I Am Shakespeare Read online

FRANK. Barry’s a natural genius?

  BARRY. I like this guy. Who is he?

  FRANK. It’s Sir Francis Bacon. Viscount St Albans. The Baron Verulam. One of the most powerful and influential figures of Shakespeare’s time.

  BARRY. Never heard of him.

  BACON. As I wrote, the monuments of wit and learning are more durable than the monuments of power.

  FRANK.

  ‘Not marble nor the gilded monuments of princes,

  Shall outlive this powerful rhyme… ’

  BACON. Well said. You know your Shakespeare.

  FRANK. I do. You know your Bacon.

  BACON. I am.

  BARRY. You both know your onions.

  FRANK. I can’t believe it.

  BACON. You are believing it.

  FRANK. Did you write Shakespeare?

  BARRY. Frank.

  BACON. I despise idolatry, Frank. I always have. Idols of the mind. Idols of the theatre.

  BARRY. Pop Idol?

  BACON. This idolatry of the man from Stratford is obstructing the understanding of the plays. People should fall in love with the teaching, not the teacher.

  FRANK. How does the idolatry of a natural-born genius present any obstacle to what might be in the plays?

  BACON. An all-knowing, natural-born genius wasn’t an obstacle. Modern scholarship, however, has discovered an ill-educated, bookless actor of dubious financial dealings and ardent Catholicism and now must make the plays fit that man’s rather limited mind. This is what concerns me.

  FRANK. Yes, yes, yes. So you wrote the works of Shakespeare?

  BARRY. Frank.

  BACON. Ah, the mystery of identity. Do you know, Frank, from the perspective of an atom there is no difference between you and that lawnmower?

  BARRY. Frank, come here. What about the man in the kitchen?

  FRANK. I know, but Bacon’s got all the education and almost all the life experience that’s in the plays. He’s one of the strongest candidates. He told a friend he was a concealed poet, Barry. Secret.

  BACON. If you couldn’t keep a secret in my time, you lost your head. We kept much larger secrets than who wrote plays.

  BARRY. Why would anyone want to keep it secret if they wrote Shakespeare?

  BACON. We lived in an iron and malicious age of privilege, Barry, a vicious tyranny of wealthy families. Nowadays, you don’t realise the political sensitivity of the Shakespeare plays. Poor John Stubbes. Do you recall his misfortune, Frank?

  FRANK. A single line of Stubbes’ writing was thought to contain an implicit criticism of Queen Elizabeth. He denied that he had meant any such thing. The authorities said it didn’t matter whether he meant it or not and cut his hand off.

  BARRY. Stubbes by name, Stubbes by nature.

  BACON. There were many notable men at court who suppressed their poetry or published under another’s name. Especially love poetry. A poem like Venus and Adonis was considered pornographic…

  BARRY. Venus and who?

  BARRY attempts to write it down.

  FRANK. Venus and Adonis. It’s the first work with the name Shakespeare on it and only a few years after it was published, two poets, Hall and Marston, point to Bacon as the author.

  BARRY. You wrote porn?

  FRANK. It’s not porn, Barry.

  BACON. To write for the public theatres would have been like your Prince Charles putting himself on Big Brother.

  FRANK. But you’re the father of modern science, why would a scientist write plays?

  BACON. Why did da Vinci, the inventor of the tank, paint the Mona Lisa? My primary scientific concern was the human state, the human heart and mind and spirit. Do you know I considered publishing all my known works under pseudonyms? I so loved secrecy, codes and masks.

  FRANK. Did you write the works of Shakespeare?

  BARRY. Shakespeare said he did it. It’s his name on the plays.

  BACON. The Shakespeare works are designed to mirror nature, and nature’s author is always hidden. She wears a mask of nature. Was Shakespeare really his name?

  BARRY. What does he mean?

  FRANK. Oh, Shakspar. When the Stratford man signs his name he writes Shakspar…

  BARRY. Shakespeare, Frank. Not Spar, that’s a little supermarket.

  FRANK. You don’t understand, Barry. Look!

  FRANK shows signatures and frontispieces to BARRY on the screen. They appear on the screens above as well.

  When the actor signs his name – these six signatures are the only examples of his handwriting we have –

  BARRY. He has got terrible handwriting.

