The knight he was facing was a true brute; gigantic, monstrous and foul. His sword as he brandished it arrogantly caught the sun and gleamed gold. With clanking steps he advanced steadily, chest heaving, his arms wringing as they prepared for attack. His armour seemed to have melted into his body, so confidently he wore it, the undoubtedly heavy strain going completely unnoticed by him. Will watched him move towards him, fear wrought into his bones. His tiny dagger hung limply at his side; he was prepared to drop it and run, dash away to safety. But where was safety? The filthy crowd had formed an arena around the two unevenly matched competitors, encaging them. Will looked frantically around, hither and thither, and no avenue of escape presented itself. He wished that the ground would open up and swallow him whole.

He looked up at the Heavens hoping for an intervention, anything, to save his puny self, when he saw the reason for battle looking at him, from atop the castle right in front of the fight. For a second all went blank; the princess looked at him with care and deep concern in her eyes, as beautiful as a midsummer’s day, with long auburn hair gently weaved into locks. Will could see the bright sun reflected in her eyes, those eyes which were bright blue and which were so tender and sweet that he felt quite faint with love. Oh if God could give him wings so he might float up to his sweetheart and hold her in his- THUD! He looked up shocked, with a clear pain in his belly. The knight had kicked him ferociously and knocked the wind out of his sails. He crouched, rubbing himself gingerly, and suddenly felt a deep anger within him, anger like he had never felt before.

Looking up defiantly, he saw the knight laughing at him in a most contemptuous manner and Will glanced at the worried princess. Before he knew it, he charged forward and thrust his knife and, surprisingly…felt it pierce flesh! He had found a small chink in the knight’s armour! The knight looked at him shocked clutching his belly, and collapsed with a resounding PLUNK! A pool of crimson swiftly formed around him and Will looked around him, bemusement writ on his young unwrinkled face. The crowd had been stunned into silence, the princess had deserted her window. Out of nowhere, a small commotion was heard and a small thing had pushed its way from the gaggle; the princess!

She ran towards him, beauty in every feature and step and Will readied himself to hold her softness in his arms, and caress her, and kiss her sweet cheek and—

“Will! Will! Haven’t you woken up already? You’ll be late for school…the third time this week for God’s sake! Get up you lazy child!”

Groaning at the top of voice, Will awoke to find himself on the hard and cold floor, his body aching, his blanket missing. Muttering unutterable curses, he tightly closed his eyes, willing sleep, trying to force it again. Just two more minutes, just two more minutes with the princess he kept saying over and over in his head, like a mantra. But, alas to no avail.

His mother had walked into his room (or rather the room he shared with his two sisters) again and began to shake him roughly, “I swear there’s something wrong with this lad, how he sleeps so much is something I’ll never understand. He needs to have his brain, if he even has one, examined!”

Grumbling under his breath, Will had a quick bath in the backyard from cool water drawn from a well. While leaving home, his mother shouted to him again, “Your sisters and brothers must have already reached school. Run lad, you know how sharp the master’s cane be!”

Rolling his eyes upwards, he pretended not to hear her and began walking. Will was a bit of a recalcitrant and ostensibly incorrigible child and consequently, his journey schoolwards was at a snail’s pace. The sleep was still thick in his eyes and his head was afuzz…it seemed to him that at any moment his legs might give way and he might fall asleep on the dirt. Will’s parents thought there was something seriously wrong with him; he was so unendurably lazy and absent minded, and always was engaged, deeply, in a mysterious world of his own, a world where entry to others, to all effects and purposes, was banned.

While his sisters and brothers frolicked about in their tiny garden, Will sat quietly on the porch, watching them with a serious expression on his eyes. If a fight took place at the crowded market, or if passionate lovers met at the river, or if a disagreement took place between his parents, Will would be at the scene, not too close yet somehow at an arm’s length, watching, hearing, absorbing…His parents could not understand this obsession he had with other people and warned him not to meddle in other’s affairs and risk attracting the wrath of people; they felt that if he had so much interest in people, he might as well open his mouth, say a few words, and learn something and make friends. But silence seemed to be his byword and somehow he always found a way to wriggle out of responsibility and find the unfolding of an interesting situation. One could say he had quite the eye, ear, and nose for it!

