Shakespeare Must Die Act 4 scs 3 & 4

Act 4 sc 3

1613. The Globe has burnt to the ground. King James and Ben Jonson walk in Whitehall.

Jonson - If it were done, it was best it were done quickly.

James - And so it was.

Jonson - The place, aye, but the man is more than eight walls and a thatched roof. The Globe will be the better for its rebuilding.

James - For certain it did stink in high summer.

Jonson - And so Will needs rebuilding, for his reputation has suffered much at the hands of these damn copiers.

James - And how?

Jonson - Your majesty, no man's reputation can be controlled, not even by himself, though it is to present and future ages that we truly dedicate our works.

James - And your works, though never so important as mine, do echo and celebrate my right to publish.

Jonson - As yours, so serene and learned, do lend authority to mine, be they never so mean and humble in aspect, but in assertion of my right to be considered author, they do follow in the wake of Soloman. But again I say, no man's reputation can be controlled while that man yet lives.

James - So control Shakespeare's. He has been dead these twenty years and more.

Jonson - But Shakespeare lives yet in his works, and since we ceased penning them, the clamour of the people for more grows unseemly.

James - I am done with these petty scribblings. I would that you find a way for him to take his leave of us.

Jonson - Then needs must he be murdered.

James - Murder? I will hear none on't.

Jonson - I mean simply that as we gave him life after death, so must we take it away.

James - We are in this at least demiurge.

Jonson - In this we are. There is naught else for it – Shakespeare must die!

 

Act 4 scene 4

1616. Bacon and Donne. Whitehall.

Donne – You look troubled, Sir Francis.

Bacon – It is just a touch of the gout, a mere trifling pain compared to the pain that awaits.

Donne – That awaits?

Bacon – If we be not saved, John.

Donne – But surely we … ah, so it is done?

Bacon – It is done, John.

Donne – It seems only just.

Bacon – That Will's greatest play should provide the text for his final resting?

Donne – And that his fate is more …

Bacon – Definite?

Donne – It is that. 'Oh, help us, heaven … here are Faustus' limbs all torn asunder by the hand of death'? Hardly the most subtill change.

Bacon – It's as well the author dies within the work as well as without.

Donne – Terminat hora diem, terminat Author opus.

Bacon – Will did rather overstay his welcome.

Donne – Aye. He lived on in books full twenty-four years after he burnt his.

Bacon – Bridges?

Donne – Aye, those. 

Bacon – Best we not conjure up worlds through spirits.

Donne – Though his worlds were conjured through spirits.

Bacon – Through spirits indeed, John, but benign ones, like Ariel. Through words.

Donne – And like Ariel we are to be released from our bondage. He was entrapped within a tree, like Myrhha, while we, we have bound ourselves to the word.

Bacon - Prisoners of the stage, every word set free upon it draws our bonds tighter.

Donne - But we may release Will with those same words that entrap us.

Bacon – We are servants to great king James, and may not follow that path without his leave; No more than he commands must we perform.

Donne – Did he not charge us to publish Will's ending?

Bacon – No, we publish'd of our own accord.

Donne – Did not his conjuring speeches deliver us there?

Bacon – That was the cause, but yet per accidens

Donne – Per accidens?

Bacon – Sometimes the matching of cause to effect is no simple matter, and the command is but a fingerpost that directs us towards our goal.

Donne – The bell does not always toll for thee, Francis.

Bacon – No, but the bell always tolls, John.

Donne – And now it tolls one last time for Will, though he would not have appreciated your depiction of the Pope.

Bacon – But it ensures that the King will not act upon us. I am not for the indexer's pen.

Donne – There will be no restraint, no damnation by words alone.

Bacon – No suggestion of collusion.

Donne – No devils other than Ben.

Bacon – Ben is certainly devil enough for anyone.

Donne – He was devil enough for Will.

Bacon – And yet it was the making of him …

Donne – Death, where is thy sting?