The Late Mr Shakespeare

by Robert Nye

  My main feeling, though, was straightforward dislike of the man. He was rich and he was a poet-fancier, that’s all. I do not think he cared for poetry, though at one point he was an ardent theatre-goer, spending his time merrily in going to plays every day. What he liked was being seen by the audience. He had his own stool which he perched upon, one leg thrust forward. His habit was to make much fuss with his hair, patting and primping, or powdering his cheeks as he sat. He never even pretended that he was listening. He liked to prop himself against a proscenium door, and kick aside his stool to show off the clock on his stocking. Did I mention that he was left-handed? A further token, if you like, of his aptitude for viciousness. Not that I have anything against left-handed people. But Southampton made a virtue of disconcerting you by holding out his left hand to be kissed.

  The young Earl lived for his hair, I always thought. Poets and barbers were much the same to him. In fact, as Mr Shakespeare once told me in a rare unguarded moment, Southampton took an odd delight in having his hair combed in a measured or rhythmical manner. He would only have it done by dressers who were skilled in the rules of prosody. He claimed that while many take delight in the rubbing of their limbs and the combing of their hair, these exercises would delight much more if the servants at the baths, and all the barbers, were so skilful in the art of poesy that they could express any called-for measure with their fingers. Whether Mr Shakespeare provided his patron with iambic or trochaic combing, I know not. His dactyls may have caused no small delight.

  Little or nothing in himself, Southampton wanted immortality through others. At Cambridge, his dissertation was on Fame. Mr Shakespeare claimed that some of the sonnets would give it to him. Alas, this is probably true, though they’re not the best sonnets.

  This golden youth was a Papist, and the heir of Papists. His father, a Mary Stuart man, had perished in the Tower. The boy was brought up by his mother, a more worldly creature who groomed him to marry Lord Burghley’s granddaughter, the Lady Elizabeth Vere.

  This marriage of convenience, which would have brought together two of England’s greatest houses, never came to pass, despite Lady Southampton’s plots and entreaties and then Mr Shakespeare’s work in the same cause. I have always suspected, by the by, that those first twenty-five sonnets urging Southampton to marry were in fact commissioned by Lady Southampton, but I cannot prove it, and I never dared ask their author. (Notice how in the third one he flatters the boy’s mother!) They did not work anyway. The young Earl did not feel like marrying.

  He went for women as well as men, mind you. He liked both men and women to adore him. Whether he loved anyone in his life, of either sex or none, I rather doubt.

  Many writers sought Southampton’s patronage, not just Shakespeare. It was known he would inherit a fortune on coming of age. (So he did, though Burghley contrived to dock it of £5000 on account of the young man’s breach of contract in the matter of Elizabeth Vere.) Besides our hero, others who tried to tap Southampton for funds included Barnabe Barnes, Samuel Daniel, Gervase Markham, Henry Constable, Bartholomew Griffin, George Wither, Richard Barnfield, George Peele, Matthew Gwinne (whose ‘comedy’ Vertumnus once sent King James to sleep), Arthur Pryce, William Pettie, and George Chapman (who even tried to find a patron in his grocer). Thomas Nashe is known to have written obscene verses for the little charmer, excusing himself by saying that he was only following in Shakespeare’s footsteps. Alas for Nashe, his verses were so obscene that they still remain in manuscript. Meanwhile, out in the published world, dedications rained on Southampton’s head, and he got wet.

  In Mr Shakespeare’s case, money certainly changed hands. Venus and Adonis (or its fame, or its power when recited for a bit of barbering) must have proved sweet to the young Earl’s taste, for by the time of its sequel Southampton was inviting its author to dine at Holborn House, his palatial London residence, and to stay with him at Titchfield in the country. Mr Shakespeare was always reticent regarding it, but I believe that his patron once made him a present of £1000 to enable him to go through with a purchase which he heard he had a mind to – enough to purchase a fine house in Stratford, a large number of shares in our Company of actors, and leave some change to spare for playing primero. Southampton played a lot of primero. Gambling of any kind pleased him. He once lost 1800 crowns at a tennis-match in Paris.

  It has to be admitted that Shakespeare had something of a weakness regarding aristocrats. He liked them to like him. I could not say why. In Southampton, who was ten years his junior, he found, for a while, a powerful patron who seemed like a friend. No doubt he was flattered and excited to find himself invited into a circle that was like a little court. Here he was, accepted on his own merits by a set that put much store by wit – persons who were worldly wise as well as wealthy, all of them impressed by his gift for puns (I can put it no higher). You can see this reflected in Love’s Labour’s Lost, a comedy first written to amuse Southampton and his friends. Not all Southampton’s friends were idiots, either. John Florio, the scholar, was his tutor. It was Florio who gave Mr S the seed for his mulberry tree.

  Southampton’s patronage of Shakespeare, then, developed quickly into intimacy. But this was a friendship that brought Shakespeare more torment than peace.

  I no more want to speak of this than to tell the boring story of the boring Lamberts. Southampton is even more boring. Consider him apart from WS. All his life he sought ‘praise and reputation’ – his own words. He rose and then he fell with his flash friend Essex. He commanded in some fashion the Garland on the famous Islands Voyage of ’97, and was even credited with the capture of a Spanish vessel. However (yawn, yawn), he aroused Queen Elizabeth’s fury two years later by accepting the rank of General of the Horse under Essex in Ireland without royal permission. When Essex tried to capture the Queen and seize power, in 1601, it was Southampton’s London house that was used as a base for the crazy insurrection. You could say this was the worst mistake of a mistaken life. Southampton was tried for treason with Essex, found guilty, and only escaped execution thanks to his Mamma pulling a few strings with Secretary Cecil. No doubt she persuaded him that so pretty a head could not be dangerous.

  In his manners, the irksome Earl was always epicene. When he served in the wars in Ireland it is said that he saw most of his active service in bed with a Captain Piers Edmunds. Southampton would ‘cole and hug’ his captain in his arms, and ‘play wantonly’ with him – I quote from a report that was sent to Cecil. To COLE or CULL is to fondle, as in CULL-ME-TO-YOU, which as my wife Jane used to remind me is a country name for the pansy flower. WS may well have been thinking of Southampton and Edmunds when he wrote of Achilles and Patroelus in Troilus and Cressida. Something he said to me once led me to understand that Southampton is also Bertram in All’s Well That Ends Well, that disagreeable hero, another reason why I do not like the play.

  For the rest, I believe Southampton’s part in Shakespeare’s story to be negligible. True, when his patron toyed with studies of the law for a brief while, the poet obligingly fitted out a sonnet in praise of him with a few legal terms remembered from his own days as a NOVERINT. Then, when Southampton entertained day-dreams of serving the King of France, his Will-to-boot came up with comedies which transport the spectator to Nerac and the Louvre. Such things are not profound. They belong, like their begetter, to the surface.

  This is not to say that William Shakespeare did not take Henry Wriothesley seriously. He did. Too seriously. And he suffered much pain as a consequence. You will learn of that when I tell you about the sonnets, the story behind them, as that concerns Southampton. Not that he was the only one concerned.

  For the pretty Earl’s part, Pickleherring is sure that the sonnets were over his head. Beyond him. If he read them at all, that is, which he probably did not, except for the ones that are simply in praise of his beauty.

  He died, in 1624, Henry Wriothesley, of a lethargy, having lived in one most of his life, if you ask me.

  Oh yes, and Wriothesley
should be pronounced as RIZLEY. That’s how top people always say it. Rhymes with GRISLY.

  Chapter Seventy

  A Private Observation

  I promised to tell you about it if I ever saw Anne fucked. Well, I have not seen Anne fucked, but I’ve seen her fucking.

  Reader, I think it is time that you took yourself in hand. This matter’s of some more than riddling interest, as I hope that you will presently agree. Pay heed to what I tell you, if you please.

  Late last night I heard sweet noises coming from the room below. It was the sound of lechery. As I listened, I heard thumpings and bumpings, unmistakable in their import, and other intimate, disturbing noises. The summer night was full of provoking music.

