Bingo (play)

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Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death is a 1973 play by English Marxist playwright Edward Bond.
It depicts an aging William Shakespeare at his Warwickshire home in 1615 and 1616, suffering
pangs of conscience in part because he signed a contract which protected his landholdings, on the
condition that he would not interfere with an enclosure of common lands that would hurt the
local peasant farmers. Although the play is fictional, this contract has a factual basis.[1] Bingo is a
political drama heavily influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Epic theater.[2]

Contents
[hide]

1 Explanation of the Title

2 Historical Basis

3 Characters

4 Plot Summary
o

4.1 Part One

4.1.1 Scene One

4.1.2 Scene Two

4.1.3 Scene
Three

4.2 Part Two

4.2.1 Scene Four

4.2.2 Scene Five

4.2.3 Scene Six

5 Production History

6 Bond's Introduction

7 Notes

8 References

[edit] Explanation of the Title

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Bond said, "Art has very practical consequences. Most
'cultural appreciation' ignores this and is no more relevant than a game of 'Bingo' and less
honest."[3]

[edit] Historical Basis

Bond cites William Shakespeare by E.K. Chambers as his source for information about the
Welcombe enclosure, on which Bingo is based.[4] In the introduction to Bingo Bond describes this
incident: "A large part of his income came from rents (or tithes) paid on common fields at
Welcombe near Stratford. Some important landowners wanted to enclose these fields... and there
was a risk that the enclosure would affect Shakespeare's rents. He could either side with the
landowners or with the poor who would lose their land and livelihood. He sided with the
landowners. They gave him a guarantee against loss - and this is not a neutral document because
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it implies that should the people fighting the enclosers come to him for help he would refuse it.
Well, the town did write to him for help and he did nothing."[5]

[edit] Characters
William Shakespeare - Bond's Shakespeare is depressed and introspective, concerned more
with financial security than with art or the people around him; he is notably silent during several
scenes.
Judith - Shakespeare's daughter; she resents Shakespeare's treatment of her mother
William Combe - A wealthy landowner scheming to enclose the common lands for his own
profit
Old Man - Shakespeare's gardener, mentally handicapped after spending three years in a press
gang
Old Woman - The Old Man's wife, Shakespeare's housekeeper; Bond based her on
Shakespeare's daughter Susanna Hall.[6]
Young Woman - A displaced beggar woman, prostitute, and pyromaniac
Son of the Old Man and Woman, a religious zealot who leads a rebellion party against Combe
Ben Jonson - Shakespeare's drinking buddy and theatrical rival
Jerome, Wally, and Joan - Peasant workers who join the Son in fighting Combe
2nd Old Woman - Shakespeare's wife Anne Hathaway; she is heard but never seen on stage

[edit] Plot Summary

[edit] Part One

[edit] Scene One

Shakespeare is seated in his garden when the Young Woman arrives to beg. The Old Man takes
her into the back garden for sex. The Old Woman tries to sound out Shakespeare's intentions with
regards to Combe's land scheme and warns him that it will ruin local families. Combe arrives to
convince Shakespeare to sign a contract stating that he will not interfere with the scheme, in
exchange for the security of his own lands. Shakespeare hands Combe a paper stating his terms.
The Old Man enters, followed by the Son, berating the Old Man for his sexual misconduct with
the Young Woman. Combe interrogates her, but disbelieves her story, taking a haughty moralistic
attitude. Combe and the Son take the Young Woman to be whipped for vagrancy and prostitution.
[edit] Scene Two

Six months later. The Old Woman tells Judith about her husband's condition and his history with
the press gang, but Judith takes a moralistic tone, condemning the Old Man for his infidelity and
irresponsibility. Later, Shakespeare and the Old Man are in the garden when the Young Woman
returns. She is physically decimated, having been living in burned out barns all winter, supported
by the Old Man. Shakespeare tells Judith to give the woman food and clothing, but Judith resents
her and refuses. The woman hides in the orchard when Combe arrives to give Shakespeare the
contract, which he signs. Judith enters and tells Combe that the woman has returned; he sends his
men to apprehend her. Judith berates her father for his toleration of their misconduct and his lack
3

of sympathy with the local people: "You don't notice these things. You must learn that people
have feelings. They suffer."[7] Judith soon feels guilty at being the cause of the woman's
punishment, and regrets turning her in. The Old Man breaks down crying because he knows that
the woman will be executed for arson, having burned down several barns. He describes the
public spectacle of an execution as a festivity he used to enjoy, but can no longer endure.
[edit] Scene Three

The Young Woman has been executed, and hangs on a gibbet on stage. While Shakespeare sits
alone, the Son and several local laborers eat lunch. The Son talks about the woman's sin, also
making pointed comments about Shakespeare. The Son and his friend Wally look into the dead
woman's face and engage in vehement prayer, jumping and shouting. When they leave,
Shakespeare tells Judith about the violent scene of a bear-baiting that took place next to the
theatre, saying "When I go to my theatre I walk under sixteen severed heads on a gate. You hear
bears in the pit while my characters talk."[8] Shakespeare relates his despair: "What does it cost to
stay alive? I'm stupified by the suffering I've seen."[9]

