Scene: The Mermaid Tavern

SCENE: THE MERMAID TAVERN

James Munro

As the lads all trooped into the Mermaid and took their usual seats, the landlord roared, 'Hey, Joan! The players are here! Where are you, wench?'

Joan emerged from the scullery wiping her large red hands down her filthy skirt. She was a buxom lass with a reputation for knowing how to pleasure a man (and a room above the scullery where she took him to do it) and once she'd laid aside the slattern's skirt the rest of her no doubt matched those muscular forearms and hands.

Philip Henslowe was one of the players who would know. 'Hey, Joan!' he shouted, taking off the landlord perfectly, 'Where are you, wench?'

'I'm here! Hold on! Your ale's coming!' She flounced over to them with four tankards in each hand. 'You must be blind if you can't see me.'

'Blinded by your beauty, lass.'

'Of which the quantity makes up for what is lacking in the quality.'

'You're the nearest thing to a mermaid this tavern boasts!'

'More like a dugong,' muttered a greybeard at the next table who, like the landlord, had spent years at sea.'

'Hey, Joan! You've been immortalised!' Henry laughed.

'I've been imm – what?'

'You've been immortalised in verse. "Not marble, nor the gilded monuments of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime – "'

'What's he going on about?'

'You're in a poem! A play! "Then nightly sings the staring owl, tu-whit, tu-who, a merry note, while greasy Joan doth keel the pot." You've been immortalised!'

'Oh, I have, have I?'

'Ah, here he is. The man who penned those imperishable words.'

Joan stared at the new-comer. The playwright, William Shakespeare. Thought himself too good for the likes of her. Went chasing after ladies. Dark ladies, if the baiting she'd overheard was anything to go by.

He walked straight past her to where the landlord stood counting out someone's change. A pat on the back. A private word. A snigger. 'Aye, Captain.' He always called the landlord Captain, the landlord called him Master Shakespeare.

She eyed the great tray of mutton dripping that stood between herself and him.

Another pat on the back – 'Aye, aye, Captain' – Captain again – and he turned and came towards his play-mates – play-mates! – hah! She liked that –

She met him half way, bumped into him and sent him tumbling face down into the tray of still half-molten fat.

There was a squawk from Shakespeare, followed by a shocked silence. Then a couple of laughs – quickly hushed.

Joan peered round, hands on hips, chin up like a great wooden carving of a mermaid facing the swell, a coming storm.

'Hey, lads! Aren't you going to come and help Greasy Will up out of the drippings? Or shall I spit him?'

Her victim lifted himself onto his hands and knees, dog-like, swiveled his head, peered up at her through the oily slime that plastered his face and eyes, and snarled, 'What did you call me?'

'Greasy Will. Why? What did you call me?'