The Playmaker (8 page)

“Poetry,” Susanna muttered bitterly. “A treasure indeed. You can guess how much comfort it brought her.” But she put up no further argument, especially when I offered her the ring and pendant, and the spoons to keep for me. Only the papers had I taken, and thought them a fair trade. But now they were gone. And the rector's testimony, and those silly beads I had bought in my mother's memory, and the shilling given me by my first friend in London—all gone.

“Will you be buying that book, sirrah?” The bookseller, a portly dame who looked better suited to selling iron skillets, folded her arms and glared at me meaningfully.

For answer I replaced the quarto and turned away, speechless. Drawn toward the cathedral by a need for quiet prayer and reflection, I climbed the stone steps and passed through the arched doorway into the nave—where I paused for a moment, blinking in surprise. The interior of St. Paul's was almost as boisterous as the grounds. It appeared to be a kind of public meeting hall, where money changed hands over the very font, and hopeful tradesmen angled for work, and lovers whispered together in dark corners. London had confounded me once again; in a daze I made my way past all these doings and into the unoccupied south transept, where a row of short high-backed benches stood in a pool of light falling from the clerestory overhead. Here I knelt, with my elbows on a bench and my head in my hands, and tried to think.

By now my fright had ebbed away, and another sensation was stealing in to take its place. I recognized this new arrival— a quality that was my mother's bane, the one thing in me that drove her to violence. “Ah, thou'rt ever a stubborn lad!” she would cry. One time I refused to apologize to Susanna for an offense I did not see myself to blame for, and Mother took my head and slammed it against the heavy oak door of our cottage. “Stubborn, stubborn lad!” she cried, and then clutched one hand with the other as though to restrain them, while I bit my lip so hard it bled, forcing back tears. She had a temper but also true
humility; it was she who begged my pardon later, not the other way round.

Alas though, she was right. When crossed, I am apt to dig in my heels and refuse to shift in any direction. I do not attack; I resist.

And now I was crossed, as never before. I struck my head on the back of the bench and cursed my aunt, the so-called Holy Nan, with more passion than I had thought was in me. Without doubt she was responsible for this—she, and those she had set on me. “Fly away straight,” they said, but I hereby vowed not to oblige them. Those who had stolen my heart evidently expected me to run home with my tail between my legs. But I would not. I found myself knocking my head against the wood over and over, hard enough to hurt. Stubborn, stubborn lad. Almighty Lord, I prayed: let them not escape. Deliver me from unrighteous and evil men, and bring them unto thy most speedy judgment.

Surely that judgment would fall, and soon. In the meantime I meant to stay, for no better reason than my enemies wished me gone.

Returning to work at Motheby and Southern was out of the question. Somehow I must spirit back the pouch that held their bills and receipts and leave them to draw what conclusions they could. This was the very day we were to draw up the papers binding me to an apprenticeship, but fortunately that had not come to pass—I need not add bond-breaking to my list of woes. Most of my possessions, except what I carried on me, would have to be written off as lost. I dared not show my face on the docks;
they
would no doubt be watching, as they had before. Starling had been right
about that. Perhaps she was right about other things as well.

What I needed was a place in London where I might be free from detection and still earn a living.

A place where I could fit immediately into a set or trade and go about in company—unnoticed, perhaps even disguised.

A place where no one watching for me would ever think to look.

T
HE
C
OMPANY

o, lad,” were Master Condell's first words to me. “You've had second thoughts about acting, have you?”

“In a way, sir. If you still want me, I am willing to bind to you.”

“You are willing.” His tone was dry. “That's all well, but I don't comprise the Lord Chamberlain's Men by myself. The rest of the Company must approve.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then take a place at the board, and we'll hear you anon.”

So I seated myself at one end of the table with six other boys, most younger than I, and all more presentable. My afternoon had been spent in outfitting myself by any means at hand to one who had no
change of clothes, nor tiring place to change them, and scarcely two coins to rub together. I did manage to wash my shirt in a rain barrel behind the cathedral, and scrubbed most of the blood from it. With my next-to-last farthing I bought a strip of linen and tied it to cover the cut on my neck, hoping to create an impression of uprightness. In truth, I probably resembled an undersized street brawler, but no one at the table paid me much heed. The men at one end were deep in discussion about a trial, trade, and the city of Venice, carried on a tide of names all ending in “o.” The boys were engrossed in study—each held a piece of paper and scanned the words on it intently, with a fluttering of lips that told me they were memorizing the words thereon. No sooner had I understood this than Master Condell passed a scrap of paper down to me: “Con these words as best you can. You'll soon be asked to speak them without reference to the paper.”

