Simon Hawke - The Merchant of Vengeance

Fortunately, for all his passionate and violent nature, Marlowe was, at heart, neither evil nor mean-spirited, and his rages would usually dissipate as quickly as they would erupt. Nevertheless, Kemp had become so terrified of him that he had developed a nervous twitch that manifested itself whenever Marlowe was around, and this only served to irritate the flamboyant poet further.

“And so I rose,” boomed Alleyn from the stage, sweeping out his right arm in a grandiose gesture of encompassment, “and looking from a turret, did behold young infants swimming in their parents’ blood…”

Now Alleyn paused dramatically and posed, sweeping both arms out wide, right arm to the side and bent slightly at the elbow, left arm to the other side and raised, with elbow sharply bent, fingers splayed, eyes wide and staring, as if at a lurid vision of unimaginable horror. His voice rose and fell dramatically as he continued with the speech. … scores of headless carcasses piled up in heaps, and half-dead virgins, dragged by their golden hair and flung upon a ring of pikes…

“And with main force flung on a ring of pikes‘!” shouted Marlowe from the second-tier gallery, springing to his feet and pounding his fist on the railing. “And the line is ’headless carcasses piled up in heaps,‘ not ’scores of headless carcasses‘! God blind me, Ned, must you always change the lines?”

“Methinks that ‘scores of headless carcasses’ sounds ever so much more dramatic, Kit,” Alleyn replied in his stentorian tones, gazing up him.

“Well, if they are piled up in bloody fucking heaps, methinks ‘tis likely that we may assume that there are bloody fucking scores of them!” shouted Marlowe, throwing up his hands in exasperation. “Why can you not read the lines the way I wrote them? And why is that man shaking?” he added, his voice rising to a screech as he leaned over the gallery rail and pointed an accusatory finger toward the stage, straight at Kemp.

“Must be all those infants swimming in their parents’ blood,” Shakespeare murmured quietly to Smythe as they stood together near the back of the stage, holding spears up by their sides.

Smythe snorted as he barely repressed a guffaw.

“Kemp? Is that you again?” shouted Marlowe.

In vain, the trembling Kemp tried to conceal himself behind

John Hemings, who was far too thin to help conceal much of anything.

“I can still see you, Kemp, you horrible man!” shouted Marlowe. “Why the devil are you twitching about so?”

“Doubtless he is attempting to upstage me,” Alleyn said petulantly. “Kemp is forever attempting to upstage me.”

“Liar! I. I was not!” protested Kemp, clutching at Hemings for protection. “John, tell them I was not!”

“He was not trying to upstage you, Ned,” said Hemings placatingly.

“Well, Lord Strange’s Company all stick together, to be sure,” said Alleyn with a grimace. “No doubt, they all think that they are much too good to be stuck carrying spears at the back of the stage.”

“I have got a place to stick this spear,” said Shakespeare wryly,

“and ‘tis not at the back of the stage.”

“What was that?” said Alleyn, spinning round.

“‘Twas nothing, Ned,” said Smythe, giving Shakespeare an elbow in the ribs to stave off his reply.

“I distinctly heard somebody say something,” Alleyn said, narrowing his eyes.

“I said-ooof!”

Smythe elbowed him again and took hold of him as he doubled over. “Will said he was feeling poorly, Ned,” he said. “Look, see how he suffers? It must be something that he ate.”

“Well, take him off the bloody stage, then!” Marlowe shouted from the gallery. “We have a play to perform tonight, people! And you, Kemp, you can go with them, until you can learn to stop twitching as if you had St. Vitus’s bloody dance!”

“Ohhh, how I despise that man,” said Kemp through gritted teeth as they went through the doorway at the back of the stage and came into the tiring room, where the players changed their costumes and waited for their entrances.

“Well, I shall grant you that he is not, perhaps, the most amenable of men,” said Smythe, still supporting Shakespeare, who was just getting his wind back, “but he is a decent sort at heart, Will.”

“Decent?” Kemp replied, with disbelief. “Marlowe? Are you mad? There is naught that is decent about him. The man is a wanton libertine of the first order!”

“Hola, pot! You are black, the kettle sayeth,” Shakespeare said, finally getting back his breath.

“And you can bloody well shut up.” Kemp said, forgetting his usual cleverly acerbic banter in his frustration. “Poets.” he added with contempt, throwing on his cloak with a flourish. “You are all mad as March hares, the lot of you! I say a pox upon all poets!”

“Hmmpf! He wished a pox upon me, did you hear?” said Shakespeare, watching Kemp depart in a huff. “‘Twasn’t very nice of him, now, was it? Speaking of which, you might have broken my ribs with that elbow, you great, lumbering ox.”

“And Alleyn might have broken your jawbone with his fist had I not stopped you just then,” Smythe replied. “To say naught of what Marlowe might have done had he heard you mocking him.”

“Ned frightens me about as much as the wind that makes up the greater part of him,” said Shakespeare. “And as for Marlowe, well, you must admit, he truly begs for mockery. I mean, come on! Impaled golden virgins and infants swimming in their parents’ blood? Lord save us, not even Sophocles would pen such an exaggerated, foolish line.”

“You must admit that it conjures up quite the lurid vision.”

Smythe replied.

“It conjures up what I ate for breakfast,” Shakespeare said with a grimace. “‘Tis all a lot of knavish nonsense.”

“Perhaps, but ‘tis what the audiences love about his work,” said

Smythe. He pointed a finger at Shakespeare’s chest. “And ‘tis why you are trying to emulate him.”

“I am not trying to emulate him, I am trying to better him,” said Shakespeare irritably. ‘There is a difference, you know.“

“Fine, I shall grant you that,” said Smythe. “Nevertheless, the fact remains that audiences eat up Marlowe’s ‘knavish nonsense,’ as you put it, and you know that as well as anyone. ‘Tis why you are so determined to outdo him. His Jew of Malta and his Doctor Faustus and this new one about the queen of Carthage are all much more exciting than your own Henry the Sixth.”

“Bah! You compare oranges with apples,” Shakespeare said.

“They are very different works.”

“Mayhap so, but the audiences seem to enjoy Marlowe’s oranges much more than your apples.”

“Now look, we have staged Henry the Sixth but once,” Shakespeare said defensively, “and ‘twas despite my protests that the play was not yet ready.”

“Then why submit it for production?”

“Because… well, because Marlowe keeps on writing new ones, and everyone keeps asking when they shall see mine and why I cannot write so quickly and why all I have managed to produce is books of sonnets!”

“Ah, so you allowed yourself to be rushed into submitting it before you were fully satisfied with the result,” said Smythe.

“Aye, damn it,” Shakespeare said. “I admit it freely, ‘twas a stupid thing to do. But even you keep chiding me for not yet having finished anything!”

“Aye, ‘tis true,” admitted Smythe, “but ’(Was nothing more than a means to have a bit of fun with you. If it truly troubles you, Will, than I shall refrain from doing it, I promise.”

“Nay, it does not trouble me,” said Shakespeare. “Well, perhaps a little, but in truth, it does help to spur my efforts. Yet I have learned something from all this, methinks.”