Love is Not Love Upstart Crow

Mm... This upstart crow is ever more advanced in the world,

beautifying himself in the feathers of a gentleman.

In vain have I sought to find

some chink in the armour of his propriety,

some lewd scandal or base crime

with which to dispatch him to the dungeon -

or the gallows.

He claims to lead a blameless life -

married, sober, solvent...

dull.

But all men have their secrets,

and when I find Will Shakespeare's,

I will crush him

like a walnut betwixt the iron buttocks of a Titan.

Oh, yes.

Oh, bloody yes!

Nailed it!

"..and this by that I prove,

"Love's fire heats water, water cools not love."

Finished! By Jupiter's hairy armpits!

Bloody finished!

Finished what, Mr Shakespeare?

My 154th sonnet.

The cycle be complete.

Result! Oh, yeah!

Who the bard? Me the bard!

Iambic pentameter is my bitch!

I thought you were working on your wonderful star-crossed lovers play.

I am, Kate, but a sonnet be like the idle wind -

when it bubbleth within, you have to let it out.

Besides, these verses be my ticket to immortality.

Through them will I live forever.

How so, Mr Shakespeare?

I'm to have them published.

Imagine it!

A play is but a puff of air,

a player's stinking breath doth give it life,

but no sooner is it spoke than 'tis lost

amid the burps and fartle-barfles of the groundlings.

But a published poem lives forever!

People love 'em.

Particularly now these short and easily-digestible sonnets

have made the epic verse cycle look SO last century.

Young people have such short attention spans these days.

And with publishing, kids have instant entertainment

in the pockets of their puffling pants.

Oh, you see them hanging around together,

hunched over a book of 14-line iambic pentameter,

thumbing away, transfixed like zombies.

Not talking to each other.

Not interacting socially.

Lost to the world.

"Get off your book of sonnets!" cry parents up and down the land.

"You'll develop a hunch!"

I do worry about how their brains will develop

with so little variation of stimulus to challenge their imagination.

Who cares?

The point is, sonnets are what the kids are digging and ever shall.

Which is why I have, for a time, abandoned drama

and switched to churning out poems.

I thought I'd never get them finished.

I've been struggling over this last one all morning.

Couldn't get the final rhyme.

So you gave up? Probably best.

I didn't give up at all.

I found my final rhyme, and it's genius.

"..and this by that I prove,

"Love's fire heats water, water cools not love."

Except "prove" doesn't actually rhyme with "love".

Ah, yes, but it nearly does, which is...which is even better.

Hmm, not really.

Yeah, it's not even close.

For "prove" to rhyme with "love",

you'd have to say "pruv", which would be just rubbish.

Or you could say "loove".

"..and this by that I prove,

"Love's fire heats water, water cools not loove."

I think it could work... at a stretch.

I don't want it to stretch!

The proper rhyme is boring.

I honestly think people prefer their poems

to actually rhyme, Mr Shakespeare.

Course they do. Like that brilliant one

about the cock that couldn't cluck.

Have you written any poems lately, Bottom?

Can we expect to see a collection of 154 sonnets

attributed to the divine Bottom in the foreseeable future?

No.

No? And why would that be?

-Cos I can't write.

-Exactly.

Let all stand in wonder

at the world's first illiterate literary critic.

I thought you said all critics were illiterate.

Don't get clever with me, Bottom!

I'm sorry. I thought I was thick.

Which one am I? Clever or thick? I'm confused.

Thick, because you can't see how good my rhyme is.

Cos it doesn't futtocking rhyme!

Which is the entire futtocking point.

Now shut thee that which eateth food but grows not fat,

speaketh words but be not wise,

and burpeth loud but makes not gas.

Bloody hell, master, just say "mouth".

People aren't impressed, you know.

Sorry, must try harder! My bad!

Come on, boys.

Let's not fall out over a rhyme that doesn't rhyme,

even though it's a rhyme.

Have you really written 154 sonnets, Mr Shakespeare?

That's amazing.

Well, I find it therapeutic.

They help me deal with my moods.

-Like being in love with a bloke.

-I am not in love with a bloke.

-You've written him a lot of poems.

-Not just him.

My... My sonnets are inspired by twin muses.

The mysterious Fair Youth...

-Who you fancy.

-Whom I admire aesthetically.

..and my other muse, the sultry Dark Lady.

Who you absolutely definitely fancy.

Yeah. I absolutely definitely do,

ever since Kit Marlowe introduced us.

But, Mr Shakespeare, you are a married man.

I know that, Kate, which is why I've used my secret passion

to create a lengthy series of sonnets,

which I will then publish and thus become immortal.

So much more satisfying to consummate a passion poetically

betwixt pure white sheets of paper

rather than physically in the snowy linen sheets of love.

Hmm. At least that's what I keep trying to tell myself, anyway.

Me, too.

But I must confess,

I have allowed myself one small romantic indulgence.

I have commissioned Burbage and his players

to recite my sonnets to my twin muses prior to publication.

The first 126 to my Lord Southampton.

Lord Southampton?!

Is he the Fair Youth?!

Good goss!

Some might think it be him,

but the identity will always remain ambiguous.

And the other 28 I will send to Emelia Lanier.

Emelia Lanier?

Daughter of the celebrated Venetian court musician?

She's the Dark Lady?

Again I have left the matter open,

but between you and me it's definitely her.

As if anyone will ever give a tosslington about it either way.

And now I must journey to Stratford,

where I keep the second copies, which I intend for publication.

Goodness, Mr Shakespeare.

You keep copies of these passionate poems in Stratford?

Aren't you worried that Mrs Shakespeare might read them?

No chance of that.

They be too well hid.

She can't read.

Home am I...

Mother, Father, Wife, Daughter!

Bring ale and pies.

Summon the twins from their dame school.

Your ever-loving husband, father and son is home.

Er, yes, well, not a bad journey.

Thanks for asking(!)

Only half a day late.

Coach crash at the Watford Turnpike.

It wasn't the crash that delayed us.

Amazingly, the local watch cleared that up with some efficiency.

No, 'twas the fact that all who then passed must slow to a snail's pace

to gawp at the wreck.

Why do people do that?

It occurred to me that there be good and bad in all of us,

and they be in constant conflict.

I've been toying with a soliloquy on the subject. What do you think?

"To gawp, or not to gawp - that is the question.

"Whether 'tis nobler to ogle

"at a coachman squashed under a dead horse...

"..Or take arms against the urge to perv,

"And by opposing, feel a bit better about oneself."

What do you think? Might be useful somewhere?

I like the structure.

Hello!

I'm here!

Returned with news of ever more success in London.

My poetry is much noted.

Oh, I know all about your poetry, Will Shakespeare.

She found the sonnets, Dad. You're so crap, you really are.

The sonnets?

But surely she couldn't read them.

She made me read them to her.

Why did I teach that girl to read?!

Hoist am I by my own socially-enlightened petard!

I never thought a son of mine could be so base.

My own fault for marrying beneath me.

The only thing beneath you when you got married

was the bloody floor, woman.

You didn't have a pot to piss in.

Who's this Dark Lady, Will?

Dark Lady? I-Is there a Dark Lady?

Oh, you know right well there's a Dark Lady, forsooth!

Nobody says "forsooth" any more, Mum. It's medieval.

-Oh, the Dark Lady in the sonnets?

-Yes, Will.

The lady in the sonnets.

The dark-eyed woman with the thick black hair

you seem so fascinated with!

Well...perchance 'tis thee, Anne, for...

you have dark eyes and raven hair.

In a certain light.

Good poetry is never direct or literal.

The imagery should be oblique.

Read me those bits we marked, Susanna.

"Your love is as a fever...

"Frantic mad with evermore unrest."

Yuck, Dad! I mean, seriously, just yuck!

Is that about me, Will?

Are you frantic mad with restless love for me?

Is this really a proper conversation for the front parlour?

Mary, your husband's taking a dump in the front parlour!

It's raining.

An Englishman's home is his privy.

Are you having an affair, Will?

No. No, I-I swear.

Honestly. Truly.

You do hurt me with these churlish suspicions

and bring to mine eye that which though 'tis water be not drunk

and though 'tis salted be not cod.

What?!

Tears, girl. Tears!

Yeah, Dad, I know you mean tears. I'm just, like, aghast.

Look, they can't all be gold. It's work in progress.

Wife, please,

I am a true and faithful husband.

No other tufted lady grotto than thine...

..hath given good shelter

to the stranger in the purple helm that doth...

..that doth enter upstanding strong

but departs a limp and shrunken weakling.

I am actually going to be sick.

I shall certainly have to have a lie-down.

I be married to thee.

You're married to me,

but you're writing poems about some stinksome whore-slap!

And the Fair Youth.

