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A GENTLEMAN PLAYER
Works of
ROBERT NEILSON STEPHENS
[Illustration]
An Enemy to the King
(Twentieth Thousand)
The Continental Dragoon
(Seventeenth Thousand)
The Road to Paris
(Sixteenth Thousand)
A Gentleman Player
(Sixth Thousand)
[Illustration]
L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY, Publishers
(Incorporated)
196 Summer St., Boston, Mass.
[Illustration: QUEEN ELIZABETH AND HARRY MARRYOTT.]
(_See Page 87._)
A
GENTLEMAN PLAYER
His Adventures on a Secret Mission for
Queen Elizabeth
BY
ROBERT NEILSON STEPHENS
AUTHOR OF
"AN ENEMY TO THE KING," "THE
CONTINENTAL DRAGOON," "THE
ROAD TO PARIS," ETC.
"And each man in his time plays many parts."
--_As You Like It._
[Illustration]
BOSTON L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY (INCORPORATED) 1899
_Copyright, 1899_
BY L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
1899
Colonial Press:
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U. S. A.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF "HAMLET" 11
II. AT THE TAVERNS 36
III. QUEEN AND WOMAN 69
IV. THE UNEXPECTED 93
V. THE PLAYER PROVES HIMSELF A GENTLEMAN 104
VI. AND THE GENTLEMAN PROVES HIMSELF A
PLAYER 116
VII. MISTRESS ANNE HAZLEHURST 129
VIII. "A DEVIL OF A WOMAN" 137
IX. THE FIRST DAY OF THE FLIGHT 152
X. THE LOCKED DOOR 174
XI. WINE AND SONG 184
XII. THE CONSTABLE OF CLOWN 199
XIII. THE PRISONER IN THE COACH 220
XIV. HOW THE PAGE WALKED IN HIS SLEEP 233
XV. TREACHERY 251
XVI. FOXBY HALL 276
XVII. A WOMAN'S VICTORY 295
XVIII. THE HORSEMEN ARRIVE 309
XIX. THE HORSEMEN DEPART 320
XX. ROGER BARNET SITS DOWN TO SMOKE SOME
TOBACCO 332
XXI. ROGER BARNET CONTINUES TO SMOKE TOBACCO 342
XXII. SPEECH WITHOUT WORDS 360
XXIII. THE LONDON ROAD 368
XXIV. HOW A NEW INCIDENT WAS ADDED TO AN
OLD PLAY 375
XXV. SIR HARRY AND LADY MARRYOTT 398
NOTES 409
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
QUEEN ELIZABETH AND HARRY MARRYOTT _Frontispiece_
"SHE GAVE NO OUTWARD SIGN OF ANGER" 190
"THE BRAZEN NOTES CLOVE THE AIR" 267
"RUMNEY ... BACKED QUICKLY TO THE WINDOW,
AND MOUNTED THE LEDGE" 327
A GENTLEMAN PLAYER.
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF "HAMLET."
"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"--_Quoted in "As You
Like It," from Marlowe's "Hero and Leander."_
At three o'clock in the afternoon of the cold first Monday in March,
1601, a red flag rose, and a trumpet sounded thrice, from a little
gabled turret protruding up out of a large wooden building in a field in
that part of Southwark known as the Bankside and bordering on the Thames
west of London Bridge. This rude edifice, or enclosure, was round (not
like its successor, hexagonal) in shape; was in great part roofless; was
built on a brick and stone foundation, and was encircled by a ditch for
drainage. It was, in fact, the Globe Theatre; and the flag and trumpet
meant that the "Lord Chamberlain's servants" were about to begin their
performance, which, as the bill outside the door told in rough letters,
was to be that of a new "Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of
Denmark," written by William Shakespeare. London folk knew this Master
Shakespeare well as one of the aforesaid "servants," as the maker of
most of the plays enacted now by those servants, and, which was deemed
far more to his honor, as the poet of "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape
of Lucrece." Many who read the playbill guessed rightly that the new
"tragicall historie" was based in part upon another author's old play,
which they had seen performed many times in the past.[1]
The audience, in all colours and qualities of doublet and hose, ruff and
cloak, feathered hat and plain cap and scholar's coif, had awaited
noisily the parting of the worsted curtains of the stage projecting from
one side of the circular interior of the barnlike playhouse. Around the
other sides were wooden galleries, and under these was a raised platform
divided into boxes called "rooms," whose fronts were hung with painted
cloth. The stage and the actors' tiring-room behind it were under a roof
of thatch. The boxes had the galleries for cover. But the great central
O-shaped space, known as the "yard," where self-esteeming citizens, and
assertive scholars, and black-robed lawyers, and burly soldiers, and
people of countless occupations, and people of no occupation at all,
stood and crowded and surged and talked and chaffed, and bought fruit
and wine and beer from the clamorous venders, had no ceiling but the
sky. It had no floor but the bare ground, and no seats whatever.
The crowd in this so-called "yard" was expectant. The silk and velvet
gentry sitting in the boxes, some of whom smoked pipes and ogled the few
citizenesses in the better gallery, were for the most part prepared to
be, or to seem, bored. The solid citizens in gallery and yard were
manifestly there to get the worth of their eightpence or sixpence
apiece, in solid entertainment. The apple-chewing, nut-cracking,
fighting apprentices and riff-raff in the topmost gallery were
turbulently ready for fun and tumult, whether in the play or of their
own making. In the yard a few self-reliant women, not of the better
order, and some of them smoking like men, struggled to hold their own
amidst the hustling throng. Two or three ladies, disdaining custom and
opinion, or careless or ignorant thereof, were present, sitting in
boxes; but they wore masks.
Now and then, before the performance began, some young foppish nobleman,
scented, feathered, bejewelled, armed with gilt-hilted rapier in velvet
sheath, and sporting huge rosettes on his shoes, would haughtily, or
disdainfully, or flippantly, make his way to the lords' room, which was
the box immediately overlooking the stage; or would pass to a place on
the rush-covered stage itself, he or his page bearing thither a
three-legged stool, hired of a theatre boy for sixpence. There, on
similar stools at the sides of the stage, he would find others of his
kind, some idly chatting, some playing cards; and could hear, through
the rear curtains of arras screening the partition behind the stage, the
talk and movements of the players in their tiring-room, hurrying the
final preparations for the performance.
One of these gallants, having lighted his pipe, said, lispingly, to
another, and with a kind of snigger in the expression of his mouth:
"'Twill be a long time ere my lord of Southampton shall again sit here
seeing his friend Will's plays."
Southampton, indeed, was in the Tower for complicity in the insurrection
of his friend, the Earl of Essex, who had died on the block in February,
and whose lesser fellow conspirators were now having their trials.
"A long time ere any of us may see Will's plays here, after this week,"
answered the other lord, dropping the rush with which he had been
tickling a third lord's ear. "Don't you know, the chamberlain's actors
are ordered to travel, for having played 'Richard the Second' for the
Essex men when the conspiracy was hatching?"[2]
"Why, I've been buried in love,--a pox on the sweet passion!--dallying
at the feet of a gentlewoman in Blackfriars, the past month; and a
murrain take me if I know what's afoot of late!"
"What I've told you; and that is why we've had so many different plays
all in a fortnight, and two new ones of Will Shakespeare's. The players
must needs have new pieces ready for the country towns, especially for
the universities. These chamberlain's actors were parlously thick with
the Essex plotters; 'tis well they have friends at court, of other
leanings, like Wat Raleigh,--else they might find themselves ordered to
a tower instead of to a tour!"
Ignoring the pun, and glancing up at the black drapery with which the
stage was partly hung, the first exquisite remarked:
"Will Shakespeare must be in right mood for tragedy nowadays,--his
friend Southampton in prison, and Essex a head shorter, and himself
ordered to the country. Burn me if I know how a high-hearted knave like
Shakespeare, that gentlemen admit to their company, and that has had the
court talking of his poems, can endure to be a dog of an actor, and to
scribble plays for that stinking rabble out yonder to gape at!"
Whatever were Will Shakespeare's own views on that subject, he had at
that moment other matters in mind. In the bare tiring-room beyond the
curtained partition at the rear of the stage, he moved calmly about
among the actors, some of whom were not yet wholly dressed in the armor
or robes or other costume required, some of whom were already disguised
in false beard or hair, some already painted as to the face, some
walking to and fro, repeating their lines in undertones, with
preoccupied and anxious air; and so well did Master Shakespeare overcome
the agitations of an author who was to receive five pounds for his new
play, and of a stage-manager on whom its success largely depended, that
he seemed the least excited person in the room. He had put on the armor
for the part of the ghost, but his flowing hair--auburn, like his small
pointed beard--was not yet confined by the helmet he should soon don.
