The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman (13 page)

Winter gloom hangs in the skies, the cloud meeting the mist above the trees. We were off to church this morning, my wife riding in her chair against the cold, and I in my cloak with high fur collar and fur hat, so that if a bear had met me on the way he would have announced me brother.

A poor sermon and poorer singing. I am confirmed in my view that singing with many voices is not singing but an instrumental chorus, with the sense of the words lost. There should be one or two voices at most, and one a counterpoint. But, as a gentleman, I did not inform the parson of this.

Espied old Kneebone, my farmer Lear, escorted by both daughters. I bade him joy of the season, and asked him how his new state be.

The old man laughed. ‘I should have done it five years back when my old Bessie died, God rest her soul. Strong sons to build strong fires, grandchildren at my knee, and my Kate's cooking! What man can wish for more?'

I wished him health and a good year, and watched them go, both daughters helping the old man to his chair, the sons-in-law to carry him. Stratford, it seems, does not breed a Lear, only the man who wrote him.

Nor does it seem we have a witch, for Susanna today at dinner told us how old Mistress Feathergale hunts snails all the summer (the woods here are rich in them) and grinds their shells and all to make a broth, and dries them for her winter feasts as well. Snails and nettles, hazelnuts and pippins, and berries of the field, the food of a poor woman who knows the fruits to glean about the forest. No witchcraft; though I be glad her dinner is not ours.

This town is what it was in my childhood: a market town; and, at its heart, a market too, of sheep and meat and fleeces. Crabbed and confined I found it then, and as a gentleman I find it so as well.

Once today in church I thought I smelt a breeze from far-off lands of sun: the scent of oranges and flowers; Verona or even Venice, where, they say, the women have more beauty than any others in the world, and the meanest hovel is a palace bright with frescos and poet's song. But when I breathed again it was but the pomander Susanna carries, made by her good husband, to ward off the sour smells of the congregation.

Home, to the same faces I have seen all winter, where only dinner varies and my bowels.

Tomorrow I must check that our garden beds are freshly manured to make heat to give us winter strawberries, asparagus and spinach and all salletting; that the cauliflowers are protected each night and still fat; that the new orange and lemon trees be protected, as are my apricots and grapes. Perhaps next year I may venture to grow pineapples. Ah, what adventures to look forward to. My ambition has come to this, that I may grow a pineapple.

Dinner: saddle of mutton, stuffed and baked; collops of pork with green sauce; a pheasant pie; mushrooms,
pickled; a dish of onions, baked; a pie of strawberries, preserved; a medlar jelly. Second course: glazed leg of kid with sauce of Carmeline; chickens stuffed with raisins of the sun; buttered worts; pies of Paris; baked pears; olives; nuts; the claret, this time spiced with caraway and apple.

Bowels: stopped.

My hand shakes and the ink smudges the paper. Yet to whom else might I confess this except my book?

This morning, as the rest of Stratford laughed to watch the ploughmen in blackened faces leap and dance in front of the plough to be blessed before the first furrow of the year be turned, I saw my daughter Judith emerge from behind the holly bush at the bottom of our cow field. Behind her came Thomas Quiney, still fastening his codpiece. It seems he too ploughs a furrow, and one that is not lawful either to man or God.

I said naught, for what was there to say? I have worried at the smiles of the smith's daughter when I should have been watching the glances of my own.

I offered Judith my arm as if I had but met her strolling in the garden. I did not speak to Quiney, nor even look at him, for if I had I would have ripped out his heart, or that piece of him which has profaned my daughter. And perhaps I would have done it yet, had I the rapier I wore in London, but not here among the swans.

My daughter and I walked back to New Place with no word or glance between us, but the silence thick as
pottage three days old. Quiney did not run after us, nor even try to beg my pardon. A kitten lover, who licks the cream, then creeps away.

I left Judith in the hall, and came here to cage my rage into what beast might serve me best. And so I write, for words on the page have always helped me shape my world and see it clear.

I do not worry that Thomas Quiney will seek my daughter's hand. My chief concern is that he will, and what then should I say?

More than one score years and ten ago I did as he has done: stole the maidenhead of a well-dowried girl to ensure she would be my wife. Judith has the rent of the cottage in Chapel Lane in her own right, and the three hundred pounds I settled upon her a year past; beyond what she and Susanna will inherit after I am gone, for there can be no son of my house now. It will be a goodly sum, and more than any other woman in the county might expect. He has done well for himself with his ploughing, Thomas the tavern-keeper. That my daughter should be naught but an alewife!

And yet, with my blessing and a good dowry, she need not. She could live in Chapel Lane, and someone other than her husband could run his tavern for him while Thomas Quiney apes being a gentleman, if he can learn to eat without dribbling on his doublet. All this I expect he knew when he lay with her behind the hedge.

A foolish daughter makes a fool of her father; yet a foolish father allows his daughter to be a fool too. Today, like Hamlet, I saw my father's ghost appear to me with his sin and mine held in his outreached hands, returned to me tenfold.

My daughter and my ducats: Thomas Quiney will have them both.

Later

I called my daughter to me, when my temper had cooled to that of the blacksmith's iron and not the flames of purgatory.

She had changed her dress; it was stained by the mud perhaps. I expected her to kneel to me, to cry and plead. But she just stood there, hands together, her look as steady as that of any dutiful daughter.

‘Had you no thought for our good name?' I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.

‘I thought but of my heart.'

She said the words as if they were the most reasonable plea in all of England.

‘Your heart!'

She came to sit upon my knee, but I turned my legs so that she might not do so. I wished to warn her that no man buys what he has had for free, but what use was that now? For this is just what the wretch doth want: my daughter for his wife, her dowry for his chest, my substance after I am gone.

‘How could you do this to our house?' I asked again.

‘But, Father, you yourself have said,
to the marriage of true love let there be
no impediment.
'

‘True minds! I mind not your mind dallying with this man, but your maidenly body. He wishes for your fortune, girl, and takes your body so he may get it,' I told her harshly. ‘Are you still a maid?'

She flushed. ‘Of course, Father.'

She lied. I, who have read the faces of the motley, can read one girl.

‘How long have you been meeting him?'

‘I have loved him these three months.'

I closed my eyes, and hoped when I might open them she would be gone, and I might be in Venice, or Elsinore, anywhere but here. But then I did open them, and there she was: her mother's daughter. And, if my sins be remembered, her father's too.

I looked into the fire, and not at her. Sin builds walls we cannot shatter once the sin is done. We can no more unscramble eggs than put a lost maidenhead to rights. Now we were on a road with ruin at one end and love's illusion at the other, and no byways along its path that we might take instead.

At last I found the voice to say, ‘Do you love this man?'

‘Yes, Father. With all my heart, I love him.'

She who loves quince puddings and sarcenet dresses! This was her body's passion, not love, and for a wretch who knew how to play her like her sister's harpsichord.

And now I had to say the words. ‘And would you marry him?'

She nodded eagerly, all smiles now I had said the words she wanted most to hear. ‘He has asked me, and with such earnest expressions of his love.'

She reached into the bodice of her dress and handed me a parchment, much creased and greased with fingerprints and sweat.

To the fairest most celestial Judith

Doubt that the stars do move

Doubt that the sun is fire

Doubt truth to be a liar

But never doubt my love.

Hung by my own words! Cockscomb. Damned and thrice-damned villain. That it should come to this!

I read it twice. She reached for it, eager to have it back, next to her bosom. Did she not know those words? But
why should she? My daughter has not seen my play; nor do I own a copy here that I might read to my family. It is not what I would have my daughter hear: a girl becoming mad for love.

‘Are you with child?' I asked bluntly.

She flushed. ‘I . . . I do not know.'

Well, her mother must see to that.

Jem knocked upon the door. ‘Sir, Thomas Quiney the vintner is here to speak with you.'

‘I thank you. Show him into the small hall.' Let him wait where there is no fire, I thought, till I am ready for him.

‘He is a good man,' cried Judith. ‘He loves me more than life itself, more than the stars.'

‘And yet he takes you behind the holly hedge and does not speak first with your father.'

‘He was afraid you might say nay.'

Ay, well he might be. But they had both hit that nail so deep into the wood it will not be seen again. Should I wait to see if Judith truly be with child? Or have them marry now, so that when the gossips count the months till a child is born they might think the babe is but a few weeks early? I did not know.

I gazed at my daughter's face, wondering what it hid. For though her look was properly penitent, a smile lurked behind her eyes. The wench had bested me, and knew it.

