The Playwright and the Proletariat

A battle of the brows from an alternate history

Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash

“This is fantastic! Pure genius. This, my friend, is your ticket to the big time!”

Jacques places the scrawled manuscript back among the desktop magpie’s nest of papers, candle stumps and quills. Its author, though, is in too dark a mood for pep talks and praise.

“Pah! I sometimes don’t know why I bother, Jacques. Frankly I’d settle for shifting a few dozen tickets to the stalls tonight. Did you see yesterday’s takings? They won’t even cover the company’s costs, let alone pay the rent on this stinking garret.”

“You’ll see. This new piece is a knockout. Such depth — all humanity is here upon this storied stage!”

Bill raises an actorly eyebrow, as a smile almost punctures his grimace. Always so hard to tell what he is really feeling — as skilled a player as a playwright.

“Hark at Jacques the poet! Not after my job are you?”

“Oh, please, I could never…”

“You can have it.” Bill plucks a quill from the desk, scrapes up the last remnants of congealed ink from the well, and begins to scratch a note in the crabbed hand that is the bane of his company.

“I, Bill Jakes, do solemnly resign my position as playwright, leading man, director, ticket office errand boy, britches stitcher — anything else I should add? — of the Borough Players, in favour of the esteemed Jacques Gonville, Esq. There — all yours! Enjoy! I should offer the condemned man a last meal, but as you can see” — he gestures at the hunk of ergot-riddled rye bread perched on the filthy bedspread — “the pantry is as undernourished as its patron.”

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Jacques would normally take such melodramatic rants as just another of Jakes’ jokes. Today, though, there is a real rumble of thunder to his mood. The whole atmosphere seems almost drained by his mesmeric charisma imploding slowly in on itself.

“You’re not serious, of course!” Trying to instil a little weak cheer into his voice.

“We shall see, my good Jacques, we shall see. What I do know is that this whole London caper can’t go on much longer. It’s not just the money — though God knows the situation is dire. It’s the frustration of it all. The desperation.

“Slaving away, pouring my soul, my suffering into every word, and seeing that infernal machine sweep the sheep — my sheep! — past the playhouse door to queue in the rain for whatever tripe has tickled its mechanical fancy this week. Leaving me without a pot to piss in.”

Bill makes no deliberate gesture to highlight the truth of his words, but Jacques can hardly fail to notice.

“Quite literally, I see,” he acknowledges, pointing a toe gingerly towards the upturned skull that his friend and host has pressed into service as a chamberpot.

“Oh, that. Amazing how useful these props can turn out to be — waste not, want not! And what a perfect memento mori, Jacques. ‘Life is shit, and then you die.’ All other words on our human condition are, perhaps, superfluous.”

Bill picks up the reeking skull-pot, opens the casement a fraction, and flings its contents with a splat into the street below.

“Oi! Watch where you’re throwing that! You’re full of crap, you are, Bill Jakes!” comes the screech from the pavement.

Bill leans out of the window, genuinely grinning for the first time today, his famed tragicomic sparkle glinting through his glowering countenance.

“Why thank you, my good lady! That is by far the most generous review I have received all week!”

The sad thing is, he’s not lying. His plays are bombing. Or rather, they’re not even getting a chance to bomb, or perhaps even to fly on their own merits. How can he wow his audiences if they’re down the road at Webbe’s World of Wonders? How is he to attract their attention if they live in thrall to that diabolical contraption?

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“It’s the Timbernet, isn’t it?” Jacques asks, though he knows full well the answer.

“Of course it’s the bloody Timbernet! What else do people think about these days? If they think at all, that is. Clanking away in the square, serving up one absurd novelty after another on those great boards. Billboards they call them — I swear they’re taking more than a potful of piss, Jacques.

‘Ruff, Ruff, Rough! Dogs in Costume!’ — that’s what they were all jabbering about last week. Performing hounds in doublet and hose. Is that what we call culture nowadays? Could we sink any lower?”

“Perhaps you could try your luck in some other town…” Jacques proffers, though again, he knows the answer.

“But it’s everywhere! I don’t know how they do it — some devilry, trickery, magic. As soon as one of those two-headed pelicans or juggling baboons appears here in London, it’s instantly everywhere. The same machines in every town square, sucking folk’s souls and brains out through their eye-sockets.”

Bill slumps onto the bed, picks up his soiled skull, and stares at it.

“A bare bodkin, Jacques. Either that Timbernet goes, or I fear I will.”

“But you have so much more to give, Bill. So much to write. I know your chance will come — this Hamlet will have them cheering your name in the stalls, chairing you through the marketplace.”

“Past the contemptuous clanking contraption, and its Pussy Boots Galore or whatever filth it’s peddling now? I don’t think I could take it, Jacques. I think I may just pack it all in and head back to Stratford. Lay me down in a pauper’s grave, mute and inglorious. The machine has won, I fear.”

Outside in the street, a band of drunken revellers stagger by, braying the ‘ruff, ruff!’ catchphrase of the latest pestilent sensation to flood the gutters of what passes for the capital’s culture.

“Those damned dogs,” mutters Bill. “The shame of it will outlive me, Jacques — you’ll see.”