Adapted from The Secret Player, ©Jinny Webber, Revised edition

From  Chapter XVIII, Spring 1592

Adieu, farewell, earth’s bliss;

This world uncertain is.

  “In Plague Time,” Thomas Nashe

Two men in black hats appeared at the entrance to The Theatre tiring room as we dressed for the Comedy of Errors. I quickly pulled Luciana’s skirts down over my long smock. When I peered out from its flounces, everyone had frozen, staring at the intruders: the sergeant and his assistant, ordering the theatre closed right then and there . . . .

How better to spend such a suddenly empty afternoon than to drink away our woes? Tom Pope showed no reluctance when Kemp turned toward Cheapside and the Mermaid. “Above forty deaths in a week and not yet May.” Pope said as we made our way down the narrow street, avoiding its stinking rivulet.

Actors, law clerks and gallants who would have spent this afternoon in The Theatre or the Curtain or the Rose filled the tavern. Recklessness blew on the air with the pungent pipe-smoke, and I felt drunk on fumes alone.

Tom Pope pushed over to a table and sat down heavily next to Will Shakespeare; Kemp, Jack and I crowded in opposite. “I hope I can keep you boys. This closure could ruin us all.”

“Don’t trouble these lads, Tom,” Shakespeare said. “‘This is no place for melancholy.”

“Reality is the word, my friend. Who can control the plague? Not doctors or priests; surely no actor. I feed the mouths that sit at my table—but these lads may have to seek other work.”

What work might that be? Could I scull a wherry or groom horses in Walter’s stable? Or take up smithing in earnest? I wanted to be a player forevermore.

Kemp waved Bess over to us with her pitcher and pots. “No gloom for me,” he laughed, dropping coins into her apron pocket and leaving our table with his tankard for more jovial company.

“The plague is not forever.” Shakespeare lifted his cup. “This summer Earl of Pembroke, for one, will support a traveling company. Henslowe hopes to tour Marlowe’s plays and we could tour Comedy of Errors.”

“You want me to play Pinch through the countryside?” Pope replied.

“I don’t see why not.”

“In my youth I toured aplenty, but now I prefer to stop at home, Will, that’s why not. Touring is for younger men.”

“You’re not so old. I come near thirty myself,” Shakespeare said.

“Do you plan to join Pembroke’s Men?” Pope asked.

“No, if I leave London I shall go to Stratford. I miss my children.”

“I can make music,” Jack said. “I can play anywhere.”

Pope ruffled his hair. “You’re a good boy, Jack. And a skilled musician. Will’s right, plague must end sometime. I drink to Fortune.” He emptied his cup and looked for Bess with her ale jug.

“Poor Luciana. Our sergeant the ass has stopped her counseling maids and wives to restrain their headstrong wills.” Shakespeare winked at me.

“Why must a wife be patient, let the man do what he may? Oft times she has twice his wit but is granted fewer than half his words and none of his rights.”

Just then Christopher Marlowe came in the door, making his way to our table and saving me from further taxing my skills of rhetoric. No sooner had Marlowe taken a seat at our table than Bess set a brimming mug before him.

“That word-twisting sergeant called upon you too, I see,” he said. “What do you think, does the devil bring this plague? Has London been thriving so gloriously that her fate must reverse? Imagine the plague like a swarm of rats, for indeed I saw rats dead in the street with their eyes rolled back and great oozing sores like plague-stricken humans. Sure they suffer as humans do. One’s dead eyes stared at me, such a devil, I thought—or a poor sufferer like us all. No, if plague were the devil’s work, it would kill the good and the pure and a few of the rest of us middling sort, leaving villains to their naughty deeds unhindered.”

Kit drank deep. “Nothing to do, my friends, but flee to the peaceful countryside, overfull of health and fragrance. We shall sip nectar and dance and sing with the innocence of children.”

“What peaceful country dwelling would you seek?” Shakespeare asked with a sly smile. “Your friend Tom Walsingham’s?”

“No, not his. There’s a grand house I know owned by Sir Thomas Howard, hero of the Armada and sometime patron of the theatre himself. It’s set in woods and meadows and far enough from London to be safe. Audley Inn, it’s called.”

My breath caught: I knew the place. Did Kit seriously propose a visit to Audley Inn? No “inn” in the London sense of the word but rather the lordly manor nearest to Saffron Walden, it had been visited by Queen Elizabeth, according to old folk in our village. The lord of the manor, the lord of the curacy of St. Mary Virgin where my onetime friend Judith’s father preached, was no other than this very Sir Thomas Howard.

“I shall stop in London,” Pope said. “Ruth needs me, and—”

“And your investments,” Kit laughed. “Tom, you’re near as rich a landlord as our Philip Henslowe.”

“Indeed not!”

A wave of longing came over me. Ah, to breathe the familiar air of my childhood, to manage somehow, whatever the risk, to see Gran and my brother Johnny.

“Have you an invitation?” Shakespeare asked.

“I can get one easily enough. Sir Thomas is something of a poet and will be delighted to have us. How about it, lads?”

Jack was jumping up and down. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

“Then I shall send to Sir Thomas. Unless by some miracle the plague lifts, we shall go amuse ourselves at Audley Inn.” Kit slipped off the bench and into the crowd.

“You know what amusements he has in mind,” Kemp laughed. “Mischief, lechery and poetry. That’s our Kit.”

Instead of much wished-for breezes and cleansing showers, heat thickened as June drew to a close. Not only rats lay in the gutters, but cats and dogs, eyes rolled back like very devils, and poor human wretches groaned daily in death agonies. We played a week here and there, but were not surprised when the sergeants came to shut down the theatres for good.

The sergeant we called Ass said, “You actors’ ribaldries make prentices riot in the street and suspect the law. Therefore the Privy Council orders a stoppage of play-fopping.” We knew plague deaths, not we, had caused the theatres to close. But even without street rebellions, our hearts were not for playing.

Tom Pope’s choice of Southwark had proven wise for reasons besides thrift. Rarely did the death wagons collect bodies on the south bank of the Thames, save where the poorest tenements clustered. Our lands were wetter than in the city, but our houses were less crowded together and we had fewer narrow lanes and alleys. The Rose and the Beargarden remained shuttered, but not so the Bankside brothels, visitors coming and going at all hours in a desperate frenzy, drunk and raucous.

Aside from revelers at the stews and the pious visiting St. Saviour’s, the streets were empty. True to his word, Tom Pope made no plans to leave London.  

Marlowe secured an invitation from Sir Thomas Howard for a week’s house party for us: Shakespeare, who agreed to stop there before going on to Stratford-upon-Avon, Will Kemp, and one Tom Nashe, whom I knew only by name.

After that week, the company would disperse until plague abated. Jack suggested that he and I rejoin his father and Lord North’s Men. But the countryside could scarce support so many touring players and refugees from London; villages were likely to ban travelers who might bring infection. The road wasn’t a wise course for apprentice boys, Pope said, not when we had the offer of Audley Inn.