on the premise that facts tell the truth.
Country history, on the contrary, knows that facts can obscure the truth. Your country historian, your Man in the Moon, your servant Pickleherring, allows for the fact that the facts can prove anything, that they prickle and point in all directions, like the twigs on a tree that’s still growing. The truth of the tree is its life. That’s the green blood that springs, like a fountain, from the roots to the stars.
This book you read is mostly country history. It consists of tales I have heard told about Mr Shakespeare.
Our hero was a country-man who took the town by storm. He set the Thames on fire with what he knew from the Avon. But he remained in his heart a man of the country. And he went back to his origins to die.
I have collected most of my tales about him from people who knew him. In Stratford, in Warwick, in London. The wheres do not matter. You can be a good country historian in Paternoster Row.
What matters is that it’s told tales I am telling you. Tales told me. Twice-told tales. Tales, tales, tales, tales. Here there are Canterbury tales, and old wives’ tales. Here there are tales of tubs and of roasted horses. One tale is good until another’s told. All are the tales of every common tongue. Tales, idle tales, fictions.
And if some of my told tales are tall, that’s because in the minds of the tellers the late Mr William Shakespeare was a giant.
Town history is mostly written. Country history is all in the telling.
Town history begins and ends in the mind. Country history begins and lives in the tongue, and it can have no end while the Man in the Moon keeps on climbing.
I am, like Mr Shakespeare, motley-minded.
I have, like Mr Shakespeare, a peasant heart.
Chapter Nineteen
Positively the last word about whittawers
To be a poet is to be one thing. Not so John Shakespeare. He was on the make .
So he did different jobs at different times. Then, in the end, he didn’t do much at all. He diced. He drank. He told stories, but nobody listened. He mortgaged his wife’s lands, and he passed his days in law-suits (which he lost). He became just a huge hill of flesh always warming his buttocks by the fire. He went about Stratford, where once he had been Chief Alderman in scarlet robes, wearing a ragged leather jerkin and an old torn pair of breeches, with his hose out at his heels, and a pair of broken slip shoes on his feet. He wore a greasy cap on his white head.
I like John Shakespeare. His life was chequered with vicissitudes. For a man on the make, he ended as an honourable failure.
Many instances of his benevolence are recorded. When not hiring it out at interest, he gave away his money freely.A broken gamester, observing him one night win five guineas at cribbage, and putting the money into his pocket with indifference, exclaimed, ‘How happy that money would make me!’ John Shakespeare, overhearing this, turned and placed the guineas in his palm, saying, ‘Go, then, shog off and be happy!’
His gambling made him notorious even in those improvident days. I like him also for his philosophy to justify his gambling – that a man ought to have a bet every day, else he might be walking about lucky and never know it. Similarly philosophical, his excuse on one occasion, when his horse was beaten shortly, that the horse’s neck was not quite long enough.
And his extempore wit was sharp enough in his prime, lending credence again to the thought that his son found Falstaff in him. As when once, at the market in Warwick, on seeing the wife of the Puritan divine Thomas Cartwright go by riding on a pony, he remarked that no doubt it was the first time the lady had ever had fourteen hands between her legs.
The truth is that there was a wild streak in the Shakespeares. In John it took some years for it to come out, but when it did it took control of his life. His father, Richard Shakespeare, the poet’s grandfather, had a bad name all his days for
Country history, on the contrary, knows that facts can obscure the truth. Your country historian, your Man in the Moon, your servant Pickleherring, allows for the fact that the facts can prove anything, that they prickle and point in all directions, like the twigs on a tree that’s still growing. The truth of the tree is its life. That’s the green blood that springs, like a fountain, from the roots to the stars.
This book you read is mostly country history. It consists of tales I have heard told about Mr Shakespeare.
Our hero was a country-man who took the town by storm. He set the Thames on fire with what he knew from the Avon. But he remained in his heart a man of the country. And he went back to his origins to die.
I have collected most of my tales about him from people who knew him. In Stratford, in Warwick, in London. The wheres do not matter. You can be a good country historian in Paternoster Row.
What matters is that it’s told tales I am telling you. Tales told me. Twice-told tales. Tales, tales, tales, tales. Here there are Canterbury tales, and old wives’ tales. Here there are tales of tubs and of roasted horses. One tale is good until another’s told. All are the tales of every common tongue. Tales, idle tales, fictions.
And if some of my told tales are tall, that’s because in the minds of the tellers the late Mr William Shakespeare was a giant.
Town history is mostly written. Country history is all in the telling.
Town history begins and ends in the mind. Country history begins and lives in the tongue, and it can have no end while the Man in the Moon keeps on climbing.
I am, like Mr Shakespeare, motley-minded.
I have, like Mr Shakespeare, a peasant heart.
Chapter Nineteen
Positively the last word about whittawers
To be a poet is to be one thing. Not so John Shakespeare. He was on the make .
So he did different jobs at different times. Then, in the end, he didn’t do much at all. He diced. He drank. He told stories, but nobody listened. He mortgaged his wife’s lands, and he passed his days in law-suits (which he lost). He became just a huge hill of flesh always warming his buttocks by the fire. He went about Stratford, where once he had been Chief Alderman in scarlet robes, wearing a ragged leather jerkin and an old torn pair of breeches, with his hose out at his heels, and a pair of broken slip shoes on his feet. He wore a greasy cap on his white head.
I like John Shakespeare. His life was chequered with vicissitudes. For a man on the make, he ended as an honourable failure.
Many instances of his benevolence are recorded. When not hiring it out at interest, he gave away his money freely.A broken gamester, observing him one night win five guineas at cribbage, and putting the money into his pocket with indifference, exclaimed, ‘How happy that money would make me!’ John Shakespeare, overhearing this, turned and placed the guineas in his palm, saying, ‘Go, then, shog off and be happy!’
His gambling made him notorious even in those improvident days. I like him also for his philosophy to justify his gambling – that a man ought to have a bet every day, else he might be walking about lucky and never know it. Similarly philosophical, his excuse on one occasion, when his horse was beaten shortly, that the horse’s neck was not quite long enough.
And his extempore wit was sharp enough in his prime, lending credence again to the thought that his son found Falstaff in him. As when once, at the market in Warwick, on seeing the wife of the Puritan divine Thomas Cartwright go by riding on a pony, he remarked that no doubt it was the first time the lady had ever had fourteen hands between her legs.
The truth is that there was a wild streak in the Shakespeares. In John it took some years for it to come out, but when it did it took control of his life. His father, Richard Shakespeare, the poet’s grandfather, had a bad name all his days for
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