and resting Quality there is no fellow in the
firmament...the skies are painted with unnumbered
sparks...they are all afire, and every one doth shine;
but there’s but one in all doth hold his place: so in the
world...
The stars came out, a summer’s night on Caesar’s place,
and we heard frogs and the tittering of lovers, ourselves
loving that place, our flesh, that empirical wisdom. We
went so often we called it “our castle.”
Henley Street
June 5, 1615
At Christmas skirling bagpipers, piping a waulking
song, greeted us at Dunira. Ellen’s room, in a squat
tower, faced a narrow lake with ragged shore pines and a
small island, wild geese and ducks resting on the water,
cold, cold, moss blue water.
Sun crossed the bear rugs and tiles of her floor.
Her bed was canopied with green velvet embroidered with
golden shields and crossed spears, seen on her coat-of-
arms.
She called my attention to the pulls on the heavy
drapes, each pull a carved ivory ball enclosing a ball
inside another.
Hand in mine, she showed me her collection of silver,
gold, and ivory fans, fans from Egypt, Greece and India,
arranged on her walls, some open, some in cases,
flabellum with bone handles, Venetian lace fans, tomb
fans with gold-encrusted ribs, a Greek fan like an
acanthus leaf. I can see the movement of her lips as she
described them; I can see her hand, pointing.
We often walked around the lake and through the
pollarded garden, its cypresses like stone columns: we
walked the moors until Christmas cold sent us shivering
to the big fireplaces where we talked and ate and sang
and drank.
Someone kept the fire blazing in her fireplace and we
would sink down on her bed or lie on the bear rug and
make love, the firelight skirling her ivory, her fans and
the canopy’s yellow silk lining.
Hugh opened our door one morning very early, while we
were busy making love, and with a boisterous laugh he
said:
“I just finished with my woman; when you’re done, we’ll
go hunting. The horses are saddled. Better lock your door
next time!”
Hugh—his huge body on a huge hunter—led us hunting
along a loch, where the ocean, squeezed as in a glass
case, shuddered, as though resentful of its trap, as
though it considered everyone as intruder. I was awed by
the water’s dark and the chasms menacing it. Deer eluded
us and while we followed the loch, I lost interest in the
hunt for the quarry of sea and earth, spirit and well-
being.
Hunting, walking, eating, drinking, love-making, this
was the happiest time of my life. Her brother’s
acceptance amounted to adoption; he often came to my room
and talked at length, sharing intimacies; the only
misadventure during my stay was an attack of hungry
peasants who swarmed the castle court, shrilly demanding
food, some in kilts with silent bagpipes.
Ellen and I visited the ruins of a sprawling Cistercian
abbey on her Dunira property; there, under the vaulted
archway, where roses climbed, I felt inspired, and,
staying on I wrote Cymbeline, scenes and words coming
easily, happiness a constant companion: the sweetness of
her personality seemed altogether mine. Words and flesh—
they were mine, in that sun and cloud world of Dunira.
The weather settled into a steady spell, my room
overlooking garden, lake and bluecap forest. London might
have been at the bottom of the sea: I could not have
cared less. Its dirt and beauty—I never missed them.
Visiting the abbey frequently, we met several of the
monks who resided in a section of the refectory; their
geniality contented us and we lingered with them, in
their herb garden, by a fountain—pigeons about. A
marvelously tiny man, spry though old, gave us a
parchment book, one he had rubricated, pleased to see us
in love.
Hugh accompanied us occasionally to bring food for the
brothers, making the short trip with donkeys carrying
loaded panniers. He, too, would linger, sharing our mood.
Abbey garden, fountains, vegetables and herbs
in rows:
a collection of rare fans on a wall:
Hugh and Shakespeare drink at a refectory
table:
a peasant enters and Hugh beats the man
who is asking for alms:
skirl of bagpipes.
O
n the Scottish coast the sunset prowled the lowtide
combers, rolling cloud into cloud, wave into wave. The
clouds absorbed orange with yellow and the yellow took on
red, the red brooming low, sweeping shoreward, reaching
the sand at our feet.
Is it true that we saw the sunset together, her arms
around me, the rocks beyond us red, the sunset extending
for miles? The moon rose out of a rust-colored sky?
Stratford-on-Avon
June 11, 1615
“Darling, ours is a supreme happiness and we must
cherish it,” she wrote me long ago.
For years I kept her letters in my desk at Blackfriar’s
house, to lose them when the place burned: waxed,
ribboned and perfumed letters, from France, Italy, and
Scotland. I could rewrite some of them from memory—some.
