MARE, ignis, et mulier sunt tria mala!
ARDua molimur: sed nulla, nisi ardua, virtus.
arENas mandas semina.*
I have put capitals to the concealed acrostic name so that you may see the more readily that it is MARE (or Mary) ARDEN. In the margin of the page Brownsword has written in his crabbed schoolmaster's hand, Dux femina facti ... (Which is to say, 'There's a woman at the bottom of it.') And beside this, scribbled in a macaronic mixture of English and Latin, 'No!' (dixit) 'no!' 'No!'
What is the significance of this? Let Pickleherring elucidate the mystery. In themselves the lines might be nothing but the complaint of a splenetic spirit thwarted in its love for an inappropriate object, but taken in conjunction with a tale still current in both Stratford and Macclesfield they are at least peculiar, and peculiarly haunting. That tale goes thus:
John Shakespeare having one day to journey to London on business, he says to his wife, 'Listen, while I am gone you're to say No to that Rev. Bretchgirdle.'
'Say no?' says Mary. 'What do you mean say no?'
'I mean say No to him,' John Shakespeare says.
'Nothing but no?' says Mary.
'No, no, no, no, no, all the time No,' John Shakespeare says. 'Say No in thunder, woman. Always answer No, whatever he says to you, however he comes pleading and wheedling, that lecherous old goat. And never add another word to No. Do you understand?'
Mary Shakespeare said she understood.
Her husband went on his way. He trusted his simple stratagem would prevent any harm befalling his wife.
The Reverend Bretchgirdle's in through the back door of the butcher shop in about five minutes.
'Good morning, Mrs Shagshaft,' says the scoundrel, bowing low, and then wringing his plump white hands and studying the palms of them as one might refer to an index of human vanity. 'You'll be missing your husband already, I expect?'
'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.
'Oho,' thinks vile Bretchgirdle, 'what can this signify?'
That Mrs S is not missing her husband sounds mighty promising to the lusty vicar.
Then before long he discovers that the young wife answers No to all the things he says to her.
Bretchgirdle sees his chance. He's as clever as a bag of weasels. And persistence is his strong suit. 'Well,' says he, 'if I put my hand on your knee, Mrs Sexspire, you won't mind then?'
'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.
'And if I lift up your gown, Mrs Shakespay,' says the happy priest, his round cheeks dimpling, 'you won't be complaining and telling your husband when he gets back?'
'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.
So the Reverend wretched Bretchgirdle puts his hand on Mrs Mary Shakespeare's white-stockinged knee, and he lifts up her grass-green gown of linen taffety, and he takes down her mockado drawers. His mind is smelling like a rich man's funeral. His bulging eyes roll.
'Pray tell me, Mrs Sackstuft,' he says politely, 'would you object if your rector was to futter you?'
'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.
So the false friar futters her, and when he has finished he says, 'There, Mrs Sexbear, you'll be satisfied now.'
'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.
'Hallelujah!' cries the Reverend Bretchgirdle.
He futters the docile lady all over again, concentrating the while in order to delay the moment of ejaculation upon certain collects of Cranmer's.
'Will that do, Mrs Shagspeer?' the priest enquires solicitously when he comes to his amen.
'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.
Bretchgirdle falls out of bed. He wolfs a dozen oysters and a loaf of cockelty bread. Then he's back at it again.
This time he just pumps away and keeps himself going with fantasies that he is loose in a harem of virgin Turkish girls. Some of the girls are choirboys. Some of the choirboys are angels. He has to inspect, resolve, and satisfy them all. Then they must satisfy him - first the girls, and then the choirboys, and then the angels. Then angels, choirboys, and girls all come together and Bretchgirdle's the Pope and they all have to do what he says. He doesn't say much but they do it all anyway. Meanwhile the lady beneath him claws at his back and watches a fly over his shoulder that squats upon the ceiling rubbing its hands together.
'Mrs S,' pants the priest, 'isn't that,' (he collapses), 'enough?'
'No,' says Mary Shakespeare.
Confused, exhausted, and contrite, a sadder and a wiser man in all ways, his balls drained, his heart pounding, his imagination in tatters, his eyes starting out of his head, his knees knocking together and his breath coming in great shuddering gasps, the unworthy Reverend Bretchgirdle withdraws, defeated, and creeps speechless away to his church by the swan-ridden river.
Nine months, nine days, and nine hours later, William Shakespeare made his entrance into this world.
* Englished: The sea, fire, and women are three evils! We essay a difficult task: but there's no merit save in difficult tasks. You are sowing the sand, i.e. you waste your seed.
Chapter Eleven
About this book
You understand, madam, that I do not mean to say that the late Mr Shakespeare was the bastard son of a priest. (Though in all honesty there are worse things to be, and I am myself the bastard son of a bishop's bastard.)
I only tell you stories about Shakespeare. I only tell you tales which I have heard. You are not required to believe any particular one of them. Nor is it necessary to salvation that you should. But from the over-all impress of the various stories may you perhaps come to know our poet thoroughly. One story might cancel out another. But the whole book will be more than the sum of its parts.
For what it is worth, sir, I think Shakespeare was the son of a butcher (and whittawer). Or perhaps a glover's son.
But, having said that, what have we said in any case? What, in other words, do we mean when we say Shakespeare?
Who is Shakespeare? What is he? (that all our swains commend him). Yes, good reader, what is Shakespeare? That is the question my book is trying to answer. What is Shakespeare? Where is he to be found? How can we tell the man from the work, and both from the stories about him? Why did the sly fellow leave so little information about himself, so few facts in the way of footprints made in Time? Why did he cover his tracks so cleverly, leaving not a rack behind? What is the proper name for the subject of our study: Shakespeare or 'Shakespeare'?
Sometimes I think that no one has ever been so many men as this man. Like the Egyptian Proteus, he exhausts all the guises of reality.
That Proteus was a minor sea-god, herdsman of the flocks of the salt sea, its seals and its dolphins and so forth. He was a daimon, servant to Poseidon. He had this power to assume all manner of shapes, but if held till he resumed the true one, he would answer questions. And so in this book I try to hold the late Mr Shakespeare.
Not that WS was a god, you understand; nor even a demiurge or daimon. He was just a man like any other man. Only he was just a man like every other man, and more so. This means that we must think of Shakespeare as always more than we can say about Shakespeare. And, as he remarked to me once, in an unguarded moment, a moment when weariness and excitement made the mask slip and his tongue lose reticence, we must think of Shakespeare as always less than we can say about Shakespeare too.
What he said to me that day at the bear-garden was in fact that sometimes he did not feel as though he had written his own works. He said that sometimes he felt as if his works had been written by someone else of the same name. I do not think this betokens undue modesty. He was talking in part about inspiration, of course - that feeling all true poets must have, that their best work comes from somewhere else, from something other than their minds, and that they are merely the conduit for it. The poet takes; he does not ask who gives. 'Not I,' he cries, 'not I, but the wind that blows through me.'