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“Illegal Litigation”: Excerpt from “I am the Raleigh,” by F. L. Light

In Arts & Letters, Britain, British Literature, Creative Writing, History, Humanities, Poetry, Writing on March 2, 2016 at 8:45 am

Fred Light

A Shakespearean proficiency in meter and rhetoric may to F L Light be ascribed. Nearly forty of his dramas are now available on Amazon, and twenty have been produced for Audible. His Gouldium is a series of twenty four dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould which he followed with six plays on Henry Clay Frick. The whole first book of his translation of The Iliad was published serially in Sonnetto Poesia. He has also appeared in Classical Outlook and The Raintown Review. Most of his thirty five books of couplets are on economics, such as Shakespeare Versus Keynes and Upwards to Emptiness the State Expands.

For his defense in this part of the play, Raleigh asserts that two witnesses are required for the charge of treason.

Raleigh:       The primacy in law is presence,
The testifying presence of a man
Where answers and rejoinders in a court
Proceed, procedurally set right in full
Protection of the truth. Not one but two
For treason are required. This case without
Accusers here illicit must become.
Illegal litigation the Attorney
General of England never should allow.
If no premeditated certitude
You mean in court, let my accusers come
Before me. The sheerest hearsay you assert
In court, if now unsifted inferences
Obtain without an oath, with no subscription,
Nothing demonstrable in testified
Exposure of the truth, simply enlarged
Upon a paper imputation by
A desperate man. How should unscrutinized
Reproaches credible remain unless
The Jesuit Inquisition you regard
As just? Were Cobham dead or gone abroad,
No case you’d have. But in this very house,
Winchester Castle, he abides. My lords,
Perpend how over-guessed assumptions are
Not rare in court, and lightless allegations,
Of darkling likelihood, have dazzled lawyers.
Why, Sir John Fortescue, of reverend estimation
As a Chief Justice in this realm, relates
How in his time a judge condemned a wife
At Salisbury for her husband’s death upon
Gratuitous prejudice to peasants or
On the suppositious sophistry of looks
Or likely baseness in the wife, whom one
Accuser had belied. But he that killed
Her husband was discovered after she
Was burned. The judge that had her die then told
Sir John the mordant penance of his mind
Would never pall in conscientious smart
With caustic memories. And you, Sir John
Popham, are too exultant in damnations
To regret my doom.

Popham:                   The damnedest imputations you
Deserve, far prouder to exalt prodition than
All traitors heretofore.

Raleigh:                      By fallible
Ferociousness your wisdom may default.
You’d proudly consummate your preconceptions.
And if you say the statutes I adduced
Before abide no longer in the courts,
Because religious mutability
Required removes, yet faultless equity
Remains in them, not failing reason. Now
Impartial exemplarity you lawyers find
In them, and for the common law they are
Considered sacred. Jurists never doubt
In Deuteronomy that one condemner shall
Not doom for his enormities a man,
But double attestations may suffice
Or triple for attesting treason to
A judge. There’s no dissentient scripture, old
Or new, thereon. Thus by the law of God
No men are immaterial nullities
In court. Untenable disgrace they need
Not suffer from one man.

Popham:                         Sir Walter Raleigh,
No statute you adduced can aid you now.
Those of Edward the Sixth no longer hold,
Too inconvenient for convictions, all
Repealed by Philip and Mary when their fires
Began. As the Chief Justice of this realm,
I know the common law’s commensurate
Extents to measure treason. Here in court
One requisite assertion that attests
To treason is enough. And, should one
Accomplice carry allegations how
The others were conjoined, that proof will hold.
But he that blames himself before he blames
Another cannot be denied in court,
For mouthed authority demonstrable.

Warburton: I muse, Sir Walter, measurably considerate
As you are, how you stretch yourself to stress
This point, for horse-thieves never could be judged
Thereby, requiring witnesses. By law
Upon deduced presumption we condemn
The guilty or on circumstantial presence
Or incidental revelation we
May judge events. Should regicidal gore
Not prove a swordsman guilty who had been
In covert presence with a king? He’d be
Too sanguinary for misjudgment, Sir.
No inquisition requisite therefore!

Raleigh: Yet by the common law, my lord, all trials
Of fact by juries and witnesses proceed.

Popham: No, sir, examination satisfies
The common law. Where traitors have confessed,
Redundant witnesses might not in court
Condemnatory tales unfold.

Raleigh:                                As you
Conceive the law therewith, I cannot grasp
The incongruity unknown to me.

Popham: Nay, Sir, the law is not conceived by us
But known in full.

Raleigh:                My lord, so how so laws
Suffice in process, here I suffer life
Or death thereby. Not with insufferable
Exorbitance should English rigor be
Enforced. At his asserted coronation
King James to nurture equity in England
And not fixed rigor force has sworn. And as
Benignant furtherance he would effect
In law, so should his ministers and judges no
Less happy prove.

Popham:               Procedural monarchy
Provides you equity. But our judicial course
Will be confined to justice.

