Mr. Shakespeare's Bastard by Richard B. Wright

Author:Richard B. Wright [Wright, Richard B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical
ISBN: 9781443404327
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2010-09-13T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

MY SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY, AND this evening a small gathering with gifts: a fine, bone-handled enlarging glass from Mr. Thwaites to increase my ease in reading; from Charlotte, a new book, which she handed to me, whispering, “The first has scarcely a dozen pages left unfilled”; a handsomely engraved pewter mug for my ale from Mr. Walter; from Mrs. Sproule, a woollen shawl knitted by her granddaughter; and from Emily, a brooch that likely will not last a wearing, for it is poorly made, bought no doubt from a peddler at her mother’s door. Still, it is the thought that matters, and besides, the girl has little money. I was grateful to them all.

There was cake and wine and ale, and everything might have been well had I not been suffering all day with the stone; a fiendish pain had me pacing my room from first light until late afternoon, when it abated somewhat, allowing me to pass water. I kept this to myself as best I could and mostly listened to the talk at the table, which was on the harvest that will begin this week. Mr. Walter is hopeful of a good return and said with a laugh that this hot, dry weather is a benefit but will greatly deplete his store of ale, because the workers in this heat soon grow a thirst. Listening to him I thought of how the seasons swiftly pass, folding into one another with barely our noticing. Another harvest, and then the planting of winter wheat and the apples and medlars brought into the cellar. Soon Advent will be upon us, and then Christmas and another winter. And surely I am close to having used up my share of seasons. What then? Heaven? Hell? Nothing?

Mr. Thwaites was in Oxford this week and heard talk of how Cromwell is quite ill and Parliament worried with no successor named and Prince Charlie waiting in France with an army. That made me wonder if our Great Protector was also considering his share of seasons here on earth. I have heard that for all the blood on his hands, he is a pious fellow and so must be readying himself for what’s next.

This led me to reflect as I have from time to time on how my father faced his end. When he died, I was twenty-seven, and I knew nothing of his passing until five or six years later, when in Oxford at a performance of King Lear—at a courtyard inn in Cornmarket Street—I overheard two gentlemen speaking well of my father and lamenting his death years before up in Stratford. In the last years of his life, my father had lived only forty miles away, and travelling from London he must have passed through our village on his way northward. Yet oddly enough, not once had I thought of him doing so; always I pictured him in London.

In the play I saw that Saturday afternoon, the old King laments the final separation from his

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