And it was during the lull before a pair of fighting cocks was brought into the pit, Edmund Meredith smiled at his friends.
“Shakespeare’s giving up. I’m going to take his place,” and made his remarkable boast.
Young Rose and Sterne, gallants like himself, applauded. William Bull wondered if he would get his money back. Cuthbert Carpenter trembled, because he was going to hell. Jane Fleming wondered if Edmund would marry her. And John Dogget grinned, because he had no worries anyway.
Nobody took any notice of the dark-skinned man behind them.
Edmund Meredith wanted to cut a figure in the world. He had no other motive, and there was nothing else that he wanted to achieve. But in pursuing his ambition he was single-minded. If the world was a stage, he meant to play a handsome part. He had always known that quiet old Rochester would never do for him, but fortunately his father had left him a modest income on which he could live as a single gentleman. And so he had come to London.
But what to do? How did a young man cut a figure in the world? There was the royal court of course, the great high road to rank and fortune. But the chances of failure and humiliation were high, as his father and grandfather had discovered. The law then. There were more lawsuits in busy London nowadays than ever before, and the best lawyers were making huge fortunes. He had attended the Inns of Court, therefore, and nearly completed his studies. “But law’s too dry, too tedious for me,” he judged. His cousins the Bulls were brewers. “But I’ll not dirty my hands with trade,” he vowed.
He liked to write verses. “I’ll be a poet, then,” he declared. But to be a poet you needed a patron. Without a patron the court and the fashionable world never noticed you; printers, even if they printed hundreds of copies, only paid a pittance. A rich patron, however, pleased by elegant verses dedicated to him and immortalizing his noble house, could be generous indeed. The Earl of Southampton, people said, had paid Shakespeare so well for one fine poem, Venus and Adonis, that the fellow had been set up for life. The only trouble was that patrons were also fickle. Poor Spenser, no less a poet than Will Shakespeare, had hung about the court for years and had scarcely made a penny.
There was, however, the theatre. It was amazing really: even in his childhood, the theatre had hardly existed. There were the mummers who enacted Bible stories at religious festivals, or the fellows who would put on a song and dance in the courtyard of an inn like the George; and of course every educated man knew about the drama of classical times. Classical scenes were sometimes enacted at court. But it had only been recently that the great nobles had set the fashion by encouraging troupes of actors to give more elaborate shows to please the queen. Encouraged by their lordly patrons, the actors had begun to discover what they could do. Soon they wanted proper plays. They began to hire writers, and in a few years, as if by magic, the wonder of the English theatre had begun.
“It’s a fashion that will pass,” some said, but Meredith did not think so. People were flocking to the plays, not just at court, but in London too. The best actors, little more than servants or vagrants before, were becoming popular heroes. Writers were well paid. If a play was successful, the playwright was granted most of the house receipts for one performance. And some – men of learning like Ben Jonson – had won the court’s admiration for their brilliant wit. Marlowe too, killed young, alas, had written tragedies in language so resounding that men compared him to the ancient Greeks.
And then there was Shakespeare. Meredith liked both the Shakespeare brothers. He saw more of Ned, who acted the minor parts well enough: Will was always so busy that you only saw him fleetingly. But when he did join the crowd at the tavern he was certainly very cheerful company. He had written several comedies which had found favour, and some history plays about the Plantagenet kings as well. “Fustian stuff, but popular,” Edmund judged. Will Shakespeare had not yet attempted tragedy and Edmund imagined it was probably beyond him. Except for one play. His Romeo and Juliet had been astonishing, and had played again and again. All London knew it. “But I’m sure he must have had help from other hands,” Edmund would say. He had done nothing quite like it since. “He’s wise enough to know his limitations,” Edmund told his friends. For though, with his balding, dome-like head, you might have thought the fellow was a man of learning, this was not the case. “I’ve a little Latin and no Greek,” he had freely admitted. Shakespeare was just an actor with a remarkable wit, and in his secret heart, Meredith could not help feeling that he was cut from a finer cloth and could probably do better.
