Read Online The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jude Morgan
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her name is Anne. She acknowledged his bow. That smile. It touched like the waking from a nightmare – the realisation of the beauty of reality, which never lasted as long as it should. Anne.
On the stage the clown burst out, cutting a flaccid caper: Jack Towne was right. But the audience rippled and quieted and gathered its attention. Anne among them: her long, tight-sleeved arm gathered the boy in front of her as they faced the stage. Two hand breadth of white neck between collar and coif-netted hair – like caged honey – presented itself to Will’s fidgeting eye. But what then? This: everything about her was beautiful. It made that lazy, spoiled word do its work at last, and he had known that when he had stood boyish before her at Hewlands Farm, but what then? It was nothing to do with him. Will glanced around. Townsfolk standing at ease, country folk craning, still smutted with the dust of their journey. Children perching on shoulders, clapping uncertainly. The clown, teetering on the edge of the stage, was yelling back at a fist-shaking woman. ‘You want to cuff me, did you say, sweetling? Cuff me? Spell it backwards, that’s what you truly want.’ He mimed it with fat thrustings, feeling himself through his parti-coloured breeches.
That smile. It didn’t last as long as it should. It seemed to Will that to coax and tend that smile, to bring it into the world, would be something worth.
The clown waddled off, the play began. ‘ The Right Tragical History of Darius King of Persia, as it has been acted before Her Majesty the Queen…’ The King hurried to the edge of the stage to tell them urgently of the fate that hung over him. It was William Knell yet not so: all king now, no player.
The rafters of the Guildhall became the arches of Babylon. A shift, a change. You couldn’t be aware of it any more than you could pinpoint the moment when you fell asleep. Joan threw herself into it, Will saw with pleasure, gasping at every cruelty, hands flying to her cheeks in pity: as if everything were really happening in a room that she happened to be in. As it should be.
But for the first time Will’s attention was split. He kept watching Anne’s face, almost as if it were part of the play. Judging the tragedy by the lights and shades it drew on that face. It seemed to him that other faces were like blank leaves compared to hers, where a whole busy page of text invited the eye to read.
Meanwhile two vast young women at her side, sharing a cider-jug that they passed to each other like an infant to be nursed, grew larger with drink and self-love and began crowding her out. They wanted to be reproved, so they could enjoy a quarrel or shouting-match. But Anne simply coiled her stepbrother closer and took up less room. He saw not shyness, not absence of will, but a pure refusal of contention: so pure it stretched out for ever, an infinite quiet denial of the stupid and ugly. He moved.
‘Mistress, come this side of me, there’s more room.’
He made the space, and preserved it with taut back and stiff elbows. Her lips moved, perhaps thanks. He preferred none. As the play neared its catastrophe, he observed her – as Joan was – shifting her weight from one foot to the other: the boy was sitting on the ground at her feet. A play was a long time standing unless you were, like him, insane about it.
‘Will! What are you doing?’
‘Offering comfort,’ he said to Joan, on his knees. He had sometimes seen men do this for their womenfolk at the play, as two hours turned into three. Young men often propped each other up back to back. ‘Lean on me. Do it, please.’ He did not quite turn his head. ‘Mistress Hathaway – if you will.’
Joan, giggling, leaned her weight on his shoulder at once. In Anne’s short hesitation he found time for a surmise that he had mortally, everlastingly, offended her; and to wonder what that meant to him. When she laid her hand on his shoulder everything else, thought, emotion, gave
On the stage the clown burst out, cutting a flaccid caper: Jack Towne was right. But the audience rippled and quieted and gathered its attention. Anne among them: her long, tight-sleeved arm gathered the boy in front of her as they faced the stage. Two hand breadth of white neck between collar and coif-netted hair – like caged honey – presented itself to Will’s fidgeting eye. But what then? This: everything about her was beautiful. It made that lazy, spoiled word do its work at last, and he had known that when he had stood boyish before her at Hewlands Farm, but what then? It was nothing to do with him. Will glanced around. Townsfolk standing at ease, country folk craning, still smutted with the dust of their journey. Children perching on shoulders, clapping uncertainly. The clown, teetering on the edge of the stage, was yelling back at a fist-shaking woman. ‘You want to cuff me, did you say, sweetling? Cuff me? Spell it backwards, that’s what you truly want.’ He mimed it with fat thrustings, feeling himself through his parti-coloured breeches.
That smile. It didn’t last as long as it should. It seemed to Will that to coax and tend that smile, to bring it into the world, would be something worth.
The clown waddled off, the play began. ‘ The Right Tragical History of Darius King of Persia, as it has been acted before Her Majesty the Queen…’ The King hurried to the edge of the stage to tell them urgently of the fate that hung over him. It was William Knell yet not so: all king now, no player.
The rafters of the Guildhall became the arches of Babylon. A shift, a change. You couldn’t be aware of it any more than you could pinpoint the moment when you fell asleep. Joan threw herself into it, Will saw with pleasure, gasping at every cruelty, hands flying to her cheeks in pity: as if everything were really happening in a room that she happened to be in. As it should be.
But for the first time Will’s attention was split. He kept watching Anne’s face, almost as if it were part of the play. Judging the tragedy by the lights and shades it drew on that face. It seemed to him that other faces were like blank leaves compared to hers, where a whole busy page of text invited the eye to read.
Meanwhile two vast young women at her side, sharing a cider-jug that they passed to each other like an infant to be nursed, grew larger with drink and self-love and began crowding her out. They wanted to be reproved, so they could enjoy a quarrel or shouting-match. But Anne simply coiled her stepbrother closer and took up less room. He saw not shyness, not absence of will, but a pure refusal of contention: so pure it stretched out for ever, an infinite quiet denial of the stupid and ugly. He moved.
‘Mistress, come this side of me, there’s more room.’
He made the space, and preserved it with taut back and stiff elbows. Her lips moved, perhaps thanks. He preferred none. As the play neared its catastrophe, he observed her – as Joan was – shifting her weight from one foot to the other: the boy was sitting on the ground at her feet. A play was a long time standing unless you were, like him, insane about it.
‘Will! What are you doing?’
‘Offering comfort,’ he said to Joan, on his knees. He had sometimes seen men do this for their womenfolk at the play, as two hours turned into three. Young men often propped each other up back to back. ‘Lean on me. Do it, please.’ He did not quite turn his head. ‘Mistress Hathaway – if you will.’
Joan, giggling, leaned her weight on his shoulder at once. In Anne’s short hesitation he found time for a surmise that he had mortally, everlastingly, offended her; and to wonder what that meant to him. When she laid her hand on his shoulder everything else, thought, emotion, gave
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