I Am Shakespeare Read online

  BARRY. Naughty Rome!

  FRANK. We know Ben Jonson loved you both.

  BARRY. Was it a threesome?

  OXFORD kicks down the door.

  Scene Twelve

  The Third Guest Ever: Edward de Vere

  There is a loud crash as EDWARD DE VERE, the EARL OF OXFORD, kicks the back door open and enters sword in hand.

  OXFORD (considers himself in the flesh again). What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a God the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me – nor woman neither…

  BARRY. Time out, D’Artagnon! I don’t know about where you come from but where I live, here in Maidstone – it’s all right, Frank, I’ll deal with this – you usually knock before smashing your way into a room. Knock, knock. Who’s there?

  OXFORD puts his sword to BARRY’s throat.

  OXFORD. Oh, know my name is lost, fool. Report me and my cause aright to the unsatisfied, Charlton. Report me and my cause aright. I hereby proclaim that I, Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, am William Shakespeare.

  FRANK. My Lord Oxford, there’s no need to threaten my friend.

  BARRY. It’s all right, Frank, he’s just a ghost. Ghosts can’t hurt you.

  OXFORD slices the head off the teddy with his sword. BARRY kneels on the floor and cradles the headless teddy and head.

  Alas, poor teddy.

  OXFORD. You entertain fools too readily, Charlton. Mr Bacon, how strange to see you, my little cousin, older than myself. A knight to boot, a lord.

  BACON. Yes, cousin. All after your death, from the hand of our gracious King James.

  OXFORD. ‘Mediocria Firma.’ Your middle way proved a profitable one in the eyes of that Scotsman.

  BACON. I served my king as faithfully as I could.

  OXFORD. Would you have served me, cousin, as your king?

  BACON. That situation never arose.

  OXFORD. What makes a king, Charlton? A real king? Is it blood? Is it self-mastery? What makes a king a king? What was a drama for others, was my life. Charlton, these works aren’t some conscious scheme, some toy in the Great Instauration of society. They are certainly not some actor-manager’s playhouse pension plan. They are an unconscious cry from the heart. I pulled them kicking and screaming from the deepest pits of my darkest hours. That’s why they have their power, their passion, their monstrous indiscretion.

  SHAKSPAR. Frank, no one denies Lord Oxford’s tormented, outcast life, but any connection to the plays is pure conjecture. The baseless fantasy of pseudo-psychologists.

  OXFORD. Pseudo-psychologists? Dr Sigmund Freud. I quote, ‘The man from Stratford seems to have nothing at all to justify his claim, whereas Oxford has almost everything.’

  SHAKSPAR. Do you really believe Hamlet de Vere wrote all my plays because he wanted to murder his father and sleep with his mother? Which day in his life did he meet the Merry Wives of Windsor?

  BACON. There are more things in heaven and earth, my lord, than the Oedipus complex.

  OXFORD. The voice of Hamlet cries out through all the plays. It is the most important character in the central play of the entire works. What possible connection can you determine between your lives and the life of Hamlet? My life is so similar, you would do better to claim you were writing it about me, but you don’t dare invite the comparison. These plays were born in my life, Charlton. I wrote to heal the wounds of my soul and in that healing touched upon the wounds of the world soul.

  SHAKSPAR. This is all just an elaborate defence mechanism to glorify their ignominious and forgotten lives.

  OXFORD. You social-climbing little snob.

  BARRY. Shall we order in tonight, Frank, just for a change?

  SHAKSPAR. You’re just a bunch of disenfranchised imperialists… out of a job… with rotten stinking reputations… stealing the natural gifts of the common man.

  BARRY. Anyone for a Thai takeaway?

  BACON. There is but one case wherein a man may commend himself with good grace, and that is in commending virtue in another.

  SHAKSPAR. You and your great enlightenment of society… one rotten poem about a bubble and a scientific materialism that is destroying the nature you claim to love, as we speak. Atheists! Necromancers! Pederasts! The both of you. Is that who you think wrote Shakespeare, Frank… a couple of pederasts?

  BARRY. A cup of tea?

