Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  “Why, man, they did make love to this employment! They are not near my conscience,” cried Hamlet, as if to defend himself against the sad regret he sensed in Horatio’s words. Regret there certainly had been, not for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, but for Hamlet himself. His was the tragedy, not theirs. Sadly Horatio gazed at the brilliant, lively and noble young Prince who had been dragged back into an ancient, corrupt world of poison, murder and revenge.

  As they talked, there was a gust of perfume, a rustle of satins, and a courtier came into the hall. He was a delicate gentleman with a feathered bonnet and butterfly hands. He talked very roundabout, and with so many bows that his listeners marvelled at his flexibility. His message, when at last it was unravelled, was from the King, and was amiable enough. Having heard that, of late, Laertes had won a great reputation for fencing, and knowing Hamlet’s fondness for the sport, the King had laid a wager on the outcome of a match between them—that is, if the Lord Hamlet was agreeable to trying his skill against Laertes. Thus appealed to, Hamlet could not refuse. He was proud of his skill as a swordsman and always eager for a chance to show it off.

  “Sir, I will walk here in the hall,” he informed the courtier. “Let the foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the King hold his purpose, I will win for him and I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.”

  When the courtier had departed, Hamlet frowned and shook his head. He knew not why, but a strange uneasiness had seized him.

  “If your mind dislike anything, obey it,” said Horatio anxiously. “I will forestall their repair hither and say you arc not fit.”

  Hamlet smiled and shook his head. “We defy augury,” he said. “There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all . . .”

  Trumpets announced the approach of the King. The courtier had delivered his message promptly. The King and Queen entered the hall attended by all the court. Two servants carried a table, and a lord bore a bouquet of swords, like a bridesman of Death.

  All was smiles and good humour, as if Hamlet’s madness had never been. “Come, Hamlet, come,” urged the affable King; and he drew the Prince and Laertes together so that they might clasp hands and seal their friendship in forgiveness.

  “Give me your pardon, sir,” said Hamlet warmly, for there was no enmity in his heart for Laertes. “I have done you wrong.”

  Laertes responded with equal generosity, and the King’s smile broadened. The swords were offered. Laertes, being the quicker, chose first. “This is too heavy,” he said with a frown, flourishing the weapon he had drawn. “Let me see another.” Plainly he was a most fastidious swordsman. At length he found a blade to his satisfaction. The swords were offered to Hamlet, who cheerfully took the first that came. The two young men saluted each other in steel, and awaited the King’s word for the bout to begin.

  The King called for wine so that he might drink Hamlet’s health should he win. The cups were filled and set upon the table. The King, with a royal gesture, held out a splendid pearl. If Laertes should be defeated, the pearl would be cast into Hamlet’s cup of wine. The court murmured, and applauded the magnificence of the prize.

  “Come, begin!” exclaimed the King. “And you, the judges, bear a wary eye.”

  Swords touched, and the judges, two dancing, skipping, hopping courtiers, followed the weaving blades. The fencers, both in black, for each mourned a murdered father, circled one another, made swift lunges, darted back, lunged again, parried, thrust, riposted—

  “One!” cried Hamlet, triumphantly.

  “No!” cried Laertes.

  The judges were appealed to, and declared: “A hit, a very palpable hit.”

  “Well, again!” demanded Laertes.

  “Stay,” ordered the King. “Give me drink. Hamlet, this pearl is thine.” He cast it into Hamlet’s cup, and offered it to the Prince. But Hamlet would not drink. He would try another bout first. He and Laertes fenced again; and again Hamlet scored a hit.

  “Our son shall win,” said the King. The Queen smiled proudly, and offered her son her napkin to wipe his sweating brow.

  “The Queen carouses to thy fortune, Hamlet,” she said, and took a cup of wine.

  “Gertrude, do not drink!” muttered the King, his face grey with horror.

  “I will, my lord,” said she. “I pray you pardon me.”

  The cup she held was Hamlet’s cup. She drank the poison that had been laid for her son.

  “My lord, I’ll hit him now!” whispered Laertes to the King.

