Grantville Gazette Volume 25

by editor Paula Goodlett

  "Something better." Amber sipped her coffee. "Although with Dick and Tom Quiney in the forefront of anybody's mad charge toward a brave new world . . ."

  * * *

  "Actually, if you do a few rewrites, I think we can put A Fine Companion on the stage here before Christmas." Massinger looked at Marmion. "But not Holland's Leaguer."

  "But you'll have to change the name of the friend of Aurelio and Careless," Dick said firmly.

  "Why?"

  "Because up-timers think that 'Fido' is a dog. It'll be a distraction. They won't mind 'Lackwit' and 'Crotchet.' Just . . . umm . . . tone down some of the language, like Master Massinger said. They'll like the plot well enough."

  "It's not as if I haven't heard all this before," Shackerley Marmion said. "There are critics of the stage aplenty. Indeed, I wrote lines for one of them in the prologue:

  By my consent I'll have you

  Banisht the stage, proscrib'd, and interdicted

  Castalian water, and poetical fire.

  'Tis this licentious generation

  Of poets trouble the peace of the whole town; . . .

  "But I had heard that there was no censorship in Grantville."

  "There isn't," Dick said. "Nothing like the Lord Chamberlain's Office. No licensing of plays before performance. But there is . . . public opinion, I guess you'd call it."

  "Even so," Philip Massinger added. "Dick has the right of it. While you are in Grantville, endeavor to moderate your muse. Think of yourself as a guest, deferring to your hosts."

  "You might even sit down and read some of the up-time plays we studied in class," Dick said. "The tedium of them—even the comedies—is sometimes beyond belief, but they are what is considered acceptable in the classroom. And they'll applaud Aemilia's lines. I like them, myself."

  Come sister, though our liberty be straightened,

  Our minds stand free without compulsion,

  There's none can make a rape upon our will.

  Well if they understood a woman truly,

  They would not seek to curb so, whose nature

  Rejoices like a torrent, to make way

  Spite of the impediments. Now, if their wisdom

  Should let us alone, we might perhaps ourselves

  Find out the inconvenience and prevent it,

  Which they like a false perspective would seek

  To multiply upon us.

  He looked at Massinger. "Christina would rather play Aemilia than Valeria, if that's agreeable."

  "Of course. Antonia will take the part of Mistress Fondling, of course, and I will play Littlegood. We need someone for Dotario."

  Marmion shook his head. "It's hard to get used to having women on the public stage."

  "You'll get used to it. You'll have to," Dick said. "More than half of the students in your drama classes at the school will be girls, too."

  "Well, I'm used enough to that. And to the fact, as I have Aemilia saying, that females are inclined to stretch their brains."

  Dick twirled his pencil. "They stretch them a lot, here in Grantville. Now look at the passage right before that, when you have her commenting about her mother. This one:"

  Although her husband be penurious,

  Hard as the metal that he dotes upon,

  Yet she can make him malleable, and work him,

  And turn, and hammer him, and wire-draw him,

  And rule him with as much correction

  As one would wish to govern.

  "Can you bring in something topical there? The machine shops in Grantville with their tools? The agreement with the Upper Palatinate regarding iron? Negotiations with Jacob Durre and the other metal merchants in Nürnberg, since Mike's father is there? Something to pull the audience into the action?"

  The conversation got down to the practical, serious business of putting on money-making plays. Unsubsidized plays. Plays that would make enough money, year in and year out, to support a couple dozen people.

  * * *

  Amber Higham made a preemptive strike and informed the students of their new teacher's name well in advance of his arrival. It helped. Some.

  The first three days he taught, she stayed in the classroom to observe.

  The fourth day, she told them that Master Marmion was a playwright himself. Then they took the class to a matinee performance of A Fine Companion.

  The fifth day, she threw him to the mercies of Drama II (advanced level, open to juniors and seniors only).

  "Aurelio was stupid," Michelle Matowski said. Then she added. "Pardon me, Mr. Marmion, but he was."

