Rosamond, by James W. Morris

3/17/2023

Gerard Soest, “Portrait of William Shakespeare,” c. 1667

William Shakespeare. Snoozing in a red plastic chair in the row directly across from mine at Judy’s Suds ‘n’ Go.

I knew the man was not the original of course but he did appear to be an exact replica of what the original was supposed to have looked like. Must be a reincarnation I thought.

The new version appeared as a frail itinerant who had ventured into the laundromat in order to shelter from the cold mist outside. He was damp and dirty and his eyelids fluttered.

Here’s a big coincidence. I was holding a slim well-thumbed volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets in my hand at the time. I had read in an advice column that a single guy reading poetry at the laundromat appears interesting and not at all creepy to young ladies who might be present.

There was a portrait of the poet centered on the back cover of my book and I raised it into my line of vision. The guy across from me was Shakespeare all right.

I folded my clothes and stacked them still pleasantly warm in the green mesh laundry bag I use. Then I paused in front of Shakespeare to get one last look before leaving. My proximity seemed to wake the little man up though. Taking my friendly assessment as a sort of invitation he rose and followed me out of Judy’s.

On the street I stopped and told him I enjoyed his poems and plays but I preferred to be alone. He nodded but continued following anyway matching me step for step along the puddled sidewalk.

I stopped once more. No I said. Go away.

His head bobbed again. But there was no real understanding in his eyes.

What was the proper thing to do? Push my diminutive accoster away violently? Run? The rain dampened my laundry while I pondered the question.

I looked the man over again top to toe. He was skinny and filthy. His eyes were brown.

I thought of myself as a cautious person but decided there wasn’t anything threatening about Shakespeare since I was twice his size physically. And I was curious to learn how it was that he’d been reborn after so many years.

That’s how I ended up taking Shakespeare home with me that day.

And he never left.

***

He liked soup.

That was a blessing since I soon learned a spoon was the only utensil he manipulated with any dexterity. If you put a knife and fork into his gnarled little hands the utensils were as likely to end up stuck in his nose as his mouth.

I could not decide what to call him so I just referred to him as Old Man. Or Shaky.

Sometimes when my guest was slurping his soup an odd feeling came over me while I was sitting at the wobbly kitchen table across from him. I tried to imagine the reincarnated brain living inside his head.

How many people had made more profitable use of their intellect than he had?

How many had brought more beauty into the world?

How many were better able to capture and express what it meant to be human through art?

So go ahead Old Man I thought. Slurp your soup as much as you like.

***

He liked polyester.

The clothes Shaky was wearing when I discovered him were just rags. Searching his pockets before discarding the old gear I found nothing. Not a penny or scrap of paper.

I conferred some of my own clothes on him but the Old Man was so small compared to me he practically disappeared wearing them. Finally I went out and purchased a pair of inexpensive polyester jogging outfits. One was crimson and one powder blue. Both sported eyebrow-thin white piping along the arms and legs.

Shakespeare loved those outfits. They were lightweight and comfortable and he actually looked quite spiffy in them though I must admit the sight of the Bard of Avon swishing around my apartment modeling the lowest in Kmart fashions took some getting used to.

***

He liked television.

On days I had to go out I planted him in the chair in front of my set before leaving the house and when I returned home later I always found him still there raptly watching the same channel.

I fretted about exposing such a magnificent brain to so much cultural crap though. It was the psychological equivalent of a parent who fed his kids nothing but Cheetos.

Shaky’s emotional responses to the aforementioned television programs often seemed inappropriate. Watching those ubiquitous Law & Order reruns with Jack McCoy waggling his head in righteousness at some sneering just-nabbed murderer the Old Man was likely to burst into riotous laughter. When he saw the episode of Seinfeld in which Jerry broke up with a woman because she ate peas one at a time the Old Man wept. Great sobs racked his puny body and hot tears cascaded down his worn and withered face.

I thought at first Shaky was displaying symptoms of advanced senility. I imagined he was a sad old man who was misapprehending the culture of modern society. Then I thought about it and decided he might have understood the world better than I did.

***

Geeze. I forgot to mention that he didn’t talk.

Actually I should say that he didn’t converse. The Old Man could use his voice when he wanted to. I often caught him jabbering but couldn’t quite make out the words. Most communication therefore occurred through his use of wildly variable facial expressions. In this language Shaky was most articulate. He was able to reveal even the subtlest of wants through tiny alterations in the set of his mouth or eyebrows.

I attempted different strategies to provoke Shaky into interacting on a verbal level since of course I’d be glad to have a reborn genius pontificate a bit and illuminate poor moronic me with his well-reasoned insights into the nature of the human condition.

Direct questions were ineffective. A wry smile was his only reply to any query I posed even those constructed purposefully to offend him into response. I understand Christopher Marlowe was twice the man and the three times the poet you were I said. How do you live with your obvious inferiority?

As an experiment I tried reading his work aloud. I supposed that reminding an artist of his noblest achievements might inspire him to speech since I knew even the shiest of writers was likely to be expansive on the subject of himself. But there was no real response from Shaky. If I recited his sonnets he looked at me blankly. If I acted out one of his plays he fell asleep before scene ii.

One day at breakfast feeling a bit bored I held up the sugar bowl in front of him.

Sugar bowl I said.

Sugar bowl he immediately answered echoing my pronunciation exactly. There was a broad smile on his face. He liked the way the words sounded.

Sugar bowl sugar bowl sugar bowl he repeated savoring each phoneme as he rolled the phrase around on his tiny tongue.

I’d broken through!

I held the cereal box up in front of him.

Cereal I said.

Sugar bowl he replied.

***

I decided upon a strategic U-turn to get my guest to reengage the world and perhaps talk spontaneously. Why didn’t I see it? No person could be more disenchanted with a set of characters than the writer who fretted over and agonized about and finally worked through those characters’ stories centuries before. To Shaky his plays had simply and permanently worn out their welcome. And modern American television was no substitute. His titanic intellect was tuned to a finer classical wavelength.

What I needed to do therefore was challenge the man afresh. Put a pen in his gnarled little hands and demand he produce a new play.

It would also prove he was who I thought he was.

The idea seemed to me an insight of rare brilliance. My companion might become a vital part of the world again. And the world as reward for its wait would have a newborn play by Shakespeare to add to its treasures. I could see it. Performances worldwide. Scholars nitpicking the hell out of it without appreciating its true beauty. High-school students everywhere cursing his name. Just like the others.

I cleared my tiny kitchen table. I sat him at it and stacked fresh white paper in front of him. I presented him with my best pen.

I said The Globe needs a new play right away. Go to it!

At first Shaky seemed interested only in the stack of paper. He inspected several pieces on both sides as if expecting to see writing already there. Then he examined the pen. He unscrewed it and took out all the parts. He played with the little spring. Then he put his head down on the stack of paper and fell asleep.

The next day I was still hopeful. Rome wasn’t built etc.

I repeated the preparatory procedure of the previous day almost exactly thinking a ritualistic approach to the project might convey the importance of the activity. Then I put the pen in Shaky’s hand and put his hand to the paper.

Write! I commanded.

He took the pen apart like before and examined its guts. I took those pieces away. I handed him a cheaper pen that didn’t unscrew and he spent five minutes trying to unscrew it. Then he dropped the pen onto the slanted tabletop and watched it roll onto the floor. This seemed to delight him and he repeated the action several times.

I couldn’t help but think little progress was being made.

I had an idea that night. Shakespeare didn’t write with a ballpoint pen. Putting a modern instrument in the Old Man’s hands aroused his curiosity but didn’t excite the vestigial memory of the manner in which he used to make plays. Luckily our city had a colonial past and the next morning at a dingy souvenir shop in the Olde City Shopping Mall I was able to obtain quill and inkwell.

I rushed home with my purchases eager to bestow them on the Bard.

I sat him at the table in front of a pile of paper like before. I wrenched open the squat-shouldered bottle of ink and handed him the quill.

The look on his face! I admit I became a bit teary-eyed when I saw it.

Write! I said.

He did.

He dipped the quill and made a small mark on the paper before pausing and reclining in his chair thoughtfully. Then he moved forward again and made another mark but shook his head in dismay at the result.

I watched him from my seat on the sofa.

A thought broke free at last. Shakespeare bent to the paper with renewed vigor and wrote some large confident letters in the center of the page before virtually collapsing onto the tabletop exhausted.

Being a genius was apparently quite tiring.

After a few minutes I tiptoed around the table and lifted the diminutive poet into my arms to carry him to bed. I put my best blanket over him and made sure he was tucked in tight.

Then I stole back into the kitchen to see what the great man had written.

He had written the words sugar bowl.

The next day was Tuesday. My regular day to play chess in the park. I decided to leave the television turned off when I went out and instead placed Shaky in front of his now-familiar stack of paper. When I returned home I found the Old Man dozing in fading golden afternoon light using the stack of paper as his pillow. I made soup and woke him. When he lifted his head there was no writing on the paper beneath yet I noted that his hands were stained with ink.

Before setting Shaky in his place at the table on Wednesday I counted the sheets of paper in the stack. One hundred twenty-five.

Upon returning Wednesday evening I found the Old Man asleep very much in the same way as before. After dinner I counted the paper. One hundred twenty. Shakespeare wrote five pages. Or perhaps he ate them. All I knew was that five pages were gone.

A pattern was formed. I left him alone in the mornings and went out into the world to do whatever chores needed doing then returned home to find some paper missing and Shaky asleep.

I did no exhaustive search of my apartment during that time though I was curious about where he was secreting the work-in-progress. Be strong and restrain yourself I thought. One does not disturb Shakespeare in his writing.

***

Several weeks passed and Shaky and I settled ourselves into a routine as dull and predictable as that of an old married couple. On weekdays I found an excuse to leave him alone then returned home to make soup before we watched television together for the rest of the evening. I knew he was working because the paper and ink were disappearing with perceptible regularity. On weekends we skipped work and went to the park.

I thought the best thing to do was remain mum about the play writing project until the finished work appeared. It is said writers are as superstitious as ballplayers. Don’t mention the pitching of a no-hitter until the game is over.

What worried me was that the state of Shakespeare’s health appeared to be deteriorating. He appeared physically frail since the moment we met of course yet there was at that time in his eyes an inner light. He still ate his soup and laughed at McCoy and cried at Seinfeld but I thought his light was dimming. Perhaps he was not strong enough for the stress of trying to produce a new play after four hundred years.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I was afraid I was killing Shakespeare.

***

One day on my way home from the library I found cans of soup on sale at the local supermarket. Two for the price of one. I therefore bought more than usual and had quite an ordeal carrying the surprisingly heavy bags home.

I reached the apartment and clunked the bags down upon the cement stoop with barely strength enough to knock on the front door. Most of this soup is for Shaky I thought. The least he can do is help me inside with it.

There was no answer to my knock but this was not unusual. Shakespeare was generally to be found asleep at this hour either sitting at the table or stretched out nearby on my tattered sofa.

I sighed and dug out my key to let myself in.

When the door yielded I saw that Shakespeare was on the sofa peacefully oblivious to my entry. I went past him to the kitchen cabinet and put most of the soup away and stacked the excess on the counter. Then I turned and was on my way back to wake the Bard when I noticed a bundle of papers on my kitchen table centered upon the ink-spotted area he used for writing. The bundle was tied up with a bit of string.

Shakespeare had finished his play.

I rejoiced inwardly but decided to tease him a bit in case he was actually awake and surreptitiously watching for my reaction to his accomplishment. For the next few minutes I found excuse after excuse to walk around the table tidying the abbreviated space laughably known as my kitchen. I pretended all the while not to have seen the packet he’d left there.

Then I got a terrible feeling and turned to look directly at Shakespeare. After a moment I walked to the sofa and put my hand on his brow. His skin was stone cold.

Shakespeare was dead.

Again.

After a minute I rose and faced the bundle on the table. I realized then that his play was his goodbye note.

***

The night Shakespeare died. What a night that was.

I take medication for my disability and am not allowed to drink alcohol but decided to buy some anyway so I could toast the Old Man. At the liquor store I bought the cheapest bottle of whiskey they had. The label featured a drawing of a mule kicking a guy in the head.

At home I sat on the floor and filled a juice glass with whiskey. I silently toasted my dead friend on the couch then threw the brown liquid down my throat. As an inexperienced drinker I fully expected to choke and cough and sputter the way inexperienced drinkers do in the movies. Though my eyes burned a bit I didn’t do that. I liked it.

My grief had three layers. The first was a sort of generalized mournfulness I felt on behalf of the world at large which had just lost a reborn version of its greatest playwright.

I also experienced a rueful pang for the man himself. He was an uncontested genius who died in diminished circumstances stretched out on a wheezy sofa. Alone.

Mostly I felt sorry for myself. Shakespeare was my friend. Due to circumstances I won’t describe here he was the only real friend I’ve ever had. The pain was piercing and exacerbated by the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able provide my friend with the funeral or recognition he deserved. I simply didn’t have the financial means or the social skills and emotional wherewithal to deal with arranging a proper ceremony to acknowledge Shakespeare’s passing.

And the world believed he had lived only one life and that one ended four hundred years ago. I’d have a hell of a time convincing people that the body in my apartment belonged to anyone but a bum I found on the street.

That’s when I decided to look at the play.

I sat at the table and undid the string. I was not so overburdened with grief that I was unaware of History standing at my shoulder.

I riffled through the pages and examined through numerous cross-outs and smeared blots of ink the Old Man’s cramped and spidery scrawl.

As you may have guessed the play was utter gibberish.

***

I awoke with a start a few hours later then inwardly congratulated the manufacturer of the whiskey for adhering to truth in labeling regulations. I definitely felt as if a mule had kicked me in the head.

Nonetheless I drank some more. The bottle was mostly gone when I decided to look at the play again with less expectant eyes. Surely there is something worth salvaging in it I thought. The fact that that old man had written it at my behest endowed the work with value even if it held none in a literary sense. Or even a sensical sense.

I would analyze the manuscript word by word. What else did I have to occupy me?

First the title centered on the top page. It was not Sugar Bowl. A single word beginning with an R.

Rorschach? Ravioli? Ringworm?

No. Ringworm by William Shakespeare? I thought not.

I let my eye trace over the script without judgment attempting to take the word in as a whole.

Rosamond?

Yes. The more I peered at it the more certain I became. The title had a nice ring to it though I was ignorant about what it might refer to.

I have no computer or internet so I looked up the name Rosamond in the index of one of my old English Lit texts and found it in a bibliographic list of titles composed by Swinburne. A blank verse drama. This was either a coincidence or a not-unprecedented outright steal although since Shakespeare lived both before and after Swinburne which author would be considered to have stolen from which?

In any case I returned to the work Shaky left me and to my great surprise quickly deciphered the setting. Ancient Italy in the days of the Teutonic invasions.

With growing excitement I realized the play was not gibberish. Far from it.

I got no more sleep that night. I spent hours un-encrypting the text and during that span made remarkable headway. I transcribed the play in its entirety and learned among other things that Shakespeare was a rotten speller and whimsical punctuator. Nonetheless the words fell into place and I believe I recognized about ninety percent of them.

I will summarize the story of the play.

The princes of two rival Teutonic tribes meet by chance in a rural mountain pass and they fight. Alboin of the Lombardi slays his rival but forgets to carry away the other man’s bloody armaments afterward for trophies as is the custom of the day. Alboin’s father the King therefore refuses his son a seat at his banquet table upon his return to court. To restore his honor Alboin takes forty warriors to the castle of the rival king and demands his spoils.

Alboin’s boldness pays off. He is solemnly presented with the dead man’s armaments. But while amongst his rivals Alboin spies another treasure he covets. Standing silently near the banquet table is Princess Rosamond. The enemy king’s daughter is tall and blonde and blue-eyed and fierce. The Teutonic ideal. Taking his bold imposition a step further Alboin impulsively demands her hand in marriage. The rival king is now outraged and refuses. Determined but outnumbered Alboin pretends to return home only to sneak back alone to the castle. After bribing a guard to be alone with Rosamond his awkward and ineloquent attempt at wooing her fails. Outraged by Rosamond’s rebuffs and overcome with lust he takes the princess’s virginity by force.

A bloody war ensues and Alboin kills Rosamond’s father in battle. Afterwards Alboin thinks it the height of proper etiquette to have the dead king’s skull gilded so that the trophy can serve double duty as a rather large drinking cup. He also takes Rosamond as war booty and marries her just after his own father dies. Now Alboin is king and Rosamond is queen of the Lombardi.

One cold night Alboin hosts a particularly rowdy drinking banquet which is not a surprise since it is the chief feature of his government. He decides it might be funny to have his new wife drink some wine out of her dead father’s skull. Rosamond refuses. He forces the issue at knife point saying that his queen must “rejoice with her father.”

Next comes what I would deem the signature moment of the play. Rosamond reluctantly takes hold of the skull filled to the maxillae with sloshing wine and with her hands trembling raises it to her lips. She also utters a quiet prayer which is really a curse. Alboin will pay for his insult with his own life.

When the castle is quiet Rosamond lets an assassin into the royal bedchamber where she has attempted to exhaust the king with lovemaking. Sensing a trap Alboin wakes and reaches for his sword. But Rosamond has secured it in its scabbard. Alboin is slain.

In the days that follow it quickly becomes clear Rosamond does not have the wherewithal to hold the Lombardi kingdom together after her bold act. She flees the outraged populace and takes with her as protector a clod named Helmichis whom she impulsively marries. The couple hides out with a rich neighbor named Longinus who also yearns for r the beautiful Rosamond. Rosie likes Longinus too and decides she might as well use him to trade up from her current kinda boring spouse.

Still disturbed by the bloody mess of her first husband’s slaying Rosie this time decides to try poison. As Helmichis is exiting the bath next morning she is waiting by the tub and hands him a deadly cup of wine. Helmichis is an oaf but he is a well-traveled oaf and knows what poison is said to taste like. Though aware that it’s too late to save his own life Helmichis grabs his nearby dagger and holds it to his wife’s lovely throat. Rosamond can either drink the rest of the poison herself or be stabbed to death.

Rosie waffles a bit in a beautifully phrased speech. Then she chooses the poison and drinks it. Attention scholars. Note the parallel between this scene and the one in which Rosamond is forced to drink from her father’s skull.

It is at this juncture that the acute reader will realize the play is ending since in typical tragic Shakespearean fashion the stage is now decorated with dead bodies.

***

I awoke later that morning in very much the same position I regularly found Shakespeare. Sitting before a stack of paper at the table with my head resting on my hands. When I rose I realized how remarkably terrible I felt. My head pounded with pain. My neck ached. My mouth felt full of cotton. The mule was still at work.

No more drinking for me I decided. Never again.

I spent some time contemplating the remains of my friend. The problem of his final disposition plagued me. In the end I decided to put off a decision on how best to proceed until a time when I thought my head would be clearer.

I’ll distract myself by reading the play one more time I thought.

When I sat down to look at the pages I quickly realized that during the night something extraordinary had happened. Shakespeare’s version of Rosamond had once again become mere gibberish in my eyes. It was all scrawls and inkblots. The whole thing was utterly illegible. Even the title. How in the world did it ever seem coherent to me?

I hesitated a moment before taking up my transcribed version fearing a similar revelation. I discovered that the pages I penned were intact.

***

Many months have now passed Shakespeare died. The play he left behind is my most treasured possession. The more I read it the greater the amazement I feel regarding my small part in producing it.

How did an isolated innocent man such as myself extract such a lovely thing from meaningless marks on a page? The plot and the characters and perhaps even some of the more felicitous turns of phrase I might conceivably have invented however unlikely the prospect. But the inwrought sensuality and the monstrously beautiful humanity of the play? Well it’s clear those were given as gifts. The sorts of things I am sure I could not have conjured on my own.

James W. Morris is a graduate of LaSalle University in Philadelphia, where he was awarded a scholarship for creative writing. He has published dozens of short stories, humor pieces, essays, and poems in various literary magazines, and worked for a time as a joke writer for Jay Leno. His first novel, RUDE BABY, was recently published, and is available worldwide. More info at www.jameswmorris.com.

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Rosamond, by James W. Morris

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