"_And moreover, at this Fair there is at all times to be seen
Jugglings, Cheats, Games, Plays, Fools, Apes, Knaves, and Rogues,
and that of every kind.... Now, as I said, the way to the Celestial
City lies just through this town, where this lusty Fair is kept;
and he that will go to the City, and yet not go through this Town,
must needs go out of the World._"--BUNYAN.
I
At the theatre in Shoreditch, on Christmas Eve, 1598, the Lord
Chamberlain's servants presented a new comedy. Never had the Burbages
played to such a house. It cheered every speech--good, bad, or
indifferent. To be sure, some of the _dramatis personæ_--Prince Hal and
Falstaff, Bardolph and Mistress Quickly--were old friends; but this
alone would not account for such a welcome. A cutpurse in the twopenny
gallery who had been paid to lead the applause gave up toiling in the
wake of it, and leaned back with a puzzled grin.
"Bravo, master!" said he to his left-hand neighbour a burly, red-faced
countryman well past middle age, whose laughter kept the bench
rocking. "But have a care, lest they mistake you for the author!"
"The author? Ho-ho!"----but here he broke off to leap to his feet and
lead another round of applause. "The author?" he repeated, dropping
back and glancing an eye sidelong from under his handkerchief while he
mopped his brow. "You shoot better than you know, my friend: the bolt
grazes. But a miss, they say, is as good as a mile."
The cutpurse kept his furtive grin, but was evidently mystified.
A while before it had been the countryman who showed signs of
bewilderment. Until the drawing of the curtains he had fidgeted
nervously, then, as now, mopping his forehead in despite of the raw
December air. The first shouts of applause had seemed to astonish as
well as delight him. When, for example, a player stepped forward and
flung an arm impressively towards heaven while he recited--
_When we mean to build,
We first survey the plot, then draw the model_--
and so paused with a smile, his voice drowned in thunder from every
side of the house, our friend had rubbed his eyes and gazed around
in amiable protest, as who should say, "Come, come, ... but let us
discriminate!" By-and-by, however, as the indifferent applause grew
warmer, he warmed with it. At the entrance of Falstaff he let out a
bellowing laugh worthy of Olympian Jove, and from that moment led the
house. The fops on the sixpenny stools began to mimic, the pit and
lower gallery to crane necks for a sight of their fugleman; a few
serious playgoers called to have him pitched out; but the mass of the
audience backed him with shouts of encouragement. Some wag hailed
him as "Burbage's Landlord," and apparently there was meaning, if
not merit, in the jest. Without understanding it he played up to it
royally, leaning forward for each tally-ho! and afterwards waving his
hat as a huntsman laying on his hounds.
The pace of the performance (it had begun at one o'clock) dragged
sensibly with all this, and midway in Act IV., as the edge of a grey
river-fog overlapped and settled gradually upon the well of the
unroofed theatre, voices began to cough and call for lanterns. Two
lackeys ran with a dozen. Some they hung from the balcony at the back,
others they disposed along both sides of the stage, in front of the
sixpenny stools, the audience all the while chaffing them by their
Christian names and affectionately pelting them with nuts. Still
the fog gathered, until the lantern-rays criss-crossed the stage in
separate shafts, and among them the actors moved through Act V. in a
luminous haze, their figures looming large, their voices muffled and
incredibly remote.
An idle apprentice, seated on the right of the cutpurse, began for a
game to stop and unstop his ears. This gave the cutpurse an opportunity
to search his pockets. _Cantat vacuus_: the apprentice felt him at it
and went on with his game. Whenever he stopped his ears the steaming
breath of the players reminded him of the painted figures he had seen
carried in my Lord Mayor's Show, with labels issuing from their mouths.
He had stopped his ears during the scene of King Henry's reconciliation
with Chief Justice Gascoigne, and unstopped them eagerly again when
his old friends reappeared--Falstaff and Bardolph and Pistol, all
agog and hurrying, hot-foot, boot-and-saddle, to salute the rising
sun of favour. "Welcome these pleasant days!" He stamped and clapped,
following his neighbours' lead, and also because his feet and hands
were cold.
Eh? What was the matter? Surely the fog had taken hold of the rogues!
What was happening to Mistress Quickly and Doll Tearsheet? Poor souls,
they were but children: they had meant no harm. For certain this plaguy
fog was infecting the play; and yet, for all the fog, the play was
a play no longer, but of a sudden had become savagely real. Why was
this man turning on his puppets and rending them? The worst was, they
bled--not sawdust, but real blood.
The apprentice cracked a nut and peeled it meditatively, with a glance
along the bench. The countryman still fugled; the cutpurse cackled,
with lips drawn back like a wolf's, showing his yellow teeth.
"Hist, thou silly knave!" said the apprentice. "Canst not see 'tis a
tragedy?"
The rascal peered at him for a moment, burst out laughing, and nudged
the countryman.
"Hi, master! Breeds your common at home any such goose as this, that
cannot tell tickling from roasting?"
The apprentice cracked another nut. "Give it time," he answered. "I
said a tragedy. Yours, if you will, my friend; _his_ too, may be"--with
a long and curious stare at the countryman.