I had heard much of this popular entertainment since joining the King’s Men, all of whom were in agreement that it was one of the finer spectacles the city had to offer. But after viewing it, I am forced to confess that I was shocked that anyone, after sitting in attendance for more than a moment or two, could find it entertaining in the least.
Standing in a long queue with Alexander, waiting to purchase our tickets, I looked around me, fascinated while at the same time overwhelmed by the swirl of activity. Close enough for us to smell the rotting meat fed to the dogs and the ripe privy smells of their waste were the kennels, from which the howls of what sounded like a hundred beasts could be heard. Nearby, more silent for all that, were the sheds, larger and better built than the kennels, where the bulls and bears were kept.
Closer to the theater I could hear the sounds of music, of dancing and of arguing and fighting coming from nearby taverns. Girls selling sweet treats of all kinds were to be seen, as well as girls selling, as Alexander explained whispering warmly in my ear, their virtue, dressed in long gowns with stiffly starched blue ruffs and tall periwigs towering somewhat precariously atop their heads. They seemed to be in wait for the men departing from the taverns, and, as Alexander described it watching one such transaction, each would settle on a price with her customer before taking him off to what I assumed would be a dark, filthy, flea-ridden abode, or even, if necessary, back behind the dog kennels.
Alexander paid the admittance price that allowed us to sit in the stalls and, taking me by the arm as was his wont, led me in.
My nostrils were immediately filled with the foul stench caused by the vast number of mastiffs, along with that of thirteen large ferocious-looking bears, all locked up in their respective kennels and cages circling the arena. Soon after I entered, my ears were deafened by the roar of the screaming and frenzied and seemingly drunken audience, all eager for the show to begin, all crying out for blood.
One of the bears was a particularly large one who, I was told by a red-faced woman sitting next to me, was the direct descendant of the famous fighting bear named Sackerson. He was so famous, in fact, that Master Shakespeare himself had made mention of him in his popular comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, which we were scheduled to perform in the following week. After the beast was secured to a stake in the center of the arena, several of the great English mastiffs were then set loose.
It was a sight that still brings horror to my mind when I think back on it. The dogs rushed at the bear with much growling and barking and gnashing of teeth. The bear, in return, struck and mauled the dogs, all the while issuing forth such thunderingly angry roars that I found myself tightly clutching Alexander’s arm, trembling in fear and trying to contain my nausea. All the while, he and the others in the audience called out for blood, blood and more blood — whether that of the dogs or the bear, I remain not altogether certain.
The dogs threw themselves tirelessly at the bear in the most ferocious manner imaginable, and given the value of the bear to his owners, the dogs often had to be pulled off or their muzzles forced open with long sticks to prevent them doing permanent harm. The teeth of the bear, I was told, were not sharp, but had indeed been broken short so that they could not harm the dogs, although his claws were still sharp and deadly.
As the first group of dogs became exhausted, they were removed from the arena and fresh ones were brought forth to replace them. When the first bear became obviously weary of the fight, another one was brought in to replace him as well, and this continued until all, including the audience, were spent.
Even though the bears were considered too valuable to be killed, the dogs were seen to be expendable and all too easily replaceable. And although I never attended another such entertainment, I shall also never forget the sight, nightmarish as it was, of that first enraged bear, his mouth covered in frothy saliva, his fur red with blood — both his own and that of the dogs he had injured and possibly even killed, either with his claws or, even more grotesquely, by grabbing a dog on the attack and pinching or crushing it to death.
A brief aside — thanks to Master Shakespeare, the memories of that afternoon’s questionable entertainment were revived as often as we performed, due to popular demand, The Merry Wives of Windsor.
SLENDER
I love the sport well; but I shall as soon quarrel at it as any man in England. You are afraid, if you see the bear loose, are you not?
ANNE
Ay, indeed, sir.
SLENDER
That’s meat and drink to me, now: I have seen Sackerson loose twenty times, and have taken him by the chain; but, I warrant you, the women have so cried and shrieked at it, that it passed: but women, indeed, cannot abide ’em; they are very ill-favored rough things.
Indeed, they are very ill-favored things, and although I am not a woman, I am unable to abide them myself.
While the audience left the Paris Garden as happily entertained as though they had attended an event as light and frivolous as one of the comedies performed next door at the Globe, I found myself shaken to my very soul. I was horrified not only at what I had seen, but at the blood-hungry reaction of all in attendance, many of whom it seemed would not have been satisfied until all available dogs and bears were lying dead and bleeding on the ground.
Still holding tight to Alexander, I asked him how any good Christian could take pleasure in such a sight, in seeing God’s own creatures tear and kill one another, just for their foolish pleasure. He looked at me oddly and told me that he was as good a Christian as one could hope to be. Then he hugged me and took me out of the theater to a nearby tavern where we drank beer and spoke of other matters until the memory of what I had just seen faded, at least for the moment, from my mind.
