Chapter Sixteen

In which there is yet another
outbreak of the plague, we
perform Macbeth before King
James and King Christian of
Denmark, and I offer a brief
look at my life off the stage

In July, the theaters were shut down because of the plague, forcing us once again to lower the flag at the Globe and lock our doors. In the outbreak of two years earlier, more than thirty thousand residents of London had lost their lives, forcing the Privy Council to order that all public playing would cease when deaths in the course of one week rose above thirty. In the summer of 1606, deaths reached a height of 116 during the last week of August before the disease, as it had so often before, ran its course with the return of colder weather.

This was one of many epidemics I witnessed during my life, and although, praise be to God, I was fortunate enough never to have fallen ill, I still remained fearful that like my brother William and many of my classmates at home and acquaintances in the city, I would fall victim.

It was a disease that could only have been sent by the Devil himself, for the suffering it caused its victims was beyond all human reckoning and, apparently, beyond the power of God himself to ease except unto death.

A fever of unimaginable intensity was the first sign that one had fallen ill. The sufferer’s heartbeat became rapid, making it impossible to catch one’s breath. Severe, even excruciating pain began in the back and legs, and the throat became parched and dry with a thirst impossible to quench. Some victims suffered from an inability to walk properly; others from great unrelenting pain in nearly every part of the body. Next there were eruptions of plague sores found around the victim’s armpits, neck and groin. These sores often swelled up until they burst, causing such agonizing pain that victims with alarming regularity took their own lives rather than suffer any longer — a mortal sin for which, I pray, God would forgive them.

In the last days of the disease, it became impossible to speak normally, and because of constant pain and fever, the victims raved like lunatics or became delirious, before, finally and blessedly, their hearts gave out and their agonies came to a merciful end.

It is no wonder then that when the plague struck, panic-stricken residents of the city fled to the surrounding countryside, for not only was the disease itself to be dreaded, but during the worst days, if anyone in your house fell ill, everyone else in the house was held under quarantine along with them. A cross was painted on the doorway to warn others to stay away, while all residing there were forced to remain inside until the disease ran its course, or until, as was more often the case, all inside succumbed.

And although the days when the epidemics were at their worst appear to have come to an end, I shall never forget what those years were like — the moans and shrieks and screams of agony emanating from the houses under quarantine; the smell of death everywhere as bodies piled up too quickly to be disposed of by city authorities; and finally, the creaking wheels of the carts making their way slowly down the near-empty streets, piled high with corpses, with more added as the drivers of the carts (employed at a profession I cannot imagine myself doing even at the threat of death) cried out, “Bring down your dead.”

We were fortunate to be out of London for the worst of it, with performances at Oxford and Leicester, at Marlborough and Dover and Maidstone, and, of primary importance, at Greenwich and Hampton Court before King James and his most honored guest, King Christian IV of Denmark.

We stayed several days at Greenwich, where King James spent what appeared to be a goodly fortune and then some in hosting King Christian, who was the brother of his wife, Queen Anne. Much to everyone’s sorrow, she had recently suffered the loss of her newborn daughter, Sophia, who had during the previous month been interred at Westminster Abbey.

Even with the gloom and pall of Sophia’s death hanging overhead, the festivities were of a kind, I was told, reminiscent of the descriptions of paradise common among Mohammedans. There were women of great beauty, and there were magnificent feasts.

On one occasion wines and liquors of the highest quality were so plentiful that even the ladies of the court abandoned their good sobriety and could be seen rolling about on the ground in a state of utter intoxication, much to the amusement of King Christian, as well as the seeming dismay of King James, who, it must be said, did not appear to enjoy the festivities as much as did the others.

On one such evening, after our afternoon’s performance of Hamlet, in which I personated Ophelia, presenting a tragedy about the prince of Denmark in front of the current king of Denmark, we were invited to remain to watch the evening’s entertainment. It was a masque that told the story of the Queen of Sheba, not so much through the use of language as with Master Shakespeare, but through poetry, song, costume and dance.

But alas, this performance ended in disaster due to the copious amounts of drinking by the masque’s amateur performers. The lady who played the role of the Queen of Sheba, while carrying precious gifts to the two kings in the audience, miscounted the steps, or so it seemed, dropping the presents into the king of Denmark’s lap before falling completely atop of him. Naturally there was much confusion and shouting for servants and napkins, and after His Majesty’s clothing and person were put back in reasonable order, he rose to dance with the Queen of Sheba but himself fell down, caused, I was later told, by many hours of feasting and drinking. He was carried into the palace and laid on his bed, his garments, as a servant breathlessly told us later that night, still covered by the remains of the wine, cream, jelly, cakes and other goodly consumables that the queen had bestowed upon him. Despite his hasty departure from the festivities, the entertainment continued, even though the participants who were in a state of drunkenness outnumbered those who were not by an increasingly sizable amount.

