He had never felt so alone. He wished one of the trap doors through which ghosts appeared would open and swallow him up. But no. He was here. What could he do but go on?
He stood still for a moment, letting all eyes find him. Then, into that near-quiet, he said,
"His Most Catholic Majesty is dead;
Meet that we here gather to mark his end.
I come to praise Philip. His tomb's afar
But his strong hand lies on us even yet.
As I'm but a scribbler, this play's the thing
Wherewith to note the nature of the King.
Imagine this stage Britain, long ago;
Here comes Boudicca, to seek her vengeance
'Gainst the Romans, who harshly, cruelly whipp'd
The Queen of the Iceni and ravish'd
Both her young defenseless virgin daughters.
Beginning with this struggle, starting thence away
To what may be digested in a play.
Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are:
Now win or lose, 'tis but the chance of war."
Shakespeare withdrew to mostly puzzled silence punctuated by spatters of applause-no, his prologue didn't match what the signboards outside promised. As he withdrew, he saw three or four men, both from among the groundlings and in the galleries, rapidly starting thence away. No doubt they were off to Sir Edmund Tilney: of course the Master of the Revels had spies here to make sure the play presented matched the one advertised and approved.
But those spies wouldn't reach Sir Edmund, not this afternoon. Shakespeare devoutly hoped they wouldn't, anyhow. Jack Hungerford's helpers, the men who took the audience's money, and a double handful of ruffians hired for the day were charged with letting no one leave the Theatre till the play was done. By then, it would be too late.
For the dons, Shakespeare wondered, or for us? Before he could fret any more, out went a wordlessly chanting Druid, the boy actors playing Boudicca and her daughters, and Richard Burbage, sword on his hip, as Caratach. For better or worse, it was begun; no stopping now, not till the end.
"Ye mighty gods of Britain, hear our prayers;
Hear us, you great revengers; and this day
Take pity from our swords, doubt from our valours,"
said Joe Boardman, who played Boudicca. He wasn't quite so good as Tom would have been, but he wasn't a Catholic, either. Excitement added life to his voice as he went on,
"Double the sad remembrance of our wrongs
In every breast; the vengeance due to Rome
Make infinite and endless! On our pikes
This day pale Terror sits, horrors and ruins
On our executions; claps of thunder
Hang upon our arm'd carts; and 'fore our troops
Despair and Death; Shame past these attend 'em!
Rise from the earth, ye relics of the dead,
Whose noble deeds our holy Druids sing;
Oh, rise, ye valiant bones! let not base earth
Oppress your honours, whilst the pride of Rome
Treads on your stock, and wipes out all your stories!"
With a great waving of arms, the hired man playing the Druid responded,
"Thou great Taranis, whom we sacred priests,
Armed with dreadful thunder, place on high
Above the rest of the immortal gods,
Send thy consuming fire and deadly bolts,
And shoot 'em home; stick in each Roman heart
A fear fit for confusion; blast their spirits,
Dwell in 'em to destruction; through their phalanx
Strike, as thou strik'st a tree; shake their bodies,
Make their strengths totter, and topless fortunes
Unroot, and reel to ruin!"
Epona, Boudicca's elder daughter, took up the cry of condemnation against the Roman occupiers:
"O, thou god
Thou fear'd god, if ever to thy justice
Insulting wrongs and ravishments of women
(Women sprung from thee), their shame, the sufferings
Of those that daily fill'd thy sacrifice
With virgin incense, have access, hear me!
Now snatch thy thunder up, 'gainst these Romans,
Despisers of thy power, of us defacers,
Revenge thyself; take to thy killing anger,
To make thy great work full, thy justice done,
An utter rooting from this blessed isle
Of what Rome is or has been!"
The first murmurs rose from the crowd as people began to realize what sort of praise for King Philip this was likely to be. Boudicca's younger daughter, Bonvica, continued in the same vein, saying,
"See, Heaven,
O, see thy showers stol'n from thee; our dishonours-
O, sister, our dishonours! — can ye be gods,
And these sins smother'd?"
An attendant lit a fire on the altar before which the Druid stood. Boudicca said, "It takes: a good omen."
As Caratach, Richard Burbage took a step forward and drew his sword to pull everyone's eye to himself. His great voice would have done the same when he declared,
"Hear how I salute our dear British gods.
Divine Audate, thou who hold'st the reins
Of furious battle and disordered war,
And proudly roll'st thy swarty chariot wheels
Over the heaps of wounds and carcasses
Give us this day good hearts, good enemies,
Good blows o' both sides, wounds that fear or flight
Can claim no share in; steel us with angers
And warlike struggles fit for thy viewing.
A wound is nothing, be it ne'er so deep;
Blood is the god of war's rich livery.
So let Rome put on her best strength, and Britain,
Thy little Britain, but great in fortune,
Meet her as strong as she, as proud, as daring!
This day the Roman gains no more ground here,
But what his body lies in."
"Now I am confident," Boudicca said. They exited to the wailing of recorders.
