Meg’s fears were unfounded. Both she and Will were welcomed into Burbage’s company. His best player had suffered a concussion in a brawl and could not even remember his own name, so Will was needed to act as well as write plays. Burbage agreed to Meg’s stipulation; thus all the players knew her for a woman and were as courteous to her as their rough natures allowed. Meg liked her fellows, especially Bumpass, the clown with the remarkable ability to produce a hundred different sounds by farting, and Wagstaff, a handsome youth who played all the women’s roles. The boy was especially glad of Meg’s presence, for he was getting a beard and thought himself ready for a man’s role. Little Richard Burbage was his father’s factotum. He took quickly to Meg, bringing her sweets and offering to do whatever she asked him. Around him Meg felt like a queen. The only fly in the ointment was Rankin Hightower, whose stage name belied his base origins as the son of a butcher. He fancied himself more talented than anyone, especially Will.
James Burbage kept Meg and Will close to him and daily maligned the proprietors of the Curtain, a rival playhouse. “He is afraid of them luring us away,” said Will to Meg. “That’s how much he regards us.”
“We must prove ourselves worthy of that regard,” said Meg. She hesitated to believe their good fortune, which was compounded by the absence of William Burbage from the playhouse. Meg asked Bumpass where he had gone.
“Just before you fell in with our company, it befell that William and the master had a falling out,” explained Bumpass, miming the act of stumbling.
Meg took up residence in a tiny cottage in Shoreditch while Will shared a room with one of Burbage’s employees, a carpenter named Tom Makeshift. By night Will wrote new scenes and by day the actors rehearsed them, vying for the best lines and the most important parts. Only Meg made no demands, for she saw how tense Will was, how desperate to succeed. She memorized all the players’ lines, her brain soaking up Will’s words as a sponge soaks up water. She knew by listening when a line did not sound just right, but she never said anything to Will. Invariably he would change it.
Three weeks quickly passed and on the seventh day of November, heralded by trumpet and with flags waving atop the amphitheater, Will’s Tragedy of Cleopatra saw its first performance. The galleries were filled and the groundlings stood shoulder to shoulder. Peering from behind the curtain Meg saw Burbage’s wealthy patron, the Earl of Leicester, seated on a gilded chair on the stage. Beside him on stools sat Master Overby and Gwin, looking as proud as royalty. Will had insisted they be thus honored and admitted free of charge because Overby had been deprived of the income from Will’s play. There were several patrons of the Boar’s Head in the audience. Violetta—for Meg still thought of her by that name—and Thomas Valentine waved from the second gallery. Among the groundlings stood Jane Ruffneck. Ned, Dab, and Grabwill Junior rested their chins on the stage. Meg longed to please them all, though her heart was jumping like a frog and she feared she might throw up.
When she stepped onstage as Cleopatra, wearing a wig of black hair, she heard the chanting start up: “Long Meg! Long Meg!” She held her queenly attitude for a long moment before speaking. Will entered, armed as Antony, and the Boar’s Head crowd shouted: “Will! Will! Shake your spear!” Meg struggled to keep from smiling. Behind the curtain Burbage would be dancing a jig, for his new players were causing a sensation and the noble Leicester was a witness to it.
It was the final act. Antony fell on his sword. Bumpass and three centurions hoisted Will to their shoulders, carefully avoiding the sheep’s blood he squeezed from a bladder onto the stage.
“I am dying, Egypt, dying,” Will said, moaning as they laid him on the platform where Cleopatra knelt. “Give me some wine and let me speak a little.”
Meg put a cup to Will’s lips, and the red liquid spilled out again. She touched her lips to Will’s forehead, then to his cheek. She could hear the audience snuffling wetly as if an ague had seized them all.
“O quicken again with kissing! Had my lips that power, I would wear them out,” Meg said and kissed Will, closing her eyes and thinking of anything but his lips lest she forget her next lines.
Will was borne away and Rankin strode onstage as the conquering Caesar. Loud booing greeted him. “Caesar’s a merchant that makes a prize of you,” he said to Cleopatra with contempt. Meg knew he was supposed to say “Caesar’s no merchant, to make a prize of you.” She heard Will behind the curtain, fuming that he was debasing the noble Caesar. But she knew that for all Rankin’s strutting, Cleopatra’s would be the final victory.
