Which was both a comforting and a dauntingthought for those seated at the director’s table.
“I propose, gentlemen, that we begin.” SirPeregrine stared down at his cast, who themselves were staring downat their scripts. “Mr. Dutton, your slim figure and vigour ofmovement should suffice to make you a presentable lover. Would youfavour us with one of Lysander’s speeches?”
Sir Peregrine indicated the speech hedesired.
Andrew Dutton found it, fondled his goatee asif speculating whether or not it might have to be sacrificed forart’s sake, and began:
Content with Hermia? No, I do repent
The tedious minutes I with her have spent.
Not Hermia, but Helena, I do love,
Who will not change a raven for a dove?
Sir Peregrine cleared his throat. Dutton had gotevery word right, but the rhythms in which he had cast them werecloser to those of a prosecuting attorney with a hostile witnessthan a teenage lover in an enchanted wood.
“Perhaps we could try that again, sir. And alittle less forensic this time.” Sir Peregrine chuckled at hiswitticism in hopes of relaxing the fellow. “Try thinking of thebeautiful Helena as you do so, or any beautiful woman, if you will.I am told your dear departed Felicity was a dark-hairedbeauty.”
Dutton tried to smile to indicate hisappreciation of the compliment, but the pain in his eyes wasapparent. Nonetheless, he gamely plunged ahead.
Several more attempts had reduced the pacesomewhat but little of the sustained aggression. Sir Peregrine’ssmile grew more impoverished with each rendition. Finally he turnedto Fullarton and said, “While Mr. Dutton ponders Lysander’s wordssilently, perhaps you would try the meaty role of Oberon, my dearHorace?” Sir Peregrine directed the banker to the speech he hadpreselected.
Fullarton began to recite in a deep, richbaritone voice:
My gentle Puck, come hither. Thou rememb’rest
Since once I sat upon a promontory
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin’s back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath
That the rude sea grew civil at her song
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid’s music?
The silence that followed Fullarton’s recitationindicated that something in the poetry had genuinely moved hislisteners. Perhaps too they were startled by the passionate andmelodious voice of the speaker, who was after all a banker and anusher at St. James, a man of rectitude and solitary habits. ButBrodie was not surprised, for he had long suspected that there wasa lot more to the man than his public persona. He was grateful thatMr. Fullarton had suggested their joining this club: it was goingto be good for them both.
“Splendid, sir,” the chairman burbled. “Morethan splendid. Somewhere above, seated on his divine actor’s stool,the Bard himself is surely watching and nodding approval.”
This effusive dollop of praise had a doubleeffect: it embarrassed Horace Fullarton and left Cyrus Crenshawdry-throated in the knowledge that such a performance would beimpossible to follow. Moreover, Sir Peregrine was now blessing himwith a multi-chinned grin.
“My dear Crenshaw, as you may have begun tosurmise, we have saved the plum role for your formidabletalents.”
“P-Puck?” was all Crenshaw could squeeze out,though it may not have been as precise an enunciation asintended.
Sir Peregrine’s grin vanished. “I amobviously referring to one of the supreme comedic roles in theentire Bardic canon.”
“He means Bottom the weaver,” Duttonwhispered in the manner he had often used to toss devastatingasides to the jury.
“You want me to play Bottom?” Crenshaw said,letting his jaw drop.
“I do, sir. I believe you will make theperfect clown. Why, you have the face of a Will Kemp, Shakespeare’sown favourite among the Lord Chamberlain’s Men.”
Crenshaw struggled heroically to take thisremark as a compliment. “But Bottom is a common mechanic,” heprotested, “an ignorant weaver who muddles his diction. And he ispompous and vain to boot.”
“Ah, I see you have penetrated to the nub ofthe character already. My directorial instincts have proven to beunerring, have they not?” Sir Peregrine said with much heartinessand a rippling smile.
“But I am a man of means, milord, the ownerof a prosperous factory and a fine residence. I have graduatedgrammar school. I can read Latin and a little Greek – ”
“Then you are further advanced than theBard,” Sir Peregrine quipped.
“I was hoping to be assigned a role with somedignity – like Oberon.”
“But my dear Crenshaw, am I not correct inrecalling that your father was a hard-working farmer and a merecorporal in the Canadian militia when he fell in the line ofduty?”
Whether this was a deliberate putdown or amisguided attempt to bolster Crenshaw’s confidence did not matter.The candle-maker knew he was beaten. He also knew that his wifeClementine would poison his coffee if he failed to obtain roles forthem in the baronet’s play.
“I will do my best, then” he said. “What doyou want me to read?”
“Act four, scene one: the place where Bottomwakes up with the ass’s head on him and finds himself in the armsof the beautiful Titania.”
Crenshaw blinked. The image of donkey’s earsvied with the happier one of an amorous Titania in the guise ofLady Madeleine, whose svelte figure and lustrous tresses he hadfurtively glimpsed in her pew at St. James.
“Ass’s head?” he gulped.
“Of course. Bottom is, after all,fundamentally an ass,” Sir Peregrine said with anill-concealed smirk of satisfaction at this brief excursion intowit. “This passage is prose. Just read it straight ahead, beginningat ‘Mounsieur Cobweb, good mounsieur.’”
Crenshaw gritted his teeth and began. Whetherhe was nervous, humiliated or inept – or all three – it had animmediate effect on his delivery. It started out at quick march andfever pitch, and gained momentum from that point. It rode roughshodover commas and periods, devoured vowels, and deconstructedconsonants.
“Well, now,” Sir Peregrine said into thestony silence, broken only by the rasping of Bottom’s breath, “thatwas not a bad beginning. We’ll work on it as we proceed. Perhapsyou might try rehearsing with your good lady.”
The reference to Crenshaw’s wife seemed torevive him a little, enough to let him eke out a nod ofacknowledgement and unslump his shoulders.
“So you wish me to read for Demetrius?”Brodie said in an effort to divert attention from the deflatedfactory-owner.
“I do, young Langford, I do.”
Brodie proceeded to read his assigned part.Dramatic readings and satiric skits had been part of hisprivate-school experience in New York, and so he felt quitecomfortable throughout, despite the watery blue gaze of the lordlydirector upon him.
While Brodie’s vowels and cadence werenowhere near the diphthong-drawl of many New Yorkers, theynevertheless produced in Sir Peregrine’s multi-planed visage asequence of startling winces that disrupted his chins, jowls anddimples. To the others at the table, such infelicities were a minordistraction from the sheer force of the presentation itself. Herewas a voice – in addition to youthful good looks – that coulddeliver the volatile shifts of mood and pace required of the younglover in the play. When Brodie finished, his audience applauded,and the wincing director adroitly arranged a congratulatorysmile.
“But we still need someone to play Puck,”Dutton said when the applause was over.
Sir Peregrine feigned a look of abashment. Hemay even have blushed, except that his permanently pink complexionmade it impossible to tell. “It is a role I have always coveted,”he said, peering up from under his puffed eyelids, “but have neverhad the opportunity to play – as the more masterful roles ofProspero and Oberon have taken precedence. But Puck I shall be,fellow thespians, and a Puck that shall dazzle and daunt.”