The Late Mr Shakespeare (2 page)

The first part I ever played for Mr Shakespeare on the London stage was that of young Prince Arthur in his play of
The Life and Death of King John
. That’s why he asked me to say
I am afraid, and yet I’ll venture it
. It is what that poor boy says before he kills himself by jumping from the battlements of the castle where he is confined.

When I jumped down off the red-brick wall and into the back yard of the Cock Tavern, Cambridge, Mr Shakespeare stopped eating his oysters and he asked me my name and where I lived and who my father was. So I told him of the cot beneath the thatch and my fatherless fate.

As I spoke to him of fathers, I saw tears run down his cheeks. I thought it was rain.

‘O my poor Hamlet,’ Mr Shakespeare said.

Like a fool, I repeated the four words.

Mr Shakespeare flushed. His face was all at once a crimson rose. He blinked at me in anger through his tears.
I think he thought that I was mocking him. Then he must have realised that I’d mistaken what he said for another speech to try. He pinched his nose between the thumb and the first finger of his left hand, shaking his head a moment as he did so. When he looked at me again his eyes were clear.

‘Do you have perfect pitch?’ Mr Shakespeare asked me.

I told him that I had. (It was a lie.)

Then Mr Shakespeare took my hand, unsmiling, and he promised me that if I chose to come with him to London and join his company he could make me a player like himself.

My heart thumped in my breast. I felt as if I had suddenly grown taller by an inch.

Well now, my dears, it happens that this part of Prince Arthur might contain the key as to why Mr Shakespeare first noticed me and thought to give me employment as a player.

I think perhaps that I put him in mind of his son.

I was wearing, do you see, a pair of lugged boots. Those boots were all the rage that year of our first meeting. They were boots of soft leather, hanging loose about the leg, turned down and fringed. I think they called them lugged because the fringes looked like ears.

Be that as it may. I learnt later that young Hamlet Shakespeare begged for a pair of these boots to wear as he lay dying. He was eleven years old. It was Mrs Shakespeare herself who told me that she got them for Hamlet to wear as he tossed on his death-bed. He never so much as walked in them anywhere.

So it might be that my lugged boots were what caught Mr Shakespeare’s eye.

But then (you ask me), what has this to do with that other boy Arthur in
King John?

Permit me to tell you.

Little Hamlet died not long before I first met Mr Shakespeare. I think that Mr Shakespeare was still writing
King John
in his head that day in Cambridge, and that in any case he was thinking of his own son when he has Queen Constance in Act III Scene 4 lament the fate of her son Arthur in these lines that follow:

Of course, I could be wrong. My linking of the writing of this speech with what Mr Shakespeare may possibly have felt about the loss of his own (and only) son might deny the man’s imagination or at the least insult it. Or it could be that I mistake or misconstrue the way the mind of a poet works upon the things that happen in the poet’s life.

I confess that I never dared to question Mr Shakespeare directly in the matter. But I remember a night at the Mermaid when having recited those tender lines which he gave to Queen Constance, I expounded my theory and quizzed his fellow playwrights as to what they thought.

Mr Beaumont said I was right, and wiped away a tear.

Mr Fletcher said I was wrong, and that my supposition
accused Mr Shakespeare of a want of heart, or a want of imagination, or of both wants together, and only went to prove my mediocrity.

Mr Ben Jonson said nothing, but belched and hurled a flagon at my head.

It was an empty flagon, naturally.

Ladies and gentlemen, Beroaldus (who was a wise doctor) will have drunkards, afternoon-men, and such as more than ordinarily delight in drink, to be mad. I am of his opinion from my own experience. They are more than mad, much worse than mad.

Speaking of which, before we quitted Cambridge finally Mr Shakespeare saw fit to try to teach me the joys of tobacco. He was not one of those who suppose that plant divine in its origin or its powers. But he liked his white clay pipe. He gave me sweetmeats also, and called me his doxy. It was not for such things that I loved his company.

