Stratford

February 26, 1616

So I’ll never know who attacked Ellen?

Is it because I am sick that I care?

Could it be that someone stepped from his stage of bitterness and struck her that night the fog drowned her carriage? Did he resent my luck? The harder poverty knocked the keener he felt my good luck: was that how it was? Was hunger a knife in his belly? Did he run away from London afterward? His hun­gry, motherless kids asked him to kill for money? Was that how it was?

“Your brother Fred is here, bending over you...”

“Was that Ann, who said that yesterday? Or was it Hall, bending over me, who said that Fred had come by?”

Ellen, could you come? Or Hamlet? Othello? Marlowe?

Stratford