doubt that the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move
it is all locked safe in here
as soon as i have found my muse
she is always aphrodite.
henslowe, you have no soul so how can you understand the emptiness that seeks a soulmate?
what piece? richard crookback?
who wrote that?
half what you owed me. i am still due for one gentleman of verona.
mr. henslowe, will you lend me fifty pounds?
burbage offers me a partnership in the chamberlain's men. for fifty pounds my hired player days are over.
no, then.
to my weekly confession.
words, words, words…once, i had the gift…i could make love out of words as a potter makes cups out of clay love that overthrows empires, love that binds two hearts together come hellfire and brimstones…for sixpence a line, i could cause a riot in a nunnery…but now
aye, now and again, but what of it? i have lost my gift.
i have lost my gift. it's as if my quill is broken. as if the organ of the imagination has dried up. as if the proud tower of my genius has collapsed.
nothing comes.
it is like trying to a pick a lock with a wet herring.
a goodly length in times past, but lately
i was a lad of eighteen. anne hathaway was a woman, half as old again.
she had a cottage. one day, she was three months gone with child, so
on my mother's side the ardens
four years and a hundred miles away in stratford. a cold bed too, since the twins were born. banishment was a blessing.
yet cannot love nor write it.
will it restore my gift?
to the palace at whitehall.
prithee, mr. kempe, break a leg. you too, good crab.
no, they would laugh at seneca if you played it.
i am still owed money for this play, burbage.
when i have fifty pounds.
a comedy. all but done, a pirate comedy, wonderful.
romeo. wit, swordsman, lover.
romeo
it's for henslowe. he paid me.
ten pounds.
i swear it. he wants romeo for ned and the admiral's men.
done.
i have lost my gift.
are you to be my muse, rosaline?
you see? the consumptives plot against me. "will shakespeare has a play, let us go and cough through it."
i feel a scene coming on.
romeo and rosaline. scene one! god, i'm good!
richard!
burbage?
mr. tilney
so this is the favour you find in the chamberlain's men.
i would have made you immortal. tell burbage he has lost a new play by will shakespeare.
you have opened the playhouses?
but the plague
yes. nearly. it's all locked safe in here. we need ralph for the pirate king. good morning, master nol. you will have a nice little part.
give me to drink mandragora.
kit
wonderful, wonderful.
i have. and chinks to show for it.
i insist--and a beaker for mr. marlowe. the barman does the business.
i hear you have a new play for the curtain.
i love your early work. "was this the face that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of ilium?"
good title.
romeo and ethel the pirate's daughter. yes, i know.
well, there's a pirate in truth, i have not written a word.
yes, that's good. until he meets
do you think?
the daughter of his enemy.
mercutio…good name.
i'm coming.
good luck with yours, kit.
this is a different one.
i did not.
tomorrow
please god.
your name?
take off your hat.
where did you learn how to do that?
wait there.
let me see you. take off your hat.
where's the boy?
follow that boat!
yes.
really?
do you know that house?
the actor
william shakespeare, actor, poet, and playwright of the rose.
i will wait.
master plum! what business here?
i seek master thomas kent.
by all the stars in heaven, who is she?
i was a poet till now, but i have seen beauty that puts my poems at one with the talking ravens at the tower.
how do i offend, my lord?
christopher marlowe at your service.
my lady!
will shakespeare!
the same, alas.
a lowly player.
oh--i am him too!
oh, i am fortune's fool, i will be punished for this!
oh my lady, my love!
you can bring them with a word.
we are at least six men short, and those we have will be overparted, ranters and stutterers who should be sent back to the stews. my romeo has let me down. i see disaster.
who are you, master?
i'll be damned if you are!
gentlemen! thank you! you are welcome.
we are about to embark on a great voyage.
you want to know what parts you are to receive. all will be settled as we go
we are in desperate want of a mercutio, ned, a young nobleman of verona
mercutio
mr. pope! mr. phillips! welcome, george bryan! james armitage! sam! my pretty one! are you ready to fall in love again?
but your voice have they dropped?
master henslowe, you have your actors.
yes, i saw it.
better fortune, boy.
you admire it?
oh. what is your name?
i have to get back.
cut round him for now.
romeo.
what?
good
no, no, no…don't spend it all at once!
do you understand me?
he is speaking about a baggage we never even meet! what will be left in your purse when he meets his juliet?
god's teeth, am i to suffer this constant stream of interruption?! what will you do in act two when he meets the love of his life?
of course you have not! i have not written it!
go once more!
locked safe in here. i leave the scene in your safe keeping, ned, i have a sonnet to write.
you did not like the speech?
there you have his duel, a skirmish of words and swords such as i never wrote, nor anyone. he dies with such passion and poetry as your ever heard: "a plague on both your houses!"
did you give her my letter?
oh, thomas! she has cut my strings! i am unmanned, unmended, and unmade, like a puppet in a box.
row your boat.
she tells me to keep away. she is to marry lord wessex. what should i do?
and break her heart and mine?
she loves me, thomas!
no. and yet she does where the ink has run with tears. was she weeping when she gave you this?
your aunt?
like a sickness and its cure together.
oh, if i could write the beauty of her eyes! i was born to look in them and know myself.
oh, thomas, her lips! the early morning rose would wither on the branch, if it could feel envy!
deeper. softer. none of your twittering larks! i would banish nightingales from her garden before they interrupt her song.
constantly. without doubt. and plays the lute, she has a natural ear. and her bosom--did i mention her bosom?
