Much Ado About Murder

“If you say so,” Smythe replied, wryly. He sighed. “Very well. Lay on, MacDuff…”

AFTERWARD

IN MY AFTERWORD TO A Mystery of Errors, the first novel in the Shakespeare & Smythe series, I stated that my purpose was primarily to write a work of historical fiction meant to entertain. I also wanted to disclaim having any serious credentials as a Shakespearian scholar. Teaching a college course in Shakespeare, seeing a few plays, and doing a little reading does not a serious scholar make, by any means. However, at the same time, I wanted the story to have at least a nodding acquaintance with history, insofar as it is known, before taking a certain amount (well, all right, a considerable amount) of dramatic license with it.

The so-called seven “Dark Years” (sometimes also called the “Lost” or “Hidden Years”) from 1585 to 1592 constitute a period when absolutely nothing is known of Shakespeare’s life. I chose that period as a starting point, largely because I thought it would be fun to speculate fictionally and because it offered a great deal of flexibility. (When nothing is known for certain, one has more freedom to make stuff up.) When I wrote the second novel in the series, The Slaying of the Shrew, it was set during that same period and I did not see any particular need for an afterword. I had, at that point, nothing more to add that I had not already written in the first afterword. But since the conclusion of this novel marks a period when Shakespeare is entering a new stage of his life, with a new theatrical company (even though we are still in the so-called “Dark Years”), I thought that a few background notes might be interesting and perhaps helpful.

To begin with, there is really no solid evidence that Shakespeare was ever a member of the Queen’s Men. He might have been, and inferring from circumstantial evidence, a number of scholars seem to believe there is a strong probability that he was, but the fact is we really do not know for certain. We do know that he was a member of Lord Strange’s Men, the acting company that later became known as the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and that there was something of an overlap in the membership of those respective companies. Will Kemp and Edward Alleyn, for example, were both members of the Queen’s Men first and later joined Lord Strange’s Men.

In an effort to control the sort of situation described in the first chapter of this novel, where numerous “bands of cozeners” (or con artists) travelled the countryside posing as companies of players, the law stated that a legitimate acting company had to have a titled aristocrat or nobleman as a patron. This was not to say that said noblemen lent any sort of financial support to the company they sponsored, so to speak (they didn’t). The idea was to have such nominal patronage legitimize the companies. This program met with general success, apparently, although it did not entirely eliminate the problem of thieves and con artists travelling the countryside, pretending to be players.

Lord Strange was Ferdinando Stanley, who became the Earl of Derby in September of 1593. He did not have a very long tenure. He died in April of 1594, and rather colorfully-it was rumored that he had been slain by witchcraft. Whether this was possible or not is a matter for the reader’s own beliefs; suffice it to say that this left his acting company in need of a new patron. They found one in Lord Hunsdon, the Lord Chamberlain, and it was under the patronage and name of the Lord Chamberlain that this company became, as Anthony Burgess called them, “the greatest body of actors of all time,” with a resident poet (or playwright, as we would say today) who was destined to become the most famous writer in history.

Simon Hawke

Greensboro, N.C.

Simon Hawke

SIMON HAWKE has been the author of two successful SF/F series (Time Wars and The Wizard of 4th Street), a New York Times bestselling Star Trek novel, and several books for TSR in the “Dark Sun” and “Birthright” settings. Much Ado About Murder is his third Shakespeare-and-Smythe mystery. He lives in Greensboro, North Carolina.

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