‘Go to your mother,' I said to Judith. ‘I will see your lover now.'

He scuttled in like a rat grown fat on an honest household's winter stores: green stockings, red velvet doublet, worn about the knees and elbows; some lord's cast-offs given to his servant, the servant casting them off for a shilling to this clown. His hat even held a falcon's feather.

‘My Lord Shakespeare.' He bowed. I did not.

‘I am no lord,' I said. Nor was I lord of my own household. ‘It insults us both to say so.'

He straightened, tried to hide his smirk. ‘I would ask — nay, sir, I do entreat — that I may have the dainty hand of your most fair daughter.' He prattled the words like a child counting to ten in a damn school. Had he composed what he thought a poet's words to woo a poet father? There was no need, and we both knew it. His codpiece wielded power in this room, and not his words.

Had Bartholomew felt this, when I profaned his sister? They had never asked us to dine, nor we them. I thought it our family's choice, for the man had used his sister ill. For the first time I realised his anger, that no weapon, be it fists or swords, could strike against the mischief of a codpiece.

I had never felt guilt for sinning against Anne, for in truth it was no sin to free her, to give her hearth and family, and later pearls and servants beyond any she had dreamt. But for the first time I realised how I had wronged her brother.

‘'Tis love,' quoth Quiney soulfully, ‘that makes fools of men. Love that gives me courage for a star beyond my station. Love that . . .'

I listened not, but gazed at the bare trees outside the window. If my windows had been stopped with honest shutters, instead of a rich man's glass, would they have kept this march fly out? My fortune and my sin brought my daughter this.

‘. . . and I will keep her as a gentlewoman, you shall be sure. Serving men to do her bidding, nor shall she step foot within the tavern door. Everything my wife desires I shall provide for her.'

And I should pay for it. ‘She will have no dowry,' I said abruptly. ‘If you love her so, her love must be enough.'

He bowed again, sweeping his hat against the floor. ‘Her love will make me prince of Stratford town.'

Nay, her cottage would do that, and her three hundred pounds. It would be enough to see them comfortable until I died. We both knew it. This was a play that we performed, with an audience of two. But for the first time this was not one crafted with my words.

Who was this man, who smiled and bowed to me? A man can smile and smile, and still be a villain. I, who played so many men, still did not know this man who now must be my son.

I saw his greed. I saw his lust, not for my daughter now, but for my ducats. I saw his feeble cunning too. Not a man of words and wit, unless he stole them both, but neither is my daughter. And yet her mother made this bargain too, and did right well from it. Could my foolish daughter be happy with this fool? Perhaps there lurked behind his rat-smile cunning, the heart of a good husband, who would give courtesy to the wife who'd made his fortune, and honest love perhaps to his children?

I did not know. ‘Then you shall have her,' I said.

I watched him bow, and try to hide his triumph, thinking his words had swayed me now, and might again, to give him more, once he was my son-in-law. ‘Sir, I thank you from the piteous depths of a poor lover's heart. I will at once procure the marriage licence.'

That last, at least, I did believe.

Dinner: galls and wormwood, and vinegar to drink.

Bowels: stubborn, entirely stopped. Waters a cloudy flow.

Grey skies blow mist upon the town, shivering the river and men's souls. But not women's it would seem, for my wife is running all smiles to gather fripperies for the wedding, new cloths and cushions for the Chapel Lane cottage, subtleties for the feast; and Judith grinning like a monkey too. Well shall she smile a month after this wedding, when she sees what she has married and why.

I will have none of it and so up here, to live in good memories, instead. Which one to choose? One as far away from this dreary day as possible.

A bright day, larks rising in the sky, the world aflame with hope, the second time I was on stage, though there was no stage to climb. It would be many years before we conjured one: a platform which every man could see, the gentry in tiers above us, and we raised above the groundlings.

Our small band of players met in the morn in the tavern room, but soon fled to a turnip field the better to rehearse, Richard carrying a sack of bread and cheese to be our dinner. But I did not feel the lack of the roasted meat at home nor gooseberry pie, for I had starved for words, and now I had them. I had written half
the night, and flourished my harvest for the company in the turnip field: six sheets of parchment with ideas most brilliant to add to the play, for my words must be jewels to tempt the company to ask me to join them when they left.

But each of my rubies turned to cabbages, speedily dispatched as with a gardener's knife.

‘How can we have a ghost descend?' asked Matthew. ‘Will you have an actor dangle on a rope? From where? A tree, where all can see and laugh? You must conjure the audience gently, to belief.'

‘And this speech: you have the Princess and the hero's mother both in the same scene, and only Rob to play both,' said Richard.

It was a quick series of lessons they taught me, in that turnip field. As fast as I suggested, they tore my visions down. Then, slowly, as the turnips watched and the sun rose, the play rose too; the same play, but with a ghost now, not just at the beginning, but swooping in throughout the play. And the best of my speeches was uncrumpled.

‘
To be or not to be, that is the question
. . .' Richard nodded. ‘Yes, that
speech speaks well. But the hero pondering his death must speak it, not the ghost
who has been severed from his life.' Richard added, ‘That too is a good line. We
will keep that in as well.'

Back to the tavern, through the back door. The front yard was already swollen with the crowd, who spilled out onto the green, displacing the geese that usually grazed there. The innkeeper had already passed the money-boxes around. For this, and for the use of his forecourt, he would get a quarter of our takings, though what he gained in ale sold would be even more.

The next time, we must play at a guildhall, I thought, where we pay a single sum, rather than share our bounty with the ale man. For surely today we will make enough to do so.

And then the play.

Once more the gong, then Richard, in doublet and fine cloak and moth holes.

‘
List, O list!
' he cried.

‘
For something is rotten in the state of Denmark now.

My father not two months dead,

My mother married to my uncle.

And now at midnight —
'

He screamed, as I appeared, holding up his arms as if to ward off evil spirits.
‘
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
'

(An excellent line. I kept that, as the play grew stouter in the years to come, and the lines that followed too.)

‘
Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou comest in such a questionable shape

That I will speak to thee.
'

‘
Mark me!
' I ordered.

‘
Sir Ghost, I shall!
'

‘
My hour is almost come

When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames

Must render up myself.
'

‘
Poor ghost
,' said Richard. ‘
Speak, I am bound to hear.
'

‘
Bound you are, but you know not

How bound ye be.

I am thy father's spirit . . .
'

Someone shrieked faintly from the audience. I smiled beneath my sheet.

And so the play went on.

In truth, I remember little of that day's play. I have written a thousand versions of
Hamblet/Hamlet
now, and each one different, cut to fit the audience, for
Hamlet
was a play that grew and changed as much as any babe, till at last it stood of fine stature and, like a son, may live a little even after I am gone.

But that day, even when the play was not yet fully formed, they shouted for us as we left the stage, called for our return.

We put the play on once more by torchlight, the better for a ghost to haunt. So great was the clamour for our show (for there was naught else but the turnip harvest to interest men that week), the next day we did two performances as well. My father came to neither, nor did any of his household attend any performance that I gave, or where words of mine were spoken, in the years to come.

My father might sell me to the players, for coin to pay his debts and give him comfort — for in truth he did sell me for coin to come, willing though I was — but he would never show the motley that he countenanced it. It hurt only a little, the smallest of rapier pricks, that he never felt pride in his son's words, only in the status those words might earn him. But my heart was so filled with joy that night it bled only a pin head that my father was not there to cheer as well.

After the first performances I vanished into the crowd, leaving the audience to think that one of the cast had played the ghost, though any who could count must wonder how they did it. But in that final torchlight, after the motley cheered and cheered us, many having seen the play five times now, as Richard, Rob and Matthew strode
out and bowed, I marched with them, my sheet around my shoulders, and bowed too.

Richard glanced at me in surprise, then grinned. He bowed to me, doffing his king's crown as if it had been an apprentice's cap.

The crowd laughed and cheered and stamped upon the ground. I heard the mutter as men recognised me in the flickers of the torchlight. Murmuring grew to shouts. I heard my name, as all made sure that each one knew there stood Will Shakespeare, glover's son.

I gazed at Richard and he at me.

‘So,' he said, ‘you announce yourself as a player.'

‘I do. These last two days have been as if a new sun poured into the world, showing for the first time that it has colour. The muse of fire, leashed like a hound sat at my feet, winging me upon time's chariot not just through space but time, and to the vast palaces of Denmark. And I, all unwary —'

Richard held up his hand to stop my speech, laughter in his eyes. ‘You want to join us?' He spoke under the yelling of the crowd.

‘I cast my muse, sir, at your feet.'

He clapped my shoulder. About us, Matthew laughed, and young Rob too.

‘They were trying to think of a way to coax you,' said Rob. ‘Richard said we might give you the same portion of the takings as him, though you were new. And Matthew —'

‘Hush, brat.' Richard flicked his finger at Rob's cheek. ‘We can discuss terms with Master Shakespeare over supper.'

‘At my father's house,' I said. ‘For he has offered you his hospitality for this night.'

‘Feather beds!' cried Matthew.

‘Is your mother a good cook?' asked Rob. The crowd was melting back to their homes now, though some lingered, in case what happened next might be as amusing as a play, and even meatier gossip.

‘A most good cook. My wife as well.'

My last night in my father's house, I thought, as lingerers called for more ale, unwilling to let this evening end, the summer sun low in the sky but the day still bright enough for men to see their way back home. My last night in Stratford town. It was as if my feet had grown wings already. My mind already slept in Elsinore.

Then I saw her. Judyth. She must have come with her brother's family to see the play; see it for the second time perhaps, even the third, as had so many. I had not known her, hidden among the crowd under her veil.

But now she waited alone under the oak tree beyond the courtyard, her eyes greener than any leaves. She had not changed, except to be more herself. And suddenly in this courtyard I knew myself again: husband perhaps, and father, but poet to the marrow of every bone. And Judyth had known the true Will Shakespeare, when all else had seen the shadow.

‘Excuse me, sirs.' I bowed.

As I walked away, I heard Rob ask, ‘Is that his wife?'

And Richard reply, ‘One thing you must learn, brat, is that is not a question you ask of any player. Our wives are where we find them, not where we leave them. Understood?'

Then I was there, beside her. It was as if no time had passed, or else a lifetime.

I said, ‘I leave with them tomorrow.'

‘Then I am glad.' Her voice was still the same, sweet and low. ‘Did I not say that Stratford was not world enough for you, Will Shakespeare?'

‘Yes, my lady. You told me that.' I met her eyes. I would my hands had met hers too, my lips met the soft mouth that it had tasted so long ago. ‘I would that you could come with me. Would that it had been you beside me all these years.'

I stopped, for how could I explain my father's need; the duty that had caused me to sin in fornication and in lies, and to sin against her too?

There was no need.

‘I know,' she said.

I wondered how much she did indeed know. For she was her brother's sister, and he, a merchant, might know perhaps of the dowry brought to our family by Anne, and how my father needed it. But one thing shone like the moon on a dark river: she knew that I had loved her even as I wooed Anne; knew that I had married for my family. I had given Anne my body, but my heart was hers.

Her hand touched mine so quickly. It was as if a feather had brushed it, then blew on. But that touch burnt so deep that even today, I feel it still.

Her smile was sad, and yet she raised her chin: a woman of such pith and resolution that I have writ her a dozen times into my plays, and each woman true and steadfast. Portia, Desdemona, Cordelia, Juliet, each one is her. I, alone of all my fellow writers, have given women courage, for I alone perhaps have known one who had it writ into her soul.

‘You need use no words to explain to me,' she said. ‘Soon those words will be heard across England, and one day, I am sure, they will come here too, and I will read them, clasp them to me and be happy, Will, for thee.'

My words left me. Then she was gone as well, too quick for scandal to attach to her name, or to mine.

And I turned back to Lord Knudson's Men, no longer Will Shakespeare, glover, but player, poet and a man of words.

Dinner: my wife pleaded for Thomas Quiney to join us, and my daughter too, but there be time enough when he is legally our family, and to keep our family's name I must at times invite him. It was a good dinner, and tasted better that Quiney did not eat it too. I think my wife doth tempt me to wedding gladness with my favourite foods: well-flavoured rooster, roasted, with black liver sauce (only Quiney's liver would have pleased me better); a hedgehog of sausages; salt beef, boiled; roasted pigeons, fattened in our dovecot throughout winter on spiced grain; a loin of pork; a butt of beef (for with Lenten fast soon we need our meat); tarts; jellies; custards; medlars that had been laid in bran to keep; figs, dried then spiced in wine; French claret to drink, which still keeps good.

Bowels: still stopped entirely, but I hope the figs of which I ate a lot may be a cure.