The Sonnets
Warwick Collins

Copyright

The Friday Project

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by The Friday Project in 2008

This edition published by The Friday Project in 2015

Copyright © Warwick Collins 2008

Warwick Collins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Although this is a work of fiction and the product of the author’s imagination, it is based on/inspired by real historical events and, therefore, some of the characters portrayed herein are based on real people. However, any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events or localities who are unconnected with the historical event is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780007306190

Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN 9780007379996

Version: 2015-03-31

Dedication

To Chris Owen

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Biographical Note

Afterword

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

MY LORD SOUTHAMPTON, at the lake that day, removed his garments, wading in silence to deeper water. In hungry dawn his slender frame, already bearing scars and calluses of fearful games and hunts, seemed to pause and flicker. A heron stood on the neighbouring bank, observing the edge of the shallows. Against that human figure a bird’s shadow, hovering over water, preparing to strike at waiting fish, would not have seemed more ghostly or more pale. There my lord waited, hardly moving, suspended in the heron’s eye, as though lost in invisible thought.

I, standing on the shore, observed how light became flesh, seeming to pause and thicken. Water covered his thighs, his lower back. From the bank I considered him as he walked further into the lake, until it lapped his shoulder blades. I continued to observe him as he waded deeper into that periphrastic calm. The liquid line rose until, once level with shoulder and neck, he began to swim, both languidly and strongly.

Out there he seemed impalpable. Only his head appeared, floating on the surface. Under the dawn light he moved alongside his own reflection, touching ghost to liquid ghost, leaving a soft wake which formed and glimmered like an arrowhead.

Instead it was I – the watching man, the unquiet one – who took up my usual position, holding the reins of both our nervous horses. Part of that mind which lives in shadow now became alert. I remained constantly fretful – the silent waiter at the water’s edge.

Standing between the horses in that calm, with a warm and breathing beast on each side of me, I sensed the shudder of their animal spirits. Both seemed tense. My own gelding stood still, occasionally reaching down to feed. But beside me the stallion stamped and neighed softly, dancing on his hooves, restless as any child who wants to play. He was in perpetual motion, never still. I felt him strain, then call forth his challenge. His long whinny reached out across the tranquil earth and water. Holding their reins, I listened for that thread of silence which the horses could perceive. And then I heard, as though in answer, another horse’s call, as clear as a bugle note, from half a mile away; from some dark stretch of woodland, some invisible valley. Strange sound! It might as easily have come from a mythical, hidden underworld.

During those times when the London theatres were closed, curtailed by plague, I too was nervous, aware of my own vulnerability. My scribbling of plays had no market, and I could not even work upon the stage. It is true that poets often live at the edge of starvation – vulnerable as song birds to winter’s cold – but those days were the worst.

By some strange alchemy, my lord’s very confidence rendered me more sensitive. On his behalf sometimes I felt we were overlooked, or that another party spied on him. Sometimes I heard a horse neigh, far away, and once I saw three riders on a hill – distant, pricked out by light – observing us in what seemed like lucid concentration.

He began to swim now into the deeper part of the lake, so that the shadow of his body dissolved in the water. Only his head appeared, like a bust, floating on the milky surface. I stood a little back from the bank’s edge, ever-watchful.

Though he was my patron, I continued to chafe at his recklessness. For these were dangerous times, with many eddies of insurrection around our Protestant Queen. His family retained their allegiance to the Catholic Church. In their midst, he moved with peculiar ease, and feared nothing.

Out on the water, my lord turned, treading water, and looked back towards the silent land. Could he perceive me, soberly coloured against the darker earth? Even at that distance, I could see there was amusement in his expression. He called out, ‘Will you not swim, Master Shakespeare?’

I did not answer.

‘Come, gentle man,’ he sang out. ‘Swim with me.’

I, the nominative, smiled to myself and answered, ‘I prefer to keep a watch, my lord!’

‘Come,’ he repeated. ‘The animals will not run far. If they do, we’ll catch ’em.’

Alas, he thought my concern was with the horses. Around us lay an unsettled land. The woods had spies in them, and there were those whose loyalty was to the other great families – a number of whom did not wish him well. Yet he regarded himself as invulnerable. If I were not here, he would have let the horses wander and have happily chased them for a morning, naked and alone, without a thought for himself or for those who might see him in a state of nature.

Out on the lake my lord still swam. Now he turned and sang out to me in his clear, melodious voice, ‘Come, live with me, and be my love, and we will all the pleasures prove.’

I observed him laugh at his own joke – knowing that he quoted Christopher Marlowe at me, and aware that it fretted at my profession of poet and incited my jealousy. He enjoyed reminding me that our great Marlowe also vied for his patronage. Perhaps, too, he relished the suggestion that Marlowe would be more responsive than I to his playful overtures. And since my patron, though young, was a man of subtlety and mischief, his remark reminded me that Master Marlowe was invited to dine at his house that night, during which time, no doubt, we two poets would be teased like rival and delicate young mistresses.

Perhaps my lord realised that I would not abandon my lookout. He shook his head at my caution, smiled to himself, turned, and swam out further into the lake.

Chapter 2

STRANGE TO OBSERVE, yet stranger to recall, were those who called my lord ladylike, affected, languorous. Around him I observed his acolytes gather and whisper. Yet all who bore close witness to his pale beauty also observed, beneath the liquid surface, the stir of muscle and sinew. A condign will fleshed the hidden currents of the water. The searching eye, bent towards its surface, recognised fierce pride, and cold reflection. It was true that he was one of those who are unaware of how he scattered light. The effect was that all those admiring glances, falling on that surface, were reflected backwards to their source. In that way, he was like all heroes: you saw what you hoped for; he refracted your dreams.

Unaware of his own power, such grace seemed strange to him as much as to his companions. Yet to write of him as Narcissus, in truth, was also to address another. Rumours moved around him. He was there and not there, laughing at those vanities attributed to him by others. During the plague years, when the London theatres were closed, I saw my own fond hopes and circling ambitions reflected in that youthful, mirthful glass. He was both my plight and my aspiration.

As for effeminacy, in those surroundings what argument could one propose for such a creature? There were other realms, even in our own society, where effeminacy was much admired. In our theatre companies women were forbidden to act on the stage; beautiful boys and young men played the female roles, and were celebrated for their virtuosity. I myself loved their ambivalence; the flavour of the unknown and forbidden beneath the formal inhibition. Maleness might be enforced in the theatre, but not masculinity.

Our martial aristocracy, by contrast, lived by bloodlines. Twenty generations of great Pharaohs might create inbred leaders with perfect skin and lissom hips, but our turbulent kingdom, always on the edge of war, gave cruel tests to its warriors, often allowing less than a man’s brief span before disease or death, the axe-man, struck them down. Their deepest truths were brutal, simply this: all their lives hovered on the verge of annihilation. And these, our politic-ridden times, allowed no easy settlement into placidity or plain repose.

If we were sometimes witness to things of grace, it was by contrast rather than by inherence. Stare into fire, see how the greatest heat lies like a mellow ghost on wood or coal. So, in the harshness of our age, such a youth, whose fair exterior floated as a fervent dream before our eyes, was at the limit of benign possibility.

But grace itself is a form of power, carrying its own hidden and implicit threat. If I myself survived and even thrived in my lord’s companionship, it was precisely because, beneath that surface, I never forgot the harsh heat of his potency. I attempted to describe something of his character in a sonnet I was writing, addressing as its subject the nature of his attractions to those in his circle, his reflection of their dreams:

What is your substance, whereof are you made,

That millions of strange shadows on you tend?

Since every one hath, every one, one shade,

And you, but one, can every shadow lend.

Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit

Is poorly imitated after you;

On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,

And you in Grecian tires are painted new:

Speak of the spring and foison of the year,

The one doth shadow of your beauty show,

The other as your bounty doth appear;

And you in every blessed shape we know.

In all external grace you have some part,

But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

That ‘constant heart’ I attributed to him was not a mere conceit, or a pretty figure of speech. He was my patron, my source of life in those bad times, and every waking day I thanked my good fortune for his loyalty.

As for myself, my own beginnings had been strange. When, after several years as a travelling player, I began to try out a line or two, to help my fellow actors with a scene – bridging an awkward pause here, helping to refine a phrase there – it seemed to me no more than journeyman’s work. But then, like an artisan found amongst gentlefolk, my own poor skills became more valuable. ‘This ending appears too long, would you say?’, or ‘Could we not fit an extra scene here?’ Silver-tongued, I mouthed the words, worrying back and forth upon the stage, adjusting entrances, reworking rhythms, waving my arms in emphasis, bowing, stooping to kiss imagined ladies’ hands, learning meanwhile the practical difference between iambic di dah or trochaic dah di, or how to use the two long beats of a spondee to add occasional emphasis.

Here I stand, a mere grammar-school boy, risen wit, obsequious survivor, forced to rely for my living on the ancient tradition of a line of warriors. Should I plead for aristocracy or heritance? No, let the dice fall where they may. Yet here were no effete men, but soldiers, soldiers’ sons, robbers, intimidators. Above the ranks of villeins rose the lords, greater villains all, whose hidden power lay not in virtue or principle, but the hissing edge of axe or broadsword or skull-crushing mace. In France they say chevalier, meaning horseman, from whose high mount, delivering painful punishment or death, a little mercy sometimes followed. Hence the code of chivalric virtue.

These were the men I lived among, who asked and gave no quarter to themselves; jealous of bloodlines, but hardly bloodless, fierce in pride, quick to anger, remorseless in revenge. In my lord’s household those were the local spirits who inhabited his terrain.

Chapter 3

I REMEMBER, as though it were yesterday, my horse’s heavy breathing as it strained its heaving chest against the night air. The large house loomed close. My sturdy mount cantered, jingling bridle and reins, until the stonework reared out of the darkness, with braziers burning at its entrance.

I rode through the main gate, past gargoyles and heraldic stone roses, into walled gardens. My lord’s house at Titchfield had once been an abbey, confiscated from the monks by our monarch’s father, granted as gift to my lord’s grandfather – the first Earl of Southampton – by Henry VIII. The buildings still retained their atmosphere of contemplation.

In the courtyard I dismounted. A stable boy, emerging from the dark, took my horse and led it away.

In my best clothes – a doublet and hose, with a rakish hat and a tattered black cloak – I stepped forward, striding towards a doorway from which there came the noise of men laughing. Passing through, I faced on my left side a great dining hall, with a long table at which were seated thirty or so guests and retainers of the house. I looked towards the head of the table where my lord presided, and bowed my head to his presence.

On his right there was an empty place. On his left sat a singular, dark, saturnine man, whose intelligent eyes surveyed me.

‘Master Shakespeare!’ my lord called out. Holding my attention, he indicated the vacant seat near him with a finger’s tap, so that I went to my allotted place, sliding my legs under the table. ‘You have not met Master Marlowe before?’

‘In passing,’ I replied.

Beside my patron the figure stirred its languid length, as if his wit steeled itself.

‘Then in that passing,’ Marlowe said, ‘we did not meet.’

Though casual, all conversation on the great table seemed to cease.

Around me the silence seemed somehow both decisive and complete. My lord, too, considered me. I felt as though a French fencing master, contemptuously and elegantly, had flicked a fly off my cloak with the point of his sword, as though to say, ‘I may choose to strike when I will.’ The whole hall watched me suffer their regard. For several moments it seemed as though I were about to fall.

But I am an actor, and I know that timing is all. The performer inside me rose to the occasion, sensing the drama, even milking the moment for its worth. That same congregation noted my own answering stillness, observed me incline my head in calm acknowledgement of my rival’s superior artistry. So it seemed from the first fateful meeting that we two poets were doomed to consider each other – from our different perspectives – like rivals about to engage.

‘Tell me, Master Shakespeare,’ my lord asked, allowing himself to throw casual extra fuel on our vanities, and playing to the gallery. ‘Tell me now, according to their virtue, which of Master Marlowe’s plays do you prefer?’

His directness made me smile, despite my fear. His pure thirst for entertainment was as clear as a hunter’s horn on a still day. Noting at the same time how the rest of the company continued their watchfulness, hoping for sport, I too became temporarily silent, as though hunting with them.

‘You are considering, are you, Master Shakespeare?’ my patron said.

‘My lord,’ I replied, ‘from all I have read of Master Marlowe, there is too much richness to easily contemplate.’

I remember the nature and depth of that silence. From its centre a small ripple of applause moved outwards at this diplomatic answer, spreading round the table. Even Master Marlowe smiled. My lord, too, seemed pleased at the frisson. But he persisted. ‘And now that you have had time to consider your answer, what think you?’

‘I believe,’ I began, ‘that I admire most, before The Jew of Malta, even before Doctor Faustus … Hero and Leander.’

There was another silence. A small, clear frown formed on my lord’s forehead. ‘Come now, is this a riddle? Who here has heard of Hero and Leander.’

Our host turned towards the other poet. ‘I believe he teases you, Master Marlowe. By citing a play that does not exist, he surely incites your retribution.’

Cold and calm, the one he addressed spoke out. ‘No, my lord, what he says is true. Except this: the work in question is not a play but a poem. And it exists, as yet unfinished.’

The rival poet turned towards me, detached enquiry in those fierce, dark eyes. He asked, with a deceptive limpidity, ‘And how is it, Master Shakespeare, that you have read my own unfinished work?’

But by then I had begun to gauge the feelings of that waiting audience; its liking for directness, its hunger for incisive clarities. I said, ‘You are so famed, sir, that copies of it circulate.’ I gestured with my hand in visible circles, so that one or two of the watchers laughed.

His next words were carefully chosen, laid out like chess pieces on a board. ‘And you make it your business to read it?’

The question’s coldness touched me somewhere deep. But if I am a player, I am used to contingency, to turn and pivot. So I responded, hearing myself say, ‘What I most admire, I fear. And what I most fear, I admire.’

As if by instinct – though not greater skill – I had cause to believe his sword was turned; or that, passing through me, his blade found no flesh, no bone to hasp. From the long table I heard again that limpid, expectant silence, and then a rising ripple of applause.

My lord seemed pleased at this exchange. He had played on our rivalry, enjoyed his sport. His restless mind moved to other subjects. And so, to my own relief, he began to discourse with others, while the applause died down and the table settled again to its eating and interrupted conversations.

