the infection we were deluded. An outbreak of the pestilence had been reported from the south side of the town. News of such an event spreads even more quickly than the disease itself and, like the disease, usually has no obvious source. It simply became “known” that an entire household had been struck down near Folly Bridge.
The response of the players was perhaps a little offhand. We had come, after all, from a populous city where the disease never quite died out. You got used to it, as I’d said to Abel. Certainly you didn’t show fear. A more immediate concern for us might have been the suspicion directed at outsiders. Since the Chamberlain’s Company had crossed Folly Bridge only a few days before – and since we might therefore have been blamed for importing the infection with us – it was just as well that the road across the bridge was the principal route into and out of town and constantly busy. In other words, if the disease had come from the outside, it might have been brought in by any of the hundreds of travellers who arrive at the Athens of England at all times of the day.
We didn’t know whether the city authorities differed from those in London in the way they would handle the outbreak, apart from the inevitable step of isolating the household. The general opinion was that we, that is the players, would be permitted to ply our trade in the inn yard for as long as the death toll stayed low. But, if it started to rise (and bearing in mind that Oxford is a much smaller place than London, not partitioned into many suburbs and wards), then we could find ourselves on the move once more. I’d said to Abel Glaze, half in jest, that the player’s future was never other or better than a matter of pillar to post. This staggering insight was likely to be proved true once again.
However, we dismissed the plague and its threat to our livelihoods, not to mention lives, as soon as we reached Doctor Fern’s and began practising for
Romeo and Juliet
.
This is a queerly affecting play, a sugared tragedy. The story is surely known to you. If the theatre survives and the Puritans or the plague do not triumph over all of us then this tragedy will be played out down the centuries, and keep WS’s name fresh to succeeding generations. But – wherever you live, whenever you live – you are doubtless already familiar with the two rival families in the city of Verona, those Montagues and Capulets, and the young couple who reach across the divide which separates them. You recognize the couple’s fear that their parents would hardly allow them to meet, let alone marry. You remember the intervention of Friar Laurence, Romeo’s friend and father-confessor, who encourages Romeo and Juliet to wed in secret, partly for the sake of propriety but also in the hope that the union of such young lovers might bring about a reconciliation of the feuding families (which it does, but in the last way that anyone would have desired).
The youngsters enjoy one night of wedded bliss. Their whole marriage is contracted into the hours between a single dusk and dawn, hardly more than an eye-blink. Then Romeo must fly from Verona for the killing of Tybalt, and Juliet must feign death with the help of Friar Laurence’s potions, and Romeo must believe her really dead, and return to kill himself over her drugged body in the Capulet family vault, and then she must awaken – too late, just too late! – to see her husband truly dead and gone, before taking up his dagger and sheathing it in her own body. So perish the young lovers and so are their old families brought together in grief and self-reproach.
Love and death, it is a most infallible mixture.
It is not just the deaths of the young lovers, either. There’s also the odd fight on the way, with the occasional casualty. On the road to that love-tryst in the Capulet tomb others will perish. Mercutio is mortally wounded by Tybalt’s rapier before Tybalt himself dies at the hands of Romeo.
The response of the players was perhaps a little offhand. We had come, after all, from a populous city where the disease never quite died out. You got used to it, as I’d said to Abel. Certainly you didn’t show fear. A more immediate concern for us might have been the suspicion directed at outsiders. Since the Chamberlain’s Company had crossed Folly Bridge only a few days before – and since we might therefore have been blamed for importing the infection with us – it was just as well that the road across the bridge was the principal route into and out of town and constantly busy. In other words, if the disease had come from the outside, it might have been brought in by any of the hundreds of travellers who arrive at the Athens of England at all times of the day.
We didn’t know whether the city authorities differed from those in London in the way they would handle the outbreak, apart from the inevitable step of isolating the household. The general opinion was that we, that is the players, would be permitted to ply our trade in the inn yard for as long as the death toll stayed low. But, if it started to rise (and bearing in mind that Oxford is a much smaller place than London, not partitioned into many suburbs and wards), then we could find ourselves on the move once more. I’d said to Abel Glaze, half in jest, that the player’s future was never other or better than a matter of pillar to post. This staggering insight was likely to be proved true once again.
However, we dismissed the plague and its threat to our livelihoods, not to mention lives, as soon as we reached Doctor Fern’s and began practising for
Romeo and Juliet
.
This is a queerly affecting play, a sugared tragedy. The story is surely known to you. If the theatre survives and the Puritans or the plague do not triumph over all of us then this tragedy will be played out down the centuries, and keep WS’s name fresh to succeeding generations. But – wherever you live, whenever you live – you are doubtless already familiar with the two rival families in the city of Verona, those Montagues and Capulets, and the young couple who reach across the divide which separates them. You recognize the couple’s fear that their parents would hardly allow them to meet, let alone marry. You remember the intervention of Friar Laurence, Romeo’s friend and father-confessor, who encourages Romeo and Juliet to wed in secret, partly for the sake of propriety but also in the hope that the union of such young lovers might bring about a reconciliation of the feuding families (which it does, but in the last way that anyone would have desired).
The youngsters enjoy one night of wedded bliss. Their whole marriage is contracted into the hours between a single dusk and dawn, hardly more than an eye-blink. Then Romeo must fly from Verona for the killing of Tybalt, and Juliet must feign death with the help of Friar Laurence’s potions, and Romeo must believe her really dead, and return to kill himself over her drugged body in the Capulet family vault, and then she must awaken – too late, just too late! – to see her husband truly dead and gone, before taking up his dagger and sheathing it in her own body. So perish the young lovers and so are their old families brought together in grief and self-reproach.
Love and death, it is a most infallible mixture.
It is not just the deaths of the young lovers, either. There’s also the odd fight on the way, with the occasional casualty. On the road to that love-tryst in the Capulet tomb others will perish. Mercutio is mortally wounded by Tybalt’s rapier before Tybalt himself dies at the hands of Romeo.
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