“Lead the way,” he says as good-naturedly as if they are out for a stroll in Haymarket Gardens.
On the corner of Ninth and Bank Streets, a man in a nightshirt and sleeping cap stands in the intersection, shouting Bible verses at anyone who passes by. #8220;?‘And the angel took the censer, and filled it with the fire of the altar, and cast it to the earth; and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake.’?” He points at the sky and screams, “This is God’s will! This fire, it is retribution for man’s sin!”
“And what sin is that, other than being drunk on a street corner?” Anderson shouts back at him.
Jack knows there is some truth to what the man says. Richmonders can find their way around a gaming hall, a horse track, and a theater, but it’s rare for them to find their way to church. Even the men his father associated with, who were all of them upstanding citizens, preferred to spend Sundays at the Quoit Club, where Jasper Crouch served up barbecue and plenty of rum punch.
“Can I ask you something?” Jack says when they can no longer hear the man’s shouts.
“I have a feeling you’re going to, even if I say no.”
“What makes you so sure we’ll hang for this? I mean, I know it’s terrible, what happened. A sin, even. But isn’t it Christians who preach forgiveness?”
Anderson sighs. “There is a long history of our kind not getting their fair due.”
“Our kind?”
“Actors, players, thespians.”
Jack doesn’t know how he feels about being lumped in with a bunch of actors anymore.
“We used to be considered royal servants,” says Anderson. “And as such, we had immunity from prosecution.”
“In America?”
“No, no. This was years ago, in England. If anyone wanted to sue an actor, they had to first petition the lord chamberlain, who was an employee of the crown, and he never agreed to it.”
Jack wonders what this has to do with anything.
“But then the Society for the Reformation of Manners comes along.” He says the name of the society in a stuffy voice. “And they start footing the bill whenever their members want to take an actor to court.”
“Why do they care?”
“Because they’re a bunch of religious fatheads who can’t stand to see anyone enjoying themselves.”
“As bad as that fellow on the corner?”
Anderson lets out a small laugh. “Worse. They wanted the old Jacobean Act to Restrain the Abuses of Players enforced. And, as if that weren’t enough, they passed an addendum to it.”
Anderson might as well be reading from one of Jack’s father’s law books.
“First, you can’t say the names of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost onstage. They’re all outlawed. Then, there’s no sex. Eventually, they began suing playwrights whose plays don’t offer sufficient ‘moral instruction.’?”
“They really took the fun out of everything.”
Anderson gives him a wry smile. “Before long, all the biggest names in the theater—George Bright, Thomas Doggett, John Hodgson—are getting hauled into the Court of Common Pleas and being fined ten pounds for their trouble.”
“So, what happened?”
“The playwrights cleaned up their scripts, the playhouses agreed to submit their scripts to the master of the revels, the actors tried their best to stick to their lines, and when there were slipups—which were inevitable—the censors learned to look the other way.
“But our days of being treated like house servants of the king were over. The reformers had vilified us; to them we were nothing more than rogues and vagabonds, intent on spreading disorder wherever we went.”
“And you think that’s what everyone here thinks of us, as well?”
“This new United States would like to pretend it bears no relation to Mother England,” Anderson says, “but test the winds and you’ll find a country growing more puritanical with every passing day.”
SALLY
