Ink and Steel

I should have burned this letter. I should write no more. I know now I’m writing not to thee, but to myself. Still I imagine I might see thee again. But I am a poet, & poets are liars, as Ben Jonson—you would have hated Ben, sweet Kit—reminded me over supper at the Mermaid yesterday. Still, I’ve managed to hold my peace a year. Perhaps I am learning independence after all. That was what sent thee back to Faerie so hastily, wasn’t it, my friend? The worry that Tom & I wouldn’t stand alone. Thou wert probably right. There is the usual news, fair & foul. Mary & Robin are well. Robin tall as a weed, & Mary we’ve found work as a seamstress with the lord Chamberlain’s Men. We’re the lord Chamberlain’s Men again, George Carey lord Hunsdon has taken his father’s old place in the wake of Cobham’s death, God rest his eternal soul, merrily, & in a place where entertainments are shown daily, much may it chafe him. Oh, Kit, the litany of the dead grows long. The gossip might as well grow on trees. Gabriel Spencer, who I mentioned when I wrote you last, killed a man in a duel before Christmas. And he and Ben Jonson were arrested in July. Ben says Spencer’s a secret Catholic, not that that means overmuch, but it doesn’t ease my suspicions that he’s Promethean. James Burbage died in February; Richard & his brother Cuthbert head the company now. We had to tour last summer, & next summer again likely. There’s lease trouble with the Theatre: we shall have to relocate & though they have purchased the indoor theatre at Blackfriars (the one that was used by Chapman’s boy company, from whence so many of our apprentices on the common stage did come) a lawsuit by the neighbors there keeps us from using it. I suspect Baines. Or Oxford, more likely. Not that there’s a blade’s width between them. Annie bought me only the second-biggest house in Stratford, after all: she’s moved the whole family therein. My father was awarded arms in London last fall. Life seems to go on most merrily, & yet I find nothing in it to put my teeth in. Perhaps because I have lost one or two. Ned Alleyn has left playing, for good he says, & truly he has everything a man could want from it. I think he finds the modern masques & satires as wearying as I do, & misses thy pen & thy wit, sweet Christofer. Truly, he & thee were a match. Half the new satires have no play behind them but a series of jibes. Or perhaps I am old & out of fashion. Although my plays do very well. I include my Midsummer Night’s Dream, a foul copy, forgive me on the thought it might amuse thy mistress a little. Thou shalt judge if it is fit for her eyes. Thou wilt however be amused to know Ned’s still wearing that cross and since mine encounter with the Devil claiming he appeared at Faustus (I had heard the story but never credited it) September last, I’m inclined to wear one of mine own. The other news is not so cheerful. Thou wilt however laugh, I can see thee laughing to know that Her Majesty clouted Essex alongside the head recently when Essex turned his back on her. She created your old patron, the lord Admiral, Earl of Nottingham after Cadiz, & Essex was outraged that he, the Queen’s favorite, should be passed over. Burghley says he nearly drew his sword on the Queen, & the lord Admiral, now Nottingham pinned him to the floor before he could clear the scabbard, thus saving Essex’s life. Pity. My Richard II has been pirated, & I recognize the draft of the manuscript I circulated through mine old patron Southampton & his friends. I shall not make that mistake again. Sleeping, waking, heart beating or cold in earth, tis all the same. I’ve no taste for anything of late but putting words on paper. Kemp claims I must have taken a pox, I have so little will for sport. Mary’s a relief. The plays go well. I write better when I’m unhappy. There’s comfort in that of a sort. I fear I am growing old. Four & a half years ago I was young, Kit. The age most men are when they marry. My career ahead of me, London bright, Gloriana strong. Thou wert alive, & we were rivals and chambermates. The poetry we were going to write, each of us outdoing the other!

Now I am famous & a gentleman with a fine house. Edmund my brother is with us in London now: he said he could not bear to stay in Stratford. He’s a hired man with another company not with the Chamberlain’s, he said he wished to make his own way & I cannot grudge it &

Well. I’ll leave this on the mantel tonight, again, and again you will not take it. Nay, enough. More later, perhaps. As the spirit moves me.

The place on the Mermaid’s weathered door where a hand might rest to make it open was refined smooth and fair, the wood so oiled with the grease of men’s palms that it retained a fine polish although its sea-blue paint was worn into the grain.