Death of Kings (22 page)

“Yes,” I said, now irritated at what I thought was WS’s attempt to divert the conversation.

“You are a traditional man, Nicholas?”

“Perhaps,” I said warily, wondering what this had to do with anything.

“You like a story with a beginning, a middle and an end,” said WS.

“And an epilogue,” I added.

“Well, life is not always so neat,” said the playwright. “Sometimes we must trim and compromise.”

“I suppose so. Next thing you’ll say is that I’ll learn.”

Master WS almost smiled.

“Let me tell you, in confidence, Nicholas, that there is a design behind what we are doing . . . even though it may not at first appear. It is the case.”

“In this case?” I pressed him.

Compelled to justify my persistence, my importunity, I suppose I’d have argued that William Shakespeare having employed me to run an errand to his friend Henry Wriothesley gave me the
right to an answer. I considered myself to be, on all sides, a man freighted with secret knowledge. A privileged man. A man in danger.

“The weather may turn, Nick. In such situations, anybody with sense provides himself with as many burrows as possible. Do you understand me now?”

I – I am not sure.”

“Or, to vary the figure, it is the foolish gambler who risks everything on one throw.”

“Gamblers are foolish by nature.”

“Says the parson’s son,” said WS, looking closely at me and smiling slightly to rob the words of any offence. “You are probably right and it was a poor analogy. But
sometimes we have to gamble.”

At that point he was beckoned across by Dick Burbage on the far side of the room. He clapped me round the shoulder and walked away without another word. As I waited my moment with the
Book-keeper, to see what little role I’d been allotted in
Richard II
, in my mind I turned round and round WS’s words. When he’d talked about having more than a single
‘burrow’, I presumed that he meant that he and Burbage and the rest of the senior men had agreed to put on a performance of
Richard at
Merrick’s request (and, behind him,
the Earl of Essex) because there was a possibility – a slight possibility – that Essex might find himself once more a power in the land. It would not do to alienate such an influential
figure.

Yet, even as it occurred to me, this explanation didn’t really answer. There was no chance of Essex’s scrabbling his way back into favour with our Elizabeth. Even I, who was no
politician or court-leech, knew that Devereux had crossed his Rubicon when he stormed back from Ireland. He’d been lucky to escape with his head still fastened to his shoulders on that
occasion – and if what I’d witnessed in his house was anything to go by, he could not long avoid a fatal appointment in the Tower yard. No, I was forced to conclude that the real reason
why Shakespeare & Company were staging
Richard
was that they considered the Essexites might
win
if they raised a head.  In other and blunter words,  they believed our
sovereign lady might be deposed by force and insurrection . . . and another elevated to her place.

This was not – let it be whispered – impossible. Kings have been compulsorily unseated before now and usurpers have taken their place. WS’s own
Richard
and then his
sequel of
Henry IV
showed this very thing. But if the Chamberlain’s senior men were really throwing in their lot with a wild bunch on the Strand, then I had to question their
judgement. It may be that history is a series of improbable chances and unlikely outcomes, but it did not seem to me that the Essexites had it in them to replace a divinely appointed sovereign with
one of their own choosing. What I’d sensed in that hall in Essex House had been dangerous and unpredictable, but also wavering and uncertain in its aim. Could it really be that we of the
Chamberlain’s had hitched our fortunes to such a rickety wagon?

Enough of this speculation. I didn’t really know what it was all about. They say that history might have different if Cleopatra’s nose had been a bit longer – or a bit shorter
(I forget which) – so perhaps very great alterations may proceed from very small causes. Perhaps all it takes to shift the ship of state in its course is a bunch of wild men. After all, they
only have to overpower one individual and seize the wheel, to drive us all onto the rocks.

I was hastening away from the Globe at the end of our Friday morning rehearsal of
Richard II
, confirmed in my impression that this play of WS’s was the worst of
both worlds, paradoxically fusty and current and therefore (for us) dangerous to perform, when I heard shouts from behind. I looked round and there was another troubled Richard running up to keep
me company.

Like King Richard when he begins to realise that his throne may be forfeit, Richard Milford wore a somewhat anguished expression, a beseeching countenance. The would-be playwright’s face
was even redder than usual from the morning’s cold and from his pursuit of me.