  OXFORD. How dare you accuse me of pederasty! You little upstart crow. Captain Pod. If only they’d killed you rather than Marlowe. You’ve basked in the hard graft of my suffering existence… born of the kind of pain you never experienced in your nasty little life, hoarding grain from your beloved fellow common man in time of famine… attempting to enclose common lands around Stratford… leaving your long-suffering wife to borrow shillings from a servant… a debt you never repaid… you tight-fisted little nouveau riche tax-dodger…

  SHAKSPAR. My long-suffering wife. That’s rich. That’s rich coming from you. What about Anne Cecil, his innocent teenage wife, abandoned for five years while he shagged Italian altar boys in Venice?

  OXFORD. Hamnet Shakspar, his innocent little boy, died in poverty, his mother begging servants for shillings, while his father flaunted it in London on the riches I paid you to front my plays.

  SHAKSPAR. The Devil take thy soul!

  OXFORD. I loved Anne Cecil; forty thousand brothers with all their quantity of love could not make up my sum!

  OXFORD grabs SHAKSPAR by the throat. FRANK accidentally falls on the keyboard, setting off a loud Shakespeare film soundtrack.

  SHAKSPAR. I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat!

  OXFORD. Away thy hand!

  FRANK. Pull them apart!

  BARRY. Fellas!

  BACON. Good my lord, be quiet!

  OXFORD.

  Why, I will fight with him upon this theme

  Until my eyelids will no longer wag.

  BACON (underneath the following dialogue). Revenge is a kind of wild justice, gentlemen… in passing it over, you are far superior… it is a prince’s part to pardon, my lord… That which is past is gone, and irrevocable… Wise men have enough to do with things present and to come… You but trifle with yourselves to labour in past matters.

  BARRY. Oh, he’s mad, Frank.

  FRANK. For love of God, let him go, Will.

  SHAKSPAR. Nay, an thou’lt mouth my lines, I’ll rant as well as thou!

  OXFORD.

  Swounds, show me what thou’lt do.

  Woot weep?

  SHAKSPAR.

  woot fight?

  OXFORD.

  woot fast?

  SHAKSPAR.

  woot tear thyself?

  OXFORD.

  Woot drink up eisel?

  SHAKSPAR.

  eat a crocodile?

  OXFORD and SHAKSPAR.

  I’ll do it.

  SHAKSPAR.

  Does thou come here to whine?

  To outface me with leaping in my grave?

  OXFORD.

  This is I, Hamlet the Dane.

  OXFORD frees himself and draws his sword.

  SERGEANT FREEMAN of the Kent County Constabulary enters through the back door.

  SERGEANT. Mid Kent Constabulary! Nobody move!

  Now, who the hell do you lot think you are?

  Blackout.

  End of Act One.

  ACT TWO

  Scene One

  The Policeman, the Ripper and the Earl

  Lights up. There has obviously been a struggle. The SERGEANT has disarmed OXFORD and handcuffed him to the lawnmower. All else, bar the SERGEANT, are prone on the floor.

  SERGEANT. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand?

 
; OXFORD nods. The SERGEANT gets out his notepad.

  FRANK turns the television to the wall so that the SERGEANT can’t see the camera is on.

  Good. Now, what’s going on here? Who’s the owner of this property?

  FRANK. I am, sergeant.

  Standing.

  SERGEANT. Sit down! And your name is?

  FRANK. Frank Charlton. I can explain everything, officer. You see, I’m an English teacher and these friends of mine and I are preparing a little play about… it’s a sort of whodunnit…

  SERGEANT. Whodunnit?

  FRANK. Yes. We were all just acting.

  BARRY. Frank.

  FRANK. Yes?

  BARRY. Is this a play?

  FRANK. Yes… you remember…

  BARRY. No.

  FRANK. Yes. We’re acting in a play.

  BARRY. Am I in it?

  FRANK. Umm… Yes, you play the neighbour.

  SERGEANT. What’s this whodunnit about then?

  FRANK. It’s about William Shakespeare.

  SERGEANT. What’s your name?

  SHAKSPAR. William Shakespeare.

  SERGEANT. You?

  BACON. Francis Bacon.

  SERGEANT. Yes?

