Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  “Say as he says,” pleaded Hortensio, “or we shall never go.”

  Kate sighed. She was aching and weary; and she had suffered much, she reflected, as she had made others suffer. It would be folly to suffer more. It was the moon if he wanted it to be the moon, or a candle if he preferred. It was the wiser course, she thought, to deny the evidence of her senses, than her good sense.

  “What you will have it named,” she said, “even that it is, and so it shall be so for Katherine.” She looked at him. He was a plain, rough fellow who had weathered her storms. He was, she felt, a mariner to be admired. She smiled at him; and he tried hard not to smile back.

  “Petruchio,” said Hortensio softly, “go thy ways, the field is won.”

  There was a great celebration in old Baptista’s house, a wedding feast of huge proportions. It was a feast to celebrate a triple marriage: Lucentio, as himself at last, and books and scholarship thrown to the winds, had got Baptista’s blessing and gentle Bianca’s hand. Hortensio had briskly courted and married the widow, who sat beside him, as ripe and tempting as an orchard of plums. And Kate and Petruchio, who, though married once, seemed now married again, heart to heart.

  “Nothing but sit and sit, and eat and eat!” cried Petruchio, with a cheerful and knowing look to his wife. The talk was free and merry, and presently the ladies withdrew. Then the gentlemen talked of the good fortune they had in their wives; until old Baptista, overcome with wine and sympathy, leaned over and laid his arm consolingly upon the shoulder of the husband of his eldest child. “Now, in good sadness, son Petruchio,” he wept, “I think thou hast the veriest shrew of all.”

  Gently Petruchio set his father-in-law upright. “Well, I say no,” he said; for he would not rate his Katherine below her sister or Hortensio’s plump bride. Indeed, he rated her far above them; so much so that he was willing to wager a hundred crowns on Kate’s proving superior in courtesy and duty. Each husband was to send for his wife; and whichever came first should take the prize.

  “Who shall begin?” cried Hortensio.

  “That will I,” said Lucentio, whose bride was an angel of gentleness. He sent his boy to fetch her, and smiled confidently as he waited.

  The boy returned. “My mistress sends you word,” he said uncomfortably, “she is busy and she cannot come.”

  “Is that an answer?” asked Petruchio, gravely.

  “Pray God,” said old Gremio, between mouthfuls, “your wife send you not a worse.”

  Petruchio shrugged his shoulders, and waited while Hortensio sent the boy to fetch the widow. He returned almost as soon as he’d gone.

  “She will not come,” was the message. “She bids you come to her.”

  “Worse and worse!” cried Petruchio, shocked beyond measure. “Go to your mistress,” he bade his servant. “Say I command her come to me.”

  “I know her answer,” said Hortensio, when the servant had gone.

  “What?”

  “She will not.”

  The table nodded sagely, when old Baptista cried out: “Now, by my holidame, here comes Katherina!”

  Kate came in, looked about her, saw amazement on every face, save on her husband’s. “What is your will, sir, that you send for me?” she asked.

  “Where is your sister and Hortensio’s wife?”

  “They sit conferring by the parlour fire,” answered Kate, trying not to smile.

  “Go fetch them hither,” commanded Petruchio; and waited for the errant ladies to appear.

  “Now fair befall thee, good Petruchio!” cried old Baptista, through rosy clouds of wine; and he offered a second dowry with Katherina, for surely she was a new Kate.

  The new Kate came, and, smiling, made a pleasant contrast with the peevish looks of the ladies she had fetched.

  “Katherine, I charge thee,” said Petruchio, “tell these headstrong women what duty they do owe their lords and husbands.”

  “Come, come, you’re mocking,” protested Hortensio’s wife, “we will have no telling!”

  But they did; and most eloquently. Kate bade them consider what they owed their husbands, for safety, security and comfort; and then to consider how little they were asked in return. Or was obedience to another’s wishes so demeaning a thing? “My mind hath been as big as one of yours,” she said, “my heart as great, my reason haply more, to bandy word for word and frown for frown.” She shook her head. Such warfare profited none. Then, with a sudden gesture, she knelt and placed her hand beneath her husband’s foot.

  All were silent. The gesture had not humbled Kate; but had raised her husband because it showed that he was high in her esteem.

  “Why, there’s a wench!” cried Petruchio, in admiration. “Come on, and kiss me, Kate!” He had begun his courting with a love of coin; but now he knew no greater riches than the coins of love.

  “Come, Kate, we’ll to bed,” he said, and led her gently away. One by one the others followed, until the feasting chamber was empty and in darkness.

  All was silent, save for a sound of soft snores. Was it a sleeping reveller; or was it a sleeping tinker, all alone?

  King Richard the Second

  Enter King Richard the Second of England: in gold and figured velvet and flashing jewels, with a following of nobles, like a spilling of bright coins, eager to be spent upon the glittering King.

  He had been King since he was a little boy; his grandfather had been a great king, his father a mighty prince, and all his uncles were dukes. There was nothing about him that was not royal; and he walked and nodded and smiled as if the air was full of unseen flatterers, murmuring in his ear.

  “Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster,” he began, and the assembled multitude of lords made way for the Duke of Lancaster, the greatest of the King’s uncles. He was an old, old man, venerable as a mountain, and with much snow on top. He bowed; and it was strange to see so old and dignified a man bowing to one so gay and young.

  “Hast thou,” inquired the King, “according to thy oath and bond, brought hither Harry Herford, thy bold son?”

  The court grew quiet, expectant faces turned. There was a deadly dispute between Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Herford, and Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. Bolingbroke had publicly accused Mowbray of treason and murder; and the two Dukes had been summoned to stand before the King.

  “Call them to our presence,” commanded the King. He waved his hand, as if to pluck Bolingbroke and Mowbray from the air. The lords stirred; and the two Dukes appeared.

  They took up places opposing one another. The air between them trembled with anger. But neither spoke nor even moved, for they were in the presence of the King. First Bolingbroke was released from silence. He put his case while Mowbray was required to stand, stiff as a carving, and hear himself accused of the vilest crimes. Then Bolingbroke, scowling like a thundercloud, had to stand likewise, and hold his tongue, while Mowbray called him, “slanderous coward and a villain . . .”

  Then Bolingbroke again, then Mowbray—each hurling at the other words like cannonballs—as well they might have been, for these two Dukes were more than private men. They represented, in their powerful persons, castles, lands and troops of armed soldiers. So that the quarrel between them, if unchecked, might have shaken down stone walls, burned villages and soaked many a fair field with English blood.

  But to the golden King, like a second sun in the sky, this fury between his Dukes was no more than a squabbling of sparrows over a crumb.

  “Wrath-kindled gentlemen,” he interposed, raising his hand for silence, “be rul’d by me, let’s purge this choler without letting blood. Forget, forgive, conclude and be agreed,” he advised, with a cheerful smile as if to unruly children. “Our doctors say this is no month to bleed.”

  This was his wish and the King’s wish was every man’s command. His word stood next to the Word of God; it had been so since he was a little boy. But the two Dukes had gone too far in anger to be soothed by words and they set their private honour above the wishes of the
King. Though King Richard might talk till Doomsday, the Dukes demanded satisfaction of each other in single combat to the death.

  “We were not born to sue but to command,” frowned the King, striving to conceal his displeasure at this flouting of his will. “Be ready, as your lives shall answer it, at Coventry upon Saint Lambert’s day . . .”

  So the King decreed, not as he had wished, but as his Dukes had desired.

  The field of combat was prepared. The day was bright; painted tents swayed and bloomed, and lords and ladies crowded the green. King Richard and his court, like banked-up gorgeous images, sat upon a gilded balcony, awaiting the entry of the Dukes.

  Presently they came, huge and stiff in jointed steel, each holding his plumed helmet to his armoured breast, like a flower of death. The King nodded; and each Duke, in accordance with the ceremony of combat, repeated the cause of his quarrel and affirmed his readiness to uphold it in mortal fight.

  “Harry of Herford,” proclaimed the marshal-at-arms, in roaring tones so that all might hear, “receive thy lance and God defend the right!”

  The tall thin weapon was awarded to Bolingbroke; then another to Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. All was in strict accordance with the ceremony of combat.

  “Sound trumpets!” bellowed the marshal, “and set forward, combatants!”

  The trumpets sounded, high, harsh and brilliant in the morning air. The Dukes made ready and the multitude strained forward, eager to see which Duke would live, and which would shortly die.

  Suddenly all was stopped. Before a single blow had been struck, before a single drop of blood had been shed, the King had put an end to it. His royal gesture had been enough.

  “Let them lay by their helmets,” he commanded, “and both return back to their chairs again . . .”

  The King had not forgotten how the two proud men had scorned his wishes. Now they would pay for their disobedience. Because the quarrel between them was dangerous, and might lead to civil war, they must leave the kingdom. King Richard banished Bolingbroke for ten long years, and Thomas Mowbray for the remainder of his days. The golden King had spoken; and his word was next to God’s.

  The punishment was heavy, but as it fell on both, they had no choice but to submit. Nonetheless, Bolingbroke would have the last word.

  “Confess thy treasons,” he demanded of Mowbray, “ere thou fly the realm!” He was still eager to prove himself to have been in the right.

  Mowbray, immeasurably sad at the timeless loss of his native land, shook his head.

  “No, Bolingbroke,” he answered. “If ever I were traitor, my name be blotted from the book of life. But what thou art,” he went on slowly, and staring hard at Bolingbroke as to see his soul, “God, thou, and I do know . . . and all too soon, I fear, the King shall rue.”

  But the King was indifferent and had already turned away to speak with his uncle, old John of Gaunt. The old man was grieving. The ten long years of Harry Bolingbroke’s banishment would prove too long. The old man would never see his son again. At once King Richard, filled with tenderness for his uncle, shortened the punishment by four years. Bolingbroke, hearing this, half-smiled.

  “Four lagging winters and four wanton springs end in a word,” he sighed; “such is the breath of kings.”

  But the old man still shook his head. Even the six years remaining would prove too long.

  “Why, uncle,” cried King Richard, anxious to comfort old John of Gaunt, “thou hast many years to live!”

  “But not a minute, King,” said the old man grimly, “that thou canst give.”

  King Richard shrugged his shoulders. Whatever might be said, the day had gone well. He had behaved wisely and justly; and had ridded himself of two dangerous and powerful men.

  King Richard was in his court, a bright and lively place, where the very air was dressed in perfumes before it was admitted into the presence of the King. It was like a high-walled summer garden, shutting out the winter of the world, where his favourites—chief among whom were three knights, Bushy, Bagot and Greene—like painted butterflies, played and fed.

  Bagot and Greene were with him when the news came that Bolingbroke had gone. Richard was delighted. He could not abide his stern and careful cousin. He detested Bolingbroke’s way of courting the common people—a commodity that Richard himself regarded with remote distaste.

  “Off goes his bonnet to an oyster wench,” jeered Richard. “A brace of draymen bid God speed him well, and had the tribute of his supple knee with, ‘Thanks my countrymen, my loving friends!’ ” (delivered, to his companions’ entertainment, in shrewd imitation of Bolingbroke’s harsh voice), “as were our England in reversion his . . .”

  “Well, he is gone,” said Greene happily; and the talk turned to the ever-present need for money and how best it might be squeezed from the land. Money for this, money for that, and money for soldiers to fight the Irish wars.

  Bushy came in and was greeted by one and all. Bushy was excited; he had news. Old John of Gaunt had fallen sick and was near to death. The friends looked at one another. Their eyes sparkled. Rich old John of Gaunt!

  “Now put it God,” cried King Richard, heartlessly eager as a child upon his birthday, “in the physician’s mind to help him to his grave immediately! The lining of his coffers shall make coats to deck our soldiers for these Irish wars. Come, gentlemen, let’s all go visit him, and pray God we may make haste and come too late!”

  The stern old man, in his stern old house, was dying. Sober lords and black-gowned attendants looked on as he conversed with his brother, the Duke of York. These last two sons of a great dead king spoke sadly of the young King who danced and laughed and postured and frittered the great inheritance away.

  “Will the King come,” wondered the dying man, “that I may breathe my last in wholesome counsel to his unstaid youth?”

  But York could give no comfort. Wise counsel would never touch this king. Poisoned flattery alone had his ear. John of Gaunt grew restless and angry. He struggled to rise from his chair. His brother, with scarcely more strength than he, made haste to support him.

  “Methinks I am a prophet new-inspired,” cried out the dying man; and indeed there was, to those who watched, something wild and prophetic about the white-haired old man, whose eyes blazed in his bloodless face as he gave frantic utterance to his aching love and his aching fears for England.

  “This little world,” he cried out, and his voice cracked with the cracking of his full heart, “this precious stone set in the silver sea . . . this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England . . . this dear, dear land,” he wept, “is now leased out—I die pronouncing it—like to a tenement or pelting farm . . . England . . . is now bound in with shame, with inky blots and rotten parchment bonds . . . ah would the scandal vanish with my life . . .”

  Tears, like bitter rivers, streamed down his dried-up cheeks, as he stood swaying in his brother’s arms.

  “The King is come,” muttered the Duke of York, “deal kindly with his youth . . .”

  King Richard entered, accompanied by his favourites and his pretty Queen. Attired more like a gorgeous bridegroom than a visitor to the sick, he moved fastidiously about the darkened room, eyeing the rich hangings, appraising the silver cups, exchanging glances with his companions, and stepping round and round his dying uncle, so that it seemed that the bright candle was attracted to the dusty trembling moth.

  “What comfort, man? How is’t with aged Gaunt?” he inquired with casual concern; while aged Gaunt, sinking back into his chair, stared hollowly at the hollow King.

  “Old Gaunt indeed, and gaunt in being old,” he muttered; and then, presuming on the respect due to an old man dying, reproached the King for the senseless evils of his spendthrift reign.

  “Landlord of England art thou now,” he accused, “not King—”

  “A lunatic lean-witted fool!” shouted the King, losing all patience with his tedious uncle who had shamed him before his friends. “Presuming on an ague’s
privilege—”

  “O spare me not!” raged the old man, beating his futile fists on the arms of his chair, while those present looked on, aghast and ashamed at this unseemly quarrel between the dying man and the vigorous one, the uncle and the nephew, the subject and his king. “Convey me to my bed,” panted the old man at length; for he felt that darkness was closing in upon him; “then to my grave . . .”

  “And let them die that age and sullens have!” flung out the King contemptuously, as attendants came to help his uncle away, “for both hast thou—”

  Many kind hands assisted the old Duke, who seemed, amid strong shoulders and strong arms, no more than a shabby bundle of gown. When he had gone, there followed an awkwardness. Gently the Duke of York tried to make his brother’s peace with the King. Then all too soon news came that John of Gaunt had made his own peace, and with a higher power than Richard’s. He was dead.

  “The ripest fruit first falls,” said King Richard impulsively; “and so doth he.”

  He spoke from the heart. His uncle’s death had saddened him; for old John of Gaunt had been his boyhood’s father. But then it was over. He had paid his tribute and that was that. He was King Richard again and was concerned with matters of state. The Irish wars. Money.

  With princely calm he announced that he was possessing himself of his dead uncle’s property in order to pay for his Irish war. The Duke of York stared at him. He was outraged. He could scarcely credit this bare-faced robbery, this pillage of the newly dead man’s house.

  “Why, uncle, what’s the matter?” asked Richard, honestly surprised that his actions should be questioned.

  Swallowing down his indignation, the Duke explained that the dead man’s title and property now belonged, by right of succession, to Bolingbroke, the banished son . . .

  “Think what you will,” exclaimed the King impatiently, “we seize into our hands his plate, his goods, his money and his lands!”

  The Duke retired, bowing low as much under the weight of grief as in respect for the arbitrary young King.