Free Sleep of Death by Philip Gooden Page A

each other’s throats.’
    I was beginning to warm to this fellow, for all his airs.
    ‘My father wouldn’t thank you for saying so. Like our City fathers, he held that the playhouse was the root of all abomination.’
    ‘And so
you
are drawn to it. Does he know how his son earns a living?’
    ‘My father is dead. My mother also. The plague-beast struck at Bristol a couple of years ago, and one of its tails or legs swept through our little parish.’
    ‘And now you are a player. Well, whether the words of Leviticus about the marriages of widows and brothers apply or don’t apply, I’m sure that it is not so unusual for two people in such circumstances to find themselves attracted to each other.’
    He said this as if he were talking about
my
mother and father.
    ‘Probably not.’
    ‘So, you see, these events taken separately – a death and a remarriage – are nothing out of the ordinary.’
    ‘But you don’t actually think that?’
    ‘To be more precise, I don’t feel it. Without being able to say why, I don’t feel that all’s right with the world.’
    ‘There’s a simple way of clearing this up,’ I said. ‘When did your father die?’
    ‘The first week in May.’
    ‘And the first performance of
Hamlet
was in June, I think.’
    I struggled to remember when I’d seen the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark. It was a successful play and so had received more than a couple of performances; and now it had been revived in the autumn. My first appearance with the Chamberlain’s Men had been on the previous day in this very production. But I was fairly sure that my first sight of it as a
spectator
had been in early summer. High white clouds scudding above the open playhouse. A sense of freshness in the air, even among the groundlings. Standing at the back I’d pulled my hat lower to shade my gaze from the afternoon sun as I witnessed the destruction of the royal court at Elsinore (little dreaming that I would myself be appearing within a few months on that very stage as the emissary from England, come to announce the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to unhearing ears!). Yes, this was in June.
    ‘It was June,’ I said. ‘I remember.’
    ‘Well?’
    ‘Your father’s death took place before the play of
Hamlet
ever appeared on the Globe stage. You’re not suggesting that our author got the idea for his play from what happened to your father?’
    ‘Of course not,’ said William Eliot. ‘I’d never accuse any playwright of making up ideas or borrowing from reality. They’d be justifiably insulted. Anyway, every educated person knows that there’s an older version of your author’s
Hamlet,
some crude stuff that’s been around for years. And that rough version probably had an even rougher version preceding it. And one before that, and so on.’
    ‘So it’s not a case of nature holding up the mirror to art, as you wittily put it,’ I persisted. ‘Your father’s death occurred before the play was first performed. But it’s not the other way round either. The play was not composed so far in advance of your father’s death as to indicate that the author might have “borrowed” from reality, even assuming that he’d be prepared to do anything so indelicate. The two things, the play writing and the death, must have been occurring more or less simultaneously. Why, he must have been at work on
Hamlet
in April or even during May itself if it was first staged in June.’
    ‘He writes fast.’
    ‘No more than average,’ I said, pretending to a knowledge of our author’s compositional habits. But what I said applied to any playwright worth his salt. We had no patience with any author who laboured for weeks and then produced a few paltry scenes.
    ‘So there’s no connection between the events of the play and my father’s death, you think,’ said William.
    ‘Just coincidence,’ I said with a confidence that I didn’t feel.
    ‘You’re probably right,’ he said. Then after a pause, ‘You