Much later that evening, we were rowed across the Thames and walked, or shall I say stumbled, the distance to Master Heminges’s home and crawled into bed. I was close enough to Alexander to smell his warm beery breath, and he gave me a quick kiss and began what was to become a new nighttime ritual of rubbing himself against me from behind before falling fast asleep, an action that I at first found perplexing but quickly welcomed as a sign of his friendship and affection, even, I will allow, as the rubbing progressed to something more forceful. Feeling Alexander’s body pressing and thrusting against mine, his face burrowed against my neck, I understood, or thought I did, the depth of his feelings for me. As time went on, I not only allowed his advances but encouraged them, often reaching behind me to pull him closer.
But that first night, my thoughts were not of Alexander sleeping beside me but about the events of that afternoon.
I was forced to ask myself the following questions: What was it about me that made me so seemingly different than everybody else? Why did I respond so differently to the bear-baiting? Why did I shrink in horror while everyone else was calling for blood and death? Was something missing in me? Would I always feel like an outsider, like a stranger looking in? And was it this difference that encouraged Alexander’s physical advances?
These questions and others I have been puzzling over ever since.
Chapter Nine
In which my training
continues, I am publicly
shamed by Master Ben Jonson
and comforted by Master
William Shakespeare
But of course the time available for so-called forms of recreation such as bear-baiting was limited at best. Now that we were able to perform, the theater was open every day with the necessary exception of the Sabbath, and plays old and new, dramas and comedies and history plays, were all acted out on the stage of the Globe. And I was there for all of it.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the work was, in a word, grueling. And it was work, however much like play it might appear to an audience. That was, indeed, part of our job — to make it look not like work.
It was rare that we would perform the same play two afternoons in
a row, which required that the program be changed on an almost daily basis. So if, for example, The Tragedy of the Spanish Maze was being performed on Tuesday, rehearsals, such as they were, for Wednesday’s play were already taking place, while changes were being made on the play that would be performed on the Thursday. And since the number of players available at any given time was limited due to finances, many actors would be playing two or even three parts in a single production. The demands on one’s memory, the need to remember which part one was personating in which play, especially given the fact that nobody involved except the book holder and the playwright himself knew any play in its entirety, was daunting and exhausting both in body and mind.
Even given the extraordinary demand on the other actors, my parts were still, for the most part, as small and unimportant as Peaseblossom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But I was constantly reassured by Alexander as well as Master Heminges that what was important was gaining the experience of being on stage. When roles that suited my abilities were available, I would be awarded them, and in turn the roles would get larger and larger as I proved myself, until I would finally be given the women’s roles that I was being trained to perform.
Given the loud and constant demand for new productions from an audience that had not had the opportunity to attend the theater in more than a year, it is perhaps no surprise that the vast majority of those presented at the Globe, and at the other theaters such as the Swan, were entertainments performed one day and forgotten the next. Plays such as the aforementioned The Spanish Maze, along with The Fair Maid of Bristow, written to instruct men on how to tell a good woman from one that is bad, and The Malcontent, Jeronimo and The Tragedy of Gowrie were all popular but are seldom seen or talked about today.
Two playwrights of that time have stood out though, and their works have been performed often to reflect their popularity with audiences. Their works have also been published in collected editions, making their plays available to those unable to see them on stage or those who wish to read and study them for their further edification.
The first of the two is, of course, Master Shakespeare, whom I have already discussed and who is the playwright whose work has had the largest influence upon me both as a performer and as myself in my own person.
The second of the two is Ben Jonson, with whom I had a much more strained and tumultuous, although ultimately rewarding professional relationship.
He was, to his displeasure, called “the bricklayer” in whispers around the theater although only outside of his presence, since that was the trade, somewhat looked down upon, practiced by his father and his father’s father before him.
Jonson though, had received a classical education at Westminster School that, or so he claimed, went far beyond what Shakespeare had received at Stratford. This he never tired of reminding not only Shakespeare but everyone in the King’s Men within the sound of his voice, as well as the other theatrical troupes for whom he wrote. For unlike Master Shakespeare, Jonson did not compose exclusively for just one company of actors but went where his services were needed or asked for, or when, because of his temperament, he had to move on to another.
His writing was known and respected for its brilliance. But his reputation for being quick to anger, for having an inordinate fondness for canarie wine, for having no tolerance or patience for fools or criticism or actors not treating his words with the respect he felt they deserved struck a feeling of awe and fright in all who knew and worked with him. (He had in fact been in prison several times, once for killing a man, which he claimed he had been forced to do to defend his own life, although rumors suggested otherwise.)
One morning in the spring of 1604, he arrived to begin preparations for a revival of his comedy Every Man out of His Humour, a play that had been performed with great success in 1599 and was itself the second part, as it were, to Jonson’s own earlier play, Every Man in His Humour. I had read the play in an inexpensive quarto edition I had purchased at the St. Paul’s bookstalls, and saw in it a larger, more complex role than those I had up to that time been portraying, one that would test my skills and allow me to prove myself to Masters Heminges and Shakespeare.
The role was that of Fungoso, a law student whose greatest aims in life, it seems, are to have a new stylish suit of clothes and a steady supply of tobacco. And while I was perhaps too young for the role, I plucked up all the courage I had within me and approached Master Jonson to ask him if he might consider me for the part.
Burly and in appearance such that I could understand why they called him the bricklayer, with the oddity of having one eye larger than the other, while the other was positioned lower down his face making it impossible for him to look directly at anyone, he gave the impression of being a man both exhausted from his previous night’s entertainments (as I came to understand them to be) and angry with not only the world but with me for having the temerity to speak to him directly.
After looking me up and down twice and informing me that I was too small, too young and, to my astonishment, too boyish and at the same time far too girlish to perform the role as he would like, he still bid the book holder to bring forth the roll. Master Jonson looked through it and pointed out the speech he wanted to hear me read, wherein Fungoso begs his uncle for money for a new suit. And so I began:
In good faith (at this point Fungoso looks at the new suit of clothes being worn by Fastidious Brisk),
I was never so pleased with a fashion, days of my life. O so I might have by my wish, I’d ask no more of heaven now, but such a suit, such a hat, such a band, such a doublet, such a hose, such a boot, and such a —
…
Let me see, the doublet, say fifty shillings the doublet, and between three or four pound the hose; then boots, hat, and band: some ten or eleven pound will do it all, and suit me for the heavens!
I stopped and looked up at Master Jonson, hoping that I had pleased him, but was met with a glare such that would have alarmed and brought a sense of dismay to the most lion-hearted of men. And I, to be frank, was far from the most lion-hearted of men, or, to be more precise, of boys. Jonson shouted at me that I had not yet earned the right to read his words, that I had not even, as he proclaimed in the bluntest and loudest of ways, earned the right to call myself an actor and should, if I had enough of a mind to heed his words of advice, give up any hope of making a success of it and return to my home at the earliest possible moment.
With that, all the hopes and ambitions I had allowed to build up within myself over the past months disappeared in a mere moment. Hoping not to embarrass myself in front of him any further by bursting into tears, I thanked him for his advice. Excusing myself, I ran off to find a hidden area of the theater where I could cry without being seen, and from where, I told myself, I could immediately leave to begin my long shameful walk home to Reading, where I would be forced to confess my failure to my father.
As I sat there in a heap on the floor, weeping on all that would not come to be and wondering how I would be able to explain what had happened to those at home, I looked up to see Master Shakespeare standing over me with a look of concern on his face.
“Never you mind Ben,” he told me. “When he sees himself in a looking glass he sees a large bear, roaring at everyone in the world as a truth teller, the only one in the city.” And here Shakespeare allowed himself a grin. “But truth be told his only problem this morning was too much wine and carousing last evening.
“But … you do not need to concern yourself about that,” he added hastily. “I heard your reading, and while it was not as bad as the angry bear indicated, it was not nearly as good as you can be for two reasons that I know of. The first being that the part of Fungoso is not the sort that you should or will be playing. Fungoso is an ordinary sort of young man, and you, young John, are anything but ordinary. The roles I know you’ll be playing will go beyond ordinary. You have something of magic about you, John, and your roles will have
to use what makes you so special.
“But don’t let that go to your head. You also read the part badly,” and here he laughed softly to himself. “While Ben has many goodly qualities as a writer, writing readable lines for young actors or — and you must promise never to repeat this to anyone, John — parts for any sort of actor is not where his talent lies.”
Looking through his seemingly bottomless doublet, Master Shakespeare pulled out another roll — this for young Prince Arthur in The Life and Death of King John, which, he told me, we would be performing at the king’s court at Christmas, and he would, if I was deemed ready, like me to personate this role.
“I’d like to hear you speak this speech. Arthur is being held prisoner, and his jailer has informed him that he is to be executed in the most horrible way imaginable, by having red-hot iron pokers thrust into his eyes. Imagine yourself then, young John, as Arthur. You’re alone, frightened to death and begging him to save your life. You’re reminding him of how kind you yourself have been to him while under his protection, hoping against all possible hope that he will take pity on you.”
I read over Arthur’s words carefully, envisioning myself as that young boy, alone and afraid. I remembered Jonson’s words to me earlier, which by sending me home would have condemned me to another kind of death. And so I began:
Have you the heart? When your head did but ache,
I knit my handkercher about your brows,
The best I had, a princess wrought it to me,
And I did never ask it you again;
And with my hand at midnight held your head,
And, like the watchful minutes to the hour,
Still and anon cheer’d up the heavy time,
Saying, “What lack you?” and “Where lies your grief?”
I Was Cleopatra Page 5