SHAXSPER

 

Peete’s Ante-Room

Willy looks around, somewhat stunned.  Where was he ?

“We’ve been expecting you.”

The voice belongs to Peete – that’s the name embroidered on his shirt-pocket.  He is a wiry thirty-something, with greasy hair and bad teeth.  His hands are stained yellow by nicotine.  His thin mouth suggests a knowing smile.

“I guess no one told you, eh ?”

Willy looks dumbfounded.  He blurts out, “Who are you ?  Where am I ?”

“Calm down.”

“That’s easy for you to say.”

Peete takes a long drag on his cigarette, which was now down to the butt-end, and starts to talk in a quiet voice.  He has had this conversation many, many times before.

“Just try to relax and listen closely to what I tell you.”

“Yeah, sure.  But how do you expect me to do that if I don’t know what’s happening here   And, why are you “expecting” me ?  What’s that about ?”

“You are now in the processing unit.  Once we have completed your paperwork, your eternity in AfterLife will begin.”

Willy splutters, “AfterLife – what the fuck is that ?”

“Please listen closely and ask your questions when I have finished.  That is, if you have any questions.  OK ?”

Willy doesn’t respond.  He’s trying to understand what seems to be incomprehensible.

“You are now DeadOnEarth; you are now moving on to a new form of existence.  The first thing you have to grasp is that what you were told before is only partially true.  Now, don’t go making the usual mistake of believing that this is Heaven.  There are no cloud-pillows or angels here.  Muslims don’t get to have sex with virgins here.  It doesn’t work like that.  Are you following me ?”

“I think so. But where am I ?”

“Let’s not get into that right now.  Let me finish with my speech.  The time for questions is afterwards.  OK ?”

“OK, tell me more.”

Peete continued.  “What you learned during your LifeOnEarth is partially true – you are going to be there forever but – and pay close attention to this – AfterLife is not a time or a place.  Rather, it’s another state of consciousness.  You might have noticed that your physical being is now changed and that your speech is different.”

Willy is thoroughly confused by this additional information and fumbles about himself..

Peete continues, “Also, you will not be here alone. You get to decide your companions in AfterLife.  You will be spending eternity with them, so choose them carefully.”

Willy, interjects, “You mean to say that you are telling me that I am going to be in this “AfterLife” forever and that I get to choose others who will be here with me ?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

 ****

Audley End,

Summer, 1578

The Tudor court is travelling through Essex on its way to Cambridge.  This is part of the ritualized summer progresses by means of which Queen Elizabeth defrays the costs of maintaining her court by down-loading the expense on her loyal subjects.  They are supposed to be only too happy to pay for this privilege but it is a dubious honour for the host because of the very stiff cost of feeding, housing, and entertaining the Queen, her courtiers, various hangers-on and flunkeys, as well as hundreds and hundreds of servants.

The first stop on the 1578 tour had been William Cecil’s majestic estate, Theobalds, a short distance north of London’s walls.  Since he became Elizabeth’s prime minister in 1558, the spoils of office have allowed William Cecil to become the richest man in the kingdom.  Only a few years earlier, this tavern-keeper’s grandson had been elevated to the peerage so that his daughter could be married off to Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford as well as the Lord Great Chamberlain of England.  The de Veres are the oldest noble family in the realm.  Compared to them, the Tudors are merely Welsh upstarts who had been raised from the dust 250 years after the Norman knght, Aubrey de Vere, had been ennobled

Yet in the new Elizabethan regime, William Cecil’s power is so hegemonic that remnants of the feudal aristocracy bite their tongues, bow their knees, and mutter their spiteful recriminations under their breath.  As long as William Cecil holds onto the Queen’s favour, knows her secrets, and does her bidding, the old order is kept on the outside, looking in.  Well, not quite on the outside since their presence is co-opted for state occasions, but they are kept in a kind of penury and abject dependence on the Queen’s whims.  Economically, they are kept in subjugation to the Tudors.  Their estates are frequently commandeered for royal visits like this one.  And, militarily, the old aristocracy is humbled by the Tudor’s monopoly over the means of violence.  Those who have the temerity to resist the royal will find themselves in The Tower and, often, headless.

The Tudors’ monarchy is a newfangled Renaissance court in which the monarch is not only the incarnation of God’s will but also the center of all fortune in men’s eyes.  It is not without irony, therefore, that the second stop on this summer progress is Audley End – a massive house located about half-way from London to Cambridge.  It has recently been extended by its owners, a branch of the Howard clan which had been a cornerstone of the aristocratic cousinage that was supplanted by the Tudors in Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather’s time.  The current occupant of this estate, William, is a younger son of the erstwhile Duke of Norfolk who had had aspirations of grandeur that, like Icarus, led him to fly too close to the sun.  But a Renaissance monarch like Elizabeth Tudor brooked no rivals and, so, Thomas Howard – who had been the only Duke in England – had paid for his unseemly ambitions with his head.

****

Peete’s Ante-Room

After a momentary pause, Peete continues,

“AfterLife is a form of what could be called self-fashioning.  It’s not just that it is what it is, so much as it will always be what you want it to be.  And, of course, it’s not possible to understand AfterLife in relation to your comprehension of time and space.  So, instead of trying to make sense of it in terms you understood when you were alive down there/back then, why not just listen closely and come to terms with your new, permanent reality.  OK ?”

“I think so.”  Willy is beginning to appreciate this strange new parallel universe.

“You also need to come to grips with the fact that in AfterLife you will have no physicality.  Like I said before, you will not be a corporeal being.  You will be a disembodied essence of your former self.  In AfterLife, age does not wither you, nor do the years condemn you.  You will have already noticed that language we are speaking has changed since your day – that’s because a long, time which has elapsed since your LifeOnEarth ended.”

“How long ago was that ?  And, where am I now ?”

“Willy, you are currently being prepared for a new mode of existence in which your essence will be visible in the mantle of your physical self at the height of your attraction.”

“You mean that it’s just like the appearance/reality confusion in Plato’s famous allegory of the cave.”

“I suppose so but let’s move on, shall we ?  I would assume that you would want your essence to be visible to others as you were when you were in your prime, at twenty-five or maybe thirty.  And it will be like that for the others who will be joining you in your AfterLife.”

“I see.  At least, I think that I’m beginning to come to grips with what you’re telling me.”

Actually, Willy is flummoxed.  He is beginning to think that maybe it would be better to just listen closely and then try to understand what he is being told.

“Well, like I was just saying, you are going to be there forever although, of course, there’s no there there – if you get my drift.”

Peete is now toying with him and Willy knows it, but he is powerless to resist.

“So, once you have finished with me in the processing unit, we will arrange transportation to your new state of being.  But, first, you and I need to talk so as to determine what your AfterLife will be like.  Who will be there with you, and like that.”

Peete pauses momentarily and Willy is speechless.

“Are you following me ?”

“Yessir.”

It was now Peete’s stage.  He is an adept director.  In fact, he has exercised his domination, cowing Willy into acquiescence.  It is an easy thing for him to do and Peete had done it countless times before.  He is the master and his authority is evident from Willy’s subservience.

“OK, let’s move right along.”

Peete’s tone has changed, not only is he now in control but Willy’s initial resistance has waned as he begins to come to grips with his utter incomprehension.  Willy has now given up his earlier attempts to stamp his own authority on the proceedings.

“Now, like I mentioned a few moments ago, we now have to come to some crucial design decisions about your new existence in AfterLife.  First of all, who do you want to accompany you ?”

Willy’s confusion is becoming palpable.  He asks meekly, “What do you mean ?”

“Jeez, let me go over this again for you. OK ?”

“Yes, please.”

“You are going to be there – in AfterLife – forever.  You are going to be there with three other people you have chosen.  Isn’t that clear ?  Haven’t I told you that before ?”

“Yes, you have.  I’ve been confused about this new situation because – well, because it’s so new to me.  It’s not what I expected.  This is nothing like what I’d been told.”

“Exactly.”  Peete now has a strong sense of satisfaction in his voice but he resists saying “I told you so.”  Doing that never worked because it just slows things down and he has a quota to meet.

“OK, moving right along, who do you want to be there with you ?”

“Anyone I want ?” asked Willy.  He wants to make sure he isn’t being rushed into making a rash decision.