But for that music, vast silence filled the Theatre as the players left the stage. Into that silence, someone from the upper gallery yelled, "Treason! Treason most foul! You-!" A scuffle broke out. With a wild cry, someone fell out of that gallery, to land with a thud amongst the groundlings. No one cried treason any more.
"Play on!" someone else shouted from that same gallery. "By God and St. George, play on!" A great burst of applause rang out. Awe prickled through Shakespeare. They do remember they are Englishmen, he thought.
On came the Romans for the second scene of the first act. When the audience took in their half Spanish helms and corselets, even the innocents and dullards who'd missed the point of the play up till then suddenly grasped it. And when one of those Romans said,
"And with our sun-bright armour, as we march,
We'll chase the stars from heaven, and dim their eyes
That stand and muse at our admired arms,"
the hisses and catcalls that rose from all sides told just how admired Spanish arms were.
Back in the tiring room, Burbage said, "It doth take hold."
"Ay, belike." Shakespeare dared a cautious nod.
"It doth take hold here," Burbage amended. "What of the city beyond the Theatre?" Shakespeare could only shrug, hoping Robert Cecil and his confederates had planned that as well as this. Burbage had no chance to stay and question him further; he was on again in the next scene.
As it had in real life more than fifteen hundred years before, the great rebellion of the Iceni against tyrannical Roman rule built on the stage. A legionary officer cried on in despair,
"The hills are wooded with their partizans,
And all the valleys overgrown with darts,
As moors are with rank rushes; no ground left us
To charge upon, no room to strike. Say fortune
And our endeavours bring us into 'em,
They are so infinite, so ever-springing,
We shall be kill'd with killing; of desperate women,
Neither fear nor shame e'er found, the devil
Hath ranked 'mongst 'em multitudes; say men fail,
They'll poison us with their petticoats; say they fail,
They have priests enough to pray us to nothing.
Here destruction takes us, takes us beaten,
In wants and mutinies, ourselves but handfuls,
And to ourselves our own fears paint our doom-
A sudden and desperate execution:
How to save, is loss; wisdom, dangerous."
Swords, pikes, and halberds clashed against one another. Led by Burbage/Caratach, player-Britons chased player-Romans from the stage. How the crowd roared!
And Boudicca cried out, too, in exultation:
"The hardy Romans-O, ye gods, of Britain!-
Rust of arms, the blushing shame of soldiers!
These, men that conquer by inheritance?
The fortune-makers? these the Julians,
That with the sun measure the end of nature,
Making the world one Rome, one Caesar?
How they flee! Caesar's soft soul dwells in 'em;
Their bodies sweat sweet oils, love's allurements,
Not lusty arms. Dare they send these 'gainst us,
These Roman girls? Is Britain so wanton?
Twice we've beat 'em, Caratach, scattered 'em;
Made themes for songs of shame; and a woman,
A woman beat 'em, coz, a weak woman,
A woman beat these Romans!"
Before Richard Burbage could deliver Caratach's answering line, someone said, not too loudly, one word: "Elizabeth!" The name raced through the Theatre. Excitement raced with it, as if the mere mention of that name, for ten years all but forbidden, could remind everyone of what England had been before the Spaniards came-and what she might be again. Shakespeare nodded to himself. He'd hoped for that. To see what he'd hoped come true. What writer could ask for more?
And Burbage, as Caratach, let Elizabeth's name echo and reecho before saying,
"So it seems.
A man, a warrior, would shame to talk so."
Boudicca asked,
"My valiant cousin, is it foul to say,
What liberty and honour bid us do,
And what the gods let us?"
"No, Boudicca." Caratach shook his head.
"So what we say exceed not what we do.
You call the Romans fearful, fleeing wights,
And Roman girls, the lees of tainted pleasures:
Doth this become a doer? are they such?"
"They are no more," Boudicca said. "Do you dote upon 'em?"
Caratach shook his head again.
"I love a foe; I was born a soldier;
And he that in the head on's troop defies me,
Bending my manly body with his sword,
I make a mistress. Yellow-tress'd Hymen
Ne'er tied a longing virgin with more joy,
Than I am married to the man that wounds me:
And are not all these Romans? Ten battles
I suck'd these pale scars from, and all Roman;
Ten years of cold nights and heavy marches
(When frozen storms sang through my iron cuirass
And made it doubtful whether that or I
Were more stubborn metal) have I wrought through,
And all to try these Romans."
Boudicca wouldn't listen to him, of course. There lay the tragedy: in her overreaching herself, in thinking she could drive the mighty Roman Empire from Britain's shores. And do we likewise overreach ourselves with the Spaniards? Shakespeare wondered. He shivered. An we do, we die harder than ever the British Queen dreamt of dying.
The play went on. The Romans, hard pressed by the Iceni, went through agonies of hunger. Will Kemp's Marcus did a clown's turn to make light of it. He said,
"All my cohort
Are now in love; ne'er think of meat, nor talk
Of what provender is: hearty heigh-hoes
Are sallets fit for soldiers. Live by meat!
