LOPEZ

 

 

 

 

 A play by Peter Oswald

 

 Note. I wrote a version of Schiller’s MARY STUART, that was performed at the Donmar Warehouse (2005,) in the West End and on Broadway. Harriet Walter, who played Queen Elizabeth, was always furious about the audience leaning towards the far more sympathetically written character of Mary Stuart. Phyllida Lloyd, the director, told me that Harriet would be swearing unprintably at the audience back-stage as they simpered at Mary. Actually I agreed, and felt that the steely character of Elizabeth as written by Schiller doesn’t begin to give a feeling of the real Elizabeth, whose passionate warmth flows through the whole of English-speaking culture. So I wanted to write a kind of response, and the opportunity arose when my friend Eduardo Barreto gave me a copy of Dominic Green’s book THE DOUBLE LIFE OF DOCTOR LOPEZ. From this and other books, like Robert Lacey’s ROBERT, EARL OF ESSEX, AN ELIZABETHAN ICARUS, I came up with this play LOPEZ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHARACTERS

 

 

 

LOPEZ

SARA, his wife

ELLEN, ANNE, their daughters

ANTONY, their son

QUEEN ELIZABETH

LORD BURLEIGH

SIR ROBERT CECIL, his son

THE EARL OF ESSEX

FRANCES, HIS WIFE

JOHN DEE

TALBOT

ANDRADA

REV.THOMSON

DUNSTAN ANES

ANTONIO PERREZ

EDWARD ALLEYN, an actor

DOORMAN, SERVANT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ONE. BURLEIGH, ROBERT, WITH A LETTER.

 

BURLEIGH: This is it! This is it! That is his seal!

 

ROBERT: The King of Scotland! Open it!

BURLEIGH: Yes, of course, Robert!

 

HE OPENS IT.

 

BURLEIGH: To William Cecil, Lord of Burleigh, and to Robert Cecil, in the name of God, greetings. In utmost secrecy, ourselves being cognisant that such communication is treason, let it be known to you both that with regard to the great question you have put to us, the answer is –

 

ROBERT: Yes???

 

BURLEIGH: Yes. I am willing.

 

ROBERT: King James of Scotland will be the next King of England!

 

BURLEIGH: God save the Queen!

 

THEY DANCE FOR JOY.

 

 

TWO. ELIZABETH’S BEDCHAMBER. ELIZABETH IN A NIGHT-GOWN. IT IS THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AND SHE IS HAVING A PANIC ATTACK.

 

ELIZABETH: Ah- ah – ah – ah! Ah! He is gone! He is gone! Ah!

 

ENTER LOPEZ.

 

LOPEZ: It is alright! It is alright! Your Majesty! Sublime Majesty, it is me, your physician, Doctor Lopus! My dear sweet Majesty!

 

ELIZABETH: Ah – ah – ah – Lopus – Lopuz – Lopez -

 

LOPEZ: Where do you feel it now, your Majesty?

 

ELIZABETH: Ah – ah – ah – in my – ah –

 

LOPEZ: The solar plexus?

 

ELIZABETH: No – no – no – moving –

 

LOPEZ: It will, it will.

 

ELIZABETH: Now near to my heart! Lopus! Lopus!

 

LOPEZ: I am here, your Majesty!

 

ELIZABETH: Let it not rise into my brain! Ah, doctor!

 

LOPEZ: It shall not, it shall not, I swear!

 

ELIZABETH: Down, down! Oh, down! Is it a demon???

 

LOPEZ: No, no, no, your Majesty, no –

 

ELIZABETH: The King of Spain’s witches!

 

LOPEZ: A million English hearts fling back their curses at them!

 

ELIZABETH: Ah Lopus – Roger - Roderigo! It rises!

 

LOPEZ: No it does not – your Majesty –

 

ELIZABETH: It fights into my head!

 

LOPEZ: It sinks, it sinks, back to its place, your Majesty.

 

ELIZABETH: Eliza -

 

LOPEZ: No, no –

 

ELIZABETH: Say Eliza, damn you!

 

LOPEZ: Eliza -

 

ELIZABETH: Again!

 

LOPEZ: Eliza! 

 

ELIZABETH: One more –

 

LOPEZ: Eliza.

 

ELIZABETH: Oh bliss, it sinks, it sinks –

 

LOPEZ: Obedient to the command of your Majesty –

 

ELIZABETH: Back to its place, back, back, down, oh down –

 

LOPEZ: Always to remain.

 

ELIZABETH: All returns to its proper station.

 

LOPEZ: Amen, Amen.

 

ELIZABETH: What is it, doctor, and what can you do about it?

 

LOPEZ: It is the womb, your Majesty. The womb:

a vacancy that roves unfixed in women

from place to place, when it is not weighed down

by its ordained and natural inhabitant,

the foetus. Now the motions of this vacuum

force blood into the head, compress the lungs

or heart, according to its wild itinerary.

Sometimes the subject faints, or gasps or screams

as if in madness. What we call hysterica

passio. And it is all caused by nothing,

a kind of active and malignant zero

or pathological absence, we might call it –

like atheism in the state, or treason

bubbling about inside the body politic,

the cause of bloody fluxes. It is found

mostly in young unmarried virgin women.

 

ELIZABETH: And me.

 

LOPEZ:                           And you, as it appears, your Majesty.

 

ELIZABETH: Why is God so in love with chaos, Lopus?  

 

LOPEZ: Your Majesty, my religion is never to discuss religion before breakfast. And never to eat breakfast.

 

ELIZABETH: This is why you are alive!

 

LOPEZ: Chaos I might talk about, otherwise known as politics – at the Queen’s command. 

 

ELIZABETH:  I wish King Philip would exile more like yourself to my shores!

 

LOPEZ: Your Majesty! There are English physicians!

 

ELIZABETH: None of them could make his tongue call me Eliza.

 

SILENCE.

 

ELIZABETH: Less than a year since he who called me that was eaten by the dirt. Doctor. You have tended me for five years. I loved a man, you knew him well – a great man, depraved and brilliant. While he was alive, there was, for me, a King in England. I was not alone under the crown. But now he is gone. And those who remain – ah, Burleigh was my anchor before ever I was crowned! Now he and his son are talking to the King of Scotland. So you see, I am dead. Mary Stuart! Her son my heir. The next generation -

 

ENTER ESSEX.

 

ESSEX: Elizabeth!

ELIZABETH: Jesus! I’m only half-dressed!

 

ESSEX: I am struck blind!

 

ELIZABETH: I hope it happened before you burst in!

 

ESSEX: No! I caught a glimpse –

 

ELIZABETH: Jesus Christ –

 

ESSEX: I am blinded by the light!


ELIZABETH: Well it serves you right!

 

ESSEX: Ah no, it’s coming back, it’s coming back – is that you, Lopus?

 

LOPEZ: It is, my Lord –

 

ESSEX: Good man! Where is the Queen?

 

LOPEZ: Behind you –

 

ESSEX: I knew! I could feel the heat!

 

ELIZABETH: You will.

 

ESSEX: Thank God I got here before them!

 

ELIZABETH: Who did you think would be here, in the bedchamber???

 

ESSEX: Your essential self –

 

ELIZABETH: Essex, you are where you should not be! This does not recommend you.

 

ESSEX: Please do not throw me out yet! For your own sake!

 

ELIZABETH: For your sake I will forget you were here if in the next five seconds you have gone. Doctor Lopus –

 

ESSEX: Is it true?

 

ELIZABETH: Doctor Lopus, let us continue, since there is no one here but you and myself –

 

ESSEX: Is it true?

 

ELIZABETH: Mister Williams!

 

ENTER GUARD.

 

ESSEX: Do not throw me out!

 

ELIZABETH: That is not my intention –

 

ESSEX: Thank God!

 

ELIZABETH: (TO WILLIAMS) Why did you let the Earl in?

 

WILLIAMS: He said he was summoned –

 

ELIZABETH: I do not summon the Earl or any other man to my bedchamber!

 

WILLIAMS: He said the Spanish were invading. Forgive me, your Majesty!

 

ELIZABETH: Are the Spanish invading?

 

ESSEX: Yes! Well not this country, but –

 

ELIZABETH: Williams, the Lord Chancellor and his son.

 

WILLIAMS: To your bedchamber?

 

ELIZABETH: Why not? It’s a public place!

 

EXIT WILLIAMS.

 

ESSEX: I take my leave in that case.

 

ELIZABETH: Stay where you are, young man!

 

ESSEX: Help me, Lopus!

 

ELIZABETH: I want them to see for themselves.

 

ESSEX: Lopus, help me to entreat her Majesty –

 

LOPEZ: My dear Lord –

 

ESSEX: (TO ELIZABETH) A dethroned and desperate King, enemy of our enemy, washed to your shores, who, in the name of divine right, cries out to you for aid against his holy deposers, the sweaty tawny stinking oily Papist Jesuit Iberian chanting defrauders, calls to you for what would be a most golden enterprise, and recompense, and rebound, and blow-back, a huge silver haul of honour –

 

ELIZABETH: No.

 

ESSEX: Oh Harry, Harry, can you hear my cry?

Eighth of that name, Fourth of that name?! Oh England,

shrink, shrink your claws in, seal yourself with slime

into a snaily womb and feast on dreams,

while Spain acts out its wishes as they rise,

raping the world and reaping from the deed

riches immeasurable! Harry, in the clay,

cover your eyes – our day is not your day!

 

ELIZABETH: Are you saying I should invade France a hundred years ago? I am not a Queen of impossible stratagems. Essex, puppy, listen! Nothing unnecessary! Today is the day when you learn that lesson.

 

ENTER WILLIAMS.

 

WILLIAM: The Lord Chancellor and Privy Councillor Sir Robert Cecil.

 

ELIZABETH: Come in, come in, join the party!

 

ENTER BURLEIGH AND SIR ROBERT, WITH LOWERED EYES.

 

ELIZABETH: It’s alright, I’m shirted. More than I was when the Earl of Essex stormed in announcing a Spanish invasion –

 

BURLEIGH: Nevertheless, most sacred Majesty,

I have no wish to let my mortal eyes

scamper like apes around your bedchamber –

 

ELIZABETH: Unlike the Earl of Essex.

 

ESSEX: All this and more I will bear for the sake of the King whose cause I have sworn to uphold!

 

ELIZABETH: Don’t uphold it so much that you sink England.

 

ESSEX: What shall I say to the King of Portugal, your refugee friend? I cannot, cannot go to him again with a refusal!

 

ELIZABETH: Then drop him, as I will you if you do not change your behaviour.

 

ESSEX: How else am I to prosecute the war?

Who is your General? Is it these men here,

who do not even dare to look at you,

much less the enemy?! Will you clip my claws

and wings, kick out my teeth, and teach my mind

strategies of politeness? Bless my soul,

there is no better means to strike at Spain,

which sprawls its poison corpse across the world,

purveying living death – there is no scheme

better than to assist this King, our friend,

back to his throne, provoke an uprising

in Portugal against the Spanish thieves,

her occupiers – bind ourselves with chains

of gold to Portugal whose merchants buy

from Africa and India and China!
What better course of war can Burleigh see,

what straighter path to wealth and world-wide power?

Sir Robert Cecil, can you spy a means

there on the floor? Perhaps a mouse escape-route?

 

BURLEIGH AND CECIL LOOK UP.

 

ELIZABETH: Ha! They look up!

 

BURLEIGH: Last year, my Lord, without enormous outlay,

we sank a Spanish fleet. No expedition

was necessary, no ferrying of legions.

Spain came to us, and seamanship and fire

smashed it upon the anvils of the weather.

An act of God that saved us blood and treasure.

 

ESSEX: They are rebuilding. This is not their policy,

it is their sacred brainless papal duty.

Phillip will not desist till we are Catholics.

And we have got the rightful King of Portugal

sitting in London – axe to split Iberia!

 

ELIZABETH: My Lord Burleigh?

 

BURLEIGH: I thank your Majesty for inviting my son and I to this lesson on the fruits of impetuousness, here in your bedchamber. Were we to rush into Portugal as the Earl rushed into this room, unbidden, we might very well be rebuffed and shamed as he has been.

 

ESSEX: The King himself has bidden us!

 

ROBERT: The King is a pauper!

ESSEX: No, Sir Robert! The pauper is a King!

 

ELIZABETH: Thankyou all. Now leave me please. I am with my doctor.

