Popping open the little door of the hut atop the theatre, a trumpeter blows shrill blasts; the play is about to start: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.
Henley Street
Sunday afternoon
Theatrical voices—commanding, secretive, beseeching, vituperative—are not voices I want to recall. I prefer the normal and kindly, an intimate Scot voice, a man’s educated speech, someone mouthing thoughtfully, an older person whose words show profound mellowing.
Ann’s voice was once full of witchery, stealing my guts and senses, leaving me hot. Marlowe’s was low and persuasive. Queen Elizabeth’s crisp. Raleigh’s burly. Hamnet’s birdlike. Ellen’s warm.
Not the regal! Not dotards and thieves, but a voice combining generosity, ease, and hope: is the voice I invent when insomnia takes me: for a moment it speaks out of the past.
I never enjoyed the children’s theatre—always wondering how they produced even one creditable play a season since they whipped their boys to force them to learn their parts. Clifton, I recall, was kidnapped and compelled to act. They whaled him, fed him badly, did sexual malice to make him perform—hardly the way to create a star. Clifton’s father had to appeal to the authorities for his boy’s release. I went to see him, at his home, and the tales he told me matched his tear-streaked face. His little hands trembled and his mother had to reassure him he wouldn’t be kidnapped again.
Whippings, threats, nagging—they were the stuff that kept the children’s theatre alive in London, while the council shrugged and patrons furnished subsidies for these odious and grossly amateurish entertainments. I talked and fought. Marlowe talked and fought. Alleyn and Jonson used their influence. The cruelty continued.