Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (30 page)

“So Catherine Willoughby accepted, guarded, edited, and polished your
Merchant of Venice
, Jane. I’ve got a question I’d like to ask about that; there is something that troubles me about the play. I hope you don’t think it too nervy of me.”

“There is little you could say in the way of nerve that would surprise us, Dolly,” Catherine said.

“It is about the—well, frankly—anti-Semitic tone of the play. Perhaps it is not for me to judge on the complex cross-religious mores of the Renaissance, but I cannot help but confess I find it painful.”

“That aspect of the play did not come from me or from my step-grandmother,” Jane said. “My Shylock was a more simpatico character than the one who has come down through the ages, and I know my own language, in the play as in life, had little disparaging to say about anyone. Grandmother has told me that she assumes the altered Shylock was the work of Mr. Shakespeare or one of his company when the work got to them. All she lays claim to is grammatical and stylistic corrections where needed, the Nerisa subplot, and some considerable reworking of the character of Portia to make her personality more in keeping with my own, as my grandmother saw it.”

I liked the idea that Jane’s editorial “we” included Catherine Willoughby and that Catherine’s talent had come down through the ages in such a hitherto unknown way. “How far a little candle can throw its beams!”

Chapter Eighty

How They Were Hand-to-Handed, and Whence They Landed

“I was told earlier that Jane’s work was edited by the same person who edited her sisters’ works. So, just to recap, Catherine Willoughby was responsible for the final product of all three of you Greys. Have I got this right?” I asked.

“You have, Dolly.”

“Well, I know how Jane’s work made it into Catherine Willoughby’s hands. How did your works get there?” I asked Mary and Catherine.

“Unlike my sister, Jane, I was not confident enough in my work to be passionate about it seeing the light of day. I did not, quite frankly, know what to do about it when I realized my end was imminent. In the event, all I did was direct that all my personal papers go to my sister, Mary, upon my death. Mary,” said Catherine, saluting her little sister, “over to you!”

“Discovering, from her effects, the excellence of my sister Catherine’s plays spurred me on to greater effort with my own works,” Mary said. “Like her, though, I was unsure about what I wanted the fate of my works to be when I was gone. When I found myself ill and with my days numbered, I made a will leaving my jewels and my personal papers—which included, now, my sister Catherine’s, as well—to my step-grandmother, Catherine Willoughby. I didn’t know what I wanted her to do with them. I just trusted that with her wisdom and connections, she’d be the right one to figure it all out.”

“I’d love to hear from her, directly, about what she did with your plays!” I said. “Will I get to meet Catherine Willoughby while I am here? I was not able to on my last visit, after learning of the very special bond the two of us share. And now, knowing that we are both involved—on opposite chronological ends—in the sourcing of these plays of yours, I feel even more connected to her and would like even more to meet her!”

“Sorry, Dolly, but that is against the rules,” Elizabeth informed me.

Mary, Queen of Scots, took pity on me, no doubt moved by my crestfallen face, and proffered me yet another glass of wine. I rose to my feet and accepted it. Fortified after a couple of sips, I took umbrage with Elizabeth.

“You told me, Elizabeth, during my last visit here, that there was only one rule about my visit:
favete linguis
, a religious silence. That I was not to reveal to the world, ever, that I had been on a visit to this Tudor astral plane. So what is this other rule that keeps me from meeting Catherine Willoughby?”

“I don’t make the rules here, Dolly,” Elizabeth said, rising, as she and all the others looked skyward. “I just enforce them. We have been informed that you and Catherine Willoughby are not to meet. We didn’t know that was a rule until we were arranging your current visit here; the Almighty, realizing that the question might come up because of the nature of our discourse, made this rule known to us.”

I must admit that I was pretty unhappy about this rule, not to mention a little the worse for all the wine. I flung my goblet at the fireplace; in its trajectory, it narrowly missed bathing Elizabeth in wine.

“Dolly!” she said, “don’t shoot the messenger. I am only doing what I’ve been directed to do by a higher authority.”

I thought for a moment about how very many of Elizabeth’s staff must have felt the same way as they carried out the orders of their mercurial queen.

