I Am Shakespeare Read online

  Mark Rylance

  THE BIG SECRET LIVE

  ‘I AM SHAKESPEARE’

  WEBCAM DAYTIME CHATROOM SHOW!

  A Comedy of Shakespearean Identity Crisis

  NICK HERN BOOKS

  London

  www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Production Note

  Characters and Original Production

  Act One

  Act Two

  Parallelisms Between the Writing of Bacon and Shakespeare

  About the Author

  Copyright and Performing Rights Information

  Introduction

  The Big Secret Live ‘I Am Shakespeare’ Webcam Daytime Chatroom Show was created in the summer of 2007 for the Chichester Festival Theatre. Greg Ripley-Duggan produced the play, and subsequent to our run in Chichester, organised a brief tour to Warwickshire, Oxford and Cambridge University, amongst other places. This was not unlike taking a play that questioned Robert Burns’s identity as a poet, to Scotland. But, for some reason, the Shakespeare authorship controversy pierces deep to the heart of identity for some people, wherever you play. It was the extreme reaction of otherwise reasonable people that inspired this play. Their efforts to repress my curiosity, and frighten others away from the mystery, were funny in retrospect but extremely trying at the time, especially when I was Artistic Director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London between 1995 and 2005.

  I say that the play was ‘created’, as I had only written the first act and some of the second when the cast gathered in the Soho Laundry to begin rehearsals that summer. Under Matthew Warchus’s excellent direction, which included many improvements and developments of the script and idea, we then created the play. All of the original cast, especially Sean Foley who played Barry, improvised lines and situations, which I later included in the text. I am indebted to this spirit of adventure and collaboration, which, by the way, has always been my image of an aspect of the creation of the Shakespeare plays as well.

  The play is set in the then present: 2007. I am writing this introduction to the published text in 2012. Some things have happened since in the world of Shakespearean authorship studies that probably warrant mention in a new production – James Shapiro’s book, Contested Will, and others. Frank, in the play, would certainly be aware of the Roland Emmerich film, Anonymous, and the fuss it generated, not least the website created by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, ‘Shakespeare Bites Back’, which has some passing similarities to Frank’s own website. I wonder if anyone came to our play from the Birthplace Trust when we played down the road in Warwick University. Professor Jonathan Bate, of that university, soon after created his own play with Simon Callow called Being Shakespeare. When I mount a new production I will probably update the script, and will be able to offer the new material I create. It is also always a possibility to produce the play as a period piece set in 2007. As much as things have changed in the sphere of authorship studies, the technology of computers has changed even more. This also needs to be born in mind. Allowing the audience to send text messages, instead of, or as well as, phoning in to the show, might be a good idea.

  I am also indebted to the many independent and professional Shakespeare scholars whose work has fascinated me since I first began to develop my reasonable doubt that the actor William Shakspar wrote the plays: Peter Dawkins, Diana Price, Robin Williams, Professor William Leahy, Charles Beauclerk, Stephanie Hopkins Hughes, Mike Frohnsdorff, Professor Daniel Wright, Professor William Rubinstein, Professor Stanley Wells, Professor Jonathan Bate, Nigel Cockburn, Michael Wood, John Shahan, to name a few of the many people whose work has inspired me. This is to neglect the many before my time who have loved Shakespeare’s work in such a way that they felt they must inquire about its origin, including a few in his own time brave enough to hint at the mystery: Ben Jonson in particular. I am also indebted to David Canter, the author of a book on the mystery of Jack the Ripper, Mapping Murder. A good read for the actor playing the sergeant.

  As the play involves improvised interaction with the audience, it is recommended that the actors playing Shakspar, Sidney, Bacon and Oxford read as much as they can about their character’s authorship case. I have endeavoured to write each character as if they wrote the plays themselves, singularly or collaboratively. The Shakespearean Authorship Trust (SAT) has an excellent website on which books are recommended on each candidate. I would recommend Beauclerk and Hopkins Hughes on Oxford, Dawkins and Cockburn on Bacon, Williams on Mary Sidney, and on Shakspar? Take your pick. Diana Price is the best on why there is a question at all. Mark Twain, the funniest. The Declaration of Reasonable Doubt at www.doubtaboutwill.org is a clear statement also of why there is a question.

