The Merchant of Vengeance (16 page)

And so, with a bittersweet mixture of sadness and anticipation, they had joined Lord Strange's Men, who in turn had combined forces with the Lord Admiral's Men shortly thereafter due to a poor season and hard times for all the companies in London. Over the next few months, players came and went; companies fanned, disbanded, and reformed. And sadly, the Queen's Men, once the nation's most illustrious company of players, did not survive the various upheavals.

Bobby Speed came with them to Lord Strange's Men, as did John Hemings soon thereafter. The departure of a second shareholder in the company signalled the end to all the others. Hemings was in due course followed by Tom Pope, George Bryan, and Gus Phillips. Will Kemp had joined their new company, as well. He had not gotten on well in the Lord Admiral's Men, having managed to quickly raise the ire of both Ned Alleyn, their star player, and their resident poet, the young and irrepressible Kit Marlowe. Unfortunately for Kemp, when the two companies joined forces, he was once more thrown in with both of them.

Alleyn had little patience with Kemp's ever increasing reluctance, or perhaps growing inability, to learn his lines, something he had previously covered with improvised songs and caperings. However, the conventions of the stage were changing, and Marlowe's sensational and gory dramas had no place for such buffoonish antics. Thus, when Kemp forgot his lines and resorted to his usual comic bag of tricks, Marlowe flew into hysterical rages, screaming and throwing things at him, at one point actually drawing steel and chasing him around the playhouse with his sword, threatening at the top of his lungs to disembowel him. Had it been anyone else but Marlowe, Kemp might well have taken it for nothing more than a grandiose display of temper and dramatics, something not at all uncommon in the world of players and poets. However, this was not just any player or poet, but Kit Marlowe, whose flamboyant excesses and mad, Dionysian behaviour were legendary throughout all of London. Kemp took fright and ran to his old friends for protection.

So the old crowd, for the most part, was back together once again. But although the Rose was home now to both companies, and they often played together, sharing members back and forth depending on the needs of their productions, there was still a feeling of competitiveness and rivalry between them—and, in a few cases, even animosity. It was not the most harmonious of marriages.

Ned Alleyn's ego ,vas as expansive as his gestures on the stage and, having been the star of two companies in succession, he had a natural tendency to lord it over everyone. Being widely acclaimed throughout the country as the greatest actor of the age had certainly done nothing to restrain him. Where he had once tolerated Kemp when they had played together in the Queen's Men, he now openly detested him and, knowing that Marlowe absolutely loathed Kemp, often tried co pit the one against the other. And Will Kemp was an all-too-easy victim. He simply could not restrain his wicked sarcasm, which was his natural defence, and Marlowe did not know the meaning of restraint to begin with, all of which meant that their rehearsals often became boisterous and tumultuous affairs that nearly degenerated into riots. On a number of occasions, Smythe had CO separate the two of them, able to do so only because his size and strength made him an effective barrier between them and because Marlowe, having once fought alongside him in a barroom brawl, was well disposed toward him.

Fortunately, for all his passionate and violent nature, Marlowe was, at heart, neither evil nor mean-spirited, and his rages would usually dissipate as quickly as they would erupt. Nevertheless, Kemp had become so terrified of him that he had developed a nervous twitch that manifested itself whenever Marlowe was around, and this only served to irritate the flamboyant poet further.

"And so I rose," boomed Alleyn from the stage, sweeping out his right arm in a grandiose gesture of encompassment, "and looking from a turret, did behold young infants swimming in their parents' blood…"

Now Alleyn paused dramatically and posed, sweeping both arms out wide, right arm to the side and bent slightly at the elbow, left arm to the other side and raised, with elbow sharply bent, fingers splayed, eyes wide and staring, as if at a lurid vision of unimaginable horror. His voice rose and fell dramatically as he continued with the speech. … scores of headless carcasses piled up in heaps, and half-dead virgins, dragged by their golden hair and flung upon a ring of pikes…

"And with main force flung on a ring of pikes'!" shouted Marlowe from the second-tier gallery, springing to his feet and pounding his fist on the railing. "And the line is 'headless carcasses piled up in heaps,' not 'scores of headless carcasses'! God blind me, Ned, must you always change the lines?"

"Methinks that 'scores of headless carcasses' sounds ever so much more dramatic, Kit," Alleyn replied in his stentorian tones, gazing up him.

"Well, if they are piled up in bloody fucking heaps, methinks 'tis likely that we may assume that there are bloody fucking scores of them!" shouted Marlowe, throwing up his hands in exasperation. "Why can you not read the lines the way I wrote them? And why is that man shaking?" he added, his voice rising to a screech as he leaned over the gallery rail and pointed an accusatory finger toward the stage, straight at Kemp.

"Must be all those infants swimming in their parents' blood," Shakespeare murmured quietly to Smythe as they stood together near the back of the stage, holding spears up by their sides.

Smythe snorted as he barely repressed a guffaw.

"Kemp? Is that you again?" shouted Marlowe.

In vain, the trembling Kemp tried to conceal himself behind

John Hemings, who was far too thin to help conceal much of anything.

"I can still see you, Kemp, you horrible man!" shouted Marlowe. "Why the devil are you twitching about so?"

"Doubtless he is attempting to upstage me," Alleyn said petulantly. "Kemp is forever attempting to upstage me."

"Liar! I . I was not!" protested Kemp, clutching at Hemings for protection. "John, tell them I was not!"

"He was not trying to upstage you, Ned," said Hemings placatingly.

"Well, Lord Strange's Company all stick together, to be sure," said Alleyn with a grimace. "No doubt, they all think that they are much too good to be stuck carrying spears at the back of the stage."

"I have got a place to stick this spear," said Shakespeare wryly,

"and 'tis not at the back of the stage."

"What was that?" said Alleyn, spinning round.

"'Twas nothing, Ned," said Smythe, giving Shakespeare an elbow in the ribs to stave off his reply.

"I distinctly heard somebody say something," Alleyn said, narrowing his eyes.

"I said—ooof!"

Smythe elbowed him again and took hold of him as he doubled over. "Will said he was feeling poorly, Ned," he said. "Look, see how he suffers? It must be something that he ate."

"Well, take him off the bloody stage, then!" Marlowe shouted from the gallery. "We have a play to perform tonight, people! And you, Kemp, you can go with them, until you can learn to stop twitching as if you had St. Vitus's bloody dance!"

"Ohhh, how I despise that man," said Kemp through gritted teeth as they went through the doorway at the back of the stage and came into the tiring room, where the players changed their costumes and waited for their entrances.

"Well, I shall grant you that he is not, perhaps, the most amenable of men," said Smythe, still supporting Shakespeare, .who was just getting his wind back, "but he is a decent sort at heart, Will."

"Decent?" Kemp replied, with disbelief. "Marlowe? Are you mad? There is naught that is decent about him. The man is a wanton libertine of the first order!"

"Hola, pot! You are black, the kettle sayeth," Shakespeare said, finally getting back his breath.

"And you can bloody well shut up." Kemp said, forgetting his usual cleverly acerbic banter in his frustration. "Poets." he added with contempt, throwing on his cloak with a flourish. "You are all mad as March hares, the lot of you! I say a pox upon all poets!"

"Hmmpf! He wished a pox upon me, did you hear?" said Shakespeare, watching Kemp depart in a huff. "'Twasn't very nice of him, now, was it? Speaking of which, you might have broken my ribs with that elbow, you great, lumbering ox."

"And Alleyn might have broken your jawbone with his fist had I not stopped you just then," Smythe replied. "To say naught of what Marlowe might have done had he heard you mocking him."

"Ned frightens me about as much as the wind that makes up the greater part of him," said Shakespeare. "And as for Marlowe, well, you must admit, he truly begs for mockery. I mean, come on! Impaled golden virgins and infants swimming in their parents' blood? Lord save us, not even Sophocles would pen such an exaggerated, foolish line."

"You must admit that it conjures up quite the lurid vision."

Smythe replied.

"It conjures up what I ate for breakfast," Shakespeare said with a grimace. "'Tis all a lot of knavish nonsense."

"Perhaps, but 'tis what the audiences love about his work," said

Smythe. He pointed a finger at Shakespeare's chest. "And 'tis why you are trying to emulate him."

"I am not trying to emulate him, I am trying to better him," said Shakespeare irritably. 'There is a difference, you know."

"Fine, I shall grant you that," said Smythe. "Nevertheless, the fact remains that audiences eat up Marlowe's 'knavish nonsense,' as you put it, and you know that as well as anyone. 'Tis why you are so determined to outdo him. His Jew of Malta and his Doctor Faustus and this new one about the queen of Carthage are all much more exciting than your own Henry the Sixth."

"Bah! You compare oranges with apples," Shakespeare said.

"They are very different works."

"Mayhap so, but the audiences seem to enjoy Marlowe's oranges much more than your apples."

"Now look, we have staged Henry the Sixth but once," Shakespeare said defensively, "and 'twas despite my protests that the play was not yet ready."

"Then why submit it for production?"

"Because… well, because Marlowe keeps on writing new ones, and everyone keeps asking when they shall see mine and why I cannot write so quickly and why all I have managed to produce is books of sonnets!"

"Ah, so you allowed yourself to be rushed into submitting it before you were fully satisfied with the result," said Smythe.

"Aye, damn it," Shakespeare said. "I admit it freely, 'twas a stupid thing to do. But even you keep chiding me for not yet having finished anything!"

"Aye, 'tis true," admitted Smythe, "but '(Was nothing more than a means to have a bit of fun with you. If it truly troubles you, Will, than I shall refrain from doing it, I promise."

"Nay, it does not trouble me," said Shakespeare. "Well, perhaps a little, but in truth, it does help to spur my efforts. Yet I have learned something from all this, methinks."

"And what is that, pray tell?"

"I have discovered that waiting till I have written something to my final satisfaction is but a means to keep from ever finishing a thing," he said. "For in truth, there is no final satisfaction. At least, not for me. A much better way to work, '(Would seem to me, would be to treat a play as if it were a gemstone and I a patient and painstaking jeweller who makes my cuts, thus faceting the stone, and then submits the cut gem to the company so that we may all then proceed to polish it together, just as we did when I rewrote some of the Queen's Men's repertoire, do you recall?"

"Aye, but then you did it thus because you had no other choice," said Smythe. "You had to write and then rewrite as flaws were made manifest in the production, because there was no time to do it any other way."

"Quite so," said Shakespeare, "and as a result, 'twas needful to put on the finishing touches in rehearsal, and then revise again after one performance, and once again after the next, and so forth and so forth… just as you said to Greene back in the tavern, when you spoke about a play being a crucible in which the intent of the poet and the interpretation of the player comingle with the perception of the audience. 'Twas most excellent, most excellent, indeed! I recall being very taken with that line, even as that vile souse upbraided me, and thinking that I must remember it. 'Twas a memorable turn of phrase, indeed. And much more than that, Tuck, 'twas a rare insight into the alchemy of the crafting of a play!"

"Well, I was but repeating something that you said once."

Smythe replied.

"What! I said that?" asked Shakespeare, raising his eyebrows with surprise.

"Or else something very like it," Smythe replied.

"The devil you say! "When did I say that?"

"I do not remember when just now," said Smythe. "But I do seem to recall that you were rather deeply in your cups when you said it."

"Zounds! I shall have to ask you to start setting down these things I say so that I may remember them," said Shakespeare.

The crashing sound of thunder interrupted them, booming so loudly that it seemed to shake the rafters up above them. The first crash was almost immediately followed by the next, and then a third hot on its heels.

"Oh, dear," said Smythe. "That sounds like a rather nasty storm is brewing."

The next clap of thunder was deafening, and lightning seemed to split the sky as they stepped out of the tiring room. The wind had picked up suddenly, and moments later a torrential rain began pelting down, bringing an immediate end to the rehearsal.

"Well, so much for that," said Shakespeare, watching as the other players scrambled for their hats and cloaks. "We have been rained out nearly every night this week."

"This bodes ill for the companies' already meagre purses," Smythe replied, as he buckled on his sword belt. He had of late been trying to cultivate the habit of wearing his rapier everywhere he went, although he still found it rather cumbersome and had an unfortunate tendency to keep catching it on things. His uncle had taught him how to fence, but until he came to London, he had never even owned a sword. He always carried the dagger that his uncle made for him, but wearing a sword had simply seemed like too much trouble, despite the fact that it was much the fashion and, given the steady increase in crime, also seemed very practical.