Sly.     Is not a comonty a Christmas gambold or a tumbling trick?

Page.  No, my good lord, it is more pleasing stuff.

Sly.     What, household stuff?

Page.  It is a kind of history.

 

(William Shakespeare The Taming of the Shrew Induction scene ii)

 

 

 

Emilia

 

(Othello)

 

 

I watch my lady fall in love.  She drinks

the General’s words as if they are her life’s

elixir.  He is the barque laden

with all her fortune.  As for me,

 

before my wedding I had second thoughts.

It was arranged, of course – a bargain

in an alehouse – and I reasoned

all men are much the same (A good match,

 

my father said, he has expectations).

Ensign Iago’s full of closet secrets

now he’s back from warring, and his clothes

are tainted with the stains of villainy.

 

Tonight I spread her wedding sheets,

smooth them softly lest my hands begrime them.

 

 

 

Aegeon

 

(The Comedy of Errors)

 

 

They were the sons of our middle age –

so alike we knew them by coloured threads

we tied around their wrists.  I bought two boys

to be their slaves, never considered parents

forced to sell their children into servitude

or watch them starve. 

                                The shipwreck changed everything –

I lost half my family, then, in seeking them,

the others disappeared.  Here in Ephesus

my face is wrong, my skin, my voice, my clothes,

even the prints of my feet in the dirt.

Two states at war and I am condemned

for a tyrant’s actions. 

                                    It is a sin

to give up hope, they say, even on death row.

What fancy could redress my fortune now?

 

 

 

Boy

 

(Henry V)

 

 

I’m always Boy, a word to call a dog.

I served Sir John but now he’s dead,

killed by the king’s I know thee not, old man.

I tag along to war, not knowing why

we fight, follow Bardolph, Pistol, Nym

to France, but all they do is pocket up

more wrongs, enough to buy a gallows rope.

 

How the king swaggered at Harfleur! 

I heard his threats, matching his soldiers

with Herod’s slaughtermen.  It made me retch. 

Now, hungry, worn out with marching,

we’re quick to quarrel.  The little I can do is keep

the baggage train, pray that the French know not

there’s none to guard it but boys, child soldiers all.

 

 

 

Cressida

 

(Troilus and Cressida)

 

 

Because you won’t believe me I will speak

the truth.  I woke up one morning and knew

that war would go on for ever, each side

claiming victory (only the merchants do well –

the procurers of flour, fish and flesh).

With one night’s pleasure Venus took my name

for a debt I cannot redeem.  In Troy

there is nowhere to hide.  Once, as a child,

I rolled a loom-weight down the stairs and watched

it smash on the final step.  A hostage exchange –

that’s all it ever was.  When I entered the Greek camp

the common soldiers pawed my skin, the lazars

begged with cop and clapper.  Read me truly –

sister of the first casualty of war.

 

 

 

                                            Viola

 

                                                                        (Twelfth Night)

 

 

                                   Shakespeare’s orphaned girl

                                       within sound of the sea

 

 

 

Dorothy Wordsworth reads Timon of Athens

 

 

Sauntered in the garden – with William away

my mind fidgeted, thought of tasks

that needed to be done, checked on plants

(the turnips wanted weeding), looked for wild flowers

 – bluebells’ sweetest scent.

                                             Read Timon of Athens –

what held me seated, closed my ears to birdsong?

That he knew about eating roots (new potatoes

almost ready, carrots showing frilly tops)

and where to find spring water?  That he reminded me

of a vagrant whose wits were so in tatters

they could not be mended? 

                                            I would not argue

with the simple moral, but as I walked

that evening I felt the deepest melancholy

for him who could find no one to love.

 

 

 

The Duke of Albany

 

(King Lear)

 

 

I married Goneril.  Her face was painted,

her head weighed down with jewels, her breasts

full and bare.  I held back, let her speak

and make decisions.  Suddenly

she was in command of soldiers, spies,

half a kingdom.  I blame myself I was not there

when she and Cornwall blinded Gloucester,

that I could not decide which pretext

would justify a call to arms, that I forgot

Cordelia and the king until it was too late. 

When Lear died, his daughter in his arms,

tears drowned my eyes.  In my heart

I go over it again and wonder

what difference I could have made.

 

 

 

Horatio

 

(Hamlet)

 

 

You were a royal heir and I a scholar

whose good spirits were his only revenue.  

I never saw you in the library

yet your arguments were unassailable,

the tutors silenced by your rhetoric. 

 

I came to Elsinore to see your father’s funeral,

alas, too late.  You were distraught with mourning.

In my philosophy there were no ghosts

until my mind recalled the dead who walked

Rome’s streets ere Julius Caesar fell.

 

There’s none left now but I

to chronicle your deeds, set down the causes

of this bloody, senseless slaughter.

Sweet prince, you were the best of us at Wittenberg.

 

 

 

Re-reading The Merchant of Venice

 

 

How could Antonio, whom all Venetians loved,

spit and watch his spittle lodge in Shylock’s beard

and laugh at his misfortunes and call him rotten

to the core? 

                       We had no Jews at school,

or if we did they had, like Jessica, converted.

No mention made of Hitler, or the starved spectres

of Belsen newsreels.  We learnt by heart

the quality of mercy is not strained

and did not know why there were Polish girls in class

with long hair and longer names that plaited

round the teacher’s tongue.

                                                Why did Antonio,

whose surety was his body, offer his flesh

so that his bosom lover could be decked

in diamonds, lace and velvet to chance

upon a wife?  And Portia – our ‘role model’ –

a sixth-form youth whose lips disturbed our dreams.

 

 

 

Duke Senior

 

(As You Like It)

 

 

I, who have had death at my heels,

hear my courtiers shuffling up to me,

their feet beribboned and rosetted,

buckled up with jewels.

 

I grieve the fellowship of the forest –

there I was almost one of them,

singing their lusty songs after they’d poached

the deer that once was mine.  I’ve kept

my leathern shoes.  I slip on pattens,

like the servants, to go outdoors.

I miss my daughter’s laughter, her footsteps

round the hall.

 

                         They whisper at my back

how quickly I have changed,

adapted to the seasons like the ermine.

 

 

 

Autolycus

 

(The Winter’s Tale)

 

 

Of course you know me – all together now:

     a snapper up of unconsidered trifles!

There – you’re smiling already.  You don’t need me,

I’m not important for the plot, but I make you happy.

You can’t resist my ballads, sing them long after

I’ve taken my final bow.  I’ve wares to sell –

ribbons, damasks, silks – and that good feeling

spending brings.  You laugh at my tricks, never notice

it’s your purse I’m filching.  Then there’s the costumes –

I get to change clothes twice and end up

wearing the prince’s three-pile velvet. 

All this from a simple stage direction

Enter Autolycus singing

and I shift the play from winter into spring.

 

 

 

Crab

 

(The Two Gentlemen of Verona)

 

 

Launce is loyal, but I thank heaven I have more wit than he.  When his two-timing master bids him take me to the Duke’s daughter as a gift, he – Launce, that is – depends on me – Crab – to get him out of it.  My strategy is scent.  How my hormones twitch as I anoint myself in the milkmaid’s dunghill, its luscious sweet and sour odours. 

 

The palace chamber smells of beeswax, pomanders, roast meats.  The capon leg slips from Sylvia’s plate into my mouth.  I slive under the table, watched by the Duke’s drooling deerhounds.  I’ve more brains in the twitch of my tail than they have in their inbred skulls.  The rushes need a good pissing to make them smell properly.  The Duke holds his nose, Out with that cur! he yells.  I cock my leg against his daughter’s farthingale and run.

 

Loyal as ever, Launce takes the blame.  He tells me everything, his hand stroking my fur.  He loves my hazel eyes, my glistening nose, that trick I have of lifting one ear to listen.  He assumes my affirmative.

 

 

 

Puck

 

(Midsummer Night’s Dream)

 

 

I’m a jester, a prankster, a mathematician –

forty minutes precisely to circle the globe.

Love potions are my speciality, but lovers –

they all look the same to me. 

A stroke of genius that ass’s head. 

I transformed a hempen homespun weaver, but the plot

unravelled – what a rush to mend it for the nuptials

(when they talked through all of Pyramus and Thisbe).

 

Now it’s ended and I’m here with a broom

sweeping up flowers and bits of forest,

putting the stage to bed, dowsing the lights:

assistant stage manager, that’s my job.

It was just a jolly romp, in case you hadn’t guessed;

leave open the casement and let the moonlight in.