London (102 page)

From the turret above the Globe’s roofline, a trumpet had twice sounded to announce that a play would begin at two o’clock. Evening performances were banned, naturally, since no one wanted crowds in the streets after dark; and even late afternoon productions were forbidden lest they distract the common folk from going to the church service of evensong as they should. Soon after the main midday meal known as dinner, therefore, the Elizabethan theatre had to begin.

One of the bearded Burbage brothers was at the door, watching the audience arrive and quietly counting the take. Entrance to the pit was a penny, to the galleries twopence. The Lords’ Room above the back of the stage, entered by a staircase behind the tiring house, was set at sixpence that day. So far the theatre was well under half full, a total of seven hundred altogether: not a disaster, but, unless the play was very well received, not enough to secure a repeat performance. Rose and Sterne, having promised twenty friends, had brought seven. The Lords’ Room, as yet, was empty. Lady Redlynch had not come.

But in the tiring house a very different kind of problem had developed.

Edmund looked around desperately. Five actors, including Jane’s little brother, stood before him. But where were the other three? Will Shakespeare had excused himself at the start of rehearsals, but that was natural, Edmund supposed, when he was working on his own play. But there had been a full complement at the rehearsal yesterday. “Richard Cowley’s sick,” one of the others reported. “Thomas Pope has lost his voice,” Fleming sadly told him. As for William Sly, no one had heard from him since the previous day. He had simply disappeared.

“Can you double up?” Edmund begged them, as he searched his memory frantically to see how this could be done. After several minutes poring over the script he managed, with a couple of small cuts, to cover for Pope and Crowley; but unless Sly turned up: “We can’t do it,” he concluded. “It’s impossible.” He gazed around them, at a loss. His play, all that he had worked for, casually destroyed at this last minute. The audience would have to be given their money back. He could not believe it. The actors, embarrassed, looked at each other in silence. Until Jane’s little brother spoke up. “Could you not play a part yourself?”

The actors looked at Edmund curiously.

“I?” He stared blankly. “On the stage?” He was a gentleman, not an actor.

“Seems the best idea,” Fleming agreed. They were still watching him.

“But I’ve never acted,” he protested in confusion.

“You know the play,” the boy said. “Anyway, there’s no one else.” And after a long, agonized pause, Edmund realized he was right.

“Oh my God,” he breathed.

“I’ll get you a costume,” said Jane.

They hit him like an engulfing wave as soon as he came on stage, taking him entirely by surprise. He could see them all in the daylight from the big circle of the open roof above: eight hundred pairs of eyes staring at him from the pit below his feet and from the galleries on every side. If he moved to the side of the stage, some in the galleries could almost reach out and touch him. They were all looking at him expectantly.

Not that they would do so for long. Elizabethan actors had to earn the attention of the audience every minute. Bore them, and they would not just become restless in their seats – the folk in the pit and many in the galleries were standing anyway. They would begin to talk. Irritate them and they would hiss. Annoy them, and a hail of nuts, apple cores, pears, cheese rinds or anything else to hand, might land on the stage or on your head. No wonder the prologues to plays often appealed to them, hopefully, as “Gentles All”.

But he was not afraid. In his left hand, in a little scroll wrapped around a stick, were his lines, which Fleming had discreetly slipped him as he went through the stage door. It was not uncommon for actors in a new play to bring such prompts with them, and it was hardly visible, but the gesture had seemed absurd to him. He was hardly likely to forget the lines he had written himself. As he waited his turn he glanced around. He spotted Rose and Sterne and noticed their surprise at seeing him on stage. He would have to make up some good reason for this afterwards. He watched the actor playing the Moor. He was speaking tolerably well and Edmund saw with satisfaction that, so far at least, the audience’s eyes were riveted on the strange, black figure he had created. His idea had been good, then. But the time for his own speech had almost come now. He smiled, took a step forward, took a breath.

And nothing happened. His mind was a complete blank. He glanced at the actor playing the Moor for a cue. None came. He felt himself go pale, heard Fleming’s voice call out something from the stage door, and, shaking with embarrassment, glanced hastily down at the scroll.

So, Sirrah, how does my lady now? How could he have forgotten? It was so simple. A hint of restiveness seemed momentarily to afflict the audience after this fumble. No hissing, just something in the air. But fortunately it seemed to disappear.

The rest of the first scene, which was not long, passed without incident. By discreetly unrolling the scroll in his left hand, and glancing down at it for reassurance, he found that he did not fluff his lines again. The play was settling down.

The strange murmur began in the last minute of the scene. The Moor was making his first major speech, centrestage. It was blood-curdling and he had been rather proud of it. But just before he reached the climax of his speech, something else seemed to claim the audience’s attention. Edmund saw one or two hands pointing, and nudges being exchanged. The speech ended, not to awed silence, but still more whispers and pointing. He turned to exit, puzzled. And then he saw.

No one had been in the Lords’ Room when the play began. The whole gallery above the back stage had been empty. But now, a single figure had entered it, seating himself right in the centre like a presiding judge, and then leaning over the balcony to get a better view – so that, seen from the pit, his face seemed to hang, a sort of strange, stage ghost, over the proceedings. And no wonder the audience had whispered and pointed.

For the face was black, like the Moor’s.

“It’s him. I’m sure of it.” Jane was the one who had gone out to inspect the black stranger from the gallery. “His eyes are blue,” she added.

There were seldom any intervals between acts. The second had already begun and Edmund was due to go on again very shortly. As he and Jane gazed at each other, they both remembered the conversation with the Moor only too well. Would he guess that he was the inspiration for the play, Edmund wondered? Of course he would.

“How does he look?” he asked nervously.

“I don’t know.” She considered. “He just stares.”

“What shall I do?” he asked.

“Take no notice of him,” she advised.

A minute later, Edmund was before the audience again.

Hard though he found it not to glance up at the black face over the back of the stage, he managed to focus on his lines, and played his part without mishap. The Blackamoor’s first great crime – a theft and rape – was unfolding. The audience was following the action expectantly and the actors seemed to be gaining confidence.

Why was it then, towards the end of the second act, that he began to feel uncomfortable? There was plenty of action. The Blackamoor’s character and deeds were horrifying. But as the minutes passed, the sensation grew: the play was getting flat.

The third act came. As the evil doings of the black pirate rose to new heights, so did his language. Yet now it seemed to Edmund that the ringing declarations he had so lovingly penned sounded bombastic, empty; and he realized that the audience too was beginning to grow restive. Here and there, he heard faint mutters of conversation: looking up at the gallery, he saw Rose whispering in Sterne’s ear. As the act neared its end, he started to search in his mind: something new had to happen by the start of the next act, at least. And with a feeling of cold panic he realized that there were two more acts to follow – and they were just the same. The play had no heart, no soul.

Jane was in the audience too, but if her concentration shifted from the stage, it was for a different reason.

How strange he looked. Time and again, as she watched from the gallery, she found her attention moving from the action of the play to the face behind it.

He never moved, even between the acts. He might have been carved upon the woodwork. His face hung there, expressionless as a mask. Like all Elizabethans, Jane was uncertain whether black people were human beings. Yet as she gazed at him, it seemed to her that there was something noble in that dark, unmoving face.

What was he thinking? There before him the actor, a made-up caricature of his condition, was exposing his villainy to the audience. Was he himself so terrible? She remembered everything about him from that day at the bear-pit: his snake-like body, the sense of danger about him, his dagger. As she stared at him now, she had no doubt that he could be dangerous. And yet, it seemed to her that his eyes were sad.

She should have gone back to the tiring house after the third act; but she stayed, watching him, instead. What was he thinking? And what was he going to do?

The fourth act: within minutes, Edmund knew he was in trouble. The black pirate’s villainies were mounting, but, now that the audience had got used to him, and seen through the trick of the play, they no longer cared. Were they going to start hissing? But the audience was in a cheerful mood. Knowing this was a first effort, they were inclined to be kind to the playwright. Towards the end of the act, almost as a gesture of support, there were some hisses and groans each time the Blackamoor appeared. And still, as the final act began, Edmund could see that for some at least, the strange black man at the back inspired more curiosity than the play itself.

Alone in the Lords’ Room Orlando stared. He saw them all and understood them; but he did not let them shame him.

He had paid sixpence to enter the Lords’ Room, more than any of them. He supposed he was a richer man, quite probably, than anyone in that theatre. He had paid, hoping in his heart to see himself as a hero.

There was no doubt that he was the central character of this play. As soon as he arrived, he saw the audience pointing at him, heard the whispers and the buzz with a feeling of satisfaction. The first scene he saw confirmed this view. The Blackamoor of this play was captain of a ship and evidently a man of some importance. Only kings and heroes, he supposed, had plays written about them. But if, he thought, I am to preside here over this play about myself, I will lean forward, and let them know me and see my face.

By the second act he understood better and by the third act he was certain. He had seen very few plays, but this Blackamoor was clearly a villain. As the fourth act unravelled, he started to feel indignation, then fury. Had this fake buccaneer ever heard the cannons’ roar, known the force of a gale, faced death or a mutinous crew? Could he have brought a ship through a storm where the waves came over you like solid thunder, or killed a man in cold blood because he had to, or even guessed what it was to come from six weeks at sea into the arms of a warm and sultry beauty in an Afric port? And, just because he was untutored, only he, the Moorish mariner, in all this audience truly saw, in its entirety, the vulgarity of Meredith’s poor play.

Then he remembered, once more, what Meredith had said. “I can make you into a hero, or a villain; a wise man or a fool.” So this was the power of the young popinjay’s pen. He thought he had the power, in this wooden circle, to make him not only a villain, but to make him worthless.

His face still showed nothing. He felt for his knife.

The audience had at last had enough. With the fifth act, they could take no more. The play might be terrible, but at least they could have a little fun. As the Blackamoor, attempting his greatest and most terrible crime, was foiled and caught, to be followed by his inevitable trial and execution, they gazed at the actors, considering how best to begin.

Seeing the villains on stage, and the strange, mask-like face of the black man staring out so incongruously from the Lords’ Room above him, someone in the pit saw the joke.

“Hang the devil,” he cried out. “And the other one too!”

It was a good joke. The audience took to it at once. Here was something of interest. A player pretends to be a blackamoor while a real blackamoor, like a presiding spirit, hovers behind him.

The next lines were cheerfully obvious. “Spare the actor. Hang the blackamoor!”

“Someone must hang for this play!”

“They’re partners. Hang both!”

If the pit saw a broad joke, the gallery saw subtler implications. “Spare the blackamoor. Hang the playwright. The play’s the crime.”

“No,” a gallant explained to the audience. “The play’s not dull. ’Tis a true report. And behold,” he pointed to Orlando Barnikel, “the real villain.”

The audience could not contain itself. It rocked with laughter. For a moment the actors could not proceed.

Black Barnikel did not move. His face was still a mask.

It was then that they started throwing things. They meant no harm. Nothing dangerous was thrown. Small nuts, cheese rind, a few early apple cores, one or two cherries. It was all good-hearted. Indeed, wishing to spare the actors, and even the young playwright, too much ignominy, they tossed their missiles towards the blackamoor in the Lords’ Room, who, it seemed to them, could provide a harmless focus for this horseplay, and who in any case was somehow the inspiration behind it all. Most of the projectiles fell short. Only two or three landed close or hit him. A moment later, one of the Burbages called back the actors and sent on the clown to give the customary jig. So pleased were the audience with their wit, that they received him with roars of warm approval.

So ended Meredith’s play.