SHAXSPER

Chapter 2:                        HIDDEN BEFORE HISTORY

Willy’s AfterLife

Willy has now been joined by his trio of specially-chosen companions: Bess, Henry Wriothesley, and Will Shaksper.

Will is noticeably ill-at-ease in this company.  He sidles up to Willy and pulls him off to the side.

“What am I doing here ?”

Willy, nonchalantly answers:

“It’s my AfterLife and the four of us are going to be together forever.   I think it might actually be quite fun. You had better get used to it.”

Will is completely unimpressed and slides away trying to make himself small.  But that is just hopeless because Bess immediately takes over the encounter, speaking imperiously towards him.

“You ?  Who are you ?  And what are you doing here ? You don’t seem to belong with us ?

“Yes, your highness, that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

Willy stops this conversation by immediately interposing himself.

“Hold on a second here.  This is my AfterLife.  Here and now, it’s all about me.  Do you understand that ?”

Bess, somewhat miffed replies,

“Your ……. AfterLife ?  What are you talking about Willy ?  Everything is always about me; I am after all your sovreign monarch, anointed by God himself.”

“Not anymore, Bess.  That was then, this is now.  Here and now, in my AfterLife, we don’t go in for that hierarchical business.  My AfterLife doesn’t have got a great chain of subordination.  Here, we’re all equals.”

“What !”  Bess is gobsmacked. “I’ve never heard such foolishness.  I was selected by Great God Almighty !”

“That’s as maybe, Bess.  But we’re not there anymore.  Here, it’s not pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die.  Now, we’re on my AfterLife – and it’s all about me.”

“Well, this is all very strange.  What is this AfterLife, Willy ?”

“I also want to know more about this funny-business.”

“You’ve been chosen by me to be my companions in AfterLife.  Let me try to tell you what I know since it’s strange to me, too.  It seems to be like this.  After I became DeadOnEarth, my essence had been kept in a place called “cryogenia”.  Then, after an indeterminate time, I suddenly appeared before a man called Peete.  He told me that he had been “waiting for me”; that I was on the list in his appointment calendar.  He didn’t tell me where I was nor did he tell me how much time had passed since I died.  In fact, I didn’t think to ask him because I was too busy answering his questions about setting up my own AfterLife.”

Bess, Henry, and Will spoke in unison, “Tell us more, please.”

“Of course I will but you have to keep an open mind about this.  Let me try to reconstruct what Peete said to me.  It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes and you will then know what I’ve been told.  OK ?”

“Absolutely” they replied, as if speaking in one voice.

“First, Peete said that the most important thing I needed to understand was that I had to put aside what I had been told about life-after-death when I was alive because it was only partially true.  Then, he told me that I was DeadOnEarth and had moved on to a new life-form which would be nothing like what Christian divines had told us about during our LifeOnEarth. Nevertheless, he told me that what I had learned about AfterLife was partially true.  We are are going to be here forever BUT – and pay really close attention to this point – AfterLife is not a time or a place.  Rather, it’s an alternative state of consciousness.  In AfterLife, you are quite literally disembodied.”

This last statement brought some quizzical looks from the trio, who began fumbling about themselves and were amazed to discover that their “bodies” had no corporeality.

Willy continued, “Peete told me that in AfterLife, I would not be alone because I would decide on three people with whom I was going to spend eternity.”

Henry interjected, “You mean to say that we are going to be here forever, together.  And that you have chosen the others who are going to be here with me. ?”

“No, that’s close but not quite right.  You – and Bess and Will – will be together in my own private AfterLife.  Your AfterLife – or Will’s or Bess’ – might be different.  That will be your choice, a choice that you will have to make when you come to meet your dispatcher.  It’s all pretty weird, eh ?”

The trio nods.  They are uncomfortable but, slowly, they are beginning to come to terms with this strange new state of being.  So, Willy continues,

“Peete told me that my own private AfterLife is a form of self-fashioning.  Peete said that “It’s not just that “it is what it is”, so much as it will always be what you want it to be.”  And, then he completely threw me for a loop by saying that AfterLife cannot be understood in relation to our own ideas concerning time and space.  Needless to say, this just astounded me.  But then he quickly brought my feet back on the ground.  He told me that instead of trying to make sense of it in terms which I understood I was alive down there/back then, I had to abandon those ideas and just listen closely to him so that I could come to terms with this new, permanent reality.  Are you OK, with that ?”

The trio are dumbfounded, but they nod in agreement.  So, Willy continues,

“At this point, I was overwhelmed and realized that I had to completely submit to Peete’s direction. Very quickly, he had cowed me into submission with his authority because I had lost my bearings in much the same way that you have lost yours.  This was not my stage. He had exercised his authority and mastery.  It was an easy thing for him to do because Peete had done it countless times before.  The three of you are in much the same state of deference to me as I was to him.  And, because of your uncertainty about these surroundings, you need to do what I tell you in order to accommodate yourselves to this new situation.”

Bess is a bit reluctant to comply and wonders out loud, “What about my sacred regality ?”

Willy just laughs weakly and replies, “Bess, that was then and this is now.  And you have to live in TheNow.”

“I’m not sure I like this but do I have any choice ?”

“Bess, you will have a choice when you get to choose your three companions in your AfterLife.  But now it’s all about me and my AfterLife.  I think that we can all make sense of this situation by understanding that we are now in alternative AND parallel state of being.  This one – what I just called TheNow – is a circumstance of my choosing.”

“I think I’m beginning to comprehend our situation now” said Bess, rather half-heartedly.

The two men nod.  They are both now acquiescent in what seems like an unalterable fate.

Henry speaks for the second time.  “This pleases me very much.  Because you both had enormous influence on me during my LifeOnEarth. Will was my most intimate friend, companion, and soul-mate during that difficult stage of youth, between childhood and full manhood.  Indeed, I think if I understand this matter, I would have chosen the three of you to be my companions in my own private AfterLife.  But, I understand, that that’s a different matter – another story, so to speak.”

“That’s right.”

Now it falls to Will to make his own remarks, on his own behalf.  He began hesitantly,

“I find it difficult, Cousin Willy, to approach the three of you on equal terms.”

Bess interjected, “Wait just a second, here, boy. What’s this about “Cousin Willy” ?”

“It’s a long story.  But since we have an eternity together it might be a good place to start our reminiscences.

***

St John’s College,

Wednesday morning

Two dozen academics around the table shuffled their papers. A few whisper in brief conversation with the person sitting beside him/her.  They are all waiting for Professor Sir Peter Schofield to begin the first session.  They didn’t have to wait long because he immediately taps the table with his pencil – this is his customary method of getting attention – and, when the whispering stops, he begins.

“So glad that you have all recovered from last night’s splendid feast. As advertised, the college claret was very, very good.  The fellowship, too, was quite wonderful.  We have a lot to live up to in our formal seminars.

Our first session will consider the connections between Edward de Vere, the Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, and Will Shaksper, the Stratford glover’s son.  Professor Henry Marley will present a short overview of his argument.  So, Professor Marley, please proceed.”

A short, rumpled man with a balding head rises on the window-side of the room.  He turns to the Chair, seated at the head of the large table, and begins:

“What a very great pleasure it is for me to be given the honour to be the first in the firing line !  I expect that my argument has been provocative, upsetting those previously-held claims and opening the door to new interpretations of “Shakespeare’s Works”.”

When he said “Shakespeare’s Works”, Marley makes a big commotion with his hands to indicate that he means that this should be understood to be in italics, as if they very notion that “William Shakespeare” could have been the author of the poems, sonnets, and plays could only be held by a person who is unfamiliar with recent scholarship.  It is  scholarly irony mocking such a person’s naivety.

“Recent geneaological research into the Trussel family of the West Midlands has opened up an extremely provocative argument concerning the genealogical connections between Edward de Vere and Will Shaksper.  As you all know from reading my internet-circulated paper, this kind of kinship connection was not unexpected in a time of bastard feudalism, with its local clan networks and ramified, radiating loyalties.

I need to start this story with a brief digression because you probably didn’t know but on Edward de Vere’s birth-mother’s side, he was descended from the Trussels, who were a wealthy West Midlands family.  His mother’s parents had their principal residence at Cublesdon, Staffordshire. Elizabeth Trussel married Edward de Vere’s grandfather, the fifteenth Earl of Oxford.  The fifteenth Earl was the Lord Great Chamberlain of England, and in this capacity he had carried the crown at Anne Boleyn’s marriage to King Henry VIII.

“Marrying down” was the usual aristocratic ploy of marrying money to keep the lineage intact and solvent.  Elizabeth Trussel brought both cash and manors into the de Vere family’s estate.  Most germane to our story is that Elizabeth Trussel’s dowry included the manors of Billesley and Bilton, both of which are located in Warwickshire, in the vicinity of Stratford-Upon-Avon.

Let me continue to bring the story full circle. Will Shaksper’s family were commoners; his father was a glover, his mother was the daughter of a peasant.  There were people of that name – variously spelled “Shagsper”, “Shaksper”, “Shaxper”, and so on – in all the local document from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  It was an unusual but not uncommon name in Warwickshire and Staffordshire.  But the real point of intersection relates to Will Shaksper’s mother’s family who everyone assumes had been called “Arden” back to the beginning of time.  But this was not so.  Or, to be more precise, the family name was “Arden” only through the male line. In the female line, there were all sorts of branches that defy easy genealogical description

If you follow Will Shaksper’s mother’s line then you will find that it seems to intersect with Edward de Vere’s mother’s line.  Mary Shaksper was the daughter of Robert Arden, a Warwickshire yeoman who came from the cadet line of a family which had the right to bear arms. But it’s not Will’s mother’s father’s family-line that concerns us here.  More to the point, it is her mother’s mother’s line of descent.  If we ask the pertinent question about her mother’s mother then it would seem relevant that nineteenth-century antiquarians were told by Stratford natives that she was a member of the Trussels, the same family which had its local headquarters in Billesley.

I don’t think that Edward de Vere’s grandmother and Will Shaksper’s grandmother were one-and-the-same person.  There is a generational disjunction and, in fact, I think that the common ancestor was located two or three or maybe even four generations further back, in the murky depths of time back before written records.  That being said, here’s the rub, they belonged to the same clan-network.  In rural England in those days of plague and civil wars, these extended clan networks were often called upon for assistance in times of difficulty.  Now, we can see these genealogical connections in a proper perspective.”

Professor Marley is now finishing his presentation.  He did so by drawing his genealogical arguments to a fine point.

“It was only when Henry VIII was on the throne that parish priests in the Church of England were commanded to make lists of all baptisms, burials, and marriages celebrated in the church.  These records are by no means comprehensive since only a few parishes have unbroken records.  And, of course, before 1538, there were no systematic written records.  Before the advent of what has been called “artificial memory”, older men and women preserved family memory, so the memories held by the family’s elders were like the family’s archive.  In the local documents – but even more-so in the folklore and legends that were collected by antiquarians and amateur historians during the Victorian craze for local history – we have another form of historical information that might shed light on obscure, undocumented associations and relationships.  Many families’ histories were passed on by word of mouth.  It was only among the very highest ranks in society that archives can be combed for written records.  But even these landed-family archives are significantly less useful to the genealogist than the parish registers because they only noted people who lived long enough to become part of the family’s property-holding arrangements.  Indeed, these earlier documents are concerned with property management and not genealogy, except insofar as they trace inheritance through the male line.

As I’ve been at pains to indicate, genealogical studies which are limited to the male line are as misleading as they are incomplete.  They give a false sense of knowledge-security.  And they bring to mind the old historiographer’s chestnut about “absence of evidence, not being evidence of absence“.  For the modern, document-based historical study, we will never have the necessary evidence to plumb the depths nor traverse the breadth of these networks of affiliation.  This kind of evidence leaves us with something like a penumbral zone of uncertainty with regard to the wider kinship ties that connected men as widely distant on the social scale as Edward de Vere and Will Shaksper.  But, as I have indicated in my written text, all is not lost to us if we follow the lead of Professor Carlo Ginzburg, the Italian historian of renaissance mentalities and symbolic meanings.  For problems like this, Professor Ginzburg urges on us a conjectural mode of analysis.  Rather like Conan Doyle’s detective, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Ginzburg  encourages us to reach beyond the degree-zero of historical documentation.  The conjectural approach would have us pause and reflect on a Holmesian history of possibility, eliminating the impossible and then sorting through whatever remains, however improbable, to look for a contingent field of forces within which something like the truth might have resided.  So, I submit, we should think hard about these traces of connection which seem to connect Edward de Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, and the Stratford commoner, Will Shaksper through their mutual Trussel ancestors.”
***

Willy’s AfterLife

“See, Will, someone has finally sussed how we were related to one another.”

“That’s right, Cousin Willy.  I remember talking with my parents about this years before your players put on that skit in Stratford’s marketplace.  My mother’s mother was then living with us and when the local word-of-mouth reached her that you were again resident at Billesley Manor, she began to natter a fair bit about her own mother’s family connections.

At that time, sur-names were only beginning to become stabilized and many people were also known by nick-names or aliases.  So my grandmother’s family had been known as both “Trussel” and also “Cublesdon”, for their Staffordshire place of residence.  Nanny told us that they were not long-time residents of Cublesdon.  She seemed to recall fireside chats, which took place long before when she was just a girl, about earlier generations of ancestors lived in the neighbourhood of Stratford.  But, the break-up of serfdom meant that peasants ran away in all directions because in that time of civil war and plague, landlords were just happy to have someone to work their land so that it was in what they called “good heart”, by keeping the weeds at bay.”