 

ESSEX: Your Majesty, if you believe your champion

my Lord of Leicester, by his death has left us

incapable of war, bereft of man-blood –

do not forget, he raised me! Fatherless,

I was not left by God the least unguided,

but Leicester made me like himself. I tell you,

that which, whilst living, he increased, now dead,

he has passed on to me – his entire lionheart!

And I, though young, make bold to claim his place,

and be your champion in the lists of England!

 

ELIZABETH: Sweet.

 

EXEUNT BURLEIGH, CECIL, ESSEX.

 

ELIZABETH: Doctor, you are from Portugal. And you too, I know, are a friend of this refugee King. In fact he calls you his Ambassador. Poor King whose ambassador is a doctor! No doubt you are in favour of this invasion plan. Talk to me!

 

 

THREE. LOPEZ’S HOUSE. SARA, LOPEZ.

 

SARA: Still, she will not?

 

LOPEZ: Still not. I put Don Antonio’s offer to her. Twinkling Indias of treasure once she restores him.

 

SARA: And she refused?

 

LOPEZ: Yes. But she wept.

 

SARA: Wept?

 

LOPEZ: A single tear right at the end. What does it mean?

 

SARA: These tears –

 

LOPEZ: One tear.

 

SARA: Strange! If she was a gambler – which she is – one tear betrays her whole hand!

 

LOPEZ: Does it?

 

SARA: I am looking into it! Like a crystal ball, Roderigo! Oh I wish I could see a future there where Don Antonio rules again in Portugal! What a gift that tear would be to all us scattered nobodies!

 

LOPEZ: If that is what it means.

 

SARA: What else was reflected there? Show me the whole of her chamber!

 

LOPEZ: Leicester. His name.

 

SARA: Grief?

 

LOPEZ: Essex burst in.

 

SARA: Laughter?

 

LOPEZ: So she cried out for Burleigh and his heir –

 

SARA: A child in need of a protector?

 

LOPEZ: When they were gone, she questioned me intensely. She knows all I am doing for Don Antonio.

 

SARA: Betrayal?

 

LOPEZ: By me? No! I then laid out his offer of power and diamonds. But she only pretended to listen. Then it came. More precious than all his treasures. The tear.

 

SARA: What does it mean?

 

LOPEZ: She asked me to call her Eliza.

 

ENTER ANTONY.

 

ANTONY: Father? Mother?

 

LOPEZ: Come on, come on!

 

ANTONY: The sisters are with me!

 

ENTER ELLEN AND ANNE.

 

LOPEZ: Well goodbye, good boy!

 

ANTONY: Give my thanks to her Majesty the Queen!

 

LOPEZ: I will. I have, and will again, Antony.

 

SARA: And when you come back you will teach your sisters!

 

ANNE: I will teach him! The Queen speaks Latin and so do I!

 

SARA: Well done Anne!

 

ANNE: I’ve learned the Winchester song! And, which was much harder, taught it to Ellen!

 

ELLEN AND ANNE SING, ANNE ACCOMPANYING ON MANDOLIN.

 

Concinamus, O sodales,

Eja! Quid silemus nobile canticum

Dulce melos domum

Dulce domum resonemus –

 

SARA: Strange that they should choose to sing about sweet home! What do their teachers think?

 

LOPEZ: It is humorous!

 

SARA: I see.

 

LOPEZ: They will turn him into an English gentleman, you see, Sara, humorous and light-footed servant of her Majesty.

 

ANTONY: Like you!

 

SARA: What are you hoping to learn, Antony?

 

ANTONY: My main question is – do the many troubles and conflicts of humanity, which we see swallowing up all of our energy – as if our problem was each other, not death and disease – do these quarrels emerge from a defect in the human soul, or are they pressed upon us from outside, by fate or God like the weather? Either way, it seems to me that the soul is not water-proof –

 

LOPEZ: So seal it!

 

ANTONY: Yes!

 

ANNE: At the best school in England!

 

SARA: Anyway the one her Majesty has chosen.

 

ELLEN: How she must love you, father! We are the luckiest –

 

LOPEZ: Silence! No, Ellen, no, no!

 

ANTONY: Remember!

 

SARA: Remember!

 

ELLEN: I am so sorry, I –

 

LOPEZ: (TO ANTONY) You will take with you no outward sign.

 

ANTONY: No.

 

LOPEZ: You will love her Majesty the Queen with all your heart.

 

ANTONY: Yes.

 

LOPEZ: And in the same heart daily you will say –

 

ANTONY: If I forget thee, O Jerusalem – If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it even to the foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

 

LOPEZ: God bless you. Well I will walk with you to the gate. But no women.

 

SARA: Goodbye!

 

ANNE, ELLEN: Goodbye! Goodbye!

 

EXEUNT ANTONY AND LOPEZ. ANNE TAKES UP THE MANDOLIN AND PLAYS SADLY.

 

ANNE: What I would study is, what I am studying, is this question - would there be peace on earth if men and women could be true to one another? Would that be enough?

 

SARA: Well it would be a start.

 

MANDOLIN.

 

SARA: Her Majesty cried.

 

ANNE STOPS PLAYING.

 

ANNE: Why did she cry?

 

SARA:                          If we can find that key,

perhaps the prisoner in her heart will say,

open the door and gladly I will pay

with armies for my freedom, to restore

the exiled King of Portugal.

 

ELLEN:                   And then?

 

ANNE: We can go home!

 

ELLEN:                     Home?

 

SARA:                          Metaphorical

the key was that I spoke of then – not this one.

 

SHE TAKES A LARGE HOUSE-KEY OUT OF A CASKET.

 

ELLEN: Our house! Our house! Is it a lovely one?

 

ANNE: Is it still standing? Is the occupant,

if so, a Spaniard who will run for Spain,

or Portuguese who might stay put?

 

SARA:                    Your father

will be rewarded, if he wins the Queen,

with this at least, when two-shirts Don Antonio

is King again! Your father will have mansions

in Lisbon, castles. He might be the grand

Governor of a province. Each of you

will be a Duke’s wife. The unseated monarch

has promised to your father, if he wins

his throne back for him, fifty thousand crowns.

And this is all the echo of God’s laughter

at present – but the Queen has shed a tear.

 

ELLEN: I do not understand. She shed one tear.

 

ANNE: The point is that she let our father see it.

He is her doctor, and he knows her body.

But now she wants to let him see her mind.

 

ELLEN: Her heart! Her soul!

 

ANNE:                 Some say she lost her soul

when she cut off the head, reluctantly,

of Mary Queen of Hearts.

 

ELLEN:                              Of Scots?

 

ANNE:                                            That one.

 

ELLEN: Is she in love? Elizabeth?

 

ANNE:                              The Queen

is very nearly sixty.

 

SARA:                   So am I.

 

ELLEN: Are you in love?

 

SARA:                       Of course.

 

ELLEN:                               So she may be.

Not with our father?

 

ANNE:                         Ellen, honestly!

         

ELLEN: I said not.

 

SARA:               With her doctor, not this Queen.

Though Mary dallied with her secretary,

Elizabeth is prouder stuff. (The Lords

of Scotland claymore-d that poor man -)

 

ANNE:                        Who then?

If it is love –

 

ELLEN:    It must be!

 

SARA:                          Anyway,

let us suppose, and follow where that leads.

Leicester is dead, who had her heart before –

 

ELLEN: Well it is grief then!

 

ANNE:                          Love and grief are twins.

 

SARA: Prior to the tear, four men were in her chamber.

 

ELLEN: Four? Her bedchamber???

 

SARA:                          Burleigh and his son –

 

ANNE: A cricket and its scratch-song.

 

ELLEN:                       And your husband –

 

SARA: And Essex.

 

ELLEN:                   A whole county?

 

ANNE:                                 No – the Earl!

 

ELLEN: I thought she meant that all the men of Essex

were in one room!

 

ANNE:                  I know you did, my darling.

 

ENTER LOPEZ. THE OTHERS TURN TO HIM, THEN CARRY ON TALKING, AS HE LISTENS.

 

SARA: Essex? A young man half her age, a shaky

amateur pencil-sketch of Leicester. Married,

but to the widow of his fallen hero,

Sir Philip Sidney, who, as he lay dying,

on the male romance of the battlefield,

made Essex swear to take the woman over.

Sepulchre of a marriage that must be.

Could it be Essex?

 

ANNE:                  She admires him warmly,

she loves him like a child, the child that Leicester

and she did not have.

 

SARA:                 But the tear – the tear –

 

ANNE: The tear – of longing – as the shadows lengthen

of a denied life –

 

ELLEN:          Yes! Poor Queen Elizabeth!

 

FOUR. ESSEX HOUSE. ESSEX RAGING AT A MANNEQUIN OF WILLIAM, WHICH HE THINKS IS THE REAL THING. HE IS UPSTAGE OF IT AND IT’S FACING THE AUDIENCE, SO HE ONLY SEES THE BACK OF THE HEAD.

 

ESSEX: Well I said what you told me to! And a fat lot of good that did! Harry, oh Harry! I looked like a pratt! An actor! Which served me right! But you said, you swore in botanical terms that it would work! Burst into her chamber like a lover? She was appalled! I glimpsed her – well actually she is – quite decently... But she is the great out-manoeuverer. If she was a ship she would sail off without wind, while the rest of the fat fleet sat whistling! She exposed me to the old lump of chalk and his baby-snail son. Imagine a whole audience of Puritans! That was what it was like! William, William, what have you done to me, William??? Speak, man! Eloquise your way out of this one! Tell me what this Queen is, what I am, what to be, to do – write me, write me, William!

 

HE GRABS HOLD OF THE MANNEQUIN.

 

It is not William.

 

ENTER ALLEYN.

 

ALLEYN: My Lord of Essex –

 

ESSEX: Alleyn, what the buggery –

 

ALLEYN: Master William sends his apologies –

 

ESSEX: Yes, yes, but what’s this, Alleyn??

 

ALLEYN: Ah! Now what’s that doing here? Those scallywags -

 

ESSEX: I don’t care about it, forget about it. Tell him I have had with his dummy a superior discourse to any I have had with him!

 

ALLEYN: (WRITING IN A NOTEBOOK) A superior discourse.

 

ESSEX: Yes he can use that if he likes. Tell him I would like to tell him how his plot went down with the Queen –

 

ALLEYN: He was on his way here, my Lord, and I with him. But we met with your doctor, the fascinating Lopez, and he and William got to discussing states and machinations and Spanish terms and the Pope and so on. They wandered off and left me hurrying on to you. This is, I think, supposed to be an opportunity for me of some kind. A role he has arranged for me.  

 

ESSEX: At his divine leisure, tell him, it needs a bit of work, his plot with the Queen! Say, real women don’t make sense, William! If he dares to test his art against life, he would do well to study the Queen!

 

ALLEYN: Life.

 

ESSEX: It is a thing, Alleyn, that happens offstage, in prose. The plot’s a mess, in fact the whole thing is one endless loose end. Which is why I need him!!

 

ALLEYN: And he you, my Lord!

ESSEX: Bring me William!


ALLEYN: So I will, in good time!

 

EXIT ALLEYN. ENTER HOBBES, A SERVANT.

 

HOBBES: Doctor Lopez.

 

ESSEX: Thank God! The one person on earth more absurd than I am.

 

EXIT HOBBES. ENTER LOPEZ.

 

ESSEX: Where is -? Oh never mind.

 

LOPEZ: How is my Lord?

 

ESSEX: The head, the head, Lopez –

 

ESSEX UNDRESSES.

 

LOPEZ: The sores have mostly fallen away –

 

ESSEX: Yes, yes –

 

LOPEZ: Well done, my Lord!

 

ESSEX: Not me, Mercury.

 

LOPEZ: A conspiracy of yourself and the element!

 

ESSEX: What next? What will happen to me?

 

LOPEZ: Well, this is good progress. Let us continue the treatment.

 

ESSEX: The torture.

 

A MERCURY BATH IS REVEALED, IN PREPARATION BEHIND A CURTAIN.

 

ESSEX: Ha! Hobbes did not forget, even if I did. I forget things, Lopez, more and more. It makes me so angry! Just when the Queen has appointed me to the Privy Council. As Master of Horse! The youngest ever! Except for Sir Robert. But he always was top of the class! Thanks to his father!

 

LOPEZ: In you get, my Lord.

