Shoreditch
Will swept clean the desk Tom Makeshift had built for him and moved it closer to the small window to catch the weak November light. He imagined the success that would greet his festive holiday comedy. The queen, Burbage said, loved music, masques, and star-crossed lovers to distract her from the careful business of state. A wise and witty female character was sure to please her as well. Burbage wanted the plot to concern a hero falsely imprisoned and his beloved who disguises herself as a lawyer to obtain his freedom. Will knew he could write such a play, for hadn’t he already lived it?
Love’s Logical Lawyer, he wrote at the top of the page.
Would anyone in Stratford believe his newfound fortune? A month ago he had been a penniless youth about to go to prison. Now his Cleopatra was pulling hundreds to the playhouse and the Earl of Leicester had commissioned a play. He was like the waxing moon, growing toward the day in January when he would shine full upon the queen herself. What if she rewarded him with a pension? Burbage might invite him to be a shareholder in his company. Fame and prosperity would overcome his father’s disapproval once and for all.
Love’s Logical Lawyer. The title promised dullness. He crossed it out and wrote Love Disguised. His pen scratched steadily. Makeshift snored in his bed. A mouse scuttled among the wood shavings, finding stuff for its nest. Will reread his opening scene and with a groan blotted every line. Where should he start then? With a simple ditty. Lovers know no law/But the rule of love. An hour passed and he could think of no rhyme but “flaw” and “glove,” which he considered unsuitable.
He wished Meg were beside him. She took seriously her role as a muse—when she was not teasing him. Sometimes he still thought of her as Mack even as he admired her long, golden hair, her ready smile, and the way her lithe figure moved on the stage. From her lips his words fell lightly, like notes from a lute. Hearing them, Will knew what was good and what he needed to revise. Sometimes Meg even suggested a fitter word or rhyme. He had never known such a clever woman. She could now read and write as well as any of Will’s peers at Stratford’s grammar school.
He had to see her. Quickly he covered the short distance to her cottage. It was almost midnight.
“Meg?” he whispered, tapping at her window. “It’s Will.”
He felt foolish standing there in the blackness and cold. This was something a lover unable to bear his solitude might do. His inner voice spoke up. Well, do you love Meg? Will shifted from one foot to the other, equivocating with himself. Though he was at Meg’s cottage at midnight, his intentions were not what they had been in the Forest of Arden at midnight. Are you certain? “Yes,” Will murmured. This was not a woman to be won in the usual way.
“Meg, are you awake?” He held his breath, listening. He thought he heard a stirring within. The shutter was flung outward and a sleep-touseled head appeared.
“Whatever are you doing here, Will Shakespeare?” Meg rubbed her eyes. She was wearing only a shift and exuding a warmth he could almost smell.
Will felt himself blush, despite the cool night. “I need your help,” he said.
At once she was alert. “Is there trouble? Are you in danger?”
Will wished for any reason to embark upon a new adventure. He sighed. “No, my brain is stuck on a rhyme.”
Meg rolled her eyes. “Surely it can wait until tomorrow.”
“But I’m here now and we’re both awake,” he said as Meg pulled the shutter closed. “Listen, if only for a moment,” he pleaded. Silently he counted to ten. “Please, Meg.” How selfish he sounded! At twenty he would leave.
At fifteen Meg opened the window again. She had a blanket around her shoulders. She cocked her head sideways and waited.
Now Will felt foolish. He cleared his throat and began. “Lovers know no law / But the rule of love.” He beat the air with his hand. “Flaw? Glove? Above?”
Meg furrowed her brow. Her lips moved as she thought. Finally she said, “How about this? Lovers know no law / But the rule of love: / Do not withdraw / At a slight rebuff.”
“That suits the meter,” said Will. He leaned on the window ledge. Another rhyme came to him. “Through lips without flaw / Sings my turtledove,” he said, wondering what it would be like to kiss Meg. Not on a stage before hundreds of onlookers but now, while they were alone in the darkness.
Will felt Meg’s hands on his shoulders. Could she read his thoughts?
“Turtledoves do not have lips,” she whispered and pushed him gently backward. Then with a shadowed smile she added, “Will, despite the riposte / Know all is not lost!”
Again Will found himself staring at Meg’s shuttered window. He wondered if he had been walking in his sleep and dreaming the whole while. He returned home and sat at his desk, where his pen flew across the page as if inspired by the gods who wrought every change on earth and in the heavens.
He filled a sheet, turned it upside down, and wrote between the lines. Some banter between lovers. Two villains cursing. A poetic interlude between acts. He was like the great inventor Nature, ceaselessly contriving new shapes from old and new scenes from old words. When it was almost dawn he fell asleep with his head resting on the desk.