The other thing that was grossly wrong with him according to mother and father was that he slept too much. He had the somewhat enviable (depending upon one’s disposition of course) habit of possessing the remarkable ability of being able to sleep almost anywhere at the drop of a hat. At home, in the classroom, by the river, even at the noisy and rough marketplace! He had earned the moniker of ‘Sleepy Will’ by his siblings and classmates, a name he passionately detested. His somewhat extreme somnolence had attracted the visit of the village doctor, a local quack who seemed in need of a real doctor himself!- at his parents’ behest. Six swishes with the feather from a swan’s bottom on Will’s forehead to drive the demons of doziness away, three taps on his ears and eyes from a magic spoon to force the hags of heavy-eyed hypnotism away, and one hard slap from the charlatan himself to wrench the alluring lass of languor away. To humour his parents, Will was the very epitome of energy for but two days, after which he quietly slunk back to past ways much to their chagrin.

“Four-and-twenty pences for just two days of normality? What an abysmal waste! I could have rented the carriage instead of wasting the coppers on this useless buffoon!” his father cried out before lashing him with a leather belt crafted by himself. Yelling outwardly in pain, Will chuckled to himself through the agonising tears feeling that the pain was worth making his parents look rather foolish.

“Hurry, hurry lads, the bear baiting is soon to begin!”

Will looked up suddenly and realised that he was already near the market place. A gang of older boys were shoving and pushing their way through the crowd and running at a breakneck speed. He looked at them curiously, and realised that a fight was to take place. Running behind them, he scurried past the thickly forming crowd which was congregating near the ramshackle theatre, his puniness facilitating him past dirty boots, breeched legs, and rotund waists. He reached the very front, and stood before the makeshift arena which had been constructed at the theatre’s façade.

“Will! Will! Look here!” He looked around wildly trying to find that familiar sound amidst the commotion and then he saw Anne waving frantically from a corner. He rushed to her, relieved and happy.

Anne was eight years older than Will but that didn’t stop them from being friends; in fact she was the only true friend he had ever had, and she possessed the extremely rare privilege of knowing Will’s thoughts. She was a sprightly girl, always roaming wherever her mind took her, much like Will, but unlike him, was deeply energetic and expressive. From the neighbouring hamlet she hailed, but could often be found at Will’s village, the noisy and dynamic atmosphere making it agreeable for her temperament.

“How come you aren’t at school Will?” she asked in her lilting voice which he had always found sweet and lark-like.

“I don’t have the energy…I woke up in such a terrible fashion that I simply do not have the energy to drag this mortal coil to school…”

“But surely Will, you must have the will to go; after all ‘tis your name isn’t it?” She looked at him cheekily while he rolled his eyes in mock despair. “But you do like school don’t you? All those epics and grand stories about different people…You don’t know how lucky you are Will…” She stopped abruptly with a solemn expression on her face.

Will was just going to say something when the fight just began. “Roar! Grrrrrh!” the bear, a feral and monstrous creature frothing at the gob was briefly unchained, and a pack of wild dogs set upon it. “Woof! Grrr, Rawr!” the five dogs were swept aside by the bear’s hairy paw in a swift swoop, but undeterred they jumped on him again. The bear struck blood, and one of the dogs was seriously wounded, but the others kept attacking him incessantly until the great brute grew quite tired. Sensing this, the mongrels leapt upon him with greater ferocity until blood became the order of the day.

Gashing and flowing with rapid abandon it became quite hard to see which species was coming off the worse. Will watched the carnal scene unfold with the utmost fascination in his eyes. His eyes glowed as the blood splattered all over the arena, and his mouth was slightly ajar with clear and obvious fascination. Anne tugged at his sleeve to whisper something in his ear but he was unhearing; his mind was firmly fixed upon the animalistic fight taking place before him. A while later, the bearmaster chained the bear to heed to his multiple wounds, and there was a brief lull in the proceedings. The crowd, being worked up by the goriness took this time to soothe their nerves by engaging in loud and noisy chatter. In the midst of this interlude, young and scrawny boys scurried like mice amongst the different legs with their puny hands clutching on to oversized crates containing food and drink.

“Eggs, cheese, porridge, and bread, down it all with some cider or mead!” in high pitched voices they sang.

Will, chomping on some bread commented, “What a delightful rhyme indeed!” with a smile on his boyish face. Ann shrugged in reply. She had suddenly adopted a sad expression her face and her friend knew what the reason was.

“As soon as the chance presents itself, I promise I will acquire some more books for you. Won’t that change your expression, my dear lady? A smile crowns your jewel face in a manner quite unlike a frown!”

Ann looked at him, and true to his word, smiled, immediately producing a marvellous effect. “Oh that would be wonderful Will, truly. I’ve read and reread the books I have so many times that the pages are as worn out as my mind is quite dulled by familiarity.“

Anne loved to read more than anything in the world. She had learnt the alphabet at school where her first and rather memorable encounter with a book had taken place. Unfortunately, within three years, she was withdrawn as she was required to help at home. She was forbidden from reading as according to her parents “reading garbled texts doesn’t befit a young lady” Will being her faithful companion had procured a few books from school for her which she read in fierce secrecy. A habit established, he had now become her very own private book thief.

