Shakespeare's Scribe

by Gary Blackwood

  I made no reply. Though I knew well enough that he was jesting, I found nothing amusing or appealing in the notion of leaving the Chamberlain’s Men.

  To Sal Pavy’s credit, when it came to studying for his roles, he applied himself more assiduously than any of us. I thought myself an early riser, yet often I emerged from our room at some inn soon after sunrise to find Sal Pavy pacing about the courtyard, reciting his lines under his breath and practicing over and over the appropriate gestures to go with them.

  He also worked harder than most at keeping himself and his attire clean and tidy. He bathed whenever the opportunity presented itself—in private, of course—paying from his own purse the two or three pence innkeepers customarily charged for such services. Naturally, Sam pointed to these habits as further indicators of a female nature.

  We were working our way northward, now, traveling as quickly as we might and stopping at the smallest and shabbiest inns to conserve our dwindling funds. Lodging of any sort grew increasingly scarce and one night, finding ourselves between towns when darkness fell, we stopped alongside the road and spread our mattresses out upon canvas sheets beneath the carewares.

  Though I welcomed the chance to sleep in the open air, some of the other players griped about it, most notably Ned Shakespeare. I had noticed that he was not chary with his complaints at any time. The meals we ate were never to his taste; he grumbled over the fact that, though he was the famous playwright’s brother, he must make the journey on foot; when the sun shone, he railed against the heat; when it rained, as it did almost daily, he cursed the damp.

  It was a pity we were not farmers. Had we been, we could have put to use all the earth we turned up with the wheels of our carewares. And had we been growing crops, we might have welcomed the rain that made the roads into a morass of mud. Our definition of a good day became a day when the carewares bogged down no more than half a dozen times.

  Sometimes the sharers could drag the wagons free by tying extra ropes to them and adding the pulling power of their mounts to that of the draft horses. Other times we prentices and hired men had to play the part of so many Atlases, taking onto our shoulders not the weight of the whole world but that of the wagons, which sometimes seemed nearly as great.

  After one such dismal day we stopped at an inn outside Grantham, and several of the company paid for the privilege of a bath. Sam and I contented ourselves with scrubbing our clothing and shoes in the horse trough. When Sal Pavy crossed the courtyard from the stable to take his turn in the bathhouse, Sam sidled up next to me and announced gleefully, “I’ve a plan that will reveal the truth once and for all.”

  “The truth?” I echoed. “About what?”

  “About whether it’s Sal or Sally, you dunce.”

  “Sam,” I said with a sigh, “must you always be harping on that same string?”

  “Ah, Widge, you know you’re consumed with curiosity about it.”

  “Nay, I’m not—truly.”

  He nudged me with his elbow. “Come, come, tell the truth and shame the devil. You admit, surely, that there’s something suspicious about the boy—if he is, indeed, a boy.”

  “Well, aye, perhaps a bit, but—”

  “Right. So let us find out what it is.” So saying, he seized my shirtsleeve with one sopping hand and pulled me across the inn yard.

  “Where are you taking me?” I demanded.

  “Whist! Just over here.” He led me to an alcove next to the bathhouse, where firewood was stacked. In the growing dusk, I could see a narrow shaft of light issuing from between the boards of the bathhouse and laying a yellow ribbon across the rough bark of the logs. “I discovered this earlier, when Mr. Phillips sent me to fetch firewood,” Sam whispered. He knelt atop the woodpile and pressed his face to the crack in the wall.

  “Stop it, you sot!” I said, and tugged at the back of his shirt, though not all that insistently, I admit. Some part of me, a part I did not much care to acknowledge, wanted to know if there was anything to Sam’s theory.

  Sam whispered from the side of his mouth, without taking his eye from the crack, “I can see him! He’s starting to strip down! There goes the doublet … the breeches … the shirt … the hose …” There was a pause, then Sam exclaimed softly, “Gog’s nowns!” and, without warning, jerked back away from the crack, nearly breaking my jaw with his pate, for I had leaned up close behind so as to hear him.

  I could not see his face well in the fading light, but enough to read astonishment upon it. “What is it?” I demanded, still holding my jaw.

  Sam slowly shook his head. “See for yourself,” he said, and yielded his place to me.

  Hesitantly, feeling uncomfortably like the fellow who peeped at Lady Godiva and was struck blind for it, I put my eye to the crack. The room was lighted by a candle I could not see; probably it was on the wall against which I leaned. In the center of the room was a wooden tub, like a half barrel, and Sal Pavy, naked as a nail, was just stepping into it.

  His profile was to me, and I could see well enough that his appendages were appropriate to a boy. I was about to turn to Sam and say, “Did I not tell you so?” but then Sal Pavy shifted position, so that his back was to me, and I saw what had startled Sam so. A series of long, livid scars or welts descended his back like a ladder, continued across his buttocks, and down the backs of his thighs—the sort of marks left by a caning.

  I knew the pattern well, for my own frame had been similarly decorated often enough by Dr. Bright’s walking stick, when I had spilled some valuable medicine or was caught filching from the pantry. But my welts had always faded after a few days. I doubted that Sal had come by his so recently. For one thing, I could not imagine anyone in our company giving such a caning to a prentice. For another, these tracks did not look fresh. They looked, rather, like a permanent record of punishments long past.

  I could only speculate about how severe the beatings must have been to have blistered the skin in such a manner, and how painful. Feeling suddenly queasy, I stepped back from the peephole and nearly lost my balance.

  “Did you see it?” Sam asked in a soft, subdued voice.

  “Aye,” I replied. “And I would I had not.”

  “Who do you suppose might have given him such a smoking?”

  I shook my head, unable to imagine. “You’ll ha’ to ask him that,” I said, knowing that even Sam, with his rash tongue, would find that difficult to do.

  11

  I was still feeling shaken when I went up to Mr. Shakespeare’s room. I found him at the folding desk, fighting valiantly to control his quill with his left hand, and losing. His hand, his sleeve, and his paper were all spotted and smeared with ink, and the words he had managed to set down were even more illegible than his normal script, a thing I would not have believed possible.

  He laid the pen down and glanced up at me with an expression that put me in mind of the way Mr. Pope’s boys looked when they were caught at some mischief. “Now I understand why the left hand is called sinister. It has a twisted will of its own and cannot be made to obey.” He rose and gestured for me to take his place, then set about awkwardly trying to clean the ink from his hands using a rag soaked with brandy.

  “When I was a schoolboy in Stratford,” he said absently, “I had a classmate—Laurence, his name was—who was left-handed. The schoolmaster believed this was contrary to nature and insisted that, for the purposes of penmanship at least, the boy must use his right hand. Laurence worked diligently at it, but was totally inept. The master, convinced that the boy was just being stubborn, tried to beat him into compliance.”

  I winced, thinking of the stripes on Sal Pavy’s back. “Did ‘a succeed?”

  “He succeeded only in making an enemy of Laurence. When we grew bigger, one day Laurence wrested the rod from the master’s hand and gave him a drubbing in return, using his right hand—just to show that he could, I suppose.” Mr. Shakespeare sank onto the edge of the bed and cradled his bandaged arm. “Well. You see what I’m doing, don’
t you?”

  “Easing your bad arm?”

  He smiled wryly. “Yes, but I’m also delaying, trying to avoid setting to work.”

  “We need not, an you’re in pain.”

  “The arm is not to blame. The swelling has gone down considerably, as you see.” He held out the arm for my inspection. The flesh around the plaster bandage was no longer red and puffy, but nearly normal in appearance.

  I smiled with relief. “I was afeared I’d done it wrong, and it wouldn’t heal.”

  “No, you did as well as any surgeon, and I’m grateful.”

  “What does pain you, then?”

  He frowned and lay back on the bed. “This play,” he said.

  I did not know how to respond. I had supposed that composing plays was an effortless task for a man of Mr. Shakespeare’s gifts. But he was behaving as though it were something to be dreaded, as though it required a degree of fortitude or courage he was not sure he possessed. “Shall I … shall I read what I transcribed last night?”

  “Yes, yes, read it all. God knows there’s little enough of it.”

  It was true. I’d put down but half a dozen speeches the previous night, before Mr. Shakespeare grew frustrated and sent me away. The play’s progress, in fact, closely resembled that of the tour as a whole—agonizingly slow, with much bogging down.

  We were in the midst of what was meant to be a comic scene between the Countess and the Clown. Though Mr. Shakespeare’s mood was anything but comical, he went on struggling with the scene, as his classmate must have struggled to write a satisfactory Italian-style script using the wrong hand. But Mr. Shakespeare had no master standing over him with a hickory rod. The only one driving him was himself.

  He pressed his hand to his forehead in that fashion I had seen so often. “The Clown says … The Clown says … Ah! The Clown says, ‘I have an answer that will fit all questions.”’

  As I wrote down the line, I laughed. “An answer to fit all questions? It must be an answer of monstrous size.”

  “That’s good!” said Mr. Shakespeare. “Write that down as well, for the Countess’s line.”

  “Truly?” I said.

  “Why not? I’m not above stealing a line when it suits.”

  I wrote down what I had said, happy to have been of some help, however small. “What is this answer to fit all questions, then?”

  “Oh, Lord,” groaned Mr. Shakespeare. “I’ve no idea.” Then he paused and, to my surprise, smiled. “Wait. Perhaps that’s it.”

  “What’s it?”

  “‘Oh, Lord.’ That can be made to answer anything, depending on how you say it, can it not? Let’s try it. Pose me a question.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Pose me a question—any question.”

  Flustered, I asked the first thing that entered my mind. “How fares your arm, sir?”

  “Oh, Lord, sir,” he replied in a tone that implied it was in dreadful shape. “That works. Ask me another.”

  “Umm … ah … how goes the play you’re composing?”

  He rolled his eyes and replied in a tone of great dismay, “Oh, Lord, sir!” We both laughed at how apt the answer truly was. “Come, another,” said Mr. Shakespeare. Suddenly the melancholy mood that had hung over us seemed to have lifted.

  I thought of an old jest that could not well be answered with a yes or no. “Tell me, sir, do you still beat your wife?”

  “Oh, Lord, sir!” This time the reply was laced with indignation. “Ha! You see, it works! Write it down! Rob will know how to make the most of it.” He meant, of course, Mr. Armin, who customarily played the broad comic parts.

  Now that Mr. Shakespeare was in better spirits, he went on to dictate another scene and another, at such breakneck speed that I was hard-pressed to get it all down. It was an astounding feat, really. One might have thought the words were already fully formed in his head, and he was merely reading them off.

  Though he was galloping along like a man on a fresh horse, I was fading fast. My eyelids drooped; my lines of charactery symbols, normally straight as a privy path, began to wander. I glanced at the watch that lay on the desk. It was past midnight.

  Mr. Shakespeare seemed to notice neither the lateness of the hour nor my nodding head, so caught up in his creation was he. I pinched my leg mercilessly, to jar myself into wakefulness. Now that he was racing along at last, it would not be fair of me to bring him up short by pleading exhaustion. I kept up as best I could until, finally, he began to stumble and came to a halt.

  “End of Act Two,” he said with satisfaction. “A fair night’s work.”

  “Fair?” I said, and yawned widely. “I doubt whether I could survive a good night’s work, then.” I looked about at the papers I had strewn this way and that in my haste.

  “Go on to bed,” said Mr. Shakespeare. “I’ll clean up here. Did I work you too hard?”

  “Oh, Lord, sir,” I said, and we shared a final, fatigued laugh.

  When I stretched out on my mattress in our sleeping room, Sam stirred and murmured, “How did it go?”

  “Like the wheel of Fortune,” I said. “Now up, now down.”

  “I don’t see why he agonizes so over it. After all, it’s only a play.”

  For a change, the room was not filled with Jack’s snoring. “What’s happened to Jack?” I whispered to Sam.

  Jack’s grumpy voice replied from the darkness, “You’re keeping me awake with all your gabbling, that’s what.”

  “Sorry.”

