The people not there were the people who should have been there. But Shakespeare was to be played by a film actor who was the husband of Ms Grace Hope, and he was making a film. The dark lady who was to play the Dark Lady was completing a nightclub engagement. Hamlet without the prince, Enderby had quipped. Gus Toplady had morosely replied that he had tried it in Minneapolis at the Tyrone Guthrie but it had not really worked. Hamlet off stage all the time, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern eavesdropping on inaudible soliloquy. What's he say now? He say he not know whether he live or die but he use too many big words. Toplady had done a nude Macbeth somewhere. He appeared to have little confidence in Enderby. Enderby reciprocated with all his heartburn.
"Shakespeare," Enderby said, "is dying. His ageing wife and two daughters sit by his bed, the wife audibly jingling two pennies. These are to put on his eyes when he shall finally close them."
"Why?" asked a girl whom Enderby knew to be Toplady's mistress.
"The custom in those days. These are not what ah you would call pennies. Not cents I mean. Big pennies. English ones."
"Okay," Toplady said without compassion. "He's dying. Forget the pennies."
"You can't," Enderby said. "Shakespeare says: 'Ah, I hear you jingling your pennies to put on my eyes. Do not fret, wife. I shall not keep you waiting long.' Then, though it's still April, he hears the song of boys and girls bringing in the May. They sing the ah following:
'Bringing the maypole home,
Bringing the maypole home,
Bringing the maypole home,
Bringing the maypole home.' "
"A deathless lyric," Toplady said.
"There's more to it than that," Enderby said, red. "It goes on:
'Custom has blessed this strange festivity,
Licensing every gross proclivity,
Here's the year's nativity,
Here is life, let's live it.
To sin it is no sin
When spring is coming in.' "
He looked round for a positive response, but there was none, except of vague incredulity. He pushed on sturdily:
"In his dying delirium he sees the mayers prancing about the deathchamber, his younger self and Anne Hathaway among them. He says: "Thus it began. She overbore me in a wood. Needed a husband, even though one ten years younger. Susannah there born but six months after the marriage." Himself dying and his surrounding family fade into blackness, and the younger Shakespeare, whom we will call Will for brevity, is sitting in a chair nursing his son Hamnet."
"What happens to the singing and dancing?" asked somebody.
"That is ah sung and danced off. But this is another May and Will hears the song in the distance. He hugs his little son and sings to him as follows:
'Little son,
When I look at thee
I am filled with won-
Der such wonder should be.
Part of me yet no part of me,
Wholly good yet the wood of my tree.
If I could
I would live to see
Fulfilled in me
The man that I can never be,
Born to property,
Richly clad retainers about thee.
Hawk on hand,
You survey your land,
Your acres shining in the summer's gold
And I behold
The glory of a name
Restored to fame
It had of old.
Little son,
If these things should be
And I die before they are granted to thee,
Think of me as he who carved them
From the wood
For the wood of my tree.' "
There was a silence. Toplady said to Silversmith, who lay on the floor: "Mike?" Silversmith pronounced:
"I say what I said already." Toplady said with cold eyes to Enderby:
"Go on. But cut out the lyrics."
"But the whole of this ah induction is done practically entirely in song."
"Go on."
"Well," Enderby said, "Will goes to the window and looks up at the clear night sky. He sees, but we do not see, Cassiopeia's Chair, a constellation in the shape of an inverted W, the initial of his name. He sings to it."
"Ah Jesus," said Silversmith from the floor.
"He sings to it as follows:
'My name in the sky
Burning for ever,
Fame fixed by face
Never to die.
At least
I feast on that dream,
The gleam of gold, my fortunes mounting high.
To render my deed
More than pure fancy,
On lonely roads I must proceed,
My one companion a dream,
A seemly vision only I espy!
My name in the sky.'
"But then his wife Anne appears and sings a contrary song which combines in counterpoint with Will's:
'Will o' the wisp,
A foolish fire,
Leads fools to fall
In mud and mire.
Better by far
The fire at home,
Smoke in the rafter,
Lamb's wool and laughter -' "
"What," Toplady's mistress asked, "does lamb's wool have to do with it?"
"Lamb's wool," Enderby authoritatively defined, "was an Elizabethan drink for cold weather, consisting of heated ale mixed with the pounded pulp of roasted crab apples, which fragments floated in the ale like the wool of lambs in a high wind. Seasoned with nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Highly fortifying."
"You'd have to have a programme note," said a bearded youth, "or some guy standing there to stop the song and explain it."
"Push on," Toplady said in the tone of one who leads a toiling party through a high wind.
"Anne finishes the song:
'Will o' the wisp,
Do not desire
To follow fame,
That foolish fire.
Better by far
The fire at home,
Fresh dawn on waking
And fresh bread baking.
A will o' the wisp
Should not aspire
To be a star.' "
"Mike?"
"Like I said already."
"But," pleaded Enderby, "they both hear approaching song. It is the company of players known as the Queen's Men. They have been playing in Stratford and are now leaving it, with their property carts and clopping horses. The troupe sings:
'The Queen's Men,
The Queen's Men,
Not beer-and-bread-and-beans men
But fine men,
Wine men,
Music-while-we-dine men.