  Pointing to BARRY.

  BARRY. Barry Wild.

  SERGEANT (with suspicion). Barry Wild?

  BARRY. Yes.

  SERGEANT. So you’re practising a play?

  FRANK. Yes, you see. No one was really upset. We were just acting.

  SERGEANT. Ed, here, seemed pretty upset. Was he just acting when he attacked me?

  FRANK. Well, he got confused… because… we’re waiting for one of our actors to arrive, you see, who was going to play a uniformed policeman, and he thought you were that actor.

  SERGEANT. One of your actors was going to impersonate a policeman?

  FRANK. Yes.

  SERGEANT. Have you got a licence for that, Charlton?

  FRANK. No, sergeant.

  SERGEANT. Well, you better get one. There are very strict rules about impersonating policemen in plays.

  FRANK. Yes, sergeant. My point was that he didn’t mean to attack you. He’s what you call a method actor. Takes it all very personally. Finds it difficult sometimes to see the difference between his own life and the play.

  OXFORD. It is my life, Charlton. Were they robbed by pirates on the English Channel, stripped and left naked on the shores of England like Hamlet? I was.

  SHAKSPAR. Theatre is not always about personal revelation. I thought you agreed with me, Frank?

  SERGEANT. All right, calm down. It’s just a play after all. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take him down to the station and confiscate this weapon.

  FRANK. Do you really have to take him down to the station?

  SERGEANT. Yes.

  BARRY. Sergeant, earlier on, when Will went past The Coach and Horses, his hands disappeared. Those cuffs are gonna slip straight off.

  SERGEANT. What?

  FRANK. Yes. That’s right, Barry. That’s your line in the play, but wait till I give you a cue to speak. Remember, don’t speak, don’t say anything, before I give you the cue.

  OXFORD becomes quite agitated.

  SERGEANT. You had better tell your friend to calm down. I don’t want to have to call over a van.

  SHAKSPAR. He’s a dangerous man, sergeant. He murdered a servingman once.

  FRANK. In the play, in the play, not in real life. Let’s all calm down.

  BACON. Would you like a cup of tea, sergeant? Perhaps if you give your prisoner a few minutes to calm down he will become more manageable.

  SERGEANT. Well…

  FRANK. Yes. It’s the least we can do for causing you this trouble. Barry, get him a cup of tea.

  BARRY. Really? Or is this in the play?

  FRANK. Both.

  BACON. May I try a cup of tea?

  BARRY. Milk, sugar? One or two?

  SERGEANT. Milk, two sugars.

  BACON. Is that the ideal way to take tea?

  SERGEANT. I like it that way.

  BACON. I’ll have the same as the sergeant, but no milk.

  BARRY. Anyone else?

  SHAKSPAR. What’s tea like?

  FRANK. Why don’t you have a small beer, Will.

  OXFORD. Sack, Spanish sack if you have it, with some sugar.

  BARRY. What do I say now, Frank? In the play?

  FRANK. Just get out, Barry. Get some drinks.

  BARRY. Just get out, Barry. Get some drinks.

  BARRY goes out.

  SERGEANT. I never went in for acting myself, but my brother is a great enthusiast, you know, in an amateur fashion. Oh yes, he’s the clever one. Always was. Loves his Shakespeare. So what’s all this arguing and upsetting the neighbours with your play?

  FRANK. Are the neighbours upset?

  SERGEANT. What were you arguing about?

  FRANK. The question of who wrote Shakespeare.

  SERGEANT. Oh, right, Jack the Ripper.

  FRANK. You think Jack the Ripper wrote the works of Shakespeare?

  SERGEANT. Don’t get cocky, sunshine. No, the Shakespeare authorship question always reminds me of Jack the Ripper.

  FRANK. Why?

  OXFORD. Because Shakespeare lives deep in our dark unconscious fears and doubts about who we really are.

  SERGEANT. No, Rambo, because I’ve heard the authorship question mentioned by colleagues of mine studying the Ripper case.

  FRANK. Why did your colleagues mention it?

  SERGEANT. The Victorian Ripper diary. The name on the diary is James Maybrick, a Liverpool cotton merchant, but was he actually the killer? Now there’s a whodunnit! Who actually wrote it? CBCA.

