The Shakespeare Mask

by Newton Frohlich

  “I always try to leave clues like that in my work—if I don’t, I’m going to be consigned to an anonymous oblivion.” He took her hands. “Now then, for your sagacity, you get a prize, anything you desire. What would you like?” Her smile was so warm, so loving, he forgot they’d ever argued.

  “Anything?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to go to Sicily with you.”

  He tilted his head. “But you’re already coming to Sicily with me.”

  “Why, so I am!” She turned and pointed. “Now, turn around, Monsieur le Compte, and look off the starboard bow—we’ve arrived in Palermo. Merci for taking me along.”

  Near Palermo lurked volcanic Mount Aetna, the legendary home of Scylla and Charybdis. After they docked and went ashore, he found a hotel and booked a room for them. At the desk, he studied a book he’d bought in Padua on the history of Sicily. It was here the Sicilians had rebelled against a French king. On an Easter Sunday they’d massacred eighty-four thousand French soldiers and invited Pedro, king of Aragon and Catalonia, to rule them.

  It was perfect for a history play. To catch the attention of his English audience, he’d mention that the Spanish king’s bastard brother, Don Juan, was also coming. The threat of a Spanish invasion was real. If he worried about it, so should all Englishmen. But audiences being what they were, he’d write the play as a comedy and call it Much Ado About Nothing.

  After several hours of writing, he went down to the port for some wine, leaving Virginia to nap.

  The tavern wasn’t crowded—just a single English officer and a Spaniard drinking red Sicilian wine at separate tables. He chose a table between them and ordered a bottle for himself.

  Afternoon darkened into evening. All three tables were on their second bottle of wine when the English officer turned to Edward.

  “You’re from England, aren’t you?”

  He glanced over. Fat and balding, the fellow looked to be in his mid-twenties.

  “In fact,” the officer said, “weren’t you at St. John’s, Cambridge?”

  “I was.” He extended his hand. “I’m the Earl of Oxford.”

  They shook hands.

  “Milord, I knew you then as Edward de Vere. What a small world—and believe me, I’ve seen much of it.”

  “I envy you.”

  “Permit me to introduce myself,” he said. “William Webbe.”

  “A pleasure, Mr. Webbe—come, join my table and tell me tales of your travels. I’m sure they’re thrilling.”

  “That’s one word for it, milord. I was captured by Moslem pirates, spent some time as a slave on a galley. After the Turks tortured me, I was ransomed. I’m recuperating here while I translate Virgil’s Georgios. When I return to England, I’m hoping to find a position tutoring a fine Essex noblemen.”

  “Perhaps I can help you,” Edward said. “Let me know when you’re in London. You can reach me at Savoy House in the Strand.”

  “Very kind of you, milord. We St. John’s men have to stick together, don’t we?”

  “Indeed.” He ordered another bottle of wine for each of them.

  “Gentlemen,” said a Spaniard, “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation.”

  “You speak English,” Webbe said.

  “Of course,” he said. “I have a Spanish education.”

  They laughed.

  “Won’t you join us?” Edward said.

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Once he was seated, he ordered a fresh bottle.

  “Spanish friend,” Edward said, “we heard from Webbe, here—what’s your story?”

  The Spaniard took another sip of wine. His hair was white as snow, though he didn’t look much older than Webbe.

  “Miguel Cervantes, at your service.” He feigned a bow. “Born in Alcala de Henares, father a surgeon, uncle the town mayor. I was valet to a wealthy priest until he became a cardinal and I enlisted in the Spanish navy’s infantry. From there I was captured by Algerian pirates, forced to row in a galley until my family ransomed me. I’m going home in a few days.”

  Edward nodded toward the Spaniard’s arm, which hung limply at his side.

  “Did you injure it in battle?”

  “I took two shots in the chest and one in the arm in the last moments of Lepanto. I like to say I lost my left hand for the glory of the right. I spent three years in a Naples hospital, and now if the pirates don’t get me again, I’m off to Barcelona. And you, milord?”

