Death and Taxes: Hydriotaphia and Other Plays

by Tony Kushner

  Shakespeare lived through the tail end of the roughest phase of primitive accumulation in England, and his plays reflect the chaos of the time, their bloodiness, their immense excitement, and the irreconcilable dissonance between Christianity and capitalism, between unstoppered material appetite and Christ’s asceticism, His antipathy toward wealth and usury, His preference for the poor. Widespread misery was occasioned by the seizure of common lands, moors and forests, and their transformation into private property. This misery manifested itself chiefly in waves of homeless rural poor descending on the cities, seeking food, shelter, work, and finding less than they needed; in the fiery growth of religious dissidence, religious radicalism and factionalism, challenging the orthodoxy, feeding rivers of ancient class resentment and the explosive pressures generated by a rapidly rising mercantile class rubbing up against a truculent, greedy aristocracy. A social, political revolution in England in the seventeenth century was inevitable.

  From 1642-1649, England fought two civil wars, ending with the beheading of the disastrous king Charles I and the establishment of a wobbly Parliamentary republic. In 1653 Oliver Cromwell, a personage of spectacular contradictions, noble intentions and a pronounced capacity for barbarism, backed by the army, ascended to an uneasy dictatorship as Lord Protector and Head of State. In 1658 Cromwell died of malaria, and all hope for a real republic ended quickly; in 1660, with the backing of part of the army, the monarchy was restored in the person of Charles II, who one year later dug up Cromwell’s grave in Westminster Abbey, hung his corpse in Tyburn and then decapitated it, keeping the head on a pike atop Westminster Hall where it remained till Charles II died.

  Sir Thomas Browne lived through this period, a steadfast supporter of the monarchy throughout the civil wars, the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, for which loyalty he was rewarded with a knighthood in 1671. Hydriotaphia takes place in an obviously askew version of this postrevolutionary England, after the Restoration of the Old Order Transformed.

  In 1664 Browne’s testimony, consisting of disinterested theological speculation, helped hang two women accused of witchcraft.

  Dramatis Personae

  SIR THOMAS BROWNE, a physician and author. He’s fifty years old. He is a thin man, but his body is hugely swollen. He is very wealthy and he is dying.

  HIS SOUL, tiny, beautiful, but a little soiled; it lives behind the headboard of Browne’s deathbed. It sings beautifully.

  DAME DOROTHY BROWNE, Sir Thomas’s wife, forty or forty-five; she’s had fourteen children and a very hard life. She is dressed simply but elegantly.

  BABBO, Browne’s nanny when he was a child, and now his cook. She is very old but busy as a little steam engine—not frail, her brain a little dim, and sweet. She chews a stick of cinnamon.

  MACCABBEE, Browne’s amanuensis/servant/laboratory assistant. Maccabbee has the clap and it has eaten away his nose. In his nose’s place he wears a brass prophylaxis, like Tycho Brahe did. The brass nose is held in place with ribbon tied around his head.

  DR. EMIL SCHADENFREUDE, Browne’s physician, a Hessian doctor living in Norfolk. He speaks with a remarkable German accent. He is dressed in High Restoration style, as if eager to blend in with London society. A pleasant man enjoying life and his work, an enthusiast.

  DR. LEVITICUS DOGWATER, Browne’s pastor and his business partner. A Protestant cleric, he dresses elegantly but severely. He is very robust, and he speaks with a stutter.

  LEONARD PUMPKIN, the local gravedigger. He is very handsome and very poor, about twenty-five years old. His hands are always filthy filthy filthy.

  THE ABBESS OF X, née Alice Browne, Sir Thomas’s sister, presumed drowned but actually living as the Mother Superior of a convent of British ex-pat assassin nuns. She is dressed in a very severe and very elegant (but suitable for action) nun’s habit.

  DOÑA ESTRELITA, the wife of the Spanish ambassador to the British court, a former lover of Browne’s. She is fifty, immensely wealthy and, when not in disguise, her couture is the very zenith of European decadence and beauty. She speaks with a magnificent Spanish accent.

  SARAH, a ranter woman, homeless, lives in the forest, a witch. She is dressed in rags. Probably in her twenties or thirties, though so begrimed and worn by life it’s hard to tell. She is a person of tremendous power.

  MARY, a ranter, just like Sarah, but of a more thoughtful and gentle disposition.

  RUTH, a ranter, more bellicose than the other two, and the best at ranting.

  DEATH, an immensely fat man, green skin, skull showing through scalp, dressed in rotting Stuart-era finery, wrapped, like Marley’s ghost, in chains from which dangle ledger books and counting boxes. He resembles a wealthy silk merchant. He is nearly seven feet tall, terrifying to behold and he loves to eat.

