I like stories to be in books, and I like books to be full of stories, but while I like the thought of a never-ending story I like books to have a middle, a beginning, and an end, though not necessarily in that order. This bit will be the middle. I daresay I should have begun with it, but it's too late now.
Chapter Fifty-Two In which Anne Hathaway
Here is Anne Hathaway walking down Henley Street. She goes down one side, she comes up the other. She is wearing a white gown with a crimson sash of velvet, a hat of plaited straw, long, fine silk gloves to her elbows, new sandals on her feet. It is when she is crossing the road outside the butcher's shop that she has suddenly to stop and step aside to let a cart go by.
When Anne tries to move again, it seems that she cannot. She stands stock-still in the middle of Henley Street. She is a handsome woman, twenty-six years old, well-versed in country matters, with a decent little dowry, but so far none of her suitors has asked for her hand in marriage. This might be because of her tongue, which is known to be sharp and shrewd. Besides, it is said that her hand can be had without benefit of clergy. Like Perdita, a queen of curds and cream, she is willing to use it to milk her importunate swains when their needs grow too much. Unlike Perdita, Anne Hathaway now appears to be transfixed in Henley Street.
Her flat wooden sandals seem stuck fast, in fact, in a deep heap of dung. It is summer, and the dung is thick and warm.
Miss Hathaway's father, a farmer, died last year. Her home is at Hewlands Farm, Shottery, about a mile away. There she lives, the eldest daughter, with a stepmother she detests, and her senior brother Bartholomew who is married and who brought in his wife to help him run the farm. Anne's four younger brothers also live at Hewlands, all aged between four and thirteen, on purpose (she often surmises) to make her life less than the joy it might otherwise be.
Miss H, in short, is in quest of a husband. At the moment, however, you might think she has a more pressing problem that requires to be solved.
Anne Hathaway seeks to ease up her right foot within her sandal where it is embedded in the dung, keeping her instep pressed against the thong of whitleather.
The sandal does not budge in its sticky bed.
Anne Hathaway shifts her weight and tries to ease up her left foot, this time pressing with her ankle against the thong at the back of the sandal.
Still no go, apparently.
The maiden now stuck in the midden is fond of these sandals. They cost her two shillings and sixpence at Evesham Fair.
Here she stands, in distress, as it seems, in the middle of the road. And the more that she struggles to pull her sandals free without removing her feet from them, the deeper those sandals are sinking in the soft, sticky dung. Flies start to buzz about her. The day is very hot.
Quite a predicament, reader, I think you'll agree.
Presumably Anne Hathaway cannot just slip out of her sandals and walk barefoot in the street. Her feet would get dirty, or they might perhaps be cut. A farmer's daughter in quest of a husband has in any case at all times to behave like a lady in public, and ladies do not go barefoot on the Queen's highway.
Should she then remove her gloves and remove her sandals and then replace her sandals on her feet?
She could, sir, yes. But a lady does not remove her gloves out of doors, no, quite so, madam.
Should she then retain her gloves and still remove her sandals and then replace her sandals on her feet?
I think not, madam, no. For if she does that then her gloves will get covered with dung, yes, indubitably, sir, and they are fine gloves, silk gloves, also purchased at Evesham Fair.
With gloves on or off, gloves retained or gloves sacrificed, we might also suppose that Anne Hathaway's predicament is compounded by knowledge that whichever course of action she should decide upon, assuming she cannot simply lift feet complete with sandals out of the dung, then she will have to stoop and bend over in Henley Street in order to accomplish it. Again, here is something a lady would prefer not to do, if she can possibly avoid it.
So, Anne Hathaway stands, Anne Hathaway is standing there, all of a dither. She flaps her hands about in the long silk gloves. She emits little mewing cries, as the flies go buzz about her, in what she trusts no doubt is a distressed manner. In fact she sounds more like a buzzard that hovers high above its prey.
What is Anne Hathaway doing? She is looking for a husband. Why should she look in a dunghill? Because it is there.
Do we know that she has not planned this? We do not. John Shakespeare's sterquinarium, if not exactly a trysting-place, is something of a landmark in the district. And where the dung is there the flies are found. Anne knows all such proverbs.
Besides, she has known William Shakespeare since both of them were children. But that eight-year difference in their ages has not enchanted her in his eyes, or so she suspects. She has seemed to him, perhaps, too much of a bossy-boots. So it could be with some cunning that she has devised the present accident.
Here is Anne Hathaway, standing right outside the house where William Shakespeare lives, apparently vulnerable and undecided in the street, fixed in a nasty predicament which might be blamed in part upon his father, and in a posture that calls out for firm, over-riding male action on the part of the son.
She is seeking to seem inadequate, frail, and clinging. She has placed herself in a position where he must sweep her off her feet.
Now a small crowd has gathered to watch her. Children laugh, and the town idiot pelts her with cherry stones.
Anne Hathaway's big blue eyes fill up very fetchingly with tears.
So along comes William Shakespeare on his white horse. It's a shuffling nag, actually, spavined, old, and with a touch of stringhalt, but it serves well enough for a young man of eighteen with no fortune.
William Shakespeare draws rein. He tries to spin his horse, but the creature's not having that. Mr Shakespeare dismounts with a leap, after standing bolt-upright in his stirrups. He tethers his steed to a tree, though there's probably no need since the creature falls asleep as soon as it stops.
William Shakespeare approaches Anne Hathaway where she stands in distress.
William Shakespeare plucks off his bonnet and bows as he comes to the lady.
With a courteous 'By your leave', William Shakespeare gallantly lifts Anne Hathaway up and out of her stuck sandals.
He carries her in his strong arms to the pavement just outside his father's shop.
Then he sets her down very gently in a patch of grassy shadow. Anne wriggles her pretty little toes in the grass as she stands there barefoot. Shakespeare's eyes observe the gesture. Anne gives him a smile of thanks. He bows again, low.
Then young Mr Shakespeare strides back to the middle of Henley Street, holding up his left hand modestly to acknowledge the applause of the spectators, and he tugs Miss Hathaway's wooden sandals out of the dung.
Even the town idiot cheers.
In fact, he cheers loudest.