I also initially included some detail about his lodging in Silver Street, but again this was too much in the story telling mode.
WILL:
(calls) yes very good keep going..Quiney …
Judith’s husband
“cut all the logs … …the only chopper I would have you wave about this town..
Margaret Wheeler died birthing his baby. An expensive mess to cover
(shouts) when the wood is done gather the water..
(to audience)
I leave £300 to Judith and her alone…
Quiney’s life will not be his own for I know her.. ha ha
most of the rest goes to Susanna., and her john..
one marries a profligate with his cock hanging from his breeches and the other a dry puritan..
WILL:
These…
they are fine gloves father … …
what were your words?
“measure men .. weigh their harm and need …
We are new kinds that live between dog and master…
and must at times pull our little all through crooked ways to make it stretch, …
my crimes are just weights and measures… for which the lawyers are still building scales …” …
When you lost your post as alderman-
were prosecuted for wool dealing and usery
illegal dealing and usury … … hundreds of pounds… ..
your application for a coat of arms failed …
All jests left..
thousands of pounds of wool and hundreds of pounds… .. lost…to the magistrates
you only beat our mother once …then when struck low and lost all pride.. and (shouts )
but I have beat mine not at all…
Well enough…!
I first walked the oxford road
Londons catch-throat stench
Of fish guts, iron works, tanners, midden heaps,
crow blown bodies of tyburn
filthy lick of shit clogged streets
silver thames, teemed with boats
the great guildhall, the courtyard around Crumbling st paul’s
merchants, hirers pickpockets and the publishing houses .
they were my university.. where an old friend from Stratford published my first poems
This was the 80’s:
All swagger: broad doublets, oversized breeches,
the bloody plays; intrigues
of Marlowe and Kydd
Nashe called it, a sea sucking in all scummy channels of the realm..
Everyone was 20 drunken and fighting for your purse,
New privateers jarred fresh values with outworn chivalry
I emptied all thoughts to commonplace books
spies everywhere …. The air compact fear of
Catholics, French, Dutch and
Spanish, plague the Irish or of an everyday quarrel that might end in a stabbing. “
People feared of the foreign,
are easier to rule,
I lodged in Shoreditch:
spill town of barns, cottages and fields.
Near hog lane where Kit Marlowe and Thomas Watson would kill William Bradley, over a bill
All the actors, writers, Criminals and whores lived here mostly together
Greene, Peele and Nashe married wenches for their dowrys and ran from them here to write …
….. Ben you did this too later …
WILL:
Aemilia hated it
flashing your sharp Dark eyes to chide for speaking not well of women in my plays
“do not like a viper deface the wombe wherein you were bred.”
Shh Aemilia …. leave me in peace this was not a time i knew you
I wrote and wrote
in leafy silver street,
living with the Mountjoys
protestant Huguenots greatly skilled in crafts
despite swinging taxes, and dangerous hostility …
my hosts had lightness
and Marie Mountjoy was fine fingered and white limbed
but I have ever been drawn to exotic beauty
dusky dark women,,, Helen of troy and Cleopatra …
tawny… gipsy and riggish.. all women are of another country
I loved you …….
But
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. –
We loved and ruined our
Hearts
Your dark skin in the taper light
Rested on your back
writing The Merchant of Venice ..
and your other lover
my friend ..
whose name I no longer speak
poor Anne …
this was no mechanic meeting of bodies
or of two young men sharing love not finished for women
these I have had and to some shame
but we loved with the metre of music
two solitary hearts played in time
she guessed all of my love but we never spoke of it
I met you then Ben
Strange to think your Company should slowly shake me,
back to sense
I needed male rivals on healthier pitches than
tiring house beds
and in theatre at least then
I was more potent than ever
Remember, after your satire the isle of dogs jailed you
and closed the theatres, almost for good..
it was I who,
asked you to you write for us… no one else would touch you
“and I taught you much about classical writing”
which I ignored
“ahh.. poor shagsbeard you were never as deep a print of learning as I”
True Ben you stand one foot in Greece
with your head in Rome
at times poor London gets only your arse.
Ha ha …
We drank hard you felt more cheated by the university wits than I
Praise for the learned man should be shared with his teacher,
And William you and I were to ourselves both teacher and pupil
universities breed whores who make a profession of what they first did love.
I thought the world did that don’t we do that?
Well ben You have an honorary degree now ..
I’m a counterfeit gentleman …. you an honorary whore
actors in and writers of our own tragicomic dramas
I initially gave more detail; here about apprentice riots and the condition of refugees in London which ends with the Thomas more speech attributed to Shakespare.
My landlord’s arm was crook’d
He been beaten some years before
by apprentices of London
that seeing wretched strangers,
with babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding tooth ports and costs for transportation,
sat as kings in their desires, accused refugees of taking jobs
threatened their lives
this cankered malice made london ugly
chid down all the majesty of England;
and taught men to be ravenous fishes
feeding on one another
I felt desire to use my pen for without those strangers london would
Be back to a meaner darker times,
less goods worse food and closer horizons
Dekker told me that he Chettle; Heywood were mending mundays old
Thomas more play, I offred to write
The part decrying , a similar riot against strangers
would you be pleased
To find a nation of such barbarous temper,
That, breaking out in hideous violence,
Would not afford you an abode on earth,
Whet their detested knives against your throats,
Spurn you like dogs,
what would you think To be thus used?
this is the strangers case;
And this your mountanish inhumanity.
This section continued to speak of Aemilia, and more of Jonson and of the theatre itself. I eventually rewrote this section and omitted a great deal but the original research is more evident here.
Here in an obvious Tempest reference. Will has Quiney, his daughter's errant husband chopping logs. This felt too contrived and the early language of the narrative is more colloquial in the style of some of the more roistering Shakespeare biography plays and over-sells the research. The story didn’t return.
This section from the same draft adds some detail to the story of Will’s Father. I liked the idea that Will’s later attempt to gain a coat of arms might have had some emotional resonance with the failure of his own father to do so. I also like the description of the new middling sort but this slowed the flow of the text.
These next sections were descriptions of London that I liked but in performance would have been too descriptive and slipped into a story telling mode that disengaged with the rest of the text.
I gave Aemelia Lanier greater voice initially using words from her own poetry, again simply cut for reasons of flow.
December chilled the plagues revels
And we were called to Hampton court
I as one of James’ new indulgences
Old saws , Romeo Juliet, henry the 4th
The king freed jails and executed others at wim
I had no feet in this new dance
the King's Men, enemies of puritan rectitude
arrived in the midst of a theological conference
James wine most oft in hand was in debate with an assembly of sober puritans
seeing Augustine wearing his most senseless Flemish fashions
one vinegar face muttered “the king now keeps peacocks for his amusement”
what cocks? said Augustine
“all I have seen are sparrows drab birds and all alike, and they hop furiously rather than soar…
………………..
We showed Measure for measure
a new kind of comedy in a dark world with an elusive ruler
It was a new kind of play; legal debate, satire
Justice and tyranny were all confused
the duke says:
I love the people, But do not like to stage me to their eyes:
Through it do well, I do not relish well
Their loud applause and Aves vehement;
James said of the prying crowd:
“gods wounds I will pull down my breeches and the crowds shall see my arse..
You Ben, blundered back into jail with Chapman
For mocking the scots in eastward ho
remarkable you being half scot yourself
Which, you announce much more now than before
…………
James is negotiating a treaty with the Spanish and has found the English contingent thin
We are to costume As British nobles, and give swagger,
suggesting we each have vast bodies of men and ships at our command….
we acted men at court and for a pittance
and precious gifts went to the meanest
of the Spanish court
he accrued great debts,,using England as though it were Christmas..
