Derek Jacobi - As Luck Would Have It

I dedicate this book to Mum and Dad, and to my teacher, Bobby Brown.

Cover

Title Page

Dedication I dedicate this book to Mum and Dad, and to my teacher, Bobby Brown.

The Seven Ages

Prologue: The Boy with the veil

AGE I INFANT, MEWLING

1The front room

2Our war

3The return of Alfred Jacobi

4The Christmas Conned ’em

5Mum

6Dad

AGE II SHINING MORNING FACE

7‘With one little touch of her hand’

8Confinement

9East London boy

10My teachers

11Intimations of immortality

12The lads of life

13The passport prince

14Cloud-capped towers

AGE III SIGHING LIKE FURNACE

15First term, first love

16The Marlowe Society

17Princes and puppets

18‘Honorificabilitudinitatibus’

19Encounters with a colossus

20The Brummie Beast

AGE IV SEEKING THE BUBBLE REPUTATION

21A shameful episode

22‘I thought Hamlet looked a bit down at the wedding’

23Sir

24Clay feet and other parts

25Giving away Michael York

26Leading in the dark

27 The Idiot

AGE V AND THEN THE JUSTICE

28The intangible ‘it’

29From Kaiser to Emperor

30‘Hamlet, played by Derek “ I, Claudius ” Jacobi’

31Enter Richard II

32A marriage proposal

33Terrible news

34So we’ll go no more a-roving

AGE VI A WORLD TOO WIDE

35Ultimate nightmare

36The RSC

37Proboscis magnifica

38The Jacobi Cadets

39Two broken codes for the price of one

40Life among the great and good

AGE VII STRANGE EVENTFUL HISTORY

41My new family

42The summons

43Walks on the dark side

44Russell Crowe’s bum

45Shakespeare’s end-games

46Aren’t we all?

Picture Section

Afterword and Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Shakespeare, As You Like It , II, vii.

The boy with the veil

It shimmers and enchants; it belongs to a secret, magical, forbidden world, and I have always wanted it.

She keeps her glorious white silk wedding veil – part of her wedding trousseau – in her wardrobe, and I sometimes sneak into my parents’ bedroom and gaze at it. And then one day in 1945, when I am six years old and they are both out at work, I creep into their room, open the wardrobe and carefully lift out the veil. I drape the gorgeous white material round my shoulders and over my head, and, swishing it around and puffing myself up like mad, I go out of the house and parade up and down Essex Road.

We East London kids like to play out in the Essex Road and the adjoining streets, and do so in complete safety. The streets of England are our playground. We make dens in the front gardens, and dream and imagine we are other people and characters. From as early as I can remember I have been excited by the idea of dressing up, and this is my first recollection of being in costume.

Perhaps it is to impress Ivy Mills that I have worn Mum’s wedding veil, though my first girlfriend is Winnie Spurgeon. We play hopscotch, and doctors and nurses, with two other girls in the street and we chalk our initials on the pavement. Yet it is Ivy, the prettiest of the three, who has now become my favourite. The boys in my class start to chalk on the pavement, ‘DJ LOVES IM’, and I will do anything to please her.

But on this day I know I’m not just pleasing Ivy. I know in some instinctive way that I am performing , perhaps for the first time in my life, and suddenly all the world – or at least Essex Road – is my stage. And in transforming myself, and entertaining Ivy, I have a sudden insight – a sense of who I am, and who I could be, when I’m not just being myself.

I can become other people in my imagination – but can’t we all? I can be a hero or villain, strong, weak, timid, arrogant, crafty, trusting, passionate, destructive, nurturing ... I can be anything I want to be. After all, I’m a human being, full of everything you can possibly imagine.

Of course Ivy, Winnie and my friends laugh at me and are most impressed. I play up to it for all it’s worth – strutting, waltzing, skipping, galloping around the pavement until my veil is finally shredded to bits on the front garden privets.

Mum was back home when I returned. She was waiting.

‘Well, this is it,’ I thought. ‘She’s going to go completely bananas at me when she finds her precious wedding veil torn into tatters!’

I was starting to cry as I stood there ready for her to tear me to shreds – just as I had torn her wedding veil.

But her reaction wasn’t anger: she hardly told me off at all.

From that moment I continued to fancy myself in the veil. The idea of the veil stuck in my mind as a garment that, whoever wore it, both concealed and revealed the person. Yet the actor in me, the dressing-up part of me, was a mystery which I never could understand, right from the beginning – and that still remains the case today. I can only describe it as a magical process.