Work Text:
For the preventing and avoyding of the greate Abuse of the Holy Name of God in Stageplayes, Interludes, May-games, Shewes, and such like; Be it enacted by our Soveraigne Lorde the Kinges Majesty, and by the Lordes Spirituall and Temporall, and Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authoritie of the same, That if at any tyme or tymes, after the end of this present Session of Parliament, any person or persons doe or shall in any Stage play, Interlude, Shewe, May-game, or Pageant jestingly or prophanely speake or use the holy Name of God or of Christ Jesus, or of the Holy Ghoste or of the Trinitie, which are not to be spoken but with feare and reverence, such person or persons shall forfeite for everie such Offence by hym or them committed Tenne Pounds, the one moytie thereof to the Kinges Majestie, his Heires and Successors, the other moytie thereof to hym or them that will sue for the same in any Courte of Recorde at Westminster, wherein no essoigne, Proteccion or Wager of Lawe shal be allowed.
-- Act to Restrain Abuses of Players (1606)
* * *
“Jack Webster! Well met, you’re just the man I was looking for.”
Jack turns to greet his friend Dick Burbage.
“How’s Sara? And the new baby?”
“They’re well, God be thanked.” (For values of well that include the baby howling for several hours straight every night between midnight and dawn, The other women in the neighborhood have assured Sara that it’s nothing to worry about, so long as he eats well and sleeps well at other times. Their only advice about what to do was to hire a nurse and let her handle it, which Jack absolutely can’t afford.)
“Good-good. Now, I’ve got a little proposition for you, which I think may be to your profit as well as ours –”
“I can’t really take on a new play right now,” says Jack regretfully. He’s already weeks behind on his portion of a new comedy, and his co-writers are getting impatient.
“Not a play. Legal advice. You’ve got the training, and we could all use some help making sense of this new statute.”
Jack certainly needs the money. A little too much, to be honest. Dick’s brother Cuthbert has been known to discreetly take on charity cases, and it occurs to Jack that he might have just become one of them, because he’s not at all sure he’s the right man for this job.
“Why me?” asks Jack. “I mean – there are proper lawyers out there. Practicing ones.”
“And if it comes to a court case, we’ll hire one. Cuthbert’s already got someone in mind. But you know the law well enough to interpret it for us, and – well, you know us.”
“Speaking both as a lawyer and as your friend,” says Jack, “I don’t really recommend hiring friends as your legal counsel. It never ends well.”
“It’s more than that.” Dick becomes an indefinably exaggerated version of himself, the version Jack wrote for him once, in a prologue. “Why should we not enjoy the ancient freedom of poesy? That’s why you.”
“Those were your words,” says Jack. “I just took ‘em down. And prettied ‘em up, a little.”
“You followed us around for weeks taking down our words – and occasionally prettying ‘em up a little – just to write a three-page induction scene! Yes, you’re the man we want, Jack, and the whole company’s agreed on it. Will you or won’t you?”
“I will,” says Jack, thinking guiltily about his comedy-in-progress. But it wasn’t like he’d actually been working on it before Dick approached him.
“Good. Come to my brother’s house first, he’s got some questions for you.”
* * *
They are greeted at Cuthbert’s door by a mixed pack: three dogs of various sizes and a little girl of about five, who opens the door and bids them a polite good morning, and then drops down to her hands and knees and starts romping with the dogs.
Cuthbert has already got his own copy of the statute, and has been looking it over. “It seems to me,” he says, “that this law is saying anyone can claim five pounds by reporting an offense.”
“Not quite,” says Jack, “they’ve got to sue for it first. And they may well lose.”
“Still. Considered as an incentive, that seems rather – malicious.”
“This whole law’s malicious,” says Dick frankly.
“Agreed. But you can’t make it any less malicious by refusing to obey it. And getting fined ten pounds on a regular basis will break us.” Cuthbert frowns suddenly, another point having caught his attention. “Maybe not even us. Jack, am I right in thinking that this ten-pound fine falls not on the theater, nor on the company, nor even on the playwright, but on the player who utters the words?”
