Dark Aemilia

by Sally O’Reilly

  Baptiste was not formally married to Aemilia’s mother Margaret Johnson, referring to her as his ‘reputed wife’ in his will.

  In the novel, I make a reference to one of Margaret Johnson’s cousins, Robert Johnson, who composed ‘The Witch’s Dance’ (the tune that Alfonso is humming in Act II, Scene V). I liked the fact that he shares his name with the African-American blues guitarist Robert Johnson (1911–38) who is alleged to have sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads. Popular myth has it that this is how Robert Johnson gained his phenomenal musical skill. He died in mysterious circumstances at the age of twenty-seven. In my story, Baptiste makes a similar pact with the witches at the crossroads at Tyburn, and then reneges on the deal, repenting and giving up his music.

  Simon Forman (1552–1611)

  Simon Forman studied at Oxford University, and later set up a medical practice in London, providing astrologically based treatments and predictions. Demand for his services increased after he (apparently) cured himself of plague. He was in dispute with the College of Physicians for many years, and the College banned him from practising as a doctor. He was eventually awarded this title.

  Forman is one of the few people to have accurately predicted the date of his own death. His papers are now in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

  The distinction between ‘high magic’ and ‘women’s magic’ was not made explicitly at the time, but it is accurate to suggest that men developed the intellectual side of magic via experimentation, while women used old lore to cure common ailments for small sums of money. If you want to know more about the importance of ‘magic’ and its connection to belief systems during this period, I recommend Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas, a truly magisterial tome.

  Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton (1573–1624)

  Wriothesley (pronounced ‘Rizley’) is often identified as the Fair Youth of Shakespeare’s sonnets, though this is not a matter of historical fact. In addition, there is no evidence that Shakespeare and Henry Wriothesley were romantically or sexually involved, though many novelists have suggested this.

  In the novel, I suggest that Wriothesley is bisexual, though not that he and Will are lovers. We have no information about Wriothesley’s sexuality, though we do know that he was apparently happy with his wife, Elizabeth Vernon, and that they had several children. Surviving portraits of the handsome and highly elegant young man have been seen as evidence of his ‘effeminacy’ by some scholars, but his appearance could equally have been an expression of his interest in fashion, a widespread obsession at the Elizabethan court. Attitudes to sexuality were very different from today. Fulsome and seemingly romantic dedications, such as those made by Shakespeare to Wriothesley, were common. Young men were often physically affectionate towards each other. But male homosexuality was seen as a terrible sin, diverging from the natural order, and was a capital offence.

  In the novel, I present Wriothesley as a young man intoxicated by his own power, who uses this to step beyond social norms. This is plausible, and fits in with the theme of over-reaching in the novel.

  We do know that Wriothesley was involved in the rebellion led by the Earl of Essex in 1601, for which he was sentenced to death. Essex was beheaded – which Elizabeth apparently regretted – but after her death Wriothesley’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in the Tower of London. He was released on the accession of James I.

  Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon (1526–96)

  Hunsdon was the son of Mary Boleyn, Anne Boleyn’s sister. He was a blunt, outspoken man, a professional soldier rather than a courtier. As Lord Chamberlain, he was the patron of William Shakespeare’s company from 1594.

  Simon Forman’s case-books record that Aemilia Bassano was his mistress for around six years (1586–92).

  Hunsdon died in 1596 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His tomb is indeed bizarre and ornate.

  Ann Shakespeare, née Hathaway (1555/6–1623)

  Very little is known about Ann Hathaway beyond a few references in legal documents, but her personality and marriage to Shakespeare have been the subject of a great deal of speculation.

  Pregnant when she married William Shakespeare in 1582, Ann was seven years older than he was. Much has been made of this, and it has been suggested that Shakespeare was coerced into marrying her. We have no proof of this. Although Shakespeare worked in London, there is also no evidence that he disliked his wife.

  Shakespeare famously bequeathed his ‘second-best bed’ to Ann. In my novel, he leaves his best bed to Aemilia. I feel that Ann has been poorly treated both by popular myth and (most) other fiction writers. Germaine Greer robustly challenges the idea that Ann was unintelligent or illiterate in Shakespeare’s Wife; my version of Ann is inspired by Greer’s book. Ann is as formidable as Aemilia in her own way. If you are interested in a ribald and witty fictional account of her life, read Mrs Shakespeare: the Complete Works by Robert Nye.

  Thomas Dekker (1570?–1632)

  Throughout his life, dramatist and pamphleteer Thomas Dekker had severe financial problems, and was imprisoned for debt several times. He is thought to have written about sixty plays, but only twenty have survived. Dekker wrote the city comedy The Roaring Girle (1610) in collaboration with Middleton. The heroine of this play, Moll Cutpurse, was based on the notorious London thief Mary Frith, who dressed as a man. His pamphlet The Wonderful Year (1603) describes London ravaged by the effects of the plague.

  Moll Cutpurse (Mary Frith) (1584–1659)

  Mary Frith (also known as Moll Cutpurse) was a cross-dressing fence and thief. She was mythologised even in her lifetime, and at least two plays were written about her. She smoked a pipe, played her lute on the stage, and swore. She lived into the time of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate and is alleged to have fired a musket at one of his men. Her remarkable life story does indeed indicate that she enjoyed a level of personal freedom that was almost unknown among women at that time.

  Richard Burbage (1567–1619)

  Although Richard Burbage was a member of an acting family, his early career is poorly documented. Later he became one of London’s best-known actors.

  He was the lead actor with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and a sharer in the company. Burbage played the title role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare’s plays, including Hamlet, Othello, Richard III, and King Lear.

  Background Events

  1526 Birth of Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon.

  1533 Birth of Elizabeth I.

  1569 Birth of Aemilia Bassano.

  1576 Death of Baptiste Bassano, Aemilia’s father, cause unknown.

  1587 Death of Margaret Johnson, Aemilia’s mother. The probable date of beginning of Aemilia’s affair with Lord Hunsdon.

  1591–92 Plague kills 15,000 people in London.

  1592 Christopher Marlowe writes Dr Faustus (probable date).

  1592 Aemilia falls pregnant and is married off to court musician (and cousin by marriage) Alfonso Lanyer.

  1595 Robert Southwell, English Jesuit poet, hanged at Tyburn.

  1596 Lord Hunsdon dies at Somerset House while still in office.

  1597 Shakespeare’s son Hamnet dies in Stratford.

  1597 Aemilia visits Simon Forman for news about how her husband’s ‘business’ will fare. This is the Islands Voyage trip to the Azores, 1597, led by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, the Queen’s favourite.

  1599 Globe Theatre built.

  1600 Moll Cutpurse indicted in Middlesex for stealing 2s 11d. Two plays written about her in next ten years – The Madde Pranckes of Mery Mall of the Bankside by John Day, and The Roaring Girle by Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton. Both dwell on the ‘scandalous’ issue of her dressing like a man.

  1603 Queen Elizabeth dies.

  1603 Alfonso is one of 59 musicians who played at Elizabeth’s funeral. He is then employed by James I.

  1603 King James 1 crowned.

  1605 Gunpowder plot (known as the Treason Plot), November 5th.

>   1605–07 Probable date of first performance of Macbeth. Many scholars say that the play was probably written between 1603 and 1606. As it seems to celebrate the Stuart accession to the English throne, they argue that the play is unlikely to have been composed earlier than 1603, when James I was crowned. Others suggest a more specific date of 1605–06 because the play appears to refer to the Gunpowder Plot. Macbeth was first printed in the First Folio of 1623 and the Folio is the only source for the text.

  1611 Aemilia Lanyer publishes Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. She is one of the first women to be published as a poet in England, and the first to claim professional status for her work.