As to why Mr Shakespeare liked mine, if he did, who now can rightly say?

I suggest only that the least that can be supposed – leaving lugged boots and young Hamlet out of it – is that the great man was pleased when he found that rainy afternoon that I said his lines plainly and true even when perched upon a red-brick wall. And perhaps it pleased him further when he discovered that I had some rudimental feeling for the shape of English verse. The Sisters Muchmore had taught me rhythm on the arse with their striped tawse.

For whatever reason, or none, Mr WS took me along with him like a prize bull-calf when he went back to London to rejoin his company of actors.

They were called the Lord Chamberlain’s Servants
*
and they played at that time at the playhouse called the Curtain, in Shoreditch. Our master was Mr James Burbage, a stubborn old man with an anchor on his thigh, who died of a surfeit of lampreys the Easter after I made my first entrance.

I wore my lugged boots and I made great strides.

I was thirteen years old in that long-ago summer when I first met Mr Shakespeare and made my entrance on the London stage. I am eighty-one now, or maybe eighty-two, or eighty-three. I can't remember, and it does not matter. Besides, I may not be so old at all. I may be a thirteen-year-old boy wearing an eighty-three-year-old mask. That's how I feel sometimes. You think about it. How old would you be if you didn't know your age?

Here I am, at all events, a little wearish monkey in a red cotton nightcap.

The last time I looked in a looking-glass what did I see?

I saw a wretched elf with hollow eyes and cracked rawbone cheeks. I saw a pantaloon with a blubber-lipped mouth. I saw a sickly visage, and a shrivelled neck like a chicken's.

Sometimes I wear a false beard, but not today. One does not put on a false beard to write the Life of William
Shakespeare. I have pointy ears, though, and I wear long pointed slippers that curl up at the toes. My belly bulges from the stomach down. Once I could pull it in like everybody else, but not any more. I can only see my sex by bending over. It must be a good twelvemonth since I bothered.

If I still had a mirror what would I see in it? A white worm, that's what.

But enough about even imaginary mirrors. My grandfather the bishop used to say that looking in the mirror made you go mad. I submit, gentlemen, that I have a subject which is not myself, and mighty. I aver, ladies, that you will not have long to bear my less than charming company.

Let me put it this way: I am one who has in his possession a vast argosy of tales about Mr Shakespeare. A thousand stories, ladies. A thousand and one, good sirs. And if it pleases you, gentles, Pickleherring will tell them all.

I shall tell you stories to beguile you.

I shall tell you tales to keep me alive while I do so.

Not all these tales and stories will be my own. I mean that a book like this might be said to be long in the making, and to have enjoyed the intercourse of many several begetters. My mind is what Mr Shakespeare said of his Dark Lady. It has been a bay where all men ride, and it has been the wide world's common place. Yet in the end I am no whore, but our Shakespeare's true and loyal servant. I served him first on the stages at the Curtain and the Globe. I put myself now upon the stage for him again. This book is my theatre. The play's not done.

Before I begin my story proper, I wish to express my thanks to all those who have helped me (even unwittingly) in the gathering of the matter for it. You see, although the
writing of this book has come late in my life, I think I was preparing for it all along. It is the outcome of a lifetime of labour, and testament to a lifetime's love as well. From
King
John
on, I worshipped Mr Shakespeare. I thought him more a god than a mortal man. And so it was that I lapped up all there ever was to learn about him. Like Autolycus in his
Winter's Tale
I was littered under Mercury and have been likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. (In that play, though, I played the part of Hermione.)

Chief among my memorists and informers have been my fellow actors in the theatre, now most of them dead (and God rest their souls every one). Therefore it is a pleasure to me now to recall and name first in pride of place the leading members of our company as it stood at the death of Mr James Burbage, all of whom gave me something of our Shakespeare that was their own: Mr Richard Burbage (old James B's younger son, and a Protean actor – the first Hamlet, the first Othello, the first Lear); Mr Thomas Pope; Mr John Heminges (the original Falstaff); Mr Augustine Phillips; and Mr George Bryan. I might mention even that flame-haired ticklebrain Mr William Kempe, though Mr Shakespeare never much liked him on account of his habit of working in jokes of his own when on stage and being generally too conceited in his jigs.

