London - Edward Rutherfurd [343]
Meanwhile, things at the Curtain were not getting any better. Despite all their efforts, the more fashionable part of their old audience was still reluctant to set foot in the place. There were tensions amongst the actors too. Some, led by the clown, thought they should supply the audience with bawdier entertainments; others, including Shakespeare, were growing impatient with the enterprise, because they wanted to improve the quality of work.
“We’re not taking enough money,” Jane’s father told her one day. The Burbages, he hinted, were in some financial difficulty. “The company will never find its feet again in this place,” he concluded. If only they could get back to the theatre. “It’s doubly galling,” she overheard one of the Burbages remark, “because we even built the place.” Some twenty years ago, at the start of the original lease, the Burbages had constructed the wooden building on the site, but with the ground lease up, they still could not set foot in the place. And by early June, her father sadly told her, “There’s a chance, I’m afraid, that this season could be our last.”
This prospect made Jane close her mind to Edmund. Her reasoning was that if the company closed, and no one would take his play, Edmund would never feel self-confident enough to take a wife. And she judged with considerable maturity that his interest in her was because she was part of the theatre. But Dogget just liked her for herself. She was friendly to Edmund, therefore, but no more.
In midsummer she had promised to go out on the river in the evening with John Dogget, and had been rather looking forward to it. Then, that afternoon, Edmund had come by. He and a party of friends were going to walk up to Islington Woods, to a glade where they would set out refreshments and, very likely, improvise some theatricals. Politely she declined, citing her earlier promise, and Edmund departed. Just after he had gone, she wondered if she should have offered to come and taken Dogget too; but she put this out of her mind. Dogget might have felt cheated; and besides, it was too late.
But as the warm sun gleamed on the water on the way up to Chelsea, and young Dogget, with a happy grin, pulled with his webbed hands on the oars, she felt an unaccountable sadness and even irritation. When they reached Shoreditch again, and Dogget pulled her into the shadows near the darkened playhouse, she could only go through the motions of returning his kiss.
Before they parted, however, she arranged to go out with John Dogget two evenings later, and made up her mind that by then her kisses would be ardent.
On the day after they had left London on the summer tour her father told Jane the sombre news, on condition that she did not tell the actors.
“Shakespeare has given notice. He’s told the Burbages that if they don’t find him a theatre, he is quitting the stage and retiring.” Since Shakespeare now had his property in Stratford, Fleming judged that the threat was real. “He can retire there any day now,” he remarked.
“And is there any hope?” she asked.
“A chance, but only a slim one,” he told her. “The Burbages have made an offer to Giles Allen, for a new lease on the Theatre. It’s so high that he’s said to be considering it, even though he fears Ducket and the aldermen. I’m not even sure the Burbages can afford it, but there we are.” He smiled wanly. “He’ll decide by this autumn. If he says no . . .” He spread his hands. “Pins for me, I’m afraid. And for you, I dare say.”
Often in the long weeks of summer as they went from town to town, Jane found herself thinking of the empty theatre. And also, she could not quite deny it, of Edmund and his play.
As Edmund Meredith made his way towards the Burbages’ house in the city on a cold October afternoon, he was both thoughtful and cheerful.
Thoughtful because of Cuthbert Carpenter. He had spent the last hour in the George Tavern listening to his troubles. His grandmother was becoming increasingly tyrannical. She