This was all the instruction I received. I looked down at twenty-odd lines of verse, and panic struck, hard as a blow to the side. I had not seen an entire play in my life, and my only notion of acting was pieced together from my memories of inn-yard performers and our village rector's dramatic reading from Scripture. The scheme I had determined in the clear, pearly light of St. Paul's appeared as insubstantial as a dream in the smoke and noise of the Mermaid Tavern. The speech began thus:

And so on for another sixteen lines in praise of mercy, the glory of kings and gift of God. I reckoned that these were the words of a play; the speech appeared to take place in a court of law and was addressed in part to a nameless Jew. But who was speaking, and to what end, and upon what occasion, I knew not. To make matters worse, scarcely five minutes after I had begun my study, one of the boys at the table was called upon to recite for the Company. My turn could not be far away.

For the first two soundings my mind was cruelly divided between the hopeful young actors and these words I must somehow drive into memory like a peg. But by the third I had gathered from their example some notion how to stand and hold my head, along with a conviction that there would be no harm in seeing this thing through. My memory, when not distracted, soaks up words as the plowed fields take rain. Therefore I shut myself in by a huge effort of will and made a clean, straight furrow in my mind: “The attribute to awe and majesty, wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings …”

Then I was called, and the next moment stood before the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Their stares were neither soft nor hard, only the intent study of workmen who wish to see their work well done. “Thy name, lad?” asked one.

“Richard, sir,” I said firmly. It had occurred to me that spilling my
last name might not be wise if anyone was looking for me. My first name was safe enough—one could hardly throw a rock in London without hitting a Richard. To my relief, the questioner let it pass.

“Have you parent or guardian?”

“None, sir.”

“Well then.” I saw a pot of ink upon the board, a hand with a pen coming down to scrawl my name upon a sheet of curled paper. “You may begin.”

I drew a long breath, and began. “The quality of mercy …”

A calm approach seemed best suited, so I did not stride or pace or leap forward as some of the other boys had done. My arms stayed bent and my palms rose slowly, pleading but not groveling for mercy to a poor orphan without hope or prospect. As I spoke I began to hear my mother reading from Scripture: “For thy mercy is everlasting … Thou dost not regard us as our sins deserve, nor punish us according to our iniquities …” And as I spoke, I know not how, my voice became hers, rounded to her pauses and inflections. No one ever read the Word with more depth of feeling. She might have been holding my hand, so smoothly did I walk through that speech. I thought, when all was done, that it had not gone so badly.

One or two heads nodded. All looked thoughtful, and after a brief spell of silence they launched into a comparison of the seven of us and our merits. I felt suddenly faint and heard little of it. So earnest was the discussion that no one noticed I had remained in place, until one of the actors glanced up and made a little start.

“I'll vow,” he said, as frankly as if I were deaf, “see how he stares! If wishes could build kingdoms, this boy would be emperor of us all!”

His resounding voice sent a shiver down my spine. I blushed, and bowed, and returned to my seat, noticing how intently Master Condell was watching me. “True enough, Richard,” he said (not to me). “A lean and hungry look, if ever I saw one.”

“I like his manner,” said the scribe of the company, who had spoken little thus far. His eyes were the kind that seem to pierce through the styles and habits one may assume, and into the soul of a man. “‘Tis plain, but eloquent. He speaks from the heart.”

“As thou dost, Will.” Another player affectionately thumped the said Will on the back. “The boy shows promise. I vote for a trial. What say you, gentles?”

Through a haze I perceived that the Lord Chamberlain's Men voted to take me in on trial. Henry Condell alone appeared to hesitate, and no wonder: my abrupt change of heart about the theater must have aroused his suspicions. Yet after I was elected with two other boys—Richard Worthing and Adrian Ball—Master Condell was the one who offered to board me in his household. He may have wished to keep a curious eye upon me, but I cared not for the reason at that moment. My state was one of exhilaration and terror. God help me now, I thought, barely attending as these men settled my future among them.

“He'll be pretty enough once he scrubs up,” said the man called Richard, with a jerk of his head toward me. “I'll give him that.”

And this was a revelation. With my wide eyes, broad jaw, and short chin, I have always thought I possessed the face of a rabbit.

Starling almost squealed when Master Condell brought me into the great room of his house. He sent her to fetch another shirt and hose for me, and upon her return, she whispered, “I knew you would be back.” I made no reply; she had been right too often already.

The master led me up two flights of stairs to a short hallway with a door on either side. Here he opened the right-hand door to reveal a youth about my age, sprawled on a low bed and covered with small boys. “Thomas! Ned! Cole!” scolded their father. “Get to bed. You know Robin has to study.”