Then, also, and no less, in the years that followed, these men, the principal actors, besides myself, in all of Mr Shakespeare's later plays: Mr Henry Condell (one of WS's closest colleagues, remembered in his will); Mr William Sly; Mr Richard Cowley; Mr John Lowin (the original Henry VIII, now landlord of the Three Pigeons Inn at Brentford); Mr Samuel Cross; Mr Alexander Cooke; Mr Samuel
Gilburne; Mr Robert Armin (a far better clown than Kempe); Mr William Ostler; Mr Nathan Field; Mr John Underwood; Mr Nicholas Tooley; Mr William Ecclestone; Mr Joseph Taylor (who took over Hamlet when Dick Burbage died, and if anything surpassed him in the part); Mr Robert Benfield (played kings and old men); Mr Christopher Beeston; Mr Robert Goffe; Mr Richard Robinson; Mr John Shank (who was a gentle dancer); and Mr John Rice.

These were my fellow students of our Shakespeare. They went to school with me in the universality of his wit. Each of them told me something about the man, or confirmed perhaps a tale I had heard from another. All of them taught me a part of what I had then to learn as a whole for myself. Just remembering them now, and reeling off their names, renews for me the pleasure of their company and our fellowship. They were my companions in comedy and tragedy alike, on stage and off. They were my fellow players. They were also my friends.

I acknowledge too the assistance (and sometimes the obstruction) I have been given over the years by the late Mr Shakespeare's rival playwrights, chief amongst them these notables: Mr Francis Beaumont; Mr George Chapman; Mr Henry Chettle (whom Mr Shakespeare prized for one sweet song); Mr Samuel Daniel; Mr Thomas Dekker (fond of cats); Mr Michael Drayton; Mr John Fletcher; Mr John Ford; Mr Thomas Heywood (whose boast was that he had had a hand or at least a main finger in 220 plays); Mr Ben Jonson (who said that Mr S lacked art, but was author of the chief eulogy in the Folio of 1623); Mr John Marston (red hair and little legs – and became a priest); Mr Philip Massinger (Papist); Mr Thomas Middleton; Mr Anthony
Munday (became a playwright after being hissed off the stage as an actor); Mr Samuel Rowley; Mr George Ruggle; Mr Thomas Tomkis; Mr Cyril Tourneur (whose nature was as lovely as his name); Mr John Webster (kept a skull always by him); Mr George Wilkins (wrote the first two acts of
Pericles
, and much of
Timon of Athens
); Mr Arthur Wilson (a great dueller until he risked his life to save a laundry maid from drowning, took up mathematics, and died a Puritan).

For personal information regarding Mr Shakespeare I am also much indebted to the Poet Laureate, Sir William Davenant. Sir William is certainly Mr Shakespeare's godson. I do not believe (as Sir William himself has sometimes claimed late at night) that he is also Mr Shakespeare's natural son. His
Ode in Remembrance of Master Shakespeare
may assuredly be commended as a remarkable production for a boy of twelve. I am sorry that he lost his nose to the pox.

I suppose that I am grateful to the late Dr Simon Forman for his horoscope of Mr Shakespeare imparted to me privately. I glanced at this before I threw it away.

Nextly, I wish to mention all those in Mr Shakespeare's native county of Warwickshire who submitted to my importunate interview of them after his death, telling me tales of his boyhood and early manhood, and then his later years spent in retirement in Stratford-upon-Avon, the town of his birth. Principal among these is his widow, Mrs Anne Shakespeare, born Hathaway, a woman whose serene silence on the subject of her husband should have taught me at least to hold my tongue when I am not sure that I know what to say. Mrs Shakespeare, despite her reticence, might be counted my main source of understanding of the home-life of the poet. She was a woman like no other I have
ever known. Expressionless, for me she expressed wisdom. On one occasion which I remember with especial feeling she drove me from the Shakespeare residence at New Place, Stratford, with a stout birch broom in her hands. Admittedly at the time I was dressed in her second-best petticoats.

I have then as well to thank another redoubtable woman, Mr Shakespeare's sister Joan, latterly Mrs William Hart of Stratford, who regaled me in her final years with many sweet remembrances of her brother. The poet's daughters Susanna (Mrs John Hall) and Judith (Mrs Thomas Quiney) were also most generous to me with their memories, especially the former, whom I always found to be a woman (as her tombstone now declares) witty above her sex. Mr Shakespeare's son-in-law, Dr John Hall, of Hall's Croft, Stratford, and then New Place, was a mine of information on matters medical and religious, as well as concerning Mr Shakespeare's gout, and the day that he died. On a small personal note, I owe also to Dr Hall the cure of my scurvy by means of his Scorbutick Beer.

Others who assisted my enquiries in pursuit of
anecdota
in Warwickshire include Mr Shakespeare's granddaughter Elizabeth, now Lady Bernard, and her husband John, of Abington Manor, near Northampton, to whom I am also grateful for hospitality. Concerning Mr Shakespeare's domestic life while he was working in the theatre I am indebted to details furnished long ago by his landlord Mr Christopher Mountjoy, in whose house, on the corner of Monkswell and Silver Street near St Olave's Church in Cripplegate ward the poet sometime had his London residence.

It is a great privilege and pride to acknowledge at all points in what follows the influence upon my own writing
of the work of my friend and patron the late Sir Thomas Urquhart, of Cromarty, translator of the immortal Rabelais and author in his own right of
Logopandecteision
, a scheme for a universal language. It has been said that Urquhart's Rabelais is not exactly Rabelais. But I say that it is exactly Urquhart. Besides, it reproduces the
spirit
of the original with remarkable felicity and force. I love it as I loved the man himself. Never let us forget that he died laughing.

As to my wife Jane, I acknowledge that without her I would not be as or where I am today.

Finally, I may say that all I perform in these pages that follow is what I was taught to do in the theatre. Namely, to hold a mirror up to nature. Take it or leave it, my motive in writing this book cannot be better expressed than it was by my old comrades from the tiring-house Mr Heminges and Mr Condell when introducing the volume of Mr Shakespeare's works which they gathered together and published after his death. That Folio sits to my right hand now on the table where I write, just beside the tattered pile of my own actor's copies of Mr Shakespeare's plays. Here is what they say in their preface, Mr Heminges and Mr Condell – that they work
without ambition either of self-profit or fame,
but
only to keep the memory of so worthy a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare
.

So now do I. No more. No less.

But a word as to the manner of my writing. Apart from the exemplar of the admirable Urquhart already noted, this wretched style of mine has something (I think) in common with the playing of Mr Armin, our company's clown, author of
Fool upon Fool, or Six Sorts of Sots
besides. He
created Feste in
Twelfth Night
, as well as playing the part of Dogberry. An excellent round man, and a pupil of the great Tarlton.

Armin could not only act the fool like a wise man. He would ask the audience to shout out a subject, and thereupon produce a poem out of his head, composing extemporarily. He was what the Italians call an
improvisatore
. Mr Shakespeare made good use of this talent in his comedy called
As You Like It
, where Armin took the part of Touchstone. When Rosalind (your author) appears with Orlando's verses, Touchstone (Armin) retorted with a few more of his own, composed on the spot, made to the moment, a different set each night of the twenty-night run. It was doggerel, of course, but it made you laugh.

That's just what I do, ladies.

I play the fool, gentlemen, yes. And like a good clown in cap and bells I make it all up as I go along. I write a sort of motley, though this motley I make up has been formed and informed by the many wise men and women acknowledged in this chapter.

But enough of Pickleherring.

It is high time I started to give you my Life of Mr Shakespeare.