‘Rust, my lady, Alan Rust.’
‘You are a delight, Mister Rust, a delight, as are you, Mister Kemp.’
‘Your ladyship is most kind,’ Kemp said, bowing low.
‘Kindness is for dogs, Mister Kemp, not for paid players. And no more poems, Mister Kemp, no more poems. And let the play be no longer than two hours, Mister Shakespeare, two hours! Come Caesar, come!’ She swept from the hall, followed by her ladies, and by Caesar, a small white dog that had been hidden beneath her long skirts.
There was silence on the stage after she left, a silence George Bryan broke. ‘Paid players, indeed!’
‘What else are we?’ my brother asked.
‘A delight,’ Will Kemp said angrily, ‘we are a delight!’
Will Kemp had played Bottom well, but those of us who knew him could sense the anger that had simmered beneath his performance all afternoon. He was brooding over something, and Alan Rust, fearing an outbreak of Kemp’s rage, tried to divert the conversation. ‘Is death really the law in Athens for disobedient daughters?’ he asked.
‘Of course it isn’t,’ my brother said, ‘but if I’d admitted that she’d have demanded accuracy. As if accuracy matters. It’s a play!’
‘At least she still wants us to perform the play,’ John Heminges said gloomily.
‘She wants me to perform!’ Will Kemp said, letting his anger loose. He jumped off the stage and strode to the nearest table, where he poured himself a cup of the Lord Chamberlain’s ale. ‘You heard her ladyship. What works in this play, you tell me that?’
‘It all works,’ Richard Burbage said.
‘Then why does she want it shortened?’ Kemp demanded. ‘What works is the comedy. Nick Bottom works!’
‘No one denies that you’re good, Will,’ my brother said, trying to placate Kemp.
‘Good!’ Will Kemp spat. ‘And you give me how many lines in Romeo and Juliet?’
Alan Rust groaned as he realised what had caused this outburst. Kemp had been brooding on the new play for days, and his unhappiness could be contained no longer.
‘I gave you sufficient lines,’ my brother said curtly.
‘God damn your sufficiency!’ Kemp snarled. ‘God damn it to hell and back.’ He drained the cup, slammed it onto the table, and filled it again. ‘They come to laugh!’ He pointed at my brother with the hand holding the jug, spilling ale. ‘They don’t come to be miserable. They have enough goddamned misery in their poxy lives already. They don’t come to see lovers die, they come to laugh!’
‘They come to see you?’ Alan Rust asked acidly.
‘They come to see me,’ Kemp replied bitterly, then glared at my brother. ‘You’ve given Peter thirteen lines. I counted them. Thirteen! That’s what you think of me, a thirteen-line serving man. The poxy Theatre will be empty after thirteen minutes.’
‘Will—’ my brother began.
‘Empty after two minutes,’ Kemp roared, ‘and a pox on you too! All of you!’ He slammed the jug down, snatched up his cloak, and stalked out of the main doors to avoid crossing the stage.
‘Oh, dear sweet God,’ my brother said.
‘Is all our company here?’ Alan Rust quoted Peter Quince’s opening line, but failed to raise a smile.
Billy Rowley, Kemp’s apprentice, looked close to tears, uncertain what he should do. ‘Go after him, boy,’ my brother said. He stared at the door through which Kemp had left. ‘It’s my fault,’ he went on, ‘I should never have shown him the script.’
‘He had to see it sooner or later,’ Alan Rust said.
‘Is there a bigger part for him?’ George Bryan asked nervously.
‘No, there is not!’
‘He’ll be back in the morning,’ John Heminges said anxiously.
‘If he’s not trotting off to Philip Henslowe and the Rose,’ my brother said.
‘I’ll talk to him,’ Alan Rust said. No one spoke to that, no one else wanted to face an angry Will Kemp. ‘He’ll be back,’ Rust said, ‘I’m sure.’
My brother gazed up at the hall’s beams. ‘Nothing else we can do today, and our last rehearsal is tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow!’ I blurted out, astonished.
‘His lordship needs the hall,’ my brother explained. ‘The wedding is next Thursday. If tomorrow goes ill, we’ll rehearse at the Theatre.’ He looked at Bobby. ‘Learn your lines, for Christ’s sake, learn them!’
‘Yes, sir,’ Bobby said miserably.
