Folio

In the UK, everywhere is currently full of William Shakespeare.  I read that 400 years had passed since the publication of the bard’s First Folio and I wrote this.  Just silly really and, I am quite happy to admit, a little bit childish.  It’s been that kind of week…

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE SITS AT HIS DESK, QUILL IN HAND, DEEP IN THOUGHT.  THERE IS A KNOCK AT THE DOOR.

SHAKESPEARE             Anne!  Anne!  Forsooth, where is she.  Down at ye bingo again I shouldn’t wonder.  Yeah, loathe that I am to break this tragic muse, I must away to answer the door, forsooth….. again.

HE OPENS THE DOOR.  FRANCIS BACON ENTERS.

SHAKESPEARE             Aah, Bacon.

BACON                       Shakespeare.  It is not usual for you to answer your own door.  Where is your wife?

SHAKESPEARE             Anne Hathaway.

BACON                       Yes, that’s the one.

SHAKESPEARE             No, Anne hath away to ye bingo.  Come in my friend, take a pew.

BACON                       Don’t mind if I do.

SHAKESPEARE             I would offer you a coffee, but I’m not entirely certain whether Raleigh’s invented it yet.

BACON                       No matter.  Tell me, fellow Bard, why dids’t thou sumonnest me to thy humble abode this fine frost-scarred morn….. forsooth.

SHAKESPEARE             It is ye writer’s block, Bacon.  I’ve not written a decent sonnet since Wednesday and I’m getting nowhere with my new play ‘Hamlet’

BACON                       Is that the one about the Frenchman?

SHAKESPEARE             No, Danish, Bacon.

BACON COLLAPSES IN LAUGHTER.

BACON                       Oh verily, that’s a good one.  A real side-splitter is that.  I should put it in your next comedy

SHAKESPEARE             Comedy?  I’ve never thought about doing a comedy.  How do they go then?

BACON                       Well, they usually start off with a pair of identical twins and they have very similar names.  One of them has to dress up as a man to get a job, but then she falls in love with her boss and eventually, after lots of high jinks and good old-fashioned belly laughs occasioned by this subtle subterfuge she has to reveal her true self to him.

SHAKESPEARE             That’s it?

BACON                       Always.

SHAKESPEARE             No custard pies?

BACON                       Ye gads, no.  Besides, Raleigh’s not come back with the recipe for custard yet, has he?

SHAKESPEARE             I could give it a bash I suppose.  Perhaps I could adapt one of my old ones.  What about this one; ‘Romeo and Juliet’

BACON                       Good title, not very comic though.  What about ‘Carry On Romeo and Juliet’….. ‘Capulet’s World’….. ‘Venetians Behaving Badly’?

SHAKESPEARE             No, I prefer my title.

BACON                       What You Will.

SHAKESPEARE             That’s it!  That’s it!  Perfect!  I’ll start it straight away.  I’ll change the plot though.  I’ve only got male actor’s you know and they make lousy women.  Besides, I’ve got a blinding first line.  What do you think of this?  “If music be the food of love, play on, that surfeiting the appetite may sicken and so die.”

BACON                       Erh…..

SHAKESPEARE             Well?

BACON                       It’s not very….. you know….. is it?

SHAKESPEARE             What?

BACON                       Well, it’s not funny is it?

SHAKESPEARE             Funny?

BACON                       Funny, comedies are supposed to be funny.

SHAKESPEARE             They are?

BACON NODS

SHAKESPEARE             All the way through?

BACON NODS AGAIN

SHAKESPEARE             How do you do that then, without custard pies I mean?

BACON                       You tell jokes.

SHAKESPEARE             Jokes?

BACON                       You know, like why did the chicken cross the road?

SHAKESPEARE             Chicken?  Has Raleigh brought them back yet?

BACON Look, this is not going to work. Why don’t you go back to that one you were working on when I came around the other day. The Scottish one. I’d shorten it a bit though. You know what they say, ‘Brevity is the soul of wit’.

SHAKESPEARE             Do they?

BACON                       I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere…  Anyway, you must do something, Will.  Nothing will come of nothing.

THE DOOR OPENS.  ANNE HATHAWAY ENTERS.

BACON                       Anne.

ANNE                         Bacon, here again?

BACON                       Aye, he haveth ye writer’s block again.

ANNE                         I cannot think why he calls for you.  He is a genius after all.  Why should he need you to help him?

BACON                       The lady protests too much, methinks.

A DOG BARKS

ANNE                         (Shouts) Out, Damn’d Spot.

SHE STARTS TO TIDY SHAKESPEARE’S DESK.

ANNE                         Honestly, the very idea that he should need help.

SHE PICKS UP A PAPER KNIFE.

ANNE                         Is this a dagger I see before me, the handle toward my hand?

DISPIRITED, BACON EXITS, THE OPEN DOOR CASTING LIGHT ACROSS THE ROOM.

ANNE                         Soft, what light through yonder window breaks?

SHAKESPEARE             It’s a door, actually.

ANNE                         Trust me, go for window.

FADE TO BLACK