I decided to take him to the Globe, on account of Dick Burbage has a closet full of costumes he did steal from Ned Alleyn. He played a heap of roles in his day, did Ned, so I was hoping we could make Tristan over into whatever would be most expedient for his undertaking.
’Tis a short walk from the Tearsheet to the Globe, mostly along the river, and one I never thought of as remarkable, but you’d think I was asking Tristan to eat a sewer. Practically retching the whole way he was, despite my taking him along the broader lane where gravel is laid down over the clay, and all the sewage lies neatly in the drainage ditches to the side of the streets, not like some alley where the offal sits right in the street once it’s dumped from above. ’Twas only a turd or two we had to sidestep, not counting the horse manure, which isn’t at all offensive, in fact it has a barnyard smell that reminds me of home.
Tristan Lyons had only his underclothes on, of course, but in this part of town that hardly draws attention, no matter he was such a large fella. Crowds were streaming into the Globe’s gates. Trumpets did sound from within, and then I recognized Hal Condell’s voice like an oratorio, which meant they were beginning some fool play. Tristan’s attention turned toward the gate as if he were curious to go in.
“’Tisn’t that way we’re going,” I said.
“That phrase,” he said, looking surprised. “Even I know that phrase. ‘Star-crossed lovers.’ They’re doing Romeo and Juliet in there. The original Romeo and Juliet.”
“No, the original had Saunder Cooke as Juliet,” I said. “That was much better than whoever’s doing it since Saunder grew a beard. Anyhow it’s a shite play, just a stupid court-sponsored rant against the Irish.” I grabbed his arm and began to pull him through the floods of people streaming back into the theatre. We must need get around to the back of the stage where the tiring-house was.
“How is it anti-Irish?” Tristan asked.
“The villain is a Catholic friar,” I pointed out. “He being a meddling busy-body who traffics in poison—he’s the reason it’s a tragedy and not a comedy, and everyone knows Catholic is code for Irish.”
“Aren’t the French Catholic?” asked Tristan. “And the Spanish?”
“The friar’s name is Lawrence,” I countered, as I pulled him along. “So obviously named after St. Labhrás. He was martyred by drinking a poison of his own concocting. The whole play is just a coded insult to the Irish, a demonstration of how amoral we supposedly are. It’s bollocks. You be missing nothing. Especially now that Saunder’s grown a beard.”
“I don’t want to see it, I just never heard that Shakespeare hated the Irish before,” said Tristan, only it was so crowded there that he was shouting just to be heard as all the people pressed past us to get inside.
“Why would anyone in your time give a shite about Will Shakespeare’s politics? But, aye, he does,” I said. “I can quote reams of examples, same as anyone. Worst of all was just the other year, one of them plays about some English king, and there was a terrible drunk Irish character staggering about the stage wailing about how all the Irish are villains and bastards and knaves. And awhile before that he had a play about some other English king who went to conquer Ireland, and he said the Irish live like venom. Venom. That’s poison, so it is. He’s obsessed with the Irish and poison. Trying to convince the masses that one of us is planning to poison the Queen.”
“Are you?” asked Tristan.
“Course not. Not worth the risk. She’ll be dying soon anyhow and ’tisn’t as if she could suddenly produce an heir at her age. There’ll be chaos soon without us meddling.”
“Fair enough,” he said.
“It is not fair enough. It would be fair if she’d died years ago. ’Tis always the wrong ones living too long and the wrong ones dying too young.” And then because this touches a subject near to my sensitive heart, of course I pressed on: “Like my Kit Marlowe.”
“Who’s Kit Marlowe?”
I stopped walking, and let the crowd bump past me as I turned to him. “Christopher Marlowe? Are you telling me you’ve never heard of Christopher Marlowe?”
“Christopher Marlowe. Of course I know the name.” He thought a moment. “He was a spy and a writer, but I was not briefed about him in depth because he died years before I needed to arrive here.”
“Briefed? There’s nothing brief about him, except his life, he is only the greatest playwright that ever was, who only wrote the greatest play that ever was.” And because no light of recognition went on in his pretty eyes, I prompted, “It’s Tamburlaine I mean.”
He shrugged. “I do not know it.” I was incredulous and I expressed my incredulity with colorful language. “More famous than Hamlet?” he asked.
I figured he was codding me and almost fell over with the laughter. “Are you taking the piss, Tristan Lyons?” I asked. “Hamlet’s a dull fuck of a story where a fellow stands around lamenting how useless he is even to his own self, and then there’s one pansy swordfight and it’s over. The only good part of that is what he nicked from Kit’s Dido.”
Tristan shrugged again. “I’m not much of a theatre-goer.”
“No theatre, no whoring . . . pray what is it you do for recreation, then?”
But before he could answer, we’d reached the back of the Globe, and they know me in the tiring-house, so I grabbed him by the hand and in we marched.
The tiring-house is a fair way to madness, and it was a big masquerade-ball scene they were gearing up for, with all the supernumeraries donning gorgeous gowns and robes and masks the like of which could have afforded us half Your Grace’s navy for a season. The Prop Man (I never have learned that fella’s name) and his lads were flying around, handing out masks and candles and chalices and bated rapiers and kerchiefs, and I could hear the musicians in the gallery above tuning quietly, while Dick Burbage was bellowing on the boards, pretending to be a horny young man, which he is, except for the young part.
“Here to see Dicky,” I say to the Prop Man. He looks disgruntled, which is his usual state, and he says, “Come back after the show is down.” Then he sees Tristan and his eyes fix on him, because Tristan is big and I realize Prop Man is worried about costuming him—he’s there in nothing but undergarments, so he looks as if he must be expecting a costume (which is true in a way).
“He’s with me,” I say. “Only I need to speak to Dicky about some clothes for him.”
Prop Man frowns, cocks his ear toward the upstage center curtain. “He’s almost off,” he whispers. “And he’s not in scene three.”