Because the Lady Author has been waffling on a bit and her fingers are feeling a bit R.S.I with all the frantic typing, the story of Bamber Robert Wilson as narrated by Bambino Bobble Wilson cracks on apace.
‘My esteemed ancestor had the great misfortune,’ he begins,
‘of being the cat of William Shakespeare's household. And let me tell you, Shakespeare wasn’t a cat
person.’
In the wings, William Shakespeare has the decency to blush,
but he knows, like all great writers, that the truth of life must be told,
unless you are a talentless gutter-press louse like Omid Scobie and are in it
purely for the money and media exposure. I digress…
‘No, life in the Shakespeare household for Bamber Robert
Wilson was far from the luxury you might think,’ says Bambino. ‘Not a tin of
tuna nor comfy cat bed in sight. He was forced to catch his own food and sleep
on a cold stone floor. But now he wants to wreak his revenge and reveal exactly
what Shakespeare got up to during his so-called ‘missing years’…
The audience gasps.
‘Yes!’ says Bambino. ‘What was William Shakespeare up to between
1585 and 1592? Bamber’s story will tell us all…’
‘Don’t tell them!’ blurts out Shakespeare from the wings.
‘Too late!’ shouts Bambino. ‘It’s time your adoring public knew the truth, once and for all!’
And so he continues…
‘It was 1585. Shakespeare was already father to two-year-old
Susanna and a set of twins – Hamnet and Judith. With three young mouths to feed
and his early poetic works going down as successfully as a holly tree at a
balloon party, Shakespeare was being urged by his family to ‘get a proper job’
instead.
‘You can’t feed a family on dreams of fame,’ said his
father. ‘Come into the glove-making business with me. People will always need a pair of
gloves.’
‘But father,’ whined Shakespeare, who despite being married
and a father of three himself, still behaved like a petulant teenager, ‘I must
follow my heart and be a writer.’
‘Rubbish!’ said his mother. ‘Get a proper job and stop all
this nonsense now.’
‘I wish I’d never married!’ shouted Shakespeare.
‘You should have thought about that before dangling your doo-dah
around with such gay abandon,’ said his father. ‘People of our standing in the
town always do the right thing when we make a mistake. You made your
second-best bed and now you must lie in it.’
But young William Shakespeare was a single minded and
determined chap. I mean, who else would have stuck around long enough at a
quill and parchment to write lengthy plays like ‘Hamlet’ and ‘King Lear’? And
that very night, he determined he would leave Stratford-Upon-Avon, despite its
wealth of fine inns, restaurants, gift shops and antique centres, and head off
to seek his fortune in London.
Off he crept into the night, leaving his wife, Anne, alone
with three children under the age of three. He took with him nothing more than
a change of pants, a quill and some parchment and a fairly substantial bag of
gold he ‘found’ in his father’s safe that he ‘accidentally’ broke open using a
set of coal tongs and a mallet.
‘Twas the season of Yule. Snow lay thick on the ground and
Shakespeare wished he had also appropriated a more substantial set of boots
from the homestead but he was an artist, after all, and artists rarely waste
their time thinking of the practical aspects of living. Instead, he trudged
onwards, through the forests of Arden and off towards London.
At least, he thought he was heading to London. Unbeknownst
to him, some jolly drunken chaps, in the spirit of Twelfth Night jokes and
japeries, had switched the signposts round, and Shakespeare was not following
the road to London at all, but heading northwards apace to Birmingham and, more
specifically (because the Lady Author doesn’t wish to get stuck on the
Birmingham ring-road – terrifying) to Tamworth.
Therefore, it was to the town of Tamworth he arrived and
found himself seeking lodgings in an inn called ‘The Buttered Parsnip.’
Having deposited his meagre belongings in his room, Shakespeare returned to the bar
in the hope of a pie and a pint supper.
‘London’s a lot quieter than I imagined,’ he commented to
the landlord who was standing behind the bar, buffing a firkin.
The landlord laughed. ‘This isn’t London,’ he said. ‘This is
Tamworth.’ He paused in his firkin buffing long enough to serve Shakespeare
with a pint of ale and a pie of indeterminate filling. ‘If you want London,
lad, you’ll need to be travelling for days more yet, in THAT direction,’ and he
pointed somewhere towards North Wales. Geography had never been his
strong point.
‘Oh,’ said Shakespeare. ‘That’s annoying.’
‘What do you want with London, anyways?’ said the landlord.
