What's In A Name?

A play about Shakespeare, inspired by thoughts about the Chandos portrait, which seems to me quite similar to da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

by Tom Rogers

Dear Will…

Or is it William?

You prefer which?

Since we’re intimate,

You’ve poured out your heart,

We ought to start,

On the right note,

So…Lend me your ears,

I have a complaint,

A bone to pick,

A rose by any other name,

May be just as sweet,

But we lie if we pretend,

That what matters isn’t fame,

You told us,

Through Juliet,

That names don’t matter,

But you were wrong,

They do,

  More than mere chatter,

  It’s not to besmirch,

Yet the eternal,

The heart and soul,

You reach across time and space,

We want to know,

The artist as much as the art,

We are stood on ceremonies,

We want to memorialise,

The appeal is deafening,

We need testimonies,

The human factor,

Is part of the performance,

And Shakespeare,

Actor, poet, dramatist,

The most human human being of all,

Perhaps the first human,

But intrigue, romance!

You plead,

And I will allow,

There is something in it,

Words, words, words,

What matters is the art,

The wooden O,

Your words are Greek,

But they touch us,

Yet for the inquisitive,

It is cold comfort,

Curiosity is aroused,

Meaning is addiction,

It only comes from knowing,

Who is essential to Why,

If we can only guess,

Appreciation is lost,

Then angst is abroad,

Among riven men,

Who let slip the dogs of war!

Like Prince Hamlet,

The original angry young man,

We need a link to the past,

It’s a thread to the future,

I admit there’s more to it,

Or less to it,

Jealousy’s green-eyed monster,

Has me conquered,

You are great,

That we appreciate,

We have the King’s Men to thank,

We’re bedazzled,

Still,

I am plain,

Yet you were plain too,

Gifted to let your works speak,

Your inner self unravelled,

But let’s not mince words,

Or matters,

The proof’s the thing,

Not the play,

You’ve left no kin,

The problem then,

Is all we have are effects,

Belongings,

Which can be gainsaid,

By slavering knaves,

Of ill-intent,

Double, double toil and trouble,

So who am I addressing?

Who was the Bard?

Really?

You’ve condemned us to keep guessing,

You are the accused,

To be or not to be?

It’s as good as any question,

Much as it may cause perplexion,

The struggle is like a fight,

In the mind,

The beast is as tricky,

As an alligator,

But without the brawn,

We cannot find an accommodation,

Don’t play fast and loose,

Let us have the naked truth,

The mystery begins with your portrait,

Published only after you met your deathly fate,

The enigmatic smile,

Like the Mona Lisa,

Is it a smile?

Earring and hippie mane,

The apparel oft proclaim the man,

A man of your time,

Inauspicious in ours,

A challenge,

To abstemious Puritans,

Past and present,

What else?

We have scraps and scattered parchments,

Inferences and guesses,

A shotgun wedding,

A Dark Lady,

Sonnets and bedrooms,

A will,

The arrows of your critics,

But no specifics,

Or did the Dark Lady give you issue?

A hidden Shakespeare dynasty?

A genetic literati?

Your own flesh and blood,

Writers not bearing your name,

But carrying your talent,

Your lineage and true legacy,

An invisible phalanx,

Risen to champion,

The world’s greatest language,

 In cyberspace,

Wherefore art thou, Shakespeare?

To the modern mind,

You are an incomprehensible,

Uneducated,

Untravelled,

Yet,

You travelled exotically,

Using only your quill,

You sonneted like a bird,

You impressed Queen Bess,

Or Falstaff did,

Yet politicked like Machiavelli,

And were as bloodstained,

Cold-blooded and cold-hearted,

And wrote of law like a lawyer,

How?

Are you an imposter?

In my heart of hearts,

I think not,

The thing is silliness,

I cannot imagine unmitigated savagery,

From one so foppish,

Who wrote of moonbeams in sleeping eyes,

And romantic melodrama,

Proteus and Julia, Valentine and Silvia,

And the goodness of Henry VI,

The creator of Banquo, Prospero and Mistress Quickly,

No!

Not even at the crack of doom,

Like Brutus,

A literary assassin,

A bandit?

And if that,

Then who did you stoop to elbow?

Who was Caesar?

Aye, there’s the rub,

Yet how could you be not a Cassius?

You were not white as driven snow,

Poets never are,

Cannot be,

As Yeats reminded us,

Wearing your heart on your sleeve,

I can believe,

An actual assassination,

An evil assignation,

A real-life Richard III,

Was not beyond calculation,

For Titus Andronicus,

Murder most foul,

The highest drama,

Committed under the owl,

Yet there is a defence,

To thine own self be true,

You were,

King Harry was Sovereign,

But when he sent Gloucester, Bedford and Exeter into battle,

He was just plain Harry,

You understood the heart of a king,

But gave him a plain man’s voice,

In Richard III and Shylock, you gave us villains to hate,

In Richard II, you questioned divine right,

In Macbeth and Titus Andronicus,

You staged violence,

To drug the masses,

But then,

You were a propagandist,

For the Tudors,

Is this one big joke?

Set in English Oak,

A stunt,

A laugh,

That we’re the butt of?

All the world’s a stage,

You said as sage,

Was that just on page?

 

Knock-knock,

Who’s there?

William who?

That is the question,

Forgive me if it seems distasteful,

That I should ask,

Were you Bacon or de Vere of Oxford?

Or Derby, Essex or Rutland?

Or Marlowe?

Or even Good Queen Bess?

The thing is laughable!

Give it short shift,

Or shall we say,

Just plain old Stratford?

Plain Stratford, I’d prefer,

Shakespeare,

The name we know,

A Norman warrior’s name,

But a William Who too,

A plain man,

Full of sound and fury,

From an ordinary birthplace,

You were born to the manner enough,

Yet an upstart crow,

A simple country boy,

Bearing borrowed feathers,

With a beatnik mane,

Who wrote marvellous plays,

Sonnets, ballads,

And found fame,
In letters.