The School of Night Read Online Free Page A

blame you, Henry, for missing it. The audiences of 1594 or ’95 or whenever it was, they would have missed it, too. Only a handful of spectators, I think, would have known what was going on. And in that moment, Henry!” He smiled blearily. “I like to think their gasps would have carried all the way to Shakespeare himself. Waiting in the wings.”
    Alonzo began to massage the air around us until I began to feel, yes, something like a stir along my hairline.
    â€œWhy were they so shocked?” I asked.
    â€œBecause this little northern upstart, this son of a Stratford glover, was mocking some of the greatest men England had ever known. No, it’s true. Walter Ralegh. Christopher Marlowe. A good half dozen others. Love’s Labour’s Lost is nothing more than a satire of these great men and their pretensions. With that one phrase— the School of Night —Shakespeare was hauling them into the light of day, leaving them naked for all to see.”
    â€œAnd for evidence you have…?”
    â€œOh, for God’s sake, read Bradbrook. Read Tannenbaum. Read Shakespeare’s goddamned plays, if you don’t believe me. The King of Navarre and his court. The Duke of Arden and his court. Prospero. Hamlet! Again and again, Shakespeare came back to that same theme. Scholars—men of real originality , Henry—working in isolation from the world. Banished, basically, for their very thoughts. And they’re all just variations on Ralegh’s original school.”
    Here was one of the differences between us. Alcohol made him more expansive. The cheaper the booze, the louder he grew.
    â€œI still don’t get it,” I said. “What was this school?”
    â€œOnly the most secretive, the most brilliant—God, the most daring —of all Elizabethan societies.”
    He lowered his head toward the table, eyeing me as though I were a cue ball.
    â€œAre you ready, Henry?”
    Without any more preamble, he took me back. To 1592.
    Walter Ralegh, the great courtier of his time, has incurred the queen’s wrath for secretly marrying one of her attendants. Exiled to his estate in Dorset, he comes up with a characteristically ambitious way of passing the time. He will gather the greatest intellects of his generation and give them the freedom they have been seeking all their lives, the freedom to speak their minds.
    â€œIt was going to be—Christ, how did Shakespeare put it? In the play we just saw? A little academe —”
    â€œ Still and contemplative in living art .”
    â€œJust so.”
    Well, who could turn down such an invitation? Not Marlowe.
    Not Henry Percy, the “Wizard Earl” of Northumberland.
    Not George Chapman or his fellow poets Matthew Roydon and William Warner. One by one, they flocked to Dorset.
    From the start, the school’s members understood the risks they ran. They met exclusively in private, exclusively at night. As far as we know, they kept no record of their conversations. They published none of their findings. Until Shakespeare gave them a name, they had none.
    â€œAnd yet ”—Alonzo’s index finger dug into the table like an awl—“they were one of the greatest threats to the Elizabethan establishment.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause they talked about things no one could talk about. They questioned Jesus’ divinity. They questioned God’s very existence. They practiced dark arts. Alchemy, astrology, paganism … satanism  … nothing was off the table, Henry. They dared to—to imagine a world without creed, without monarchy. With only the human mind as anchor. They were this quiet little knife in the heart of Elizabethan orthodoxy.” His eyes gleamed; his voice darkened. “And they all paid dearly for it.”
    With unmistakable relish, he outlined their various ends. Marlowe, murdered in a saloon. (“Over a bill? I think not, Henry.”) Ralegh