Death of Kings

by Philip Gooden

  Before I tell you about the reception of Richard and its aftermath I’d better explain what I said a moment ago about the play being dangerous. I’d never seen it myself until I appeared in it (and then of course I only saw the action in fragments). All I’d heard were the hints and disagreements about it beforehand. Perhaps I’d considered them a little overstated – after all, we were only talking about a play, for goodness’ sake. However, when the piece was actually presented by the Chamberlain’s on that Saturday afternoon a dead text became a living animal. I understood why some of our fellows were uneasy. I grew uneasy myself, particularly after witnessing the nature of our audience. The play was like an instrument that is being used to probe a wound. The wound was the sad condition of our realm, with an ageing, childless Queen and no immediate heir to her throne. The question was whether this was a mortal wound; and whether our play-probe would worsen an already grave situation.

  In the unfolding of WS’s drama, Richard may be a poor king but he is still a divinely appointed one. Henry Bolingbroke is banished by Richard, who is his cousin, and his lands are seized. Henry forces his way back from exile, to general acclaim. Almost all of King Richard’s followers desert the falling star for the rising sun. Richard abdicates but, in truth, he is shoved from his throne by the usurper. He is murdered in Pomfret Castle. The manner of his death is affecting, for Richard in his fall from grace has acquired a new humility. Meanwhile, Bolingbroke rides high in triumph through London on his coronation day. He rides on Richard’s horse, Barbary.

  But Bolingbroke’s moment of triumph is short-lived for, as WS has shown us in his plays of Hal and Falstaff, the new King pays dearly for seizing the throne. His land is torn apart by inward wars even as his own body is sapped by sickness. He has taught treason and his followers have followed him in that too. I have always considered our playwrights to be as stern moralists as our preachers. My father could not have delivered so strict a lesson on the vanity of human ambition as did Master Shakespeare in his plays of Richard and Henry. Far from being at odds, playwright and parson should make common cause! For the only thing that we are sure of down here on earth, king and commoner alike, is our own mortality. While all that we need to learn is that, as we sow, so surely shall we reap.

  But I fear that the lessons drawn from this piece were not to do with grace and humility. The simple lesson for the Essexites was that divinely appointed sovereigns may be thrust from their thrones, if a fitter ruler come among them. It has happened once in our history; there is precedent. Now, our Elizabeth was not a weak ruler like WS’s Richard. She was a strong woman – stronger in heart and spirit than most men, I would think, though able to use her feminine parts when it would advantage her or her country. Nevertheless, she was in a – if I might so put it without disrespect – thrust-able situation. Like ripe fruit, our Queen could be loosened. And the looseners were out there in the pit and the galleries of the Globe playhouse.

  My part in this play was small. King Richard has a trio of favourites named Bushy, Bagot and Green. They are caterpillars of the commonwealth, preying off the land and giving nothing in return. It may be that the King prefers their company to that of his Queen. It may be that together these men are guilty of the sin that is named for one of the cities of the plain, the unnatural practice which outsiders often believe players to be guilty of with their boys and which I had unwisely imputed to myself in order to get rid of Mistress Horner. It may be that Bushy, Bagot and Green are of that bent; but it would be unwise to be too open about such things on stage, even more unwise perhaps than showing how to procure the downfall of kings. Nevertheless one may mince and strut just a little to show one’s mettle. I was one of Richard’s favourites, you see: I was Bushy (together with some even smaller part). Halfway through I lose my head, as does Green.

  We players were not the ones losing our heads that afternoon. That could safely be left to the audience. I observed them through the spy-holes which were provided back-stage. Indeed, there was a more than normal interest in the spectators’ response and, for the duration of the play, those members of the Chamberlain’s who weren’t out front could be found clustered round the little chinks which afforded a view of the pit and galleries. Even Master Shakespeare was concerned to watch how his words were being received. I saw Thomas Pope, who played the part of John of Gaunt, look most uncomfortable with what he was witnessing, as if he had indeed stepped into that old nobleman’s shoes and was in despair at the condition of his beloved England.

  This was no occasion for refined playing. The small touches and flourishes that I brought to my Bushy and the other attendant lord went for nothing. At times indeed the Essexites seemed almost impatient with the happenings on stage, and these were usually the melting moments when Richard bids farewell to his Queen or when the poor, abandoned King is alone, philosophising in his Pomfret cell. Then I sensed more than impatience – almost a contempt – with much nudging, laughter and shifting among our watchers. They seemed to be giving vent to their hatred for this enfeebled and impotent king. When he was murdered there was an instant of hush, as if even they appreciated the gravity, the sacrilege, of what had occurred on stage. But this was succeeded by muted cheers and other marks of approbation at his death.

  Their real enthusiasm was reserved for those scenes in which Bolingbroke stretches the sinews of his new-found power. As when he confronts Richard for the first time after his return from exile and kneels down, in fair pretence of loyalty and meekness, saying that he has come back only to reclaim what is his own. Richard the King says, ‘Your own is yours and I am yours and all.’ It is the moment at which power is transferred from king to claimant. Once that door is opened it can never be shut again. This exchange was greeted with a great shout from one of the noble Essexites in the galleries and in seconds it was taken up by the whole crowd. Undoubtedly they saw their darling in Bolingbroke’s place. I dreaded to imagine what Cecil’s agents would think, for it was certain that there must be some among the audience and that they would hot-foot it back to their master to report this disgraceful response. Even worse was to come later when the Duke of York told his Duchess how Bolingbroke was greeted by the people in his triumphal progress through London. Master WS paints a picture in words, he does not show it. However, it was enough to move the Essexites to almost uncontainable excitement.

  Whilst all tongues cried “God save thee, Bolingbroke!”

  You would have thought the very windows spake:

  So many greedy looks of young and old

  Through casements darted their desiring eyes

  Upon his visage; and that all the walls

  With painted imagery had said at once

  “Jesu preserve thee! Welcome, Bolingbroke!”

  Through our peepholes we watched the bubbling crowd, unprompted, act out the scene, mouthing ‘Essex’ instead of ‘Bolingbroke’, and darting their eyes hither and thither as if they were standing at London’s casements and watching their leader parade through the streets. You would have thought that Essex himself was in the audience – and in a sense he was, for he was present to their minds’ eye almost more vividly than if he had been there in the flesh. The crowd was shifting and jabbering so much that they missed the sequel to this description of Henry Bolingbroke. In the Duke of York’s utterance, Master WS has offered two pictures, telling us to look upon a victorious usurper and then upon a dejected king, for the latter rides at the heels of his dispossessor. Disloyal Londoners scowl at him and throw dust upon that sacred head. Yet all this was lost upon the Essexites, so excited were they by the vision of their conquering hero.

  I remembered my own first glimpse of the man, how he had turned his head and the upper part of his body from side to side and smiled benignly on the crowd. I remembered too the sudden up-rush of the black cloud which had been rightly taken for an omen; how everyone had scrabbled for shelter. Now, the waving arms and bobbing heads and agitated noises of the Globe audience seemed like tree-tops readying themselves t
o be shaken by a storm.

  So much for Richard II.

  After the performance was over, we made our bows but did not finish with the customary jig. However, despite the lateness of the February afternoon, the audience did not disperse to their homes or the usual healthy diversions like the stews or the bear-pit. Rather, wanting to prolong the thrill of what they’d just gone through, they seemed most reluctant to shift from their seats or standing places though a few stepped up onto the stage. Some of the players were intercepted before they could reach the tiring-room.

  Now, we players are used to acclaim. (A carping critic might say that this, the desire to be in the public eye and to be praised for it, is the main reason – no, the only reason – why some of us put on motley. And the carpers may be partly in the right.) Some are more accustomed to acclaim than others, it’s true, and I hope one day to rise to the dizzy heights of a Burbage or a Phillips. But the kind of attention that the chief players were getting now was different.

