Shakespeare's Rebel

by C. C. Humphreys

  Yet here he is, John marvelled, acting the role rumour reassigned him: sweet Robin to her sweet Bess. Kissing the hand that had struck him. Striving again for favour against the man now limping back to his place on Elizabeth’s other side. What a contrast he provided to the gangling Essex. For Sir Robert Cecil was a crouchback, and the story was that Burbage had modelled his walk as Richard III on the diminutive Secretary of State, earning his enmity for the players ever since. Dressed entirely in sombrest black, he was a crow to Essex’s lilac-, yellow- and tangerine-swathed parrot. Yet tonight Cecil, for all his oft-expressed puritanical distaste of theatre, seemed to be enjoying himself, laughing loudly at Falstaff’s antics. While his rival, after the kissing of the Queen’s wrist, slumped into his chair and returned to the state in which he’d watched the previous three acts – a gloom that shrouded him like a one-man cloud. The Earl of Essex was barely looking as the music swelled and the first players marched out.

  Melancholy again, Robbie? John wondered. What had set him off this time, now he was back in favour and had received what he always sought – the command of an army in war? And he was known to like the playhouses, oft accompanying his friend – and Will’s patron – the Earl of Southampton to them.

  Perhaps it was this play? John knew it well, having appeared in the first staging at the Theatre, the Burbages’ playhouse, in ’97, after his return from imprisonment in Spain and his emergence from the Tower. Briefly appeared. After the reality of his ordeals, it had, he now realised, been a little early to be returning to a life of illusion. He had also been drinking too much in the joy of freedom. Both factors had led to his punching of Kemp. Truly, he did not regret the punch, only its consequence: exile from the world he loved as more than spectator.

  One day, he thought, and returned his wandering mind – only somewhat restored by mutton pottage, maslin bread and an hour’s doze upon some hay – to the observations Will had set him. What was afoot here? Why Essex so gloomy, Cecil the cock of the walk? The First Part of Henry the Fourth was largely that mix of patricians speaking sentiments in verse and plebeians telling jokes in prose. Well balanced in the end, with the drunken sot Falstaff the centre of the laughter. Many of the knight’s flaws and several of his sayings John knew to be drawn from his own life, for his friend the playwright was a shameless pillager of both the times and the people around him. Yet there were politics too – especially in the contrast of the two ambitious young men. Essex had oft been likened to, had indeed been nicknamed, ‘the fiery Hotspur’. And tonight, in broad style, Dick Sly was speaking the role not with the usual blunt northern vowels but with more than a tinge of the Welsh borders that, notwithstanding his years at court, Essex had never quite eradicated from his speech. His renowned bravado was also mocked and the biggest laugh of the night so far had come on Prince Hal’s description of Hotspur: ‘He that kills me some six or seven Scots at a breakfast, washes his hands and says to his wife: “Fie upon this quiet life! I want work.” ’

  Yet the players were ever licensed fools – at liberty to mock their betters up to a point, and those betters taking it in good spirits. Essex should have been laughing with the rest, laughing it off even if the barbs stung, to show his good humour. That he could not was perhaps to do with what else was new this night – for it had become quite clear to John that Cecil was identifying himself with Prince Hal, the future hero of England, Henry the Fifth. Not physically, of course – Cecil was ever the small and twisted hunchback. Yet by this, the fourth act, Hal had thrown off the gaudy colours of dissolute youth and donned the sober black of the Puritan – not unlike the suit Cecil himself wore – along with the responsibilities of the prince.

  Is that what is afoot this night, William? John asked himself. Is it that your play is being used as a weapon in the ceaseless war around the throne?

  The music crescendoed. The actors took their positions, Sly’s Hotspur began to speak. Then, in moments, Ned appeared as a messenger. John leaned over, held his breath. It was a relief to hear his son speak English, for his previous appearance had been as a Welsh princess who spoke only her own tongue. He had gotten laughs for it, though, to John’s joy – the lad clearly had his father’s bent for comedy. Here, he dispatched his few lines clearly and without gilding, and John could settle back, still proud. Ned had made his debut with the Chamberlain’s Men and before her majesty – let Sir Samuel D’Esparr try to turn him into a gentleman after this taste of glory!

  The play proceeded – on and off the platform. For where the fourth act ended, no interruption came, the actors continued, the audience remained seated – and Elizabeth’s concluding choice on whom to bestow her hand was unresolved. Few would notice; John did, and wondered briefly what her withheld favour signified, before the action took him on.

  The plot sped up. The scenes got shorter, more filled with the wind of martial vigour – except when Falstaff punctured it like a bladder inflated for a game of football with a speech John did not remember from the original, that asked: ‘What is honour?’ and answered, ‘Air,’ as if expelling from that same deflating ball. It was another sentiment John had expressed to his friend before a tavern’s fire, its glow reflecting in eyes that looked back on too many battles fought, too many fallen comrades. Honoured? Maybe. Dead? Without doubt. ‘Good, Will,’ John murmured. His friend had complained that all he did was entertain. John had always known him to do much more. As now.

  Bugles sounded. Leaning forward, resting his forearms on the balustrade, he felt his first true excitement of the night, noting also that the earl at last sat up. It was the call to war, and men in armour now took to the stage. There were alarums and excursions and one knight, dressed to counterfeit the King, fell to a Scottish lord’s sword. John glanced down, wondering if Essex was, like him, remembering how they’d stormed Cadiz looking the same, ending so differently.

  The early skirmishes were brief and functional. Stock moves, basically executed. Those who knew the play knew the main bout was to come. Those who did not could guess where the climax lay: in two rivals confronting each other in trial by combat, with power and glory going to the victor alone. And when Sly and Burbage stepped upon the stage, John could not know how much of the spectators’ buzz was for the fight itself and how much for its significance that night. What he could see was Cecil leaning forward as eagerly as Essex, and Elizabeth’s knuckles paling as she gripped her chair.

  Lines spoke to the mood in the palace as they never had in the playhouse.

  Two stars keep not their motion in one sphere

  Nor can one England brook a double reign

  Of Harry Percy and the Prince of Wales.

  Yet the gasp that provoked was lost in the first clash of weapons, in music so different to the previous thuds of iron blade on shield or pike shaft hitting shaft. That past dispelled now in this present: for Harry fought Hal with rapier and dagger, and their steel rang out like silver bells.

  John held his breath. No matter that he had set this fight two years before. No matter that few there would know or care that anyone had set the fight at all. This was his contribution to the evening, his tiny remaining place with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. They would know whose work they performed, as they knew they spoke Will Shakespeare’s words.

  If, as with words, the trick of it was to make the audience believe that the players were making them up, so here in this . . . argument continued by other means. With the added complication that while few men performed, most men fought – and considered themselves experts, ready to applaud, readier to condemn.

  Though he’d set it a while ago, it reappeared to John now, piercing the fug in his brain as nothing else had since the ending of his debauch. A fight consisted of moves so practised they appeared the opposite, and he looked first to see if the combatants were anticipating the timing and placing of blows or seeming to react to them. The latter, in the main, moving fast and vigorously. And while in a battle a warrior looked to the weapons and where they were moving, here upon
the platform the players trusted themselves to each other’s eyes, seeing the moves there a fraction before they happened, partners in illusion.

  Burbage and Sly each held the other’s gaze; there were few slips he noted – one misplaced parry, a blow astray covered with a wider vault to the side, making it a part of the whole. And they had clearly practised hard, for the fight was as punctuated as the music had been from the consort beside him, progressing not in one even wash but in staccato exchanges like pistol shots, in legato movement flowing like silk.

  It ended too soon for John, the fact that even he was carried away by it showing that it was well done. Especially the superbly executed kill, moving from what John’s Bolognese master would have termed coda lunga e distesa: dagger forward and taking Sly’s two blades, sword stretched back so that the audience could see it travelling the longest distance, see and anticipate the blow that ended Hotspur’s life, safely placed in the player’s side. Sly’s reaction was perfect, making it seem real and horribly painful, yet contriving also to die nobly – and with a length and calmness of speech John had seen no one manage when expelling their guts upon an actual battlefield.

