A Gentleman Player; His Adventures on a Secret Mission for Queen Elizabeth. Robert Neilson Stephens
Heminge, Sly, Condell, and Laurence Fletcher, manager for the company of players. The six walked off together, across the trodden field and along the street or roadway, drawing their short cloaks tight around them for the wind. The Falcon tavern was at the western end of the Bankside, separated from the river by a little garden with an arbor of vines. As the players were about to enter, the door opened, and a group of gentlemen could be seen coming from within, to take boat for the city or Westminster.
"Stand close," said Fletcher, quickly, to the actors. "We may hear an opinion of the play. My lord Edgebury is the best judge of these matters in England."
The players moved aside, and pretended to be reading one of their own bills, as the nobles passed.
"It holdeth attention," my lord was saying to his companions, "but—fustian, fustian! Noise for the rabble in the yard. 'Twill last a week, perchance, for its allegory upon timely matters. But I give it no longer. 'Twill not live."
"Gramercy!" quoth Sly to the players, with a comical smile. "He is more liberal than Gil Crowe, who gives it but three afternoons. Come into the tavern, lads, and a plague on all such prophets!"
My lord Edgebury and Gil Crowe, ye are not dead yet. At all first nights do ye abound; in many leather-covered study-chairs do ye sit, busy with wet blankets and cold water. On this occasion, though no one knew it at the time, you were a trifle out of your reckoning—three hundred years, at least, as far as we may be sure now; not much, as planets and historians count, but quite a while as time goes with children.
CHAPTER II.
AT THE TAVERNS.
"We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow."—Henry IV., Part II.
That this narrative—which is to be an account of things done, not an antiquarian "picture" of a past age—need not at every step be learnedly arrested by some description of a costume, street, house, aspect of society, feature of the time, or other such matter, let the reader be reminded at the outset that the year 1601 was of Elizabeth's reign the forty-second; that England was still in the first thrill of the greatest rejuvenescence the world ever knew; that new comforts, and new luxuries, and new thoughts, and new possibilities, and new means of pleasure, had given Englishmen a mad and boisterous zest for life; that gentlemen strutted in curiously shaped beards, and brilliant doublets, and silken trunk-hose, and ruffs, and laced velvet cloaks, and feathered hats; that ladies wore stiff bodices and vast sleeves, and robes open in front to show their petticoats, and farthingales to make those petticoats stand out; that many of these ladies painted their faces and used false hair; that the attire of both sexes shone with jewels and gold and silver; that London folk were, in brief, the most richly dressed in the world; that most ordinary London houses were of wood and plaster, and gabled, and built so that the projecting upper stories darkened the narrow streets below; that the many-colored moving spectacle in those streets was diversified by curious and admiring foreigners from everywhere; that although coaches were yet of recent introduction, the stone paving sounded with them as well as with the carts and drays of traffic; that gray churches, and desolated convents, and episcopal palaces, and gentlemen's inns, and turreted mansions of nobility, abounded in city and suburbs; that the Catholics were still occasional sufferers from such persecution as they in their time had dealt to the Protestants; that there were still some very proud and masterful great lords, although they now came to court, and had fine mansions in the Strand or other suburbs, and no longer fostered civil or private war in their great stone castles in the country; that bully 'prentices, in woollen caps and leather or canvas doublets, were as quick to resent real or fancied offence, with their knives, as gentlemen were with silver-gilt-hilted rapiers; that the taverns resounded with the fanciful oaths of heavily bearded soldiers who had fought in Flanders and Spain; that there were eager ears for every amazing lie of seafaring adventurers who had served under Drake or Raleigh against the Spanish; that tobacco was still a novelty, much relished and much affected; that ghosts and witches were believed in by all classes but perhaps a few "atheists" like Kit Marlowe and Sir Walter Raleigh; that untamed England was still "merry" with its jousts, its public spectacles, its rustic festivals, its holiday feasts, and its brawls, although Puritanism had already begun to show its spoil-sport face; and, to come to this particular first Monday in March, that the common London talk, when it was not of the private affairs of the talkers, had gone, for its theme, from the recent trial and death of the brave but restless Earl of Essex, to the proceedings now pending against certain of his lesser satellites in the Drury House conspiracy.
Before entering the Falcon, Hal Marryott sent a last sweeping look in all directions, half daring to hope that the lady in gray and murrey had not yet left the vicinity of the theatre. But the audience had gone its countless ways; at the Falcon river-stairs the watermen's cries and the noise of much embarking had subsided; and the only women in sight were of the Bankside itself, and of a far different class from that of her whom he sought. He sighed and followed his companions into the tavern.
They were passing through the common hall, on their way to a room where they could be served privately, when they were greeted by a tall, burly, black-bearded, bold-featured, weather-browned, middle-aged fellow in a greasy leather jerkin, an old worn-out red velvet doublet, and patched brown silk trunk-hose, and with a sorry-feathered remnant of a big-brimmed felt hat, a long sword and a dagger, these weapons hanging at his girdle. His shoes barely deserved the name, and his brown cloth cloak was a rag. His face had been glum and uneasy, but at sight of the players he instantly threw on the air of a dashing, bold rascal with whom all went merrily.
"'The actors are come hither, my lord,'" he cried, with a flourish, quoting from the play of the afternoon. "A good piece of work, Master Shakespeare. Excellent! More than excellent!"
"Despite thyself, for doing thy best to spoil it—bawling out in the fencing match, Kit Bottle," put in Will Sly.
"Captain Bottle, an it please you, Master Sly," said the other, instantly taking on dignity; "at least when I carried Sir Philip Sidney off the field at Zutphen, and led my company after my lord Essex into Cadiz."
"And how goes the world with thee, Captain Kit?" inquired Mr. Shakespeare, with something of a kindly sadness in his tone.
"Bravely, bravely as ever, Master Will," replied Kit. "Still marching to this music!" And he shook a pouch at his belt, causing a clinking sound to come forth.
As the players passed on to their room, Kit plucked the sleeve of Hal Marryott, who was the last. When the two were alone in a corner, the soldier, having dropped his buoyant manner, whispered:
"Hast a loose shilling or two about thy clothes, lad? Just till to-morrow, I swear on the cross of my sword. I have moneys coming; that is, with a few testers to start dicing withal, I shall have the coin flowing me-ward. Tut, boy, I can't lie to thee; I haven't tasted meat or malt since yesterday."
"But what a devil—why, the pieces thou wert jingling?" said Hal, astonished.
"Pox, Hal, think'st thou I would bare my poverty to a gang of players—nay, no offence to thee, lad!" The soldier took from the pouch two or three links of a worthless iron chain. "When thou hast no coin, lad, let thy purse jingle loudest. 'Twill serve many a purpose."
"But if you could not buy a dinner," said Hal, smiling, "how did you buy your way into the playhouse?"
"Why, body of me," replied Bottle, struggling for a moment with a slight embarrassment, "the mind, look you, the mind calls for food, no less than the belly. Could I satisfy both with a sixpence? No. What should it be, then? Beef and beer for the belly? Or a sight of the new play, to feed the mind withal? Thou know'st Kit Bottle, lad. Though he hath followed the wars, and cut his scores of Spanish throats, and hath no disdain of beef and beer, neither, yet as the mind is the better part—"
Moved at thought of the hungry old soldier's last sixpence having gone for the play, to the slighting of his stomach, Hal instantly pulled out what remained of his salary for the previous week, about five shillings in amount, and handed over two shillings sixpence, saying: