EPIGRAPH
The T. S. Eliot quotation is from his essay 'Shakespeare and the Stoicism of Seneca', in Selected Essays, Faber and Faber, New York, 1932, p. 126.
FOREWORD
Sam Clemens' Foreword is a reproduction, with slight adaptation, of chapter three of Mark Twain's Is Shakespeare Dead?. Though written nearly a century ago it still offers a reasonable sketch of our verifiable knowledge of Shakespeare. Decades of subsequent research by tens of thousands of scholars and academics have added a little to Twain's store of facts: Robert Bearman in Shakespeare in the Stratford Records (Alan Sutton Press, Stroud, 1994), pp. 79-81, lists thirty-five Shakespeare-related items in the Stratford records, and Jonathan Bate, The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador, London, 1997), p. 4, points out that there are some fifty documents relating to Shakespeare, his family and his acting company in the Public Record Office at Kew. But many of these are repetitious (multiple references to the same incident), or tangential (lists of jurors at a court case), and most by their very nature speak only of the bare facts of birth, marriage and death, of taxes, petty debt and the accumulation of property. They tell us little or nothing of Shakespeare's character or of his work - some people even dispute that the Stratford and London Shakespeares were the same man. Yet these are the dry bones that all biographers have to work with. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was, of course, Mark Twain's real name.
PROLOGUE A Dead Man in Deptford
Eleanor Bull was indeed a 'cousin' of one Blanche Parry, who in turn was 'cousin' to both Lord Burghley and the conjuror Dr Dee - see Charles Nicholl, The Reckoning (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992), p. 35 ff. Although in Elizabethan times the term 'cousin' could encompass fairly distant relatives, it did imply bonds of obligation. And it does appear that if she ran anything at all, Widow Bull had some sort of gentleman's victualling house, not a seedy inn.
Recent research suggests. Most notably Nicholl, Reckoning, and M. J. Trow, Who Killed Kit Marlowe? (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 2001).
Deptford, in 1593. Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 13-15 provides much of this background on Deptford, though my turning Eleanor Bull's home into a safe house is a surmise, and I've elaborated on her relationship with Poley and Cecil.
'the tenth hour before noon'. Alan Haynes, The Elizabethan Secret Services, (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 2000), p. 119, claims that Marlowe was reporting to Widow Bull's house on Cecil's orders.
'Sweet Robyn'. At least one person (Anthony Babington of the Babington plot) called Poley 'Sweet Robyn'. I've turned it into a nickname.
severed the internal carotid artery. Haynes, Secret Services, p. 120; Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 18.
William Danby. Details are as mentioned in the coroner's report. See Leslie Hotson, The Death of Christopher Marlowe (Nonesuch Press, London, 1925) for a full reproduction and translation from Latin of the document.
a friend of her kinsman Lord Burghley. Trow, Marlowe?, p. 244.
PART I
CHAPTER ONE Prefaces to Shakespeare
his beautiful singing voice. Sheer surmise - though as will be seen, Marlowe would have to have been able to sing well in order to win his scholarship to Cambridge.
John Marlowe . . . an immigrant to Canterbury. I owe much in this chapter to William Urry's painstaking examination of the Canterbury archives as revealed in his Christopher Marlowe and Canterbury (Faber and Faber, London, 1988).
a short cut to citizenship. Urry, Marlowe, p. 13; J o h n Bakeless, The Tragicall History of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 1 (Archon Books, Connecticut, 1964), p. 21.
'a scowlde, comon swearer'. Urry, Marlowe, pp. 27 and 34.
bellow and scream. Urry, Marlowe, p. 3, places the Marlowe household between the butchers' shambles, cattle market and clanging bells.
how far cheverel will stretch. Anthony Holden makes similar points about blood and leather in William Shakespeare, His Life and Work (Abacus, London, 1999), pp. 16 and 4 0 - 4 1.
'the small boy Shakespeare'. Urry, Marlowe, p. 2.
visiting his maternal grandparents in Dover. Marlowe's mother came from Dover, A. D. Wraight (who does believe Marlowe wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare) makes the King Lear connection in The Story that the Sonnets Tell (Adam Hart, London, 1994), pp. 327-9, and posits the existence of a tanner named Best in Wingham, ('Best's son, the tanner of Wingham' is mentioned in Henry VIPart 2).
A court case of 1565. Related in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. I, p. 24; Urry, Marlowe, p. 29.
the tale of Dorothy Hocking. The story was uncovered in Canterbury archives by William Urry, and is cited in Andrew Butcher's introduction to Urry's Marlowe, pp. xxxii-xxxiv, and by Wraight, The Story, pp. 321-4.
Clemence Ward, a notorious harlot. See Urry, Marlowe, pp. xxxiv-xxxv, and Wraight, The Story, PP. 325-7
the Marlowes' only son. Christopher already had a younger sister, Margaret (b. 1565). Katherine was to give birth to another daughter, Jane, in 1569, lost another infant son in 1570, had her fiery daughter Anne in 1571, then Dorothy in 1573, and finally a surviving son named Thomas, in 1576.
Richard Umbarffeld and his fellow apprentices are mentioned in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 23. Stephen Gosson's shopping spree is invented, though he lived in the same small parish as the Marlowes and did go to the King's School that year.
the private tutelage of Thomas Bull. Thomas Bull lived near the Marlowes in St George's parish and did take in pupils (see Urry, Marlowe, p. 9), but I have expanded on his relationship with Christopher.
'The midle sort of parentes'. Quoted in Daryll Grantley and Peter Roberts (eds), Christopher Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, (Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1996), p. vii.
'The Master Downhale'. R. Willis (b. 1564), Mount Tabor (1639), quoted in John Dover Wilson, Life in Shakespeare's England, (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1911), p. 53.
Sir Roger Manwood's history and character are revealed in Mark Eccles, Christopher Marlowe in London (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1934), pp. 20-21; and Trow, Marlowe?, pp. 23-4. Sir Roger did take an interest in the young Christopher, though it is not clear how far his support went. Kit would later appear before him in court and write his epitaph.
£1 a quarter. Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, pp. 41-2.
Oliver Laurens is of such stuff as dreams are made on.
'On Sunday, Saint Bartholomew's Day'. Report of Juan de Olaegui, 1572, quoted in Trow, Marlowe?, p. 60.
Some 4,000 Huguenots were slaughtered. S. T. Bindoff, Tudor England (Penguin, London, 1987), p. 249. Trow, Marlowe?, p. 60, has 40,000 dead.
made their way to Canterbury. Urry, Marlowe, p. 3, also J. B. Black, The Reign of Elizabeth (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992), pp. 157-60.
a family of Gossons. Urry mentions a Huguenot Gosson, Marlowe, p. 3, and Stephen's father's foreign origins, p. 10.
Claudius Hollyband's language book, together with another by Peter Erondell are reproduced in M. St Clare Byrne (ed.), The Elizabethan Home (Cobden Sanderson, London, 1930). The taut definition of language teaching is quoted in the introduction (p. ix), and young Francis's wail comes on p. 2.
in Canterbury to meet the Queen. Description of the progress and the preparations are from J. Nichols, Progresses and Processions of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1823, reprinted Burt Franklin, New York, 1966), p. 336 ff.
travelling troupes. Urry, Marlowe, p. 6.
'Lord of Leycester his players'. Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, P. 33
'between his leggs'. Quoted by Andrew Butcher in his essay ' onleye a boye called Christopher Mowle in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 10.
'harborowe[r] of the Devill and the Pope'. William Lambarde in his Perambulation of Kent (1576), quoted in Peter Roberts's essay 'The "Studious Artizan"', in Grantley and Roberts, Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 17.
the Red Lion. The history of the first commercial playhouses and what went on in them is based on Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare's London (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000), pp. 10-12 and 119-24.
'the best for pastoral'. Francis Meres mentions Gosson in his survey of English authors, Palladis Tamia, 'Wit's Treasury '(1598), edited by Don Cameron Allen (Scholar's Facsimiles and Reprints, New York, 1938).
'marvellously ragingly'. The sky at night is described by Urry in Marlowe, p. 4.
'a problem of discipline'. This point is made by Peter Roberts, in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 19.
£14 6s Sd Christmas plays. Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 34.
'dyd anymate the boyes'. The men on both occasions were one Edwards and one William Symcox; the quotes are from Roberts in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 19.
'History [is] the treasure of times past'. Quoted in John Morrill, Tudor and Stuart Britain (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996), p. 184.
Christopher read the poets and the historians. Details of Marlowe's school studies are based on M. H. Curtis, 'Education and Apprenticeship' in Allardyce Nicoll (ed.), Shakespeare in His Own Age, Shakespeare Survey No. 17 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1964).
peas and prunes. Details of the school diet are from Urry, Marlowe, P- 43
standard-bearer to Henry V. Urry, Marlowe p. 49.
his manners. For young Francis's lesson in table manners see St Clare Byrne (ed.), Elizabethan Home, p. 17. No doubt the young Marlowe had to learn much the same.
schollers shal and must'. Quoted in Trow, Marlowe?, p. 28.
CHAPTER TWO Une Histoire Inventee
'a sharp maintainer'. Camden is quoted in C. R. N. Routh, Who's Who in Tudor England (Shepheard-Walwyn, London, 1990), pp. 217, 218.
a certificate signed by the vicar of Wimbledon. Burghley's caution is mentioned by Conrad Russell in 'The Reformation and the Church of England', in Morrill, Tudor and Stuart Britain, p. 280.
Jesuits from abroad. Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 95-7, mentions the Jesuit network; other details of Protestant politicking are from Bindoff, Tudor England, pp. 247-51; Nicholl, Reckoning pp. 102-6; Morrill, Tudor and Stuart Britain, pp. 335-7 and 409-13.
he immediately spent i d on a meal. Marlowe's initial expenditure, recorded in the Corpus Christi buttery book and college accounts is mentioned in Urry, Marlowe, pp. 55-6. Information on his scholarship and first days at Cambridge is from G. C. Moore Smith, 'Marlowe at Cambridge', Modern Language Review, 4, (1909), pp. 167 ff; and Roberts, in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, pp. 22-4.
a Puritan college. The college's Puritan credentials are discussed in Austin K. Gray, 'Some Observations on Christopher Marlowe, Government Agent', Modern Language Association of America, 43 (1928), pp. 685-6.
'plain, simple, sullen, young, contemptuous'. Quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 95.
rebels was Thomas Nashe. Urry in Marlowe, p. 60, says that Kit 'may well have known' Nashe; Trow, Marlowe?, p. 44, states their friendship as a fact; Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 53 ff, notes that Nashe once recalled Marlowe as one who 'used me as a friend' and says that the two men undoubtedly knew one another, and traces a decline in their intimacy. They did mix in the same circles, and Nashe's name appears as a collaborator on the title page of Dido. I have embroidered a little on their friendship.
conferrers of gendemanly virtues. John Adamson in 'The Aristocracy and their Mental World', in Morrill, Tudor and Stuart Britain, pp. 176-7.
'Consort yourself with gendemen'. Henry Peachem's The Compleate Gentleman (1622), quoted by Rosemary O'Day, in 'An Educated Society', in Morrill, Tudor and Stuart Britain, p. 136.
'a thinne Chest'. The impecunious student is mentioned by Bakeless in Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 55; and the ranking of his associates by Elisabeth Leedham-Green in A Concise History of the University of Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996), p. 62.
Hero and Leander. Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 55. 35 \Vtd. Urry, Marlowe, p. 56.
'one William Peeters'. Urry, Marlowe, p. 59. Apart from this brief mention, nothing seems to have been written about Peeters, so I have invented a history.
'dissoluteness in playes'. Quoted in Roberts in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 23.
'ridd theim cleane away'. Roberts in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 23.
Gammer Gurton's Needle. Record of the performance of this old favourite together with Tarrarantantara and other plays at Cambridge, as well as descriptions of the drama and its audience at the university, can be found in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, pp. 6 2 - 3.
Svith vizors and lights'. Quoted in Roberts in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 35.
Bene't college accounts for 1581. These payments are mentioned in Roberts in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 24.
English players did indeed tour the Continent, as has been amply documented by Albert Cohn in Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Asher and Co., London, 1865), and Jerzy Limon in Gentlemen of a Company (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985). The earliest players are mentioned in Cohn, pp. xxi-xxiv and Limon, pp. 28-30. The troupe William Peeters joins is a fiction, though squarely based on a number of real strolling companies of the time.
'a filthy play'. Quoted in Trow, Marlowe?, p. 92.
the famous university at Padua. Jonathan Woolfson, Padua and the Tudors (James Clarke and Co., Cambridge, 1998), p. 15, mentions these informally registered students.
strictures on visiting Rome. E. S. Bates, Touring in 1600 (Constable and Co., London, 1911), p. 55, gives the conditions under which passports were issued.
a letter from one J. Beaulieu. Quoted in Limon, Gentlemen of a Company, p. 161 (fn 26).
'Skeggs'. Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 116.
'by the banks of the Seine'. Watson does dedicate the elegy Meliboeus to Thomas Walsingham and recalls their trip to Paris.
Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 182 ff, holds that the friendship between them was a warm one, and dates the visit to Paris as between the summer of 1581 and the spring of 1583. That Marlowe joins the fun is certainly not impossible, but is unverified.
Measure for Measure. Georges Lambin's comments on the play are given in Joseph Sobran, Alias Shakespeare (The Free Press, New York, 1997), p. 186.
a honeypot for converts. Gray, 'Some Observations . . .', pp. 687-9, writes of the 'perpetual leakage' of students from Cambridge to Douai and Rheims that increased after 1580; and Marlowe would a few years later be accused of going to Rheims - but this early mission to collect a 'note' from Baines (who was indeed there at the time) is my creation.
'insinuated a certain priest'. Quoted in Gray, 'Some Observations . . .', p. 689. Acquavivia is a real name.
poisoning the well water. Baines did indeed have such a plan; Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 122-4.
'a delight rather to fill [hisl mouth'. Part of Baines's confession, quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 128, though Nicholl does point out that it should be viewed with caution as 'public writing' written in exchange for his release.
'carnal delights'. Quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 128, though Baines's penchant for a 'well-looked boy' is my addition.
'Henry Baily, a young youth'. Quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 126.
letter to the Jesuit . . . Agazzari. Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 124.
CHAPTER THREE Catch My Soul
'There be divers there'. Thomas Lever, A Sermon Preached at Pauls Crosse (c.1550), quoted in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 58; here with spelling slightly modernised.
'amongst wags as lewd as myself. Quoted in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 50.
'initiated in a tavern by the way'. This final phrase comes from John Earle's Micro-cosmographie, 1628 (Scolar Press Facsimile, Leeds, 1966), p. 81. His description of students provides a partial model for the invention of Marlowe's Babylonical friends.
the rigid Cambridge curriculum. Details of Cambridge studies are from M. H. Curtis, 'Education and Apprenticeship' in Nicoll (ed.), Shakespeare in His Own Age, pp. 64-6, though I speculate on Marlowe's personal passions.
dubbed as homo memorabilis. By the musical scribe John Baldwin in My Ladye Nevells Book; see Edmund Fellowes, William Byrd (Oxford University Press, London, 1948), P- 237
a university wait. The entry in college accounts is mentioned by Roberts in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 24.
the name was a common one. Fellowes, Byrd, p. 34.
William Byrd (alias Borne). Fellowes, Byrd, p. 34.
Ricardus Tertius, written by Thomas Legge, was performed in 1579 and on other occasions, including in 1582, and William Byrd did compose the music - see Fellowes, Byrd, pp. 167-9 and John Harley, William Byrd, Gentleman of the Chapel Royal (Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1997), p. 278. Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 62, suggests it is probable Marlowe saw the play and others claim that it influenced Greene, Marlowe, and perhaps Shakespeare (Alan and Veronica Palmer, Who's Who in Shakespeare (Methuen, London, 2000), p. 150). Like Legge, Byrd was a Catholic, and Tom Watson probably was too. Watson certainly collaborated with Byrd (see Harley, pp. 103, 275 and 281) and was friendly with Marlowe but that he introduced the two is my surmise, as is Marlowe's meeting with Essex at a performance of Ricardus Tertius.
Bene't accounts and buttery books. Urry interprets entries as indicating a five-week absence in the three months before Michaelmas (Urry, Marlowe, p. 56); Moore-Smith ('Marlowe at Cambridge', p. 173), says six or seven weeks over the summer.
St Helen's, Bishopsgate. Harley, William Byrd, Gentleman, p. 103, mentions Watson's return from the Continent to life in St Helen's ('where there was a strong Catholic presence'). Though it is clear Watson and Marlowe knew each other, I have expanded on the relationship - and this summer visit to London is conjecture.
'strangers who go not to church'. Quoted in Harley, William Byrd, Gentleman, p. 103.
'no want of young ruffins'. The rumbustious high jinks surrounding play-going are described by Gurr, Play going, pp. 123-5; and my description of the styles of plays is based both on Gurr and on Stephen Gosson's Playes Confuted, quoted in Gurr, p. 214.
Richard Tarlton. Gurr connects Tarlton with the rise in popularity of the word 'clown' {Playgoing, p. 276 fn. 14), quotes Henry Peacham's verses on Tarlton (p. 129), and highlights Tarlton's old-fashioned style (pp. 132-3).
'a Stationer that I knowe'. Nashe's description comes from his Pierce Penilesse, His Supplication to the Divell, reprint of 1592 edition (Bodley Head Quartos, London, 1924), p. 82, though Oliver's connection with this man, and subsequently with Thomas Thorpe (who did exist), is of course invention.
Sam Kennet, Marlowe's schoolmate, did convert and go to Rheims, see Urry, Marlowe, p. 49.
something seductive about Catholicism. Nicholl, Reckoning,P. 95
'places where certaine Recusantes remaine'. PRO SP12/151/11, quoted in Harley, William Byrd, Gentleman, p. 73. The Catholic connections are all verifiable (see Harley, pp. 58-9, 74, 103), but the house party at Harlington is my invention. Poley did marry one Miss Watson, who probably was Thomas Watson's sister, though was later estranged from her (see Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 182).
Voluptuous music'. William Prynne, Histriomastix, quoted in F. W. Sternfeld, 'Music and Ballads' in Nicoll (ed.), Shakespeare in His Own Age, p. 217.
'lute, cittern, and virginals'. William Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time (Cramer, Beale and Chappell, London, 1853), Vol. 1, P. 7 8.
'But supper being ended'. Quoted in Sternfeld in Nicoll (ed.), Shakespeare in his Own Age, p. 214.
'Since singing is so good a thing'. Fellowes, Byrd, pp. 149-50.
The first sett, of Italian madrigalls Englished was indeed published in 1590 and dedicated to Essex (see Harley, William Byrd, Gentleman, p. 103), though the merry madrigal singing at Harlington, with the earl joining in, is speculation.
Love's Labour's Lost. Lefranc's theory, and further parallels in Love's Labour's Lost and Hamlet, can be found in John Michell's Who Wrote Shakespeare? (Thames and Hudson, London, 1999), pp. 197-204.
'Mr Marlin'. Mentioned in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 84.
'gorgeous attire'. Marlowe's penchant for flashy dressing is conjecture - though university attitudes to fashion are not (see Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, pp. 50-3). The description of Marlowe's clothing is based on Thomas Middleton's portrait of a dandy in Father Hubbards Tales, and is used with a little poetic licence, as Middleton was writing in 1604.
an absence of six or seven weeks. Urry, Marlowe, p. 56; Moore-Smith, 'Marlowe at Cambridge', p. 173.
'mak'st waste in niggarding'. Alan Haynes, Sex in Elizabethan England (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 1997), p. 79) is not alone in providing an autoerotic reading of the sonnet. J modi, with engravings by Romano and text by Aretino exists. See Lynne Lawner (ed. and trans.) I modi, the sixteen pleasures (Peter Owen, London, 1988).
'one of the wittiest knaves that ever God made'. Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller (reprint of 1594 edition, Percy Reprints, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1927), p. 61.
Jean-Frederic-Maximilien de Waldeck. For the full, extraordinary tale of chance and adventure behind the resurfacing of I modi, from Toulon to Toscanini, see Lawner (trans.), I modi, pp. 15-17. The First suckes is my creation.
'Che per mia fe' questo e, miglior boccone\ The lines from I modi can be found in Lawner (trans.), p. 64 - though she rather anachronistically translates ' il pan unto as 'garlic bread'.
'La signora Bianca' and her transgressions are mentioned in David C. McPherson, Shakespeare, Jonson and the Myth of Venice (Associated University Presses, New Jersey, 1990), p. 86.
Ponte delle Tette. Too true.
frisky young men. Thomas Cogan's hints for healthy living are cited in Haynes, Sex in Elizabethan England, P. 7 8.
Andrew Badoer is quoted in J. W. Thompson and S. K. Padover, Secret Diplomacy (Jarrolds, London, 1937), pp. 31-2; Roger Ascham's remark can be found in Richard Lassels, The Voyage of Italy (sold by John Starkey, Fleet Street, 1670), p. 1; and Henry Cavendish's journey is recorded by his servant Fox, in 'Mr. Harrie Cavendish His Journey to and from Constantynople', in Camden Miscellany XVII, 1940, passim.
a secret drawer of a cedar chest. Benjamin Woolley, The Queen's Conjuror (HarperCollins, London, 2001), pp. xv-xvi, tells the story of the discovery of the secret drawer, which contained books and papers by the great astrologer Dr John Dee, together with 'a necklace of beads made of olive stones, from which dangled a wooden cross'. The Marlowe/rosary idea is my creation.
'Our regret has no real claim on him'. Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 266.
'Treason begets spies'. Quoted in Haynes, Elizabethan Secret Services, p. xi.
'You teach them to cheat'. John le Carre, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Coronet Books, London, 1963), p. 10.
'There is less danger in fearing too much than too little'. Letter of 1568, quoted in Richard Deacon, A History of the British Secret Service (Grafton, London, 1991), p. 17.
the case of one Richard Foley is mentioned in Deacon, British Secret Service, p. 45.
'They knew the international language, Latin'. See Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 171, whose analysis of the nature of Elizabethan intelligence work has been invaluable to me.
a discrepancy in the records. Urry, Marlowe, p. 56; Moore-Smith, 'Marlowe at Cambridge', p. 174. That these periods of absence represent a period of probation for spy Marlowe is conjecture.
for Her Majesty's special and secret affairs. These methods of payment are outlined by Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 109.
the people he is beginning to mix with. Percy, Hariot and Ralegh were all friends with shared intellectual interests. The Paget incident is true, and it appears Walsingham and Burghley were keeping Percy under surveillance. Marlowe and Walsingham were friends, and he and Ralegh certainly knew one another, but I have speculated as to how well, and have expanded on his friendships with the others (also see Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 193-9; Trow, Marlowe?, pp. 167-73).
Sir Walter's personal intervention. A distinct possibility, though not a corroborated fact (Trow, Marlowe?, p. 168).
Thomas Walsingham was indeed at Seething Lane, apparently with some sort of senior position, and Poley did apply to him for 'secret recourse' to Sir Francis (Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 116-17).
'go out at midnight into a wood'. Quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 205.
CHAPTER FOUR Gentlemen of a Company
three men reporting from Paris. The increase in espionage activity is outlined in Haynes, Elizabethan Secret Services, pp. 16-17.
the Low Countries. For the historical background to the situation in the Low Countries I am indebted to Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1998), and Susan Doran, Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy (Routledge, London, 2000).
English players. This discussion of the English comedians is based on Albert Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Asher & Co., London, 1865); Limon, Gentlemen of a Company; Simon Williams (Shakespeare on the German Stage, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990); E. Brennecke, Shakespeare in Germany 1590-1700 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1964); Willem Schrickx's article: 'English Actors at the Courts of Wolfenbiittel, Brussels and Graz during the Lifetime of Shakespeare', Shakespeare Survey, No. 33, 1980; and maps in E. Herz, Englische Schauspieler und Englisches Schauspiel zur Zeit Shakespeares in Deutschland (L. Voss, Hamburg, 1903). That the companies were a cover for spies, and that Marlowe was of their ilk, is purely speculation.
