Burns and Shakespeare - chapter 2

A couple of years ago I wrote a kind of spoof playlet featuring Robert Burns and William Shakespeare, conversing in another world. This was originally for our Wester-Ross Burns Club meeting. I then blogged it. At the last count 'Two Gentlemen' has been viewed around nine hundred times - presumably by nine hundred different people. Here's that first chapter and a brand new chapter two. If you've read the first, just scroll down until you reach the CHAPTER TWO heading, then read on ...











Two Gentlemen in a FarOff Land.




A Short Play for The Wester-Ross Burns Club







This all takes place in a land flowing with milk and honey,
a land where all the good folk go when they get tired of planet earth - or
planet earth tires of them. Two men meet up, greet each other warmly, sit down for
a chat  on a grassy bank alongside the
slow moving Milk river. The sun shines just warm upon them and down  this sylvan glen.




Don’t ask what these two look like or what they’re wearing.
They look as you want them to look and they wear what you feel they should be
wearing.




Most of the language is here translated into modern
English, or indeed any other language known to or preferred by the listener.  Note also that in a land of milk and honey
neither time nor distance exists. Let us begin …




RB: Now then, Will, how’s she
hangin’?




WS: That’s horrible. And I’ve
told you before, my friend, I’m William, not Will and you are Robert, not
Rabbie. But yes, as a matter of fact she’s hangin’ pretty well. Having said
that, I’ve just been watching my ‘As You Like It’ being played on that
television thing with the men dressed up as those nasty old nazis and the girls
as ladies of the night. Not at all as I like it. Robert. Oh, what they do to us,
once they think we’re dead and gone!




RB: Right. (Chuckles) As You Like It indeed! You know how much I used to like it. (Sighs)





WS: Strange, wasn’t it,
Robert, how, ever since that lovely old Garden of Eden, sex seemed to be
everything for so much of the time. Seems such a waste of your adult years there
on earth, doesn’t it?




RB: Well - it’s just the
way of it. The way He put is all together, yes? Pal of mine once told me;
‘it’ll pull you more than dynamite’ll blow you’.




WS: Not too too elegantly
put but yes … There was this dark lady …




RB: I read all about her
in your sonnets, William. Very discreet. Not like my lassies at all. No sooner
I bedded them than there they were - still are - in my verse. But I don’t spend
much time looking down there these days. Maybe
just now and then I’ll look in on some of their Hogmanays -




WS (interrupting): Their
new years eves, don’t you mean? No colloquialisms, remember?




RB: OK - sorry - I mean
yes. But there’s millions of them at it with the crossing arms and holding
hands and running out of words after verse one. Of course we don’t do vainglory
here, William, but if we did I’d have to say there’s more at the auld acquaintance
not being forgot, when all the rest of it has been, than well, than anything
else written or sung by the live ones, poor things.




William holds out his
hand, palm uppermost. Bees zoom in on it from all quarters, alight to deliver
their succulent loads. A small pyramid of honey at once begins to grow.




WS: You must be right
about that. I often wonder why I myself didn’t do more poetry in the form of
song. Big, big impact. Oh yes indeed: Greensleeves; Bring On The Clowns; My
Heart Is Like A Red, Red Rose; Ain’t Gonna Work No More On Maggie’s Farm.




William nods ‘enough’ and the bees disappear. He raises hand to mouth, licks
up their sweet libation. Continues …




WS: Yes, strong stuff, that songbook of yours. By the way, I
meant to ask you, when are all the seas due to gang dry?




RB: When? Honey, honey. Think
I’ll join you with some of that.




Robert holds out his own hand. Bees arrive, get to work. He
continues…




RB: The seas are going
to gang dry any time now, says the boss. When they’ve warmed up their old
planet enough there’s a critical point when all the oceans suddenly evaporate. Too
bad.




WS: Going to get a wee bit
overcrowded for us here then?




RB: Doubt it, Will -
William. He tells me there’s not all that many down there will qualify when the
time comes. Oh, look here, my friend!




A beautiful young
lady, floating apparently on a raft of wild flowers and splayed out long blonde
hair is drifting slowly by, carried by the flow of the Milk river current. 




