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Whatever, whichever, whomever, there were two deaths of females in Stratford-upon-Avon while William Shakespeare was young which, I have reason to believe, haunted him at some deep level at least until they found outlet in his work.

The first occurred, in fact, in the year he was born, so that it was only by repute that he could ever have heard of it. But the sad tale was current in Stratford for many years after, and in its horror seems just the sort of nightmare that would make Will's blood run cold.

What happened was this. In the early summer of 1564 there was a sudden outbreak of plague in Stratford. ('Hic incepit pestis,' scribbled Bretchgirdle in the parish register - and I don't think he was talking about the birth of baby S.) Corpses get buried hurriedly and without fuss at such times, and a young girl who was believed to be dead was buried so. But when the family vault was opened again later for the coffin of another victim, the body of the unfortunate girl was found on the floor with her shroud torn off. She had been buried alive, come to her senses in her coffin, then crawled from it and scratched vainly at the door of the vault before she perished.

It is this that Mr Shakespeare was remembering, in my opinion, when he has Juliet cry, before venturing into the tomb of her ancestors:

Shall I not then be stifled in the vault,

To whose foul mouth no healthsome air breathes in,

And there die strangled ere my Romeo comes? ...

O, if I wake, shall I not be distraught,

Environed with all these hideous fears?

And madly play with my forefathers' joints?

And pluck the mangled Tybalt from his shroud?

And, in this rage, with some great kinsman's bone,

As with a club, dash out my desperate brains?*

This particular nightmare vexed the boy William all his childhood time in Stratford, I suspect, and fed into his fears of the charnel house.

The second death was the death of Katharine Hamlett. This took place in February of 1580, when Shakespeare was not quite sixteen. The girl was found drowned in the Avon, at a spot where the roots of a great willow tree dam up the current and make a deep pool in the river bed.

Katharine Hamlett's death was the subject of a coroner's inquest. The jury was inclined to believe that it was a case of suicide. The girl's family, asking for Christian burial, claimed that her death had been accidental, and that Katharine had slipped when leaning over the bank to moisten her flowers. The inquest went on for eight weeks before a verdict of accidental death was brought in. But people still talked. And Shakespeare listened.

He was always a very good listener, Mr S.

At all events, madam, you will recall what he made of this when he came to write Hamlet, where he has Queen Gertrude thus describe the sad death of Ophelia:

There is a willow grows aslant a brook,

That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;

There with fantastic garlands did she come,

Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,

That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,

But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them;

There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds

Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,

When down her weedy trophies and herself

Fell in the weeping brook.

(It's in the seventh scene of Act IV, of course. By the way, 'long purples' probably refers to purple cuckoo-pint or pintle rather than purple loose-strife. I never heard of loose-strife having a grosser name, while cuckoo-pintle is so called because it looks like a little prick in a state of erection.)

The death of poor Katharine Hamlett seems to have provided Mr Shakespeare not only with that passage about the death of Ophelia, but also with much of the lugubrious conversation among the gravediggers about the right of a suicide to rest in consecrated ground. That was precisely the topic which exercised the wits and wagging tongues of Stratford for eight weeks.

Consider. Here is a poor girl probably drowned by mischance as she dips her flowers into Avon pool where Tiddington brook flows in. Up jumps vicar Heicroft (Bretchgirdle's dead) and refuses her body burial. The laymen then decide to try to fine the corpse for felony. Her family's grief is compounded by all this debate. It's the town scandal until - with a touch of true Christian charity - the coroner elects to suppose that Katharine Hamlett never meant to drown, that her death is and must for ever remain a mystery, 'per infortium et non aliter nec allio modo ad mortem suam devenit', as it kindly says in his report.

This, sir, is that I mean by country history. An item in the chronicles of local gossip, madam, a tale told over the punch-bowl by a roaring fire.

Perhaps it is not so surprising that Mr Shakespeare remembered Katharine Hamlett when he came to kill off poor Ophelia. Her name would have floated back into his mind with his play's title. And a boy of fifteen could not have been indifferent to a young girl's drowning in that river that flowed right through his own mind.

What is surprising is the way the talk of those gravediggers in Hamlet echoes the words of the inquest. I have put them side by side. The resemblance is remarkable.

Only a laureate of weeds does something like that.

* Romeo and Juliet, Act IV, Scene 3.

Chapter Thirty-Seven The revels at Kenilworth 9th July, 1575

They're going to the revels at Kenilworth. Who's going to the revels at Kenilworth? We're going to the revels at Kenilworth. Shakespeare and son.

This is the way it was. Everywhere there was something for him but today at Kenilworth Castle there would be everything. Everywhere would be somewhere for one day. Everything would be something at Kenilworth Castle.

Everywhere on the roads there are fathers riding. And everywhere in the roads there are sons running. Fathers and sons, riding and running, they're all going to the revels at Kenilworth. We're going to the revels at Kenilworth. Who's going to the revels at Kenilworth? Shakespeare and son.

John Shakespeare wears his bailiff's butcher's best. His flat velvet cap, plum-coloured, is plumed with a great cockfeather, more bailiff than butcher. But his slashed butcher boots are made of the finest whitleather. Will, rising twelve, runs the road in his father's fat shadow. It goes like that. It goes along. He wears a laced and embroidered shirt just like his father's. His mother Mary sewed it when she was not sewing shrouds. He runs, he's elated, he runs, he's cock-a-hoop. Your merry heart goes all the day. (Your sad tires in a mile-a.) As for John Shakespeare, bold butcher Jack, on this hottest day in living memory he's sweating like a pig. Father and son in peaked doublets with scarlet silk trunk hose reaching down to their bald knees.

It's John Shakespeare who is singing as he rides. John Shakespeare has a song for each occasion. A great voice among the basses, and he always sings in tune, even when drunk. John Shakespeare's singing now as he rides the Queen's highway. Who's going to the revels at Kenilworth? We're going to the revels at Kenilworth. Who's going to the revels at Kenilworth? Shakespeare and son.

That is his song.

As for young Willy, he runs.

Riding, a man can sing, but running no.

Will does not sing but his father's song runs in his head. We're going to the revels at Kenilworth. In Will's head, though, the song is differently sung. His feet ring on the road. Shakespeare and father.