I Am Shakespeare Read online

  BARRY. Fare thee well, Will.

  SHAKSPAR. I’m retired; I just want to be left alone, like Prospero. Let your indulgence set me free.

  FRANK. If Shakespeare’s so like Prospero, why didn’t he educate his daughters?

  SHAKSPAR. They didn’t want to be educated.

  FRANK. Why didn’t he write or receive any letters?

  SHAKSPAR. I conducted my business in person.

  FRANK. Why did Shakespeare never write about his home town, Stratford?

  SHAKSPAR. Which would you rather go and hear: The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or The Slightly Embarrassing Day in the Life of John, Glove Maker of Stratford?

  He goes out and they carry on talking around and out in front of the garage.

  FRANK. People in Stratford had no idea he was a playwright?

  SHAKSPAR. I kept myself to myself.

  FRANK. Then, why was he so litigious?

  SHAKSPAR. What’s any of this got to do with my work?

  FRANK. That’s exactly my question.

  BARRY. Will, you know you can see inside my head, can you see inside Frank’s?

  SHAKSPAR. When? In the past, present or future? Once you die, your existence is not bound by time or space.

  BARRY. What was Frank doing last Tuesday at, say, 11:37 in the morning?

  SHAKSPAR. He was in a classroom, teaching my play, Romeo and Juliet, and he was just about to confiscate a mobile telephone from a young student named James who was texting a friend beneath his desk.

  BARRY. What did the text say?

  FRANK. It doesn’t matter.

  SHAKSPAR. ‘Tosser Charlton is a dickhead. ’ In the First Folio collection of my plays, Ben Jonson refers to the author as the ‘Sweet Swan of Avon’; there’s a reference to the author’s ‘Stratford Monument’, in Stratford-upon-Avon; and, my fellow actors, Heminges and Condell, also refer to me as the author. How do you explain all that?Why? If I wasn’t the author, why? Until you can answer that, you haven’t got an answer, you haven’t even got a question!

  SHAKSPAR goes out into the evening.

  Scene Six

  Barry and the Crop Circles

  BARRY rushes back inside the garage to address the camera. After a moment, FRANK comes back inside as well.

  BARRY. Crop circles!

  FRANK. What?

  BARRY. Paradigm shifts! Some of the big crop-circle guys in Wiltshire reckon the circles might be communication, from somewhere outside what we are conscious of, via the World Wide Web, the internet. How did Shakespeare say he got here? By the internet!

  FRANK. What’s that got to do with anything?

  BARRY. What if the internet is an incredible communication device, a portal to an astral plane, and with a little help from the lightning, the rain and the wonky wiring in this leaky old garage of yours, it’s enabled this guy to travel across space and time?

  FRANK. A time machine? That’s impossible.

  BARRY. The internet is only twenty years old. When man first discovered electricity, he didn’t immediately think: ‘Hey, I’ll have an electric hedge-trimmer. ’

  [FRANK. Okay, the internet is new, but, Barry – astral planes, time-travel, life after death, none of that’s scientific.

  BARRY. Flying wasn’t scientific once. Only witches did it on broomsticks. Do you know how long it takes the average person to change their mind about a fundamental belief? Twenty-five to forty years!]

  Where do you live, Frank?Where are we?

  FRANK. 33 Oak Tree Close, Maidstone.

  BARRY. No, which galaxy?

  FRANK. The Milky Way.

  BARRY. Wrong, The Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, which scientists have only just discovered is being swallowed by the Milky Way Galaxy – in what part of man’s known history has there not been some massive… fucking… thing… he doesn’t know anything about… which is just about to wedge open the door of his mind for ever! – Don’t you see, for decades you firmly believe you’re a citizen of the Milky Way and then one morning – PZHAM! – you’re a Sagittarius dwarf.

  FRANK. What are you saying?

  BARRY. I’m saying we’re both Sagittarius dwarfs and that guy wasn’t a lookalike. It was him, William Shakespeare himself. How did he know my song? How did he know exactly what you were doing last Tuesday at 11:47 in the morning?

  FRANK. How did he know the message on the text?

  BARRY.… about Teddy and the Philosopher’s Guitar?

  FRANK.… or all the things he knew. He knew your name.

  BARRY. He knew your name.