“That would seem to be the plainest interpretation, yes,” Jack confirms.
“So. You cannot ask actors to hazard ten pounds – particularly not hired men – and even you, my dearly-beloved-and-insanely-stubborn brother, must see that you can’t.”
“I’m not asking anyone to do that, I’m just saying that we don’t need to do three times more than this law actually says we’ve got to –”
“Consider the title,” says Cuthbert. “It’s called An Act to Restrain Abuses of Players. Not An Act to Restrain Blasphemy or An Act to Protect the Holy Name of God.”
“I am completely in favor of acts that restrain abuses of players. No heckling, no hissing, no throwing anything onto the stage –”
“Dick, be serious and listen to me for once. Whoever wrote this law has got it in for the entire profession, which means that they’ll be looking to find us in the wrong whatever we do.”
“Do you think I don’t see that? If they’re going to find us in the wrong no matter what we do, they haven’t given us any reason to do what they want. What they really want, frankly, is for us to disappear, and I know from hard experience that I can’t do that.”
Both brothers burst out laughing, and Cuthbert explains to Jack, “When Dick was playing Oberon, he got the bright idea that he could think himself invisible. It wasn’t one of his more successful experiments.”
“You never know what’s possible until you try it,” Dick insists.
“Well,” says Cuthbert, “I hope you’ll at least be ruled by your legal counsel before trying anything too rash. What say you, Jack?”
“Sometimes,” says Jack slowly, “the plain word of a law is narrow enough to make it sound reasonable to most men – and to most members of Parliament in particular – but the intent is otherwise. As with the infamous horse of Troy.”
Cuthbert shoots him a baffled look. “Which one of us are you siding with?”
“I don’t know,” says Jack. He’s saved from having to give a more definite answer when someone passes by in the street with a strange dog. This triggers a flurry of barking from Cuthbert’s dogs, and also from the child.
“Bessie,” says Cuthbert, “do you understand the difference between dogs and people?”
The girl straightens up. “Yes, dad,” she says demurely.
“And what is the difference?”
Bessie explains, with an air of great expertise, “Dogs are hairy on the outside and people are hairy on the inside. And that’s the only difference between dogs and people.” And she starts going on all fours again.
Cuthbert leans back in his chair with a what-can-you-do shrug, and asks Dick, “What are you playing this afternoon? And please tell me it’s not going to be any sort of test case.”
“King Lear. It’s a nice pagan sort of play. The gods they swear by definitely aren’t ours.”
“Why,” says Cuthbert, with a slight roll of the eyes, “you speak like an ancient and most quiet actor; for I cannot see how paganism should offend.”
* * *
After the play, Jack is shown to an office in one of the Globe’s outbuildings, where the company’s prompt-books are kept along with various other books and papers. He has never been here before. It’s a mark of trust, he knows, that he’s being invited into the inner sanctum now, albeit with two company men to keep an eye on him.
Robin Armin is one of the handful of players everyone in London knows by sight: a tiny man who scarce weighs a hundred pounds soaking wet, with a comical set of mannerisms and a vocal range that stretches from mellifluous tenor to absurd falsetto. The other man, Will Shakespeare, is a fellow you wouldn’t give a second look at if you passed him on the street. But if you know anything at all about poetry, you know.
“As the company poets,” says Will, “we’ll naturally be doing all the tedious bits. We just need you to tell us what the law requires.”
“Very well,” says Jack, trying to gauge whether this just means his new job is going to be very easy, or whether he’s being given a quiet warning not to trespass on their territory. Will Shakespeare has always been friendly enough, but notoriously, he prefers not to collaborate with anybody.
“Also, I’m going to want some advice on our new tragedy.”
“Will wants to do witches,” explains Robin, “which, as I’ve told him, is absolutely cuckoo under the circumstances, because profanely-speaking-or-using-the-holy-name-of-God was sort of the definition of witchcraft, last time I checked.”
“It was not long since,” says Will, with an uncharacteristic touch of asperity, “that I was told that our patron the king had a particular interest in witches, and would be pleased to see their wickedness unmasked on stage. I don’t see how I’m supposed to finish a play when I’m asked to do a thing at one time, and then told not to do it a few months later. It makes it impossible to plan. Anyway, Jack, I’ve written a tragedy. It has witches in it. Please advise.”
“Do these witches actually curse or abjure the name of God on stage?” asks Jack.
“No,” says Will. “I’m not showing how they got to be witches. The play starts after that.”
“Do they mention the name of God at all?”
“I’m ... not sure. But they don’t have to, I mean it’s not important to the story. But there’s at least one place where the name of God is important to the story. Have a look.”
Jack examines the manuscript. The writing is hasty, untidy and unpunctuated; very different from the fair copies made by the playhouse scribe.
One cryd god blesse us and Amen the other
as they had seene me with these hangmans hands
listning their feare I could not say Amen
when they did say God blesse us.
Jack considers for a moment. “Spoken in fear and reverence. That seems to be permissible under the terms of this law.”
“Good. What about conventional expressions, like God save the king or God be with you?”
“Allowable, I believe.” But there is a tiny, creeping doubt at the back of Jack’s mind, and he hopes he is not leading these men astray. “I wish this statute had defined profanely...”
Robin reaches for one of the books on the shelf: A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Usual English Words. “Profane: ungodly, not consecrated; or unhallowing that which was holy.” He shuts the book. “From the Latin pro fano, I believe, meaning that-which-is-in-front-of-or-generally-outside the temple. This place is not a temple.”
“Isn’t it?” says Will. “You never heard Dick and Cuthbert’s father on the topic. He always insisted that theaters were a kind of sacred space for the Greeks, and so they ought to be for us.”
“I never met Dick and Cuthbert’s father,” says Robin, “but it’s my understanding that he once cordially invited the fellow serving him with a court order to wipe his arse with it. Which makes him, considered strictly as a source-of-advice-on-the-law ... rather suspect.”
Will looks at Jack. “What say you, O-source-of-advice-on-the-law?”
“I think,” says Jack, “that I would not care to argue in a court of law that God save the king is a profane expression, regardless of whether it’s said in a church or a theater.”
“Good,” says Will. “It stays, and I think that gives me some notion of what we can and can’t do. Now, we had better get to our existing repertory so we have something to play in the meantime. I was thinking I’d start with Twelfth Night, because it’ll want some rewriting, anyway. Jimmy Sands is getting too old to play Viola, and our new lead boy – who is tremendous in other ways – hasn’t got the voice or the musicianship.”
He opens up the company’s fair copy of the play, takes up a pen, and crosses something out. Jack reads over his shoulder: Well, God, not I, is the doer of this, and he is to be thanked. Will writes in Jove, then repeats the correction at several other points in the same speech. “Will that do?”
“That will most certainly do,” says Jack, “but to my mind, it’s not necessary. This – Malvolio, is it? – he isn’t jesting. And I don’t think he’s speaking the name of God profanely, either.”
“He doesn’t think he is. I am none too sure of that.”
“You are overthinking this,” says Robin, “but, as to that – it’s my opinion that having one of those Puritan fellows talk incessantly about Jove or Apollo is funny, and you don’t argue with funny.”
“‘Very well,” says Will. He flips back a few pages, makes some more revisions, and then turns over a few pages more. “Jove help me, there’s something on nearly every page. Too old, by God – I suppose we might change that to ‘by heaven,’ or some such?”
“That seems prudent, yes.”
“Right. So, this is the bit I was going to work on anyway.” Will takes up a finer-pointed quill and writes something very small, in between the lines of dialogue. “He is not here, so please your lordship, that should sing it – That’s going to be you.” He looks at Robin. “Seek him out, and play the tune the while. Let me hear how that song sounds in your voice.”
Robin begins to sing. “Come away, come away, death...”
He’s got such a big voice for such a little man. Jack leans back, forgetting that he’s supposed to be working, caught up in the pleasure of the moment.
... A thousand thousand sighs to save,
Lay me, O where
Sad true lover never find my grave
To weep there!
Will tosses him an imaginary coin. “There’s for thy pains.”
