Fools and Mortals

‘Jean! Where’s the green cloak?’ John Duke called.

‘Where it always is.’

‘Sweet Jesus,’ George Bryan said. He was visibly shaking, but no one tried to calm or encourage him because that would bring ill-luck, and besides, we all knew that George’s whimpering nerves would vanish the moment he went through one of the stage doors, and the mouse turned into a lion.

The white-faced, red-lipped, black-eyed boys in their pretty dresses gathered by the left-hand door, their tresses bulked out with hair-rolls and ribbons. Simon Willoughby stared into a polished piece of metal nailed by that door and admired his reflection. Then Will the trumpeter, far above us, blew six high and urgent notes that sounded like a call on the hunting field. The first city church had just struck two o’clock.

‘Wait,’ my brother said, as he always did, and we stood silent as one after another the churches rang the hour, filling the sky with their bells. The last bell tolled, but no one moved and no one spoke. Even the waiting crowd was silent. Then, somewhere to the south of the city, a distant church sounded the hours. It tolled a good minute after all the others, but still we did not move.

‘We still wait,’ my brother said quietly. He had his eyes closed.

‘Dear God,’ George Bryan whispered.

‘I really do need a piss!’ Thomas Pope moaned.

‘Keep the words moving!’ Will Kemp snarled, as he always did. ‘Keep them moving!’

And then, after what seemed an eternity, Saint Leonard’s rang two o’clock. The church, just to the north of us in Shoreditch, was always the last, and the crowd, knowing that its bells were the signal for the play to begin, cheered again. Footsteps sounded above us as the musicians went onto the balcony. There was a pause, then the trumpet flourished a final time, and the two drums began beating.

‘Now!’ my brother said to the waiting boys, and Simon Willoughby threw open the left-hand door and the boys danced onto the stage.

We were players and we were playing.

‘The fretting heads of furious foes have skill,’ I said, ‘as well by fraud as force to find their prey!’ I spoke small, meaning I pitched my voice as high as I could and still kept it loud enough to reach the folk leaning over the upper gallery’s balustrade. ‘In smiling looks doth lurk a lot as ill,’ I piped, ‘as where both stern and sturdy streams do sway!’

In fairness I have to say my brother had not written this hodge-pudding of nonsense, though God knows he has written enough idiocies that I have declaimed onstage. We were playing Hester and Ahasuerus, so I was Uashti, Queen of Persia, though I was dressed in fine modern clothes, the only concession to the biblical setting being a great cloak of fur-trimmed linen that swirled prettily whenever I turned around. The cloak was a very dark grey, almost black, because I was a villainess, the heroine being the nose-picker Simon Willoughby, the plump little sixteen-year-old, who played Hester in a pale cream cloak. God only knows why the role was named Hester, because her name was Esther, but whatever she was called, she was about to become Queen of Persia in my place. The story is from the Bible, so I have no need to retell it here except to explain where the play has changed the tale. In our version, Uashti tries to poison Hester, fails, has a skin-the-cat moment of fury, then relinquishes her crown and licks Hester’s plump arse, which is what I was now doing. I was kneeling to the smirking little bastard. ‘Be still, good Queen,’ I said, and gave the word ‘still’ a lot more force than it needed because Willoughby, the preening little slut, was flicking a fan of peacock feathers to keep the audience’s eyes on his over-painted face, ‘their refuge and their rock,’ I went on, ‘as they are thine to serve in love and fear. So fraud nor force nor foreign foe may stand against the strength of thy most puissant hand!’

The groundlings love this stuff. Some cheered as I prostrated myself in front of Hester, while the richer folk in the galleries clapped their hands. They knew they were not really watching a tale from the Bible. Uashti might be Queen of Persia, but she represented Katherine of Aragon, while Hester was Queen Anne Boleyn, and the whole piece was an arse-sucking flattery of Elizabeth, which pretended that the popish Katherine had respected the rightful status of Elizabeth’s Protestant mother. We did the play rarely because, even though audiences seemed to like the tale, it truly was dross, but when the dross is written by a royal chaplain it has to be performed now and then. That chaplain, the Most Reverend William Venables, was in the lower gallery, beaming at us, convinced he had written a masterpiece. He thought we were performing the play because of its brilliance, but in truth we were currying royal favour because the city’s aldermen were having another of their attempts to close the playhouses. The Theatre was built outside the city’s boundaries, so they had no authority over us, but they did possess influence. They said we were sinks of sin, and cockpits of corruption, ‘which is wholly accurate, of course,’ my brother liked to say.

‘Thou, to a convent will conveniently convey,’ my brother, playing Mordechaus, kicked me in the ribs, ‘there to contemplate and in constance pray.’ And with that two Persian guards wearing burgonets and breastplates and both armed with mighty halberds hauled me to my feet and took me to the tiring room. The play was ending.

‘Oh, Richard,’ Jean said, then tutted, ‘look at your bodice. All torn! Let me pin it for you.’

‘It was George Bryan,’ I said, ‘he bloody mauled me.’

I sometimes wonder about the Most Reverend William Venables. In the biblical story, Haman, the villain, is accused of assaulting Esther, but that wasn’t good enough for the reverend, who added a scene where Uashti is half raped by the bastard. The scene made no sense because Haman and Uashti are supposedly allies, but the groundlings adored it anyway. George Bryan, all nervousness gone, had been clawing at me, much to the audience’s joy. They were urging him to drag up my skirts and show them my legs, but I managed to get a knee between his thighs and jerk it up hard. He went very still, and the audience probably thought he was having a moment of even greater joy, and I pushed him off while I screamed my next line, which provoked a cheer.

The audience liked me. I knew that. I know it still. Even when I play the villain they cheer me on. There are always a few who are coarse, shouting at me to show my tits, but they are swiftly silenced by others. The coarser members of the audience have their moment at the play’s end, when we perform the jig, a separate play altogether, and one designed to send the groundlings home happy. They applauded when our play ended, then shouted for the players to return to the stage. Phil and his musicians gave them a jaunty tune, but the calls for our return got louder, then there was a raucous cheer as the big central door from the tiring room was thrown open and the boys danced onto the stage.

There was a roar of welcome when Simon Willoughby joined the jig, still costumed as Queen Hester, but the roar was twice as loud when I danced onto the stage. I played to the grinning faces, whirling around at the stage’s front, lifting my skirts and winking at some red-faced butcher who was gazing raptly up at me. This jig was called Jeremiah and the Milk Cow, and it had been written by Will Kemp, who played a soldier who had been blinded in the wars and had returned home and was searching for his wife, who had run off with a farmer played by my brother. The farmer kept offering other girls to the soldier. Jeremiah, though blind, realised none of the offered girls was his missing wife, until, in the end, my brother offered Bessie the cow, who was played by me. I made horns with my fingers, and mooed, and ran away from Will Kemp, who finally caught me by the hips, turned me about and gave a massive jerk of his loins, which got the crowd cheering again. ‘I’d know this arse anywhere!’ Will Kemp roared, I bellowed as he jerked again, the crowd was laughing, and Will slammed his body into mine time after time and kept shouting that he had found his wife at last. He finally let go of me and rattled off a string of bawdy jokes as I went back to join the dance with the other players. I managed to step on Simon’s cloak, which made him miss his step and half fall. The playhouse does have its compensations.

‘You were, you were,’ the Reverend Venables had come to the tiring room after the play and now waved his hands as if he could not find the words he wanted. He was talking to all the half-undressed players. ‘You were magnificent!’ he said. ‘Quite magnificent! Richard, my dear,’ he darted at me, and, before I could evade, put his hands on my cheeks and kissed my lips, ‘the best I have ever seen you! And you, dear sweet Simon,’ off he went to buss Willoughby, ‘I shall tell Her Majesty of your loyalty,’ the reverend said, beaming at us, then looked to my brother. ‘I’ve written another piece. Judith and Holofernes.’

There was a beat before my brother responded. ‘I am replete with happiness,’ he said drily.

‘And young Richard,’ the reverend’s fingers brushed my shoulder, ‘would be superb as Judith. While dear Simon can play her sister.’

‘Judith had a sister?’ my brother asked, evidently puzzled.

‘She doesn’t in the Vulgate,’ Venables said coyly, ‘but in my play? One cannot have too many darlings, can one?’ He smiled at Simon, who duly wriggled and smiled back.

My brother just looked tired. ‘Doesn’t Judith cut off Holofernes’s head?’ he asked.

‘With a sword!’

‘Beheadings,’ my brother warned, ‘are monstrous difficult to do onstage.’

‘But you can do it!’ Venables exclaimed. ‘You are all magicians. You are all …’ he hesitated, looking pained as if he could not find the right word to do us justice, ‘you are all sorcerers!’

What is it about the playhouse that turns men and women into quivering puppies? All we do is pretend. We tell stories. Yet after the play the audience lingers at the tiring-house door wanting to see us, wanting to talk to us as if we are saints whose very touch could cure their sickness. But what sickness? Dullness? Boredom? The Most Reverend William Venables was evidently entranced by us, by the playhouse, and by what he believed was some kind of benign magic. He touched my elbow. ‘Dear Richard,’ he murmured, ‘a word?’ He gripped my upper arm and pulled me towards the stage door. I resisted for a heartbeat, but for a small, thin man he was surprisingly strong, and he dragged me away as Simon Willoughby smirked and my brother looked surprised.

The reverend took me through the left-hand door onto the stage, where he stopped and gazed into the courtyard where Jeremiah was sweeping hazelnut and oyster shells from the cobbles. Pickles the cat lay in a patch of weak sunlight and began licking a battered paw. ‘I hear you might leave the company,’ the reverend said, ‘is that true?’

The sudden question confused me. ‘I might,’ I muttered. In truth I had no plans, no offers of other employment, and no future. My threat to walk away from the Lord Chamberlain’s Men was nothing but pique, an attempt to gain some sympathy from my brother in hopes that he would give me men’s parts and a larger wage. ‘I don’t know, sir,’ I added sullenly.

‘Why would you leave?’ he asked sharply.

I hesitated. ‘I want to grow a beard,’ I finally said.

He laughed at that. ‘What a shame that would be! But I do understand.’

‘You do?’

‘Oh, dear boy, isn’t it obvious? You’re getting too old. Your voice is just passable for an older woman, but how long will that endure? And what men’s parts are there for you? Richard and Henry won’t make way for you, will they? They are our young and handsome heroes, are they not? And Alexander and Simon are snapping at your heels, and they’re both so exquisitely talented.’ He gave me a pitying smile. ‘Perhaps you can run away to sea?’

‘I’m no sailor,’ I said. I had seen the sea once, and that once was enough.

‘No, you’re not,’ Venables said forcefully, ‘you’re a player and a very good one.’

‘Am I?’ I asked, sounding like Simon Willoughby.

‘You have grace onstage, you have been blessed with beauty, you speak clearly.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ I said in Uashti’s voice, ‘but I have no beard.’

‘You don’t need a beard,’ he said, and took my arm again, steering me towards the front of the stage.

‘I can’t grow one yet,’ I said, ‘because I still have to play the women’s parts. But James has promised me a man’s part soon.’

He let go of my arm. ‘James Burbage has promised you a man’s part?’ his tone was surprisingly harsh.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What part?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And in what play?’