A Gentleman Player Part 36

"Nay, 'tis not goodness alone--"

And she finished with a look straight and deep into his eyes. He seized her hand, and kissed it fervently.

"And thou'lt wait?" he whispered.

"Forever, if need!--but let it not be so long."

With his free hand, he grasped Kit Bottle's, and wrung from the old soldier a husky "G.o.d bless thee, boy!" Then he spurred forward in the direction silently pointed out by Anthony. At a bend of the street, he turned in his saddle, and cast a look back. His friends were motionless upon their horses, gazing after him with saddened, softened faces. A slight movement of Mistress Hazlehurst's gloved hand, and his horse had carried him from the scene; but he bore that scene ever in his heart's eye, day and night, to the coast, which, thanks to his good start and tireless riding, he reached uncaught; over sea to France, where Anthony soon brought him into sight of Sir Valentine Fleetwood, who had arrived at Dieppe not a day sooner than Hal had disembarked at Boulogne; in Paris, where Hal got an honorable post in a great man's household through the influence of Sir Valentine's wife,--for it turned out that the knight, unknown to Queen Elizabeth, had a wife, after all, a French lady whose virtue and beauty easily explained her husband's willingness to save his life at another's risk.

She was of great wealth, and, it happened, of equal grat.i.tude; whence it fell out that, when Master Marryott returned to England, after the accession of King James, he came as owner of an estate previously purchased in his name by Anthony Underhill; an estate sold by the crown, under confiscation,--no other estate, in fact, than that pertaining to Foxby Hall, in Yorks.h.i.+re.

Now it had come out that Mistress Hazlehurst's brother, before getting himself killed by Sir Valentine Fleetwood, had overladen his estate with debt, and, in conspiracy with his sister's man of business, had made way with her portion also. When the courts of law had finally established beyond doubt that she was penniless, Master Marryott was about returning to his own country, fully informed, by Anne's correspondence, of the state of her affairs. So there was afforded the unique spectacle of a lady who had remained unmarried while she was supposably an heiress, obtaining a husband the moment she was shown to be a beggar.

"I think, love," said Sir Harry (he was knighted under King James, on no better pretext than having, with his own servants, rid the northern counties of a famous robber called Rumney the Highway, whom Marryott's man Bottle slew in single combat), "I think I will write my memoirs, as everybody in France does." He sat idly touching a viol in an upper window-seat of Foxby Hall, one summer evening, while Lady Marryott as idly fingered a virginal near him.

"How now, Hal? Hast done aught wonderful in thy time? 'Faith, thou shouldst have told me!"

"Rail an thou wilt, sweet! But there is much for wonder in the matter that brought us together,--not in any doing of mine, forsooth, but in Fortune's doing. For look you, had I not indeed tarried here that night you counterfeited illness in this room, you might perforce have talked with Roger Barnet ere the six days were done, and he have sent back to Sir Valentine, who left not Fleetwood house till the last hour. Thus, perchance, Sir Valentine had not escaped to France; had he not done so, I had not fared well there, and met his lady, whose grat.i.tude took the shape of filling my purse. I had not then come back as owner of Foxby Hall at the very time my love was disowned of Fortune. But for the sad quarrel 'twixt your brother and Sir Valentine, and for my having taken up the queen's thankless errand, I had not met you in the road that night; but for the continuance of my pretence to be Sir Valentine, thou hadst not followed me to the end we wot of."

The queen's death had unsealed his lips,--though only to his wife, who was one woman that could keep a secret,--regarding her Majesty's commission.

"Why, then," said Anne, "but for the queen's lingering love of the knight, and but for her dread of seeming weak to her councillors,--for that I will take oath was her reason,--we should not be here together this moment. Ne'ertheless, 'twas a cruel queen, merely to save her pride a brief unpleasantness, to send a young gentleman to risk his life!"

"Marry, Anne, I have heard of ladies who were not queens, sending great lords further, for less! But look you, I took the errand for no reward, being minded like to Master Spenser's knight:

"'Upon a great adventure he was bond.

That greatest Gloriana to him gave (That greatest glorious Queen of Faerie land).

To win him wors.h.i.+p, and her grace to have.'

"Nay, I know thou'lt say, much virtue in her grace! But bethink you, if I looked for no other direct reward, and got none, neither did I look for the indirect rewards Fortune took it on herself to pay me withal. If I sought only the queen's grace, and mayhap received small share of that, was I not put in the way of winning thy grace, my sweet, and of all else I have?"

"Nay, perhaps Fortune had found other ways to bring these things to thee. Look out of the window, Harry, and bid Kit Bottle not make little Will run so fast. Thine old bully is the child's undoing!"

"Nay, the lad is safe with Kit; though indeed the old rascal spoils him some. What was he doing yesterday, but teaching him to counterfeit Anthony Underhill's psalm-singing? A steward of Anthony's years deserves more courtesy."

"If the boy grow up as brave a gentleman as thou, Hal, I shall be content. There be honors waiting for him in the world, I trow."

"Why, he hath some honor already, methinks, in being Will Shakespeare's G.o.dson. 'Sooth, the players will not know him for the same lad when we go again to London, he hath shot up so tall. But thou wert speaking of that night, when thy feigned tears conquered me in this room--"

"Nay, thou wert speaking of it, love."

"Thou hast never told me; never have I dared ask: was--all--counterfeit that night?"

"Why,--my lord,--the illness, indeed, was counterfeit; but the kisses--though perhaps I had withheld them, save for my purpose--were real enough. G.o.d wot, once my lips were loosed! And I marvel I could still cling to my revenge, yet yield myself to thine arms so willingly!

Nay, Hal, there's no need to act the scene anew! Out on thee, madcap, thou'st crushed my kirtle--!"

THE END.

NOTES.

NOTE 1. (Page 12.)

Mr. Fleay seems satisfied that 1601 was the year of the production of Shakespeare's first "Hamlet." But he believes it was "hurriedly prepared during the journey to Scotland," where the players had arrived by October, when they were at Aberdeen. "In their travels this year they visited the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where they performed 'Julius Caesar' and 'Hamlet.'" That "Hamlet" was the second of these two plays produced, seems evident from the allusion of "Corambis"

("Polonius") to his having played "Julius Caesar" at the University. But this speech might have been added to the first version after its original production, and before the publication in 1603 of the garbled first quarto; for two plays whose London productions are a.s.signed by Fleay to 1601 ("Satiromastix" and "The Malcontent") contain allusions to "Hamlet." If the lord chamberlain's company did not act again in London in 1601 after its departure on its travels, how account for these allusions, unless "Hamlet" had been acted in London before the company's departure? Dr. Furnivall would forestall this question by saying that "the 'Hamlet' allusions in and before 1602 are to an old play." But it seems as fair to conjecture a slightly earlier production of the new play, in accounting for these allusions, as a general revival of interest in an old play; and the fact that the allusions are not true to speeches actually occurring in Shakespeare's first "Hamlet" will not weigh with those who consider the methods of satire and burlesque. The lines in the play that seemingly attribute the company's travelling to the popularity of the "little eyases" (the Chapel Royal children acting at the Blackfriars Theatre) are rather such as would have been designed for a London audience on the eve of the company's departure, as a pretext for an exile due to royal disfavor, than for University audiences, to whom the players would less willingly confess a waning of London popularity; or than for a London audience after the company's return, when the allusion, though still of interest, would be the less likely to serve a purpose. The conclusion here driven at is, that Sir Henry Marryott's narrative is not to be impugned because he places the first "Hamlet" performance before the company's departure from London, while the investigators place it after. Heaven forfend that, even on a single unimportant question, the present writer should rush in where angels fear to tread, to the arena of Shakespearean controversy, to whose confusion even such a master as Mr. Saintsbury refrains from adding!

NOTE 2. (Page 14.)

The occasion for the lord chamberlain's players to travel was one of the numerous minor episodes of the Ess.e.x conspiracy. That plot to seize Whitehall, and dictate a change of government to the queen, was hatched at Drury House by the Earl of Ess.e.x and his friends, in January. Early in February Ess.e.x was ordered to appear before the council, and he received an anonymous letter of warning. It was decided that the rising should occur Sunday, February 8th. On Thursday, February 5th, Ess.e.x's friends went to the Globe Theatre to see Shakespeare's "Richard II."

performed,--a play affording them a kind of example for their intended action. (In the trials in March, Meyrick was indicted for "having procured the out-dated tragedy of 'Richard II.' to be publicly acted at his own charge, for the entertainment of the conspirators.") Of the shareholding members of the company of players, the one who had arranged this performance was Augustine Phillips. The rising in London, when it occurred, was abortive, and Ess.e.x was taken to the Tower, those of his adherents who surrendered, or were caught, being distributed among different London prisons. On February 18th, the confessions of several of Ess.e.x's friends were taken. The next day, Ess.e.x and Southampton, Shakespeare's friend, were brought before a commission of twenty-five peers and nine judges, in Westminster Hall. Things were done expeditiously in that reign: at 7 P.M., the same day, sentence of death was p.r.o.nounced upon Ess.e.x, and he was taken back to the Tower. Six days later, February 25th, he was beheaded. Southampton was kept a long time in prison. Four of Ess.e.x's a.s.sociates were executed. One of several remarkable features of this little affair was that the band of conspirators included Catholics and Puritans, as well as men of the established church. To return to the players: Mr. Fleay says it is "clear that the subjects chosen for historical plays by Marlowe and Shakespeare were unpopular at court, but approved of by the Ess.e.x faction, and that at last the company incurred the serious displeasure of the queen. So they did not perform at court at Christmas, 1601." In the previous Christmas season, they had given three performances at court. In Elizabeth's reign, this company acted at court twenty-eight plays, twenty of which were by Shakespeare, eight by other men. This shows that the age which could produce a Shakespeare could appreciate him,--as somebody has said, or ought to have said.

NOTE 3. (Page 18.)

"Boys were regularly apprenticed to the profession in those days," says the anonymous author of "Lights of the Old English Stage." "Each princ.i.p.al was ent.i.tled to have a boy or apprentice, who played the young and the female characters, and for whose services he received a certain sum." This certain sum was, of course, paid out, like the rent and other common expenses of the theatre, before money taken in was divided among the different shareholders. All the princ.i.p.als were shareholders. The Globe Theatre was owned by the Burbages. Hence Richard Burbage would first receive rent, as owner of the playhouse, and would later receive his part of the profits as a shareholder. As to these apprentices, one finds mention of "coadjutors," "servitors," and "hired men," not to speak of "tire-boys," "stage-boys," etc. Those boys that played female parts must have played them effectively, notwithstanding the unwillingness of Shakespeare's Egyptian queen to see, on the Roman stage, "some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness." Else would Shakespeare have dared to write, for acting, such parts as Juliet and Beatrice, and, above all, such as Rosalind and Viola, in which a boy, dressed as a boy, should yet have to seem a girl disguised? The anonymous writer already quoted says of these boys: "Thus trained under great masters, it is not to be wondered at that they grew up to be such consummate masters of their art." It is well known that women did not appear on the stage in England before 1662, forty-six years after Shakespeare's death.

NOTE 4. (Page 19.)

If anybody supposes that Burbage would not be thought a great or a finished actor, were he now alive and acting just as he did in his own day, let that person read the various poems written at his death and descriptive of the effect produced by him on his audiences. His Romeo "begot tears." His Brutus and Marcius "charmed the faculty of ears and eyes." "Every thought and mood might thoroughly from" his "face be understood." "And his whole action he could change with ease, from ancient Lear to youthful Pericles." In the part of the "grieved Moor,"

"beyond the rest he moved the heart." "His pace" suited with "his speech," and "his every action" was "grace." His tongue was "enchanting" and "wondrous." Bishop Corbet tells in verse how his host at Leicester, in describing the battle of Bosworth field, used the name of Burbage when he meant King Richard. Or let the skeptic read what Flecknoe says: "He was a delightful Proteus, so wholly transforming himself into his part, and putting off himself with his clothes, as he never (not so much as in the tyring-house) a.s.sumed himself again until the play was done.... His auditors" were "never more delighted than when he spoke, nor more sorry than when he held his peace; yet even then he was an excellent actor still, never failing in his part when he had done speaking; but with his looks and gesture, maintaining it still unto the height." His death, in 1618, so over-shadowed that of the queen of James I., as a public calamity, that after weeping for him, the people had no grief left for her Majesty.