“No pains,” says Robin, “I take pleasure in singing.”
“I’ll pay thy pleasure, then.”
“Truly, sir, and pleasure will be paid, one time or another.” It’s the sir that tips Jack off that they are still playing a game of pretend, and huh, maybe Will Shakespeare does collaborate with somebody, after all.
“Give me a moment to get that down,” says Will, reaching for his pen. And then, in a slightly different voice, “Give me now leave to leave thee.”
“Now the melancholy god protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is a very opal. I would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be everything and their intent everywhere, for that’s it that always makes a good voyage –”
“Slow down, Robin, I can’t –”
“— of nothing.”
Will scribbles down the last few words and turns to Jack. “We’re straying rather far from your commission, I’m afraid. Are you charging us by the minute?”
“Don’t worry about it,” says Jack, although technically, he supposes that he could.
“Oh, good. Because I think I want to – I need more paper – O fellow, come, that song we had last night. Mark it, Cesario, it is old and plain – Have you dined, Jack? Perhaps you’d better go and have something to eat, and come back in an hour or so.”
* * *
Jack takes himself off to a tavern, where he finds his friend Ben Jonson demolishing a pint of canary and sharing an enormous fowl with an extraordinarily good-looking young fellow in his late teens. Jack, who has never known Ben to be inclined toward boys, tries to place his companion.
“What are you doing here?” asks Ben. “Aren’t you supposed to be writing a new comedy?”
“Aren’t you?” Jack retorts.
“We were talking about you,” says Ben, although they hadn’t been doing any such thing.
“I’ve been working at any rate. In the profession I was actually trained for, if you’d like to hear a wonder.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
“What do you think of this new statute?”
“Ah,” says Ben. “We were just discussing that. Do you know Nid? He’s a pupil of mine. Children of the Chapel. Nid, if you’re to be a poet, you ought to know my friend Master Webster.”
“Nid?” asks Jack.
“Or Nat, now that he’s grown up a bit. When he came to us, he was definitely a Nid.”
“Baptized Nathan,” says Nid, “but I already had an older brother called Nathaniel, so they had to come up with something to tell us apart.”
“Couldn’t your godparents have ... foreseen that particular difficulty?” Jack asks.
“Witnesses-not-godparents,” says Nid, “and it had to be Nathan because it was God’s will. My father opened the Bible to a page at random, and ‘Nathan’ was the first name that caught his eye. Could’ve been worse, another brother of mine got stuck with ‘Theophilus’.”
“How on earth did your family let you join the Children of the Chapel?” asks Jack, and then realizes there’s a definite possibility that they hadn’t. “Oh. You were impressed?”
Nid smirks. “It would be fairer to say that I impressed them. I’d been warned that the theater was a den of sin and iniquity where they kidnapped little boys and turned them into girls, and I was to keep well away from it. So naturally I used to walk past it very slowly on my way to school, and I always sang as loud as I dared – my mother and stepfather didn’t approve of singing. I kept hoping they’d notice me, and after a while, they did.”
“And eventually they also noticed that he wasn’t just a pretty child with a good voice, but a more-than-ordinarily clever one.” Ben tears off a leg of the fowl and hands it to Nid. “And so they hired me to give him a bit of tutoring in the classics, and he, in turn, became my interpreter for how that sort of people think. It’s been ... enlightening. Nid’s just been helping me figure out how to annoy them as much as possible while staying within the bounds of the law.”
“How are you proposing –”
“I thought I might set a few more plays in ancient Rome,” says Ben, “and start a vogue for historically accurate swearing. I don’t imagine that having people go around London calling on Pollux and Hercules is quite what they have in mind.”
Jack refrains from pointing out that Ben’s earlier venture into Roman tragedy was not exactly a commercial success; certainly not to the point of setting any new fashions in swearing. “Who would you be in ancient Rome?” he asks, instead.
“Lucius Arruntius, I hope,” says Ben, “the one who only talks, and is suffered to remain at liberty, accordingly.” He takes a heavy swallow of canary. “I’ve been to prison for my writing before, as you know. Prison is ... unpleasant; I don’t recommend it. But neither am I afraid of it.”
* * *
When Jack returns to the Globe after supper, Will and Robin are still taking advantage of the long light of a late-spring evening.
“How is it going?” Jack asks.
“Well enough,” says Robin, “approximately one-hundred-and-four jesting and profane uses of the holy name of God have been purged, with no more than five or six thousand to go. And Will and I have argued over every single one of them.”
“Here,” says Will, “you may as well have something to read while you’re on call.” He hands Jack a copy of The Works of Our Ancient and Learned English Poet, Geoffrey Chaucer. “I find Chaucer’s good for focusing the mind on what matters. I hope you’ll forgive me, Jack, if it happens that I occasionally take his counsel over yours. Who shall tellen a tale after a man / He mote rehearse as nigh as ever he can / Everich word, if it be in his charge, / All speak he never so rudely ne large: / Or else he mote tellen his tale untrue. That’s good advice, I reckon. There’s a truth you've got to be faithful to, even if you’re writing words for men and women who never were.”
“But don’t let Chaucer knock you cross-eyed,” Robin advises. “Tweye hundred years agoon, they ne speaken good English, and nuther woll ye if ye readen too much of ye tales of Canterbury. Look what it did to poor Spenser, and be warned.”
The pair of them go back to their work, and Jack opens the volume of Chaucer, somewhat at random, to the Doctor of Physick’s Tale.
He reads the story of Appius and Virginia all the way through, and before he reaches the end of it he can see Virginia in his mind: seized by agents of the corrupt judge as she goes to the market one day. She is not very frightened, at first, though they are brutal. She has always believed herself to be a freeborn daughter of Rome. Believed that the law will protect her. It’s afterward, when she finds herself trapped in a spider-web of falsehood and lust, that she discovers none of it matters, that the only way out is death. (Jack hopes it was her idea that she should die and not her father’s, although that’s not how Chaucer tells the story.)
He had better get it down on paper, he thinks, because he’s had this experience before. You see (and hear) a scene in your head as plain as if it were played upon a stage, but if you don’t write it straightaway, it vanishes as clouds do in a summer sky.
Well, there is plenty of paper here, and quills and ink. Will and Robin are industriously working their way through the King’s Men’s playscripts, here and there crossing out a word and writing in a new one. They don’t seem to be wanting his advice much; they have, he thinks, already worked out what course they will steer. He reaches for a pen.
Ignoble villain,
I am as free as the best king or consul
Since Romulus. What dost thou mean? Unhand me...
Will’s voice cuts into his thoughts. “Found yourself some occupation?”
“An idle thing only,” says Jack, because this certainly isn’t the comedy he’s supposed to be writing.
“I’ve got a new question for you. What about pretend-swearing, like, for example, by Gis or by cock?”
“Under the terms of this law,” says Robin, doing a fairly good imitation of Jack in legal-advice mode, “that would seem to depend on whether you make a god of your cock or not. Do you?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” says Will. “Well, half-of-everyone.”
“Quite right,” says Robin, “only the ladies make a god out of mine. Yours, I’ve never been sure about.”
Will looks at him in some puzzlement, and remarks to Jack, “Don’t get in a battle of wits with him, he’ll cap you every time. Now, as to my question –”
“Not actually the name of God. Permissible.”
“Oh, good.” Will and Robin turn back to their work, occasionally pausing to discuss a line, and Jack helps himself to another leaf of paper. He can see and hear Appius, too: consulting with his most trusted advisor, who tells him how to commit an assault by form of law.
The business is, t’ave warrants by arrest
To answer such things at the judgment bar
As can be laid against her; ere her friends
Can be assembled, ere herself can study
To answer or scarce know her cause of summons
To descant on the matter, Appius may
Examine, try, and doom Virginia.
But all this must be sudden.
Jack grows absorbed in the scene, writing much faster than he usually does. He’s almost forgotten about the task he was hired to do, and then Dick Burbage shows up to complicate matters.
* * *
“Mother’s sent you some strawberry tarts. And a few pasties. The ones at this end of the basket are codfish-and-peas, and the others are cheese-and-onion.”
“Friday pasties on a Thursday?” asks Robin. “What a singular honor. Tell your mother thanks.”
“Hot out of the oven. Be careful with the cheese ones.”
Will helps himself to a pasty and breaks off a corner, allowing the filling to cool. Jack reaches for one of the strawberry tarts before Dick can scoff up all of them.
“How are you getting on?” Dick asks. “Are we going to have anything to play next week that isn’t set in pagan times?”
“Just about done with Twelfth Night, getting to work on Hamlet. Have a look.” Will hands Dick the page he’s been working on. “Mostly, you just need to remember to say ‘heaven’ a lot. Jack thinks that’s enough to cover us.”
“Oh, heaven, a beast that wants discourse of reason would have mourned longer. Fine-fine. But this doesn’t work. Oh heaven, how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world! You hear why it doesn’t work.”
“I do,” Will acknowledges, “but what are you proposing to do about it? Oh, Jove, Jove! isn’t any good either, and Jupiter! doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“Oh, God! God! Like it’s always been.” Dick rests his hands on his hips and looks at Will defiantly. “Cuthbert reckons it’s the actor who pays, and Jack said the same when we asked him. So, on my own head be it.”
“I’m not absolutely sure –” says Jack, and stops, because the truth is that he’s a poet first and a man of law second, and Dick is right about that line. It needs the clash of harsh consonants, the repetition, calling and calling on a God who doesn’t answer. “I think,” he says, “that you might be able to make the case that it’s prayer and not profanity.”
“Well, says Dick, “whether we can or we can’t, I do have ten pounds that I’m willing to hazard.”
“You’ll have no money at all,” says Will, “if you keep throwing it away over principles.”
“I doubt it’ll come to that. Someone has to make a complaint first. And I believe I can make them not complain.”
Will gives him a look.
“Ha! You think I flatter myself too much? How about a side bet?”
Will shakes his head.
“Think of it this way. Until we try it, we don’t know what we can and can’t get away with. And until we do know, we’re forever going to be running away from painted lions and bears. And I don’t know anyone better positioned to try the experiment than I am, although if one of you fellows wants to volunteer...”
“Godspeed,” says Will.
“Is that profanity?” asks Robin.
“It’s a prayer.”
* * *
“What you’re working on – that looks rather long to be an idle thing only.” It’s just the two of them now, Will and Jack, the others having gone home. Will shows every sign of planning to work all night by candlelight.
“It might be turning into something,” says Jack. “It’s about Appius and Virginia.”
“May I see?”
Jack hesitates for a moment, then lifts his hand so that Will can read what he has written.
O my dear lord and father, once you gave me
A noble freedom; do not see it lost
Without a forfeit. Take the life you gave me
And sacrifice it rather to the gods
Than to a villain’s lust...
“Has it crossed your mind,” Will asks him after a moment, “that your Muse might favor tragedy over comedy?”
“Ben says don’t even bother with tragedy,” says Jack. “He says it’ll break your heart once when you write it, and again when it’s performed, and at the end of the day the people won’t heed the lessons they were supposed to learn from it.”
“Well – perhaps that’s good counsel. For Ben. That doesn’t mean it’s a universal law, or that it’s the right advice for you.” Will sets the candle down, closer to Jack than it was before. “Keep working on that one. I reckon we’ll be able to use a few more pagan tragedies. Always presuming, of course, that we haven’t been fined into oblivion.”
Jack wants to reassure him, but he’s not sure he’s right; he’s not sure any of what he’s told them will turn out to be right. Not because he doesn’t understand the plain text of the law, or even its intent, but because he isn’t sure which way the winds are blowing: whether this is a sop thrown to keep the Puritans quiet, or the first of many demands that will confine players and poets within narrower and narrower bounds. He thinks this is a feeling he wants to put into his Appius-and-Virginia play as well, and a line of verse comes at once into his mind: Where are we, in a mist, or is this hell?
He reaches for his pen. He writes. Because that’s what poets do for as long as they have light enough to write by, and sometimes even when they haven’t.