There were a couple of others about my age in the Earth’s Men; Philp was one of them and a good friend. There were several young women in the troupe, including Aglaé, the best and most attractive Juliet and Rosalind I’ve ever seen: she was a year older than me and my choice for girlfriend, lover, and wife, but she never noticed me; Tooley was our age, but he primarily did basic maintenance engineering on the Muse, although he could hold a spear in a crowd scene if pressed to.

Kemp and Burbank were the two real leaders of the troupe, along with Kemp’s wife (and Burbank’s lover) Condella, whom everyone secretly, and never affectionately, referred to as “the Cunt.” I never learned how the nickname got started—some say it was her French accent as Catherine talking to her maid in Henry V—but other and less kind guesses would probably have been equally accurate.

Kemp had always been a clown in the most honorable sense of the word: a young arbeiter comic actor and improviser when he was chosen for the Earth’s Men by Burbank’s father, the former leader of the troupe, more than fifty years earlier. One of Kemp’s specialties was Falstaff although he’d lost weight as he aged, so he now had to wear a special suit fitted out with padding whenever he played Sir John. He was a brilliant Falstaff, but he was even more brilliant—frighteningly so—as Lear. If Kemp had had his way, we would have performed The Tragedy of King Lear for every second performance.

Burbank had the weight for Falstaff but not the comic timing, and since he was in his early fifties SEY, was not quite old enough—nor impressive enough in personality—to make an adequate Lear.