Being the True Account of the Life of William Shakespeare, performed by Mr. William Beeston, Gent., and his Troop of Alchemical Spirits, at Posbrook Farm, Titchfield, Hampshire, in the Year of Our Lord, 1623.
TO READ EPISODE ONE , PLEASE CLICK: HERE
TO READ MORE ABOUT SHAKESPEARE THE PLAY PLEASE CLICK: HERE.
EPISODE TWO
BEESTON
Will had to get out of town and the place to go was London. He wanted to be a writer and the City was full of them. Some of them were friendly to him, like ‘mighty’ Kit Marlowe….
(Enter MARLOWE, smoking a long clay pipe, with a HANDSOME YOUNG MAN on his arm….
….who openly declared that….
MARLOWE
All they that love not tobacco and boys be fools…..
(Enter YOUNG SHAKESPEARE, now with small, stylish moustache and beard. MARLOWE draws on his pipe and gives it to YOUNG SHAKESPEARE. YOUNG SHAKESPEARE draws on the pipe and chokes. MARLOWE takes back the pipe and offers SHAKESPEARE the HANDSOME YOUNG MAN instead)
YOUNG SHAKESPEARE
(Still choking from the tobacco) Pass….
(ALL EXIT)
BEESTON
Other writers, like Robert Greene and Thomas Nashe, were not friendly at all….
NASHE AND GREENE
(Entering by trapdoor, standing arm in arm, Little and Large)
How dare this Will Shakespeare set up as a poet…
He’s a grammar school oik and we’ll make him know it!
NASHE (light tenor voice)
His voice is a screech….
GREENE (Basso profundo)
And his background is lowly…..
NASHE AND GREENE
And he’s taught how to write by the mad Robert Crowley….
(EXIT via trapdoor)
BEESTON
Robert Crowley was the vicar of St. Giles, Cripplegate. (BEESTON puts on a surplice) Sir Thomas Lucy was still hot on Will’s trail…..And when Lucy went to London, he worshipped at St. Giles. Best to get the vicar on your side….(BEESTON kneels in prayer) Even if he is mad….
(BEESTON becomes CROWLEY, a violent anti-Papist who keeps trying to be tolerant. He finishes his prayer, takes off his surplice, looks around then jumps up and down on it, with his feet together, as though he were killing a living thing)
CROWLEY/BEESTON
(With full ecclesiastical voice) Satan’s sinful surplice….
(YOUNG SHAKESPEARE enters)
The Devil’s direful dress…..
Old Nick’s nasty night-gown…
Beelzebub’s…..
(CROWLEY/BEESTON can’t think of anything to go with ‘Beelzebub’ so he stops)
YOUNG SHAKESPEARE
I’m sorry, father, is this a bad time?
(CROWLEY/BEESTON looks round at SHAKESPEARE)
CROWLEY/BEESTON
No, Will. It’s a very good time! POPERY HAS POOPED! (Trying to calm down) As you can see, Will, I’m opposed to the clergy wearing vestments of any kind. (Getting over-excited again) IT REEKS OF ROME!… (Trying to calm down again, he holds up some sheets of paper) Now this ballad of yours…how would you feel about if you were Sir Thomas Lucy?
YOUNG SHAKESPEARE
But I’m not Sir Thomas Lucy….I don’t have his penchant for genital mutilation…
CROWLEY/BEESTON
Will, it’s your job as a writer to empathise with everyone. You have to imagine, for example, what it’s like to be poor….
YOUNG SHAKESPEARE
But I AM poor!
CROWLEY/BEESTON
(ignoring him)…and to imagine what it’s like to be rich. If everyone did that, the rich would give everything they had to the poor…
YOUNG SHAKESPEARE
Then the poor would give it back….
CROWLEY/BEESTON
Look, Will, I’ll get Lucy off your back, but I’ll want something in return….
YOUNG SHAKESPEARE
Of course….
