The company was “struck dumb”—but for a “few astonished moments only, it boasting some of the cleverest tongues in the Kingdom.” Overbury found his voice first. “Surely the Queen’s Majesty would not want all entertainments to be like her masques, with Amazon warrior Queens prevailing over men, which is the world turned upside-down?” He tittered, as though nothing could be more ridiculous, and Cecily Bulstrode smirked and cut her eyes at him, while Lady Anne Southwell looked more thoughtful than amused. Overbury waved his languid, beringed hand with more energy than he usually showed. “Olivia’s household was chaos throughout the play,” said he, “exactly for that it was masterless. Surely no person of sense could agree that such bedlam is to be taken as anything but an argument for why men must keep rule o’er women?”
The Countess’s kinswoman, Mistress Goodyere, said, “And yet, Sir, I myself doth take the Queen’s point. A certain melancholy steals over my heart now that I think on the Lady’s feelings. Sebastian showed himself to be nothing much like his sister, but in appearance only. When a woman loves, whilst she loveth the body, she also loveth the spirit and heart as well. I do not see how one who would love the youth as Cesario seemed to her to be would then love another very much unlike.” Mistress Goodyere smiled gently at Master Donne. “The which is to say, I do not see the lovematch in that union, Master Donne.”
Donne said, “somewhat (though kindly) mocking,” “I see that I mistook the matter entirely. The which must be laid to my ignorance of the true workings of ladies’ hearts. But you must grant that Viola’s union with the Duke was a lovematch? Or doth the ladies find fault with that match as well?”
The Countess said “with that clever dryness in her voice that draweth interest to its pronouncements just as honey draweth flies,” “The Queen’s Majesty regarded it skeptically. The Duke will be bored with Viola in a trice, is how the Queen judgeth the matter. As a boy, Viola was delightful to him. But transformed into a woman, swathed in skirts and restrained from frank speech as any lady must be, and never pert and always proper, she will soon lose the Duke’s interest. What charms in a boy is intolerable in a woman. And so ’twas, the boyish companion was all to his taste; his previous pursuit of Olivia, though trumpeted to the world, mere play-acting without true passion. In short, the Queen resteth no confidence in the happiness of that match, the which, like t’other, was based on a lie, albeit of appearance rather than spirit, and by reason for that ’tis true that the spirit of a woman must differ when she be in skirts than when she be in breeches, the difference doth in fact come to more than one of mere appearance.”
Then Overbury said: “But that is a hard judgment, indeed. By such perverse reasoning, only Sebastian and Antonio will end happily! When they be not properly matched at all, not being husband and wife but only intimate friends!”
A few people rolled their eyes, and the Fool said, “’Tis Maria I care most for. Her cleverness in exposing the puritan upstart was an act of service to her mistress. A woman of such intelligence is too good for such as Sir Toby, whose only use for her is dishonorable. The Author doeth her no honor in his ending, either!”
The Countess’s lustrous eyes beamed warmly on the Fool. “A Penthiselea indeed,” she said. “But in the world as it doth be nowadays, a Penthiselea would be taken for a madwoman, or a whore. Our world would know nothing of her. And so, Maria must be silent and downcast in the end, or else be taken for a scold or harlot.”
Bulstrode said then, “Aye, and ’tis not that always the way. When a woman speaketh her mind, or doeth what she desireth rather than what she is supposed to desire, she is condemned for ’t. Unless she be Elizabeth Tudor, or Catherine de Medici, that no one dare slander or judge disorderly.”
“You see, Donne, what their constant reading of Spanish Amazon fantasies hath achieved,” said Overbury. “Such romances maketh them to hunger for what no good Englishman would in truth abide!”
“Say rather most good Englishmen, sir, rather than none,” replied Donne. “For if you mean to invoke the Querelle des Femmes, I must declare myself to take the ladies’ side.”
Overbury made a loud noise of disgust, fairly spitting as he thrust the syllable “Pah!” from his mouth. “This Olivia,” he said, “plainly needs a generous helping of halek. A husband—with a real staff between his legs—would provide that, especially a husband like that young and lusty fellow Sebastian. The Author hath that right, I’ll warrant. Whether Cesario is a codling or a woman disguised as one, the lad lacks what it would take to satisfy such a woman. A shrew, if we better knew her, I make no doubt. Treating her lord as she did, gives the hint to ’t. The kind of woman who is never satisfied, and is always just about to fall to a fit of the Mother,14or halfway to a pact with the Devil, caught up in the belief that the Evil one will see her satisfied where mortal men aren’t up to the job.” Overbury stared satirically at the court ladies, and then suddenly at the Fool, where his gaze grew harsh and derisive. “As one imagines your own mother to have been, puny freak that you are. Either too impatient for ’t to wait until her monthly bleeding was past, or so dissatisfied with her husband’s potency to seek the Devil’s bed. Thou art a living lesson to us, thou child of filth or devil’s baggage, so to see plainly with our own eyes what such women do wreak out of their very bodies.”
The Fool writes that “This shame hath been put to me so often that I no longer blush with each fresh rebuke.” She replied, “Just so, Sir Thomas,” and bowed to him as deeply as Donne had bowed to the Countess for his offense. “’Tis my profession,” she writes, “to please and amuse. That I must grovel to all and sundry the way the likes of Sir Thomas must grovel to the Queen and King is the way of the world. Living at court, I am oft reminded that the King maketh little difference in his regard for the gradations of station of those beneath him. Did not the King’s Majesty write publicly to the Queen that it made no matter to him that she was a King’s daughter, for that being his wife, to his mind she would as well be the daughter of a fishmonger? And so all men do so regard most women, but those few like the Countess and the Queen with the power to bless or curse their lives, and more especially as with the late Queen, so like the Lady Olivia, whom Sir Thomas condemneth as a shrew or witch or hysteric.”
After bowing to Overbury, the Fool bowed a second time to the rest of the company and said, “But just as I am such a freak, sir, and with so little of the true woman about me that many are led to speculate on my sex altogether, so I, at least, am in no danger of sharing my own mother’s fate. The Mother will have aught of me, that I have too little of the Sex in me to suffer an affliction in that organ, and the Devil neither, for all my ugliness is beyond what even the Evil One will tolerate. Which leaves me by default, sir, chaste and the child of God, who alone will have such as me.”
Overbury turned haughtily away, as though the Fool hadn’t spoken, and leaned close to Cecily Bulstrode and whispered into her ear. The Fool claims that her special powers allowed her to hear what he whispered, but that she chose not to repeat it.
Lady Mary Wroth, smiling broadly at the Countess, said, “I see Sir Thomas’s strategem. ’Tis plain! He hath distracted us exceedingly, so that we no longer talk of the ladies’ discontent, but rather of how greatly e’en the mightiest of men do fear the power of e’en its least effects.”
Donne said, “And ’tis not so, that all men, howe’er wise or foolish they be, do well to fear the power of the fair Sex?”
Lady Mary Wroth rolled her eyes at Lady Anne Southwell and said, “Mayhap we should be playing Edictes rather than Newes, since the gentlemen are in the mood to attack us whate’er we might venture to say.”15
Bulstrode smirked at Overbury. “As usual, the man speaks from pique. He dies to die in love in a certain Countess’s arms. Who will none of him.”16
Annoyed, Overbury said, “And why all this bibble-babble, when there’s Newes to play?”
“Ah, that it would be possible to see the outcome, and make wagers on ’t,” said Lady Mary
Wroth, smiling, “all radiance and mischief.” “That we could go to Illyria, there to spy on the supposed lovers, and see what they make of the Author’s ending.”
The Fool writes, “’Tis a common enough notion for that lady, putting forth such a wish, for that she spends much time imagining other places and societies, peopled with family, friends, and acquaintance, caught up in other methods of ordering relations. Doth she not oft entertain the Queen with such fancies, whilst most of us ply our needles, as we chat idly about whatever romance we have been reading among ourselves as we work?”17
The company laughed, “some in delight, and Sir Thomas in scorn.” Donne said, “But ’tis easily done, my Lady, by merely asking the Author how he imagines it.”
