“Just when you believe you have captured Fate by the bosom, you discover that she is merely a tease!”  --Carl Clark

            You don’t want to read this story.  You’ve heard it all before.  It’s the same beginning with the same ending.  Purely by accident, I learned of a “buried treasure,” and then it became my sole purpose in life to find this buried treasure.  I’d be famous.  I’d be rich.  I’d be remembered for all time.  Little did I know that really it’d all end in failed success.

            On October 3^rd, 1996, my life changed forever.  It started with Dr. Lawrence Holmes showing me and my fellow graduate students slides of his trip to London. 

            *snap sliiiiiide snap*  The first slide was of him and his wife in front of Westminster Abbey.  “Thomas Nashe was denied the right to be honored with the other distinguished playwrights of England.”  *snap sliiiiide snap*  “The building Nashe kept a room in while staying in London.”  *snap sliiiiiiiide  snap*  A picture of Dr. Holmes raising a pint of ale to the photographer in the Tipperary, a famous pub on Fleet Street.  “This is where Ben Jonson used to frequent,” said Dr. Holmes. 

            I love it when intelligent people act unintelligently. 

            There was a lot that we learned in Dr. Holmes’ class, Elizabethan Drama.  Shakespeare was a contemporary of Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson.  There was no such thing as “freedom of speech.”  Queen Elizabeth and her minions, if you will, ruled all.  There was drinking, there was smoking, and there was licentiousness (whatta word).  You imagine it, and they did it.  Gotta love those Elizabethans.

            “So . . . ”  *click*  Dr. Holmes turned off the projector and on the light.  The dark room had almost lulled me to sleep, and the sudden bright lights temporarily roused me.  “There were no copyright laws in the end of the 16^th century.  It was every man for himself.”  He droned on about the caste system in England.  I don’t remember much of it.  I felt my head slip off of my fist as Dr. Holmes’ voice soothed me to sleep. 

            “Mr. Clark!”  Dr. Holmes said, interrupting my nap, “You probably learned in your Shakespeare class, Mr. I’m-Specializing-in-Shakespeare-And-There’s-Nothing-You-Can-Do-About-It, that all of the theaters in England were closed in the last decade of the 16^th century.  Why?”

            I had no idea.  “Because the queen didn’t like plays. Because the arts are never appreciated. Because she was PMSing.”  I stretched and yawned.

            The classroom was small, and despite the overhead, fluorescent lights being on, it was still rather dim.  There were 8 of us in the classroom, seated around a big table, conference room-style.  There were a few gummy bears stuck on the ceiling, which was the inspiration for a poem in another class.  Outside, it was dark and gray, typical for October in Monroe, Louisiana.  Dr. Holmes stood puffing in front of me.  He didn’t like me.  Because mostly I was a slacker. A lazy ass.

            So why WERE the theaters shut down? 

            “Thomas Nashe, Mr. Clark.  That’s why.”

            What did he do?  No one asked, but the question resonated off of our curious minds.  Finally Dr. Holmes had piqued my interest.

            “Not falling asleep now, are you, Mr. Clark?”
“Never.”

            Dr. Holmes paced our cramped room a few times, and then looked sternly at us all.  “Thomas Nashe was a fool.”  Dr. Holmes paused for dramatic effect.  You have to love the drama majors.  “A fool . . . at least that’s what the London authorities would have us believe.  Some time in the 1590’s Nashe wrote a play.  This play created such an uproar with the London authorities that it was instantly outlawed and everyone having any kind of association with it was jailed.  The authorities searched for Nashe, but they never managed to capture him.  He escaped.  In his haste, he left all of his papers, his writings, his plays, his pamphlets, in his residence in London.  There was no such thing as copiers or ‘back-up disks’ back then.”  Dr. Holmes glared at us like we were preschoolers. 

Get out your paste and start eating!  I was glued to every word he spoke.

“Everything was lost,” he continued.  “Everything for everyone was lost.  The plays, the players, and all of the other ‘incriminating evidence’ were either locked up or destroyed.  And so that whatever happened with the play would never happen again, the authorities closed all of the theaters in London.”

            I sat on the edge of my seat.  One man closed all of the theaters in London?  What the hell was in that play that would cause that?  What plays would have been written in that time if the theaters had not been closed?  What playwrights were imprisoned and then never saw the light of day again?  One man changed the history of English Literature? 

            “What was the name of the play?” I asked, “I want to read it.”  I felt like I was about to pounce Dr. Holmes and choke the answer out of him. 

            “You can’t,” Dr. Holmes shrugged, nonchalantly, like we should’ve known all along.  “All copies of Isle of Dogs, the play,” he winked at me, “were destroyed.  As far as tangible history is concerned, the play does not exist.”  Then he shrugged again, signifying, “Tough luck for you, Carl Clark . . . slacker!”

            Damn.

            “I’ll find the play,” I said to my class.  I looked at their blank stares.  “I’ll find it.”

            Dr. Holmes wasn’t happy about my going in search of “some lost play.” 

            “I’ll do it for my master’s thesis.  I need a topic.”

            Dr. Holmes rubbed his bald scalp and leaned back in his weight-laden chair in his book-laden office.  “You mean the play that doesn’t exist?”

I nodded.

“Hell, Carl.  I’d love for you to change your topic from Shakespeare” (You don’t want to know.) “but I can’t let you do your thesis on a play that doesn’t exist.”

            “That’s going to be all part of the paper.  I’ll find the play and then explain whatever it is that the paper proves.”

