From “Hod”, a play about the career of Ben Jonson. A scene from act two.
(The Jonson household. Papers and baby clothing on the table. A small stove is giving off red
light. Washing, on a sagging clothes line, hangs across the kitchen. BEN and FLYTE are both
older.)
BEN (entering)
Come in, come in.
FLYTE (following)
We didn't want to bother.
BEN
Not at all, not at all. You are the new-?
CHAMBERLAIN (enters, shakes hands)
Understudy. Chamberlain, Frank.
BEN
Ah, the Chamberlain's man of all the Chamberlain's men.
FLYTE
Yes very funny. Can we sit?
BEN
Sit, sit. You want a coffee? Mol - can we have coffee?!
(Pause. Silence.)
I might make you some coffee in a minute.
FLYTE
I'm fine. You have a minute, now, Ben?
BEN
Sure. A minute. I was working, but sure. I have a minute. What's it about?
FLYTE
Well - (sitting) - this is a nice place –
BEN
Well FLYTE
You've done well for yourself.
BEN
I've done alright. It's not a palace.
FLYTE
For a poet you've done very well. And you go out to the Palace,
don't you?
BEN
I'm known.
FLYTE
You get asked.
BEN
Sometimes.
FLYTE
Write masks. Like a clown.
BEN
Masques, like a lady's hippy-hop
but yes - I do get asked back.
FLYTE
We noticed.
BEN
Does he talk?
FLYTE
He shook your hand didn't he?
BEN
I wondered.
CHAMBERLAIN
I'm - very honored to be here Mister JonJon- JonBEN
A stammerer. What wonderful understudies
you must make for all the prima donnas - no fear.
FLYTE
He's a petal - aren't you pet?
CHAMBERLAIN
Jon- son.
I know your po-ems.
BEN
I'm sure. (to FLYTE) You like 'em young.
FLYTE
You've done very well here.
BEN
Burbage was twice your age when he picked you up
and you were older than this, could speakCHAMBERLAIN
- poems, to move the heart.
FLYTE
I met Dick when I was twelve. I joined him in the acting life
when I was fifteen - Frank's CHAMBERLAIN
-Poems to fall in love. With.
FLYTE
Yes alright pet, don't lay it on.
CHAMBERLAIN
Poems I love.
BEN
He's a fan.
FLYTE
He's romantic I know. I like 'em like that when they're young.
(lights up a pipe)
You know, Dick used to say, to me, in front of me
"I love this man" or "I live upon his looks" or
"nothing I do makes sense without him."
I thought he was old sock full of pig's foot jelly.
Like an old ham hock with juice congealed around it,
his heart and his belly. Then he died.
And nights have been cold without him.
Not that he wasn't fat, and sentimental
and an old fool when it came to money.
But. The nights are - long. And stars
have a way of fading. You start out
they're cold and bright and fixed
and always to you, always giving you
the eye and winking. Then - mists,
and total eclipses of moons, and age
come calling. Across the sky like shooting stars
and dusts fall slow out of the galaxies.
And you look up one day to find your star
and find - instead of your lover
a whole grey cloud of pin points
of light that all say they could be
good as you and your star ever were.
So you get practice. And you work.
And you choose your pieces
and you try to help someone who
cares. Because God knows
you don't know when you will need them.
CHAMBERLAIN
Lovely flowers. You poems.
(hands BEN a daisy, from his pocket)
FLYTE
Frank, wait for me outside.
CHAMBERLAIN
Ok. P- p-pleasure to meet you.
BEN
Likewise.
(BEN places flower on books. CHAMBERLAIN exits.
BEN sits.)
FLYTE
We need a book of Will's plays. How do you go about it?
BEN
Will's plays? What for? William Shakespeare?
He's been dead these fifteen yearsFLYTE
Ten. That's not it. It doesn't matter about him.
Have you seen the market stalls? Have you
seen what the booksellers have on them?
BEN
What, books?
FLYTE
Quartos, quartos of the Chamberlain's Men plays.
Hamlet, Lear, Othello, all Dickie's parts,
all the plays, our bread and butter.
BEN
So? He didn't care. He died a rich man. He offered me his bed.
FLYTE
I don't care about the bastard,
I care about getting bread into my mouth.
Are you aware that other troupes,
other houses are now doing Shakespeare?
