in the oriel, and talked and talked, and the talking of
him brought out the talking in me, and there was no
bothersome time: I suppose we ate by candlelight; I
suppose we went to bed, but our talking was not bedded,
and I hear it now in the sound of his retreating horses:
I hear hope retreating, hoof on cobble, hoof on brain:
for he will not come again. Or should I ask him, being
thought-sick?
Twelfth Day
In the fall I went across the fields to the poplar
trees under which Ann and I used to make love; I sat in
the sun and let it drench me. The trees were nobler
though limbs had fallen off; one tree was rotted at the
top; another...but no matter.
I sat and remembered how it was before our twins were
born, sat with elbows on my knees, gaping. I tried to see
that pair of lovers loving on the grass. That love had
never happened. No. The thing that was real was my gaping
loneliness...
I walked home and took up a packet of her letters; this
one was lying on top:
Dear Red,
I am glad that people like your play, that
Romeo and Juliet play. That was the one we
saw at the Globe, I think. The Capulets
frightened me much. What is the name of your
new play that you are writing at? I can’t
remember. Is it the Merchant play?
You should write a play about your papa and
his glove-making. The twins are sick again.
Hamnet is the worst, sick at night, and all
that. Judith has a flushed face and she
coughs and coughs, and I keep her in bed.
Write soon.
Love,
Ann
I try to forget the casualness and say it belongs to a
buried past and then I say to myself, if this is dead
then all life is equally dead, including myself.
I opened another letter and a dried flower fell out of
the yellowed paper. I had to hold the sheet to the window
before I could read it, meantime trying to harden myself,
half remembering. My wits are diseased, I thought.
Dear Red,
So you have made twenty-two pounds at the
theatre from all the good attendance. That
will help take care of the clothes we need,
and winter right against us. What is this
play they are playing at the Globe, the
Othella thing? I have heard Mama talk about a
woman like that—some foreign woman. Is
Othella your leading person? Is she pretty?
Is it true you fought a duel? That will not
help you get ahead in London. You said that
people talk.
You should see Hamnet. How well he does
with his school work, better than anyone at
school, I hear. He takes after you, his
master tells me.
Our bedroom window was broken in the storm
last week, but Tom has put in new glass, and
leaded and puttied it nicely. It was the
window by the good chair.
Love,
Ann
Like roses, red roses on a stalk, or was it, coral is
far more red than her lips’ red...love is my sin...my
love is longing still!
I put away her letters and closed the shutters and lit
the candles and the rush lamp, and, settling in my chair,
I read of another past, to palliate myself, Virgil’s.
Stratford
I have been thinking of Merlin and his magic ways, the
thrall of his immense dabbling: this island should have
been named Clas Myrddin: Merlin’s Enclosure. Perhaps
Gawain and Lancelot would have enclosed us and the grail
might not have become the great illusion among illusions.
I am reading Spenser’s Amoretti now: now I read what
Raleigh read in prison; the coincidence is appropriate
enough. There are not too many coincidences in life but
there are many kinds of prisons. Perhaps the worst is the
prison imprisoning the prisoner against his will; the
other prison, self-germinated, self-maintained, can be as
ascetic, as impassioned in its tortures, and yet it has
its rush lamp for the outcast state:
Pour soul, the center of my sinful earth,
Thrall to these rebel powers that thee array.
Why dost thou pine...such a mistaken canister
Of words that I would not put them down once
more.
January 15, 1616
Stratford—Henley Street
Viola bows rasped and recorders piped and rain hit the
door and windows at Hall’s, the quartet playing before
his fireplace, the men sitting with their backs to the
blaze, instruments fired.
“More ale?”
“How about canary?”
“Cake, eh, Will?”
Cakes and rain perpetually, the strings for a throat,
garroting the night...the rain, it raineth every night.
Admit no impediments, listen:
Never say that I was false of heart...the poison left
her stunned, as if beneath an avalanche of men. Mad
slanderers, no, Ann deserved the slander but what could
slander accomplish? Like incessant rain, or that repeated
low note on the fiddle, what good? A flooding melancholy,
and Ann unchanged.
Love was my sin but now my sin is breathing. And
tonight it is a multiple sin for I am listening, hoping
these instruments and players have a message for my soul.
The shattered rain on windows is everyman’s storm, the
gutter thief, the pimp, the king—all of us hunkered under
pain.
The good Dr. Hall bends over me:
“Feeling better tonight, Will? I hope so.”
I chuckle and say I am.
Put on your cloak and hurry, Hall. There’s someone
sicker than I who needs you. Eat a crocodile. I’ll be
going home soon. I should be there now, going over my
accounts.
Music has unstopped my ears but no grapple of sound
holds tonight, not with the scrofula of rain, the wink of
time on cavernous faces beefed by the fire.
See that wizened face, that’s Hall, tall and thin, and
next to him my frump, belly puddinged, hair screwed at
angles, lines and then more lines lining the half-open
mouth, the missing teeth... Ann, dear Ann, was it to you
I wrote the sonnet beginning? Ah, no, the errors snare
us, bare us to the quick of lime. The arithmetic of
memory multiplies fantasy.
Poetry, succor me in this hour of need, help me as you
have: I have given you my life; now, you must lend
argument to my folly. Dry the rain on my skull! Be youth:
be Ellen, outcast, incast, what is your substance,
whereof you are made, that millions of strange shadows on
you tend? Is this my memory? Or do the lines remember me?
The notes of the quartet confuse the shadows, the
fire’s instrument, the tankards on the table, one for
you, Marlowe...
I am to wait, though waiting be as hell—
And we walked home together through the rain, she who
has never met Touchstone or Polonius or Othello...
And so to a cold bed.
–S–
On some of Dr. Hall’s visits, he urged me to
discontinue my journal, wanting me to rest. I told him
that the language I used was hardly playwriting,
requiring the barest effort on my part. I explained that
I need something. He huffed and rumbled, with
professional sincerity, like the good neighbor he is, and
I understand now that my resurrected fears may, like a
Greek chorus, pervade and annul. But what do they pervade
and annul, this corner, precharnel, prepaid house in
Hell? Am I to talk with trees? Am I to forget manhood? Am
I to cheer old age? Infirmity? Hall is such a knotted
creature I wonder my Susanna married him: such a sultry
woman for such a cadaver! His contorted body, pinched
here, pinched there, sewed here, unsewed there, his
starvation face, with zealot eyes in bald skull, leaves
me lacking in confidence; yet, I listen and he prescribes
and we talk and play chess. I am his medical pawn,
gulping doses for him, bleeding for him: is the final
move his or mine?
Home
January 18, 1616
Dr. Hall, when you found your woman in my Susanna, you
found bed-woman, kitchen wench and apothecary girl. Your
shop, shelved, bottled, ointmented, reeks of balm and
poison. Long before you married my Susanna, I got to know
that smell when I came to you to help me battle pain. You
were never too ill or busy to help me check pain’s
unkindness.
But underneath your skin you are another Timon, another
hater of mankind, concocting health to make more health
to make more pain to make money. Pestel in hand, you
measure alleviants, the richer your patient, the cleverer
your compound. How you worry on behalf of the young
countess. How you thumb your books for the Lord
Chamberlain’s gout.
Drum bottles—
Beat shelves—
Smash glass—
See, his shingle in the wind, JOHN HALL – PHYSICIAN,
weeps rain, and I sit waiting, with vapors, losses,
pangs, venoms in my blood, anticipating prescriptions—or
epitaph.
His face grimaces his thanks, his hand extended, his
pox is to “rob one another. There’s more gold! Cut
throats...all that you meet are thieves!” All this is
patiently and subtly withheld by the good doctor since
frightening the patient frightens money. Only dear
friends discover the true Timon...
Oh, God, how pain strangles me today! It paves my
skull! I am on fire! Such useless misery! Pain is the
greatest cheat. Pain, your friendship is much too cov-
etous! Pain—you old prostitute—swallow your own hemlock
for a change!
Henley Street, Stratford
January 20
I am too hard on friend Hall!
I’ve spent hours there, puttering, talking, laughing,
entertained by his curious, Indian cow’s tail, stones cut
from men’s bladders, uterine balls of hair, paw of a
bear, and skeleton of a pigmy.
This year, he is publishing a treatise on the Wounds of
the Abdomen. He’s as clever with his scalpel as his
concoctions of wormwood, rosarum and menthol. Around
Stratford, he is best known for his treatment of dropsy.
Stratford
January 23, 1616
Logs burn in my fireplace and I have a book on my lap:
I have a kingdom: a crown: crackling of wood becomes
voices, stuff of dreams, friends, stages, plays,
quarrels, hopes, changes, beginnings, endings, the pen
scratching paper, pigeons chuckling, laughter, death,
Hamnet’s face, father’s, the cloak, the whisper, the
plague, the rain, fog, losses, waves against rocks: a log
totters and the upended section spurts into a
pennant...shake-scene!
