Together in the attic she and Penitence scoured the text for clues to Desdemona until they practically knew her shoe size. ‘The poor, poor soul,’ said Aphra, wiping her eyes. ‘To be as innocent as she was, and yet suspected of being a whore by the man she loves.’
‘I can play that,’ said Penitence, quietly.
But Aphra decided there was more. ‘Not so insipid after all,’ she said. ‘The dear girl doesn’t know it, but she has appetites. She positively lusts after Othello. She is a creature of nature, like my poor, dear Caesar’s wife. She makes “the beast with two backs” – what a powerful phrase, how did the man do it? – with that lovely black Othello in the artless joy of love.’ Aphra picked up her fan to cool herself. ‘The thing is, Penitence, she radiates animality. She can’t help it. It’s directed at her husband, but other men pick up its scent. Cassio does. That horrid rogue Iago does. It is why he sets out to destroy her. It’s the old, old story. Men want us, and hate us for making them want us. Desdemona is Eve.’
Penitence was floundered. ‘You are clever, Aphra.’
‘If you ever felt lust,’ said Aphra, ‘prepare to play it now.’
Penitence’s eyes went to the attic window; she had felt it. Once.
* * *
‘No, no,’ shouted Hart. ‘Would you make the girl into a wanton?’
Rebecca Marshall and Kynaston were in the pit, learning the parts of Emilia and Cassio. Knipp, with the smaller part of Bianca, was watching. ‘I don’t know, Charlie,’ she said, slowly. ‘Her playing of it makes sense.’
‘When I want the interpretation of someone who’s never seen the damned play, I’ll ask for it, thank you very much,’ said Hart.
Penitence felt a fool. She also felt relieved. Taking the memory of the passion that had possessed her for Henry King on the night nearly two years before, distancing herself enough to control and direct it towards somebody else, even a fictional somebody else, had given new meaning to the dictum ‘All actresses are whores’.
But Kynaston joined in. ‘I agree with Knipp, Charlie. It gives an explanation for Othello’s jealousy. I always wondered why the silly bugger was so quick to believe Iago’s lies. But if Desdemona’s a bit of a wagtail, even if she’s only wagging it for him, Iago’s just confirming Othello’s fears.’ In an aside to Knipp, he added: ‘It makes sense of Iago, too. The sod’s jealous.’
Hart raised his eyes. ‘If only Shakespeare’d had your command of language.’ He came to the unlit footlights. ‘Othello isn’t about sense, my dears. It’s about chaos. The destruction of a great man. They’re not coming to hear sense. They’re coming to hear me reduce them to terror and pity. I shall be wonderful.’
‘Good. Good.’ Kynaston held up his beautiful hands. ‘Sorry I spoke.’
‘You do see, though…’
‘Please,’ said Kynaston. ‘Continue. Lay on being wonderful. Turn the girl into a dairymaid. If the audience wonders what Othello ever saw in her, it’s no skin off my nose.’
‘No, it isn’t. But you do see…’
Kynaston returned to his script. ‘Go ahead.’
Lacy, who was playing Iago, was called in for his opinion. Penitence, not called for hers, settled herself on a couch set for the afternoon’s production of The English Monsieur, while the argument continued.
To her surprise, Knipp came up from the pit and joined her. ‘Reminds me of my husband,’ she said.
‘Hart?’
‘Othello. Wants a woman attractive, but only attractive to him.’ More than once Penitence had noticed that Knipp’s delicate small face sported a black eye. It had one now. Close to, the wrists of her stylish sleeves were worn and there was a hole in her stocking. ‘Did you hear Gwynn’s sent in her scripts?’
It was promotion for Penitence that, for the first time, Knipp was prepared to gossip with her. In King’s hierarchy, the top-rank actresses rarely addressed their inferiors unless in the course of work, and when they did they referred to each other – and insisted on being referred to – by the title ‘Mrs’.
Nevertheless, she was sorry that Nell Gwynn was leaving, and said so. ‘Where is she going to?’ It seemed incredible that someone who already possessed the moon Penitence was reaching for should surrender it.
‘Higher things. The king’s setting her up. Didn’t you know?’
‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ For all her rejection of Puritanism, two generations of free thinking had inoculated Penitence against monarchy. Nor had her glimpses of the king during his attendances at the theatre changed her conviction that it was wrong to set up a man and worship him. On her very first day in England, when she’d seen Charles II pass by in his coach, she’d decided he was a bad thing and nothing had since changed her mind.
