 | William Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher |  |
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ACT II
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Scene I.
—The Street before the Court House at Stratford. In the background the Public, awaiting admission. In the foreground Five Fathers and a Mother, conferring with the Clerk of the Court.First Father.
Must we then howl jointly and severally, good
Master Clerk?
The Clerk of the Court.
Aye, Master Perch, and roar also.
Second Father.
And weep exceeding sore?
The Clerk of the Court.
Aye, so as thy neighbour smelleth not thine onion.
Third Father.
And when shall this our lamentation and uproar
appear most prudent and seemly, good Master Clerk?
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When ye shall note Sir Thomas to enter. Until
then, lift not your voices clamorously: only thou
[to the Mother]
may'st sob and spare not. Notwithstanding,
omit not the while to shake your fists at
Master Shakespeare. And remember that when Sir
Thomas cometh in, ye men shall cry for justice
against the said Shakespeare, but the mother shall
cry only, “O my boy, my boy! my innocent boy!”
Fourth Father.
Wherefore this, good Master Clerk?
The Clerk of the Court.
Marry, because Sir Thomas maliceth Shakespeare,
and shall regard you the more favourably if you do
him to wit that you malice Shakespeare also, and give
him cause to say that Shakespeare has hurt not him
only but you and your children. Cry and weep inasmuch
as it shall be given you, until ye perceive Sir
Thomas offer to speak, or call the first witness, then
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that none be able to say that Sir Thomas taketh his
law from the fathers of the defendants.
Fifth Father.
May we not cry from time to time, “O Sir Thomas,
Sir Thomas, spare my child!” as though extremity of
anguish did enforce us?
The Clerk of the Court.
Aye, but warily, that Sir Thomas his voice be not
covered thereby.
First Father.
There is but one thing yet somewhat disquieteth
me, good Master Clerk.
The Clerk of the Court.
What of it?
First Father.
Thou knowest that our children do marvellously
affect their master Shakespeare, and I doubt that
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shake their fists at us.
Second Father.
Aye, and that when we cry out against him they
will cry for him, and call him dear master.
Third Father.
And say that they choose rather imprisonment with
him, and their love and loyalty shall move many.
The Clerk of the Court.
It moveth not Sir Thomas, I warrant you, albeit he
be of gentle heart save when he maliceth a man, and
he maliceth your sons not at all, but Shakespeare
only. But see, the doors are opened, and the folk
enter. Go in, therefore, and sit where I did tell
you: and although your sons must needs be shent in
court, doubt not that this night they shall eat their
porridge at home.
[They go in.
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Scene II.
—Sir Thomas Lucy's private room in the Court House.Sir Thomas Lucy
[laying down a paper].
Now am I perfect, now can so direct
The steps, bewildered else, of sightless Justice.
No stay, or slip, or stumble need she fear.
How well it doth become the magistrate
To bench him squarely with a mind made up
Ere he hath heard a word about the case
In public session, nailed to his opinion,
Like Teneriffe or Atlas unremoved!
Sic volo, sic jubeo, stat pro ratione voluntas.
Majestic proclamation! Held this not,
The pillared firmament were rottenness,
And earth's base built on stubble. But it holdeth.
My foe is at my feet, there shall he lie,
Though all the angels swore his alibi.
[A knocking at the door.
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To the judicial seat! In! menial!
Enter Lady Lucy.
Lady Lucy.
Sir Thomas, have you thought about the sentence?
I know you wont to carry your awards
To Court all cut and dried, like wholesome blisters,
Ready for instant application.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
My mind is labouring towards this very point,
And 'twixt the blandishments of heavy whipping
And long imprisonment hangs balancing:
Whiche'er it be, he takes a turn at the pillory,
In lieu of fine our clemency remits,
Knowing that nullos habet reditus.
Lady Lucy.
Whip not, Sir Thomas, nor imprison him,
But send to other counties fugitive.
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A banished man.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Would'st thou be nut-brown maid?
You greatly wrong your reputation
Suing for one against whom, were you honest,
It rather should become you to inflame me.
