I stepped through into a sunlit courtyard. Alan Rust followed, letting the guard close the wicket gate behind him. He was smiling. ‘That was what I call an entrance,’ he said. ‘Use a servants’ gate in Water Lane indeed! Who does he think we are? His lordship’s scullions? Now where the hell do we go?’
I could see only one door into the mansion from the courtyard, and I pointed to it. ‘There, I suppose.’
‘I suppose so too.’ He crossed the cobbled yard. ‘The sun shines! I’d forgotten what it looked like. Sunlight and no rain!’
‘No rain,’ I agreed happily. The summer and autumn had been cold and wet, which meant the harvest had again been meagre. Folk were starving, and I had heard muttering in the streets about ransacking the homes of the rich. Prices were rising, and there were rumours that one London riot had already been savagely suppressed by troops and the ringleaders summarily hanged. Yet the playhouses were still full.
The door, set in an imposing archway approached by a brief flight of stone steps, was bolted. Alan Rust beat on it with his fist, then looked me up and down. ‘I see you’ve dressed for the occasion, Richard?’
‘It seemed polite,’ I said vaguely.
‘Polite!’ He sounded amused. ‘God send us all such courtesy. Where are these bloody people?’ He hammered on the door again, and still no one answered. ‘You must be happy to be playing Francis Flute.’
‘Very.’
‘It’s a good part,’ he said enthusiastically.
‘He’s a lover, my brother tells me?’ I said, making it into a question in hope that he could tell me more about the character.
‘Flute is a lover indeed,’ Rust said gravely, ‘and if the play were not a comedy we might almost say he is a tragic lover.’
‘Tragic?’ I was intrigued.
Rust beat on the obstinately closed door. ‘Are they all asleep?’
And just then we heard bolts being shot back. The door opened, and a nervous woman peered out. ‘Masters?’ she asked.
‘We are summoned to the great hall, woman,’ Rust said grandly.
‘Yes, master,’ she said, and pulled the door fully open. She was an older woman carrying a birch-twig broom, and, seeing my clothes, she bobbed me a curtsey.
‘And where is the great hall, my good woman?’ Rust demanded, stepping through into a large stone-flagged chamber hung with tapestries.
‘Straight on, master,’ the woman said, pointing to a wide passageway. ‘Down there.’
‘We shall remain for ever in your debt,’ Rust said, and led me down the passage, which ended at a large double door. He threw both leaves open, then stopped abruptly. ‘My,’ he said after a long pause. ‘Oh my!’ We had reached the great hall, and were evidently the first of the company to arrive. ‘Oh my!’ Rust said again.
The hall was vast, shadowed and grand. Elegantly curved oak beams supported the high roof, each beam decorated with carved roses painted white and edged with gold leaf. The walls were panelled, and hung with great tapestries showing hunting scenes, and between the tapestries were ancient swords, spears, and axes, all hung to make patterns.
We had entered on one of the hall’s long sides. Opposite us was a gaping hearth, the jambs and mantel shelf were of carved white marble surrounding a fire-blackened space in which an ox could have been roasted. No fire burned there, there were just two enormous black iron firedogs, which stood in a great pile of ash. In the centre of the hall was a long table surrounded by high-backed chairs. I counted them; thirty-six, while to our left was a minstrels’ gallery, beneath which a pair of doors led into the rest of the mansion. At the opposite end of the hall, facing south, was a big oriel window that jutted out from the panelled wall and was reached by a pair of carved wooden staircases. ‘That must overlook the river,’ Rust said. There was a cushioned seat the width of the oriel, which was the only window in the cavernous hall. ‘Only one window?’ Rust said. ‘Think what they must spend on candles!’ He walked to the dark space beneath the minstrels’ gallery, where he turned to look down the length of the hall. ‘Let there be light!’ he said loudly, then grunted. ‘There’s an echo. Still, fill the place with wedding guests and it won’t be so bad. Have you ever performed in a wedding play?’
‘No.’
