“What am I meant to be looking at?” I said. “There’s nothing to see.”
“Well, I suppose that’s right enough in a way, seeing nothing,” said Jack. “Look more close.”
I peered. The black hole into which I was looking was, I now realised, the empty middle section of a much larger wooden framework covered with painted canvas. This canvas was ornamented with flames, with devils sporting horns, with writhing worms and dragons rampant. White-faced individuals stood packed into cauldrons set above crackling fires. Other hapless beings were being speared, lanced and tridented by grinning demons.
“Why, it’s a hell-mouth,” I said.
“Did you ever see a hell-mouth like it?” said Jack proudly. “It’s the biggest in any London playhouse, they say. It only just fits through the trap.”
“Hell-mouth will always fit through the trap,” I said. “Where would we be without hell-mouth?”
This was true enough. There’s perhaps been a falling-off in recent years of plays where one or more of the characters go to hell. I suspect that the modern shareholder and the more cultivated members of the audience consider such a purgatorial penalty to be a touch extreme, a trifle crude. Too reminiscent of those morality plays where hell is always lying underfoot, ready to gape. Nevertheless, there’s nothing your average playgoer likes better than watching some wrongdoer dragged down into the sulphurous pit, via hell-mouth. Why, we were still playing Kit Marlowe’s Faustus ten years after it first saw the light of day.
Any Company with a regard for its audience, and its profits, will ensure that it possesses a hell-mouth in good working order. They’re generally on wheels so that they can be positioned above the trap. Now that I knew what I was looking at, I could see that the Chamberlain’s was indeed a fine example: sturdy, wide and with some detailed work in the pictures that adorned the surround. There was a loving care in the painting, and it crossed my mind that there are many who take pleasure in the depiction of torment and misery (and I wondered too whether the craftsman who wielded the brush round the mouth of hell had also clambered aloft to paint the ‘heavens’ on our canopy).
So, after this excursion round hell-mouth, you can guess where I chose to secrete myself under the Globe stage. Feeling forward with my hands, I entered the infernal portals silently and willingly – unlike all those other souls who must be dragged through screaming. Once inside the little cave of wood and canvas, I felt oddly secure. Gauzy hangings, which fell from the roof of the hell-mouth to give the illusion that a new arrival had been swallowed up, brushed against my exposed hands and face and draped themselves about my shoulders.
So I huddled down in the back of this comfortable little cavern and waited. If necessary, I was prepared to stay here until dawn broke, my fellows returned to the playhouse and safety arrived. I listened out hard for the sounds of footsteps on the stage overhead and, at one point, thought I heard something. But nothing came of it. No one opened the trapdoor to see what lay beneath, no one fumblingly descended the ladder, no one sought to penetrate the mouth where I lay, undigested.
The human mind is a strange thing, unaccountable in its workings. Though I’d been thoroughly frightened by the unseen stranger who’d pursued me through my workplace, I soon found my position in the gullet of hell-mouth to be as tedious as it was comfortable. I discovered in myself a wish to be out and about in the world again. Perhaps this is the reason why a ghost chooses to walk on earth: not tedium vitae but tedium mortis. I offer this only for consideration.
I had to hold myself back from strolling out of the underworld and clambering up to the surface of the Globe. Last time I’d come out of hiding the stranger had been waiting for me. Or had he? Was it possible that I had imagined the whole thing – not the entry into the book-room, I was sure enough about that, but the subsequent chase along the passage. Had the oath and the stumbling in the dark been my own?
I remained where I was for what seemed an eternity (apt enough considering my location!) but was probably a mere earthly half hour. Then I made a rapid exit from my hole, opened the trap, briskly crossed the stage and retraced my route through the tiring-house and down the passage to the casement.
Quickly, before I had time to grow frightened once more, before anyone might have the opportunity to seize me by the ankle, I unfastened the window, swung my legs over the sill and dropped to the ground. I took off like a hare down Brend’s Rents. Found a late ferry to Paul’s Wharf. Raced up to Clerkenwell. Arrived at the Priory to discover that the rehearsal hadn’t even begun. Not even sure that my absence was noticed.
Also arrived at the Priory to discover that I’d lost the plot.
It hardly mattered, as it happened. Master Allison was quite apologetic when he told me that he did keep a spare copy in the Revels Office after all.
Some nights later we played Twelfth Night before her majesty at Whitehall. If that was an occasion to treasure, then what followed immediately afterwards was even more memorable – though not treasurable – as you shall hear.
But first to the performance.
I noticed that as we drew nearer to the hour of our commencement, even the more seasoned members of the Chamberlain’s were exhibiting signs of excitement and fret. Strangely, I felt myself growing calmer, although I’d been unable to eat anything since early that morning. The fiftieth check was made of the properties, the hundredth inspection carried out on our costumes, the thousandth rehearsal of each man’s lines took place inside his own head.
We were to enact Twelfth Night in the Hall, a great room with many bays and buttresses and windows. I had never acted indoors before, although the many evenings of rehearsal at the Revels Office had taken away my initial sense of the oddness of being under a roof and playing by candlelight. Wooden seating had been erected around the walls of the Hall in tiers, an arrangement that was familiar enough although there was of course no equivalent to the playhouse pit in a royal palace.
There were other differences too. In the public theatres, we players are accustomed to being the cynosure of all eyes. (I say ‘we’ while really meaning the likes of Dick Burbage and Robert Armin; it is those individuals on whom the gaze of both the general and the gentry is fastened from the moment of their first appearance.) But in the court theatre it is, as it must be, otherwise. However brightly our stars shine, there will always be one who shines yet more brilliantly. And She will be found not on the stage but in the heart of her audience – as well as in their hearts. There the monarch is as much on display, perhaps more so, than her players.
So as we players waited – and there is a point before the performance begins when the player seems like the still centre, while all about him is rush and dash – I cast frequent glances at the imposing chair of state which was set up on a dais near the middle of the hall. This chair had a finely embroidered backcloth and a rich blue canopy. Earlier, I had daringly approached it. There, on that seat, in little over an hour, She would station her sacred self. I was sometimes conscious of referring inwardly to the Queen as She, with a reverential emphasis that was reminiscent of my friend Nell. I wondered how I’d recount this episode to her later, how I’d go about impressing her in bed with my great acquaintance. Would I catch Nell’s habit of wrapping her majesty in a respectful indrawing of breath: She; or would I continue to allude to her casually in conversation: ‘oh her’?
In the playhouse we start sharpish at two o’clock after the trumpet has sounded, and any latecomer may struggle both to find a place to stand or sit in as well as having to catch up with the plot. In the royal palace of Whitehall, by contrast, we were obliged to wait on our chiefest guest. Until She was established in her state, nothing could begin. I had heard that Elizabeth was, in fact, prompt enough in attendance, though whether out of real interest in the drama or because of her innate graciousness I did not know. Since it was the evening of Shrove Tuesday matters might be delayed because She first had to attend the usual banquet before arriving at the digestive of a drama. We players had
been well enough supplied with food and drink by the officers of the household, although never so amply as to suggest that we were anything other than servants. Even so, I was still too anxious to eat anything and contented myself with sipping at a mug of ale.
On our improvised backstage, I wandered over to young Martin Hancock, he who played our heroine Viola-Cesario. He was deep in converse with Jack Horner, ‘her’ twin brother.
“So it is tomorrow,” Martin was saying.
“So they say.”
“Has she signed?”
“They say not,” said Jack.
“But must do soon?”
“For certain she must, if it is to be tomorrow.”
“What? Who?” I broke in.
“Why, don’t you know, Nick?” said Jack.
“Obviously I do – that’s why I’m asking,” I said.
There was an unaccustomed seriousness about these two, which I didn’t think was related to the imminent royal performance. Even Martin Hancock, now garbed as Viola, seemed to have forsaken his normal hinting and winking style.
“They say tomorrow that he goes to it,” said Jack.
“Who?” I said with some impatience. But, as sometimes happens, the question had no sooner escaped my mouth than I realised what they were talking about. Jack’s reply confirmed it.
“The Earl of Essex.”
“He is to be executed?”
“Yes, Master Nicholas,” said young Martin. “He must surely die.”
“Not a traitor’s death?” I said.
“No, she will not subject him to that, traitor though he be,” said Jack, casting his eyes in the direction of the stage area, in front of which was, as we all knew, the still vacant chair of state. I shivered, wholly taken away in my mind from the warmth of the great Hall for an instant.
A common traitor’s death provided a public show at Tyburn, with the condemned man sliced open while still alive so that the hangman could draw out his guts and flourish them in front of his tormented face. I had never seen the spectacle but was assured that the crowds spread about the scaffold would be the envy of any playhouse. But a well-born traitor enjoyed a less dreadful end: Essex might expect the privacy of the block in the Tower, and the merciful quickness of the axe. For sure he would have no common eyes trained upon him.
“And Wriothesley?” I said.
Now it was Jack’s turn to ask who.
“Southampton, I mean,” I said, feigning casualness. “He is closely associated with the Earl of Essex, is he not?”
“I don’t know,” said Jack. “I don’t know what is to happen to him.”
“The friend of Master Shakespeare?” said Martin Hancock, nodding towards one of the rooms which led off the Hall. Moments earlier we’d seen Master WS (who wasn’t playing in his own Twelfth Nighi) go in there with John Heminges as well as Edmund Tilney, the Master of the Revels, and a clutch of court officials, presumably to discuss some aspect of the production.
“Is he?” I said, all ignorance.
“I saw them talking close together at the Globe after Richard,” said the watchful Master Hancock. “I saw you talking to them too, Nicholas.”
Fortunately, I was saved from having to respond to Martin’s awkward observation by a great ripple and stir that now ran through the crowd of us players, assistants and shareholders clumped in threes and fours backstage. From the sussuration issuing from beyond the temporary divisions that separated us from the frontstage area it was evident that the court audience was assembling in the body of the Hall, and that we’d have to look sharp about our business. So I put to one side the melancholy end of Robert Devereux and the unknown fate of Henry Wriothesley, and turned instead to my Twelfth Night part, that of Antonio, the loving friend of Sebastian.
We had to wait several minutes longer until we were given the signal that we should process onto the stage. Because this was a royal performance – and I’d been told that the Queen herself had personally requested Twelfth Night – we were required to make our obeisances to the audience and principally to Her before the action commenced. Accordingly, led by Messrs Shakespeare and Burbage (costumed as Duke Orsino of Illyria) and Heminges and other of the shareholders, we walked out stately onto the dazzling stage. The Hall itself was also in full blaze, with candle-frames suspended from wires stretched from wall to wall and elaborate sconces on every buttress. I saw, for the first time, that one of the appurtenances of greatness and wealth is light.
Not for the first time, however, I was glad of my junior position in the Chamberlain’s, since it meant that I, a tender sapling, could find shelter among the full-grown oaks and beeches of my elders. Together with the court audience, we remained on our knees until She had taken her state and indicated that we might all rise. Then we of the players continued to make graceful flourishes and bows until She signalled with a gracious wafture of her hand that we might begin.
It wasn’t the first occasion I’d seen our great Queen. Soon after I’d arrived in London, I had glimpsed her in procession in the street, and the very next day I’d seen the royal barge on the river. This double sighting gave me the oddest, most vainglorious idea that she must be aware of my presence in the city and that I was destined to see my monarch every day. But of course I did not, until this Shrove Tuesday evening.
Not that I saw much now. I kept my head at a respectful angle, glancing up and round at the crowded Hall only momentarily. The great room was packed, with court-men and court-ladies standing at the edges and the more important seated and the most important of all nearest to Elizabeth. The fiery clusters of candlelight sparkled and spangled off brooches and clasps and rings, off pendants and necklaces, off gold-threaded stomachers and doublets. Everywhere, white lace waved and tossed like the spume I remember to have seen once on a stormy day in the Bristol Channel. Everywhere there was the subtler glow of silk. Players are used to being the finest dressed members of any assembly. Indeed, we are often reminded by the Tire-man of how much our costumes are worth in comparison to our insignificant selves, and how the audience has really come to see the clothes, to which our words and gestures are mere adjuncts. But in a royal palace the reverse holds. There we are outshone tenfold by the magnificence of the audience. And how could it be otherwise?
As for the Queen herself, I can report little at this moment. Rather than looking directly at her, I was conscious of a lavishly-decked figure shadowed by the canopy of state. To gaze straight at a monarch may be unwise, like gazing straight at the sun. Then again, all of us have heard stories of our lady’s graciousness and directness with the common people, and of how she enjoins them to speak their minds to her. Even so, even as I was aware of being in Her presence, the main thought that floated through my mind was: if my father could see me now! A hater of plays, he surely would have modified his opposition if he had been able to witness his only son in the same room as the Queen. He surely might have allowed a grudging respect for the drama if he’d seen that scene! (But it may be that I’m imagining this.)
As we trooped off the stage to leave it clear for the first scene, set in Duke Orsino’s court, I noticed a figure sitting on the front row only a short distance from the Queen. On the only previous occasion when we’d met, the light hadn’t been so good, but under any circumstances I would have recognised the high white forehead, the candid gaze. To say nothing of the awkward posture which was produced by the man’s hump back. Sir Robert Cecil, Master Secretary Cecil, caught my eye as I processed off stage. I thought that some signal passed from him to me, though I couldn’t have said exactly what it was. Perhaps he was merely acknowledging my presence, acknowledging a small prior connection between a high statesman and a low player. Or perhaps it was something more. (But it may be that I’m imagining this too.)
So to the play itself.
Twelfth Night makes for fitting pre-lenten fare, even if it is a little adrift from its due calendar date. It raises our spirits before the days and nights of abstinence, and sends us out happy into th
e dark. And it cannot help reminding us a little of that dark by the humiliating ends of Malvolio and Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Not everyone in this world will conclude the day happy and married. Feste sings yet in the rain, while Antonio is forgotten by Sebastian.
Though a player usually wants a large scroll, a large part, I was again content to be in a subordinate position for this royal performance. I gave Antonio a kind of fervour in his declaration of love for Sebastian, I gave him bitterness in his denunciation of ingratitude – or at least I hope that I imparted these qualities to the role. I hope I spoke clear and full. But the weight of the play was borne by Dick Burbage and Armin, not to mention Martin Hancock as Viola or our other leading boy, Michael Donegrace, who assumed the mantle of wealthy Olivia.
Although noble patrons are not altogether strange to us, this Whitehall audience was different from the common run at the Globe. For one thing, they had been so well catered for at the banquet that wine filled their upper chambers and some were now more than halfway between satiety and stupor. Most of the rest took their cue from the Queen or would have done had they been easily able to gauge her response. But it was hard to see how She was reacting under the protection of her fine canopy. Her chair of state, though set up high on view, was also curiously insulated from her subjects. However, there was a not infrequent woman’s laughter from that quarter at the antics of Sir Toby and Maria, at their fooling of Sir Andrew and Malvolio, followed by enough chuckles and snorts from the audience to indicate that what was good enough for their monarch was certainly good enough for them.
But it seemed to me that an air of reserve – even, paradoxically, of sobriety – hung over the great Hall, for all the finery and intermittent jollity of its occupants. Now, there might be several reasons for this. For one thing, I had never experienced a performance at the palace before and, for all I knew, this might be the standard reaction to the Chamberlain’s royal displays. There was none of the easy banter that obtains in the playhouse between those up on stage and those down in the pit. Whitehall Palace, as I’ve already mentioned, has no pit – but the spirit of the pit was also absent. And an absence of other things besides: no cutpurses, no whores, no swearing soldiers and boatmen, no vendors of nuts and apples and ale, no quicksilver gangs of apprentices. Without doubt, some examples of these types, of thieves and whores, were present in the royal court as they are in every human gathering but, if so, they were richly disguised in robes and lace.
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