'Tis not so much resentment at his trespass
Who leapt the pale that held my lovely deer,
But dispeace of mine own I am expelling,
And slur on you that I am wiping off,
That load my sentence with severity.
Or you, or I, should be inexorable.
If you are slandered, I avenge your honour;
But, are you spotted, vindicate my own.
Lady Lucy.
Slandered I am, Sir Thomas, this believe,
But dread lest slander truth become, unless
My suasion moves. Would'st make me pity Shakespeare?
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Shall I not hate myself if savage stripes
Deface a youth so gentle? must I not
Make show of my compassion and remorse?
And will these press no further? Tempt not thou.
If long he linger pent in noisome gaol,
Sure penitential thought shall lodge with him,
And to his plaints my fancies shall be ears;
Comforts shall I procure, and anodynes,
Which tokens shall become, and haply hence
May grow to embassies and stratagems.
O put not wantonly my faith in peril!
Banish the man upon condition
Of sharpest penalty be he again
In Warwickshire beheld, and with one stroke
Of policy disarm all jeopardies.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Lady, I see thou lovest him, and fearest;
This angers me and moves me to deny thee
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But, on the other hand, thou reasonest well.
My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirred,
And I myself see not the bottom of it.
Enter an Attendant.
Attendant.
Sir Thomas, Mistress Shakespeare craves admittance.
Lady Lucy.
Deny her, good Sir Thomas.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
May she not
Bring light to our perplexities?
[To Attendant.
Admit her.
Enter Ann Shakespeare.
Ann Shakespeare.
My reverence to your honour and my Lady!
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Mistress, if pardon for thy spouse entreating,
Thine errand know for vain, and spare to vex
Our ears with idle importunity.
Ann Shakespeare.
Not such is my petition, noble Sir.
Long have I groaned o'er William's evil courses,
And mourned to know my household fed by rapine,
And mine own stomach's pure integrity
Polluted by his depredations.
How oft when spit hath turned, or caldron bubbled,
Mid savoury smells and steams have I with voice
Gentle and low, an excellent thing in woman,
Demanded, William, whence this venison?
And he would laugh, and cite some silly tale
Of Theseus or the ghost of Herne the Hunter.
Pardon I pray not then, but penalty
Conducive to his reformation;
Like lightning, sanctifying where it strikes.
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By loving spirits wielding arms of flesh,
Best scared this poaching devil out of him.
Lady Lucy.
Sure in thy cradle thou did'st sup the milk
That Romulus and Remus throve upon.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Or else wert nurtured in Hyrcania.
Ann Shakespeare.
Under your graces' favour, I am neither
My seeming or your deeming. Wis ye not
Sharp stripes, his portion, but a mockery
To my invisible hurts and viewless wounds?
Which well I now may bear, since at my side
Sudden occasion shines a radiant angel,
Armed with the lictor's rod that shall redeem him,
Raised with the lark to sing at heaven's gate.
O base to set his flesh above his spirit!
But 'tis time's veriest nick. A prosperous star
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I court not but omit, eftsoons my William
Droops in a noose; and other fates and fortunes,
With his unseverably braced and morticed,
Turn round with it as spokes turn with the wheel.
Am I to take no thought for our poor children?
What shall these eat if father goes to gaol?
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Thou hast a tribe of brethren.
Ann Shakespeare.
Who flung
My innocence
Lady Lucy
[aside].
O most mendacious minx!
Ann Shakespeare.
With willing sport to the wild ocean
Of stormful wedlock, in their sister's person
Themselves relieving of unwelcome load,
And tying her to Shakespeare, sink or swim.
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Lest I betray me to mine own reproof.
Beseech you then of your great charity
Suffer the sinner's weal to overpoise
The burdened scale of his transgressions,
Using such nice adjustment of the lash
As but a week may bind him to his bed,
Where he may call Repentance to efface
The long score he hath run up with the Fiend,
And be his own inquisitor, things past
Summoning to sessions of sweet silent thought,
Save when I moralise the spectacle.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Wilt thou procure a surgeon at thy charge
To salve his wounds?
Ann Shakespeare.
These peril not his days,
Being hurts of hide of cow, not horn of hart;
Yea rather windows in his corporal ark
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For I will be his ministering angel,
To every groan responsive with a tear.
Salad and leek and cress I'll bring; nor gruel
Nor broth nor porridge scant; nor, be they needful,
Strange panaceas in a crystal bowl;
Mummy, and mandrake, Venice's famed treacle
(Whereof the asp is chief ingredient)
And choicest wormwood by myself distilled;
And cease not to upbraid him for his sins,
Save when I read him from some godly tome
The homilies of painful ministers:
Or, stilling objurgation, usher in
Reason with glass of Truth equipped to show him
The ass he hath enacted; or enlarge
On that great plucking forth of burning brands,
The wide dispersion of his hopeful scholars,
Who now shall 'scape the gallows, we may trust:
And how he needs must come to beggary,
Unless your honour, of your condescension,
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Chasing afar vain love and poetry,
Shall tame his spirit, and by slow degrees
Subdue him to the useful and the good.
O Lady Lucy, be my orator.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Mistress, Egeria revives in thee.
But know, our Lady hath already opened
Her mind to us, alleging weighty cause
Why thy unhappy husband, being so spotted,
Should not be striped to boot, but eat the bread
Of exile, far from pleasant Warwickshire.
Ann Shakespeare.
The Lady Lucy speaks not from her faith,
But from her need.
Lady Lucy.
I took thought for thy husband,
Of thy most base desertion prescient.
Thou rotten rib! most perfect fruit of Sodom,
If only thy exterior enticed!
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'Tis thou would'st lure him on the road to Sodom,
And I who Zionward would set his face.
And am I nothing? and the helpless children?
Lady Lucy.
See thou to that. I not abase my thought
To thee and to thy brats.
Ann Shakespeare.
If brats of Shakespeare's,
'Tis marvel, lady, that they are not yours.
Lady Lucy.
Sir Thomas, will you hear me thus insulted?
Ann Shakespeare.
Sir Thomas, weigh the provocation. Brats!!
The blessed babes!
Lady Lucy.
The ugly little monsters!
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Lady, say that again, and I will claw you.
Lady Lucy.
Sir Thomas, will you shield me from this fury?
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Peace, peace, I pray you peace.
Enter an Attendant.
Attendant.
The Court, Sir Thomas,
Expects its magistrate.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
There shines a rainbow!
Come, follow soberly, the pair of you.
[Aside.
Rough is the day, but we will rough it through.
[Exeunt.
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Scene III.
—Interior of the Court House, filled by the Public. Sir Thomas Lucy on the bench, Lady Lucy and Ann Shakespeare near him. Shakespeare standing in the dock, handcuffed. The Scholars sitting together outside the dock. The Fathers and Mother opposite. Clerk of the Court, Constable, Attendants, and Ushers. Moles leaving the witness-box.First Father.
[Aside to the Clerk of the Court.
Master, was this well howled?
The Clerk of the Court.
Most wolfishly.
The Mother.
How was the weeping?
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Very laudable.
So Niobe bewept herself to stone,
And Thisbe wailed by Ninny's monument.
Now silent sit and hopefully expect
The glad enlargement of your erring sons.
The Constable.
Hush! hush! Sir Thomas rises.
The Clerk of the Court.
Hush!
The Attendants and Ushers.
Hush!
The Public.
Hush!
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Friends and admirers, burgesses of Stratford!
So crammed the Court is with particulars,
More to adduce were superfluity.
Thou chiefly, Moles, another Androclus,
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And limping Justice bounds and roars again.
The Court knows what it knows, and what it knows not
It knows is immaterial to be known.
Yet of our equity, though but for form's sake,
We'll hear what the defendant has to say,
And if his speech do aggravate his guilt,
Will mark the advantage. Come, thou serpent, if
Thou hast justification, hiss it forth!
Shakespeare.
Sir Thomas, I plead guilty.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Hast thou aught
Meet to be urged in mitigation?
Shakespeare.
Much, would the magistrate so deem it, but
'Twere faggot to the furnace of his wrath.
