IT was an important evening at the Mermaid Tavern. Long before supper time the spacious upper chamber with the sanded floor began to fill. All the regular frequenters of the place were eager for news of Will’s new comedy. But it was a long way in those days from the palace at Richmond to the famous hostelry in Eastcheap. Authentic information was tardy in coming that evening.
The hour of eight was told on the clocks of the city. Yet there was never a word of news of Will or of his comedy. This was indeed strange. Among those who came very often to the tavern for the sake of the company to be found there was a number of men about the Court. Not one of these has as yet appeared upon the scene. And neither Will himself nor any of his fellow-players had arrived.
Dishes of deviled bones and flagons of wine were laid on the long table. The company sat down to a very informal repast. Tongues were unloosed and rumor was presently rife.
The assembly that had gathered in this long upper chamber was a curious one. In the shabby and careless garb of the poet, or in the soiled doublet of the writer for the theater was contained some of the choicest spirits of the age. On most evenings this strange company was garnished with a sprinkling of men of fashion with some pretensions to wit, but these were absent to-night. This fact, taken in conjunction with a singular dearth of news was held to be a sinister omen. No news is not always good news in matters relating to the theater.
There was genuine concern among those present. Will was a universally popular man. In spite of a very remarkable success which had sprung from beginnings of the humblest kind he bore himself invariably with a modesty and a courteous consideration for others that completely disarmed even those who had the most cause to envy him. Moreover, those who had the entrée to that sacred upper chamber at the Mermaid well knew how thoroughly his success was deserved. For these were first-rate minds. These men, as far as it was possible for the contemporaries of William Shakespeare to do so, realized and appreciated his accomplishment.
If Will had at last met with a check to his career none would regret the fact more than these friendly and admiring rivals who had an intense admiration for his extraordinary genius. And some of them, moreover, had already come to live in a kind of reflected glory that it cast upon them.
Rumors of failure grew with the arrival of each newcomer who yet had no first-hand news to give.
“Did he let you con the piece, Martin?” asked a gray and worn veteran with a ragged beard of an individual very familiar to himself who sat at the head of the long table.
“Aye, he did so. And I tell you it is the best thing he has done yet. If he makes a failure of that, God help the age, say I.”
“He was not very happy about it two nights ago.”
“Ah, that’s Will’s way. He never does anything but that he wishes it better.”
“And yet they say he never blots a line, eh?” said a young man with flaming hair who sat opposite.
“It is only Ben who says that,” rejoined the veteran at the table-head. “And Ben blots so many himself that he thinks nobody else takes any pains by comparison.”
“Then you consider this new piece a good thing?”
“Aye, good enough, good enough. It is a better thing than any of us will ever see our names to.” The speaker sighed. He was a man of infinite courage and ambition. But he had lived long enough and had striven hard enough to learn the sharp truth that these things of themselves will not conquer. “But by God!” The fine poet and great-hearted man took up his flagon. “I’d be the last in the world to begrudge Will his good luck. His fortune is our fortune too. He is a nonesuch and not again will the world look on his like. He is a king in his own right, and by God, I drink to him. Here’s to our monarch. May God protect him, and may he never write a worse comedy than ‘As You Like It.’”
Dekker rose and held his flagon aloft. And all the others at the long table followed his example.
There was a murmur of voices and a clink of cups.
These men could not bring themselves to admit that by any possibility the true prince had met defeat at last. Still, the total absence of news from Richmond was very ominous. But even if the Queen had not approved the new comedy, that was not warrant sufficient to assume, as more than one among that company made bold to maintain, that the new comedy was not worthy of her approval.
“’Tis a fine thing,” said the man at the head of the table, “and you may lay to that. His genius ripens every day. There is nothing in my opinion beyond the compass of Will’s invention.”
“He lacks but one thing,” said a large, ugly and pock-marked fellow who came slowly into the room.
“And what is that, Ben?” was the question that was promptly fired at the newcomer.
“A little learning, my friends, to temper the heat of his mind. A little of the classic severity of Athens to mellow the over-sharpness of his wit, to trim and clip the excess of his redundancy, to confine the natural incontinence of his humors.”
But the words of Ben were drowned in good-natured laughter. All knew the foibles of this heavy and slow-moving man. He was a surly dog fond of his growl. He must ever run contrary to received opinion. He had an exaggerated regard for the classic tongues. But there was no stouter fellow, no stauncher friend, and there was not a grain of smallness in his nature.
“Sit down, you dog,” said the time-worn warrior at the table-head, “and bury your mask in a flagon. Hi, drawer, a cup of Muscadel for Master Jonson. Ben, my son, with all your learning, aye, and with all your genius, too, you will never be quite man enough to don the mantle of William the Peerless.”
“Did I ever say I would?” said Ben roughly. “Is there any man alive that ever heard me speak so windily? There is no man living or dead who is the peer of our incomparable William and I care not who hears me say it.”
The great rude fellow brought down his bricklayer’s fist with such a resounding thud upon the table that the dishes rattled and the wine slopped over in a dozen cups. But this rough diamond, who as yet did but stand at the threshold of renown, was freely forgiven all the inconvenience he caused for the sake of that honest enthusiasm whereby he did himself honor in the eyes of all.
The motley crew who sat night after night at that table were without exception men of parts and understanding. Whether their ruffles were ink-stained, whether their hands were lily-white, whether they wore silk and fine linen or plain bombazine, whether they lived by the sword or by the pen, or whether they had no need to live by either, there was no appeal from their judgments upon poetry and the drama, and posterity has not found occasion to reverse their verdicts. It was the great age indeed. These were men of rare mental power, of large and liberal intercourse. They knew the highest when they met it and knew how to pay it homage.
For example, this rude fellow Ben Jonson, this clumsy, loud-voiced, opinionative Scotsman, a pock-marked, ugly creature who had lived rough and who had the brand of a felon on his thumb was the coming man. He would go far, said the quidnuncs. He was heavy metal of the royal currency; one who under Providence was destined to be second only to Will himself.
Thus men cast in a gentler mold made room for him. He was no favorite, to be sure. His manners were too rude, his opinions too unqualified. But the sacred fire was in his veins. And those who were wont to dispute precedence with persons of far more account in the eyes of the world were proud to sit at the feet of Ben.
The long July evening was closing in. The candles had been brought and the shutters drawn in the long upper chamber. And that which hitherto had been hardly more than a thrill of half-expectant surmise was now become a slow agony of suspense. It was incredible that news had not come from Richmond. The play must have been over by six o’clock. The verdict of Gloriana and her court must have been delivered long ago.
Was it possible that the miracle of the age had tasted his first defeat? Well, and if he had? said the graybeard at the end of the table. Gloriana and her Court were not infallible. Will should read his comedy to his peers that night, as he had done on many occasions previously. Theirs should be the verdict, for they alone, with all respect to Gloriana, were qualified to give it.
The brave words from the table-head were received with loud approval from a score of stalwarts who by now had gathered round the board. Such words were well and wisely spoken. But suddenly there fell a hush. A famous and admired figure came quietly, almost stealthily, into the room.
It was that of a bearded, brown-faced man of forty, trim and soldierly of look, secure and curiously authoritative of bearing. His dress was rich and fine; his air that of a courtier, urbane, polished, calm, quizzical. There was the coxcomb in the outward man, but not a trace of it in the far-looking, eagle-glancing eyes. This was a great figure, even in that company, which measured a man not by his outward assemblance but by his deeds.
“Ah, now we shall know,” cried the man at the table-head. “Here is Wat. Newly from Richmond, else I’ll never drink sack again out of a bombard until I attain the age of a hundred and twenty.”
“Yes, Martin, newly from Richmond, as you say,” came the courtier’s lisp. “Newly from Richmond, newly from Richmond.”
The newcomer sank down in a manner of extreme weariness in a vacant chair. He sighed heavily.
“A cup of the muscadel for Sir Walter,” said the man at the table-head. “And lively about it, boy. No need to tell us what has happened, Wat. But we did not think it was so bad as all this. We did not think it possible that Will could fail. Is it—tell me, Wat—that Gloriana has smelt some affront in the new piece? Well, well, she is getting old, and even in her prime she was—well, shall we say?—what shall we say?—why, body o’ God, what’s the matter with the fellow?”
The speaker had good reason to ask the question. Raleigh—the brown-faced courtier was no less than he—seemed utterly overcome. Something untoward had most certainly happened. There was more than a mere matter of a play’s failure or success in the dismay of that strong face which shone a bleak gray in the uncertain light of the room.
“Why, what’s the matter? Tell us, for the love of God!”
But Raleigh shook his head haplessly. He who knew not the meaning of fear in the presence of bodily peril, he whose resolution never failed in great crises, was wholly unable to tell the news he bore.
“Is it Will?” A sense of foreboding had descended suddenly upon all. “Tell us, I pray you.”—The eagerly anxious voices sank in the oddest manner. “Has aught happened to Will Shakespeare?”
Raleigh did not answer. But that face so eloquent of power and high capacity seemed to grow a little bleaker. And then twenty pairs of eyes that were turned almost fiercely upon it saw that a rush of sudden tears was shining there.
The man at the head of the table laid a hand to his heart.
“Oh!”
His exclamation went echoing through the silence of the long room. Again the solemn hush descended. That which Walter Raleigh had not courage to tell, not one of these men could muster the courage to ask.
What could have happened? Those were perilous times indeed; times in which the quietest, most law-abiding citizen took his life in his hand when he walked down the street. The tragedy of poor Kit Marlowe was in every mind. Had Will Shakespeare, the incomparable poet and charming personality, met the assassin’s knife by chance or by design? The face of Raleigh portended not less than that. Yet not one of these men could summon enough resolution to set his doubts at rest. The silence was painful. A pin could have been heard to fall in the room.
Suddenly there came sounds of heavy feet stumbling, blundering up the wooden stairs. The door was flung open. A thick, squat, gnarled-looking fellow reeled in like a man under the influence of wine. His face shone livid in the light of the candles.
It was Burbage the tragedian.
“Speak, man! Tell the news!” came the hoarse demand of a dozen voices.
“Shakespeare,” The voice of the tragedian could hardly be heard. “He is arrested by the Queen’s order. They say—they say he will lose his head.”