In court, a simultaneous translator. Fynes Moryson, supplementary to Itinerary in Charles Hughes (ed.) Shakespeare's Europe (Sherratt 8c Hughes, London, 1903), p. 304; Limon, Gentlemen of a Company p. 12.
'their pretty inventions'. From the preface of the first collection of works performed by the English comedians (1620), quoted in Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany, p. xciv.
* We can be bankrupts on this side'. Quoted in Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany, p. xcvi.
Kit's absences from college. Urry, Marlowe, p. 56.
O crudelis hyena. These anagrams are given in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 70.
a passport for a number of players. Schrickx, 'English Actors . . .', pp. 153-5. The text of this passport is given in English in Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany, p. xxix, and in a more complete version in French in Schrickx, p. 153. Bradstriet does appear on the passport, and though a John Breadstreet/Bradstriet is mentioned in other groups of travelling players, there is no mention of him in London (see Cohn, p. xxxiii). In the pages that follow I have given him an independent existence, and his own troupe. Details on Robert Browne are true.
'chose to steer towards Genoa'. Lassels, Voyage of Italy, p. 74.
'leaving both armies barking'. William Lithgow, A Total Discourse of Rare Adventures and Painefull Peregrinations of Long Ninteene Yeares ofTravayles (I. Okes, London, 1640), p. 412.
one Wychegerde. Haynes, Elizabethan Secret Services, p. 102.
'The tumbler also did us please'. Translated by Brennecke, Shakespeare in Germany 1590-ijoo, p. 8.
Pyramus and Thisbe. A slight fudge here, though another group of players was performing a play called Pyramus and Thisbe in 1604 (Schrickx, 'English Actors . . .', p. 167).
Marlin, Marlen, Malyn or Marlyn. Moore-Smith, 'Marlowe at Cambridge', p. 176.
the shadow of a Tudor portrait. The story of the discovery is true, though the college is always very careful to state that it is a putative portrait of Marlowe. Calvin Hoffman's sleuth work is chronicled in his The Man Who Was Shakespeare (M. Parrish, London, 1955, p. 656°). The ageing of the Corpus face into the Chandos portrait is a digital sleight of hand.
conspirators posed for portraits. Roberts, in Grantley and Roberts, Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, pp. 28-9.
a fashionable melancholy. Strong is cited in Roberts, in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 28.
'I am one who is entrusted to keep secrets'. Wraight, The Story, p. 92.
lSd and 2 i d extravagances. Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 100.
'a doublet of black carke, cut upon a dark reddish velvet'. Letter from Sir Edward Stafford to Sir Francis Walsingham, 10 July 1588, quoted in Gray, 'Some Observations . . .', p. 693. That Marlowe borrowed the doublet from Roger Walton is guesswork.
'All prostitutes and immodest girls'. Montaigne was amused enough by the rules to note them in his journal: E. J. Trechmann (trans.), The Diary of Montaigne s Journey to Italy in 1580 and 1581 (Hogarth Press, London, 1929), p. 13.
a dose of the clap. Wraight, The Story, p. 233-5, discusses gonorrhoea and the Sonnets; Haynes, Sex in Elizabethan England, p. 152, writes about syphilis and the plays. The details of Marlowe's sexual health are a matter for speculation.
visit to Plombieres. Montaigne had indeed visited Plombieres in 1580, and records the event in his travel journal (Diary, p. 9 ff), but this subsequent visit and meeting with Marlowe is my invention. (Montaigne was travelling through Europe at this time, but it is not certain where exactly.) My description of the baths is informed by Montaigne.
a troupe that followed the Earl of Leicester. Leicester did have a company of players with him. I've slipped Marlowe in among them.
Claudio Monteverdi travelled as maestro di cappella. Paolo Fabbri, Monteverdi, translated by Tim Carter (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994), pp. 30-1 and Denis Arnold, Monteverdi (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000), p. 10.
'commended unto him by the honourable the Earl of Leicester'. The players in Elsinore in 1586 do appear to have been from Leicester's own troupe - see E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1923) Vol. 2, pp. 271-2; Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany p. xxxix.
snippet of tactical know-how. The parallel between the passages in 2 Tamburlaine and Paul Ive's book is pointed out by Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 120.
Will Kempe, the clown was with the company - see Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, p. 272, and Jon Stefansson, 'Shakespeare at Elsinore' in Contemporary Review, LXIX, 1896, p. 35: both cite Court records; and 'Will, the Lord of Lester's jesting plaier' did carry a letter from Sydney to Walsingham - see Karl Elze, 'The Supposed Travels of Shakespeare', in Essays on Shakespeare (Macmillan, London, 1874), p. 256.
'spent his life in mad Jigges'. Will Kemp, Kemps nine daies wonder, edited by Susan Yaxley (The Larks Press, Norfolk, 1985), p. 1.
Kronborg Castle had just been completed, and the players were probably there as part of inaugural celebrations. The possibility of Kronborg as a setting for Hamlet, and other parallels, is based on discussions in Kenneth Kirkwood, Did Shakespeare Visit Denmark ? (privately published, Karachi, 1953), p. 26 ff, and Jon Stefansson, 'Shakespeare at Elsinore'.
forbade them to make noise with their drums. Limon, Gentlemen of a Company, p. 29.
'vastly fond of great noises'. Paul Hentzner, 'A Journey into England in the Year MDXCVIII' in Paul Hentzner's Travels in England during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, translated by Richard Bentley, London, 1797, p. 89.
'It would make a man sick'. Quoted in Stefansson, 'Shakespeare at Elsinore', p. 31.
dumb-show prologues were a special feature of the English comedians' performances (Limon, Gentlemen of a Company, p. 19).
Very black, heavy and windy'. Fynes Moryson, Itinerary, Vol. 4 (1617 edition, James MacLehose and Sons, Glasgow, 1906), p. 67.
a knowledge of Danish words. These observations are made by Stefansson, 'Shakespeare at Elsinore', pp. 3 2 - 3. ' . . .
it is hanged with Tapistary'. Quoted in Stefansson, 'Shakespeare at Elsinore', p. 28.
the Ur-Hamlet. Cohn points out both an English Hamlet and an early version of Der Bestrafte Brudermord were in the repertoire of bands of English comedians, Shakespeare in Germany, p. cxx. Brennecke, Shakespeare in Germany 1590-ijoo, pp. 247-8 cites Henslowe's and Lodge's early references to such a play. Marlowe's time in Denmark is, however, my invention.
Rosencrance . . . and Guildenstiene, students from Denmark, did indeed register at the University of Padua (see
Kirkwood, Did Shakespeare Visit Denmark?, p. 20 and Stefansson, 'Shakespeare at Elsinore', p. 32).
the Babington plot. For my account of the plot I am indebted to Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 147-65, and Christopher Haigh, 'Politics in an Age of Peace and War' in Morrill, Tudor and Stuart Britain, PP. 337-9
'I am the same I always pretended'. Quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 158-9.
'handled so circumspectly'. Quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 158.
Raptus Helenae. Watson did paraphrase the poem in 1586, and there are contemporary references to a (now lost) version by Marlowe published in 1587, but the relation between the two is uncertain (Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, pp. 293-4).
The Faustbuch was introduced at the 1587 Frankfurt Book Fair, and the annotated Aquinas is in the Parker Library at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
*Witty Tom Watson'. The various contemporary references to Watson are from Mark Eccles, Christopher Marlowe in London (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1934), pp. 7-8. It was Eccles who first showed that Marlowe and Watson were friends. Thomas Walsingham was friendly with both (I have, as pointed out earlier, elaborated on the friendships). Shakespeare was labelled 'Watson's heir' for Venus and Adonis.
the 'flower-strewn world'. Alan Bray, 'Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in Elizabethan England' in History Workshop Journal, 29 (1990), p. 16.
*Whereas it was reported that Christopher Morley'. From Acts of the Privy Council, Vol. 4, 29 June 1587, quoted in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 77 (spelling modernised). Baines's role in the affair is invented, though his Cambridge connections are not.
INTERLUDE
strolling troupes visited Stratford. Holden, William Shakespeare, p. 78, lists the companies that visited Stratford.
to repair a broken bench. Holden, William Shakespeare, p. 79.
Will stepped into the breach. My account of the Thame affray is based on Katherine DuncanJones's, Ungentle Shakespeare (The Arden Shakespeare, London, 2001), p. 29. A number of biographers, including Holden (William Shakespeare) and Mark Eccles (Shakespeare in Warwickshire), surmise that this is when Shakespeare was recruited by the Queen's Men, though there is no evidence to support this.
PART II
CHAPTER FIVE West Side Story
London. The following have been helpful to me in creating a picture of London at this time: John Stow, Survey of London (1598, reprinted by Everyman, London, 1929); Paul Hentzner, 'A Journey into England. . .', (1598); Peter Ackroyd, London, The Biography (Chatto 8c Windus, London, 2000); Roy Porter, London, A Social History (Penguin, London, 1994); Gamini Salgado, The Elizabethan Underworld (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 1995); T. F. Reddaway, 'London and the Court' in Nicoll, (ed.), Shakespeare in His Own Age.
100,000 people. A conservative estimate. There were no censuses, so numbers for this time are a matter of guesswork. Roy Porter traces a population growth from 85,000 in 1565 to 140,000 in 1603, with a further 40,000 in the burgeoning suburbs (London, A Social History, p. 42). Others prefer a figure going on for 200,000 within the city walls by 1600.
barely a handful of Jews. The number of foreigners in London is discussed in G. K. Hunter, 'Elizabethans and Foreigners' in Nicoll (ed.), Shakespeare in His Own Age> PP. 45 and 49
'handsome and clean'. Hentzner, 'A Journey into England . . .', P-33
scoured with paste of almonds. St Clare Byrne (ed.), The Elizabethan Home, p. 59ff.
'building of filthy Cottages'. Stow, The Survey of London, p. 376.
'her Eyes small, yet black and pleasant'. Hentzner, 'A Journey into England . . .', p. 48.
'All manners of attire'. Moryson, Itinerary, I, p. 428.
'dressed most exquisitely and elegantly'. Quoted in S. Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare, a Compact Documentary Life (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1975), PP. 134-5'uncomely to be used'. Moryson, Itinerary, I, p. 428.
'No 1 Lhtle Crown St Westminster'. Cited by various biographers, including Holden, William Shakespeare, p. 90.
fifty-seven documented varieties of the family name. These are listed in Michell, Who Wrote Shakespeare?, pp. 13-16.
lodging . . . with his friend Thomas Watson. Watson was living in St Helen's, and later moved to Norton Folgate, and certainly by 1589 his friend Kit Marlowe was also living in Norton Folgate, Eccles, Marlowe in London, pp. 159 and 114 respectively. That they lodged together is my invention. Eccles posits that Shakespeare was also in Shoreditch/Norton Folgate at the time (pp. 122-4). Robert Poley was there too (see Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 104).
John Heminges did marry Rebecca Knell, and many believe also acted with the Queen's Men before moving on (see Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, p. 31); and he was left money in Shakspeare's will (see Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare, p. 300).
book-keeper and stage-keeper. Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, P-43
'an absolute Johannes factotum'. As quoted in Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, pp. 4 3 - 5 ; the Johannes fac totum label comes from the famous 'upstart Crow' passage of Robert Greene's Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance (reprint of 1592 edition, Bodley Head Quartos, London, 1923), which (this passage at least) Duncan-Jones convincingly argues is by Nashe.
no proven examples of his handwriting. His will was not in his own hand, but dictated to his lawyer Francis Collins (see Holden, William Shakespeare, p. 320). The only other handwriting argued to be Shakespeare's is 'Hand D' 147 lines written as an amendment to Anthony Munday's play about Sir Thomas More - but this is a typical example of an early surmise becoming tradition and then hardening into a form of fact. Apart from some eccentric spellings, no proof exists.
'upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers'. Greene, Groats-worth of Witte, p. 45.
the sensational young Christopher Marley. I've elaborated a little on Marlowe's personal (though not his theatrical) reputation. There is no absolute proof that Shakespeare and Marlowe ever met, though they did both have connections with Lord Strange's Men. Their working relationship is an invention though many have posited collaboration (for example on Henry VI), quite possibly work that an ambitious Johannes factotum might do.
creation of the Romantic era. Jonathan Bate makes a similar point in The Genius of Shakespeare (Picador, London, 1997), p. 99
and passim.
'presiding personality'. Cited in Frank Kermode, Shakespeare's Language (Penguin, London, 2000), p. 18.
'self-satisfied pork-butcher'. Quoted in Holden, William Shakespeare, p. 327.
the 'Chandos portrait'. All shall be revealed.
'the precisest man in England'. That the proprietor saw to it that the Mermaid was a quiet and respectable tavern is noted in Eccles, Marlowe in London, p. 88, while Trow points out that Marlowe and Nashe also drank at the Nag's Head (Trow, Marlowe?, p. 97). Shakespeare's local remains a mystery, and the tavern tattler is invented.
CHAPTER SIX Gypsy Soul
Colloquia et Dictionariolum. The publication is mentioned in Francine De Nave and Leon Voet, Museum Plantin-Moretus (Ludion, Brussels, 1989), p. 99.
'many lands and speaking many tongues'. Bindoff, Tudor England, p. 274.
an Esperanto of War. De Somogyi, in 'Maps of War' in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, pp. 104-5.
franco piccolo9. Mentioned in
Bates, Touring in 1600, p. 48.
Dictionorium Teutonico-Latinum. Listed in Leon Voet, The Plantin Press, 1555-1589 (Van Hoeve, Amsterdam, 1983), pp. 1300-03. Oliver's involvement is of course fictitious.
Plantin's allegiances and various clients are discussed in Leon Voet, The Golden Compasses (A. L. Vangendt & Co., Amsterdam, 1969), pp. 9 4 - 8 and 113-15.
a broadside 'Declaration'. Haynes, Elizabethan Secret Services, p. 103, mentions this broadside, stolen for Walsingham.
Jasper Himselroy, who traded in passports. Haynes, Elizabethan Secret Services, p. 3, mentions Himselroy's activities in this field.
Stephen Powle, who had probably recruited Wroth. Jonathan
Woolfson, Padua and the Tudors (James Clarke 8c Co., Cambridge, 1998), pp. 265 and 287-8, establishes the connection between the two and that they were both intelligencers. I surmise that the older Powle recruited Wroth before he left.
the 'best listening post in Europe'. Deacon, British Secret Service, p. 41.
a subtle psychological warfare. Deacon, British Secret Service, PP. 35-9
coded espionage messages. Edward Kelley is a most mysterious character. Woolley, Queen's Conjuror, pp. 218-23, examines the possibility that he had been lured into the Walsingham spy network. I treat a Walsingham/ Dee/Kelley espionage link - a distinct possibility - as fact.
Steganographia. Both Haynes, Elizabethan Secret Services, p. 22 and Woolley, Queen's Conjuror, pp. 72-81, discuss Dee's discovery of the Steganographia and his excitement at the idea of occult communication.
The occult was taken seriously. Gareth Roberts in 'Necromantic Books' in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 162, mentions the wax dolls; Bruno's plans are outlined in John Bossy, Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1991), p. 154.
The Jesuit scholar Christopher Parkins. Woolfson, Padua and the Tudors, p. 262, notes Parkins's presence in Padua; and Woolley, Queen's Conjuror, p. 300, mentions his letters about Kelley from Prague.
daring young gentlemen like Harrie Cavendish. Fox, his manservant, gives an account of the trip undertaken in 1589 in 'Mr. Harrie Cavendish His Journey to and from Constantynople . . .', edited by A. C Wood, Camden Miscellany, XVII, 1940.
Nashe found himself embraced and feted. Elze, 'Supposed Travels . . .', p. 267, relates this experience and dates Nashe's visit to Italy as ending in the summer of 1588 - though many hold that Nashe's accounts of Italy are pure fiction, and that he never went there at all. Nashe's travelling with Marlowe is my invention.
commedia dell'arte. The various parallels between the plays and those of commedia are based on discussions in K. M. Lea, Italian Popular Comedy (Russell 8c Russell, New York, 1962), Vol. 2, pp. 431-47, and Andrew Grewar, 'The Clowning Zanies: Shakespeare and the Actors of the Commedia dell' Arte' in Shakespeare in Southern Africa, 3, 1989. Allardyce Nicoll is cited in Grewar, pp. 17-18, and Edward Gordon Craig on p. 9.
'the Academie of man-slaughter'. Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penilesse, P. 48.
'the art of atheisme'. Thomas Nashe, The Unfortunate Traveller, p. 96.
'a sort of squirting baudie Comedians'. Thomas Nashe, Pierce Penilesse, p. 90. 'with as good a grace, action, gesture'. Thomas Coryate, Coryats Crudities 1611 (Scolar Press, London, 1978), p. 15.
Savore sauce. The recipe is given in Moryson, Itinerary, Vol. 4, p. 100. The meal at Bergamo is based on Moryson's descriptions of Italian food, pp. 95-100.
'wrapt up in cleane paper'. Perhaps the first ever mention of a doggy bag. The take-away, as well as the effects of Lachrimae Christi, are mentioned in Lithgow, Total Discourse, p. 15.
students from Illyria, from Bohemia and from Cyprus. The various nationalities that made up the university's cosmopolitan student body are listed in Woolfson, Padua and the Tudors, p. 280, and Lucia Rossetti, The University of Padua (Erredici, Padua, 1999), pp. 37-8.
'More students of forraine and remote nations'. Coryate, Coryats Crudities, p. 154.
Oliver - on his first visit to Italy. This fictional visit echoes that of Fynes Moryson (Moryson, Itinerary, Vol. 1, p. 147 ff).
'a man may lie down in the exhalations'. Montaigne describes the visit to Abano in his Diary of Montaigne's Journey to Italy, p. 95.
'A monstrous filthinesse'. Lithgow's musings on buggery and the gloominess of Padua are in his Total Discourse, p. 43.
'punished with banishment'. Moryson, Itinerary, Vol. 1, p. 156.
Richard Willoughby. True: Woolfson, Padua and the Tudors, pp. 283-4.
cushions strewn about for comfort. A number of travellers have left records of their journeys - see, for instance, Francis Mortoft, 'Francis Mortoft: His Book', Hakluyt Society, LVII (London, 1925), p. 186 and note 2. I know that multitudes of examples of inaccuracies about Italy and Venice can also be quoted in retort. This is partially the point. We could ping-pong details back and forth without any certainty of how or why they got there in the first place. Who knows what bits of information or misinformation actors may have contributed in rehearsals; or how an author may bend reality to create a stage Verona or a conceptual Venice that suits his dramatic purposes? Should we care whether the writer went there or not? As Geoffrey Braithwaite, Julian Barnes's narrator in Flaubert's Parrot, puts it: 'Why does writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well alone? Why aren't the books enough?' (Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot p. 2.) (Incidentally, of all his contemporaries, Ben Jonson seems to have had the fullest idea of Venice.)
candidates for Belmont. The various theories are expounded in Elze, 'Supposed Travels pp. 278-81; Ernesto Grillo, Shakespeare and Italy (The University Press, Glasgow, 1949), p. 138; and J. R. Mulryne, 'History and myth in The Merchant of Venice', in Michele Marrapodi et al. (eds), Shakespeare's Italy (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1997), pp. 93-8.
below the Belvedere, is a chapel. It's there.
depiction of Rome. A. J. Hoenselaars, 'Italy staged in English Renaissance drama', in Marrapodi et al., Shakespeare's Italy, p. 34; and A. D. Wraight, New Evidence (Adam Hart, London, 1996), pp. 251-2.
Correggio's Io and Jupiter. Elze, 'Supposed Travels . . .', p. 291, and Michell, Who Wrote Shakespeare?, p. 225, are among those who point out the link between the play and the painting.
'This signior Julio's gyant dwarf. The gloss is made by Elze, 'Supposed Travels . . .', p. 290.
described . . . in The Rape of Lucrece. Lines 1366-456, mentioned in Michell, Who Wrote Shakespeare?, p. 225.
Muzio Giustinopolitano's 77 Duello. Sergio Rossi, in 'Duelling in the Italian manner' in Marrapodi et al. (eds) Shakespeare in Italy, p. 114, points out that Saviolo's book is almost a direct translation from the Italian.
rules gave way to dirty tricks. Sydney Anglo, in The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000), pp. 273-4, Points out the anarchic nature of street combat, despite the rules.
the 200-ton Tiger under Captain
John Bostocke. W. B. Whall, Shakespeare's Sea Terms Explained (J. W. Arrowsmith, Bristol, 1910), pp. 13-14, lists this ship as being part of the fleet in 1588. Captain Barnestrawe, his 'copernose' and his Tiger are real enough (see D. B. Quinn, 'Sailors and the Sea', in Nicoll (ed.), Shakespeare in His Own Age, p. 29), but their presence in Venice is hopeful thinking.
'Master had no compasse'. Lithgow, Total Discourse, p. 44.
'stamp of death in his pale visage'. Lithgow, Total Discourse, p. 99.
use correct professional language. The mariners' expertise is pointed out by A. F. Falconer, in Shakespeare and the Sea (Constable, London, 1964), pp. 38-9.
CHAPTER SEVEN Men of Respect
as lonely as an owl. Lord Burghley bewails his loneliness in David Cecil, The Cecils of Hatfield House (Cardinal, London, 1973), p. 57. Also see Curtis Breight, Surveillance Militarism and Drama in the Elizabethan Era (Macmillan, London, 1996); Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (Jonathan Cape, London, i960).
Regnum Cecilianum. A position outlined in Breight, Surveillance Militarism, pp. 1-42.
'Suffer not [your] sons to pass the Alps'. Quoted in Cecil, The Cecils of Hatfield House, p. 180.
Robert Devereux, the young Earl of Essex. His entry into the Cecil household is described in Read, Burghley and Queen Elizabeth, p. 467. The antagonism between the two Roberts became quite clear in later years, but I have speculated as to its source and driving force.
'godly vigilance'. Cecil's impeccable public behaviour is chronicled in Cecil, The Cecils of Hatfield House, p. 93.
'a man likely to trust much to his art and finesse'. Quoted in Read, Burghley and Queen Elizabeth, p. 496. Read holds that the remark could apply either to Burghley or Cecil.
pits of blackest depression. Cecil, The Cecils of Hatfield House, p. 91.
'Towards thy superiors be humble'. Quoted in Cecil, The Cecils of Hatfield House, p. 82.
'bringinge lettres in post'. From government accounts, quoted in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, P. 84.
the battle between Ralegh and Essex. The tumult and violence of this rivalry is highlighted by Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 295-6.
a clandestine raid on Walsingham's house. Haynes points out that there 'are no other candidates for the organizer of the raid' (Elizabethan Secret Services, p. 156). I have turned surmise into fact, and later come up with some credible (though invented) discoveries Cecil made.
'Sir Robert Cecil, as you may have heard'. Quoted in Read, Burghley and Queen Elizabeth, p. 477, who also dates Essex's efforts to countercheck the Cecils' influence from his return to England from France.
CHAPTER EIGHT Shakespeare in Love
The Hog Lane affray. The following were useful to my account of the Hog Lane affray: Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, pp. 98-103; Eccles, Marlowe in London, p. 38 ff; Trow, Marlowe?, pp. 129-30. I've kept to the facts as we know them, but interpret Marlowe's role more leniently than others do.
'kynde Kit Marlowe'. Bakeless quotes these and other mild epithets, Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, pp. 186-7.
a known thug and scoundrel. Eccles, Marlowe in London, pp. 43-68 and Trow, Marlowe?, pp. 129-30, convincingly argue the case for Bradley's ill nature and the existence of a feud over money.
Newgate. Accounts of Newgate and Elizabethan prison life are drawn from Salgado, Elizabethan Underworld, pp. 165-86 and Eccles, Marlowe in London, pp. 3 9 - 4 1.
'a foul kennel'. From Luke Hutton's prison poem The Black Dog of Newgate (1596), quoted in Salgado, Elizabethan Underworld, p. 184.
'jailors hoarsely and harshly bawling'. Quoted in Salgado, Elizabethan Underworld, p. 184.
Sir Roger Manwood was indeed on the bench, and his connections with the Walsinghams are elaborated in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 2, p. 162. Richard Kitchen and Humphrey Rowland were Marlowe's sureties (see Eccles, Marlowe in London, p. 66 ff), and the Burghley and Antwerp connections are true (Eccles, p. 91 ff).
'gvyes' and 'Gwies'. Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 2, p. 89, lists the relevant entries in Henslowe's diaries, pertaining to performances by Strange's Men at the Rose though these performances date from 1593 (or 1594) onwards. This flurry of activity on Marlowe's part is an invention - there is no certainty about first performances of any of the plays mentioned.
worked . . . with Tom Nashe. Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, pp. 50-3, writes on the collaboration with Nashe, on the departures from the Aeneid, and on the embellishment in Titus of the gore of Dido.
'an actor of some kind'. Quiller-Couch writes in the introduction and notes to the 1928 Cambridge University Press edition of the play.
Diana Enamorada is the generally accepted source of much of the plot, and was not translated into English until 1598. The Decameron also appears to be a source, but was not translated from the Italian until 1620. There is no performance recorded of Two Gentlemen until after the Restoration, though most commentators date it before 1592 (Holden, William Shakespeare, p. 330, for example, places it some time between 1587 and 1592).
Very well known to . . . my Lord Strange'. Marlowe made this claim in 1592 (see Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 235). I have embellished on his relationship with Lord Strange, though Nashe did dedicate his Dildo to Strange, and Strange's Men did perform both Marlowe and early Shakespeare plays - and Will Kemp was a member of the company.
a small court of wanton poets. Haynes, Sex in Elizabethan England, p. 51 ff, describes the brilliant Penelope's charms.
Cecil secured Kit as an informer. Marlowe's role as a spy in Strange's milieu is conjecture, though Strange was (albeit possibly reluctantly) a figurehead for Catholics abroad as pretender to the throne, and was under Sir Robert Cecil's surveillance after May 1591 (see Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 227-9). Nicholl believes that, in 1592 at least, Marlowe was working as a 'projector' for Cecil in Strange's milieu (p. 246).
Emilia Bassano. A. L. Rowse famously (if somewhat eccentrically) first proposed Emilia (or Aemilia) Bassano as the Dark Lady. Her biographical details are here taken from his book Shakespeare the Man (Macmillan, London, 1988).
Henry Wriothesley - known as 'Rose'. Martin Green, in Wriothesley's Roses (Clevedon Books, Baltimore, 1993), pp. 18-24, argues that the family name was pronounced 'Rose-ly', but does not go as far as giving the young earl a floral cognomen.
a huffy scuffle. The contretemps is related by Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, p. 105.
'Rose' Wriothesley liked to dress as a woman. The Cobbe portrait was reproduced, with a convincing argument by Anthony Holden for its authenticity and Southampton's cross-dressing, in the Observer, Review, 21 April 2002, p. 5.
opens the myth to a strong homoerotic reading. A point made by Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, p. 65.
the attentions of minions. Their romps are noted by Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, pp. 79-80, and Rowse, Shakespeare the Man, pp. 55-6.
'play wantonly with him'. Quoted in Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, p. 80.
'fiddling and dancing'. Samuel Stevens describing Margaret Clap's house in 1725, quoted in Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (Gay Men's Press, London, 1982), pp. 81 and 82.
'The men [called] one another "my dear"'. A contemporary account of a drag ball at the molly house in the Old Bailey, quoted in Bray, Homosexuality, p. 87.
a 'line of continuity'. Bray, Homosexuality, p. 85.
'a clinical, scientific coinage'. Bruce R. Smith, Homosexual Desire in Shakespeare's England (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1994), p. 11.
'The temptation to debauchery'. Bray, Homosexuality, p. 16.
'beds are not only places where people sleep'. See Bray, 'Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship . . .', p. 4; Anne Bacon and Bishop Laud are quoted here also.
'daily conventions of friendship', et al: Bray's terms (Bray, 'Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship . . .', pp. 8-9).
'Unless one were famous and had powerful enemies'. Smith, Homosexual Desire, pp. 48-53.
promiscuous and predatory. Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, p. 79, quotes Ovid Senior in Jonson's Poetaster (who is horrified his son will become 'an ingle for players') as illustration of the wicked reputation of theatre folk. Jonathan Goldberg, Sodometries (Stanford University Press, California, 1992), p. 106, cites other objectors, including Stephen Gosson, who complains that theatres 'effeminate the minde, as pricks unto vice'.
'The question confronting a young man'. Smith, Homosexual Desire, p. 65.
'a specifically homosexual subjectivity'. See Smith, Homosexual Desire, p. 23 and chapters six and seven. He, of course, does not hold that Marlowe wrote the Sonnets.
'Marlowe [was! breaking free'. Holden, William Shakespeare, p. 95, who is writing tangentially about Marlowe - his exact claim is: '. . . Shakespeare joined Marlowe in breaking free of the plodding, one-dimensional archetypes of the mediaeval tradition'.
'Marlowe was the first poet to grasp that chance'. Gurr, Playgoing, p. 141.
Holinshed's Chronicles are a major source for Edward II (Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 2, p. 8 ff) and subsequent history plays. A new edition did come out in 1587, but that Walsingham gave Marlowe one as a gift is invention.
'a theatrical feat never previously attempted'. Holden, William Shakespeare, p. 95, writing on Shakespeare.
CHAPTER NINE Theatre of Blood
'as hatefull to the people as the Spaniard himself. Thomas Wilkes, one of the English members of the Raad van State, the governing body of the United Provinces; quoted in Jonathan I. Israel, Dutch Republic, pp. 228-9. The portrait of Flushing is accurate, though Elisabeth Brandt is an invention.
a 'projector' to sniff out conspiracy. Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 235-47, makes a convincing case for this. I am indebted to his view of events in Flushing for my account, and have followed his interpretation, though have embellished the antagonism between Marlowe and Baines, and have invented Baines's methods and motives.
Professor Robert B. Wernham extracted a single letter. Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 235.
'to go to the enemy, or to Rome'. The letter, from which the ensuing quotations are taken, is given in its entirety in Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 235-6.
Robert Browne and John Bradstriet. The passport is given in full in Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, p. 274, though Marlowe's connection with the players is speculation.
plays by the 'celebrated Herr Christopher Marlowe' at Frankfurt (see Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, p. 274; Brennecke, Shakespeare in Germany 1590-1700, p. 4).
'fast bound like a thief. Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 247.
two Shoreditch constables. The constables are named, and the document given in full, in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, pp. 104-5.
no place on earth like jail. Nashe is quoted in Salgado, Elizabethan Underworld, p. 180.
'never could my Lord endure [Kit's] name or sight'. Quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 226.
Tom Nashe appears not to know. Both possibilities are mentioned by Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, p. 57, though she inclines to the view that Nashe was a collaborator on the play.
'. . . there is an upstart Crow'. Greene, Groats-worth of Witte, pp. 45-6.
a long though not unpraiseworthy poem. Emilia Bassano's later career is chronicled by Rowse, Shakespeare the Man [2], pp. 97-8.
'breathings of lofty rage'. The translation from the Latin is given by Eccles, Marlowe in London, pp. 165-6. The dedication is signed 'C. M.', and though there is some dispute that Marlowe is its author, no other feasible candidate has ever been put forward.
Earl of Pembroke's Men. Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare, pp. 165-7, notes that these plays were in the company's repertoire, and speculates that Shakespeare was one of Pembroke's players when Marlowe wrote Edward //for them.
considerable periods . . . at Scadbury. It is certain that Kit was at Scadbury in 1593, but these early visits are a supposition - though not unlikely, as 1592 was indeed a bad plague year, and the theatres were closed. The oath that Tom Watson extracts from Walsingham and Poley is an invention.
running a network in the Low Countries. Poley's residence and activities are reported in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 104, and Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 250 ff.
William Corkine. My treatment of the Corkine incidents in Canterbury is based on accounts by A. D. Wraight, The Story that the Sonnets Tell (Adam Hart, London, 1994), pp. 302-4, and Urry, Marlowe, pp. 64-8, who argues for a clerical error and that the two incidents were in fact one.
'plainely and distinckdy' read the will. Urry, Marlowe, p. 57.
'a scowlde' and 'comon swearer'. Quoted in Urry, Marlowe, p. 57.
Robert Poley . . . Paul Ive. Their presence in Canterbury is noted by Urry, Marlowe, p. 68.
'Will Hall' is paid a handsome £10. References to this mysterious Will Hall, his work for Anthony Munday and subsequent missions to Denmark, the Low Countries and Prague, are listed in Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman, The Shakespeare Conspiracy (Century, London, 1994), p. 158 ff. Some writers have imagined Will Hall to be William Shakespeare.
these men in the same place at the same time. The complex interrelations between these men, and the Scottish connection, are laid out by Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 145-6, and 257-62. Paul Ive was working on the Canterbury canal (Urry, Marlowe, p. 68) and did have espionage connections (Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 119), but I have invented the idea that he ran a letter drop. One of William Hall's missions was indeed to deliver a letter from the Cecils to Kelley in Prague (see Phillips and Keatman, Shakespeare Conspiracy, P. i 58).
'each one in a riddle or sieve'. Elze, 'Supposed Travels . . .', p. 307.
'men of quality to go unto the K of Scots'. Quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 260.
CHAPTER TEN The Mousetrap
too weak to go to court. Burghley's increasing infirmity is noted in Read, Burghley and Queen Elizabeth, pp. 484-5.
series of articles by Christopher Devlin. Devlin's article, entided 'The Earl and the Alchemist', appears in three parts in The Month (1953, Vol. 9), pp. 25-38, 92-104 and 153-66. Devlin puts forward the view that Cecil engineered a plot to eliminate Stanley as a political factor in the succession - a false conspiracy, rather like the Babington plot and that his plan misfired. In the chapter that follows, I treat Devlin's theory as fact, and have turned the idea on a notch. I have used the evidence that he assembles - the people involved, the planted letter, the chain of events that leads to things going wrong - but have added another layer to Cecil's motive: that he would use his 'exposure' of the plot to further his political standing. Marlowe's role in the affair is conjecture.
'Supposing you had a mind like Cecil's'. Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', p. 161.
'a stout man, fifty years of age'. Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', p. 32, gives the description, but does not ascribe it.
'my friend Richard Hesketh'. Quoted in Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', p. 30.
a haunch of venison as a gift. Woolley, Queen's Conjuror, pp. 315-16, comments on the Cecils' sudden ingratiating of Dr Dee, and suggests a possible link with the Hesketh plot, as they pumped him for information on English papists in Prague. The gift of venison is true; the crawfish, though seasonal, is my invention. That Cecil learned of Kelley as an intelligencer after raiding the secret-service archive is also my suggestion.
'fat and merry', with a limp. The description of Kelley is from Charles Nicholl, 'The Last Years of Edward Kelley, Alchemist to the Emperor', London Review of Books, 19 April 2001, p. 3.
rumours of a magic powder. Woolley, Queen's Conjuror, pp. 281 and 297.
'defer her charges for this summer for her navy'. Quoted in Nicholl, 'The Last Years . . .', p. 3.
'A guilty man on other grounds'. Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', pp. 102-3.
Bartholomew Hickman. Woolley, Queen's Conjuror, p. 317, oudines Dee's dealings with the whole Hickman clan, and also Bartholomew Hickman's government connections.
'a mixture of the terrible plights of Gloucester . . . and York'. Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', pp. 102-3.
'Your cousin the baker'. Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', PP. 34-5'the old Earl would have been
scared rigid'. Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', p. 104.
*William Hall' was dispatched to Prague. Payment for this is recorded by the Chamber Treasurer of the time. See Phillips and Keatman, Shakespeare Conspiracy, p. 158.
Hesketh picked up the document from Sir Robert Cecil. Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', p. 93, puts forward a good argument for this, citing correspondence 'To Lord Cobham or Sir Robert Cecil'. My account of Hesketh's journey and subsequent events is a much-simplified version of Devlin, p. 92 ff.
'a dupe in a complicated scheme'. Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', p. 98.
'a witness in Hesketh's favour'. Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', p. 154.
Vomits . . . like soot or rusty iron'. Talbot Papers, 'Touching the Death of the Earl of Derby', quoted in Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', p. 166.
Bartholomew Hickman . . . had ridden north. According to Dee's diary entry for 23 March 1594, quoted in Devlin, 'The Earl and the Alchemist', p. 165.
'A warrant to Henry Maunder'. Marlowe's arrest warrant, Acts of the Privy Council, XXIV, 1593, edited by J. R. Dasent (HMSO, London 1901), p. 244. Cecil's conniving is conjecture.
Richard Cholmeley. Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 265-83, discusses Cholmeley in some detail, and questions the validity of the 'Remembrances' and the accusations of atheism against him. My outline of the Dutch Church Libel, and of Cecil's and Cholmeley's involvement is based on Nicholl's well-argued conclusions (pp. 39-47 and 286-9), but I reshuffle his evidence, giving events a somewhat different slant, assigning other motives to Cecil, and imagining different relationships between the people involved.
For centuries the full text was lost to us. Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 284. A full copy of the text is transcribed on www.prestel.c0.uk/rey/libell/htm.
'in better case and more freedom than her own people'. From one of a number of other 'libels' current at the time; quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 49.
'counterfeiting religion for [their] flight'. See www.prestel.c0.uk/rey/libell/htm lines 30 and 42; spelling modernised.
*Whereas it is pretended that for strangers'. Quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 290-1.
*With Spanish gold, you all are infected'. See www.prestel.c0.uk/ rey/libell/htm, lines 4 5 - 5 1.
'he saith & verily believeth that one Marlowe'. Quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 267; Nicholl discusses the relationship between Drury and Cholmeley on pp. 306-8, but I have turned his evidence in a slightly different direction.
'search in any the chambers, studies, chests'. Quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 42.
'shuffled with some of mine'. In a letter to Sir John Puckering, quoted in Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 288.
'This daie Christofer Marley of London, gentleman'. Marlowe's arrest warrant, Acts of the Privy Council, Vol. XXIV, 1593, p. 244.
'In the realities of Elizabethan polities'. Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 315, Nicholl puts forward Cecil as the 'only plausible' candidate as Marlowe's protector - but I have Cecil protect Marlowe for entirely different reasons.
'his daily attendaunce on their Lordships'. There is no record of his ever doing this. Haynes, Elizabethan Secret Services, p. 119, puts forward the idea that Robert Cecil substituted the daily appearance with a meeting with Poley at Eleanor Bull's establishment. Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, pp. 141-2, suggests Deptford as the 'natural place to go' for such a meeting, as London was stricken by the plague.
Cecil was waiting to brief him. Normally a regular attendant at Privy Council meetings, Cecil is inexplicably absent between 24-29 May. Cecil's meeting with Poley, and Poley's subsequent journey to Scadbury, are fictitious.
CHAPTER ELEVEN The Reckoning
that mild May morning. The background on Skeres and Ingram Frizer is derived from Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 22-7, and Trow, Marlowe? pp. 213-14. I imagine the order in which they arrive, the plan to save Marlowe, and details of diet and climate, but the structure of events is as narrated at the inquest.
'one man's sudden death'. Duncan Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, p. 28.
'Take iii sponfulls of the galle'. The formula is given in Barbara Howard Traister, The Notorious Astrological Physician of London (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2001), p. 36.
'payment of a sum of pence, that is, le recknynge9. The translation from the Latin of the coroner's report is from Hotson, Death of Christopher Marlowe, pp. 31-4.
'one manner of cut'. Phillip Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses (1583, facsimile reprint, Garland, New York, 1973), no page numbers; Merchant of Venice I ii 6 6 - 8 ; Nashe, Unfortunate Traveller, p. 77.
INTERLUDE
the Queen's pardon. Eccles, Marlowe in London, pp. 24-5, gives the date of the pardon as early as 12 June 1593, but Hotson, Death of Christopher Marlowe, pp. 34-7 argues otherwise.
the next twenty years. Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, pp. 161-71.
'Nicholas Kyrse, alias Skeers'. Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 30 and 336.
'our well-beloved subject R. P.'. Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 336-7, suggests the 'R. P.' is Poley, who is being recommended for the post of yeoman-waiter in the Tower of London, and thus put out to grass as a minor official.
I do know the law'. Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 281.
Baines delivered his 'Note'. Nicholas Davidson, in 'Marlowe and Atheism', in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, p. 129, cites a number of cases to show that most of the blasphemies mentioned in the note were neither exceptional nor new. Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 310, discusses various opinions on the veracity of the Note, which appear either to refute or validate it entirely, using exactly the same data; on p. 129 Nicholl discusses the closeness of the Note to Baines's 'confession', and on p. 278 notes the three close parallels with further accusations about Cholmeley in a letter to the authorities by the compiler of the 'Remembrances'.
'A note Containing the opinion'. British Library Harley MS.6848 ff. 185-6, transcribed on www.prestel.co.uk/rey/bainesi.htm.
'Banish me forever'. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Cecil, Vol. 4, pp. 366-7 and 357-8, www.prestel.co.uk/rey/drury.htm.
'soden & fearfull end of his life'. Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 311-12, traces the alterations.
Gabriel Harvey . . . appears not to have known about it. Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, p. 139.
Kit died of the plague. This is how most biographers interpret a reference in his New Letter of Notable Contents, an addition to Pierce's Supererogation, published in September 1593, though Nicholl, Reckoning, p. 61 ff, argues the poem is not about Marlowe at all.
'Marlin . . . a Poet of scurrilitie'. This and subsequent accounts of Marlowe's death are cited in Bakeless, Tragicall History, Vol. 1, PP. 142-53his first noticeable appearance in the public arena. Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare, pp. 172-6; Wraight, New Evidence, pp. 8-9.
Walton himself ended up in jail. The story is related by Nicholl, Reckoning, pp. 33 and 335.
PART III
CHAPTER TWELVE His Exits and His Entrances
quince marmalade and . . . sea water. The remedies for seasickness are based on some given by Fynes Moryson, Itinerary, Vol. 3, p. 395.
more ships in Vlissingen. Coryate, Coryats Crudities p. 652. The inns in Flushing/Vlissingen are invented.
a Dialect of the German toung. Fynes Moryson, in Hughes (e d.), Shakespeare's Europe, pp. 377-8.
'a mighty blue feather in a black hat'. Sir Henry describes his disguise and adventures in a letter to Lord Zouche, May 1592, printed in Logan Pearsall Smith, The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton (Clarendon, Oxford, 1907), Vol. I, p. 271 ff, also p. 19.
the Dutch-held town of Middelburg. Moryson, Itinerary, Vol. 1, p. 430, records the distance as a mile. Charles Nicholl, in 'At Middleborough' in Grantley and Roberts (eds), Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, argues that Middelburg was a centre of clandestine printing and makes a connection with Poley.
Antwerp was in a forlorn condition. The account of Antwerp and the surrounding countryside is based on H. G. Koenigsberger and George L. Mosse, Europe in the Sixteenth Century (Longman, London, 1972), pp. 48-52; Israel, Dutch Republic, p. 219; Jervis Wegg, The Decline of Antwerp under Philip of Spain (Hyperion Press, Connecticut, 1979), p. 311 ff; Ephraim Schmidt, Geschiedenis van dejoden in Antwerpen (C. de Vries-Brouwers, Antwerp, 1994), pp. 57-8; John J. Murray, Antwerp in the Age of Plantin and Brueghel (University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1970).
*Venice outdone'. Quoted in Murray, Antwerp in the Age, p. 43.
her breasts devoured. Hooft cited by Wegg in Decline of Antwerp, p. 312.
De Roy Lelie/Het Gulden Cruys. Details of Antwerp's hoofden and taverns are from Paul Verhuyck and Corine Kisling, Het Mandement van Bacchus (C. de Vries-Brouwers, Antwerp, 1997).
places in the city that Kit had to avoid. The activities of Adrian de Langhe and Jacques Ghibbes, as well as the names of Cecil's agents, are oudined in Haynes, Elizabethan Secret Services, p. 158.
Diego Lopez Alleman was a resident of Antwerp at the time, who as a Marrano would have been allowed to own property (see Ephraim Schmidt, Geschiedenis van dejoden in Antwerpen, p. 55); and Pieter Bellerus was indeed a local printer and bookseller (see Voet, Golden Compasses Vol. 2, passim) though their relationship with 'Walter de Hooch' is invented. Christophe Plantin at the 'Gulden Passer' was one of the most renowned publishers of the era.
'a superannuated Virgin'. Quoted in Bates, Touring in 1600, p. 122.
'Antwerp . . . surpasses all the towns I have seen'. Quoted in Murray, Antwerp in the Age, p. 27.
'Sterrell' . . . bribed one of De Langhe's letter clerks. Mail was kept for a day for weighing in Antwerp, and Sterrell did bribe one of the clerks (see Haynes, Elizabethan Secret Services, p. 159), but the letter cited here is an invention.
the travelling company of Robert Browne certainly was performing at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 1593 (see Brennecke, Shakespeare in Germany 1590-1700, p. 5).
assistants as representatives. Voet, Golden Compasses, Vol. 2, p. 396, also fn. 4.
Jan van Keerbergen and Martin Nutius are real (see Voet, Golden Compasses, Vol. 2, p. 267, and p. 396, fn. 2), but Van Keerbergen's diary is not.
Christendom's foremost book mart. Voet, Golden Compasses, Vol. 2, pp. 395-6 describes the importance of the Frankfurt Book Fair in the sixteenth century.
'in a pleasant and fruitfull plaine'. Coryate, Cory at's Crudities, p. 588.
'you can hear them discussing philosophy'. Translated from the Latin original of Henri Estienne (' Stephanus'), Francofordiense Emporium (1574), by James Westfall Thompson as The Frankfurt Book Fair (Caxton Book Club, Chicago, 1911), pp. 169-70.
'had an evil time in carrying books'. Josias Maler's diary is quoted in Thompson (trans.) Frankfurt Book Fair, p. 25.
'cheere[d] the tables of the Fair'. Estienne, translated in Thompson, Frankfurt Book Fair, p. 147.
125 extra 'strangers'. Figures from Thompson (ed.), Frankfurt Book Fair, p. 53.
Love's Labour's Won. Meres, 'Wit's Treasury', p. 281.
Roderigo Lopez, the Queen's physician, did send money to Antwerp, and an anonymous letter of 18 February 1594, ascribed to Diego Lopez Alleman, was used at his trial (see Schmidt, Geschiedenis van defoden, p. 55; Haynes, Elizabethan Secret Services, pp. 135-46).
'Jewish gaberdine'. Umberto Fortis, The Ghetto on the Lagoon (trans, by Roberto Matteoda, Storti, Venice, 2001), p. 15, gives the dress regulations for Jews in Venice; as does Coryate, Coryat's Crudities, p. 231 - though he records red hats for Jews of Western origin and yellow turbans for Levantines.
'a kinde of light yellowish vaile'. Coryate, Coryat's Crudities, p. 232; McPherson, Shakespeare, Jonson and the Myth of Venice, p. 64, describes the dress-code anomalies.
'For when as walking in the Court of the Ghetto'. Coryate, Coryat's Crudities, pp. 234-7.
more conservative estimates. McPherson, Shakespeare, Jonson and the Myth of Venice, p. 64.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN In the Bleak Midwinter
Disgrace and loss of reputation. Wraight points to this and other sonnets (such as Sonnets 121 and 112) as belonging to a group with a theme of disgrace; one which is closely associated with a group of sonnets of exile (see Wraight, The Story, p. 11, pp. 57-8). The idea that the sonnets are Marlowe's verse letters back to England is derived from Wraight's writings.
