the play, I'd put thee in thy place. I might have played Laertes, but that—"
Here he paused, whereupon the white-bearded Corambis (such was the name of Polonius in the first version) finished for him:
"But that y'are not to be trusted with important parts, lest the play be essentially spoiled an you be too drunk to act."
"Why, as for that," replied Crowe, "beshrew me but our gentleman here will stay as late at the tavern, and be roaring as loud for more sack when daylight comes, as any one."
For this home thrust Marryott had no reply. Crowe thereupon walked away, the Corambis joined another group, and the Ophelia sauntered across the room to view the costly raiment that a tiring man was helping Mr. William Sly to put on for the part of the foppish courtier, later christened Osric. Left to his thoughts, the Laertes, nervously twirling his false mustaches, followed the ex-shoemaker with his eyes, and meditated on the latter's insolence. The more he reviewed it, and his own failure to rebuke it properly, the more wrathful he inwardly became. His anger served as a relief from the agitation he had formerly undergone. So deeply buried was he in his new feelings, that he heeded not the progress of affairs on the stage; and thus he was startled when he felt his arm caught by Shakespeare, who was pointing to the entrance, and saying:
"What ails thee, Harry? They wait for thee on the stage."
Roused as from sleep, and seeing that Burbage and the others had indeed gone forth from the tiring-room, Hal ran to the entrance and out upon the stage, his mind in a whirl, taking his place before King Claudius with such abruptness that Burbage, surprised from his mood of melancholy self-absorption, sent him a sharp glance of reproof. This but increased his abashment, and he stared up at the placard that proclaimed the stage to be a room in the palace at Elsinore, in a kind of panic. The audience moved and murmured, restlessly, during the king's long speech, and Hal, imagining that his own embarrassment was perceptible to all, made an involuntary step backward toward the side of the stage. He thus trod on the toe of one of the noble spectators, who was making a note in his tables, and who retaliated with an ejaculation and a kick. Feeling that some means must be taken to attain composure, the more as his heart seemed to beat faster and his stomach to grow weaker, Hal remembered that he had previously found distraction in his wrath toward Gilbert Crowe. He therefore brought back to mind the brief passage in the tiring-room. So deeply did he lose himself in this recollection, gazing the while at the juniper burning on the stage to sweeten the air, that it was like a blow in the face when he suddenly became aware of a prolonged silence, and of the united gaze of all the actors upon himself.
"What wouldst thou have, Laertes?" the king was repeating for the third time.
Hal, aware now that his cue had been given more than once, opened his lips to reply, but his first line had fled completely from his mind. In his blank confusion he flashed a look of dismay toward the entrance. His eyes caught those of Shakespeare, who had parted the arras curtains sufficiently to be visible to the players. Rather in astonishment than in reproach, the poet, serving on occasion as prompter, uttered half audibly the forgotten words, and Hal, caught back as from the brink of a bottomless pit, spoke out with new-found vigor:
"Dread my lord.
Your leave and favor to return to France,"
and the ensuing lines. But his delivery did not quiet down the audience—which, indeed, though it had hushed for a moment at the play's opening, and again at the appearance of the ghost, was not completely stilled, until at last, upon the king's turning to Hamlet, the "wondrous tongue" of Burbage spoke.
When Hal presently made exit to the tiring-room, after the king and courtiers, he craved the pardon of Master Shakespeare, but the latter merely said:
"Tut, Hal, it hath happened to all of us in our time."
The derisive smile of Crowe did not sweeten Harry's musings while he waited for his next going on. Indeed, he continued to brood bitterly on the exhibition he had made of himself, and the stay he had caused in the play. His chagrin was none the less for that it was his friend and benefactor Shakespeare that had nominated him for the part of Laertes, and whose play he had brought to a momentary halt. In deep dejection, when the time came, he returned to the stage with the boy-Ophelia for his scene with her and Corambis.
This passed so smoothly as to give Hal new heart, until it was near its very end; and then, having replied to Corambis's excellent advice with the words. "Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord," Hal happened to let his glance wander past the old man, and across a surging mass of heads in a part of the yard, to a certain face in one of the boxes; and that face had in it something to make his gaze remain delightedly upon it and his lips part in admiration.
Yes, the face was a lady's. Hal had never seen it before; of that he was instantly sure, for had he seen it he could not have forgotten it. He would not have seen it now but that its youthful possessor had removed her mask, which had become irksome to her skin. She seemed above all concern as to what might be thought of her for showing her face in a Bankside theatre. A proud and wilful face was hers, as if with the finest feminine beauty she had something of the uncurbed spirit and rashness of a fiery young gentleman. Her hair and eyes were dark, her skin fair and clear and smooth, her forehead not too high, her chin masterful but most exquisitely shaped, her cheeks rich with natural color. In fine, she was of pronounced beauty, else Master Marryott had not forgot himself to look at her. Upon her head was a small gray velvet hat, peaked, but not very high, and with narrow brim turned up at the sides. Her chin was elevated a little from contact with a white cambric ruff. Her gown was of murrey cloth with velvet stripes, and it tightly encased her figure, which was of a well-made and graceful litheness. The slashed sleeves, although puffed out, did not make too deep a secret of her shapely, muscular arms. She might have been in her twenty-second year.
With this fine young creature, and farther back in the box, sat a richly dressed old gentleman, comfortably asleep, and a masked lady, who shrank as far as possible into the shadow of the box corner. Standing in the yard, but close to the front of the box, was a slim, dark-faced youth in the green attire then worn by the menservants of ladies.
Not all these details, but only the lady, held the ravished Laertes's attention while he recited:
"Farewell, Ophelia; and remember well
What I have said to you."
So heedless and mechanical was his utterance of these lines, in contrast with his previous lifelike manner, that the nearest auditors laughed. The Corambis and Ophelia, seeking the cause of his sudden lapse, followed his gaze with wondering side-glances, while Ophelia replied, in the boy's musical soprano:
"'Tis in my memory lock'd
And you yourself shall keep the key of it."
"Farewell," said Laertes, this time with due expression, but rather to the lady in the distant box than to Ophelia and Corambis. Reluctantly he backed toward the rear curtains, and was so slow in making his exit, that Corambis, whose next line required to be spoken in Laertes's absence, gave him a look of ireful impatience and a muttered "Shog, for God's sake," which set the young lords at the stage-side tittering.
At sight of Shakespeare, who was whispering to the Horatio and the Marcellus, near the entrance. Master Marryott had another twinge of self-reproach, but this swiftly yielded to visions of the charming face. These drove away also all heed of the presence of Crowe. Hal would have liked to mount the steps to the balcony at the rear of the stage, in which the unemployed actors might sit when it was not in other use, and whence he might view the lady at leisure; but the balcony was soon to be in service as a platform of the castle, in the scene between Hamlet and the ghost.
His imagination crossing all barriers, and making him already the accepted wooer of the new beauty. Hal noted not how the play went on without, even when a breathless hush presently told of some unusual interest on the part of the audience; and he was then but distantly sensible of Shakespeare's grave, musical voice in the ghost's long recitals, and of the awestricken, though barely whispered, exclamations of Burbage.
In the second act Hal had to remove his mustaches, change his cloak, and go on as an attendant in the presence-chamber