Pseudonymous, Part Two
Dec. 8th, 2011 08:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a_t_rainMore off-the-wall Hamlet AU, in lieu of doing actual work. Part One is here.
For the record, I would like to note that I started writing this before I saw Bill Cain's play Equivocation, which features Shakespeare's daughter Judith as a touchy and presumably unpaid laundress and assistant-of-all-work to the King's Men. That's about as far as the similarities go, and they are purely coincidental. However, DC-area people should totally see Equivocation, because it is excellent.
Chapter Two: One Man In His Time Plays Many Parts
Hamlet had been staring at the same speech in The Life of St. Crispin for half an hour.
Sweet is the simple and the humble life,
Which never felt the prick of treason’s fang;
‘Twixt palace walls lurk danger, toil, and strife
Here, brother, let us live without a pang...
It was silly, fustian stuff. Why was he finding it so hard to learn?
Sitting beside him, Alexander was muttering scraps of his part.
Fly, brave sons, fly, and fight another day.
For prudence ofttimes ‘scapes where valour dies...
Idly, Hamlet wondered whether his own behavior exemplified prudence, cowardice, or flat-out madness. It would be easier to decide, he thought, if he could make sense of what had happened last night. It seemed inconceivable that a man could perform the act toward which his whole life had been building and remember nothing of it; yet, was it not also inconceivable that someone else could have plucked his revenge almost from under his hand, like a cutpurse at a fair?
None of this was helping him learn the part of Crispin. He stared at the page again.
* * *
"Tush, young man," read Judit in the quavering tones of the old friar, "you may trust me to keep your secret; I swear by the blessed Book that I will be both willing and constant. I have done many of these feats in my days; I know that youth are youth, but they will not have the whole world wonder at their doings. And where shall it be?"
There was a brief silence, until Hamlet realized had missed his cue again. "At St. Gregory’s chapel, good father, and be not forgetful to observe the time. Two of the clock is the hour, and therefore look you be ready when I shall call you.”
“I warrant you, and because I will not oversleep myself, I will for this night lie in my clothes, so that as soon as ever you call, I will straight be ready.”
“Then, father, I will trust you; so, farewell.
O, haste the happy hour that makes us one!
Ne’er did a starving man long so for food,
As I do long for my sweet Ursula.
Yet, silence! For I dare not speak my mind –
No, not to mine own brother, nor my dame ... Judit, what’s next?”
“‘So, peace.’”
“So, peace, till silent night draw all to rest,
And love, be safely housed within my breast!”
“Very good, my lord – I mean, Francisco.” Judit shut the prompt-book and looked out the window to the inn-yard, where her father and Thomas had nearly finished setting up a makeshift stage. “I am afraid we will have no time to practice the rest. The people are beginning to come, and I must help Mother take their money.”
Hamlet reflected that it really would have been much better if he had killed himself yesterday, after all.
* * *
The play was not, at least, a complete disaster. This was mostly thanks to Hans and Karl, who improvised comic patter whenever the main action fell flat, and even did a bit of tumbling whenever Prince Hamlet bumped into them – which was often, because Judit had forgotten to drill him on the complicated system of unwritten rules for entrances and exits. He had managed to learn most of his lines, though. Judit only had to prompt him three times, and Alexander twice. By the end of the third act, she had begun to breathe again – until Alexander burst through the curtains that surrounded the prompter’s stool.
“Judit!” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I forgot to learn the part of Ursula’s nurse! Father made me play so many parts, it slipped my mind, and you were busy with Pr – with Francisco and could not remind me.”
“Hush, Alec.” Judit handed him the prompt-book. “You can learn it now; ‘tis only one scene.”
Alec started to cry (silently, for he had been trained from infancy not to make any noise the audience could hear during a performance). “I cannot learn it! Not now! You must help me!”
“No, Alec. Not in front of the prince.”
“Please, Judit! He hardly knows us; he will not notice the difference. Besides, he says that he is not the prince any more, and we must regard him as nothing more than a poor apprentice player.”
“Father will know the difference, and he’ll flay us alive if we do anything to risk our place as Prince Hamlet’s Men.” Judit stopped and considered. Father would have flayed them alive yesterday; today, she was not so sure. In fact, Father seemed to have gone utterly mad, and to be acting with a reckless disregard for the company’s future. “Very well. You must keep the prompt-book, and don’t forget to prompt Francisco at once if he loses his thread.”
* * *
The play ended with a dance of the shoemakers, their wives, and the court lords and ladies – a routine that Frederik had originally intended to skip, but the rest of the company overruled him. It was a sure crowd-pleaser, and the climax of the play itself, when Prince Crispin healed the crippled boy with his touch and revealed himself to be the true heir to the kingdom, had left the audience visibly unmoved.
Whatever his shortcomings as an apprentice player might be, at least Hamlet had learned to dance at court. They would be able to make use of him, Judit thought, as long as they cast him in parts that played to his strengths. She would have to talk to Father and Thomas about trying something more suitable tomorrow. Love’s Melancholy and Love’s Mirth, perhaps, which had two masques and a great deal of misdirected letters, which could double as crib sheets.
The audience was clapping their hands and beginning to join in the dance, and Judit decided that they could, after all, count the afternoon a success. That was before the bailiff and the aldermen arrived to shut them down.
“Hold! Enough! Peace, stop the music!”
Maximilian and Henrik stopped playing; the dancers straightened in mid-bow; the audience slowly came to attention.
“Return to your homes,” proclaimed the bailiff, “and may God have mercy on us all, for the plague rages outside our city walls! This town is under quarantine, in the name of Claudius, King of Denmark.”
The audience began to murmur, and dispersed.
Oh God, no, thought Judit. Not again! The rest of the company looked similarly dismayed – especially Thomas, who had particular reasons to dread another epidemic.
She had a fleeting impression that Prince Hamlet had not been surprised when the bailiff first interrupted their performance, but when she looked at him again, he seemed just as startled at the proclamation of plague as anyone else.
* * *
Hamlet was, in fact, startled – although when he thought about it, the proclamation made perfectly good sense. It had the mark of Polonius’s particular brand of low cunning. As with most of Polonius’s plans, he was sure the old Lord Chamberlain had not thought about the possible consequences, nor considered what his next move was to be when the ruse could no longer be kept up.
At any rate, it was a reprieve of sorts. He had thought that he would be a laughingstock for days at the inn, but the people had forgotten all about the play as soon as the bailiff had made his announcement. The few who remained were either buying up the last of the barrel of ale that had been rolled into the courtyard, on the theory that they might as well get blind drunk before they died, or hectoring the drinkers to repent. Thomas, inexplicably, was calling for bath-water and ordering Martha and Judit to do the laundry at once. The rest of the players were arguing with the innkeeper, who had offered them cheap rooms in exchange for a promise to perform a play every day, and who was now trying to raise the rates.
Hamlet took refuge behind the prompter’s curtain, and tried to curl up as tightly as possible.
Judit, flushed and sweaty from hauling water, found him there some time later. “Laundry, sir?”
“What? Oh, er, no. Thank you.”
“Most of the players are in the tap-room. They’d be very pleased if you would join them.”
“Aye, as I would be very pleased if someone impaled me upon a stake.”
“What my father did to you was not just,” said Judit positively. “It is not what we do to new players. They were all new players once, even Henrik, and they know that. They respect you for getting through a play you had never seen before without stumbling. Karl said he could not have done it, and he has been an actor since he was eleven.”
“I did stumble. More than once.”
“Not so the audience would notice. In any case, you cannot spend the rest of your life brooding.”
Hamlet opened his mouth to say that actually, he could spend the rest of his life brooding, and had been well on his way to doing just that before the players had arrived at Elsinore – and then decided he hadn’t the energy to argue with Judit, who showed every sign of being an extremely stubborn woman.
* * *
“Hallo, Francisco!” Hans filled another glass from the jug of beer, and set it in front of the prince. “What thought you of the play? Karl and I think it is a very old, stale piece, and one that mocks nature with too many improbabilities to be believed; yet Henrik says he has known a time when it pleased well.”
Hamlet smiled and shook his head. “There are more improbabilities in nature, I find, than on the stage. I will believe almost anything. And yet, for all that, I do not believe that a prince could learn the shoemaker’s craft in a day. I am learning that many a trade looks easy to a stranger’s eyes, yet proves difficult and treacherous in practice.”
“You did well enough, lad,” said Henrik. “Drink deep.”
Judit came in and began counting out the proceeds from the company’s cash-box. “Three marks, eight shillings, and fourpence. That’s ten shillings for each of the shareholders.” She slid a small heap of coins across the table to Henrik, Hans, and Karl. “I’ll keep Father’s and Thomas’s shares until they come. Max, you and Alec may have eightpence each to buy sweetmeats. Don't spend it all at once; 'tis the last you're like to see for a while. Five shillings to the hired man.” She pressed the coins into Hamlet’s hand. “I wonder if this is the first money you have ever earned?”
“The first at any honest trade.” Hamlet lowered his voice, so that the innkeeper might not hear. “Princes are little more than sturdy beggars. But have you kept nothing for yourself?”
“What for, my lord? I am neither shareholder, nor hired man, nor prentice.”
“I wondered. There were four ladies in the final dance, were there not?”
“Were there? I did not see.”
“And yet, there are only two boys in the company.”
Judit laughed, and tossed her hair over her shoulders as she rose from the table. “One man in his time plays many parts,” she said enigmatically.
Hamlet followed her. “Which man? Hans and Karl were in the dance, I think – so was Thomas – and I do not think your father and Henrik would make very pretty ladies!”
Judit smiled, and shrugged. “You will learn that one can do much with a mask, a wig, and a little powder.”
“Can you? Then you ought, I think, to earn some commission for your artistry.” Hamlet signaled to the tapster. “Do not go yet; allow me to buy you a drink with the first honest wages that ever I earned. What will you have?”
“Rhenish wine. Thank you, Francisco.”
* * *
The Rhenish at the inn was not as good as the bottle they had been given at the palace yesterday; yet Judit liked it well enough. And there was much to be said for the company of a man who bought you a glass of wine, and bid you sit for a while, instead of commanding you to wash clothing he had worn only once.
Prince Hamlet had the reputation of being a wit, and Judit soon found that it was quite true. She was not sure that she had anything very clever to say herself – after a long and exhausting day, it was all she could do to follow the thread of his conversation – but she enjoyed listening to him. And, after all, men seemed to like girls who laughed at their jokes much more than those who tried to compete with them.
It was some time before she began to suspect that anything was wrong with Hamlet. She felt, rather than thought, that he was talking too fast, too cleverly, and altogether as if he were trying to suppress some dreadful thought that would come with silence. Once she had taken the impression, she could not lose it. There was something desperate and feverish about the flow of words, and she found herself thinking once again of the rumors that the prince was mad.
She had not had time to consider this for long, however, when Thomas came into the taproom. He did not look very well pleased to see her laughing and talking with Prince Hamlet. Good, she thought. Let him learn that there were some men who regarded her as more than a laundress.
