Stratford 1582
The smell of the urine tubs stung Will’s nose and made him gag. In the two years of his forced apprenticeship he had learned how to prepare the hides of deer, sheep, horses, and even goats. After scraping the skins and softening them with salt and alum, he soaked them in the urine tubs, then laid them out to dry. It always surprised Will that the resulting leather was smooth and soft, with no trace of foulness. But he would never get used to the awful smell. It stood for everything he hated about his father’s trade.
After the first year it became Gilbert’s job to tend the smelly tubs, and Will progressed to cutting the leather using special knives, patterns, and a glover’s compass. He liked the precision of this work and laid out the patterns so as to waste none of the leather. But he hated stitching the pieces into belts, purses, saddles, and gloves. The needles pricked his clumsy fingers, the seams were always uneven, and his father berated his every effort.
Will’s sister Joan worked the finer pieces such as women’s gloves. Sometimes she lined them with velvet or flannel. The best ones were finished with gold braid, embroidery, and lace. John Shakespeare paid two sisters from Shottery, Anne and Catherine Hathaway, a penny for each glove they trimmed. Ever since spring, when he had held her nimble fingers in his and danced around the Maypole until he was breathless, Will had been in love with Catherine.
Will had known the sisters all his life. His father had purchased sheepskins and wool from their father, Richard Hathaway, who owned Hewlands Farm in nearby Shottery. But Hathaway had died, leaving his second wife to care for their five children. Anne and Catherine were her stepdaughters, but she treated them like servants. Everyone in the village pitied them for it.
Anne was twenty-six, eight years older than Will, with a mane of thick brown hair and freckles across her nose that gave her a look of sunny, robust health. When Will felt the first stirrings of manhood, he stole glances at Anne’s round and shapely body just to feel his blood grow warm. But he could not forget how she used to carry him on her hip when he was a little boy and play with him like a puppy. Around her he always felt like a little boy tongue-tied with admiration.
Then he began to notice Catherine. What ho, Ovid! Almost overnight she had changed, and she now resembled Anne in height and shape so closely, they might have been twins. Will compared what he could see of their bosoms and found himself not more pleased with one set than the other. Even Catherine’s hair was the same color as her sister’s though sleeker, like the fur of a wet otter. She had green eyes and skin like fresh cream. She was shy, favoring Will with smiles but few words. And she was exactly his age.
On a sunny morning in mid-May Will followed the path from Stratford toward Shottery, crossing the brook and the meadows full of cowslips and honey-stalks without even seeing them. He cut across the hayfield belonging to Fulke Sandells, trampling the new wheat. Catherine’s pale beauty was the only thought in his mind. And when he knocked at the door of Hewlands Cottage with its frame of hedge roses, it was his good fortune that she was the one to open it.
“Will!” His name was a breath issuing from her lips. A pink flush rose to her cheeks. She glanced over her shoulder and said in reply to a sharp voice that Will guessed was her stepmother’s, “’Tis only John Shakespeare’s boy.”
She turned back to Will and giggled. Her movements stirred up the scent of roses. He forgot what he had intended to say, content merely to look upon her.
The sharp voice sounded again. “Catherine, you lazy wench, you left the lid off the churn and there are flies in the butter!”
Catherine sighed. “I will think on you while I work,” she said and withdrew into the house.
Will closed his eyes. The idea of Catherine with the churn held between her knees made him dizzy with desire.
A female voice said, “ ‘Only the Shakespeare boy.’ I am glad it is not Fulke Sandells.”
Will opened his eyes, surprised to see Anne where her sister had stood moments before. She smiled at him, her head tilted to the side, and waited for him to speak.
All Will could think of to say was, “Does your neighbor dislike my walking through his field?”
“Sandells’s dislikes are no matter of mine,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Why did you come here? I told your father I would deliver the finished gloves tomorrow.”
Anne was never afraid to speak her mind. Perhaps that was why she was still unmarried. There had been gossip involving a betrothal and some misfortune, but Will had paid no attention to it. Now he wondered what the truth was.
“’Tis a fair day for a ramble through the fields,” he replied, satisfied that the answer made him seem aimless and free.
“Are you inviting me thither?”
“You and … and your fair sister,” stammered Will.
“Catherine is not done with her chores,” Anne said, stepping over the threshold and taking Will’s arm. He had no choice but to walk with her. At the gate she plucked a sprig of lilac and tucked it behind her ear. The fragrance drew Will toward her. She reached up and touched his chin, saying she liked his new beard. Will was proud of this change in his features. He blushed and wondered if she was serious.
Laughing, Anne led him along a path toward the woods Will’s ancestors had once owned. Before they reached its shaded precincts, a cloudburst drove them back to the cottage, where they took shelter under the eaves.
“So Nature keeps us from our pleasant purposes,” said Will, leaning against the cottage wall and thinking of Catherine.
“I think I know your purpose, Will Shakespeare. Was it only the piecework you came for or something more?”
Her teasing tone confused him. Did she suspect he loved her sister? Without thinking, he said, “You are the piece of work I sought, Nature’s own best creation.”
It was the very phrase he had been saving for Catherine. But Anne was before him, buxom and redolent of lilac, her hair in damp tendrils around her face.
“Though it is a lesser work—the gloves—I must be content with,” he added.
“You are a witty one,” said Anne, slapping his arm lightly. “I’ll fetch them for you.”
Will hoped Catherine would come out so he could see her again, but Anne returned quickly, handing him the bundle of gloves. With no further reason to dally and nothing else witty to say, Will tucked the gloves inside his jerkin and said good-bye. At the end of the lane he glanced back and thought he saw Catherine’s pale face at the window, watching him through the curtain of rain.
However Will contrived to speak to Catherine, it was always Anne who came to Henley Street on business or met Will in the marketplace and bade him walk her back to Shottery. He complied, for he always hoped to see her sister. When Anne took his arm, Will was afraid anyone who saw them would think he was courting her. At the same time he wondered what her body looked like without clothes. He wished that she were younger or he older. He felt guilty for dreaming about Anne when it was her sister he loved. But Catherine remained out of reach, a bud deep within a thorny rosebush.
Therefore Will conceived a plan to kiss Catherine during the Pentecost festival in June, when three days of games, dances, and mumming culminated in the crowning of the Summer King and Queen. But he required the aid of the pageant’s organizer, David Jones, who happened to be one of his father’s loyal customers.
When Jones came by the shop Will saw his chance.
“For you, Davy, this belt is only five shillings, not eight,” he said, then skillfully brought the conversation around to the festival.
Jones admitted the pageant had become a burden to organize, with merchants, craftsmen, and aldermen all vying to create the best wagons and obtain places of honor in the procession.
Will hummed in sympathy. “I was thinking more of the play itself,” he said. “Those ancient rhymes so twist the tongue and strain the sense that the audience groans to hear them. ’Tis no fault of yours,” he added hastily.
Jones looked troubled. “If the play displeases the people of Stratford, I will suffer in their esteem.”
“I have some skill with verses,” said Will. “With your leave I will make the old pageant new, and you shall be praised for it.”
Jones hesitated. He was paid a good wage for his yearly efforts and was unwilling to share it, Will knew.
“I want no payment. Only permit me to play the first shepherd,” he said. Thus reassured, Jones gave his ready consent.
Will knew the old pageant by heart. He began revising it in his head as he worked. At first the words trickled through his brain like water in a dry brook. Why, it was easier to translate Latin sentences! But when he thought of Catherine the rhymes flowed freely. At night he scribbled down his new verses by the flame of a candle stub. A week later he visited David Jones with his finished pages.
Nodding as he read it Jones said, “I like it very well. The Summer Queen is hard of heart but women are ever so.”
Affecting nonchalance Will said, “I care not who plays the queen, but let the younger Hathaway sister be my shepherdess. She is nimble and can lead the others in the dance.”
Will had carefully rewritten the lines he would say to his shepherdess to awaken thoughts of love.
Behold the queen, the mistress of disdain,
Leading her king with a rose-red chain.
When his lips are ready for their pay
She winks and turns her lips another way.
Come now you shepherds, all ye red-lipped lasses,
Praise the god of love, ere summer passes.
Jones punched Will’s arm. “I see your plot!” he said. “I’ll gladly smooth the path of love for you. She shall be in your arms by nightfall.”
On the day of the pageant, the mayor’s son and an alderman’s daughter were transformed with flowers and green worsted capes into the king and queen, harbingers of summer. Will, wearing a sheepskin belted at the waist, spoke his lines to Catherine while straining to see through her gauze tunic. She pursed her lips until, cued by his verses, she smiled at him. But she would not kiss him as the other lasses did their shepherds.
“Please,” he said. “It is written thus.” But she only shook her head.
Though downcast by her refusal, Will grinned to hear the loud applause, which pleased him more than he had expected.
After the play, as everyone began to dance, Anne seized Will as her partner and leaped lightly before him. “See, I can dance as prettily as my sister. But no one can rhyme like you, Will Shakespeare.” And she kissed him on the cheek, leaving behind the scent of lilac. Will found himself blushing.
At least one citizen of Stratford was not pleased with the day’s events. John Shakespeare, though he did not leave his house to see the pageant, heard about Will’s role in it. That night Will felt his wrath.
“Did I not forbid you to be a player? Yet you deceive me and strut upon a stage before the whole town.” Spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth. “I thought you had forgotten that disgraceful business. Writing verses! What profit is there in such vanity?”
“Thieving is more disgraceful than acting,” Will shot back, “yet there is profit in it. Many a man, while seeming virtuous, milks the commonwealth for his good alone.”
His father smoldered like a peat fire. “Hold your peace!” he demanded, reaching for his rod. “I abhor your disobedience!”
But Will could not be silent. “Next to a thief a player is honest; he takes nothing but the appearance of another and yields it again at the play’s end.” He watched the rod tremble in his father’s hand but felt no fear.
“I will be a poor player and an honest poet before I will be a false glover.”
Will’s father turned and struck the table. With a loud crack, his rod broke and clattered to the floor in pieces.