The clownish Will Kemp was appointed lord of Misrule chief of Christmas festivities for lord Strange’s Men, thus ensuring that drunkenness and disorder would ride sovereign over the frantic preparations for the Twelfth Night play. And between a tailor’s visit or three, rehearsals all day and all night (and drinking at the Mermaid), occasional church services and the Twelve Days festivities, the first time Will had a moment’s silence between his own ears was on January 5. And only because a thin-lipped, towering Ned Alleyn, who, plied by Burbage with liquor and conversation, would perform with lord Strange’s Men this once, threw the entire company out of the Mermaid Tavern and into the street to ‘go home, the lot, and rest your heads so as not to lose them before Her Majesty!’
Will’s stomach had been too sour for much drinking, and now, as he lay in his bed against the warmth of the chimney, it was too sour for much sleeping.
Perform before the Queen.
He sat up in bed and let the bedclothes slip aside. A draft came between the floorboards as he set his feet down; he stood anyway, shivering with his coverlet wrapped around his shoulders, and crossed to light a candle. After unrelieved darkness, the glow warmed him as much as a fire. Perform before the Queen and her rival favorites, and remind them that their duty is to their sovereign, and not to their quarrels. Oh, I wish Annie were here to see this.
He set the candle on the sideboard and opened an oaken cupboard, drawing out the soft wine red velvet drape of his new doublet. Kit would have loved it: it fit like a second skin, snug at the waist and broad at the shoulders, slashed in peach taffeta and buttoned with knotted gilt. Kit would have been much calmer, Will thought, as he picked up a clothes brush and polished the nap of the already spotless velvet. The steady rasp of the brush on the cloth helped him think: his racing, exhausted thoughts rocked instead of spinning, and Will forced himself to breathe and contemplate.
Put on the role, and play it. Turn a trembling hand into a swordsman’s confidence, and quivering voice into an arrogant sneer. I’m a player, if I’m not a Burbage. I can manage a role indifferent well. So tomorrow I’ll be a role. And then the day after tomorrow, I will write to Annie, and see if she’ll have me home for lent.
January the sixth Twelfth Night dawned with a cold that settled over London like the locking of a chest, but even in winter of a plague year, festivity could be found. A solemn sort of merriment fought with nausea as Will peered through a gap in the draperies, amazed at the splendor of Westminster Palace bannered in holly and ivy and ablaze with more candles than a church. The great Gothic hall echoed with the busy footsteps of players and tirers, servants flitting like shadows through the bustle on any pretext to get a glimpse of the great Richard Burbage, of the famous Edward Alleyn. Alleyn was easy enough to mark: broad-shouldered as a monolith, his lips moving silently as he reviewed his cues. Burbage vanished twice for not above half an hour each time, and each time Will noticed a serving girl went missing simultaneously. One sweet dark-haired lass caught his own eye, and if it hadn’t been for fear of rumpling his doublet, he might have sought a kiss.
Just for luck.
But it was past time for that, and time to be tending to paint, reddening boys lips with carmine and lacing them into their corsetry. A black wig for Katharine and a blond wig for Bianca. Will swallowed his own fear: the younger boy, also named Edward, was trembling as Will made a mirror for his paint.
“Tis only a Queen you perform for,” Will said in the boy’s ear, tidying his kohled eye with a cloth. “Surely that’s happened before.”
Edward giggled, for all his cheeks stayed white as a bride s. Will patted Edward on the shoulder above his bodice before walking away. At least your name’s not under the title. He went to have Burbage mend his own painting. And found the round little player pacing five short steps, back and forth and back again.
Richard considered. “Too much on the lips.”
Too much indeed, Will thought, standing what seemed a moment later just out of the audience’s view.
There was the Queen, her chair surrounded by her admirers. Sir Walter Raleigh, glossy in his black, leaned to murmur in Her Majesty’s ear. Her hand came up to brush his shoulder, and the loosely sewn pearls on his doublet scattered at the snap of a thread. Will could plainly see the Queen’s condescending amusement at her favorite’s expensive conceit.
On her other side, ferret-faced Henry Wriothesley Southampton frowned at the dashing Earl of Essex in his white-and-gold, who frowned more deeply still at Raleigh, while Raleigh affected not to notice. Will noticed for all their posturing that it was Burghley’s son, Robert Cecil, to whom the Queen most often bent, and spoke, and smiled.
All fell silent as the prologue began. What would Marley do?The expected confidence did not burgeon Will, although Burbage stepped close enough to bolster him with a shoulder. But Marley was dead, or as good as: Will on his own, and‘boy: let him come, and kindly’— There’s my cue.
Will swallowed a painful bubble, let his hands fall relaxed to his sides, and stepped out on stage amid a swirl of trumpets, half convinced his voice would fail him.
“Huntsman, I charge thee, tender well my hounds:
Brach Merriman the poor cur is embossed;
And couple Clowder with the deep-mouthed brach.”
This is the stupidest thing I have ever written. She’ll have me whipped around town for stepping above my station.
A nothing part, a pompous lord, and Will had been playing on stage six years now. Still, his hand shook. The Queen. I am no Richard Burbage, to collect hearts like so many butterflies.
“Sawst thou not, boy, how Silver made it good
At the hedge corner, in the coldest fault?
I would not lose that dog for twenty pound.”
But the Queen was leaning forward in her chair, the last three fingers of her left hand moving in a faint, dismissive gesture when Essex tried to draw her attention. The Earl looked down sulkily, fiddling something in his lap. Over his shoulder, lord Burghley standing near to his son and a little further from the Queen caught Will’s eye. The boards creaked under Will’s foot. He upstaged the huntsman, forcing him to turn, so Will could follow Burghley’s gaze and catch a glimpse of Essex’s task. The Earl riffled the pages of a little book, an octavio, of a size for tucking in a sleeve or a pocket. He couldn’t be reading the playscript; it wasn’t published. And Southampton was leaning forward over Essex’s shoulder, his lips moving.
Interesting.
“Thou art a fool,
Will said.
If Echo were as fleet”
There was something, a pressure. Almost as if a stiff wind sprang up. But the Queen was laughing, and Will leaned on that, camped his dialogue, airy turn of a sleeve to offset a pompous thundering. The scene was almost all his, and he carried it. The prologue ended, and Will beat his retreat with a glance across the audience.
Engaged. Alive, at least. He gulped ale through a tight throat and leaned against a pillar, listening. It was a mistake to recruit Alleyn he’s too overblown for comedy, no, he’s managing it. Oh, this may work.He fretted his hands, one over the other, feeling the power rise up in opposition to his work. Feeling the play itself, its rhythms and stresses, the connection between player and playgoer. The surge of emotion and thought that bound the audience to the performance, and the energy that ran between them, like lovers giving one another all.