"Gentlemen, I'm sure you are wondering why I have called you here," Queen Elizabeth began.

"To tell us you are honouring us with new titles, Your Majesty?" said Kit Marlowe with a hopeful look on his face. Francis Bacon and Edward Devere, Lord Oxford smiled.

That this was the wrong answer was plainly evident on the Queen's frowning face. "It is common knowledge that each of you is considered one of the greatest writers alive," she said. "Somehow, though, not one of you has been able to write the sort of play that I would enjoy watching."

Oxford and Bacon glanced at Marlowe, who was certainly well regarded for his play about Doctor Faustus. Marlowe reddened slightly, but said nothing.

"In short, I am not amused by the low standards of our playwrights," the Queen continued. "Without better efforts from them, our theatrical companies will continue to produce third-rate spectacles for the gullible masses. I'll wager a hundred pounds that my cats could do a better job."

Hearing the word "cats," William meowed and rubbed his head against the Queen's leg, while Shakespeare stayed curled up in the corner by the fire.

"Your...cats, your Majesty?" Oxford stammered.

"Yeeees, Mr. Devere, my cats," the Queen said rising from her seat. "Now, if you three gentlemen, working alone or together, can come up with a play good enough for presentation, I shall give you the 100 pounds and attribute it to William & Shakespeare. I doubt that you will have any trouble finding a theater group willing to produce it. Of course, you needn't tell anyone who William & Shakespeare are." She glanced at her precious pets. "That will be our little secret." With this, she gave the signal, and her attendants whisked her out of the room. Perhaps she was christening a battleship or attending the Privy Council, or hostessing a banquet for some foreign head of state. She was a busy woman. The previous year she had organized an execution of a well-known rival. It didn't pay to cross her.

After her footsteps died away, the others began making sense of what she had just said.

"The money is tempting," Bacon began. "I can't see myself writing drama, but I'll happily step aside if you gentlemen want to take up the challenge.

"She does not want to see more plays like the sort that I write," Marlowe said. Were there tears at the corners of his eyes?

"Take it not to heart, Marlowe. The Queen simply likes comedies," Francis Bacon consoled him. "I'm sure that your expertise would be invaluable in any kind of play we might write. We should write as a team."

"I have no objection to working as a team," Marlowe said, " but comedy is harder than it looks, and it doesn't stay popular. Few comedies are worth seeing more than once. After everyone has seen one, they are apt to be tired of it. Comedies don't have long runs, so theaters are loathe to schedule them."

"I think Her Majesty would like the sort of comedy that might amuse a cat, or at least a cat-lover," Oxford speculated. "The thing is, many of our intended audience members are suspicious of cats for their association with witches. So, any cats in our plays would need to be owned by people of impeccable morality."

"A cat's main use is that of hunting mice," Bacon said. "We could write a play about a woman whose cat has tamed a great many mice."

"We'll call our play 'The taming of the mice,' then" Marlowe said, becoming more enthusiastic about the project.

"Or maybe one very large mouse, to give it stature," Oxford proposed.

"Here's to 'The Taming of the Mouse,' then," Bacon said.

They set about writing a play with this theme, but none of them was enthusiastic about what they came up with. When the church clock struck midnight they left the play on their writing desk and retired to their chambers for the night. Oxford, the last to leave the room, noticed that the cats were still curled up next to the fireplace. The room was cleaned by a chap from Stratford Upon Avon. Every evening he came to sweep up and leave some food for the William and Shakespeare.

"Say, now, what is this?" Bacon exclaimed the next morning when he led the others back to the room.

"It's a cat, Bacon," said Marlowe. "Two cats, to be exact. We would be fortunate indeed if we got food and lodging in return for such light work as cats do."

"I know they are cats," Bacon said, "but someone has placed a pamphlet under William's front paws." He moved the paws and glanced at the document. "Zounds, this is our play, but someone has rewritten it and made nice work of it."

"But they changed the title," Marlowe said when it was his turn to see the play. "There's no mention of mice, just a shrew."

