Robert Nye - The Late Mr Shakespeare

Wincot , let me also tell you, is the way that Mrs Anne Shakespeare used delightfully to say the name of the village her mother-in-law came from. I have retained that particular spelling in affectionate memory of the many happy hours I spent in her company while she divulged to me little or nothing concerning her late husband. The proper spelling of the place is Wilmcote. However you spell Mary's place of origin, as an Arden she might have been descended from the Ardens of Park Hall, a family mentioned in the Domesday Book. Mary Arden was certainly something of a minor heiress, her father having left her lands at Wincot, as well as money, so we may suppose that it was not just the miller's daughter's conversational shortcomings which put off Mr John Shakespeare from her marrying.

Speaking of the Domesday Book, and suchlike records, I have turned up a pretty pair of Shakespeares who managed to make their marks before our man. The first is one William Saksper, of Clopton, in Kiftesgate Hundred, Gloucestershire (about seven miles from Stratford), who in 1248 was hanged for robbery. At the other extreme, consider that Isabella Shakspere who was prioress of Wraxall Abbey at the start of the last century. There is no evidence whatsoever that either of these was related to our poet. Yet I must say I relish the fact of them.

The late Mr Shakespeare remarked more than once in my hearing that he held within himself a devil and an angel, and that his life was their warring together, and his work the resolution of that war. So it pleases me to picture a young abbess picking apples in his family tree, her skirts kilted high to show a plump leg perhaps, while a robber dangles executed from one of the branches. Of such confusions is the best poetry made.

Before we resume our story, permit me lastly to explain to you how I can write conversations which I did not overhear. (I anticipate your criticisms, madam.)

The truth is Mr Shakespeare lessoned me. Do you think I learnt nothing from all that playing in his plays? And had you supposed he listened to King Lear?

Chapter Six About the begetting of William Shakespeare

So Mr John Shakespeare married Miss Mary Arden. But just as Mary was nearly not William Shakespeare's mother, so John was nearly not his father, or thought he wasn't. How so? Listen and you'll find out.

It happened, you see, that John was a very jealous husband. He was so jealous that he couldn't bear another man to be so much as looking at the ground where Mary's shadow had passed. She had already borne her husband two daughters, though neither lived long after christening. John was still jealous. And he desired a son.

One night in the year before our poet's birth there was a great storm that raged across all England. It was unseasonably cold. Sleet blew in the wind. People lit fires and huddled in their houses. Standing at the window of the room over the shop in Henley Street, Mary calls to John to come and look out and see something else that's strange in this unnatural night. A fine coach has turned over on the road below, its axle broken, its horses run off, harness trailing.

Then there's loud knocking at their big front door.

John Shakespeare goes downstairs and opens it.

It's a tall, dark-haired man in a black cloak that's asking for shelter. John says he can give him food and a bed for the night.

The man is obviously of gentle blood. Some say it was Edward de Vere, the young Earl of Oxford. (I doubt this myself - the Earl was too young at the time.) Whoever, the man has great presence, and fills the room up with his charm. He wears his hair long, with ribbons tied in it. His sword swaps between his legs like a monkey's tail.

As this man sits there warming his long, thin hands by the fire and looking at the lady of the house, it comes into John Shakespeare's head that anyone glancing in at the mullioned window just now would think what a splendid married pair they make, Mary and the stranger, and himself no more than an interloper thrown up by the storm where he doesn't belong.

You have to understand that the Ardens had for a long time been somebodies. The Shakespeares were not nobodies, but they were still over-eager to make that known. As for the stranger, Lord Oxford or not he was certainly a Somebody with a capital S.

Now, as John Shakespeare rubs his temples with this line of thinking, the stranger leans back his head and yawns. He has an uncommonly pretty red mouth and a most artful style of yawning. The next moment, almost as if to answer him, Mary yawns too.

'It's a sign,' thinks John Shakespeare to himself. 'It's a secret sign between them that they want to go to bed. She must have known this rogue before I married her, when she was Mary Arden.'

He sits furiously in the chimney corner. He is still and passionate, nursing his grief.

Now if Mr John Shakespeare had met a former lover of his wife's on the road or in the tavern, he could have cut him dead or knocked him down. But this elegant fellow with the raven locks and pink mouth has come to him cunningly, in search of sanctuary from the storm, and is now a guest within his house. You can't cut guests, and neither can you throttle them.

They eat their venison pie, the three of them, with gravy, by the hissing fire, with little speech, and none of it from John. He sits sullen. He looks sunken in his skin.

When the stranger has disappeared upstairs with his candle (and out of this book), John Shakespeare goes to the old sea-chest and takes from it a hank of hempen rope. His wife he gathers by the wrist. 'Come,' he commands. And he leads her out into the dark.

Mary is frightened. Going out through the door she has thrown on her cloak, but it's small enough protection against the storm.

'What is it?' she cries. 'What is it you're wanting with me?'

'Love,' shouts mad John Shakespeare. 'I want love, and I want the simple truth.'

'But you have them both,' cries Mary. 'My dear, you have always had them.'

'And I mean to keep them,' promises her husband. 'I mean to keep you true, madam, which means not opening your legs for that old flame of yours who's up in the house.'

His wife holds up her hand in the wind and the rain. 'I swear to you,' she cries, 'by my own hope of heaven, I am innocent of this sin which you say is mine. I never saw that man before in my life!'

'Strumpet!' roars Mr John Shakespeare. 'If that's true, then weren't you the quick one to be making the signs of lust - smiling between your fingers, yawning when he yawned, and all the wicked rest of it.'

He's in a fury now, our Mr Shakespeare's father, the bold butcher and whittawer. His fingers burn as he fashions a noose in the end of the rough hempen rope. His wife cannot believe what her eyes are seeing. He drops that noose about her neck, and pulls.

John leads Mary through the dark towards the Forest of Arden.

The wind is dropping but it still blows hard enough. They are bent in their struggle to reach the ragged trees.

As they go, John and Mary Shakespeare, a noise of wild wings goes with them. It's a flock of small birds, fluttering against the ends of the storm, whirling above their heads where they bend into the wind.

And the moon rides out. There's a pool of moonlight now for them to move through, like people underwater, as they reach the first tree of the forest. John Shakespeare throws his rope over the lowest bough.

Up goes the rope, and it crosses the branch, but it does not lodge there.

The birds are there first, you see, hopping and dancing, and the rope slides when it hits their beating wings, and it snakes away, and it falls back to his hand.

John Shakespeare curses. Then he tries again.

Up goes the rope, the birds' wings beat once more, down falls the rope without purchase.