The Vavasour Macbeth

by Bart Casey

  “That’s it?” asked Margaret.

  “That’s it.”

  “So how do they get from that to this writing on the old play?”

  “Well, three or four of the scholars split up the work and tackled the question, each from a different angle. All of the resulting evidence is circumstantial, but it does all point to the same conclusion. And I, for one, believe they are probably right, that this play contains an example of his writing.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t see how they could do that. You know, I am supposed to be an investigative journalist,” insisted Margaret.

  “Okay,” Bowen continued. “The first scholar was Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, principal librarian at the British Museum. He had just written a paper called ‘Shakespeare’s Handwriting’ for that tercentenary book, Shakespeare’s England. He simply chopped up each of the letters in the six signatures, so he had six capital Ws and six capital Ss, and then six or more examples of all of the lowercase letters in the signatures. And he put them all next to one another, side by side, and then made a forensic description of each set of letters—and, you know, the letters all shared the same sort of quirks about them. And he had a fair share of all the alphabet letters represented there, so that was a good start.”

  “That seems very sensible,” said Margaret.

  “The second scholar took the manuscript of Sir Thomas More and studied each of its passages to determine who annotated them. He identified about six or seven individuals writing on the pages, each with a distinctive handwriting style, and he actually was able to say who several of the individuals were, because he knew other examples of their handwriting on things that were under their names. One he labeled ‘Hand E’ and identified as Thomas Dekker, a playwright of that time. ‘Hand S’ was Anthony Munday, the copyist who worked for all the playwrights producing fair copies of finished scripts and so on. Also very easy to identify was the handwriting of the censor, Edmund Tilney. He was the Master of the Revels responsible for licensing plays to be performed. He kept putting in comments like ‘No’ or ‘Must be changed,’ and so forth. One other set of lines the scholar could differentiate by handwriting style, but he didn’t know the writer by name, so he labeled it as ‘Hand D’—and that’s the one they think might be Shakespeare.”

  “How did they argue that case?” asked Margaret, with furrowed brow.

  “Well, the passage in question is 142 lines of a long speech at the beginning of the play. ‘Hand D’ doesn’t appear anywhere else in the document, just in this one place. First of all, it matches up with the work of the man who chopped up the six signatures. I mean all the letters—the capital Ws and the small e’s and so forth—all match up with the signatures that had been chopped up.”

  “I see,” said Margaret, impressed with the practical approach.

  “And then another scholar weighed in from a totally different angle,” continued Bowen. “This man was an expert on Shakespeare’s style. The play Sir Thomas More follows the arc of More’s career, just like in the film A Man for All Seasons. At the start, a raging mob wants to overturn the King, but Sir Thomas steps in front of them and delivers this speech that calms them down and saves the day. This makes Sir Thomas well loved by King Henry VIII, who advances him along, right up to being chancellor. But then Sir Thomas won’t approve of the King’s desired divorce to marry Anne Boleyn, so he goes out of favor and eventually is tried and executed—that’s the play. Obviously, Queen Elizabeth is the daughter of King Henry and Anne Boleyn, so this play is never going to get approved for production in front of the London mob of 1596. But these 142 lines in ‘Hand D’ are the speech Sir Thomas More makes to calm the crowd. In other words, it’s the critical speech to demonstrate the greatness of Sir Thomas. This third scholar argues all these hacks dragged in Shakespeare to add his magic to this crucial turning point for the play.”

  “And is it that good?” asked Stephen. “Could it credibly stop a mob?”

  “Yes, actually,” said Bowen. “The scholar compares the speech to others where a Shakespearean orator controls a mob—think of Marc Anthony calming the crowd after Caesar’s assassination in Julius Caesar with the ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’ speech, or others from the early plays Henry VI and Henry IV. Anyway, the scholar says the author shows real insights and wit playing to the humors of the crowd—he simply understands angry people. And he has a profound belief in the rights of kings and those in positions of legitimate authority, as did Shakespeare. So whoever wrote the lines did indeed display the necessary passion in the oratory. He warns the mob of the chaos they would set in motion if they overthrew the very order ordained from heaven which allowed good Englishmen to live in the peace and order that every one of them craved for. It’s a very emotional connection.”

  “That is very interesting,” allowed Margaret.

  “Yes, and the scholar finishes his bit noting that those lines appeared to be written quickly, in the free flow of an author composing, with fast crossing outs and revisions—nothing like the careful lines of Anthony Munday, the so-called Hand S, who was obviously only a plodding copyist, on this project at least.

  “Just let me finish telling you about the last scholar, Mister White and Miss Hamilton. And he was probably the most arcane and microscopic of them all.”

  “That should be pretty amazing,” she said.

  “This last poor bastard made his life work studying the typographical errors made by typesetters trying to read the handwriting of Elizabethan playwrights when printing their plays,” began Bowen.

  “You’re joking,” said Margaret.

  “Really. It was his life’s work. He knew, for example, that an apprentice in the Jaggards print shop set parts of Macbeth in the First Folio, because he always made the same mistakes. The scholar had pretty much figured out what materials were used as sources to set each play in the First Folio collection. Half a dozen were from fair copies of scripts made by a scribe called Ralph Crane who wrote very clearly and standardized all the stage directions a certain way. But others were from scripts that looked like Sir Thomas More where many people had written all over them. For the First Folio, the source material for Macbeth was so confusing that one of the stage directions—I think it was ‘ring the bell’—appears in the dialogue to be spoken, so a character actually says ‘ring the bell’ in the middle of his speech because the typesetter accidentally made the stage direction part of the speech.”

  “I read about that,” said Stephen smiling, “but I didn’t understand some poor apprentice actually was known to have made the mistake.”

  “Anyway, this last scholar knew which of the First Folio plays were likely set from manuscripts in Shakespeare’s own handwriting—he called those ‘fair papers.’ Other plays were set from copies by someone else: a stage manager, or something. Those were called ‘foul papers.’ And Shakespeare’s handwriting obviously had some quirks that caused typesetters to make the same mistakes frequently. Apparently Shakespeare’s e’s and o’s could easily be mistaken for each other—so could his c’s and i’s. The letters m, n, and u also caused misprints when they were followed by e, o, or i.

  “I mean, this micro-babble goes on and on—but the last scholar’s conclusions are that all of those quirky letter formations that resulted in so many misprints by typesetters working from Shakespeare’s handwriting—those same quirks are in the letters of the 142 lines written by ‘Hand D’ in the manuscript of Sir Thomas More. So all of these different lines of analysis point to the same conclusion: ‘Hand D’ in Sir Thomas More was penned by Shakespeare.”

  “Blimey,” offered Margaret. “I had no idea what these people did—it was crazy. How could they know all that?”

  “And the sad thing is that we don’t have old scholars like them today. Today, we have literally millions of old documents that only a few hundred people can decipher,” Bowen concluded.

  “Good god,” said Stephen. “I’m even one of those few people—but I’m so inept compared to those earlier sch
olars that I’m like the monkey banging out Shakespeare on the typewriter. There are just as many answers to mysteries out there that we will never recover. Margaret, that’s why your papers from Anne Vavasour are such a miracle. Not only are they rare, but also they are in fine condition—and somehow they fell into the hands of people who can at least work out what they say. There won’t be many others that fare so well.”

  “Stephen, I’ll never laugh at your love of classics again. And I must say it provides a welcome respite from the modern world. That story is just amazing, Doctor Bowen,” Margaret said, turning to the librarian. “Thank you so much for taking us through it. And if there turns out to be anything of real value in the papers we’ve found, we’ll be sure to follow up with you about that further appointment here at the museum. Thanks so much.”

  “And thank you for the photocopies of the pages with the Hand D speech,” said Stephen. “They’ll be very useful for us.”

  “No problem,” said Bowen, zippering up his portfolio.

  ~

  The fresh air out in the museum’s courtyard fronting Museum Street was a welcome relief from the sealed manuscript rooms, but what an education I’ve just had, thought Margaret. “Stephen, you went quite quiet there for a while. Was I being too much of the reporter or something?”

  “No, Margaret, I was just sidetracked while Doctor Bowen was talking. I mean, I already knew a bit of what he was saying—and it was great to hear the whole story—but I was totally distracted by something else.”

  “What was it?” she asked, stopping for a moment and looking over at him.

  “Well, I think there is some of the same ‘Hand D’ handwriting in your papers, Margaret.”

  “My god,” she said. “Is it possible there could even be another surprise with all this?”

  They just stood there awhile, watching school buses unload their charges for field trips.

  ~

  That night, back at home in the village, Stephen was able to confirm the Vavasour papers did indeed include contributions made by the owner of Hand D.

  “It’s true,” said Stephen, “the handwriting known as Hand D is all over the manuscript of the Ditchley masque that Sir Henry and Anne put on for Queen Elizabeth in 1592.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I think so. Actually, it makes some kind of sense. The year 1592 was about the time Shakespeare wrote his long poems Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He did that because the playhouses were all closed because of plague and writers needed money. He would have been desperate for work. Since Sir Henry had the Queen to entertain for two days just then, he was one of the few rich people in England who actually needed some drama written. They had months to prepare, so they would have hired lots of talent to help in a big way.”

  “Has anyone hinted that Shakespeare might have had a hand in that?” asked Margaret.

  “No, nobody has,” replied Stephen. “In his book, Chambers thought the principal ghostwriter was Richard Edes, a scholar from Cambridge. But then no one has put much effort into studying the text of the entertainment that has been available until now—and I know that manuscript is incomplete. So your copy may be much longer than what anyone has seen of that work before. There’s also some of the same handwriting on the scroll, and that’s from fourteen years later, so it looks like whoever Hand D was became a friend of the family with our favorite couple.”

  “What do we do with that?”

  “I don’t know yet. I think we should calm down and think it all over. And I think we should go ahead with Soames and Professor Rowe to get the rest of their input. I’ve arranged to see Professor Rowe tomorrow with my inventory. He might also have had some insights into the scroll and Heminge, so I want to see what he says. Then you and I can compare notes on Sunday morning, after you’ve had your dinner with Soames. But I wouldn’t say anything about the scroll or the Hand D thing to him yet—he would go absolutely bonkers.”

  “All right. Then I want to get the lot into that bookseller Maggs for an authoritative estimate. While we’re waiting for that, we should go together to meet with our new detective and all get on the same page. Okay?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Stephen.

  ~

  Up in Horton-cum-Studley that evening, someone else was thinking about the same Saturday meetings as Stephen and Margaret. Hugh Rowe was at home alone, slouched into his favorite leather chair in his study. The professor was angled comfortably to catch the heat spreading out from the gas grill in his fireplace, with its burners hidden behind a sculpture of orange and black fake coals reminiscent of the old coal fires he remembered from when he was a boy in his parents’ row house, seemingly a thousand years before.

  His previous day’s visit in Gloucestershire with Soames ended badly. He hastily repacked his overnight case and fled to his car in the driveway at six thirty, just as the light was failing. Soames was in the blackest mood and deaf to any arguments for a reasonable resolution to his financial crisis. Soames was staring off intently into space and playing out scenarios of theft and murder silently in his imagination. He didn’t even seem to notice the professor fleeing the scene.

  Rowe reflected on how all of this had started. Out of the blue, Stephen’s photocopies had arrived in the post. He could see what they were, and guessed what else just might be with them, and he had called Soames with the good news. Then, Soames found the article about the discovery in the Village Advertiser. And when Soames broke into the vicarage in Margaret’s village, he thought he was alone in the house—until he heard sounds of the vicar tinkering around in his kitchen. Soames had already looked through most of the papers in the dining room, and all he had to do was wait for the old man to go up to bed, or even just fall asleep in his chair. Then he could have simply taken the things he had already selected, and left the scene without a fuss. But that had not happened. Apparently, patience was not one of the arrows in Soames’s quiver. Instead, the stupid boy decided to bludgeon the old man on the head, knocking him senseless from behind and shriveling him down into a heap on the kitchen floor—a blow from which the vicar never would recover. And the booty taken that night was the script of Macbeth that Heminge sent back to Anne Vavasour after the First Folio was published. When he saw it, Rowe knew it was a priceless maximal copy of the play—the full-length master version, not the abridged one put hurriedly into Heminge’s great book, but one marked with all the crossing outs and amendments added.

  Now, if Soames was to have his way, Stephen White and Margaret Hamilton would both be dead by Sunday. Soames had spoken one scenario in which he planned to stage the scene as a murder-suicide in the middle of the night between Saturday and Sunday—first killing Margaret and then killing Stephen and leaving him holding the proverbial dagger in his hand.

  Rowe’s thoughts were racing.

  Those two are such innocents. The boy is a good scholar, and he’s obviously starting to make his own way in the world. And he’s managed to have that beautiful gel along with him. She couldn’t be finer—not like that cowering wimp who used to come with him to my study for tutorial. This gel is wonderful. People think gay men can’t appreciate women, but it’s not true. This one is very pretty and feisty; wouldn’t put up with my nonsense, and just pushed back at me—charming. If I had had any exposure to females at all before I was eighteen, I might have fancied her myself. But then I was always naturally one for the boys. And Soames was the most beautiful of them all. Sublime. But that was long ago. Now he seems like a twisted old fiend—even older and deader than me, for god’s sake. I can’t allow all this to happen, Rowe thought. But how can I stop this demon from his plan?

  Of course, it would help if the manuscript of Macbeth is absent from Stephen’s inventory. After all, Soames grabbed it right in the early days, before Stephen could have gotten very far with his damned cataloguing. He might not know he ever had it. Unfortunately, Rowe thought, it’s mentioned in the Heminge letter, so it would be a bit hard to explain how it had suddenly
surfaced separately from all the rest...although the way it is mentioned might not be understood by Stephen’s just reading it. It’s very cryptic.

  Well, there may be another way: perhaps I could offer Soames everything I have—my house, papers, and bank accounts—and then kill myself? That would help, but probably even that would not stop his will to profit from those incredibly valuable papers.

  Then the solution came to him—and he thought it felt right. It was the only answer. Pouring a final glass of brandy from the cut-glass beaker in his study, Professor Rowe decided he should sleep on it and confirm his final decision tomorrow first thing.

  After all, he always did his best work in the morning.

  Saturday was busy for Margaret ahead of her dinner with Soames. At 10:00 a.m. she pulled into the driveway of the Juric house, with everything needed for the promised picnic at the Whipsnade Zoo packed up and stowed in the boot of her father’s car. And she had brought along an old brochure she had about the zoo to show Denis and Mia on the drive over to Dunstable Downs in Bedfordshire.

  The children were ready and seemed to be relaxed and also happy about escaping the regime of Mrs. Quick, who smiled and waved goodbye to them all as Margaret drove the car away.

  “Do you know about this zoo?” asked Margaret. “As I told you, it’s run by the same people as in London—the Zoological Society, but it’s up here in the middle of the countryside. It’s very large, hundreds of acres, and an ‘open zoo,’ where the animals run around and live normally. When they get tired in the city, they bring them here to relax—or to breed. And we can drive all through it and even get out of the car and walk about and so on. It’s very special.”