‘I hate them,’ he growled, ‘hate them.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the audience is drunk, that’s why. The bastards start drinking in the forenoon, and by the time we play in the evening they’re either tottering or stupefied. It’s like playing to a room full of farting corpses.’ He walked the length of the hall, his footsteps loud on the flagstones, then climbed the brief stairs to the oriel window through which he stared into the smoke-hazed sunlight above the Thames. ‘And they’re privileged, Richard. You can’t tell them to be quiet. If they’re bored they’ll talk the whole play long. The only thing that keeps them quiet is if the Queen is present and enjoying the play. Then they’ll be quiet.’
‘Will the Queen be here?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows? She’s Lord Hunsdon’s cousin, so maybe. I hope so, I can’t abide performing to a hall full of chattering lordlings.’
‘Why hire us if they don’t watch us?’ I asked.
‘To show they can afford us, of course. We are pearls cast before sleeping swine.’
I followed him up the stairs. Sunlight glittered on the river that was thick with watermen’s wherries. A big sailing barge was headed downstream, presumably bringing grain or vegetables from far inland. Swans paddled between the craft. On the southern bank I could see the bull-baiting arena, which looked uncannily like the Theatre, while to the west was the new playhouse that was being built by Francis Langley. The building loomed over the small houses on the river’s south bank, yet its flintstone walls were still unfinished and were surrounded by a dense web of wooden scaffolding. ‘Just look at the size of it,’ Rust said scornfully. ‘It’s going to take three thousand people to fill that!’
‘He’ll need players,’ I said, thinking of my conversation with the Reverend Venables.
Rust appeared not to hear me. He was gazing at the far scaffolding. ‘Twenty years ago,’ he said ruminatively, ‘there wasn’t a playhouse in London. Nor anywhere else either. We played inn yards, three a week. Monday in Gloucester, Wednesday in Worcester, Saturday in Warwick, and the same piece of rubbish could be played in all three places. Now we play to the same audience week after week after week, and we need what? Thirty, forty plays a year? Where’s Langley going to find them? He doesn’t need players, players are a dozen a groat, he needs men who can write plays, and those men don’t grow on trees. If you want to make money, son,’ he punched me lightly on the arm, ‘don’t waste your time prancing about onstage, write the damn plays! That’s where the money is.’
‘I can’t write.’
‘Thank Christ your brother can. I just wish he’d write more. The beast has to be fed.’
‘The beast?’
‘The playgoers. The great mongrel beast that always wants something new.’
The other players were arriving now, coming through the doors beneath the minstrels’ gallery. I heard their exclamations of awe as they looked about the great hall. Kit Saunders and Simon Willoughby climbed onto the long table and danced up and down its length, linking arms and whirling about, laughing whenever they almost fell off. Isaiah Humble, the bookkeeper, was shuffling papers at the table’s end and gave a feeble protest when Simon Willoughby danced too close to his carefully arranged piles. Alan Rust went down to join my brother and Will Kemp, who were standing beside the dead fire, heads together, where a dignified grey-haired man in the white rose livery of Lord Hunsdon had joined them. The man turned to frown at Kit and John. ‘Now, my young masters,’ he said sternly, ‘that table is polished. Have a care of it!’
‘He means get your poxy feet off the table,’ Will Kemp growled.
I watched the two boys from the oriel’s height and felt a surge of pleasure. At last I was to play a man! I was no l
onger a boy. I was a player, a man, one of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men! Till now I had been neither fish nor fowl, neither an apprentice nor a proper hired man. I had simply been tolerated as the younger brother of a Sharer, but now I had a real part, and I went down the short stairs determined to show I was worthy of the trust. I would make the Sharers value me.
‘We need candles,’ Isaiah Humble said tentatively, ‘if it’s possible? Sorry, but it’s very dark.’
‘Candles are coming,’ the liveried man said. He wore a dark grey robe trimmed with fur, and had a chain of office about his neck.
‘And a fire?’ my brother asked. ‘It’s cold.’
‘I’m sure his lordship will allow you a fire.’
