Rushes on the floor, rustling underfoot. Fire roaring in the hearth. Something savory roasting—sometimes, something once savory but now forgotten and scorching—over the fire. On a bright morning, the shadow of St. Paul’s slowly sliding back and away as the sun climbs higher. Small, sweet curls of smoke rising now and then from a pipe of tobacco in the hand of a man of newfangled habit. Always, always, ale in the air. Sometimes, too, the acrid aftermath from a man who’s had all he can hold and one more tankard besides, and cannot dash to the street quick enough to give it back to the gutter.
Bread Street. The Mermaid Tavern. 1606. A new century taking hold, and a new king.
Sunset coming—no, sunset here. One of the serving maids goes from table to table, lighting candles from a twig she’s thrust into the fire. She is a pretty little thing, just about ripe—fifteen, maybe even sixteen. The theatre folk who’ve crowded several tables together near the hearth slow their banter for a moment to ogle her.
When the banter picks up again, someone mentions
“Well, it is.” If Shakespeare sounds touchy, who can blame him? Sure as the devil, who remembers the poet? “What of it?”
“Some play to be given on the morrow called it to my mind. What names gave you that pair of Danes, the old friends to Hamlet?”
“Why, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz,” Shakespeare answers—names common as Baker and Johnson amongst the lesser Danish nobility.
“So I thought.” The player nods to himself. “The pair of ’em figure in tomorrow’s performance at the Rose.”
Rage rips through Shakespeare. “May Satan scour all whoreson cullionly barbermongers! Milk-livered, scurvy villains! They will steal, sir, an egg out of a cloister. But their filching is like an unskillful singer, for they keep not time. And meseems they pillage from
He hates the horrible botch a printer made of the play. The man must have got what passes for the text from an actor in the production—one who does not know it very well. And all Shakespeare can do is complain. Go to law over a pirated quarto? There is no law to go to in such cases. Even if there were, it would cost more than he can ever hope to squeeze from a rascally printer!
He turns to his friends and his fellow topers in the Mermaid. “Shall we by our silence give them leave to do what they will with mine own words? Or shall we take arms against this sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?”
He cribs from himself, from the very play the wretches at the Rose purloin. Does anyone cheer his cleverness? Does anyone so much as notice? The ale has been going around for some little while, and nobody seems inclined to care about such things—not even Richard Burbage, who first gave the lines life on stage. But some muzzy shouts and raised tankards more or less promise he won’t beard the bandits alone tomorrow afternoon.
More or less. Sometimes more. Sometimes less. Less today. Shakespeare waits outside the Rose. He waits, and waits, and waits some more. His friends? His fellow topers? They must have something else to do. Wherever they may be, here they are not.
“Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly,” Shakespeare mutters. Which is true. And which does him no good whatever.
The signboard mocks him. It is not put there deliberately for that purpose . . . he supposes. Or maybe it is. Without his friends—and fellow topers—at his side, at his back, he feels less sure of . . . well, of everything. Deliberately placed or not, there it is.
Shakespeare grinds his teeth, which pains him—one has started to ache. He keeps putting off a trip to the dentist. Who in his right mind does not? As well visit the torturers in the Tower, and pay for the privilege besides. But part of the hurt lies in his spirit. Not content with stealing his characters, this very superficial, ignorant, infected Stoppard has taken his line as well, and taken it for a title.
And Shakespeare has to spend a penny to get into the Rose to see precisely what Stoppard has done to him. He would like to spend a penny on the back of the bacon-fed, malmsy-nose knave, or on the blackguard’s face. Now, though, he can only hand the prentice villain at the door his coin and go in with everyone else out for an afternoon’s amusement.
He takes some somber satisfaction in noting what a tumbledown wreck the theatre is. If only it could have tumbled down altogether before offering this abortion! The Globe, no more than a furlong distant, puts it to shame. Yes, the Rose deserves a fire.