  Edward emptied his cup and refilled it.

  “Please, call me Edward. Both of you.”

  Webbe raised his cup.

  “To you, Edward.”

  “To the three of us.”

  They clinked glasses and drank.

  “I hardly know where to start,” Edward said.

  “Stories begin at the beginning,” Cervantes said. “Why don’t you?”

  “Well, then.” He took a long drink. “When I was very young, my father was murdered, poisoned. At least, I think he was—no, I have good reason to be sure of it. I became a ward of the queen. I had to leave my home and live with her principal minister.”

  Webbe waved the waiter over for another bottle.

  “I went to Cambridge and Oxford, read law at Gray’s Inn—I even served as aide to my uncle, the Earl of Sussex, when he was putting down a rebellion in the north of the country.”

  “Good show,” Webbe said.

  “I suppose it was, until we massacred three hundred innocent civilians to teach the rebels a lesson… . Not much more to tell, really. I was forced to marry my guardian’s daughter. We’ve just had our first child, a girl.”

  “Wonderful!” Cervantes raised his glass. “Congratulations, signor.”

  “Again, good show, milord.” And again they clinked glasses and drank.

  “The only thing of note about me is that I’m a writer,” he said. “I’ve been published, my plays have been produced, my work has been enjoyed. Praised, even. But I can’t put my name to my own work because I’m nobility—it’s just not done. So there you have it.”

  For a long moment they all drank without talking.

  “You said your father was murdered,” Cervantes said, “but you’ve said nothing of revenge.”

  “If I kill him, I’m a murderer,” Edward said. “I could lose my land, my titles. I might even be executed.”

  Cervantes shrugged. “A steep price, but it would not stop me.”

  “In any case, killing him would interfere with my writing,” Edward said. “I won’t have that. He’s hurt me enough. He killed my father, I won’t let him kill my soul.”

  He looked to Cervantes, whose only reaction to this ringing declaration was another shrug. Webbe was busy pouring himself another cup of wine.

  He had to prove himself. He climbed onto the table and lifted his cup high.

  “I, Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, call on all manner of persons to choose any weapon and confront me on any field of battle, anywhere.” The table wobbled, and he stumbled down. Cervantes laughed and bellowed for another bottle while Webbe stared, wide-eyed.

  “My English friends, this one’s on me.” Cervantes raised his cup. “I, Miguel Cervantes, also wish to make a challenge. If God spares me from the pirates, I will become a writer like my friend the Earl of Oxford, and the hero of my very first novel will be modeled after him.” They drained their glasses as Cervantes collapsed back in his chair.

  “So how will your hero resemble me?”

  “Fill my cup, Edward,” Cervantes said, “and I’ll tell you. You’ll have to pour—I’ll spill the whole damn bottle if I try.”

  Hands unsteady, Edward managed to slosh wine into each cup.

  “Miguel, even I don’t know what kind of a person I am. How would you?”

  “I’ve drunk with you for over an hour. I think I know you well enough.”

  “Very well, let me fortify myself.” Edward drained his cup and slammed it on the table. “Now let me hear your version of the Earl of Oxford.”
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  “When I’m done, you may smash that bottle over my head. “

  “I’d never do that—go ahead, speak your truth. I can take it.” He glanced at all the empty bottles on the table. If he did smash one over the Spaniard’s head, at least the fellow would feel no pain.

  “You have every advantage in life—wealth, position, education, high intelligence, talent—yet you cannot avenge your father’s death.”

  “What would you have me do?” Edward half-rose from his seat, leaning over the table.

  “Write. Forget your damned anonymity and write.”

  “And if the world never knows I’m the author?”

  “Who cares? You don’t write for money, you’re already rich. You don’t write for notoriety, you’re the seventeenth Earl of Oxford.” Cervantes banged a hand on the table, rattling the cups. “Quit your whining. Who cares who wrote the words, as long as they’re heard?”

