William and Susanna

by L E Pembroke

  ‘That’s no place for a young woman,’ Gilbert growled.

  Susanna had just had her fourteenth birthday. She was not only devout, she was wilful. ‘My prayers are as good as yours. I intend to pray for Father Robert’s soul as it departs from his body.’

  Well aware of her stubbornness, Gilbert did not waste his time arguing with her but he worried about what William would say when they arrived late on the eve of the hanging. Gilbert, being a man who could not bear dissension in the family, shrugged his shoulders and said no more to his niece.

  William had long since moved from his quarters at Southwark. In 1595 he was living in large higher-priced rooms on the north side of London and not far from The Strand and the palace at Whitehall. When he answered the knock on the door, he was stunned to see Susanna - stunned and very annoyed, especially when she burst out that she had come for the priest’s hanging.

  ‘You will not be going to any hanging, my girl. What’s come over you, Gilbert to permit this nonsense?’

  ‘She would have come with strangers if I’d refused.’

  ‘She’ll stay here with me until it’s all over and tomorrow we will see the afternoon performance of Richard III, that will teach her more about the evils of this world than watching a good man hang.’

  As much as Susanna had always wanted to see one of her father’s plays that was not why she came to London. She kept her own counsel. She planned to be wide awake and dressed when Gilbert left the house at first light to walk to Tyburn. She would follow him, attend the hanging and pray aloud for Father Robert’s soul.

  How cold it was that early morning in February and so horrifying to be amongst the laughing, expectant crowds milling around the gallows. She had lost sight of her uncle and crept into the back row of one of the stands which were always put in place the eve before a hanging. She gasped with horror, began to pray and tears poured down her face when the slight, thirty-three year-old man was led to the gallows. He stepped forward to say his last words.

  The crowds, who always enjoyed this part of the spectacle, fell silent as the priest echoed the words of Jesus Christ and asked for forgiveness for his persecutors.

  The rope was put around his neck. In a trice the trap opened and Robert Southwell was hanging before the crowd, twisting and turning as he slowly choked. Artfully, the length of the rope was such that he would only be half dead before he was cut down preparatory to enduring the final horror. It was too much to bear, a group of his supporters, heedless of punishment, ran forward and pulled at his legs so that the breath went out of his body. He was dead before having to suffer the last torture.

  Susanna did not see the performance of Richard III that afternoon or ever. Horribly shaken by what she had seen and clutching the beads in her pocket while murmuring the Rosary, she stumbled along streets unknown to her. For hours she turned this way and that along the narrow thoroughfares. She wasn’t thinking straight, too shocked to think logically. She became totally confused and was far too timid to approach the strangers crowded around her. Darkness had fallen by three in the afternoon. In the dim light of lamps she went around in circles passing again and again through the same crowded streets and lanes. Too frightened to seek advice from the toothless hags who roamed the streets, she searched in vain for some well-dressed family group from whom she might obtain directions. This was not the area for family groups, it was a miracle that the men looking for a prostitute didn’t molest her.

  Gilbert arrived back at his brother’s rooms to learn that Susanna must have followed him to Tyburn. Furious with his brother for having been unaware of his daughter’s actions and distressed by thoughts about the danger she might be in, William tore out of the house intent on organising his player friends to assist him in a search for his daughter.

  A group of men - players from the Lord Chamberlain’s Company- with their playwright leading the way, found her not so very far from home, somewhere on The Strand, crouched, hiding in the dark, shivering with fear and cold in the doorway of a building. Gilbert had joined another group that went looking in the other direction.

  The following morning Susanna and Gilbert took the coach to Stratford. They sat silent throughout the journey; both shocked by the events of the previous twenty-four hours and both thinking there was nothing to be said for life in England’s crowded capital city.

  ACT 2 - 3

  There was no point staying in London and putting himself at risk. Justifiably, William had a great fear of The Plague. Again, in 1596, thousands were dead and dying. He was gone from the city well before Lent that year. And, why not, he said to other members of the Company. They had all seen houses and narrow lanes barred from the general population. Whole families locked into their meagre infected homes and forbidden to rid themselves of accumulated rubbish. They watched as occasionally doctors visited the plague house. Doctors who wore clownish masks with long bird-like beaks, and long flowing robes as protection from the deadly plague. In almost every case the plague spread throughout the family and the doors to their hovels were barred by timber planks until only corpses remained inside.

  That year the plague was everywhere although much worse in the cities teeming with their poverty-stricken populations. Feeling secure in Stratford, William relaxed with his writings and his family, in particular with his children. He came up with a new and different idea for his next light-hearted plot. ‘Be warned, Gilbert,’ he said, ‘marriage is not all wine and roses.’

  ‘You, of all people would know that,’ his brother replied. That was the truth, he thought, nothing remained of his former feelings for Anne, not that she was a shrew like the female lead in his new play. She was simply a dull, fast-ageing woman.

  Midsummer; light until nine at night and long hours for those who worked in the fields. For others like William, summer meant hours of leisure with his children, fishing, chasing birds with a sling shot, riding to Arden Forest to visit cousins and always encouraging Susanna and Hamnet to demonstrate their literary skills to him. Judith preferring other ways to fill in the time, had never been persuaded to take up a pen.