  Setting

  Norfolk, England (sort of)

  April 3, 1667 (more or less)

  Some Thoughts about the Play:

  IT IS VERY LONG. Do it fast. This is a rough, aggressive age. It is very long. Do it fast, but make it real. It lives only if it addresses and presents relationships between real (and unreal) people with real, immense needs, and fears and hopes. Played rapidly without specificity and intelligence it will feel to the audience a million years long.

  It is very long because it is full of words; it is, in fact, very much a play about words and writing. The words are not hurdles to leap across and over on your way to some big juicy inarticulate emotion, you American actors! The scenes full of words are not inaccurate and unreliable suggestions for some potential event to which the play alludes elliptically but does not actually describe, you American directors! The scenes must be read and analyzed carefully and precisely (specifically) and imaginatively (but groundedly) with an eye toward objectives and needs and plausible psychological development. The characters live and do what they come onstage to do (and they always always come onstage to do something) through their words.

  Frequent address of the audience is fine; more than fine, it’s important. The main relationships are between the characters but the audience ought to be included when possible and not injurious to the life of the relationships onstage.

  As for Dr. Browne, his entire inner life, which is almost entirely articulated (see play’s Afterword), is shared directly with the audience. The audience, for him, is his inner life, or at least that to which his inner life is spoken.

  The Set

  Central should be Browne’s deathbed, with a high marble headboard like a tombstone. The room should be richly appointed and cluttered with books, scrolls, astrolabes, telescopes, microscopes, models of engines, a model of the quarry, models of buildings, sacks of gold, musical instruments, anatomical charts, skulls of various animals including many human skulls, bottles of medicine, bottles with dead things and necrotic tissues floating inside, paintings (including several portraits of Browne), surveying equipment, nautical equipment, daggers and swords and harquebuses, abacuses—and a cobwebbed, long-unused writing desk with split pens, dried ink in dusty inkwells and great sheaves and stacks of paper, endlessly scribbled upon.

  There is a plinth, empty, awaiting the arrival of the urn. When it arrives, the urn should be astonishing, blackened ancient terra-cotta with bas-relief faces in ghastly rictuses and agonies of death—coins on their eyes, tongues distended, jaws either rigor-mortised opened or clamped shut with mortuary bandage. It should be very sinister and old. It will be required to cough up a delicate spume of dust and belch forth a thick cloud of smoke. Smoke is smoke and dust is dust and a spume is different from a cloud and yes the urn must be able to do both of those things.

  Music

  His Soul’s songs have been set to beautiful music by Mel Marvin (permission for use may be obtained through the Joyce Ketay Agency).

  “There Is a Land of Pure Delight” is a traditional English hymn, and can be found in hymnals. The melody is traditional. The words are by Isaac Watts. It should be sung in four-part harmony.

  Costumes

 
The costumes should be sumptuous and extravagant; neither leadenly historically accurate nor too silly! There should probably be a touch (only a touch) of the modern about the look of the characters, for instance, period clothing but no wigs. Remember that these people live in the country so wigs and other Restoration geegaws are probably not appropriate.

  Browne’s swollen body and Sarah’s naked body in Scene Four should be achieved by anatomically articulated, over-the-top body stockings (genitals included). Real nudity is too . . . real.

  The Accents

  This is the way I described the accent issue in the first drafts:The aristocrats all speak standard American English, crisp and clear.

  The bumpkins speak a made-up dialect. Simply pronounce the words exactly as they are written—it will sound a little like Brooklynese, though it should not be done with a Brooklyn accent; its vocabulary is derived from Yorkshire, Brooklyn, and also Krazy Kat (the comic strip; not the cartoon). It is not southern American, Texan, Irish or African-American!! You will get it right if you just read it out loud as it is spelled, without accent of any kind. They speak rapidly and clearly. To be understood by the audience you have to speak very very clearly. Schadenfreude’s accent should be a great trilled and guttural German. (Please, actor playing Schadenfreude, do not substitute “sh” for “s”—be intelligible and crisp.) Estrelita’s accent should be a great, rich, voluptuous Spanish. (Actor playing Estrelita, do not add an “e” to every word beginning with “s,” and do not do a Castilian lisp.)

  Dogwater’s stutter, again, should be exactly as written—please, the actor playing him should not make up his own stutters, or add to the ones written. Dogwater has great control over his impediment and has the lightness and crispness that implies. Remember, he speaks for a living! Adding and improvising stuttering will kill the jokes and make the speeches interminable and unintelligible.

  I would add to the above that it now seems to me possible that the whole thing could be done with British accents, the peasant dialect probably a Midlands dialect—though if this option is tried, the made-up peasant words wouldn’t change, just the accent. I like the American sound but perhaps a British sound would work.

  Because of the strangeness of the peasant language, regardless of which side of the Atlantic, accentually speaking, your production winds up on, you should play the first scenes with a special precision and care. Babbo and Maccabbee’s first speeches will tend to affright audiences with their linguistic ali-enness, and must serve as an accessible, comprehensible template for listening to the play.

  I hope Dogwater’s stutter is not offensive to anyone with a stutter—several people with stutters have seen the play and have not taken offense, but using a disability in a comedy always raises complex questions. And Dogwater is a comic character—the audience should laugh at him, though not because he stutters. His stutter is another kind of eloquence, he is in magnificent control of it, unapologetic, though vulnerable, as we see at the end of Scene Two, to mockery. As I mentioned, this is a play about language and words, and I think the accents, made-up words, Dogwater’s stutter and everyone’s loquacity are all part of a general reveling in language and in the ways language is used.

  Intermissions

  There must be two intermissions, one after Act Two, one after Act Three. This means that the middle section is short; that’s fine. Putting the second intermission after Act Four is a bad idea; having only one intermission is worse.

  Act One

  CONTEMPTUS MUNDI

  Bright Fresh Early April Morning

  The sickroom. The deathbed. Dr. Browne lying in it, covered, rattling feebly, asleep. The curtains are drawn and it is dark. At the foot of the bed, on the floor, Maccabbee and Babbo are fucking.

  MACCABBEE AND BABBO

  HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH!

  BABBO

  (Sharply) Sssshhh!

  (They both sit up, look at the bed, see Dr. Browne breathing, and go back to their copulation.)

  MACCABBEE AND BABBO

  HUH! HUH! HUH! HUH! HUH! HUH HUUUUU-UUUUHHHH!!!!

  (Babbo sticks her legs straight up in the air and her slippers fly over her head across the room. They have finished.)

  MACCABBEE

  (Fastening his pants) Ouf.

  BABBO

  Shame.

  MACCABBEE

  ’Tis natchural.

  BABBO

  Verra. But it still bin a shame. We shouldn’t oughta a done dat. In here. Him dying onna bed ’n’ you with da clap so bad yer nose is rot off.

  MACCABBEE

  Gets me going, da smella da room.

  BABBO

  Dat’s disgusting.

  MACCABBEE

  I predick dat he takes his last breaf before noon. Ef he don’t pop first. Dat’s my scientific summestimation.

  BABBO

  Poor Dr. Browne. So swole . . .

  MACCABBEE

  Think a all dem juices.

  (They look at each other, a lascivious look.)

  MACCABBEE

  You wanna?

  (As they begin to embrace again, Dr. Browne sits up suddenly, makes an abrupt horrible noise, falls back and begins to spasm and gurgle.)

  BABBO

  Ah Christ! We gone and disrespected him to da portals a death!

  MACCABBEE

  Go get da missus.

  BABBO

  (Shrieking) Aaaaahhh!!!

  MACCABBEE

  Da Event! ’Tis imminent! Scoot, ’n’ hurry!

  (Babbo runs out one door, Maccabbee the other.

  There is a simultaneous darkening and a build of strange, gray light. Music. Above the headboard a white ladder descends, just the tip, a light comes down from Heaven, and His Soul strains upward, trying to reach the ladder; meanwhile Death, growling, enters the room and approaches the bed. Death lays a chilly hand on Dr. Browne’s throat and from the sleeve of his cloak he draws a huge carving knife.)

  DEATH

  At . . . last . . . I’ve . . . waited . . . so long . . . for you . . . THOMAS . . . come . . . I am ravenous . . . how I love—

  (Death raises the knife.)

  DR. BROWNE

  (Sitting up, eyes still shut, fierce) NOT YET, GODDAMNIT!

  (The lights revert abruptly to normal, the music dies as though running out of batteries, Death growls in frustration and runs out the door; His Soul gives up reaching for the ladder and drops down behind the headboard.)

  HIS SOUL

  Shit.

  (The light from Heaven dies. Dr. Browne opens his eyes, shivers with cold, wide awake into terror.)

  DR. BROWNE

  Maccabbee!

  (Maccabbee enters.)

  MACCABBEE

  Yup.

  DR. BROWNE

  What’s the date?

  MACCABBEE

  Thursday.

  DR. BROWNE

  The date, you idiot.

  MACCABBEE

  April Three.

  DR. BROWNE

  My Birthday.

  MACCABBEE

  No need ta call me a idiot.

  DR. BROWNE

  My Birthday.

  MACCABBEE

  ’N’ many happy returns a da day.

  DR. BROWNE

  I will die today.

  MACCABBEE

  I said dat ta Babbo not five minutes gone. I predicket it. From da gurgle ’n’ da gasp. ’Tis scientific.

  DR. BROWNE

  I have trained you well. Fetch the gravedigger. It’s morning?

  MACCABBEE

  Only just.