“Of course.  Didn’t I tell you that already ?”

Peete is getting frustrated.  He is exasperated with having to go over and over the same ground.  His job is like this, all the time.  The predictable monotony of these exchanges is just dispiriting – and he had had great expectations that this time, with Edward de Vere, it would be different.  But it isn’t.

During his LifeOnEarth, Willy might have been the seventeenth Earl of Oxford and, under a pseudonym, he might have written the greatest plays and poetry in the English language but now he is just as inarticulate as your normal, run-of-the-mill yokel.

Peete winces.  He wonders if it would ever get any better but he knows that it won’t change.  This is his job for eternity and, as he has learned, eternity is a very, very long time.  He has no option but to lead Willy through the dispatch process.

****

St John’s College, Cambridge,

Tuesday afternoon,

August, 2014

A group of men and women are scattered in small groups across a wide green lawn.

Slowly, they gather at the far end of the courtyard.  A white-haired, older man calls for the group’s attention:

“Shall we move into the seminar room ?”

Dutifully, the men and women move through the door and into the brick, Tudor building.

Once they have found their seats around the large table and settled, Professor Sir Peter Schofield raps the table with his pencil. Slowly, the group becomes silent.  He clears his throat and begins his address.

“I am so very happy to have been able to bring you all together for this year’s meeting of the Shakes-speare Authorship Group.  We are calling this meeting, “Penumbral Issues in Historical Identity.”

Some of you have been in attendance at our previous seminars, others are here for the first time.  I welcome you all to St John’s College, Cambridge, which – as you all know – was Edward de Vere’s college during his terms at this university.  Lord Oxford first came up to Cambridge, as it were, as a precocious eight year-old, under the care of Sir Thomas Smith, who was his private tutor. Much of his education took place at his ancesteral home in Essex, then here at St John’s, and, finally, after the death of his father in 1562, at the home of his guardian – William Cecil – in London.

The College’s archive provides us with documentary evidence that records he was conferred his Bachelor of Arts degree in early August, 1564, exactly 450 years ago. This degree-granting ceremony coincided with the royal visit of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the First, and a large body of her courtiers.  Being granted a degree was a coming-of-age event for a young nobleman who would have been expected to be one of the cornerstones of the new Elizabethan regime.

By 1564, Edward de Vere was in line to succeed to his patrimony as the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford and his hereditary title as the Lord Great Chamberlain of England.  He was still a boy but he was expected to recapitulate the glorious careers of his predecessors, many of whom had been high-ranking servants of the English crown, stretching back many centuries.  But, as we know, Edward de Vere’s life turned out to be quite different from those expectations.

Instead of being a soldier, or an administrator, or a councilor, or just a courtier, Edward de Vere became the genius of the English Renaissance.  His poetry and theatrical works have achieved immortal fame yet they have done so at the expense of his own historical identity.  The Shakes-speare Authorship Group has been conceived as a way to fill that vacuum, to restore Edward de Vere to his rightful place and, at the same time, to understand the role of Will Shaksper of Stratford-Upon-Avon in this world-historical case of mistaken identity.”

 ****

 

Audley End,

Summer, 1578

The men and women promenading across the Audley End lawns are the most powerful aristocrats in the realm.  Leading the procession is Queen Elizabeth herself.  On her right is Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford; on her left is Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.  Trailing close behind in close attendance on his monarch is William Cecil, who has recently been ennobled and is now also known as Lord Burghley.  They exchange small talk, pleasantries, and idle gossip.  For these very important people, today is just another day at the office.  Their attendance at these state occasions requires them to smile disingenuously, to appear interested in the proceedings, and, above all, to stay awake.

The procession stops for a moment outside the doors of the main building.  Lord Oxford steps aside to greet a tall, thin man in dark clothing.  de Vere then turns back towards the Queen and gestures to her.  Elizabeth Tudor rarely takes kindly to being beckoned by anyone but Edward de Vere is her young favourite and she fawns on him.  de Vere introduces the Queen to the young man who bows low in an obsequious fashion.  They speak back-and-forth to one another for about ninety seconds before the Queen proffers her right hand, which the young man kisses with abject submission.  The man in black is then left behind as the sea of colourfully-dressed courtiers passes him by, entering the main Hall with its glorious frescoes and relief-plastered ceilings.

For this event, there are no plebeian onlookers.  The Hall is closely packed.  Indeed, there are rather more people in the Hall than it can comfortably accommodate.  There is not enough seating for everyone in the royal party.  Of course, there is the travelling throne for the Queen, and overstuffed chairs for her principal courtiers.  These people sit in the front row, facing the make-shift stage.  Behind them, the lesser courtiers, functionaries, and the small army of hangers-on sit on benches or, if they are really just flunkeys, they have to stand and shuffle about on their feet during the interminable speechifying that characterizes this sort of occasion.

Peete’s Ante-Room

Peete is continuing his attempt to process Willy de Vere so that he can be moved along to his own private AfterLife.

“Who do you want to be with you in your AfterLife ?  You get three choices.”

“So, let me see if I understand this correctly.  I am going to be there forever and the choice of these three people – can I still call them “people” ? – is for me to decide.”

“Yes, that’s right.  Can we please move this along ?  There are untold numbers of others who are waiting for the line to move.”

Willy wanted to ask about Peete’s last sentence – “untold millions waiting for the line to move” – but by now he had realized that he could not do that.  He had to do what Peete was telling him to do.  And, he had to do it quickly.

“Can I please ask one more question about this process ?  It’s all so new to me.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

Willy composed himself, thought for a couple or three moments, and then asked “These people who are going to be with me forever, will I have had to know them …. before. ?  you know, before now, like ?”

“Oh, yes.  That’s a very good question.  Most of the others do not think to ask about that but, obviously, you cannot just pluck names from the sky.  The people who will be with you forever, in AfterLife, will be chosen from among those you knew before, during your LifeOnEarth.  And, maybe I should add something – those people you choose will not only be in your AfterLife, but they will also be in their own AfterLife.  However, that is another story.  Did you get that ?”

“I think so, Mister Peete.”

“Don’t call me Mister Peete !  There are no titles here.  Just call me Peete.  You are not now  known as the seventeenth Earl of Oxford.  No one will call you Viscount Bolbec, or any one of your other titles like Lord of Badlesmere and Scales.  Here, you are simply Edward or, if you prefer that silly nickname, you can call yourself “Willy”.

Audley End,

Summer, 1578

This is the kind of ceremonial occasion that the Queen demands to be held in full view of the political nation gathered around her.  It reinforces her sense of primacy, being the center of attention.  That is important because a crucial element in her governing role is the projection of mystical authority.  On some occasions, this mystical authority is transmitted by magical moments of trans-substantiation in which the earthly woman is re-imagined as the celestial vessel of godliness.  Elizabeth Tudor really enjoys playing this game.  On other occasions, her authority is transmitted through ceremonial practices designed to emphasize her regality and domination.  This is the latter kind of event.

Speechifying academics from Cambridge have been brought down the London Road to Audley End to provide the afternoon’s entertainment.  Their orations are meant to be theatrical acts, glorifying the Queen by praising her to the heavens while also letting her bask in the reflected glory that shines from the lavish tributes paid to her courtiers.

But, actually, it’s always all about Elizabeth Tudor.  The Renaissance Queen just laps it up and has the rare ability to tolerate hours and hours and hours of toadyism.  Elizabeth Tudor is prodigiously learned – fluent in French and Italian as well as Latin and Greek.  She loves nothing more than to be flattered in a foreign tongue so that she can display her own learning by engaging the flatterer in witty repartee.

The low hum of conversation stops.  William Howard steps forward.  As the lord of this estate and the presumptive host of the proceedings, it is up to young Howard to make the formal opening speech, welcoming his Queen and her court.

But William Howard’s remarks are perfunctory because he is still in un-official mourning in memory of his disobedient father who had been beheaded several years earlier.  He is reluctant to play at being Elizabeth Tudor’s sycophant.  Finishing quickly, William Howard looks up and searches through the crowd.   He is looking for Gabriel Harvey who has been granted the honour of making the principal rhetorical entertainments for the gathering.

