Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel (38 page)

“For me, the Ridolfi and Babington plots were the only ways I had to try to bust myself out of English custody and away from the possibility that at any time, I might be put to death. I did not feel unjustified in participating in them,” Mary said, “and I was able to make Elizabeth accept that.”

“And I helped Mary to come to terms with the fact that my setting her up with the Babington Plot was the best way
I
had to obtain the proof I needed to make a case for executing her. She understood perfectly well that her existence was a direct threat to my own life.”

The Ridolfi and Babington plots were espionage capers carried out by the Catholic world for the cause of Mary, Queen of Scots, and her replacing Elizabeth on the English throne and restoring England to Catholicism. Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spymaster, had double agents planted for the Babington Plot and so was able to set Mary, Queen of Scots, up for trial and execution for plotting against Elizabeth’s life.

“For my part,” Mary said, “I was growing weary of life; almost twenty years in prison had taken a toll on my health and day-today comfort. I was coming to realize that my best fate might be in Catholic martyrdom rather than any restored glory in the earthly world. Once I met Elizabeth, and got to know her, I saw her as the person who could be brave and resolute enough to dispatch me to that fate. I felt, strange as it may seem, grateful that she’d be able to steel herself to do it.”

“For
my
part,” Elizabeth said, “it was not as passive a fate as that. Not for me to rely on someone else’s courage; I was going to have to find enough of it in myself to have the only other
anointed queen I knew, my own cousin, executed. Even though Mary pretty instantly came to grips with that reality and embraced her fate and my role in it, I couldn’t rid myself of a nagging feeling of self-reproach. I wanted to do something for Mary, something to ameliorate that burden on me.”

“And I had just the thing for it,” the Scottish queen said. “There was a way Elizabeth could make it up to me for any self-recrimination she felt about my end. Well, two ways, actually. One was that she would name my son as her heir, to take England’s throne after she died.”

“Which she did, albeit at the eleventh hour,” I said.

“The other way she could make things up to me was to take charge of my plays and see that they, like my bloodline, survived for posterity. Imagine my delight, Dolly, when Elizabeth accepted the charge and shared with me that she, too, was a playwright. It was yet another bond between us. We parted that night not as mortal enemies but as two women who had become, if not the best of friends, at least perfectly
sympatico
.”

“I eventually made the same arrangements for my cousin’s plays that I made for my own, to go into effect after I died,” Elizabeth said. “Between the time I received the plays and that point, I read my Scottish cousin’s plays many times. They were entertaining, and they reminded me of our bargain, helping to relieve, at least a little, the painful feelings I carried about being the cause of her death.”

“I learned after we met here just how much Elizabeth enjoyed and was inspired by my plays,” Mary said. “In fact,” she added, bringing a little much-needed passive-aggression to this cousinly love fest, “I do not mind at all that she hijacked the favorite of all my characters in my plays and used him for one of her own.”

Chapter One Hundred-Two

Ruff and Bluff

Now that we were down to the last nine of Shakespeare’s plays, guessing games such as the present one were getting easier. In fact, I was able to take charge of the conversation, at least a little, while I figured things out.

“Well, we’ve
Hamlet
to go, but there are no repeaters there that I can think of. Ditto the pastorals,
Midsummer
and
As You Like It
. The lost mother plays,
Pericles
and
Winter’s Tale
, do not qualify, nor do the mistaken identity plays:
Comedy of Errors
,
Twelfth Night
, and
Two Gentlemen of Verona
. That leaves
The Merry Wives of Windsor
and of course, John Falstaff.”

Falstaff is one of Shakespeare’s best-loved characters, the original bad influence with good intentions. He is Prince Hal’s boon companion in the Henry IV plays and appears as a fat and dirty old man in
Merry Wives
, trying unsuccessfully to take advantage of two ladies who are far savvier than he is.

“Well, Elizabeth, legend has it that you asked Shakespeare to write a play featuring Falstaff in love, and that he came up with one of his minor works,
Merry Wives
, in response. Is that why you wrote a play about Falstaff—to see him in love?”

