THE sound of the clashing steel, of chairs overturning, of shouting and scuffling, brought John Davenant into the room. The sight that met him turned him sick. A man of whom he went in mortal fear was defending himself as best he could from the furious lunges of a tall, elderly foreigner, who yet used his sword with all a young man’s address and agility.
“Oh, stop ’em, for the love of God!” cried John Davenant.
But the players knew better than to intervene. The bully was being pressed so close and with such a bitter animosity, that for any man to have attempted such a task had been highly dangerous. Also they knew the man for what he was. And now was as fair a chance as was ever likely to offer for him to pay his dues.
The Italian music master was pressing Grisewood at the point of his weapon all over the room. But only one of those present was aware that he had murder in his heart. And this was the man who knew what was the real issue between them. That agile mind, moreover, had the power to look swiftly ahead. In an instant, it had grasped the full significance of that which was happening and of the grave danger that threatened.
In the stress of the moment, Shakespeare threw discretion to the wind. He approached far nearer than was wise to the combatants. Their breaths were coming in fierce, low grunts. Sweat was on their white faces. Murder was in the eyes of both.
Utterly heedless of his peril, Shakespeare went to the side of Gervase.
“Have a care,” he said. “For God’s sake don’t kill him.”
Well it was that Gervase was of those who can keep a hold upon themselves, even when a savage blood-lust has them in its toils. Desperately as he was fighting, he heard the words of his friend, and well he understood them. But he was out to kill. With a contained rage that was terrible, he meant to pierce that strong and resourceful guard, and then should the man pay the penalty of his crimes.
Grisewood was not a coward. He was among the coarsest and most brutal of his kind in a coarse and brutal age. His life had been ignoble, but he was a man, in any circumstances, to sell it dearly. Yet as this tall and furious fellow drove him all over the room, he felt that now his hour was come.
This would have been the case without a doubt, had not Gervase realized the importance of the player’s warning. He must lay aside his revenge for a season. This man was a link in the slender chain that one day might save him. But he was determined that the ruffian should not go scot free. By sheer vigor, he drove Grisewood finally against the wall. And once there, he broke down the man’s guard and drove the point of his sword through his arm.
It was the end of the fight. Grisewood was totally disabled. Suffering great pain and bleeding fiercely and streaming curses, he was glad enough to have his hurt attended to and then, under a chirurgeon’s advice, to be put to bed by John Davenant.
From that hour, the Italian music master was a hero in the sight of the Lord Chamberlain’s servants. To be sure, his son, Arrigo, disgraced himself utterly by going off into a dead faint as soon as the fight was over, and although such behavior was felt perhaps to be ultra-Italian, it did not lessen his popularity among his new comrades.
Two o’clock that afternoon was the hour fixed for the Lord Chamberlain’s players to give their first performance in Oxford. Much of the morning had been spent in erecting a stage in the center of the spacious courtyard of the Crown. It seemed that the visit of this famous company had given rise to grave controversy. Shakespeare had applied for leave to play three pieces in the large hall of Balliol College, or of some other convenient place within the precincts of the University. The question was referred to the Vice Chancellor. “Yes,” said that worthy, “after giving the matter anxious consideration, as we have a favorable report from London touching your band of comedians, and we learn that her Grace the Queen has approved them on divers occasions, the University will accede to your request, provided the pieces are given in their original Greek or Latin.”
Upon this, the playwright made the modest rejoinder that, much as he regretted the circumstances, it was, in point of fact, impossible to play the three pieces in either of those chaste tongues, since he himself had written them in the vulgar English language, which unfortunately was the only tongue with which he could claim an acquaintance, and that a very imperfect one. Such a statement was very shocking to the University. The permission was at once withheld, but in language of great politeness and dignity. “We do not well understand,” it said in effect, “how one who is not even a member of this University or of the sister foundation of Cambridge, who, we are credibly informed, is a mere hackney writer for the theaters, and who, we are further informed, is a little better than one of the illiterate, can prefer such a request.”
After this rebuff, the playwright, quite undaunted, applied to the city authorities for permission to use the Town Hall. In the meantime, however, the news had been carried to the bench of aldermen that the University had rebuked this importunate fellow. And if the vulgar English tongue was beneath the dignity of the Gown, how much more was it beneath the dignity of the Town, which had a reputation to maintain and so much less upon which to maintain it. “No, sir,” said the bench of aldermen, “we would have you to know that that which is not deemed worthy for only a part or moiety of this fair city, is deemed still less so for the whole of it.”
Thus there was nothing left for the poor playwright to do but to seek permission of honest John Davenant, mine host of the Crown, to set up trestles and boards and rig up a curtain in the middle of his large inn yard. And John Davenant, having less in the way of learning than the Gown and less in the way of dignity than the Town, and being promised, moreover, a full ten percentum of the takings at each performance, was nowise averse from such a proceeding.
The play to be given that afternoon was “The Merchant of Venice,” a pleasant comedy that had already been played several times with success in Shoreditch. The author of the piece had not to play in it himself, a contingency for which he expressed himself devoutly thankful. “A bad play is doubly damned,” he said, “if the author himself has to preen and strut in it.”
That afternoon, the more congenial and not less onerous rôle was to be his of sitting at the receipt of custom. But his friend, Richard Burbage, had for his sins to play the Jew. And the famous tragedian was fain to declare that the playwright as usual had got the best of the bargain, inasmuch that it was far easier to play the Jew in the box-office than it was upon the boards.
These players were a high-spirited, light-hearted, genial crew. The incident in which they had been concerned in nowise affected their gaiety. They lived in and for the moment; they took life as it came to them; theirs was the sovereign faculty of being able to lay care aside. They were prone to set all sorts of tricks upon one another, and to crack jokes and tell tales at one another’s expense. They seemed to have no particular respect for anybody, not even for Shakespeare himself, but Anne and Gervase noticed that only one man in all that merry, careless company ever ventured to break a lance with him.
Richard Burbage was the man in question. The tragedian was a short, powerfully-made man, with a solemn face of much good-humor and an organ-like voice that was both rich and deep. When the playwright and his friend crossed swords, which they did pretty frequently, the whole table would cease to ply knife and spoon in order that it might attend the combat. These duellos, to be sure, were carried off in the highest style of pleasantry, but the play was very keen while it lasted.
The dramatist sat at one end of the long table, and his trusty henchman at the other.
“They do tell me,” said the tragedian, in his slow, rolling speech, and bestowing a wink on those that were near him, “that this plaguy piece we have all got to play in for our sins this plaguy afternoon is the work of a certain court gallant by the name of William Shakespeare.”
At this, the dramatist at the other end of the table laid down his knife very deliberately, and after gazing around as if in search of a thing he could not see, said, “I wonder whence that growl proceeds. I do believe there is a dog in the room. Young Parflete”—this to the youngest and smallest member of the company—“young Parflete, I will thank you to pitch it out with your foot behind it.”
“A friend,” proceeded the tragedian, in a very audible whisper for all that he spoke behind his hand, “of the Queen’s most gracious majesty. This is no reflection upon the Queen, still it must have been a sore trial to her friendship when such a burden was laid upon it.”
“Yes, it is a dog,” said the dramatist, very gravely. “One of those brindled, flop-eared, yellow-coated, squab-bellied mongrels by the sound of it. It is the kind of dog that is only fit for a blind pedlar to trundle at the end of a string. Hi, Thomas!”—addressing a servant who had entered with a dish—“there is a dog in the room.”
“I don’t see it, sir,” said the servant, looking round.
“Oh, but there is, I tell you. One of those squat brutes all body and no legs. One of those half-begotten starvelings that lies all day by the hob and whines all night to the moon.”
“I see no dog, sir.”
“Have you looked under the table, Thomas?”
Thomas looked under the table, but still could see no dog.
“But I heard it, man, I tell you. There is no mistaking such a voice as that.”
“There is no dog here, sir,” the servant assured him, solemnly.
“Upon your oath, there is no dog?”
“No dog, sir, upon my oath.”
“Then the sound must proceed,” said the playwright, “from that queer, rude fellow who sits at the foot of the table there, of whom I am credibly informed that, since he retired from the theater, he gains a precarious livelihood by training bloodhounds to sing like canaries.”