London - Edward Rutherfurd [328]
He liked to write verses. “I’ll be a poet, then,” he declared. But to be a poet you needed a patron. Without a patron the court and the fashionable world never noticed you; printers, even if they printed hundreds of copies, only paid a pittance. A rich patron, however, pleased by elegant verses dedicated to him and immortalizing his noble house, could be generous indeed. The Earl of Southampton, people said, had paid Shakespeare so well for one fine poem, Venus and Adonis, that the fellow had been set up for life. The only trouble was that patrons were also fickle. Poor Spenser, no less a poet than Will Shakespeare, had hung about the court for years and had scarcely made a penny.
There was, however, the theatre. It was amazing really: even in his childhood, the theatre had hardly existed. There were the mummers who enacted Bible stories at religious festivals, or the fellows who would put on a song and dance in the courtyard of an inn like the George; and of course every educated man knew about the drama of classical times. Classical scenes were sometimes enacted at court. But it had only been recently that the great nobles had set the fashion by encouraging troupes of actors to give more elaborate shows to please the queen. Encouraged by their lordly patrons, the actors had begun to discover what they could do. Soon they wanted proper plays. They began to hire writers, and in a few years, as if by magic, the wonder of the English theatre had begun.
“It’s a fashion that will pass,” some said, but Meredith did not think so. People were flocking to the plays, not just at court, but in London too. The best actors, little more than servants or vagrants before, were becoming popular heroes. Writers were well paid. If a play was successful, the playwright was granted most of the house receipts for one performance. And some – men of learning like Ben Jonson – had won the court’s admiration for their brilliant wit. Marlowe too, killed young, alas, had written tragedies in language so resounding that men compared him to the ancient Greeks.
And then there was Shakespeare. Meredith liked both the Shakespeare brothers. He saw more of Ned, who acted the minor parts well enough: Will was always so busy that you only saw him fleetingly. But when he did join the crowd at the tavern he was certainly very cheerful company. He had written several comedies which had found favour, and some history plays about the Plantagenet kings as well. “Fustian stuff, but popular,” Edmund judged. Will Shakespeare had not yet attempted tragedy and Edmund imagined it was probably beyond him. Except for one play. His Romeo and Juliet had been astonishing, and had played again and again. All London knew it. “But I’m sure he must have had help from other hands,” Edmund would say. He had done nothing quite like it since. “He’s wise enough to know his limitations,” Edmund told his friends. For though, with his balding, dome-like head, you might have thought the fellow was a man of learning, this was not the case. “I’ve a little Latin and no Greek,” he had freely admitted. Shakespeare was just an actor with a remarkable wit, and in his secret heart, Meredith could not help feeling that he was cut from a finer cloth and could probably do better.
He had started over a year ago when he contributed some extra lines to a comedy, which had been praised. Even successful writers like Shakespeare often did light work of this kind and he was delighted with himself. A few months later he was allowed to do a whole scene, and then another. He excelled, they agreed, at producing witty repartee in the mouths of young gallants like himself. But six months ago, the Lord Chamberlain’s company, the very same troupe that Shakespeare wrote for, had agreed in principle to take an entire new play from him for which, when it was accepted, he would be paid the full fee of six pounds.
“Is