Such a throng of cats was there. Many had come from afar, walking by night and hiding by day for their greater safety.
This was a thing we’d not foreseen, but (sayt Nero) the more the merrier.
The cats who dwell hereabouts sayt they would chase away these incomers as soon as our entertainment was done. They feared they’d take our places and steal our vittles.
I hoped they would spread our fame abroad.
“Say rather, spread your false imaginations,” sayt the Mad Cat.
And though our play is fool, when I stepped forth as hungrie Lion Rampant and saw many in our audience rise and claw the air in like manner, my heart swoll within me.
One thing we did forget. Viz, how kitlings love to imitate cats. And how apt they are to learn.
The kitlings were to show, in silence, what we told. Save our Maggot (my niece). For her I writ two little songs.
But the kit we’d chose to play the cook took it into his head to die with speeches.
He stood like me (Lion Rampant) and squeaked out to his fellow that played young Ox-Foot, “What, my lord, will you murder me?”
I made haste to hold him down, so I could give out my lines on the taste of his blood.
“Help, help!” he cried.
His fond mother, seated near, mistook his cries and my intent. She came at me very fierce.
But I’m quick in my wits, and have read many play books. I sayt:
Good cook, forbear, you have already died!
Madame, away with him! Bear his corpse aside.
She dragged him off, he squeaking all the while, “Ox-Foot has killed me. Alas, I am dead.”
Likewise when two kits – young Ox-Foot and Old Hamton’s wife – enacted the killing of Old Hamton. The kit that played Old Hamton rose up and fought with them instead of dying quiet.
But I believe our audience saw nowt amiss. How they beat their tails upon the earth to match the measure of our verse!
How they screeched when Ox-Foot killed Lord Purrlie, and when the Queen fought Ox-Foot!
And doubtless they saw the frensied kits now flying back and forth (unrehersed) as servants and the like.
A woman came from a cottage nearby and flung a piece of coal into our Field. All hushed then, lest a dog be loosed at us.
But, Ox-Foot and the Queen having spake their last, I thought it best to die without much ado.
A tide of kits (as imps from hell, come for our souls) swept across the ground. The kitchen cat gave out Young Hamton’s speech, and so our play ended.
Then Nero sprang up and led all in song.
He sang, “Who was it killed the poor cook?” and all replied, “It was the Earl of Ox-Foot.”
And so on, with many questions too lewd to be writ here.
“Who was it sired young Hamton?” “It was the Earl of Ox-Foot.” “Who then begged him to scruff his wife?” “It was the Earl of Ox-Foot.”
“And who would Ox-Foot next have killed?” Nero sang at last.
I called “Our own Earl!”
“Our own Earl!” sang all. “Our own Earl!”
A cottage door swung wide. A shoe came flying at us.
All scattered then. But not before two stone-cats had run to the shoe and set their marks on it.
We went a way off, and made revel-rout till dawn. Such creepings and leapings, such prancings and dancings, such callings and waulings and brawlings.
The Mad Cat sayt, “Your goodly pageant being done, now see what mischiefs you have wrought.”
Our kitchen cat sayt she never had such a time in all her life.
And I never had such great applauds. But I believe I may be full of shame on the morrow.
Gib describes his play as fool. However, an odd theory that the Earl of Oxford was the Earl of Southampton’s biological father and Queen Elizabeth his mother has currency among some who believe that Oxford wrote “Shakespeare”.
Could Gib’s false imaginations have contributed to this? As I’ve said before, I’m surely not the only person in the past 400 years to have deciphered his writings.
The Earl of Southampton's Cat 
A fun post –and through it, cat nature too revealed!
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They love a bit of drama.
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What fun!
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Love the vivid descriptions of the young ones running amok with the script. Really captures the excitability and impetuous nature of kitlings.
They would be perfect for an improvisation-based show a la Outnumbered.
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I never realised how much us cats are!
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I meant, of course, that I never realised how much like us cats are. A plague upon this devil computer!
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It certainly sounds like they know how to party!
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Real life even more complicated than a Jacobean play? Surely not. Those earls certainly got about a bit, allegedly.
I’m glad Gib’s play was such a roaring success, although it’s a shame that Nero’s (and the other cats’) singing was not appreciated.
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“Allegedly” is the word. Much seems to depend on how and why one reads Shakespeare’s sonnets, particularly if they were written by Oxford.
Of course, I’m convinced that many of them were written by Gib, but tampered with before publication.
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Clearly Gib wrote them, who else knew the young earl so well.
Should you not get to see ‘Upstart Crow’, one of the running jokes is that Shakespeare wrote Kit Marlowe’s plays as well as his own. Something else to think about 🙂
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What a night of pageantry it was 🙂
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I suspect even the Mad Cat enjoyed himself.
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Those cats are so cute!
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Bravo! Even in the 16th century, I suspect Gib was not the first to be upstaged by child actors.
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I shall not mince my words: Gib is a genius! 🙂
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He would agree with you!
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I’m happy to know that the play was performed to such resounding success and such a large audience. Now, granted all the ad libbing and improvisation — did any shine as stars in the performance, or did it look more like an ensemble show?
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I’m sure it was a great ensemble effort on the part of the older cats. Though I suspect that Nero (Ox-Foot) may have have been the star. And he led the singing at the end.
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I loved this account. What amateur player hasn’t overplayed the part and had a shoe thrown at him?
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I see the thrown shoe as an indication of our lack of appreciation of night-screeching cats. When I heard such sounds, I assumed a stand-off was taking place. Now I know better. It’s theatre, pure and simple.
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Such party animals they are. Is there an encore?
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I fear Gib may be growing too old for such high-jinks!
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Ah yes, I totally understand.
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Bravissimo! Gib is a total success – at least around this house. Roxie is strutting about as though she is his best friend. However, she was quite perturbed at the kits’ behavior -trying to ruin a perfectly good play. She opines that it would be something ZuZu would think a lark!
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I’m sure Roxie has the same talent for improvisation that Gib displayed.
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😼 Roxie’s great at improv – a regular stand-up comedian around here.
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Reblogged this on basheerabdulwahab.
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Ah, once more, a superb example of Magnificience!
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