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Excerpt from “I am the Raleigh,” Part II, by F. L. Light

In Arts & Letters, Britain, British Literature, Creative Writing, Fiction, History, Humanities, Law, Literature, Poetry, Writing on February 3, 2016 at 8:45 am

Fred Light

A Shakespearean proficiency in meter and rhetoric may to F L Light be ascribed. Nearly forty of his dramas are now available on Amazon, and twenty have been produced for Audible. His Gouldium is a series of twenty four dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould which he followed with six plays on Henry Clay Frick. The whole first book of his translation of The Iliad was published serially in Sonnetto Poesia. He has also appeared in Classical Outlook and The Raintown Review. Most of his thirty five books of couplets are on economics, such as Shakespeare Versus Keynes and Upwards to Emptiness the State Expands.

The clerk has recited an affidavit by Lord Cobham, in which he blames Raleigh for the Main Plot. William Watson, a priest, was the chief inciter of the Bye Plot. Lord Popham is the presiding justice at this trial.

Raleigh, to deliver himself from Tyburn, where traitors were executed, holds forth as far as he can.

Raleigh: Now, candid jurymen, conduct yourselves
By equitable accuracy, measuring
Each side. Coke’s imputational omnipotence
In wholeness of assertion is in this
Pretentious affirmation put. He calls
This version evidential verity.
This either quails me or discomfiture undoes;
Either absolves my sufferance or means
In absolute privation my demise;
Either exalted exculpation offers
Or vagrant indigence provides my wife
And children. This may manifest a traitor
Or a devout trustee defectless to
His king. But let me see this testament
That I may answer with defensive doubt.

Popham: Sir Walter Raleigh may examine it.

Raleigh: A wakeful answer, vital likelihood
Providing, should evoke intelligence
In you. How Cobham, the accuser, came
To say this I’ll profess. The Privy Council would
With perceant queries penetrate if Cobham
And myself combined for Aremberg’s conditions
Or of the deadly priestliness in Watson were
Apprised or whether plotted discipline,
Designed for Lady Arabella, we
Suspected. Guiltless verities I gave
The Privy Council, in pronouncement free
From priests and clear of plots. But soon, when I
Came home, I wrote to Henry Lord Cobham how
I wondered whether Aremberg advised him,
Who years ago in Flanders with that Count
Conferred. And twice that summer, having supped
With us at Durham House, Lord Cobham could
Be seen into LaRenzi’s place advance,
Who is a scribal henchman of that Count.
This news was in my letter sent. But I
Was told by Robert Cecil not to speak
Of this because King James would not offend
The Count. So when Sir Robert showed this letter
To Lord Cobham, a combustion of defense
Possessed him. With inflamed recrimination
He flared against me, caustic charges in
His shouts concerting. But he ceased, incensed
No longer, blame renouncing as mere blab,
Who then assured Sir Robert to absolve me.
A circumstantial stretch you made of this,
Master Attorney, that Lord Cobham lacked
Inductive likelihood, a dunce belike
Mistaking him. But never infantile
Inertia shows him nerveless, who asserts
In settled firmness his sententious will.
Impassioned suppositions he pursues,
Disposed to see his purposes dispatched.
And now, forbearing sanity, you say
In your absurd acuity I would plot
With him, a man of unbefriended chariness
And unattractive thrift, with him when I
Resigned perforce the Cornwall Wardenship
Of Stannaries and was enforced to do
Laborious dispossession of my rights?
My lords, eccentric ignorance I have
Not nurtured. This monarchal island I
Perceived was never so defensible,
With Scotland a united fortress having.
All Ireland has relinquished enmity,
Not breaching acquiescence north or south.
Denmark accords, negating her excess
By sea, provoking jealousy for cod
No longer. Now the plainest Netherlands,
Resemblant neighbors to our realm, at peace
Remain. And here, no dubious hesitations in
A Queen we suffer, she whom time surprised
And age suppressed, for now a forward king
Advances our attention to demands,
Who may by rightful coronation reign.

Popham: Come, sir, digressive hesitations cease
In court.