A few hours later he awoke and resumed writing, but his ideas were as sluggish as his sleepless brain. The pounding of Makeshift’s hammer distracted him. His characters seemed cut from wood, not made of flesh and blood. How was he to transform his own life into art? Will tossed his papers into a pile of sawdust.
“How do you do that, Makeshift?” he said, gesturing toward a heap of wood. “Assemble a cabinet out of so many pieces without having to tear it apart and rebuild it over and over?”
Makeshift considered his hammer as if it had dropped from the skies into his hand.
“I can’t even put a play together with two hands, a brain, and this pen,” said Will, disconsolate.
Makeshift nodded. “That stub of a feather is useless as a tool.”
“Ha! That’s very good,” said Will, reaching for his pen as a knocking sounded at the door. It had to be Burbage wanting to see the opening scenes of his play. Will leaped over a stack of wood and crouched behind it. “Tell him I’ve gone out!” he whispered.
Makeshift opened the door and Will heard a familiar voice.
“Please, don’t strike me! I have a message for Will Shakespeare.”
Will stood up. It was only Dab Nockney looking terrified at the sight of Makeshift’s hammer. “This came to the Boar’s Head not two hours ago.”
Will recognized his father’s handwriting. He unfolded the letter and read:
William, an urgent and personal matter compels me to
summon you home. Delay not but come at once upon
receiving this. Your father, Jn. Shakespeare.
What did this mean? Was someone in the family gravely ill? He was being summoned—was it another legal action? Had his father lost the Henley Street property? Were the Shakespeares about to be evicted?
Will reached into his pocket and drew out three shillings. “Dab, go hire me a good horse, not one with spavins. Makeshift, tell Burbage I will return within a week and show him the first act of my new play.”
Will threw his clothes and belongings into a satchel, including the lawyer’s handbook, which might prove useful. Next he ran to Meg’s cottage. She was seated before a window reading the poetic miscellany Will had given her. The sun streamed in the window behind her, illuminating her hair like a crown of gold.
“Come away with me, Meg,” he said, breathless.
She stood up and the book fell from her lap to the floor. “Now? Where?” Her hand touched her throat, the spot where her blood pulsed. “What have you done, Will?”
“My father is tangled in some new trouble and needs me to unravel it again,” he explained, holding out the letter. “And I need your wit to help to solve these woes.”
Meg’s hand dropped from her throat to her hip. “You want Mack to come with you,” she said. “And I have forsworn being Mack.”
She was right. Will’s first thought had been that Mack would accompany him to Stratford and lend him courage and resourcefulness. But those qualities were … Meg’s.
“You are my friend, Meg. I want you to come with me,” Will said and found that he meant it.
“And disguise myself as Mack? For how else should I travel alone in your company and keep my reputation? If you arrive in Stratford with Meg de Galle, every tongue within miles will wag right out of its mouth.”
Will had not considered this. “How inconvenient that you are a woman! Will you disguise yourself for my sake?” he pleaded.
Now her lips tightened. He could see he had angered her. She blinked rapidly and looked away.
Sudden desolation swept over Will. “Fie, fo, and fum! I do not blame you for thinking me a knave and a woman-hater. But I swear, Meg, I revere you as a goddess.” His thoughts rushed headlong into words as true as any he had ever written. “I came straight to you, for you are the dearest friend of my heart. I cannot go even a day without the sight of you.”
Meg looked at him. Tears marked her cheeks. She lifted her hands and placed her golden hair behind her shoulders like the sun shifting her beams away from him.
“Will, I am your eternal friend. But I will not go with you.” She sought for words. “These … family matters you must settle alone. Your past is yours, not mine. The present only is ours.” She broke off.
“And the future?” said Will.
Meg lifted her shoulders and smiled. “That is up to you.”
Now was the time to say it. I love you. But the words seemed unsuitable. What he felt for Meg was not the giddy excitement Catherine caused him or the passion he spent on Anne. What should he call the deeper regard that now filled him, body and mind? Maybe this, and not what came before, was love.
There was only one way Will knew to test his feeling. He stepped close and ran his hands from the crown of Meg’s head to her shoulders, tangling his hands in her hair. Gently he drew her down to him. He was aiming for her lips, but she tilted her head a wee bit and his mouth grazed her cheek instead. She did not offer her lips but neither did she pull away. She let her cheek, warm and damp, rest against his lips for several long breaths. Finally Will drew away. For the moment he was fully content.
“This is not ‘farewell,’ for I shall return anon,” he said.
Meg reached up her hand and touched his lips. “Promise?”
Will tried to kiss her fingers but she didn’t give him the chance.
“Do make haste,” she said, tapping his chin. “You have a play to write for the queen and I intend to perform it.”
Stern though she sounded, she smiled and blushed crimson like the sky at sunset. Or rather the sky at dawn, for surely this moment was a new beginning for them.
Beshrew the play, Will thought. It’s a sonnet I want to write.