The Playmaker (15 page)

“So he lied to you. And it seems they have an interest in him as great as yours.”

“It does. This fellow Master Merry—what a name for one so grim!—he was right startled to hear where I met the man—”

“—as if Beecham were in a place he had no business being. Did you mark anything about him that day? Think.”

I cast back to my meeting with John Beecham, and the longer I thought, the more curious it appeared. There was that rustling behind the door, which ceased when I knocked, and those papers spilled, and the iron grip of his hand on my wrist—

“The paper you picked up,” Starling interrupted. “Did you see anything on it?”

“A name. It seemed a proclamation of some sort. Not a letter. ‘By order of,' ‘By the will of'—something like that.”

“And the name?”

“I disremember. Something with a ford. Shallowford, Streamford, or the like.”

“It meant much to him that it not be seen. Do you suppose he stole the papers from Master Feather?”

I was thinking the same, and my clerk was taking on a darker color. I liked it not, but what other conclusion? His violent start upon recognizing me at the Theater, and the fact that he saw fit to disappear immediately after, only added to my suspicions. Starling went on, “You say he's the one who sent you to the wine merchants in the name of—who was it?”

“Peter Kenton.”

“I wonder if we should try to uncover this Peter Kenton.” “How? I can't go down to the docks and ask for him.” “True.” Her mouth was stopped but not her brain; I could almost see it working behind those clear green eyes.

“Starling, have a care. If you take this up on your own, you could bring me harm.”

“Would I bring you harm?” Her tone was all light and innocence—a very angel she sounded. “By the way, you were excellent today as Lady Constance. I knew there was an actor in you. What brought him out?”

I lacked the words to explain, and doubted whether I could bring him out again, but fortunately our conference was interrupted by Alice Condell coming across the lawn.

Lady Alice was not one to be denied. At a mere sixteen, she was one of the most daunting people I knew—tall and handsome like her mother, with much the same air of command but lacking the subtlety. Like a troop of cavalry she bore toward us now with her un-mincing walk, ribbons streaming like banners from her cap and a folded paper in her hand. “Here, Richard,” she called while still yards distant, “My mother bids you carry this message to Father. He's at the Mermaid. You must be quick about it—'tis a church matter.”

I took the message with a bow. “Never mind,” Starling said when Alice was out of earshot. “I will think of something.”

I already knew the sort of thing that happened when Starling proposed to think, but there was no time to argue over it. I took the back gate out of the garden, then followed the alley all the way to Bread Street, arriving at the Mermaid just as dusk had curled around the city and tavern keepers were setting out their lamps.

Yellow light gilded the smoke of a dozen pipes inside the tavern. Spanish tobacco from the West Indies had become all the rage in recent years, biting hard into the Lord Chamberlain's Men. At least half the Company were puffing on clay pipes lit with coals off the grate, and the sight was still wonderful to me—like so many genial, smoldering dragons gathered about the hearth of their dragon kitchen. In this blue-gold haze I spied Master Condell
seated at one end of the board, gazing toward Will Shakespeare. That gentleman occupied a space at the middle of the table surrounded by listeners, a stack of papers before him. With broad actor's vowels and eloquent pauses, he was reading all the parts in his latest play. This was the custom for a playmaker, to declaim his work before the company he hoped would perform it. If the work failed to please, they would silence the author and send him packing, with his hero's love unfulfilled, the lady's virtue unavenged, or the knife still planted in some hapless victim's chest.

But Master Will was never silenced; his readings held all listeners spellbound to the end. He was at that moment conveying to his audience the sorrow of a man compelled to carry out a hateful act. I did not grasp all the particulars, but it seemed that the character he was reading had taken an infant child to a distant land, where he must leave it exposed on a rocky beach to die: “Blossom, speed thee well! There lie, and there thy character—which may, if fortune please, still rest thine. …” His listeners were silent in the brief pause that followed this speech, except for a sniff or two.

