My Name Is Will

by Jess Winfield

  “No wonder they call it the Golden Behind!” he shrieked, his voice piercing through the crowd murmur and idling engines.

  “Oh, yay!” said Rebecca, clapping her hands giddily like she had just been given a pony. “We got here in time for the Short Sharp Shakespeare show. Their night shows are the best. They always do something totally new.”

  The three guys in sneakers were nearing the end of an extended crowd-gathering introduction and launching into the main thrust of their performance.

  “We now present for your late-night irritainment, the premiere of a work years in the making!”

  The crowd cheered.

  “A dramatization of our forthcoming seven-volume scholarly epic of Shakespearean studies . . .”

  A rousing chorus of booos and scattered catcalls of “boring, boring!”

  And then, with a devilish smile, one said, “Entitled . . .” and then the three belted out in unison, “A Compendium of Drug Use in Shakespeare!”

  Wild cheers. Someone blew a horn, others beat on drums and shook tambourines or beat on their pewter cups. “You mean drug use backstage!” yelled a hairy, bearded man with a watermelon rind on his head. The heckle got a laugh, too.

  The troupe momentarily ignored the watermelon-head. “We dedicate this performance to Ronald Reagan, Carlton Turner, and the entire Drug Enforcement Agency . . . who are sitting right over there. Thanks for coming!” Willie jerked his head hard toward where the troupe pointed, but it was of course a joke, addressed to a couple of Ren Faire security guards standing to one side with walkie-talkies. “Hi, guys,” said one of the troupe to the guards. “Please arrest the heckler with the watermelon on his head.”

  The guards nodded and laughed along with the crowd. They were likely just as high as everyone else.

  Covered by the laugh and seemingly from nowhere, like in a Warner Bros. cartoon, the threesome produced dirty, ragged cloaks, hunched over an imaginary pot, and launched into the witches’ scene from Macbeth.

  “Double, double toil and trouble,” all three chanted in croaky voices, “Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”

  Then one, witchlike, continued:

  “Round about the cauldron go;

  In the poison’d entrails throw.

  Toad, that under cold stone

  Days and nights has thirty-one

  Swelter’d venom sleeping got,

  Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.”

  And they all chanted in unison again, “Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.”

  There was an uncomfortable pause.

  Finally the bearded guy stage-whispered to the guy in the dress, “The toad, Pete. Throw it in!” And the guy in the dress produced a large rubber toad. He started to throw it in the pot, but first pulled it suddenly to his mouth and gave it a huge lick with what seemed a freakishly long tongue. The other two grabbed at the toad. After a brief scuffle, one snatched it up and gave it a wholly too-sensual French kiss before throwing it in the pot. Finally the bearded guy chanted with increasingly manic intensity:

  “Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

  Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf

  Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,

  Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark,

  Liver of blaspheming Jew,

  Gall of goat, and slips of yew

  Silver’d in the moon’s eclipse,

  Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,

  Finger of birth-strangled babe

  Ditch-deliver’d — ”

  “Dude. DUDE! Chill out,” interrupted one.

  “That is some sick shit, man,” said the other.

  “Birth-strangled babe? And what was that about Jews and liver? That is such a stereotype.”

  And they continued on in that vein, moving quickly to other Shakespearean scenes of poisoning, drinking, and imbibing of potions. Gertrude got hilariously, rippingly drunk watching Hamlet and Laertes trying to prick each other with blades dipped in LSD. In a gay porn takeoff, Phuck squeezed the juice of a concupiscence-inducing flower into the eyes of a foursome of Greek lovers, a fairy, and a guy named Bottom, in a Shakespearean donkey show.

  “Wanna get high? Take it in the eye!

  Wanna have a blast? Do it with an ass!”

  Finally a befuddled, lecherous friar who only had eyes for Romeo’s “Golden Behind” gave Juliet a sackful of sleeping pills accompanied by a string of tasteless Marilyn Monroe jokes. Romeo discovered Juliet face-down on a bathroom floor and wailed over her death, ignoring her cartoony snore (ZZZZAAAWP — wee-weeweewee . . . ZZZZAAAWP — weeweeweeweewee). Inconsolable, Romeo bought some goods from a passing drug dealer — who assured him “It’s killer shit” — guzzled it, and promptly died on top of Juliet, his last breath a comically choked whisper:

  “O true apothecary! Thy drugs are quick!”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  How could Shakespeare, if he was an oppressed Catholic, be so essentially apolitical in his drama? As any touring actor knows, audience sensibilities can vary widely from town to town: one night an audience of urban intellectuals, the next a beer-swilling, blue-collar crowd. At some point, Shakespeare the young dramatist seems to have learned that tailoring the play to the playgoer is simply good business. Perhaps it is that very dexterity that helped his drama, first among his contemporaries, to transcend politics and reveal a universal compassion and humanity.

  The play was done. The musicians were playing a dance and the mood had lightened. There was ale and William stood next to the tap, drinking and feeling out of place. Mary was across the courtyard, talking with her Arden relations. A young man came up to the tap next to William. He looked familiar.

  “Is there aught left for a thirsty player?”

  “Ay, ay,” William said, and stepped aside from the tap for the boy, whom he now recognized. “Fie, a pox upon me for my sight. Europa! Well done, well done! Your source I know well, yet ne’er have I seen the story upon the stage. Surpassing fair,” said William, and raised his cup.

  “Thank you, my lord,” said the lad, bowing. “Richard Burbage, at your service.”

  “To a lord your service may be, but not to me, for I am none,” William replied.

  “May not service also be unto a lady? For so I am told.”

  “Marry, and some might say ’tis the best service, though all here would put God first, I fear. But pray you, sirrah, do you call me a lady?”

  “I know not what else to call you, for I know not your name.”

  William told him and they poured another ale together.

  “How comes it,” William asked, “that Leicester’s Men play thus with unbated swords in the matter of the Old Faith, when your patron the Earl wields a mace for the new?”

  The young man shrugged. “These are matters for greater minds than mine. You might ask my father.” He nodded to the older man now approaching the tap: the player who had enacted Zeus and the Bull behind their masks. His clothes were neat but of an older style, and ragged around the edges. He wore a leather codpiece. “Father, this is William Shakespeare. My father, James Burbage. William here has a query — ”

  “I heard, Richard.” He gave William a glance while he poured his beer. “Our patron Leicester is of the new faith, to be sure. In his company of players, there are many faiths: those who profess the new faith, those who openly profess the Old Faith, those who profess the new but practice the Old, and the lion’s share who are wanton sinners and have only the faith that they shall burn in hell for it. I myself am in some two of those categories.”

  James Burbage turned and raised his cup, drained it, reloaded, and continued, “We may play wanton with many commandments, but to a man we obey the first commandment of the theater: Know Thy Audience. It is not difficult, in a Protestant house, for us to but move this wink here and that nod there, and of a sudden our Catholic screed becomes a Puritan parable of Zeus as Pope, raping innocent, devout Europe — and Elizabeth most personally — via his Papal Bull.”


  “So you are troubled not by the crimes against our Catholic priests? Betrayal, injustice, hangings, beheadings?” William asked.

  “This is the stuff our plays are made on. Without such suffering, we would have neither art nor commerce,” Burbage said.

  “You cannot be so faithless, and so cruel.”

  Burbage shifted. He lifted his codpiece. He scratched underneath it. Finally he said, “I’m old enough to remember, lad, that there were all those crimes of man against man under our last Sovereign — Bloody Mary, as some call her — and burnings beside. Many more died for their faith in her five years’ reign than in Elizabeth’s twenty-five. No faith, it seems, owns the market on butchery. Our butchery, at least, is but playacting. We show men as they are, as they were, as they could be. We are a glass, wherein men look and learn, mayhap, something of themselves. For performing that office, we need beg no forgiveness.”

