In 1613, William Shakespeare was putting the finishing touches on a play which, he claimed, was the best of all he had written so far. His investors were drooling with anticipation – a new Willie Shakespeare play! Even though The Tempest had grossed millions all around the Globe, they were eager to make one more killing on the theater market.
(Sicko note 1: The Globe Theater, in which Shakespeare himself had a stake, could hold a lot of people at one sitting, but what most people, including the producers,didn’t know was that there was a flourishing Black Market in ticket sales going on at that time. The tickets were being sold not on a per-person basis, but on a per-creature quota. So if you were filthy and hadn’t had a bath in a week, you were supposed to pay for all the fleas that came along with you. On an average, a Londoner would carry 500 fleas and other assorted critters on his body at any given point of time. So grossing a million viewers was as easy in the 1600’s as garnering TRP ratings for an Ekta Kapoor TV show in the early 2000’s. )

It was done. The play, supposedly a saga of a family divided, opened on May 14th, 1613 to a packed house. The audience waited with bated breath. An overzealous fan who had the good sense to bring some ears of corn along to chew during the show was almost choked to death by other overzealous fans who claimed that it was interfering with their Billing Rights.
Sicko Note 2: ( A Billing Right referred to the right side of a Shakespearean stage, it was where Willie Shakespeare would crouch in a nervous position, mouthing the dialogues along with the actors, and occasionally weep when the dialogue-delivery got too hokey. The Billing Right was also the place where the Shakey-Bakeys hung around – the official groupies, buxom young women who claimed to have the capacity to recite the balcony scene of Romeo and Juliet from memory, and also those who screamed “Billy, We Love You!” in caps and bold at various points of a Shakespearean production.)

The curtains were drawn ( which is kind of metaphorical, because there were no curtains in the Globe Theater in those days, with all those rats around), and the Man came out. A hush. A cough. Shuffling in the seats. Another cough.

“Ahem.”

Silence.

“I bid thee welcome, fair ladies and merry men. Er, gentle men. ”

Applause. Which dies down as soon as WS raises his hand.

“It doth be all about loving thy family. ”

More applause.

“It doth be named Who be I to Thee.”

Thunderous applause. The crowd knew they were in for something good. The groupies squealed, “We love you, Bill!”

And thus the play started. Gaping mouths watched the venerable actors going about their onstage duties. One fellow, the tollkeeper at London Bridge, gaped so much he forgot to breathe, fortunately for him, he didn’t crash to the ground in his death spasms, there were just too many people ( and fleas) to hold his corpse aloft. (It was said that the nursery rhyme “London Bridge is falling down” came out of children screaming the selfsame words when, after the show’s unfortunate conclusion, the body dropped to the ground )

And from the Billing Rights, Billy Shakespeare stared hard at his audience ( trying hard not to stare at the heaving bosoms of the groupies bouncing below him, because Mistress Hathaway was in the house, and she could kick Shakespearean ass when she wanted to ) and beheld their zombie-like expressions. He was exultant, because to all purposes, his play was a success, there was not a peep in the house, narry a rotten tomato to be seen. He had seen worse, back when Juliet had died in the original R&J and he had had to change the ending to make it a happier one, with Juliet and Romeo in a clinch. Those barbarians had wanted a bedroom scene thrown in at the end as well, but better sense prevailed( Thank God, he thought now, that I didn’t change the original manuscript. At least the Eye-ties and the Frogs will get to see Romeo& Juliet the way it was meant to be seen, with teary eyes and heaving hearts)

But what was this? Something was wrong. There was somebody muttering, and Willy could see flashes of red in the long cloaks of the theatre-goers. Oh no, he thought, not the tomatoes. Slowly, and trying very hard not to attract attention, William backed away further into the wings.

Onstage, the wedding bells dissolved. And another wedding couple came on. It was the fourth such sequence that had started. And the audience had had enough.

“We have had enough”, they screamed, one collective voice of indignation that swept through the Globe theatre.

And one bright young fella, a young poet who tried quaint rhyming devices to write love paens to all the flighty ladies of the East End suddenly had a bout of rhyming inspiration.

“KILL BILL!”, He screamed.

“KILL BILL!” The rest of them took it on. “KILL BILL. KILL BILL. KILL BILL”

The rest, as they say, is history. The Globe theater was burnt down. The blaze ignited the ears of corn the overzealous fan from para 2 had brought with himself, and well, popcorn came into existence. William Shakespeare, with his life and the final bound script intact, fled the land. A young chappie (name unknown) later claimed that it was he who had written the play, and he was lynched by the mob. (So the Globe owners did make a killing in the theater business after all) As it turned out, nobody took responsibility for who it was that wrote the play, and historians tried to fob off a guy named Marlowe as the culprit.

The bound script of that ill-fated play was last seen doing the rounds in a dilapidated warehouse in Parel, Mumbai in India. Some bright lad named Barjatya made a movie out of it, and since there were no synonyms for “Kill” that rhymed with “Barjatya”, he got away with it.

Kill Bill? Ah, now that‘s a movie to be proud of. I am glad I saw it last night. Great print, too.

Hyuk.