  He said to Gilbert, ‘I believe Hamnet will follow in my footsteps.’

  ‘And our own brother, Edmund, I hear tell he is a clever student who desires to join your Company of Players. I, once had a wish myself to join you in London. I thought I would be very handy in helping to construct a setting. Sixteen years I have worked with father and I wished to try new pastures. However I changed my mind after my experience with Susanna last year.’

  ‘You didn’t see the best of it, give it another try. You will always be welcome and perhaps we will find you a wife in London.’

  ‘Maybe so, there is certainly no woman in Stratford who cares to give me a second glance. I have a mind to marry and our father’s financial worries seem to have passed, so maybe I will consider making the change.’

  Yes, William thought, Gilbert had had the worst of it. It’s time he became his own master. No one deserves it more than my brother. However, to be honest, William couldn’t really see his gentle brother living in London. Gilbert was a shy man who had no need or desire for fame and fortune. Although close friends, in personality, the brothers were direct opposites.

  William decided it was almost time he returned to the Lord Chamberlain’s Company. Yet fate ordained otherwise. Hamnet began to sicken. Within three days his body was struggling piteously with fever and was soon covered with oozing red and black lumps, called buboes, full of pus and blood and as big as an orange. They didn’t need the diagnosis of a physician to know Hamnet was suffering with Bubonic Plague. Nevertheless, the whole household, especially William, was devastated to see the boy die within a week of the first symptom appearing. Unable to eat, sleep or create, daily he left the house to walk alone in the nearby countryside and question the God who allowed innocent children to suffer such a cruel death. To have one’s only son, a boy of eleven years, sicken and die in a matter of days was almost beyond bearing.

  Up until n
ow they had been a fortunate family, at a time when the mortality rate amongst children was so very high. It had been a full fifteen years since the death of William’s sister. Rarely were families of that era given such a long period between deaths.

  William knew there would be no more children born of his loins. Two daughters, but no son to carry on the name, a great shame, but he would not risk again the pain of loss of a child. He stayed in Stratford while he mourned and only considered returning to London as the year drew to a close.

  About this time John Shakespeare, having applied himself on several occasions over the years to bear a Coat of Arms and been refused, received good news. Permission was granted and John achieved his lifelong ambition - he was now officially “a gentleman.” He could thank his eldest son for that, for William had applied on behalf of his father. His reputation as a most laudable playwright and poet having spread far and wide throughout the country, there had been little chance of his being turned down. Upon receiving this honour, John was soon reinstated with the local council and after twenty years, recommenced his civic duties.

  The following year William was able to buy a splendid home for his family. He called it New Place. For the first time in her life Anne was mistress of her own home. It was arguably the best home in Stratford. John thought the move was long overdue, the house at Henley Street had been packed to capacity, for fifteen years. Now with just his wife, three sons and a daughter and being “a gentleman” they would be able to live at a standard befitting his restored status.

  William soon discovered he wasn’t able to settle to anything in the months following Hamnet’s death. He had lost his motivation and his imagination dried up. He roamed the city seeking inspiration but with little success. Friends and colleagues suggested he travel to Paris, and the city States of Florence, Venice and Rome He should interest himself in the study of Humanism, they said, a philosophy of education that had swept through those cities and progressed to the German states and France. Humanism was a study of the Humanities that incorporated poetry and history, Ancient Greek and Roman moral philosophy. They said, this study would give him all the inspiration he could ever dream of and especially knowledge which he, at present, lacked.

  Convinced, he returned to Stratford to farewell his family.

  Susanna, in almost three years, had never completely recovered from the trauma she had undergone on the day of Robert Southwell’s death. She suffered frequent nightmares, was unable to forget the horror of the gallows at Tyburn, the savagery of those who had come to witness the execution and her terror while she wandered, for hours, lost in that vile city. She was still suffering from intermittent nightmares when Hamnet, her closest companion since they began studying together, succumbed to his ghastly death.

  When Gilbert heard William’s plans, he suggested Susanna’s father had a duty to take his daughter with him. ‘The girl is fretting, is well into her seventeenth year and should be married any day. However, I doubt she will ever completely recover until her mind is otherwise occupied.’

  William, startled by the suggestion and not altogether pleased with it, prevaricated. ‘She is a simple country girl not ready for such travel. Young girls are peculiar creatures, she will soon recover her good spirits, besides she would miss her grandparents.’

  ‘Not half as much as the company of an educated, loving and caring father. You must be aware that the girl is now educated beyond most, possibly too educated for the young men of Stratford. I see her as an example to other women, possibly a writer like yourself, even the Mother Superior in some religious order in France or Belgium. Given the opportunity who knows where she will end?’

  ‘Who indeed. You make a strong case, brother. I will think on it.’

  He decided that this could be a God given opportunity to be close to at least one of his children. If it had been Hamnet he would not have hesitated, would never have turned his back on the chance to travel with his son and experience the joy of watching as the experience stimulated the boy’s mental growth. But it would never again be Hamnet, foolish to say “if.” Susanna would be a feisty companion and possibly the travel might rid her of some of her intensity about her religion. Yes, a little time away from the Arden side of the family might do them both some good.