A little later, my lord touched me on the shoulder in support, signalling that constant affection for which he was both praised and slandered, whispering in my ear, ‘Well spoken, sir,’ while from the other side of that long table Master Marlowe looked on, saturnine and amused, keeping his thoughts to himself.

The dinner reached its end, the candles flickered. Some of the guests lay forward on the table, drunk. My lord surveyed the scene with approval, saying, ‘It seems that we are surfeited.’

I, by nature more cautious and abstemious than the others, nodded to where Marlowe also lay forward, asleep on his arms. Of the visiting poet my lord said softly, ‘Let us not wake him. He rode from London, where it is said he conspires constantly with the younger Walsingham. Let him sleep.’

He turned towards me. ‘Come, now, let us play a game of throw-apple, and while we may, wake certain of these diners.’

He plucked an apple from a dish of fruit in front of him, and rose from his seat. Gathering my wits, I followed him as he walked alongside the great table, shaking awake various of his guests. A number rose and stumbled after him, mumbling to themselves as though in a dream. I took hold of one of the torches that lay against the wall, lit it from the last of the burning logs, and followed the young earl out into the cold air of the courtyard.

The drunken company followed behind. A rough circle was formed, with my lord in the middle, around whom other torches burned, as further guests and servants arrived. So he waited, at the centre of the circle, weighing the apple in his hand, throwing it in the cold air, catching it, calling out his open challenge, saying, ‘Who can keep this from me?’

He peered around him at the faces of his companions, lit by the light of the encircling flames. The guests and servants stared back at him, hoping for entertainment. Choosing his time, my lord threw the apple towards me.

In that moment, it seemed to me, time slowed. The cold air brought sobriety, lifting the fumes of the wine. Above me, the apple seemed no more than a star-gleam; then, falling towards me, it expressed its unexpected mass. I caught it as deftly as I could, surprised by the sudden weight of it, in my spare left hand – the one not holding a torch. Around me other hands applauded the speed of my catch.

My lord wiped his lips with the back of his wrist, flexed his shoulders, began his charge like a boar towards me. His speed and determination seemed almost devilish. I waited until he was almost upon me, then flicked the apple over his charging head, watching it sail through the air, upwards, glinting like a planet, until one of the sturdier servants caught it.

There was another burst of applause. With fearsome dexterity my lord turned and pursued the apple to its catcher. The same servant, holding the apple, appeared intimidated by his ferocious charge. Even so, he managed to throw it over his lordship’s head in time. Another guest caught it. (And so it seemed to me that, as I watched the game, I observed the circle from above, the apple sailing through air, the scion of the house chasing with absorption and ferocity, almost under its shadow, panther-like, moving so fast from thrower to catcher that beneath each glimmering flight he seemed to be gaining ground on the flying prey.)

It happened that one of the greater guests, a powerful Seneschal, a renowned warrior, caught the apple a moment before the charging youth – closing on him at speed and calculating its upward trajectory – snatched it in the very act of rising again from his hand.

‘Huzzah!’ our host called out in triumph. Holding his prize aloft, he backed into the middle of the circle, to rising roars. There he took a wolf bite of the apple, to further approbation, while among the gathered others, I watched in smiling approval.

Chapter 4

MY LORD BURNED WITH A CONTINUOUS, dense energy. He was one of those who needed little sleep. When he rested, he slept instinctively and deeply, like an animal. After we had thrown the apple, he approached me and said, ‘Master Shakespeare, I wish to speak with you about certain matters.’

It was already past midnight. In his chambers during the early hours, he paced up and down. I stood still and silent, leaning against the wall, not daring to interrupt his fervent movement. Eventually he turned towards me. ‘Is Master Marlowe older than you?’

‘Hardly,’ I answered, surprised by this odd question. ‘By only a few months, I believe.’

‘Yet you openly acknowledge him your superior?’

‘My superior in art,’ I said. ‘The worthier pen.’

‘You say so freely.’

To which I answered, ‘Every scribbler in our land is in debt to his great peroration, his mighty line. Where he leads, we others follow.’

‘You truly admire Faustus?’ he asked.

‘Marlowe is Faustus,’ I replied. ‘They say he necromances spirits, that he is on speaking terms with Mephistopheles.’

He smiled at that, saying, ‘This … other work that you mentioned at our table –’

‘Hero and Leander,’ I said.

‘Hero and Leander. What is it, precisely?’

‘A poem about love, dwelling much on masculine beauty. It is said that he intends to dedicate it to you.’

His face lit up. He was addicted to praise.

‘To me?’

‘So it is said.’

‘Yet it is unfinished.’

I smiled. ‘So it is said.’

He looked at me searchingly. ‘And you do not mind … a rival for your praise?’

‘He has a worthy subject.’

He paused and considered me. ‘You are honest. You see coldly and clearly, and yet I believe you burn hot inside.’

I would not deny it. So before him I said, as though in affirmation of a fact, ‘I see clearly and burn hot.’

That night, after I left my lord’s rooms, I attempted to give some further shape to the thoughts I had earlier that day – that his youth and beauty incited dreams in the observer. Earlier that morning, when he emerged from the lake, there was one more witness than those I had already described. In the dawn mists, a figure was collecting brushwood in some dense, nearby scrub. At first I thought it might have been a boar, rooting in the undergrowth. Despite the low-lying vapour, I could begin to make out an elderly crone, bent-backed, in a grey hood. She had been dragging a sack of brushwood backwards from a thick covert where she had been collecting sticks for firewood.

The foliage was so dense there that it would have been difficult to lift the sack under the immediate oppression of the overhanging boughs. Once she was out of its entanglements, she intended to lift her load onto her shoulders. So she emerged from the thicket backwards, like some strange animal, hauling her load, wheezing and gasping, at precisely that place on the shore where my lord, unconscious of any other human witness, was approaching after his swim in the lake. I supposed that, suspecting a meeting, I could have warned her of his emergence from the water, but the comical nature of our situation touched me and stimulated my curiosity.

Perhaps the elderly crone heard the jingle of horses’ bridles, or the splashing of my lord’s feet as he neared the shore, for she seemed suddenly aware of others in her vicinity. She turned round, perplexed, and was faced with an entirely naked youth emerging like a god from the elements.

Her face, I do recall, was a picture. It was a wonderful old countenance, wrinkled and shriven, but with a clear, bright, and intelligent eye. I know enough of age to appreciate that the inhabiter of that bag of bones was the same being who had danced with graceful feet on the common in her youth.

For a brief moment her eye surveyed the figure that had risen from the waters – heavy, pale shoulders, long fair hair, the nub between the slender legs – with the purest appreciation.

Why should either of them have been offended? It is true that he, at first as startled as she, tensed a little from the unexpected meeting; but seeing almost immediately that his witness offered no offence and appeared appreciative of his form, he relaxed, and even lowered the lid of his eye in the form of a rakish wink. For a moment, all that old woman’s Christmases seemed rolled into one. She cackled with pleasure, allowed her eye one more appreciative traverse of his figure, and then – modesty imposing itself at last – turned away to lift the sack onto her back. It seemed she shook with laughter as she slowly disappeared into the mist.

I handed my lord his clothes. When he had dressed, we rode back through the morning towards the great house.

Chapter 5

I HAD BEEN WORKING on the idea of composing a sequence of poems or sonnets addressed to my patron. The sonnet itself had a complex history. According to a prevailing fashion, it was addressed by a poet to a mistress, often one who was out of reach, after whom he yearned, or at least affected to do so for the sake of the fulsome compliments he would bestow upon her. It was a convention which had emerged in part at least from the troubadour tradition of France, and since we English tended to ape French fashions, it had its adherents amongst the nobility. Great ladies found it amusing to be addressed thus, in appropriately lofty language, by one who remained suitably distant and chaste. I had one obvious difficulty in my own circumstances: my patron was a master, not a mistress. Yet precisely because of this, the convention imposed its own interesting construction. It reminded me of the convention in a theatre, whereby a man would play a woman’s role. By the same processes, perhaps, it stimulated rather than repressed the imagination.

If a man, rather than a woman, were to be the object of those high-flown praises, a more subtle tone was required – of fervent infatuation which was, at the same time, ironic. And since my master was himself both intelligent and someone who enjoyed praise, I began with the advantage of a most discerning subject for my poetry.

Until then I had mainly drafted certain thoughts in the form of individual lines and brief passages of description or argument. But now, reaching my rooms, I attempted to write a sonnet which would perhaps function as a keystone to my efforts. With a clean page before me, I began by praising my master’s beauty as though he were my beloved mistress, at the same time asserting that my love was not physical, but spiritual.

A woman’s face, with Nature’s own hand painted,

Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;

A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted

With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;

An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,

Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;

A man in hew all Hews in his controlling,

Which steals men’s eyes, and women’s souls amazeth.

And for a woman wert thou first created;

Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,

And by addition thee of me defeated,

By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,

Mine be thy love, and thy love’s use their treasure.

If it were a sonnet which would form the key to the others I would write, there were certain ways in which I would attempt to make it stand out from the other sonnets I intended to compose. I deliberately chose to use eleven syllables to the line, as opposed the usual ten. In addition, I left a clue to the identity of my patron in the phrase:

A man in hew all Hews in his controlling,

The mysterious word ‘Hews’, with a capital letter, as though it were a name, would be opaque to the merely casual reader. But since my patron was Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, whose initials were HWES, an anagram of Hews, it would give a clue to the identity of the fair young man. It happened too that certain of those tradesmen, builders and merchants who had cause to address my lord, or wrote him bills, often altered his name to ‘Henry, Earl Wriothesley of Southampton’. Thus ‘Hews’ would act as a vernacular reference to my patron.

