On the morning of the dress rehearsal for Romeo And Juliet, Jack stood grimacing in the wings. He was cast as the hot-tempered swordsman, Tybalt, to better direct the tremendous dueling scenes he and Alphonse had worked up. Since so many minor characters had to be cut from the play due to scarcity of supernumaries in the company, and so much of the text had to be excised for the sake of propriety, Mr. Fairweather told Jack he had to depend on the fighting and the splendor of the Capulet ball to cut a dash.
Certainly, Henry Harding’s Mercutio could never be listed among the assets, even if it was his own benefit. Jack tried not to cringe as he watched Harding energetically mangle the lovely Queen Mab speech onstage, grinding out the poetry as if it were stringy beef to be gnashed into submission. There were not many compensations to playing Tybalt, but at least Jack would have the satisfaction of murdering this graceless Mercutio.
"Look, Owen, my prayers are answered! Catch me, ere I swoon!"
Jack turned to find Jane Kennett gazing at him in an attitude of dumbstruck delight while Violet Owen giggled at her side.
"We were just admiring your dress, Mr. Dance."
Jack glanced down at his indigo doublet and hose, pretty standard fare for Shakespeare in the provinces.
"You ought to have gone in for Romeo, Mr. Dance," added Mrs. Kennett. "His dress is even more revealing."
"I expect Mr. Bell fills out his tights to satisfaction," said Jack.
"As you do, sir."
Jack was long out of the habit of flirting, but he could not help but smile at the playful lewdness in those odd-colored eyes.
"Ladies, you shall make me blush."
"Oh, I doubt that, but how I should like to try," grinned Mrs. Kennett. "Your family does not go in much for blushing, I’ve noticed."
"If you mean my sister, she’s far too level-headed."
"And you are too cold-hearted, sir. You ought to have praised our dresses by now."
"Miss Owen, you are a perfect picture," Jack replied obediently, nodding at her gossamer Juliet gown. "The swains will be slaughtering each other in the boxes over you."
"Oh, Mr. Dance . . . " giggled the girl, and she hurried off to find her marks for her next entrance.
"And me?" Mrs. Kennett assumed an elaborate coquette’s attitude, all the more ironic given her outfit of voluminous skirts and shawls for the character of Juliet’s old Nurse.
"Are you not a little young for the Nurse?"
"Is that the best you can do?" sighed Mrs. Kennett. "I play bawds in this company, Mr. Dance, and bawds come in all ages. Of course, had I known you were going to look so killing as Tybalt, I should have gone in for Lady Capulet. Imagine the fun I would have throwing my body across your prostrate form after the fatal duel. I guarantee I should have made you blush then!"
"I don't doubt it!" Jack laughed. "But that would be a shameful way for Lady Capulet to use a kinsman."
"Oh, surely you don’t believe that ‘kinsman’ business, do you?" scoffed Mrs. Kennett. " 'O, kinsman! O, cousin!' No sensible woman becomes that distraught over her relations. Lady Capulet and Tybalt are not cousins, they’re lovers. Anyone can see that."
Nothing changed in Jack's expression as Mrs. Kennett glided away, but he felt a chill of alarm, all the same.
Tory had nothing to do in Romeo but decorate the Capulet ball in a fancy dress, so she had an excellent opportunity to watch the rest of the play unfold on performance night from between the side-scenes. Harding had risen to the occasion of filling the house. Jack told her it was the job of the actor receiving the benefit to stand as many potential patrons to drinks as he could drag into the alehouse in return for their pledges to attend. Harding’s popularity in the alehouses of Kelsingham was reflected in the character of the house, particularly the boisterous fellows and bawdy women crammed onto the pit benches, lustily feasting on oranges and walnuts and cheering Harding’s every entrance. In return, Harding lost no opportunity to march down to the edge of the stage to deliver every speech of more than two lines expressly to them.
After he had flung verse after verse of a speech into the pit in this manner, the trouble began. Forced to follow him downstage to fetch him back into the action, Christopher Bell as Romeo spoke the line, "Peace, Mercutio, peace! Thou talk’st of nothing" with perhaps too saucy an edge for Harding’s liking. The pit roared, but Mercutio was seen to visibly glower. From then on, whenever Harding took the stage with Bell, the kinsmen’s bawdy jesting became moments of ferocious competition. Harding grew ever more heated, but it was a game he could not win; verbal sparring was as natural as breathing to Mr. Bell, and despite his partisans in the pit, Harding began to perceive that he was giving ground, that Bell was somehow besting him at his own ben.
Tory could read the progression of Harding’s feelings in his face and manner, for, player though he was, he could not conceal his anger. It made him reckless. When Mercutio could not get the better of Romeo onstage, Harding contrived to linger between the scenes, awaiting Bell’s exits. Once, passing each other between the scenes, Tory heard Harding mutter, "We shall have to re-name the piece Molly And Juliet," which Bell ignored. When Mr. Gabriel’s friar ushered the young lovers offstage to be wed, Harding hissed, "Never was a husband less able to satisfy a bride." Poor Violet Owen fled backstage, but Bell, without breaking stride, murmured to Harding, "Fear not, my dear, you shall have your satisfaction soon enough."
