The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman (10 page)

If this were a play, I would write of tearful marriage quarrels and a termagant who must be starved of meat to keep her docile. Indeed, I have already written such a play, but it was not, as some have said, based upon my wife. My Anne was no shrew to tame. She remained as she had been before our marriage: dutiful, but now also happy. She sang as she podded peas with my mother sitting in the garden, her belly swelling, my mother smiling, my sister at their side. She was skilled at embroidery too, and of an evening sat beside the fire adding decoration to my father's gloves as if she had been born to the craft.

My father too was well content. Anne's dowry had paid his debts. I do not know if Anne knew how much our household owed her, but my father treated her with respect due to that and as his son's wife.

And I? I had an obedient wife in my bed and serving at my table, and a life more comfortable by far because she was in it. Her godfathers were right: her cheeses were good, as were her hearth cakes and her roasting of a duck. This was the happiest she had ever been, and it showed.

And then the child — the small, red-faced, screaming, wrinkled scrap that has grown into the beauty of Susanna
now. Like any father, I delighted at the miracle of new small life, the smiles that seemed for me alone. What had I to pine for?

A love. A life.

Not just my Judyth gone; for now, with my marriage, I was forbidden by law from taking apprentice at any other trade, or joining a merchant guild. Nor might a married man attend a university, even if I had the money to send me there or the favour of a patron that might make it possible. I was what I must always remain: Will Shakespeare, glove-maker and husband, of Stratford town, bound as strongly as if chains held me down.

I felt myself dwindle with each winking of the sun. Flowers, weeds, young trees might rise, but not young Will. My life had flowered and finished at eighteen, and all that was left to ripen were my seeds or children. My children should have new lives; not I.

I wrote in those barren years.

Nay, not barren, for my marriage bore good fruit: twins after Susanna, a girl whom I named Judith, and Hamnet, my son, my wife thinking that we named them for the baker and his wife, a friend of hers, not knowing that thoughts of any other Judyth still crept about my dreams.

Ah, Hamnet, what can I say of thee? Are there any words that can truly say what it means for a man to have a son, to carry on his house and name to generations through the years?

But when from high-most pitch, with weary car,

Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

The eyes, 'fore duteous, now converted are

From his low tract and look another way.

So thou, thyself out-going in thy noon,

Unlook'd on diest, unless thou get a son.

Even on the first day my son was laid in the cradle with his sister, swaddled so only his red face showed, his eyes met mine. By the first week, he grasped my hand, as if he knew the bond between a father and his son. By ten months, he was crawling up the stairs if our backs were turned for two chimes of the church clock, while his sister gurgled in her cradle.

Seeing my son, I knew what my father felt; why he had turned his back on the secure world of a glover to deal in wool and land and ships, to try to make his sons' position higher than his own. Gazing at my Hamnet's face, I knew that I would do the same. I would give him the whole world, had I the power or need to do it.

But yet I knew that a wretch such as I, crawling between earth and heaven, had no right or means to change my lot, or that of my son. And though I knew happiness, I was not truly happy. This was a small, good life. I wanted more.

I wrote, for no one's eyes; or rather, for just one, though I knew she would not see them.

There were no more messages in the beech tree; nor did I leave one, though each week I made sure to pass it, to see if a ribbon fluttered there. I wondered if she did the same, but could not ask.

I told myself that Judyth would soon marry, grow fat, and I would be glad of it. I lied even to myself. But she did not marry in those years. She lived still with her brother and his wife, an aunt to their children. Yet I did not think her life was as Anne's had been. Arnold was no Bartholomew, to use his sister as a servant. It seemed he was content to let his sister have her choice, to marry or not; and surely the pleasure of her presence must be
enough for him and his wife and their children, to have her as sister and aunt among them.

Perhaps, I thought, Judyth would rather be a maid, and free to write and read, than a wife whose husband says that she might not. For what man would take a merchant's daughter who wrote? Who among the country clods would want a wife of fire?

I saw her little.

At church, she sat in the family box, cut off from the eyes of the motley — and from me. Outside church, she kept her eyes down modestly. And if at times I watched her from the corner of my eye, I never saw her glance at me.

Once I saw her at the market, a few stalls off, looking at some snipes hanging from a line, but when I looked again, she was not there. I wondered if she thought of me enough to keep away from me, from anger, jealousy or shame perhaps that she had let herself be kissed by a glove-maker's apprentice, who had so shamefully wooed and wed another while he professed his love for her.

She had loved a poet. Now all she saw was another's husband, still in his apprentice cap, his children in his arms. Did she know I had named my daughter for her?

