1596

His boy had arrived at his apartment in Bishopsgate, all the way from Oxford. He was already taller than him, lanky, with honey hair and doe eyes. His face was slightly oval, with warm, open expression. His likeness, clearly—and yet when he looked at him, all he could think about was Anne.

“We’re on the Sallust, such a bore,” he griped, tired but cheerful, casting off his traveling cloak and gloves. “I lodge at Middle Temple with my friend Hal, I think I told you of him. I thought to surprise you.” He hesitated. “You are not angry?”

“Nay, nay.” He had put away the letter, blinking furiously. “Well—it is a trying time, but—thou shouldst keep to thy studies, is all.”

“But ‘tis a coil,” the boy groaned, slumping loose-limbed on his bed. “Bid me not go back. I cannot bear another lēctiō et trānslātiō. Let me stay, amābō te.”

His heart was a soaring sparrow, its open cage burned, in ashes. “For this Michaelmas, then. How dost thou, my dove? Thy Latin hath much improved. Hast reached the Ovid?”

“Ovid is for grammar, not university. Sallust and the Greek Old Testament is university. I must write to Susan, she still has my Lyly.” His brilliant face fell. “You look ill. What has happened? Is it the Theater?”

“Nay—well, ay.” It no longer mattered, nothing did, but…“The Theater’s lease is to expire. Master Allen refuseth to extend it. We have moved to the Curtain, but ‘tis too small…we must find another playhouse.”

“And Blackfriars?” His boy sat up, leaning in. “Burbage bought it, no?”

“We are banned from occupying it.” Some Puritan countess had complained, her letter to Burbage an angry italic script. His old friend Rich had signed the neighborhood petition. All irrelevant now. “I must to Master Langley, see if we can play at his Swan, ‘tis large enough. I was to go now—hours ago.”

“Oh.”

Awkward silence fell. His hands still burned, as if Anne’s letter were still in them. They were bronzed hands, rough and stained with ink.

“Wherefore go you not to Langley?” 

He glanced up and found only curiosity in the youth’s beautiful brown eyes. He did not understand after all. He did not even understand it himself. 

“I love thee,” he told him helplessly. “All that I do is for thee. Knowst thou?”

But the boy was leaning away with an embarrassed laugh. “You sound like Mother.” 

“I will be a gentleman soon.” He could not stop, his grip on his boy’s lily hands too tight, his voice too throaty, carrying as if he were back on the Theater stage. “The College of Arms shall grant my petition—my coat of arms granted—and thou, my Hamlet, shall be a gentleman’s son.” 

“You’re unmanned…Father, peace…”

It was spoken, the words ringing in the air, as good as any spell.

***

He was weak, he knew. He let Hamlet dog him through his errands about London, asking questions, rambling charmingly on some desultory topic, or simply as a silent companion. In a way, his son’s presence calmed him, anchored him. It would only be for a few days at the most. They could worry about Oxford later. 

“Our new…patron,” Burbage told him at a crowded Curtain, with palpable dislike, older and wearier than ever, “felt his kin was much abused by our Henry IV. He would demand Oldcastle be removed from the play entirely.”

“Impossible,” said Hamlet immediately. “Oldcastle is the toast of London!”

“Be that as it may, he is his lordship’s ancestor, and he would not suffer his kin to be traduced on stage.” 

“He will suffer to sink himself in sinking the play, the slave!”

“I will not suffer it either way,” he told them both. “Tell Cobham—my Lord Chamberlain that Oldcastle is not and has never been his kinsman. I will change the names, and there an end.” 

But his heart warmed. Already Hamlet had a romantic attachment for the playhouse, that beautiful, treacherous mistress.

“Would it not be a most wondrous thing?” sighed Hamlet, almost hugging the awning pillars as he hastily crossed out the Oldcastles and Russells. “Sawing out Hieronimo, Richard, Romeo, drawing half of London to rapturous awe?” 

Romantic attachment, though, was not love. Or even grand passion. “Thou wilt be a lawyer. Or a doctor. Thy mother will kill me otherwise.”

Truths and lies, lies and truths. How easily could one morph into the other. His mother was a gentleman’s daughter. Oldcastle was Falstaff. And once his coat of arms was accepted, Sir William Dethick depositing his fee, he, too, would be a gentleman. But he wasn’t the only one who could reshape reality through words.

Non. The clerks wrote his motto thus, very tersely. Sanz droict. 

“I bet you ten to the hundred these clerks were farmers’ sons and grandsons,” said Hamlet fiercely. “Call for their censure!”

Instead, he crossed out the punctuation and returned the draft to be revised. He did this twice.

***

It was the Puritans who nearly ruined everything.

“This is William Wayte, sir,” Langley introduced dully, not even bothering to lift his head from the table. “Son of the Justice of the Peace, Sir William Gardiner. Come now to torment or arrest me, I know not.”

For Langley, wanted for brokering and extortion, had to flee to his mistress’s cheap lodgings in the Paris Garden. He and Hamlet were forced to meet him in that tiny room, rubbing his temple, his blonde mistress refilling their cups.

“Burbage’s fellow, eh?” A bulky Wayte in Puritan gray sneered coldly at him. “I know you are fleeing that sinking ship, the Theater. Aim ye to take shelter at the Swan? Fear not but that her wings may not soon be clipped. Look to it, sir.”

“Slander me a thief by all means,” said Langley through gritted teeth, lifting his head, “but at least give courtesy to a Theater sharer!” 

“I do him all the courtesy of his desert, which is none.” Wayte scoffed, rolling his thick shoulders. “You players really are the devil’s own minions. Your dens of iniquity, stewing in filthy lies, slander, lust…but the Lord hath his ways. He will grant your just reward and send ye all howling!”

“And thee in darkest hell, too, villain.” Hamlet was up on his feet in a thrice, hand at his rapier. “Take the minion back.”

An odd look came upon Wayte, all too knowing. “Oh, this one I know. The glover’s son. Tell me, sir, is report on thy bawd father true?”

“Peace, thou!”

“Or what?” That queer little smile vanished from Wayte’s pock-marked face as he turned to him. “Wilt have thy boy-love to avenge thine honor in thy stead?” 

He did not remember, at first, Hamlet’s charge, Wayte’s sneer turned to a snarl. He did not remember Langley’s own shouts, his mistress’s screams, the landlady’s reprimands in French. He did not remember Wayte’s ominous words of departure nor the heated fight between Langley and his angel-blonde mistress. He did not recall Langley’s mistress gently leading him to her room, his sobs at her swelling bosom. 

“I fear for Francis,” she whispered later in her bed, swallowing audibly. “He hath been much abused by this Gardiner. He fears he will lose his Swan by him.” 

Nothing mattered. But…“What is thy name?”

“Anne.”

He had gone mad. Or else his stars had truly crossed him. “I’m so sorry, Anne. Forgive me.”

The next day, all five of them—he, Hamlet, Francis, Anne, and even the landlady—were arrested. He was booked two hours before Gardiner finally granted them bail. 

“Wherefore did you stop me?” Hamlet was pacing in the cell, rounding on him in rage, in grief. “I could have beat the whoreson! I could have avenged you!” 

“Ay, thou hast much avengeth me.” He was trembling too, in anger, panic. “Casting me in jail, and Wayte crying abuse! Go to, boy!” 

“I am a man, and if thou wilt ‘boy’ me again, I will prove it so!”

“How so?” The ink stains on his hands, they grew darker and darker. “Hamlet, that is not the way of manhood. This is not the age of roaming knights, of unfettered vengeance—”

“Of true valor!”

“Of brute simplicity.” He felt lost, drained. “By heaven, I did not raise thee for brawling on such a disadvantage.”

“You did not raise me at all.” 

His boy’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. “Hamlet—”

“I defended you,” he said, broken. “In grammar school, when that whoreson Wheeler called thee bawd. I defended your honor.”

