On 23 April 1616 Shakespeare
died; he was fifty-two. Not surprisingly, his plays have been translated into
every major living language and are performed more often than those of any
other playwright.
Controversy has lingered over the
authenticity of some of his works. I decided to play (!) with this idea for a
science fiction story, ‘If We Shadows Have Offended’, which can be found in the
collection Nourish a Blind Life
(2017).
The story is set in 2093 and concerns Zeigler, who has
gained approval from the Time Door Committee, to research a specific event in
the past. Here’s an excerpt:
He
smiled at his great ancestor’s photograph. In 1895 WG Zeigler, a Californian
lawyer, had been the first to suggest that Christopher Marlowe’s death on 30
May 1593 was staged and that the poet actually went underground to write the plays
using Shakespeare’s name.
Now, at last, he would be able to prove once and for all whether
or not Shakespeare had written everything attributed to him.
***
The
twelfth night arrived.
In the greying mackerel sky, the sinking sun streamed red down
onto the white concrete square building with a circular tower, similar in style
to the old-fashioned long superseded light-houses. Above the tower hovered a
shimmering black cloud. But this was no ordinary cloud. It hung perpetually
over the tower, possessing no depth or discernible edge. Gleaming. Apparently
as fathomless as the deeps of the oceans.
One of several Timedoors into
the past.
Zeigler had frequently passed this and other Timedoors, and on each occasion he had been drawn by the weird unearthly
sight of those black clouds. Such awesome power, so frightening to contemplate,
and now he was destined to travel through one.
He stood outside the door marked ENTRANCE. Above was a plaque with
a quotation, ironically from Shakespeare:
‘The end crowns all,
And that old common arbitrator, Time,
Will one day end it.’ - Troilus and Cressida
Zeigler
read the small red print alongside the doorway.
He was to give his name, age, occupation, ID number, and his
appointment reference number. Making sure he got it in the right order, he
complied.
The door opened upwards with a hiss.
The interior was blank metallic walls on three sides bathed in
glowing red light.
A faint humming reached him as he entered. He hardly noticed it.
His was the last generation not to live wholly in an electronic, mechanical
world together with its concomitant noises. He could still remember when
silence was accessible on the planet. It was an irrational thought, but he wondered
what the next-but-one generation would do if confronted with total silence. He
shuddered to think and recalled Coriolanus:
‘My gracious silence, hail!’
By then of course they might be virtually deaf - his nephew’s
hearing was 30% poorer than his, and the lad was average for his age.
The door glissaded shut behind him.
The pitch of humming heightened. If the slight upsurge of his
entrails was anything to go by, he was rising in a remarkable lift - no, there
was no lift cubicle: he was rising bodily up a shaft, probably in some kind of
anti-gravity beam.
The instructions had been unable to prepare him for anything like
this, doubtless for security reasons.
Markers on the walls showed his ascent. At the fifty-foot mark he
stopped with a queasy reaction in his stomach.
An opening appeared in front of him and he stepped into a brightly
lit circular room, the walls crammed with computer facia and attendant
hardware. Seated at a tubular steel desk, a young beardless man in a white
smock beckoned for Zeigler to step forward.
The young man’s ample stomach pressed tightly against the coat,
reminding Zeigler of Henry VIII: ‘He
was a man, Of an unbounded stomach.’
‘You are on time, Mr Zeigler - a trait sadly lacking these days!’
The man shoved across a quarto printed sheet. ‘Please read this and sign. It is
the Official Secrets Codicil (TPC) 2058. Afterwhich,
kindly enter that stall over there.’ He pointed to a recess in the wall,
between two orange steel computer cabinets.
The cubicle was uncomfortably narrow.
‘This won’t hurt, Mr Zeigler. But we have to be sure you are the
real you! And, you see, access to the Timedoor is only permitted if you’re
completely fit and germ-free.’
A flash appeared in front of his eyes. It felt as though his
eyelashes had been seared off. But it was over so fast he remained unmoved.
Zeigler found that the man with an unbounded stomach was blurred.
‘Yes, Mr Zeigler, your physiogram matches with State records. You have also
been made bacteria-free. Your unique bacteria, however, will be coated back
onto you when you return. Be careful while in Elizabethan England, sir, for you
are now exceedingly vulnerable to illness of any kind.’
‘Haven’t you any panacea-type injection you could give me?’