“First off, ‘minor’ is not a word for royalty, Dolly,” Elizabeth reminded me, executing a jump kick to my backside with a
finesse
that I wouldn’t have thought possible in a farthingale. “I wrote a play around Falstaff because I wanted to see William Kempe play him. I was a big fan of his, you see. The
Henry IV
Falstaff was terribly amusing and with some ripening could suit Kempe right down to the ground. Maturing Falstaff from boon companion to
bumbling and lecherous old man was a natural progression and one that made the role ideal for Kempe.”

I’d always pictured Kempe as sort of like John Belushi in
Blues Brothers
, or maybe like Chris Farley or Lou Costello in a ruff. Known for physical clowning and for actually dancing across England, Kempe is said to have gone from shareholder in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men to penury and death around the turn of the seventeenth century. I was a little surprised that the elegant and erudite Elizabeth would be such a big fan of the
commedia del arte
style of a John Kempe. I was not surprised, though, at the knowledge of human nature that her Falstaff progression showed, having watched many an old high school bad boy age into a pitiful, old, bar-crawling horndog.

Elizabeth preened while I rubbed my backside. For the sake of my aching behind and the integrity of my farthingale, a change of subject seemed in order.

Chapter One Hundred-Three

Bucolic Frolics

“I guess it’s time we moved this conversation on to greener pastures,” I said.

“As you like it,” Elizabeth replied.

“Thank you,” I said.

“That was not permission, Dolly. That was my introducing the first of my two pastorals to your attention.”

“Of course—
As You Like It
and
A Midsummer Night
’
s Dream
! Which of the two came first?” I asked.

“
As You Like It
followed closely on the heels of
Midsummer
, Dolly, during my progresses of 1591 and 1592.”

Elizabeth, being a wise ruler, made annual summer progresses, or journeys, to country homes during much of her reign. Her peregrinations served multiple purposes.

“Those progresses gave the common folk outside of London a chance to be exposed to you as you traveled through and were entertained in the hinterlands. They cemented your reputation as the people’s choice,” I noted.

“Absolutely,” Elizabeth said. “I tried to be at my grandest as I traveled in the country. It gave my subjects such a thrill to see that I wasn’t known as Gloriana for nothing.”

“A visit was also your way to show favor to a particular noble family or to keep tabs on folks who lived away from the hurlyburly of the court and might be worrisome because of their religious or political leanings.”

“Yes, we turned up more than one Papist relic at Catholic country houses but generally chose to look the other way,” Elizabeth said.

“You didn’t want to ‘make windows into men’s souls,’” I said, remembering Elizabeth’s famous comment on religious tolerance.

“Nor to have drama introduced into my stays in the country. That is precisely
not
what I went there for.”

“Of course; your progresses also served as much-needed vacations, allowing you to hunt, party, soak up local culture, and generally chill in the lovely English countryside.”

“There was not much opportunity to chill in August, Dolly, which was when I often made my progresses. My hosts were usually very good about creating shady corners for me and my courtiers, though, if that is what you mean.”

“They were also very good about providing you with expensive gifts. Those gifts, like everything else involved in entertaining you, were usually replete with symbolism. It was quite a mental exercise for your hosts, wasn’t it, to come up with something symbolic and clever?”

“Some were more up to the job than others, Dolly. I probably have one of the largest golden key collections on record.”

“Where did you head for your 1591 and 1592 progresses? Theobalds? Kenilworth?” I asked, naming two of the most famous of Elizabethan progress destinations and the country homes of William Cecil and Robert Dudley, respectively. “The entertainments they put on for you were the stuff of legend, fueled as they were by a little friendly, or not-so-friendly, competition.”

Cecil and Dudley, being two of the top men at court, really put on the dog when it came to entertaining Elizabeth in the country. They were more fortunate than some of her hosts in
terms of being able to afford it. More than one man went broke setting up his country home to impress the queen and curry favor with her. Off-season agriculture, rearranging landscape features, and producing exterior statuary and waterworks were all part of the drill. So was organizing elaborate plays and masques for the queen’s pleasure.

“In the summer of 1591, I sojourned at Cowdray with Viscount Montague. I was particularly looking forward to relaxing as much as I could during my stay in the country that year. To that end, I brought along some lighter literature than was my wont to read when at court: Thomas Lodge’s
Rosalynde
. The tale was enchanting. And the entertainment that Viscount Montague arranged for me was most rustic. So many characters met among the oaks; anglers, ruffians, gentle ladies, buffoons, and country dancers. It was well done and in a simpler and more natural vein than I was used to seeing at Theobalds and Kenilworth. That and
Rosalynde
gave me the idea of turning my playwright’s pen to a pastoral.”

“And so
As You Like It
got its start,” I said.

“Yes. It was easier to write in the country than at court, so it came along quite quickly.”

“How did you manage to write your plays, in the country or otherwise? You must have had precious little privacy, not to mention time.”

“One can make privacy and time when it matters,” Elizabeth said. “I was known among my ladies as a night owl, and I did most of my writing in the wee hours. My ladies were asleep, or wished they were, and never looked too closely into what I was writing, assuming it was some of my voluminous correspondence.”

“I see,” I said. “And so there you were in the wee hours, writing your country story.”

“It was more than just a country story, Dolly. It starts off, as I may remind you, with the younger of two brothers, Orlando, being unfairly treated by his older sibling.”

“You were working through your feelings about your troubled relations with your own older sibling even then, when you were entering your golden years.”

Elizabeth flicked my shoulder in rebuke. “I was ageless, Dolly, and all my years were equally golden. You are correct, however, in that I worked through some of my feelings about my sister and our relationship in that play and, to some extent, allowed them to drift away.”

“You were able to arrange the happy ending in art that Mary and you did not have in life through the characters of Oliver and Orlando. In
As You Like it
, Oliver reforms his ways, and he and his younger brother live happily ever after.”

The sisters, Elizabeth and Mary Tudor, joined hands and smiled.

“I worked through and was able to let go of some of the resentments I had about the banishments in my early life as well,” Elizabeth said.

“I’ll say! Duke Senior and his lords, Rosalind, Orlando, Celia, and Adam all know exile, one way or another. Of course, during your father’s and your sister’s reigns, you also knew what it was like to be cast to the margins of the world you lived in.”

“I knew what it was like to go about dressed as a man as well, thanks to my visit to my Scottish cousin. It was one of my most interesting experiences, and I wove that into the play as well.”

“Of course; through Rosalind, who dresses as a man to escape detection, using the deception to advantage with her lover.”

In
As You Like It
, star-crossed lovers Rosalind, Orlando, Celia, Oliver, Phoebe, Silvius, Touchstone, and Audrey all manage to sort things out in the forest of Ardenne. The backdrop of wrestling matches, courtly love, wandering royalty, roaming lions, shepherds, shepherdesses, and cross-dressing only adds to the fun.

“I think the fact that you worked on that play in the country shows through; even with the heavy personal themes involved, in the end, one gets the sense that you had fun with it.”

“I did!”

“And the homoerotic tones in the play; very ahead of your time,” I commented.

“You know how it is when you set people loose in country houses,” Elizabeth said. “There is always plenty going on for the observant writer to use as literary capital. People
will
let their hair down.”

“Not to mention their pants,” I said.

“You’ve spent time in country houses too, Dolly!”

“No, but I enjoyed
Brideshead Revisited
as much as anyone.”

“I finished up
As You Like It
early in my 1592 progress to Bisham,” Elizabeth went on. “It was while I was there that I also started on my second pastoral.”

“
A Midsummer Night
’
s Dream
, of course.”

“Those
will
happen when one overindulges in all the exotic new-world fruits and vegetables that are presented to one during the typical summer progress,” Elizabeth said.

“You mean the play started with your actually having a dream while you were staying in the country?”