  "Personally," Lorie Lee Carstairs said, "In my opinion, Othello was stupid, too. I just don't have any patience with these guys who get a stolen handkerchief or ring or something and immediately conclude that their girlfriends are cheating on them. It's really dumb to be that jealous. Really, really, dumb. If they'd just use a little common sense, they'd ask a few more questions and pretty soon they'd know better."

  "But what would that do to the plot?" Tom asked.

  "I don't want to live my life in somebody's plot."

  "Is there no romance at all in your soul?"

  "Probably not," Lorie Lee admitted.

  Shackerley Marmion drew a deep breath. "Positing that both of the men were stupid, or at least not responding in a fully logical manner, what makes Othello a tragedy and A Fine Companion a comedy?"

  Wolfgang Fischer looked thoughtful. "Desdemona died and Valeria stayed alive?"

  Marmion remembered that Mistress Higham had assured him that Wolfgang had a fine bass voice. She had said nothing about his intellectual powers.

  Michelle shook her head. "If you ask me, the tragedy in A Fine Companion, is that Valeria forgave that stupid Aurelio and took him back. No one in her right mind would want a husband like that. Does she want to end up in a shelter for abused women in a few years?"

  Dick interpreted the term "shelter for abused women" to Master Marmion.

  "We never had one in Grantville," Lorie Lee said. "We've all got more common sense than to be abused in the first place."

  "That's not really true," Robin Kerns interrupted. "My mom says that at the hospital . . ."

  Lorie Lee gave the new teacher a reproachful look. "You made Valeria go mad, too, just because someone tried to ruin her reputation. Women are tougher than that. You should have made it plainer that she was just pretending, to trick her father."

  "But she didn't drown herself, like the girl in that other play," Robin pointed out. "Aurelio disguised himself as a doctor and cured her."

  "What makes Hamlet a tragedy and A Fine Companion a comedy?" Marmion tried once more to direct the discussion.

  Wolfgang Fischer thought again. "Ophelia stayed insane and died, but Valeria got better and stayed alive?"

  "The essence of tragedy . . ." Marmion said rather feebly. He started to recollect, possibly too late, all the essays that had been written, from antiquity to the present, on the unhappy lot of the schoolmaster.

  Drama II went on.

  * * *

  "At least, they got Noelle and Eddie back. I heard he got a broken arm out of it."

  "He did. I haven't seen him, though, except just to say 'hi' in Sternbock's. He was with Gerry Stone and a couple of other kids—Denise Beasley and Minnie Hugelmair—getting his cast autographed. Hans-Fritz and I went over long enough to put our names on it."

  Micaela Garrett wrinkled her forehead. "Giving up."

  Mariah nodded agreement. "He's cute, but he's a lost cause. Who wants a boyfriend who's never around? Hans-Fritz is taking me to the new play tomorrow night."

  * * *

  "Come to the play with me, Lisa. It's the last performance before Massinger's company leaves for Magdeburg. How long is it since you've gotten out of the house for anything except school functions."

  "Since they sent Allan to Magdeburg last spring."

  "That's about what I thought. When are you going to join him? Or are you?"

  "Next spring. At the end of the
school year. A year apart is long enough. I've told Victor, but it isn't public yet, so please don't say anything, Amber."

  "Good. It'll be great to have you there. Not so good for the high school, but good to have you there. Still, do you plan on not ever getting out for another six months? Come to the play."

  "But. . . ."

  "No muttering about a sitter. Bring the kids. They're old enough to sit through a play and behave themselves."

  "What's on?"

  "Something down-time. Love's Labours Won, according to the ad in the paper."

  "There's something familiar about the name of that play," Lisa commented.

  "It just reminds you of Love's Labours Lost. At least, that's what I thought of first."

  "You were an actress. I was an English Lit. major. Okay, I'll go with you tomorrow night, Amber. But first, I want to go home and look a couple of things up in one of my old textbooks."

