The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman (12 page)

But gossip would fade, as I well knew, for gossip had come and faded when I married Anne. Gossip is a bluebell, to spring up bright and quickly fade. This chance would never journey to my life again. Nor, if I were careful under the sheet, might anyone guess I had spent a day as a player.

I took the tankard of ale the innkeeper's wife had brought, and poured in a jot of brandy. ‘I will do it.'

Three invitations to dine, including one from Thomas Quiney's sister, which I naturally refused, although my daughter pouted. Has that family no proper sense of their true place?

Dinner: lentil pottage; a dish of pollards, roasted, delivered this morning for the oven by my Dr Hall; a mess of shellfish with saffron and Virginia potatoes; bruet of cod with mustard and almond cream; sallet stuff from the hothouses, dressed; parsnips, mashed; a pie of leeks and herring; pear tarts; rhubarb baked with caraway; a pudding of spiced cherries; olives; nuts; winter pears and apples; ale, well spiced.

Bowels: improved.

The smith finished the squire's gates yesterday, and is now awaiting the men to take them to the manor. And Bertram has taken my advice, I think, for Bess smiled at him, then straightaway vanished to reappear with her shopping basket, which she carried down the street, glancing back at her lover, who was not such a fool as to miss a hint like this. He hurried after her. What his father will say I do not know, except that it will be as dull as any other of his utterances. Yet this man is my only social equal in this town. Well, the lad is of age, and the squire has no other sons, so if they marry, the squire must make the best of it.

And I too have made my bed, as is the saying, and so I must lie in it. Yet when did I become the man who quotes others' sayings instead of jousting words into new forms for my delight and satisfaction? Dullness must be as contagious as the plague, for I have caught it.

A pleasant afternoon, though a man can have a surfeit of pleasantness as much as a surfeit of cheese tarts. My wife, Judith and the maids have been making mince pies for the Christmas days, and fish pies to last us until then, discussing who has been seen with whom and at what
hour, and whose hens were carried off, and matters such as are most important for our town.

Jem took the pies to the bakery and fetched them back, for there are too many even for our oven here. Many more knocks upon our door to seek pennies for the Advent dolls, and each child given a mince pie to keep for Christmas too — or at least till they were out of sight — till I thought half the town must be wandering the path between our flowerbeds, though they'll be bare of flowers now till Jem arranges garlands of greens upon the bushes for Christmas.

Susanna and her husband joined us for ale and fish pies, and then proceeded homeward with pies enough for their house too, leaving us then to a pleasant supper, though ‘pleasant' has become a curse for me, who has supped with queens . . . Well, to this book I do confess I have met just three queens: our Good Queen Bess, her memory be blessed, Queen Anne and Queen Henrietta Maria, may God grant her and the King long life; nor did I ever actually break bread with any of them. We ate when we were bidden to the castle to dine before a play, but, truth be told, the Queens did not, for Good Queen Bess ate quietly with just her women for company, and presided over the table only.

Nor did I eat with the new Queen, for the King did not ask us to dine, though he was pleased indeed with every play. And so he should have been, for I made sure each one was cut exactly to his wants and close as any tailor cuts his cloth. We players were the King's Men then, in heart as well as name.

Those days are gone, when each new sunrise shone of new adventure. I could be bounded in an eggshell, were it not that I have dreams.

Dinner: a mess of crayfish and peas; blancmange of crab; seethed dried fish roes on toast; parsnips, boiled in wine; an almond custard pie; celery in the French way; an apple tart; lentil pottage with parsnips; turnips, spiced; almond cakes; raisins of the sun; spiced winter pears, the last the only food solid enough for a man to get his teeth into, mine being entirely sound.

Bowels: easy, and waters good.

Today, all across the town, the sows are slaughtered to make the feast of Yule, and a great screaming of pigs there be and the tinny scent of blood upon the icy air.

Down in our meathouse hang two sows dripping blood into the bucket for black pudding, four sucking piglets and one fine boar's head, the rest of him lying in salt to make hams, or spiced to be baked, he being a gift from my Lord Sheriff, for which return I send him preserved apricots and glassed asparagus, his hothouses and manure beds not being as good as ours. Our hall is all steam from the kitchens, where my wife and the maids are boiling sausages and blood puddings, white as well as black, both of which I am most fond.

Tomorrow my tenants come to give their gifts to their landlord, and I will receive them in my blue velvet cloak with silver buttons and red hose, as far from the young man who played the ghost in a tavern sheet as London is from old Verona.

We will give them a good dinner too, this one day of the year when they dine with us as family. I have just seen Jem carry a tray of pies down the street to the baker's
oven, for once again our own is not large enough for the cooking that must be done today.

My fingers crave to write more, but I have been checking the ledgers with Dr Hall to see all is right with the accounts for tomorrow, and though this day's hours have been weary, yet there were not enough for all that must be done.

Today in church we heard the first banns for the marriage of the squire's son, Bertram, to one Lady Lyn Pearson; a good match which will raise him and his family in station, and hers, perhaps, in wealth.

I looked across at Bess, the smith's daughter. But she sat next to her father's new journeyman, a comely lad with broad muscles and bright eyes, and seemed content.

Ah, foolish old man, I thought, you do write plays still to set imaginary figures prancing. For the Romeo and Juliet you thought you saw was naught but flirting, and the rest the playings of your boredom.

And yet the happiest of my hours were spent in that good place, imagination: in Rome, burying Caesar; on Prospero's isle; in Elsinore with Hamlet and his father's ghost; with Portia in Venice, with its canals and bright women that I did long to see, and for a time saw bright as if I were there.

Dinner today of Advent fare, too unremarkable to write of.

Silence, old man, and to your bed and wife.

Christmas is almost with us. The garlands are made, the larder filled with puddings and jellies and all kinds of fancies, the ale brewed, my cellar filled with Rhenish wine and French too. Pheasants and hares and bitterns hang in the larder, ripening. The house smells of meat, even if we may not yet eat of it.

My wife has ordered the Yule log, and it is a good one, wide and heavy, and sure to burn through all the days of Christmas if she do ensure the maids bank it well with ashes each night.

Today there has been much airing of beds and quilts, and fires roaring in every room. Garlands are hung about the hall.

Tomorrow our guests will arrive: Richard, still a friend after all these years, and John Heminges and Henry Condell, with cheer and company and talk from London.

And may the snow fall and ice blacken the paths, that none may walk out to see William Shakespeare, gentleman, at play with players once again, with wit and friendship foreign to this town and my estate. For tomorrow I will have companionship beyond this book,
for what is a friend but someone who knows your closest nature? And that for me is ‘wordsmith', whether it be for coin or sport, or in times past, for love.

Dinner: Advent fare, which is all the greatest playwright in England might say of it.

I have not written in this book for some weeks, for the Christmas festivities here and in London have kept me so entertained that I needed not for company.

Richard, John and Henry brought us cheer and shared our Christmas meats, and Susanna and Dr Hall attended. A merry time we had of it, dancing while Susanna played; and bantered wit as sprightly as the men, and Judith happy as Henry winked at her and called her ‘Queen of Stratford', a player's compliment, no more.

Richard, John and Henry did perform my
Romeo and Juliet
for all the company: Dr Hall and Susanna and Elizabeth; the parson and his wife; and my wife's nephew, James — for although I do not esteem his father, nor ask him here to dine, his son is a good man and a respected yeoman farmer and worthy to sport with us at Christmas. We also gave the servants leave to watch.

I played Paris and Lord Montague, then the Prince, while Richard, all prating, did play Juliet, which made all merry for he hath grown a beard and kept his voice gruff. Yet despite his beard, I saw Judith wipe her eyes when Juliet and Romeo were laid on their biers.

For me, the play will ever be for my other Judyth, who lives yet; not just in my memory but in the words of hers I stitched into my plays, that she should speak to the world as she once dreamt she would, even if the world knows not that it hears a woman's voice. But that I cannot write of yet.

My wife attended to the Christmas boxes for our tenants and the servants who are too old to serve us now: for each a ham; a collar of pork, spiced and pickled; a bottle of port; blood puddings, both black and white; mince pies from our own kitchens; and, for the ailing, a dish of calf's-foot jelly to which she herself attended. There were also mince pies and lentil pottage for all who called at our kitchen door, for one must not forget the poor this season.

Then I off to London for a week, where indeed I played with good heart, and other
parts of me as well. We did see Ben Jonson's masque
The Golden Age Restored
,
a satire on the fallen court favourite, the Earl of Somerset. The King so liked it
he asked for it again, and even on second watch it played right well.

But to this book I do confess I could have done it better. Where the motley laughed, I would have had them gasp to find the breath to laugh some more; and where they gasped, my play would have them still, in case by breathing they shattered the illusion I had wrought.

Yet I am a gentleman and Ben is not. That is what I wished for and what I have. But I think I may visit the London house more often.

