IT was an important evening at the Mermaid Tavern. Long before supper
time the spacious upper chamber with the sanded floor began to fill.
All the regular frequenters of the place were eager for news of Will’s
new comedy. But it was a long way in those days from the palace at
Richmond to the famous hostelry in Eastcheap. Authentic information was
tardy in coming that evening.
The hour of eight was told on the clocks of the city. Yet there was
never a word of news of Will or of his comedy. This was indeed strange.
Among those who came very often to the tavern for the sake of the
company to be found there was a number of men about the Court. Not one
of these has as yet appeared upon the scene. And neither Will himself
nor any of his fellow-players had arrived.
Dishes of deviled bones and flagons of wine were laid on the long
table. The company sat down to a very informal repast. Tongues were
unloosed and rumor was presently rife.
The assembly that had gathered in this long upper chamber was a curious
one. In the shabby and careless garb of the poet, or in the soiled
doublet of the writer for the theater was contained some of the
choicest spirits of the age. On most evenings this strange company was
garnished with a sprinkling of men of fashion with some pretensions to
wit, but these were absent to-night. This fact, taken in conjunction
with a singular dearth of news was held to be a sinister omen. No news
is not always good news in matters relating to the theater.
There was genuine concern among those present. Will was a universally
popular man. In spite of a very remarkable success which had sprung
from beginnings of the humblest kind he bore himself invariably with
a modesty and a courteous consideration for others that completely
disarmed even those who had the most cause to envy him. Moreover, those
who had the entrée to that sacred upper chamber at the Mermaid well
knew how thoroughly his success was deserved. For these were first-rate
minds. These men, as far as it was possible for the contemporaries
of William Shakespeare to do so, realized and appreciated his
accomplishment.
If Will had at last met with a check to his career none would regret
the fact more than these friendly and admiring rivals who had an
intense admiration for his extraordinary genius. And some of them,
moreover, had already come to live in a kind of reflected glory that it
cast upon them.
Rumors of failure grew with the arrival of each newcomer who yet had no
first-hand news to give.
“Did he let you con the piece, Martin?” asked a gray and worn veteran
with a ragged beard of an individual very familiar to himself who sat
at the head of the long table.
“Aye, he did so. And I tell you it is the best thing he has done yet.
If he makes a failure of that, God help the age, say I.”
“He was not very happy about it two nights ago.”
“Ah, that’s Will’s way. He never does anything but that he wishes it
better.”
“And yet they say he never blots a line, eh?” said a young man with
flaming hair who sat opposite.
“It is only Ben who says that,” rejoined the veteran at the table-head.
“And Ben blots so many himself that he thinks nobody else takes any
pains by comparison.”
“Then you consider this new piece a good thing?”
“Aye, good enough, good enough. It is a better thing than any of
us will ever see our names to.” The speaker sighed. He was a man
of infinite courage and ambition. But he had lived long enough and
had striven hard enough to learn the sharp truth that these things
of themselves will not conquer. “But by God!” The fine poet and
great-hearted man took up his flagon. “I’d be the last in the world to
begrudge Will his good luck. His fortune is our fortune too. He is a
nonesuch and not again will the world look on his like. He is a king
in his own right, and by God, I drink to him. Here’s to our monarch.
May God protect him, and may he never write a worse comedy than ‘As You
Like It.’”
Dekker rose and held his flagon aloft. And all the others at the long
table followed his example.
There was a murmur of voices and a clink of cups.
These men could not bring themselves to admit that by any possibility
the true prince had met defeat at last. Still, the total absence of
news from Richmond was very ominous. But even if the Queen had not
approved the new comedy, that was not warrant sufficient to assume, as
more than one among that company made bold to maintain, that the new
comedy was not worthy of her approval.
“’Tis a fine thing,” said the man at the head of the table, “and you
may lay to that. His genius ripens every day. There is nothing in my
opinion beyond the compass of Will’s invention.”
“He lacks but one thing,” said a large, ugly and pock-marked fellow who
came slowly into the room.
“And what is that, Ben?” was the question that was promptly fired at
the newcomer.
“A little learning, my friends, to temper the heat of his mind. A
little of the classic severity of Athens to mellow the over-sharpness
of his wit, to trim and clip the excess of his redundancy, to confine
the natural incontinence of his humors.”
But the words of Ben were drowned in good-natured laughter. All knew
the foibles of this heavy and slow-moving man. He was a surly dog fond
of his growl. He must ever run contrary to received opinion. He had an
exaggerated regard for the classic tongues. But there was no stouter
fellow, no stauncher friend, and there was not a grain of smallness in
his nature.
“Sit down, you dog,” said the time-worn warrior at the table-head, “and
bury your mask in a flagon. Hi, drawer, a cup of Muscadel for Master
Jonson. Ben, my son, with all your learning, aye, and with all your
genius, too, you will never be quite man enough to don the mantle of
William the Peerless.”
“Did I ever say I would?” said Ben roughly. “Is there any man alive
that ever heard me speak so windily? There is no man living or dead who
is the peer of our incomparable William and I care not who hears me say
it.”
The great rude fellow brought down his bricklayer’s fist with such a
resounding thud upon the table that the dishes rattled and the wine
slopped over in a dozen cups. But this rough diamond, who as yet did
but stand at the threshold of renown, was freely forgiven all the
inconvenience he caused for the sake of that honest enthusiasm whereby
he did himself honor in the eyes of all.
