Mask of Night (16 page)

I must be very precise about the afternoon of the play performance. About all of it. “Every detail may be significant,” someone said to me later. Judge for yourself.

The first surprise – but a very minor one in view of what happened later in the day – was the information that Doctor Fern was to take part in our Golden Cross
Romeo and Juliet
. Shakespeare had hinted to me that his old friend had once had acting ambitions, and now our author proposed that, for a single performance, Fern should don his mantle (or his Franciscan cassock) as Laurence, the Friar who gives comfort to Romeo and provides the sleeping draught for Juliet.

“But he’s not even a proper member of our Company,” said Abel Glaze, with the outrage of the newcomer. Abel was playing the apothecary of Mantua who sells Romeo the poison with which he kills himself. My friend had a couple of other little roles as well but he felt aggrieved that a big part was going to a “play-dabbler” like Fern.

“Why has Shakespeare surrendered his own lines? I don’t understand,” he persisted.

“Because they’re his lines so he can dispose of them as he wants,” I said.

“And how does this doctor person, this play-dabbler, know these lines, anyway? Has he been in rehearsals? No, he hasn’t.”

“He knows the lines the same way we do. By rote. I hear he’s been studying night and day since we arrived, and also that Burbage and Shakespeare have run through his moves with him.”

Abel snorted.

“It’s no use objecting, Abel. Master Shakespeare is a shareholder and may do as he pleases, provided the other seniors agree. And Doctor Fern is our sponsor too, we’re here in this town mostly because of him. If he wants to tread the boards then he will be indulged . . . ”

“Go on, Nick. You’re very good at digging up reasons – or should that be excuses?”

“Also, he’s a physician and that will give authority to Laurence’s talk of herbs and remedies. And look at his hair and the way he’s going bald. There’s even something friarly about
that
.”

“It’s not professional,” was the best that Abel could come up with in answer.

Since there won’t be another opportunity, I may as well record here and now that – as far as he went – Doctor Hugh Fern provided a good performance as Friar Laurence. No one in the paying audience ought to have felt short-changed that this meaty part was being enacted by a man whom Abel Glaze had disparagingly referred to as a “play-dabbler”. It was only a pity that the good Doctor was not permitted to deliver his lines to the very end.

For one thing, as I’d indicated to Abel, Fern looked right. With his round face and cheerful smile, he had the reassuring appearance of someone you would instinctively trust and turn to. Although he and Mercutio don’t share any scenes together on stage, I was able to hear a few of his lines from off-stage, and there was some comment among the Chamberlain’s afterwards that the day he decided to take up medicine was a decided loss to the English stage. (Mind you, people do tend to talk in that rather grand style about someone who’s just died.) But they were right, he was a loss. To medicine, if not to the theatre.

If you think that I sound worked up about a man whose hand I’d shaken once and who’d only uttered a few words in my direction, then I should explain that I was one of the last people to see Hugh Fern alive. More than that, we had enjoyed a conversation together.

There was cause to remember that meeting later and I went over what we had said, or rather what
he
had said, several times in my mind to try to extract some clue out of his words. I even made some notes about our dialogue a few hours after his shocking death.

Although the Golden Cross Inn was a good place for playing as far as the audience was concerned – there was plenty of room for those who wanted to stand and, for those prepared to pay a bit more and hire stools or chairs, there was a wide gallery running round the entire yard – it was a little deficient from the players’ point of view. The stage itself was a simple raised platform with booths for exits and entrances on opposite sides at the back, and a larger curtained area in the middle to simulate “indoor” scenes such as the Friar’s cell or the tomb of the Capulets. The rear of the stage was concealed by canvas sheeting, painted with bright swirls of red and blue and green that were without meaning, and so adaptable to whatever action might be played out in front of it.