  “And yet,” said William, “you perform here, amongst this particular company, with seeming passion.”

  “Seeming is our trade. And there’s profit in it, too. There is insatiable hunger in England for theater. In London especially. A man may make a pretty penny upon the stage, if he will but commit to London nine months a year.”

  “And besides,” said young Richard Burbage, “who would not play with passion, who wishes to be a player? ’Tis the best of all possible worlds, to act, and dress up, and travel the country. We’ve just come from Coventry, and play Shrewsbury next.”

  William was silent for a moment. The pretty servant girl came up to the tap, carrying a tray of empty mugs. “Pray you pardon, my lord,” she said.

  William turned to look at the elder Burbage — but Burbage was looking at William.

  “Master Shakespeare,” the girl clarified.

  William turned, surprised. His father was Master Shakespeare. Yet he liked being called “my lord” by a curtsying girl with pillowy breasts. “Ay?” William said.

  “My lord Arden has summoned you to a council, my lord.”

  “Me?”

  “Ay, my lord. This way.”

  William looked at Mary, who had watched the exchange from nearby. She nodded to him with a proud smile.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The best actors in the world, either for tragedy,

  comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical,

  historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-

  comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or

  poem unlimited; Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor

  Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the

  liberty, these are the only men.

  — Polonius, Hamlet, II.ii.396

  After the play, Rebecca wanted to go talk to Pete, the guy in the dress. But Willie wasn’t comfortable with other people’s backstages. He never waited to meet guys in bands or actors in shows or — well, once he waited to meet an actress in a show, but he was trying to stay focused. “I should really find Jacob.”

  “If he’s here, he’ll be backstage. Come on,” Rebecca said, and took Willie by the hand. They made their way through the hay bales as horns and noisemakers razzed about them. Short Sharp Shakespeare had been followed by a men’s vocal group singing lusty versions of already bawdy songs while wearing fishnet hose and G-strings.

  “My man John put his thing that was long

  Into my maid Mary’s thing that was hairy . . .”

  With a nod and a casual “hey” to the security guard, Rebecca strode past a sign saying ACTORS ONLY, and through a burlap curtain. Backstage, the costumes were a blur of color and freakiness. Willie had a vague impression of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet meeting a John Waters movie.

  Rebecca walked up to Pete, who sat on a hay bale, taking off his miniskirt. “Hi, handsome!” Rebecca said, and ran toward him. “Great show! What a great show. Ohmigod, drugs in Shakespeare, where did you get that idea!? I was dying! This is my friend Willie, he’s looking for Jacob, have you seen Jacob?”

  “Um, thanks . . . hi . . . no, no, I haven’t,” Pete replied, trying to catch up with Rebecca’s flurry of questions. “He was here, but I think he went to actors’ camp.”

  Willie remembered Todd’s instructions: He has a joker flag flying over his tent. “And which way would that be?”

  “That way . . .” said Pete vaguely, then did a double take at Willie. “Do I know you?”

  “I was your heckler in Berkeley yesterday. Fuck you, Romeo.”

  “Right, right! That was really funny. How’s it going? How’d you like the show?”

  “Hysterical. Especially the digs at Reagan. I thought you missed a couple of obvious drug references, though.”

  “Really? Like what?” Pete asked, genuinely curious.

  Willie shrugged. “I thought for sure you were going to do a gag of Cleopatra getting off on the asp poisoning.” Willie mimed holding a wriggling snake in front of himself and shrilled out in a piercing falsetto, “Come, thou mortal wretch! With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate of life at once untie! Where art thou, death?” He mimed putting the snake to his nipple, and faked a breathless orgasm, “Come hither, come, come, COME!” and finally made with his lips a credible sound effect of a balloon bursting and a breast deflating. He gestured to Pete’s balloon breasts. “Wouldn’t be too hard to put a pin in a rubber snake and pop one of those babies.”

  Pete looked Willie up and down. “You an actor?”

  “Not professionally. I’ve done some Shakespeare.”

