The Vavasour Macbeth

by Bart Casey

  As promised, John, Brian, and Tessie walked around, sitting, standing, and coaching all of the groups. In about fifteen minutes, everyone declared themselves ready for a complete read-through of the seventeen-line speech with their accompanying gestures and movements.

  Watching, Stephen thought the kids were wonderful doing this. Their inhibitions were going away and they all seemed to be really getting into it. As they read through their sentences, they punched out the key phrases and swayed rhythmically to accompany the words. The overall effect was powerful.

  Stephen, Mrs. Boardman, and the teachers huddled during the first break.

  “This is the way to do it,” confided Miss Davies. “When we were reading through Macbeth in the classroom last week, it was a real struggle to keep the whole class engaged. This is so much more. I never thought to introduce the movement, gestures, and so on. Now I know what the RSC people meant when they told me they taught ‘Shakespeare on your feet.’”

  “Yes,” added Mister Meakins. “But I think we’d be missing a trick if we just keep this for the oldest students. I think we should start this much earlier—when the kids are even more comfortable with playing and acting out.”

  “Very good idea, Mister Meakins,” said Mrs. Boardman.

  Just then, they all noticed a boy had come over to Stephen and was waiting there quietly, while the adults had been talking.

  “Please, sir…Mister White,” said the boy.

  Stephen turned and was surprised to see young Denis Juric there, the boy from his summer cricket practice.

  “Hello, Juric. How can I help?”

  “Sir, we want you to come with us now. And this is Sophie,” replied Juric, nodding to a girl Stephen hadn’t noticed, standing just on his other side.

  “Sophie. Well, hello,” Stephen said to the pretty and mischievous-looking pre-teen girl, who startled him by reaching out and taking his right hand. Then Juric took his left hand and he felt totally surprised.

  “Hello, sir,” said Sophie. “We need you to come with us just now please. We’re going to kill you.”

  “What?” Stephen managed to get out before the booming voice of facilitator John interrupted it all.

  “Come on, Mister White,” said John. “We need you over here as King Duncan. It will be just like your day job. You stroll about looking important and everyone bows to you. Come over here now and help us, will you?”

  Everyone laughed and Stephen felt himself blushing, something he could never control.

  The students were ready to start work on the next scene, where Macbeth has doubts but Lady Macbeth persuades him to kill the king, who is just arriving at the castle as a guest.

  “You’d better get over there,” laughed Mrs. Boardman, as Stephen began to understand he was being drafted into the workshop—and not just as an observer.

  The class was standing in a circle in the center of the rehearsal room, with facilitator John in the middle. Stephen stood up, smiled, and the kids dropped his hands as he took off his jacket. Then Juric took his left hand, and Sophie took the right, and lifted them up high as they ceremoniously slow-marched with him toward the circle.

  “All hail, King Duncan,” the class boomed out.

  Well, here I go to be murdered, thought Stephen. And how enthusiastic they all seem about it.

  ~

  After that, the rest of the workshop only got better. Next, Macbeth, acted out by all the boys, delivered a soliloquy and then told his wife they were no longer going to kill the king. And then Lady Macbeth told him right back to “man up” and do the deed, and he gave in. The girls really liked that.

  For the final scene, a makeup crew came in with smocks for all the students and splattered them copiously with fake blood. So when all the boy Macbeths came in with their bloody daggers and then all the Lady Macbeths went offstage to smear the king’s guards with blood to frame them for the crime, the kids really put their hearts and souls into acting it all.

  By three o’clock everyone was saying their goodbyes to John, Brian, Tessie, and the impressive Memorial Theatre, leaving about ninety minutes in their day for a visit to Shakespeare’s supposed schoolroom, which was only a five-minute walk from the theater.

  As arranged, a special tour guide was waiting for them and led them from the entry hall of the timbered old village guildhall, past a waiting queue of tourists, and upstairs into the ancient classroom where Shakespeare allegedly had been schooled. At the front, another guide was dressed in Tudor period robes and cap and stood holding a fearsome-looking cane made out of long birch twigs. He bellowed out the order for all the students to sit down and fill up the desks, holding the cane aloft as a threatened weapon.

