Part 27
“Feeling better tonight, Will? I hope so.”
I chuckle and say I am.
Put on your cloak and hurry, Hall. There’s someone sicker than I who needs you. Eat a crocodile. I’ll be going home soon. I should be there now, going over my accounts.
Music has unstopped my ears but no grapple of sound holds tonight, not with the scrofula of rain, the wink of time on cavernous faces beefed by the fire.
See that wizened face, that’s Hall, tall and thin, and next to him my frump, belly puddinged, hair screwed at angles, lines and then more lines lining the half-open mouth, the missing teeth... Ann, dear Ann, was it to you I wrote the sonnet beginning? Ah, no, the errors snare us, bare us to the quick of lime. The arithmetic of memory multiplies fantasy.
Poetry, succor me in this hour of need, help me as you have: I have given you my life; now, you must lend argument to my folly. Dry the rain on my skull! Be youth: be Ellen, outcast, incast, what is your substance, whereof you are made, that millions of strange shadows on you tend? Is this my memory? Or do the lines remember me?
The notes of the quartet confuse the shadows, the fire’s instrument, the tankards on the table, one for you, Marlowe...
I am to wait, though waiting be as hell—
And we walked home together through the rain, she who has never met Touchstone or Polonius or Othello...
And so to a cold bed.
–S–
On some of Dr. Hall’s visits, he urged me to discontinue my journal, wanting me to rest. I told him that the language I used was hardly playwriting, requiring the barest effort on my part. I explained that I need something. He huffed and rumbled, with professional sincerity, like the good neighbor he is, and I understand now that my resurrected fears may, like a Greek chorus, pervade and annul. But what do they pervade and annul, this corner, precharnel, prepaid house in Hell? Am I to talk with trees? Am I to forget manhood? Am I to cheer old age? Infirmity? Hall is such a knotted creature I wonder my Susanna married him: such a sultry woman for such a cadaver! His contorted body, pinched here, pinched there, sewed here, unsewed there, his starvation face, with zealot eyes in bald skull, leaves me lacking in confidence; yet, I listen and he prescribes and we talk and play chess. I am his medical pawn, gulping doses for him, bleeding for him: is the final move his or mine?
Home
January 18, 1616
Dr. Hall, when you found your woman in my Susanna, you found bed-woman, kitchen wench and apothecary girl. Your shop, shelved, bottled, ointmented, reeks of balm and poison. Long before you married my Susanna, I got to know that smell when I came to you to help me battle pain. You were never too ill or busy to help me check pain’s unkindness.
But underneath your skin you are another Timon, another hater of mankind, concocting health to make more health to make more pain to make money. Pestel in hand, you measure alleviants, the richer your patient, the cleverer your compound. How you worry on behalf of the young countess. How you thumb your books for the Lord Chamberlain’s gout.
Drum bottles—
Beat shelves—
Smash glass—
See, his shingle in the wind, JOHN HALL – PHYSICIAN, weeps rain, and I sit waiting, with vapors, losses, pangs, venoms in my blood, anticipating prescriptions—or epitaph.
His face grimaces his thanks, his hand extended, his pox is to “rob one another. There’s more gold! Cut throats...all that you meet are thieves!” All this is patiently and subtly withheld by the good doctor since frightening the patient frightens money. Only dear friends discover the true Timon...
Oh, God, how pain strangles me today! It paves my skull! I am on fire! Such useless misery! Pain is the greatest cheat. Pain, your friendship is much too cov- etous! Pain—you old prostitute—swallow your own hemlock for a change!
Henley Street, Stratford
January 20
I am too hard on friend Hall!
I’ve spent hours there, puttering, talking, laughing, entertained by his curious, Indian cow’s tail, stones cut from men’s bladders, uterine balls of hair, paw of a bear, and skeleton of a pigmy.
This year, he is publishing a treatise on the Wounds of the Abdomen. He’s as clever with his scalpel as his concoctions of wormwood, rosarum and menthol. Around Stratford, he is best known for his treatment of dropsy.
Stratford
January 23, 1616
Logs burn in my fireplace and I have a book on my lap: I have a kingdom: a crown: crackling of wood becomes voices, stuff of dreams, friends, stages, plays, quarrels, hopes, changes, beginnings, endings, the pen scratching paper, pigeons chuckling, laughter, death, Hamnet’s face, father’s, the cloak, the whisper, the plague, the rain, fog, losses, waves against rocks: a log totters and the upended section spurts into a pennant...shake-scene!
I have no picture—no drawing—to help me remember Hamnet. Inago Jones could have done one. I should tear apart pieces of paper and fold them until they become his face, or, with scissors, cut out his silhouette. Damn the weak mind that makes such simple wishes impossible!
There was no artist in Stratford. Stratford had no skills to offer except death’s skill...death for all of us along with that triumvirate, love, marriage, children; with fornication for pallbearer, adultery for sexton, rape for choirmaster...
How weary and stale and flat are the uses of this world. Bring hebenon for O...
Youth’s falcon on his glove, Hamnet stands with his friends around him, most of them young, their well- groomed horses held by pages.
On the distant shore of a lake, a castle breaks through a grove of beech.
Hamnet is laughing at his unhooded bird.
“Have you unseeled him?” someone asks.
“He can fly,” Hamnet says. “Now.”
“See...he’s looking for game!”
“Hamnet, is it true your father writes plays for our Queen? London plays?”
“You should see his Macbeth! That’s a play for you! Duel and all! We’ll go to London and see one of his plays. There’s one at the Palace soon.”
How I would like to rearrange life, bring happiness, bestow wealth, fix love, make well, foil crime, reverse ill luck. But only the stage can accomplish miracles and there custom stales the plot and disharmonies garble intention.
But, as evening galls, and candles go on, I hear Hamnet’s footsteps...he wants new gloves, new hood, new leash...
What’s past is prologue:
At Blackfriars, the chandeliers of candles are hugely lit and light streams upon Alleyn, who is speaking on stage; the boards are clean and shine; all actors are in their places; the seats are almost filled; I see a woman, in dark green velvet; accompanied by her maid, she takes a seat; rows of faces beseech the stage: oh kingdom, place of tempest and calm, engulf us again!
Henley Street
Stratford
February 1
Suum—nun—nonny, the wind said, as my father and I worked in his glover’s shop, quiet hours, among the many kinds of leather, sheepskin, goat, kid, lamb, pigskin, coltskin, doeskin, buckskin. In his tiers of drawers were the pontifical gloves, liturgical gloves, gloves for dignitaries, ladies’ gloves, wedding gloves...
A bird sang in its cage by the door.
Between the opening and closing of the shop we talked pleasantly or waited on customers with consideration:
We talked of Rocco Bonetti, the great London fencing master, and his fencing school; we talked of the snail and how it shrinks in its house when hit, or sits in the shade of its shell; we chatted about spears and helmets and mottos like Non Sanz Droict, his favorite; we talked of great castles, like Kenilworth, and their ghosts; we talked of kings and how to catch larks with a mirror and scraps of red cloth...the buzz of our talk was a good buzz.
So, another memory!
Candlemas
I wrote The Tempest at Stratford, the only play I wrote at home. For the first time I had leisure to write, in my garden, the summer warm: this was an island for an island: time faded: I remembered scenari I had seen at the commedia dell’arte: I remembered the wreck of the Sea Adventure in Bermuda: a drunk sailor stopped me and described that grievous storm, described the bewitched island, and I began:
On ship at sea:
Captain: Boatswain!
Boatswain: Here, Master, what cheer?
Captain: Good fellow, talk to the sailors, warn them, fall to it quickly or we’ll run aground!
Enter sailors:
Boatswain: Quickly, my fellows! Take in the topsail speedily! That’s the captain’s warning whistle!
Then the shipwreck followed.
It was pleasant to invent without pressure: I wanted a lively yet serene play, with a mixture of philosophy, humor and fantasy: I wanted a play to fit the new mode, free of symbolism.
I walked about my garden and my peace trees, and there, over there was Caliban, a savage slave; I took another turn, and there was Ariel; I heard the wind blow hollowly across an uninhabited island...
“Safely in harbor is the king’s ship; in the deep nook where once you called me at midnight... Go, make yourself a nymph of the sea... Where should this music be? In the air, or the earth? Delicate Ariel, sea nymphs ring the knell...in the dark backward and abysm of time...”
Discs of spinning yellow, pink, lavender:
A hundred Kemps are jigging,
each in yellow clown suit,
grinning, clowning, enroute to the Globe.
Kemp jigs onto the stage:
Applause.
Home
S
o it went...
As I left the Globe, near the end of a play, I found Will Kemp, slumped on the steps, by the street, head on his arms, sobbing: he would never clown for us again: he said he was too old, that he embarrassed us, that times had changed: as I stood beside him, he glanced away.
I had watched him a hundred times and thought him better than Summers, or any clown: Kemp was legend, for jig and bawdy tale, for the laugh at the end of the play. Londoners flocked to see him—had flocked to see him for years.
His make-up streaked by the rain, his yellow suit soaked, he tottered to his feet, as if drunk. Last summer he had danced his way across country, from place to place, enthusiastically received by villagers and townsmen—carried aloft on their shoulders.
His wrinkled face was drunken-lined, shining in the rain. He yanked his hat lower: was he remembering his fustian scenes, hard-drinking, quarrelling? He was famous for his winnings at primero—stubby, rock-muscled, little, knotted—he wavered, seemed about to collapse.
The play was over and the theatre crowd vomited out and milled around Kemp, encircled him, caught him up, hoisted him and bore him, through the streets, howling, cheering: KEMP...KEMP...KEMP!
Home
A number of years before we dismissed Kemp at the Globe, I visited him at his Thames River home—a home in the Sir Walter style. Kemp’s carriage brought me. I strolled about his extensive garden for a few luxurious moments, viewing the river below, thinking how well it paid to invest in land and play primero. His doormen showed me in, for I had been invited to dinner.
Mrs. Kemp, dressed in pale green, came toward me, to greet me, a charming young woman: like a clap of thunder, Kemp came at her, caned her, lashed her with fierce blows, and dragged her to her room. I didn’t wait for an explanation of his violence...
I do my best on the pot and think of my sex and think I’ll be rotting soon, and I hear pegs moving in the beams, and I hear old time and new time—outside the church bells strike. Outside of what?
Henley Street
Stratford
February 8, 1616
Why do I write?
All day Ann has sat by the windows, embroidering, soak- ing sun, her rheumatic fingers paining her, her silence and disdain evident.
Her stooped shoulders anger me because they remind me of my age, and I rant at time’s disdain and irreparable devastations: a plague on time’s house, a plague on mine— sickly wife and sickly husband.
Egypt—it is well you aren’t here, to be contorted, cheated, frailed or paunched. To nourish an illusion is hard and grows harder through the years. The only wisdom is the quiet heart, born of the smile of heaven, seeking nature, not the wild sea of conscience.
But that is for the wise! Today, there is no Orpheus. The trees are not our sanctuary. The seas don’t hang their heads; I hang mine. Where’s the lute, the player? I travel round and round the dial, to Ellen and the cloak, the fog and loneliest of men. Time should cure all, they say. But time—as I see time—does not oblige.
My last will...my last walk...my last play. I never thought of a last play. Henry VIII was to have another and yet another...creeping on but creeping to be sure...other sonnets...other songs...to sleep, to die, to sleep...
O shit on death.
Home
February 10, ’16
I used to wake with anticipation. I wake these mornings and know that I may not wake in another twenty days. When I lie down to sleep I think I may fall asleep and from that sleep never wake. I consider the worried faces about me and realize they will not have to endure me for long. Jonson visits me and I think this is his last visit.
Cheat, your door, as it swings open, opens onto a cave; no shepherd’s note signals to watery star...cuckold...bastard...my tale will end and my small cubicle will be filled. Have I put down man’s spirit with enough spirit? Beauteous youth, have I recorded you? I never wanted to write love’s epitaph... Antony was my tongue in praise.
I am certain that love is the best, love that is closest to beauty and the kindest of affections. Sensation surpasses thought. Imagination is well enough but it is not love. Between earth and heaven, imagination compares with no warm arms and legs.
Feb. 11, ’16
Stunned by poverty—how hard it was to write during those early years. Belly gnawing, I kept at it: I lay down, I got up, sat at the big table. Storms hunkered over the roof tops, the sun licked at the roofs, snow bundled them, and I was cold, cold. Smoke puffed from chimneys, bent in the icy mornings like hearse plumes. Chimneys—I never wanted to count them; broken, dying chimneys, strewed the city below me. One brick stack leaned far over, yet belched smoke.
Pimps lived on one side of me, prostitutes on the other; I could not move without paying my rent. My place was never warm: my hands cracked because of the cold. I kept my legs wound in rags, coughing.
Because of pleurisy I had to sell all of my books: Mary sold them for me, one by one, maybe two or three at a time. How old was Mary? Twenty? I was about twenty-five. It would take another twenty-five years to dim her memory: the stalk of her body, her restless, weightless feet. She bent a little to the left, as if injured, the arms also restless, the eyes inward. Did she ever laugh? Her smile always seemed something pushed into being, only a little jolt got it there.
She sold my books and bought my food and fed me, the hell of pleurisy riding me: tears in my eyes I attempted to eat: tears of many kinds crushed me. The roofs, the cold, the sorrow, how they come back to me! The anguish in my side went on for weeks but Mary never failed or complained: she fucked men at night and succored me during the day: sometimes she slept on the floor beside my bed or lay across the foot of the bed, a blanket around her. Her black hair might unpin itself and lie about her.
“Let’s keep a bird, when it’s Spring,” I suggested.
“How can you feed it, w-w-w-without money?” she asked.
“My father is sending money.”
“When? Soon?”
“Has someone written to him? You must see to it, Mary. Make someone write.”
“I think s-s-s-so. I’ll try again, ton-n-n-night.”
I managed to eat more when the money came and Mary ate well: I ate for those who were poor, I ate for my father, for the starving waifs, for the sick, those in prison, fighting in wars. I ate because it would soon be Spring. I ate because I must write.
Wrens built a nest above my window. Day after day, they fluttered in and out; day after day it got warmer; I was able to take care of myself; Mary and I were planning to picnic beside the river; she never came; I waited and waited; I asked those who knew her; no one had seen her.
I asked for her many times. There was absolutely no trace of her. She simply disappeared. Some criminal? Some man? Death? I never knew.
Ave Maria!
Home
Over the years I have read Ellen’s letters, hearing them almost. Those lines of hers, when I was dismal and lonely, shook off the curse of disillusionment. Even now, after these years, lines come to me:
Surely the greatness of a play lies in its mystery: we are taken inside a private world that is tragic or amusing or sentimental; things that are a part of this world must be judiciously hinted at.
Your plays take life apart because your poetry is so profound. It’s the finest poetry I know. Knowing you gives your work added profundity...
The theatre gives man breadth: it’s his second life. A country without a theatre is a poor, barren country.
Spring is the best part of the year...we decided: our lochs take on a greenness that must originate in deep, moss-covered rock. I think that water has a definite temperament, a personality, if you like... I like to walk when the sting of spray mingles with fog and underfoot, like a blanket, are the tiny flowers... I want you...
My brother is fond of you. He laughs and asks what is it that makes me take to that man? You must come back to Scotland, Will. Write me seriously about a possible visit... Love finds a way...
I wish you could be here, the castle is so beautiful, springtime is so evident, so unlike Scotland, full of gay things, white lilies and pansies along the paths, tulips and agnus-castus, roses around our statues and ramblers on the arbors. Only the biggest roses are in full flower: you should see the yellow ones. You know, I think yellow is my favorite color, and it’s because the sun is yellow, for what would this earth of ours be without the sun? We wouldn’t even have love, would we? And I wouldn’t even be able to dream of your kisses and your arms about me. And that’s what the sun is for, for dreaming, springtime dreaming...and I wish for you, to walk with me, and love me. I will pick a pansy and wear it for you. I will pick a rose and put it in my room, for you. Will, when can we see each other? Can’t you come here?...
Her letters were like that...
Stratford
February – 1616
Queen Elizabeth came on our stage at the Palace as I played the role of king, the afternoon stainglass bangling her jewels. I was shocked at seeing her galled face and yet had the guts to continue my lines, adding improvisations as well, to force her to wait. While she waited, she dropped her glove (playing her part), and as I arranged my robe, talking as I stood there, I picked up her glove and slowly faced the audience and said:
“Yet we stoop to pick up our Cousin’s glove.”
How that amused her. “Such propriety!” she said.
“Such folly,” I wanted to say.
This is high class prostitution commonly called “purse penury,” our coldest-oldest art. The art is especially susceptible to jewels and the brazenness of crowns. Men have been hung for their inability to kowtow, with poverty in the wings, snivelling or prancing jubilantly.
KING JAMES—
Now that you are our new friend, sceptering this Brittic island with careful gaze, ours is the homage! We see that your awareness is aware of considerations, a King James version of Sleeves and Ruff duly pressed. You surely press promises without guilt for gilt. Through narrow lozenged glass the sun administers your ceremonials.
Oh, king, your uniqueness Towers over us: you are our stiller of war, our buffer of hate, our unbiased protestant.
You rise—and London rises.
You walk—and London walks, for we are your guardians.
If your latest diamond is somewhat small, speak to us and it will be remembered in moors, fens, and locks. If your crown, coming from a woman’s head, needs adjusting our adjusters are sure hands, toward continuity.
Henley Street
Stratford
When Susanna visited me in London we ate at the Swann: she loved the rich and badly seasoned food, the purpled windows and painted scripture walls. “Oh, Papa, this is a wonderful Inn... Oh, Papa, isn’t that a beautiful house by the river? Think of living there! Those people must be awful rich! Will we get that rich? ...Papa, I’ve never seen such beautiful books... And look, look at the Thames in the sun; the sun seems squashed right into the water. And can we really ride in a boat again, down toward the ocean?”
Enthusiasm was her best quality. And very little perturbed her. Trash strewn in the street, a dead cat, brawling seamen...she drew back in disgust but soon found something exciting or beautiful. When I sleepwalked and stumbled against a table and broke the rush lamp, she was undisturbed. She kissed me, and we talked about what we’d do tomorrow. She was fifteen, then. Fifteen—what an age! She wanted to remain with me in London and I would have permitted it if I could have looked after her. There was no budging Ann to the city. Some thought Susanna a hussy.
Fun-loving, keen at games, she outplayed her friends. While she played I would be at my writing. In the midst of her fun, she might pop up and say: “Papa, you’re working too hard: you never have fun.” Her consideration brought me to my senses and I remembered growing up with six kids: none of them had her brightness. Of course the years changed her: her copper hair darkened: her enthusiasm faded: marriage ruined her figure: marriage made her a business woman: her hussiness became sexmate: Dr. Hall her all! How clearly I can remember today...a warning. And why do I write?
Shakespeare discovers Ellen’s blue cloak
in a heap of theatre crud in his Stratford closet:
Puzzled, he sits on the floor, holds up the cloak,
checks the fabric, his face sickly:
Fog at the door of his house.
Henley Street
Stratford
February 24, 1616
R
ummaging in my storeroom, I found forgotten things, things I had supposed lost or destroyed, a velvet jacket faced with grubby ermine, a pair of crimson trousers, a leather breastplate and brass helmet ornamented with a dragon’s crest. It annoyed me that none of these things had deteriorated. For some unfathomable reason—Caesaria ego—I put on the breastplate and helmet and gaped at myself. How now, that sickly face and stupidity: my stupid room, some of it visible in the same glass: the odious German etchings Judith gave me, Papa’s cracked leather chest, the unpolished table, seamed plaster and varnished beams.
Tossing breastplate and helmet into the storeroom, I noticed something. A cloak? Lifting it out of a box, unfolding it, I thought it was her blue theatre cloak. How could it be, after having disappeared years ago, in the street? But, holding it higher, I searched for the slash and the blood stains. Of course it had been cleverly cleaned and mended! I was too disturbed to go over it carefully. No...no...I dropped it and put out the light and went to bed.
Lying there, I watched sky, clouds floating, white over stars and then the stars dazzlingly near and then the cloud-cloak covering them once more, drowning.
Fear sifts through my fingers and mind.
What am I—a lie? Was she a lie? Was life? The cloak?
Why haven’t I, if I am sure of myself, seen to it that my plays have been published? I leave nothing. Nothing! Antony, Hamlet, Macbeth, Winter’s Tale, Romeo...not one. I must speak to Jonson and Alleyn. I must write to them at once!
Fog lay about in pieces like pieces of my life. Ground fog.
In the starlight I glared at my hands and saw that they were swollen, as they have often been lately.
Wasn’t that snow falling, flakes of morning?
I tried to remember Ellen’s face, tried to feel her presence.
When Ann brought me breakfast I could not look at her though she spoke to me kindly.
I write with costly effort—hands worse. I am cold. My mind staggers.
To the oriel—to look outside.
Thinking makes poverty.
Religion as we came to regard it in London was a glib and soiled art.