Gabriel Harvey is the tall thin man in dark clothing who had earlier been introduced to the Queen by Edward de Vere.  They had been contemporaries during their university days in the 1560s.  Over the years, the young Earl of Oxford patronized Harvey’s academic career, sponsored his studies, and used his influence to arrange for his appointment to the Professorship of Rhetoric, ahead of all other candidates regardless of Harvey’s inferior qualifications.  But that favouritism doesn’t mean that Harvey is a feeble wordsmith – far from it.

Master Harvey steps forward onto the stage.  Once again, he bows deeply before Queen Elizabeth.  His job for this day is to welcome the Queen and her court with witty verses.  These moments are magical in connecting the Queen with higher forms of culture.  It is as if she could claim to be the equal – or superior – of any man, any mere mortal.  In this way, she demonstrates not only her intellectual authority but also her regal divinity. Throughout her long reign, she never misses an opportunity to revel in this kind of public display.  For Elizabeth Tudor, it represents the essence of her being as well as the projection of that essence outwards so as to wreathe herself in a special aura.  She takes these events very seriously.  Very seriously, indeed.

Peete’s Ante-Room

Willy is lost in thought.  He is now choosing his options carefully because he had encountered so many people of all sexes, genders, nationalities, conditions, classes, and occupations in his LifeOnEarth.

“OK, Peete, my first choice would be Bess.”

“Do you mean Queen Elizabeth, your sovereign during your LifeOnEarth ?”

“Yes, that’s right.  She’s the one.  She was my sovereign but she was also my lover and the mother of my first-born child.”

Peete arches his eye-brow, “You don’t say ?”

Now, he is being entertained.  In fact, Peete is more than just amused, he is rather surprised at these revelations.  So he asks, “I thought she was a “Virgin Queen”.”

“You don’t believe that idiocy, do you ?  It’s sheer fabrication, propaganda.  Bess was every inch her father’s daughter – and her mother’s daughter, too !”

“What do you mean ?”

“It was just like she said so famously in her victory speech at Tilbury after the Armada was defeated: “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and of a King of England, too”.“

“Yes, yes, yes.  We’ve all heard that repeated over and over again but I thought you were going to tell me something else.”

“Of course I will do that.  But you will have to give me a bit of time – and not interrupt me if you really do want to hear what I experienced in my LifeOnEarth with Bess.”

“Oh, please do. I’ll try to keep myself quiet.”

“Well, like I was saying, this “Virgin Queen” mythology was merely a pretence, a façade.  She was her parents’ child in so many ways.  Like King Harry she was brusque and self-centered.  My great good friend, Walter Raleigh, said of her father,

“If all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in the world, they             might all again be painted to the life, out of the story of this King.  For how many             servants did he advance in haste (but for what virtue no man could suspect) and             with the change of his fancy ruined again, no man knowing for what offence?  To             how many others of more desert gave he abundant flowers, for when to gather             Honey, and in the end of Harvest burnt them in the Hive.”

Like her father before her – and just like her mother, Anne Boleyn – Bess was the boss and she never let you forget it.  Woe betide anyone who crossed her.  Bess was fickle, capricious, and demanding.  Her wishes, her needs, her desires always came first.  And, like both her parents, she had a voracious sexual appetite.”

“You don’t say.  Tell me more.”

“What ?  Don’t you know about her private behaviour ?”

“Well, actually, no.  Like everyone else, I was led to believe that she was, as she said, “married” to her people.”

“Ha !  What utter non-sense – a mulch of bullshit.  From the time she had her first flowers – when she was no more than a girl of twelve or thirteen – she was active, aggressive, and insatiable.  Haven’t you heard about her trysts with Protector Somerset’s younger brother, Thomas, the Lord Admiral, who was also known as the First Baron Seymour of Sudeley ?”

“No. I have never heard a word about anything like that.”

“That’s just amazing !”

“Yes, it might be amazing to you but I have never heard any reports about any hanky-panky on her part, just rumours, innuendoes, and slurs which were spread by traitors.”

“This is just fantastic.  It’s beyond belief.  I guess that I’d better fill you in – at least I can give you a summary.”

“Yes, please do.  I’d like that.”

“It went like this. Elizabeth Tudor never knew her mother because, as you know, Anne Boleyn was beheaded when King Henry tired of her.  He already had a likely lass in waiting.  Henry was shagging Jane Seymour for almost two years before he got rid of Anne Boleyn.  As my Hamlet would later say of his own mother, in disgust, “The funeral sweetmeats furnished forth the wedding table.”

Jane was the sister of Edward and Thomas Seymour and, much more importantly, she was the mother of Henry’s only legitimate son, Edward, who was the Prince of Wales.  A bit of jiggery-pokery in the palace’s back stairs meant that the Seymours had vaulted to the top of the heap, ahead of the other noble clans while Henry was alive and for as long as young Edward was the heir-presumptive.

So much for the genealogical connections.”

Willy stops himself to ask Peete, “Are you following this ?”

“Yes, but it’s more than a bit disconcerting to find out that the official story is a charade.”

“Well, well, well.  You are hardly the only one who was taken in by the appearances as opposed to the reality of this situation.  The conventional history of those times – my LifeOnEarth – seems to have been reconstructed in such a way that it’s both trivial and superficial.  Shall I continue ?  You’re not pressed for time are you ?”

“The others can wait.  They’ve been waiting for a long, long time and they can wait a bit longer.  Besides, no one will know the difference.”

Willy wanted to ask Peete about what he just said – “a long, long time” – but he has now regained control of the situation and doesn’t want to forfeit it.

“OK, let’s fast forward to 1548, the year after Henry had died and his frail, sickly young son has now been crowned King Edward VI, under the so-called “guidance and counsel” of his maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, who was Earl of Hereford, as well as giving himself the title of Duke of Somerset.  Edward Seymour also called himself “Lord Protector”.  Somerset’s younger brother, Thomas Seymour, was Lord Admiral and second-in-command.  Thomas quickly made himself a convenient marriage with Henry’s last wife, Katherine Parr.

I know, I know, this is all very confusing but it is essential background.  Should I continue ?”

Peete nodded.

“Young Bess was in the care of Katherine Parr and, therefore, living under the same roof with Thomas Seymour, whose ambitions were matched only by his complete lack of scruples.  And, what better way to fan the flames of that ambition than by impregnating the sister of the King ?”

Peete was flabbergasted.  He spluttered, “What are you talking about ?  This seems just so much make-believe.”

“It might be so easily dismissed if there were not actual documentary evidence.”

“You mean that such documents exist – I find it hard to believe that they weren’t destroyed years later when Elizabeth became Queen.”

“That’s true looking at it retrospectively, from your vantage-point.  But you have to keep in mind that in 1558, when Bess ascended to the throne, there had been a decade of incredible chaos in the land and she had been riding the whirlwind.  In these circumstances, her main ambition had been simple survival.  I would imagine that she thought her trysts with Thomas Seymour had happened such a long time before her accession that no one would remember them.  But William Cecil knew all about them.”

“Who ?”

“William Cecil was what the French would call an eminence grise. In the period between King Henry’s death and Elizabeth’s accession in 1558, William Cecil not only survived but also switched sides with great dexterity.  First, he abandoned the Seymours; next, he switched his affiliation to their great rival, Lord John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland; and then, in the last, turbulent days of King Edward’s reign in 1553, he abandoned the Dudleys and Lady Jane Grey, slipping into the shadows.  He kept a very low profile during Mary’s short, bloody reign but always maintained his ties to Elizabeth Tudor.  When Mary died childless in 1558, her half-sister Elizabeth Tudor was immediately recognized as the so-called “legitimate successor”.

This was not jsut ironic, it was also not a little rich since in the twenty-odd years after her birth, Elizabeth Tudor had been de-legitimized not once, not twice, but three times: first, when her father, Henry VIII, had had her mother executed in order to marry Jane Seymour; second, when her brother was dying and Lord John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, tried to install Lady Jane Grey, his daughter-in-law, on the throne; and then, for the third time, when Mary restored the kingdom to the Roman Catholic faith which had never acknowledged the legitimacy of Henry’s first divorce, his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn, or their child, Elizabeth..

