One May morning in the brave year 1594, Mistress Betty Hodges, from the
threshold of the narrowest house in the narrowest of the narrow streets
in the ancient parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, observed with more
than passing interest the movements of a gentleman in black.
"Whist, neighbor!" she called out to Mistress Judd, whose portly person
well-nigh filled a kindred doorway just across the street. "Yonder
stranger should be by every sign in quest of lodgings, and by my
horoscope this is a day most favorable for affairs of business. I pray
thee, get thy knitting, lest he take us for no better than a pair of
idle gossips."
"In faith," retorted Mistress Judd, folding her arms complacently after
a side glance in the loiterer's direction, "an he should ever lodge
with thee let us hope his shillings prove more nimble than his feet."
The gentleman indeed advanced with much deliberation, pausing from time
to time to look about him as a man who balances advantages and
disadvantages one against the other. It was a quaint old-mannered
thoroughfare he moved in; a crooked street of overhanging eaves and
jutting gable ends which nearly met against the sky; a shadowy, sunless,
damp, ill-savored street, paved with round pebbles and divided in the
middle by a trickling stream of unattractive water. For London, still in
happy, dirty infancy, had yet to learn her lessons at the hands of those
grim teachers, plague and fire.
"A proper man enough!" Mistress Judd added, "though I'll warrant
over-cautious and of no great quality. To me he looks a traveling
leech."
"Better a country student of divinity," suggested Mistress Hodges.
"Or better, a minor cleric, or at best some writing-master," Mistress
Judd opined.
"Please God, then he can read," rejoined her neighbor, already debating
within herself a small advance of rent. "Mayhap he might acquaint me
whether those rolls of paper left by Master Christopher in his oaken
chest be worth the ten shillings he died owing me."
"An they would fetch as many pence," sniffed Mistress Judd, "our master
poet had long ago resolved them into Malmsey."
"Nay, speak not harshly of the dead," protested Mistress Hodges,
conveying furtively a corner of her apron to one eye.
"Marry, if Master Kit did sometimes sing o' nights 'twas but to keep the
watch awake. I'd wipe my shutter clean and willingly to hear his merry
catch again. Ah, he was ever free with money when he had it. And 'twas a
pleasure to see him with his bottle. In faith, he'd speak to it and kiss
it as a woman would her child."
"And kiss it he did once too often, to my thinking," murmured Mistress
Judd unsympathetically, "the night he got to brawling in the street and
met his death."
"Marry, he was no brawler," Mistress Hodges protested warmly, "but ever
cheerfullest when most in drink. They were thieving knaves who set upon
him, and, God be good to sinners, ran him through the heart before the
poor young man could so much as recite a couplet to prove himself a
poet."
"How thinkst thou poetry would save him?" Mistress Judd demanded curtly.
"Marry, come up! What thief would kill a poet for his purse?" cried
Mistress Hodges. "Quick, neighbor, get thy knitting!" she added
hurriedly, and catching up a pewter plate began to polish with her apron
as the stranger, attracted by their chatter, quickened his pace.
He was a slight man, apparently of thirty or thereabout, with deep-set,
penetrating eyes and a lean face ending in the short, sharp, pointed
beard in fashion at the time.
"Give you good-morrow, dames," he said, when within speaking distance;
"can you direct me to some proper lodging here-about?"
Mistress Hodges dropped a deeper courtesy to draw attention to herself
as the person of most importance.
"In truth an't please you, sir," she said, "'tis my good fortune to have
this moment ready for your worship the fairest chambers to be had in all
the town at four and six the week. Gentility itself could ask no better,
for doth not the Lord Mayor live around the corner in his newly
purchased Crosby Hall, the tallest house in London, and near at hand do
not the gardens of Sir John Gresham stretch from Bishopsgate to Broad
Street like a park? And if one would seek recreation, 'tis not five
minutes to Cornhill, which is amusing as a fair o' pleasant evenings,
with the jugglers and peddlers and goldsmiths and----"
"Ah, by my faith," the stranger interrupted gravely, "I should seek
elsewhere, for I am not a man born under Sol, that loveth honor, nor
under Jupiter, that loveth business, for the contemplative planet
carrieth me away wholly."
"An you be disposed toward contemplation," interposed Mistress Hodges,
quickly, "there can be found no purer place in London for such diversion
than is my second story back. From thence one may contemplate at will
either the almshouse gardens and the woodland beyond Houndsditch, or the
turrets of the Tower itself, in winter when the leaves are gone."
"Please Heaven the leaves are thick at present!" said the stranger with
a grim half smile. "Nevertheless, I have a mind to look from your back
windows. The almshouse gardens may at least teach one resignation."
"Enter an't please you, sir," replied the landlady with a low obeisance.
The stranger made a close inspection of the chamber, peering into
cupboards, testing the bed and stools and chairs, and finally pausing
before a small oak box secluded in a corner.
"'Tis but a chest of papers left by my last lodger, one Master
Christopher," Mistress Hodges explained, adding, "A poet, sir, an't
please you, who was slain by highwaymen, and I know not if his lines be
fitted for honest ears to hear, though, an one might believe it, they
have been spoken in the public play-house. Think you," she added,
raising the lid of the chest to disclose a dozen manuscripts or more,
bound together with bits of broken doublet lacing, "the lot would bring
as much as ten shillings at the rag fair?"
The stranger laughed and shook his head.
"'Tis a great price for any dead man's thoughts," he said, taking up a
package at random and hastily turning over the leaves, while Mistress
Hodges regarded him anxiously. His interest deepened as he read, and
presently his eyes devoured page after page, oblivious of the other's
presence.
"In truth," he said at length, "there be lines not wholly without
merit."
"And pray you, sir, what is the matter they set forth?" the landlady
ventured to inquire.
"This seems the story of a ghost returned to earth to make discovery of
his murder--" the stranger was beginning to explain, but Mistress Hodges
checked him.
"Marry!" she cried, "such things be profanations and heresy against the
Protestant religion, which Heaven defend. Marry, 'twould go ill with the
poor woman who should offer such idolatries for sale."
More protestations followed, prompted, no doubt, by fear lest disloyalty
to the dominant party be charged against her; to prove her detestation
of the documents she declared her purpose to burn the last of them
unread.
"Still better, shift responsibility to me," suggested the stranger,
smiling grimly at her zeal. "Sell me the lot for two shillings and
sixpence, and my word for it the transaction shall be kept a secret.
The reading of these idle fancies will serve as a relaxation from my own
employment."
"Marry, they shall be yours and willingly," cried the woman, glad to be
rid of dangerous property on such generous terms. And it was thus that
the stranger became possessor of the chest of manuscripts. His
bargaining for the lodgings proved him a man of thrift to the point of
meanness, a quality not to be despised in lodgers, for, as Mistress
Hodges often said to Mistress Judd, "Gentlemen are ever most liberal who
least mean to pay." In answer to reasonable inquiries he would say no
more than, "My predecessor was known as Master Christopher; let me be,
therefore, Master Francis, a poor scholar who promises only to take
himself off before his purse is empty."
The new lodger entered into possession of his chamber on the afternoon
of the day on which he saw it first. His luggage, brought thither by two
porters on a single barrow, and consisting chiefly of books and
manuscripts, proved him to be the humble student he had represented
himself, and in a week his neighbors were agreed in rating him a rather
commonplace recluse. His days were spent in reverie by the open window
or in writing at the parchment-littered table. If he stirred abroad at
all it was but for an hour in the long twilight after supper, and his
candle rarely burned later than ten o'clock. It was not until a
fortnight had gone by that Mistress Hodges had the satisfaction of
announcing a visitor.
"Come in!" cried Master Francis, responding to her knock at his chamber
door, and not a little surprised by a summons so unusual, for the
remnants of his supper had been removed, and he was himself preparing
for his evening stroll.
