The Bookman's Tale (6 page)

B
artholomew Harbottle pulled his cloak tight despite the sticky summer heat. The smell of incense hung in the air as it often did during a plague year, but Bartholomew had come to think of himself as immune to the plague. After all, he had survived the outbreak in 1592, when there had been death all around him. Extraordinary that all those friends who had celebrated his triumphant return from Winchester that summer were dead, but none from the plague. Greene had died the day after Bartholomew’s visit. He left a note to his abandoned wife asking that she pay ten pounds to Mr. Isam, but the debt was never settled. Peele had died a few years later, of the pox, and Nashe had succumbed to a batch of bad fish near the end of Elizabeth’s reign. Over the years Bartholomew had lost track of Lyly, who never did become Master of the Revels, but he heard that his old friend had died poor and neglected, from no cause in particular. Perhaps he had died of shame or impatience.

Marlowe’s death had been most shocking of all. Less than a year after Greene had died, Bartholomew had swaggered into the George and Dragon to be greeted by a bar full of downcast faces and the news that Christopher Marlowe had been stabbed to death in a fight at Deptford. He had been only twenty-nine. Bartholomew had taken to his bed for a week and had later walked all the way to Deptford to stand at Marlowe’s unmarked grave.

Batholomew had made new friends, but life in the taverns of Southwark was never quite the same without Greene and Marlowe. He still stopped by the George and Dragon on occasion and was still known among the theatrical set. He and Richard Burbage, the great actor and owner of the Globe, had bought drinks for each other, and on several occasions Bartholomew had sat listening to Will Shakespeare tell the story of his next play. The glove-maker’s son had outstripped them all, and Bartholomew had known it the day he sat in the summer sun at the Globe watching the King’s Men perform the tragedy of
Hamlet
. Compared to the glove-maker’s son, most of Bartholomew’s old friends had been insignificant. But to Shakespeare, Bartholomew guessed, he was nothing more than a second-rate hanger-on. The great playwright would allow Bartholomew to buy a round of drinks and to sit in the firelight with a few of the King’s Men listening to him weave a tale, but Bartholomew knew he would never be in Shakespeare’s inner circle.

It hardly seemed twenty years since he had begun his career as a bookseller in 1589, but life had a way of slipping by quickly. In all those years he had never had another find the likes of the stolen Psalter he sold to Robert Cotton. Cotton was still collecting and had moved into a fine house in Westminster, but Bartholomew had yet to sell Cotton another book. Still those heady days of youth, when all London seemed to be at his feet, were as fresh in his memory as his visit last week to a new girl named Penelope in a room above the George and Dragon.

Today’s trip to the tavern was a rare bit of business south of the river, for today Bartholomew would meet Will Shakespeare himself, and show him the book that was tucked into his cloak—a book Bartholomew had kept for nearly seventeen years. He had thought he would never part with it, but when he chanced to see Shakespeare and a small knot of actors outside the closed Globe Theatre a few days earlier, the playwright was complaining of lack of source material for a new play. Bartholomew told him he had just the thing.

As he slid onto a bench in the back bar of the George and Dragon, Bartholomew was keenly aware that this was the first time he had ever been alone with the great playwright. Here was a man he and his friends had once ridiculed, and Bartholomew’s heart raced as if he had been granted a royal audience.

“So,” said Bartholomew, “any word on when the theaters might reopen?”

“The season is lost,” said Shakespeare. “We shall have to hope for better luck in sixteen ten. Still a fresh season, whenever it happens, must mean a fresh play or two. I can’t expect them to keep coming back for
Hamlet
and
Romeo and Juliet
forever.”

Bartholomew, who thought it very likely that they would keep coming back to those two great tragedies forever, only nodded his agreement.

“Now, what have you got for me?” said Shakespeare.

Bartholomew pulled the slim quarto volume out from under his cloak. It was a tad worn around the edges, for he had pulled it off his shelf many times when sleep would not come to him late on a winter’s night. He laid the book on the table. “It’s by Robert Greene,” he said.

“Greene,” said Shakespeare with a laugh. “He was a friend of yours, was he not?”

“He was,” said Bartholomew.

“A friend who once called me an upstart crow, as I remember it.”

“And what better revenge,” said Bartholomew, leaning forward, “than to use his story for your next play. A story no one reads anymore becomes a play everyone in London flocks to see. The upstart crow has the last word.”

“What’s it about?” Shakespeare asked.

Bartholomew picked up the book, opened to the first page, and read. “‘Among all the passions wherewith human minds are perplexed, there is none that so galleth with restless despight, as the infectious sore of jealousy.’”

“I’ve written a play about jealousy,” said Shakespeare. “Burbage proposes a revival for next season.”

“This one is different,” said Bartholomew, who wasn’t sure it was that different. After all, just like Desdemona, the main character’s wife in Greene’s
Pandosto
dies in the end. Still Bartholomew pressed his case. “Besides, you can change it. You could make it a comedy. The wife is restored and all are happy.”

“You are a bit of a rogue, are you not, Harbottle?”

“I enjoy my drink and my visits to the upper floors of this fine establishment, though not as often as in my youth, but I am a businessman.”

“The greatest rogue of all,” said Shakespeare, laughing. “I have heard of your adventures in Winchester Cathedral.”

“A story which no doubt grows in the retelling.”

“And now you wish to sell me this book so I can have my revenge on poor forgotten Robert Greene. Perhaps I should put you in the play. A thief, a rogue, but a likeable man. A comic rogue, if you will. Not quite a clown—darker than a clown—and a schemer. A salesman.”

“You do me honor, sir, though I doubt that I am all that.”

“The stage makes us all what we are not,” said Shakespeare. The two men took deep drafts of ale as this proclamation hung in the air. Finally Bartholomew pushed the book across the table.

“Your revenge will be all the sweeter knowing this,” he said. “Greene himself gave me this copy of
Pandosto
the night before he died.”

Shakespeare picked up the volume and let it fall open on the table. “And you expect me to buy it?” he said.

“You misunderstand,” said Bartholomew. “I do not wish to sell you this book. I wish to lend it to you for as long as you require.”

“But you are a bookseller.”

“Most days I am. Today I am merely a member of the audience who will delight in a new play by William Shakespeare.”

“That and a sycophant.” Shakespeare laughed.

“Granted,” said Bartholomew.

“Very well,” said Shakespeare, closing the book and pulling it toward him. “I shall read what your friend Mr. Greene had to say. But I warn you, if I decide to make this story into a play, I may have to mark up your book a bit.”

“By all means,” said Bartholomew, “mark it up as much as you require.”

“
Pandosto
is not a name for a play,” said Shakespeare.

“I always read it in the winter,” said Bartholomew. “Why not
A Midwinter’s Tale
? To go with
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
.”

Shakespeare tucked the book under his arm and drained his mug of ale. Standing, he winked at Bartholomew and said, “I’d stick to bookselling if I were you.”

Bartholomew sat back and smiled after Shakespeare had left the room. For the bookseller was indeed a scheming rogue, and proud to know so, and he was laying deeper plans than just the writing of another play by the upstart crow.

—

T
he street outside the Globe roiled with humanity. No plague, perfect weather, and a new play by Shakespeare had drawn enough Londoners across the bridge to fill the playhouse to its capacity of three thousand. Bartholomew Harbottle feared that if his companion did not arrive soon, there would be no space for them in the galleries, and he could not imagine that Robert Cotton would be willing to stand with the groundlings for three hours.

