It is widely surmised that young Shakespeare witnessed performances by the touring theatrical companies that crisscrossed the English provinces. Each of these troupes was in the employ of powerful nobles who were well aware of their potential as propaganda organs, and all but the lightest comedies of the day carried political messages. Given the sociopolitical turmoil in his own life, one can imagine the young poet as both susceptible to and fascinated by the emotional and political power of the theater.
William finished out his week’s work at the King’s New School as inconspicuously as he could. He avoided the inns and Philip Rogers’s apothecary shop, and overcame the occasional urge to visit Davy Jones’s house and enquire after Rosaline. He neither saw nor spoke to any of his friends. He heard no word from his bride to be, and he sent none, though his parents were thick as thieves with the Hathaways. Mary had gotten word that Edward and Mary Arden planned to attend, and she pushed wedding plans forward with controlled panic.
After leaving the schoolhouse on Friday evening, William went home and fixed the broken cart wheel in the tanning yard, fed Lucy (the ass), then went inside and began to pack for the journey to Park Hall. William opened the trunk he shared with his brother, and took from under the bed linens at the bottom the mysterious box from Thomas Cottom. So much had happened since Robert Debdale had delivered it to him. It seemed heavier now, more sinister. The inlaid St. George’s cross, a sign of the Old Faith, gleamed in the candlelight. He shook the box gently: a soft ruffle. Too light for gold. Rosaries, perhaps? The teeth or bones of a saint or martyr? Whatever it was, the last individual on earth but one to possess it had been executed, and the box and its precious contents smuggled away. He eyed the lock and briefly considered trying to break it, but then wrapped it carefully in a shawl and packed it with the rest of his gear.
While looking for a spare shirt, he came across Goody Hall’s potion. What to do with it? He considered emptying it into the chamber pot, but it seemed such a waste. Ten shillings was ten shillings. He finally hid it in the bottom of the trunk where the box had lain hidden.
On Saturday, William and his mother set out from Stratford early, toward the northeast. At a tavern in the shadow of Warwick Castle, they shared a midday meal of meat pies, cheese, and ale. Then they turned northwest and rode for some hours, stopping for a late afternoon rest at Wroxhall Abbey — or what was left of it.
“What is this ruin?” William asked.
“Your grandfather on your father’s side was baptized here,” Mary answered with a pale smile. “I’m sorry you never met Richard Shakespeare. He was a kind man, much like your father, less many gallons of ale. His aunt Isabel was the prioress here, and his sister, your great-aunt Jane, was to succeed her. And in the village nearby lived Richard’s brother William, your namesake.”
William looked around at the ruined stones of the abbey, already trailing with creeping vines. “What happened here?” he asked, knowing the answer.
“The new faith came,” said Mary, “and the abbey was thrown down.”
They wandered amongst the stones. Mary took a rosary from her bosom and, after a look over her shoulder and a furtive genuflection, left it on the stones where the chapel’s altar had once stood. Then she turned and mounted the cart.
They arrived at Park Hall after dark.
As they approached the gatehouse at the moat that surrounded the structure, a grim-looking pair of guards stepped out to bar their way with spears.
“I have no herald,” said Mary, “and therefore humbly announce myself as Mary Arden Shakespeare, along with my son William Shakespeare, arrived in fealty to our Most Blessed Saint Mary and the one true church of our sweet Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
One guard simply said “Ay, mum,” and gestured to the other, who opened the gate.
As they crossed the moat and rolled up the carriageway, they passed a gardener standing by the path and leaning on a rake. Curiously, William noticed, there were no leaves to be seen anywhere about, nor trees to drop them. The approach to the great house had been entirely cleared of flora.
The ancient wooden house loomed in a tortured evening light. The Hall was large, but time had not been kind to it. Only two windows were dimly lit with candles. The door to the great hall opened even as William and Mary walked up to it, and they were shown immediately by a young servant girl — a very pretty young servant girl, William noted, with cornflower blue eyes, pillowy breasts, and a jest about her lips — to a guest room in the house’s east wing, where they rested after the long journey from Stratford.
After an hour or so they were summoned to an evening meal in the house’s great hall. There were perhaps twenty individuals. Many wore expensive clothes, gold rings, silver chains, and brooches. William felt positively Puritan — or was it simply poor? — in his travel-stained shirt, black doublet, and hose. Introductions were made, and William, who had a good head for poetry but not for names, immediately forgot most of them. There were many prominent families represented: Throckmortons, male and female, including Sir Thomas himself; two quiet and intense sisters, the daughters of Lord Vaux; Sir William Catesby, master of Coughton Court; Underhills from the south; a Richard Owen. There were also Smiths, lords of the manor of Shottery. William hoped they wouldn’t ask him about their neighbors the Hathaways and the impending nuptials. There were also the Reynoldses of Stratford, along with several of their household that he recognized. Their presence made William feel less conspicuously out of his depth, for Master Reynolds was a yeoman, yet had he not honored William’s own father when he was bailiff? And there was a haunted, smelly young man at the end of the table, who began drinking great draughts of wine the second he arrived and roundly insulted anyone who approached him. William asked his mother his name. “My cousin John Somerville, and best to stay well clear of him. A ha’penny short of a shilling, as they say.”
At last Edward Arden entered, and bade his guests to table, and he went around greeting them one by one. When he stopped to greet Mary, he looked at William in amazement, and asked his age. “Eighteen, my lord,” William responded. Edward Arden laughed. “My father used to say he wished there were no age between ten and twenty,” he said, “for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, and fighting. I hope you prove him wrong. I bid you welcome, William.” He clapped William on the shoulder, took his seat, and dinner began.
Conversation was small and hushed, murmured bits of gossip from London, of Elizabeth and her court. Growing impatient at the end of the table, John Somerville finally slammed down his cup.
“Enough of this small talk and prattle, the inconsequential whisperings of schoolgirls! Have there been any fresh roastings of Catholic cocks and guts this fortnight? Nay, the answer I know, for there are such feasts aplenty at Tyburn these days. Have they been avenged? Nay, answer that not, neither, for I see the lily-hued answers in every one of your pied faces. We dine only upon pheasants and capons tonight, and shall not taste revenge.”
There was a silence. Robert Arden finally replied from the head of the table where he sat under a tapestry of the family crest that covered an entire wall. “Such stuff is not meet for table talk. We will have a full account of the state of our cause after our morning’s assembly. Tonight, we celebrate our congregation with mirth. Eat apace, for there are players here to entertain you withal.”
When the meal was finished, the company was led through the back of the house to a fountained courtyard. For once, William wished he wore a hat. It was a cold November evening, and despite the warmth from the many torches that lit the stage, he shivered in his inadequate cloak. Robert Arden announced that they would have the great pleasure of watching the Earl of Leicester’s Men — “his players, not his pursuivants,” Arden noted to a grim laugh — enact a play entitled The Greek Maid.
It was a tragedy, the tale of an innocent and devout maiden named Europa who was lured by Zeus, in the guise of bull, to take a ride upon him so that he might ravish her. It was immediately clear to everyone present that the tale was an allegory of innocent Catholics all across Europe being abused at the hands of a new and bestial incarnation of an old faith. And though William was cold, he watched, rapt. He knew the tale well from Ovid, but the company of performers, Leicester’s Men, were good. Very good.
The bull came to stamp in a meadow where the Phoenician maidens picnicked. Europa, the maiden, taken in by the beautiful, shining beast, approached it slowly in her flowing white robe, and tentatively caressed the bull’s flanks. Frightened at first but then awed and seduced by the sonorous rumble of the bull’s voice that emanated from behind a mask, she dared to touch a gleaming white horn —
A flash of gunpowder.
And when William’s momentarily blinded eyes adjusted, he saw that the bull now carried the terrified Europa across the sea — via a water effect much as William had pictured for the fountain of Salmacis — to Crete, where, while tambours beat and viols sawed as though unstrung, the bull transformed with a whisk of a mask into wide-browed, almighty Zeus, who raped and then imprisoned the maiden.
Europa’s final soliloquy, in her captivity, was heartrending:
“Pity me my fate, to be seduced by such a beast, so seeming-fair, so simple and so pure, without rich robes or jeweled scepters, with horns like a shining crescent moon, and yet to be at last betrayed. Cruel was the god that gored me, and left me to wither and die, thus a world away from kith and kin, in a forsaken tower of the Palace of Minos.”
William’s mother, sitting next to him, was crying.
His own tears he held back.