by David Taylor
“‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ and the smell emanates from a royal palace that is simply humming with intrigue. Nowadays such a smell would hardly be noticed. We have been desensitised by corporations and data banks with vast information capabilities that are used to subdue and control us; robbing us of our essential human rights. We live, as Hamlet says, in ‘an unweeded garden’ of ‘things rank and gross in nature’ and do nothing to root them out. The politics haven’t changed since Shakespeare’s day.”
To emphasise the point, he smacked the lectern with the palm of his hand, scattering his papers far and wide. As he bent down to retrieve them the door burst open and a girl came in. All he could see was a pair of long legs and a disconcertingly short skirt. As he stood up, Cheryl Stone took off her shoulder bag and found a place in the front row.
Wondering what she was doing here he resumed his lecture. The Elizabethan authorities suspected playwrights of having political motives and Shakespeare reflected this obsession by making his prince commission a play to awaken Claudius’ conscience. Hamlet was a biting satire as well as a great tragedy.
“And the rest, as the prince said, is silence.”
Freddie was wrong about that. The small lecture theatre erupted into a standing ovation. Embarrassed by his reception he rushed outside to find Cheryl waiting for him.
“Ready,” she said.
“Ready for what?” he wanted to know.
“For what comes next.”
“And what might that be?”
“Take me to lunch and find out.”
They went to Fishers, a popular seafood restaurant on St Clements Road, and ordered fish soup and sea bass which they ate almost in silence. Cheryl was biding her time. It came with the coffee.
“Where did you disappear to last Sunday, leaving that silly note?”
“I had to go to a cocktail party at the Manor.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so instead of going all moralistic on me? I mean, let’s face it, tutors and students are having it off all the time.”
This was a novel interpretation of Oxford’s staff-student relations but, like so many hypotheses, it contained more than a grain of truth.
“Don’t you want to shag me anymore?”
A distinct hush fell over the restaurant as male diners pondered the question and waited for an affirmative reply. Freddie disappointed them by asking for the bill.
“You’re coming with me,” he grabbed her wrist. “We’ll talk about this at my place.”
“You’re hurting me Freddie,” she said, as he tightened his grip on her arm, frog-marching her along the High. “But I like a masterful man.”
Outside the flat in Walton Lane, Simon Nicholas was packing the boot of his Ford Fiesta.
“Hello, I’m off to Brighton for a very long weekend.”
Catching sight of Cheryl’s coppery tresses he stopped what he was doing and turned to Freddie. “Tell me, dear heart, what is this reincarnation of Lizzie Siddal doing on our doorstep?”
“I ain’t no artist’s model, sir, I’m a respectable girl.”
“No, you’re not. I can see that for myself.”
“Garn, I’m a good girl, I am,” Cheryl wailed in imitation of a cockney flower seller before abruptly changing her tune. “Alright, it’s a fair cop, guv’nor. I’m a lap dancer from Hackney hired to show your Freddie a good time.”
“Well, mind you do,” Simon replied sternly, aware his chain was being yanked.
Freddie found his key and opened the door for her, conscious of the flat’s shortcomings. It looked like a student pad: small, transitory and impersonal. The kitchen was much the best room with an Aga cooker, fitted cupboards and a breakfast bar.
“Wow,” cried his eager guest, throwing her bag on the table. “This is better than my dump.”
“We need to talk,” he muttered darkly as he put on the kettle.
But what was he going to say. That she should curb her tongue when, in reality, he found her imperfections and complexities quite beguiling? That he didn’t want to have an affair with her, that it was unprofessional, that he didn’t even like her. If he couldn’t believe these things, why should she? Watching her settle down at the kitchen table with her long hair, heart-shaped face and high cheekbones, he felt an almost irresistible urge to kiss her.
I’ve got something for you.” Cheryl rummaged around in her shoulder bag. “It’s only a small gift.”
He was both touched and disconcerted by the gesture. “You shouldn’t have,” he muttered mechanically, ripping the wrapping paper off her parcel. She had bought him a DVD.