            “So you’re just going to walk over to England, poke around their stuff for a bit, and then VOILA!  You’ve found the play?”

            “No, Dr. Holmes.  I’ll take a plane or something.  And I’m just going to look where no one else has looked before.” 

            “It’s not that easy, Carl.  England’s a big country.  I can’t, with a good conscience, let you do this, kid.  You’re throwing your Master’s degree away.”  Dr. Holmes sat up in his chair and pointed a mean finger at me.  “If I let you do this, I won’t be able to sleep at night.  Stick with the Shakespeare topic.  Get your masters.  Then go on this insane ‘crusade’ later.”

            I shook my head.  Something in me told me that this was my fate.  That this would change my life.  “I want this, Dr. Holmes.  More than anything.  I’ll find that play, and then prove you wrong.  I promise.”  I got up and left, mostly because I felt it was dramatic.  How dare he tell me I couldn’t do something.  How dare he not support me.  As an instructor, shouldn’t he encourage me?  As a scholar of English drama, shouldn’t he praise me for wanting to find something that was lost?  I SO rock!

            As I walked out the door, I heard Dr. Holmes turn to his late-wife’s picture and say, “’Let the punk kid do it,’ you say?  Well.  You don’t know.  You won’t have to look at his face when he comes back with nothing.”

            No.  I knew that he’d be looking at me, looking at him, when he was looking at me after I came back from England.  With the play.

            A thinly Elizabethan man in his late-twenties throws on his over coat, as people can be heard yelling out the window to the man’s apartment.  As the man yanks on his long, leather boots, he carelessly grabs a crumpled hat and pulls it over his untamed, sandy-colored hair.  The man hastily stands up and runs across the room to his desk.  There, he grabs a leather portfolio.  He quickly sifts through his papers as men’s angry voices and the sound of their armor clambers closer to the apartment.  The man finally finds the bound papers he is looking for.  It is a play.  On the front of the cover is a note that says, “Ben:  I hope this is worth what you paid for it.”  And it is signed by Thomas Nashe.  Below that signature is another note:  “Tom:  Please be so kind as to indulge me in telling me if my additions have been sufficient to your liking.”  And it is signed by Ben Jonson.  Quickly, the man grabs the play, places it in the portfolio, wraps it up and tucks it in his overcoat.  As the yelling guards storm in through the front door, the man has already made his escape through the back window, taking with him the only remaining copy of the play, Isle of Dogs.

            I toyed with this idea.  Maybe Nashe did leave with at least one thing, the play.  If that were the case, then the play could be anywhere.  Finding it could prove to be impossible. 

            I started researching where all Nashe’s stuff had gone after his death.  I was presuming that he had kept the play close to him all the rest of his short life.  Maybe he willed it to some relative, and they never knew of its importance.  Who knew.

Of course.  I had another theory, aptly named Theory Number Two:  Thomas Nashe dashed up the creaking stairs to the room he’d been occupying in London for the last two months.  He burst through the door and grabbed his leather suitcase.  He threw two shirts and his stash of money into the suitcase.  Nashe could hear the Queen’s Royal Guard outside as they were coming up the street.  They seemed to be approaching the house at a confident, determined pace.  The guards busted open the door of the house, sending the landlord into a frenzy. 

            Nashe rushed to his door, only to hear the guards proceeding at a quickened pace, past the yelling landlord.  He closed the door and swore.  He turned to the window, and rushed to look out it.  It was a long drop to the cobblestone road beneath him.  As he glanced back nervously at the door, a stack of papers on his desk caught his attention.  There was writing scrawled across the front page.  Nashe knew whose handwriting it was. 

            “Sorry about the trouble, Tom.  The Queen’s after all the copies of the play.  Please keep this one safe for us.  Ben Jonson.” 

            As Nashe read the note, he heard the guards tromping up the steps.  He looked at the window, sized up the jump, left the play on the desk and jumped to save himself. 

            This would certainly mean that all copies of the play were, in fact, destroyed.  But what writer would leave his creation on a desk?  Leave it to be destroyed?  Not Nashe.  Not any respectable writer.  Especially knowing that the queen wanted all copies destroyed.

            Theory number three:  Nashe saw the play on the desk, grabbed it as he heard the guards charging up the stairs.  He crammed it in some sort of leather case.  He frantically searched the room for a place to stash the play until he could come back for it.  Under the loose floorboard next to the desk.

            As the guards crashed through the door, Nashe jumped out of the window, leaving the play, to retrieve later.

            If this were so, then the play was probably still waiting there, under the loose floorboard, for me to find.  All of these years, all of the occupants of the place, the play sat there.  Waiting to be found.  And I was determined to find it.

            There were some common things in the research I did.  Most of the “stories” about Isle of Dogs claimed that Nashe, not Jonson, was the last one with the play.  Stories told at pubs, even at the Tipperary, had Nashe, in a drunken stupor, claiming to have stashed away a copy of the play.  Stashed in a leather portfolio or suitcase.  There were at least fifty different theories about the whereabouts of the lost play.  And I was determined to search every theory out.

            It’s funny how sometimes I don’t really envision myself as a hard worker.  I mean, I am working on my Master’s degree.  But honestly I went to graduate school because I got an assistantship and it was all paid for by the university, for the most part.  I didn’t have anything better to do, and being in school was the only thing known all of my life.  I had never worked hard for anything in my life until I started looking for the play.

            About 2 months into researching it, I realized how difficult it was going to be to find.  And that made me want to find it even more.  I imagined the recognition I’d get for finding it.  The spots in the anthologies.

