Part 22

rowing up, our greatest fun was swimming, our greatest anguish church. From church, as quickly possible, we got into nakedness, rival of summer lightning. We swam the Avon in laughter and rowdiness, three, four or five of us, and if others were at our favorite pool we chased them off, our penises flying, rocks and yells going everywhere. We scared them half to death, or, if we were in proper mood, we adopted them, kids like us; we swam and climbed on them and trampled the ooze of plants, and the ooze slicked our bodies over their bodies: I can feel it almost like a lover getting ready to make love: and that’s about what we did: we made love to the day and we made love to the water: we yelled and slapped it and cuffed it into obedience, and orgasmed it, and tore our legs till blood pricked, and then we swam and I was pretty good and I out-swam some though some out-swam me, and we swam until we felt cool and easy, and then lay on the grass by the mill, to watch the swallows and gape and groan, like lovers after their bout in bed: our spirits ebbing for the nonce, then rising to dress and yell and pull and sing and chase each other home.

How I reveled in summer haying.

Usually, I loaded a small wagon pulled by Burt, Burt eying me, snuffling at me as I pitched the hay: he was getting old and the grey of his wooly hide was shedding outrageously; he lifted each black hoof slowly, often fetching a fart. He liked working the field alone but I preferred working with others. Stripped to the waist, hatless, I forked and grunted and Burt pulled and farted. Some of the time I had to sing, the smell of hay and sun inspiring my songs: sometimes, when I worked with others, all of us sang, horses perkier for our merriment.

Mildred was as good at the fork as I: working side by side, we often bumped and her blue eyes would widen and light up: pretty, blonde, barefooted, she wore a blouse, skirt and Dutch apron: our field ended at the river, an apple grove along the other sides. Two or three of us, in teams, harvested Papa’s hay each season: I still smell the timothy and the girl.

Wonderful, wonderful and most wonderful...and yet another.

Henley Street

May 10, 1615

Choir singing was boring—just sucking melancholy out of song—and whenever I could, I skipped it and went off with Becky. No matter how icy, there was fun, hands linked, our runny noses beatific: Becky, whose giggle alerted every boy, was my girl whenever we could steal away and turtle hunt—that was our joy: tirelessly, we combed the creeks and river, staying long past staying time, scolded but not caring.

I see her giddy black eyes, brown mop, skinny legs, tiny hands and tiny feet—barefooted beside me, wetting herself to the legpits, screeching or silent, often too silent, wading lustily. She loved to steal apples, raspberries, strawberries, turnips, hungry from morning till night. I peeled turnips for her and we munched them on a stile, then raced one another, slithered downstream:

“There’s one, see, on that log. Be quiet!”

“I’ll get ’im.”

“No, let me. It’s my turn. He’s tiny. He’s for me.”

“Go slowly.”

A few times Becky and I rang the church bells for the sexton; together, we stole buns and cookies at home, but best of all we stole happiness, books in running brooks.

She married a seaman and lives in London: I warrant you there are eight children, a happy family—God bless t’em! I would not change the story.

Henley Street

Mother—memories of you are mostly memories of songs you used to sing when sleep was near, lovingly, patiently, sung in my room, close to the varnished beams, curtains drawn, as you sat or lay beside me or rested in a nearby chair.

Our favorite song was “Happy be thou, heavenly queen...man’s comfort and angel’s bliss...of all women thou hast the prize...”

And I remember each word of Sanctus—and hear each word as you sang it lingeringly; sometimes your hand kept time; sometimes your fingers covered mine.

Stabat Mater Dolorosa...

So many years have lapsed that I have forgotten how you looked, only your eyes and thin figure and voice remain: I hear you when you called us in from play: “Too-lee- looly-loo,” you called, shepherding your six for supper and bed.

I roam about, room to room, stooping for a bedroom doorway, floors creaking, the varnished beams always the same, three floors of thinking about me, windows you used to look out of, beds you used to make—or was that another house, another time, another illusion? My house, your house, our house—who owns, who makes traitorous gifts, decisions, contracts, to pile millions of acres of dirt on top of us later?

At the Globe, when I was young, I received quite a visitor! Ben Jonson brought Sir Francis Drake. Ben was a sharer of friends. I was dumbfounded but “El Draque,” contemptuously at ease, sat on my backstage table, his plumed hat and red gloves flung on top of a litter of plays. He and Ben discussed a masque Jonson was to produce.