  FRANK. Yes, how could people read his manuscripts? But you see he writes Shakspar, or Shagspere, Shakspere, never Shakespeare or Shake-hyphen-speare. Did you choose the actor William Shakspar as a front for the plays of Shakespeare?

  BACON. Did you know, Barry, that Pallas Athena literally means the spear-shaker: Pallas Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, brandishing her spear at the eyes of ignorance. Shaking her spear, sending a vibrating sound, word, an idea in our consciousness. You ask, ‘Who chose Shakspar as a front?’ What force in the universe chooses any artist as a front for inspiration? Where do your songs come from, Barry?

  BARRY. I was inspired with a song tonight. Completely out of the blue.

  BACON. Oh, then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

  BARRY. Could be. The eighties are such a blur.

  [I have a note to self here: ‘Advert from FRANK to ring the show.’ Make of it what you will.]

  So you’re telling me this guy in the kitchen is a front?

  BACON. Sometimes I’m amazed that our front has survived as long as he has. In our time, the silence about him as a writer was deafening, don’t you find, Frank?

  FRANK. Yes, even his contemporary theatre managers, Henslowe and Alleyne, don’t mention Shakespeare once in their diaries and account books, despite their many references to other playwrights and theatre people. They even purchase for staging the plays King Lear and Hamlet without mention of Shakespeare. Henslowe actually paid two other men for Troilus and Cressida.

  [BACON. A few more discoveries like those diaries, and the mask will drop.

  FRANK. Do you think there will be more discoveries?

  BACON. Most certainly, if they are accepted as discoveries. What happened to that mural in St Albans?

  FRANK. They covered it up. A late-sixteenth-century mural, discovered in 1985, depicting erotic scenes from Venus and Adonis…

  BARRY. That love poem.

  FRANK. Yes… dismissed as unimportant by Stratfordians. A large part of it has never even been revealed.

  BARRY. That’s sometimes a good thing. More sexy that way.

  FRANK. That’s not the reason. It’s because it was found in the nearest inn to his house, outside St Albans.

  BACON. Would that have been the case if it had been discovered in Stratford?

  FRANK. No.]

  BARRY. All right, if Shakespeare is a front, why back Bacon?

  FRANK. Why back Bacon? What about the inventory of the Northumberland Manuscript, Sir Francis?

  FRANK shows close-ups of the Northumberland Manuscript to BARRY on the screen. They appear on the screens above as well.

  Look at this, Barry! In the late-nineteenth century, a bundle of Elizabethan papers belonging to Francis Bacon was discovered at Northumberland House on the Strand in London. The bundle was wrapped in a cover and on the cover was an inventory of its contents, including the titles of two plays Richard II and Richard III. This is the earliest known reference to a Shakespearean manuscript. Now, the name of William Shakespeare appears sixteen times at the bottom of the manuscript, as if someone is practising it…

  BARRY. Well, this is an own goal. It’s got his name on it.

  FRANK. Wait a minute, Barry. Look, the scribe never puts the word ‘by’ before Shakespeare. Look, to the left of the title Richard II are the words ‘by Mr Francis Bacon’. Can you see that?

  BARRY. That’s incredible.
r />   FRANK. Why are you the first person in history to possess a bundle with the names Shakespeare and Bacon all over it, which contained original manuscripts of two plays that had not yet been published under Shakespeare’s name?

  BACON. Good question.

  BARRY. Why have I never heard of this bundle?

  FRANK. Yes, exactly. Any equivalent manuscript bundle that had on it the words ‘by William Shakspar’, would be the central piece of evidence for Mr Shakspar’s case.

  BACON. It would be a unique and priceless artefact, but my cousin Sir Henry Neville’s name appears on the manuscript – he’s an authorship candidate – and my brother Anthony’s as well.

  FRANK. Don’t you want to prove you wrote the plays?

  BACON. No, that is not my intention.

  FRANK. Not your intention! For God’s sake, you’ve been the prime suspect for two hundred years. You even wrote that you were going to create something like the Shakespeare plays. Why? Why? Why didn’t you leave some irrefutable evidence that you did in fact write the works of Shakespeare? I lost my job because of your bloody secrecy.

  BARRY. He lost more than that.