“Nicholas, may I join you?”

“You already have.”

“You are going back to your lodgings?”

In fact, I was going to nowhere in particular, but rather wishing to get
away
from the uneasy atmosphere of the playhouse rehearsal. No one, however, likes to admit to being without a
destination and so I simply nodded.

“How do you find the four sisters? Are they still mixing their brews and potions.”

“They were well enough when I left them,” I said, irritated by Milford’s attempt to make casual conversation when it was obvious that he’d approached me for a deeper
reason. I was far from forgetting – more important, so was he – the scraps of manuscript which I’d found in the bottom of the book-room trunk, the few tattered sheets which gave
me an unwished-for power over the playwright’s professional fortunes.

“And your room . . . which once was mine? I always found it a little cold in the winter.”

So cold, I almost said, that a man died in it the other night. However, what I actually said was, “Master Milford, it is generous of you to be concerned about my welfare, particularly now
that you have moved up in the world . . . on the expectation of success.”

“You have hit on the very thing I wished to speak to you about.”

“I can guess it.”

“Master . . . Nicholas . . . you are an educated man. You know the story of Damocles and his sword?”

“Yes,” I said. “He flattered Dionysius of Syracuse by saying that the king must be the most fortunate of men. Dionysius invited him to experience royal happiness. The king
placed him at a banquet. Looking up, Damocles saw a naked sword hanging over his head by a single hair.”

“You are an educated man, as I said,” said Milford.

“And this was the happiness of a monarch, this was his security.”

As I spoke, I wondered at Milford’s drift.

“Would you be surprised if I said that I see myself as Damocles?”

Although I could suddenly see where he was headed I nevertheless said, “No doubt you can enlighten me.”

“Damocles lived in fear and trembling that at any moment the thread might snap and the sword plunge into his head. Believe me, Nicholas, when I say that my own state is not too far from
Damocles’s.”

“I am no Dionysius,” I said, half indignant, half amused, and remembering that Master Shakespeare had recently alluded to the tyrant of Sicily as well. “I am no tyrant, and if
I didn’t find the imputation funny I might be angry.”

“No, of course you’re not – but at any moment I fear that a word from you will bring to an end my burgeoning career in the playhouse. That the sword of imputed plagiary will
dash my brains out. And my
Whore
is soon to be staged, you know. It is her beginning – and mine too.”

“Really, Richard, you should save all this stuff for the stage. I don’t know why you had to borrow another man’s words. You’ve quite enough of your own, and a fine sense
of your own drama too.”

“Each man stands on his own piece of earth,” he said stiffly.

I glanced at him. His face was turned earnestly towards me, perhaps reddened by cold rather than embarrassment. The eye which was flecked with green had a peculiar liveliness to it while the
other stared bluely. We were heading, willy nilly, in the direction of Broadwall and the Coven. Again the thought recurred of the fate of poor Nat, ill-covered by leaves and strewn with branches in
a ditch not far south of here. There was a real case of foul play. I wondered whether the corpse had yet been disturbed in its resting-place by the foxes and the crows. For sure, I would not be
walking that way again for some time. All of a sudden, I grew impatient with Master Milford’s maunderings. For God’s sake! He wanted reassurance that I would not ‘betray’
him, that I would not run like some schoolboy to inform on him and his play-thieving to Messrs Burbage and Shakespeare. With all his talk about the sword of Damocles, he wanted me to be sorry for
him, he wanted to be forgiven, to be absolved by the parson’s son.

Well, I would not ‘betray’ him to our seniors – even though part of me urged that this was what he richly deserved – but nor would I tell him this, since his anxiety was
not unpleasant to me. Indeed, I regarded it as penitential. And, for certain, I would not absolve him of his fault. Oddly enough, if he’d freely owned up to carelessness, even dishonesty, in
appropriating another’s work, and then laughed it off, I think I’d have done the same. But as it was, he wriggled and squirmed on the hook of his own self-pity and self-importance, and
I could not find it in myself to release him.

“You know, Richard,” I said, “when you started to talk about Damocles and his sword, I thought that you had rather greater matters in mind.”

He looked astonishment at me, as though there could be any greater business than his own concerns.

“I mean this matter of the drama of Richard,
Richard II,
that is, and not Richard Milford. There
is
actual foul play. There may be a sword hanging over our heads by a thread
and some may stand to lose more than their reputations if it falls.”

I added a note of grimness to my speech. It was not feigned. For the phrase ‘foul play’, which had been floating around in my mind and which had already attached itself to
Nat’s demise, now became linked with our presentation of
Richard.
Just as the deposition of the King was foul play, so would be – in certain eyes – the agreement of the
Chamberlain’s to enact it on the Globe stage. And this was the very phrase that Nemo had used in his message to me. Which suggested that he already knew of the decision of our shareholders as
soon as they had taken it; we were to put on a play which could be construed as ‘foul’; he was making a sardonic joke out of it. Was Nemo aware of what was planned before it had been
announced to the rest of us that Friday morning. What was going on?

If I was in the dark, a dangerous dark, it was apparent that Richard Milford had little notion of what I was talking about either. What was Essex or Richard to him? There had been no reason for
him to attend that morning’s tire-house meeting. His association with the Chamberlain’s was still tenuous. I questioned whether he was even aware of the bubbling, distracted state of
London and her inhabitants. Probably not. After all he was merely the author stuck up in a garret somewhere, cut off from the real world.

“I do . . . do not know much about these things,” he said.

“No, well, believe me there is much pressing on our minds and hearts at this moment.”

“Of course,” he said in the tone of one who does not quite believe. “But for me . . . Milford’s mind and heart . . . Nicholas?”

“Oh I promise nothing,” I said, and strode off, feeling almost as much anger and irritation as I played at showing.

I’ve taken part in some pretty odd dramatic presentations in my time, and one or two dangerous ones too, but I don’t suppose any of them were as odd or dangerous as
our Saturday afternoon performance of
Richard II –
even though that paled in comparison with the doings of the next day.

Some of the danger came from the play itself because of its story but more of the danger came from our audience. Now, normally, the worst that we players expect to receive as a mark of the
spectators’ disapprobation is a catcall or a nutshell tossed in our direction. Occasionally a fight breaks out among the groundlings, when one man slights another’s trollop or attempts
to snip his purse-strings. In general, however, our congregations are happy enough to leave the fighting and the fury to the experts on stage.

This audience for
Richard
though was a different kettle of fish – and, if it hadn’t been for the quantity of wellborn and noble citizens in our playhouse that afternoon,
I’d be tempted to call it a
stinking
kettle of fish. Not that anybody threw anything at us or made an adverse comment on our performances. I rather wished they had. Of course they
weren’t really interested in us as players; we might just as well have been apes dressed up or parrots mouthing Master WS’s words. Give me a normal riotous assembly any day.

Never have I seen such a bunch of swaggerers and swearers, such a pile of saucy fellows and silly fops as the Essexites. These gentlemen were quite distinct from our usual attenders. Oh, they
were present too, a few of them. Those in our Company who’d claimed that the play wouldn’t be a great draw because of its fustiness, or for some other reason, seemed to be in the right.
If I’d been an Essexite and had my wits about me (probably a contradiction in terms in those dizzy days) I might have taken note of the thin sprinkling of ordinary folk in the playhouse and
seen it as an omen. However, the wild boys in the audience were having none of that. They were oblivious to everything except each other and the cause.

Watching the playhouse fill up on that dull-skied afternoon was like watching a witches’ cauldron over a blazing fire. The crowd seethed and bubbled away, not in pleasurable anticipation
of the action about to unfold on stage, but in mad delight at its own motion. And, as in a witches’ cauldron, some very unpalatable stuff was bobbing about on the surface. I even thought that
I caught a glimpse in the audience of the Puritan divine, Master Busy, the one who’d been ranting on about ‘compulsion’ when I visited Essex House. If so, it must the first
occasion when one of his breed has swallowed his hatred of the drama for the sake of his hatred of the state. This shows that they can swallow anything if they gape wide enough. But in all this
action, this milling about, we players were secondary. No, not even that. We were scarcely a sideshow.