Upstart Crow by Ben Elton

Author:Ben Elton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld

WILL’S LONDON LODGINGS – DAY

Will be at his papers. Kate doth berate him most vexedly.

KATE: Henry the Eighth? You’re going to sanitize the reputation of the meanest, cruellest monarch that ever lived?

WILL: Yes, I am. I’ll play it as light romantic comedy with plenty of sauce. When Harry met Cathy. And Anne. Also Jane … another Anne and two more Cathys. One king, six queens, will he get his Hampton Court?

Bottom joins them.

KATE: Mr Shakespeare, Henry the Eighth was a monster. You should do Henry the Fifth – such a heroic figure.

WILL: Henry the Fifth was an utter bore and everyone knows it. A pious, humourless killjoy who attended three masses a day, forswore the company of women and marched round France killing people because apparently it was what God really, really wanted.fn5

BOTTOM: It’s funny how the more religious a person is, the more murderous they seem to get.

WILL: Hmm, a brutal lesson which I learnt at school, Bottom, where the master regularly asked God for strength as he flayed the flesh from my botty buttocks. He was quite simply the most terrifying child-care professional since King Herod opened the Bethlehem crèche. His name was Simon Hunt, so you can imagine what we called him.fn6

BOTTOM: Open goal.

WILL: Yeah.

KATE: Don’t you think it’s deeply revealing and rather depressing that when wishing to express angry contempt men use imagery relating to the female sexual anatomy?

WILL: Kate, the man’s name was Simon Hunt, what would you have had us call him? If his name had been Berty Venus, we’d have called him Spurty—

To hide her blushes Kate doth speedily interrupt.

KATE: Yes! But it wouldn’t have been as potent, would it?

WILL: I don’t follow.

KATE: Well, think about it. In the lexicon of male abuse, is any cod-dangle word ever as powerful an expression of hatred as a term that hails from the tufted lady grotto?

BOTTOM: I have absolutely no idea what you’re on about. But I bet you’d like to tell that old bastable Hunt what you think of him now, wouldn’t you, master?

WILL: Yes, I would, Bottom. I’d slaughter him with one of my brilliant insults. How about that cracker from Richard the Third? ‘Thou elvish-mark’d, abortive, rooting hog.’

BOTTOM: You got anything stronger?

WILL: Well, there’s that one from my Titus Andronicus: ‘Villain, I have done thy mother.’

BOTTOM: Oh, that’ll hurt.

KATE: And once again we see that for a really powerful insult, men must need resort to sexually degrading images of women.

BOTTOM: I still don’t know what you’re talking about, Kate, but maybe we should look this Hunt up if we go to Stratters, see if he’s still living.

WILL: He may still be living, but not in Stratford. He refused to recant the old religion and left England in 1575. I hardly think an avowed papist is likely to turn up with Liz on the throne. Not unless he’s planning to assassinate her.fn7

The company departeth for Stratford.

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