Raleigh: Lord Popham, on the pointed mark
I’d realize accuracy in the court,
With equitable pertinence conveyed.
Now I unwarranted discomfiture
Would never bear and undeserved absurdities
Would hear no more. A devil-headed raver,
England’s secured circumference assailing,
They say I am, the basest Robin Hood of hell,
Or a Wat Tyler warrior taking arms
Or like Jack Cade to jounce the uppermost
Security of kings. But now the penniless defaults
Of Spain I know, where impecunious nothingness
Abounds, in moneyless exorbitance
Unfit for war. Discouraged sentiments
Deny King Philip all belligerent
Regards for England. Have we not six times
Distracted him, in Ireland thrice triumphant
And in naval valor never failing thrice,
Even at Cadiz to devastate his coast.
As Captain for the Queen four thousand pounds
Of substance from myself I’ve spent in war,
Three prevalent events procuring while
You slept in peace. Now six or seven ships
In ports remain for Philip, a diminishment
Of fifty sails, who alien argosies
Must hire for the Columbus lands. No more
By thirty million crowns he weighs himself,
In overspent expansiveness expiring.
The neediest royalty in Europe now
Denies the Jesuits monetary grace,
All miscreant mendicants to make of them.
The lowest of inverted lordliness
He is, by meekest reconcilement now
With England to abide, who in devout
Felicitations at the recent crowning
Rejoiced complaisance to our king avowed.
Therefore in Spanish hardship would this prince
Six hundred thousand to an Englishman
Deliver without pledged securities
Or gaged collateral in pawn? When Queen
Elizabeth to her allies in Holland lent
Profusely, liens on Brill and Flushing she
Obtained. Dieppe no less she had in pawn
When France had borrowed from her purse a sum
For battles. And assure you, many goldsmith
Moneyers in London would not lend to her
Without avouched collateral in land.
Then say, my lords, what costly likelihood
For six hundred thousand could myself
Or Cobham give in pledge to Spain, myself
By meanest deprivation out of place?
As paroxysmal as appassionate,
The hottest exemplarity in hate
Of Spain I’ve shown. Would I betray my own
Biography? Would I upturn the tenor
Uppermost in me? I am the Raleigh,
English royalty fending from the Pope.
I am the Raleigh, anglophilic rectitude
Presenting, protestant heroics fain
To prove. I am the anti-papal archetype
Of England. Untransmutable antipathy
To Spain defines me. Read Guiana. Read
My Treatise on the Force of Spain in Flanders,
Which to his Majesty I gave, if he’d
Consult a warrior.

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Excerpt from “I am the Raleigh,” by F. L. Light

In Arts & Letters, Britain, British Literature, Criminal Law, Fiction, History, Humanities, Law, Literature, Theatre, Writing on December 9, 2015 at 8:45 am

Fred Light

A Shakespearean proficiency in meter and rhetoric may to F L Light be ascribed. Nearly forty of his dramas are now available on Amazon, and twenty have been produced for Audible. His Gouldium is a series of twenty four dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould which he followed with six plays on Henry Clay Frick. The whole first book of his translation of The Iliad was published serially in Sonnetto Poesia. He has also appeared in Classical Outlook and The Raintown Review. Most of his thirty five books of couplets are on economics, such as Shakespeare Versus Keynes and Upwards to Emptiness the State Expands.

In November, 1603, Sir Walter Raleigh was for treason put on trial. Those charged with treason were not allowed lawyers. The prosecutor is Edward Coke, Attorney General of England.

Wolvesley Castle in Winchester, where the chief judicial officers of England and many peers of the realm are gathered. Sergeant at Arms Yelverton comes forth.

Yelverton: You English, conscientious quietude
Abide. In mutest comprehension mark This Court. Let your acuity be quieted,
Judicious silence in this cause permitting. Now let the Keeper here at Castle Wolvesley
Conduct the prisoner, Sir Walter Raleigh,
Into the court.

Raleigh is ushered into the court by the Keeper.

Popham: Name the commissioned magistrates
For watchful jurisdiction of this court.

Yelverton: Yourself, the Lord Chief Justice, Master Justice
Gawdie, Master Justice Warburton, Robert
Lord Cecil, Edward Lord Wotton of Morley,
And Henry Lord Howard.

Popham:                          What is the professed
Indictment, Sergeant Yelverton?

Yelverton:                                  It is
Alleged Sir Walter Raleigh in comprised
Inclusion with a clique conceived
And counseled a conspiracy, resolved
The presence of the King be done away,
With common dispossession of the King’s
Propriety; and he, considering seditious seizures
Of the state, by factious infestations would
Revolt effect, who’d raise mutations in
Religion, irreligious primacy
In England prompting, and who’d summon to
This island the amassed misanthropy
Of Spain at arms or an invasive sway
From Scotland. It is further stated that
Lord Henry Cobham met at Durham House
On June the Ninth with Raleigh to procure
For Arabella Stuart the crown of England.
There Raleigh readied the corruption of
Lord Cobham, bidding him confer with Charles
De Ligne, the Count of Aremberg, to draw
Six hundred thousand crowns from him, a sum
For Arabella’s royalty by revolt.
Above this, should Aremberg’s superior,
The Archduke Albert of the Netherlands,
Not have that sum, then to the king of Spain
Should Cobham pass; that Arabella should
In written briefs to Albert and King Philip
And even Savoy’s enthroned administration
Pledge a constant reconcilement held
By London and Madrid, and she must swear
The Papacy’s adherents may persist
In alien ritual of un-English use,
And that her marriage be imagined, moved
And warranted by Philip of Madrid.
And this declarative indictment claims
That Cobham on that ninth of June apprised
George Brooke, his brother, of these plots, assured
Of sibling likelihood therein. And said
That England never glows with lucre till
All Jacobean propagations be
Undone with James, the cubs and bear together;
That a book was lent to Cobham, drawn
From Raleigh’s shelves, purporting that the king
No ancestral validation could assume
For kingship in this realm; that Cobham on
The seventeenth of June then messaged Aremberg
For money with LaRenzi as the messenger;
That on the next day Count Aremberg agreed
Upon six hundred thousand as the sum,
Whereof eight thousand were for Raleigh’s use,
And ten thousand would George Brooke receive.
At these outstanding imputations what
Is your plea?