I have no picture—no drawing—to help me remember
Hamnet. Inago Jones could have done one. I should tear
apart pieces of paper and fold them until they become his
face, or, with scissors, cut out his silhouette. Damn the
weak mind that makes such simple wishes impossible!
There was no artist in Stratford. Stratford had no
skills to offer except death’s skill...death for all of
us along with that triumvirate, love, marriage, children;
with fornication for pallbearer, adultery for sexton,
rape for choirmaster...
How weary and stale and flat are the uses of this
world. Bring hebenon for O...
Youth’s falcon on his glove, Hamnet stands with his
friends around him, most of them young, their well-
groomed horses held by pages.
On the distant shore of a lake, a castle breaks through
a grove of beech.
Hamnet is laughing at his unhooded bird.
“Have you unseeled him?” someone asks.
“He can fly,” Hamnet says. “Now.”
“See...he’s looking for game!”
“Hamnet, is it true your father writes plays for our
Queen? London plays?”
“You should see his Macbeth! That’s a play for you!
Duel and all! We’ll go to London and see one of his
plays. There’s one at the Palace soon.”
How I would like to rearrange life, bring happiness,
bestow wealth, fix love, make well, foil crime, reverse
ill luck. But only the stage can accomplish miracles and
there custom stales the plot and disharmonies garble
intention.
But, as evening galls, and candles go on, I hear
Hamnet’s footsteps...he wants new gloves, new hood, new
leash...
What’s past is prologue:
At Blackfriars, the chandeliers of candles are hugely
lit and light streams upon Alleyn, who is speaking on
stage; the boards are clean and shine; all actors are in
their places; the seats are almost filled; I see a woman,
in dark green velvet; accompanied by her maid, she takes
a seat; rows of faces beseech the stage: oh kingdom,
place of tempest and calm, engulf us again!
Henley Street
Stratford
February 1
Suum—nun—nonny, the wind said, as my father and I
worked in his glover’s shop, quiet hours, among the many
kinds of leather, sheepskin, goat, kid, lamb, pigskin,
coltskin, doeskin, buckskin. In his tiers of drawers were
the pontifical gloves, liturgical gloves, gloves for
dignitaries, ladies’ gloves, wedding gloves...
A bird sang in its cage by the door.
Between the opening and closing of the shop we talked
pleasantly or waited on customers with consideration:
We talked of Rocco Bonetti, the great London fencing
master, and his fencing school; we talked of the snail
and how it shrinks in its house when hit, or sits in the
shade of its shell; we chatted about spears and helmets
and mottos like Non Sanz Droict, his favorite; we talked
of great castles, like Kenilworth, and their ghosts; we
talked of kings and how to catch larks with a mirror and
scraps of red cloth...the buzz of our talk was a good
buzz.
So, another memory!
Candlemas
I wrote The Tempest at Stratford, the only play I wrote
at home. For the first time I had leisure to write, in my
garden, the summer warm: this was an island for an
island: time faded: I remembered scenari I had seen at
the commedia dell’arte: I remembered the wreck of the Sea
Adventure in Bermuda: a drunk sailor stopped me and
described that grievous storm, described the bewitched
island, and I began:
On ship at sea:
Captain:
Boatswain!
Boatswain:
Here, Master, what cheer?
Captain:
Good fellow, talk to the sailors,
warn them, fall to it quickly or
we’ll run aground!
Enter sailors:
Boatswain:
Quickly, my fellows! Take in the
topsail speedily! That’s the
captain’s warning whistle!
Then the shipwreck followed.
It was pleasant to invent without pressure: I wanted a
lively yet serene play, with a mixture of philosophy,
humor and fantasy: I wanted a play to fit the new mode,
free of symbolism.
I walked about my garden and my peace trees, and there,
over there was Caliban, a savage slave; I took another
turn, and there was Ariel; I heard the wind blow hollowly
across an uninhabited island...
“Safely in harbor is the king’s ship; in the deep nook
where once you called me at midnight... Go, make yourself
a nymph of the sea... Where should this music be? In the
air, or the earth? Delicate Ariel, sea nymphs ring the
knell...in the dark backward and abysm of time...”
Discs of spinning yellow, pink, lavender:
A hundred Kemps are jigging,
each in yellow clown suit,
grinning, clowning, enroute to the Globe.
Kemp jigs onto the stage:
Applause.
Home
S
o it went...
As I left the Globe, near the end of a play, I found
Will Kemp, slumped on the steps, by the street, head on
his arms, sobbing: he would never clown for us again: he
said he was too old, that he embarrassed us, that times
had changed: as I stood beside him, he glanced away.
