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.
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(BEESTON opens the First Folio. HARRY enters)
HARRY
(speaking out front, as if to SHAKESPEARE) I know thee not old man. Fall to thy prayers:
How ill white hairs become a fool and jester!
I have long dreamed of such a kind of man,
So surfeit-swell’d, so old and so prophane:
But, being awake, I do despise my dream.
Make less thy body (hence) and more thy grace,
Leave gourmandising: know the grave doth gape
For thee thrice wider than for other men.
Reply not to me with a fool-borne jest.
Presume not that I am the thing I was,
For heaven doth know (so shall the world perceive)
That I have turn’d away my former self,
So will I those that kept me company.
(HARRY exits)
BEESTON
Now Will had lost two sons and his unexpressed grief came flooding back. From a decade before….
(SHAKESPEARE enters, dressed in black again, holding his dead, eleven year old son, HAMNET, in his arms)
SHAKESPEARE
Howl, howl, howl, howl. O you are men of stones!
Had I your tongues and eyes I’d use them so
That heaven’s vault should crack! He’s gone for ever…
I know when one is dead and when one lives…
He’s dead as earth…..No, no, no life….
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life
And thou no breath at all? Thou’lt come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never….
(SHAKESPEARE, if possible, hurls the body of his son into the air. It disappears. Otherwise he takes it off stage)
BEESTON
Grief hardened into sexual disgust…
SHAKESPEARE
Th’expence of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
(Spirits – of indeterminate sex – enter and make violent love to one another, acting pout the words of the Sonnet)
Is perjur’d, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so,
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
(The Spirits wail and vanish)
Before a joy proposed, behind a dream…..
He’s mad that trusts in the tameness of a wolf, a whore’s oath or a boy’s love….
BEESTON
(Putting the painting of HARRY in drag onto the easel)
Disgust hardened into hatred. Will had promised Harry the certainty of immortality. Now he promises him the certainty of death…
SHAKESPEARE
(Staring at the painting of HARRY) O thou my (bitterly sarcastic) lovely boy who in thy power
Dost hold Time’s fickle glass his sickle hour,
Who hast by waning grown…..
(HARRY walks across the stage with his new-born baby son in his arms)
…..and therein show’st
Thy lover withering….
(SHAKESPEARE points to baby)
…..as thy sweet self grow’st…..
(HARRY fondles the baby – then exits)
If nature, sovereign mistress over wrack,
As thou goest onwards still will pluck thee back,
She keeps thee to this purpose that her skill
May time disgrace, and wretched minutes kill.
(SHAKESPEARE takes the painting of HARRY in his hands) Yet fear her, o thou minion of her pleasure:
She may detain, but not still keep her treasure!
Her audit, though delayed, answered must be,
And her quietus is to render thee….
(SHAKESPEARE smashes the painting to pieces and exits…)
BEESTON
Hate hardened into revenge….
(THOMAS THORPE, a printer, enters and sits at a table, proof-reading and correcting. Enter SHAKESPEARE with 154 separate sheets of paper which he plonks down)
SHAKESPEARE
Tom, I want you to publish these.
TOM
(Continuing to proof-read and correct) Are you selling by the pound?
SHAKESPEARE
One hundred and fifty four sonnets…
TOM
Not for me, Will. Sonnets don’t sell. People don’t like them….
SHAKESPEARE
But they’re by ME!
TOM
(Tom becomes interested and stops correcting) And you’ll put your name to them?
SHAKESPEARE
I’ll be proud to….
TOM
(looking them over with a quick, practised eye) Some of these are a bit hot. You’ll be changing the ‘he’s’ to ‘she’s’….?
SHAKESPEARE
No…
TOM
Narrows the market….
SHAKESPEARE
Not in Southwark it doesn’t…. I’ll pay for publication myself!
TOM
And what about libel? I don’t want Southampton’s thugs smashing up my press…
SHAKESPEARE
I won’t dedicate the book to the Earl of Southampton….
TOM
Well that’s a relief….
SHAKESPEARE
No. I’ll dedicate it to Mr. Henry Wriothesley – remind him of his time in the Tower…
TOM
Are you insane?
SHAKESPEARE
Well, Mr. H. W. then….
TOM
(Sarcastically) Impenetrable code….
SHAKESPEARE
Look Tom, I want everyone to know it’s him….
TOM
How about Mr. W. H.….?
SHAKESPEARE
Would you publish if I agree?
TOM
(Looking at the Sonnets and realising they are masterpieces) I will, Will, I will…
SHAKESPEARE
(SHAKESPEARE rises to go. Then remembers) Oh there’s another poem I’d like to go at the end – A Lover’s Complaint…
(SHAKESPEARE hands TOM another manuscript)
TOM
(Suspicious) What’s this one about?
SHAKESPEARE
Relax, Tom. It’s about a woman….She is seduced by a vain, psychotic, lover who abandons her….
TOM
Spare me tragedy, Will. We can’t give tragedy away….
SHAKESPEARE
But by the end she realises that her experience was wonderful… that, despite her suffering, she’d go through the whole affair again…
TOM
In other words, Will Shakespeare in drag…(Thinks about it – then sees a great marketing opportunity) King James will LOVE it! He’ll buy the whole run!
(Smiles and shakes SHAKESPEARE’S hand. Both exit)
TO READ EPISODE NINE, PLEASE CLICK: HERE.
The Shakespeare Code 
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