realize: dreams hawsered to nowhere. I have been guilty
of this all my life. I copulated with commas. I hunted
dreams on paper—cheap privateer! I was priest, pharaoh,
general, slave, glutton. Paper is a sickness, a
sweltering fever, clammy forehead, thudding pulse, ague
within ague: so I am a man of paper, elongated, soggy,
contorted, multiple of calligraphic speculation: paper
bones, paper heart, paper skull, paper blood, paper
penis.
Listen, isn’t that time rustling a sheath of paper?
Snow buffets Shakespeare’s cottage:
Snow enters a window.
There are varnished ceiling beams,
varnished furniture,
books and manuscripts.
A stunning woman appears, smiles, fades,
beckons seductively, disappears.
Henley Street
March 5, 1615
Y
esterday it snowed, and during the afternoon I fell
asleep and dreamed I saw King Henry and Shallow crossing
the fields beyond my windows.
“O God, that one might read the book of fate,” I heard
King Henry say, as I followed, hidden from view. “I wish
to see the revolution of the times make mountains level,
and the continents, weary of solid firmness, melt itself
into the sea and, other times, to see the beach girdle
the ocean...”
“There is a history in all men’s lives, figuring the
nature of the times deceased...”
Was it Shallow who said that?
Though I am confused, I recall the gaunt face of Alleyn
as he spoke those lines, that stormy night, when our
theatre rattled. He was infirm with fever and yet played
on; he seldom let us down.
Winter is here again, to make our beds uneasy. Oh, for
a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of
invention, and return me to my youth!
This is a document in madness because pain seldom
leaves me...
Oh, to be young and tumble a naked woman on a bed,
quarrel desperately and make up, burn the night learning
and unlearning lines, defy the elements, dally along the
Thames, out-shout the gulls, see a mermaid behind a rock.
Youth has such powers! Youth’s rule rules his own court
by championing a hundred causes, ordaining and
cancelling, defying and acknowledging, digging canals,
raising temples.
Slave of every beautiful woman he meets, he presents
her with lasting riches and eternal potency. He conquers
every country for her: his grail, his fleet battering an
endless Armada to bring her into port, no gale too wild.
Henley Street
Monday, ’15
When I taught school at Snitterfield, Jonson came now
and then to prime my Greek and Latin. He used to say,
“You should have done a lot less fishing in the Avon,
boy! Why, these fellows will never learn, not the way you
teach. See, they grin at you. They love you. Call them
churls, cane them; make them scat when you appear!”
Away from school, Jonson would slip into theatre talk
and urge me to rejoin him: “Your poems are remembered.
You have to come back, Will! I’ll find you a patron.
Now’s the time to write plays... I’ll help you put them
on the stage.”
I told him I was afraid of the London plague. He
scorched me with a “haw-haw.” “Teaching’s your plague,
man!”
Henley Street
April 20, 1615
Teaching was forgotten at Fair time, good food,
acrobats, cockfights, gambling—there was something to
keep us spellbound spelling laughter! Games and dances
went on at all hours. Cinquepace was the fast, new step.
How I liked it! There were plenty of pickpockets but I
had nothing to pick but my loneliness. When I danced with
a red-cheeked girl there was sperm in every movement—
those giddy curls and hot hands, the smoke of sizzling
fish, howls of the stinking bear baiters.
Stratford
Trumpets blared... I heard them days after the Fair.
I stayed on as long as possible in Snitterfield, to
contribute what I could to my family’s upkeep in
Stratford. Then came the day when the school board asked
me to find another job; so it was back to London again,
to Jonson and his half-ass promises, back to city
trumpets, strumpets, rattle of carriages, pismire
poverty, paunched patrons and perfumed snowballs for the
Queen’s masque...
Stratford
While I was at Snitterfield, I had the companionship of
a girl whose fourteen years should have been double
fourteen to equal her double sight for fox, hawk, raven
and snail: she was unreal because she could bring me to
the brink of fantasy by gesture or word: “Hush, there,
over there, in the grass by the stile.” Her flip-smile
had the best of both pook and pagan. What she wore seemed
a part of her blondeness, a blondeness often eerie with
an eeriness that worried me, to be quickly saved by her
smile or laughter. Her low voice set the stage for confi-
dences—thread between goldenrod, rabbit lying in the
entry of its burrow, lark rising.
Faith and I had lingering afternoons and saw the first
of fog before dark, heard the last of bird sounds before
sleep: her house next door to mine taught me, by window
and door, the wretchedness of her life: her father’s
drunken beatings, kickings, savagery: so, to escape the
village clod we escaped together, to sit by a woodland
stream and hear words by leaves as they sifted down.