My wife would have no taste for town, nor have I taken her there; nor would I tempt Judith with the jackanapes of the city. But I brought my family gifts, and will again, just as I brought gifts each time I returned while still a player. This year it was the roll of satin
promised to Judith, and amber beads for my wife, and a bowl of oranges that she exclaimed upon, and will make a marmalade of with pears, and sugar the peels for our delight. I was so pleased at her joy that next time it will be pearls, not amber beads, for my estate grows well.

I also brought two lemon trees and two orange trees, to grow in our hothouses, for if an old man may not have Venice, may he not have Venetian fruit when he dreams of blue skies and warm air to caress the skin? But I at least have London, when I wish.

Ah, London. City of kings and beggars, rats and royalty, of boundless stench and dreams. The apprentices still brawl each evening, brandishing their knives and rapiers; the crowds still gape at dancing bears on royal barges and the same cheers for each.

How can three rivers be so different? The peaceful Avon, with its dunking ducks and gentle swans; the mud of London's Thames, the even muckier River Fleet. But above the Thames's stench float royal barges; ferries carrying young men and maids pining for adventure and planning it as well; ships that sail to the New Worlds or rich and fabulous old ones, sails flapping and ropes creaking; and each powered by dreams as well as wind.

In Stratford, time wends itself in petty pace, each day according to the last. In London, a man may dine on Sunday night and have his head upon a traitor's pike by midday on the Monday, or have his ship sail up the river bringing a wealth of slaves or spices, cloth or Spanish gold.

I was three and twenty ere I saw London, nor was my road there straight.

That first evening after playing the ghost, I carried a guinea's worth of pennies back home. Later I found out that the guinea was almost the week's entire takings,
given to tempt me to return. But I needed little tempting. For I had felt my words sway the hearts of men. In all my years upon the stage, that magic never left me.

‘Father?' I sought him alone, where he was stitching in the garden, squinting down at the leather although the light was good.

He eyed the bag of coins that I held out to him, took it, weighed it and peered inside. He did not hand it back.

‘How did you come by this?'

I told him all, and frankly. ‘But no one knew it was I, Father. I am sure of that. The players wish me to play again, tomorrow. I will be in costume; none shall recognise me.'

He weighed the bag again, silent so long I thought he was finding words fit to condemn me for risking our household's name with such a prank. Twice he began to speak, then stopped, as if weighing matters too heavy to speak aloud.

At last he looked down at the coins again and said, ‘And what if the players are so pleased by your performance that they ask you to go with them?'

‘How can I, sir? I am married and apprenticed. I cannot in law change my state.'

‘Except to this.' Father spoke as an ex-bailiff of the guildhall now. ‘These players have a patron, do they not — Lord Knudson's Men? For without it they would be vagabonds.'

‘Yes, sir, they do.'

‘There is naught to hinder you from joining Lord Knudson's household, not as an apprentice, but as his man, like those other players here. All you need is a release from your apprenticeship papers, which is mine to give.'

I said slowly, ‘And you would be willing for me to go?'

Silence answered me. I heard a sheep complain in the fields behind the house; my sister's yell from the back garden where she helped our mother and Anne bring in the quilts from airing.

‘You are a good son, not to question your father. But in a few months it must be told to all,' he said at last. ‘A debtor who cannot make his payments will be bankrupt. And such a man am I.'

It was as I'd thought. I looked at the bag of coins in his hand. A guinea a day would mean three hundred and sixty-five guineas a year — unthought-of riches. No man in this county had that a year, even my Lord Sheriff.

But there would not be a performance every day; much time must be spent in travel too, and in rehearsal. Perhaps I might make two guineas a week, or even three. It was as much as I'd make as a schoolmaster in a quarter-year. Even a guinea a week surely would be enough for Father to regain his position, pay the interest on his debts, keep our household well. If I lived carefully, I could send home far more.

Father looked at me fully, a glint of desperation in his eyes. ‘Will they take you as a member of their party?'

I had expected to plead my case.

I said, ‘I will ask. Father, I will try.'

Dinner: a fine goose, roasted; a collar of spiced pork, stuffed; mutton soup with forcemeat balls; beef collops with mustard; a rice pudding with dried currants from our bushes; pickled mushrooms; pickled red cabbage; turnip wine, of our own brewing, and Burgundy, which I had brought down from London — a good addition to our cellar, and one I do like much.

Bowels: unsteady from the travelling, but waters clear.