‘There’s nothing in London that you can’t get round these parts, ‘cept jellied
eels maybe, but then who in their right mind wants anything to do with those?’
‘I’m a playwright,’ said Shakespeare. ‘I am heading to
London to see my work performed in the biggest and best playhouses in the land,
and to seek patronage from Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth.’
The landlord threw back his head and roared with laughter.
‘The Plague’ll get you before you find your fame,’ he said. ‘There’s always
news of the playhouses being shut because of the Plague. No, lad, you’ll be
safer and just as successful here in Tamworth.’ He wiped the bar down and rearranged his packets of nuts. ‘You should have a chat with that chap over there,’ and he
pointed to the corner of the pub where sat a ginger pig. The ginger pig was staring into space, occasionally taking a sip of his beer.
‘Who’s that, then?’ said Shakespeare.
‘That,’ said the landlord, ‘is Egon Bacon. His brother,
Francis, is the cleverest chap around these parts and probably further afield. Francis fancies himself a bit of a playwright, although I’ve seen a couple of his shows
and I found the plots somewhat lacking in drama.’
Bambino looks out into the audience. ‘Francis Bacon. He’s a
pig,’ he says. The audience emits a dutiful titter.
‘Honestly,’ says Bambino. ‘You try to provide a spot of
humour to lighten what has been a bit of a sombre set of ghostly tales…’
He sighs, and continues.
‘William Shakespeare introduced himself to Egon Bacon, who
then introduced him to his brother Francis. Shakespeare took to Francis
immediately, mostly because of his own enthusiasm for creative writing, and
partly because, although Francis was, indeed, a most intelligent and
accomplished pig, he was also a bit gullible and, as Shakespeare read through
Francis’s body of works, he saw a spark of something rather special in the
pages and pages of manuscripts. And when William Shakespeare sees something special,
he goes after it with the theory that possession is nine-tenths of the law.’
The audience sits up at this news and some let out little
gasps of shock as they twig the implication to which Bambino is eluding.
‘Oh yes,’ says Bambino Bobble Wilson. ‘On behalf of my
ancestor, Bamber Robert Wilson, who followed Shakespeare to Tamworth and
witnessed everything that went on because us cats are sneaky like that, I
hereby declare that a few weeks after his arrival in Tamworth, Shakespeare
stole the complete works of Francis Bacon, made his way to London and reworked
the stolen material to then pass them off as plays written by his own hand!’
‘Shakespeare is a FRAUD?’ says Kenneth the Phantomime,
rather loudly from the wings of the set. He turns to face a rather sheepish
looking Shakespeare. ‘William,’ says Kenneth, ‘is this true? Did your plays
originate in the mind of Francis Bacon?’
‘Well,’ says Shakespeare, ‘aren’t all stories merely
retellings of other stories that have gone before?’
The Phantomime looks appalled. But not half as appalled as
he imagines Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber will be when he finds out he has set up a
contract with a criminal.
‘Why didn’t Bamber Robert Wilson reveal this outrage at the
time?’ shouts someone from the audience.
‘Aah, he tried,’ says Bambino. ‘He confronted Shakespeare as
Shakespeare was creeping away from Tamworth. He told Shakespeare he had seen
and heard everything and would make sure everyone in London knew what had
happened, so that Francis Bacon would receive the proper credit for his works.
And what happened?’ Bambino pauses for dramatic effect. ‘Shakespeare looked at
Bamber and declared, ‘Now you know this, I will have to kill you.’
‘Oh, my goodness!’ shrieks Mrs Pumphrey. ‘This is terrible.
He didn’t, did he?’
‘What do YOU think?’ says Bambino, pointing at the ghostly
figure of Bamber, who has been sitting all the while on the rug in front of the
faux Victorian fire, attending to his ablutions.
The entire cast and audience stare at William ‘The Cat
Murderer’ Shakespeare. If being taught his plays at school hadn’t put them
off him, catricide certainly had.
‘It was an accident,’ pleads Shakespeare. ‘I stepped on him
in the dark. Roads were very badly lit in those days. And he was a black cat after all.’
The audience, though, is not to be placated by weak platitudes. Sensing a potential riot in the offing, Mrs Miggins steps
forwards. ‘Free gluhwein and apple streusel in the dining room!’ she shouts,
and after the briefest of pauses, the audience dash en masse for the freebies. Sadly, when all is said and
done, the human race is incredibly shallow and will forgive anyone anything for a free meal.
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