‘So go home,’ my brother said, ‘all of you, go home.’
‘Are you shortening the play?’ John Heminges asked.
‘What her ladyship wants, her ladyship receives,’ my brother said, then sat at the table, drew some candles towards him, and opened the box that held his quills.
The players and musicians went home. And just a street away, the twins were waiting for me at Saint Benet’s. It was time to hide.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a wedding play, all its events springing from the marriage between Duke Theseus and his bride, Hippolyta. Their wedding was the cause of Peter Quince gathering his band of Athenian workmen, who hoped to amuse the duke with their play, Pyramus and Thisbe. They rehearse the play in a wood near Athens, and most of the play is set in that wood, which we constructed with five hornbeam saplings cut from the northern edge of Finsbury Fields. The saplings, of course, were bare because it was winter, but my brother had insisted that they must have leaves, and so Jean and Silvia had spent hours cutting leaves from green cloth and tying them onto the naked branches. ‘You could have used holly bushes!’ Jean had complained.
‘I want it to look like hawthorn,’ my brother had said.
‘Don’t tell me you want white blossom too?’
‘That’s a good idea. Yes, blossom!’
‘In midsummer?’ Jean had protested. ‘Hawthorn blossoms in May!’
‘It’s a magic wood,’ my brother had airily explained, so Jean and Silvia had twisted white scraps of wool into tiny blossoms.
The hawthorn wood was where Oberon, King of the Fairies, and Titania, his queen, had their quarrel. Titania was sheltering a small Indian child, who was played by Walter Harrison’s grandson, Matthew, whose face would be darkened by burned cork. Matthew, who was six years old, was only onstage once and had no lines to speak, but his grandfather, Lord Hunsdon’s steward, had beamed proudly when he saw the lad in costume for the first time. ‘He does look good, does he not?’ he asked Alan Rust, who had been trying to marshal the small boys into some kind of order.
‘When he stops picking his nose, yes.’
Nose-picking Matthew was the cause of the quarrel between Oberon and Titania. Oberon wished the child to be in his entourage, and Titania refused his demand, and so, to punish her, Oberon despatches Puck, his servant, to find a magical flower, which, when squeezed, oozes a juice that Oberon will drop onto the sleeping Titania’s eyelids. When she wakes the very first living thing she sees will become the person or beast with whom she falls helplessly in love.
And she sees Will Kemp, wearing an ass’s head.
The ass’s head was a wicker frame over which we had stretched rabbit pelts. The eyes were oversize glass beads on which were painted a pupil and iris, while the ass’s ears were more rabbit skin stiffened with wicker strips so they stood high. The ass’s mouth was left open, so the wedding guests could hear Will speak, but we added chunky wooden teeth, painted white, so that the beast looked as if it was braying with laughter. At first Will had found it hard to keep the head on his shoulders because the front part, with the teeth, was too heavy, so Jean had sewn a strap to the back of the wicker frame that stretched down to a belt he could wear beneath his shirt. Kemp loved the head and was reluctant to take it off, delighting in prowling the mansion’s passageways to scare unwitting servants.
It was indeed a big play, with over twenty characters. Theseus, Oberon, Titania, Puck, Peter Quince, Nick Bottom, Demetrius, Lysander, Helena, and Hermia all had substantial parts. Will Kemp, playing Bottom, had the most lin
es in the play, which he thought was his due, and, before he had stalked out in dudgeon, he had revelled in the ludicrous love scenes he had to play with Titania and with me. The other lovers in the play were even more star-crossed, or rather juice-crossed by Puck. Hermia loves Lysander, but her father insists she marry Demetrius or else face dire punishment, and so she and Lysander elope to the wood of five saplings. They are pursued into the wood by Demetrius, also in love with Hermia, and by Helena, Hermia’s friend, who is in love with Demetrius. Oberon, taking pity on the forlorn Helena, instructs Puck to anoint Demetrius’s eyes with the magic flower so he will fall in love with Helena, but Puck mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, and so the lovers’ knot is tangled and tightened. There were fights, there were quarrels, there were chases, and there was laughter, and in the end Oberon and Titania are reconciled, Theseus marries Hippolyta, Hermia marries Lysander, Helena marries Demetrius, and Pyramus and Thisbe both die.
It was indeed a wedding play.
The preparations for Christmas in the mansion had been hectic, but they were nothing compared to the fuss preceding the wedding. Lord Hunsdon was still not certain whether his cousin, the Queen, would come to the marriage, but he had to assume she might, and so a second stage was built, this one close to the great hearth so that Her Majesty could dine a few feet higher than her subjects, and stay warm. The small tables that had sufficed for the Christmas guests were declared inadequate, and three new tables were made, a small one to stand on the new dais, the other two to match the existing long table, which could seat thirty-six people. Chairs were made, and so the great hall echoed to the sound of carpenters. Swags of white cloth were hung over the hall’s panelling, but Lady Anne Hunsdon, inspecting it, declared it to be shabby, and satin was ordered instead. Garlands of ivy were twisted about the new swags and around the ceiling’s high beams. Candles arrived by the bushel, and all needed sticks or stands. Lady Anne had declared the stone-flagged floor of the hall to be too cold for aristocratic feet, so rugs were ordered. ‘Rushes were good enough in my day,’ Lord Hunsdon grumbled.
‘Rushes harbour fleas,’ his wife declared brusquely.
‘And fleas don’t live in rugs?’
‘Not in my rugs! And Harrison!’
‘My lady?’ The steward bowed.
‘Rats were seen in the scullery passage.’
‘So I heard, my lady.’
‘It’s the river,’ Lord Hunsdon grumbled. ‘You always get rats by a river.’
‘Not in my house!’ her ladyship said. ‘Get rid of them!’
‘I shall, my lady,’ Harrison said.
‘And what are these?’ Lord Hunsdon had found a box and took from it a thin silver stick that ended with two tines. ‘And why do we have so many?’
‘They are forks,’ Lady Hunsdon said.
‘Forks?’
‘You eat with them. Don’t pretend you haven’t seen one before! Katherine Howard uses them.’
‘What’s wrong with a good knife and fingers?’
‘We are not peasants.’
‘Fork,’ Lord Hunsdon had said, flinching as he tested a tine on one finger. ‘Fork! Harrison, fork!’
‘Indeed, your lordship,’ the imperturbable steward said.
Lord Hunsdon turned towards the stage where we were trying to rehearse. Any attempt to keep the play secret from the household had long been abandoned, though such was the chaos that I doubt anyone could make sense from the scraps of dialogue they heard. ‘Is that supposed to be a wood?’ Lord Hunsdon snarled.
‘It is, my lord,’ my brother had answered, ‘it’s a wood near Athens’
‘They must have forking poxy woods in Athens! It looks more like a feeble spinney. You couldn’t hide a sparrow in those leaves. Green gauze, man, green gauze. Thicken it up!’
The Lord Chamberlain’s suggestion worked. We draped expensive green gauze over and between the trees, and the illusion of a thicker wood was instant. It looked even better when candle-stands were put behind the gauze and the light filtered through.
The candles were a problem, though hardly the most severe that we faced. We had often played by candlelight in palaces and mansions, and knew that as the play progressed the candles would begin to gutter and it would be necessary to pause the performance while the wicks were trimmed. ‘Three pauses are sufficient,’ my brother had said.
‘Four,’ Will Kemp had said immediately. If my brother had suggested four then Kemp would have wanted three.
‘We need music for the candle trimming,’ my brother had shouted at Phil, ignoring Kemp, ‘three pieces!’
Phil nodded. He was gloomy because the household musicians, who would play during the wedding feast, were insisting on rehearsing in the minstrels’ gallery, which meant our musicians were forced to wait while the larger group played. ‘They’re not even musicians,’ Phil had grumbled to me, ‘they’re more like catgut torturers. God! Listen to that note!’
‘It sounds good to me.’
‘Thank God you don’t sing in this play. I suffer enough.’
The chaos in the hall was so great, that a week before Simon had stolen the two plays we had tried to move the rehearsals to a capacious undercroft beneath the old chapel, but the room was damp, and the weather so cold that ice formed on the ancient stone walls. We did manage to stumble through the first half of the play once, teeth chattering and feet stamping, but the undercroft was plainly inadequate and became even more so when, as the wedding day approached, servants brought hams to hang from the ceiling. The smell of cooking began to pervade the mansion.
Bobby Gough still did not know Titania’s lines.
