The Diary of William Shakespeare Gentleman Read online

  I looked around, but there was no one — blighted wheat needs no tending, just the animals put in to eat what can be salvaged and then the land left fallow to clean the blight away.

  I shut my eyes.

  I had planned to recite Mark Antony’s speech, but I’d forgotten it. Instead, as if they had always been there, came other words. I heard my voice say,

  ‘Friends, Romans, everyone!

  Listen to me!

  I’ve come to bury Caesar

  Not to praise him.

  Brutus says Caesar was ambitious.

  Brutus is an honourable man.

  All of those who lifted savage knives to Caesar

  Are honourable men.

  Yet did not Caesar weep when soldiers died in battle?

  Did he not feel the hunger when wheat rotted on the stem?

  Did he not —’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  I opened my eyes. It was Ned. He wore a muddy shepherd’s smock, not the stockings he wore for school or church, but his hands were clean, even if his bare feet were not.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said, flushing. And then, ‘Stuff for school.’ It was the first time I had lied to him. But how could I explain that the play still whirled in my brain as if I had been given mead to drink?

  ‘Oh. School stuff. I’m not going back to school.’ Ned shrugged. ‘School’s stupid, anyway.’ He flung himself on the ground and began to chew a head of grass. He wore his old darned hose under his smock. His hose were muddy too. But I’d missed him so I sat next to him, and hoped I could brush the dirt off my stockings.

  I looked at him closely. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘There is. You’ve been crying!’

  ‘Have not.’

  ‘Have too!’

  He shrugged again, then said quickly, ‘Pa has sold me to the players as apprentice.’

  I stared at him. Never in my wildest dreams had I thought of luck like this. A father could pay to apprentice his son as a glove-maker, smith, wool merchant or cooper. But an apprentice player! How had Ned’s father found the money to give his son such a chance?

  ‘The actors paid Father four guineas for me,’ said Ned softly.

  ‘That can’t be right. You have to pay to be taken as apprentice.’

  ‘Not for players.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Ned shrugged yet again. I could see he knew, but wouldn’t tell me. He stood. ‘I have to go. Ma has killed a rooster for my farewell supper. I leave with the players tomorrow. Will . . . can you come and say goodbye to me, as we leave?’

  ‘Of course.’ I might get a beating for missing school, but it would be worth it, to wave the players off. And Ned.

  ‘You’ll go to London, as soon as the theatres open again!’ I said, trying to be glad for him, instead of jealous. Grief stabbed my boy’s heart, for I would miss him too. Not just because he was my only friend, but because he was himself, Ned.

  Dimly through time’s shifting veil I knew I’d make other friends as years consumed my life. But a new friend does not replace the lost. I tried to cheer us both. ‘You’ll see dancing bears and . . . and the Queen maybe and London Bridge. The whole world!’ While I was stuck here, studying grammar, with no one to climb the trees with.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ned flatly.

  ‘You’ll be in all the plays.’ He would make a good girl player, I thought, with his red curls and soft white skin, and he was small and slight besides. You could put him in a skirt and no one would be able to tell the difference.

  Ned’s face crumpled suddenly. I thought he was going to cry again. Instead he hugged me hard, so quickly I had no chance to hug him back. I watched him as he ran back to the farm.

  I wrote my first poem that night. I do not know if it was for loss of Ned, or inspiration from the play. But all at once the words in my head formed lines that whispered, ‘Write me on a page. Now!’ No beatings from the usher stopped me. I took up the quill and found an inkwell, and then a scrap of parchment.

  I began to write. The words looked like ants trotting across the paper, for no scrivener had taught me how to make the letters properly.

  O, friend, ’tis hard to part from you

  For friendship’s heart is strong and true.

  Our beasts will leap and our birds sing

  For you the London bells will ring.

  I stopped. The poem wanted something more, but I couldn’t think of what it might be. So I rolled it up, and sealed it with a blob of candle wax, as Father did when he sent an account.

  I went to bed, lapped by the mattress feathers, and dreamt of London town and reciting the play’s words in a tavern forecourt, with my grand friend, the actor Ned.

  The players left early the next day, allowing them to get to the next village in time for mid-morning dinner, and a performance that afternoon. A crowd of footloose apprentices and tavern wenches, as well as Ned’s family and I, waved them off. Their cart was loaded with chests, which I supposed held costumes. The players sat upon the chests, except he who had played Chorus and held the reins. They were still in costume: Julius Caesar with bloodied toga and laurel wreath; Mark Antony, noble and sad. But now it was Ned who wore Livia’s skirts. As I watched, Caesar nudged him and ordered, ‘Smile.’

  Ned’s lips curved obediently, though tears rolled down his cheeks. Behind me I heard his mother sob. But mothers always cry when their sons go to make their fortunes.

  I waved and yelled, ‘Hurrah for Ned!’

  But Ned looked straight ahead and not at me, as if already seeing what lay before him. Even when I ran to the cart and held up the poem I had written for him, he took it but did not meet my eyes, nor did he look back as the cart rumbled down the road.

  And all I could think was, if only they had chosen me.

  Today’s dinner’s first course was roast kid with sauce; minced mutton shapes; a pie of sparrows; beef collops with marrow bone; a tart of apples and the sparrow brains; medlar jelly; quinces preserved in cider, which again I feel did not agree with me.

  My waters clear, but bowels unsteady. I fear the upset will give me bad dreams, and I will dream of Ned.

  Tuesday, 13th October 1615

  Today the tooth surgeon did come and pull my wife’s bad tooth. He says there are two more to pull, but my foolish wife will have none of it, as they are at the front.

  ‘’Twill make me a toothless crone,’ she said.

  I did a husband’s duty, lifted her hand, kissed it. ‘Thou may be toothless, but a crone, never.’

  Nor did I lie. Was it a lie when I cried out that my brother had murdered me when I played the ghost of King Hamlet? Did I lie when as Prince Harry I led the army to victory at Agincourt? ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, or close the walls up with our English dead!’ Though in truth, my Prologue was better than my Prince Harry. My Prologue left the audience agape, and could cause a man making for the privy to halt his steps. The audience cheered me for my Prince Harry, but it is silence the actor most desires, when you have carried the watchers to a land so far beyond their lice bites or their hunger that it takes them heartbeats to return.

  The squire’s son has come to the smithy again. The smith will be wondering at this horse that loses so many shoes. But I knew Bess was not there, for my wife had told me that the girl was going on the carter’s dray to lay in a store of stockfish for the winter, and my wife had given her sixpence to buy our store too. Poor Bertram. No kisses, and an hour’s discourse with the smith instead, though at least they could talk horses.

  I had no conversation at dinner today but with Judith, who reproached me for not having found her a husband, as if husbands are to be discovered under gooseberry bushes.

  My fortune came too late to wed Judith young, and, as she grows in years, her nose grows too. I would not say she is bad-featured, but with all a father’s partiality I cannot say there is much in her to love, she being spoilt as her mother’s youngest. Nor is her estate an easy o
ne, for while she is a gentleman’s daughter, I am newly so, which prevents her marrying high, unless she catches some lordling’s eye. And marrying low would sully our reputation.

  ‘Take me to London and to court then, Father,’ she pouted.

  I sighed and cracked a walnut between my fingers, my hands still strong. How could I tell the girl that her country manners would cause her to be mocked at court? She has been taught dancing by a master, but who can teach her the quick wit of the court? Not I, for I have tried. Once I thought she might suit the younger daughter’s lot, to care for her parents in their decline, but I would as put our wellbeing in the hands of No Eye Sue the beggar than Judith.

  At last, tired of her complaining, I hied upstairs and to my pen. And with my pen came memories.

  I did not forget Ned. Players came often to Stratford in those years, when creeping plague thrust its foul cloak over London’s lords and beggars, and actors too, if they did not flee. Each time I hoped Ned might be one of the company. But though I asked, none had ever heard of Ned Forrest.

  It was four years before I found out why Ned wept, and why he could not tell me what his tears were for. The company who came to us that year was Sir Edmund’s Wrothson’s Players (each company must have its sponsor or be vagabonds, bound for gaol, not the stage). This company played at the guildhall, where gentlefolk sat upon good seats and the motley stood behind.

  Father knew by then that I had a liking for such things, and from his goodness took me afterwards to the room where the actors changed their clothes. He introduced me to the chief actor and company manager, who offered me a tankard of small ale while Father went to speak to another of the company. Father had paid the fine for usury and the scandal had not spread. Yet once again he seemed worried. I was glad to see him smiling and among important men, or men I thought important then.

  I drank, though the ale was sourer than we had at home, and said, ‘I enjoyed your Antony and Cleopatra, sir.’

  The player bowed. ‘I thank you, young master.’ He winked. ‘I vow there are a few tonight who would be Antony to our Cleopatra.’

  ‘I do not understand, sir.’ I glanced over at Cleopatra, still in his dress, his black curls brushed like a girl’s. Two men chatted to him, one a grain merchant, the other a farmer of some estate. As I watched, the merchant chucked the boy under the chin, winked, then came up to the manager.

  ‘A shilling,’ he said.

  ‘Five, and he is yours for the whole night,’ the manager told him.

  The merchant spat on his hand and they shook to seal the bargain. The merchant took the shillings from his purse, handed them to the manager, then made his way back to Cleopatra, who still wore the actor’s smile that had wooed young Antony. I watched as they went out together.

  I knew that women sold their bodies to men. I had even found out what fornication meant. But I had not discovered this. I realised now that Ned had known. When the players bought him, they must have explained his other duties and how to do them well. His father must have known too, for why else would he get a price so high for one young son? Enough for turnip seed, enough for wheat seed the next season, enough to keep his family and his fields.

  ‘Sir, have you come across Lord D’Naughten’s Players?’ I asked the manager. ‘They were here four years ago.’

  He frowned. ‘The name I know. They travelled to Denmark when London’s taverns were last closed, I think, or was it the Low Countries? I have not heard of them since.’

  ‘And one Ned Forrest? He was my friend. He went with them.’

  A world of understanding filled his face. ‘Four years ago? He would be young then. I’m sorry, lad, I know him not.’ He paused, then added, ‘Our Cleopatra shares in all our takings. No one is forced to go where there is true dislike.’

  But not for love, I thought. And never free.

  Poor Ned . . . I must finish his tale here, or I will dream of him again. And I have dreams enough to haunt me.

  It was more than twenty years before I had news of him. We had built the Globe by then. Beggars who had been actors once sat outside, their faces like their lives shrunk to rotten apples, for what is an actor once teeth and face are gone, if they have not saved coin for their old age? No man can act if he loses teeth and cannot play a hero as well as an old crone, nor his mumbles be heard above the crack of walnut shells. For charity’s sake we who still sunned ourselves in warm success did not hound them off our cobbles.

  One night I saw a new beggar, old and with no teeth. Dimly I saw in the crumbled face that first Caesar of my childhood. I dropped threepence into his bowl.

  As he muttered, ‘Bless you, sir,’ I said, ‘I saw you play Caesar at Stratford when I was just a boy. A fine performance.’

  He straightened a little, even in his rags. ‘Thank you, Master Shakespeare.’

  All men in London knew me in those days. I warrant many know me yet.

  ‘You took a young lad as apprentice. Ned Forrest was his name.’

  ‘Ah, Ned,’ he mumbled. His breath could have stopped a charging bull. ‘He wasn’t with us long.’

  ‘He found another job?’

  ‘Ay, you could say that.’ The beggared Caesar giggled, and I knew my threepence would go on gin. ‘A job at the bottom of the river. Being a corpse, that was Ned’s job, eh.’

  I asked quietly, ‘How did he die?’

  ‘Why, he drowned himself. The poor puppy started damp with tears, and died a wet one. Two months, maybe three he drowned, after we took him. Some takes to the life and some doesn’t, and he was one of those.’

  ‘A sad, cold end,’ I whispered.

  The beggar squinted at me. ‘If you give me another penny, sir, I can see your play tomorrow. They say Apollo guides your tongue, that every line you write strikes like a spear.’

  I did not want his flattery. I put another penny in his dish, and went to dine with Ben Jonson and laughed and drank. But the next day I lit a candle for young Ned, and have done every Sunday since.

  And never, in any company I have been part of, has a boy been asked to whore.

  Eight invitations to dine, but I preferred not to venture out into the mud.

  Dinner this midday: a quarter of roast boar, delivered as a gift from the squire, who, if he has not a son with enough sense for conversation, does have the gift of hunting; a dish of mutton, stewed; eels with worts and gravy; an elderberry tart. Second course: a chicken pie; pigeons, roasted, our dovecot giving us good harvest all year now; a mess of parsnips and leeks, the first from our garden this season; pears baked in cider; May butter; a raspberry tart; a cheese; medlars, soft fruit my wife likes much; and good October beer, of which we now have enough barrels in our brewhouse to last well into summer.

  Bowels: steady. Waters clear and strong.

  Wednesday, 14th October 1615

  My wife has just come in rain-wet and chilly-fingered from our dairy after checking that the cheeses be turned. The maids are pickling pears and making apple jelly and quince paste, and Judith is visiting her sister, I suspect to escape straining jelly and cutting the quince cores. The house smells sweet, but sticky. And I to this room, with a good fire and spiced ale to ward off autumn’s breath, to live awhile in memory.

  Ned’s father sold his son at ten years old. I was eighteen before my father sold me, but that evening at the guildhall play was the last I spent as a schoolboy.

  The four winters since Ned had left had been hard too. Another year of blight, then a winter so cold and long the snow did not melt till June. The wheat ripened on short stems, enough to fill our bellies, but not long enough to make straw for thatchers. Roofs leaked like kitchen sieves, and tempers grew short as beds grew damp, and such a crop of mould as if to mock the fields that harvested so little.

  Plague’s bony fingers shut the London theatres twice more. Corpses lay rotting, no one daring to bring them out. Dogs’ bodies were piled in every street, as carriers of the plague. Rats grew fat on dead men’s flesh, free from teeth of Terrier
s. Once it visited our town too, though with quarantine crosses set upon the two houses that harboured it and their doors hammered closed, none died but the families shut up in them. The houses were later burnt to make sure no evil humours lasted. There are trees grown now where once there were black embers, but as I pass them I still wonder who died of starvation in those homes rather than of plague, for none would even take a basket of bread to plague-crossed doors.

  Our household seemed prosperous. The ship from Venice did come back with silks and glassware, and a goodly price received. Father showed me the accounts, for a businessman’s learning does not come only at school with its grammar and Greek and Latin. All was invested in another ship, off to the Indies this time, to bring back spices worth ten times what the Venetian ship had brought. For four more years, Father dreamt of buying a family crest, of setting up his carriage, of buying a new house with many chimneys and glass at its windows. And Mother dreamt, I suppose, of what most women do: happiness for her children, full bellies and bright eyes.

  For four years between the boy of eight and youth of twelve, I dreamt I would go to university after I left the grammar school at fourteen. And after that? Perchance a university scholar if I won a fellowship, or a parson. I might find a place at court.

  But dreams must end. When I was twelve I woke, as sudden as the rooster grabbed sleeping on his perch, to feel the axe upon his neck to make him dinner.

  My execution fell when Father sat me by the fire in the hall while the women were in the kitchen-house, the children helping them. Father picked up a glove, made but not embroidered, and sorted through embroidery threads. I thought he was going to show me a new decoration. Little did I know he would murder all my dreams, and let me embroider what new life I could.

  ‘I should be at school,’ I said.

  The master taught us older boys. He could be angry if we were late. But he knew me, knew my love of learning. He had even arranged for a scrivener to teach me how to form my letters easily. If I said my father had kept me, the master would believe me.