Young as I was, it took courage to speak to “El Draque” because even his purple hat shocked me. But I managed to ask about his attack on Cadiz. Lines warped his mouth, and he said, stroking his corn husk chin:

“It was a matter of guns...we singed the King’s whiskers through our superior armament. Ah, good winds too. We had great luck! Don’t you believe in luck? When you write a play, isn’t it luck, lucky weather, luck with your players, luck with your attendance, the right kind of royalty attending at the right time?”

I saw him again after the defeat of the Armada, at a crowded Thames anchorage. Wounded, he looked older, livid scar on his cheek, the fire dead in his eyes, his expression one of cynicism and fatigue. He wore a squat, official hat. No rings. Leaning against a spattered capstan, he seemed smaller than I had remembered him; he did not recognize me.

“Our fire ships forced the Armada out of anchorage, broke up their plan!” he said, talking to a group of officers.

“Put yourself on a fire ship,” he boomed. “You’re at the rudder. She’s aflame—flames are roaring aft! Your whole ship’s blazing but somehow you bugger her against a Spanish hull. You’re beaten off. They’re afraid you have a powder mine in your hold. There’s cannon shot! You dive overboard. It’s a long, icy swim. Most men never make it out of that water...

“What we needed was more gun shot, more ammunition, kegs and kegs of powder; then, by God, we’d have run them clean to Spain, run them, not waited, our guns useless. We had to sit it out, wait—no powder. We didn’t dare take a chance. Think of it, everything to our advantage but we dared not move. We had to bluff.”

I wrote down his words—but I still hear them, it might be five or six years ago, not thirty!

Deceptions of mind bother me: unrehearsed, the brain bedevils and stacks lie on lie...in the lays of time. I turn my glass and am alone, the cuckold of myself reflected in three hundred sixty-five mirrors. My spirits, as in a dream, are bound up, and like the Armada, strewn on shores and still more rocky shores...

Henley Street

May 18, 1615

Memory’s snowfall rattles every door and window in my house. Was it the once lost winter thirty years ago in London? From door to door, I begged for work: my hands blue, legs quaking, face frost-galled. Belly empty, pocket empty, I harried taverns, bakeries, homes. People mistrusted me, that wild-haired kid, goat-bearded—doors slammed in my face. Blinded by snow, I headed for the Thames, for the bridge—shelter there. On the way, I passed a tavern and opened a door: a crowd of young men faced me: I asked for work and was given a scullery job, supper and a mat by the stove: I’ll never forget the warmth of that mat by that stove: I wanted nothing more: cherry voices and warmth: it all comes back!

A piece of bread in one hand, I fell contentedly asleep. An elephantine man, with florid face and scraggly beard, wakened me roughly.

“Next time you go to sleep don’t let the rats share your bread,” Falstaff guffawed.

Stratford

May 23

Falstaff helped me find an old cloak and helped me borrow boots and gloves. He got me a stagehand job. Later, he showed me where I could purchase stolen things, sharing his room with him: ribaldry, punning, gargantuan laughter, thievery, friends, foolishness, foppery, wit and wine. Little did I think of using him in a play during the weeks I lived with him. In those days, I had never written a line.

Like an umbrella, his character sheltered me from depression: he introduced me to Marlowe, Kyd, Jonson. Years later, I introduced him to Alleyn and Burbage; Burbage wanted him on stage but Falstaff had his own stage where he could dupe and bedevil, unmolested by paid gapers. By then, he was getting old and liked puttering and sleeping best.

Those were mad times, those days with Falstaff, and yet, behind every laugh lay the threat of poverty, the knife blade of quarrels, reason gone unreasonable. Night after night we went to sleep hungry. With glue and nail we pieced our shoes together, for one more day. With needle and thread we patched our clothes. Falstaff pulled my wisdom tooth to save the barber’s fee: “Open wide, yell! There, I’ve got it, Will, spit now. Spit, boy.”

In a few ways Falstaff resembled my father: both were unassuming, generous, dilatory: their fat portraits hang side by side in my mind: the last I heard from my friend was a brief word from Dover where he was working for a shipbuilder and lived in a shanty by the sea.

He would have roared at his role in my plays: he would have objected to his cowardice, upheld his zeal, begged me for a thousand pounds, and tried to bribe me for the address of a pretty woman.

Friend...you were eel-fish, bull’s pizzle, dried neat’s tongue and stockfish! When you were born the front of heaven was full of fiery shapes and the goats ran from the mountains.

Henley Street

May 25, 1615

A cockroach creeps about my room, an X on its back, the only roach branded in my roost. I see it in the morning, when I sit down to write. It favors a corner, where there is a deep crack, in case of an intruder or wrath on my part. It has a stiff carriage—much more so than any of the others. Ruler, no doubt, with excessive responsibilities! So I have decided to call it Bill. Certainly all other roaches seem afraid of this Conqueror. When I find it on my table, I make a pass at it and it leaps with a scut. It eats paper—old and new. It munches leftovers, liking cheese best, though I think the cheese is pretty well divided between the roaches and the mice.

Henley Street

May 26, 1615

Why am I disliked in Stratford? Is it because I drive a hard bargain? Is it because I have assumed, at least at times, an actor’s air? They say I stand aloof but is it possible to cross the Avon to their side? My side is Ptolemy’s, Priam’s, Cleopatra’s, Coriolanus’. We four are difficult to appraise as we walk along Henley Street. The local folk have never heard the creak of chariot wheels.

Lonely...I have been lonely and am lonelier now, but which is lonelier, the pod with one pea or the pod with aliens? True, I have sued for money; true, I have acquired property. And the city man and country man mistrust one another: the writer fits in nowhere: yet, since this is home, I try to accommodate myself, say “yes” to Mr. Combe, and help if I can. “Yes, M.”

I never could introduce Ann to Londoners and she has been unable to introduce me to Stratford people. If I were well, if I could write, I would spit on Avon.

Combe is the only person in S. who has seen any of my plays; however, when I talk with him, he confuses scenes and characters; his appreciation is based on pride that says “I can speak of Shakespeare.” A Puritan, he patronizes incoming Puritans more than most, helping them infest this town, making it a sawtooth of moral crud, chair and whip in line, summoning whispered inquisitions.

Monday

What fools we mortals are, for I who wrote of shrews married a shrew who is more shrewful than any Kate from Padua. I laugh at my own defeat, a shrew beside a shrew, players nodding at my marital bewilderment, I, the drunkard drunk on illusions. Shall we list her infidelities—country-man at Fair, con-man, neighbor? Shall we name names?

Shakespeare and Ann, at ruins of Kenilworth castle,

copulating in the grass, happy in their bucolic lust.

The two trudge, hand in hand:

Ann ups her skirt and they flop again, giggling:

“Twins,” she says.

Henley Street

I

married a shrew and yet thirty years ago, Ann and I knew hot jollity at Kenilworth, the grass a hide under us, pigeons reconnoitering castle walls, a falcon lawing the sun. Since Ann and I had a few days for ourselves, we had ridden to K. She was Sweet Villain, and when we pastured the horses and unstuffed our knapsacks, we stuffed ourselves, and sacked ourselves, gorging in sun, the horses stomping and snuffling beyond us. Sweet Villain pulled up her skirts after we had drunk more than we should and I was glad I had not married another. She said “Your hair’s redder,” and I said “Your hair’s yellower,” meaning where, and our laughter went bounding.

We sacked that old busky castle from wall to wall, writing on scalded plaster, pushing over abutments, throwing rocks at a fox. From some crater corner, we looked up, our heads dusty, holding each other sexround, our fierceness there while falcons fought, clipping each other, beaking one another, feathers falling. Kenilworth and kings: we smelled unsavory dungeons but pushed our falconry over them, our naked seel better than intercourse of power and time: among the marl, we viewed puffs of smoke from country homes, saw water gleaming, a windmill turning, sheep among sheep, their woolly backs humping toward a rainy sunset.

Soon, soon, time was to tear away our love, but we did not suspect: we were the confidents, our jollity amusing because fastened to laughter, no wrack or confusion: it was slap of hands on bare buttocks, “ah” over breast, mouth sucking, suckling, surprising, surfeiting, back again for more: the taste of love’s bite the waist around, the hand up, down, and the grass its hide browner, browner than our flesh, her flesh ignited from within, so burned for me.

Stratford-on-Avon

June 1, 1615

We ate off wooden plates, tulips blooming in the garden, blue and white Chinese plates hanging on the wall, and lilacs blooming in the garden...in a dream I confronted him and he was monarch and he said to me: I am Hamnet, come, we’ll go to the guild chapel and hear the sermon...it was a cold sermon but honeysuckle was blooming in the garden...orioles were singing above the oriel. Columbine, ferns, and lilies were on the cabinet: she said to me: Come, Will, eat! I said to her: listen, I hear the pegs moving inside the beams: that is for integrity. Ivy grew on the east wall of my house in those days.

Henley Street

June 3, 1615

Alone, following the Roman wall, as it girdled London, I used to speculate where the Roman gods had gone; thinking, as well, of those of Egypt and Greece...time with a scroll on his back, asking alms. Smashed bricks, memento mori, along that vast, yellow, unweeded garden, were questions in their own right, broken, to be kicked aside, as are our own questions concerning mortality.

Gazing at the Thames, I hoped for hope from the wide wall, wider river and broader mystery. I went over my plays...Ulysses...Cleopatra...Prospero... The wall, with its imperialism and legion of whispers, said “no, master, no,” speaking in the voice of Lear’s fool.

Ellen and I climbed the castle where Caesar lived, the tallest site in London, the Thames below, flowers and vines crawling over ruins, the walls of yesterday saying “Et tu Brutus.”

Danger knows full well that hate is doubly dangerous: we are two lions littered in a day, and the litter of stones crumbles underfoot, but Ellen cries out to me, and I catch her by the arm.

There is a white sail on the river...

Ay, me, how fine a thing the heart of woman! I thought it then and think it still, the very best of her is gentle subtlety: it is this that takes a man in.

A flock of blackbirds lit below us, covering the fallen stones like black hail.

We went many times to that castle and walked along its ancient yellow walls; she asked me for poetry and I repeated lines: what were they, I wonder?

Now...most noble one...the gods stand friendly today, that we may, lovers in peace, lead on our days to age:

I am constant as the northern star, of whose true-fixed and resting Quality there is no fellow in the firmament...the skies are painted with unnumbered sparks...they are all afire, and every one doth shine; but there’s but one in all doth hold his place: so in the world...

The stars came out, a summer’s night on Caesar’s place, and we heard frogs and the tittering of lovers, ourselves loving that place, our flesh, that empirical wisdom. We went so often we called it “our castle.”

Henley Street

June 5, 1615

At Christmas skirling bagpipers, piping a waulking song, greeted us at Dunira. Ellen’s room, in a squat tower, faced a narrow lake with ragged shore pines and a small island, wild geese and ducks resting on the water, cold, cold, moss blue water.

Sun crossed the bear rugs and tiles of her floor.

Her bed was canopied with green velvet embroidered with golden shields and crossed spears, seen on her coat-of- arms.

She called my attention to the pulls on the heavy drapes, each pull a carved ivory ball enclosing a ball inside another.

Hand in mine, she showed me her collection of silver, gold, and ivory fans, fans from Egypt, Greece and India, arranged on her walls, some open, some in cases, flabellum with bone handles, Venetian lace fans, tomb fans with gold-encrusted ribs, a Greek fan like an acanthus leaf. I can see the movement of her lips as she described them; I can see her hand, pointing.

We often walked around the lake and through the pollarded garden, its cypresses like stone columns: we walked the moors until Christmas cold sent us shivering to the big fireplaces where we talked and ate and sang and drank.

Someone kept the fire blazing in her fireplace and we would sink down on her bed or lie on the bear rug and make love, the firelight skirling her ivory, her fans and the canopy’s yellow silk lining.

Hugh opened our door one morning very early, while we were busy making love, and with a boisterous laugh he said:

“I just finished with my woman; when you’re done, we’ll go hunting. The horses are saddled. Better lock your door next time!”

Hugh—his huge body on a huge hunter—led us hunting along a loch, where the ocean, squeezed as in a glass case, shuddered, as though resentful of its trap, as though it considered everyone as intruder. I was awed by the water’s dark and the chasms menacing it. Deer eluded us and while we followed the loch, I lost interest in the hunt for the quarry of sea and earth, spirit and well- being.

Hunting, walking, eating, drinking, love-making, this was the happiest time of my life. Her brother’s acceptance amounted to adoption; he often came to my room and talked at length, sharing intimacies; the only misadventure during my stay was an attack of hungry peasants who swarmed the castle court, shrilly demanding food, some in kilts with silent bagpipes.

Ellen and I visited the ruins of a sprawling Cistercian abbey on her Dunira property; there, under the vaulted archway, where roses climbed, I felt inspired, and, staying on I wrote Cymbeline, scenes and words coming easily, happiness a constant companion: the sweetness of her personality seemed altogether mine. Words and flesh— they were mine, in that sun and cloud world of Dunira.

The weather settled into a steady spell, my room overlooking garden, lake and bluecap forest. London might have been at the bottom of the sea: I could not have cared less. Its dirt and beauty—I never missed them.

Visiting the abbey frequently, we met several of the monks who resided in a section of the refectory; their geniality contented us and we lingered with them, in their herb garden, by a fountain—pigeons about. A marvelously tiny man, spry though old, gave us a parchment book, one he had rubricated, pleased to see us in love.

Hugh accompanied us occasionally to bring food for the brothers, making the short trip with donkeys carrying loaded panniers. He, too, would linger, sharing our mood.

Abbey garden, fountains, vegetables and herbs in rows:

a collection of rare fans on a wall:

Hugh and Shakespeare drink at a refectory table:

a peasant enters and Hugh beats the man

who is asking for alms:

skirl of bagpipes.

O

n the Scottish coast the sunset prowled the lowtide combers, rolling cloud into cloud, wave into wave. The clouds absorbed orange with yellow and the yellow took on red, the red brooming low, sweeping shoreward, reaching the sand at our feet.

Is it true that we saw the sunset together, her arms around me, the rocks beyond us red, the sunset extending for miles? The moon rose out of a rust-colored sky?

Stratford-on-Avon

June 11, 1615

“Darling, ours is a supreme happiness and we must cherish it,” she wrote me long ago.

For years I kept her letters in my desk at Blackfriar’s house, to lose them when the place burned: waxed, ribboned and perfumed letters, from France, Italy, and Scotland. I could rewrite some of them from memory—some.

At the time I received her letters I thought that a number of them had been detained much too long and I thought several of them had been tampered with. I put this aside as fancy for I was willing to be blind. As I think back it’s odd I never suspected censorship. And why was it I never knew till later that she and her family opposed the Queen?

The knife of one’s own stupidity cuts deepest!

A year or two after the attack on her, when she was back in Scotland, she wrote that Hugh was assassinated in Glasgow—an Elizabethan courtesy, someone said. The shock was more of a shock coming from her: Hugh dead, big Hugh, with his cleft beard, bushy eyebrows, and mop of greying hair: the bigness of his Dunira castle comes to me, along with his hospitality.

For years I was driven half insane by a dream of an enveloping cloak: the cloak swallowed my house, trees, sun, and stars: I heard a woman scream inside this luminous thing. Behind the folds was a bearded face, coming closer and closer.

Henley Street

I was headed for home when I met Ellen and the autumn sun favored us, potentates meeting by a river, our kingdom the leaves along the shore, the ash red, our introduction friends, our hopes instantaneous. I saw beneath her gloves to her veined hands; I saw her veined breasts beneath her dress; I saw beneath her smiles the invitation, rebuffs, wiles...

Yet who dares to know royalty outside the theatre!

Home, I reminded myself, is Stratford; but, who among us remembers home and fidelity?

I loved home once, my Ann, my children, and the sharing of the things a man wants to share. I loved these in my groin and the raves of sweetness summoned me, over and over, till I was worn out and imperious insomnia stalked and kept me at my desk or sent me.

How can it be, in the midst of aged foolishness, Ellen appears, to convince, to distract—those devil eyes of hers and that black hair and her white, white skin begging love. When she speaks, I listen: I turn and listen: I turn and listen again for she is theatre, its hush, its compassion, its folly.

Jonson was right to introduce us; he thought to kill my pen and wit. It was his plot to make me plotless—great jest! He was right, for sleepless nights swept around and the pulsing indirection of sex carried me to her for yet another rendezvous.

Did I ever come to my senses: was it a week, month, or year? Was it she who nailed the fog over my soul? Ah, crucifix between her breasts, so soft, so impaled! What graciousness!

London was too small for us for everyone perceived the unperceivable, impaired our pairing and yet...but all this is past and the last seat empty.