The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman (5 page)

This morning my wife complained again of the toothache. Or rather, she did not complain but made the whole house know of her pain by sighs and holding a warm compress to her cheek. I did not say, ‘Wife, you should have taken the surgeon's art when it was offered,' but removed myself instead to the guest bedroom for sleep and quiet.

My tenant, old John Kneebone, has also come this day to ask that his farm be divided between his daughters and his sons-in-law; he to live half the year with each, in comfort and with their gratitude.

Ah, old King Lear, I thought. Your sons-in-law will not be so respectful when your worldly goods are theirs. But I said none of this, and signed the transfer papers.

My wife and Judith brought new ale from the kitchens and almond cakes, and we toasted his new fortune, to do him courtesy and to show the Stratford gossips that we are not so high in our new estate that we will no longer drink with tenant farmers.

Judith wore new ribbons in her hair, a present from her friend Catherine, she says. We must send Catherine's family a gift of honey when Jem closes the hives for winter.

The parson did call, hoping, I think, to be asked to stay to dine, but my memory gives me better conversation than I get from him. I gave him a basket of soul cakes for the poor of this parish. We received soul cakes in our turn from servants knocking at the door all morning: a fine one made by Susanna; and one from my Lord Sheriff, filled with preserved orange peel and very fine; and another from the squire, with ginger and dried plums.

My wife now dosed with poppy and hot flannel, I return to my book and tinder sparks of memory.

Judyth. That night I burnt for her, sleeping on the feather mattress with my younger brother snoring at my side. At last, I crept to the coals in the fireplace, lit a candle and began to write. The words flowed so fast I did not even have to blot the paper.

To the fairest, most celestial Judyth:

The fire's sparks that issue from your eyes,

My trembling heart has no defence,

From anything man can e'er devise

Your eyes are sunbeams of such vehemence

To daze my sight in their green presence.

And I am dazed, in such a guise

Of one stricken to such love, by such green eyes.

At last I slept, but with so many dreams of her it seemed I dreamt again when I saw her the next day, floating down our garden path as if blown by a muse's wings and not by slippers underneath her skirts.

Was she a vision, come to taunt me? But surely no vision would come with a companion such as this: her sister-in-law, older than her by a dozen years and with a moustache already, but said to have brought a grand dowry of twenty fields to her husband, Arnold, my vision's brother.

Mistress Marchmant, it seemed, had come to order gloves and had brought her young sister-in-law, Judyth, with her. My father greeted them, and, as was proper to their estate, my mother brought spiced ale and cakes.

My Judyth sat demure, her eyes downcast, while her sister-in-law's moustache rustled with delight at silk linings and unborn lamb's leather for her gloves.

When the measuring was over, the ale drunk, I said to the moustached lady, ‘Such fair hands must not venture alone. May I escort you home?'

My father smiled, thinking only that I was flattering a new and wealthy customer. I slipped upstairs and took my poem from beneath the mattress, found a thimbleful of ink still in the pot, and scratched:
Can you meet the one who loves you after the church clock strikes noon tomorrow?
And when her sister-in-law's back was turned, I slipped it into Judyth's hand and saw her slide it up her sleeve.

I wrote another poem that night, the first that ever pleased me from my pen; the first, indeed, I knew that a brain matched with mine would understand. Each line was mine, yet each were her words too. My words had wandered, homeless, till I met her. Now they were arrows, knowing where to strike.

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer's lease hath all too short a date;

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade.

I waited under the beech tree's cloak long before the church bell struck, in case she came early. I had time to say my prayers seven times before being sure she would never come. What right had a lout such as I to woo one as fair and dainty?

The branches parted, and she was there.

I stood as if rooted like the beech tree, ashamed of my apprentice's cap, my very self, beside her. She smiled and looked at the roll of parchment in my hand. I held it out, dumb as an ox.

She took it. She began to read.

I had expected to read it to her, as every woman I had yet known had needed a man to read words for her. But I had forgot that she was a maid like no other. Oh, miracle green eyes that read, and hands that wrote, and a mind bright with wit, this warm apple of my heart.

She gazed up at me. ‘It is most beautiful,' she said softly. ‘But I do not know the poet.'

I said, ‘It is I.'

‘You are truly a poet then.' She said it as another might say, ‘You did not tell me you were Emperor of all the Romans.'

From somewhere I found the wit to say, ‘Not until I found my muse of fire to inspire me.'

She looked at me steadily. How could green eyes be flames? ‘I have a gift for thee as well.' She took a parchment from her sleeve and held it out.

I took it. Read it. Felt the heart within me burst in wonder, then come together once again, now more hers than mine.

My eyes, I fear, are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than my lips red;

If snow be white, my skin is dun;

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see you in my cheeks;

Yet take these instead, for I have nothing else to give:

My words, my heart; for the instant that I saw you did

My heart fly to your service, where 'twill dwell

While the both of us shall live.

I met her gaze.

‘Two hearts that beat as one,' she whispered. ‘Two minds that breathe the air of poets.'

I took her hand and kissed it. It smelt sweet, of roses and fresh bread.

‘Two lips,' I whispered, ‘that meet; and in that meeting slow, all time, till no more time shall flow.'

I stepped closer and kissed her lips.

That night I wrote another verse. And so, that night, did she, for the moment we might meet again, exchanging words and kisses.

Dinner: a good salmon baked with sorrel; eel pie; frumenty with almond milk; samphire sallet; mushroom soup with dumplings, which is all my wife did eat, her face much swollen; a pudding of nuts and ginger; an orange, which I had sent from London for my delight.

Bowels and waters continue good.

A bright day, the sun for once put off his grey gown of cloud, and cold enough to turn a nose to ice. We have fires lit in each room now, to keep the house from freezing like the pond, where one small foolish duck lies till released to proper death by spring. Today the surgeon came again, to much groaning of my wife. The screams of the Sabine women were naught compared with the shrieks above our stairs. Three of her teeth removed, the surgeon then informed me, my wife's blood still upon his cuffs, for which I must pay a guinea, but 'twill be worth it if we now sleep in peace. Two of the teeth be at the front, so when she smiles now it must be with her mouth closed, but that art she hath learnt before when her side tooth turned black.

I rode out in the latter morn with my agent and Jem for a groom to inspect my farms and granaries, to ensure that all is well prepared for winter, and was greatly satisfied with all. Arrived home in time to wash and change for dinner.

We had two invitations to dine today, but refused each. Many do think to dine with us, both for my estate and to dine with one who has dined with the King and can tell stories of the court and the nation's great. But where the
dinner be no better than our own — and often worse, for our orchards, gardens, fields be as good as any in the county — and the conversation offers no more than the price of wool or the rising of the river or the chance of snow, there is little to tempt me out.

Indeed this day I was content with Susanna and Dr Hall, who came to support my wife during the tooth pulling and joined us this morning to dine, and stayed to supper; both have wit and sense. Even Judith seemed content, with no complaining. Her closer friendship with Miss Catherine must do her good, for it be weeks now since she complained that I have not yet found a husband for her.

We played at cards after dinner, while the cold wind prowled at our windows, and then snapdragon, flicking raisins of the sun from the burning brandy, till Dr Hall burnt his cuffs, and Susanna, laughing, told him he must mend them himself, for was it not a doctor's art to mend?

Tomorrow morning I am invited to discuss poor relief this winter with the Lord Sheriff of the county, no doubt to dine after. I think we will discuss not the giving of alms and soup, but hunting and London gossip; and this a way of one so high inviting me to share his table without my wife. She is a good wife, but does not shine in company.

Though my wife keeps to her room, she instructed the servants well, and this day before the surgeon came set the maids to picking mushrooms in the woods for pickling; the men to husking chestnuts and seeing them well stored for winter.

Our carrots, beets, skirrets, root celery, turnips, sweet Canada potatoes and parsnips are dug and stored within our cellar, and one sack of Virginia potatoes too, which I grew to like in my London days. My wife will not let our daughters eat them, for she says they are the Devil's crop,
not mentioned in the Bible. The asparagus in the beds heated by manure do well, with white stems that I much enjoy, and the hot beds of endives and salletting are well set too . . .

Enough! And why do I prattle of manure beds when matters of such substance mock my dreams? You are a coward, man! Lamb heart and primrose metalled, unable to set down your deepest heart. Yet I have done so, in play and poem, opened my secret heart to royalty, to nobles and to ten thousand common men, calling it a fiction. Surely I can write and call it ‘truth' now?

For Judyth's name and those long-flung days are brighter than the autumn sun that sails sad beyond my window. Days of fiercest joy open in my mind, and yet those days contain my deepest sin, that snarls still about my conscience; and worse, my father's sin, how he who gave me most did sell me too. Can one still love a man, and honour him, and yet in old age still not forgive? Is that why my pen halts now?

I
will
write of Judyth, and of my father too. But conscience doth make cowards of us all. I cannot write it yet.

Dinner: a haunch of mutton; roast steaks with gravy; pigeons of our own fattening; a pie of venison and one of apple; a dish of peas and chestnuts; sallet of endive, radish, sorrel, cabbage lettuce; aniseed comfits; strong cheese; butter with saffron and liquorice; wafers; October beer and ale to drink. Supper: white soup; a chicken pie with spinach; Canada potato fritters; plain butter; maslin bread; new ale.

Bowels: continue well, and waters frothy, which Dr Hall tells me is from much ale.

Today be filled with the lowing of cattle, protesting geese and screaming pigs, their fortune bloody death then tasty ham, as all but breeding stock are killed and hung for winter. In the forecourt of New Place, we roast an ox for my tenants all to dine, as today be also the quarter-day for rent and settlement. The air be thick with the smell of fresh bread piled upon the benches, and fresher blood seeped onto frost-cold ground. My wife and Judith and I ate meat out with the motley so none shall say that we who were once yeomen and traders keep ourselves too high, and later gave fresh ale and spiced wine with wafers and small cakes to the yeomen we asked indoors to take a drink with us.

Today our servants feast too, out in the forecourt. Tomorrow begins their winter work: manuring of the hot beds to force the vegetables for winter; the sowing of peas and beans in the upper field that does not freeze; and earthing up the celery and endives. It is the time of year when two weeks' delay may mean a barren table. I have striven too hard for peace and plenty to be niggardly of my family's comforts now.

Is this old age too, that I think more of my stomach than my heart? No, I am not yet old, for I still remember the wonder of a girl's hand, so small, so white, except for its smudge of ink, that held me in its spell more than her white breast.

Is it the flowing blood of the slain beasts that makes my ink flow so sweet today, when it stayed sluggard in its well all week? So here is Judyth, ready for the page, and here am I, a youth; and here too is our love.

And it was love not of her body, which was sweet, but of the whole of her. We were, as Plato wrote, two souls ripped apart before their birth that join together once again, and poetry and words had done so.

There was a hollow in the beech tree where we left our writings in oiled cloth, with a ribbon tied to a high branch as a message to say she or I had left another there. Meetings of the mind, most sweet; meetings of our hands and lips were sweeter still.

It was easier for me to reach the tree. The glove trade was not so steady that I must ply the needle all the day, and my father, best of men, knew that young men must have their way at sport with friends.

Her road was harder, for a woman's life is lived with other women, under many eyes; and a young girl under stricter eyes than most, for she was just sixteen. But she had four sisters, all married, besides the brother and sister-in-law with whom she lived since her father's death, and so plenty of good reasons to visit them all; and so near that she had no need of maid or footman to accompany her, not in the quiet estates and fields of Stratford, except on market days when strangers and tinkers might walk the streets, or men who had been too free with ale.

And on her way to visit them, we met. We talked, as well as kissed.

She told me more of the school in France where her father had sent her on her mother's death. He had indeed been inclined to the Roman faith. Not so her brother, who had put away all Romish things upon their father's death, painted over the frescos in the family chapel and had the priest's hole nailed shut.

Gone too were the hopes that Judyth might make a high match among the gentry. Her father, no doubt, had intended to dower her well, as he had her sisters, but her brother had inherited all on her father's death, except the three small fields that she had from her mother's dower; nor in her brother's house was she likely to meet anyone of noble birth.

‘Or noble mind,' she said, and smiled at me.

That day we discussed Caesar, and did a man do wrong to aim for kingship when God's grace had given him the skills and temper for it, but not the station?

And then I went back to my glove-sewing, and she to embroidering linen, each dreaming of the other.

Dinner: a rooster in a blanket; a collar of pork, spiced; beef collops with mustard; a green goose with spinach; sprouts in butter; a rhubarb pie, grown in our own hothouses, which Dr Hall says will be good for my digestion. Ale hot, and spiced with cloves.

Bowels: improved. Waters no longer frothy. I will drink none but warm ales until the spring.