Part 23

We thought to escape to Rome, that eternal place for eternal mouths. She offered me money and I refused. At the theatre she begged me to accept, for us, for time, for love...and I accepted. On stage I swore to testify but I hugged my testament and my lines faltered.

We have played our parts too often, our thighs packed with wax, our mouths with honey; we bring it to the hive; and, like the bees, are murdered for our pains.

Henley Street

June 18, 1615

For months I kept at the writing of Antony and Cleopatra—Ellen seldom out of my mind. Yet the writing was an abatement of anguish, scenes lifting me out of maelstroms, Antony’s turbulence alleviating mine. Apartment and theatre were all I allowed myself, sharing time with Jonson, dividing mutual crusts.

Rain—rain—when has it rained more! It was well I had the Egyptian sun to keep my bones warm.

Some scenes evolved easily; others fought me, full of sound and fury. I could not visualize certain scenes on the stage and sometimes strange actors walked the boards and stole my lines, fixing them with their own personalities. Alleyn stalked as Caesar, and I had to re- write again and again.

Baxter affronted me with his buffoonery and I had to cross out his lines. Phips—our cheerful homosexual—had Cleopatra in his perfumed arms, jeering at me. Kempe jigged.

On top of all this, insomnia set in and never left me for weeks. March – April – May, it was the warmth of May that unlocked its crossbow and shot me outdoors, to sit and sit for hours.

There, in the sun, my shirt open, shoes off, grass alive, lilacs alive, birds twirping, I knew I could make Antony and Cleopatra successful. There in the sun people and river came alive. The sun’s gnomon wrote. I bowed my head and waited. At my desk, I hurled my sentiency... alive, it must come alive, to hurl aside life’s muddle: alive: these people from the past must speak: nothing is more remote than yesterday: speak to them: make them chroniclers: break their sleep.

The Thames with anchored and sailing ships:

Ellen and Shakespeare on board a coaster,

leaning on the taffrail:

She settles her tam and quotes from Two Gentlemen of Verona.

They talk of Naples as sailors leer at them

from on top a stack of boxes.

Henley Street

June 20, 1615

E

llen and I sailed the Thames, the water stippled with gulls; our hands locked, we stood at the stern and hoped for a smooth voyage, with love, our rudderbar credulous to us, the wind mild and lasting. In Venetian wine there would be happiness, we promised each other...

But why are you lost to me and I alive?

Ellen—what is this, that reaches round us and never arrives; what is this that promises return?

Ours was a proper departure, landing us on the Italian shore, love in a town of disinterested people.

Perhaps I want the impossible: yes, yes, I want that time when we were there in Naples, when we strolled the seaside; when we sailed the waterlanes and walked Roman streets and her fountains watched us with sleepy eyes, spray beaded on some bronze arm.

I dislike borrowing things and yet I’m borrowing memories, borrowing time, those bronzes, our return, our boat bucking seas, sending us north, ice off the larboard, back to reality, debts, conniving. We said good-bye but our good-bye was postponement. Our wheel became St. Catherine’s. At a gypsy teller’s tent there was a kind of double silence.

I lived for my work, starved for it.

With my pen I quartered the earth and green pastures and made them live for her and the witchcraft of hope, to shake off sadness and burst the anarchies of soul.

Incorrect to heaven, some say.

June 22, 1615

What a cocked up play, my Coriolanus. To fill my pocket! To fob off bad for good, that was it. I leaned on one crutch and fought with another—and fell. Too many of my plays were crutched. I borrowed too much from Plutarch and others. I worshipped royalty. I was too conventional, too romantic, borrowing plots, borrowing, borrowing, double sure, never sure, cocksure.

Henley

Midsummer-day

And I must guess the identity of her attackers—or why they wanted her life. Christ, we had our list of suspects. And what came of our grim suppositions? Nothing. We said: was it robbery, I prithee? Jealousy? Hatred? Politics? We said. We have said and I go on saying. Thrift, Horatio, thrift...and I have not saved.

Henley Street

June 26, 1615

Hamnet...

Today is your death day.

After you died I went to the shore and the sea’s clods of wood and detritus infused in me a loneliness that nothing has every wiped out: a wrangle of foam goes on and on inside me; the grey that topped the abyss of ocean finds a darker grey in me; the gulls are sleep-flying for you.

Hamnet, my son...

Prince of my house, I loved you. We had such fun. Good day, sweet boy, how dost thou, good boy? May flights of angels sing you on your way. When you died, Stratford teemed with monsters. Your hand in mine, such a cold hand, you said adieu. What God was this to snuff you out at eleven. Grief stiffened me: I feel it today, when there should have been a birthday party not a remembrance. The sea rolls back on me as I sit here, my legs unable to move, pain working in me.

The Queen and her killings...time and its murders...they are alike! The unfairness of life, O what angels sing the truth? What angels! Go, fetch me a quart of sack; put a toast in’t.

God took him from me...damn the God that steals your son.

King of grief they might have called me. Now, all is mended by many years: ours be your patience, your gentle hand lead us, and take our hearts.

I had thought to leave him something beside my father’s coat-of-arms. I had thought to introduce him to the theatre, have him think about my plays, have him know the better part of London. He would have been a friend of Drake’s; perhaps he might have sailed on Raleigh’s Virginia voyages. Perhaps Jonson might have taught him Latin. Perhaps is my treadmill, and I wear it thin.

He went to a few plays with me and thrilled to them. He respected me. Loved me. What were his thoughts, as he died? To be such a short, short time on stage! Was he resentful, bewildered? I think he was confused because of the great fever. Good God, what was the use of his flowering? It was an error of the moon...it makes men mad.

To thine own self be true, they say, and I, still harping, I ask your credent ear to listen: we shall not look upon his like again?

Speak... I go no further.

Stratford-on-Avon

Flowers in my hand, I thought to visit his grave, but as I limped across the yard, thinking of the bone house and how each of us ends there, remembering those underneath my shoes, under the tree, under the threatening sky, I laid the flowers on another’s grave, and the dove carved on that granite nodded, as it were, pecked me across the grass, among the weeds, reminding me of other men’s grief.

That woman, over there on her knees, isn’t that Nancy Richards? I recognize her shoulders and the back of her head. Her father died last month.

What stupidity, this crawling, mewing, kneeling, this unresurrectable world, with weeds that smell of dust.

I remember a king’s grave in Denmark, with falcons carved on it, falcons of black marble, perched on top a branch, carved black centuries ago.

I walked through the rain, moving as fast as my legs would let me, my soul full of discord and dismay, wishing I had not gone, resolved to confine myself to myself, incarcerate my grief in my writing, or, if I could not write, be ennobled, not afflicted as other men are with contagion.

The fault, dear Brutus...

After his death, the dissentious Judith and Ann used to side against me: “He’s no good, Judith,” Ann preached vehemently. “What does he care for any of us! He’s always away in London. You’ve heard him say that life’s but a walkin’ shadow. We’re just so many shadows to him!”

I would stare at Judith after one of Ann’s outbursts; I would look at her and through some sort of necromancy I would see Hamnet’s face—I would remember our fun, our fishing, our swimming in the Avon.

It was not the constant conspiracy of Ann and Judith that drove the final nail; it was Judith’s resemblance, same color and texture of hair, same blue eyes, same half smile, same propensity to giggles, same way of rubbing her hands on her clothes. I had always favored Hamnet because he and I had shared more. Now, now that Judith lived, I could not accept his death. Of course I never wanted her to die. As long as the twins lived there was accord. If death must steal one of them...but I couldn’t, wouldn’t choose. Yet, in ugliest anger, I had shouted my preference. And she knew I often saw Hamnet when I looked at her: I’ve seen her run when I stared at her: I’ve heard her cry: “Mama, he’s looking at me that way!”

“These are my twins,” I used to say, showing them to people. Twins—for how long!

I bought her a goonhilly pony, an excellent pacer, and taught her to ride. I got her a lamb and a puppy, I brought her gifts from London. I brought her things from France and Italy. There was little chance to get through to her because of Ann. If I won Judith for a while, I lost her when at work in London. She never wrote to me...or Ann destroyed those letters. During my years in the theatre, in London and touring the provinces, all those years, I received no note. She never expressed a desire to see one of my plays, seemed disinterested in my life in the city—unless it was to suggest I bring something when I came home.

Home?

July 1, 1615

I am that wanderer of night, full many a morning have I seen flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye...

There’s memory, that’s for remembrance; pray, you, love, remember...and there is pansies; that’s for thought...there’s fennel for you, and columbine; there’s rue...you must wear your rue with a difference.

Through the years they mangled those lines! How cold to hear them backstage! How cold to hear them now, here, in my room, echoing from varnished beams, off-stage in my oriel of yesterday.

But I should not have gotten sick: I should have stayed in London to the end, fought the Puritans, fought the King, the tax collectors, the players of the shrew’s men!

Pain shut me out: the body must have its moments of solace—the mind its soothsayer!

I would give you violets...but they are planted around a gravestone.

I was a young man when I wrote those lines; like Ophelia I ride on bawdy repetitions, error on error.

The table of my memory is dusted with crumbs.

Off-stage, the wind gushes; on-stage, there’s a frenzied pitch of “no!”

Chorus, players!

This love, this royalty by jackanapes brought to earth, the stage to my back: what can a man affirm in such a position: flight? I speak to her and she puts her fingers on my lips and holds her beauty like a whip over me. The curtain came down quickly: fie, the curtain often comes down swiftly, manipulated by fury, a last sound snapped out, muffling resolution, covering courage...

There is a curtain for love and one for hate: there is a curtain for youth and another for age. And when we finally realize these things we are dotards, and our realization laughs.

The executioner’s curtain is no doubt the swiftest. The jig maker’s safest. The priest’s dullest. The mariner’s loneliest. The lover’s saddest.

Henley Street

July 8, ’15

These pages are so unlike my plays and sonnets and yet I have to struggle to get anything down! Here is my mock dukedom; since I can not write any longer I look back across time from the shelf of my memory, longing to improve my existence: I am certain that the old word- chattels gladly deserted me, looking for a young man, no doubt, an upstart from Snitterfield, enroute to London, riding a brood mare, humming...hey, non nonny...

...Heaven mend all!

Henley Street

July 9, 1615

Elsinore has a tongue of land that licks at time, a place that ends with defeat, its castle and its people falling into apparitions.

Usurping night, Elsinore made me face the northern ocean, irresolution. There was no illusion to being there: rain cusped out of sky: the snow fell: it was a bitter time to see the place, a blastment. I had shaken off that incessant pain that stabbed the roof of my skull each time I leaned over, that writhed through my eyes: I would rub my eyes and feel something click in my brain as if it had fallen into place again. But I was still weak from this ailment and tired from long journeys and longer thoughts. I was filled with new dreads, especially here, under the rain. Irresolution: it is wrong to deny it for there is no denying its power.

There is something like death, being alone in a foreign land. With determination grappling, the loneliness and death-sense grip harder. So I felt that I was borrowing from everything around me.

It is a custom for some of us to think and yet I turn against that custom. It is better to live, simply as simple people live. I wanted to live without the paper- world, to shun its distortions, escape its death head, the charnel house of yesterday.

As I stood on that tongue of land, I heard the slobber of the sea: I heard old men whisper: I heard old passions. My blood was young and yet I could not get away. The porches of my ears wanted friendship, I, the kind hand, the kinder mouth.

“If you were here there would be reason enough. Without you, there is no more than walls and sky and food. To be sure, I eat. To be sure, I move about. You understand what I mean. I find that there is so much in life that never gets said. When I am with you I am unable to say it...old plaint. I try to convey with my presence—that is help. You, too, have this desire, and have expressed it. When we were in bed, mating, there was a beauty in that union that sufficed...until tomorrow. Then, caught up in time, I sensed the old longing, to share the unshareable, to reach the unreachable. Here, in this cold room, I am trying to make life a little more livable, for you, for me.”

So I wrote her.

Stratford

YEARS AGO

At Oxford, it is pleasant to recall, I stopped at Duvenant’s inn frequently, the rooms and meals much to my taste. Madame Duvenant, dressing like someone from an Inigo Jones’ masque, her rosy sex refreshing, greeted me with a favorable eye. Veal, shoulder of mutton, rabbit, green fish...gingerbread...strawberries...claret: she knew my favorites, sharing my meals and bed. When I arrived, tired by travel, she had someone look after me, prepare my meal; then, we enjoyed each other’s company in the dining room she kept for private use. A Londoner and play-goer, she fixed her lusty eyes on me, hand on my arm, and made me feel I had never been away. She asked no promises, required no letter-writing, no payment. “It’s late. Will, shall we go up to bed?” Why are there so few generous women?

Henley Street

July 13, 1615

I’d like one more ferry trip across the Thames, in the morning, the water dark, Sly at the oars, telling me about the latest girl, of the girls he has ferried, girls he wanted to love but could never love, old, old Sly.

“There’s one, Will, you just can’t beat. She’s about this tall, tiny around the waist, and she makes you know, before you know it, that she can be had for very little, very sweetly done too, that’s the game of it...that’s the game of her, that little one, Portia, they call her. Portia, the one with grey eyes and small mouth. When she stands up beside me in the boat to pay her fare, I groan. It’s terrible being old, Will, when you can’t do it any more. And I want to do it to her, to be young again. That Portia, she comes mostly in the evenings, I guess you know why. But she’s not always alone, but when she’s alone, we talk. That she, she is little around the waist but has melon breasts, the kind, you know how they are. I will give you her address, if you want. Shillings, now Will! But she’s not one you’ll forget, I warn ye. That mouth of hers and them eyes of hers. Faggots for her, that’s it, Will, faggots for men who see her...”

The boat shifts, Sly’s oars are cracked, his old face crisped from the sunny crossings, the winds and fogs. He’s been boatman for forty-odd years, he says. He has worn out a dozen boats, which he builds himself, to make them stout enough. Sun on his boat, the water dark...

I’d like to cross once more with him, though he’s been dead a long time, cross with other boats around, small boats and schooners, some with sails unfurled, seaward bound.

St. Swithin’s Day

If I knew where I was going to die I wouldn’t go near the place.

Stratford

July 20, 1615

Today, warm sun and silence were mine and pain alleviated: I hoped for recovery, hoped to write again, hoped that my memory might outlive death half a year; so shall I progress, ant-wise, day by day: ants, as you creep over the woodwork, stumble against the grain, think of me and the words I summon: conviction me to another Rosalind: the Touchstone will unblacken and reveal pure, pure gold: alchemy of ruffians and angels:

Tongues I’ll hang on every tree

For the souls of friend and friend...

The sword in my chimney corner has not been unsheathed for years: when I bought it I thought I had the keenest blade in London, sharper than my rapier: when I carried it I liked to give it a flick now and then, to catch the eye of a woman: I kept it polished: it saved my life in a street fracas: Hamnet liked it: he used to shoulder it and parade about: I thought it would keep me young forever: I thought it would cut across time, loosen parchment and paper, let flood a bevy of immortal words above a sea of faces...

...for Thomas Combe.

The Roebuck on the Atlantic, bucking water,

sailors topmast, Raleigh in his cabin,

one eye on the compass, another on a manuscript:

Books line the walls; a monkey chitters:

the Roebuck pitches:

Raleigh’s jewels flash on his hands:

“Mermaid,” yells a bow sailor.

Henley Street

July 24, 1615

I

had thirty-five days at sea with Raleigh:

How he commands, respected by his seamen, each crewman called by name. There is adequate leisure aboard his frigate. I never saw anything done “on the double” as aboard an Essex ship where the captaincy seemed insecure.

On board the Roebuck I kept at my writing, lolling and writing on deck or passing hours in his cabin where I gave up to his booked walls: volumes in French, English, Italian, Greek, manuscripts in Latin and Hebrew, his literary world broader than mine.

In his cabin, under his table lantern during bad weather, during squalls, I wrote an act and then, at Raleigh’s urging, read it aloud. Feet propped on a mother-of-pearl chest, he listened gravely, smoking his clay pipe, brandy in reach, his comments as mellow as his drink, Oxford accent to my liking.

Ere we were ten days old at sea I had written several scenes—writing in the sun and spray, sitting on coils of rope, a gun lashed in front of me, gulls mewing.

“Mermaid...mermaid,” a sailor yelled aloft, and we scuttled to the starboard rail, to see something break water and then submerge, its pearly back toward us.

She swam and dove, flipping in and out of swells, the bubbles foaming around her, making off at a 40 degree angle from our stern, pearl or green grey, though I never saw her distinctly.

The excited sailor who had spotted her claimed that he had seen her face... “such a beautiful face!”

Raleigh appeared.

“They’re deep swimmers,” he said, as we leaned far over, hoping she might reappear. “She’ll likely stay down a long time. Must have powerful lungs, those mermaids.”

He told of other mermaids: he had heard one call through fog and mist on the Orinoco river; he had seen one off the Cape, near a small island; he said that seeing a mermaid spells luck.

He went on talking of a trip upriver, jungle river, heat, crocodiles, green birds, monkeys with beards, butterflies, solid white butterflies, bigger than your hands: his descriptions sent my brain going: I too was the Queen’s favorite, Shepherd of the Ocean, sailing a Golden Hind: I would find El Dorado in Manoa.

His accent sometimes thickened to a brogue and it was difficult to follow. Talking of his travels, his eyes grew nervous, searching, searching, seeing inside, greying: his arms gestured.

We leaned against the taffrail, as the ship heeled under a wind, white caps racing after.

His Roebuck is splendid, new, well-equipped, faster than others of design. He and his navy draughtsmen spent months on her, and she cost him a fortune.

On this run we fired new cannon, firing them to test their recoil, trying a device designed by his chief gunner: for Mr. Ames the firing took place after dawn, when the ocean was smooth; I was wakened five or six mornings; the great ship rolled in protest and rigging and beams creaked. One morning I was on deck to witness the testing.

Legs spread, soap on him, he rode the swells, while a sailor threw water over him, a sexful man, proud, and that same pride was at dinner in his cabin while being served among his officers and it was there while he read to me at the same table, eatables cleared, read me from the Greek poets, Pindar’s ode on boxing, Simonides and his Perseus imprisoned in a chest at sea, Anakreon: reading the Greek and then translating as if it were his tongues.

It seemed to me he might be fit to govern the new world...a great, wise colonist...

On our trip we visited Madeira Island, disembarking at noon, the cambers keeling us into warm, shallow water, the weather perfect. I had a carcanet that I was determined to give a girl, in exchange. The priest, in the town, was very determined to detain me: to please him, I had to see the hairs of the Virgin, treasured in a box: the coil of hair kept the convent free of famine, he insisted: with his gigantic paunch I felt he might cause a famine of his own: he had a tree-filled, bird-filled cage he wanted me to see, strung with brass wires, where hundreds of birds lived. Negro girls, naked except for the cloth pad underneath the calabash shells they carried on their heads, wandered past the cage to see the birds, and found me most amusing. Their smooth, dark features, slick jet hair, round waists and small breasts were delightful. The priest had to leave—called by the convent bell. I gave the youngest my carcanet: the bushes slid about us, our hands together, the leaves cool, the cool stream cool beside us, giving us water in our hands: birds in the aviary whistled and sang, while she fondled the carcanet and lay with me: I had never had anyone so young, accomplished, kindly, wooing, mouth tasting of fruit: she peeled fruit taken from a bush and we ate together: she filled her calabash at the stream and left me, lying, dreaming of her smiles and stroking hands...

Stay illusion.

I liked sprawling in my bunk, the ocean light illuminating the ceiling, a book or two beside me.

From above came the pad-pad of barefoot sailors, shift of rigging and cordage, yaw of boom, sough of wind and flap of canvas; from below came the gurgle of seas and jab of crested rollers that sometimes held the ship suspended for a moment and then permitted her to careen as she drove down inclines steep enough to shake the reaches of the sails.

When I dozed I felt the vastness, ringed vastness, and I was monarch through nearly closed lids: I was ruler of my inconsistencies: I dreamed an island, chained by surf and reef, where life was incredibly carefree, a warmth of flowers, fruit—women.

At night, in the bunk, oil lamp swinging, I imagined the uncharted waters beneath us, porpoise and whale, creatures that pursued us as we floated across a valley, across a hill where coral studded the top: I saw monsters pass and re-pass, dark blue, grey, orange, fins fluted like fans close to our keel. Streamers of kelp and seaweed tangled crab and shark and I fell asleep, my play forgotten, the lamp burning, burning, burning...

Screaming, a seaman plunged from our topgallant, to die on deck while we were outrunning a storm.