Faith had her legs in the water, up to her knees, or lay
on the embankment, the color of her flesh gleaming. Her
beauty was not a pair of breasts but a pair of hazel eyes
and a dimple in her chin. She was tall, a cathedral
figure in caenstone, the stone so alive yet
ecclesiastical, erect, her posture one of graceful
expectation: repose flowed from her: her thin hands
lifted to her thin face: her hair straggled to her
shoulders and down her back or was combed into a flaxen
haycock. I thought my teaching infinitely poorer than
hers and went with her whenever possible, helping her
withstand the disgrace at home.
I thought many times of going back to see Faith Stanton
but even the changeless changes and woodland jewels,
claiming socketless eyes, reflect only images of the
mind. Drunkenness outlives beauty—the clod burying
haycock, bog and girl.
Henley Street
Goddamn my hair!
My hair, with its copper and red, used to say: This is
your world, boy!
Damn my wrinkles! My gallows neck!
My face was once all right.
Now one cheek has begun to cave in under my eye, the
wince of lechery, no doubt, and meteors, no less. Lines
around my mouth give the impression that I have never had
a good time—never laughed. My eyes, when I swivel them in
a mirror, warn me that grave changes are taking place
inside and that denials will get me nowhere: grey hairs,
wrinkles, poor vision...they are the roistering gift of
time, markings on the stone, to remind myself that I am
here, that escape is never, that courage is all that
counts, humor with its leg lifted on the monument, peeing
on vanity.
The sullen bell called me to school and I went
reluctantly, leaving my fishing pole behind the door,
pike and trout lost to me. Early morning was almost
beyond endurance; I rubbed my eyes and stumbled
downstairs, to eat amid yappings, survive, survive.
I did not resent school when Hunt read aloud in Latin,
reading masterfully, giving us Caesar, Antony, and
Cleopatra. When he read, I wandered beside the pyramids,
the Nile dotted with boats, ibis, and heron; I tramped
battlefields, fought with black spears piercing the hot,
dusty air. It was along the Avon that I sensed man’s
struggle. I saw. Heard. As the water grew greener and
greener and deeper and deeper, the air motionless, the
past was there, Hunt’s past, Cleopatra’s...her barge,
like a burnished throne, burnt on the water; the poop
beaten gold, purple the sails, so perfumed that the winds
were love-sick with them; the oars were silver, which to
the time of flutes kept stroke...
When I dared I got away early and went to fish or
loafed at the mill pool where I hung my feet in the Avon
and counted dragonflies, my line thrown as far as I could
throw it. Sitting on a mossy mound, I heard the warblers
and lark spell morning into warm sun.
Thirty-five years ago!
Summer:
Naked swimmers, five boys, penis fun,
laughter:
Naked girls in bushes along the same river
bank:
Church bells in distance:
Behind a copse boy and girl kiss and squirm.
Henley Street
May 4, 1615
G
rowing up, our greatest fun was swimming, our greatest
anguish church. From church, as quickly possible, we got
into nakedness, rival of summer lightning. We swam the
Avon in laughter and rowdiness, three, four or five of
us, and if others were at our favorite pool we chased
them off, our penises flying, rocks and yells going
everywhere. We scared them half to death, or, if we were
in proper mood, we adopted them, kids like us; we swam
and climbed on them and trampled the ooze of plants, and
the ooze slicked our bodies over their bodies: I can feel
it almost like a lover getting ready to make love: and
that’s about what we did: we made love to the day and we
made love to the water: we yelled and slapped it and
cuffed it into obedience, and orgasmed it, and tore our
legs till blood pricked, and then we swam and I was
pretty good and I out-swam some though some out-swam me,
and we swam until we felt cool and easy, and then lay on
the grass by the mill, to watch the swallows and gape and
groan, like lovers after their bout in bed: our spirits
ebbing for the nonce, then rising to dress and yell and
pull and sing and chase each other home.
How I reveled in summer haying.
Usually, I loaded a small wagon pulled by Burt, Burt
eying me, snuffling at me as I pitched the hay: he was
getting old and the grey of his wooly hide was shedding
outrageously; he lifted each black hoof slowly, often
fetching a fart. He liked working the field alone but I
preferred working with others. Stripped to the waist,
hatless, I forked and grunted and Burt pulled and farted.
Some of the time I had to sing, the smell of hay and sun
inspiring my songs: sometimes, when I worked with others,
all of us sang, horses perkier for our merriment.
