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."
4
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.
Enderby was let in by a muttering black man in a white jacket. Mrs Schoenbaum was there in the hallway to greet him. "Mr Elderly? We are so honoured," honored, really. Enderby shyly took in riches. Daubs on the walls which must be what were known as rich men's impressionists, cost millions. He knew that Mr Schoenbaum was dead from making money. Mrs Schoenbaum was clearly enjoying her widowhood. She wore a kind of harem dress of silk trousers and brocaded sort of cutdown caftan. Her silver hair was frozen into a photographed stormtossed effect, clicked into sempiternal tempestuousness on a Wuthering Heights of the American imagination. Her eyelids were gold-dusted and her lips white-lacquered. Her nose looked as though its natural butt had been surgically cut off. She took Enderby by the hand and led him into a salon with more daubs discreetly lighted. Enderby tottered and then recovered on bearskins laid on pine overpolished. "Whoops," Mrs Schoenbaum said, holding on to his hand. "I'm sure," she said, "you know nobody here." That was true. An evidently hired youth playing cocktail tripe on the Bechstein in a far corner sent over to Enderby a vulgar conspiratorial look. Enderby was introduced to two overweight men who got up from a couch as long as a barge with some difficulty. A middle-aged woman laden with beads did not, quite rightly, get up, but she fixed Enderby with eyes of hate. One overweight man was from the University of Indianapolis. The other seemed to be a lawyer or something shady of that kind. Enderby did not catch the names. "Mrs Allegramente," or something, said Mrs Schoenbaum, "has promised to demonstrate her powers for us after dinner." This Mrs Allegramente said, as Enderby boarded the couch and accepted a whisky with ice from the muttering black: