The Playmaker (13 page)

I made bold to speak my mind. “Pardon, mistress, but there seems little to fear for my soul on that account.” Her hands, which had resumed their bobbin-winding, paused as though considering my words and what they meant. Then they moved on, swift and sure as fate.

“Perhaps not. I have seen you on the stage, Richard, and I will allow that the profession does not take easily to you. Or you to it. But I would not yet give it up. There is something in you—my husband sees it, and one or two of the others. If you leave the stage, may it be for the best. But if you stay …” The skein I was holding felt suddenly lighter, and I noticed with a start that she had wound almost all of it. “If you stay, you may find that you are one of the
truly gifted, and my warning holds double for you. See that you heed it.

“And when you go about in the city, you must go as yourself, and not as what you most surely are not. If I catch you in my daughter's clothes again, we will have to find you another lodging. Do you understand?” I nodded miserably. “Now, rest your arms a moment while I ready another hank of yarn to put upon them.”

I feared a two-skein lecture, but she turned the talk to more trifling matters: where I grew up, and how I got my schooling, and how my sister got along. Mistress Condell possessed a stately bearing that caused even the high-born to bow upon meeting her, yet she glowed with an underlying warmth—not merry but deep, and as soothing as the scent of orange and cloves that wafted from the pomander ball at her waist. Little by little it loosened the knot in my guts and allowed me to speak almost freely. That knot had been some weeks in the making, so steady a companion I scarce knew myself without it. But by the end of the third skein, her calm had spread to me, with a feeling I suddenly recognized as happiness. Another thought struck then: I did not want to leave this house. Here was the order and peace I had been craving, ever since circumstance uprooted me from Alford. With all my heart, I wished to stay. But one great difficulty stood in the way of that. I would have to secure my place with the Company.

May was drawing to an end and the season had scarcely more than a fortnight to run. Warm weather brought the plague time, when
London theaters closed for fear of contagion and actors left the city to tour the countryside. Robin was to accompany the Lord Chamberlain's Men on tour for the first time, and every night he bent my ear with the glories of life on the road. Having myself spent some time on the road during my journey to London, I could have told him about the glories of sleeping under hayracks and begging bread, but Robin was better at talking than listening. Further, I had the sense that most of his relish owed to disappointment: he had been awaiting his mother's call to spend the summer with her, but the invitation never came. So I held my peace and let him talk.

Kit harbored no such longing for his own parents, who were grocers on Cheapside; he would join the Company for his third tour. Dick would pass his summer with cousins in Surrey. And Adrian Ball had left the Lord Chamberlain's Men to join the boys' company of St. Paul's Chapel. Master Condell said nothing about my situation, either because he was too occupied or because he knew not what to say. Or more likely both. In the meantime I was back in harness as a soldier, a messenger, a nobleman's daughter who speaks seven lines and is brutally murdered off the stage. All this I managed without disgracing myself, and the month of May was lumbering peacefully to a close, when Kit ate a piece of boiled goat on Thursday night and was violently ill by Friday morning.

The first word I had of it was Alice Condell charging into our attic room well before dawn. “Up, Richard! We're in a coil today— Kit is puking up his guts and Father says you must take his part!”

I sat up halfway, squinting at the sheaf of papers she waved before my face. “‘Tis Lady Constance, in
King John
. Master Heminges has made cuts in it, but you must get your lines in the second act before breakfast. Father will quiz you on it. You may con the rest at the Theater. Up, I say!”

She leaned over Robin and gave my shoulder a hard push, which, as I was resting half-awake on my elbows, overbalanced me and sent me crashing to the floor. This uncovered Robin, who sat up in his skewed shirt, blinking. “What's this about? Out, you froward female!”

“Mind what I say, Richard,” warned Alice, just before disappearing swift as a wind.

“What was it she said, Richard, that warrants stealing my sleep?” When I told him, Robin groaned and threw himself back against the pillow. “Constance is a demon's part. You'll be hard-pressed to have the second act before we reach the Theater. What are you gaping at me for? Strike a flint and light the candle!”

King John
is a historical play, another of Will Shakespeare's works. It concerns the John who was brother to Richard Lionheart and who took over the kingdom after that great crusader met his premature end. But, as often happens in history no less than drama, the king must contend with a rival. Though Richard died childless, he does have a nephew, Arthur, who is next in line for the throne. But John has ruled England since his brother Richard joined the Crusades, and does not intend to surrender his crown, especially since Arthur is but a child.

Arthur's mother, Constance, enlists the aid of King Philip of France and the Duke of Austria to secure the throne for her son. War breaks out between the forces of John and Philip, then a truce, then more war. Arthur is captured and John plots to have him murdered, but instead the boy is killed in a fall while trying to escape. His mother Constance dies of grief (off the stage, fortunately), and eventually John himself is poisoned by a fanatical monk.

Master Heminges had pared down the lines so that they were not too much to learn in a morning, but all of them were to be strongly delivered. It was a “demon's part” indeed—Constance is a she-lion, completely devoted to the advancement of her son and ready to tear apart anyone who stands in her way. She snipes at Queen Eleanor, her mother-in-law, taunts her allies when their zeal appears to falter, whips up flagging spirits with bloody rhetoric. When Arthur is captured and taken from her, she spins into a grief so profound her allies think she has gone mad. “I am
not
mad,” she rails at them. “I would to heaven I were, for then 'tis likely I should forget myself!”

Reading over the part, I felt my heart sink. Dick Worthing had been trotted out as a madwoman the week before without much success, and I guessed why. Rage and grief may be easy to play, but I had noticed, in comparing Dick to Kit, that one can go too far with it and fall into parody. Audiences have been known to laugh at an over-tragical interpretation of the lover betrayed or warrior expiring. That is what I feared would happen to me when Constance appeared with her hair all unbound, spouting lines like “Death!
Death, O amiable lovely Death! Thou odiferous stench! Sound rottenness!” To say such words as though they came from the heart, rather than from a poet's overheated pen—that was the task before me, after first getting the lines in my head.

And all to be done in a matter of hours. Robin, who was cast as John's daughter, helped where he could; a year before he had taken Arthur's part and still remembered some of the cues. As he fed them to me, I stumbled over my speeches in Act II, all the while getting dressed and combing down my unruly hair and washing out my brackish mouth with rosewater, continually tripping over little boys who couldn't stay out of the way.

Then Robin and I hurried down to the great room, where our master met us in company with John Heminges and William Sly. Master Sly had sped from Southwark as soon as the news of Kit's misfortune reached him. He was to play the Duke of Austria, a pompous bag of wind who parades about in a lionskin and offers Constance endless occasion to jeer at him. Masters Condell and Heminges were Kings Philip and John respectively. Together we made up enough of Act II to lurch through it, and did so while hastening toward the Theater in the milky light of an overcast morning, tossing lines back and forth. I staggered to keep up both literally and figuratively, clutching the sheaf of papers in a sweaty hand.

While the Company rehearsed Act I on the stage, I practiced my lines for Act III in the tiring room, with Master Sly offering uncertain instruction: “Put a hand to your head. Nah, nah, take it off—
you look like a sailor! Now Salisbury says”—he consulted the prompt book—“‘Pardon me, madam, I may not go without you to the kings.' That is your cue; continue.”

“‘Thou mayest,'” I read. “‘Thou shalt. I will not go with thee. For my grief's so great that no support but the huge, firm earth—'”

“Hold awhile. Make a note here. At this point you are to sit upon the stage.”

“… Do what, sir?”

“Mind what she says about no support but the earth. She sits on the ground and bids the kings come to her, fractious female that she is. Do you, sit down. Do it! Then the kings enter, arm in arm after making their alliance. …” So we continued, and after several more lines I was standing again, trying to respond fittingly to William Sly's cues. But I was distracted, remembering a recent scene in my own life that seemed to have some bearing on this play. I wished to give it more thought but could not, with Master Sly barking cues at me. At the end of our time together he seemed less than confident. “That's all I can do for you,” he said. “I have my own business and you must get this part in your brain. The task is yours, Richard; you must sink or swim, as God grants.”

