All Night Awake Read Free Page A

of vision. “How he did kill himself for love unrequited.”
    And the dandy, his eyebrows more arched than ever, looked puzzled. “A fine sonnet, to be sure,” he told Will. “A fine sonnet.” Despite the man’s words, his lips worked in and out, battling some emotion that Will feared was mirth.
    With sudden heat, Will attempted to explain, “Your lordship will allow,” Will said. “That my lady’s name is Hathaway, you see.”
    The small, neat mouth—whose corners trembled upward, beneath the narrow moustache, when Will addressed its owner as “lordship”—opened in a round “o” of astonishment.
    “Ah. Hathaway. Hate from hate away. Why it’s marvelous, man. No more than a poet in two would think of such a clever pun, I say. What say you, Henslowe?” He turned to the theater owner.
    Suspecting he was being mocked and feeling his heart droop down to consort with his worn-out boots, Will, too, turned toward the theater owner.
    But Henslowe never once glanced in his direction. Instead, he looked impatiently at the dandy and flicked him on the shoulder with a shabby glove, as though to call his attention. “I think you have strange amusements, Kit.” And before the dandy could more than open his mouth for what promised to be a droll reply, Henslowe added, “And I think your time would be better employed in writing me a play that I could stage. What, with the plague raging over this winter and the playhouses just reopened, we could use a new play to pack the groundlings in. Faustus has run its time upon the stage. Give us something new. I have a new playhouse to pay for.”
    In Will’s brain the given name of Kit added to Henslowe’s request for a new play, and to the name of Faustus , and as Will turned to gaze on the dandy—Will’s mouth opening in wonder, his eyes wide—he realized that this creature, with his slashed-through sleeves, his immaculate, white silk hose, his expensive boots, his lace handkerchief, and gold-fringed grey gloves was no other than Kit Marlowe, the leading playwright of the age, the Muses’ darling, the light of the London stage.
    “Many good simples for all illnesses,” a shrunken man in a black cloak called out, walking between them and away, waving a large, dark bottle. “It cures the French Pox, the ague, and the plague.”
    Kit Marlowe laughed.
    “In time, my dear Henslowe, in good time. I’ll write another play.” Marlowe smiled on the theater owner. “But first I’ve promised my lord Thomas Walsingham to write a long poem on the sad tragedy and most sorrowful death of Hero and Leander.”
    Philip Henslowe made a rude noise at the sad tragedy. “And on their romping, perforce, beneath a silken sheet. No. Don’t answer that.” He waved away Marlowe’s attempt at speech with a hand clad in a glove dark with wearing. “Don’t answer that. It doesn’t bear discussing. I know why lordlings care about long-dead lovers. More honest, I say, to write for the people.”
    “And make sure plenty of blood spurts, to make the populus throw its greasy cloaks in the air,” Marlowe said softly. “More honest that might be, Henslowe. But not nearly so profitable.”
    Marlowe swept his hand left to right through the air, describing a perfect arc and as though signifying the futility of human life. “Stay.” He held Henslowe’s arm as Henslowe made to turn away. “Soon as I’m done, I’ll write you something new. A piteous doomed romance, maybe. Or would you prefer a revenge tragedy, like Thomas Kyd’s?”
    Kit’s eyes acquired a faraway look as if he were reading in the entrails of his future for plays not yet written. “Perhaps I could write on the legend of Hamlet, the Dane, and how he avenged the murder of his heroic father.”
    Henslowe sighed. “Write on what you will, so long as you write. Marlowe’s name on a playbill still draws them in.”
    Marlowe laughed. “For which you pay me enough to buy the buttons for one of my doublets. No. Mind not. I’ll