"The shrew is a woman, actually," Bacon said, reading a scene from the middle. "She is a gentlewoman in name only. Oxford, that must have taken a lot of time. You can't have gotten much sleep."

"I left a few minutes after you did. The cleaner was coming in to feed the cats as I left. There was no document under the cats' paws."

"What do you know about this cleaner, Oxford?" Marlowe asked.

"He's a simple fellow who wants to be an actor. He's from Stratford Upon Avon. Pleasant enough, but he's no Edward Alleyn or Henry Condell." He glanced at the refined lines on the manuscript. "It's not likely that he could write anything this good."

Marlowe looked at the last page and gasped. "It's signed 'William Shakespeare!' "Either the cats really did write it, or someone has been called in to write it for them."

"Could the Queen have written it for us, as an example of what she wants?" Bacon wondered.

A broad smile spread across Marlowe's face. "The author has very clearly read our play. He used most of our characters, including Bianca and Petrucchio. If he wants credit for writing it, he should come forward and share in the 100 pound reward. If he remains silent, he is a fool. Could her Majesty have come here late at night and written this?

"She endures many restless nights, and when she does sleep she has nightmares," said Oxford, "but this play took considerable effort, and would have taken almost the whole night to write."

"Whoever it was used the cats' names as inspiration for the final signature," said Bacon. "But can we be sure these cats aren't geniuses?" He looked warily at the animals, but they just slept peacefully.

The Queen was quite pleased with the play. The 100 pounds was soon forthcoming. She promised more money for future plays, and the three men accepted the arrangement. The mysterious playwright never identified himself, but he continued to read the men's plays and place much-improved versions of them under the cats' paws. Not every play was a comedy, but once the public became fond of William Shakespeare's work, they began coming to everything presented under his nom de plume. The comedies didn't stop altogether, mainly because they were quite profitable for the actors and theater owners. William and Shakespeare eventually died, and the Queen replaced them with cats bearing the same names. Marlowe was replaced by another writer after his death in 1593. The new cats seemed every bit as talented as their predecessors.

Things were looking up for the actor who called himself William Shakespeare as well. Was this because the public assumed he had written the plays? Quite probably. He stopped cleaning rooms, but continued to feed the cats. One day, Queen Elizabeth noticed that an actor named William Shakespeare was in the cast list for a play. "Such an amusing coincidence," she said with a chuckle. "If anyone asks if he wrote the play he is acting in, I will say he did. But of course he didn't. Such a lark!"

She went to her grave in 1603. King James, who succeeded her, continued the playwriting project that Elizabeth had started, though he thought it was odd to list cats as the authors. Like many, he assumed that the actor from Stratford Upon Avon was the one who was really writing the plays.

The partnership eventually wound down. Bacon, as the last survivor of the original team, reflected in his later years that the Queen had only rejected one play: it was about a young grain-dealer from Stratford Upon Avon who traveled to London on business and enjoyed the plays he saw so much that he gave up the grain business and became an actor. His wife would never have approved of this had she known, so he kept it a secret for many years. The Queen thought this plot was so absurd that she tore up the script and called it "Kitty literature." A parrot which was in the same room heard it and squawked "Kitty litter. Kitty litter."

Bacon wondered if this play actually had been written by William Shakespeare as an autobiographical work. It hardly seemed wise to ask him directly, as he might demand his share of the money that the Queen had paid out over the years. Bacon wondered why the play had been written at all. If Mr. Shakespeare of Stratford Upon Avon didn't want his wife to know that he was in London writing plays, why take the risk that audiences would try to visit him in Stratford Upon Avon after he retired from his theatrical career? I'd best not bring this up, he thought to himself.

Sometime in late 1613, both cats died simultaneously, and their successors did not make any changes to the plays that Bacon's team was writing. King James noticed a steep decline in quality. Worse, Mr. Shakespeare had returned to Stratford Upon Avon, never to be involved in theater again. In 1616 he died. The King terminated the arrangement that Queen Elizabeth had started. Bacon lived until 1626. He bought a couple of cats, hoping they would turn his last plays into masterpieces, but nothing happened. Oh, well, he thought, most kitties aren't litterate.

Paulh

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