I have not availed myself of such transitional forms of address for nobility as were in use at the time, under the belief that it would cause more confusion than it would be worth; instead, I’ve tried to limit courtesy titles to one per customer, for clarity. Also, I have discarded the Elizabethan habit of referring to oneself in the formal third person (“Here sitteth –”), with the exception of sparing use in correspondence, etc. As well, during the time period in question, that same older third‑person verb conjugation ‑eth (She desireth, he loveth, she hath, etc.) was being replaced by the modern ‑s or ‑es, so that in some cases words were written with the older idiom and pronounced in the modern one. In the interests of transparency–this is a work of fiction, intended to entertain, after all – sincere attempts have been made to preserve the music of Early Modern English while making its vocabulary transparent to the modern eye and ear, but what is rendered in this book is, at best, nature‑identical Elizabethan flavoring rather than any near approximation of the genuine animal.
I recommend David Crystal’s excellent books Pronouncing Shakespeareand Shakespeare’s Wordsfor an accurate picture of the speech of the times.
I was unable or unwilling to avoid the use of some words that have a well‑defined meaning in Modern English, but are slipperier in EME, and to which our own cultural assumptions do not apply. Those who were spoken of as Atheists did not necessarily deny the existence of a God, though they denied God’s goodness and agency in intervening in mortal lives, for example. Likewise, the word “sodomy” covered a lot of ground, and it was legally punishable in proportion to witchcraft and treason… but the practice of male same‑sex eroticism seems to have been largely winked at, or at worst satirized. You can explore two conflicting takes on the homoeroticism of the day in Alan Bray’s Homosexuality in Renaissance Englandand Michael B. Young’s King James and the History of Homosexuality;feel free to draw your own conclusions, as I have. At the very least, the modern ideas of homosexuality or heterosexualiry as the foundation of one’s persona did not have much currency to the Renaissance mindset; however, we can be fairly certain that, the social demands of reproduction aside, the desires of men (and the less‑well‑documented desires of women) no doubt inhabited the usual sliding scale of preferences.
Of course, even Platonic Elizabethan same‑sex friendships
could be very intense, passionate in modern terms, and one can find examples in Shakespeare and other chroniclers of the times of the vocabulary of love used casually between friends and nothing thought of it. However, some squeamish criticism to the contrary, it is this reader’s opinion that the language of Shakespeare’s sonnets is homoerotic rather than homosocial, and I have chosen to run with that reading. It also seems to me that, while those poems were at first only privately circulated, he does not seem to have believed his friends would be too shocked. Of course, this leaves open the question of whether any biographical analysis of those selfsame sonnets can be considered reasonable; they may very well have been an interesting work of fiction.
Much as this.
Back to cultural drift. On the family front, a cousin was not the child of an aunt or uncle, but merely any relative close enough to be considered kin, but not a member of the immediate family – a niece or a third cousin twice removed as easily as what we might consider a “cousin.”
Some historical events have herein been consolidated for the sake of narrative clarity, and a few dates altered (notably moving the construction of the Globe back a year to ease narrative clutter, moving the Essex rebellion by a day for purposes of pacing, and removing Master Richard Baines to France some few years afterhis historically documented tenure at Rheims to put him there when Marley might have theoretically been in residence). Several taverns of historical interest have been condensed into the famed Mermaid, which I have made the haunt of poets and playmakers some years before its historical heyday. Certain notable individuals have been dispensed with entirely, or prematurely, or their lives extended somewhat. In addition, Robert Poley’s daughter, Miss Anne Poley has received both a sex and a name change, and Mistress Poley, is the recipient of a first name chosen only for unobtrusiveness in the milieu, as her own is lost to history. The relationship of that same Mistress Poley, born “one Watson’s daughter,” to our old friend Tricky Tom Watson is strictly a matter of conjecture. And that is merely the most glaring alterations listed… .
As I was trained as an anthropologist rather than a historian, and as the preceding is a work of fiction, I have chosen to apply the standard that absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence, and I’ve chosen to make free with some conjectures frequently presented as absolutes (such as Anne Hathaway’s alleged illiteracy) which are not documented but rather a part of the common legendry and educated guesswork. In addition, certain questionable bits of tradition relating to the authorship of various notable works of sixteenth‑ and seventeenth‑century literature (Edward III,the King James Bible)and the original ownership of certain objects (notably the Stratford churchyard “W.S.” signet ring) are treated as fact rather than rawest speculation. And I must admit that my interpretation of intentions behind the post‑Lopez revival of The Jew of Maltaand The Merchant of Veniceis, at best, bogus–though not quite as bogus as my chronology of Shakespeare’s plays.
History is not narrative, alas. And Elizabethan political and theatrical history is less narrative than most. To paraphrase Velvet Brown, the facts are all tangled up together and it’s impossible to cut one clean.
This is a work of fiction. While there are any number of actual factsenmeshed in the web of its creation, it should not be treated as representative, as a whole, of my opinion on any particular historical theories or opinions. Nor should my suggestions regarding additions to the seemingly endless litany of Christopher Marlowe’s suspected lovers be taken seriously. It’s vilest calumny, all of it.
Well, except the part about Edward de Vere’s proclivity for transporting choirboys across international boundaries for immoral purposes. That’s the gospel truth.
The choirboy in question was sixteen at the time of the transportation; his name was Oracio Coquo. “I knew him, Horatio – ”
… okay, that was uncalled‑for.
To sum up, I consider this novel to be a grand disservice to antiquity in the tradition of those innovators whose Fictionalized Histories linger in vogue to the present day, and don’t consider it necessary to be any more faithful to Kit and Will than they were to assorted British Sovereigns not of the Tudor persuasion.
Really, considering what they wrought upon various Edwards and Richards and maybe the occasional Henry or so, Kit and Will deserve whatever the Hell they get from me.
It’s been a deep and abiding joy telling lies about them, however, and I’m pleased they came into my life. I do, however, hope that they are sharing a fine laugh at the irony of it, wherever they are.
After all, we’re each storytellers here.
About the Author
Originally from Vermont and Connecticut, Elizabeth Bearspent six years in the Mojave Desert and currently lives in southern New England. She attended the University of Connecticut, where she studied anthropology and literature. She was awarded the 2005 Campbell Award for Best New Writer.