  My apologies to those who champion other candidates, especially Christopher Marlowe, Neville, and Derby. There was not time to do their cases justice. But, ultimately, the play is more concerned with the search for identity, our own identity, than the search for the identity of the author of the Shakespeare works.

  The whole adventure was initially inspired by the brilliant American TV show, Meeting of Minds, created by the genius host, Steve Allen. I used to work on the play in my dressing room at the Comedy Theatre in London’s West End, while performing in the farce Boeing-Boeing. The director, John Dove, was a great encouragement during this period. Curiously, if my memory serves me right, I Am Shakespeare had as much laughter, if not more at times, as Boeing-Boeing. Those times did not include the performances at Warwick University, where the students were actively discouraged from attending, and the audience was, shall we say, deconstructed.

  Needless to say, I love Shakespeare – the work and the author – more than any other human art I have ever encountered. I have made my living, in many more ways than an actor’s pay check, on Shakespeare, since I was sixteen years old (which was thirty years ago at the time I wrote this play). I do not believe, as was charged against me at the Globe, that I am biting the hand that fed me. I am attempting to shake it. The fact that Shakespeare’s work will all disappear from the universe one day is more awe-inspiring to me than my own death.

  But what a laugh we had making this. I will never forget it. Rehearsing from ten till six. Home for dinner and then writing until my head literally fell to the desk at three or four in the morning. Thanks to all who believed it was worthwhile to ask, ‘Who’s there?’

  And to all those audience members who stood at the end of the play and shouted ‘I am Shakespeare’ – You are.

  Mark Rylance

  Production Note

  The action of the play takes place entirely in and around Frank Charlton’s garage, on the outskirts of Maidstone, Kent, on the day that the play happens to be performed.

  The play begins in the early evening and concludes later that night. It is a rainy night with lightning and thunder.

  The telephone on Frank’s desk is live and the number is real. At the top of the show an announcement invites the audience to please leave their mobile telephones switched on throughout the play and to ring the actors whenever they wish. The telephone number remains visible on the large television screens hanging above the garage set. (Though sometimes, I have to confess, we had to close the telephone line to let the action flow, and because certain members of the audience wrote the number down and telephoned from home the next night, which seemed like a scripted phone call to the present audience. It would be good to resolve this slight issue.)

  These screens also project images from the camera filming live inside the garage, the webcam inside Frank’s refrigerator in his house, and other documentary and pictorial evidence from Frank’s laptop.

  I recommend a thrust stage as it helps
if the audience can see one another.

  The Elizabethan characters should all appear in authentic reconstructions of the clothes they might have worn when alive at the age they appear. The Shakespearean Authorship Trust (SAT) owns the clothes of the authors worn in the original production. Their construction would not have been possible without the generous donation of Antoinette Abbey and the exquisite skill of our designer Jenny Tiramani and her tailors.

  You will need to get permission to use a few minutes of the film Spartacus by Dalton Trumbo. It cost us just over six hundred pounds sterling, but is well worth it. Actually, it is essential.

  Claire van Kampen wrote excellent music for the play, which I would recommend, especially Barry Wild’s Top of the Pops hit ‘I’m a Sputnik Love God’.

  I feel it is probably too long. When was a play ever too short? Especially one connected to Shakespeare. I have indicated some cuts in the text (marked within square brackets) and would suggest producers explore more cuts. There is undoubtedly too much information, but I have left it in for you to decide what would be best for the given audience you will encounter, not unlike a Shakespeare play, though in that aspect only.

