by Ben Elton
KATE: I love mime.
WILL: You do not love it, Kate. You merely tell yourself you love it, because you are kind and have a natural sympathy for the terminally deluded and the pathologically talentless. I, however, am made of sterner stuff and would lock every mime in Christendom up in his imaginary glass box and throw away the notional key.
BOTTOM: Good journey, was it, master?
WILL: Well, Botsky, it was dirty, overcrowded and late. On the other hand, it wasn’t diverted via Aberystwyth or cancelled due to unusually wet leaves. So I suppose within the very limited context of my minimal expectations, you could say that in a purely comparative sense, yes, I had a good journey.
KATE: And I expect your family were pleased to see you.
WILL: Not really, Kate. ’Twas all too brief and they complain I neglect them. I’m just so overworked. I need more time. I wrote a history on the coach. The tragical history of Edward the Second. It’s a quite brilliant first draft but it needs a lot more work.
KIT MARLOWE: Hang on, hang on. Here’s a thought. I know how you can save yourself all that work.
WILL: Really, Kit? That would be great.
KIT MARLOWE: Give the play to me. I’ll just chuck it on as is. I’m not proud. And be fair, you’ve had loads of hits.
WILL: Through talent and hard work. What I have, I have by merit.
KIT MARLOWE: You say that as if it’s a good thing.
WILL: Isn’t it?
KIT MARLOWE: Well of course not. I mean, if all men advanced by merit, what becomes of us stupid posh boys? Or do we not count? Never had you down as an elitist, Will. Stop being such a snob. Give us a play.fn7
WILL: No, Kit. I am resolved and even an insanely convoluted argument such as that cannot sway me. I’ve sent my Titus Andronicus round to Burbage but I’m really not sure about it. What do you think, Kate? You read it. Too gory? Be absolutely honest. I can take it.
KATE: Since you ask, yes, it was.
WILL: Well, thank you very much. That’s very helpful. Nice to have your support. I don’t think.
KATE: I’m sorry. But Titus Andronicus is a degrading orgy of abusive sex and unspeakable violence.
BOTTOM: Sounds brilliant. I’d go.
KIT MARLOWE: Me too. Love all that.
KATE: People’s lives are filled with abuse and violence, Mr Shakespeare. Surely as an artist you should be offering them something inspiring. Uplifting. Which brings joy and lightness to their existence.
WILL: But what about that Comedy of Mistakes, Misunderstandings and Coincidences I was working on.
KATE: I thought it was contrived.
WILL: Contrived? How can you say that? Two identical twins separated at birth who happen to have been given the same name, with servants who are also identical twins, also separated at birth and also happen to have been given the same name, end up in the same town and mistakenly hook up with each other’s girlfriends. That could easily happen.
KATE: I just don’t think it’s a play, Mr Shakespeare. But it’s not entirely irredeemable.
WILL: Irredeemable? It’s the most deemable thing I’ve written all week.
KATE: Deemable is not a word.
WILL: It is if I bloody say it is because in case you’ve forgotten, that’s what I do.fn8
KATE: It’s got some nice madness about it, but the drama exposes its limitations. You need to come up with a new art form which allows for such exuberant absurdity. Some extra element which takes us to a heightened world where we can accept such joyful nonsense. A new style which defies dramatic logic and appeals directly to the senses, the emotions, the soul.
WILL: Gosh, Kate, if I could do that, then all my problems would be solved. I could get away with really stupid plots while still delighting the crowds and running for years.
KATE: Yes!
WILL: But no such extra element exists. Theatres put on plays. There is no new form, and meanwhile I have bills to pay and a family to feed. I need a show.
BOTTOM: Well, when I’m really stuck on something, I find it helps to sing a happy song.
WILL: Yes, thank you, Bottom. I’m trying to concentrate.
Bottom doth sing most lustily.
BOTTOM: ‘Now is the month of Maying, when merry lads are playing.’
Kate and Marlowe joineth in.
KATE/KIT MARLOWE/BOTTOM: Fa-lala-la-la-la-lala.
WILL: Trying to think!
KATE/KIT MARLOWE/BOTTOM: Fa-lala-la-la-lala.
KATE: I love Thomas Morley. He is a God.
BOTTOM: Oh, how does he do it? I mean, they’re just so catchy. So many hits. ‘April Is in My Mistress’ Face.’
