As the family ate together, breaking their fast, Gilbert was obviously sleepy.

Later, when John and his sons went to work, Gilbert yawned even more.

As they worked, Shakespeare could sense that John was irritated by Gilbert’s drowsiness. Shakespeare knew that John would not permit such inattention in the workshop—not when it came to handling sharp tools, and working with such delicate precision.

Shakespeare gave his brother a glance, to warn him to wake up now. Gilbert ignored him.

When he yawned again, John said, “Gilbert, if you are not awake, then perhaps some time in the tanyard will do you some good. The smell will wake you up.”

In the past, Shakespeare had been punished by working alone in the tanyard. The smell of animal flesh and hides, and the stench of urine and excrement, was hard to take. But it had been many years since Shakespeare had been punished like that. Gilbert, however, never ceased to be a problem. He was sent to the tanyard with some frequency.

Shakespeare saw the anger in Gilbert’s face. He hoped that his brother would not talk back to John.

Gilbert did not move. He obviously did not want to go, “I am just tired, that’s all.”

John put down his tools, and turned around to look at Gilbert, “You sleep too much, that is why you are dozy now. That is why you are tired all the time.”

Gilbert was usually the very last person in the entire house to wake up in the morning. Everyone knew it, and he could not deny it. Sometimes Shakespeare thought that Gilbert made sure to be the last one awake, out of some sort of perverse defiance, or some sort of pride.

Shakespeare and John were usually the very first to wake up. They often slept only five hours a night, or less. They usually sat down to work as early as two or three o’clock in the morning. It was not uncommon for people to divide their nighttime rest into two halves—known as first sleep and second sleep. Shakespeare and his father rarely went back to bed a second time. They did take the occasional short nap, after the family’s noonday meal.

Richard and Edmund usually slept not much longer, and would arrive at the glove workshop, around four o’clock in the morning.

Anne and Joan usually did not divide their sleep. They slept as long as they wanted. They had far more duties and work than the men, and they had to look after the children. But they still never slept more than seven hours. Mary often slept the most, and required more rest. However, even though she was always seated, she worked as hard as everyone else.

Gilbert frequently slept almost seven hours each night, almost as much as the children.

John said now, “You are not making enough gloves. You are falling behind.”

Gilbert shook his head, “I am tired because of all this work. I could get much more done, if you didn’t keep giving me so much to do!”

Richard and Edmund giggled at this silly excuse. Shakespeare shook his head, to keep them quiet.

To their surprise, John did not raise his voice. He said calmly, “Gilbert, you are not a boy, you are a man. A man should not sleep for more than six hours.”

Everyone knew that it was customary for men to sleep six hours, for women to sleep seven hours—and that only fools slept for eight hours or more.

Gilbert took offense to what John was suggesting. He stood up, “I am no fool, father!”

John did not raise his voice, “I did not say that you were, Gilbert. But as a man, from now on, you must wake up earlier, with Richard and Edmund. That will give you the time to do your work.”

The idea terrified Gilbert.

John nodded firmly, making the decision for him. He did not wait for a reply. He went back to work.

Gilbert was about to say something rash, but Shakespeare pulled him away. He hoped Gilbert’s anger would subside, before he made matters even worse. But Gilbert was still angry.

Shakespeare dragged Gilbert away, and took him to the tanyard, passing by Mary and Anne who looked concerned, but said nothing. Shakespeare spoke softly to him, “Gilbert, you will see. It is not that difficult. I hated getting up so early, you know that. But now I enjoy it. It is indeed very beneficial.”

Long ago, when he was a boy, Shakespeare had the same problem. He frequently overslept. But after some time, he got used to sleeping less. At the time, Shakespeare thought that getting more sleep would make him less tired, but he discovered the opposite to be true. He often thought, God only knows why getting less sleep gives me more energy, and getting more sleep makes me more tired.

Shakespeare did not know what else to say, to make Gilbert feel any better. He said, “You will see, you will eventually enjoy it. And we will enjoy having more time with you in the morning.”

Gilbert snapped, “Leave me alone! Don’t tend to me like I am some sheep!”

Shakespeare backed away and went back to the workshop. He sat down and stitched a glove, very slowly, in order to calm his mind.

He heard a faint chirping sound. He was very busy, so he resisted the urge to look and see what kind of bird it was. As a boy growing up in Stratford, he loved nothing more than to watch birds flying, landing, eating, hopping on a branch, shaking their wings, chasing each other, disappearing among the clouds, and living among and above the people of the town.

When he was very young, he sometimes ran into the forests and fields looking for them. Over time, he thought he had developed a special understanding of birds, and that he had a sort of bond with them.

He remembered the time when he was very young, and when he first paid any attention to birds. He thought that the sounds birds made, and their birdsong, was strange and incomprehensible. Over time he began to hear the differences in the sounds they made. He began to believe that they spoke a mysterious language.

He later heard about how a dove stuck its beak into the mouth of Pope Gregory, to give the Pope the right words to say. Shakespeare hoped that one day he might possess such a gifted bird.

He paid even more attention to the birds, and tried to watch them as much as possible. He was teased by other boys, for having his head in the clouds so often. However, he did not stop watching birds and learning the differences in how they looked, how the flew, and how they sounded. He loved few things as much as their birdsong.

With his eyes lifted upward so often, he also began to pay attention to the clouds. At first they mostly looked the same. Over time, he saw many differences in the clouds. He became even more fascinated by them, and by their behavior. He especially loved being able to see the invisible wind become visible, as it moved around and through the clouds, to change their shape.

Sometimes he even saw enormous clouds that appeared in the shape of giant anvils. He liked to imagine that the clouds were the size of the anvils found in the workshop of Hephaestus, the blacksmith to the gods of Olympus. And he liked to imagine that all of the wind in the skies was produced from Hephaestus’s twenty bellows.

He noticed how the anvil clouds sometimes had areas that resembled the horn of an anvil, also known as a bickern or beak-iron. It made think that there was some connection between the anvil clouds and the beaks of birds.

He asked his schoolteacher about it. His teacher found the idea intriguing. He told Shakespeare that the horn of an anvil was known in Italian as the lingua—which also meant “language” or “tongue.”

Shakespeare wondered if there was a sound from the clouds that he was not hearing. He began to observe the clouds even more. He sometimes even ran into fields, or forests—away from the noise in the streets of Stratford—to look at the clouds, and listen to them as carefully as he could.

He heard nothing. If the clouds were indeed speaking, he was unable to hear their tongues.

A few weeks later, with his head in the clouds again, he heard the birds singing from every direction. He stopped walking and listened to them, as he stared at the clouds.

A thought suddenly landed in his head, What if the sounds and songs that birds make is the sound that God makes, as He hammers and beats out a piece of iron on the clouds, like so many anvils?

He did not know why his mind became so tangled. He had no idea why birds would have anything to do with clouds. He thought, And yet, I cannot stop thinking that it is somehow true. The ringing in my ears from all the birdsong and sounds of birds are like the peals of a hammer on an anvil.

Even now, as he sat in the glove shop, he thought, The more I think of it, the more this idea appeals to me.

Over time, he never found any evidence to prove his idea. The sounds that birds made was no less strange to him, but it seemed more comprehensible. Also, as time went by, he did not feel the need to prove it, or find evidence to support the idea. He simply liked the idea.

When he was in school, first learning to read and write, and learning Latin and Greek, he loved reading about birds, and other creatures. With each thing he learned, he wanted to learn even more. He became greedy for knowledge. All of the other boys wanted to play games, challenge each other to fights, and generally get into trouble. He wanted to learn. It did not make him the most popular boy. The other boys frequently teased him.

When he was introduced to Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he was delighted by all of the stories about animals that turned into people, and people who turned into animals.

He also instantly fell in love with Aesop, who wrote fables about birds, lions, ants, bats, and other creatures. As he immersed himself in those stories, he found himself wondering if there was really much difference between humans and animals. He once thought, Do birds even know that they are birds? Do they even think? Do they have emotions? Do they know that we are human—or do we look like some strange birds to them?

What does it even mean to be human?

As a boy, he sometimes wondered if the birds around him might actually be people who were changed into birds. After all, he had learned how King Brân the Blessed’s name meant “Blessed Crow” or “Blessed Raven.” He thought that Brân may have changed from a bird into a human.

Since Brân was a giant, he thought, he must have been a very big bird indeed. Perhaps he was made the King of Britain because he was the biggest bird of them all.

Shakespeare began to have boyish dreams that he himself could turn into a bird one day. He spent days trying to figure out which bird he was. And then one morning when he was studying the Latin language, and nodding his head, hung over a book—he imagined himself as a plump and gluttonous bird, eating up words, like they were so many worms.

Very often, he became so proud of what he had learned at school, he would run home to tell his mother. He told her about Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, the Roman general—for whom Ovid may have written the Metamorphoses. The Corvinus family name was from the Latin word Corvus which meant “raven.”

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He told his mother about Gerana, whom the Pygmies worshipped as a god. Gerana unwisely claimed to be more beautiful than Hera, the queen of the Greek gods. Hera took her revenge, by turning Gerana into a crane.

He told Mary about how Hera turned King Priam’s sister, Antigone of Troy, into a stork.

He told her about Hecate’s mother Asteria, who escaped being raped by Zeus, the king of the Greek gods. Asteria evaded him by turning into a quail and leaping into the sea, where she then transformed into an island.

He told his mother about Zeus’s insatiable and terrible appetite for beautiful women. Zeus also turned himself into creatures, in order to rape women. He turned into a satyr to rape Antiope, and a bull to rape Europa. He even turned into a cuckoo to seduce, and then to marry Hera—his own sister.

He told her about Apollo’s mother Leto, a Titan goddess, who turned the mortal Lycian peasants into frogs for not being hospitable to her. He told her about Philomela, who turned into a nightingale, Procne who turned into a swallow, and princess Nyctimene who was transformed into an owl, because of her sins.

Mary was often shocked by these stories that Shakespeare had learned. She did not discourage him from learning them, since she thought that he had to know the truth about history.

John overheard them one day. He was very angry. He told Shakespeare that it was wrong to show off what he had learned, and that such displays of intelligence were prideful. He said that Shakespeare should not share any such wicked tales. He was very upset that such stories of rape were taught to children. He also said that anything written by any pagan writers—even Ovid, Homer, Virgil—was sinful, and not worth reading.

He gave Shakespeare an order, “Just because something is written in these other books does not make it worth knowing, or repeating. Just because it is written in a book does not make it true. You are never to speak of any other book in this house, other than the books of the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament. Those are the only books worth knowing. They are the only books that are true.”

Shakespeare was upset. But of course he obeyed his father. He kept the pagan stories out of the house, even though he wanted to share what he was learning.

He wanted to tell his brothers about so many incredible and important people from the past—like Odysseus and his wife Penelope, Aeneas and Queen Dido, Helen and Paris, Agamemnon and Achilles, King Priam and Queen Hecuba, Hector, Hercules, King Arthur and Guinevere, Sir Gawain, Alexander the Great, Scipio Africanus, Hannibal—and many more.

He wanted to tell them the incredible and often very disturbing history of the Emperors of Rome, such as Caligula, Claudius, Elagabalus, and Tiberius. He especially wanted to teach them about Constantine the Great, who was the first Emperor to convert to Christianity, and who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

Shakespeare was amazed by all of the famous and infamous people throughout history. He loved reading about how they made history—through their deeds and misdeeds, and their triumphs and tragedies. Each of them, in their own way, inspired Shakespeare to think, Perhaps I could make history, too—even if it is something small. Perhaps I might do something that is remembered in the future, something that is read about in books.

When Shakespeare read the book Works and Days by Hesiod, he was especially eager to tell his father about it. He thought his father and that ancient Greek poet had so much in common. Hesiod valued good hard work just as much as John did.

Sitting on his stool now, Shakespeare set aside those memories and fleeting thoughts that fluttered through his mind like a flock of birds.

It confused him. He thought, Why did I learn all of these things, if there is no purpose to them?

Why did I read Virgil, Homer, Hesiod, Aesop and so many others, and study them as if they were important—if they have no importance in my life now? Why did I learn about them—why should anyone learn about them—if that learning is not put to any use? Why do we read such books and set them aside—and close our minds to them, when we close their covers? Why do we read about the great and heroic women and men of the past—and not put their greatness to use in our lives, and become heroes ourselves? Why do we read about the terrible and cruel women and men from the past—and their dark deeds—and not prevent women and men from even becoming terrible and cruel? Are we only to read the chronicles of history as if they are hollow and cheap illusions—without any truth, without any value, and without any usefulness?

Should we dismiss past history as mere entertainment? Are the people in history trivial actors in trifling stories?

Such questions upset him. He did not like it when he became so reflective and lost in thought.

He now harnessed his attention to his work at hand, and tried to block out such distracting questions. He quickly became distracted again. Instead of trying to force himself to work, he stopped working. He went outside the workshop, for some fresh air.

There was a morning fog, not too dense. He saw the glistening dew on the grass. He stared at the misty sky as thick clouds began to clear slowly, and as the Sun was still low over the horizon.

It was another thing that Shakespeare had discovered when he began to get up early with John, many years ago. He found that he enjoyed taking a small break just to watch the Sun as it rose over the horizon, and as the light first illuminated the sky. It never looked the same each day, and it never ceased to amaze him. He was always surprised by how eagerly and cheerfully the Sun rose. It is as if the Sun stands on tiptoes, he thought, as impatiently to see the world as the world is keen to see it.

He remembered the first time he heard his father say the name of the town in which they lived—Stratford-Upon-Avon. He was a very young boy, and he was just beginning to make sense of the world in which he lived. John said it so quickly, to Shakespeare’s ears it sounded like “Stratford-up-on-heaven.”

For whole weeks and months, Shakespeare incorrectly understood the name of his own town. He spent his days in a childish wonderment, enchanted by the idea that he lived in a heavenly town. It was not until almost a year later that his mother corrected him. But even years later, in moments like these, Shakespeare still found himself occasionally admiring Stratford-Upon-Avon as if it was a heavenly haven.

He saw some jackdaws as they scattered, screeching as they flew away—perhaps afraid that he was a hawk. He wondered whether they had traveled far. He liked to imagine that they had been in London the day before, or Paris, or Rome, or Jerusalem—or perhaps they had flown from the New World, and perhaps even from the colonies of Spain. He tried to picture what the world must look like to them, and how small it must all seem.

He often liked to think of the morning dawn as a time of dew and jackdaws, and as a misty time of each day when almost anything could or would happen.

Shakespeare thought of words that Juvenal wrote, “rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno”—about how rare it would be to see a bird on earth that looked like a black swan. Now as he looked at the waters of the Avon River, Shakespeare thought that he might see a sight as impossibly rare as a swan that was dark, or dun, or even black.

Shakespeare looked upward into the sky. He remembered how Hesiod wrote that if an anvil were dropped from Heaven, it would take nine days for it to fall to earth. Shakespeare liked to think that Hesiod was wrong. He wanted to believe that there was no limit to how high the heavens were, and that there was no ceiling to the space above him. If he had the power to ascend and travel upward, he wanted to believe that he would keep climbing and never ever stop.

Shakespeare liked to think that no matter what troubled him each day, by the time that he saw the morning Sun, his troubles seemed to evaporate with the mist and fog.

Just now, the light of the Sun began to form massive fiery orange-colored beams jutting through the clouds. Shakespeare paused to admire how the architecture of the sky changed before his eyes.

Many years before, when he learned to get up earlier in the morning, he loved looking at the sky. He sometimes saw unusual things—lights and illuminations in the heavens that were mysterious and strange.

In the month of September, in the east, and right before sunrise, he occasionally saw an immensely tall pillar of light. It did not shine down from the sky, but rose upward from the horizon. It sometimes glowed in the shape of a triangle. He often thought it looked like a dawn that was not authentic, but false.

There were other times, throughout the year, in no particular month, that he would see another column of light. It was similar in shape and brightness, rising up from the western horizon. This other extraordinarily tall shaft of light was unusual, since he could often make out strands or smaller threads of light within the main body of the column.

Shakespeare never knew what to make of these peculiar lights. The only person who was awake with him was his father. He sometimes showed them to John, who had no answers. He told Shakespeare that such things were clearly the handiwork of God, whose works are not always to be comprehended. John told him to admire it, but not to worry himself thinking about it.

Shakespeare knew that there were astronomers who spent their lives studying such things, and they must have had answers. But he was not an astronomer. That was not his business. He was a glove-maker, and his business was making gloves. He told himself that he should not try to decipher such ethereal lights. But Shakespeare did think that his father was right, that God made these lights for a purpose, even if they did not know what it was. He sometimes thought, We see stars—but what are stars? What is the Moon, or the Sun? Are we meant to understand them? Or are we merely meant to see them—from afar? Perhaps one day we will have such answers, and gain such incredible knowledge. We may learn so much, but does such knowledge truly benefit us? Or perhaps we will never know what life means as long as we are looking outward, and not inward.

By getting up so much earlier, and by working so many more hours each day, Shakespeare became far more patient while he worked. Before he began getting up early, he was constantly restless, nervous and frustrated while he worked. He would often get knots in his stomach, primarily because he never thought he had enough time to do the work. As soon as he woke earlier, and put in more hours, he was able to relax. He never had to hurry again. The knots in his stomach softened and dissolved.

His attention to detail also became better. He began to discover many more intricacies in the work he did. He could stop and appreciate the many subtle and small nuances to each and every step in the complicated process of making gloves. These discoveries only added to his productivity and overall pleasure for the work. He really appreciated all of the hard work that he put into gloves, and he was even more satisfied that he had done his best.

It was around that time, when he was younger, that he started looking forward to see the rising Sun, and to behold the light in the morning sky. He also enjoyed seeing the Morning Star, also known as the Dawn-Bringer—which the Romans named Venus. They found it so beautiful, they named it after the goddess of beauty and love.

When Shakespeare saw the Morning Star in the morning, it reminded him of that time in 1572 when the “new star” appeared. He had to admit that there was part of him that wanted to see that blazing light again. He hoped that one of these mornings it would return.

On many mornings, he went outside in the dark, to gaze at the dark sky, even before any cock had a chance to crow. There were times when he thought that he and the rooster had a close affinity. He loved to look at the night sky of the late morning. It reminded him of the plumage of a starling. It was a time of the morning when blackbirds sang together with nuthatches and robins and chaffinches and wrens, and all sorts of other birds. He liked to think that dawn was the happiest time of the day for the birds, since they liked to sing together in one grand chorus. The jackdaws and rooks often even danced together in the sky, in the dawn’s light.

Also, in the dark, as if he was blind, Shakespeare could hear something else, in between the sounds of the birds, the sound of the wind in the trees, and the random and soft natural sounds around him. He did not know what he heard but he heard something.

He would then wait until the light of the Sun arrived to illuminate the world. He had even found a Psalm that he thought expressed what he saw, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth the work of his hands.”

Shakespeare came to believe that the real reward of waking up so early was to be able to see the artistry of Creation, and have it inspire him to be a creator in his own right.

In the last two years or so, he had even come to believe that it was that time of the morning when he was most likely to see Christ’s promised return. He imagined that Christ would come down from the heavens with glory and power, surrounded by a host of angels.

The idea of His return filled Shakespeare with a unique joy that was unlike any other feeling—a sensation of contentment and comfort that he had found nowhere else in his life.

And yet the idea of His return also made Shakespeare concerned and sad. There was so much he wanted to do in his life, so many things he wanted to learn for himself, teach to his family and especially his children, and so many places he wanted to go. The idea of Christ’s return filled him with joy, but it also made him feel as if his own life was far too empty.

He did not share these concerns with anyone, not even Anne. Whenever he talked with her about the Second Coming of Christ, she became excited. She called it the “blessed hope” for all people. She said that no matter what she wanted or needed, the return of Christ was what the world and all the people of the world needed more than anything. Her selflessness made Shakespeare ashamed of his own selfish desires.

Over time, it also occurred to Shakespeare that when he and John worked together each early morning, in silence by that candlelight, in the dead of night, they were far from alone. He began to believe that God might be present with them. He suspected that, through their work, they were expressing a desire for God, and as soon as God was sought in such a humble and obedient way, God would and did join them.

Shakespeare never spoke a word of this. He told no one, not even Anne. He was worried that his family would think that he was being blasphemous. In those moments when he thought that God was actually present, Shakespeare did not look up from his work, and he did not speak aloud. Like a dutiful servant, Shakespeare just kept working.

Shakespeare and his father hardly talked when they worked together that early, working by the light of sometimes a single candle. Often the only sound between them was their chewing some angelica herb for digestion, which Mary grew in her garden. But it was a time that Shakespeare found to be very precious.

Shakespeare looked at the sky now, and hoped that Gilbert would discover how good and how rewarding it could be to wake up so early. He hoped that Gilbert would find a creative energy in this work. He fervently hoped that Gilbert would find that feeling of being connected to God and His Creation.

Gilbert was often in Shakespeare’s prayers. He asked God for guidance, and how to be a better brother, and how to reach out and connect with his brother. Shakespeare sometimes wondered, How is it possible that Gilbert and I are siblings—when we are so entirely different? How could he possess such a wicked nature in such a good family as ours? How could Gilbert reject so much of what we happily accept? Why does he fight with father and mother, and show such singular and solitary ingratitude? Why does he insist on fighting, when all we want is peace? Why does he seem to resent the love we offer him?

I do not fully know what makes Gilbert do what he does. Why does he try to undo all that the rest of this family is trying to do?

Shakespeare bowed his head and thought, I wish I had the answer, and a solution that would satisfy him.

After a moment, he returned to his family, and to his work.