Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard

by Richard B. Wright

  “‘Of course I can,’ I said, ‘and write my name too, though I can’t pretend knowledge of any subject, as I haven’t read much. Parts of the Bible,’ I said. ‘My brother and his wife are Puritans, and the few books in the house make dry reading.’

  “‘Still, you can read,’ he said, putting his arms around me and hugging me from behind. I remember his breath on my neck. ‘A beginning, at any rate. I’ll read some of Ovid to you. He was a Roman who lived about the time of Christ, but he got into trouble with the authorities in Rome and was banished.’

  “Ovid was your father’s favourite writer and he told me the title of the book, but I have forgotten, though I do recall the stories. All had to do with changing forms: they were about a spirit world in ancient Greece or Rome where humans lived with gods and sometimes mated with them or were changed by them into plants or trees or other creatures. I liked them, because this Ovid was very good at describing nature. But to your father, this book was like a Bible. He could not get enough of these wondrous tales and told me he had been reading them since he was a schoolboy, when he studied them in the Latin tongue. However,” she added with a little smile, “I must tell you, Aerlene, that your father was full of earthly passion and I too had sorely missed the touch of a man, and so the reading of Ovid was soon put aside.”

  “Yes, yes, Mam,” I said, for like many girls on the edge of such feelings, I was nervous and impatient about matters anatomical. I had seen a stallion mount a mare in the fields of the Easton estate, and stray dogs in the village were always about it; I had heard too the coarse words of schoolboys, so I didn’t want to picture my parents doing such things in any detail whatsoever.

  That autumn, Mam and my father found what time they could to be together, sometimes lying in Finsbury Fields; cold and damp as it was, Mam said, it scarcely mattered, so compelling was their passion. But they also talked about many things during those weeks. Not only of their childhoods, but also of their lives in London. Will Shakespeare, Mam said, was interested in everything about millinery; already he knew a great deal about hides and skins and the various apparelling trades from helping in his father’s shop.

  Such was his mind that he often drew her into topics she had never thought about. Once, passing Bethlem Hospital, they heard a shriek, a prolonged wail of distress from some poor mad soul, and my father wondered aloud what it must be like to be so afflicted: to lose your wits and inhabit another world. He also talked about his trade and the men he worked with, delighted when Mam told him that she had been to a playhouse across the river with her friend Mary, who had dressed as a man. He loved the story.

  “It’s like the stage,” he said, “where the woman is played by a man, while in the audience, a man is played by a woman and all is topsy-turvy.” He wondered then if Mary Pinder dressed as a man at her work.

  Mam affected surprise at this remark. “Why would she do that?”

  “The reason?” he said. “Why, there are plenty about who enjoy such games. Undressing a man and finding a woman. There are many playful themes in the arts of love, Elizabeth.”

  “And all of them in London, I expect,” said Mam, “as I never heard of such things in Worsley.”

  “Nor I in Stratford,” he laughed.

  He asked her then what play she had seen at the Rose and she told him.

  “Ah yes, Tamburlaine. Marlowe’s made a name for himself with it. And he has written a second part that is now playing.”

  Mam told him she thought Tamburlaine was good but long-winded. “And this Tamburlaine,” she said, “is so puffed up with himself. And a tyrant too. Putting that King in a cage and driving him mad. I couldn’t bear to look at the man braining himself.”

  “But your father appeared not to be listening and said nothing for the longest time. I thought he had forgotten about it or was in his own world, as he often seemed far away from me.

  “Then he said, ‘Yes, Tamburlaine is good in its own way. It is a spectacle with some fine verses. Marlowe has a talent, there is no doubt of that.’”

  They had stopped at the door to the shop and he kissed Mam and said, “I too enjoy writing verses, Elizabeth, and one day I will write something better than Tamburlaine. On my life I will,” he said, laughing. “There you see, Will proclaims his will.” He told her he could already find scenes in plays they were rehearsing that he could do much better. “I am hoping that in time I will join others in fixing them and one day I will write my own Tamburlaine and others like it and beyond. That is my hope. I am mostly an indifferent player, Elizabeth, and I fear I never shall be anything more. My heart lies in writing. I have felt so for some time. And now, I truly believe it.”

  “He told me this outside the shop,” Mam said, “and I took him at his word, Aerlene, because your father was not a man to make idle boasts. I discovered that about him in our weeks together. I could tell he was envious of Marlowe’s success. They were the same age, and there was Marlowe already with a great following. I could see that it bothered your father.”

  Mam told me that one night they were in a tavern in Bishopsgate Street. “The Four Swans, it may have been,” she said, “for that was a favourite of the playhouse crowd. In one of the backrooms was much shouting and laughter, and Will said, ‘Greene is with us tonight. You can hear him in there braying like a donkey.’

  “I still knew little of poets and players and asked about the man with the loud laugh.

  “‘Robert Greene,’ he said. ‘A poet. He had something of his performed earlier this year called Alphonsus, King of Aragon. Another imitation of Tamburlaine and mostly laughed off the stage, I heard. But Greene is thought well of by some. Like Marlowe, he attended the university at Cambridge and so thinks well of himself. Our paths have crossed a few times, and one day not long ago in St. Paul’s churchyard, I was looking at a new edition of Ovid in Latin. It made me think about my schooldays. I could not afford it, but it was a handsome book with very pretty woodcuts. Greene happened by in the company of friends and was amused to see me there with Ovid in my hands and made some slighting jest about an apprentice player enjoying such rich fare. “Bad for my digestion if I weren’t used to it,” he said. Or something like that. He clapped me on the back and all had a good laugh, and I suppose I smiled too, for I didn’t want them to think I was that affected by his damnable forwardness. He can be difficult. Contentious as a tavern lawyer who lives for disputation. It’s said he’d rather score points in an argument than win at cards. He delights in parading his wit. He is a man upon whom courtesies are apparently wasted, and overfond of wine, though he’s only pennies from the street. But enough of him. I don’t suppose you have heard about what happened this week at the Rose during a performance of the second part of Tamburlaine. Everyone is talking about it.’

  “I said I had overheard something in the shop from customers about a mishap, but I didn’t catch it all.

  “‘A fearful mishap,’ Will said. ‘A cannon shot in a battle scene went astray and killed a woman and a child. The owner, Henslowe, I’m told now fears the authorities will close the place, though Southwark is beyond their province. The woman’s husband is bringing a suit against him.’ I asked if he had seen the second part and he nodded. ‘Yes, I saw it Monday last. The day before the accident. It’s not half as good as the first part. I’ll wager Marlowe wrote it in a week and never blotted a line. Too many devices, too little poetry. But no matter. The spectacle packs them in and they cry for more.’

  “Just then the roisterers from the backroom emerged led by a red-haired man whose face was inflamed by drink. His doublet was soiled and though he swaggered, he was unsteady on his feet, gripping the shoulders of those he passed among the tables. The others were laughing at something Greene said. But the red-haired man had seen us and, coming over, swayed above our table grinning. ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘it’s young Will from Warwickshire. And with a pretty one too. Is she also from the country, Will?’

  “‘Yes, Miss Ward is from Oxfordshire.’

&
nbsp; “‘From Oxfordshire? Well now. Not so far from your own little town. You must be talking of country matters.’ This made others laugh and I didn’t know why, though Will explained later that in the city the term meant lovemaking. ‘So,’ continued Greene, ‘you are no longer sleeping just with Ovid.’ More laughter.”

  Whatever Will’s thoughts that night, Mam said, he took it all in good heart, expecting such raillery from so-called wits like Greene, though she hated the man on sight. A brute and a bully and already wasted in dissipation, though he couldn’t have been much older than she was at the time, she said.

  Listening to Mam, I hated Robert Greene as well, and was much satisfied years later to learn that he died of debauchery and in debt some five years after the events described by Mam that night in the Four Swans. He was then thirty-five and, as I also discovered, had written something called Greene’s Groats-Worth of Wit, in which, out of spite and envy, he delivered an ugly rebuke to my father’s talent. Had I known his burial site when I went to London, I would have spit upon his grave. Many years later while reading Twelfth Night, I wondered as I read about the drunken blunderings of Sir Toby Belch if my father had Greene in mind when he fashioned Belch’s character, though I dare say he met many like him in his lifetime.

  “Before he left the tavern that night, Greene said, ‘And are you well pleased with this woman, Will?’ And your father said, ‘I am, Robert,’ and Greene affected an air of being insulted, splaying his fingers across his chest. ‘Oh, if you please, Will, it’s Master Greene to you. Should a ‘prentice player not know his place among poets?’ And then the fool placed a finger alongside his nose and farted. ‘And what a pretty and pleasing procession of the letter p the foregoing line provides. And the letter p stands too for piss, which I must needs take, and so adieu, all gentles. I’m for the laneway.’ Amid this mirth he staggered out, followed by the others, except for one, a man whose name Will told me later was Peele; he placed a hand on your father’s shoulder and told him to pay no mind, ‘for you know Greene’s humour when he’s in drink.’

  “Afterwards your father said, ‘He’s well named, isn’t he, for he’s green with envy over Marlowe’s triumph.’ After finishing his ale, he muttered, ‘But then, alas, so am I. So are many in this city.’ He was staring across that noisy, smoky room as though he were looking for things that weren’t there, and then he said, ‘How the devil did he do it? And only weeks older than I?’”

  “And what did you say to that, Mam?” I asked. “Did you give my father heart?”

  She laughed. “Why, of course I did, Aerlene. But then, what would any woman say to a man she likes who has ambitions? I took his hand and told him the lines foretold a future in which lay triumphs in the playhouses. I knew he put no store by palm reading, but it does no harm to hear such things when you feel beset by life. Yet I must confess that I did not believe it myself. I think I lacked the imagination to foresee your father’s success. To me he was then just a young man who loved words, and who wanted to write plays one day. But I could not see him writing anything to equal Marlowe’s play. Perhaps it was that I could not imagine myself being that close to a man who could ever accomplish such things. And so I valued your father’s gift too lightly—until last summer when I saw his name on that playbook in Oxford.”

  CHAPTER 11

  THIS MONTH HAS BEEN fair and fruitful and the estate occupied with haymaking. All the rain that so dismayed us weeks ago has proved a benefit, with an abundance of good hay now mostly gathered; and only one mishap this year, a boy of eleven years who broke an arm in a fall from one of the wagons. This morning we set out the trestle tables in the orchard for the haymakers’ supper, and by four in the afternoon, the benches were filled with the workers and their families enjoying Mrs. Sproule’s cold mutton and capons with peas. There was bread and later fruit pies, and plenty of ale.

  It is now nearly ten o’clock, and I can still hear shouting from the bonfire, where the young men are leaping across the flames to win the hearts of girls with their daring. Most of the older folk will have left by now. No doubt Emily will still be at the fire, for she has been a fetching sight today in a new smock which nicely shows her bosom, much to the consternation of Mrs. Sproule, who thought the girl too brave in dress. But I said it was only sensible to take your fruit to market when ripe.

  “Where is the harm, Mrs. Sproule?” I said. “It’s the middle of June and love is in the air.”

  She didn’t argue. Mrs. Sproule was pleased with herself. She worked hard all week roasting her mutton and shelling her peas and the supper was a great success, and I told her so. Charlotte and Mr. Thwaites walked among the tables greeting the workers and their families. The rector will have a full church tomorrow morning.

  When Charlotte is with Simon Thwaites, you can see the colour rising from her throat into her face, a veritable glowing in his presence. Before the meal, Mr. Walter thanked the men and women, the boys and girls, for their labour, and Mr. Thwaites said grace, offering a prayer of thanksgiving for the bountiful hay. Then, amid great cheering, the two men raised their tankards of ale and drained them at once. Watching Charlotte as she looked up at Simon Thwaites, I wondered if I had ill prepared her for married life. She has been thinking lately of men and women and what transpires between them.

  Yesterday, after we finished our work, she said, “Your mother was certainly attracted to men, was she not, Linny?”

  “She was, Charlotte,” I said. “Without question, she was.”

  Charlotte had got up to walk about the library and was flexing the fingers of her writing hand, a small frown appearing as she paced. What did she know of mating? I wondered. You can’t live on a large farm for twenty-four years without observing some copulation.

  Charlotte said, “This Mary Pinder—what a life she must have led! All those men having their way with her. Last year, when Annabelle and I went to London for a week—do you remember?”

  “I do, yes.”

  “We went for a walk one evening in Drury Lane with her brother and his wife, and Annabelle whispered to me that many of the women on the arms of gentlemen were very likely prostitutes, and that we should not admonish them but pray for their redemption. They were only poor lost souls at the mercy of men. I didn’t know what to make of her remarks at the time, and so said nothing, but really I thought those women with their gaudy dresses and painted mouths looked rather hard. Why could they not get honest work as servants? I could not summon much pity for them. Selling themselves like that. Inviting vile diseases into their bodies.”

  I decided to tease her. “Did Christ himself not counsel forgiveness for the fallen?” I asked. “What of Mary Magdalene, for instance?”

  “What of her?”

  “Why, it’s generally acknowledged that she was a prostitute, Charlotte. Yet Christ forgave her after she washed His feet with her tears and dried between his toes with her hair.” Now this wasn’t so. It was Mary of Bethany who dried Christ’s feet with her hair. But I couldn’t help myself.

  “Mary Magdalene was a prostitute?”

  “Yes, she was,” I said. And as far as I know, that at least was true.

  Her pretty little face was perplexity itself. “I didn’t know that, Linny.” And then, since Charlotte never worries a thought for long, she said, “What shall I wear tomorrow, do you think? For the haymakers’ supper? Simon will be coming.”

  In the presence of Simon Thwaites, Charlotte is radiant, even today on the thirteenth anniversary of Nicky’s death. For the first time, she has forgotten to mark the day. But I remember a rider bringing us the news two days after the battle, and then Nicky’s body returned the week following in a farm wagon, his passage home safely warranted by the Roundheads, for which I credit them. We buried him that evening in St. Cuthbert’s churchyard behind the iron railings of the Easton plot.

  Yet I cannot blame Charlotte for allowing this day to pass unnoticed. Love promotes happiness, banishing old sorrows, and that is as it should be. Leave sorrowf
ul memories to the old.

  CHAPTER 12

  LIKE JULIET I WAS born on Lammas Eve. That was in the year of the Great Armada, so by my reckoning I was conceived on or about All Saints’ Day in 1587, perhaps in that small room in Holywell Lane or perhaps on the grass of Finsbury Fields near the windmills. Within the month, Mam would have noticed her courses not running and other peculiarities that I remember Mrs. Easton relating to me with the onset of each of her four pregnancies: the flushing and tingling and peculiar cravings. She once whispered to me with a small, gay laugh that at such times she often craved her husband more. Listening to Mam, I wanted to know how my father took the news. Did he clasp her hand and cover it with kisses?

  As always I overwhelmed the poor, sick woman with my questions, and by then it was winter and she was nearing the end and lacked the strength to protest in words. She merely waved a languid hand, saving her breath for her story.

  “I first told Mary,” she said. “It was perhaps the second or third week of December, and by then I was certain. I used to weep at my foolishness for believing that Wilkes’s stillborn child had rendered me barren. I had been fooled, you see, by all those times with Henry Chapman. When I was told years later that Henry had married a widow with children and was living near Chipping Norton, it occurred to me that the children must all have come from the first husband, for the woman who told me said she didn’t believe the widow had any from Henry. So perhaps it was his seed that was worthless. And all that time I thought I couldn’t bear a child.

  “One Saturday afternoon in December, Mary and I were by St. Magnus Church and I went in and prayed, which surprised her. Afterwards, as we walked along Thames Street, I told her. She shook her head and squeezed my arm. I was filled with the wildest thoughts of Bridewell or the streets.

  “And bless her, Mary said, ‘That won’t happen, Elizabeth. You’ll not go to Bridewell and you’ll certainly not be on the streets. So put such thoughts aside.’