THE sound of the clashing steel, of chairs overturning, of shouting and
scuffling, brought John Davenant into the room. The sight that met him
turned him sick. A man of whom he went in mortal fear was defending
himself as best he could from the furious lunges of a tall, elderly
foreigner, who yet used his sword with all a young man’s address and
agility.
“Oh, stop ’em, for the love of God!” cried John Davenant.
But the players knew better than to intervene. The bully was being
pressed so close and with such a bitter animosity, that for any man
to have attempted such a task had been highly dangerous. Also they
knew the man for what he was. And now was as fair a chance as was ever
likely to offer for him to pay his dues.
The Italian music master was pressing Grisewood at the point of his
weapon all over the room. But only one of those present was aware that
he had murder in his heart. And this was the man who knew what was the
real issue between them. That agile mind, moreover, had the power to
look swiftly ahead. In an instant, it had grasped the full significance
of that which was happening and of the grave danger that threatened.
In the stress of the moment, Shakespeare threw discretion to the wind.
He approached far nearer than was wise to the combatants. Their breaths
were coming in fierce, low grunts. Sweat was on their white faces.
Murder was in the eyes of both.
Utterly heedless of his peril, Shakespeare went to the side of Gervase.
“Have a care,” he said. “For God’s sake don’t kill him.”
Well it was that Gervase was of those who can keep a hold upon
themselves, even when a savage blood-lust has them in its toils.
Desperately as he was fighting, he heard the words of his friend, and
well he understood them. But he was out to kill. With a contained rage
that was terrible, he meant to pierce that strong and resourceful
guard, and then should the man pay the penalty of his crimes.
Grisewood was not a coward. He was among the coarsest and most brutal
of his kind in a coarse and brutal age. His life had been ignoble, but
he was a man, in any circumstances, to sell it dearly. Yet as this tall
and furious fellow drove him all over the room, he felt that now his
hour was come.
This would have been the case without a doubt, had not Gervase realized
the importance of the player’s warning. He must lay aside his revenge
for a season. This man was a link in the slender chain that one day
might save him. But he was determined that the ruffian should not go
scot free. By sheer vigor, he drove Grisewood finally against the wall.
And once there, he broke down the man’s guard and drove the point of
his sword through his arm.
It was the end of the fight. Grisewood was totally disabled. Suffering
great pain and bleeding fiercely and streaming curses, he was glad
enough to have his hurt attended to and then, under a chirurgeon’s
advice, to be put to bed by John Davenant.
From that hour, the Italian music master was a hero in the sight of the
Lord Chamberlain’s servants. To be sure, his son, Arrigo, disgraced
himself utterly by going off into a dead faint as soon as the fight was
over, and although such behavior was felt perhaps to be ultra-Italian,
it did not lessen his popularity among his new comrades.
Two o’clock that afternoon was the hour fixed for the Lord
Chamberlain’s players to give their first performance in Oxford. Much
of the morning had been spent in erecting a stage in the center of
the spacious courtyard of the Crown. It seemed that the visit of this
famous company had given rise to grave controversy. Shakespeare had
applied for leave to play three pieces in the large hall of Balliol
College, or of some other convenient place within the precincts of the
University. The question was referred to the Vice Chancellor. “Yes,”
said that worthy, “after giving the matter anxious consideration, as we
have a favorable report from London touching your band of comedians,
and we learn that her Grace the Queen has approved them on divers
occasions, the University will accede to your request, provided the
pieces are given in their original Greek or Latin.”
Upon this, the playwright made the modest rejoinder that, much as he
regretted the circumstances, it was, in point of fact, impossible
to play the three pieces in either of those chaste tongues, since
he himself had written them in the vulgar English language, which
unfortunately was the only tongue with which he could claim an
acquaintance, and that a very imperfect one. Such a statement was very
shocking to the University. The permission was at once withheld, but in
language of great politeness and dignity. “We do not well understand,”
it said in effect, “how one who is not even a member of this University
or of the sister foundation of Cambridge, who, we are credibly
informed, is a mere hackney writer for the theaters, and who, we are
further informed, is a little better than one of the illiterate, can
prefer such a request.”
After this rebuff, the playwright, quite undaunted, applied to the
city authorities for permission to use the Town Hall. In the meantime,
however, the news had been carried to the bench of aldermen that the
University had rebuked this importunate fellow. And if the vulgar
English tongue was beneath the dignity of the Gown, how much more was
it beneath the dignity of the Town, which had a reputation to maintain
and so much less upon which to maintain it. “No, sir,” said the bench
of aldermen, “we would have you to know that that which is not deemed
worthy for only a part or moiety of this fair city, is deemed still
less so for the whole of it.”
Thus there was nothing left for the poor playwright to do but to seek
permission of honest John Davenant, mine host of the Crown, to set up
trestles and boards and rig up a curtain in the middle of his large inn
yard. And John Davenant, having less in the way of learning than the
Gown and less in the way of dignity than the Town, and being promised,
moreover, a full ten percentum of the takings at each performance, was
nowise averse from such a proceeding.
The play to be given that afternoon was “The Merchant of Venice,” a
pleasant comedy that had already been played several times with success
in Shoreditch. The author of the piece had not to play in it himself,
a contingency for which he expressed himself devoutly thankful. “A bad
play is doubly damned,” he said, “if the author himself has to preen
and strut in it.”
That afternoon, the more congenial and not less onerous rôle was to
be his of sitting at the receipt of custom. But his friend, Richard
Burbage, had for his sins to play the Jew. And the famous tragedian
was fain to declare that the playwright as usual had got the best of
the bargain, inasmuch that it was far easier to play the Jew in the
box-office than it was upon the boards.
These players were a high-spirited, light-hearted, genial crew. The
incident in which they had been concerned in nowise affected their
gaiety. They lived in and for the moment; they took life as it came
to them; theirs was the sovereign faculty of being able to lay care
aside. They were prone to set all sorts of tricks upon one another, and
to crack jokes and tell tales at one another’s expense. They seemed
to have no particular respect for anybody, not even for Shakespeare
himself, but Anne and Gervase noticed that only one man in all that
merry, careless company ever ventured to break a lance with him.
Richard Burbage was the man in question. The tragedian was a short,
powerfully-made man, with a solemn face of much good-humor and an
organ-like voice that was both rich and deep. When the playwright and
his friend crossed swords, which they did pretty frequently, the whole
table would cease to ply knife and spoon in order that it might attend
the combat. These duellos, to be sure, were carried off in the highest
style of pleasantry, but the play was very keen while it lasted.
The dramatist sat at one end of the long table, and his trusty henchman
at the other.
“They do tell me,” said the tragedian, in his slow, rolling speech, and
bestowing a wink on those that were near him, “that this plaguy piece
we have all got to play in for our sins this plaguy afternoon is the
work of a certain court gallant by the name of William Shakespeare.”
At this, the dramatist at the other end of the table laid down his
knife very deliberately, and after gazing around as if in search of a
thing he could not see, said, “I wonder whence that growl proceeds. I
do believe there is a dog in the room. Young Parflete”--this to the
youngest and smallest member of the company--“young Parflete, I will
thank you to pitch it out with your foot behind it.”
“A friend,” proceeded the tragedian, in a very audible whisper for all
that he spoke behind his hand, “of the Queen’s most gracious majesty.
This is no reflection upon the Queen, still it must have been a sore
trial to her friendship when such a burden was laid upon it.”
“Yes, it is a dog,” said the dramatist, very gravely. “One of those
brindled, flop-eared, yellow-coated, squab-bellied mongrels by the
sound of it. It is the kind of dog that is only fit for a blind pedlar
to trundle at the end of a string. Hi, Thomas!”--addressing a servant
who had entered with a dish--“there is a dog in the room.”
“I don’t see it, sir,” said the servant, looking round.
“Oh, but there is, I tell you. One of those squat brutes all body and
no legs. One of those half-begotten starvelings that lies all day by
the hob and whines all night to the moon.”
“I see no dog, sir.”
“Have you looked under the table, Thomas?”
Thomas looked under the table, but still could see no dog.
“But I heard it, man, I tell you. There is no mistaking such a voice as
that.”
“There is no dog here, sir,” the servant assured him, solemnly.
“Upon your oath, there is no dog?”
“No dog, sir, upon my oath.”
“Then the sound must proceed,” said the playwright, “from that queer,
rude fellow who sits at the foot of the table there, of whom I am
credibly informed that, since he retired from the theater, he gains a
precarious livelihood by training bloodhounds to sing like canaries.”