Page 22 of The Two Wills

“Fine, fine, that’ll do.”

I pronounced the speech as I had done for the Poet. Master Augustine sat at his table, not even looking at me while issuing disapproving sounds as if my performance were making him ill. I began the speech again, but my voice would not stop shivering. Worse, I became keenly aware that I possessed hands at the ends of my arms. What exactly does one do with them? I recalled seeing players wave them this way and that, but I was allowing mine to simply dangle at my side, looking stiff and dead. I clasped them behind my back, hoping Augustine might overlook their existence. But that felt wrong as well, especially for an angry queen, so I shoved them into my pockets.

“Stop fidgeting, boy!” Master Augustine shouted. “Queen Anne’s accusing him. Point at the crookback like this and attack.”

I did as he said, but he appeared to grow even more frustrated.

“No, no, boy, like this.” As he began speaking the Queen’s lines, his voice became light and impassioned, his movements became gentle, while his bearded and grumpy countenance vanished. He became the young beautiful queen in her devastated fury.

“Marry! That was marvelous-good, sir!” I enthused. “When you was a lad, did you play the ladies’ roles as well?”

It was the first time I saw Master Augustine break his scowl. It wasn’t necessarily a smile, but it allowed my heart a respite from terror.

“Bah! Me play the ladies’ parts? Never pretty enough, nor young enough. How I wish I had the chance. A female role is a feast for an actor! You have the ability to touch the audience far more than the male roles. Now you try it again. Here, put this on your head. It always helps.”

He tossed me a shawl, which I draped like long hair, and then he handed me a bowl, which I wore like a crown. I copied the first notes of his phrasing and gestures, and indeed I felt I was able to fill the character even more with that as a start.

“Was that better?” I asked.

“Not bad, but still a little stiff.” He took in a deep breath. “Here’s the thing, lad. In the end, acting a role is merely playing like when you were small. Remember that? How you’d lose yourself for hours, pretending you were a soldier in battle or the King of England? That’s all this is, lad. It’s about play. So just imagine yourself as the queen, beautiful, with wealth and power, and this hideous man has taken away your love. Now go ahead and play.”

I began again, taking into account what Augustine had just said. I didn’t think about the words, but I imagined Augustine as the brutal hunchback, and even though I was me, I imagined myself as her, and suddenly I began to feel most free.

When I finished, Master Augustine nodded, sighed, and said, “Very well. You’ll do.”

And with those words my formal apprenticeship with Master Augustine Phillips began.

I trained with him on Mondays and Tuesdays all day, practicing fencing, tumbling, lute, drum, stage fighting, singing, elocution and voice projection. We also discussed the roles I was assigned—but he would not review them with me in detail until I committed them to memory. That I had to work on with Sam and Little Goat.

Despite what the others said, Augustine’s true manner betrayed much kindness and a true passion for performance. He told me stories of how he had worked his way up to sharer by saving money and proving himself a flexible and useful actor. While he now mostly played eccentric grandfathers and madeira-nosed old clowns, he still was able to teach me the tricks for playing the ladies’ roles. He showed me how to touch my heart while making a speech to signal the depth of my feeling, and how tearing at my hair could emphasize a grief-stricken woman’s madness.

“Now, lad, if you tilt your head back and shield your eyes like this …” He demonstrated a look of dread. “Next, adjust your expression as if you really see some odious monster just beyond the audience’s heads, and just watch the entire mass of penny stinkards shrink in fear as if there was something really coming for them! What joy!”

One afternoon, still struggling with learning my words, I decided to ask my master a question. “Master Augustine, it occurred to me that if I had time to practice the roles I will be covering with the other players, it would be easier to commit the lines to memory. When might that happen?”

“Practice?” Augustine laughed. “We’ve no time to practice a substitute, lad. These plays we’re doing this coming week have been done dozens of times, except Richard III, which they’ve performed thrice already. We only practice full out when it’s a new play, and the poet needs to see it all in one piece. You must learn your words on your own and be ready for our first performance tomorrow afternoon.”

“No practice at all?” I stammered.

“This is how it’s done when you have a proper role—you memorize the lines, work out your own stage business, then you get a quick scramble-through the morning of the play with the other players, but that’s all. And don’t be surprised if Will hands you new lines the morning of the performance. He’s been known to even change lines in the middle of a play, whispering you the new speech in the tiring house just before you go on.”

“But that’s impossible!”

“That’s life as a player, lad. We do the impossible—especially on these godforsaken summer tours.”

“But what if I have to go on as Queen Anne tomorrow? I only know her one speech!”

“Well, you better learn the rest quickly!” He obviously saw my distress and patted my back. “Don’t worry, lad. Alexander Cooke never gets sick—especially with rumors of your talent flitting about. Focus on learning the words for your assigned roles for tomorrow. Just don’t stand upstage of Richard. He’s a festering cunt if you force his face away from the audience. Trust me, all will be well.”

And, thus, I was calmed. Other than various corpses, nonspeaking soldiers and heralds, my biggest speaking role in Henry VI (Part I) was that of the Sentinel, with around twenty words, if one includes the ins and the tos. Those three lines of poetry were branded in my mind.

Thus are poor servitors / When others sleep upon their quiet beds / Constrained to watch in darkness, rain, and cold.

And so came the afternoon when I first set my feet upon the stage and saw those hundreds of eyes ogling us at the Guild Hall. It was both thrilling and stomach-heaving. I executed my first one or two-word lines with ease, but when it came time to say my nineteen-word speech, my mouth dried up, and my throat tightened. I was able to squeak out my first eleven words, but because of the sour look on Beeston’s face (he was playing the sergeant to whom I was speaking) I began to distrust myself. When it came time to pronounce the final words, instead of saying, “Constrained to watch in darkness, rain, and cold,” I blurted, “Confused to watch in darkness, cold, and pain.” Beyond this making no sense whatsoever, by placing the word “cold” before “pain”—I was later informed by the master of the book—I had destroyed the Poet’s rhyme. Thus humiliated, I barely remember the rest of the performance except for the cold stares when I came offstage. Later, Beeston kept his word and forced me to collect my meals after everyone else. While it was more than cabbage water left, the last of the meat was gristly, and the bread was all stale crumbs and heels. Worst of all, I had brought shame upon my master Augustine who wore a look of deep disappointment on his aged face. I vowed I’d never let it happen again.

The next day, as we road in the cart to nearby towns to announce our repertory, I had Little Goat and Sam feed me all my cues, and check that I was spot-on with my lines. The only thing that distracted us from the work were the plague corpses we saw burning along the side of the road. As our donkey cart passed, we’d turn our heads and cover our mouths with rags so as not to gag from the smell. Most painful was to see the ill who had not yet died, their necks swollen with buboes, waiting for the inevitable.

I caught sight of the Poet in the cart behind ours, his eyes like wet, black stones, staring at a sick child still clinging to his mother’s corpse. He never looked away as others did. He continued to stare, almost as if he wanted to commit it to memory—perhaps thinking how he might feel if it were one of his own children. I sensed that was how he made his plays, imagining himself in the same spot as others, feeling what they felt, understanding what it really meant to suffer that sort of loss. It was why his tragic plays brought others to tears, and his comedies filled the onlookers with joy. He understood the lives and hearts of every character.