“I know.” He recalled those same doe eyes telling him this, also awash with tears. “I was proud. Thou art my sweet boy. I only scold thee in fear and care for thee. This time is not free.” 

Hamlet was silent. “I cannot conceive,” he said at last, defeatedly, “the point in learning to act and yet not acting.”

He was saved from replying at the guard’s arrival.

“I have a message from your patron, my Lord of Southampton,” he said. “He has spoken with Sir William for your release. You are to come with me, sir.”

But just before he left, he turned back to Hamlet. Hamlet’s arms were folded across his chest, his gaze flinty.

“Go,” he said. “Thy lovely boy stays.” 

***

He did not return to Bishopsgate. Instead, he leased temporary lodgings in Surrey, near the Paris Garden. It wasn’t just Anne Lee’s warm bed. Gardiner’s interference had made him more determined than ever to make the Swan his troupe’s new home. He did not dare go back to St. Helen’s. He knew his Hamlet would be waiting for him there. 

He did not go to Southampton, either. His patron had been generous already. He did not even want to glimpse the depth of that debt.  

Instead, he wrote. He wrote about complacent nobles, gossip and slander, innocent maids slandered. He wrote about a highborn boy and his two fathers, a king and a criminal. It was all fantasy, reflecting this world’s horrors at a slant. But he no longer cared if his Muse was lounging lazily on its chaise, indulging on chimeras he would have gleefully satirized years ago. 

It was words on a page. The playhouse was a demanding, commanding mistress. London needed its fat knight, its Puritans rebuked. No matter if his world had broken. He would make it right, somehow, through his writing.

“Thou art not thyself, Will,” his friend Heminges told him, again and again. “Thou must to Stratford. If thou wouldst, I could come with thee. But do not drown alone in darkness.”

One letter from Stratford did arrive, like lightning through that darkness.

Mr. Underhill hath come to take back New Place, his neighbor Richard Quiney wrote. He aims to recover some debt. Your wife Anne refuseth to leave, Underhill’s men are without the house, and all is chaos. Please, sir. 

***

New Place was sprawling as ever, grand as any lord’s manor. But now he saw more than his child’s eyes, gazing across the street from his grammar school, could ever see. He saw now the weathered bricks, the aging cobblestones, and weed-filled courtyard.

He also saw Underhill’s men, gathered with forks and torches in the street outside, eyes on him like a pack of hyenas. He had been right to dress in London black. They parted warily, hats doffing automatically. 

“Master Shakespeare.” William Underhill’s smirk vanished entirely, his swarthy face twisting into a scowl. “I did not expect you, sir.”

The servants led him to a fully furnished parlor—his wife’s work, a part of him vaguely recognized. His Anne at the writing desk in black, her face buried in her palm. Underhill stood over her in silver-gray, leaning against the desk. 

“Call off your men,” he said, his voice terrible even to him. “I have but just arrived. Let me meet with you at supper to discuss the lease.”

“Very well, sir,” said Underhill, and with a chill his lazy smirk returned. “But I must say, I am surprised you do not know, a man of your position. Too captured by London affairs, hmm?” 

Hate was very hard for him, slow, even reluctant. But as Underhill swaggered toward him, its premonitions did stir. 

“There is no lease,” said Underhill distinctly. “Your wife hath roosted here with her chicks on my property without law for more than a year. There is no measure to measure the debt owed unto me. Unless you can give me satisfactory answer, you and your own must be out of my house by supper.” 

Thank you, William Underhill, the small part of him said quietly even amidst the roaring sea. Thank you for your terrible villain’s part. He needed this branch to pull him from the gaping chasm. He was safe from Hamlet for the time being.

“Master Underhill hath been sued by the Corporation for unpaid taxes,” their servant Maria told him, hands wringing. “He demands a whole years’ rent in payment. My mistress is not herself. Sir, what must we do?”

There was no lease. Words of horror he would cling to like a twine amid the rushing river. 

By supper Underhill’s men were gone. In the parlor he found Underhill lounging at the table’s head, Anne refilling his cup. They sat down across from each other, drinking silently for a moment.

“I am a liberal man, sir,” said Underhill at last. “To my great folly, I confess. But your wife has much abused my trust.”

“My wife’s abuse is without the point.” He never wanted Underhill even to breathe anywhere near her again. “My wife is feme covert. Any agreement you have with her is void. As her husband, your dealings should have been only with me. You did not write me, sir.”

“Be that as it may,” said Underhill steely, “your wife’s stay was without law. I am the owner of New Place for thirty years.”

“And not a minute more, on my life.”

Silence fell. Underhill’s mouth opened and closed. He rubbed at his beard; an odd smile hovered about his lips. 

“What is your offer, then?” he asked. 

“Sixty pounds.”

As he thought, Underhill’s eyes flashed in choler. And greed. “That is not a good sum.”

“True. It is too high.”

“I will not accept a sum below a hundred pounds. One hundred and ten.”

“Sixty pounds.”

“Ninety-four.”

“Sixty pounds.”

“Eighty.”

“Sixty pounds.”

“Seventy, and not a penny below.” Underhill almost leaped up. “’Zounds, know you not New Place? The majesty of Stratford, the jewel of old Clopton’s crown—”

“—A dilapidated bag of bones with half the rooms scarcely furnished and the other half in need of repair. I have seen skulls at the charnel house with fairer aspect. My wife hath kept house well, but I am not buying her husbandry. I am buying yours. Sixty pounds.”

Underhill stared at him. He settled into his seat, more calculated now.

“Mark me, sir,” he said in a low voice. “I paid forty pounds for New Place, and your wife owes me much more. This is the grandest house in all of Warwickshire, and I will not give to some player and his whore wife!”

There was no lease. Underhill had no idea. He had sealed his fate with his own words. 

“Sir, I give you as much love as your desert, little as it is. You owe our town dearly, and if I know aught of the Stratford Corporation, you will not win your suit. If you do not accept my offer, I will tell the Corporation you have demanded carnal congress with my wife as payment and thee charged with attempt. Sixty pounds.”

So it was agreed. Underhill shook his hand as if it were a fanged serpent and departed, his furious footsteps echoing loudly through the halls. Anne had scarcely stirred at their conversation. Whatever energy that had powered her seemed to have departed.

“Wherefore didst not tell me, Anne?” Just thinking about it made his skin crawl.

“Wouldst have believed me?” Her hand fell, like a dead thing, to the table. “The fires…the children and I, burdens on my brother and your family…and Underhill was without for years, New Place as good as abandoned. I thought to ask forgiveness than permission.”

If it weren’t for all the madness of Hamlet, Langley, and now Underhill, he might have smiled at this. “I could have helped thee.”

“And abandon thy whores and ingles of London?”

Anne’s face had not changed, but her voice had gained some warmth and life. “I’m so sorry, Anne. Forgive me.”

“It matters not now,” she said dully. “Nothing does.”

Somehow, hearing the words spoken aloud was much more devastating than just thinking it. “Where are the children?”

“With thy parents.” She was silent. “Thou writest me not. I had to learn by Greenaway.”

“I could not write.” He lacked the spiritual resources now to lie. “There were no words.”

“Thou hadst words for London, for thy plays and drabs,” she said, with a spark of ire. “This villain, ever at my skirts—at Susanna’s—and now my heart is in the grave where my Hamlet lies, and thou hadst no words.”

But Hamlet was here, he thought, even as his Anne fled the room with a broken sob. He wasn’t gone. He just wasn’t there.

“Wherefore does Mother weep?” his boy asked, almost timidly. “I have never seen her so.”

It was not something he was prepared for. Truth, real and fictive, can be one thing, two things, many. The definite was harder to accept by far. But he had to try. For Anne.

“She mourns thee,” he told the air, almost experimentally. “Thou art dead, Hamlet.”