‘I thank you,’ my brother said, then slapped the table to gain everyone’s attention. ‘Seat yourselves, seat yourselves! And thank you all for being here so early in the day.’ A murmur of laughter sounded. The company was seating itself, the Sharers at one end, the boys at the other, and the hired men in between. I sat between John Duke and John Sinklo, both hired men. ‘I wanted us to meet here,’ my brother continued when the scraping of chairs had ended, ‘so that you can see our playing space. It will look quite different, of course. His lordship has given us permission to make a stage.’ He turned and looked at the grey-haired man in Lord Hunsdon’s livery, who nodded affirmation. ‘Let me name Walter Harrison, his lordship’s steward, who will look after his lordship’s interests while we are here. You wish to say something?’ he asked the steward.
Harrison had remained standing beside the hearth, but now stepped forward and looked at us sternly. ‘His lordship welcomes you,’ he began, ‘and you have the free use of this hall for your practices.’
‘Rehearsals,’ John Sinklo said irritably, but not loud enough for the steward to hear.
‘You will come and go through the Water Lane gate,’ Harrison went on, ‘and you will approach the hall through the scullery passage, not by the main passage as some of you did today.’
‘Guilty,’ Alan Rust said cheerfully.
‘The scullery passage brings you to those doors,’ Harrison pointed to the two doors beneath the musicians’ gallery. ‘Behind those doors there are stairs to the minstrels’ gallery and you may use those. I understand you wish to use the gallery too?’ he asked my brother, who nodded. ‘And that is all,’ Harrison said very firmly. ‘You can use the stable yard, the scullery passage, the hallway beyond those doors, the gallery, and this hall. The rest of the house is forbidden to you.’
‘So where do we piss?’ Will Kemp asked brusquely.
‘The stable yard,’ Harrison said.
‘What do we use for a tiring room?’ George Bryan asked with a frown. His broken nose was mended, though it was still swollen and the bruising had not quite subsided.
My brother answered. ‘His lordship has agreed that we can make a new wall beneath the gallery, so much of the space beneath the gallery will become our tiring room. The stage will be in front of that new wall. There will be three doors. A large central door, and two smaller ones flanking it.’
‘Just like the Theatre,’ John Heminges put in.
‘Just like the Theatre,’ my brother agreed.
‘It’s a big play,’ Will Kemp intervened, standing up to address us all. He liked to show his authority. He was a Sharer, of course, and my brother had talked quite long enough for Will’s taste. ‘There are a lot of parts. That means some of you will be sitting around with nothing to do but fart while others rehearse, and you’ll keep yourselves quiet! I’m looking at you apprentices …’
‘May I?’ Walter Harrison looked enquiringly at my brother, but it was Will Kemp who answered.
‘Speak, master steward!’
‘His lordship,’ Harrison said, ‘has given instructions, very strict instructions, that none of the household are to witness your practices. He and her ladyship have read the play, of course, and they like it, but he wishes it to be a surprise to the rest of the household on the day of the wedding. I know the Lady Elizabeth came and talked to you at the Theatre, but she doesn’t know what the play is about and she mustn’t know. If you see any servant listening, perhaps from the gallery, you will ask them to leave. You will insist that they leave,’ he said forcefully, and I grimaced. I had dressed carefully in hope of seeing Silvia, Elizabeth Carey’s maid, but it seemed that hope was vain. ‘The only exceptions,’ the steward went on, ‘are the tutors who will accompany the small boys.’
‘Small boys?’ Will Kemp asked in a horrified voice.
‘There’ll be music,’ my brother said, ‘and his lordship’s choristers will sing as a fairy choir.’
‘God bloody help us,’ Will Kemp growled.
‘Does the fairy choir dance?’ Ralph Perkins, who trained the dancers at the Theatre, asked.
‘They will dance, Ralph, and you’ll show them how. Now,’ my brother took a step forward, subtly asserting his authority over Will Kemp, ‘we don’t have all the time we’d wish because we need to be at the Theatre just after midday, but we’ll read as far as we can. You may keep your parts, keep them and learn them.’
‘Con them well,’ Will Kemp snarled.
‘And do not lose the parts,’ my brother also snarled.
‘Say what the play treats on,’ Will Kemp, still standing, said to my brother.
‘It’s a wedding play,’ my brother said, ‘and all the action takes place during one night in Athens.’