Carl Clark, who found the once lost play, has contributed an inestimable amount to English literature.

I saw myself being awarded PhD’s from universities across the US and England.  But more than that, I’d be the first to look upon this play.  Something that Nashe and Ben Jonson touched. 

            By the end of my second year at Northeast Louisiana University, Dr. Holmes had gone practically bald.  “You’ll be the death of me, Carl Clark.  And I’ll curse you on my death bed.”  Drama majors!

            In June, after my last class was out, I packed up all of my belongings and stuck it in storage.  I had plans to go to England to find the play.  I still had one year left of school, but that was for my outside research for the thesis paper.  Dr. Holmes was begging me to not go, and my fellow graduate students were laughing at me.  I’ll have to admit that at the time the thought of going over to England, looking for a play that had been lost for over 400 years, and expecting to find it really scared me.  But by nature, I’m a stubborn person.  I couldn’t let Dr. Holmes or the other students feel like they had won.  I knew that there was a chance that I wouldn’t ever find the play.  That I would never get my Master’s degree.  But that was a chance that I’d just have to take.  How cliché is that? 

            Even though I was prepared for having a rough time in England, I wasn’t ready for how rough it really was going to be.  Strangely enough there was a language barrier.  A whole new culture. With totally different rules.

            A few days after I got to London, I thought it’d be a great idea to hit the libraries, check out a few books and see if maybe the play would just so happen to fall out of the pages of one of the books.  Ha.  That’d be perfect. 

Applause. More applause.

            “Please please.  Your love is too much.  I swear I just walked into the dang library, picked up a copy of Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament and the daggum thing just fell out.  How funny.”

Chanting.  “Carl Clark!  Carl Clark!  Carl Clark!”

            Present are the Deans of Oxford, Harvard, Princeton and Owens Community College.  “Congratulations.  Here are your honorary degrees.”

            “What?  Another PhD for lil ole me? Awwwww.”

            “Excuse me, sir.  You’re drooling on our books.  If you’re going to sleep, you need to not do it in our library.  Your snoring is disturbing the others.”  I awoke to see a librarian hovering over me.  I’d be lying if I said she was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life.  But that’s not to say she wasn’t pretty. 

            I wiped my face and gathered my books as the librarian walked off.  I’d been in London for three weeks by the time I finally met her.  I’d flipped open every book I could possibly think of.  Shaken a few of them too.  I was still awaiting permission to visit some of the houses that Nashe had reportedly lived in at least 400 years ago.  Yes.  I really did have plans of taking a hammer with me to pry up floorboards while no one was looking.  Maybe that’s why no one gave me access to the homes.  It dawned on me, though, as I watched the pretty librarian walk back to her desk, that all I needed to do was  get in with the locals.  Maybe someone like a librarian could help me in my research. 

            “Hi.  Sorry about the sleeping.  I have narcolepsy,” I said, after quickly grabbing my belongings and chasing after her.  She didn’t look up from her desk.  I stared at the top of her head.  Brown hair, with maybe one or two gray hairs.  She was probably in her mid-thirties.  I was disappointed that she didn’t have her hair pulled back in a bun, but she was definitely wearing the typical librarian glasses, neck-chain included.  She had a long nose, but not too long.  A pretty nose.  And a ruddy face.  No, rosey.  Women have rosey faces.  Well.  I eventually married her, so she’ll be reading this as soon as I’m done typing it.  So of course she had a flawlessly rosey face.  An angel sent from heaven.

            “Excuse me.  I said I’m sorry about the sleeping.  I don’t have any other place to sleep.  Can I sleep with you?”

            She quickly looked up at me, alarmed and appalled.  I laughed and put my hands up, in an “I’m not armed” fashion.  “I’m kidding,” I said.

            She glared at me and returned to her book on her desk.  She was reading Shakespeare.  Comedy of Errors, more specifically.  I think this was one of only two times in my life that Fate was on my side. 

            “I to the world am like a drop of water that in the ocean seeks another drop, Who, falling there to find his fellow forth, Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself . . . .”  The eloquence of Shakespeare, once again, to the rescue.

            The librarian looked up at me, smiled and then laughed. 

            “I’m Carl,” I whispered, crouching down next to her desk. 

            “Ashley,” she said. 

I quickly put my finger to my mouth, gesturing that she should lower her voice.  “This is a library.  We should leave.  And talk somewhere.”

“The pub around the corner. At seven.  You’re buying my dinner.” 

            I smiled.  “Seven.  Good.  That’ll give me a few more hours to sleep.”

            “Go,” she mouthed, pointing to the door. 

            When you walk into the Tipperary on Fleet Street, the first thing you smell is ale.  Old ale.  And some baking bread.  Thomas Nashe was too drunk to notice either of these smells though, the night that he staggered in.  He grinned at the patrons, trying at the same time to look around for a familiar face.  But it was difficult because mainly he was so drunk he could barely stand, and also because of how dark the pub was at night.  Candles and gas lamps lit small areas, but the dark wood benches, tables and floor absorbed most of the light.  There wasn’t any music.  Just a few people, as intoxicated as Tom, that were signing.  But there were a lot of talkers.  The pub maybe had a maximum capacity, if there had been requirements for that kind of sign during the time, of fifty, but there were more like eighty people there. 

            Tom leaned against the bar, still looking.  Then he heard it:  Ben’s distinct laughter.  Damn that man was brave.  Three weeks in The Clink and he’d show his face out in public again.  As a matter of fact, Tom was brave showing his face around Ben.  After all, it was partially his fault that Ben and a couple of other actors with him had been thrown in jail.  His fault that he and every other playwright/actor had been out of work for most of the last month.

