A mirage of Armada, sails rattling, guns roaring...

At sea, Sir Francis tells yarn of brave seamanship:

a man stabs another in the eye with a dagger.

Silence.


Stratford

August 5, 1615

S

pelling God backward gets dull after a while: at the clandestine meetings where Raleigh, Greene, Marlowe, Drake, Jonson and others crucified everyone’s beliefs, they gradually dulled their ar­rows, for me: I thought: Lucifer can smell too strongly of sulfur too often. “Am I not a mighty man who bears a hundred souls on his back!”—talk like this was to little purpose, to my way of thinking. How much saner to keep convictions to one’s self: Yet some, surly as a butcher’s dog, paraded their beliefs. Gulled, I never went too often: the suite, in the Duke’s Thames house, had about it an air of trouble brewing, trickery, and the abrupt appearance of men-at-arms. The talkers walked or sat about, under brilliant chandeliers, shad­owing their shadows on the polished floors, starched cuffs thrown back over satin sofas. Whiffs of cologne and perfume over-topped the whiff of garret. Rapiers shimmered. The Queen, if she chose, could do away with each of us: a nod of her wig. I seriously suspected all their pattery, branding it half-hearted conspiracy, mistrust and defamation. The passage of time has confirmed, not denied my feelings: perspective has brought out the folly of guffawings at creeds.