 

ESSEX: No, no –

 

LOPEZ: Yes, yes.

 

ESSEX: How long till I go mad, Lopus?

 

LOPEZ: My Lord, let us continue with the treatment.

 

ESSEX: How long?

 

HE GETS IN.

 

ESSEX: Aaggghhh! Too hot! Let me out!

 

LOPEZ: Stay in! Stay in a little longer!

 

ESSEX: No, no! Mercy! Lopus!

 

HE FAINTS.

 

LOPEZ: Help me with the Earl, Hobbes!

 

THEY DRAG HIM OUT.

 

LOPEZ: Rum, Hobbes.

 

ESSEX COMES ROUND. HOBBES HANDS HIM A BOTTLE OF RUM AND A GLASS AND EXITS. ESSEX DRINKS GLASS AFTER GLASS.

 

ESSEX: Lopus – Lopus – listen – I am in love – I am in love – with Elizabeth!

 

 

FIVE. ELIZABETH’S CHAMBER. ELIZABETH, LOPEZ.

 

ELIZABETH: I would, of course, if I was a warrior King, not hesitate to put back your throneless friend –

 

LOPEZ: Your Majesty, please, I am your physician. It is by accident that I am a friend of Don Antonio. And why does he call me his ambassador? It is just because I have so many cousins – one in the court of Spain, one at the Sultan’s court in Constantinople – cousins in Antwerp and Portugal. He does not want me to petition you and nor do I. I only wish for your good health.

 

ELIZABETH: Hush!

 

LOPEZ: Hush?

 

ELIZABETH: Hush, Doctor! What is good for my health is truth!

LOPEZ: Truth?

 

ELIZABETH: Truth! You are the Portuguese Ambassador! Persuade me to save your country!

 

LOPEZ: Your Majesty –

 

ELIZABETH: Be a man!

 

LOPEZ: As your physician, then, I speak the truth as I see it, for the sake of your Majesty’s health. The enterprise is full of risk.

 

ELIZABETH: Yes!

 

LOPEZ: If there is a shade of delay – if the Spanish get warning – they will immediately hang all of the Portuguese nobility who support or might support Don Antonio. They would like to hang them all anyway, and would welcome the excuse of an invasion. Without that faction, you will not drive out the Spanish from Portugal.

 

ELIZABETH: Quite.

 

LOPEZ: Therefore the question of command is – perhaps the most crucial question of your Majesty’s reign so far –

 

ELIZABETH: Oh?

 

LOPEZ: I mean – I do not know –

 

ELIZABETH: Say it if you think it!

 

LOPEZ: This war with Spain – this war, your Majesty, of an island kingdom against an empire - at no moment, your Majesty, at no time prior to this has England enjoyed an advantage –

 

ELIZABETH: Yes! True!

LOPEZ: Use it!

 

ELIZABETH: I may.

 

LOPEZ: But think! When last year Spain sailed with so vast a force against us – in defence of our very shores we were united! My Lord of Leicester was alive!

 

ELIZABETH: Am I not enough to unite us?

 

LOPEZ: Yes, in defence of the island. But when the question is a foreign invasion, with multiple golden temptations – one should think of the English as like a greyhound, single-minded in defence of its kennel, but – set loose in a field of rabbits –

 

ELIZABETH: The expedition requires Julius Caesar.

 

LOPEZ: I think Sir John Norris.

 

ELIZABETH: And what will the Earl of Essex say about that? What will he do?

 

LOPEZ: Your Majesty – the Earl of Essex is in love with you.

 

ELIZABETH: Thanks, Lopez! You have given me authority over him that I completely lacked as his Queen. It was a clever thing you did, to tell me that, Lopez.

 

 

SIX. A ROOM IN THE PALACE. BURLEIGH, ROBERT CECIL, ANDRADA. ANDRADA GIVES PAPERS TO BURLEIGH AND LEAVES. BURLEIGH LEAFS THROUGH THEM.  

 

ROBERT: Another letter from the King of Scotland –

 

BURLEIGH: He is impatient. But the Queen is healthy.

 

HE KISSES THE LETTER, THEN PUTS IT ASIDE AND PICKS UP OTHER PAPERS AGAIN.

 

And as for that, we have a present question.

War, Robert.

 

ROBERT:   Tell me what you think about it.

 

BURLEIGH: War is a waste of money if you lose –

or if you win but lease your victory

on inconvenient terms. But if you win

and take all, all being more, by multiples,

than your expense, and have no alimony

of long-term occupation, compensation

of allies, and your own recuperation –

war, Robert, is a sensible investment.

I am a man of peace, and so are you,

the Queen is female, she is not compelled

by manly blood, to shed the blood of men.
She has no Queen to win, she is the Queen.

We are not looking out for enemies,

but they have found us, in the form of Spain –

last year, a vast fleet, next year, doubtless, one

as big or bigger. Essex is not wrong

to make war plans.

 

ROBERT:              For now he has good reasons,

but it will not last.

 

BURLEIGH:               No, his reasoning mind

is not strong. What he cannot understand

is that to end the war is our war-aim,

has to be. Peace, with England free and strong,

would be, for us, a signal victory

over King Phillip’s empire. Now, this plan

to seize the damsel Portugal from Spain

her ravisher – is good. But if we won,

pushed back the Spanish on their own peninsula,

no power on earth would make the Earl stop there.

No, no! Not him! He would, God’s warrior,

without the sanction of the Queen, plunge on

towards Madrid – with every port-wined madman

Portugal could provide.

 

ROBERT:                 He would, for certain.

 

BURLEIGH: And what had been the crystal, elegant,

just reinstatement of a rightful monarch –

thus far, no further, to the world’s delight –

would change into an endless feast of horror,

the entire empire, rushing to its nest,

contracting to defend the centre. Crushed,

all that adventure, peace impossible

forever.

 

ROBERT: That is what Lord Essex dreams of.

 

BURLEIGH: Yes, endless war.

 

ROBERT:                         When he and I were schoolboys,

as it were, he would always win at jousting,

and I at algebra.

 

BURLEIGH:    And French and Latin

and rhetoric and Greek. It is well known

that a good horseman and his horse are one.

But I have seen his Lordship’s horse at home,

Robert, and it is not the least like him.

He is like it. Now in a land of horses

he would be king, and such a realm was England

in former times – essentially a herd

stampeding here and there, with armoured men

attached to it with saddles. Nowadays

it is a land of seaports and of merchants,

whose minds are maps and clacking abacuses.

The era of the charger is no more.

So let my Lordship chew the cud of that.

 

ROBERT: We must divide the strategy from the man.

 

BURLEIGH: Exactly, Robert. With the Earl removed,

the plan is good. If we restore the King

to Portugal, and Spain, amazed, withdraws,

most likely peace will follow. With advantage

for us – of an Iberian alliance,

and worldwide trade. The riches of this Kingdom

will beggar India, when the blade-mad Earl,

who is a danger to her Majesty

of more concern to us, if we are wise,

than the whole Spanish empire and the plague,

and every curse the Pontiff can devise –

when the crazed thinker and his sane idea

are separated, England will be golden.

Now Robert, who can help us to ensure

that this goes forward, Portugal is taken,

and that the Earl does not command the mission?

 

ROBERT: Ah –

 

BURLEIGH PICKS UP THE LETTER FROM KING JAMES.

 

BURLEIGH: There is a price to pay for this. What is it,

Robert?

 

ROBERT: The Queen suspects?

 

BURLEIGH:                          She does. Of course.
And you and I are loyal to her, Robert,

of course we are. But loyalty to her,

our most beloved mistress, sweet Elizabeth,

might well be treason to the crown, to England

itself – which must continue past her death,

now she will leave no heir. And so to Scotland

we turn, conceiving never-dreamed-of union,

as the Queen ages. And our hearts, to her,

are glass, of course they are – or else some courier

has blabbed. She does not trust us as before,

but speaks more freely, frankly, with her doctor.

And soon our lives may well be his to end,

or at least, if we wish to guide her Majesty,

we may soon have to speak through him. Now Robert,

what can we do? What do we know about him

that he does not want known? Can you remember?

 

ROBERT: He is a Jew!

 

BURLEIGH: Yes! He actually practises, in the privacy of his house! Here in England, where it is a crime. If her Majesty knew, she would have to banish him. Ah, here’s Lopus!

 

ENTER LOPEZ

 

BURLEIGH: Excellent man. How is her Majesty?

 

LOPEZ: Well, thankyou, my Lord Chancellor.

 

ROBERT: Not so well as to be able to dispense with her physician.

 

LOPEZ: Her Majesty may dismiss me whenever she desires.

 

BURLEIGH: I pray, Master Lopus, that will never happen. You are such an excellent fellow, who has brought together my Lord the Earl of Essex –

 

ROBERT: The hope of England!

 

BURLEIGH: The hope of England – with my Lord the King of Portugal, Don Antonio, to the potential benefit of both our Kingdoms!

 

LOPEZ: I am glad to hear your Lordship say so. My Lord felt differently before, about this matter.

 

BURLEIGH: Cautionary principle. Time to think, to weigh, as we always do, the interest of her Majesty extremely carefully.

 

ROBERT: We now want to back the plan.

 

BURLEIGH: Steady, Robert. Master Lopus, may I put to you a question: in the matter of Don Antonio, which seems to you more important: that the King should be restored, or that the Earl of Essex should restore him?

 

LOPEZ: He should be restored by the Queen.

 

ROBERT: Good answer!

 

BURLEIGH: It was a loyal answer, Robert.

 

LOPEZ: Of course.

 

BURLEIGH: From one who is both the Queen of England’s subject and the King of Portugal’s ambassador.

 

LOPEZ: Whilst he is without a Kingdom.

 

BURLEIGH: I always think it miraculous for a Christian to have so many cousins in so many countries.

 

LOPEZ: I am Portuguese born.

 

BURLEIGH: And there is your cousin in Antwerp and your cousin in Madrid. And your cousin by marriage in Constantinople. Is he a Christian?

 

LOPEZ: I believe he is a Jew.

 

BURLEIGH: But you are not.

 

LOPEZ: My Lord it was for this crime I was falsely banished from my homeland. By the inquisition. And sought for sanctuary and for justice in England!

 

BURLEIGH: No inquisition here!

 

LOPEZ: Amen!

 

BURLEIGH: But even so we do get curious from time to time. You must understand our sensitivity. When you lay your hands on our Queen, you have a grip of England. No man on earth do we require to know better. We might feel safe if your skull was glass and we could see the little gnat thoughts flitting about.  

Lopez, what do you think about the Earl of Essex?

 

LOPEZ: The hope of England!

 

BURLEIGH: What we hope is that England will survive despite him. Lopus – it is our belief that an invasion of Portugal is in the interests of England.

 

LOPEZ: Amen! Amen! Amen!

 

BURLEIGH: And we will seek to persuade her Majesty to this effect. But –

 

ROBERT: The Earl of Essex must have nothing to do with it!

 

BURLEIGH: Will you help us, Lopus?

 

LOPEZ: Yes. I completely agree with your Lordship about Essex. I am keen to work with you and with Sir Robert in any way I can to prevent that man from wrecking the country. I am yours, my Lord, in body and soul, believe me!

 

ROBERT: Soul?

 

BURLEIGH: Hush, Robert. What the doctor has said is excellent.

 

LOPEZ: I believe that if Essex can be separated from the mission, the Queen will agree to it.

 

BURLEIGH: Can you effect that separation?

 

LOPEZ: I believe so – by means of a plot, not my own inspiration – but a work of genius, if ever there was one –

 

 

ROBERT: But the Queen is such a shifting wind – she might wake up tomorrow morning and forbid all talk of Lisbon!

 

BURLEIGH: That is why I have been talking to Talbot –

 

 

SEVEN. DEE WITH SERVANTS CARRYING HIS MAGIC TABLE. ENTER LOPEZ.

 

DEE: Ah, Lopus! Good. Speak, speak – the Queen.

 

LOPEZ: My dear Dee, as the chart predicts –

 

DEE: The earth begins to give beneath her?

 

LOPEZ: And within.

 

DEE: The precise moment that was calculated.

 

LOPEZ: Your art proves true.

 

DEE: No, the angel, the angel. (TO SERVANTS) Place it here, in the centre. (TABLE IS PLACED IN THE CENTRE, HIDDEN BY A CURTAIN.) Where is Talbot???

 

LOPEZ: What are we to do, Dee? Her grief for Leicester -

 

DEE: Do? You are a plumber, I am a listener. We can do nothing but plumb and listen, while the hosts of the invisible war as they will. Where the hell is Talbot?? If he has entered into trance already –

 

LOPEZ: A foreign adventure seems more and more auspicious.

 

DEE: To you. But you are a beetle.

 

LOPEZ: Do you want me to leave?

 

DEE: No. Ah, Talbot!

 

ENTER TALBOT, HALF IN A TRANCE.

 

DEE: Talbot! Have you got the glass? Have you got the glass, Talbot? Have you got the glass, have you got the glass? Talbot? Have you got the glass, Talbot? Have you got the glass – Talbot??? The glass, the glass, have you got the glass, the glass, Talbot?

 

TALBOT: Yes.

 

DEE: (TO LOPEZ) He hears them more and more, me less and less. (TO TALBOT.) Put the glass on the table.

 

ENTER DOORMAN.

 

DOORMAN: Her Majesty the Queen.

 

DEE: Put it on the table, Talbot! On the table. The glass, the glass, Talbot. Put it on the table. The table.

 

DEE PUSHES TALBOT BEHIND CURTAIN. ENTER QUEEN.

 

ELIZABETH: Too bright.

 

SOME CANDLES ARE EXTINGUISHED.

 

ELIZABETH: Is that you, Dee?

 

DEE: Yes it is, your Majesty.

 

ELIZABETH: And Lopus is here?

 

LOPEZ: I am here, your Majesty.

 

SHE TAKES HIM ASIDE.

 

ELIZABETH: Sit, Lopus, at my left hand. Let us begin.

 

CURTAIN OPENS, TO REVEAL TALBOT SITTING AT THE TABLE.

 

DEE: Talbot, thou good man, in the name of Christ, place the glass on the table.

 

PAUSE.

 

DEE: Again I say, Talbot, thou excellent fellow, in God’s name, place the glass on the table.

 

PAUSE.

 

DEE: And in the name of the Holy Ghost, a third time I beseech thee –

 

TALBOT BANGS THE GLASS ONTO THE TABLE.

 

DEE: Amen. Now your Majesty, reverently I will attempt to summon our helper, who teaches us the names of the stars. (INTONES) Uriel aporsy mesarpon omeuras peludyn malpreaxo. Condusen, vlearo thersephi bayl merphon, paroys gebuly mailthomyon ilthear tamarson acrimy lon peatha Casmy chertiel, medony reabdo, lasonti iaciel mal arti bulomeon abri pathulmon theoma pathromyn –

 

TALBOT: England! Is that you, England?

 

ELIZABETH:                            It is I!

 

TALBOT: England, arise, and seize the seven seas!

Salt of your speech shall tang the world-wide waters!

All shall be yours! The treasure-house lies open!

By astrolabe take Africa, by compass

India, rove by sextant to America

and make her yours! These are your symbols, England!

These are your soul! The Seven Sisters beckon,

they blaze a compass rose onto the ocean,

north south east west, for you our dearest England,

who would not, bending to Rome’s rod, bow down

with Spain to push Christ back into the tomb,

and so will be a second Rome, far wider

than all the sword-ploughed acres of the Caesars!
Vaster than all that fell to Alexander,

because the keel, and not the plodding soldier

or warhorse shoe-d in mud, shall stretch your borders!

 

ELIZABETH: Uriel, angel, thanks for this prediction.

But England is a poor and muddled island,

with Rome on all sides – Spain and France and Ireland.

What can I do?

 

TALBOT:       Set free your sailing soldiers!

 

ELIZABETH: You want me to make war?

 

TALBOT:                              With craft and counting.

 

ELIZABETH: Well I could do so, but I have to tell you,

angel, this island may be due for sprouting,

acorn-like, but her little Queen is shrinking

smaller and smaller. Why? Because within her

there is not anything at all. God help me,

an age has passed, and everything has gone,

but I am still here! Angels in the height,

you crush me with your dreams of English empire!
Send me a man, a King, a friend to help me,

and I will do it! Send someone to help me!  

 

 

EIGHT. ESSEX HOUSE. ESSEX. ENTER ALLEYN.

 

ESSEX: Is he coming?

 

ALLEYN: No, my Lord.

 

ESSEX: What this time, Alleyn?

 

ALLEYN: He has been captured by pirates.

 

ESSEX: In Southwark?

 

ALLEYN: That is what he said to tell you.

 

ESSEX: When will he be free?

 

ALLEYN: Well that is rather up to them –

 

ESSEX: Alleyn, I thought this man was my friend!

 

ALLEYN: He is, my Lord!

 

ESSEX: The Queen is in love with me! Does that not interest him?

 

ALLEYN: It does! If my Lord will pay a ransom of three hundred pounds –

 

ESSEX: Bla! Bla! Bla!

 

ALLEYN: He has come up with a plan!

 

ESSEX: Oh really?

ALLEYN: Which he whispered to me from his prison.

 

ESSEX: What does he say?

 

ALLEYN: It is not always easy to understand him. He speaks six languages at once and calls it English.

 

ESSEX: That is how you speak on the stage.

 

ALLEYN: I say to him sometimes, why can’t we talk like normal people, William?

 

ESSEX: We can hear each other speak any time! What would be the point of the theatre?

 

ALLEYN: To hold up a mirror to nature?

 

ESSEX: That’s what the eyes are! No, no, theatre holds up a mirror to the imagination. Which is itself a mirror – that reflects the invisible.

 

ALLEYN: Fairies?

 

ESSEX: Motives! Peer, Alleyn, into the mirror here! It shows us, but not what’s inside us! Now in the course of a play, in imagination’s mirror, the characters are slowly turned inside-out, the invisible is made visible, the darkest motives of the soul are laid bare! That is why I need William now! My true mirror! This one’s useless –

Mirror mirror on the wall,

Why do you show me nothing at all?

 

ALLEYN: He’s in one of his moods.

 

ESSEX: Ah, Alleyn!

 

ALLEYN: He thinks he’s the Earl of Oxford.

 

ESSEX: How does he get like this?

 

ALLEYN: He looks himself in the mirror and he says, ‘How could I, a Grammar School boy from Stratford on Avon, if I even went to the school there, which is uncertain, all the records are lost – how could I possibly get it together to write comedies and tragedies to rival the greatest written? How could I penetrate the minds of Kings and courtiers, how could I have access to ancient philosophy when I’m crap at Latin and my Greek’s a non-starter?’ It freaks him out. He disappears for a week and then he pops up saying, ‘Alleyn, I’ve cracked it, I’m the Earl of Oxford.’

 

ESSEX: And how does Oxford feel about that?

 

ALLEYN: Fine. He thinks he’s William.

 

ESSEX: But even so, Alleyn – you say he’s dreamed up a plan?

 

ALLEYN: Yes. This is it, as far as I can understand. That you, by night, should sleep with the Queen. She has confessed that she loves you. Will has worked out, with Doctor Lopus, how it can be done.   

 

ESSEX: No, Alleyn, it’s impossible! Lopus knows why!

 

ALLEYN: She marries you and that solves the question of the succession.

 

ESSEX: I am married already!

 

ALLEYN: Was that a problem for Henry?

 

ESSEX: Alleyn, whilst I am married I will honour my vow!

 

ALLEYN: What? Why?

 

ESSEX: Lopus knows!

 

ALLEYN: Alright, they said you’d say that, they’ve worked that out.

 

ESSEX: How?

 

ALLEYN: In the short term, your bedwork can be done by proxy.

 

ESSEX: Who will stand in for me?

 

ALLEYN: William.

 

ESSEX: What???

 

ALLEYN: He is prepared to commit for you, my Lord, this act of treason! At first he said it should be Lopez, but Lopez refused for professional reasons. Will is your height and build. It will be dark. He can do your voice. It will happen tonight. We are performing at court. Don’t even think about it. William’s on top of it.

 

ESSEX: Despite his mood?

 

ALLEYN: He is willing to lay that aside to lay the Queen of England.

 

ESSEX: Dear God.

 

ALLEYN: My thoughts precisely.

 

ESSEX: Thank Will.

 

ALLEYN: I will.

 

EXIT ALLEYN.

 

ESSEX: Dear God.

 

ENTER FRANCES, WHO SINGS.

 

FRANCES:
My true love hath my hart and I have his,

By just exchange, one for the other giv’ne.

I holde his deare, and myne he cannot misse:

There never was a better bargaine driv’ne.

My true love hath my hart, and I have his.

 

His hart in me, keeps me and him in one,

My hart in him, his thoughts and senses guides:

He loves my hart, for once it was his owne:

I cherish his, because in me it bides.

My true love hath my hart and I have his.

 

ESSEX: Frances!

I wish that heart was here, that with this hand

resting upon it, slowed and stopped its drum.

The hand still trembled but the breast was still.

Still, still as all the hoof-threshed Flemish corn,

the hive from which the rhyming honey ran,

that you just tasted on your tongue again.

I wish the Spanish spike had not been aimed,

I wish my charge had broken their stiff line.

Instead, too soon, too strong for this weak hand,

their reinforcements thundered up the lane!

And Leicester failed to break the siege of Flushing.

 

FRANCES: Oh my dear heart –

 

ESSEX:                   But Flushing, Flanders, all

Europa, I would fling them to the wind

to have my true friend back, to place my hand

on his good heart, and feel it move again!

Sir Philip Sidney! Those three words combined

are the best poem in the English language!
But all our straining prancers could not save him

from shark-swift Spain. So I say, God save England!

 

FRANCES: But if we had not lost him, you and I

would never have been joined in sacred marriage,

which to our lost one is a living shrine,

keeping him warm, despite the foreign clay

that clasps his body. Has his poetry

stopped? Has his greatness failed in any way?

No, it is us – it is our love for him

and for each other, triple rose entwined,

whose roots are in disaster, but whose bloom,

scented with love, waves in the living weather!

 

ESSEX: Yes, Frances, it is true – he is alive

if we love him. I would have followed him

into the freezing caves of memory

if he had not, with his last breath, implored

that I should take his widow as my wife.

Easy request, sweet duty, lark-winged burden.

You are my life, you are my only cause.

Memory of my friend, and wife of mine –

what woman ever joined so much in one?

And if I have not loved you as a man,

it is because with you I am in heaven.

 

FRANCES: Husband, I understand. This heart of mine,

wrecked by its loss and left to sink unmanned,

then salvaged by your love and towed to shore,

feels safer than the golden jewel that shines

on the Queen’s bosom. And a time may come

for kisses and for children, but till then

our hearts can simply gaze at one another.

 

ESSEX: She loved the Earl of Leicester.

 

FRANCES:                      Oh completely.

She is a woman.

 

ESSEX:        Did they sleep together?

 

FRANCES: I do not know.

 

ESSEX:                  Oh Frances, set me free.

 

FRANCES: From what?

 

ESSEX:                      His wife, she lived a country life,

she never came to London.

 

FRANCES:                       Then she sadly

fell down the stairs.

 

ESSEX:                 They say he poisoned her.

Lopus mixed it and Leicester gave it to her.

 

FRANCES: That is a lie. He pushed her down the stairs.

 

ESSEX: It was an accident! My Lord of Leicester?!

 

FRANCES: Does the Queen love you?

 

ESSEX:                            Oh my dear, my dear!
This is a breach between us! You believe

Leicester, my guardian, was a murderer!

 

FRANCES: No. I was joking.

 

ESSEX:                           You have said those words!

 

FRANCES: Well I unsay them. Please forgive me, husband.

 

ESSEX: Words cannot be unsaid! My righteous Lord!

 

FRANCES: Is this the end? For us?

 

ESSEX:                                       It is the end.

 

FRANCES: Where shall I live?

 

ESSEX:                          I have three country houses.

Choose for yourself.

 

FRANCES:                I hope you will be happy.

 

EXIT FRANCES. ESSEX DOUBLES OVER IN PAIN, GABBLING, TO THE TUNE OF GREENSLEEVES.

 

ESSEX: And I have loved you so long, delighting in your company! Greensleeves was my delight oh greensleeves was all my joy!

 

ESSEX: Lopus! Lopus! Lopez!

 

ENTER LOPEZ.

 

LOPEZ: Good news! The best news!

 

ESSEX: Ah Lopus, Lopus! I have sent away my wife! Lopus - 

 

LOPEZ: My Lord, my Lord, sit down and listen!

 

ESSEX: Yes, yes, my head is empty, fill it up, fill it up –

 

LOPEZ: Her Majesty the Queen assents to the invasion!

 

ESSEX: Of Portugal?!

 

LOPEZ: Portugal, my Lord!

 

ESSEX: Ah! At last!

LOPUS: An army will be raised! The Queen herself will invest five thousand pounds! My Lord Burleigh and his son large amounts –

 

ESSEX: It is God’s will. Amen. England is saved.

 

LOPEZ: Our two countries will be one. Every fort and castle in Portugal will have an English garrison!

 

ESSEX: For how long?

 

LOPEZ: All Portugal’s world-wide trading rights shall be ours.

 

ANTONIO: Yes, indeed, yes.

 

ESSEX: Generous King.

 

LOPEZ: The Queen is a different woman!

 

ESSEX: Who shall be the Captain by sea?

 

LOPEZ: Sir Francis Drake shall be the Captain by sea.

 

ESSEX: Good.

 

LOPEZ: And by land –

 

ESSEX: Myself.

 

LOPEZ: She has not yet decided - 

 

ESSEX: Myself.

 

LOPEZ: No doubt. But the Queen has not yet decided -

 

ESSEX: Why not? Ah God, Lopez, this is torture!

 

LOPEZ: Patience, my Lord -

 

ESSEX: I will speak with her immediately!

 

LOPEZ: Today, my Lord? Before or after the play???

 

ESSEX:  The play? No, no – tomorrow. Not today.  Ah Lopez, Will, must command her, with his love, to give him – give me – give me this command! 

 

LOPEZ: Amen!

 

 

NINE. COURTLY DUMB-SHOW OF PLAY ENDING WITH PASSIONATE EMBRACES AND ROMANTIC MUSIC AND A DANCE. APPLAUSE, PEOPLE GOING TO BED, THEN THE COCK CROWING.

 

 

TEN. A FIELD. NEXT MORNING. ELIZABETH READY FOR HUNTING.

 

ELIZABETH: Glorious morning! Spring is hurrying,

though she is not yet here. What slows her down?
Days do. But we can seem to cast off days,

when we go racing through the dew and reach

April before it gets to us! I tell you,

in future times, when scholars strive to learn

how we kept happy, they should know one thing:

the horn awoke us, and we chased the dawn!

Aha, an Earl!

 

ENTER ESSEX.

 

ESSEX:                 My love, my life, my Queen!

 

ELIZABETH: Bold naked words! Do you too feel the change?

I have set loose a pack of English hounds,

to hunt a foreign hart beyond the sea,

and all their kennelled gloom has blown away!

 

ESSEX: But still the fastest cur of all remains

chained to a post, and howls to lead his friends.

 

ELIZABETH: He is too dear, he must stay here and pine.

 

ESSEX: And change into a lapdog?

 

ELIZABETH:                   Obviously

he needs to learn some new tricks – to obey,

not to barge in, but wait outside the door

till he is called.

 

ESSEX:             But any mutt of yours

should be a King of dogs, I think, not cringe,

tail between legs -  a lurcher unafraid

to leap into your lap, as eagles thrust

up to their eyries.

 

ELIZABETH:     King of dogs, maybe –

but there is nothing sillier than a King

of dogs who thinks he is a King of men.

 

ESSEX: Let me command!

 

ELIZABETH:                 Stay here with me in England.
Do you not love me?

 

ESSEX:               Did God make the world,

and men to fight and women to remain,

having their man’s love proved?

 

ELIZABETH:                  Last night a play

moved me so deeply I must keep you here.

 

ESSEX: Elizabeth!

 

HE KISSES HER. SHE STRIKES HIM.

 

ELIZABETH:           One does not kiss the Queen

without permission. It is a rebellion

against the body of the state! Lord Essex,

my General must be subject to the crown,

or else what is he but a rival king?

You are my subject but you seem to suffer

from the delusion of equality.

And that is why you must remain in England.

 

EXIT.

 

ESSEX: What? What?

 

ENTER ALLEYN.

 

ESSEX: Alleyn – Alleyn –

 

ALLEYN: My Lord, my Lord –

 

ESSEX: Did I or did I not sleep with the Queen last night, by proxy, after the play, as Lopez and William devised?

 

ALLEYN: You did, my Lord, well done!

 

ESSEX: Did I?

 

ALLEYN: Probably!

 

ESSEX: What? What?

 

ALLEYN: Will won’t absolutely say.

 

ESSEX: Alleyn?

 

ALLEYN: Sometimes he sighs and smiles and then –

 

ESSEX: Eh?

 

ALLEYN: Laughs in an odd sort of way –

 

ESSEX: For Christ’s sake, did he or didn’t he??

 

ALLEYN: He won’t say.

 

ESSEX: Sweet God! I am getting out of this country!

 

 

ELEVEN. LOPEZ’S HOUSE. LOPEZ AND MARY ALLINGTON.

 

LOPEZ: You see your property well cared for I hope, Mrs Allington?

 

MARY: And yet you are about to remove the great roofbeam, yourself, Roger Lopus. You are sailing with the army to Portugal.

 

LOPEZ: Well I am King Antonio’s ambassador.

 

MARY: To England?

 

LOPEZ: To everywhere. In this case, to Portugal. And when it is taken, he will send me back to London, no longer the ambassador of Nowhere.

 

SHE SUDDENLY EMBRACES HIM AND THEY KISS PASSIONATELY.

 

LOPEZ: Mary, Mary –

 

MARY: Roger, come back to me!

 

LOPEZ: I will – a changed man! A great man! And then –

 

MARY: And then?

 

ENTER ANNE, WITH AN OPENED LETTER.

 

ANNE: Hello, Mrs Allington.

 

MARY: Goodbye, Anne!  

 

EXIT MARY. ANNE IS VERY SUSPICIOUS.

 

ANNE: Antony writes to say goodbye. He wishes he could come home to say it himself.

 

LOPEZ: No, no, no.

 

ANNE: He is doing well. Nobody has called him a Jew for three days. Also, in terms of his own line of enquiry, he says ‘The soul is broken, but also fate itself is broken. Perhaps therefore fate and the soul are one.’

 

LOPEZ: Ethos anthropos daimon.

 

ANNE: I myself have not yet reached a conclusion.

 

LOPEZ: What was your question?

 

ANNE: Would the world be healed if men and women were true to one another. I am still at the stage of observation.

 

LOPEZ: If Eve had been true to Adam –

 

ANNE: If Adam had been true to Eve.

 

LOPEZ: How?

 

ANNE: Not told God what she had done.

 

LOPEZ: True, would that have been?

 

ANNE: Eve must have been heartbroken.

 

LOPEZ: Should we hide one another’s faults, even from God, Anne?

 

ANNE: It would have made Eve love Adam.

 

LOPEZ: And what would God have said?

 

ANNE: Perhaps that love would have impressed him.

 

LOPEZ: For sure, we should protect one another.

 

ANNE: Perhaps, from this protecting love, peace would have spread out over the earth! Eve did not betray Adam!

 

LOPEZ: No, no –

 

ANNE: She accused the serpent.

 

LOPEZ: Ah, the serpent.

 

ANNE: If my mother fell, would you tell God?

 

LOPEZ: My dear Anne –

 

ANNE: Would she if you did?

 

LOPEZ: This is too far-fetched.

 

ANNE: She would not! She would protect you even from God! She is a holy woman! A prophetess! Honour her!

 

LOPEZ: Yes, yes, yes, yes!

 

ENTER SARA AND ELLEN, WITH CANDLES.

 

SARA: Farewell! To him who sails across the sea

in search of fortune! May he come back home,

in the black armour of the King of Babylon!

 

LOPEZ: Goodbye, dear wife.

 

ELLEN:                            The key! The key!

 

SARA:                                                  The key!

 

THEY PRESENT HIM WITH THE KEY.

 

LOPEZ: The key to my old house.

 

ELLEN:                   You mean the key

to our new house!

 

ANNE:            When we are Portuguese!

 

 SARA: We will uphold you with our love, dear husband!

 

ELLEN: We will, we will!

 

ANNE:                          We will.

 

SARA:                         The sea may burn,

the earth melt, but our love will not be shaken!

 

ENTER ANDRADA WHO LEAVES WITH LOPEZ.

 

 

TWELVE. PORT. ELIZABETH AND LOPEZ.

 

ELIZABETH: Farewell, Ambassador. God speed.

 

HE KNEELS.

 

LOPEZ: God save the Queen!

 

SHE LIFTS HIM UP AND KISSES HIS HAND.

 

 

THIRTEEN. ALLEYN, SINGING. DUMB-SHOW OF HIS STORY.

 

ALLEYN:

It was a day in April

In Fifteen Eighty-Nine,

Sir Francis Drake a voyage did make

With brave ships of the line

 

All crammed with English pikemen

As stout as they could be,

To have a go and make a show

Beyond the briny sea.

 

The wind it was a Spaniard,

It turned the boats around,

And blew them back with creak and crack

Into old Plymouth sound.

 

Then messengers from London

Jumped on the ships and cried,

‘Where is the Earl, our royal girl

Is searching far and wide!

 

‘Where is the Earl of Essex,

Oh where oh where is he?
She bade him ride not from her side

Nor cross the briny sea!’

 

But honest John Sir Norris,

He said, ‘The Earl’s not here!’

Said Francis Drake, ‘Make no mistake,

We carry no such beer!’

 

And then the wind was English

And blew our comrades on,

Across the sea, brave hearts to be,

Led by Sir honest John.

 

Now it was their intention

To capture Lisbon town,

And on his throne to place Anton-

io, with rightful crown.

 

But first they took Coruna,

A wealthy Spanish port,

That’s not at all in Portugal,

But it was lovely sport!

 

And then they sailed for Lisbon,

Beneath the skies of pearl.

And spied a mast approaching fast –

By Christ it was the Earl!

 

‘Now we are far from London,

And far from good Queen Bess.

Though on remand, will you command?’

‘By God,’ the Earl said, ‘yes!’

 

And on they sailed to Lisbon,

But first they heard a cry –

‘We’ve spied a hold rammed full with gold,

In Peniche, nearby!’

 

Two thousand men the Earl took,

Who mustered on the deck.

‘For Bess!’ he cried – into the tide

He leapt up to his neck.

 

And from the beach the Spanish

They pushed at point of pike.

The gold had sailed, the robbery failed –

But how the Earl did strike!

 

Then it was his decision

That over solid ground

The men should move, their legs to prove,

And let the ships sail round.

 

Just sixty miles to Lisbon,

But in the dago sun

The men did wilt – their blood was spilt

By Spanish dirk and gun.

 

They mixed the filthy water

Into the filthy wine.

They died in heaps, on plains and steeps,

All in the bright sunshine!

 

And when they got to Lisbon,

It was a sorry crew.

To bang the gate with noble hate

Was all the Earl could do.

 

There wasn’t a rebellion

To put the true king back.

The Spanish they had hanged that day

The aces in his pack –

 

All of his strong supporters

Were dangling from the trees.

The English force with small remorse

Employed a homeward breeze.

 

And what was lost, I ask you?

Well, eighteen thousand men.

But as for pride, I say outside

The gates of Lisbon then

 

The honour of the Spaniard

Dropped dead! The Earl did shout

A challenge there – ‘Does any dare?’

And not a man stepped out!

 

And as for all annuities,

If you have payments due

For shares you bought in that onslaught –

Go to Antonio’s Jew!

 

 

FOURTEEN. ELIZABETH’S CHAMBER. ELIZABETH. LOPEZ, PROSTRATE AT HER FEET.

 

ELIZABETH: Get up. I have lost ten thousand pounds. But I am not dead.

 

LOPEZ: Your Majesty –

 

ELIZABETH: Up!

 

LOPEZ: I gave you false advice –

 

ELIZABETH: You did not.

 

LOPEZ: I urged this invasion –

 

ELIZABETH: On the premise that it was well-led. Was it?

 

LOPEZ: No – no, not at all –

 

ELIZABETH: He got loose, Essex! And Drake and Norris? Caved in as soon as he arrived! I know what happened! Hey – who shall we choose, card-comrades, to be our Captain when we burgle the church next Wednesday? I say the boy! It’ll be a laugh to see him Caesar-ing about, we’ll give him some cardboard armour and a daffodil sword! Hahaha!  

 

LOPEZ: I will repay every penny for which I am liable –

 

ELIZABETH: You have come through. Look at yourself! You are much stronger for this. And you do not have to win back my trust and my love. You were right! So were Burleigh and Cecil! The difference between you and them is that you are not talking to the King of Scotland!

 

LOPEZ: How could I?

 

ELIZABETH: When you were away I did not dare to be ill! Now that you are home I feel fine! Thankyou, Doctor, you have made me well!

 

LOPEZ: Great Queen, you did not want this fight. You were right, and that truth is now written on my soul in blood! I have seen the blood of English soldiers, who acted against your instinct, falling like rain! I have seen, in the shut gates of Lisbon, your rightness. I have felt, in the horror and sickness of sea-storms, your steadiness of soul. Ah, Queen, in this very room I sided with the madmen and strove to persuade you to help my one-time-lord the King of Portugal. How I wish I had sided with you, stood by you as I should, as your physician, backed up your instincts, which are, I now see, divine!  

 

ELIZABETH: Instinct is as instinct does. I failed to act on mine.

 

LOPEZ: Because you were alone.

 

ELIZABETH: Am I still?

 

SILENCE.

 

ELIZABETH: What now?

 

LOPEZ: Peace. Peace at last with Spain. A peace treaty with Spain.

 

ELIZABETH: Is it possible?

 

LOPEZ: Yes! They are ready for it. And so are we. Last year they lost, this year us. Both sides are weary. I know this through my cousin in the court of King Philip. Queen, I believe that for England the great age of which the angel spoke through Talbot, could begin to come, not through war but through this great peace with Spain, all the seas will open -

 

ELIZABETH: Essex will wreck it.

 

LOPEZ: I will do it secretly then.

 

ELIZABETH: Secretly begin it. I think this peace with Spain will be my child, that I leave to England, for the safety of the Kingdom. And you will be its father.

 

 

FIFTEEN. LOPEZ’S HOUSE, TWENTY YEARS BEFORE. LOPEZ AND SARA HAVE JUST BEEN MARRIED. LOPEZ, SARA, DUNSTAN, THE REV.THOMSON, OTHER MARRANOS.

 

THOMSON: A wedding most joyous! Rarely do I feel such hey-ho happiness among the anciently English of my congregation. Switzerland has breathed on us a freezing fog. Puritanism! Oooh, give me the hot countries! I wish the Vatican was in Iceland!

 

DUNSTAN: Amen!

 

LOPEZ: More wine, vicar?

 

THOMSON: Why the devil not?

 

DUNSTAN: Your church is a sanctuary for Christians from all directions.

 

THOMSON: That’s what I love about London! Bring them all in, I say! Cheat the Inquisition! Why make it so hard to walk with the Lamb?? Why, even our Roger wasn’t Christian enough for them! Suspicion, suspicion! In God’s name, if a man walks of his own free will through the doors of my church and takes the bread and the wine – he is Christian! If he be false, that lies between God and him! So what if he sucked Jewish milk from his mum??? Well, Portugal’s loss is our gain! For my part, I wish there were Jews in England. We have an entire testament in common!

 

LOPEZ: Very true, Father!

 

THOMSON: Ah come to my arms, Roger! Sara! Hey Dunstan, Dunstan, do you know what that young woman – I beg your pardon – did you hear what her Majesty the Queen said to the Spanish ambassador? About King Philip she demurely enquired, ‘Why can his Majesty not permit his subjects to go to hell in their own way?’ To go to hell in their own way! She’s my kind of maiden!

DUNSTAN: Wine! Wine!

 

THOMSON: No, I must be going. You people will want to be dancing, and once I start that hey nonny no, oh my dear it unravels me! I’ve done my bit, got the ring on! I’ll roll on my merry way! Billions and billions of blessings! (SINGS) And oh the roast beef of old England, and oh for old England’s roast beef!

 

LOPEZ: Thankyou, Reverend!

 

EXIT THOMSON.

 

DUNSTAN: (TO SERVANTS) Bar the doors.

 

EXIT SERVANTS.

 

DUNSTAN: All Christians gone?

LOPEZ: All.

 

SERVANTS RETURN.

 

DUNSTAN: The chuppah –

 

SERVANTS CARRY OUT A CANOPY.

 

DUNSTAN: Roderigo. Sara.

 

SARA REMOVES HER RING AND GIVES IT TO DUNSTAN.

 

DUNSTAN: Thou art our daughter, be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.

 

DUNSTAN GIVES THE RING TO LOPEZ,WHO PUTS IT ON SARA.

 

LOPEZ: Behold, you are consecrated to me with this  ring according to the law of Moses and Israel.

 

SARA: Ani l’dodi, ve dodi li. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.

 

LOPEZ BREAKS A GLASS ON THE GROUND, STAMPS ON IT.

 

LOPEZ: If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy. Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said, Rase it, rase it even to the foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

 

OTHERS: Mazel tov!

 

MUSIC AND DANCING. PASSING OF TWENTY YEARS. EXEUNT EVERYONE. BABY CRYING IN A BASKET. AROUND IT STAND LOPEZ, ELLEN, SARA, ANNE.

 

ELLEN: Oh! Sweetheart! Can we keep him? Please!

 

SARA: There is a note –

 

ELLEN: Oh who would leave him on a doorstep?  

 

ANNE: What does it say?

 

SARA: Oh just nonsense –

 

ANNE: (READS IT) Yes – gibberish –

 

ELLEN: Let me see! (GRABS THE NOTE AND READS)

Senor Lopez here I come,

Open the gate and take in thy son.

Thy Spanish creed I will not disgrace,

Behold the image of thy face.

 

So he’s your son, father! So we can keep him! Oh, babba, babba! Hello, I’m Ellen, your great big sister! But mother, how did you keep it secret? And why did you put him on the doorstep? Is it something Jewish?

 

SARA: Ellen, take it to the kitchen, for the minute. Alison will give it some milk.

 

ELLEN: Oh yes, babba! Oh yes! He does have his daddy’s face! His Spanish creed he will not disgrace!

 

EXIT ELLEN WITH BABY.

 

SARA: Thy Spanish creed! Nothing is secret in London! Now they will kill us! Who leaves a baby with such a note? Only murderers!

 

LOPEZ: My dear Sara –

 

SARA: We are dead! Now there is no Portugal!

 

LOPEZ: Portugal, yes, is gone. But not Constantinople.

 

SARA: Constantinople?

 

LOPEZ: The Queen has not dismissed me. Others perhaps are bitter. Not she. She trusts that all will be made good. And it will.

 

SARA: How?

 

LOPEZ: I am liable, it is true, for the debts of Don Antonio. They total fifty thousand crowns, as it happens. Her Majesty knows that I can repay only by means of her favour. Also she needs me, for this new project of peace with Spain! We have got a cousin in the court of Spain! Therefore her favour will increase, gradually, till the debts are squared, and all is as before. Then, after a little more increase, I will beg her to release me into retirement. And to Constantinople we will go, where if they call you a Jew it is because they like you! But we will not leave till both of our daughters are married. At present that’s impossible, we could not give a pittance of dowry – and Anne for one, we know, has got a man waiting! A good man! But he will not have to wait very long, Anne! I swear to you!

 

ANNE: Do not worry about me!

 

SARA: Oh help us, God! A world was ours – almost! Now it is lost!

 

LOPEZ: You, Sara, are very dear to God and close to Him. Therefore pray to Him for me. I have got to work in the world, and with Christians. Therefore, very often, blinded, I blunder into ditches and am defiled both by touch and by thought. You do not know one tenth of what I do! I am a spy for Lord Burleigh, on Essex. I am a spy for Lord Essex, against Burleigh. I have to try to think like a Christian, to understand them. On ship, on land they are monsters! Madmen! I have to honour with almost all of my heart their very chief, her Majesty the Queen, as it were the Pope of England. I have to tell myself, all day long, ‘You are a Christian, you are a Christian. Walk like one, smile like one, stab your friend in the face like one and drink God’s blood and chew God’s bones. Be a kindly religious vampire and no one will see that under your Christian skin there hides a just man! True to the rock of Abraham!’ I am filthy, Sara! My clothes are soaked in the blood of innocents, in untruth, in pretence! But my heart resides in the temple!

 

SARA: Oh my dear husband!

 

LOPEZ: So it is for you, please, my love, you who live here in this house, this little Jerusalem, to pray for me and keep me safe day by day. Keep this house a sanctuary, where I can be purified when I return from out of the midst of them, and have peace and think God’s thoughts, not theirs, and steer us at last to safety, by His guidance.

 

SARA: I will! I will!

 

HE WEEPS ON HER SHOULDER.

SARA: Oh my dear husband, you are safe home, safe home!


LOPEZ: Arrange for the infant to be handed over to the Parish. What is theirs we repay to them, with thanks for the loan.

 

SARA: Amen! Amen!

 

EXIT SARA.

 

ANNE: So farewell, baby brother.

 

LOPEZ:                           My dear Anne –

 

ANNE: Will God protect us if we lie to Him?

 

LOPEZ: I tell no lies to God.

 

ANNE:                       Or will He take us

and strike our brains out on the English stones?

Drown us in fire? Nail us, with English hands,

to English oak? We are already exiled,

already floating in His flood, no island

visible anywhere. All he has to do

is send a Christian whale to stove us in!

Oho, the ark is taking water! Why?

Because the captain is a fornicator!

And with a Christian woman! Worse disgrace

than with an animal! ‘Help me, I have blundered

into an English ditch!’ No - dived in gladly

to wallow with the English pigs. Which makes us

all fit for slaughter! Not distinguishable

in plague-time to the angel, all discoloured

by the same mud! How can my mother pray

for you, when she does not know what you are?

She wrings her own soul out like wine-stained linen,

ignorant of the cess that yours is soaked in!

 

LOPEZ: Go out and fight them, Anne! They have the land!

 

ANNE: But we have God!

 

LOPEZ:                       And if Jerusalem

comes as a scented friend, a harmless woman –

 

ANNE: How could it?

 

LOPEZ:                   We are waiting, always waiting,

century after century!

 

ANNE:                      So we should!

 

LOPEZ: At last, at last, the hour of sweet return –

 

ANNE: Too soon! Too soon!

 

LOPEZ:                  But smiling like the dawn

in Israel!

 

ANNE:        Delusion!

 

LOPEZ:                         So I fell

into the raptures of the promised land!

 

ANNE: Into the clutches of your landlady!

 

LOPEZ: I tasted Eden, but it was a dream.

 

ANNE: It was a trap!

LOPEZ:                  But not a dangerous one.
I still have strong friends.

 

ANNE:                 But your family

has been invaded, and the sanctuary

is broken!

 

LOPEZ:   I will fix it. Help me, Anne!

 

EXIT ANNE. ENTER ANDRADA, WHO HAS BEEN WAITING IN THE SHADOWS.

 

LOPEZ: What does the King say?

 

ANDRADA GIVES HIM A RING WITH A LARGE RUBY. LOPEZ TRIES IT ON.

 

LOPEZ: It is too small for me. But fifty thousand crowns would make it fit. So -

 

ANDRADA: I told him the Queen now trusts you only.

 

LOPEZ: Does he trust me?

 

ANDRADA: A bit. He wants us to do one little thing, to increase his trust.

 

LOPEZ: What?

 

ANDRADA: Have you been to Essex house lately?

 

LOPEZ: I am still his Physician.

 

ANDRADA: Then you will have met a certain minotaur, a twisted Spaniard who tried to kill his own king with poison.

 

LOPEZ: Perrez.

 

ANDRADA: Why not? Of course his attempt recommends him to the Queen of England. And here he sits, her treasured guest. But one finds him always with Essex. If this man were suddenly to die, then peace negotiations could begin immediately between yourself, on the Queen’s behalf, and the King of Spain.

 

EXIT. SILENCE, LOPEZ STARING INTO THE DARKNESS.

 

LOPEZ: I must do a murder for the King of Spain. For your sake, Elizabeth. But will that save me, when I am condemned as a traitor?

 

ENTER ELIZABETH VEILED.

 

LOPEZ: Hello?

 

ELIZABETH: I have a sickness.

 

LOPEZ: I am tired.

 

ELIZABETH: I am a great Lady.

 

LOPEZ: Is it bad?

 

ELIZABETH: It is not leprosy.

