Death of Kings (21 page)

None of this was exactly new to the Company. I glanced at my companions, the Jacks and Martin. All of us were well aware of just how unstable our trade was, even in the finest, best-established
of acting companies. Yet, such was Dick Burbage’s oratorical skill, that we listened to his words as if he were telling us great, unuttered truths. At the back of my mind, though, was the
certainty that we hadn’t yet reached the heart of his speech, the real reason we’d been summoned to the tiring-house on a cold winter’s morning. Everything he’d said so far
was a preparation for something that when it came wasn’t, I suspected, going to be entirely welcome. Otherwise, why was Dick making such a business of selling it to us?

It came, sure enough:

“As players we must look with favour on those who would favour
us.
We cannot afford to turn a cavilling, carping face to the world; rather we must show welcome both in eye and
tongue. We have been requested to stage a special performance this Saturday afternoon, which will be advertised as usual and open to our public as usual, but for which we have been offered the sum
of forty shillings extraordinary.”

He paused. There were no gasps or whistles of amazement at this sum, for although it might have been ‘forty shillings extraordinary’ – that is, in addition to whatever receipts
we might take at the door – it was hardly an extraordinary sum in itself. In fact, I calculated that it would have kept me going for less than two months in London, and that would be by
living sparely. So, if it was to be shared out among the Company, forty shillings represented a thoroughly modest disbursement.

“What’s this play then, Dick?” said someone, Thomas Pope I think. “It must be very special that we cannot just be told our parts but need to meet about it
beforehand.”

“It is one of our own,” said Burbage, again inclining his head in the direction of Master WS. “It is William’s
Richard II
that I am talking about.”

“That old piece,” Jack Horner muttered next to me. His feeling was obviously shared by the majority of the Company, to judge by the shifting and stirring and muttering around us. I
would probably have felt the same way, had I not been privy to the conversation between Sir Gelli Merrick and Augustine Phillips. That, together with Robert Cecil’s warning, had alerted me
not only to the title of the play but also to its significance. In truth, this latter point was nothing very arcane. Very soon my fellows in the Company, or the quicker-witted among them, had
grasped the meaning of a request for
Richard II.
I glanced at WS to see whether he was offended by comments about the fustiness or dustiness of his work; I wondered whether he would speak up
on his own account. But he did nothing other than wear his usual bland expression.

“A practical point, Dick,” said Pope, again. “You say that we’re being offered forty shillings extraordinary to put on a piece which – not to put too fine a point
on it and saving your reverence, William – is a little musty. But in my view we’re likely to
lose
more than forty shillings when our regular customers stay away in droves. Why
don’t we do something new, or at least do something not quite so old?”

“Yes, and it may be more than the forty shillings we’ll lose,” said someone on the opposite side of the room. There was an agitated flurry at this point, since a consideration
that most of us had been uneasily aware of was pushed to the forefront of our minds. Yes, we could lose in several ways: it would be bad enough to forfeit money rather than to make it, if we were
fined by the Council; it would be yet worse if some of us lost our liberty, as a result of putting on a play which the Council would certainly frown at; and worse still, if some lost more than
liberty . . .

Several people turned in the direction of the last speaker, as if they expected him to enlarge on his remark. Dick Burbage was also looking towards him, giving him the chance to have his say. It
was Richard Sincklo, a quiet and rather formal man.

“Master Burbage, we all know that there are . . . reasons why this play of
Richard
should be requested at this time.”

“Tell us them, Richard,” said Dick Burbage kindly but firmly, like a master to a pupil.

“It deals with the . . . the death of kings. It shows a throne usurped, and the usurper triumphant. It shows that a sovereign may be deposed and then put to a violent death. These are nice
subjects at this time. I think I do not have to expatiate further.”

Now Master WS, he nodded slightly at Dick Burbage and stepped forward on the makeshift platform. This was his right – after all, it was
his
play that we were talking about. Who
better to defend it? Unlike Burbage with his overmastering ‘attack’, WS had a softer approach. His voice and intonation still carried traces of country sweetness and simplicity. Or
perhaps it was all an act.