  As the man acted out his set piece with the students, he introduced himself as Shakespeare’s supposed actual teacher, Thomas Jenkins, and made the point that the students would have been all boys back in the 1570s, but the curriculum would probably be familiar to each of them today. It was mostly a lot of Latin—which all of these contemporary English children had also suffered through for several years—followed by a smattering of numbers and science. The day would have started at 6:00 a.m. in the summer, and an hour later in winter, and continued on until 5:00 p.m. Everything would have been free, provided by the borough council. The old desks they sat at, covered with deeply carved initials of the former students, were all actually Georgian rather than Elizabethan, but they looked incredibly ancient as it was.

  “They missed a trick with the whitewashed walls,” whispered Stephen to Mrs. Boardman. “They would actually have been brownish, mixed with the mud and bush cuttings from the local fields. And the beams would have been light brown, not dark as the mock-Tudor buildings are today. Also, things wouldn’t have been this clean: Shakespeare’s father, John, was fined for having a large unauthorized dung hill out front.”

  Mrs. Boardman smiled. “And they wouldn’t have had a big gift shop downstairs either,” she whispered back at him, obviously very pleased with how the day had gone.

  In the ground-floor shop, Stephen bought a booklet of Shakespearean insults to share with the students back at school when they were restless in class. He thumbed through it as they walked away from the guildhall toward the waiting school coach, liking Shakespeare’s line “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” That’s really timeless, he thought.

  The visit had been a great success, both for the students and also the merger. There was no doubt Mrs. Boardman was really looking forward to working in the new partnership with Stephen and St. George’s. And Stephen was hoping she might become a strong enough force to take over running the school for both the girls and the boys—which would let him escape the headmaster’s job and get on with his life. Back in the car, the two chatted away happily all the way home.

  1580–1581. Beneath the Queen, preferment at court was a fickle affair, with competition intense among those bold enough to seek it.

  Top of the heap in 1580 was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. His hazardous adolescent friendship with Elizabeth had secured his position for many years, though it was now showing signs of strain. At the death of Edward VI, Dudley’s father, the Duke of Northumberland, led a rebellion to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne. Along with Lady Jane, Queen Mary sent the elder Dudley to death on the scaffold and imprisoned his family. That put young Robert in the Tower exactly when Princess Elizabeth was there herself, confined under suspicion from yet another rebellion. The two became the closest of friends and for many years early in Queen Elizabeth’s reign he lived in the apartment next to her, sparking rumors of romance. Unfortunately, he jeopardized his position with the jealous queen by a secret marriage in 1578—which perhaps explained his lavish 1580 new year’s gift to Elizabeth as a means of retaining his footing.

  Just below, and momentarily coming up strong, was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford. His earldom was the oldest in England, and brought with it the role of the hereditary Lord Great Chamberlain of England. He came to prominence ear
ly, inheriting his title at age twelve, on the death of his father in 1562. Because of the importance of his hereditary position, he was made a royal ward and taken away from his family for formal education and training. This meant moving from his ancestral home at Castle Hedingham in Essex to the London mansion of Elizabeth’s chief minister, Lord Burghley, who was also master of the court of wards. Burghley lived in the palatial Cecil House on the Strand, which had the finest private library in England. No fewer than twenty young noblemen and their tutors were lodged there for protective development. By rank, Oxford was top of the pack, and he arrived immediately after his father’s funeral at the head of a troop of 140 men, all dressed in mourning black.

  However, the Earl of Oxford had a very bad temper and he soon acquired, along with the great talent in music and literature he showed from an early age, a reputation for being quarrelsome and dangerous. For example, in July 1567, Lord Burghley noted in his diary that the earl had inflicted a fatal wound on Thomas Bryncknell, an undercook at Cecil House. Burghley also noted that he had successfully persuaded a jury to deliver a verdict of felo-de-se, attributing the man’s death to

  his accidentally “running upon a poynt of a fence sword of the said earle.”

