A Play of Dux Moraud by Margaret Frazer Page B

melt,” his grandfather assured him.
    “Joliffe always takes Tisbe.”
    That was true but Joliffe suggested, “It will give you chance to tell Gil stories about us all without us overhearing you.”
    “And smacking you hard for it,” Ellis added.
    Piers brightened. “Come on, Gil.”
    “Before you go, though,” Basset added, “do duty with the shovel and find the stable’s dung heap.”
    Piers groaned. When on the road they left certain horse-based problems by the wayside when they moved on. Here, lacking that advantage, Tisbe’s dung had to be seen to.
    “And Gil,” Basset went on, “you might as well fill the water bucket again while he does that.”
    The boys went, and Ellis looked up from wooing the fire to flames again to ask Basset, “Are you planning to play Gil again tonight?”
    “Last night gave him confidence. Now we give him training,” Basset said. “He’s had a taste of applause. He’ll take even better to the work.”
    “So tonight we do what?” Ellis asked.
    “I think . . .” Basset paused, looking from Ellis to Joliffe and back again with a glint of mischief. “. . . tonight we’ll do The Fox and the Grapes .”
    Joliffe and Ellis both groaned far more loudly than Piers had. Since the play was done in dumbshow and therefore they had no words to remember, it could have been thought an easier play for them to do, but while Basset told the story—beginning where Aesop had but soon turning it into something else altogether—Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers had to play it out, pretending to be more dismayed and frantic and desperate as the story went further and further astray. By the end the lookers-on were helpless with laughter, and Ellis, Joliffe, and Piers were worn out.
    Quite aware of their dislike, Basset went on, “I’m gambling they will finish with the marriage talk today and be ready for a release to laughter. Tomorrow and the days after, while the banns are being read, we can do The Husband Becomes the Wife, The Baker’s Cake, and Tisbe and Pyramus . If more is needed, we can decide when the time comes, but I’ve thought Griselda the Patient for the wedding feast, with Gil taking the Daughter . . .”
    “And a well-grown little girl he’ll be,” said Joliffe.
    “. . . who has but the one speech, but it should please Lord Lovell to see him already at work,” Basset went on. “We’ll throw in another speech that lets Piers be the son.” Someone in the story they had done without until now, Piers having to be the daughter.
    Ellis with a wordless grumble and Joliffe with a nod accepted that, both of them trusting Basset’s skill at choosing plays that matched an audience’s humour of the moment. A very necessary skill among players and one at which Basset was very good.
    “Then,” said Basset, “to work. Joliffe, some speech for Griselda’s lord if you will. You might even add a few lines to Gil’s part. This will be, after all”—Basset put on a grand voice—“his first chance to speak as a player .”
    “And if he makes a dog’s mess of it,” said Ellis, “most people will be too drunk to note it.”
    “Especially the happy wedding couple, drunk with delight,” Joliffe said.
    “Um,” Ellis agreed. “I thought she looked well-beddable, too.”
    Ignoring that jibe, Rose said to her father, “You stay sitting. We’ll see to things and you’ll tell us if we’re doing it right. There’s a dress I think will do for Gil but it’s in the hamper under the cart seat. Ellis, come. You’ll have to take out all the others for me to come at it.” Which meant she had not ignored the jibe and Ellis was now going to pay for it.
    Joliffe took his writing box and the box in which the company’s copies of plays were kept back to the corner and out of the way. Piers and Gil returned with cleaned shovel and full water bucket, collected the basket for bringing back firewood, and leading Tisbe between them, left again. Basset, enthroned on his cushions, oversaw