The Diary of William Shakespeare Gentleman Read online

  The squire could well do with my Judith’s dowry, and our family with the alliance to his, but I will not marry my daughter to a lad who is fool enough not just to pine for a blacksmith’s daughter, but to kiss her in the daylight where spying eyes like mine can see and make gossip thrust and stab about the town.

  Gossip is more sharp than any sword. It was gossip scalded my Susanna, saying she had a foul disease, disproved in court. She almost fell to gossip’s flames when for a while she refused to take Easter communion as the King commanded. But by God’s grace she soon repented, met Dr Hall, a man strong in Protestant faith, and all was well. Gossip was the weapon the alderman wielded more than forty years ago. His gossip could make our family outcasts.

  I can still see him clearer than the tapestry upon my wall. He turned to look at me as I came in from school that day, a thin man in rusty black, a bearskin cloak and tarnished chain of office.

  Our hall smelt of the rich comfort of leather stretching on the benches, kidskin, doeskin, calf, deer, lambswool and even chamois from France, as well as the pottage for our dinner still steaming on the hearth. A craftsman’s hall is his family’s home. Yet today the gloves my father had been embroidering sat on his stool, abandoned. Mother seemed to have vanished like a ghost upon the light. Nor did the guest have even a tankard of ale, or bread to sop in it.

  ‘William, away!’ said my father sharply.

  I stared at him. I was used to Father’s bear hugs when I came home from school. I bowed and backed away.

  ‘Let the boy stay,’ the alderman pronounced.

  ‘I would prefer —’ began my father.

  ‘Let the son hear what his father has done.’

  The alderman spoke as if Father were a common woodcutter. Father was chief alderman, and had been high bailiff too. How could a mere councilman treat him like this?

  ‘Soon the whole town will know your crime. Why not your son?’ The alderman gazed at me, a minnow in a muddy pool. ‘Your father is guilty of the foul sin of usury. He must pay the fine or go to prison. Till then he is excommunicated and may not go to church.’ Was there a faint smile on the thin lips as the alderman added, ‘By next Sunday all Stratford will know your family’s shame’?

  Prison? Father? No longer allowed in church? It was as if the swans on the river had picked up their white skirts and danced. What was usury?

  ‘I will pay the fine by the week’s end,’ said Father quietly. ‘There is no need for this matter to be made an amusement for the town. Will you stay to dine with us, sir?’

  The councilman did smile then, the smile of a man who laughs as others are cut down. ‘When the fine is paid, you may dine with Christian men. I will not sup in a usurer’s hall till then.’

  I watched the door slam behind him. Father sat slowly on his chair by the fire, where the light was best on rainy days for sewing gloves. I stood uncertain. It was as if the earth trembled like water. Father not allowed to go to church? Every Christian went to church, even the papists, who, it was whispered, went to mass secretly as well.

  ‘Father?’ My voice was a mouse’s squeak.

  He did not speak.

  Most sons never dare ask their father questions, but Father had always answered mine. Where did the jet beads that are sewn onto the gloves come from? Where did the swallows fly to in autumn? Now I ventured, ‘Father, what is usury?’

  It hurt to see his face shame-clouded, his bright eyes turned rain with gathering tears. ‘Usury is lending money and asking high interest. It is a sin for any Christian, and as a Christian I must pay for it. And yet I believed I did good, not harm!’

  ‘Who did you lend the money to, Father?’

  ‘I lent your friend Ned Forrest’s father five guineas to buy seed for his fields next year. I charged him two guineas interest, to be paid when his harvest is brought in next year. Someone must have heard our bargain, for now my five guineas is given back to me.’

  Father stared at the flames. ‘Sin sows a bitter harvest. Farmer Forrest has no money to buy seed for the next sowing, and I must find twice the loan and pay it as a fine, or go to prison.’

  Ten guineas? Even our schoolmaster only made four guineas a year. Surely you would need to be the Queen herself to pay ten guineas! ‘Father, I don’t want you to go to prison!’

  My father tried to smile. ‘We will manage. I will sell the fields your mother brought as dowry. In a good year they might bring forty guineas. This year they should give us ten at least.’

  I ventured, ‘Why did you break the law, Father?’ Father never put a wrong stitch in a glove, nor broke a Lenten fast. He’d even had the papist murals in the guildhall painted over when he was high bailiff.

  Father looked at me steadily now. ‘Where does your bread come from, William?’

  ‘From the baker, sir,’ I told him. At eight years old I knew it all.

  ‘And the flour to make the bread?’

  ‘From the wheat that grows on the farms, sir.’

  ‘And if the rain rots the harvest on those farms? If the damp hayricks catch alight, as if to give the heat the sun refuses to share? Where does flour for our bread come from then?’

  ‘I . . . I do not know, Father.’

  ‘It comes from other counties, other countries, which is why a penny loaf today is only a quarter of the size it was last year. How many loaves do you eat each day, William?’

  ‘One before school, sir, and another four at dinner, then one for supper.’

  ‘Sixpence a day for bread for one small boy, and more pennies for your brother and sister, your mother and father, even Mary, for maids must eat as well. A man must feed his family. How must knaves like me find the money?’

  ‘You make gloves, sir.’

  I looked at the gloves and tools with which we shared our lives. Strong woollen gloves for farmers, mittens for woodcutters, jewelled silk gloves in bags of doeskin and parchment, though no one had ordered silken or jewelled gloves for more than a year.

  ‘If men use all their pennies to buy bread, they have none to spare for gloves,’ my father said. ‘So I broke the law to make money on our savings instead of spending them. And now both my savings and the sinful interest on them are lost.’

  ‘Will we be poor?’ I tried to stop my voice trembling.

  Being poor was almost as bad as being a leper and ringing a bell so no one came close enough to catch your disease. Though even leprosy wasn’t as bad as catching the plague. If you caught the plague, you were dead. The poor lived on cobnuts from the hedges, ate nettles instead of turnip greens and lettuces, and ground acorns as flour to make their bread. Poor boys wound rags about their feet instead of wearing shoes, and picked stones from farmers’ fields for a penny a day.

  Today at school I had read two whole pages of the myths of Greece and Rome. I was as drunk on words as a ploughboy full of cider at the harvest feast. I did not want to leave my books to pick up stones!

  My father smiled. My soul filled with warmth again. ‘We will manage,’ he repeated. ‘I have invested in a ship sailing for Venice. When it returns with silks and Venetian glass, our money will be returned in full and more.’ He looked at the flames again. ‘All will be made right. I am quite sure.’

  Of course all would be right. When I was eight, I trusted my father’s word more than I trusted the fickle sun to rise. I wondered what Venice was like, this city of silk and glass that would give our fortune back. Then I realised. Father had told the alderman he would pay the fine by the end of the week. But this was only Monday . . .

  ‘Will . . . will people point and laugh at us till the fine is paid, sir?’

  We boys had thrown rotten turnips at Master Tumbleton when he was charged with fornication. I did not know what fornication was, except that any guilty man or woman charged with it was excommunicated, as Father had been, and let us dress a man in dross and turnip leaves.

  ‘Our family will hold our heads up too high for any to dare condemn,’ said Father quietly. He added, with more determi
nation, ‘We will go to the play this afternoon at the tavern, you, your mother and myself, with old Tom to wait upon us. We will show that the house of Shakespeare still has standing in this town.’

  Joy bloomed as doubts rose faded. A play! Players came to Stratford sometimes when the plague closed London’s taverns, so no plays could be shown in their courtyards, but I had never seen one. All thoughts of Father’s crime melted as a dragon’s breath eats snow. Within a week the fine would be paid, just as Father said. He’d be a communicant again, and all would be as it always had been.

  Suddenly I realised our family’s shame might stab Ned too. Blighted wheat seed did not keep over winter. How could Ned’s father farm if he had no seed to sow?

  ‘Sir . . . how will Ned’s father find the money to buy seed now?’

  ‘I do not know,’ said Father quietly. ‘Each man must tend his own garden. Your mother is picking pea pods, with Mary and the children. Go tell her we will dine quickly, and then dress for the play.’

  Our dinner that day was pea pottage and brown bread. Today my servant John has just come to say my dinner is ready, when I wish to dine. It will be roast beef with mustard, as my wife is not here to complain about tough meat, a warm dish that will soothe my melancholy. There will be a haunch of venison, a gift from my Lord Sheriff; beef marrow fritters; a lark pie; then shaved cheese with sugar, and late pears and apples whole, for my teeth are good, unlike my wife’s. I have ordered John to bring up the malmsey wine, which will further warm my mood. Forty years and more from that poor dinner in a craftsman’s hall, yet I will taste that pottage, not my beef.

  Chamber pot this morning: I was glad to see my waters clear and bowels steady. It confirms my thought that I am still a man within his prime.

  Monday, 12th October 1615

  I have not written in this book for a week, for now the river runs obedient as a baby strapped in its swaddling clothes between its banks again. I have dined out each day, and if the dinners, house and plate were not as fine as that of my own household, I am still too newly made a gentleman to shun the invitations of others.

  This morning my wife, Judith and I, with Jem as our footman, went to the Mop Fair, where on this day each year labourers and maids go to seek work. My wife desired a new milkmaid for our cows in the fields below the house, though I believe she wished even more for the bows and curtseys of the motley.

  We passed the housemaids carrying their mops, the shepherds with their crooks.

  A young man with a crop of black hair well greased with oil and little washing under his hat bowed to us. ‘I hope I see you well, Master Shakespeare.’

  I stared at his effrontery. That he should speak to me, who has the right to wear the livery of His Majesty, without even a cuckoo between us to sound an introduction! It was Thomas Quiney, who keeps a tavern, but not one of the kind I do attend — or at least not in Stratford where I am known.

  My wife and Judith in their innocence would have returned his bow. I laid my hands upon their arms to stop their curtseys, and we passed on without a word.

  ‘Father, who is that man?’ asked Judith. ‘Why shouldn’t we show him courtesy?’

  ‘A tavern-keeper. I know him not. It was a presumption for him to speak to us.’

  ‘Many do wish to claim your acquaintance, husband.’ My wife spoke with the pleasure of a woman who did the work of cook and housemaid when she was young and so enjoys her gentlewoman’s estate the more.

  Judith glanced back. ‘And yet his face is handsome.’

  ‘Hush. No more, girl!’ I muttered, hoping no one of consequence had heard.

  ‘But, Father, why is a tavern-keeper less respectable than a wool merchant? One sells drink, the other wool.’

  I clenched my teeth and kept my smile. This crowd would not see me rebuke my daughter in public. ‘Because that is how the world is made. Kings at the top, and tavern-keepers below farmers and merchants.’

  ‘Are they also below glove-makers?’

  I would have boxed her ears if we had been at home. I had once been my father’s glove-maker’s apprentice, and my daughter knew it, as did the whole of Stratford. It had been her grandfather’s deepest desire to raise his family to a gentleman’s estate, and years of work to make me one. And now this girl would tarnish the crown of all our labours.

  ‘Enough!’ I muttered.

  Judith cast one look back at the tavern-keeper, who still stared at us, but thankfully said no more.

  At last, we found a maid who did not displease my wife by being too old to work, nor whose maiden beauties outshone an unmarried daughter or might tempt a husband, and whose fingernails were clean even if her face was poxed. I pressed a penny into the girl’s hand as a symbol of her hire.

  Judith would have stayed to eat the fair’s roast ox, but my wife’s teeth pained her in the cold air, and I had no wish to eat and dance with the motley, nor have my daughter do so. We walked home, my wife to hot compresses and bed, and Judith and I to dine alone.

  I wished I had sent a note for her sister and her husband to join us, for Susanna has the wit her sister lacks, and the good doctor the best conversation to be had in Stratford. That is to say, it would not earn a halfpenny in London, where the wise and witty gather to share bread and tales and women, but Dr Hall is a good man, and sensible.

  I left the table at the second course, and had John bring my wine here, well warmed, and apples, cheese and wafers with it. Now I sit with sharpened quills and fresh ink — my wife must have seen I write and so supplied them — and a good fire, and memories so sharp that they might cut the ox heart that we dined upon.

  That day my father told me I would see a play! Despite the threat of our family’s disgrace, I could have swooped into the air and danced a quatrain with clouds.

  It was as if my unruly heart already guessed that plays would ride on Cupid’s arrow to my breast, though I had never seen one. Players had come to Stratford before, performing at the guildhall. My father had judged me too young to see them. Today’s performance would be at the Green Man Inn. Today, because the house of Shakespeare must be seen to hold its head high as Caesar’s horse, I would see it too.

  There’d be noble clothes and sword fights and perchance a dancing bear. Ned’s uncle’s cousin the carter had seen a play in London. He said an actor died in front of them, there on the tavern floor, all daubed in gore, yet stood again full of life at the play’s end to make his bow. Would Ned be at the play too? He hadn’t been at school the past week. My doubts fled like autumn swallows as I scrambled to find my least darned stockings. Life was apples and May butter. A play!

  My mother dressed in her green silk and embroidered sleeves, and Father in his brown velvet cloak with bear-fur trim. Father had sent old Tom who worked the garden for us to place stools in the front row outside the tavern. We joined the crowd, Mother returning the curtseys of each woman there. No one glanced at us and whispered. Father’s crime must still be quiet. Perhaps the alderman and others who had found him guilty would not yet speak of it, for if Father’s fine was truly paid by Friday he would be a man of influence once more in Stratford, and not one to offend.

  I looked across the crowd for Ned. He was not there. Perhaps his father had him hoeing ground for turnips, to replace the wheat that had failed. But Farmer Forrest would have first to find the money to buy the turnip seed . . .

  We arranged our cushions. Old Tom brought us a tray of ale and a dish of walnuts. I tried not to bounce upon my stool. When would the play begin?

  At last an actor in a moth-eaten silk cloak strode from the tavern door to a small chorus of cheers, holding a pottery box out for us to put in our pennies and threepences.

  ‘Today we play The Death of Caesar,’ the actor announced, rattling his coin box. He bowed, then strode back into the tavern.

  Two seconds later an evil, snarling fellow in a Roman toga snuck out the door, and stood in the round gap before us. ‘Hist!’ he whispered.

  Suddenly the crowd sat quiet. St
ratford’s breath was stolen by that single word. It was the first time I saw an actor’s magic. Even now it thrills me.

  ‘For there is murder coming!’ the player whispered, his whisper somehow louder than a barking dog. ‘All this cursed month we have been plotting! And now our evil bursts to flame! Today must Caesar die!’

  No one cracked a walnut. I thought, how can one man command so many, all with whispers and a toga?

  The actor peered this way and that, as if to check that no one saw, turning a crowd of townsfolk and yeomen into the pillars of ancient Rome. Mark Antony came on next, noble and fair, and then Livia, dressed in some lady’s discarded robes of silk. The fair Livia raised giggles, for she had not shaved that day. Her beard pricked through her rouge.

  ‘Marry, methinks they need a younger actor for such parts as these,’ my father muttered to my mother.

  ‘Women’s parts!’ some lout sniggered behind us. Father silenced him with a stare. Livia began to speak, in a high girlish croak that revealed a teenage actor’s breaking voice.

  We breathed in ancient Rome that day, sitting outside an English tavern, while the ducks swam on the pond and the tavern-keeper brought out tankards of ale: screamed at the brutal stabbing of Caesar, the traitors cowering, cheered at Mark Antony’s fierce defence. For two hours each man forgot the stench of blighted wheat, his rotting hayricks, that the plague lurked a few villages away. Women cared not about the terrors of childbirth, nor men the antics of their sons. For two hours of the clock we floated upon words, taking us further than any ship upon the sea.

  Words. But what words! I’d read fine words at school. But written words had not power to take farmers, glovers and small boys across time and space to ancient Rome.

  And then the play was done.

  It was, in truth, not much of a play. But I knew no better then.

  Father and Mother lingered to talk to neighbours, carefully keeping their faces cheerful. I slipped away, with naught but a ‘Do not get your hose dirty’ from my mother. I ran down the streets, avoiding the contents of chamber pots and the horse droppings because I was wearing my best shoes, out into one of the sad, bare blighted fields.