I don't say I knew personal Queen Bess, but seen her lots, and I knew from Lord Burghley and also Leicester from her council, and Bob Dudley who had his nose always so close to her it would of been in her tochis if it wasn't she wore such a big farthingale, and Charlie Blount I knew who stuck Essex in the leg with his rapier in a duel they fought about who should Queen Bess love best—him and others also I knew! Queen Bess I knew enough to see her a couple times box ears or throw her salter or pepper caster, all from plate and jewels made, from the table at somebody made her angry, so I can say I knew!
Everyone I knew because I was always there at my work with theatricals, the theaters, also all of which I knew, from Theater and Curtain, the first, then The Rose, Blackfriars, and The Globe Dick Burbage's papa built on the South Bank, an oddness because in the place they hanged persons on the gallows—hanging and stocks for lumpenmensch, beheading and the Tower for gentle nobility like Southhampton! I'm not kvetching, only saying.
Before and after the plague years of '92 and '93 when they closed them up so persons shouldn't catch a plague, the theaters I all knew.
I also say I knew not only Annie the wife from Master William, who he kept at Stratford except when he made visits—who he married because only a junge he shtupped her and she had a daughter, her I knew also. I knew not only Annie Shakespeare but also Emilie Lanier, who was a bastard child from Queen Bess's Italian music man Bassano, who herself later was shtupping regular Lord Hunsdon before Master S. wrote all the sonnets for her made him think he was a true poet like Sidney and Spenser or Lyly instead of just a play-maker of theatricals.
Musicians? I knew Bassano, but more important the best English, Jack Dowland who wrote his jig music for my Will Kempe. The greatest hautboy ever since was Jack Dowland! Numerous too many to number the prominent personages I knew, for example Adam Bell the greatest archer in England's realm who always clove the stake in competitions, you could wager on him with odds against and never lose—which I did lots!--him I knew, for an instance.
So who better to do this telling? And enough now because what I'm telling I'm just a part of, not the main, which is Will Kempe and what we did in 1600 and could have maybe done greater, bigger, in France and Italy, which we didn't, but not by my fault, which I'll also tell later.
Will Kempe. Where to begin telling it? How he looked, to look at him, I'm saying. Not at first look impressive to look at, not entertaining to see him just by his appearance.
First, not a handsome man Will Kempe wasn't. Hard-favored like the English say because someone's ugly if all you're looking at is appearance. Small eyes like a pig he had, and a big schnozz for a nose, not big sticking out from his face, but fat-like, flat-spread like a smashed potato, the biggest part of his punim. Also rosy red from drinking, which I'll be honest to tell. And his skin swart, dark, not pale like the English like for their women who wear masks to keep the sunshine from making them swart dark—excepting some persons, such as Master W.S. if you read his sonnets for Emily Lanier, who being the bastard child of the Italian Bassano was also swart, hairs like black wires W.S. said from her, but he didn't care, nu? So swart was my Will he could of been also Italian too, even Spanish he looked, and teufel take both Italian and Spanish for they do against Jews in Spain and also Italy, in Venice make them wear the yellow badge!
So, hard-favored and swart Will Kempe was. Also not tall, not manly the English say from short persons. I, Pincus Perlmutter, as a short person all my long life, so what's worth such a tsimmes to make a hoo-ha that a person's not tall manly in stature?
Also his punim, his visage, even if it's unpleasant to say, was married by what he worried always was a pox he got from wenching in Southwark stews and other places, but which I happen to think was not the French disease, only a serpigo or maybe scrofula could have been.
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