* * *
From the way Thomas was looking at him, Hamlet thought he would do well to push off, but he was anxious not to be left alone with his own thoughts. He sought out the company of Frederik’s younger son, who was curled up in front of the fireplace, idly petting the dog called Hebe.
He repeated his question about the number of ladies at the dance to Alexander. The boy looked alarmed. “Please, m’lord – Francisco, I mean – don’t think ill of us, and don’t punish Father for it. ‘Twas only for the dance at the end – that is, Mother and Judit were not meant to have speaking parts, only I made Judit play the nurse because I forgot to learn it. Father knew nothing of it. That is, he knew about the dance, but he wanted to leave it out, only the others said that it would please the audience more than the play had done.”
“Judit, I take it, has acted before?” That seemed a safe conjecture; she had slipped into the nurse’s role with ease, and had shown a sense of comic timing that could only come from experience.
“Well–” Alexander hesitated, and then seemed to decide that he had already spilled too many of the company’s secrets to hold anything back. “It began after the plague, sir. Two of our men had died, and a third run away, and then Johannes was arrested for stealing a chicken in Aalborg, and I wasn’t tall enough yet to play women’s parts, so Father said he did not see how we were to go on. So Judit coaxed him into letting her and Mother play some of the ladies – in a mask, so that no one would see who they were. And Thomas had just joined the company – he went to the university in Bologna, you know – and he took Judit’s part, saying that women acted in the Italian comedies and no one thought the worse of them. So then Judit said she would marry him, and Father was so glad that he gave in.”
“Judit decided to marry Thomas because he took her part in an argument?”
“So Max and I think, sir. They all wanted to marry her – Hans, and Karl, and poor Niels who died of the plague, and Johannes, although nobody thought she would be silly enough to take him. Father was hoping she would marry Hans or Karl, as they’ve been with the company since they were boys, but Judit said they’d been slipping into one another’s beds for almost as long as she’d known them, and she didn’t mean to share her husband with another man unless she could have one, too. At any rate, Father was pleased enough when she made up her mind and chose somebody, for he says he's too old to stay head of the company until Max and I grow up, and he thinks Thomas will do well enough as long as Judit keeps a check on his stranger ideas. Now he is trying to hurry them to the church before she changes her mind, but Judit says she needs time to sew her wedding-gown and make pillow-cases for her dowry. I am not sure she means to marry him at all.”
Alexander’s conversation, Hamlet noted, was certainly enlightening. He wondered what the boy would have to say about him as soon as he was out of earshot. “Why is it that Thomas eats no pork?” he asked, curious to see what other secrets might lurk within the company.
“I do not properly understand it, sir. It is something to do with a man named Bacon that he met in England. Thomas admires him very much.”
“And ... he thinks the pig might be a relative?” Hamlet reflected that perhaps he ought to give up eating pork, by that token. He was almost on the point of making another jest about it, when he recalled that there were very few pigs named Francisco.
Alexander giggled. “No, he thinks that pork might be a cause of the plague. You’ll have to ask him, sir. The rest of us think he’s mad.”
That, Hamlet reflected, made two of them. Perhaps he ought to be friends with Thomas.
Frederik had appeared in the doorway of the taproom. “Idlers, idlers all! Think you that because it is plague-time, there’s no work to be done?”
“Why, yes, we do think so!” said Hans. “That is the point of plague-time.”
“‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,’” added Karl. “King Solomon said that.”
“King Solomon also had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines!” retorted Frederik. “I suppose you think that is a good idea too!”
The company stared at one another, bewildered. Thomas ventured at last to say that it did sound like rather a good idea, when you put it like that, only he thought he might skip the wives. Judit trod heavily on his foot.
“Enough!” Frederik snapped. “We have a new player, and ‘tis your part to teach him what he needs to know. Thomas, you’re to train him in sword-fighting tomorrow, and teach him about entrances and exits so he’s not tripping over people. And I would have some new plays as soon as the plague is over. No more moldy old scraps like The Life of St. Crispin.”
Nobody felt like pointing out that Frederik had been the one who ordered them to play The Life of St. Crispin in the first place, so there was a short silence. “Which new plays, Father?” asked Judit at last.
“That,” said Frederik, “is Francisco’s part.” He turned to Hamlet. “You can write, I suppose? Yes, of course; that speech of Lucianus’s was well enough. We’ve had no one to mend plays or make new ones since Niels died; I had hopes of Thomas, being a university man, but his notions are too curious. See what you can make of this.”
“This” proved to be a slim quarto volume entitled The History of Amleth, Prince of Denmark. Hamlet pocketed the book, feeling altogether confident for the first time since he had joined the company. How hard could writing a play be?
* * *
The trouble with The History of Amleth, Prince of Denmark, he realized some hours later, was that it was going to be utterly impossible to stage. As green as he was at the playwright’s craft, Hamlet could see that it would not be possible for Amleth to ride a horse backwards across the stage, nor could he very well encounter a wolf when all they had was a very small terrier. As for the scene in which Amleth’s friend sent him a secret message by fastening a straw to the nether parts of a gadfly – well, Hamlet amused himself for a few moments by drawing ingenious flying machines in the margins of the book, but none of them seemed remotely practical.
Then there was the bit where Amleth ravished his foster-sister in a fen while lying upon a horse’s hoof, a coxcomb, and a piece of the ceiling. That would certainly have the Master of Revels upon them for public indecency if they tried to show it on stage.
Yet for all of its absurdities, Hamlet found the tale deeply compelling. Amleth had a cause for revenge that was uncannily like his own, and yet he had succeeded at everything at which Hamlet had so conspicuously failed. Amleth set fire to the palace, killed his uncle-father along with all his followers, told his tale to the people and was believed. He had just been acclaimed king, publically and to great applause, when Hamlet felt the need to put the book aside.
* * *
Thomas had fallen into a restless, troubled sleep around midnight, his head full of plague-hospitals and the groans of the dying. Prince Hamlet was still sitting at the writing-desk in their room, a candle burning before him.
The prince spoke, and Thomas jerked awake. “What, my lord?”
Hamlet started. “Oh! Did I speak aloud?”
“Yes. You said ‘How all occasions do inform against me.’ What did you mean by that?”
“I meant nothing. You were eavesdropping.”
“I was sleeping,” said Thomas. “When people go around saying ‘How all occasions do inform against me’ in the middle of the night for no discernable reason, they tend to wake other people up.”
“I was only thinking of something I read in this book.”
“The book Judit’s father gave you?”
“Yes.”
“It is very late. You would do better to go to bed.”
“In good time, in good time.” Hamlet turned back to his book. There was, Thomas noted, a feverish flush on his cheek, and his movements were restless. Thomas began to consider diagnoses: there were several diseases of the mind that could cause men to speak or cry aloud, sometimes unaware that they were doing it...
In contemplating these things, Thomas completely forgot about the plague, and fell asleep again.
* * *
Prince Hamlet turned up for their practice session promptly, right after breakfast. Thomas was not sure he had actually slept – in fact, to judge from the number of burnt candle-ends and blotted sheets of paper littering their room, he probably had not – but at least he was there, and seemed to be game.
“How is your swordplay?” Thomas asked.
“Fair enough,” said Hamlet.
“Let’s see.” Thomas handed Hamlet a sword and dagger, taking up another pair for himself. “I think you said you had seen The Tragedy of Aeneas? Let’s begin with the last scene. You play Turnus, and I will be Aeneas. Have at you, Tuscan dog!”
Thomas quickly realized that “fair enough” was an extremely modest description of his opponent’s actual abilities. He was not a bad swordsman himself, but the damned prince moved like lightning, his blade popping up in places that seemed to be physically impossible. Moreover, Hamlet seemed to have entirely forgotten about the dramatic situation they were supposed to be portraying; the fight went on and on, and his opponent made none of the moves that players whose characters were doomed normally used to set up a plausible-looking defeat. Nor did he leave Aeneas a single opening. Thomas finally had to give up in exhaustion.
“Not bad for your first time,” Thomas gasped, “but you were supposed to lose. You’re Turnus, remember? You do know how to lose?”
“Of course I know how to lose! I’ve lost a thousand times to Laertes.”
Laertes? Well, no wonder the prince had underrated his own gifts. Thomas knew of the Lord Chamberlain’s son by report; everyone did; he was said to be the greatest fencer of his generation in all of Europe, perhaps the greatest in a century. “But – do you know how to lose on purpose?”
“Oh. I guess not. You must teach me, I think, when we have rested.”
Thomas turned to Judit, who had been leaning forward on one of the benches watching them fight. Much to his annoyance, she had risen to her feet and applauded at the climax. “I had thought you had better sense! Why did you not prompt him to lose? How often have you told me that the play is everything?”
“‘Twas not a real play,” she said, “and ‘twas worth applause. I would not have interrupted him for the world. Besides, I never did like Aeneas. He knew not how to treat a woman, and I was not sorry to see him lose for once.”
Thomas threw his sword down and paced deliberately to the edge of the stage – lest he do something to his sovereign lord that he might regret. He swore.
“Th’art not thyself, Thomas,” said Judit, with more gentleness than was her custom. “This plague is weighing heavy on thy mind.”
This, he realized, was true. Most of the anger he felt was not for Hamlet, nor even for Judit, but for the men and women he had known in the last plague: the wretches who fled, in defiance of the quarantine, and carried the infection from town to town; the bailiffs who walled up the healthy along with the sick and left them to die of starvation if the pestilence did not carry them off first; the brutes who went looking for a scapegoat and fired the houses of old women they imagined to be witches; the physicians who would not listen to Thomas, and had expelled him from their ranks rather than admit he had noticed patterns they had not...
He drew a breath, remembered that most of them were dead, and splashed some water on his face from the bucket Judit had left at the corner of the stage. He had another profession now, and it was, on the whole, a more honorable trade than physician. At least players were honest about the fact that they sold pretty lies that did nothing to relieve real human suffering.
Meanwhile, Judit had already turned to Hamlet, bubbling over with excitement. “They’ll come to see that, I’ll warrant you, were you never so poor a player! We must play Achilles and Hector as soon as the plague is over; you can start learning your part this afternoon.”
“I was,” said Thomas, “under the impression that your father was head of this company. You have told me so many times, in fact. Which means you are not.”
He regretted the words almost as soon as he had spoken him, since Judit went red in the face and recoiled as though he had slapped her. “And you may never be head of the company, either, if I choose not to make you so!”
“I care not!” said Thomas – which was true as far as it went, since heading a company of players had never been a particular ambition of his. But inwardly, he felt sick and hollow.
Prince Hamlet was trying, simultaneously, to pretend that he was ignoring this bit of byplay and remind them that he was there. As this was more or less an impossible task, Thomas could not really fault him for the fact that he accomplished only the second part. He whistled a few lines of “Fortune My Foe,” ran his thumb experimentally along the blade of his sword, and remarked, “They’re blunted like practice-swords, I see. ‘Twould be an ingenious way to commit a murder, to substitute a sword with a sharp edge, and make another man do the deed in all innocence.”
“Do you spend much time thinking about ingenious ways to commit murder?” Thomas demanded.
“‘Twas only a passing fancy. Come, teach me how to lose.”
