Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories

by Leon Garfield

  “Am not I your Rosalind?” demanded Rosalind; and Orlando, with a wishful smile, answered, “I take some joy to say you are.” Then Rosalind, true to her promise of being contrary, said she would not have him; and he, true to his lover’s part, swore it would kill him. But this was too much for Rosalind’s good sense. “Men have died from time to time,” she said, “and worms have eaten them; but not for love.”

  He frowned. “I would not have my right Rosalind of this mind,” he said, and instantly she changed about. She would indeed have him . . . “And twenty such,” she added for good measure.

  “What sayest thou?” he cried, outraged. She gazed at him with wide, innocent eyes. “Are you not good?” she asked. He said he hoped he was. “Why then,” she declared triumphantly, “can one desire too much of a good thing?” She laughed and turned to Celia. “Come sister, you shall be the priest and marry us!”

  Celia stared. Truly, this strange courtship had passed beyond all bounds! “I cannot say the words,” she muttered uneasily.

  “You must begin,” instructed Rosalind, “ ‘Will you Orlando—’ “Celia sighed and, shrugging her shoulders, married off the false, yet true, couple who stood hand in hand before her, feeling all the while that a high solemnity was being mocked.

  “Now tell me,” demanded Rosalind of Orlando after the ceremony was concluded, “how long you would have her after you have possessed her?”

  “For ever, and a day,” he answered very properly; but she shook her head.

  “Say ‘a day’, without the ‘ever’,” she advised. “No, no, Orlando; men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.” But Orlando would not believe his Rosalind would ever change, and he put a stop to all arguments that proved the contrary, by remembering that he was to wait upon the Duke at dinner. “For these two hours, Rosalind, I will leave thee.”

  “Alas! dear love,” she cried, clutching him fiercely by the sleeve, “I cannot lack thee two hours!” But there was no help for it; so, after threatening him with her direst displeasure if he should be so much as a minute late in returning, she let him go.

  Celia was bursting with indignation over her cousin’s outrageous display of female perversity. “You have simply misused our sex in your love-prate!” she cried. “We must have your doublet and hose plucked over your head, and show the world what the bird hath done to her own nest!”

  But Rosalind did not care. “O coz, coz, coz,” she laughed, flinging out her arms and dancing on the green, “my pretty little coz, that thou didst know how many fathom deep I am in love!” Then, remembering that two long hours must pass, she said, “I’ll go find a shadow and sigh till he come.”

  “And I’ll sleep,” said Celia, who was not in love.

  The two hours came and went, but brought no Orlando. Instead, they wafted another lover through the forest: the breathless Silvius doing his Phebe’s bidding. He had brought her letter and faithfully delivered it into Master Ganymede’s hand, with humble apologies for the bitter and taunting words that Phebe said she had written. Impatiently, and with many an anxious glance for the coming of Orlando, Rosalind read the letter. Her brow grew dark with anger, and Silvius trembled that his Phebe should have written so cruelly. Rosalind looked up. “Will you hear the letter?” she asked.

  “So please you,” answered Silvius; so she read it to him. As he listened, his eyes grew big with tears. Phebe had deceived him! The words she had written were bitter, but only to him. The letter he had carried was full of a wild and tender passion; but not for him. She had fallen in love with Ganymede!

  “Alas, poor shepherd!” sighed Celia; but Rosalind felt no pity for the foolish youth who was weeping for so worthless a creature as Phebe. “Well, go your way to her, for I see love hath made thee a tame snake!” she cried, angry that love, which should have ennobled, had reduced this lover to so crawling a condition. “Say this to her: if she love me, I charge her to love thee. If she will not, I will never have her—” She stopped. She had glimpsed a familiar figure approaching through the trees. Hastily she dismissed Silvius, and made herself ready for—

  But once again, it was not Orlando . . . yet there had been something about the stranger that had, for a moment, deceived her. He was handsome enough (but no Orlando!) and his manner was gentle . . . though inclined to be awkward, like a new garment, not yet worn in. He was looking for a cottage near a clump of olive trees, where a brother and sister dwelt together. As he spoke, he looked curiously at Rosalind and Celia, and wondered if they could be the pair who owned the cottage? “It is no boast, being asked, to say we are,” answered Celia; and a sudden summer of roses bloomed in her cheeks as she met the stranger’s inquiring gaze.

  Nor was the stranger unaffected. He seemed, for a moment, to forget the purpose of his errand. He faltered, looked confused . . . then, recovering himself, began, “Orlando doth commend him to you both—” and at once Rosalind understood why he had reminded her of her love! He had come from Orlando, and therefore bore his imprint! “And to the youth he calls his Rosalind,” the stranger continued, “he sends this bloody napkin.” He held out a handkerchief, streaked with red.

  Rosalind stared at it. “What must we understand by this?” she whispered, suddenly pale. The stranger sighed; then, seating himself cross-legged on the turf, with his audience, like eager children, kneeling before him, he told a story so strange, so wild and wonderful, that the cousins scarcely dared to breathe . . .

  It began with Orlando on his way to keep his promise to his imagined Rosalind. As he walked through the forest, full of dreams, he came upon a ragged man, asleep under an ancient tree. About the sleeper’s neck, like a lady’s bright scarf, was coiled a deadly serpent, which, on hearing Orlando’s approach, glided harmlessly away. But a more terrible danger was near at hand. Under a bush crouched a hungry lioness, waiting to leap upon the sleeper with savage teeth and claws! Orlando drew close; then stopped in amazement. He recognized the man! It was his brother, his elder brother Oliver!

  “O! I have heard him speak of that same brother,” breathed Celia, staring at the stranger as if wondering how he could know so much without having been present himself; “and he did render him the most unnatural that lived amongst men!”

  “But to Orlando,” cried Rosalind, impatient of brothers and all else, save Orlando. “Did he leave him there—?”

  The stranger shook his head. Though sorely tempted to leave his brother to the lioness, and so be revenged for all the ill-usage he had suffered, he could not do so. As the lioness roared and sprang, Orlando, without a thought for his own danger, met her in mid-career! They wrestled, and in a moment he had overthrown the savage beast as readily as he had once overthrown the mighty Charles! Here the stranger paused; and then said quietly, “In which hurtling from miserable slumber I awaked!” He himself had been that sleeping man; he was Oliver, Orlando’s wicked brother!

  The cousins stared at him: Rosalind with anger, but Celia more with sorrow that so fair a young man should turn out to be so black a villain. But no longer! With earnest looks he told them of his most wonderful conversion: of how, having been despatched by the tyrant Duke to bring back Orlando, he had wandered in the forest, becoming more and more wretched until the moment he had awakened from sleep to see Orlando endangering his own life to save his brother’s. At once, all envy and malice had vanished from his heart, and now there was only love and forgiveness between himself and Orlando . . .

  Celia listened with shining eyes; but Rosalind was still troubled. She had not forgotten the strange token that Orlando had sent. “But, for the bloody napkin?” she asked; and Oliver resumed his story. Orlando had taken him to the banished Duke, where he had been received with great kindness and given fresh clothing; but as Orlando himself was changing his torn attire, he suddenly fainted! The lioness had ripped open his arm, and he had lost much blood. But he quickly recovered and begged Oliver to seek out the brother and sist
er in the forest to explain to them the reason for his failure to keep his promise. “And,” concluded Oliver with a smile, “to give this napkin, dy’d in his blood, unto the shepherd youth that he in sport doth call his Rosalind.” He rose, and courteously presented Orlando’s crimson gift.

  “Why, how now, Ganymede! Sweet Ganymede!” cried out Celia in a fright; for Rosalind, seeing Orlando’s blood, had fainted clean away!

  “Many will swoon when they do look on blood,” said Oliver; but Celia, vigorously chafing her cousin’s cold hands, shook her head. “There is more in it,” she muttered. “Cousin! Ganymede!”

  Rosalind opened her eyes. “I would I were at home,” she murmured; and suffered herself to be helped to her feet. Then, fearful that her sudden weakness had betrayed her sex, she assured Oliver that her fainting had been pretence, that she had not fainted at all, that she had never felt better . . . and that he was to be sure to tell his brother how skilfully she had pretended. She looked to see how well her assurances had been received, and could not help noting some resemblances to Orlando in his elder brother’s features: but they were prentice-work compared with what Nature had accomplished when she’d tried again! Celia, on the other hand, as she and Oliver assisted Rosalind back to their cottage, could not help wondering, as she kept glancing at the young man, if Nature, like a lucky player, had not done her best at the first throw! “Good sir,” she murmured, as he showed signs of departing, “go with us . . .”

  “We shall find a time, Audrey,” sighed Touchstone, as the sun went down among the trees, and marriage, like Monday after Sunday, threatened ahead. “Patience, gentle Audrey,” he urged as, gazing at his chosen bride ambling foolishly among her goats, he wondered yet again about the wisdom of his choice. But even as he puzzled over it, and would have given much to find some means of delay, there was another in the forest ready to give up all to hasten it!

  “My father’s house and all the revenue that was old Sir Rowland’s will I estate upon you!” cried Oliver distractedly, as he dragged Orlando back to the cottage where Ganymede and his sister Aliena dwelt. He had fallen in love with Aliena, and she with him! It had happened in an instant, in the merest twinkling of eyes; and now, all he desired was to marry Aliena, poor as she was, and live and die by her side, a humble shepherd in the forest.

  Orlando marvelled at the swiftness of it all, although why he, who had been struck dumb with love for Rosalind with a suddenness that made his brother’s courtship seem almost tedious, should be surprised was a mystery. Nonetheless, he would not stand in their way, and promised to bring the banished Duke and all his followers to celebrate their forest wedding on the morrow. “Go you and prepare Aliena,” he advised; “for look you, here comes my Rosalind.”

  Warmly, Oliver clasped his brother by the uninjured hand; then, greeting the approaching Ganymede as “fair sister”, he laughed and hastened to Aliena’s cottage.

  “O! my dear Orlando,” cried Rosalind, regarding his bandages with concern, “how it grieves me to see thee wear thy heart in a scarf!”

  “It is my arm!” he protested. She expressed surprise, then inquired if, by any chance, his brother had told him how well she had pretended to faint on seeing his blood?

  “Ay,” nodded Orlando, “and greater wonders than that,” he said, with a smiling look towards the departed Oliver. She took his meaning, and at once confirmed that Aliena’s passion was fully the equal of his brother’s.

  “They are in the very wrath of love,” she declared, “they will together: clubs cannot part them!”

  “They shall be married tomorrow,” Orlando promised; then he sighed, “But O! how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!”

  “Why then, tomorrow,” asked Rosalind softly, “I cannot serve your turn for Rosalind?”

  “I can no longer live by thinking,” said he.

  “I will weary you then no longer with idle talking,” said she, much moved by the honesty of Orlando’s love and the deepness of his distress. The time was near for truth. Her own heart could scarcely hold out against it. But it must be revealed with proper solemnity and mystery . . . “Believe then, if you please, I can do strange things,” she told her lover gravely. “I have, since I was three year old, conversed with a magician . . .” He smiled; but she reproved him with a frown, and continued: “If you do love Rosalind so near the heart as your gesture cries it out, when your brother marries Aliena, shall you marry her.”

  Orlando stared. “Speakest thou in sober meanings?” he demanded.

  “By my life, I do,” returned she. “If you will be married tomorrow, you shall; and to Rosalind, if you will . . .”

  He would have pressed further, but there were others in the forest who had come to seek out Ganymede. Phebe, the vain and foolish shepherdess, her black eyes screwed up in anger, like rivets in a plank, and with her poor love following after, had come to reproach that youth for reading aloud her very private letter. “You have done me much ungentleness,” she complained.

  “I care not if I have!” answered Rosalind, wearied by such persistence in folly. “You are there followed by a faithful shepherd; look upon him, love him. He worships you!”

  But Phebe shook her silly head. “Tell this youth,” she bade the doting Silvius, “what ’tis to love!”

  “It is to be all made of sighs and tears,” responded Silvius hopelessly; “and so am I for Phebe.”

  “And I for Ganymede,” echoed Phebe, with a yearning look.

  “And I for Rosalind,” sighed Orlando, adding his link to the chain.

  Then all turned to Ganymede, who smiled, and ended the chain most mysteriously with, “And I for no woman!”

  Then mystery upon mystery! The strange youth raised a hand and solemnly commanded, “Tomorrow meet me all together;” then spoke to each in turn: first, to Phebe, “I will marry you, if ever I marry woman, and I’ll be married tomorrow.” Then to Orlando: “I will satisfy you, if ever I satisfied man, and you shall be married tomorrow.” And last, to Silvius: “I will content you, if what pleases you contents you, and you shall be married tomorrow!” Then, making a magical sign in the air, doubtless learned from the magician, the youth vanished among the trees, leaving the three lovers to stare and wonder, to hope and doubt if these marvels could ever be brought to pass.

  Two little pages from the banished Duke’s court, all in green like leaves of holly, with faces bright as berries, came marching through the dawning forest, singing as they went:

  “It was a lover and his lass,

  With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,

  That o’er the green corn-field did pass,

  In spring time, the only pretty ring time,

  When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding,

  Sweet lovers love the spring.”

  As they marched along, keeping time in song and step, all the birds of the forest obliged with a shrill and chattering chorus, from hawthorn, oak and holly . . .

  “Dost thou then believe, Orlando,” asked the Duke, as he and his followers, with Oliver and his Aliena among them, crowded into the misty chapel of sunshine that was the place appointed for the lovers’ meeting, “that the boy can do all this that he hath promised?”

  “I sometimes do believe,” said Orlando, and then with a sigh, “and sometimes do not.” And the little pages went on singing:

  “These pretty country folks would lie,

  In spring time, the only pretty ring time . . .”

  until suddenly they fell silent as, like a bright phantom passing through the golden pillars of the sun, Ganymede appeared, leading Silvius and Phebe by the hand. Gravely the youth surveyed the assembled congregation, and then addressed the Duke: “If I bring in your Rosalind, you will bestow her on Orlando here?”

  “That would I,” returned the Duke gladly, “had I kingdoms to give with her!” Ganymede nodded, and turned to Orlando: “And you say you will have her when I bring her?”

  “That would I,” promised Orl
ando, “were I of all kingdoms king!” Now was the turn of Phebe. “You say you’ll marry me if I be willing?”

  “That will I,” cried Phebe, all aglow with hope; but Ganymede raised a warning finger. “But if you do refuse to marry me, you’ll give yourself to this most faithful shepherd?” Phebe thought; she frowned, she sighed; she looked at Silvius and she smiled. “So is the bargain,” she said. Then Ganymede, reminding each and all of their solemn promises, beckoned to Aliena; and, hand in hand, the mysterious brother and sister departed into the forest.

  “I do remember in this shepherd boy,” frowned the Duke, “some lively touches of my daughter’s favour.” Orlando agreed. He too had fancied he’d seen something of Rosalind in Ganymede, and had wondered if he could have been Rosalind’s brother. “But my good lord, this boy is forest-born,” he began to assure the Duke, when Jacques, his melancholy face crumpling into smiles, announced, “Here comes a pair of very strange beasts, which in all tongues are called fools!”

  Sniffing out weddings, like dogs to a dinner, Touchstone and Audrey emerged from among the trees; he, crowned with a chaplet of ivy leaves, and she in her best attire, with her shining happy face poking out from ruff and bonnet, like a festive mutton chop.

  “Salutation and greeting to you all!” cried Touchstone grandly, perceiving that he had fallen among courtiers and gentlemen; then, feeling that his choice required some explanation, presented her to the Duke: “A poor virgin, sir, an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own: a poor humour of mine, sir, to take that that no man else will.” He gave Audrey a shove to indicate that she, in acknowledgement of the tribute paid her, should curtsey gracefully; so down she went, as if to milk her goats. “Bear your body more seeming, Audrey,” urged her lord as he engaged in a battle of courtly wits with Jacques; but she could only gape in wonderment as his words, of which she understood not one, flew as fast as fat from a pan. And he, seeing her looks, was well content with his choice: admiration was much to be preferred to equality.