‘No, the side effects while undergoing the time-journey are
deleterious in the extreme. We lost two esteemed pioneers that way - they were
devoured from the inside by various bacteria that grew to huge proportions. As
yet we don’t know why - but at least we detected it. This is another very good
reason why you’ve signed this piece of paper, Mr Zeigler.’ The man wafted the
form and smiled; he was not so blurry an image now. ‘Not a word, mind. To
anyone. You will be free to report on your findings only. The rest will be
erased from your mind once the report is filed and copyrighted; however, any credit
will be yours entirely.’
‘I never realised how - delicate, no, how dangerous - this
time-travelling is. It puts me in mind of The
Merchant of Venice: “Men that hazard all, Do it in hope of fair
advantages”.’
‘Really, sir? And what’s your “fair advantage”?’
‘Oh, confirmation of my research paper, to vindicate an ancestor.’
‘I see. Well, we’re meddling with things our ancestors only
dreamed about, Mr Zeigler. Our fail-safes even have fail-safes, hence this
little gadget.’
The young nameless man held up a small black box. ‘Please remove
your shirt, sir. Here is a pamphlet about this little beauty. Read it
carefully.’
Although very curious as to why the box was being secured over the
fleshy bulge of his left shoulder blade, Zeigler scanned the pages of small
print.
It appeared that the device would self-destruct should he do
anything to disturb the balance in the past. By self-destructing, it would also
take him with it, leaving no trace whatsoever. Then the Timedoor would close on
his ashes and the pod would disintegrate.
Connected remotely to the box was a pendant, an eye. The man
draped this round Zeigler’s neck. ‘The simple act of removing the eye or
breaking it will also result in the box self-destructing.’ He shrugged
apologetically. ‘We must protect ourselves as well as our past.’ He grinned.
‘Selfish maybe, but I wish to continue in existence!’
‘You mean some applicants might seriously contemplate disrupting
the past to change the future? Don’t they realise they’d be putting their own
existence in jeopardy?’
‘Some fanatics think it worth the risk, Mr Zeigler.’
Zeigler went cold and thought how chilling the words from Richard
II were in this context: ‘O! call back yesterday, bid time return.’
‘Right, Mr Zeigler, now you are ready. Please stand on that
circular brass plate.’
Zeigler was lifted up another anti-gravity beam. ‘Enjoy your trip!’
called the young attendant.
Again, Zeigler rose but this time it was a green zone: olive and
yellowish. Quite sickly.
Finding himself in another room devoid of furniture or machinery,
he was startled to hear a metallic female voice issuing from a grille.
‘The parcel you dispatched separately in accordance with
instructions has been examined and you may now put on the clothes. You have
chosen a particularly smart set of garments, sir.’
The speaker unit clicked off and a tray levered out from the wall
with his pile of Elizabethan clothes lying on its shiny surface.
Irrationally, he felt self-conscious as he undressed; simply
because the metallic voice sounded female?
He took a while to slip into the clothes, all the while conscious
of the presence of the black box.
The voice returned. ‘Now step back into the shaft. Don’t look
down, don’t worry - the ag’s still on!’
Zeigler was not amused. But he didn’t look down; his ruff made
that action awkward anyway.
Up again. To the 140ft mark.
‘Alight, please.’ A flesh-and-blood woman’s voice.
This room was roofless and possessed a central dais on which
rested a conical transparent pod. The pod was aimed upwards, pointing at the
black hole. Even from this close, the true edges of the Time Hole were not
readily discernible. The shimmering effect made him dizzy.
‘Step this way, please, Mr Zeigler,’ said an attractive brunette
attendant also dressed in white. She possessed angelic features, which he thought
somehow appropriate up here.
She eyed his prominent codpiece, arched her eyebrows suggestively
and smiled.
He blushed; another first-impression destroyed: I thought her as
chaste as unsunn’d snow - Cymbeline.
He sighed.
Gently the woman placed Zeigler inside the pod. Although the pod
was designed for bigger men than him, it was still a tight squeeze, mainly due
to his doublet bulging with the bombast stuffing of the period.
‘Everything all right? You require any paper of the period for
notes, or a recorder can be fitted to the “eye” if you like?’
Zeigler shook his head. ‘No, thanks. I’m only after one fact. Have
you been able to pinpoint - select the right…?’