  BACON. By the way, have you lost Shakspeare?

  FRANK. Oh my God.

  BARRY. He’s in your kitchen fetching a beer.

  BACON. Have you still got a live webcam in your refrigerator?

  FRANK. Yes. That one you put in there last Christmas.

  They tune into the fridge webcam and we see SHAKSPAR looking into the fridge in big close-up. We see him pick up something and look at it.

  He’s eating my breakfast.

  FRANK goes to an intercom panel on the desk, and speaks into the microphone.

  Hey, Will! Put the bacon back. There’s ham on the bottom shelf. Don’t nick the bacon.

  BACON. Let me go and fetch our friend William. I’ll be right back. I’m dying to see this refrigerator.

  BACON exits swiftly and gracefully through the back door.

  Scene Ten

  One of Them’s a Liar

  FRANK. Why won’t he say it? He’s hiding. He’s playing with us. It’s a game of cat and mouse.

  BARRY. Yeah, but who’s the cat and who’s the mouse? I mean, it’s got to be the man from Stratford. They’ve got his birthplace and Anne Hathaway’s cottage. I went there once on Mrs Somerville’s school trip. I got an ice cream from ‘As You Lick It’.

  FRANK. Shakespeare’s birthplace is a sham!

  BARRY. Shakespeare’s birthplace, a sham? You can’t say that. Mrs Somerville cried when she showed us Shakespeare’s birthplace. I bought a leather comb-case and a packet of Shakespeare mints.

  FRANK. You were conned. It’s all built on nothing, a vacuum. There’s no evidence that Shakspar’s father occupied a house on Henley Street when Shakspar was born.

  BARRY. You mean to tell me that my whole school trip was a rip-off? I’m going to have them for false advertising under the Trade Descriptions Act.

  FRANK. It’s been done. Francis Carr. 1969. He lost the case. It didn’t apply – the Stratford magistrates ruled – because the Stratford tourist trade isn’t a business, it’s a Trust. The Birthplace Trust. And that’s all it is, trust.

  BARRY. I don’t know about all this, Frank. What are you going to gain?

  FRANK. How can we know who we are, if we don’t know where we came from? In Stratford, young people get the impression that great art, like Shakespeare, is pulled out of thin air, just dreamt up like magic, without any education or life experience. Great art is not a fantasy. It’s based on observation of what’s actually happening in the world around you. Think what a horrible demon Shakespeare is to so many young writers, because his life story makes them think writing is a kind of creationalist miracle.

  BARRY. But as soon as you prove that someone else wrote Shakespeare, then the ‘As You Lick It’, the MacDonald’s, the whole ShakExperience thing you hate, just packs up and trucks over to the new guy’s birthplace, and the whole thing starts up again.

  FRANK. No, it won’t be the same. Francis Bacon has a life story. It’s because of the vacuum of Shakspar’s life story that all that corporate rubbish has taken hold in Stratford-upon Avon. There’s nothing there. The birthplace, Anne Hathaway’s cottage, even the bust in Trinity Church, they’re all a sham.

  BARRY. Well, maybe they did it together. Bacon and Shakespeare. Maybe they were best friends. Look! Their names are together on that manuscript. Pen pals!

  FRANK. Yeah, but why hide it? Bacon and the author of the Shakespeare works stand together as the two writers of exceptional genius in their time, yet search every other document we have and they never mention each other. Why?

  BARRY. Two guys standing together like that and never talking. Are you sure?

  FRANK. Yes. They never acknowledge each other.

  BARRY. That is weird.

  FRANK. While still a teenager at Cambridge University, Bacon launched his Great Instauration.

  BARRY. His what?

  FRANK. His worldwide regeneration of all learning, insisting that learning should be enjoyable and come from direct observation of nature.

  BARRY. Wait a minute – did Shakespeare like to get close to nature too?

  FRANK. Yes, the plays are full of observations of nature. Human nature as well as the natural world.

  BARRY. Mountains?

  FRANK. Yes, mountains, everything, the open air, the bottom of the sea, plants, animals, but mostly human nature.

  BARRY. Animals, like horses?

  FRANK. Certainly, lots of horses. ‘My kingdom for a horse!’ But Bacon’s prime interest was the interplay of man’s passion, to be demonstrated by historical drama and fable.

