Alms for Oblivion

by Philip Gooden

  As it happened, the play we were going to stage, William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, contained all this and more. To wit – wit (of a sour sort), love, lust, argument, filth, battles, treachery, and sulking in tents. As a backdrop, there’s a war, the one between the Greeks and the Trojans. It may even be the original war, for all I know, the very first to darken the face of the earth. It certainly goes on for a long time, all of ten years. And then there’s the cause of that war the seizing of Helen, wife of Menelaus the Greek, by Paris, the son of King Priam of Troy. But the story of Troilus is not really to do with them – and I should know since this was my part.

  Yes, Nicholas Revill was playing Troilus, the love-sick young Trojan prince who, like Paris, was a son of King Priam. It was the first time, incidentally, that I had appeared in the title to a play.

  I am a warrior and in love with the beautiful Cressida, daughter of Calchas the priest. Calchas is a Trojan blessed or cursed with second sight. Forseeing his city’s ruin, he has abandoned Troy for the Greek camp outside the walls but somehow forgotten to take his daughter with him. Comes a time, during which Troilus after a long and laborious wooing is enjoying his Cressida, when Calchas arranges for his daughter to be brought to him in an exchange of prisoners. The young lovers must part, although not before they have sworn eternal fidelity. Do they keep that faith? You shall see (even though you already know the answer).

  Meantime – in the foggy by-ways of London rather than on the sun-kissed plains of Troy – Peter Agate and I groped towards our destination beyond Temple Stairs. I knew the area just to the west of here for it was the site of Essex House, the London palace of Robert Devereux, the now disgraced Earl, and a place which I had twice visited at some peril to my life. In the shadow of Temple Bar we entered the jumbled precincts of the Inner and Middle Temples. It was only about two in the afternoon but it seemed as though evening was already approaching. I identified ourselves to a gatekeeper as members of the Chamberlain’s – adding “the players” in case he pretended ignorance – and Peter and I were directed round several corners and through several courts. Dark-gowned figures were flitting about in these spaces, like crows, and adding to the general cheerfulness of the scene. I supposed they were Benchers or juniors. A grand red-bricked tower and entrance, crested with the lamb and flag symbol of the Temple, loomed up in the murk. We climbed a few steps. Pushing through a weighty oak door, we left the damp fog and entered a great hall with an elaborately beamed ceiling and candles massed in sconces along the walls. The tables and benches which had been shifted to one side indicated that when this room wasn’t being used for playing its real purpose was for dining, probably of a grand sort.

  Inside this hall were my fellows and that air of bustle and excitement which I’ve long associated with a play in its real beginnings – any play, it doesn’t matter what. The run-through that morning in the Globe tire-house had been a bare affair and now we were going to clothe that skeleton with action, expression and gesture. I pointed out to Peter the area at the end of the room, telling him that this was the very spot where the law students mounted their own performances and where our own Troilus and Cressida was to be staged. I enjoyed playing the expert.

  First, though, I had to gain approval for Peter’s presence here. I looked about for a likely senior, that is, one who wouldn’t raise objections. Fortunately the playwright himself was in attendance. He hadn’t been with us at the earlier chamber practice. Now he was standing, as he often did, a little to one side, regarding. His acting days weren’t quite over but he was always more prominent backstage than on the boards.

  WS looked up and nodded slightly at my approach. He seemed preoccupied but greeted me courteously enough.

  “This is Peter Agate, a friend of mine arrived from the country,” I said. “He has come to see how we do things.”

  “He is welcome.”

  “Peter, here is our playwright – and senior – and share-holder – and sometime player – Master Shakespeare.”

  Peter looked abashed – he knew who it was standing opposite him for WS’s fame had spread quite far among the lettered classes. No words came out of his slightly open mouth but he stuck out his hand in response to WS’s own I took some pleasure in seeing an old friend shake hands with a man I greatly admired and liked. And I took a more covert pleasure in the thought that now Peter knew that I knew a man like WS. Reflected glory.

  “Peter wishes to become a player.”

  “He is doubly welcome then,” said Shakespeare, sounding as though he meant it.

  Peter looked even more abashed, as though I shouldn’t have revealed this ambition. WS’s warmth contrasted with my own coolness back in the Goat & Monkey, and I regretted having been discouraging to my friend, even briefly. I wondered whether to amuse WS by telling him of the tavern encounter with the chalky-faced old man and of our rescue by the boatmen. But there were other more serious matters running through the author’s head.

  “You can read, Master Agate? I mean, read with feeling rather than by rote?”

  “I hope so, sir,” said Peter, seeming unsurprised by the question.

  “We have a sudden gap in our ranks, Nicholas.”

  “Somebody’s late?” I said hopefully, wanting Burbage’s waspishness directed elsewhere.

  “Not late now – but I fear that our patron will be shortly.”

  Deliberately or not, Shakespeare had misunderstood me. We were all aware that our patron Lord Hunsdon – who had succeeded his father to the post of Lord Chamberlain only a few years earlier – was sick, too sick to attend the Privy Council. This meant that the Chamberlain’s Company was without a voice at court or in the highest circles of the land. I had glimpsed this great man on a handful of occasions but knew nothing of him except that he had a great fondness for music. What I knew besides was that every company needed a patron and protector. During any sickness of Lord Hunsdon, we might have looked to the Queen to be our guardian but rumour whispered that the royal decline, hitherto slow, was gathering pace.

  “Thomas Pope has gone off on a visit at Hunsdon House,” said WS. “It is a delicate business. He left for Hertfordshire this very afternoon.”

  I nodded. It must have been an urgent departure if Thomas Pope was compelled to travel in this weather. He’d been present at the morning practice. I noticed that Peter Agate looked both interested and baffled, as well he might. I was a bit baffled myself.

  “We want a first-hand account of our patron’s health,” said Shakespeare. “And our obligation to Hunsdon demands that a senior visit him.”

  This was surely a sudden decision on the part of the shareholders, the seven men who between them had control of the Globe playhouse. Perhaps they had received news of some crisis. Underneath the courtesy of visiting an ailing man was, of course, the unspoken desire to determine whether we needed to look about for a fresh patron now or whether this might be postponed for months or even years.

  “But it means that we’re without a Thersites for the afternoon,” said WS, looking at Peter. “Only for this afternoon. We can make other arrangements before the next rehearsal.”

  He said no more but let his words sink in.

  “Peter – play Thersites!”

  I couldn’t help myself. I spluttered loud enough for one or two near us to stop whatever they were doing. If there’s any one character in Troilus and Cressida who’d be beyond the reach of my friend it was Thersites. My acquaintance with Shakespeare’s creations was by this time fairly extensive and, however brilliantly they were realized, you generally knew where in the catalogue of men (or women) to place them: soldiers, sages, lovers, shrews, & cetera. But I’d never encountered anyone like Thersites before, either in real life or on the stage.

  So I half laughed, half exclaimed, and Peter became a little indignant, at least in his looks.

  “Master Agate,” said WS ignoring my reaction, “I don’t know you, although you come with the recommendation of being Nicholas’s friend.”


  Peter hardly knew where to put himself. He actually blushed.

  “And you want to be a player?”

  Peter nodded.

  “You know what is the hardest part to play?”

  “Oneself,” said Peter.

  “Why yes,” said WS, the pleased pedagogue. “And the opposite is generally true too. That is, we find it easiest to play what we are not. And, believe me, when I ask you to read – read not play – the part of Thersites, I’m asking you to be the very opposite of what is most likely your true self.”

  “Who is Thersites?” said Peter.

  “A deformed and scurrilous Greek,” said Shakespeare. “One who rails on the wars and satirizes his commanders. One to whom the whole world is a mass of fools. A nasty, cynical fellow but a necessary one perhaps.”

  “Thomas Pope has the part,” I added, seeing the drift of WS’s words, “and he is not like that at all.”

  “Nor are you, Master Agate. Not a scurrilous, cynical fellow, I think. Are you?”

  What answer can you give to a question like that? Peter duly shrugged and reddened and looked abashed all over again.

  “So you are well suited to read the part of Thersites this afternoon, since that Greek gentleman is your opposite in every respect.”

  The playwright paused for an instant to allow Peter to disagree but my friend naturally said nothing.

  “That’s settled then.”

  WS clapped Peter on the shoulder and smiled. Peter smiled back. Shakespeare had got his way. He usually did get his way, and without stirring up resentment or a sense of grievance, even though it was sometimes hard to see how the trick was done.

  “Nick,” he continued, “if you take Peter across to see Master Allison, he’ll supply this fledgling player here with his part. I’ll speak to Dick Burbage and make the way smooth.”

  WS moved off to explain to Burbage that we now had a man to play Thersites for the afternoon. Peter gazed after him. I looked around for Geoffrey Allison and eventually spotted him ensconced behind a table in a corner, with sheaves of paper and a mound of scrolls. I tapped Peter on the shoulder to get his attention – he was still staring, bemused, at Shakespeare who was now talking in low tones to Dick Burbage – and we crossed the banqueting hall to see the book-keeper.

  Master Allison is the conscience of the Chamberlain’s, or perhaps our recording angel. He remembers our good actions and our bad ones, that is, the good and bad performances He keeps our parts and doles them out, grudgingly. He remembers who we’ve played even after we ourselves have long forgotten our lines. No one, not even Dick Burbage or William Shakespeare, knows as much as Allison does about the playing history of the Company.

  I introduced Peter to him, informing him that this ‘fledgling player’ was to assume Thomas Pope’s part of Thersites for the afternoon session, by order of WS. Master Allison paused from his note-making to scrabble among the mound of scrolls on the table and, selecting one more by instinct than inspection, held it out to Peter but without letting go of it. He cast his eyes up and down my friend.

  “Fledgling player, eh. Well, here is a feather or two will help you fly.”

  He waggled the scroll but didn’t release it into Peter’s outstretched hand.

  “Mind you return it straight after the practice is over.”

  “I will.”

  “You have an honest enough face,” said Allison, and it occurred to me that Peter might be growing weary of being complimented on his honesty. Still reluctant to part with the rolled-up paper, the book-keeper continued, “Understand that these parts are like gold, young man, but more valuable since they are mined, not from the earth . . .”

  “Mined?”

  “ . . . but rather from the mind of our author – as you might say.”

  Fortunately my friend smiled at the pun. And only then did Geoffrey Allison allow Peter to take the scroll. Then, dismissing us with a wave of the hand, he resumed his note-making.

  Without any signal being given, the rest of the company was moving towards the hall-screen. It was in front of this partitioned-off area that we’d be practising and later performing Troilus and Cressida since, with its double entrances and gallery above, it was the nearest thing to the layout of the stage at the Globe. As we ambled across to join our fellows, I said to Peter, “Well, you can never have thought that within a few hours of arriving in my lodgings you’d be reading with the Chamberlain’s Company.”

  “I’m speechless, Nick.”

  “Not for a couple of hours, I hope.”

  “So when do I come on?”

  “It’s all down there on the scroll. The lines immediately before your entrances. But Burbage’ll cue you anyway. You’re only reading. This isn’t your part, after all. You’re not Thersites.”

  I said this to soothe his nerves or rather to temper his growing excitement. But something inside me also wanted to put my old friend in his place. I had been many months in London before achieving even a hearing from the Chamberlain’s. I didn’t want Peter Agate to believe that theatrical success came too quick and easy. It wouldn’t be good for him. (It wouldn’t be good for me either.)

  After all this, I expect that you expect to read how Peter gave a brilliant reading as Thersites, the Greek with the foul mouth and fouler mind. Or how he was execrably bad in the part. The truth is that he was neither. When he got into the part and saw what he was dealing with, he gave a solid account of the character, sneering and fleering with the best of them. But every so often glimpses of good, honest Peter shone through, so that lines and sentiments like ‘I am a bastard’ were quite decorously delivered, rousing the wrong kind of laughter.