  FRANK.… and my dad’s name. He knew me better than my own brother.

  BARRY. You haven’t got a brother.

  FRANK. No, but if I did.

  Pause.

  Wait a minute. It can’t be him. He said he wrote the plays.

  BARRY. Exactly. He said he wrote the plays.

  FRANK. Oh my God. Maybe you’re right, Barry. It was him. Maybe the first guest ever on Who’s There?, the international Shakespeare authorship show, was the real live author William Shakespeare and…

  BARRY. You said he had severe hygiene issues.

  FRANK. Oh my God! How could you let me do that, Barry!

  BARRY. You were out of control, a man possessed. You tore up his sonnet.

  FRANK. I tore up the first authentic handwritten Shakespearean sonnet ever known to mankind.

  BARRY. Live on the internet. You’re going to be very famous, Frank.

  FRANK. Famous?! They’ll lynch me.

  BARRY retrieves the fragments of the torn-up sonnet and sticks them together with tape from FRANK’s desk.

  BARRY. Don’t worry, Frank. I can fix it.

  FRANK. When he gets to Stratford, the world’s media will want to know where he first appeared, who he spoke to, what I said. Breakfast news. Lunch news. The evening news and then, oh my God. It’ll be Newsnight and Jeremy Paxman. Paxman loves Shakespeare. They’ll set Paxman on me. Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Paxman’s gonna eat me alive!

  BARRY. Don’t worry, you’re going to be all right. I know how to deal with the media. I’ve been reading the Alastair Campbell diaries. Focus the camera and sit down in that seat. I’ll pretend to be Alastair Campbell pretending to be Jeremy Paxman and you pretend to be you.

  FRANK. Are you sure?

  BARRY. Trust me, Frank.

  They sit, as if doing a Newsnight interview. BARRY turns down the lights and plays some appropriate Newsnight-type music on the Korg by remote control.

  (With thick Scottish accent. ) So, Mr Charlton, did you or did you not…

  FRANK. Barry, Jeremy Paxman isn’t Scottish.

  BARRY. Nevertheless… did you or did you not tear up the first authentic handwritten Shakespearean sonnet ever known to mankind and throw it in the face of William Shakespeare?

  FRANK. I… I… I… I… I…

  BARRY. Did you or didn’t you, Mr Charlton?

  FRANK. Well, I, you see… I’d had a bad day and I wasn’t sure if…

  BARRY. Answer the question!

  FRANK. I didn’t think he was…

  BARRY. Answer the question!

  FRANK. I don’t know how to answer that question, Barry!

  BARRY hands FRANK the reconstituted sonnet, and demonstrates what FRANK should say.

  BARRY (with a Scottish accent). ‘Ah well, that’s where you’re wrong, Jeremy. ’

  FRANK. Barry, I don’t have a Scottish accent.

  BARRY (without a Scottish accent). ‘I didn’t tear up the sonnet because I have it here, covered in a protective coat of Sellotape.

  (As Paxman again. ) Then read it out to us and prove you are innocent?

  FRANK (reading).

  ‘Shall I summer thee to a compare day?

  May darling, have you untrimmed your rough buds?

  Lovely… ’

  Barry! That’s utter rubbish!

  BARRY. It could work.

  FRANK. No. It’s a disaster.

  Realising with horror.

  And it
’s all gone out live on the internet. I’m finished.

  Scene Seven

  Shakespeare’s Triumphant Return

  SHAKSPAR. Are we still live on the internet?

  SHAKSPAR appears again at the back door.

  BARRY. Yes.

  SHAKSPAR. Good. Don’t log off. I walked about fifty feet down your lane, just past The Coach and Horses, and my hands disappeared. I think I might have a very limited range.

  BARRY. He’s back! Great to have you back!Welcome to the Astral Authorship Spaceship Show!

  FRANK. Here, Barry, record it with this tape.

  Handing BARRY a tape.

  BARRY. You are not going to record over Spartacus.

  FRANK. What are you talking about, Barry? It’s William Shakespeare!

  BARRY. Okay, okay. Walk into shot, Will. That’s how they do it.

  BARRY plays chat-show introductory walk-down music.

  FRANK clears the desk and puts his suit jacket on. BARRY presses the ecstatic applause button.