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Take heed, then, heat not thou the furnace sevenfold.
Ann Shakespeare.
William, be ruled, petition for a whipping.
Shakespeare.
I thank your Ladyship for your good counsel,
Which Prudence bids me hearken, yet should Truth
Upbraid me, did I miss the rare occasion
To bring her and Sir Thomas face to face
For confirmation of their crescive love.
She bids me say, Sir Thomas, that yourself
Create the fault you would chastise in me,
And keep yourself a poacher's school, your scholars
Men goaded into wrong by righteous anger
At small oppressions, petty grievances,
Affronts, contumelies, scarce perceived by him
Who gives, to him who takes esil and wormwood.
These spring, I know, from no embosomed malice,
But thoughtlessness and heady vanity,
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Perceive not that the peasant is a man,—
Praise him, he beams content; prick him, he bleeds;
Feed him, he guards your substance; starved, he steals it.
Deem you that I had robbed you of your deer
If you had taken nought from me and mine?
Wrongful the deed, I own, worse the example.
'Tis said, the world subsists by thievery.
The sun's an arrant spoiler of the ocean,
The moon conveys her pallid fire from him,
And earth and water plunder one another.
But you, Sir Thomas, rob both earth and water,
And would the sun and moon too, could you grasp them.
How many commons have you not devoured?
What paths not barred? where erst the villager
Was used to trip, but now slinks sullen, conscious
Both of his trespass and your injury,
And all for your game's sake. Far worse I deem it
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Do eat into our honest English nature.
For frankness roguery, for truth evasion,
For pleasure in his lord's prosperity
Envy and grudge, for honourable dealing
A settled purpose by sly practices
The scale unfairly weighted to adjust,
The fiend expelling by another fiend.
These cankers prey upon our England's blood,
Pray Heaven they bring not palsy. Would'st thou hearken
My friendly suasion, some kind passages,
Some acres of filched common given back,
Some paths unstopped, a courteous mien, the pressure
Of hand by toil made honourably rough,
Some gifts dispersed as duty, not as dole,
Some genial largesse from thy parks and warrens,
Some boons to recompense the ravaged crops,
Some mingling with the people's sports and pastimes,
And on the seat of justice, should'st thou strain
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Trust me, Sir Thomas, such slight condescensions
Would make thee, in thy sphere, as England's Queen
Whose throne is builded on her people's hearts.
Now, did I tell this populace I took
Thy deer for public cause, they would acclaim me,
Shakespeare, the Robin Hood of Warwickshire.
I shall not tell them, 'twere but half the truth.
I am the people's poet, not their tribune.
Sport pointed me the way with beechen spear,
And Youth, too young to know what conscience is.
This is the head and front of my offending,
And fault it is that Time is ever mending.
No exculpation plead I for my crime,
Save the most brisk and giddy-paced time
Of this my twentieth year, and overplus
Of spirit frolicsome and venturous,
And sick and sorry heart that bade me roam
To shun the hell of an unquiet home,
And love of the wild creatures in their lairs,
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And if these pleas avail not, here I stand
Ready to take my sentence at thy hand:
But not upon my boys thy vengeance wreak,
Branding them miscreants for a youthful freak.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
A goodly speech, well studied and well spoken;
Be sure it shall avail to shape thy sentence.
Lady Lucy
[aside].
Alas! his bosom swells with pent-up fury.
It tears him as fire tears a thunder-cloud.
Ann Shakespeare
[aside].
If he deliver sentence in this fluster
I'll have to nurse my William for a month:
Which for his blessing overrule, kind Heaven.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Not much this cause demands of subtlety;
It needeth but discrimination.
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For me, by edict of forecasting Heaven
Ordained to be a county magistrate.
But when the judge accedes to passing sentence
Light doth he need, and to be done to wit
Touching the wretched culprit at the bar,
His dispositions and his antecedents,
And who should know them better than his wife?
Stand forth, Ann Shakespeare.
Ann Shakespeare.
At your honour's bidding.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Speak to thy husband's character.
Ann Shakespeare.
