THE MEETING IN FINBURY FIELDS.
The man that on the forehead of his fortune
Bears figures of renown and miracle.
—I. Tamburlaine, ii.
A combination, and a form, indeed,
Where every god did seem to set his seal,
To give the world assurance of a man.
—Hamlet, iii, 4.
At the point where the path from the Theater penetrated the brick wall on the eastern boundary of Finbury Fields, late in the afternoon of June the first, 1593, a man had paused, apparently to prevent overtaking a crowd that was preceding him in the direction of the Shore-ditch Highway.
A fog of varying density, that had already enveloped the streets of London, was drifting across the fields, and hid not only the Theater and Curtain from view, but also the buildings, nearer at hand, of the dissolved Priory of Holywell. In spite of the obscuring mist, if one had stood at one end of the broken wall while the man, just spoken of, had paused in the center of the opening, the form and features of the latter could have been seen to advantage. His face would first have attracted attention. Both energy and sensibility could have been traced upon it even in repose when the dark and glowing eyes were closed. The first characteristic was displayed in a close-shaven chin which was almost pugnacious in its squareness, and in a nose which, while too fine for that of a Cæsar, had all the lordly outline of the latter. Intelligence and sensitiveness were written on the full and finely curved lips, and the glow upon his cheeks pronounced the extreme of temperance in habit, or an inexhaustible power of recuperation. In the eyes and broad and compact forehead evidences of genius were disclosed, but it could not be determined whether it was in the fiery glance of the former, or in the serenity of the latter, that such proof was written. The letters were of a type intelligible to all readers. The lines of thought, between his brows and on his cheeks, were indicative of age, but his laugh was from the heart of youth alone. Between the two one would have guessed his years correctly as close to thirty.
He was slender in stature and slightly above medium height. His dress was of the extreme style of the period; but although rich in texture, was worn with much use, and stained from evident dissipation. The black cloak, with buff silk lining, was torn across one shoulder. The scarlet doublet, because of missing buttons, was open more than its maker intended, to show the vest of same color, and gayly embroidered shirt front. The belt around the doublet was enriched with silver cord, and held a long rapier, whose bejeweled hilt was enough to excite the cupidity of vagrants or rufflers. The trunk hose of black fabric, reaching half way down his upper leg, was slashed so as to admit the protruding of purple silk, while tights of the latter color extended from the bottoms of the trunks down into the low shoes. He wore a flat cap with single white feather, and under it a mass of black hair hung to his shoulders.
The crowd before him was one dispersing after a short afternoon performance[3] at both theaters. It was smaller than usual and was the last of the season. The Plague had firmly engrafted itself in the city, and was gathering new life with increase of deaths.
Even in the suburbs the red crosses were being marked upon the doors of infected houses. A week previously, the Lord Mayor had issued a proclamation prohibiting the holding open of places of amusement during the prevalence of the epidemic. This order, aimed at the gathering of multitudes where germs of disease might be readily propagated, was nugatory outside the city walls, but it had had its effect upon the theater-going public. It was a warning of greater force than those thundered from the pulpits. The hegira of the wealthier class of people to the country had begun, and the poorer classes were closing their doors and venturing out only as necessity compelled.
It was this condition of affairs that had caused the managers of the play-houses in Finbury Fields to announce a closing of their doors, and the prospect of a reopening before the fall, or possibly the winter season, was not encouraging.
Such a cessation of occupation assured discomfort and perhaps misery to the man described; for his livelihood depended upon the prosperity of the theaters; but if he had at any time seriously considered the matter, the consideration had in no wise affected his perennial good humor. He laughed at the unsuccessful attempts of several crows at lighting upon one of the wings of a near windmill that turned slightly one way and then another in the shifting breeze. And then again he was amused at the actions of an apparently intoxicated man, who, having stumbled from the path, had in the fog encountered the wall near by, and with one hand against it was repeating in loud voice the lines he had lately heard from the lips of a ranting actor: “Swing back the gates, thou triple-headed fiend,
Or by the gods this hand will draw a blade
To make thy shoulders strangers to thy head.”
The laugh which these words and gestures awakened on the part of the quiet observer just described was joined in by another man who was approaching by the same path. The latter had been whistling with all the ardor and enthusiasm of tender years and an undisturbed mind, until the loud voice of the drunkard provoked him to laughter.