  The applause was long, sustained and John took it for his fight, though he did not rise, simply nodded to himself – and to Burbage, who acknowledged him with one swift salute of his rapier. Others took it differently – Essex slumped back again, Cecil grinning and staying forward, remaining so through the short scenes that followed, through further laughs for Falstaff, to the play’s conclusion and more applause.

  The players were bowing. Yet most of the eyes were upon that other stage, and its actors, the foremost of whom waited for the clapping to fade, but not die entirely – she was a gifted player too, rising to build on the applause for herself, then silencing it with a gesture. ‘Well, Master Shakespeare,’ Elizabeth called, summoning him from the throng. He approached, bowing low, the carbuncled wax nose he’d donned for Bardolph already off and in his hand. ‘You and your company have once more richly entertained us.’ She smiled. ‘I am intrigued how an old play on such an old theme can have such . . . fresh meanings. An interesting choice for our times.’ She paused, teeth gently pulling at her lower lip before reaching behind her. The Master of the Revels placed a purse into her hand. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘is your reward.’

  Will took the purse, bowed still lower, before retreating back to his company, who bowed once more then swept out to more applause. John had time to note Ned’s delighted grin before the doors closed and the Queen, opening her arms to the court, spoke again. ‘And now, to our further delight – does any here crave dancing a coranto or a galliard as much as I?’

  There was an immediate hum as people rose from their seats. Elizabeth cut through it. ‘Come! Who shall be my first partner?’

  John, who’d half risen with the intention of leaving with the musicians, sank back. There’d been another drama performed this night – and he might as well see the end of it.

  Elizabeth had turned to the men behind her. Both who had so sought to offer their hands before now shrank back, discomfort on the contrasting faces – Cecil, with his high forehead, carefully groomed brown hair and long, pointed beard, Essex with his thatch of reddened gold and Cadiz-cut facial hair, both kept stylishly unruly to signal the man of action over the courtier.

  ‘My Secretary?’

  Cecil took a step forward. His voice, especially after the strength of the actors’, was nasal and thin. ‘Your majesty, I . . . I believe those players once said of a crippled king, “I am not shaped for such sportive tricks.” ’ He sniffed, bowed. ‘So I fear I will only trip the Queen, and my clumsiness could be perceived as treason.’

  A little laugh came, which Elizabeth joined. ‘I hope you do not have the malice of a Richard Crouchback. You are excused, Master Secretary.’ She turned. ‘But you, my lord of Essex? Your shape is fitted for sports, is it not?’ Another titter came. All knew that Elizabeth was not referring to his reputation as a jouster.

  ‘Some, my lady,’ he grunted. ‘The galliard is not one of them. However’ – he raised a hand – ‘as my Queen commands.’

  ‘Nay, my lord!’ Elizabeth lightly struck the earl’s fingers. ‘I offer a dance, not to lead you to a scaffold.’ She turned to the court. ‘Odd’s faith, I hope his lordship is bolder in Ireland, or how shall he make that arrant rebel Tyrone dance a jig or two?’ More laughter came, which Elizabeth acknowledged before turning to the third man who had always exited and entered with her party. ‘Monsieur de Maisse, perhaps the French ambassador can teach these English lords some courtesy?’

  The man stepped forward, bent to kiss the proffered hand. ‘It would be an honour, majesté,’ he replied. ‘There is a new dance that our sovereign Henri is most taken with. It is like the galliard . . . mais plus vite!’ He bowed. ‘It is called the lavolta. It would be my delight to show you the steps should you desire it – but it will be required that I lay hands upon your majesty.’

  ‘Lay hands upon me? I warrant I am glad that someone wants to!’ Withering the two courtiers with a look, she turned to the crowd. ‘Bravo for the courtesy of the French. And bravo for their wine. Let us drink some of it while the floor is cleared.’

  A squadron of servants appeared, some to bring refreshments, others to expertly dismantle the dais and platform. In the gallery, the musicians collected their sheets, stands and instruments, making way for the far larger Queen’s Consort coming in. Taking a last look at Essex, head bent and ignored in the mayhem, John went to seek the players.

  In the stable yard, the company had gathered around the brazier, for full darkness had come in the time of the playing and the February night was chill. Burbage had the purse and was conjuring with the silver before handing over each player’s share. On receipt, several of the actors began juggling with the coins, passing them back and forth. John remembered many such Shrove Tuesday nights – a London season’s end and no performances until they reached Bath in a week’s time. No lines to learn for the morrow, no rehearsal to rise for. Tonight all could celebrate with a good conscience – and accept the foul head it would give in the morning.

  Among the jugglers he spotted Ned, laughing as he caught and dispatched the coins. It would be his first such celebration, his ‘blooding’ as it was called. John remembered the occasion of his – but none of the events of it. Just the day groaning abed that followed. Well, he would leave Ned to it.

  Unless . . . the thought froze him – unless Despair would try to reclaim him now? He could not believe the knight would simply accept Ned’s abduction. Tess would not allow him to allow it! And if he did appear, what then? Would John have to take on the knight and his louts?

  He raised his sword hand – still shaking as if he had an ague. Truly, he thought, this is all too much for a man who’s been drunk for a month. Sighing, he turned to his most pressing need – he needed a piss! He made for a stable that was flush to the brick walls of the palace garden. But within, just as he was seeking to free himself before a pile of rushes, a voice called, ‘Oy! Not there, ye dog! I sleep there!’

  John looked at the scowling guard. ‘Then can you suggest a place, friend. My need is urgent.’

  ‘Back in the yard, or’ – the soldier jabbed a thumb – ‘through that door. There’s a garden that gives on to the palace. It will be unoccupied since, as you hear, our betters are cavorting.’

  The distant sound of stamping came. They must have begun with some country dance, for the nobility liked to fancy themselves peasants in a field. Free of the dung and the rickets, of course. ‘For this relief, much thanks,’ said John, and passed into the garden.

  Not much light spilled from the banqueting hall’s tall windows. But he did not need much to do the business. As long as he could avoid the rose briars that garlanded the ash arbor hard by, and spare his cock a scratching.

  He groped forward, found a wall. Don Pedro’s breeches were cut in the Spanish style and so demanded an elaborate unwinding, requiring him to take
off his sword, lean it against the brickwork. When he was at last freed, it took a while to come, such was his need; when it finally did, it came in a gush that would have disgraced no stallion.

  ‘Ah,’ he sighed, closing his eyes.

  The voice came from right beside him. ‘Do you mind,’ it said. ‘You are pissing on my leg.’

  John Lawley jumped so hard that he sprayed the wall, his hand and Don Pedro’s breeches. The shock wasn’t so much in the voice itself but in the fact that he recognised it instantly.

  He was pissing on the Earl of Essex.

  VII

  My Lord of Essex

  As John stood, mouth open, cock in hand, held in midstream, unable to speak or piss further, that voice came again from the dark. ‘No, no, fellow. Continue, pray. Everyone else in Whitehall is doing it, so you may as well join them.’

  ‘I th-thank your lordship,’ John stammered, cursing himself for using a title, moving a few paces down the path, flooding again. Christ’s blood! He was tempted to run, venting as he did. But his deluge was furious, and near endless; besides, the other’s tone had been full of the melancholy for which he was renowned. He would take to his bed and not rise for weeks. So he would perhaps remain in the arbor long enough for the business to be concluded and a quiet exit made.

  John’s hopes lasted until the moment he was tucking himself away – when the gravelled path crunched and the voice came again, almost at his shoulder. ‘Ha! I thought as much. I’d know those Cornish tones anywhere. God a mercy, if it ain’t John Lawley.’

  Despite the years they’d known each other, John had never been able to persuade the earl that his tones came from Shropshire and the deep dark of his hair from the father he’d never known, dead before his birth. He would forever be a ‘black Cornishman’ – and now was not the time to renew the argument. ‘’Tis I indeed, my lord,’ he replied, fumbling at his groin.