Sleep of Death Read online

  ‘At the end I don’t have the last word, do I? I don’t remember the ending of the play clearly.’

  ‘That is probably because you were rapt by the beauty or the wit of my own dying words as Hamlet. The last word of all goes to Fortinbras. He’s going to be the next King of Denmark.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ I said.

  ‘Fortinbras writes finis to our tragedy,’ said Burbage.

  ‘I would like to have the last word one day.’

  ‘Master Revill, when did you arrive from your Zummerzet?’

  ‘About two years ago, Master Burbage.’

  ‘I didn’t hear it in your voice until you did your, ah, imitation. I can detect it now.’

  ‘We’re not all bumpkins even if we do come from the provinces.’

  ‘No, though some of us ride in on our high horses. I was born here, but our author is from Warwickshire. He rarely goes back. And the companies you’ve played with, again?’

  ‘The Admiral’s . . . and . . . Derby’s once.’

  ‘At the Boar’s Head?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve filled in during sickness, unavoidable absence, that kind of thing – but no doubt you’re looking for a company which you can permanently attach yourself to?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing is permanent in this business, Master Revill. We could be closed down like that.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Plague, the Council, commercial failure, anything could drive us out onto the road and into your bumpkin provinces.’

  ‘I want only to act,’ I said.

  ‘Well, Master Revill, let me say that the Chamberlain’s Men are pleased to have you for the next week or three, or until Wilson returns from attending on his poor dying mother. Now to terms. One shilling a day is your pay. Which also happens to be the fine if you are late for rehearsal, while it is two shillings for non-attendance at rehearsal, and three entire shillings if you are late and out of costume when you should be ready for the actual performance. Larger fines, very much larger fines, if you remove a costume from this playhouse. Remember that costumes are worth more than players and plays put together. Some of our congregation come only to see the costumes. And if you lose your part by dropping it in the street or leaving it in the tavern or by some whore’s bed you will not only be drawn and quartered but your goods forfeit. You will doubtless know this from your short time with the Admiral’s, but I always like to be clear where I stand with new players.’

  ‘I understand, Master Burbage.’

  ‘Good. Now go to the tire-man for your costumes, and then to Master Allison our bookman for your parts. Just tell him you’re doing Jack Wilson’s. He’ll understand. And before you leave this morning check the plot in there.’ He nodded towards the tiring-house. ‘You won’t appear as nephew to the player-King till half past three or thereabouts this afternoon, and we start at two, so you have plenty of time before you come on, not just for your lines today but for the townsman in A City Pleasure. And you might as well take a look at what you’re doing in Somerset Tragedy while you’re about it. Leave the French count and the Machiavel for today. We’re hearsing Pleasure on Tuesday, and you can try out your Zummerzet voice on Thursday when we’re running through the Tragedy of that county. All clear? If it’s not, get the details from Allison.’

  ‘Thank you, Master Burbage. I would like to say how grateful I am to be given the chance to work with the finest—’

  ‘Yes yes, Master Revill. We’re only players, remember, caterpillars of the commonwealth – though I suppose some caterpillars are finer than others.’

  ‘You are the Queen’s caterpillars,’ I said, referring to the well-known favour enjoyed by the Chamberlain’s Men at court.

  ‘And we shall see if you are Master of the Revels, Master Revill,’ said Burbage, referring to the well-known civil servant who made a packet out of licensing plays.

  Richard Burbage hoisted himself from his chair. Son of a carpenter, wasn’t he? Well, there were good enough precedents for that. There was certainly something solid, something oak-like about him.

  I visited the tire-man and was kitted out with Wilson’s gear, one thing that was villainous and another thing with a showy but leftover feel to it. From the bookkeeper I received half a dozen puny scrolls giving me my lines for that afternoon and for the rest of the week. From the plot hanging up in the tiring-house for the day’s business I ascertained that I joined in a dumb-show as a poisoner, and then appeared a few moments afterwards as one ‘Lucianus, nephew to the King’, for which I was required to carry a flask (containing poison) and, presumably, a face with black looks. All as Master Burbage had said, and all as my returning memory of the tragedy of the Prince of Denmark told me. Later, much later when almost all were dead and gone, I was cued to enter the court of Elsinore with news from England of even more death. So I was a porter of death and a messenger of death, I thought neatly, trying to make a pattern out of my little roles, and then I considered that I enjoyed this good fortune only because Master Wilson was attending to a dying mother in Norfolk. But in Julius Caesar I was myself destined to die, playing the part of the unfortunate Cinna, the poet torn in pieces by the mob for his bad verses. The other plays I didn’t know, though Love’s Sacrifice and A Somerset Tragedy by their very titles carried the promise of death dealt with an open hand.

  I left the Globe, almost skipping on this fine, late summer morning. I was only sorry that Dick Burbage had not wanted to hear out my stammering gratitude. For grateful I was. Outside the playhouse in Brend’s Rents, the alley behind, I glanced up at its sides, sheer white like the chalk cliff of a gorge. Like a palace, like a cathedral or a castle – this playhouse was all these to me, a place of authority and splendour. I remembered my first glimpse of it on arriving in London, fresh and green from Zummerzet. The Globe shimmered in a heat haze on the south side of the river, unmatched for height or amplitude by any building in the neighbourhood. The flag was flying and the trumpet reached my eager ears even across the great stretch of London’s water, and I knew that playing was about to begin, and I wished myself, at any cost, to be one among that company. When you are near this great edifice you can see a polygon, but so multi-sided is it that, from a distance, it appears to be a fine shining ring. It is, in truth, a magic ring, in which any apparition may be conjured for the delight and the edification of what Master Burbage called the congregation. The Globe playhouse was, to me, as fabulous as Troy.

  Later after my arrival, when I had been in London a few weeks and was mixing with my playing kind, I learned the extraordinary story of the construction of the Globe, how Burbage and his brother, together with the other shareholders, had—

  ‘I’ll fucking have you!’

  I broke from my recollections. Someone was shouting at me. An instant more and the same someone had smashed into me. A great sweaty face was pushed into mine, foul breath shoving over the sill of his lower lip. I fell down on my back, and the great oaf tumbled on top me and panted there as if he really was fucking having me. After a time he levered himself off. From his costume I recognised a waterman. I would have known him for one anyway, partly because every third man in this borough of Southwark makes his living on the river, partly because he had that look, half sea-dog, half hang-dog, which most of them’ve got and which they claim comes from having served with Drake or Frobisher or the Lord High Duck or some other sea-worthy sea worthy – but mostly I would’ve known him for a waterman because of the flood of cursing that gushed out of his filthy lips the moment he had righted himself.

  ‘Fucking arse-wipe – bloody fucking shite – Jesus Christ – where the fuck’s the fucking fucker gone . . .’

  All of this was accompanied with gusts of sour air, heaves of his great chest and rollings of eyes that did not quite swivel together, so I had the unpleasant sensation that he was looking simultaneously at, before and behind me.

  ‘Where’d he fucking go? Why’d you let him get away, you shitting turd?’

  I took a couple
of deep breaths and stepped back from my panting assailant. What was going on? Instinctively I grabbed for my purse. When you come across a fracas in the street, there’s a fair chance that it is a put-up job, and that the tusslers are waiting for a ring of spectators to form before the third man or woman tiptoes round the outside and relieves the more agog of whatever valuables weigh them down. When this unofficial subscription has been raised, the fight will suddenly end with a handshake and the participants magically evaporate. My purse, however, had not gone. Most likely, if the oaf had wanted to get it off me he would have done so when we were tangled on the dusty ground. Looking at his fists, which hung down like bags of meat, I thought that if he’d asked me to surrender my purse I probably would have done so with only a token protest. After all, what was money? Other things were more important, like – Jesus! – my parts in the Globe plays. My hands flew back to where I’d tucked the scrolls under my shirt, near the heart. Still there. I breathed a quick and silent prayer of gratitude to the patron saint of players (one Genesius).

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I said, brushing at my clothes, and growing more angry, even as the hulk opposite me seemed to be sailing into calmer waters. ‘In fact, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, to adopt your terminology.’

  Three or four people had stopped in the street, drawn by the prospect of trouble. The large boatman had stepped back a pace or so, and I mistook the look of bovine stupidity that was now begining to usurp his angry features for sheepishness. ‘And another thing,’ I said, foolishly deciding to demonstrate my intellectual superiority. ‘What did you call me . . . shitting turd I think it was?’

  ‘So what if I did, you arse-wipe.’

  ‘Interesting example of pleonasm is that shitting turd,’ I said as nonchalantly as I could manage. ‘Pleonast, are you?’

  Both of the boatman’s eyes trained themselves on me more or less at once. I had said the wrong thing, been stupid by being clever at the expense of a no-wit. He took a step towards me and I stepped back. Unfortunately that was as far as I could go. Now the boatman had me between his sweaty self and a flinty wall. A few more people had assembled in the hope of seeing violence done to one who was young and blameless.

  ‘What’s a fucking pleenast when it’s at home?’

  He had his arm rammed across my throat so that, even if I had wanted to correct the way he said the word, I couldn’t have spoken. His beard, which was as clotted as a bunch of seaweed, tickled my face. I made ineffectual attempts to push him off but he pressed himself against me, and I smelt on him a mixture of riveriness and fishitude and it was not agreeable.

  ‘I said, you bum-sucker, what’s a pleenast?’

  There was a real danger that if I didn’t answer, he was going to crush me as completely as a fallen mast would have. But it was all I could do to drag air through a dented windpipe, let alone produce any explanation. The fine summer morning was flecked with orange spots and there was a roaring in my ears.

  ‘Pleenast – pleenast? Fucking tell me. I’ll give you pleenast!’

  I had time to think that this was perhaps the first occasion in the history of the world that anyone had died for the sake of a little word from the Greek, and time also to consider that if I were to have my life over again then I would learn not to be so foolishly clever as to try to impress those who are, by nature, unimpressible. And I had time to think that this business of dying took too long, as the half-circle of white faces looking at this spectacle merged into a blur.

  ‘It’s a compliment,’ came a voice close to one of my roaring ears. ‘Let him go, boatman. It’s a compliment. Let him go, I say.’

  After a moment the pressure on my throat was lifted. I was too busy forcing air inside myself to pay much attention to the exchange which followed, but was able to reconstruct it afterwards.

  ‘When you’ve released him I’ll tell you what he is unable to tell you himself. That’s better.’

  ‘All right, you tell me then. What’s a pleenast?’

  There was still aggression and injury in what the boatman was saying to the newcomer but, even in my preoccupied condition, I was aware of a retreat in the man’s tone, as well as an absence of fucking, shiting and arse-wiping.

  ‘Pleonasm,’ said the individual who had interrupted my throttling, ‘is a rhetorical figure by which more words than are strictly necessary are used to express meaning. For example, if I said that you were a fine boatman as well as a good boatman and an excellent one, then I would have committed a pleonasm.’

  ‘Fine . . . good . . . excellent,’ said the boatman, half to himself. I noticed that the number of people about us had grown, rather than the dribbling away of a crowd which usually occurs when the promise of violence has not been fulfilled. They too were listening to the explanation of a pleonasm. Something about the man’s calm and certain speech drew them, just as it pacified the boatman. I glanced at my rescuer. I’d seen him somewhere recently.

  ‘I think that what this young man meant by calling you a pleonast is that you are a person of linguistic means – that you have a full share of that wealth of language which is available to all Englishmen whatever their class – in short you know a lot of words and it pleases you to express yourself in full – even at the risk of some repetition.’

  I struggled for the irony in this speech, because I was afraid that if I could detect it then the boatman would pick it up too, but not a tremor of insincerity, not a streak of piss-taking, did I hear in the other man’s tones. He appeared to mean what he was saying.

  ‘I’ll say what I fucking like,’ said the boatman, but in a docile fashion.

  ‘To be accused of having too many words is a fine thing,’ said the other. Then I realised that it was the man who had slipped unobtrusively past Master Burbage and me as we were talking by the tiring-house, the man who played the Ghost in the drama of the Prince of Denmark, ‘our author’, Master William Shakespeare. Well, he’d certainly saved my bacon.

  ‘He got in my way, didn’t he,’ said the boatman to the playwright, his beard wagging in justification. ‘My fare did a fucking runner, saving your reverence. I’d no sooner touched the bank than the bugger was out my boat and up the stairs like a parson’s fart, gone before you can sniff it. So what d’you expect a poor boatman to do? It may be only a couple of pennies to a gentleman like yourself but to me and Bet and our five kids it’s our fucking dinner. Me, I can’t afford to let a fare get away like that, the bastard. So I took off in hot pursuit and this bloke got between me and my quarry. And he fell down and I fell down on top of him and then he accused me of that – plea-nasty – what was it?’

  ‘Pleonasm,’ said our author.

  ‘That one. So what am I expected to do, go home to my Bet and our six kids and tell her that I was rooked out of threepence by some cunt who was too slippery for me? Jesus, I tell you, I’d be in the doghouse from Tuesday to Doomsday.’

  The crowd had begun to disperse, recognising the man’s whinge, no doubt, and expecting him to whip out a wooden leg gained in the sea battle of El Dago as a means of enforcing their sympathy.

  ‘Just now you said five ki—’ I started to say before the playwright threw a warning glance at me. His brown eyes didn’t look so benevolent, but when he turned back to the boatman he spoke softly, almost kindly.

  ‘I know how hard it is to earn even a modest living in these times,’ he said. ‘I know how our business depends on you boatmen. Without you, I think we would not be here.’

  Our author spoke the truth. There was a constant traffic to our side of the river, for the playhouses, the bears and the whores, and the single Thames bridge was convenient only for the few who lived either side of it.

  ‘What business would that be, sir?’

  ‘The play business.’

  ‘Beg pardon, sir, I took you for a gentleman.’

  Now it was my turn to take offence. Despite my having just recovered breath and wits, despite my having escaped death
by a hair’s width, I was ready to take up arms on behalf of my calling. But our author smiled as if he agreed with the boatman – and the common opinion was with him, it must be said – that the playhouse was no place for a gentleman to work.

  ‘Tell me who was the first gentleman, boatman,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not educated in the way of answering questions of that sort, kind or shape, sir.’

  Our ferryman might have no respect for players in general but he seemed prepared to make an exception for the playwright.

  ‘Then I shall tell you, master boatman. It was Adam was the first gentleman,’ he said.

  ‘That’s my name!’ said the boatman, as eager as a child.

  ‘A happy coincidence. Your ancestor and my ancestor Adam, Adam, was a gentleman, for he bore arms. You know it is the right of a gentleman to bear arms?’

  ‘Most infalliably, sir,’ said the boatman, now thoroughly mollified.

  ‘Adam ’ad arms, one might say,’ said the playwright, who appeared more pleased with his words than the circumstances justified.

  ‘How’s that, sir?’

  ‘The Scripture tells us that he digged – and could he dig without arms?’

  The playwright seemed over-amused at what I considered to be only a mediocre joke. A stale one too. I was sure I’d heard it somewhere before. But whatever I thought, the words seemed to work some kind of magic on the boatman. His mouth cracked open to reveal teeth like boat-ribs, while gurgles of laughter sounded like water in the bilges.

  ‘Very good, sir . . . dig . . . yes, how could he . . . without arms . . . very good.’

  ‘Now, Adam, take this for your lost custom, and as a mark of my general respect for your profession.’

  The boatman’s grin remained. He didn’t glance at the coins; long practice made him familiar with weight, size, number, amount. Oh, he knew a gentleman when he saw one.

  ‘Thank you, sir. And I’m sorry if I crashed into you . . . sir.’ It cost him an effort to speak to me in almost the same tone that he managed with our author. ‘I’ll remember what it was you said. What was it again?’