The Bookman's Tale Read Online Free PDF Page A

know, Peter, that it was because of a book collector that you were able to read
Beowulf
in your freshman English class? One man saved the only known manuscript of the first great English poem. And he saved a lot more than that.
Gawain and the Green Knight
, the Lindisfarne Gospels, some of the greatest treasures of the book world. His library in London was divided into fourteen bookcases, each with the bust of a Roman emperor or imperial lady above. Miss Devereaux asked me to organize this room the same way.”
    “Who was this collector?” asked Peter.
    “He was one of those who, as you say, might have known Shakespeare personally. His name was Robert Cotton.”

Southwark, London, 1592

    B artholomew Harbottle strode down Borough High Street, burst through the door of the George and Dragon, and shook the dust of the highway off his new doublet. From the back bar he could hear the familiar sounds of carousing—and it had barely gone four o’clock. He stomped across the floorboards, threw open a door, and revealed himself to his friends.
    “Barty!” cried Lyly. “We thought you were in Winchester.”
    “And I thought you were sober,” said Bartholomew, taking both a seat at the table and a mug of ale proffered by Peele.
    “There’s no point in staying so,” said Peele. “There’s no work.”
    “But it’s the high season,” said Bartholomew, “I should think the theaters would be filled every day in such weather.”
    “He hasn’t heard,” said Lyly. “The theaters have been closed these two months. First a riot and now the plague.”
    “I could do without the plague,” said Bartholomew. “But I’m sorry to have missed the riot. And what of you, Lyly? Not Master of the Queen’s Revels yet?”
    “Edmond Tylney absolutely refuses to die. I shall petition the queen again in the spring. Perhaps fifteen ninty-three will be my lucky year.”
    “Well, tell her that riots are good for business, will you,” said Peele with a booming laugh.
    “But who’s this I see returning from the bar laden like a packhorse?” said Bartholomew. “Can that be the face of Christopher Marlowe behind all those mugs?”
    “None other,” said Marlowe, sloshing ale onto Bartholomew as he set the next round on the table.
    “I’m surprised to find you here, with the plague in town.”
    “My visit will be brief, I assure you,” said Marlowe.
    “If it were me,” said Peele, “it would be just long enough for a good drink and a better whore.”
    “It wouldn’t be long at all then,” said Bartholomew, “for yours is never long for long.” The table erupted in laughter and Bartholomew took a long draught of ale and looked around at the sparkling faces of the educated wits, the very sort of men he had hoped to have as friends when he entered the book business only three years ago. And now here he was, welcomed into the bosom of London’s finest—urbane and talented, they made up perhaps the greatest collection of writers who ever drank together.
    There was Thomas Nashe sitting quietly in the corner. Bartholomew had sold hundreds of copies of Nashe’s pamphlets at his bookshop in Paternoster Row. Then there was George Peele, whose
Arraignment of Paris
had been presented before the queen. Peele’s wild antics dated back to his days at Oxford, and he could drink, gamble, and whore as heavily as Bartholomew himself, and that was saying something. Patient John Lyly was as fine a writer as any of them, Bartholomew thought, excepting of course Kit Marlowe. For Marlowe there was no match.
    That he, Bartholomew Harbottle, who had been born and raised in a village void of literacy, could be sitting here, at the age of twenty-six, drinking and laughing with the greatest playwright of the age seemed unfathomable. But then Bartholomew always had a talent for improving his lot, first attaching himself to the household of one of the local gentry, then forcing that gentleman to recognize his intellect and send him off to Cambridge,