BEN
Well, they've got pretty bad taste
that's all I can say. But they're actors
what do you want me to do about it?
FLYTE
Look in my mouth - do you see food in it?
Do you see meat? And I a hippo
or a whale - do I need a bird
to come pick my canines clean of meat?
No - I do not- I do not have this much meat to spare.
I have very clean teeth Ben
and they're cleaning me till my smile is bare.
BEN
What do you want me to do about it?
FLYTE
A preface.
BEN
What?
FLYTE
A dedication.
A poem saying who Will was,
what he stood for, why they've got to read him.
And our plays BEN
Yours?
FLYTE
Our plays are
the only correct playing versions. The quartos are pirated texts,
faulty lines, paintings copied in darkness.
Our plays are - our Folio - the real thing - the master piecesBEN
If you could have such a thing from such a sloppy artistFLYTE
Whatever. You've got to tell them
he's worth reading. And we do him properly.
BEN
If you put the plays in a book
every noggin can read and go and do them properly!
FLYTE
Not like us they can't! We've got the method!
Dicky passed it to me with his own hands!
BEN
I'll bet he did. And a few other thingsFLYTE
We are the actors who did him and do him
and if you make the case
that he was worth reading, might
repay seeing again, done rightBEN
You might have a hot playwright
again and might get audiences others don't.
FLYTE
That's right.
BEN
I'll think about it.
FLYTE
What's to think? Ben, my teeth Ben, bare.
BEN
Put them away.
FLYTE
I've no smile left. Just skeleton, grinning.
BEN
Burgage smelled just like you when he wanted something. Stale beer.
FLYTE
Love. He smelled of love.
BEN
He smelled of fear.
FLYTE
Whatever.
You want something - you fear you won't get it.
You fear that you do. You fear you'll lose it.
That's all gone now. I fear I'll lose the will to go on.
There's not much left you know. These plays. Frank.
A few costumes.
BEN
Men in baggy tights.
FLYTE
I need a way to make a living.
BEN
I wrote for you too you know.
FLYTE
But you were better than that. You've done well for yourself.
You've gone quite far. For one that startedBEN
I'll think about it.
FLYTE
- with us. You won't regret it.
BEN
I'll think about it. Bring me the plays to read.
FLYTE
Alright.
BEN
It's been years. I'll see if I have a wit
sprightly enough to make up for Shakespeare's shit.
FLYTE
You write about enough bullshit artistsBEN
Money's an inspiration. What can I tell you?
I don't get inspired unless there's a possibility of money.
FLYTE
Some can only sing when the gallows swing
up outside their jail cell windowBEN
I've been in that cell. It didn't inspire.
I write to set my thumb on England.
LanguageFLYTE
I heard you had a murderer's brand on your thumb.
BEN
Would you like my thumb in your eye so you can look at it?
FLYTE (rises)
I'll bring the plays.
BEN
Good.
FLYTE
I'll see you.
BEN
Be sure you do.
(FLYTE leaves, BEN bites his thumb.)
Ten years and the thumb burned
with Tyburn's T still gives me trouble.
I only stabbed that actor once
but I've been tried for it in people's mouths
more times than they've teeth. Well,
I've done enough, for a man who's got nothing to prove.
I'll read Will Shakespeare's plays alright
and let them publish them - in imitation of me- I wouldn't mindlet them show the world that Will
wasn't an artist and he paid the crowd
with wind that hallooed and hallowed
his name - and my face, like the real artist's
portrait, next to the smudged
impressionistic, un-patterned bust
will show like the radiant head
of Apollo next to the sow's litter's
smallest, blackest runt.
And mother nature's children are not
art as history knows these things
mother nature's children are but stones in the rough
the learned craftsman polishes his precious jewels
the best to sell 'em.
MOLLIE (off)
Ben, Ben come and help me with the shopping..
BEN
I'll show the Chamberlaine's men
and the world - the face of Ben Jonson.
A true man, a man of compassion
and in Shakespeare's mirror of coal
a radiant paragon.
MOLLIE
Ben! I'll drop the eggs!
BEN
Coming - wife to the paragon. Don't fret - help is at hand.
Help - don't you know - always comes to the deserving.
MOLLIE (enters, laden)
It may sometimes come too bloody late.
BEN
No eggs broken love yet, no eggs broken.
