Will wrote his play Richard Ⅲ for Richard Burbage, and it was a great success. Richard the Third was a wicked king -- a murderer -- but he was wonderful on the stage, with Burbage's great voice and fine acting. Soon all London was saying King Richard's famous words when his horse is killed in war:
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All kinds of people came to see plays and Will was making a lot of new friends. One day, after the play, he was talking to a young man outside the Rose. He was a very beautiful young man, a bit like a girl, perhaps -- but still very good-looking. Later, I asked Will who he was.
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"A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!"
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I don't know about that. The Queen was fifty-nine years old, and a very, very clever woman. But it was true that she liked to have good-looking young men around her, and the Earl of Essex was her favourite. Then. It all changed later, of course.
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"The Earl of Southampton," Will said. "He's only eighteen, but he loves poetry and plays."
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"Isn't he a friend of the Earl of Essex?" I asked. Everybody knew the Earl of Essex. He was young and good-looking -- and some people said that Queen Elizabeth was in love with him.
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"Henry, eh?" I said, surprised. "My word! Do you really call him Henry? Not Lord Suthampton?"
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"Yes," said the first man. "But it's a hard life. A different town, a different inn, a different play, every night. I think I'll stay in London."
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"Yes, he is," said Will. "But I think Essex is a dangerous man Henry needs better friends than him."
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In the Boar's Head we met some friends and started talking. The talk was all about the plague, which was coming back again into London.
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Will was always like that. Quiet, never shouting about himself to the world.
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"Only when other people aren't there." Will laughed. "I'm still just an actor from Stratford, Toby. Not very important. Let's go and have a drink at the Boar's Head on our way home."
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"But the players can go on tour, surely?" said Will.
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"And the City Council," said another man, "wants to close all the theatres. They always do that when the plague comes to London. There'll be no work for any of us actors."
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"Have you heard the latest news?" said one man. "They say that more than thirty people are dying every week now."
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In September 1592 the City Council closed the theatres.
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"Are we going on tour, Will?" I said to him one day. "Or back to Stratford? We can't stay in London."
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"You go back to Stratford, Toby," he said slowly. "I'm going to Lord Southampton's home in Hampshire for a while. He's asked me to go and stay with him. I can do some writing there, read his books, meet a few people."
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I looked at him. "There's a woman in this somewhere, isn't there? You've had a strange look in your eyes for weeks."
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The plague is terrible in any place, but it was worst in London. In those narrow streets, with houses so close together, and the dirty water running down the middle of the street, there was no escape. When the plague came, it ran like fire through the town. If someone in a house got the plague, then the doors were shut and locked, and a big red cross was put on the door. Nobody could leave the house. You had to stay inside and fight -- or die. If you were rich, you left London as fast as you could.
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Will laughed, but didn't answer my question.
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During those years Will wrote a lot of poetry. He wrote his beautiful long poem, Venus and Adonis, for his friend Lord Southampton, and he wrote many of his famous short poems, the Sonnets. But they didn't go in a book; they were only for his friends to read.
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For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
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One day, when we were back in London, I was reading some of his latest sonnets. Will was out somewhere, and I was at home in our lodgings in Bishopsgate. A lot of the poems were about a woman, a terrible, black-haired, black-eyed woman. She was cold and cruel, then she was true and loving, and then she was cruel again.
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The theatres in London didn't open again until June 1594. Will often visited Lord Southampton, but sometimes we went on tour with the company, or spent time at home in Stratford. Will began to spend more time in Stratford, because it was quiet there, and he could do his writing. I never heard what Anne thought about it all.
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Was Will writing about himself here? I asked myself. And who was this woman, this Dark Lady?
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The woman looked Italian, so I went and asked John Florio about her. Florio was Lord Southampton's Italian teacher. We saw a lot of him in those days.
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Then one day I saw her. I was coming in the door at our lodgings, and she was coming downstairs. She had black hair and great stormy black eyes, and there was gold at her ears and round her neck. I stood back and she went past me like a ship sailing into war. She looked wild, and angry, and very, very beautiful.
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I always like to know what's going on, so I listened, and watched, and looked at all his women friends.
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"Whew!" I said to myself. "If that's Will's Dark Lady, he'll never have a quiet, easy life!"
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I described the woman, and he knew her at once.
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I didn't ask him about Will. Perhaps Emilia Lanier was Will's Dark Lady, or perhaps Will was just trying to help his friend Lord Southampton. Nobody will ever know now.
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"If she's a married lady, she doesn't have a lover now, then?"
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"Emilia," he said. "Emilia Bassano. Now Emilia Lanier, wife to Alphonso Lanier. Before that, she lived with the old Lord Chamberlain. She was not his wife, you understand. But why do you want to know, my friend?"
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Florio laughed loudly. "Lovers! You don't know Emilia Lanier! She's a bad woman, my friend, a bad woman." Now he spoke very quietly. "For a time she was the friend of Lord Southampton. But not now. That is all finished."
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