The fairies’ costumes were unfinished.
Will Kemp had walked out of the play.
The wedding was close.
And the twins waited for me at Saint Benet’s.
‘Shouldn’t you be going home?’ my brother asked me.
The other players had left. A lone carpenter was working at the hall’s far end, while my brother sat at the central table and turned pages. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Shortening the play as her ladyship insists. And shouldn’t you be going home?’ he asked again. The coldness in his voice told me that whatever warmth had been generated by my rescue of his plays had vanished.
‘I’m going,’ I said. I picked up my cloak, found deValle’s hat, and crossed the stage. I opened and shut the door to the scullery passage, making enough noise to convince my brother that I had left, then crept under the stage. I crawled to the front, to the corner where Silvia had made a nest out of the green cloth, and there I settled down. The lone carpenter finished his work and left. My brother worked on. The front of the stage was draped with cloth, and I could just see over the top where the material sagged. The fire lit the hall, flickering its lurid shadows as, one by one, the candles went out, all but for the six surrounding my brother’s pages.
I heard the hall door open, and then footsteps. My brother looked up and stood.
‘Sit down, man, sit down.’ It was Lord Hunsdon, who took a chair opposite my brother. ‘There’s no peace in the household,’ he grumbled.
‘Another week, my lord, and it will all be over.’
Lord Hunsdon grunted, then, ‘Do you have daughters, Mister Shakespeare?’
‘I do, my lord. Two.’
‘Two!’
‘Susanna is twelve and Judith ten, my lord.’
‘Two!’ his lordship said again. ‘I have eight! I married them all off, and now it’s the granddaughters getting married.’ He turned in his chair and shouted towards the door. ‘Harrison! Someone! Anyone!’
A serving man answered. ‘My lord?’
‘Sack, man, and two cups. Quickly now!’ He looked back to my brother. ‘Two daughters, eh? Pretty girls?’
‘I think so, my lord.’
‘I like daughters! They keep a house lively.’ His lordship leaned back in the chair and stretched. ‘The Queen tells me she’ll be here for the wedding.’
‘We??
?re honoured, my lord.’
‘God’s breath! Honoured?’ His lordship laughed. ‘She can’t abide the groom’s mother. I hoped that would keep her away. Maybe the weather will?’
‘You hoped, my lord?’
‘Dear God, man, entertaining Her Majesty is not easy! And she’ll bring Christ knows how many courtiers, who all need wine, food, and flattery. But if the river’s frozen …’
‘Then she might come by coach, my lord,’ my brother suggested mischievously.
‘She’s in Greenwich. It’s the river or nothing,’ Lord Hunsdon said, then paused as the serving man brought a tray with a jug of sack and two goblets. His lordship waved away the servant’s help and poured the sack himself. ‘The water under the bridge wasn’t frozen the last time I looked. Like as not she’ll be here.’ He pushed a cup towards my brother. ‘She may not stay for the feast. Who knows?’
‘If she doesn’t stay, my lord, she’ll miss the play.’
‘My wife says you should play in the afternoon. Before the feast.’
‘Really, my lord?’
‘She says too much wine makes folk sleepy. And she likes your play.’
‘Her ladyship hides her opinion well,’ my brother said drily.
Lord Hunsdon laughed. ‘She’s cracked the whip, eh?’
‘Indeed, my lord.’
‘Now you know how it feels.’
‘Only too well, my lord. I also have a wife.’
‘Here, in London?’
My brother shook his head. ‘She stays in Stratford,’ he said, then paused. ‘It’s better that way.’
‘Yet I doubt you lack for company.’
‘No more than does your lordship.’
Lord Hunsdon laughed. ‘You knew Emilia?’
‘I do know her, my lord.’
‘A good woman, a good woman!’ Lord Hunsdon sounded wistful.
‘And married now.’
‘Indeed she is,’ his lordship said gloomily, then drank deep from his cup and poured more sack. I listened enthralled. It was plain that his lordship liked my brother, and equally plain that my brother was comfortable with his lordship, and I wondered if I would ever have the confidence to chat casually with a great lord. And Lord Hunsdon, the Queen’s closest relative, was indeed great. He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the shadowed beams where the swags of expensive satin hung. ‘Eight daughters! Eight weddings! Christ help us.’