CUMBERLAND DORSET PEMBROKE

Countess of Cumberland. Middle aged, a successful business woman and

manager of her estates, very rich, invests in overseas exploration
Countess of Dorset; Young sporty,dances, chatty
Countess of Pembroke; Arrogant, elderly,self-absorbed, pious.

MANHATTAN THEATER SOURCE; DECEMBER 2009

AMELIA BASSANO SHORT PLAYS: PLAY NUMBER NINE

HAVE A GOOD TIME ON THE CROSS, GOD

The Writing of Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum* (1611)

A boy wearing stage black and a white loincloth. His arms are
outstretched in a cross. It is dark. Amelia is at stage left, wearing a
colored skirt . She is holding a large dice and a large flashlight which
illuminates the cross.

Amelia. This passion and the death of a dear friend would go near to
make a man look sad.
Boy. Come tears, confound
Out sword and wound the pap of Pyramus

*
The title of her poetry collection, and that of the main poem, refers to the Gospel of
Matthew 27;29 which describes Jesus being mocked by soldiers saying Hail, King of the
Jews. Strangely, Amelia does not use the normal Latin word 'Ave' for hail. She uses
'Salve' meaning are you well, are you having a good day, ho w are you doing? This sets
the mocking tone of the whole poem.

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 Aye that left pap where heart doth hop
[Amelia slashes with her hand at his left breast]
Thus die I, thus, thus, thus
Now am I dead, Now am I fled
My soul is in the sky.
Tongue lose thy light, moon take thy flight.
[Amelia focuses the light at his feet]
Now die, die, die, die
[Amelia rolls a large meta-theatrical dice into the light at front stage.]
Amelia; Here comes Thisbe and her passion ends the play.
[lights up]

Amelia. That’s a good boy. That will be all. ( boy takes arms down)
Boy. Do you want me to do it again mistress Lanier?.
Amelia. No, its fine. There is your penny. That’s all I can afford now.
[he stands there while Amelia addresses the audience]

I wonder what he thinks. I am sure he has done worse things for money.
Did you get it? Do you know what you were just looking at? I hope so. It
would be nice to have an informed audience after all this time.

It has been 15 years since that first performance at the Blackfriars. And in
all that time what has happened? All everyone talks about is fairies.
Oberon this. Titania that. Isn’t it obvious what it really is? For some,
evidently not. And for the wiser sort, those who know to solve the
allegory, well they know better than to open their mouths. It is
undiscussable. Nobody dares.

But I don’t mind telling you. What can they do to me now? It’s a satire. A
very funny satire. The wall between earth and heaven comes down for
the Last Day, so Jesus who you have just seen —in his allegory as
Pyramus---can come back and unite with the church, played by Thisbe. It
is the Apocalypse but it all goes wrong, and Jesus gets crucified again.
The black humor is hysterically funny.….so why am I the only one
laughing?
[ she gestures boy off stage]

But nobody said a thing. It was just the same for the other plays. Look at
Julius Caesar, where Caesar even wore a coronet of nettles and came back
as a ghost, just like Christ, but no-one remarked on the parody. The
Romans suck Caesar’s blood from his wounds, “like a fountain with an
hundred spouts” (2,2,77) washing in his sacred blood. It was just so
blasphemous, nobody would talk about it.
Mr Shakespeare has gone back Stratford, so my playwriting days
are over. But I can still write poetry. I wanted to call it CRUCIFIXION, but

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the publisher insisted on a Latin title Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum….Hail
God King of the Jews…

[knocking outside]

At least this time I could publish it under my own name. By the Wife of
Captain Alphonso Lanier, Mistress Amelia Lanier. God has always given
the power to wise and virtuous women to bring down the powerful in
their pride and arrogance, as Deborah hammered a tent peg through the
skull of proud Cesarus.
So I sent out my little booke with letters to the noble ladies of
England, asking for their support. My letters to these great one--blessed
with Fame--are my last hope to raise my sad dejected Muse. Shut up
here in sorrow’s cell, poor and full of care, what else can I do? Will woman
help woman? Will they read my verse? Will they judge if what I have
written agrees not with the text. Will they seek out virtue? Will they speak
good of me and my endeavors, by their favorable and best
interpretations, or will they quench my work by their wrong
constructions? We shall soon find out.

[knocking and voice offstage] THE COUNTESS OF CUMBERLAND.

Amelia. Here comes the first of them. An expert on seamanship and the
richest woman in England, will she navigate the true virtue of my verse?

