King of Shadows (14 page)

It was Will Shakespeare, wonderfully demonic in his makeup as Oberon. He said, whispering, “Wait till they come off, then run on. And speak loud.”

I stared up at him, frozen, as Burbage and the rest came galumphing past us, while the audience laughed and clapped. He grinned at me, and suddenly everything was all right, and I ran onstage into that marvelous terrifying bright space ringed by faces. I somersaulted toward Roper, running from the other side to meet me.

 

“How now, spirit! Whither wander you?”

“Over hill, over dale

Thorough hush, thorough briar. . . .”

 

I hoped Will Shakespeare wouldn't think I was overdoing the somersaults, but the audience liked them, and Roper and I bounced through our scene, both of us ferociously projecting, until Oberon and Titania stalked on, mad at each other about who should own the servant boy. Shakespeare looked magnificent and somehow taller in
his exotic pants and cloak, and as Titania, Thomas was magical, unrecognizable. Master Burbage had given him an amazing multicolored costume that shimmered like a waterfall, quite disguising his pudginess, and his high strong voice rang out like a clarinet.

I don't think they had clarinets, then. Well, Thomas's voice got there first. When that voice broke he would obviously be a clown, because he had that natural comic talent—like the company's new actor Robert Armin, who was playing Flute the Bellows-mender. But today, still a boy, Thomas was beautiful and oddly chilling as the fairy queen. I told him so afterward, and he crowed like a cock and punched me in the stomach.

As for Will Shakespeare, he was King of Fairyland and of the whole world, as far as I was concerned. He wasn't a great actor; he didn't have that indescribable special gift that Richard Burbage had, that could in an instant fill a theater with roars of laughter, or with prickling cold silence. But as Oberon he had an eerie authority that made me, as Puck, totally his devoted servant. When he sent me offstage to look for the magic herb that he would squeeze on Titania's eyes, it was my own delight—me, Nat Field—that put spring into my cartwheeling exit.

 

“I'll put a girdle round about the earth

In forty minutes—”

 

And I'd arranged to have the door held open for my hurtling arms and legs, not by Roper, in spite of his repentance, but by Joseph the tireman, who was totally reliable because of his concern for my spectacular green tights.

On we went, through Shakespeare's cheerful chain of misunderstanding and accident, to the scene in which Lysander and Hermia, on their happy way to elope together, lie down to sleep in the wood outside Athens. But it's the same wood in which Puck, sent by Oberon, is hunting for Hermia's admirer Demetrius and his scorned girlfriend Helena.

Instructed by Oberon to make Demetrius fall in love with Helena, I came prowling across the front of the stage, carrying the magic flower.

 

“Through the forest have I gone

But Athenians found I none

On whose eye I might approve

This flown force in stirring love.”

 

Then I spotted Lysander.

 

“Night and silence—who is here?

Weeds of Athens he doth wear;

This is he, my master said,

Despised the Athenian maid—”

 

And I was tiptoeing toward Lysander, flower in hand, when suddenly a piercing voice rang out from the groundlings' yard below me, a girl's voice, full of concern.

“No, no, that's not he—that be the wrong one!”

I stopped, frozen. There was a rumble of laughter from the audience, and a few blurry drunken shouts, and if I'd been reacting as myself, or perhaps if I'd been in my own world and time, I would have been thrown, and spoiled the
scene. But I was altogether in Will Shakespeare's time and dream, I was his Puck, and so I reacted as his Puck.

I paused, listening, and cocked my head first to one side and then to the other, as if to say:
Did I hear something?

The girl called again, urgently—I could see her out of the corner of my eye, a round-faced pretty girl staring up at me, completely caught up in the play—“No, Puck, prithee—he is the wrong man!”

I listened puzzled again to the air, head cocked, and there was a ripple of laughter, different laughter this time, and then I shook my head firmly—
No, of course, I didn't hear anything, I'm dreaming it.
—and I squeezed the juice on Lysander's eyes. They really laughed then, a laugh made out of affection for the girl and amusement at me, and they applauded when I ran off.

Nick Tooley, white-painted and robed as Helena, ran onstage past me, to waken Lysander and further screw things up. And Will Shakespeare, who had been watching from the tiring-house door, caught me by the arm as I whirled past him—and then let go hastily, for fear of smudging Burbage's paint. He was smiling. He said, “Th'art a true actor, sprite.”

I grinned at him, half out of breath. “Thank you.”

He looked me in the eye for one more moment, and it was bright but it was serious. “Promise me never to stop.”

“I promise,” I said. “I promise.”

And I never shall stop.

Then the mechanicals were milling around us, peering at the “plot” for their cue, hissing at the book-keeper to check their lines, and it was time for the scene where they are rehearsing their terrible little play in the wood, and
Puck scares them all to death by changing the head on Bottom's shoulders to the head of an ass.

 

“Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee—thou art translated!”

 

Quince says that—big laugh line—before he rushes away after the others.

Master Burbage had a terrific ass's head. The oldest tireman, Luke, was a real whiz at special effects; put him in the twentieth century with computers to play with and he'd have made a lot of money in Hollywood. The head's eyes rolled wildly, on command, and the ears went up and down and sideways. The groundlings loved it. They cheered and shrieked like little children.

The theater was full of shouts and laughter, the play was dancing along. By the time I reached Puck's speech telling Oberon what has happened to Titania, I was high with delight and excitement. There we were, the two of us, at the heart of this happy gathering of three thousand people, at the heart of this fantastical play: together in the center of the stage, Will Shakespeare and me.

 

“My mistress with a monster is in love—”

 

Puck is on a high too, in that scene, really full of himself—until Demetrius comes on, pursuing Hermia, and Oberon says,
“Stand close, this is the same Athenian.”

Puck stops still. Uh-oh. He may be in trouble.
“This is the woman, but not this the man. . . .”

And when Oberon finds out the mistake—

“What hast thou done?”
Master Shakespeare thundered
at me, and for a moment it was terrifying to be attacked by that magnificent unearthly presence. But I remembered something he had said to me in rehearsal: “Puck is all mischief,” he had said. “He loves jokes, and causing trouble—he has no heart. Don't let him
feel,
like you or me.”

So I let the thunder bounce off me, and was wary of Oberon, but not frightened. I was learning things at the back of my head, then, that I had no idea I was learning. Puck danced about, Puck didn't give a darn about real human emotions.

 

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!”

 

Puck and Oberon, Oberon and Puck: together we watched and encouraged the lovers' jangling confusions, and Queen Titania's embarrassing love for an ass-headed clod, and then together, pulling the audience with us, we sorted everything out. It was wonderful, playing those scenes in such a theater, like telling a long involved family joke: all around us were friendly faces, intent, enjoying, shouting comments. Yes, they cracked nuts too, and popped bottles of ale open, and chomped on apples, but they came right along with us, all the way to the fairies' dance—Will Shakespeare stepping stately and elegant with Thomas—? when Titania and Oberon come together again.

And that was our exit until the end of the play, and we had to slip out through one of the tiring-house exits to make way for the imposing entrance of Duke Theseus and Hippolyta—which, though I didn't know it at the time, was the biggest gamble Burbage and Shakespeare had ever taken in their lives.

I saw them in the tiring-house, Theseus and Hippolyta, poised to go on, and the sight stopped me where I stood. Will Shakespeare was already motionless, watching, as John Heminges, who was Duke Theseus, swept toward the stage in a splendid purple velvet robe and held out his arm to Sam, the husky-voiced senior apprentice who was playing Hippolyta.

It was Sam who was the astounding sight. He wore a gleaming, wide-skirted dress of white satin, embroidered with hundreds of little pearls, and a great winglike embroidered collar rose like a halo behind his head. Above his white-painted, red-lipped face was an elaborate wig of bright red curls; he was the exact image of a portrait of Queen Elizabeth I that I'd seen reproduced on a poster at the new Globe Theatre in my own time.

And that, I realized, was exactly what Burbage and Shakespeare intended him to be. There was even the gold circlet of a crown amongst the red curls.

Shakespeare said softly, “Gloriana.”

