by Lisa Klein
“Meg was still onstage being applauded, and I was in the tiring room with Burbage when Lord Leicester burst in,” said Will.
“He was at three performances this week. Burbage was on tenterhooks the whole time,” Meg added.
“Leicester demanded a play for the queen on the twelfth night of Christmas. ‘This one is too tragical,’ he said, ‘dealing as it does with a defeated queen’s suicide. But whoever penned it shall write a new one for me.’ ”
Recounting the story made Will flush with pleasure, which in turn made Meg happy.
“Burbage put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Here is the author, my newest player, a very skillful man with words.’ ”
Master Overby thumped the table in approval. Will downed the rest of his ale before continuing his tale.
“Then Burbage promised Leicester a comedy of mistaken love and disguising, accompanied with song to delight Her Majesty.”
Meg knew what Burbage was thinking. He had described to her the play he wanted Will to write. The plot would follow their late adventures.
Will winked at Meg and went on. “Burbage told Leicester he had one who could act the woman’s part so well the queen would not know whether to laugh or weep. Leicester nodded and said, ‘He who plays Cleopatra, you mean.’ ”
Gwin squealed and pinched Meg’s cheek with her fat fingers.
Meg forced herself to smile. Her heart pounded when she thought of performing before the queen.
“Does Leicester know Meg is a woman?” asked Violetta, a crease marring her happy brow.
Meg had asked Burbage the same question, and now she repeated his reply. “It matters not what Leicester knows. All that matters is the queen’s pleasure.”
Still, she worried. And what if the queen is displeased?
Will lunged at the opportunity for renown. But Meg felt turmoil. How could she perform the very deceits she had forsworn? Could she play herself and Mack, reenact her own life? She might as well go naked on the stage and proclaim her true feelings to all the world! But she must do it. She had a contract with Burbage and an obligation to the company. Will was also counting on her.
“You must give the lovers a happy ending like ours, Will,” said Violetta, gazing at Thomas adoringly.
Meg was happy for them yet wistful. I must think of her as Lady Olivia now.
“Of course it will end in marriage, being a comedy,” Will said.
He smiled at Meg, giving her a look so full of assurance it made her spirits rise and her cheeks turn pink. She was Will’s treasured muse! He would not write a part too difficult or painful for her to play. Moreover he promised a happy ending to their tale. Meg would act out deceit and loss but also truth and the discovery of love. Who could fail to be overjoyed by the possibilities of art and life conjoined?
“Will, your play shall please the queen and so shall I,” Meg said, reckless with sudden hope. “And if the queen discerns my womanhood, she will be delighted to see one of her own sex on the stage. Is she not also a player? Her stage is the world.”
Gwin nodded in amazement. “I remember when she was crowned. You said a woman could not rule England.” She frowned at her husband.
“Women are capable of anything, my love,” said Overby.
“Huzzah, Long Meg!” shouted Will. “To England’s first woman player.”
Why not? thought Meg. It followed common sense and perfect reason that she, as well as Will, could pursue a life on the stage.
Chapter 40
Shoreditch
Will swept clean the desk Tom Makeshift had built for him and moved it closer to the small window to catch the weak November light. He imagined the success that would greet his festive holiday comedy. The queen, Burbage said, loved music, masques, and star-crossed lovers to distract her from the careful business of state. A wise and witty female character was sure to please her as well. Burbage wanted the plot to concern a hero falsely imprisoned and his beloved who disguises herself as a lawyer to obtain his freedom. Will knew he could write such a play, for hadn’t he already lived it?
Love’s Logical Lawyer, he wrote at the top of the page.
Would anyone in Stratford believe his newfound fortune? A month ago he had been a penniless youth about to go to prison. Now his Cleopatra was pulling hundreds to the playhouse and the Earl of Leicester had commissioned a play. He was like the waxing moon, growing toward the day in January when he would shine full upon the queen herself. What if she rewarded him with a pension? Burbage might invite him to be a shareholder in his company. Fame and prosperity would overcome his father’s disapproval once and for all.
Love’s Logical Lawyer. The title promised dullness. He crossed it out and wrote Love Disguised. His pen scratched steadily. Makeshift snored in his bed. A mouse scuttled among the wood shavings, finding stuff for its nest. Will reread his opening scene and with a groan blotted every line. Where should he start then? With a simple ditty. Lovers know no law/But the rule of love. An hour passed and he could think of no rhyme but “flaw” and “glove,” which he considered unsuitable.
He wished Meg were beside him. She took seriously her role as a muse—when she was not teasing him. Sometimes he still thought of her as Mack even as he admired her long, golden hair, her ready smile, and the way her lithe figure moved on the stage. From her lips his words fell lightly, like notes from a lute. Hearing them, Will knew what was good and what he needed to revise. Sometimes Meg even suggested a fitter word or rhyme. He had never known such a clever woman. She could now read and write as well as any of Will’s peers at Stratford’s grammar school.
He had to see her. Quickly he covered the short distance to her cottage. It was almost midnight.
“Meg?” he whispered, tapping at her window. “It’s Will.”
He felt foolish standing there in the blackness and cold. This was something a lover unable to bear his solitude might do. His inner voice spoke up. Well, do you love Meg? Will shifted from one foot to the other, equivocating with himself. Though he was at Meg’s cottage at midnight, his intentions were not what they had been in the Forest of Arden at midnight. Are you certain? “Yes,” Will murmured. This was not a woman to be won in the usual way.
“Meg, are you awake?” He held his breath, listening. He thought he heard a stirring within. The shutter was flung outward and a sleep-touseled head appeared.
“Whatever are you doing here, Will Shakespeare?” Meg rubbed her eyes. She was wearing only a shift and exuding a warmth he could almost smell.
Will felt himself blush, despite the cool night. “I need your help,” he said.
At once she was alert. “Is there trouble? Are you in danger?”
Will wished for any reason to embark upon a new adventure. He sighed. “No, my brain is stuck on a rhyme.”
Meg rolled her eyes. “Surely it can wait until tomorrow.”
“But I’m here now and we’re both awake,” he said as Meg pulled the shutter closed. “Listen, if only for a moment,” he pleaded. Silently he counted to ten. “Please, Meg.” How selfish he sounded! At twenty he would leave.
At fifteen Meg opened the window again. She had a blanket around her shoulders. She cocked her head sideways and waited.
Now Will felt foolish. He cleared his throat and began. “Lovers know no law / But the rule of love.” He beat the air with his hand. “Flaw? Glove? Above?”
Meg furrowed her brow. Her lips moved as she thought. Finally she said, “How about this? Lovers know no law / But the rule of love: Do not withdraw At a slight rebuff.”
“That suits the meter,” said Will. He leaned on the window ledge. Another rhyme came to him. “Through lips without flaw / Sings my turtledove,” he said, wondering what it would be like to kiss Meg. Not on a stage before hundreds of onlookers but now, while they were alone in the darkness.
Will felt Meg’s hands on his shoulders. Could she read his thoughts?
“Turtledoves do not have lips,” she whispered and pushed him gently backward. Then with
a shadowed smile she added, “Will, despite the riposte / Know all is not lost!”
Again Will found himself staring at Meg’s shuttered window. He wondered if he had been walking in his sleep and dreaming the whole while. He returned home and sat at his desk, where his pen flew across the page as if inspired by the gods who wrought every change on earth and in the heavens.
He filled a sheet, turned it upside down, and wrote between the lines. Some banter between lovers. Two villains cursing. A poetic interlude between acts. He was like the great inventor Nature, ceaselessly contriving new shapes from old and new scenes from old words. When it was almost dawn he fell asleep with his head resting on the desk.
A few hours later he awoke and resumed writing, but his ideas were as sluggish as his sleepless brain. The pounding of Makeshift’s hammer distracted him. His characters seemed cut from wood, not made of flesh and blood. How was he to transform his own life into art? Will tossed his papers into a pile of sawdust.
