARLOWE: Well, unique-ish. I mean, all you really do is jumble up the words.
WILL: Well, I admit I do do a fair bit of word jumbling – and I’m not apologizing for that. But, but, also I create language. Inventing phrases that I’m sure one day will be in common usage. (Seizes upon a manuscript) Look here, Mary Stewart, who is twice damned, being both Scottish and French, she I have dubbed a Frog-Jock.
KIT MARLOWE: Ooh. No, fair play, that is pretty good. I mean, that’s just the sort of line I should have written.
WILL: Mm, but you didn’t.
KIT MARLOWE: Oh don’t quibble, Will, makes you look small. Come on, just give us a play. Because of you everyone thinks I’m this brilliant poet guy, when a
ctually I couldn’t be bothered to rhyme dove with … with … see? Lost interest already. Verse is just not my gig.
WILL: But why do you care that people think you’re a poet? You’re a famous roisterer. The most popular man in the city. Your name is like a cold sore.
KIT MARLOWE: Pardon?
WILL: It’s on everybody’s lips.
BOTTOM: Bit rubbish, that one, master.fn18
WILL: Look, Bottom, improvisation needs a non-critical environment to flourish. You can’t do it if you’re getting heckled by your servant.
BOTTOM: You need to man up. Comedy’s a tough game. It’s adversarial.
WILL: I just don’t think it needs to be.
KIT MARLOWE: Come on, Will! You totally know why I need this poet thing. It’s my cover.
WILL: Oh, yes, of course. I was forgetting, you’re a secret agent.
KIT MARLOWE: I’m one of Walsingham’s men. Sworn to defend the realm, yet forever in the shadows, and so I play the gadsome poet whilst on my secret work of vital national importance!fn19
WILL: Hmm … this work being the entrapping and burning of Catholics.fn20
KIT MARLOWE: Absolutely.
WILL: And that’s vitally important, is it?
KIT MARLOWE: Well, it seems to be. Walsingham never shuts up about it.
WILL: As a taxpayer, I can’t help wondering if the state might not be better employed expending its resources on other important works. Building better roads, for instance, or some rudimentary urban plumbing.
KIT MARLOWE: Well, you’d think, wouldn’t you? But, burning Catholics – that’s definitely the big thing.
WILL: Just as burning Protestants was the big thing of the last insane bint in a crown who passed England’s way.
KIT MARLOWE: Yes, weird, isn’t it? But I don’t make the rules. I’m just in it for the expense account and the chance to chase foreign girls.
WILL: Well, I’m sorry, Kit, but you’re gonna have to have exotic sex at the public’s expense without my help. I love you, cuz, but I’m not giving you my frog-jock play and that’s final.
KIT MARLOWE: Well, if you won’t, you won’t, I suppose. Writing plays can’t be that hard. Maybe I’ll just grab a chicken and write one myself.
WILL: Kit, you be no poet. If you write a play I fear it will be like that which stinks but be not fish. Fertilizes plants but be not compost. And is the last stage of the digestive process but be not a glass of port and a pipe of tobacco.