Alms for Oblivion (8 page)

Richard Milford was still a sensitive creature underneath The shell of his success was thin. He fixed me with a hard stare. He had a little peculiarity in his eyes which was disconcerting when
you first noticed it: one of the irises was heavily flecked with green while the other was pure blue.

“I thought that some of the matter was . . . a little sensational.”

“Such as?”

“The severed head and the cut-off arms together in the one scene perhaps.”

“It is a satire on cruelty.”

“I thought it was a tragedy.”

“A satirical tragedy. Or a tragical satire. Or what you will. Those limbs are made of wax, by the way, designed for torment by the cunning of Duke Ferrobosca. They are not real, you
know.”

“But the heart of the wicked Cardinal torn out at the end and brandished before the audience, that is real.”

They’d use a sheep’s heart but it would still be real in the sense I meant.

“Nicholas, I tell you,” Richard told me, “this is the way the drama is going.”

I had to acknowledge that he might be right. You could never lose out by underestimating the taste of an audience, at least when it came to violence. Audiences are funny things though. If you
offended them in their proprieties – by advertising the blessings of incest for instance – you ran the risk of failure.

Even so, I was surprised at the direction Richard Milford’s writing had taken, from the lightness and sugariness of his early pieces to the violent colouring of this latest offering. He
might well be correct that the drama was getting darker. By contrast, his own personal circumstances were nothing but sunny. For one thing, he was achieving some professional success. For another,
he’d recently married. His wife, Lucy, was a pretty, demure piece. She was a gentlewoman.

And not only had Richard Milford got himself a wife, he’d acquired a patron too. I’ve mentioned already that he seemed to model himself on William Shakespeare: coming from the same
country, setting himself up as a playwright and also trying to establish himself as a pure poet. And the one thing a poet needs above all is a patron.

In his early days William Shakespeare had a patron – Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton. Even I, a relatively unknown actor, had exchanged words on two occasions with Wriothesley. I
remembered his candid gaze. Shakespeare was still, as far as I knew, friends with the Earl although Southampton had been lucky to escape with his life after the Earl of Essex’s rebellion and
he yet lived in the shadow of disgrace. WS had dedicated his poem of
Venus and Adonis
to this nobleman, when he was young, when they were both young.

A little while ago Richard Milford decided that he too required a sponsor and fastened on a noble sprig to garnish his first book of verse. So in the front of
A Garland
appeared a florid
tribute to one R.V., Robert Venner. Venner was the son of some obscure lord from some backwater Loamshire or Clod Hall. Whatever furrow he’d sprouted from, Venner was entitled to be addressed
as Lord Robert. He was no Southampton though. No great port, he was barely a tiny harbour. He wasn’t charming and beautiful and dashing like Southampton. Venner was highly undistinguished in
appearance, squat and straw-haired. At most a lordling or a lordlet. He was an occasional attender at the Globe playhouse and I’d met him once, very briefly. I thought that Richard Milford
ought to have spent longer looking for a patron. I didn’t imagine that Venner had too many poets clamouring for his patronage. Still, it was none of my business.

All of this – Richard Milford’s new play, titled
The World’s Diseas’d
, and his connections with his patron – came together for me in an unfortunate
conjunction on the following day, the day after Peter Agate’s arrival in my lodgings.

I left Peter asleep in my room in Dead Man’s Place. It was nine o’clock but he was still flat on his back, a combination of last night’s drinking in the Devil and, no doubt,
general excitement at finding himself consorting with real players in the big city. I assumed he’d find something to do to while away the day. I wondered whether he’d pay a return visit
to Holland’s Leaguer and Nell. I hoped not.

The fog was still creeping around Southwark like a disgraced guest. The sound of church bells came muffled through the gloom. Passengers passed like wraiths in the streets.

In the Globe playhouse it was business as usual today. We played less frequently at this time of year – on the previous day, for example, we’d only had our
Troilus and
Cressida
rehearsal at Middle Temple – but we did continue to perform for the public. Our audiences were loyal.