(YOUNG SHAKESPEARE gets out a bag of coins. CROWLEY/BEESTON grabs them, goes to the window and flings them outside)
CROWLEY/BEESTON
(To people outside) Come and get it! (To YOUNG SHAKESPEARE, who is standing aghast) Isn’t redistribution of wealth a wonderful thing? It’s not your money I want, Will. It’s your soul…I want you to travel the length and breadth of England, spreading the word of the Gospel… (YOUNG SHAKESPEARE looks crest-fallen)…WITH ACTORS AND PLAYS….
YOUNG SHAKESPEARE
(Suddenly excited) Now you’re talking, Proddie Bob!
(YOUNG SHAKESPEARE claps CROWLEY/BEESTON violently on the shoulders. BEESTON becomes BEESTON again)
BEESTON
(Resuming his normal voice) You overstep the mark, young Spirit!
(BEESTON blows a whistle and orders YOUNG SHAKESPEARE off – like a soccer referee with an errant player)
BEESTON
(Resuming his pleasant manner) Will formed a company, but the only actors he could get were failed, alcoholic tradesmen. They toured the Midlands, dragging a cart full of props and costumes behind them. Often there were very few in the audience. Sometimes there was only one….
(Lights up on the single seated member of the audience, clapping the players we presume to be out front)
MIDLANDS GENTLEMAN
Bravo! Bravo! (Looking off stage) A friend of mine’s just turned up. Would you mind doing it all again?
(EXIT)
BEESTON
Then disaster struck the acting profession. The Spanish Armada attacked England. Actors were despised. The public wanted ‘real men’. Playwrights pulled strings to get teaching jobs. Will, aged by touring and with his hair starting to fall out, pulled Papist strings….
(Enter MARY, COUNTESS OF SOUTHAMPTON, early middle aged and beautiful. ….
…..She shows the OLDER SHAKESPEARE a painting of the 2nd Earl of Southampton, which is presumed to be out front. SHAKESPEARE, at this stage of his life, is still thin)
MARY
And this, Master Shakespeare, is my late husband, the second Earl of Southampton. If you are to become tutor to my son, you must be aware of the facts, however painful. The second Earl was a fine Catholic: he fought to bring the Blessed Mary Queen of Scots to the English throne. (MARY and SHAKESPEARE cross themselves) He was imprisoned in the Tower and nearly lost his head. However, as a husband he was….unappreciative. He accused me, quite insanely, of falling in love with a common person…(Looking SHAKESPEARE, discreetly, up and down)…I can see you’ll be needing some new clothes….
And an allowance…(Recovering herself – she is clearly taken with SHAKESPEARE) My husband snatched my young son, Harry, away. He turned his manservant into his wife and left him everything. I overturned the will, of course, but could not overturn the damage done to Harry….
(BEESTON holds up a painting of Henry Wriothesley in drag which MARY and SHAKESPEARE look at)
As you can see, he loves dressing up as a girl. Other than that, has no interest in women whatsoever. This, Master Shakespeare, is where you come in. (SHAKESPEARE looks startled) You are a married man with children. I want you to get Harry excited by the idea of fatherhood. Unless he marries, the Southampton line will die out…Soon it will be Harry’s seventeenth birthday… I want you to write seventeen sonnets to show him the joys of the opposite sex. I want you to ‘turn the vessel round’ as it were….Wait here….(MARY exits)
SHAKESPEARE
(To himself) Sonnets? Aaaagh! (MARY re-enters)
MARY (announcing)
Master Shakespeare, my son, Henry Wriothesley, the third Earl of Southampton and Baron of Titchfield….[‘Wriothesley’ is pronounced ‘Ryosely’]
(SHAKESPEARE kneels as HARRY enters to trumpets and drums. HARRY, a handsome young man with shoulder length hair, offers SHAKESPEARE his ring to kiss. SHAKESPEARE does so, then looks up into HARRY’S face)
MARY
(in all innocence) I’m sure you two will get on like a house on fire….
(SHAKESPEARE and HARRY exit swiftly down the trapdoor…..)
TO READ EPISODE THREE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.
The Shakespeare Code 
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