I had watched him a hundred times and thought him
better than Summers, or any clown: Kemp was legend, for
jig and bawdy tale, for the laugh at the end of the play.
Londoners flocked to see him—had flocked to see him for
years.
His make-up streaked by the rain, his yellow suit
soaked, he tottered to his feet, as if drunk. Last summer
he had danced his way across country, from place to
place, enthusiastically received by villagers and
townsmen—carried aloft on their shoulders.
His wrinkled face was drunken-lined, shining in the
rain. He yanked his hat lower: was he remembering his
fustian scenes, hard-drinking, quarrelling? He was famous
for his winnings at primero—stubby, rock-muscled, little,
knotted—he wavered, seemed about to collapse.
The play was over and the theatre crowd vomited out and
milled around Kemp, encircled him, caught him up, hoisted
him and bore him, through the streets, howling, cheering:
KEMP...KEMP...KEMP!
Home
A number of years before we dismissed Kemp at the
Globe, I visited him at his Thames River home—a home in
the Sir Walter style. Kemp’s carriage brought me. I
strolled about his extensive garden for a few luxurious
moments, viewing the river below, thinking how well it
paid to invest in land and play primero. His doormen
showed me in, for I had been invited to dinner.
Mrs. Kemp, dressed in pale green, came toward me, to
greet me, a charming young woman: like a clap of thunder,
Kemp came at her, caned her, lashed her with fierce
blows, and dragged her to her room. I didn’t wait for an
explanation of his violence...
I do my best on the pot and think of my sex and think
I’ll be rotting soon, and I hear pegs moving in the
beams, and I hear old time and new time—outside the
church bells strike. Outside of what?
Henley Street
Stratford
February 8, 1616
Why do I write?
All day Ann has sat by the windows, embroidering, soak-
ing sun, her rheumatic fingers paining her, her silence
and disdain evident.
Her stooped shoulders anger me because they remind me
of my age, and I rant at time’s disdain and irreparable
devastations: a plague on time’s house, a plague on mine—
sickly wife and sickly husband.
Egypt—it is well you aren’t here, to be contorted,
cheated, frailed or paunched. To nourish an illusion is
hard and grows harder through the years. The only wisdom
is the quiet heart, born of the smile of heaven, seeking
nature, not the wild sea of conscience.
But that is for the wise! Today, there is no Orpheus.
The trees are not our sanctuary. The seas don’t hang
their heads; I hang mine. Where’s the lute, the player? I
travel round and round the dial, to Ellen and the cloak,
the fog and loneliest of men. Time should cure all, they
say. But time—as I see time—does not oblige.
My last will...my last walk...my last play. I never
thought of a last play. Henry VIII was to have another
and yet another...creeping on but creeping to be
sure...other sonnets...other songs...to sleep, to die, to
sleep...
O shit on death.
Home
February 10, ’16
I used to wake with anticipation. I wake these mornings
and know that I may not wake in another twenty days. When
I lie down to sleep I think I may fall asleep and from
that sleep never wake. I consider the worried faces about
me and realize they will not have to endure me for long.
Jonson visits me and I think this is his last visit.
Cheat, your door, as it swings open, opens onto a cave;
no shepherd’s note signals to watery
star...cuckold...bastard...my tale will end and my small
cubicle will be filled. Have I put down man’s spirit with
enough spirit? Beauteous youth, have I recorded you? I
never wanted to write love’s epitaph... Antony was my
tongue in praise.
I am certain that love is the best, love that is
closest to beauty and the kindest of affections.
Sensation surpasses thought. Imagination is well enough
but it is not love. Between earth and heaven, imagination
compares with no warm arms and legs.
Feb. 11, ’16
Stunned by poverty—how hard it was to write during
those early years. Belly gnawing, I kept at it: I lay
down, I got up, sat at the big table. Storms hunkered
over the roof tops, the sun licked at the roofs, snow
bundled them, and I was cold, cold. Smoke puffed from
chimneys, bent in the icy mornings like hearse plumes.
Chimneys—I never wanted to count them; broken, dying
chimneys, strewed the city below me. One brick stack
leaned far over, yet belched smoke.
Pimps lived on one side of me, prostitutes on the
other; I could not move without paying my rent. My place
was never warm: my hands cracked because of the cold. I
kept my legs wound in rags, coughing.
Because of pleurisy I had to sell all of my books: Mary
sold them for me, one by one, maybe two or three at a
time. How old was Mary? Twenty? I was about twenty-five.
It would take another twenty-five years to dim her
memory: the stalk of her body, her restless, weightless
feet. She bent a little to the left, as if injured, the
arms also restless, the eyes inward. Did she ever laugh?
