Will by Christopher Rush

Author:Christopher Rush
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

31

I didn’t go to the Theatre myself. I went home instead, sat down among the morning’s breadcrumbs and bits of bacon and stared at the wall, two feet from my face. I closed my eyes. I could still see Hartley’s insides slopped out on the scaffold beside him, steaming like puddings in a pile. I could see his heart still twitching in the hangman’s raised fist. His privities had been thrown off the stage after being plucked from his dead gaping mouth. The dogs devoured them. Then out came the big choppers. They were going to quarter the corpse. Soon it would be a gutted torso, two arms, two legs, a severed head, for distribution, moral exhortation, political instruction, and dire threat.

Right then a huge roar went up from the nearby Theatre. Alleyn had come onstage as Tamburlaine. He was Burbage’s for the day – that would change when he married Miss Henslowe. But for the next two hours the Theatre belonged to the scourge of God. Put but money in thy purse, Will, a voice in my head advised me. Any company that puts on your play is a good company, the gob of the groundlings in Finsbury Fields, and the spit turning to silver in Southwark. Put but money in thy purse. Another roar, and a rabble rolled past my window, singing hoarsely. By the sound of them they’d been too drunk even to make it into the performance and were out on the rampage instead. Somebody shouted ‘Fuck Tamburlaine!’ And somebody else ‘Fuck the Papists!’ Then the tune changed to ‘Fuck the Spaniards!’ and the chant was taken up.

The cries grew fainter. I shut my eyes again. It all went round in my head: Tarleton, Hartley, Jackie Vautrollier, Marlowe, Tamburlaine, the Armada, the drunken crowd, fuck the Pope, fuck Parma, long live the Queen! I swept aside the breadcrumbs with my sleeve, dipped a quill into the inkpot and held it over the paper. It didn’t drip and I knew this would be a good pen and one without blots. Excellent, i’faith! I knew precisely what I was going to write. The Muse had flashed her garter at me and the urge had struck, sudden and sweet as Marlowe’s Elysium, hot as Marlowe’s hell. I could feel it like lust. That crowd down there in the street, full of blind energy and leonine pride – it was loose in London and it had no theatre for its will. It needed a stage. It needed to see itself up there. It needed a glass and a chronicler of the time. The future was out there.

Look out of the window, Will, and what do you see? A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene. Look in the streets and write. Look in Holinshed. Read and hear. Fuck Tamburlaine! Fuck the Spaniards! Fuck France! Long live England! England forever. You said it, sirs. The answer to Marlowe was ringing in my ears. It was the noise of the national theatre.

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