"A gentleman attends below, an't please you, sir," she announced,
entering hurriedly.
"Impossible!" her lodger protested, "for how should a visitor inquire
for one who has no name?"
"By your description, an't please you, sir," replied the woman. "He
drew you to the life. By my faith, there could be no mistake, and when
he said you might be known as Master Francis how could I but admit him?
Grand gentleman that he is, with a servant at his heels and half a score
of varlets waiting within call!"
Master Francis bit his lip and moved impatiently about the room.
"Go tell this grand gentleman that you were wrong," he said. "Tell him I
was requested out to supper at half an hour before seven. Tell him what
falsehood slips most easily from your tongue, and as you are a woman,
tell it truthfully."
"'Twould not avail, for even now your visitor, grown impatient, mounts
the stair," replied the hostess, while a heavy footfall coming every
moment nearer testified to the truth of her assertion.
"Then off with you and let us be alone," commanded Master Francis,
stopping resolutely in his walk, while Mistress Hodges in the doorway
found herself thrust unceremoniously aside to give place to a dignified
man in middle life. The visitor's dress was black, relieved only by a
broad white ruff, yet of so rich a quality that the appointments of the
room descended in the scale from homeliness to shabbiness by contrast.
But apparently he concerned himself no more with the apartment than with
Mistress Hodges.
"How now, nephew?" he began at once. "What means this hiding like a
hedgehog in a hole?"
Master Francis bowed with almost servile deference and clasped his
hands, making at the same time a gesture with his foot intended to
convey to Mistress Hodges an intimation that she was free to go.
"My uncle, this is far too great an honor that you pay me," he said,
when the landlady had closed the door behind her.
"Odsblood! For once, I hear the truth from you. Why have you left your
chambers in Gray's Inn for this?" the other answered with a movement of
the nostrils as though the whole environment was comprehended in a
whiff of Mistress Hodges' mutton broth.
"In truth, most gracious kinsman," the younger man rejoined, "since my
exclusion from the Court some certain greasy bailiffs have favored me
with their company a trifle over often, nor had I otherwhere to go while
waiting for a fitting opportunity to recall myself to your lordship's
memory."
"And pray you, to what end?" the other asked impatiently.
"You are not ignorant, uncle, of the state of my poor fortune," said the
scholar.
"No," was the answer, "nor can you be forgetful, nephew, of my efforts
in the past to mend that fortune."
"For all of which believe me truly grateful," responded Master Francis
with a touch of irony. "'Tis to your gracious favor that I owe my
appointment to the reversion of the Clerkship of the Star Chamber, worth
sixteen hundred pounds a year, provided that I, a weak man, survive in
poverty a strong affluence. 'Tis like another man's ground buttaling
upon his house, which may mend his prospect but does not fill his barn."
The other, crossing to the open window, half seated himself upon the
sill, folding his arms while fixing disapproving eyes on his nephew's
face.
"This attitude becomes you not at all," he said. "Through me you were
returned to Parliament, and through me you might have been advanced to
profitable office had you not seen fit to antagonize the Ministry,
opposing, for the sake of paltry public favour, that four years' subsidy
of which the Treasury stood in dire need to meet the Popish plots."
"I sought to shield the Ministry and Crown from public disapproval,"
replied Master Francis. "The country in my judgment was not able to
endure the tax."
"'Twas most presumptuous to set up your judgment against that of your
betters," said the other. "Your part is plain. This act of yours must
be forgotten. It must be known that you have once for all abandoned
public life for study. Publish some learned disquisition upon what you
will. Absent yourself from town, and in a twelvemonth, perhaps, or less
if things go well----"
"A twelvemonth!" cried Master Francis. "Unless my pockets be replenished
I shall have starved to death by early summer."
The gentleman upon the window-sill remained for a space silent with
knitted brows. Presently he said:
"I shall arrange to pay you an allowance, small, but sufficient for your
needs, upon condition that you go at once to France, where you already
have acquaintances."
