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“Will you come back later?” he asks. “After the show?”

“No. Unfortunately, I have to get back to London.”

His eyes widen in distress. “London? But why? You said you’d stay with the tour for the summer.”

“I know, my dear, but the pestilence is on the wane, and my husband believes he’s been cured of his nonexistent illness. I’ll need to return, but I shall write you. Perhaps we’ll see each other when the company is allowed back in town.”

His eyes are like a young boy’s whose ginger candy has been snatched away. He does care for me in his way, I can see that, but my father’s people come from the princes of Armenia. I will not be forced to accept too small a fraction of anyone’s love.

“We shall see,” I say, blowing him a kiss. “Do stay in touch.”

“I will write to you, Rose!” he cries as I leave him in the sheets, wounded and unsatisfied. It is, of course, crueler than any whip, but it had to be done.

My mind begins to plot on how to become the leading player in this love story. Of course, I will need to rid that beautiful young man from the landscape of the Poet’s life. That much is clear.

NineteenA Ghost

Wherein Willy Hughes performs his Juliet for the first time, and someone from his past shows up unexpectedly.

“Remember thee?

Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat

In this distracted globe.”

—Hamlet (1601) Act 1, Scene 5

And suddenly the stinking Rose was gone—removed hastily like a bouquet of withered flowers kept around far too long. Though I couldn’t know for sure, I had convinced myself that the Poet had ordered her to leave for my sake, knowing the distraction was deleterious for his writing and my performance. Whatever the reason, her absence, and the Poet’s newest sonnet, had me feeling brighter than a summer’s day.

Then more good news—after weeks of fashioning and refashioning, the Poet felt The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet was finally ready to perform before an audience. The plan was to premiere the play at our next stop on the tour. It would run on a rotating bill for the week with Johnson’s comedy Every Man in His Humour and parts one and two of Henry VI.

I felt a bit forlorn that Alex would no longer be playing Romeo, but I understood the reasoning. Burbage was the draw—especially for a play that was untried. All prayed for its success, since everyone was weary of performing the same old repertory. Of course, I more than anyone needed the new play to succeed. Both my future with the company, and my goal of enhancing the Poet’s affection for me, depended on it.

In the final days leading to our first performance, I overheard two hired men complain that the Poet had acted too hastily in risking an entire play on an inexperienced apprentice “merely for his beauty.” When I spoke of this to my master Augustine, he said to me, “Ignore them, lad. It’s just the jealousy of older actors who lament not getting to play the young beauties themselves. You’ll see, one day it will happen to you too. It’s the way of all flesh. All which walks will wither. Get all that you can now, lad. You are blessed with a gift. Use it for all its worth, so you may bask in the memories later, when the only roles you’re given are buffoons, witches, and dying grandfathers with but six lines to a play.”

His words echoed what the Poet had written in his sonnet: “Summer’s leaf hath all too short a date.” I promised myself that I would gain all I could from my youthful beauty, and not only in the sorts of roles I would play, but in my higher pursuit of true love.

During the scramble-through the morning of the premiere, Burbage, who still stunk of the previous night’s dragon’s milk, merely mumbled his lines as he worked out where he would be standing. Periodically he’d cry out, “My head, my head, my kingdom for a clear head!” as if it were hilarious. It frustrated me that he offered no clue as to how he would truly speak Romeo’s words, but such was his way. He gave little without an audience present to stomp their feet and pay their penny.

Finally, the trumpets sounded and the musicians began to play. I peeked through the slats of the tiring house to watch Burbage make his entrance. I had to admit, despite being in his late twenties, he was most believable as the handsome youth of my own age. Where his humpback Richard the Third had been brilliantly bloodthirsty, his Romeo stole the hearts of every onlooker. His face brightened, his eyes became clear and illuminated. Even I, who still resented him for sometimes being a bully, found myself wounded with wonder and stunned by his beauty. Seeing his transformative genius caused what little confidence I had to crumble. I remembered the hired men’s words about the hastiness in my being given a titled role. Queen Anne had but a pocketful of scenes to play, and even fewer emotions to express. Juliet was all.

The downward trajectory of my spirit must have been evident on my face, since I soon felt the Poet come up behind me and place his hands on my quaking shoulders. “It’s normal to feel nervous, lad,” he said.

“I don’t want to let you down,” I whispered.

“You won’t.” He turned my body so that we were looking into each other’s eyes. “Remember, I wrote this role for you. I cut its words to fit your lips. You are my Juliet.”

It was all I needed. As had happened with my debut as Queen Anne, when I stepped onto the stage and said my first lines—“How now, who calls?”—the entire audience burst into hoots, gasps, and sighs.

“’Tis a real girl!” a penny stinker cried.

“’Tis not, but I wish he were!” another retorted, followed by cries of “Shhh, let the beauty speak!”

The rest was a blur, other than the sense of awe and triumph that followed. Burbage and I worked together brilliantly, pitching our lines off each other as if we were creating them on the spot. He even sometimes turned his shoulder to give me the stage, though not often, and only during my most important speeches. The play itself was a rousing success. Tears flowed in the yard and galleries. The next night the company was begged to repeat the performance, supplanting Johnson’s play. Word spread to all the nearby towns how devastating and glorious was both the new play and its leading players. Throughout the rest of July and August, we performed the Romeo and Juliet play far more than any of our other plays; each performance was more lauded than the previous. The Poet’s name was on everyone’s breath, along with Burbage’s and mine, though to a lesser extent.

It was after one of our final performances that August, when I was leaving the Guild Hall in Barnstable, that I was approached by a man whom I, at first, did not recognize.

“Willy Hughes!” the man called out in the deep, raspy Cornish accent. He was a fine-looking bearded man whom I gathered to be in his early twenties, with the thick, fit torso of someone familiar with the lifting of barrels. I had no idea why one such as he would be calling my familiar name in a strange town.