Foolscap by Michael Malone

Author:Michael Malone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2010-04-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

The Manor Bourne

All this was mine, and was taken from me unjustly.

—Sir Walter Raleigh, passing Sherborne on his way to the Tower

While Foolscap hadn’t been at the front of Theo’s mind at dinner, he hadn’t lain long in (possibly) Charles the first’s high carved-oak bed before he started to think of it. And as he did, a thought began buzzing like a gnat around his head, keeping him from sleep. It came at first as a pleasant fantasy of revenge. What a fool he could make of Mr. W.F.D. The thought was next shrewdly disguised (even from himself) as an act of charity. Dame Winifred expected to find a play Raleigh had written in the Tower. She believed in a strange magical way that Raleigh wanted her to find it. She had been mocked for her belief. Old and slighted, she hadn’t long to live, and would die happier if she were proved right. But that there was such a play was, frankly, improbable. Just as unlikely the chance of finding it now even if it had existed.

Foolscap was about Sir Walter Raleigh writing a play about himself in the Tower. What if Foolscap had actually been Raleigh’s play, the way Jonas Marsh had talked about what-if-Bolt-had-written-A-Man for-All-Seasons-so-that…? What a gift to Dame Winifred, what a revenge on her detractors!

“Americans shouldn’t try this sort of thing,” had said “W.F.D.” “You simply can’t write plays like this in the twentieth century.”

All right, assume that London producer was right. In that case, it was unlikely that anyone would ever produce Foolscap. Well then, why not say it wasn’t from this century? Why not say it was by the man who had first claimed America for England, five hundred years ago? As long as the characters in Foolscap were the creations of some twentieth-century nobody called Theo S. Ryan, they might never find themselves on a stage. But imagine their fates if their author were the great Elizabethan? Or even might be the great Elizabethan? Beyond doubt, if Dame Winifred accepted the authenticity of the play, a dozen other Raleigh scholars would deny it, if only from envy and contentiousness. And the controversy itself would be enough to lure producers. Maybe academic rivals would rush to the fray: Marston or Webster scholars might claim Foolscap for their author, or Bacon, or even…maybe Shakespeare scholars would wonder if it were just possible that, off in his Stratford retirement, the Bard had…

“Oh for God’s sake,” Theo muttered aloud. “You’re out of your mind!” He turned over, yanking twisted sheets and comforter with him. What a stupid fantasy. Wait’ll he told Jonas. It could never be done. It shouldn’t be done. What a horrible thing to do to Dame Winifred even if he could, which he couldn’t. He could never fool her. And if he did and got caught (which of course he would), his career would be over. His career? He’d probably go to jail. “You jerk,” Theo snorted at himself, and pulled the feathery pillow over his head.

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