The Secret Life of William Shakespeare Read Online Free PDF

he found him unattractive, his mother because she was not thinking of him but of someone else.
    ‘The cost,’ she said.
    ‘Being so near, you have an advantage. He can live at home instead of boarding. Yes, you will have to find him in writing-gear and books and candles. It is an expense, but surely a worthy one. And after a year, he’s eligible for a scholarship.’ The clerk sniffed. ‘It would make a vast difference to his prospects, madam. Even the universities might lie at the end of it.’
    His mother sat and thought. Ben slipped away, to be sick in a corner of the yard, sick with wanting.
    He was not quite sure how his mother did it. When she first told him he was to go to Westminster School, she said that a clerical connection of his dead father’s had provided the funds, in his memory. Certainly his stepfather would not have spared the money. He shook his head over the scheme; could not see the use in it. But, then, he could not see the use in Ben at all – until he was of prentice age.
    As for his mother, Ben thought: I can forgive her anything, for this.
    Now the world begins. Such was the solemnity with which Ben first entered the long schoolroom. It was crowded and noisy and stank to the rafters, and he was down among the lowliest, the Oppidans, local-dwelling day boys, conscious of his rough shoes and frayed bands; and the headmaster lashed and thrashed. But he knew he was going to enjoy everything. Latin he already loved: now came stranger Greek to baffle and beguile.
    ‘Many boys find Greek difficult at first.’ Master Camden smiled. ‘But I’ve never known any find the difficulty gratifying before.’
    With William Camden, the undermaster, perfect understanding and even intimacy. Nothing of the parish clerk: he was a long-nosed, abstracted young man, whose brown eyes were untreacherous and without desire. Patiently he supervised forty Queen’s Scholars in their noisome dormitory before retiring to his chamber above and studying until dawn put out his taper.
    ‘The history of ourselves.’ That was his passion. ‘Britain, land and legend and truth. The Romans walked here, Benjamin, and many a farmer turns up their coins with his plough; and there are in our western shires giant circles of stones put up by human hands of which we know nothing. The ancients took pride in their history, and we still learn from them. Perhaps we in turn may be a pattern to future ages. So my studies. I’m not so vain as to think they matter now. But if I can lay a small stone in the path of posterity—’
    ‘I want to do the same,’ Ben burst out.
    Master Camden smiled again. ‘Well, now, leave me my scholar’s field, at least.’
    ‘Not the same. I don’t mean that. What I want—’ Could he say it? Yes, to this man he could; this man obliterated all thought of the whistling strap and the fat neck. ‘I want to be the most learned man in the kingdom.’
    And Master Camden paused only a moment, eyebrows up, before nodding. ‘A commendable aim. But what is it you would seek to do with your learning?’
    Ben ran his eyes over his schoolfellows: the stupid talking loudly, the ugly mocking themselves to make the handsome laugh. Alliances and need. He heard a farthing rolling on floorboards.
    ‘Make people better,’ he said.

2
    The Malcontent (1582)
    ‘Now I’m alive again,’ Will says, turning the pages. He does not want to laugh or to cry, not exactly: he feels on the edge of some third expression, surpassing either of them.
    They are in the bare, swept, godly parlour of the Field house, a little drunk but not as drunk as they mean to be. Will has supped here and now godly, black-clad Master and Mistress Field have gone, climbing the stairs to their unthinkable bed, cautioning about candles, leaving them to it. Allowing that Will and Richard still have much to talk of.
    Schoolfriends, they have been separated these three years since Richard went to London as a printer’s apprentice. His master is taking a