His soft light brown eyes moved in swift but careful survey of the whole
company; and then, seeing that the actors for the opening scene were
ready, and that the others were in sufficient preparation for their
proper entrances, he gave the signal for the flag and trumpet aloft.
At sight of the flag, late comers who had not yet reached the playhouse
mended their speed,--whether they were noblemen conveyed by boat from
the great riverside mansions of the Strand; gentlemen riding horseback,
or in coaches, or borne in wherries from city water-gates; or citizens,
law scholars, soldiers, sailors, rascals, and plain people, arriving by
ferry or afoot by London Bridge or from the immediate neighborhood. At
sound of the trumpet, the crowd in the theatre uttered the grateful
"Ah!" and other exclamations natural to the moment. From the tiring-room
the subordinate actor who played the first sentinel had already passed
to his post on the stage, by way of the door in the partition and of an
interstice in the rear curtains; other actors stood ready to follow
speedily; the front curtains were drawn apart, and the first performance
of Mr. William Shakespeare's earliest stage version of "Hamlet"--a
version something between the garbled form now seen in the "first
quarto" and the slightly altered form extant in the "second quarto"--was
begun.
In the tiring-room,--where the actors awaiting their entrance cues could
presently hear their fellows spouting on the stage without, and the
"groundlings" in the yard making loud comments or suggestions, and the
lords laughing lightly at their own affected chaff,--the pale yellow
light of the chill March afternoon fell from high-placed narrow windows.
It touched the face of one tall, slender young player, whose mustaches
required a close inspection to detect that they were false,--for at that
time, when the use of dye was general, it was common for natural beards
to look artificial. The hair of this youth's head also was brown, but it
was his own. His blue eyes and rather sharp features had a look half
conciliating, half defiant, and he was manifestly trying to conceal, by
standing perfectly still instead of fidgeting or pacing the floor, a
severe case of that perturbation which to this day afflicts the chief
persons concerned in a first performance of a play.
He was approached by a graceful young person in woman's clothes,--with
stomacher, puffed sleeves, farthingale, high-heeled shoes,--who had been
gliding about, now with every step and attitude of the gentle damsel he
seemed to be, now lapsing into the gait and manner of the pert boy he
was, and who said to the inwardly excited but motionless player:[3]
"Marry, Hal, take it not as 'twere thy funeral! Faith, thou'rt ten times
shakier o' the knees than Master Shakespeare himself, and he writ the
play. See how he claps his head-piece on, to go and play the ghost, as
if he were but putting on his hat to go to the tavern for a cup of
claret."
Hal looked as if he would deny the imputed shakiness; but seeing that
the clever boy "Ophelia" was not to be fooled, he gave a quick sigh, and
replied:
"'Tis my first time in so prominent a part. I feel as if I were the sign
in front of the theatre,--a fellow with the world on his back. May I be
racked if I don't half wish they'd given this 'Laertes' to Gil Crowe to
play, after all!"
"Tut, Master Marryott! An thou pluck'st up no more courage, thou shalt
ever be a mere journeyman. God knows thou art bold enough in a tavern or
a brawl! Look at Mr. Burbage,--he has forgot himself and us and all the
world, and thinks he is really Hamlet the Dane."
Hal Marryott, knowing already what he should see, glanced at Burbage,
who paced, not excitedly but as in deep meditation, near the entrance to
the stage. A short, stout, handsome man, with a thoughtful face, a fine
brow, a princely port; like Shakespeare, he was calm, but while
Shakespeare had an eye for everything but apparently the part himself
was to play, Burbage was absorbed entirely in his own part and
unconscious of all else, as if in the tiring-room he was already Hamlet
from the moment of putting on that prince's clothes.[4]
"What a plague are you looking at, Gil Crowe?" suddenly demanded Hal
Marryott of another actor, who was gazing at him with a malicious smile
evidently caused by Hal's ill-concealed disquietude. "An it be my shoes,
I'll own you could have made as good if you'd stuck to your proper
trade!"
"Certes," replied Crowe, who wore the dress of Rosencrantz, and whose
coarse face bore marks of dissipation, "I'm less like to deny having
been a shoemaker, which is true, than some are to boast of having been
gentlemen, which may be doubtful."
Young Marryott's eyes flashed hot indignation. Before he could control
himself to retort, an actor in a rich robe and a false white beard,[5]
who had overheard Master Crowe's innuendo, strode up and said:
"Faith, Crowe, you wrong the lad there. Who hath ever heard him flaunt
his birth before us? Well you know it, if he doth at times assert his
gentle blood, 'tis when forced to it; and then 'tis by act and manner,
not by speech. Go your ways, Crowe; thou'st been overfree with the
pottle-pot again, I'm afeard!"
"Nay," put in the impudent Ophelia, his elbows thrust out, his hands
upon his hips, "Master Crowe had picked out the part of Laertes for
himself; and because Master Shakespeare chose Hal to play it. Hal is a
boaster and not truly gentle born."
"You squeaking brat," said Crowe, "but for spoiling thy face for the
play, I'd put thee in thy place. I might have played Laertes, but
that--"
Here he paused, whereupon the white-bearded Corambis (such was the name
of Polonius in the first version) finished for him:
"But that y'are not to be trusted with important parts, lest the play be
essentially spoiled an you be too drunk to act."
"Why, as for that," replied Crowe, "beshrew me but our gentleman here
will stay as late at the tavern, and be roaring as loud for more sack
when daylight comes, as any one."
For this home thrust Marryott had no reply. Crowe thereupon walked away,
the Corambis joined another group, and the Ophelia sauntered across the
room to view the costly raiment that a tiring man was helping Mr.
William Sly to put on for the part of the foppish courtier, later
christened Osric. Left to his thoughts, the Laertes, nervously twirling
his false mustaches, followed the ex-shoemaker with his eyes, and
meditated on the latter's insolence. The more he reviewed it, and his
own failure to rebuke it properly, the more wrathful he inwardly became.
His anger served as a relief from the agitation he had formerly
undergone. So deeply buried was he in his new feelings, that he heeded
not the progress of affairs on the stage; and thus he was startled when
he felt his arm caught by Shakespeare, who was pointing to the entrance,
and saying:
"What ails thee, Harry? They wait for thee on the stage."
Roused as from sleep, and seeing that Burbage and the others had indeed
gone forth from the tiring-room, Hal ran to the entrance and out upon
the stage, his mind in a whirl, taking his place before King Claudius
with such abruptness that Burbage, surprised from his mood of melancholy
self-absorption, sent him a sharp glance of reproof. This but increased
his abashment, and he stared up at the placard that proclaimed the stage
to be a room in the palace at Elsinore, in a kind of panic. The
audience moved and murmured, restlessly, during the king's long speech,
and Hal, imagining that his own embarrassment was perceptible to all,
made an involuntary step backward toward the side of the stage. He thus
trod on the toe of one of the noble spectators, who was making a note in
his tables, and who retaliated with an ejaculation and a kick. Feeling
that some means must be taken to attain composure, the more as his heart
seemed to beat faster and his stomach to grow weaker, Hal remembered
that he had previously found distraction in his wrath toward Gilbert
Crowe. He therefore brought back to mind the brief passage in the
tiring-room. So deeply did he lose himself in this recollection, gazing
the while at the juniper burning on the stage to sweeten the air, that
it was like a blow in the face when he suddenly became aware of a
prolonged silence, and of the united gaze of all the actors upon
himself.
"What wouldst thou have, Laertes?" the king was repeating for the third
time.
Hal, aware now that his cue had been given more than once, opened his
lips to reply, but his first line had fled completely from his mind. In
his blank confusion he flashed a look of dismay toward the entrance. His
eyes caught those of Shakespeare, who had parted the arras curtains
sufficiently to be visible to the players. Rather in astonishment than
in reproach, the poet, serving on occasion as prompter, uttered half
audibly the forgotten words, and Hal, caught back as from the brink of a
bottomless pit, spoke out with new-found vigor:
"Dread my lord.
Your leave and favor to return to France,"
and the ensuing lines. But his delivery did not quiet down the
audience,--which, indeed, though it had hushed for a moment at the
play's opening, and again at the appearance of the ghost, was not
completely stilled, until at last, upon the king's turning to Hamlet,
the "wondrous tongue" of Burbage spoke.
When Hal presently made exit to the tiring-room, after the king and
courtiers, he craved the pardon of Master Shakespeare, but the latter
merely said:
"Tut, Hal, it hath happened to all of us in our time."