  “I do not think it,” said the King, whose eyes were upon his poisoned Queen, and whose whole world was beginning to crack and crumble about him.

  “Have at you now!” shouted Laertes, seeing Hamlet unprepared. He thrust at him, and caught him on the wrist. Hamlet looked down amazed. He was bleeding. Laertes’ sword had been unbated! He looked up at Laertes and saw guilt and hatred in his eyes. Bewilderment, then fury seized him. Though he never knew it, he had been fighting for his life. Savagely he flung himself upon Laertes, and beat the weapon from his hand. He picked it up, and contemptuously flung Laertes his own. They fought again: Laertes in terror, and Hamlet with all the skill at his command.

  “Part them,” cried out the King, “they are incensed!”

  “Nay, come again!” shouted Hamlet, and, with a sudden thrust, pierced Laertes through.

  Now the poison was spread, the poison that had, so long, rotted away the castle of Elsinore; and it was a poison, like the venom Laertes had brought back, for which there was no remedy. The Queen, the easy, lustful Queen, felt agony seize her. She cried out: “The drink, the drink! O my dear Hamlet! The drink, the drink! I am poisoned!” She fell back, and with lifeless eyes stared at her son.

  “Let the door be locked!” shouted Hamlet. “Treachery! Seek it out!”

  “It is here, Hamlet,” sighed Laertes, bleeding from his wound, and dying from the venom of his own blade. “Hamlet, thou art slain. No medicine in the world can do thee good; in thee there is not half an hour’s life . . .” So Laertes, while there was still breath in him, confessed his treachery, and pointed to the one whose crime, like Cain’s, had brought about so many deaths. “The King—the King’s to blame.”

  There was no delaying now, no breathing time for thought. With a terrible cry, Hamlet rushed upon the King and stabbed him with his sword. But, like a serpent, the King would not die.

  “Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, drink off this potion!” the avenger cried and forced the poisoned cup between the King’s unresisting lips, and made him drink. “Follow my mother!”

  “He is justly served,” breathed Laertes; and with the last of his life, begged forgiveness of Hamlet for what he had done. Like Hamlet, he had avenged his father; and, like Hamlet, he died for it.

  “I follow thee,” murmured Hamlet, over the young man who now lay quiet and still. “I am dead, Horatio,” he whispered to his friend who had come forward to support him. He trembled as a chill began to invade him. Then he smiled ruefully. “This fell sergeant, Death, is strict in his arrest . . .”

  There came a sound of martial music and gunfire from outside the castle walls. A messenger entered, to tell that Fortinbras, the victorious Prince of Norway, was approaching. With a last effort, Hamlet roused himself. He was a Prince, and his concerns were now with the state, good order, and the well-being of his people. “The election lights on Fortinbras. He has my dying voice,” decreed the Prince. Then, all strength spent, he fell back in Horatio’s arms. “The rest is silence,” he sighed.

  Through veils and veils of tears, Horatio gazed down upon the quiet countenance that rested against his arm. “Good night, sweet Prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.”

  It was thus that Fortinbras found them, the dead and those who still lived, in the great hall of the castle of Elsinore.

  “Let four captains b
ear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage,” said Fortinbras, when he had heard Hamlet’s story, “for he was likely, had he been put on, to have proved most royal . . .” The captains lifted up the dead Prince and carried him away. “Go, bid the soldiers shoot,” commanded Fortinbras; and solemn gunfire roared in honour of the Prince of Denmark.

  Romeo and Juliet

  In old Verona, where the streets were hot and narrow and the walls were high, where men were as bright as wasps and carried quick swords for their stings, there lived two families—the Capulets and the Montagues—who hated each other worse than death. They had but to pass in the street and they were at each other’s throats like dogs in the sun. Cursing and shouting and bawling, and crashing from civil pillar to post, they filled the good people of Verona with fear and anger to have their city’s peace so senselessly disturbed.

  They were at it again! In the buzzing heat of a July morning, two lazy no-good servants of the Capulets had spied two strolling men of the Montagues. Looks had been exchanged, then words, and in moments the peaceful market was in an uproar as the four idle ruffians set about defending their masters’ honour by smashing up stalls, overturning baskets, wrecking shops and wounding passers-by, in their valiant endeavours to cut each other into pieces.

  Benvolio, a sensible young Montague, came upon the scene and tried to put a stop to it; Tybalt, a young Capulet so full of fury that he sweated knives, promptly went for Benvolio; old Montague and old Capulet appeared and tried to draw their doddering swords—that surely would have shaken more like straws in the wind than lightning in the sky. Men shouted, women screamed and rushed to drag wandering infants into safety . . . and bloody riot threatened to swallow up all the fair city, till the Prince of Verona, with soldiers, came furiously into the square.

  “Rebellious subjects, enemies to peace!” he roared; and, by dint of stern anger and sterner threats, restored some semblance of peace. The vile destructive brawling between the Montagues and the Capulets incensed him beyond measure.

  “If ever you disturb our streets again,” he swore, “your lives shall pay the forfeit.”

  When the Prince had gone, taking old Capulet with him, (to remove one half of the quarrel and so leave the other without an object), Lady Montague spoke to Benvolio.

  “O where is Romeo, saw you him today?” she asked. “Right glad I am he was not at this fray,” she added, as if Romeo, her only son, was as hot-headed as any and would surely have come to grief among the flashing swords and blundering fists. But Romeo had been elsewhere, wrapped in a melancholy that was most mysterious to his parents.

  “See where he comes!” exclaimed Benvolio, as the young man in question drifted dolefully into the square, as if he was a ghost under instruction to haunt it. “So please you step aside,” he urged old Montague and his wife, “I’ll know his grievance . . .”

  The parents departed, leaving Benvolio to penetrate the inscrutable mystery of his cousin Romeo’s gloom. It proved no great task, as Romeo was all too willing to talk. He was in love. Hopelessly. He doted to distraction upon a glorious creature by the name of Rosalyne; and she would have nothing to do with him. So far as she was concerned, he was dust. Consequently he had been mooning all morning, lovesick, in a grove of sycamores.

  Patiently Benvolio listened to the extensive catalogue of Rosalyne’s amazing charms. He shook his head, and ventured to suggest that, if only Romeo looked about him, he might find others as fair. Impossible! The world was not so rich as to hold another such as Rosalyne. Benvolio expressed doubts, but Romeo was adamant; and so they continued, strolling through the golden warm streets of Verona, Romeo all melancholy passion and Benvolio all cheerful good sense.

  “Why, Romeo, art thou mad?” began Benvolio when a servingman, much bewildered and with a paper in his hand, accosted them.

  “I pray, sir, can you read?”

  It seemed the fellow’s master had entrusted him with a list of guests to be invited to a banquet that night. But, being no scholar, he could make neither head nor tail of the writing. Obligingly Romeo read out the names. They were a distinguished company—and among them was Rosalyne!

  Where was the feast to be? Alas! at the house of old Capulet. A dangerous place for a Montague. But, if he went masked and in fantastical costume, as was the custom for uninvited guests at such a feast . . .

  “Go thither,” urged Benvolio, anxious to cure his cousin of that sickness called Rosalyne. He had noticed that on the list had been the best beauties of Verona, beside whom Rosalyne might well not shine so bright. “Compare her face,” he advised shrewdly, “with some that I shall show; and I will make thee think thy swan a crow.”

  They met that night in the street outside the Capulet’s house: Romeo, Benvolio and Mercutio, who was a kinsman of the Prince and Romeo’s dearest friend. He was a lively, mocking youth, as full of bubbling laughter as a glass of good wine. They met by torchlight with some half dozen others, all in fantastical costume and gilded masks—as if King Midas had patted their heads and made fortunes of their faces.

  Like gorgeous dragonflies, with partly folded wings, they leaned against the high wall that enclosed the Capulets’ orchard, laughing and talking and trying, by all manner and means, to lift up Romeo’s depressed spirits. But he, dressed as a rather splendid pilgrim, (in deference to the notion that any place that held Rosalyne must be a holy shrine), remained as dull as lead. Neither Benvolio’s urging nor Mercutio’s wit affected him. He stayed glum; and, furthermore, had had a strange premonition that the night’s festivities would turn out to have been the beginning of a journey to the grave.

