Robert Nye - The Late Mr Shakespeare

To

Giles Gordon

and in memory of

Glenn Gould

Georges Perec

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

I In which Pickleherring takes his pen to tell of his first meeting with Mr Shakespeare

II In which Pickleherring makes strides in a pair of lugged boots

III Pickleherring's Acknowledgements

IV About John Shakespeare and the miller's daughter

V How to spell Shakespeare and what a whittawer is

VI About the begetting of William Shakespeare

VII All the facts about Mr Shakespeare

VIII Which is mostly about choughs but has no choughs in it

IX About the birth of Mr WS

X What if Bretchgirdle was Shakespeare's father?

XI About this book

XII Of WS: his first word, & the otters

XIII Was John Shakespeare John Falstaff?

XIV How Shakespeare's mother played with him

XV What this book is doing

XVI Shakespeare breeches

XVII Pickleherring's room (in which he is writing this book)

XVIII The Man in the Moon, or Pickleherring in praise of country history

XIX Positively the last word about whittawers

XX What if Queen Elizabeth was Shakespeare's mother?

XXI The Shakespeare Arms

XXII Pickleherring's Song

XXIII About the childhood ailments of William Shakespeare

XXIV About the great plague that was late in London

XXV Bretchgirdle's cat

XXVI Of the games of William Shakespeare when he was young

XXVII The midwife Gertrude's tale

XXVIII Of little WS and the cauldron of inspiration & science

XXIX Some tales that William Shakespeare told his mother

XXX What Shakespeare learnt at Stratford Grammar School

XXXI About Pompey Bum + Pickleherring's Shakespeare Test

XXXII Did Shakespeare go to school at Polesworth?

XXXIII Why John Shakespeare liked to be called Jack

XXXIV What Shakespeare saw when he looked under Clopton Bridge

XXXV About water

XXXVI Of weeds and the original Ophelia

XXXVII The revels at Kenilworth 9th July, 1575

XXXVIII More about Jenkins

XXXIX John Shakespeare when sober

XL Jack Naps of Greece: his story

XLI Jack Naps of Greece: his story concluded

XLII Flute

XLIII The speech that Shakespeare made when he killed a calf

XLIV In which there is a death, and a birth, and an earthquake

XLV Pickleherring's peep-hole

XLVI About silk stockings

XLVII How Shakespeare went to teach in Lancashire

XLVIII How Shakespeare went to sea with Francis Drake

XLIX How Shakespeare went to work in a lawyer's office

L How Shakespeare went to the wars & sailed the seas (again?) & took a long walk in the Forest of Arden & captured a castle

LI Pickleherring's confession

LII In which Anne Hathaway

LIII Shakespeare's other Anne

LIV Pickleherring's nine muses

LV In which John Shakespeare plays Shylock

LVI In which Lucy is lousy

LVII Shakespeare's Canopy, or Pickleherring in dispraise of wine

LVIII Pickleherring's Poetics (some more about this book)

LIX What Shakespeare did when first he came to London

LX In which Pickleherring eats an egg in honour of Mr Shakespeare

LXI In which Pickleherring speculates concerning the meaning of eggs

LXII About Mr Richard Field: another ruminating gentleman

LXIII About a great reckoning in a little room

LXIV More

LXV A look at William Shakespeare

LXVI Pickleherring's list of the world's lost plays

LXVII Love's Labour's Won

LXVIII Was Shakespeare raped?

LXLX All about Rizley

LXX A Private Observation

LXXI In which Pickleherring presents a lost sonnet by William Shakespeare

LXXII Who was Shakespeare's Friend?

LXXIII The Dark Lady of the Sonnets 1

LXXIV The Dark Lady of the Sonnets 2

LXXV The Dark Lady of the Sonnets 3

LXXVI The Dark Lady of the Sonnets 4

LXXVII The Dark Lady of the Sonnets 5

LXXVIII Of eggs and Richard Burbage

LXXIX A few more facts and fictions about William Shakespeare

LXXX In which boys will be girls

LXXXI In which Mr Shakespeare is mocked by his fellows

LXXXII Pickleherring's poem

LXXXIII In which Mr Shakespeare plays a game at tennis

LXXXIV What Shakespeare got from Florio + a word about George Peele

LXXXV Deaths, etc.

LXXXVI 'Mrs Lines and Mr Barkworth'

LXXXVII Shakespeare in Scotland & other witchcrafts

LXXXVIII About Comfort Ballantine

LXXXIX In which Pickleherring plays Cleopatra at the house in St John Street

XC Tom o' Bedlam's Song

XCI In which William Shakespeare returns to Stratford

XCII Bottoms

XCIII Some sayings of William Shakespeare

XCIV A word about John Spencer Stockfish

XCV Pickleherring's list of things despaired of

XCVI Shakespeare's Will (with notes by Pickleherring)

XCVII Fire

XCVIII The day Shakespeare died (with his last words, etc.)

XCIX About the funeral of William Shakespeare & certain events thereafter

C In which Pickleherring lays down his pen after telling of the curse on Shakespeare's grave

Postscript

About the Author

By Robert Nye

Copyright

Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late

Edmund Spenser

The Tears of the Muses

A never writer to an ever reader: News.

Chapter One In which Pickleherring takes his pen to tell of his first meeting with Mr Shakespeare

For instance, William Shakespeare. Tell you all about him. All there is that's fit to know about Shakespeare. Mr William Shakespeare. All there is that's not fit, too, for that matter. Who he was and why. Where he was and when. What he was and wherefore. And then, besides, to answer several difficult questions that might be bothering you. Such as, who was the Dark Lady of the sonnets? Such as, why did he leave his wife only his second-best bed? Such as, is it true he died a Papist, and lived a sodomite? Such as, how come he placed that curse on his own grave? All this, and more, you will find answered here. But better begin at the beginning, while we can.

Who am I? Reader, I will tell you suddenly. My name is Robert Reynolds alias Pickleherring and my game is that of a comedian and believe me I was well-acquainted with our famous Mr Shakespeare when I was young. I acted in his plays. I knew his ways. I played Puck to his Oberon. To his Prosper, I was Ariel. I washed my hands sleep-walking too, as the Scottish queen. Why, once, at Blackfriars, the man was sick in my cap. I loved the lovely villain, ladies and gentlemen.

By the time I have finished I think you will have to admit it. There is no man or woman alive in the world who knows more than old Pickleherring about the late Mr Shakespeare.

I call to mind as if it was just yesterday, for instance, the first time I ever clapped eyes on the dear fellow. He was wearing a copataine hat. You won't know those hats now, if you're under fifty. They were good hats. They wore good hats and they wrote good verse in those days. Your copataine hat was a high-crowned job in the shape of a sugar-loaf. Some say the word should be COPOTINK and that it comes from the Dutch. I call a copataine hat a copataine hat. So did Mr Shakespeare, let me tell you. I never heard him say that his hat came from Holland. And in his tragical history of Antony and Cleopatra he has the word COPATAINE. Which part, friends, he wrote first for your servant: Cleopatra. I never wore a copataine hat myself, but then I was only a boy at the time we are speaking of.

I was living in those far-off but never to be forgotten days in a cottage made of clay and wattles just outside the north gate of the city of Cambridge. That cottage stood by a fen. Fatherless, motherless, I was being looked after by a pair of sisters, whiskered virgins, Meg and Merry Muchmore, two spinsters with long noses for the smelling out of knavery.