  For Susanna the thought of travelling with her father for the following year was overwhelming. Beyond her wildest dreams, she said again and again. So many pilgrimages to be made. She began listing all the places she had heard about. They would begin in Belgium inspecting the monasteries and boarding schools for Catholic English boys. How much she wanted to see a proper monastery. The English ones having all been destroyed by the time she was born. She had to see Paris, to actually visit Notre Dame Cathedral, one of the most famous pilgrim destinations in all of Europe and after that, a succession of pilgrimages further south. As yet, she didn’t quite know where, but she would read books on the subject.

  William had little to say in the face of Susanna’s enthusiasm. How could he reveal to her that, for him, the whole point of their journey was to visit the city states of Florence and Venice and to witness and even become part of the spectacular and bohemian section of their society that provided musical and other on-stage theatrical entertainments along with carnivals and festivals for wealthy travellers from neighbouring states. Travellers, who, he’d heard, also came from countries and states as far away as England in the west to Russia in the east and from the Mediterranean to the North Sea. That’s what William looked forward to. He had no desire to travel along the arduous routes taken by pilgrims to isolated sacred villages perched on mountain tops in the Pyrenees.

  As for Rome, well that was another matter and perhaps Assisi too. He would enjoy a short stopover in Rome en-route to Venice. Rome, a city whose diverse history over almost two thousand years had left him spellbound when he first became cognizant of it. At Hoghton he studied the life of Marcus Tullius Cicero in greater depth than he had done at school, learning even more of the man who was considered the greatest orator of ancient Rome. The very man who for his condemnation of Marcus Antonius, was beheaded. (It seemed nothing had changed in sixteen hundred years). He also learnt of Plautus whose ribald plays written in the second century AD were, by all accounts still, in his own time, being played by the Commedia dell Arte. He had to see a Plautus play. There was no doubting he would journey to Rome with his daughter, probably leave her in one of the convents to enjoy their hospitality for a short time while he attended the masked productions so very popular in Rome, Venice and other centres he was determined to visit.

  *

  They disembarked at Calais and immediately travelled to Douai where an English Theological College and several seminaries had been established. The Catholics there were hopeful that England would return to Catholicism but William believed there was little chance of that. As time passed wasn’t it logical that families would become accustomed to life in a Protestant country and would not feel the need to return to the old ways with which they were not familiar?

  He was aware that in England, by the end of the century, there were fewer aggressively recusant families left and most of them were in the north west of the country. The majority had had enough of religious troubles and many were happy enough with the status quo. What difference did it make, they said, how they worshipped. They were Christians. They believed that Jesus was the son of God and that God created the world. Wasn’t that enough? Silly, many of them were saying, to make Catholics pay fines for not attending Church of England Services and if some people were determined to follow the old faith, well let them do so as long as they didn’t push their ideas on to the rest of the population. Nevertheless, William discovered in Douai that some Catholic religious orders continued to send priests to do their undercover preaching in England and to administer the Sacraments to recusant families.

  The devout Susanna was determined to see where Robert Southwell had trained for the priesthood. She was well aware that throughout her life and before it
, many priests were caught and hanged for treason because of their refusal to accept the Queen of England as head of the Church in place of the Pope. She believed all those priests were saints. Never in her whole life would she ever forget the day of Robert’s hanging.

  ‘I will not leave this place until I see where Robert became a priest,’ Susanna insisted. William, who always had fond memories of his poet friend and martyr, did not demur.

  Within days of being at Douai, they were travelling south to Paris.

  ‘You must know, father, that Notre Dame Cathedral is one of the great pilgrimage destinations in all of Europe. It would not be right if we did not pay our respects to Our Lady of Paris.’ Susanna remarked as, in a carriage, they jolted through huge areas of natural wilderness and along the rudimentary roads of France. The discomfort brought back vivid recollections to William of when he set out on his first journey from home nearly twenty years before.

  ‘We’d have been wiser to travel by barge,’ he grumbled, only belatedly realising that northern France was so well-endowed with rivers. Nevertheless, he thought philosophically, Susanna was good company, enthusiastic about everything they encountered and rarely pensive.

  They moved into rooms on the left Bank, cosmopolitan and bohemian, this was the area to which William was drawn. The Latin Quarter was just a small section of Paris surrounding the university and where artists and students, who spoke only Latin lived. He wanted to soak up the easy-going atmosphere which was in some ways similar to Southwark across the river from London where he had begun writing ten years before.

  Travelling with a sixteen-year-old daughter could be tedious in many ways. William, a man who appreciated his own company, did not totally enjoy the business of constantly attending to his daughter’s wants. Yet, he couldn’t leave her in a strange city where depraved men young and old were constantly on the lookout for innocent young girls. Even so a man needed some respite. Ale and wine for a start, the latter (once too expensive for his purse) had given him particular pleasure during the last few years. Jovial company was easy to find in the Latin Quarter as were books, hundreds of books to be purchased in this part of the city. The printing industry was thriving in Paris as it was in Venice - another reason for his desire to travel on to that city as soon as possible.