…………
I worked..with with young Middleton on Timon of Athens
the new writers are after my own style but more modern: Fletcher, Marston, Middleton,
some have “theories” but Middleton has a bitter wit;
over ale he treasonablly mocked one of Ben’s court masques, saying :
Behold the kings dream.. London a new Athens
its philosopher prince.. the sun king
a glittering light to cleanse all
london awake
and sees itself to be only ruled
by yellow, glittering, precious gold
That makes black white, foul fair,
And knits and breaks religions
Timon is a generous but profligate dreaming noble
drawn by parasites he dies penniless and hated,
………………
thoughts piecemeal grew inundated
With jealousies guesses, and imaginings
Of Anne, of Emilia
my works teemed with misattributed Jealousy, undetected innocence , hidden plots
Othello , measure for measure, lear winter’s tale, Macbeth
When clear I saw my mind Ary When clouded the imagined deeds of others
justified my lying with women of changing beauty and breeding
and with one or two lads of the theatre,
Ben shewd me his verse wrote on the death of his boy
My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry,
I said I wonder at your honesty
I only incidentally write of myself ..
of my dead ..
poor lost boy
I weave the threads of my sorrows and betrayals.. into my characters
hang then upon the broken Bones of my own hurt and offences
tis what we all do , he says ..
1606 the gunpowder plot … I heard from my house the screams
Of Everad Digby hung, drawn and quartered
And when The executioner cut out his heart,
Shouting “Here is the heart of a traitor”
I heard Digby call
“Thou liest.”
I saw as if from heaven
Myself hardened to so much death
Memorising the words:
….I have the heart of a traitor
……….
All were worried about Jame’s new
union with Scotland
What did I think… fool to the king I
Stood at the balancing point of oppositions
Lear divided a kingdom did not unite it
As James in uniting also divided
…….
Once again I equivocate and weigh both scales:
destruction certainties ,
James saw celebration of union…
men are as the time is….
James adrift in the land knew much,
But like but like Lear
slender knew himself..…
gave gifts unwisely
and I was an absent father to my daughters
growing tired,
lear, king of the end of worlds …
……………..
Baumont has died
John fletcher’s writing companion
It was rare to see them together outside their bankside lodgings
twixt the brothels and bear pits
they shared one best suit of clothes and a wench in the house between them.", …
one would walk in town leaving the other to tup lily their girl: at home…..
this day Beaumont was touching the blackfriars audience as
”too simple to appreciate his satire of outdated romance..
Fletcher..was it was satire ?
thought it genuine outdated romance
Beaumont put a knife in the wall an inch from johns face
and Fletcher laughed catching my look: “shakestaff he missed why so melancholy”
well, because I had old Shoreditch my mind
Marlowe, Kyd, Burbage dear Augustine and the others
we too had pitted prides and made great reckonings in little rooms
Beamont married to ease his purse
and struck immobile by disease the same year
could not write
comedy or tragedy? …
A play is not life ….. but
life is all play …. And new playwrights will always dispute with old wisdoms and ways..
in disgraceful London rooms
………..
I wrote Pericles, with George Wilkins. He owned a tavern of women
food , wine dice, and tobacco, chambers upstairs for pleasure
He had been arrested for robbery violence and rape
Wilkins made money from whores in the north London playhouses
But business is business pimp, playwright?
a good writer and an apt for the times
……………….
The kings Danish cousin christian came to court
carousal sports women, and wine of astonishing plenty,
embraced at table.
nobles wallowed in wine and ladies rolled in intoxication.
A masque of the queen of Sheba was made,
And the Queen tripped emptying her gifts into his Danish Majesties face , and fell at his feet,
danced with the Queen of Sheba ;
but fell and was carried to an inner chamber and
laid on a bed which he defiled with wine, cream, jelly, beverage, and cakes,
The show went forward,
and the presenters fell backward, or down in wine
then appeared, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and Charity:
Hope drunk could not speak
Faith staggered out and
Charity looked on as they both spewed in the lower hall.
Next came Victory, in bright armour, too drunk to make sense and
Peace furious with her attendants rudely made war with her olive
branch, about the heads of those who did oppose her com-
ing.
john Harrington The courtier whispered:
these pegeantries, bring to my remembrance what passed of this sort in our
Queens days; of which I was sometime an humble presenter and
assistant: but I neer did see such lack of good order, discretion,
and sobriety, as I have now done. I
I will now, in good sooth, declare to you, who will not blab, that the
gunpowder fright is got out of all our heads, and we are going
on, hereabouts, as if the devil was contriving every man shoud
blow up himself, by wild riot, excess, and devastation of time
and temperance. I do often say (but not
aloud) that the Danes have again conquered the Britains, for I
see no man, or woman either, that can now command himself or
herself.
My Anthony and Cleopatra echoed this soft sensual
Egypt and hard warlike Rome melted and merged
As my resolution had in emilias arms
Anthony’s Epicurean cooks
Sharpen with cloyless sauce his appetite.
almost every character betrays their country, ethics, or a companion.
And are united not in their love but in their attempts to avoid shame
And to chase fame
She shall be buried by her Antony:
No grave upon the earth shall clip in it
A pair so famous.
Shame comes from without
Guilt from within
I would appease both
I am not good with city comedies and
must often work with others to improve my works
But the rousing speech and mind of the great man,
I still do well..
I do not understand Ben or fletchers conjecture’s
about Horace or style
Ovid was my master..all is change
I learn by the action itself
If I lived another hundred years
I’d begin to know
Then tastes and modes
Then will have
Metamorphosed a thousand times
No art like all is a bastard changing thing
I am an aged shepherd
Locked from familiar old pasture
Wishing for the certainty of
old customs
I am tired
I know the stranger
And I love a craftsman
Dramaturgy:
In editing the work for the stage my editors were clear that unless I kept a through line of emotional involvement they began to lose interest. Kurt Vonnegut’s injunction that anything that doesn’t tell us more about the character or move the story should be omitted was proved many times. Thus many sections that dealt with 'clever ideas' like the section on sonnets or some of the more philosophical actions had to be clipped, and the section of deleted scenes illustrates some developments of the text.
I discovered that to maintain a political or social context the macro and the micro had to be conjoined. For example in order to discuss Shakespeare’s tax avoidance I made his constant shifting homes the reason that he could not get to see his son before he died. This conjoining of evidence from his life in order to mix the personal and the political became a tool that developed with the text.
It comes to a peak at the description of the queen watching Richard II after the Essex rebellion where Shakespeare has been dragged out of hiding to attend.
Other sections were lost, including interesting conjecture about about the publishing of the sonnets and life at court. In-depth descriptions of Elizabethan London based on eye witness accounts had to be omitted from the final script or the dramatic narrative would have given way to material that had more interest only to researchers.
Large sections of interaction with his family also had to go or the play’s back would have broken under the weight of subplots.
The omitted material or research found its way into numerous references or convergences that were clear to Scholars who could join the dots but didn’t disrupt the emotional through line of the piece.
Theatricality:
There are a number of plays in the playlist that generate extreme theatrical situations and are characterised by a kind of rambunctious bawdy humour.
I chose to avoid sensational dramatic devices. There are a number of apocryphal sources which create dramatic and comic narratives around Shakespeare like this anecdote, from John Manningham’s 1601 diary, which concerns a performance of the play we now call Richard III. Richard Burbage played the King and caught the attention of a woman in the audience. The lady was so impressed by Burbage’s performance that she invited him to her home that evening — as long as he promised to stay in costume and character. Shakespeare got wind of the assignation and went first to the lady’s residence. Burbage arrived at the appointed time but Shakespeare was already inside, being 'entertained and at his game'. When the lovers were informed that Burbage was at the door, a triumphant Shakespeare sent his colleague a mischievous reply that contained a sharp lesson in English history: "William the Conqueror,” he said, “was before Richard the Third.”
I did put the 'William the conqueror came first' gag in the play but played it in a consciously clowning style undercut by the reality of his infidelities later, in an attempt to replicate the kind of balance that Shakespeare works with clown scenes undercutting and commenting upon more serious content.
Probably this approach has more to do with modern ideas of masculinity than any projected idea of what constituted an Elizabethan contract of the male, as such a thing is a long way from our understanding.
But in working with two feminist-minded editors and with a female director I hoped to adjust the gaze of the piece and alleviate the possibility of this play being focused specifically from a masculine perspective.
The principal theatrical device was for Shakespeare to act other characters and also tranform into them, causing a confusion about space and time. This enabled the audience to engage with a number of posibilities regarding which plane of reality was being embodied, allowing more flexibility to offer a series of contrasting aspects of his character.
This section was not really essential to the play but again offers interesting background into the theatre scene in which Shakespeare was operating.