Leon Garfield's Shakespeare Stories Read online

  LEON GARFIELD’S

  Shakespeare Stories

  Illustrated by

  Michael Foreman

  THE NEW YORK REVIEW CHILDREN’S COLLECTION

  NEW YORK

  THIS IS A NEW YORK REVIEW BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS

  435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  www.nyrb.com

  Text copyright © 1985, 1994 by Leon Garfield

  Illustrations copyright © 1985, 1994 by Michael Foreman

  All rights reserved.

  Leon Garfield’s Shakespeare Stories was previously published in two volumes: Shakespeare Stories and Shakespeare Stories II. Shakespeare Stories was originally published in Great Britain in 1985 by Victor Gollancz Limited. Shakespeare Stories II was originally published in Great Britain in 1994 by Victor Gollancz Limited. Shakespeare Stories and Shakespeare Stories II are published in Great Britain by Penguin Books, Ltd.

  Cover design by Louise Fili, Ltd.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged an earlier printing of this book as follows:

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Garfield, Leon.

  Shakespeare stories / by Leon Garfield ; illustrated by Michael Foreman.

  pages cm. — (New York Review Books Children's Collection)

  ISBN 978-1-59017-931-4 (hardback)

  1. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616—Stories, plots, etc.—Juvenile literature. 2. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616—Adaptations—Juvenile literature. 3. Children's stories, English. I. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. II. Foreman, Michael, 1938- illustrator. III. Title.

  PR2877.G37 2015

  823'.914—dc23

  2015014749

  ISBN 978-1-59017-995-6

  V1.0

  For a complete list of titles in the New York Review Children’s Collection, please visit www.nyrb.com or write to:

  Catalog Requests, NYRB, 435 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright and More Information

  Dedication

  SHAKESPEARE STORIES

  Twelfth Night

  King Lear

  The Tempest

  The Merchant of Venice

  The Taming of the Shrew

  King Richard the Second

  King Henry IV. Part One

  Hamlet

  Romeo and Juliet

  Othello

  A Midsummer Night’s Dream

  Macbeth

  Much Ado About Nothing

  Julius Caesar

  Antony and Cleopatra

  Measure for Measure

  As You Like It

  Cymbeline

  King Richard the Third

  The Comedy of Errors

  The Winter’s Tale

  Biographical Notes

  To the Royal Shakespeare Company

  and

  To the editors, past and present

  Shakespeare Stories

  Twelfth Night

  Before you hear of the shipwreck, you must know that, inland from its wild sea coast, Illyria was a green and golden land, of thatched cottages, neat as well-combed children, of gracious mansions, and the noble palace of the Duke. Orsino was his name, and, before the shipwreck, he was fathoms deep in love with Olivia, a fair countess who dwelt nearby.

  “If music be the food of love,” he sighed, gazing through his windows towards the lady’s house, “play on, give me excess of it . . .” and his lute-player bent low over his beribboned instrument and filled the air with song. But alas! What pleasure was there in a feast for only one? The lady would have nothing to do with him, nor, indeed, with any of his sex. That is, until the shipwreck. She was in mourning for a brother deceased, and had shut herself away in her mansion, and vowed to see no suitors for seven long years.

  “What a plague means my niece to take the death of her brother thus?” complained her uncle, Sir Toby Belch, a fat bag of wind and merriment who lived in her house and floated between kitchen and cellar like a portly bubble in stained brocade. He himself had fetched his niece a suitor, a long, thin knight by name of Sir Andrew Aguecheek; but it had been to no avail. Nonetheless, Sir Andrew kept paying for Sir Toby’s entertainment in the foolish hope of becoming his nephew. Though he always dressed young, it was a case of stale wine in a new bottle. To be honest, the knight was old enough to know better, and too old to do it. But Sir Toby kept him in hopes, and he kept Sir Toby in drink; which seemed a fair exchange.

  Then, one day, came a shipwreck. Far out at sea, a sudden and fearful tempest sprang up. Huge winds came boiling out of black clouds and tore sea and sky to shreds. A vessel, frail as paper, lifted, plunged, turned and tossed, until at last caught between two roaring walls of water, it cracked and split! Its cargo of shrieking souls was tumbled helplessly among the waves. Some clutched at spars and broken fragments of the mast, while others clung, with streaming desperation, to the shattered vessel itself. Then the storm began to abate and the wreck, driven hither and thither by winds, was heaved up on to a beach. Some half dozen sailors, the ship’s captain and a solitary passenger gave thanks to God, and limped wearily ashore.

  “What country, friends, is this?” asked the passenger, as the sun came out, and made the morning gold.

  “This is Illyria, lady,” answered the captain.

  “And what should I do in Illyria?” she wept, gazing towards the dazzled sea. “My brother he is in Elysium.” Her name was Viola and her brother had been called Sebastian; but now, surely, he was drowned. They had been twins, alike as two mornings in April, full of young beauty and promise. The kindly captain tried to reassure her that her brother might still live, for he had been seen, clinging to a spar; and Viola was glad enough to clutch at this frail straw even as her brother had clutched at his.

  “Knowest thou this country?” she asked. The Captain knew it well, and told her of the Duke and his love for Olivia, and of how matters stood between them. Viola sighed; dearly she would have liked to serve the lady, who mourned a brother even as she did herself. But it was not to be, as the lady would admit none to her house, so Viola begged the captain to bring her to the court of Duke Orsino where, in man’s clothing, she might get employment as a page.

  She called herself Cesario, and, in doublet and hose, with sword at her hip, and plumed hat in her hand, she made as handsome a youth as she had been beautiful as a girl. Gladly the Duke took her into his service; and, so much trust did he place in her that, after only three days, he sent her to the lady Olivia to plead his love. “Be not denied access,” he urged her. “Stand at her doors.”

  “I’ll do my best,” promised Viola, and set off to bear her master’s heart to the lady’s house. It was a bitter errand; for that which she carried she would sooner have kept for herself. In the space of the three days, she had fallen in love with the Duke.

  Olivia was not well pleased when she was told that there was a young man waiting at her gate who would not be sent away. Nor was she better pleased when she learned that her uncle was with him. Shrewdly she judged that the sight, smell and sound of Sir Toby would give no very favourable impression of a house in mourning. So she sent her steward, Malvolio, to tell the young man to go away, and to contradict, in his solemn person, any wild notion the young man might have got from Sir Toby. Malvolio was as sober a personage as Sir Toby was not, with a face as long as Sunday, which he wore on every day of the week. Before his important tread, the very larder mice grew serious and thought of church; but not even he could dislodge Duke Orsino’s messenger from Olivia’s gate.

  “Let him approach,” said the lady, with weary resignation; and, when Malvoli
o had stalked away to admit the young person, she bade Maria, her waiting-woman, to fetch her veil.

  “The honourable lady of the house, which is she?” demanded Viola, coming into the chamber with a stride that was too long for her, a look that was too bold, and a voice that was too deep. Then, when she had been coldly informed which was the mistress and which was the maid, she begged the veiled one to grant an audience alone. Olivia considered the request. Although there was an impertinence in the messenger’s manner, and he had, from all accounts, been impudent at her gate, there was such a manly boldness about him (bolder by far than his too-gentle master), that the lady was curious to know him better. She dismissed her maid and leaned forward so that her eyes sparkled like stars within the night of her veil.

  “Good madam, let me see your face,” begged Viola, stepping a little outside her office and yielding to womanly curiosity. Olivia hesitated and then, not wanting it to be thought that she wore a veil merely to hide a plain countenance, drew it back and smiled a most radiant smile.

  “Is’t not well done?” she asked, with quiet pride.

  “Excellently done,” granted Viola, none too pleased to see a beauty that almost rivalled her own, “if God did all.”

  “ ’Tis in grain, sir,” returned the lady, a little taken aback that the honesty of her complexion should be called into question. “ ’Twill endure wind and weather.”

  Viola, anxious to make amends for her offence, and fearful, perhaps, that its very shrewdness might have betrayed her for a woman, began pleading the Duke’s cause with such passion and ardour, with such tender fire and aching love, as any woman might have dreamed of hearing from a lover’s lips, but never did. She spoke for the Duke as she longed for the Duke to have spoken to her.

  “What is your parentage?” murmured Olivia faintly, when the messenger had done.

  “Above my fortunes,” answered Viola, somewhat surprised. “I am a gentleman.”

  Olivia sighed and nodded, and bade the messenger return to the Duke. “I cannot love him,” she said. “Let him send no more . . .” She paused, and then added softly, “unless, perchance, you come to me again, to tell me how he takes it.”

  When the handsome youth had gone, Olivia gazed after him with brightly shining eyes. She summoned her steward. “Run after that same peevish messenger,” she told him with a calmness that she herself marvelled at. “He left this ring behind him . . . tell him I’ll none of it.”

  When her steward had gone with the ring, she blushed for her lie. The youth had left nothing; the ring had been her own. The messenger had pleaded the master’s cause with too much success. The lady had fallen in love with the messenger, and longed for him to come again.

  Malvolio, his black cloak flapping and his black stockings twinkling, like a crow to a feast, panted after the Duke’s messenger. “Were not you even now, with the Countess Olivia?” he demanded when he had caught up with the youth; and, when the messenger had confessed as much, he said: “She returns this ring to you,” and held out the trinket disdainfully, between finger and thumb.

  Much surprised, Viola disclaimed all knowledge of the ring, so Malvolio dropped it contemptuously in the mire and hastened back to his mistress’s house. Viola picked up the ring, stared at it, wondered, then guessed the reason for the sending of it. “Poor lady!” she sighed. Though the sun shone, the blossoms smiled and the air was soft, it was a sad world. She loved Orsino, who loved Olivia, who now, it seemed, loved her. In each instance, love was given, and not returned.

  That night, in Olivia’s house, there was another giver who got no return. Sir Andrew Aguecheek, still laying out his money for a cause that all but a fool would have known to be hopeless, was with his good friend, Sir Toby Belch. They were both drunk and inclined to be musical: Sir Toby low, and Sir Andrew high and eager as a wren. They sat at a table in a golden cave of candlelight, that, as they breathed, swayed and tottered as if the very air was tipsy from recollected wine. Presently they were joined by Feste, Olivia’s jester, an ageing Fool who earned his keep by roaming the mansion and dispensing faded laughter and sad sweet songs. All three now leaned together in their withered finery, like a bowl of old mottled fruit.

  “Would you have a love-song, or a song of good life?” proposed Feste.

  “A love-song, a love-song!” belched Sir Toby, with an amorous glint in his wine-rich eye.

  “Ay, ay,” agreed Sir Andrew eagerly. “I care not for good life.”

  So Feste sang them a love-song of such sweet melancholy that they fell silent; and when he finished with: “Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth’s a stuff will not endure,” they sighed and their eyes grew moist; it was December remembering May. But melancholy was soon blown to the winds, for they began upon a mad song that went round and round, like a blindfold child at a birthday, which required much banging of tankards and stamping of feet to keep it in motion.

  “What a caterwauling do you keep here!” Maria, a cross plump morsel in her shift, had to shout to make herself heard, for the revellers had awakened the house. But she was too pretty a complainant to be taken seriously. Sir Toby staggered to his feet, caught her in his arms, and danced her about the room, singing at the top of his voice.

  “For the love o’ God, peace!” she shrieked, but more in laughter than reproach.

  Then, when the uproar was at its height, with Feste capering, Sir Andrew whirling like a blown leaf, and the very plates upon the table jigging up and down, there appeared in the doorway a most fearful, dismal, chilling sight. Malvolio in his nightgown, with every inch of him, from tasselled cap to the shocked toes of his bare feet expressing outrage and indignation, stood and surveyed the lunatic scene. “My masters, are you mad?” he demanded; and then went on, in dreadful tones, to threaten Sir Toby, in his mistress’s name, with eviction from the house unless he mended his ways.

  “Dost thou think,” returned Sir Toby indignantly, “because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?”

  Malvolio ignored him and, after having expressed strong disapproval of Maria, for being party to the drunken disorder, he stalked away like a ghost to the tomb.

  “Go shake your ears!” said Maria angrily; and then, exasperated by the pompous steward, confided in Sir Toby a certain plan she had devised for humbling that odious man.

  She would write a letter, in her mistress’s hand, containing a passionate declaration of love for a person not named, but warmly described. She would drop this letter directly in Malvolio’s way. Such was his vanity and high opinion of himself that, when he picked it up and read it, he would unfailingly see himself as being the object of the Countess Olivia’s love. The conspiritors beamed happily at one another at the prospect of Malvolio’s antics when he believed his mistress was his slave. While Sir Toby and his companions were plotting to make free with Olivia’s love, Viola took back the refusal of it to Duke Orsino. Her feelings were mingled. She was a little saddened for the sadness Olivia’s message caused her master, and thankful that it gave her hope of, one day, gaining Orsino for herself.

  The Duke would hear none but the most doleful ditties, which chimed in with his mood. He bade his page go to the Countess Olivia once more to plead his love.

  “But if she cannot love you, sir?” said Viola gently. But the Duke would take no such answer; so Viola, as nearly as she dared, tried to turn Orsino’s thoughts towards herself. “My father had a daughter loved a man,” she said, “as it might be, perhaps, were I a woman, I should your lordship.”

  The Duke gazed curiously at his page. “And what’s her history?” he asked.

  “A blank, my lord: she never told her love.”

  “But died thy sister of her love, my boy?” asked the Duke, when he had heard a sad tale of unspoken affection.

  “I am all the daughters of my father’s house,” answered Viola, mysteriously; then grief swept over her as she thought of lost Sebastian. “And all the brothers too . . .” She turned away to hide the sorrow and the lo
ve she dared not show; and was thankful to escape Orsino’s eye, even though her errand, to Olivia’s house, was even less to her liking than before.

  Now the Countess Olivia had a garden, where close-clipped trees made green secrets of the avenues and walks. Here Sir Toby and his companions had hid themselves and were peering eagerly through a lattice-work of branches, for Malvolio was coming, and the fateful letter lay directly in his way.

  He came, a blot of ink upon the bright morning, with his shadow in close attendance, like an admiring pupil. He was in a gravely sauntering mood, with his buckled shoes making stately little patterns on the path. Sometimes he paused and bowed courteously to some imaginary acquaintance, sometimes he made gestures as if to indicate an audience with him was at an end. He was communing with himself aloud, as men will do when they suppose their only listeners are the trees. First, Maria was in love with him; and then, advancing further into dreams, he was Count Malvolio, had been married to Olivia for three months, was richly dressed and had just summoned his wife’s uncle to stand before him as a penitent. “Cousin Toby,” he murmured reproachfully, “you must amend your drunkenness.”

  “Out, scab!” breathed Sir Toby, trembling with rage at the steward’s presumption. Then he and his fellow watchers held their breath. Malvolio had seen the letter. He touched it with his foot; looked cautiously about him; then picked the letter up and immediately recognized his mistress’s hand! With shaking fingers he broke the seal and read:

  “Jove knows I love: But who?” There followed some riddling lines that ended with: “M.O.A.I. doth sway my life.”

  He cogitated, long and deep; and then, with a burst of excitement, he realised that M.O.A.I. were all letters that were in his own name. He read on; and every word he read convinced him more and more that the letter was from his lady and was meant for him. “If this fall into thy hand,” she wrote, “revolve. In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.” Then she urged him to be haughty in his manner, for was not his future golden? He should smile in her presence to show that he returned her love; and she earnestly requested him to appear in yellow stockings with cross garters.