Voices from the Past Part 123

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear

To dig the dust enclosed here:

Blessed be the man that spares these stones

And cursed be he that moves my bones.

YOUTH-

Was there youth?

I sometimes think of the Avon that summer, thunderstorms booming, the river very high. Cousin Will was trying to yank a calf out of the water, when the river sucked him under. Kathlene Hamlett played at Ophelia-letting defeat suck her down. That was a summer of defeats for most of us, the loss of my father's property, theatres closed because of official disapproval, weeks of suffocating heat, the sun caught in the trees, frying our brains, flies buzzing...

Cousin Will was a cheery, responsible boy, with a pitiful limp. Good at lots of jobs, he was thinking of marrying. Fishing was his love...poaching too. Kathlene was good and capable but tried making love before she was old enough...

I miss their smiling faces.

Ben writes such an elegant hand: he has that Italian influence to perfection: his scripts are d.a.m.natory of my provincial scrawl, I who can't remember whether to write Willm, Will or William...thank G.o.d for copyists, those drones, our skull-down, penny-quill calligraphists. Too bad someone is not dotting this.

Stratford

Gossip hangs over me, leaving me naked as vulgar air: home gossip, precipitated by Ann, when Philip drops by, then Blanch, then Longworth, then Melun, then Peter, then Elinor, then Pembroke: Elinor has had a severe cold; Longworth has lost his mare; Melun's wife is down with pleurisy. Philip's face is so emaciated he can't carry a rose over his ear; Elinor has to be helped with a pick- up. "When is another doctor coming to practice here?"

Pembroke asks. Ann knows-and tells. Ann thinks there's a possible rape of the church, no less. Blanch's face puckers in disgust. Longworth asks for a gla.s.s of water.

Peter talks genealogy. Their arrows are carefully wrapped in leaves: all afternoon they talk in the shade, under the apple, trotting in and out of the house, moodily conferring in knots or pairs, then sauntering back to leafy conference. There is a consensus of opinion that the bridge over the Avon may be too poorly built... "it can't last... Sheriff Grimes has been appropriating tax money...he must go..."

Someone objects but when Ann objects he objects and she objects to his objection and the objections because I object are more objectionable and this objectionable quality leads to further objections...on a summer's afternoon.

Henley Street

December 7, 1615

Not long after Hamnet's death, Ann removed Judith from school, against my wishes. Though fond of school, Judith became slaved at home. Later-in a year or so-Ann needed Susanna, another home puppet. She further alienated us by this decision. I still say that ignorance, like horse p.i.s.s, stinks, cankering the mind. Example: Ann.

I have had more visitors, five Stratford puritans, who attacked my play writing. I got very angry yet tried to conceal my anger; remembering the smallness of my town I said little to the women; as if in the wings I waited, remembering:

"How unworthy a thing you make of me! You would play on me; you would seem to know my stops; you'd pluck out the heart of my mystery; you'd sound me from my lowest notes to the top of my compa.s.s...there's music in this little organ and yet you can't make it speak. Why?"

I talked to them as best I could and then a fat wench bleated, jerking at her gloves:

"You talk in riddles, sir. Your plays ridicule us. You disesteem our monarchs, King Richard for one. Your plays attract the vulgar. You praise the rotten..."

By standing, I asked them to leave: perhaps they felt the pain I felt; then my sickness grew worse after their visit.

An apple tree shakes out a boy:

The boy, Linnus, performs acrobatics in the branches:

He's fourteen.

Laughter:

Then King Lear's voice: