Билл Брайсон – Shakespeare (страница 9)
But a few intriguing notes are all that the record can offer. It is extraordinary to think that before he settled in London and became celebrated as a playwright, history provides just four recorded glimpses of Shakespeare – at his baptism, his wedding, and the two births of his children. There is also a passing reference to him in a lawsuit of 1588 filed by his father in a property dispute, but that has nothing to say about where he was at that time or what he was doing.
Shakespeare’s early life is really little more than a series of occasional sightings. So when we note that he was now about to embark on what are popularly known as his lost years, they are very lost indeed.
* It was an unlikely courtship. The Queen was old enough to be his mother – she was nearly forty, he just eighteen – and the Duke moreover was short and famously ugly (his champions suggested hopefully that he could be made to look better if he grew a beard). It was only the Duke’s death in 1584 that finally put an end to the possibility of marriage.
FEW PLACES IN history can have been more deadly and desirable at the same time as London in the sixteenth century. Conditions that made life challenging elsewhere were particularly rife in London, where newly arrived sailors and other travellers continually refreshed the city’s stock of infectious maladies.
Plague, virtually always present somewhere in the city, flared murderously every ten years or so. Those who could afford to left the cities at every outbreak. This in large part was the reason for the number of royal palaces just outside London – at Richmond, Greenwich, Hampton Court and elsewhere. Public performances of all types – in fact all public gatherings except for church-going – were also banned within seven miles of London each time the death toll in the city reached forty, and that happened a great deal.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.