KATE: ‘My Bonny Lass She Smileth.’
KIT MARLOWE: ‘Flora, Wilt Thou Torment Me?’fn9 I mean hit after hit after hit. Appealing directly to the senses.
KATE: Oh, the emotions.
BOTTOM: The soul!
WILL: Hang on. Hang the futtock on. That’s it. By Neptune’s salty nipples, that’s it!
KATE: What’s it, Mr Shakespeare?
WILL: The new form! The key to getting away with really silly stories while providing joyful, uplifting popular entertainment. I must to the theatre. A cultural revolution begins!
THE RED LION THEATRE – DAY
Burbage, Condell and Kempe discuss their scripts.
BURBAGE: What is to be done? This Titus Andronicus be little better than pornography. Titus kills Tamora’s oldest sons. Tamora has Titus’s sons beheaded. Tamora’s sons gang-rape Titus’s daughter and Titus cooks Tamora’s sons in a pie and makes her eat it!fn10
CONDELL: I certainly shan’t be recommending it to Mother.
KEMPE: I’m telling you, make it a comedy, like we should have done with his Richard. Problem solved.
BURBAGE: Suppose it might work as a kind of dark pantomime.
KEMPE: Except, no laughter.
CONDELL: I thought you said play it for laughs.
KEMPE: I said comedy, mate. Not laughs. Laughing is anti-comedy. I don’t want to be told when to laugh.
CONDELL: Other people’s laughter isn’t telling you anything. It’s just an innocent expression of collective jollity.
KEMPE: Collective jollity? What’s collective jollity got to do with comedy? Comedy should be exclusive and elitist. If everybody gets it, then what’s to get?
BURBAGE: The joke?
KEMPE: And there’s your problem right there, Burbage. In comedy, jokes are worse than laughter.fn11
Will doth enter.
WILL: Mr Burbage, halt rehearsals, I’ve had the most brilliant idea. A way to uplift and inspire. To fill our theatre with joy. To move people so much that they tell their friends, and perhaps even return a second time themselves.
BURBAGE: Oh, do not jest, Will. Word of mouth and repeat business are the Holy Grail of the theatre owner. For such things, we would sell our souls.
WILL: Then pop your soul in a bag, mate, and I’ll take it with me, cos I’ve got the answer. Music.
BURBAGE: Music? Oh dear, Will, you really have lost your touch. We already use music. Had you not noticed?
CONDELL: We strum our lutes at the beginning and we blow our pipes at the end.fn12
KEMPE: And from what I’ve heard, Condell, you blow a few pipes at the interval too. Whoopsiphobic or brave and edgy? You decide. Ha ha ha!
CONDELL: God, he’s doing his laugh again.
BURBAGE: I thought you said you didn’t like laughter, Kempe.
KEMPE: Group laughter, mate. Everyone laughing together. That’s never right. But solo laughter. Me laughing, very loudly and intrusively at something that nobody else finds funny? That’s the mark of a comic genius.
WILL: Excuse me, I’m trying to tell you my brilliant idea. I didn’t just mean music at the start and the finish, Burbage. I meant throughout. For add music to theatre and what do you have?
BURBAGE: Theatrical music.
WILL: Yes! No! Musical theatre.
CONDELL: Oh my God. I love it.
BURBAGE: Love
what, Condell? Mr Shakespeare’s scarcely begun to explain himself.
CONDELL: I don’t care. I love it anyway. Just those two words. Musical theatre. They speak to my soul.
WILL: Of course they do. I’m talking about a play with songs. What’s not to love?
KEMPE: Um, everything?
BURBAGE: Let me think this through, Will. Are you suggesting that we find somebody to write songs to fit your plays?
WILL: Well, I thought that at first. You know, work with a composer on an original score. But then I thought, no, we need guaranteed hits. Lots of them. And how do we get those?
BURBAGE: By using songs that are hits already!
WILL: Yes! By St Bernard’s buttered barn-cakes, yes! I’m on fire today. First I invent the original stage musical and then instantly make it obsolete by inventing the greatest hits musical.fn13
BURBAGE: Talk me through the detail.
WILL: Well, how does my Henry the Sixth Part One open, for example?
BURBAGE: At the funeral of Henry the Fifth, Bedford, Gloucester, Exeter, Warwick, Winchester, Somerset are gathered to mourn the king.
CONDELL: Each speaks at length. A soldier brings news that France is lost. Further extended monologues ensue. It’s a very long scene.
BURBAGE: Very long.
KEMPE: Like mad long.
WILL: It is not long at all. Twenty-five minutes at most and it flies by.fn14 But I admit that you don’t exactly go home humming it. But imagine if instead of opening with fifteen pages of blank verse, we opened with ‘Now Is the Month of Maying’.
BURBAGE: My God. ’Tis a thought.
CONDELL: A brilliant magical thought. I love, love, love it. I can see it now. Act one, scene one. London, 1422. The street is filled with lovable cockney characters. Cheeky street urchins. Costermongers. Pretty flower girls. A perambulating top or two.
BURBAGE: Enter the new king!
CONDELL: Strike up the players!
BURBAGE: And the whole company sing ‘Now Is the Month of Maying’!
WILL: Two minutes later, the entire audience will be on their feet with their arms swaying in the air. Fala la la la la la la!
All raise their arms and sway from side to side singing ‘Fala la la la la la la’ together most lustily.
THOMAS MORLEY’S HOUSE – NIGHT
Burbage and Will come a-calling upon the great composer Thomas Morley, a fellow of somewhat debauched and decadent appearance.
BURBAGE: I must say how very kind it was of you to invite us to your beautiful home, Mr Morley.
THOMAS MORLEY: Technical point: not actually my home. Belongs to a subsidiary branch of an offshore holding company incorporated in Lichtenstein. Which is, I must stress, an entirely legal tax arrangement, entered into on the advice of my accountants.fn15
BURBAGE: Yes, of course. No doubt.
THOMAS MORLEY: I just want to make music, man.
BURBAGE: Absolutely. And if you allow us to use your songs, then you might also make a great deal of money.
THOMAS MORLEY: Yeah, technical point: not actually my songs. The copyrights are owned by a subsidiary branch of an offshore holding company incorporated in Baden Eisenbach. An entirely legal tax arrangement, entered into on the advice of my accountants. I just want to make music, man. And I’m loving this new direction. Morley, the musical. Very cool.
BURBAGE: Yes, it does have a certain ring.
WILL: Sorry, Morley the musical?
THOMAS MORLEY: Well, Tom, Tommo. Tomster. Tomster the musical?
WILL: You think the show should be called after you?
THOMAS MORLEY: Too on the nose? Could be. What about ‘Norwich Boy’, the story of a one-man hit factory?
BURBAGE: Yes. Yes, I can see the groundlings flooding to see that.
WILL: I was just wondering if the show should be about you at all?
THOMAS MORLEY: Why not? It’s my musical.
WILL: Our musical. I provide the script.
THOMAS MORLEY: Yeah, you or some other geezer.
WILL: What other geezer?
THOMAS MORLEY: I don’t know. Anyone. I got people.
WILL: People?
THOMAS MORLEY: Yeah, people who sort stuff.
WILL: What, like creating original stories and sparkling dialogue?
THOMAS MORLEY: Could be. They’re my people. They sort what I tell them. Organize a few parties. Drum up a few grouping slaps. Write an original story with some sparkling dialogue. That’s why you have people. To get stuff sorted. You want the gig or not?
Burbage doth speak to Will in the manner of an aside, which by strict convention none can overhear.
BURBAGE: Have a care, Will. Mr Morley’s created the most valuable back catalogue in Christendom.
WILL: And I’ve written three hits called Henry the Seventh and a fourth called Richard the Third. I admit that my Verona piece wasn’t as big but it’s that difficult fifth play that isn’t named after a numbered monarch, isn’t it? The point is, I’m not going to write some tawdry hagiography designed to massage the ego of Thomas bloody Morley.
BURBAGE: Then with deepest sadness, I must needs commission some other geezer and you will have no play, no income and be ever further from buying the coat of arms on which you’ve set your heart.
WILL: Right. So, ‘Norwich Boy’ it is.
THOMAS MORLEY: I just want to make music, man.fn16
Morley doth sit by Will, throw a leg over his knee and kiss him.
ROBERT GREENE’S OFFICE – NIGHT
Robert Greene hath invited three cock-snobbled folderols to conference.