He was a beardless youth of apparently twenty years of age. As he laughed his little blue eyes were almost closed beneath his red eyebrows, so that their expression alone was enough to excite the merriment of an observer. His wide open mouth revealed two rows of white teeth, separated by at least two inches of space at the moment that the loudest peal of laughter came forth. His round cheeks were red with superabundance of health, and proclaimed contact with country air. It was not an overshrewd face nor one showing resolution; but it was so open, so frank and good natured, that even a person injured by carelessness on the part of its owner would have paused in expressing a natural remonstrance.
One would have expected to have seen a rough doublet of Kendal green, or of homespun russet, with patched trousers and low cockers upon the slender figure beneath this face; but, on the contrary, he was attired in a neat-fitting garb appropriate for the page of a lord or rich country squire. His blue coat, with velvet facing, had even an Italian ruff with a hundred double turnings upon it. A short sword was belted at his waist, and his trunks, of strong material, disappeared into top boots. The latter, however, were patched, of crude manufacture, and looked to have been worn through plowed fields at some recent period. Neither was his hat in keeping with his new body apparel, but was one evidently picked, for wearing on this particular expedition, out of some pile of discarded garments of the man whom he served.
As he saw the man first described a gleam of recognition showed in his face.
“Ho!” he exclaimed, joyfully, “Is that you?”
“None else,” returned the other, carelessly, as though the discovery of himself by the stranger was of the least concern.
“Sir Kit?” queried the youth, taking off a hat, still adorned with a broken feather, and bowing with a grace which was evidently a recent acquirement, for it savored of a contact with people far removed from a service in which he must have acquired his rough field boots.
“‘Sir,’ if so you will have it, but ‘Kit’ without doubt,” answered the man addressed, smiling at the youth’s appearance, and at the same time taking an interest in the jolly face of its owner. The latter feeling caused him to inquire:
“Hast thou any matter of concern to communicate to me?”
“You do not recognize me,” returned the stranger, as though the matter of his identity was first necessary to be established.
The gentleman studied the other for a moment, and then said:
“I have seen thy face before, but can not place thee. Where was it and who are you?”
“You saw me in Deptford, and my name is Tabbard. I come now from Sayes Court, where I have lately entered into better service than that of an attendant upon gentle folk in a wayside inn. The duke took a fancy to me.”
“And gave you a new doublet, and his old hat, eh?”
“True,” said Tabbard, “and the promise of long service, good wages and promotion.”
“Your star is in the ascendant,” laughed the other, and then added, “but what do you want to tell me?”
“It is this. The Duke of Sussex is at Sayes Court now, and many more who have left London with him. You are to attend there a masque with the remainder of the Earl’s actors.”
“Well,” interrupted the other, impatiently.
“But I am not here to tell you that alone. When I last saw you, you were at the Golden Hind, Dodsman’s tavern, in Deptford. They called me Tabbard there, and so did you when I waited upon you, and you gave me an angel for my attendance.”
“I do not remember the gold. When I give gold my memory is gone as well,” said the other, while an expressive smile played upon his lips.
“Well,” again began Tabbard, hurriedly, “at the same time that you were there, a gentleman named Manuel Crossford, from Canterbury, was there also with his daughter.”
“Yes, yes,” the man addressed as Kit exclaimed, and with it all the reserve that he had maintained vanished.
“Let details go,” he continued, grasping Tabbard’s arm, “I remember it all and you too. What of her?”
“The father did not look favorably upon your suit.”
“You evidently learned more than was proper for one in your position,” again interrupted the other, “but you are certainly not here to badger words with me. What else have you to say?”
The two men had moved close to one end of the brick wall, so as to avoid being brushed against by the occasional stragglers, who were still issuing from the mist in one direction and vanishing in the other. These stragglers came singly, in pairs, and in groups. Here would ride by a mounted cavalier in Spanish hat, loose velvet cloak that covered him to his knees, and high boots rattling with clumsy silver spurs. Then close in the latter’s wake would follow a ragged, sneaking vagrant of the Straits,[4] who having caught a glimpse of the spurs and the gold cord on the rider’s hat, was now intent on dogging him, until upon the latter’s dismounting at some ordinary or ale-house within the city, a groat might be earned by holding the horse. After these, a line of truant apprentices would stagger by with locked arms and swaying black-capped heads, endeavoring, by blocking the path, to keep a group of gayly dressed women from hurrying toward the tenements in the Garden Alleys.[5]
The sight of these trailing members of the great body of people which had disappeared did not seem to disturb the attention of the gentleman or his inferior; and pausing but for a moment the latter continued:
“Well, she is there at the Golden Hind to-day. I saw her face at one of the windows as I was riding by and then I remembered your words to never fail to inform you if I ever saw her again. I dismounted and went in.”
