And after that, things went worse in the Shakespeare household. All of
John Shakespeare's ventures were proving failures. Debt pressed on every
side. There began talk again of a mortgage on the Asbies estate, and
this time none could say nay.
Dad went about with his head sunk on his breast, and at home sat staring
in moody silence.
[Illustration: "Dad ... sat staring in moody silence"]
"Don't, Mary, don't," he would say to Mother, putting her hand on his
shoulder. "Take the children away. Instead of the name their father
would have left them, 'John Shakespeare, Gentleman,' they are to read
it--what?"
"John, John," said Mother, "is there no more then in it all--our love,
our lives--than pride?"
Pride! Will Shakespeare by now knew what it meant, and his heart went
out to his father. He had felt the sting of this thing himself. It had
been the year before. Dad had taken him behind him on his horse to
Kenilworth, to see the masks and fireworks given by the Earl of
Leicester in the Queen's honor. The gay London people come down with the
court had sat in stands and galleries to witness the spectacle of the
water pageant, breathing their perfumed breath down upon the country
people crowding the ground below. And Will Shakespeare among these, at
sight of the great Queen, had cheered with a lusty young throat and
thrown his cap up with the rest. Will Shakespeare was the once chief
bailiff's son. He was the son of Mary Arden of the Asbies. Though he
never had thought about it one way or another, he had always known
himself as good as the best.
And so at Kenilworth, standing with the crowd and looking up at the
jeweled folk in fine array casting their jokes and gibes down at the
trammel, he had laughed, too, as honest as any. But when the time came
for the water pageant, Dad had given him a lift up and a boost to the
branches of a tree. And he had heard what she said, the lady upon whom
he had from the first fixed his young gaze, the dark lady, with the
jewels in her dusky hair, breathing lure and beauty and glamour. As he
straddled the limb of his high perch that brought him so near her, he
heard her cry out, her head thrown backward on her proud young throat:
"Ah, the little beast, bringing the breath of the rabble up to our
nostrils."
And it was something like to what burned in young Will Shakespeare's
soul then that Dad was feeling now. Will, big boy that he was, laid a
hand on Dad's hand. Father looked up; their eyes met.
Dad threw an arm about his shoulder and drew him close--father and son.
Something passed from the older to the younger. The boy squared his
shoulders. The man in Will Shakespeare was born.
How best could he help Dad? So the lad pondered, meanwhile digging the
sense piecemeal out of his _Ovid_ for the morrow's lesson.
"_It is the mind that makes the man, and our
strength--measure--vigor_"--any one of the three words would do--"_our
measure is in our immortal souls_."
Why--why is there truth in books? Had Ovid lived and been a man, a man
who knew and fought it out himself?
Will Shakespeare caught sight of a great and glorious kingdom he had not
visioned before. The schoolmaster hitherto had talked in riddles.