She knew well enough herself that she was ill-suited to play the Egyptian queen—the part might much better have gone to Anne Marshall—but the idea had been Tom Killigrew’s and in her black wig with her eyes elongated by black pencil, a sleeveless sequin-spotted vest which just covered her breasts and a thin scarlet silk skirt slit to the knees in front, she had attracted an overflowing house for the past week and a half. Most productions were limited to three or four days, because so small a part of the London population attended plays, but some of the young men had been back four or five times to see this Cleopatra. They were used to a woman’s breasts being displayed in public, but not her hips and buttocks and legs. Every time she walked onto the stage there were whistles and murmurs and the most unabashed comments, but the boxes had been noticeably empty and the ladies were said to have protested they could not tolerate so lewd and immodest a display.
Amber more than half expected trouble and was prepared for it, but though the atmosphere was undoubtedly tense, everything went as usual until the last scene of the last act. Then, as she stood waiting at the side of the stage for her cue to go on, both Beck and Anne Marshall came to stand beside her, Beck on her right, Anne slightly in back. Amber gave Beck a careless glance but continued to watch the stage where the men—in their great plumed head-dresses which told an audience that this was tragedy being performed—were deciding Cleopatra’s fate.
“Well, madame,” said Beck. “Let me offer my congratula-251 tions. You’ve progressed mightily, they tell me—to be kept by only one man now.”
Amber looked at her sharply, and then said with an air of profound boredom: “Lord, madame, you should see your ’pothecary. I swear you’re turned quite green.”
At that instant a pin pricked her from behind and she gave an angry start, but before she had time to say anything Mohun came off the stage, scowled, and muttered at them to go on. With Beck on one side and Mary Knepp on the other Amber walked out, proclaiming in a loud clear voice:
“My desolation does begin to make
A better life. ’Tis paltry to be Caesar ...”
But for the commotion in the audience, the last scene progressed smoothly—through Cleopatra’s dialogue with Caesar, her decision to end her life, the trial suicide of Iras, and then Cleopatra’s own seizure of the pâpier-maché asp, which she addressed in full dramatic tones:
“With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie; poor venomous fool ...”
While Beck, as the faithful serving-woman who could not bear her mistress’s death, ran distractedly about the stage, Amber applied the asp beneath her vest and heard a young man down in Fop Corner remark, “I’ve seen this six times. That viper should be weaned by now.”
She clenched her teeth and shut her eyes as in a sudden spasm of pain. But she did not take her tragic parts very seriously and had to resist the inclination to laugh.
After standing motionless for a long moment she began to turn slowly in her death agony. Halfway around, she was arrested by a sudden barking shout of laughter from nearby. And then the sound was repeated from hundreds of throats. It swept on up through the boxes to the galleries beneath the roof, growing ever louder and noisier as it rose, until it seemed to fill the theatre and to come from all sides at once, hammering against her with an almost physical force.
Instinctively conscious that the laughter was directed at her, Amber swung quickly about, putting her hand to the back of her skirt. And though she half expected to find it torn open, she felt there instead a piece of cardboard and ripped it off, sailing it furiously across the stage. Beneath and before and above her she saw a blur of faces, a seemingly endless vista of opened mouths, and at the same instant the apprentices began to beat their cudgels and stamp their feet and a roaring chant went up:
“My tail’s
For sale.
Half-a-crown
Will lay me down!”
Half-crown pieces had begun to ring upon the stage and Amber felt them pelting her sharply, hitting her from every side. The men were climbing onto their benches, shouting at the top of their lungs; the ladies had put on their masks but were shaking with laughter; from top to bottom the theatre was a bedlam of noise and confusion—though not more than forty seconds had passed since Amber’s unlucky turn.
“You lousy bitch!” Amber ground the words through her clenched teeth. “I’ll break your head for this!”
With a hysterical titter Beck started off the stage at a run and, just as the curtains swished frantically together, Amber went after her as fast as she could go, yelling, “Come back here, you damned coward!”