I chose the moment carefully to show the poem to my lord. We had been riding through the forest that early summer morning. He dismounted from his horse in order to walk to the edge of a nearby decline, so that he could survey the surrounding country. As I walked alongside him, I drew the paper forth from my clothes. Taking it from me, he read it with studied amusement. I watched him raise his eyebrows at the last few lines, read them again, and then laugh the louder.

‘Most excellent,’ he said. ‘I am thy spiritual love, but Nature pricked me out for women’s pleasure.’ He smiled again. ‘I should be desirous to see more.’

I asked him whether he had noted the hidden reference to his name in ‘Hews’.

My patron said, ‘If these are dangerous times, as you counsel me, then it is right that living persons should not be mentioned. And since these are private poems, for our own enjoyment, Master Shakespeare, I believe all your references to me as your patron should be hidden to an outside view. If you will accept those conditions, pray continue as you will.’

He returned the paper to me. ‘Will you make a copy of this, in your own hand, so that I may keep it?’

It became our custom. When I had finished a poem, I would copy it; keeping the overwritten and amended original for myself, giving the fair version to him. As for the content, perhaps I could do better in due course. But the tone – part infatuation, part irony, directed at a mysterious and unidentified beautiful youth – seemed well set for our enterprise. In due course I would arrange the poems in a different order, but meanwhile they would steadily accrue.

Chapter 6

THAT SUMMER, GRANTED MY LORD’S PERMISSION, I began to sing his praises in those effusive and extravagant terms so dearly beloved of my countrymen. For there was another circumstance which propelled me towards such orisons to beauty, and my lord towards receiving them with a good grace. It happened that in our kingdom we were ruled by a Queen, a veritable lion-hearted Empress, and in our pleading for her mercy and her favour we all of us sounded like troubadour poets singing of our love. It happened too that the very form or construction of my sonnets – soliciting the favours of a fair subject – rhymed with the prevailing fashion among courtiers. And so I proceeded from one to the next, gaining greater confidence as each one was well received by my patron.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, – and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings,

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

I continued to sing my calculated songs throughout that summer, piling verse on verse, page on page, making each time a fresh copy for my lord. With the form established between us, I began to exceed myself in gallantry, making the object of my praises the subject of love itself. Though my poem was addressed to a handsome youth, I strove as best I could to reflect some universal desire.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometimes declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

I burnt my nightly hours as he inferred, confined to my small room, bent over my formal rhythms, counting the beats on my fingers, feeling for that thread of sense which would hold together the discreet observations and soaring praises they would contain. Sometimes several days, or even a week, would pass without a single line that I deemed worth showing to him. At other times, in the course of a night’s labour, I would find several pages of some worth had piled one upon the other. So, often laboriously and occasionally swiftly, I began to accumulate my efforts.

Who will believe my verse in time to come,

If it were fill’d with your most high deserts?

Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb

Which hides your life, and shows not half your parts.

If I could write the beauty of your eyes,

And in fresh numbers number all your graces,

The age to come would say, ‘This poet lies;

Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.’

So should my papers, yellow’d with their age,

Be scorn’d, like old men of less truth than tongue,

And your true rights be term’d a poet’s rage

And stretched metre of an antique song:

But were some child of yours alive that time,

You should live twice, – in it and in my rhyme.

The introduction of a child of his own making who would perpetuate that beauty was accidental and felicitous, though perhaps with my poetic senses now attuned to his particular circumstances, I presaged some future development.

Chapter 7

THERE WERE TIMES when my lord seemed to regard me with a certain wry amusement for my pains. In conversation one day, he deliberately switched the subject from the sonnet he had been reading towards another subject perhaps closer to his heart. At the time he was staring at the floor, as though gathering his thoughts. Now he turned to peer once more at me with his green eyes, flecked with gold. ‘My mother has spoken to you again?’

‘She has.’

‘And on the usual subject?’

‘The usual,’ I said.

‘And you take her side, as always.’

‘Her side is your side,’ I replied, and added, ‘She speaks for you.’

He turned away. ‘Damn me, if she does.’

I said, ‘There are matters which await you. That is all she says.’

‘Yes, yes, matters!’ This was fierce and fast. He seemed compelled to continue, for the rest of what he wished to say now streamed forth. ‘It is time, perhaps, that you knew something further of me, of my closer circumstances…’

‘Your closer circumstances?’ The phrase rang oddly, and I was at a loss as to this new departure.

He said, ‘You know, for example, that my father died when I was eight.’ I nodded, nervous at his apparent continued excitation. Now, with an effort, he seemed to compose himself sufficiently to explain. ‘After my father had been buried, my Lord Burghley became my legal guardian. When I was still no more than a child, my great guardian caused me to sign a contract, promising to marry his granddaughter, Elizabeth de Vere, on pain of which refusal, on reaching my majority, I would pay a fine – a terrible fine, almost equal to the value of my entire estate. You know of this?’

It was common gossip, so I said, cautiously, ‘I have heard rumours, nothing more.’

‘Then,’ he insisted, ‘you have heard of the disposition of my Lord Burghley?’

I said only that I knew that he had the disposition of a lawyer, and the reputation of a courtier.

‘And what else have you heard of him?’ he asked.

‘That he is our Queen’s closest advisor, and the strongest voice in the Privy Council.’

‘Yes, yes, that is his political suit. But have you ever seen the man, in person?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘He is the coldest creature that ever walked upon this earth. He regards all art, all painting, all poetry, as vanity. The theatre in particular he considers both impious and seditious. They say he is not of the Puritan party, yet he has a puritan’s instincts. Whatever he touches, becomes ice. If he walks through summer, winter follows. And yet it was he who replaced my dead and lamented father – in nomine patris.’

‘In your maturity,’ I tentatively suggested, ‘You will grow away from him.’

‘If only it were so!’ He seemed a little calmer now, staring at the floor, but still biting his fist, his attention set in some other realm. ‘Even from a distance, from London, he still controls my household. My mother too is fearful of him.’

‘Why, my lord?’ I asked.

He raised his eyes again to mine. ‘If I do not marry the one he has chosen for me, my mother too shall be ruined by the catastrophic fine that my Lord Burghley, in his wisdom, shall apportion on me.’

He remained unusually excited. I did my best to calm him, saying, ‘Your mother thinks more of an heir from you than of your inheritance.’

‘Yes, yes! He blackmails her too, though at a remove. His reach is great. His claws are in everyone.’

I was about to say something more, but my lord continued, ‘And then, of course, there is my tutor, Master Florio.’ He paused, raised his eyes towards the ceiling, adding with emphasis, ‘Master Florio.’

I attempted emollience. ‘Master John Florio. A most eminent Italian scholar, to whom you owe your own achievement in learning.’

‘A fine tutor, and in that respect I perhaps am willing to accept your description. But we should not forget one thing – that he writes regularly to his own master.’

‘His own master?’

‘My Lord Burghley, who appointed him.’

I halted, silenced in part by the strange complexity of my patron’s circumstances. ‘Perhaps he writes to apprise my Lord Burghley of your great advances in learning.’

He laughed at this, with a dismissive air. ‘No, no, my dear Master William. He writes of my predisposition to marriage, of my carousing in certain company. And so, Master Florio, instructed by his master, admonishes me for my behaviour. Amongst his lessons he coldly arranges certain threats against me. Why, the man’s an Italian, of passionate mind. Yet he passes on the current of my Lord Burghley’s coldness as though it were his own.’

I smiled at this, and said, ‘Machiavelli too was a Florentine,’ then added, ‘In Master Florio’s favour, he imposes upon himself the same discipline he would exert upon you.’

‘What discipline is that?’ he shot back at me.

‘He constructs a dictionary of Italian and English, a great and noble undertaking –’

‘In his own interest –’

‘And in my interests, too,’ I said, ‘for I find in his other translations of Italian works a rich source of stories and quaint dramas. It is, I admit, my own concern, but he is generous to me with his translations –’

‘And no doubt you are grateful to him, as you should be. And I am grateful to him, too. But why should a man play double if he is, as you say, of so single a mind? Why should he serve two masters if one master is enough?’

‘It sounds as though his other master – my Lord Burghley – is difficult to refuse.’

‘Don’t you see? He admires his master, just as Signor Machiavelli admired his prince…’ He paused, then burst out, ‘He is Lord Burghley’s flea!’

I allowed the first clean wave of his anger to pass me by, swiftly and uncomfortably. ‘How can you be certain that what he writes is anything more than praise of you? You yourself received your Master’s degree from Cambridge at the age of sixteen. He has good reason to be proud of his pupil.’

But he objected, ‘You are too generous. You take every other’s part. I believe you’ – he struggled for words – ‘complicate matters.’

‘My lord, it is in my nature to seek for wider motive.’

‘Then, speaking of wider motive, let us return to my mother. She would arrange some further slip of a girl to marry me, and because I hesitate –’

‘She would accept your direct refusal,’ I said. ‘If you proposed another match –’

He turned away in anger. ‘Another girl, another victim of the great imperative …’ His voice became fierce again, ironical. ‘Why, marry and produce an heir.’

I could not help but smile at his retort.

‘You laugh at me, Master William?’ he asked.

I replied, as gently as I could, ‘No, sir, I do not laugh. I merely play the devil’s advocate, as you have asked.’

He considered me for several moments. Who knows what he saw, or for what he searched. Perhaps he observed something genuine in my perplexity.

