Free The Playmaker by J.B. Cheaney

though he told me he was only twelve. Just before getting into bed he knelt and rattled off a prayer.
    “How long hast thou been in the Company, Robin?” I asked— very low in spirits, for if this boy was my measure I had too far to stretch.
    “Since I was nine. Most don't engage so young with the Lord Chamberlain's Men, but my saintly widowed mother did marry again, and my most excellent stepfather desired me out from underfoot. You're fourteen, you say? That's late to begin.”
    “How would you advise me?”
    “Why, like any apprentice, at any trade. Listen much, say little, do as you're told. Haven't you some notion of the stage?”
    “I've never even seen a play, entire,” I answered miserably.
    He sat up and swore like a sailor. It unsettled me, this tendency of Londoners to swear by the body parts of God and Christ. “May the Almighty Grace defend you, then,” said he, in a tone that clearly suggested the Almighty had a deal of work ahead.
    Imagine a puppy seized by the scruff of the neck and flung into the foaming Thames at flood tide, and you will have a fair picture of my life for the next many weeks. Dick Worthing and Adrian Ball,both of whom came into the Company with some experience, seemed to adjust to the current and swim right away. But I barely kept my nose above water, and every day found a dozen opportunities to wish that I had sped directly to Newgate in that fateful hour after the riot, and kept on to Scotland.
    My first view of the Theater, on a damp and overcast April morning: a round barnlike structure with three circular galleries surrounding a center court. The posts supporting these galleries were pranked up to resemble fine marble pillars and the wooden railings were painted to suggest the balustrades of an Italian villa, or something like. It was clearly meant to look grand, and perhaps did so at one time, but the stern gray light showed its obvious pretense. The stage was a rough board platform, about fifteen feet square. As we arrived, boys were spreading sawdust on the ground to soak up some of the rain that had fallen before dawn. Most of the Company were gathered at one corner of the stage, discussing business matters.
    Master Condell turned to me before joining him. “Today you watch. Watch Robin and Kit, especially, and I'll not take amiss any opportunity you find to make yourself useful.”
    Robin eagerly introduced me to Christopher Glover, or “Kit,” a thin youth with straight black hair, a milky complexion, and gray eyes shaded by soft black lashes. He raked his icy gaze over me and stalked away with the haughtiness of a prince. “Don't mind it,” said Robin, “‘Tis just his humor.” He went on to explain that Kit was approaching sixteen, an age when most apprentices had eitherquit the stage or moved on to male roles. But young Master Glover remained unsurpassed in playing imperious queens and duchesses.
    A sharp voice sounded from overhead: “Avast! Mind your ears!” Immediately after, the stage shook with a roar, followed by a sprinkle of cinders. In answer to my wide-eyed stare Robin told me it was only Harry Smithton, in the “hut” over our heads. I glanced up to a boxlike structure built high above the stage, with a trapdoor in its floor. Master Smithton, it seemed, liked to get off a preliminary shot or two before any play that involved a battle, to “warm the gun.”
    “The stage boys must be handy with buckets, in case he sets the thatch on fire,” Robin added. “I'll be off. Watch the play, so you'll know what to do tomorrow.”
    I helped hang curtains around the stage, to hide the forest of trestles that held it about four feet off the ground. Black curtains signified that the play was a tragedy; the boy I was assisting informed me it was called
The Greek Warriors.
“What's it about?” I asked. “I dunno. Somewhat to do with the Trojan War.” The rehearsal that shortly took place left me no wiser than he. Actors moved in and out through two doors