Will was special -- because he wrote the plays. And what plays they were! He never wrote the same play twice, like some writers. He was always trying something new, something different And he wrote fast, too.
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After the plague years, we were busy all the time. There were new companies of players and Will now belonged to the Lord Chamberlain's Men. The Lord Chamberlain was a very important man, close to the Queen, and we often put on plays for the Queen's court, and in the houses of the great lords of England. We had some very good actors. There was Will, and Richard Burbage, of course, and John Heminges. And there was Augustine Phillips, Henry Condell, and Thomas Pope. There were other actors, too, but those six were the real company. They worked together for more than twenty years. And made a lot of money, too.
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I did the costumes and properties for the Chamberlain's. John Heminges said I was the best properties man in the city.
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John Heminges could never understand that. "How can you write so fast, Will?" he asked him. "And you never make a mistake or change a word."
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Will played the part of old Capulet, Juliet's father. One of the boy actors played the part of Juliet. There were no women actors, so boys played all the women's parts. Of course, Will never put real love -- making on stage. He did it all with words -- clever, beautiful words, and you forgot that the women and girls were really boys in dresses. Some of the boy actors were very good, and went on to play men's parts when they were older.
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Will didn't really understand it himself. "It's all in my head," he said. "I think about it, and then it just comes out on paper."
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He wrote a play about love in 1595. Young love. It was Romeo and Juliet. It was a very sad play, because the young lovers die at the end. But the playgoers loved it. They wanted to see it again and again.
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We played Romeo and Juliet at Richmond Palace that year. We always played before the Queen at Christmas. She liked to see the new plays, and she paid us ￡10 a play. We often had to work through the night to get the stage ready in time, but it was exciting to be in one of the Queen's palaces at Christmas. There was a lot of singing and dancing, and eating and drinking. Some years Christmas began in November and didn't finish until February or March.
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The year 1596 began well, but that summer the weather was really bad. Cold. Wet. It never stopped raining, and the plague began to come back into London. We were in Stratford for the summer, but I went down to Hampshire for a few weeks to do some business for Will about some sheep. Will didn't need me at home, because he was busy writing his new play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.
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I came back to Stratford one wet August evening. The house in Henley Street was strangely quiet, and I went round the back and up to Will's room -- his writing room, we called it. He was just sitting there not doing anything, just sitting.
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"What's the matter, Will?" I said. "Where is everybody?"
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"What's happened?" I asked. "What is it?"
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He looked at me. "Hamnet…" he began. "Hamnet was ill last week, and…and he died, yesterday. He was only eleven, Toby, and he's dead. My boy. My only son. He's dead, Toby. Dead." He put his face in his hands.
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What Can you say to a man when something like that happens to him? I sat down next to him and put my hand on his arm. We sat together, silently. I knew that Will loved that boy of his -- red-haired, bright as a new penny, full of life. Just like his father.
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"At church." His face was grey, and his eyes looked empty, dead.
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After a while I said, "You'll have other sons"
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"Well, now, you've got two fine girls in Susanna and Judith. They'll marry before long, and then you'll have more grandsons than you can count. You'll see. There'll be boys running up and down stairs, shouting for their Granddad Will!"
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He smiled sadly, but his eyes were not so empty now. Pleased, I went on quickly:
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"Anne's forty already." Will's voice was tired. "She's had no children since the twins."
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"And there are all your brothers -- Gilbert, Richard, Edmund. They'll have sons too. The Shakespeare family will never die out. Think of the family, Will, the family!"
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And he did. He was already a famous poet and playwright, but he was a family man, too. The next year,1597, he bought a new house for his family. It was a big, grand house, called New Place, right in the middle of Stratford. It cost ￡60 -- a lot of money -- and the townspeople began to say "Mr Shakespeare", not "Young Will the actor" or "John Shakespeare's boy". They were happy to do business with him, and to borrow money from him.
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Anne was very pleased with the new house. The wife of Mr Shakespeare of New Place was an important person in Stratford. But she still didn't like Will's work.
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John was looking at the playbook. "You see this bit here, Toby," he said. "Will's writing about his son, isn't he?"
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"Actors are wild, dangerous people," she often said to him. "I'm not interested in plays or the theatre, and I don't want to know anything about your work."
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But she liked the money, and the new house, and the new dresses -- and the six fields of apple trees and the big farm north of Stratford that came a few years later.
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Will never talked much about Hamnet. Life goes on and Will was busier than ever. But I know he thought about his son a lot; his grief was very deep inside him. A year or two later, I was talking to John Heminges abut the costumes for Will's new play, King John. John Heminges was a family man -- he had fourteen children in the end. The noise is his house! Shouting and laughing, coming and going…
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I read the words slowly, and remembered Will's empty eyes that day in August.
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There was a man called Shylock in his play The Merchant of Venice. This Shylock was a money-lender and a cruel man -- everyone hated him. But in the end, when Shylock lost everything, you had to feel sorry for him. He was just a sad old man.
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Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words…
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Perhaps Richard was right. And if anyone understood Will, it was Richard Burbage.
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Richard Burbage said once that Will's writing changed after Hamnet's death. Will still laughed at people in his plays, but he also felt sorry for them -- sorry for all the world, good and bad, rich and poor, young and old. And his people were real. No one was all good, or all bad.
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