  Author’s Note

  With thanks to my wife, the beautiful Claire van Kampen, and to Juliet and Nataasha, the two lovely daughters whom I co-father with the gentle Chris van Kampen. The play is dedicated to them with my deep affection.

  Mark Rylance

  Characters

  FRANK CHARLTON, a schoolteacher and Shakespearean authorship researcher, who was once a star Shakespeare academic at Oxford or Cambridge University. Age around fifty. Obsessed.

  BARRY WILD, Frank’s next-door neighbour. A pop star, who once had a top-twenty hit entitled ‘I’m a Sputnik Love God’. Very interested in crop circles and popular culture. Age around thirty-five to forty-five. Affable.

  WILLIAM SHAKSPAR, born 1564. Died 1616. Posthumously attributed with writing the plays and poems of William Shakespeare. Age forty to forty-five. Confident, unassuming Warwickshire actor.

  FRANCIS BACON, born 1560. Died 1626. Elizabethan statesman, philosopher, lawyer, father of modern science, concealed poet. Believed by some to have written the plays and poems of Shakespeare. Age sixty. Wise, witty, mystic.

  EDWARD DE VERE, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford. Also believed by some, including Freud, to have written the plays of William Shakespeare. Passionate, depressed, very much like Hamlet actually. Dressed in extraordinary Italian fashion. Age twenty-six to thirty-five. Dangerous.

  SERGEANT TREVOR FREEMAN, Kent County Constabulary. Very interested in Jack the Ripper. Not thought to have anything to do with the plays and poems of William Shakespeare.

  LADY MARY SIDNEY, the Countess of Pembroke, sister to the famous poet Sir Philip Sydney. A poet and dramatist in her own right, she founded the Wilton School of English Writing on the banks of the River Avon, Wiltshire. Often called ‘The Swan’, and believed by some to have been part of a group of writers who wrote the plays and poems of Shakespeare. Age twenty-five to thirty. Witty, beautiful, with a profound grief beneath.

  THE SERGEANT’S TWIN BROTHER, an angry, orthodox boar of a Shakespearean.

  TELEPHONE SALESMAN

  I Am Shakespeare was first performed at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester, on 14 August 2007. The cast was as follows:

  FRANK CHARLTON

  Mark Rylance

  BARRY WILD

  Sean Foley

  WILLIAM SHAKSPAR

  Colin Hurley

  FRANCIS BACON

  Roddy Maude Roxby

  EDWARD DE VERE

  Alex Hassell

  SERGEANT TREVOR

  FREEMAN/HIS TWIN/

  TELEPHONE SALESMAN

  Sam Parks

  LADY MARY SIDNEY

  Juliet Rylance

  Director

  Matthew Warchus

  Designer

  Jenny Tiramani

  Composer

  Claire van Kampen

  Sound Designer

  Simon Baker

  Lighting Designer

  Paul Pyant

  Choreographer

  Sian Williams

  Dialect Coach

  Penny Dyer

  ACT ONE

  Scene One

  Frank Arrives for His Weekly Broadcast

  A driveway and garage in Maidstone, Kent.

  Early evening. The present.

  It’s raining hard as FRANK CHARLTON arrives on his bicycle, sheltering a large pile of school papers for correction under his plastic poncho. He is all flashing lights and reflector strips. Inside the garage, the phone on his desk is ringing, and then the answerphone message can be heard.

  FRANK. Oh God.

  As FRANK enters the garage we hear his neighbour, BARRY, leaving a message.

  BARRY (on answerphone). Hello, Frank. Are you there?

  FRANK chooses not to pick up the phone.

  FRANK. Barry, I told you not to use the chat-show hotline.

  BARRY. I know you told me not to ring on your chat-show hotline. Are you there? I’ve left some tunes on my Korg for the opening theme. They’re in the keyboard memory under ‘Chat-room-Garage-Music 1590’s style’; one, two, and three. This rain’s pouring all over my conservatory. There’s leaks everywhere. So I’ve got to get up to the drains and clear them out. Live up. Bazza. Hope the jokes work.

  FRANK gathers his school papers into a pile and hurries to prepare himself and the garage, multitasking at great speed. Possible tasks include:

  Audibly searching through the Korg keyboard for the opening theme music.

  Hearing and rejecting BARRY’s suggested music for the opening of his chat show.

  Changing from his rain poncho and worn grey teaching suit into his host clothes; the blue Who’s There? T-shirt.

  Selecting and arranging the books and notes for the show.

  Practising parts of his opening gambit out loud, ‘Stratfordians!’, etc.

  Clearing boxes from the guest seating, weekend gardening debris, and tools, off the visible set.

  Setting up the Minerva Britannia curtain frame on the desk and other props. And then focusing the web cameras and lights.

  Lowering the painted backdrop tied to a ceiling crossbar, behind his desk.

  Finally putting on his Steve Allen-style, chat-show glasses, and sitting.

  While FRANK desperately sets all this up, the chat-show phone rings again on his chat-show desk and he eventually, in great frustration, answers it. A fast T-Mobile salesman from Madras is on the line. We hear the conversation, as we have heard BARRY’s message over the chat-show’s phone speaker.

  FRANK. Barry. That music is wrong. I said classic tunes…

  SALESMAN. Is that Mrs Carlton?

  FRANK. Oh. No, this is Frank Charlton and you’re through to Who’s There? The International Shakespeare Authorship show. We’re not live on air, but what’s your question?

  SALESMAN. Hello. Are you Mr Carlton?

  FRANK. Charlton. Yes, Frank Charlton.

  SALESMAN. All right, Frank. Are you having good weather there, Frank?

  FRANK. No, it’s dreadful, raining. Why, what’s the weather like where you are?

  SALESMAN. Here, it’s very hot and lovely, thank you very much, Frank.

  FRANK. Hot and lovely. Where are you?

  SALESMAN. Madras.

  FRANK. Madras. What is this, some kind of sales pitch?

  SALESMAN. No, Frank, this is a free package offer.

  FRANK. How did you get this number?

  SALESMAN. All right, Frank, you are on our list, Frank.

  FRANK. Please don’t call me Frank. You don’t even know me.

  SALESMAN. Yes, I do, Frank.

  FRANK. What colour hair have I got?

  SALESMAN. Dark hair.

  FRANK. You’re just guessing. This is the problem with the whole world. No one knows anyone else. We meet at the end of wires, and guess about each other.

  SALESMAN. Frank. If you purchased a m
obile phone, you would meet people without wires.

  FRANK. I don’t want to buy a mobile phone. Don’t call me Frank. You know nothing about me. You just think you know me because of something someone else has written about me on some list, which you have taken for granted to be true. You’re probably a Stratfordian.

  SALESMAN. What’s a Stratfordian?

  FRANK. A Stratfordian? A Stratfordian is someone who believes that the actor from Stratford-upon-Avon wrote Love’s Labour’s Lost, for example.

  SALESMAN. Didn’t he?

  FRANK. Exactly. Why do you think that? Because someone told you to think that. Did you ever question it? No. You just bought it hook, line and sinker. Have you ever wondered how the man from Stratford could possibly have written Love’s Labour’s Lost?

  SALESMAN. No. How could he have done it?

  FRANK. With extreme difficulty, I would imagine, when he has only just arrived in London, from God knows where, so how could he have ever developed the vocabulary and wit and learning of a university-educated playwright? How could he have learnt such intimate details of the Royal Court of Navarre in France?

  SALESMAN. I don’t know. I never thought about it, Frank. It sounds impossible.

  FRANK. Well, there you are. You never thought about it.

  SALESMAN. Yes, I see. That’s amazing. Frank, you’ve convinced me.

  FRANK. Really?

  SALESMAN. Yes. Frank. Love’s Labour’s Lost is very like Friends, isn’t it?

  FRANK. Friends?