“The Isle of Dogs” is a story in my collection The Snowman Three Doors Down. In it, a group of scholars investigate the play of that name, by Ben Jonson and Thomas Nashe, which was suppressed and is now lost. The French play mentioned here, Caquire, is also real, but its use in the story is as a red herring. Red herrings are, after all, used to throw dogs off the scent; Nashe’s first work after The Isle of Dogs was Lenten Stuffe, which is, among other things, a book about red herrings.

Here’s how it begins.

THE ISLE OF DOGS

It was a late October afternoon, overcast and growing chillier by the minute. I decided to stop in at Red’s bookstore on my way home, to warm up and browse for a bit. And besides, I hadn’t seen Red in a while.

The bookstore was certainly warm, though even more cluttered than the last time I’d seen it, with even more stacks blocking the aisles. Red greeted me in his usual gruff but amicable way, and we exchanged a few uninspired observations on local politics. I never knew his real name; everyone called him Red because of his hair and politics, both of which, as his customers liked to joke, had grown thin and grizzled with age.

Once we had aired our usual scorn for our elected officials, and Red had groused about his latest aches and pains, I searched through the shelves, not neglecting the piles that grew, like paper stalagmites, from the floor. I thumbed through some Perec, some Addison, and Bullen’s edition of George Peele. My attention was eventually drawn to a small tattered volume, stuffed atop other books on a crowded shelf. It was old, and in poor condition, badly stained and missing more than a few pages. On opening it, I found a French play in verse, apparently devoted entirely to scatology. Most of the characters suffered from diarrhea, and the author specified that they wear costumes soiled with large stains. I was intrigued. Was it ever performed? Was it some precursor to Jarry? It was fairly expensive, though, especially given its condition, so I noted the title and author, and decided to look it up once I got home: Caquire, by Charles Decomble, published in Lyon by “Les Cyniques” in 1730. I did buy the Peele, and said goodnight to Red, earning his usual comically exaggerated grunt.

Once home, I searched the internet, and found a reference to Caquire in Pierre Gustave Brunet’s invaluable Anthologie scatologique, from 1862. Brunet quoted several lines from the beginning, as well as the stage direction (if you will excuse my translation), “He makes a great turd in his hand, which he sharpens into the form of a dagger,” and the remark at the end, “The table of contents is useless: there is only one thing in this work.” However, Brunet also noted that it was a parody of Voltaire’s tragedy Zaïre, and that it was credited to a M. Vessaire, obviously a pseudonym, and speculated that the real writer was either a certain Coste, or Comberousse.