Here, indeed, was sufficient matter for musing. But the poet's unhappy reveries were cut short by the appearance of a young man—his brother Edmund, who had recently arrived in London and obtained a small acting post at the Blackfriars Theatre. He addressed the older man with a mixture of respect and boyish naïveté. "Good Will, lend me a groat or so—ere I perish of sheer hunger. Six long hours have I laboured at their plaguy rehearsal, and I have not a penny to my pocket. In faith, I never starved like this in Stratford. I swear I will repay thee two days hence!"
The elder brother, with his easy, tolerant air waved the lad to a seat, and shouted for the drawer, or waiter. "Anon, anon, Sir!" and that functionary hastened up. The Mermaid was emptying now, and the attendants were less hurried and flurried. Shakespeare ordered in a second dinner—for, little though he had eaten, the food was cold: and, patting his brother affectionately on the shoulder, slipped a handful of money into his hand. "Ay, marry, thou hast a good Warwickshire hunger and thirst, Ned," said he, "let it not cry out upon thee in vain. For me, I am away to the Globe. They play Hamlet there to-day, and needs must I be present." He did not wait for thanks, but, with his peculiarly pleasant smile, slipped out of the Mermaid, and made haste towards his theatre.
"Like the three wanderers in Arden, against the bole of a huge oak."
Touchstone. The more fool I, to be in Arden!
(As You Like It).
ROSALIND, CELIA AND TOUCHSTONE.
Painting by Hugh Thomson.
The Globe was already crowded when he arrived, although the play did not begin till three (there were no evening performances in those days, except in noblemen's private theatres). Burbage, the favourite tragedian, as Hamlet, drew a great following: but the humble part played by the author himself as Rosencrantz was a succès d'estime rather than a genuine one—for Mr. William Shakespeare was no very wonderful actor. "A fellowship in a cry of players" held little glamour for him. The man who could imagine, with every vivid circumstance of detail, the sinister and foreboding atmosphere of Elsinore, had little admiration for the "strutting and bellowing" of the players who interpreted his visions....
On either side of the stage sat the young noblemen, the poetasters, and the shorthand writers who worked for private publishers. In the boxes—priced up to half-a-crown (about £1 of our present money) were various aristocratic and wealthy patrons of the play. The "groundlings" obtained standing room in the pit for a penny (say 6d.) and were vociferous in their applause of the sanguinary scenes, of the Gravediggers, and of the grosser jests. Everyone who could afford it, smoked: the "classes," rich authentic tobacco, and the "masses," men and women alike, an adulterated mixture of coltsfoot and other "hot" herbs. As for the middle classes, the merchant-folk, tradesmen, and bourgeoisie in general, they were chiefly conspicuous by their absence. Strongly pervaded by a growing flavour of Puritanism, and having a wholesome decent horror of "play-acting" as something undoubtedly congruous with all dissolute ways and ill-living, the middle classes avoided Bankside like the pestilence. Had they been present, they would have been sorely put to it to understand what in the world Mr. Shakespeare, through the mouth of Hamlet, was gibing at. Was he decrying actors? Was he contemning audiences? Was he scorching, with bitter disdain, all who wrote for, or acted in, or crowded into playhouses?... The young gallants, uncomfortable and uncertain, were glad when the Play-scene was over, and one arrived at more familiar matters of battle, murder, and sudden death. Too much metaphysics about this Hamlet fellow, so they held. A dramatist should stick to his last, and not drag his hearers into deep waters of conjecture, where a man might well flounder for ever....
The play was over. Some few adventurous spirits from the audience approached the tire-room door: Heminge held it warily ajar. "I would speak with your author: where is he?"—"I would have a word with Mr. Shakespeare: is he within?" "Not this way, I assure you, sir: we are not so officiously befriended by him, as to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the book-holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the music out of time, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit."—"Was it not Mr. Shakespeare, then, that played the part of Rosencrantz?" enquired the bewildered ones. "Close the door!" thundered Burbage from within. Followed a sound of bolts and bars.... Meanwhile, Mr. Shakespeare had disappeared from the malodorous precincts of the Globe—for the adjacent bear-gardens were notorious for evil effluvia—had crossed the river, and was making his way to the Mermaid, where he arrived about six. A plentiful supper was already being partaken of: the rooms were full of steam and savoury smells. Supper was a smaller meal than dinner, but in no way stinted. Lettuces and radishes were usually served first, and afterwards a variety of highly flavoured dishes. Pigeons stuffed with green gooseberries, fiercely-seasoned herring-pies, roast pork with green sorrel sauce—mustard, horseradish, ginger, and honey ad lib, and sweet dishes innumerable. Shakespeare did justice to his food, and took copious draughts of light sweet wine: the morning's melancholy had passed away, and was succeeded by an almost feverish gaiety. The artificial stimulus of the theatre had produced a temporary excitement in him—he was flushed, brilliant, loquacious. As his repartees flashed rapier-like across the room, Ben Jonson smiled grimly, seated at the head of the table, and a score of kindred souls, who surrounded it, relished the verve and sparkle of their favourite comrade. Jonson was a man of great size, of immense strength and personal courage—masterful, domineering, jealous. He recognised and allowed the extraordinary genius of Shakespeare—but always with many detractions, "insinuating his incorrectness, or a careless manner of writing, and a want of judgment." That the Stratford shopkeeper's son, utterly unequipped in scholarship or training, should stand so high in popular estimation above himself—the University graduate of great learning—was acutely annoying to Jonson: it may be, too, that, with the littleness of certain minds, he had never forgiven Shakespeare for doing him a good turn in the matter of his comedies. At any rate he resented the Warwickshire man's unparalleled quickness, brightness, and flexibility of tongue; and every evening he inaugurated a duel of words, which almost invariably resulted in a "draw," and which was the delight of those privileged to be present. "At the Mermaid," says Fuller, one of these favoured auditors, "many were the wit-combats between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, which two I beheld like a Spanish great galleon and English man of war. Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performance. Shakespeare, like the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all sides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." And thus it befell that the frequenters of the Mermaid—such notabilities as Raleigh, Fletcher, Marlowe, Beaumont, Greene,—were accustomed to hear these two great poets disputing, and to join the tournament, in words (as Beaumont put it)