  BARRY. I’ve got it! They were secret lovers. Elizabethan cowboys. You know, like in Brokeback Mountain and first they tried to fight it, deny it, but then they couldn’t help each other, it was bigger than both of them, and so they tried to hide it from everyone else by standing together as geniuses at great installations, ignoring each other and acting tough even though deep down they just wanted to kiss and cuddle each other and go out riding bareback into nature, and dress up and do plays in the open air about fairies and bottoms. What are they doing now? In the film, they couldn’t help embracing and having a kiss whenever they were alone. Maybe we’ll catch them at it and one of the great literary conundrums will be solved.

  BARRY looks on the computer at the kitchen webcam. We see what he sees, BACON with his hand up a frozen chicken.

  What on earth is he doing?

  FRANK. He’s testing how cold it is. Francis Bacon died of pneumonia after conducting an early experiment in refrigeration by stuffing snow up a chicken.

  BARRY. They’re coming back.

  FRANK. We’ve nearly got it. We’re nearly there. If Shakspar wrote, they both wrote such similar things, there can only be two possibilities: either Shakspar is a genius and Bacon’s his advisor, or Bacon is a genius and Shakspar’s just his front. They have to have been involved with each other. They have to have known each other intimately.

  BARRY. Intimately.

  FRANK. Don’t worry. I’ve been in this situation before at school many times during exams. You sometimes get two boys submitting papers that are almost identical to each other. It’s called cheating. You have to call them in after school and have it out with them.

  BACON and SHAKSPAR return from the kitchen.

  Scene Eleven

  Bacon and Shakspar, Together at Last!

  BACON and SHAKSPAR re-enter, laughing and talking about frozen chicken and beer.

  BACON. That chicken, Frank, my hand is still tingling. Could we defrost it and roast it later for dinner? I would be fascinated to know if the taste is altered.

  SHAKSPAR. If it tastes anything like this beer it won’t taste like chicken at all. Nothing tastes like itself any more, Francis. Here, hold this and chase me. Oh, oh, exit pursued by a beer!

  FRANK. So you two know each other then?

  SHAKSPAR. Never met befo
re in our lives, but it’s been like meeting a brother!

  BACON. I can’t believe how much we share.

  FRANK. Never met before in your lives? Well, come in and sit down. We don’t want to keep you very long. You see, Barry and I have a little problem and we need your help.

  BARRY. But first we want to encourage you to relax and be yourselves. You can tell us.

  FRANK. We understand.

  BARRY. You’ll feel better if you get it off your chest.

  FRANK. Tell us the truth. You’ve borne the secret of your relationship for three hundred and ninety years.

  BARRY. Just come out and say it.

  FRANK. Thanks, Barry. I’ll handle this. Now, as an English teacher, I’ve a keen eye for writing, and from what I know of the writing work you two have submitted in your names, I can safely say that you stand together as the towering geniuses of your generation. The top of your class. A-plus. Well done. You can relax about that. There’s no problem there.

  BARRY. We have no problem with you standing together.

  FRANK. Have you ever heard of a parallelism, gentlemen?

  It’s a correspondence between the writing of two authors. It may be a thought that is shared, or language, or both. For example, William, it’s how we know that sometimes you collaborated with other writers. Pericles, for example, Macbeth. Two thirds of your fellow writers for the theatre wrote collaboratively. I have here some examples of your writing, boys. These are from your wonderful plays, William. And these are from your notebook, your storehouse of phrases you heard which you collected for later use, Francis.

  FRANK drops a cloth behind his desk with a selection of parallelisms.

  There are one thousand, one hundred parallelisms to be found between your writing, boys. Six hundred of those parallelisms can be found in Francis’s private notebook alone! That is called cheating, boys. Copying.

  BARRY. What have you been sharing?

  FRANK. We want to know who is relying on who?

  BARRY. Who is lying on who?

  FRANK. Who is copying who?

  BARRY. Did you do it together?

  FRANK. How could the two of you not have been involved with each other? You had to have done it together. We know you had to have been together at the first performance of A Comedy of Errors! Ben Jonson described you both wearing the theatrical socks of comedy and bettering all that insolent Greece or haughty Rome sent forth. The same words for both of you.