Short Plays

then, Shakespeare had a real grievance; and though it is a sentimental exaggeration to describe him as a brokenhearted man in the face of the passages of reckless jollity and serenely happy poetry in his latest plays, yet the discovery that his most serious work could reach success only when carried on the back of a very fascinating actor who was enormously overcharging his part, and that the serious plays which did not contain parts big enough to hold the overcharge were left on the shelf, amply accounts for the evident fact that Shakespeare did not end his life in a glow of enthusiastic satisfaction with mankind and with the theatre, which is all that Mr. Harris can allege in support of his broken-heart theory. But even if Shakespeare had had no failures, it was not possible for a man of his powers to observe the political and moral conduct of his contemporaries without perceiving that they were incapable of dealing with the problems raised by their own civilization, and that their attempts to carry out the codes of law and to practise the religions offered to them by great prophets and lawgivers were and still are so foolish that we now call for The Superman, virtually a new species, to rescue the world from mismanagement. This is the real sorrow of great men; and in the face of it the notion that when a great man speaks bitterly or looks melancholy he must be troubled by a disappointment in love seems to me sentimental trifling.

If I have carried the reader with me thus far, he will find that trivial as this little play of mine is, its sketch of Shakespeare is more complete than its levity suggests. Alas! its appeal for a National Theatre as a monument to Shakespeare failed to touch the very stupid people who cannot see that a National Theatre is worth having for the sake of the National Soul. I had unfortunately represented Shakespeare as treasuring and using (as I do myself) the jewels of unconsciously musical speech which common people utter and throw away every day; and this was taken as a disparagement of Shakespeare’s “originality.” Why was I born with such contemporaries? Why is Shakespeare made ridiculous by such a posterity?

Dramatis Personae

• A Beefeater

• William Shakespeare

• Queen Elizabeth

• The Dark Lady

The Dark Lady of the Sonnets

Fin de siècle 15⁠–⁠1600. Midsummer night on the terrace of the Palace at Whitehall, overlooking the Thames. The Palace clock chimes four quarters and strikes eleven.

	A Beefeater on guard. A Cloaked Man approaches.
The Beefeater	Stand. Who goes there? Give the word.
The Man	Marry! I cannot. I have clean forgotten it.
The Beefeater	Then cannot you pass here. What is your business? Who are you? Are you a true man?
The Man	Far from it, Master Warder. I am not the same man two days together: sometimes Adam, sometimes Benvolio, and anon the Ghost.
The Beefeater	Recoiling. A ghost! Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
The Man	Well said, Master Warder. With your leave I will set that down in writing; for I have a very poor and unhappy brain for remembrance. He takes out his tablets and writes. Methinks this is a good scene, with you on your lonely watch, and I approaching like a ghost in the moonlight. Stare not so amazedly at me; but mark what I say. I keep tryst here tonight with a dark lady. She promised to bribe the warder. I gave her the wherewithal: four tickets for the Globe Theatre.
The Beefeater	Plague on her! She gave me two only.
The Man	Detaching a tablet. My friend: present this tablet, and you will be welcomed at any time when the plays of Will Shakespeare are in hand. Bring your wife. Bring your friends. Bring the whole garrison. There is ever plenty of room.
The Beefeater	I care not for these newfangled plays. No man can understand a word of them. They are all talk. Will you not give me a pass for The Spanish Tragedy?
The Man	To see The Spanish Tragedy one pays, my friend. Here are the means. He gives him a piece of gold.
The Beefeater	Overwhelmed. Gold! Oh, sir, you are a better paymaster than your dark lady.
The Man	Women are thrifty, my friend.
The Beefeater	’Tis so, sir. And you have to consider that the most openhanded of us must e’en cheapen that which we buy every day. This lady has to make a present to a warder nigh every night of her life.
The Man	Turning pale. I’ll not believe it.
The Beefeater	Now you, sir, I dare be sworn, do not have an adventure like this twice in the year.
The Man	Villain: wouldst tell me that my dark lady hath ever done thus before? that she maketh occasions to meet other men?
The Beefeater	Now the Lord bless your innocence, sir, do you think you are the only pretty man in the world? A merry lady, sir: a warm bit of stuff. Go to: I’ll not see her pass a deceit on a gentleman that hath given me the first piece of gold I ever handled.
The Man	Master Warder: is it not a strange thing that we, knowing that all women are false, should be amazed to find our own particular drab no better than the rest?
The Beefeater	Not all, sir. Decent bodies, many of them.
The Man	Intolerantly. No. All false. All. If thou deny it, thou liest.
The Beefeater	You judge too much by the Court, sir. There, indeed, you may say of frailty that its name is woman.
The Man	Pulling out his tablets again. Prithee say that again: that about frailty: the strain of music.
The Beefeater	What strain of music, sir? I’m no musician, God knows.
The Man	There is music in your soul: many of your degree have it very notably. Writing. “Frailty: thy name is woman!” Repeating it affectionately. “Thy name is woman.”
The Beefeater	Well, sir, it