Excerpt by Rupert Stutchbury
ACT 1 – SCENE 1
Lismore Castle 19th February 1631 – Home to Richard Boyle, The “Great” Earl of Cork. A log fire is blazing in the grand fireplace (optional!). There is a large table with various documents, a clay pipe with tobacco pouch and a pair of spectacles amongst other things upon it. There is a least one large ‘ in period’ arm chair near the table. It is obviously a place where the Earl spends a great deal time. A pageboy (Boy) is playing ‘keepie uppie’ football with an old bladder. The Earls clerk ( Scribe) comes in, the Boy immediately tries to hide his ‘ball’ behind his back, but the Scribe on walking past him knocks it out of his hands and starts dribbling the ball round the room with the Boy chasing after him, trying to tackle him to get his ball back. At this point Lady Alice (eldest daughter and second eldest child of the Earl) comes into the room with Martha, an old nurse maid, and Martha’s brother Will Gunter (dressed in Puritan garb).
Alice: What in heaven is going on here? Harrington?
Scribe: ’Nothing Ma'am. I was getting this bladder off the brat.
Alice: Balthasar?
Boy: Give it back you beast, ‘tis mine.
Martha: Now little man, that is no way to speak to your betters? You watch your step or ye will meet your end on the gallows.
Alice: Its looks disgusting. Is it supposed to be a ball of some kind Harrington?
Scribe: Aye my Lady.
Alice: Why were you fighting him for it?
Scribe: I was afeared he would break something m’lady.
Will: If I may be so bold, my Lady. I have seven lads of my own, and I give thanks to the Lord for each and every one of them, but even on the Sabbath day they will boot a bladder up and down the road and make a brawl over it.
Martha: Even on the Sabbath Brother! Whatever next?
Alice: Boys, this is not a battlefield.
(Enter Boyle)
Boyle: What’s this?
Alice: ‘Tis nothing, they were fighting over this thing… Father, Master Gunter is here to see you.
Boyle: Gunter (nods)….Give that to me. You are a little devil for trouble boy. Go on, out of here. Find something useful to do in the kitchens. As for you, is this the behaviour I am to expect of my Scribe?
Scribe: No sir.. but.. I..I
Boyle: If you have a surplus of energy go to the stables. Tell them I sent you.
Scribe: But my Lor…
Boyle: Go!
(Exeunt Boy and Scribe in double quick time)
Martha: What is the world coming to?
Gunter: I think it is not a sin sister, well, not a big one….
Boyle: To what purpose do you attend here Master Gunter?
Gunter: I am sent by Mayor Carter to give you this petition sir.
Boyle: Petitions are for the courts.
Gunter: The town Council hopes you might resolve our trouble for us, as we have been through the courts many a time previous sir. I am to give it to you first.
Boyle: Your complaint is?
Gunter: Harassment by the Irish, if you please sir..
Boyle: Baltimore isn’t it?
Gunter: Aye my Lord.
Boyle: Why are you troubled by the Irish?
Gunter : It is that Sir Walter Coppinger sir, he is behind every sort of disturbance.
Boyle: How so?
Gunter: Take last week, sir, he has John Slyman, basket maker, up for not paying the rent. But he don’t have to pay no rent to ‘im sir. We all owes it to Sir Thomas Crooke. But he was summonsed any road to the Petty Sessions. Then there’s his gang of footpads what waylay the innocent going about their lawful business. We knows they are his men, yet they hide behind him sir.
Boyle: What do you think I may do about it?
Gunter: It has been going on these last five year and we was hoping you might put a stop to his tricks, my lord.
Boyle: I will see what I can do.
Gunter: God bless you sir.
Boyle: Look at this mess.(Boyle goes to the table and starts poking about)... The Scribe is not much older than a schoolboy. How will he ever serve me?
Alice: You must give him a chance.
Boyle: An urchin from a country hovel would have more idea of his duties.
Alice: I’m training him up Papa.
Boyle: He is not what I need. I need you. You understand the nature of my work.
Alice: I am twenty four years old and still a spinster. For pity’s sake I’ve been kept at home long enough.
Martha: Oh it is time she had a family of her own master, an’ no mistake. Now her dear mother, the Lady Katherine if you think back on it sir, now let me see, she’d had five by Alice’s age already, counting the poor little mite she lost, god rest his little soul. Well I had ten brothers and sisters, including Will here and my eldest sister…
Boyle: That will do.
