George Dart was so moved that he started to clap his hands in spontaneous applause until cuffed into silence by Thomas Skillen. They were in their tiring-house, a room off the Great Chamber, where The Italian Tragedy would be performed. Scenery from their rivals’ play had been removed and their own scenic devices were waiting to be carried out. Sharing the occasion with a rival company, they had little time to rehearse on the stage itself and that induced a general nervousness but it was largely dispelled by Firethorn’s speech. Westfield’s Men knew what was at stake. They had to act for their livelihoods.
Nicholas Bracewell moved among his fellows to check their costumes and issue reminders about cues to be taken and properties to be used. He paid particular attention to the apprentices, young boys who would profit most from his reassuring presence and whose dresses and farthingales, head-tire and fans would come under the intense scrutiny of the very court ladies whom the apprentices were counterfeiting. Every detail had to be right, every move and gesture so convincing that the audience would not even realise that they were looking at four boys in female attire.
They could hear the heavy murmur of anticipation in the Great Chamber. The room was filling up. Wooden tiers of seats covered in green baize had been erected against all four walls. A canopied throne was set for the Queen on a carpeted podium in front of a high stand at the head of the Chamber. Red velvet cushions had been set out on the floor in readiness for selected ladies to lounge and pose. The stage itself was a rectangle in the middle of the hall, some twenty feet wide and not much above twenty-five feet long. Since the play would be viewed from all sides of the arena, scenery had to be used to decorate without obscuring any part of the action.
The floor was made of polished wood, ideal for dancing and much more solid than the quaking boards on which they acted at the Queen’s Head. Instead of open sky above an inn yard, they would be acting beneath an ornamented and fretted ceiling of hard plaster. Instead of competing with the bells and street clamour of London, their voices would be clarified by the tapestried walls and the solid ceiling. Hundreds of branched candles, hung on wires, stretched across the room.
Most of the audience were in position but the throne and all the scaffolds in the upper part of the room were empty, guarded by yeoman with halberds. The Gentleman Usher sounded a warning, then twelve trumpets announced the approach of the Queen and her train. Everyone in the Chamber rose to their feet and the actors in the tiring-house felt a surge of pride which was tempered with a dryness in the mouth. They were almost there. Elizabeth I, Queen of England, had come to witness their performance.
They could hear the exact moment of her entry into the Great Chamber. It was a long procession. The trumpeters came first, then the heralds in their coats of arms, then the nobles and Knights of the Garter. Distinguished foreign visitors to the palace were also included, led by the Lord Chamberlain with a white staff which he used to marshal the fifty Gentlemen Pensioners, who acted as the Nearest Guard, and who, bearing gilt poleaxes, formed a hedge on either side. The Earl of Banbury was given the honour of bearing the crimson-sheathed Sword and the Lord Keeper carried the Great Seal. Then came the Queen herself, arrayed in all her finery, sweeping majestically into the Chamber with Ladies of Honour in her wake. Only when she was escorted to her throne by the Lord Chamberlain and lowered herself into it did anyone else dare to seat themselves.
To the waiting actors, it seemed like an eternity before they were given their signal. When it came, George Dart and the other assistants swiftly carried out the scenery and stage properties. After bowing to the Queen, they set them in position then bowed again and withdrew. There was a murmur of approval at the brightly painted scenic devices. The play opened in the Great Hall of a castle. At a glance, the audience could tell exactly where they were.
The Chamberlain used his staff to beat on the floor.
‘Sound, trumpets!’ he ordered. ‘Sound out!’
The ringing fanfare was their cue. With Firethorn at their head, the company walked bravely into the Chamber and bowed three times before distributing themselves around the stage. Those who did not appear in the first scene sat on green rushes at the edge of the stage. Book in hand, Nicholas sat among them to watch and control. Peter Digby and his consort took up their positions to the side of the stage, their instruments tuned. The Lord Chamberlain raised his staff again and boomed over the hubbub.
‘Peace! Ha’ peace! Let the play commence.’
Silence slowly fell on the banked audience and the music started. Owen Elias stepped out to deliver the Prologue, bowing to the Queen, before declaiming the words which Edmund Hoode had penned during the long hours of the previous night.
‘Good friends, for friendship is our constant aim,
Y’are welcome to a play that will not maim
A king with crookback vile and wicked tongue
Nor let a merry looking glass be hung
In front of London town. To Italy we go,
And there, for your delight, we straightway show
What history so often sadly finds,
Upright men with dark and crooked minds
That make King Richard seem a silver saint,
For all those layers of black Banburian paint,
Which you have seen this very afternoon
Splashed thick upon a foul, misshapen loon.
You will not have a lock of London’s hair
In Italy. Dear friends, we take you there
To show you lust, deceit and civil strife,
To hold our Westfield mirror up to Life!’
The first burst of applause broke and the spirits of the whole company were lifted. Even their patron was encouraged. Angered at the sight of his hated rival, bearing in the Sword with such dignity, he smiled at the mention of Banburian paint and laughed aloud at the play on Viscount Havelock’s name. He was also reminded what a fine, clear-voiced actor Owen Elias was. Seated beside him, the Countess of Dartford did not let her gaze linger on the Welshman. It was Lawrence Firethorn who commanded her full attention. Magnificently attired as the Duke of Milan, he moved around the stage with an authority and grace which was breathtaking.
The Italian Tragedy proved a happy choice. It was a brilliant study of political duplicity and, since it involved Court spies from France, Spain and Holland, it enabled the audience to laugh at four different nationalities while realising at the same time that they were watching eternal traits of human nature which they themselves possessed. Firethorn was inspired as the villainous Duke, plotting, seducing, betraying, stabbing and poisoning his way through five acts of heady drama. Richard Honeydew was so moving as his hapless victim that even the Queen herself had to brush away a tear. Edmund Hoode was elevated to papal status and reinforced the Protestant prejudices of his audience with a display of scheming and manipulation. Owen Elias was the valiant hero who finally vanquished the tyrannical Duke.
It was Barnaby Gill, however, who gleaned the most applause. Relieved to be back with the company and smarting at his folly in considering defection, he was determined to atone for his mistake and pushed himself to the outer limits of his art. His timing was perfect, his gestures vivid, his facial contortions a delight and his dances a source of pure joy. The comic songs which Hoode had inserted into the play for him were greeted with thunderous clapping and the Queen’s hand patted the arm of her throne in acknowledgement. Those who had laughed at A Looking Glass for London discovered what real laughter was.