WS: Ophelia! That’s my
Ophelia, Robert. (Breaks into song) Isn’t
she lovely, made for love.




Robert springs to his
feet, flings his arms wide (forgetting the accumulation of honey which runs all
down his arm) declaims …RB:




Ophelia, thy charms my bosom fire,

And waste my soul with care;

But ah! how bootless to admire,

When fated to despair!



Yet in thy presence, lovely Fair,

To hope may be forgiven;

For sure 'twere impious to despair

So much in sight of heaven.




WS: Heaven! That’s a nice
one.




He’s looking down at his hand in the grass. A tiny
fieldmouse has hopped on and is nibbling away at the last trace of honey.




WS: Hey, just look at this
little chap. Is he not enjoying himself! Oh, but he’s gone in a flash!




RB: That was my wee timorous
beastie, you ken? Oh, Timmy, little Timmy.




I'm truly sorry man's dominion

Has broken nature's social union,

And justifies that ill ‘ opinion

Which makes thee startle

At me, thy poor earth-born
companion,

And fellow mortal.




William rises to join his standing friend. Ophelia is seen swimming
ashore, climbing out of the river, smoothing back her long golden tresses.




WS: But your tiny friend is not mortal, Robert, any more than are
you or I. We are here all immortal, remember?




RB: She isn’t - wasn’t;
your Ophelia, no? But I often wondered … she was, like, someone you knew,
William? Down there?




WS: Of course. Every
character one created was like someone you knew. Ophelia was actually Beatrice,
a farm girl in the village where I grew up.




RB: Laughs.




By the by, gentlefolk. I should have told you: ‘human’
emotions are all here in this place - provided they’re the positive ones - joy,
satisfaction, love (non-carnal of course) etc. No negative waves. No fear or
hatred or anything downbeat, right?




Meantime the young lady Ophelia has taken off her filmy
dress and now stands there naked, wringing out the milk. The two in
conversation take little notice.




RB continues: You know
we were so much alike, William. You had a fancy for this Beatrice / Ophelia? Of
course you did. So alike. We both of us impregnated young girls when still not
far out of our minority. What was it you had your Othello say? “One that loved
not wisely but too well”? And we both worked on farms before gravitating to the
big city, both earned a measure of fame in our own lifetimes, both learned so
much from books without doing overmuch in the way of schooling, etcetera.




WS: Yes, and we both used things
of long ago on which to weave what they called our tapestries of words. You
used Scottish traditional songs. Me, I used Ovid and those other good old
storytellers.




RB: But you ended up
moneyed and comfortable and I died poor and most uncomfortable. It’s very hard, even here, to think charitably about
that doctor who told me to swim in the sea every freezing day. Yes, you ended
up better than me. You were the better businessman, William. But it’s a funny
thing, I seldom had any money but never felt like a poor man, ever. Hungry yes,
but poor? Never. A man’s a man for all that and all that.




WS: We are such stuff as
dreams are made on. But comfortable in death? No, sir. I died of exposure after
a night out in an alehouse near Stratford
with my old compatriot, Mister Ben Johnson. You know, the one who wrote my
epitaph: “Not for our time but for all time”? Found in a ditch! What an
inglorious ending. Not exactly any flights of angels taking me to my rest. I
just arrived here all by myself. Don’t quite know how.




RB: Ah, William Shakespeare
- Man of mystery! But all’s well that ends well.




WS: One of these days we’ll
have to write something together. Play, poem and song all in one. By Robert
Shakespeare and William Burns. Come on, let’s go find some of the others. (Calls out) Come with us, Ophelia. No, no
need to bother with the dress.




The three of them wander off across the meadow and into the
trees, singing together, Should old
acquaintance be forgot, And never …but no crossed arms.




The sun has not moved in the sky, nor will it move in this
land where the trees never shed their leaves and the birds never cease to sing
and where there are no noxious people nor any of the trials and tribulations
that come with noxious people. So it follows there are none of the human
problems that William Shakespeare and Robert Burns had spent their earthly lives
trying their very best to explain, justify or cover up with words of everlasting
beauty.




…. CHAPTER TWO ….




RB: Sings melodically; Ophelia, Ophelia. Pauses,
What a lovely girl. So, William, finally we know all
things but one.