It had taken Bartholomew weeks to persuade Cotton to make this outing to the Globe, and only the collector’s affection for the Winchester Psalter and Bartholomew’s intimation that another grand acquisition might be on the horizon had convinced him to make the journey from his home in Westminster. The clattering of hooves and rattling of coaches occasionally rose above the din of the crowd as some noble or other was disgorged near the theater’s entrance, but Bartholomew’s eyes were trained toward the river. From Westminster, surely Cotton would make the trip by boat. It was nearly two o’clock when Bartholomew finally glimpsed the familiar doublet of blue and gold glinting in the sunshine as Cotton strolled toward the theater in no hurry, it seemed, to arrive betimes. Bartholomew fumbled in his purse for the four pennies that admitted himself and his guest to the galleries, and the two had just squeezed into the end of a row when a trumpet sounded, the roar of the crowd lowered to a murmur that would underscore the entire performance, and two men, exquisitely attired in richly embroidered garments, stepped onto the stage.

“What does he call it?” asked Cotton.

“It’s called
A Winter’s Tale
,” said Bartholomew, and Cotton settled back on the bench and watched the play unfold without further comment.

Bartholomew did not mention his own part in the genesis of the play, though he did mark how closely it followed the story of
Pandosto
. He had not spoken to Shakespeare since that day almost three years ago when he had suggested Greene’s romance as a source. He had heard that a new play, presented at court last November, was titled
A Winter’s Tale
, and he had some hope, the title being so similar to what he had suggested, that Shakespeare had taken the bait. Not until April had he known for sure. On a cold and dank day, a messenger brought a package to his shop in Paternoster Row. Inside, Bartholomew found the copy of
Pandosto
he had loaned Shakespeare and a short letter.

Harbottle,

Pardon the messenger, but I have business in Stratford. I think you will find something of yourself in
A Winter’s Tale
. I beg forgiveness for defacing your
Pandosto
, but return it herewith with my thanks.

W. Shakespeare

Bartholomew opened the book and turned rapidly through several pages. The margins were filled with the scrawled notes of the playwright. That very afternoon he set off to Westminster to pay a visit to Robert Cotton.

Bartholomew almost forgot Cotton as he watched
A Winter’s Tale
. The story of King Leontes, who falsely accuses his wife, Hermione, of adultery, imprisons her, and banishes her presumably bastard child Perdita, kept most of the audience attentive, though there was an occasional scuffle or outburst from the yard. When, in the waning stages of the third act, news came first of the death of Leontes’s young son Mamillius and then of Queen Hermione herself, Bartholomew saw tears glisten on many faces, and even heard cries of woe from one or two of the groundlings. He began to wonder if Shakespeare had taken his advice about changing the ending, for the story had all the marks of a tragedy. Nor had Bartholomew seen any character fashioned in his own image. Still, these matters were trifles. Shakespeare had written the play, and Bartholomew now had everything he needed to secure his fortune.

Lost in his thoughts, Bartholomew did not at first notice a new character appear onstage early in the fourth act, singing. When Autolycus, the traveling merchant, called himself a “snapper-up of unconsidered trifles” and bragged how he made his living by cheating the foolish, Bartholomew sincerely hoped that Cotton would not recognize his companion the bookseller on the stage. “A thief, a rogue, but a likeable man. A comic rogue, if you will,” Shakespeare had said. Bartholomew forgot for a moment all his well-laid plans, and imagined only an audience, years hence, watching this play and seeing a thinly disguised Bartholomew Harbottle tread the boards, laughing, singing, and thieving.

As the last two acts unfolded, Bartholomew watched in awe as he, so it seemed, took over the play in the character of Autolycus. This rogue did not sell books, but he did sell ballads. Bartholomew at first took some slight offense when Autolycus, deciding not to help out young Perdita and her beloved, said, “If I thought it were a piece of honesty to acquaint the king withal, I would not do’t. I hold it the more knavery to conceal it, and therein I am constant to my profession.” Was knavery really Bartholomew’s profession? Surely the proudest moments of his career did not drip with honesty, but Bartholomew did not believe he had ever done anyone real harm, nor, he was glad to see as the play raced toward its conclusion, did Autolycus. As Perdita was restored to her father and Hermione brought back to life to give the play the happy ending Bartholomew had suggested, the schemings of Autolycus ultimately contributed to the happiness of the characters.