  After a moment, I heard Jack’s voice again. “I know what you’re up to,” he said.

  “How do you mean?” I asked.

  “With all your extra work. You’re trying to get in good with the sharers, so they’ll keep you on.”

  I made no reply to this. In fact I said nothing until I heard him begin to snore. Then I poked Sam.

  “What?”

  “Jack says I’m trying to get in good wi’ the sharers so they’ll keep me on. Do you suppose there’s some chance they won’t?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “Well, we’re making no money at all. An this keeps up, perhaps they’ll ha’ to let some of us go.”

  “Who would they have to play girls’ parts, then?”

  “Sal Pavy, for one.”

  “Ahh, you’re far better than he is.”

  “How do you ken?” I said. “You’ve not seen him perform yet.”

  “Ha! I see him perform every day for the sharers, in the role of the Good Prentice.”

  “Aye, and they seem to find him very convincing.”

  “Then perhaps it’s our duty to enlighten them.”

  “Nay, it’s not,” I said. “Whatever his faults he’s one of us.”

  Sam laughed ironically. “Just don’t try to tell him that.”

  12

  Sal Pavy soon had the chance to show the rest of the company how capable an actor he was. To our great relief, we were welcomed by the mayor of Newark. He did question us closely, though, to be sure none of the company had any symptoms of the plague. Though the contagion had not yet reached his town, rumors of it had.

  In London, when we were to perform for the Queen, we first had to present our play to her Master of Revels. Here, though our audience would be nothing like royalty, we were expected to play first for the mayor and his aldermen, who would then pass judgment on whether or not we were fit for public consumption.

  Since we had failed in our attempt to perform Love’s Labour’s Lost in Newbury, the sharers determined to do it now, assuming that a provincial audience would prefer comedy to tragedy. Perhaps, I thought, recalling what Mr. Shakespeare had said about the Queen’s taste, they were not so different from royalty after all.

  We were all of us a bit rusty from not having exercised our skills for so long, but once the play was under way we performed smoothly enough. Sal Pavy’s early-morning practices served him well; so did his naturally haughty manner. It was difficult for me to watch him play the Princess of France
or to act alongside him. In truth, I suppose I was resentful, for always before, Sander had been the one to play the Princess. But even I had to admit that Sal Pavy brought to the role an uncommon dignity and grace.

  After the performance, he had praise heaped upon him by the sharers. Sam and I, not wishing to seem poor sports, said a few complimentary and wholly unconvincing words. The mayor and his friends were enthusiastic, too, and a public performance was set for the following afternoon. Again, we prentices were given a sheaf of handbills to scatter through the town.

  We split up, to make the task go more quickly. As I was returning to our inn, I spotted a troupe of a dozen or so men, some on horseback and some afoot, approaching on the highway. When they drew nearer, I noticed that they wore brown cloaks and orange caps—the livery of Lord Pembroke’s Men.

  I had seen Pembroke’s company perform at the Swan, but not often enough so I could recognize the individual players, particularly without their makeup. One of their number—a stout fellow of perhaps twenty, with a ruddy complexion and a generous belly—did look somehow familiar at first, but as he drew nearer I saw that he wore a leather patch over his right eye. I didn’t recall ever encountering anyone with such a distinctive feature.

  I hurried to the inn, ran upstairs, and burst into Mr. Armin’s room. He looked up in surprise from a sheet of paper he had filled with his neat, elegant script. “Remind me to add to your other instruction a class in courtesy,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said breathlessly, “but I thought you’d want to ken.”

  “Ken what?”

  “The Earl of Pembroke’s Men are coming.”

  He set paper and pen aside and rose. “Are you certain?”

  “I recognized their livery—brown cloaks, orange caps.”

  “Shrew them! They’ve had the same idea we did, it seems. I didn’t foresee having to compete with another London company.”

  “But we’re here first. They’ll have to be content wi’ the leavings, will they not?”

  Mr. Armin played idly with the handle of the dagger he always wore at his belt. “Perhaps,” he said thoughtfully. Then he looked up and smiled slightly at me. “Thanks for the warning, at any rate. Next time knock, though.”