Alice: Martha, Why don’t you take your brother round the town.
Martha: Thank you my dear. That’d be right nice.
Will: Thank’ee my lady..erm… my Lord.. We are much obliged to ye...(stammering, nervous)
(Martha bobs and then exit with Gunter who nervously bobs and bows his thanks)
Boyle: She drives me mad with her blather.
Alice: You don’t have to be so abrupt with the poor old thing.
Boyle: If she isn’t used to me by now, she never will be.…. Why do make yourself sound like a prisoner?
Alice: You have never let me go anywhere for more than two days at a time. It would be nice to help my sisters at their confinements.
Boyle: If my daughters are like their mother they will be having babies all the time. I can’t stop working just to let you go for each one.
Alice: You have a dozen clerks in your service.
Boyle: Not for this.
Alice: Even little Latiffa was wed last summer and has her own home. She is fifteen years old Papa, I am twenty four.
Boyle: So? It was you who begged me not to send you away at fourteen.
Alice: That was ten years ago.
Boyle: Do you love Barrymore?
Alice: I do.
Boyle: Best not, for it will not last! Make him your friend. Leave the loving to baby making.
Alice: I want my chance. I do want babies and to be mistress of my own household. David is going to be a great man one of these days. You’ll be proud of us.
Boyle: So, that’s it then, you are still desperate to get away from me!
Alice: Don’t be ridiculous Papa. You have to let go of me. I want a family, that’s all.
Boyle: You’ve got a family here. It is quite the done thing to have one’s eldest daughter looking after her parents.
Alice: Let me go or I will go anyway!
Boyle: If I say you will not ( with a flash of anger)…Go if you must. I should have married you off years ago. That would have been the right thing.
Alice: I did not desire it then.
Boyle: Sons have it in their natures to compete with their fathers. It seldom makes for easy relationships, a father can dote on a daughter and apart from those with sick minds it is the most natural thing in the world.
Alice: And if she is neither politically astute or particularly clever, or as pretty as you pretend she is, what then Papa? You carry a vision of me in your heart that I can never live up to, except in your imagination. So perhaps if I go from you it may stay in your imagination, unsullied by reality.
Boyle: Touché’. I’m not sure this Scribe can live up to being my secretary either.
Alice: He is a bright young man.
Boyle: You’ve always been so good at it.
Alice: You didn’t think I was when I started.
Boyle: You were, which is why I never replaced the last fellow. How am I going to manage? I am sixty six this year. I can hardly move my carcass for stiffness.
Alice: Bear up you poor old man, it is not all bad. You‘ve still got Mother to look after you.
Boyle: I should be dead, then you could all do what you like. Your brothers would be delighted. They could start spending my fortune.
Alice: Oh my poor bleeding heart!
Boyle: Go on, go away from me. Prepare for your damned wedding. It’s cost me enough.
Alice: It will do you proud, which is what you want isn’t it.
Boyle: It had better be the grandest day seen in Ireland. Do you realise, I’ve paid ten thousand pounds towards your dowry. Barrymore could purchase a Dukedom for less.
Alice: You make no secret about how rich you are.
Boyle: I’ll have you know I have had to work damnably hard for my wealth. All my lands were wasted at the time of the 98 rebellion.
Alice: That is all past history Papa, it cannot happen again.
Boyle: That is your considered opinion is it? We’ll never be free of rebellion as long the Irish are Papist.
Alice: Well we had all better go back to England then, because I think you will never change them.
Boyle: Don’t be clever. The young pissheads’ regard it as their duty by the old religion and their ‘heritage’ to oppose us.
Alice: So would you in their position.
Boyle: It is my duty to prevent it.
Alice: I think you choose to miss my point Papa. David told me his cousins lost three quarters of their land to one of your sequestration courts. It was unjust, so of course they hate you.
Boyle: If they had had any foresight, they would still have their land, but every recusant one of them is a traitorous fool. They live tucked away in their towers and expect us to leave them alone to their banditry
Alice: Oh Father! For the love of heaven, I’ll swear you are so narrow minded sometimes.
Boyle: Oh am I really? Look child, with an ounce of political acumen, they should have seen that one swims with the current or finds oneself left behind in a backwater, and instead most of the Irish stick to their ancient ways and their Catholicism, because to them it is inextricably part of their Irishness, and you accuse me of being reactionary.
Alice: No Father I called you narrow minded.
Boyle: That’s worse.
Alice: For some reason you cannot accept that anyone choose to remain where they feel they belong and believe in what they feel to be right. You accept it from the Puritans. Why are you so exercised by the old religion anyway.
Boyle: Because it encourages its practitioners to be at odds with us.
Alice: If we want to rule this country peacefully surely we should encompass their ways not ostracise them. Are you surprised that they feel at odds with us?
Boyle: Not in the least. Their ways are barbarous and they behave exactly as I would expect them to.
Alice: That is unfair Papa, many of them are better educated than you are.
Boyle: I doubt it. In any case they only like reading fairy tales about their ancestors.
Alice: You despise them, don’t you?
Boyle: (Boyle shrugs) When it is my responsibility to see to orderly government and I find I have to do it as though this were a playground full of superstitious savages pulling faces at one another, what do you expect?
Alice: But you are forcing them to become English, and why should they?
Boyle: Have you learnt nothing? I care not a jot for what they like or dislike.
Alice: You are always talking about wanting good order and stability and yet you cannot seem to see that you are less likely to get it if you antagonise the native people.
Boyle: It is my duty to run this country for the good of England, not for the benefit of a couple of dozen warring tribes of cattle thieves and smuggling cut throats. If they don’t like it. I’ll send them to hell and we would all be better off without them.
Alice: So however unpopular, you will enforce your rule?
Boyle: (Voice rising in volume to correspond with his lack of patience for this conversation) I am not interested in my popularity or their opinion. How many times do I have to tell you?
Alice: Why are letting me marry into one of their families then?
Boyle: I am letting you marry an Irishman because it suits me to keep his family on our side. But don’t go native on me.
Alice: (calmly) Most of David’s family are Catholics, they are good people, why make them your enemies.
Boyle: Their Catholicism makes them rebels, don’t you see? Strewth, can’t I get through to you any longer. Have I lost your head as well as your heart, Alice? I was thrown into goal myself in ’92, on trumped up charges of fraud and collusion with the Spanish. My enemies accused me of treason, of being a covert Papist. I had to go before the Star Chamber. If I had been a Papist, that would have been it, finito. (he does a chopping motion)
Alice: You’ve never ever mentioned it before.
Boyle: It is not something I care to dwell upon or shout from the roof tops, but I need you to understand. I got off because I had ingratiated myself to the Queen, but had anyone discovered the merest hint that I was in sympathy with the old religion. If they had found so much as a rosary bead, or a statuette of the Virgin in the house, and they searched it, high and low believe me, nothing could have saved me. That is how it still is.
Alice: What? They would have used those things as an excuse to bring you down?
Boyle: Aye, they damned well would, but I want you to understand Alice, Papists are regarded with hate, whether they are above suspicion or not and I’ll tell you why. It is because their wretched Pope issued an edict called ‘Regnans in Excelsis’ which declared Elizabeth to be a heretic, and released all her subjects from any allegiance to her. It was an act of pure unmitigated political folly and it has never been rescinded by Rome or forgotten by our enemies and that single fact shapes all our dealings with them to this day.
Alice: It is a shame we cannot all be left alone, to believe in what we want.
Boyle: Is any one, am I ever let in peace?
Alice: Alright, I am just going, Pax vobiscum.
Boyle: That is not amusing. If you think saying things like that will impress the Barry’s ….
Alice: You are being ridiculous now Papa, they would be as shocked as you are. I like teasing you, that is all. You ‘re so easy to provoke.
Boyle: Go on, get out of here. Send me the scribe. I must write a letter to London.
Alice: I sent a bundle off yesterday. Did I forget something?
Boyle: No, but I received word this morning from my spy in Tangiers. It troubles me, if you must know. He says the Barbary Corsairs are planning an invasion this summer.
Alice: An invasion where? Here?
Boyle: Aye, here somewhere, Kinsale, Cork, who knows?….. Now why would they want to invade us? Who has set them up for such an enterprise do you think?
Alice: I have no idea. What would they want in Ireland?
Boyle: Precisely! Methinks it has to be one of the old exiles in Spain.
Alice: I doubt it, the Spanish would not approve.
Boyle: May be so…. Still, I have work to do, even if you have time to chatter all day missy.
Alice: Hmm! I am going.
(She makes the motions of a playful slap, without actually doing it, which he surprisingly tolerates, and then she Exits. Boyle shouts after her)
Boyle: I still have need of you here, you selfish brat! (to himself) ..more than I care to admit. I am tired,