“A man who takes refuge in that,” she said, “can have little merit of his own, my lord. And to my mind a man is twice a fool who, being born to opportunity, can turn it to no better advantage. How say you, Master Shakespeare?”
“There are those who hold, your grace,” said the player in his deep and musical voice, “that it is better to be a fool of pedigree than to be a sage without gules or quarterings.”
The Queen laughed. But the ready independence of the player’s answer pleased her as much as it surprised her courtiers. There was not one among them who would have ventured it. There was not one among them who was not unduly eager to acquiesce in any opinion that might be expressed by this august lady.
It was not the Queen’s habit to unbend easily. She held the exaggerated Tudor view of the status of the sovereign. Her court was expected to approach her on bended knee and there were many supple backs in consequence. But there was not a trace of the sycophant about this man who conversed with her as modestly, as readily and as easily as he would have done with a lounger in a tavern. And while the gallants and fine ladies were not a little shocked by the unaffectedness of the man’s bearing and marveled not a little that one so august should bestow so much notice upon a common play-actor, the Queen, on the other hand, seemed almost to forget for the moment the dizzy eminence to which it had pleased Providence to call her.
The truth was she dearly loved what she called “a man.” And this was a scarce commodity in the exotic atmosphere which surrounded Elizabeth Tudor. Few there were who dared to hold opinions of their own, let alone to advance them with the unstudied assurance of this man of lowly calling, who was yet not wholly unmindful of the fact that he was absolute monarch of an empire more imperial than Gloriana’s own.
To be sure, none of those present realized that fact. Nor was it realized by the Queen herself. Her mind was strong and shrewd rather than deep and subtle. It was the player’s independence of judgment and the clear yet perfectly modest and simple manner by which he gave it expression which made such an appeal to her.
It was a sad sight for many an astonished and resentful eye to observe the Queen and the man “Shakescene”—it is a foible of the great to affect a becoming uncertainty in regard to the names of humbler mortals—walking quite apart from all the rest, up one alley and down another, talking and laughing heartily upon terms which perilously approached equality. What the Queen’s majesty had in common with the merry-andrew in the barred cloak passed the comprehension of all. But the harsh and strident laugh of the royal lady, not unworthy of a raven with a sore throat, could be heard continually. Many a diligent courtier who had spent the flower of his years in waiting humbly upon the Queen’s pleasure without having anything very substantial in the way of preferment to show for it, was cut to the soul.
And it was not here that the scandal ended. A little later when the Queen dined a place was set for the man Shakescene at her own table. And many a lisping, lily-white gentleman narrowly observed the demeanor of this upstart whose homely style and unaffected air offered so wide a target for their criticism.
CHAPTER XXXII
BY two o’clock that afternoon all was in readiness for the performance of the new comedy before Gloriana and her Court. A pavilion had been raised in the middle of one of the great lawns, in order that the spectators might be shielded from the sunshine which beat fiercely from a cloudless July heaven. At the edge of the lawn was a thicket of fine trees and heather, a veritable Forest of Arden in miniature. From the depths of this glade emerged the performers in this woodland pastoral.