  Once thinking of Anne being fucked, I could think of nothing else. I snuffed out my candle. I sat still in the warm darkness, my heart beating hard against my breast bone. I was wrestling with my conscience, which instructed me not to look. Did I really want to see my dear little egg-girl under some sweating bull of a whoremaster who had purchased her body for a half an hour’s business? Did I truly want to see that sweet young creature tupped?

  I did indeed, sir! I wanted it more than anything in the world. My nerves cried out to watch it. And those noises continuing, louder, more urgent, with squeaks too, and squealings, and other indications of delight, I knew I had to watch what was going on below me in Anne’s bedroom.

  I removed my Ovid carefully, without a sound. I knelt down upon my knees, with my eye to the peep-hole.

  What did I see?

  I saw my lovely Anne, where she lay arse-upwards. She was naked save for those white silk stockings of hers. One stocking was held up by a black taffety garter. The other was tumbled, all anyhow, down round her ankle. Her young limbs were busy in their lechery. I saw her back first, white and trim and lithe, with her plump little buttocks going up and down, plunging. She was wantoning, and revelling in the act. She has the most adorable dimple in her left bum-cheek.

  So she likes to ride on top, thought I, the young harlot! What bliss! What joy! How the fortunate fellow below her on the bed must be pleasuring her! No doubt his cock is spear-hard, big, and thick, and my darling rides him now as not long ago she rode on her rocking-horse.

  The chamber was illumined by a blazing thicket of candles. All round the bed they burnt, like a fiery forest. Hot wax dripped down as the flames flickered straight in the gloom.

  Anne’s shadow on the wall made her look like a succubus.

  But having feasted my eyes on my darling I saw then that the one below Anne was not a man as I’d supposed. It was another female, more mature, indeed voluptuous, with long blonde hair that shone bonnily in the candlelight. This woman was also naked, except for a band of black velvet she was wearing about her neck, with a cameo brooch on it. She looked vicious and lascivious, as she lay there with my whore-child in her arms. There was a proud patrician tilt to her ample breasts. Her hair streamed down, half-drowning both bodies as they twisted and threshed this way and that in their amorous disport. I saw that this older woman was clutching a red rose in her left fist. As I watched I saw her swivel her hips under Anne’s downward thrusting, tightening the grip of her legs where they held her rider in place. She cried out some demand. I could not hear what. The effect, though, was immediate. Anne redoubled her thrustings. It was as if she was ploughing her companion.

  I do not think this other woman was another of Pompey Bum’s whores. I’d never seen her before, and I believe I have seen every woman employed in this establishment. Besides, there was something about her which spoke of power and money. Perhaps it was that cameo brooch. The tilt of her breasts and her chin. She had very blue eyes which blazed up at me as she lay there threshing from side to side, and her look was imperious. There was something matronly and aristocratic about her, and while it was plain that she was delighted with what little Anne was doing to her it was at the same time plain that she was really the one in command. Both of them seemed lost in their ecstasy, but the greater part of the pleasure was undoubtedly the blonde woman’s.

  As I watched, I saw her trail that red, red rose down Anne’s white back. There was a blood-red ruby ring on the middle finger of her hand. It caught the blaze of the candleflames.

  I watched Anne’s bottom going up and down. It was white as snow, and the cheeks were firm and tight. Her whole body has a taut, straight innocence, like an arrow.

  Then that arrow hit the target, there on the bed in that magic Arabian cavern of candlelight under me. The ridden woman started bucking and screaming. She threw away the rose and grabbed hold of Anne by the ears. As for Anne, she was laughing, and kissing the woman as she rode her. But the woman did not laugh. Instead, she started slapping at her lover’s arse with the open palms of her hands. Then she was bucking again, and screaming again, and scratching with her fingernails deep in Anne’s bottom-cheeks, and crying out in her luxury: ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

  They lay still, these two pretty bed-fellows, for a long, long minute.

  Then Anne rolled off her customer.

  She had given her satisfaction.

  My Anne rolled off the fair-haired matron and lay there on her back on the bed beside her.

  And gazing down into my secret erotic theatre I saw that between her white thighs, over the faintest down of pubescent hair, Anne had strapped on a whopping dildo, both lifelike and terrible, shaped exactly like a man’s prick, a black man’s prick. It was with this artificial ebony phallus that my whore-child Anne had been fucking the older woman.

