Free The Darling Strumpet by Gillian Bagwell Page B

so many plays if there have been none for so long?”
    “The two companies divided the plays from the old days,” said Harry. “And my father got the best of those, as he did with the actors.”
    “Is it all lads and men?” Nell asked. “Are there no women players?”
    “Up ’til now,” Harry said, “it’s always been boys acting the women’s parts. But that’s soon to change. His Majesty saw women on the stage in Frankfurt and thought it a charming innovation.”
    “Mr. Killigrew says he’s going to try putting a woman on the stage in a few weeks,” the youngest of the lads said. “My dad says it will cause rioting in the streets, either from outrage or from lust.”
    Nell joined in the laughter, but was intrigued.
    “Who are they, these women? Where do they come from?”
    “Oh, they’re pretty, likely-looking wenches my father has found somewhere,” Harry shrugged. “Girls with a quick wit who are like to be able to learn their words.”
    “Not married. And orphans, likely,” said the fair-haired actor. “For who would want their wife or daughter on the stage?”
    “Sir William Davenant at the Duke’s Company has a couple of girls about your age in his care,” Harry said. “Betty Barry and Moll Davis. Perhaps he’ll make something of them.”
    “But that’s all to come,” said the fair-haired lad. “Mr. Killigrew will not risk putting women on just yet. Certainly not when we play at court in a fortnight’s time.”
    “Is there a playhouse there?” Nell asked.
    “There is,” Harry answered. “The Cockpit. It’s fallen into a sad state. But it’ll soon be right again, eh, Marmaduke?”
    “With not a penny spared,” the fair-haired young man agreed. “My brother’s a plasterer and he says there’s night work as well as daytime labor. The king’s in a tear to get the job finished, and when it’s done, it’ll be mighty fine.”
     
     
     
    THE NEXT AFTERNOON, NELL AND ROSE MADE THEIR WAY UP ST. JOHN Street to where the Red Bull stood near Clerkenwell Green. There was already a crowd at the door to the playhouse, and Nell was seized with fear that there would be no room for them. But when Rose told their names to the man with the box for the money, he nodded and waved them in with a smile.
    The square yard was open to the winter sky, with enclosed galleries along three sides and a stage across the fourth. Despite the chill breeze, the benches in the galleries were quite full, and even the ground before the stage was crowded with men, women, and children, all eating, drinking, talking, and laughing. In the middle of this seething crowd, Nell could not even see the stage. Rose grasped her hand and they worked their way forward. The stage stood some five feet high from the ground, so that those standing at the back of the pit could see as well as those at the front, but its height meant that Nell had to look almost straight up to see it.
    The play began and Nell was pleased to see Wat Clun, Charles Hart, and other actors from the previous day’s rehearsal. The story rocked merrily along—everyone, it seemed, was in disguise, and at the end of the play all were revealed as their true selves. Charles Hart turned out to be a nobleman, and not only was he reunited with the girl he had been forced to forsake, but she proved to be the daughter of a duke, so all ended happily, if improbably.
    Dusk was coming on when the play finished, with rain clouds lowering overhead, and Nell was shivering despite the heavy cloak she clasped around herself and tired from standing for two hours. Yet she didn’t want to go. The play had transported her, made her forget about Madam Ross’s place. She had been in two playhouses now, and different though they were, they had both seemed to hold magic within them, to make her thrill with an excitement she had felt only once before—while watching the king’s return to London.
     
     
     
    THE OLDER ACTORS DID NOT RETURN TO MADAM ROSS’S IN THE weeks