I could see Sam's hand shaking as he opened his fan. He straightened his back, and with his head proud and high, he swept out into the theater on Heminges's arm. The audience gave a gasp, and voices whispered to and fro, sibilant, muttering. “The Queen . . . She's like the Queen. . .”

Shakespeare was standing very still, listening.

And then they broke into cheers. Spontaneously, all of them, all at once. Perhaps it began as applause for the costume, for the audacity of the portrait, but it swelled at once into an impulsive upsurge of emotion. Those in the galleries, who had been sitting down, jumped to their feet, applauding; the groundlings shouted, “God Save the
Queen!” and threw up their hats. They were all cheering their Queen with as much enthusiasm as if she'd been there in person to hear them.

And she was, of course, though none of them knew that. I looked at the curtain masking the Gentlemen's Room, and half expected to see it flung aside by a jeweled royal hand, but there wasn't a flicker of movement.

Instead, out on the stage, Sam in his queenly costume swept down in a deep curtsy to the entire theater, his hand still resting on Theseus's arm. And then their scene began, Gloriana—the Queen—became Hippolyta, and the audience quieted down.

Beside me, Will Shakespeare let out a long, low sigh of relief.

The book-keeper said softly, “Was tha feared? Really?”

“I feared the serpent's tongue. If they had hissed her, Burbage and I would be headed for the Tower. Headed and headless, like as not.”

“They love her,” said the book-keeper simply.

“They loved Essex, the other night.”

“But this goes deeper.”

The lovers came sailing past us and onto the stage, in their proper couples now.

Thomas was close by us, his eyes dark pools in the white Titania makeup. He said to Shakespeare, “You knew they'd not hiss her. You always know what they will do, always.”

“I throw the dice, Tom,” Will Shakespeare said. “I throw the dice.”

And pretty soon after that, Bottom and his fellow mechanicals were on, to perform their play before the court. It's the funniest and best part of
A Midsummer Night's.
Dream,
that play—“the most lamentable comedy, and most cruel death, of Pyramus and Thisbe”—and we were all unashamedly crowded near the exit doors, peeking through to watch it. Master Burbage stumped and stamped about as Bottom/Pyramus, with ridiculous stiff gestures and roaring declamation.

 

“O grim-look'd night! O night with hue so black!

O night, which ever art when day is not!

O night, O night, alack alack alack—”

 

Shakespeare gave a little soft snort of laughter. “Ned Alleyn to the life,” he said.

Guiltily, Thomas giggled. I whispered to him, “Ned who?”

Thomas blinked at me. “Edward Alleyn, of the Admiral's Men. Where do you
live,
Nat? Master Burbage's great rival, until he retired—old Fustian Tamburlaine Alleyn.”

“Oh yes, of course,” I said hastily—and then luckily the theater exploded into laughter at Robert Armin's entrance in his crudely female costume as Thisbe.

The play-within-the-play rollicked its way through to the staggering, throat-clutching death of the principals. Then there was a comical little clod-hopping dance called a bergomask, danced by two of the actors while another two played—badly—the tabor and drums; then, offstage, a stage-keeper tolled the strokes of midnight on a bell. Theseus broke up the evening, and I heard him speak my cue:

 

“Sweet friends, to bed.

A fortnight hold we this solemnity

In nightly revels and new jollity.”

 

And off they went and onto the empty stage I stepped, on tiptoe, in my glimmering green tights and my leafy-patterned body, with a broom in my hands, sweeping. I looked out at the audience.

 

“Now the hungry lion roars.

And the wolf behowls the moon. . .”

 

I could see the faces, all around me, intent now. They'd had done with laughing, they were caught in the last lingering magic of Shakespeare's dream. And so was I. The musicians up in the stage gallery played soft haunting music, a thin white mist crept over the stage from the two entrances, and it all affected me as much as it did the audience. I forgot the frantic stage-keepers who would be puffing away with their bellows at the smoke buckets in the tiring-house. I spoke my speech to the audience, not a cheery speech, telling them this was night now, when out in the dark world, graves gaped open and spirits roved free—and I felt suddenly that a lot of the upturned faces below me in the yard, mouths half open, staring, really believed me. I half believed myself. But here, I told them—