Mistress Shakespeare (17 page)

 

An infidel indeed! Why did this playwright Marlowe earn a pass in London, spouting such lines when Christians, be they Catholic instead of Protestant, were prosecuted? Why had not Edmund Tilney, the queen’s Master of Revels, censored this content and levied fines, or demanded revisions, as he did of other playwrights? No wonder the Puritans and some of the city fathers not only reviled the raucous playhouse crowds but questioned the purpose of some plays.

But as the powerful language swept me up in its embrace, I became seduced by it too. No couplets here, few rhymes, no hints of sonnet structure. It boasted a beat but was more like natural speech. Even the groundlings stood raptly at attention.

I began to cry, not for the deeply moving impact of the actors or the genius of the daring mind that had written this drama, but because that damned Will Shakespeare was not here to hear it and to top it.

After the play, as I had planned, I hustled Maud to the back door and waited for someone important-looking to step out. I knew James and Richard Burbage would be possibilities; I planned to tell them I’d seen their plays in Stratford. A few others hung about too, herb girls, the slovenly wenches who sold oranges and hazelnuts and a few blatant whores. A small rabble of men also watched the back door like hawks. I hoped the theatre manager would not be detained by any of them.

As we waited, I studied the Theatre and its environs. The half-timbered, three-story building was built of lath and plaster walls; it boasted two outside staircases by which guests could climb to their gallery seats. The small lot was crammed between a garden and Great Horse Pond, where those who rode left their horses to be watched by boys. On another side of the structure, pens of complaining cattle waited to be dispatched in a nearby slaughterhouse. In addition to the stench of the animals, a sewer ran past, heading toward Finbury Fields. If patrons came from the west, they entered the area through a hole in a brick fence and skirted the sewer. Yet, once inside, the skill of the actors made everyone trade raucous reality for fine, faraway fictional scenes.

Finally, a chestnut-bearded man came out the back door with his arm around a younger, sloe-eyed one whose unruly dark hair looked as if he’d combed it with a spoon. The young man was flashily garbed in a padded black doublet with blood-red slashings, and gartered purple tights outlined his shapely legs.

To my dismay, several of the people waiting leaped at the older man for whatever purposes, chattering away at him. He wasn’t one of the Burbages, but he would have to do. I stepped closer, doffing my cap before I realized I should keep it on. Though I quickly replaced it, the younger man’s eyes fastened on me, raking me up and down. He shrugged himself away from the cluster of men and came straight for us—or me, rather, for Maud was timid and hung back.

“Did you see
Tamburlaine the Great
?” he asked with a smile.

“Yes, and it was great indeed,” I told him, trying to pitch my voice low.

He smiled even broader, displaying large, strong teeth. A slight mustache above and a thin goatee below edged his full-lipped mouth. His eyes were strangely shiny, like silver shillings.

“What part did you favor most?” he prompted.

“I found it all amazing and daring, as does everyone.”

“Ah, but I have not chosen to speak to everyone.”

I tried to place this young man as an actor, but realized I must be speaking to the playwright Marlowe himself. “You wrote those bold words?” I asked, wishing I sounded more learned, more clever.

“And have more where those came from—such as, will you come have a drink and talk with me, my lad?”

Of course, he thought I was a lad—didn’t he? “But why me? I’m sure you have friends, and your friend there—”

“Has seen the play two score times not counting endless rehearsals, so I can hardly ask his opinion, can I? Is that other lad with you?”

“Yes, and truth be told, we intended to talk to someone about buying scented cushions for the gallery seats. My friend makes herbal pomanders, tussie-mussies, and we’ve sold such to some wherry owners so I—”

“Ah, I have it!” he declared and took Maud by the elbow to march her up to the cluster of men. “Roger,” he said to his friend, interrupting several conversations, “this lad needs to talk to you about making us seat cushions—for a fair fee, mind you, whether they are provided by the Theatre or rented by the audience for each performance—scented ones too. I insist you take him up on it, and I’m going to discuss such with his partner over there. I’m sure you can talk the Burbages into it. See you later at the tavern on Holywell.”

