CROMWELL: A woman?

FITZGERALD: A woman I love…

CROMWELL: Love? Love!?

FITZGERALD: Aye, do you not know it, sir?

(Cromwell jumps up and hits Fitzgerald hard against the side of his face)

CROMWELL: Do not talk to me of love. I have known more love than you could know. Do you hear me, sir, more than you could know.

Pause

FITZGERALD: I hear you.

CROMWELL: Who is this woman? Do I know her?

Pause

FITZGERALD: Your daughter Elizabeth…

CROMWELL (Shouting): What!? What!? My Elizabeth? No sir, oh no sir, not my Elizabeth, I…

FITZGERALD: I came to tell you we are to be betrothed.

CROMWELL (Shouting): Betrothed?!

FITZGERALD: Aye.

CROMWELL: She is a child! Do you hear me? A child!

FITZGERALD: She is twenty-two, old enough.

CROMWELL: A child. My child.

(Cromwell is beside himself with anger and paces up and down, then sits and laughs)

CROMWELL: You jest, sir? I know you jest.

FITZGERALD: No.

(There is a heavy silence)

FITZGERALD: We met two years ago…

CROMWELL: Where?

FITZGERALD: I was a clerk in the Treasury Office, not a very good one mind, but I had to earn money, my poor mother was alone. My father had been killed, a good Royalist. I had to earn money. Then one day I met your daughter on my way from work, she was giving alms to the poor, thought it an appropriate place to do so, outside the Treasury.

CROMWELL: Aye, she would. Go on.

FITZGERALD: We spoke awhile, I told her of my mother’s plight…

CROMWELL: And Elizabeth took you home and fed you, and gave you victuals to take home to your mother?

FITZGERALD: She did…

CROMWELL: Does it all the time. Has cost me a pretty penny I can tell you. Go on.

FITZGERALD: She was outside the Treasury most evenings after that, we would walk cross the bridge at Battersea, and sit in the fields, she said it reminded her of Ely. She would sing…

CROMWELL: Where The Wild Thyme Grows?

FITZGERALD: Yes.

(Cromwell sings)

CROMWELL (Singing): There is a place where the Wild Thyme Grows,
Close beside the sweet water’s edge,
A place that only I, and my true love knows,
That place where the Wild Thyme Grows.

(Beckett joins in on the next line..)

Where the Wild Thyme Grows.

BECKETT (Singing alone): A place for a courting and a betrothing pledge;
A loving corner where her virgin body did a glow;
As mine did cleave unto her own wild thyme,
In that place by the sweet waters edge.

CROMWELL & BECKETT (Singing together):
Yes, there is a place where the wild thyme grows,
Close beside the cool, sweet waters edge;
A place where we did make love awhile,
A top our grassy bed.
There, where the wild thyme grows,
Where the wild thyme grows.

(Cromwell embraces Beckett at the end of the song)

CROMWELL: Thank you, Jeremiah.

BECKETT: My old grandmother taught me that song when I were but a mistlethrush to a crow. I taught the young Miss Elizabeth if you remember, sir?

CROMWELL: I do Jeremiah, I do. Bring more drink for our guests Jeremiah.

BECKETT: Sir.

CROMWELL: Elizabeth must have taken a shine to you to sing that song. Go on with your story, boy.

FITZGERALD: We spent most of that summer…

CROMWELL: When I was in Ireland?

FITZGERALD: Yes

CROMWELL: Did you mount her, sir, there in the grass of Battersea fields?

HARRISON: Oliver, enough!

CROMWELL: Hmm? He did, I know he did.

FITZGERALD: I did not, sir, not…

CROMWELL: Well, sir, perhaps you should have? Mounted her there and then in the buttercups and the daisies, as no doubt she wanted, for I tell you, sir, mounting she needs, and well, before…

FITZGERALD: She is pregnant, sir, barely three months.

Pause

CROMWELL: What!?

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The fence went up around Elizabeth Scott’s Royal Shakespeare Theatre today as the demolition crews moved in to start the three year rebuilding programme.

You’ll agree the old building looks slightly undignified as her insides are ripped out.

Watch this space for the continuing story, and more pictures.

Steve Newman

CROMWELL ( in a much more light-hearted mood): I was once taken as a boy to see a group of travelling players perform Shakespeare, on the green outside Ely Cathedral.

HARRISON: What did the Bishop of Ely make of Shakespeare upon his holy green?

CROMWELL: It was a Wednesday evening. He was away fornicating in a nunnery as usual. (laughter) He eventually caught the pox and died howling for someone to cut off his bollocks. ( More laughter) There were thirty nuns at his funeral, but I swear the Mother Superior looked the most forlorn and scabrous.

(Harrison bursts into laughter, as does Cromwell after a while)

HARRISON: Which play?

CROMWELL: Hmm? Oh, Henry V.

HARRISON ( Standing & quoting): Now all the youth of England are on fire
And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies;
Now thrive the armourers, and honours thought
Reigns solely in the breast of everyman:

HARRISON: The next line, Oliver?

CROMWELL: They sell the pasture now to buy the horse…

HARRISON: Following the mirror of all Christian Kings.

CROMWELL: Isn’t that how we started, Thomas?

HARRISON: By selling the pasture? Aye. But rest assured we shall break that curs’d mirror, and no seven years bad luck neither.

CROMWELL: I fear I cannot let theatre, let playwrights have their day, they speak too clearly, and for too many. The people must read, make their own judgements, not be swayed by a mob before a stage.

HARRISON: I fear that to ban might lead to larger unrest.

CROMWELL: We shall see. First I’ll make Milton the state poet, for I swear I cannot understand a word of his new work, Paradise Lost, even in English, then I’ll make you my court Jester.

(There is a commotion outside. Enter BUNYAN with a prisoner. BUNYAN throws the prisoner to the floor.)

HARRISON (Jumping up): What is the meaning of this?

SOLDIER: I found him outside, sir, at the window. He claims to be a royalist spy…

SPY: Aye, loyal to the true heir to the throne, not some farmer…

( BUNYAN hits the SPY)

CROMWELL: Enough man, you have done your duty, and done it well, leave us pray, and prepare yourself for Upton.

( BUNYAN exits. CROMWELL looks at the spy.)

CROMWELL ( to the SPY): A spy you say? From where?

SPY: I say not.

CROMWELL: I say not? What sort of answer is that? You’ve already admitted to being a spy, you could very well be hanged before this night is out, so tell me from whence you came or by God die now by my own hand.

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