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The Thirty-eighth Play.
Act One.
Scene: London, late 16th century, at the Court of St. James.
Enter--A young Lord Burghley (i.e. Cecil) and daughter followed by the youthful De Vere (AKA the Earl of Oxford).
DE VERE: Are you Burghley?
CECIL: No. Cecil still.
DE VERE: Ah, yes, methinks in time to come
You will be elevated. And so, by
Dreadful reckoning, like a seadog
Amidst the heaving sea and
Tossing spray of oceans wide,
Are we all lost in the present. Now
Has to be a long time ago.
Well, then, Cecil, here am I, not creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school but, heeding the storm
Raging within my frame, do know I need
Assistance. Schooling I want,
And that most speedily.
CECIL: Schooling? From me?
DE VERE: (Looking about, striking oratorical pose).
This is the Court, the foremost Council
In the land. And you are Cecil,
To be Burghley, and burly are you
In the Queen’s eye. In short,
You are top dog, and this, your pup
Must be top dog’s daughter.
I deal with none other.
CECIL: Is that a fact?
DE VERE: Refuse me not, mighty lord to be—
Or not to be (Hmmm I must remember that one)
If spurn-ed not is this proffer’d love of learning
You shall profit of it, and your wench.
CECIL: How so?
WENCH: Yes. How so?
DE VERE: I shall write plays, and you, dear Cecil
Shall be my pa-tron.
WENCH: And I?
DE VERE: Dear love, you shall be my ma-tron!
How elegant is a tron with
Ma and Pa attached. Know
I have been parent-less, an orphan these many years.
CECIL: A Bastard writer! The Queen in her majesty
Deplores the stage. I must deplore that which
She doth deplore and do so, most heartily.
Get you gone!
WENCH: And yet, dear father, he has a certain,
CECIL: As all men have! You will learn.
DE VERE: Wise wench! Oh a Danielle come to Justice!
WENCH: Danielle? Yes, methinks
I grow exceeding tired of wench.
Henceforth Danielle shall I be.
DE VERE: There’s more! The coffers
Of my late lamented father are brim full,
My fortune well established;
Yet ‘tis unestablished too.
My mind teems and yearns
To set down part form-ed lines
On Parchment, for which I have the wit
But lack the writ. Impatient is the world
For you to do your duty.
CECIL: I am the Queen’s minister. Your writ
As you call it, and I the pa-tron
May authorise your fame
But it’ll be the end of me. The Queen deplores,
DE VERE: What she does know. So do we all
Yet long to know the more, the more knowing to deplore.
But sir, if it be our secret, excluded
Like the dust of Damsons must be the fate
Of her deplores.
DANIELLE: The dust of damsons?
DE VERE: ‘tis nothing, wench. A mere metaphor.
CECIL: These wise keen eyes of mine have never
Spied the dust of damsons.
DE VERE: How could they, it is mine own invention
And there are thousands more you will know
‘fore I am done. Nor will the Queen if, in charity,
Mum we keep.
DANIELLE: Can I meet her?
CECIL: In all the waking moments of the day,
And doubtless dreaming hours of sleep
I do suppose you speak thus ever and anon.
DE VERE: Frustrated authorship doth curl my tongue.
Come, sirrah, hitch your wagon and your wench
To my rising star.
DANIELLE: I do so like rising stars!
DE VERE: Well you might, for I do tell you,
‘though valiant be your father’s labours
On the Queen’s behalf,
And nationally valuable,
His work is destin-ed to die with him
Save a few scratchings ‘mongst the dust
Future history men may chance upon.
My Complet-ed Works,
My every phrase, shall live, each comma
Commanding generations of attentive effort
The world over, ’though I but dashed them off.
Your name, too, if with me you will associate.
At this point the Queen peered angrily over the top of the manuscript. “I thought you claimed you’d written this in modern English.”
Burghley nodded, feebly. “So I have, Ma’am. Save for His Words. You wouldn’t have me edit the glorious Bard as I might a common journalist?”
The Queen was far from mollified. “Think of the children, suffering from insufferable pedants for centuries to come!” She shook the papers. “Dreadful stuff. This is, words fail me!”
“You, Ma’am, are not a poet.”
“Nor do I wish to be if this trash results. And you kept the perpetrator a secret from me for all these years! I saved our green and pleasant land from Spain and the Inquisition, and all the time you’ve harboured and encouraged this scourge upon our future. Oh, Burghley, how could you!”
“Keep the secret? Quite easily, despite the wainscotters and maids in waiting. Once his hand I’d tutored I did compel him publish under another name, that of a common actor. It pleased him not a lot and that I do admit was a mistake. He has a violent temper.”
“I’m not surprised,” the Queen replied, scanning the roll. “Even the devil craves recognition of his sins. Damn this tiny print. It hurts my eyes so I cannot make out the words and when I can hurts the mind. Yet, strangely I would have more. On, on; tell me what happens next.”
“You must read, Ma’am.”
“Must! You dare must your Sovereign!”
“Forgive me; what must be must be for my memory and my strength are gone. I cannot help you.”
Act Two.
Scene: The same. Uproar off stage. Enter Cecil and de Vere.
CECIL: What news of the kitchen,
From which, by your manner and
The gherkin on your ketchup,
I know you come?
DE VERE: Ketchup on my jerkin? Not words
Of mine. I thought ‘twas blood.
CECIL: Whatever. What news?
DE VERE: Thomas, the Under Cook, is dead.
CECIL: That is no surprise.
Many has been the occasion him I did inform
He would undercook once too often!
DE VERE: The lady Salmonella did not claim him
‘though I agree his fate thereof
Was certain had he not felo de se.
CECIL: Felo de se!
DE VERE: Indeed, my lord. See, upon my sword
The blood still runs. Here, upon this point
Did he impale his future
Even as he sought most evilly to divulge
The dread secret which we share.
CECIL: But why?
DE VERE: ‘tis plain enough;
He sought to gain from our discomfort,
Nay, our fall!
CECIL: It is indeed a mercy
Your unsheathed blade
Arose to be most handily poised.
Was it so?
DE VERE: In truth, sir, no. I drew in passion-ed moment
And well I did, for I have saved your life.
CECIL: And, by happy coincidental chance, your own!
But, beware. There will be a trial.
Away with you, abroad
> ‘till I can square the peers.
DE VERE: Is it possible to square that which is
Both long and thin, and wet beneath to boot?
CECIL: You’d better hope it is.
DE VERE: Rome, Venice, Carthage, Thebes,
I go, a great welling, a dozen dramas
Bursting for release from my inner self.
By the by I love your daughter.
Enter Danielle, (Sheepish).
CECIL: I do suspect a plot.
Sir, did you preplan this?
DANIELLE: No, my lord father. ‘twas I.
CECIL: You! My Treasure! My Wonder kid!
But why? It is perverse
To love a man dealing in blank verse.
DANIELLE: Who said ought ‘bout love?
I want a bit of sun!
DE VERE: Great Rome! Fair Venice! Ancient
And Venerated Carthage.
DANIELLE: Nothing old hat dear heart.
DE VERE: Then away to Wigan, or Southend
And beyond with grateful thanks
To lordships who collectively do speed our journey.
Destiny thou beckons, those dozen dramas
Now a score so rapidly my mind doth conjure
Characters out the very ether!
DANIELLE: I hope we’re talking the same language.
DE VERE: (Hurriedly, to Cecil) But yes, I would have your daughter.
CECIL: A score of curses. Blast and double blast!
Get you gone, yes both
Before the Queen peers too closely at this matter.
DE VERE: A pun! Why, Cecil, you would rival me.
No matter ‘though I durst admit it irks
My secret work is heralded another’s.
CECIL: God’s blood! Are you never satisfied?
Admitted at the Court you are the best
For comedy, and your verse
Has lyric beauty I am told. As for your secret work
Does it lie mouldering in a chest
Other than thine own? Is it not
Globally performed to swell that
Which is already overlarge, your head?
What more can you desire? Take care
That swollen pate does not grow so much
That spotted is it and lopp-ed off
Like some overripe fruit.
DE VERE: Your point is well made.
I shall depart. Yet mark thee this,
One day, Cecil, the word must out!
CECIL: Not while I have a dozen breaths left in me.
How the Queen, so percipient, so omniscient,
So wise and wonderful a prince in all things worldly
Has failed to learn that you, all conquering at Court
Has also authoured the scurrillous dramas she so abhors
Beats me!
DE VERE: I shall create her father.
DANIELLE: You’ll do king Henry VIII?
DE VERE: He lies at Windsor, long since dead
And out of reach.
CECIL: My daughter indicates a book.
DE VERE: Hmmm; promising although I fear
It might not be one of my best. Still
It shall be insurance for us all.
Meanwhile your daughter,
CECIL: Go!
DANIELLE: Aye, father, and willingly.
DE VERE: Think you a pair of velvet gloves would suit?
DANIELLE: You, or me?
DE VERE: Why me, dear heart. (Hastily) Or both.
I think I shall acquire a personal souvenir
Of our foreign travel. A new cap, too,
And silken hose. Becoming what?
CECIL: Becoming dangerous. Get out!
The Queen paused in her reading to find Burghley slumped in his chair, his eyes closed. She hurried to his side and felt his pulse.
“He lives a while. Good. I haven’t finished with him. This villain, this writer, by these lines I know him. My lord of Oxford, once at the court, ‘till I sent him away. But back, he dares come back?. I’ll root him out even if I have to burn my poor eyes with more of Burghley’s drivel.”
She settled at the old man’s side. “Let’s see what more is scribbled here!”
Act Three.
Scene: The same. Cecil writes at a desk. Enter his daughter.
CECIL: Daughter Danielle! How little
Have I seen you since you married!
DANIELLE: How little have I seen HIM since I married.
CECIL: Come now, Danielle. You have three children.
DANIELLE: They are his doubt not, but little sight of me
Had he in getting them. It was ‘Dearest Danielle,’
And ‘Danielle my lovely’, and ‘Danielle
You are my one true love,’ his lips
To mine ear as you might hazard.
CECIL: Trying out his speeches whilst in love’s throes?
DANIELLE: That is the nature of The Bard. What else?
And if, by chance, distracted by mine own passion,
I do not catch every vital syllable,
It matters not.
The world’s a stage, he says
And true it is. A short step
To the Globe and I revise
Each whispered lie of love
I missed the night before.
CECIL: His pleasure done he doth depart?
DANIELLE: He doth. I do not complain.
What other wife has daily matinees
Of last nights frolics
To fill the afternoon?
CECIL: More than you know I do suspect.
I am surprised you find it tolerable.
DANIELLE: Instructive is more apt, dear pa,
I hear other lines and these
Not premiered to me.
CECIL: Other liaisons do exist?
That is not on! No man
Should use a Cecil so.
DANIELLE: And yet he does, my lord.
CECIL: I shall have him one day, mark my words.
The Queens’ threatened displeasure
Is his Achilles heel. There will come a time
Most fit to gently tell her.
DANIELLE: She does not know?
CECIL: She does not and will not yet; and yet,
It is in my mind to scribble a short drama of mine own--
At which I show a tolerable hand--and leave
It in my will for her perusal
When I am out of reach, in Heaven.
DANIELLE: Hoist by his own petard!
I like it, father dear.
I have some lines you might include:
A little apish hat,
Couched fast to the pate,
Like an oyster;
French cambric ruffs,
Deep with a witness,
Starched to the purpose;
Delicate in speech;
Never quiet;
Quaint in array;
Conceited in all points;
In courtly guiles,
A singularly odd man.
CECIL: Excellent. My daughter you rival me
And both of us his genius.
DANIELLE: A genius he is and not just literature
Does he stir up. He has insulted Sydney
In the Tennis Court, no love all there
And duelling with Knyvet,
So pricked his pride for he was hurt
With everyone a snigger.
The result of which in his own house
He is now a prisoner
By order of the Queen.
Duelling she does not tolerate.
CECIL: Serves him right.
DANIELLE: Yet serves us ill for he scribbles all the more.
He patronises his actor friends and now
His fortune is all but gone. Worse yet
I thought our foreign travels would curb his pen
But both his wander and his lust are undimn-ed.
CECIL: I curse the day I let him in this house.
Ill has he used me, you more so
.
Flouting every rule. I am made a
Laughing stock and you, poor Danielle
Are much estranged.
DANIELLE: Methinks it is a curse, devised in Hell
Round writers all. Particularly cruel.
CECIL: Indeed.
DANIELLE: Troubling those proximate much more
Than the scribe himself. He’ll write
Until the grave, and on, and on; it is our fate
To suffer.
“Talking of which,” the Queen stirred, grasping Burghley’s wrist yet once more, seeking his pulse and finding it ere non. “Faint, to be sure, but, faithful Burghley, you live, by my command, as you always have. I can forgive you much for that.”
“Can you, Ma’am?”
“You old fox! Open your eyes. Quit feigning.”
“It always was my keenest joy,” Burghley announced, looking at her, “To gaze upon the fairest Queen in Christendom.”
Elizabeth glowed with pleasure. “Take strength from me, old chum. Here, the wine.”
Burghley struggled to sit straighter in his chair. He sipped the claret offered, then gently sighed. “You should read the rest.”
“Later, perhaps. For completeness and to admire your unguessed skill. I know the secret now.”
“You are content?”
“You should have told me sooner. But, yes, I am content.”
“In all but this I have served you well.”
“In this too, Burghley. I well liked Henry VIII.”
“Your father!”
“Not the man, old fool. The play. It told the complimentary truth. Had I lopped the head from that proud bard the nation would have been the poorer. Yet, he should pay for his deceit.”
“Then, if you agree, Ma’am, I would propose a little plot, ‘twixt you and I. One last secret, good company to keep with the many others that we share.”
The Queen brightened. “Go on. If I know my Burghley it will be good.”
“‘Tis very good, Ma’am. Most apt. Most just. You know that all these years the pretence has been our famed dramatist is just a common actor. Quite laughable in fact, since he is barely literate.”
“I did suspect the falsehood,” the Queen insisted.
“That I did not doubt, for as I’ve said, you are the wisest prince in Christendom. But even you, Ma’am, knew not the hidden identity of the actual author.”
“Until today.”
“Quite so. He is, my daughter claims, and I do not doubt it, conceited in all points. Conceit grows fat on recognition and pines when it is absent. Our dramatist would have the world applaud his genius. Sour is his temper that to this day an actor gets the credit.”
“I told you that.”
“How much sourer will he be if for all time’s span the Stratford Ape is king!”
“No more than he deserves! He’s used you ill, my Burghley, and your family.”
“Then we’re agreed. Suppress my script. Keep it for your private pleasure and let my lord of Oxford know if ever he lays claim to what he wrote he’ll permanently lose your favour and probably his head. A secret you will tolerate, pending his future good behaviour.”
The Queen was delighted. “I like it! He can even go on writing, in another’s name, and the more he does the more he suffers lacking recognition for his labour. And since he cannot bear not to write he cannot but suffer all the more. Good Burghley, my faithful servant to the end, it is a pretty plot.”
“A damn pretty plot,” Burghley murmured.
The Queen thought he said more, and bent closer the better to hear but Burghley had expired, a smile frozen for all time upon his lips. Revenge is sweet.
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Don’t Count Your Chickens Before You Have Crossed The Bridge.