He had started over a year ago when he contributed some extra lines to a comedy, which had been praised. Even successful writers like Shakespeare often did light work of this kind and he was delighted with himself. A few months later he was allowed to do a whole scene, and then another. He excelled, they agreed, at producing witty repartee in the mouths of young gallants like himself. But six months ago, the Lord Chamberlain’s company, the very same troupe that Shakespeare wrote for, had agreed in principle to take an entire new play from him for which, when it was accepted, he would be paid the full fee of six pounds.
“Is it finished?”
He smiled down at the red-haired girl at his side. “Almost.”
The play, though he said it himself, was a masterpiece: none of your crude humour for the crowd, but brilliant wit to delight the court and the discerning. It was about a young man like himself. Every Man Hath His Wit, it was called. She had already followed each step of its progress over the last few months and now he told her the latest developments of its plot.
There were several things Edmund Meredith liked about Jane Fleming. She was fifteen – young enough to look up to and be moulded by a man like himself. She was pretty, but not such a beauty that she attracted a host of rival suitors. Her family were involved with the playhouse: she shared his love for the theatre. And though her family was modest, she was to receive a small legacy from an uncle. “Enough,” he had confided to the Bulls, “to keep a family.”
“I’m surprised,” said one of those cousins, knowing his ambition, “that you don’t look for a real heiress, or a rich widow.” Some of the greatest men at court had done that. But Edmund knew his limits. “I’d always be looked down upon. A mere kept man,” he reasoned. He was not strong enough to strut through that.
In time, perhaps, he would marry young Jane Fleming.
And then the dark-skinned man behind them spoke.
“I think, young master, I’ll come to see your play.” They turned, and found themselves looking at the strangest fellow they had ever seen in their lives.
It was hard to describe him. Though his features were negroid, you could only say that his skin was a rich brown. His hair was long and black and hung in heavy ringlets and he was wearing a long, sleeveless leather jerkin that reached down to his knees, with leather boots, red breeches and a white linen shirt. On his wrists were golden bangles. He carried no sword but a long, curved dagger. He was perhaps thirty-five, but his teeth were all there, as sparkling white as his shirt, and it was obvious from the almost indolent way he carried himself, that under the shirt there was a splendid athlete’s body. A dark-skinned man was rare in London. His eyes were a perfect blue. His name was Orlando Barnikel.
One of the Barnikels of Billingsgate, a seafarer, had brought him to London as a cabin boy after a voyage to the south, and cheerfully announced to his astonished family: “He’s mine.” He never offered any further explanation, but the boy’s blue eyes seemed to confirm the statement, and when, ten years and several profitable voyages later the seafarer died, he left Orlando quite a tidy little fortune: enough for him to acquire a part-share in a ship which he captained himself. With a crew drawn from every port in Europe, a dead-eye with a pistol, a body as strong and supple as a serpent and a hand fast as a panther, he roamed the seven seas.
He was, of course, a pirate. In another age, he might have been hanged; but then so, very likely, would Sir Francis Drake, and a good many other English heroes.
But now the island kingdom had other things to worry about. There was the Spanish enemy to plunder, and since men like Drake offered the hard-pressed queen a share of their profits, if a French or other prize were found on the distant, broad high seas, only a fool would ask too many questions. Anyway, as Elizabeth knew: “You cannot control these salty sea-dogs: they go with the wind.” It was Orlando, and many like him, who harried the great Armada to destruction.
Although his colour was dark, he had the spirit of the Viking. His appearances in London were irregular, but whenever he came to the port, he would stride down Billingsgate market to the huge stall where the Barnikels carried on their fishmongering business, and where his cousins, rather proud that this exotic adventurer belonged to them, always gave him a welcome. The Moor, some of the Billingsgate folk called him, by which they meant only that his skin was dark. But those who sailed with him, and the men all over Europe who feared him referred to him as Black Barnikel.
