"Believe you me, you will make yourselves bloody laughing-stocks. The title comes from -"
"Not even William Shakespeare is immune from censure. We have here a quorum, I think -"
"Some of them drunk."
"That is uncalled for -"
He had assuaged his misery and boredom by raging around the small office, uncleaned, unvisited, that had long before been allotted to him, switching on the typewriter and mostly ignoring its invitatory hum, thus vindictively wasting the Peter Brook Theater's electricity, but also occasionally adding a pecked line to a formless poem he was allowing to accumulate, its theme Caesar (he, Enderby, unlaureled) and Cleopatra (she who these days uttered mostly a distracted Hi at him. Her dresser had arrived from New York, an Iras or Charmian of gross mammyish aspect who slept in the room next to Enderby's and laughed in her sleep).
Nor will this quadrate marble crush
Juice from the olive stone,
No slave philosopher enmesh
In marriage stone and moon.
By narrow moongate let me in,
Eased by the olive's gush.
He had had his chance, he could not deny it, but he had not wanted the chance, had he? Shakespeare would have understood, she not, never, either Dark Lady. Musing thus, he received a cold note ordering him to perform what seemed to be a final scriptorial office, namely to compose a kind of national anthem for Elizabethan England. He rattled off:
The babe's first breath
Is: Elizabeth.
The soldier's death
Is for Elizabeth.
Hail Gloriana, keep England our home
Safe from her enemies: Scotland and Ireland and France and Spain
and Muscovy and the Holy Roman Empire and, it goes totally
without saying, Rome.
Delivering it in an envelope (let them bloody well process that into something singable, the bastards) to the secretarial concourse, he had seen for the first time the presswet posters. ACTOR ON HIS ASS. Clever in a way. It could not be, though it was now being, considered obscene, since it was a citation from Hamlet, but its implication was totally vulgar. On a notice board he had read that the final dress rehearsal would be in the nature of a free performance for the schoolkids of Indianapolis and environs, three in the afternoon of 6 January, Twelfth Night if anyone was interested, and that in the evening there would be an obligatory party at the mansion of Mrs Schoenbaum. That party was in progress now. Enderby was having it out about the title with one of the board of governors of the theater trust, a hardware magnate named, it seemed, Humrig, retired and now, apparently, a full time churchwarden. He drank teetotal punch, which few others there did. Enderby said:
"Anyway, it's not my responsibility – either the title or your own wretched squeamishness. Ass is asinus, a donkey."
"You wrote the ah play."
"I wrote something. Whether that something is still there I can't say. I did not go to the dress rehearsal, though I heard lots of ill-behaved schoolchildren. They seemed to enjoy it. On their level."
Enderby turned his back on Mr Humrig and went to the improvised bar, which the mad son Philip and the grey black retainer were running together. "Gin," Enderby ordered. The mad son Philip whispered:
"I got this stuff spiked."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Smell it." A jug of murky orange liquid was raised to Enderby's nose and he got a whiff of surgical spirit.
"That," Enderby said, "could be dangerous."
"Shit to them. That guy there plays piano like shit."
He meant the haired répétiteur Coppola, who was crashing out what sounded like an atonal cancan, to which Toplady's ginger mistress and another girl pranced with raised skirts. "Gin," Enderby insisted. He observed April Elgar in a blazing scarlet directoire, from the look of it, nightdress talking earnestly to the black lad of the company, Sir Walter Raleigh for all Enderby knew, who counted points off on his fingers. Toplady sat glumly with talking elders on or in the deep couch. Enderby heard something about renewal of contract, probably nonrenewal. Toplady was perhaps for the chop for some reason, probably unconnected primarily with the ass business. Mrs Allegramente came up to Enderby and said:
"Leave the Irish alone."
"Only too glad," Enderby said, "to leave the murderous bastards alone. It's not my concern anyway. If you're so concerned get over to Belfast and have your kneecaps converted to Quaker Oats."
Mrs Schoenbaum did not seem happy about her party. She stood at an end of the room with the lawyer Elvin or Alvin or something, clad in black silk pyjamas with a gold caftan over, her hair, as previously, glued to a snapshot wuthering. She seemed ready for a cardiac arrest when two genuine Elizabethans entered, late and tanked up elsewhere – William Shakespeare and the Earl of Essex, both bearded, wigged, ruffed, jerkined, slashtrunked, hosed. Enderby too had a profound tremor until William Shakespeare spoke in the accent of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He cried:
"Greetings to ye all, let the nutbrown ale floweth, or, marry and egad, the iciclebythewalled martini." He noticed Enderby and added: "And all that sort of heynonnino shit." Enderby growled:
"Learn your Elizabethan grammar before you start mocking it. The accusative of ye is you. And a profound heynonnino to you, fleerer and bad actor."
"Do not," said Humrig the churchwarden, "use language of that sort in the presence of Mrs Schoenbaum."
"Shit," said the mad son Philip. "Shit shit shit."
"Philip," his mother said, "please."
"I wanna play the piano," Philip said, "and that guy there hogs it."
"Welcome," haired Coppola said, banging three Scriabinesque cacophonies and getting up with a low bow and an arm stretched in proffer. Philip drooled his way over and began to play something manic and unrecognizable. He cried:
"Dance! Dance!" Some obeyed. Enderby asked the grey black for more gin. Oldfellow Shakespeare was on to him now, saying:
"And what the fuck do you know about acting?"
"Enough to know that you're as much like Shakespeare as my arse or ass. And," he added, "your breath smells horrible." It did too. Perhaps that was the origin of sodomy: avoiding partner's halitosis. Enderby got away and over to a corner where Mrs Schoenbaum's daughter was leasing her bedroom for half an hour for five dollars. Toplady and the conferrers got up with difficulty from the deep boat of a couch. Toplady cried:
"Stop that row for a minute."
"Okay." Oldfellow had followed Enderby. "You try it, buster, that's all, you just try it."
"I speak English anyway," Enderby said, "and I know the lines."
The hands of Philip had been forcibly removed from the piano keys. Toplady cried: "A few words, friends. You've worked hard. We've all worked hard. Some not so hard as others, but let that pass. Tomorrow we open. Or rather tomorrow you open. My contract as Artistic Director of the Peter Brook Theater was due to end in March. By mutual agreement it ends as of now. Certain elements do not like the way I have been doing things. There's a feeling that I should have concentrated on ordure like Abie's Irish Rose or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I have not made the Peter Brook Theater a centre of entertainment. It is wrong apparently to take the drama seriously. Until my successor has been chosen things will be in the incapable hands of my sleeping assistant director Jed Tilbury. Bless some of you and fuck others. I go." He went. Some watched him go, others turned to look at this Jed Tilbury, who was the black lad enumerating points, though now no longer, to April Elgar. He cried: