My studio had good light. Of course I painted the walls
black. You would have admired my Roman pieces, heads,
busts. You, my friend, were living in Vaprio then.”
We moved his bed into the sun, and pulled open the
drapes. He enjoyed lying there. “Spring is beautiful,” he
said.
Cloux
April 5, 1519
Da Vinci talks to me with difficulty. However, I go on:
“Perhaps those years in Milan were the busiest years of
my life. Irrigation projects, The Last Supper mural,
easel paintings, the horse...yes, the horse... cartoons.
I tried to interest the authorities in an ideal city. I
made models for them. Planned double-decked streets.
Vehicles would use the lower level, pedestrians the
upper. There would be proper sewage. I wanted to show men
that the plague might be avoided through sanitation.”
He has eaten a little fruit, and sipped some wine.
“In Milan, I went on with my anatomical studies, this
time working in a clean hospital, with proper light. I
had adequate leisure. I dissected male and female
...eight or ten cadavers...over the years. Made my
drawings in various media.
“Illness laid me low...
“I never trusted physicians. They know nothing of
anatomy and less about illnesses. I suffered alone—with
my servants. They fed me, administered my
concoctions...my kidneys. Nature cured me. After about
six or seven months I was able to get about, to walk,
stride along. There was kindness then...but kindness is
your specialty...your kindness has never failed me.”
Cloux
April 6, 1519
“Remember this—I was forced to work for Cesare Borgia.
Remember, Vitelli and I tried to refuse him. Refusal was
impossible. We were like hostages in Borgia’s camps. Of
course we wanted to escape...planned...we were afraid.
Pay was high. So...we continued ours jobs as
cartographers. Close friends, fellow artists, we looked
to each other for support.
“As I sketched Borgia I realized his animosity. Vitelli
and I were aware that his soldiers disliked us. They made
it pretty obvious most of the time. I talked to Niccolò
Machiavelli about this antagonism. He scoffed. Laughed at
me.
“Yet Borgia, always demanding, arrogant, worried us. He
went out of his way to annoy Vitelli. I tried to play
down his swaggering. I tried to play down our
apprehensions. Then...then, he had Vitelli strangled.
Strangled in Borgia’s tent. Enraged, afraid, I left that
night. Niccolò provided my horse. He rode with me. We
escaped through the rain. Our horses fast. Solitary
roads...hoof beats... I remember. Vitelli murdered. In
the tent.
“We said little as we rode.
“At an inn we dismounted, drank, warmed ourselves.
Niccolò could not justify his Prince.
“Ai, that murderous rain! His name, his face, that
Borgia face, assassination rain!”
It is late as I finish writing down his words. He is in
pain. Last night he slept very little.
April 7, 1519
“No, not purgatory and not hell...
“I esteem the horse and the dog because they are free
of perversions...no misa, no confessional...
“Animals exact little...make no covenants.
“I can’t forget the Papal wars, the crusades, the
Savonarola fanaticisms.
“When did robe and aspergillum exorcise evil?
“I’m still searching...but, in this world of ambiguity,
I think there is no answer.”
Today...only these words, as I sat by his bed. Visitors
annoyed him. Several times he asked for his mother.
Cloux
April 9, 1519
It is afternoon. The sun is low. Da Vinci speaks:
“When the old French King saw my Last Supper he was
determined to remove the entire wall of the refectory,
and have it transported to Paris. He discussed it with
engineers and architects who said it was impossible.
“What a study...the King is scarlet, pompous, in a very
bad humor, his syphilitic face grey. Flailing his arms,
as he stood before my mural, he roared at the men around
him, kicked a dog that had wandered in.
“ ‘Your fresco can’t remain in this wretched
refectory!’ Everyone was amused.
“Later, when I painted his portrait, he was affable. I
painted him in profile, a good study, in good light. He
insisted on having a book on his lap. Ovid. I remember he
said:
“ ‘In Amboise, I have a collection of fine
books...Ovids.’
“He was willing to pay any price for my Madonna of the
Yarn Winder. So, he paid...and carried it off to Paris.”
Stroking his beard, da Vinci watched rain streak his
windows. Lifting one arm, he said: “No more today,
Francesco, no more talk.”
Cloux
April 10, 1519
“Come, let’s get on with it...I have something to say:
“My deluge drawings express weight, gravity, power,
fury, terror. The overturned, whirling chunks of masonry,
the enormous waves, defy. This is the end of man. I
believe such a cataclysm is going to overcome the earth.
“The drawings were inspired by my visits to the sea, by
my trips to the mountains where I saw avalanches.
