“My guess is he wrote them because they
were in him. And he must have traveled with players. One professor at Yale
thought that had to have happened, probably with the Queen’s Men. Otherwise how
did he learn to act and to write for the theater, such as it was, before London
and the inn-yards and the Rose?”
“I was always fascinated by their war
writings, much of that in Tamburlaine
along with rivers of blood. Marlowe seemed to know about military
paraphernalia. I think it was part two, ‘cavalierios
and counterforts,’ how those words stick in the mind. He had an impressive
grasp of detail.”
“I remember one line, ‘We will have
gabions of six-foot broad,’ never looked up what gabions were. I need to brush
up on my Marlowe.”
“Gabion means ‘cage’ in Italian. It’s
when you encase rocks in mesh, wood or other frames to make walls, or in this
case defenses.”
Mark tipped his glass in compliment. “I
guess gabion is a lot more elegant than a ‘box of rocks.’ ”
Kate grinned and lifted her glass, “Marlowe
talked inventory, but the poetry was stunning. You can see why they thought he
was an atheist, ‘slaughtering gods’ and all that pagan imagery.”
“Shakespeare got inside soldier’s heads
He must have seen it firsthand, been in it, or talked to men who were there.”
“At Agincourt, one soldier said
something like ‘Morning comes,’ and another said ‘I have no desire to see the
break of day,’ morbid humor before a battle.”
“Court and John Bates, there was one
more if I remember. ‘We see the beginning of the day, but we shall never see
the end of it.’ That sounded real, something soldiers, not nobles, would say. Williams?”
“Michael Williams, who gives Henry, disguised
as a soldier, a good talking to. In Kenneth Branagh’s film version of Henry the
Fifth, an actor named Michael Williams played the role, and he is the late husband
of Judi Dench, who is also in the film.”
“Kate, you are a fount of interesting
information.”
“Trending toward the gossipy, and I love
Judi Dench, followed her career since I was a child. At the risk of changing
the subject, please pass the chicken, careful of getting your dangling sleeve
in the beef curry.”
“Dangling sleeve, ravelled sleeve?”
“Knit up your carefree, curried sleeve.”
Their laughter was drawing attention from other diners. Kate looked around.
“We’ve had one beer too many. Let’s go home and write more about Will’s life,
time to start on him working around Stratford for his father, maybe a lawyer,
too, doing some tutoring.”
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