A Brief Memoir by
David Ossman
Founding Member of The Firesign Theatre
Rick Shakespeare, balding and bearded, looking remarkably like his famous ancestor, William, waited for me at the top of the gangplank leading onto his yacht, “Tem-Pest II,” docked at the Monterey Marina. It was a “Da Vinci Code” moment for me, because, on the spanking clean, if inky black vessel there awaited a literary prize that, if genuine, could change the course of Shakespearian scholarship.
Over thirty years ago, while diving off the Bleak Islands, Rick claims to have stumbled over the remains of The Gilded Hind, an Elizabethan craft, lost in a Pacific storm around 1610. Going for the gold, Rick spent months uncovering the remains of the ship.
Strangely, the “gold” he discovered was a small but priceless library of poetry and drama, once the property of the “Hind’s” owner, one Capt. McDucke.
Most important among the volumes, kept sealed in an airtight silver chest, was an original, nearly complete manuscript of “Anythynge You Want To,” the long-missing play often attributed to William Shakespeare.
Since I and my fellow Firesign Theatre actors were planning another selected performance from this quasi-mystical comedy, a viewing of the original script would not only be a rare privilege but might also help to solve some of the dramaturgical problems associated with the play’s text, hitherto assembled from the many other bits and pieces used by actors and ripped off by other lesser writers and unscrupulous Bankside publishers in Shakespeare’s time.
Looking fit, if silvered by the years and worn smooth by his lifetime in the water, Rick welcomed me aboard. He had agreed to let me examine a copy of “Anythynge,” which remains in his possession after years of litigation, along with some volumes from Capt. McDucke’s library.
Imagine the thrill when seeing such a collectable possible Shakespearian artifact, possibly with corrections and additions in someone’s (the author’s?) hand. A page of it lay before me, there on the wine-dark ebony desk in Rick’s below-decks office. In cramped Elizabethan typography I could make out the (much annotated) beginning of “Anythynge”’s Act I, scene ii:
[SOPHIE: THE FOLLOWING EIGHT LINES SHOULD BE SET ITALIC.]
“A Nawful Place, upon the heath at dawn. Three Cookes doth the broth spoil.
Cke I Com coking cusines, stok the peet
Bile the ale & the meet be beet
Cke II Ive fowl deepfired, a buket’s load
Cke III Add’s ‘pleen of Banker, hand of Coppe
Tongue of Lawier, dearly bowt
Cke I All must steethe & bile with lava
Whilest we take Five for mokajava.”
“It isn’t well known, Dave,” said Rick, “but I wrote a lot of original dialog for that big Pflegmish Raadio production of “Anythynge,” based on this book. They wanted Shakespeare, they got me!”
His was yet another gloss on the indestructible “lost comedie,” which has survived reconstructions by Orson Welles, Noel Coward, The Living Theatre, the cheerfully athletic team of Olivier and Kaye at Stratford in 1951, and of course, by me and my Firesign Theatre partners.
One of us had picked up a dilapidated copy of an 1898ish printing of “Anythynge” back in the “Dear Friends” radio days. Always on the lookout for classic material we incorporated favorite scenes from “Anythynge” into our live act, along with Hemlock Stones’ “Giant Rat of Sumatra” and Edmund Dante’s “The Count of Monte Cristo.” (We reserved William Burroughs and “Winnie The Pooh” for live radio.)
Much later, at the beginning of a brief revival of radio plays in the 1980s, “Anythynge” got one of those elaborate European productions only possible on state-supported radio. HRH the Queen herself attended that celebrated live broadcast, at least until an early luncheon arrived during the endless retakes of Act 1, Scene Two.
Rick refused to identify his contributions to the Pflegmish radio play, although I suspect the Prologue (“O for a microphone and wire,” it begins) to be in his “slight of hand.”
The entire experience aboard the “Tem-Pest II” remains one of my Favorites Among the Famous, along with weighing the once-golen Oscar for “Casablanca,” shaking the shaking hand of the lyricist of “Tea For Two,” and taking over the all-night radio production watch from Norman Corwin, the guy who pretty much invented what it is I do.
“Now, you know the whole book is in my safe-deposit box in Switzerland. This is the only page I let anybody see in the original, because it was loose when I found it and it had a bunch of writing on it. I think it was the Captain’s, taking notes on tropical nights when the ship was becalmed. This one here says ‘Brotherhood of Kappa Delta’ and then ‘three humors only’ when the Weird Cookes come in.”
“Very philosophical.”
“Oh, that’s the thing, Dave. At the bottom of the whole ‘comedie’ is a big alchemical formula that only the truly Metaphysically Adept can figure out. You know the scene where Marie says ‘What’s Alchemie to me, or me to Alchemie? Must I repeat this formula anon?’”
“And the Bishop relies ‘Absolutely, Sweet Marie. Tis wizzard’s fun!’ Then they talk about changing mice from lead to gold?”
“They could do that. They took the little lead mice they used for fishing and charged them up with golden power so that if you had one you could get girls horny or blow things up, whatever. There’s a formula for it in one of the Captain’s collection right here, ‘Booke of Cerebral Magicks.’ I don’t open it up, because it might get damaged and anyway, a lot of it is pretty much double-X-rated.
“Really?”
“Well, Dave, really, what is reality anyway? ‘Anythynge You Want To,’ right?”
“Unless everything you know is wrong.”
Rick held up two more leather-bound books, “Here’s another from the Captain’s library, ‘Plotinus The Mad’ by Christopher Marlow, and this one’s ‘Ye Trajedy of Young Candidus’ by Comedon and Greene. I think he may have done performances aboard ship from these plays.”
“Wow! Imagine doing that scene where the ship goes down in a huge tempest in a real tempest!”
“Very existential, man!”
We gave each other manly hugs and, well, maybe the visit wasn’t as good as sharing the stage with media greats George Tirebiter, Bebop Lobo, Ralph Spoilsport, and The Wizard of Oz, but it was right up there.
And the next time you see us, The Firesign Theatre will be playing its justly renowned version of “Anythynge You Want To,” sillier than ever, because of my brief encounter with Shakespeare’s great, great, etc. grand nephew, Rick.
