| Rating: | ★★★★ |
| Category: | Books |
| Genre: | Literature & Fiction |
| Author: | Bill Cain |
These are the first words of Bill Cain's new play, "Equivocation".
The speaker is none other than William Shakespeare, chief playwright of "The King's Men", the leading "theatrical cooperative" in London. It's early in the year 1606, and the middle-aged artist is at the top of his game, having written histories,comedies and tragedies for over a decade to much acclaim. But the man who has summoned him, Robert Cecil, Secretary of State for the Kingdom of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales under James I, does not want Will to write another play about long-dead nobility from The War of the Roses, or a farce about twins separated at birth or some play about an ancient Worthy like Julius Caesar.
That stuff won't cut it this time.
Shakespeare or "Shag" (played by Anthony Heald, a very good actor who you might have seen in films of playing a judge on the series "Boston Legal) is literally made an offer he can't refuse. His majesty elevated the company of players after he came down from Scotland to rule both kingdoms in 1603, right after the death of Queen Elizabeth, the lady who put his mother, Mary of Scotland, to death fifteen years earlier.
Lord Cecil, who is akin to a Prime Minister to James, is putting the heat on "Shag"--he and His Majesty want him to put off writing the next Globe Theater production ("King Lear') and write a new play about "The Gunpowder Plot." Here is a little background courtesy of a BBC documentary, featuring the fame historian and novelist Lady Antonia Fraser :
Cecil and the King want a play about this Catholic Plot to blow up the kings and his lords. But "Shag" doesn't want to write such a play. It was normally forbidden in Tudor/Stuart England to write about current events. He wants to play it safe, let someone other writer-- Henry Beaumont, John Fletcher, Robert Middleton, et al--write this little propaganda piece that the King has already outlined.
But there are plenty of empty cells in the Tower of London for reluctant playwrights who refuse a royal demand. Thomas Kyd--who wrote the famous "Spanish Tragedy"--had been tortured by 1593 in the Tower when he ran afoul of the authorities a few years earlier. So, rather than a stretch on the rack and a cold cell, Will takes Cecil's money and goes back to the company--headed by his friend and partner, Richard Burbage--and thus commences to write and later rehearse the "official story" of the "guilty" men who stand in the Tower for treason.
As Shakespeare goes about trying to work out the King's outline of the play, he starts finding inconsistencies and implausibilities. Cecil won't supply him with reasonable answers on how the act of terrorism was supposed to be carried out. Such as "all the traitors were gentlemen--what do they know about building a tunnel big enough to carry 36 barrels of gunpowder in the first place? And all this tunnelling would take place right under Cecil's own office? Who might really gain from the discovery of such a dastardly plot. And why would James be in such haa hurry to break precedent and makes this "news event"" a popular entertainment?
For the sake of dramatic tension, Shakespeare becomes an investigator, convincing Cecil to let him talk to some of the conspirators who await execution in the Tower. He begins to see there maybe a counter-narrative to the official story--perhaps the heretical conspirators were set in motion by a "Fifth Columnist" or "False Flag" operation engineered in the highest levels of Whitehall itself. (Similar in some ways to the Babington Plot of 1587 that conned Mary, Queen of Scots, into believing she was in communication with King Philip of Spain while a prisoner of her cousin, Elizabeth. That bit of spymaster dirty-dealing cost James' mother her head. )
"Equivocation" is a play that anyone interested in Jacobean history and power politics would love. And its very relevant giving the issues of torture by "good" governments and questions about terrorism in our own times. A good deal of the subplot is provided by Mr. Cain introducing Shakespeare's youngest daughter, Judith, as a character--a sort of female servant working with her dad and keeping things tidy around the Globe "tiring house" backstage.
Judith is as sharp as a whip, and adds a lot of much needed humor in the play by her witty soliloquies, but her very presence haunts her father at times: she is the twin of his only son, Hamnet, who died before he was ten. The loss of his son has, at least in this play, made Shakespeare a different man than the young poet who was happy to make Richard III a monster if it suited the Tudor Establishment. He is more willing to reach out to those who are in pain--such as a young man who was caught by Cecil's men and is being tortured to tell all of what--apparently little--he really knows.
Cain also does a good job incorporating conjectures about Shakespeare's possible Catholic sympathies--his father, John, may have entertained priests at one time in Stratford and some historians believe Will was a tutor in a Catholic recusant estate in Lancashire before he came to London. He also has a heart-to-heart meeting in the Tower with Henry Garnet, a Jesuit Priest and spy. Here's a bit of his Wikipedia bio:
"Garnet supervised the Jesuit mission for eighteen years with conspicuous success. His life was one of constant danger, concealment and disguises. A price was put on his head; but he was brave and indefatigable in carrying on his evangelization and in ministering to the scattered Catholics, even personally going into their prisons. The result was that he gained many converts, while the number of Jesuits in England increased during his tenure of office from three to forty. It is, however, in connection with the Gunpowder Plot that he is best remembered."