Mildred was as good at the fork as I: working side by
side, we often bumped and her blue eyes would widen and
light up: pretty, blonde, barefooted, she wore a blouse,
skirt and Dutch apron: our field ended at the river, an
apple grove along the other sides. Two or three of us, in
teams, harvested Papa’s hay each season: I still smell
the timothy and the girl.
Wonderful, wonderful and most wonderful...and yet
another.
Henley Street
May 10, 1615
Choir singing was boring—just sucking melancholy out of
song—and whenever I could, I skipped it and went off with
Becky. No matter how icy, there was fun, hands linked,
our runny noses beatific: Becky, whose giggle alerted
every boy, was my girl whenever we could steal away and
turtle hunt—that was our joy: tirelessly, we combed the
creeks and river, staying long past staying time, scolded
but not caring.
I see her giddy black eyes, brown mop, skinny legs,
tiny hands and tiny feet—barefooted beside me, wetting
herself to the legpits, screeching or silent, often too
silent, wading lustily. She loved to steal apples,
raspberries, strawberries, turnips, hungry from morning
till night. I peeled turnips for her and we munched them
on a stile, then raced one another, slithered downstream:
“There’s one, see, on that log. Be quiet!”
“I’ll get ’im.”
“No, let me. It’s my turn. He’s tiny. He’s for me.”
“Go slowly.”
A few times Becky and I rang the church bells for the
sexton; together, we stole buns and cookies at home, but
best of all we stole happiness, books in running brooks.
She married a seaman and lives in London: I warrant you
there are eight children, a happy family—God bless t’em!
I would not change the story.
Henley Street
Mother—memories of you are mostly memories of songs you
used to sing when sleep was near, lovingly, patiently,
sung in my room, close to the varnished beams, curtains
drawn, as you sat or lay beside me or rested in a nearby
chair.
Our favorite song was “Happy be thou, heavenly
queen...man’s comfort and angel’s bliss...of all women
thou hast the prize...”
And I remember each word of Sanctus—and hear each word
as you sang it lingeringly; sometimes your hand kept
time; sometimes your fingers covered mine.
Stabat Mater Dolorosa...
So many years have lapsed that I have forgotten how you
looked, only your eyes and thin figure and voice remain:
I hear you when you called us in from play: “Too-lee-
looly-loo,” you called, shepherding your six for supper
and bed.
I roam about, room to room, stooping for a bedroom
doorway, floors creaking, the varnished beams always the
same, three floors of thinking about me, windows you used
to look out of, beds you used to make—or was that another
house, another time, another illusion? My house, your
house, our house—who owns, who makes traitorous gifts,
decisions, contracts, to pile millions of acres of dirt
on top of us later?
At the Globe, when I was young, I received quite a
visitor! Ben Jonson brought Sir Francis Drake. Ben was a
sharer of friends. I was dumbfounded but “El Draque,”
contemptuously at ease, sat on my backstage table, his
plumed hat and red gloves flung on top of a litter of
plays. He and Ben discussed a masque Jonson was to
produce.
Young as I was, it took courage to speak to “El Draque”
because even his purple hat shocked me. But I managed to
ask about his attack on Cadiz. Lines warped his mouth,
and he said, stroking his corn husk chin:
“It was a matter of guns...we singed the King’s
whiskers through our superior armament. Ah, good winds
too. We had great luck! Don’t you believe in luck? When
you write a play, isn’t it luck, lucky weather, luck with
your players, luck with your attendance, the right kind
of royalty attending at the right time?”
I saw him again after the defeat of the Armada, at a
crowded Thames anchorage. Wounded, he looked older, livid
scar on his cheek, the fire dead in his eyes, his
expression one of cynicism and fatigue. He wore a squat,
official hat. No rings. Leaning against a spattered
capstan, he seemed smaller than I had remembered him; he
did not recognize me.
“Our fire ships forced the Armada out of anchorage,
broke up their plan!” he said, talking to a group of
officers.
“Put yourself on a fire ship,” he boomed. “You’re at
the rudder. She’s aflame—flames are roaring aft! Your
whole ship’s blazing but somehow you bugger her against a
Spanish hull. You’re beaten off. They’re afraid you have
a powder mine in your hold. There’s cannon shot! You dive
overboard. It’s a long, icy swim. Most men never make it
out of that water...
“What we needed was more gun shot, more ammunition,
kegs and kegs of powder; then, by God, we’d have run them
clean to Spain, run them, not waited, our guns useless.
We had to sit it out, wait—no powder. We didn’t dare take
a chance. Think of it, everything to our advantage but we
dared not move. We had to bluff.”
I wrote down his words—but I still hear them, it might
be five or six years ago, not thirty!