  1611 Simon Forman writes first known review of Macbeth in his notebook.

  1613 Alfonso Lanyer dies.

  1613 Globe Theatre burns down during a performance of Henry VIII.

  1614 Globe Theatre rebuilt (using brick rather than wood).

  1616 William Shakespeare dies.

  1645 Aemilia Lanyer dies, aged 76, a ‘pensioner’ therefore someone who has an income – not rich, but not a pauper.

  Suggested Reading

  If this story has made you want to find out more about the period, here are some suggestions for further reading:

  Peter Ackroyd, Shakespeare, The Biography (Chatto & Windus, 2005)

  Bill Bryson, Shakespeare, The World as a Stage (Harper Perennial, 2007)

  Judith Cook, Dr Simon Forman, a Most Notorious Physician (Chatto & Windus, 2001)

  Andrew Dickson, The Rough Guide to Shakespeare (Rough Guides, 2009)

  Germaine Greer, Shakespeare’s Wife (Bloomsbury, 2007)

  Christopher Lee, 1603: The Death of Elizabeth I and the Birth of the Stuart Era (Review, 2003)

  Robert Nye, Mrs Shakespeare: the Complete Works (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1993)

  Graham Philips and Martin Keatman, The Shakespeare Conspiracy (Arrow, 1995)

  Lisa Picard, Elizabeth’s London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London (Phoenix, 2004)

  Stephen Porter, The Plagues of London (Tempus, 2008)

  Alison Sim, The Tudor Housewife (Sutton, 1996)

  Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1971)

  Susanne Woods, The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Oxford University Press, 1993)

  Susanne Woods, Lanyer: A Renaissance Woman Poet (Oxford University Press, 1999)

  Glossary

  ale-pottle (noun) – beer bottle or tankard

  bawdy (noun) – lewd or obscene talk or writing

  bowelled – (adj) disembowelled

  ceruse (noun) – a white lead pigment, used in cosmetics

  chap-book (noun) – a small book or pamphlet containing poems, ballads, stories or religious tracts

  cheat-bread (noun) – poor quality bread

  coney (noun) – a tame rabbit raised for the table

  coney catcher (noun) – a thief or trickster

  the Corporation (noun) – the Corporation of London, the municipal governing body of the City of London

  cozener (noun) – cheat or trickster (from verb, to cozen)

  doxy (noun) – mistress or prostitute

  dread-belly (noun) – Aemilia’s own word, meaning stomach upset brought on by unwholesome food and/or anxiety about the Early Modern world

  farthingale (noun) – a support, such as a hoop, worn beneath a skirt to extend it horizontally from the waist, used by European women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

  foolscap – (noun) paper cut to the size of 8.5 x 13.5 inches (216 x 343 mm) – traditional size used in Europe before A4 paper became the international standard

  fribbling (adj) – time-wasting

  grabble (verb) – Aemilia’s own word: to catch at thin air in a desperate manner

  gull (noun) – a gullible person, easily fooled or the victim of a trick (from verb, to gull)

  halek (verb) – Simon Forman’s own word, meaning to have sexual intercourse

  hell-waines (noun) – creatures from hell (‘waine’ is an Old English name for boy)

  jakes (noun) – an outside toilet

  kennel (noun) – a gutter along a street

  kersey (noun) – coarse woollen fabric

  kinchin-mort (noun) – a child used by professional beggars to gain sympathy

  the Liberties (noun) – an area on what is now the South Bank of London which was outside the jurisdiction of the Corporation of London