Garnet's emotional and intellectual resources make him similar to Sir Thomas Moore in Robert Bolt's "Man For All Seasons"--you have to respect him highly, even if you might not have agreed with most of what he believed were he brought back to life. But was he really part of any plot? Most historians seem to think so, but others disagree. It is for those who favor the latter group who will find the conclusions drawn by this work the most satisfying.
This play has won The Edgerton Foundation 2008 New American Plays Award and will have more stagings in Seattle and San Francisco apparently next year. I hope many people who love a good intriguing bit of off-beat history will get a chance to see this superb multi-level work.
And now a bit of background from the writer himself:
It sounds like a very interesting play indeed. Thanks Doug.
ReplyDeleteYes, Iri Ani, I'm always a bit leery of a new play by a writer I don't know about, but this one was a hit with the myself and the audience.
ReplyDeleteI just wish it was a movie so more people might see it.
Thanks for raising awareness of this play Doug, it sounds fascinating and timely. Shakespeare as you say is claimed by some to have been a closet Catholic, so this commission would have been particularly troubling for him personally I think, had it really happened. I had never thought of the physical proximity of the original Globe Theatre to the Tower which of course is on the other (north) side of the Thames. Although I am not sure of the exact location of the original, I would have thought that it was not in earshot of the Tower, particularly as it was situated in the teeming and presumably noisy red light district of Southwark, although I guess the sounds of cannons (even if they were theatre props) must have carried a long way, so maybe... depending on the direction of the wind I suppose?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, not to get too hung up on the geography, the play sounds really good... I'd like to see it myself.
Unmasking the duplicitous Robert Cecil and his relationship with the plotters is an interesting subtext I think. I was wondering whether Catholic 'patsy' Thomas Percy makes an appearance in the play since he was a central figure in the unfolding 'false flag' operation of the Gunpowder Plot.
Percy's trust of Lord Cecil eventually cost him his life (to keep him quiet)?
Since the gunpowder plot was in a way, the opening salvo of the British Empire... it could be argued that it was a scene setter for the entire English speaking world and was its continuing leitmotif, so to speak.
It is my view that Dick Cheney is a contemporary equivalent of Robert Cecil in that English speaking world, which may explain a lot I think.
Thanks for reviewing this contemporary piece of drama Doug, I wish I had more time to go to the theatre myself, I used to a lot when I had a GMT based lifestyle.... rather than the diurnal variation I now endure that means I'm awake, when most of my compatriots are tucked up in their beds.
I hope that will be changing later this year, in which case I will be able to do more of these sort of things, but in the meantime I remain envious Doug. A great review, thanks.
I have to agree. Cecil's casual attitude toward torture and the driven cold-blood calculation of the man must remind people of Cheney, as was the author's intention I gather.
ReplyDeleteHenry Percy does make a appearance in the play, AA, and it is Cain's contention (and others I presume) that he was a special target when the fleeing conspirators while they made a desperate stand against the government men at an estate in Worcestershire. The man who shot Percy dead was later rewarded with a generous bonus for his "marksmanship". The inference is that Percy was not to be taken alive.
The idea of this undoing of the plot as the opening salvo of Empire is intriguing. As a actor playing a "player" makes the point (paraphrasing here) "an empire must be founded on some great myth." The apparent treachery of the few here makes for the long-term marginalization of the great many, nicely wrapping things up in a veneer of placid and Protestant unity. America's own Empire was based on such a myth--"Manifest Destiny", a notion of eminent domain that when fully examined holds no more intellectual water than the "divine right of Kings."
According to the "Britannia" website, King James made promises to certain Catholic-leaning nobles early in his post-Elizabeth progress to London in 1603. He did not keep such promises.
i remember Antonia Fraser's book on this period, "Royal James", records how pleased James to be England's Monarch. (Back when James was '"Wee Jimmy the Sixth" of Scotland he faced a more feudal-style monarchical set-up--the noble Lairds and Thanes could get right up in his face at times.) We do know that the play that Shakespeare did write--"Macbeth"--is fill of and dark deeds carried out by nobles against sweet old King Duncan. That must have pleased the king, as well as the witches Shakespeare featured in the play. James had written a book on witchcraft called "Demonology" during his off-time in Edinburgh. (He was a proponent of harsh measures against women who displayed activities--real of imagined by hostile witnesses--connected with the occult.) I guess he wrote a number of books and who amongst his subjects would criticize him? France's King Henry IV--a perhaps less than devoted reader--called James "the wisest fool in Christendom", and in Cain's play he is portrayed a little daft dandy who drives Cecil to barely-concealed distraction at times. (A bit of a nod to Bush the Younger?)
Thanks for the encouragement and thoughtful feedback, AA. I've worked some odd shifts myself and it does make one feel that one is missing out on the evening activities others take for granted. I hope your professional situation turns better for you soon.
This really does sound like a play I'd like to see Doug, thanks for extra detail.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading a description (possibly contemporary?) of Percy that called him "a tame duck used to catch the wild ones"...obviously he didn't 'duck' often enough, but since the marksman was as you say, amply rewarded...it only proves the old dictum, 'its an ill wind that blows no good'.