Now here’s the point of this digression: as soon as Mary was dead, William Cecil took charge over the day-to-day management of affairs.  He was Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State and it was in that ministerial role that he controlled the keeper of the state-records and other official documents.  Of course, the mere hint of blackmail always provided him with great leverage over the young Elizabeth Tudor.  So, William Cecil was able to exercise a kind of demonic power.  He became rich.  He was later ennobled – his title was Lord Burghley – and then his son succeeded him as first minister of the Crown/  For the whole of my adult life, England was a Regnum Cecilianum.  But I am getting too far ahead of myself.”

”Willy, this is quite simply astounding.  It’s so unlike the official story how can I know that you are not making it all up.”

“You don’t say ?”  Peete’s confusion and surprise was like music to Willy’s ear.

 ****

Audley End,

Summer, 1578

At Edward de Vere’s instigation, Gabriel Harvey had been selected to undertake a most difficult task.  And, as his deep voice begins its intonations, it is evident that he is well prepared for the challenge.  His apostrophes to the Queen, Lord Burghley, and the Earl of Leicester are polished, refined, and witty.  They are replete with classical allusions which, it was thought by people living in the Renaissance, give the imprimatur of antiquity to his outrageous compliments.  It is all quite over-the-top – but that is exactly what is expected.  Finally he comes to his peroration in honour of Edward de Vere and because Gabriel Harvey is so deeply indebted to the seventeenth Earl of Oxford for his longstanding patronage, he pulls out all the stops:

“Thy splendid fame, demands even more than in the case of others the services of a poet possessing lofty eloquence.  Thy merit doth not creep along the ground, nor can it be confined within the limits of a song.  It is a wonder which reaches as far as the heavenly orbs.”

Edward de Vere smiles from ear to ear.  Rather ominously, the Queen is not amused.  She doesn’t enjoy being upstaged.  She especially does not appreciate having to listen to her underlings being praised even more lavishly than her royal self.  But, Gabriel Harvey has his text and he is sticking to it.  Besides, he is not focused on Elizabeth Tudor.  Rather, he is looking directly at Edward de Vere.  This is pay-back time.  His praise for the Earl of Oxford, his erstwhile patron, goes well beyond over-the-top. Harvey is just laying it on with a trowel

Harvey’s ode to de Vere praises his “strong mind” and his “fiery will”.  Harvey next compliments de Vere’s “English poetical measures” and his “Latin verses”.  But he is only just beginning:

“neither in France, Italy, nor Germany are any such cultivated and polished men…..Our whole country knows it.”

The Queen shuffles some more.  This is getting to be too much for her to bear with sufferance.  But Master Harvey is only just reaching the crescendo of his eulogy:

“In thy breast is noble blood, Courage animates thy brow, Mars lives in thy tongue, Minerva strengthens thy right hand, Bellona reigns in thy body, within thee burns the fire of Mars.”

Now, Harvey’s brow is glistening as he prepares to deliver his climactic coup de grace.

“Thine eyes flash fire, thy countenance shakes spears; who would not swear that Achilles had come to life again ?”

And, with that final flourish, Master Harvey raises his eyes and looks for approval from the front row.  He is more than a little dismayed to catch sight of Queen Elizabeth’s smouldering anger which is hardly concealed from view when she rises to thank him.

Peete’s Ante-Room

“Dammit, Peete, this is the true history.  It has been covered up and then repackaged to create an official story that was more palatable to public opinion.  What’s amazing to me is that this cover-up has been so successful.  But it was not the only cover-up from the time of my LifeOnEarth that has seemingly bamboozled later generations.  However if you persist in your slavish belief in the varnished truth then I might as well not continue.”

“Excuse me, I didn’t mean to offend you – or to question the veracity of what you’re telling me – but I am finding your story quite incredible.  Indeed, almost unbelievable.”

“Peete, I didn’t make any of this up.”

Willy is now regaining some sense of equilibrium.  He’s even beginning to feel that he’s in control.

“Do you want me to continue ?  Or are you so busy with your dispatching job that I am just wasting my breath ?  What about  those others who were behind me in line and are waiting to be “processed” ?”

“Oh, don’t worry about them.  Like you were, they are in a state of cryogenic time-freeze.”

“What ?”

“Oh, that’s my own private joke.  I call that period between LifeOnEarth and AfterLife, ‘cryogenia’.”

“You mean that I’ve been dead for a long time”

“Yes, indeed.  ’Cryogenia’ is uniquely organized for everyone but no one gets to jump the queue.  Besides, those who have been in line behind you can wait.  But, to answer your question, it’s been a very, very long time since you died.”

“How long ?”

“That doesn’t matter.  Remember that you are now about to be transferred into a new state of being in which your old concepts of time and space are no longer relevant.  It’s enough for you to know that you’ve been DeadOnEarth for a long time – your file tells me that you died in1604.  Ever since then you’ve been waiting to be brought before me for processing.”

“Peete, can’t you just tell me how long I’ve been in ‘cryogenia’ ?”

“No.  Actually, I’m not told how long the waiting times are.  But you might feel better to know that it’s the same for all those others.  And so a little bit longer won’t matter to them.  Besides, this is much more interesting to me.  What the hell, this is a 24/7 job for me and it’s not often that I get to meet someone who has things to tell me.”

“How long does this “processing” last ?”

“For you, Willy, I have all the time in the world – so to speak.”

Willy pondered about this.  “How much do you want to know ?”

“Well, let me be the judge of that.  I will stop you when I’ve heard enough.”

“Alright,  As I was saying, documentary evidence exists in which Bess’ maid, Kat Ashley, deposed that Thomas Seymour was frequently seen in the young princess’ bedchamber, in his night shirt, while Elizabeth was in her bed.  Other household servants’ documented testimony records that they had seen The Lord Admiral kissing, cuddling, and behaving in an unseemly manner towards Bess, the sister of King Edward.  All this, and more, is in the archival documents that William Cecil oversaw.  He kept them close to him at all times.  They were his leverage and his shield from being a victim of the Tudors’ famously capricious favour – and dis-favour.  William Cecil was a man who kept his head upon his shoulders and died in his bed.  That was no mean feat.

A few years later, after Mary had succeeded Edward, Bess was frequently in the company of Robert Dudley.  He was the fifth son of Lord John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland.  Lord John Dudley had been a soldier and courtier under Henry VIII.  He became de facto ruler of England in 1551 when he engineered a coup to displace Edward Seymour as the so-called “Lord Protector”.  In the last two years of young Edward VI’s turbulent reign, Lord John’s power was seemingly absolute.

But, uneasy was the head that wanted to wear the crown.  In short order, after Edward’s death, Lord John Dudley was declared a traitor and beheaded.  He had over-reached himself when he had attempted to re-work the succession in favour of Lady Jane Grey – another grand-daughter of Henry VII – who had been married off to his son Lord Guilford Dudley.

I know that this history is confusing but you have to keep in mind that the ruling elite in my time was just a tiny clique of buccaneering fortune-hunters.  This coterie was so deeply interconnected that their relations were incestuous.  It was the kind of family nightmare that my play, Richard III, sought to explicate.

So it was that Bess and Robert Dudley – most of us called him “Robin” – were both dangerous to Mary’s position when the tables were again turned and the outs became insiders.  When the wheel of fortune turned, Bess and Robin became outsiders.  Furthermore, they were both aligned with the Protestant, anti-Spanish groups who posed a very real threat to Mary’s government, contesting its legitimacy.  So, Mary kept them under close surveillance and a kind of house arrest.  The point of all this is to make it crystal-clear that these five years brought them together, with a lot of idle time on their hands.  I don’t think you need very much imagination to figure out the upshot of this idle time.”

“Not at all.  If I understand what you’ve been telling me they were young, she was the libidinous daughter of Henry VIII, and he was the son of a notorious fortune-hunter.  Right ?”

“Exactly !  When Bess ascended the throne in 1558, Robin Dudley became The Master of Horse.  This office gave him privileged access to her – and, of course, vice-versa.  They often had adjoining rooms in royal residences and, more especially, in those castles which the Queen and her court visited during her summer progresses.

Furthermore, the young Queen was vigorous and athletic – just like her father had been.  She went riding almost every day, and she rode out with her very own cock-horse, Robin Dudley.  Thus, they had hours of privacy when they could be alone, freed from the prying eyes of courtiers, ladies-in-waiting, chamber-maids, and all those other flunkeys that made up the royal household.