I was a poet still. My wife was of the earth — the carrots that she peeled, the turnips she mashed and spooned, mixed with grated cheese, for the babes to eat. Yet while she slept, I sat and watched the stars. I wrote by candlelight. If my body was satisfied, my mind and soul still yearned. But I was caught; the bear clutched in the trap, and he himself had walked in there.

And to this book alone I must confess: William Shakespeare, gentleman, walked all knowing into my father's trap again. For here I sit, once more writing
words in secret, to be seen by myself alone. Once more I let my father make me what I am not.

Was Prospero happy when he drowned his books? Did Prospero sit before the fire and smile upon his grandchildren with no regrets? I did not think those questions when I wrote the play; nor did I think them when I too drowned my books, to live here upon my rents and my investments. My father's dream had burnt the question from my brain: surely, as a gentleman, I must be content?

But contentment has withered as surely as the autumn leaves; and just as surely, all I see before me is a winter ship, bound forever in the faceless ice. If the heart of Will Shakespeare is a poet, why then, that heart is dead.

Dinner: Advent beans and pottage do not suit my bowels. I will have none upon my table. We ate pilchards, baked; fresh and salt cod within a pie; herring fritters in Spanish oil; Canada potatoes moulded and coloured like a joint of beef; a ragout of mushrooms; peas in the pod in broth; peaches, dried and stewed with carrots; a jelly of almonds and what I fear was quince; saffron cakes; candied sea holly; raisins of the sun; hot ale, spiced.

Bowels: uneasy. Waters clouded, as if by snowy skies.

Returned last night from a sojourn in London; the last perhaps before the snow shall stop the roads. I had not planned my visit till the day before, but, tired of grey days, and each day the same grey conversations, I set out before the dawn, and in three days' ride had reached London town with only six changes of my horse.

I am tired still, for a good rollicking we had of it, with fine drink and excellent meats, leaving my wife to eat her Advent pottage and finish the season's pickling and washing afore the full force of winter. My new house at Blackfriars suits me well, and is there when I have need of it, with my man in London, John Robinson, to caretake and keep it fair for me. I bought it cheap, for it was there the Gunpowder Plotters met. Yet scandal fades, and good walls last.

Ben Jonson was at me to attend a play.

‘Which play?' I asked.

He laughed. ‘Any that Master Shakespeare choose. Or write us one, to act instead. England is lonely for your words.'

I forced a smile. ‘You give England words enough. I've burnt my books,' I said.

Ben gazed at me, his playwright's eyes too keen. ‘No words that buzz like honeyed wasps about your brain? No hands that tingle till you must find a pen?'

I was glad that I wore gloves, so Ben did not see the smudge of ink on my mid finger. Even to Ben I would not confess I write this book. Only these pages can see me write these days, and pages do not talk, unless published for the world to read. Here I write as I might speak; not as an actor on the stage, in clever talk, but my words unwrought, spilling as they wish until I grow weary and seek my chair or bed.

Pardon. I am no Lear, weary of my kingship. I am full and hearty for my years. Yet I miss still the street calls of London, with none here but the cuckoo calling the dawn. I miss more the fellowship of men with like minds, who speak with wit and know affairs greater than that of the squire's son and the smith's daughter, or the calamity of a crust of mould on the autumn cheeses. I miss — and let it be said here and nowhere else — the applause of crowds, the smile of the King, who gives smiles rarely and yet did often to me.

But even to my London friends this past week I pretended I was content in my fine state. I bid them come and share the comforts that London gives them not: warm feather beds that no flea dares to enter, not with my wife's warming of them and lavender in all the quilt boxes; May butter from our barrel; sweet ale, and all the produce of my hothouses, not leavings picked over from the market. I let them think that I invited them for their sake, not my own.

Ah, me. It is little more than a hundred miles to London; a three-day easy journey. Or a lifetime.

It took me more than twenty years to get there. And that by accident. A bad sausage made me what I am now,
a gentleman, and what I was, an actor, playwright, guest of kings and queens. If days be jewels, I have a handful that shine brighter than the moon.

The hour I met with Richard Burbage still sparkles as a ruby; nay, a sapphire, for his blue eyes.

I had been a husband almost five years, a father for four, and still an apprentice glover, trying to tell my will it was content, the day I walked to deliver a pair of gloves to a merchant's house. I had been received politely, and given spiced ale in the hall, not among the servants, even though my father had resigned as alderman. I feared his investments had turned to debt again, but though I was of age now, and a husband, my father still did not confide in me his business. Perhaps he did not wish to admit his affairs even to himself.

I strolled back, under the green trees, in no hurry to scrape more leather in the boil and bustle of our hall. I loved my children dearly, but our craft hall, home and nursery was smaller for their presence, the women gossiping as they shelled peas, Father and brothers swapping tales or singing, the children crawling under and over all. I left the path, to pick watercress for dinner to excuse my tardiness, when I heard a cry from the turnip field beyond the apple trees: ‘Alack! Must it be so?'

Was a traveller in trouble?

I ran to the field, then stopped. An anguished figure stood amid the turnip tops, his hands reaching to the sky.

‘
My kingdom wrenched from me

And by such a foe?
'

Was this a wandering madman? And then I realised, as his despairing hands clenched into fists: not mad, but a player, practising his lines, as I had practised mine, and Judyth hers, under our beech tree.

He continued as I watched, unseen.

‘
Nay! My uncle shall not rule!

For from this day I'll pay the fool . . .
'

It was not great verse — I had done better at ten years old — but the voice was excellent. The young man gave the shoddy words a shape and style.

‘Good morrow,' I said.

He turned. He was a man of good height and countenance, and twenty years perhaps.

‘Good morrow, sir, indeed,' he said, showing no embarrassment at being caught pleading with the sky. He bowed. ‘My name is Richard Burbage, actor and fellow of Lord Knudson's Men.'

A troupe of players then.

Actors have no guild and so must be attached to some great lord's estate, or even, as we were, be accorded that honour by the King. Without such patronage, they are instead judged to be vagabonds or beggars, and stoned and run out from the town.

This actor wore what must be his Lord's colours, though the red and blue doublet was patched and faded, and his stockings more darn than hose. It seemed Lord Knudson gave these players the shelter of his name, but naught else.

‘I thought I had found a traveller in trouble,' I said.

He laughed. ‘Our only trouble is with such poor lines. Kyd's play travels too tight upon its history, methinks.'

‘What is the tale?'

‘
Hamblet, The Prince of Denmark.
The King is poisoned by his brother, who
marries his brother's wife. The Prince must play the fool to escape the poison too,
but triumphs and marries a Scottish Princess at the end. I am to play the hero,' he
added modestly, ‘Hamblet. The
play opens as I return to Denmark, to find my
father dead, my uncle King.'

I frowned. ‘But do we not see the old King poisoned? That would be a role indeed — a King, the lord of all, and yet all stolen, even his life.'

Richard looked at me with respect. Or perhaps, I thought in later years, with the respect an actor learns to show to a yokel who may have the coin to maybe buy him a drink, or even offer him a bed that has no fleas.

‘You have an ear, sir. You have an ear. You live nearby?'

‘I do. My wife and I, in my father's house.' I smiled. ‘I am the father of a young son, and of two daughters, sir. My son bears a name much like your Prince: Hamnet for your Hamblet.'

‘Then we must drink a toast to him!'

Richard had given up hope of beds for the company — no young man would bring a retinue of players to his father's house — but not of the free ale.

‘Indeed I will,' I said. ‘And willingly.'

And willingly I followed him, hearing his tales of London, and the Danish court where the company had been when the plague shut the London theatres last, and to the Netherlands as well, playing in dumb tongue, for when you mime a play it does not matter if you know not foreign words. Stories of players and places, and a good one-tenth part of them were almost true.

We met the others of the company at the tavern: young Rob, a lad of twelve perhaps, who played the Queen, and then the Scottish Princess; and Matthew Scott, who played the evil uncle — a lean and hungry man, who called for bread and sausages to eat while we drank the ale.

‘Those green specks,' I said, pointing to the sausages, ‘which you hope are herbs, are parts no pig would e'er
acknowledge had once been his.' The ale had flowed well by now, and been followed by brandy.

I liked these men, and the lad too. And yet they played here, at a common tavern, not at the guildhall. Innocent of the world as I was then, I knew their choice must be for thrift's sake. The guildhall cost money to hire. Nor did these players order roast beef, or saddle of mutton, puddings, cheese and apple pie, but bread and suspect sausage.

Then I remembered Ned. I had forgot before, in the joy of wit and words. I looked at young Rob across the table, then at Richard and Matthew.

‘How did you come to be with this band of rogues?' I asked, as idly as I could.

Richard grinned and cuffed the lad about his head. ‘Why, we captured the brat from slavers bound for Venice, did we not? We offered Rob the choice: to ply his trade with us, or have his head chopped off.'

‘Nay, we chop his head off three times each afternoon when we play
Cymbeline
,' said Matthew. He took another sausage, inspected it, sighed
and gulped it down.

‘Well, Rob?' I asked.

Rob dipped a crust of bread into his ale, then bent his head towards me. ‘Master Richard asked the Queen's own astrologer to conjure up the best apprentice in the land,' he whispered. ‘And I appeared! But tell no one, or such witchcraft may mean all our heads on pikes outside the Tower.'

Matthew burped, inspected another sausage, then took a bite. ‘'Twas none of those,' he said, his mouth still full. ‘We came upon a dancing bear cub, but when we looked again, it was young Rob, who does forget to wash his face as often as he might. So we took pity on the mite and
unchained him, and from the gentle goodness of his heart we let him play with us.'

Richard held up his hand. He had seen something in my face that gave him pause. ‘Why do you need to know?' he asked me quietly.

‘I had a friend,' I said. ‘His name was Ned. He was sold to Lord D'Naughten's Players, more than half a score of years ago.'

Rob swallowed his crust. ‘Lord D'Naughten's men? I do not know them.'

‘Afore your time, brat,' said Richard. ‘I knew them, though not this Ned of whom you speak.' He caught my eye, glanced down at Rob, innocently tearing off the last crust from the loaf of bread, and shook his head. ‘You will not find that here.'

‘Find what?' demanded Rob.

‘More sausage,' said Matthew, taking the last one. ‘Bread be good enough for you, brat, until you've earned your meat this afternoon.'

‘I would not eat that sausage if you gave me the King's crown to swallow it,' said Rob. ‘It smells like an ox's —'

Richard cuffed him again, but it was a gentle cuff; affection, not correction.

‘Rob is my sister's son,' he said. ‘So we must put up with him, and him with us.'

‘One day,' said Rob, swallowing his crust, ‘I am going to play Julius Caesar and wear a crown, if Richard would just write the words for me.'

‘There are no words that would turn thee into Caesar,' said Richard.

Matthew burped again, covering his mouth. His face looked faintly green. ‘And if there were, our Richard could not woo them from the muse. Well, if that were
dinner, then I have eaten it. Excuse me. I must find the privy.'

Our family's dinner would have been on the table an hour earlier, and I had missed it. But this day outshone all my dim years before. I could no more have left their company for dinner than I could have danced upon the river. These men tossed words like a juggler throwing daggers in the air. They were not just beyond the confines of this town and fields, but had travelled across time and space, turning the accomplishment of many years into an hourglass.

A good phrase, I thought, emptying my tankard.

I stood, a trifle unsteadily. ‘It has been an honour to spend this time with such as you, who turn the world and the accomplishment of many years into an hourglass, for the audience to see.'

Young Rob clapped. ‘He has words,' he said to Richard.

Richard looked at me thoughtfully. ‘You are a glover, sir, you said? A good profession?' He must have noticed my apprentice's cap, but was too polite to call me one.

‘The name of Shakespeare is honoured in this town.'

But for how long, I wondered. Father had not spoken to me of his speculations or the ship he had invested in. But if it had arrived safe, surely he would have told me, rejoicing in it. Which meant, perhaps, the ship had sunk. Our good name and household might sink with it. Anne's dowry had been spent. Just last month at Father's request I had signed the mortgage deed to her fields. He had not told me if he had indeed paid off the mortgage, nor had I asked. If I did not ask, then I could pretend my father had never sold my life for forty-six pounds.

But I could not let these new friends know that. Let them pass from here remembering Will Shakespeare as an
honoured citizen, who, for a short time, dazzled them a little with his speech.

I bowed. ‘I will see you, sirs, this afternoon.'

Richard placed a smile upon his face instead of his thoughtful look. ‘Ah, but by then we will be King and Princes.'

Matthew wandered back, waving his greasy fingers. ‘And this tavern yard our stage.'

‘All the world's a stage,' I said, ‘for such as you.'

I bowed again, managed to find my balance, tossed coins on the table to cover the drink, bread and sausages — coins I could ill afford, for they were all but threepence of my year's allowance — and tottered home. Nay, strode, for I was young and two hours' drinking had but wetted my sides.

‘Wife!' I called, as I came in the hall. ‘We go now to the play! Wear your blue dress and red hairnet.' For I wanted to show my new friends that my wife would do me proud.

Anne smiled pleasantly and obeyed.

My father was out, measuring the fingers of a merchant's wife; my brothers with him, to carry the leathers for her to choose from. My mother and sister were visiting the Hall family, whose son is now my family too. Would it have been different if they had accompanied us that day? Had fate disposed of them for a purpose?