P. Chisholm - A Plague of Angels

‘No, they loved it,’ said Shakespeare gloomily. ‘They cheered it. Burbage was cock-a-hoop, said I was nearly as good as Marlowe.’

Somewhere, he knew, Dodd had missed something important. Where was the problem?

‘But, if they liked it…what’s Greene got against ye?’

‘He says he’s an educated man, been to university, an experienced writer, he says the play was perfect before I meddled with it and ruined it.’

‘But ye didnae?’

‘No, of course I didn’t. He’s jealous because I’ve never been to university and I’m nothing but a common player and I can write a hundred times better than him.’

Dodd shook his head. Fighting over stolen sheep or a woman or even a drunken argument, that he could understand. But fighting over words? Why?

‘So why do ye care what he thinks?’

‘I don’t. I care that he…er…he tries to kill me whenever we meet and he’s told all the printers and booksellers to have nothing to do with me and he’s half-convinced Burbage that the good bits in the play were his, not mine. The City shut our theatre the month before last and it’s not opening until Michaelmas; Burbage fired me at the same time and I haven’t been able to get another place as a hired man, not on any terms. Greene’s making trouble for me any way he can. He knows the King of London, too. He keeps saying he’ll arrange a little accident for me.’

‘All because ye fixed up his play?’

‘No,’ said Shakespeare bitterly. ‘Because I’m better than he is and he knows it.’

‘Och,’ said Dodd and poured them both some more aqua vitae. ‘Why d’ye not go to be some rich man’s gleeman, his house poet? Then ye’d be away fra London and Greene couldnae harm ye.’

Shakespeare nodded. ‘I’d like that, I think. But the problem is…Every penniless university man who can string a couple of lines together wants the same and I’ve got no degree, no contacts, no…no nothing. I’d put out one of the poems I’ve written, dedicate it to someone likely, try getting a place that way, but the printers won’t take it because they’re scared of Greene, even Richard Field who I went to school with…he says he daren’t.’

‘Would ma Lord Hunsdon no’ have ye?’

Will had an unfortunate propensity to blush. ‘Not any more, I shouldn’t think. It’s only a matter of time before Mistress Bassano persuades him to fire me.’

‘So ye’re stuck.’

Shakespeare nodded dolefully. ‘Stuck. I’ll be in the Fleet by Christmas.’

Dodd nodded with him, full of oiled sympathy. You couldn’t blame the man for wanting to break away from playing, it was no right work for a man.

‘But could ye no’ do some other line o’ work? Like…er…ye said yer father’s a glover? Could ye no’ go back to that?’

To Dodd’s horror, Shakespeare’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’d like that,’ he said. ‘All I ever wanted to do when I was a boy was make beautiful gloves, but…I’m too clumsy. My fingers won’t…You see the gloves Sir Robert’s wearing, fine kid, embroidered in silk? It’s very…very intricate, making top class gloves like them…My father did his best, but…It was no good. That’s why he turned to drink, you see, because…because I was such a disappointment.’

Och, God, thought Dodd, he’s turned maudlin.

‘And I tried schoolmastering, and Christ, that’s an awful job. No money in it. The children…I hate them. Ink down your gown. Nails in your seat. Crab apples through your windows. I’ve never been any good at anything, really…’

Dodd couldn’t help it, his attention wandered. Marlowe had won again and the buggery argument was still rumbling on. Greene was quoting Leviticus on the subject and Marlowe laughed at him.

‘Why should I live my life according to the notions of a starveling band of desert wanderers that were slaves in Egypt, slaves of the Assyrians, slaves of the Persians, slaves of the Macedonians and slaves of the Romans?’ he asked.

‘Because they were God’s Chosen People,’ said Poley sententiously and Marlowe laughed again.

‘So they say. Which must have been a comfort to them. Surely God’s Chosen would be a little more successful.’

Well, there it was, thought Dodd in an icy moment of clarity while Shakespeare droned on about his children and multiple failures beside him, if you wanted a reason for the plague hitting London, that was all you needed. Almighty God, they were doomed. They were drinking with an atheist and a pervert.

‘That’s enough, Kit,’ said Carey very quietly. ‘You’ve shocked us all, now be quiet.’

For a moment Dodd thought he might do as he was told, but then Greene had to stick his purple nose into the brew. ‘God will repay,’ he roared, wagging a finger. ‘God repays the atheist and blasphemer. In the end, He repays!’

‘ Your God may rule by tyranny and injustice,’ hissed Marlowe, leaning over the pile of gold on the table. ‘You make a fat roaring idol in your own fat roaring image and you bow down before it and then you plume yourself on your stern Protestant virtue and nobility. God preserve me from such a god.’

‘Playing I’m not bad at, but I’ll never touch Alleyn or Richard Burbage,’ Shakespeare was still talking, locked in the drunk’s miserable obliviousness. ‘I haven’t got the size or the looks for it, though I’m not bad at character roles…’

‘At least I’m no atheist,’ spat Greene.

‘I’m not an atheist, I’m a pagan,’ said Marlowe composedly. ‘The God who made the stars, the God who built the crystal spheres, the God of fire and ice and stone and wind, that God is worthy of my worship. But why should I bow down to books of gathered words from hundreds of years ago when with my own pen I can write such words and better .’

He’s mad, thought Dodd in the horrified silence, clearly insane, not with the burbling drooling madness of men that talked with their shadows and shook their fists at the clouds, but a stranger more limpid madness that hid itself in elegance and urbanity. Even Shakespeare had stopped drivelling to gape at the speaker of such blasphemy.

To his surprise, it was Carey who answered Marlowe; not even Greene seemed to be able to find the words.

‘Yes,’ said Carey, still quietly. ‘It’s attractive to decide on what God is and worship that. How is what you do different from what you accuse Greene of doing?’

‘If I must have a religion, what’s wrong with rationality, science, justice?’ said Marlowe in general, still leaning forwards as if he genuinely were trying to convert Carey to his strange brand of atheism. ‘I could believe in those, not some fairytale designed to keep the people in awe.’

‘No doubt,’ said Carey. ‘And kindness, wisdom, mercy? Where are these? Have you ever seen what happens in a land where the people are not in awe? Bloody feud and robbery, the strong against the weak, the children starving. Not everyone is as brilliant and powerful as you. Oh, and I’ll raise you an angel.’

‘And I’ll see you, Sir Robert,’ Marlowe didn’t seem much abashed and nor was he ruffled when Carey proved to have a flush. He waved the gold coins farewell and called for a pipe of tobacco. Poley and Greene did the same.

‘But poetry. I can do that.’ Shakespeare was off again as the air around them filled with clouds of foul-smelling smoke. ‘Maybe not the way Marlowe does it, but my way. My own way.’ He caught Dodd’s sleeve and breathed earnest booze-fumes in his face. ‘I can do it. Do you understand?’

‘Ay, ay, I understand.’ Give him more aqua vitae, Dodd thought to himself, maybe he’ll pass out and stop blathering at me.

‘No, you don’t, you couldn’t. Plays, poems, anything. I looked at that pile of dung Greene produced, and I knew how to fix it, what it needed. And I sat down with as much paper as I could afford-it’s awfully expensive you know, penny a sheet-and I started…It was as if something huge, God, something picked me up and carried me, like a spate-tide of words…You just open the tap and out it all flows, like…like there’s this huge barrel of words inside you and you put the tap in and open and…whoosh.’