HE sat with his father in the garden behind the house on Henley Street. It was glorious August weather. The pot of small ale in his hands were mantled with sun-warmed yeast-flowers. That sun that mantled the body in a pleasant light sweat, cooling deliciously as a breeze whispered, had played like a consort of jolly brass as the small coffin had gone under. The summer world had sung about the coldness of the church, the dull drone about ashes to ashes, the weeping family. It was a family to which he seemed not admitted, from which his own dry eyes alienated him. He had stood on the outer ring at the graveside, a cold London man in a fine cloak. The elder of the gravediggers had whistled between his teeth distractedly, then remembered himself, then darted an embarrassed smirk and a droll roll of eyes at the cloaked gentleman. And so earth took that poor boy. What could earth not take? He had shown, at the age of eleven, little promise of special distinction — neither a lust for books nor a precise knowledge of birds and herbs, no mad quickness of thought expressed in boy’s mean and ragged language; a tall boy tending to thinness, in face not unlike his uncle Gilbert. He had liked to spend his after-school time with his uncle Gilbert, hearing simple scriptural tales while the patient glover’s hands worked away. He had seemed not to like his uncle Richard. His sisters had sometimes petted him, more often scolded, in the manner of girls.
‘They are two good girls,’ said John Shakespeare, nodding. ‘A help to their mother and grandmother. They will be good wives.’ Good girls, thought WS, good wives. I have begotten good stodgy children. Yet Susanna was fair enough at thirteen, a young country beauty. Soon, his heart sank to think it, she would be enticed to cornfields to beguile the dullness of a country spring. Yet what could a father do, especially a father away? ‘It is a comfort to have daughters,’ said John Shakespeare.
‘Can you say that?’ grinned WS. ‘I always felt that you saw your children as somewhat of a burden.’
‘Oh, when a man is young,’ said his father vaguely. ‘I grow old now. It is good to have them all about me. You will be of the same mind when the time comes for you to settle.’ He waited for his son to say something. ‘Have you thought,’ he asked at length, ‘of settling?’
‘Of making a beginning,’ said WS. ‘I have spoken with Rogers about my buying New Place.’
‘New Place!’ The old man’s apple cheeks rushed, in a flash, through a whole autumn’s ripening. New Place — the hub and core and flag and very emblem of Stratford gentility.
‘A house for my wife and children.’ WS thought an instant. ‘Wife and daughters,’ he emended. ‘They have crowded you here a long time. For myself, it may yet be a long time before I can leave the stage.’
‘Leave it as soon as you can,’ said his father with gentle force. ‘I do not think it can do a man much good. And now Ned talks of joining the players. He is more like you than any of them, though he cannot write sonnets and poems about naked goddesses. He says he will act, and I say one actor is enough in the family.’
‘An actor who thinks of buying New Place,’ said WS. ‘Edmund could do worse.’
‘Aye, I see about the New Place. A house of women, though; a strange house. Of course,’ said John Shakespeare, ‘it is not too late to beget another son. Anne is not old. Edmund himself was born very late. I have been lucky with sons, myself, but my sons seem loath to give me grandsons. Gilbert will never marry.’ He shook his head in some sadness. ‘There have been people saying he has a devil in him because of the falling sickness. You can see that women will hardly look at him, poor boy. And Dickon is strange, he does strange things. I have begotten a strange set of sons.’
‘What strange things does Dickon do?’
‘Oh, he goes away for whole days, sometimes two or three, once a full week, and comes back with money. He will never say how he got the money, only that it was fairly earned. But he was seen one day in Worcester.’
‘Doing what?’
‘He was with some old tottering woman, walking through the rain. It was not clear what he was doing. One thing is certain, and it is that he cares naught for marrying. He is a well set-up boy, save for this one leg somewhat shorter than the other, and there are a many wenches that would be glad of such a husband. But he will have none of them. Nor will he aught of the trade here. He is strange, going his own way. But his heart can be very soft, for those last days of poor Hamnet’s sickness he was a comfort to your Anne.’
‘Yes?’
‘Oh, he was ever ready to weep with her and comfort with kind words. And she was much withdrawn in spirit and would speak to none. But Dickon wept with her in her sadness.’
‘And I suppose,’ said WS slowly, ‘he said it was a great misfortune for her that her husband should be away.’
‘Oh, he knows how husbands must be away to earn money. But she is glad to have you here now. Her lord and master is home, and that is a woman’s best comfort.’
GLAD? Comfort? They lay together in that old bed from Shottery, the hot summer nights recalling others. It was always said, he remembered, that with the death of a son a light goes out between wife and husband. They lay on their backs, sweating, thinking their thoughts, so silent that each might well think the other asleep. At length he said, this night, ‘What is it best we do? Will you come to London and bring the girls and we will set up house there?’ He saw it, saying it: Master Shakespeare the citizen, with Mistress Shakespeare and two daughters, renting some decent house in Shoreditch or Finsbury; no more friendship with noble lords, no more furious writing midnights, no more freedom, no more—— He pulled a shutter down swiftly. He would relapse into a dull fat tradesman of botched plays. What would the gentlemen of the Inns say? Ah, hast seen his Juliet? His Adriana thou wouldst say, his Katherina. ‘Will you stay here? By next year we shall have New Place.’
‘You wish it so. You have your own life there. Master Field spoke to your brother——’
‘Dickon.’
‘Aye, Richard.’
‘And what has he told you?’
‘What all talk of, he says, in London. I would not live there to be laughed at.’
‘So you believe all some prentice printer tells you?’ He tried to gulp that back. ‘Whatever it is, for I know not what. Belike what is always said by the vicious about poets and players, ever since Robin Greene died and Kit Marlowe was killed.’
‘I know not those names.’
‘Oh, according to the scandal-tattlers we are all atheists and drunkards and wenchers and we throw our money away on evil living. I ask you, would such an one be able to send home what I send and to talk now of buying New Place?’
‘I know not what money you earn. I know that you are seen smiling in silk with your fine friends. And I know that — ah, ’tis no matter. Let me sleep. God knows I have had little enough sleep lately.’
‘What is it that you know?’
‘Oh.’ She turned away from him with a deep sigh. ‘There are poems you have written. They were brought to Master Field for his printing.’
‘That is old stuff, my poems. I brought home Lucrece, though none here would read it. Field himself told me that my father read Venus but you said it was filthy or some such thing.’
‘I said not that. But it is about naked goddesses.’
‘Aye, a naked goddess tumbling a boy in a field.’
She did not see that. She said: ‘There are little poems, and some are to men and some are of a black woman.’ She snivelled. ‘Thou didst never write such to me——’
‘Sonnets? Is it sonnets? What is this about Field being given my sonnets?’
‘I know nothing of it.’ WS was already out of bed, moonlit in his shirt. ‘Get back to bed,’ she ordered. ‘You make it clear that all they have said is true.’
‘It is not that. It is that poems I have written for friends have been thumbed by dirty hands——’
‘Perhaps the dirty hands of friends. Get back into bed or not, as you please. Leave the house if you wish. But let me sleep.’
‘I would speak to Dic
kon of that. I would know more. There are thieves, traitors——’
‘Richard is away, as you well know. This is unseemly, all this raving. Your son not cold in his grave.’ She began to snivel again. Then she said: ‘I have seen one of these sonnets, as you call them. I have one of these sonnets.’
‘That is not possible. Where is it? Who gave it to you?’ He went to the bed in moonlight, he took her moon-silvered neck between his fingers. She broke his weak hold with her own strong hands, saying:
‘So, I am to blame for all this. Fool. What have I to do with it?’
He saw his unreasonableness. ‘Where is this sonnet?’
‘Oh, it must wait until morning.’
‘I would see it now.’ He took the tinder-box and worked at it, moonlight leading him to the candle in the sconce that had been there since his boyhood. ‘And I would know who gave it to you.’
‘Richard——’
‘Aye, Dickon again.’
‘It was another Richard that gave it to him, if you must know. Your friend Master Quiney.’
‘Dick?’ He was puzzled, he just could not——‘Dick Quiney?’
‘It is in my book there.’ She pointed, her fine full arm now red-warm in candlelight. ‘It is between the leaves.’
WS, frowning, puzzled, took up the poor little bound volume of devotional chatter, weak warnings of the Spanish Antichrist and the End of the World. He found a folded piece of good parchment and, even before unfolding, at once remembered the May night, his own trembling fingers (were they then now different fingers?) pulling from his breast what had been defiled, turned sour and rancid, by the laughing defection of a black-haired girl and the jeers of her new lover. How many years ago had that been?
My love being black, her beauty may not shine
And light so foiled to heat alone may turn.
Heat is my heart, my hearth, all earth is mine;
Heaven do I scorn when in such hell I burn.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘After so much time. This I wrote as a boy. Before I even knew that you—— Yes, I had finished it that very day.’ He peered at it. ‘It is very poor stuff, but I was only young.’ And then, in something like awe and fear, he perceived whose name was embedded in it. ‘God,’ he said, ‘must we be pursued all the time?’
‘Come back to bed,’ she told him, ‘now you are satisfied.’
HE WISHED TO travel back to London the following morning. But his father said:
‘I hoped you would have stayed longer. There was one piece of good news I wished to keep till it was in black and white, no going back on it. I had thought I would have had it by now. I wanted you, with all this sorrow, to carry back something to cheer you.’
‘Well, we could all do with some private happiness to match the public.’
‘Public? Oh, these French alliances and so forth and the Queen passing out of her whatever-it-is——’
‘Grand climacteric.’
‘Heathen superstition. These mean little to us here, out of the great world. Small things please us best. Though I would doubt this was a small thing.’
‘Let us have it then.’
They were in the shop and workroom. Gilbert, older and graver than his years, was examining with serious closeness a piece of calfskin whereon he had pencilled fingers. He said, looking up from this seriously:
‘Aye, such as ’tis. All are to be made gentlefolk, aye. But that cannot make little difference, as in God’s eye it is all one.’
‘What is all this about?’ smiled WS.
‘Oh, Gilbert fumbles things, as ever.’ His father cleared his throat in something like embarrassment. ‘I applied for arms, and it is to be granted. It is but a matter now of awaiting the ceremonious parchment from Garter King of Arms.’
‘So.’ WS sat down on a rough workstool. He slowly began to see what this meant. ‘Arms? A coat of arms?’
‘A falcon shaking a spear and a silver spear on what they call a bend.’
‘And the motto?’
‘I cannot pronounce it aright, it is Norman French.’ He took Gilbert’s pencil and traced the letters large on a scrap of paper: NON SANZ DROICT.
‘ “Not Without Right,” ’ translated WS. ‘Good,’ he said after a little time. ‘That is very good.’
‘We have always been gentlemen,’ said his father, holding himself straight with a dignity that was somewhat pathetic. ‘There were very hard times but, thank God, they are over. It is thanks to you. And the sooner you are out of this way of making money and back here to live like the gentleman you are——’
‘We English are like that,’ sighed WS. ‘We like to forget how money is made. Only land is truly gentlemanly, land and property. Well, I shall do my best to buy land. And I am glad we are now acknowledged to be gentlemen.’
‘Soon you may have your arms on your liveries and seals,’ said his father, bubbling it out like a child. ‘Rings and banners and all. It is a fine smack at the Ardens,’ he grinned with child’s impishness. And then, with mature seriousness, he said: ‘It is strange how things be all reversed in time. Your mother forgets all about how her family stood for the Old Faith. I think it is your Anne that has brought her to this plain religion and sniffing at bishops. And I, in mine old age, take up the position she once held, though privily, very privily. At least, I see that there is more truth there than I formerly thought, and that men have been cruelly burnt for nothing. I see, I mean, in what belief I may die. They say men end as wine and women as vinegar.’
‘Whatever else may come,’ said WS, ‘we will all end as gentlemen.’
‘And think what it would have been for your son,’ said his father softly, regretfully.
‘Oh, well, that is all over.’
Gilbert, like a clock, whirred before striking. ‘We know what we are,’ he said, ‘but know not what we may be.’
AND so he rode back in more scorn than bitterness. That a lord should behave so to a friend. There is one here would speak with you, my lord. He is, he says, a gentleman. It would be best to have a seal made and to twang off his scorn on fine vellum, then down with it, a spear-shaking falcon in hot wax. Non Sanz Droict. You have exposed my heart, my lord, to the grinning world. You have made manifest so your own unworthiness. This admired fine flower is stricken with a hidden canker. Believe me, they that understand will mark that more than mine own shame; they will know where to attribute that shame, my lord. And then and then and then. Was it not perhaps dirty Chapman (there is a vulgar name, a Cheapside name) who had, putting his own poems in that spice-smelling box, stolen in spite and jealousy and run in glee to Field, thinking Field to be a ready filching printer who would pay out his few slivers of silver — drink-money, boy; for the poet naught; for me much? But was Field that manner of man? He might well be; he was not of need better for being a Stratford’s son; he had said not one word that day WS had called on him with money for the family nor that other day when he had brought his crapula-quelling news. Or was it shame that kept him silent before shame’s own begetter?
Still, the true enemy to be boarded was that fine and graceful lordship, silver-masted, silk-caparisoned, cloth-of-gold sails lifted proudly to any breeze of perfidy or wind of court policy, faithless, as incapable of love as of loyalty — And then a great wave of weariness washed over his own poor barque as he saw once more the boy’s coffin drop into the grave, and he wondered whether, with death always lurking in alleyways, tainted meat, sour ale, death a very contending twin of life, those great cries about honour and rank and treachery were more than the bawlings of a fretful child in a cradle. Honour is a mere scutcheon. Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday.
A mere scutcheon? A mere scutcheon?
VIII
SCUTCHEON. Escutcheon. Shields, targets, escutcheons, coats of arms, pennons, guidons, seals, rings, edifices, buildings, utensils, liveries, tombs or monuments …
‘I noted,’ said Florio, ‘with pleasure——’
The seal had been cut hurriedly by a man in
Fetter Lane. To bear and make demonstration of the same blazon or achievement upon their shields, targets, escutcheons …
‘In this strange country,’ said Florio, ‘a gentleman may be a poet. Indeed, gentility has been taken as the primal qualification for making poetry. It is rarer to see that a poet may be a gentleman.’
‘But the letter itself,’ said WS, ‘apart from the seal——’
‘He has not seen the letter,’ said Florio. ‘And I think it better that he do not. He is not well, he is not solely sick of his body but also most profoundly melancholic——’
‘Following the fashion.’
‘Alas, no. He caught some pestilential thing in France. Alone in bed in the dark a man has no audience. As for what you say in your letter, I perceive its justice. Shall we say that my lord was careless and that my lord’s friend the Earl of T desired copies of these most exquisite and mellifluous etcetera etcetera and that these then fell into the hands of Sir John F and then descended rung by rung to——’
‘To some impoverished master of arts or other.’ Dick Field may have talked of them in Stratford but he had not desired to print them. Some small anonymous fellow had brought them, saying he had been sent by a gentleman whose name he had been forbidden to disclose. Not Master Chapman, said Dick Field. Indeed, Master Chapman was not impoverished; his new plays of humours were doing well at the Rose.
‘As you say,’ said Florio. Florio looked fatter: something to do with the content of love, with Rosa, a poet’s daughter. ‘And you may also say, if you think about it, that if my lord showed your sonnets to any of his friends it would in no wise be out of malice; rather out of pride. I think you may understand that.’
Nothing Like the Sun - Anthony Burgess Page 17