Master of the Revels

by Nicole Galland

  “Yes, sir,” the fellow said, bowed, and backed out of the room.

  Tilney looked back at me. “Come first thing in the morning,” he said. “Wear cleaner clothes.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said, bowing very deeply now. “I shall strive to be worthy.”

  ENTRY IN PRIVATE DIARY OF

  Edmund Tilney

  ALBEMARLE HOUSE, 10 APRIL 1606

  Today I added to the servants of the Revels Office one Robin Shakespeare, cousin to the playwright Wm Shakespeare, for clerical assistance.

  ’Tis a superfluous position, and the wages will come directly from my purse as there is nothing in the budget for them. But if I provide needed employment, this may obligate Wm to do me a kindness in turn and recommend my manuscript to his patrons. ’Tis the least he could do after so many years of my championing his work.

  ROBIN’S AFTER ACTION REPORT, STRAND 1 (CONT.)

  That night I declared I would sleep upon the floor with Ned Shakespeare, without taking off my linen shirt or hose, nor he his. I’d offered to wager rights to the bedroll on a flipped coin, but he wouldn’t take the bet—it distressed him that a guest might sleep on the floor while he did not. It was a wooden pallet at the foot of Will’s bed, with a flock-stuffed felted bedroll on it, and flaxen sheets and a goose-feather comforter to sleep on. It looked comfortable. And I was the guest. (It never seemed to occur to Will to offer me his bed, which was an actual bed. Given he wrote the greatest scenes of human interaction ever, his real-time social intelligence was not the highest.) So I accepted it even though it felt awkward.

  My head was inches from the strewing herbs, so it smelled nice. There were no fleas—I wouldn’t bother mentioning this, except there were so many beggars with fleas in the street that I worried some would jump on board and have at me. I’m pretty hardy regarding wildlife, but fleas, ugh. Really sucks that I can’t tell anyone that’s why they had a plague outbreak last month. (It’s under control now.)

  Awoke in the morning to see that Ned had kept a respectful distance, curled up under the trestle desk. The windows had been opened, and the city air smelled of smoke—morning fires for morning meals.

  “Good morning,” I said, when Ned opened his eyes moments after I did. He winced and rubbed his neck with one hand. “You’re a gentleman, and I thank you for it, but don’t injure yourself on my behalf.”

  He took a moment to regain his composure. He was in pain, but he didn’t want me to see it. Then he pretended to scowl at me. “Once you’ve proven yourself as a lad, ’twill be your turn to sleep on the floor,” he said.

  Will was already up and out. Draped over his chair was a better set of clothes than I’d worn the day before: a russet doublet with a simple black coat and some knitted hose. Secondhand clothes from Long Lane or Houndsditch, said Ned. He went down to relieve himself in the alley behind the house (we had a perfectly good chamber pot, but I appreciated his absence), while I donned the new togs. They were not flattering—probably a good thing.

  “We’ve no breakfast here, but there be a baker on the next street south if you fancy a loaf. Have you money?”

  Rose had loaned me a penny to cross the Thames, and the brothers had taken me along to dinner at the Mitre the night before, so I hadn’t had to think about it. “Once I am paid my wages from Tilney . . .”

  “Naught to worry,” said Ned, going to a low shelf against the wall and opening a small box. “You may pilfer from the common pot and repay it when you’ve received your salt. You’re lodging with the world’s richest playwright, after all.” At this he glanced ironically about the room—spacious but spare—and winked at me. He rummaged around in what sounded like a heap of coins, drew out three pennies, and proffered them to me.

  He was expected at the Globe for a morning rehearsal, and I headed in the opposite direction toward the Revels Office. The smoke hung heavy until I was beyond the city walls, but even then the sky was a muddy grayish color. There were oaks leafing out over a crossroads. There were no street signs, but my study of Rose’s map, especially after I’d done the journey once with Ned, made it easy to find my way.

  I’d spent the previous evening with Will and Ned, brainstorming how I might sway Tilney from putting Gráinne’s nefarious spell into the Macbeth script, but realistically I’d have to spend a day in situ first, to get a feel for my role there. I presented myself at the gate, where I got an assessing stare from the officious-looking porter. I stared him down with the most bullying expression I could muster; he lowered his gaze and gestured me toward the stairs.

  Tilney received me in my new clothes with cool approval. “In an hour, Ben Jonson is coming with a script,” he announced. “The Masque of Lightness. You will help to rehearse it so I can see how the properties work. Until then, you’ll inventory the spectaculars.”

  “The spectaculars,” I echoed. Then, getting it: “The special effects.”

  “Go through the chancery, and beyond it you will find a storeroom with harnesses and wire, cannons, clouds, all such matter. In the adjoining room are candles, rush lights, flint, and wick. Each room has a large book into which is writ the sum total of stores at the start of the season and then, below that, what items have been depleted or broken or gone missing. At the end of each masque, one of my sub-clerks is supposed to bring the tally forward, so that we know what we have for the next masque.”

  “Indeed,” I said.

  “I am not confident the tallying is good,” he said. “Correct whatever is amiss.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You will find it tedious.”

  It sounded like an order. “Yes, sir,” I said with a bow. “May I—before I go, sir—may I presume to ask you a question, sir?”

  “You may ask. My answering is another matter.”

  “I am in search of a woman who I believe may have visited you recently. She is an Irish—”

  “An Irish witch,” he said, interrupting. He gave me a curious look. “Are you an intimate of hers?”

  His tone was not approving. So that was useful information: he knew Gráinne and didn’t like her. Or at least, he didn’t trust her.

  “Not at all,” I said. “I have a message to deliver and I know not how to find her.”

  “Is it to do with your cousin’s play?” he asked.

  “Which play, sir?” I asked in a tone of bland disinterest.

  He stared at me for at least three heartbeats and I did my best to look casually puzzled.

  “I know not how to find her,” he said. “I have only met her once, to discuss a topic of no concern to you. If you like, the next time I see her I shall alert her that you’re seeking her.”

  “No,” I said too quickly. “Thank you, but ’tisn’t necessary. I’m sure some mutual acquaintance will learn me the way to her. Sorry to bother you about it.”

  “Off you go, then,” he said, losing interest in me.

  I trotted toward the chancery door. It was annoying to be sequestered, but if I couldn’t be near Tilney, at least I was spared being stared at by curious others.

  The storeroom was huge. At least twenty paces to a side, divvied into sections by aisles wide enough for a cart to pass, and lit by the gray daylight coming through large diamond-paned windows. Objects were heaped or piled or stacked on long, sturdy tables, the kind you’d find in a tavern; other things were stored beneath these tables. To the left of the entrance was a small standing desk and the book Tilney spoke of: INVENTORIE. It was longer than my forearm and thick as the length of my thumb. It sat open to a page about halfway through it, held open by the weight of metal bars near the top and bottom. A cup with quills sat to one side and an inkwell on the other. I expected the ink to have dried up, but it had been tightly capped overnight and now only required stirring with the first pen dip of the morning. I examined the book. The open page had carried over data from the previous one, so it was easy for me to sort out what to do.

  I turned to the table closest to me, under which were dozens of coils of r
ope. Well, all right, I thought, feeling very far away from where I needed to end up. If I worked quickly and competently, Tilney might make use of me closer to his office. I began.

  For the Office of the Revels, inventory of 11 April 1606, as carried out by R Shakespeare

  Ropes, hempen, medium gauge: 12 @ 30 fathoms, 10 @ 20 fathoms, 5 @ 10 fathoms, 14 @ 40 fathoms

  Pulleys for same

  Iron chain, 40 links

  2 firkins saltpeter

  2 firkins gunpowder

  Swevels for lightning effects: 5, with 50 squib to light

  Aeoliphone: 1

  Harnesses: boys 6, ladies 4, gentlemen 8

  Cannons: 4

  Birdcages (gold foil): 4 listed but only 3 present

  Cages for animals (small): 5

  Cages for animals (large): 1

  Pig bladders, for blood: 25

  Gold wire: 40 coils each of 2 fathoms

  Skulls (human): 3

  Skulls (animal): 5 (deer)

  Skeletons (animal): 1 (deer?)

  Fanes of feathers: 4

  Effigies: 2

  Icicles of tin, painted with silver leaf: 18 listed, 15 present

  Lightning bolts of tin, painted with ochre veined with gold leaf: 9

  Thunder sheets: 4

  Thunder sticks: 4

  Curve of coloured glass with candlestick behind: 10 red, 10 blue, 10 amber, 10 pale green

  Horn lanterns: 8

  Reflecting lantern: 1, with extra lens and extra mirror

  ROBIN’S AFTER ACTION REPORT, STRAND 1 (CONT.)

  I was surprised to find the reflecting lantern here and not with the other lighting. But as I considered it, I saw the point: it was not used for illumination but for special effects.

  A reflector is a sort of early-epoch Fresnel lens. Putting a candle in front of a mirror to amplify the light is old school going back to the dinosaurs. But a reflecting lantern (a riflettore, as its inventor Leonardo da Vinci called it) turbocharges that process: you stick the whole thing in a box and add a convex lens, so the light gets refracted and comes out much brighter and more focused than a mere mirror. I hadn’t realized convex lenses were a thing in England by 1606. Tilney was ahead of the curve (see what I did there?).

  I couldn’t think offhand of any plays that could use such a lantern. It wouldn’t work at the Globe anyhow, of course. Shows there were performed in natural daylight. Even when that stage was in shadow, it was never dark enough for such effects. But masques were all about visual spectacle, and those were only held at court, so maybe it had been made for a masque . . .

  I rebuked myself for thinking like a Maker of Theatre and went back to being a Counter of Tin Icicles. There were definitely three tin icicles missing, and that was important information my boss needed to know if I was going to win his trust enough to manipulate him into saving the world.

  About an hour into my tallying, a boy fetched me back to Tilney’s office, to help read through the masque. So I got to meet Ben Jonson.

  Dude.

  Ben Jonson was as famous as Shakespeare, back in the day. He was known to be an ornery, narcissistic drunk and an ace at alienating even his biggest fans and allies. Still, he sure could dish out the heavy allegorical prose for the masques. I know about him mostly because he worked a lot with my geek-crush Inigo Jones. Jones designed elaborate sets and costumes to go with Jonson’s brownnose-the-monarch scripts. Add music and dance, maybe some clowning or acrobatics, and hey nonny, nonny!—you’ve got yourself a masque.

  The great hall was crowded with dancers and acrobats and actors and stagehands. An enormous canvas backdrop hung from pulleys against the far wall; it was easily forty feet across and twenty high, displaying a huge, vast roil of ocean waves—a play of light and texture made it look almost 3-D.

  Tilney was standing near his table in the company of three men. One was dressed in simple black, his face ruddy and his hair a wavy brown; he was holding a large manuscript, so I guessed him to be Ben Jonson. A second man was better dressed and sported a long, tufted beard and a skullcap over curly hair. He had fierce eyes. The third man was dressed, and moved, like an aging dancer.

  Tilney beckoned me. As I approached, all three men gave me the once-over, and I tensed. Maybe the stares were just because I was a new face. Maybe they were because he’d told them I was a Shakespeare. Maybe they were because I was so cute. I tried to think of some appropriately manly thing to say or do, but I blanked. Tilney held out two narrow scrolls. “Here are your rolls. Make your entrances from up right.”

  At the table, the copyist was fanning his ink-stained hand over a final roll to quicken its drying. Ben Jonson and his two companions moved closer to Tilney, studying the playing space as the performers and stand-ins gathered into the center of it.

  I unfurled the end of each roll as I awaited directions. I’d been assigned a Cherub and the Goddess of Autumn. (The boy player they had hired for these roles had died of the plague and they hadn’t found a replacement yet.)

  “Let’s begin!” said Ben Jonson. He raised his arms like a conductor’s. The men and boys stopped stretching, or flexing, or humming scales, and turned to face him. “You—there,” he said, flicking his finger upstage. “You—there,” and so on until all three dozen of us were placed for our entrances. Then: “Begin the recitation,” he said loftily, and gestured for a man near me to move into the middle of the playing space. The man’s silver robe hung open, exposing his deliciously well-muscled, hairless chest. He took a step toward the center of the room—

  “Just a moment,” said the skullcapped man beside Jonson imperiously. “First, we must make sure Master Tilney knows what he is looking at.”

