London

  At first his friends could hardly believe it. True, he could still be carefree and full of wit, but as for the rest . . . Gone were his fine clothes: his tunic was simple and usually brown; his hat was smaller and held only a modest feather; he even grew a rough little beard. He looked positively workmanlike. When Rose and Sterne protested, he called them popinjays. But most astonishing of all was his announcement: “I’m going to write a play. Not for the court at all, but for the common folk. I shall write it for the Curtain.”

  After all, it was the only playhouse he had left. Nor would he be put off. Where before he was confident, now he was determined. The Burbages were doubtful that he could do such a thing, but he coolly reminded them that they owed him fifty-five pounds. And when, reluctantly, they agreed he was due a favour and asked him what sort of play he had in mind, he told them. “A history play, with plenty of fighting in it.” He had seen such dramas, of course; but now he decided it was time to read and analyse the texts.

  Here he encountered a problem. There were almost no texts to be had, for when a play had been written it suffered a curious fate. It was cut up and rearranged into parts, each part being the lines of a particular actor so that he could learn them. The stage instructions went to the keeper of the tiring house so that he could provide props and costumes. Only the author or theatre manager, like as not, retained an entire text which was carefully guarded. Sometimes these texts were printed after a while, but much more often they were not. And the more successful the play, the less chance there was that the author would print it.

  There were no laws of copyright. If another company obtained a copy of the play and put on a pirated version without paying the author, there was nothing he could do about it. Texts were valuable property therefore: and if Shakespeare did not have his printed – which indeed he never did in his lifetime – he was not careless of their worth. He was merely protecting his income.

  Edmund could, of course, have asked the Burbages for copies of a dozen plays; but, afraid it might betray his lack of confidence, he was reluctant to do so. Another thought did occur to him: when done with, the actors’ parts were often kept in the tiring house in case of repeat performances. Fleming could surely put some plays together. So at Easter, Edmund returned to Jane and asked her to find him some scripts.

  He found her very busy. The first months at the Curtain had not been easy. Though similar in size to the Theatre, it was far less convenient. The tiring-house was smaller; the stage less good; they regularly had to vacate the place for other entertainments such as cock-fighting. Jane found herself constantly transporting and re-checking the wardrobe.

  With so much going on, she had not had time, she told herself, to think of Edmund. She had heard that his affair with Lady Redlynch was over but in the months after Christmas, when his own hopes were so low, he had not been seen about the playhouse and so they had not met. Nor had she thought about the subject of men at all. Except, perhaps, for Dogget.

  It was hard to say quite how he had come into her life. She had seen the young boatbuilder before in the company of Edmund; but some time in January she gradually became more aware of him. He often seemed to be about, and he made her laugh; she was grateful for that. But it was a small incident early in February that had really impressed her. A group of theatre people and their friends had been going to the tavern together, Dogget among them. She had had to stay behind because there was so much to do in the tiring house. Without a word, but with a cheerful smile, Dogget had remained and helped her, sorting and cleaning costumes for a full five hours, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. At which she could not help thinking: would Edmund Meredith ever have done that?

  A pleasant friendship had developed since then. Dogget would quite often come by and they would walk out together. She felt comfortable in his presence. Late in February he had kissed her, but chastely, as though he expected nothing more. A week later she had remarked teasingly: “I expect you’ve had a lot of girls.”

  “Never one,” he said, with merry eyes; and they both laughed. Two weeks after that, she indicated that he could kiss her properly and found that she liked this too. So that when, near Easter, her mother had mildly observed – “Young Dogget’s courting: you think you’d be happy with him?” – she had answered hesitantly: “I think so. Perhaps.”

  Indeed, if she had any doubt, it was because of something so absurd that she did not feel she could set any store by it. It was similar to the sensation she experienced whenever the company set off on the road for their summer tour: a desire to see new places, a need for adventure, like some traveller upon the seas. No such thoughts had ever afflicted the Fleming family so far as she knew, nor could she see the point in them. She decided therefore that they must be nonsense, a fleeting and childish fancy. If Dogget and his boatyard in Southwark did not satisfy this vague craving in her for the unknown, she did not think it mattered. She thought she could be happy with him. Then Meredith had reappeared.

  Edmund felt pleased as the spring progressed. The play he devised had a stirring subject: the Spanish Armada. There were noble speeches from the queen, from Drake and other sea-dogs. There would be a long re-enactment of the action, in which it would be necessary to fire a cannon numerous times. It would, he was confident, be the noisiest play ever produced in London. The closing speech he intended to model upon the most grandiloquent language of Marlowe, pointing out how God’s hand had wrecked the Spanish galleons in the storm. “The common herd will love it,” he predicted. “It cannot fail.”

  By late May, when the first act was done, Edmund felt even more confident. Once again he began to have a vision of himself making a figure in the world; and with this vision came the pleasant realization that he would like to have Jane at his side. It was time to reclaim her. In the first week of June he gave her a posy of flowers. The next week, a silver bracelet. And if, having been neglected, she seemed to hesitate, it did not worry him.