How much of this kindling rivalry was visible to the audience, Tory could not tell. But the tension increased when Harding met Jack’s Tybalt onstage for their duel and Bell joined them. In the play, Tybalt’s obstinate attempts to lure Romeo into a fight were deflected by Romeo’s protests of love for the Capulets, to the angry impatience of Mercutio. But when this Romeo told Tybalt, "I . . . love thee better than thou canst devise," Kit Bell turned his face away from the house for an instant to eye Harding with an expression of such lewd invitation that Tory had to clap her hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Bell finished the speech to Jack with absolute aplomb, but Harding was beside himself. As Mercutio cried, "O calm, dishonorable, vile submission!" he whipped out his sword and turned on Bell.
Jack saw that Harding had forgotten all about him in his rage to draw on Bell. Prop rapiers had dulled tips, but they could still batter and bruise and Romeo had yet to draw. Harding neglected to speak the lines inviting Tybalt into the fray, so Jack had to bound between Mercutio’s sword and Romeo to recall Harding to the text, and while the rest of Mercutio’s epithets were flung at Romeo, Jack fenced in double time to keep his weapon engaged. It was strenuous work, deflecting Mercutio’s blade when Romeo rushed unarmed between them, but Bell was skilled enough an athlete to dodge the worst of it until Jack had the opportunity to thrust the fatal blow against Mercutio. After that, Harding was too intent on his splendid death scene to waste any more effort baiting Christopher Bell.
"'It was with no little relish'," Jane Kennett read aloud from the Kelsingham Advertiser two days later, "'that the audience at the Kelsingham Playhouse Wednesday last beheld the spectacle of Romeo And Juliet. Playgoers may be forgiven thinking they had stumbled by mistake into a farce. Most especially in Act III, when it appeared to require all the best efforts of Tybalt to prevent Mercutio from drawing against his own friend and kinsman, Romeo. We must praise the skill and dexterity of Mr. Dance’s Tybalt in reminding Mercutio who his opponent was'."
Tory could not help but smile. Certainly, Jack had never looked for any kind of notice in a role like Tybalt.
"What else does it say?" cried Violet eagerly.
"Oh, merely some fa-la-la about the 'sweet and affecting Juliet of Miss Owen'," Jenny teased, and the girl colored with pleasure. Jenny's eyes continued to scan down the page. "'Mr. Bell gives us a Romeo of fire, wit, grace and above all, youth, a refreshing change from the mature Romeos we so often see on the provincial stage.' Hmmm, Mr. F may not appreciate that. Still, he’ll be pleased for Kit. His majesty can be quite forgiving as long as his players don’t outright disgrace the company onstage."
"And there’s no mention at all of Harding?" Tory said drily.
"Ah, here it is, in the description of the comic opera after-piece. 'Mr. Harding dances prettily enough'." Jenny glanced up at the others, her odd eyes doing their own dance of mischief. "Well, he made his money, in any event. He’ll have to be satisfied with that."
"I’ll demand satisfaction," glowered Henry Harding into his tankard at the Pig And Piper, the tavern where he and some of the other gentleman players lodged. "That whelp, that wretched little sod made me a laughingstock!"
"Now, Hen, 'twas you chose the piece," George Plumleigh reminded him. "You can’t blame the lad for making the most of it."
"At my expense! I should have shone against Fairweather’s placid Romeo. That damned cur sabotaged my ben!"
"Well, you’ve had the last laugh, anyway. It’s your profit."
"Aye, for one night," muttered Harding. He tossed back the rest of his drink in a single gulp. "In the meantime, Bell and even Dance have enhanced their reputations at my expense. I’ll be stuck playing comic opera for the rest of the season." He swung up his tankard again and roared at the pot boy when he found it empty.
"Never mind, old sport," soothed Plumleigh. "We’ll give a new piece tomorrow night and all will be forgotten."
"Not by me." The boy brought another tankard and Harding stared into it, as if the entire blighted performance was being replayed there to torture him anew, amid the din and cursing and brash laughter and jesting of the taproom. These were his natural patrons, the only ones who appreciated his worth. They would not allow him to suffer this outrageous insult.
"It ought to be against the law," he began, his voice rising, "for a practitioner of that most odious and unmanly vice to profane so noble a role as Romeo upon the stage of a decent town."
"B’God, Hen, if actors were forbidden to play because of their vices, there’d never be another play performed!" Plumleigh laughed.
"Jest if you will, Plum," Harding replied gravely. "But if such fellows, one can scarcely call 'em men, receive our approbation upon the stage, where shall it end? Our streets, our towns, our homes shall not be safe from their vile influence. Our very children shall be at risk!" He had worked himself up to his most stentorian stage voice, by now. Several fellows occupying benches and tables nearby had suspended their own quarrels and revels to listen. " It grieves me to think of the world our sons will inherit."
"Hear, hear," responded a burly young fellow at the next table, saluting Harding with his own tankard. His two companions nodded and muttered in agreement.
"Their sort of corruption should not be allowed to run free, infecting decent folk," Harding declared. "It must be the duty of all men, all real men, to resist it!"
The three young men at the next table, the aimless and choleric sort who infested alehouses at every hour of the day, were still talking heatedly among themselves when Harding bid Plumleigh good night and swept out of the taproom. He’d have his satisfaction, now, and it would cost him nothing.
Top: Samuel Sangster, ca 1870
Above R: Nathan Thompson
Above L: F. Barnard ca 1853
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