Overbury laughed loudly. “But would the ladies be satisfied then? There’s a matter I’d make a wager on.”
Mistress Goodyere shook her head. “Nay. But the Author’s opinion is no more authority to predict than that of a parent asked to give the tale of his child’s life at the moment of its birth.”
Donne looked surprised. Impatient, Bulstrode threatened to send the lot of them away and herself to bed if no one had any intention of playing Newes. The Countess was asked to suggest the game’s theme. “The stage,” she said “quickly, briskly, and in all originality. ’Tis not a theme anyone remembers having played before.”
Anything once it is made has its own existence and it is because of that anything holds somebody’s attention.
—Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America
The Fool writes that the next day she and a number of ladies were sitting with the Queen doing needlework while one of the Queen’s personal servants, Pierrette, was translating a story (aloud) from the French. “… and Pierrette’s bright, black button eyes flash with that sly air of knowledge only a Frenchman carries about his person,” the Fool says, then quotes him as reading: “The lady, being entirely French and therefore possessed of a full measure of feminine cunning so characteristic of that country, approached Madame Marguerite, the King’s daughter, and the Duchess of Montpensier, who was sitting with the Princess. ‘If it would please you, Mesdames,’ saith she to them, ‘I would show you the most amusing thing in the world.’ And the Princess and the Duchess, neither of whom were inclined to be melancholy, inquired eagerly as to what she had in mind to show them.”18
The Fool notes that while Pierrette’s translations are always amusing, his commentary, “more to the point, makes so bold as to exploit the Queen’s malice towards the French, e’en when enjoying a tale of French conception.”
Seated in the full flood of the light of midday, reasonably near the fire, the ladies comfortably pulled their silk-threaded needles in and out, in and out, embroidering here a white rose, there one blushing, here the sturdy trunk of an oak, there the deep twining green of ivy or the celestial blue of heaven.
Pierrette’s gaze returned to the lectern and the beautifully illustrated book. “And the lady saith, ‘There is a certain gentleman whom you and everyone else at court revere as one of the most honorable men who lives, and full of courage and bravery, too. Who does not know how much cruelty he has borne unto me, or how when I loved him most he abandoned me to avail himself of the love of other women? Though I concealed my unhappiness, it was almost beyond what I could bear. Now God has granted me the opportunity to revenge myself on him. Hark. When I go upstairs to my room, if you take the trouble to watch, you will observe the man follow me, like a hound hot on the scent of the fox. May I ask of you, Mesdames, that when he is through the galleries and about to ascend the stairs, that you both go to the window and shout “Help! Thief!” along with me? I warrant that that will make him so angry, that he’ll act such a performance for us as we seldom have the pleasure to watch.’ The lady’s words gave the Princess and Duchess considerable amusement, for that no other gentleman at court was known to be so relentless in besieging the ladies with his seductions. And yet he was also well regarded by all, and in great demand, and the sort of man no one ever dared risk being mocked by. The Princess and Duchess were doubly entertained, because they felt that the lady, by including them in her plans, would be allowing them to share in her triumph over him.”
The Fool says that like everyone else present, she was taking a great deal of pleasure from this narrative, but that she had to leave the room at that point so that she could execute her plan “for bringing the Queen even greater delight than Pierrette’s reading of such a tasty tale.” No one paid any attention to her departure. She writes: “I go not to the privy, though, but into a little chamber nearby, to be private as I shift my shape into that of my most frequent familiar, a large orange cat known to come and go as it pleases where’er it lists. Though such a form is not natural to me, yet ’tis comfortable to inhabit a body that moves gracefully and as swiftly as the fleetest swallow darting to its nest under an eave. The Queen’s dwarf greyhounds have never caught me, though are like to give chase whene’er they catch sight or scent of my fiery form insolently dashing past them.”