Now, being happy with himself for having given her something to look forward to he said, “In half a fortnight you shall have your new tomes with you. And now the battle is once more begun.”

The bearmaster had tended glibly to his ward’s wounds and the fight had resumed. The rabble finishing their food and drink greedily composed themselves once again to lose their composure in the ensuing bloodbath. The same pattern once again took place, and the two friends found themselves cheering and shouting at every slash and yelp and groan and roar. Will suddenly felt a deep pity in his heart for the poor bear which was losing to the strays and yet fighting desperately to keep itself alive.

A strange and faraway look came upon his countenance and his voice, a mere whisper in the sea of primally berserk noise uttered, “I am tied to this stake, fly I cannot…bearlike, therefore, I must fight this battle…”

A deep sense of conviction filled him as he spoke these unheard words, and this queer feeling inside him, just as soon as it had come, dissipated into the wind and he saw that the fight was over. The bear lay in a bloody heap on the floor with only one of his opponent having survived albeit being in an extremely pitiable state. “That was something was it not? I fancied the bear would pull through in the end but alas black death seized it. Oh well…let’s go the market shall we?”

Having filled their eyes and minds with blood, and their stomachs with food, the crowd dispersed and the two friends followed them. In silence they walked, happy and carefree, and Will found that his sleepiness had deserted him. They soon reached the marketplace and the familiar scents and noises enveloped them, a melange of sensations. Here a portly woman haggling over some farm fresh vegetables while simultaneously trying to control her three young recalcitrant children, there a young lad just reached adulthood trying to pickpocket a busy customer, elsewhere a shopkeeper furiously driving some energetic goats away from his leafy greens, and all around different sellers yelling out their wares at the very pinnacle of their voices…Anne looked at Will and the two simultaneously laughed at this expected scene, so familiar and comforting in a way…Walking at a slow pace to avoid the slushy muddiness of the path from dirtying their clothes they walked along the marketplace in all its commotion.

“‘tis not that I hate school you know, quite the contrary in fact. The epics, the ballads, the engrossingly wild tales of Chaucer, Ovid, the lost yet timeless classics…sigh, such beauty in them, such truth, such wonder…studying these, nay reading, for studying and compulsion go hand’n hand; fills my soul with true joy, dear Anne. The master be strict and his cane be a-pointed but that’s no matter. Love is love. The only folly that I make is my laziness which prevents my regular going to class. But that is alright too for the stories I have cast on my soul many times. Hence the dearness of my sleep for in dreams, I live out the tales.”

Anne smiled at this and touched his shoulder in reassurance and understanding. They hurriedly passed a cripple, lain in the dirt, and screaming at all who turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to his wretched moaning; “Curs’d be you all! Neither limb nor copper doth you deserve you merry fools! Unseeing, unhearing scoundrels!”

Looking back at him sadly, Will commented “Whiles I am a beggar, I will rail and say there is no sin but to be rich; and being rich, my virtue then shall be to say there is no vice but beggary.” And shrugged stoically.

Looking at him with unconcealed awe, his friend said, “Will! Such profound and simple thoughts, and yet so wonderfully wise! Many’s the time I’ve said this but again I shall say- you must write. You weave thoughts into words so beautifully…you must ink them down.”

“Hmm, perhaps my fair lass, but putting ink to paper is far too cumbersome, and my legendary laziness as you know makes reading a far more pleasurable activity. And speaking of ink, I do need to purchase a few bottles and quills, the recording supplies so to speak having run out. I must purchase them and this is where I must bid adieu.

“Good bye, good bye! Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say good bye till it be morrow.” 

With a mischievous grin he ran away from her and skipped among the people until being swallowed by the mass he disappeared. “And with a sweet rhyme the hero exits the stage. Oh Will, if you only bothered to heed my advice and write…you could do wonders, truly.” Shaking her head, Anne walked homebound.

With his quill and ink bottle in tow, Will reached home (he had dipped the quills in the ink beforehand to give the appearance of usage). It was nearly suppertime and having refreshed himself, Will pondered over Anne’s words. He had always been a ready reader and a thoughtful thinker but writing was something he had never attempted, or bothered to, the writing done at school being enough to suffice him. Perhaps ‘twas the machine like manner of the writing exercises that didn’t pique his fancy? Or maybe his laziness, a ready excuse, got in the way…but the fact remained that he simply hadn’t bothered to try. There was some strange urging in his soul which kept prodding at him, tapping lightly from within and before he could even attempt to make sense of this intangible feeling, the call came for him to attend dinner.