The derisive smile of Crowe did not sweeten Harry's musings while he
waited for his next going on. Indeed, he continued to brood bitterly on
the exhibition he had made of himself, and the stay he had caused in the
play. His chagrin was none the less for that it was his friend and
benefactor Shakespeare that had nominated him for the part of Laertes,
and whose play he had brought to a momentary halt. In deep dejection,
when the time came, he returned to the stage with the boy-Ophelia for
his scene with her and Corambis.
This passed so smoothly as to give Hal new heart, until it was near its
very end; and then, having replied to Corambis's excellent advice with
the words. "Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord," Hal happened to
let his glance wander past the old man, and across a surging mass of
heads in a part of the yard, to a certain face in one of the boxes; and
that face had in it something to make his gaze remain delightedly upon
it and his lips part in admiration.
Yes, the face was a lady's. Hal had never seen it before; of that he was
instantly sure, for had he seen it he could not have forgotten it. He
would not have seen it now but that its youthful possessor had removed
her mask, which had become irksome to her skin. She seemed above all
concern as to what might be thought of her for showing her face in a
Bankside theatre. A proud and wilful face was hers, as if with the
finest feminine beauty she had something of the uncurbed spirit and
rashness of a fiery young gentleman. Her hair and eyes were dark, her
skin fair and clear and smooth, her forehead not too high, her chin
masterful but most exquisitely shaped, her cheeks rich with natural
color. In fine, she was of pronounced beauty, else Master Marryott had
not forgot himself to look at her. Upon her head was a small gray velvet
hat, peaked, but not very high, and with narrow brim turned up at the
sides. Her chin was elevated a little from contact with a white cambric
ruff. Her gown was of murrey cloth with velvet stripes, and it tightly
encased her figure, which was of a well-made and graceful litheness. The
slashed sleeves, although puffed out, did not make too deep a secret of
her shapely, muscular arms. She might have been in her twenty-second
year.
With this fine young creature, and farther back in the box, sat a richly
dressed old gentleman, comfortably asleep, and a masked lady, who shrank
as far as possible into the shadow of the box corner. Standing in the
yard, but close to the front of the box, was a slim, dark-faced youth in
the green attire then worn by the menservants of ladies.
Not all these details, but only the lady, held the ravished Laertes's
attention while he recited:
"Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
What I have said to you."
So heedless and mechanical was his utterance of these lines, in contrast
with his previous lifelike manner, that the nearest auditors laughed.
The Corambis and Ophelia, seeking the cause of his sudden lapse,
followed his gaze with wondering side-glances, while Ophelia replied,
in the boy's musical soprano:
"'Tis in my memory lock'd
And you yourself shall keep the key of it."
"Farewell," said Laertes, this time with due expression, but rather to
the lady in the distant box than to Ophelia and Corambis. Reluctantly he
backed toward the rear curtains, and was so slow in making his exit,
that Corambis, whose next line required to be spoken in Laertes's
absence, gave him a look of ireful impatience and a muttered "Shog, for
God's sake," which set the young lords at the stage-side tittering.
At sight of Shakespeare, who was whispering to the Horatio and the
Marcellus, near the entrance. Master Marryott had another twinge of
self-reproach, but this swiftly yielded to visions of the charming face.
These drove away also all heed of the presence of Crowe. Hal would have
liked to mount the steps to the balcony at the rear of the stage, in
which the unemployed actors might sit when it was not in other use, and
whence he might view the lady at leisure; but the balcony was soon to be
in service as a platform of the castle, in the scene between Hamlet and
the ghost.
His imagination crossing all barriers, and making him already the
accepted wooer of the new beauty. Hal noted not how the play went on
without, even when a breathless hush presently told of some unusual
interest on the part of the audience; and he was then but distantly
sensible of Shakespeare's grave, musical voice in the ghost's long
recitals, and of the awestricken, though barely whispered, exclamations
of Burbage.
In the second act Hal had to remove his mustaches, change his cloak, and
go on as an attendant in the presence-chamber scene. His first glance
was for the lady. Alas, the face was in eclipse, the black velvet mask
had been replaced!
Returning to the tiring-room, he had now to don the beard of an elderly
lord, in which part he was to help fill the stage in the play scene. As
he marched on in the king's train, for this scene, to the blare of
trumpet and the music of instruments in a box aloft,--violins, shawms,
sackbuts, and dulcimers,--he saw that the lady was still masked. His
presence on the stage this time gave him no opportunity to watch her; he
had to direct his eyes, now at the king and queen on their chairs at one
side of the stage, and now at the platform of the mimic players.
When he made his exit with the royal party, he saw on every face a kind
of elation. "They are hit, and no question," said Master Taylor. "Ay,"
quoth Master Condell, "that shout of the groundlings, when the king
fled, could have been heard as far as the bear-garden." "But the
stillness of both lords and groundlings before that," said Master
Heminge,--"never was such stillness when Tom Kyd's Hamlet was played."
"We shall see how they take the rest of it," said Shakespeare,
softly,--though he could not quite conceal a kind of serene satisfaction
that had stolen upon his face.
Hal Marryott doffed his beard, and resumed his Laertes cloak, resolved
to have some part in the general success. His next scene, that in which
Laertes calls the king to account for his father's death, and beholds
his sister's madness, held the opportunity of doing so,--of justifying
Shakespeare's selection for the part, of winning the young lady's
applause, of hastening his own advancement to that fortune which would
put him in proper state to approach a wealthy gentlewoman. Perhaps she
was one of those who were privileged to attend the Christmas court
performances. Could he first win her admiration in some fine part at
Whitehall, the next time the chamberlain's men should play there;
then--by getting as much wealth as Mr. Alleyn and other players had
acquired--leave the stage, and strut in the jewels and velvet suitable
to his birth, to what woman might he not aspire? He had all planned in a
minute, with the happy facility of youth in such matters.
So he stood in a remote corner of the tiring-room, getting into the
feeling of his next scene, repeating the lines to himself, assuming a
Burbage-like self-absorption to repel those of his fellow players who,
otherwise, would now and then have engaged him in talk. Much
conversation was going on in undertone among the groups standing about,
or sitting on the tables, chairs, stools, and chests that awaited their
time of service on the stage,--for, although scenery was merely
suggested by word or symbol, furniture and properties, like costume and
makeup, were then used in the theatres. In due time, Hal placed himself
at the entrance, working up his mood to a fine heat for the occasion;
heard the cue, "The doors are broke;" and rushed on, crying "Where is
this king?" with a fury that made the groundlings gape, and even
startled the lolling lords into attention.
Having ordered back his Danes, and turned again to the king, he cast one
swift glance toward the lady's box, to see how she had taken his fiery
entrance; and perceived--no one. The box was empty.
He felt as if something had given way beneath him. In a twinkling his
manner toward the king fell into the most perfunctory monotone. So he
played the scene out, looking again and again to ascertain if his eyes
had not deceived him; but neither was she there, nor the other lady, nor
the gentleman, nor the page in green who had stood before the box. The
theatre was dark and dull without her; though as much light came in as
ever, through the gallery windows and the open top of the playhouse.
With a most blank and insipid feeling did Hal finish this scene, and the
longer and less interesting one that came almost immediately after. He
carried this feeling back to the dressing-room, and dropped upon a stool
in utter listlessness.
"Hath life then lost all taste and motive?" It was the voice of
Shakespeare, who had read Hal's mood. The question came with an
expression half amused, half sympathetic. At this, in place of which he
had deserved a chiding, Hal was freshly stricken, and more deeply than
before, with a sense of the injury he did his benefactor by his lifeless
acting. So his answer was strangely wide from the question.
"Forgive me," he said. "I swear I'll make amends in the rest of the
play."
And he rose, resolved to do so. Perhaps, after all, the lady and her
companions had but gone to another box, or would return to the theatre
before the play was over. And, moreover, what a fool should he be, to
throw away this chance of advancement that might equip him for some
possible future meeting with her! And what malicious triumph was glowing
darkly on the countenance of Gilbert Crowe! There remained to Hal two
opportunities to retrieve himself.
The first was the encounter with Hamlet in the graveyard. Choosing to
believe that his enchantress was indeed looking on from some
to-him-unknown part of the house, he put into this short scene so
excellent a frenzy that, on coming off the stage, he was greeted with a
quiet "Sir, that was well played," from Burbage himself, who had made
exit a moment earlier. "Bravely ranted," said the Corambis; and the
Ophelia, now out of his woman's clothes and half into a plain doublet,
observed, with a jerk of his head toward Master Crowe:
"Thou'st turned Gil's face sour of a sudden."
But Master Marryott, disdaining to take gratification in Gil's
discomfiture, found it instead in a single approbative look from
Shakespeare; and then, choosing his foil, began making passes at the
empty air, in practice for the fencing match.