oh thomas, a pair of pippins! as round and rare as golden apples!
yes, by god! love knows nothing of rank or riverbank! it will spark between a queen and the poor vagabond who plays the king, and their love should be minded by each, for love denied blights the soul we owe to god! so tell my lady, william shakespeare waits for her in the garden!
for one kiss, i would defy a thousand wessexes!
lady?
can you love a fool?
wait! you are still a maid and perhaps as mistook in me as i was mistook in thomas kent.
i am.
it is strange to me, too.
there is.
oh
well perhaps better than my first.
i must. look-- how pale the window.
no, the morning rooster woke me.
oh, let henslowe wait.
let him be damned for his pages!
there is time. it is still dark.
it was the owl. believe me, love, it was the owl.
yes…yes…er…not quite right…it is more let me "then have my lips the sin that they have took."
yes, yes…continue. now the nurse. where is ralph?
i must. i must
yes, some of it is speakable.
"oh romeo, romeo, wherefore art thou romeo? deny thy father and refuse thy name."
"what man art thou that thus bescreen'd in night so stumblest on my counsel?"
"the orchard walls are high and hard to climb, and the place death, considering who thou art, if any of my kinsmen find thee here. if they do see thee, they will murder thee."
"good night, good night. as sweet repose and rest come to thy heart as that within my breast. o wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?"
oh, but it is mine too!
"my bounty is as boundless as the sea, my love as deep:
"stay but a little, i will come again."
how is it?
ned…i know…i know
oh
ah
thank you, ned.
you are a gentleman.
sunday…it is sunday.
i found something in my sleep. the friar who married them will take up their destinies.
in heaven, perhaps. it is not a comedy i am writing now. a broad river divides my lovers--family, duty, fate--as unchangeable as nature.
you cannot! not for the queen herself!
to be the wife of a poor player?--can i wish that for lady viola, except in my dreams? and yet i would, if i were free to follow my desire in the harsh light of day.
then i will go with you.
i know how to fight!
here we come at last, my lord!
her chaperone. my lady's country cousin. my, but you be a handsome gallant, just as she said! you may call me miss wilhelmina!
oh, my lord, you will not shake me off, she never needed me more, i sear by your breeches!
a man, my lord?
a theatre poet?
marlowe? oh yes, he is the one, lovely waistcoat, shame about the poetry.
fifty pounds!
what is this rabble?!
a literary feud. quite normal.
stay hid!
i dreamed last night of a shipwreck. you were cast ashore in a far country.
it is also a tavern.
it is, thomas, but of good reputation. come, there is no harm in a drink.
mr. fennyman, because you love the theatre you must have a part in my play. i am writing an apothecary, a small but vital role.
by god, i wish i knew.
oh…what have i done?
it was i who killed him! god forgive me, god forgive me!
it is worse. i have killed a man.
marlowe's touch was in my titus andronicus and my henry vi was a house built on his foundations.
he was not dead before. i would exchange all my plays to come for all of his that will never come.
my love is no lie. i have a wife, yes, and i cannot marry the daughter of sir robert de lesseps. it needed no wife come from stratford to tell you that. and yet you let me come to your bed.
i was the more deceived.
now?
oh, my love you ran from me before.
you cannot marry wessex!
no…no.
for killing juliet's kinsman tybalt, the one who killed romeo's friend mercutio, romeo is banished
but the friar who married romeo and juliet
you, edward. the friar who married them gives juliet a potion to drink. it is a secret potion. it makes her seeming dead. she is placed in the tomb of the capulets. she will awake to life and love when romeo comes to her side again.
i have not said all. by malign fate, the message goes astray which would tell romeo of the friar's plan. he hears only that juliet is dead. and thus he goes to the apothecary.
and buys a deadly poison. he enters the tomb to say farewell to juliet who lies there cold as death. he drinks the poison. he dies by her side. and then she wakes and sees him dead.
and so juliet takes his dagger and kills herself.
the play. all written out for you. i had the clerk at bridewell do it, he has a good fist for lettering.
there's a new scene
"wilt thou be gone? it is not yet near day> it was the nightingale and not the lark that pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear. nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree. believe me, love, it was the nightingale."
"yon light is not daylight, i know it, i. it is some meteor that the sun exhales to be to thee this night a torchbearer…"
"…thou need'st not to be gone."
you are on my ground.
i am more than enough.
absent friends! this is the murderer of kit marlowe!
oh god, i am free of it!
we are lost.
how will it?
wonderful!
luck be with you, sam. sam…?
sam! do me a speech, do me a line.
what do we do now?
go on.
how will it?
i am fortune's fool.
you are married?
if you be married, my gave is like to be my wedding bed. the implication of her silence fills the air. will does not move.
my lady wessex?
i am done with theatre. the playhouse is for dreamers. look where the dream has brought us.
i have hurt you and i am sorry for it.
a comedy! what will my hero be but the saddest wretch in the kingdom, sick with love?
sold in marriage and half way to america.
orsino…good name
and thus unable to declare her love
how does it?
you will never age for me, nor fade, nor die.
good bye, my love, a thousand times good bye.
my story starts at sea…a perilous voyage to an unknown land…a shipwreck
the wild waters roar and heave…the brave vessel is dashed all to pieces, and all the helpless souls within her drowned
all save one … a lady
whose soul is greater than the ocean … and her spirit stronger than the sea's embrace … not for her watery end, but a new life beginning on a stranger shore
it will be a love story … for she will be my heroine for all time
and her name will be … viola.