Sound...the crash of falling boulders, the crash of a
raging ocean...they warn. Finality—in one form or
another—surrounds. We can’t escape.
“Rage, rage...much of life is rage...desperate rage.
“Here, far inland, I can hear the tumultuous sea!”
Sometimes I can barely make out his words. I served his
supper. He ate very little. He remarked about the pigeons
cooing on the roof.
Cloux
April 12, 1519
Royalty have visited us. Alone with me, da Vinci said:
“Yesterday, I dreamed that the sun was coming through
my window at Vinci...there were bunches of grapes on our
table...bare table, in the sun. Caterina was sitting
opposite me, her hands in the sun. I seemed to be about
thirty years old. She seemed to be about the same age.
Our dog lay on the floor, waiting for me to take him out.
“I felt imprisoned by the sunlight, happily
imprisoned... I was imprisoned by the beauty in
Caterina’s face. My eyes followed the grain of the table,
mixed with the bunches of grapes, went out into the
street, returned to her face, her smile.
“...You have asked me about happiness. Does anyone know
what happiness is? It is so often illusory. For you,
Francesco, it’s a woman...or a swim in the lake. For me
it was always work. If a great discipline haunts a man
throughout his life...well, he’s lucky. You have seen me
happy. You didn’t throw in your lot with a bitter man.
“We see King Francis...we watch him...he is eaten up
with regrets...he is scheming,
plotting...worrying...battlefields gnaw his guts...if we
want sanity there are Vaprios, little rivers, little
hills.”
He asked me for another cover.
Cloux
This was our last conversation—on April 23rd.
Melzi - I heard that you created a mirror machine while
you were in Rome.
Da Vinci - I tried to amplify the stars—study them.
Melzi - Please explain.
Da Vinci - A series of mirrors and lens.
Melzi - To catch the light?
Da Vinci - I could position the mirrors and the lens.
You have to visualize them, in a shallow cradle, some
pieces one and two inches square, some pieces two and
three inches square, most of them concave, all specially
ground, to fit together like an eye, to focus like the
eye. They could be raised or lowered, tilted, under a
lens which I could also focus.
Melzi - They brought the sky closer?
Da Vinci - All of the mirrors and lens were destroyed
by the man who had cut and polished them. He smashed
them. Malice...fear...envy...
Melzi - A bitter experience, Maestro!
Da Vinci - That’s how it was...in Rome. The Pope
learned of these experiments and ousted me from the
Vatican.
He fell asleep.
Cloux
May 20, 1519
A
s requested in Maestro Leonardo da Vinci’s will, sixty
men, each carrying a lighted taper, accompanied his
coffin to St. Hubert’s chapel, on the evening of May the
4th. Royalty, château-pages, soldiers, visitors, servants
made up the procession from the manor house to the
Amboise chapel. It was a cloudy, threatening evening. The
chapel bell tolled.
A bearded priest, in black vestments, performed the
requiem. Royalty crammed the chapel. The royal green
flag, sewn with hundreds of white salamanders, blanketed
the casket. Wreathes of roses and carnations leaned
against wall cabinets where there were lighted candles.
Men chanted a Gregorian chant.
The Maestro was buried close to the chapel, under
chestnut and cypress, buried by torch and taper light.
The chapel doors were wide open as someone played the
organ. Six men lowered the coffin.
Leonardo’s death was the saddest moment of my life.
When King Francis returned to Amboise, later in May, I
walked with him to the burial place and he laid flowers
on “Mon Père’s” grave. Fog filtered the grove and dripped
on us. A hard day for the monarch.
King Francis has retained all of da Vinci’s paintings.
I was willed his drawings, sketches, journal,
treatises, music, and correspondence.
Soldiers accompanied me on my return to Vaprio.
Villa Vaprio
July 13, 1519
My father and mother welcomed me home.
Father gave me a northlight room, on the third floor. I
will place my easel near the windows that face the Adda,
face the little bridge where the Maestro used to fish for
temolo.
I have hung my copy of his Mona Lisa on the entry wall
and have laid his red velvet cloak over the back of a
chair.
I am arranging some of his drawings on a center table.
There is ample space for his Anghiari cartoon on the
inside wall. I have ordered broad shelves for his books
and his small bronzes, his drawings and treatises, his
brushes and pigments. I will purchase a leather box for
his correspondence.
I will do what I can to bring order to his writings.
Under this stone are the
remains collected during
excavations outside the
royal chapel of Amboise.
It is surmised these are
the bones of
Leonard da Vincy
1452 – 1519
Author’s note:
This epitaph was placed on da Vinci’s grave in later
years.
