“If the queen should ever require my service, then it goes without saying that I am Her Majesty’s to command,” said Henry Darcie.

Shakespeare grimaced, wryly. “Aye, as are we all.”

Sir William turned to Smythe. “As for you, Tuck Smythe… we already have ample evidence of both your mettle and your constitution. And of your constancy, I have no doubt. Be a player, if such is your desire, though ‘twould seem to me that you have little talent for it. I think I may have work more suited to your skills. At the very least, there is still the matter of that sword you promised me.”

“I am at your service, milord,” said Smythe.

“Good. Then we shall speak again.” He stood to leave. “And now, ‘tis very late, and I shall leave you to your beds.”

“But, milord,” said Shakespeare, “what shall we tell the others of this matter on the morrow? They shall be full of questions about the causes behind all these strange events.”

“And I have no doubt that you shall have suitable answers for them that will satisfy their craving and yet still mask the truth,” Sir William said, putting on his hat and cloak. “After all, as Richard Burbage said, you are ‘soon to make your mark as one of England ’s greatest poets,’ Master Shakespeare.” He chuckled. “Look to your muse to serve you. And now I bid you all good night.”

As Sir William closed the door behind him, Henry Darcie and Elizabeth stood to leave, as well. “I must thank you for your service to my daughter, Mr. Smythe,” he said. Elizabeth, standing beside him, met Smythe’s gaze. “You believed in her when even her own mother and I did not.”

“Well, under the circumstances, sir, who could blame you?”

“I blame myself,” said Darcie. “I should have taken more trouble to examine the suitability of the match, to make inquiries, to… to…”

“Consider your daughter’s feelings?” Shakespeare suggested.

“Well…” Darcie grunted, clearly feeling that the poet was presumptuous, but not feeling in a position to say so. “That, too, I suppose. Again, my gratitude to you… gentlemen.” He gave them a curt bow and left. With a lingering glance back, Elizabeth followed her father.

Shakespeare shook his head, then turned to Smythe and shrugged. “Well… I shall come up with some sort of story to explain all this, I suppose. Though at the moment, Lord only knows what it shall be.” He shook his head. “This has all been the most curious and unsettling affair. Odd’s blood, I need a drink.”

“Here,” said Smythe. “Have some more wine. We can take the bottle up with us.”

“To think of it,” said Shakespeare, as they headed up the stairs to their room, “two brothers, identical in every way, to say nothing of a sister, and then a servant who serves both, innocents caught up in strange misapprehensions… you know, with a few small changes here and there to mask the truth of these events, there may well be a story for a play here.”

“Nonsense,” Smythe said. “ ‘Tis all much too fantastic. Who would ever believe it? What audience could be so credulous?”

“Perhaps if ‘twere done as a sort of farce, a comedy,” said Shakespeare, musing as he paused at the top of the stairs. “ ‘Tis not really a bad idea, you know.”

“I’d leave it alone, if I were you,” said Smythe, with a grimace. “You’ll get both our heads chopped off if you do not have a care.”

“Well, ‘twould be just a play, you know… a foolish thing of very little consequence.” Shakespeare shrugged. “After all, in a hundred years, who do you suppose would care?”

Smythe snorted as he opened the door and plopped down into bed, fully dressed. “Not me. I am much too tired. Good night, Will.”

“Methinks I shall work awhile.”

“Well, don’t stay up too late. Remember, we have another performance tomorrow. And do not forget to blow the candle out when you are done.”

“Good night, Tuck. Sleep well. Flights of angels and all that rot. Hmmm. Now where did I leave my inkwell?”

IT MAY BE THOUGHT THE height of arrogance to use William Shakespeare as a fictional character in a novel, and I imagine there will probably be those who will curl their lips with disdain at the idea, but at the same time, I have a strong suspicion that Shakespeare would have approved, or at the very least, been rather amused by the whole thing. After all, it is precisely the sort of thing he did himself.

I do not, I should say right up front, make any pretense to being a serious literary scholar or critic on the subject of the Bard. While I have some knowledge and I have done some research, for my own enjoyment and as part of working on this book and teaching Shakespeare in college level English courses, there are numerous authorities whose knowledge of Shakespeare and his plays far exceed my own. My purpose here was really just the same as Shakespeare’s, no more, no less-to entertain.

I am by no means the first to use the Bard in such a manner nor, I am sure, shall I be the last. In this regard, I am certainly no less derivative than Shakespeare was himself when he based his works on other sources, such as the Chronicles of Holinshead, when he chose to borrow from history, or the works of Greene or Nashe or Marlowe, when he chose to steal outright. What I have tried to teach my students in order to help make Shakespeare more accessible to them is that if he were alive today, William Shakespeare would probably be known unpretentiously as Bill to his friends and there’s a good chance he’d be on the writing staff of some prime-time television show like Melrose Place or perhaps a soap opera such as The Days of Our Lives. I really do believe that. He would doubtless fit right in at a Hollywood power lunch with Steven J. Cannell and David Kelley, with whom he would feel very comfortable talking shop, and he might script for Spielberg or Lucas or whoever hired him to write a screenplay. In short, he would be exactly what he was in his own time, and what Dickens was in his-a working writer, without any literary pretensions, one who simply practiced his craft, as Balzac said, “with clean hands and composure.”

This is not to say that I am trying in any way to denigrate Shakespeare by comparing him to Hollywood scriptwriters, which many scholars would probably consider blasphemy, nor necessarily elevate them by a comparison to him. Marshall McLuhan, I think, was wrong. The medium is not the message. Genius will always transcend the medium, or else exhalt it, much as Paddy Chayevsky and Stanley Kubrick and Orson Welles did. From everything I know of him… and to a large degree, subjectively, from what I feel… I think that Shakespeare would have been amazed beyond belief at the effects he has produced and the impact he has made, at the immortality he has achieved. Certainly, he never sought any such thing.

I know writers today who never throw anything away, who obsessively keep copies of every marked-up draft and every note ever scribbled on a napkin in a bar on the off chance that, someday, these things may be worth something, if not in a material sense, at least in an academic one as papers to be donated to some university for future bibliographical and biographical research. Future doctoral candidates need never worry, for there will be no dearth of manuscripts and notes for them to sift through en route to stultifying dissertations. Shakespeare, on the other hand, never saved a thing. If not for his printers, we would probably have nothing, for immortality was the last thing on his mind, and I doubt that the idea would even have occurred to him. He knew that his medium was an ephemeral one and he regarded it accordingly. He wrote his works to be performed, not deconstructed in a college classroom or analyzed with pathological precision for every possible nuance and interpretation. He understood, without a doubt, that his was a collaborative medium, that actors would bring their own contributions to the table, that plays were a dynamic group effort of the entire company, not a showcase for an individual writer’s talent and/or ego.