Edmund Meredith knew nothing of this. He stared at him in surprise, but then, seeing the other two gallants watching, he quietly smiled. It was only natural, after all, that a man of wit like himself should have a little sport with the curious stranger. With a sideways glance at his companions, therefore, he began.
“You wish to see my play, sir?”
Black Barnikel nodded slowly.
“I thank you for your kindness then. And yet I cannot help you.”
“The reason?”
“Why, that my play, sir, is not made to be seen.” And as Barnikel gazed at him, the other two gallants laughed. For they knew what he meant.
There were two kinds of play in Elizabethan London. The common herd liked a spectacle: a battle, a sword fight – the actors were expert at these. Even a cannon was fired sometimes. They liked broad jokes from popular clowns who adlibbed to the audience, and every play, no matter what the subject, ended with a gig – a song and dance routine. These were the spectacles written, as Meredith and his friends would say, to be seen. But for the discriminating, for the more private, courtly audience, there was another kind of play, full of wit and decorous language. The kind that Edmund meant to write. Plays written not to be seen, but to be heard.
“It will not be played?” the seafarer softly asked.
“Marry, sir, yes.”
“I come here to the Curtain,” Black Barnikel said.
“Then you shall neither see nor hear it.”
“Where should I go then?”
“Why, you may go to the devil,” Edmund laughed. “But to hear aught for your good, sir,” he continued lightly, “I commend you to a monastery.” And the little company applauded.
This little sally was not without wit. For if there were two kinds of play in London, there were also two kinds of theatre. Most playhouses were essentially open-air stages surrounded by a circular gallery. Of the two in Shoreditch, the Theatre and the Curtain, the nearby Theatre which was used by Shakespeare and the Chamberlain’s men, was moderately respectable and confined itself to plays; but the Curtain was known for its vulgar entertainments and so like a bear-pit that, as today, it was even used as one. The only advantage of these roofless and noisy buildings was that the acting companies could pack in a large paying audience; but the dream of every serious actor was to perform indoors, before a quiet and attentive audience. In 1597, the lease on the Theatre having run out and renewal refused, it was precisely this that the Chamberlain’s men proposed to do.
It was a radical move. Though boy companies from the London schools had put on courtly indoor productions from time to time, this would be the first time in history that anyone had put on serious, professional indoor drama. “We’ll have nothing but the finest plays,” they decided, and a splendid hall had been found and fitted up in the precincts of the Blackfriars, the former monastery. Edmund planned to have his play performed in this elegant new setting when the indoor productions began later that year.
Black Barnikel’s eyes took on an almost sleepy look as he watched the little group. The brewer, the carpenter and young Dogget did not interest him. He noted the girl’s pale freckled skin and her abundant red hair with interest. But though he had seen, and sailed with, and even killed all kinds of men, this clever young popinjay was a type that was new to him. He did not especially mind being teased with riddles. London was full of witty fellows and even the crudest theatre audience expected the clowns to amuse them with quips and conundrums. But behind Meredith’s words, he detected a trace of contempt.
“I think you mock me,” he gently suggested. And stretching easily, he took out his dagger and gazed at it thoughtfully. “They say that my point is sharp.”
The other two gallants put their hands towards their swords, but if Edmund felt any alarm, he had too much spirit to show it. “I intend no mockery, sir,” he said. “But I warn you even so that my pen is mightier than your dagger.”
“How so?”
“Why, with your dagger, sir, you may end my life,” Edmund laughed. “Yet with my pen, I can make you immortal.”
“Mere words,” the sailor shrugged. “On a stage.”
But Meredith was not so easily gainsaid. “Yet what is the world, sir –” he demanded, “if not a stage? And when our life is done, sir, what remains? How shall we be remembered? For our fortune? Our deeds? Our tomb? But give me a theatre – even a pit like this,” he gestured round. “I can contain a life within this circle, sir,” he cried. “I can show you a man, his deeds, his qualities, his very essence.”
Black Barnikel’s eyes continued to rest upon the little group. “Do you mean,” he asked curiously, “that you could write a play about me?”
“Aye, sir,” the other rejoined, “which makes my pen still greater. For not only can I make you immortal,” he smiled, “but I can change your very form, sir, turn you into something else, like a magician.”
“I do not follow you.” The seafarer’s eyelid drooped.
“Nay but you shall, like a hound on a leash,” he blithely continued. “For this reason. My pen can make you into what it will. Perhaps a hero; or just as well, a fool; one who loved wisely, or a helpless cuckold. Captain or coward, handsome or loathsome. Upon the stage, sir, in the hands of a poet, a character is tethered like that bear upon a chain.” And he smiled in triumph.
How fine, how clever he was, thought Jane, as she gazed at Edmund. The dark-skinned stranger rather frightened her, though she could not help stealing glances at him too.
Black Barnikel said nothing. If he felt threatened or insulted, he gave no sign; but had either Jane or Edmund looked more closely, they might have noticed that his eyes were somewhat smoky. Only after a pause, did he softly murmur:
“I shall come to your play then, young master.”
The leafy little suburb of Shoreditch lay half a mile to the north of the city, above Moorfields. It was here that the two playhouses lay. For Jane Fleming, it was also the place she had called home all her life.
As she walked into her parents’ lodgings an hour later she could not help smiling. She knew her parents were a little strange. “Don’t be like them,” her uncle used to urge her. But she loved them as they were. And she smiled because the house was like her father: small and thin. Just eight feet wide and two storeys high it stood, jammed between two larger houses, just behind the Theatre. And it was completely full of clothes.
Gabriel Fleming was the trusted keeper of the tiring house – the room in the theatre where the actors changed their costumes – for the Chamberlain’s men. The whole family was in the theatre too: his wife Nan, and Jane, who both assisted him, and even Jane’s little brother Henry, who had just started as a boy-actor, taking, as the custom was, the female roles. As for the clothes, for reasons of safety Gabriel liked to keep most of the theatre wardrobe in his house.
Nothing was ever tidy. With her parents shuttling between house and theatre, and actors dropping in at all hours, Jane was used to a genial mess. But life was never dull. In autumn and winter the theatre was in fu
ll swing, culminating, if the company were chosen, with performances before the queen at the Christmas court. During Lent, when plays were forbidden, she and her mother went over the entire wardrobe, washing, repairing, renewing, and thanks to this she was a first-rate sempstress. Then, after Easter, the performances began again. But it was the summer that she enjoyed best of all; for then the whole company set out on the road. There would be a line of wagons – one loaded with the travelling stage and props, her parents in another filled with costumes, which would also serve as a tiring house at each stop. They would trundle out of London and be gone for weeks, into the surrounding counties. Each time they came to a town, members of the troupe would go ahead to announce their arrival with kettledrum and trumpet. The stage was set up, usually in the yard of an inn so that people would have to pay to enter; and for several days they would go through their repertoire until it was time to move on. Sometimes they turned aside to play in a noble house. And how Jane loved it all – the freedom of the road, the new sights and sounds, the sense of adventure.
“You must get away from the theatre.” No wonder her kindly uncle shook his head. The Fleming family were cautious, and proud of it. When the Dissolution of the Monasteries had ruined their old business, they had moved into haberdashery. “Haberdashery is more reliable than religion,” Jane’s grandfather had solemnly declared, and he bequeathed a sound little business to his three concave-faced sons. Why Gabriel had deserted this for the unstable world of the theatre, his two brothers could never understand. The eldest, with a family of his own, had never spoken to him since; but Uncle, as Jane called him, having remained unmarried, had appointed himself her guardian, constantly gave her advice and, since he was convinced Gabriel would die a pauper, had promised her and little Henry a legacy.
The haberdashery business was good. Buttons and bows, ribbons, sequins, all manner of knick-knacks. The two Fleming brothers also had a workshop making brass pins, as had several others. “That’s where we’ll find you a husband,” Uncle told her. “You want a good pin man. Just leave it to me,” he would add with a sigh. “Your parents will never do anything.”
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