It was partly for his skill with the foils that Hal had got
Shakespeare's vote for the character of Laertes. Being a gentleman by
birth, though now alone in the world and of fallen fortunes, he had
early taken kindly to that gentleman among weapons, the rapier, that had
come to drive those common swaggerers, the sword and buckler, out of
general service. At home in Oxfordshire, in the lifetime of his parents,
and before the memorable lawsuit with the Berkshire branch of the family
had taken the ancestral roof from over his head, and driven him to
London to seek what he might find, he had practised daily with the
blade, under whatever tuition came his way. In London he had picked up
what was to be learned from exiled Frenchmen, soldiers who had fought in
Flanders and Spain, and other students of the steel, who abounded in the
taverns. With his favorite weapon he was as skilful as if he had taken
at least a provost's degree in the art of fence. The bout in "Hamlet"
was, of course, prearranged in every thrust and parry, but, even so,
there was need of a trained fencer's grace and precision in it. Good
fencing was in itself a show worth seeing, in a time when every man knew
how to wield one weapon or another.[6]
The audience was wrought up to that pitch of interest which every fifth
act ought to witness, when the final scene came on. Each man--especially
among the apprentices, the soldiers, and the lords--constituted himself
an umpire of the contest, and favored the fighters with comments and
suggestions. The sympathy, of course, was with Hamlet, but no one could
be blind to the facile play of the Laertes, who indeed had the skill to
cover up his antagonist's deficiency with the weapon, and to make him
appear really the victor. The courteous manner in which Hal confessed
himself hit put the spectators into suitable mind for the better
perceiving of his merit. There could be little doubt as to the outcome,
had the fight been real, for Burbage was puffing in a way that made the
queen's observation, "He's fat and scant of breath," most apt. During
the sword-work, the lords and soldiers aired Italian fencing terms then
current, in praising the good defence that "the mad girl's brother"
made; and when he seemed to wound Hamlet, there burst out a burly voice
from the midst of the yard, with:
"I knew that thrust was coming, Master Marryott! Tis I--Kit Bottle!"
When Laertes confessed his treachery and begged Hamlet's forgiveness, so
well had Hal fenced and so well acted, he won such esteem of the
audience as to die in the best odor. And when, at last, the rushes
covering the stage boards were in turn covered with dead bodies, when
the curtains closed, and the audience could be heard bustling noisily
out of the theatre, Hal partook of the general jubilant relief, and
hoped the beautiful young lady had indeed seen the last act from
somewhere in the house. The actors arose from the dead, looked as if
they had jointly and severally thrown off a great burden, and hastened
to substitute their plainer clothes for their rich costumes.
"Come with us to the Falcon for a cup or two, and then to the Mermaid to
supper," said Shakespeare to Hal, as the latter was emerging from the
theatre a few minutes later, dressed now in somewhat worn brown silk
and velvet. With the poet were Masters Heminge, Sly, Condell, and
Laurence Fletcher, manager for the company of players. The six walked
off together, across the trodden field and along the street or roadway,
drawing their short cloaks tight around them for the wind. The Falcon
tavern was at the western end of the Bankside, separated from the river
by a little garden with an arbor of vines. As the players were about to
enter, the door opened, and a group of gentlemen could be seen coming
from within, to take boat for the city or Westminster.
"Stand close," said Fletcher, quickly, to the actors. "We may hear an
opinion of the play. My lord Edgebury is the best judge of these matters
in England."
The players moved aside, and pretended to be reading one of their own
bills, as the nobles passed.
"It holdeth attention," my lord was saying to his companions,
"but--fustian, fustian! Noise for the rabble in the yard. 'Twill last a
week, perchance, for its allegory upon timely matters. But I give it no
longer. 'Twill not live."
"Gramercy!" quoth Sly to the players, with a comical smile. "He is more
liberal than Gil Crowe, who gives it but three afternoons. Come into the
tavern, lads, and a plague on all such prophets!"
My lord Edgebury and Gil Crowe, ye are not dead yet. At all first
nights do ye abound; in many leather-covered study-chairs do ye sit,
busy with wet blankets and cold water. On this occasion, though no one
knew it at the time, you were a trifle out of your reckoning,--three
hundred years, at least, as far as we may be sure now; not much, as
planets and historians count, but quite a while as time goes with
children.