“Richard Sincklo, thank you for dealing so plain, as usual. No, you do not need to expatiate further. [
I noticed that he did not take the opportunity to mock Richard Sincklo’s
slightly formal ‘expatiate’, something a lesser man might have done. As ever, Master WS paid grave and good-humoured attention to what he heard
] We all know what you are talking
about, and these matters should be aired. You say that my
Richard
shows ‘a throne usurped’, you say it shows a ‘usurper triumphant’. So it does – or rather, so
our History does. What I have recorded is what happened, happened once. And I ask you what became of the usurper, Henry Bolingbroke? For that is History too. Why, he lived as King Henry IV, and not
so long after he ascended the throne he died of a sickness, and during his reign our kingdom was torn apart by inland wars and civil strife. This too I have recorded, as I think you know.
[
Appreciative laughter, for it was WS’s Henry IV that first offered to the world the indestructible figure of Falstaff and other riotous fellows.
] Those plays about a usurper met with
no little success, I think, even though I showed him dying in defeat and disillusion. The lessons that History teaches are not simple. Those who would treat them as an A-B-C primer may be fools.
What I am saying, my friends, is that we must not think of our audience as fools.”

Shakespeare paused here.

“We are afraid of trouble now if we show a play about the death of a king. But I say to you: we are players first and foremost. Let those who wish to construe what they watch in a bad
sense, do so. We are not guilty of their false assumptions and constructions. We are guilty of nothing, only of holding the mirror up to nature. If a man looks in the glass and doesn’t like
what he sees, then the fault – and the remedy – lies with him.”

“What if he goes and smashes the glass, William?” shouted out Thomas Pope. “What then? You know how costly a glass is, how difficult it may be to replace.”

“More fool him,” said WS, easily equal to this elaboration of his original ‘glass’ metaphor; in fact, comfortably able to top it. “Each piece of shattered glass
will tell him just the same story again when he looks at it, but this time it will be multiplied a hundredfold. I say once more, we are players. Players are bold and truthful, or they are nothing.
We
are nothing.”

There were murmurs of assent at this. Jack Wilson nudged me and I nodded at Jack Horner. We were all infused with a sense of the dignity of our trade. Later, in a cooler moment, I was able to
see that Burbage and Shakespeare had presented a kind of double act here: while Dick stressed the insecurity of the player’s life (and the consequent requirement to accept just about anything
that was on the table), William showed himself an adept at stiffening our sinews and summoning up the blood. We were players; we should be proud; we ought to fear no man. I wondered whether the two
shareholders had worked out beforehand who was to say what, or whether they knew each other’s methods so well that they simply fell into this kind of pattern without consulting over it. I
wondered too why they were going to all this trouble about a performance for which the Company would receive only forty shillings. We got five times as much for a performance at Court – and
got it with royal thanks and without the danger of treason.

Dick Burbage stepped forward once more. This time he spoke briskly, as if everything were settled. Again he showed his shrewdness here. A pause for more questioning would have allowed for
protest, objection.

“Now we must proceed. Gentleman, please collect your scrolls from the Book-man. Robert Gough will be playing the King and I will be taking the part of Bolingbroke. We begin rehearsing in
an hour.”

The debate was over. It had been over before it began, since I noted that the roles must have been allotted and the scrolls prepared in advance of the meeting. We trooped off to see what Master
Allison had for us in the way of parts. Looking round, I found Master WS at my elbow.

“Oh Nicholas,” he said as if it was a chance encounter. It was only much later that I wondered whether anything,
anything
, occurred by chance in those strange days.

“Sir,” I said, then, “William.”

As you can see, I was still thrown into a slight state of confusion in my encounters with WS. He smiled vaguely but his mind seemed elsewhere.

“You have seen our friend, as I asked?”