  Yeah, come down here, out of camera shot, and then walk in, shake his hand and sit down. And we’re off.

  Go camera one.

  FRANK. Welcome to the show, Mr Shakespeare. Please have a seat. I want to begin by apologising to this sweet-natured, gentle genius beside me. What do these men behind me have in common?Who are they? A bunch of fucking idiots. I should know, I was one of them. Oh my God, I haven’t even told you how much I love your work. I mean, what can I say, I’m speechless. Harold Bloom was right, your incredible mind… I mean, you created our concept of a human being…

  BARRY. Yeah. I don’t get it. I mean Frank’s been going on and on about what an idiot you were. How you couldn’t have got an education in Stratford because everyone was so stupid there. Your dad was so dim couldn’t sign his name. Stupid. Everyone was thick. That’s the picture he’s painted.

  [For some reason I have made a note here that says: ‘phone call’. I think I might mean that if we wanted to have one arranged call, to encourage a shy audience, we would place it here in the previous speech as it can be interrupted by a call, and then BARRY can pick up the scene again in the middle of the speech. Worth a try! Hopefully you won’t need to encourage, quite the opposite. ]

  FRANK. Thank you, Barry, for your opinions. Do you have a question for our special guest?

  BARRY. Where did you get your education?

  SHAKSPAR. I attended the King’s Free Grammar School of Stratford-upon-Avon. My father was an alderman; it was my right.

  FRANK. Have you got any more stupid questions, Barry?

  SHAKSPAR. No, I understand Barry’s question. The school records of those years, when I attended, have been lost, so you have no proof I ever attended any educational institution in my entire life.

  FRANK. But it’s your name on the plays, Will! They prove you were educated. Where else would you have got your education?

  SHAKSPAR. Yes, well, some people think that the proven education in my plays and the unproven education in my life, prove that I didn’t write the plays.

  [FRANK. Prove it. It’s the name on the plays.

  SHAKSPAR. It’s the name in the plays.

  FRANK. What?

  SHAKSPAR. What’s the name of the boy student in the Latin grammar lesson in The Merry Wives of Windsor?

  FRANK. William!

  BARRY presses SFX – ‘one hundred and eighty!’– the sound of a commentator at a darts championship announcing the top score.

  SHAKSPAR. Where does the schoolmaster in that play, Sir Hugh Evans, come from?

  FRANK. Wales! Wales?

  SHAKSPAR. My schoolmaster in Stratford was a Welshman.

  BARRY presses SFX – ‘one hundred and eighty!’BARRY and FRANK sing a bit of a Welsh song. ]

  FRANK. Well, some people say an aristocrat had to have written these plays.

  SHAKSPAR. It’s true people think, because I wrote in a style to please aristocrats, that one of the aristocrats must have written the plays!

  FRANK. That’s very funny. [Or: ‘Cor Blimey!’]

  SHAKSPAR. I wrote what pleased them, and what reflected them pleased them. I held a mirror up to their nature. People think all writing is personal since the Romantic age of Byron, Shelley, Keats, where people bared their souls in what they wrote, but in my time it wasn’t personal.

  FRANK. It wasn’t about personal revelation.

  SHAKSPAR. It was about making a living…

  FRANK. Making a living! By the way, what were they thinking, Will?What were people thinking when you died? How come not a single person, your friends, your acting mates at the Globe, no one from the whole world of literature and theatre in 1616, says a single word?When your colleague, the actor Richard Burbage died, people are reported to have run out of their houses and wept in the streets.

  SHAKSPAR. What’s your favourite film?

  FRANK. I don’t know. I don’t have a single favourite. I recorded Spartacus last night. That’s a fantastic film.

  SHAKSPAR. Who’s your favourite actor in it?

  FRANK. Laurence Olivier’s pretty brilliant…

  SHAKSPAR. Was there a fuss when he died?

  FRANK. You bet there was. Westminster Abbey.

  SHAKSPAR. Who wrote Spartacus?

  FRANK. I don’t know.

  BARRY plays his victory sound effect again.

  SHAKSPAR. Frank, could I ask a favour?

  FRANK. Anything. Anything, Will.

  SHAKSPAR. Would you mind if I go and help myself to a beer?

