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.’ (So was he called Dirty Will.) Then he disrobed her in great difficulty, for she scratched and fought, and he was fain to desist from such fatiguing play.But once she said she would call in some other to help with the holding her down an he lacked force to do it alone; nay, even Dickon and poor Gilbert — in default of one lusty man — should be waked from their thin boys’ snores in the neighbour room to assist at this treasonous rape.And then, aghast at the mere conceit of the counter-rape of innocence, he struck her a damned blow in the chaps and went hard at it, so that she cried both aye aye aye and her fear of harm that might chance to the child in her belly.Often she said, when the queenly mood was on her, that this act of laesa maiestas showed to poor advantage in that small bare bedchamber.There should be her court all about her — her great men of state and chamberlains and maids of honour and even, as at some progress, the base commons — to witness the gross defilement of beauty and majesty by the meanest and most despised of all her subjects.And sometimes, in the approach of her dying scream, she would talk of their clipping naked at the window in full day and view.She would act the queen otherwise.She would be the descending goddess to woo one who would feign to wish none of her (was it feigning?) WS must be adamant in his nays and pout, a lovely boy.She would have his beardkin off, she said, and eke all the hairs of his body saving his auburn crown.Then she would be at him with goddess strength, big-bellied naked.After Susanna’s birth — and she bore Susanna as easy as any sow — she was restored to her slenderness.Then it was her fancy to be herself a lovely boy and, with Susanna crowing in the cradle, to steal Dickon’s clothes from the press (they were much of a size) while the two unlovely boys, side by side in the spring night, entertained their innocent dreams.Then, decked as a pretty page, she would taunt him and simper before him and say: ‘Take me, master, in whatever way you have a mind to.’ This would fill his whole head with beating blood, so that he was blind and went for her blindly.She was, he saw, hunting out corners of corruption in his soul which he had hardly guessed at before.She would even make for him, grinning, with a dildo or penis succedaneus, and he was shocked to know she had such a thing in her chest of stored belongings.How could all this expense be supported, work to be done, his eyes heavy and limbs drooping in the morning, head dropping to the bench two hours before dinner? She, meantime, remained fresh and singing over her pans, bidding his mother rest, she had had a hard life, here was come a new daughter to halve all her burdens.Bless thee, Anne, thou art a good lass.Besides his work, he had the duty of teaching dull and godly Gilbert the glover’s craft, and Gilbert would cut his hand and drop foaming at the sight of blood or else cry loudly on his brother for the strictness of his rule and say, ‘I have spoke to God of thy naughtiness.’ And WS would reply, ‘Well then, ask God to teach thee of tranks and gussets, for, by God, I have had enough of it,’ and then Gilbert would fall, going hud hud hud, and near upset the workbench.To be added to the agents of discontent was the antiphonal wailing of Susanna and her nuncle Edmund.But most was his wife’s scolding, for she more than murmured of his untimely tiredness when it came to the time for climbing to their creaking and bouncing Shottery bed.He would say:‘Not this night.The day has been hard and hot.One night’s holiday will not harm.’‘So,’ she would reply, ‘thou callest it work, then, that thou callest not doing of it a holiday.Thou wert ready enough that August night of my undoing.’ And then she would prate of his effeminate unmanliness and take it beyond the confines of love to the manner of their life, how she would never at this gait rule her own hearth nor have fine gowns like Mistress Whatyoucall an he did not seek some better mode of employ than boy to a poor gloveman.‘Thou art weak, thou art all water, I have married but a poor thing, I, that could have had great Worcester merchants for the asking but took pity on one that seemed, with strong wifely help, like to promise fair.Thou wilt, I see it, become like thy father, a mewling shrode, naught of the ambition that should be in a man at all in thee.’ There was no ho with her, so he would escape, crying creak, to his slumbers
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