  At length the maskers gave up their efforts and, with their gloomy companion, went into the feasting house. At once they were dazzled by a blaze of candles and a blaze of beauty . . . of silks and satins, soft white skin and dark, delighted eyes.

  “You are welcome, gentlemen!” cried old Capulet, in holiday robes and cheerful to see so fine a company of maskers at his feast. “Come, musicians, play. A hall, a hall, give room! And foot it, girls!”

  Music scraped and set a pulse, and the dancing began. Gowns rustled, filling the air with perfume; buckled shoes, like bright mice, twinkled in and out of richly swinging hems; fingers touched, hands entwined; masks and faces bobbed and turned, exchanging silver looks for golden smiles. All were dancing, but Romeo. He stood, marble pilgrim, stock-still and amazed! At last he spoke, to a servant standing by.

  “What lady’s that which doth enrich the hand of yonder knight?”

  “I know not, sir,” returned the servant.

  “O she doth teach the torches to burn bright!” breathed Romeo, as he gazed at the girl whose beauty had, in an instant, overturned his heart. But though he had spoken softly, it had been too loud.

  “This by his voice should be a Montague!”

  Tybalt had recognized the masker! He was enraged that one of that hated name should dare to mock the Capulets’ feast with his presence! He sent a page for his rapier.

  His uncle, old Capulet, sharply bade him keep his temper. It was a night of feast and revelry, and not to be spoiled. He command Tybalt to leave Romeo in peace.

  “I’ll not endure him!” cried Tybalt furiously.

  “He shall be endured!” ordered old Capulet, with mounting indignation. “I say he shall. Go to, am I the master here or you? Go to!”

  Unable to contain his anger, Tybalt departed. There was vengeance in his heart. He vowed that he would call Romeo to account for the supposed insult to the Capulets.

  Romeo, unaware of the sudden hatred directed against him, moved among the dancers towards his sudden love. At last he stood before her and his eyes, inside his golden eyes, shone with rapture. Her loveliness had increased a hundredfold with nearness. Startled, she looked at the pilgrim and, such was the warmth of his passion, that she took fire herself.

  Their hands touched; they spoke, half-humorously, half-solemnly. He begged a kiss. She was too young to hide her heart, and too innocent to pretend an innocenc
e. She granted the request. Then, like children for the first time having tasted strawberries, they wanted more. They kissed again . . .

  “Madam, your mother craves a word with you.”

  The world outside broke in upon them, in the shape of a female with a billowing bosom and skirts that might have covered half a county. Reluctantly the girl parted from her passionate pilgrim, and went in answer to the summons.

  “What is her mother?” asked Romeo, following her every movement till she was lost among the throng.

  “Her mother is the lady of the house,” answered the female complacently. “I nurs’d her daughter that you talked withal. I tell you,” she confided, with a wink and a nudge and a knowing smile that creased up her face like a marriage bed, “he that can lay hold of her shall have the chinks.”

  She bustled away after her charge, leaving Romeo dismayed. He, the son of Montague, had fallen in love with the daughter of Capulet! Despairingly he cursed the night in which he had been so blessed, the night when Romeo first set eyes on Juliet.

  The maskers left the house and met outside, by the orchard wall, meaning to make a night of it in Verona’s hot dark streets. Romeo was not among them. They called him, searched for him, tried to conjure him up in the name of his fair Rosalyne and all her delicious parts. In vain. He did not appear; so they went away, laughing loudly at the foolish melancholy of love.

  Romeo heard them go. “He jests at scars,” he murmured, ruefully reflecting that, to him, love was falling among roses and being savaged by their thorns, “that never felt a wound.”

  He had climbed the high wall and was hiding in shadows within the Capulets’ orchard. His situation was dangerous, but love lent a brightness to it, just as danger lent an edge to his love. He gazed up toward the dark side of the house. A light appeared in a window, before which there was a balcony, like a carved stone pocket some dozen feet from the ground. The window opened and on to the balcony stepped Juliet. She looked out on to the night, and sighed.