  FRANK. You go right ahead, Will. They’re in my house, in the refrigerator, in the kitchen.

  BARRY. Will, I’d just like to say, I am learning so much tonight. If I hadn’t met you in the flesh, I never would have known that William Shakespeare had such massive thighs.

  SHAKSPAR. Thank you, Barry.

  BARRY. Do you want me to fetch you a beer?

  SHAKSPAR. Really, that’s all right, Barry, thanks.

  FRANK. He can do it by himself, Barry. By himself, like he wrote the plays.

  SHAKSPAR exits.

  Scene Eight

  From Limits Far Remote

  FRANK and BARRY celebrate and then FRANK suddenly stops.

  BARRY. You were right. He stinks like a farmyard, but he’s a fucking genius. Wait till I call the Wiltshire crop-circle guys!

  FRANK. Yeah, wait till I tell all the professors up at the Shakespeare Institute…

  BARRY. What is it?

  FRANK. You don’t understand, Barry, I was wrong about Shakespeare. You were right about crop circles being communication from an astral plane, but all these years I’ve been wrong. William Shakespeare did write Shakespeare.

  BARRY. How were you to know?

  FRANK. It’s got his name on it.

  BARRY. Well, it’s an easy mistake to make. So, you were wrong about crop circles too. It doesn’t matter if you can admit it.

  FRANK. Yeah, do you think it’s all right? If you admit it. If you say you’re sorry. Oh, Barry, you are like the best friend I ever… You know those crop-circle books you lent me once? Can I borrow them again, and this time, read them?

  BARRY. Of course. You know The Complete Works of Shakespeare you’re always telling me to read?

  FRANK. Yes.

  BARRY. Can I borrow your lawnmower?

  FRANK. Course. Barry, he appeared in a garage, my obscure little garage in Maidstone. Why?

  BARRY. Don’t take this wrong, Frank, but you are a couple of plays short of a full folio.

  FRANK. Eh?

  BARRY. I mean, who thinks about Shakespeare as much as you? Your thought entered the world brain of the internet, the universal search engine, and made him appear here… like a Tudor email. Your thoughts drew him here. Across huge distances of time and space.

  BACON walks up the driveway and through the (invisible) closed garage door into the garage as FRANK recalls a sonnet.

  FRANK. Thinking makes it so. Listen to this:

  ‘If the dull substance of my flesh
were thought,

  Injurious distance should not stop my way,

  For then despite of space I would be brought,

  From limits far remote, where thou dost stay… ’

  BARRY. Hey, I just thought of some song lyrics.

  Going to the Korg as BACON also speaks the sonnet.

  ‘No matter then although my foot did stand,

  Upon the farthest earth removed from thee,

  For nimble thought can jump both sea and land,

  As soon as think the place where he would be. ’

  What d’you think of that?

  FRANK. That’s the rest of the sonnet… the next stanza.

  BARRY. Fuck off. I just made it up.

  FRANK. No, you didn’t. I just spoke the first stanza of sonnet number 44 and then you spoke the next. Perfect.

  BARRY. Did I? Where’d that come from?

  FRANK. I don’t know.

  BACON. I do.

  BACON materialises in front of them.

  Scene Nine

  The Second Guest Ever: Sir Francis Bacon

  BACON. By far the greatest obstacle to the progress of science, and to the understanding of new tastes and provinces therein, is found in this: that men despair and think things impossible. The internet, Barry.

  BARRY. It’s another one, Frank!

  BACON. Mr Charlton, I’m a great admirer of inductive reasoning, if you would indulge me for only a few minutes, while Mr Shakspeare explores your refrigerator – what a sublime invention that is – I would very much like to assist your inquisition.

  BARRY. And this one didn’t even use the door.

  BACON. Yes, Barry. I had no idea when I discovered the binary code, the root of the computer, such things would be possible. But then polarity – strife and friendship – is at the root of everything. Your age has created a world mind with all the potential capabilities of an individual mind.

  BARRY. That’s what I was saying. Only he said it a lot better.

  BACON. What you call inspiration, intuition, is really thought arriving in your individual mind from outside your self. Like an intuition, I have arrived in your world mind from an astral plane of pure thought, of nothing. Barry is absolutely right. A natural genius.