"It may be you are right, my lord," responded Master Francis, "but it
suits my humor not at all to exile myself, and before accepting your
offer grant me permission to speak to the Earl of Essex. He has the
favor of the Queen."
The other laughed a scornful laugh, and rising deliberately drew on a
glove he had been holding in one hand.
"Enough!" he said. "Depend on Essex's favor with the Queen and follow
him to the Tower in good time."
"But, uncle, give me your kind permission at least to speak with him."
"My kind permission and my blessing!" the uncle answered suavely, moving
toward the door. With his hand upon the latch he stood to add, across
his shoulder, "You are behind the times in news, nephew. Three days ago
my Lord of Essex departed somewhat suddenly for his estates--upon a
hunting expedition, it is said, though beldame Rumor will insist that
our most gracious Queen hath turned the icy eye at last upon his
fawning."
"A morning frost!" cried Master Francis with a gesture. "A frost that
the recurring sun of pity turns full soon to tender dew. But 'tis a
chill of which to take advantage. Let me but follow my peevish lord to
his retirement, lock in my humble cause with his, and in due season
claim the meet reward of faithful service."
His manner had grown so earnest that the other turned to listen, albeit
with a smile of contempt.
"Look you, uncle," the younger man went on, "were I to start at once,
travelling in modest state, yet as befitting the nephew of the Lord
Treasurer of England, well mounted and attended by a single man-servant,
the whole adventure might be managed for a matter of one hundred
pounds."
"Good!" cried the other with suspiciously ready acquiescence. "Thou art
in verity a diplomat. By all means put your fortunes to the test, and
when you have, acquaint me with the issue."
He turned and once more laid a hand upon the latch.
"But," protested Master Francis, "I have still to find the hundred
pounds----"
"A riddle for diplomacy to solve!" replied the Lord Treasurer of
England, laughing sardonically. "I can tell you no more than that you
shall not find it in my purse!" And so saying, he strode from the room,
leaving the door wide open.
For many minutes Master Francis paced the floor, muttering to himself,
now angry imprecations at his own folly, now curses on the relentless
arrogance of the Lord Treasurer. As the long twilight of the season fell
he caught up his wide-brimmed hat and hurried from the house.
He took his way through narrow winding streets, and after several
turnings came at length to one much wider, a thoroughfare lined with
little shops, whose owners when not occupied with customers stood on
their thresholds soliciting the patronage of passers-by.
"What do you lack?" they cried; "hats, shoes, or hosiery; gloves, ruffs,
or farthingales?" each setting forth the value of his wares in frantic
effort to outshout competitors. Along the pavement worthy citizens
sauntered with wives and sweethearts, or stood in interested groups
about some mountebank or maker of music performing upon several
ill-tuned instruments at once. On a patch of trodden grass young men
played noisy games of bowls until a gilded coach in passing wantonly
destroyed their goal. Here a bout with single-stick was in progress,
there a contest with bare fists which must have grown serious had not
the watch arrived in time to separate the belligerents with their pikes.
But the centre of most interest was a seafaring man who smoked a
long-stemmed pipe with rather ostentatious unconcern. The men regarded
him with furtive admiration, the women disapprovingly, while children
ran to catch a whiff of the strange aromatic scent. When he blew puffs
of vapor from his nostrils everybody laughed.
Master Francis, moving hastily aside to make way for the smoker and his
escort, came into collision with a man of his own age, whose broad
good-humored face showed due appreciation of the scene.
"What think you, friend?" the stranger asked, laughing. "Will this new
savagery become an institution? Have we been at such pains to banish
smoke from our churches only to turn our heads into censers? Mayhap this
be another Popish plot?"
"It seems to me a bit of arrant folly," Master Francis answered somewhat
listlessly, "and as such, certain to become the rage."
"They tell us it will prolong the life," went on the other, "for it is
well known a herring when smoked outlasts a fresh one."
"Say rather he who smokes will live the longer because the wise die
young," retorted Master Francis, pleased by the conceit.
"At least," remarked the stranger, "the fashion will make trade for
fairy chimneysweeps."