Don't forget the Fair Youth.

Yeah, Dad, that is pretty weird.

And dangerous. There's laws, son.

The Fair Youth is just a pal.

Look...

I admit that while in London seen and admired have I

many dainties of beauty and experience

and perhaps did idly pen

some obscure and somewhat impenetrable verse about them.

But I be faithful to thee.

Well...

..maybe you are and maybe you aren't.

But I shan't share my bed

with someone who is thinking about Fair Youths

and Dark Ladies.

So until you sort yourself out,

you can either sleep in the cowshed with Mrs Moo-Moo

or you can sod off back to London.

Because I don't like you very much at the moment, Will Shakespeare.

I don't like you very much at all.

DOOR SLAMS

Do you want to get in here?

Oh, no...

you're already up to your neck in it.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?"

-Oh, I do think that's pretty.

-Yes.

Such a lovely image of one's love like a beauteous August morn.

Yes. Fresh, sparkling, sun-drenched.

Hm, yeah, unless it's raining.

"Shall I say you're a bit wet and soggy?" Hmm!

Romantic? Don't think so.

HE LAUGHS

Do stop doing that, Kempe.

What? Stop what?

Being brilliant?

Can't. "Why?"

-Cos I am brilliant.

-HE LAUGHS

That... That...laugh. You keep doing it all the time. Now, stop it!

Yes, it doth rattle me to my very teeth.

Oh, right, yeah, the laugh.

See, the thing is...

I see comedy everywhere, yeah?

I get stuff you couldn't even begin to get, so...

I understand comedy very well, thank you.

Hm-hmm! Quite well, Burbage, quite.

But if you're a genius, like me, there's another level, so...

Another level, Kempe?

Yeah. I see deep comedy, yeah?

Beneath the, "Ooh, it's a bit funny," and beyond...

to the secret, very funny comedy only I get.

That's why I do my massively annoying laugh, yeah?

To let you in on it. It's a bit of a favour, really.

HE LAUGHS

Now, before I go to Lady Emelia's, I wanted your help, Kate.

I'm in urgent need of your unique insight into the feminine mind.

I'm looking for the understanding that only one woman

can bring to the feelings of another.

Oh...

my...

God!

Thank you!

Thank you. Thank you!

Thank you.

Pardon?

You're finally going to let me be your Juliet!

Don't be ridiculous, girl. Whatever gave you that idea?

When you begged use of my unique feminine understanding, I...

..naturally presumed...

Naturally presumed? God's bodikins, girl!

What nonsense!

I know we've discussed the idea, but the more I think about it,

the more I see that what is required

to convincingly portray a woman on stage

is not feminine understanding or girlish insight,

it's a squeaky voice, pouty lips and a couple of half-coconuts.

I just really...

really feel that an actual girl would be more convincing.

Plus, it's my dream.

Kate, be realistic.

The law states that a woman may not attend university,

take a profession,

hold public office or own property.

Men are better than women, by law.

Exactly.

It therefore follows that they must even be better at being women.

Well, that's just obvious.

Now, please, forget these silly notions of becoming an actor

and attend to me. I need advice.

Advice?

Be there no men left in Christendom to confide in?

Surely even the most ignorant would be a better oracle than I,

who, though I read Virgil and Cicero - in Latin -

have no cod-dangle, which clearly be the font of all wisdom!

Kate...

Do yourself a favour. Wind in Mrs Smartarse.

Blokes can't stand clever birds.

Can we focus?

My wife Anne is very angry with me

because I've written 154 love poems to people who are not her.

God. Women! I mean, they're so bloody sensitive.

I know. I know.

The point is, Kate, how can I put it right?

Well...

I suppose the first question is, do you still love Anne?

Yes, definitely.

I-I honestly do.

Ignorant, illiterate milkmaid though she be.

It's just that...

after 13 years, I'd...

I'd really like to lie with someone else.

Well, duh! Huh!

I'm not going to.

I'd... I'd just like to.

A lot.

A really, really lot.

Poetry helps me deal with these unworthy urges.

I grab my trusty nib, my wrist starts to fly and...

..within a few strokes, relief pours out of me.

Well...

I'm sorry, Mr Shakespeare,

but if ever things are to be right 'twixt you and Anne again,

you're going to have to stop loving whoever it is

you're writing these... naughty poems to.

If only it were so simple -

but the Fair Youth and the Dark Lady are my twin muses.

'Tis they who empower my verse.

Besides, once the two of them read my sublime and bewitching sonnets,

I...very much doubt that they'll be able to stop loving me.

"..and this by that I prove

"Love's fire heats water. Water cools not lo-oove."

KEMPE LAUGHS

It doesn't rhyme.

The sonnets, my lady.

See how fervently she reads.

How grateful will she be to be the subject of such divine verse.

-ITALIAN ACCENT:

-Just reading the one

about my eyes being nothing like the sun.

Ah, yes, a brilliant opening image, don't you think?

The sun being bright, shining, radiant

and, above all, hot.

-Yes, absolutely.

-But you are saying my eyes are not?

Bit of an own goal there, mate.

Well, not as bright, shining, radiant or hot, obviously.

We're talking about the sun, Emelia.

"If snow be white, why, then, her breasts are dun."

Dun...

is an English word for grey-brown, no?

As when you say...dun cow.

Ouch. 2-0.

Well, yes, but the image is only partially bovine.

I'm... I'm not suggesting you have but one bosom with four nipples.

Will, you're really digging a hole for yourself here, mate.

"The breath of my mistress reeks..."

Were you happy with this as well, Mr Shakespeare?

I don't know. Should it have been "stinks"?

So this is supposed to be flattering? Just so I understand.

I get it. Perhaps I should have explained.

This love sonnet is particularly brilliant

because besides being a love sonnet it also satirises love sonnets.

You see? You're... You're getting double-bubble.

Ah! This is satirical?

Yes. Conventionally, love sonnets are ridiculously flattering.

They make absurdly overblown claims for the beauty of their subjects.

Well, we wouldn't want that, would we?

Exactly.

The love I show you

in my startlingly innovative 130th sonnet is greater,

because it recognises your flaws.

Next time bring me sweets.

Actually, I wrote a poem for you as well.

Ahem!

Emelia, Emelia.

By God, I'd like to feel ya!

SHE SHRIEKS AND LAUGHS

At last!

A poem with a proper rhyme!

Good day, Mr Shakespeare.

Perhaps you'll have better luck with your boyfriend.

SHE LAUGHS

Lord Southampton is a pal.

"A woman's face with Nature's own hand Painted hast thou..."

Hang on, stop there.

So you're saying I look like a girl?

Yes. I-I don't mean it literally.

Oh, don't you?

"..For a woman wert thou first created."

Now, that means...

I'm so pretty that when God made me he actually intended to make a girl.

Yes, but as I quickly add...

"Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,

"By adding one thing."

Which would be a cod-dangle?

Well, I don't actually say it, but...

So I'm a Venus with a penis?

A strumpet with a trumpet?

A Miranda with a stander?

A Judy with a protrudy?

Put very simply...

"And by addition me of thee defeated."

So, to be clear, you think I'm pretty,

but because I'm a man

you can't have sex with me.

-But...

-Get thee hence to your milkmaid wife

who is clearly but a beard to your bechambered whoopsidom

and returneth not till ye be ready to celebrate God's rich rainbow!

KEMPE LAUGHS

Not laughing at the word "whoopsidom".

Laughing beyond the word "whoopsidom".

So, actually, that's not offensive.

Actually, I find it deeply whoopsiphobic.

Blimey.

You try and write a nice series of classic love poems

and what do you get?

The Dark Lady objects to the tiniest allusion to halitosis

and the Fair Youth seems to have a problem with being told

he looks like a girl.

I don't know why I bother!

Twin muses not happy?

No, Kate, they weren't - which is really weird,

because all 154 of them are works of genius.

And what's more, once they're published, the world will know.

Bottom! I want Bottom!

Yes, I think that is clear from the first 126 sonnets.

Bottom, did you deliver my sonnets to Her Majesty's Master of Print

that they may be licensed for publication?

Yeah, I gave them straight over to Robert Greene this morning.

Greene? Robert Greene?

Yeah. Looks like he's oiled himself into another top job.

He's the new print master.

Greene has my sonnets?

This is terrible!

He'll probably deny me a licence out of spite.

No, I think you'll find it's a little more serious than that,

Mr Shakespeare.

Guards!

Arrest this man for incitement to hugger-tuggery.

Let go! What are you...? No!

HE YELLS

Mr Greene...

I am the Lord Inquisitor.

Why lies this man upon the rack?

Sodomy, my lord. Sodomy.

This inquisition will establish that Mr Shakespeare's vile pornography

is nothing more than an incitement to foul hugger-tuggery.

They're just poems!

Sodomy is a crime for which circumstantial evidence

is always allowable,

there being rarely witnesses save the perpetrators -

and one of them is looking the wrong way.

HE YELLS

My lord...

I wish to speak in Mr Shakespeare's defence,

assisted by my clerk, Ned Bottom.

Don't you worry, Will. Bottom and I have been working on a plan.

Oh, God!

-Proceed.

-Well...

I...pluck a text at random.

"Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious..."

My lord will of course understand in this context

"will" clearly denotes carnal desire.

The man's very business is literary criticism.

He's absolutely right.

The couplet continues...

"..Vouchsafe to hide my will in thine,"

the second "will" being quite obviously a deliberate pun

on the word "willy"...

..an, er, uncouth slang for the male sexual organ.

Damn, he's good!

I will quote the prisoner's Sonnet 126,

which addresses this Fair Youth.

CLEARS THROAT

"Th'expense of spirit in a waste of shame."

Clearly, in this context "spirit" is an allusion to seminal fluid.

He's right. That is how the line is destined to be interpreted.

Thus we have an ejaculation in a "waste of shame",

which can only mean a man,

for there is no more shameful place in which to expend one's spirit.

Apart from perhaps a donkey.

Stretch the damned hugger-tugger till he confesses!

A moment, if you please.

Don't you worry, Will. I've got this.

GRINDING, HE YELLS

Sorry, sorry.

My Lord Inquisitor.

-Yes.

-You have the evidence before you.

154 sonnets.

But may I enquire if you've actually read them?

I'm not going to lie.

Skimmed a bit.

And do you think that many people are ever going to read them?

Not really, no.

Of those who do actually read them,

how many of those do you think, honestly,

will actually have the faintest idea what it's about?

Well, not very many of them, if I'm honest.

-Just a minute!

-Of those who do have a vague idea

as to what they're about,

how many of those will only have arrived at such an understanding

via forced study from joyless schoolmasters?

Well, most of them, I imagine.

Can't really see them being read for pleasure.

Not really a privy book, is it?

Are you mad? They're brilliant!

The defence contends

that far from being an incitement to sexual depravity,

these sonnets are in fact an incitement to a nice long nap.

Well, yes, I did nod off once or twice.

I rest my case.

Release Mr Shakespeare!

-I object!

-I bloody object, too!

Well...thanks to you and Kit Marlowe, Bottom, I'm acquitted.

But only on grounds that my poetry be too wilfully obscure

for anyone to bother actually reading.

Sometimes you've got to be cruel to be kind.

I'll no more of sonnets.

I think you should write one more sonnet, Mr Shakespeare.

Another one, Kate? Why?

Who for? None likes them.

For Anne, your wife.

I've been thinking about what you asked me -

how to win back her favour.

And it seems to me that if 'twere poems to other women

which did upset her,

then to set it right, you must needs pen one to her.

Of course.

Of course!

What a subject!

A love poem to an illiterate farm wench whom I only married

cos I'd got her up the duffington.

Such a challenge!

Hmm, yes.

The muse be upon me.

"My darling, you are my entire world."

Good. Nice start.

"Though you be old...

"and rather plumpish, sadly..."

Er...

"A common, saggy, ignorant old girl..."

Er...

"..and yet for all that I do love you madly."

-Um...

-What do you think?

Pretty good so far, eh?

It is good, but as a woman,

if I might suggest just one or two tiny cuts.

It isn't even finished. That's four lines. I need ten more.

Honestly, we've got enough.

"My darling, you are my entire world.

"I do love you madly."

Is that it?

Yes, that's it.

Oh, Will, it's lovely.

Lovely? It doesn't scan and it's missing 12-and-a-half lines.

I don't care. All I ever wanted was me own sonnet.

My own sonnet by Will Shakespeare.

Hm... Yes...

Although it's not actually a sonnet.

I don't care.

It says "I love you", which is all a love poem should do.

Hm. A lot of people think that, which, personally, I find weird.

Anyway, I'm done with sonnets.

They've brought me nothing but misery and rejection.

These 154 will warm our toes a little,

and that's all they're good for.

Ooh, stay thy hand, Husband.

There's a couple in here might be worth a few groats.

There's one about a summer's day

that I think could be popular on its first two lines alone.

And there's another one about a marriage of two minds

that I think might be a big hit at weddings.

You think so?

Come on, read me mine again.

Oh, God, if I must.