[enter Countess of Cumberland. Amelia does a deep curtsey]

Amelia. Your grace! Most excellent and Right Honorable lady, I am so
deeply honored to see you.
Countess C. And I, my dear Amelia, was happy to be honored by your
poem.
Amelia. In my poor state, having neither rich pearls of India, not fine
gold of Arabia, nor diamonds of inestimable value, with the writing of my
unworthy hand I can but hold up a mirror, dear Madame, to your most
worthy mind.
Countess C. Not that I understood it of course.
Amelia. I did but deliver to you Countess, the sweet balm from the
beautiful tree of life. It is so super-excellent, in all its parts, that it
exceeds for beauty and riches all the most precious jewels of the world.
Countess C. For your best wishes for my health, that I may continue to
shine my light in the world in increase of health and of honor, for all of
that Amelia, you have, of course, my thanks. I can see it is a poem about
Christ.
Together. Our noble Lord [both curtsey]
Countess C.……but is it not a bit, just a tiny bit, macabre? There may I
his bleeding body all embrace, and kiss with tears of sorrow his dying

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face. In joyful grief embrace his bleeding wounds, as impotent and lame,
naked and bare, full of diseases comes he to his fair.
Amelia. It is the art of poetry Countess. It is how poets speak in
metaphor and allegory in verse. You will cherish your dear Lord, the
Husband of thy soul. Your learning, virtue and your beauty shining
brighter than the sun, make you his Spouse. You may think my praises
overmuch, yet pardon me, your modesty is such. Pure thoughted lady,
when to this world I came, it was to praise your virtue and your fame.
Countess C. (puzzled) You ask me to follow the saint who gave his body
to be broiled in the fire, or went to the cross most joyfully to die,
receiving deaths most vile and most base, and those who all the ugliest
torments did embrace.
Amelia. I crave thy pardon, noble lady, your excellent virtue deserves no
less. Christ’s agony, his bloody sweat, his joints dis-jointed, his bloody
side, his members torn, his blood watering his pierced feet---all these
are honors you deserve in men’s sight. His holy blood runs in rivers of
his grace, sweet sugared currents that salvation brings. Taste the
ambrosiac food of saints, the sweet nectar, of his Christal streams…
Countess C. [clearly uncomfortable and now worried about Amelia’s
sanity] Then, good Amelia, am I glad for this talk, for truly I was worried
by your metaphor. I really have to be leaving. I trust your book will be a
great success. Take this purse as a small token of my regard. Farewell.
(exits)
[Amelia opens purse]
Amelia. What? So little? Farewell, Countess. Metaphor? No, I meant it
literally. Every word of it. Like the church, go unite with your Lord at the
Apocalypse. Fold up all his beauty in your breast. Like Thisbe embracing
Pyramus, [shouts after her] embrace the bloody body of your Lord.

{knocking. voice off-stage] LADY ANNE CLIFFORD, COUNTESS OF DORSET

[to audience] I know. I came on so strongly I must have sounded like a

religious zealot. She didn’t get the irony at all. Let me try again with the
next one.
[countess D enters]
Countess D. My dear Amelia.
Amelia. My lady. Sweet beauteous Dorset. My noble Lady.
Countess D. Cumberland passed me in the street. She said she had just
paid you a call. When you taught me your love for reading in my youth, I
little thought that you would publish a book of verse—no woman has
before. Nor that I would be honored in it.
Amelia. Those were fond times in Cookham’s garden. I well remember
sweet Dorset’s former sports, in which my poor self did always bear a
part. Sweet memory retains the pleasures past, which never return again.

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Countess D. How often I did walk in those sweet woods, with Christ and
his apostles there to talk. Placing his holy writ in some fair tree, to
meditate upon what I did see.
Amelia. But when you left, the trees forsook their flowers. Their frozen
tops in ages hoary hairs, showed their disaster, languishing in fears. A
swarthly rough disease all over spread, their dying bodies half alive half
dead. And pretty birds that wonted were to sing, no longer sang nor
chirped, nor used their wing. Each arbor, after Christ and thee did leave,
looked desolate and bare, and withered all their leaf.
Countess. A pretty poem Amelia. How have you been?
Amelia. Alack. Cast down by fortune and in poor estate. Our great friends
we can no longer see, so great a difference is there in degree. And yet, as
you well know, this world is but a stage, on which we play our parts and
must be gone.
Countess D. T’is true that titles of honor which the world doth give,
depend not upon us, but on how our ancestors did live. In heaven,
perchance, they may be even, the cottage and the throne. But though
earthly honors may be base, while we all live on earth-- they are God’s
grace.
Amelia. In you fair madam those gifts are richly placed. It is a splendor
which my meanness bars. My wit is far too weak to add to the greatness
of the great. I do but set a candle to the sun, or add a drop of water to
the sea.
You are God’s Steward for the poor, in whom the seeds of virtue
have been sown. And being poor, my gift is this unworthy poem. God’s
lovely love, his death and passion may you here behold. So lodge him in
the closet of your heart--his worth is greater than can be shown in art.
From any scandal that this world may frame, defend my poem with your
virtue and your name.
Countess D. Scandal? About your verse Amelia? Why talk you of scandal?
Do not be so concerned. But I must go, I have an appointment with Lord
Herbert, and then a party, and then we go hunting, and then supper with
the Queen. I was just in the neighborhood, and wanted to thank my old
tutor for her kindness. Take this small gift. Goodbye.
Amelia; Goodbye Countess. [shaking her head, watches her leave]. A
pretty poem! Is that all you can say? Alas, my former student has no
inkling. Parody, grotesque, and upending the social order are found only
in old plays, like Henry IVth. It is out of fashion, so none have noticed it
in my verse. What patronage has she given her old tutor? [opens purse].
Not enough to cover the paper and ink I used to parody her Christ.
But surely you can understand?. [addresses audience] An audience
of such learning, such excellence in virtue and shining beauty …..ah, but
you have paid already. I was forgetting. I can drop this courtly flattery.