At the time I received her letters I thought that a
number of them had been detained much too long and I
thought several of them had been tampered with. I put
this aside as fancy for I was willing to be blind. As I
think back it’s odd I never suspected censorship. And why
was it I never knew till later that she and her family
opposed the Queen?
The knife of one’s own stupidity cuts deepest!
A year or two after the attack on her, when she was
back in Scotland, she wrote that Hugh was assassinated in
Glasgow—an Elizabethan courtesy, someone said. The shock
was more of a shock coming from her: Hugh dead, big Hugh,
with his cleft beard, bushy eyebrows, and mop of greying
hair: the bigness of his Dunira castle comes to me, along
with his hospitality.
For years I was driven half insane by a dream of an
enveloping cloak: the cloak swallowed my house, trees,
sun, and stars: I heard a woman scream inside this
luminous thing. Behind the folds was a bearded face,
coming closer and closer.
Henley Street
I was headed for home when I met Ellen and the autumn
sun favored us, potentates meeting by a river, our
kingdom the leaves along the shore, the ash red, our
introduction friends, our hopes instantaneous. I saw
beneath her gloves to her veined hands; I saw her veined
breasts beneath her dress; I saw beneath her smiles the
invitation, rebuffs, wiles...
Yet who dares to know royalty outside the theatre!
Home, I reminded myself, is Stratford; but, who among
us remembers home and fidelity?
I loved home once, my Ann, my children, and the sharing
of the things a man wants to share. I loved these in my
groin and the raves of sweetness summoned me, over and
over, till I was worn out and imperious insomnia stalked
and kept me at my desk or sent me.
How can it be, in the midst of aged foolishness, Ellen
appears, to convince, to distract—those devil eyes of
hers and that black hair and her white, white skin
begging love. When she speaks, I listen: I turn and
listen: I turn and listen again for she is theatre, its
hush, its compassion, its folly.
Jonson was right to introduce us; he thought to kill my
pen and wit. It was his plot to make me plotless—great
jest! He was right, for sleepless nights swept around and
the pulsing indirection of sex carried me to her for yet
another rendezvous.
Did I ever come to my senses: was it a week, month, or
year? Was it she who nailed the fog over my soul? Ah,
crucifix between her breasts, so soft, so impaled! What
graciousness!
London was too small for us for everyone perceived the
unperceivable, impaired our pairing and yet...but all
this is past and the last seat empty.
We thought to escape to Rome, that eternal place for
eternal mouths. She offered me money and I refused. At
the theatre she begged me to accept, for us, for time,
for love...and I accepted. On stage I swore to testify
but I hugged my testament and my lines faltered.
We have played our parts too often, our thighs packed
with wax, our mouths with honey; we bring it to the hive;
and, like the bees, are murdered for our pains.
Henley Street
June 18, 1615
For months I kept at the writing of Antony and
Cleopatra—Ellen seldom out of my mind. Yet the writing
was an abatement of anguish, scenes lifting me out of
maelstroms, Antony’s turbulence alleviating mine.
Apartment and theatre were all I allowed myself, sharing
time with Jonson, dividing mutual crusts.
Rain—rain—when has it rained more! It was well I had
the Egyptian sun to keep my bones warm.
Some scenes evolved easily; others fought me, full of
sound and fury. I could not visualize certain scenes on
the stage and sometimes strange actors walked the boards
and stole my lines, fixing them with their own
personalities. Alleyn stalked as Caesar, and I had to re-
write again and again.
Baxter affronted me with his buffoonery and I had to
cross out his lines. Phips—our cheerful homosexual—had
Cleopatra in his perfumed arms, jeering at me. Kempe
jigged.
On top of all this, insomnia set in and never left me
for weeks. March – April – May, it was the warmth of May
that unlocked its crossbow and shot me outdoors, to sit
and sit for hours.
There, in the sun, my shirt open, shoes off, grass
alive, lilacs alive, birds twirping, I knew I could make
Antony and Cleopatra successful. There in the sun people
and river came alive. The sun’s gnomon wrote. I bowed my
head and waited. At my desk, I hurled my sentiency...
alive, it must come alive, to hurl aside life’s muddle:
alive: these people from the past must speak: nothing is
more remote than yesterday: speak to them: make them
chroniclers: break their sleep.
The Thames with anchored and sailing ships:
Ellen and Shakespeare on board a coaster,
leaning on the taffrail:
She settles her tam and quotes from Two
Gentlemen of Verona.