  “Hunh.”

  “So,” said Rebecca to Willie — she was clearly bored of the Shakespeare chat — “if you go out to the main road, back the way we came, but when you see the security guard on the right, you go up the hill. Actors’ camp is at the top.”

  Willie’s time with Rebecca was apparently done. She was sitting on the hay bale next to Pete while he undressed, and it didn’t look like she was leaving.

  Feeling suddenly like a third wheel, Willie said, “Okay, thanks. Nice meeting you. See you around.”

  “Okay, bye,” said Rebecca sweetly enough, but she was already making goo-goo eyes at Pete.

  “See ya,” said Pete.

  Actors, Willie thought, get all the pussy. He followed Rebecca’s directions, out the burlap curtain and past the singing troupe.

  “Beneath the spreading chestnut tree

  The Village Idiot sat,

  Amusing himself by abusing himself

  And catching it in his hat . . .”

  Willie heard the cheers and the shouted choruses fade as he walked around the corner. He saw a group of actors headed up the hill and fell in behind them. He showed his paperwork to a security guard, who examined it closely and looked suspiciously at Willie’s street clothes and small bag. Willie felt his heart race.

  “You staying in camp?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Already got a site? It’s crowded tonight, because of the night show.”

  “I’m hoping there’s a girl waiting for me in her tent,” Willie lied. Then he added, for credibility, “Rebecca.”

  The guard smiled slightly at the name. “If you can get her to stop talking, maybe you’ll get lucky,” he said, and let him pass.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Shakespeare’s plays are filled with cautionary tales of conspiracy, rebellion, and usurpation. From Hotspur to Macbeth to Brutus to the restive gangs of Romeo’s Verona, murderous or intemperate youths drive many a plot. Shakespeare certainly had ample models for such characters among the Catholic conspirators of his day.

  The pretty servant girl led William up a narrow stair into a high turret of the house. There, a ladder descended from the ceiling and William climbed through a hole that opened out into a hidden chamber, set up as a council room. Already there were a dozen or so of the company from downstairs assembled about the table, talking in low tones. William sat down, feeling more out of place than ever. After a few minutes Edward Arden rose, and the room quieted.

&nbs
p; He led the room in the Lord’s Prayer, and then spoke. “Good gentles all, friends and family of the one true faith, I bid you welcome to Park Hall. We have congregated in what should be joy and peace and to celebrate the sacrament, yet there are worldly matters which demand our attention.

  “When last we met, a year past, there was great promise. Fathers Edmund Campion and Robert Persons were here, spreading hope and resolve that we might practice our faith, quietly if neither in secret nor in glory. And now are those two excellent men martyred, along with Thomas Cottom and many more beside, and Tyburn’s noose closes ever more tightly about us.

  “Also, we have of late heard a rumor which, if true, bodes well for Elizabeth’s spinner of webs, the spymaster Walsingham, yet most ill for our cause: Robert Debdale, ’tis said, has been set free from the Tower of London.”

  There were murmurs around the table, and faces looked grave. Master Smith of Shottery asked the same question that was on William’s mind. “Should we not rejoice that our friend and neighbor has been set free? This will not be ill news to the Debdales, nor the Hathaways, Paces, and Richardsons of our village.”

  “In his freedom, we may rejoice,” Arden replied. “Yet I fear the price he paid to gain it. Others such as Campion have watched their own entrails burned rather than speak the names of those who preach the Old Faith, and the names of those who harbor them. We may hope that Debdale also kept faith, and that his release was gained in some other wise. But we must double our discretion — ”

  He was interrupted by a loud laugh from John Somerville. “What, shall we dig deeper holes in which to cower!? Weave darker cloaks in which to shroud our womanish tears of melancholy? Fie on discretion! Let us act!”

  “What would you have us do, John Somerville?” said Edward Arden.

  “What ought to have been done the instant the whore Anne Boleyn’s daughter Bess first drew blood upon our priests: cut her throat i’the very church she has with blood defiled.”