The True Prince (26 page)

“Fear not for that.” The young man pulled a strip of black silk from his sleeve. “I shall disguise myself. Adrian will be masked, and we shall add lines to say his face was disfigured by his enemies. That will enhance the play; increase his motive for revenge, you see?” He glanced about with obvious pleasure at this brilliant stroke, while the men of the Company stared at the mask as though it were a viper.

He got his way, though. The most determined arguments failed to discourage him, and a brief audition proved he could at least put out the lines. He sealed the decision at last by references to important friends who would be very disappointed if the play was not performed. “I'd like to tell him where he could send his important friends,” Will Kempe muttered, but of course that would not do. Every player understood his obligation to help prevent Philip Tewkesbury, Baron of Wellstone, from making too great a fool of himself. A most difficult task in so putrid a play.

While the dresser laced up my gown, I dutifully read the corrected lines I had been given: something about Adrian's face being o'er raked with the scorpion whips of cruelty. Once I had it in memory, to be forgotten as soon as the play was done, I folded the paper, pushed it into the deep cuff of my sleeve, and climbed down to the lower tiring room. Tewkesbury nodded to me—his first concession that I existed—but continued his pacing.

This close, he looked no older than nineteen. Overconfidence may have propelled him thus far, but now he looked as if the reality of walking out onto the boards was sinking in. I was wondering what reason would drive him to expose himself this way, when a ragged cheer sounded in the half-filled house, indicating that the Prominent Personage had taken his seat in the gentlemen's room. Gregory scampered up to the musicians' gallery and came down directly to tell us who it was: “Essex.” No one seemed surprised, but Lord Philip turned a bit green, as though the earl were not his “good friend” so much as his examiner. But no more time for nerves now; Ned Shakespeare made his entrance as Sylvester, and the play began.

To Tewkesbury's credit, he was not dreadful. With training and practice and the addition of another skill, like sword- swallowing, he might have commanded some attention. But new players are always surprised at how little weight their voice carries when surrounded by a crowd of strangers. To one
accustomed to having his every word obeyed, it must have been a shock.

Besides, it soon became apparent that he and the Company were at cross-purposes. While we dutifully left out all the veiled references to the Brooke family, he resolutely left his in—and even repeated a few when quick-witted players spoke over him. In our courting scene the conflict became painful when he took my hand. “Alas!” said I. “I do fear the bloody streams of treachery will yet rise up and o'erwhelm our jocund hope—”

“What mean you?” he interrupted. “Bloody
brooks
of treachery?”

He squeezed my hand so hard my next line came out as a squeal: “Aye— Heaven defend us!”

Tewkesbury was almost panting with effort when we came off the stage. He flung aside my hand and approached Master Will to ask why some of the lines had been changed.

“Changed, my lord?” asked Shakespeare, all innocence.

Tewkesbury found himself in a delicate situation: what right had he to protest alterations in the play, if he was unwilling to admit his authorship? The Company, meanwhile, pretended to have no idea what he meant by “changed lines,” thus creating all sorts of undercurrents (streams or brooks) behind the stage. But those were soon o'erwhelmed by the very obvious currents in the house.

By the second act four young gallants were sitting together
in the first gallery, across from Essex. They were obviously not his friends, nor Tewkesbury's, for by the third act they were causing enough disturbance to destroy any possible interest in the play. Every time I came on, there were fewer people in the galleries and more hazelnut shells and orange peels on the stage. Directly after Silvia's death scene, Essex departed, too.

After that, Master Burbage strongly suggested cutting large sections of the remaining text, and Tewkesbury agreed. He kept his head high, like Hotspur going to his doom with “Die all, die merrily” on his lips. Lord Philip at least had the sense to die quietly, wrapping himself in the poisoned cloak with the least possible fuss and cutting down his speech to:

“O happy garb, that ends my vile disgrace!
Ye fates—bear me up to a happier place!
O cloak most black, consume me into dust—
The pale smoke of honor to the gods I trust.”

When he fell (with a thump), his tormenters in the first gallery rose and flapped their arms, as though helping to bear him up to that happy place. Behind the stage, the players groaned. While Edmund Shakespeare was making a speech over the fallen Adrian, his brother said to Master Burbage, “You deal with Lord Mustard; I will do what I can to calm yonder beast”—by which he meant the remaining audience. On his way to the stage Master Will bowed politely to the body of Philip Tewkesbury as it went by on a litter. Thus the gentleman did not hear Shakespeare's public apology for his play,
because Richard Burbage was at the same moment apologizing to
him
—a noble effort that summoned all the diplomacy Burbage possessed. Tewkesbury left the Swan with a straight posture and flaming cheeks, while Master Burbage clutched the bag of coins paid to him as Judas might have held his thirty pieces of silver. “If Kit Glover ever shows himself hereabouts again,” he said, “I'll cheerfully kill him.”

That night I complained to Starling, “I wish you hadn't talked me into sending that message to John Clement. If ever a man deserved to be robbed, Tewkesbury does.”