            Tom staggered over to Ben’s laugh.  Ben was seated in the middle of a group of about eight other men. 

“ . . . so he just looked at me and said, ‘If you’d like to finish the damn play yourself, I’ll sell it to you.’ And I bought him a pint of ale for it.  Ha.”  Ben’s cheeks were rosey and he laughed again.  “I responded, ‘Ha.  For drink, what have I got to lose?’  And I regret those words now, my friends.”  The group roared with laughter.

            One of the men smiled and asked, as Ben took a gulp from his ale, “What was in the play?  Why’d they throw you in the clink?”

            “Ha!  A spy.”  He pointed, melodramatically.  “You’re all part of the Queen’s guard, methinks.  Sent to see if I’d say anything.  Another three weeks locked up?  No thank you.  I shall never tell!!”

            Drunkenly, Tom laughed and fell into the group, being caught by two of the men. 

            “Tom!  You brave bastard.”  Ben snorted with laughter and slapped Tom on the face. 

            “I’ll tell you what it was about,” Tom slurred.  “Our eloquent Ben Jonson called the Queen a raunchy old—”

            “No.  Let’s not tell what I said.  Grab a pint—“

            “Or two . . . .”  The group burst into laughter..

            “—and join us, Tom.”

            I wondered what kind of ale Nashe drank.  Maybe he didn’t drink ale at all.  Maybe that was a misconception.  Definitely something I considered looking into.  I wondered if scholars wrote about what different authors drank.  Do they research that?  Ha.  I decided I could always use it as a back-up topic if the play never surfaced. 

            When the barmaid (she wasn’t too happy when I called her that) approached my table, I asked her if she knew what table Jonson and Nashe had sat at. 

            “From what I heard,” she said, “they had as many different tables as they did women.”

            The acting business was drawing the girls even back then. 

            I looked around the bar, rife with history.  Pictures and prints from the Victorian era.  Pictures of Fleet Street, the street the Tipperary is on, as it bustled during the Industrial era.  And mirrors lined the oak-paneled walls.  I wanted to drag my hand along the oak panels, in the hopes that I’d trip some secret panel.  Maybe the first place Nashe ran to, to hide the play, was his one true home, the Tipperary.

            I looked at the mirrors for a long while.  They were just at eye-level as I sat in my oak booth.  I wondered if the mirrors had been there when Nashe was there.  If he had sat at a table, in the evening, all alone, the same as I was.  Did he look at himself and think the same things I was thinking.  A man with big intentions, normally leading to failure.  Maybe that’s why Nashe sold the play.  It got too big for him.  Or he sat and stared at his reflection too long.  Realized he’d never be anything.  Or at least thought that he’d never be anything.  But now he was something to me.  I told myself that perhaps I’d be something, too, perhaps to someone else.  At least, if I could find the play, I could make both Nashe and myself something famous.  Well, for our own fifteen minutes. 

            I watched, in the reflection of the mirror, the waitress approach my table with my ale.  I smiled at her and took it.  Then, holding it up to my reflection in true Hollywood-style, I toasted my imaginary companion, Thomas Nashe.  “To the play.”

            “Here here!  To the play that ruined my career,” Ben bellowed. 

            Tom laughed.  “We should write more plays together.”  The group hushed. 

            “You’ll get us thrown in jail, Tom.  Have another pint.” 

            I’ve never really understood how the playwrights from the 1600’s could drink so much.  I heard in a class once that the water from the Thames and other rivers in England were so polluted that it was safer to drink the alcohol.  I know if I drink something and try to write, try to drive, or, yes, there was once when I experimented with trying to teach a class while intoxicated, then my abilities would be impaired.  I think in class I rambled on about something like how Dr. Samuel Johnson was an ass for writing the first dictionary, thus managing to stifle our language as we know it.  “Whuts soo rong with speling werds various weighs?”  I wrote that on the board as I said it.  It has long been my idea that if we say “too” for an excessive amount (too little too late), then we should say “soo” for an excessive amount (soo many women, soo little time).  The theory makes sense to me.  My plan when I was younger was to write some major paper on the subject.  Argue with the council of the OED and convince them to change the spelling.  But then I realized that would be just one more thing for English professors to get in a fit over.  One more thing to say, “Wrong use of ‘so’!”  Yeah.  I gave up that idea. 

            Spelling wasn’t an issue in Nashe and Jonson’s time.  When studying the old plays, it’s obvious that some words have the same meaning, but they’re just spelled differently.  Some could argue that this makes it more difficult to understand what the playwright was trying to say, but I say it doesn’t matter. 

            When Ashley showed up at the pub, I explained all of this to her.  She listened quietly, ordered a gin and tonic and nodded politely as I babbled.   

            “You mean to say you went to class drunk?”  She said, after I had finished my story. 

            “Well.  Just slightly tipsy.”

            She smiled and it was one of those weird things where I knew that she was someone that I could never get tired of talking to.  Funny how you just know these things sometimes.  She had green eyes and she had lost the glasses.  When I asked her about them, she laughed.  “Oh.  I just use those at the library.  They’re not real.  They just make people feel more comfortable.  You know how many times a day I used to get asked where my ‘librarian glasses’ were?”  Then she giggled. 

            As I was working on my second ale, she was ordering another gin and tonic.  It’s funny that I remember almost everything about our first “date.”  She had a white sweater on and a cute dress.  Flower-y.

            Halfway through her second gin and tonic, she asked me what I was doing in London.

“Searching for a lost play.”  I shrugged.  “That and trying to find out some information about it.”

            “Got lucky yet?”  she asked.  She hadn’t laughed or even looked at me oddly. 

            “Not with the play.”

            She kicked me under the table and laughed.  “What play are you searching for and why’s it so important to find it?”

            “Well.  My master’s thesis depends on it.  Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson closed all of the theatres in London due to the play.”

            “Isle of Dogs,” she said, matter-of-factly, slurping on her drink.

            “Yeah,” I said, thinking I was falling madly in love with her.  “You think you can help me find it?”

            She laughed.  “Probably not.  But I can tell you where you’re not going to find it.  I’m guessing it won’t be the library.” 

            “I know,” I said, staring down at my empty glass.  “But you can’t blame a guy for trying, right?”

            “I guess not.  You know what I learned?  It’s always such a funny thing.”

            I looked at her, sitting there with her brown hair not in a bun, white sweater buttoned from the top to the bottom.  She was so smart, and I could see that she was sincere.  “What’s that?”  I asked.

            “You always find the thing you’re looking for in the last place you looked.”  She winked.  “Hope that helps.”

            I laughed.  “Amazing.  Mind if I cite you in the paper?  O, Wise Ashley, the Librarian with fake glasses.” 

            “Sounds like a great start to a sonnet.”  We looked at each other for a while.  And then smiled as the waitress brought another round of drinks for us.

            “You know,” I said, trying to sound smart, trying to impress her, “the Elizabethans believed that by making eye-contact with another person that they see into that person’s soul.”

            “That’s why women had to keep their eyes down.  Hence Romeo and Juliet were doomed from the start, since they looked into each other’s eyes.”

            I rolled my eyes.  “Well, gee.  Everyone knows that,” I said, teasingly.  “Imagine my luck,” I said, trying not to lose my train of thought in her eyes, “finding a woman who knows Shakespeare, Elizabethan drama, and works in a library.  I think I’m the happiest man in the world right now.”

            “Wow.  Imagine my luck,” she started, reaching across the table and taking my hand, “finding a guy that’s so easy to make happy.” 

            Add that to my list.  Drinking before and during a first date. Definitely the most unique experience of my life.  I was thinking this as I looked at her, probably looking like a lovesick puppy.

            She smiled and took a sip of her gin and tonic.  “Now would that be ‘so easy to make happy’ or ‘soo easy to make happy’?”  She winked.

            We continued with our “date,” had dinner, and talked about her job and about my searching for the play.  It was amazing because she was the first person who didn’t tell me that I was a fool for looking for the play.  She thought it was a great idea.  Maybe it was because she already had her master’s degree in Library Sciences.  Or maybe it was because she knew that I didn’t need to hear another person say I was a fool for doing it.  Still holding my hand, she told me that she knew I could find it.  And that made my wanting to find it even greater.  I didn’t want to disappoint her.

            It wasn’t long before the impracticality of my living in a pricey apartment and her living in her own pricey apartment finally got to us and we moved in together.  It’s not to say that I let her distract me.  She just motivated me to try even harder.  And maybe she got tired of hearing me talk about the play all of the time, but she never let on.  Although when I had first met her at the library I had wanted to just get a local’s opinion, now there were more benefits to being with her.  She knew a lot of the older areas and what places actually gave tours.  She knew where some archives were kept, and also helped me gain access to some of Ben Jonson’s writings. 

            After about four months in London, I became desperate to find something.  Anything.  I wanted a letter or something, maybe, that just referenced the play.  But it seemed that Queen Elizabeth I and her Royal Guards were very thorough.  Or perhaps the punishment threatened was soo severe that no one wanted to even talk about it.  I wondered how many other plays had been destroyed.  Plays that no one talked about or remembered.  A part of our history, our language, lost. 

            “That’s just sentimental drivel.  You sure you’re not a Romantic in an Elizabethan scholar’s body?”  A professor at Oxford and I had met while trying to simultaneously gain access to some Nashe archives.  I told him all about my searching for the play.  He was a skeptic. 

            “Mr. Clark,” he said, emphasizing the Mr., “It seems wholly irrational to think that you could just find a play that has been lost for 400 years,” he told me.

            “It seems, Dr. Peters,” I said, mockingly emphasizing the Dr., “that you’re not familiar with the ole Yankee mentality.  When the Brits say we can’t do something, that makes us want to do it more.”  He laughed and invited me to a drink at the Tipperary. 

            Dr. Jamie Peters was an older man, with a PhD in Jacobian and Elizabethan drama.  At the time, he was working on a theory that perhaps Nashe had written some of the plays that had been attributed to Shakespeare.  We had lively conversations and at some point, after many trips to the library, then back to the pub, that it was impossible.  Shakespeare’s writing was lively and made bold political statements, but nothing as harsh and cutting as Nashe’s writings.  Nashe couldn’t help it.  He was just an asshole.

            “So,” Dr. Peters asked as we were sitting in the same booth that Ashley and I had sat in (it was quickly becoming known as my booth), “if he was such an ‘asshole’ as you say, then why’s it so important or relevant that you find this play?”

After a few beers I snarfed, which is basically when you laugh and beer comes out of your nose, “I just want the fame that goes with it.”  I expected him to laugh.  I mean, he seemed like a pretty easy-going guy.  But he took his literature seriously.  I donned a serious expression and explained, “I think that it’s an important play to not only English Literature but English History.  And drama too.  Imagine how much we can find out about all facets of that period of time in England.”  I waited for his response.  He slowly nodded his head.

            “So have you checked Norfolk?”

            “Where Nashe was born?” I asked.  He nodded.  “Not yet.  I didn’t think he ever returned there after he came to London.”

            “Well.  Rumors were that he fled somewhere after everyone was arrested for the play.  Where did he flee to?”

            “I didn’t find anything on that.  I just know that he fled.  I heard rumors that he’d gone to Great Yarmouth.”

            He nodded.  “And the leather portfolio?”

            “Just another rumor,” I said.  I guess I could say I was lucky for running into Dr. Peters, but later events proved that it was not good luck, as you’ll see.

            “Then you haven’t seen the letter that Richard Lichfield wrote to a companion about Nashe’s fleeing London?”

“Lichfield? The man who made the satirical portrait of Nashe?”

“And the insulting pamphlet. . .  yes.”  Dr. Peters scratched his gray beard and looked sternly at me.  “You haven’t done much of your research, have you, Mr. Clark?” 

Just then Ashley walked in.  I had told her I’d be at the pub and she came to meet me for lunch.  She approached our booth, kissed me on the cheek, called to the waitress for a Tom Collins, and looked at Dr. Peters.

Dr. Peters smiled.  Then he looked at me.  “Now I see what you’ve been researching.”  He winked at me and said demeaningly to Ashley, “Good afternoon, young lady.  I’m Dr. Peters.”

Ashley looked at me and then back at Dr. Peters.  She snorted in laughter and sat down next to me.  “Ashley.  Nice to meet you.  I only have a thirty minutes for lunch.  No time for formal stuff.”

She downed her Tom Collins when the waitress brought it over and I just beamed.  What a woman!!

            Based on First Impressions, I would have guessed that Dr. Peters was a nice man.  He seemed helpful and asked thought-provoking questions.  But after a few weeks of talking to him, I realized that his intention wasn’t necessarily to help me, but rather to discourage me from the topic.  Why was it that soo many English scholars didn’t want me to find the play?

            “It’s not that I don’t want you to find the play, Mr. Clark.  I just want you to go about finding it the right way.  Who’s to say that someone can’t just make a play and call it the lost one?  Or maybe someone found an old play, changed the name, and will now try to sell it to you as the play you’re looking for.  Just be careful.  I want your research to be valid and scientific.”
            “Scientific?” I asked.  “What is scientific about a play?  That’s why we have Science divisions in colleges and the Arts division.  There’s nothing scientific about this.”

            Dr. Peters shook his head.  “You just don’t get it.”

            I thought it was a conspiracy to keep me from finding the play.  Now, almost fifty years after this talk, I realize that his concern wasn’t that far off.

            After a few weeks of talking to Dr. Peters, I finally got tired of his constant criticism and avoided him at all costs.  This meant going to the library at the most insane of times:  10 in the morning.  He had classes until the afternoon. 

            Thankfully, this cut back on the amount of ale I was ingesting.  Sure.  Ashley and the ale were interfering with my research, but not because I wasn’t letting it.  I was getting depressed.  After five months of looking for the stinking play, I still had found nothing. 

            Before I started avoiding him, Dr. Peters had acquired a copy of that letter he had told me about.  Sure enough, it said that Nashe had been seen by many escaping London, leather portfolio in hand.  The rumors were that the play was tucked into that leather portfolio.  Rumor also had it that Nashe had signed it when selling it to Ben Jonson, then Jonson had signed it when giving it back to Nashe.  The relevance was that before copy machines and copyright laws, playwrights would sign their plays.  A signed copy meant that it was “officially” (if you will) what the playwright had written. 

            It was obvious to Dr. Peters and even Ashley that I hadn’t done and wasn’t doing my research.  It was time I sat down and found out about Thomas Nashe and his play. 

            Thomas Nashe was known for his biting wit.  And he made comments about British Royalty, politicians, fellow playwrights, and other notable people.  His comments were sometimes cruel, but most of the time they were humorous.  He would poke fun at anyone or anything.  My kind of guy.

            It’s funny how sometimes we, as literary critics, don’t take into consideration all the time and toil that writing requires.  That we don’t realize that sometimes, in just one piece, a writer undergoes a lot of different emotions.  Like at some points, I write this and I am happy with the outcome of my life.  I made one major mistake and it ruined what I had once hoped to achieve.  And then some days, I wake up and say, “Wow.  Look at what this mistake has brought me.”  And I am glad that my life followed this treacherous path.  But who knows.  Why do we always assume that the “greats” like Shakespeare, Milton, Yeats, Frost, Angelou, Me (Clark) are always infallible?  Funny. Like we’re perfect.  Maybe Sylvia Plath had the right idea.  Stick your head in a stove before anyone calls you a poseur.  Sheesh.  I read something one time that said, “Would Plath be the respected poet that she is now if she hadn’t killed herself?”  That makes me laugh ‘cause I know they’ll be saying the same thing about me in fifty years.  “Would Clark be in anthologies if he hadn’t done what he did?”  And I say no.  No regrets, I guess.  Or rather, you can’t change the past, so you might as well grin and bear it. 

