A Gentleman Player Part 33

"We'll tarry the day out here, and start fresh on the morrow. The foul fiend is in my leg!"

He thereupon sent Hudsdon to order rooms made ready, so that the prisoner might, as usual, be conducted from the horse to his chamber without stoppage. Barnet did not yet ride into the inn yard, for he noticed a crowd and a bustle therein, and preferred not to enter until it should be certain he would not have to go elsewhere for lodging.

Here, as in other towns, the pursuivant kept his men close around the prisoner, as much to conceal the latter's bound wrists and legs from lookers-on as for any other purpose. Thus few people, if any, observed that here was a prisoner, and so no crowd collected.

As Hal sat his horse, awaiting Hudsdon's return, he bethought him that this day was Friday, March 13th,--the tenth day since his departure from Fleetwood house. The time he had undertaken to obtain for Sir Valentine would be past that evening,--and Welwyn was still seventy miles away!

This geographical fact, connected as it was with the certainty that he had more than accomplished his adventure, called up another and less pleasing fact, of which indeed he needed little reminder,--the fact that not a hundred miles now remained of the road to London.

His reflections were cut short by the reappearance of Hudsdon, who spoke to Barnet in whispers. The party then rode around to a side door of the inn, doubtless to avoid taking the prisoner through the crowd in the great yard. The hostess had already opened this door. Barnet and four men alighted from their horses, enabled Hal to dismount, and led him, at the heels of a chamberlain, through pa.s.sages and up-stairs to a room. He had noticed, as he entered, that hostlers had already come from the inn gate to take the horses to stable by the usual route.

Hal's first glance, on entering his chamber, was for the window. To his dismay, it opened, not so as to give a view of street or of places exterior to the inn, but so as to command a part of the square inn yard, which was enclosed on three sides by the inn itself, on the fourth by a wall and gate. What hid a portion of this yard, which was far below, was the downward-sloping roof of the long upper gallery or balcony that traversed the three inner sides of the house. Situated as he now was, he could have no sight of the waiting horse.

"What do you see to make you stare so?" asked the watchful Barnet.

"Naught but the crowd in the inn yard," replied Hal, with barely the heart to dissemble. "'Tis more than common, methinks."

"Yes. Heard you not what Hudsdon said? There is to be a play in the yard; the town will not give the guildhall for plays on a Friday in Lent."[30]

"A play? Who are the players?"

"The lord chamberlain's men that are now travelling. They are wont to play at the Globe,--why, that is where you played, is't not so?"

But Hal heeded not the question. The lord chamberlain's men!

Shakespeare, Sly, his friends, who a moment since had seemed worlds and ages away!

And, that very instant, a familiar voice rang out above the noise of the crowd below.

CHAPTER XXIV.

HOW A NEW INCIDENT WAS ADDED TO AN OLD PLAY.

"If he come not, then the play is marred."--_A Midsummer Night's Dream._

The cause of Marryott's not having seen the person whose voice he now heard, or the little board platform raised to serve as a stage, was that this platform was directly below his window, and hence hidden by the balconies with which the lower stories, unlike that in which he was, were provided.

The crowding of guards around Marryott, the distraction Barnet owed to his pain, had deterred the two from noticing, when outside the gate, the playbills attached to the posts. The play announced was "The Battle of Alcazar," by Mr. George Peele. There was still a special favor for anti-Spanish plays. Fresh in memory was that English victory over Spain whence arose the impulse of expansion destined, after three centuries of glory, to repeat itself in a new Anglo-Saxondom from a victory over the same race, when the guns of Dewey and Sampson should echo back in multiplied volume the roar of Drake's and Howard's. History has nowhere repeated itself more picturesquely.

But after the play had been selected and announced, there had arrived at the inn, with a small regiment of servants, and a good part of his household furniture for his better accommodation, young Lord Tyrrington and his newly wedded lady. A squire in my lord's service had preceded him and bespoken the entire second story of one of the wings. My lady, on taking up her quarters, had learned with delight that London actors were to give a play in the yard. She had expressed to her husband, on whom she still looked with the soft eyes of a bride of a fortnight, the wish that the piece might be a love-play. Her spouse, as yet deeply enraptured with her and with love, had sent straightways for the master of the players. The result of the interview was the oral announcement which Marryott now heard from lips whose facility was well known to him.

Prefaced by delicately hinted compliments to the n.o.ble couple, and by gross open flattery of the worthy, excellent, and good people of Oakham, the announcement was to the effect that, instead of performing "The Battle of Alcazar," the lord chamberlain's servants would enact Master William Shakespeare's most admired and lamentable tragedy of the love of "Romeo and Juliet." Whereupon there was loud and prolonged applause, and the musicians, on the inn-balcony above the rear of the stage, struck up a tune for the beguilement of the crowd until the actors should be ready to begin.

"'Twas Will Sly," said Marryott, half to himself.

"You know him, I ween," said Roger Barnet, who had listened to the announcement with close attention, and who seemed to have softened a little under the stress of some concealed inclination.

"Marry, the days and nights we have tossed the pot together!" replied Hal.

"I ween you have been gossip and comrade to all of them," went on Roger, with guarded interest. "You know Burbage, and Shakespeare, and the rest?"

"I may say I know Burbage and the rest, and I have lived under the same roof with Master Shakespeare. I am acquaint with his outer life, which is, perforce, much like other men's, and with his talk, which varies so gently between sincerity and subtle irony, that one can never be sure; but to know the man himself were to know a world."

"I like his plays better than all others," said Roger. "And of all his plays, this 'Romeo and Juliet' best. I have read Arthur Brooke's poem of the tale, and William Paynter's story in 'The Palace of Pleasure;' but they are pale dullness to this tragedy. It hath rare love-making in it!"

The steeliness of Barnet's eye had melted to a soft l.u.s.tre; a warmth had come over his face. Marryott looked at him in amazement. That this hard rascal, this complacent spy and implacable man-hunter,--even in that day when rough soldiers were greedy for wit and beauty and fine thought,--should have read poems and novels, and should possess a taste for rare love-making, was indeed one of those marvels which prove how many-sided (not inconsistent) is the individual human.

"If we could hear it better than we're like to do," suggested Marryott, "'twould a little distract us from our ills of mind and body,--for I take it from your twitchings that you suffer some."

The pursuivant was careful against showing how welcome this suggestion was; for he had felt that it would better emanate from the prisoner, in whom a desire to see the play was quite proper, than from an officer who ought to hold in supreme indifference all but duty.

"Why," said he, "I wot of no reason why you may not be allowed to see this play, under guard. Dawkins, go to the landlady and require for me a room in one of yonder wings, well toward the front of the yard, that we may see the stage from it. G.o.d forbid I should deprive a doomed man of two hours' forgetfulness!"

When, some minutes later, the change of rooms had been effected, Marryott found himself looking down from a gabled window, which, being over one side of the yard, gave a complete oblique view of the stage at the yard's rear. He sat on a low stool, his hands pinioned behind him, Roger Barnet at his side. Four armed men stood close around, leaning forward for all possible view over the heads of the two.

The musicians, now visible in the gallery over the back of the stage, were still playing. The second story balcony across the yard from Hal's window was occupied by the lord and lady and their numerous attendants, a group whose rich attire presented all hues, and every kind, of silk, velvet, and costly cloth. My lady, close to the railing, and leaning expectantly over it, wore on her head a caul of golden thread; and one of her maids held a peaked Minever cap ready to be donned in case of cold. My lord, sitting at her side, bent so near that the silk rose at the end of his love-lock often brushed the cheek of her in whose honor it was still worn, despite their being now married. His lords.h.i.+p might have taken a seat upon the stage, but he preferred to remain where he could mark the significant love speeches to his lady's attention by gentle pressure of his hand on hers.

Three or four rustic gallants sat on the stage, and talked ostentatiously, with a great deal of very knowing laughter, each one keeping a side glance upon the n.o.ble lady in the balcony, to see what impression he was making; for each was convinced that her softly eager looks toward the stage were cast in admiration of himself.

The stage was of rough boards upon an underwork of upright barrels and trestles. At its back there hung from the balcony a curtain behind which a few makes.h.i.+ft steps descended to the door of an inn parlor now used by the actors as a tiring-room. The balcony thereabove was not devoted exclusively to the musicians; like all the other galleries around the yard, and to which chambers of the inn opened, this one held crowds of spectators,--inn guests and town's people. But of this one, that part immediately over the stage had, since the change of play, been cleared of people, and now remained so, with poles placed on either side as barriers. This part was reserved as Juliet's balcony; an inn chamber gave access to it from the rear. The height of the stage was such, that the floor of the balcony would be level with Romeo's eyes; but that mattered nothing to the imagination of an Elizabethan audience.

Even the steps leading to the balconies were crowded; the yard itself, paved with cobble stones, was more densely so, and with rougher and noisier people. Here were the lowest cla.s.ses represented, but not those alone; here was a rawer wit than among the groundlings of the Globe Theatre; here was a smaller measure of acuteness than there, and here was a loutishness that was there absent.

The inn gates were now closed, but for a narrow opening, where stood two of the players' men to receive the money of what spectators might yet arrive.

The hour when the play ought to have begun had pa.s.sed. But the crowd was the more tolerant of a burden upon its patience, for the fact that "Romeo and Juliet" had been subst.i.tuted for the other play.

Shakespeare's love-tragedy, which at first production had made the greatest success in the brief history of English drama, was the most popular play of its time; and to a county town of the insignificance of Oakham, it was still a novelty, bright with the l.u.s.tre of its London triumph.

But at length the pleasure of antic.i.p.ation lost power to sweeten the delay of realization. The crowd murmured. The musicians, who had fallen to playing "I am the Duke of Norfolk," for there being nothing else left unplayed, became the targets of derisive yells; the unseen players, behind the curtain, were called upon to hasten. My lady had changed her position several times, and my lord was beginning to wonder why the devil--

And then the curtain was pushed a little aside, and Master Sly stepped forth again, now dressed for the part he was on this occasion to enact,--that of Mercutio. The crowd gave a shout of welcome, the musicians came to an abrupt but grateful stop. "The prologue," remarked several of the knowing, and then indignantly bade others hush, who were making the same remark.

But Master Sly's air was not suggestive of an ordinary prologue. It was hesitating, embarra.s.sed, a little dubious of consequences. He began, rather to my lord than to the audience as a whole, a halting, bungling speech, of which the purport was that, by reason of the sudden illness of an actor who played a part necessary to the movement of the tragedy, and as no unoccupied player in the company knew the part, either "Romeo and Juliet" must be for the occasion abandoned, or its performance marred by the reading of the part, "which marring must needs be the greater," said Mr. Sly, "for that it is a part of exceeding activity, and hath some furious fighting with the rapier."

Here was a damper, whose potent effect became at once manifest in blank looks on faces n.o.ble and faces common. My lord and his lady were as much disappointed as the rudest artisan or the pertest grammar-school truant.

The a.s.semblage was yet in that chilled silence which precedes murmurs of displeasure, and Mr. Sly was drawing breath to submit the alternative of another play or the marred performance, when from a gable window high above all galleries a voice rang out:

"Go to, Will Sly! I'll wager 'tis the part of Tybalt; and that Gil Crowe's illness comes of the same old cause!"

Master Sly stared aloft at the distant speaker. So did every auditor to whom the window was visible; and those in the balconies under it leaned over the railings and twisted their necks to look upward.

"Why,--'tis thee, Harry Marryott,--i' the name of G.o.d!" cried Sly, after a moment of blinking,--for Hal's gable was sun-bathed, and blue sky was above it. "What dost here, Hal? What surprise is this you give us?"

"No matter!" answered Hal. "I said truly, did I not?"

"Surely thou didst, and a mur--! Why, boy, thou canst play Tybalt! You studied it in London!"