 

LOPEZ: Alright then let me look

 

SHE REMOVES VEIL.

 

LOPEZ: Your Majesty!

 

ELIZABETH: I have come to speak with the King of England –

 

LOPEZ: He is not here, your Majesty. He does not exist.

 

ELIZABETH: He does. I am looking at him.

 

LOPEZ: All the other English must be dwarves if I am their King –

 

ELIZABETH: As they shrink, you grow! And that is as it should be – only a King can speak to a King!

 

LOPEZ: Or a spy –

 

ELIZABETH: Only to a King will a King listen –

 

LOPEZ: Or to a spy –

 

ELIZABETH: Well I wish the King of Spain to speak to you as the King of England –

 

LOPEZ: Crown me then!

 

ELIZABETH: Ha! I do by speaking to you!

 

LOPEZ: That is true. Or do you speak to me as to a spy?

 

ELIZABETH: This peace is too important for spies.

 

LOPEZ: Then I will try to imagine that I am a King.

 

ELIZABETH: Imagine!

 

LOPEZ: I will imagine you speaking to me, even when I am speaking with the King of Spain. And this will make me a King.

 

ELIZABETH: Have you spoken to him?

 

LOPEZ: Not yet. But I have learned that he is willing.

 

ELIZABETH: Ha! But be careful –

 

LOPEZ: I must. My crown is invisible. Anyone without second sight will think me a spy.

 

ELIZABETH: He believes that you speak for me?

 

LOPEZ: He is prepared to believe.

 

ELIZABETH: He trusts you, Lopez?

 

LOPEZ: He will.

 

ELIZABETH: I wish I could give you full and open authority, make you England’s envoy – and I will soon, but –

 

LOPEZ: Not all your enemies are in Spain.

 

ELIZABETH: But you must understand you always have my full protection!

 

LOPEZ: And you my full devotion.

 

ELIZABETH: King of Physicians!

 

HE BRINGS HER MEDICINE.

 

LOPEZ: It is bitter. Remember.

 

ELIZABETH: Do you have any syrup?

 

LOPEZ: Your Majesty?

 

ELIZABETH: Syrup. Do you have any?

 

LOPEZ: Your Majesty never uses syrup.

 

ELIZABETH: Because it might hide the taste of poison. Well I can take it with syrup in your home.

 

LOPEZ: Surely, your Majesty.

 

HE ADDS SYRUP. SHE DRINKS THE MEDICINE.

 

ELIZABETH: So sweet! Not like in court! Thankyou!

 

EXIT QUEEN.

 

 

SIXTEEN. ESSEX HOUSE. PERREZ, ESSEX. SMOKING. PERREZ KEEPS CRUMBLING WEIRD STUFF INTO THE PIPE.

 

PERREZ: My God, Roberto, of course she loves you! Take a look at yourself, just for a momento! Everything you do turns her to water! She just doesn’t show it! You think she doesn’t know how not to show things???

 

ESSEX: I do not even know if I have slept with her, Perrez!

 

PERREZ: Don’t be ridiculous! What a poet says he will do, he does! And with such metaphors, you know, such rhythms! He gave her the full five acts, I am sure! And she thinks it was you!

 

ESSEX: If I only knew!

 

PERREZ: You do know! I am telling you!

 

ESSEX: I don’t want to take her by force!

 

PERREZ: No! But she wants you to! And they know that, and that is why they watch you night and day! And me too! She knows you are the only man in England who can choke the King of Spain till his eyes shoot out – all the way to Mexico! And you will! Easily! When she gives you everything! Your wedding bells will ring out victory for England! And that makes them shiver, oh my God! They are not spying on Spain anymore – they are spying on you!

 

ESSEX: Are they?

 

PERREZ: Yes! This Lord Chancellor and his unattractive child –

 

ESSEX: Who is their spy?

 

PERREZ: Oh you know, that Jew doctor who spies on everybody! Who poisoned Leicester’s wife!

 

ESSEX: Lopus?

 

PERREZ: Yes, Lopez!

 

ESSEX: Lopus?

 

PERREZ: I can tell you a thing or two about him and the King of Spain! They are fucking, right now! You are too much in love with that scorpion who stung you in Portugal! Lopez! Yes, him! It was all planned! I have got a strong sense of smell, Roberto. It makes me queasy that a friend of King Phillip is a friend of yours! It would not surprise me if Spain has paid Lopez to poison little me! And you! And all the bishops and the whole Parliament! And the Queen!

 

 

SEVENTEEN. ELIZABETH’S BEDCHAMBER. ELIZABETH IN AGONY.

 

ELIZABETH: Lopus! Oh! Oh! Lopus!

ENTER LADY IN WAITING.

 

LADY: Your Majesty????

 

ELIZABETH: Get me Doctor Lopus!

EXIT LADY IN WAITING.

 

ELIZABETH: Satan in heaven! It rises!

 

RE-ENTER LADY-IN-WAITING.

 

LADY: Your Majesty –

 

ELIZABETH: Where is he?

 

LADY: He is in a dungeon.

 

ELIZABETH: What? Where?

 

LADY: In Essex house.

 

ELIZABETH: Oh?! Get me the Earl of Essex!

 

LADY: He is here –

 

ELIZABETH: Oh, he is here, is he? Just when I am weakest! This Earl has more brains than I thought! Let him in then! I can fight a hundred of him! But call Burleigh – and Sir Robert!

 

EXIT LADY-IN-WAITING. ENTER ESSEX.

 

ELIZABETH: What have you done with my doctor?

 

ESSEX: Sacred moon of England –

 

ELIZABETH: My doctor!

 

ESSEX: The Spanish spy is in my hands!

 

ELIZABETH: What Spanish spy?

 

ESSEX: Some call him Doctor Roger Lopus. Others – Roderigo Lopez!

 

ELIZABETH: He is Portuguese!

 

ESSEX: But spying for the King of Spain!

 

ELIZABETH: Who sold you this?

 

ESSEX: Aha! A reptile by the name of Manuel d’Andrada was working with Lopez. But, under examination, confessed, and is now working for us!

 

ELIZABETH: Who told you about Andrada?

 

ESSEX: Perrez! Your guest and mine! That fearless gryphon who tried to poison the devil himself!

 

ELIZABETH: You mean his own king!

 

ESSEX: Yes! Perrez is a traitor in Spain. And in England – the treasured friend and guest of your Majesty and mine!

 

ELIZABETH: The fellow is a bit strange –

 

ESSEX: He has already done us a great service!

 

ELIZABETH: No he hasn’t. Ah my poor dear Lord of Essex. Sit down please.

 

ESSEX: Thanks, my Queen!

 

ELIZABETH: I am going to tell you a story, though it is not bedtime. A true one. Once upon a time quite recently Doctor Lopus met with myself and Lord Chancellor Burleigh and his son Sir Robert.

 

ESSEX: Yes?

 

ELIZABETH: He asked us for permission to begin negotiations with the King of Spain. Secret negotiations.

 

ESSEX: About what?

 

ELIZABETH: Peace.

 

ESSEX: Peace? You did not agree?

 

ELIZABETH: We did.

 

ESSEX: Peace? Eighteen thousand men lost in Portugal for peace? Peace!

 

ELIZABETH: Yes. I do not know what you racked out of Andrada, but he writes to Philip under our licence! And the same goes for Lopus!

 

ESSEX: No! No!

 

ELIZABETH: Yes!

 

ESSEX: Peace, my dear Queen? Has England come to this?

What do we gain from peace? We must strike out,

we are an island, we will shrivel inwards!
Was any Lord in England born for peace?

Sir Francis Drake, what will he do, sell fish?
And all your fencing English gentlemen,

steel at their steel sides, every nosehair bristling

at the insulting breeze – these trim-shanked legions,

what will they all do? Study to be surgeons?
Trim garden hedges? What a tidy Eden

England will be! While Spain, fierce, marches on

across America, the Netherlands,

the moon, the stars! Till it decides to turn

and with steel fingers pluck the plum of England

out of its pudding! If the Englishmen

have not all killed each other, by that time,

in vine-bound jaguar and rose-bowered frustration!

 

ELIZABETH: Idiot.

 

ESSEX:                      Am I? Visionary perhaps!

Ghost of old England raging in the pantry,

the counting house! I know you see all things,

but is it just their surface that you see,

while my eyes, opened by the fire of war,

pierce to the centre? I have stepped, stooped, down,
Elizabeth, into the black of Hades

for you! Into the boiling heart of man

I have descended, and my eyes have seen

such doubling, diving, finned duplicity

bubbling around you, that my heart broke open

and love for you poured out like lava burning

everything but the truth to ash! My darling!

 

ELIZABETH: Your what?

 

ESSEX:                       Trust no one!

 

ELIZABETH:                           Essex least of all!

 

ESSEX: Yes! Do not trust me! I am just a man!

But trust my love, that is a spark of heaven,

a spirit, England’s angel and your own!
Queen, do not turn your back on that, I beg you,

or all that you have done will turn to brimstone!

 

ELIZABETH: Your evidence is false.

 

ESSEX:                         To all appearance.

But true at heart. These persons you have licensed

to be your messengers to Spain – I tell you,

they do not love you, they do not love England!
You are their fool, not me!

 

ELIZABETH:              You cannot prove this!

And Burleigh disagrees –

 

ESSEX:                        My Lord of Burleigh

does not love you!

 

ELIZABETH:           He does!

 

ESSEX:                                    But not like I do!

Queen, I am yours, you mine –

 

ELIZABETH:                  I am your monarch,

you are my subject.

 

ESSEX:                   Was it just a dream?

There was a night. My speech was oddly charmed.

I was a poet while the moon was mine.

Subject and monarch were dissolved in one.
I was the King of Love, and Love was King.

 

ELIZABETH: It was a dream.

 

ESSEX:                      If so my whole heart yearns

to make it come true.

 

ELIZABETH:          It will not.

 

ESSEX:                                      Sweet Queen,

I have not held back anything of mine

from you, from England! You have everything!

 

ELIZABETH: I am not England!

 

ESSEX:                                  You wear England’s crown!

 

ELIZABETH: I am a woman! And this woman says

I do not love you. Do you understand?

 

ESSEX: Not in the least. Eliza, you are dying

of loneliness, and you need me!

 

ELIZABETH:                     God help me!

 

ENTER BURLEIGH AND CECIL.

 

BURLEIGH: Your Majesty once again summons us to your bedchamber, where we find the Earl of Essex in confrontation.

 

ELIZABETH: He has locked up my doctor.

 

BURLEIGH: This argues a lack of care for the health of her Majesty.

 

ELIZABETH: For the sin of speaking to Spain.

 

BURLEIGH: As your voice.

 

ELIZABETH: What shall we do?

 

ESSEX: That man loves Spain alone! He shall not be trusted with her Majesty’s body!

 

ROBERT: May no man negotiate with Spain on behalf of her Majesty without my Lord of Essex accusing him of treason? Then everlasting war is our only course.

 

ESSEX: It is, with God’s enemies!

ROBERT: Everlasting drunken adventures to Lisbon!

 

ESSEX HALF DRAWS HIS SWORD.

 

ESSEX: Hear me, Sir Robert! I do not have absolute proof at this time, but serious and grave indications that the Queen’s Doctor, Roger Lopus, has conspired with the King of Spain not to negotiate peace with England, but to poison her Queen!

 

ROBERT: This is new!

 

BURLEIGH: Can you prove, my Lord of Essex, that this man is a traitor, her Majesty, myself and son his dupes, yourself the only possessor of true intelligence?

 

ESSEX: If I may keep him for a time!

 

ELIZABETH: What do you say, Burleigh?

 

BURLEIGH: I say this is nonsense. Let the man out, he is innocent.

 

ELIZABETH: I will think about it.

 

ESSEX: God save the Queen!!!

 

EXIT ESSEX IN RAGE.

 

ELIZABETH: Poison me? Lopus?

 

EXIT. BURLEIGH AND ROBERT LOOK AT EACH OTHER IN HORROR.

 

 

EIGHTEEN. DUNGEON, ESSEX HOUSE. LOPEZ. ENTER ESSEX.

 

ESSEX: If I had only been the Earl of Leicester.

He was her age. God made them to be lovers.

I have come late, the lady has grown cold.

I rip my lungs out puffing at her embers,

and only see a feeble dying flicker

flutter and rise and fall again –

 

LOPEZ: Is it my Lord of Essex?

