The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman (18 page)

As the fire died, the brother was at my side, his withered hand on mine.

And then, at last, I crept to tell my wife.

My heart is empty after my writing yesterday, and my life too. For what is there of William Shakespeare left to write?

That is my son's face that sits not there,

That emptiness along our table,

The laughter absent from our hall,

The cloak that hangs not at the door.

I was father of a son. Now I am not.

I thought my world would die

When my son had ceased to live.

O, pardon.

Though no man notices,

Will Shakespeare ceased to be.

There was a father once. I am not he.

When I first lifted my pen, my young life whirled with passion that ripened, like a field of wheat, to finally write of love, a man's love and a father's. Now, with those two loves scythed down, I wrote of tragedies, wringing pain out of my anguished body onto pages and giving them to the world. I think that without those plays I could not have borne my life.

But life seeps in despite the pain. One day I laughed again, one night I drank, and once more took a mistress to my bed. Honours fell upon me, the King's favour, good estates. And then one day my pen ran dry, for I had purged my pain and had no dreams to fill the void. I played at writing with good Fletcher, but my muse, my heart, had fled.

All that was left was the dream that had been my father's: to see our household rise in estate, from glover to merchant, merchant to gentleman. And, having no dreams of my own, I came back here, to be the husk that you see now, my corn withered. I smile, I bow, I dress; I have Jem follow me lest I, a gentleman, demean myself by carrying a parcel.

Today I took a shovel full of coals from the great Yule log that has been burning since Christmas, and put it to the tinder when the maids had set the fire again. Thus, by custom, will our household's fire shine bright for the full year ahead.

My wife and daughter laughed and clapped as the new fire caught, as if true purpose can be found in fire. And yet the custom has been done in every house throughout the land and still the plague comes, the smallpox, the agony and death that flesh is heir to.

After, I signed my name to the year's new land agreements, this being the end of the tenant farmers' year, and its beginning.

Today is the horse and cattle fair too.

‘Thomas says there be a fine pair of carriage horses to be sold,' my daughter told me this morning.

‘And does Thomas Quiney intend to buy them?' I demanded.

She flushed, knowing that her Thomas has not the money for a pair of terriers until her dowry be in his pocket. ‘He thought they would suit you, Father.'

I shrugged. ‘We do well with those we have.'

‘Yes, but She stopped, but I could hear her words. If we had two pairs of carriage horses, she could then say, ‘Why, Father, we need another carriage.' That way she and her ‘sweet Thomas' could ride instead of walk, with a family crest upon the door, the one I purchased for my father and that gave him so much joy.

She is now counting her linen; and my wife is making Lenten jellies of almond milk, and baked fancies to decorate the marriage feast.

And I write . . . of what? Of prating and foolishness, of tenants and horse fairs; I who wrote with the muse of fire at my heels, encircling whole kingdoms in my words.

There is no tragedy of
King Lear
here, played out by an old farmer and his
daughter; nor
Romeo and Juliet
; no wise Portia, just my wife, ordering the
largest carp in Stratford for baking. Words I have; but no substance to give to
them. My life is like a gilded chestnut, seeming fine until you crack it and see the
worms have eaten in while the world believes it is still rich and whole.

I have writ my past into this book; writ my love, my wit and agony into my plays. What then is left to me?

If I were mad, I should forget my son;

Or madly think, a babe of clouts were he:

I am not mad; too well, too well I feel

The different plague of each calamity . . .

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,

Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me;

Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,

Remembers me of all his gracious parts,

Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;

Then, have I reason to be fond of grief.

News has come from London, in a letter from Richard: the King has bestowed the greatest honour upon Ben Jonson, giving him a pension of a hundred marks a year. Ben Jonson is to be the King's Poet.

If I had stayed, that would be me.

Is it truly of more worth to be a gentleman than a poet? Will Ben Jonson, poet, live in memory, as Will Shakespeare, gentleman, is forgot? Perhaps even my father's gloves will live longer than I, treasured for their craft and their warmth. What is a king but craftsman of a kingdom? Have I lost all, in reaching for what my father had not?