SHAKESPEARE’S JOURNAL
To my Elizabeth,
for her loyalty, love and genius
Henley Street
January 28, 1615
T
o invent can become an aberration, a mystery, at times a
querulous searching to remedy an irremediable loss. Shall
we say there is a larger purpose? Must there always be a
purpose and justification? I can not believe that. Then,
there can be stumbling, burial, burial violets around a
grave, an absence. These thoughts must be weighed, re-
assessed, subtracted from physical ailment and sickness
of mind. Surely the stage was not intended for a single
player.
Stratford
February 2nd, Candlemas – 1615
On Christmas last I sang carols with Ellen and her
friends, in her London apartment, candlelight on her
frosted windows where trees, like menhirs, listened. Some
of her friends were drunk and raucous parasites; some
were manikins; some were overly friendly; some, Countess
Bardolph, Lord Fenton, Lady Page, were perfumed bores;
the Irishmen were troublemakers...
The Captain of the Guard requested a dance, and
musicians appeared on a small wreathed stage, a candlelit
tree at one side. Sprigs of ribboned mistletoe decorated
the window drapes and the frames of all Ellen’s
paintings; she wore a sprig and her Scot mouth met mine
under the portrait of a highlander. Caroling and wine
went on and on:
Joseph and Mary walked
Through an orchard green,
Where were cherries and berries
As thick as might be seen...
Mummers paid Ellen a call, accompanied by a dancing
jester wearing furs. By now it was snowing and the storm
sprinkled the jester and the costumes of the torchlit
merrymakers with him, as they trailed about, singing. A
glass of wine with Ellen... Egypt, it seemed an easy dive
to the bottom of the deep, to pluck drowned honor, but
there was Ann, pinch-faced, wanting to scourge, and sting
with pismires.
Joseph and Mary walked through their orchard bewitched,
and Ellen’s thick tree burned with its candles; the Yule
log burned and cat-spat; thick-eyed musing came with
scalding wassail; then more dancing and then sleep at
their side... Later, I’ll tell her about my play, my
plans, secrets of the stage, boyhood delights... I’ll
reveal the wildness of the world, and beyond this, the
tranquility of poetry itself.
She’ll share her Edinburgh, her theatre, her books, her
home by the lake, her work for the priory library.
She told me:
“Life is to hold warmly in our hands. It is to be made
better for our passing.”
Her intense face considered mine: the fine lines of her
mouth, those eyes, lochs, and then there were her dark,
dark hair, her perfume, the pressing of her fingers into
my sex...necessities and no better...
Carols continued while snow stuck to her window panes
and the pine boughs put resin on the air...a day and then
another, her hair on her pillow like a fern...and nothing
else was needed.
On the blue frozen Thames
skaters zip past people, booths, flags.
A giant ox roasts on a giant spit.
Arm in arm, Shakespeare and Ellen skate:
Over a glassy spot in the ice they peer down
where a blue cloak floats:
fish below.
Singing carolers pass on skates.
Henley Street
February 8, 1615
O
ne year the Thames froze and above London Bridge it
became a market, hobbled with ragged booths, stalls,
flags and streamers, peopled with courtiers, beggars,
soldiers, priests, merchantmen and their families. An ox
was roasted—and as it steamed and smoked—walkers
clustered around the carcass as if it were Holland.
Skaters spun close, stopping to chat or buy and eat, then
spun away over the ice.
For days the surface was free of snow and one afternoon
I brought Ellen, and we skated arm in arm, the sky
unblemished; we swished between ice-bound frigates,
toqued sailors leaning over, waving and jeering. It was
almost Christmas and carolers sang around bonfires.
Royalty had set up tents and we were welcomed there, the
tents and flags reflected in the ice, purple, red,
yellow—pennants squares gay—men and wenches tippling—
musicians trying to keep their feet warm, strumming
bravely.
Ellen, in plaid scarf, yellow cloak and jeweled tam,
stands alongside a striped purple and gold tent, laughs
alongside the scabby hulk of a frigate, warms her hands
before a fire. Ellen...your face is real... I can reach
out and take your hands...you smile and sway in the wind.
Singing with the carolers, your breath puffs its
toadstool alongside my mushroom, and we laugh and hug
each other. Inside a carpeted tent, we toast “Wassail!”
and glance at velvet cushions heaped in a corner.
Henley Street
Stratford
Mine was the wish to bind society together, expose the
floor of heaven, make immortal real, show man’s folly and
labor, extol faith and uphold beauty. Beauty, as I felt
it at the outset of my career, is no longer here: it is a
long way from Venus and Adonis to Henry VIII: there were
grim diversions, rude and costly failures: my goal it
seems is beggared: if I had the capacity I would reach
back to beauty and carry it forward with greater
maturity: I am thinking of poetic beauty.
Farewell! You were too dear for my
possessing,
for such riches where is my deserving...?
I lost sensibility and communion in pursuit of plot and
character for the ricochet of horror and death, for the
mockery of crime and subterfuge.
At times, I was in sleep a king—but on waking, no such
man.
I have been awake to my losses a long while: there was
no recouping them in France and Italy, alone with
hegemony of rocks, promontories, beaches, hierarchy of
seas assailing nakedness...here in Stratford, here I have
illness as exchange.
Sallow yellow:
Men, women and children dying in the streets:
Church bells tolling.
Three men drag a dead youth to the Avon
River,
pitch him in.
Church steeple, reflected in the water,
sways:
The church registry lists column after column
of dead:
Not a sound.
I
n Stratford, the plague moved down Mill Lane, Butt Lane,
Rother Street, jumped to Henley and then Church Street.
Father and I worked on Mill Lane: finding Charles
collapsed by the whipping post, we lugged him out of the
sun...shivering...sweating...vomiting...and we could not
find anything to cover him, and he begged us for a cover.
“Something to cover me, Will...just something?”
“But there’s nothing left for you.”
“Everything used up?”
“All used, Charles.”
“So many of us sick?”
“Lie still. I’ll bring you hot sack. That’ll help you
feel better...there’s a rug...”
“I’ll see if I can find something to cover him.”
“No, you’re tired. I’ll bring hot sack and a cover.”
Pigeons swooped low, then rose: were they afraid?
Six people had died that day.
During the week twenty-six died, men, women, and
children. Our town heard the bell toll morning and
afternoon and evening. At times the tolling seemed to be
right in my ears; at times I forgot it, bringing water or
food, medicine or cover, anything to help. Father and I
worked together as much as possible...his word or nod
kept me going.
The Avon seemed blotched and diseased for there, there
was the plague’s mucous caulking the water and the water
was grey and beaten and unmoving, locked in its own
foetidness, dead by the weir, dead by the church and
underneath the bridge.
Stratford
February 14, 1615
I remember the plague, how, with our theatre closed, I
worked to aid the sick and cart away the London dead.
Appleton...I remember his red beard, his cough, his
scared grin. Meerie, talking Irish, blamed us, saying
“there’s narra a plague in Ireland—it’s your filthy
London—you damn filthy foreigners!” Miller cursed the
altar and the saints behind his head, as he struggled to
breathe. And that gargoyle-like fellow, Fackler, crawled
off to die or recover, we never learned: he said the open
field was the proper place to get well, or die.
The Cheney twins died right outside the Globe: they had
been working as stage hands: clever lads from Sussex,
faithful, hard-working: they got sick on Tuesday; as the
bells tolled on Thursday evening they were dead, dying a
few minutes apart, their hands clasped, eighteen years
old, flax-headed, tall.
Why did that young woman, with hair to her waist, run
about laughing, eating handfuls of earth? Why did that
Dorsetshire man stab himself with a dirk? How did the
graves of the Boothby children get left open, deserted
for days? Was God in the heavenly lectern those days...to
save us of our sins!
For days the sun chewed us in Blackwell. It gave us a
chance to kill some of the rats. Caesar, don’t let one
bite you! Worms crawled out of the earth. Caesar, beware!
Whenever I passed our cemetery I smelled new, raw earth—
as terrifying as the death smell. ’Sblood, how many
deaths does it take to satisfy the earth?
YOUTH—
What is this vomit, this black gunk pouring out of your
mouth? Are you only fourteen...with death on your face?
This is our boy, Slade, who walked to school last week
and fished where I fished.
“Papa, let’s carry him into the shade. We’ll cool his
hot face and give him water. Our medicine has to make him
well. We need him, to grow up and catch perch and pike,
and marry Jenny.”
Papa is washing his face. There’s fruit. There’s sleep.
There’s tomorrow. There’s kindness. There’s
forgetfulness.
Best to cover him.
I’ll cover him. There, that blanket may keep him from
shivering. His mother’s sick too. I’ll rub his hands and
arms. Water, Papa, give him some. There!
“Papa, you get some rest, while I stay with Slade.
You’d better go home and turn in. You didn’t sleep much
last night. Things are better now. No. I’m not hungry.
I’ll eat later.”
I’ll sit with you, boy, and we’ll deny harsh fortune.
Did you ever see a play, boy? The play’s the thing: it
takes you out of yourself. Listen...I’ll recite some
lines for you...
Farewell! a long farewell, to all this...
This is the state of man: today he puts forth
The tender leaves of hope; tomorrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him;
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And, when he thinks, good easy man, fully
surely
His greatness is a ripening, nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do. I have ventured,
Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders
This many summers in a sea...
Farewell, he’s dead.
Papa, you and I have lost him. He’ll never race across
the fields or pack his creel or kiss a girl on the
bridge. The plague has killed him.
Was it you who wanted a new cap?
Now you’ll have a cap of dirt.
I throw my heart against the flint of time. O sun, burn
your great spheres... I importune death a while. The
passing of so small a thing should make a crack at least.
Stained with his own blood...
Grey yelping dogs chase a coach through
London fog:
Fog drips from coach lamps, from trees, iron
railings.
Someone in the fog screams and
a cloaked figure stabs Ellen
as she gets into her coach.
Ellen’s cloak, blood, fog,
Shakespeare’s anguished face.
Henley Street
February 20, 1615
F
og, that old-year-treachery, steals round my house, thief
at every window: renegade, despot, carrion-maker.
That night the fog mauled us after we left the theatre,
Ellen and I. I thought of throwing my cloak around both
of us, as we walked along: dark blue cloak in white fog.
Instead of covering both of us I covered her...
The play had been well played, Alleyn up to form,
Marlowe’s lines appreciated by a better than usual
audience, some of them royalty. Tambourlaine usually
appeals to royalty. This was Crown night, Christ’s crown,
hell’s crown, fog on every thorn, thorns sticking through
our laughter, to be remembered, in that cloak, bastard
thorns.
Like dogs they followed us as we left the theatre,
late, our arms around each other, the cloak flapping, fog
leaving us inconspicuous. I saw her carriage approaching,
inching the fog, fog through the spokes of her wheels.
And then outcries, and Ellen beside me, falling, and as
she fell I turned and saw my cloak slide with her,
lantern and dagger on the road, misericord.
Here it is now: yes, here it is: I have it, pricking
thing for future pricking, if need be: long, needle-
pointed: Toledo steel: the right length to kill her—or
me.
Laughter and fog, spines and theatre, the royalty of
crime in a London gutter; time doesn’t remove them, can
not remove them.
When we could we located guards—trustworthy men—and
with a constable informed her servants and posted guards.
Later, Jonson and I sat with her doctors and learned a
little more about pain. I went for Ellen’s brother and he
came, a cold young man who resembled Ellen, a slight
fellow in handsome black. Hand on sword, he drew himself
up, face ashen, mouth trembling...
“I’ll comb London for them...get them...”
Jonson often visited her, his words and thoughts the
stuff for those days, my brain run dry, bats coasting
out, Enobarbus memories:
Why, sir, give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it
pleases their deities to take a man’s woman from him, it
shows the tailors of the earth; comforting therein, that
when old robes are worn out, there are members to make
new...so grief is crowned with consolation.
Did I write that?
Henley Street
February 26, 1615
I am not able to write poetry and yet I must write,
must tell the teller, crush the shards of illness. What
is life, the undone and the done, the foolish and the
great? I hate drowning in real and invented apprehensions
but mine is the stumbling, after the play, after the com-
pliments and the celebration, a mixture more brew than
sanity admits.
My pen jerks and my hand wavers and my head aches, and
I watch faint light creep into the sky, exacting a
promise from me to defy pain.
I hate sleeplessness on a foggy night like this, for
there is something in the fog that makes death come
alive, that sears the sordid into the mind...what was the
cause: contorted memories? Am I afraid to die, be laid in
straw or committed to a sulfurous pit?
Give me my rope, put on my crown...
Memory is for me acting in a dissolve, cloud of rain,
concatenation of nothings, performing yet recalcitrant,
ambiguous and poor. Here, in this town, this room
smelling of spilled wine, the candles ugly, I see a
woman, the filaments of yesterday’s straw tangled in her
hair—selling love for a price. Why is love obtuse,
ruthless, rain-buried, eerie and demanding, slinking one
to the other?
Stratford
March 2, 1615
I write with rain across my oriel, and the fire almost
out in my fireplace, and my loneness sniveling in its
pot. I am sick of self-pity. I taste with wretched ap-
petite, so be it! To be generous, hungry, guiltless, and
free...what would I give!
Pincers, pinch harder at the rushes, keep the light
burning as long as possible, for each of us.