Free The Playmaker by J.B. Cheaney Page A

at the back of the stage, spoke lines that were cut short, corrected each other, made grand exits, and entered again in what seemed to be another character. Toward the end of the rehearsal my attention was drawn more and more to Kit, who was playing the role of Helen. His voice fell into a melodious alto that could ring with command or sigh with affection. His face, now in transition from boy to man, was too angular to be considered beautiful, but somehow he created an impression ofbeauty. By merely putting out a hand, he made me see a sweeping skirt and train. Watching him, I felt hopeless: here was another standard I could not match. Even Dick and Adrian, the other new boys, were masters in comparison to me; they were to be used today as servants and messengers.
    Noon came, and Starling soon after. I was surprised to see her, and to learn that she took fares for the gallery seats and sold fruit and gingerbread during performances. “How goes it?” she asked me, with ill-concealed delight.
    I sighed. “It's bedlam. I'm lost.”
    “Be patient. In time it will all make sense. I'm in a pother to ask you, though—what drove you here from the docks?”
    I was not comfortable with outright lying, so I merely shrugged. She jabbed me in the ribs, I poked her back, and a shrill-voiced woman called her to her station. Already, patrons were filing into the Theater, though the play wasn't to begin for another hour. “There's more to this tale,” Starling whispered to me before scampering off. “And I
will
have it.”
    During the performance I stood on the floor with the “groundlings”—the apprentices, clerks, and maids who could only afford a penny to get in. Mindful that I was supposed to be in hiding, I pulled my cap low and added nothing to the noisy comments made by the audience. It was my first real play to watch and I wish I could remember it better, but too much lay on my mind. After the third act, Dick Worthing came to fetch me to the tiring rooms behind stage.
    If the play was confusing, what went on behind it was incomprehensible. I dared not offer to help, but stayed out of the way and wondered how anything could be made of the mad rushing about. Only toward the end did peace reign in the tiring room, and that because every available player was on the stage, battling before the gates of Troy. The cannon roared, the actors howled, the audience cheered, my head ached. Immediately after the play, the Company assembled on stage for a dance, and then the happy crowds poured out of the Theater to go their ways.
    I had expected the players to take a rest then, but after changing their clothes and making a quick survey of the day's receipts, they walked through some scenes of the next day's play, in which I was to perform as a servant and a soldier. Rehearsal, for me, meant being grabbed by the elbow and pulled into this place or that, like a piece of furniture. After about an hour (and me still as confounded as before) the day was finally over. By then it was six o'clock, almost twelve hours since we had arrived at the Theater. The Company scattered; Master Condell and his neighbor John Heminges walked home to St. Mary's Parish, a distance of one mile, followed by me and Robin and Kit (who boarded with Master Heminges). After supper that evening Robin showed me how to stage-fight with staves, then laid out the plot of the morrow's play and told me what my entrances were, then studied his part while I lay in bed in a blank stupor. So ended the first day of my blithesome life as an actor.
    My expectation of theater life was that once or twice in a performance I would glide upon stage in a gown and make a speechloud enough to be heard in the third gallery. Two things I did not reckon on: first, that plays must be acted, not merely spoken, and second, that Londoners have an insatiable appetite for them. Citizens of the provinces may be well content with two or three performances in a year. But the London public has been fed