“Yes. In another man’s house, as you asked,” I replied, thinking how easy it was to fall into the cryptic mode.

“And passed on the words I gave?”

“Yes,” I said, reflecting now that Master WS must be in an unusually unquiet state of mind to be seeking confirmation that his requests to me had been complied with.

“Thank you,” said WS.

“He gave me something for you.”

“Something?”

“Four lines.”

“Lines?” said WS, for all the world as though verse was a foreign language to him.

“Of verse. They are:

‘Lo in the orient when the gracious light

Lifts up his burning head, each under eye

Doth homage to his new-appearing sight
,

Serving with looks his sacred majesty . . .’
”

“These I know well,” said WS. “What does he mean by ‘sacred majesty’? Is it reassurance or warning?”

“They are your lines, are they not?”

“Must we be held accountable for all our words?” he said wearily. “I suppose so. Do you think we shall be required to listen to everything we have ever said and written, when
the day of judgement comes? Or do you think that a mere abstract will suffice?”

“I don’t know,” I said, because I truly didn’t. Master WS was unaccustomedly grave and, well, abstracted. Then he reverted to the Earl of Southampton.

“But he said nothing else? No further message?”

“No,” I said, “but he was mindful of . . . of your welfare.”

I wished I could communicate to WS the tone in which his friend HW had enquired after him, for in the latter’s questions there had been much more gentleness and warmth and interest than my
own rather bald description would indicate. Master Shakespeare seemed satisfied, however.

“He should rather be mindful for his own. Tell me, Nick, you also saw the inside of . . . the other man’s house, when you saw my friend?”

“We had an interview within its walls, yes.”

“And your impressions?”

“Of the house?”

“Of its occupants.”

I hesitated, partly from uncertainty as to what to say, partly from uncertainty as to what he wanted to hear.

“I heard some wild and whirling words there. A Puritan was up on his hind-legs, spouting stuff that it would be unwise to repeat.”

“He was preaching to the unconverted in that place,” said WS.

“And I saw – saw Devereux himself.”

“What was my lord of Essex doing – cutting a caper?”

“In a manner, yes. He moved so very fast across the hallway, he might have been dancing.”

“Leading others a dance.”

“Nothing so light,” I said, deliberately misunderstanding the comment. “It seemed to me a place of swearers and desperate men.”

“I fear so,” said the playwright. “I fear there will be many wrecked on the Essex coast before this is finished.”

I had never seen him in so quiet a mood, almost a despondent one. The resolve and the steel which he had showed on the platform so recently had all gone. I would have almost welcomed a pun from
him.

“Then why . . . ?” I began.

“Yes, why, Nicholas. Go on, complete your question please.”

“Just now, when you were speaking to us all, you seemed to be saying that we should not concern ourselves with the bad construction placed on our words – your words, I should say .
Or on our actions either. That players should be true to themselves and so on.”

“So we should.”

“Well then?”

I was surprised at myself for the directness, almost the impertinence of the question. But really I did not understand how Master Shakespeare could at one moment counsel that we of the
Chamberlain’s ought to play whatever we pleased and the devil take the hindmost, and the next that he should express the utmost apprehension about the enterprise presently unfolding at Essex
House. For, if his prognostications were correct about many being wrecked on the Essex coast, then what were
we
doing staging a play at the behest of a bunch of malcontents and
renegades?

I did not voice this question in so many words but it was the one that Master WS chose to hear and to answer.

“You ask yourself what we’re doing,” he said, and I almost jumped because he had echoed my thoughts. By this time we were snugged in a corner. The rest of the company were
queuing for their parts and costumes.

“What Dick Burbage said was right,” said Shakespeare. “We can’t afford to pick and choose, and play only what we feel like playing.”

“But you said – your grand words about holding the mirrror up to nature – not caring what people think,” I said, feeling disappointed (and a little angry as well).

“Well, grand words are true too – in their place. On stage or in the pulpit. Your father was a parson, wasn’t he, Nick?”