Voices from the Past Part 101

varnished furniture,

books and ma.n.u.scripts.

A stunning woman appears, smiles, fades,

beckons seductively, disappears.

Henley Street

March 5, 1615

Y

esterday it snowed, and during the afternoon I fell asleep and dreamed I saw King Henry and Shallow crossing the fields beyond my windows.

"O G.o.d, that one might read the book of fate," I heard King Henry say, as I followed, hidden from view. "I wish to see the revolution of the times make mountains level, and the continents, weary of solid firmness, melt itself into the sea and, other times, to see the beach girdle the ocean..."

"There is a history in all men's lives, figuring the nature of the times deceased..."

Was it Shallow who said that?

Though I am confused, I recall the gaunt face of Alleyn as he spoke those lines, that stormy night, when our theatre rattled. He was infirm with fever and yet played on; he seldom let us down.

Winter is here again, to make our beds uneasy. Oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, and return me to my youth!

This is a doc.u.ment in madness because pain seldom leaves me...

Oh, to be young and tumble a naked woman on a bed, quarrel desperately and make up, burn the night learning and unlearning lines, defy the elements, dally along the Thames, out-shout the gulls, see a mermaid behind a rock.

Youth has such powers! Youth's rule rules his own court by championing a hundred causes, ordaining and cancelling, defying and acknowledging, digging ca.n.a.ls, raising temples.

Slave of every beautiful woman he meets, he presents her with lasting riches and eternal potency. He conquers every country for her: his grail, his fleet battering an endless Armada to bring her into port, no gale too wild.

Henley Street

Monday, '15

When I taught school at Snitterfield, Jonson came now and then to prime my Greek and Latin. He used to say, "You should have done a lot less fishing in the Avon, boy! Why, these fellows will never learn, not the way you teach. See, they grin at you. They love you. Call them churls, cane them; make them scat when you appear!"

Away from school, Jonson would slip into theatre talk and urge me to rejoin him: "Your poems are remembered.

You have to come back, Will! I'll find you a patron.

Now's the time to write plays... I'll help you put them on the stage."

I told him I was afraid of the London plague. He scorched me with a "haw-haw." "Teaching's your plague, man!"

Henley Street

April 20, 1615

Teaching was forgotten at Fair time, good food, acrobats, c.o.c.kfights, gambling-there was something to keep us spellbound spelling laughter! Games and dances went on at all hours. Cinquepace was the fast, new step.

How I liked it! There were plenty of pickpockets but I had nothing to pick but my loneliness. When I danced with a red-cheeked girl there was sperm in every movement- those giddy curls and hot hands, the smoke of sizzling fish, howls of the stinking bear baiters.

Stratford

Trumpets blared... I heard them days after the Fair.

I stayed on as long as possible in Snitterfield, to contribute what I could to my family's upkeep in Stratford. Then came the day when the school board asked me to find another job; so it was back to London again, to Jonson and his half-a.s.s promises, back to city trumpets, strumpets, rattle of carriages, pismire poverty, paunched patrons and perfumed s...o...b..a.l.l.s for the Queen's masque...

Stratford

While I was at Snitterfield, I had the companionship of a girl whose fourteen years should have been double fourteen to equal her double sight for fox, hawk, raven and snail: she was unreal because she could bring me to the brink of fantasy by gesture or word: "Hush, there, over there, in the gra.s.s by the stile." Her flip-smile had the best of both pook and pagan. What she wore seemed a part of her blondeness, a blondeness often eerie with an eeriness that worried me, to be quickly saved by her smile or laughter. Her low voice set the stage for confi- dences-thread between goldenrod, rabbit lying in the entry of its burrow, lark rising.

Faith and I had lingering afternoons and saw the first of fog before dark, heard the last of bird sounds before sleep: her house next door to mine taught me, by window and door, the wretchedness of her life: her father's drunken beatings, kickings, savagery: so, to escape the village clod we escaped together, to sit by a woodland stream and hear words by leaves as they sifted down.

Faith had her legs in the water, up to her knees, or lay on the embankment, the color of her flesh gleaming. Her beauty was not a pair of b.r.e.a.s.t.s but a pair of hazel eyes and a dimple in her chin. She was tall, a cathedral figure in caenstone, the stone so alive yet ecclesiastical, erect, her posture one of graceful expectation: repose flowed from her: her thin hands lifted to her thin face: her hair straggled to her shoulders and down her back or was combed into a flaxen hayc.o.c.k. I thought my teaching infinitely poorer than hers and went with her whenever possible, helping her withstand the disgrace at home.

I thought many times of going back to see Faith Stanton but even the changeless changes and woodland jewels, claiming socketless eyes, reflect only images of the mind. Drunkenness outlives beauty-the clod burying hayc.o.c.k, bog and girl.

Henley Street

G.o.dd.a.m.n my hair!

My hair, with its copper and red, used to say: This is your world, boy!

d.a.m.n my wrinkles! My gallows neck!

My face was once all right.