'Odd' Thorpe. The details on Thomas Thorpe are from Phillips and Keatman, Shakespeare Conspiracy, p. 161, and Alan and Veronica Palmer, Who's Who in Shakespeare's England, p. 250, though he did not, of course, employ Oliver Laurens.
a lump sum of £1,000. No one knows for certain how Shakespeare came by the money to buy a share in the Lord Chamberlain's company - the rumour of a £1,000 gift from the Earl of Southampton was first recorded in Nicholas Rowe's biography in 1709, though Schoenbaum is sceptical (see William Shakespeare, a Compact Documentary Life, pp. 178-9); Holden, William Shakespeare, His Life and Work, pp. 129-35, suggests the amount was a possible pay-off, but for reasons other than I have outlined; Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, p. 85, thinks the sum more likely to have been £100, used by Shakespeare to buy his coat of arms, and cites Andrew Gurr as saying that he probably paid for his share in the Lord Chamberlain's Men using play-scripts carried from other companies. And so on. It is true, though, that Southampton broke off all professional relations with Shakespeare from this point forward, and no longer acted as his patron.
'The gift is small'. Ascription found in a manuscript compiled by Sir Francis Fane of Bulbeck (1611-80), now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, quoted in Holden, William Shakespeare,
P. 135 one year that Browne did not travel to Germany. Schrickx 'English Actors . . .', pp. 156-7, notes Browne's absence and family tragedy; Hans Hartleb, Deutschlands Erster Theaterbau (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, 1936), pp. 24-6, points out that while there were English comedians in Kassel (on a likely route to or from Frankfurt) in 1594, it was not Browne's troupe.
a high point of the English comedians' activity. Limon, Gentlemen of a Company, pp. 4 -5 and 10.
'When I came to the Duke of Brunswick'. Letter to Sir Robert Cecil from Nuernburg, 10 November 1595, quoted in Diana Poulton, John Dowland (Faber and Faber, London, 1972), p. 38. The Duke of Brunswick and Maurice of Kassel were indeed renowned for their cultured courts, and played host to such musicians and players.
a small company led by Harry Brodribb. Fantasy, though firmly based on accounts of real troupes travelling at the time.
the annual Hirschessen. Hartleb, Erster Theaterbau, p. 20, mentions the feast, and cites a letter from the Marburg state archive as evidence that a group of English players, and two lutenists (one of whom was most likely Dowland), attended Maurice.
comedians may have stopped over before. A point made by Schrickx, 'English Actors . . .', p. 155; Hartleb, Erster Theaterbau, pp. 24-5.
a paragon among princes. Poulton, Dowland, p. 31, points out the differences in temperament between Maurice and Brunswick, and quotes the German historian Johann Janssen on the obscene nature of one of Brunswick's plays.
'a goodly personage, of stature tall'. Nichols, Progresses and Processions, Vol. 3, p. 394.
'like the Louvre in Paris, hie and statelie'. Nichols, Progresses and Processions, Vol. 3, p. 385.
Dowland . . . was a melancholy man. Poulton, Dowland, pp. 76-8, comments on the intensity of Dowland's depression. His relationship with Marlowe is conjecture.
soliloquies of Hamlet. This similarity between Dowland's 'ayres' and the soliloquies is noted by Christopher Headington in The Bodley Head History of Western Music, (Bodley Head, London, 1974), p. 100-01.
Flow, my tears. John Dowland, from Second Book of Airs, transcribed, scored and edited by Edmund Horace Fellowes, in The English School of Lutenist Song Writers (Stainer 8c Bell, London, 1922), p. 8.
detects the same hand. Poulton, Dowland, pp. 254-6, though she does admit objections to the idea.
parallels . . . The Merchant of Venice. Poulton, Dowland, p. 281.
Dowland was in contact with Cecil. Poulton, in Dowland, pp. 36-40, reproduces his panic-stricken letter.
the bitterness of the scholar reduced to . . . clowning. A point made by William Bliss, in his largely imagined The Real Shakespeare (Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1947), p. 116.
the ageing Doctor Hugo Blotz was indeed in charge of the Imperial Library, was an advocate of unity and peace, and played host to Sir Henry Wotton (see Pearsall Smith, Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, Vol. I, p. 14). This visit is based on Wotton's - though it is not certain whether Blotius owned a copy of Holinshed. Holinshed.
lBugeria is an Italian word'. Quoted in Goldberg, Sodometries, p. 106.
the original Admirable Crichton was indeed the mysterious and multitalented James Crichton of Cluny. His adventures are related in more detail in Douglas Crichton, The Admirable Crichton (L. Upcott Gill, London, 1909), and George Pottinger, The Real Admirable Crichton (Michael Russell, Norwich, 1995), which includes a reprint of Sir Thomas Urquhart's inventive biographical essay. There were rumours of a second man, 'Crichton, The Survivor' (Pottinger, pp. 96-7).
'he never blotted out a line'. Bate, Genius of Shakespeare, pp. 26-7, makes his commentary and quotes the passage from Jonson's literary notebook in full.
a 'Poet-Ape'. Michell, Who Wrote Shakespeare, p. 72, points out that most biographers hold Shakespeare to be the main contender for the title, and quotes Jonson's epigram, which hints that the Poet-Ape stole other people's work.
the Chamber Treasurer paid £15 to 'Hall and Wayte'. Noted in Phillips and Keatman, Shakespeare Conspiracy, p. 159.
'to guide the Passinger his dangerous way'. Lithgow, Total Discourse, p. 335.
'head downewards and heeles upward'. Moryson, Itinerary, Vol. 3, p. 467.
'the fittest time to passe the Alpes'. Moryson, Itinerary, Vol. 3, p. 467.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN Renaissance Man
an unsolved riddle. The incident is recorded in Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare, pp. 198-9.
William Wayte's stepfather. Noted in Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare, pp. 198-9, though Hotson's claim is refuted here.
'worldly recognition' . . . 'a gentleman'. Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, pp. 83 and 85.
hoarding grain at a time of famine. Shakespeare's hard-nosed business practices are discussed by many, including Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, pp. 121-2; Park Honan, Shakespeare, A Life (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999)> PP. 225, 292-3 and 321-2.
The coat of arms. Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, pp. 95-7, gives details of the coat of arms, and Shakespeare's dubious means of acquiring it.
Ben Jonson wickedly sent up. Jonson's satire is discussed by Michell, Who Wrote Shakespeare?, pp. 7 2 - 3.
Malvolio's cross-gartered yellow stockings. Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, pp. 157-8, unravels the riddle of the garters, though she sees it as an example of Shakespeare's self-ridicule.
Jan Moretus did not record their names. Voet, Golden Compasses, Vol. 2, pp. 174-5 a n d 187-8, notes that these casual workers often slipped through company records.
knowledge of printers' trade expressions. W. Jaggard, Shakespeare, Once a Printer and a Bookman (Shakespeare Press, Stratford-upon-Avon, 1934), p. 6ff.
at busy times even family members helped out. Voet, Golden Compasses, Vol. 2, p. 180, discusses the work arrangements of the proof-readers, and describes how casuals and family were roped in to help; young Christophe's punishment and letter are given in Murray, Antwerp in the Time, pp. 99-100.
'they do not laugh'. The rules are given in Voet, Golden Compasses, Vol. 2, pp. 184-5.
Lipsius and his dog Mopsus. Master and mutt are mentioned in Mark Morford, Justus Lipsius en zijn contubernales', in R. Dusoir et al. (eds), Justus Lipsius en het Plantijnse Huis (Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp, 1997), p. 139. The great humanist was a frequent resident at the Gulden Passer, and Rubens was indeed part of the milieu as a friend of the younger Moretus (see Voet, Golden Compasses, Vol. 1, pp. 207 and 212). Apart from the public conversation with 'Hooghius', the picture of Lipsius drawn here is based on Morford, Voet and on Francine de Nave, 'Amicitia et constantia' and Jeanine de Landtsheer, Justus Lipsius en zijn relatie met Johannes I Moretus', in Dusoir et al. (eds), p. 15 ff and p. 82 ff respectively; and Alois Gerlo and Hendrik Vervliet, La Correspondence de Juste Lipse Conservee au Musee Plantin Moretus (De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, Antwerp, 1967), pp. 52-4. The Rubens letter is an invention, though he did at times illustrate his correspondence - see Ruth Saunders Magurn (ed.), The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1971), p. 42.
'the solemnity and weight of the Senecan iambic'. Eliot, 'Seneca in Elizabethan Translation', in Selected Essays, p. 85.
'Blount, I purpose to be blunt'. Thorpe's dedicatory letter to Blount is printed in full in Hoffman, The Man Who Was Shakespeare?, p. 191 ff., who proposes that Blount knew Marlowe was alive and that Thorpe had discovered the truth and was 'twitting' him; and by fellow Marlovian, A. D. Wraight, who sees Marlowe floating through St Paul's Churchyard disguised as a Moor (Wraight, The Story, pp. 378-80).
intricate set of references. Michell, Who Wrote Shakespeare?, pp. 238-9, discusses the allusions in As You Like It more fully.
something of a culture-raid. Details of the duke's visit to the Low Countries (with Monteverdi in train), and the visit's musical influence on the composer are from Fabbri, Monteverdi, p. 33 ff. It is not certain, but most likely, that this is when Vincenzo recruited both Pourbus and Rubens - see Marie-Anne Lescourret, Rubens: A Double Life (Allison 8c Busby, London, 1993), pp. 24-5.
Lipsius was planning to travel to Rome. Marc Laureys and Jan Papy, ' "The grandeur that was Rome": Lipsius's variaties op een oud thema', in Dusoir et al. (eds), Justus Lipsius, pp. 129-30.
'The dizzying display of poetry and philosophy'. Holden, William Shakespeare, pp. 190-91.
'a new inwardness, almost independent of dramatic necessity'. Kermode, Shakespeare's Language, p. 71 and p. ix. He is, of course, speaking of the conventional Shakespeare.
on horseback to Mantua. This is Rubens's departure date and mode of transport, though it is not known exactly who comprised the party (Lescourret, Rubens, pp. 16-17).
CHAPTER FIFTEEN Under the Mask
'chosen my Lord the Duke as patron'. The boast reappears in a letter of November 1603, Magurn (ed.), Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, P. 38.
while a pageboy to the Countess de Lalaing. Magurn, (ed.), Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, p. 14.
*whole Forests of Olive-trees'. Lassells, The Voyage of Italy, p. 2.
'abundance of goodly meadows'. Coryate, CoryaVs Crudities pp. 119-20.
by sailboat along waterways. Edward Sullivan, 'Shakespeare and the Waterways of North Italy', in The Nineteenth Century, August 1908, p. 215 ff, elaborates on this extensive transport system (one which, incidentally, would permit Prospero in The Tempest to leave Milan by boat - something which has perplexed some critics).
Svealth of many beautiful and great palaces'. Quoted in Fabbri, Monteverdi, pp. 24-5. Vasari's praise came in the second edition of his Vite (1566), correcting an earlier impression.
he handed over an entire estate. Maria Bellonci, A Prince of Mantua (Weidenfeld 8c Nicolson, London, 1956), p. 199.
Vincenzo loved the theatre. Details of the duke's patronage of the arts are from Fabbri, Monteverdi, pp. 24-5; Iain Fenlon, Music and Patronage in Sixteenth-century Mantua (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980), pp. 5 and 123; Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, p. 261; Denis Stevens (trans.) The Letters of Claudio Monteverdi (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1995), p. 23; Lescourret, Rubens, pp. 18-23.
Mantua was gratifyingly cosmopolitan. Fenlon, Music and Patronage, p. 10, attests the cosmopolitan nature of Mantua; Lithgow, Total Discourse, p. 330, notes the locals' lingering sorrow over the death of the Admirable Crichton.
the Jewish community. Details of the status of Jews in Mantua are from Shlomo Simonsohn, History of the Jews in the Duchy of Mantua (Kiryath Sepher, Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 25-41, and Emanuele Colorni, La Comunitd Ebraica Mantovana (Mantova Ebraica, Mantua, 2000), pp. 26-30.
'he favoured the Jews and spoke kindly to them'. Quoted in Simonsohn, History of the Jews, p. 31.
Leone de' Sommi . . . Salomone Rossi. Their contribution to Mantuan court life and Italian culture is discussed by Kate Simon in A Renaissance Tapestry (Harrap, London, 1988), pp. 219-22; Colorni, Comunitd Ebraica Mantovana, p. 14; Simonsohn, History of the Jews, pp. 658 ff and 673 fr.
the double of the great Arlecchino. Stevens (trans.), Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, pp. 23-4.
strangely similar to Monteverdi's Lament of Ariana. The similarity is noted in Headington, History of Western Music, pp. 100-01. Marlowe's involvement is hypothetical.
a legend of terror. The story is related in Selwyn Brinton, The Gonzaga - Lords of Mantua (Methuen, London, 1927), p. 176.
in Sabbioneta the Teatro Olimpico. Sabbioneta - the cittd ideale - and Vespasiano's theatre are still very much intact.
famed as architect, painter and creator of theatrical effects. Romano's versatility is mentioned in Simon, Renaissance Tapestry, pp. 5, 211 and 216, and Michell Who Wrote Shakespeare? pp. 224-6. The tombstone inscriptions were noted by Vasari and are quoted in Elze, 'Supposed Travels . . .', pp. 287-8.
Svork of brush more horrible and frightening'. Quoted in Gianna Suitner and Chiara Tellini Perina, Palazzo Te in Mantua (Christopher Evans, Electa, Milan, 1994), pp. 101-2.
'great gambler, a spendthrift'. Ludovico Muratori, Annali, quoted in Lescourret, Rubens, p. 22.
at the centre of Mantuan academic circles. Fabbri, Monteverdi, p. 25, points out the central role Vincenzo played among Mantua's academia. Tasso had been resident in Mantua, scholarly debates were common, there were alchemists in the cellars, and Vincenzo did commission a gas bomb (see Bellonci, Prince of Mantua, p. 190).
*you shall see sometimes ten or twelve Rooms on a floor'. Maximilian Misson, Voyages, quoted in John W. Draper, 'Some details of Italian local colour in Othello', in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, LXVIII, 1932, p. 125.
'open their quivers to every arrow'. Coryate, Coryat's Crudities, p. 264. 'a second Cleopatra'. Coryate, Coryat's Crudities, pp. 266-7.
compose sonnets and discuss Boccaccio. Lawner, I modi, p. 26, remarks on these and other talents of the courtesans.
'the dregs of their olde age'. Coryate, Coryat's Crudities, pp. 268-9.
During his 1595 campaign, he had taken . . . a young Monteverdi. Monteverdi's presence on the campaign is discussed by Fabbri, Monteverdi, p. 30.
savoured the powers of command. Bellonci, Prince of Mantua, pp. 180-3, a n d 228, notes Leonora's behaviour in power and her treatment of Francesco.
*Willm Halle' . . . returned with intelligence from Denmark. Phillips and Keatman, Shakespeare Conspiracy, p. 159.
Cromwell, written by *W. S.' was published by William Jones in 1602. Listed by Hoffman, The Man Who Was Shakespeare, p. 38.
one of the most unpleasant . . . families in the town. Holden, William Shakespeare, pp. 202-3, relates Shakespeare's dealings with the nasty Combes.
stooped to collaborate . . . Sir Thomas More. The original play was by the part-time spy Anthony Munday ('Will Hall's' first employer). Holden, William Shakespeare, pp. 197-8, holds that 'by general consent' Shakespeare was one of the five people brought in to undertake rescue work on the play; Schoenbaum, William Shakespeare, a Compact Documentary Life, p. 214, is more assertive.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN Themes and Variations
an ambassadorial mission to Spain. Lescourret, Rubens, pp. 35-9, outlines Rubens's impact on the Mantuan court, and gives details of the Spanish mission. Marlowe's collaboration with someone at court to sabotage the trip is an invention - though Rubens did take an illogical route, and appears to suspect some sort of plotting against him.
an exuberantly decorated silver coach. Details of the gifts are from Magurn (ed. and trans.), Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, p. 21 and Bellonci, Prince of Mantua, p. 200.
'they almost crossed themselves in astonishment at such a mistake'. Letter I, from Florence, 18 March 1603, in Magurn (ed. and trans.), Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, pp. 24-5.
'by the incompetent advice of I know not whom'. As above.
'through a Flemish gentleman in his service'. Letter II, from Pisa, 26 March 1603, in Magurn (ed. and trans.), Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, pp. 26-7. The identity of this 'Flemish gentleman' is a surmise.
'in every detail as to the quantity and quality of the gifts'. This and subsequent quotation from Letter III, from Pisa, 29 March 1603, in Magurn (ed. and trans.), Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, p. 27.
King Philip was hunting rabbits. Lescourret, Rubens, pp. 36-7.
'guardian and bearer of the works of others'. This and subsequent quotations from Letter VIII, from Valladolid, 24 May 1603, in Magurn (ed. and trans.), Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, p. 33.
known among writers for his unstinting largesse. The generosity and intelligence of the Count of Lemos is recorded in William Byron, Cervantes, A Biography (Doubleday 8c Company, New York, 1978), pp. 295, 460 and pp. 475-6. Lope de Vega had indeed been his secretary.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, a protege of the Count of Lemos. Byron, Cervantes, p. 460, mentions the possibility of Lemos's early patronage of Cervantes; Gary MacEoin, Cervantes (Bruce Publishing Co., Milwaukee, 1950), p. 158, mentions him as one of the writer's only two protectors.
reading from his manuscript. Byron, Cervantes, pp. 413-14, writes that Cervantes read from his manuscript, probably in the small shop Robles had left behind in Madrid when he moved to Valladolid. This reading in the Valladolid shop is conjecture, and Sanchez's eavesdropping an invention.
'a magic book, as close to being a living object'. Byron, Cervantes, p. 423.
Christopher Marlor, or Marlowe. Mentioned in F. S. Boas, Marlowe and His Circle (Oxford University Press, London, 1931), pp. 18-20. He reappears in the Gatehouse prison in Westminster in 1604, but the name appears to be an alias he is described as being 'of very low stature, well set, of black round beard'.
without cucumbers or other missiles'. Quoted in Melveena McKendrick, Cervantes (Little, Brown and Co., Toronto, 1980), p. 109.
Lope de Vega quick fed voracious audiences. Byron, Cervantes, pp. 280 ff. has been useful to me on the relationship between Lope and Cervantes, and the failure of drama for the latter.
called Cardenio (and later Double Falsehood). Bate, Genius of Shakespeare, pp. 76-82, gives the story of the rediscovery of the play, and makes the strongest argument for Fletcher as collaborator and the play's authenticity (Theobald was accused of forgery).
'impudently grating on a sorry guitar'. Quoted in Clare Howard, English Travellers of the Renaissance (John Lane, London, 1914), p. 134. Other details of travel in Spain based on Howard, pp. 132-5.
Claudio and Claudia Monteverdi. Strange, but true.
'our Director of Music, who has a wife and other relatives'. Quoted in Stevens (trans.), Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, p. 33, who writes of the virginity test; Arnold, Monteverdi, p. 19, also tells Caterina's tale. Claudia Monteverdi gave birth to a son in May.
Vincenzo quickly commissioned . . . Orfeo. The background to the first performance of Orfeo is given in Fabbri, Monteverdi, p. 63 ff.
'It should be most unusual'. Quoted in Fabbri, Monteverdi, p. 63.
'They accompanied the music . . . with appropriate facial expressions'. Vincenzo Giustiniani in 'Discorso sopra la musica', probably written around 1630, quoted in Fenlon, Music and Patronage, p. 127.
'When Romeo and Juliet first speak'. Bate, Genius of Shakespeare, p. 279. The reference is to Romeo and Juliet I v 92-105.
fine cakes, monstrous sausages . . . and for the allures of its female staff. The shop is described in Giancarlo Malacarne and Mauro
Bini (eds), A Tavola Con Gli Dei (II Bulino, Modena, 2000), p. 20; the quotation ' in maniera che a poco a poco. . .' is from a letter reproduced here from G. Calzona to Duke Gugliemo Gonzaga, 7 July 1565, though the later complaints about a quaint-talking Fleming are invented.
'The truth is that instead of Otello being an Italian opera'. Quoted in Bate, Genius of Shakespeare, p. 285.
one George Wilkins. This unpleasant character, and his collaboration with Shakespeare is chronicled in Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, p. 205 ff.
'that prodigal aristocrats squandered, or borrowed'. Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, pp. 183-4.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Prospero's Books
Ottavio Benintendi's bad intentions are revealed by Stevens (trans.), Letters of Claudio Monteverdi, p. 34.
Southampton was a major 'adventurer'. Southampton's connections with the Virginia Company are outlined in A. L. Rowse, Shakespeare's Southampton, Patron of Virginia (Macmillan, London, 1965), pp. 234-9. His friend Sir Thomas Gates did indeed go out to America on the Sea Venture (or Sea Adventure), which left that June.
he was Will's bastard son. Or so tradition has it, though in a letter to the Times Literary Supplement, 16 May 2003, Davenant's biographer Mary Edmond points out that this is a misinterpretation of a claim of Davenant's, reported in Aubrey's Lives, and that Davenant is rather saying that he is content to be thought Shakespeare's son as he writes in the same spirit as his godfather - an even more outrageous statement.
the 'Chandos portrait'. The provenance of the 'Chandos portrait' is outlined with some certainty from Davenant onwards by E. A. Greening Lamborn in Notes and Queries, Vol. 194, No. 1, January 1949, pp. 71-2, but the early provenance is unclear, and it is not known for sure whether it is a picture of Shakespeare or not. I have used Greening Lamborn's research and mortared in the gaps. As mentioned in an earlier note, the computer face-ageing process is a digital sleight of hand.
the flagship Sea Venture had been lost in a terrifying storm. True. The story of the loss of the Sea Venture and subsequent events back home is given in Rowse, Shakespeare's Southampton, p. 239 ff; and Leo Salingar, in 'The New World in The Tempest', in Jean Pierre Maquerlot and Michele Willems (eds.), Travel and Drama in Shakespeare's Time (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996), p. 209 ff.
command from King James. That the king commissioned Henry VIII for wedding celebrations of Princess Elizabeth is one of the great Shakespearean biographical traditions. The Chamber Account does mention an unnamed play that was cancelled for the 'greater pleasures' of a masque (see Schoenbaum, Shakespeare, a Compact Documentary Life, p. 276). Fletcher's large contribution to Henry VIIUs generally accepted.
'a pallid, pompous, prettified version'. Holden, William Shakespeare, p. 297.
burned the theatre down. A contemporary account of the blaze is reproduced in Schoenbaum, Shakespeare, a Compact Documentary Life, pp. 276-7.
a confidential report had reached the Council. The True Reportory was kept secret, and was not published until 1625 m Samuel Purchas's Hakluytus Posthumus, or, Purchas his Pilgrimes (Salingar, 'The New World in i(The Tempest"'in Maquerlot and Willems (eds), Travel and Drama in Shakespeare's Time, pp. 209-10; Rowse Shakespeare's Southampton, pp. 239-40, also Virginia Mason Vaughan's introduction to the 1999 Arden Shakespeare edition of the play, pp. 40-41) - though it must be admitted that other publications in 1610, including the Virginia Company's own A True Declaration of the estate of the Colonie in Virginia, were also possible sources. There are parallels between The Tempest and A True Reportory, and it remains a riddle that the first performance of the play predated the pamphlet's publication. Most commentators explain this by saying that Shakespeare somehow had access to the secret manuscript of A True Reportory. I posit another scenario.
pays homage to the commedia delTarte. K. M. Lea, Italian Popular Comedy (Russell 8c Russell, New York, 1962), Vol. II, pp. 445-53, draws these and many other parallels.
Their names both signify 'one who is lucky, prosperous'. This Prospero/Faustus parallel is pointed out by Duncan-Jones, Ungentle Shakespeare, p. 237.
AFTERWORD
'nine bones and six hundred barrels of plaster of Paris'. Mark Twain, Is Shakespeare Dead? (Harpers 8c Brothers, New York, 1909), p. 49.