Alms for Oblivion by Philip Gooden Read Free Book Online

one, not even Dick Burbage or William Shakespeare, knows as much
as Allison does about the playing history of the Company.
    I introduced Peter to him, informing him that this ‘fledgling player’ was to assume Thomas Pope’s part of Thersites for the afternoon session, by order of WS. Master Allison
paused from his note-making to scrabble among the mound of scrolls on the table and, selecting one more by instinct than inspection, held it out to Peter but without letting go of it. He cast his
eyes up and down my friend.
    “Fledgling player, eh. Well, here is a feather or two will help you fly.”
    He waggled the scroll but didn’t release it into Peter’s outstretched hand.
    “Mind you return it straight after the practice is over.”
    “I will.”
    “You have an honest enough face,” said Allison, and it occurred to me that Peter might be growing weary of being complimented on his honesty. Still reluctant to part with the
rolled-up paper, the book-keeper continued, “Understand that these parts are like gold, young man, but more valuable since they are mined, not from the earth . . .”
    “Mined?”
    “ . . . but rather from the
mind
of our author – as you might say.”
    Fortunately my friend smiled at the pun. And only then did Geoffrey Allison allow Peter to take the scroll. Then, dismissing us with a wave of the hand, he resumed his note-making.
    Without any signal being given, the rest of the company was moving towards the hall-screen. It was in front of this partitioned-off area that we’d be practising and later performing
Troilus and Cressida
since, with its double entrances and gallery above, it was the nearest thing to the layout of the stage at the Globe. As we ambled across to join our fellows, I said to
Peter, “Well, you can never have thought that within a few hours of arriving in my lodgings you’d be reading with the Chamberlain’s Company.”
    “I’m speechless, Nick.”
    “Not for a couple of hours, I hope.”
    “So when do I come on?”
    “It’s all down there on the scroll. The lines immediately before your entrances. But Burbage’ll cue you anyway. You’re only reading. This isn’t your part, after
all. You’re not Thersites.”
    I said this to soothe his nerves or rather to temper his growing excitement. But something inside me also wanted to put my old friend in his place. I had been many months in London before
achieving even a hearing from the Chamberlain’s. I didn’t want Peter Agate to believe that theatrical success came too quick and easy. It wouldn’t be good for him. (It
wouldn’t be good for me either.)
    After all this, I expect that you expect to read how Peter gave a brilliant reading as Thersites, the Greek with the foul mouth and fouler mind. Or how he was execrably bad in the part. The
truth is that he was neither. When he got into the part and saw what he was dealing with, he gave a solid account of the character, sneering and fleering with the best of them. But every so often
glimpses of good, honest Peter shone through, so that lines and sentiments like ‘I am a bastard’ were quite decorously delivered, rousing the wrong kind of laughter.
    Still, all went well. Well enough for it to be arranged that, if Thomas Pope hadn’t returned from his visit to Hertfordshire and Lord Hunsdon by the next
Troilus
rehearsal in a
couple of days’ time, then Peter would once again speak for Thersites. I noticed that Shakespeare went out of his way to say something to my friend. By his look and gesture it was
complimentary. But then WS was always complimentary, I consoled myself. Almost always.
    After the play practice some of us repaired to a local tavern, a rather more salubrious one than Southwark’s Goat & Monkey (but we were in north London and in lawyer-land after all).
The place was called the Devil, spawning plenty of jokes about ‘going to the . . . ’ and ‘talking of the . . . ’. The story went that the tavern owed its name to the