“And so,” I wound up, “for my money, Ann Hathaway was the girl — and there’s another check on it: in Sonnet 129, two numbers past the one I just quoted, is voiced bitter disappointment in ‘lust,’ as he calls it, but disappointment that has meaning only if we assume that it’s the disappointment of first flight — sex wasn’t quite what he thought it would be — and once more we come back to Ann. There’s another point to be borne in mind. ‘Venus and Adonis’ was published in 1593 when Shakespeare was twenty-nine, but perhaps it was written before that. It’s about a woman in her twenties who is satiated with sex, is hungry for a new experience, and who falls for a boy in his teens. Ann Hathaway was twenty-six when she fell for Shakespeare, so this poem could well be a memoir of personal experience. The fact that no sonnet mentions the marriage might be explained by the gory finish that befell Adonis. The poem proves nothing, yet it is in harmony with the theory that ‘Venus and Adonis,’ far from being a fresh effort, was actually a continuation of these sonnets in another poetical form.”
I stopped, and a murmur of incredulity went through the room. Albaugh, as though addressing a not-so-bright child, said: “Dr. Palmer, surely you’re not serious in contending that these deathless poems are the work of a youth. At that time, a butcher’s apprentice. And—”
“Mr. Albaugh,” I said, “there’s not one shred of real evidence that Shakespeare was ever a butcher’s apprentice. It is assumed that he was on the basis of local heresay, as it was assumed that Mary Fitton was the Dark Woman until a window was found, one made in her honor, that proved she was a blonde. In my theory, I must confess, the precocity involved has bothered me, until a couple of years ago when the Maryland Arts Council sponsored a literary competition for high school students in the state and made me one of the judges. The compositions included poetry, even some sonnets, which astonished me. The best of them weren’t just pretty good; they were damned good — fit to be published, of true professional grade. Poetry, like music, is an art that blossoms young. If Maryland kids can write it, couldn’t Shakespeare have? Let me quote a statistic: in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, the King James Bible gets twenty-eight pages; John Milton, fourteen; John Dryden, seven; Longfellow, six; Edgar Allan Poe, three; and Tennyson, eleven. But William Shakespeare gets seventy-seven. It gives you some idea how great this genius was. Remember, all the others I mentioned were celebrities in their teens. Poe, for example, got out a published volume of verse before he was twenty, and Longfellow paid part of his Harvard expenses by writing verse for the papers. I say, for God’s sake, let’s stop thinking of this man as just an average boy a glover’s son from Stratford who went down to London for some reason, held horses in front of the Globe Theatre, got stagestruck inhaling the effluvia of grease paint, and then started writing plays, with sonnets in between. Genius isn’t acquired, like a case of rickets. It’s born. If Shakespeare was a genius at thirty-five, he’d have been a genius all his life.”
“But Dr. Palmer, after all, fourteen—!”
“Mr. Albaugh,” I shot back, “I’ve been waiting for you to say it — I staked you out. It just so happens that America’s outstanding poet, at least most successful poet, was a success in life, a local Detroit celebrity, on the basis of paid contributions of poetry to the Free Press at fourteen. I ask you, if Edgar A. Guest could do it, couldn’t William Shakespeare?”
It caught them by surprise and got a tremendous roar, first laughter and then hand-clapping. With that, I stalked back to my table. When I bowed and sat down, Hortense patted my hand. Sam Dent thumped me on the back, and I had to stand up again as the applause kept on.
That night she phoned to say she would be late. “Richard has something he wants to show me. He’s asked me to dinner first.” So I undressed, put on my pajamas and a robe, and waited. I waited for a long time. It wasn’t until after eleven that the elevator stopped at my floor and I heard her putting her key in the lock. After kissing me, she said: “Darling, I have to ask you to get dressed and come out with me. There’s something I have to show you, something Richard took me to see so I could see it first with him. But, of course, I want to see it with you.”
“What is it?”
“He surprised me with it, and I want to surprise you.”
So she helped me dress, and we went downstairs to her car, which she insisted we take because she wanted to drive. She followed Rhode Island Avenue in as far as Sixteenth, where she turned and entered an all-night parking garage. As soon as she had her ticket she took me by the hand and led me down to K Street. She turned into it, and then suddenly we were standing across the street from our building, the new one I had had Garrett buy. But I hardly recognized it. All the scaffolding, canvas, and boards were gone, so that the front was clear, with its new black granite facing covering the entire front. And there in big bright, brass letters was:
It was lit by soft golden floodlamps, and a shiver went through me.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said softly.
“I have to say it is.”
“I love to look at it. I wanted to... with you.”
“You’re consecrated to fame.”
“It’s not that. It’s just that — it’s so beautiful!”
“It is, it certainly is. The lettering is art in itself, and that stone — its color and the way it’s polished — is simply staggering.”
“It comes from Minnesota. They polish it out there and then ship it in slabs by flatcar, all cut to size and ready to install. Richard had to pay all kinds of bonuses to get it done so quick, but, of course, he has a magic wand.”
“Where’s that light coming from?”
“From the building behind us, the one across the street. More of the magic wand; but when it waves for you, it’s something.”
“Something to see — it certainly is.”
“Well, you might show some enthusiasm — a little, anyway.”
“I have shown enthusiasm. You want me to jump up and down?”
“That’s what I want to do.”
“Then—”
I started jumping up and down, but she stopped me in horror after glancing around to see whether any police were there. Then, very sulky, she said: “You looked like a fish flopping — and that’s how cold you are.”
“O.K., but what did I have to do with it?”
“It was your idea, Lloyd.”
“It was his magic wand.”
“And I helped a little, didn’t I?”
“Hortense, without you, it wouldn’t have happened.”
“You really mean that?”
“I do. At least we know I love you.”
“I opened my mouth to say, ‘Then act like it,’ but the trouble is, you might — right here on K Street.”
“I’d be tempted, I certainly would be.”
“Let’s go home... But first, let’s walk up to the Hilton and see what the paper says about the brawl you got into this afternoon. Then we can come back for one last look.”
At the Hilton, which was just a block away, the stack of papers was out front on the sidewalk. The rope was being cut off as we got there, and when they were brought inside, we bought two. Then we sat down with them in the lobby. I was covered in the section devoted to goings-on around town, in two separate stories, one devoted to what I had said about biography and the other to my verbal brawl with Albaugh on the subject of Shakespeare. It was that one that gave me concern. Instead of kissing me off as someone in over his depth, however, the article was respectful. The reporter knew his Shakespeare. For the benefit of those who didn’t he explained the sonnets a bit, especially the mystery of “Mr. W.H.” and the Dark Woman and went on to report word for word what I had said. At the end he commented: “It is a novel theory, and it has one point to commend it: it rests on the incontrovertible fact, as he insisted to his listeners, that his was the greatest genius in the history of language — ours or any other.”