            I spent six whole months looking for that play.  I had Dr. Peters, Ashley and a few others that I had met in the mean time helping me look for the play.  And we came up with . . . yeah . . . you guessed it . . . jack squat.  So I started thinking.  This is pointless.  I kept reading the same things over and over again.  I wrote a letter to Dr. Holmes.  He had emailed me the day before I wrote the letter.  He said, “How’s the ‘non-existent’ play search going?”  Ha.  Like rub it in my face, why don’t ya.  So I wrote him a letter back.  Said, “I know so much about this damn play that I could write the whole thing myself.”  And that got me to thinking, “Who says I couldn’t write it?”  I’d just need some paper.  Some ink.  Stuff that maybe would date back to the 1600’s.  Just to make it look good.  The idea was funny at first.  You know how sometimes you suggest something totally off the wall?  And people take you seriously?  Then you’re obligated to it?  Well.  I bought the paper.  At a thrift store.

            I’d studied the writing.  The words. The scripts.  I knew the history of England at the time.  No one, I thought, knew as much about Elizabethan drama as I did.  Maybe . . . just maybe . . . no one would notice that the play was forged.  Yeah.  Forged.  My degree depended on it.  If I wanted the degree, I had to have the play.  The REAL play? Nah. Wasn’t a necessity.  Just something that everyone THOUGHT was the real play.  Hell.  Maybe I’d get an honorary PhD for finding the daggum thing. 

            So imagine this.  I’m sitting on the floor of Ashley’s and my apartment (while she’s at work, mind you), writing some play ‘cause I can’t find the real one.  Any time I hear a creak or cough from another room, I quickly grab all the papers and shove them under the bed.  Or sometimes, even when the phone would ring I’d hide everything.  What would Ashley think?  A plagiarizer?  Worse yet . . . what would she think if I never did find the play?  And I didn’t get that degree?  Ha.  I’d be shipped, for sure, back to the US . . . without my Ashley.  I had so many ways of justifying what I did, it wasn’t even funny. 

            So I wrote the play in secret.  I knew the writing style of Nashe.  Cruel. Crass. Tongue-in-cheek.  Once a student asked me, “What does ‘tongue-in-cheek’ mean anyway?”  And I said, “Means you’ll get an A if you tell all your friends to take my class.”  Like I got paid for recommending students to take English 101. Tongue-in-cheek.

            It was funny how quickly I managed to write the play.  I’ve never written anything that quickly in my life.  You know how the old writers called on a muse to help them write?  Well . . . I never called on a muse, but it was as if someone was helping me to write the play.  Like my hand was being guided.  At one point, my writing was so easy and fluid that I told myself that perhaps Nashe and Jonson themselves were guiding my hand; helping me to rewrite the play.  If I couldn’t literally find it . . . I could vicariously find it.  Through them.

            In one month, I had the play written.  Ashley never knew.  She wondered, yes, why I was so happy.  I’d been so depressed the weeks before I decided to start writing the play on my own.  Then when I started writing it, I was so happy.  I thought of so many things.  Sometimes I’d get off track and say, “No.  This is THEIR play.  I have to listen to what they tell me.”  And I’d write it as I felt the Elizabethans would.  As Nashe and Jonson would.  What would get them into soo much trouble.

            And my play was a masterpiece.  It’d make the anthologies, I was sure. 

            When the play was done, I hid it between Ashley’s and my mattress.  I had it there for three weeks.  Almost as long as it took me to write the play.  It was funny ‘cause when it was time to announce that it was done, I got scared.  I realized that people would think that the play I had written was really the play that Nashe and Jonson had written.  Maybe even the Tipperary, the pub I loved by then to hang out in, would put something up about it.  Especially since I made several references to it in my forged Isle of Dogs version.

            Then Dr. Holmes called.  Left a message.  It said, “Clark.  Your advisory board has just lost a faculty member.  Dr. Smythe died last week.  So you’ll have to choose someone new, or hope that another person will volunteer.  Don’t take too long with the play, otherwise, no one will know you and you’ll have to start all over with your degree.”  Good advice.  It was time to reveal the play.  I didn’t have the thesis written.  But I was SURE that my play was soo good that I’d be awarded any and all degrees I ever dreamed of. 

            On a Monday morning, I traveled out to Norfolk.  Not because there was anything relevant there, but because I couldn’t let Ashley know that I just reached under our bed and pulled out a play.  I came back the next day, a Tuesday, and showed it to her.  I was shaking, which was a good cover.  I said, “I found this and I think it might be the real play.  Tell me it isn’t.  Tell me it is a fake.”

            She looked at me like I was the greatest man alive.  I knew I would marry her in that instant.  Another part of my life that I lied my way into. 

            She told me that it looked like the other “real” plays she’d seen at the archives.  That it definitely seemed to have the authentic Nashe and Jonson signatures on it.  “But I thought the rumor said that the play had a leather portfolio with it?”  She looked at me quizzically. 

            I had decided that trying to find a leather portfolio would be too expensive.  Plus risky.  If I paid with a  credit card, it would be more likely for someone to trace the payment.  This way, if someone was to do research, they wouldn’t find much.  I had paid cash for everything.  A leather portfolio from around the early 1600’s was around $3000.  I decided it was better to just say, “Myths!  I found the play without a leather portfolio!”

            “Where’d you find it?” Ashley asked.  I shrugged. 

            “I was just flipping through some papers at the old Nashe estate.  His parents’ residence.  They had it.  ‘Cause you know rumor said that’s where he ran to hide when the police were after him.”

            She nodded.  She had a play in her hand and she was willing to accept any excuse I gave.  Her look said, “No one would waste soo much time to fake something like this!”  Plus, in her eyes, I had only been gone one day.  That wasn’t enough time to fake a play.  The idea that I had been stashing it while she was at work never crossed her mind.