By larding up our bodies? 'Tis lewd, lazy,
And shows us merely mortal. It drives us
To fight, like camels, with bags at our noses."
He capered comically before resuming,
"We've fall'n in love: we can whore well enough,
That the world knows: fast us into famine,
Yet we can crawl, like crabs, to our wenches.
Fall in love now, as we see example,
And follow it but with all our salt thoughts,
There's much bread saved, and our hunger's ended."
Hands to his own large belly, he left the stage.
Shakespeare hurried up to him. "Well played!"
"How not?" Kemp said. "Belike, when I'm up on the gibbet, the hangman'll give me the selfsame praise.
May you stand beside me to hear't."
"An you go to the gallows, am I like to be elsewhere?" Shakespeare asked.
"An you go to the gallows, I should like to be elsewhere," the clown replied.
Poenius, the officer who would not send his legionaries to help Suetonius, cried out in despair as the Britons advanced against his fellow Romans:
"See that huge battle coming from the hills!
Their gilt coats shine like dragons' scales, their march
Like a tumbling storm; see them, and view 'em,
And then see Rome no more. Say they fail, look,
Look where the arm'd carts stand, a new army!
Death rides in triumph, Drusus, destruction
Whips his fiery horse, and round about him
His many thousand ways to let out souls.
Huge claps of thunder plow the ground before 'em;
Till the end, I'll dream what mighty Rome was."
Still more combat crowded the stage. Now, instead of Iceni routing Romans, the Romans, reviving, routed in their turn the Britons. The groundlings-yes, and the galleries, too-wailed in dismay as Boudicca and her daughters and Caratach mured themselves up in a last fortress to stand remorseless, relentless Roman siege. Poenius fell on his sword for shame.
In the fort, Boudicca raged against the soldiers who had failed her, shrieking,
"Shame! Wherefore flew ye, unlucky Britons?
Will ye creep into your mothers' wombs again?
Hares, fearful doves in your angers! Fail me?
Leave your Queen desolate? Her hopeless girls
To Roman rape and rage once more? Cowards!
Shame treads upon your heels! All is lost! Hark,
Hark how the cursed Romans ring our knells!"
From the balcony above the tiring room, which did duty for the battlements of the fort, Epona spoke to the Roman general, Suetonius:
"Hear me, mark me well, and look upon me
Directly in my face, my woman's face,
Whose sole beauty is the hate it bears you;
See if one fear, one shadow of terror,
One paleness dare appear apart from rage,
To lay hold on your mercy. No, you fool,
Damned fool, we were not born for your triumph,
To follow your gay sports, and fill your slaves
With hoots and acclamations. You shall see-
In spite of all your eagles' wings, we'll work
A pitch above you; and from our height we'll stoop,
Fearless of your bloody talons."
She cast herself down to death. When Shakespeare heard groans, when he heard women weep-yes, and some men, too-he knew that, regardless of what happened outside the Theatre, he'd done all he could in here.
Meanwhile, among the Romans who besieged the Britons' stronghold, Will Kemp's Marcus declared,
"Love no more great ladies, is what I say;
No going wrong then, for they hold no sport.
All's in the rustling of their snatch'd-up silks;
/> They're made but for handsome view, not handling,
Their bodies of so weak and soft a temper
A rough-pac'd bed'll shake 'em all to pieces;
No, give me a thing I may crush."
He illustrated, with great lascivious gestures. The crowd, which had mourned the death of poor ravished Epona, now laughed lewdly at a soldier relishing more rape.
But, a moment later, the groundlings cheered when Caratach and a last host of Iceni sallied. Caratach cut down Marcus-and Richard Burbage likely enjoyed killing Kemp, if only in the play. After that victory, Caratach said,
"My hope got through fire, through stubborn breaches,
Through battles that were hard to win as heaven,
Through Death himself in all his horrid trims,
Is gone forever, ever, now, my friends.
I'll not be left to scornful tales and laughter."
He threw himself at the Romans surrounding Suetonius and died fighting.
Inside the fortress of the Iceni, hope died, too. As the Romans below besieged them, Boudicca and Bonvica stood on the battlement where Epona had killed herself. Bonvica asked, "Where must we go when we are dead?"
"Strange question!" Boudicca told her younger daughter.
"Why, to the blessed place, dear! Eversweetness
And happiness dwells there."
"Will you come to me?"
"Yes, my sweet girl," Boudicca answered.
"No Romans? I should be loath to meet them there."
"No ill men," Boudicca promised,
"That live by violence and strong oppression,
Are there; 'tis for those the gods love, good men."
"Dearest mother, then let us make an end," Bonvica said. "Have you that dram from the kindly Druid?"
They drank poison together. Bonvica died at once. Boudicca, who'd let her daughter have the greater share to be sure of death, lasted till the Romans, led by Suetonius, burst into the fortress and up onto the battlement. "You fool," she told the general.
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