Given these opportunities to pursue a carnal connection in private, it was thus surprising that when they were in public, in full view of the court, they were so frequently indiscreet.  Their sexual relations were an open secret among courtiers and other members of the tiny group which ruled the country.  There were rumours were rumours of children too – often put about by the former Marian, Catholic insiders who had become outsiders in Elizabeth’s protestant regime.

Of course, Robin Dudley benefitted and was enriched by this liaison and was soon to be elevated to the peerage as the Earl of Leicester.  Nothing he did could damage him in the Queen’s eyes.  She was besotted.  But he was not her only favourite, although for many years he was her main man.

“Willy, this is really quite unbelievable.”

“Peete, it’s not a question of whether or not the story is credible – or, indeed, whether you believe me or not – but, rather, whether or not you want to know why I am still so entranced with Bess that I want her with me for eternity.”

“Yes, of course that’s quite right.”

“Shall I continue ?

“Yes, please do.”

 ****

Audley End, 1578

“Young Master Gabriel, you have surely blown My Lord Oxford’s horn and, in so doing, you have done us an honour.  But, if I may say so, you have done the Lord Oxford, un hommage.  No one would dispute your characterization of his great gifts but, perhaps we might have waited for his funeral elegy to see him praised above all others.”

It is a stinging rebuke.  Harvey knows that he has gone too far.  He is visibly quaking.

Oxford is only slightly less taken aback by the jealous envy in his monarch’s reply.  It is a dangerous business to compete for honour with the daughter of Henry Tudor – and to live to tell the tale.  But, Elizabeth Tudor is not quite her father’s duplicate in a female body.  She knows that Harvey might have gone too far but she also realizes he is only telling the listeners what they already knew – Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Viscount Bolbec, is an extraordinary young man.

Sensing that she has created a dangerous sense of foreboding, Elizabeth immediately changes her tone.  Leaning her arm on Willy’s shoulder, in the full hearing of those surrounding her in the front rows, she playfully asks him:

“Do you shake your speare at me, Lord Oxford ?”

“Yes, madam, I will shake my speare.”

A slight titter ran through the room.

Then, to the great mirth of everyone-who-was-anyone – in other words, those seated in the front rows – the Queen murmurs in her most seductively-throaty voice,

“All of my ladies-in-waiting know about your shaking spear, my Lord Willy.”

The Queen’s riposte changes the tone, the moment of jeopardy now passes.

Amidst the mirth and chitter-chatter of the Hall, the Queen and her closest comrades nod towards a much-relieved Master Harvey and then slowly move towards the open doors, leading them back to the wide green lawn.

 ****

St John’s College, Cambridge,

Tuesday afternoon,

August, 2014

Professor Sir Peter Schofield is the man in charge of organizing the conference.  He revels in being the star-turn.

Professor Sir Peter Schofield had come a long, long way from his early days as a rural vicar’s youngest son.  But, by dint of his restless ambition, he was now not only a knight of the realm but also firmly entrenched at the very pinnacle of academic life.  This long life’s journey had marked him.  He is a bundle of contradictions who just adores being a glamourous celebrity but can never quite resist displaying his common touch.  So, he was always “Professor Sir Peter” yet always he gave his acolytes the sense that they were in league with him in taking-the-piss from his very own pretensions.  It was a game he took great pleasure in playing – and he was very, very good at playing it, too.

“Before I present you with a short overview of our 2014 seminar’s schedule, I want to extend our thanks to the Master and Fellows of St John’s College for so kindly providing us with a meeting-place.  In the next few days we will be the beneficiaries of their extraordinary generosity, which will be greatly appreciated by all of us in attendance.  I am sure that when we come to publish the proceeding of our little conference, we will not need reminding to thank them again.

Now, you have all been selected to be take part in this seminar because of our public’s interest in the revisionist scholarship from “The International Shakes-speare Authorship Group”.  Some of you have written papers which were, of course, pre-circulated over the internet so that our time together can be used most efficiently for discussion, rather than formal presentations.  The plan of this seminar follows our established format:  that is, we will have two sessions each day, starting tomorrow so that our American guests can have another day to get over their jet lag.

I will chair all sessions.  Each session will begin with an author providing us with a short summary – no more than fifteen minutes ! – of her/his argument.  Then we will have prepared responses before breaking for morning coffee or afternoon tea.  After a short refreshment break – say, thirty minutes – we will collectively discuss the paper, the responses, and issues that have been raised.  So, our time together will be quite tightly organized and, you can rest assured that I will see to it that the schedule is closely adhered to by all.

I’m going to ask the authors to give us their summaries – no longer than fifteen minutes, as measured by my sand-timer !  [Professor Sir Peter holds up this glass instrument in full view of the group assembled around the table.]  Once the sands-of-time run out, I will intervene to move matters along.  The colleagues who will be respondents will have the opportunity to share their reflections with the whole group.  [Professor Sir Peter holds up a second glass instrument in his left hand.]  As you can see, I have another sand-timer which is set for ten minutes; that is the allotted-time for each response.

Our last session, to be held on the final working-day we are here at St John’s College will be much less structured.  My control will be relaxed.  Instead of having me ride herd on you, I envisage that our Saturday afternoon’s discussions will be rather more like a spontaneous free-for-all as we will be concluding this year’s meeting and planning for the next one, which will take place in two year’s time at the Hearst Ranch in San Simeon, California.  Let me thank our colleague, Neddy Shorts, for making this arrangement with the University of California, which owns the Hearst Ranch.

As you know, in our previous meetings we have made arrangements for the proceedings of this seminar to be published.  This year, we are going to expand our outreach, and to do that we have enlisted the services of the Cambridge University Technology Support Services to video-tape the seminars and discussions.  We will therefore be preparing two manuscripts for publication – one will be produced in a book-format while the other will be an electronic version.  It will be my responsibility to collect your revised papers and the formal responses.  I will also take charge of preparing an edited transcript of the informal discussions which will be a part of our final manuscript.  A CD-Rom of the meetings will be produced by the Technical Services Support Group and we will be supplying this disk, as an accompaniment to the book, to those interested scholars and public persons who have been unable to attend this meeting.  So, don’t drink too much wine at lunch because you might fall asleep in the afternoon meetings and the evidence of your indiscretion will be available for all to see !”

****

Peete’s Ante-Room

Willy had now wrested control in his conversation with Peete.

“When my father died in 1562 I was only a lad of twelve but I instantly became the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, in direct succession, dating back to the time of the Norman Conquerors  That has always been an especial point of pride – maybe overweening pride – for me perhaps because I have been surrounded by so many of these so-called “new men” whose families have no lineage.  Men whose ancestors – like William Cecil’s grandfather – were tavern-keepers or peasants like the Robin Dudley’s forebears.

Upon my father’s death I was both ennobled and immediately stripped of my wealth. My lands were carved up between Bess, William Cecil, and Robin Dudley.  This kind of divestment is what the ancients called the spoils-of-power but in England there was a more polite, legalistic description: it was called “wardship”.  Being a minor, I was the Queen’s ward.  My estates were a plaything for her to depose as she saw fit.  After Bess took a prime cut for herself, she then used the rest to keep her favourites happy.

For nine years, until I reached my majority, I was therefore under the control of William Cecil.  I lived in his house and was subject to his discipline.  But I was never a member of his family – he always saw me as an asset that could be used to promote his own interests and those of his family.  He always spied on me – he was the kind of man who even spied on his own son, Thomas, when he was living it up in Paris at that time.  Of course, that’s exactly what Polonius arranged when his son Laertes returned to Paris.

But, to be fair, William Cecil also provided me with great advantages.  He had the finest private library in Europe and he made sure that I was taught by the best tutors available.  Men like Lawrence Knowles whose knowledge of Anglo-Saxon history was unparalleled and my uncle Golding under whose direction I prepared a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a work whose influence runs through all my plays and poems.

And, like all men of my station, I was exposed to the excellent scholars at St John’s College, Cambridge, and then, later, at Grey’s Inn for my legal studies.  By the time I was eighteen, I was fluent in Latin, Greek, Italian, French and also had passable Spanish.  Cecil patterned my education after that which had been given to Bess when she was under the tutelage of Master Ascham..

My years in wardship were tightly controlled and, of course, I rebelled in the way that any young colt would chafe against restraints.  I spent lavishly on clothes and books and Damascus-steel swords, as well as horses and falcons.  I learned to drink and was ever after a real tippler.  But the point to bear in mind is that while I spent like a drunken lord, my expenditures were never excessive in comparison to what I should have earned from my estates.  But, vast sums were skimmed from my patrimony by those who held them during my years of wardship.  And, whatever monies I spent were always debited against my accounts by William Cecil who oversaw it all and kept a running tab on my accounts.

“This man, William Cecil, seems to have been a real scoundrel in his dealings with you.”

“Yes and no.”

“What do you mean by that, Willy ?”

“William Cecil patterned my education after the finest humanist schooling which had been given to Bess.  Living in Cecil’s house near the Savoy gave me access to the many and varied pleasures of London life.  It was an easy matter to clamber over the walls and be in the middle of a vibrant popular culture of rogues, blowhards, soldiers of fortune, and jack-be-nimbles.  I was enthralled by the easy familiarity of the under-classes, whose love you could purchase for a drink and whose loyalty was yours for a shilling.  It was exciting – the very antithesis of the stiff-necked domesticity of William Cecil and his wife, the dreadful Mildred Cooke. Outside the walls of Cecil House, there was no prattling and praying.  Formal manners and etiquette were irrelevant.  Outside, I was free to be myself – I could fashion my self.  My self could be mine own self and mine own self would not be defined by rigid court protocols or the puritanical prattling of Cecil House..”

“So, if I understand you right Willy, your association with William Cecil had good and bad points.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m trying to communicate to you.  It was all rather like the old children’s rhyme.”

“Which one ?  there were a great many you know.”

“Quite so, Peete.  The one I am thinking of goes something like this:  “There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead; When she was good, she was very very good, but when she was bad she was horrid”.”

“I think I understand.  Please, Willy, tell me more.”

“That rigid protocol of courtly life was a mere charade.  Bess’ court was a snake-pit of competing egos and prideful ambition.  In that dangerous little world there was an inner circle of a half-dozen kinship-groups who were what I would call “contenders”.  Then, there were also the other three or four dozen clans who formed the background scenery.  These people were merely “pretenders“.  Intrigue was constant.  Alliances shifted according to whim, the whim of the sovereign.  All friendships were transitory – most of them were superficial.  But it was also dangerous – wrong choices, wrong friends and you could lose your head.  Many did.

The center of it all was, of course, the monarch.  William Cecil exerted some sort of sinister influence over Bess, but she controlled courtly life.  Losing favour with Bess cast one outside the inner circle.  Inside that magic ring, her desires were paramount.  Her whims, her fickle fancies, and her desires were the motor of everyday life at court.  And, like her father, she took great pleasure in dividing, ruling, and conquering her subjects.  Jealous of her place and even more jealous of her sexual powers, she surrounded herself with the most beautiful young women in the realm – young women who were like the Vestal Virgins.  You could look, you could dally, you could flirt, but woebetide you if you touched !  The Queen’s anger knew no bounds when one of her ladies-in-waiting was seduced.  I learned that bitter lesson with Annie Vavasour; so did Walter Raleigh, some years later. When our lovers’ pregnancies were discovered, we were immediately imprisoned as were our ladies.

Just as I said before, Bess was like her father – sexually predatory.  Of course, the public was fed this claptrap about the “Virgin Queen” but the reality was far different.  Once she ascended the throne, three or four men were always kept in thrall to her desires.  Robin Dudley, of course, was there from the beginning but over the long years of her ascendancy there were many others besides me – Christopher Hatton, Walter Raleigh, and, finally, the ill-starred Robert Devereux were only the most visible.  But there were others, many, many others.  Why it was even rumoured that she carried on with Topcliffe, the executioner, although that seemed far-fetched to me.

What Bess wanted in a man was not just a full codpiece but also amusement.  Like her father, she was learned, witty, athletic, and demanding.  So, she wanted to be entertained – in private, in court, and on the public stage.  That’s why she sponsored jousting – and I won at the tilt-yards three times.  As you might not know, my surname – Vere – was derived from the Latin virtus, whose root meaning is masculinity. A virtuous man in my LifeOnEarth was not just manly but also born to be a ruler – of himself, and of others.  This word-play was threaded throughout my poems, and especially my sugared sonnets which were privately circulated.

By means of elaborate events like jousting tournaments and court entertainments – for which I wrote my earliest masques – as well as her progresses through the countryside every summer, Bess sponsored allegorical ceremonies to enhance her reputation and to give it an aura of otherworldliness.  The poor deluded commoners had lost their Virgin Mary, but they were given the “Virgin Queen” in her stead.  Bess knew in her marrow that the sovreign had to be invested with magical enchantment.  That was what you could call the business of monarchy.  The people were governed by fear – but also by magic and mystery.”

“Willy, now I’m getting a bit confused.  On the one hand, you have said that Queen Elizabeth’s whims had the power to hold her most powerful subjects in thrall yet, on the other hand, you have also said that William Cecil exerted influence over her.   Isn’t there some inconsistency in this account of yours ?”

“No.  Not at all.  Look at matters in this way: Bess was masterful but, in relation to the common theories of the day, she was also a mere woman and likely to be a pawn in men’s games.  That’s the point at which her reliance on William Cecil was crucial.  He -unlike the Dudleys – never wanted to be king.  William Cecil was content to be the monarch’s essential prop, her right-hand man.  For William Cecil, it was the substance of power – not its appearance – that mattered whereas for Bess (and for others who were the descendants of noble lineages) it was precisely the opposite case.

Bess was incredibly adroit at manipulating public images so that she could perpetuate the fantasy that she was married to her people.  In that way she could be both a Virgin and a reigning monarch.  It’s not too much to say that she turned the imaginary world upside-down.  She invested herself with the Catholic aura of the Virgin Mary in a newly-Protestant nation.  She contradicted the Old Testament story of Eve’s subjugation to Adam. She had been taught well in the classical idioms to provide a majesty to her speeches.  She remembered those lessons and they were a vital part of her daily practices of regality.

Bess herself was a bundle of contradictions – fickle and loyal; trusting and suspicious; manipulative and affectionate; distant, aloof and needy and very, very jealous.  She was ever-mindful of the jeopardy which inhered in her position.  She never forgot her own royal heritage was only two generations removed from her grandfather’s success at Bosworth Field which ended the Wars of the Roses in 1485.  She looked back at those turbulent times – and, of course, at the more recent turbulence in her father’s and  brother’s and sister’s reigns – which confirmed her belief that she stood for order in the face of chaos.

But, above all, Bess was quite wonderful.  To be in her presence was to be enraptured by the sheer magnetism of her person.  I know all this because when I reached my majority, she drew me in and kept me close to her bosom for more than a decade.  That was especially so in the first years of our affair, in the early 1570s.  In fact, even after I had been married-off to William Cecil’s daughter in an alliance of mutual convenience, Bess hardly let me out of her grasp.  She just sucked me dry.  We danced, we rode, we frequently dallied with one another at my secluded estate, Havering atte Bower, away from the sight of others and freed from interruptions.”

“Willy, she was so much older than you – she could have even been your own mother !”

“Peete, I believe that there were even rumours to that effect !  There were always rumours – gossip, innuendo, back-biting, scandal-mongering, and dissimulation, these were the currency of court life.  But, that was may be; I ignored them all because I knew that I was lucky that her prime coincided with my young manhood.  She might have been more than a dozen years older than me but that difference didn’t matter because I was enchanted.

But I never had her to myself, not even when she was pregnant with our child and eventually gave birth to our little love god.  She was jealous of her regality.  With Bess, there were always complications – in part due to her position atop the great chain of worldly subordination but mostly because by playing off her suitors, courtiers, and lovers against one another, she kept the element of power in her own hands.

Again, this was the way her father ruled. They both believed that they were authorized by God to be an intermediary between the divine and the secular worlds.  And, I would imagine, this belief gave them the audacity to act as if anything they did was sanctioned because their LifeOnEarth was touched with divine authority.

Peete, I can truthfully say that there was no one like her and to be able to remain in her presence throughout eternity in my own AfterLife would be just as wondrous and magical as it had been in my LifeOnEarth.  Can you now understand why I would choose her first, despite all the pleasures, complications, and pains that I endured ?”