  “I have scanned the text already, Inigo,” said Tilney.

  Holy hell! Inigo Jones! I thought, my mouth literally falling open. Meeting Shakespeare is like meeting Jesus, but seeing Inigo Jones was encountering my own particular saint. I’d thought he was in Italy.

  “But ’tis all movable scenery,” said Inigo. “You must see and hear it, to determine if it shall please Her Majesty. With the help of these fine stagehands, we may start to paint the picture for you. Let’s begin.” He turned and gestured around the hall, exactly as Ben Jonson had. Jonson glowered at him behind his back.

  Two sets of boys ran into the center of the hall, each pair carrying a large framed-canvas outline of a cresting wave. They positioned themselves in front of the huge roiling-ocean backdrop and earnestly swayed back and forth at different tempos, the effect being of the ocean surging about in real time.

  Inigo glanced at Tilney, who nodded without looking impressed.

  “Good,” said Ben Jonson, turning to his script, “and now Neptune—”

  “The spectacle is not yet set!” said Inigo. “Tritons, enter!”

  Six sinewy men, sporting long and tousled wigs of bright blue taffeta, danced in an undulating pattern to center stage. From the waist down they wore long slitted skirts, fashioned to look like fish scales; the bottoms of the skirts lifted behind them in the whorled pattern of a conch shell and rose above their heads like a hooded cloak caught back in the wind. They each mimed holding a large object to their lips.

  “Their music shall appear to come from large shells, which Mr. Jones’s workshop is devising,” said the metrosexual guy standing with Jonson and Jones. He must be the music master.

  Tilney nodded, still dispassionate. He took some notes.

  “And now,” said Jonson grandly, raising his arm to signal Neptune.

  “Not yet, Ben,” said Inigo. Gesturing the dancing tritons to move aside, he signaled other performers. Two boys dressed like mermaids, on a wheeled platform some four feet across, were pushed onto the stage by stagehands, miming to sing while gesticulating dramatically.

  “I shall have a new song from Will Byrd for them,” said the music master. Tilney made a note.

  “And now—” tried Ben Jonson, but:

  “And now the seahorses!” Inigo Jones cried grandly.

/>   Two more sets of stagehands ran on, each carrying the jointed forequarters of a blue-maned horse. These weren’t graceful abstractions like The Lion King. More like huge mummified horses with movable joints. It took four boys to work each one, using dozens of tiny pulleys and levers. They manipulated the horses between the backdrop and the foreground waves, so that as one horse rose like a wave about to break, the other dipped down like the surf withdrawing from the shore.

  It was fucking awesome. Honest to God, it really looked good. Like animatronic-level good.

  Tilney raised his eyebrows and almost looked impressed. “The Queen will like that,” he said quietly, and took a note.

  “And all of this will be underscored, of course,” said the music master.

  “And now,” said Ben Jonson, “the masque itself begins, with a recitation of my words.” He gestured again to his lead actor.

  “No, no,” said Inigo Jones dismissively, “this is just the first movement. There are two more before we bother with the words.”

  “Inigo! ’Tis my masque!” said Ben Jonson.

  “’Tis my scenery and costumes,” said Inigo Jones. “Would you stage a masque without scenery and costumes?”

  “My script does not call for quite so many scenes nor quite so many costumes, sir,” said Jonson hotly. He turned to Tilney. “Sure this is a burden on the Revels Office, sir, and might be trimmed a little? Nobody will be listening to my well-fashioned lines, they will be so distracted with the . . . spectacle.”

  “The Queen likes spectacle,” said Tilney patiently, his attention on his notes. I think the three of them had this conversation a lot.

  “The Queen likes me,” said Jonson. “She expressly asks for my masques.”

  “That’s because your masques are the ones with all the spectacle,” said Tilney.

  It was a long afternoon.

  LETTER FROM

  GRÁINNE to CARA SAMUELS

  County Dublin, Vernal Equinox 1606

  Auspiciousness and prosperity to you, my friend!