  Marranos (noun) – Jews living in the Iberian peninsula who converted to Christianity, many of whom practised Judaism in secret

  mouldiwarp (noun) – a mole

  pattens (noun) – outdoor shoes with wooden soles worn over indoor shoes

  pavane (noun) – a slow processional dance common in Europe during the sixteenth century

  pigwidgeon (noun) – an insignificant or unimportant person; something petty or small that is worthy of contempt

  plague-mort (noun) – Aemilia’s own word, meaning someone afflicted with the plague

  pottage (noun) – a thick soup or stew

  prentice-boy (noun) – apprentice boy

  scragged (adj) – Aemilia’s own word, meaning scraggy, skinny, lined

  scrimmage (noun) – Aemilia’s own word, meaning a mess and tangle of mucky things

  shave-grasse (noun) – a plant with a brush-like appearance

  shippon (noun) – cowshed

  shittle-cock (noun) – shuttlecock, used in Volpone and The Fox, by Ben Jonson

  simples (noun) – medicinal plants or the medicine obtained from them

  slip-shake (adj) – Parson John’s own word, meaning slippery and unwholesome

  small beer (noun) – a beer or ale that contains little alcohol

  solar (noun) – upper sitting room, common in most houses of the period

  squibbling (to squibble) (verb) – Aemilia’s own word, meaning the male habit of quibbling and double-dealing, being deceitful and emotionally dishonest

  truckle-bed (noun) – a low bed on casters, often pushed under another bed when not in use. Also called a trundle bed.

  virginals (noun) – keyboard instrument of the harpsichord family widespread in Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

  vizard (noun) – mask for disguise or protection, alteration of Middle English viser mask

  wherry (noun) – a river ferry-boat

  Acknowledgements

  This book has been a joy to write, and many people have helped it along the way.

  First of all, my heartfelt thanks to everyone at Myriad Editions, especially Candida Lacey, Linda McQueen, Holly Ainley and Vicky Blunden. It is inspiring and exciting to work with people who love books and writing so much, and are so meticulous about the publishing process.

  I’m also indebted to the writers and historians who gave me the benefit of their considerable wisdom while I drafted and re-drafted the novel. Fay Weldon, Celia Brayfield, Elizabeth Evenden, Sarah Penny, Matt Thorne and Linda Anderson – thank you so much. Sincere thanks also to Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at the University of Bristol. The ideas, themes and characters in the novel came together after many fascinating meetings and discussions. Any mistakes or inaccuracies are mine alone.

  There were times when my energy and determination flagged – the friendship and support of Martin Cox, Susanna Jones, Alison Macleod, Lisa Seabourne and Kate Wade have kept me going.

  A special mention too, for Julie Burchill. After a long and boozy lunch party during a rather gloomy hiatus in my career, Julie gave me three books by Patrick Hamilton and said, ‘I don’t know why you don’t write something darker and more historical.’ I think this book fulfils the brief.

  I am also grateful to Brunel University. The university’s Isambard Scholarship gave me the means to study for a PhD in English and Creative Writing, and this novel is the main component of that research.

  (Nearly there now.) I couldn’t function without my children and (extremely patient) husband. Georgia and Declan, you ar
e probably the funniest teenagers on the planet, and definitely the messiest. I don’t know what I have taught you, but you have taught me what motherhood feels like. Noel, you are the best reader I could hope for, and please carry on telling me when my writing isn’t good enough – even when you would rather have a quiet life. And thank you, Mum, the only person I know who is as forceful and unstoppable as Aemilia Bassano Lanyer.

  Last of all – thank you, Aemilia. This book was meant to be about Lady Macbeth. Then I found you, threw away 30,000 words – and never looked back.

  About the Author

  Sally O’Reilly lives with her family in Brighton. A former Cosmopolitan Young Journalist of the Year, she was shortlisted for the Ian St James short story prize and the Cosmopolitan short story award. She is the author of How to be a Writer and (as Sam O’Reilly) two previous novels, The Best Possible Taste and You Spin Me Round. Her short stories have appeared in the UK, Australia and South Africa. She has worked as a journalist and editor for Christian Aid and Barnardo’s, and written for the Guardian, Sunday Times, Evening Standard and New Scientist. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from Brunel University, London, and teaches Creative Writing at the University of Portsmouth.

  Copyright

  First edition published in 2014

  This ebook edition published in 2014 by

  Myriad Editions

  59 Lansdowne Place

  Brighton BN3 1FL

  www.myriadeditions.com

  Copyright © Sally O’Reilly 2014