[edit] Part Two

[edit] Scene Four

Shakespeare and Ben Jonson are drinking in a tavern. Jonson has come to tell Shakespeare that
the Globe Theatre has burned down, and to ask Shakespeare what he is writing. Their
conversation and their attitude towards literature are unglamorous: "I hate writing. Fat white
fingers excreting dirty black ink. Smudges. Shadows. Shit. Silence" Jonson says. [10] Jonson
recounts a life of violence, compared with Shakespeare's "serene" existence. As the two get
increasingly inebriated, the Son and the workers enter, having just had an encounter with
Combe's men while destroying Combe's ditches and fences. They see themselves as religious
soldiers against the "rich thieves plunderin' the earth."[11] Combe confronts them, claiming that he
represents progress and realism.
[edit] Scene Five

Shakespeare is walking home from the tavern through the fresh snow, coming across the Old
Man, who is throwing snowballs. Judith enters and scolds Shakespeare; Shakespeare tells her
that after temporarily abandoning her mother, he tried to love Judith with money, but ended up
making her materialistic and vulgar. She leaves him, and as he sits alone in the snow, several
dark figures run by backstage, and a gunshot is heard. The Old Woman comes to bring
Shakespeare home.
[edit] Scene Six

Shakespeare is in bed, half delirious, repeating the phrase "Was anything done?"[12] Judith and
her mother knock on the door calling for Shakespeare to let them in, gradually becoming
hysterical when he does not respond, until finally he slips his will to them under the door and
they leave. The Son enters, and tells Shakespeare that in a scuffle with Combe's men he shot his
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father, the Old Man. Combe enters, and the Son hypocritcally accuses him of shooting the Old
Man. While Combe and the Old Man argue, Shakespeare takes poison pills he had taken from
Jonson. Combe and the Son leave, unaware that Shakespeare is dying. Judith enters, and paying
no care to her dying father, she ransacks the room looking for money or a second will.

[edit] Production History

Bingo was first presented at the Northcott Theatre, Devon on 14 November 1973. It was directed
by Jane Howell and John Dove, with the following cast:

Shakespeare - Bob Peck

Old Man - Paul Jesson

Son - David Howey

William Combe - David Roper

Ben Jonson - Rhys McConnochie

Old Woman - Joanna Tope

Judith - Sue Cox

Young Woman - Yvonne Edgell

[edit] Bond's Introduction

Like George Bernard Shaw, Bond generally wrote lengthy prose introductions for his plays.
Bond begins the introduction to Bingo by mentioning the minor historical inaccuracies he
introduced into the play for dramatic purposes; for example, the Globe Theatre burned down in
1613 rather than in 1616, and Michael Drayton was also present at Shakespeare's "last binge."[13]
The rest of the introduction explains Bond's view of the relationship between "human values,"
society, and art. Although he finds much suffering and violence in his own and in Shakespeare's
time, Bond is not ultimately pessimistic; he attributes this violence not to human nature but to the
arrangement of society, which can be reformed. Reflecting his Marxist views, Bond argues that
the demands of capitalism force people to act in aggressive, self-interested ways that conflict
with their innate human values: "We're wrong when we assume we're free to use money in
human ways," Bond writes.[14] He then argues that the proper role of art is to work against this
corrupted version of society: "(Art) always insists on the truth, and tries to express the justice and
order that are necessary to sanity but are usually destroyed by society."[15] Shakespeare's dilemma
in Bingo is that he is caught between his financially-motivated behavior and his artistic
sensibility of the destructiveness of that behavior: "Shakespeare's plays show this need for sanity
and its political expression, justice. But how did he live? His behavior as a property-owner made
him closer to Goneril than Lear. He supported and benefitted from the Goneril-society - with its
prisons, workhouses, whipping, starvation, mutiliation, pulpit-hysteria and all the rest of it."[16]
Od Drugo

Bond continued to provoke the British establishment. He dismantled Shakespeare's King

Lear, rewriting it as Lear in 1971, and in Bingo: Scenes of Money and Death (1973) he
depicted Shakespeare as a rapacious capitalist who signs away the rights of his tenants
(historically true). The point of the play was not to slander the Bard, but to ponder a writer's
responsibility to society. According to Bond, "If you are an unjust person, it doesn't matter
how cultured you are, how civilized you are, how capable you are of producing wonderful
sayings, wonderful characters, wonderful jokes, you will destroy yourself. And so, a writer,
nowadays, has to put the cards on the table for the public, and say: 'These are the
consequences of your life; they are inescapable. If you want to escape violence, you don't
say 'violence is wrong,' you alter the conditions that create violence.' "