CHAPTER XXX
NO time was lost now in moving out of Oxford. Within an hour of Justice Pretyman’s visit, the Lord Chamberlain’s men were on their way to London. They were accompanied by Gervase and Anne, who were still disguised as the Italian music master and his son, and also by the falconer, John Markham. None of them was aware that, less than a mile behind, rode Sir Robert Grisewood and his two servants.
The players traveled that night as far as Reading, where they lay, and reached Southwark without misadventure in the course of the following afternoon, which was Sunday. Shakespeare felt a keen sense of relief when he had placed the fugitives in the comfort and security of his lodgings on the Bankside, which he shared with his friend Burbage.
The tragedian, on his own part, it must be confessed, was terrible uneasy of mind. He knew the situation to be one of great peril and difficulty. And he viewed with a feeling little short of horror Shakespeare’s determination to concern himself with a matter of high treason. He had a deep pity for the fugitives, but he felt how futile and how perilous it was for men such as themselves to mingle in their sinister affairs.
Parflete had been left at Oxford, as he was in no condition to travel. And over the question of a substitute for that unlucky young actor, the author and the manager came to the verge of a quarrel. Shakespeare kept to his determination that Anne should play Rosalind in the new comedy, while Burbage affirmed that it was contrary to all precedent and was courting disaster.
In spite of this, however, the author began at once to instruct Anne in the part. And she brought to her study a keenness of grasp and a quickness of apprehension that delighted her mentor. Her progress was very rapid under his wise guidance. In two days, she was almost word perfect. Moreover, she discovered a natural faculty for acting which she shared in common with her sex. All her gestures were simple, unforced, appropriate; and her bearing had an ease and grace that Parflete himself could not have equaled.
The author was delighted. It was in vain that Richard Burbage shook his head and indulged in all manner of dark prophecy. Here was the perfect Rosalind. Besides, there lay behind this project a higher and deeper motive than even the pleasuring of the first lady in the land.
Never for an instant was there absent from a noble and humane mind an intense desire to serve these hapless children of destiny. William Shakespeare was determined at all hazards to arouse the Queen’s interest on their behalf, and if possible to excite her pity. Yet none knew better than this supreme judge of human kind the peril and the difficulty of such a task. The Queen was a woman of dangerous and vindictive temper.
But Shakespeare was pledged to do all that lay in his power to save the lives of these fugitives. Burbage and Kemp and Heming, and others of his colleagues, might be full of alarm for the consequences likely to attend his interference, but they were powerless to turn him from his purpose. The matter had become a point of honor with him now.
In accordance with the promise made to Gervase, Shakespeare kept himself fully informed in regard to Sir John Feversham. On the morning following his return to London, the playwright went to Greenwich to the Queen’s palace, and there sought an interview with a man with whom he was on terms of intimacy, who held high office in the Royal Household. From him he learned that the Constable was held a close prisoner in the Tower, that the Court of Star Chamber had condemned him already to the block, but that there was good reason to believe the sentence would not be carried out for another week at least, since Cecil, the Queen’s all-powerful minister, felt it was not a case for undue haste.