“I thought we should celebrate my dissertation subject. It’s Kenneth Branagh’s version of Love’s Labour’s Lost. I hope you haven’t seen it.”
“No, I missed it. But I like Branagh’s Shakespeare movies. I thought Much Ado about Nothing was particularly good.”
He took her into the lounge, put the DVD into the playback machine and slumped down on the sagging sofa, all thoughts of a serious conversation forgotten.
The film came as a complete surprise. Lasting only ninety minutes, it began retro-style with a thirties musical score over the opening titles. Branagh had time-shifted Shakespeare’s most enigmatic comedy and repackaged it as a salute to the Hollywood musical with songs by Berlin, Gershwin and Cole Porter. And while production numbers like ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ were performed with gusto, they only served to emphasise the thinness of the plot. The screenplay was enough to give Oxford’s English Faculty conniptions.
“What did you make of that?” he asked in a shocked voice as the final credits rolled.
Cheryl smiled knowingly. “Putting the Bard on Broadway? Load of bollocks, if you ask me. Not much of the play was left. Not that it’s much of a play in the first place.”
“Then why are you doing a dissertation on it.”
“Because I find Love’s Labour’s Lost intriguing: it’s the only comedy that doesn’t have a happy ending. There must be more to it than meets the eye.”
“Yeah, God knows what is going on. After a couple of early productions it was given the rotten tomatoes treatment and never performed again until the nineteenth century. I studied the play as an undergraduate. My research notes are over there.”
He bounded across the room to retrieve a box file. Maybe Cheryl was right about the comedy having hidden depths. Hadn’t he been talking about this very thing in his lecture? Operating in a dangerous domain where sedition was always suspected, dramatists like Shakespeare relied on insinuations and shades of subtle meaning to get their message across, particularly when their work was given a royal command performance. First acted before the Queen, Love’s Labour’s Lost was a cat’s cradle of a play, full of elaborate wordplay, obscure puns and strange paradoxes.
Cheryl snuggled up to him on the sofa as he opened the box and took out his youthful notes. “You can have these if you like,” he said.
His eyes widened as he reminded himself what literary critics had had to say. Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch couldn’t understand the play’s ‘separate topical riddles’; the Polish scholar Jan Kott considered its allegories and allusive imagery had ‘a secret meaning for the initiated’; Richard David, the Arden Shakespeare editor, thought it contained a puzzle that would ‘satisfy the most rabid detective ardour’ while Walter Cohen, a Norton Shakespeare editor, believed the comedy had ‘false bottoms.’
“Leaving the false bottoms aside,” said Cheryl, “it’s a really dirty play with more sexual innuendos than you could shake a stick at.”
He pointed to the bookcase. “Pauline Kiernan’s book, Filthy Shakespeare, is over there, next to Eric Partridge’s Shakespeare’s Bawdy.”
Like an obedient puppy, she fetched and carried, before perching on the sofa’s armrest. “It says on the dust cover that Dr Pauline became a research fellow at Oxford before realising she could make more money out of screenwriting.”
Freddie watched Cheryl thumbing through the pag
es. Their increasing intimacy disturbed and excited him. He wanted to run his hands through her long, lustrous hair and to kiss the tendons in her slender neck. Was he addicted to sex? We are addictive creatures, he thought, blundering through the empty ceremonies of life without quite knowing why.
“How about this! Act 2, Scene 1,” she exclaimed. “Biron and Rosaline meet up and he goes, ‘Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?’ and she goes, ‘Did not I dance with you in Brabant once?’ ‘Dance’ was a synonym for shagging and ‘Brabant’ was the Low Countries and therefore a pun on below the belt. They’re arguing about who did the fucking.”
Cheryl threw the book on the floor. “This is turning me on,” she said sliding onto his lap. “Let’s dance. I want to be ravished on your chesterfield.”
Her body coiled around him, fitting to the angle of his hip, while a hand dropped into Brabant country seeking signs of life. His thoughts scattered as her skimpy skirt rode up to reveal a lacy black thong. The softness of her lips and the way they responded to the thick insistence of his tongue was a promise of things to come.