  When Anne Vavasour had come to court, Oxford was twenty-nine years old, well traveled, a central figure at court, and an accomplished rider in the tilts. He wrote poetry and maintained his family’s own company of actors, writing comedies for them. In his capacity as Lord Great Chamberlain, he carried the sword of state in front of the Queen in ceremonial processions. He was also on the prowl, estranged from his wife, Lord Burghley’s daughter, Anne Cecil, and looking for diversions.

  Soon after Anne Vavasour’s successful debut dancing for the Queen, Oxford and Anne could often be seen walking together. Also, from the description of her in a poem said to be written together by the couple, they also spent time at his nearby seaside estate in Essex, east

  of London.

  And so it is not too much of a surprise to read about “a grave scandal at court” in a letter written on March 23, 1581, by Elizabeth’s spymaster Francis Walsingham:

  On Tuesday at night Anne Vavasour was brought to bed of a son in the maidens’ chamber. The E. of Oxford is avowed to be the father, who hath withdrawn himself with intent, as it is thought, to pass the seas. The ports are laid for him and therefore if he have any such determination it is not likely that he will escape. The gentlewoman the selfsame night she was delivered was conveyed out of the house and the next day committed to the Tower. Others that have been found any ways party to the cause have also been committed. Her majesty is greatly grieved with the accident, and therefore I hope there will be some order taken as the like inconvenience will be avoided.

  ~

  It took time for the scandal to blow over. By June, Anne had left her confinement in the Tower and slipped into anonymity to start raising her bastard son, named Edward Vere. She was helped by the de Vere family as well as the Knyvets. The Earl of Oxford was also confined in the Tower, and was banned from court for two years. The Knyvet family remained fiercely loyal to Anne, blaming Oxford for her trouble. For several years, Sir Thomas Knyvet harassed the earl, culminating in a duel in which Oxford was seriously wounded, remaining lame for life. He never did regain his favor with the Queen at court and became a sad figure, heeding the royal order to reconcile with his wife and systematically selling off all forty-five of his estates to settle debts. To avoid final embarrassment and maintain him in a style appropriate for his position, the Queen finally awarded him an annual allowance of two thousand pounds.

  Meanwhile, Anne’s family and friends cloaked her in the respectability of an arranged marriage to one John Finch, a sea captain often gone for months as a minor member of the Muscovy Company delegation dispatched for trade and diplomacy to the court of Ivan the Terrible, Tsar of all the Russias.

  Meanwhile, living mostly by herself in England and outside the palace, Anne maintained close connections to friends at court.

  She was not, by nature, a woman to spend much time alone.

  From “Woman’s Changeableness,” a poem by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford

  If women could be fair and yet not fond,

  Or that their love were firm and fickle, still,

  I would not marvel that they make men bond,

  By service long to purchase their good will;

  But when I see how frail those creatures are,

  I muse that men forget themselves so far.

  Lines from Verses made by the Earle of Oxforde and Mrs Anne Vavasour

  (1) Verses Made by the Earle of Oxforde

  Sitting alone upon my thoughte, in melancholy moode,

  In sighte of sea, and at my back, an ancyente hoarye woode,

  I saw a faire young lady come, her secret feares to wayle,

  Cladd all in colour of a Nun and covered with a vaylle:

  Yet (for the day was calme and cleare) I myghte discern her face,

  As one myghte see a damaske rose hid under christall glasse:

  Three times with her softe hand full hard on her left side she knocks,

  And sighed so sore as myghte have moved some pity in the rocks:

  From syghes, and sheddinge amber teares, into sweet songe she brake,

  When thus the Echo answered her to everye word she spake:

  (2) Anne Vavesor’s Eccho

  O heavens, who was ye first that bredd in me this fevere? Vere.

  Whoe was the first that gave ye wounde whose feare I ware for evere? Vere.

  What tyrant, Cupid, to mye harme usurps thy golden quivere? Vere.

  After the last class on Tuesday, Stephen was handed an urgent message to come to the school office. Verger Andrew had just called to leave word that Vicar Hamilton had died. Stephen should come to the vicarage as soon as he could.

  He felt the reality of the loss sweep over him, making all of his everyday plans so small and irrelevant in the face of the finality of death. He already knew how it felt to have one parent die and he was so glad to still have his mother. Now Margaret had lost both. It must be the loneliest feeling in the world, he thought.

  Stephen drove directly from the school to the vicarage. The vicar had never woken up, Andrew told him at the door. Margaret had sat next to her father most of the day, talking to him and reading. But sometime after noon there were erratic signals from all the bedside monitors and she ran out to the nursing station just outside. Then the medical team asked her to leave and stay in the waiting room. An hour later, the doctor came out and told her he was gone. Andrew was the first person she called and he came over to the hospital right away. She spent a few minutes with her father alone, and then they both walked home to the vicarage. She was in her father’s office now, trying to reach her father’s brother and her mother’s cousin. Once she got them, they would let the rest of the family know.

  Stephen stood looking out into the garden from the lounge, with his left hand resting on the vicar’s reading chair. It had all happened so fast. His last call with the vicar had been only ten days before. Then the vicar had been so excited at Stephen’s update on the papers, and as happy as Stephen had ever known him. He was all positive energy and hope for the future. Now he was gone and everything that Margaret had been dreading had become the new and bleak reality.

  Margaret came into the lounge at that moment, her eyes red and her face streaked with tears. Stephen went over and hugged her. “Margaret, I’m so sorry.” It was all he could get out, and yet just that had the effect of starting her to cry again. They just stood together for a minute or so, and then she calmed and came gently away to arm’s length so she could look up at him.

  “You know, I didn’t get to say goodbye. All those machines started flashing and beeping, and they sent me out. I think they tried a few desperate things to revive him, but in the end nothing worked. I went in after and said a few things alone, even though I knew he couldn’t hear me. I didn’t believe it, but...he w
as really gone, all in just a moment. When I touched his hand, it seemed he was already starting to get cold.”

  Stephen just hugged her close again. Half of him wanted to console her by saying that her father didn’t suffer and now would be with the God he worshipped so completely—but his better half knew he shouldn’t sugarcoat the reality of this tragedy now. Not for Margaret.

  After a few minutes, Stephen guided her over to the sofa and sat down with her. She was still shaking, and he turned to Verger Andrew as he held her. “Andrew, what’s next? Do you know?”

  “Of course, it will be up to Margaret and the family,” Andrew replied. “I did, however, call the bishop’s office to let them know. Normally we’d issue a statement to the newspapers and let the townspeople know any plans for the service. We already did make a special announcement at Sunday’s service about how ill he was, so the congregation is very aware. Someone will have to write an obituary notice as well and we’d place that. Then there might be some questions from the press, especially after the coverage of those papers being found. And the bishop would preside at the funeral ceremony.”

  “Oh god. Not the bishop,” said Margaret. She couldn’t stand the man’s pompous self-appreciation. “I can handle the press, but not ‘his lordship’—maybe my aunt can cover him for me.”

  They sat in silence briefly, until the doorbell rang. Andrew answered and brought in two of the village policemen to the lounge: Sergeant Stokes, whom Stephen and Margaret had already met, and his chief of the village police. “We’re sorry to intrude, Miss Hamilton, at this sad time for you,” said the chief. “I wanted to convey our condolences from the entire force. The vicar was always a kind and steadying force all the times he worked with us. He was a familiar face in times of trouble, ministering to many traumatized people at fires and times of family tragedies when we’d ask him to step in. I personally recall his kind visits to me two years ago when I was in hospital after my heart attack. I wasn’t the most frequent face at his services, yet he stopped in to see me almost every day and we’d have a nice chat. We just wanted you to know, miss, how highly we valued him.”