“Give me my robe, put on my crown; I have immortal longings in me,” she said.
Wagstaff as Iras minced up the stairs to the platform aloft, carrying a basket. Meg stooped as he put the crown on her head. From the basket she drew out the effigy of a snake. Hidden beneath the stage, Bumpass shook a gourd full of dried peas to moke the hissing sound that filled the amphitheater.
“O thou speak’st and calls great Caesar an ass, outdone in craftiness!” Meg said, imitating the serpent’s hiss. She twisted the effigy in her hand to make it writhe. She saw Gwin’s mouth open, a wide, dark O, and heard a hundred gasps as she brought the snake to the hollow of her throat.
“Peace, peace,” she purred, as if imploring the audience. “But see the baby at my breast, that sucks the nurse asleep. As sweet as balm its bite, as soft as air—” With all eyes in the theater raised to her, she sank to the platform with her arms dangling over the stage below.
The rumor that a woman was performing at the Theatre proved a boon to business. The Puritans descended to decry bawdiness, gay apparel, and all forms of deceit, but their preaching and pamphlets only stirred up more interest in the play. The London authorities were powerless to enforce their prohibitions, for the playhouse was beyond the city limits. Nor did the queen show much rigor, for she was said to enjoy plays as much as anyone. Nevertheless a cautious Burbage posted his son at the door to warn him if someone from the Revels Office arrived. He might be a friend wanting to commission a performance or a foe bent on censorship. If the latter, Burbage would replace Meg with one of the other players, and the censor would depart scratching his head.
Between performances and rehearsals, Will and Meg were often in each other’s company trying out their new friendship. Gradually their conversation grew easier. Meg told Will about her parents’ misfortunes, her exploits with Davy and Peter, and her long-held secret, which had lost its power when she learned the crime was Roger’s, not her mother’s. Will talked about his family and described Stratford so vividly, Meg felt she knew the town. Once he spoke of the Hathaway sisters and when Meg grew silent, fighting jealousy, he changed the subject.
“Why don’t I teach you to write and read?” he offered. “You can be my scribe.”
“I would have to write very fast to pin down your quick words,” said Meg, smiling. But she was delighted to let Will instruct her and enjoyed the hours they spent in the tiring room after everyone had left the Theatre. They bowed their heads together, sharing the candlelight, their ink-stained fingers sometimes touching as Will guided her hand.
Will was amazed. “How quickly you learn! I was right to prize your wit.”
“I can’t deceive you, Will! I’ve been copying letters on my own and teaching myself,” she confessed. “I memorize the parts by listening and later match them to your written pages.”
He drew back in surprise. “You don’t need me then.”
“O but I do, because I don’t know when I make a mistake.”
“And I need you for the same reason,” he said, sighing.
Meg would put down her pen and listen while ideas sprouted like grass from Will’s fertile brain. She watered the good ideas and plucked the weedy ones. This was what it meant to be a muse.
One day while Meg was doing an inventory of costumes, Will looked up from his writing and said out of the blue, “I miss my old friend Mack.” He twirled a man’s cap on the tip of his finger. “Do you?”
Meg was a little hurt. Why should Will miss Mack when he had her?
“No. It was confusing being Mack. I am more useful to you now, aren’t I?” Not liking to beg for praise, she quickly added, “Give me that cap. It needs new feathers.”
Will held up two buff jerkins and helmets trimmed with metal.
“Come, let’s don this soldier’s garb and seek out an adventure to feed my poet’s fancy.”
Meg saw the light of mischief in his eyes. She countered by tossing a wig and skirt in his direction. “You wear the disguise this time. I’ll take you where you shall overhear enough privy news to pen a dozen scenes with Mistress Bicker and Goodwife Tattle.”
Will threw the costume back at Meg. “I’ve heard women gossipping all my life in Stratford. I kept a stall in the marketplace.”
“That does not mean you know what it is to be a woman.” Meg pressed the skirt against Will’s chest. “I am your muse. I know what is good for you.” She was good-natured but serious. “We’ll stroll through Southwark as two doxies, and you shall witness firsthand how women endure men’s fleering and abuse.”
“But … but …,” Will stammered.
“Do you disdain to play the part of a woman?” she asked.
“I do not see the purpose in it,” he blurted.
Would he never learn? “You lately told me I was as good as any man you knew,” she said. “It was being Mack that made me a stronger Meg.”
Will seemed confused. “Therefore I should become a woman to make me a softer Will?”
How could she explain the need? The sexes were not equal. For Meg to behave as a man was brave; Will had admired her for it. But the idea of Will as a woman was simply comical, even to Meg. Still, the reversal was only fair.
“Yes you should,” she said firmly. “There’s no harm in it.”
Will only smiled. “Wherefore do I have you, Meg, if not to teach me what women want from us?” he said with such a gentle manner that Meg could not be angry with him.
At every performance of The Tragedy of Cleopatra the Theatre was filled. Barely a week after it opened a stroke of good fortune befell Burbage’s company, sending Will and Meg to the Boar’s Head to celebrate with their old companions. Any ill feeling over their departure seemed already forgotten. Gwin doted on Ned and Grabwill Junior as she once did Meg and Violetta. Meg cornered young Grabwill and made him understand that if he stole so much as a pie from the oven she would make him regret it. Jane reported that Roger Ruffneck had confessed to killing the priest, and Davy and Peter were still in prison. But Will was past caring about revenge, eager instead to describe the scene of his new triumph.
“Meg was still onstage being applauded, and I was in the tiring room with Burbage when Lord Leicester burst in,” said Will.
“He was at three performances this week. Burbage was on tenterhooks the whole time,” Meg added.
“Leicester demanded a play for the queen on the twelfth night of Christmas. ‘This one is too tragical,’ he said, ‘dealing as it does with a defeated queen’s suicide. But whoever penned it shall write a new one for me.’ ”
Recounting the story made Will flush with pleasure, which in turn made Meg happy.
“Burbage put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Here is the author, my newest player, a very skillful man with words.’ ”
Master Overby thumped the table in approval. Will downed the rest of his ale before continuing his tale.
“Then Burbage promised Leicester a comedy of mistaken love and disguising, accompanied with song to delight Her Majesty.”
Meg knew what Burbage was thinking. He had described to her the play he wanted Will to write. The plot would follow their late adventures.
Will winked at Meg and went on. “Burbage told Leicester he had one who could act the woman’s part so well the queen would not know whether to laugh or weep. Leicester nodded and said, ‘He who plays Cleopatra, you mean.’ ”
Gwin squealed and pinched Meg’s cheek with her fat fingers.
Meg forced herself to smile. Her heart pounded when she thought of performing before the queen.
“Does Leicester know Meg is a woman?” asked Violetta, a crease marring her happy brow.
Meg had asked Burbage the same question, and now she repeated his reply. “It matters not what Leicester knows. All that matters is the queen’s pleasure.”
Still, she worried. And what if the queen is displeased?
Will lunged at the opportunity for renown. But Meg felt turmoil. How could she perform the very deceits she had forsworn? Could she play herself and Mack, reenact her own life? She might as well go naked on the stage and proclaim her true feelings to all the world! But she must do it. She had a contract with Burbage and an obligation to the company. Will was also counting on her.
“You must give the lovers a happy ending like ours, Will,” said Violetta, gazing at Thomas adoringly.
Meg was happy for them yet wistful. I must think of her as Lady Olivia now.
“Of course it will end in marriage, being a comedy,” Will said.
He smiled at Meg, giving her a look so full of assurance it made her spirits rise and her cheeks turn pink. She was Will’s treasured muse! He would not write a part too difficult or painful for her to play. Moreover he promised a happy ending to their tale. Meg would act out deceit and loss but also truth and the discovery of love. Who could fail to be overjoyed by the possibilities of art and life conjoined?
“Will, your play shall please the queen and so shall I,” Meg said, reckless with sudden hope. “And if the queen discerns my womanhood, she will be delighted to see one of her own sex on the stage. Is she not also a player? Her stage is the world.”
Gwin nodded in amazement. “I remember when she was crowned. You said a woman could not rule England.” She frowned at her husband.
“Women are capable of anything, my love,” said Overby.
“Huzzah, Long Meg!” shouted Will. “To England’s first woman player.”
Why not? thought Meg. It followed common sense and perfect reason that she, as well as Will, could pursue a life on the stage.