London - Edward Rutherfurd [336]
The alderman did not often smile. Indeed, the only visible trace of the cheerful genes of his ancestor who had dived into the river was the silver flash in his hair. Like many of his fellow aldermen, he was a Puritan – in his case of a sternly Calvinistic kind.
It had been a very good day for Alderman Ducket. He had already been to the Bankside theatres. He had enjoyed that. Now he was going to Shoreditch. Seeing young Meredith, known to be a play-lover, gave him another chance to savour the reaction to his statement. Calmly, then, he informed him: “The theatres are all to be closed.”
It was as he expected. The girl looked stunned and Meredith went pale; but Meredith recovered first. “Who says so?”
“The city council.”
“Impossible. All the theatres are outside your jurisdiction.”
Shoreditch, of course, lay past the city limits. But it was a curious feature of city government that, even after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, their old feudal liberties had never been repealed but passed into the hands of the monarch. The Bankside theatres, therefore, lay in the old Liberty of the Clink. Even Blackfriars was still a liberty. It had long infuriated the city fathers that the theatres continued under their noses yet outside their jurisdiction.
“We have asked the Privy Council to close them all.”
“They won’t. The queen herself loves the players.”
But now Ducket smiled. “Not since The Isle of Dogs,” he said.
This play, performed by Lord Pembroke’s men, had featured pointed, but amusing criticisms not only of the city aldermen, but even of the government. It had been an amazing stroke of luck. For months Ducket and his fellow aldermen had laboured, ensuring the Chamberlain’s men’s lease on the Theatre in Shoreditch would end. They had even approached Giles Allen, who owned the site and ordered him: “Don’t lease it to actors again or we’ll ruin you.” Since then, Ducket had been stirring up trouble in Blackfriars, but he had achieved nothing definite. And then those fools the Lord Pembroke’s men had given him his chance, and he had taken it with both hands. A deputation to the Privy Council had produced a careful report showing how the government had been insulted.
“You are wrong,” he said sweetly. “The council is with us.”
“But,” Edmund protested, “that would mean . . .”
“That the theatre is over,” Ducket nodded. “Indeed,” he went on, “some of your actor friends had better be careful. They may be considered vagrants.”
The threat was not entirely empty. Anyone wandering about the country, with no fixed employment, as actors did, was liable to be whipped and returned to his place of origin; and while Ducket could not touch respectable men like the Shakespeares, some of the poorer actors with only casual employment might run this risk if they attempted to tour. The real point of his remark, however, was the implied insult: the theatre was outside society, its actors mere vagabonds.
“I still don’t believe you,” Meredith said, and walked on.
But it was true; and by that evening all London knew it. The theatres were ordered to close. Worse yet, poor Ben Jonson, one of the writers of The Isle of Dogs, had been put in gaol for contempt, while his fellow author Nashe had fled. In the theatre community people were deeply despondent. “I shall have to go back to haberdashery,” Jane’s father miserably remarked. The actors were distraught. Even the Burbages, who had repeatedly tried to see the Privy Council, could say nothing encouraging.
Only after a week was there any piece of news.
“We are permitted to leave the city to go on our tour,” the company was told. But when someone asked “After that, will we be