THE inn courtyard was seething with excitement long before the play began. Handbills had been distributed in the town for some days past, and notices of the performance had been set up in prominent places.
A love of the drama, amounting almost to a passion, had taken hold of all classes. From the Queen in her palace to the village idler in his hedge alehouse, provided he could raise a penny to buy standing room in the yard of the Crown Tavern, all took the keenest delight in the new and wonderful drama that was rising in their midst. Every phase of these strong and moving plays was followed with a breathless excitement. They were given without scenery or the thousand and one devices that help to sustain illusion in a modern theater. There was literally nothing between the play and the audience, not even the lure of sex, since all the women’s parts were played by boys, but the success of these performances was extraordinary.
The Lord Chamberlain’s men were known to be a famous company. Their headquarters were the Globe Theatre, the playhouse that had been built recently on the Bankside in Southwark. But as their provincial tours were numerous, their reputation had spread up and down the country. They were already known as the best players of the time, and the plays in which they appeared were held to be the strongest.
The stage had been set up at the end of the inn yard. Standing room could be had for a penny on the cobblestones of the yard itself, but the best and most comfortable places were those in the galleries, which ran round three sides of it and commanded a full view of the stage. A shilling was the charge for places here. But the most coveted place of all was a stool on the stage, which was reserved for a few persons of distinction.
Among those who had been given a seat on the stage this afternoon, were three who had come in a spirit of scepticism. They were men of dignified and authoritative bearing, keenly alive, no doubt, to their condescension in gracing the proceedings with their presence. Much discussion had taken place among these personages as to the importunity which had sought to gain the sanction of the university for the play about to be given, also for two others by the same uneducated hand.
There is little doubt that the subject would not have been thought worthy of discussion in such exalted circles, would in fact have been dismissed as a matter of not the least consequence, had it not been that quite recently that august man, the Dean of Christ Church College, had enjoyed the privilege of eating with Gloriana in her palace at Greenwich. And she had spoken in his hearing with high approval of the man Shakespeare, and was even pleasantly anticipating his new interlude, which was to be given for the first time in her presence on some fine summer’s afternoon in Richmond Park.
In Ascalon they never referred to the fact that Gloriana, with all her merits, was an unlettered woman, whose taste was robust. For a queen is a queen even in the eyes of a Dean of Christ Church College; and when this curious, little bald man in a furred gown confided to the Master of Balliol, his distinguished coadjutor, that this mime whose name he forgot was undoubtedly persona gratissima in royal palaces, they agreed that while such clowning could receive no sanction from the University, it would hardly be seemly in the circumstances to drive the mummers out of the town.
It happened, at that time, that the Master of Balliol had staying with him in college a young man of promise, Mr. Francis Bacon by name, who knew his way about the Court. And when the Dean chanced to mention that this man, whose name he had forgotten, desired to perform three of his interludes within the precincts of that ancient home of learning and that the Queen approved him mightily, Mr. Francis Bacon, who even at that time had taken all knowledge for his province, exclaimed, “By God, it must be that plaguy fellow, Shakescene, that all the Court is mad about!”
“Shakescene is the man’s name, undoubtedly,” said the eminent divine, gravely. “An importunate Shakescene, moreover, who would play three of his rustical interludes within the precincts of this old foundation.”
“Importunate enough, I grant you,” said Mr. Francis, taking snuff with a great air. “Wat Raleigh tells me the numskull comes to Court in a barred cloak and affects the style of a gentleman. However—fine feathers make not fine birds. But why not let the rogue play his interludes, eh, Master? How say you, Mr. Dean? And we will go ourselves and witness ’em. I have long sought the opportunity to watch one of the performances of this ripe scholar.”
“The rogue shall perform in the town, Mr. Francis,” said the Dean of Christ Church, “if perform he must, but not, I promise you, within the precincts of this old and honorable foundation.”
“I doubt not he would perform still better at the whipping post, where such knaves more truly belong,” said the Master of Balliol, taking a prodigious pinch of snuff from the box of the Dean. “But as you say, Francis, let the rogue set up his booth in the city, and thither we will repair of an afternoon. We can then judge for ourselves what it is that the taste of Gloriana the peerless approves.”
Thus it happened that Gervase and Anne, who had been stowed away in a corner of the gallery out of the sight of the multitude, were able to gaze directly down upon these three grave and serious gentlemen, who were seated upon the stage itself.
Grave and serious they might be. Yet as they decked the proscenium, their demeanor was spiced with not a little levity. Not only their surroundings, but the whole of that which was taking place, seemed to provide food for their sly mirth.
Gervase had marked one of the three in particular immediately upon his entrance.
“I know that man,” he whispered to Anne. “Yes, the fellow in the feathered bonnet and the blue cloak. He is always about the Court. Sit close, dear soul. He’s got the eye of a hawk, but, thank God, he won’t look to see me like this.”
Indeed, Mr. Francis Bacon had eyes for nothing save the comedy that was being performed for his benefit. Greatly condescending, the future Lord Chancellor had come in the company of two learned pundits with no better intention than to deride the piece and its author.
Now there never was yet a critic since the world began who accosts an author in such a mood who has the least difficulty in making good his intention. If the man has wit, he lacks propriety. If he has invention, he lacks art. If his writing is marvelously alive, it is of course barbarous. If it is poetical, it is not true to nature. If it should happen to be true to nature, the whole performance is so flat, stale and mediocre as to be unworthy of the pains spent upon it. Whichever way the author turns, the critic is ready for him. Every merit he possesses serves as a fresh weapon to assail him.
Had these gentlemen had the good fortune to live two hundred years later, when the reputation of the author was already secure, they would have been among the first to make him the standard of comparison. It would have then been quite legitimate to admire “The Merchant of Venice,” and even to have taken credit for doing so. But how was it possible for men of polite learning to treat seriously the production of a shabby fellow who took your half-crown at the entrance to the inn yard?
Yet, in spite of themselves, Mr. Francis Bacon and his two august friends were not a little diverted by the briskness of the piece. But any entertainment there was to be derived from it had, of course, to be laid to the door of the actors. The acting was undoubtedly excellent, but the less said of the play, the better.
Still, notwithstanding the fact that the opinion of the critics who graced the proscenium was not very favorable, all the rest of the house appeared mightily to approve the play. The afternoon had turned wet and there was no roof to the inn yard, but those who were packed in it so closely that they could hardly breathe, followed the whole of the piece with ever-growing excitement. They roared with delight at its humors. Portia, who was played by young Parflete, enchanted them. They execrated the Jew, yet Richard Burbage, as became the great actor he was, invested his defeat with a pathetic dignity that almost drew their tears.
“Ha! now, that is the man,” said Mr. Francis Bacon. “I ask you, what had the play been without such incomparable acting?”
“What, indeed!” said the learned doctors.
“I must make that fellow my compliments upon his performance,” said the Master of Balliol College.
And a few minutes afterwards, when the delighted audience was streaming out of the yard, these great men condescended to approach the tragedian and express their approval.
“Fain would I make you my compliments, sir,” said Mr. Francis Bacon, in his highest style, in order to impress the person he addressed, “upon the inimitable art you have used this afternoon. The performance would have been barren enough without it. Never have I seen acting so choice lavished on a play so inferior.”
The tragedian looked very doubtfully at Mr. Francis Bacon.
“By your leave, sir,” he said, “I would not have you exalt me at the expense o’ the piece.”
“To be sure, sir, your modesty does you honor,” said the Master of Balliol College. “But your genius, if I may so express myself, is deserving of something far better than the clumsy work of this rude journeyman.”
The tragedian shook his head.
“Nor would I have you exalt me at the expense of the writer,” he said.
“Ah, my friend, you are too modest,” interposed the Dean of Christ Church in an amiable manner.
“If it is the part of modesty,” said the tragedian bluntly, “to decline to be praised by the ignorant, then I grant you that modest I may be. Because I would have you to know, you learned doctors in your furred gowns, that the play you have just witnessed is by the first dramatic author of this age or of any other.”
The three gentlemen were unable to repress a polite snigger.
“What!” said the Master of Balliol College, “that odd-looking fellow with the beard who sat in the pay box and bit my half-crown as if he feared it was a counterfeit?”
“The same, sir,” said Burbage. “And if you can put a counterfeit upon him, you are an abler man than I have yet cause to consider you.”
“No doubt, sir,” said the Master of Balliol College, with an air of pained dignity. “But, pray, convey my compliments to your Johannes Factotum, and inform him that if he will give his days and nights diligently to the study of Aristotle, he may, by the time he is a very old man, be able to produce a passable play without doing grave violence to the dramatic unities.”
“Perhaps you will be kind enough, sir,” said the tragedian, “to pay William Shakespeare your own compliments, for here he comes staggering under the receipts of the performance.”
The playwright, his face beaming with satisfaction, came towards them.
“We had near ten pound in the yard, Dick,” he said, with a frank disregard of all things except the business in hand. “That is, unless a half-crown that a little half-faced, chapt-shot, under-hung mouse of a fellow in a furred gown put upon me is a counterfeit. And I am sore afraid it is, unless my pooh old teeth have lost their integrity. Do you try it, Dick.”
The playwright handed the dubious coin to the tragedian.
“I presume you refer to my half-crown, sir?” said the Master of Balliol College, with great dignity.
“I hope, sir, I may presume to refer to it as your half-crown,” said Mr. William Shakespeare, “if my friend Shylock here adjudges it to be one. How now, Usurer, what say you?”
“If that is a half-crown,” said the tragedian, who had already bitten the coin nearly through, “I’ll never be paid in anything but five shilling pieces as long as I live.”
“But I protest, sir,” said the Master of Balliol College, warmly, “that coin was paid to me last evening by my much-honored friend here, Mr. Francis Bacon, over a game of primero.”
“The more shame to Mr. Francis Bacon, then,” said the tragedian, “that he should use such a coin for such a purpose in such a company.”
Mr. Francis Bacon examined for himself the dubious currency.
“It cannot be the one I gave you, Master,” he said, as soon as he was able to assure himself that the coin was false.
“Certainly it is, Francis,” said the Master of Balliol College, with a pained air.
“I cannot believe it, Master. However—” Mr. Francis put the coin in his pocket with the quiet dignity of one who realizes the force of the old adage, noblesse oblige: which, in plain English, may be taken to mean that it ill becomes gentlemen to argue among themselves in the presence of the commonalty. “However, as I was saying, Master, to return to Aristotle, that much-overrated sciolist, I do most cordially approve your critical acumen when you say that if our friend Master Shakescene——”
“Master Shakespeare,” interposed the tragedian, solemnly.
“I beg his pardon. If our friend, Master Shakespeare, here would study the drama ad hoc, and give his days and nights to that matchless work, the “Ars Poetica,” of Aristotle, there is indeed no reason why, in the process of nature and always under the courtesy of providence, he should not one day produce a work of the imagination that pays some little regard to the laws that govern such quaint abortions of the human mind.”
Mr. William Shakespeare listened with an air of grave courtesy to this sage counsel. Like all men of parts, he was at heart a very humble man, with a deep reverence for true learning. It was too late in the day for him to hope to acquire it. He had never known the want of wit, yet in his mind was ever the thought of how much better his plays would have been could he have fashioned his rude verses after the manner of the ancients.