Curiouser and curiouser, she thought, although her heart was pounding within her chest. What the hell is going on here? Was further exploration a grand idea or a dreadful one? C.J. walked downstage—literally—as the floor was significantly raked and sloped toward the audience. A quaint little prompter’s box was nestled just below the lip of the stage. Yet here no light was affixed to the wooden podium that nearly filled the shadowy, cramped space.
It was surreal. C.J. rescanned the playing area for clues, wondering when she might wake from her elaborate daydream. High above the center of the stage, at the apex of the proscenium arch, a familiar emblem stood out in gold relief, topped by a crown and trimmed handsomely with a carved ermine drape. It was a version of the English royal crest, bearing several lions couchant, as well as the rampant red lion C.J. recognized as the insignia of Scotland and a golden Irish harp on a field of blue. C.J.’s pulse raced with alarming rapidity. Perhaps she had ended up on another set, one for some period classic. But where? Curiosity trumping fear, she elected to inspect the backstage area.
Through a musty gloom C.J. fought her way past huge painted flats that sat in a track, or rut, allowing them to be slid on and off the stage like pocket doors. Amid the maze of stored scenic elements were stained glass windows, elaborate thrones encrusted in gold and studded with gemstones, a hedgerow fashioned entirely of silk leaves, and several enormous walls interrupted by high, Gothic arches.
Once free of the forest of flats, C.J. resumed her offstage foraging, which finally led her to an imposing door at the stage level. She pushed against the heavy wooden portal, which swung open onto a narrow alleyway paved in uneven cobblestones, then negotiated her way to the street, where she was greeted with a wash of bright sunlight. She found herself as dazed as Dorothy upon her first eyeful of Munchkinland and blinked several times, attempting to adjust her vision.
She turned back to view the façade of the building she had just exited, on which had been painted the words Orchard Street, and struggled to make sense of her surroundings. A young lady in a capacious straw bonnet elbowed C.J. as she passed, nearly knocking her to the ground.
Slack-jawed with amazement, C.J. stood in the middle of the street and gaped at the framed sign prominently displayed outside the elegant stone edifice: EASTER SUNDAY! APPEARING TONIGHT AND TOMORROW EVENING! COURTESY OF THE THEATRE ROYAL AT DRURY LANE. MRS. SIDDONS IN DE MONTFORT BY JOANNA BAILLIE. And beneath it: TUESDAY NIGHT: SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, WITH MRS. SIDDONS AND MR. KEMBLE.
Brother and sister costars as the Bard’s bloodiest couple; now that would be an interesting production indeed, especially with the greatest tragedienne of the . . . C.J.’s heart fairly stopped. Mrs. Siddons? Sarah Siddons? And what in heaven was Joanna Baillie, an unknown—to C.J.—female playwright, doing sharing the bill with William Shakespeare? Where was she?
The rest of the notice did much to enlighten and, even more, to intrigue her. FRIDAY NIGHT, DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND, MR. KEMBLE WILL REPEAT HIS PERFORMANCE AS HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK. Her heart nearly leapt out of her chest when she read the date at the top of the announcement: APRIL 5, 1801, THEATRE ROYAL, BATH.
Bath? 1801?
A stupefied C.J. looked across the road, arrested by the sight of the lacy Gothic architecture reaching toward the sky from behind a cluster of low, narrow buildings. Her gaze was drawn heavenward, tracing the fantastic height of the stone spires and the graceful, yet impressive, flying buttresses. The church bell tolled twelve, its chiming reverberations lingering in the air like a melodic gray cloud. It was all too sudden, too new, and too wondrous an experience to instill panic—yet. She had recently read an article about conscious dreaming: because she’d been eating, sleeping, and breathing By a Lady and everything she could get her hands on about the time period, perhaps she was somehow willing this strange and thrilling journey to occur. Whatever trick my mind is playing, how can I not keep going to see how it all ends? thought C.J.
Wending her way up a slender, curving lane and through a claustrophobic alley that obligingly trapped the intoxicating fragrance of freshly baked bread, C.J. threaded past women with delicate fichus crisscrossed over high-waisted, lightweight Directoire gowns, lending their wearers a slightly pigeon-breasted appearance. She narrowly avoided a trio of bawling children who resembled their modish parents in costumed miniature, and practically tripped over an aging macaroni in his dandified Sunday best, with impeccable cravat and high black Tilbury hat.
Her investigative perambulations took her along the aromatic Stall Street, undoubtedly named for the vast profusion of vendors purveying their various wares: everything from piping hot currant muffins to milk, from fragrant fresh-cut flowers to remarkably unappetizing unplucked fowl suspended by their feet from horizontal wooden poles. C.J.’s nostrils were further assailed by the smell of sweet rolls wafting through the air, the fragrant aroma of apples being baked to order on a small coal stove, and the earthy odor of ordure. She soon found herself in a crowded public square, facing a low, shaded colonnade.
“Shall
