My Name Is Will

by Jess Winfield

  But she had refused to fuck him.

  “Trust me,” she’d said, “it would probably mess with your head.”

  And now Willie sat in the fog atop the Oakland hills and sullenly sipped at a dark, leathery red wine.

  “So try me,” said Alan. “Sometimes just the process of saying something out loud helps clarify it in your mind. Tell me about it. It might help.”

  “What?” said Willie with rising panic.

  Fuck, I haven’t been listening. Tell him about . . . ? He looked at Mizti, but she was smiling. His thesis, he was asking about his thesis.

  “Well, what do you know about persecution of Catholics by Protestants in sixteenth-century England?” said Willie.

  Alan Greenberg shrugged. “Not much. I can tell you about the exploration of identity in Robert Bolt’s script of A Man for All Seasons, if you like.”

  “Do you know about all the executions?”

  “Sure. It happened pretty much everywhere. On both sides. Burnings at the stake, the Inquisition, Huguenots, Bloody Mary.”

  Mizti perked up at “Bloody Mary,” but seeing that it wasn’t an offer, she refilled her wineglass and sank back into her chair.

  “During Elizabeth’s reign there were several Catholic plots to murder Elizabeth and put the other Mary — Mary, Queen of Scots — onto the throne,” Alan concluded.

  “Right,” Willie said, although he didn’t know about the plots, and hadn’t realized until this instant that Mary, Queen of Scots, and Bloody Mary were two different people.

  “So Shakespeare fits in how?” asked Alan.

  Willie told him the tale of Sonnet 23, and Alan nodded, impressed.

  “That’s some clever scholarship.”

  “So my thesis is that Shakespeare was Catholic.”

  Alan kept looking at him, waiting. “I’ve heard that suggested before.”

  “You have?”

  “I hate to slow you down on this, but I think you need more. One line in a fairly obscure sonnet isn’t enough evidence to base a master’s thesis on.”

  “Well, obviously I have more research to do,” replied Willie, annoyed.

  “Obviously. Are you spending some time at the library?”

  “Yeah, I’m going to be there all night tonight,” Willie lied.

  Mizti had been shifting uncomfortably. “What about the man?” she asked.

  Alan and Willie both looked at her as if artichokes had suddenly sprouted from her ears.

  “What’s that, sweetie?” asked Alan.

  “Shakespeare the man? I mean, so he was being prosecuted by the Protestants — ”

  “Persecuted,” corrected Alan.

  “Whatever. It seems to me what’s interesting is how that affected him personally. His family. His friends. And then how did it, you know, make Shakespeare Shakespeare? Maybe you could research that.”

  Willie looked at his dad. How to explain it to her?

  Alan began. “Literary criticism and theory in the twentieth century tends to be entirely focused on the text, cupcake.”

  “It’s true,” Willie continued. “The biography, politics, and intention of the author — even his or her interpretation of his own writing — have been deemed irrelevant to interpreting or critiquing his or her work.”

  Mizti looked back and forth from Alan to Willie, stunned.

  “Well, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I’d be interested in hearing how the persecution of Christians — ”

  “Catholics,” interrupted Alan.

  “Catholics,” Mizti corrected herself. “If that was going on when Shakespeare was a kid, just imagine how it must have fucked with his head. That kind of trauma in your family, at such a young age. What would that do to you? It must have had some impact on what made Shakespeare Shakespeare. I just think it’s completely dumb that you can’t talk about it.”

  Mizti sank back into her chair, sipped her wine, and looked out the window as the lights of Berkeley strove to burn through the fog.

  There was another long silence.

  “So you’re sure you’re okay for money?” Alan said to Willie at last.

  “Yeah. I’ll be fine. But I was wondering . . . could I borrow your car? I’ve got one more errand to run tomorrow.”