Her smile always seemed something pushed into being, only
a little jolt got it there.
She sold my books and bought my food and fed me, the
hell of pleurisy riding me: tears in my eyes I attempted
to eat: tears of many kinds crushed me. The roofs, the
cold, the sorrow, how they come back to me! The anguish
in my side went on for weeks but Mary never failed or
complained: she fucked men at night and succored me
during the day: sometimes she slept on the floor beside
my bed or lay across the foot of the bed, a blanket
around her. Her black hair might unpin itself and lie
about her.
“Let’s keep a bird, when it’s Spring,” I suggested.
“How can you feed it, w-w-w-without money?” she asked.
“My father is sending money.”
“When? Soon?”
“Has someone written to him? You must see to it, Mary.
Make someone write.”
“I think s-s-s-so. I’ll try again, ton-n-n-night.”
I managed to eat more when the money came and Mary ate
well: I ate for those who were poor, I ate for my father,
for the starving waifs, for the sick, those in prison,
fighting in wars. I ate because it would soon be Spring.
I ate because I must write.
Wrens built a nest above my window. Day after day, they
fluttered in and out; day after day it got warmer; I was
able to take care of myself; Mary and I were planning to
picnic beside the river; she never came; I waited and
waited; I asked those who knew her; no one had seen her.
I asked for her many times. There was absolutely no
trace of her. She simply disappeared. Some criminal? Some
man? Death? I never knew.
Ave Maria!
Home
Over the years I have read Ellen’s letters, hearing
them almost. Those lines of hers, when I was dismal and
lonely, shook off the curse of disillusionment. Even now,
after these years, lines come to me:
Surely the greatness of a play lies in its
mystery: we are taken inside a private world
that is tragic or amusing or sentimental;
things that are a part of this world must be
judiciously hinted at.
Your plays take life apart because your
poetry is so profound. It’s the finest poetry
I know. Knowing you gives your work added
profundity...
The theatre gives man breadth: it’s his
second life. A country without a theatre is a
poor, barren country.
Spring is the best part of the year...we
decided: our lochs take on a greenness that
must originate in deep, moss-covered rock. I
think that water has a definite temperament,
a personality, if you like... I like to walk
when the sting of spray mingles with fog and
underfoot, like a blanket, are the tiny
flowers... I want you...
My brother is fond of you. He laughs and
asks what is it that makes me take to that
man? You must come back to Scotland, Will.
Write me seriously about a possible visit...
Love finds a way...
I wish you could be here, the castle is so
beautiful, springtime is so evident, so
unlike Scotland, full of gay things, white
lilies and pansies along the paths, tulips
and agnus-castus, roses around our statues
and ramblers on the arbors. Only the biggest
roses are in full flower: you should see the
yellow ones. You know, I think yellow is my
favorite color, and it’s because the sun is
yellow, for what would this earth of ours be
without the sun? We wouldn’t even have love,
would we? And I wouldn’t even be able to
dream of your kisses and your arms about me.
And that’s what the sun is for, for dreaming,
springtime dreaming...and I wish for you, to
walk with me, and love me. I will pick a
pansy and wear it for you. I will pick a rose
and put it in my room, for you. Will, when
can we see each other? Can’t you come
here?...
Her letters were like that...
Stratford
February – 1616
Queen Elizabeth came on our stage at the Palace as I
played the role of king, the afternoon stainglass
bangling her jewels. I was shocked at seeing her galled
face and yet had the guts to continue my lines, adding
improvisations as well, to force her to wait. While she
waited, she dropped her glove (playing her part), and as
I arranged my robe, talking as I stood there, I picked up
her glove and slowly faced the audience and said:
“Yet we stoop to pick up our Cousin’s glove.”
How that amused her. “Such propriety!” she said.
“Such folly,” I wanted to say.
This is high class prostitution commonly called “purse
penury,” our coldest-oldest art. The art is especially
susceptible to jewels and the brazenness of crowns. Men
have been hung for their inability to kowtow, with
poverty in the wings, snivelling or prancing jubilantly.
KING JAMES—
Now that you are our new friend, sceptering this
Brittic island with careful gaze, ours is the homage! We
see that your awareness is aware of considerations, a
King James version of Sleeves and Ruff duly pressed. You
surely press promises without guilt for gilt. Through
narrow lozenged glass the sun administers your
ceremonials.
Oh, king, your uniqueness Towers over us: you are our
stiller of war, our buffer of hate, our unbiased
protestant.
You rise—and London rises.
You walk—and London walks, for we are your guardians.