Now and then, before the performance began, some young foppish nobleman, scented, feathered, bejewelled, armed with gilt-hilted rapier in velvet sheath, and sporting huge rosettes on his shoes, would haughtily, or disdainfully, or flippantly, make his way to the lords' room, which was the box immediately overlooking the stage; or would pass to a place on the rush-covered stage itself, he or his Page_bearing thither a three-legged stool, hired of a theatre boy for sixpence. There, on similar stools at the sides of the stage, he would find others of his kind, some idly chatting, some playing cards; and could hear, through the rear curtains of arras screening the partition behind the stage, the talk and movements of the players in their tiring-room, hurrying the final preparations for the performance.
One of these gallants, having lighted his pipe, said, lispingly, to another, and with a kind of snigger in the expression of his mouth:
"'Twill be a long time ere my lord of Southampton shall again sit here seeing his friend Will's plays."
Southampton, indeed, was in the Tower for complicity in the insurrection of his friend, the Earl of Essex, who had died on the block in February, and whose lesser fellow conspirators were now having their trials.
"A long time ere any of us may see Will's plays here, after this week," answered the other lord, dropping the rush with which he had been tickling a third lord's ear. "Don't you know, the chamberlain's actors are ordered to travel, for having played 'Richard the Second' for the Essex men when the conspiracy was hatching?"[2]
"Why, I've been buried in love,—a pox on the sweet passion!—dallying at the feet of a gentlewoman in Blackfriars, the past month; and a murrain take me if I know what's afoot of late!"
"What I've told you; and that is why we've had so many different plays all in a fortnight, and two new ones of Will Shakespeare's. The players must needs have new pieces ready for the country towns, especially for the universities. These chamberlain's actors were parlously thick with the Essex plotters; 'tis well they have friends at court, of other leanings, like Wat Raleigh,—else they might find themselves ordered to a tower instead of to a tour!"
Ignoring the pun, and glancing up at the black drapery with which the stage was partly hung, the first exquisite remarked:
"Will Shakespeare must be in right mood for tragedy nowadays,—his friend Southampton in prison, and Essex a head shorter, and himself ordered to the country. Burn me if I know how a high-hearted knave like Shakespeare, that gentlemen admit to their company, and that has had the court talking of his poems, can endure to be a dog of an actor, and to scribble plays for that stinking rabble out yonder to gape at!"
Whatever were Will Shakespeare's own views on that subject, he had at that moment other matters in mind. In the bare tiring-room beyond the curtained partition at the rear of the stage, he moved calmly about among the actors, some of whom were not yet wholly dressed in the armor or robes or other costume required, some of whom were already disguised in false beard or hair, some already painted as to the face, some walking to and fro, repeating their lines in undertones, with preoccupied and anxious air; and so well did Master Shakespeare overcome the agitations of an author who was to receive five pounds for his new play, and of a stage-manager on whom its success largely depended, that he seemed the least excited person in the room. He had put on the armor for the part of the ghost, but his flowing hair—auburn, like his small pointed beard—was not yet confined by the helmet he should soon don. His soft light brown eyes moved in swift but careful survey of the whole company; and then, seeing that the actors for the opening scene were ready, and that the others were in sufficient preparation for their proper entrances, he gave the signal for the flag and trumpet aloft.