“There is something ironic about the fact that, in enforcing the inexplicable, you are essentially living the nightmare that you put the Cecils and so many of your other staff through, Elizabeth,” I said. I probably had a smirk on my face but did not have a mirror on hand to confirm.

A wine goblet flung by Elizabeth crashed on the wall behind me and splashed a few drops of wine on my gown. Fortunately, they did not show very much on the wine-colored velvet.

“Farthingale pledge!” Mary, Queen of Scots, reminded her.

“I think Elizabeth can be excused for being so upset about having the tables turned on her like that,” I said, rising up with my hand extended to Elizabeth for a conciliatory handshake. “It was probably unfair of me to throw her behavior in her face like that, not to mention the wine goblet. It’s just that I have always pitied poor Cecil and all the others so vulnerable to the royal whim.”

“‘Excused’ is not a word one uses to a queen of England, Dolly! “
I
do not require pardon from
you
! I will deign, however, in light of my pledge, to excuse
you
for your impertinence. Shake?”

We shook hands happily enough.

“So,” I asked, “if I can’t hear the story of the Grey-Shakespeare plays from the Catherine Willoughby firsthand, can I at least hear it as secondhand news?”

“Easily done, Dolly,” said Jane. “Our step-grandmother informed my sisters and me, when we all met here, that she had edited and polished all our plays as she saw necessary. She wanted our work, and at that point, hers, to be performed in public to a contemporary audience. She also wanted to be sure that the works descended down into posterity and did not just become flashes in the pan. As she felt her end drawing near, in 1580, she did not feel that English theater was ready yet for the plays; the industry was not sufficiently developed to do justice to our works. She felt confident that it
would
be in the not-so-distant future but knew that her own time on earth would not take her to that point.”

“What did she do about the plays, then?” I asked.

“She left our works in the hands of her daughter, Susan Bertie. Susan was to ensure that the plays were performed pseudonymously in her time so that a contemporary audience could enjoy them without compromising the Grey sisters’ reputation. Their authorship was to be a temporary secret, not a permanent one—to be revealed when theater and playwriting gained credibility as respectable literary outlets.”

“Well, the latter part of that directive obviously has yet to happen.”

“Which is where you come in, Dolly,” said Mary Tudor.

“Yes, I know; you want me to reveal the true authorship of these plays to the modern-day world. I’m going to need more information if I’m to perform my task, though. Why, or how, did Susan Bertie fall down on the job? What happened?”

“Susan Bertie did
not
fall down on the job, Dolly,” Jane said. “She safeguarded the plays with her eye on the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and some of its players and playwrights to
help her execute her task. By the time her own end was imminent, she felt that the troupe was on the brink of being ready to be part of the fate of those plays but still not
quite
ready yet. So she turned the Grey plays over to a trusted accomplice to await the full development of the troupe into the means that would bring the plays to life and immortality.”

“Those plays got passed around more than a pre-Truman buck,” I commented. “Who got them next?”

“Susan Bertie left them in some very capable literary hands—in fact, probably the most capable hands there were for the job.”

“Cecil’s?” I conjectured.

“No, Dolly. Susan passed the plays off to her protégé, Emilia Lanier.”

And so Shakespeare’s Dark Lady made her way into the tales of the evening.

Emilia Lanier, early English poetess, was also the mistress of Lord Hunsdon, Shakespeare’s patron; possibly the mistress of Shakespeare himself and the inspiration for his
Dark Lady
sonnets; and a well-placed individual in the ambit of Elizabeth I. Capable hands seemed to about cover her credentials.

“And through Emilia, the plays found their way to old Will and to fame and glory—at least fame and glory for Will,” I said.

“Those plays found their way to old Will through Emilia but with my gracious permission,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Emilia knew dynamite when she saw it and wisely sought my permission to forward the tales to the Lord Chamberlain’s Men through William Shakespeare. She felt that, because of his romantic interest in her, he would do right by them as a favor to her. That made sense to me. Emilia was a discreet girl and great favorite of
mine; I felt comfortable trusting her with the task and with the Grey plays.”

“Did you read them before they were passed along, Elizabeth?”

“Yes, I did, and mightily entertaining they were too.”

The Grey sisters beamed at Elizabeth’s approbation, and she generously let them bask in the center stage for a nanosecond or so before drawing the attention back to herself.

“And now, Dolly,” said Elizabeth, joining hands with Mary Tudor and Mary, Queen of Scots, “it is time for the three of us to tell you about our contributions to the Shakespeare canon.”

Chapter Eighty-One

Paeans to Three Queens

Knowing my history as I do, I probably should not have been surprised that the Renaissance era’s three most famous queens were not about to be outdone on any level by their also-ran relatives. Still, I was not entirely sure how to respond to this latest and biggest bit of heretofore unknown literary history. I assumed the best posture I could manage in a farthingale, as I felt fitting to the occasion, and addressed myself to the three queens.

“I have to admit that at this point, I’m beginning to rethink using the word ‘Shakespearian’ around here altogether. My goodness,” I said in exasperation, “did the man write
anything
that I thought he had?”

“The man’s sonnets, so far as we know, are his own, Dolly,” said Elizabeth. “And possibly that dubious
The Two Noble Kinsmen
that came along after the main Shakespearian fact.”

I felt on somewhat more solid ground with the sonnet information than I had in some time and addressed myself to Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth, and Mary Tudor once more. “So, your cousins have enumerated the plays from the Shakespearian canon that
they
actually created. Which of the remaining plays does history now have to credit you three ladies with?” I asked.

“All of them,” said Mary, Queen of Scots. “The assembled works of the ladies now present before you, Dolly, comprise the entire canon of the theatrical works heretofore attributed to William Shakespeare; the
bona fide
works of his
First Folio
.”

Back onto my cushion I flumped; there is no other word for it. I was floored, literally, by the ramifications of this information.

“You realize that history of all kinds—political, social, literary, royal, and feminist—will be rocked to the core and have its socks knocked off by this revelation! It almost seems that it couldn’t possibly be so.”

“‘Couldn’t’ is not a word to use to royalty, Dolly,” Elizabeth reminded me. “And as I informed you on your last visit here, ‘denial is more than just a river in Egypt.’ We are telling you the truth and entrusting you with the task of revealing it to the world.”

“Before I can reveal anything, you’ve got to float me across that denial river on a raft of information. Who wrote what? How did it wind up credited to Shakespeare? I need answers!”

“I think my cousin Jane had the right idea when she talked about taking things in chronological order. Being the firstborn among us, I would therefore like to begin the proceedings, if everyone else doesn’t mind,” said Mary Tudor.

“It seems only fair to me that, on this occasion, we give Mary Tudor her head as first in line,” I said.

Mary, Queen of Scots, took over from Elizabeth in the keeping-me-in-line department by hitching up her skirt a couple of inches and applying her slippered foot to my behind.

“Execution awareness never goes out of fashion, Dolly,” she reminded me.

“Point taken,” I said as I rubbed my sore backside.

“And graciousness never goes out of fashion either,” said the Scottish queen, addressing Mary Tudor now. “You may go first, as you request, Cousin.”

Elizabeth chimed in with some younger sis sass.

“I have no problem deferring to you, Mary; after all, it is what I did when our brother Edward died and the English throne was up for grabs. You get to go first now, as you did then. And you know what they say—age before beauty.”

I couldn’t help but notice Mary Tudor wince. I had always thought, from what I knew about her life, that her self-esteem when it came to her attractiveness had probably been beaten pretty much to death by the behavior of her less-than-gallant husband, Phillip II of Spain. This made Elizabeth’s potshot seem mean and unnecessary, and I sprang into corrective action.

“‘Beauty is only skin deep,’” I reminded Mary. “‘But ugly,’” I said, staring directly into the eyes of her sister, “‘goes clean to the bone!’”

“Isn’t that what our friend Mistress Dorothy said when she was here?” asked Margaret.

“Mistress Dorothy? Do you mean Dorothy Parker?” I asked.

“Yes, that was her name. She was here for career advisement. I found her most amusing!” said Elizabeth, her pleasure at the memory of her old acquaintance clearly visible.