Who's there in th'other Deuils Name?

Going cold down the back of my neck at Macbeth, this Guy Fawkes Night.  Not at the witches, but the Porter.  Earlier that year, his audience had watched the players on another scaffold:  those terrorists who would have blown their world to atoms, and Father Garnet, who had shriven them.  The Jesuit had spoken from that other stage, attesting:  "I do not now equivocate, and more than I have confessed I do not know."  Then like the others in the plot, he was half-hanged, cut down, and gutted, and "equivocate" became the biggest buzzword  of the year, the most re-tweeted tweet, the blackest joke.  So when the Porter called, "O, come in, equivocator!" his audience, from court to groundlings, would have howled with glee.

Nine