Some further conversation followed naturally, for Master Francis, weary
of his own society, was in the mood to welcome any companionship, and,
moreover, the newcomer, who seemed a man of understanding, met another's
eyes too frankly to leave the question of his honesty in doubt. They
spoke of tobacco as a possible feature in social life, and both agreed
that a whiff of the new herb might be an interesting experiment.
"Let us go then to the Bull," the stranger suggested, "where in a small
room behind the tap one may smoke a pipe for threepence under the
tutelage of this very seaman, who acquired the art in our Virginia
colonies."
"Agreed!" cried Master Francis willingly; though at another time he
might have rejected such an offer. "'Twill be an experience to
remember."
"Marry," replied the other, "'tis he who lags behind the cavalcade who
must take the dust. For my part I like not to be outfaced by any idle
boaster who may lisp--'Ah, 'tis an art to keep the bowl aglow! Ah,
shouldst see me fill my mouth with smoke, and blow it out in rings!
Odd's bodkin, the Duke himself said bravo!'"
The stranger's mimicry of the mincing gallants of the day was to the
life, and as they turned their steps toward the tavern, Master Francis
laughed with satisfaction at finding himself in such good company. When
presently his companion quoted Horace, he ventured to inquire at what
school he had read the classics.
"At none," was the reply. "Let those who will perform the threshing. I
am content to pick up kernels here and there like a sleek rat in a
farmer's barn. Your tippling scholar of the taproom will set forth a
rasher of lean Xenophon with every cup of sack, and as for
churchmen--they be all unnatural sons who so bedeck their mother tongue
in scraps and shreds of foreign phrase, the poor beldame walks abroad as
motley mantled as a fiddler's wanton."
"But surely--_Justitia eum cuique distribuit_--as Cicero hath it,"
Master Francis cried in protest against such heresy. "You will not deny
that an apt quotation lends grace to our too barren English."
"'Tis a thin sauce to a rich meat," replied the other; adding modestly,
"I am, an't please you, sir, but one who, having little Latin and less
Greek, must make a shift with what is left to him."
"Your speech belies you, sir," retorted Master Francis courteously, "for
it proclaims a man of nice discrimination. I could swear you are a
doctor of the law."
"Then would you be forsworn," replied the other, laughing, "for, by the
grace of God, I am near kinsman to the dancing poodle of a country fair.
Come any afternoon at three o'clock to the Curtain Play-house at
Shoreditch, and there for sixpence you may see my antics."
"Ah, then you are a player!" Master Francis cried, well pleased.
"For the lack of a more honest calling," his companion answered with a
gesture as who should say, "Tell me where can be found an honester?"
"Then we are in like case," laughed Master Francis. "_Fere totus mundus
exercet histrionem_, says Phædrus; or as one might put it bluntly, 'All
the world's a stage.'"
"Methinks our English hath the better jingle," commented the player.
"Would that some wordsmith might e'en recoin these ancient mintages to
fill the meager purses of our mouths!"
They had come now to the broad low archway leading to the courtyard of
the Bull, and passing in beneath its shadow, Master Francis recalled the
plays he had witnessed there in boyhood.
"Ah," said his companion, "'tis not so long since we poor players hung
our single rag of curtain where we might. Now we have playhouses of our
own, and when the servants of the Lord Chamberlain shall occupy the
Globe at Bankside, you shall see how plays may be presented. But _Navita
de ventis de tauris narrat orator_, as thy gossip Propertius hath it,
though I like best the homely adage, 'A tinker will talk of his
trade.'"
They found the seaman in the little room behind the tap, a veritable
high priest of some mystic cult in dignity. He bowed a hearty welcome to
the visitors and presently made clear to them the true relationship
between his pot of dried tobacco and the earthen pipe bowls at the ends
of hollow reeds. He cautioned them to have a care, when the coal of fire
was applied, not to draw the smoke into their mouths too suddenly and
fall to coughing. He was a swarthy man, with brass rings in his ears and
long hair braided in a queue behind, and his account of the savage king
held captive until the inner secrets of the art of smoking were revealed
by way of ransom was in itself a yarn well worth his fee.
"I pray you, gentlemen, hold not the pipe too lightly lest it be overset
and mar your garments," he instructed them. "And, by your leave, it must
be grasped between the thumb and second finger, nicely balanced that
the forearm grow not weary. Should the brain become afflicted by the
vapor it is well to pause and inhale some breaths of common air. Extend
the little finger carelessly and compose the face as though the flavor
were agreeable, for to spit and grimace at the pipe were most
inelegant."
"Out upon you for an arrant knave!" cried Master Francis, springing to
his feet, exasperated by the solemn affectation of superior wisdom.
"'Tis but an indifferent entertainment at the best, and as for the art,
I know of none too great a fool to compass it."
He had grown a trifle pale about the lips and his nerves tingled.
"Nay, then," protested his fellow investigator, "were the taste less
vile and the savor less like a smithy 'twould make an excellent good
physic for one afflicted with too much health."
The sailor was a man of evil disposition, who had not only sailed with
Raleigh's godless mariners but, had the truth been known, in other
service still less creditable. Hearing his enterprise thus flouted, his
anger rose, and with a mighty oath he turned upon his clients.
"A pest upon such horse boys!" he exclaimed. "Get back to the stables
whose smells best suit you. Leave elegant accomplishments to your
betters."
Master Francis, grown fearful lest his knees give way beneath him, and
blinded by a film which swam before his eyes, moved unsteadily toward
the door, half throwing, half dropping his pipe upon the oaken table,
where the red clay bowl fell shattered in a dozen fragments.
"Hold!" cried the sailor. "Not another step, my gallant, till you have
paid me ten shillings for my broken pipe."
He sprang upon the slighter man and, grasping him by the shoulders,
would have done him violence had not the other smoker interposed a
doubled sinewy fist beneath his irate nose and bade him let go his hold.
As the command was not instantly obeyed, a sharp blow followed.
"Beshrew my blood!" the pirate roared, turning to strike at random.
"Gadslid!" returned the player, facing him and bringing both fists into
action with such good effect that presently the table groaned beneath
the weight of the struggling freebooter, while pipes, jug, and precious
weed went flying.
The uproar brought the company from the taproom at a run, customers,
servants, the drawer, the pot-boy, a brace of hostlers, until the small
room filled to suffocation. Swords were drawn, cudgels brandished, above
the din the seaman's oaths boomed like the cannon of a sloop of war in
action.
"Good friends," the player bawled out, springing to a stool to command
attention, "behold to what a pass the smoking of this weed will bring a
man. I pray you bind this fellow fast and get him safe to Bedlam before
some mischief happens."
Master Francis sank down into the corner of a high-backed seat, too ill
for much concern with what passed about him, and it was not till some
moments later, in the open air and propped against a wall, that
consciousness returned. His champion in the late encounter stood beside
him.
"Sir," said the student, "it is to you I owe my preservation, though, by
my honor, I should have cut a better figure in the skirmish had not the
vapors of that vile weed overpowered me. How made you our escape?"
"Even as Æneas with Anchises on his back," replied the other, laughing.
"'Twas high time to take ourselves away, being but two against so many,
though, by my faith, I've rarely seen a merrier opening for a game of
skull cracking."
The player, whether actuated by humor or generosity, seemed disposed to
make light of the whole affair. Grasping his companion's arm he
supported that gentleman's still uncertain steps in the direction of the
lodging-house of Mistress Hodges. He spoke of broils and frays as though
such pastimes were of every-day occurrence with men of spirit, whether
the sport were putting a pinnace crew of drunken sailors to their heels,
or by some trickery outwitting the watch. At the door Master Francis
could do no less in hospitality than invite so stanch an ally to enter.
"Come to my chambers and rest awhile," he said, adding regretfully,
"though they be plain indeed, and offer no better entertainment than my
poor company."