‘Athens?’ George Bryan asked. He frowned. ‘Why Athens?’
‘Because it doesn’t bloody rain in Athens,’ Will Kemp said.
‘It rains everywhere.’
‘Is Athens in France?’ Simon Willoughby asked.
My brother thumped the table to stop the chatter. ‘We’ll begin by fitting the play,’ he said, meaning we would start by giving each player his part, ‘and the tale begins in the palace of Theseus, Duke of Athens, who is marrying Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons.’
‘That’s me,’ Thomas Belte said brightly from the apprentices’ end of the table.
‘Mister Humble, please?’ my brother said, and Isaiah carefully selected two sheaves of paper from the pile on the table and placed the first in front of George Bryan. All of us tried to judge from the number of pages how large the part of Theseus was. It looked substantial.
‘I have to learn all this?’ George said, looking through the pages.
‘Unless you’d rather play Mustard-Seed?’ my brother said.
‘I’m Queen of the Amazon,’ Thomas Belte, a skinny freckled boy, said happily as Isaiah gave him a thinner sheaf.
It took some minutes to distribute the parts, and as they were placed on the table my brother described the play, which, to me, sounded very tangled. There was the duke and Hippolyta, who were getting married, and then two pairs of lovers from Duke Theseus’s court. One of the two girls, Hermia, which was Kit Saunders’s part, was supposed to marry Demetrius, who would be played by Henry Condell, but was really in love with Lysander who was Richard Burbage. Meanwhile Helena, now played by Alexander Cooke, was also madly enamoured of Lysander, and all four lovers wander into a moonlit wood where they become even more confused by a magical potion given to them by Alan Rust, playing a character called Puck, who, in turn, served Oberon, King of the Fairies, who was John Heminges.
Richard Burbage was leafing through his part, which, naturally, looked large. ‘Why do we go into the wood, Will?’ he asked.
‘You’re eloping with Hermia.’
‘And this fellow Puck does what?’
‘Causes confusion.’
‘Shouldn’t I play Puck?’ Will Kemp demanded.
‘No,’ my brother said shortly. ‘Meanwhile,’ he went on, ‘a group of Athenian tradesmen also go to the wood to rehearse a play which they hope to perform before the duke on his wedding night.’
‘It’s a busy wood,’ Will Kemp growled.
‘Why don’t they rehearse in a barn?’ George Bryan asked plaintively. ‘Or at home? Why go to
a wood?’
‘It’s all explained in the play,’ my brother said patiently.
‘Which we’d like to know about,’ Alan Rust snarled, ‘so will you all be quiet and let Will tell us?’
My brother continued, explaining how Nick Bottom, a weaver played by Will Kemp and one of the tradesmen, was transformed into an ass, and Titania, the Queen of the Fairies, played by Simon Willoughby, fell in love with him thanks to Puck’s magical potion. My brother described all this, and I tried to sort out the different stories and also listened for any mention of Francis Flute or the woman he loved. I heard nothing that enlightened me, and supposed I must wait until I received my part.
We paused as two servants brought candles, which were placed along the table and lit so that we could read the pages. Walter Harrison, the steward, nodded approval when the candles were burning. ‘We shall leave you alone,’ he said, and ushered the two serving men from the hall.
‘Now for the mechanicals,’ my brother said.
‘“Mechanicals”?’ Will Kemp interrupted. ‘What in God’s name are “mechanicals”?’
‘They’re tradesmen of Athens,’ my brother said curtly. ‘I shall play Peter Quince, a carpenter.’
‘Wasn’t there a Peter Quince with a workshop in Cow Lane?’ John Heminges asked.
‘There was,’ my brother said. ‘Will, you already have Bottom’s part, yes?’
‘He was a carpenter,’ John Heminges said.
‘He was a wheelwright!’ Henry Condell corrected him. ‘It was his brother James who was the carpenter.’
‘They both died of the plague, God rest them,’ John Heminges said.
‘Have you finished?’ Will Kemp glared at them. ‘And yes, Will, I’ve got the part.’ He flourished some sheets of paper.