MOLLIE
Get these things from my hands.
BEN
I will love, I will, give me your hands.
(Blackout.)
12. (Jonsons' kitchen. The book is on the table. BEN bustles past it filetting some sausages. He
stops just before off stage left.)
BEN
Mol! (Pause) I've got the breakfast in.
(Pause) It's sausages! (Pause) What's this? (to off) The actors been then?
(inspects book) Typical. Such shoddy copying.
Tsk. Nice portrait. Spent a bit on that.
Nice finishing. Copper plate. Pretty penny.
Engraving for the title page. Well well, engraving now.
For wee Willie Shakespeare, an engraving.
Who will they bury in Westminster Abbey next
flea circuses and their bears? Clowns in all their sad paint?
(He lifts the first page.)
"Hamlet". I remember that. Some sort of ghost story.
(flips)
Macbeth. Witches and knives. Burbage
tripped when he changed his cloak
on the first night. Swore blue murder.
Unlucky. (flips) Lear. Bloody long bore.
"Midsummer Night's Dream". Don't remember that one.
Well, I'll have to read him. Rich bastard.
(to off) Mol! Do you want the pork cooked
or salted? I'll do it now. I've got hours.
(Pause) Not a word outside the theatre past his twenties.
What a waste. No dedications. No epistles to the learned men.
No flatteries of the coteries of ladies' petticoats.
(flips pages)
Just speeches. Plays and players and lines.
What kind of life can he have had
a hope for without anything for the mind?
(to off) Mol? The sausages growing near
rancid with all this laying round here!
Alright, if you don't care, the hell with meat.
What do I care if you starve to death?
I suppose I have to salt it, as well.
(Pause. He lays out the salt dish. He starts to rub the sausages in salt. Pause. He looks at the first
page, still salting.)
BEN
(reading) Halt, who goes there. Nay, stand and unfold yourself.
Standard stuff.
(He pours more salt.)
(Pause. He goes back to the book.)
(Music plays, a cello, sharp, dark.)
(He turns many pages of the book.)
(He pours more salt on the meat.)
(Cello plays. He looks at the meat.)
(He looks at the page of the book.)
Is it possible there can be art
which recognizes no boundaries?
Which channels itself through no system of guides?
No.
(Cello plays. He pours more salt.
He turns the pages of the book.)
I have made a life in the groves of art.
I have made my name in the narrow lanes.
Nothing escapes the heart. Nothing escapes the hand
coiled to catch - every mind is channeled...
(The cello plays. He pours more salt.
He turns the book.)
(The meat has a mountain of salt on it.
The book has come to its end.
He closes it.
He looks at the mountain of salt.
He blows at it. Grains come away.
He blows off more salt. Grains come.
He flails at the salt. Finally the sausage
white with the grains of salt
held up in his open hand.)
BEN
Still meat under all that salt.
Still meat under all those grains
and the meat still stinks.
And all of those channels
every grain spent, blown off in the torrent.
I have wasted my life.
(Pause) No. No. I haven't wasted it.
I have done what was wanted, I have
made the language what it is.
No. No I haven't. This meat is
still chopped animal and this is
blood, semen and brain spume
beating under your hand.
Here is dead friend Shakespeare
and his bear still howls blood
out of my cold bowels.
(He closes the book again.)
I have always been outclassed.
But I didn't know it. What do I write
now about the shadow on my face?
(Pause) What do I write about my death?
Who will remember Ben Jonson
when this book and its blood are spread?
Who will remember Ben Jonson
when this music still plays on
and all the ladies I have flattered are salted earth?
(Pause) What will it matter?
When all's done we are all of us paper men
and one man whose book will make canker
of everyone in sight of its blistering sun
will fire on every tongue.
Well, sausage in salt mash
you and I must manage in daylight
long as we can. Soon night with its candle
will come - and you'll be dinner,
me, a coal to this diamond.
(He flings the book across the stage.
Papers scatter everywhere.
Pause.)
Damn. (Pause) Mol! Get the supper on!
I have to put something together - it's very important!
(He gets on his knees and starts to gather the pages.)
Hamlet 5. Richard II fifteen.
Mol! Get the fire going! I'm tired and I need something, I need something!
(Pause. He gathers the papers.
Far away, the sound of a cough. A loud, hacking cough. He stares.
Slow fade to blackness.)