Deceptions of mind bother me: unrehearsed, the brain
bedevils and stacks lie on lie...in the lays of time. I
turn my glass and am alone, the cuckold of myself
reflected in three hundred sixty-five mirrors. My
spirits, as in a dream, are bound up, and like the
Armada, strewn on shores and still more rocky shores...
Henley Street
May 18, 1615
Memory’s snowfall rattles every door and window in my
house. Was it the once lost winter thirty years ago in
London? From door to door, I begged for work: my hands
blue, legs quaking, face frost-galled. Belly empty,
pocket empty, I harried taverns, bakeries, homes. People
mistrusted me, that wild-haired kid, goat-bearded—doors
slammed in my face. Blinded by snow, I headed for the
Thames, for the bridge—shelter there. On the way, I
passed a tavern and opened a door: a crowd of young men
faced me: I asked for work and was given a scullery job,
supper and a mat by the stove: I’ll never forget the
warmth of that mat by that stove: I wanted nothing more:
cherry voices and warmth: it all comes back!
A piece of bread in one hand, I fell contentedly
asleep. An elephantine man, with florid face and scraggly
beard, wakened me roughly.
“Next time you go to sleep don’t let the rats share
your bread,” Falstaff guffawed.
Stratford
May 23
Falstaff helped me find an old cloak and helped me
borrow boots and gloves. He got me a stagehand job.
Later, he showed me where I could purchase stolen things,
sharing his room with him: ribaldry, punning, gargantuan
laughter, thievery, friends, foolishness, foppery, wit
and wine. Little did I think of using him in a play
during the weeks I lived with him. In those days, I had
never written a line.
Like an umbrella, his character sheltered me from
depression: he introduced me to Marlowe, Kyd, Jonson.
Years later, I introduced him to Alleyn and Burbage;
Burbage wanted him on stage but Falstaff had his own
stage where he could dupe and bedevil, unmolested by paid
gapers. By then, he was getting old and liked puttering
and sleeping best.
Those were mad times, those days with Falstaff, and
yet, behind every laugh lay the threat of poverty, the
knife blade of quarrels, reason gone unreasonable. Night
after night we went to sleep hungry. With glue and nail
we pieced our shoes together, for one more day. With
needle and thread we patched our clothes. Falstaff pulled
my wisdom tooth to save the barber’s fee: “Open wide,
yell! There, I’ve got it, Will, spit now. Spit, boy.”
In a few ways Falstaff resembled my father: both were
unassuming, generous, dilatory: their fat portraits hang
side by side in my mind: the last I heard from my friend
was a brief word from Dover where he was working for a
shipbuilder and lived in a shanty by the sea.
He would have roared at his role in my plays: he would
have objected to his cowardice, upheld his zeal, begged
me for a thousand pounds, and tried to bribe me for the
address of a pretty woman.
Friend...you were eel-fish, bull’s pizzle, dried neat’s
tongue and stockfish! When you were born the front of
heaven was full of fiery shapes and the goats ran from
the mountains.
Henley Street
May 25, 1615
A cockroach creeps about my room, an X on its back, the
only roach branded in my roost. I see it in the morning,
when I sit down to write. It favors a corner, where there
is a deep crack, in case of an intruder or wrath on my
part. It has a stiff carriage—much more so than any of
the others. Ruler, no doubt, with excessive
responsibilities! So I have decided to call it Bill.
Certainly all other roaches seem afraid of this
Conqueror. When I find it on my table, I make a pass at
it and it leaps with a scut. It eats paper—old and new.
It munches leftovers, liking cheese best, though I think
the cheese is pretty well divided between the roaches and
the mice.
Henley Street
May 26, 1615
Why am I disliked in Stratford? Is it because I drive a
hard bargain? Is it because I have assumed, at least at
times, an actor’s air? They say I stand aloof but is it
possible to cross the Avon to their side? My side is
Ptolemy’s, Priam’s, Cleopatra’s, Coriolanus’. We four are
difficult to appraise as we walk along Henley Street. The
local folk have never heard the creak of chariot wheels.
Lonely...I have been lonely and am lonelier now, but
which is lonelier, the pod with one pea or the pod with
aliens? True, I have sued for money; true, I have
acquired property. And the city man and country man
mistrust one another: the writer fits in nowhere: yet,
since this is home, I try to accommodate myself, say
“yes” to Mr. Combe, and help if I can. “Yes, M.”
I never could introduce Ann to Londoners and she has
been unable to introduce me to Stratford people. If I
were well, if I could write, I would spit on Avon.
Combe is the only person in S. who has seen any of my
plays; however, when I talk with him, he confuses scenes
and characters; his appreciation is based on pride that
says “I can speak of Shakespeare.” A Puritan, he
patronizes incoming Puritans more than most, helping them
infest this town, making it a sawtooth of moral crud,
chair and whip in line, summoning whispered inquisitions.
Monday
What fools we mortals are, for I who wrote of shrews
married a shrew who is more shrewful than any Kate from
Padua. I laugh at my own defeat, a shrew beside a shrew,
players nodding at my marital bewilderment, I, the
drunkard drunk on illusions. Shall we list her
infidelities—country-man at Fair, con-man, neighbor?
Shall we name names?
Shakespeare and Ann, at ruins of Kenilworth
castle,
copulating in the grass, happy in their
bucolic lust.
The two trudge, hand in hand:
Ann ups her skirt and they flop again,
giggling:
“Twins,” she says.
Henley Street
I
married a shrew and yet thirty years ago, Ann and I knew
hot jollity at Kenilworth, the grass a hide under us,
pigeons reconnoitering castle walls, a falcon lawing the
sun. Since Ann and I had a few days for ourselves, we had
ridden to K. She was Sweet Villain, and when we pastured
the horses and unstuffed our knapsacks, we stuffed
ourselves, and sacked ourselves, gorging in sun, the
horses stomping and snuffling beyond us. Sweet Villain
pulled up her skirts after we had drunk more than we
should and I was glad I had not married another. She said
“Your hair’s redder,” and I said “Your hair’s yellower,”
meaning where, and our laughter went bounding.
We sacked that old busky castle from wall to wall,
writing on scalded plaster, pushing over abutments,
throwing rocks at a fox. From some crater corner, we
looked up, our heads dusty, holding each other sexround,
our fierceness there while falcons fought, clipping each
other, beaking one another, feathers falling. Kenilworth
and kings: we smelled unsavory dungeons but pushed our
falconry over them, our naked seel better than
intercourse of power and time: among the marl, we viewed
puffs of smoke from country homes, saw water gleaming, a
windmill turning, sheep among sheep, their woolly backs
humping toward a rainy sunset.
Soon, soon, time was to tear away our love, but we did
not suspect: we were the confidents, our jollity amusing
because fastened to laughter, no wrack or confusion: it
was slap of hands on bare buttocks, “ah” over breast,
mouth sucking, suckling, surprising, surfeiting, back
again for more: the taste of love’s bite the waist
around, the hand up, down, and the grass its hide
browner, browner than our flesh, her flesh ignited from
within, so burned for me.
Stratford-on-Avon
June 1, 1615
We ate off wooden plates, tulips blooming in the
garden, blue and white Chinese plates hanging on the
wall, and lilacs blooming in the garden...in a dream I
confronted him and he was monarch and he said to me: I am
Hamnet, come, we’ll go to the guild chapel and hear the
sermon...it was a cold sermon but honeysuckle was
blooming in the garden...orioles were singing above the
oriel. Columbine, ferns, and lilies were on the cabinet:
she said to me: Come, Will, eat! I said to her: listen, I
hear the pegs moving inside the beams: that is for
integrity. Ivy grew on the east wall of my house in those
days.
Henley Street
June 3, 1615
Alone, following the Roman wall, as it girdled London,
I used to speculate where the Roman gods had gone;
thinking, as well, of those of Egypt and Greece...time
with a scroll on his back, asking alms. Smashed bricks,
memento mori, along that vast, yellow, unweeded garden,
were questions in their own right, broken, to be kicked
aside, as are our own questions concerning mortality.
Gazing at the Thames, I hoped for hope from the wide
wall, wider river and broader mystery. I went over my
plays...Ulysses...Cleopatra...Prospero... The wall, with
its imperialism and legion of whispers, said “no, master,
no,” speaking in the voice of Lear’s fool.
Ellen and I climbed the castle where Caesar lived, the
tallest site in London, the Thames below, flowers and
vines crawling over ruins, the walls of yesterday saying
“Et tu Brutus.”
Danger knows full well that hate is doubly dangerous:
we are two lions littered in a day, and the litter of
stones crumbles underfoot, but Ellen cries out to me, and
I catch her by the arm.
There is a white sail on the river...
Ay, me, how fine a thing the heart of woman! I thought
it then and think it still, the very best of her is
gentle subtlety: it is this that takes a man in.
A flock of blackbirds lit below us, covering the fallen
stones like black hail.
We went many times to that castle and walked along its
ancient yellow walls; she asked me for poetry and I
repeated lines: what were they, I wonder?
Now...most noble one...the gods stand friendly today,
that we may, lovers in peace, lead on our days to age: