Rare Sonnets Surface in Long Beach

I consulted a broker of rare documents in Los Angeles and explained what I had. He was eager to put it on the market. But first I had to create a buzz.

“Gin up interest and you add zeros to the selling price,” he told me across the polished marble desk covered with impressive folders holding even more impressive documents. He slid a brown leather folder out of the pile and held it up. “Original handwritten song by John Lennon.”

“I’ve got something better.”

“Maybe, maybe not. You gotta get it in the media. Collectors need to know it’s available. They want their friends and enemies to know it’s available so when they swoop in and place the winning bid everyone is jealous.”

“Publicity costs money,” I said, feeling the pinch.

“You don’t buy it, Franks. Get it published and they pay you.”

I was beginning to get the picture.

“Pitch it to a high brow literary magazine. Provide historical background so they don’t have to look it up.”

“Thanks, Jim.”

I left the swank Wilshire Blvd offices of Tipton, Brooks & Weaver, my head bursting with ideas. This was the home run ball I had been waiting for all my life. Several weeks later I had finished research and emailed my pitch…

Dear Editor of The New Yorker,

I am excited to report an extraordinary literary find – an original parchment manuscript penned by the Avon Bard – the provenance as interesting as the sonnets themselves. Yes, three original sonnets by the immortal William Shakespeare added to the 157 published in 1609. Interesting also is how these sonnets contrast with those written to his ‘Dark Lady,’ a muse responsible for the master’s suffering he channeled into his darkest and most violent plays – Hamlet, King Lear and the posthumously produced MacBeth. These newfound sonnets, as you will see when you read them, reveal Will’s whimsical side, as if he had momentarily broken free from her torturous bonds. They also resemble his lighter works – A Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Being a man impassioned with love of language and literary history, my hands trembled as I released the creases in the parchment imprisoning his words, pages so brittle with age they creaked, the bare bulb in the ceiling spewing a yellow cast in the dank chamber. My eyes sped across the pages, marveling at the penmanship, checking each of the fourteen lines for correct iambic pentameter within the three quatrains in abab, cdcd, efef – the classic Elizabethan rhyme scheme for which Shakespeare was known. And his inimitable wit in the surprising resolution of the ending couplet. It was all there.

“Ya believe me now, laddie?” The grizzled old wharf rat snatched back the pages and secreted them inside the tattered leather pouch he entrusted to me once the purchase was final. The odor of sardines and cheap rum emanated from him as seawater splashed against the sides of the lorry made fast against the three-masted schooner scheduled to shove off at dawn.

“Where did you get these?” I asked, sitting on a coil of hemp rope drinking tea from a soup can. I was eager to be gone from his company, but not before I knew the whole story leading up to his unlikely ownership of these priceless treasures. His pale blue eyes glistened like stars as he croaked his tale, his bony fingers tracing an arc through the air. The historical details leading up to his acquisition were the result of my painstaking research over these past weeks…

In the late fall of 1610, six years before his demise, William Shakespeare, champion of the Globe Theater, consumed with drink from a brutal night channeling his poetic fires, stumbled down the dirt path to cousin Theobald’s farm and crashed asleep in the barn. A tremendous thunderstorm rolled through the valley in the wee hours, blowing open the shutters and scattering the master’s freshly inked sheets behind the woodpile. The next morning the poet woke with a terrible hangover, and without a word to anyone, went off in search of relief, impervious to his literary outpouring the night before.

Theobald’s wife, Edith, yapping about cold air blowing through the wattle-and-daub panels of the stone roundhouse, kicked Theobald off his straw palette and demanded he stoke the waning fire. He tossed on his wooly coat and boots and clomped off to the woodpile where he discovered the parchments. Theobald immediately recognized the hand of his famous cousin, his greed instantly outstripping filial loyalty. He tucked the pages into the hayloft and waited.

Weeks passed without a whisper and Theobald began to contemplate the windfall of his discovery. He well knew the high prices Willie’s writings fetched in theatrical circles. How much more would they be worth when his cousin was dead? Theobald struggled to maintain his secret through the years while keeping a keen eye on the hayloft. He knew time was on his side, his cousin’s imminent demise hastened by intemperance and lasciviousness.

Six long years Theobald hid those pages until the glorious event occurred. No more would he be chained to the drudgery and vile fragrances of the farm. He was the cousin of England’s most famous poet and playwright and once he sold the undiscovered sonnets he would be on his way, rubbing noses with the London literati and experiencing all the pleasures his cousin had enjoyed without him.

Then Theobald had another idea. Why should he ride on his cousin’s fame when he could establish his own? Surely, he could write sonnets if he gave it a try. William and he were cut from the same genetic cloth. Why couldn’t he be a genius too? Securing the same type and size of paper Will had used, Theobald copied his cousin’s work over in his own hand and submitted it to the Stratford-on-Avon Gazette: “Three Sonnets by Theobald Shakespeare.”

The name Shakespeare resounded through the country newspaper offices from the front counter to the scribes in the back room. It had been months since the great bard passed and his audience was hungry for words to ignite their imaginations and provide a moment’s surcease from daily toil. Theobald’s parchments were carried reverently back to the editor.

“Another Shakespeare? Balderdash!”

But he could not deny the eloquence of the words, the majesty of the meter nor the delight he felt at the end of each reading. Where had this savant been hiding all these years?

“Find this fellow and bring him to me at once!”

Theobald spied the editor’s messengers from back in the shadows, peering down through the hayloft door. He knew they would come and had rehearsed for years how he would play it. After they knocked at the door and Edith had given her usual stranger tongue-lashing, they sheepishly began to explore the dilapidated out-buildings of the squalid parcel. When they called out from below, Theobald was busy pitching hay.

“Who’s there?”

“We are from the Gazette. The editor would like to meet you.”

He stabbed his fork into the fresh pile and climbed down to face them.

“Read me sonnets then, has he?”

The shorter of the two eyed him up and down. “Do you always dress like that?”

Theobald had on his finest pantaloons and puffy shirt. “Something wrong?”

“No,” the taller messenger added. “Unusual for a farmer to dress like a fop.”

“A fop?” Theobald pulled at his shirt.

“Fop farmer,” said the shorter. They exchanged an amused glance.

“Jus’ finishing up. Was going into town for a pint.” Theobald held his ground.

“Come along, then. Pint’s on us.”

So, in they went to meet Mr. Crenshaw, the editor, who patted Theobald on the back and said he would pay thirty quid for first rights. The plagiarist gladly accepted, and they progressed to discussions amid many pints and more to eat than Willie’s cousin had seen since the after party of Hamlet. Wenches came over and sat on his lap. Word spread to the Globe and company actors joined the party as they were concerned about the source of future employment, their meal ticket having gone to reside where “moth and dust doth corrupt.” Theobald promised the play he was working on would knock the knickers off Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He became an instant celebrity. Even hardened skeptics on the Gazette staff mused Will’s cousin had potential past the south end of a northbound mule.

Theobald inserted himself into the fast company of actors and actresses at the Globe, his sonnets lavished with praise and promises made for production of his new play. Will’s wenches were at his beckoned call, much to the dismay of homely Edith whose morning scowls increased with the cock’s crows at his inebriated returns at dawn. Two months later when his advance was squandered and no words produced, Theobald was turned out as a braggart and a charlatan. He limped home to his farm where he met his ignominious end – falling off the loft after several flagons of cheap ale onto his pitchfork.

Sorting through his things after the funeral, Edith found Will’s original parchments and quickly decided what she must do. The shame of poor Theobald being a one-hit wonder would be nothing compared to plagiarist of the greatest writer the English language ever produced. Edith burned Theobald’s forgeries and made her sons take an oath, which they kept. She then gave one of the master’s sonnets to each of her three sons with the stipulation they were not to be made public during her lifetime.

