J. C. Snaith

“ 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.” ”

“ Despair closed upon Gervase and Anne. They did not need to be told that Sir John Feversham had taken upon himself the whole responsibility for his prisoner’s escape, and that not a word had crossed his lips in regard to the share his daughter had in it.
One thought sprang at once to the minds of the fugitives. It was impossible in such circumstances to leave Sir John to his fate. All the laws of honor, of filial duty forbade such a course.
“Oh, why did you tell them!” said the player to John Markham. The too sensitive soul felt the stab of tragedy in its inmost fiber. ”

“ From the gentle face of this man, all compassion, all tenderness, their eyes sought that of the Queen. That was a very different countenance. And yet, as those hawklike eyes met theirs, a curious light ran in them. It was almost as if, in spite of herself, Elizabeth had been moved by the sight of this shadowy, yet dauntless thing, this Rosalind who yesterday had charmed her with her coquetry, her grace, her sorcery of voice and look.
“Mistress Feversham”—the harsh voice seemed to assault their ears, so sharp it was, so merciless—“I am given to understand you are a woman. ”

“ Of a sudden John Markham’s hand forsook the hilt of his dagger. And in the same instant his face changed from the tawny bloom of health to a hue far otherwise. His rather slow brain had realized who it was that lay by the side of the escaped prisoner.
The falconer grew white as death. He was the devoted servant of a good and honored master. But beyond all things he was the slave of his young mistress. All was mad turmoil at the Castle. As yet none had had thought to spare for Mistress Anne. ”

“ Gervase, thin and careworn, was kneeling by the bed, and his arms were holding its frail occupant.
For many days Anne had lain between life and death. But the fire of youth was in her veins. She had fine courage, moreover, pure strength of body, therefore Nature fought for her. And in the end Nature prevailed. Yet long after life itself had conquered, it was feared that reason, the sovereign goddess, would be dethroned forever in that finely tempered spirit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It ran straight to where they lay concealed in the grass, and to their horror began to fondle Anne and lick her face. In the next moment a man on a horse was bending over them.
Thrusting the dog away from her, Anne looked up and saw the man, and as she did so her heart died within her. It was John Markham the falconer. His eyes were fixed upon the prostrate form of Gervase. In the very fascination of terror she watched his hand stray to the hilt of his dagger.
Both the fugitives lay in the grass staring up helplessly into the grim eyes of the falconer. They could neither move, speak nor act. ”

“ There was a void, it seemed, gaping in the ground behind the bushes but a few yards off. But Gervase could scarce drag his body towards it as they crept close by the wall to see what it might be. For now he felt with a dull sense of terror that the great moment was past. His insurgent nerves told him that not again in cold blood would he climb to the parapet of the wall.
From this new errand he looked for no deliverance. But as soon as they came near they saw that the void, barely visible in the gray light, was a hole in the ground. ”

“ O God! they were setting up the scaffold in the courtyard. In spite of the strength he had won in these last few weeks he rolled off the pallet onto his knees and began to pray wildly. A fever shook his mind. His new-found strength was leaving him. Death—and such a death!—was a thing he did not know how to meet. A grim terror took hold of him.
And then a thing happened to him which shook the central forces of his being.
Suddenly he saw the face of Anne. He saw it all wan and swollen with tears. And as he looked he saw the eyes grow starlike and great with their compassion. ”

“ The man Shakespeare had certainly behaved like a stark fool, and richly merited any fate that could overtake him, for my Lord Treasurer’s was that practical order of mind that hates a fool quite as much as it hates a rogue. The one was intelligible, but the other was an affront to the human race. Still, the man Shakespeare had many highly placed friends. And if Cecil himself had little use for the order of things the man represented, he recognized, with that large grasp of mind in which none of his age excelled him, that this play-actor stood for human amenity. ”

“ But when Shakespeare came to consider all the consequences that would follow upon it he put it out of his mind. At the back of his thoughts was ever the distraught figure of the falconer, the unhappy man whom he had been compelled to deceive. If Heriot fled the country Sir John Feversham would lose his life. No, the hour was not yet for such an irrevocable step. “But, my friend,” whispered a sinister voice, too often heard in that overwrought brain, “you of all men have reason to know that delays are dangerous!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ William Shakespeare alone was so cool and collected that the occasion might have been of the most ordinary kind.
Those few among the players who shared the dark secret which was to make this day so memorable in the life of the author of the new comedy, were astonished by a calmness that was to them unnatural. And they could not help marveling how a man whose very life depended on the whim of a harsh-tempered and capricious woman should be able to mask his thoughts and to control his feelings in a manner so remarkable. ”

“ If ever a man might be said to have sold himself to the devil, that man was Simon Heriot. He had a cunning and subtle mind; moreover, he was very well acquainted with the world in which he lived. He was clever enough to make the entail of his nephew’s estates the price of his testimony. And, indeed, it was no uncommon thing in that day to reward those who brought and proved charges of high treason with the property of the people they had hounded to the scaffold. The times were very perilous for all men. The life of no man was safe. ”