Raleigh:      Not guilty, and I’ll put myself
Upon the country’s jurisdiction, fain
A jury of my peers may pass on me.

Yelverton: Would you assert a challenge to remove
Or question any jurors?

Raleigh:                          None of them
I know, but, as I sense appearances,
Forthright discrimination and direct
Discretion cannot be denied in them.
Faces of normal reason I regard
Among them, not afraid their rectitude
Will jar with mine. And as I know my plea
Is stainless, let this panel stand. I may
In confident indifference suffer them.
Yet here one wish you may accept as meet.
For you should know intense infirmities
Of late my readiness impair and leave
My memory faint. And thus the itemized
Indictment I would touch on and deny
By individual severalties, as they
Before the court come forth, or else I’ll not
Retain them till at last I may reply.

Coke: The evidential whole is stronger than
Her parts, and overwrought distinctions may
Disintegrate the rightful fullness we’ve
Embodied in this case. Distinguished parts,
When overstretched, constrained distortions put
Before us.

Raleigh:     Undivided evidence
Can hardly be reviewed by a refuter.

Popham: Let the defendant with each single charge
Contend in sequence. By the common law
Judicial consummations come of parts.

 

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“Raleigh and Spenser, 1580,” by F L Light

In Arts & Letters, Britain, British Literature, Creative Writing, History, Humanities, Literature, Writing on September 23, 2015 at 8:45 am

Fred Light

A Shakespearean proficiency in meter and rhetoric may to F L Light be ascribed. Nearly forty of his dramas are now available on Amazon, and twenty have been produced for Audible. His Gouldium is a series of twenty four dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould which he followed with six plays on Henry Clay Frick. The whole first book of his translation of The Iliad was published serially in Sonnetto Poesia. He has also appeared in Classical Outlook and The Raintown Review. Most of his thirty five books of couplets are on economics, such as Shakespeare Versus Keynes and Upwards to Emptiness the State Expands.

This scene (from a work in progress) occurs after the Battle of Glenmalure in County Wicklow, Ireland, where the English suffered a strong defeat. Edmund Spenser was secretary to Lord Grey, the English general at that battle. Raleigh and Spenser were later to become neighbors in Munster. Spenser had vexed Queen Elizabeth when he sought to dissuade her from marriage to the Duke of Alençon in The Shepherds’ Calendar.

Dublin Castle. Enter Sir Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser.

Raleigh: The Phoenix re-inflames herself to stand
Alive. Like her we can re-spring ourselves
And spread our advents forth. Re-mustered loyalty
Can be enlarged. In multiplied aggression
We may go forth erelong. They’ve not undone
Regeneration nor defeated fatherly
Revival of our cause. In myriad dominance
Amain we’ll march again and recommence
Composure in this land. Colonial neighborhoods
Of Perikles in fertilized profundity
May lettered conscientiousness assert.
This island of untutored emptiness
Oxonian literacy should accept
Or Cantabrigian dogma comprehend.
No feudal diffidence in reason nor
Despotic fairyland we Englishmen
Profess. The fairest possibilities
Of free endeavors should in husbandry
Not pall on Ireland.

Spenser: If recoveries
Refresh mortality for us, then all
Of Desmond’s Munster is dispropertied
And shall in efficacious forfeiture
To Lord Grey’s officers be meted out.

Raleigh: Incentive victory therefore may as
The greediest of attainments comfort us.
Now for the landed fortune of a lord
I’d follow my triumphant appetite
And trust emotional inclemency
For gain.

Spenser: A magnate’s animosity
For main extents you mean, in deep intent
On money.

Raleigh: Gainful joyance is no jape
For me. To my increaseful happiness,
Disposed like Croesus, I would magnify
My dirt.

Spenser: The fertile presence of your voice
In Munster would immortal lucre breed.
But the uncivilized delusions seen
Among the people there no peaceable
Facilities permit.

Raleigh: That profit is
The flow where life proceeds in grace the folk
Of Ireland will perceive. Your fluency,
In clarion inculcation, should be clear
Enough for that. Unguarded politics
Allow the Queen. You should political
Decorum to consultants in the court
Concede. On lucrative georgics, not
Upon her Majesty’s conclusiveness
In marriage, should your verses touch.

Spenser: Therefore
On spacious tilth for capital I should,
Sir Walter, songful eloquence enlarge?

Raleigh: I say proprietary sapience may
The most unsoftened pulchritude confirm
In poetry. The unmitigated tone
Of merchantry for English metre would
Be fit. Commercial intonations may
The strongest likelihood for music hold.
Singing your sagaciousness on seeds
For money, you would planters multiply
For Munster’s plenitude of various means.

Spenser: Now that convulsive wilderness consumedly
Has waned. Delinquent emptiness is left
In Munster, where abandoned decadence
Abides in death. Of starved disorder few
Survive. The naked likelihood of misery
Upon fulfilled oppression is avowed.
Now warfare to inflammable extremes,
Infesting Ireland, intervenient fire
On Desmond’s land inflicts.

