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  “There is something you might do for me,”

  Mr. Shakespeare said.

  “Name it,” I said, assuming he meant for me to fetch him more brandy or the like.

  “Have you ever taken dictation?”

  “Dictation? You mean, writing down the spoken word?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well … aye. Dr. Bright often asked me …” I paused. Now that I had a clearer sense of right and wrong, it embarrassed me to admit my past transgressions. “‘A was a clergyman as well as a doctor, you ken, and ‘a had me visit neighboring churches and copy down the sermons of other rectors.”

  Mr. Shakespeare seemed more amused than disapproving. “Steal them, in other words?”

  “Aye.”

  “And then Simon Bass had you steal my play.” He shook his head. “You’ve had ill luck in masters.”

  “Until now,” I said.

  “Blackwood creates an amiably atmospheric world of rogues and players, villainy and virtue.”

  —The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

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  The Shakespeare Stealer Gary Blackwood

  Tales from Shakespeare Shakespeare/Lamb

  Shakespeare’s

  Scribe

  GARY BLACKWOOD

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  For Lucia,

  who gave poor Widge a home at last

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers,

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in the United States of America by Dutton Children’s Books,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2000

  Published by Puffin Books,

  a division of Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 2002

  15 17 19 20 18 16 14

  Copyright © Gary Blackwood, 2000

  All rights reserved

  THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DUTTON EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

  Blackwood, Gary L.

  Shakespeare’s scribe / Gary Blackwood.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: The Shakespeare stealer.

  Summary: In plague-ridden 1602 England, a fifteen-year-old orphan boy, who has

  become an apprentice actor, goes on the road with Shakespeare’s troupe and

  finds out more about his parents along the way.

  [1. Theater—Fiction. 2. Orphans—Fiction. 3. Actors and actresses—Fiction.

  4. Plague—England—Fiction. 5. Shakespeare, William, 1564–1616—Fiction.

  6. Great Britain—History—Elizabeth, 1558–1603—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B5338 Sk 2000 [Fic]—dc21 00-034603

  ISBN: 978-1-101-56349-6

  Printed in the United States of America

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that

  it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise

  circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover

  other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition

  including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Several readers of The Shakespeare Stealer, the book to which this is a sequel, have mentioned that they had some trouble sorting out what was fact from what was fiction. (I hope that means I made everything in the book seem real and not that it all sounded totally made up!) This time I’ll try to make things easier by giving you, the reader, a better notion before you begin of which parts are a result of research and which are a product of the imagination.

  There really was a Dr. Timothy Bright, and he really did devise a system of “swift writing.” In fact, that bit of information, stumbled upon purely by accident, was the seed from which The Shakespeare Stealer and its sequel grew. The passages of charactery in the books are as much like Dr. Bright’s shorthand as I can make them.

  With the exception of Widge and Jamie Redshaw, nearly all the characters who make up the Lord Chamberlain’s Men are based on William Shakespeare’s actual fellow players. Some, such as Alexander Cooke, we know nothing about except the name. Others, such as Richard Burbage and Robert Armin, were so well known that it’s possible to get some idea from sixteenth-century sources of what they were like, at least onstage. William Shakespeare did have a younger brother, Edmund.

  Salathiel Pavy was a member of the Children of the Chapel in reality, too, and was known for his ability to play old men’s parts convincingly. All the plays mentioned in the book, whether written by Shakespeare or by someone else, were actual works of the period.

  The bubonic plague was, of course, all too real. Spread in two ways—by fleas that fed on infected rats, then on humans, and by bacteria in the air—it had wiped out, by various estimates, one-fourth to one-half of the population of Europe in the fourteenth century, and regularly made a comeback. During the worst outbreaks, all public gatherings were banned. The epidemic described here actually reached its peak in the following year, 1603.

  Shakespeare’s

  Scribe

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  About the Author

  1

  Acting seems, on the face of it, a simple enough matter. It is, after all, but an elaborate form of lying—pretending to be someone you are not, committing to memory words set down by someone else and passing them off as your own.

  I was an admirable liar. I had even lied myself into the most successful company of players in London, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. It stood to reason that I would be an admirable actor as well.

  But I had since discovered that there is far more to performing than merely mouthing words in a lifelike fashion. A lad who aspires to be a player must be able to sing as sweetly as a nightingale, dance as gracefully as the Queen, change garments as swiftly as the wind changes, sword-fight as skillfully as a soldier, die as satisfyingly as a martyr, and learn an astonishingly large number of lines in a distressingly short time. And if he is less than competent at any of these skills, then he must be adept at dodging a variety of missiles aimed at him by an audience that is as easily displease
d as it is pleased.

  I have also heard it said that, to be a successful player, one must be at least partly insane. I have no doubt that this is true. What person in his right mind would willingly endure so many demands for so little reward?

  Certainly anyone who found himself behind the stage at the Globe Theatre just before a performance would have readily subscribed to the insanity theory. In fact, a first-time visitor might well imagine that, rather than entering a playhouse, he had stumbled by mistake into Bedlam, London’s asylum for the mentally deranged.

  In my early days at the Globe, all the hurly-burly that preceded a performance had been overwhelming for a country boy like me. And even after a year’s apprenticeship, it could still be unnerving if the level of activity was frantic enough—as it was, for example, on the afternoon when we opened a new production of Richard III, one of Mr. Shakespeare’s early plays.

  Several of the players were pacing about like caged cats, muttering their lines ferociously and somehow managing to avoid colliding with one another or with our dancing and singing master, who was practicing an intricate dance step. Mr. Pope, my mentor, was berating the man who was trying desperately to strap the old fellow into a boiled-leather breastplate that seemed to have grown too small to contain Mr. Pope’s ample belly.

  Mr. Heminges, the company’s manager, was hastily repairing the curtain that concealed the alcove at the rear of the stage. It had been torn nearly from its hooks by our clod-footed hired man, Jack, as he struggled to put one of the heavy wooden royal thrones in its proper place. Meanwhile he and Sam, one of our apprentices, were attempting to wrestle the other throne down the stairs; the throne appeared to be winning.

  “C-careful, gentlemen!” called Mr. Heminges. “D-don’t d-damage the arms!”

  “Which ones?” groaned Sam. “Ours or the throne’s?”

  I and my fellow prentice and closest companion, Sander Cooke, were in the relatively calm reaches of the tiring-room, getting into our costumes. The chaos outside did not concern me overly. I had learned that, like Mr. Heminges’s stuttering, all trace of it would vanish once we were upon the stage. Then Mr. Shakespeare strode into the room, bearing a fistful of crumpled papers, which he held out to me. “Can you copy these out in the form of sides, Widge?”

  Because of my skill with a pen, it was my job to copy out the sides, or partial scripts from which each actor learned his lines. I smoothed out one of the pages and peered at Mr. Shakespeare’s deformed handwriting. “Aye,” I said. Under my breath I added, “An I can manage to decipher them.” The others in the company were fond of poking fun at the system of swift writing I had learned from my first master, Dr. Timothy Bright, calling it “scribble-hand,” but in truth it was scarcely more difficult to read than Mr. Shakespeare’s scrawl.

  I was about to tuck the pages inside my wallet, but Mr. Shakespeare waved an urgent hand at me. “No, no, it’s to be done at once.”

  I blinked at him in disbelief. “What, now, do you mean? But—but we’ve no more than a quarter hour before the performance begins.”

  Mr. Shakespeare shrugged. “Not to worry. They’re not needed until Act Four.”

  “Ah, well,” I said sarcastically, “wi’ that much time at me disposal, I could copy out all of The Faerie Queene.”

  The moment Mr. Shakespeare was gone, I unfolded the sheets and stared at them, feeling dazed. “Does ‘a truly expect me to copy all these lines, and the actors to con them, before the fourth act?”

  “He didn’t seem to me to be jesting,” Sander said. “Did he to you?”

  “Nay.” I sighed. “I’ll ha’ to use Mr. Heminges’s desk.”

  “I’ll come with you and deliver the sides as you complete them.”

  “Thanks.” As we headed for the property room, I said, “I sometimes get the feeling that I’m of more value to the company as a scribe than as a player.”

  “Oh, I’d hardly say that.”

  “I’m not complaining, mind you. Not exactly. I mean …” I lowered my voice. “In truth, I’d volunteer to clean out the jakes and haul the contents to the dung heap an that’s what it took to belong to the company.”

  Sander grinned. “So would I. But let’s not make it known, shall we? We’ve enough to do already.”

  There was no denying that. Our every morning was occupied with learning the essential skills of a player, our afternoons with demonstrating them upon the stage. And when we were not practicing or performing, we were engaged in some menial task—cleaning up the yard of the theatre, whitewashing the walls, polishing stage armor and weapons.

  In return for all our work, we received three shillings a week, Sunday afternoons free, and, if we performed well enough, the applause of the audience. It was not an easy life. Yet I would not have traded it for any other.

  Part of the attraction, of course, was the performing. Odd as it may seem, there is a satisfaction unlike any other in creating an imaginary world and in pretending to be someone you are not. That in itself may be a sign of insanity. In the world at large, after all, a wight who goes about trying to convince others that he is a woman, or a faerie, or a famous historical personage, is ordinarily shut up somewhere safe.

  But the opportunity to act before an audience was not my only reason, or perhaps even my primary one, for relishing my position with the Chamberlain’s Men. I had grown up an orphan, and they were the nearest thing to a family I had ever known, partly mad though they might be.

  As I set to work copying out the sides, trying to strike a balance between writing speedily and writing legibly, I became aware of a sort of murmuring or rustling coming from the yard of the theatre. At first it was very like the way the wind sounds, soughing through treetops. But as it grew in intensity, it came to resemble more the grumbling of some great beast, impatient to be fed.

  It was our audience, impatient to be entertained. To soothe them, our trio of hired musicians struck up a tune, and some players came on to dance a jig for them. When the music ended, there was a moment of relative silence, followed by a ripple of laughter. Mr. Armin, one of our best actors, was on the stage now, doing his comical turn, perhaps trading gibes with the audience, perhaps impersonating one of the foolish fops who turned up at nearly every performance and sat on stools upon the very stage so they might be seen and admired by the groundlings.

  These dandies seemed not to mind being mocked by Mr. Armin, whose antics included tripping over the fashionably elongated toes of his shoes or getting his ostentatious jewelry caught in his cloak; pretending to doze off, then slipping from his stool and landing on his hucklebones; or dropping his rapier and, as he bent to retrieve it, revealing a wide rip in the seat of his breeches.

  The audience responded, as usual, with uproarious laughter. Mr. Armin’s exit was accompanied by an explosion of applause, whistles, and cheers so enthusiastic that I looked up from my work. He came capering off the stage, wearing a broad smile that vanished the moment he was out of the audience’s sight, to be replaced by an expression that, while still pleasant enough, was businesslike. “How are you progressing?” he asked.

  “Nearly done,” I replied—not much of an exaggeration.

  “Excellent. I knew we could depend on you.”

  I nodded. As much as I appreciated the praise, it seemed faint compared to the boisterous acclaim Mr. Armin himself had just received. “Do you suppose,” I said wistfully, “that I can ever hope for a response like that?”

  Mr. Armin raised his eyebrows, as though taken aback by my question. “What? The applause? The laughter? Anyone can do that. All it takes is a few pratfalls, a few jests. You want more than that, Widge. You want their silence. You want their tears.”

  And how, I wondered, did I go about earning that? In my year’s apprenticeship I had worked as hard as any other player or prentice, I was sure, and had been awarded ever more substantial parts—Maria in Twelfth Night, Rosaline in Love’s Labour’s Lost, Hero in Much Ado About Nothing.

  But for all my seeming s
uccess, in my idle moments—of which there were few—I sometimes felt an anxious something worrying at the back of my brain. At first I could not give a name to it, but in time I recognized it for what it was—a lack of confidence in my skills, the nagging feeling that I was an impostor, a sham. Secretly I suspected that, beneath all the trappings, behind all the grand lines I spoke, I was not a real actor but only a rootless, feckless orphan acting the part of an actor, and I feared that one day someone in the audience or in the company would expose me.

  It was not an unreasonable fear. Just in the year I had been with the company, they had dismissed my friend Julia and another apprentice named Nick, who could not be considered a friend. Of course, there had been compelling reasons: Nick had stolen a play script; Julia had had the misfortune to be a girl in a profession that admitted only boys and men.

  Though I had not gotten off to a very good start with the Chamberlain’s Men—in fact, I had joined them initially only in order to copy down Hamlet for a rival company—my transgressions since then had been minor: missed cues, forgotten lines, and the like. Still, I did not feel entirely secure. If the company did decide they could do without me, God only knew what would become of me. Aside from my dubious skills as a player and a scribe, I had no means of supporting myself. Even more unpleasant than the prospect of being out on the streets was the thought of losing the only family I had ever known and being an orphan again.

  2

  Perhaps it was just as well that I had little leisure to dwell on my fears. The sharers of the company, for reasons they did not feel compelled to explain to us prentices, had not bothered to replace Nick or Julia. That meant that Sander and Sam and I had to double up frequently—that is, play several parts apiece.

  Our only respite came when the weather made it impossible to perform. During the winter months, the weather was not a factor, for we played indoors, usually at the Cross Keys Inn. But when spring came, the company moved to the open-air Globe Theatre.