Ruled Britannia

made two more cry out in sympathy. If one screamed, others always followed. And he was good enough to make that first one scream.

He had no lines here, or in his next couple of appearances. He had but to stand, looking ominous and menacing, till his cue to stalk off, and then go below once more. One of the tireman's helpers crawled out to bring him another bowl full of bits of paper and a fresh candle. 'You nigh gasted them out of their hose, Master Shakespeare,' he whispered.

'Good,' Shakespeare whispered back. 'Get thee gone.' The tireman's helper went back the way he'd come. Shakespeare crouched in the smoke under the stage, fuming a little himself. I'd best know how to frighten them with the ghost, he thought. If not I, then who? He had failed once or twice: he'd been bad, or the audience had been bad, or who could say what had gone wrong? He didn't dwell on the failures. Every player had them, in every role. But he'd made the most of the part far more often. And so I shall again today.

He hadn't long to brood. The ghost appeared again in the first scene, and again vanished without a word.

Then he appeared once more in the fourth scene of the first act. He was once more silent, but he beckoned to Burbage as the astonished Prince of Denmark.

The fifth scene was his. He had to vanish once more at the end of the fourth, then come back up on stage through a trap door closer to the tiring room. And he had his lines, urging the Prince to action against his murderous uncle. Shakespeare spoke them in a rumbling, echoing voice that might indeed have come from beyond the grave. Gasps and a couple of muffled squeals told him his words and looks were striking home. He remembered to use the gesture Burbage had liked during the rehearsal. The other player beamed. Shakespeare wasn't sure it really added anything, but it pleased Burbage and it didn't hurt.

'Adieu, adieu, adieu!' Shakespeare said. 'Remember me.' He stretched the words out into something close to a wail, then sank through the trap door. By that time, the space under the stage was so full of smoke, it wasn't far from the sulphurous and tormenting flames to which the ghost said he must render himself up. He had a few lines from below later in the scene, and then an appearance in the third act, where the Prince could see him but his mother could not. After that, eyes stinging, he retreated to the tiring room. 'Have a care with the robe, Master Will, do,' Jack Hungerford said. 'Here, sit you down. I'll get it off you.' Once the robe was safe, he added, 'Well played. I've rarely seen you better in the part.'

'For which I thank you.' Shakespeare rubbed his streaming eyes. ' 'Swounds, give me a bowl of water, that I may wash away the smoke.' He coughed. Now he could, without marring the play.

'You'll take off the chalk with water, but not the black,' the tireman warned. 'I have a cake of soap for that.'

'Give it me, but plain water first.'

Shakespeare was drying his face on a grimy towel when Burbage took advantage of a scene where he wasn't on stage to go back and clasp his hand. Pointing to Shakespeare, he started to laugh. 'With your paint half off and all besmeared, your aspect is more fearful now than ever before the groundlings.'

'I believe't.' Shakespeare turned to the tireman. 'Where's that soap, Master Hungerford?'

He washed again, then dried himself once more. 'Better,' Burbage said. 'And the specter was as fine as you've ever given him.' He imitated the gesture he'd urged Shakespeare to use. 'Saw you how the audience clung to your every word thereafter, you having drawn them into the action thus?'

Shakespeare had seen no such thing, but he didn't feel like arguing. Things had gone well, no matter why.

That would do. 'They did seem pleased,' he said.

'As they had reason to be. And now I needs must dash-I'm before 'em again in a moment.' Burbage clapped Shakespeare on the shoulder, then hurried back toward the stage.

In his shirt and hose, Shakespeare watched the rest of The Prince of Denmark from the wings. In his present mood, a scene just past pleased him most: the one where the Prince admonished the players to speak trippingly and warned the clowns against making up their own lines. He stood for every poet ever born.

After the play ended, Shakespeare came out in his own person to take his bows. He used the gesture he'd made while playing opposite the Prince to show the audience who he was. And Richard Burbage, always generous, waved to him and called out to the crowd, 'Behold the man whose play you saw!' That got him more applause. He bowed deeply.

The groundlings streamed out of the Theatre. By their buzz, they liked what they'd seen. Shakespeare retreated to the tiring room to don shoes and doublet and hat and talk things over with the company and with the players and poets and other folk who got past the glower of the tireman's burly helpers.

In came Christopher Marlowe, a pipe of tobacco in his mouth. As soon as Shakespeare caught the first whiff of smoke, he started to cough. 'Marry, Kit, put it by, I prithee,' he said.

'I will not, by God,' Marlowe said, and took another puff. His eye swung to the beardless youth who'd played Ophelia, and who was now getting back into the clothes proper to his sex. 'All they who love not tobacco and boys are fools. Why, holy communion would have been much better being administered in a tobacco pipe.'

He reveled in scandal and blasphemy. Knowing as much, Shakespeare didn't react with the horror his fellow poet tried to rouse. Instead, he said, 'Put it by, or I'll break it, and that gladly. Having spent the whole of the first act beneath the stage, I'm smoked and to spare, smoked as a Warwickshire sausage.'

'Ah. Then you have reason for asking. I'll do't.' And Marlowe did, knocking the pipe against the sole of his shoe and grinding out the coals with his foot. He gave Shakespeare a mocking bow. 'Your servant, sir.'

'Gramercy.' Shakespeare returned the bow as if he hadn't noticed the mockery. Nothing could be better calculated to annoy Marlowe.

Or so he thought, especially when Marlowe gave him a shark's smile and said, 'Damn you again, Will.'

'What, for speaking you soft? An I huff and fume, will't like you better?'

'No, no, no.' Marlowe made as if to push him away. 'I know the difference 'twixt small and great. De minibus non curat lex. No, damn you for your Prince of Denmark.'

This time, Shakespeare bowed in earnest. 'Praise from the master's praise indeed.'

'In this play, you are my master. And, since I fancy not being mastered, I aim t'overcome you. There are Grecian pots, 'tis said, with figures limned in contortions wild, and with the painter's brag writ above 'em: a€?As Thus-and-So, my rival, never did.' After first seeing The Prince of Denmark last year, I set to work on Yseult and Tristan, afore which I shall not write, a€?As Shakespeare never did,' but, when you watch it, you may take the thought as there.'

'And then my turn will come round again, to see how I may outmatch you.' Shakespeare's early tragedies owed a good deal to Marlowe, who'd led the theatre when Shakespeare came to London from his provincial home. Since then, Marlowe had chased him more often than the reverse. 'We do spur each other on.'

'We do,' Marlowe agreed. 'But you have in your flanks for now different spurs, of one sort. and another.' He gave Shakespeare a sly look. 'You're to make the Spaniards a King Philip?'

'I am.' Shakespeare wasn't surprised Marlowe had heard about that. He didn't need to keep it secret, as he did the other piece. Of course, Marlowe knew about that, or something about that, too. Shakespeare wished he didn't. The other poet did not know how to keep his mouth shut.

Marlowe proved as much now, saying, 'But will they see it? Or will the players strut the stage in other parts?'

Shakespeare had been pondering the same question. He didn't care to discuss it with anyone else, especially in the crowded tiring room, and most especially. 'Have a care,' he hissed. 'The Spaniard comes. Would you have had him hear you prattle of boys and tobacco and communion?'

'Danger is my meat and drink,' Marlowe answered blithely, and Shakespeare feared that was true.

Making a leg like a courtier, the other poet gave Lope de Vega his most charming smile. Even Shakespeare, for whom it was not intended, felt its force. 'Master Lope!' Marlowe exclaimed. 'Always a pleasure, and an honor.'

'No, no-the pleasure is mine.' De Vega returned the bow. He looked dapper and dangerous, the rapier on his hip seeming a part of him.

'I hear your comedy on the foolish woman was a great success,' Marlowe said. Shakespeare had heard nothing of the sort. The less he heard of the Spaniards' doings, the happier he was. Marlowe went on, '