“Small coals! Small coals!”
“Hot peas!”
I wish I could hear those raucous London street hawkers! I’d like to see the Thames crowded with little boats. I’d like to see the people packed in front of St. Paul’s. I’d like to be back at the Exchange, for the armorers and booksellers and glovers. I’d like to stare off-stage at a thousand rapt faces.
I miss Burbage more than anyone. He and I worked hand-in-glove for more than ten years, seeing each other almost every day. He played Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and his was the finest Lear voice-transcending. Lear was Burbage and Burbage was Lear. There were no weaknesses. Weaknesses?
I have mine—so many weaknesses.
Today I have been up and round but last week I was in bed throughout the week. When I am up and about, I freeze. My sight fades. My heart bangs. I must get to the composition of my will, the final act in my play...no applause...no whistles...silence.
Burbage could take my lines and recite them for me, adding, subtracting, modulating. If there must be rewriting I knew, through his skill, what I must do to improve a scene.
What amusing letters he used to write home, when he was traveling with the Company. He and Alleyn were as domesticated as tea.
“Dear Jug,” he would address his wife. “Dear Mouse,” Alleyn wrote his.
“Dear Jug, let my orange-tawny stockings be dyed a good black, against my coming home in the winter,” Alleyn wrote.