The motley crew who sat night after night at that table were without
exception men of parts and understanding. Whether their ruffles were
ink-stained, whether their hands were lily-white, whether they wore
silk and fine linen or plain bombazine, whether they lived by the sword
or by the pen, or whether they had no need to live by either, there was
no appeal from their judgments upon poetry and the drama, and posterity
has not found occasion to reverse their verdicts. It was the great
age indeed. These were men of rare mental power, of large and liberal
intercourse. They knew the highest when they met it and knew how to pay
it homage.
For example, this rude fellow Ben Jonson, this clumsy, loud-voiced,
opinionative Scotsman, a pock-marked, ugly creature who had lived rough
and who had the brand of a felon on his thumb was the coming man. He
would go far, said the quidnuncs. He was heavy metal of the royal
currency; one who under Providence was destined to be second only to
Will himself.
Thus men cast in a gentler mold made room for him. He was no favorite,
to be sure. His manners were too rude, his opinions too unqualified.
But the sacred fire was in his veins. And those who were wont to
dispute precedence with persons of far more account in the eyes of the
world were proud to sit at the feet of Ben.
The long July evening was closing in. The candles had been brought and
the shutters drawn in the long upper chamber. And that which hitherto
had been hardly more than a thrill of half-expectant surmise was now
become a slow agony of suspense. It was incredible that news had not
come from Richmond. The play must have been over by six o’clock. The
verdict of Gloriana and her court must have been delivered long ago.
Was it possible that the miracle of the age had tasted his first
defeat? Well, and if he had? said the graybeard at the end of the
table. Gloriana and her Court were not infallible. Will should read
his comedy to his peers that night, as he had done on many occasions
previously. Theirs should be the verdict, for they alone, with all
respect to Gloriana, were qualified to give it.
The brave words from the table-head were received with loud approval
from a score of stalwarts who by now had gathered round the board. Such
words were well and wisely spoken. But suddenly there fell a hush. A
famous and admired figure came quietly, almost stealthily, into the
room.
It was that of a bearded, brown-faced man of forty, trim and soldierly
of look, secure and curiously authoritative of bearing. His dress
was rich and fine; his air that of a courtier, urbane, polished,
calm, quizzical. There was the coxcomb in the outward man, but not a
trace of it in the far-looking, eagle-glancing eyes. This was a great
figure, even in that company, which measured a man not by his outward
assemblance but by his deeds.
“Ah, now we shall know,” cried the man at the table-head. “Here is Wat.
Newly from Richmond, else I’ll never drink sack again out of a bombard
until I attain the age of a hundred and twenty.”
“Yes, Martin, newly from Richmond, as you say,” came the courtier’s
lisp. “Newly from Richmond, newly from Richmond.”
The newcomer sank down in a manner of extreme weariness in a vacant
chair. He sighed heavily.
“A cup of the muscadel for Sir Walter,” said the man at the table-head.
“And lively about it, boy. No need to tell us what has happened, Wat.
But we did not think it was so bad as all this. We did not think it
possible that Will could fail. Is it--tell me, Wat--that Gloriana has
smelt some affront in the new piece? Well, well, she is getting old,
and even in her prime she was--well, shall we say?--what shall we
say?--why, body o’ God, what’s the matter with the fellow?”
The speaker had good reason to ask the question. Raleigh--the
brown-faced courtier was no less than he--seemed utterly overcome.
Something untoward had most certainly happened. There was more than a
mere matter of a play’s failure or success in the dismay of that strong
face which shone a bleak gray in the uncertain light of the room.
“Why, what’s the matter? Tell us, for the love of God!”
But Raleigh shook his head haplessly. He who knew not the meaning of
fear in the presence of bodily peril, he whose resolution never failed
in great crises, was wholly unable to tell the news he bore.
“Is it Will?” A sense of foreboding had descended suddenly upon all.
“Tell us, I pray you.”--The eagerly anxious voices sank in the oddest
manner. “Has aught happened to Will Shakespeare?”
Raleigh did not answer. But that face so eloquent of power and high
capacity seemed to grow a little bleaker. And then twenty pairs of eyes
that were turned almost fiercely upon it saw that a rush of sudden
tears was shining there.
The man at the head of the table laid a hand to his heart.
“Oh!”
His exclamation went echoing through the silence of the long room.
Again the solemn hush descended. That which Walter Raleigh had not
courage to tell, not one of these men could muster the courage to ask.
What could have happened? Those were perilous times indeed; times in
which the quietest, most law-abiding citizen took his life in his hand
when he walked down the street. The tragedy of poor Kit Marlowe was in
every mind. Had Will Shakespeare, the incomparable poet and charming
personality, met the assassin’s knife by chance or by design? The face
of Raleigh portended not less than that. Yet not one of these men could
summon enough resolution to set his doubts at rest. The silence was
painful. A pin could have been heard to fall in the room.
Suddenly there came sounds of heavy feet stumbling, blundering
up the wooden stairs. The door was flung open. A thick, squat,
gnarled-looking fellow reeled in like a man under the influence of
wine. His face shone livid in the light of the candles.
It was Burbage the tragedian.
“Speak, man! Tell the news!” came the hoarse demand of a dozen voices.
“Shakespeare,” The voice of the tragedian could hardly be heard. “He
is arrested by the Queen’s order. They say--they say he will lose his
head.”