Martin Stephen: The Conscience of the King

'Don't watch too long, old friend.' Hemminge spoke softly to the Actor. 'Watch too long and you might start to think we have any real importance.'

Thousands flocked to see them play. They had kings and admirals as their patrons. They stood in the sunshine of public adoration and fame. Yet, thought the Actor, the players were little more than piss and shit in the eyes of the power brokers. At best they were seen as popinjays with no breeding. At worst they were considered seditious, riotous drunkards. Those in power detested most of all their capacity to arouse deep emotions in their audiences. What had a noble lord said recently of them? 'Of no more worth than a common beggar.'

The newer, younger members of the company groaned and grumbled, affecting a distaste for the cramped and crammed hordes filling the playhouse. 'Oh God!' one of them murmured as he wafted by, scented handkerchief held to costumed lips, 'so very many of the poorer sort! This is so vulgar.'

Hemminge exploded, rounding on the new recruit. 'And what's vulgar about good people wanting to see us perform?'Stick your vulgarity up your arse! This vulgarity is what we exist for. Two and a half thousand people out there, two and a half thousand people who've paid to see us perform! D'you hear, young'un? There's fewer people at a king's funeral!'

The handkerchief wondered whether to have a tantrum, remembered who he was talking to and bowed instead. He felt the excitement. The Actor could see it in the boy's face and in his body as he walked away. They all did.

'We've spoilt them, haven't we, these young fops?' John Hemminge grabbed a cheap stool, a long-forgotten prop from a play, and sat opposite the Actor. 'Let them forget their meat and drink, forget where they really come from. They've had it on a plate; never had to fight, as we did.'

Too many indoor performances, the older ones said, either at Court or in the new theatre at Blackfriars.

'What about this new play?' asked Hemminge after a moment's pause, patting the pocket specially put into his doublet to hold his pipe. 'This lost manuscript. By Marlowe.'

The Actor felt the band of pain tighten across his brow. 'Steer clear of it, John,' he said. 'Well clear of it. Marlowe was trouble when he was alive, and people like him are trouble when they're dead. God knows what he knew. If he's put half of it into this damned play no one appears to have seen, I dread to think what the consequences will be. The last thing this company needs is the government down their throats after a riot. Can you imagine? They say this mysterious manuscript has the King as a sodomite and his favourite as Satan.'

'Strange, isn't it?' mused Hemminge, contentedly drawing the foul smoke down into his lungs and making a small V of his mouth as he gently exhaled it, 'how Marlowe could be so prescient as to write a play about a sodomite king and an anti-Christ favourite? With Queen Elizabeth still on the throne when he died and six years — was it six? — to go before good King James took over? Remarkable.' The smoke rose slowly until the air, agitated by the vast crowd, caught and dispersed it. The two men's eyes locked for a moment. 'They do say it's very, very powerful. A masterpiece, they say, those few as are meant to have seen it. Better than anything anyone else has done…' A thin smile crossed Hemminge's face as he mused, outwardly at peace with the world and his pipe.

The sweeping tide of nausea came on the Actor again, as if his lips and nose had been sealed. The thin, bitter vomit rose in his throat, burning as it cascaded on to his tongue. Thank God he had not thrown up, in front of them all.

'Are you… well?' asked John, always sensitive despite his bluster, always his friend.

'No,' the Actor said simply, 'not well. Not well at all.' Neither in body nor in mind, he added silently. Not for some months now. He paused, swallowed, felt the beads of sweat break out across his forehead. 'It's this same sickness, the one I told you about before. It doesn't go away.'

'Can you play?'

'There's no option. I have to.'

'Perhaps not. I think one of your parts turned up an hour ago, pleading for work. Old Ben Thomas, remember him? We sacked him for drunkenness — two years ago, was it? A bit player, but good enough when he works at it. Well, he's out there, sober for once, and he knows the play.' John Hemminge looked down at the Actor, more worried than he tried to show. 'Take a rest. You look as if you need it. And Ben certainly needs the work.'

'Will you ask him? And thank you,' the Actor replied.

'Yes, of course,' said John, throwing the words back over his shoulder as he strode purposefully away. 'Provided you pay him!'

Hemminge went off to the back room where the actors were gathering, and where Old Ben had gone to scrounge whatever food, coin and drink his old companions might give him. The parts were easy, undemanding, thought the Actor. Rather demeaning, actually. What they revealed was that the Actor was not really a very good actor at all. Well, he had made Ben's day at least.

The boy came round, pasting up details of the plot backstage along with a list of scenes and who was required in each one.

From where he sat the Actor could see out into the Pit and the galleries. The merchants, the doctors, the lawyers and the incessant flood of foreign visitors crammed the galleries, their ladies giggling as they tried to keep decorum while forcing their way up the narrow stairs to the seats. The vendors were moving among the crowd, cheerfully breaking the law by selling their nuts, apples, gingerbread, pears and bottled ale. It was the noise and smell he would always remember. Two thousand and more bodies crammed together: the sweating excitement; the rustle of silks and taffetas from the ladies in the galleries; the shouts of the vendors; the cracking of the nut shells and the clink of glass on glass; the conversations in roars and the conversations in secret whispers; the raw smell of dock tobacco mingling with the stale smell of beer and the tang of garlic. The half hour before a performance to a packed house was better than being drunk, better than sex — it was all life's excitement rolled up into one ball and flung in the face of time. Caught up in it, the Actor even forgot the pain in his gut.

The tension in the air now was palpable. One of the younger players looked as if he were about to be sick. Stagefright, the Actor thought, and understandable. Where else since Roman times had a man been able to speak in the voice of a poet to thousands of souls gathered before him? It was the power of the gods, the power of kings.

The Actor realised Henry Condell was sitting by him. He had not heard him come, realised it must have been a result of Hemminge tipping his other old friend off that there was something wrong. He and Condell gazed for a moment on the seething mass of humanity waiting to hear their play. Old friends do not always need to speak in order to communicate.

'A bad business, the other night.' It was Henry who broke the silence.

'Bad for us,' the Actor answered, 'and even worse for Tom.' Tom was the porter at The Globe, given his bed and keep there in order to guard it overnight and in the few hours when it was not occupied. He had been found by his young apprentice, his throat slit, two nights previously.

'Why steal two manuscripts only? Why not take the whole lot?' Henry spoke in a musing tone.

Two manuscripts had been found missing from the store where they kept the precious paper. The real text of a play was the most valuable thing a company held, after its costumes. They had paid Tom to protect both.

'Why indeed?' the Actor responded as his heart jolted. He knew why. And not even one of his oldest friends could be allowed to share in the secret. He had brought death to old Tom. Was he to murder his oldest friends as well by telling them a truth they did not need to know?