  * * *

  "I'm not trying to rip you off, Philip. Really I'm not. Neither is Lisa. Could we just please, please, pretty please, take a look at that satchel of papers that Shackerley brought Dick from his aunt? Please."

  Massinger made no move to get out of his chair.

  Amber looked at Dick and Tom Quiney. "They're really yours, aren't they?

  Dick grinned. "I'd be tempted to bargain this for a better grade, Mistress Higham. Except that I have the highest grade in your class already. Aside from being tied with Tom, that is. I don't suppose there's any way to use it to improve our grade in civics?"

  "None. Absolutely none at all."

  "You are asking us to let you look at this purely out of the goodness of our hearts? Purely as a matter of Christian charity?"

  "Yes. That's what I'm asking."

  "There ought to be something in this for us."

  "If I didn't know you were teasing . . ."

  "Let them look," Tom said.

  Massinger nodded. "In that case, scamp, you climb the stairs and fetch the satchel."

  A half hour later, Amber and Lisa thanked them and left.

  "Let's go to Tip's. I need a drink," Lisa said when they reached the street. "Something stronger than coffee. They have Cardenio in there, too. An autographed copy, I think."

  Amber nodded. "Me too. A drink, I mean. If we were still up-time and found the stuff in that satchel, we'd be the two most famous scholars in the world. You could be a professor of English literature at Harvard. I could go back to Minneapolis and become artistic director of the Guthrie Theater. And every scrap in that satchel ought to be in the bank vault with Grantville's very few prohibited books."

  "That's if we were up-time," Lisa said with a sigh. "Here—they're just a bunch of play books that Massinger wanted to use to expand his company's repertoire. And it's not as if they were major plays. If so, they'd already have been printed like the rest of them. But we really ought to encourage the boys to get them copied and published before they head off to Magdeburg next week. Can't you just imagine what could happen to those papers while that bunch is traipsing around Germany. A cartwheel breaks and they fall into the mud. Someone drops them getting out of a barge and they fall into a river. Or. . . ."

  "I don't even want to think about it. Tip's, here we come."

  * * *

  Note for readers:

  In OTL, the original time line of human history, both Thomas and Richard Quiney died in January 1639, probably of the plague.

  Scholars who become upset about the "lost years" of William Shakespeare have certainly not done much comparative research on other Englishmen of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Almost everyone then alive has "lost years" as far as the historical record is concerned. These might better be described as years during which a person either didn't generate any documents or generated only documents which have either disappeared over the course of time or which still rest undiscovered in some repository that no researcher has utilized.

  No scholar has thus far documented where Philip Massinger was or what he was doing from the time he left the University of Oxford shortly after his father's death, some time between 1603 and 1606, until he appeared in London as a playwright (in jail for debt) in 1613. The hypothesis that he was with a group of touring English actors in Germany is only one of those that has been offered. I have chosen to adopt it for Franconia!

  Even more surprisingly for a man whose father was a high-level employee of the noble and literary Herbert family (the earls of Pembroke) and whose parents and siblings are in the historical records, nothing is known of Massinger's wife. That he was married is documented only by the fact that one patron paid out a small stipend to his widow after his death. I have taken advantage of this lacuna by presenting the plausible explanation that she was a German actress whom he married in his early twenties and brought back to England with him. This would explain why she was never mentioned as the sister, daughter, cousin, etc. of some other man in London's literary circles.

  The Mill on the River Kymi

  Written by Terry Howard and Mic Sjostrom

  Late 1634, Pomerania, USE

  The Lord High Chancellor will call on Field Marshal Hermanni Wrangell, Baron of Skokloster, on Wednesday next.

  Signed for and by the order of The Lord High Chancellor, Axel Ochsenstern, Count of Södermöre.

  The usual note for a social visit or a routine call in the line of duty would read something like: "Hermanni, set up the chess board. I'll be there Wednesday, Axel." This was a formal note, though, which meant official business.

  Something out of the ordinary, something important, something most probably unpleasant, was about to land in Hermanni's lap, or on his plate. It might be his head. As the Lord High Chancellor, Axel did not do pleasantries. This was not like other notes from him.