  Still in costume, there stood the late King Richard in the person of Robert Gough and the living Bolingbroke in the shape of Dick Burbage. Around these two in particular clustered the Essexites. Voices were raised; gesticulations became sharper. I recognised the dark figure of Signor Noti. He shook his fist at Gough before seizing hold of him by the shoulders and shaking him violently. When Dick Burbage, who was being fawned over as if he were a real usurper, noticed what was happening to Gough he walked over and put a restraining hand on Noti. The Italian spun round, mentally reaching for his dagger no doubt, but when he saw it was the ‘king’ (for Dick still wore the crown he sported in his final appearance), Noti bowed and withdrew. Eventually, we were allowed to proceed unhindered to the tiring-room.

  Without the evidence of my own eyes, I shouldn’t have believed such a scene possible. It was apparent that the passions of the Essexites were running so high that they wanted to mistake the sham for the real. For them, the man who played the usurper-king was a king in fact, while the player who personated poor Richard was a despised, feeble creature, to be bullied and crowed over. And yet here we were dealing with kings and queens, dukes and lords, who had been dead these many, many years. I do not think that the Essexites who clambered onto the Globe stage genuinely believed Gough or Burbage to be Richard or Bolingbroke – though who can penetrate the wilder recesses of the human mind? Rather, they were so transported by their own visions that they wished to applaud the victor and exult over the loser, even in play, even in effigy.

  It made little sense to me. It frightened me too. To judge by the faces and manner of my fellows in the Company, none of us was pleased by the performance, even though one might say that it had been a triumph in terms of its reception. It is a good instance of the notion that one can do too well.

  As I made my way back to the tiring-house, I saw Master WS deep in conversation with a finely dressed man. They were standing together at the end of one of the galleries closest to the stage. The man had his back to me but I knew him instantly for Henry Wriothesley. I had time to be surprised that he should deign to attend our performance (for certain, his master the Earl of Essex had not been present) before he noticed me as I passed.

  “Mercury,” he said.

  He turned on me his brilliant gaze, and I felt myself come alive again after the turmoil of the performance and its conclusion. He and WS were standing a little above me but within an arm’s distance.

  “I hope that you enjoyed the play, my lord,” I said.

  “I was much affected by the troubles of the king,” he said.

  “Which one?” I said, greatly daring.

  “Of the kings, you mean,” said Master WS, looking at his companion with a gaze that seemed to combine a mild warning with – something or other. I really couldn’t fathom what was between these two men. I couldn’t fathom either what the Earl was doing at this Saturday performance. Essexite he might have been, but it all seemed a bit, well, crude for a man of his sensibility. He would not have cheered the downfall of a philosopher-king surely, even though part of him might have supported a Bolingbroke?

  “Of the kings, I mean,” said Wriothesley. “Thank you, William. As you always do, you put me right.”

  There was a mixture of compliment and pointedness in this reply and Shakespeare did not look particularly pleased. I sensed that he would have gone on to make some retort had I not been there. The despondent look that had hung about him the previous morning had cleared somewhat but he was still preoccupied. I wanted to ask him if he held to yesterday’s opinion, that we players weren’t in a position to pick and choose what we presented. For it seemed to me that we had stored up a mass of trouble for ourselves with our Richard, and all for forty shillings extraordinary! But this was not an opportune moment to ask questions of our chief playwright and shareholder, even had he been willing to answer them, and so, excusing myself, I went off to change. Before I’d moved a pace or two, the two men had resumed their private colloquy.

  The rest of that Saturday was quiet, almost dead. Customers seemed to melt away from the Southwark amusements. I heard afterwards from Nell that she and the other women in Holland’s Leaguer had never known such an absence of trade on the day before the Sabbath. The taverns and ale-houses were almost empty. It was as if the city authorities had rung a curfew. I loafed around the cold, inward-looking streets for a time, unwilling to return to the Coven and not sure of what reception I’d get from Nell if I tried her. My fellows in the Chamberlain’s had mostly repaired to their homes and lodgings. It was an evening for each man to seek the shelter of the familiar.

  For the second time within a few days I made my way along the Strand early in the morning. The pocky street was less populous than previously, but then it was a Sunday and all good citizens ought to have been preparing for their devotions at church. I wondered whether, if I was ever called up and fined for non-attendance myself, I’d be able to plead affairs of state. A wintry sun threw my shadow ahead of me. As I approached Essex House a rumbling noise grew louder. It was like water rushing over a weir. If it seemed to be drawing me on, it was doing the same for a few other fellows. They were trickling through the little postern gate. I noticed that they were armed.

  I hoped to make an entrance in their wake for it was apparent that there was a greater crowd than ever in the courtyard; it was they who were responsible for the continual rumbling, a sound which had a curiously even and insistent quality to it. I fell in behind a gigantic, heavily bearded man who was waiting his turn to slip through the narrow entrance. He turned to me.

  “We are summoned,” he said in a surprisingly slight voice.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Our hour has come.”

  “As you say,” I said.

  “At last.”

  Fortunately, I was saved from any more of these unsatisfactory utterances by his passing through the door from where he was immediately absorbed into the throng on the other side. On the other side also was Signor Noti. But there was a change in him from my last encounter.

  “Ah, Signor Revill, the commediante.”

  “Signor Noti,” I said, almost relieved to see a familiar if unfriendly face. I might have offered him his handkerchief back if I’d had it on me. He cast a quick eye up and down my form.

  “You are not – how you say? – quipped?”

  “Equipped?”

  “Where is your weapon? Vostro gladio?”

  “My weapon is well hidden,” I said, thinking of the little blade I kept concealed, more suited for peeling fruit than anything else. Indeed, I’d never used it for any more life-threatening activity than nail-paring and cutting up food. “It is sharp and I am prepared,” I added, falling into the prevailing style of threat and ambiguity.

  “Sharp. Bene. Is good,” said Noti, his moustache twitching and eyes already flicking to the next entrant through the gate. “I grandissimi sono arrivati.”

  “And our hour has come,” I said, thinking that – insofar as I could understand h
im and his foreigner’s tongue – he was wildly overestimating the importance of Nick Revill if he identified him as one of the great ones.

  “Si finalmente, ower hower,” said Noti in his Italian fashion.

  I found myself pushed forward into the great yard. At first glance, it contained the same mixture of men as before, a confused rabble of superannuated soldiers and reckless ne’er-do-wells. But whereas last time they’d looked smudged and dirty, as if newly landed from some foreign campaign or freshly scraped up from the streets, everyone now wore bright looks and clothes – well, brightish and rather gaudy. It was as if they were indeed dressing for their Sunday devotions, but devotions of no very holy sort. The noise in the yard, which I’d first heard from a distance, maintained its subdued but insistent note, seeming to come from nowhere in particular. Strangely, the sound was similar to the hopeful susurration of a playhouse congregation; whereas on the previous afternoon those attending our performance of Richard had sounded (and behaved) much more like a mob. This audible steadiness, this even buzz, suggested a seriousness of purpose which convinced me that I had walked into real danger, perhaps a trap.

  Another feature reminiscent of the playhouse was the way in which most of the men in the yard were directing their attention at the raised area before the main entrance to the house. Unoccupied at the moment, it had the expectant air of an empty stage just before a performance. And just as it can sometimes be in an audience, each man was disposed to pass the time of day with his neighbour so it wasn’t long before I found out from those around me enough information to make me want to take to my heels.

  Noti’s remark about ‘i grandissimi’ hadn’t been an ironic or flattering joke when I and one or two others passed through the postern. For there were genuine grandees inside Essex House at this moment. Someone said that the Lord Chief Justice was of the party. Another that it included the Lord Keeper. These great titles were uttered in no great tones of respect. Essex’s official visitors had been ushered through the main entrance of his mansion only minutes before. No wonder all eyes were fastened to the spot before the porch.