Shortly after her death, the youngest brother Ignatius, let it slip to a collector of rare antiquities, that he might have an original William Shakespeare manuscript. The collector, Robert Thorogood, down on his luck and eager to find something worth selling, agreed to have a look. He could barely conceal his delight when everything he saw on the pages seemed authentic. He invited the boy to lunch and bought round after round until Ignatius revealed every detail: two more brothers, two more missing sonnets.

Thorogood then remembered the scandal of the fake sonnets in the Gazette that had attracted so much attention. Attention that prepared the readership for an even more incredible truth. What a story he had! The original manuscripts would bring a mammoth payday – the crowning achievement of Thorogood’s lackluster career. He could live out his life in luxury on a sweet grass farm in Devonshire. He returned to London, showed the parchment to a top publisher and a bidding war ensued, pushing the price into the high four figures for the three sonnets. He was ecstatic. But first he must locate the other two brothers and acquire their parchments by downplaying their value.

Breckenridge Shakespeare left the family farm when his mother passed and married the daughter of a sheep herder near Dover. He loved the view of the channel from top of the chalky cliffs and built a little cabin where Matilda bore him two daughters, Melissa and Margaret. They lived a simple carefree life and when Thorogood appeared and offered to buy his sonnet, made a deal. Money was not as important as was a prize ram Brecky needed to expand his herd.

One more to go.

The third brother, Francis, enlisted in the English Navy and was assigned the Bonaventure, a middling ship launched in 1621. Thorogood tracked him down to a pub while on shore leave and timing was fortuitous. Francis had accrued a sizeable debt from gambling losses to a gunner twice his size and mean as a wharf rat. In his view a useless old parchment traded to get him off the schneid was a gift from heaven. The men shook hands and parted ways, each thinking they had gotten the better of the transaction. Thorogood returned to London and Francis continued as mate until the Bonaventure was blown up and sank during the Battle of Leghorn in 1653.

Now possessed of the three original sonnets, Thorogood contacted the publisher who was eager to close the deal. Two other firms got wind of the rare opportunity and also made offers. Enjoying his rare view from the catbird’s seat, Thorogood decided to let them fight it out until the price was high and only one bidder remained. A sound plan until Ignatius had a change of heart about his entrusted sonnet, “The Unsolvable Uncertainty.”

‘Tis time again, she must find an answer,

To the question for centuries has lain,

Can’t ask a Duke or even a master,

The problem is hers, quite simple and plain.

Will it be cotton? Or will it be lace?

With ermine perhaps, a cape to the floor?

An utter monstrosity lacking in grace,

Whatever, for sure, it won’t be a bore!

And, oh now puff, how her face does redden,

She seems a stranger, quite distant and far,

Her breathing comes quick, feet slide as leaden,

As far as it goes, for her this is war!

Can she make it right? Select a winner?

Oh, what will the lady wear to dinner!

Ignatius had parted with his treasure for three shilling’s worth of ale and shepherd’s pie with the provision he could reclaim it at any time for twice that amount. Appearing at Thorogood’s shop on High Street with six shillings, he was spurned away and told summarily a deal is a deal and “that was that.” Ignatius pulled back his fist to trounce the mendacious dealer who cowered like a guilty cur.

“You’ll get yours,” he said. Then left, snatching a pound note off a stack of bills.

To protect his interests until the sale closed with the winning publisher, Thorogood hired a night watchman, Charles Barton, without performing a proper due diligence. The next morning Barton and the strongbox containing the three sonnets had disappeared.

The police questioned Ignatius, but quickly determined his innocence. Thorogood had the reputation of a cheat and a scoundrel. Sympathy was for the poor farm hand who barely managed a hard scrabble living. Thorogood spent his remaining days looking for Barton without success. He went soon to his grave mired in debt and regret.

Charles Barton kept his ear to the rail as all those who possessed the parchments seemed to fall under the spell of bad luck. Too clever to challenge the curse of Shakespeare’s muse, he traded the sonnets for a tiny plot of land he could call his own and lived out his days raising goats and cutting peat. The recipient was Lord Alexander Farrington, a nobleman, who deeded Barton a small corner of his estate. He was a private man and had no need to share his rare treasures with the world. Rumor is he would bring out the pages in front of the fire and read the sonnets to his sweetheart, Beatrice. Although she was unable to reward his amorous advances with a child, her favorite sonnet was “End of the Road” as it encapsulated her experience with Farrington.

A wayfaring bard, a rambler it’s true,

My pleasure’s a song, good wine my best friend,

I stay where I like and take care to undo,

Any cares – neither borrow or lend.

‘Twas once outside Kent, a lady in silk,

Came crashing through brambles, torn and in heat,

The brute was outrageous, she was in bilk,

With a swing of stout cordwood he lay at my feet.

As impassioned a mistress had never been seen,

Juices of gratitude flowed like a spring,

Before it was over she called me “Dad!”

Was unable to convince her ‘twas merely a fling. Now, ten years later, a father of four,

My pack gathers dust on a peg by the door.

When Lord Farrington passed in 1702, Beatrice could not bear life without him. Imbibing a steaming cup of hemlock tea she joined him on a frosty November night, nestled sweetly within the soft sheets of her four poster bed.

Leading up to the American Revolution, the growing tension between England and the Colonies resulted in many ships sailing back and forth across the Atlantic carrying soldiers, supplies and deported dissidents. One such rascal, a Montgomery Smythe, had been in the service of Lord Farrington’s grandson. Through the years Smythe had developed a friendship with Freddie Barton, bastard son from a local sporting gal, who inherited the small corner plot and lived alone. One night, with the aid of some seven-year-old highland malt Freddie told the tale of the manuscripts, hidden inside a sheepskin caked within a mud wall brick. No word of that conversation was remembered by Freddie, though Smythe’s mind churned until he had concocted his exit strategy.

Farrington’s grandson, a piss of a man and a churlish braggart, set Smythe up on false charges of heresy for which he was to be deported to the Colonies. Smythe had failed to resist the advances of the insipid grandson’s buxom lass and when she started spending more and more time in the garden shed, the little Lord, devious voyeur that he was, got an eyeful hiding among a hedge of hollyhocks.

It took all of Smythe’s savings to bribe the guard to take him to the farm the night before the ship left to see his old friend Freddie. Inside for half an hour, Smythe returned to the constable’s charge and acquiesced to his fate, the parchments sewed into the lining of his jacket. Freddie Barton was left unconscious but unharmed, a sterling silver letter opener stolen from the Farrington grandson stuck in the mud wall bearing a note of apology.

In the Colonies the life of an indentured servant was arduous and unforgiving, working the fields from dawn to dusk seven days a week. But in the spring of 1775, rumblings of revolution permeated the grapevine and gave hope to those sequestered in bounty. One moonless night Smythe and a dozen others broke from camp and joined the rebels to wreak vengeance upon British soldiers at Lexington and Concord, armed only with pitchforks and hoes. After the battle, Smythe was able to disappear and become assimilated within the revolutionary forces, eventually becoming a free man with a land grant in Fincastle County, Virginia, renamed as the state of Kentucky on June 1st 1792.

Smythe worked hard, married the daughter of a Revolutionary War colonel, and achieved a measure of respectability in Bourbon County, Kentucky, siring six sons and four daughters. Consumed with making his success in the new world, Smythe forgot all about the old country and Shakespeare’s sonnets still sewn within the linings of his jacket, buried in a chest in the basement where it remained as long as he lived.

Smythe’s youngest daughter, Eleanor, cleaning through his things after his abrupt departure from a mule hoof he was attempting to shoe, came upon the jacket, felt the lumps, cut away the stitches and pulled out the Bard’s pages, just before the start of the U. S. Civil War. As a neutral state, Kentucky was sympathetic to both the North and the South, with Union and Confederate forces seeking lodging at the Smythe farm at intervals.

