Fools and Mortals

by Bernard Cornwell

When we are at the playhouse, we end every performance with a jig. Even the tragedies end with a jig. We dance, and Will Kemp clowns, and the boys playing the girls squeal. Will scatters insults and makes bawdy jokes, the audience roars, and the tragedy is forgotten, but when we play for Her Majesty, we neither dance nor clown. We make no jokes about pricks and buttocks, instead we line like supplicants at the edge of the stage and bow respectfully to show that, though we might have pretended to be kings and queens, to be dukes and duchesses, and even gods and goddesses, we know our humble place. We are mere players, and as far beneath the palace audience as hell’s goblins are beneath heaven’s bright angels. And so, that night, we made obeisance, and the audience, because the Queen had nodded her approval, rewarded us with applause.

‘They don’t see what they see, they see what they think they see.’

‘The plaudits of fools,’ he once told me, ‘are worthless. Gratifying, maybe, but ultimately without any meaning.’ ‘You don’t enjoy being praised?’ I had asked. ‘If the compliment comes from a person of wit, yes. Otherwise it’s just the yapping of a dog.’

the mind forever slides downhill to believe the worst.

‘I’m old, that’s why. Kindness comes easier when you’re old.’