“ The player, humble-minded as he was, would have been the last man in the world to arrogate to himself any such privilege. But the insistence of Anne’s friends was strong. Well they knew the valiant part this man had played. Moreover, the Queen, it seemed, had caused many inquiries to be made of “the brave thing” who was fighting the sternest of all her battles. The heart of the woman had been moved by the gallant story. It may have been that Gloriana felt that honor had been done to the sex of which she herself was a foremost ornament. ”

“ And yet that is not the full measure of a poet’s unhappiness.”
[Pg 256]
“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.” ”

“ Mistress Anne had a full share of the cynical irreverence of youth.
“I am not at all surprised to learn that, sir. I have even been told that the Queen dyes her hair.”
The effect of a speech so daring was to startle Master Tidey quite visibly. The world looks to one of his craft to have a conventional mind, and there was no doubt the times were perilous. The shears almost fell from his hand. If this was not treason, might he never sew another doublet!
The play-actor, however, was of a fiber less delicate. It was as much as Mr. William Shakespeare could do to refrain from open laughter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But that’s nothing to you, Master Shakespeare. I reckon you see it every day o’ the week.”
“It’s a fine thing, I grant you, when it rides proud in the sight of heaven,” said the player abstractedly.
“Aye, Master Shakespeare, and even when it goes afoot!” said the tailor, whose mind was more pedestrian. “It does a man good, I always think, to have a sight of the quality now and again. But as I say, Master Shakespeare, it is nothing to you who go to Court like a gentleman.” ”

“ He was William Shakespeare, the play-actor, and she was Elizabeth Tudor, the conqueror of Spain.
But the kingdom of the mind is no Venetian oligarchy. Those who speak the same language are all made free of it. And queen and mime, alone perhaps among that assembly, were able to address each other in the universal tongue. Seldom, of late years at least, had this crabbed, difficult and arrogant woman, been seen in a mood so accessible. ”

“ While the poet continued to read his noble invention he was gravely preoccupied. His thoughts were forever straying from the creatures of his fancy to that wan and fragile thing propped up with pillows who looked as if she could never smile nor weep again. If only Sir John Feversham could come to his daughter now! If only the forgiveness of that just man could be granted to her! Even as he read, the words of the Queen were ever in his ears. “It is a matter, Master Shakespeare, in which we may never be able to move. ”

“ One glance he cast round the room, saw no place was set for him, and then called loudly for the landlord.
“The place is full of these stinking play-actors!” he cried out. “The best inn in Oxford is now the worst. These mimes have taken all the best rooms, they infest the place like vermin. They are sticking up a filthy stage upon filthy trestles in the middle of the courtyard, so that a man hasn’t even room to water his horse, and now, by God’s blood, they crowd their betters out of the dining-parlor!”
The man was Sir Robert Grisewood, whom Shakespeare and Gervase had seen already. ”

“ There was no need for the young man to get down on his knees, candle in hand, and loosen the man’s clothing. Simon Heriot had already breathed his last.
The men who had come with Gervase into the room belonged one and all to the Lord Chamberlain’s Company. The first of these was William Shakespeare whose fantastically ingenious device had been fraught with such tragic consequences. It had succeeded beyond hope or expectation. Richard Burbage’s had been the voice which had re-echoed down the wide chimney with such ghastly effect. ”

“ In such circumstances there was nothing for Anne and Gervase to do but to return bitterly hungry to the village street.
They feared to show themselves in it, but alas; the spur of hunger is a most instant thing. Sad indeed and footsore already with their wandering, they walked through the village. Both were tired and thirsty and also faint for lack of food. They kept close under the houses, expecting at any moment to be sprung upon by the men in the scarlet livery.
In the middle of the road, coming slowly towards them, was a ragged nut-brown vagabond playing a flageolet for pence. ”

“ A light flashed in the somber eyes of the player. “Speak for yourself Master Tidey,” he said, with a slow, deep laugh. “Whenever I get my deliverance, by God’s grace I’ll have the robe of a gentleman to cover me. Unless”—the light in the somber eyes was so intense that they shone almost black—“unless they let the reason out, and then there’s no warrant for any man’s exit. But what of this poor young man? How comes he to this?”
[Pg 3]
The tailor lowered his voice to a whisper. ”

“ Shakespeare presently delivered a solemn charge to the melancholy-visaged John Davenant, of whom there was a tradition that he had never been known to smile.
“Right excellent host,” said the player, with a whimsical air, “I would have you place at our disposal about the hour friend Phoebus enters his cradle, the eight trustiest and lustiest steeds to be found in this city. John Davenant, on your honor as a licensed victualler, do I charge you to give the whole of your mind to this matter. An affair of great pith and moment is toward as soon as the sun has gone down.” ”