Monday, ’15
When I taught school at Snitterfield, Jonson came now and then to prime my Greek and Latin. He used to say, “You should have done a lot less fishing in the Avon, boy! Why, these fellows will never learn, not the way you teach. See, they grin at you. They love you. Call them churls, cane them; make them scat when you appear!”
Away from school, Jonson would slip into theatre talk and urge me to rejoin him: “Your poems are remembered. You have to come back, Will! I’ll find you a patron. Now’s the time to write plays... I’ll help you put them on the stage.”
I told him I was afraid of the London plague. He scorched me with a “haw-haw.” “Teaching’s your plague, man!”
Henley Street
April 20, 1615
Teaching was forgotten at Fair time, good food, acrobats, cockfights, gambling—there was something to keep us spellbound spelling laughter! Games and dances went on at all hours. Cinquepace was the fast, new step. How I liked it! There were plenty of pickpockets but I had nothing to pick but my loneliness. When I danced with a red-cheeked girl there was sperm in every movement—those giddy curls and hot hands, the smoke of sizzling fish, howls of the stinking bear baiters.
Stratford