Raleigh: But after war
The inflammation of vitality
We shall for savant juvenescence light
In Ireland. Verdant exploitation I’d
Advise and greenest diligence for growth.

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Scene from “A Trial of Recognition,” by F L Light

In Arts & Letters, Britain, British Literature, Creative Writing, Fiction, History, Humanities, Law, Literature, Shakespeare on September 16, 2015 at 8:45 am

Fred Light

A Shakespearean proficiency in meter and rhetoric may to F L Light be ascribed. Nearly forty of his dramas are now available on Amazon, and twenty have been produced for Audible. His Gouldium is a series of twenty four dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould which he followed with six plays on Henry Clay Frick. The whole first book of his translation of The Iliad was published serially in Sonnetto Poesia. He has also appeared in Classical Outlook and The Raintown Review. Most of his thirty five books of couplets are on economics, such as Shakespeare Versus Keynes and Upwards to Emptiness the State Expands.

The Earls of Essex and Southampton are tried together for High Treason before a jury of the noblest peers. Pleading not guilty, they strive in angry and arrant disputation with Attorney General Edward Coke and Francis Bacon. This drama is the third part of an Aeschylean trilogy and maintains the classical form of tragedy in English with seven scenes of dialogue and seven choral performances.

This trial was conducted in Westminster Hall, February 19th, 1601.

Yelverton: Now the Attorney General will speak.

Coke: My lords of courtly justice, chief pronouncers
And primest fathers of preceptive law,
Treason unsettles what is set by God.
Thrones of established exaltation it
Would overthrow. The firmest Tudor fundament
Upon immediate evanescence fades
To nothing should betrayal triumph, come
Upon premeditated compassments
Of power. Therefore to think projected thoughts
Of treason, all in violent mindfulness
For power, is death. And he that strides against
The realm, with royalty striving, must be judged
By the intent transgression of his thought.
Whoever is at arms in his array
Of might amid a kingdomed commonwealth
Founded on authentic ancestry,
Cannot be suffered by the law, perceived
As lawless as usurpers are.

Essex: But sir,
No duke would a defenseless dukedom in
This realm maintain. No helpless earldom would
An earl endure. Their settlements are set
Apart from central pertinence in Whitehall.
By vassalled mightiness they serve the main.
And undefended danger I would not
Support, assured that Lord Grey or Sir Walter Raleigh
Were raising homicides against me. Thus
I am no traitor, here a man traduced
For his defensive force.

Coke: You say, my lord,
In a protective insurrection you
Arose, forfending murder by revolt,
Who would insurgently secure yourself.
But all rebels would dissemble their revolt
Or revocation of regimes. Lord Darcy,
That traitor in the Pilgrimage of Grace,
By wrongful reprobation Thomas Cromwell
Blamed for his rebellion, that he feared
The King’s chief minister would murder him.
And like yourself Sir Thomas Wyatt to check
The Spanish from an English crown presumed
At arms his Protestant resolve, who drew
A proditory rise upon the realm.
But as a culpable defendant he
Was put to death. A guiltier prisoner
Than Wyatt you are who by her Majesty
The loftiest rooms of favor were allowed,
Made Master of the Horse at twenty two,
Admitted to the Privy Council then.
Soon as Earl Marshal of the realm you were
Preferred, and for Cadiz were given high
Command, and by her Majesty’s regard
The Azores’ were your charge. And higher yet
For Lord Lieutenant and Governor of Ireland
Her Majesty’s commission you received.
Beyond this, you had bounteous delectation
In her gifts to you, deemed more than thirty
Thousand pounds in favor. But you for pride
And inconsiderate presumption thanklessly
Repressed your memories of wealth. No man
A more ungrateful appetite, when fed
With grace, could manifest than you, who’d by
The kingliest insatiety consume
Yourself, your loyalty, and your liege. All this
Concerns her Majesty, against whose throne
Your rising throbbed. And though no Britishman
Without applause can of her Majesty’s
Protective justice speak, I must remark
That overmeasured mercy by the Queen
Will bring unmerciful exorbitance
On her. For though inhuman disobedience
Would have disabled England, yet no man
Howso wayward ever, violent ever,
Was crossly racked or tortured overthwart
For his confession. Most of them would make
Their conscientious peace with God. The truth
Came forth with faithful certitude in God,
As true religion can relinquish enmity.
Accordant attestations they conveyed,
Though sifted severally.

Essex: Now your unsifted speech
I’ve suffered, Master Coke, at culpable
Traducements kept before you, by confined
Civility not answering forthwith
The guiltiest allegations laid on me.
With insurrectional salvation might
The realm be saved from priestly sinfulness
Of blameful priests who’d stupefaction stress.

