Voices from the Past Part 118

Henley Street

October 3, '15

Evening late

W

e players, playing in the provinces, walked all day to reach our destination, our horse cart lumbering behind us, stacked with costumes and gear. Sun blazed. Rains soaked. Chewets followed us. We walked from inn to inn, town to town. At two o'clock we played Tambourlaine, and the soft verse of Marlowe. Then, packed again, we walked until another two o'clock, somewhere along the way. Our comrades.h.i.+p on the road, sleeping in the same rooms, sleeping on the floor as often as not, eating at the same table-those were our bonds! Burbage, Alleyn, Kempe... I could name a dozen. Week by week, we played our plays, our Lord Chamberlain's Men, banished by edict and plague, protected from jail by contract, cheered by the Puritans!

We worried over money, badgered, confronted, schemed. We placated the constabulary and loved the annuncios-the children!

Sometimes we sickened of one another and quarreled, our masculinity distressing us: men and boys, men and boys- that was our disease! What women would have meant to us, in London especially, where the theatre was spoiled. What it would have meant to have a girl strut across the boards and smile a s.m.u.tty smile. Chafing would have disappeared.

I longed to see Desdemona as a girl would play her; I wanted to see Cleopatra acted by a woman, Lady Macbeth by a skilled player-not castrated boys, our s.e.xless wire- sounding temperamentalists.

Who wants boys primping, boys in women's hats, giggling over skirts and bows? Scratching fleas in baboon areas?

Crying for their mamas?

Our groundlings wanted women to go to bed with.

Lords, ladies, and soldiery wanted women.

Everyone is sick of boys!

Soldiers, in their half-armor, jeer at us!

It is afternoon-warm and sunny!

Women, wearing eye masks, are chatting and taking seats at the Globe. Hawkers, bright yellow bands around their waists, are selling books and cakes and ale, pa.s.sing among the theatre crowd. Dandies are getting settled in an area close to the stage. Swords clatter as soldiers find seats; a captain bows to a Jesuit priest. Someone strums a zither and croaks a bawdy ballad. Workers shove their way past the gate, afraid to miss a word of the beginning.

Popping open the little door of the hut atop the theatre, a trumpeter blows shrill blasts; the play is about to start: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.

Henley Street

Sunday afternoon

Theatrical voices-commanding, secretive, beseeching, vituperative-are not voices I want to recall. I prefer the normal and kindly, an intimate Scot voice, a man's educated speech, someone mouthing thoughtfully, an older person whose words show profound mellowing.

Ann's voice was once full of witchery, stealing my guts and senses, leaving me hot. Marlowe's was low and persuasive. Queen Elizabeth's crisp. Raleigh's burly.

Hamnet's birdlike. Ellen's warm.

Not the regal! Not dotards and thieves, but a voice combining generosity, ease, and hope: is the voice I invent when insomnia takes me: for a moment it speaks out of the past.

I never enjoyed the children's theatre-always wondering how they produced even one creditable play a season since they whipped their boys to force them to learn their parts. Clifton, I recall, was kidnapped and compelled to act. They whaled him, fed him badly, did s.e.xual malice to make him perform-hardly the way to create a star.

Clifton's father had to appeal to the authorities for his boy's release. I went to see him, at his home, and the tales he told me matched his tear-streaked face. His little hands trembled and his mother had to rea.s.sure him he wouldn't be kidnapped again.

Whippings, threats, nagging-they were the stuff that kept the children's theatre alive in London, while the council shrugged and patrons furnished subsidies for these odious and grossly amateurish entertainments. I talked and fought. Marlowe talked and fought. Alleyn and Jonson used their influence. The cruelty continued.

London was a place of whippings: the public whipping of offenders through the city streets and post whippings repelled... Jim was one of those I saw...and Hardy's body hanging naked in chains...

Stratford-on-Avon

Wednesday

d.a.m.n them in Luddington and Walton, the groundlings who pelted us with fruit and eggs, those smelly c.o.xcombs!

That day in Luddington was blazing: the sweat ran down me as I stood on stage: then, the first egg struck, then a rotten orange: I waited, hoping. The play went on, drowned by laughter, and then, as if by prearrangement, a barrage of fruit and eggs. .h.i.t us: our tragedy was hounded off the boards.

Walton had a couple of hecklers who were supported by the audience and broke up our play: we got eggs from many Waltonites: putrid, smelling a dozen feet away, saved, undoubtedly for our arrival: it was two days before we could play again since we had to wash and press our clothes. What a jangling of nerves that bred.

Why not give up the acting and the writing? Why not go back to Stratford and work with father? Why let these slovenly cruds, these barnyard b.a.s.t.a.r.ds ruin my life?

Days later, humor came slanting through. When we were well-received and the money tinkled we forgot; we called ourselves ninnies and threatened to arm ourselves with eggs for the next affront. We found goodness and warmth in lines well-delivered. We saw our comrades.h.i.+p, our triumph over slogging days: there was magic flowing through our blood: that fulsomeness, that nothing could tarnish or remove.