BY two o’clock that afternoon all was in readiness for the performance of the new comedy before Gloriana and her Court. A pavilion had been raised in the middle of one of the great lawns, in order that the spectators might be shielded from the sunshine which beat fiercely from a cloudless July heaven. At the edge of the lawn was a thicket of fine trees and heather, a veritable Forest of Arden in miniature. From the depths of this glade emerged the performers in this woodland pastoral.
It was a great ordeal for Anne. On an occasion of far less importance she might have been overcome by fear. But now she was strung up almost to the breaking point. So grave was her pass and so much was at stake that a supreme call was made upon her will. And she responded nobly. No human being could have exercised a greater power of mind or brought a finer resolution to bear upon her task.
The success of the play was never in doubt. To begin with it was one of the Queen’s “good days.” At this time Elizabeth was past sixty. And a temper which was not particularly mild even in the heydey of its youth had grown severe. But even this old and sour woman could not remain insensible to the wit and poetry of this new “interlude,” performed with the highest skill and grace in charmingly appropriate surroundings.
The Queen made no pretensions to literary taste as did King James, her successor. But she knew what she liked. And her untutored but extremely shrewd faculty seldom led her astray. There were those, and Heming and Burbage had been among them, who had been inclined to deplore the fact that the author had not prepared stronger food for Gloriana’s palate. A play of delicacy and fantasy, all lightness and grace, would surely miss the mark. She who had held her sides at the broad humors of Juliet’s nurse and of Hostess Quickly would hardly appreciate the melancholy Jacques, Touchstone and above all, the subtle charm of Rosalind.
But this was not the case. Those finely accomplished actors, William Kemp and Richard Burbage, had very wisely been intrusted with the two chief male characters. To be sure, it was hardly Nature’s design that they should interpret them, but players of their genius dignify and embellish every rôle for which they are cast. The noble voice, the manly bearing, the persuasive ease of style, that choicest fruit of many a victory hardly won, tells just as surely in a whimsical impersonation a little away from the main lines of human development, as in the delineation of some incomparably drawn world figure such as Hamlet, Falstaff, Lear.
Unaided, these great men would have carried through a weaker play. And yet they did but serve as a kind of heavy relief, a somber frame for the central figure. Rosalind has stood for three centuries as the symbol of womanhood in its youthful glory. That embodiment of the divinity of girlhood still remains without a peer. And none could have given it more powerful, more appealing expression than Anne Feversham.
From the moment the slight figure came out of the depths of the forest and spoke her first magic lines in a voice as clear as a bell, a hush seemed to fall upon all. The occupants of the pavilion, no less than the humbler spectators who were privileged to sit upon the grass were spellbound. The tall figure, trim and slender, yet exquisite in outline, looked a little gaunt, a little fine-drawn in its close-fitting boy’s dress. The eyes shone out of the pale face with a luster that fascinated those the least sensitive to beauty. And the voice thrilling with a nameless music ravished ears which knew it not for a cadence borne upon the long night of the soul.
In that great and gallant company, however, were those who had eyes to see and ears to hear. And when all was said, the Queen was foremost among them. Harsh, crabbed, difficult, narrow, insensible to many things as she was to the very end of that long life that was now so near its close, she retained her force of judgment and her power of seeing things in their true relation. Rosalind spoke to her; spoke to her not in her capacity as the sovereign of a great people, but of that even more sacred, more universal thing, which every woman verging upon seventy has once been herself. Of a sudden the raddled old cheeks were wet.
Men, too, were spellbound. Cecil, Raleigh, Pembroke, Southampton and many others almost equally famous were gazing upon that scene. These were first-rate minds, and in all ages, in all countries, the eternal verities address them in the same way. Sir Fopling knew that the Queen was weeping, and was amazed that she should not have more regard for the havoc of her cheeks; Cecil knew why she was weeping and held her so much more a Queen.
Anne was strung to the breaking point. And not the Queen, and not the Lord Treasurer, with all their power of mind, knew that. Richard Burbage and William Kemp for all that they evoked the magic phrases from her lips, for all that they were thrilled by the touch of her fingers and the luster of her eyes were also unaware of it. One man alone knew the perilous truth. And he was the individual in the doublet slashed with bars of yellow who stood leaning against one of the noble oaks of the Forest of Arden, in full view of the play but out of the sight of the audience.
Shakespeare never once allowed his eyes to stray from Rosalind. He watched her every movement, her every gesture. He had an intensity of solicitude that a father might have shown for a beloved but fragile daughter. At the end of each scene he led her apart from the others and made her sit in the inner shade of the thicket. Here while she rested the playwright encouraged her with word and deed. He was all kindness, all tenderness, all forethought and concern.
Not far away was Gervase. Still in his disguise he had been placed among the musicians. At Shakespeare’s behest he was biding his hour. Before that day was out he had made up his mind to reveal himself to the Queen. But the hour was not yet. It had been agreed between Shakespeare and himself that the time and the manner of the confession should be left to the player. And among the audience was the man Grisewood narrowly watching all that passed. He too felt that the hour was near in which the truth should be declared. But in his case he was determined that the dramatic revelation should turn to his own personal advantage.
In the meantime all went well with the play. Moreover, as it proceeded the Queen began to show the liveliest interest in the personality of the new Rosalind.
“Tell me, my lord,” she said, turning to Pembroke, an acknowledged authority in all matters relating to the theater, “who is that sweet chit in the doublet and trunk hose who cannot counterfeit manhood for all her strivings?”
“By the bill of the play, your grace, she is called Rosalind and is apparently of the sex of which she is so poor an imitation.”
“Pshaw, my lord!” said the Queen contemptuously, “do you think I have neither ears nor eyes? This is a Rosalind that will never be able to grow a beard. She is of my own sex and a sweeter chit I never saw in all my life.”
“Far be it from me to gainsay your grace,” said Pembroke with an elaborate air, “but according to the bill of the play I have in my hand this Rosalind is impersonated by a young Italian gentleman, one Signor Arrigo Bandinello by name.”
“A young Italian fiddlestick!” said the Queen. “I tell you that girl is as much an Italian gentleman as I am. She shall attend us when the play is at an end. We will go into this matter more fully.”
However, when the play was over, it was the author who was first honored with a summons to the royal pavilion. The Queen received him with high good humor. For the time being she had forgotten the personality of Rosalind in the charm and glamour of the play itself. In the graciousness of her mood she paid many compliments to the author of “As You Like It” and was fain to admit “that she liked it very well.”
“You are a wonderful man, Master Shakespeare,” said the Queen. “And I think you must be the happiest man alive.”
But there was nothing in the face of the player to suggest that destiny. The somber eyes framed a question which the august lady was quick to read and in the expansiveness of her mood was even prepared to answer.
“You inhabit an enchanted world, Master Shakespeare. All the persons in it are of your creation. You can order their natures and their destinies exactly as it pleases you.”
“Alas, your grace!” The poet shook his head.
“Tell me, is it not so?” said the Queen.
“The world I inhabit, your grace, is that of human experience. It is neither less nor more than that which we all know. A maker of plays must depict life in its verity, and that is a hard matter and one which tears the soul.”
The playwright spoke with the slow precision of one whom has felt in his inmost fibers the long drawn agony of mortal life. The Queen was a little amazed. In such a bearing and in such a speech there was not a trace of that enchanted mind, all airy lightness, all delicate fantasy, which had wrought such ravishment. Nor was there any sign of personal satisfaction in the triumph which had been gained or in the fruits of success which now he was beginning to gather in ample measure. The Queen, being a woman, was a little inclined to be piqued by the aloofness of the dramatist.
“Would you have us believe, Master Shakespeare,” she said, “that the glad world which your inimitable fancy creates for the pleasuring of your fellow-men is not a source of joy and delight to its possessor? And would you have us believe that the homage which all the world has come to pay to you brings not pride nor happiness?”
The playwright who stood before his sovereign with a throng of great persons gathered round him, answered these rather embarrassing questions with a curiously unstudied humility. Such a modesty of bearing made an effect of perfect sincerity. Moreover, there was a complete absence of self-regard. Few ordeals could have been more trying for a man of small education, who knew but little of courts, than to be exposed to the gaze of many sharp and jealous eyes, and to be compelled to answer on the spur of the occasion a series of most intimate questions concerning himself and his art. Such an ordeal would have been a tax upon the alert readiness of mind and the self-possession of a highly trained courtier. But there was not a trace of awkwardness in the bearing of this singular man in the black doublet barred with yellow. Indeed, there was nothing to suggest that the situation in which he found himself was in any way unusual. And there was no evidence that the presence of others, of even the highest in the land, was a source of embarrassment to him. No man could have been more completely at his ease or more completely master of himself.
“I will answer the second of your questions first, your grace,” he said, speaking very slowly and looking directly at the Queen. “I am indeed a very proud man that the travail of my mind should have given pleasure to those whose favorable opinion must ever be coveted by all honorable men. I unfeignedly rejoice and I am filled with gratitude that your grace and those about you are pleased to approve my labors. And whatever of happiness comes to me comes to me in that.”
“That is well spoken, Master Shakespeare,” said the Queen. “You do well to allow that. And now touching the first of these questions I would put to you. Is it that you take no happiness from the possession and the exercise of your most noble gifts?”
“None, your grace. They are but the mirror and the counterfeit of life. We makers of plays live in a world of shadows—a world of shadows woven out of our own vitals as a spider weaves his web, and from which by night or day there is no escape.”
“Would you escape them, Master Shakespeare, these inimitable children of your fancy?”
“Yes, your grace, I would on occasion; I would almost yield life itself to do so.”
The Queen was astonished by the almost passionate nature of the answer. This man was no shallow deviser of masques to speed a summer’s day, but one to whom existence was an almost intolerable burden, which admitted of very little alleviation. And he was one who read its riddles with the eyes of a seer.
“I begin to take your meaning, Master Shakespeare,” said the Queen. “I had supposed that when these children of your fancy laughed and made merry, you also rejoiced. But I had forgotten that even in these plays of yours the sadness outweighs the mirth as is the case with life itself, whereby a double burden is laid upon the endurance of their creator.”
“Yes, your grace, that is indeed true. And yet that is not the full measure of a poet’s unhappiness.”
“In what does a poet’s unhappiness consist, Master Shakespeare?”
“It consists, your grace, in this. A poet sees too much, feels too much, knows too much. He is stretched perpetually on the rack of his excess. He reads more into life than life itself will hold. Of a most private grief he will make a little song. He will amuse the groundlings with the tale of some deep injury he has suffered in his bones. When he moves the crowd to tears, his fees are paid in blood.”
There was something in the nature of the answer which held the Queen. Good sense was her highest quality, and it was that quality in others which never failed to speak to her. She was captivated by the bearing of this man, in whom she recognized not only the master of his craft, but also what pleased her even more, a mature mind which had much to say to her own acute and worldly wise one.
Indeed, so gratified was the Queen with the demeanor and the mental quality of Mr. William Shakespeare, that, as a signal mark of her favor, he was commanded to sit in her presence. The sovereign was prone to carry her Tudor sense of importance to ridiculous lengths, but there was some subtle instinct lurking within her which sought equality between “the fair vestal throned by the west” and the monarch of an empire infinitely wider than her own.