Thomas stood stone still and glared at the prince. “You have very strange fancies,” he said.
For the record, I would like to note that I started writing this before I saw Bill Cain's play Equivocation, which features Shakespeare's daughter Judith as a touchy and presumably unpaid laundress and assistant-of-all-work to the King's Men. That's about as far as the similarities go, and they are purely coincidental. However, DC-area people should totally see Equivocation, because it is excellent.
Chapter Two: One Man In His Time Plays Many Parts
Hamlet had been staring at the same speech in The Life of St. Crispin for half an hour.
Sweet is the simple and the humble life,
Which never felt the prick of treason’s fang;
‘Twixt palace walls lurk danger, toil, and strife
Here, brother, let us live without a pang...
It was silly, fustian stuff. Why was he finding it so hard to learn?
Sitting beside him, Alexander was muttering scraps of his part.
Fly, brave sons, fly, and fight another day.
For prudence ofttimes ‘scapes where valour dies...
Idly, Hamlet wondered whether his own behavior exemplified prudence, cowardice, or flat-out madness. It would be easier to decide, he thought, if he could make sense of what had happened last night. It seemed inconceivable that a man could perform the act toward which his whole life had been building and remember nothing of it; yet, was it not also inconceivable that someone else could have plucked his revenge almost from under his hand, like a cutpurse at a fair?
None of this was helping him learn the part of Crispin. He stared at the page again.
* * *
"Tush, young man," read Judit in the quavering tones of the old friar, "you may trust me to keep your secret; I swear by the blessed Book that I will be both willing and constant. I have done many of these feats in my days; I know that youth are youth, but they will not have the whole world wonder at their doings. And where shall it be?"
There was a brief silence, until Hamlet realized had missed his cue again. "At St. Gregory’s chapel, good father, and be not forgetful to observe the time. Two of the clock is the hour, and therefore look you be ready when I shall call you.”
“I warrant you, and because I will not oversleep myself, I will for this night lie in my clothes, so that as soon as ever you call, I will straight be ready.”
“Then, father, I will trust you; so, farewell.
O, haste the happy hour that makes us one!
Ne’er did a starving man long so for food,
As I do long for my sweet Ursula.
Yet, silence! For I dare not speak my mind –
No, not to mine own brother, nor my dame ... Judit, what’s next?”
“‘So, peace.’”
“So, peace, till silent night draw all to rest,
And love, be safely housed within my breast!”
“Very good, my lord – I mean, Francisco.” Judit shut the prompt-book and looked out the window to the inn-yard, where her father and Thomas had nearly finished setting up a makeshift stage. “I am afraid we will have no time to practice the rest. The people are beginning to come, and I must help Mother take their money.”
Hamlet reflected that it really would have been much better if he had killed himself yesterday, after all.
* * *
The play was not, at least, a complete disaster. This was mostly thanks to Hans and Karl, who improvised comic patter whenever the main action fell flat, and even did a bit of tumbling whenever Prince Hamlet bumped into them – which was often, because Judit had forgotten to drill him on the complicated system of unwritten rules for entrances and exits. He had managed to learn most of his lines, though. Judit only had to prompt him three times, and Alexander twice. By the end of the third act, she had begun to breathe again – until Alexander burst through the curtains that surrounded the prompter’s stool.
“Judit!” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I forgot to learn the part of Ursula’s nurse! Father made me play so many parts, it slipped my mind, and you were busy with Pr – with Francisco and could not remind me.”
“Hush, Alec.” Judit handed him the prompt-book. “You can learn it now; ‘tis only one scene.”
Alec started to cry (silently, for he had been trained from infancy not to make any noise the audience could hear during a performance). “I cannot learn it! Not now! You must help me!”
“No, Alec. Not in front of the prince.”
“Please, Judit! He hardly knows us; he will not notice the difference. Besides, he says that he is not the prince any more, and we must regard him as nothing more than a poor apprentice player.”
“Father will know the difference, and he’ll flay us alive if we do anything to risk our place as Prince Hamlet’s Men.” Judit stopped and considered. Father would have flayed them alive yesterday; today, she was not so sure. In fact, Father seemed to have gone utterly mad, and to be acting with a reckless disregard for the company’s future. “Very well. You must keep the prompt-book, and don’t forget to prompt Francisco at once if he loses his thread.”
* * *
The play ended with a dance of the shoemakers, their wives, and the court lords and ladies – a routine that Frederik had originally intended to skip, but the rest of the company overruled him. It was a sure crowd-pleaser, and the climax of the play itself, when Prince Crispin healed the crippled boy with his touch and revealed himself to be the true heir to the kingdom, had left the audience visibly unmoved.
Whatever his shortcomings as an apprentice player might be, at least Hamlet had learned to dance at court. They would be able to make use of him, Judit thought, as long as they cast him in parts that played to his strengths. She would have to talk to Father and Thomas about trying something more suitable tomorrow. Love’s Melancholy and Love’s Mirth, perhaps, which had two masques and a great deal of misdirected letters, which could double as crib sheets.
The audience was clapping their hands and beginning to join in the dance, and Judit decided that they could, after all, count the afternoon a success. That was before the bailiff and the aldermen arrived to shut them down.
“Hold! Enough! Peace, stop the music!”
Maximilian and Henrik stopped playing; the dancers straightened in mid-bow; the audience slowly came to attention.
“Return to your homes,” proclaimed the bailiff, “and may God have mercy on us all, for the plague rages outside our city walls! This town is under quarantine, in the name of Claudius, King of Denmark.”
The audience began to murmur, and dispersed.
Oh God, no, thought Judit. Not again! The rest of the company looked similarly dismayed – especially Thomas, who had particular reasons to dread another epidemic.
She had a fleeting impression that Prince Hamlet had not been surprised when the bailiff first interrupted their performance, but when she looked at him again, he seemed just as startled at the proclamation of plague as anyone else.
* * *
Hamlet was, in fact, startled – although when he thought about it, the proclamation made perfectly good sense. It had the mark of Polonius’s particular brand of low cunning. As with most of Polonius’s plans, he was sure the old Lord Chamberlain had not thought about the possible consequences, nor considered what his next move was to be when the ruse could no longer be kept up.
At any rate, it was a reprieve of sorts. He had thought that he would be a laughingstock for days at the inn, but the people had forgotten all about the play as soon as the bailiff had made his announcement. The few who remained were either buying up the last of the barrel of ale that had been rolled into the courtyard, on the theory that they might as well get blind drunk before they died, or hectoring the drinkers to repent. Thomas, inexplicably, was calling for bath-water and ordering Martha and Judit to do the laundry at once. The rest of the players were arguing with the innkeeper, who had offered them cheap rooms in exchange for a promise to perform a play every day, and who was now trying to raise the rates.
Hamlet took refuge behind the prompter’s curtain, and tried to curl up as tightly as possible.
Judit, flushed and sweaty from hauling water, found him there some time later. “Laundry, sir?”
“What? Oh, er, no. Thank you.”
“Most of the players are in the tap-room. They’d be very pleased if you would join them.”
“Aye, as I would be very pleased if someone impaled me upon a stake.”
“What my father did to you was not just,” said Judit positively. “It is not what we do to new players. They were all new players once, even Henrik, and they know that. They respect you for getting through a play you had never seen before without stumbling. Karl said he could not have done it, and he has been an actor since he was eleven.”
“I did stumble. More than once.”
“Not so the audience would notice. In any case, you cannot spend the rest of your life brooding.”
Hamlet opened his mouth to say that actually, he could spend the rest of his life brooding, and had been well on his way to doing just that before the players had arrived at Elsinore – and then decided he hadn’t the energy to argue with Judit, who showed every sign of being an extremely stubborn woman.
* * *
“Hallo, Francisco!” Hans filled another glass from the jug of beer, and set it in front of the prince. “What thought you of the play? Karl and I think it is a very old, stale piece, and one that mocks nature with too many improbabilities to be believed; yet Henrik says he has known a time when it pleased well.”
Hamlet smiled and shook his head. “There are more improbabilities in nature, I find, than on the stage. I will believe almost anything. And yet, for all that, I do not believe that a prince could learn the shoemaker’s craft in a day. I am learning that many a trade looks easy to a stranger’s eyes, yet proves difficult and treacherous in practice.”
“You did well enough, lad,” said Henrik. “Drink deep.”
Judit came in and began counting out the proceeds from the company’s cash-box. “Three marks, eight shillings, and fourpence. That’s ten shillings for each of the shareholders.” She slid a small heap of coins across the table to Henrik, Hans, and Karl. “I’ll keep Father’s and Thomas’s shares until they come. Max, you and Alec may have eightpence each to buy sweetmeats. Don't spend it all at once; 'tis the last you're like to see for a while. Five shillings to the hired man.” She pressed the coins into Hamlet’s hand. “I wonder if this is the first money you have ever earned?”
“The first at any honest trade.” Hamlet lowered his voice, so that the innkeeper might not hear. “Princes are little more than sturdy beggars. But have you kept nothing for yourself?”
“What for, my lord? I am neither shareholder, nor hired man, nor prentice.”
“I wondered. There were four ladies in the final dance, were there not?”
“Were there? I did not see.”
“And yet, there are only two boys in the company.”
Judit laughed, and tossed her hair over her shoulders as she rose from the table. “One man in his time plays many parts,” she said enigmatically.
Hamlet followed her. “Which man? Hans and Karl were in the dance, I think – so was Thomas – and I do not think your father and Henrik would make very pretty ladies!”
Judit smiled, and shrugged. “You will learn that one can do much with a mask, a wig, and a little powder.”
“Can you? Then you ought, I think, to earn some commission for your artistry.” Hamlet signaled to the tapster. “Do not go yet; allow me to buy you a drink with the first honest wages that ever I earned. What will you have?”
“Rhenish wine. Thank you, Francisco.”
* * *
The Rhenish at the inn was not as good as the bottle they had been given at the palace yesterday; yet Judit liked it well enough. And there was much to be said for the company of a man who bought you a glass of wine, and bid you sit for a while, instead of commanding you to wash clothing he had worn only once.
Prince Hamlet had the reputation of being a wit, and Judit soon found that it was quite true. She was not sure that she had anything very clever to say herself – after a long and exhausting day, it was all she could do to follow the thread of his conversation – but she enjoyed listening to him. And, after all, men seemed to like girls who laughed at their jokes much more than those who tried to compete with them.
It was some time before she began to suspect that anything was wrong with Hamlet. She felt, rather than thought, that he was talking too fast, too cleverly, and altogether as if he were trying to suppress some dreadful thought that would come with silence. Once she had taken the impression, she could not lose it. There was something desperate and feverish about the flow of words, and she found herself thinking once again of the rumors that the prince was mad.
She had not had time to consider this for long, however, when Thomas came into the taproom. He did not look very well pleased to see her laughing and talking with Prince Hamlet. Good, she thought. Let him learn that there were some men who regarded her as more than a laundress.
* * *
From the way Thomas was looking at him, Hamlet thought he would do well to push off, but he was anxious not to be left alone with his own thoughts. He sought out the company of Frederik’s younger son, who was curled up in front of the fireplace, idly petting the dog called Hebe.
