Much Ado About Murder

It was a lesson a lot of people never seemed to learn. At this hour, Smythe knew those players still remaining in the tavern would be three sheets to the wind, and there was nothing quite as uninteresting as being sober in the midst of drunken revelry. Besides, he was not much in the mood for company. He felt like going for a walk. And in all fairness, Will needed his time alone, as well. Smythe knew that Shakespeare could work best when left completely on his own, without any distractions, which was perhaps the main reason why he seemed to work best during the night.

Will was still trying to work on several ideas for original plays, but much to his frustration, playwriting was not what was bringing in the money for him right now. Shakespeare’s sonnets were becoming rather popular among some of the fashionable young gentlemen at court and if he kept on his present course, there was a good chance that he would soon find a wealthy nobleman to be his patron. In fact, judging by what had happened earlier that day, he may already have found one, though he was being rather circumspect about it. Smythe could understand the reasons for that, but if Will had found himself a patron, then it could easily turn out to be a two-edged sword.

The other players were all happy for his good fortune, and grateful that he chose to share the wealth, but at the same time, Smythe could see that they were somewhat apprehensive. Will had quickly become a valuable commodity to the Queen’s Men. He was industrious and capable of working quickly. He had already rewritten several of the plays in their repertoire, improving them significantly in the process, and the proof was in the pudding. Audiences had responded far more favorably to the rewritten versions than they had to the earlier ones, and Will had a knack of revising as they went along, making alterations from performance to performance by taking into account the reactions of the audiences and the contributions of the players.

Unlike many of the university men, who often seemed to act as if their words had emananted from a burning bush and thus were sacrosanct, Shakespeare understood that plays were a collaborative effort, depending upon the contributions of everybody in the company for their success. As a result, within a fairly short time, he had risen in stature from ostler and hired man to book holder and stage manager for the company. Both Burbages, father and son, were anxious to see what he could do when it came to writing an original play.

However, revising the current plays in their repertoire had taken precedence, for that was where the immediate improvements to their fortunes could be made. Now, with the playhouses closed, even that work was being put off while Shakespeare had to strike where the iron was hot. His writing of sonnets on commission was helping to support them all right now, so the other players could hardly begrudge him his efforts in that regard. Yet, if his “strumpet sonneteering,” as he called it, happened to secure a wealthy patron for him, which was the true heart’s desire of every poet in London, then perforce that patron would be the one who called the tune, and he might well choose to have his house poet spend all of his time creating sonnets for publication, rather than writing plays or acting with a company of players.

On the other hand, it was also possible that a wealthy patron might enjoy having a poet in his service who wrote plays. Some of the university men, such as Kit Marlowe, had such patrons and were allowed considerable freedom in writing what they chose. Robert Greene, for instance, wrote not only plays and poetry, but also cautionary pamphlets on the art of “cony-catching.” To Smythe, coming from the country, cony-catching had always meant hunting rabbits, but in the underworld of London ’s criminals, it had another meaning altogether.

To the cutpurses, foists, and alleymen of London, a “cony” was a victim, an innocent rabbit to be caught and skinned, whether by outright theft or trickery. And though Greene’s plays had not impressed Smythe particularly, his pamphlets had proved very educational. John Fleming had told him that they should be required reading for anyone coming to London from the country and on his recommendation, Smythe had purchased several and found them well worth the few pennies he had spent.