Knipp glanced at her. ‘And why be sorry, miss? It ain’t every day a child who had to serve drink in a brothel becomes a royal mistress.’
Penitence shook her head. ‘I like Mrs Gwynn.’ It had been a pleasure to watch her. Penitence knew that when it came to acting she was already the comedienne’s superior, but that if she remained a player until Doomsday she’d never be able to pick up an audience and bounce it like a ball as Gwynn did. ‘I hope she will not become another Mrs Farley.’ Elizabeth Farley’s story was still bandied about the walkers’ foyer as an Awful Warning of what could happen if an actress gave in too easily to the king’s priapism. She’d been Charles’s fancy for a night or two, was discarded to one of the courtiers, discarded again, became pregnant, was put in a debtors’ prison and now, so legend went, walked the streets of Cheapside.
‘Oh Lord,’ said Knipp, ‘a bloody sermon-sniffer. Farley was a fool. As to that, we were to talk to you later, but it might as well be now.’ She looked to where the actors were still in discussion and shifted round so that she was facing Penitence. ‘Look, Hughes, you can end up set comfortable for the rest of your life, or you can end up like Farley. Which do you want?’
‘I want to act.’
‘We all want to act, dearie,’ Knipp was impatient, ‘always supposing they let us. But what happens is, the moment you step out as Desdemona on that stage in front of that audience, you’re prey. You’re hunted. You’re the hind and they’re the stag-hounds. This theatre’s a pudding and actresses are the plums. It’s all a matter of which hand you let grab you.’ She wagged a finger under Penitence’s nose. ‘Make sure you pick the one with the best rings on. And get guarantees. Put away a nest-egg for when your looks go. Believe me, that’s soon enough.’
A figure squatted down beside them and Knipp looked at it for confirmation. ‘I’m telling her Farley was a fool as didn’t get guarantees before she got the pox, ain’t that right, Becky?’
The younger Marshall’s face remained beautifully remote. ‘I’m afraid it is.’
‘Nelly never made Farley’s mistake,’ continued Knipp. ‘No more did Moll Davis over at the Duke’s. They got Old Rowley to cough up before he lost interest. He’s given Moll a baby, but he’s given her a house and a thousand a year to go with it. And our Nelly’s got that out of him already.’
‘And not even pregnant yet,’ said Becky Marshall.
Penitence was warmed by their concern – there was no doubt these two lovely women were very much in earnest – but she was repelled by their assumption that an actress should pick a protector on the basis of his income. She thanked them with the complacence of one about to receive the heady sum of £52 a year.
Knipp shook her head at her and went off to the tiring-room.
‘You’ll learn,’ said Becky Marshall.
‘Mrs Knipp doesn’t seem to have profited from being a plum,’ Penitence said, defensively.
Marshall yawned. ‘Ah well, you see, she married for love, poor thing.’
Hart was beckoning her over. Penitence went, prepared to feel sympathy for him. If what she’d heard were true, he’d just lost his beloved to a king. But the actor was insouciant. ‘Now then, dear,’ he said, ‘we’re going to try an experiment. We’re going to make Des
demona a woman for these lusty times. I want you to give her passion. She doesn’t just dote on Othello, she’s on heat for him…’
* * *
Frangipani was the in perfume that month, and the actresses had splashed it on. Warmed by bare necks and bosoms and the heat trapped within the tiring-room’s baize-hung walls, it reached a level that interacted with the noise of female voices crescendoing as the time came for curtain-up and actresses and their dressers jostled for places in front of the looking-glasses.
Outside the door, Jacko and the property boy, Cully, seventy if he was a day, were arguing with Sir Hugh Middleton, who was enamoured of Rebecca Marshall and wanted to enter. Further off the audience’s chatter had become a one-pitch note interspersed with the thump of tabors, and the ‘Penny-a-pipeful’ call of the tobacco-sellers.
Mrs Coney stepped back and looked at Penitence with her head on one side. ‘Does she need more powder, Marshy?’
Rebecca Marshall put down her own powder-puff. ‘Lord, no. Here, put some of this on her cheeks.’ She passed over a leaf of Spanish rouge.
‘Hart said “a lily”.’
‘He didn’t say Hamlet’s ghost. Watch out.’ Penitence was gulping.
‘Sick bowl,’ called Mrs Coney. ‘Quick.’
A bowl was brought. Penitence vomited into it. Sighing, Coney wiped her face and began again. ‘There, pigeon. You’re not the first.’
The argument outside grew louder. Sir Hugh Middleton was refusing to accept the ruling that no male except the property boy was allowed in the tiring-room on first afternoons. ‘Becky,’ he was shouting, ‘Becky, my little bone-ache.’
Marshall covered her ears. ‘Why do we have to put up with this? I’m going to complain to the king. I never encouraged the stinkard.’
‘Cully’s called for Sir Tom to take him away.’ Coney patted Penitence’s hair and put on its wreath of flowers. ‘There now, pigeon, you look lovely. Don’t she look lovely, Marshy?’
‘She does indeed.’ Rebecca gave her own hair a final pat, and stood up. Carefully, one by one, she uncurled Penitence’s fingers from around the posy of roses Dorinda and Aphra had given her before she left home. ‘Let go now, there’s a good girl.’
Freed, Penitence’s hands fastened desperately on the front of Rebecca’s robe. ‘I c-can’t remember the first line.’
‘I know. Stand up now.’
Outside Sir Hugh’s shouts were diminishing as Killigrew persuaded him back to the auditorium. Anne Marshall was panicking as usual. ‘Oh hell, oh hell, I can’t find my… oh there they are.’ She gave Penitence’s cold cheek a kiss. ‘You look lovely, dear. Good luck.’
Coney put her head out of the door: ‘Mrs Hughes’s cloak.’
‘Mrs Hughes’s cloak coming up.’ Theatre costumes were guarded like gold, which generally was what they were worth, being mostly royal cast-offs. On performance days the floors on stage and backstage were laid with calico sheets to protect them. Cully, the property boy, hobbled in with the shoulders of the blue silk cloak laid over his rheumatic hands, his assistant holding its train.
Coney draped it around Penitence’s shoulders and fastened it.
The callboy knocked on the door. ‘Act I. Scene iii. Mrs Hughes, please.’
Penitence clutched Rebecca Marshall again. ‘P-p-pplease. I can’t remember anything. Not a line.’
‘I know.’
‘Bb-bb-bbut it’s gone. I want to g-g-go home.’
‘I know.’
Between them, the Marshall sisters walked the sagging Penitence to the wings where they stood crammed between John Downes and the cut-out of Othello’s ship which had been dragged offstage along the groove that held it. John switched his eyes from his prompter’s script for a second and gave her a thumbs-up sign.
Penitence stared ahead. Through the unglazed window of the prompt-side door the actors on stage appeared unreal and far-away in their brightly lit frame. Hart, black-faced and opulent in green and gold, was declaiming, a puppet facing the unseen monster she could hear breathing in the cavern beyond the footlights. It was an animal. She could smell it. Aphra was out there, and Dorinda and MacGregor, Dogberry and his friends, and it had eaten them, absorbed them into its maw.
She was limp. She’d reached the stage of terror beyond terror. I’ll stutter. I’m going to stutter. I can’t even stutter. I’ll stand there and they can send me home. I’ll die. This can’t be happening. It doesn’t matter. It’s all silly. No job for a grown woman.
‘It’s a step up from being a whore. The job, my dear girl, is the play. We give them the best we know. Now breathe.’
Hart’s great voice throbbed out:
‘She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
And I loved her that she did pity them,
This only is the witchcraft I have used.’
Rebecca Marshall saw Penitence’s hands go up to her face as if adjusting a mask. She touched her on the shoulder: ‘Decus et Dolor,’ she said.
‘Decus et Dolor,’ said Penitence.
‘Here comes the lady; let her witness it,’ said Othello and held out his arms.
Desdemona ran on to the stage…
She used everything she’d ever known, emitting it out of skin and mouth to the huge shape in green and gold that dominated the stage. The audience was small and had a respectable feel, mostly citizens who hadn’t fancied the risqué play at the Duke’s. She felt their hostility; they wanted a Desdemona they knew, sexually naive. There was a wave of shocked disapproval as she kissed and stroked the black face.
Hart amazed her; even in rehearsal he’d never responded like this. It wasn’t Desdemona’s play, it was Othello’s, but her rendering was allowing the Moor subtleties that hadn’t been explored; he grew as she fed him and fed her back so that she grew alongside, taking the audience with her.
Then it was the interval before Act II. Marshall came groaning into the tiring-room where Mrs Coney was repowdering Penitence. ‘There’s stinkards arrived,’ she said, ‘Sedley and some others. They’re with Middleton up on the apron already.’
I’ll stutter. Now I’ll stutter.
‘Sick bowl,’ called Coney.
But Becky Marshall had taken Penitence by her shoulders and was shaking her. ‘Look at me. It doesn’t matter what they do. You and Hart are… well, it’s like sharing the stage with tigers. You’ve conquered the cits to the point where they’d cut their throats if you told them to do it. You’re not to let them down. Whatever the other bastards do, ignore them. Do you hear me?’
It was a generous speech; Becky Marshall had wanted to play Desdemona herself.
‘Yes, Becky. Thank you.’ Breathe.
But it was still terrible to stand at the prompt door listening to fops’ chatter, rebuilding Desdemona’s energy to go out and face it.
On stage, Kynaston as Cassio was too old a hand to be distracted, but the others with him were being put off their stroke. As John Downes in the wings called out: ‘A sail! a sail! a sail!’ to signal the arrival of Othello’s ship into Cyprus, one of the fops got up and did a hornpipe to the applause of his friends. The citizens in the pit were getting restless at the interruptions. Another moment and the theatre would be in uproar.
Beside her, Lacy took her hand. ‘Last time I played Iago,’ he said, ‘we got raided by Cromwell’s troopers. Rough? You think those lily-pinks out there are rough? Wait ’til you’ve been on the end of a Puritan pike.’ He crossed himself. ‘Decus et Dolor.’
‘Decus et Dolor.’ Radiating happiness, she swept out.
The scene quelled some of the hoots with which the fops and rakes always accorded a new actress in a leading role and, though they rose again at the passion of her greeting to Othello, she felt the aggression waver. It was a matter of mastery, hers or theirs. Power was leaving them as she and Hart sucked it out of them, transmuted it, and turned it into indomitable tragedy.
She forgot them; she wasn’t playing to Othello, but to another man who had believed her to be a whore. S
he cried Desdemona’s cry, ‘I have not deserved this’, to Henry King.
In the Willow Song she glimpsed Sir Hugh weeping like a baby and Sedley leaning forward, his hand cupped on his chin. She allowed her voice to break on the last line and felt the anguish of the pit rush forward out of the darkness to comfort her. She begged Othello not to kill her.
‘It is too late.’ Hart’s voice was begging himself not to kill her.
She felt the pillow over her face and almost panicked. Suppose he gets carried away. Her last lines were the trickiest; the not-quite-dead-yet was, she felt, Shakespeare overdoing it. ‘O! Farewell,’ but in the audience somebody sobbed as her hand went limp over the side of the bed.
At last Othello’s body fell on hers: ‘…to die upon a kiss,’ enveloping her in a smell of stove-blacking. She heard the sigh of the curtain come down on a house that was totally silent.
‘Oh God,’ she muttered. ‘They didn’t like it.’
‘Stay still.’ Hart’s white eye glared at her, like a shark’s. ‘Anyone can rouse a house. To subdue it is the true artistry. And we’ve done it.’
The curtain rose with the bodies still lying on the bed, the dead Emilia (Rebecca Marshall) artistically draped on the floor.
It wasn’t until Hart handed her up that the applause came at her. She stood in it, Hart’s hand holding hers high. She loved him. She loved the fops now standing in ovation, loved the beast out there she had conquered, the unicorn that was laying its head in her lap. A fountain of eternal youth played about her.
I wish Benedick were here. They’d left him with Mistress Palmer, in case the sight of his mother being smothered was too much for him.
The triumph wasn’t complete. It was missing somebody.
Kynaston and Marshall came on to be washed in their turn, as they deserved. Appreciation gained solid form; flowers, ribbons, coins landed at their feet. Somebody threw a gold watch.
Anne Marshall was due to speak the prologue and whet appetites for the next day’s performance of The Humorous Lieutenant, but Killigrew took her place to say that in view of the reception ‘the King’s Servants will oblige with yet another rendering of Othello on the morrow’.
The Vizard Mask Page 32