The Queen's Men,
The Queen's Men,
Of-more-than-ample-means men,
Are off now,
Doff, bow,
We will come again,
The Queeeeeeen's Men.' "
Enderby prolonged the long vowel in a gesture of song: "Hearing it, Will says: 'By God, I will go with them. I will become a player and eke write plays -' "
"Why does he go eek?" a fat frizzy girl in crimson asked.
"Eke means also," learned Enderby said. "Cognate with German auch. But he can say also if that is what is, ah, desired."
"That is, ah, desired," the girl said.
"He says to his little son: "I will be back with fine gifts for Hamnet. And eke Susannah and Judith. And eke their mother." Or, if that is still desired, also. Anne sings her Will o' the Wisp song and Will his Cassiopeia song again, and both are in counterpoint to the song of the Queen's Men. The scene ends. The curtain goes up almost at once on Elizabethan London in the full flush of victory over the Spaniards. A song is sung which begins with a kind of ah fart -"
"Your first job," Toplady said, "was to find out about the stage. This stage has no curtains. Go and look at it sometime. No curtains."
"Except for someone," Silversmith said obscurely from the floor.
"A sort of er far
t," Enderby went on, "like this:
'Prrrrrrrp
We ha' done for the Don,
Clawed off his breeches
And rent every stitch he's
Had on -' "
"Right," Toplady said to the company, "you can see a lot of work has to be done yet, and our friend here says that this is only what he calls an induction -"
"Shakespeare, too," Enderby cut in. "You all know your Taming of the."
"Watch noticeboard for next reading call. Okay," dismissively. To Enderby he said: "You and me and Mike have to talk. In ten minutes in my office."
"You," Enderby said, "do not appear to like the project."
"I like any project that has a fan in hell's chance of working. This project we've got to do. There's money gone into it from Mrs Schoenbaum. She wants it and to Mrs Schoenbaum you don't say no. But we don't do the project the way you see the project or think you see it." He breathed on Enderby and exuded a memory of breakfast blueberry pancakes. "Ten minutes in my office." Both he and Enderby had to leave by the same door, but it was if they were to exit by opposed wings. Silversmith remained on the floor. Enderby said harshly to him:
"Good friend for Jesus' sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blest be the man who spares these stones
But curst be he who moves my bones."
"That too," Silversmith said, "is a shitty lyric." Enderby was constrained, though silently, to agree with him. He then lost himself in the bowels of the theatre among shut cabin doors, fat heating pipes, growling engines. A big place, he concluded, having passed twice the same boilersuited men playing cards. At length he found himself in the wings of a stage and he timidly ventured onto the stage itself which, true, had no curtains and jutted far into an auditorium far too large for the town of Terrebasse but not for playgoers from the state capital, which was near. Less shyly, he moved downstage in the dusk mitigated by a working light and tried certain lines:
"By God, I will follow them to London and make my fortune there, acting plays and eke writing them." Terrible. A man who now appeared in the wings with a hamburger seemed to think so too, for he clapped faintly.
Enderby went down to the auditorium and through it, uphill, to doors which led to a wide corridor. Then there were stairs and he came to the administrative area, where girls and grown women were typing. He was somewhat late. Toplady glowered from his open office. Silversmith was already lying on the floor. Toplady's office was full of framed posters of his triumphs in high colour and fancy lettering. Toplady drank coffee from a paper cup and so, with some loss of the substance, did Silversmith. No coffee was offered to Enderby but a chair was. Toplady sat behind his desk. He said:
"What's the story?"
"The story, yes. Shakespeare, or Will as we may call him for brevity's sake, said that already, sorry, leaves wife and children in Stratford and goes to London. He sees how the Londoners like violent sports like bearbaiting and beheadings at Tyburn, so he writes the most violent play ever written. I see you presumably know it, Mr Ladysmith, since a poster there says you once directed it. Not a good play. In fact," he said daringly, "a lousy one."
"Go on."
"This leads him to the Henry VI plays and the friendship of the Earl of Southampton and at least acquaintanceship with the Earl of Essex, who wants to be king of England. Then there is Richard III, which leads him to the Dark Lady. She sees the play and falls for Burbage who plays the lead, and wants him to come to her bed with the announcement at the door that Richard III is here. But Will gets there first and is at his work when the announcement comes and says tell him William the Conqueror comes before Richard III."
The anecdote made Enderby smile but the two others remained gloomily watching. He continued:
"The Earl of Southampton takes the Dark Lady away from him and he falls into depression and whoring and drinking. You could have a song about that," he suggested.
"Depression, whoring and drinking," Silversmith sang from the floor.
"And then comes the news that his son Hamnet is very sick. He rushes to Stratford to find his boy dead and being buried. But he becomes a gentleman. Too late, too late, alas. This," Enderby saw fit now to explain, "is a play about guilt."
"Go on."
"End of first act. Second act Will is involved in Essex rebellion through putting on Richard II, which appears to justify usurpation. He sees Essex beheaded and fears he will be beheaded himself. But the Queen tells him to stay out of the big world of politics. He is a little man, she says. He goes home to Stratford and looks after his land and sues everybody in the manner of a country gentleman. Then he dies. A brief outline only." Silence. "It could be expanded." Silence. "A lot of things happen really. Marlowe, Ben Jonson. Sex and murder." Silence. "No limit to dramatic possibilities. Gentlemen," he added.
"You know what this is really about?" Toplady eventually said.
"Of course he could have syphilis, if that would help at all. He probably did have. Marvellous description of symptoms in Timon of Athens. Read it sometime. Nose dropping off, voice getting hoarse and so on. Everybody had syphilis in those days. America 's gift to Europe. All the world's a tertiary stage, he might have said. I don't know why I'm telling you all this."
"What I said," Toplady said more loudly though untruthfully, "is that this play is about its two stars."
Enderby coldly answered his cold stare. "You mean," he said, "like the Guide Michelin?" He had no confidence whatsoever in Toplady.
"I mean," Toplady said, "Pete Oldfellow and April Elgar. They're the stars. You'd better believe it. You can't put April on for a single scene and then shovel her off like dogshit. Once she's there she's there. You see that?"
"I don't," Enderby said, "think I know the lady. The name, of course. Elgar's a great name. But I thought the family had died out. Worcestershire, as you know."
"April is black," reproved the voice from the floor. "April is only Worcester in the sauce sense. April is the hottest property. April is tabasco." Enderby listened with unwilling approval. This was pure poetry.
"April Elgar," Toplady explained, "is a great singing star. You don't seem to realize what's on here. We take this show to Broadway by way of here and Toronto and Boston. It could run for ever."
"Why," Enderby asked, with seeming irrelevance, "did you pick on me?"
"Had to pick on somebody," Toplady said. "We didn't want one of these professors. Mrs Schoenbaum has to be convinced she's getting what she asked for. Meaning Shakespeare. Now get this first act ready. Shakespeare comes from Stratford bringing his kid with him."
"Hamnet? But he didn't. Hamnet stayed with his mother."
"You may," Toplady said, "think I'm an ignorant bastard, but I know what I don't know. More important, I know what you don't know. What you don't know is what really happened. Okay, who's to say he didn't bring his kid with him? He brings his kid with him but he protects him from the dirty world. He puts this dirty world on the stage. The Dark Lady comes into his life. He neglects his kid and his kid dies – plague, mugging, falls from a scaffold, gets roughed by a mad horse, gang rape, anything will do. So, right, you can have your guilt and remorse or whatever the hell it is." He scooped the gift towards Enderby with a Toledo dagger Enderby assumed was used as a paperknife. "She leaves him for this other guy, the Earl of Southampton or Sussex. She's got ambitions, right?"
" Essex. But look here -"
"Who cares what sex, right, but she's back in Act Two. In Act Two Shakespeare wants his son back so he turns him into Hamlet, and Shakespeare plays the Ghost."
"You got that from -"
"Never mind where I got it. The rebellion's because she wants to be queen. She only gets to be queen in Shakespeare's dream. She becomes Cleopatra. When he's sick and losing his teeth and getting old, she drops him. But she's really his mooz."
"His what?"
"His inspiration. Fella, you have enough to be getting on with. But remember we don't have all that much time."
"My title," Enderby said. With great reluctance he had to admit to a faint admiration for Toplady. Horribly blasphemous and obscene though it was, he seemed to know what he wanted.
"Your title is out. Who wants to see a musical called Whoever Hath Thy Will? There's a lot round here can't say th. I thought of Goats and Monkeys. You know where that comes from." He nodded up at a poster advertising his production of Othello, in which everybody in the blown-up photograph of turmoil on Cyprus seemed, except for Othello, who, in his general's uniform, looked like Patton, to be black. That's our working title, anyway. Something else may turn up. There's a room and a typewriter along there. You'd best get moving."
Enderby humbly obeyed, or at least got out of there. Silversmith said: "Your first lyric is the Tomorrow and Tomorrow one. Get it finished today."
4
In the dark bar of the Holiday Inn, whisky sour before him, Enderby wrote a lyric:
Give the people what they wish:
Something trite and tawdry,
Balladry and bawdry -
Give the people what they wish.
Give the groundlings what they crave:
Bombast and unreason,
Dog and bitch in season,
Prophecies of treason
Rising from the grave.
Pillaging and ravishing and burning,
Royal heads and maidenheads
Presented on a dish,
In a pie.
Let them eat their stinking fish -
What they find delicious
Soon will seem pernicious.
When the time's propitious
That diet will cloy,
They will come to enjoy
What I wish
What I wish
What Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Wish.
Let that bloody Silverlady or Topsmith try that one, see what his rhythmical sense was like. Enderby began to sketch the dialogue that followed. He preferred to work here than in the room they had given him. Too many people kept looking in to see how he was getting on. The mistress of Silvertop came twice to giggle. She was a thin long girl with red hair who was to play Queen Elizabeth. Enderby had set his scene in a brothel. Will in the dark with a spot on him while singing. Lights come up to disclose whores in undress. Henslowe with his account book. He frowns on Will and waves him away.
Enderby's Dark Lady Page 5