Too Like the Lightning

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of plague, it was the age of plague, it was the epoch of no sword control, it was epoch of no gun control, it was the season of theater box-office hits and flops, it was the season of movie theater box-office hits and flops, it was the summer of my love, it was the winter of our discontent, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we had made substantial progress, we had made no progress—in short, it was modern times and Elizabethan England and we were all going to die of the plague and somehow it was the Chinese’s and the Catholics’ fault.

For months that was how I experienced two lives or half-lives—one as high schooler Alex Cuoco and the other as Theater actor Alexander “Sander” Cooke, an apprentice of John Heminges. Every morning I’d either wake up to Mom on her laptop on Zoom with her clients or at Heminges’ house in London, his wife shouting at her kids while she patched up costumes with her daughter Alice. While waiting in (socially-distanced) line at Starbucks, I found myself face-to-face with a Puritan preacher, screaming at me to repent for being the utter depraved sinner that is being an actor. While I was attending Ms. Bloom’s now-remote class, I was also following along to Gus Phillips leading throat and diction exercises, tapping our T’s and rolling our r’s: Trifle not with treasonous, treacherous tippers and Tap it trippingly on the tongue. 

Speaking of pronunciation. The first time I said prove the normal way, I might as well have declared that I was a time traveler from the future.

“Prohve, Sander, not prove,” corrected Gus Phillips patiently during script readings at the Dolphin, albeit very much scandalized, the other actors roaring with laughter. “You rhyme it with love, dove, and above.” No duh, his tone implied.

“Strangers,” Will Kempe muttered as I stammered out an excuse, red in the face. “The notions they devise to mangle our tongue!”

“‘Tis very well, Alex,” said Shakespeare evenly, but even he looked at me with an almost intense curiosity, frowning slightly. “Now once more, thy Juliet… ‘Yet, if thou swearest, thou mayest prove false…’”

Let me start over.

My master Heminges, it turned out, was very good friends with Shakespeare (or Will, as they all called him), their conversation full of inside jokes I could barely understand, much less follow. Will was often at the Heminges,’ sometimes even coming for lunch, Mrs. Heminges fussing over his plate. Will was determined to have a play out ready by Christmas at Greenwich, when we would play before the Queen, but he was cagey with the details.

“Will is protective of his issue,” Heminges told us candidly when my friend and fellow apprentice Sam and I asked him excitedly about it. “Until they are ready to be cried forth publicly, he keeps his chicks close to nest. But what aught it is, ‘twill play. He is the wittiest of us players, with the happiest genius. Henslowe and Alleyn were fools to let him go after Strange’s Men…but their loss is our gain.”

But one night at supper Shakespeare arrived, his round face more animated than I’ve ever seen it. He and Heminges chatted briefly, but not before we snuck down to listen at the parlor door.

“‘Twas a coil,” he told Heminges with a heavy sigh. “Master Brooke’s poem was good but quite marred. I did fear it would defeat my Muse. But I finally found the bent and by my fay, Jack, it is whole now. I have mended all imperfections, purged its foulness. Rescued these falcons from their trot verse mire. ‘Twill play now.” His voice darkened. “It must.”

“A new play,” whispered Sam. “I warrant thee!”

Sure enough, the next morning Heminges told us Master Shakespeare had just finished his latest play, to be approved by the Master of Revels.

“An old Italian tragedy, Romeo and Juliet,” he said as we walked to the Theater. “Hoary but stirring. Leicester’s Men performed a stage posy of it once, I think.”

“Is it a domestic tragedy?” asked Sam excitedly.

“Ay. Will’s Venus had such great success, we would try our efforts further in this vein. There are at least four parts for boy players; if you obey and meet your marks well, you may yet play a role.”

“Heardst thou of it, Sander?” asked Sam, cocking his head at my expression.

“Yeah,” I said, looking away. “I’ve heard of it.”

***

It wasn’t something I was proud of as a theater kid, even in the early days. But I never really got what all the fuss was about Shakespeare. Mostly he was just some dead old white dude we were forced to read about in English class. Not even a guy, come to think of it—just some “texts” that we had read to take exams on.

The worst was Romeo and Juliet in freshman year—overrated, overdone, over-the-top, over it, you name it. Our class made TSTL memes and sang mmm what cha say every time a death happened in the play. In the end I just Sparknoted-it and our English teacher made us watch the ‘90s film, featuring a screaming, blood-stained DiCaprio (“Bro, that’s you,” I told my friend Leo, and got a shove in response) shooting a John Leguizamo in the fountain. Just no.

But then Elizabethan England happened, Shakespeare happened. Now I did not know what to think—except that I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass me by. I was going to be part of the original Theater cast for Romeo and Juliet, one way or another. Maybe then I’d finally prove to Ms. Bloom that Shakespeare meant the play to be taken as the ridiculous mess it was. Maybe then I would learn why I was even here in the first place. Maybe then Anne would change her mind.

But it didn’t turn out quite like I had imagined.

“O, speak again, bright angel!” Richard Burbage had arrived fashionably late to the first day of rehearsals, his sonorous voice filling the Theater like its own presence, my arm and neck hairs standing on end. “For thou art / As glorious to this night, being o’er my head / As is a wingéd messenger of heaven / When he bestrides the lazy-passing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air! Will!”

He flung an arm over Shakespeare’s arms and neck; they wrestled for a bit, laughing, our jaws dropping. (Okay, just me; Sam and the others were roaring with laughter).  

“Thou knave!” Burbage was saying. “Where was this falcon in Two Gentleman? S’blood, but I love the whoreson already.”

“Falcon for falcon and whoreson for whoreson, Dick, ‘twas meet,” retorted Shakespeare, but he was grinning too. “I knew Romeo would please thee.”

“Ay, that he does,” said Burbage, his dark eyes glittering. “Who is my Juliet? I must be incontinently in love with her.” 

Juliet, however, was more uncertain. The sharers had had a serious discussion about it, with Heminges gunning hard for Sam and me. But I was deemed too tall and mature-looking for the part, so I got Lady Capulet and Sam Lady Montague. In the end, it came down between Robert Gogh and Chris Beeston, with the latter winning the role. So it shocked everyone when, a quarter of the way through rehearsal, Chris tried to quit the role.

“I'm sorry, sir,” he told Shakespeare, through gritted teeth. “But pray give me any roll else.”

It was the middle of evening rehearsal, with most of the cast present. For the first time I got to see Shakespeare in action as the director. He was mostly hands-off, correcting us only in our position and line reading. It was a little disappointing, to be honest, even shocking; I had the vague image of Shakespeare as this Kubrick-like visionary, a perfectionist auteur toeing the fine line between perfectionist and asshole. Either that, or a clown who constantly made dick jokes. Instead, he said little, merely correcting small things in the gesture, direction, or in the script, speaking with Burbage, Heminges, and Gus Phillips on the groundling area on finer details.

But when Beeston spoke up, the whole Theater fell silent. Shakespeare swung himself onto the stage in one lithe arm movement—something I had seen him do a dozen times before, but never with such chilling grace as he did then.

“‘Tis a weighty role, I do admit,” he said at last, his lips twitching. “Kissing Burbage is especially great sacrifice.” (“Hang thee, Will,” called Burbage playfully). “But what is thy grievance, Chris? I may yet grant thee.”

Beeston looked momentarily uncertain, but bravely powered on. “I tire of doing naught but sigh and weep and swoon and beat my breast for a man. And ‘tis not only I who agree with this.”

“Oh?”

“Ay, Nick and Rob and Sander too.”

Leave me out of this, I wanted to shout. It was more than just keeping a low profile. Ambivalent feelings for the play aside, I didn’t really agree with Beeston. Even in ninth grade English I had no problem with Juliet. She was fine except when it came to Romeo. Honestly, Romeo was just as bad as her—birds of a feather, I slowly realized. Maybe that’s why they fell in love so quickly.

“Chris, can we speak of this later?” asked Gus Phillips, strained. 

“I would discuss this now,” said Beeston firmly.

“Wouldst a censure for cheek now?” retorted Will Kempe, playing Peter, rolling his shoulders. “I would thou wert wise.”

“Nay, for this one would rob thee of the pleasure,” said Pope dryly.

But Shakespeare held out a hand. He looked thoughtful, as if mulling it over.

“Tell thee what, Chris,” he said. “Exchange rolls with Alex—read for Lady Capulet. If thou art yet unsatisfied, thou mayst give thy part to him to read and his thine. Alex, wilt be content to read for Juliet for now?” he asked me suddenly, and I jumped. “‘Tis an excellent part, assure ye. Romeo will be the beloved of the public, I know, but trust me, Juliet is his equal in all ways.”

It didn’t matter that I was barely warming up to the play, that I had great ambivalence over doing girl roles. The very idea of being the first to play Juliet freakin’ Capulet, one of the most iconic roles in theater, offered by the Bard himself, had me nodding my head like a chicken, red-faced. 

“Very good,” said Shakespeare, though a little bemused at my chicken bopping as Kempe and Pope snickered. “Speak the cue. ‘Tell me, daughter Juliet.’”

“‘Tell me, daughter Juliet,’” Chris read aloud, animated in his relief. “‘How stands your disposition to be married?’”

This was it. I could not blow it. Sweat dewed on my face, trickling down my forehead. I gazed down at my roll, steeling myself.

“‘It is an honor that I dream not of,’” I read.

Robert Gogh would eventually take Beeston’s place as Juliet, and I would return to Lady Capulet. But for just one moment in history, I was Juliet.

***

I cannot tell you how well I did Juliet. Again, Shakespeare said little except to correct my line reading, intonation, and yes, pronunciation. It surprised me, how difficult it was, beyond just mumbling the lines in English class. How much the words affected me, far more than I remembered.

“‘Although I joy in thee, I have no joy in this contract tonight,’” I told Burbage, swallowing thickly. “‘It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden / Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be—’” My throat closed, burning with hot, humiliating tears.

“Art well, Sander?” asked Heminges, concerned, the rest of them staring as I struggled. “Remember thy rolling r’s, like the dog’s sound.” 

(This was a mistake. Anne’s text had been coldly formal, almost impersonal. You’re a minor, Alex. My behavior was entirely inappropriate and I make no excuses for it. I’m deeply sorry for what occurred. This will never happen again.) 

“‘O wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?’” Burbage gazed at me, his tone a masterful mix of demanding, pleading, and vulnerable, and I could not continue.

“What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?” Gus Phillips prompted me, growing concerned. “Sander.”

“What satisfaction canst thou have tonight?” I repeated dully.

(“What do you want from me tonight, Alex?” Anne in her cinched nightrobe at her apartment, torn, defeated. “I can’t do this. I just can’t.”)

“Lose countenance!”

Sometimes I forgot, with his soft-spoken, modest ways, that Shakespeare was indeed trained an actor and could project like nothing else. I jumped as Shakespeare approached me, his gait brisk. My heart sank at his somber expression.

“Alex, a private word with thee,” he said in his normal voice, in a tone that would not be disobeyed.

This was it, I thought, heart thundering as I followed him to the eaves. I was done for. William Shakespeare was going to reprimand me, kick me out of his play, and I would have deserved it. But then he turned, and I saw his concerned expression. 

“Juliet does not please thee either?” he asked quietly.

“No, it does—she does please me,” I said hurriedly. “It’s a great part.”

“Then wherefore this melancholy?” He stared at me intently, boring into me. “I know thy quality from Love Labour’s. Is it truly all well with thee?”

(“It is not too late,” said Anne, her voice harsh in the small confines of her SUV. “Never say that.”)

“I’m sad, I guess,” I said hollowly.

“Of love?” he asked immediately.

Oh, what the hell. Might as well TMI-dump William Shakespeare. “There’s this girl I like.”

“Maid, married, or widowed?” he asked, suddenly shrewd.

How to describe Anne? She was definitely not a virgin, but she had never been married as far as I knew. “A maid with a suitor and everything.”

Was it just me or did Shakespeare suddenly looked all too knowing? Almost triumphant? “How old is she?”

“Six-and-twenty. Her name is Anne.”

I waited for his laugh, a joke, an eye roll. When none came, I finally dared to look up at him. His smile had disappeared; he looked almost pale.

“I see,” he said at last. “And she will not have thee.”

“No.” This hurt the most to admit it; I swallowed back humiliating tears, burning at the back of the throat. “She says that I am—”

“—That thou art too young for her, that thou meanst to draw her into a coil to earn her grace, that thy love is mere luxury, that she would a man, not a boy yet in his mother’s milk, that it is not nature’s order, and that thou must bide thy time to grow a beard on thy chin before seeking out a wife. Well? Was it so?”

They weren’t kidding about the genius thing, were they? “Er, yeah. How did you know that?”

He said nothing at first. He actually looked a little pained. As if he felt what I felt.

“Is she honest, thy maid?” he finally asked.

“Ay,” I said, though I didn’t quite know what he meant—was she a good person, I assumed. (Turned out he was asking if she was a prostitute or a slut).

“Then to woo her is an easy matter,” he said, “if thou wilt consent to be thyself wooed.”

“Oh, I would be wooed,” I said immediately and felt gratified when he laughed, thinly but warmly.

“Thou speakst honestly.” Then he sighed. “I’faith, Alex. As we are finite, all things in life have their end. So doth love.”

“I think not so, sir.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Well, no, you’re right, but…” Why was I even arguing with Shakespeare? What had my life become? “I mean, just because all things end doesn’t mean you should stop living or stop loving. Or not to act to preserve your love. Right?”

I didn’t even know what I was saying, and I was half-convinced Shakespeare would call me out on my BS. Instead, he was looking at me in vague but distinct approval, as if I had passed some unspoken, unwritten test.

“To act,” he said finally, almost half to himself. “Ay. Thou must act for the wooing of thine own. And so must I.” And then, changing gears so suddenly I jumped, “For we are to play in a few days’ time! Hast Lady Capulet well studied?”

“Ay, sir.”

“Good, good. Return to the stage. Oh, and Alex.”

I turned. Shakespeare giving me one of his X-ray stares, as if he saw right through me.

“Find thy words, Alex,” he said at last, almost apropos to nothing. “The fairest and truest ones thou canst afford. Speak them, and were there a thousand suitors for her hand, and all of them of higher dignity, she will always be thine. I warrant thee.”

He turned to leave, but something inside of me, irrepressible, bid call him.  

“It is a good play, sir,” I said. “Your Romeo and Juliet, I mean. It will play for ages.” 

And to my surprise, I meant it. It was about a madness I recognized, that I was beginning to feel—the madness of love and its chaos. The mystery of it, its strength and frailty, acting like the force and power of lightning.

(Also. Love at first sight had nothing on time traveling. Perspective really does change everything).