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Excerpts from “Westminster Hall,” by F L Light

In Arts & Letters, British Literature, Creative Writing, Humanities, Literature, Poetry, Shakespeare on August 5, 2015 at 8:45 am

Fred Light

A Shakespearean proficiency in meter and rhetoric may to F L Light be ascribed. Nearly forty of his dramas are now available on Amazon, and twenty have been produced for Audible. His Gouldium is a series of twenty four dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould which he followed with six plays on Henry Clay Frick. The whole first book of his translation of The Iliad was published serially in Sonnetto Poesia. He has also appeared in Classical Outlook  and The Raintown Review. Most of his thirty five books of couplets are on economics, such as Shakespeare Versus Keynes and Upwards to Emptiness the State Expands.

Westminster Hall. James Burbage and Shakespeare are seated.

Burbage: The Privy Council can on riddances
Pronounce. It governs the legalities
Outside the city’s scope or what the Crown
Would touch.

WS:             As a patrician council how
Should they abide your common plea?

Burbage:                                               Why, Will,
Assure yourself, the Council favors quality.
Opinionated oligarchs prefer
Their kind. Ignoble verities will be
Unnoted. Evidential knowledge is
Not high enough in rank to weigh against
Renown. Her name ennobles her complaint.
She is too glorious for a loss in court,
Where reputation has more proof than real
Disproof. Her reputable rank is heard
More readily than ours of trade. She has
Momentous notability while ours
Is mean.

WS:    Thus for a coat of arms I have
In proper requisition been precise;
For with a gentleman’s esteem I’d stand
Protected from the contumelies of power.

Burbage: Yes, yes. Armorial fortitude avails
In litigation where one’s stature is
Observed.

WS:          Incarcerated debtors have
No rank while lordly borrowers are left
At large.
Burbage:     I think the giddy nobleness
Of Oxford fit for jail.

WS:                           He is too high
To see himself deluded.

Burbage:                        And your friend,
Southampton, in excess of easiness
Expends himself.

WS:                     I fear he is far gone
In impecunious vacancies. His goings
Of gold are lightly gamed away.

Burbage:                                     There is
The bloated bonnet of the dowager. Enter Lady Russell.

WS: It swells herself conceitedly to suit
Her rank.

Burbage: The bailiff comes. Enter bailiff.

Bailiff:                                      All present rise
In subject salutation to the lords
Of state. Enter four members of the Privy Council, Sir Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley, Lord Cobham, and Sir Edward Coke, who sit down about a table.
All sit.

Burghley:       What matter, bailiff, is
Before us?

Bailiff:     The petitioners in Blackfriars,
My lord, beseech the Privy Council now
To let no playhouse in their midst be wrought.

Burghley: How many have petitioned with their names?
And who are chief among them?

Bailiff:                                            Twenty nine
Are named thereon. The chief of them are Lady
Elizabeth Russell, Dowager; George Lord Hunsdon; Sir Thomas Browne, knight, Stephen Egerton of Saint Anne’s church, and Richard Field, printer to the Crown.

Burghley: Who would defend the playhouse from this plea?

Burbage: My lord, I am James Burbage, bound
In ownership to build this theatre for
My company, the Lord Hunsdon’s Men, of which
A sharer, William Shakespeare, would with me
Defend it.

Burghley: How then guard your venture when
Your patron is averse thereto?

Burbage:                                   He weighed
His spirit with my lady’s spite and could
Not desperate inspiration brook.

Burghley:                                      That may
Be so. Now Lady Russell, as the prime
Complainant on this parchment, read it out.
Bailiff, to Lady Russell bring the writ.

Lady R: In chambered transformation of the Friars’
Refectory beside Lord Hunsdon’s house
And near Lord Cobham’s, now James Burbage would
By framework a theatrical resort
Complete. An arduous nuisance, cynosurally
Not sane, seductively seditious, would
With brigand congregations Blackfriars crowd.
Amassed in molestation, Londoners
Like jouncers, vagrant japers, changefully
Conjoined, our gentle precinct would deject.
And should diffusive pestilence come down
From God, these crowds will aggravate the course
Of death. And fanfaron profaners would
With throbbing respiration trumpet forth
The entrance for a play, so near the church
In blazing perturbation as to throw
The rightful services of ministers
And pews into distraction. Thus, my lords,
In sensed consideration of this shame
And for that never hitherto there was
In Blackfriars such a playhouse, nor should be
While the Lord Mayor has from London barred
Such faults, which try in unprotected liberties
Their trials of plays, you should this troop displace
And have the rooms reframed for trades of use.

Burghley: What little replication would you players
Pursue?

WS:      My lord, the grandest comprehension was
Required in Rome, where presses ten times broader than
Would come in Blackfriars filled the lanes for plays,
As public delectation laudative
Of Plautus proved. In flowed conventions Romans,
Encompassing convergent wholeness, would
By theatres magnify themselves, immense
Assertions gathering, where Caesar was
Revered. To legion generalities
Extending, throngers without prejudice
To Rome would in the Circus Maximus
Comprise one hundred thousand for the cheer
Of rival favorites on the road. Convened
Contentiousness appeased the populace,
Not their insurgent fluency provoking.
Municipal atonements, unified
Amassments, would be found in theatres, where
The vices are depicted for distaste,
And nothing virtuous is deformed.