“Well, one good thing came of today's performance—it silenced Mistress Critic. She came early and stayed for the whole play, but after the first act I heard not a word from her.”

“All the rest of our critics were loud enough.”

“Put it behind you. Part Two will save your reputation.”

She was very likely right. Boys were already posting playbills throughout London, and a full house, at double admission, would boost our fortunes again. When Thursday arrived, eager play-goers began lining up outside the Swan long before the first trumpet.

The Company had to borrow a boy from St. Paul's Chapel to play Falstaff's page. The part had been written for Davy, and to see young Lawrence Bates strutting around in a short cape reminded me painfully of a child lying at the bottom of a stone staircase with a broken neck. By now, five days had gone by
without event, but I was increasingly on edge, and Lawrence's habit of humming monotonous tunes needled my conscience. Nor could I escape it, for the boy perched on the loft just over the place where Richard Burbage was painting me.

Burbage was an accomplished painter, and “Rumor, painted with tongues” gave him an opportunity to stretch his skills. I had pictured something like cow tongues hanging all over me—not a pretty sight, but Master Burbage thought tongues of fire: flame-tipped points, layered like feathers. The wardrobe master had made a pair of breeches covered with strips of red, yellow, and orange that would spin out when I whirled upon the stage. The effect was far more pleasing than I could have imagined, though art could not disguise the fact that I was stripped to the waist and perched on a stool next to a window, while a man in a smock applied paint to my chest in preparation for me to go out upon a stage and expose myself to three thousand pairs of eyes. This was one of those times when the player's life felt every bit as unnatural and devilish as my sister had said.

“By my faith,” Master Burbage complained, “it takes twice the quantity of paint to cover thy goose bumps. Hold still.”

I made an effort to hold still, as my breath streamed out upon the cold October breeze and Master Bates overhead hummed his song without end. Then Gregory appeared, in scarlet taffeta. He was playing a whore named Doll Tearsheet, but at the moment his face under the paint was so pale that he
resembled a real doll. “Please, sir,” he said breathlessly, “Master Heminges would speak with you.”

Burbage frowned. “Can it not wait? I'm almost done.”

“No, sir. We have a visitor—a constable, sir.”

“What
now
?” The painter threw down his brush, leaving a bright red spatter on the floor. When he was gone, Gregory leaned forward and whispered to me. “He's looking for Kit Glover.”

“Who is?”

“The constable. He wanted to ask me about that time last June, when Kit tried to kill the Welsh Boy. He asked me every detail.”

If I was cold before, my veins now turned to ice. “Why?”

“Because Davy is dead! Murdered, most like! They found his body at the bottom of some stairs. They think Kit did it. But he can't be found.”

Burbage and Heminges sent the constable packing with their assurance that none of us had any notion of Kit's whereabouts, but all the players were shaken. Bad enough that Ben Jonson should now be in prison for manslaughter, but this was cold- blooded murder, with a former colleague as chief suspect. Robin was so undone he had to be fortified with doses of cider and
Esperance
before he could even think about Mistress Quickly.

But I was worse. I alone knew that the suspect was not guilty.

“This is a blow to all of us,” Master Condell told me
kindly (and much more truly than he knew). “But set it aside as best you can. It falls to your charge to begin what is perhaps the greatest opening we have ever had. Pray put your speech forward with every particle of energy that's in you, and … Richard,
what
is behind those great staring eyes of yours? Is your part less than perfect?” I managed to indicate that there was no fear for my part. “Very good—but there's no harm in going over it again, eh?”

Some of the other actors were looking at me curiously. “You
will
be able to speak, will you not?” Augustine Phillips asked. I nodded and took out the paper that contained my lines, hiding behind it as I gathered my wits. There was no longer a choice of standing apart from Kit's trouble. Kit's trouble had broken loose like a team of horses pelting madly downhill— with me tangled in the traces. I was the only one who could speak for him, and I must speak quickly. Immediately. Rumor's first words rolled out before my eyes: “Open your ears …”

In those words, I saw a chance. A slim chance, but it was all I had to hope for. God grant that the ears I must open would be present in the house today.

The third trumpet blew, and Master Will's hands rested lightly on my painted shoulders. “Not yet—let them wait a little longer. Anticipation, you know. Breathe deep. Again. Remember the voice—high and disembodied. One moment. One moment. Now—”

WHEN LOUD RUMOR SPEAKS

pen your ears! For which of you will stop the vent of hearing when loud Rumor speaks?”

The greatest compliment to a player is not applause; it is silence. From the moment I spun out upon the stage, “tongues” flying, the house fell into my hands, hushed and spellbound. Partly because I had been entrusted with opening one of the most eagerly awaited plays of the Company's history—a well-trained dog might have led this audience by the hand. But the burning in my heart fired Rumor with uncommon energy, as I whirled “from the Orient to the drooping west” and swept both hands to the west door of the theater.