On one occasion, Eleanor brought out the pages to show Confederate Major Markham Pierce who dismissed them as fake, yet absconded with them the next morning as his troops rode off by way of Troublesome Creek to fight with General Morgan in the Battle of Mt. Sterling. On June 2, 1864, Morgan’s superior forces overran the Union positions, capturing some 380 men along with a large amount of munitions and medical supplies. Celebrating their victory, the Confederates were unprepared the morning of June 9th when Union General Burbridge attacked the men sleeping in their tents. Major Pierce was one of the casualties.

Stripping dead soldiers of their leather, brass and weapons before burial, a sexton by the name of Hoodie McLeash came across the manuscripts tucked inside Major Pierce’s tunic. Not being a literate man able to recognize their value, he tossed them in a box where they lay among other war documents retrieved from the Confederate encampment. When General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lt. General Ulysses S. Grant following the Battle of Appomattox on the morning of April 9, 1865, the Civil War was officially over. The box was taken by horse drawn lorry first to Winchester, then to Paris, Kentucky, where it was stored in the Bourbon County Courthouse basement for almost 100 years.

In the fall of 1963, a historian by the name of Amelia Cahill was hired under contract to sort through and organize documents in the many boxes stored in the courthouse basement. On November 22nd she opened the box containing the Shakespeare sonnets and was trying to ascertain their significance when news came over the radio that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas. Confusion ensued. Public buildings were closed and locked down across America. Wanting to study the aging hand-scripted pages more closely, Cahill hid them in her petticoat and snuck them home. She read the sonnets that night by the fire in her rented room in an old Victorian house just off Main Street and wept, as Shakespeare’s words rekindled an old romance.

To a Lady I Once Knew

Upon the winds of fate I wandered, one;

No harbor called me home, a fearful dread

My constant friend; an emptiness, dark sun;

I thought I’d be better off quite dead.

And then, from out of gloom, you did appear,

My heart was borne away upon a wing,

I trembled, could not breathe with you so near

I’d found my queen with you I could be king!

Together we rode high on top a wave,

But at the crest your ornament shown through,

A mighty castle crashed as if a knave,

Had tried to show the world just what was true.

And now at sea again, bereft and tossed,

My soul laced not with gold, but yet embossed.

The more she studied the pages, the more convinced she became of their authenticity and their value. They had nothing to do with Kentucky history and had evidently made their way into that box by an error of providence. They were hers to exploit and no one would be the wiser. Still, she had to explain how they came into her possession and went about concocting a story that would not only be plausible, but historically accurate. Much of what I have just conveyed is the result of Ms. Cahill’s research, told to me by the lady herself as I have laboriously traced the provenance of these documents backwards from the day they came into my possession.

This is where the case takes an interesting twist. In order to establish pedigree to the manuscript, she had to travel to London and meet with the archivist at the Globe Theatre to authenticate the penmanship was indeed that of the Avon Bard – now more famous than ever his works having been revered for three and a half centuries. Untrusting of air travel, Cahill booked passage on the last transoceanic voyage of the Queen Mary in September 1967. Her plan was to validate her claim, sell the sonnets through Sotheby’s in London, return home to Kentucky and buy a horse farm she had her eye on since she was a little girl.

Three days out of New York, a terrible squall sprang up, inciting seasickness in most of the passengers. Amelia Cahill was no exception. A new gentlemen friend with whom she had been dining, offered to provide her with Dramamine tablets and brought them to her cabin. The gentleman remained until the tablets took hold, rendering poor Ms. Cahill unconscious, but not before she confessed her plan about the manuscripts before she passed out. The gentleman, whose name remains a mystery this day, tucked her neatly in bed and relieved her of the pages, stowing them in a waterproof cylinder in one of the lifeboats.