 

ESSEX:                       Traitor doctor,

one thing could make her love for me leap higher

and never fall again. If I can show her

for sure, that I have saved her from a traitor!
From you!

 

LOPEZ:   She does not want you as a lover!

My Lord of Essex, she is old! Remember!
Do not go mad! What makes you think she loves you?

 

ESSEX: Do not go mad, he says. What sane advice,

from he who drove me into melancholy

with Jewishness!

 

LOPEZ:                What do you mean, my Lord?

 

ESSEX: Your Jew heart always near me, Doctor Lopez,

as I surrendered to your ministrations,

burned all my hopes! It was the devil’s medicine

you fed me. With my hope all changed to ashes,

or like a river by a desert murdered,

the lovely greenwood of my virtue died.

And there was nothing left to keep me upright,

but like a shambling ape or hog I truffled

among the whores, and caught the creeping evil

that means I cannot be the King of England,

except by proxy loving!

 

LOPEZ:                              My dear Lord –

how did I kill your hope? I tried to help you –

 

ESSEX: How did you help me if He did not rise?

If He did not rise, help and hope are nothing!

And this is what your Jew heart whispers always –

He did not rise, He did not rise, forget him!

 

LOPEZ: But when the trumpet blows we all shall rise!

 

ESSEX: That is not what your Jew heart whispers always!

 

LOPEZ: My Lord, I love our Lord as much as you!

 

ESSEX: At Lisbon’s gates you sold us to the Spaniard!

 

LOPEZ: My Lord I did not, as the Queen will tell you!

 

ESSEX: You can say nothing! You are not a human!

You do not love me! You have never served me!

You spied on me for Burleigh while you told me

I would be King!

 

LOPEZ:              My Lord, I did not say that –

 

ESSEX: When I am King, there will be truth in England!
No lies, no spies, no secret Jews, no demons!

 

LOPEZ: My dear, sweet Lord, if I have strayed, forgive me!

I am a black lamb – be thou my good shepherd,

restore me to the flock. I can restore you

to health! You must not think about the Queen

in Romeo and rose-red terms, or clamber

onto the throne in your imagination.

You are an Earl, a Privy Councillor,

the toast and boast of all the common people,

and the Queen’s friend! Forget the crown, I beg you!

 

ESSEX: Get out!

 

LOPEZ: What? I am free?

 

ESSEX: You rot my heart and hopes! Get away from me!

 

 

NINETEEN. ANDRADA IN THE LIGHT. BURLEIGH AND CECIL UNSEEN.

 

ANDRADA: My Lords I am nothing. Cut me open on the public scaffold, spool out miles of glistening nothing! I serve the King of Spain, yes! Gladly! The Queen of England! And the King of France, and the Emperor of the Moon and Jupiter, Lord of the Stars! All bubbles like I am! I love Christ Jesus! And Allah! Venus and Mary and Satan! You cannot damn me to hell. I am already there, and believe me, it is heaven! Lord Chancellor, you are an old dog, your Queen is a bitch who cocks her leg on you in mockery of custom! Use me, or kill me, I really really do not care. Lopez and I have agreed to kill Perrez, to improve our position with the King of Spain, so he will use us for peace negotiations. Anything else you want to know?

 

BURLEIGH: No. You may go.

 

ANDRADA: Me?

 

BURLEIGH: Yes, you.

 

ANDRADA: Thankyou.

 

EXIT ANDRADA.

 

ROBERT: We have paid Lopez to spy on Essex! And Perrez!

 

BURLEIGH         : We have been employing an agent of the King of Spain.

 

 

TWENTY. A HILLSIDE. ELIZABETH, LOPEZ.

 

ELIZABETH: They reached out and seized you but you see I saved you! There is no dungeon I cannot get you out of!  

 

LOPEZ: You have indeed saved me, sweet Queen! And your enemies, otherwise known as your ministers, they see me, how close I am to you! When I was down, in the dungeon, I was safer from their hate than I am now! They will unite, if only very briefly, to destroy me!

 

ELIZABETH: My dear, I have begun through you negotiations with the King of Spain! This makes me strong!

 

LOPEZ: I have it! My Queen, you should permit them to imprison me once again. Even in the Tower! This would mitigate their hate! Let them seem to win a victory against me, to split me from you – then they will no longer fear me! But even from the Tower I could be speaking with the King of Spain –

 

ELIZABETH: Ah! That is clever!

 

LOPEZ: Setting forward your negotiations – till peace is signed, you release me, and we have won!

 

ELIZABETH: Then? What then?

 

LOPEZ: Ah, my dear Queen – I will never be safe here in England! Once that great victory is won, I beg you to release me, let me go – I will travel with my family to Constantinople –

 

ELIZABETH: I have nothing other than you.

 

LOPEZ: Here I will certainly die! Great, beloved Queen, I beg you –

 

ELIZABETH: Why Queen? Why not just beloved?

 

LOPEZ: Save my life!

 

SHE ENTERS INTO A KIND OF TRANCE.

 

ELIZABETH: Lopus, can you see him?

 

LOPEZ: Who, my Queen?

 

ELIZABETH: We are in the garden where they laid him. Here is the tomb. Look in, look in. Can you see him?

 

LOPEZ: No, my Queen, he is not there! He has risen!

 

SHE LAUGHS. EXEUNT. ENTER ESSEX.

 

ESSEX: She walks with him, upon the English green –

Judas, Barabbas and the King of Spain

all in one person. And I scream in vain,

‘My love, my life, my heart, my hope, my Queen!’

She cannot hear her lover, only him,

the poisoner, the liar and the traitor!

Oh truth, across what sharp straits must I swim,

to reach her, venture over what strange water?

When the Earl is the subject of the Jew,

and good Saint George the client of the dragon,

when death is life, sky earth, star ice, false true,

heaven itself is old and out of fashion.

True hearts worn shiny are all packed away,

while the dog has his everlasting day!

 

ENTER BURLEIGH AND SIR ROBERT.

 

ROBERT: My Lord!

BURLEIGH: Do not be downcast, my Lord!

 

ROBERT: Lift up that hero head!

 

BURLEIGH: We doubted you, but we were fools, my Lord! Or too cautious. We have information of our own!

 

ROBERT: Corroborative of yours!

 

BURLEIGH: Andrada!

 

ROBERT: Lopus is an octopus! He has hold of us all! We have got to hack off his suckers, or drown!

 

ROBERT: He plotted with Andrada to assassinate your friend!

 

ESSEX: Perrez was right!

 

ROBERT: And your plan to convict him of plotting to poison the Queen –

 

BURLEIGH: Perfect!


ESSEX: It is the truth!

 

BURLEIGH: It will be. We have got letters referring to the Perrez plot. Where it says ‘assassinate the Spaniard’ – well, ‘Spaniard’ is obviously code for ‘Queen.’

 

ESSEX: Shake hands!

BURLEIGH, ROBERT: Shake hands!

 

THEY SHAKE HANDS AND EMBRACE. ENTER ELIZABETH AND LOPEZ. BURLEIGH, ESSEX AND ROBERT ALL KNEEL.

 

BURLEIGH: Your Majesty, you see kneeling before you the three men most devoted in this whole kingdom to your safety.

 

ELIZABETH: I see them.

 

BURLEIGH: Hear me, your Majesty! My Lord of Essex, Sir Robert Cecil and myself this very day are gathered before you to bring against Doctor Lopus a charge of high treason!

 

 

TWENTY-ONE. TOWER OF LONDON. LOPEZ IN CHAINS. ENTER ELLEN, SARA, ANNE, ANTONY.

 

SARA: No news.

 

ELLEN: The Queen loves you, father!

 

LOPEZ: Yes I know that.

 

ANTONY: Father – it is fate that is cracked, not the human soul! And the proof is this! Your fate is black, but your soul is as white as the angels! Your fate is warped and wicked but you are not! You are a good man, a loyal servant of the Queen, a good father and husband! This opens up a whole new realm of enquiry! Human innocence! It is not a subject that has ever been studied! Nobody believed it existed! But I do! Humans are good – fate is bad! Humans are true and whole and – fate is a terrible disease that has got hold of all of us –

 

ANNE: Our father’s fate is not yet known.

 

LOPEZ:                      True, Anne.

 

SARA: Any more letters from the Queen?

 

LOPEZ:                                         No. None.

 

ANNE: And if the worst comes to the worst, what then?

 

SILENCE. ANNE SPEAKS IN PROPHETIC TONES.

 

ANNE: This is God’s judgment. Hear, O Israel.

Because you could not hold yourselves together,

nor keep your outside and your inside mirrored,

everything that you did was false, and falseness

requires the whole mind, leaving none for thinking.

Or else you could have reconciled these persons –

the hiding Jew, the hollow open Christian!

 

SARA: Hush, Anne!

 

ANNE: Into the pit between them you have fallen!

 

ELLEN: What have we done wrong? What have we done wrong?

 

ANNE: God knows!

 

ELLEN: But I don’t!

 

LOPEZ: Forgive me!

 

ELLEN: For what?

 

SARA: For what?

 

ANTONY: For what?

 

ANNE: Forgive him!

ELLEN, SARA, ANTONY: We forgive you, we forgive you!

LOPEZ: Anne?

 

SHE EMBRACES HIM. THEY ALL EMBRACE.

 

LOPEZ: The prosecution claims, because I told them,

to silence them, so I could sleep a little,

that I had planned to kill her Majesty

at court with poison mixed into her medicine,

the taste disguised with syrup. But her Majesty,

you see, does not take syrup in her medicine,

not when she is at court. You understand me.

This was a sign from me to her, to tell her

that this confession was of course a forced one.

And she will understand it absolutely.

They say that life is sweet. Well, children, wife,

syrup is sweet, and it will save my life.

 

GUARD INDICATES IT’S TIME FOR THE FAMILY TO LEAVE. THEY LEAVE SILENTLY. OTHER GUARDS ENTER AND START TO STRIP LOPEZ AND TIE HIM TO A HURDLE.

 

LOPEZ: What’s this? What are you doing?

 

GUARD: The Queen’s signed.

 

LOPEZ: But there’s been no warning!

 

GUARD: The Queen has not been well.

 

LOPEZ: Of course not! Her doctor is in prison!

 

GUARD: She’d be even more ill if he wasn’t!

 

LOPEZ: There was no warning!

 

 

TWENTY-TWO. ELIZABETH ALONE. ENTER BURLEIGH, CECIL.

 

BURLEIGH: Your Majesty, the traitor Lopez is dead. All was followed as the law prescribes. The executioner hanged him by the neck, cut him down alive, cut off his male members, burned them in the fire, dragged out his innards, then cut him into quarters, which have been nailed to Tower Bridge. In his life this man hid much, but now all is out.

 

ROBERT: He cried out, before he died, that he loved your Majesty as well as he loved our Lord. And all the people, knowing how little he loved the Lord, being a Jew, cackled like a magpie marriage!

 

BURLEIGH: I have brought you this priceless ruby, that was given to that man by King Phillip as the price of your death. By the grace of God you are alive, and the bauble is yours!

HE GIVES HER THE JEWEL. SHE LOOKS AT IT AND LIFTS IT TO HER LIPS AND KISSES IT.

 

ROBERT: There is another matter, your Majesty. Graver than grave, if not unexpected by any of us. We have evidence that the Earl of Essex is plotting against you.

 

BURLEIGH: He will attempt to capture your person.

 

ROBERT: But he is loved by the people! We think best to send him with an army into Ireland, to quell the rebellion.

 

BURLEIGH: He will fail there, as everywhere else, and return, to seize your throne!

 

ROBERT: But we will be ready for him!

 

 

TWENTY-THREE. TOWER GREEN, A FEW YEARS LATER. ESSEX ABOUT TO BE BEHEADED.

 

ESSEX: I am a new man! All that I have done

has fallen from my soul as flesh from bone

shortly will do. My life, that is the Queen’s,

I give to her. I have no other gem,

title or house or hope – all, all are gone.

And my rebellion, black and wicked sin,

also has been wiped out, by my confession

of all the names of my conspirators,

who will now go to God with me together,

to face His judgement, I with truth for garment,

they all protesting still their innocence,

and dressed in lies that hide the soul from men

but not from God! No man on earth has seen

a soul as bright as mine! God save the Queen!

 

DRUMBEAT CRESCENDO TO BLACKOUT.