Ruled Britannia

pot on the table in front of him, then darted at the manuscript of Love's Labour's Won like a striking asp. 'When will you learn to put stage directions in a form players can actually use?' he asked, more in sorrow than in anger: he said the same thing every time Shakespeare handed him a manuscript.

'Your pardon, Master Martin,' Shakespeare said. 'I do essay precision, but-'

'You succeed too well,' the prompter told him, also not for the first time. 'With directions such as these, you break the action like a man disjointing a roast fowl. Simplicity, sir-simplicity's what wins the race.'

Shakespeare wasn't convinced Martin was right. Like any playwright, he wanted things just so, with all the actors moving at his direction as Copernicus and his followers said planets moved around the sun.

But the prompter's word carried more weight in such matters than his. As Martin went from one page to the next, Shakespeare did presume to ask, 'What think you?'

'Aside from these wretched stage directions, very pleasant, very gay,' Geoffrey Martin answered.

'Without a doubt, the company will buy the play of you. And then you'll put all your work towards the new King Philip, is't not so?'

'As much of it as I may, yes,' Shakespeare answered. The prompter's question gave him the opening he needed: 'Tell me, Master Martin, what think you of-?'

But before he could finish the question, Martin lifted a hand. 'Hold,' he said, and such was the authority in his voice that Shakespeare fell silent. 'Here in your second act, you have entering three lords and three ladies.'

'I do,' Shakespeare agreed, looking down at what he'd written-the second act seemed a long way off these days.

'See you here, though. Only two of these ladies speak: the one Rosaline, the other Katharine. What point to the third one, the one you style Maria?'

'Why, for to balance the third lord, of course,' Shakespeare answered.

Geoffrey Martin shook his head. 'It sufficeth not. Give her somewhat to do, or else take her out.'

'Oh, very well,' Shakespeare said testily. 'Lend me your pen, then.' He scratched out a name and substituted another. 'Now hath she this passage, once Katharine's.'

'Good enough.' Martin read on. After a bit, he looked up and said, 'I am much taken with your Signor Adriano di Armato, your fantastical Venetian. Some poets I need not name might have sought instead to make of him a Spaniard, the which the Master of the Revels would never countenance.'

Shakespeare's first thought had been to make him a Spaniard, to get the extra laughs mocking the invaders would bring. But he too had concluded Sir Edmund would never let him get away with it. Again, though, he had the chance to ask the question he wanted, or one leading towards it: 'What think you, Master Martin, of having to take such care to keep from rousing the Spaniards' ire?'

'Working with the Master would be simpler without such worries, no doubt of't,' the prompter replied.

'But you'll not deny, I trust, that heresy's strong grip'd yet constrain us had they not come hither. I have now the hope of heaven. Things being different, hellfire'd surely hold me after I cast my mortal slough.'

'Ay, belike,' Shakespeare said, none too happily. Without a doubt, Geoffrey Martin had given him an honest answer, but he hadn't said what Shakespeare wanted to hear.

'Why? Believe you otherwise?' Martin asked-he'd heard how half-hearted Shakespeare's answer sounded, which the poet hadn't wanted at all.

'By my troth, no,' Shakespeare said, this time using his experience on the stage to sound as he thought Geoffrey Martin would want him to.

'I should hope not, sir,' the prompter said. 'King Philip, God keep him, is a great man, a very great man.

He hath from ourselves saved us, and in our own despite. Of whom else might one say the like, save only our Lord Himself?'

'Even so,' Shakespeare said, and got away from Martin as fast as he could. The players he'd sounded had all been willing, even eager, to help try to expel the Spaniards from England. The tireman had been noncommittal. The prompter, plainly, took the Spaniards' part. And if Geoffrey Martin suspected treason, he knew important ears into which to whisper-or shout-his suspicions.

'Why the long face, Will?' Burbage called when Shakespeare wandered out onto the stage again.

'Mislikes he the mouse your mountain at last delivered?'

'Nay, the jests seemed to please him well enough,' Shakespeare answered. 'But he hath.

misgivings. in aid of. certain other matters.'

Someone clapped him on the shoulder. He jumped; he hadn't heard anybody come up behind him. Will Kemp's elastic features leered at him. Cackling with mad glee, the clown said, 'What better time than the new year for a drawing and quartering? Or would you liefer rout out winter's chill with a burning? I'll stake you would.'

'Go to!' Shakespeare exclaimed. 'Get hence!'

'And wherefore should I?' Kemp replied. 'I know as much as doth Dick here.' Before Shakespeare could deny that, the clown continued, 'I know enough to hang us all, than the which what could be more?'

Put so, he had a point. Burbage said, 'The object is not to let others know enough to hang us all- others now including a certain gentleman (marry, a very certain gentleman he is, too) who all too easily can confound us.'

'Knew you not that Geoff Martin hath his nose in the Pope of Rome's arsehole?' Kemp said with another mocking smile.

' 'Steeth, Will-soft, soft!' Shakespeare hissed, the ice outside having nothing to do with the chill that ran through him. 'He need but cock his head hither and he'll hear you.'

'He's right, man,' Burbage said. 'D'you want your neck stretched or your bowels cut out or the flesh roasted from your bones? Talk too free and you'll win your heart's desire.'

'O ye of little faith!' Kemp jeered. 'Dear Geoff's prompter and book-keeper. He hath before him a new play- so new, belike the ink's still damp. What'll he do? Plunge his beak into its liver, like the vulture with Prometheus. A cannon could sound beside him without his hearing't.'

Burbage looked thoughtful. 'He may have reason,' he said to Shakespeare.

'He may be right,' Shakespeare said. 'Right or wrong, reason hath he none. Where's the reason in a man who will hazard his life for nothing but to hear his own chatter? God deliver me from being subject to the breath of every fool, whose sense no more can feel but his own fancies.'

'Doth thy other mouth call me?' Will Kemp retorted. He strode away, then stopped, bent, and spoke loudly with his other mouth.

'Whoreson beetle-headed, flap-eared knave,' Shakespeare burst out-but quietly. He remembered all too well that, if he angered Kemp, the clown could betray him, too.

'A bacon-fed knave, very voluble,' Burbage agreed, 'but when have you known a clown who was otherwise?' He too spoke in a low voice. After a moment, he went on, 'And what, think you, may we do about Martin?'

'In sooth, I know not,' Shakespeare said miserably. 'Would we could just sack him, but the company'd rise in revolt-and with reason (that word again!), did we try it without good cause.'

Burbage nodded. 'True. Every word of't true.'

'But this business cannot go forward without him, nor with him in opposition,' Shakespeare said.

'Look you to your part of't,' Burbage told him. 'Write the words that needs must be writ. Think on that, for none else can do't. As for the other-haply you misread Martin's mind and purpose.'

'That I did not,' Shakespeare declared.

'Well, as may be,' Burbage said with a shrug. 'But I say this further: we are embarked here on no small enterprise, is't not so?' After waiting for Shakespeare to nod, he went on, 'We may be sure, then, we are not alone embarked. We need not, unaided, solve all conundrums attached hereto.'

'It could be,' Shakespeare said after some thought. 'Ay, it could be. But, an we solve them not, who shall?'

'That is hidden from mine eyes, and so should it be, for what I know not, no inquisitor can tear from me,'

Burbage said. Shakespeare nodded again, a little more heartily; he'd had the same thought. Smiling, Burbage continued, 'But to say it is hidden from mine eyes is not to say it hath no existence. Others, knowing little of the parts we play, will be charged with shifting such burthens as an o'erstubborn prompter. Is