Shakespeare’s Monkey

I am Shakespeare’s “monkey,” and I dress like a prince out on the town.

London-town, that is. Will it was out whoring with Marlowe, cheering up on A Comedy of Errors, when at the pub table I was the only seat taken at the only table remotely open, and they buggered their way in, ranting and panting about now is the winter not heaven sent and I right honorably said, “Now that you’re drinking my ale, now is the winter of our discontent,” and at that ducats flew up my nose, and Marlowe slid his knife to make a close shave of my “monkey whiskers.”

I am really a bonobo, and English is a second language for my tongue[JS2] , and Will smiled huge up Marlowe’s ass and said like this: we’ll make you the happiest monkey in Christendom, and I said, I just like the free life of an Englishman and that gave them a great big laugh, and Marlowe handed me my wallet with a thick grin and said, you’re gonna be the genius behind the Globe, behind Shakespeare and Marlowe and Company, and that is Act One and Scene One of how I, Cornelius, lived to be the “monkey” genius of myth behind Shakespeare (and Marlowe to a lesser extent too).

I’ll tell you some whoppers and blunders.

I am a self-made “monkey.” I made a killing on the streets doing jigs for passersby outside the theaters. My master was named Lord Johnson; he was a learned man who had purchased me for his curiosity cabinet. He had a gaunt body, straight up like a May Pole, and hair like a worn carpet. His eyes were either ice cold or fiery coals.

He taught me English and instructed me in the Bible ways, the “Queen’s English” and the “Good Book,” and he lived alone with his well-fed library and his stuffed animals and his “idols,” and when he got furious over my mispronunciation of well-mannered argot, he struck me with a cane and I danced and that would make me happy, and when he was off for the day or even the night, I’d make friendly with his books. He nicknamed me “The Monkey Monk” and then his life came to pass and he died; he gave up the ghost while eating marmalade and toast, and I was off to the street, and flocked to the theater district across the Thames, which had nothing on our African waters, and I made a killing picking pockets and doing jigs for the idlers and students and prostitutes.

Outside the Globe, many a day and one day in particular, while Shakespeare and Marlowe were pouring out of the theater late, late in the afternoon with their entourage, Will said to Armin, “The monkey can out-jig you, mate.”

And I held my tongue for I wanted not for the street to know I spoke English better than their frail, fleshy, snailish tongues or they would jump me like the first winter wind, and they laughed and went on after throwing up cut coinage in my bosom, and I was well-dressed, wasn’t I, but I was homeless as a stray dog.

And Marlowe whipped out his knife and picked a leg of lamb and put hot sauce on it and he talked, making ellipses in the air; other than that, his rage was well-garbed. “Proposal to vet your verbiage for our prime usage in The Admiral’s Men: the secret is, Will and I are the prime movers of coming script, but you are the Midas touch: your simian tongue is leafed with gold.”

Marlowe, it must be said, talked like a law degree lettered fresh off the printing press.

“I’m no genius,” I said. “I can merely dance with my feet and with words.”

Will was really shy, but when he spoke it spoke volumes; it spoke hurricanes. “By the Welkin, you were blessed with oval eyes and equipped with a racy, razor tongue. It’s a good life, better than on the dirty streets.”

“I am happy to live out my days dancing my heart out for God and the sun to see. My inner dialogue is mine and mine alone. It is immortal every moment,” I squeaked with the vellum of my voicebox.

Will was quite a charming fellow: he had the smile of the first day of creation. He said: “There is a play — we call it The Merchant of Venice — with a Jewish moneylender who is a villainous rogue; we have to make him into a palpable, pleasing good fellow, just for a few lines.”

“I’m just a monkey,” I says . “What do I care about you, heathen human swine!”

He says back to me, as Marlowe was reaching for his dagger[JS16] under the table, “Don’t mug with us, monkey! We’ll stuff you for the Queen!”

That got me furious, alive and kicking, and I said, “Hath not a monkey senses, dimensions? If you’re a prick to me, I’ll make you bleed. I drink the same ale and eat the same corn and the same meat, and my tongue is as valiant as yours!”

And they laughed and patted and petted me and said, “You’re a fine specimen, you’re hired.”

Then Will said, “We won; now you will score!”

I thought he meant loot, but knew what score and wherefore and why when Kit, as we in the merry band called Marlowe, grabbed a wench weary with food trays, scaring this poor bovine creature with his eyes and claws, eyes scorching all over the damn pub for leprous leaps of violence, and the wench named Alice yowling and Kit pulling her ear to his tongue, and he said, “You are a pair with a hairy Monkey; show Cornelius a good time, for the happiness and pep of relations between the stock and barrel of our fine and funny races.”

You could see Will eying the situation, like it were the Rape of Lucrece, and I parted the abyss between them and, grabbing a chair, about to sit it on Kit’s pate as Will’s smile was about to mute into a scowl, I said: “God made chimps and wenches for good cheer. Have a seat and I’ll serenade you with a poem of old Afric.”

And Kit took his seat — he could race around the square in a quick circle — and they all, Alice included, took a place around the table, and we had a round of ale and I told all of my first love, the woman — yes, she was human — an African princess, whose name my simian nature could not notch in the spaces between your ears; she used to toy and play with me and tell me about the harem of her father the King who had no sons and who spent his time talking to the animals, and I knew English from the traders resident in his reigndom. Here is the poem without further ado:

Our hairy hearts skinny-dipped in Afric’s lonely Eden, Never truly naked, our body but one physique, Truants trespassing on the trunk of the tree of knowledge, Our love groomed in sunlit groves, the midday’s music. Rude is our bastardly college, Where fingers sing the ABCs of your carnal grunts, And your groan, my child’s word, speaks your fairy name — love.

And Will said across to Kit: “Mighty fine line, of love’s infamous whine.”

And thus Shylock’s (his name was my device) soliloquy was born and thus my career as the genius behind the geniuses was born, and I penned the eulogy at Kit’s funeral and I did a jig for Will’s, who were lifetime companions and colleagues. And Alice became my poetic wife, for she needed a gentleman to care for her, and we lived long, dwelling as a famous couple known throughout the boroughs of London and the shires surrounds

Aye! My last acts were pretty glorious for a simple bonobo come from far off, far, far, away, over the vasty, bloody seas!