Ruled Britannia Part 41

Shakespeare withdrew to mostly puzzled silence punctuated by spatters of applause--no, his prologue didn't match what the signboards outside promised. As he withdrew, he saw three or four men, both from among the groundlings and in the galleries, rapidly starting thence away. No doubt they were off to Sir Edmund Tilney: of course the Master of the Revels had spies here to make sure the play presented matched the one advertised and approved.

But those spies wouldn't reach Sir Edmund, not this afternoon. Shakespeare devoutly hoped they wouldn't, anyhow. Jack Hungerford's helpers, the men who took the audience's money, and a doublehandful of ruffians hired for the day were charged with letting no one leave the Theatre till the play was done. By then, it would be too late.

For the dons, Shakespeare wondered, or for us? Before he could fret any more, out went a wordlessly chanting Druid, the boy actors playing Boudicca and her daughters, and Richard Burbage, sword on his hip, as Caratach. For better or worse, it was begun; no stopping now, not till the end.

"Ye mighty G.o.ds of Britain, hear our prayers; Hear us, you great revengers; and this day Take pity from our swords, doubt from our valours,"

said Joe Boardman, who played Boudicca. He wasn't quite so good as Tom would have been, but he wasn't a Catholic, either. Excitement added life to his voice as he went on,

"Double the sad remembrance of our wrongs In every breast; the vengeance due to Rome Make infinite and endless! On our pikes This day pale Terror sits, horrors and ruins On our executions; claps of thunder Hang upon our arm'd carts; and 'fore our troops Despair and Death; Shame past these attend 'em!

Rise from the earth, ye relics of the dead, Whose n.o.ble deeds our holy Druids sing; Oh, rise, ye valiant bones! let not base earth Oppress your honours, whilst the pride of Rome Treads on your stock, and wipes out all your stories!"

With a great waving of arms, the hired man playing the Druid responded,

"Thou great Taranis, whom we sacred priests, Armed with dreadful thunder, place on high Above the rest of the immortal G.o.ds,Send thy consuming fire and deadly bolts, And shoot 'em home; stick in each Roman heart A fear fit for confusion; blast their spirits, Dwell in 'em to destruction; through their phalanx Strike, as thou strik'st a tree; shake their bodies, Make their strengths totter, and topless fortunes Unroot, and reel to ruin!"

Epona, Boudicca's elder daughter, took up the cry of condemnation against the Roman occupiers:

"O, thou G.o.d Thou fear'd G.o.d, if ever to thy justice Insulting wrongs and ravishments of women (Women sprung from thee), their shame, the sufferings Of those that daily fill'd thy sacrifice With virgin incense, have access, hear me!

Now s.n.a.t.c.h thy thunder up, 'gainst these Romans, Despisers of thy power, of us defacers, Revenge thyself; take to thy killing anger, To make thy great work full, thy justice done, An utter rooting from this blessed isle Of what Rome is or has been!"

The first murmurs rose from the crowd as people began to realize what sort of praise for King Philip this was likely to be. Boudicca's younger daughter, Bonvica, continued in the same vein, saying,

"See, Heaven, O, see thy showers stol'n from thee; our dishonours-- O, sister, our dishonours!--can ye be G.o.ds,And these sins smother'd?"

An attendant lit a fire on the altar before which the Druid stood. Boudicca said, "It takes: a good omen."

As Caratach, Richard Burbage took a step forward and drew his sword to pull everyone's eye to himself. His great voice would have done the same when he declared,

"Hear how I salute our dear British G.o.ds.

Divine Audate, thou who hold'st the reins Of furious battle and disordered war, And proudly roll'st thy swarty chariot wheels Over the heaps of wounds and carca.s.ses Give us this day good hearts, good enemies, Good blows o' both sides, wounds that fear or flight Can claim no share in; steel us with angers And warlike struggles fit for thy viewing.

A wound is nothing, be it ne'er so deep; Blood is the G.o.d of war's rich livery.

So let Rome put on her best strength, and Britain, Thy little Britain, but great in fortune, Meet her as strong as she, as proud, as daring!

This day the Roman gains no more ground here, But what his body lies in."

"Now I am confident," Boudicca said. They exited to the wailing of recorders.

But for that music, vast silence filled the Theatre as the players left the stage. Into that silence, someone from the upper gallery yelled, "Treason! Treason most foul! You--!" A scuffle broke out. With a wild cry, someone fell out of that gallery, to land with a thud amongst the groundlings. No one cried treason any more.

"Play on!" someone else shouted from that same gallery. "By G.o.d and St. George, play on!" A great burst of applause rang out. Awe p.r.i.c.kled through Shakespeare. They do remember they are Englishmen, he thought.On came the Romans for the second scene of the first act. When the audience took in their half Spanish helms and corselets, even the innocents and dullards who'd missed the point of the play up till then suddenly grasped it. And when one of those Romans said,

"And with our sun-bright armour, as we march, We'll chase the stars from heaven, and dim their eyes That stand and muse at our admired arms,"

the hisses and catcalls that rose from all sides told just how admired Spanish arms were.

Back in the tiring room, Burbage said, "It doth take hold."

"Ay, belike." Shakespeare dared a cautious nod.

"It doth take hold here," Burbage amended. "What of the city beyond the Theatre?" Shakespeare could only shrug, hoping Robert Cecil and his confederates had planned that as well as this. Burbage had no chance to stay and question him further; he was on again in the next scene.

As it had in real life more than fifteen hundred years before, the great rebellion of the Iceni against tyrannical Roman rule built on the stage. A legionary officer cried on in despair,

"The hills are wooded with their partizans, And all the valleys overgrown with darts, As moors are with rank rushes; no ground left us To charge upon, no room to strike. Say fortune And our endeavours bring us into 'em, They are so infinite, so ever-springing, We shall be kill'd with killing; of desperate women, Neither fear nor shame e'er found, the devil Hath ranked 'mongst 'em mult.i.tudes; say men fail, They'll poison us with their petticoats; say they fail, They have priests enough to pray us to nothing.

Here destruction takes us, takes us beaten, In wants and mutinies, ourselves but handfuls, And to ourselves our own fears paint our doom--A sudden and desperate execution: How to save, is loss; wisdom, dangerous."

Swords, pikes, and halberds clashed against one another. Led by Burbage/Caratach, player-Britons chased player-Romans from the stage. How the crowd roared!

And Boudicca cried out, too, in exultation:

"The hardy Romans--O, ye G.o.ds, of Britain!-- Rust of arms, the blus.h.i.+ng shame of soldiers!

These, men that conquer by inheritance?

The fortune-makers? these the Julians, That with the sun measure the end of nature, Making the world one Rome, one Caesar?

How they flee! Caesar's soft soul dwells in 'em; Their bodies sweat sweet oils, love's allurements, Not l.u.s.ty arms. Dare they send these 'gainst us, These Roman girls? Is Britain so wanton?

Twice we've beat 'em, Caratach, scattered 'em; Made themes for songs of shame; and a woman, A woman beat 'em, coz, a weak woman, A woman beat these Romans!"

Before Richard Burbage could deliver Caratach's answering line, someone said, not too loudly, one word: "Elizabeth!" The name raced through the Theatre. Excitement raced with it, as if the mere mention of that name, for ten years all but forbidden, could remind everyone of what England had been before the Spaniards came--and what she might be again. Shakespeare nodded to himself. He'd hoped for that. To see what he'd hoped come true . . . What writer could ask for more?

And Burbage, as Caratach, let Elizabeth's name echo and reecho before saying,

"So it seems.

A man, a warrior, would shame to talk so."

Boudicca asked,

"My valiant cousin, is it foul to say, What liberty and honour bid us do, And what the G.o.ds let us?"

"No, Boudicca." Caratach shook his head.

"So what we say exceed not what we do.

You call the Romans fearful, fleeing wights, And Roman girls, the lees of tainted pleasures: Doth this become a doer? are they such?"

"They are no more," Boudicca said. "Do you dote upon 'em?"

Caratach shook his head again.

"I love a foe; I was born a soldier; And he that in the head on's troop defies me, Bending my manly body with his sword, I make a mistress. Yellow-tress'd Hymen Ne'er tied a longing virgin with more joy, Than I am married to the man that wounds me: And are not all these Romans? Ten battles I suck'd these pale scars from, and all Roman; Ten years of cold nights and heavy marches (When frozen storms sang through my iron cuira.s.s And made it doubtful whether that or I Were more stubborn metal) have I wrought through,And all to try these Romans."

Boudicca wouldn't listen to him, of course. There lay the tragedy: in her overreaching herself, in thinking she could drive the mighty Roman Empire from Britain's sh.o.r.es. And do we likewise overreach ourselves with the Spaniards? Shakespeare wondered. He s.h.i.+vered. An we do, we die harder than ever the British Queen dreamt of dying.

The play went on. The Romans, hard pressed by the Iceni, went through agonies of hunger. Will Kemp's Marcus did a clown's turn to make light of it. He said,

"All my cohort Are now in love; ne'er think of meat, nor talk Of what provender is: hearty heigh-hoes Are sallets fit for soldiers. Live by meat!

By larding up our bodies? 'Tis lewd, lazy, And shows us merely mortal. It drives us To fight, like camels, with bags at our noses."

He capered comically before resuming,

"We've fall'n in love: we can wh.o.r.e well enough, That the world knows: fast us into famine, Yet we can crawl, like crabs, to our wenches.

Fall in love now, as we see example, And follow it but with all our salt thoughts, There's much bread saved, and our hunger's ended."

Hands to his own large belly, he left the stage.

Shakespeare hurried up to him. "Well played!"

"How not?" Kemp said. "Belike, when I'm up on the gibbet, the hangman'll give me the selfsame praise.

May you stand beside me to hear't."

"An you go to the gallows, am I like to be elsewhere?" Shakespeare asked."An you go to the gallows, I should like to be elsewhere," the clown replied.

Poenius, the officer who would not send his legionaries to help Suetonius, cried out in despair as the Britons advanced against his fellow Romans:

"See that huge battle coming from the hills!

Their gilt coats s.h.i.+ne like dragons' scales, their march Like a tumbling storm; see them, and view 'em, And then see Rome no more. Say they fail, look, Look where the arm'd carts stand, a new army!

Death rides in triumph, Drusus, destruction Whips his fiery horse, and round about him His many thousand ways to let out souls.

Huge claps of thunder plow the ground before 'em; Till the end, I'll dream what mighty Rome was."