The Book of Air and Shadows - Michael Gruber [132]
Soe goe we throew the oulde stones of the priorie all o’ergrowne with brakken & smale trees; it was the priorie of St. Bosa as he telleth whilst we goe, onece the abode of holie sisters. Hee pointes variously: here the chapel there the cloister & at last come we to a ring of stones & in the centre a black cercle. This is St. Bosa’s holy-welle he saies & list thee well to it & droppeth in a pibble & it passeth a long tyme before wee heare but verie fainte the plash. Tis deep saies I. Marry, passinge deep, saies hee they saie no man hath plombed it ever. In past tymes the maydes would gather heere on St. Agnes daie & draw up a payle & peer in the water to scrye the face of theyre husband that shalbe. But no more, no more: for God as we nowe are taught loveth not confort, nor plaifulnesse, nor musick, nor glorious shewes, nor anie lovelie thynge, nor yet workes of charitie, but desireth us to tremble in plain dull chamberes, wee cloathed all in mourninge, whilste som whey-face canting parson drones wee are damned, damned damned to hell. Then laughes clops me on showleder & saies hang such sectish talk for now wee are for home & shall feaste us & drinke & play nine mens morris lyke simple folk.
Soe we did & after meate wee oute to the sward all the familie & Spade with his knife cutteth out some turves to make a board & they commense plaie. I saie I know not this game & W.S. saies what, canst not play morris? Nay you plaie deeper games mye tricksey cosen deep as Bosa Holiewell; soe I aske his meaninge & he saies why I meant onlie London games with cartes as pinero & gleake. But I thinke he meant else.
This night he hath a candle late & I heere hym pace his chamber & I listen close & heer the scrach of a pen & shift of paper & I think hee must write oure plaie of Mary now. My lord you ask can I overlook his papers to see what he doth write & I shall try it; but hee is verie close with hys papers & no onne is let see them til he be finished. I praye you my lord doeth well & all your howse prosper, from Stratford-upon-Avon the 19th June 1611 bye your lordshipes most humble servt Richard Bracegirdle
13
Iam reading a little Shakespeare now, in the intervals between sleeping, eating, and writing this thing. Mickey’s got a Riverside here, of course, not to mention any number of supplementary texts, lexicons, critical works, and so forth. Shall I add my own little bit of bird shit to Everest? I think not, although I have to say that Bracegirdle has given me a somewhat different take on the guy. As I’ve already said, I have had some commerce with creative types and I have indeed seen in them the same peculiar blankness that our Dick picked up in W.S. Like they’re talking to you and doing business and all but you get the feeling you’re talking not to a regular person but to a fictional character they made up? I just mean writers here; musicians are quite different, like large hairy children.
It so happened, my little diary tells me, that I spent the next morning with a musician whose name you would undoubtedly know if you were rockin’ in the ’80s at all and this fellow had written at least fifteen Top Twenty songs, music and lyrics and (not having taken the precaution of consulting a good IP lawyer) had signed the copyright to these songs over to his label, in return for which the scumbag who owned the label gave him an advance of something like twenty-five grand. And gosh, the scumbag kept feeding him driblets of money, and of course the musician became famous and went on tours and made even more money, and flash forward twenty or so years, with his original group long dispersed and the crowds of fans with them, but the songs are now classics getting tons of airplay on every oldie station in the country and the label scumbag sells his copyrighted list to a media megacorp for close to a billion dollars and what is my guy’s share? Zip is what, the same as what he earns for all those zillions