Thirteenth Night (30 page)

To which I can say two things, one speculative, the other even more speculative but intriguing.

First: It apparently was the practice of the Guild to conceal their exploits by retelling and distorting the events in ballads and other compositions. It is entirely possible that the original story had, over the centuries, been broken up into its various components, which in turn surfaced in the retellings and adaptations upon which Shakespeare relied.

However, at the abbey itself, a more interesting story is told. There is no record of Shakespeare (or Bacon), or any William of Stratford, or any other such name, ever traveling to Ireland to visit this abbey. But a sixteenth-century friar in residence does mention in a letter that has been preserved that a student, one “Wil [sic] Kempe,” was expelled from the abbey for allegedly pilfering manuscripts from the library. One William Kempe later shows up as an actor in London in the company of Shakespeare and Burbage. Mr. Kempe's specialties were portraying women and fools.

Could it have been the same Kempe? Could one of the pilfered manuscripts have been Theophilos the Jester's original account of the events later portrayed in
Twelfth Night?
There is no way of knowing for sure and perhaps never will be. But it is as good an explanation as any.

The language originally used was the Tuscan dialect, similar to but predating by several decades that used by Dante. It was written in prose, thank goodness, as my Italian is barely up to the task of translating the Tuscan of this period, much less achieving the equivalent of the Dantean terza rima. I would at this point extend my thanks to the young Jesuit scholar who assisted me in the translation. His identity must also remain secret, but I look forward to his new version of the
Purgatorio
in about five years or so.

The excerpts from
The Harrowing of Hell
are freely adapted from a thirteenth-century English version of the passion play. I would like to acknowledge both the New York Public Library and the Queens Public Library for their excellent collections, as well as the several authors who have written on the history of the medieval fool.

Some may take me to task for not rendering the language in pseudo-antiquated English. This was meant to be a translation, that is, a transformation into the language of our own time. The contemporary equivalent would have been a thirteenth-century Middle English that Chaucer would have found tough going. Theophilos used an earthy, colloquial style, and I have attempted to re-create it.

HISTORICAL NOTE

There is scant historical evidence for the existence of the Fools' Guild. This is that rare secret society that actually succeeded in remaining secret. In
The Age of Faith,
Will Durant writes of “a confrèrie of minstrels and jongleurs like that which we know to have been held at Fécamp in Normandy about the year 1000; there they learned one another's tricks and airs, and the new tales or songs of trouvères and troubadours” (p. 1054). Frustratingly, this is virtually the only unfootnoted line in the entire book, and I have yet to discover his source.

The distaste of the Church for the troubadours is well documented. Many perished during the persecutions of the Albigensian Crusade later in the thirteenth century for suspected sympathies with the so-called heretics. The Feast of Fools remained a thorn in the side of the Church for another two centuries before its official eradication, but its traditions lingered long after that. Fools continued both their mockery in high places and their charitable works. Many bequeathed their wealth to charity. One Rahere, fool to Henry I, founded Saint Bartholomew's Hospital in England.

This tradition continued to the present day. Noble societies formed to re-create foolish traditions for charity. The Compagnie de I'Infanterie Dijonnaise was well-known in seventeenth-century France for their foolish revels and their fund-raising. More recently, the Shriners in the United States have, with their Mummers' Parades and general clowning, raised significant amounts for children's health. Finally, one may only look at Comic Relief, the banding together of professional comedians to benefit the homeless, to find shadows cast by the original Fools' Guild.

Read on for an excerpt from Alan Gordon's next book

JESTER LEAPS IN

Available in hardcover from St. Martin's Minotaur

 

What think you of this fool…? Doth he not mend?

 —
TWELFTH NIGHT
, ACT 1, SCENE 5

 

The sun rose through the gap in the eastern ridge where the river cuts through. I watched it come up, lying on my back on the riverbank. A few months ago, I had prayed that God would grant me the gift of seeing one more sunrise. He had granted that prayer, along with a few others, in a manner more generous than my situation merited, but that's the sort of thing He does. I make no pretense of understanding His ways, but ever since I survived that dreadful night, I've made a point of trying to see every sunrise that I could. And I've continued to pray. Not for myself, mind you. I've been rewarded enough so that I can pass along some prayers for the rest of the world. It seems only fair.

As the warmth of the rays began removing the night's chill from my limbs, I took my right knee, brought it to my chest, and held it there for a slow count of ten. Then I did the same with the left knee, though the leg protested vehemently. Pain coursed through it, rounding the turns at my ankles and surging back toward my hip until I released it, gasping. Then I repeated the exercise, right knee without pain, left with.

I sat up, kept my right leg straight, and brought it up by degrees until it was pointing to the sky. I let it drop, then looked at my left leg as if it belonged to some stranger, one who had yet to earn my trust. Reluctantly, I grabbed it and started pulling it up.

I couldn't get it to the vertical, and had to settle for the diagonal. I thought I could hear the scar tissue cracking, but that may have been my imagination. I let it go and stood up.

Roosters crowed on the farms surrounding the town. I stripped to my linens and dove into the river, kicking hard. The water came directly from the snow still visible on the distant mountain peaks, pausing on its way to the nearby Adriatic to chill me to the marrow. I made it across to the opposite bank, then swam back. I did five circuits before the left leg gave up; then I dragged myself back up the bank like a shipwrecked sailor. Not bad, I thought. Only four months since a bolt from a crossbow had fixed my thigh to a wall, one month since I could walk without crutches. Lucky I still had a leg to stand on.

I dried myself off, donned my motley, and rubbed the flour- chalk mixture onto my face until it took on its normal macabre aspect. Kohl for the brows and lines, rouge for the lips and cheeks, then malachite for the green diamonds under the eyes. Finally, the cap and bells on my head, and I was ready to face the world again.

“Good morning, Fool,” said a woman behind me.

I spun, startled; then I relaxed and bowed.

“Good morning, milady,” I said. “I trust you slept well.”

“Quite well, thank you, Feste,” replied Viola. “I am ready for my lesson.”

She glanced around and made sure that no one was near. Then she walked up to me, placed her arms around my neck, and kissed me.

“There, you've gone and smeared my makeup,” I protested, admittedly some minutes later.

Viola stepped back and surveyed the damage. “I suppose some of it got on me,” she said. I nodded. She pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her face while I made repairs to mine. “The perils of kissing a fool,” she remarked. “I had no idea that loving someone so simple would be so complicated. How is your leg today?”

“Improving. Still weak and stiff, but less than before. Now, my lovely apprentice, let's see how you've progressed.”

She took three balls out of a bag and started juggling.

“Good. Switch hands.”

She shifted the pattern from a left-handed start to a right- handed one.

“Good. Two and one. Other way. Over the top. Excellent. Overhand grabs, now. Have you tried going under the leg?”

“In my room,” she said, concentrating on the pattern. “But I can't do it here in this gown. Oh, dear.” A ball dropped out of her reach and rolled toward the bank. I retrieved it before it plunged into the river and handed it back to her. “Why did you go over there?” she asked it sternly.

“Because that's where you threw it,” I replied. “Start over.”

She sighed and sent them aloft. “When do I start on four balls?”

I tossed another one at her. She wasn't expecting it. She made a late grab, and three of the four balls ended up at her feet.

“When you've mastered three,” I answered.

“Yes, Teacher.”

She went back to work while I resumed my stretching.

“That trick won't work on me again, you know,” she said, tossing one behind her back and catching it over the opposite shoulder.

“That's today's lesson,” I replied. “A good fool is ready for anything at any time. We'll start on four balls tomorrow. In the meantime, switch to clubs. When you're ready, we'll work on some four-handed moves.”

I stopped and listened. “Do you hear that?”

She nodded, pulling three gaily painted clubs out of her bag. “Someone singing. Coming from the town toward us.”

“Not just someone.”

In the Fools' Guild, we are trained how to make contact with each other. The exchange of passwords is one method, of course, but only when you know where to find a particular colleague. In the vast expanses of the world, however, we have many ways of signaling when we need to find each other. A certain type of birdcall; a peculiar clapping rhythm; a song.

Our troubadours call it a
tenso
: a debate in verse and melody, a call and response between two singers on any topic, though usually on love. The best can improvise on a theme for hours at the contests held at the Guildhall and the great tournaments in southern France where a sparrow hawk is perched on a tall pole throughout and awarded to the winner.

But this particular song was a call to any Guild member to respond in kind. The verse was sung, and then the singer paused, waiting. Then he moved on and repeated it.

Thus it was that I heard in the distance a sweet tenor soaring over the faint strummings of a lute:

How sweet to meet the soft-lit Dawn

When the world lies still aborning.

Farewell, Philomel, I must move on.

I have miles to go this morning.

I cleared my throat and sang out in the direction of my unknown friend:

Yet stay, I pray, my pretty Faun,

Or my love you will be scorning.

The Sun will run, and then be gone.

Let tomorrow's Dawn be our warning.

“Shouldn't the second part be sung by a woman?” asked Viola, keeping her eyes on the clubs dancing in the air over her head.

“When one's available,” I replied. “Now, hush, Apprentice.”

Tantalo once told me that the art of being a troubadour is to sing, play the lute, and look magnificent in a cape, all while simultaneously riding a horse. And there he was, the embodiment of his own definition, perched on a beautiful, black, Spanish stallion prancing daintily down the hill, both horse and rider bedecked in black-and-red checkered silks. His Insouciance guided his steed without reins, leaving his hands free to continue plucking away at a lute that was far nicer than mine. His horse, I swear, kept time with its hooves. They descended the slope toward us. When they stopped, Tantalo swung his leg over the saddle and leaped lightly to the ground, continuing the melodic line in the lute without break.

“You must teach me how to do that trick,” I said. “You're in fine voice this morning.”

“This morning, this afternoon, yesterday and tomorrow,” he replied. “You, on the other hand, sound a touch hoarse.”

“I've been swimming,” I said, a bit defensively.

He turned, doffed his plumed hat, and nodded to Viola, then turned back to me.

“Introduce me to your charming companion, if you would be so kind.”

“Viola, this is Tantalo, an old friend. Tantalo, this is my apprentice, Viola.”

“Apprentice?” he said in surprise. He leaned toward me and muttered, “Looks a bit long in the tooth for an apprentice, don't you think?”

I reached forward and caught a club an inch away from his skull.

“Oops,” said Viola sweetly, keeping the other two clubs going with her right hand. I tossed back the wandering third. She caught it adroitly and continued practicing.

“Rather ungallant for a troubadour, commenting on a lady's age,” I admonished him.

“Oh, a lady, is she? Forgive me. I mistook her for a fool's apprentice. As a Guild member, it is my right and obligation to insult apprentices, and their responsibility to come up with some witty retort.”

“You're funny-looking, and your horse smells,” Viola called out.

“All right, so that part needs work,” I said hastily. “But she's no ordinary apprentice. She's fluent in nine languages, sings and plays beautifully, and is a superb actress and mimic. I can vouch for that.”

“Well, if you say so,” he said, somewhat dubiously. “Anyhow, that is not my business here.”

“What
is
your business?”

He straightened up and puffed out his chest. “Theophilos, I have traveled from the Guildhall to Venice, and by boat from Venice to Capodistria, and then ridden down the Adriatic coastline to this lovely town of Orsino, to ask you but a single question: how is your leg?”

“Is that personal or official?”

“Both.”

“Personally, it hurts like hell. Officially, I can no longer do a standing back flip, and I still limp fairly badly, but I am otherwise back to my old self.”