Much Ado About Murder

To make matters even worse, the Burbage Theatre was dilapidated and much in need of repair. The thatch was old; the galleries were creaking and there were more than a few cracked and splintered boards among the seats up in the boxes. The stage was in a state of disrepair and needed rotten boards replaced and hangings mended. Even the penants drooped with all the list-lessness of an old beggar woman’s breasts. The Burbage Theatre was a tired and weary old maiden, and merely slapping on some paint would not cover up all of the wrinkles and the blemishes of age.

Nevertheless, it was still their theatre, and to all of them who remained, it was much more their home than where they ate and slept. And as their decimated company gathered for rehearsal, despite all of their ill fortune and dim prospects, there was nevertheless a strong sense of cameraderie and joi de vivre. This was where they truly came alive, a sentiment that Shakespeare had expressed to Smythe quite often.

“Aye, this is where it matters, Tuck,” he had said again, moments after he came up to greet them. As he stood beside them just inside the entrance, he looked out with them over the yard, up at the stage, then back round to the galleries. “This is where their laughing faces fill our hearts with joy or where their catcalls plunge us all into despair. This is where the smell of unwashed bodies and fresh rushes mingles with the smells of greasepaint and the vendors’ offerings to create a heady perfume that intoxicates each player’s soul. This is where we stage our plays and play the dramas of our lives, where shadow becomes substance and substance masquerades as shadow. This…” he held out his hands, palms up, as if presenting some great work, “… this is our world. And you, prodigal Ben Dickens, are welcome to it once again.”

Dickens grinned. “It feels somewhat strange to be back again after all this time,” he said. “And yet, despite that, it also feels most welcome and familiar. It has been only a few years, and yet so much seems to have happened in that time. Can it have been so long since last I trod the boards in women’s clothing, declaiming in my high and squeaky, boyish voice the lines that I had worked so hard to drill into my memory, dreaming of the day when I could at last cast off my girlish gowns and walk out like a young knight in doubtlet, cape and hose, and carrying a sword?”

“That day has come,” said Shakespeare.

“Aye,” said Smythe, with a chuckle, “and a good thing, too, for you would make a most unnatural woman now with that deep voice, those broad shoulders, and that beard.”

“Well, we could shave off the beard,” said Shakespeare, as if contemplating the idea. “The face would look comely enough with a bit of paint upon it, but there would be no hiding that breadth of arm or depth of chest. S’trewth, Tuck, he is a strapping youth, indeed, almost as big as you.”

“We could always cast him as a horse,” said Smythe.

“Soft now, keep your voice down, else Kemp may hear and wish to ride him,” Shakespeare replied, with a wink.

“Ben!” Fleming called out, as he spied him from the stage. He threw his arms out as if to hug him from up there. “Welcome! Welcome! Well met and welcome once again! Look, everyone, look! Ben has come! Ben Dickens has come back to join us!”

They all gathered round to greet him, Speed and Fleming, Burbage, Flemings, Pope and Phillips, Kemp and Bryan… all a motley looking crew, but still a happy lot, despite their tribulations. And as he saw them all together, Smythe thought of Liam Bailey’s admonitions against wasting his time amongst the players and realized that for all his good intentions, Liam Bailey simply did not understand. How could he?

They were a family, much more of a family than he had ever known. Symington Smythe had never truly been a father to him in anything save name, for all that they had shared that name. That patronymic bond was one of the reasons he now preferred to be called Tuck. That grasping woman that his father married, whom Tuck did not even care to think of as his stepmother, had never wanted to be bothered with having a child underfoot, so to appease her and free his father of a burdensome responsibility at the same time, he had been packed off to his uncle’s. And much as he would always love his uncle, Thomas Smythe was a quiet man by nature and by disposition, reserved and not given to boistrous demonstrations of his thoughts and feelings. Uncle Thomas gave him what he could, and did as well by him as he knew how, but Tuck had always felt that there was something missing. Now he knew that he had found it.