The Sonnets

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 (#ulink_317b8107-12cc-5c08-a366-daec6e2da150)

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.