Ruled Britannia (8 page)

“Clowns.” Burbage packed a world of scorn into the word. “The lackwits who watch 'em do laugh, wherefore they reckon themselves grander than the play they're in.”

Shakespeare nodded. Kemp in particular had a habit of extemporizing on stage. Sometimes his brand of wit drew more mirth than Shakespeare's. That was galling enough. But whether he got his laughs or not, his stepping away from the written part never failed to pull the play out of shape. Shakespeare said, “Whether he know it or no, he's not the Earth, with other players sun and moon and planets spinning round his weighty self.”

“Or the Earth and all round the sun, as Copernicus doth assert,” Burbage said.

“He, being dead, may assert what pleases him.” Shakespeare looked around nervously to make sure no one had overheard. “His Holiness the Pope holding opinion contrary, we enjoy not the like privilege.”

Burbage frowned. “If a thing be true, it is true with the Pope's assent or in his despite.”

“Here is a true thing, Dick,” Shakespeare said: “An you speak such words where the wrong ears hear, you'll explicate 'em to the Inquisition.”

“This for the Inquisition.” Burbage hawked and spat.

Easy for him to be brave
, Shakespeare thought.
He lies under no suspicion . . . yet
. As Edward Kelley's frantic plea had, the questions from Lieutenant de Vega reminded him of the sovereign power of fear. The Spaniard still seemed friendly enough and to spare, but Shakespeare knew he would never think of him as silly and harmless again.
By the time this ends, I'll see foes and spies everywhere, as Marlowe does
. He'd had that thought before.

But Burbage's scorn let Shakespeare ask the question he knew he would have to ask sooner or later: “Would you, then, we lived still under Elizabeth?” A field lay by the left side of the street. When he turned his head that way, he could see the looming bulk of the Tower in the distance. What was Elizabeth doing there? What was she thinking? A pretty problem for a playwright.

Burbage walked on for several strides without answering, taking the chance to ponder it. At last, though, the player said, “A man will do what he needs must do, that he may live and prosper if prospering's in him.
So we know. Did we not, these past nine years had schooled us. But when you ask, what would I?—I'm an Englishman, Will. If you be otherwise, run tell your lithping friend.” He mocked de Vega's Castilian accent.

He's no friend of mine
. Shakespeare started to say it, but it wasn't true, or hadn't been true till de Vega asked questions about Kelley. The Spaniard was clever, amusing company; he knew everything there was to know about his own country's theatre, and had learned a great deal about England's. If he ever settled down to write instead of talking endlessly, he might make a name for himself.

“You were an idiot to speak your mind to me, did you reckon I'd turn traitor,” Shakespeare replied after some small silence of his own.

“ ‘Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason,' ” Burbage quoted, and then cocked his head to one side. “I misremember—is that yours?”

Shakespeare shook his head. “Nay: some other man's. I thank you; I am answered.”

“And had I cried hurrah! for Queen Isabella?”

“Many who cry so prosper,” Shakespeare said.

“The dons are here, and here to stay, by all the signs,” Burbage said. “A man must live, as I said just now, and, to live, live with 'em. So far will I go, so far and no further. A fellow who sniffs and tongues the Spaniards' bums, like some scabby whining cur-dog with a pack of mastiffs . . . This for him!” He spat again.

They separated not far inside the wall. Shakespeare went off to his lodgings. Burbage had a home of his own in a more prosperous part of town farther west.
I could go back to Stratford
, Shakespeare thought.
I have a home there, and my wife, and my children
. He cursed softly under his breath. His son Hamnet had died the year before of some childhood fever, and had gone into the ground before Shakespeare could make his way back to Warwickshire.

A terrier proudly trotted by, a dead rat clamped in its jaws. Shakespeare sighed and clicked his tongue between his teeth. When he'd gone back to Stratford, Anne had wanted him to stay there. Had he stayed, he wouldn't have had to worry about swaggering Spaniards. Hardly a one had ever been seen in the West Midlands.

But how could I stay?
He asked himself now the same question he'd asked his wife then. He was making a far better living in London than he could have in Stratford: enough to send money off to Anne and their
daughters, Susanna and Judith. And Anne wasn't always easy to get along with. He was happier and freer admiring her virtues from a distance than having them ever before his eyes.

When he walked into the house where he lodged, Jane Kendall greeted him with, “A man was asking after you today, Master Will.”

“A man?” Shakespeare said in surprise and no small alarm. His landlady nodded. Fighting for calm, he found another question: “What sort of man? One of the dons?”

The tallowchandler's widow shook his head. Shakespeare hoped he didn't show how relieved he was. “He was about your own age,” the widow said, “not a big man, not small. Ill-favored, I'll say he was, but with a look to him. . . . Did he ask me to play at dice with him, I'd not throw any he brought forth.”

Shakespeare frowned and scratched his head. “Meseems that is no man I ken,” he said slowly. “Gave he a name to stand beside this his ill-favored visage?”

Before his landlady could answer, Peter Foster laughed raucously. “Was't the name of his wife or his sweetheart or his daughter?”

“Go to!” Shakespeare said, his ears heating. He didn't live a monk's life in London, but he hadn't, or didn't think he had, given anyone cause to come after him for that kind of reason. Lieutenant de Vega boasted about the horns he put on husbands. Shakespeare, by contrast, reckoned discretion the better part of pleasure.

Again, Widow Kendall shook her head. “He said naught of any such thing. And he did leave a name, could I but recall it. . . . I'm more forgetful with each passing year, I am. It quite scares me.” But then she suddenly grinned and snapped her fingers. “Skeres!” she exclaimed in delight.

“Your pardon?” Shakespeare said, thinking she'd repeated herself and wondering why.

“Skeres,” she said once more. “Nick Skeres, he called himself.”

“Oh.” The poet smiled at having his confusion cleared away. Even so . . . “He may know me, or know of me, but I ken him not. Said he when he might again come hither?”

“Not a word of't,” the widow replied. “I told him, seek Master Will at the Theatre of days, I said. He's surely a ninny, and a fond ninny at that, to know where you lodge but not where you earn your bread.”

“My thanks for speaking so.” Shakespeare wasn't at all sure he should thank her. He would have wondered at any time why a stranger
was sniffing around him. Now . . . He exhaled through his nose, a silent sigh. No help for it.

Peter Foster sounded sly and clever and most experienced, saying, “Have a care, Master Will, do. This rogue could be a catchpole, come for to carry you off to the Clink or some other gaol.”

“I've done naught contrarious to law,” Shakespeare said.
Yet
.

Foster's smile pitied a man capable of such naïveté. “If so be he's paid, he'll care not a fig for that. A few shillings weigh more than a man's good name.” Again, his tone was that of one who knew whereof he spoke. His eyes flicked to Shakespeare's belt. “You haven't even a sword.”

“ 'Twould do me but little good,” Shakespeare said sadly. “Even for a player, a man of make-believe, I'm a cream-faced loon with blade in hand, and I give proof thereof whenever we practice our parts for a show with swordplay.”

“You know that, and now I know that, but will this Nick What's-his-name know't? Give me leave to doubt.” Foster winked. “An he see you with rapier on hip, what will he think? Belike,
Here's a hulking brute, could run me through
, or summat o' the sort. The porpentine need not cast his quills to make the other beasts afeard; he need only have 'em.”

Again, the tinker—if that was what he was—made good sense. Shakespeare bowed. “Gramercy, Master Foster. I'll take your advice, methinks.”

He got his writing tools from his trunk and went off to the ordinary to eat and work. The threepenny supper, the serving woman said, was, “A fine mess of eels, all stewed with leeks. Master Humphrey went down to Fish Wharf and fetched back a whole great tun of 'em.”

“Eels?” Spit flooded into Shakespeare's mouth. “Bring 'em on, Kate, and a cup of sack to go with 'em.”

“Beer comes with the threepenny supper—the wine's a ha'penny extra,” Kate warned. Shakespeare nodded; he wanted it anyhow.

When the eels arrived, he dug in with gusto, savoring the rich, fatty flesh and pausing every now and then to spit fish bones onto the rush-strewn rammed-earth floor. Then he got out his paper and pens and ink and settled down to write. He made slow going of it: every time someone came into the ordinary, he looked up to see if it were the fellow who'd asked Widow Kendall about him. But there were no ill-favored strangers, only people who, like him, supped here often. Some of them exchanged a word or two with him; most, seeing him at work, left him
to it. He sometimes got testy—a couple of times, he'd got furious—when interrupted.

Tonight, though, his own misgivings were what kept interrupting him. It was not a night when he had to worry about forgetting curfew. That he got anything at all done on
Love's Labour's Won
struck him as a minor miracle.

 

T
HE TWO ACTORS
—actually, the two Spanish soldiers—playing Liseo and his servant, Turín, appeared at what was supposed to be an inn in the Spanish town of Illescas, which lay about twenty miles south of Madrid. The one playing Liseo hesitated, bit his lip, and looked blank. Lope de Vega hissed his line at him: “
¡Qué lindas posadas!
”

“What lovely inns,” the soldier—his real name was Pablo—repeated obediently. He might have been a slightly—a very slightly—animated wooden statue, painted to look lifelike but wooden nonetheless.

“
¡Frescas!
” agreed the fellow playing his servant (
his
real name was Francisco). He knew he was supposed to say, “Fresh air,” to suggest a hole in the imaginary roof, but sounded even deader doing it than Pablo did.

Before they could go on to complain about the likelihood of bedbugs and lice, Lope threw his hands in the air. “Stop!” he shouted. “God and all the saints, stop!”

“What's the matter,
Señor
Lieutenant?” the soldier playing Turín asked. “I remembered my line, and Pablo here, he looked like he was going to remember his next one, too.”

“What's the matter? What's the matter?” Lope's volume rose with each repetition. “I'll tell you what's the matter. What's the name of this play of mine?”

“
La dama boba
,” Francisco answered. “That's what's the matter, sir?”

“God give me strength,” de Vega muttered. He turned back to the soldiers. “That's right. The lady Finea is supposed to be a boob. You two aren't supposed to be boobs.
So why are you acting like boobs?
” He started roaring again.

“We weren't,” Pablo said in injured tones. “We were just giving our lines.”

“If you give them like that, who'd want to take them?” Lope demanded. “You couldn't be any stiffer if you were embalmed. This is supposed to be a comedy, not a show of mourning for—” He started to say
for King Philip,
but broke off. The King of Spain wasn't dead yet. “For Julius Caesar,” he finished.

“We're doing the best we can, sir,” Francisco said.

That might have been true. It probably
was
true. But it wasn't excuse enough, especially not in Lope's present excited condition. “But you can't act!” he howled. “You ought to go to a play here and see how these Englishmen do it. They're actors, by God, not—not—so many tailor's dummies!”

“Devil take these Englishmen,” Pablo said. “We came up to this miserable country to make sure the buggers behave themselves, not to make fools of ourselves in stage plays. If you don't like how we do it, we quit!”

“That's right,” Francisco said.

“You can't do that!” Lope exclaimed. “You're supposed to start performing in a week.”

“So what? I've had a bellyful, I have,” Pablo said. “This isn't part of my duty. If you think the damned Englishmen make such good actors,
Señor
Lieutenant, get them to put on your play for you.
Hasta la vista
.” He stomped away. The soldier playing his servant followed, slamming the door behind them.

Lope swore. He sprang to his feet and kicked the bench on which he'd been sitting, which toppled the bench and almost ruined one of his toes. As he hopped around, still cursing, he wondered how in God's name he was going to put on
La dama boba
without two of his leading characters. If he could have got men from Shakespeare's acting company to recite Spanish verse, he would have done it. Except when they swore, Englishmen didn't want to learn Spanish.