After walking through Acts II and III with the Company, I was released to study while the others practiced the remaining scenes. History plays brim over with more characters than any company can supply, and actors often doubled on the smaller parts. The Lord Chamberlain's Men also hired unattached players to fill out a large
cast, and a number of these were milling about today, adding to the confusion as I sought refuge deep in the bowels of the tiring room.

The rooms behind stage are like a rabbit's warren: dark, complex, and busy, smelling of starch, powder, paint, and too many anxious bodies crowded together. Racks of costumes and properties form little coves in the clutter, to which is added all the furniture necessary to a particular play. I worked my way to the back wall, where light from a narrow window fell upon King John's throne—a masterpiece of gilt and velvet, with richly upholstered arms and a high pointed back. In Act V the dying king is carried in this chair by the stage boys, and fortunately it is made lighter than it looks or the boys would be serving notice.

I chose the throne for my study, though even in this out-of-theway place actors came and went. Richard Burbage plunked a severed head on a shelf nearby with the words, “A bit of company, eh, lad?” It was a plaster replica of William Sly's head, who, as the Duke of Austria, would lose it in battle. It stared fixedly at me until I turned it aside. The ceiling over my head rumbled at a blast from the Company cannon, which Harry Smithton had touched off from the hut.

A memory was needling me, and it would have to be dealt with before I could concentrate on getting my lines.

On the day our mother was buried, Susanna had cleaned out the cottage, hauled all our pots and dishes to the stream to scrub them, aired the mattress and washed the linens, and worked herself to little more than a frayed twig. She could hardly stand during
the short burial service. It struck me as irrational and disrespectful, and I took her to task for it. This led to the biggest row we had ever had, with me claiming she was bent upon scrubbing all memories of our mother out of that place—which I would admit now was not fair. For her part, Susanna wept and wished herself dead. Then she dropped cross-legged on the plank floor of our house. “How dare you reproach me? How dare you? She was my mother, too, though she may have loved you better.”

I tried being conciliatory. “I should not have reproached you. Now get up.”

“I won't! You come to me, if your knees will bend.”

“Stop playing the madwoman,” I said, exasperated. “You can't stay on the floor forever. We still have to live.”

“That's easy for you to say. Oh, it is easy for you.” She pounded the splintered boards with her fists, working herself to new heights. “Everything is easy for you!”

We made peace later that night, but it remained a painful scene I did not like to recall. Yet the part of Constance had forced it to my attention. I looked down at her lines: “My grief's so great that no support but the huge firm earth can hold it up. Here is my throne; let kings come to it!” The words blurred before my eyes. Susanna, I thought. So this is what you were feeling. …

“Art dreaming, lad?” a mild voice interrupted my thoughts as Master Will's head appeared above a row of feathered hats on a costume rack. The tiring room had begun to fill with actors seeking cloaks, helmets, and armor that would transform them into
warring princes for an afternoon. The sun's rays fell steeply through the window and I knew that Harry Smithton had run up the white silk flag to signify a performance at two o'clock.

“Not dreaming, sir,” I replied. “Pondering.”

“A worthy occupation,” said he. “God gave you wit, but it remains your charge to use it.”

Another head popped up in the thicket of feathers, a pleasant face very similar to the first but without the retreating hairline. This was Edmund Shakespeare, brother to the playmaker, who had joined the Company that spring at the age of eighteen. As the son of the French king, Edmund was acting his largest role to date. His face glowed with anticipation and—well might I recognize it—a touch of terror. “Come, Will,” he cried with a gaiety somewhat forced, “I would parry a word with thee over a rapier's point.”

Master Will nodded at me before going off to practice a bit of swordplay with his brother, and I had the sense he had meant to say more. He listened far more than he talked; there was always a listening look about him, as if the whole world had his ear. Suddenly, I understood what he was listening for: it was life. And he heard it, too. This was how Richard Burbage could breathe a soul into such a character as Shylock the Jew; Master Will had given him life.