Shakespeare

I've just finished reading the novel 'Young Will: the confessions of William Shakespeare'. I discovered it in the new books section of my local library. What a wonderful book! I couldn't put it down. I guess it would be called 'creative nonfiction'. The author - Bruce Cook, who passed away before the book was set to type, did a lot of research into Shakespeare's life. The book is "historically deeply informed" (to quote from the cover), and the fictionalized parts are all blended skillfully with the true accounts. This book brought William Shakespeare to life for me. I can now imagine him as he worked on his plays. I can envision what kind of life and surroundings were his as he created these masterpieces. This new knowledge will add a whole new layer to my experience when I listen to his plays on C.D.

Funny, I had imagined him to be a scholarly man who did all his writing, seated at an ornately carven desk in his mansion study. Instead, he was a poor young man living in a squalid loft in London. His wife, who tricked him into marriage, lived with their three children, back home in his native Stratford - upon - Avon, along with his parents and many siblings.

He was bisexual, and hung out with a wild crowd of actors, playwrites and poets, all men, who paired off with one another, and betrayed each other, and sought patronage with gay royals young and old. He caused the death of a fellow actor by accidentally pushing him into a river, then choosing not to rescue him. He was ordered by Lord Hunsden to execute his own former lover - Christopher (Kit) Marlowe, who had been pronounced an athiest, based on Shakespeare's retelling of an incident several years before. Shakespeare had once loved Marlowe, but as he stood before his bound and gagged former friend, he thought only of the humiliation he had recently suffered at Marlowe's hands. Taking the dagger that had once belonged to Marlowe, Shakespeare lifted the blindfold, uncovering one of Marlowe's eyes, and plunged the dagger in, not stopping until he had pierced his brain.

This book depicts Shakespeare as a contradictory man. He was generous in the way he provided for his wife - faithfully sending money for herself and their children. On the other hand, he doggedly kept to his vow that he would punish her for her trickery into marriage, by denying her dream of living in London. Though he spent the majority of his time in London, he never allowed her and the children to join him there, and visited them only rarely. There was another reason he wanted to keep his wife out of London - her presence there would have brought an end to his filandering. Shakespeare enjoyed an active sex life with both men and women. He fell hopelessly in love several times, and actually planned to murder his wife in order to open the way for him to marry the beautiful Raffaela with whom he was carrying on a torrid love affair. He intended to push his wife into the river, but ended up falling in himself, whereupon his wife saved his life. Thus, he decided he could not, in good conscience, attempt to kill her again. He was relieved at the failure of his murder attempt when, on his return to London a week or so after the event, he found that Raffaela had died from plague.

Despite his frightening lack of conscience, I couldn't dislike him. I think he was acting according to the times actually, his companions all acted as he did. No wonder, really. Londoners were regularly exposed to public executions. More desensitized than today's children, they cheered enthusiastically as hapless prisoners, having endured months of torture, were hung by the neck until near death, cut down and revived with water before their limbs were hacked off. To finish them, they were sliced open at the belly, and their steaming guts pulled out upon the ground. Horrifying death was, apparently, a form of entertainment. It seems almost normal that Shakespeare and his fellow artists were able to commit acts of incredible violence, and then sit down to write moving sonnets about love and beauty. It also explains to me why Shakespeare loved so dearly, to kill off his characters in his plays!

London, during that day, was a cesspool. People regularly flung the contents of their bedpans out their windows, forcing the people below to duck and swerve their way along, to avoid stepping in the mess. It was the time of the great plague, and the place was overrun with rats. And if we think free sex was invented in the sixties, guess again. London during Shakespeare's time, boasted shadowy, underground type taverns that catered to gay men, along with the more regular taverns that came complete with whores. Along either side of London bridge, there were hovels where prostitutes stood in the windows and doorways, tempting anyone who passed by. These inhabitants inevitably flung their own raw sewage down into the water below. The stink of it rose up to assail the nostrils of those crossing the bridge in the narrow corridor left between the twin rows of shacks. If this wasn't bad enough, the bridge was the place where heads of executed prisoners were displayed on stakes. One of these heads belonged to Shakespeare's own uncle.

After life in London lost its appeal, Shakespeare returned to Stratford - upon - Avon, to live out his days with his wife and children. He aged into a slightly grumpy family man who went to church each Sunday (a self imposed punishment for his former sins). His only vice was smoking in the comfort of his study. He carried on a running argument with his wife, who regularly hid his tobacco in an attempt to stop him smoking in the house. He suffered through family dinners with his grown children and their spouses (who bored him to death). He no longer wrote plays. But he was content. And he left us with a priceless legacy.

I'm so impressed with this book, I plan to read it again a second time.