‘It was never so in Cyril Fulbeck’s day.’
‘Where might I find this Raphael Parsons?’
‘At the Blackfriars Theatre. He rehearses daily.’
‘And Master Fulbeck?’
‘There, too, as like as not. Master Parsons teaches the boys to be actors, but only Cyril Fulbeck can transform then into real choristers.’ Ingram’s curiosity was aroused. ‘If you need to go there, Nick, I would gladly bear you company.’
‘I accept that offer with thanks.’
‘Cyril Fulbeck is always delighted to see his old choristers. My presence may open doors that would otherwise be closed to you.’
‘It is settled, James. We’ll go together.’
A rousing cheer interrupted their discussion. They turned to see that a small miracle had taken place behind them. The rain had stopped. The sun was wrestling with the clouds. Westfield’s Men shouted and clapped and stamped their feet with delight. Jonas Applegarth, soaked to the skin, was the happiest man in the yard. The Misfortunes of Marriage might after all be performed that afternoon.
***
The audience that streamed into the innyard a few hours later had no notion of the frenetic activity which had preceded their arrival. Under the supervision of Nicholas Bracewell, the assistant stagekeepers swept the water off the scaffold and strewed it with dry rushes so that an attenuated rehearsal could commence. While that was in progress, the mud was brushed into the corners of the yard and the benches in the galleries were rubbed with dry cloth. George Dart, the lowliest member of the company, was given the job of wringing the damp out of their flag. When it was hoisted at two o’clock to show that a play was being performed, they wanted it to unfurl proudly in the breeze.
Edmund Hoode was despatched to Barnaby Gill’s lodging with the fictitious tale that the latter’s role in the play had been assigned to Owen Elias instead. Professional pride was a shrewd surgeon. It effected a complete recovery in a matter of seconds and had Gill leaping from his bed of pain with a yell of indignation. Both men were soon taking their places on the stage at the Queen’s Head.
Only a double blessing could have made the performance possible. Not only did the storm abate but a second wonder occurred. Jonas Applegarth behaved with impeccable restraint. Instead of cajoling the players, he watched the rehearsal in silence. Instead of unsettling the company with his fearsome presence, he was kept out of their way by Nicholas while the actors snatched refreshment before the performance.
By the time that Lord Westfield and his cronies took their places on the cushioned chairs in their privileged position in the lower gallery, all was in readiness. Bright sunshine turned the thatch into spun gold. Ladies and gallants filled the seating with a veritable riot of colour. The book holder made a final check behind the scenes, then signalled to Peter Digby. Music played and The Misfortunes of Marriage began.
The Induction had the spectators laughing within a matter of seconds. Four apprentices-Martin Yeo, John Tallis, Stephen Judd and Richard Honeydew-attired as choirboys, burst onto the stage in the middle of a fierce argument over who should take the leading roles in a play about Samson. They fought over Samson’s club, each grabbing it in turns to strike at the others. Since all four of them were far too young and puny to convince in the Herculean role, the audience shook with mirth.
Competition for the part of Samson was matched by four-sided rejection of Delilah. None of the boys wished to don the long red wig of the betrayer, and they threw it at each other continually like a dead cat, hideous to the touch. In the space of a short scene, the stage had been filled with violent action, the audience’s attention had been seized and they had been given, as they would later come to realise, the central theme of the comedy.
The interplay between marriage and religion fascinated Jonas Applegarth. It did not matter that Samson and Delilah were lovers rather than man and wife. The Biblical story was ingrained in the minds of all who watched. While the standees in the yard loved the wild antics of the boys, the sharper minds in the galleries also relished the satire on the children’s theatre companies. When the scene ended with Richard Honeydew, the youngest of the apprentices, in the guise of Samson, and with lantern-jawed John Tallis, the fattest of them, as Delilah, the deficiencies of the Chapel Children and the Children of St Paul’s were writ large. Championing the adult company with whom he worked, Jonas Applegarth mocked their fledgling rivals mercilessly.
The Misfortunes of Marriage was a glorious romp with a serious undertone. Its plot revolved around Sir Marcus Coldbed, a wealthy landowner in search of a pretty young wife to satisfy his almost uncontrollable lust. When he marries the beauteous Araminta, he discovers that she is a strict Roman Catholic with a rooted objection to physical contact and an absolute horror of sexual intercourse. To keep her lecherous husband at bay, Araminta employs her Jesuit confessor, Father Monfredo, as a holy bodyguard, allowing him to sleep in the anteroom to her bedchamber in order to protect her virtue. Shuddering with comic frustration, Sir Marcus spends his wedding night in a freezing-cold bed.
Out of sheer desperation, Sir Marcus turns for help to the weird Doctor Epididymis, a notorious mountebank who poses as astrologer, alchemist and necromancer, asking him to provide a potion that will send Father Monfredo to sleep and a powder that will arouse his wife’s passion to such a point that she will demand uninhibited consummation. Potion and powder are given to the wrong victims, and it is Araminta who slumbers for twenty-four hours while her aged confessor chases every woman in sight like a mountain goat. Sir Marcus Coldbed returns to a cold bed yet again.
Lawrence Firethorn was at his supreme best as the luckless husband, bemoaning his fate with a range of comic gestures and facial expressions that kept the audience in a state of almost continual mirth.
Why, what is marriage if not a licence for a man to take his wife at will? To occupy her body with his largest proof of love and pluck the choicest fruit from out her orchard. To spurn a husband is to geld a stallion in his prime. Do Araminta’s Popish thighs not feel the prick of high desire? Is Rome an icy region down below the waist? How, then, will this old religion last if it go forth not and multiply? And how reap a harvest of Jesuitical progeny except by the downright way of creation? Man above a woman is God’s law. Man inside a woman is husband’s right. Give me the due reward of marriage. Cover this Coldbed with the hottest sheets. Let me wallow in my wife’s concupiscence. Throw off your holy garments, Araminta. Be naked in my arms. Be my slave, my mistress, my whore. Be the everlasting bride to my eternal lust. Oh, sweetest Araminta, hear my prayer. Be mine!
As the grotesque Doctor Epididymis, Barnaby Gill was equally brilliant, trotting comically around the stage after his restless client and plying him with all kinds of bogus remedies. When all else fails, the crafty doctor tells Sir Marcus that the only way he will lie beside his wife is to disguise himself as a Cardinal and tell her that it is her solemn duty to serve the Church. The trick succeeds and Araminta submits with grace. In his eagerness, Sir Marcus throws off his disguise in order to ravish her and is left clutching the pillow as she flees in panic.
Abandoning all hope of carnal delight and unable to divorce his first wife, Sir Marcus secretly marries-at the suggestion of Doctor Epididymis-a second beauty, hoping to find a bigamous outlet for his lascivious appetite. Arabella, the new Lady Coldbed, is quite unaware of the existence of his first bride, and all kinds of stratagems are needed to keep the two wives from meeting each other. What Sir Marcus does not realise until his second wedding night approaches is that Arabella is a devout Puritan and will not even share the same bedchamber with him, let alone the same bed.