  They lay there on their backs looking up at me.

  One dark. And one so fair. The fair one fucked. The dark one her sweet fucker.

  Amorously impleacht, the blonde hair and the black entwined on the pillow.

  Their limbs gleaming with sweat in the candlelight. Their eyes wide with sensual surfeit as they gazed at me. It was disconcerting, madam.

  They were beautiful, both of them. They were lovely with the lineaments of satisfied desire. One blonde, the elder, one my dark young charmer, they lay there in the light of the candleflames, spread out for my inspection on the bed.

  It was as if they knew that I was watching them, and they did not care. But I do not think they could see my eye at the peep-hole. They were too much involved with each other to know I was there.

  Then, as I watched, the older woman (who for some reason to do with her air of assurance and self-possession I now began to think of as the Countess), this Countess began to run her long fingers up and down Anne’s dildo wonderingly, as if the thing was real, and now it had crossed her mind to play with it, to inspirit it into action once again.

  Anne laughed at such sport. Then she jumped up, and strutted up and down. She walked about the chamber, in and out of the flickering circle of candlelight, her hands on her hips, and wriggling her bottom most wantonly. She was shaking the dildo, she was slapping it, she was waggling it up and down and from side to side as she strutted. She pranced. She pirouetted. Every joyful little gesture made the thing to dance as if it had a lewd life of its own. Anne looked so innocent with her dildo on. I know that’s a strange thing to say, but I say that’s how it was. You could see it was all such fun to her, such frolic, such forked excitement. She wagged her little tail as she walked with her black dildo on. She was like a child playing games, and her games the more exciting because adult and forbidden.

  Then my darling jumped up on the bed, and smacked the Countess. She smacked the Countess, hard, across the breasts, with the black dildo. She did not take it off, but she made it do the smacking. The Countess screamed at the stings, but she seemed to like them.

  Anne stopped.

  She kissed the Countess lightly on the lips.

  Then she kissed her again, most chastely, this time on her cheek.

  Then she extricated herself from her bed-fellow’s arms where they beseeched her, and rolled nimbly from the wide bed, and stood beside it.

  Anne stood still. Trickles of sweat ran down her breast
s. Her breasts are like little apples. She looked so lovely I could hardly bear it.

  Then, as I watched, with bated breath, Anne slowly unstrapped the dildo from her thighs. She was taking her time. She was making her victim wait.

  Suddenly, the dildo unstrapped, and clutched now in her right hand, Anne pushed the Countess back on the bed, and rolled her over, and with a squeal of glee began beating her with the dildo on her bare buttocks.

  The Countess was wriggling her bum. She writhed beneath this punishment. I had no doubt at all but that she was enjoying it. She was crying out with the pleasure the pain was giving her. Her body arched up in long, exquisite shudders from the bed.

  Anne’s response was to beat the proffered bottom yet more savagely. She smacked and she spanked till the Countess looked quite red and raw. Both were panting, and shouting out obscenities in their excitement. It surprised me to hear Anne shout out several words I would not have thought she knew. I mean words that I had hoped she would not have known on account of her tender years.

  Then, eyes blazing, Anne strapped on the dildo once more, and in no time at all the two women were at it again, at their amorous rites, first in this position then in that, like two sleek dolphins copulating in the foam …

  I could watch it no more.

  I could stand it no longer.

  I drew away from the peep-hole.

  Pickleherring had seen enough.

  I put Ovid back over the aperture.

  This morning I don’t feel much like working on my book. The day is hot. I have opened my window an inch or so. I can hear from the street below the sound of children playing. In summer this street is alive with the children of misery. Outside the grocer’s a band of juvenile pickpockets will be absorbed in pitch and toss. At a short distance, a motley crew busies itself with games of barley-break, blow-point, loggats, marbles, muss. Oaths and idiot laughter mar their play. They spit and cheat. Osric is drunk and Mopsa adjusts her gaiters. Hal writes on Tybalt with a rusty knife. Pretty Lavinia farts. Lysander picks his teeth with the point of an arrow. It is still early, but the sun, who at this season takes only a nap, like myself, has got his chin above the level of the roof-tops opposite, where sparrows …