“How do you do that, Makeshift?” he said, gesturing toward a heap of wood. “Assemble a cabinet out of so many pieces without having to tear it apart and rebuild it over and over?”
Makeshift considered his hammer as if it had dropped from the skies into his hand.
“I can’t even put a play together with two hands, a brain, and this pen,” said Will, disconsolate.
Makeshift nodded. “That stub of a feather is useless as a tool.”
“Ha! That’s very good,” said Will, reaching for his pen as a knocking sounded at the door. It had to be Burbage wanting to see the opening scenes of his play. Will leaped over a stack of wood and crouched behind it. “Tell him I’ve gone out!” he whispered.
Makeshift opened the door and Will heard a familiar voice.
“Please, don’t strike me! I have a message for Will Shakespeare.”
Will stood up. It was only Dab Nockney looking terrified at the sight of Makeshift’s hammer. “This came to the Boar’s Head not two hours ago.”
Will recognized his father’s handwriting. He unfolded the letter and read:
William, an urgent and personal matter compels me to
summon you home. Delay not but come at once upon
receiving this. Your father, Jn. Shakespeare.
What did this mean? Was someone in the family gravely ill? He was being summoned—was it another legal action? Had his father lost the Henley Street property? Were the Shakespeares about to be evicted?
Will reached into his pocket and drew out three shillings. “Dab, go hire me a good horse, not one with spavins. Makeshift, tell Burbage I will return within a week and show him the first act of my new play.”
Will threw his clothes and belongings into a satchel, including the lawyer’s handbook, which might prove useful. Next he ran to Meg’s cottage. She was seated before a window reading the poetic miscellany Will had given her. The sun streamed in the window behind her, illuminating her hair like a crown of gold.
“Come away with me, Meg,” he said, breathless.
She stood up and the book fell from her lap to the floor. “Now? Where?” Her hand touched her throat, the spot where her blood pulsed. “What have you done, Will?”
“My father is tangled in some new trouble and needs me to unravel it again,” he explained, holding out the letter. “And I need your wit to help to solve these woes.”
Meg’s hand dropped from her throat to her hip. “You want Mack to come with you,” she said. “And I have forsworn being Mack.”
She was right. Will’s first thought had been that Mack would accompany him to Stratford and lend him courage and resourcefulness. But those qualities were … Meg’s.
“You are my friend, Meg. I want you to come with me,” Will said and found that he meant it.
“And disguise myself as Mack? For how else should I travel alone in your company and keep my reputation? If you arrive in Stratford with Meg de Galle, every tongue within miles will wag right out of its mouth.”
Will had not considered this. “How inconvenient that you are a woman! Will you disguise yourself for my sake?” he pleaded.
Now her lips tightened. He could see he had angered her. She blinked rapidly and looked away.
Sudden desolation swept over Will. “Fie, fo, and fum! I do not blame you for thinking me a knave and a woman-hater. But I swear, Meg, I revere you as a goddess.” His thoughts rushed headlong into words as true as any he had ever written. “I came straight to you, for you are the dearest friend of my heart. I cannot go even a day without the sight of you.”
Meg looked at him. Tears marked her cheeks. She lifted her hands and placed her golden hair behind her shoulders like the sun shifting her beams away from him.
“Will, I am your eternal friend. But I will not go with you.” She sought for words. “These … family matters you must settle alone. Your past is yours, not mine. The present only is ours.” She broke off.
“And the future?” said Will.
Meg lifted her shoulders and smiled. “That is up to you.”
Now was the time to say it. I love you. But the words seemed unsuitable. What he felt for Meg was not the giddy excitement Catherine caused him or the passion he spent on Anne. What should he call the deeper regard that now filled him, body and mind? Maybe this, and not what came before, was love.
There was only one way Will knew to test his feeling. He stepped close and ran his hands from the crown of Meg’s head to her shoulders, tangling his hands in her hair. Gently he drew her down to him. He was aiming for her lips, but she tilted her head a wee bit and his mouth grazed her cheek instead. She did not offer her lips but neither did she pull away. She let her cheek, warm and damp, rest against his lips for several long breaths. Finally Will drew away. For the moment he was fully content.
“This is not ‘farewell,’ for I shall return anon,” he said.
Meg reached up her hand and touched his lips. “Promise?”
Will tried to kiss her fingers but she didn’t give him the chance.
“Do make haste,” she said, tapping his chin. “You have a play to write for the queen and I intend to perform it.”
Stern though she sounded, she smiled and blushed crimson like the sky at sunset. Or rather the sky at dawn, for surely this moment was a new beginning for them.
Beshrew the play, Will thought. It’s a sonnet I want to write.
Chapter 41
Shottery
In November the fields of Hewlands Farms possessed a stark beauty as gray-green thistles and faded, flowerless stalks swayed in the wind. Thousands of finches flitted and chirped while gathering thistledown to line their nests. They were the last birds of the season to breed, for all the sparrows and wrens had fledged and flown away.
Anne Hathaway envied the simple finches their mates, their soft and happy nests, and their wings. She was also breeding. Of this she was now certain. Only she could not sing about it.
For two months she kept her secret even from Catherine. It was not hard, for since Will’s betrayal they barely spoke. Though they shared a bed as usual, they slept with their backs to each other. But one morning Catherine came upon Anne retching behind the barn. She knew the truth at once, for there was only one reason for a healthy woman to vomit in the morning.
“You will have to be married now,” Catherine said.
“No,” Anne moaned.
“Why? Is the father already married?”
Anne shook her head. “Don’t be a fool and lie with Gilbert, no matter what he promises.”
Catherine ignored this. She stared at Anne’s still-flat stomach. “Whose babe is it, then?”
“Whose but Will Shakespeare’s?” Anne said, indignant. “I’ve been with no man before or since.”
Catherine stiffened. “You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
“Are you still jealous?” said Anne, her voice rising. “You’ve forgotten Will.”
“Will, I think, has forgotten you,” Catherine said.
“He does not k
now about the baby. How could he? Not even his family knows where he is living.” Anne sighed. “This is my burden to bear alone.”
Soon Anne’s stepmother suspected as well. “Are you with child?” she demanded. “Don’t lie to me. I have borne six children and know the signs of breeding.”
What was the point of lying? Her condition would become evident. Anne admitted she was carrying Will Shakespeare’s child.
“That errant son of the ruined glover? Why not some prosperous and upstanding farmer whom it would not be a shame to marry?”
Anne knew her stepmother was thinking of Fulke Sandells, her former suitor. He was twenty years her senior! Who would marry an old man and risk being left a widow with all his children to raise? Such was Joan Hathaway’s sorry plight, but it would not be Anne’s while she had a voice to say nay.
“I will raise the child myself,” said Anne.
“Not in this household! I’ll not permit a strumpet and her bastard child to live under my roof.” Spittle flew from Joan’s lips.
“Our vows were as good as a contract,” said Anne defensively. But she trembled.
The very next day her stepmother dragged Sandells into their business. He had been Richard Hathaway’s friend and witnessed his will. Thus he bore a sense of duty toward the family.
“Fulke has been to see John Shakespeare and demanded that his son be brought home,” said Joan. “The parties agree; Will Shakespeare must be made to marry you.”
“Then let those agreeable parties scour all of London looking for him,” Anne retorted, glad for once Will’s whereabouts were unknown.
Joan smirked. “As it happens, Shakespeare lately received a letter from his son. He replied, ordering him home. Sandells posted the letter himself.”
Anne’s heart sank even lower. Once she had dreamed of marriage to Will. But he no longer wanted her. Now he was being haled home like an errant schoolboy to answer for their deed. What if he denied it? Could he still be forced to marry her? Under such circumstances how could either of them ever be happy? Will would blame Anne and grow to hate her.