The Playmaker

by J. B. Cheaney

  For the first two soundings my mind was cruelly divided between the hopeful young actors and these words I must somehow drive into memory like a peg. But by the third I had gathered from their example some notion how to stand and hold my head, along with a conviction that there would be no harm in seeing this thing through. My memory, when not distracted, soaks up words as the plowed fields take rain. Therefore I shut myself in by a huge effort of will and made a clean, straight furrow in my mind: “The attribute to awe and majesty, wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings …”

  Then I was called, and the next moment stood before the Lord Chamberlain's Men. Their stares were neither soft nor hard, only the intent study of workmen who wish to see their work well done. “Thy name, lad?” asked one.

  “Richard, sir,” I said firmly. It had occurred to me that spilling my last name might not be wise if anyone was looking for me. My first name was safe enough—one could hardly throw a rock in London without hitting a Richard. To my relief, the questioner let it pass.

  “Have you parent or guardian?”

  “None, sir.”

  “Well then.” I saw a pot of ink upon the board, a hand with a pen coming down to scrawl my name upon a sheet of curled paper. “You may begin.”

  I drew a long breath, and began. “The quality of mercy …”

  A calm approach seemed best suited, so I did not stride or pace or leap forward as some of the other boys had done. My arms stayed bent and my palms rose slowly, pleading but not groveling for mercy to a poor orphan without hope or prospect. As I spoke I began to hear my mother reading from Scripture: “For thy mercy is everlasting … Thou dost not regard us as our sins deserve, nor punish us according to our iniquities …” And as I spoke, I know not how, my voice became hers, rounded to her pauses and inflections. No one ever read the Word with more depth of feeling. She might have been holding my hand, so smoothly did I walk through that speech. I thought, when all was done, that it had not gone so badly.

  One or two heads nodded. All looked thoughtful, and after a brief spell of silence they launched into a comparison of the seven of us and our merits. I felt suddenly faint and heard little of it. So earnest was the discussion that no one noticed I had remained in place, until one of the actors glanced up and made a little start.

  “I'll vow,” he said, as frankly as if I were deaf, “see how he stares! If wishes could build kingdoms, this boy would be emperor of us all!”

  His resounding voice sent a shiver down my spine. I blushed, and bowed, and returned to my seat, noticing how intently Master Condell was watching me. “True enough, Richard,” he said (not to me). “A lean and hungry look, if ever I saw one.”

  “I like his manner,” said the scribe of the company, who had spoken little thus far. His eyes were the kind that seem to pierce through the styles and habits one may assume, and into the soul of a man. “‘Tis plain, but eloquent. He speaks from the heart.”

  “As thou dost, Will.” Another player affectionately thumped the said Will on the back. “The boy shows promise. I vote for a trial. What say you, gentles?”

  Through a haze I perceived that the Lord Chamberlain's Men voted to take me in on trial. Henry Condell alone appeared to hesitate, and no wonder: my abrupt change of heart about the theater must have aroused his suspicions. Yet after I was elected with two other boys—Richard Worthing and Adrian Ball—Master Condell was the one who offered to board me in his household. He may have wished to keep a curious eye upon me, but I cared not for the reason at that moment. My state was one of exhilaration and terror. God help me now, I thought, barely attending as these men settled my future among them.

  “He'll be pretty enough once he scrubs up,” said the man called Richard, with a jerk of his head toward me. “I'll give him that.”

  And this was a revelation. With my wide eyes, broad jaw, and short chin, I have always thought I possessed the face of a rabbit.

  Starling almost squealed when Master Condell brought me into the great room of his house. He sent her to fetch another shirt and hose for me, and upon her return, she whispered, “I knew you would be back.” I made no reply; she had been right too often already.

  The master led me up two flights of stairs to a short hallway with a door on either side. Here he opened the right-hand door to reveal a youth about my age, sprawled on a low bed and covered with small boys. “Thomas! Ned! Cole!” scolded their father. “Get to bed. You know Robin has to study.”

  “I have my part, sir,” the youth offered. “The boys were only plaguing me, like always.” The children had jumped into their own bed and pulled the blanket over their heads and pretended to be fast asleep while Master Condell introduced me to Robin Bowle: “This is Richard, our new apprentice. Take him under your wing, pray.”

  “You're in for it,” Robin told me cheerfully, after the master departed and I confessed I had never been on a stage before. The little boys, who clearly worshipped him, had crept out of bed again and now were fighting each other for his attention. “I'll toss thee out the window, see if I don't,” he cried, dangling little Cole above the sill while the child screeched with delight. A banging from the room below broke upon their revels. “There,” said Robin as he set the little boy on the floor, “‘tis thy sister Lady Alice telling you to muckle down. Peace now, or she'll be upon us all like a tiger.” He bared his teeth and made his fingers into claws and chased the boys around their bed.

  “But,” I tried to resume our conversation, “I don't know—that is, I am not certain—”

  “Aye. You seem right green to me—about the stage. You could probably teach me a thing or two about the street. How did you get that cut on your neck? By my guess you were taken in so quick because of our sharp need of 'prentices just now. One broke his leg in a fall from the gallery and another died of the pox on Saturday last. Poor James,” he sighed. “He sang like an angel. God grant he's singing with the angels now. Then there's Ned Bly—sweet baby-faced Ned. Within a sixmonth he's grown the iron jaw and hammy arms of a blacksmith, and we had to let him go. We doubted our audience would take to him as Juliet, say. But fear not; the Company would never have voted for you, did you not show promise. They're no fools.”

  “No, but—”

  “So I am to take you under my wing.” Robin flapped one elbow and squawked like a chicken. “You may squeeze under with these brats. The Lord Chamberlain's Men produce almost as many children as they do plays.”

  “Why are they called that?”

  “The Lord Chamberlain's Men? Because he is our patron. And our protector.”

  “Do you mean the chamberlain of the Royal Court?”

  “Is there any other? His name is Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon— a cousin of the Queen, and the best patron we could have. Without him the Lord Mayor would have us playing on the street, can you imagine? The finest company in London!” I tried to look shocked, as he continued. “Lord Hunsdon arranges our appearance at Whitehall, during Christmastide—”

  “Whitehall?”

  Robin flipped the howling Thomas over in a somersault. “To play before the Queen, country lad. I can see you've a deal to learn.”

  This was putting it gently. I undressed and got into bed as Robin went on in his high, rippling voice, piling information upon me with such generosity I felt my brain collapsing. The Company was composed of ten master players, plus hired actors and apprentices and stage help and extra players as needed. The names of the ten I promptly forgot, save of course for that of Henry Condell and Richard Burbage, who had commented on my face.

  “Master Richard is the tall fellow with the rolling voice. And the big nose. No actor in London rivals him. His brother Cuthbert manages our receipts.”

  The Company determined the plays and the casting and divided the profits amongst themselves.

  “The rest of us follow their direction and work our bums till there's hardly enough left of them to sit on.”

  As he spoke, Robin prowled the room with the thoughtless grace of a
cat, stripping off his round hose and netherstocks, scrubbing his teeth with a frayed twig, delivering an affectionate kick to the Condell boys, finally settled in their low bed. He was handsome and solid as a seal; his auburn hair curled upon his shoulders and his long-lashed blue eyes laughed at everything they saw—including me, but without malice. One glance told me that girls went wild over him, though he told me he was only twelve. Just before getting into bed he knelt and rattled off a prayer.

  “How long hast thou been in the Company, Robin?” I asked— very low in spirits, for if this boy was my measure I had too far to stretch.

  “Since I was nine. Most don't engage so young with the Lord Chamberlain's Men, but my saintly widowed mother did marry again, and my most excellent stepfather desired me out from underfoot. You're fourteen, you say? That's late to begin.”

  “How would you advise me?”

  “Why, like any apprentice, at any trade. Listen much, say little, do as you're told. Haven't you some notion of the stage?”

  “I've never even seen a play, entire,” I answered miserably.

  He sat up and swore like a sailor. It unsettled me, this tendency of Londoners to swear by the body parts of God and Christ. “May the Almighty Grace defend you, then,” said he, in a tone that clearly suggested the Almighty had a deal of work ahead.

  Imagine a puppy seized by the scruff of the neck and flung into the foaming Thames at flood tide, and you will have a fair picture of my life for the next many weeks. Dick Worthing and Adrian Ball, both of whom came into the Company with some experience, seemed to adjust to the current and swim right away. But I barely kept my nose above water, and every day found a dozen opportunities to wish that I had sped directly to Newgate in that fateful hour after the riot, and kept on to Scotland.

  My first view of the Theater, on a damp and overcast April morning: a round barnlike structure with three circular galleries surrounding a center court. The posts supporting these galleries were pranked up to resemble fine marble pillars and the wooden railings were painted to suggest the balustrades of an Italian villa, or something like. It was clearly meant to look grand, and perhaps did so at one time, but the stern gray light showed its obvious pretense. The stage was a rough board platform, about fifteen feet square. As we arrived, boys were spreading sawdust on the ground to soak up some of the rain that had fallen before dawn. Most of the Company were gathered at one corner of the stage, discussing business matters.

  Master Condell turned to me before joining him. “Today you watch. Watch Robin and Kit, especially, and I'll not take amiss any opportunity you find to make yourself useful.”

  Robin eagerly introduced me to Christopher Glover, or “Kit,” a thin youth with straight black hair, a milky complexion, and gray eyes shaded by soft black lashes. He raked his icy gaze over me and stalked away with the haughtiness of a prince. “Don't mind it,” said Robin, “‘Tis just his humor.” He went on to explain that Kit was approaching sixteen, an age when most apprentices had either quit the stage or moved on to male roles. But young Master Glover remained unsurpassed in playing imperious queens and duchesses.

  A sharp voice sounded from overhead: “Avast! Mind your ears!” Immediately after, the stage shook with a roar, followed by a sprinkle of cinders. In answer to my wide-eyed stare Robin told me it was only Harry Smithton, in the “hut” over our heads. I glanced up to a boxlike structure built high above the stage, with a trapdoor in its floor. Master Smithton, it seemed, liked to get off a preliminary shot or two before any play that involved a battle, to “warm the gun.”

  “The stage boys must be handy with buckets, in case he sets the thatch on fire,” Robin added. “I'll be off. Watch the play, so you'll know what to do tomorrow.”

  I helped hang curtains around the stage, to hide the forest of trestles that held it about four feet off the ground. Black curtains signified that the play was a tragedy; the boy I was assisting informed me it was called The Greek Warriors.“What's it about?” I asked. “I dunno. Somewhat to do with the Trojan War.” The rehearsal that shortly took place left me no wiser than he. Actors moved in and out through two doors at the back of the stage, spoke lines that were cut short, corrected each other, made grand exits, and entered again in what seemed to be another character. Toward the end of the rehearsal my attention was drawn more and more to Kit, who was playing the role of Helen. His voice fell into a melodious alto that could ring with command or sigh with affection. His face, now in transition from boy to man, was too angular to be considered beautiful, but somehow he created an impression of beauty. By merely putting out a hand, he made me see a sweeping skirt and train. Watching him, I felt hopeless: here was another standard I could not match. Even Dick and Adrian, the other new boys, were masters in comparison to me; they were to be used today as servants and messengers.

  Noon came, and Starling soon after. I was surprised to see her, and to learn that she took fares for the gallery seats and sold fruit and gingerbread during performances. “How goes it?” she asked me, with ill-concealed delight.

  I sighed. “It's bedlam. I'm lost.”

  “Be patient. In time it will all make sense. I'm in a pother to ask you, though—what drove you here from the docks?”

  I was not comfortable with outright lying, so I merely shrugged. She jabbed me in the ribs, I poked her back, and a shrill-voiced woman called her to her station. Already, patrons were filing into the Theater, though the play wasn't to begin for another hour. “There's more to this tale,” Starling whispered to me before scampering off. “And I will have it.”

  During the performance I stood on the floor with the “groundlings”—the apprentices, clerks, and maids who could only afford a penny to get in. Mindful that I was supposed to be in hiding, I pulled my cap low and added nothing to the noisy comments made by the audience. It was my first real play to watch and I wish I could remember it better, but too much lay on my mind. After the third act, Dick Worthing came to fetch me to the tiring rooms behind stage.

  If the play was confusing, what went on behind it was incomprehensible. I dared not offer to help, but stayed out of the way and wondered how anything could be made of the mad rushing about. Only toward the end did peace reign in the tiring room, and that because every available player was on the stage, battling before the gates of Troy. The cannon roared, the actors howled, the audience cheered, my head ached. Immediately after the play, the Company assembled on stage for a dance, and then the happy crowds poured out of the Theater to go their ways.

  I had expected the players to take a rest then, but after changing their clothes and making a quick survey of the day's receipts, they walked through some scenes of the next day's play, in which I was to perform as a servant and a soldier. Rehearsal, for me, meant being grabbed by the elbow and pulled into this place or that, like a piece of furniture. After about an hour (and me still as confounded as before) the day was finally over. By then it was six o'clock, almost twelve hours since we had arrived at the Theater. The Company scattered; Master Condell and his neighbor John Heminges walked home to St. Mary's Parish, a distance of one mile, followed by me and Robin and Kit (who boarded with Master Heminges). After supper that evening Robin showed me how to stage-fight with staves, then laid out the plot of the morrow's play and told me what my entrances were, then studied his part while I lay in bed in a blank stupor. So ended the first day of my blithesome life as an actor.

  My expectation of theater life was that once or twice in a performance I would glide upon stage in a gown and make a speech loud enough to be heard in the third gallery. Two things I did not reckon on: first, that plays must be acted, not merely spoken, and second, that Londoners have an insatiable appetite for them. Citizens of the provinces may be well content with two or three performances in a year. But the London public has been fed so often it is like a beast, hurling itself at the theater doors demanding, “Plays! Give us more plays!” When I began my term of service with the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the city boasted four theaters open to
the public, and each performed its own schedule: a different play almost every day, six days per week, for at least eight months of the year. Yesterday a comedy, today a romance, tomorrow a tragedy, and so the cycle continued, as relentless as the tide. I found time the first week to write to Susanna and tell her what I was doing (which I knew she would not approve); after that the stage swept me out to sea.

  “Forward, march!” barked Master William Sly, who had served some time as a soldier and knew his drill. “Wheel right! Up with the pikes and engage!” He was built as solidly as an ale tankard, with thick wavy hair and a bull neck and a lower lip that bowed up combatively when something displeased him. “To the right I said, Richard, thou thick-pated shrimp—to the right!”

  The play in which I first “acted” was about King Henry VI and the French wars. Wars make excellent dramatic material, so the first lesson for an actor is how to march on with a pike on one shoulder, then leap about the stage in a semblance of hand-to-hand combat. Since Robin was busy with his own part, I was paired with an actor hired for the day, a lanky, clownish street player who nonetheless knew his business. “Stick close to me, little brother,” he told me with a wink. “I'll show you the ins and outs.” This is exactly what he did, for we shared all our entrances as soldiers and serving men. To signal my speaking cues, he covertly kicked me, but as I had only two lines to say, my shins did not suffer overmuch. Both were in the same scene, where we entered fighting with bloody bandages wrapped around our heads. Master Condell, as King Henry, commanded us to cease, whereupon I cried, “Do what ye dare, we are as resolute!” Shouting such words with passion proved to be easier than I thought—the difficult part was making the fight seem natural. I had doubts about my performance until Dick Worthing accidentally brained me with his staff and knocked me near-senseless to the ground—that probably looked natural enough.

  For two weeks I was used as a figure of action, and seldom spoke more than four lines together, usually as a messenger bearing news of some bloody event. My plan to disguise myself as a female may thus have been thwarted, but I could often wear a helmet or a hood, or smear my face with sheep's blood in a battle or street grime in a fight. I could don a beard or pull my cap low or simply melt into the crowd. “Stand forth, Richard!” the players shouted more than once, in rehearsal. “What are you doing in the theater if you don't wish to be seen, eh?”