NOTE 5. (Page 20.)

As to false beards worn on the stage at that time, recall Nick Bottom's readiness to discharge the part of "Pyramus" in "either your straw-color beard, your orange-tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French crown-color beard, your perfect yellow;" and, later, his injunction to his fellow actors to get good strings to their beards; regarding which injunction. George Steevens says: "As no false beard could be worn without a ligature to fasten it on, Bottom's caution must mean more than the mere security of his comrades' beards. The good strings he recommends were probably ornamental. This may merely show how little a former-day Shakespearean commentator might know of the acting stage. A bad "ligature" might give way and make the actor ridiculous by the sudden shedding of his beard. Such an accident was one against which Bottom, being of an active jaw, might be particularly precautious. In a full beard, ascending at the sides of the face to meet the hair of the head, the ligature could be completely concealed. But often glue was used, to fasten on false beards. "Some tinker's trull, with a beard glued on," says a character in Beaumont and Fletcher's "The Wild-Goose Chase." Sir Walter Raleigh wore a false beard in his betrayed attempt to escape down the Thames, night of August 9, 1618. Real beards of the time were of every form,--pointed, fan-shaped, spade-shaped, T-shaped, often dyed.

NOTE 6. (Page 32.)

"Fencing was taught as a regular science," says George Steevens, in a note to "The Merry Wives of Windsor." "Three degrees were usually taken in this art, a master's, a provost's, and a scholar's. For each of these a prize was played. The weapons they used were the axe, the pipe, rapier and target, rapier and cloak, two-swords, the two-hand sword, the b.a.s.t.a.r.d-sword, the dagger and staff, the sword and buckler, the rapier and dagger, etc. The places where they exercised were, commonly, theatres, halls, or other enclosures." A party of young gallants at a tavern, says Thornbury, would often send for a fencing-master to come and breathe them. The great dictator in fencing, duelling, etc., in London, about 1600, was Vincentio Savolio, whose book on the "Use of the Rapier and Dagger" and on "Honor and Honorable Quarrels" was printed in London in 1595. The Dictionary of National Biography says he was born in Padua, and, after obtaining a reputation as a fencer, came to England and was taken into the service of the Earl of Ess.e.x. "In 'As You Like It,' Touchstone's description of the various forms of a lie is obviously based on Savolio's chapter 'Of the Manner and Diversitie of Lies.'"

Though a great swordsman, Savolio seems to have been anything but a brawler, or an abettor of fighting. In his book he deprecates quarrels upon insufficient causes.

NOTE 7. (Page 45.)

n.o.body needs to be reminded that the original of Justice Shallow is supposed to have been Sir Thomas Lucy, the knight of Charlecote Hall, whose deer the legend has it Shakespeare stole; as steal them he probably did, if deer there were to steal, and if Shakespeare was not totally different from other boys with the opportunities for dangerous frolic afforded by a rustic environment and a middle-cla.s.s condition of life. On this subject one might pleasurably re-read Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's account (in "The Sketch Book") of his visit to Charlecote Hall.

Regarding the p.r.o.neness of provincial great men to boast of their wickedness in the metropolis, Falstaff hits off the type, as it is not yet entirely dead, when he says of Shallow: "This same starved justice hath done nothing but prate to me of the wildness of his youth, and the feats he hath done about Turnbull Street: and every third word a lie, duer paid to the hearer than the Turk's tribute." The rest of the speech, wherein it is shown what figure Master Shallow really made in Turnbull Street, is not here quotable; but it is none the less readable.