Prosperous Books
Oliver Laurens visited Mantua once in 1604, and again in 1607 on the second occasion being attacked by bandits near Bergamo while on his way back to England. They stole his cloak, as well as 'what small gold was not in my boots or sewn in my jerkin', and broke open the chest containing Kit's manuscripts. This may be another reason for the texts of Timon and Pericles arriving incomplete in London, and was possibly the occasion on which Kit's third Jewish play Jehuda disappeared. Bernard Rosine suggests that Kit was so ill that he appeared near death, which is why Oliver took the incomplete plays with him; but it seems unlikely that Oliver would leave his friend in such circumstances.* In 1608 Oliver returned for a sustained visit, which lasted until the spring of the following year. This may indicate that Kit was again ill and needed close care. If he was overheard muttering in English while delirious, it could lead to complications.
At some point during this visit, the two old friends brewed up an extraordinary idea. They became determined to see the wonders of the New World. The provenance of this apparent madness is not clear. Kit had doubtless heard the fantastical tales told by Spanish explorers who had returned to Valladolid, and he had sipped bitter chocolate from Mexico. Oliver was fired up by talk of new colonies, big visions expounded in London taverns now that the Spanish sea power had been checked. Their imaginations were captured by voyagers' reports of an Eden of free love, with natives devoid of guile and treason. Kit had been engrossed by Antonio Pigafetta's account of Magellan's circumnavigation, and, long ago, he had read Montaigne and spoken to the great essayist about a Utopia beyond the seas. This New World was also the source of tobacco, which Kit missed sorely, and rumours were wild of a rare root or bark that was a cure for cupid's burn, so if not a land of milk and honey, at the very least the Americas offered a good smoke and relief from the clap.
In Mantua, life was growing more difficult. A dishonest and unpleasant court treasurer, Ottavio Benintendi (whom Monteverdi caustically nicknamed 'Belintento') diverted Duke Vincenzo's good intentions, as well as his money, and artists went unpaid. Even the maestro di cappella had to write letters to the duke begging for his dues, and Kit knew that Vincenzo's dull heir, Francesco, bore no love for the Monteverdis. (He was right. When Vincenzo died in 1612, the new duke dismissed Monteverdi within weeks.) Kit was forty-five, a ripe age for retreat and retirement - but his enquiring spirit saw in such a move a chance for transformation. Like Proteus, he was once again changing shape, and the first twitches and writhings already showed in his weakening desire to write. Perhaps he had indeed been seriously ill, and had felt the imminence of death, so discovery became an antidote to dying, a voyage into the wondrously unknown new world being an earthly substitute for the more fearful journey to 'the undiscover'd country, from whose bourn/No traveller returns', a shadow-play of death that removed its dread by ensuring that he left the world he knew on his own terms.
The plans that the pair made, with the same boyish fervour as they had once played together in Canterbury, were not impracticable. Kit's old paramour the Earl of Southampton was a major 'adventurer' in the Virginia Company, the leading force in England's move to colonise the Americas. 'Adventurer' at the time meant one who undertook commercial enterprises, or adventures - as in the Society of Merchant Adventurers - but the word already had connotations of personal daring, or venturing off on something risky, as in 'then will they adventure upon the exploit themselves' {I Henry TVl ii 165). As early as 1602, while he was still in the Tower, Southampton had backed an expedition to the New World. When the Virginia Company was granted a new charter in 1609, with powers to govern and regulate the American colony, Southampton was one of the first subscribers. It was easy for him discreetly to arrange passage for Kit and Oliver, and perhaps he was even inclined to secure them some land and invest in their adventure.* Oliver's journal simply notes that they left Mantua in April 'to meet with Sir Thomas in Plimouth'. This may refer to Tom Walsingham, who had been knighted in 1597, or possibly Sir Thomas Gates - a Netherlander and friend of Southampton's - who was going out as temporary governor of the colony. Southampton used his own influence, or this Low Countries connection, to gain the pair berths on the flagship the Sea Venture. They travelled as Flemings.
Kit arrived back in England as he had left sixteen years earlier, using the alias Walter Hoochspier. He still had to be extremely cautious. Sir Robert Cecil had long grasped his coveted secretaryship, and other high offices, but was now the Earl of Salisbury, far more powerful than he had been in 1593, and doubtless just as vengeful. The Walsinghams had risen socially under King James - Sir Thomas's wife Audrey was now a friend of Queen Anne, and one of the Keepers of the Queen's Wardrobe. Dark scandal was no way to repay him for his years of loyalty. Oliver records an emotional reunion between Kit and Tom Walsingham, and also a meeting with his own former employer Thomas Thorpe, but it is not clear whether these took place in London. The rendezvous were most likely held within the privacy of Scadbury, or in the anonymity of Gravesend or Plymouth. They did not meet Will Shakespere.
Two plays were sent on to Shakespere with the clear message that they would be the last. Both have a mysterious, fairytale quality and offer curious parallels to Kit's brief return to England and venture out into the brave New World. The first part of The Winter's Tale is set indoors, and is dark and fraught; the second part takes place sixteen years later (exactly the time Kit had been away from England), but occurs largely outdoors and is bright and forward-looking. Cymbeline (based in part on an anonymous Dutch story) moves from a decaying old world towards a new (albeit not quite ideal) order, along the way affirming passion, integrity and initiative over high breeding.
As part of his attempt to raise as much money as possible for the venture, Kit sold Thomas Thorpe the right to publish the sonnets he had written as verse letters, which had been circulating 'among his private friends'. As Will Shakespere had already put five in the public domain (in The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599), and had claimed others as his own, and as the style was by now so recognisable, even these had to come out under Shakespere's name. Thorpe, who a decade earlier had written the curious dedication in Kit's translation of Lucan's Pharsalia, hinting that Marlowe was still alive, brought out the Sonnets later in 1609, and himself penned their dedication - an affectionate, if enigmatic, tribute to Kit himself, which is worth examining in full:
TO.THE.ONLIE.BEGETTER.OF.
THESE.INSUING.SONNETS.
M' W.H. ALL.HAPPINESSE.
AND.THAT.ETERNETIE.
PROMISED.
BY.
OUR.EVER-LIVING.POET.
WISHETH.
THE.WELL-WISHING.
ADVENTURER.IN.
SETTING.
FORTH.
T. T.
Once again, Thomas Thorpe carefully places his clues. 'Mr W. H.' refers to the name that Kit had borne (in various mutations) for the past sixteen years: Walter Hoochspier. The 'Mr' completes the near anagram that had so disturbed Kit when he killed the original Hoochspier in Italy - 'Mr Walter Hoochspier' is an exact anagram of Christopher Marlowe. Mr W. H. is, of course, the 'only begetter' - the only creator - of the ensuing sonnets (a wry prod at Shakespere). The purity of the logic that Mr W. H. as 'onlie begetter' refers to the single author of the Sonnets, and not the Beautiful Young Man, the Dark Lady in Disguise, the Patron, or any of the other alleged recipients of the poems, eludes many commentators. Their perplexity has led to centuries of squabbling. Thomas Thorpe wishes him this optimistic ('well-wishing') 'adventurer' setting forth into the New World, the secretly 'ever-living poet' - all happiness, and through the publication of the sonnets, that eternity he himself promises in the poems.
Among other papers relating to Oliver Laurens held at the Bernhardt Institute are two receipts signed by Thomas Thorpe, one for a portrait and the second attached to an inventory of books received from 'W-H' (reproduced in Appendix VI). It would appear that Kit had either sold his books to Thorpe to raise money for the venture, or had left them as a deposit - as other travellers of the time would leave money with London goldsmiths - to be drawn on in case of financial need. The list provides a helpful clue to the sources of some of Kit's plays. The portrait is most likely one that Kit had painted by a Flemish artist in Mantua, in the week of his fortieth birthday, soon after arriving back from Spain. It later passed from Thorpe's possession, possibly in settlement of a debt, to one John Taylor, the 'Water Poet'. (This John Taylor, 1580-1653, a Thames waterman, eccentric poet and early travel writer, has often been confused with the Joseph Taylor, ? 1586-1652, who took over from Richard Burbage as an actor with the King's Men.)
By the mid-seventeenth century, the portrait was owned by Shakespere's scurrilous godson Sir William Davenant, an acquisitive old fraud who exploited the faint resemblance to Shakespere to pass it off as a likeness of his godfather. It is possible that Davenant (who was only ten when Shakespere died) was himself duped, but far more likely that the invention was his own. He notoriously made every possible gainful use of his Shakespere connection (even claiming he was Will's bastard son). A comparison of the portrait with the only two images made of Shakespere under the auspices of people who knew him - the bust in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, commissioned by his son-in-law and the engraving by Martin Droeshout used as a frontispiece for the First Folio - makes it quite clear that apart from baldness and a similar domed forehead, these and the Davenant portrait are of different people; whereas the application of computer face-ageing software to the Corpus Christi painting of Kit, shows equally clearly that the Davenant portrait is the same man twenty years on (see Appendix II). Davenant died bankrupt and intestate in 1668 and the picture was claimed by his principal creditor John Otway, who was only too happy to perpetuate Davenant's claim in order to raise the value of the goods he had managed to seize. As 'A Portrait of William Shakespeare' the painting passed through a succession of hands, eventually coming into the possession of the dukes of Chandos, and it is as the 'Chandos portrait' that it now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Having raised as much money as they could from Thomas Thorpe, Kit and Oliver retreated into hiding - either at Scadbury or in Plymouth - to await the departure of the Sea Venture. A fleet of nine vessels, with some six hundred colonists on board, left Plymouth in early June. In October, report reached London that although the rest of the fleet had reached the Chesapeake, the flagship Sea Venture had been lost in a terrifying storm.
Will Shakespere had Cymbeline and The Winter's Tale to get by on, but was alarmed by a royal command from King James in 1613 to write a play to celebrate the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to Frederick, the Elector Palatine of the Rhine. Shakespere hastened to his earlier 'collaborator'John Fletcher, and together they came up with Henry VIII, a play the biographer Anthony Holden calls 'a pallid, pompous, prettified version of events from 1520 to 1533'. Their sorry effort was cancelled on the day of the wedding in favour of the 'greater pleasures' of a masque and was later presented at the Globe, where with deft dramatic irony the firing of a cannon in one of the scenes set fire to the thatch and burned the theatre down. Undeterred, Shakespere hazarded a further unfortunate collaboration with Fletcher, The Two Noble Kinsmen, before making a politic withdrawal to retirement in Stratford, to tend his famous mulberry tree, lord it like a local gentleman, and live off the fat of his rents and tithes. He made one more venture into the world of verse - the appalling piece of doggerel that now defends his tomb:
GOOD FREND FOR JESUS SAKE FORBEARE,
TO DIGG THE DUST ENCLOSED HEARE:
BLESTE BE YE MAN THAT SPARES THESE STONES,
AND CURST BE HE THAT MOVES MY BONES.
Before his retreat to Stratford, before, even, the difficult episode of the royal command, one other play had come his way. It arrived without any letter of explanation, in a package bearing the seal of the Earl of Southampton. It was entitled The Tempest. In October 1610 a confidential report had reached the Council of the Virginia Company revealing that the Sea Venture had not been lost, but had been driven on to the uninhabited island of Bermuda - 'the still-vex'd Bermoothes' {The Tempest! ii 229) and had broken up. This letter, or True Reportory, was compiled by the company's secretary, William Strachey, and recounts how all lives on the Sea Venture had been spared, how the castaways found the forests of the island rich in swine and fowl, and the seas full of fish, and how they had spent the winter and spring after the wreck building boats that would take them on to Virginia. The True Reportory also contained damaging information on the misgovernment of Jamestown, and so was kept secret. With the letter came a sealed parcel personally addressed to one of the company's leading shareholders, the Earl of Southampton. It was the contents of this package that Southampton forwarded, without comment, to Will Shakespere. The play the package contained showed striking similarities with some of the events described in the True Reportory. Both the Sea Venture and the ship in The Tempest are wrecked without any loss of life; and the crews of both are frightened by the phenomenon of St Elmo's fire: 'Sometime I'd divide,/And burn in many places; on the topmast,/The yards and bowsprit, would I flame dis-tinctly,/ Then meet and join' {The Tempest I ii 198-200). The colonists (like Prospero's islanders) were convinced their island was haunted, full of spirits and strange noises; and there were two or three attempts at mutiny, including a plot to kill Sir Thomas Gates, that are reflected in events in The Tempest.
It is in The Tempest that Kit finally bows out from his work as a dramatist. He pays homage to the commedia dell' arte- the story of Pantalone and Pulcinella trying to steal an Enchanter's book, the subsequent buffoonery of mishandled magic, and the setting of a magic island visited by strangers, was a popular one in commedia, and informs the structure of The Tempest. Kit's play is the counter-image of one of his earliest successes, Doctor Faustus. Faustus is a black magician, whereas Prospero in The Tempest uses white magic. Their names both signify 'one who is lucky, prosperous' (Faustus in Latin, Prospero in Italian), but in The Tempest Kit substitutes the dangerous, youthful fire of Faustus with the softening waters of a sea change into wiser old age. Faustus yells dramatically as he is taken off to Hell: 'I'll burn my books', Prospero promises 'deeper than did ever plummet sound/I'll drown my book' {Tempest V i 56-7). He abjures his 'rough magic', renounces his attempts to control those who have collaborated with him in his art (Ariel the actor and Caliban the clown), and turns to rely on his own faint strength.
The Tempest was staged in 1611, many months before the Virginia Company made the contents of Strachey's report public.
In the years that followed, London, ever hungry for the young and the new, effortlessly shifted its gaze from the man who had slipped away to Stratford. Will Shakespere played his final role - as squire of New Place - to an entirely local audience. On 23 April 1616, sated and swine-drunk after a night spent swilling with his merchant cronies, he collapsed on his second-best bed, belched, then muttering the figures that were swirling in his head, spat once and was seized by a fatal apoplexy. There were no eulogies. On the same date, in Madrid, wiry old Cervantes, who had sweated to produce a second part to Don Quixote and found it even more rapturously received than the first, but who had lately been suffering from dropsy, lapsed into a coma from which he never recovered.
And on an island near Bermuda, Kit Marlowe picked up a quill (plucked from the wing of an albatross), dipped it in deep red ink that Oliver had made from the gum of a dragon's-blood palm, and began his first novel.
* Rosine, Oliver Laurens, p. 392.
* The ever-prurient Seb Melmoth in The Ring of Rose's argues that Southampton himself was planning to go to Virginia with Kit, and was merely using Oliver as a pander, but this seems unlikely.