  Edward slumped back into his chair. It was true—Cervantes saw his soul.

  “When I was in that galley,” Cervantes said, “I learned that freedom isn’t something to waste. You can write, therefore you must.” He turned to Webbe. “As for you, Webbe, I’m going to make you the model for my hero’s faithful squire. A true Englishman, loyal to the end, even if a member of your upper class shits on your face.”

  Webbe chose this moment to slide from his chair to the floor.

  “Yes, dear Oxford,” Cervantes said, “you’ve inspired the hero of my novel. He’ll use a sword, not words, but he, too, will travel the countryside, a nobleman intent on setting right every wrong he finds.”

  Edward barely made it back to the hotel. Virginia took one look at him and wrinkled her nose.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Nowhere special,” he said. “And everywhere important.”

  With that, he collapsed on the bed.

  Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,

  Such shaping fantasies, that comprehend

  More than cool reason ever comprehends.

  The lunatic, the lover and the poet

  Are of imagination all compact.

  Shakespeare

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  He was worn out from Sicily, but Virginia insisted they sail to Cyprus. He slept all the way to Famagusta and when they arrived went straight to the battlements that overlooked the port. He climbed to the top, made a note or two, and told Virginia he’d seen enough.

  “We came all the way here so you could take a walk on the battlements?”

  “That’s the way it is with Petrarch’s little things. Besides, I haven’t even seen Florence, Siena, or Rome. Let’s get started.”

  Virginia smiled. “Andiamo.”

  They returned to Palermo for a night and weighed anchor the next morning. The captain wanted to make it past the Aeolian Islands before a storm hit. Every sail was raised and the rowers did their best, but the wind and waves rose steadily and the captain ordered all sails furled—there was nothing to do now but row and pray. The crew members rowed ceaselessly until they reached the island of Volcano, where they found anchorage in the strangest place Edward had ever seen: inside an enormous rock on the beach. Anchoring was tricky—the line needed ample room to swing, but too much and the ship would be dashed to pieces in the small space—but the galley was soon secured.

  He and Virginia made their way down the beach, passing pool after pool of muddy water that stank like horse piss. Eventually they came upon a shack. He knocked.

  A man speaking a Catalan dialect invited them in. He offered one of his three rooms—he lived there with his wife and little girl—and said they were welcome to stay until the storm abated. Edward could have hugged the poor wretch. For two more days the winds raged. They passed the time by exploring the island, and at night Edward filled page after page with notes about strange animals, ugly flowers, steaming geysers, and insects that looked as if they could kill a grown man. And when the wind blew, the cracking, drumming, and sighing from the rocks sounded like music.

  “Of course, it’s the perfect setting for a play,” Virginia said as they walked along the beach.

  “I’ll call the character Caliban, outcast in Catalan.”

  Finally, the storm subsided. On a calm sea under a sunny sky they sailed for Naples.

  Two months had passed since Edward left for Sicily. He’d seen Cyprus and Volcano, Adriatic ports from Capodistria to Zipola with its Roman amphitheater, Bohemian ports like Fiume, Spolato and the palaces of Emperor Diocletian, and Ragusa. Now he was ready to return to Venice, which they reached on the last day of November.

  Winter hadn’t yet arrived, and if they moved fast they could make it to Florence, Siena, and Rome, and still be back in time for Carnival. No word from the queen awaited him, so he paid his bills and counted what was left of the five hundred crowns. He had enough to make the one last trip south, so late in December he and Virginia left for Florence. Again it was on the tip of his tongue to ask her if she’d come to London with him. But if she refused, he didn’t think he could bear it.

  The idea kept distracting him through their detour to Sabbioneta on the way to Florence, the sights of Florence itself, even in Siena, where he stood in the cathedral and studied the stained glass window depicting the seven ages of man. There they were: the infant, the schoolboy, the lover, the soldier, the justice, the slipper’d pantalone, and the old man approaching oblivion. He felt so pressed for time. If the world were a stage, how far was he from the end of his role? It was time to move on.