Great Sir,
A good youth were he, were he not a poet,
And were we not too nearly of an age,
As to the Court is plainly visible.
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[aside].
O brazen hussey!
Ann Shakespeare.
Had I caught him younger,
Much had I made of him, much yet will make,
Will you by my persuasion rule your doom,
And yoke Law's lion with my lamb of love.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
What chastisement deem'st thou most meet for him?
Ann Shakespeare.
The lash, grave Sir, but with such love and wisdom
Attempered, that it smite nor less nor more
Than needful for his subjugation
To his much injured and most loving wife,
But lay him gently on a restful couch
For profitable hours of penitence,
And colloquy with me, continuous tasting
The medicated honey of my speech
Like time, as half renews the dwindled moon,
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But do not, with mistaking kindness, fix
The thirsty leech on his poor family.
I will attend him, for he is my husband;
Diet his sickness, for it is my office;
And will have no attorney but myself.
Lady Lucy.
O good Sir Thomas, send the man a-packing,
And be we rid and quit of him, and bar
The gate of his return with penalty.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Dames, to your service I am held and bounden,
Not as mere judge, but by devoir of knighthood
Therein most happy, may I stead you both.
[To the Public.
The Court hath listened to these ladies, urging
One exile, one the scourge. Ere they had spoken,
I leaned to neither, but imprisonment.
But rapt audition of their eloquence
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To Dardan Paris when the heavenly three
Sought the Idæan mountain all unrobed,
Contending for the apple. Could the shepherd
Have shared it among all, what ravages
Of devastation he had spared the world!
Trojaque nunc stares, Priamique arx alta maneres.
What Paris might not do, Sir Thomas may:
And being, like him, confronted with the charms
Of three most beauteous competitors,
Banishment, flagellation, durance vile,
And not, like him, corrupted with a bribe,
Or violently in my proper person
Enamoured of their most divine embraces,
I do award the apple unto all.
That is to say, Shakespeare shall first be whipped,
Imprisoned then till healed, then for three years
Exiled to distant shires, there to propound,
With carriage apt and speech mellifluous,
Strange doctrines unto country gentlemen.
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Shall I have license to attend my lord,
And piteously beweep his horrid scars,
And soothe with opiates and leniments,
And reprehend him for his sinfulness,
And read him printed piety, and touch
His spirit to fine issues? Intercede,
I supplicate your Ladyship.
Shakespeare.
Alas
For blind Authority beating with his staff
The child that would have led him! Thou, Sir Thomas,
Thinking to shame me in thy lady's sight,
Sham'st but thyself in mine. Thou may'st not touch
My spirit that can suffer and be strong.
Lady Lucy.
I doubt Sir Thomas sleeps not well to-night.
My tongue is shorter than thy Anna's, William,
By a good yard, but yet methinks 'twill serve.
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Relieve our presence of the knave's pollution.
The Constable.
Sir Thomas, I'm afeard to touch the man.
Thou heardest? he hath a familiar spirit,
Perchance an impish sootikin, but haply
Tail-switching Lucifer, Hell's emperor.
Shakespeare.
Aye, man, I hold in fee ten thousand spirits,
And more can summon from the vasty deep,
Who at my word shall seize thy knight and thee,
And set bemocked upon the public stage,
Stuff for the humorous world's derision.
The Constable.
What did I tell your honour?
The Public
[from the lower end of the Court].
Place! give place!
A messenger from her dread Majesty!
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Lady Lucy.
Bespattered is he all from head to foot.
Urgent must be his errand.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
To foul treason,
Belike, it hath respect, or Papistry.
The Constable
[aside].
I'll free me of the Pope and Devil together,
Getting me from the Court.
[Exit hastily.
Sir Thomas Lucy
to Leicester.
Our loves and duties,
Like greyhounds straining in the leashes, fret
To know the cause of thy commanded speed,
That the effect may follow.
Leicester.
I have charge
To claim the body of one William Shakespeare.
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Shakespeare! Hath rumour of the man's malfeasance
Reached then the royal ear? deems our liege Lady
Whipping too good for him? If so, our sentence
Admits recast.
