The Playmaker (11 page)

But what lover would fail to recognize his beloved in the weak disguise of an attorney's robes? What court would fail to rule that shedding blood is necessary to cutting flesh?

“What apprentice would quibble over a story?” Robin, tried beyond patience, heaved a pillow at me. “Go back to quayside, if you've no more touch for the theater than that.”

Going back to quayside was impossible, of course, but what Robin said struck home: I seemed to lack “the touch.” True, by now I had begun to decipher the mysteries of the plot sheet, and could get through most performances without some player hissing, “Now, Richard!” or “Not yet, Richard!” I had gained some notion of
how to stand upon the stage and pitch my voice low or high and conduct a tolerable fight. But all were pieces, fragments of some greater whole that my mind failed to grasp. I was looking for a good reason to dress up in a gown and wig for the amusement of Londoners who might better be spending their time elsewhere. What value did they draw from the stage?

More to the point, what good was it to me? Almost a month had passed since I was attacked and robbed, and my simple intention to remain in London and spite my enemies had grown to a hope that I might somehow get my property back. But the theater claimed body and soul—I had scarcely time to think of a plan, much less act on one.

These thoughts ran faster through my head as the date approached for our first performance of
The Merchant.
The Company did not slight its schedule to prepare a new play; all our rehearsals were squeezed in before or after each day's offering. For three mornings I rehearsed with Kit, who played Portia, under the watchful eye of Master Condell. My master took some pains with my first speech: “On you rests the burden of letting the audience know why Portia's suitors have to go through this guessing game with the caskets. But keep your speech light and sharp—if you turn dull, you will lose their interest.”

Kit was never dull. Portia's lines glittered like a needle as she described her failed suitors, skewering each one. As Portia he charmed; as Kit he made me feel like a fool. Our rehearsals went thus—

Me (as Nerissa): “What say you then by the French lord, Monsieur … um …”

Kit (as himself): “Le Bon, you blockhead. 'Tis an easy enough name to remember.” (As Portia): “God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.”

Me (as Nerissa): “What think you of the Scottish lord—”

Kit (as himself): “What think I of nitwits? The
English
lord comes next!”

After three days my lines were firm, I had suppressed my fear of sharing a scene with Kit, and Master Condell claimed to be satisfied. But he had yet to tell me, and I knew not how to ask, what it was all about. Only once did I catch a glimmer of what acting could be.

It was during our one rehearsal of the entire play, with all actors present. The middles were dropped out of the long speeches and many of the shorter ones—I had scarcely begun my first and longest speech when Master Will called out, “Hold, enough! Jump to the end, so please you.” Walking through the play helped me see that the story held together better than I supposed, but Shylock as portrayed by Master Burbage was the real surprise. He made a proper villain, rubbing his hands in glee at the prospect of cutting up Antonio's sweet Christian flesh. But in the middle of the play Burbage swept aside the villainous outline and revealed the beating heart of a man scorned all his life by the society that fed off him: “Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you
poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

Watching from the back of the stage, I was spellbound—caught up, feeling
with
the greedy Shylock. Burbage had brought him to life. And that, I guessed, was the aim of the Lord Chamberlain's Men: to serve up rich helpings of life to their audiences, to introduce them to people they would never otherwise meet, to stretch their minds and hearts to fill a greater world.

But in realizing this aim, I doubted more than ever my ability to achieve it.

Now the dreaded day has arrived and all the actors are behind stage getting into their costumes. The second trumpet has just sounded, signaling half an hour until the performance begins. Kit and I are in the upstairs tiring room because we need more space than the others. We have each stripped down to breeches and hose, then pulled on a shift and one stiff petticoat. The dresser hurries to lace us into corsets, very tight at the waist but looser near the top, where he skips every other point. Stage apprentices generally do not stuff themselves in the bosom. Real ladies of the court, in fact, aspire to a shape much like our natural one, with a smooth front tapering down to a very long waist.

The garments are not designed for comfort or ease in dressing. They are the same clothes, minus a few petticoats, that any of the Queen's ladies might don of a morning, with hours to prepare and a bevy of servants to assist. The farthingale goes on over the
corset—a sort of oval pillow that ties around the waist and flares out at the sides, lending a woman the shape of a Spanish galleon. A corset-cover next, then the gown—silk, satin, velvet, or quilted versions of the same—always heavy, with skirts that could conceal a troop of dwarfs and separate sleeves shaped like giant sausages. Most of these dresses are embroidered all over with seed pearls or silk thread—one sleeve would have fed us for months back in Alford.

After the gown is laced up the back and the snag-ends of gold thread are clawing at our necks, on goes the ruff—as subtle an instrument of torture as man has ever invented. It ties around the neck and locks your head in such a vise you can scarcely turn it— that, and scratchy too. The ruff stands out in stiff pleats, with a grandeur of width to match the rank of the wearer; some are so wide they make one's head look like a pea on a plate—a pox on them all! By now we are so trussed up that the dresser has to complete us, buckling our shoes and setting a jeweled wig, which reeks of many wearings and not enough washings, upon each head. Portia wears a tiara glittering with paste diamonds. And I am topped with a headdress of plumes.

All this takes place in near-perfect silence. Off the stage, Kit behaves as one who thinks very well of himself, but in the hours before a performance his manner is passing strange. He might never have trod the boards for all that a stranger could tell: so tightly wound that if I bumped him accidentally he might whirl back and slap me. I have seen him bite at his lips until they bled.
Most actors will jest with one another while waiting for the play to begin, or run quickly over a scene together, or clasp hands and wish themselves well, for a play like a ship sails smooth only when all hands are working in accord. But Kit steers his own ship, and the Lord Chamberlain's Men take care not to jog his sails; that is his humor, and everyone works around it. He has powdered his face white and lined his eyes with kohl; now he rubs a bit of rouge on his cheeks and lips, then hands the mirror to me—still without a word—so I may paint my own face.

Robin, agile as a monkey, clatters up a stairway so steep and narrow it is little more than a ladder. As Shylock's daughter, Jessica, he does not appear until the second act and is waiting until we quit the tiring room to dress himself. “Fair Venus, descend!” he cries to Kit. “The play begins anon, and the house is packed. We'll have silver in our pockets tonight. Then ho for the Southwark stews!” I was pretty sure the brothels and gambling houses across the river had never seen Robin's face, though he liked to speak as an old familiar. The bit about the silver might well be true, for the Company charges double for seeing a new play and apprentices receive a bonus from the profits.

Robin scurries back downstairs as the third trumpet sounds. The peculiar, breathing hush of the theater falls upon our audience, suddenly weighty in their silence. Kit glides to the stairway, turns, and looks at me directly for the first time. “Your feathers are tilted,” he says before descending backward, sinking like a bright sun behind the floor's planked horizon.

Before this, all I had done with my short lines and brief actions was help push a story forward, like one of the stage boys moving trees or pillars. Now my task was to enter the story, give flesh and life to a play, and I still had no idea how. For the first time, I understood why acting is a profession, not a trade. Delivering extreme emotion is easy; carrying on everyday conversation is hard. Scarcely three sentences into Nerissa's first speech, I became aware of whispers and flutters in the audience. My part, which I had rehearsed so many times it might have been carved on my brain, crumbled like chalk.

In the course of their conversation, Nerissa names the suitors and listens to Portia's witty judgments on each, but I soon became so rattled that the names came out in a very haphazard order—one I mentioned twice, and two others were left out altogether. Kit took over the naming, carrying on a dialogue with himself while I nodded when it seemed appropriate, and tried to smile, and prayed for a quick end to my misery.

Once off the stage, he called me a gaudy string of names hardly befitting a lady, and it might have come to blows had not Master Heminges taken him aside for a lecture on self-control. Most thankfully, I had no speeches for the next many scenes and only short ones thereafter, of which I missed about half. I did make some impression on the audience: when Portia reveals her plan to pose as the doctor of laws with her clerk, Nerissa says, “What, shall we turn to men?” “Aye, lad,” cried some wit from the
audience, “and that is the trick, for thou art a mouse so far!”

Kit refused to speak to me thereafter. Nor did anyone else except Master Will, who as Nerissa's suitor had sent me looks closer to pity than love. But not even he addressed the issue directly. “Here, Richard,” said he as I descended the stairway in lawyer's robes for the court scene. “Let us be true to life. A law clerk always wears his tassel on the left side to show he does not yet aspire to the profession.” So saying, he moved the tassel on my cap, and in my distraught condition I remembered leaving it on the right side for a reason, but could not think what it was. This simple act of kindness helped, for Master Will coaxed me into showing a bit of spirit in the last scene. Then I turned to exit and tripped over my petticoat, falling on my face.

The audience enjoyed this, as much as they had enjoyed the entire play. The business with the three caskets delighted them and while Bassanio pondered his choice, they did not hesitate to help him decide. “Choose lead! Choose lead!” they called, and laughed when Bassanio pointed guardedly to the said casket and winked at them. They loved to hiss Master Burbage as Shylock, with a red beard and a leering grin, and cheered loudly when he was dealt his defeat in court. But his speech about revenge silenced them. I noticed its effect even while sunk in gloom behind the stage, waiting for my next entrance under Kit's scorching disdain. “… and when we are wronged, do we not revenge?”

The Merchant
was deemed successful enough to play for two more days running, and in those performances I managed to not
butcher my part—although I did no special kindness by it either. Nerissa could scarcely speak three lines together before the whispering and nut-cracking began. Try as I might, I could not enter the play; I felt almost as if the play had locked me out. After church on Sunday I took to the garden, dumpish and tight-lipped, to study my prospects: namely, whether to leave the Company now or wait until they dismissed me at the end of the season.

A letter from Susanna had arrived the day before, full of reproach, as I expected. Though we were twins, she was born older than me, and considered herself wiser: “It doth maze me that you who claimed to know our mother's heart best could shame her by making a fool of yourself upon the ungodly stage. …” More followed in this vein, before she assured me that I could always return home if I changed my mind. But Alford was no longer home. It had nothing for me besides living off my sister or hiring out for farm work. What to do?

In the two months since my mother's passing, life had spun me around so many times I had lost all sense of direction. I recalled the opening scene of
The Merchant,
where Antonio described his state of melancholy in words that suited me well: “Such a want-wit sadness makes of me that I have much ado to know myself.”

“I'll tell you this,” came a voice behind me. “If you keep moping, you'll never get anywhere. I'll wash my hands of you.”

I considered not answering, then sighed. “Is that my Lady Consolation? How sweetly falls her voice. Truly, 'tis the voice of an angel—from hell.”

Starling swept in like a gale from the north bringing cold comfort, and perched upon the back of the stone bench. She had kept mostly clear of me while I was learning my new profession (or drowning in it, more like). But her prying nature could not be put down forever. “A wise youth would wait until he knows his angel better before deciding where she's from.”

“How can you wash your hands of anything that was never on them?”

She snorted. “Were it not for me, you wouldn't be here.”

“For that, I know not whether to thank you, or push you off that bench.”

“Oh, peace!” she burst out, suddenly angry, unless she had been all along. “I didn't drag you by the heels into this company. You were chased here, as we both know.”

“It's no concern of yours how I came here.” “That may be, but there's a thing I've been turning over in my mind. Something odd about one of those men.”

“What was it?”

“Probably no concern of yours.” She hopped off the bench and took two steps before I grabbed her by the apron-bow.

“What's your price?” I asked.

“Only your story.”

Very well then, thought I; I'll take this bait and tell her all. If a choice of allies were offered me, I might have passed over Starling, as she was tart and inquisitive and talked when I had rather she wouldn't. But the friend market was not a large one at the time,
and I had to admit she was clever. So I started from the beginning and told her of my arrival in London and the man who directed me to the quay and the infuriating interview with my aunt. I finished with the street riot and the threat upon my life, which drove me to the theater. She listened avidly, her eyes widening. “Faith, it's better even than I thought!” she exclaimed, when I had done.