The Secret Life of William Shakespeare Read online

  ‘It’s journeyman work,’ Will said. ‘Henslowe has need, as we all do, of plays, and if not a whole play then a play-plot to be worked up, or an old play warmed over. With a little, I say only a little, recommendation from me, Ben is doing these things for Henslowe, here and there.’

  ‘A little, a very little effort from me, you know – a mere thumb-nibbling insult compared to what I could do – and, lo, the piece is transformed, and I think Master Henslowe will soon be loving me above every other,’ Jonson said.

  ‘Here’s Ben going through the manuscript,’ Will said, putting on the barrel chest, the chin. ‘“This too long. This to be moved to the end, ’twill balance better. Add six lines heroic measure to bring out the rival, he’s too faint. Tut, a laughable figure, out with it. Tut, polish, polish…”’

  ‘Aye, a fair representation,’ Jonson said, smiling and red, ‘and in truth the piece was worse than that. It was so artless and sprawling I thought you must have had a hand in it.’

  And Will laughed – which she could not understand. ‘So, if they’ll have you, will you go?’

  ‘Why should they not have me?’

  ‘Well, I heard what Pembroke’s Men thought of your acting, so—’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t,’ Nashe cried. ‘Pray tell.’

  ‘They made me try out a most lamentable poor part. There was naught to be done with it,’ Jonson scoffed.

  ‘They said blustering is not acting,’ said Will, temperately.

  ‘This company is of a different mettle entirely,’ Jonson said, ‘and better able to appreciate a man’s new-minted but solid ringing worth. And when they set out in June, they say, I may thoroughly count upon a place, all being well.’

  ‘A travelling company is a very fair fit place to begin,’ Will said, ‘as I well know. But it does mean beginning, Ben: choosing that life, and everything that goes with it, and not turning back. It must be all or nothing.’

  ‘Oh, I know that. She knows that. I’m ready.’

  He never referred to his wife by name, Anne thought; and bit through the wool with her teeth.

  * * *

  At the top of the house there was a garret where the maid did the laundry, hanging it to dry on a pulleyed string across the street. Very London, Anne thought: you put out your shifts and drawers for all to see, yet of course no one looked up to see them, because that would be countrified. Would they look up if someone were hanging there? Another of her wonderings. She wished she could stop them. This, she thought, when she went up to the garret, is my head. Full of flapping shapes and light, and the heat rising.

  * * *

  ‘Dance with me?’ Edmund said. He had found her alone, and without her face ready: her London face, plucky and responsive.

  ‘We haven’t done that for a long time,’ she said: meaning no.

  ‘Too long.’ He had hold of her hand. He hated seeing her unhappy – Edmund hated seeing anyone unhappy, indeed – but she knew that he particularly wanted her to stop being unhappy now, here, because he was so very happy. And her being unhappy probably spoiled, a little, his happiness. So he wanted her to dance him into reassurance.

  She did it. Well, it was not much to do; and it was part of the old Stratford life, besides. Ah, and there you heard a chime of revelation. That Stratford life was what you wanted. With Will, without Will? Dance, hear the mind-music, don’t hear the question.

  * * *

  ‘Edmund wants to do what you do,’ she told Will. He was undressing for bed, hardly able to stand for weariness; she had been lying sleepless behind the curtains for hours. Different clocks. Different skies.

  ‘I know. He’s said so – or tried not to say so. I wish he could.’

  ‘Do you? Why?’

  She sensed him, in the half-dark, jerking back from the shin-barking directness of that question.

  ‘I mean,’ he said, sitting on the edge of the bed – the very edge, ‘I wish it were more probable, since it’s what he wants. But I doubt whether he has it. The ability to be a player. Well, call it something else, for it’s a species of inability, in truth. Edmund’s too much himself. If he were to try acting, I’m afraid he would always be Edmund.’ A pause, in which something in Anne, a prentice yelling revolt in the street, cries out: Good for him, so he should be. ‘You can see the difference in Matthew.’

  Oh, yes. Him.

  * * *

  Richard Burbage brought him, though obviously Will had agreed to the fact of him earlier. She watched them from a first-floor window, standing in attitudes before the street-door: Burbage with his hand lightly on the boy’s shoulder, Will with arms folded, the two grown heads in discussion – and the boy between, a blob of fairness atop slenderness, a dandelion-boy. He was looking at a waiting laden donkey as if he could look at that sight for a long time, hands folded before him: as if he could find plenty there to occupy him, for now.

  If not for him … How wicked of her. She should have felt motherly, no doubt. But surely there was meant to be a limit to that, and that was why they had come here, to narrow family down, not spread it out.

  Naturally, it was Will’s work. Matthew Hollingbery was a boy-actor, to be trained up by a seasoned actor. It was not a formal apprenticeship, but it was very like it. Will was master and tutor. Also landlord and, perhaps, a kind of father.

  ‘It’s how it works in the theatre,’ Edmund said to her. Increasingly he made these explanations, or excuses: his brother’s advocate. ‘It’s a professional matter.’

  But Edmund believed what he wanted to believe, which gave, she thought cruelly, a slightly strained look to his muscular eagerness, like a man at the fair bending iron. Of course it couldn’t be just professional, unless you were inhuman, which Will wasn’t. There must be some warmth involved, some connection. All the more, in fact, as Matthew belonged to Will’s work – for that was where she suspected Will’s heart, elusive bird, settled most.

  And impossible not to have the suspicion, when in the evening Will and Matthew withdrew to the garret for an hour to go over lines, try out voice and gesture, that he relished this. Even when she heard a nagging or weary edge to his voice – ‘Come, pat on your cue, Matt, hearken else all’s lost, for God’s sake—’ Anne suspected he was enjoying himself more than with his own children, who were so very much themselves.

  She hated herself all the more because Matthew was so unassuming. A schoolmaster’s son, she learned, orphaned, then placed with a relative who had been vicious. A refined manner, but without affectation. He would sit in the window-seat and read, or gaze out. Blue eyes. An odd-looking peachy complexion – odd-looking to her, a mother, who saw all children as not quite coming up to hers in looks, and their hair strangely cut. His gaze at her was humble yet not submissive. If anyone, he put her in mind of Will when she first knew him: when he could blanch his identity from the room, turn into a sun-drop, a breeze-touched cobweb.

  Hamnet was eleven. Matthew was thirteen. They had nothing to say to each other. Hamnet watched his father. Came out with it.

  ‘What you said about boys going into a nobleman’s household … If I did that, what would you think, Father? Would you think more of me?’

  Will gave a start. ‘Great God, how could I think better of you than I do?’ he said. He hugged his son.

  Anne, divided, could have told him Hamnet didn’t much like embraces now, even from her. Blacker thought: London has certainly done this, it has shown that we really don’t mix well as a family, and it was silly and countrified to think we could. And perhaps none did: thinking of her father, her beautiful past, she realised she was a sport, a white blackbird. The common way was thus: father governed all, mother governed children; father and mother conducted themselves towards one another with proper esteem and respect. Love was there; but you all took your places at its table in due order.

  And as for the sacred domestic hearth, here in London, here in the domain of the theatre…? Well, perhaps again she was being unrealistic. Some players were married, certainly. St
ill, they were more with each other than with their wives. Sometimes, instead of an inn, the Chamberlain’s Men adjourned to this house after rehearsals, occasionally performances. They made a great noise, drank and ate hugely. Sometimes she heard them harsh in hilarity. Bawdy talk too. Will tried to restrain it. Still she could not help wondering how much he joined in when she was not by. A cup of perry nerved her to ask him.

  ‘Oh, it’s mere fantastication, a game of words, not real.’

  ‘That’s not what I asked you.’

  ‘I know, and I’m not going to answer. Women talk bawdy among themselves, that I know.’

  ‘How do you know it, if it’s only among themselves?’

  ‘From listening at doors.’

  They were so nearly playful with each other: so far from at ease, or happy.

  ‘Is it not a pity that men and women must be so separate? How, if women were to act on stage, might that not change things?’ she said: or the perry did. ‘I know, it would shame their modesty to make a public exhibition. But at least they would be real. Not these invented women – a man writes them, a boy presents them. Not a touch of woman has gone into their making.’

  ‘Unless the man who made them is part woman.’

  Startled, she said: ‘You mean the boys who play? But surely there’s nothing of that about them—’

  ‘No, no, I didn’t mean that … You don’t care for Matthew, I know.’

  She felt herself impugned as mother and woman. ‘He is a good young fellow, I wish him well. But I didn’t expect him – that’s all.’ There was a sharp whistle from the yard below. Anne opened the window and waved. ‘That’s Betty. She’s a cow-keeper. I buy milk of her. Fresh from the kine. And we have a rare talk. She’s a real woman, not someone pretending.’ She added that angrily, because he looked somehow surprised and disappointed – at what? Her making friends with a cow-keeper? Who else, then? she thought, as she went downstairs. Belly-smoothing Jacqueline Field, whose talk was all of narrow candlelit city doings? That other Frenchwoman who always seemed to be there, with a subdued stare and a cryptic greeting for Will? (And Will hardly spared her a glance. No, that wasn’t what she had to fear.)

  Betty: she was about Anne’s age, comfortingly slow-moving as her cow, her voice softly burred: ready to stand about the yard and agree that the sun was hot today, mortal hot, but then the season, aye, without ever wanting to whip the conversation to some dazzling finish. Each day she came in to London from St Giles, which Anne thought at first must be another of those city parishes packed like boxes within boxes.

  ‘Nay, it’s country there. Not like this.’ Betty jerked her thumb back – at London. Oh, thrilling dismissal. ‘We live by the old spital wall, with an old oak for shade and a herb garden and a well of sweet water. Drink water here and you’re bent in a bloody flux.’ Spotting Will on his way out, she went on: ‘That your man? They’re pretty things in their way, aren’t they? As long as you keep them in their place. My Dickon’s a fair sort. Poulterer. A haynish item, but no harm in him. Married when I was fifteen. It was his eyes that did it. Handsome eyes, I thought. Now I know they all have handsome eyes when they’re young. What’s your man?’

  ‘A player.’

  Betty grunted, hefting her pail. ‘Well, they’re all that.’

  * * *

  His new play was coming on. Anne was going to see it. For the first time since they had arrived, she was going to step into a theatre.

  Edmund had taken the children to see Will act in pieces written by other hands. Why had she waited? Loyalty, perhaps: reserving herself for a play of his own making.

  Or, perhaps, until she could put it off no longer.

  She had heard snatches of it. The boy Matthew was in it, and she had overheard him rehearsing; Edmund had read – overcoming grim reluctance – Will’s own copy, and went around murmuring lines. Sweep the dust behind the door.

  Anne looked too. Will left it on the chest in their bedchamber. A breeze fingered the pages, ahead of her reaching hand. Soft spring-laden scents should have come with that breeze: not here, though. She looked, read a little, but it was too difficult for her, ill met by moonlight proud Titania, to manage it for long. Will said they weren’t for reading anyway. How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears. She left it, and went to help Susannah with the dressing of her hair. It had thickened amazingly of late: felt heavy as rope in the hand. She wondered if Susannah had started her menses yet. An attempt last winter to raise the subject had elicited one of Susannah’s loftiest responses: ‘Dear Mother, please, let’s talk of pleasant things.’ Susannah was happy behind her fences. She thought of the bird in the kitchen at Henley Street, and how she had once left the cage door open by mistake. A forlorn piping had alerted her. The bird could not be happy until the door was shut.

  Betty would be here soon. Anne went downstairs to wait for her. She was growing quite addicted to milk from the cow. I am sent with broom before, To sweep the dust behind the door. And there was some, she saw. On impulse she wrote in it with her finger. She wrote: somewhere it is spring. She preferred that to pen and ink. You could just wipe it away.

  * * *

  And now here she was. Flag blaring and trumpet rippling on high, trample of feet, press of voices. Hawkers with neck-slung trays, beer from the back-borne keg. Prostitutes bare-necked and balancing their bosom-wares, looking at you as only they could: as if you’d intruded on them, but they’d let it be, this once. Mud underfoot as Anne and her family squeezed their way through the gate, money-taker knowing, bowing them in. Edmund thick-tongued, almost glazed with excitement: Hamnet nearly as bad.

  ‘Father made this. Didn’t he? Didn’t he make all of it?’

  ‘Well. Not this building.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. I don’t mean the building,’ Hamnet said, in his slightly laborious way, his grandfather’s way. None of the quicksilver that went into Will and Edmund. She hugged him with the sudden fierce love of a child’s flaws. ‘I mean,’ he said, gently pulling away, ‘what we’re going to see.’

  Well, he was right. It was years since she had been to the play, and never in London, in these strange crammed circles made for the sole purpose; and she half expected more show, more appurtenances of illusion. Instead she faced a bare stage lit by clear sky, a few properties, the heavy bob and whisk of rich costumes: and the words.

  And it was nothing horrible, as she believed the Romeo play was that everyone talked of. Edmund had read out some, and there was love and death and it was all like a dream of a black rose pressing velvety and smothering your breath and she feared it. No, this was beautiful and often gay, like dancing in words. It was in the wood and of the wood. It was about the madness of love and what madness leads men and women to. It made her remember a pair of gloves being slipped on to her hands; Bartholomew watching her across the threshing-floor as she danced; a wild bird eating from her hand; many things. Many things that belonged to her alone. Yet this play was no whisper but a participation. Everything belonged to everyone here. Will had them, somehow. As if he had the secret of all their lives and put his ear to their sleeping breathing lips. As the play went on the crowd warmed, cracked like logs on a well-laid fire. He was seducing them. She sensed the surrender, and certain stars shot madly from their spheres to hear the sea-maid’s music, and it gave her as much unease as pride. Somewhere there is spring. But here is midsummer, and such a season created as makes the real unnecessary.

  Then the laughter. The man with the ass’s head made the children roar – but Anne could not join in properly, and it was to Edmund that they turned their laughing faces, his arms that went companionably round them. A man with the head of an ass, and a bewitched queen loved him. But this was too real. Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. She looked with her mind and shuddered, for it did not seem right somehow that the inmost madness of life should be turned inside out to smiles in the sun. Sweep the dust behind the door.

  The lo
vers were lost in the wood. They would never get out of the wood, perhaps: find their bones at last under a heap of stones, perhaps. Everyone was subject to enchantment, even the plain and countrified. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was. She knew, though. There came the countrified characters doing a play. A bad play: but she wondered if there were any bad plays. And it was only at this point that she realised if Will was a player in the piece she had not noticed him.

  There was a happy resolution. So shall all the couple there ever true in loving be. Sweep the dust behind the door. The crowd sighed, trilled, bellowed, and applauded. Anne clapped, but soon needed her hands: to grip the splintery edge of her seat in fear.

  Because this was where Will had gone. This was where he had taken his self. And this, she saw now, was where she could not follow him. Oh, she could offer him truth, perhaps, beauty, love – but nothing, nothing compared with what he could make.

  * * *

  It was crowded and stinking in the tiring-house: no place for them to linger, especially with men half undressed.

  ‘Burbage is going to make a speech,’ Will said, with a grimace, kissing her. Unreal: as if a figure had reached out of a painting. ‘Then there’ll be a supper at the Black Bull. I’ll not stay long.’

  ‘You never do,’ cried Bottom the weaver – but, no, this was Will Kempe the comedian, big, golden-haired, like Bartholomew. My brother thou art translated. She felt sick. ‘You should learn to exult, man. Cultivate a reckless side.’

  ‘Then what would become of my other sides?’ Will said. ‘Matthew was fine, was he not?’ His eyes went proudly to the boy, who was taking off his wings as if shedding his school satchel. And Hamnet saw that, Anne could tell. But his own pride did not diminish, not a whit. His face still shone with what his father had wrought.

  Edmund was a little doleful, the heavy afterwards of intoxication. ‘Let’s go home,’ he said, and went to find the manservant, their guardian through dubious Shoreditch to decent Bishopsgate. Anne hurried them on, not because of that, but because she had had a sudden thought: she might miss Betty. It seemed desperately important.