‘Yes. May 30th, 1593. Almost 500 years ago to the day, Mr Zeigler.
We’ll put you down just outside the town. There’s ample room to conceal the pod
in a neglected grove nearby.’
He craned his neck. ‘Are those the screens that you view me on -
through the eye, I mean?’
She nodded, then said in a serious tone, ‘Take care, Mr Zeigler -
we can’t help you once you leave the pod.’
‘I know,’ he said solemnly, his stomach performing somersaults. ‘I
know all the risks. But our faculty must find out if - well, you know my
theories, anyway.’
‘Yes. Now I’m going to lower the cowling and secure you inside.
You’re liable to feel excessively giddy and you may even lose consciousness for
a short while. Our scanners show you obeyed instructions and didn’t eat today -
so your ride should be an untroubled one. I trust it will also be successful,
sir.’
‘Thanks.’ He smiled.
And she shut him inside.
It was most peculiar, how he suddenly felt trapped, though he
could see all round. He closed his eyes, calmed himself. Mustn’t get excited.
Be rational, logical. Simply observe.
‘Ready?’
‘Yes.’ His voice came out as a strangled croak.
He felt as though his whole face was suddenly being squeezed off
his skull as the pod fired up, the G-forces ramming him hard into the ergonomically-shaped
cushioned seat.
Contrary to his original conception, he was not immersed in
absolute blackness on entering the Time Hole.
It was like a velvety blue-black, with pinpoints all around, like
stars that had forgotten how to twinkle. The sensation of movement had stopped
- how long ago? He had no way of knowing, there were no instruments or clocks
in here; and his wristwatch had been removed, together with every other
personal possession.
Another quotation, from As
you like it, reared its head for him to muse upon: ‘Time travels in divers
paces with divers persons.’
Dizziness gnawed at the edges of his consciousness but never posed
a serious threat. Elation kept him awake. He would succeed where so many before
him had failed!
Over the years, anti-Stratfordiana had grown to a flood.
Professor Thomas C Mendenhall counted the letters in 400,000
Shakespearean words, discovering that for both Shakespeare and Marlowe the
‘word of greatest frequency was the four-letter word’, a fact that left the
world of letters decidedly unshaken.
Then in 1955 Calvin Hoffman sought documentary proof for his case
in the tomb of Sir Francis Walsingham, Marlowe’s reputed homosexual lover. But
nothing was found in the tomb. Not even Sir Francis.
Which shouldn’t have come as a surprise, Zeigler reasoned.
Walsingham had contrived a most corrupt system of espionage at
home and abroad, enabling him to reveal the Babington plot which implicated
Mary Queen of Scots in treason, and to obtain in 1587 details of some plans for
the Spanish armada. Queen Elizabeth I acknowledged his genius and important
services, yet she kept him poor and without honours, and he died in poverty and
debt in 1590. At least he seemed to live longer than Marlowe.
The twenty-nine-year-old son of a shoemaker, Marlowe had died with
a dagger in his brain, the precise circumstances quite obscure.
Marlowe had from time to time been engaged in government employ, a
euphemism for secret service work, and had become embroiled in the theatre of
conspiracy and intrigue, the tumultuous, often dangerous life of London’s
underworld.
At the age of twenty-one, Marlowe was employed as an agent
provocateur, posing as a Catholic to spy on other Catholics, and acted as a
renegade to trap such people.
He did it for the money, insinuating himself into the households
of Earl of Northumberland and Lord Strange. As a projector he actively fostered
treason in the employ of Sir Francis Walsingham and later of Sir William Cecil
Burghley.
Wily young Marlowe’s apparent atheism was just a ruse for trapping
free thinkers into indiscretion. Finally, he was set up as a conspirator by the
Earl of Essex as a way of striking at Sir Walter Raleigh.
On that fateful night, Marlowe was knifed over his right eye in a
drunken brawl at a tavern in Deptford, but the swift pardon of his murderer,
Friser, twenty-seven days after the poet’s burial, suggested to Zeigler that
the death had other, possibly political, undertones.
Hoffman had believed the whole affair was staged by Sir Francis
Walsingham to remove his lover from the threat of imminent arrest for alleged
blasphemy and atheism. Hoffman argued that the coroner was bribed to accept a
plea of self-defence on behalf of Marlowe’s alleged killer and docilely
accepted the stated identity of the body.