  Starts writing on the whiteboard.

  Have you read Professor David Canter, the criminal psychologist, on CBCA?

  FRANK. No. Sorry, sergeant, I haven’t.

  BACON (writing on the board). On CBCA. O–N–C–B–C–A. or C–B–A–C–O–N. See Bacon. May I say, from the point of view of a cryptologist, sergeant…

  SERGEANT. Cryptologist? No, we’re not talking about grave-robbing here, Gandalf. Psychologist! He’s changing the way detectives think and work. Groundbreaking.

  OXFORD. Is he a Freudian psychologist?

  SERGEANT. No, no, no. It’s just common sense. Actors! You just don’t get us, do you? The man behind the badge. The Bill, The Sweeney, Dirty Harry, bunch of ponces. No one can act a copper. Not your true copper. It makes me so angry… You’re gonna get this play right, Charlton.

  So, pay attention. In a manhunt, like the Ripper case or your Shakespeare question, the success of the detective, I’m talking about a real detective, depends on how well he shapes his mental map and his hunting strategy to match that of his prey, in your case the author, and that’s where CBCA comes in. It’s a bold chief detective who says, ‘MEN…’

  He bangs the table as if giving a briefing in an episode of Prime Suspect.

  ALL. Yes, sergeant.

  SERGEANT. Let’s ignore why something was done. Instead let’s ask what elements can we follow that will lead us to the killer. Close your eyes, men. Because somewhere there, hidden at the scene of the crime, wrapped perhaps in the tiniest of details, with his tiger’s heart beating, and his guilty hand still shaking in the darkness, our masked man can’t help but reveal his true identity.

  The phone rings. They all jump. FRANK answers as quietly as possible.

  FRANK. Hello. This is Frank Charlton, your host on Who’s There? The International Authorship Chat Show… play. What’s your question?

  BARRY. I have a question for Sir Francis Bacon.

  FRANK. Yes. Sir Francis, it’s for you.

  BACON. Hello. This is Francis Bacon.

  BARRY. One sugar or two?

  BACON. Two please, Barry.

  OXFORD. What connection did your colleagues make between the Ripper diary and the authorship controversy?

  SERGEANT (who has been writing on the board). CBCA. Criteria-Based Content Analysis is an
objective test psychologists have fashioned to help determine the authenticity of a written account.

  FRANK. Really? Any written account?

  SERGEANT. In this case, the diary of James Maybrick, a Victorian cotton merchant, which happens to give a first-person account of the deeds of Jack the Ripper. Is the diary a fabrication drawn from the accounts of others or a description of actual events the author experienced? That’s the crucial question.

  OXFORD. That is the crucial question.

  FRANK. How can you tell if an author has actually experienced something, rather than reported it second hand?

  SERGEANT. CBCA says an invention is always more likely to lack the sort of detail a genuine account has – the sort of detail that would be more likely to come from genuine experience than fabrication.

  OXFORD. Sergeant, the plays contain descriptions of my travels through Italy in such minute detail that, until recent re-evaluation, they were thought inaccurate. Fourteen plays set in Italy and yet neither of them ever visited Italy.

  BACON. They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. My brother Anthony travelled extensively in Italy and the Continent before he returned to live and write with me.

  SHAKSPAR. Sergeant, what do people do when they return from travels? They talk about what they’ve experienced. I picked up everything about Italy in the plays from travellers’ chat along Bankside.

  OXFORD. In the beginning of my play Romeo and Juliet, I place Romeo in a sycamore grove, quote: ‘that westward rooteth from this city side’. The sycamore trees are still there to the west of Verona today. This is an inconsequential detail drawn from the memory as a writer writes. Why would a traveller chatting about the glories of Renaissance Italy mention some insignificant trees?

  SERGEANT. Now you’re using your head, copper. Details. I like it.

  SHAKSPAR. Surely it’s the job of a creative writer to add that sort of convincing detail.

  SERGEANT. Now calm down, Shirley Temple. Rambo’s right. No writer can help leaving his fingerprints on the scene.