  Still, all went well. Well enough for it to be arranged that, if Thomas Pope hadn’t returned from his visit to Hertfordshire and Lord Hunsdon by the next Troilus rehearsal in a couple of days’ time, then Peter would once again speak for Thersites. I noticed that Shakespeare went out of his way to say something to my friend. By his look and gesture it was complimentary. But then WS was always complimentary, I consoled myself. Almost always.

  After the play practice some of us repaired to a local tavern, a rather more salubrious one than Southwark’s Goat & Monkey (but we were in north London and in lawyer-land after all). The place was called the Devil, spawning plenty of jokes about ‘going to the . . . ’ and ‘talking of the . . . ’. The story went that the tavern owed its name to the church of St Dunstan which stood nearby, and that an old inn-sign had once depicted that saint pulling the devil by the nose (what the devil had done to deserve this, I don’t know). Now the painted sign was duller and vaguely legalish, showing a scroll and a seal and a quill. Even so I considered that the devil’s name was a fitting one for a tract of London where so many lawyers and would-be lawyers congregated.

  Peter got on famously with those of my fellows he chatted with in the Devil. We were in that high-spirited mood that comes after a successful practice or performance and we welcomed a newcomer to our ranks. I was split between pleasure that my friend was being so graciously received by the Company and anxiety in case he thought it was always like this. And of course there was a little touch of resentment too. No patron likes to see his client go too far too fast.

  We didn’t get free of the Devil until late evening. Peter was reluctant to leave and we reeled out with the other unwived, unloved, un-bed-warmed members of the Chamberlain’s, mostly the younger ones. The fog had cleared and permitted a few stars to gaze drowsily down on the two of us as we reached the river, caught a ferry and, on the far side, retraced our steps to Dead Man’s Place. No Charons or chalk-faced old ranters in sight.

  It was generally assumed that Peter would share my lodgings for the next few days until he could find his own. Assumed by him, that is, and acquiesced in by me. I didn’t think Samuel Benwell would make any difficulty. More likely he would be drooling to imagine two members of his favourite profession sharing a bed. So it proved. My landlord was still in the little lobby, leaning into a corner –
I wondered if he’d been hanging around there all day waiting for some surprise visitor. He was holding a candle of stinking tallow whose waste oozed into a grease-pan. For a moment I thought of a mother, or perhaps a wife, waiting for two naughty boys to come back home after a night on the town.

  I shut Peter up just after he’d started burbling and slurring on about his fren’ship with Willum Shakeshpeare and his discovery that the Chamberlain’s were wunnerful men. Revill, relatively sober, swiftly negotiated with Benwell the provision of a spare mattress rather than a new room. The landlord simultaneously looked disappointed and raised his eyebrows in surprise – insofar as one could read all this expressiveness by a single smoky candle – but he must have known that my bed was small and mean, not really comfortable enough to share with anyone, even with a woman. He must have known, I say, because I think he was in the habit of spying on me.

  We settled on one and a half pennies a night extra. I already knew that Peter was in funds, having seen his largesse in the Devil. The bargain struck, Benwell graciously handed over his odorous candle, now more grease than illumination, so that we might see ourselves to bed. Then we went single file up to my room, I almost pushing Peter up the stairs with one hand and holding on to the light with the other. I retrieved a leaking straw mattress from some unregarded corner, tugged it into my little room, laid it out beside my own bed (there was no space for it to go anywhere else), and felt simultaneously virtuous and resentful, as if I’d done everything and more that could be expected of me in relation to my old friend.

  Peter had bashed his forehead somewhere in his progress to my room, probably at the entrance. The lintel was low but I was used to it. I should have warned him but the blow seemed to do him a favour and clear his head a little, even as the blood leaked slowly from his noddle. He was disposed to go on talking. He was still the worse for drink although the slurring disappeared.