Suddenly he broke off and shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t do this. It’s not right.”
Seriously absorbed with her needs, Cheryl struggled for composure.
“Of course you can do it,” she panted. “We already have, more than once, and I’m not leaving it there, Freddie Brett, just so you understand. But I’ll bide my time, if that’s what you really want.”
Freddie grinned sheepishly. “Let’s get to know each other better.”
He lifted her off his lap while trying to hide his erection. She pretended not to notice.
“I’ll tell you something though. Lashings of smut may have kept the groundlings happy at the Curtain but is it the kind of show a crabby old Virgin Queen would want to watch?”
“Yes and no,” he said, trying to establish a more appropriate staff-student relationship. “A courtly drama poking fun at French historical figures and their vices must have gone down well in Whitehall Palace. Having renounced his faith to gain the French crown, Henry of Navarre was no longer the Protestant poster boy and, therefore, fair game for a bit of mockery. The play involves a faithless King of Navarre. No sooner do he and his noble companions vow to abstain from sex than the arrival of the French princess and her ladies persuades them to break their oaths. The real-life princess is Henry of Navarre’s estranged wife Marguerite de Valois, who had many lovers, and her ladies-in-waiting are the notorious ‘flying squadron’ who slept with admirers to learn their secrets. A satirical comedy in which a notorious lecher like Henry of Navarre issues a self-denying ordinance to keep his hands off women only to be caught in a honey trap would have tickled Queen Elizabeth’s fancy.”
Cheryl pretended to straighten his tie. “How long do you plan to keep away from my honey, Dr Brett?” she whispered in his ear.
“I don’t think you are taking this extra tutorial session very seriously, Cheryl. Let’s change the subject. Tell me about yourself.”
He could see the joy on her face. It was the first time he’d used her Christian name.
“What do you want to know?”
“How a down-to-earth outspoken girl who went to a poor school in Hackney ends up studying Shakespeare at Oxford. Quite a leap, isn’t it?”
He made a place for her on the sofa. She sat inches away from him and spoke of growing up in a tower block on a sink estate in London’s East End.
“We lived in a shitty flat on the sixteenth floor, still do, where privacy was as scarce as hen’s teeth. I never knew my dad. He scarpered before I was born. After that, two other men got Mum up the duff so I’ve a younger half sister and a half brother which means there’s always someone coming or going. Everything I wore as a teenager was second-hand. We must have visited every thrift shop in Hackney. I was a right sight, I can tell you. Here comes Cheryl, the young Goth, in fishnet stockings, black imitation leather miniskirt, black lipstick and witchy eye make-up. Next on the piss-stained catwalk, cool Cheryl, thin as a paper clip, in acid washed jeans and Doc Martens, described as ‘super sexy’ by her boyfriend when he wanted to get his leg over. You would not have been impressed.”
“What about your love of Shakespeare. Where did that come from?”
“When I was nine, Mum took me to see a pantomime at the Hackney Empire, only she got her dates wrong and we ended up watching a touring production of Twelfth Night. I was promised an ice cream if I could sit it out. At first, I was lost. Hearing characters ‘beseeching’ and ‘entreating’ one another, I went like, duh, yeah, what does that mean? But I loved the flow of words – beautiful lines like ‘If music be the food of love, play on’ and ‘make me a willow cabin at your gate.’ Straight away I was hooked, a Bard junkie if you like, spending whatever money I could scrape together on going to the theatre. I owe Shakespeare just about everything. He’s a kindred spirit. People forget that he lodged in Hackney and that some of his early plays were performed there.”
Freddie grinned at her. “What you haven’t told me is why you wanted to come to Oxford. There’s not much working-class solidarity here.”
“Right, well, I went to Brooke House Sixth Form College for disadvantaged kids from Hackney and was selected for the residential course at Pembroke College where I attended lectures, learned how to write essays and hobnobbed with undergraduates who weren’t nearly as stuck-up as I had imagined. It made me feel I could aim high.”
“You must have been one of the first successes of the scheme?”
“Yeah, Cheryl Stone, human guinea pig, at your service and ready for love. Talking of history, Shakespeare doesn’t take the credit for any of his plays until Love’s Labour’s Lost appears in print in 1598. Is that just a coincidence?”
“Let me stop you there. A second edition of Richard II was also published in 1598 with Shakespeare’s name on the title page so we don’t know which came first.”
Hovering over him, she made a clucking noise which he took to be a prelude to a challenging statement. “Correct me if I’m wrong, tutor dear, but didn’t Queen Elizabeth object to Richard II and prevent its deposition scene from being played in public. Who in their right mind would put their name on a play that had already incurred the royal displeasure?”
“The writer had no say in such matters. Plays were sold to publishers who therefore owned them and they didn’t care much about authors. Most plays were published anonymously. Maybe Shakespeare’s popularity had reached a point where it was profitable to put his name on the title page of a quarto. On the other hand, it might have been a distancing act.”
The words slipped out before he realised what he had said.
Cheryl looked at him in amazement. “Care to repeat that?”
“There might have been a political reason for sticking Shakespeare up front.”
“You’re not losing it, are you? You haven’t become a flaky theorist in your spare time.”
There was no going back now. He began to tell her about his cipher discoveries, ignoring her snorts of outrage as he did so. Eventually his persistence paid off and the cries of ‘get out of here’ and ‘you must be joking’ dwindled to a shocked silence.
“You’re serious about this, aren’t you?” she said in a small voice.
“Yes, I’m pretty convinced that Francis Bacon was Shakespeare’s silent partner.”
“What about your partner, Dr Dilworth. What does she think?”
“Oh her, she’s too busy shagging her married head of department,” he said bitterly.
“Fuck off, I don’t believe it. The famous Milton Cleaver who wrote that book on Shakespeare’s morality. What a randy old stoat!”
Freddie wished he’d never opened his mouth. He was telling this girl all his secrets.
“I want to say something,” she began. “I’ve never taken any interest in the authorship controversy. It seemed a pretty arid debate between the improbability of it being the Stratford man and the impossibility of it being anyone else. But
you’ve got round that by offering me an alternative proposition – not Shakespeare versus Bacon but Shakespeare and Bacon. Unfortunately, your evidence is in code and, stop me if I’ve got this wrong, isn’t cipher a discredited currency.”
He nodded his head miserably. “The ciphers are genuine though,” he replied defensively.
“But there’s no conclusive proof, is there? If I saw your decipherments I wouldn’t be convinced by them but then I’m prejudiced. I don’t believe in skulduggery. You, on the other hand, obviously love a mystery and the Shakespeare Authorship Question is a bloody good whodunit. But history isn’t like fiction, it’s not as tidy, and the closer you get to the truth the more the mystery deepens about what really happened in the past.”
“Don’t you think I know this, Cheryl?”
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, Freddie. Honestly I don’t. Things didn’t work out too well for the curious cat. Don’t toss your career away.”
“Ta very much,” he said. Their roles had reversed. She was giving him advice.
“There’s another thing. I’m not too happy with the idea of a posh gay boy from St Albans sharing the credit for Shakespeare’s plays.”
“Hold on a minute, you’re not homophobic, are you. Sure Bacon was gay but he swung both ways as did many Elizabethan and Stuart courtiers.”
To reinforce the point Freddie mentioned another leading Shakespeare candidate, the Earl of Oxford, a notorious womaniser whose love of the stage was spiced by his desire for boy actors, and Shakespeare’s patron, the Earl of Southampton, whose active service in Ireland was largely spent in bed with Captain Piers Edmunds. Sodomy may have been a capital offence in England but King James practised masculine love. What was unnatural lust to Puritan moralists was par for the course in the Stuart Court.
“And remember, if Shakespeare wrote all the Sonnets he had to have been AC/DC, immortalising not only a ‘dark lady’ but a ‘lovely boy.’”