CHAPTER XXIV.
"If he come not, then the play is marred."—A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The cause of Marryott's not having seen the person whose voice he now heard, or the little board platform raised to serve as a stage, was that this platform was directly below his window, and hence hidden by the balconies with which the lower stories, unlike that in which he was, were provided.
The crowding of guards around Marryott, the distraction Barnet owed to his pain, had deterred the two from noticing, when outside the gate, the playbills attached to the posts. The play announced was "The Battle of Alcazar," by Mr. George Peele. There was still a special favor for anti-Spanish plays. Fresh in memory was that English victory over Spain whence arose the impulse of expansion destined, after three centuries of glory, to repeat itself in a new Anglo-Saxondom from a victory over the same race, when the guns of Dewey and Sampson should echo back in multiplied volume the roar of Drake's and Howard's. History has nowhere repeated itself more picturesquely.
But after the play had been selected and announced, there had arrived at the inn, with a small regiment of servants, and a good part of his household furniture for his better accommodation, young Lord Tyrrington and his newly wedded lady. A squire in my lord's service had preceded him and bespoken the entire second story of one of the wings. My lady, on taking up her quarters, had learned with delight that London actors were to give a play in the yard. She had expressed to her husband, on whom she still looked with the soft eyes of a bride of a fortnight, the wish that the piece might be a love-play. Her spouse, as yet deeply enraptured with her and with love, had sent straightways for the master of the players. The result of the interview was the oral announcement which Marryott now heard from lips whose facility was well known to him.
Prefaced by delicately hinted compliments to the noble couple, and by gross open flattery of the worthy, excellent, and good people of Oakham, the announcement was to the effect that, instead of performing "The Battle of Alcazar," the lord chamberlain's servants would enact Master William Shakespeare's most admired and lamentable tragedy of the love of "Romeo and Juliet." Whereupon there was loud and prolonged applause, and the musicians, on the inn-balcony above the rear of the stage, struck up a tune for the beguilement of the crowd until the actors should be ready to begin.
"'Twas Will Sly," said Marryott, half to himself.
"You know him, I ween," said Roger Barnet, who had listened to the announcement with close attention, and who seemed to have softened a little under the stress of some concealed inclination.
"Marry, the days and nights we have tossed the pot together!" replied Hal.