Yonder scribe for the New Yorker is in excellent fooling. O, that the doings of politicians were so merry in truth! 'Twould ease the playmaker's labour, I warrant ye.
From t'other world to this little O, the earth: and, forsooth, to that same wooden O where the lives of men and women be shown forth in little: that is to say, mine own Globe, by Thames on Bankside.
This is but one of many figurings-forth of the ancient Globe where my Lord Chamberlain's men did play with Burbage at their head: itself, alas, burnt to ashes in 1613 by a scurvy ill-fortuned cannon-shot in my Henry VIII. It was new-built the year after, and stood fast for threescore years more until an unkindness of Puritans destroy'd it. Now its offspring may be seen in Tokyo, Rome, and Texas; one in Berlin is a-building and one in Sweden built all of ice: a thing to wonder at.
My heart giveth much unto them all. Yet the Globe in London, which standeth near enough where stood the first, is mine especial care. At the first roll of the drums for Henry V some seven years since, methought I heard mine own heart to beat again. And in sooth, Master Rylance hath there assembled as hardy a cry of players as ever drank deep at the Mermaid, with a doughty crew of clothiers and masters of motion, dancing and musick. Their playing hath joy'd me much: their antick Macbeth of writhing music, their sad-and-merry Twelfth Night, their Richard Third play'd by a company of sprightly dames who out-Burbaged Burbage. These summer days, Measure for Measure, Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing are to be seen, an you please.
Indeed, Master Rylance hath done me the office of a friend. Were I yet living, I might well desire some moments' privy converse with that same sweet-voiced gentleman, who giveth breath to my lines in such pretty halting tones. Dead as I am, he hath given me gifts beyond my spirit's conceiving.
But hear you, gentles: take not this my praise of one playhouse to mean that I have any the less love for all the rest. My Measure for Measure playeth now at the National Theatre as well as at the Globe: the one laid in these latter days, 'tother in mine own, and I am well pleas'd with both. Whether the players go in silks, denim or naught but skin, 'tis no matter, so it be well done. He (or she, forsooth) that speaketh my words on a stage shall be my brother in craft, be it in playhouse, schoolhouse or public-house, before a public throng'd as an army or scarce as honest lovers. Be thou Danish prince or hurried messenger, know thou this: thou art of mine own, and my blessing (frail thing as 'tis) is on thee. Go thou well.
Od's my life, hath a whole moon waxed and waned since last I writ here? Your pardon, good gentles, I humbly crave: matters superlunary did entreat my attention. To wit, I was bidden unto a celestial revel whereat my masters Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Liszt and Ray Charles were the musick, and they did play together extempore in concords so sweet that they made the spheres to echo back the sound, and it seemed the welkin itself did dance a sprightly cinquepace. Brief, gentles, I was enchanted, and the sense of time did leave me.
Faith, but our revels were prodigious! There did I drown a merry hour in golden nectar with Kit Marlowe and Ben Jonson. Sir Philip Sidney and his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke came thither, and young Beaumont and Fletcher arm-in-arm. Webster, Middleton and Marston were drinking wine with other tragedians of King James' age, clad all in black; I saw, too, Racine and Corneille sharing a table and speaking to none. I spoke, though, to Master Moliere, who was drinking deep with Carlo Goldoni and Edmond Rostand; they were arguing over Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, new-rendered into English by master Barry Kornhauser, and to be seen at mine own namesake theatre in the capital of the American nation.
Rostand decried the translation, and heaped a thousand French oaths on the American who had so trifled with his work, inserting base humour and excising much of Rostand's own making, that it made him like to crumble his bones with turning in his grave. But Moliere did say that an the two-a-penny quips set the public on a roar, which nightly they did, then the play was well Englished. Goldoni added that Rostand should be glad of the acclaim, whether the words were to his liking or no. I spoke then, and said that in the English of my time, the word "translate" did signify "transform"-- but they all began to mock me then, as one who had "transformed" many works into English and pass'd them for new plays of mine own. I had been shamed, had not de Bergerac himself arrived then.
Pointing his majestic nose at Moliere, who cowered as before a cannon, Cyrano put us all in mind that Moliere had lifted a scene entire from him for his Scapin. Furthermore, he declared that Master Kornhauser's rendering of the play pleased him passing well, and spoke kind words of the player who doth therein personate himself, one Geraint Wyn Davies. It seems Cyrano's soul smileth upon this man, as on Coquelin before him. I drained my glass then, and left them to their war of wits.
'Twas then I chanced to see mine ancient friend Geoffrey Chaucer, of whom I read much in life, and whose better acquaintance I made thereafter. "So, goode Will," said he, "qwhat ys thys that I heere, that thou writest againe for the eyen of the lyvynge?" "Even so," quoth I. "Welle," saith he, "That must I se anon! Mayhap, when nexte thou art in minde to leave thy chronicle unwrit for a litel space, I shal speke in thy place yf that I may!" And ere he returned to quaffing beer with Sir Thomas Malory and Marie de France, I did promise him faithfully that it would be so. So, gentles, when next I have business otherwhere, honest Geoffrey shall divert ye. Use him kindly, I pray you.
And now, forsooth, I must away to rest my weary head some while. And curst be he that moves my bones.