“Was she there alone?” asked Kit, without endeavoring to conceal his interest.
“I do not know, except——”
“And what do you know?”
“Let me proceed. Thou art too impatient. A line of horses was before the place and a crowd inside. I went through the tap-room and up the staircase without having made up my mind how to announce myself as coming from thee—coming from thee, mind—or for what purpose; and marry sir, she was at the head of the stairs and I simply blurted out: ‘Kit will be here to-night, and would see thee.’”
“And what answer made she, thou fool?”
“‘At nine,’ she said sir, ‘and tell him not to fail,’ and at that moment a man who had followed me into the hall set his foot on the lower stair and stumbled. This must have startled her, for she stopped speaking.”
“And didst thou not ask the number of the room?”
“Wait. I heard the step and looked below, and when I turned again her finger was on her lips and she drew back.”
“Canst thou never learn expedition?” exclaimed the other, biting his lip.
“She was behind the balustrade,” resumed Tabbard, unmindful of the interruption, “and where the light from the skylight fell upon her. He could not see her, nor she him, but she heard him hit the stairs. I say he could not see——”
“Go on, you stumble in your speech.”
“——not see her, but I could. She was dressed like a lady; her cheeks pink, her eyes as dark as thine own; her hair golden.”
“The same,” uttered the other, nodding his head.
“She went into the room with carved panels on the door.”
“Are they not all carved?”
“May be so; but I think not. No, ’twas the first guest’s room; the second door on the right from the head of the stairs. The man passed me as I went down.”
“Who was he?”
“I never saw him before.”
“Was he not her father?”
“Oh, no. He was a young man dressed in grand style. In face he was so like thee that I almost stopped him as I have thee now.”
“And did you make no inquiry at the bar?”
“The tapster was busy; the serving men were strangers to me, and Dodsman was not in sight.”
“And you learned nothing more?”
“No; I mounted and came on.”
“Marry, and why didst thou not wait, and why didst thou not find me before?” questioned the other, in tones of reproof. “It is now near six o’clock and three miles lie between here and London bridge and then another three miles or more to Deptford.”
“Is that not time enough?”
“And how much can one spare from it for a full meal and a glass of Canary at the Red Bull or the Mermaid? I would not chance more than a mug of sack and a square of black bread at the ale-house next to the London wall. And how can one push his horse faster than a walk through such a fog as this? But let us press on.”
Through the fields they proceeded along a wide path unfenced and bordered with stretches of grass and rushes.
“You ask me why I did not wait for knowledge about the lady,” at length said Tabbard, thinking that some explanation was still due. “It was then late, and besides the message I had for the Earl’s actors, I wished to see Gabriel Spencer as the king in ‘Edward the Second,’ at the Theater. I could not miss that, Sir Kit.”
“And nearly missed seeing me,” said Kit, absently.
“I expected to see thee there, too. For admission I paid my last penny, or at not seeing thee on the stage I should have gone to the other playhouse. I tried to go into the galleries, but an upstart youth in bare head and with sword at his side, like one of the Queen’s men, forced me back, demanding another penny. Before me went a crowd of women, and the galleries were filled with them. Unlike those in the open pit, they sat under roof and without fear of rain.[6] So into the pit I went, and must needs have paid another penny for a seat had not Dudden, a countryman of mine from near Maidstone, in Kent, whom I had not seen for four years, touched me on the shoulder and bade me squeeze in between him and a friend. They had brought bottles of sack in with them,[7] and not a drink would they take without my joining them.”
“And did that require much urging?”
“Little at first,” answered Tabbard, “but when once the play was well on, I could not drink for fear of taking my eyes from the stage; not that the devil heads on the tops of the posts on each side interested me, or the dandies on the stools and dried rushes on the stage-floor[8] under these heads, but the actors! Ah, but the actors, Sir Kit! Were there ever such crimson doublets and cloaks with copper lacings worn? And the rich dresses that the men wore, who played the parts of the Queen and ladies, made me think that they had broken into the wardrobe at Whitehall. And do ladies never play such parts, Sir Kit?”
“Never,”[9] answered the other, shaking his head.
“But Dudden swore they were ladies, and when one of the spectators on the stage hissed the Queen for forgetting a line he threw one of the empty bottles of sack at him. It was all so grand, so fierce, so bloody. And Dudden went into a drunken fit when the head of Mortimer was brought in. But that was at the end. My own heart was in my throat at the sight of the mowers, with their Welch hooks, taking the king captive.”
“Art thou so easily disturbed, fellow?” asked Kit, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Prut!” exclaimed Tabbard, “Thou couldst never have seen the play, if you say that. What man could sit still when the king moaned; ‘Lay me on a litter and to the gates of hell——’”
“Hold,” interrupted the other, “not quite so. These are the words: ‘A litter hast thou? Lay me in a hearse,
And to the gates of hell convey me hence:
Let Pluto’s bells ring out my fatal knell,
And hags howl for my death at Charon’s shore.’”
“Then he throws off his disguise,” continued Tabbard, excitedly. “Why those sound like the very words. Didst thou ever play the part of Edward?”
“Nay,” said Kit, shaking his head.
“Or Gaveston or Mortimer?”
“Nay, neither.”
Tabbard looked at his companion with open mouth, and then asked:
“And what says the king when he hands the Bishop his crown?”
“Now, sweet God of Heaven, make me despise this transitory pomp,” answered the other without hesitation.
“Well, and dost thou know all the play?” asked Tabbard in amazement.
“Much of it,” came the answer.
“And never was in it as an actor?”
“Never.”
“And how comes it that you know it all?”
“I wrote it,” quietly answered the other.
“Wrote it!” exclaimed Tabbard, “and then thou art——”
“Christopher Marlowe,” continued the gentleman, “commonly called Kit.”
The effect on the excited youth was something magical. He stopped talking but gave vent to a prolonged “Oh,” that died into a whisper. He was in the presence of genius; this was the man who had written the lines which for three hours under a hot sun, he had listened to in silent awe and tremblings of terror. He could scarcely believe his eyes; and Marlowe noticing Tabbard’s stupid amazement said:
“How much sack did you punish, Tabbard?”
The question was designed to bring the latter-mentioned person out of his stupefaction, and it had this effect; but in his recovery Tabbard’s wonder ran along the mental line of inquiry concerning how it was that genius could be interested in such common matters.
“Enough to have lost my way and the place where I tied my horse,” at length answered Tabbard, recovering his voice, and looking about him.
“Tied him? Witless, you should have had a boy hold him,” said Marlowe, exhibiting some interest in the welfare of the man who had brought him the message of all others the most pleasing to his ear.
“Then I needst must have cheated the boy, for I have not an old Harry Groat in my pocket,” answered Tabbard, spreading his hands open before him, with palms turned up.
“It is not safe to trust one’s animal with rope and post in these fields nor in this lane,” said Marlowe in the tone of an adviser.
“Well a boy held two horses near where I tied mine to a tree not a great way from this opening. But for the fog I could see him. And I said ‘keep an eye on him. He can not be held.’”
“Which was false, undoubtedly,” nodded Marlowe, smiling.
“Ay, for the brute needs spurs for walking smooth roads. But the watching required no labor.”
“And I suppose that your horse is a pleasing sight to look upon,” said the other.
“True, Sir Kit, and so the score will be even.”
“Was one horse gray that the boy held, and one black, and did the boy wear a cap and stand under an apple tree next to the Priory wall?”
“That is all true,” responded Tabbard.
“Well, the gray horse is mine,” said Marlowe.
“And why did you leave him so far from the entrance to the play-houses?” asked Tabbard.
“A man who has creditors must appear to be a beggar on foot. I limped to the theater and have now let the crowd precede me as you see,” explained the other, and then noticing a group emerging from the fog, he exclaimed: “Ah! here the boy is now, and there is your horse where you tied him.”
The pair had been following the path for some distance, and now mounting their horses, rode down the lane between brick walls, over which great orchard trees extended their branches, and again on between low houses with green blinds where the miserable outcasts of the city had located themselves. Before them ran the Shore-ditch highway, and entering this they rode on toward the invisible city wall.