  Hermanni reviewed the accounts. He could find no discrepancies. There were no notable disciplinary problems, nor civil unrest. Why, then, a visit from the high chancellor? Why now? The newly-minted Baron of Skokloster was worried, with good reason. Whose neck was on the chopping block and why?

  Wednesday

  "Sir, the chancellor's party is in the courtyard."

  Hermanni glanced at the chessmen on the table where glasses waited, along with a new bottle of Axel's favorite liquor. "Bring him in immediately Berendt."

  "Yes, sir," Berendt replied.

  A few minutes later Axel stepped into the room and stopped just inside the door. Hermanni took the hint. "Close the door, Berendt, and see to it we are not disturbed."

  "Hermanni, my old friend, we have a problem." Axel said.

  "Ah." The tension flowed out of Hermanni's neck and shoulders. His old friend had a problem. A problem could be addressed and survived.

  "Gustav has gone all Vasa," Axel said. The founder of the Vasa dynasty a century ago had built a power base by supporting the commoners against the aristocracy. For the most part Gustav supported the rights of the old noble families, but with his exposure to Grantville the occasional fits of "going Vasa" had increased.

  "What do you need me to do?"

  "Write to your brother Hannes."

  "Hannes? What foolishness has he gotten into this time?"

  "The sawmill and crown lands he purchased in Laajakoski on the Kymmene älv back in '29? He needs to sell them immediately."

  "Axel, you know why he bought the property." Colonel Hannes Wrangell's salary from the crown, as a high officer in the Swedish army, had gone unpaid for several years. As part of the agreement, the pay arrearages were applied to the price of the purchase. "And I know for a fact he's sunk a wheel-barrow full of money into it on top of the purchase price."

  Axel replied, "What he did was build a grand manor house. He didn't spend more than a handful of copper coins on the sawmill. No upgrades, no improvements, nothing beyond immediate repair. The mill has broken down again and is slow getting back into production. The shipyard the mill feeds is behind schedule and they are blaming it on the lack of lumber. We both know if it wasn't this they wou
ld have some other excuse, but they don't need another. This one works just fine. Hermanni, there is a war going on. That mill is supposed to be producing strategic material needed for the war effort. Gustav is not a happy monarch."

  "I'll speak to my brother. He will send more money." Privately, Hermanni wondered where they would find it. It would have to be found. This made the whole family look bad. Letting the mill sit idle, normally, wouldn't matter. The shortages to the shipyard, however, had already been noticed and Gustav was in a rage. Yes, Gustav sold the property, in part, to cover a debt he owed Hannes, but he still expected the sawmill to meet the objective for which it was built.

  "Don't bother. Tell him to sell it," Axel said.

  "Is that necessary? We can get things caught up as quickly as anyone."

  "Hermanni, I told you, Gustav has gone Vasa over this. Sell it or see it confiscated!

  "You know Countess Anna Marketta Bielke, your late wife's cousin?"

  Hermanni wondered why Axel was introducing a complete change of topic. "Her husband, the count, is governor-general of Mainz and Frankfurt. She is one of the empress's ladies-in-waiting." The mention of the queen's court caused Hermanni's thoughts to wander. First there were his own efforts to find a third wife from amongst the ladies and widows of the imperial court. Then there was the tension between Gustav and his wife.

  It might be going a little far to say the king and queen were feuding, but their daughter was in Magdeburg and the king did not get home to Stockholm, or wherever the queen was holding court, very often. There were people who thought the queen should aid their aspirations, and she was unhappy because he wouldn't be generous to her favorites. The queen, now empress, Maria Eleonora, was whining a great deal and wanting Gustav to come be with her, and to be considerate of her. She was even willing to come to him, preferably someplace reasonable. Unfashionable, raw Magdeburg was more than she really wanted to endure, but she would even go to that war-ravaged town if that was what he wanted. Gustav would not let her. He found her nagging and whining easier to endure at a distance.