MANHATTAN THEATER SOURCE; DECEMBER 2009 AMELIA BASSANO SHORT PLAYS: PLAY NUMBER ONE (DRAFT)

(Actor 1 appears on stage with a copy of the First Folio)

Actor 1

.One of the great unanswered questions is who wrote these plays in theFirst Folio, and why

[opens Folio to take out refrigerator magnet of Shakespeare,and hangs it up].

Mr Shakespeare has such a magnetic personality that a wholegroup of people in his home town, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, allinsist that he could and did write the plays that appeared under his name. Letshear what they say.

Actor 2 in Audience

“

Mr Shakespeare could have learnt everything in the playsabout Italy and Italian from a waiter at his local Italian restaurant. Dr J L Wilson.Letter to the Times, April 2000.”

Actor 1.

Thank you Dr Wilson. Now I would ask the audience. Has anyone everhad pizza or visited an Italian restaurant? Please keep your hands up just for aminute.Now the author of the plays had very fluent Italian, made complex Italianpuns, and read Cinthio, Dante and Boccacio in the original. Please keep yourhand up if you can read Italian fluently, and if you learnt it from your waiter.Anyone?Now what about the music in the plays. The most musical plays in theworld. Three times more musical than any others. What do the Stratfordianssay?

Actor 2 in Audience

“Everything Mr Shakespeare knew about music couldhave been learned in only 6 music lessons. Professor Tom Dale Keever,interview on Steal This radio, 2009.”

Actor 1.

So another question for the audience. Has anyone ever had a musiclesson? Great. Keep your hand up. Tell me, who has had a single music lessonthat taught you 16 songs, 70 technical musical terms , and how to make 330musical references. Anyone who has had a music lesson like that, keep yourhand up……………… Have you tried writing plays?Now lets look at the other aspects of Mr Shakespeare

s education thatmade him the fine upstanding figure you see before you. Stratford GrammarSchool was actually just a one room schoolhouse in a tiny market town of 1500people --but Stratfordians talk about it as if it were Harvard or Yale.

Actor 2 in Audience

“The level of education revealed by the works is entirelywithin the compass of anyone who had received only a grammar schooleducation. Dr Stanley Wells, the Shakespearean Birthplace Trust, Stratford UponAvon.”

Actor 1.

Thank you Dr Wells. Um, dont you run Stratford

s major tourist industry?And weren

t you on the board of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Not exactlyneutral. are you? So tell me did Stratford Grammar School teach Italian?

Actor 2 in Audience

Well, no, but you could learn that by eating in any Italianrestaurant.

Actor 1.

I see. Well, how about Hebrew? There weren

t any kosher restaurantsin Elizabethan England, because it was illegal to be a Jew. So did StratfordGrammar school teach Hebrew? Did it teach students to read the

Mishnah

andthe

Zohar,

both of which are used in A Midsummer Night

s Dream? Did it teachthem to write Hebrew, which is used in All

s Well that Ends Well?

Actor 2 in Audience.

Um… well….

Actor 1

. Or how about girls

literature like the standard manual for etiquette atcourt for girls,

The Knight of Le Tour Landry

s book for his four daughters

, whichwas used to write the Shrew play. Or Montemayor

Diana

, in the originalSpanish, which was a favorite of the ladies at Court and used in Two Gentlemenof Verona. Can you prove they were on the reading lists at Stratford GrammarSchool?

Actor 2 in Audience

Um…well….

Actor 1

. In fact, Dr Wells are there

any

records that show Mr Shakespeareeven went to Stratford Grammar School at all. Or did you just make it up?

Actor 2 in Audience

Well, actually, there are no surviving records. But…

Actor 1.

Thank you. Case closed. [

turning to entire audience]

You look like asmart audience. You know bullshit when you see it. Now how many peoplehave an English translation of the Bible at home. How many have 2 differenttranslations. Three translations. Five translations…. Nobody?Shakespeare

s plays use fourteen different translations of the Bible, andmake 3,000 Biblical and religious references. They are written in a very scholarlyway, not simply through inspiration. They are the most complex literary works inthe world and could not have been written by someone whose social backgroundwas from Stratford and as an actor.

Actor 2 in audience.

(protesting)

Will was a genius. He had great imagination.

Actor 1.

Oh really Dr Wells. Then prove it. Lets see. Show the audience howbook 6 of Josephus

The Jewish War

can be used to develop the night scene inMacbeth. Give me a few examples. Use your imagination.

Actor 2 in audience.

…

I cant.

Actor 1

No? Didn

t think so. See, the author of the plays didn

t do it just bymaking it up in their imagination. The author carefully drew on sources, andlinked them all together.So now the time has come, we need a volunteer from the audience. Yesplease come up onstage (

actor 2 comes on stage

). Thank you for volunteering.So if William Shakespeare didn

t write the plays, someone else did. Lets seewhat they really thought of Mr Shakespeare. Here, take a sock puppet.

[With all seriousness, as if this were the Royal Shakespeare Company, they bring on a tiny cardboard box proscenium arch theater within which to situate Mr Shakespeare and 2 colored sock/glove puppets for Mistress Quickly and Sir Hugh operated by Actor 2]

Lets see how William gets tested in his

Accidence

meaning on page oneof his Latin Grammar. My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, we present

Merry Wives of Windso

r and

As You Like It,

starring William Shakespeare himself.

Actor 2. MISTRESS

: Sir Hugh, Sir Hugh, young William profits nothing in theworld at his book. I pray you, ask him some questions in his Accidence.

Actor 2. SIR HUGH EVANS

: William, how many numbers is in nouns?

Actor 1. WILLIAM PAGE