            I called Dr. Holmes as Ashley was peering through the play.  I said, “I’ve found it.  Like I said I would.”  He called everyone he knew.  I’m sure lots didn’t care.

            Dr. Peters showed up at the library.  He harassed Ashley until she told him where the council was meeting to evaluate my play.  Rather . . . evaluate Nashe and Jonson’s play.  He wasn’t happy that I had found the play.  After all, I had no idea what I was looking for, according to him.

It was interesting because the play wasn’t evaluated as I had presumed it would be.  I assumed that many scholars would be called, that inspectors would test the play, and that some government official would be needed to “approve” the play.  Instead, five professors from Oxford were called in.  Who knew if they were English teachers.  Ashley had told her boss at the library that I had found the play and her boss called his bosses.  They then called the papers.  It was a media frenzy.  Everyone was excited that something from over 400 years ago had been found.  A call came in from the queen. 

“Make sure it’s the actual thing.  Let’s not make my predecessor look bad.”

So she appointed a council (made up aforementioned five scholars from Oxford) to review the play and verify that it was the actual play.  They read it, examined the paper and ink and said, without “much ado” announced that it was in fact an authentic play.  After all, Ashley was my witness.  I had been in London then just left and found the play.  They never even questioned where I had stayed at in Norfolk.  Never wondering if a Nashe estate even existed anymore.

Dr. Holmes was ecstatic.  All of a sudden, he was claiming that it was his idea for me to go in search of the play.  It was as if everyone hopped on the Carl Clark bandwagon.  But I could tell that Dr. Peters wasn’t happy.  He wasn’t convinced.  He saw through the Norfolk excuse.

“Just where is this Nashe estate?”

“Ha!” I laughed at him.  “And you call yourself a Nashe scholar?  Look it up!”  And I, of course, lived to regret those words.

After the scholars accepted the play, they gave it to me.  I was, after all, the finder of the play.  According to law, “finders keepers.”  It was up to me to decide who to send the play to.  I could chose anyone.  So I waited for the richest offer to pour in.  And definitely the offers did “pour” in.  I had thought, at one point, that no one was interested in Elizabethan drama, but it seemed that they were really interested in this “Cinderella” story.  A rejected play that was found and loved.

Also what poured in were the offers to speak at local colleges and universities.  I was still in London, since I didn’t want to leave Ashley (and I honestly didn’t have the money to afford to move back to the states).  I took jobs, speaking at schools, explaining how I found the play.  Each time, I got a little more enthusiastic about finding the play.  “Waalaah!” I proclaimed.  “There it was, sitting under a loose floorboard in Nashe’s old bedroom.  I sneaked out of the home, took it to my hotel room, read it over and said, ‘Yes! This IS the play I’ve been searching for!’”  Some people even cried when I got to that part.  Who would have known?

I “found” the play in January.  By May, the month that I should have had my thesis done and been preparing to graduate, I had been sent a letter by Oxford, offering me a position to teach Elizabethan Drama there.  So I called Dr. Holmes and told him I’d be leaving the graduate program at NLU.  He was upset, understandably so.  I was his star student and NLU needed a distinguished alumnus.  So they awarded me an honorary Masters of Arts in Elizabethan Literature.  Just what I wanted.

After four months of lecturing and promising the “highest bidder” the play, I finally got tired of it.  Imagine.  Getting all these calls.  All these people saying, “Wow!  You must be soo proud to have found this play.  What an attribute to English literature.”  I started to feel horrible.  I mean, schools even started offering classes geared around the play.  NLU asked me to come and teach a course, explaining the research and finding of lost plays.  I was now the most respected play researcher for Elizabethan plays.  I was getting calls from other professors, asking me to help them find plays.  I knew that the next call would be from Dr. Peters.  He’d probably start backpeddling.  Start telling me that he wanted me to help him with his Nashe/Shakespeare research. 

How many scholarly theories were going to be based on my placebo-play?  Just because I got all messed up thinking I wouldn’t find the real one.  The real one didn’t exist.  Just my fake.

Understandably, I too started feeling like a fake.  Like a sham.  At night, I would lay down next to Ashley and I imagined that she could hear my subconscious yelling, “NO!  I’m a fraud!!  Please tell me you see it.”  It’s all fake!

Instead, one night she rolled over and snuggled up next to me.  She held me close and whispered in my ear, “I’m so proud of you.  I just knew that you were going to find that play.”  And a sob, one that ran from my stomach to the top of my throat, escaped my mouth.  My body shook and pulled away from her tender touch.  I brought my knees to my chest and put my hands over my eyes, even though our room was pitch black. 

My lie was a stabbing pain.  I spent 3 days in bed, refusing to get up.  I sobbed and kept my face buried in my pillow.  Ashley was, of course, concerned.  I heard people come in; hypothesize that I had sunken into a “Post-Discovery Depression.” 

“All of the greats experience this.  They have had a life-long quest and when they finally complete it, they are left with this hollow feeling.”

Finally, I asked myself, “How many other ‘greats’ had just faked it?”  Then I started thinking about all of the near-greats that hadn’t faked it.  That had died trying.  Amelia Earhart, trying to be the first woman to fly around the world. Martin Luther King, Jr., trying to have equal rights for everyone. All of the men and women that died in the World Trade Towers, trying to find a way to help save people. Galileo, trying to prove that the Earth wasn’t the center of the world.

I cheated.  There would be no place reserved for me in the great English Heaven, next to Nashe, Jonson, Shakespeare, and the many many other greats.