She says she padded softly back to the ladies, “to their senses a mere cat that either lurks silently about during the most secret converse, or dashes like a beast caught in brain-fever, to tempt the dwarf greyhounds into misbehavior.” She crouched for a moment on the threshold, to spy out the lay of the land. Pierrette’s voice had all the human ears in the room hanging on its every word: “But the gentleman was swift with ripostes and dogged in his own defence, making so bold as to claim that he had only accepted the lady’s invitation to meet her in her chamber simply to relieve the tedium of everyone at court.”
Suddenly the Fool leaped out of her crouch and streaked past the dwarf greyhounds lying asleep at the Queen’s feet, to the far wall of the room and the large tapestry that hung there. Before uttering even one yelp or bark, the dogs were up and away “in hot pursuit of a prey they have long wished to capture. But I am clever and far too fast. I dart behind the tapestry—which no longer covers a wall, but guards the entrance into a certain garden to which I know the Queen and all her ladies will desire admission. The dwarf greyhounds, yelping wildly, mad to catch me, race swiftly after me. But not only am I too quick for their capture, but as they enter the gardens, they at once lose my scent, and coming to a halt, sniff the lush deep grass for some hint as to where I have gone.”
Screened by a shrub, the Fool lolled about in the thick, silken grass at her leisure, basking “in the hot Illyrian sun, enjoying the warm breezes and spicy scents of rosemary, sage, cedar, and carnation, all of which thrive and abound in the garden! Nearby squat trees heavy with oranges, their leaves glossy and bright in the clear Illyrian air. With vigilance I watch the patch of ground from whence I and the dogs came and keep a wary eye on them, for all that their bodies—like mine—are so unfleshly as to be transparent. In this world we be spirits, without scent, without substance, without extension, just as visitors from the spirit world, angels and ghosts alike, lack flesh in our own.”
The dogs were leaping over and through the rosemary hedges in madcap play when Pierrette came through, whistling for them. “Mon Dieu!” said he, astonished at the new world spread around him. And he turned and stepped back into the old world, “so that to my eyes,” the Fool writes, “there appears only the ghost of a velvet shod foot and shapely calf in bronze-clocked silk stockings where I know him to be standing. When the dogs begin their rush towards that foot and calf, I dart past them, to tempt them by the very sight of my speed, to make them ignore Pierrette and renew their pursuit of the orange cat they have never yet caught.”
By the time the Fool had shaken the dogs’ scentless pursuit, she had strayed from the entry point. When she slyly slinked back to it, she found “the Queen and her ladies wandering about the garden, their faces turned to the sun in wonder, their heavy wool shawls scattered over the grass like great ghostly patches to be stitched into a quilt blown hither and thither by the wind.” Silently the Fool retired behind a thick hedge of cedar and changed her shape bac
k to her own. She then rejoined the ladies.
When the Queen tried to speak, her voice was inaudible. Though her bright brown eyes glittered with wonder, the Fool says, “we are but thin wraiths even to one another, and have no other means to converse but our eyes and gestures. And so it is that I gesture to Pierrette and persuade him to follow me, and so I lead him to the palace that is Lady Olivia’s and draw him within its precincts, as grand and handsome as Denmark House or even Hampton Court, or any other of the palaces so familiar to us. Everywhere we go we pass servants at work who do not see us, do not hear us, do not feel us even when Pierrette puts out his hand to grasp a page’s arm and his fingers go right through it, as though it were an illusion made only of light and air.”
After wandering through many rooms, they at last came “to a long, handsome room looking out on the garden, where a gentleman paces before a lady that is seated on a cushioned bench with a younger gentleman, perhaps the other’s brother, beside her.”
The Fool looked at Pierrette, and Pierrette looked at her. His mouth moved, and the Fool says she almost heard the word “Rina!”19The Fool nodded “Indeed!” with great vigor. “For the lady seated on the bench might have been our Queen herself at about twenty years of age. Because that such a sight I did not expect to find, it doth bemuse me with the greatest of confusion.”
The Fool relates that the man who paced said, “Such a chance I cannot let slip by. Orsino’s assistance in this matter is more than I could e’er dare hope for, and will give me the closest of odds for recovering my father’s estate.”
Lightspeed Magazine Issue 37 Page 4