The next day when Cahill returned to her senses, she discovered the theft, went to the ship’s captain, reported the incident and insisted on a thorough search of the man’s cabin. It was ordered and done. Nothing was found. The man took offense, and despite numerous apologies, slugged the duty officer and was placed in the brig until the ship reached Southampton where he was summarily turned over to the Bobbies. Cahill, near penniless, stayed on the ship for the return voyage, went back to work as a courthouse clerk and never breathed a word about her loss.

The city of Long Beach, California, outbid the scrap yards and bought the Queen Mary to use as a tourist attraction. A special mooring was created in the harbor near Howard Hughes’ famous flying wooden boat, derisively nicknamed the “Spruce Goose,” by Senator Owen Brewster from Maine who chaired a committee set up to investigate Hughes for war profiteering. The ship’s boilers, propellers and other equipment were removed to make room for restaurants and exhibits. During the conversion, a carpenter by the name of Thaddeus Weeks happened to be working on the lifeboat and found the waterproof cylinder. He eyed the pages curiously, hid them in his lunch pail and showed them to his brother-in-law that weekend in Beverly Hills. His brother showed them to an art dealer and interest began to rise.

But greed set in, and not liking the way he was relegated to a subordinate role, Thaddeus stole away the pages. Thinking he could handle the transaction himself he enlisted a couple of his mates from the shipyard. They met at a wharf side bar to plan out their scheme. One drink led to two, and two led to six, and before long they were all at odds with one another, got into a scuffle and the barman called the police. Thaddeus was taken into custody, booked for drunk, disorderly and resisting arrest. They ran his name and found he had an outstanding federal warrant in New York for smuggling cigarettes. A tough U. S. Marshall was dispatched to pick him up.

Working part time as the booking officer at the Long Beach jail, the old ship’s mate with whom I began this story, overheard Thaddeus babble his tale to another inmate who failed to grasp the importance of what he was being told. He watched closely as Thaddeus struggled to hold onto something when the guards stripped him down and put him in a jump suit for the ride back to New York. It got tossed into the trash with his clothing. The codger waited until the shift change, found the manuscripts inside his jacket and stole away with them after work inside a leather pouch.

As luck would have it, his first thought was to call the English Department at USC where I was working as an assistant professor. The secretary couldn’t understand him and passed me the call. He thought the parchments were valuable, having something to do with a spear shaker. This led me to believe they may had come from a mystic or a shaman. Needing something to pull me out of the intellectual doldrums, I agreed to meet him after my classes were over, in the hold of a little ship down at the Long Beach wharf.

“You have a nice face, laddie. I trust youse,” he said and I paid him all the money I had on me. It was the bargain of the century for sure, but he seemed pleased with the transaction. That’s when I took possession of the parchments. The rest of the story is the result of my research, the authenticity of Shakespeare’s hand established by experts at Tipton, Brooks & Weaver.

By now all doubt is surely removed and you must be convinced these sonnets are from no other than the great bard himself, lost treasures of literature which have traveled many miles and endured countless hardships to be offered to you here today. I only ask that you treat these noble works with the honor they so rightly deserve and publish them prominently within your esteemed periodical.

So there is no mistake, I am offering you first publication rights only, after which all rights revert back to me. I intend to then find a suitable home for these sonnets, perhaps in the Archives of the United States in Washington, DC, or at the University of Texas, an institution widely known for its proclivity to obtain the finest original manuscripts regardless of their cost.

Your speedy reply is requested as there are many others clamoring to get first glimpse of these parchments, unmistakably caressed with the handwriting of William Shakespeare, lost for centuries, now uncovered and available for the first time to the general public. You have until Monday to make up your mind.

I signed the letter and emailed it with scans of the parchments. About a week later I received a reply.

Dear Mr. Franks,

As intriguing as your story is, I’m afraid there is not much interest in sonnets these days even if they are from Shakespeare. I suggest you try one of the little literary magazines, but they only pay in copies. Or the University of Texas would probably love to have them. They buy about anything.

Thanks for thinking of us. Best of luck.

Cordially,

The Editors

Damn… That was much ado about nothing.