Shakespeare's Scribe (2 page)

I blinked at him in disbelief. “What,
now
, do you mean? But—but we've no more than a quarter hour before the performance begins.”

Mr. Shakespeare shrugged. “Not to worry. They're not needed until Act Four.”

“Ah, well,” I said sarcastically, “wi' that much time at me disposal, I could copy out all of
The Faerie Queene
.”

The moment Mr. Shakespeare was gone, I unfolded the sheets and stared at them, feeling dazed. “Does ‘a truly expect me to copy all these lines, and the actors to con them, before the fourth act?”

“He didn't seem to me to be jesting,” Sander said. “Did he to you?”

“Nay.” I sighed. “I'll ha' to use Mr. Heminges's desk.”

“I'll come with you and deliver the sides as you complete them.”

“Thanks.” As we headed for the property room, I said, “I sometimes get the feeling that I'm of more value to the company as a scribe than as a player.”

“Oh, I'd hardly say that.”

“I'm not complaining, mind you. Not exactly. I mean …” I lowered my voice. “In truth, I'd volunteer to clean out the jakes and haul the contents to the dung heap an that's what it took to belong to the company.”

Sander grinned. “So would I. But let's not make it known, shall we? We've enough to do already.”

There was no denying that. Our every morning was occupied with learning the essential skills of a player, our afternoons with demonstrating them upon the stage. And when we were not practicing or performing, we were engaged in some menial task—cleaning up the yard of the theatre, whitewashing the walls, polishing stage armor and weapons.

In return for all our work, we received three shillings a week, Sunday afternoons free, and, if we performed well enough, the applause of the audience. It was not an easy life. Yet I would not have traded it for any other.

Part of the attraction, of course, was the performing. Odd as it may seem, there is a satisfaction unlike any other in creating an imaginary world and in pretending to be someone you are not. That in itself may be a sign of insanity. In the world at large, after all, a wight who goes about trying to convince others that he is a woman, or a faerie, or a famous historical personage, is ordinarily shut up somewhere safe.

But the opportunity to act before an audience was not my only reason, or perhaps even my primary one, for relishing my position with the Chamberlain's Men. I had grown up an orphan, and they were the nearest thing to a family I had ever known, partly mad though they might be.

As I set to work copying out the sides, trying to strike a balance between writing speedily and writing legibly, I became aware of a sort of murmuring or rustling coming from the yard of the theatre. At first it was very like the way the wind sounds, soughing through treetops. But as it
grew in intensity, it came to resemble more the grumbling of some great beast, impatient to be fed.

It was our audience, impatient to be entertained. To soothe them, our trio of hired musicians struck up a tune, and some players came on to dance a jig for them. When the music ended, there was a moment of relative silence, followed by a ripple of laughter. Mr. Armin, one of our best actors, was on the stage now, doing his comical turn, perhaps trading gibes with the audience, perhaps impersonating one of the foolish fops who turned up at nearly every performance and sat on stools upon the very stage so they might be seen and admired by the groundlings.

These dandies seemed not to mind being mocked by Mr. Armin, whose antics included tripping over the fashionably elongated toes of his shoes or getting his ostentatious jewelry caught in his cloak; pretending to doze off, then slipping from his stool and landing on his hucklebones; or dropping his rapier and, as he bent to retrieve it, revealing a wide rip in the seat of his breeches.

The audience responded, as usual, with uproarious laughter. Mr. Armin's exit was accompanied by an explosion of applause, whistles, and cheers so enthusiastic that I looked up from my work. He came capering off the stage, wearing a broad smile that vanished the moment he was out of the audience's sight, to be replaced by an expression that, while still pleasant enough, was businesslike. “How are you progressing?” he asked.

“Nearly done,” I replied—not much of an exaggeration.

“Excellent. I knew we could depend on you.”

I nodded. As much as I appreciated the praise, it seemed faint compared to the boisterous acclaim Mr. Armin himself had just received. “Do you suppose,” I said wistfully, “that I can ever hope for a response like that?”

Mr. Armin raised his eyebrows, as though taken aback by my question. “What? The applause? The laughter? Anyone can do that. All it takes is a few pratfalls, a few jests. You want more than that, Widge. You want their silence. You want their tears.”

And how, I wondered, did I go about earning that? In my year's apprenticeship I had worked as hard as any other player or prentice, I was sure, and had been awarded ever more substantial parts—Maria in
Twelfth Night
, Rosaline in
Love's Labour's Lost
, Hero in
Much Ado About Nothing
.

But for all my seeming success, in my idle moments—of which there were few—I sometimes felt an anxious something worrying at the back of my brain. At first I could not give a name to it, but in time I recognized it for what it was—a lack of confidence in my skills, the
nagging feeling that I was an impostor, a sham. Secretly I suspected that, beneath all the trappings, behind all the grand lines I spoke, I was not a real actor but only a rootless, feckless orphan acting the part of an actor, and I feared that one day someone in the audience or in the company would expose me.

It was not an unreasonable fear. Just in the year I had been with the company, they had dismissed my friend Julia and another apprentice named Nick, who could not be considered a friend. Of course, there had been compelling reasons: Nick had stolen a play script; Julia had had the misfortune to be a girl in a profession that admitted only boys and men.

Though I had not gotten off to a very good start with the Chamberlain's Men—in fact, I had joined them initially only in order to copy down
Hamlet
for a rival company—my transgressions since then had been minor: missed cues, forgotten lines, and the like. Still, I did not feel entirely secure. If the company did decide they could do without me, God only knew what would become of me. Aside from my dubious skills as a player and a scribe, I had no means of supporting myself. Even more unpleasant than the prospect of being out on the streets was the thought of losing the only family I had ever known and being an orphan again.

2

P
erhaps it was just as well that I had little leisure to dwell on my fears. The sharers of the company, for reasons they did not feel compelled to explain to us prentices, had not bothered to replace Nick or Julia. That meant that Sander and Sam and I had to double up frequently—that is, play several parts apiece.

Our only respite came when the weather made it impossible to perform. During the winter months, the weather was not a factor, for we played indoors, usually at the Cross Keys Inn. But when spring came, the company moved to the open-air Globe Theatre.

That spring of 1602 was warmer than usual, so we began our outdoor season early in May. Unfortunately, it was also wetter than usual. Only when there was a distinct downpour did the sharers call off a performance. This did not mean that we did not work. They might simply call a rehearsal instead, in one of the practice rooms. Or they might send us out to spy on some rival company, such as the Lord Admiral's Men or the Children of the Chapel Royal, who had begun to get a reputation for their lively comedies and satires.

Though we did not regard a company of children as a serious threat, neither did we wish to underestimate them. So it was that, one sodden day in June, Sander and I were dispatched to the Blackfriars Theatre to see how much of the young upstarts' reputation was deserved. Since the essence of spying is to go unnoticed, we prentices were the logical choice for the mission, for our faces were not likely to be recognized, unadorned as they were with wigs or face paint.

Blackfriars, which lay just across the Thames from the Globe, was so called because it had once been home to a brotherhood of monks called the Black Friars. The building that housed the theatre had formerly been a guest house. The walls had been removed to create a spacious hall that was lighted, on this gloomy afternoon, by dozens of candles in sconces. While Sander pursued a vendor hawking apples, nuts, and candies, I found
us a seat a few rows back from the stage. My neighbor was a burly, sunburned man dressed in the wide-legged trousers and conical wool cap of a seaman. He was chewing as noisily as any cow at some substance that gave off a smell so acrid and spicy it made me screw up my nose.

The sailor grinned, showing teeth that had been brown to begin with and were made more so by the substance he was chewing. “Angelica root,” he said, and a bit of it came flying forth to land upon my sleeve. “'Tis a sovereign protection against the plague.” He tapped the side of his red, prominent nose. “But just to be certain, I've stuffed my nose holes with rue and wormwood.”

I felt a chill run up my back. “Why …?” I began, but my throat was thick, and I had to clear it to continue. “Why take such measures now, though? The plague is no particular threat.”

“That may be true here, but …” The man leaned down close to me, as if not wishing all to hear. “I've just come from Yarmouth, and they're dying by the dozens there. The city fathers have taken to shooting dogs, and setting off gunpowder in the streets to clear the air. It's but a matter of time before the contagion spreads to London—if it hasn't already.”

I shrank back from the man and his foul, angelica-scented breath. I had known the smell was familiar, but until that moment I had not known why. Now the answer came to me in a flash of memory. I saw myself at the age of seven, standing by my old master, Dr. Bright, as he treated a plague victim. I was heating over a candle flame some concoction of grease and herbs, which the doctor then plastered on the patient's open sores. The reek of the medicine alone was enough to nauseate; added to it was the putrid stench of the sores themselves and, underneath it all, the bitter presence of the angelica root that lay like a tumor beneath my tongue, gagging me.

Now, with the same scent strong in my nostrils, I felt nausea rising in me again, accompanied by a sickening feeling of dread. Most folk believed that the plague was caused by corrupted air. But according to Dr. Bright's theory, the contagion spread by means of tiny plague seeds, invisible to the eye, which entered our orifices and took root inside us. When they matured, they bore more seeds that went wafting, like the seeds of a dandelion, on the wind of our breath until they found fertile ground.

I sprang from my seat and made for the rear of the room, meaning to put as much distance between myself and the sailor as I possibly could. As I swam against the incoming tide of playgoers, I collided with Sander, who carried a paper cone filled with roasted hazelnuts. “Why did you not
save our spot, Widge?” he asked. “It would have given us a good view of the stage.”

“Too close,” I muttered. “The players' spittle rains down upon you when they say their
t
‘s and
p
‘s. Let's move back.” Before he could protest, I struggled on to the very last row of benches and plopped down. “This is good,” I said. “An there's a fire, we'll be the first ones out.” Agreeable as always, Sander took a seat next to me.

The play was a fairly challenging one—Jonson's satire
The Poetaster
—and the Children of the Chapel, who ranged in age from about ten to fourteen or fifteen, were sadly inadequate to the challenge. Though they tried hard to please, mugging and gesturing in an effort to coax laughs from the audience, the whole thing was more in the nature of a pageant than a performance, all surface and no depth.

I leaned over to Sander, meaning to say that I had seen enough. Then the boy who played Horace strode out upon the stage and sang,

“Swell me a bowl with lusty wine,

Till I may see the plump Lyaeus swim

Above the brim:

I drink, as I would write,

In flowing measure, filled with flame, and spright.”

I sat up in surprise. Could it be that there was a real performer among them? The newcomer was tall and thin, with a head of blond curls that would have let him play any of our young ladies' parts without benefit of a wig. Though he was likely a year or two younger than Sander or me, he had the assurance of an adult actor. His voice was not mature, and it had a rough edge to it, as though he was straining a bit to be heard. Yet he spoke his lines with such authority, such conviction, as to give the feeling not only that he understood them, but that he
meant
them.

When the boy took his bow, the applause and cheers were not quite as raucous as they had been for Mr. Armin, but they were enough to make me envious. As we left the theatre, Sander said, “Was the blond fellow truly that good, or did he only seem so put up against the others?”

“‘A was truly that good,” I replied. “I'm glad ‘a's wi' the Chapel Children and not the Chamberlain's Men.”

Sander gave me a look of surprise. “Why?”

“Because, an ‘a were wi' our company, ‘a'd have all the meaty parts, and you and I would ha' to be content wi' scraps.”

Sander laughed. “Don't price yourself so cheaply, Widge. You're as capable an actor as he is.”

“Liar,” I said, but I couldn't help feeling grateful for his loyalty. I said nothing about the sailor and his talk of the plague, for I was trying
hard not to think about it. Instead, I said, “Did not the fellow who played Tibullus put you in mind of our old friend Nick?”