Whether he thought I was fish or fowl, I was grateful to Christopher Marlowe. But I was not such a country maid that I did not realize he must have seen I was a woman in disguise and that had intrigued him. I was pleased he had mentioned the Burbages, but it went right out of my head to discuss their Stratford ties with him or tell him I had seen them perform there.

“I need to wait for my friend,” I insisted, but my feet kept easily up with his as he steered me along. To have the ear of the nation’s premier playwright, to be able to probe his brain . . . I only hoped that his ear and his brain were all I would have to contend with if he’d noted I was a woman. “I don’t mean to mislead you,” I told him, “and I wasn’t born yesterday so—”

“But you are country born and bred,” he said, stretching his strides and keeping a hand on my arm so that I hurried apace with him. “I can hear it in your flat vowels, though you’ve done quite a good job of covering it. Coventry? Oxford? ’S bones, somewhere in the midlands, I warrant. But I assure you, I favor rural ways, and you have such a striking face.”

“Then you know.”

“Know what?” he demanded as I pulled back when he would have dragged me in the door of a very noisy alehouse.

“That I’m in disguise.”

“My sweet boy, we’re all in disguise one way or the other. Are you a runaway apprentice? I promise to give you a place to hide.”

“I’m a woman, Master Marlowe, one who didn’t want to flaunt herself as others do to come to Shoreditch without a man.”

“’S bones!” he clipped out and pushed me against the outside tavern wall.

“You knew that, didn’t you?” I challenged. “Because else, why would you pick a mere lad to be with y—”

He pressed his palms against my bound breasts through my doublet and shirt and swore a string of oaths. Like other Londoners who considered themselves stylish, each curser used God’s name in vain, coupling that holy word with something common, such as God’s nightgown, God’s teeth, God’s bones. The curser left off all but the final
s
of God’s name, so it came out
’s teeth
and such. Perhaps I was yet a country maid for “Faith!” and “Devil take it!” were the main meat of my swearing so far.

“’S teeth, I knew it was too good to be true!” he ranted, stomping both feet like a boy denied sweets. He yanked me to the door of the tavern and held me there a minute. My eyes adjusted to the dim light; I took in the men and lads within—and then I realized that the boys were
with
the men. Devil take it, Jennet had said Marlowe was a sodomite! I blushed to the roots of my hair.

“So you didn’t know my sex?” I stammered as he tugged me outside again.

“You’re exotic enough I could almost say it didn’t matter.”

“Tamburlaine’s Egyptian wife come to life?”

“’S bones,” he said, snapping his fingers, “perhaps that’s it. Let’s just say I had hopes, damn you, the prettiest boy I’ve seen in ages—but then, what a woman, eh? Will you tell me your name? Are you one of the Virgin Queen’s naughty unvirginal ladies in bold search of forbidden fancies?”

“You had my speech aright—I’m from Stratford and run a business in London now, but I’m no lady.”

“I like the sound of that. And your business is to make sweet cushions for sweet bums?”

“A side interest. But I am an admirer of plays.”

“And playwrights, I pray.”

“
Do
you pray, Christopher Marlowe?”

“Ah, a clever and tart tongue is tastier than a sweet one,” he said, wetting his lips, deliberately, slowly, as if he planned to devour me.

I tried to ignore his blatant provocation and said nothing. Will had called me Lady Tongue once, and Marlowe’s parry that he hoped I admired playwrights had hit home. I felt a rush of longing for Will, but fought it back.

Marlowe ogled me again and reached around to pat my bottom. “I must tell you, lady or lad, you sport a lovely cushion of your own. Will you not tell a poor poet and playwright your name? And you may call me Kit, as do my closest friends.”

“Your male friends?”

“
Touché
,” he retorted, though I knew not what he meant by that word and had no intention of asking or standing here longer. Several men going in had made rude comments. I was just starting to walk away when the man Marlowe had called Roger strolled up with two other men in tow.

“I hope you’ve struck a good bargain with the lad,” Roger said as he tipped his hat to us and headed in. “I’ve promised the quiet one of the two a pretty penny for a passel of pillows. Mark that alliterative line for your new
Doctor Faustus
play, you Cambridge-educated sot,” he called back to Kit.

“Speak for yourself and find another friend for yourself, you goatish wag-tail!” Kit shouted. He winked at me, pinched my bum again, but followed the men inside.

As I ran home, bells began to peal and distant shouts echoed in the streets. I found an excited Maud with a written promise for cushions in her hand waiting for me with Jennet in the kitchen. Rushing in from the shop, John hurried to join us, clapping his hands over his head as if he would dance.

“A citywide celebration!” he cried. Maud and I glanced at each other as if it could be for us. Or, I thought in the instant before John said more, it might as well be a revel that I am finally over my past with Will. I’ve met and befriended and escaped unscathed from the most popular playwright in the city—in the entire land!

“Word’s come that Mary, Queen of Scots, has been beheaded for her plotting ’gainst our queen!” John announced. “One Catholic threat to Her Majesty’s throne down and one to go, when we singe the beard of the king of Spain! We’ll sink whatever Spanish galleons he dares send into our sovereign waters!”

I had seldom seen him more excited. Jennet ran to his arms, and he swung her around. I glared at them until I caught myself. Of a certain, they would lie together tonight, and I feared the results. Jennet would never bear up under the loss of another child. And, sad to say, I resented that I had no one to hug and love and bed with myself.

 

 

 

About seventeen months later,
in late July of 1588, as John Davenant had predicted, the Spanish Armada approached England’s shores. The queen herself played a role in rallying her troops on the beach at Tilbury for, costumed in chest armor, she rode among them to demand victory. She delivered a fine soliloquy about being a “weak and feeble woman but with the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too!” Whatever some thought of her, I loved her all the more for her boldness. She was hardly weak and feeble, but brave, and I longed to be like her.

Praise be to God, in mid-August, the large, lumbering Spanish Armada proved to be no match for the quick, smaller English fleet, cobbled together by the queen, her nobles and certain sea captains. It was Agincourt all over again, with swiftness and agility conquering bulky weight and old ways.

In the midst of the city celebrations, three theatre passes arrived for John, Jennet and me to attend the premier of Kit Marlowe’s latest play,
Doctor Faustus,
the title I had heard mentioned that day I’d met him. The dimwit boy who brought the tickets said the donor was “Nonny-muss.”

I had not seen nor heard from Marlowe. Had it taken him this long to track me down? Maud must have given something away when the last of two hundred cushions was delivered to the Theatre and James Burbage paid our fee.

But John refused to attend a work by “that pagan Marlowe” and Jennet was heavily pregnant again, so I took Maud and another herb girl. We went garbed as lads to celebrate our good luck and thank Kit for the tickets, though I had no intention of going off with him alone again.

I had seen one other play by Kit Marlowe since our meeting, a revenge drama called
Hamlet
, full of blood and guts and no subtleties of character at all. I hated myself for it, but I spent most of the days after that wondering what Will would have done with that story. It would be nearly thirteen years before I found out.

But today at the debut of Kit’s third play, the expectation was palpable.

“Everyone’s still excited about the Armada’s defeat,” Maud said, settling herself on her own cushion, for the passes were for the first row center of the gallery. We faced the musicians just above the stage in their own elevated box; I noted well the music they played was stirring, not soothing, yet I’d heard this story was a domestic drama, not one set on the battlefield.

“I can tell these seats are from the playwright,” Maud’s wide-eyed friend Dorothy whispered. She was rightly awed, but it annoyed me that she said everything in such a breathy way. “The finer folk here are staring at us, I can tell.”

“There are no finer folk than us today and don’t forget it,” I told her as I nonchalantly peeled an orange. It smelled a good bit better up here than in the pit, that was for certain. Our cushions were a great success.

I was determined to soak in this show. Perhaps I’d even send a missive home to Will through Dick Field, whom I hadn’t seen in ages, all about what popular playwrights were doing with the London stage. Yes, I felt far enough removed from my passion for Will now to encourage him again in his own writing. Whatever he did, I told myself, it was no skin off my nose. Besides, the truth was, I knew such a letter of my worldly, literary pursuits would rot his very bones, still stuck in Stratford as he was.