The Sonnets
Shakespeare in Love for the sonnets: a fictional tale of how Shakespeare wrote his most famous poems.No one knows for sure precisely when and where Shakespeare wrote his sonnets or, more intriguingly, who he wrote them for. In this wonderfully entertaining novel acclaimed author Warwick Collins imagines the circumstances that inspired 30 of the Bard's most popular sonnets.The young Will Shakespeare is living under the patronage of Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. The controversial earl is under pressure from his family and those close to the royal court to settle down but he is far too busy drinking, carousing and cavorting with his motley band of acquaintances to pay attention. Not then, the obvious setting for poetic genius but within the politics (both State and sexual) of this lofty household Will finds lots to inspire his pen, and a few attractive distractions too.Collins has crafted a clever, witty and enjoyable novel from fragments of history. He interweaves 30 sonnets into the text in seamless fashion. The Sonnets wears its scholarship lightly and its love of Shakespeare and poetry proudly.
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The Sonnets
Warwick Collins
The Friday Project
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published by The Friday Project in 2008
This edition published by The Friday Project in 2015
Copyright © Warwick Collins 2008
Warwick Collins asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Although this is a work of fiction and the product of the author’s imagination, it is based on/inspired by real historical events and, therefore, some of the characters portrayed herein are based on real people. However, any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events or localities who are unconnected with the historical event is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780007306190
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN 9780007379996 Version: 2015-03-31
To Chris Owen
Contents
MY LORD SOUTHAMPTON, at the lake that day, removed his garments, wading in silence to deeper water. In hungry dawn his slender frame, already bearing scars and calluses of fearful games and hunts, seemed to pause and flicker. A heron stood on the neighbouring bank, observing the edge of the shallows. Against that human figure a bird’s shadow, hovering over water, preparing to strike at waiting fish, would not have seemed more ghostly or more pale. There my lord waited, hardly moving, suspended in the heron’s eye, as though lost in invisible thought.
I, standing on the shore, observed how light became flesh, seeming to pause and thicken. Water covered his thighs, his lower back. From the bank I considered him as he walked further into the lake, until it lapped his shoulder blades. I continued to observe him as he waded deeper into that periphrastic calm. The liquid line rose until, once level with shoulder and neck, he began to swim, both languidly and strongly.
Out there he seemed impalpable. Only his head appeared, floating on the surface. Under the dawn light he moved alongside his own reflection, touching ghost to liquid ghost, leaving a soft wake which formed and glimmered like an arrowhead.
Instead it was I – the watching man, the unquiet one – who took up my usual position, holding the reins of both our nervous horses. Part of that mind which lives in shadow now became alert. I remained constantly fretful – the silent waiter at the water’s edge.
Standing between the horses in that calm, with a warm and breathing beast on each side of me, I sensed the shudder of their animal spirits. Both seemed tense. My own gelding stood still, occasionally reaching down to feed. But beside me the stallion stamped and neighed softly, dancing on his hooves, restless as any child who wants to play. He was in perpetual motion, never still. I felt him strain, then call forth his challenge. His long whinny reached out across the tranquil earth and water. Holding their reins, I listened for that thread of silence which the horses could perceive. And then I heard, as though in answer, another horse’s call, as clear as a bugle note, from half a mile away; from some dark stretch of woodland, some invisible valley. Strange sound! It might as easily have come from a mythical, hidden underworld.
During those times when the London theatres were closed, curtailed by plague, I too was nervous, aware of my own vulnerability. My scribbling of plays had no market, and I could not even work upon the stage. It is true that poets often live at the edge of starvation – vulnerable as song birds to winter’s cold – but those days were the worst.
By some strange alchemy, my lord’s very confidence rendered me more sensitive. On his behalf sometimes I felt we were overlooked, or that another party spied on him. Sometimes I heard a horse neigh, far away, and once I saw three riders on a hill – distant, pricked out by light – observing us in what seemed like lucid concentration.
