The Hated Cage by Nicholas Guyatt

Author:Nicholas Guyatt [Guyatt, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2022-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

9.

Prison Four

One evening in November 1814, Frank Palmer went to the theatre. He left Prison Seven and walked to the passageway by the market square, then made a right through the central yard and into Prison Four. It was already dark outside, but the prisoners hadn’t yet slung up their hammocks and the shopkeepers were still selling their wares from tables running the length of the building. Rumour had it that alcohol was easier to find in Four; gambling was certainly more prevalent than in the other prison blocks, though card tables would pop up everywhere in Dartmoor that winter. In truth, the only major difference between this and the other blocks was that nearly all of the men who lived in Prison Four were Black.1

Nearly, but not quite all. And tonight, with a performance in the cockloft at the top of the prison, the crowd was noisy and mixed. Black and white sailors streamed up the staircases to the third floor, where the show was about to begin. Palmer had only been in Dartmoor for six weeks. Older hands would have known that the makeshift theatre was where the Romans had performed their diabolical ministries and where Black sailors had taken residence after the Americans were segregated along racial lines in October 1813. Black prisoners kept company with the Romans and Dartmoor’s other misfits for seven months afterwards, until the general release of the French in May 1814. With no further need for the costumes, makeup, and theatrical scenery they had painstakingly assembled during their five years in the prison, French prisoners happily sold everything to the Black residents of Four. During the next year, as Dartmoor filled up with Americans, a group of white prisoners regularly staged plays in the cockloft of Prison Five. But everyone knew that the theatre in Four was the place to be.2

Tickets were sixpence each. Palmer paid at the top of the stairs but quickly realised that ‘a ticket was of very little service.’ Every seat was taken, and enthusiastic theatregoers were already standing in the aisles or sitting on the front of the stage. ‘Such another crowding you never saw,’ Palmer told his journal. When he’d finally found a place to stand, ‘a great Negro about seven feet high’ stepped right in front of him. Fortunately, someone found the tall man a chair, and ‘when he sat down ’twas with difficulty I could see over his head.’ None of this mattered when the play began: the ‘scenery was very good, and so was the performance.’3

The players presented a double bill. First came George Colman’s Heir at Law, a comedy of manners which premiered in London in 1797. The central character, a pompous and rapacious conman named Doctor Pangloss, preyed on the wealthy by charging outrageous fees to tutor their children. To persuade his credulous employers that he was a man of learning, he would shoehorn endless quotations from literature into his conversation, then immediately identify their provenance: ‘“Lend me your ears.”—Shakespeare, again.

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