They talk of Naples as sailors leer at them
from on top a stack of boxes.
Henley Street
June 20, 1615
E
llen and I sailed the Thames, the water stippled with
gulls; our hands locked, we stood at the stern and hoped
for a smooth voyage, with love, our rudderbar credulous
to us, the wind mild and lasting. In Venetian wine there
would be happiness, we promised each other...
But why are you lost to me and I alive?
Ellen—what is this, that reaches round us and never
arrives; what is this that promises return?
Ours was a proper departure, landing us on the Italian
shore, love in a town of disinterested people.
Perhaps I want the impossible: yes, yes, I want that
time when we were there in Naples, when we strolled the
seaside; when we sailed the waterlanes and walked Roman
streets and her fountains watched us with sleepy eyes,
spray beaded on some bronze arm.
I dislike borrowing things and yet I’m borrowing
memories, borrowing time, those bronzes, our return, our
boat bucking seas, sending us north, ice off the
larboard, back to reality, debts, conniving. We said
good-bye but our good-bye was postponement. Our wheel
became St. Catherine’s. At a gypsy teller’s tent there
was a kind of double silence.
I lived for my work, starved for it.
With my pen I quartered the earth and green pastures
and made them live for her and the witchcraft of hope, to
shake off sadness and burst the anarchies of soul.
Incorrect to heaven, some say.
June 22, 1615
What a cocked up play, my Coriolanus. To fill my
pocket! To fob off bad for good, that was it. I leaned on
one crutch and fought with another—and fell. Too many of
my plays were crutched. I borrowed too much from Plutarch
and others. I worshipped royalty. I was too conventional,
too romantic, borrowing plots, borrowing, borrowing,
double sure, never sure, cocksure.
Henley
Midsummer-day
And I must guess the identity of her attackers—or why
they wanted her life. Christ, we had our list of
suspects. And what came of our grim suppositions?
Nothing. We said: was it robbery, I prithee? Jealousy?
Hatred? Politics? We said. We have said and I go on
saying. Thrift, Horatio, thrift...and I have not saved.
Henley Street
June 26, 1615
Hamnet...
Today is your death day.
After you died I went to the shore and the sea’s clods
of wood and detritus infused in me a loneliness that
nothing has every wiped out: a wrangle of foam goes on
and on inside me; the grey that topped the abyss of ocean
finds a darker grey in me; the gulls are sleep-flying for
you.
Hamnet, my son...
Prince of my house, I loved you. We had such fun. Good
day, sweet boy, how dost thou, good boy? May flights of
angels sing you on your way. When you died, Stratford
teemed with monsters. Your hand in mine, such a cold
hand, you said adieu. What God was this to snuff you out
at eleven. Grief stiffened me: I feel it today, when
there should have been a birthday party not a
remembrance. The sea rolls back on me as I sit here, my
legs unable to move, pain working in me.
The Queen and her killings...time and its
murders...they are alike! The unfairness of life, O what
angels sing the truth? What angels! Go, fetch me a quart
of sack; put a toast in’t.
God took him from me...damn the God that steals your
son.
King of grief they might have called me. Now, all is
mended by many years: ours be your patience, your gentle
hand lead us, and take our hearts.
I had thought to leave him something beside my father’s
coat-of-arms. I had thought to introduce him to the
theatre, have him think about my plays, have him know the
better part of London. He would have been a friend of
Drake’s; perhaps he might have sailed on Raleigh’s
Virginia voyages. Perhaps Jonson might have taught him
Latin. Perhaps is my treadmill, and I wear it thin.
He went to a few plays with me and thrilled to them. He
respected me. Loved me. What were his thoughts, as he
died? To be such a short, short time on stage! Was he
resentful, bewildered? I think he was confused because of
the great fever. Good God, what was the use of his
flowering? It was an error of the moon...it makes men
mad.
To thine own self be true, they say, and I, still
harping, I ask your credent ear to listen: we shall not
look upon his like again?
Speak... I go no further.
Stratford-on-Avon
Flowers in my hand, I thought to visit his grave, but
as I limped across the yard, thinking of the bone house
and how each of us ends there, remembering those
underneath my shoes, under the tree, under the
threatening sky, I laid the flowers on another’s grave,
and the dove carved on that granite nodded, as it were,
pecked me across the grass, among the weeds, reminding me
of other men’s grief.
That woman, over there on her knees, isn’t that Nancy
Richards? I recognize her shoulders and the back of her
head. Her father died last month.
What stupidity, this crawling, mewing, kneeling, this
unresurrectable world, with weeds that smell of dust.
I remember a king’s grave in Denmark, with falcons
carved on it, falcons of black marble, perched on top a
branch, carved black centuries ago.
I walked through the rain, moving as fast as my legs
would let me, my soul full of discord and dismay, wishing
I had not gone, resolved to confine myself to myself,
incarcerate my grief in my writing, or, if I could not
write, be ennobled, not afflicted as other men are with
contagion.
The fault, dear Brutus...
After his death, the dissentious Judith and Ann used to
side against me: “He’s no good, Judith,” Ann preached
vehemently. “What does he care for any of us! He’s always
away in London. You’ve heard him say that life’s but a
walkin’ shadow. We’re just so many shadows to him!”
I would stare at Judith after one of Ann’s outbursts; I
would look at her and through some sort of necromancy I
would see Hamnet’s face—I would remember our fun, our
fishing, our swimming in the Avon.
It was not the constant conspiracy of Ann and Judith
that drove the final nail; it was Judith’s resemblance,
same color and texture of hair, same blue eyes, same half
smile, same propensity to giggles, same way of rubbing
her hands on her clothes. I had always favored Hamnet
because he and I had shared more. Now, now that Judith
lived, I could not accept his death. Of course I never
wanted her to die. As long as the twins lived there was
accord. If death must steal one of them...but I couldn’t,
wouldn’t choose. Yet, in ugliest anger, I had shouted my
preference. And she knew I often saw Hamnet when I looked
at her: I’ve seen her run when I stared at her: I’ve
heard her cry: “Mama, he’s looking at me that way!”
“These are my twins,” I used to say, showing them to
people. Twins—for how long!
I bought her a goonhilly pony, an excellent pacer, and
taught her to ride. I got her a lamb and a puppy, I
brought her gifts from London. I brought her things from
France and Italy. There was little chance to get through
to her because of Ann. If I won Judith for a while, I
lost her when at work in London. She never wrote to
me...or Ann destroyed those letters. During my years in
the theatre, in London and touring the provinces, all
those years, I received no note. She never expressed a
desire to see one of my plays, seemed disinterested in my
life in the city—unless it was to suggest I bring
something when I came home.
Home?
July 1, 1615
I am that wanderer of night, full many a morning have I
seen flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye...
There’s memory, that’s for remembrance; pray, you,
love, remember...and there is pansies; that’s for
thought...there’s fennel for you, and columbine; there’s
rue...you must wear your rue with a difference.
Through the years they mangled those lines! How cold to
hear them backstage! How cold to hear them now, here, in
my room, echoing from varnished beams, off-stage in my
oriel of yesterday.
But I should not have gotten sick: I should have stayed
in London to the end, fought the Puritans, fought the
King, the tax collectors, the players of the shrew’s men!
Pain shut me out: the body must have its moments of
solace—the mind its soothsayer!
I would give you violets...but they are planted around
a gravestone.
I was a young man when I wrote those lines; like
Ophelia I ride on bawdy repetitions, error on error.
The table of my memory is dusted with crumbs.
Off-stage, the wind gushes; on-stage, there’s a
frenzied pitch of “no!”
Chorus, players!
This love, this royalty by jackanapes brought to earth,
the stage to my back: what can a man affirm in such a
position: flight? I speak to her and she puts her fingers
on my lips and holds her beauty like a whip over me. The
curtain came down quickly: fie, the curtain often comes
down swiftly, manipulated by fury, a last sound snapped
out, muffling resolution, covering courage...
There is a curtain for love and one for hate: there is
a curtain for youth and another for age. And when we
finally realize these things we are dotards, and our
realization laughs.
The executioner’s curtain is no doubt the swiftest. The
jig maker’s safest. The priest’s dullest. The mariner’s
loneliest. The lover’s saddest.
Henley Street
July 8, ’15
These pages are so unlike my plays and sonnets and yet
I have to struggle to get anything down! Here is my mock
dukedom; since I can not write any longer I look back
across time from the shelf of my memory, longing to
improve my existence: I am certain that the old word-
chattels gladly deserted me, looking for a young man, no
doubt, an upstart from Snitterfield, enroute to London,
riding a brood mare, humming...hey, non nonny...
...Heaven mend all!
Henley Street
July 9, 1615
Elsinore has a tongue of land that licks at time, a
place that ends with defeat, its castle and its people
falling into apparitions.
Usurping night, Elsinore made me face the northern
ocean, irresolution. There was no illusion to being
there: rain cusped out of sky: the snow fell: it was a
bitter time to see the place, a blastment. I had shaken
off that incessant pain that stabbed the roof of my skull
each time I leaned over, that writhed through my eyes: I
would rub my eyes and feel something click in my brain as
if it had fallen into place again. But I was still weak
from this ailment and tired from long journeys and longer
thoughts. I was filled with new dreads, especially here,
under the rain. Irresolution: it is wrong to deny it for
there is no denying its power.
There is something like death, being alone in a foreign
land. With determination grappling, the loneliness and
death-sense grip harder. So I felt that I was borrowing
from everything around me.
It is a custom for some of us to think and yet I turn
against that custom. It is better to live, simply as
simple people live. I wanted to live without the paper-
world, to shun its distortions, escape its death head,
the charnel house of yesterday.
As I stood on that tongue of land, I heard the slobber
of the sea: I heard old men whisper: I heard old
passions. My blood was young and yet I could not get
away. The porches of my ears wanted friendship, I, the
kind hand, the kinder mouth.
“If you were here there would be reason enough. Without
you, there is no more than walls and sky and food. To be
sure, I eat. To be sure, I move about. You understand
what I mean. I find that there is so much in life that
never gets said. When I am with you I am unable to say
it...old plaint. I try to convey with my presence—that is
help. You, too, have this desire, and have expressed it.
When we were in bed, mating, there was a beauty in that
union that sufficed...until tomorrow. Then, caught up in
time, I sensed the old longing, to share the unshareable,
to reach the unreachable. Here, in this cold room, I am
trying to make life a little more livable, for you, for
me.”
So I wrote her.
Stratford
YEARS AGO
At Oxford, it is pleasant to recall, I stopped at
Duvenant’s inn frequently, the rooms and meals much to my
taste. Madame Duvenant, dressing like someone from an
Inigo Jones’ masque, her rosy sex refreshing, greeted me
with a favorable eye. Veal, shoulder of mutton, rabbit,
green fish...gingerbread...strawberries...claret: she
knew my favorites, sharing my meals and bed. When I
arrived, tired by travel, she had someone look after me,
prepare my meal; then, we enjoyed each other’s company in
the dining room she kept for private use. A Londoner and
play-goer, she fixed her lusty eyes on me, hand on my
arm, and made me feel I had never been away. She asked no
promises, required no letter-writing, no payment. “It’s
late. Will, shall we go up to bed?” Why are there so few
generous women?
Henley Street
July 13, 1615
I’d like one more ferry trip across the Thames, in the
morning, the water dark, Sly at the oars, telling me
about the latest girl, of the girls he has ferried, girls
he wanted to love but could never love, old, old Sly.
“There’s one, Will, you just can’t beat. She’s about
this tall, tiny around the waist, and she makes you know,
before you know it, that she can be had for very little,
very sweetly done too, that’s the game of it...that’s the
game of her, that little one, Portia, they call her.
Portia, the one with grey eyes and small mouth. When she
stands up beside me in the boat to pay her fare, I groan.
It’s terrible being old, Will, when you can’t do it any
more. And I want to do it to her, to be young again. That
Portia, she comes mostly in the evenings, I guess you
know why. But she’s not always alone, but when she’s
alone, we talk. That she, she is little around the waist
but has melon breasts, the kind, you know how they are. I
will give you her address, if you want. Shillings, now
Will! But she’s not one you’ll forget, I warn ye. That
mouth of hers and them eyes of hers. Faggots for her,
that’s it, Will, faggots for men who see her...”
The boat shifts, Sly’s oars are cracked, his old face
crisped from the sunny crossings, the winds and fogs.
He’s been boatman for forty-odd years, he says. He has
worn out a dozen boats, which he builds himself, to make
them stout enough. Sun on his boat, the water dark...
I’d like to cross once more with him, though he’s been
dead a long time, cross with other boats around, small
boats and schooners, some with sails unfurled, seaward
bound.
St. Swithin’s Day
If I knew where I was going to die I wouldn’t go near
the place.
Stratford
July 20, 1615
Today, warm sun and silence were mine and pain
alleviated: I hoped for recovery, hoped to write again,
hoped that my memory might outlive death half a year; so
shall I progress, ant-wise, day by day: ants, as you
creep over the woodwork, stumble against the grain, think
of me and the words I summon: conviction me to another
Rosalind: the Touchstone will unblacken and reveal pure,
pure gold: alchemy of ruffians and angels:
Tongues I’ll hang on every tree
For the souls of friend and friend...