Anthony Burgess - Enderby's Dark Lady

"That," said Anne, "is the foul sin of presumption." Jack Hall was now back with them, listening to his father-in-law rave, grow quiet, rave again: infallible symptoms.

"My name I mean, my name. My son, poor little Hamnet, dead. And the name Shakespeare dishonoured in its own town and soon to die out along with the poor parchments that put innocent words in the mouths of players." Jack Hall shook his head slightly: self-pity too perhaps a symptom. "Wait," Will cried. "Do not leave. I, your king, lord of this disaffected small commonweal, do order you to wait. Wait." And he sailed back to the study, galley pennants flying, and took the forty-sixth psalm out of the bundle. He sat to it, calling "Wait wait" as he dipped quill in ink and counted. Forty-six words from the beginning, then. It would do, the change improved not marred. He crossed out the word and put another large in the margin. He then, ignoring the cry or cadence Selah at the bottom, counted forty-six words from the end, felt awe at the miracle that this forty-sixth word too could be changed for the better, or certainly not for the worse, by the neat mark of deletion and the new word writ clear and large in the margin. "Wait," he cried. Then he was there to show them.

Anne's jaw dropped as in death. Susannah, whose sight was dim, squinnied at the thing he had done. Jack Hall said, "This is also a -," and then kept his peace.

"You see, you see? To do this I have the right. I am not without right, do you see? Now another thing. On Sunday I will read this out in the church, aye, in Trinity Church during matins will I, and eke at evensong if I am minded to do it. For I am a lay rector. Not without right. And I have a voice that will fill the church to the rafters, not the piping nose-song of your scrawny unlay rector, do you hear me? Non sanz droict, which is the Shakespeare motto, and the name too shall prevail as long as the word of the Lord. Now, mistress," he said to Anne, "I would have supper served, and quickly." Then he strode out to stand beneath his mulberry tree, granting her no time to rail.

On Sunday morning he stood, every inch a Christian gentleman in his neat London finery, on the altar steps of Trinity Church. Family, neighbours, the scowling brethren, shopkeepers, nosepicking children filled the pews. His voice, the voice of an actor, rose clear and strong:

"This Sunday you are to hear not the Lesson appointed for the day but the word of the Lord God in a form you do not know. Next year you will know it, for it is His Majesty King James's new Bible. But now you have this for the first time on any stage, I would say any altar. The word of the Lord. The forty-sixth psalm of King David." He read from the galley expressively, an actor, clear, loud, without strain, so that all attended as they were in a playhouse and not in the house of God:

"God is our refuge and strength: a very present helpe in

trouble. Therefore will not we feare, though the earth be

removed: and though the mountaines be carried into the

midst of the sea. Though the waters thereof roare and be

troubled, though the mountaines tremble SHAKE with the

swelling thereof. Selah.

There is a river, the streames whereof shall make glad the

citie of God: the holy place of the Tabernacles of the most

High. God is in the midst of her: she shal not be mooved;

God shall helpe her, and that right early.

The heathen raged, the kingdomes were mooved: he uttered

his voyce, the earth melted. The Lord of hosts is with us;

the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

Come, behold the workes of the Lord, what desolations hee

hath made in the earth. He maketh warres to cease unto the

end of the earth: hee breaketh the bow, and cutteth the

sword SPEARE in sunder, he burneth the chariot in the fire.

Be stil, and know that I am God: I will bee exalted among the

heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is

with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah."

He ceased, looked fearlessly on them all, then stepped down, with an actor's grace, to return to his pew. One man at the back, forgetting where he was, began to applaud but was quickly hushed. Before Will arrived at his seat, Judith said to her mother:

"I wonder that God has not struck him down."

"Wait," Anne said grimly. "The Lord does things in his own good time. Fear not, the Lord will repay." Will sat down next to her. Then, having looked on her and Judith and Susannah and Jack Hall and Mrs Hart his sister with a peculiar lingering hardness, he knelt and prayed. He prayed long and with evident sincerity, so that his wife grew tight-mouthed with suspicion. Then he got up, looking much refreshed, sat down and waited till the dull long sermon was finished. Then he said very clearly to Anne and, indeed, to any on the pew that would hear:

"I am minded to turn papist."

"God forgive you. Keep your voice down. This is not place nor time for atheistical japes."

"I will turn papist." He tasted the term gently then gently spat it out: tpt. "I will not say that. It is a word of contempt. More, it puts overmuch emphasis on the Pope of Rome. It is the faith that matters."

"Be quiet," she said in quiet fury. The service was continuing, and eyes were on Will, ears striving to pick up his words.

"Catholic," he said. Then he said no more. She remained tight-lipped. He did not speak of the matter again in the two days more he remained in Stratford.

When Ben Jonson was let out of jail he went straight to William Shakespeare's lodgings in Silver Street. Before he could say aught of going out to drink, Will said:

"I have writ this new play. It is called November the Fifth, but Burbage will doubtless change the title as he always does. It is based on Gunpowder Plot."

Ben sat down carefully on a delicate French chair. "It is based on -"

"Gunpowder Plot. There is a king that is a fool and an ingrate. He believes that God exists but to confirm the holiness of his kingship. Conspirators led by a poet seek to destroy him for his blasphemy."

"A poet?

"I had you much in my mind there. Not a very good poet and most apt for meddling in state matters. His name is Vitellius. Here is one of his speeches. Listen."

"No," Ben said. "Let me read instead." He looked at the fair copy that was also the first draft and read to himself:

Conserve agst ye putrifyinge feende

The fathe yt fedde oure fathers, quite put doune

His incarnacioun in thes worst of tymes,

Casting hys hedde discoronate to ye dogges.

Then he said: "They will not let you. This will be construed as present treason."

"I am sick of it all," Will said. "The black bastards of Puritans in Stratford that will have nothing but grimness, and a church that is the lapdog of a slobbering king and no king. My father died quietly in the old faith, I will die more noisily in it."

"Have you spoke of this yet to any?"

"To my lord Cecil, aye, and he said he needed no more spies aping to be papists to dig out popish plots. I have said it to many, but none will take it that I mean what I say. It is part of the peril of being a player, that all one says is thought to be but acting."

Ben said, "The great work is now in page proof. They expect it to be out in the new year."

"What is all this to do with what I said?"

"The forty-sixth psalm has shake and speare in it."

"That is not possible. None would have it, this I knew. It would be seen as bombastic and overweening."

"Tillotson, one of those charged with the overseeing of our emendations, said that the two words came nearer to the original than what they formerly had."

"That is not possible."

"He had never, I could see," and Ben smiled sweetly, "heard of the name Shakespeare."

"Let us," said Will, "go and drink."