  Jane had been pleased at her calm when Edmund first came to ask for help. Perhaps, she admitted, she had been a little intrigued by the change that had come over him; but then so were all his acquaintances. As for the flowers and the bracelet, she took them as thanks for the texts she had procured and nothing else. If he had meant something more, she discounted it, knowing he would only change his mind again and find another Lady Redlynch.

  Meanwhile, things at the Curtain were not getting any better. Despite all their efforts, the more fashionable part of their old audience was still reluctant to set foot in the place. There were tensions amongst the actors too. Some, led by the clown, thought they should supply the audience with bawdier entertainments; others, including Shakespeare, were growing impatient with the enterprise, because they wanted to improve the quality of work.

  “We’re not taking enough money,” Jane’s father told her one day. The Burbages, he hinted, were in some financial difficulty. “The company will never find its feet again in this place,” he concluded. If only they could get back to the theatre. “It’s doubly galling,” she overheard one of the Burbages remark, “because we even built the place.” Some twenty years ago, at the start of the original lease, the Burbages had constructed the wooden building on the site, but with the ground lease up, they still could not set foot in the place. And by early June, her father sadly told her, “There’s a chance, I’m afraid, that this season could be our last.”

  This prospect made Jane close her mind to Edmund. Her reasoning was that if the company closed, and no one would take his play, Edmund would never feel self-confident enough to take a wife. And she judged with considerable maturity that his interest in her was because she was part of the theatre. But Dogget just liked her for herself. She was friendly to Edmund, therefore, but no more.

  In midsummer she had promised to go out on the river in the evening with John Dogget, and had been rather looking forward to it. Then, that afternoon, Edmund had come by. He and a party of friends were going to walk up to Islington Woods, to a glad
e where they would set out refreshments and, very likely, improvise some theatricals. Politely she declined, citing her earlier promise, and Edmund departed. Just after he had gone, she wondered if she should have offered to come and taken Dogget too; but she put this out of her mind. Dogget might have felt cheated; and besides, it was too late.

  But as the warm sun gleamed on the water on the way up to Chelsea, and young Dogget, with a happy grin, pulled with his webbed hands on the oars, she felt an unaccountable sadness and even irritation. When they reached Shoreditch again, and Dogget pulled her into the shadows near the darkened playhouse, she could only go through the motions of returning his kiss.

  Before they parted, however, she arranged to go out with John Dogget two evenings later, and made up her mind that by then her kisses would be ardent.

  On the day after they had left London on the summer tour her father told Jane the sombre news, on condition that she did not tell the actors.

  “Shakespeare has given notice. He’s told the Burbages that if they don’t find him a theatre, he is quitting the stage and retiring.” Since Shakespeare now had his property in Stratford, Fleming judged that the threat was real. “He can retire there any day now,” he remarked.

  “And is there any hope?” she asked.

  “A chance, but only a slim one,” he told her. “The Burbages have made an offer to Giles Allen, for a new lease on the Theatre. It’s so high that he’s said to be considering it, even though he fears Ducket and the aldermen. I’m not even sure the Burbages can afford it, but there we are.” He smiled wanly. “He’ll decide by this autumn. If he says no . . .” He spread his hands. “Pins for me, I’m afraid. And for you, I dare say.”

  Often in the long weeks of summer as they went from town to town, Jane found herself thinking of the empty theatre. And also, she could not quite deny it, of Edmund and his play.

  As Edmund Meredith made his way towards the Burbages’ house in the city on a cold October afternoon, he was both thoughtful and cheerful.

  Thoughtful because of Cuthbert Carpenter. He had spent the last hour in the George Tavern listening to his troubles. His grandmother was becoming increasingly tyrannical. She had also become convinced that he must be bound for hell, such was Carpenter’s liking for entertainments, and had expressed this view to his Puritan master, who, being devout himself, had begun to find fault with Carpenter’s work.

  “I need to find a new master,” he said. “But so many of the best master carpenters are Puritan nowadays, they may not take me on if my name is blackened. Even if I never set foot in a theatre again, things will still go hard with me.”

  Edmund had comforted him as best he could, but was not sure what he could do.

  He was cheerful, however, for a much more important reason. The play was done – complete down to the last alarum and cannon shot. It was a masterpiece, a mountain of melodrama, bombast and noise. He had sent word to the Burbages two days before, and now they had summoned him to see them. The script of the play was under his arm.

  He was surprised to see Shakespeare and three of the others there as well. He had not expected that. Their faces were grave as they looked at him quietly across the oak table. Burbage broke the news.

  “I’m afraid the Chamberlain’s men have come to the end of their run,” he said. “We do not want to continue at the Curtain.”

  He stared at them. “But my play . . .” He proffered it as though it changed something. “It was written for the Curtain.”

  “I’m sorry.” Burbage made a polite nod towards the now useless sheaf of papers. “We called you here because you are a creditor.”

  “Fifty-five pounds,” the other Burbage said with the respect that such a sum was due.

  “We cannot say when, or even if”, the first went on, “it will be repaid.”

  Edmund was flabbergasted. “Are there no other possibilities?”