It was a simple set-up. There’s nothing wrong with simplicity. In fact, there’s an invigorating aspect to playing in an inn yard since it harks back to our origins as players (though not mine personally). But you get used to little comforts and amenities, only noticing them when they’re gone. At our home in the Globe playhouse we had plenty of room to put our costumes on and off, just as we had secure nooks for the manuscripts containing our lines, and storage places for everything from pikes and pistols to coins and candle-holders, as well as offices for the tire-man, the book-man and the shareholder-players.

Naturally the Golden Cross possessed none of these amenities. It wasn’t a haven for players but an inn where people stayed the night or chatted and drank away their waking hours. However, Owen Meredith, the landlord, had let us have a row of adjoining “rooms” convenient for the stage, in which we might change our costumes, store our few effects, & cetera. These spaces were little more than cupboards for the lumber of the inn, full of old barrel staves, discarded bottles, splintered bits of benching and piles of rag. A beery and vinous smell hung about them, not unpleasant. We tidied up the interiors and took them over for our costumes and effects but, even so, if the garments had had to remain there for more than a few days they would have picked up the mildew while our blunted foils would have gathered the rust.

These “rooms” were in the far right-hand corner of the yard as you approached it coming from the street. They occupied one side of a covered passage which led out into an unroofed alley which, in turn, would conduct you between the Golden Cross Inn and the Tavern next door until you emerged into the wider area of Cornmarket Street. Since there seemed to be a certain coolness between the two hostelries you might have thought of this short, narrow alley as the neutral territory between two rival camps. Certainly it looked scruffy and neglected, with the half-eaten corpses of a couple of cats at one end and live rats which were nearly as big as the dead cats and which scarcely bothered to move if you poked your head round the corner.

You could have gained access to either inn by means of this alley if you were coming from the street. There was an entrance directly into the Tavern about half-way along the alley wall as well as the opening to the covered passage at the far end which connected to the Golden Cross yard. You could have gained access to either inn by this means, I say, but it was unclear why anyone would want to do so, since the alley was dirtier, muddier and much less salubrious than the normal approaches via the yard of each hostelry.

There was a makeshift bench in the yard of the Golden Cross near the inner entrance to the covered passage and in the double shadow of the overhead gallery and the backstage cloth. It was nothing more than a couple of planks supported on two barrels, and put there, I suppose, for the convenience of those who might want to sit down after the labour of shifting stuff into or out of the store-rooms.

On this fateful afternoon I’d dressed myself in my costume as Mercutio. Because we were on tour we had no tire-man to help us into and out of our costumes. Or, more accurately, we had no fastidious Bartholomew Ridd to fuss and fret over torn lace and missing gloves. He’d chosen to stay in London. We had to see to everything ourselves. This included the laundering of our clothes – a significant requirement if you’re playing in a tragedy and you are wounded or killed, and have to get the blood cleaned off.

There was about a quarter of an hour to go. An expectant, buzzing sound came floating out from the depths of the inn yard, as welcome to the player as the sound of bees to the bee-keeper. One way or another, that sound is honey to us all. Behind the platform or stage a couple of the pot-boys were busy sweeping the ground, making all neat and tidy for the players’ comings and goings. Feet scuffled on the boards of the overhanging gallery. Some of my fellows were already mixing with the arriving audience. This is not something I like doing
before
a play. Afterwards is all right, when the action is done and you are about to resume your real self, but doing it before somehow seems to diminish the mystery.

This was the first time I’d played the role of Mercutio in public and I felt a fluttering in my stomach which was more intense – as if the little hive of bees was inside me rather than out in the yard – than the apprehension I usually experienced before going on stage. I’d grown accustomed to these feelings and the gradations in them over the last few years with the Chamberlain’s. A familiar part in a play still provoked nervousness, but somehow it was a homely kind of nerves. A new part, on the other hand, produced a heightened state which sometimes had in it a touch of pure terror. In the early days I’d expected this sensation to get better over time, but the more experienced players denied that this ever happened. Indeed, some of them claimed that a player was nothing without his nerves, that they were required to keep him on his mettle.

I wasn’t the only one suffering from apprehension, however. I was surprised to see a friar sitting on the makeshift bench slung between the barrels, then realized it was Hugh Fern in costume. The scroll containing his lines was partially unfurled on his lap and he darted frequent glances at it, at the same time plucking at the sleeves of his grey habit. His assistant Andrew Pearman was bending forward to catch something his employer said. I wondered whether Fern was repeating his lines and saw him clasp the standing man by the shoulder as if for reassurance. The other nodded then walked off in my direction. We passed with the slightest of acknowledgements.

The Doctor’s expression was clouded, rather like the sky hanging over Oxford at this moment. I wasn’t sure whether he remembered who I was but at least he should recognize me, in my costume, for a member of the Company. We started to talk (and here I must admit that part of my motive was to glean some details about Shakespeare’s early life). I addressed him familiarly. It is wonderful how much of a leveller it is to act in a play together.

Nick Revill
: Welcome to our Company, Doctor.

Hugh Fern
: Thank you . . . Master . . . Revill, isn’t it? Nicholas? Tell me, how do I do as a friar?

NR
: Very well. Although perhaps . . .

HF
: Yes?

NR
: The shoes.

HF
: Too many buckles? Too much decoration for a religious man?

NR
: Well, now you mention it. But your habit is good.

HF
: The habit belongs to William Shakespeare, but the shoes are mine.

NR
: It’s surprising how the audience notices shoes, how the groundlings do anyway. They’re on the same level, you see.

HF
: It looks as though it might rain. What happens if it rains? Will the play be postponed?

NR
: No, we play on.

HF
: Whatever the weather?

NR
: I remember once at the Globe playhouse in London the fog was so thick that – some person – some foolish player – walked off the stage unawares and fell down with a terrible clatter among the groundlings.

HF
: I hope it was during a comedy.

NR
: Unfortunately it was a tragedy. It took the audience some time to settle down afterwards.

HF
: And the player?

NR
: No harm done, nothing worse than sprained pride.

HF
: It is yourself you mean?

NR
: Yes. I was that foolish player.

HF
: Do not be too hard on yourself.

NR
: I hear that you and William Shakespeare have been friends since boyhood.

HF
: Since boyhood.

NR
: Doctor Fern, I will be open with you. Such is my admiration for Master Shakespeare that I am eager to learn every detail of his life.

HF
: Then surely you should ask
him
, Master Revill.

NR
: He said once that in your younger days you went – went hunting together in company?

HF
: Oh that. He has been telling you, I suppose, that we poached deer together – ?

NR
: Well . . .

HF
: On the estate of Sir Thomas Lucy near Stratford. Did he tell you also how he was caught by Sir Thomas and whipped and imprisoned but broke out of gaol with the help of some friends and then ran away to London, though not before penning a short satire against the Lucy family?

NR
: Oh no. No, he didn’t say any of that. Is that how it happened then?

HF
: It’s one of the stories I’ve heard. Stories tend to attach themselves to Master Shakespeare. People believe that they can say what they want about him and that he will not take offence.

NR
: Is that true? That he would never take offence?

HF
: Of course it’s not. What would you think of a man who never took offence at anything said about him?

NR
: Well, he was the one who spoke about the deer first.

HF
: And speaking for myself, I have never taken a deer in my life, Master Revill, nor have I ever been out poaching with William Shakespeare.

NR
: Oh.

HF
: You should believe nothing without the testimony of your own eyes, and not even then. I am very fond of William but he’s a play-maker who lives in a world of kings and castles and murderers, and if he has to choose between a fat story and a starved reality then he will pick the first one every time.

NR
: He would sacrifice a lot for a pun. He made a pun about hunting harts. He loves a pun.

HF
: Very true. Never mind, Master Revill, if you have discovered that Shakespeare has stretched the truth and that you’ve been ready to listen to him. You’re not the first. And you’re a Sagittarius, I remember. It’s one of the marks of your sign.