In this vacancy of event, there is space for an epitome of the period, in so far as it affected the condition of the principal character of this romance. The somberness of the natural scenery, and the obscurity of the sky were in keeping with his social surroundings and the uncertainty of his existence. The fog might rise disclosing a sky conducive of joyous spirits, or it might gather so dense that naught but the austere form of Melancholy, with her trailing robes of black, could walk with firm and unfaltering strides within it. It was the latter condition that was to follow. At that moment, in the mind of Marlowe, the rosiest dreams of life pursued one another as though conceived by an Ovid, and impelled by the spirit of a Homer; but they were to be buried in the blackness of what seemed eternal night.
Fired with the ambition of a god, he had issued from the studious walks of Cambridge in 1587. Finding dramatic art confined to a close circle, wherein only rhyming productions were considered fit for presentation on the stage, and the public clamorous for aught that possessed the fire of action and the thunder of bombastic declamation, he cast from his shoulders the splendid cloak of rhyme, in which for a moment he had adorned himself, and with the plain but majestic front of a warrior, with feet in the buskins of an actor, he presented himself before the public. It fell in adoration at his feet. The thunder of his tread shook all the gods of rhyme from their immemorial thrones, and from amid the ruins Greene, Nashe and others lifted their protesting voices. Recognizing him as the son of the clerk of the parish church of St. Mary, Greene insisted that he could not “write true English without the help of clerks of parish churches,”[10] and Nashe, like Gervinus in his analysis of the “Shakespere” plays, saw in the productions of this late graduate of Cambridge and dramatic innovator, the lines of Seneca read under the light of the English candle.[11] But all in vain was the outcry.
In the production of Tamburlaine he had with one bound reached an eminence from which it was impossible to dislodge him,[12] and, in quick succession, followed the dramas of Faustus, The Jew of Malta, Edward the Second, and the Massacre at Paris. These plays had been produced during a term of six years, wherein he had alternated his afternoon occupation as an actor at the Curtaine,[13] with nights as a dramatic writer. These productions, teeming with majestic lines, and filled with a spirit from “translunary” sources, required not the critical minds of a later school of commentators to establish their worth.[14] Some passages are still recognized as having “no parallel in all the range of tragedy.”[15] Thus it was that at this period he was throned in a school where all his fellows were his servile imitators. Among them were Nashe, Peele, and Lilly; but poor Greene, with one more outburst against the “upstart crow,” with “his tygres heart,”[16] who could have been none else than the writer whom he had attacked in 1587, had finished his unfortunate career. And his career was the one being pursued by all these fiery and impatient souls. It was Marlowe, especially, who had plunged into all the mad excesses of an unbridled life,[17] the temporary drift of a youth with convictions unsettled by draughts from Greek philosophers, senses inflamed by the voluptuousness of Ovid, and an existence checkered by frequent shadows of poverty and flitting gleams of plenty. It was the unsettled state of vigorous youth, augmented by the peculiar social conditions then existing.
Upon the continent the civil wars of Henry IV. had approached their close. In England the Starchamber held its secret sessions; the block of the executioner was kept warm with the blood of the insecure nobility; while the torch for the fires of heretics was never allowed to smolder. Elizabeth had been on the throne 35 years; Francis Bacon, with mind bent on pre-eminence as a philosophic writer, was her counsel learned extraordinary, and William Shakespere, six years previously arrived from the obscure village of Stratford-on-Avon, was a member of Lord Pembroke’s Company of actors. There were no theaters at that time within the walls of the city; histrionic exhibitions being presented on the boards of the “gorgeous playing houses erected in the fields.” The edict against strolling players was rigorously enforced; freedom of expression in matters of religious belief was the subject of penal laws, and any animadversions concerning the policy of the government were declared treasonable.
As an evidence of the barbarity of the times, the Southwark end of the London bridge was decorated with the heads of thirty traitors, all of which had fallen beneath the axe of the executioner after the hanging and disemboweling of the bodies. The tower held many martyrs of religion; and Fleet Street prison, with its foul quarters, was the abiding place of hopeless prisoners for debt. If the pinch of poverty of itself was spur enough to have produced the poems of Goldsmith, the wonder at the immortal dramas and poems of the Elizabethan era must vanish upon consideration of what poverty and debt then meant, and the insecurity of the beggar who gave expression to his coin-producing thoughts.
It was during a time, thus out of joint, that Hamlet and Richard the III. walked, as embodied entities, from the brain of their author. Besides the barbarity of the period, the intolerant spirit, and the harsh laws, did any other factor add its motive power toward these productions? Had some crisis been reached in the life of the author greater than that evolved through poverty and the prospect of imprisonment alone?