“Yes I can.  But, Willy, you have a two more choices of eternal partners.  Any ideas ?”

 ****

St John’s College,

August, 2014

“All righty then, now that we have completed these formalities, we will have a few free hour before we meet up again at 6:30.  At that time, we will assemble in the senior common room for a formal welcome from the newly-installed Master of this College, our colleague Dr Beth Raine.   I think that Good Queen Bess would have approved that this ancient institution now has no Master, but one Mistress !

The Master’s reception is what they call here “semi-formal” – for Californians like Neddy, that means no shorts and, most definitely, no sandals without stockings. Drinks will be served and then we will all be invited to join the Mistress/Master, as it were, and a few of the College’s Fellows for dinner in the Master’s private dining room.

If I can provide you with a word of warning – don’t drink too much sherry at the Master’s reception or else you’ll be absolutely blotto for the dinner.  St John’s College is renowned for its cellar.  Some of their claret wines are premier cru from a private vineyard in the Bordeaux region, which the College has owned since the fourteenth century when it was bequeathed to us in the will of John of Gaunt, the Black Prince, who was another one of our illustrious benefactors.

In your participant’s papers, which are a part of the package you were given when you signed in, there is a map of St John’s College as well as some other local information to assist those of you have never had the great good pleasure of wandering through this miraculous collections of architectural wonders.  We will see one another at 6:30.  The intervening hours are yours.  Enjoy the sights of this most beautiful university town.  There’s truly nowhere else like it in the world.”

With that, the men and women begin to make their way out of the seminar room in twos and threes and fours.  A few stragglers are left behind and, seeing this, Professor Sir Peter Schofield gathers them together, taking responsibility to make sure that they are not left out.  He very much enjoys showing off to newcomers.  This kind of very public display of largesse gives Professor Sir Peter yet another chance to bask in Cambridge’s reflected glory.

****

Peete’s Ante-Room

“Peete, remind me again how many others.”

“Like I’ve said, you get a total of three eternal companions.  So, if Bess is your first choice, who else would you like to be with forever in AfterLife ?”

Willy was not listening.  He was deep in thought. He looked up and said, “Peete, you know that in my LifeOnEarth, I met so many interesting people that it’s going to be hard for me to choose just two others but I think that I will opt for my son, Henry Wriothesley, and Will Shaksper.”

“I can well understand that.  But before I get the administrivia finalized and send you on your way towards your own private AfterLife, can you tell me some more about this fellow Shaksper ?”

“Peete, don’t tell me that this is a mystery to you.  Don’t you know anything about my LifeOnEarth ?  You – and all subsequent generations of English people – have heard of the glover’s son, William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon.  The country lad, with illiterate parents, an illiterate wife, and illiterate children who was supposed to be the greatest playwright/poet in the English language.”

“Of  course. He is the most famous Englishman of all time.”

“Exactly !  That’s exactly the point of what I’m saying. But what if the identity of the historical William Shakespeare is a sham ?  What if this was just a cover-story to obscure the true identity of The Bard ?  Will Shaksper has been raised from the dust to the iconic status of a demi-god.  He’s a national hero.”

“What about all the records of his personal history ?”

“There are no records which connect Will Shaksper of Stratford-Upon-Avon to the plays or poetry that was later published under the name of William Shakespeare.”

“But I thought that these connections were well established.”

“Peete, do you really believe that fabricated history ?”

“Well, why shouldn’t I ?  Everyone does, don’t they ?”

“Not really.  And I have to say that I’m especially surprised that you – Peete the dispatcher – have been taken in by that invented front-story.”

“Why should I be different from the others ?”

“Well, I would have thought that you would have privileged access to truthful information.  If you look closely at Will’s personal history then you have to wonder not only how anyone could believe that fable but also – and here’s the point – why Will was chosen to act as my dumb man in the first place.”

“The information I was given states that Will Shaksper from Stratford-Upon-Avon was William Shakespeare, The Bard of Avon.”

“Well, suffice it to say that there are no records attesting to Shaksper’s school attendance, his university attendance, his work as a lawyer’s assistant, or his supposed role as either a country school-master or a servant in a noble household.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  A deafening silence.

Yet this man, Will Shaksper, is believed to have sprung from the sullen earth of Warwickshire to sing hymns at heaven’s gate.  The uneducated son of an illiterate glover, born in provincial obscurity, is supposed to have not only transformed the English language and literature but also displayed an easy familiarity with intricacies of English history, the law, medicine, diplomacy, courtly manners, philosophy, ancient literature, Renaissance Italian culture, Italian geography, military and naval affairs, as well as aristocratic manners and noble sports like hunting and falconry.  With the exception of his knowledge of rural wildlife and flowers, these were all matters that were quite beyond Will’s ken but they are all evident in Shakespeare’s written works.  So, I would imagine that a short reflection on this disparity should make it perfectly clear that the assumed-identity of William Shakespeare is an elaborate ruse, a fiction.”

“I never looked at this in that way ?”

“Peete, you were hardly the only one who was taken in by our subterfuge.  Will Shaksper was chosen to be a front man – for me.  The key point of confusion was that his name – “Shaksper” or “Shagsper” or “Shaxper” – seemed to be identical to the poet’s name, “Shakespeare” or “Shake-speare”.  Insiders knew this identity was chosen to put the ignorant outsiders off the scent.  It was a deceptively-simple strategy.  Will’s name, Shaksper, was pronounced with a “short a” – as in “bat” – whereas the pseudonym, Shakespeare, was pronounced with a “long a” – as in “bay”.  Yet most people have uncritically believed that “Shaksper” is interchangeable with “Shakespeare” because they have not understood that this was a distinction with a difference.”

“You mean to say that the key to the deception was in this little detail ?”

“That’s right.  That’s exactly right !  That’s exactly what I mean to say.  It was a distinction with a difference.  It was a difference that was hidden in plain sight.  I got what I needed, a dumb-man – a front – whose public face would keep my identity as the poet and playwright hidden outside the inner circle of the court.  Those on the inside all knew that it was me, Willy de Vere, who was the poet and playwright but they were effectively sworn to secrecy.  It was an open secret because even though everyone who was anyone knew about it, no one talked about it.”

“Willy, I’m really confused by this.  Why was there a need to hide your identity ?”

“Because I was too closely involved in the court and many of my plots and characters had clear references to important people.”

“You mean to say that it was like telling tales out of school.”

“Exactly !  Yet there were the literary allusions that made this artificial name seem just right to obscure my identity.  As early as 1578, I was addressed in a formal prouncement before the whole court as a man whose countenance “shakes speares”.  My own crest as Viscount Bolbec depicted a lion holding a broken, shaking spear. But, even more than that, this choice for my front-man’s name was an insider-reference that would be understandable to those cognoscenti who were conversant with the symbolic meanings of classical iconography.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“The Greek goddess, Pallas Athena, patroness of the arts, was always depicted as wearing a helmet and holding a spear.  Classically-educated insiders knew that the helmet made her invisible while the spear was an obvious reference to my own position as the Queen’s foremost jousting champion.  In my last triumph at the tiltyard in 1581, I had chosen to present myself as the Knight of the Sun Tree – and everyone on the inside knew that the Sun Tree represented Bess herself.”

“But how did you happen to choose Will Shaksper of Stratford-Upon-Avon ?”

“Peete, there is more complexity to this story than you can imagine !”

“What do you mean by that ?”

“Amazingly – and quite coincidentally – I learned that Will Shaksper of Stratford-Upon-Avon was my distant kinsman, through our mother’s mother’s lines.”

“I am amazed but I don’t see why that is relevant to my question.”

“It was not directly relevant, to be sure.  Our distant kinship was neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for selecting him but this coincidental relationship had come to my attention a few months before Will entered my company.  I first met him in Stratford-Upon-Avon in January, 1585.  That was when I was living away from the court at my Warwickshire manor house in Billesley, near Stratford.  He was a vivacious lad who was eager to please, in all ways.

A few months later, Will left Stratford to join my company of players.  He quickly found a niche as a jack-of-all-trades.  He was always on the look-out to turn a trick and make a shilling.  A few years later, when I needed to conceal my identity behind a front-man, we enlisted another one of my servants, Henry Chettle, to lay the groundwork for our scheme.  He did this with “Greene’s Groat’s-Worth of Wit which gave readers the false impression that it was written by another one of my retainers, Robert Greene, as a sort of death-bed truth-telling.  As I mentioned a few moments ago, Chettlee made a clever word-play on my assumed literary pseudonym – “Shake-speare” – and Will’s surname by referring to him as a “shake scene” who had “a tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide” which seemed to connect witll to the writer of my player Henry VI, part 3, in which Queen Margaret – called the “She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France/ Whose tongue more poisons than the adder’s tooth!” (I, iv, 111-112.) is castigated with the famous line “Oh, tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide”.(I, iv, 137)

This little piece of word-play is how Will Shaksper of Stratford, a boy of humble origins and no education, was designated as the public face of Willy de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford.  The choice seems to have been successful at the time and references to “Shakespeare” were always made to an author, but never specifically to Will Shaksper of Stratford.  And, vice versa.

“What do you mean ?”

“In our time, during our LifeOnEarth, Will Shaksper had grown up as a bankrupt’s son but became a man of property, a money-lender, and a brogger of malt, wool, and animal skins.   How did this happen ?  In exchange for lending himself to this little subterfuge, Will collected what we called a back-hander, in cash of course.  Will Shaksper became my dumb man.  Powerful people made sure that his suit to the Company of Heralds was accepted even though it was based on patently-trivial evidence.  He got what he wanted – money and a rehabilitated reputation for his family.”

“I see it more clearly now.  And I would hazard a guess that your third choice – Henry Wriothesley – would be pretty much a foregone conclusion.”

“Without a shadow of a doubt.  Henry Wriothesley grew up apart from me but he was never distant from me.  He was the child that Bess bore in September, 1573, who had been immediately removed from the royal presence and given over to the wife of the Second Earl of Southampton to raise as her own child.  This, too, was a fabrication.  The putative-father had been imprisoned in the Tower since 1571 for his involvement in plotting against the crown.  Moreover, Lord Southampton was kept close-confined there, in The Tower, until May, 1573.  He was not allowed conjugal visits.  Therefore, it stretches credulity to believe that he had sired the baby who was to be raised as his own son and heir.  Five-months’ babies simply did not survive in our time.  Poor sanitation and incompetent – dangerously incompetent – medical practices led to shocking rates of infant mortality.”

“OK, I can now understand how the baby’s identity was changed but I don’t really understand why Queen Elizabeth would do that.”

“Admitting maternity would have fatally undermined the fiction that she was a virgin – the latter-day “Virgin Queen”.  Right to the end, she refused to share center-stage.  Like I’ve said before, this attitude was bred in the bone because, like her father before her, she had to be the cynosure, the center of everyone’s attention.  Our little boy kept his noble status but lost his claim to be King Henry IX.  Bess could not bear to have a rival – not even her own son !  So, my darling baby boy became a changeling

I was commanded to keep silent about this relationship but, as things fell out, Henry Wriothesley was orphaned young when his putative-parents died.  In 1587, Henry became one of the Queen’s noble wards and was taken up by – who else ? – William Cecil.  Of course, the old man duly bilked him and fleeced his estate but Henry’s period of wardship resulted in something of an unexpected consequence for me.  My three daughters – and their mother – had been long-since been removed from our marital home to live in William Cecil’s household, with their grandparents always in close control over them.  So, having a reason to visit the Cecil household to see my daughters, I also had many occasions to encounter young Henry.”

“Did you became close to Henry at that time ?”

“No, not really.  We were very different.  Although, like me before him, Henry would take every opportunity to escape Cecil House, clambering over the back wall under the cover of darkness.  He often visited me at my house, Fisher’s Folly, outside the city walls but no more than a mile away from Cecil House.  My house was always filled with the comings-and-goings of gay young men who were involved in the theatrical world.  Henry palled around with Will and some of the actors.  Don’t forget, Peete, in the late 1580s I was a man of almost two-score years and Henry was just a kid.”

“I see.  So would it be fair to say that, at that time, your relations with Henry were rather more avuncular than parental.”

“That is fair to say.  I don’t think he ever knew – or suspected – his true parentage during his LifeOnEarth.  Besides, he was more concerned with his rebellion against William Cecil’s close controls.  Unfortunately, as he grew older, he slowly gravitated away from the actors at Fisher’s Folly and into the circle of young nobles surrounding Robert Devereux, the charismatic Earl of Essex, who was Bess’ last favourite.

It was just shambolic to see this sixty year-old woman act like a coquette in his presence, cooing at Essex’s nauseously-disingenuous compliments.  Her behaviour with Robin Dudley, was repeated tragically with me but farcically with Robert Devereux.  The fact that Robert Devereux was Robin Dudley’s step-son just added a quasi-incestuous whiff to it all.  But, of course, Bess was the sovereign.  She could end your life at the snap of her fingers so most courtiers communicated their disgust in muffled whispers and arched eye-brows.

In this situation, Henry Wriothesley was simply out of his depth.   He was a lovely boy but deep-down, he was shallow.  Henry inherited none of his mother’s cunning intelligence nor my own literary abilities.  In point of fact, Henry had been a terrible student – something of a dreamer, really.  He couldn’t – or wouldn’t – pay attention to his lessons.  Not surprisingly – looking at those times in retrospect – it seems all too predictable that he pinned his hopes on the fantasies of Robert Devereux.  Henry just would not listen to my advice.  Wary of Essex’ kinship with Leicester, I counseled caution in Henry’s attachment to his cause.  I believed that young Essex had rather too much of the Dudleys’ untrammeled ambition about him,

In 1601, my worst fears were realized when Henry joined Essex’ futile rebellion.  They were easily outmanoeuvred by Robert Cecil who had succeeded his father as the Queen’s principal servant.  Robert Devereux paid for his headstrong recklessness with his head.  Henry was sentenced to suffer the same fate but, with Robbie Cecil’s assistance, I was able to call on some vestige of maternal sentiment in Bess so that she merely kept him close-confined in The Tower for the remainder of her own LifeOnEarth.”

“From what you have said, Willy, I can completely understand your enduring attachment to Bess and Henry.  However, I am more than a little confused that you would choose Will Shaksper to be your third companion in AfterLife.”

“Oh ?”

“That’s right.  In comparison to the other two, your relationship with Will Shaksper seems to be – well, almost ordinary.”

“Peete, Will was a truly charming lad.  Of course, we were intimate because that was how older men acted with their acolytes during the time of my LifeOnEarth.  But that hardly goes towards an explanation of my attraction for him.”

“OK, so tell me a bit more.”

“I’ll try to do that.  Aren’t you rushed for time ?”

“Willy, it’s like I told you before, the others can wait.  They’re lost in ‘cryogenia’ and have no sense of space or time.  When they come before me here in the dispatching office, they will be as confused as you were about the interval since their LifeOnEarth ended.”

“Fine.  Let me try to explain my motivation to be in Will’s company.

Will might have been the third wheel in my emotional LifeOnEarth, but in our time together he pierced my heart and imprinted himself on my soul.”

“Of course.  That would stand to reason.”

“Now, about Will.  You asked why I would want to be with him in AferLife.  I think that’s what you want me to tell you, isn’t that so ?”

“Indeed, it is.”

“It’s hard to put into words but let me give it a try.  Here goes.  My choice of Will Shaksper is because of something more than the memory of loves’ labours won – or lost.  We were just bonded with one another.

In truth, it was like that from the day we met.  Calling this attachment love at first sight would be a glib, hackneyed cliché.  I certainly didn’t expect to have my rawest emotions touched by an uneducated commoner on that day in Stratford.  But that’s exactly what happened.”

“How do you make sense of that experience ?”

“Like I just said, I can’t.  When I first met young Will Shaksper, I felt an attraction for him that took me quite completely by surprise.  There’s not much more I can add to that.  Indeed, I mulled over that experience for years but it always seemed to defy logic and proportion.  I was thunderstruck.  Honestly, Peete, that’s all there is to it.  Beyond that simple statement, I am pretty much lost for words.”

“I can see that.  It’s something extraordinary for you to be lost for words since you contributed so much to the English language.”

“It just was what it was.”

“Let’s move along then, shall we ?”

“Yes, what’s next ?”

“Goodbye for now, Willy.”