His comrades, especially Master Shakespeare and Will Sly, would have inquired more closely into the circumstances of Hal's detention, but the young man was so pleasantly exhilarated by the reunion with his friends, so carried out of himself at the prospect of playing this part, that he put direful matters aside as not to be talked of. With his dulled rapier in hand, and without having to change costume, he stood surrounded by the players, at the tiring-room door, waiting to go on the stage.
The music ceased again; the speaker of the prologue stepped out, and, while the audience came gradually to a hush, delivered his lines from the centre of the platform. A boy fastened to the curtain at the back a scroll reading, "A Street in Verona." The two Capulet serving-men came on, and their rude double-meanings made the crowd guffaw; then the two Montague men, then Benvolio, then Tybalt precipitating the brawl, then the crowd of adherents of both houses; and the ensuing fray, unduly confined by the smallness of the platform, came near involving Roger Barnet and the gallants sitting at the sides.
Noting more heedfully how dense was the crowd that pressed from the yard's farthest boundaries to the stage, and recognizing the guards about the latter. Hal had a sickening feeling of being mured around with a wall no less impassable for that it was human.
His mind reverted to the last time he had acted on a stage; to the face he had seen then. Where was she at this moment? Was the horse waiting? Unmanned for an instant, he felt his eyes moisten.
When he made exit, after the Prince had quelled the tumult, he stood silent in the dark tiring-room, sad at heart.
Meanwhile, Roger Barnet and the audience were enjoying the performance. The pursuivant, nearer to the great Burbage than he had ever before been during a play, drank in Romeo's every word. In due time, the stage being for a moment vacant, a boy supplanted the first card with one reading, "A Room in Capulet's House." The scene of the Nurse with Juliet and her mother drew some very conscious blushes from my lady in the gallery, the too reminiscent Nurse's part losing nothing of mellowness from its being played by a portly man. The street card reappeared, and brought on Mercutio to deepen the audience's enhancement. Another substitution introduced the masquerade, during which the Tybalt, covered with an orange-tawny cloak and wearing a black mask, was held in particular note by Barnet. Hudsdon having followed him to the stage and pointed him out in his visored appearance.
During the second act, with its balcony scene, its wisdom so impressively spoken by Master Shakespeare in the Friar's part, its wit contest between Romeo and Mercutio, Roger Barnet was in the seventh heaven. Throughout this act, Hal, seated listlessly in the tiring-room, was under the eyes of Hudsdon and other guards. The first scene of the third act, heralded by the useful street scroll, brought his great and last great occasion.
"It may be my last stage-playing in this world," he thought, and resolved it should be worthy the remembrance of his comrades.