Pseudonymous, Part Five
In which some plot threads finally start to converge. Parts 1-4 are here.
Author’s Notes: I have used names or spellings from the First Quarto of Hamlet or from Saxo Grammaticus for most of the characters in The Tragedy of Amleth as I wanted to differentiate them from the canonical Hamlet characters. (In any case, I suspect that even Hamlet would not be crazy enough to name his principal characters Claudius, Gertrude, and Polonius, nor would the players let him get away with it if he did!) The names of Horatio and a few minor characters have been left intact, as my sources did not offer other versions, and it seemed plausible enough that Hamlet might pay tribute to his friend by using his name in the play. The text itself is not meant to be FirstQuarto!Hamlet.
In case anyone is curious, Judit's full cast list is under the cut.
Assorted soldiers, ladies, gentlemen, etc. may be played by whomever is free at any given moment.
Thomas - Amleth, Prince of Denmark
Frederik - Feng, King of Denmark; Marcellus
Maximilian - Gurutha, Queen of Denmark
Henrik - Ghost of King Horwendil; Corambis, a foolish counselor; Player-Duke; Second Clown; priest; Braggart Gentleman (Osric)
Alexander - Ofelia, daughter to Corambis; Cornelia, ambassador to Norway
Hamlet - Sentinel (Francisco); Montano, servant to Corambis; Rossencraft; Player-Poisoner; First Clown; Fortenbrasse
Hans - Voltimar, ambassador to Norway; Horatio
Karl - Barnardo; Leartes, son to Corambis; Gilderstone
Judit - Player-Duchess
“My God,” said Karl under his breath, as Thomas began the third of the five impossibly long soliloquies that Francisco had written. “That is why I thought he reminded me of someone. He’s playing Prince Amleth as if he were the prince - I mean, as if he were our fellow Francisco.”
“Sh-h-h,” said Judit. She was staring, riveted, at Thomas. Everyone was staring at Thomas. The innkeeper’s wife, who had been passing through the spare chamber where they were rehearsing, was standing in the back of the room, rapt. The mop and bucket she had been carrying lay at her feet, forgotten.
Alexander was sitting with his mouth open; Judit had to nudge him as the speech drew to a close. “‘Soft you’ is your cue, Alec. Remember, breathe deeply and do not be frightened.”
He wasn’t. He didn’t miss a line. He had a twelve-line soliloquy toward the end of the scene, and the company all held their breaths; but he was fine.
“‘Tis well writ,” said Hans. “Do you not think so?”
Judit nodded. Whatever Prince Hamlet’s shortcomings as an actor might be, he did know how to shape a speech so that one line flowed from the next, and the quiet rhythms of the verse lay beneath it all like a heartbeat. It was still a difficult part - by all rights, far too difficult for a boy of ten - and she thought with regret that she would have been able to do so much more with that speech, but Alec would be all right.
Alec finished his speech, and the company began to breathe again as Father and Henrik stepped forward.
“Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go,” said Father, and the innkeeper’s wife shivered.
“Enough!” said Father, breaking character. “Martha, where is the ale?”
Judit and her mother hurried to pour out tankards of ale for the exhausted players, and to slice the bread and cold meat they had brought for dinner.
“Noon already,” said Frederik, “and we are not halfway through. This is far too long.”
“But it will go faster after the first rehearsal, and it is a good play,” said Henrik. “You must own, Frederik, that it is a very good play.”
“It is an impossible play. I know not how I am to play this confession of forty lines that he has written for Feng, and as for the play in the next scene - well! How does the pri - er, Francisco - imagine we are to place ourselves, so that the auditors may see both the play itself and the king’s reaction?”
“We have talked of this already, Father,” said Judit. “You and the Queen must sit at one side of the stage with Gilderstone behind you. Amleth, Ofelia, and Horatio will sit at the other side; the players will be in the middle, and it will be a simple matter for the auditors to see all. Now, the fencing match, I think, will be more difficult...”
A lively discussion of the staging for the fencing match followed, and it was not until after they had eaten that Judit remembered that Karl had been saying something about Thomas’s performance.
“You made some remark,” she asked, “about Thomas, when he was just beginning that speech about the undiscovered country. What was it?”
“Nothing,” said Karl. “Nothing that matters very much.”
* * *
Thomas was, in fact, playing Prince Amleth as Prince Hamlet. It had been impossible not to do so; once he had seen the resemblance, he could not unsee it.
He had drawn certain conclusions as soon as he read the play-within-a-play scene. He meant to ask Hamlet about them, but there were only two or three scenes in which neither he nor Hamlet had to play a part, and the prince had been making himself scarce during the moments of the rehearsal when he was not needed, almost as if he dreaded having to watch his own play unfold. Which was another reason why Thomas was sure his conclusions were correct.
Secretive or not, though, Hamlet was not immune to the pride of authorship, and as soon as they were alone in their chambers that night, he asked Thomas, “What think you of the play?”
“Powerful,” said Thomas. “‘Twill please very well. The plot, of course, is quite beyond belief, but the auditors will not mind; the more absurd the story, the better the common folk like it. There is little enough truth in these old histories, I think.” (There, he thought; that would be bait enough to draw something out of the prince.)
“No?” said Hamlet. “Do you not believe in ghosts?”
“No,” said Thomas positively. “Do you?”
“One of the advantages of madness,” said Hamlet, “is that it can believe in a great many things that reason finds absurd.”
“Do you believe yourself to be mad? I see no sign of it.”
Hamlet gave him a twisted smile. “Perhaps you will when I tell you why I joined your company.”
* * *
Hamlet found himself telling Thomas rather more than he had intended: as much as he had told Judith, though nothing of his father’s tale or his cause for revenge.
“Is it possible that I have done this thing, and do not remember?”
“It is possible,” said Thomas, “and it does not make you mad. But it seems to me that there is a far simpler possibility, and - you are familiar with William of Ockham, I trust? The simplest explanation is apt to be the correct one. Someone else killed him just before you came upon him.”
“But who?”
“You would know that better than I. Do you suspect anyone among the courtiers?”
Hamlet considered the question. Horatio, alone, had known why Claudius must die - but he could not imagine Horatio robbing him of the revenge that was his by right. Marcellus and Bernardo had seen his father’s ghost, though they had not heard his words; might one of them have suspected Claudius’s guilt? The other courtiers, for the most part, were worthless flatterers who seemed wholly loyal to Claudius - but flattery could often conceal ambition. It would be ironic, Hamlet thought, if Claudius had died at the hand of a man who hoped to steal his crown.
Very well, then: was there anyone who could reasonably expect to be elected king, with Claudius dead and Hamlet under suspicion of his murder? Polonius? But Polonius seemed to be taking pains to conceal the death, unless - Hamlet drew in his breath. He might be trying to buy enough time for Laertes to arrive from France - and Laertes, Hamlet realized, was not only a popular, charismatic young man but also a distant cousin of the royal family on his mother’s side. He probably could be elected king in the absence of a stronger claim.
Thomas’s voice broke into his thoughts. “By the way, I take it you meant to kill your uncle because you believe he murdered your father, as Feng murdered King Horwendil?”
Hamlet started. “Who told you that?”
“You did. Not in so many words, but you cannot have been ambitious for the throne, for you have made no attempt to claim it. What other motive could you have had but revenge? And besides, it was you who asked for The Murder of Gonzago to be played before him.”
“Yes. Yes, I believe - I know he murdered my father.”
“Might someone else have known it too, after he called for lights and stopped the play?”
“Perhaps.” Hamlet tried to remember who had been at the play that night. Horatio, but Horatio had already known. Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, two or three more of the courtiers: all Claudius’s creatures. Polonius, he supposed, might have felt some loyalty to his father, but he was too stupid to see the truth if it had been staring him in the face. Ophelia? She might be clever enough to work it out, but he could not conceive of Ophelia taking up a dagger and slitting a man’s throat. His mother?
Ockham’s razor, Hamlet thought grumpily, did not shave as closely as it was reputed to do.
* * *
Martha watched the first performance of The Tragedy of Amleth from behind the stage.
Judit had suggested that her mother play one of the court ladies, but Martha had vetoed the idea. They would need a prompter for a new play, especially one so long, and Frederik would also need her help with his costume changes. He had two very quick ones in the first act, and there were only minutes between his first exit as Marcellus and his entrance as the king. Martha held his royal robes so that he could step into them without a pause, and picked up his soldier’s helmet and halberk after he threw them on the tiring-room floor. Then she listened for the flourish that marked the king’s exit, so that she could have Marcellus’s things ready for him again. Then there was a moment of chaos in the tiring-room, with no fewer than seven actors backstage, most of them changing into costumes for new parts. So she saw nothing of the first two scenes; but she heard a burst or two of applause.
After that there were a few quiet minutes, when Frederik could rest.
“How goes it?” asked Martha, handing him a mug of small beer and a handkerchief.
He wiped the sweat from his face. “They seem to like it well enough. But it is still an impossible play. I know not what Judit was thinking when she divided the parts; Thomas was green enough not to notice it, but she ought to know better than to make a man exit and then re-enter at once!”
“She did what she must do. We have too few men.”
“Aye, I know, and a chit of a girl who thinks she knows better than all of them. If Constantine had but lived!” This was what Frederik always said when he was troubled about Thomas, or one of his living children, or the future of the company.
Martha said nothing. Constantine was their first son, who had died of a fever when he was four. It was not that she did not mourn him, but she did not share Frederik’s faith that he would have been the company’s salvation. As far as she could remember, the only times Constantine had showed much interest in the family business was when he was tagging after his adored older sister. It had been Judit who knew how the trapdoors and discovery spaces worked before she was three, and who had learned all the parts as soon as she could read well enough to prompt the actors.
Today Judit flitted in and out of the tiring-room, sometimes helping her mother, more often fussing about her own costumes. She had three brief and silent appearances in the character of one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, a few moments in the crowd of actors, and then a single scene as the Player-Duchess: a woman playing a boy playing a woman. That was all she had been able to wring out of Frederik. She had tried to coax him into letting her play Cornelia, but he had given the part to Alexander - never mind that Alexander had enough trouble learning his lines as Ofelia. Judit had coached him patiently through the mad scenes. Frederik didn’t mind that; as far as he was concerned, a woman’s place in a theater company was everywhere, so long as it was behind the scenes. Martha had spent five-and-twenty years sewing costumes, looking after properties, watching rehearsals and giving her opinion, being a second mother to the prentices. Being an actor’s wife was busy but varied and pleasurable work, and she had been contented with it.
She wondered, sometimes, what was wrong with Judit that she was not contented - but as always, when her daughter stepped out on stage, she knew. Plays-within-plays were generally poorly written pastiches of theatrical fashions from twenty years ago, but Judit managed to wring pathos from the Player-Duchess’s hackneyed lines, and to make the woman’s grief and uncertainty real when the Poisoner wooed her in dumb-show. From behind the stage, Martha could see that audience’s eyes were on her - and not on King Feng, where they ought to have been. This was a fault, Martha knew; but one for which she was inclined to forgive her daughter.
“Who is the other boy-actor,” muttered one of the gallants seated at the edge of the stage, “and why haven’t they got him playing Ofelia?”
“Ofelia’s the head of the company’s son,” explained his companion.
“He ought not to favor his son. The other’s better.”
No, thought Martha sadly, he ought not, but in this case he must. After all, the world favored sons, and Frederik was not as bad as most men in this regard.
At any rate, no one would accuse him of undue favoritism in Max’s case. The older boy was playing the queen masterfully; there were audible gasps when she cried “Thou wilt not murder me,” and then not a sound from the audience, as Thomas and Max’s scene built to a climax.
“Flour! Nightgown!” said Henrik in a hoarse whisper. Martha started. She had been so absorbed in the scene herself that she had forgotten there was another quick costume change coming. Luckily, Judit already had it in hand, making Henrik’s face pale with the flour and helping him to change Corambis’s blood-stained doublet for the ghost’s gown.
“Get up, my lord,” said Martha to Prince Hamlet, who had been sitting slumped against the tiring-house wall with his eyes closed whenever he was not on stage. “‘Tis not long before you must enter as Rossencraft, and you are still dressed as the poisoner.”
“Oh, aye.” Hamlet didn’t open his eyes. “Goes it well?”
“Very well,” whispered Judit, flushed and starry-eyed. “Very, very well. Come, I’ll help you with your costume” - which was well, because the prince’s hands were shaking.
Thomas, thought Martha suddenly, had never feared the outcome of a performance too much to watch it. Thomas had done everything Frederik had ever asked of him with competence, professionalism, and not a trace of nerves. Which was another way of saying that the stage was not life or death to him; it was not his ruling passion.
She watched Judit’s hands as she undid the buttons at the prince’s throat, and was suddenly afraid of what might come of her daughter’s friendship with their patron.
* * *
“Go,” commanded Hamlet in his final role as Fortenbrasse, “bid the soldiers shoot.”
There was a peal of gunfire (produced by Alexander, who was in charge of everything involving firecrackers) and a moment of heavy silence. And then wild, tumultuous applause.
As Hamlet and Hans were bearing the king's body from the stage, Frederik whispered, "Oh, very well, I was wrong about this play. 'Tis not impossible at all, merely very difficult."
"Hush," said Hans, "you're dead."
But Frederik was in too good a humor to be silent. "They will not hear; and in five minutes' time, all the dead princes will rise and dance a jig. That is the beauty of what we do."
In my former profession, thought Thomas, as Henrik and one of the innkeeper's servants draped his body in black and bore him away, I could not do that.
* * *
Afterward, there was a general celebration in the inn’s taproom, and the English actors were present. Several of them spoke Latin, although they had learned it at grammar-school, so their conversation was rather full of poetry. Thomas, for his part, spoke some English, although he had learned it from his friend Master Bacon, so his conversation was rather full of science. One way or another, they managed to communicate.
“Tell me,” asked Thomas, “why is it that you travel in Denmark, when you cannot hope to perform here?”
“England’s too hot to hold us at the moment,” said Robin the clown, “thanks to my lord of Essex and that play of Will’s about the hunchback.”
“Not a hunchback,” corrected the head of the company. “Wrong Richard.”
“Well, sodomite, then. Everyone named Richard is either a hunchback or a sodomite, it seems. Which are you, Master Burbage?”
“I like to think of myself as a lionheart.”
“Sodomite, then,” said Robin promptly, to general laughter.
Master Burbage swatted at him as if he were a fly. “That play this afternoon was very well-liked, was it not? We did not understand much of it, but we could see that you acted the lead part well, and that it pleased the auditors.”
“Thank you,” said Thomas, glowing.
“What is the argument, pray?”
“Ah,” said Hamlet, “the argument is miching mallecho.”
“You will pardon me,” said one of the other English actors, “I do not speak ... Spanish?”
Thomas, feeling that this was a wholly incomprehensible answer even if you did speak Spanish, launched into a brief account of the plot of The Tragedy of Amleth.
One of the actors, a quiet, prematurely balding man, was listening to this summary with particular interest; several of the others elbowed him.
“Could you make something of it, Will?” Burbage asked the balding man in English.
“I could,” said Will, “with the Danish players’ permission, of course.” He turned to the Danish actors and said in Latin, “Might we have a copy of your playscript, in exchange for a comedy of our own? You need not fear that we will set ourselves up as rivals; we cannot perform it in Danish, but I believe we could find someone in London to make a rough translation, and you could translate ours, and so both companies would profit by the variety.”
“Will’s too modest to say it,” added the actor called Henry, “but the comedy is of his own making. He’s written some ten or a dozen of them, and the London audiences flock to them like sparrows to breadcrumbs. ‘Tis bound to fill the stalls in Denmark too, provided it is translated and acted well.”
“For my part, I make no objection,” said Thomas, “but the play is not mine to trade. You must ask Frederik, the head of our company.”
He communicated Will’s proposal in Danish to Frederik, who considered it carefully. Playscripts were a valuable commodity, usually kept tightly under the company’s control, but it was true that they seemed to have nothing to fear from actors who spoke no Danish - and the prospect of a new and fashionable comedy was tempting enough to overcome Frederik’s natural caution.
“Very well,” he said at last. “No performances in any country but England, and no translating the playscript or showing it to anybody until you are at home. You will show Thomas three of your most popular comedies, and he will make the selection. Are we agreed?”
Thomas translated this, and Will agreed.
“Thomas, try not to choose one with more than two parts for ladies.”
“That may be difficult,” said Will when this stipulation was communicated to him. “It may be that our climate lends itself to a preponderance of hunchbacks, but English audiences like ladies, particularly in a comedy.”
Frederik sighed. “No more than four, at any rate.” Will brightened, and said at once that this would not be a problem.
Despairing of the possibility that he could choose a comedy that would really please Frederik, Thomas finally selected one that he knew would please Judit.
* * *
“Your breakfast, sir,” said Ophelia.
Horatio hastened to take the tray from her. He felt guilty about allowing Ophelia to fetch and carry for him, but he knew it would attract attention if she did not behave like his page. He felt even more guilty about using her as a spy, but she had discovered very quickly that the pages gossiped among each other, and that a curious boy could ask questions that would attract attention from a grown man.
“Hear you any news among the boys?” he asked.
Ophelia nodded. “‘Tis said that some people are defying the quarantine, made bold because they know of no one who has taken the plague. There is even an inn in the next town where they are performing a play; some of the apprentices were talking of playing truant and going to see it this afternoon.”
“A play?” Horatio stopped buttering his bread and looked up abruptly. “Did they say which company it was?”
“Prince Hamlet’s Men, they said.”
It fit. Hamlet had disappeared at the same time the actors had left the palace, and he had loved going to plays above all things. And, of course, he was their patron; if he decided to travel with them, they would have felt bound to allow him.
“Pack your things when you’ve finished your breakfast,” he said. “We will see this play.”
Author’s Notes: I have used names or spellings from the First Quarto of Hamlet or from Saxo Grammaticus for most of the characters in The Tragedy of Amleth as I wanted to differentiate them from the canonical Hamlet characters. (In any case, I suspect that even Hamlet would not be crazy enough to name his principal characters Claudius, Gertrude, and Polonius, nor would the players let him get away with it if he did!) The names of Horatio and a few minor characters have been left intact, as my sources did not offer other versions, and it seemed plausible enough that Hamlet might pay tribute to his friend by using his name in the play. The text itself is not meant to be FirstQuarto!Hamlet.
In case anyone is curious, Judit's full cast list is under the cut.
Assorted soldiers, ladies, gentlemen, etc. may be played by whomever is free at any given moment.
Thomas - Amleth, Prince of Denmark
Frederik - Feng, King of Denmark; Marcellus
Maximilian - Gurutha, Queen of Denmark
Henrik - Ghost of King Horwendil; Corambis, a foolish counselor; Player-Duke; Second Clown; priest; Braggart Gentleman (Osric)
Alexander - Ofelia, daughter to Corambis; Cornelia, ambassador to Norway
Hamlet - Sentinel (Francisco); Montano, servant to Corambis; Rossencraft; Player-Poisoner; First Clown; Fortenbrasse
Hans - Voltimar, ambassador to Norway; Horatio
Karl - Barnardo; Leartes, son to Corambis; Gilderstone
Judit - Player-Duchess
“My God,” said Karl under his breath, as Thomas began the third of the five impossibly long soliloquies that Francisco had written. “That is why I thought he reminded me of someone. He’s playing Prince Amleth as if he were the prince - I mean, as if he were our fellow Francisco.”
“Sh-h-h,” said Judit. She was staring, riveted, at Thomas. Everyone was staring at Thomas. The innkeeper’s wife, who had been passing through the spare chamber where they were rehearsing, was standing in the back of the room, rapt. The mop and bucket she had been carrying lay at her feet, forgotten.
Alexander was sitting with his mouth open; Judit had to nudge him as the speech drew to a close. “‘Soft you’ is your cue, Alec. Remember, breathe deeply and do not be frightened.”
He wasn’t. He didn’t miss a line. He had a twelve-line soliloquy toward the end of the scene, and the company all held their breaths; but he was fine.
“‘Tis well writ,” said Hans. “Do you not think so?”
Judit nodded. Whatever Prince Hamlet’s shortcomings as an actor might be, he did know how to shape a speech so that one line flowed from the next, and the quiet rhythms of the verse lay beneath it all like a heartbeat. It was still a difficult part - by all rights, far too difficult for a boy of ten - and she thought with regret that she would have been able to do so much more with that speech, but Alec would be all right.
Alec finished his speech, and the company began to breathe again as Father and Henrik stepped forward.
“Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go,” said Father, and the innkeeper’s wife shivered.
“Enough!” said Father, breaking character. “Martha, where is the ale?”
Judit and her mother hurried to pour out tankards of ale for the exhausted players, and to slice the bread and cold meat they had brought for dinner.
“Noon already,” said Frederik, “and we are not halfway through. This is far too long.”
“But it will go faster after the first rehearsal, and it is a good play,” said Henrik. “You must own, Frederik, that it is a very good play.”
“It is an impossible play. I know not how I am to play this confession of forty lines that he has written for Feng, and as for the play in the next scene - well! How does the pri - er, Francisco - imagine we are to place ourselves, so that the auditors may see both the play itself and the king’s reaction?”
“We have talked of this already, Father,” said Judit. “You and the Queen must sit at one side of the stage with Gilderstone behind you. Amleth, Ofelia, and Horatio will sit at the other side; the players will be in the middle, and it will be a simple matter for the auditors to see all. Now, the fencing match, I think, will be more difficult...”
A lively discussion of the staging for the fencing match followed, and it was not until after they had eaten that Judit remembered that Karl had been saying something about Thomas’s performance.
“You made some remark,” she asked, “about Thomas, when he was just beginning that speech about the undiscovered country. What was it?”
“Nothing,” said Karl. “Nothing that matters very much.”
* * *
Thomas was, in fact, playing Prince Amleth as Prince Hamlet. It had been impossible not to do so; once he had seen the resemblance, he could not unsee it.
He had drawn certain conclusions as soon as he read the play-within-a-play scene. He meant to ask Hamlet about them, but there were only two or three scenes in which neither he nor Hamlet had to play a part, and the prince had been making himself scarce during the moments of the rehearsal when he was not needed, almost as if he dreaded having to watch his own play unfold. Which was another reason why Thomas was sure his conclusions were correct.
Secretive or not, though, Hamlet was not immune to the pride of authorship, and as soon as they were alone in their chambers that night, he asked Thomas, “What think you of the play?”
“Powerful,” said Thomas. “‘Twill please very well. The plot, of course, is quite beyond belief, but the auditors will not mind; the more absurd the story, the better the common folk like it. There is little enough truth in these old histories, I think.” (There, he thought; that would be bait enough to draw something out of the prince.)
“No?” said Hamlet. “Do you not believe in ghosts?”
“No,” said Thomas positively. “Do you?”
“One of the advantages of madness,” said Hamlet, “is that it can believe in a great many things that reason finds absurd.”
“Do you believe yourself to be mad? I see no sign of it.”
Hamlet gave him a twisted smile. “Perhaps you will when I tell you why I joined your company.”
* * *
Hamlet found himself telling Thomas rather more than he had intended: as much as he had told Judith, though nothing of his father’s tale or his cause for revenge.
“Is it possible that I have done this thing, and do not remember?”
“It is possible,” said Thomas, “and it does not make you mad. But it seems to me that there is a far simpler possibility, and - you are familiar with William of Ockham, I trust? The simplest explanation is apt to be the correct one. Someone else killed him just before you came upon him.”
“But who?”
“You would know that better than I. Do you suspect anyone among the courtiers?”
Hamlet considered the question. Horatio, alone, had known why Claudius must die - but he could not imagine Horatio robbing him of the revenge that was his by right. Marcellus and Bernardo had seen his father’s ghost, though they had not heard his words; might one of them have suspected Claudius’s guilt? The other courtiers, for the most part, were worthless flatterers who seemed wholly loyal to Claudius - but flattery could often conceal ambition. It would be ironic, Hamlet thought, if Claudius had died at the hand of a man who hoped to steal his crown.
Very well, then: was there anyone who could reasonably expect to be elected king, with Claudius dead and Hamlet under suspicion of his murder? Polonius? But Polonius seemed to be taking pains to conceal the death, unless - Hamlet drew in his breath. He might be trying to buy enough time for Laertes to arrive from France - and Laertes, Hamlet realized, was not only a popular, charismatic young man but also a distant cousin of the royal family on his mother’s side. He probably could be elected king in the absence of a stronger claim.
Thomas’s voice broke into his thoughts. “By the way, I take it you meant to kill your uncle because you believe he murdered your father, as Feng murdered King Horwendil?”
Hamlet started. “Who told you that?”
“You did. Not in so many words, but you cannot have been ambitious for the throne, for you have made no attempt to claim it. What other motive could you have had but revenge? And besides, it was you who asked for The Murder of Gonzago to be played before him.”
“Yes. Yes, I believe - I know he murdered my father.”
“Might someone else have known it too, after he called for lights and stopped the play?”
“Perhaps.” Hamlet tried to remember who had been at the play that night. Horatio, but Horatio had already known. Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, two or three more of the courtiers: all Claudius’s creatures. Polonius, he supposed, might have felt some loyalty to his father, but he was too stupid to see the truth if it had been staring him in the face. Ophelia? She might be clever enough to work it out, but he could not conceive of Ophelia taking up a dagger and slitting a man’s throat. His mother?
Ockham’s razor, Hamlet thought grumpily, did not shave as closely as it was reputed to do.
* * *
Martha watched the first performance of The Tragedy of Amleth from behind the stage.
Judit had suggested that her mother play one of the court ladies, but Martha had vetoed the idea. They would need a prompter for a new play, especially one so long, and Frederik would also need her help with his costume changes. He had two very quick ones in the first act, and there were only minutes between his first exit as Marcellus and his entrance as the king. Martha held his royal robes so that he could step into them without a pause, and picked up his soldier’s helmet and halberk after he threw them on the tiring-room floor. Then she listened for the flourish that marked the king’s exit, so that she could have Marcellus’s things ready for him again. Then there was a moment of chaos in the tiring-room, with no fewer than seven actors backstage, most of them changing into costumes for new parts. So she saw nothing of the first two scenes; but she heard a burst or two of applause.
After that there were a few quiet minutes, when Frederik could rest.
“How goes it?” asked Martha, handing him a mug of small beer and a handkerchief.
He wiped the sweat from his face. “They seem to like it well enough. But it is still an impossible play. I know not what Judit was thinking when she divided the parts; Thomas was green enough not to notice it, but she ought to know better than to make a man exit and then re-enter at once!”
“She did what she must do. We have too few men.”
“Aye, I know, and a chit of a girl who thinks she knows better than all of them. If Constantine had but lived!” This was what Frederik always said when he was troubled about Thomas, or one of his living children, or the future of the company.
Martha said nothing. Constantine was their first son, who had died of a fever when he was four. It was not that she did not mourn him, but she did not share Frederik’s faith that he would have been the company’s salvation. As far as she could remember, the only times Constantine had showed much interest in the family business was when he was tagging after his adored older sister. It had been Judit who knew how the trapdoors and discovery spaces worked before she was three, and who had learned all the parts as soon as she could read well enough to prompt the actors.
Today Judit flitted in and out of the tiring-room, sometimes helping her mother, more often fussing about her own costumes. She had three brief and silent appearances in the character of one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting, a few moments in the crowd of actors, and then a single scene as the Player-Duchess: a woman playing a boy playing a woman. That was all she had been able to wring out of Frederik. She had tried to coax him into letting her play Cornelia, but he had given the part to Alexander - never mind that Alexander had enough trouble learning his lines as Ofelia. Judit had coached him patiently through the mad scenes. Frederik didn’t mind that; as far as he was concerned, a woman’s place in a theater company was everywhere, so long as it was behind the scenes. Martha had spent five-and-twenty years sewing costumes, looking after properties, watching rehearsals and giving her opinion, being a second mother to the prentices. Being an actor’s wife was busy but varied and pleasurable work, and she had been contented with it.
She wondered, sometimes, what was wrong with Judit that she was not contented - but as always, when her daughter stepped out on stage, she knew. Plays-within-plays were generally poorly written pastiches of theatrical fashions from twenty years ago, but Judit managed to wring pathos from the Player-Duchess’s hackneyed lines, and to make the woman’s grief and uncertainty real when the Poisoner wooed her in dumb-show. From behind the stage, Martha could see that audience’s eyes were on her - and not on King Feng, where they ought to have been. This was a fault, Martha knew; but one for which she was inclined to forgive her daughter.
“Who is the other boy-actor,” muttered one of the gallants seated at the edge of the stage, “and why haven’t they got him playing Ofelia?”
“Ofelia’s the head of the company’s son,” explained his companion.
“He ought not to favor his son. The other’s better.”
No, thought Martha sadly, he ought not, but in this case he must. After all, the world favored sons, and Frederik was not as bad as most men in this regard.
At any rate, no one would accuse him of undue favoritism in Max’s case. The older boy was playing the queen masterfully; there were audible gasps when she cried “Thou wilt not murder me,” and then not a sound from the audience, as Thomas and Max’s scene built to a climax.
“Flour! Nightgown!” said Henrik in a hoarse whisper. Martha started. She had been so absorbed in the scene herself that she had forgotten there was another quick costume change coming. Luckily, Judit already had it in hand, making Henrik’s face pale with the flour and helping him to change Corambis’s blood-stained doublet for the ghost’s gown.
“Get up, my lord,” said Martha to Prince Hamlet, who had been sitting slumped against the tiring-house wall with his eyes closed whenever he was not on stage. “‘Tis not long before you must enter as Rossencraft, and you are still dressed as the poisoner.”
“Oh, aye.” Hamlet didn’t open his eyes. “Goes it well?”
“Very well,” whispered Judit, flushed and starry-eyed. “Very, very well. Come, I’ll help you with your costume” - which was well, because the prince’s hands were shaking.
Thomas, thought Martha suddenly, had never feared the outcome of a performance too much to watch it. Thomas had done everything Frederik had ever asked of him with competence, professionalism, and not a trace of nerves. Which was another way of saying that the stage was not life or death to him; it was not his ruling passion.
She watched Judit’s hands as she undid the buttons at the prince’s throat, and was suddenly afraid of what might come of her daughter’s friendship with their patron.
* * *
“Go,” commanded Hamlet in his final role as Fortenbrasse, “bid the soldiers shoot.”
There was a peal of gunfire (produced by Alexander, who was in charge of everything involving firecrackers) and a moment of heavy silence. And then wild, tumultuous applause.
As Hamlet and Hans were bearing the king's body from the stage, Frederik whispered, "Oh, very well, I was wrong about this play. 'Tis not impossible at all, merely very difficult."
"Hush," said Hans, "you're dead."
But Frederik was in too good a humor to be silent. "They will not hear; and in five minutes' time, all the dead princes will rise and dance a jig. That is the beauty of what we do."
In my former profession, thought Thomas, as Henrik and one of the innkeeper's servants draped his body in black and bore him away, I could not do that.
* * *
Afterward, there was a general celebration in the inn’s taproom, and the English actors were present. Several of them spoke Latin, although they had learned it at grammar-school, so their conversation was rather full of poetry. Thomas, for his part, spoke some English, although he had learned it from his friend Master Bacon, so his conversation was rather full of science. One way or another, they managed to communicate.
“Tell me,” asked Thomas, “why is it that you travel in Denmark, when you cannot hope to perform here?”
“England’s too hot to hold us at the moment,” said Robin the clown, “thanks to my lord of Essex and that play of Will’s about the hunchback.”
“Not a hunchback,” corrected the head of the company. “Wrong Richard.”
“Well, sodomite, then. Everyone named Richard is either a hunchback or a sodomite, it seems. Which are you, Master Burbage?”
“I like to think of myself as a lionheart.”
“Sodomite, then,” said Robin promptly, to general laughter.
Master Burbage swatted at him as if he were a fly. “That play this afternoon was very well-liked, was it not? We did not understand much of it, but we could see that you acted the lead part well, and that it pleased the auditors.”
“Thank you,” said Thomas, glowing.
“What is the argument, pray?”
“Ah,” said Hamlet, “the argument is miching mallecho.”
“You will pardon me,” said one of the other English actors, “I do not speak ... Spanish?”
Thomas, feeling that this was a wholly incomprehensible answer even if you did speak Spanish, launched into a brief account of the plot of The Tragedy of Amleth.
One of the actors, a quiet, prematurely balding man, was listening to this summary with particular interest; several of the others elbowed him.
“Could you make something of it, Will?” Burbage asked the balding man in English.
“I could,” said Will, “with the Danish players’ permission, of course.” He turned to the Danish actors and said in Latin, “Might we have a copy of your playscript, in exchange for a comedy of our own? You need not fear that we will set ourselves up as rivals; we cannot perform it in Danish, but I believe we could find someone in London to make a rough translation, and you could translate ours, and so both companies would profit by the variety.”
“Will’s too modest to say it,” added the actor called Henry, “but the comedy is of his own making. He’s written some ten or a dozen of them, and the London audiences flock to them like sparrows to breadcrumbs. ‘Tis bound to fill the stalls in Denmark too, provided it is translated and acted well.”
“For my part, I make no objection,” said Thomas, “but the play is not mine to trade. You must ask Frederik, the head of our company.”
He communicated Will’s proposal in Danish to Frederik, who considered it carefully. Playscripts were a valuable commodity, usually kept tightly under the company’s control, but it was true that they seemed to have nothing to fear from actors who spoke no Danish - and the prospect of a new and fashionable comedy was tempting enough to overcome Frederik’s natural caution.
“Very well,” he said at last. “No performances in any country but England, and no translating the playscript or showing it to anybody until you are at home. You will show Thomas three of your most popular comedies, and he will make the selection. Are we agreed?”
Thomas translated this, and Will agreed.
“Thomas, try not to choose one with more than two parts for ladies.”
“That may be difficult,” said Will when this stipulation was communicated to him. “It may be that our climate lends itself to a preponderance of hunchbacks, but English audiences like ladies, particularly in a comedy.”
Frederik sighed. “No more than four, at any rate.” Will brightened, and said at once that this would not be a problem.
Despairing of the possibility that he could choose a comedy that would really please Frederik, Thomas finally selected one that he knew would please Judit.
* * *
“Your breakfast, sir,” said Ophelia.
Horatio hastened to take the tray from her. He felt guilty about allowing Ophelia to fetch and carry for him, but he knew it would attract attention if she did not behave like his page. He felt even more guilty about using her as a spy, but she had discovered very quickly that the pages gossiped among each other, and that a curious boy could ask questions that would attract attention from a grown man.
“Hear you any news among the boys?” he asked.
Ophelia nodded. “‘Tis said that some people are defying the quarantine, made bold because they know of no one who has taken the plague. There is even an inn in the next town where they are performing a play; some of the apprentices were talking of playing truant and going to see it this afternoon.”
“A play?” Horatio stopped buttering his bread and looked up abruptly. “Did they say which company it was?”
“Prince Hamlet’s Men, they said.”
It fit. Hamlet had disappeared at the same time the actors had left the palace, and he had loved going to plays above all things. And, of course, he was their patron; if he decided to travel with them, they would have felt bound to allow him.
“Pack your things when you’ve finished your breakfast,” he said. “We will see this play.”