WS: Yes, but tell the honest truth -




RB interrupts - there is only honest truth here, Will,
remember?




WS: Yes of course. I was only going
to say I think that it’s really irrelevant, that one thing we cannot know.




RB: What, the meaning of life
and all things? Irrelevant?  Stops,
looks up through the branches. A pair of tropical exotics are strutting,
fluttering and preening. Perfect. Perfect happiness. Burns smiles. The birds
look down, smile back. The female drops, alights, weightless, to his shoulder.




WS: Who’s your friend, Robert?




The bird squawks: ‘I am called The
Grand Duchess Bollox of Borneo, Shakespeare.
Hello.’ Her mate now flaps down on to Shakespeare’s left shoulder. ‘And this splendid creature - he is my good friend the King
of all Birds.’




WS: Very pleased to meet you, Duchess,
and you, your majesty. Reverts to their topic: But
of course its irrelevant, Robert. He knows and we cannot. And even if He should
deign to tell us, what then? Besides, we both know that curiosity is impossible
because curiosity is unhappiness because unhappiness is impossible.




Burns nods his agreement. The three of them ramble on through
dappled sunlight and shade, the birds nibbling playfully on Robert’s and Williams’s
ear lobes. Their bare feet are noiseless. Warm is the earth beneath soft grasses.
The naked Ophelia still walks behind. Her voice comes like the music of the
stars, as the trickling of a summer stream: ‘I shall th’ effect of this good lesson keep / As watchman
to my heart. But good my brother / Do not as some ungracious pastors do, / Show
me the steep and thorny way to heaven.’ Her
laugh is as the tinkling of tiny bells. ‘Your words
in me for Polonius are yours as I am yours, William. With whatever naughty suggestion.
Just as you are mine by whatsoever name. And now I leave you, gentlemen both.’ As
they turn to look, shimmering, the lady fades away.




RB: Oh yes indeed, such stuff as
dreams are made on!




WS: ‘And wear thou this’ - She solemn
said, / And bound the holly round my head, / The polished leaves and berries
red / Did rustling play; / And, like a passing thought, she fled. / In light
away’ Your words and your Vision I think, my friend.




Each of them is now crowned with his own holly wreath. The shoulder-borne
birds peck idly at the red, red berries.




RB: Yes. But what then? After that?
After this? All things are known to us now except this, so knowledge is
imperfect whilst all else is perfect. You and I would abhor imperfection if
such an earthly sentiment were here a feasibility.




WS: Mister Douglas Adams said that
the meaning of life is forty two: Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy. Pure guesswork of course. Fantasy. But the meaning is as
likely to be forty two as anything else so the man must have got it right.




RB: Fantasy!! As with all your
ghosts and fairie queens and witches, not to mention your lovely floaty little Ariel.




WS: Chuckles. And your witch pulling off the tail of Tam’s grey mare. There’s
the drumming of hooves on turf and a great white horse, mane a-flying, a ragged
figure crouched over her withers, her quarters pumping beneath a mere stump of
a tail, appears and disappears between the tree trunks. Poor old Meg. Good old Tam. Tom, I mean: no colloquialisms. He raises
a hand to stroke his bird’s red, silver and violet head feathers. Yes, as I said, one of these days we will create something.
Something entirely new to Mankind, something of such a glorious and heavenly
abstraction as to provide all the answers ever needed by any of us or any of
any.




RB: So we shall. We’ll get some of
the others involved. Your pal, Ovid for one, and the Persian, Omar Khayyan, and
that fellow Scot of mine, Robert Fergusson. And the painters Da Vinci and Vincent
Jones and perhaps Raphael; for the music Wagner and Jerome Kerr and Lennon and,
oh yes, Thelonius Monk.




WS: Laughs. So you don’t think your own
or my own music could be right, then, for this masterwork of ours and
everyone’s?  He reaches into the heart of a bramble
bush, his hand uninjured by its many thorns, extracts some of its plumpest,
firmest, most glistening red / black fruits. Tasty,
these. Want some? 




RB: Thanks. You know when you sat
your questioning, William? Of course you, reader / listener, will
understand that nobody ex-planet Earth exists in our latterday dimension
without undergoing and passing the interview to which many are called and so relatively
few then chosen. This is ‘The questioning’, as it is known, where you sit alone
in a not unfriendly void and must by power of thought alone answer one million questions
about your life and times on Earth; must answer them for yourself without
hesitation and with utter honesty, knowing that the answers are already known.  Were you worried ,
Will? Afraid of rejection?




WS: Not at all. I mean, not about
rejection. Whatever will be will be.




RB: No, of course you weren’t
worried. Worry is an earthly condition, is it not, Will; something we all leave
to decay alongside that famous mortal coil of yours. But what a wondrous relief
when the truth lies bare and the knowledge of what one was - the use that one was - is there for you to confront.
Even though that which was revealed about the life of Mister Robert Burns under
The Questioning was not so glorious, its outcome must have contained a sufficiency
of glory or something to justify His immortal entry ticket.




WS:  Yes. The light and the word you either have or
have not, so to speak. Shall we sit and have a listen? At his unspoken
behest night falls cloudless, moonlit. ‘Away, away,’
shrieks His Majesty, springing into the air, the beat of wings disturbing
Shakespeare’s shoulder length hair. ‘Come Duchess, we must away to find our
roost.’ The pair of them are soon lost in the canopy of a giant chestnut tree.
The scent of many woodland flowers hangs heavy in the summer night.




RB: By all means. Should I may be
so bold as to quote your lovestruck Lorenzo … How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank! / Here will we sit, and
let the sounds of music / Creep in our ears - soft stillness and the night /
Become the touches of sweet harmony: /  Sit
here and look how the floor of heaven  /
Is thick inlaid with pattens of bright gold. / There’s not the smallest orb
which thou beholdest / But in his motion like an angel sings.’ You know
Will, when you wrote The Merchant of Venice did you not wonder why the music of
the spheres became inaudible to us so soon after our species ventured forth
from Africa? After all, we know it now to be a
reality - all truth.




WS: Most of our city-born kind on
Earth don’t notice the stars, cannot even see them, never mind hear the music that
pre-dating all of which we know. But that doesn’t signify it is any the less. Tiny
insects of all descriptions scurry, jump and fly out of the way and a grass
snake slithers off as the two men sit down. Small flowers close their petals,
bend horizontal to avoid being crushed. Listen …




The Book
says In the beginning is the Word,

The Word
is God by whatsoever name,

And you are
born of woman, weakly heard

At first
a babe all innocent of blame.

But you
grow up and from Him turn away

For what
is in your mind is yours alone -

You
hope: from His protective love you stray

immersed
in guilt, by winds of sin far blown

Perhaps grow
old will you, (but not too old),

Then
learn how not to cheat, to show concern,

Learn
why there’s little worth in glitter gold

And leave
when you no longer earn or learn:

Your pain
on Earth is after all your test

For what
comes next, unblessed or by Him blessed




RB: One of your sonnets, William.
Nice. I like it.




WS: I just made it up.




RB: Clever fellow.  Now let me have it in your Latin … no, don’t.
Listen to my song. I’m going to match it to the stars as I go along … as I make
it up … You recall the tune to my Ae Fond
Kiss, William?




WS: Yes of course.




RB: Here goes then …




Naethin’s
crude and naethin’s cruel

Naethin
here emotions fuel

Perfect
peace and joy we share it

Brother
love, no need to spare it.

Dark
despair we’ve left behind us

Though
love for the world reminds us

To the
stars such love can take me

And no
more can false love break me.




WS: That’s great, Robert; more
verses?




RB: Later. But hey, just look up.
We can go anywhere up there now. Anywhere we want to go. There is no distance,
is no time, all things sing and all things rhyme.




WS: Yes, but we like it here too
much, so we do. Sits up. How about some cloud
and rain, lovely old rain?




The brothers in verse, song and human creativity look at
each other in the moonlight, nod their smiling agreement.Earthworms pop their
heads from the soil in eager anticipation, pipistrelle bats zip, zoom and flit
around their heads, needing in this place to catch no insects winged or
otherwise, for no life needs to kill to live. The sky darkens. The first warm raindrops
pitter-splatter down. All the world is singing to the music of the stars.