And again, truth be told, our performance of Macbeth at Hampton Court in August, while I believe effective, was difficult for all of the performers since, once more, the members of the court had enjoyed a goodly amount of wine and strong spirits before the play began. The majority of the audience talked among themselves during the drama, and by the end of the play, the soft snores of His Majesty King James I could distinctly be heard during Burbage’s final speeches.

By late October the plague had finally retreated in London, so after several months’ touring, we returned home to begin work on new plays — plays that we would rehearse and perform at the Globe in preparation for our command performances for the king over the Christmas-Candlemas season.

I suggested at the opening of this chapter that I would begin to speak of my life off the stage. But, truth be told, during this period, I had no life apart from the theater. The hours working at the Globe were long, and I was playing different roles on stage as often as six days a week, leaving me no time of my own in which to explore London, to meet new people and to make new friends, or even, unfortunately, to spend time with friends I had already made.

On rare occasions, I would not be so exhausted at the end of the day that I would then go for supper at a nearby tavern with one or another of my fellow players at the Globe. On even rarer occasions, I would be able to spend time with Alexander, now the father of two, who while exhausted himself and still somewhat aggrieved that my roles were now exceeding his both in length and importance, would come with me to dine and drink. On those nights when his consumption of beer was high, as was more and more often the case, rather than make the longer journey to his own home, he would come with me to Heminges’s where he would, as in our younger days, share my bed and hold me safe and warm in his arms.

Those nights were infrequent and grew even more so as Christmas approached. Despite the fact that my new role in Barnabe Barnes’s The Devil’s Charter, which related the story of the bloodthirsty Borgia family of Italy, was compared to roles I had previously undertaken relatively straightforward, it still involved a great deal of time to prepare.

As I read through and learned my role, it became evident that there were strong similarities between Lucrezia Borgia and Lady Macbeth, similarities that would help me in my portrayal. They begin early on when Lucrezia calls upon the spirits, as did the lady, to help her as she prepares not to kill the king, but her own husband, Gismond:

You grisly daughters of grim Erebus,

Which spit out vengeance from your viperous hairs,

Infuse a three-fold vigour in these arms,

Immarble more my strong, indurate heart,

To consummate the plot of my revenge.

These lines lacked, I noted even then, the poetic subtlety that Master Shakespeare had imparted to the lady. But as an actor, I could see and appreciate how the more direct approach of Barnes, if spoken with the proper amount of unlady-like ferocity, might please and excite an audience in ways that Shakespeare could not.

And again, in what I saw as my best scene, when I, or Lucrezia as it were, stabs her husband in such a manner as to stir the emotions of the audience, while lacking Shakespeare’s consummate artistry, there was for me, as an actor, an opportunity to shout and gesticulate straight upwards to the heavens. After placing my hand over my husband’s mouth to prevent him from speaking or crying out for help, I pull out his dagger with a grand gesture and most kindly offer to gag him:

Peace, wretched villain! Then receive this quickly:

Or by the living powers of heaven I’ll kill thee!

After gagging him, I was to take a piece of paper out of my bosom and order him to write the words that would let the world know that I was innocent of any sins I had previously been accused of, and that he had taken his life by his own hand. I was then to tell him with a flourish and as much bravado as I could muster that he would die by my hand alone, and while feverishly acting, stab him six times.

After much more evildoing, Lucrezia is herself poisoned, which again granted me the opportunity to play on the grandest scale imaginable. But I can now see clearly that the drama lacked what Shakespeare gave to Macbeth — poetry and artistry, along with the sense that the lady, for all her faults most grievous, was still human, something that Barnes was not able to or did not care to impart to Lucrezia.

I feel a foul stink in my nostrils;

Some stink is vehement and hurts my brain;

My cheeks both burn and sting. Give me my glass.

Out, out, for shame! I see the blood itself

Dispersed and inflame’d! Give me some water!

…

My brains intoxicate, my face is scalded!

Hence with the glass! Cool, cool my face! Rank poison

Is minister’d to bring me to my death!

I feel the venom boiling in my veins!

…

Who painted my fair face with these foul spots?

You see them in my soul, deformed blots!

Lines such as these, I must allow, were both easier to remember and easier to present to an audience than those of Shakespeare. Indeed, it was the lack of depth in Lucrezia’s character that made it in some ways a relief to portray her. She lacked a complex character that I would need to understand fully in order to successfully personate her on stage, so I was able to rely solely on oratory, reading her lines as mere empty words. The acting advice Master Shakespeare had given me on the occasion of our first meeting was useless in playing Lucrezia; indeed, doing the opposite of what he taught would be the only way to play her. It was in some ways a respite to me as an actor to just, as it were, act.

However, I must also allow that the challenge of playing Shakespeare’s characters stirred something in me that personating Barnes’s characters did not. Working to understand Shakespeare’s characters, and working on finding something within myself that would help me to understand and personate them, brought me the deepest satisfaction.

I was now, I say with some amount of pride, at the moment of my career in which playing a female role had become a simple matter of allowing myself to become female. The challenge now was in playing a female who was very different from myself.

The next role I took on, one written again with me in mind by Master Shakespeare, would be, I think, the most challenging I dared to undertake.