He repeated his question about the number of ladies at the dance to Alexander. The boy looked alarmed. “Please, m’lord – Francisco, I mean – don’t think ill of us, and don’t punish Father for it. ‘Twas only for the dance at the end – that is, Mother and Judit were not meant to have speaking parts, only I made Judit play the nurse because I forgot to learn it. Father knew nothing of it. That is, he knew about the dance, but he wanted to leave it out, only the others said that it would please the audience more than the play had done.”
“Judit, I take it, has acted before?” That seemed a safe conjecture; she had slipped into the nurse’s role with ease, and had shown a sense of comic timing that could only come from experience.
“Well–” Alexander hesitated, and then seemed to decide that he had already spilled too many of the company’s secrets to hold anything back. “It began after the plague, sir. Two of our men had died, and a third run away, and then Johannes was arrested for stealing a chicken in Aalborg, and I wasn’t tall enough yet to play women’s parts, so Father said he did not see how we were to go on. So Judit coaxed him into letting her and Mother play some of the ladies – in a mask, so that no one would see who they were. And Thomas had just joined the company – he went to the university in Bologna, you know – and he took Judit’s part, saying that women acted in the Italian comedies and no one thought the worse of them. So then Judit said she would marry him, and Father was so glad that he gave in.”
“Judit decided to marry Thomas because he took her part in an argument?”
“So Max and I think, sir. They all wanted to marry her – Hans, and Karl, and poor Niels who died of the plague, and Johannes, although nobody thought she would be silly enough to take him. Father was hoping she would marry Hans or Karl, as they’ve been with the company since they were boys, but Judit said they’d been slipping into one another’s beds for almost as long as she’d known them, and she didn’t mean to share her husband with another man unless she could have one, too. At any rate, Father was pleased enough when she made up her mind and chose somebody, for he says he's too old to stay head of the company until Max and I grow up, and he thinks Thomas will do well enough as long as Judit keeps a check on his stranger ideas. Now he is trying to hurry them to the church before she changes her mind, but Judit says she needs time to sew her wedding-gown and make pillow-cases for her dowry. I am not sure she means to marry him at all.”
Alexander’s conversation, Hamlet noted, was certainly enlightening. He wondered what the boy would have to say about him as soon as he was out of earshot. “Why is it that Thomas eats no pork?” he asked, curious to see what other secrets might lurk within the company.
“I do not properly understand it, sir. It is something to do with a man named Bacon that he met in England. Thomas admires him very much.”
“And ... he thinks the pig might be a relative?” Hamlet reflected that perhaps he ought to give up eating pork, by that token. He was almost on the point of making another jest about it, when he recalled that there were very few pigs named Francisco.
Alexander giggled. “No, he thinks that pork might be a cause of the plague. You’ll have to ask him, sir. The rest of us think he’s mad.”
That, Hamlet reflected, made two of them. Perhaps he ought to be friends with Thomas.
Frederik had appeared in the doorway of the taproom. “Idlers, idlers all! Think you that because it is plague-time, there’s no work to be done?”
“Why, yes, we do think so!” said Hans. “That is the point of plague-time.”
“‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die,’” added Karl. “King Solomon said that.”
“King Solomon also had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines!” retorted Frederik. “I suppose you think that is a good idea too!”
The company stared at one another, bewildered. Thomas ventured at last to say that it did sound like rather a good idea, when you put it like that, only he thought he might skip the wives. Judit trod heavily on his foot.
“Enough!” Frederik snapped. “We have a new player, and ‘tis your part to teach him what he needs to know. Thomas, you’re to train him in sword-fighting tomorrow, and teach him about entrances and exits so he’s not tripping over people. And I would have some new plays as soon as the plague is over. No more moldy old scraps like The Life of St. Crispin.”
Nobody felt like pointing out that Frederik had been the one who ordered them to play The Life of St. Crispin in the first place, so there was a short silence. “Which new plays, Father?” asked Judit at last.
“That,” said Frederik, “is Francisco’s part.” He turned to Hamlet. “You can write, I suppose? Yes, of course; that speech of Lucianus’s was well enough. We’ve had no one to mend plays or make new ones since Niels died; I had hopes of Thomas, being a university man, but his notions are too curious. See what you can make of this.”
“This” proved to be a slim quarto volume entitled The History of Amleth, Prince of Denmark. Hamlet pocketed the book, feeling altogether confident for the first time since he had joined the company. How hard could writing a play be?
* * *
The trouble with The History of Amleth, Prince of Denmark, he realized some hours later, was that it was going to be utterly impossible to stage. As green as he was at the playwright’s craft, Hamlet could see that it would not be possible for Amleth to ride a horse backwards across the stage, nor could he very well encounter a wolf when all they had was a very small terrier. As for the scene in which Amleth’s friend sent him a secret message by fastening a straw to the nether parts of a gadfly – well, Hamlet amused himself for a few moments by drawing ingenious flying machines in the margins of the book, but none of them seemed remotely practical.
Then there was the bit where Amleth ravished his foster-sister in a fen while lying upon a horse’s hoof, a coxcomb, and a piece of the ceiling. That would certainly have the Master of Revels upon them for public indecency if they tried to show it on stage.
Yet for all of its absurdities, Hamlet found the tale deeply compelling. Amleth had a cause for revenge that was uncannily like his own, and yet he had succeeded at everything at which Hamlet had so conspicuously failed. Amleth set fire to the palace, killed his uncle-father along with all his followers, told his tale to the people and was believed. He had just been acclaimed king, publically and to great applause, when Hamlet felt the need to put the book aside.