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“Excerpt from the last scene of the Mortal Lopez, part two,” by F L Light

In Arts & Letters, Creative Writing, Humanities, Literature, Shakespeare on March 11, 2015 at 8:45 am

F L Light

A Shakespearean proficiency in meter and rhetoric may to F L Light be ascribed. Nearly forty of his dramas are now available on Amazon, and twenty have been produced for Audible. His Gouldium is a series of twenty four dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould which he followed with six plays on Henry Clay Frick. The whole first book of his translation of The Iliad was published serially in Sonnetto Poesia. He has also appeared in Classical Outlook and The Raintown Review. Most of his thirty five books of couplets are on economics, such as Shakespeare Versus Keynes and Upwards to Emptiness the State Expands.

Excerpt from the last scene of the Mortal Lopez, part two.

Hampton Court. The Queen, Essex and Francis Bacon.

Essex: On matrimonial fortune he’s composed
An essay, which your Majesty may wish
To hear.

The Queen:     How married happenings could mar
My house in horror I have known. O what
A procreant consequence my sire pursued!
Now your unmarried rumination I
Will hear, comparing what I’ve learned so long.

Bacon: In costly hostage, captive usage, are
One’s wife and children all by fortune held,
Being clogs to our contentions for success.
The vigor of attainment is avowed
Without them, and the manliest hunt for fame
Is found in childless hunters for the chance
Of quests. The brightest consummations, sought
With brains, and labored greatnesses, fulfilled
Protractedly with grief, have been pursued
By the unmarried. But no dim incitement,
Concerning readiness for all the cares
Of growth, constrains a house of parents, who
Of future requisites would not be short.
Yet there are some, though for expedience
All unespoused, who hold all future causes as
But futile thoughts. And in unwedded thrift
Some hold that wife and children are at length
Too chargeable. And some immodest opulence
In household ostentation manifest,
Who’d seem most rich without the charge of children.
But motive freedom is the cause for most
Unmarried, who’d for expeditiousness
Be free, remaining self-productively
Resolved, apt to accomplish thoughts of wealth
Or wit. Such fellows think their ruffs and girdles
No less than yokes and subjugative ropes.
No better friends than those unmarried will
You find. As masters, servants or advisers
I see them best, but not as subjects, being
From burdens of the crown inclined to shift
In paced escapes, incumbencies eschewing.
But single days befit a churchman, who,
To no parental charity obliged,
May play the father to his faithful pews.
Yet soldiers matrimonial loyalty
Should have, whose generals, addressing them,
Exhorting furtherance in courage, will
Adduce their wives and children as the troops
Come forth. And Turkish soldiers to extremes
Of baseness run who marriage cruelly scorn.
But to compel humanity what else
But families should be first? And single men,
Though with the means for charity unused,
Are oft unsparing in their spurns of love
Because no wife or child has ever moved
Their mercy. I’ve known women, chastely single,
Who prideful, wrathful, and pretentious were,
As if their chastity permitted them
To chastise all. And wives are likelier apt
For loyalty who know their spouses trust them.
But jealous men incite disloyal wrath.
Wives are concubines in youth, companions
For intact maturity and nurses when
Debilitated weariness declines.
No dubious protest thus a man might bring
To marry at whatever age. But one
Of philosophic name believed there was
No timeliness in marriage for the young
Or old. And all observers have averred
That kindly wives have often churlish men
Of faultiest cruelty, waiting on their spite
Either to savor patience or to raise
In long probation the true worth of kindness.
But of all husbands none was kinder than
Odysseus who preferred his homely crone
To the insatiate immortality
Provided on the island of Calypso.

The Queen: Pangs of unwedded disappointment it
Bestirs in us who’d never grief admit.

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Excerpts from “The Trial of Lopez,” by F L Light

In Arts & Letters, Creative Writing, Humanities, Law, Literature, Poetry, Shakespeare, Writing on March 4, 2015 at 8:45 am

F L Light

A Shakespearean proficiency in meter and rhetoric may to F L Light be ascribed. Nearly forty of his dramas are now available on Amazon, and twenty have been produced for Audible. His Gouldium is a series of twenty four dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould which he followed with six plays on Henry Clay Frick. The whole first book of his translation of The Iliad was published serially in Sonnetto Poesia. He has also appeared in Classical Outlook and The Raintown Review. Most of his thirty five books of couplets are on economics, such as Shakespeare Versus Keynes and Upwards to Emptiness the State Expands.

Excerpt from the trial of Lopez in the Guildhall, London. Behind Lopez and Sir Edward Coke sits a commission of fifteen jurors, including Sir Robert Cecil.

Lopez:      A tortured oneness you demand
In all your towns. This nation’s consonance
Upon tormented uniformity
Depends. Invariable ignorance,
As constant as oblivion, is coerced
Forever, as incarcerated shocks
For all dissenters you account deserved.
Whoever is untortured will be tamed
Erelong. Minacious penalties, immense
In deprivation, mean no differers
Are free. What sanctimonious calumnies
You cast at them, for blank monotony
Suppressing faces.