“Then,” said our reader in his everyday voice, “there follows a clap of thunder and Antigonus makes ready to fly back to his ship. But a bear appears and chases him off the stage, and we soon understand—”

A sputtering from across the table interrupted him. “A bear? Come, Will, a
bear
?” This came from a stocky, square-faced man with dark hair and deep-set eyes, who stared at the playmaker with a look that managed to be belligerent and affectionate at the same time.

“Yes, a bear.” Master Will showed no offense at the badgering tone. “Antigonus must die, you see. The bear is as good a means as any to finish him off.”

“But you allow us no preparation for the beast. There are no bears in the plot, no warnings from a madwoman or wise fool or any of the usual devices. And I daresay the animal never reappears after dispatching Antigonus? I thought not. At least give us a verse on the subject from the Oracle, otherwise shalt be an unbearable play.”

“I'll think on it, Ben. But what hurt to have the beast appear as a stroke of divine judgment?”

“Oh, by your leave, no hurt at all to the louse-bait audiences you play to. May as well let Jove himself descend on a lightning bolt, and 'twould please them equally. They are not even like to know you've put a seacoast on the land of Bohemia.”

Richard Cowley, seated next to Master Will, wrinkled his brow. “But isn't there a seacoast on Bohemia?”

The square-faced man swore and slammed a heavy fist on the board. “Why did our Drake sail around the globe, if Englishmen hold no more knowledge of geography than that? Bohemia is land-locked entire, Master Cowley! At least, Will, call the land by some other title than Bohemia. A coast by any other name would smell as sweet, eh? Sweeter, in my nose, for being true.”

“I will think on it, Ben,” Master Will repeated, with the ghost of a smile.

I noticed Kit, perched raven-like on a stool drawn up behind John Heminges. Looking a little peaked from his encounter with
the putrid goat, he sipped ale sparingly from a wooden mug as he followed the conversation. On his face was something that, small and tight though it was, I could not recall seeing there before—a smile. It encouraged me to step over to him and murmur, “Who is yon professor, with the soul of a poet?”

Kit may have gained a particle of respect for me after I carried his role that day—enough to answer, though he did not trouble to look. “You speak wiser than you know. He is a poet, though not as great as he thinks. 'Tis Ben Jonson.”

I gave the man another look; so this was Ben Jonson. All the talk in the Company that week was of his recent release from Marshalsea Prison, where he had spent a time for writing a play that annoyed certain officials of the Court.

Kit said, “If you came here to angle for my part tomorrow, I assure you I am recovered quite.” I felt a sting in his last words, and wondered if it was only my imagination.

Shakespeare had resumed his narrative, a comic scene involving a shepherd and his lame-witted son. I worked my way through the crowd (for the reading had attracted almost every patron in the tavern) and over their laughter delivered my message to Master Condell.

“Stay a little, Richard.” He scanned the paper, refolded it, and stuck it in the pocket of his sleeve before returning to me. “You write a clerkly hand, d'you not?”

“I have been told so, sir.”

“Hold, then. We may have work for you.”

I would have held till Doomsday on the promise of work, but it was less than an hour for the play to run its reading, especially since Master Will would begin a long speech, then break off and skip to the last two lines. Since I had missed the first half, the story made little sense, but given the run of a Shakespeare plot, this may have been true even if I had heard it from the beginning. Even so, it was pleasant to sit among the players, gathered close in the warm night while crickets tuned up in their corners and smiles came and went like fireflies. Strange, how a trifling story can lure the mind away from its worries.

The Lord Chamberlain's Men clapped and cheered when the reading was done, and decided by unanimous vote to perform the play during the autumn season. With that in view, it wanted copying. “For which I propose,” said Master Condell, “that young Richard here will serve. He writes a fair hand, and stands in need of work.”

The Company approved with no debate and went on to discuss where and how deep to make the cuts in the play. With a start, I realized that the riddle of my situation was answered: I now had a place. By his proposal Master Condell implied that the Company could use me in future and thought it worthwhile to keep me on through the summer. I felt a bit dizzy at first, then relief filled me, warm as mulled wine. The smoky, stuffy room glowed with a new light, and every face looked more dear. Even Kit's, as difficult and distant as it was, took on a softer cast as he listened intently to the talk around him. I lingered until my master stood to meet his
appointment with the vestry, indicating to me with a nod that I must now go home. I went with a will, almost floating.

