The Diary of William Shakespeare, Gentleman Read Online Free Page A

crime must still be quiet. Perhaps the alderman and others who had found him guilty would not yet speak of it, for if Father’s fine was truly paid by Friday he would be a man of influence once more in Stratford, and not one to offend.
    I looked across the crowd for Ned. He was not there. Perhaps his father had him hoeing ground for turnips, to replace the wheat that had failed. But Farmer Forrest would have first to find the money to buy the turnip seed . . .
    We arranged our cushions. Old Tom brought us a tray of ale and a dish of walnuts. I tried not to bounce upon my stool. When would the play begin?
    At last an actor in a moth-eaten silk cloak strode from the tavern door to a small chorus of cheers, holding a pottery box out for us to put in our pennies and threepences.
    â€˜Today we play The Death of Caesar ,’ the actor announced, rattling his coin box. He bowed, then strode back into the tavern.
    Two seconds later an evil, snarling fellow in a Roman toga snuck out the door, and stood in the round gap before us. ‘Hist!’ he whispered.
    Suddenly the crowd sat quiet. Stratford’s breath was stolen by that single word. It was the first time I saw an actor’s magic. Even now it thrills me.
    â€˜For there is murder coming!’ the player whispered, his whisper somehow louder than a barking dog. ‘All this cursed month we have been plotting! And now our evil bursts to flame! Today must Caesar die!’
    No one cracked a walnut. I thought, how can one man command so many, all with whispers and a toga?
    The actor peered this way and that, as if to check that no one saw, turning a crowd of townsfolk and yeomen into the pillars of ancient Rome. Mark Antony came on next, noble and fair, and then Livia, dressed in some lady’s discarded robes of silk. The fair Livia raised giggles, for she had not shaved that day. Her beard pricked through her rouge.
    â€˜Marry, methinks they need a younger actor for such parts as these,’ my father muttered to my mother.
    â€˜Women’s parts!’ some lout sniggered behind us. Father silenced him with a stare. Livia began to speak, in a high girlish croak that revealed a teenage actor’s breaking voice.
    We breathed in ancient Rome that day, sitting outside an English tavern, while the ducks swam on the pond and the tavern-keeper brought out tankards of ale: screamed at the brutal stabbing of Caesar, the traitors cowering, cheered at Mark Antony’s fierce defence. For two hours each man forgot the stench of blighted wheat, his rotting hayricks, that the plague lurked a few villages away. Women cared not about the terrors of childbirth, nor men the antics of their sons. For two hours of the clock we floated upon words, taking us further than any ship upon the sea.
    Words. But what words! I’d read fine words at school. But written words had not power to take farmers, glovers and small boys across time and space to ancient Rome.
    And then the play was done.
    It was, in truth, not much of a play. But I knew no better then.
    Father and Mother lingered to talk to neighbours, carefully keeping their faces cheerful. I slipped away, with naught but a ‘Do not get your hose dirty’ from my mother. I ran down the streets, avoiding the contents of chamber pots and the horse droppings because I was wearing my best shoes, out into one of the sad, bare blighted fields.
    I looked around, but there was no one — blighted wheat needs no tending, just the animals put in to eat what can be salvaged and then the land left fallow to clean the blight away.
    I shut my eyes.
    I had planned to recite Mark Antony’s speech, but I’d forgotten it. Instead, as if they had always been there, came other words. I heard my voice say,
    â€˜ Friends, Romans, everyone!
    Listen to me!
    I’ve come to bury Caesar
    Not to praise him.
    Brutus says Caesar was ambitious.
    Brutus is an honourable man.
    All of those who lifted savage knives to