The upholsterer is upstairs, at work upon our new bed and hangings; and then my wife will pay him for Judith's bridal bed as well.

The girl is all atwitter, as if this marriage had been long arranged and treasured by her family, with no thought at how she hath injured us, or how deep the wound could be. I'll have no more of it. And yet, what can I do? Not all my estate can help me now. There must be a wedding, and I must smile and pretend to wedding cheer.

I am a gentleman. But I regret the bargain that I made, for they were my father's dreams that I fulfilled. I could have given him an estate, and kept the stage myself. But no, I gave him all, and now I live his dream as my daughter replays my sins.

How now can it be other?

Dinner: fish fritters; potatoes, baked, my wife hoping to tempt me to good humour for she knows I do like them; almond creams; a dish of pickled mushrooms, baked with chestnuts; carp, in the French way; raisins of the sun; a tart of Canada potatoes instead of pastry, so we keep to Lent, with a filling of apricots, preserved.

Bowels: loose and painful. My wife blames the potatoes. I blame my daughter, and my wife for so neglecting my daughter's virtue that it has come to this. And myself, myself, myself.

Today was my daughter wed to Thomas Quiney, prating and prancing at her side in a quilted doublet and rapier as if he were a gentleman and not a tavern-keeper. ‘Vintner' he describes himself upon the licence, but tavern-keeper be his breath and brain.

Unknown to Quiney and my daughter, I changed the terms of her three hundred pounds, when as father I was still her fortune's guardian. That three hundred pounds is only hers on condition that if his hand make use of it, he must make the same sum to her. They are to live in the Chapel Lane cottage that is hers, and I will pay their maid and man myself, rather than see my money given to his pocket for cockfighting or ox-baiting, which word says he is prone to.

And if he does not like his bargain, it be all he gets.

Dinner: a Lenten feast, for I would not pay the church for him nor any man to eat meat upon this day. The giant carp, stuffed, an apple in its mouth; mussels in broth; lentils stewed with dumplings; quince jelly — for as I hate the stuff, I ordered that it be served now, and may its colour stain the sheets that will not be reddened with my
daughter's maidenhead, given before her wedding. For the second course: my wife hath made fish, flesh-coloured like a pig — and fitting it was for my new son, who ate it mightily, piling his trencher once again, not fit to dine with any man of courtesy; pease soup; an apple pudding; herring pie; stockfish fritters.

Bowels: loose, as if they would expel this new leech upon our family. Waters cloudy.

It seems my new son-in-law does think I am not generous in my daughter's dowry, for she came today to beg me to give them a greater estate than one small cottage of three chimneys. Perhaps he thinks I am now his true love and do owe him a better house for his Valentine!

I told her that three chimneys were all her mother knew when she married me, and that, like me, her husband is now free to make his fortune as I made ours; which made her weep and call me cruel, till my wife came and took her to the kitchens, no doubt for hot honeyed ale stirred with a cinnamon stick to soothe her.

Is she with child? These tears may be a woman's humour. But I see no happiness in my daughter's face as you might expect to see in a new-married girl, in a cottage or a great house. It should worry me. And yet, my pen again in hand, it seems as if I am in the years gone by, and today, not yesterday, is lost to me.

So I did live after my son's and Judyth's deaths, and kept living. I wrote, and kept on writing. At times it seemed I wrote with her, my pen flitting too fast even to blot the words; nor when I looked at what I wrote could
I doubt that more than my own mind had crafted what emerged upon the page.

Our plays, and at last our two new theatres, prospered.

My mother died, suddenly, in her sleep; and then my father too, more slowly withered. He knew not me, nor where he was, the last year, but he knew he was a gentleman.

Then one day, on our accounting, Richard laughed and said, ‘Why, you and I could live as gentlemen, upon our rents.'

And the bony fingers of my father pushed out of the earth and clasped me, so I said, ‘I will.'

I did not know what I had lost till it was gone. The hollow days of ‘gentleman' trap me more harshly than I ever was as a married apprentice, for now I am the fly that has flown and seen the world, until the web snatches it and keeps it down.

My plays still have renown. But one can turn from player to gentleman and let the world admire. If gentleman were to turn player, all would laugh. Each man in his station; and if we pawns move forward a square or two, we cannot turn back.

Once I heard another say, ‘I could be bound in a nutshell, if I had not bad dreams.' It is not true.

If only this hard and bitter shell would crack, dissolve itself in dew.

I am my father's triumph and his sin,

And both far greater than he knew.

The feet of my tenant's sheep have the damp rots; the sheep will be slaughtered, out of season, ere it spreads. My wife shall see the meat salted, for none can eat it until after Lent. I have forgave my tenant the next
quarter's rent. He is a most courteous man, and deserves not this misfortune.

Dinner: Lenten. Scalloped oysters, and grey did they appear too; chestnut soup; boiled cabbage; a tail of cod with celery from our hothouses; Virginia potato pie filled with leeks; a paste of apples and walnuts; raisins of the sun; olives; walnuts; preserved pears.

Bowels: stopped, and waters clear.

Today I almost did not take up my pen. The ink seems turned to ashes, and my words burnt bitter on the page. For today I saw my daughter and my son-in-law (this pen can scarce write that word ‘son') excommunicated from our church, for marrying in Lent with no true dispensation.

Could that wretch not even marry my daughter right?

My wife is crying in the second-best bedroom. Susanna is with her; but not even Susanna's good sense can comfort her mother now.

To be cast from the church! To live in open sin and call it matrimony, and in a house that I had given her. I should have placed my boot upon his rump ere he first came to my door. Being guilty of that sin myself, I did not do a father's duty.

Rage, and rage again. No anger now can quench my fury's thirst. That our house should come to this. Could aught be worse?

Dinner: still Lenten fare. An eel pie, that reminded me of the sins of the man I must still call son, even if in law and in God's sight he not be, for my daughter refuses to
return to this house until it can be made right; herring, baked, with bitter sorrel sauce, and bitter it must be; red cabbage, pickled, for a pickle we are in; a dish of onions, to make us cry.

Bowels: unsteady, and of watery tears our house has borne too much.

Oh, woe is me, to see what I have seen, to know what I must know.

For more than twenty years I worked to make our family of respectable estate. Today in church were whispers and strange looks as my wife and I passed by. At last Jem told me what is said about the town. For all I know, it may be already sung by balladeers. For yesterday, Mistress Mary Wheeler was brought with child and named Thomas Quiney as the father. An hour later she and the babe had died, so that testament must stand as true, her dying confession.

I did thank Jem for the news, and said that I must think on it awhile. If I act now, I would burst the cockscomb's face.

'Twas quiet in the churchyard. I did not know I went back there, till I found myself sitting upon the gravestone and reading again the words:
Judyth, daughter of
. . . My eyes slid once again from the rest.

I loved her, and I married Anne.

Did Thomas Quiney also love his Mary, but wooed my daughter because he must? I do not think so. He has coin enough from his tavern, and deals in tobacco in
between times as well. He could have married Mary had he wanted, for I have heard no ill report of her, till this.

Thomas Quiney stole my words to woo my daughter. Did he steal my cunning too, knowing how I stole my wife? Gossip lingers like the stench of rotten cheese, especially in those who are jealous of my new estate. He must have known the tale. Did I bring my daughter to this?

If so, I must undo this satan's knot as best I can.

We have had no invitations to dine since my daughter's lamentable connection; nor do I expect them.

Dinner: a dish of oysters, sent down from London by John Robinson, fresh shucked by Jem, still in their juices, and a salmon, dressed. A fish merchant did die of the smallpox last month, and none here will deal in fish till the quarantine is over. We give thanks for this small relief. Fennel in sops; bruet of pottage; fried spinach; worts in almond cream; turnips with chestnuts.

Bowels: stopped.