At the dinner table, he ate his food in silence; the excitement of the day had inculcated a wholesome appetite in his belly, and he found himself stuffing his mouth with meatpie and cooked vegetables. Unbeknownst to him, his parents were looking upon him quite sternly and it was a while before the strange and unusual silence came to his attention. Downing some ale from a rusty old pail, he looked up and saw his siblings struggling to withhold their quite blatant laughter, and turning upon his parents, he saw the draconian expression writ on their faces.  He prepared for the worst.

“How was school today my dear child?” his mother opened the questioning.

One grubby hand reached out to grab some wild gooseberries, Will answered, “No different from any of the thousand schooldays before today, mother. Why do you ask?”

At this his brothers and sisters finding laughter a difficult balloon to contain burst into giggles until father’s angry expression turned upon them shut them up.

“So what did you learn today? Any new books, or subjects you would like to tell us about?”

“More of the same father. Nothing different, and certainly nothing new.”

“Well unfortunately what’s not new is you not attending school, and traipsing all over town with that older friend of yours, Anne. I met the headmaster on my way back and he informed me of your esteemed absence, the fifth time this month, Will! And to add to this…this- “

“Incorrigibleness?“, Will shamelessly interjected with a hopeful and mischievous smile.

“Lord, child have you no sense of shame in yourself? Much gall in such small corpulence!” He looked at his wife and a surreptitious glance of mutual understanding was made. “A punishment is surely in order Will. Such unrepentant behavior coupled with your obscene laziness warrants action. We are going to Banbury this weekend to visit your grandparents but you will be staying at home-alone. We have already spoken to our good neighbor Mister Adam and he will be keeping a strict eye on you from time to time. You are to use this juncture to repent and think on your actions, and by all means, you are NOT to spend the entirety of this time in wasteful repose!”

“But father-“

“My word is final. ‘Tis all.”

Will could scarcely believe his ears; this “punishment” was punishment in name only. He wanted nothing more than to spend some time alone and simply think on different matters, and with his noisy family gone he could have two days of meditation. Trying to conceal his glee, he looked down upon his plate which passed off as remorse to his parents who were happy that the portent of their words had been absorbed by him.

Tired by the day’s events and with a strange sense of anticipation in his heart, Will went to bed and true to habit entered the realm of sleep scarcely before his eyelids had shut themselves. When Will’s brothers entered the room a good two hours later, they found him asleep in the dimly flickering candlelight with a broad smile on his face. “A saucy dream seems to be taking place currently, eh?” The elder insinuatingly winked at the other. The next morning Will awoke feeling refreshed and energised. Looking around the house, it was clear that his family had already left. He quickly washed himself and gobbled his breakfast without paying attention to what he was eating. A seed of thought had seemingly been planted in his mind during his slumber and he wanted to act upon it as quickly as he possibly could. Walking to his desk (a plank of wood unevenly balanced on three legs of varying length), he sat on his chair (a tree stump) and grabbed his quills, his ink bottles, and several sheets of parchment.

Will dipped the quill into the ink bottle and held it above the first sheet, a sort of self-aggrandising prelude and then- a pause, a blank moment of time, a cloudy fuzziness with nothing in it…the ink dripped steadily from the feather quill onto the paper- and then Will began to write. Slowly at first, steadily, legibly, until this mysterious creature inside him manifested itself with an incendiary burst and before he even knew what was going on, he was writing at a frenetic pace. The quill scrawled across the paper, fast, faster, quick, quicker. The thoughts inside him were pouring out and it seemed there was nothing he could do but record them. Characters he had but seen in day dreaming visions, damsels he’d dreamt of marrying someday, wicked relatives, and jocund jesters…to him, it vaguely felt that his body and mind had been housing them since the day he was born, since the day they were born, whenever that might have been.

The prison house was broken, the chain unlatched, and by Jove how they came pouring out, revelling in their freedom!

Monologues and dialogues he had held with himself in his head, truisms, fallacies…he scribbled all of them on page after page after page. Time had ceased to exist to him; he was only dimly aware of the sun’s passage across the sky with the impending darkness that it bought. Only vaguely he realised that a candle had been lit for his written benefit. Mr Adam had come in twice and on both occasions was stunned by the sheer intensity of Will’s focus; he feebly called out to him a few times but the young writer’s ears had been blocked out and shut irretrievably. At evening, he merely lit three candles in the house and left.

Will now felt that he was being controlled by the quill, which had gathered a life, a vibrant, vivacious soul of its own. He had merely become an instrument through which some obscure God of Words was choosing to express itself. But mind he surely did not. He experienced such thrill as he saw the words appear before his eyes, such joy as he had never felt before. The ink dripped from the pen, the sweat dripped from his forehead, and he wrote. The tempo at which his hands were swimming across the pages was so high that he found himself scratching and rewriting several words, and yet he could not slow his pace. The candle burnt steadily until it could burn no more and with a low hiss! gave out. Night had turned into day and he lay bent over his pages, giving a thoroughly agreeable outlet to his soul. The heap of parchment before his feet had grown into a considerable amount.

Slowly he understood the direction of the tale, of the saga, and unknowingly to him (obviously!) a wide smile wrote itself upon his countenance, growing wider and deeper like a dam with foundations until he could hold it no longer and the floodgates burst, giving way to a barrage of almost manic laughter. For five minutes he guffawed until the floodgates to his eyes opened too, letting out thick teary droplets. Adam, alarmed at this wild cackling ran into to the house and seeing Will, sweaty, ringed with ink around the face and hands, and bloodshot eyes heavy with sleep, was truly frightened by this dirty monstrous spectacle and promptly rushed out as fast as he had come in. “The child, nay the creature, has truly gone mad! Alas, I pity the parents, but my heart is filled with happiness that the scoundrel isn’t mine to for me be seized with remorse!”

The tale or rather the play finally appeared fully before his mind’s eye, replete with its wild characters and interlinked plot. His pace finally slowed down and he wrote the last few words with solicitude, almost as though saying good bye to a long lost friend, one he didn’t really want to leave. The tap shrunk to a trickle until the final drop revealed itself as a bold and rather circular full stop. Will had just written his first play!

With this dot, his energies suddenly waned and his body and mind was awash with aching fatigue, fatigue that he had ceased to acknowledge during the entirety of the previous day and night. He fell to the floor and was sound asleep. A dreamless sleep, thick with haziness.

The next morning the rooster’s crow woke him up. He hurriedly gathered his papers, the part of his soul that was so precious to him, the proof of his incipient work for surely, surely there was more to follow. Arranging them in the right order, he ran out of his house, barefoot, ignoring the stones and mud along the way. “I go, I go, look how I go; Swifter than arrow from the Tartar’s bow. I cannot wait for Anne to read my play. I am sure that she is going to enjoy it. Oh Anne!” Scampering, panting, and of breath, he reached Shoreditch, heading straight to her house. Anne was busy in the garden, hanging wet clothes straight from the wash on a clothesline. Seeing her friend by the gate bent and completely out of breath, she was conceivably surprised.

“What brings you here Will? And in so physically abject a condition at that. Is everything alrig-“

“Play!” he groaned loudly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Play. I just wrote my first play yesterday and I want you to read it,” he said, gesticulating wildly at the crumpled and precious sheets in his hand. Anne walked over to him and gently took them from his person. Skimming through them she said, “You wrote this in a day?”

“Well a day and a night. And half a day more I suppose…Read it!” He had plopped onto the wet grass and looked up at her expectantly.

Anne smiled at him. “I would be more than glad to do so, my good sir.”

He smiled back and promptly dozed off in a fetal position. “You can be such a child sometimes… I am truly happy that you have finally begun to write.” She said, moving the clothes away from his face with one hand to stop the bulbous drops from falling on him, the other clutching at his work.

When he woke up, dusk had reached its peak and twilight was making its way on the horizon. Rubbing his eyes lazily, he saw Anne sitting on the steps of the entrance to her home. She did not look up immediately as he walked up to her, choosing instead to take her time, gazing at some distant spot in the sky. He sat next to her.

“Well? Did you finish reading?” A long pause, and then her eyes faced his. He saw wonder and a hint of…pride? in them.

“Master William Shakespeare, you are indeed a brilliant writer. This play is nothing short of greatness, and I have no doubt there are many, many more to come. I am so…happy for you! And proud too.”

William felt a deep sense of satisfaction and elation inside him, a swelling of emotions from deep within. “Thank you Miss Anne Hathaway. You have no idea how happy I am right now. Truly. And certainly, yes, there is more. A great deal more on its way. For now we bide our time.”

‘Twas night and the stars had appeared in the ink black sky, shyly at first, and then boldly, twinkling until there was a galaxy at last of diamonds embellishing and serenading the heavens, smiling at a soul having realized its fantastic destiny.

---

[FEATURED IMAGE SOURCE]