Calmer now, he appeared to ease a little. He said, ‘I am not like you, William – so silent, so determined upon your life. You resemble nothing so much as one of those steel springs inside a lock. Tonight I will go to bed and sleep, and dream. And you, to some further vigil at the board?’

It was true. I observed in my mind’s eye another appointment, until the early dawn, with a sheet of paper and the little flame. ‘That is how I choose to burn my hours.’

‘Yet it is I who have no other cause, more weighty than to be myself.’

I said, as gently as I could, ‘That is enough.’

‘Oh, it would be,’ he said, ‘if I knew the meaning of myself.’

‘You will learn it.’

‘How?’ he asked, with genuine puzzlement.

I smiled at his earnestness. ‘It will grow into you. You will grow into it.’

‘Will I?’

‘You will.’

‘You make a pun upon your name.’

‘You made it first. I merely follow you. Your will is your own.’

‘Damn these circumstances, though. In many respects you are kindness itself. Yet still you press me.’

‘I do not press you. I remind you.’

‘Of my duty.’

‘Of yourself.’

‘And you will teach me to be myself?’

‘I will attempt to remind you, from time to time, of what you may be.’

Chapter 8

BUT OUR RELATIONS WERE SUCH that my patron was apt to remind me of what I should be, too. One day while out riding, he said, ‘I should like to show you at first hand how my Lord Burghley attempts to influence me. Two years ago, when I was merely seventeen years, my guardian engaged one of his secretaries, a Master John Clapham, to write a poem in Latin, dedicated to me, called Narcissus.’

‘A poem called Narcissus?’ I was incredulous, I must admit. Rumours had moved around him, suggesting vanity, but here was a source of its direct propagation by an interested party. Even then, I could not help but smile. I had a vision of some ambitious young secretary, at the behest of his master, scratching out a poem in orotund Latin, addressed to a youth who would not obey the dictums of his enraged protector.

From the depths of his clothes my patron withdrew a large, portentous document that seemed almost like a will or testament. He said, ‘I have brought it for you to consider. An entire poem which urges me, in formal Latin, to cease from my vain preoccupations with myself. Its clear implication is that I should marry the young woman who waits so patiently and unhappily for me.’

My consternation that such a poem had been written was due, in part at least, to my patron’s assertion that his guardian despised art. Perhaps I began to see a little more deeply into Lord Burghley’s soul. Art was permissible if it served a political purpose, and especially if it served his own. Setting these thoughts aside, I said, ‘The poem mentions you directly?’

‘No, not in so many words. It is dedicated to me, but it extemporises ad infinitum on a young man who might be thought to resemble me.’

‘Why did the poet – my Lord Burghley’s secretary – not have the courage of his convictions, and make you its direct subject?’

He laughed. ‘For good reason. The poem is happy enough to omit certain details of my circumstances – that the marriage contract was signed when I was a child, before I had even met my intended, or that she is the granddaughter of my guardian, so that the person who will benefit from the arrangement is my Lord Burghley.’

‘I shall look forward to studying it,’ I said, accepting the proffered document from his hand. A question struck me. ‘Are there others such as you for whom Lord Burghley acts as guardian?’

I witnessed a somewhat rueful smile. ‘It seems that, as a reward for his continuing labours for Her Majesty, for some twenty years my Lord Burghley has held the position of Master of the Court of Wards. All those infants and children who inherit large estates and who lose their father are placed in his care. It would seem to be a habit of my guardian to contract his wards to an approved marriage which benefits him. If they refuse, the marriage contract will place such a heavy fine upon them that their estate will pass to him or his chosen beneficiaries in perpetuity.’

I had a vision of my Lord Burghley – industrious, cold, puritanical – exploiting the properties of small and defenceless children, offering them the choice of unhappiness in an arranged marriage – or, as an alternative, if they did not obey him, an impoverishment of their birthright.

As though my patron understood the line and direction of my thought, he said, ‘My guardian has used his position to make himself one of the richest men in the land. Amongst his many properties, he has built a magnificent palace for himself at Theobalds, and another great house in Covent Garden.’

We rode on in silence for a while. Mulling over my patron’s account of his arranged marriage, I became curious as to whether he and his betrothed had ever met.

He smiled at my enquiry. ‘When I was old enough to consider more seriously the fate which had been arranged for me, I took it upon myself to travel to my betrothed’s parents’ house with the intention of meeting her, and making her acquaintance. Lord Burghley’s daughter Ann had married the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. My betrothed, Elizabeth de Vere, was the product of their marriage. Perhaps I was foolish in announcing my visit beforehand. My betrothed’s parents, when I entered their house, hid her from me. At first they told me she was unwell, and indisposed to a meeting. Perhaps they hoped that my patience would wear thin and I would depart. I began to perceive that their daughter’s own voluntary acquiescence in the marriage was something to be doubted, but this only redoubled my determination. In the circumstances, I was forced to wait impatiently for several days. Eventually, out of persistence, I was permitted to meet my intended.’

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