Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  The small lawyer nodded, and asked to see the bond. It was given and, when read, proved to be as Shylock had said.

  “Take thrice thy money, bid me tear the bond,” urged the lawyer. But Shylock would not relent. He stood by the law, and the law upheld him. Antonio must pay the forfeit: a pound of his living flesh, to be cut nearest his heart.

  “The law allows it, and the court awards it,” decreed the lawyer. So Antonio, condemned Antonio, took his last farewell of Bassanio and prepared himself for Shylock’s upraised knife. The court leaned forward, pale with dread at what the law could do.

  “Tarry a little,” said the lawyer suddenly, even as the knife was at Antonio’s breast, “there is something else. This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood, the words expressly are ‘a pound of flesh’: take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh, but in cutting it, if thou dost shed one drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate unto the state of Venice.”

  The knife faltered; the hand that held it shook and trembled and a dreadful bitterness curdled Shylock’s fierce face. The very law he had invoked had defeated him. The mocking laughter of the court rang in his ears like the worst of Sunday’s bells. He put away his knife; he rubbed and rubbed his hands, and muttered that he would take the offer of thrice the bond.

  “Here is the money!” cried Bassanio, gladly.

  But the small lawyer would not allow it; and, with a look of mingled affection and reproof at the extravagant young man, pressed Shylock still harder with the weight of the law. He was to have only what he had demanded, neither less nor more. Not even his principal was to be restored; only the pound of flesh without one drop of blood. He staggered, stared about him, saw only a sea of Christian faces and a sea of Christian smiles. He longed only to be gone. But even this was denied him. He, an alien, had undoubtedly sought the life of a citizen, therefore all his wealth was to be taken, half for the merchant, half for the state. His life itself was now in the hand of the Duke.

  “Down therefore,” cried the lawyer who had once urged him to show mercy, “and beg mercy of the Duke.”

  “That thou shall see the difference of our spirit,” pronounced the Duke, “I pardon thee thy life before thou ask it . . .”

  Shylock shook his head. He smiled bitterly. Of what use was his life now?

  “Take my life and all,” he whispered, “pardon not that. You take my house, when you do take the prop that doth sustain my house: you take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.”

  The small lawyer, who had, perhaps, been carried away by the ingeniousness of argument, was struck by the Jew’s tragic words, and remembered. He turned to the merchant and asked:

  “What mercy can you render him Antonio?”

  Antonio proved no less merciful than the Duke. Half of Shylock’s wealth should be restored, if he would, at his death, leave it to his daughter and her husband; the other half Antonio himself would use, and likewise bequeath to Jessica and Lorenzo. All this should be allowed upon one condition, that the Jew should turn Christian.

  “Art thou contented Jew?” asked the lawyer, with the most gentle regard. “What dost thou say?”

  “I am content,” muttered the Jew; and, with bowed head, left the court.

  When all were dispersed and the Duke departed, Bassanio embraced his saved friend; and together they thanked the small lawyer whose wit and skill had so marvellously succeeded. What gift could they give him? At first the lawyer would take nothing; but then, when pressed, asked no more than Bassanio’s ring. Alas! it was the very ring that Portia had given him and which he’d sworn to keep so long as he should live. He made excuses, said it was not good enough, and offered, instead, to find the dearest ring in all Venice. But the lawyer would take nothing else, and so took nothing. Together with his small clerk, he left the court, making scornful comment upon those who offer and then turn niggardly when put to the performance.

  “My lord Bassanio,” urged Antonio, “let him have the ring . . .”

  Bassanio sighed. He took the ring from his finger and sent Gratiano with it to overtake the small lawyer and his small clerk. So Bassanio parted with Portia’s ring; and, at the same time, Gratiano parted with Nerissa’s, for she, too, had given her husband a ring in love’s pledge; which ring the lawyer’s small clerk had begged.

  The moon was high in Belmont and the dark gardens flowed with silver, like a Venice built in dreams.

  “In such a night,” sighed Lorenzo, as he strolled entwined with Jessica, and gave an instance of lovers long ago.

  “In such a night,” sighed Jessica, and gave another, no less apt.

  “In such a night,” proposed Lorenzo . . . and so they continued, night for night, until they were distracted by music that heralded the return of Portia and Nerissa, who were followed, soon after, by Bassanio and Gratiano, with the saved merchant Antonio, newly come from Venice. Lutes, guitars and viols sweet as honey swelled the tender meeting of wives and husbands . . . until a discord broke up the harmony. This discord concerned the giving of a ring. Gratiano, so it seemed, had given Nerissa’s ring to a lawyer’s clerk in Venice. Nerissa was outraged; and so was fair Portia when she learned that her husband, the ardent Bassanio, had given her ring to the lawyer. So much for love, so much for promises, so much for husbands’ vows breathed in the first heat of passion! Antonio, much dismayed by the distress his own distress had brought about, sought to intercede. Portia sighed, and relented.

  “Give him this,” she sighed, “and bid him keep it better than the other.” She gave the merchant a ring which he, in turn, gave to the apologising Bassanio. He took it, he glanced at it, he stared. It was the very ring he had given to the lawyer. Likewise, and at the same time, Gratiano was given the very ring he had bestowed upon the clerk. At once, base suspicions entered the minds of the husbands of how their wives might have come by the rings. But soon all was told, of how Portia had been the lawyer and Nerissa the clerk. So all ended in music, smiles and happiness; and fair Portia, practising the mercy she had preached, embraced her husband with all her heart.

  The Taming of the Shrew

  In the county of Warwickshire there lived a tinker, who, in his time, had followed many trades, and caught up with none. He was Christopher Sly by name, and coarse, drunken and brutish by nature.

  “You will not pay for the glasses you have burst?” demanded the hostess of the inn he patronised.

  For answer, he shook his fat head, belched, and lay down on the floor. The hostess, a female as sweet as a lemon, threatened him with a constable.

  “Let him come,” mumbled Sly, and, endeavouring to pull a stool over him as if it was a blanket, fell like a corpse into a tomb of snores. The hostess shook her fist and departed.

  But before she could return, a most extraordinary thing happened to Christopher Sly. There was a sound of horns (which he heard not) and a barking of dogs. Then, flushed from galloping the countryside, a plumed and booted lord accompanied by huntsmen and servants, strode into the inn. They looked about them and saw, under a table, the drunken tinker, his pig-like countenance wreathed in smiles of ale. The lord shuddered, “Grim death, how foul and loathsome is thine image!” he exclaimed, somewhat fancifully although it must be admitted that Christopher Sly might as well have been dead for all he knew of lords and huntsmen and the world about him.

  Then the lord, whose head was well-stocked with old tales of gods changing humans into swine, thought it an excellent idea to change this swinish tinker into a lord. Accordingly he told his servants to carry the snoring Sly to his mansion, wash him, improve him with perfumes, lay him in the richest chamber, and, when he woke, to bow to him, call him ‘lord’, offer him the best of food and drink and clothing, show him a simpering, girlish page-boy dressed up as his lady wife, and to explain to him that he had just awakened from a long lunacy during which he had only imagined that he was a tinker called Christopher Sly. Then, to fuddle him further, he was to be shown a play, and
it was to be performed so straight and serious that he would no longer know what was true and what was make-believe. Then the lord went off, like one of the gods of old, to watch the transformation of the tinker into something rich and strange.

  Christopher Sly woke up. He blinked, through eyes like stained-glass windows. He was in a room as gorgeous as a palace and was sitting on a mountain of cushions; and there were servants bowing all round him. He was not surprised. The world often looked queer when he woke up but after he’d had a drink or two, it turned ordinary again. “For God’s sake, a pot of small ale!” he cried urgently. This time the vision did not fade; instead it grew more visionary and unreal. He was offered all manner of delicate things, quite unsuited to a tinker’s tastes; and, when he objected, he was told that there was no such person as Christopher Sly, that Christopher Sly had only been a long bad dream, and that he was really a lord who had only just awakened from it.

  He blinked again and thumped his head. Then music began to twink and scrape and a smiling gentleman talked of Apollos and Daphnes and suchlike, which was all Greek to Sly; and then a female appeared, pretty as a page-boy with a bosom as neat as a pair of oranges, and, most wonderful, she was his lady wife! This was plain good English to the tinker, who straightway wanted to take her to bed. But alas! this was not to be. He had been sick for so long, that he must husband his husband-strength awhile, lest his malady return. He and his lady-wife were to sit modestly side by side and watch a play. A play? He had never seen a play in his life before and did not know in the least what to expect; but he was ready to put up with anything rather than risk falling back into the horrible dream of being Christopher Sly.

  Of a sudden, there was a loud flourish on a trumpet, that made the tinker jump; and the chamber grew as quiet as an empty church. Then, before the tinker’s very eyes, the strangest transformation took place, so strange that he could not be clear in his head whether he was Christopher Sly, thumping-bag of hostesses and butt of angry females, asleep; a lord awake—or a piece of transparent air, and the dream of other watchers. The tapestried walls, the encrusted ceiling, the lady-wife and servants seemed to dissolve, and the great mansion itself to vanish; and in their place was magically the clear blue sky and rosy painted streets of an old Italian town!

  It was sunny, bustling Padua, where rich old Baptista Minola had two daughters, one like an angel from heaven, and one from the other place. The last was Katherine, who had a tongue like burnt bacon, and a temper like mustard without beef. Bianca, the angel, had two suitors, which was not to be wondered at; Katherine, the elder, had none, which was not to be wondered at either. Their father would have given half his fortune to have got Katherine off his hands; and Bianca would have given the other half, because her father had determined that she could not marry unless someone married Katherine first. And that seemed as likely a happening as snow in hell. So they all walked along a street in Padua, Baptista between Bianca’s two suitors, and his two daughters behind: Katherine looking daggers at the gentle and well-loved Bianca, and Bianca, who was more seemly and domestic, looking needles back.

  Hopelessly old Baptista suggested that, if the suitors transferred their attentions to his eldest child, he would make it well worth their while. Vigorously the gentlemen shook their heads; which, though she would not have had either of them save on a roasting-dish with an apple in his mouth, did not please Katherine at all. Addressing herself to the younger (for the other was no better than an ancient money-bag in wrinkled stockings), she offered to “comb his noddle with a three-legged stool.” Her father glared at her, and she glared back; and most decidedly got the better of the exchange.

  “Go in, Bianca,” said her father gently to his angel, for they stood outside his house. Bianca curtsied modestly, and, with a mildly reproachful look at her sister, withdrew to her books and music and suchlike maidenly pursuits. The suitors sighed; and Baptista asked if they knew of schoolmasters who might further improve Bianca, if such a thing were possible. While they thought about it, Baptista hurried into the house, saying, over his shoulder: “Katherina, you may stay,” either in the hope that she and the gentleman would soften towards one another, or else just to make good his escape.

  “Why, and I trust I may go too, may I not?” demanded Katherine, with a look that would have curdled ale. “Ha!” she cried; and went in after her father like a whirlwind, and slammed the door.

  The suitors looked at one another. It was plain that, if they wished to prosper with Bianca, they would have to find a husband for Katherine first.

  “There be good fellows in the world,” said Hortensio, the younger, “would take her with all faults, and money enough.”

  They nodded, but with little conviction. Could there really be such a man?

  “Would I had given him the best horse in Padua to begin his wooing,” sighed the ancient money-bag, whose name was Gremio, “that would thoroughly woo her, wed her, and bed her, and rid the house of her!”

  They shook their heads and departed, leaving the street quiet, save for in Baptista’s house where doors kept going off like exploding chestnuts as Katherine stormed from room to room.

  Two figures came out from a neighbouring doorway, where they had been silent lookers-on. They were from Pisa and strangers to Padua, and they marvelled greatly at what they had seen and heard. One was Lucentio, a young gentleman in colours so bright you might have cooked by them; the other was his servant Tranio, who wore long striped stockings, like barbers’ poles, and a cap like a brace of pheasant. The servant looked at his master, and the master looked into air. His eyes were as round and bright as sixpences. He was spellbound! He had seen an angel, a gentle angel of loveliness! He had fallen in love with Bianca! Everything else fled from his brain. He quite forgot that he had come to Padua on business for his father. He could think of nothing but Bianca and how he might get to her.

  He would disguise himself as a schoolmaster! He had heard her father say that he wanted masters for her.

  “Not possible,” said Tranio firmly: “for who shall bear your part and be in Padua here Vicentio’s son?”

  This was true. He was to have taken lodgings to entertain rich merchants for his father, Vicentio. He could not be in two places at once. He pondered; but not for long, for love lends wings to thought. He and Tranio would change about! Tranio would be Lucentio and entertain his father’s friends, while he, Lucentio, would be a humble schoolmaster, teaching the fair Bianca Latin, Greek, and whatever more her modesty would allow. Tranio agreed, for deception ran in his veins like blood; so without more ado, man and master changed cloaks and hats, and were instantly transformed.

  Hortensio, wracking his brains to think of some presentable fellow whose spirit was stout enough, and whose purse was lean enough, to try his fortunes with Katherine, walked slowly back to his house. He stopped. There was an argument in progress outside his gate. A sturdy young man was heartily thumping his companion, who was roaring for help. Hortensio smiled. One was Petruchio, a friend of his from Verona; the other was his friend’s servant Grumio, who doubtless deserved what he was getting. He hastened to greet them and to ask Petruchio what he was doing in Padua.

  “Such wind as scatters young men through the world,” began Petruchio, in a fine and lofty style, for he was an excellent fellow and the best of comrades in an ale-house brawl; but then his face grew solemn, and an anxious look haunted his eyes. His father had died and had left him, to put it plainly, somewhat short of money. “Crowns in my purse I have, and goods at home,” he said hastily, as if to reassure Hortensio that he had not come to borrow money. “I come,” he said with utter honesty, “to wive it wealthily in Padua . . .”

  Hortensio’s heart quickened. Could his prayers have been answered so pat? Cautiously he mentioned that he knew of a lady who was very rich. Then he shook his head. She had disadvantages. “Thou’rt too much my friend,” he said regretfully, “I’ll not wish thee to her.”

  But Petruchio was not so easily put off. What was
wrong with the lady? A sharp tongue and a bad temper? “Think you a little din can daunt mine ears?” he demanded bravely. “Have I not in my time heard lions roar?”

  Hortensio shook his head. “I would not wed her,” he said, “for a mine of gold.”

  “Thou know’st not gold’s effect,” said Petruchio bitterly, having discovered the evil of need and thinking peace a small price to pay to be rid of it. “Tell me her father’s name and ’tis enough . . .”

  “Her father is Baptista Minola,” said Hortensio, seeing that nothing would shake his friend’s resolve; and went on to tell him everything, even that he himself hoped to marry the younger daughter when Katherine had been taken off her father’s hands.

  “I know her father,” nodded Petruchio; and this turned out to be a great convenience to Hortensio, who promptly asked a favour. When Petruchio called on old Baptista he should take with him a certain schoolmaster and recommend him warmly as an instructor to Bianca. This schoolmaster would, of course, be Hortensio himself in an impenetrable disguise.

  Readily, Petruchio agreed; but before anything could be done, Bianca’s other suitor, the ancient Gremio appeared. And he was not alone. By the strangest chance, he had found a schoolmaster for Bianca, a pleasant enough looking fellow, but no better dressed than a tinker on Sunday. He said his name was Cambio, but anyone who knew him could have seen, with half an eye, that he was Lucentio in disguise.

  Hortensio, annoyed that his rival should have forestalled him in the business of schoolmasters, remarked that he, too, had found a learned person; but, what was more to the point, he had also found someone willing to court Katherine. He pointed to Petruchio. Gremio peered at him incredulously.

  “Hortensio,” he asked quietly, “have you told him all her faults?”