Hoffman believed Marlowe settled on the Continent and continued to
write and sent his manuscripts to Walsingham, who had found a reliable if
dull-witted actor fellow, William Shakespeare, ready - for a stipend - to lend
his name as the author of Marlowe’s works.
As Walsingham had apparently died two years earlier than the
Deptford incident, Hoffman’s theory was far from acceptable, but it suggested
other similar possibilities to Zeigler.
Since most of Shakespeare’s plays were written after the recorded
death of Marlowe, Marlovian theorists must prove Marlowe lived after the
Deptford incident in order to write the plays.
Marlowe had been deeply influenced by the writings of Machiavelli,
so any intrigue along these lines would most certainly appeal to him.
Other contenders over the years for the mantle of “greatest writer
in the English language” included Sir Francis Bacon (died 1626), Edward de
Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (died 1604), Sir Walter Raleigh (died 1618), Michel
Angelo Florio (died 1605), Anne Whateley (died 1600) and even Queen Elizabeth
herself (died 1603). As Shakespeare’s last known work The Tempest was attributed to 1611, the literary prowess of some of
these contenders can be marvelled at, Zeigler thought, capable of even writing
beyond the grave.
In the latter part of last century, computers had been used to
join in the academic fray.
Shakespeare databases were built as early as 1969 on an ICL
machine, the KDF-9. Since then, ICL’s Content Addressable File Store -
Information Search Processing and Oxford’s Concordance Program, written in Ansi
Fortran had been used to word-count and create concordances, ostensibly to
facilitate research. The DEC VAX 11/70 computer research gave credit to
Shakespeare for Acts Four and Five of Pericles
but not Acts One and Two; the researcher or computer never mentioned Act Three!
Certainly in the world of letters it was a controversial theory
and Zeigler had some sympathy with Shakespeare. Lines from his Venus and Adonis seemed apt:
‘By this, poor Wat, far off upon a hill,
Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear,
To hearken if his foes pursue him still.’
Zeigler
wondered if Shakespeare waited still, far off on some heavenly hill, wondering
if his detractors would ever cease pursuing him.
Poor Will, thought Zeigler. Well, the Timedoor Committee evidently
felt the Zeigler theory had sufficient merit for them to accept his research
request. And now he was almost there!
After
some time, Zeigler noticed a lighter patch ahead, getting bigger. The
indefinable edges again, the tint of a dusky sky...
He didn’t recall passing through the hole or landing. Perhaps he
simply materialised?
Darkness. Raised jaunty voices. The rank stench of open sewers.
These were his first impressions. It was night. He looked around and discovered
he was still lying in the pod amidst a grove of bushes.
He checked the two console buttons. Red for his return signal.
Green for opening the pod. Another button, on the reverse of his eye-pendant,
worked the pod’s entrance-hatch for ingress.
Zeigler operated the green button and no sooner had he stepped out
than the hatch shut behind him.
As he walked a few paces out of the bushes, he glanced back and
was surprised to find he could no longer see the pod; its see-through
capabilities aided concealment: someone would have to virtually stumble over it
to discover the craft’s presence.
He didn’t have far to walk before he came to the town with its
tumbled toppling street, black and white timber awry, cobbles threatening to
pitch him every which way. Cats fought for thrown out fish-heads and other
unidentifiable scraps.
Zeigler felt very vulnerable strolling the streets, for in these
times no man was safe from the reach of the torturer or the smell of the
dungeon. A carrion odour blew towards him and he retched emptily: ahead he noticed
the swaying hanging remnants of a human being; some of the hideous butchery on
the scaffold was sufficient even to turn the stomach of an Elizabethan crowd.
A building belched forth the soul of an alehouse but, gagging on
the riot of smells, he passed it by. He needed to find Mistress Turner’s
lodging house, up a squeeze-gut alley.
***
The full story can be found in the collection
of 21 tales, Nourish a Blind Life (paperback and e-book)
The title story won a prize; the judge stated:
‘I read a lot and like to think that
I’m fairly hardened to the human experience. Your story Nourish a blind life however, moved me enormously. With a powerful
understanding you avoided any mawkish melodrama. The ending, although sad, gave
satisfaction knowing the narrator was soon to be free! Thank you.’ – Eve
Blizzard, judge
***
The full story was published in my blog on 23 April and 24 April 2016 on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.
