The Secret Life of William Shakespeare (34 page)

‘Yes,’ she said, and the word was as full as an egg with meat.

‘Well, then, when Will comes back, speak out. It’s up to you. After all you caught him in the first place, didn’t you? You wanted him. You got him. And in truth it was well done, for there are few Stratford men so thriving. You set up your life well, Anne, so why stop? Now he has success, and London is the heart of his success—’

‘Exactly, and he has to be there, so all of this—’

‘Exactly, he has to be there, so why not you?’

Anne stopped dead. Ahead her children were leaping in light.

‘Oh, I dare say it seems a great undertaking. But Parliament-men take their families up, lawyers when the courts are sitting. That’s only to speak of temporary lodging. If he is to be a London man, then why not family there too? But this, I suppose, rubs on the whole question.’ Blind with sunlight, Anne remembered when, as children, he put her nose up to a cheese.
Go on, smell.
Making her face things. ‘I gather that old John Shakespeare still sees what Will’s doing as a temporary errantry. He’ll be back, he’ll give it over. But no, say I. And I’m not his father, nor does he tumble me in bed, so I think I see it all pretty clear. Leave Goodman John’s notions out of the reckoning, Anne. The family is yours.’

‘Very well,’ she said, throat dry, almost croaking. ‘But I do not want Will to do anything unless it is a thing he wants to do.’ Like us, our love and marriage, everything: none of it was forced, it was all chosen; or else where is heaven? It’s a rackety platform halfway up a painted sky.

Bartholomew chuckled. ‘You’re very sure that people
know
what it is they want to do.’

‘Yes, because you always taught me it.’

‘Me, how?’

‘Well.’ She shrugged. ‘You’ve always known yourself.’

‘God. Never mind me. We’re not speaking of me. You, Anne, and yours, think of them, work for them. Me – I’ve got nothing to lose.’ And he walked on with the dog-grin of the boozer, fathomlessly unhappy, burying his reasons in caves you could never reach.

*   *   *

When the burly young man accosts him on the threshold of Field’s shop, Will’s first thought is that this is a debt-collector of some kind; that he is going to march him off to gaol. He is not aware of any debts, but this does seem to happen to everyone in his profession, so he is not wholly surprised.

And even when the young man says, thrusting a big square hand into his, ‘Master Shakespeare, I have so long wanted to meet you that there’s no further help for it. I admire your work so, I must risk displeasing you in telling you it like this,’ even then, Will feels he has been somehow taken into custody.

‘Sir, there is no displeasure, you are very good.’ Will sees that the young man has his
Venus and Adonis,
unbound, under his arm.

Emboldened – though he doesn’t look as if he needs much emboldening – the young man goes on: ‘I swear to you before God that you have it in you to be the greatest poet of our time. This, sir, without purpose. I know the world. You suppose such praise seeks a reward. I speak purely as a scholar, a lover of the word; I speak as one who learned at the feet of William Camden and can still count him as a friend. I speak as one who knows the originals, the
Metamorphoses
and
Amores
and the
Georgics,
that have gone into this.’ He pats the book. ‘And I have read nothing in English to compare to it. Oh, to be sure, it has a hundred faults, and not a few absurdities.’ This with a broad smile, as if it were the most complimentary thing said yet.

‘So few as a hundred?’

‘I’ve seen your plays. Then came this, and I marked the printer, and asked about, and they said you could often be found here. Now, you’ll meet a deal of foolish critics who don’t know what they’re talking about, so it must be to your good to meet one with knowledge to add to taste.’ Jacqueline Field passes through the shop, with a troubled glance as if afraid these two are about to square up to each other. The young man dips her a bow, then seems to come for the first time to self-consciousness. ‘Master Shakespeare, all I ask is that you don’t judge me’ – a proud gesture at his plain dress – ‘by how I appear.’

Will smiles. ‘Certainly: and don’t you either.’

And after that there is nothing to do but either say thanks, goodbye; or propose adjourning somewhere for a drink. Doing the latter, Will makes the acquaintance of Ben Jonson.

He chooses the Mermaid, thinking he might fit in some business, for the Burbages and Henslowe are often there. Then he wonders if the place might be above Jonson’s touch; and he wonders whether secretly he wants it to be, whether he wants to show off his eminence to a young acolyte … But doesn’t this man have the air of a real Londoner, more at ease, more unimpressible than he can ever be? Already Ben Jonson is someone who makes Will ask questions of himself. Odd that he doesn’t run a mile from him.

‘So, tell: how did you do it?’ It is soon apparent that Ben Jonson is not averse to talking about himself: by the second mug of ale he has given Will his good ancestry, Westminster School, William Camden, soldiering in the Low Countries, and what he modestly mentions is only a touch of his wide learning. But he is even more eager to pluck it out of Will: everything – his life, his mind, his theatre. Will is well schooled in not giving of himself, so doesn’t fear. Besides, with this man he doesn’t mind it so much. His curiosity is a refreshing blast, like the hand-pump which it looks as if he washes his rough curly head under.

‘How did I do what?’

‘All of it. Plain Warwickshire man, you tell me. Yet you’ve turned out plays that tickle the general, and you’ve written to standards of the most exacting taste likewise. All this and being a player. Does the player part help? They say Marlowe disdains the theatre.’

‘He appears to. I don’t know where appearance ends and the real begins.’

‘In Marlowe? You mean he poses?’

‘In anybody. As for playing – it’s a craft. Play-making is a craft likewise. You learn it in the doing, what hangs together, what falls apart.’

Jonson looks sceptical, even a little suspicious, as if at an unworthy joke.

‘As for the rest … Well, there you are with my book in your hands. You’ve been candid enough to tell me you are engaged in a trade that you don’t care for—’

‘Oh, you needn’t be courtly gentle with me. My labour is loathsome, aye, but I get a little money by it, and that money I lay out on the richest food of all, the food of the mind.’

Will nods. ‘Then you’ve answered your own question. Love will always do it. By love I mean choosing. I chose this, and everything that goes with it…’ He feels the nascent pain in the forehead, which means, one out of three times, a long, crushing megrim. ‘For what you need, you find a way. Now Richard Field luckily is my old friend, and his shop is the field, indeed, where I range and graze. If you would crop up a little French, a little Italian—’

‘And this on top of a mere country grammar-school? You’ve done well, assuredly,’ Jonson smiles, ‘when what you have can with justice be called a smattering.’

‘They were wrong, you know. Whoever said this arrogance was charming.’ Though he knows where he stands with this man as he does not with Marlowe or even Nashe.

Jonson flushes – just a little. ‘Arrogance is naught but strength of mind running ahead of itself. I assure you, Master Shakespeare, with you I am being humble, as humble as I have ever been. And in that spirit let me ask you, at what age do you think a man should marry?’

An unlikely clairvoyant. Will rubs his temples. The headache is still making up its mind. ‘You expect fine figures, a couplet? I can only answer dull. An age when he is able to support a wife.’

‘So, so. But this answer is various. Feed her on bread, or clothe her in silks?’

‘You – he must learn her ways first.’

Jonson considers. ‘Well, that’s not so hard. There are only a few types of people after all. Local variations of temper, of disposition, aye, but they’re only the spots on the throstle’s breast, and we still know it from a blackbird.’

‘No,’ says Will, jolted, ‘there is a world in every feather. And a universe in the spaces between.’

‘Hm. But you can’t think like that, for you’d linger over the shape of every pebble and quibble over every word, and you’d end up mad. When’ – Jonson asks this almost incidentally, wiping alefroth from his lips – ‘when are you going to reform the drama?’

Will feels stiff and reluctant, like a strongbox lid eased open. ‘A vast subject. I don’t think beyond the plague ending and the theatres reopening.’

‘You should.’

‘I can hardly say how much I dislike being told
you should
in that way, Master Jonson.’

‘Oh, but let’s put that aside,’ Jonson says, shrugging: you can tell that your feelings will never come in for a great deal of attention from him. ‘Let’s consider the essential question: why do you write for the stage, after all?’

Will says, promptly: ‘Because it pays.’

They laugh. The kind of easy, parallel laugh that declares friendship. Though Will is not sure they are laughing about the same thing.

*   *   *

A late parting. God, they have ranged. A remarkable young fellow, Jonson, a brain he can use like a thumping arquebus or a lancing needle. Will only hopes – well, he doesn’t know what he hopes. The headache fades as he climbs the narrow stairs of his lodging, the chandler’s fat, yeasty-voiced wife calling after him, does he lack aught? Nothing. Just this. Open the door. The careful, artful space, clothes, the table devoted to paper and ink, part-scrolls, books, books. A mirror covered over. He greets the room with a lover’s sigh: ah.

*   *   *

Ben would willingly have stayed talking all night. He didn’t regret introducing himself, not that he ever regretted much. Shakespeare, player and play-maker and promising poet: well, it had not been a disappointment. There was a man for you – no doubleness. Remarkable humility. Having none himself, Ben knew how to admire it in others, though he still believed that, like wearing green, it did not suit everybody. As was his habit, he swallowed a last draught and heel of bread before bed, slept and sweated it out, and rose early to read.

To write a little also. He had resumed it for the first time since Master Camden had guided him through Latin verses. English now: you had to adjust yourself. Fewer rules, which perturbed him. It occurred to him as morning nosed over his page that he had not waited on his lady for a few days.

He found Agnes in, he thought, crabbed mood; but that was women, they held no sway over their own selves. Ignoring it, he told her of his purchase of
Venus and Adonis,
of approaching Shakespeare’s narrow back at the door of Field’s shop.

‘We might read it a little together. It has already earned a reputation as a warm piece, you know, and some citizen-husbands are warning their wives against reading it, lest it – I wonder what? Excite appetites they cannot satisfy?’

She was not much inclined to laughter today. Oh, well: he did not founder into silence, for he could entertain himself with his own conversation while Madam sulked. At last she stirred and mantled, and out with it: ‘Do you mean you laid out all the ready money you have on that book?’

Such an unaccountable question: all he could do was offer information. ‘Books are not cheap, honey. Nor should they be.’

Agnes began marching about the room, skirts swinging, jaw set. He watched with curiosity. Women: all that energy, you could turn a spit or grind corn with it, and they used it for nothing. ‘You said you would begin saving against a place for us to live,’ she said at last. ‘I shan’t live at home, Ben, as a bride, nor with your people neither. And if you are to dispose of your money so…’ Suddenly he found a peep-hole through the wall of incomprehension: she was reproaching him. A kind of light, giddy apprehension came over him: was she turning into a shrew, even before they were married? So he put it into words, those words: half laughing.

‘Oh. Oh, you should take shame to yourself for speaking so,’ she cried, stamping. Tears leaking too. Absurd, when she was as strong as a youth, this little-girl business. Time to be clear.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘don’t, I entreat, use me like some underfoot, downtrod husband-worm, my lady, for I won’t abide it. I do, you see, as I please.’

She looked at him through her tears, and he noted the effectiveness of that – as, no doubt, she had. ‘And not ever what would please me? What do you mean? Is this the way of it, Benjamin, for our marriage? What do you mean?’

‘A fart for thee.’ His liberated tongue was quick. ‘Truly, sweetling, if art a shrew o’ this kind, then I want thee no more. A fart for thee in parting, and a shitten pot on our marriage, the no-marriage, the no-marriage from which sweet heaven has preserved me.’

And he was off, with feelings like cool breezes of relief. If that was the way, then that was the way: Ben liked nothing better than an absence of alternatives.

And it was odd how when a heavy drunk burbling man got in his way at the corner of Thames Street, Ben knocked him down and yelled foulness, yelled as if he knew him and had been mortally offended by him and wanted to grind his blubbering face into the fishheads. Where had that come from? Well, never mind. Not everything had to have a reason, damn it. His mother was curiously irritating when he got home as well, tiptoeing round him as if he were his stepfather.

*   *   *

Violence. This charge in the air. It begins perhaps with the plague as the finishing touch; winter hasn’t killed it and now with the muggy spring it’s coming back in force. Add the new corpses, the new fear to the toppling heap of distresses, the prices and shortages, soldiers returning from the dragging fighting that the Armada victory was supposed to finish, everything edgy and not right and – look. The strangers among us.

They’ve been coming for years, fleeing religious persecution, usually, Protestants from France and the Low Countries (ah, but are they always, how can you tell?), bringing their trades, thriving. How much they stand out varies. Often you don’t notice them. But at times like this they are conspicuous, and damn it if there don’t seem more of them, and thriving altogether too much. That is, where they don’t thrive at all, where they pile ten into a room and because they don’t mind living in filth they push up the rents for those who do. Too rich, too poor. So many of them. So few of them, and yet look how influential. It begins with changing minds. Now those Frenchies on the corner who you’ve always said are not so bad, you begin to wonder … It begins with glances at odd items of costume, broad breeches, deep hood – mind, if they don’t wear odd costume it’s even more troubling, for then they’re trying to pass as English. And it continues with prentices gathering together on half-holidays, chanting dirty rhymes, making little resolutions. Libels. Printed sheets passed from hand to hand or, more daringly – for the authorities are on the watch against all these demonstrations – pasted prominently up. Printed words come to the aid of this swelling inchoate thing, giving it rule and shape. Rhythm. It continues with here and there a little manifestation. The dead animal left on the Huguenot family’s doorstep, the Flemish weaver finding his window smashed. Prentices stamping and clapping and linking arms to sweep down the street in the areas where they live, like Southwark, East Smithfield, St Martin-le-grand. Which is where it begins for Will.