  And past time to ask Virginia to come to London. He’d do it in Rome.

  Edward returned to Venice to find five hundred crowns awaiting him from Cecil along with a plea to sell no more of his lands.

  He fired off a reply at once:

  I need to keep traveling because I have no hope of an appointment by the queen. She says I’m too young and somehow that renders me unfit. Yet she appoints others less worthy. I know she thinks it best not to appoint me because she wants me to write but to write I need education and travel. Books are crucial to my education and they cost money, too. If the queen ever does employ me I’ll be so old my child will be the one to give thanks. To wait for her to appoint me is to watch the grass grow.

  He and Virginia threaded their way through the streets and over the hillsides of Rome, Edward alternating Plutarch’s Parallel Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans with The Fable of Menenius. In the play he was going to write about the Roman military hero Coriolanus, he’d use Menenius, who’d likened the parts of the human body to types of people: brainy people, heart people, stomach people. He’d apply those images to people swept up in the corn riots of Coriolanus’s Rome, which resembled the food riots in England.

  His thoughts turned to Antony and Cleopatra—this one was but a mind sketch thus far, though he’d written a speech referring to her that clearly referenced the queen. Pleased with himself, he recited them for Virginia:

  Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale

  Her infinite variety;

  Other women cloy the appetites they feed

  But she makes hungry

  Where most she satisfies; for vilest things

  Become themselves in her.

  “I can see you love those lines,” she said, “but no woman likes to be reminded that she looks her age.”

  “You’re right, but I can’t bear to change a word. If the queen refuses to accept the facts of life, I must help her.”

  She laughed. “It’s your head. Do with it as you will.”

  “Julius Caesar is the play I really want to focus on now. I’m making good progress on the outline. I need to study exactly where Caesar stood when he was stabbed to death on Capitoline Hill.”

  “Isn’t that too gory for your queen?”

  “Not if it’s for a good purpose. I’ll contrast the greatness of ancient Rome with the decadence of Spain, its Inquisition and so on.”

  Standing in front of one of Michelangelo’s versions of The
Pieta, he saw carved on a sash across Mary’s bosom the words Michelangelo Buonarroti facet—Michelangelo made this.

  “I don’t have stone in which to chisel my name,” he said, “but I can put proof in the titles and the plays themselves. I’ll never forget your saying words endure longer than monuments.”

  He was ready to leave Italy now. In part thanks to Cervantes, he knew where his home was and what he must do when he got there: write his plays and stage them in England. The only question that remained: would Virginia come to London with him?

  They sat together in the taverna in front of Venier’s palazzo. It had been his favorite ever since his first night in Venice when he discovered it with Lewyn. Perhaps that was why he came here now, even in the dead of winter. Bundled up, they drank wine and talked.

  “Virginia, you know I’ve decided to return to London. You were right—it’s where I must live and stage my plays.” He took a deep breath. “The thing is … I’d like you to come with me.”

  She sat silent for a very long time—too long, it seemed to him.

  “Edward, I can’t. As much as I love you, Venice is my home.”

  He wanted to scream. He had to convince her. “We could come back and visit, often. You’d be happy in England. I’ll make a beautiful home for you—”

  “Edward, you have a home. You have a wife.”

  “That doesn’t mean we can’t be together.”

  “It’s not just that you’re married. I don’t want to be dependent, on you or anyone else. Besides, I have a goal here, to improve the place of women in our society. Venice is ready for change. England isn’t.”

  Now it was his turn to be silent. Her answer left no room for argument. He wanted to cry.

  In the silence that followed, a sweet, strong tenor reached them from the Church of Santa Maria Formosa. It was extraordinary, clear as crystal.

  “Come, Virginia.” He took her by the hand. “Let’s meet the young man with that voice.”