It was a great ordeal for Anne. On an occasion of far less importance she might have been overcome by fear. But now she was strung up almost to the breaking point. So grave was her pass and so much was at stake that a supreme call was made upon her will. And she responded nobly. No human being could have exercised a greater power of mind or brought a finer resolution to bear upon her task.
The success of the play was never in doubt. To begin with it was one of the Queen’s “good days.” At this time Elizabeth was past sixty. And a temper which was not particularly mild even in the heydey of its youth had grown severe. But even this old and sour woman could not remain insensible to the wit and poetry of this new “interlude,” performed with the highest skill and grace in charmingly appropriate surroundings.
The Queen made no pretensions to literary taste as did King James, her successor. But she knew what she liked. And her untutored but extremely shrewd faculty seldom led her astray. There were those, and Heming and Burbage had been among them, who had been inclined to deplore the fact that the author had not prepared stronger food for Gloriana’s palate. A play of delicacy and fantasy, all lightness and grace, would surely miss the mark. She who had held her sides at the broad humors of Juliet’s nurse and of Hostess Quickly would hardly appreciate the melancholy Jacques, Touchstone and above all, the subtle charm of Rosalind.
But this was not the case. Those finely accomplished actors, William Kemp and Richard Burbage, had very wisely been intrusted with the two chief male characters. To be sure, it was hardly Nature’s design that they should interpret them, but players of their genius dignify and embellish every rôle for which they are cast. The noble voice, the manly bearing, the persuasive ease of style, that choicest fruit of many a victory hardly won, tells just as surely in a whimsical impersonation a little away from the main lines of human development, as in the delineation of some incomparably drawn world figure such as Hamlet, Falstaff, Lear.
Unaided, these great men would have carried through a weaker play. And yet they did but serve as a kind of heavy relief, a somber frame for the central figure. Rosalind has stood for three centuries as the symbol of womanhood in its youthful glory. That embodiment of the divinity of girlhood still remains without a peer. And none could have given it more powerful, more appealing expression than Anne Feversham.
From the moment the slight figure came out of the depths of the forest and spoke her first magic lines in a voice as clear as a bell, a hush seemed to fall upon all. The occupants of the pavilion, no less than the humbler spectators who were privileged to sit upon the grass were spellbound. The tall figure, trim and slender, yet exquisite in outline, looked a little gaunt, a little fine-drawn in its close-fitting boy’s dress. The eyes shone out of the pale face with a luster that fascinated those the least sensitive to beauty. And the voice thrilling with a nameless music ravished ears which knew it not for a cadence borne upon the long night of the soul.
In that great and gallant company, however, were those who had eyes to see and ears to hear. And when all was said, the Queen was foremost among them. Harsh, crabbed, difficult, narrow, insensible to many things as she was to the very end of that long life that was now so near its close, she retained her force of judgment and her power of seeing things in their true relation. Rosalind spoke to her; spoke to her not in her capacity as the sovereign of a great people, but of that even more sacred, more universal thing, which every woman verging upon seventy has once been herself. Of a sudden the raddled old cheeks were wet.
Men, too, were spellbound. Cecil, Raleigh, Pembroke, Southampton and many others almost equally famous were gazing upon that scene. These were first-rate minds, and in all ages, in all countries, the eternal verities address them in the same way. Sir Fopling knew that the Queen was weeping, and was amazed that she should not have more regard for the havoc of her cheeks; Cecil knew why she was weeping and held her so much more a Queen.
Anne was strung to the breaking point. And not the Queen, and not the Lord Treasurer, with all their power of mind, knew that. Richard Burbage and William Kemp for all that they evoked the magic phrases from her lips, for all that they were thrilled by the touch of her fingers and the luster of her eyes were also unaware of it. One man alone knew the perilous truth. And he was the individual in the doublet slashed with bars of yellow who stood leaning against one of the noble oaks of the Forest of Arden, in full view of the play but out of the sight of the audience.
Shakespeare never once allowed his eyes to stray from Rosalind. He watched her every movement, her every gesture. He had an intensity of solicitude that a father might have shown for a beloved but fragile daughter. At the end of each scene he led her apart from the others and made her sit in the inner shade of the thicket. Here while she rested the playwright encouraged her with word and deed. He was all kindness, all tenderness, all forethought and concern.