Anthony Burgess - Enderby's Dark Lady

"You got that from -"

"Never mind where I got it. The rebellion's because she wants to be queen. She only gets to be queen in Shakespeare's dream. She becomes Cleopatra. When he's sick and losing his teeth and getting old, she drops him. But she's really his mooz."

"His what?"

"His inspiration. Fella, you have enough to be getting on with. But remember we don't have all that much time."

"Right," came, unurgently, from the floor.

"My title," Enderby said. With great reluctance he had to admit to a faint admiration for Toplady. Horribly blasphemous and obscene though it was, he seemed to know what he wanted.

"Your title is out. Who wants to see a musical called Whoever Hath Thy Will? There's a lot round here can't say th. I thought of Goats and Monkeys. You know where that comes from." He nodded up at a poster advertising his production of Othello, in which everybody in the blown-up photograph of turmoil on Cyprus seemed, except for Othello, who, in his general's uniform, looked like Patton, to be black. That's our working title, anyway. Something else may turn up. There's a room and a typewriter along there. You'd best get moving."

Enderby humbly obeyed, or at least got out of there. Silversmith said: "Your first lyric is the Tomorrow and Tomorrow one. Get it finished today."

In the dark bar of the Holiday Inn, whisky sour before him, Enderby wrote a lyric:

Give the people what they wish:

Something trite and tawdry,

Balladry and bawdry -

Give the people what they wish.

Give the groundlings what they crave:

Bombast and unreason,

Dog and bitch in season,

Prophecies of treason

Rising from the grave.

Pillaging and ravishing and burning,

Royal heads and maidenheads

Presented on a dish,

In a pie.

Let them eat their stinking fish -

What they find delicious

Soon will seem pernicious.

When the time's propitious

That diet will cloy,

They will come to enjoy

What I wish

What I wish

What Iiiiiiiiiiiiiii

Wish.

Let that bloody Silverlady or Topsmith try that one, see what his rhythmical sense was like. Enderby began to sketch the dialogue that followed. He preferred to work here than in the room they had given him. Too many people kept looking in to see how he was getting on. The mistress of Silvertop came twice to giggle. She was a thin long girl with red hair who was to play Queen Elizabeth. Enderby had set his scene in a brothel. Will in the dark with a spot on him while singing. Lights come up to disclose whores in undress. Henslowe with his account book. He frowns on Will and waves him away.

"State your requirements to the madam. She will be down anon."

"No no no. It is you I want. Or him there, your son-in-law. Master Alleyn, that is." For Ned Alleyn has appeared, putting his doublet on.

"I know you, I think," Henslowe says. "You owe me fourpence."

"I owe nothing, not to any man. Forgive my seeking you here. I have a play."

"Ah, sweet Jesus, will they never give up?"

"Listen. You may have it for nothing if it runs not more than three afternoons."

"A prodigy," Alleyn says. "He owes no money and he gives things away."

"Listen. I'll be brief. The scene is Rome. A barbarian empress is captured by the Romans but allowed her liberty. Hating the Romans nevertheless, she urges her sons to ravish a noble matron."

"Why?" Alleyn asks.

"A sort of revenge. Listen. The sons kill the matron's husband, then ravish her on her husband's dead body, which serves in manner of a bloody mattress. Then, that the wretched woman may not tell, they cut out her tongue."

"Go on. To hear costs nothing."

"That she may not write the names of her ravishers, they cut off her hands as well."

"Dirty stuff," says Henslowe. "Go on."

"But she takes a stick between her two stumps and then scratches her ravishers' names on the earth. Then her father avenges her."

"Ah" from both.

"He kills the sons and he grinds up their bones to a flour. With this he makes a coffin of pastry. The filling is the cooked flesh of the two sons."

"Indigestible," says Alleyn. "Let me see your script."

"More indigestible than Tyburn hangings and quarterings? Then he invites the mother to a cannibalistic feast. There is also a black villain that gets the Gothic empress with child – a black child."

" 'He cuts their throats – He kills her – He stabs the empress – He stabs Titus – He stabs Saturninus -'." Alleyn riffles through.

"And the Moor, a sort of black Machiavelli, he is buried up to his waist and left to starve."

"Delectable," says Alleyn, and he declaims:

"Ah, why should wrath be mute and fury dumb?

I am no baby, I, that with base prayers

I should repent the evils I have done.

Ten thousand worse than ever yet I did

Would I perform, if I might have my will.

If one good deed in all my life I did,

I do repent it from my very soul."

So then the lights go out on that side of the stage, and on the other side the lights go up, those same final words of Aaron the Moor sounding again through the theatre, electronic blessing, as a ballet of slabbers and ravishers and poisoners prances to a music of screams and groans. Boys carrying publicity posters – HENRY VI I II amp; III – RICHARD III – thread through the dancers while Will, downstage centre, repeats his song. He makes way for Alleyn as Richard Crookback, who delivers a bloody speech. Lights go up on previously darkened segment to show the Dark Lady with her duenna, rich brown flesh and diamonds and crimson brocade, watching and listening intently. A note is passed to Alleyn as he exits. All this might do very well. Enderby stopped scribbling on his yellow legal pad. If they could get somebody to do better let them bloody well get on with it. He raised his empty glass to himself and also to the shortskirted blonde matron who was waiting on. He deserved another of those.

He had, he had to confess, given in to those two in some measure. The travelstained Warwickshire yokel, snotnosed son held by the hand, gawking in a London street. Growling bear led off to its baiting. A severed head or two gawking back at Will from gatespikes. Bosom-showing wenches. Hucksters. A bit like a dirtied-up opening for Dick Whittington. And then Will sings to Hamnet:

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow -

That makes three.

The first tomorrow is for me.

The second tomorrow – we.

The third tomorrow – thee.

I start with my poetic fame,

I then restore the family name,

And last of all I see

Thee -

Sir Hamnet, Lord Hamnet

The day after the day after tomorrow.

I pledge that these things shall be.

Terrible, but the music was terrible. Henslowe follows his growling bear. Will follows Henslowe. Good idea: Hamnet, left outside the brothel, finds his way in, seeing lust and bosoms. The beginning of his corruption. Two first scenes there in, as they said, the bag. The company could start rehearsing.

Enderby looked at his watch. Time to ask somebody at the front desk to seek him a taxi. He had to go to dinner at Mrs Schoenbaum's. Toplady, thank God, would not be there: there was a play on and he had to give his troupe confidence by glaring at them from the wings. The play was some libellous nonsense about the Salvation Army by a dead German named Brecht. Silversmith had taken a flying, literally, visit to New York to superintend what he called the pressing of an album, old-fashioned phrase recalling the crushing to death of flowers in young ladies' commonplace books.

He got a taxi with small difficulty. 1102 Sycamore Street. What's that number again, mister? The driver, a white man with Silversmith wire-wool hair, seemed to be, as they said here, stoned. He growled all the time like Henslowe's bear. 1102. Ain't never heard of that number. I can assure you it does exist. What's that you say, mister, and so on. There were no sycamores. Sumachs, rather, and a kind of hornbeam or carpinus betulus. The driver seemed dissatisfied with his tip. He looked at his ensilvered palm as though Enderby had spat into it.