Edward Marston - The Roaring Boy

Death came calling at a most inconvenient hour and in a singularly inappropriate place. The play being performed that afternoon, before an attentive audience in the yard of the Queen’s Head, was still deep in Act Three when its main character was summarily excised from the dramatis personae . It was an eerie sensation. Out went Alonso, the exiled Duke of Genoa: in came panic and confusion among Westfield’s Men. Each actor who stormed offstage brought fresh protest into the tiring-house.

‘Ben Skeat has fallen sick.’

‘The man is drunk.’

‘Fast asleep.’

‘I could get no sound from him.’

‘His memory has crumbled with age.’

‘Fright has seized him.’

‘Madness.’

‘Sorcery. Ben is plainly bewitched.’

Nicholas Bracewell, the company’s book holder, had only a limited view of the actor from his station behind the scenes but he could see enough to sense a crisis. In the habit of a friar, Ben Skeat sat silent and motionless in his chair. Instead of dominating the scene as the play required, he was completely detached from it. Nicholas felt a stab of pain as he realised what must have happened. It gave him no satisfaction to be able to contradict the other diagnoses of Duke Alonso’s condition. Ben Skeat was the oldest and most experienced member of the troupe, known for his prodigious feats of memory and for his total reliability. There was no chance that he was ill, drunk, asleep or lost for words. Still less had he taken leave of his senses or become spellbound.

Only one explanation remained and it gave Nicholas another sharp pang. Skeat was an unsung hero of Westfield’s Men. A versatile and talented actor, he was imbued with a deep love of the theatre, steeped in its traditions and wholly committed to his volatile profession. The irony was that he had a rare leading role in The Corrupt Bargain . Skeat’s more usual place was in the second rank of players where he habitually offered rock-solid support as a loyal earl, a worthy archbishop, a fearless judge, a conscientious seneschal or a white-bearded sage. He exuded a benevolence that invariably got him cast as a symbol of goodness.

Now, for once, he was being accused of downright evil.

‘He is thwarting me!’ said Barnaby Gill as he flounced into the tiring-house in the costume of a court jester. ‘There is wanton malice at work here. Ben Skeat is determined to ruin my performance.’

‘Not by design,’ said Nicholas.

‘I gave him his cue, he merely stared at me.’

‘Ben had no choice in the matter.’

‘I would expect you to take his side,’ said Gill with a characteristic snort. ‘It was on your foolish advice that he was given the role in the first place. And what does the idiot do? He dried up on me. I wait for his twenty-line speech and he stays hiding under his cowl.’ He stamped a peevish foot. ‘I’ll not abide it, Nicholas! His conduct is unforgivable. Had I not delivered a speech extempore to cover the gap in nature, the play would have fallen apart.’

Nicholas nodded. ‘You must do that office again.’

‘Never!’

‘Ben Skeat has spoken his last line.’

‘Do not look to me to rescue him.’

‘I look to all of you.’

‘Why so?’

‘He has passed away,’ said Nicholas, quietly.

‘What!’ howled Gill. ‘While I was acting with him! That is an insult that cannot be borne. I am mortified.’

His exclamation sent the rest of the company into a state of wild alarm and it was all Nicholas could do to calm them down so that the commotion would not be heard by the spectators. The book holder confided the awful truth in a whisper. Ben Skeat was dead. Cold terror spread quickly. Superstitious by nature, the actors turned the tiring-house into a Bedlam of speculation.

‘We shall be chased off the stage.’

‘This is a judgment on us.’

‘Someone has poisoned him to bring us down.’

‘I spy a devilish plot here.’

‘There is a murderer in our midst.’

‘Who will be his next victim?’

‘Abandon the play!’

‘Take to your heels!’

‘Run for your lives!’

‘Stop!’ ordered Nicholas, planting his burly frame before the exit and holding out his arms. ‘Ben Skeat has died but it may well be by natural means. Would you desert him at a time when he most needs you? Will you behave like cowards when valour is in request? Will you inflict such a dark stain on the reputation of Westfield’s Men?’ He pointed a finger at the makeshift stage behind the curtains. ‘The play must go on.’

Gill was distraught. ‘How can we act with a corpse?’

‘You have already taught us the way,’ soothed the book holder. ‘When no words came from Duke Alonso, you provided your own. Listen carefully and you will hear that both the Provost and Count Emilio follow your example.’

As they strained their ears, the company became aware that a small miracle was taking place out there in the sunshine. With its central character reduced to the role of a stage property, the play was somehow continuing on its way. Edmund Hoode, the company’s actor-playwright, was in somnolent vein as a kind Provost who escorts the disguised Duke to the condemned cell so that they may comfort the hapless Emilio. In the latter role, Owen Elias was at his best, suffering in the shadow of the headsman’s axe while busily plundering all the speeches for which Ben Skeat no longer had a use.

Edmund Hoode was not to be outdone. He had laboured long and hard over The Corrupt Bargain . The sudden departure of its main character was not going to disable his play as long as he had breath in his body to rescue it. Renowned for his comedies, Hoode had tackled a more tragic theme in his latest offering. The Corrupt Bargain was set in Genoa. The exiled Duke Alonso returns in disguise to seize power from his tyrannical younger brother, Don Pedro. Injustice runs riot in his unhappy land. Alonso is particularly struck by the plight of a devoted brother and sister, Emilio and Bianca.

Wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit, the brave Count Emilio is sentenced to death. The beautiful Bianca goes to Don Pedro to plead for her brother’s release. The tyrant is consumed with such a powerful lust for her that he offers her a corrupt bargain. If she consents to give her body to him, her brother will be set free. Bianca is duly horrified by the choice confronting her. She must lose either her virginity or her brother. Which is the more precious? While his beloved sister agonises over her predicament, Emilio spends anguished hours in prison. When Alonso calls upon him in the guise of a friar, he tries to offer a modicum of comfort to the prisoner.

Owen Elias was not going to waste the most telling speech in the scene. Leaning in close to the lifeless Ben Skeat, he cocked an ear and wrinkled his brow.

‘What says my holy father?’ he asked.

Edmund Hoode seized gratefully on the cue. Bending over the hooded figure, he pretended to listen to the friar’s words of wisdom before relaying them to the condemned man.

Hearken to his advice.

Subdue this groundless fear of death’s approach

And fast embrace him as your dearest friend.

You run from him who can your pain remove,

Your sins redeem, your sister’s honour save,

And all the rigours of this woeful world