In the morning we rehearsed in the tire-house for some play or other – I’ve forgotten what it was now – and in the afternoon there was the revival of a drama called
Love’s Diversion
by William Hordle. This was a companion piece to his earlier
Love’s Disdain
, which had also done well for us. Not a bad house for a revival, all things
considered, more than half full. The penny-payers in the pit stamped their feet and huddled together near the stage while their plumy breaths and the smoke from their pipes added to the dank fug of
the yard. The twopenny- and threepenny-payers in the galleries were tightly swaddled up on their seats. All their attention was held, I think, by William Hordle’s drama of love rewarded. And
not a severed head or limb in sight.

A small part of our audience was secured quite tight against the weather, however. The Globe offered a few boxes in the upper reaches of its galleries. These boxes made up in comfort and privacy
what they lacked in a near view of the stage. Indeed, they were furnished with curtains that could be pulled to shut out the sun or the rain or the more tedious parts of a play. You could even
enjoy your own private fire in your own private box. (Not a good idea in this humble player’s opinion. If I’d been a shareholder I would have worried that the wooden Globe might one day
be reduced to a mountain of ash.)

After
Love’s Diversion
was done I headed for a box in the uppermost gallery. Before the performance began Richard Milford had invited me to join him in a box which his patron had
hired, to join him for a glass to drink and for some close conversation. Little Lord Robert was holding court up there. From the stage I’d glimpsed two or three figures aloft in that box. At
least the curtains hadn’t been drawn, so presumably these people had been attending to the play.

I don’t know why I accepted his invitation. Amusement and curiosity perhaps. Still wearing my costume, I tapped at the door to the box and went straight in.

“Ah, Nicholas,” said Richard Milford. “May I present you to Lord Robert. My patron, you know.”

Oh, didn’t I know.

It was late afternoon. Standing in the rapidly dimming daylight in the middle of the box was Richard’s stubby patron, his Southampton-substitute. A sea-coal fire threw a flickering glow on
the whitewashed walls and kept out the damps. A small woman was sitting at the edge of the little room overlooking the stage. I could see her only in outline. For a moment I hoped that it was
Richard Milford’s fresh young wife, Lucy. I inclined my head, very slightly.

“Nicholas Revill, my lord,” said Milford. “You have met, I believe.”

“We have met, I believe,” parroted Lord Robert.

“A promising young player, you know,” added my friend Milford.

Now, this was the kind of remark sure to gall my kibe. You know you’re getting on in experience, if not in years, when you no longer like being called ‘promising’.

“Not so young any more, Master Milford,” I said neutrally, “but about your age.”

“Nor so promising neither, Master Revill? Haw haw.”

This was Lord Robert speaking. I found it very difficult to think of him as Lord Anything. Lord Bumpkin perhaps. He had a twangy, rusticky sort of voice, with burrs and thistles clinging to
it.

“That is not for me to judge, my lord, how ‘promising’ I am. You have just seen me perform, after all.”

I indicated my costume. In
Love’s Diversion
I played a lover – a satisfied lover, unlike Shakespeare’s Troilus – and was wearing something smart but unshowy.

Lord Bumpkin came forward and felt the material of my doublet. He had little pig-like eyes, hair like a hay-rick and powerful, meaty hands. He stood back and sized up the overall effect of my
costume, as if he might be about to buy it. Then he turned towards the woman sitting by the outer rail. Now I saw that she wasn’t Lucy Milford and was disappointed. This woman was much
stouter, much thicker. She was also dressed in a style which gave much away, whether you wanted what she was giving or not.

“Whaddya say, Vinny? Do you like the cut of his cloth?”

“I am not a tailor, dear.”

“I mean, is Master Revill’s performance
promising
– or has he shot his bolt? Haw.”

“It depends on what he’s promising, don’t it, dear?”

Her voice was as ugly and countrified as her husband’s.

“Or what he’s performing, haw haw,” said Lord Bumpkin.

I said nothing, not feeling up to these rallies of wit.

Richard Milford, as if he saw that his aristocratic friends were not making a favourable impression, busied himself at a little table and handed me a glass of something spiced with ginger.

“Well,
I
thought you did well this afternoon, Nicholas,” he said.

Well, thank you, Richard, I thought.

“It is a thin play, this
Love’s Diversion
, you know,” he added. “It wants a bit of blood and sinew.”

“William Hordle is a good craftsman,” I said. “Master Shakespeare thinks highly of him.”

“Oh, Shakespeare,” he said.

“Tell me, Master Revill, you’re a player . . . ”

“I am, my lord.”

Bumpkin Venner seemed to be having difficulty in ordering his thoughts.

“As a player . . . you are able to say . . . regarding these Shakespeares and these Hordles now . . . they don’t match up to our playwright, do they?”

“
Our
playwright – I am not sure who – ”

“This gent here. They just don’t match up, do they?”

Squat Lord Bumpkin slammed a meaty paw into Richard’s back, causing him to spill some of the contents of his glass. Even in the dim light of the box, Richard had the grace to look
uncomfortable.

“Oh, Richard is without equal,” I said.

O Nicholas, master of the diplomatic equivocation.

“And he is not merely our playwright. He is our poet as well. Look.”

And from out of a pocket Lord Bumpkin produced a slim volume which I recognized as Richard Milford’s
A Garland
. He opened the poetry book near the frontispiece and jabbed a stubby
finger at a paragraph. I couldn’t make out much in the half-light of the box but Bumpkin saved me the trouble by reading the words aloud, after a bout of throat-clearing to get rid of the
burrs and thistles.

“‘TO R.V. THE ONLY BEGETTER.’”

These first words were boldly uttered, fitting the capital letters they were printed in. Then the speaker moderated his delivery, imparting a tender, almost trembling quality to what
followed.

“‘
As the weaker growth must needs find some stronger plant to prop it up, so I turn respectfully but fearfully towards your lordship in hope of your favour, since only in the sun
of your gaze can my lines thrive and my verses grow. If these first fruits of my brain prove deformed, I shall be sorry they had so noble a godfather, and vow no more to plough so profitless a
furrow, but if posterity find in them some scrap of worth, then may all the honour and praise be his to whom these lines are dedicated.
’”

There was a pause. When he’d first opened the
Garland
, I expected Lord Bumpkin to read one of Richard’s poems but he had chosen instead to read the dedication – the
dedication to himself. R.V. THE ONLY BEGETTER, Robert Venner. A dedication may be a kind of poem, I suppose, with a similar degree of pretence and deceit in it. In fact Bumpkin hadn’t so much
read as recited it, and I realized that he had the words off by heart. Well, if a volume of verse was dedicated to me I expect I’d know the words pretty thoroughly too. Although I probably
wouldn’t read them aloud to a stranger. Not unless I was very self-assured – or stupid.

“Very good,” I said.

Richard Milford coughed, as if with embarrassment.

“Our poet, eh, Vinny?”

“Some of those verses are about me, they are,” said the woman called Vinny. She hadn’t moved from her seat in the corner. I wondered that she didn’t need to wear more
clothing on such a cold and dank afternoon. Now she made a give-me gesture to her husband. He handed over the precious volume. Without opening it, she brandished it like a prize. “About me
these verses are. Master Milford told me so.”

Another compromised cough from Milford.

“Better than having words about you scrawled up in the jakes, eh, Vinny?” said Lord Venner.

I expected the lady to object to the imputation that people wrote items about her on the walls of a privy, but to my surprise she found her husband’s remark extremely witty. Her large tits
quivered. Her cheeks puffed out in delight.

“Especially when you wrote those words in the first place,” said this lady to her beloved.

“One must do something when one is at stool,” said my lord.

“The devil finds work for idle hands,” said his lady.

They guffawed together. Then, glancing down at the book in her hand, she made an effort to elevate the conversation and repeated, “But these verses
are
about me. Master Milford says
so.”

“Then they must be, my lady,” I said, “since we all know that poets never lie either in their verses – or in their persons.”

I gulped at my glass. Whether from the ginger in the wine or from some other cause I felt my face growing warm in this little sea-coal-heated playhouse box.

“We are informed that Richard has written a new play,” announced Lord Bumpkin.

“
The World’s Diseas’d
, you know, Nicholas,” said Richard Milford, the complacent satirist.