Death of Kings

by Philip Gooden

  May urged me up a rickety staircase. At the top was a little room, amply supplied with fresh air (from the holes in the wall) and running water (down the same gappy walls). However, it had a bed.

  “How much?” I said.

  “Four pennies a week.”

  “One for each of you?”

  Tapping my forefinger to my lips, I pretended to consider, but I knew that I wouldn’t find anywhere cheaper south of the river. Poor players can’t be choosers.

  “I’ll take it.”

  So that was how I came to lodge at the Coven, as I termed it to myself. I had some doubts about whether the foursome were genuine sisters; perhaps they were really mother and daughters or perhaps mother, daughters and grand-daughter or perhaps grandmother, etc . . . my head reeled at the possible permutations. Maybe they didn’t even know how they stood in relation to each other. And however they were connected, their names had obviously been bestowed by a fantastical individual. Since they were surely barren, and neither green nor hopeful nor beautiful, no-one – not even a starry-eyed poet – could have compared them to a spring or summer’s day. But, who knows, such a comparison might have been allowable once.

  May was the youngest, or least raddled. She was also the most active. April and June and July appeared to do nothing except stir their noisome cauldron, sample its contents and fall into stupors. But May was out and about from time to time, no doubt doing mischief. Occasionally, furtive vagabonds came to the door and had their pots filled with some of the cauldron’s contents. I was rarely there to witness any of this. I did not linger in my lodgings by day and, when I could, spent the nights elsewhere. The only virtue of my room was that it was dirt-cheap. As long as I paid my fourpence a week the sisters didn’t bother me.

  I was ‘recommended’ the sisters by Richard Milford, a journeyman dramatist who’d been hanging around the Company for some time, certainly from before the autumn when I joined them. He hoped to be commissioned to do a piece or two for the Chamberlain’s but had not yet met with any success. He was an amiable fellow, a camp follower of WS, for they both came from the same county. Indeed, it was the general opinion of the Company that Master Milford of Coventry had deliberately set himself to tread in the heels of the Stratford master. He had reason to be a little grateful to me because he’d earlier pressed into my hands a copy of his unperformed play, A Venetian Whore, asking if I’d do him the favour of casting an eye over it.

  “Why of course,” I said, for it is always agreeable to a young man to have his opinion sought.

  “I think my Whore has something to commend it,” he said.

  “It is a direct title,” I said. “A no-nonsense title. It should draw the crowd – if it is ever put on.”

  “I hope so – if it is ever put on, as you say.”

  “You have written much else?”

  I could see on Richard Milford’s face a struggle between the truth, which was probably that he possessed somewhere a drawerful of creased and splotted manuscripts, and the saving lie that this was his first effort at authorship. In the end, he shrugged slightly, blushed hard and said nothing.

  “Why are you asking me?” I asked. “Though I am willing enough, my voice is hardly the loudest in the Company.”

  “I would value your opinion,” said Master Milford, then subtracted from the compliment by adding, “Besides the others like Master Shakespeare and Burbage are so busy and . . .”

  “Great and high and mighty?”

  “Not at all, or not so much,” he said. “It is rather that I find myself more comfortable with someone of my own age, and someone with learning, like you, Nicholas.”

  Who could resist this? But I should have known that judging another’s pen-work is a risky matter. Authors are touchy creatures. Like the chameleon, it may be that they can live on air but only if it is crammed with praise. And after all, hadn’t I already had some experience of homicide and the dramatist?

  I cast my eyes over Milford’s Whore. The plot was a touch familiar in its outline. A wealthy young Venetian woman is unable to choose between three suitors. She has no parent to guide her, for her mother is dead and her father passes poignantly away in Act I. Which man should she take as mate for life? Is it her that they want – or her money? All her suitors, separately, proclaim undying love and the purity of their intentions. They will never pay their addresses to another woman, oh no. They will never even glance at another woman, not them. If she turns them down they will go off and live like celibates in the desert, oh yes they will. And so say all of them.

  To test their sincerity, our heroine Belladonna disguises herself as a whore. That is, she dons a mask. She finds a compliant madam and keeps her soft and agreeable with money. For company she has her devoted servant Julia, also masquerading as a jade. Considering that she is an unspotted virgin – as all our heroines must be – Belladonna is highly skilled in the arts of seduction, even if she has been schooled by Julia in how to play that instrument. You can probably guess the rest. Belladonna’s suitors visit the house of sale where she plies, or rather does not ply, her trade. Two of them succumb to her verbal blandishments before she removes the mask that conceals her identity. The third stands out against her, proclaiming undying love for another (what then, I ask myself, is he doing in a brothel? – while knowing the answer very well, of course). Then Belladonna lowers her mask to his stupefied gaze. She has proved his fidelity, to her own satisfaction. Meantime, Julia has been receiving the attentions of the successful suitor’s servant. It is not clear whether she too merely plays the whore or becomes one for a time but with servants it hardly seems to matter. All ends well, with Belladonna and Julia contracting simultaneous marriages.

  All of this – the Venetian scene, the rich heiress, the three suitors, the exposing of the false fortune-hunters and the testing of the true lover – calls to mind Master WS’s Merchant of Venice, even if a Merchant without the Jew. Nevertheless if we were to banish a play because it contained a rich heiress and false suitors, on the grounds that such figures are hardly strangers to our stage, then we should find our stock of comedy sadly depleted.

  Besides, Milford’s Whore was good, surprisingly good. The scenes of love were affecting, the brothel interludes were coarse and rousing, and the whole was well observed. I said as much to him and he blushed with pleasure. He was a tall, slightly awkward young man who blushed much of the time, so that his cheeks seemed to be engaged in a perpetual rosy struggle like the war between the Yorkists and Lancastrians.

  “But,” I added (for there must always be a caveat in such praise, otherwise it is too easily earned), “I could not help thinking of Master Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice as I read your words.”

  “You mean that I reminded you of him?”

  “The setting, the choice between three suitors, the rich heiress and her faithful servant – and – and—”

  “—the power of my words?”

  “That too,” I said, though in fact I had considered his style to be a little old-fashioned.

  “Master Revill – Nicholas – thank you. It comforts me, it gives me heart, to know that someone of taste approves my efforts.”

  “I do approve.”

  I felt myself to be on safe ground here since, in whatever light I considered his Whore, my opinion did not matter greatly.

  “Since you think well of my little thing, that emboldens me to ask you another small favour.”

  “Well, that depends . . .”

  “It seems to me that you have the ear of Master Shakespeare.”

  “Oh, from time to time perhaps.”

  “When you are next in converse with him, perhaps you would . . . perhaps you could mention my Venetian Whore, talk about it warmly, if you could.”

  All this time Richard Milford scarcely glanced at me but hung his blushing head down.

  “You’re a countryman of his, aren’t you. I’m sure he’d look kindly on a direct request,” I said, in part because I believed it to be true but in
part to relieve myself of the burden of doing Master’s Milford’s work for him. “He is a kind man, and a courteous one.”

  “You mean that he’d turn me down gently.”

  “I am certain that he would say whatever was appropriate.”

  By now, such was my sageness, I felt about twice my age while Master Milford was shedding years by the second.

  “Anyway, you know, Richard, that plays are approved by the senior shareholders. You must approach them yourself.”

  “I – I suppose so.”

  And away he went, clutching his precious manuscript. I wondered if he’d ever screw up the courage to approach WS directly. I wondered further why he set such store by the effusions of his pen and if he was really aware of the low standing of authors. That it was no great matter to sling a few thousand words together – because the true art lies in fleshing out those words and presenting them in front of the multitude.

  He must have been sufficiently emboldened or desperate to make the direct approach I’d recommended because the next I heard was that the shareholders had read and approved A Venetian Whore for performance early in the spring of next year! After this there was no holding Master Milford. He became most pleased with himself and the world. Evidently he considered that I was partly responsible for his success and wanted to do me a good turn. Hearing that I was looking for cheap accommodation, he mentioned the Broadwall trio.

  Afterwards, when I’d handed over my first week’s rent, I asked Richard why he’d suggested the sisters.

  “They will repay study,” he said.

  “No doubt.”

  “I have only one piece of advice. Keep your dealings with them strictly commercial.”

  Thinking that he had in mind what had originally passed through my own as I walked down Broadwall that fine autumn morning, I said, “I would struggle to imagine a bed-bound tussle with any of those four months – and then I would have to struggle to un-imagine it again.”

  “Four months? – oh I see, very good. But no, I did not mean dealings in that way. I meant, do not be tempted to taste their brew.”

  “I think I can manage not to. In fact, I wondered if that pig of theirs was an unfortunate traveller who’d drunk from the cauldron and been transformed.”

  “As if they were Circes,” said the learned Master Milford.

  “Circe was beautiful,” I said, “and they are most ugly.”

  “Except May.”

  “I do not think ‘except’ will become ‘accept’ in my case, Richard.”

  “You should be a playwright, Nicholas, you are so sharp.”

  “I would rather play. I like applause. Well then, I will follow your advice and avoid their brew.”

  “I tried it once and . . .” he shuddered. “But they have other gifts.”

  “Those I have yet to see.”

  “They can foresee the future.”

  “They foresaw yours?”

  Here he came over a little coy.

  “They said I should be famous one day. And see, I have taken the first steps with my Whore. Why don’t you ask them to plot your future?”

  “No,” I said, “I would rather carve for myself.”

  “I stayed several weeks with them last summer but then I considered that I required . . . more suitable lodgings.”

  “More suitable for a rising playwright, you mean.”

  He blushed when I called him ‘rising’.

  “I do not mean to imply that you are not rising, Nicholas. You, I am sure, have a fine future ahead of you.”

  It is extraordinary how quickly one can assume the role of patron! For this young man – to whom, only a couple of weeks earlier, I’d been giving wise words – was now assuring me of my ‘fine future’. I almost laughed to think that all this confidence sprang from a promised play performance and the few paltry pounds which he’d receive for it. The vanity of authors!

  “Thank you,” I said, “but the sisters will do me for the time being – I can’t expect to rise to your giddy heights.”

  He smiled deprecatingly, though it was easy to see that he was pleased with any compliment, however lightly meant.

  “Try them for your fortune, Nicholas.”

  “If it comes to fortune-telling, for certain their future is all behind them.”

  “But they are cheap,” he said. No man quite escapes his early penny-pinching.

  The day following on my midnight meeting with the Secretary to the Council, was a busy one for us in the Chamberlain’s. In the afternoon the public paying for admission to the Globe playhouse was going to enjoy A Somerset Tragedy, one of the first pieces I’d participated in when I joined the Company the previous autumn. And in the evening there was yet another rehearsal at Clerkenwell for Twelfth Night, which we were to play at court in a little over three weeks’ time. So to those who consider that the player’s life in between performances is like the parson’s in midweek or – and this may be a more persuasive analogy, considering the low regard in which players are held by the ignorant – like the highwayman’s life when snow makes the roads impassable for the traveller, that is, an existence of idle if not insolent ease, I hold up this schedule which shows two plays to be got through in the compass of a single day and evening.

  My thoughts, however, were not directed towards these plays, in each of which I had fairly small parts. Rather I was preoccupied with my midnight meeting with one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, and with what he had asked of me. Through the day and evening of performance and then rehearsal, I found my thoughts tugged back to my conversation with the Secretary to the Council, to say nothing of the extraordinary way I’d been ushered to and from his presence. I considered that I was moving in very high circles indeed. Why, within a few weeks, I was to be seen by the Queen! And none of this conduced to my comfort. I did not wish to have greatness thrust upon me. So, at least, I thought I thought. Though a part of me delighted in being useful to great men and earning their gratitude.

  Naturally I had to hold my tongue. Since my ‘mission’, as Sir Robert had grandly termed it, concerned the Chamberlain’s Company itself I could hint at nothing to my fellow-players. Indeed, it had been impressed upon me that I might be in some danger if anyone at the Globe became aware of what I was doing. In different circumstances – in other words, where I couldn’t normally confide in my fellows – I might have turned to my whore Nell, whose ear was always generously open and ready to receive whatever burdened me. But the grave secret I laboured under could not be lightened by sharing it with anyone. On that point the Secretary had been insistent.

  It may be that she detected my distraction that night in her crib.

  “Why, Nicholas, this is not like you. To go only once and then without much – much spirit.”

  “I have played twice today,” I said.

  “You are practising for the – Queen?”

  There was a breathy pause before she uttered the last word. Needless to say, Nell would have kissed the ground on which her Majesty trod. I have noticed that girls like her, and those of her class in general, reverence royalty. So do I, but in an educated way if you see what I mean. Some weeks before, Nell had almost kissed the ground where I stood when I revealed that we were to present Twelfth Night at court. Not that I was standing at the time. Well, not entirely.

  “Rehearsing for her this evening, yes we have been.”

  “Her?”

  “That’s what I said. Her.”

  But I hadn’t said it with sufficient awe for Nell. Her question was a little rebuke.

  Another reason I was tired was that, as on the previous night, I’d had to make my way across from Clerkenwell after the rehearsal session at the Old Priory. This meant walking to Blackfriars to take the ferry to reach the south bank and then doing another foot-slog to reach Holland’s Leaguer, where Nell plied her trade. It also meant that I was constantly looking over my shoulder or keeping my ears cocked for another arrest like last night’s. I jumped at the shadows. I flinched
at cats and other late passengers. All this to-do – two plays, and a couple of miles paced out in the star-lit dark, and a hidden mission for the Secretary of the Council – it took it out of a man, even a young, vigorous one like myself. My head whirled and, exhausted as I was, I could not fall asleep in Nell’s loving arms. For her part, Nell seemed not inclined to rest but to talk and later on, I very much feared, to another bout of night-work.

  “Is this not a grand privilege, Nicholas?”

  “What?” said I, deliberately obtuse.

  “To play before our sovereign lady.”

  “The Chamberlain’s are often before her. We are her men in all but name.”

  “Yes . . . but for you, Nicholas, it is the first time.”

  I had recently noticed that when Nell wanted to speak to me seriously, and particularly when she was discussing the royal performance (a subject to which she frequently adverted), she called me Nicholas. Now I was Nick only in her careless or affectionate moments. I had noticed also that there was a kind of balance – or rather, imbalance – in these things, so that as the woman’s eagerness mounted higher in the scale so it behoved the man to sink down and underplay his own excitement.

  “Remember, Nell, that my work is playing. Whether we have the highest in the land in our audience or the lowest, it is all one to the player. He performs his office for the love of it and regardless of anyone’s regard.”

  “Then you don’t care if no-one is watching?”

  “Well, no, of course not. What I mean is that the player plays while the king is watching – or the beggar.”

  If I hadn’t been tired I could have continued in this king-beggar vein for some time, although I would have been laughed at if I’d spoken thus in the presence of a fellow-player. Such talk would do, though, for one not initiated into the mysteries of our craft. Nell, however, was having none of it.

  “I do not believe you. For one thing, the king will pay and the beggar cannot.”

  “You’re right. I’m not sure I believe myself.”

  “That’s better, Nick, now you are smiling.”