My Name Is Will

by Jess Winfield

  He bowed with a flourish, and everyone applauded and hooted except for Davy Jones. George Cawdrey cried aloud, “Behold, our mild-mannered tutor bursts forth his shell. Have you been penning lines in secret twixt conjugations, William?”

  William smiled. He felt like a god.

  “See the nymph,” said William, “bathing naked in her pool.” He gestured to Rosaline, and kicked toward her the one small stool that stood upon the stage. It slid neatly across and stopped inches from her shapely derriere. She sat.

  “Bathing naked, he said!” heckled Arthur Cawdrey, and all the other men laughed.

  Rosaline replied with mock offense. “Let thy imagination reveal what my modesty may hide,” she said. The merry band of brothers laughed. She turned upstage, and cast a longing glance into the distance.

  William continued, “Salmacis hunts not, nor toils at loom nor well, but all day combs her hair, bathing lissome limbs in waters clear and fine.” Rosaline took a comb from her hair, letting it cascade around her shoulders. Languidly she began to pull the comb through long tresses.

  William stepped back to the rear of the stage. “Comes a youth, of features fair in which his father and mother might both be seen, of whom he also took his name . . .”

  William, enacting the weary traveler, strode forward.

  “Hermaphroditus is he, of Mercury and Venus born, and fifteen be his age. Adventuring from his country far to see the world, into fair Cyrie he roams. By a chance, the nymph divine has left the pool to gather flowers for her hair, and strayed amongst the woods nearby.”

  Rosaline, taking William’s cue, danced lightly to the edge of the stage, and mimed plucking flowers from the grass.

  “When from behind a tree,” William continued, “the beauteous youth does she espy.”

  Rosaline ducked behind the branch of the tree that overhung the back corner of the stage and gazed at William as he enacted the youth. Rosaline swooned with instant love.

  “What god is this?” she asided to the audience, which was by now rapt — even Davy Jones held his half-full cup dangling unattended between his legs.

  “Fair is he beyond any mortal I e’er have seen,” Rosaline continued with rising passion. “His face, his hair, his chest, his limbs bespeak of blood divine. Have him I must. Have him, I will. Will I not? Say ‘Ay!’ ”

  The audience answered heartily, “Ay!!”

  Rosaline, as though looking in a mirror, took a moment to scrunch her hair. She curled a curl. She took a little finger to each corner of her lips. She hoisted her breasts up in her bodice, showing them to their best advantage.

  Young Richard Tyler leaned over to Philip Rogers. “Is a maid so cunning when she woos, so forward?” he whispered.

  “The stage is but a mirror and a shadow of nature, my boy,” Rogers replied. “You have no idea.”

  Rosaline turned to William. “O most stately boy — or are you a god? If a god, then surely the god of love — if mortal, how blessed are your father and mother? How happy your brother? But” — and now she stalked toward William, predatory, like a fox toward the hare — “so much more blessed and happy was whoever had the good fortune to be your sister.”

  Here the audience exchanged uncomfortable glances. Davy Jones bristled and drained his cup with eyes still fixed on the stage.

  “And even more . . .” teased Rosaline, and she reached out and slowly circled a fingertip lightly around William’s left nipple.

  “And even more blessed, she who nursed you . . .”

  She let her finger trail down William’s trunk toward his belt.

  “. . . she who gave you suck. But how much more blessed she who becomes thy wife? Thy bedfellow?”

  The last word hung in the air for a perfect moment before William turned to the audience.

  “She knows her Ovid well.”

  A huge laugh.

  Sensing a climax, William took a step toward the edge of the stage.

  “We may gallop apace through the rest, as I think you apprehend the particular tone. She woos the youth, but he, knowing aught of love and much afear’d, the nymph denies.”

  Rosaline, as William tried to speak, was caressing him from behind, pawing him like a maenad in heat. Distracted, he continued. “Her suit she presses with kisses and caresses, until ‘LEAVE OFF!’ he shouts, ‘or I must quit this place, and leave thee to thy tears!’ She demurs, entreats him stay, and into the forest slips away.” Rosaline mimed all this as William spoke it, and hid behind the branches of the tree overhanging the stage.

  “About the wood he roams, as she, behind a bush, hides as only nymphs can hide. The youth, unknowing, espies her pool. Clear as crystal. No sign of weed or reed, of fen or bog. Ay, the very pebbles of the pool, a fathom deep, glitter through the shimmering waves and beckon him to dive. At first he dips a toe, and then a foot into the lapping water. At last, thinking himself alone . . .”

  And here William paused a moment for effect.

  “. . . the fair youth puts off his robes, and naked doth his body shine. His beauty strikes Salmacis in her ardent eye, inflaming her with sudden passion. Barely can she restrain her desire to run and take him there” — behind William, Rosaline writhed lasciviously — “ere he claps his hollow hands against his naked flesh, raises arms, and into the water glides.”

  And with that he mimed Hermaphroditus’s fateful dive into the pool of Salmacis.

  “Imagine, if you will, our stagecraft here: a simple trick, of azure water made of fabric from young Tyler’s shop, flowing by. Hermaphroditus swims before it, his arms flashing white. Salmacis cries aloud . . .”

  “Ohhhh!!!” Rosaline moaned.

  “ . . . and spraying clothes aside, naked casts herself into the pool.”

  As Rosaline mimed diving into the pool, Arthur Cawdrey heckled, again: “Naked, he said!”

  “She envelops him, holds him, and struggle though he might, escape he is denied. Beneath the waves their bodies entwine, flesh pressing into flesh, and Salmacis cries unto the gods . . .”

  Rosaline, now wrapped around William, standing on one toe, one leg about his waist, cried to the heavens, “Gods hear me, grant my prayer that this unholy willful boy shall never from me sundered be!”

  William, still in Rosaline’s arms, turned his face out to the audience.

  “And the gods, good gentles, did grant indeed her prayer, joining their bodies in one, yet leaving privy members twain. And Hermaphroditus, once a manly youth, beholding what he had become, soft and yielding, cursed all else who bathed in those waters clear to share his fate. And so it is, my friends, that if you bathe, beware toward what ends!”

  And with that, still entwined, William and Rosaline kissed. Their audience stood, cheered, lifted their cups, clanked them together, and drained them.

  All except the fuming Davy Jones, who felt Arthur Cawdrey nudge him again in the ribs. “William’s play even managed to end with a couplet,” Cawdrey said.

  Anthony Munday’s play did not.

  On the stage, Rosaline leaned close into William’s ear. “You, William Shakespeare,” she whispered under the applause, “ought not enact the minor role of a country schoolmaster, but rather a player, poet, and — by God’s very prick I prithee — a lover, be.”

  Chapter Seven

  Could such inordinate and low desires,

  Such poor, such bare, such lewd, such mean attempts,

  Such barren pleasures, rude society,

  As thou art match’d withal and grafted to,

  Accompany the greatness of thy blood

  And hold their level with thy princely heart?

  — King Henry IV to Prince Hal, 1 Henry IV, III.ii.12

  It was past dawn by the time Willie came down from the mushrooms. He and his fellow night-trippers returned from the cow pastures to the South Remote parking lot near Cowell College via a tiny, rickety redwood set of steps between two sentinel oaks that allowed humans, but not cows, to pass over the barbed wire fence and move back and forth betwe
en the humdrum life of classes and the spirit world of the cow pastures at night. He walked Dashka back to her car, but she’d been strangely quiet since the discovery of the giant mushroom. She gave him a distracted good-bye kiss, then turned back to him suddenly after she opened the door to her faded red Honda Civic.

  “Do you want to get together sometime?”

  “Um, yeah . . .” Willie said. “Maybe next week. I don’t know . . . I’m taking the library jitney to Berkeley tomorrow.”

  Dashka cocked her head oddly.

  “To work on my thesis,” Willie added, convincing himself that he wasn’t lying.

  “Really?” Dashka replied, nodding. She seemed to be making a decision. Finally she said the last thing Willie expected to hear: “Me, too.”

  With a last spark of energy, she managed a mischievous smile. “I guess I’ll see you in the back seat.” Then she got in the car and drove away down the hill.

  The Graduate Student Residences at UCSC consisted not of traditional dorms, but coed apartments of four small single bedrooms with a common kitchen, dining room, and living room. Willie awoke at noon to the sound of the sofa rolling upstairs. No one else was home. He had a meager breakfast — a slice of leftover pizza from the fridge — and read the third act of Hamlet for the zillionth time, spinning his Rubik’s Cube and wondering why Hamlet didn’t kill his usurping uncle when he had the chance. Then he went to his afternoon fencing class, the only one he’d registered for this quarter. He came back in time for dinner, and found a note tacked to his bedroom door with a pushpin: Dood . . . some chick called. He plucked off the note and turned to the common area, holding it aloft.

  “Hey, who took this note?”

  Jill, standing at the kitchen counter grating a huge, bright orange brick of cheddar cheese, shrugged.

  Jojo, a mess of dyed-black hair and black nail polish, sat at the dining room table, hunched over a new Macintosh SE, an early Christmas gift from her parents, clicking away on a mouse. “Dunno,” she said without looking up. “Josh and those guys were here earlier. Probably one of them.”

  Now he looked again at the note. “Some chick . . .” Dashka, or someone else? He crumpled it up and tossed it toward the kitchen garbage can, missing. He peeked over Jojo’s shoulder at the Macintosh.

  “What are you working on?”

  “A fucking ‘no pass’ in Gender and Globalization, you oppressive pig.” She was playing Dark Castle, maneuvering a little warrior man with a pageboy haircut through a medieval dungeon, throwing rocks at bats. Every time a bat took a hit, it plummeted to the floor with a dying squeak. Squeak, squeak. Squeak. “Wanna play?”

  “No, I’m good. Oh, hey,” Willie said too innocently to Jill, “you cooking?”

  “Of course I am,” responded Jill, leaning into the grater with a vengeance. “It’s my night. Not that that means anything to anybody else around here.” There was a calendar on the side of the refrigerator with nothing on it except, in Jill’s fussy backward-slanted script, a schedule for the three nights each week when one of the apartment mates was responsible for cooking dinner. In theory, it saved on groceries and kept everyone from eating in the cafeteria or coffee shop every meal. In practice, it meant Jill cooked them all dinner once a week or so, and then bitched about it. “I don’t understand why no one else will cook. What’s the point of being independent and living in an apartment if you don’t take advantage of the kitchen and cook sometimes? It’s not even like everyone has to cook every week. There’s a rotation.” No one answered. “Hello, is anyone even listening to me?”

  Jill was working on a Ph.D. in sociology.

  The phone rang. Willie, glad to get away from Jill, picked it up.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello, Willie.”

  Willie immediately wished he’d responded to Jill instead.

  “Oh . . . hi.”

  “Did I catch you at a good time?”

  “Actually, I’m tired, just back from a class.”

  “How’s the thesis?”

  “Good, good, I’m rolling on it.”

  A pause.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I got the topic approved yesterday.”

  He waited for what he was certain would be an outpouring of approval — or at least relief — from his father. Instead there was a longer pause. And then:

  “Well . . . then either you’re a liar or the provost is.”

  “The provost?”

  “I just got off the phone with him.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Last week I asked him to find out how the academic career of my only child is going. I called today to follow up, and he told me that he talked to your advisor, Professor Walsh.”

  “Welsh. And he’s — ”

  “He told the provost that he hadn’t seen you academically in months, that you hadn’t given him the abstract for your thesis — ”

  “That’s because — ”

  “Let me finish, please. The provost also said that he personally is concerned about you and marijuana, that you looked stoned the last couple of times he saw you around the college. So, I just wanted to ask you if, for the past year, when I thought I was investing in your education, you’ve been merely sponging off of me and buying drugs?”

  Willie’s hands were shaking with anger, but he tried to control his voice. “Are you finished now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sponging off you, I’m working on the thesis. I was just researching the influence of religion on psychological development in Hamlet this afternoon. And I’m not lying to you, either. Professor Welsh is on a book tour, but his TA approved the topic. Yesterday.” This news, Willie thought, would surely change the tone of the conversation.

  There was a longish pause.

  “Well, that means nothing. TAs mean nothing. You need to get approval from him.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake! I’m doing the best — ”

  “Don’t curse at me, it’s extremely rude.”

  “I’m rude? You just called me a sponge.”

  “I know I don’t have to tell you that you can’t get anywhere in academia without a master’s. But the pace of your career matters, too. By the time I was your age I’d worked my own way through grad school and was starting on my dissertation.”

  “Right, well . . .” Willie took a deep breath, but the anger he held back had turned into a snake in his mouth, and he couldn’t keep it from striking. “I guess I’m just not finding my inner Shakespeare as fast or as completely as you found your inner Woody Allen. How’s the Manhattan lecture going over this year?”

  There was a very, very long silence. Willie knew he’d gone too far, but it was already said.

  On the other end of the line, he thought he heard the sound of ice clinking into a glass, followed by another long pause. “Perhaps it would be best for both of us if I simply stopped paying your way. Your tuition for the quarter is paid. Your thesis is approved, you say. So write the damn thing. If you need extra money, you could get a job.”

  Now the pause came from Willie’s end. What could he possibly say? He’d painted himself into this corner; he might as well grab a stool and a dunce cap and face the wall.

  “Fine. I don’t need your money.”

  Another eternal pause.

  “My point is — ”

  “Okay, well, I gotta go. Bye.”

  “Willie, wait — ”

  Willie hung up.

  There was a studious hush in the room, broken only by the rhythm of Jill, still grating, and the occasional death of a bat in the Dark Castle. Squeak . . . squeak.

  After a few seconds, Jojo broke the silence without looking away from her game. “Fuckin’ parents.”

  Willie was cut off.

  Chapter Eight

  One of the most well-known stories of Shakespeare’s youth involves his running afoul of a local justice of the peace, Sir Thomas Lucy. This paints a quaint image of Shakespeare as a boisterous youth, mildly rebellious in
the face of blustering, provincial authority. But Sir Thomas Lucy was a heavy character: a “pursuivant,” a local officer of the Crown charged with ferreting out Catholic “recusants” who refused to attend reformed church services — and making their lives as miserable as possible.

  On Thursday, as William walked home through the crisp fall air toward his midday meal and a free afternoon, he thought of Rosaline and of the improvised triumph of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus. Then he thought of Isabella Burns; and then again, happily, of Rosaline. The incessant fog of the past few days had broken, and sunlight gleamed on the walls and windows of New Place and the bustling shops of High Street. William thought that Stratford, today, looked uncommonly beautiful.

  It did not smell nearly so pretty.

  As he turned the corner into Henley Street and crossed the Meer Stream that ran through it, he heard a female voice overhead. “Ho, there!” Instinctively he jumped back as a rain of shit and piss splattered into the brook beside him. “Mark thy ways, boy!” He looked up to see a housewife leaning out a second-story window, shaking the dregs out of her emptied chamber pot. This was a fairly common occurrence.

  The Shakespeare house in Henley Street looked like crap; or more accurately, like a dunghill. That was the first thing one noticed on approaching the property. A ten-foot-high pile of table scraps, dead cats, festering turds of cow, sheep, goat, and dog, and last night’s chamber-pot contents greeted the potential customer or visitor who approached the humble shoppe and attached home of John Shakespeare, Whittawer & Glover.

  William shook his head at the dung heap and grumbled past it. Its mere presence here — the farmishness and ugliness of its blight on the fairest street of the fairest town in Warwickshire, where a young man might daydream of the fairest women in England — annoyed him with that peculiar annoyance that comes only from daily reminders of parents’ shortcomings. Behind the dunghill, the house teetered over Henley Street. It was badly in need of attention, the whitewash peeling and the timbers splintering. Two shutters wanted repairing. The windows had no glass; such extravagances were strictly for the wealthy. Instead they were stretched across with linen that was stained and torn. The wide, horizontally hinged window that swung open as the storefront for the family business was closed, though it was midday. The thatch roof was threadbare in places; it perched slightly askew atop the house, like a drunk’s hat.