Seven Will Out: A Renaissance Revel by JoAnn Spears

Author:JoAnn Spears [Spears, JoAnn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-11-09T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixty-Two

The Royal Matron and the Literary Patron

“Am I even allowed to ask pointed questions here?” I inquired. “There was a moratorium on my asking any during my last visit here, but they seem all right now. Am I correct in this?”

“You are, Dolly. Ask away!” said Mary Tudor.

“Well, I’d like some of the background on how five plays written by Margaret Douglas made their way into the Shakespeare canon. My curiosity about this is understandable, surely.”

“I should say so!” said Jane, looking as professorial as is possible for a sixteen-year-old to look. “Any scholar who calls herself a scholar would feel the same.”

“Well,” Margaret said, “it started with my turning for assistance with my literary career to a highly placed individual who was the obvious go-to man for the job.”

“William Cecil?” I asked, feeling confident.

“No, Dolly. Robert Dudley.”

Accompanied by the hissing sound of the air escaping my deflated ego, Elizabeth let a hint of a smile pass over her lips at the mention of her lover, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and Margaret began her story.

“The year was 1578,” Margaret began. “I had a premonition that my time on earth would soon be over. As a royal personage, my thoughts of course turned to the legacy I would leave behind me. My sons had reproduced and put children tauntingly near the English throne. I had no control, in the last days of my life, over how the fates of those grandchildren would play out.”

“Your grandchildren were the future King James I of England and Arabella Stuart,” I recalled. “Guess you could put it at fifty-fifty.”

“I knew I needed to leave my grandchildren to fate,” Margaret said. “But I also had my literary works to leave to posterity. I wanted my plays to be put out into the world and credited to me after I was gone. I dreamed of the glory of literary immortality without the social burden of having to live down being a female member of the royal family who wrote common plays.”

“And so you contacted Dudley,” I said. “You certainly took that down to the wire, Margaret; as I recall, you dined with the man the night before you died. People at the time viewed it with suspicion.”

“And people at the time were incorrect in suspecting Dudley of wrongdoing, Dolly. I dined with him on that last night to pass my five plays into his possession. As the patron of a dramatic troupe and a close friend of the family, he was the best bet I had for the safekeeping of my plays. His troupe had, as part of its warrant, the ability to perform plays with minimal censorship. Given the ribald nature of Shrew and the political football that Richard III could become, I couldn’t think of a better way to ensure that my plays would see the light of day and meet an audience.”

“His troupe was called the Earl of Leicester’s Men, was it not?” I asked. “The legendary James Burbage, builder of the first known modern English theater, was among the members of the troupe.

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