Philip Gooden - Sleep of Death

‘Then you will need to go the other way.’

‘What — oh God, how stupid!’ I clapped my hand to my head in showy forgetfulness. ‘Yes it’s the other way.’

The playwright stopped on the far side of a little ditch. Behind him was the Bear Garden. Outside was the usual crowd of loiterers and ne’er-do-wells. Somehow, I was on the opposite bank of the slimy channel.

‘Till this afternoon,’ he said.

‘You’re the Ghost,’ I said, but he’d gone already.

‘Tell Nell,’ said Nell.

‘They’re quite small parts really,’ I said.

‘Not like this part, Nick,’ she said. ‘This one is growing larger by the second.’

‘That’s nice,’ I said, distracted by what she was doing, but more excited, to be honest, about my afternoon at the Globe. ‘As Master Burbage says, we’ve all got to start somewhere.’

‘Master Burbage? Dick or Cuth?’

‘Dick. You don’t mean to say that they come to you,’ I said, genuinely shocked.

‘It’s a funny thing about that company, the Chamberlain’s, or most of the older ones at any rate,’ said Nell. ‘They’re different from the other companies we’ve had round here.’

‘What’s funny? Tell me, and just stop that for a moment.’

You can see how serious I was about my new company, that I would stop Nell just as she was getting properly started on me, so as to listen attentively to any scrap of whore’s gossip about the Chamberlain’s Men.

‘They’re pretty well all married, and every one of them’s got hundreds of brats — that Heminges for instance had a dozen or more when he last looked — and normally that’s a sure-fire combination, marriage and kids’ll drive anyone into the stews. But not the Chamberlain’s. They’re either henpecked or limp from so much fatherhood, or — I suppose it’s remotely possible-’

‘What?’

‘Can it be? That they actually love their wives?’

‘Uxorious,’ I said.

‘What’s that mean when it’s at home, clever dick?’ said Nell.

‘Forget it,’ I said. ‘I’ve already been in enough trouble over words today. All right, you can go on with what you were doing earlier.’

‘When did you become a paying customer, Master Revill? I will go on, but on condition you do this. See?’

‘Oh that’s how you do it? Here?’

‘Clever boy. Ah. And while you’re doing that you can tell Nell about your triumphs on the stage.’

‘I’m a poisoner in a sort of play within the play, if you see what I mean. .’

‘No. You’ll have to go back to the beginning.’

‘Are you comfortable?’

‘Bugger comfort, get on with the job.’

‘It’s about this Prince, see, and he’s the Prince of Denmark-’

‘Hamlet?’

‘Yes, and he’s pissed off because his father who was King has just snuffed it, and he hasn’t been made King. The man who is now King is the late King’s brother. Hamlet’s uncle. What pisses Hamlet off even more is that the man who’s mounted the throne has also mounted his mother. Hamlet’s mother, that is. His uncle has married his late father’s widow and has gained the throne of Denmark. What makes it worse still is that only a few weeks have gone under the bridge between the death of husband number one and the marriage to number two. There’s a joke about them using the leftover food from the wake for the nuptials. Economising at Elsinore. Is that too fast for you?’

‘It’s good, Nick. Get on with the story.’

‘I meant the story. So for the first half hour Hamlet mopes around until the ghost of his father tips up on the battlements one nippy night, in fact on several nights in succession, and tells his son that he didn’t die as a result of a snake-bite in his orchard — which was the story that’d been spread around — no, the serpent that took his life now wears his crown and warms his wife, sort of thing. And then ghost tells him to revenge his murder.’

‘Out with his sword and into his uncle? End of play?’ said Nell.

‘We’ve hardly started,’ I said.

‘I hope so,’ she said.

‘I meant the story. Hamlet, you see, is a thinker, not a doer, and although he rages against his uncle and vows instant vengeance he doesn’t actually do anything. He wonders whether the ghost was actually the spirit of his father.’

‘Who else could it have been?’ said Nell, her breath coming slightly short. For myself, I was finding the narrative a useful distraction from an early (and, one might say, a dishonourable) discharge.

‘A devil maybe. Out to trick Hamlet. A devil in the guise of his father spinning some cock-and-bull tale about a murder so as to provoke the Prince into killing a totally innocent man.’

‘Sounds like a lot of trouble to go to for that.’

‘Hamlet is thinking, but he’s not thinking straight. He’s looking for reasons to avoid killing his uncle, maybe.’

‘So the ghost is a real ghost,’ said Nell. ‘My mother saw a ghost once.’

‘The ghost is real — and Claudius is guilty as sin — move down a bit.’

‘Claudius? Like this?’

‘Uncle, King, murderer, adulterer. Yes, that’s good.’

‘Oh, him.’

‘Do you want to change round yet?’

‘In a moment. When you’ve reached the end. Of the play.’

‘Luckily for Hamlet, who should fetch up in the Elsinore castle at this moment but a company of players. And he has the bright idea of getting them to do a play which will mirror the way his father died and be performed in front of an unsuspecting Claudius. This play inside the play’ll have a King and a Queen in it-’

‘Like most plays.’

‘-and the Queen will swear undying love to the King, et cetera. But then the poisoner steps out and knocks off said King. That’s me, poisoner. I have six lines — “Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit and time agreeing” — you get the idea.’

‘Put one of your apt hands right here — now.’

‘This is the twist. The poisoner — me — is announced as Lucianus, nephew to the King.’

‘When it should be the brother?’

‘Precisely.’

‘That’s deep, Nick.’

‘Good. This is a cleverness on the part of our author which I haven’t yet fathomed. Anyway, the play inside the play works because just after my entry Claudius storms off in rage. Oh! He has seen something to stir his conscience. He kneels down to pray. Hamlet comes in. Ah! Hamlet won’t kill him because he wants to catch his uncle when he’s gambling or pissed or in flagrante-’

‘In what?’

‘In this. Though, now I come to think of it, that’s a bit strange — because if Hamlet was catching the King in flagrante then he’d be catching his mother at it too, and I’m not sure that he’d want that. .’

‘Dirty boy. Him. . and you too.’

‘Claudius gets in a state, and sends Hamlet to England. Yes! This is after Hamlet’s killed a wise old fool of a councillor who was eavesdropping behind an arras on Hamlet and his mother — in the Queen’s bedchamber.’

‘What was Hamlet doing in his mother’s bedroom? Not in flag. . what’s that word?’

‘Flagrante. No, he was just giving his mother a real ear-bashing. .’

‘That’s all right then.’

‘So our hero gets shoved off to England in the company of a couple of old schoolfriends or snakes — you sure you don’t want to change round yet?’

‘Get on with it.’

‘And of course he’s right not to trust them because they’re carrying a warrant for Hamlet’s execution the moment they reach the English court. Oh Nell! But Hamlet never makes England. On the way his ship’s attacked by pirates and he is carried off after a daring single-handed boarding of the pirate boat-’

‘The groundlings enjoy a good fight.’