"Just getting a few apples," he said, smiling
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"What are you doing up there?" I called.
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"Mr Nash has gone to market," the boy said. "Come on! They're good apples."
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It was a sunny day in October 1579 when I first met Will, just outside Stratford, near a big field of apple trees. I saw a boy up in one of the trees. He had red hair and looked about two years older than me.
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Will was fifteen, and lived in Henley Street, he told me. His father was John Shakespeare, and he had a sister, Joan, and two younger brothers, Gilbert and Richard. There was another sister who died, I learnt later. And the next year he had another brother, little Edmund -- the baby of the family.
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Will and I ran like the wind and only stopped when we reached the river. We sat down to eat our apples.
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"Those are Farmer Nash's apples," I said, "and he'll send his dogs after you if he sees you."
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The next minute I was up the tree with him. But Will was wrong. Farmer Nash wasn't at the market, and a few minutes later we saw his angry red face above the wall on the far side of the field.
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"Of course I can read!" I said. "I went to school."
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"There's only me and my sister," I said. "My parents are dead, and we live with my mother's brother: He's a shoe-maker in Ely Street and I work for him. What do you do?"
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"Now, what about you?" he asked.
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I was sorry for him. "Isn't it boring?" I asked.
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"Sometimes. Usually it's all right." He lay back and put his hands behind his head. "But we have to read and learn all these Latin writers. I want to read modern writers, and English writers, like Geoffrey Chaucer. Can you read?" he asked.
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"I go to Mr Jenkins' school in Church Street," Will said. "Every day, from seven o'clock until five o'clock. Not Sundays, of course."
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Will sat up and began to eat another apple. "I want to be a writer," he said. "A poet. I want that more than anything in the world."
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We were friends from that day, until the day he died. We met nearly every day, and he taught me a lot about books and poetry and writers. He always had his nose in a book.
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When Will left school, he worked for his father in Henley Street. John Shakespeare was a glove-maker, and he had other business too, like buying and selling sheep. But Will wasn't interested.
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Will was still reading a lot and he was already writing poems himself. He sometimes showed them to me, and I said they were very good. I didn't really know anything about poetry then, but he was my friend.
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"What are we going to do, Toby?" he said to me one day. "We can't spend all our lives making shoes and gloves!"
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Drake sailed back to Plymouth in 1581, after his three-year journey round the world, but we were still in Stratford. We made lots of plans, but nothing ever came of them.
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"Why not?" I asked. "We'll get away one day. You'll see."
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Poor Will. He had a lot to learn about women, too. One day in October 1582 he came to my house with a long face.
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"Perhaps you will," he said, "but I'm going to be married in a few weeks' time. To Anne Hathaway."
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"Well," I said, "we could run away to sea and be sailors. Sail round the world, like Francis Drake."
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"I'll never leave Stratford." he said.
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Will was not happy with his writing. "I've got so much to learn, Toby," he said. "So much to learn."
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My mouth fell open and stayed open. "Married! To Anne Hathaway? Is that the Hathaways over at Shottery?"
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"Well, er, she's a fine girl, of course," I said uncomfortably. "But… but, Will, she's twenty-six and you're only eighteen!"
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"Yes," Will said. I was working on some shoes on the table, and Will picked one up and looked at it.
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"I know," Will said. "But I've got to marry her."
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"Oh no!" I said. "You mean, she's…"
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"That's right," said Will. "In about six months' time I'm going to be a father."
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