That heavenly path, with many a curious dint,
That runs along his back.
Those words, along with his poetic depictions of the ways in which men and even the god Neptune loved Leander for his beauty, stirred unfamiliar thoughts and feelings within me, feelings that I did not at that time have the words to describe, or the ability to fully comprehend.
On another occasion, while lying close together for warmth on a cold evening in December in our shared bed at Master Heminges’s, Alexander told me the story of one of the plays he most enjoyed performing in — Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, or What You Will. He played the role of Viola, a young girl who during the course of a storm at sea and subsequent shipwreck is separated from her twin brother, Sebastian, and washed ashore in the land of Illyria. She dresses as a boy in order to survive and so becomes the page to Orsino, a duke who is in love with Olivia and who also seems to have feelings of a sort for his new page, now named Cesario.
It was a role I could easily envision myself playing, but the role I found particularly fascinating was that of Olivia. She falls in love with the “boy” Cesario, and then when the lost twin brother, Sebastian, arrives, dressed in the same clothes and seemingly the same in appearance as Viola / Cesario, she effortlessly transfers her feelings to him, ultimately marrying him.
How, I asked myself, too shy and afraid to ask the question of Alexander, could this be? For Olivia, it appears that the twins are equal and interchangeable. But if this were the case, I reasoned, if falling in love with a woman dressed in the clothing of a man, whose appearance indicated that she was in fact a man, was the same as falling in love with an actual man, what does that mean? Was the only thing that differentiated the two their costume and manner of presenting themselves? Was what Olivia saw and perceived, that there was no difference between the two, the reality?
This was, or so it seems to me, at the heart of the question that has haunted my thoughts and even my dreams throughout my life on stage. What exactly is it that makes one a man? Or a woman? Or is it possible to be composed of elements of both? Is there a difference between how you are seen by the world and how you see yourself?
Thoughts of this, of love and desire, and even, God forgive me, of lust, helped to inform every aspect of my life as an actor, while at the same time being part of the reason why I am leaving this life and beginning another. Often times, the confusion has simply been too much to bear.
Chapter Seven
In which I go to Hampton
Court and perform for the
royal court
With the commencement of the holiday season in December 1603, the King’s Men were honored by being asked to perform before the court of King James at Hampton Court.
We would be presenting The Fair Maid of Bristow as well as Master Shakespeare’s Hamlet, along with his A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the first production, I would make my stage debut, albeit in a non-speaking role as a page. I would not appear in Hamlet at all, but in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I would have my first speaking part, notwithstanding the fact that my role, in its entirety, would consist of a mere five words.
Still, five words in my first play, spoken at Hampton Court before King James and his family and court, was something that six months previous I could not have imagined myself doing. I would play the role of Peaseblossom, one of the fairies asked by the fairy queen, Titania, to attend Bottom, a local workman. Bottom has been innocently caught in the midst of a marital battle between Titania and her husband, Oberon, and Oberon has given him the head of a donkey and has used a magical potion to cause his wife to fall madly in love with him.
My lines, such as they were, were merely the following: “Ready,” “Hail, mortal!” “Peaseblossom” and finally again, “Ready.” The words were not difficult to memorize, and given that my lines were direct responses to commands from Titania and Bottom, my cues were clear and obvious.
Yet even so, I grew more and more nervous as the evening’s performance neared. What if I stammered my words as I had the first time I recited for Shakespeare? What if I did miss my cue? What if I said “Hail, mortal!” when I should be saying “Ready?”
Those thoughts vanished from my mind as we made, as befitted His Majesty’s servants the King’s Men, the six-hour journey by barge down the River Thames on a cold blustery day direct from the city to Hampton Court. It was the 26th of December 1603, the day of St. Stephen, and we would remain in residence, living in His Majesty’s servants’ quarters until the 1st of January.
I shall no doubt describe Hampton Court Palace itself at a later time, but for now let it suffice to say that the Christmas festivities held in 1603, the first Christmas of King James’s reign, were splendid beyond belief. Every bed in the palace was filled with noblemen and noblewomen from England, Scotland and beyond, as well as ambassadors from Spain, France, Poland, Florence and Savoy, all dressed in their most elaborate robes and finery. There were tents set up surrounding the palace to house the lesser nobility and their entourages. There were continuous balls, receptions, banquets, masquerades, as well as games of tennis and gambling.
All this was to celebrate not only the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, but to honor our new king along with Her Royal Highness Queen Anne of Denmark, a somewhat bony, sharp-nosed and tight-mouthed woman; their oldest son and heir, Prince Henry, who I believe was nine years old at the time; and his sister, seven-year-old Elizabeth. The youngest child, Charles, had been too sickly to travel, his limbs encased in heavy iron braces since May, when his family arrived in London from Scotland to assume the throne one month after the death of Queen Elizabeth.
Our Royal Highness and Patron, James I, graciously allowed us to perform for the court in the Great Hall. The first evening of our engagement we performed Hamlet. Since I did not play a role in that performance, although I would have the good fortune to do so several years later, I was allowed to stand behind the screen at the rear of where we performed, in the pantry area that led back to the serving room. There, I was able to watch the play on the trestle stage, while obtaining a most excellent view of the court and audience in attendance.
The hall, covered from floor to ceiling in elaborate and richly colored tapestries, was brilliantly lit by candlelight, although somewhat overheated due to the large number of people crowded in to watch the performance. (In truth I observed Queen Anne on more than one occasion use her handkerchief to carefully and surreptitiously daub away several drops of perspiration from her forehead.) The entire court hoped to see and be seen by the royal family, although, for the most part, they seemed to spend much of the time talking and whispering to each other throughout the performance, their faces and words hidden behind fans and high-necked ruffs.
For our troupe though, being that it was the first time we had all performed together for a while, and being that it was St. Stephen’s Day, and being that we (a word I use loosely since it did not quite, as of yet, apply to myself) were performing before the royal family at Hampton Court, the performance achieved an intensity and power I had hitherto not seen.
Master Burbage was as one possessed playing Prince Hamlet, and Alexander seemed to me particularly piteous in Ophelia’s last moments. Every word struck me anew. Each phrase, each speech seemed fraught with meaning I had not grasped when I had seen it previously.
At the end of the performance, because it was their first appearance before the court and in honor of the holiday, Master Burbage, Alexander and the other leading actors were presented to receive the greetings of the royal family. From my hiding place behind the screen, I was able to take notice at the moment when Alexander, still dressed as Ophelia, curtsied, then bowed before His Highness. The king’s eyes took on a peculiar gleam, and he smiled in a manner that seemed both intimate and knowing in a way I would not have expected. And while I could not see Alexander’s expression in its entirety, a feeling arose within me that when His Highness placed his hand on my
friend’s shoulder and allowed it to linger there for what seemed an eternity, he was pleased by the king’s attentions.
In my naivety and, yes, innocence, I did not yet understand exactly what it meant. And when I asked Alexander about it later while in bed, he seemed to make light of it, telling me that the king had merely told him how much he appreciated his performance as Ophelia.
It was puzzling to me, since Alexander had always been so open and frank with me, but I set it aside for the rest of our time at court. I had other concerns. I had seen the splendor of the court and those in attendance, and worried myself nearly to death that I would somehow fail in my performance, that I would let down all those who trusted in me, that I would be seen as unworthy of my apprenticeship and be sent home in ignominious failure.
I needn’t have worried.
We performed As You Like It on the 27th of December; The Fair Maid of Bristow (a lamentably forgettable play in which I made my debut in a non-speaking role) on the 28th, which was Innocents’ Night; on the 30th we performed The Tragedy of Julius Caesar before Prince Henry, and then on the 1st of January, again before Prince Henry, we presented (and it seems fitting that here I can at least truthfully say “we”) A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
For me, the performance did go by as if in a dream. Peaseblossom did not appear until the middle of the play, in response to the summons from Titania, beautifully personated by Alexander, then vanished from the scene in the middle of act 4. Thus I spent the first half of the play trembling in fear, then after acquitting myself was able to watch the concluding moments. I listened to Puck’s last words to the audience:
If we shadows (meaning us, the actors) have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber’d here
While these visions did appear,
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
If you pardon we will mend.
After which, as if to remind the audience that the drama they had just witnessed was indeed but a dream, all of the actors, myself included, returned to the stage to dance a jig to celebrate both the performance itself as well as the audience’s and actors’ return to the reality of our everyday existence.
For the audience though, that reality still meant a life of relative ease, of luxury and wealth and power. For those of us on stage, the season at Hampton Court had come to an end, and it was time for us to return to a daily life of hard work and performing and the need to reach and appeal to audiences who would purchase tickets for our plays.
And for me it meant the need to continue my apprenticeship, to please my masters, to prove myself as an actor, to begin the transition from small parts to larger roles, and then to play the women’s roles I was meant to personate.
Chapter Eight
In which I explain the
workings of the Globe
Theatre, continue learning
how to transform myself into
a woman, and begin to explore
Southwark, the neighborhood
surrounding the Globe
Since the plague was still prevalent in parts of the city, with three hundred or more dying from the ravages of the disease, the theaters were under orders to remain closed and were not allowed to reopen until Easter Monday 1604. We were fortunate in that we were able to live off the money awarded to us by His Most Gracious Majesty following the Christmas revels, as well as the additional thirty pounds that we had been granted from the Chamber Accounts.
During this time, Master Shakespeare returned to his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, where, I was led to believe, he would spend the time with his wife and remaining children (his son, Hamnet, having died seven years prior from the plague). He would also compose new plays for the upcoming season, which would commence when the ban on public entertainments was at last ended.
As for the King’s Men, we remained outside the city, in Mortlake, for nearly two months. Small groups of actors traveled the surrounding countryside to perform in local towns and villages. Those of us remaining stayed in our lodgings, during which time I continued to work on my gestures and movements, and read as many of the dramas of Masters Shakespeare and Jonson and others as were available. I also buried myself in other works of interest and that added to my education, including The Book of the Courtier by the Italian Baldassare Castiglione, which proved to be extremely helpful, not only to myself but to other boy actors of my time.
In this most interesting and singular of texts, the author describes in the minutest of details the manner in which women of quality should both behave and move. Every phrase, every gesture, every movement should be done not in an obvious manner, but simply and as nature would have it.
I had been keeping a ledger of notes for myself of things to learn and remember and use on stage. This from The Book of the Courtier struck me as something that I would be able to make good use of when I was finally granted the opportunity to play a woman’s role:
Surely, too, you have sometimes noticed when a woman, passing along the street on her way perhaps to church, happens in play or some other reason, to raise just enough of her skirts to reveal her foot and often a little of her leg as well. Does it not strike you as a truly graceful sight if she is seen just at that moment, delightfully feminine, showing velvet ribbons and pretty stockings?
And this also seemed to be at the time a most valuable suggestion, and given the praise I later received — whether earned or unearned I am not altogether certain — I believe it served me well:
I have discovered a universal rule which seems to apply more than any other in all human actions or words: namely, to steer away from affectation at all costs, as if it were a rough and dangerous reef, and (to use perhaps a novel word for it) to practice in all things a certain nonchalance which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless.
When the Globe finally reopened in May 1604, it was well over a year since the King’s Men had performed there. It had closed on the 19th of March 1603 on order of the Privy Council, when it became clear that Her Highness Queen Elizabeth was near death. While it would have reopened in May, the plague had forced it to remain closed, and so both actors and those who worked backstage were eager for the first productions to begin.
This might be the ideal moment, since the roles I was personating during this period were not necessarily of the greatest interest in themselves, to describe in some detail the others who worked at the theater and relied on it being open to earn their living.
At the front of the house were the gatherers, responsible not only for collecting money from our audience but to then safely store it in a box, in an office specially designed for that purpose. The gatherers were also in charge of the women who sold foodstuffs to the patrons of the Globe, everyone from those fortunate to be well off enough to sit up in the pricier tiers, the heavens, down to those standing in front of the stage, the penny stinkards, whom Hamlet called the groundlings. Beer, hazelnuts, pippins and tobacco were available for sale to all, and, truth be told, much of the theater’s income relied on those sales.
In the rear of the theater, there to support the actors, were assistants who played two distinct roles. There was the stage keeper, who served as the Globe’s general factotum, repairing what needed to be repaired, cleaning what needed to be cleaned, and doing whatever was required to keep things as neat and orderly as our lead actor, Richard Burbage, demanded.
The book holder’s role was far more essential to the actual work done by the actors. When he had been given the original book from the playwright, the book holder would then arrange with the scrivener to produce one full and complete copy written out in his very best hand. This then would be submitted by Master Heminges to the king’s Master of the Revels, who would grant his allowance that it might be performed.
Although if any of the play’s words, phrases or ideas were deemed to be subversive, those items would be struck out, after which the scrivener would copy out again the entire corrected version. He would also make individual copies of each actor’s role on long scrolls of paper of remarkably low quality, with their cues clearly and cleanly marked.
Which meant, of course — and this is something that few people outside of the playhouses understand — that no acting member of the King’s Men, or that of any other acting troupe, had in their possession a complete version of the text of the play. The cost for providing such was simply too prohibitive. Instead, when the roles for any new play were assigned, the playwright would himself, if possible, be present to talk to us about what he had written, to describe the plot and characters in full, and inform us what he wanted and expected from us as actors.
However, once I became ready to graduate to women’s roles, the person backstage on whom I depended the most was the tire man. He was responsible for my wardrobe, and therefore for helping me to present the physical illusion that I was, in fact, a woman.
The custom at that time was to perform on a bare stage with as few indicators of scenery and props as was possible (a custom that, I regret to say, is beginning to change). It was the richly ornate costumes, made from the finest possible damasks, silks, velvets and satins, in an array of colors seldom seen by the vast majority of our audiences, that were the only material tools we had at our disposal to help us bring our illusory dramas to life.
With the houses for public entertainment once again open, Alexander, on one of our rare off days, took it upon himself to take me out to enjoy an example of popular entertainment presented at the theater next door to the Globe, the Paris Garden. It was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, who though she loved theater would never come herself to the Globe but instead invited the actors to appear before her. The Paris Garden was divided into two separate sections: one featuring bull-baiting and the other, which I would be taken to attend by Alexander, bear-baiting.
I Was Cleopatra Page 4