Coke:                    Lopez, what pertains
To this? Vociferating mutiny
Condemns you, so against the crown you seem.

Lopez: I in the Tower was a tamed attester.
The threatful rack my truthfulness repressed.
I saw my menacers decisive. What
Lord Burghley wished he meant to wrench, as did
Sir Robert Cecil and the Earl of Essex
And William Wade. To them I lied of guilt.
Not striving with their threat, no torture I’d
Endure, too haplessly exposed to speak
My mind.

Cecil:      Thou Hebrew, vilest impotence
Befall you! Liar, be hapless on the block!

Lopez: Cecil, you deceitful statuette,
What can you state but a resentful threat?

Cecil: Asseveration soulful I believe
That says thou liest, in this assemblage blurting.

Lopez: Your crooking of my cause befits a crossed
Deformity whose manliness is lost.

Cecil: Corrupted pest! As deathful as your care
A traitor is with all the tricks you bear!

Lopez: You queenish midget, whom gigantic mocks
Should judge, be found a proditory fox!

Coke: Leave insultation, losel! Who are you
To counter Robert Cecil with contempt?
Now you commissioners, your votes in sums
Of guilt or innocence discover here.
Either of treason to her Majesty
Or for acquittal in this case hold forth.

 

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Excerpts from “The Mortal Lopez,” by F L Light

In Arts & Letters, British Literature, Creative Writing, Fiction, Humanities, Literature, Poetry, Shakespeare on February 25, 2015 at 8:45 am

F L Light

A Shakespearean proficiency in meter and rhetoric may to F L Light be ascribed. Nearly forty of his dramas are now available on Amazon, and twenty have been produced for Audible. His Gouldium is a series of twenty four dramas on the life and times of Jay Gould which he followed with six plays on Henry Clay Frick. The whole first book of his translation of The Iliad was published serially in Sonnetto Poesia. He has also appeared in Classical Outlook  and The Raintown Review. Most of his thirty five books of couplets are on economics, such as Shakespeare Versus Keynes and Upwards to Emptiness the State Expands.

Speech of the Inquisitor

Scene: The Tower of London. William Wade the Inquisitor comes forth. Ferreira lies on a pallet in background.

Wade: Jailers are omnipotent in England.
Imprisoned alteration of the truth
We proffer. Catholic prisoners to warped
Incarceration of their words submit,
A tortured metamorphosis enduring.
In twisted transmutations they must truth
Convey or harsher twists will set them right.
What may be realized here will suit the realm,
Where racked distortions may seem right to all.
Whatever tidings we allow may not
Be true. Incarcerated verities
Are kept from view. We are the jailers of
Particulars, the keepers of events,
Who keep them in the Tower hid from England.
Our willful falsehoods shall not be unwarped,
As factious propagations verily
Prevail, annunciated oneness on
This land annealing. Fiction is the fountainhead
Of sovereign force. As omnipresent as
Obscurity or too pervasive for
Dissent by sight the Crown’s pronouncements are.
Our words dissimulate our works. We own
The light immured in these affairs. What we
Suppress remains in prison. Keeping vision to
Ourselves and giving darkness out, we can
The foisted preference of fraud provide.

 

The Queen’s Announcement

The Earl of Essex and Francis Bacon have been conversing.
Enter Sir Robert Cecil and Sir Edward Coke.

Essex: Sirs, may my present greetings pleasure you.

Cecil: A pleasant cause, my lord, your presence carries.

Bacon: My hopeful salutation, sirs, although
Your hopes should meet no hap.

Coke: Where hope
Is meritorious rightful haps pertain.

Bacon: No hapless merits have been manifest
In you, Sir Edward.

Coke: All my haps are fit
To raise my hopes.

Bacon: Eristic jurists, as
We are, would in juristic emulation rise.

Coke: My ripened erudition is more right
For office than your own as neophyte.

Bacon: I see unequal precedents in all
The convoluted chronicles of law.

Coke: And you in my Reports and Institutes
Have learned how common law no tyranny
Allows. Enter guards, Maids of Honor and trumpeters. Fanfare for the Queen. Enter Elizabeth.

The Queen: By counted estimation of concerns
And seasoned inference from sums of thought,
Upon decisive maturation not misled,
I will the next Attorney General
Announce. For scholarly prodigiousness
No legal connoisseur is like to Coke,
A lawyer scrutinizingly discreet.
Of expert opposition, apt for trials
Of contradiction, legal excellence
In suits confirming, breathful wisdom not
Abating, Edward Coke immediate comeliness
In speech maintains. As loud as Cicero,
Tonitruous his knowledge is, expounding what
Was never reached before. He pierces far
What is perceivable by rational
Pursuits, and by experienced aptitude
Sir Edward will expose injustice to
The law. We think ingenious gratitude
In him will never pall the crown. Wilt thou
Maintain this place, Sir Edward, or forbear
Promotion?

Coke: For judicial decency
In England and the undistorted wealth
Of order in this strenuous place my strength
I’d prove.