"Good cheer enough," replied the other, stepping back for a better view
of the house. "By my estates in Chancery!" he cried, "yon bristling roof
that sets its lance against the very buckler of the moon hath met mine
eyes before. 'Twas here, unless my memory be a lying kitchen wench, our
noble Christopher did lodge, the prince and potentate of pewter pots."
"And knew you Master Christopher?" asked Master Francis with increasing
interest.
"Marry, I knew him well," replied the player. "Marry, a poet. Marry, a
rimester to couple you a couplet while your Flemish fighter quaffs a
mug of sack, and pay the reckoning with a sonnet to his landlord's
honesty. 'The first line,' he would say, 'shall tell the weight of it.'
And here he did set down a naught. 'So likewise with the second, which
doth sing its breadth; the third proclaims its depth'--another naught,
and thus until the measure of the verse was writ. 'Now add them for
thyself,' he bids the rum-fed Malmsey monger, 'and by the thirst of
Tantalus, the sum shall blazon both thine honor and my debt.'"
"Methinks 'twas but a scurvy trick," protested Master Francis, laughing
tolerantly. "What said the host to it?"
"In faith," replied the player, "he found the meter falling short and
clamored for money. 'Money!' quoth Kit. 'Think well on't! for if, as men
of reason all agree, naught is better than money, you are overpaid in
getting naught!'"
"His was a pretty wit indeed," assented Master Francis. "Enter!" he
urged with a gesture of hospitality.
"Nay!" cried the other. "As I am a just man it is perilous to enter
into a writer's castle where one without offense is often lashed with
lyrics or--what is more fearful--pilloried in prose. And furthermore,
this Hebe of all Hodges, I have heard, this Helen of Houndsditch, hath a
stout broomstick hid behind her door for players," he added, making a
pretense of looking about him warily as he followed his host up the
stairs, Master Francis going first to light a candle with a flint and
steel.
"Come in," he said as the flame flickered up, "and welcome to my
chambers, though this poor farthing dip is little better than a glowworm
that doth serve to make the darkness visible."
"So shines a good deed in a naughty world," returned the other, throwing
himself into a seat.
"You are yourself a poet!" Master Francis cried, "for you temper the
cold iron of rough speech with oil of metaphor."
"Nay," said the player, "I am no rimester, but like a scissors-grinder
I sometimes put a keener edge on better men's inventions. Faith," he
continued, looking about him with approval, "I knew not that our Kit was
housed so well. This is a very bower in which to woo the Muse. Friend,
had I your table and your chair, your inkwell and your wit, it would not
take me long to be the owner of one hundred pounds."
"One hundred pounds?" gasped Master Francis. "Believe me, it is not from
inkwells that such miraculous drafts are made." He waved his hand toward
the scattered papers on the table. "Look," he said, "it hath taken me a
year to make that much fair paper valueless."
"You waste your time," replied the player lightly. "Instead of learned
discourses, treatises, and theses, in which our age will not believe and
the next most certainly prove false, you should devise a mask, a
mummery, a play to set the groundlings' munching mouths agape, and make
the gentle ladies of the boxes mince and murmur to their cavaliers,
'Ah, me, 'tis such a sweet death! Oh, la! and 'twould be pure to be so
undone!'"
"A play!" exclaimed the scholar in surprise. "That's a task for poets,
not for men of learning."
"Say not so!" the other interposed. "For learning is but poetry turned
prude. Coax her with kisses, cozen her with a sigh, give her a broidered
girdle and a fan, and call me Cerberus if thy staid Minerva will not
tread a merry measure to Orpheus's lute."
"An' should she play the wanton thus for me, how should advantage
follow?" Master Francis asked with growing interest, as he leaned
forward in the candle-light to catch the answer.
"'Tis simplicity itself," replied the player. "Look you, this new-built
play-house of the Globe is shortly to be opened, and the town is at the
very finger pricks of curiosity to behold its marvels. The players
stand like greyhounds in their gyves, the counters wait the welcome
buffets of the coin, and Burbage, madder than a hare in March, bounds
doubling on his track hither and thither to find a play."
"Sure London hath as many playwrights as a cheese hath mites," commented
Master Francis.
"True," the other answered, "but look you, here's a case when mite and
wright agree not. For one is mad, and one hath lost his cunning, and one
will spend in drink the money given him for ink, and Kit, the master of
them all, is writing comedies for shades in Pluto's courtyard. In troth,
there seems no better market for a hundred pounds than 'twere a
huckster's hat of rotten cherries."
"An hundred pounds!" gasped Master Francis. "The sum doth spell for me
ambition gratified."
"Ah, ha, my lean scholar!" cried the player. "Is not the matter worth
considering?"
"Marry, it is," admitted Master Francis, "if one had but the fancy."
"Oh, as to that," returned the other, "I'll warrant when your blood ran
hot from the full caldron of lip-scalding youth, thy fancy played you
many a pretty mask, for young imagination dreams more dreams than waking
age doth have the wit to write. These conjure up again, unbar your
closet, unlock your treasure chest--" Here Master Francis gave a start,
but the player went on heedlessly: "By my faith, yon rascal coffer well
might be the grave wherein the best of thee lies buried."
He made a motion of the hand toward the box of the departed Christopher,
and Master Francis's visage in the candle-light turned pale.
"What ails you, man?" the other inquired. "Have you a memory of that
last tobacco pipe?"
"Sir," cried Master Francis, rising slowly to his feet, "is it the truth
that a play can be sold for so much money?"
"In the Queen's coin," the other answered. "So that it be worth the
playing, so it be such a play as Kit could have written."
Master Francis, taking up the candle, moved toward the chest.
"I'll take you at your word," he said. "Like one who creeps with
shrouded lanthorn and with muffled spade to force the moldering hinges
of the gate of Death, I'll bring you back a play."
He stooped, and lifting the lid seized the first manuscript that met his
hand and waved it triumphantly at his companion sitting on the table.
"A play!" cried the other, catching at the roll. "Ah, then I guessed
aright. 'Tis a dull writer, fitted best for slumber-wooing churchmen's
homilies, who has not in his time chucked blushing Thalia under her fair
chin.... What have we here?" he demanded, spreading the pages open
before him. "A play, indeed! A comedy, i' faith! Gadslid, a tragedy! A
miracle of masterpieces, a masterpiece of miracles! 'Twill be the talk
of London town and in the ages yet to come, when stately playhouses
shall stand where now the painted savage cleaves his enemy, your play
shall win the coy and cautious coin of nations yet unborn, your fame--"
"Peace, peace!" protested Master Francis, with a smile that would have
done credit to his uncle, the Lord Treasurer, "you are like a paid
praisemonger who bawls loudest to extol the book he has not read."
"'Tis my prophetic soul," returned the player merrily, and waving the
scroll above his head he went on: "Hear ye, hear ye, good servants of
the Queen, here's meat for your digestions, matter for your minds;
here's wit and wisdom, prose and poetry, to make ye swear that brave Kit
Marlowe walks the earth again.... Come, gossip, write your name upon the
title sheet. You are too modest."
"My name I may not sell," said Master Francis, holding back.
"Unnatural parent!" roared the other. "Would you thus turn your
offspring loose upon the world without parentage?"
"I'll not be father to a brat so ill-begotten," replied Master Francis.
"How shall I answer then to Burbage should he ask the writer?" demanded
the player.
"As you may," returned Master Francis with a shrug. "An't please you,
say it was yourself. I care not, so my name be not revealed."
"'Twill be a jest," the player cried, laughing, "a jest which, should
the play find favor, may be at any time corrected."
And taking up a pen he dipped it in the ink-horn to write across the
page:
THE TRAGEDY OF ROMEO AND JULIET
BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
"A proper title, surely!" commented the scholar, looking across his
shoulder. "Your name, friend Will, should lure the public eye more
cunningly than that of Francis Bacon."