Free The Playmaker by Thomas Keneally

play Mr. Worthy, a Gentleman of Shropshire. John Wisehammer, the Hereford Jew, will take the role of Captain Brazen, an over-florid recruiting officer in competition with Captain Plume, and a role which suits exactly John Wisehammer’s engaging but excessive temperament. For the role of Sergeant Kite I have selected John Arscott, the carpenter, who will also be of great service to me in the construction of scenery, etc., as frugal as our arrangements for scenery and decoration must be. Arscott’s demeanour seems to have amended itself since his quarrel with the Sirius sailors a year ago.
    Since many of these people are engaged on labours of construction and farming, I would be grateful if you instructed the Provost Marshal, the Superintendent of All Works, and the convict overseers that they should, within reason, be given free time away from their places of labour to polish their skills and enhance their chance of delighting the entire civilised population of Sydney Cove.
    I would be pleased also if I could be temporarily granted the services of Susannah Trippett, the artificial flower-maker and—as the time for the performance draws near—those of John Nicholls, who before his sentencing was a hairdresser and perfumier.
    I will conclude this report by telling you that I have recruited—if H.E. will excuse the pun—Mrs. Bryant, popularly called Dabby for her sharpness and cleverness, to perform the part of Rose, a Country Girl. In this regard, I hope Your Excellency will forgive me if I raise a plea for the situation of Bryant’s husband, the government fisherman. I witnessed an instance of the invective and insult to which these two are treated by former fellow prisoners aboard the Friendship and other ships. Bryant’s eminence as the only adept fisherman in this distant region, and the privileges you so generously extended him, which have now had to be cancelled because of his misdemeanour, have attracted the envy of the sort of convicted felon who could never—in anyone’s wildest expectation—hope to enjoy similar kindnesses. Bryant is aware of the shame of his demotion and is palpably embarrassed also by his flogging three months past. Since there is no one else as able as Bryant in the matter of the government fishing boat, I recommend him to H.E.’s clemency for possible return to his old hut on the east side of the cove and to command of the boat.
    I hope these theatrical arrangements meet with Your Excellency’s assent.
    Your obedient servant,
    Ralph Clark,
    Lieutenant, Marines.

CHAPTER 7
    A Full Company
    Shitty Meg Long, the one who had first come to his tent to be admitted to the play, sat in the shade of a native fig and watched the rehearsal go ahead in the shade of another.
    â€œA drummer,” Ralph read, “—and we shall arrange for one … a convict drummer, I think, rather than a Marine—enters the market place in Shrewsbury beating ‘The Grenadier’s March’ or any other suitable tune. Sergeant Kite also enters.”
    Ralph, in the fear and exaltation of this first massed reading of the play, felt willing to make his players any promise. His instincts told him that for their own reasons of corps pride they wanted the play all lag, all convict. Not even the Marine trumpeters or drummers were to be invited in. Now that he had made that skittish pledge he felt a tremor of exclusiveness pass through his actors.
    â€œKite enters,” Ralph went on. “That is you, Arscott, and you are followed by Curtis Brand in the part of Costar Pearmain and young John Hudson in the role of Thomas Appletree.” Curtis was Harry Brewer’s gardener, and John Hudson, a Cockney fourteen years of age and much favoured by motherly convict women. He had been used by older housebreakers to wriggle through broken fanlights and had been sentenced at the age of nine. Brand, a little sullen but an adequate worker, a man in his twenties, had