The Playmaker (10 page)

The acting, in itself, made few demands on me during that firstfortnight. When I was required to look something other than attentive, the sentiments were extreme ones—terror, rage, exaltation—all of which any child can, and often does, perform several times in the course of a day. So quickly did I master screaming upon the stage that I could almost begin to fancy myself a gifted actor—except for what went on behind the stage.

The tiring rooms remained in a state of mayhem during a play, with actors throwing off costumes, searching frantically for misplaced properties, or scanning the plot to determine their next entrance. The cues for the actors on stage were often supplied by Cuthbert Burbage, who sat behind the door holding the playbook. But he could not divide his attention two ways, and thus the need for the “plot” a long scroll hanging from the centerpost, on which were written all the cues for every scene. Never was a piece of paper more ardently courted than during a performance. Every member of the Company possessed incredible gifts of memory, but no mortal could remember all the cues of a different play every day. Traffic around the plot was heavy and sometimes I could get nowhere near it. On one occasion I missed a cue entire, and found myself hurled a little late upon the boards by Master Cuthbert. There I blurted my alarm about the approaching barbarians with all the terror that the bloodthirsty warrior played by William Sly could have wished. Only at that point in the play he was expecting an announcement of the birth of his son. There followed a very brief pause, then Master Sly took two steps and fetched me a blow
on the ear not entirely feigned, demanding, “Have done with thy madness, dolt! What ails thee? What news of my
wife
?”

“Keep your feet in line!” Robin had to remind me over and over. “You walk like a stork—turn your toes in! Heel-to-toe, remember? Round your steps, roll them—and keep those knees together when you sit! No maid sprawls like that.”

Walking and talking like a female is a matter of observation and practice. Robin made an exacting teacher, drilling me in the garden if the day was not too far gone. Starling often joined us once her chores were done, and sometimes she was a help. More often she was a nuisance, collapsing with laughter on a bench or hopping up beside Robin to show where he was in error as to how ladies behaved. “That's all well,” he said once, “but these are stage ladies.”

I agreed, rubbing my neck wearily. “He's right. Everything has to be done broad upon the stage.”

“Oh, listen to the veteran,” Star scoffed. “I know that. But Rob should spend less time aping Kit and more looking around him.”

“I do not ape—”

“You do. Mind how Kit walks, Richard, like he had an iron rod for a backbone. A real woman bends once in a while.” So saying, she spread her arms like wings and bowed her back in a graceful curtsey, one toe pointed.

“Not in a corset, she doesn't.” Robin imitated her curtsey with his back faultlessly straight, then spoiled the effect by making a
vulgar noise. “You should lace yourself into one sometime; 'twould force all the wind out you.”

“I don't pack near the wind you do!”

“True; what you pack is somewhat more solid. Ow!” he yelped, as she poked him in the ribs. “Pecking fowl! You be the instructor then, since you know so much.” With that, he ran off to join a game of battledore which the Condell children were starting on the lawn. Star sat next to me on the bench.

“I have been thinking,” she said. “Your coming here owes somewhat to those two men on the wharf. Did they chase you hither?”

I had to swallow before answering. “What men?”

“Just as I thought. Be comforted: I would know them again should they ever come to the Theater. I will be your sentry.” With a reassuring smile, she dashed back toward the kitchen, leaving me not in the least comforted.

By the third week I had learned enough about walking and curtseying to be trotted out in a corset and gown, as a lady of the court. The part itself required little of me, merely to stand and look shocked or alarmed and make exclamations now and then. It was what I had imagined doing all along, but it proved, of course, to be nothing like I expected. In the midst of a harrowing scene, while a king accused his most trusted advisor of base treachery, I became aware of an itch deep within my laces and petticoats—in a place where no lady would ever scratch. The more one dwells upon such trifles, of course, the more intense and demanding they become.
My predicament was approaching a kind of agony which could not last much longer—when abruptly I thought of my sister Susanna's face, could she see me now. From uncontrollable itching I went to uncontrollable mirth. I happened to catch the eye of Dick Worthing, who was likewise decked out beside me. The two of us broke into sniggers that put a strain upon our corsets and drew stern looks from the actors nearby. One of them, Thomas Pope, put a stop to it by coming down with an armored foot upon my toes—pain can cut a fit of the giggles right short.

At least once every week the Company met at the Mermaid Tavern to set schedules, assign parts, or discuss any other business that came up. When parts for a new play were to be handed out, apprentices joined them, though they were expected to keep silent.

On the first Tuesday in May all gathered at the tavern to hear the plot and casting of the latest play by William Shakespeare—he who had “liked my manner” when I first read for the Company. Master Will, I was told, penned two or three new plays every season for the Lord Chamberlain's Men, though how he found time I could not say. As an actor and partner in the Company, he was as busy as any of them, and his reputation as a poet brought other work to his door. When we arrived at the tavern, in fact, he was engaged with two gentlemen who were trying to persuade him to write a funeral ode. The object of the ode was not yet dead, I gathered, but his death seemed likely, and the gentlemen were adamant that only one poet in London was up to the task.

“My humble thanks for the honor you give my poor pen,” said the poet, “but I fear I have not time to do justice to Lord Hurleigh.”

“‘Tis not for ourselves we ask it, good sir. Lord Hurleigh admires your verses exceedingly. A request from such a kind and noble patron as he, so loyal a subject and kinsman to the Queen, is not to be despised.”

“Alas,” said Master Will, spreading his hands. “I am exalted by his regard, but the stage is my mistress. And demanding she is, too.”

“If you would but consider—”

“I pray you, gentlemen.” Richard Burbage rose from the table, with all his actor's presence about him. “You have received your answer, at least twice. Your business is done; we still have ours.”

The two left, most reluctantly, and the Company seemed to think Shakespeare had done well to get rid of them. “Though it's a fair purse they were offering,” he sighed.

“That's no matter,” said Master Burbage. “Everybody knows Lord Hurleigh is a Catholic.”

“A suspected Catholic, we must say.”

“A suspected thief can hang as easily, and blot all he touches.” The conversation was only of passing interest to me, at the time. But before long my attention was riveted by a debate concerning whether I was ready for a real part—an actual, named character, not merely “first soldier” or “third lady.” Masters Burbage, Pope, and Sly expressed some doubt—for the very good reason that I had made no impression on them. Masters Condell, Heminges, and Cowley spoke in my favor. They knew me best:

Henry Condell had taken time from his many duties to teach me elocution, while Richard Cowley served as dancing and fencing instructor to the boys. Their support was lukewarm, however— they saw me as barely competent, and no more. Master Will kept silent and merely nodded when the men came to agreement, then wrote my name beside the part of “Nerissa,” and passed down the papers that contained my speeches and cues.

Robin, at my elbow, whispered, “Now thine arse is in the skillet.” He grinned to reassure me, but I could almost smell my own flesh fry, and was not reassured. Events were moving too fast, and every day brought further indications that the stage required much more than I had anticipated. More, it seemed, than I was able to give it.

F
LOUNDERING

can make no sense of this tale,” I complained to Robin. We were drilling each other on our lines for the new play. The hour was late; little Condell boys twitched in their sleep and a soft spring breeze sighed through the narrow window as the night watch called eleven o'clock from below.

“‘Tis only a story,” Robin yawned. “Why worry it to death?”

“Because I don't understand it. Here I am to play this serving maid—”

“Not a serving maid. Nerissa is a grand lady who waits upon an even grander lady.”

“Aye, the lady Portia, who is so beautiful—and rich—that princes come from far and near to woo her. But why does she make them choose between three
caskets? Why can they not strum lutes beneath her window at night?”

“You know that! It's all in the speech Nerissa makes at the beginning. Do you not remember your own part? Portia's father fixed it before he died: three little caskets, one gold, one silver—”

“And one lead. Yes, but—”

“Peace! I am explaining to you. Her picture is in one casket only and the suitor to choose the right one wins her hand. A man who picks gold will love her only for beauty. The man who picks silver desires only her wealth. But he who chooses lead … what was the writing on the lead casket?”

“‘He who chooseth me must risk and hazard all he hath.' But anyone who chooses wrong must swear he will never again seek to marry. Who would take a risk like that?”

“Are you our master critic, now? It's just a story.”

There was more that bothered me about the play, which they called
The Merchant of Venice.
The merchant, one Antonio, foolishly promises to lend money to his friend Bassanio so the latter can go wooing the lady Portia. But, as Antonio's money is all ventured in ships, he must borrow it in turn from a Jew named Shylock, who requires a pound of the merchant's flesh if Antonio cannot pay him on time. “What reasonable man would agree to those terms?” I demanded of Robin.

Of course, Antonio is unable to pay on time. Shylock, who hates Christians and is further angered when his daughter, Jessica, elopes with one, insists on claiming his pound of flesh. Bassanio,
meanwhile, succeeds in winning Portia by choosing the lead casket, but when he hears of Antonio's distress he rushes back to Venice to stand by his friend in court.

Shylock will not be swayed either by mercy or reason, and Antonio is about to go under the knife when a learned lawyer appears—who is really Portia in disguise, accompanied by Nerissa in clerk's robes. She also appeals to Shylock's mercy (in the same speech I recited at my hearing), but the Jew will have his bond, and the law is on his side. Cut away then, says Portia, but remember: the bond calls for flesh only. If Shylock spills one drop of Antonio's blood, then the law he appeals to will come crashing down on him. The Jew is thwarted, Antonio saved, Portia revealed, and almost everyone is married in the end—even my character, Nerissa, who has managed to fall in love with one of Bassanio's friends.