“Copy work?” Robin exclaimed, in our room. “That pleases you? Copy work is the gate to hell, in my view.”

“I am good at it.” Nothing could shake my mood.

“I am good, too, at any number of sins.” He unlaced his breeches and slipped them off in one swift motion that rid him of shoes and hose as well. Then he flopped on our mattress in his shirt, bent his elbows, and stretched until they popped.

“None of which you will indulge tonight, I take it.” The approach of summer worked like strong ale on Robin, who had lately embarked on a new enterprise. At least once per week, during the changing of the watch an hour before midnight, he would slip through our narrow window, cut light-footed over the tiled roof, and climb down a stone trellis by the kitchen garden. Then he would join Kit at a designated spot and roam the streets for three or four hours, jesting with tavern maids and sailors on the docks, hovering on the outskirts of a dice game or bear fight. I was told of these excursions in detail, but never invited to join them—a snub, probably from Kit, that troubled me more than I cared to own.

“Do I look like a fool?” snorted Robin, in answer to my remark. “We depart on tour two days hence, and I must restore myself. The wenches and the bears must wait”—here he yawned greatly— “until I return.”

“No doubt there will be general mourning until then.”

“Puritan!”

The Company set off on their tour the third week in June, with little fanfare. Master Condell kissed his wife and children, instructed the servants, appointed his son Harry as co-ruler of the household, and bade me make myself useful until the play was delivered. “And no carousing in the streets at night,” he warned. “Take your needful recreation, but if you reflect poorly on this house you will not be in it, come fall.” I nodded solemnly, thinking that nothing could lure me into the streets after dark if it meant risking my job.

Every play which seeks a performance must first be read by the Master of Revels to insure that there is nothing inflammatory or indecent in it—nothing to incite its hearers to lewdness or riot. Since my copy work could not commence until the play came back from the Revels office, I set about making myself useful. Mistress Condell decided I would make an excellent summer Latin tutor for Thomas and Ned—who, until now, had seen me as fit for nothing but jumping on. They did not take readily to instruction. While struggling to make them sit still and listen, I was distracted by Starling, who kept very busy and regarded me with a smug expression that she refused to explain, or even admit to. I welcomed the arrival of the manuscript ten days after the Company's departure: here at last is something I can manage, I thought, little dreaming how that play would come to manage me.

Certain authors made bitter complaint of the butchery performed on their works by the Revels office, but not the gentle Shakespeare. His play came back with modest, almost apologetic
cuts that did little harm to it that I could see. I was to make one master copy for the prompter and a complete set of lines for each character, with cues—a week's task for a professional scribe. But I intended to write slowly and do my best work, even if it took a month. The play was called
The Winter's Tale,
a romance that begins in sorrow and ends in joy.

Two kings, Leontes of Sicilia and Polixenes of Bohemia, grew up as bosom friends, though adult responsibilities have kept them apart. As the play opens, Leontes is playing host to his friend in a long-delayed reunion. But then, for no apparent reason, Leontes becomes convinced that his queen, Hermione, has fallen madly in love with their guest and that the two are conducting an adulterous affair under his very roof. Directly, he accuses them outright, and the entire court of Sicilia is appalled—not at the beautiful Hermione, whose character and conduct have ever been above reproach, but at the irrational jealousy of Leontes. Polixenes, fearing for his life, escapes by ship to his own kingdom, leaving Hermione to be locked away while awaiting trial for treason. Mamillius, her young son, falls desperately ill of shock and sorrow.

While in prison Hermione is delivered of a girl child, which her husband believes to be a bastard. He orders a nobleman, Antigonus, to take the baby to a distant shore and abandon her to the judgment of the gods. Antigonus departs with great regret, and soon after Hermione stands trial. No evidence can be brought against her; even the Oracle of Delphi is consulted and testifies to her innocence. But Leontes will not be swayed from his mad course until word arrives
that his son Mamillius has died of grief. Hermione swoons and is soon after reported dead. This double stroke of divine judgment brings Leontes to his senses, but by then it is too late.