Bess had sat by listening to this exchange but now she has a hard time keeping silent so she decides to have her own say.

“Back in the time of the Wars of the Roses, all the noble families were short of money.  Our manors were nearly worthless and the peasantry could not be kept on the land – without peasants to work the land, it was just so much dirt.  Many of my own forebears were Lancastrians and while the Yorkists held sway, the Tudors were close to being bankrupt.  Only changing fortune – and several judicious marriages – kept us afloat.  Lots of our kinsmen were not so lucky and they just disappeared into the dung hill of history before we finally gained the upper hand in 1485.”

“That’s quite right, Bess.” Willy went on, “My family had had a hard ride through these bumps of time, too.  The previous century was a time of real jeopardy for the de Veres but, like the Tudors, we came out of those parlous days on the winning side.  Of course, it was your own family which was the big winner but I won’t let you forget that it was my predecessor who was instrumental in helping the Tudors defeat the vile Richard of Gloucester on the battlefield outside Market Bosworth in Leicestershire.”

“I know all about that.  Your father told my father that story about the noble services proffered by the Thirteenth Earl whenever they were together, in their cups.”

“Of course, they were often drunk as lords but that doesn’t make what they had to say any less true.  And in my play, you will remember that it was the thirteenth Earl of Oxford who brokered the marriage between the daughter of the last Yorkist king and your grandfather.  So, the white and red roses were united.”

Henry is feeling left out.  He is irritated by this self-indulgence: “C’mon you two, let’s quit playing at this “mine is bigger than yours” game.  I want Will to tell me some more about this Trussel connection.  Isn’t that why Will has been selected to join us here in Willy’s AfterLife ?”

“Quite right, Henry.  Bess and I have not let Will finish his story.”

“Willy, do you want me to tell you all that I remember ?”

“Of course, we’re going to be here for eternity.  And, besides, I’m sure that both Bess and Henry want to hear about your memories, too.”

“Like I was saying, my grandmother – my mother’s mother – lived with us when I was a small boy.  She always had the place closest to the fireside because she was always cold.  Old people in LifeOnEarth seem to feel the cold more – or perhaps they just complained more about it.  I do seem to recall that there were real winters in my boyhood.  Those wattle-covered cottages were draughty and damp.  From her place beside the fire, old Nanny Arden, would tell us about her own childhood memories.  She died when I was just eight – in 1572 – but she was then about seventy so her childhood took place in the reign of Bess’ grandfather, King Henry VII.

Nanny Arden was born into a branch of the Trussel family which was then resident in south Staffordshire.  She told me that her parents were peasants, working land they held by copyhold in the village of Cublesdon.  Her great grand-parents had been serfs, living in and around Cublesdon holding land and owing labour duties to the lord of the manor.  Apparently most of the younger sons and daughters had simply vanished from the local family network to seek their fortunes elsewhere because the best manorial tenancies were limited in number.  After the Black Death and the ensuing plague visitations, and especially in the confusion of the fifteenth century – when your grandparents were fighting each other to determine who would get to lord it over my forebears because they would be the biggest landlord of all – my forebears lived on the land, scattered among a number of villages on both sides of the Staffordshire/Warwickshire border.

My Nanny Arden told me that one of her grandmothers had been the Doll Tearsheet of a fine country gentleman.  At the time, I had no idea what she meant by that name – “Doll Tearsheet” – but I later came to realize that this young girl had been seduced into a life of concubinage by a gentleman.  Nanny’s grandmother had been a servant in that man’s father’s house.  When the youngsters had a baby together, it was taken into that rich man’s household and raised as though it was a direct, blood descendant.  This must have been at some time in the second quarter of the fifteenth century when the recurrent plague epidemics were mainly killing off children.  In those conditions, I suppose that it was always uncertain whether or not a gentle family could reproduce itself in the male line.

This boy-child was therefore valuable because it represented a kind of insurance policy in terms of generational inheritance of the Trussel’s bloodline.  So, as was the case with many country families, the lines of ancestry were not only blurred but also inter-twined.  The line that led down to me came from the same original root-stock as that which had branched off to become the Lords of the Manor of Billesley and Bilton, the gentle Trussels.”

Willy is stroking is chin.  Will’s story is providing him with rich food-for-thought.  “I’m having some trouble trying to follow this, Will.  Are you telling us that the common ancestor we shared leads back to a seducer and that that seducer’s baby was a changeling who was raised in the Trussel family household even though he was illegitimate.”

Bess starts to chuckle.

Willy turns towards her, looking quizzically.  “What’s the reason for your amusement with my family tree ?”

Bess just exploded in a gale of laughter.  “Oh, Willy, don’t you see ?  Don’t you see that this is a story like our own love story, only taking place in quite different circumstances. ?”

Willy stopped, and then he burst out loud, “Yes, yes, yes !  The more things changed the more they stayed the same.  Illicit love affairs between social unequals, changeling babies, and shifting identities.  It’s as if the same story just repeated itself down the ages but with unpredictable consequences each time.  And, I spent much of my adult LifeOnEarth telling and re-telling that story without ever realizing that that was what I was doing.  Oh, my, what fun !  What crazy, naughty fun.  How silly we mortals were.  What fools we were.”

Bess begins to re-compose herself, “WillyBoy. This is just too, too much.”

Will now feels somewhat more comfortable in the presence of Bess.  Emboldened, he now speaks without being spoken to. “Yes, that’s what I believe Nanny Arden was telling me.  Of course, she had no idea of what that story would mean or how it would be re-told.  In fact, I’m not sure whether anyone really believed her – I’m quite sure my father didn’t.”

“Why do you say that, Will ?”

“Let me tell you why, Willy.  The day before we went to the marketplace to watch your players perform, my father and I had had a major set-to.  He had no money and he owed debts to sundry persons.  I was a complete failure in his eyes.  Not only did I do lousy work in both preparing the leather and seaming it into gloves, but I had brought a wife and three babies into the family household thereby burdening it with massive new expenses.  Plus, I was still a kid – I had at that time only just turned twenty-one and still had wild oats to sow.

If truth be told, I was a burden on the family because I could not settle down into a life of small-town respectability.  I felt confined and trapped.  He knew that and he knew that I would never grow up unless I was able to expand my experiences before settling down at home.  My dad was shrewd like that.  Anyhow, he concocted a plan with me to try and inveigle me into your service.”

“Dammit, that John Shaksper was a sly devil.  You mean to say that when your father approached me in Stratford, he had already planned to shift you into my company ?  Did he also expect me to pay him for that, too ?”

“Yes, Willy, all the countryside knew that you and your money could easily be parted.”

Bess cracks up again.  So does Henry.  And, now Willy joined in because he always enjoys laughing – even when it’s at his own expense.  Willy is not the kind of man who feels he is above mockery; quite the opposite.  He actually enjoys being the butt of humour; it feeds his need to be noticed and, in a strange way, it makes him feel like he is being appreciated for his open-ness among friends and admired for his lack of pomposity.

This was always a fine line in Willy’s LifeOnEarth because he could also stand on a point of privilege if the occasion – or his humour – demanded it.  Sir Phillip Sidney had crossed that line and was smacked down for his impertinence but it was more usual that Willy’s fickleness – well, really, it was unpredictability – confused other people because he really never gave a tup-penny damn about anyone else so it never bothered him in the least.

“Will, you worked yourself into my company under false pretences ?”

“No, that’s not really true.  I was a pain-in-the-arse in my father’s home and I was always running away to fairs and market-day entertainments.  But, most importantly, I really did harbour a suspicion that we were distantly related.  Of course, there was no way for us – or you – to prove it because by that time Nanny Arden was long-since dead and we only knew about this connection as a result of her memory of stories she had heard decades before.  My father was skeptical of everything his mother-in-law said but, in this instance, it was music to his ears.

In fact, now I seem to remember that it was when the neighbours gossiped about the news of your first arrival at Billesley – it must have been more than fifteen years before you and I first met on that spring day in 1585 – Nanny Arden had been roundly scoffed at for putting-on airs because she had claimed that “his young lordship was coming back to rejoin his proper kinfolk”.  She was mocked mercilessly by some of the other old women at the wash-house but she wouldn’t give up her claims.

Yessss – yes, of course, now I remember that it was after that squabble with the other old crones, that she became especially vocal when we had gathered around the fire that night to eat our bowl of pottage.  It’s marvelously strange how these memories get hidden in the recesses of one’s mind.  Hidden from view.  Silent, but not-quite-forgotten.  The Trussel connection seems to have been a very real possibility although the key point was that you believed it to be so.”

***

The marketplace in Stratford-Upon-Avon,

May, 1585

Banging drums, rasping washboards, piping flutes, and trilling horns announce to all that The Queen’s Men have come into town.

Following the dozen players and their wagon, led by a pair of dray horses, is a gaggle of street urchins. The Queen’s Men are dressed in kaleidoscopic, patched garments, flowing with ribbons.  A few-score yards behind the main group walks Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford.  He is their impresario and these players have been staying at his Billesley manor house, a few miles downstream from Stratford.  Unlike his men, Willy is dressed in the manner of a courtier – snow-white hose with puffy, velvet pantaloons.  His elaborately-embroidered smock is fringed with a white, lace ruff.  His jaunty hat is worn aslant in the manner of Titian’s Adonis – it is a bonnet that partially hides his happy brow.

Reaching the marketplace, the players begin to assemble an impromptu stage.  They do this by dragging all sort of planks and trestles from inside the wagon while they prop up a painted, pastoral scene behind their platform.  While this bricolage is creating the setting for their theatrical traffic, one of the clownish players is amusing the crowd by juggling to the accompaniment of his collaborator who is playing a dizzy tune on a big bassoon.

The noise and activity of the players serves its purpose – the business of marketing comes to a standstill.  The workshops of the local carpenter, builder, weaver, tailor, whittawer, and all the other tradesmen empty into the adjoining street.  The local public house’s patrons wander out of doors and blink in the noon-day light.  The first youth to station himself in front of the crowd of gawping locals is the son of the a local glover, John Shaksper, who had been enjoying a pint of AvonBrew Bitter, the speciality of the brewer at the Bottom’s Up.

An expectant hum of conversation runs through the assembled throng.  Not much happens in Stratford-Upon-Avon so this is an event of great local excitement.  The townspeople are expecting something out of the ordinary for a few days, ever since word got out that the Earl of Oxford has once again taken up residence at Billesley.  The Earl is known by sight by all the locals – not just because of his resplendent clothing but also because of his open-handed generosity.  Like most nobles and gentlemen, he is slow to pay his bills to the local tradesmen but quick to retain their loyalty through his expenditures.

The last time the Earl was locally resident, he had come into town with a gaggle of young men in tow.  That group, led by the Earl himself, marched right into the Bottom’s Up, ordered drinks all around and stayed for several hours of raucous entertainment.  When it was time to leave, the Earl reached into his purse and flipped Bottom himself a gold sovereign and told him to keep the change.  Acts of noblesse like that are not soon forgotten – indeed, they are continuously magnified in the telling and re-telling.

When the Earl steps onto the platform the conversations stops.  He raises his right hand and the sound of silence fills the town’s market square.  Then, he begins to talk:

“My fellows – and, of course, my ladies – it is good to be among my people again.  I salute with my right hand, begloved in the finest, English kid-leather from the workshop of John Shaksper.  It is good to be back in my home country, next to the Forest of Arden.  As you can see, I have brought my players – The Queen’s Men – to provide you with some diversionary entertainment.  I have to tell you that these men are the finest actors in the realm but the play they will perform for you today is a work-in-progress.  In fact, the ink is barely dry on their play-sheets !

The inspiration for this new work comes from my man, Thomas Lodge.  Where are you, Thomas ? – there he is, hiding behind the wagon-horses.  Come forward Master Lodge and accept a good Stratford welcome from the townspeople.  Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, the muse to whom I am indebted for the idea which I have given some Italianate twists and turns while re-writing Master Thomas’ original idea and putting it into a local context.

Our version of Master Lodge’s story takes place in the Forest of Arden, where the broken-down, lovelorn Jack – a failed courtier now lives in his own dream-world.  Jack has been sent away from the court with his servant, Goodfellow.  They live together as exiles in a permanent, enchanted night-time place.  Our action begins in the midsummer hours of dusk.  The fairies are about and these men’s thoughts get strangely jumbled together into new, unexpected compounds.  Jack begins to reminisce about his lost-love RosaLinda who has come to him in his dreams dressed as a centaur.”

The Earl stops here and tells the expectant crowd that if they wait a minute longer, they too can join with the enchanted dreamer in the nearby Forest of Arden.  With that, he steps off the stage and his place is taken by two actors.  The taller one, dressed like a bedraggled lord turns and speaks to his companion, looking directly at the assembled crowd:

“My Goodfellow, I have just awoken from a dream that was wondrous and strange.  It seems to have been beyond my wit to dream it.  So strange it was that the mind of man could not touch it nor could the ear of man see it plain.  My tongue cannot write down this rare vision, nor could my nose hear it.”

The crowd gasps at these illogical statements and looks expectantly at the stage.  These first lines catches them in the fantasy of the dreamer’s dream.

***

St John’s College,

Wednesday morning (continued)

Professor Sir Peter Schofield rises amidst the sound of clapping hands.

“Astonishing ! Simply astonishing. These revelations make for a tremendous start to our proceedings.”

Turning to the speaker, “Henry, you have outdone yourself.  Your contribution opens up a whole new arena of research on a topic that had hardly been hitherto considered.  Before we take our scheduled break for morning coffee, we will next have responses from Louise Davis and Geoff Dunbar.”  Turning toward Professors Davis and Dunbar, he asks, “Do you propose to talk in that order ?”

Louise Davis stands up and answers, “Yes, Professor Sir Peter, we have agreed that I will go first.”

Professor Davis was in her late forties, she was dressed in that no-nonsense, business-like fashion which female academics often choose after they broke through the glass ceiling, in contrast to the frumpy older male colleagues who often dressed themselves in a crumpled jacket or the young turks who expressed their imagined plebeian solidarity by wearing denim blue-jeans and work-boots.  Davis’ power-dressing is in keeping with her post-feminist self-confidence.

“Geoff and I have agreed on a division of responsibility.  I will go first and draw our attention to the implications of Henry’s argument for students of the evergreen subject of “Shakespeare’s Lost Years”.  Geoff’s response will be concerned with the documentary complications of male-centered studies of genealogy.  We hope that our responses will raise a number of questions, even above and beyond Henry’s bombshell.  If we can do that then this meeting will get off to a roaring start.

Let me turn to my comments about that enduring subject of speculation concerning “Shakespeare’s Lost Years”.  As we all know, orthodox Stratfordians like to fit all sorts of incredible – but undocumented – claims for The Bard into this period.  For some, he was living in recusant household in Lancashire, for others he was attending a Catholic seminary (in France ? or maybe even futher afield in Italy ?), for others he was a school-master, or a tutor, or a lawyer’s apprentice, or whatever they imagine because, of course, there is absolutely no documentary evidence whatsoever that Will Shaksper, the son of John Shaksper, was doing anything.  Of course, he must have been doing something but the key point is that the seven-year period of his life between the baptism of his twins in 1585 and his first documented appearance in London in 1592, as a small-time moneylender, is a complete blank.

Not one piece of evidence provides testimony to Will Shaksper’s whereabouts or activities in these so-called “lost years”.  And, it can hardly be for lack of trying on the part of the Orthodox Stratfordians because the vast amounts of time spent in various archives – the central ones in London as well as the local ones, in and around Stratford-Upon-Avon – has been the equivalent of several dozen-dozen life-times.  And what has all this post-Victorian research turned up ?  One reference from 1612, which a “Shakspere” was called upon to testify in regards to a 1604 promise of marriage which took place in the Cripplegate home of M. Mountjoy, a Hugenot hatmaker.  Was “Shakspere” a party to this marriage ?  No ! He was a lodger in Mountjoy’s home in Cripplegate.  And what did this Shakspere say upon his sworn oath ?  Not a damned thing – his testimony was rather like that of an American mafioso who “takes the fifth”.  Yet, an orthodox Stratfordian has seen fit to write a whole book about this spurious reference to Shakspere.

Why have I called this reference to Shakspere “spurious” ?  Quite simply because there is no connection between this lodger and the man who wrote the poems and the plays, which were appearing at that time under the name of William Shakespeare.  Moreover, and much more damaging to the Orthodox Stratfordian case, the attribution of any man called “Shakspere” is necessarily dubious because this was an unusual but hardly uncommon name.  An example of this should suffice.  The 1592 indenture of a seven-pound loan between “Willelmus Shackspere” (note the spelling: S-H-A-C-K-S-P-E-R-E) and John Clayton is not quite what it would appear to be.  It is neither a simple nor straightforward matter to connect this “Willelmus Shackspere” with The Bard of Stratford.  The complication is that the borrower, John Clayton, is recorded as being a resident of the obscure village of Willington in Bedfordshire; and, if that weren’t enough to make one smell a rat, the idefatiguable researcher Leslie Hotson discovered that at this very time there was another “William Shakespeare” who was a farmer in the same county.  Hotson’s Bedfordshire “Shakespeare” is quite clearly a different person from the legend so revered by the Orthodox Stratfordians.

These two spurious references to Will Shaksper of Stratford-Upon-Avon underline the point made by Henry’s non-gendered approach to the subject of genealogy.  You, me, and everyone else is descended from a male AND a female line; and in the previous generation, we have two grandfathers AND two grandmothers.  In the generation before that, we have four grandmothers and four grandfathers.  The implication of this elementary point is that the usual method of genealogy is hopelessly inadequate because it works from the assumption that the female lineage was irrelevant in the later sixteenth century.  A moment’s reflection emphasizes the absurdity of this line of argument.  And it is by exposing the flimsiness of the thin tissue of descent through the exclusively-male line that Henry has led us to another, fruitful field of inquiry.

The implications of – and inherent problems with – this new arena of research will be the subject of Geoff’s comment.   So, let me thank you for your attention to my comment and turn the floor over to my colleague.”

A thirty-something man with long, thinning brown hair pulled back into a ponytail – what some people like to call a “ponus” – is next to speak.

“Thank you, Louise.  Like you – and, I would imagine, the rest of the seminar – I was deeply impressed with the way in which Henry’s simple readjustment could cut the Gordian Knot of genealogy.  By drawing our attention to the under-researched female branches of the Shaksper tree, Henry urges us to embark on a new field of endeavour.  This is a very good thing; and long overdue.  But it is not without its problems.

As Henry himself noted in his summation, prior to the 1538 Reformation legislation requiring parochial registration of vital events, the sources we can access are much less plentiful.  But, much more worringly, these sources contain hidden traps for the unwary researcher because land-transfer documents and inheritance records are necessarily unrepresentative.  This issue of representativeness is very tricky because in this instance – the forebears of Will Shaksper of Stratford-Upon-Avon – we can only learn about those who were wealthy and prosperous enough to have had their business transactions copied into surviving documents.  First, of course, the basic question of documentary survival opens up a real can or worms; second, only males were usually a party to land transactions; third, pre-mortem transactions (inheritances allocated before death) were rarely documented; and, fourth – and here’s where the question of representativeness is most intractable – only an unknown proportion of peasants were actually landholders.  Indeed, even in the conditions of post-plague England in the fifteenth century when land was plentiful, not all men (and few women) were landholders.  And, of course, at most other times in English rural history, only a tiny minority of men (and a microscopic proportion of women) were actually legally-recognized landowners.  This was a society in which both tenancy and ownership were profoundly unequally divided, along the lines of class and gender.

The issue, therefore, is that any desire on our part to trace the full spread of the Shaksper predecessors is doubly-bedevilled by the massive complications of what anthropologists would call “bilateral descent” and the unrepresentativeness of the pre-1538 records.  These complications give us very real appreciation of the magnitude of Henry’s accomplishment in tracing a common ancestral name – Trussel – shared by Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, Lord High Chamberlain of England, and the obscure boy, “Gilielmus filius Johannes Shakspere”, who was baptized on the twenty-sixth of April, 1564, at Stratford-Upon-Avon’s Holy Trinity parish church.  However, it is by no means evident that sharing a common surname – Trussel – meant that there was any other kind of genealogical connection between these two contemporaries.  Name-sharing is not, in and of itself, evidence of common ancestry.  To be certain of that linkage, we need more information.”

***

Willy’s AfterLife

“Did you hear what that man said  ? “To be certain of that linkage, we need more information.” What do these people require to be certain about that connection ?”

“Not so fast there, Will” Bess replies.

“Why-ever not.?”

“Because it’s not a cut-and-dried matter.  In fact, it’s rather like the old philosophical fallacy – post hoc ergo propter hoc.  Roughly translated, that means “after this, therefore because of this”.  Isn’t that so, Willy ?”

“Right.  Bess is right.  Besides, if you had paid close attention to the way in which these connections were laid out by me, it is not clear if the line of descent from the fifteenth-century Trussels to my grandmother was even legitimate.  From what Will’s Nanny Arden seemed to remember, there was a lot of confusion among her older relatives concerning this very point.  And, besides, it was not what they were principally concerned about.  What they put into their memory bank was the story about overlapping – but not necessarily – direct connections.  Isn’t that so, Will ?”

“Yes, that’s what I remember her telling me.  What was significant to Nanny Arden’s forebears was the fact of recognized kinship connection but not the exact nature of the linkage.  They seemed to be chuffed by the idea that they were part of a noble lineage and while they may not have been paupers, they most assuredly were not princes.  Looking at these lines of affiliation from the bottom-up seems to have made them give pride-of-place to their kinship ties, regardless of how attenuated those experiences might have been in their lifetimes.”

“Will, you’re quite right to draw our attention to that way of seeing things because, of course, the three of us tend to look at these genealogical associations from the top-down.  We are used to seeing these long lines of descent leading to us because lineages were only considered relevant insofar as their could be used to legitimate our position in LifeOnEarth ? Isn’t that so, Bess ?”

“Without a shadow of a doubt.  Willy, you know (and so does Henry) that we used to employ specialists who could create lines of descent that glorified us.  And, as we were all too well aware, our genealogical tables were as much fiction as fact.  Those specialists were always willing to fudge matters to put us in the best light possible.  Even Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford, was not a direct descendent of one of William the Conqueror’s comrades.   Isn’t that right, Willy ?”

“Certainly.  In fact, the direct line of inheritance was mended, so to speak, at several transitional points.  For my family, my predecessor, the Fourteenth Earl, succeeded to the title by reversion.  He was not a direct descendant of the glorious Thirteenth but, rather, he traced his inheritance back through an uncle of Earl John.  From what I understand, all noble families of any antiquity – and royal families, too, eh ? – did not have unbroken lineages.”

“Of course, it’s one of the reasons why my father was so nervous about his inheritance when he was dying.  He had a sickly son and two daughters.  That was no guarantee of continuity.  And, of course, when I died I was considered to be without an heir so the throne reverted to my cousin, James, who could trace his claim through his mother, back to one of my grandfather’s daughters.  It was always like that.  So, when we come to consider the lines of descent that might have connected Willy with Will, through the Trussel connection, it’s really a counsel of perfection to expect that these connections can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

“I understand that. Indeed, we all understand that but those people at that conference seemed to be oblivious to that elementary fact of genealogy.  But that’s not the real point for us, is it ?”

“What do you mean, Will ?”

“For us – during our LifeOnEarth – the real point was that you believed it to be so and my father played on that belief to insinuate himself (and me) into your confidence.”

“Quite right.  Those people at that conference are mistaking what we found convenient to believe with what with what we knew to be true.  As is so often the case, truth is what you want it to be and we both had an interest in maintaining that kinship connection.  But, of course, we did so for our own reasons.”

“Will, you seem to be a clever lad.  It’s rather difficult to believe that you never went to school nor studied the law.”

“Bess, that’s not entirely true.  I first went to the local dame-school in Stratford for a while when I was very young but after that my formal education was frequently interrupted by household obligations.  Even before I was ten or eleven, my father’s business was faltering, he was drinking too much, borrowing money he couldn’t repay, and then he refused to conform to the new church rites which made him a marked man.  His attachment to the old religion became especially dangerous a few years later when the papists began their attempts to assassinate you, Bess.”

“Oh, dear me, I do remember that time very well.  The sense of danger seemed to hang like a shroud over all things.  Was it like that for a commoner like you, Will ?’

“I can’t say exactly because I was just a child but during the short time I spent at the Stratford Grammar School there were several different school-masters.  They followed one another in quick succession, one even went to France to join the papists.  In the dame-school, all the common-scholars, like me, were first taught to read to a reasonable standard of literacy.  It was only when we moved on the the Grammar School that we were allowed to try to write with chalk or charcoal.  Only the older boys were allowed to use a pen and paper.  Like I said, I was a good reader for my standard even though I still can’t read without moving my lips.  I was amazed to see Cousin Willy do just that after I entered his service.  I would suppose that that is something you can do, too.”

“Of course, my dear boy.  I was taught by Master Ascham, who was the best educator of my time.  Remember, I was the daughter of a king, nothing was too good for me.  And, I was a precocious little girl, too.  These chaps – Henry and Willy – had the same kind of education as me.”

“I know.  There was a huge gap between what they did and what I did when we were young.  I was tied down to the demands of the family workshop while they were tied down to their desks.”

“That’s too true, Will.  Do you remember things that way, Willy ?”

“Not exactly, Henry.  I loved learning, above all other activities.   I was one of those children who never confused ignorance and stupidity.  I never felt threatened by my ignorance – indeed, quite the opposite.  I think it’s fair to say that I reveled in my ignorance because it gave me things to learn.  Having private tutors helped me a lot.  They kept me challenged and I loved triumphing over those challenges.”

“Well, we were very different in that way.  For me, schooling was a nightmare of terror and abuse.  I loathed the masters who were especially eager to impress themselves with their own cleverness – at my expense.  So, when I first met you, Willy, it was like being introduced to a person who had come down from the moon and alighted himself in Stratford.  But when I later met Henry, he seemed to be more in tune with my predilection for running riot, having fun.”

***

Stratford-Upon-Avon,

May, 1585

The play has ended, people are now milling about the marketplace.  They’re happy with the performance of this new work, even if it is very rough in terms of both its organization and the actor’s ease in their roles.  Still, it is a stage rehearsal and it has gone down well with the Stratfordians.  The players are thirsty so now is the time for a drink – or several.  Willy knows this and directs his men to the local public house, located on the opposite side of the market-square.

“Lads, the local public house has a first-rate brewer named Toby.  His AvonBrew Bitter is famous.  It’s the best I’ve tasted in the West Midlands”

“Well, then, let’s go.  What are we waiting for ?”

The Queen’s Men straggle into the pub where there are already a number of locals who are wetting-their-whistles.  One somewhat bedraggled, middle-aged man, introduces himself to Willy.

“My Good Lord Oxford, all of us here in Stratford are so happy that you have returned again to grace us with your presence.”

Willy looked at him quizzically, “Did we meet a few months ago, the last time I was here in Stratford ?”

“Yes, my Lord.  I hope you will recall that on that occasion I presented you with a pair of kid-leather gloves, inlaid with local river stones.”

“Yes, yes.  I do remember.  Those gloves were greatly admired when I returned to court; so greatly admired, in fact, that I had to pass them on as a form of tribute to Lord Leicester.  I’d like two more pairs, one black and the other gray. Can you do that for me ?”

There is now a moment’s silence.  Oxford understands immediately what that silence betokens. “Would ten shillings a pair seem reasonable to you ?”

The man bows deeply and replies.  “Why that would be most generous.  I can get them made up with my son’s assistance in the next few days.  Are you going to be at your Billesley manor for a long time ?  I can send young Will there.”

‘Me and the troupe – they’re now called the Queen’s Men because Her Majesty has taken over my company – will be here for five more days before we go on to Bristol.”

“That’s just perfect.  I will be sure to have the gloves made to your satisfaction.  By the way, I believe that we are distant kinsmen.”

Willy looked right at this man, “Are you a part of the Trussel connection ?”

“Not me, my lord; but my wife’s mother’s mother’s maiden name was “Trussel”.  She lived with us for a number of years and often-times told us the story of her kinship with that family and how your grandmother – on your mother’s side – was related to our family.”

In the spirit of good fellowship, they clink glasses and drink a toast to their common family ancestors and the good fortune that has brought us together on that day.

John Shaksper, beckons to a youth, to come over to join in the toast.  This boy is his son, Will, a lad with reddish hair, a downy beard, and twinkling eyes.  He bows deeply before Willy and, in the broadest West Midlands dialect – which is completely unintelligible to Will’s London associates – starts to hold forth on his own opinion of the play that had just ended in the market square.

“My Lordship, that was grand amusement.  I can tell you straight that there’s been nothing like that hereabouts.  Well, not since your Lordship’s child-players were in Warwick a few years back.  I stole away from my father’s shop and saw your players there, too.”

His father can see that his son is overstepping his place and elbows him aside.

“Your Lordship, please excuse young Will for his forwardness.  His enthusiasm frequently gets the better of him.”

“No, Cousin John – may I call you that ? – it’s my great pleasure to know that our latest work-in-progress has met with an enthusiastic reception from your boy.  He seems like a lively lad.”

“Oh, My Lord Oxford, you don’t know the half of it.  That boy will be the death of me.  He’s out of control.”

“Why is that ?  He seems to me to be courteous.  No one could gainsay his excitement.”

“Yes, that’s quite true but he’s always bridling at restrictions.  Our Will is only just turned twenty-one but would you believe that he is already the father of three kiddies ?”

“Country matters, eh ?”

“Country matters, indeed !  He was barely eighteen when he got the wench pregnant with child – and she was near eight years older than him.  But I doubt that she was the forward one !”

“Aye.  Why would you think that ?”

“Because, My Lord, she was not the first.  And, I warrant, she has not been the last girl that he has gotten a leg over on, as we say in these parts.  Will was married by license when Anne’s quickening happened so that those other girls were left to her own devices.  I heard from two other fathers that he had been paying attention to their daughters at the time he was paying court to Anne in Shottery.  Of course, after they were wed he could only have one wife but that has not kept him home at night.”

“Cousin John, many lads of Will’s age are – shall we say – “restless”.  If that’s the worst of it then I am sure that being yoked in marriage will slowly restrain his wandering ways.”

“Would that that were so.”  John Shaksper sensed an opening and asked his illustrious kinsman (by marriage, five-times removed) if his empty glass needed re-filling.

“Why that would be a capital idea.”

John Shaksper nods towards the brewer and, in a minute’s time, a tray with half a dozen full pint-pots is being set down in front of them.  Willy, John and Will take one apiece and arms reach out for the others from some of the actors sitting nearby.  The barmaid is young, pretty in a country manner, with a gormless, tooth-ey smile.

“Thank you, Biddie.  Tell Bottom that I will settle with him later.”

“Cousin John, I wouldn’t hear of that.  The Earl of Oxford insists on buying this round of drinks for you, your son, and all our party.  In fact, Miss Biddie, tell the publican to set up a round of drinks for all here present.  This is significant day for the Trussel descendants. And, here, take this silver coin for your troubles.”

Her smile broadens so that it was now about as wide as her ample cleavage, which is revealed as she bends over to pick up the coin.

John Shaksper now makes his move and speaks to Willy in a hushed, conspiratorial tone.

“My Lord Edward, the boy’s tom-catting is only the least of the disturbance he causes.   Our family is now burdened with four more mouths and I am not such a rich man that I can feed them all, in addition to my wife and our own children.  Glove-making, you see, is not the way to worldly wealth.”

Willy is only somewhat taken aback by this confession.  He senses that he would have to reach into his pocket to placate Cousin John.

“Is there anything I can do to help you, Cousin John.  Here, how about a gold sovereign ?”

“Your Lordship is most generous and I think that I have already over-reached myself because I am not seeking your charity.  Indeed, your hospitality today has been more valuable to me – and Will, here – than mere money could purchase.  But, in truth, there is a large favour you could show our family.  One that would be beyond money.”

Willy was taken aback. It was very unusual for anyone to refuse his generosity.  And for a common man like John Shaksper to turn down ready-cash was almost unheard-of.

“Hmmmm.  And, what would that be ?”

“MyLord Edward, do you think that there might be a place for a lad like Will in your group of players ? He’s bugger-all use to us at home – he hardly works enough to pay his way, let alone to cover the costs he has now put upon the household, what with his wife and three babies living under our family’s roof-tree.”

John Shaksper’s timing is just perfect, Willy is thrilled to have met these distant kinsmen on a day when his troupe had just embarked on a new work.  And, to be sure, he is now quite expansive after quaffing a few pints of AvonBrew bitter.

“Cousin John, there is no question that young Will is a bright spark.  And it’s already clear to me that he’s a quick study but it’s also obvious to me that he has no experience and is uneducated in the ways of the playhouse.  Still, he could be useful to my players as a kind of jack-of-all-trades, all-around handyman – a veritable Johannes Factotum.   I’m not sure if this would suit him because he would have to follow orders and be willing to do whatever was asked of him.  He would occupy the lowest rung on our ladder.”

Will interjected: “Oh, MyLord, that would be just wonderful. I would never disappoint you.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t do that but, Will, you have obligations to your family – actually, to your two families.  And I’m not sure that they could afford to have their oldest son and husband just up-stakes.  So, if you were to sign on with my players we would have to come to some sort of informal arrangement, like an apprenticeship.  Your warrant of good behaviour would be enough for me to provide your father with a fixed payment – say, five gold sovreigns in good English money for each year you serve my players.”

Willy turns back to his kinsman, and continues, “Cousin John, young Will can be fed at my expense and I will undertake to provide him with lodging, too.  And, I am sure that he can make some extra money on the side, perhaps by doing small, extra chores.  Cousin John, does that seem just ?”

“Why, to be sure MyLordEdward, it’s more than generous; more than I could have imagined.  What say you, Will ?”

“Father, I am speechless at this act of familial generosity by our noble kinsman   I assure you, MyLordEdward, that I shall do everything in my powers to see that I act in a responsible and honourable fashion.”

“Will, now that you have agreed to be part of my company of players, you will no longer be calling me “MyLordEdward”.  But it would uncomfortably presumptuous for you to call me “Willy”, which is the name I am called by my friends although my very closest friends sometimes call me “Will Monox”.  So, perhaps, you should just call me “Cousin” or “Cousin Edward”.  Is that allright with you ?”

“Yes, of course; I assure you.  I’m honoured, to be sure.”

“Now, Will, I want to introduce you to my other men, they will be the ones you will be working for.  You will follow their orders as if I gave them to you myself.”

At this point, Will summons his two personal secretaries.  Anthony Munday and John Lyly handle his day-to-day business matters.  They take the star-struck country bumpkin in hand, and the three of them go to the other side of the small public house so that they can introduce the lad to his new best friends, the actors employed in The Queen’s Men.

***

Willy’s AfterLife

“Now I understand how you met Will, but why did you take him along with the players ?  What did he offer to you ?”

“Those are two very good questions, Bess.  Now, about Will, why would I want him to be with me ?  I think that’s what you want to know.  I find it difficult to make sense of that decision.  He was an attractive lad – well, much more than that, if truth be told.  He had those sparkling eyes and a kind of unbridled energy that bewildered his father but intrigued me.  I’ve always been attracted to that kind of young man,  The kind of beautiful young man that possessed what the Greeks called “charisma”.  I think that you can understand exactly what I mean, eh Bess ?”

“Quite, that’s a palpable hit.”

“Thus, Bess, we were both – in our own ways – like the Venus in my poem, who pursued the young Adonis.”

“True, true.”

“Will Shaksper was more than just a pretty face, with a well turned leg.  There was a strange kind of depth to his character.  He seemed to know more than would have been credible for an uneducated commoner from a backwater town. It was like sixth sense; a kind of intuition which displayed itself immediately in his humour, self-confidence, and, above all, in his ability to bring himself into my confidence.”

Henry had been listening quietly, but now felt obliged to get involved in this discussion.

“I completely agree with Willy.  I first me Will when he was working as the “go-fer” for The Queen’s Men.  I was then probably fifteen or sixteen, he was about ten years older than me.  As you both know, I was a ward under William Cecil’s house arrest.  I just hated his self-satisfied, rigidly-puritanical ways – and his wife was even worse.  I felt trapped there – every hour was closely watched and I had no taste for scholarship.  I had seen Will and the players on a few occasions before our first proper meeting.  Being a ward of William Cecil, I was sometimes a spectator at Royal Entertainments.  At that time, Will was something of a handyman who only came on stage when extras were needed for a crowd scene.”

Turning to Will, “Did you ever get a speaking role ?”

“Sometimes, but I couldn’t resist playing at playing, as it were.  This infuriated the senior actors whose timing and rhythm was buggered up by my improvisations.”

“As I was saying, I had noticed Will – it was hard not to since he was such a strikingly beautiful young man – but it was only when I was able to learn about “the ward’s secret escape route” that I was able to go outside unchaperoned, so to speak.  By climbing over a particular section of the east wall, I would immediately drop myself into another world, the world of the plebeian crowd.  It was just so exciting – and so different from the puritanical world inside the Cecil’s walls – that once I had figured out how to cover my tracks, I would be over the wall almost every night, returning at daybreak when the lark heralded the morn.  That was how I came to meet Will at the Boar’s Head Tavern, where the theatricals would congregate.”

Turning to Willy, “I think you know that place well ?”

“Oh, indeed, I do – or I did during LifeOnEarth.  Did you know that it was named “The Boar’s Head” because the original landlord of the tavern had been an Essex-tenant of my grandfather, the Fifteenth ?  Our family crest was emblazoned with two boars and this fellow sought our patronage by naming his public house in honour of his lord.”

“Right.  That accords well with what was common knowledge at that time.  I remember that I would frequently meet both Will and Willy there.  The point being that I was also struck by those elements in Will’s appearance and character that Willy has just described.”

Bess had been listening intently and then asked, “If he was such a likely lad then why wasn’t he introduced to me ?”

The three men fall about themselves, laughing uncontrollably.

Bess is only a little bit indignant.  “What’s so funny ? Willy, you above all others certainly knew that I was passionate for having the attentions of a fine young man.  Why did you keep this one away from me ?”

“Oh, my goodness.  Bess you’re quite forgotting yourself.  It would have been too, too impossible during LifeOnEarth for a commoner like Will to get close to you.  You were always surrounded by seven circles of protectors – they might have protected you from harm but they also kept you imprisoned in your gilded cage.”

“Yes, that’s quite true.  It was always the case that I could only get away when I was in the country.  Then I could go riding with Robin Dudley or some other handsome young man like you, Willy.”

“I remember that well.  You would also come visit me at my country estate where the servants were commanded to face the wall when they were in your presence.  And, of course, you were both a woman and the Queen so that there were, shall we say, legitimate reasons to fear for your safety.  Your freedom of movement was a matter of state security.”

“That was all I knew from my youngest years.”

“Well, it was different for me and Henry.  We were neither royal nor female so we had liberty, not that kind of personal half-life of a female monarch.  And that was how and why we could meet up with chaps like Will.  We were masters of our own fates.”

“Unfortunately, I understand that only too well.  My LifeOnEarth was bounded – I was that bird-in-a-gilded-cage.”

“Right, so you had power but we had masculine freedom.  Henry, who followed in my footsteps in that Cecilian house arrest, was also like me in bridling against it.  As I’ve told you before, I knew only too well that Henry was our son and I was able to keep tabs on him because I visited the Cecil household to see my daughters.  When Henry began to frequent the Boar’s Head – that was probably a few years after Will had left Stratford and come with us to London – Will was no longer the country bumpkin and had re-fashioned himself into a man-on-the-make.  He was in the chips, as we say.  And what could he spend his money on except clothes and personal entertainment ?”

“Willy, that’s not quite true because I was continually sending money back to Stratford.  There were always men from Stratford who came to London and when I met up with them at John Field’s print shop, I would arrange for them to take a few coins back to my father.”

”I never knew that.”

“Why would you ?  You were a spendthrift nobleman.  Your money worries mostly had to do with evading creditors whereas mine were concerned with making sure my family – and my children especially – did not starve.”

Will’s retort silences the others.  They are taken aback by the brutal way he exposes their blithe disregard of the economics of everyday LifeOnEarth.