ROBERT GREENE: Fellow poets, brother scholars, we meet today in the face of perhaps the most heinous attack on high culture since the first clown showed his bottom to the mob. I speak of Mr Shakespeare’s plan to produce in London a greatest hits musical based on the smasheroo madrigals of that loathsome ditty guffer Thomas Morley.
A COCK-SNOBBLED FOLDEROL: We must stop this aberration.
ANOTHER COCK-SNOBBLED FOLDEROL: Madrigals are popular music.
A THIRD COCK-SNOBBLED FOLDEROL: The theatre is no place for popular entertainment.
ROBERT GREENE: Quite so. Mine own sublime Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay is well known as the most impenetrably obscure drama in all of literature.
A COCK-SNOBBLED FOLDEROL: We must destroy this heinous assault on our pre-eminence.
ANOTHER COCK-SNOBBLED FOLDEROL: But how?
ROBERT GREENE: How, sir? Why, in the manner by which an English pamperloin always gets what he wants. Abuse of privilege, gentlemen. Abuse of privilege.
They do laugh most evilly.
WILL’S LONDON LODGINGS – DAY
Bottom tendeth the fire. Will and Kate converse over his papers.
WILL: So, ‘Norwich Boy: the Tommy Morley Story’ told through his greatest hits.
BOTTOM: Sounds brilliant. I’d go.
KATE: You’re going to make it a biography? Sounds a bit cheesy.
WILL: Well, strangely, Kate, I have a feeling that in musical theatre, being cheesy might turn out to be a bit of a plus.fn17
KATE: But the whole idea was that music would provide the extra element for your Comedy of Mistakes, Misunderstandings and Coincidences.
WILL: But Morley insists that it be about him. Thus must I chronicle the inspiring life struggle of the Norwich boy. A mixed-up, wild-eyed loner with a crazy dream, a cute smile and a lute. His thrill-packed journey from humble Norfolk chorister to chief organist at St Paul’s.
KATE: Ooh, it’s not very thrill-packed.
WILL: During which Tommy and his identical twin Tommy, plus their identical twin servants, turn up in the same city and mistakenly hook up with each other’s girlfriends.
KATE: Oh my goodness, Mr Shakespeare. That’s incredible.
WILL: Well, I think it will fit.
KATE: Fit? It’s uncanny. You said such a thing could happen, and it turns out, it has, and not only that, it’s happened to the very person you’re supposed to write a musical about.
I mean, it’s just spooky.
WILL: Tommy didn’t actually have an identical twin. I’m just going to say that he did.
KATE: That’s dishonest.
WILL: Kate, I’m writing a celebrity biography. What has honesty got to do with it?
KATE: A dishonest and self-serving celebrity biog? I hope you’re not setting some kind of precedent.fn18
BOTTOM: Isn’t Mr Morley going to mind you giving him an identical twin?
WILL: Of course not. He gets double Tommy. He’ll love it. Now, where to start?
KATE: Well, since Tommy’s a composer, why don’t you give him that line you showed me? The one about music and love.
WILL: If music be the food of love, play on.
KATE: Wonderful. That’s perfect.
BOTTOM: Yeah, that is quite good.
WILL: Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, the appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! It had a dying fall. O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south, that breathes upon a bank of violets, stealing and giving odour.
KATE: Oh. Maybe just use the first bit.
BOTTOM: See, you always do that.
WILL: What?
BOTTOM: Well, you come up with a brilliant one-liner and then ruin it by going on and on and on. Speeches should be two lines, tops. Make it a rule.fn19
KATE: Anyway, let’s get on. In your comedy, you have Adriana, wife of Antipholus of Ephesus—
WILL: Now Tommy of Norwich.
KATE: … mistake his identical twin, Antipholus of Syracuse—
WILL: Now Tommy of Lowestoft.
KATE: … for her husband, Tommy of Norwich—
WILL: Cue for a song. Tommy of Lowestoft sings ‘Good Morrow, Fair Ladies of the May’.
BOTTOM: That’s brilliant. Fits perfectly.
KATE: Is it May?
WILL: It is now.
KATE: Very well. Next in your comedy, you have the Syracuse—
WILL: Lowestoft.
KATE: … twin falling for the Ephesus—
WILL: Norwich.
KATE: … twin’s wife’s sister, which shocks the wife because she thinks he’s her husband.
WILL: Exactly. She punches out the wrong Tommy and, on realizing her mistake, tries to revive him by singing ‘Arise Get Up My Dear’.