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 One great lady is still to come. The greatest of them all. She thinks
herself a poet, translates plays, and hosts a salon. Will she solve my
allegory and test me in this trial of my skill? Will she come today?

[knocking, voice offstage] MARY SIDNEY, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE.

There she is. What can I do? My verse must not be too super-
excellent it will usurp her pride, and ruin my chance of patronage. I must
only offer her mean and humble flowers in my unlearned line, else my
unworthy verse will seem too fine. My lines are humbly guised in
shepherd’s weeds, but not all in such disguise is what it seems.
[enter Countess P.]
Amelia. Great learned lady. Countess. [she curtsies very deeply]
Countess P. It has been a long time Amelia. How many years since you
worked on those translations of the Psalms for me? See I have not
forgotten in my old age. I am sorry time and Fortune have treated you so
badly. You showed such promise when great Eliza’s favor blessed your
youth.
What have you done these past twenty years? How is it that you
suddenly have written this fine verse? [pompously] And how is it you, the
wife of a mere Captain, have taken upon yourself to write to the
Countesses of England, so far above your station?
Amelia. My lady. It is I know a sight that’s seldom seen, a woman writing
of divinest things. But as the sun Apollo comforts every creature, and
since your state and virtue is so much greater, I humbly wish your light
may shine, full of your grace, on my rude unpolished line.
Countess P. [angrily] We have the Gospel already Amelia. King James’
translators have been working for years to produce his new authorized
version. Had you not noticed? What madness made you meddle with the
sacred Gospel? Dare you to create your own? Have you gone insane?
Amelia. My lady, my poem is a product of my weak distempered braine,
which all unlearned has this task adventured. I invite your Honour to my
feast, where I present your Saviour by my unworthy hand. For I have
prepared my Paschal Lamb, a precious Passover for you to feed upon. No
dove, no swan nor ivory could compare with this fair corpse, so taste the
sweetness of his sweet food, in my poor verse….
Countess P. Stop it Amelia. I don’t know what you are doing, but King
James does not like people who play games with Scripture. You have even
sent a copy to Queen Anne. What on earth are you doing?
Amelia. Craving pardon for this bold attempt, it is but a Dream. I was
asleep and the god Morphy showed me such a grove in which you, great
lady, were seated on a chair. Athena in her wisdom did embrace you
there and crowned you with eternal Fame. Though your mind my Lady,
may be set on books more rare, grace those flowers that spring from
virtue’s ground, though your own works are more deep and more
profound…

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Countess P. You are up to some literary device. Your verse is strangely
like Lucrece. Your imagery the same, your language about Christ and his
sacred blood spurting like a fountain-- too much like old plays I have
remembered. Like Titus Andronicus. Like Julius Caesar. I did not like
their bloodthirsty devices. Why take these images from the stage? They
are not religious. They are not sacred. They are not true.
Amelia. But my lady…
Countess P. Full well you know that the Gospel must not be presented on
the stage. But now you do the opposite! You mix matters of the stage in
a poem about the Gospel! You confuse the truth with fiction. I hardly
need you Amelia to make me famous to upcoming ages. You are up to
some crafty trick of poets, some equivocation. I do not trust one word of
it. Goodbye. [she exits].
Amelia. [collapses in chair] Well she got it. Nearly. But not enough. Not
nearly enough. Just enough to hate it.
[stands up to address audience]
Why will women not embrace the spark of virtue in other women?
Men have made our history since the Fall. Why must we poor women
endure it all?
[addresses men in the audience]
Why should you men disdain our being your equals? Why have you
created this huge world of sorrows, griefs and fears? Can one small
apple bring us to such danger and disgrace? That one weak woman in
Eden did offend, does not excuse your sin of yours. Your fault is so
much greater, it has no excuse nor end.
No more men’s stories about sin. No more need for redemption. No
more need for Jesus. But with women as your equals, in this upcoming
world, let us make history together. Then let us have our liberty again. So
let us say, Amen.