Free The Playmaker by J.B. Cheaney Page B

so often it is like a beast, hurling itself at the theater doors demanding, “Plays! Give us more plays!” When I began my term of service with the Lord Chamberlain's Men, the city boasted four theaters open to the public, and each performed its own schedule: a different play almost every day, six days per week, for at least eight months of the year. Yesterday a comedy, today a romance, tomorrow a tragedy, and so the cycle continued, as relentless as the tide. I found time the first week to write to Susanna and tell her what I was doing (which I knew she would not approve); after that the stage swept me out to sea.
    “Forward, march!” barked Master William Sly, who had served some time as a soldier and knew his drill. “Wheel right! Up with the pikes and engage!” He was built as solidly as an ale tankard, with thick wavy hair and a bull neck and a lower lip that bowed up combatively when something displeased him. “To the right I said, Richard, thou thick-pated shrimp—to the right!”
    The play in which I first “acted” was about King Henry VI and the French wars. Wars make excellent dramatic material, so the first lesson for an actor is how to march on with a pike on one shoulder, then leap about the stage in a semblance of hand-to-handcombat. Since Robin was busy with his own part, I was paired with an actor hired for the day, a lanky, clownish street player who nonetheless knew his business. “Stick close to me, little brother,” he told me with a wink. “I'll show you the ins and outs.” This is exactly what he did, for we shared all our entrances as soldiers and serving men. To signal my speaking cues, he covertly kicked me, but as I had only two lines to say, my shins did not suffer overmuch. Both were in the same scene, where we entered fighting with bloody bandages wrapped around our heads. Master Condell, as King Henry, commanded us to cease, whereupon I cried, “Do what ye dare, we are as resolute!” Shouting such words with passion proved to be easier than I thought—the difficult part was making the fight seem natural. I had doubts about my performance until Dick Worthing accidentally brained me with his staff and knocked me near-senseless to the ground—that probably looked natural enough.
    For two weeks I was used as a figure of action, and seldom spoke more than four lines together, usually as a messenger bearing news of some bloody event. My plan to disguise myself as a female may thus have been thwarted, but I could often wear a helmet or a hood, or smear my face with sheep's blood in a battle or street grime in a fight. I could don a beard or pull my cap low or simply melt into the crowd. “Stand forth, Richard!” the players shouted more than once, in rehearsal. “What are you doing in the theater if you don't wish to be seen, eh?”
    The acting, in itself, made few demands on me during that firstfortnight. When I was required to look something other than attentive, the sentiments were extreme ones—terror, rage, exaltation—all of which any child can, and often does, perform several times in the course of a day. So quickly did I master screaming upon the stage that I could almost begin to fancy myself a gifted actor—except for what went on behind the stage.
    The tiring rooms remained in a state of mayhem during a play, with actors throwing off costumes, searching frantically for misplaced properties, or scanning the plot to determine their next entrance. The cues for the actors on stage were often supplied by Cuthbert Burbage, who sat behind the door holding the playbook. But he could not divide his attention two ways, and thus the need for the “plot” a long scroll hanging from the centerpost, on which were written all the cues for every scene. Never was a piece of paper more ardently courted than during a performance. Every member of the Company possessed incredible gifts of memory, but no mortal could remember all the cues of a different play every day. Traffic around the