The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan

Author:Jude Morgan [Morgan, Jude]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2014-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

10

A Woman Killed With Kindness (1592–4)

He is so young that coming into his presence occasions an awkwardness, as of intrusion. Like nudity or someone at stool: I should withdraw from this. Even on his second reception by the young Earl of Southampton, Will feels it.

Deceptive, though. Yes, he is not yet twenty, still a ward of Lord Burghley’s, having decisions made for him. But then you remember that he is heir to a noble name, a fortune, multiple manors. This house in airy Bloomsbury Fields is only one of the parts of the earth his influence touches: apt to see his white hand stretching itself on the surface of a globe.

‘It inspires a new appreciation of the almighty’s creation,’ the young man says. ‘But also of man’s handiwork.’ A beautiful, lustrous thing of German crafting. ‘The question of how the world is made becomes yet livelier when you contemplate this. Look you, Master Shakespeare, this superb sphere, it must be constructed first and then the map pasted over. I asked after the method – but it must be a specific projection, you know, not a flat one after Mercator.’

They are alone in the library, or as alone as it is possible to be with a young aristocrat like this: over by the fire sits an old tutor or governor in nodding watchfulness, a liveried manservant holds the door, and occasionally another peeps in with a figure seeking audience, to be nay-said or encouraged to wait with a shake or nod of the earl’s head. Will has been there. Even the ante-rooms to the earl’s presence are an education: he heard several new lute songs, had a first-hand account of a shipboard storm off the Azores complete with rescue by Moorish prisoner, and learned to pun in Italian.

‘You know why I had so great a desire for this?’ the earl goes on, butting his hound’s questing nose away. ‘Because of its incompleteness. These doubtful areas where our mapmaker has resorted to curlicued monsters. I would love to make these places surer, con the world aright. See, discover. Oh, I’ve been over to France.’ Dismissively, as you might say Westminster. He sets the globe spinning. ‘Places sans names, look you, are your only destination. Ye gods, how tiny we must be on this earth. Like the spoor of flies or fleas, or smaller, would you say, on this scale?’

‘Smaller, smaller. Imagine the smallest thing you can, then cut it in half. Then cut that in half, and on and on.’

‘And, ergo, you never come to nothingness, how terrifying!’ But nothing terrifies this young man, Will sees.

Like bees about a blossom, Nashe said of the young Earl of Southampton, the scribblers and the thinkers and the singers flock to him, or shall I rather say like flies to their proper attraction? Nashe has hopes of patronage from Southampton too. The young sprig is not just rich and powerful but educated, cultured, as devoted to his library as his stable. A beneficent sun around

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.