But then (you ask me), what has this to do with that other boy Arthur in King John?
Permit me to tell you.
Little Hamlet died not long before I first met Mr Shakespeare. I think that Mr Shakespeare was still writing King John in his head that day in Cambridge, and that in any case he was thinking of his own son when he has Queen Constance in Act III Scene 4 lament the fate of her son Arthur in these lines that follow:
Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.
Of course, I could be wrong. My linking of the writing of this speech with what Mr Shakespeare may possibly have felt about the loss of his own (and only) son might deny the man's imagination or at the least insult it. Or it could be that I mistake or misconstrue the way the mind of a poet works upon the things that happen in the poet's life.
I confess that I never dared to question Mr Shakespeare directly in the matter. But I remember a night at the Mermaid when having recited those tender lines which he gave to Queen Constance, I expounded my theory and quizzed his fellow playwrights as to what they thought.
Mr Beaumont said I was right, and wiped away a tear.
Mr Fletcher said I was wrong, and that my supposition accused Mr Shakespeare of a want of heart, or a want of imagination, or of both wants together, and only went to prove my mediocrity.
Mr Ben Jonson said nothing, but belched and hurled a flagon at my head.
It was an empty flagon, naturally.
Ladies and gentlemen, Beroaldus (who was a wise doctor) will have drunkards, afternoon-men, and such as more than ordinarily delight in drink, to be mad. I am of his opinion from my own experience. They are more than mad, much worse than mad.
Speaking of which, before we quitted Cambridge finally Mr Shakespeare saw fit to try to teach me the joys of tobacco. He was not one of those who suppose that plant divine in its origin or its powers. But he liked his white clay pipe. He gave me sweetmeats also, and called me his doxy. It was not for such things that I loved his company.
As to why Mr Shakespeare liked mine, if he did, who now can rightly say?
I suggest only that the least that can be supposed - leaving lugged boots and young Hamlet out of it - is that the great man was pleased when he found that rainy afternoon that I said his lines plainly and true even when perched upon a red-brick wall. And perhaps it pleased him further when he discovered that I had some rudimental feeling for the shape of English verse. The Sisters Muchmore had taught me rhythm on the arse with their striped tawse.
For whatever reason, or none, Mr WS took me along with him like a prize bull-calf when he went back to London to rejoin his company of actors.
They were called the Lord Chamberlain's Servants* and they played at that time at the playhouse called the Curtain, in Shoreditch. Our master was Mr James Burbage, a stubborn old man with an anchor on his thigh, who died of a surfeit of lampreys the Easter after I made my first entrance.
I wore my lugged boots and I made great strides.
* The threefold nature of the name of the company of actors to which WS belonged has not always been well understood. Here, then, let me spell it out that the Lord Chamberlain's Servants had formerly been known (before my time) as Lord Strange's Men, and that after the accession and patronage of King James I we were proud to be known as the King's Players.
Chapter Three Pickleherring's Acknowledgements
I was thirteen years old in that long-ago summer when I first met Mr Shakespeare and made my entrance on the London stage. I am eighty-one now, or maybe eighty-two, or eighty-three. I can't remember, and it does not matter. Besides, I may not be so old at all. I may be a thirteen-year-old boy wearing an eighty-three-year-old mask. That's how I feel sometimes. You think about it. How old would you be if you didn't know your age?
Here I am, at all events, a little wearish monkey in a red cotton nightcap.
The last time I looked in a looking-glass what did I see?
I saw a wretched elf with hollow eyes and cracked rawbone cheeks. I saw a pantaloon with a blubber-lipped mouth. I saw a sickly visage, and a shrivelled neck like a chicken's.
Sometimes I wear a false beard, but not today. One does not put on a false beard to write the Life of William Shakespeare. I have pointy ears, though, and I wear long pointed slippers that curl up at the toes. My belly bulges from the stomach down. Once I could pull it in like everybody else, but not any more. I can only see my sex by bending over. It must be a good twelvemonth since I bothered.
If I still had a mirror what would I see in it? A white worm, that's what.
But enough about even imaginary mirrors. My grandfather the bishop used to say that looking in the mirror made you go mad. I submit, gentlemen, that I have a subject which is not myself, and mighty. I aver, ladies, that you will not have long to bear my less than charming company.
Let me put it this way: I am one who has in his possession a vast argosy of tales about Mr Shakespeare. A thousand stories, ladies. A thousand and one, good sirs. And if it pleases you, gentles, Pickleherring will tell them all.
I shall tell you stories to beguile you.
I shall tell you tales to keep me alive while I do so.
Not all these tales and stories will be my own. I mean that a book like this might be said to be long in the making, and to have enjoyed the intercourse of many several begetters. My mind is what Mr Shakespeare said of his Dark Lady. It has been a bay where all men ride, and it has been the wide world's common place. Yet in the end I am no whore, but our Shakespeare's true and loyal servant. I served him first on the stages at the Curtain and the Globe. I put myself now upon the stage for him again. This book is my theatre. The play's not done.
Before I begin my story proper, I wish to express my thanks to all those who have helped me (even unwittingly) in the gathering of the matter for it. You see, although the writing of this book has come late in my life, I think I was preparing for it all along. It is the outcome of a lifetime of labour, and testament to a lifetime's love as well. From King John on, I worshipped Mr Shakespeare. I thought him more a god than a mortal man. And so it was that I lapped up all there ever was to learn about him. Like Autolycus in his Winter's Tale I was littered under Mercury and have been likewise a snapper-up of unconsidered trifles. (In that play, though, I played the part of Hermione.)
Chief among my memorists and informers have been my fellow actors in the theatre, now most of them dead (and God rest their souls every one). Therefore it is a pleasure to me now to recall and name first in pride of place the leading members of our company as it stood at the death of Mr James Burbage, all of whom gave me something of our Shakespeare that was their own: Mr Richard Burbage (old James B's younger son, and a Protean actor - the first Hamlet, the first Othello, the first Lear); Mr Thomas Pope; Mr John Heminges (the original Falstaff); Mr Augustine Phillips; and Mr George Bryan. I might mention even that flame-haired ticklebrain Mr William Kempe, though Mr Shakespeare never much liked him on account of his habit of working in jokes of his own when on stage and being generally too conceited in his jigs.
Then, also, and no less, in the years that followed, these men, the principal actors, besides myself, in all of Mr Shakespeare's later plays: Mr Henry Condell (one of WS's closest colleagues, remembered in his will); Mr William Sly; Mr Richard Cowley; Mr John Lowin (the original Henry VIII, now landlord of the Three Pigeons Inn at Brentford); Mr Samuel Cross; Mr Alexander Cooke; Mr Samuel Gilburne; Mr Robert Armin (a far better clown than Kempe); Mr William Ostler; Mr Nathan Field; Mr John Underwood; Mr Nicholas Tooley; Mr William Ecclestone; Mr Joseph Taylor (who took over Hamlet when Dick Burbage died, and if anything surpassed him in the part); Mr Robert Benfield (played kings and old men); Mr Christopher Beeston; Mr Robert Goffe; Mr Richard Robinson; Mr John Shank (who was a gentle dancer); and Mr John Rice.