ISSN 2421-2679 83 Stretching the truth: festivity, re-enactment and creative invention H. Neville Davies organised a series of concerts that supplemented the core programme of the biennial International Shakespeare Conference by the performance of wide-ranging Shakespeare related music of a ong before Ronnie and I met, he was known kind that opened up unfamiliar perspectives. to me by repute, and not surprisingly, Ronnie, a great lover of music, was a particularly for besides respecting his publications appreciative and enthusiastic supporter of this LI was aware that he had previously occupied festive and pleasurably revealing innovation. It the academic post I held at the University of was just the sort of explorative endeavour that Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute. Times had he advocated. But most of my contact with changed and, with my appointment the post Ronnie was to be at, or under the auspices of, that had formerly been temporary was made Warwick University. He frequently invited me to permanent. But although Ronnie’s tenure had participate in seminars or symposia or academic been limited, his energy and innovative thinking conferences that proved to be immensely had made their mark on both the postgraduate enjoyable as well as informative and immensely community at Stratford-upon-Avon and on stimulating occasions. And I remain greatly the largely undergraduate English Department indebted to him for the warm welcome he always at Birmingham. He then moved to another provided, the open-mindedness he displayed, temporary post, this time at Edinburgh, where and the meticulous planning that preceded these the University, recognising their good fortune, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and productive wisely broke established custom by promoting gatherings. Te publications they gave rise to him to a secure lectureship. Afer a highly stand as testimony to how fruitful they were, but successful Edinburgh career he returned to the successful publication came at a price, and that Midlands, to live at Shakespeare’s Stratford, price was Ronnie’s unremitting determination to contributing in many ways to the vibrancy of its drive each project forward, turning vision into celebrated institutions, and to play a leading role splendid reality. at Warwick University where he developed the “Stretching the Truth” is ofered as a small Graduate School of Renaissance Studies, later tribute to Ronnie. It is rooted, as was Ronnie’s the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, an work, in Shakespearian drama, but its focus is on enterprise that he nurtured with imaginative Renaissance courtly festivity, and in particular scholarship and extraordinary vigour. It was afer on the importance of a theatrical danced his appointment at Warwick that we frst met, conjunction of a monarch and his future consort, when, as new academic neighbour, he revisited the parents of Elizabeth I. Tat focus is, of course, the Shakespeare Institute to give a typically one that impinges, in a modest way, on the feld lively and well-judged paper focussed on Harold of study that became so important to Ronnie and Bloom’s illuminating but controversial notion to which he contributed so much. As he would of Clinamen, the swerve that distances a fresh have expected, my approach is interdisciplinary, successor from its parental predecessor. Tereafer with dance and opera and the life (and death) our paths crossed repeatedly. During the 1980s I of a Tudor court musician contributing to my ISSN 2421-2679 84 argument, and involved as well is the glorious 21; Ives 1988: 47-49). However, it seems to have art of Veronese, so quintessentially Venetian that been another four years afer that before Henry I am reminded of those magnifcent academic became enamoured of her, probably “sometime conferences in Venice that Ronnie made possible. in 1526” (Ives 1988: 108). Yet even before she Perhaps the relationship between a play and its lef France in late 1521, Henry was likely to have sources, and between a picture and the play scene become aware of this remarkably accomplished it illustrates or a precursor that it imitates includes young lady either at the Burgundian court of the a degree of misreading or misprision that could Archduchess Margaret of Austria in 1513 or at the be categorised as Clinamen. Above all, I hope the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520 (ibidem: 31 and 40). result is a pleasurable and engaging read. Ronnie But no doubt Shakespeare or John Fletcher (if he, would certainly have wanted that, but I regret that as is now widely thought, was responsible for this much scholarship that I wished to consult, and particular scene) would have been as little “touched that ought to have been consulted, was unavailable with the desire for [chronological] accuracy” as to me. I wrote during the Covid-19 lockdown of an unrepentant R. L. Stevenson was when, for 2020 when libraries were closed to readers. the purpose of writing his historically inspired tale of Kidnapped – an enthralling read but “no Shakespeare and Fletcher’s King Henry VIII, Act 1, furniture for the scholar’s library” – he transposed scene 4, is set at York Place, Cardinal Wolsey’s grand the crucial and notorious Appin murder from episcopal palace at Westminster, and purports 1752 to 1751, and gave the Jacobite soldier Alan to show the very frst meeting of Henry VIII Breck Stewart a memorable life that extends and one of Queen Katherine’s ladies-in-waiting, well beyond the historical sources (prefatory Anne Boleyn (or Bullen). Te genuine historical “Dedication” to Charles Baxter; Stevenson 2014: occasion in 1527 was a banquet attended by lords 3). With even more fagrant anachronicity, when and by many fair ladies who may or may not have Walter Scott wrote his ‘romance’ of Kenilworth he included Anne, and at which the king, with his was content, despite all his wealth of antiquarian courtier companions, all supposedly incognito, and historical knowledge, to have Amy Robsart, arrived disguised with masks and pretending to Robert Dudley’s frst wife, who had died in much be envoys of a foreign court, yet extravagantly and publicised dubious circumstances in 1560, present fantastically dressed as idealised shepherds. In the at the Kenilworth Castle festivities of 1575, and play these masquers each choose a lady as dancing H. Neville Davies H. Neville content too to credit Shakespeare prematurely partner, Henry, of course, silently selecting the with a reputation not gained until much later most beautiful. Te compliment he immediately (Trevelyan 1949: 204). With a similarly relaxed pays, “Te fairest hand I ever touched. O beauty, attitude, despite their co-authored play that / Till now I never knew thee” (I.4.75-76), uttered spans the period 1520-1533 having been known as an aside, instantly informs the play’s audience originally as All is True and being introduced by that this courtly encounter marks the start of a new a Prologue that almost pugnaciously emphasises a amatory relationship. But it is only afer dancing commitment to veracity, Shakespeare and Fletcher and then unmasking that Henry inquires who wrote for the playhouse and not the schoolroom. his partner was, and is informed it was Tomas Tey deliberately avoided the unhistorical foolery Bullen’s daughter. He responds, “By heaven, she is of Rowley’s Henry VIII play, When You See Me, a dainty one”, and turning to Anne addresses her You Know Me (1605), but strict adherence to directly for the frst time, fnding in their having historical record was not their prime concern. In danced together a convenient excuse for kissing this respect, like the dramatist John Marston in her: “Sweetheart, / I were unmannerly to take you Te Malcontent (1604), Shakespeare, Fletcher, and out / And not to kiss you” (lines 95-96). their like-minded theatrical colleagues “willingly In actual fact the historical Anne’s real debut in an erred” (see Marston’s “To the Reader”, line 6). English court entertainment was indeed at York Place, but fve years earlier, on Shrove Tuesday in March 1522, when both she and Henry participated in the much more spectacular pageant of the assault on the Château Vert (Anglo 1997: 119- ISSN 2421-2679 Edward Hall and Raphael Holinshed choice between Hall and Holinshed. Hall, but not 85 Holinshed, describes the 1522 Shrove Tuesday Indisputably the dramatist’s principal source feasting and assault on the Château Vert in some for the scene of Wolsey’s banquet is George detail. Afer supper, as he reports, the company, Cavendish’s eye-witness account written many including visiting ambassadors from the Emperor years afer the event and then incorporated in Charles V, moved to a brilliantly illuminated Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577, revised chamber at one end of which a turreted castle had edition 1587). Tere, however, the account been constructed. Eight allegorically named ladies is not, as one might have expected, placed of the court commanded this fortress – Beauty, chronologically in its appropriate regnal year, Honour, Perseverance, Kindness, Constance, invention creative and re-enactment festivity, truth: the Stretching but made to provide instead the climax for a Bounty, Mercy, Pity – and although Hall does retrospective review of Wolsey’s career that is not say so, it is now known from other sources prompted by the cardinal’s death in November that “Perseueraunce” was impersonated by Anne 1530. Consequently, to a reader of Holinshed, the Boleyn. Yet even without that frm knowledge unspecifed date of the banquet is not evident. one might reasonably