Shakespeare's Scribe Read Free

Theatre.
    That spring of 1602 was warmer than usual, so we began our outdoor season early in May. Unfortunately, it was also wetter than usual. Only when there was a distinct downpour did the sharers call off a performance. This did not mean that we did not work. They might simply call a rehearsal instead, in one of the practice rooms. Or they might send us out to spy on some rival company, such as the Lord Admiral’s Men or the Children of the Chapel Royal, who had begun to get a reputation for their lively comedies and satires.
    Though we did not regard a company of children as a serious threat, neither did we wish to underestimate them. So it was that, one sodden day in June, Sander and I were dispatched to the Blackfriars Theatre to see how much of the young upstarts’ reputation was deserved. Since the essence of spying is to go unnoticed, we prentices were the logical choice for the mission, for our faces were not likely to be recognized, unadorned as they were with wigs or face paint.
    Blackfriars, which lay just across the Thames from the Globe, was so called because it had once been home to a brotherhood of monks called the Black Friars. The building that housed the theatre had formerly been a guest house. The walls had been removed to create a spacious hall that was lighted, on this gloomy afternoon, by dozens of candles in sconces. While Sander pursued a vendor hawking apples, nuts, and candies, I foundus a seat a few rows back from the stage. My neighbor was a burly, sunburned man dressed in the wide-legged trousers and conical wool cap of a seaman. He was chewing as noisily as any cow at some substance that gave off a smell so acrid and spicy it made me screw up my nose.
    The sailor grinned, showing teeth that had been brown to begin with and were made more so by the substance he was chewing. “Angelica root,” he said, and a bit of it came flying forth to land upon my sleeve. “’Tis a sovereign protection against the plague.” He tapped the side of his red, prominent nose. “But just to be certain, I’ve stuffed my nose holes with rue and wormwood.”
    I felt a chill run up my back. “Why …?” I began, but my throat was thick, and I had to clear it to continue. “Why take such measures now, though? The plague is no particular threat.”
    â€œThat may be true here, but …” The man leaned down close to me, as if not wishing all to hear. “I’ve just come from Yarmouth, and they’re dying by the dozens there. The city fathers have taken to shooting dogs, and setting off gunpowder in the streets to clear the air. It’s but a matter of time before the contagion spreads to London—if it hasn’t already.”
    I shrank back from the man and his foul, angelica-scented breath. I had known the smell was familiar, but until that moment I had not known why. Now the answer came to me in a flash of memory. I saw myself at the age of seven, standing by my old master, Dr. Bright, as he treated a plague victim. I was heating over a candle flame some concoction of grease and herbs, which the doctor then plastered on the patient’s open sores. The reek of the medicine alone was enough to nauseate; added to it was the putrid stench of the sores themselves and, underneath it all, the bitter presence of the angelica root that lay like a tumor beneath my tongue, gagging me.
    Now, with the same scent strong in my nostrils, I felt nausea rising in me again, accompanied by a sickening feeling of dread. Most folk believed that the plague was caused by corrupted air. But according to Dr. Bright’s theory, the contagion spread by means of tiny plague seeds, invisible to the eye, which entered our orifices and took root inside us. When they matured, they bore more seeds that went wafting, like the seeds of a dandelion, on the wind of our breath until they found fertile ground.
    I sprang from my seat and made for the rear of the room,