  Alan looked at Willie with vague disapproval. “Sure.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  If the Shakespeares were indeed oppressed Catholics, it’s no surprise that the earliest writing ever attributed to the Bard is a biting satirical ballad punning on the name of Sir Thomas Lucy that was copied and handed down through the generations in Warwickshire. But the mature Shakespeare is known for his bantering, highly sexualized farce, his love poetry, and his tragic family dramas, not for religious allegory or political posturing. Perhaps this is because in the fall of 1582, Shakespeare’s own story took a plot twist worthy of one of his own convoluted comedies . . . or, perhaps, one of his tragedies.

  William Shakespeare, Richard Field, and George Cawdrey spent the night at the Bear. Finally weary with copying “If ‘Lousy’ Is ‘Lucy,’ ” William had fallen asleep, head down on the table, pen in one hand, ale in the other. He was the first to stir, and he instantly regretted it. His head throbbed; it was infinitely more painful than his dully aching, racked shoulder.

  He finished the stale, flat beer that was still death-gripped in his left hand. He cleaned his pen. Then he poured himself another ale from the tap. He drank it, and felt better. He woke Cawdrey and Field.

  An hour later, Thomas Barber had come down from his rooms, served a breakfast with more ale, and they were all well fortified against a cold but dry November morning. William, George, and Richard emerged from the pub and strode down the deserted street, three abreast: coat, cloak, and cassock fluttered in the wind. Had slow motion existed, they’d have been in it. Holstered in their belts were hammers; in one hand, nails; in the other, copies of the first child of William Shakespeare’s invention: a bit of doggerel verse satirizing Sir Thomas Lucy. It was Sunday, and all the Protestants in town were in Holy Trinity church. Most of the Catholics were there, too. Those who weren’t were shut in their homes, pretending to be mad or in debt or both. At the High Cross, William, George, and Richard split up.

  William had volunteered to return to the scene of his previous crime, to the very gate of Sir Thomas Lucy’s great house at Charlecote. He retraced his steps down Bridge Street quietly, not wishing to call attention to himself. As he crossed Butt Close along the archery range, he saw a lone figure on the far southeast corner of the field, standing back to the river and shooting at a single target. The figure turned to look at him. A woman, William thought, and continued on toward the bridge. Three seconds later an arrow whistled past his ear and sank into the road three yards ahead of his big toe.

  William jumped back, wheeled around toward the archer, and opened his mouth to call out some choice invective. But then he stopped. He plucked the arrow from the ground and walked across the dewy grass to where the archer stood. She fired another shaft, this time into the center of the target. Thwunk.

  William extended the first, errant arrow to the archer. “You missed me.”

  “You lie, sirrah. I missed you not at all these eighteen hours,” said Rosaline. She assessed the small cut on his face with a glance, then looked at the proffered bolt. She left it hanging in his hand and took another arrow from her quiver.

  William watched her as she quietly fired two more arrows at the target. Each struck within two inches of the bull’s-eye. There were four others, also grouped in an asymmetrical bunch around the target’s center.

  “Your shafts are exceeding well shot, Rosaline.”

  “And what of your shaft?” She fired another arrow into the heart of the target. “Where would you discharge it? It seems you use it for cruel sport, to pierce a bird and then leave it to die of its wounds. As this your practice grows to rumor and thence to repute, I foresee your shaft often there,” she said with a sharp nod, “languishing in your ha
nd.”

  “My shaft is my own concern. It is a man’s care to keep it polished, trimmed, and sharpened, and to engage if battle be joined.”

  “As it is the care of a woman to keep her quiver full. But note that, if she cannot cut all her arrows from her favored trunk, she will go a-wandering; for i’faith there are many trees in a forest.”

  “Thus were women ever as inconstant in the filling of their quivers as they are in the quivering.”

  “And are men less inconstant?” she said, finally lowering her bow and turning on him. “What a manly name you have, William Shakespeare. Such a proclamation it is, of force and dominance. WILL, I AM! SHAKE SPEAR! But in some parts ‘Shakespeare’ is ‘Shake-shaft,’ is it not?”

  “What’s in a name? Rosaline may be Rosalind, and yet are both a rose, by any other — ”

  “Play not on my name; it’s not as fit for sport as yours. ‘Rosaline’ has not such homespun wit as ‘Will Shake-shaft,’ who by a name will shake his shaft in the face of any maid with a bright eye and pretty locks.”

  Rosaline took the last arrow from her quiver and fitted it to her bow. “But then,” she said as she sighted the target, “as ever when a shaft be loosed without skill or care,” and suddenly she wheeled her aim up and to the right and let the arrow fly, over the target, to disappear in the wood across the river, “it is like to fly false, and be lost forever.”

  She lowered her bow and turned back to William. “Do I strike near the truth?” she asked, and her face was flushed and white with anger.

  William had stood and taken it; he knew he deserved it. He was mesmerized by Rosaline’s beauty and wit. He had encountered precious few who could take the jabs from his own tongue and then parry and riposte with such skill.

  “You strike neither as near the mark as your surmise, nor as wide as your misspent dart,” William said quietly. “Though it pardons not my faithlessness, know that after my evening’s pastime with Sir Thomas Lucy — from which, and I thank you for your care in the matter, I was released with minimal injury — my first thought was for finding you. But matters of state o’erruled what should have been my initial care.”

  Rosaline softened, and touched his face gingerly. “I am glad to see you so little harmed. I hope there are no greater, hidden wounds?” William felt the sting of the lashes on his back, but said nothing. “Yet I wonder,” Rosaline asked, “what matter of state trumped the nobility of your first intent?”

  “The executions of priests of the Old Faith under the guise of protecting our Sovereign. I go forth today to strike a blow, be it small, for the right of our Queen’s faithful subjects to hold what private faith they will, without fear of torture or death.” William held out the documents he held in his hand.

  Rosaline took the papers and read the verse. “Lucy is lousy whatever befall it?” she asked. “In this, Ovid need not fear his reputation for poetry, nor Machiavelli for politic,” she said.

  “It is but a first blow,” William mumbled. He felt her slipping away. She stood there in green skirts, Sunday-fine and matching her eyes, with a bodice the burnished gold of fall leaves, and red hair in braids about her shoulders. Two swans glided by on the river behind her, and he had a vision of her as a third, standing tall and proud on the bank of the Avon. The vision inspired him.

  “The only legends here that need fear their regard are the swans of Avon, whose beauty is now surpassed by the swan on its bank,” William said. “And as I am but a young man, tender in years, two short of even a score, I hope I may be forgiven for being young, and a man. But even so, I would not have your quiver empty, nor yearning for an errant shaft.”

  William took Rosaline’s bow, and fitted the arrow to it. “The best way, if one bolt be lost, is by another to be found.”

  Standing next to her, he pulled back the bowstring, ignoring the screaming pain in his shoulder as he aimed at the target then wheeled high and to the right exactly as she had done, and let the arrow fly into the woods.

  He set down the bow. “Let us follow the flight of the errant shaft, to see if it might once more find your quiver.” He led Rosaline silently across the river and into the wood. William picked his way lightly amongst the trees, and as he helped Rosaline over one fallen trunk, he noticed again the fineness of her skin, the combination of delicacy and strength in her hand. Turning back to the forest, he stopped.

  Buried in the trunk of an elm tree was the arrow William had shot. He looked up into the foliage. There, where the elm’s branches intertwined with that of its neighbor, was Rosaline’s arrow.

  “What once was lost, now is found,” said William.

  He scrambled up into the tree and dropped down a moment later holding Rosaline’s arrow. He plucked the second arrow from the elm trunk, and handed them both to Rosaline. “If this be not enough to make all well with your quiver, at the least it will not be barren.”

  She took the arrows back with a half smile. “A honeyed tongue with maids you have, indeed.” She gestured to his papers. “Where falls your first blow for tolerance?”

  “Upon the very gates of power.”

  “You will need someone to hold the nail to your hammer.”

  “Women were thus ever fixed on their nails, and men’s hammers — ”

  “PLEASE!” interrupted Rosaline, raising a finger to his lips. “Stop.”

  He did.

  “I would accompany you,” Rosaline said.

  “There is danger. Thomas Lucy and his seconds will look for those who begat this insolence.”

  “I care nothing for Thomas Lucy, and less for his seconds. Though they were not cruel to me, neither were they kind. And to all of Warwickshire, and the greater good, they are passing rude. I would assist you.”

  “But — ”

  “Deny me not,” she said firmly.

  He did not. They set out together, chatting and trading barbs nonstop for the four miles back to Charlecote.

  They met no one on the road, but as they went over the rise past the centuries-old Loxley Church, they heard the sounds of a kyrie wafting from inside. The sun was still well short of noon when they reached the western gate to Charlecote. They briefly discussed whether to target this entrance or the finer gatehouse a mile farther on, an imposing new brick structure built as an ostentatious symbol of the pursuivant’s power. William thought the new edifice more symbolic, but Rosaline won the debate over the extra two-mile walk, and the difficulty of driving a nail into brick.

  They approached the wooden gate carefully. It was closed and locked. The two gatehouse guards who had bid William such unfond farewell were nowhere to be seen. William considered whether to hallo or not, and decided that anyone inside the gatehouse would surely hear the hammering in any case.

  “Hallooo!” William hollered.

  No answer but the squawk of one of the ever-present ravens.

  “Send forth Master Lousy!”

  Still no one answered.

  “Tell him a young lover and poet will shake a shaft at him!”

  Rosaline stifled a laugh.

  William produced several nails from a pouch. He unholstered the hammer tucked into his belt beneath his cloak. William held up the verse. Rosaline placed a nail to it. William hammered it into the gatepost with three strokes.

  It was one doggerel verse, hung on one gate in the middle of the backwater Warwickshire countryside. But at that moment William felt like the most powerful individual in the world.

  An hour later, Rosaline and William returned to Stratford, retracing their steps across the Clopton Bridge and up Bridge Street toward the center of town. William was armed with two more copies of the verse. When no one was looking, he and Rosaline nailed one to the exterior wall of the Bear, then, emboldened, crossed the street to add one to the facade of the Swan.

  As William nailed the last nail, Rosaline kissed his ear.

  But then there was a touch less tender on his shoulder. A hand, not roughly, but firmly, grasped him and turned him around. Two stout m
en, farmers by their looks, towered over him. Each held a matchlock rifle. Behind them was a smaller man.

  “William Shagspere?” growled the smaller of the two large men.

  “Shakespeare, ay.”

  “Fulke Sandells is my name. This is my cousin, Master John Richardson.”

  “The names are not familiar to me,” said William. “Men of Sir Thomas Lucy, I assume. I’ve no need of stretching again today.”

  The men looked at each other in confusion. “We know naught of Sir Thomas,” Sandells said. “Friends and neighbors are we of a maid of Shottery of your past acquaintance. We hope you remember her most fondly and devoutly. Anne Hathaway is her name. And this is her brother, Master Bartholomew Hathaway.”

  The smaller man looked William appraisingly in the eye. “William Shaxper. We are here to inform you of Anne’s impending nuptials, and most urgently request your attendance.”

  William looked first at the men, confused, then to Rosaline. He shrugged. “I remember Anne well enough, though I met her but twice or thrice while on my father’s business in Shottery. But I know not to what family honor I have attained, to be thus summoned to her wedding.”

  The muscles in Bartholomew’s jaw tensed. “It pains me that your remembrance of my sister is so slight; for hers of you is more weighty. She is three months with child, and her wedding day is to be yours as well.”

  The mark Thomas Lucy had made on William’s right cheek healed quickly; the sting of the blow Rosaline struck to his left didn’t fade for a long, long time.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me: I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offenses at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in. What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us.

  — Hamlet, III.i.121

  Willie was headed the wrong direction.

  He was supposed to be going north, but he’d missed the right turn at the bottom of Tunnel Road and was now headed south. The wine hadn’t helped him in finding his way; he was jittery, stressed out. He was always stressed after spending time with Alan and Mizti, but his stress was now doubled by the weight (though it was just over a pound) in the trunk of his father’s Audi, and trebled by what he was about to tell Robin.