Page 73 of The Two Wills

Your most devoted friend,

R.

Thirty-TwoThe Years Between

Wherein we learn of Willy Hughes’s life with the great poet Christopher Marlowe

Come live with me, and be my love.

—from “The Passionate Shepherd to his Love” by Christopher Marlowe

When I showed up with my sack and knocked at Marlowe’s door, I spent a long time waiting. I wondered whether I had made the greatest mistake of my life. What if Kit’s poaching me from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men was simply him trying to deeply injure the Poet, his only true rival when it came to writing plays? What if it is all a ruse that will come to nothing?

After an overabundance of time, Marlowe’s man finally answered the door and bade me enter the flat with all its obscene frippery. A moment later, I heard Kit’s voice call for me to go upstairs. There he was, waiting for me at the top of the landing in his dressing robe, looking most excited. He led me to a beautiful room on the uppermost floor with flower-painted paper on the walls and warm blankets on the large bed. There he had laid a brand-new set of clothes: an orange velvet doublet embroidered with white lilies, a beautiful pair of matching Venetians, a linen shirt, and starched collar.

“Did you walk me to a prince’s room?” I asked, marveling at how beautiful everything was.

“It’s all yours, Willy,” he said.

“Speak you truly?” I exclaimed, feeling the doublet’s luxurious weight in my hand and then rubbing its soft velvet against my cheek. “I’ve never worn a set of clothes so fine, except on the stage and then those were usually dresses.”

“I’m not speaking only of the clothes. The room, the furnishings. I want you to live here with me.”

“Here?” My head felt dizzy. It was one thing to have a dream come true, but to have so many at once was like drinking a jug of Madeira and then being hit over the head with the jug. I sat on the bed to calm myself.

“Though I imagine most nights you won’t be sleeping here,” Marlowe said.

“Why?” I asked, my heart suddenly flipping to disappointment, having interpreted his words to mean the arrangement would either be temporary or sporadic.

“Because, giddy boy, you’ll be sleeping with me,” he said, pointing to a second door within the room that, presumably, led to his. “That is, if you wish it. Do you wish it? You don’t have to if you don’t want to. My offer stands either way.”

I knew I was not in love with Marlowe, but still his offer caused my pulse to quicken. He was extremely attractive after all, and to be the beloved of the most famous poet in London was not something to sniff at, especially after pining so long for a poet who only wanted me for his muse.

“I wish it,” I said.

“Oh, thank goodness,” he said with a smile. “Come here!” He took me in his arms and began to kiss me, then pulled back abruptly. “But before we get all sticky, we must get some work done. We have but a few weeks to create our play, and we’ll need to do it more secretly than usual, considering the rather sensitive subject.”

And so, after a more compelling round of passionate kisses, we commenced building the new play. We started with just a handful of trusted leading players, including the great and most famous Edward Alleyn, who was so revered—even more than Burbage—that I nearly fainted when I met him. While the Earl of Pembroke’s Men, like the other major companies, would be doing a repertory of plays that season, I was to focus solely on the role of Gaveston and would be paid six shillings per week in compensation. It was a substantial sum for me, being that Kit was providing for all my expenses as well.

Many of the other company members were allies in our secret society. (I knew there were many sodomites among the profession, but I had no idea how many!) A few were hirelings I had already worked with in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men but had never dreamed we had similar romantic proclivities. All of us expressed outward enthusiasm for Kit’s new play, but privately we all worried greatly that the authorities might be aggrieved if they were able to fully comprehend the nature of the relationship between the King and Gaveston.

It wasn’t until a week after we put the full text together that I first went into Kit’s bed. I set about doing what I had always done to appease a man, but he quickly stopped me, lifting me by my shoulders from the floor and placing me on my back on the bed.

“Passion is a river that flows in two directions, my dear,” he said, and then proceeded to kiss me, stroke me, and other things that made me truly believe he cared for me. He was gentle, not like Barnaby Stubb in his awkward boyish rutting, nor the other men I had been with who had only cared for their own pleasure. Kit made love to me like I was his equal. We did all there was to do in the complete sense of the affection between two men. I thought of the Poet only a few times during the encounter and was hopeful that he’d soon vanish from my mind completely.

Still, despite all that, those first few nights of Kit’s and my friendship were some of the most pleasurable moments of my life. The bliss of our coupling merged easily into our artistic relationship. For weeks that’s all we did: just fuck and work, creating The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England: with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer. Unlike with the Poet and Barnaby, there was never any torment of wondering whether Kit truly wanted me or not. He wanted me, over and over again.

As he had predicted, his scandalous play, with minor adjustments to the text, made it past the Master of the Revels. Marlowe claimed it was because he emphasized the devil-like quality in how the Gaveston character woos the King away from his duties.

Marlowe told me, “I simply explained to Eddy”—Sir Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels—“that a sodomite who does not repent for his sins but is portrayed as evil and suffers for it, is a good lesson for the viewer.”

The hidden message, one Kit did not point out to the Master of the Revels, is that the King, who is still portrayed as kindly at the end of the play, does not disavow his true love for Gaveston. It would be up to each viewer to determine (or not) whether the King’s love was chaste, though all who had tasted of our secret society knew the truth.

I thought having made it past the Master of the Revels, my nervousness about the role would lessen. But then came the morning of our premiere. As I came upon the playhouse to get ready, a handful of Puritan protesters were there, screaming horrible things at both the players and arriving audience. Their leader, a Mister William Prynne, was riling up his minions shouting, “Sin! Sin! The playhouses must be closed! Sin! Sin!” My stomach nearly disgorged itself for fear they had somehow gotten a copy of our play, but then I soon realized their protest was no different than their usual protests against the playhouses of London.

Beyond their claim that the practice of male players dressing up as women was sinful, their pamphlet also said that the boy actors in all the London companies were in danger of misuse. This was the part which unsettled me most, for I knew there was some truth to it.

It was a fact for the Children of the Chapel, where my poor and beloved friend Little Goat was suffering the most unspeakable abuses. And naturally, in the other major companies there were the whippings, and verbal admonishments and crushing humiliations—the usual assortment of treatment for apprentices in any of the guilds. Sometimes lines were crossed into mild brutality. Will Kemp, for example, could be quite cruel to his apprentices, especially when he was drunk. But the other masters instructed their boys firmly but kindly. And none of these abuses could compare to what was happening to poor Little Goat in the Children of the Chapel or to the boys who sang in the church choir lofts of Mister Prynne and his Puritan associates. I knew only too well, having sung and dodged groping hands for years at Saint Leonard’s—both from the choir master and the vicar.