  “We tried for a new lease at the Theatre,” Shakespeare explained. “Allen turned us down.” He shrugged. And for several minutes, the various principals explained to him the difficulties with which their entire business was beset.

  It was not often that Edmund forgot to cut a figure in the world; but without even realizing what he was doing, he buried his face in his hands and almost wept. After a time, nodding to them vaguely, he got up and left.

  Slowly he wandered back towards his lodgings, digesting the news. The players had no respectable place to act. There was nothing to be done. He was so upset, he even briefly forgot his own play.

  It was just as he reached the Staple Inn that the idea came into his head, an idea which sent him running back towards the Burbages’ house. He burst in through the door and, finding them all still at the table, cried out: “Let me see the lease!” He was, after all, a lawyer.

  A few minutes later, he made a suggestion. The idea he had had was so daring, so utterly outrageous, so cunning, that for a little while nobody spoke.

  “We would have to be careful that no one knew what we were going to do,” he added at last. And then Shakespeare grinned.

  Of all the changes that took place during the long century when the Tudors sat upon the throne of England, one of the most striking was scarcely noted at all.

  It began during the reign of Great King Harry, but did not happen suddenly. Halfway through Elizabeth’s reign, however, it was becoming noticeable: England was getting colder.

  The mini Ice Age of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was never alarming. No ice wall began to advance down the island; the seas did not recede. But over ten decades or so the average temperature of England fell by several degrees. During much of the year, this was not greatly noticed. The balmy days of summer did not cease, and although spring and autumn may have seemed a little cooler, it was only in winter that men really saw a difference. The snows arrived sooner and were more deep. Icicles hung, thick and strong, from the eves. And above all, scarcely known before even at icy midwinter, the rivers froze.

  It was a gentle echo of the distant, frozen past; and a hint for Englishmen, if any were needed that, even though the Renaissance from the warm Mediterranean had come to court, university and theatre, their island still belonged, as it always had, to the north. In December, in the year of Our Lord 1598, the River Thames froze solid.

  Nobody took any particular notice of the men who trudged up the lane to Shoreditch as dusk was falling on that icy December day. Some were carrying hammers, others had saws and chisels. Had anyone troubled to observe them, however, they would have seen a surprising thing. Arriving one by one, they all disappeared into Fleming’s narrow house. Darkness fell. Two more muffled figures arrived and entered. These were the Burbage brothers. Soon afterwards a slimmer figure, walking with a light step, also went in. The darkness grew deeper.

  Cuthbert Carpenter’s face was shining. They had fed him meat pies and hot toddy. As he sat on the bench, jammed between a fellow carpenter and a pile of sweaty costumes from Twelfth Night, he could hardly stop grinning. This was the most exciting thing he had ever done in his life.

  It was all thanks to Meredith, of course. It was Edmund, six weeks ago, who had both found him a new master and just three days ago, given him the courage to do something even more daring: to walk out on his grandmother. But even this was only a minor crime compared to the extraordinary enterprise he was now engaged in. After this night’s work, he would surely go to hell. And yet – most amazing and wonderful of all – he didn’t care.

  An hour passed. By the faint glimmer of the moonlight that crept through the clouds, the shuttered houses of Shoreditch stared out with blank faces, like wardrobes closed up for the night. Not a soul stirred.

  At ten o’clock the door of Fleming’s house at last opened. The men filed out one by one, some carrying hooded lamps. Silently they made their way across to the looming form of the Theatre and began to move round it. The Burbages reached the doorway.

  How strange it looked in the darkness, Cuthbert Carpenter thought. The great empty
cylinder of the playhouse seemed suddenly mysterious, even threatening. What if, he wondered, it was a huge trap, and the aldermen of London themselves were waiting in there to arrest them? For a moment, his imagination even conjured up a worse idea: that once inside, the floor of the building would suddenly open to reveal a glowing tunnel down to the pit of hell itself. He put the foolish thought from him, and made his way round the high wall.

  There was a muffled crack. The Burbages had broken open the door. Moments later all the men had vanished within the Theatre.

  Except for one. Back in the little house, Edmund knew he was not needed yet. He lay on a bench, covered by a red cloak recently worn by an actor playing John of Gaunt. His eyes were half closed, a smile on his face; and at his side was Jane.

  She had almost forgotten about Dogget recently, so close had she and Meredith grown. For if she had been uncertain of Edmund in the summer, the events of autumn had changed that. Indeed, it really seemed to her that she had discovered in Edmund a new man entirely. It was not just that he was a cheerful tower of strength, there was a quiet determination, a thoroughness she had not seen before. For three whole weeks, he had retired to the Staple Inn and studied legal precedent and leases until, at last, he had presented the Burbages with a legal case for tonight’s action that, according to the experienced lawyer who reviewed it, could not have been bettered. He was acting now as an unpaid lawyer to the company, saving them a fortune in fees. “And he’s not doing it just for his own sake, but for other people too,” she remarked to her parents.

  The cool daring of the whole business appealed to her, which was no doubt why she leaned forward, kissed him fully on the lips and laughingly remarked: “You look like a pirate.”