The True Prince (4 page)

“What's wrong with it? It could be a good story, if written with a fine pen.”

“But there's the rub—it's written with a meat ax. When the action slows, somebody gets stabbed or disemboweled. Dull stretches of poetry are laid between the bloody parts. Adrian makes a long speech while dying; it ends with, ‘Happy garb, that ends my vile disgrace! Ye Fates: bear me up to a happier place!'”

She held her nose. “Alas! Poor Kit, to speak such with a straight face! Is no one letting slip who wrote this?”

“I'm sure the chief players know—Burbage and Shakespeare and a few others. But they're keeping it close. The rumors all agree that some nobleman at court thinks he's the poet of the age and longs to have his plays performed by a distinguished company.”

“Who could it be?” Starling loved a mystery—I could almost hear the hum of her busy mind as she harried a worm
out of an apple core with the point of her knife. “Sir Walter Raleigh, do you think?”

“Raleigh's poetry is better. And his influence at court is not so great just now. Our author is a bold, impetuous sort, with enough sway to get his way. Someone like Essex.”

“Essex is a warrior, not a poet. Perhaps it is Burghley.”

“Burghley!” I scoffed. “The Queen's Secretary? He's too busy with state business to write plays.”

“How do you know? Do you visit him once a week and share his burdens? ‘Alas, Richard, the Queen has ordered me to write a new treaty with the King of Spain. I think I may write a play instead.'”

I slipped a piece of apple out of her bowl. “Resist the temptation, my lord. It's harder than it looks.”

She grinned. “You would be surprised how many seem to think it's easy. Today I overheard a lady in the third gallery instructing her servant on the elements of a well-wrought play. She seemed to think our Shakespeare was a mere upstart. But how is it with you and Kit? Have you managed to fall in love yet?”

“Hardly.” I thought back over that day's rehearsal, when Kit had “wooed” me under the watchful eye of John Heminges. It had not gone well—he took my hand as though it were a piece of liver and spoke of my “moon-bright orbs” and “swanlike neck” in a voice that would have better called out a challenge to combat. Master Heminges kept reminding
him that I was his beloved, not his enemy, finally bursting out with, “Why so cold, boy? Love melts a man!” Kit blushed to a shade I could not recall seeing on his face and muttered that he could hardly play the scene as a puddle, which only provoked his master further and cut our rehearsal short.

“They should have cast Robin as Silvia,” I told Starling. “Kit could probably muster a bit of affection for him. He speaks to me as if I was a fortress and he a warrior laying siege. He comes to conquer.”

“He always comes to conquer. But what's the state of his fingernails?”

I knew what she meant. In spite of his seemingly perfect confidence, Kit's fingernails were often bitten down to the quick before an especially demanding performance. “They're bleeding already.”

“Ah. Becoming a man may not be so easy as he— Ow! A pox on thee!” This was said not to me, but to Ned Condell, age seven, who had thrown a tennis ball to land precisely in the bowl of worms.

Clearing the bowl and ball of worm guts brought an end to that conversation, after which Starling drilled me on my lines for Silvia and agreed with me on their quality. “Whoever wrote this play must be
very
important, else the Company would have used it to start fires. But perhaps there will be enough stabbing and disemboweling to please the audience.”

Next day, Kit dressed downstairs with the other men and soon was pacing the length of the tiring room. He often paced before a performance, but without a full skirt or train to sweep around at the turns, he seemed strangely off balance. He jerked where he was wont to flow, and watching him, I felt an apprehension that did not bode well for the afternoon.

As Starling had suggested, sometimes an audience will think better of a work than the Company does. But on this occasion our opinions matched perfectly. The first scene consisted of tedious complaint by Sylvester, which almost put our audience to sleep before Kit swaggered on as Adrian. A fight with the wicked uncle's men roused them briefly, but once Adrian met Silvia nothing would please. During the courtship scene, as Kit professed his undying love, the groundlings became more and more restless until someone called out, “Enough, lad—you'll talk her to death!” In the brutal laugh that followed, an orange peel landed on the stage. Kit threw his shoulders back and set his feet wide apart and spoke louder—but faster, to speed the scene.

This is a practice of raw amateurs, and startled me so much I almost forgot my lines. I had worked long and hard over the past year to slow my speech, and yet here was Kit bumping along like a cart rolling downhill. Presently he caught himself and began cutting lines and feeding me new cues. This sort of invention, called “thribbling,” came easier
to him than to me. By the end of the scene he was all but pointing at me when it was my turn to speak, and the murmurs of the crowd began to sound like the growl of an angry beast.

We left the stage arm in arm, simpering at each other, and broke apart the minute we passed through the door. “Why couldn't you follow me?” he burst out angrily. “I gave you your cues, and all you could do was flop around like a fish out of water!”

“Me?” I sputtered. “
Me?
That was—that was the most— You cut that scene up like a butcher!”

Richard Burbage intervened and sent us our separate ways before we could attract the attention of our audience— who would have gladly trooped back to the tiring room to watch us instead of the play, which continued to sink in their estimation. Silvia's death scene, where she stabs herself in remorse for her part in Adrian's downfall, came none too soon for me. By then I fully sympathized with her despair and pulled the knife from its scabbard with such passion the audience fell silent. When the blade plunged and sheep's blood spurted from a concealed bladder in my gown, ladies in the surrounding galleries made a collective gasp. Robin and Gregory, as a pair of twittering maids, followed as my body was carried off the stage. Something else followed as well— a spatter of applause.

“There,” Gregory announced, as the litter bearers dropped
me without ceremony in the tiring room. “What do you think of that?”

“Think of what?” I said, grasping his offered hands as he pulled me up.

“That sound. You're the only one—” He broke off because Kit was passing on the way to his next entrance, his face so hard we felt it like a slap. “You're the only one to win applause this dismal day,” Gregory continued, when Kit had passed. “You can be sure
he
noticed.”

I pulled off the heavy wig and ran my fingers through my hair, as though to air out my head. “He has enough worries of his own.” I could watch him now that my part was done and saw him carry himself more and more like a girl putting on mannish ways. It appeared he had lost his footing—in the duel with Thomas Pope he lost it literally and fell smack on his behind. The groundlings laughed.

By then Gregory and I were standing in the back of the musicians' gallery waiting for the play to be over. Gregory had spent a pleasant afternoon observing Kit's downfall, but I was exhausted, and the laughter of the groundlings gave me no satisfaction. This was the same crowd Kit had so often swayed to tears and outrage now mocking him, and all I felt was pity. Envy, rage, even irritation are enlivening emotions, but pity just makes one tired.

“Oh good, here's the cloak,” Gregory remarked. “Go to it, Kit. Die like a man—silently.” 29

Instead Kit spoke his lines to the last gasp, as though forcing the audience to take him at his word:

“O cloak most black, consume me into dust;

The pale smoke of honor to the gods I trust.”

That last line was done rather well, I thought, but my opinion was not shared. “Here's a smack from sweet Silvia, to hurry it up!” sang a voice from the floor, and a rotten apple bounced off Kit's shoulder, followed by a hail of nutshells.

Most of our performances, whether comical or tragical, end with selected players capering out on stage to perform a jig or Morris dance. But the author of
The House of Maximus
had requested that the work not be trivialized in this manner. So it was allowed to stand on its own—meaning that it fell with a thud. After throwing the remains of their noonday meals, the audience left in a foul humor.

Gregory and I descended into a scene as dramatic as anything on the stage. Kit was literally throwing off his clothes, starting with the jewel-hilted sword and gold-studded belt. One or two of the actors made consoling noises, but he was having none of it—he tore at his costly doublet so savagely that a button flew off, and the tiring master cried out in protest.

“Calm yourself, boy!” Richard Burbage commanded sharply. “You bear your own share of blame for this play.” I heard the warning tone in his voice as I bent to pick up the belt, but had little time to wonder about it before something
caught my eye—a folded square of paper falling from Kit's silk shirt as he pulled it off. Robin approached, as pale as an egg, offering a warm towel for Kit to wipe the paint off his face. “They're fools,” said he, with a jerk of his head toward the house. “Knaves. Tomorrow they'll be eating out of your—”

Kit silenced him with a truly vile suggestion and stalked into the far reaches of the tiring room to retrieve his clothes. Some of the men sighed and shook their heads.

“It's just his humor,” Robin whispered. “He's never been laughed at.”

Overcome by curiosity, I drew aside and opened the paper Kit had kept tucked away in his costume. In an elegant slanted hand—the new Italian script that had taken hold amongst the gentry at court—the writer wished Kit well on this most auspicious occasion: “As I trust all my effort on your behalf will be rewarded, so you too may expect your reward by serving my words this day. Your true friend—” The note was signed with a curious flourish that might have been a C, E, or T.

Well! thought I, putting the message together with Burbage's remark about bearing some blame for the play. If nothing else, Kit knew the author—

Hearing footsteps, I guiltily threw down the note and started up the stairs to the upper room, stealing a glance behind me. Kit reappeared, still buttoning his doublet, his face like a thundercloud as he scanned the floor, then
scooped up the note and stuffed it out of sight. He passed on through the tiring room and out the door. No one bothered to remind him that he would bear a heavy fine for missing a rehearsal. At that moment he clearly cared not if the Theater collapsed about our ears and buried us all.

Villainous Company

he next morning Robin and I were barely up and dressed when a great pounding broke out on the front door below. We glanced at each other, then gathered up our shoes and hurried down the two flights of stairs to see what was afoot. John Heminges had arrived, which in itself was not unusual, for he lived in the same neighborhood and walked to the Theater with us almost every morning. Today he appeared early—but Kit, who boarded with him, was nowhere to be seen.