Part 6

At length matters reached such a crisis that in 1592, the alderman determined that his daughter should be placed under more strict surveillance than he was capable of maintaining. In considering the matter his thoughts had turned in the direction of his sister’s house in London. The chances were fair for the close confinement there of the maiden until time should have worn away the image of her lover. For the moment, the Protestant actually wished for the restoration of the dissolved nunneries. Like the Jew of Malta, who had placed his daughter within the walls of a priory, the stiff-necked Brownist could have smothered his religious prejudices when the interests lying next to his heart were at stake. But half a century had elapsed since the sisters of the convents, with only their clothes upon their backs, had been rudely forced into secular life, and their abodes confiscated by the crown.

The sister of Crossford was the wife of Richard Bame. Living childless, she had long since pleaded for the adoption of her niece, but Crossford had turned a deaf ear toward all such entreaties. Her home was a “faire dwelling” amid spacious and walled grounds, the bequest of her father. As she was a woman of advanced education for the times, and a strict disciplinarian, it was no wonder that Manuel Crossford turned toward her in what he deemed was his extremity. Without notice given his daughter of their destination or his intentions, the alderman started with her on the journey toward the great metropolis.

They traveled by the way of Deptford, and knowing Dodsman intimately from an early day, they stayed for several days at the Golden Hind. Before their sojourn at the latter place had ended, Marlowe had heard of their presence there and forthwith appeared at the tavern. A stormy interview took place between the father and the suitor; a misunderstanding arose, and a bitter quarrel followed between the lovers, and apparently the meeting was but an episode in the journey.

Anne was soon afterward received into the house of Mistress Bame, where studies were begun and assiduously maintained. Any tears which she might have shed over what she supposed was the termination of the affair with Marlowe, were soon followed by a condition of mind giving evidence of its freedom from regret and melancholy, by clarity of countenance. But this peaceful condition of mind was more in the nature of a reflection of the new, and, at first, pleasant surroundings. The extent to which her affection had become involved was not at that time known to herself. It required another revolution of the kaleidoscope of her life to show the contrasting pictures of light and gloom, traced by her first love in ineffaceable colors. This revolution was not to be long delayed. It required another’s devotion; the paling of the fire of attraction and the second advent of Marlowe.

Anne had not been wholly restricted to the grounds within the walls of the residence of Bame; but upon all her departures therefrom she was accompanied by the watchful mistress. Upon one of these occasions they became separated from each other by the waves of a great crowd rushing through Fenchurch Street. It was an insurrection raised by the apprentices of the city against the alien workingmen; and although neither riotous nor destructive at the point where the younger woman became lost from the older, it was sufficiently threatening to cause the closing and barricading of all shops and houses along that ancient thoroughfare. Anne became extricated from the mob through the efforts of a young man, who proved to be Francis Frazer. He had noticed her upon a previous occasion. He had the grace of a courtier and his apparel was in keeping with his apparent rank.

Her beauty had flashed upon him and fixed his attention. On his part, it was love at first sight. Upon her part, she was attracted by his distinguished appearance, and visibly affected by his immediate protestations of affection. Unfortunately for both, as the sequel proved, he escorted her to her home.

Frequent occasions for meetings between the two followed, despite the vigilance of the aunt, and gradually the restraints of home life became irksome beyond the limit of endurance. The interest of the girl in her admirer increased in like proportion, and he, at an early period of their acquaintance, discovered that his feelings toward her were founded upon something more than temporary passion. With all the ardor of his impetuous nature he prevailed upon her to accept his hand in marriage; and the safeguards which Manuel Crossford had erected to keep his daughter fancy free, until he might arrange a suitable marriage, trembled at the assault and then fell to pieces. In confidence that the Count would fulfill his promise of marriage, the girl fled from the home of Bame leaving no clue from which to ascertain the cause of her flight or the place of her concealment. She was married to Francis Frazer at St. Peter’s Church on Cornhill.

Suspicions were by Crossford directed against Marlowe, for he knew nothing of the new suitor, and although he was quietly shadowed on several occasions, the fruitless result had not yet been sufficient to satisfy the father that Marlowe was not holding the girl in some secure hiding-place. At Canterbury and elsewhere Marlowe had been unable to learn anything concerning the girl since her departure from her father’s house. Not even a rumor of her marriage had reached his ears, and more than a year had passed since their last meeting when, beside the dead body of the Count, she told him of it.

This marriage had proved to be an unhappy one, partially due to the excessive and unwarranted jealousy of her husband. During the few months of their married life, they had wandered through various quarters of London and its vicinity, and at length had reached the Golden Hind a few days prior to the eventful night of June the first, 1593.

Here Frazer sojourned while making arrangements for leaving with his wife for the continent. A vessel then lay at the wharf of Deptford upon which he designed to make the voyage. Against this contemplated move the wife had remonstrated with such vigor and persistency that despite her protestations to the effect that her objections arose from a dread of entering an unknown world, and a desire to become reconciled with her father, the Count became suspicious that she had plotted to desert him or at least to thwart his plans.

It was shortly after one of the most violent scenes between them that Anne saw Tabbard in the hall, as related, and heard his welcome announcement that the one whom she believed had passed forever out of her life was not only anxious to see her, but was within call. Upon that sudden and unexpected communication, if she had had time to consider she might have formulated a different answer, but with the remembrances which the mention of Marlowe’s name awakened, her heart rushed to her lips, and at the instant she caught a glimpse of Frazer, she gave expression to her longing. It was like an outcry of one in distress, but founded upon no idea that through her old lover lay deliverance.

As already stated Frazer had accidentally heard the few words she had uttered, and it was his actions resulting from his suspicions of a contemplated elopement that brought about the tragedy at the tavern. With this digression, explanatory of the events leading up to the tragedy of that night, we will now return to the point where the door was closed upon the retreat of Anne.

The hall into which the woman entered, lighted, as it was momentarily, by the rays from the room faced by the carved panels, became black as night as she heard the door shut behind her. She found the balustrade, pushed her hand along its smooth top and at length reached the head of the stairs. Even then, as her eyes stared into the lower depths, no amelioration of the darkness appeared. Step by step she descended, crossing the middle landing, still holding to the balustrade. She had reached the foot and stood there for the moment trembling over thoughts of the scene from which she had just fled and apprehensive of present evil. The way was known to her as clearly as a father’s house to children. Straight ahead led the hall without a turn to the narrow door into the inn-yard. Her hand fell from the balustrade, but as it did so it was caught by another hand, and she felt bungling fingers run across her face. In vain she attempted to control her terror, but the brain, already overtaxed, went to pieces like a glass let fall on marble pavements. She uttered one scream and fainted.

A quiet, like that of a country church at high noon on week days had been for some time pervading the tap-room of the Golden Hind. The party at the center table had scattered; the landlord rubbing his eyes, had disappeared through the door above which hung the cracked painting of the host in red coat and face betokening welcome; the line of decanters and bezzling glasses on the shelf, under the long mirror behind the bar, appeared ready for the dust of at least one quiet half-night to settle upon it; while outstretched on two chairs, with his drowsy head leaning on the arm of one of them, lay the tapster, the only human occupant of the room. The cat had crawled under his arm, and, in his half sleep, he was mechanically stroking her. Out of this condition he was aroused by startling sounds in the hall.

He quickly rose to his feet and rushed to the door. The light fell full upon two persons, a woman lying unconscious at the base of the stairs, and a drunken actor leaning over her. The latter exhibited a stupefied countenance, either as the result of a light being flashed so suddenly upon him, or from the discovery of what lay at his feet. He had hardly realized that he had clasped a hand or fumbled a face, or at least nothing more than that of some serving woman of the place, and when he saw a woman with features of almost transcendent beauty, and of attire fit for a lady of rank, lying at his feet, he cowered in the light as one might when apprehended in the commission of a heinous crime.

“Zounds,” exclaimed the tapster, “what’s this snarling about?”

“Good God, man, is she killed?” exclaimed the other leaning over and attempting to raise the recumbent body at his feet.

Blood was flowing from a gash cut in the woman’s head by the sharp edge of the stair. The two men picked her up and carried her into the tap-room, where they placed her in one of the widest chairs. The tapster recognized her as the lady who had arrived there a few days previously with the Count, and looked suspiciously at the actor; but, without asking any questions of the latter, he began bathing her face in cold water and binding a cloth around her head to stop the flow of blood. Its current darkly streaked the mass of golden hair which, having been liberated from the confinement of the hood, fell disheveled around the high white ruff, in which the lower part of her face was concealed, and upon the puffed shoulders terminating the tight, slashed sleeves of vari-colored silk. Her hooded cape of showy fabric lay upon the floor. Her full gown of blue silk with front embroidered from the collar down the long pointed doublet and dress front, comfortably filled the chair. The lamps directly overhead had been extinguished, and it was the light from the still blazing candles at the angle of the chimney that flared upon her pallid face.

Several minutes had passed and all attempts at her restoration had been unavailing. A serious expression had gathered on the face of the tapster, and the actor looked to have been shaken into sobriety. Suddenly the two men heard light footsteps in the hallway. The door had been left open. They looked toward it, and at that moment the figure of a man passed across the seam of light and was immediately swallowed by the darkness that lay on the further edge. As the light struck him he had looked towards its source, but if he recognized any member of the group or realized the character of the scene which he had momentarily disturbed, it did not cause him to pause. The sound of the closing of the door into the inn-yard immediately afterwards echoed through the hall.

“That was her husband, the Count,” whispered the actor, looking with amazement at his companion.

“You are wrong. It was Marlowe,” remarked the tapster.

“Nay,” said the actor, “Marlowe was not so attired. It is her husband. You had better follow him with word of her condition.”

“If I thought you were right,” returned the tapster with considerable feeling, “I would not stir a step, for I am not anxious to serve the ruffian. The blow he felled me with was none to my liking. I would do anything for the lady, but what she needs is what he is now doing. We will stop him, whoever he is, as he returns.”

A PRECARIOUS EXISTENCE.

_Might first made kings, and laws were then most sure_ _When like the Draco’s they were writ in blood._

--_Jew of Malta, i, 1._

_The bloody book of law,_ _You shall yourself read, in the bitter letter,_ _After your own sense._

--_Othello, i, 3._

On the night of the murder in the old Deptford tavern the man who was to profit most from the false shadows thrown by the crime and its concealment was at the Boar’s Head in London. This man was William Shakespere. Without his volition and unknown to himself the crown of immortality was being set upon his brows. Just as unconsciously moved the hands that placed it there. Had the placing of it been designed; had the person who has worn it all these centuries felt its presence and coveted it, possibly all cloud that has since obscured his title might have been removed; but the actors were only puppets in the hands of the blind goddess of Mischance. The vital flaws remain, and have been pointed out by the searchers. Their genuineness has been demonstrated, but the source of title has been misapprehended. The falsifying of the record of the crime at Deptford being discovered, the tracing of the title through a deep channel to its true fountain head is a task easy of accomplishment. It leads to Christopher Marlowe.

With Shakespere were two others, whose lives were inseparably interwoven with that of his own and with Marlowe’s. One was George Peele, the dramatist, the other was Christopher Tamworth, the lawyer of Gray’s Inn.

The Eastcheap tavern, while frequently the gathering place for roysterers, was also a known resort for strolling players, pamphleteers, dramatists and other men of genius and ambition, who were looked upon with suspicion by a government that imagined greater danger from a middle class with intellect and ability of expression than from a powerful nobility, or an ignorant multitude of serfs.

At times, crowds in bacchanalian riot burnt out the hours of the night; again the peace of a cloister pervaded there, and from the lower bay, and higher dormer windows the lights of workers’ candles gleamed. Eastcheap Street might rattle with tumbrils, carts and horses’ hoofs, and the air be shattered by the cries of costard mongers, tooting of hautboys, or the ringing of bellmen, still the thick walls of the Boar’s Head enticed within them those who worked out their deliverance in solitary effort and meditation.

The three men were in a spacious room at the rear corner of one of the upper stories of the famous tavern. One window opening through the thick stone wall, faced the church-yard of St. Michaels with its drooping trees, its tenants of near three hundred years of burial, and its stately edifice wherein the fishmongers and butchers from near shops and stalls congregated. Clambering vines rooted in rich soil, framed this deep and narrow window in green; and in breezy hours sent to the ears of indwellers a rustle sweetly suggestive of the far distant woods of Kent or Surrey. In the wall facing Crooked Lane another window overlooked a traveled way so narrow that hands outstretched from facing windows on either side could clasp each other. On the pavement below, a foot passer might squeeze by a costard monger’s cart, but two carts abreast could not pass. Projecting platforms, under fronting doors with narrow stairs descending to the street, and boards thrust out from windows whereon hung linen drying, or boxed plants, assisted in obscuring the light.

The room was the living apartment of George Peele, and for several years during his separation from his wife, had been the retreat of that genius, where in intervals between mad dissipations he had written “The Famous Chronicle History of King Edward the First.” The innate taste of this individual, as displayed in the richness of the imagery that characterized his plays, could not but reveal itself in the external surroundings over which he had control. His purse had never been sufficiently distended for him to contract for luxurious apartments, or at least distended long enough for him to pause in the wild revel which always followed close on the heels of the receipt of money for a play, to consider any question of comfort in the near future, consequently both in seasons of poverty and moments of affluence this one room at the Boar’s Head was his permanent headquarters.

The blackened ceiling remained as he had found it; the ground work of dingy wall on all sides had not been changed except by the articles hung against it, and these were as varied as a prodigal hand could gather. A magnificent piece of tapestry from the looms of Flanders, bearing upon its blue groundwork the red figure of a horse and crowned rider, covered one entire side of the room. It was said to have been the gift of Queen Elizabeth, for whom, in 1584, Peele had written the comedy of “The Arraignment of Paris,” and had been bestowed after her hearing of the poet’s fancy for the hanging as he had first seen it in the banqueting house of the royal palace at Whitehall. On low stands before it were two black Greek vases of great value.

Against another wall were two long halbards, crossed just below their heads, whose bright steel flashed back the light of the lamp. The ends of their poles touched the floor, and between them was a long Norman hauberk of trellised plate and a kite-shaped shield as rusty as six centuries could make them. The chimney place was narrow, deep and black. Great brass firedogs was all that it contained at that season. Above it the shelf, formed by the receding of the chimney, was crowded with bronze and white marble statuettes, among which, one of the queen overtopped the others of more ancient sculpture.

The low iron bedstead of rude manufacture, almost concealed in the recess formed by the projecting chimney, was evidently a fixture. Of the same category were the chairs and the table. Over the latter a lamp designed to aid a scholar in his lucubrations, burned steadily from a bracket in the wall.

Books and papers were scattered on this table with inkhorn and quills, and a score of volumes on the uncarpeted floor. A copy of Homer’s Iliad lay open, with printed pages touching the wooden surface of the table, and its embossed cover displayed. Besides this were two volumes of Cicero, an English translation of the tragedies of Seneca, and of Jocaste of Euripides, of the edition of 1577. Half a dozen other Greek and Latin classics, in the costly bindings of John Reynes, were heaped so that the light of the lamp displayed them to advantage. In meaner bindings, Holinshed’s Chronicles lay open on the floor with the Mirror of Magistrates piled upon it, and in the same heap were several other volumes of cotemporary dramatists. Bundles of manuscript dramas were on one end of the table, and scattered papers bore on their faces the work of the master of the den.

It was late at night, and the three friends, for such they were, had been together in the room for several hours. The play upon which Peele was then engaged, was designed by the writer for performance by Lord Pembroke’s actors of which Shakespere was then a member.[21] He had been reading it for their appreciation and suggestion, and now, having finished, they were conversing upon other topics. Tobacco smoke from the pipe of Tamworth rose in clouds, and in a wide arm-chair against the tapestry, Shakespere, also smoking, was listening to the lawyer’s remarks.

“The crime,” said he, “is blasphemy and not apostasy.”

“How do you distinguish them?” inquired Peele.

“The last is renouncing one’s religion after having professed it; the other is reviling the Father, Son, or Holy Ghost.”

“Aye, and the crime of blasphemy he has committed.”

“No question of that.”

“Have you a copy of the paper?” asked Shakespere, addressing Peele.

“Yes, the same that was sent to the Queen.” [Note 31.]

He drew from his inner pocket a folded paper, and holding it so that the light struck full upon it he read: “The first beginnynge of religion was only to keep men in awe.”

“There may be some truth in that,” interrupted Tamworth.

“But wait,” continued Peele, “here is the sentence that sticks and perhaps gives ground for the charge, ‘if the Jews among whom he was born did crucify him they best knew him and whence he came.’”

“Truly that is blasphemous,” remarked Tamworth, “but I do not believe that he wrote it. Doth it profess on its face to be his?”

“No, they are simply charges made against him by Richard Bame, and he is an obscure person; but the Queen hath considered it seriously and a warrant hath been issued by one of the justices for his arrest.”

“Whose, Bame’s?”

“No, Marlowe’s.”

“What is the punishment upon conviction?” asked Shakespere.

“You need not add the words ‘upon conviction,’ for that followeth an arrest as surely as night followeth day. It is declared by law to be fine and imprisonment, and other infamous corporal punishment,” answered Tamworth.

“Of what nature is such punishment?”

“Slitting the nose; cutting off an ear; a seat in the pillory, and the like,” answered Peele before the lawyer could speak.

“Thou knoweth the law, too, Peele, like a solicitor. Hast thou ever been a student and lodged at Clement’s Inn?” asked Tamworth with a smile.

“Nay, but in one play I had put blasphemous words in the mouth of a dissolute character, and, before its presentation, the same was pointed out to me by the actor whose part it was to read it, and forthwith we went to the Temple and there learned the definition of the offense and the penalty.”

“And on this opinion of one who has read no better lines than those to be found in Justinian or Littleton, and made no professions of ability to criticise, thou expurgated what to me seemed the most stirring passages of the play. Wilt thou let the light of thy torch be blanketed so that only black smoke can roll forth? Fie upon thee, man!” said Shakespere with animation.

“You know not of what you speak,” exclaimed Tamworth. “The corporal punishment may be more severe than as defined by Peele. His definition is correct, but the judges have often stretched the words to a greater extent. What if they saw fit to apply such infamous punishment that death would necessarily result?”

“Could they do that?”

“Aye, and they have. Death for blasphemy maketh one smile at the laws of Draco, but such hath been and only four years since.”

“You speak of Kett,” remarked Peele.

“Yes, Francis Kett.”

“And what of him?” asked Shakespere.

“He was burnt,” said Tamworth, solemnly.

“At the stake?”

“True, at Norwich in February, 1589, for questioning the Divinity of Christ, and giving utterance to other unorthodox views.”[22]

“O Diabole!” muttered Peele.

“Is there any safety in any occupation?” inquired Shakespere.

“Well, there is certainly little in your profession, my good fellow, unless you are licensed, or enrolled.[23] The penalty of being apprehended as a strolling player, or as a common actor of interludes, is probably known to thee, and to thee, too, Peele.”