“One day he asked about my husband and how he died. Oh, your father was a great one for talking about death. A favourite subject, and no mistaking that. So I told him some things about Wilkes, but not others, dwelt at length on his brutish nature, and said he died of a fever, so ashamed was I of his brawling end. Another day I could not help myself and mentioned Henry Chapman and how kind and gentle a man he was, though he had no words to speak. This affected your father greatly and he stopped there on the street.
“‘Tell me about him,’ he said. ‘No words at all, this fellow, and yet right enough in his mind?’ He seemed astonished.
“‘Yes,’ I said.
“‘But he could hear? He could hear words?’
“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It was strange. A defect at birth, perhaps.’
“He couldn’t get over such an affliction. ‘Not to be able to use words,’ he kept saying. ‘To hear them and not be able to shape a response with words. How horrible!’
“Another time we were in Finsbury Fields near the archery butts, and some gallants and their lady friends had gathered nearby. They looked to have been carousing all night, and they were still drinking wine and singing bawdy songs. One young man was standing behind a girl showing her how to hold a bow and draw the string to guide the arrow to the target. Both could barely stand with their drunkenness, and your father said something about fools and wine being poor bedfellows, and we took care to walk to one side of them, advancing perhaps fifty paces. Then, didn’t an arrow pass not ten feet in front of us, followed by a great roar of laughter? When we looked, we saw that the drunkards had fallen forward and were on the grass laughing. The arrow had gone astray with their falling, and they found it amusement itself. And not a word of apology from any of them.
“We walked on, but your father was brooding on the event. He was very good at brooding, your father, and it could
get on your nerves, all those dark thoughts of his. When finally we sat upon the grass near the windmills, he said, ‘Just think on it, Elizabeth. Had our pace been swifter by a step or two, or had we set out a few moments earlier, that arrow might have struck one of us. And all because those rich young fools were playing drunken games.’ That set him off. ‘It’s all a matter of chance, is it not?’ he said. ‘Imagine you pass down a street where a madman awaits, his head filled with voices. Or there is a horse alarmed suddenly by the sting of a bee and it rears above you as you pass, those hoofs coming down upon your eyes. Or an arrow carelessly released flies through the air and into your throat. A welling of blood in your mouth and in an instant all is gone, the morning’s bright air, the grass, the blue sky above these milling blades. All gone forever. Are we then not simply at the mercy of fortune’s wheel?’
“I told him I could not see life that way: walking about as if forever on the brink of untimely events. Besides, I said, there were charms enough to ward off misadventure—old sayings and rituals that kept you from peril by reminding the spirit world of your innocence. ‘Perhaps God in his wisdom is behind it all.’
“‘But,’ he said, ‘what of those innocent souls who are still waylaid by chance?’
“‘Well,’ I said, ‘there must be a reason behind all things—and there’s an end to it, as I don’t care to dwell on talk like this on such a fine day.’
“He could tell I was angry and said nothing more about it on that autumn morning. But it was like your father to hold such forebodings. The more I got to know him the more I saw …”
She paused as though trying to fasten her memory of him firmly in her mind so that she might encompass him by a single feature of his character. In her illness, Mam seemed determined to tell me of my father’s essence as she saw it, and this was not like her, for usually she preferred to skim across the surface of things like a water fly; anything too deep was troublesome to her nature. But perhaps, nearing her end, she wanted to discover for herself a stronger impression of the man who had fathered her child.
“Aerlene, your father was a cautious young man, watchful not only of misplaced arrows or lanes where madmen lurked with knives and voices in their heads; he apprehended danger everywhere. I have seen him push away a plate of oysters that another might eat heartily, and he was careful in boisterous company. Now and then we dined with fellow players on a Saturday night and your father was merry enough; he could trade a jest with anyone, but always I sensed his discomfort when others got drunk and quarrelsome. He used to say that our wits weaken in drunkenness and a misplaced word can lead to blows and blows to sword-play or cudgels and thence to severed hands or broken heads. Do not misunderstand me. Your father was no coward, but
he was careful at all times, measuring the consequences of an action.”
“Prudence is a virtue, is it not?” I said.
“It is.”
“But my father was good company, Mam?”
“Excellent company, as I have already told you,” she said. “Pay attention, Aerlene, please.”
Mam’s pain often put her out of patience with me and my questions, and I felt bad for upsetting her, but I couldn’t seem to help myself, so eager was I to learn more about my father.
“I have already told you how curious he was about everything,” Mam said. “How filled with strange facts and stories. Your father read a great deal, and he was delighted when he discovered that I too could read. He hadn’t expected it of me.”
“And how did he discover that?” I asked.
“You are old enough now to know that we must have lain together to have you, so it was on one occasion at his room in Holywell Lane, which he shared with two others. And this was not long after that Sunday morning in Finsbury Fields. Indeed, a part of me thinks it might have been that very day. The other fellows were at the playhouse working on the properties for the next day’s performance.
“The room he shared was poor and barely furnished. Only a pair of truckle beds and an old dresser and chair. A
chest and a small shelf of books. I had picked up a book from this little shelf—there were only five or six—and I said, ‘Who is Ovid and what is the meaning of the title?’
“And your father said, ‘Why, you can read, Elizabeth!’
“‘Of course I can,’ I said, ‘and write my name too, though I can’t pretend knowledge of any subject, as I haven’t read much. Parts of the Bible,’ I said. ‘My brother and his wife are Puritans, and the few books in the house make dry reading.’
“‘Still, you can read,’ he said, putting his arms around me and hugging me from behind. I remember his breath on my neck. ‘A beginning, at any rate. I’ll read some of Ovid to you. He was a Roman who lived about the time of Christ, but he got into trouble with the authorities in Rome and was banished.’
“Ovid was your father’s favourite writer and he told me the title of the book, but I have forgotten, though I do recall the stories. All had to do with changing forms: they were about a spirit world in ancient Greece or Rome where humans lived with gods and sometimes mated with them or were changed by them into plants or trees or other creatures. I liked them, because this Ovid was very good at describing nature. But to your father, this book was like a Bible. He could not get enough of these wondrous tales and told me he had been reading them since he was a schoolboy, when he studied them in the Latin tongue. However,” she added with a little smile, “I must tell you, Aerlene, that
your father was full of earthly passion and I too had sorely missed the touch of a man, and so the reading of Ovid was soon put aside.”
“Yes, yes, Mam,” I said, for like many girls on the edge of such feelings, I was nervous and impatient about matters anatomical. I had seen a stallion mount a mare in the fields of the Easton estate, and stray dogs in the village were always about it; I had heard too the coarse words of schoolboys, so I didn’t want to picture my parents doing such things in any detail whatsoever.
That autumn, Mam and my father found what time they could to be together, sometimes lying in Finsbury Fields; cold and damp as it was, Mam said, it scarcely mattered, so compelling was their passion. But they also talked about many things during those weeks. Not only of their childhoods, but also of their lives in London. Will Shakespeare, Mam said, was interested in everything about millinery; already he knew a great deal about hides and skins and the various apparelling trades from helping in his father’s shop.
Such was his mind that he often drew her into topics she had never thought about. Once, passing Bethlem Hospital, they heard a shriek, a prolonged wail of distress from some poor mad soul, and my father wondered aloud what it must be like to be so afflicted: to lose your wits and inhabit another world. He also talked about his trade and the men
he worked with, delighted when Mam told him that she had been to a playhouse across the river with her friend Mary, who had dressed as a man. He loved the story.
“It’s like the stage,” he said, “where the woman is played by a man, while in the audience, a man is played by a woman and all is topsy-turvy.” He wondered then if Mary Pinder dressed as a man at her work.
Mam affected surprise at this remark. “Why would she do that?”
“The reason?” he said. “Why, there are plenty about who enjoy such games. Undressing a man and finding a woman. There are many playful themes in the arts of love, Elizabeth.”
“And all of them in London, I expect,” said Mam, “as I never heard of such things in Worsley.”
“Nor I in Stratford,” he laughed.
He asked her then what play she had seen at the Rose and she told him.
“Ah yes,
Tamburlaine.
Marlowe’s made a name for himself with it. And he has written a second part that is now playing.”
Mam told him she thought
Tamburlaine
was good but long-winded. “And this Tamburlaine,” she said, “is so puffed up with himself. And a tyrant too. Putting that King in a cage and driving him mad. I couldn’t bear to look at the man braining himself.”
“But your father appeared not to be listening and said nothing for the longest time. I thought he had forgotten about it or was in his own world, as he often seemed far away from me.
“Then he said, ‘Yes,
Tamburlaine
is good in its own way. It is a spectacle with some fine verses. Marlowe has a talent, there is no doubt of that.’”
They had stopped at the door to the shop and he kissed Mam and said, “I too enjoy writing verses, Elizabeth, and one day I will write something better than
Tamburlaine.
On my life I will,” he said, laughing. “There you see, Will proclaims his will.” He told her he could already find scenes in plays they were rehearsing that he could do much better. “I am hoping that in time I will join others in fixing them and one day I will write my own
Tamburlaine
and others like it and beyond. That is my hope. I am mostly an indifferent player, Elizabeth, and I fear I never shall be anything more. My heart lies in writing. I have felt so for some time. And now, I truly believe it.”
“He told me this outside the shop,” Mam said, “and I took him at his word, Aerlene, because your father was not a man to make idle boasts. I discovered that about him in our weeks together. I could tell he was envious of Marlowe’s success. They were the same age, and there was Marlowe already with a great following. I could see that it bothered your father.”
Mam told me that one night they were in a tavern in Bishopsgate Street. “The Four Swans, it may have been,” she said, “for that was a favourite of the playhouse crowd. In one of the backrooms was much shouting and laughter, and Will said, ‘Greene is with us tonight. You can hear him in there braying like a donkey.’
“I still knew little of poets and players and asked about the man with the loud laugh.
“‘Robert Greene,’ he said. ‘A poet. He had something of his performed earlier this year called
Alphonsus, King of Aragon.
Another imitation of
Tamburlaine
and mostly laughed off the stage, I heard. But Greene is thought well of by some. Like Marlowe, he attended the university at Cambridge and so thinks well of himself. Our paths have crossed a few times, and one day not long ago in St. Paul’s churchyard, I was looking at a new edition of Ovid in Latin. It made me think about my schooldays. I could not afford it, but it was a handsome book with very pretty woodcuts. Greene happened by in the company of friends and was amused to see me there with Ovid in my hands and made some slighting jest about an apprentice player enjoying such rich fare. “Bad for my digestion if I weren’t used to it,” he said. Or something like that. He clapped me on the back and all had a good laugh, and I suppose I smiled too, for I didn’t want them to think I was that affected by his damnable forwardness. He can be difficult. Contentious as a
tavern lawyer who lives for disputation. It’s said he’d rather score points in an argument than win at cards. He delights in parading his wit. He is a man upon whom courtesies are apparently wasted, and overfond of wine, though he’s only pennies from the street. But enough of him. I don’t suppose you have heard about what happened this week at the Rose during a performance of the second part of
Tamburlaine.
Everyone is talking about it.’
“I said I had overheard something in the shop from customers about a mishap, but I didn’t catch it all.
“‘A fearful mishap,’ Will said. ‘A cannon shot in a battle scene went astray and killed a woman and a child. The owner, Henslowe, I’m told now fears the authorities will close the place, though Southwark is beyond their province. The woman’s husband is bringing a suit against him.’ I asked if he had seen the second part and he nodded. ‘Yes, I saw it Monday last. The day before the accident. It’s not half as good as the first part. I’ll wager Marlowe wrote it in a week and never blotted a line. Too many devices, too little poetry. But no matter. The spectacle packs them in and they cry for more.’
“Just then the roisterers from the backroom emerged led by a red-haired man whose face was inflamed by drink. His doublet was soiled and though he swaggered, he was unsteady on his feet, gripping the shoulders of those he passed among the tables. The others were laughing at
something Greene said. But the red-haired man had seen us and, coming over, swayed above our table grinning. ‘Well now,’ he said, ‘it’s young Will from Warwickshire. And with a pretty one too. Is she also from the country, Will?’