* * *
Thomas had fallen into a restless, troubled sleep around midnight, his head full of plague-hospitals and the groans of the dying. Prince Hamlet was still sitting at the writing-desk in their room, a candle burning before him.
The prince spoke, and Thomas jerked awake. “What, my lord?”
Hamlet started. “Oh! Did I speak aloud?”
“Yes. You said ‘How all occasions do inform against me.’ What did you mean by that?”
“I meant nothing. You were eavesdropping.”
“I was sleeping,” said Thomas. “When people go around saying ‘How all occasions do inform against me’ in the middle of the night for no discernable reason, they tend to wake other people up.”
“I was only thinking of something I read in this book.”
“The book Judit’s father gave you?”
“Yes.”
“It is very late. You would do better to go to bed.”
“In good time, in good time.” Hamlet turned back to his book. There was, Thomas noted, a feverish flush on his cheek, and his movements were restless. Thomas began to consider diagnoses: there were several diseases of the mind that could cause men to speak or cry aloud, sometimes unaware that they were doing it...
In contemplating these things, Thomas completely forgot about the plague, and fell asleep again.
* * *
Prince Hamlet turned up for their practice session promptly, right after breakfast. Thomas was not sure he had actually slept – in fact, to judge from the number of burnt candle-ends and blotted sheets of paper littering their room, he probably had not – but at least he was there, and seemed to be game.
“How is your swordplay?” Thomas asked.
“Fair enough,” said Hamlet.
“Let’s see.” Thomas handed Hamlet a sword and dagger, taking up another pair for himself. “I think you said you had seen The Tragedy of Aeneas? Let’s begin with the last scene. You play Turnus, and I will be Aeneas. Have at you, Tuscan dog!”
Thomas quickly realized that “fair enough” was an extremely modest description of his opponent’s actual abilities. He was not a bad swordsman himself, but the damned prince moved like lightning, his blade popping up in places that seemed to be physically impossible. Moreover, Hamlet seemed to have entirely forgotten about the dramatic situation they were supposed to be portraying; the fight went on and on, and his opponent made none of the moves that players whose characters were doomed normally used to set up a plausible-looking defeat. Nor did he leave Aeneas a single opening. Thomas finally had to give up in exhaustion.
“Not bad for your first time,” Thomas gasped, “but you were supposed to lose. You’re Turnus, remember? You do know how to lose?”
“Of course I know how to lose! I’ve lost a thousand times to Laertes.”
Laertes? Well, no wonder the prince had underrated his own gifts. Thomas knew of the Lord Chamberlain’s son by report; everyone did; he was said to be the greatest fencer of his generation in all of Europe, perhaps the greatest in a century. “But – do you know how to lose on purpose?”
“Oh. I guess not. You must teach me, I think, when we have rested.”
Thomas turned to Judit, who had been leaning forward on one of the benches watching them fight. Much to his annoyance, she had risen to her feet and applauded at the climax. “I had thought you had better sense! Why did you not prompt him to lose? How often have you told me that the play is everything?”
“‘Twas not a real play,” she said, “and ‘twas worth applause. I would not have interrupted him for the world. Besides, I never did like Aeneas. He knew not how to treat a woman, and I was not sorry to see him lose for once.”
Thomas threw his sword down and paced deliberately to the edge of the stage – lest he do something to his sovereign lord that he might regret. He swore.
“Th’art not thyself, Thomas,” said Judit, with more gentleness than was her custom. “This plague is weighing heavy on thy mind.”
This, he realized, was true. Most of the anger he felt was not for Hamlet, nor even for Judit, but for the men and women he had known in the last plague: the wretches who fled, in defiance of the quarantine, and carried the infection from town to town; the bailiffs who walled up the healthy along with the sick and left them to die of starvation if the pestilence did not carry them off first; the brutes who went looking for a scapegoat and fired the houses of old women they imagined to be witches; the physicians who would not listen to Thomas, and had expelled him from their ranks rather than admit he had noticed patterns they had not...
He drew a breath, remembered that most of them were dead, and splashed some water on his face from the bucket Judit had left at the corner of the stage. He had another profession now, and it was, on the whole, a more honorable trade than physician. At least players were honest about the fact that they sold pretty lies that did nothing to relieve real human suffering.
Meanwhile, Judit had already turned to Hamlet, bubbling over with excitement. “They’ll come to see that, I’ll warrant you, were you never so poor a player! We must play Achilles and Hector as soon as the plague is over; you can start learning your part this afternoon.”
“I was,” said Thomas, “under the impression that your father was head of this company. You have told me so many times, in fact. Which means you are not.”
He regretted the words almost as soon as he had spoken him, since Judit went red in the face and recoiled as though he had slapped her. “And you may never be head of the company, either, if I choose not to make you so!”
“I care not!” said Thomas – which was true as far as it went, since heading a company of players had never been a particular ambition of his. But inwardly, he felt sick and hollow.
Prince Hamlet was trying, simultaneously, to pretend that he was ignoring this bit of byplay and remind them that he was there. As this was more or less an impossible task, Thomas could not really fault him for the fact that he accomplished only the second part. He whistled a few lines of “Fortune My Foe,” ran his thumb experimentally along the blade of his sword, and remarked, “They’re blunted like practice-swords, I see. ‘Twould be an ingenious way to commit a murder, to substitute a sword with a sharp edge, and make another man do the deed in all innocence.”
“Do you spend much time thinking about ingenious ways to commit murder?” Thomas demanded.
“‘Twas only a passing fancy. Come, teach me how to lose.”
Thomas stood stone still and glared at the prince. “You have very strange fancies,” he said.