Leicester.
Thou grossly errest, Lucy.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Lucy! Thou Lucyest me! Knave malapert!
But for her state and grandeur who hath sent thee
(Most unadvisedly, if it be lawful
In aught her Grace's prudence to impeach),
I would commit thee.
Leicester.
Lucy, thou art blind.
Can mere disguisement of a horseman's cloak,
And travel-stains conceal the Lord of Leicester?
[Throws off the cloak and appears dressed in a rich suit.
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Leicester! The Earl!
Sir Thomas Lucy.
O good my lord—
Leicester.
Sir Thomas,
Conceive all said on thy part and on mine.
Time rushes on, upsetting Compliment.
Excuse be hushed, and my commission speeded
By sight of William Shakespeare.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
There he stands
Manacled in the dock.
Leicester.
What his offence?
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Heading a band of youthful desperadoes,
He burst the barrier of my parked domain,
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By vassals' vigilance, had questionless
Broken my lodge and kissed my keeper's daughter.
Leicester.
Thy deer, thou sayest, he slew but in intention,
And thou hast in intention punished him.
I deem you quits. Now hearken my award.
Know all, I, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester,
Knight of the Garter, Privy Counsellor,
General, Lord Lieutenant of the county,
Having well weighed the case of William Shakespeare,
And of his six alleged accomplices,
The doom of the inferior magistrate
[Aside.
(Not knowing and not caring what it was),
Do quash, annul, and make of none effect,
As also the indictment, and all process
Past, present, or to come. [Applause in Court.]
His manacles
Unrivet, and provide him with a horse,
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To London then, where princely grace awaits him.
[The Public throng around Shakespeare, vieing in taking off his manacles. The Fathers and the Mother caress their sons, who receive them unfilially.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Are things turned inside out? or upside down?
Or doth the earth, from Atlas' shoulder slipt,
Tumble amain unto destruction?
The beam of royal favour gild his brow
Who would have antlered mine! whose felon hands
Are ruddy with the blood of my fat bucks!
Leicester.
The beam of royal grace, Sir Thomas Lucy,
Alighteth where it will, and willeth oft
Light, where eclipse were fitter. Yet, methinks,
It hath not this time lit upon a dunghill,
But on the goodliest man in thy court, whom
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Do so commend, he greatly overlooks
Thy little brief authority. No wonder
He claimed the freedom of thy park.
[To Shakespeare.
This argues
A generous strain in thee, and lordly instincts.
Deer-killing came in with the Conqueror.
Hast any record of thy lineage?
Shakespeare.
An ancestor of mine, so please your Lordship,
In our third Henry's reign, was high exalted.
[Aside.
Upon the gallows.
Leicester.
Like lot shall be thine.
Shakespeare
[aside].
The Lord forbid!
Leicester.
If thou do justify
Opinion by her Majesty conceived
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A little toy of thine, a comedy
('Tis called, I think, The Taming of a Shrew)
Read by a maid of honour, thereunto
Moved, as I gather, by one Master Field,
Late of this town, who further doth attest
Actor with bard met happily in thee.
Nought now will serve but thou must post to Court.
This charge is mine, which I, the more to blazon
My zeal, and haply countermine the workings
Of burrowing Intrigue, my credit sapping,
Perform in person. Take immediate leave
Of mates and kindred, and away with me.
Shakespeare.
Sir Thomas, I will stand your friend at Court:
On two conditions, one that presently
You do unclose the path you stopped last Christmas:
Next, that although the noble Earl of Leicester
Your sentence doth annul, yet, by his favour,
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And banish me from Stratford for ten years.
Leicester.
What moveth thee to this?
Shakespeare.
My Lady Lucy
Surmiseth shrewdly, so doth Mistress Shakespeare.
And I myself would set division
Between my past and future, signifying
The new life to be led. Too long I've lingered
In my dark morning hours, but, now the sun
Of regal favour rises on my path,
Needs must I follow this to glorious noonday,
And then, unto my native place reverting,
Which ne'er was aught but dear to me, or shall be,
There slowly through the golden hours declining,
Will set in splendour, like the westering sun,
But, unlike him, in the same zone and region
Where origin I had.
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'Tis nobly spoken,
And know the Earl of Leicester for thy friend
Not less than her great Majesty, and able
To ope yet wider worlds to thee. The quarrel
'Twixt Spain and England draweth to a head,
And soon the world shall ring with it, and then
The Hollander and we in union vanquish,
Or separate perish. This we know, and soon
The verdant level and the slow canal
Shall bristle with our pikes, throb with our drums,
Stream with our banners, and reverberate
The thunder of our cannon. I shall fill
The regent's seat, and my imperious truncheon
Shall beck thee to my retinue, to gather
Stuff for thy art by practice of the world.
What various shapes shall crowd the tented field!
Soldier and sutler, merchant, peasant, spy;
Captains courageous, English amazons,
Whom deaths of lovers slain most treacherously
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Dicer and cut-purse, page, groom, beggar, minstrel;
Courtesans, fortune-tellers, desperadoes;
Armourers and devisers of strange engines;
And knights too corpulent to fight or fly.
And other matter shalt thou find, arrays
Of marching hosts, pent cities, trenched leaguers,
Sallies, alarms, encounters, skirmishes,
Duels and deaths, and, chief of all, examples
Most noble, in whose brightness thou may'st sit,
And as an eagle preen thee in the sun,
Purging all soilure haply gathered here;
For know, my nephew Sidney tends my person,
Mirror of courtesy and chivalry.
Shakespeare.
My Lord, the grace and bounty of your Lordship
Leave me so rapt, I scarce find breath and boldness
For one petition, 'tis most necessary.
Leicester.
Say on.
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I humbly crave that, their breadwinner
Absent by Majesty's command, my wife
And tender infants lack not sustenance.
Leicester.
Be this thy care, Sir Thomas, and bestow
Rather excess than insufficiency.
Sir Thomas Lucy.
Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
This vixen quean, this dam of demi-bastards,
Bedrenched like Danae with golden showers
Whose drops distil from mine own treasury!
Leicester.
Tush, Lucy, thou must be conformable,
Or else abide her Grace's high displeasure.
Thy lady, prone to offices of love,
Shall seek the spouse forlorn, and soothe her sadness,
Making a sunshine in the shady place.
109
[aside].
How best to bar my doorway?
Lady Lucy
[aside].
I will tell her
Rare passages of gallantry at Court.
The Scholars.
Huzza! our master fares to Court addrest.
Shakespeare.
Bearing his boys for ever in his breast.
First Father.
Good Master Shakespeare, there is no unkindness?
Shakespeare.
No, not a grain. Myself should crave excuse.
But the high ardour of your mettled sons
To race the roads of learning, did demand
Curb, more than spur.
The Mother.
I ever knew my boy
A prodigy.
110
And so say all of us.
Shakespeare.
Well, Anna, shall we change a word together?
Ann Shakespeare.
Perdition catch my soul, but I do love thee!
Shakespeare.
Deem'st thou I know not this? Wer't otherwise,
Stratford and I had long ago been strangers.
My good thou did'st intend, and had'st effected,
Had'st thou not been,—but better 'twere to spare thee
Thy faults' unlovely catalogue. Now listen.
I am steeled 'gainst wrath and hate, and Heaven forefend
The one offence for ever unforgiven.
If thou envenomest my childrens' bosoms
'Gainst me unseen, with crimes imaginary
Slurring my name, with a depicted devil
111
The Father's image in the earthly parent,
Then, and then only, take my malison.
Ann Shakespeare.
Of this nought apprehend.
Shakespeare.
'Tis passing well.
[Kisses her.
Fix thou thy appetence on things supernal;
Guide our fair children in the paths of virtue;
Cherish the harmless necessary cat,
Who will for my departure wring her hands;
Speak of me sometimes, rail at me but seldom;
So for ten years farewell.
[An Attendant enters and whispers Leicester.
Leicester.
To horse! to horse!
[Exit with Shakespeare. The curtain falls.
| William Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher | |