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"'Tis how many hundred years, Will, since this Prince Hamlet lived?" said Heminge, the talk having led thereto; and he went on, not waiting for answer, "Yet to-day we players bring him back to life, and make him to be remembered."
"Ay," replied Shakespeare, "many a dead and rotten king oweth a resurrection and posthumous fame to some ragged scholar or some poor player."
"And we players," said Burbage, with a kind of sigh, "who make dead men remembered, are by the very nature of our craft doomed to be forgot. Who shall know our very names, three poor hundred years hence?"
"Why," said Condell, "our names might live by the printing of them in the books of the plays we act in; a printed book will last you a long time."
"Not such books as these thievish printers make of our plays," said Sly, himself a writer of plays.
"Marry, I should not wish long life to their blundering, distorted versions of any play I had a hand in making," said Shakespeare.
"But consider," said Condell; "were a decent printing made of all thy plays, Will, all in one book, from the true manuscripts we have at the theatre, and our names put in the book, Dick's name at the head, then might not our names live for our having acted in thy plays?"
Mr. Burbage smiled amusedly, but said nothing, and Shakespeare answered:
"'Twould be a dead kind of life for them, methinks; buried in dusty, unsold volumes in the book-sellers' shops in Paul's Churchyard."
"Nay, I would venture something," said Master Heminge, thoughtfully, "that a book of thy plays were sure to be opened."
"Ay, that some shopman's 'prentice might tear out the leaves, to wrap fardels withal," said Shakespeare. "Three hundred years, Dick said. 'Tis true, books of the ancients have endured to this day; but if the world grows in learning as it hath in our own time, each age making its own books, and better and wiser ones, what readers shall there be, think you, in the year of our Lord 1900, for the rude stage-plays of Will Shakespeare, or even for his poems, that be writ with more care?"
"'Twould be strange, indeed," said Burbage, "that a player should be remembered after his death, merely for his having acted in some certain play or set of plays." He did not add, but did he think, that Will Shakespeare's plays were more like to be remembered, if at all, for Mr. Burbage's having acted in them?13
"Why art thou silent, lad," said Shakespeare to Hal Marryott, by way of changing the subject, "and thy gaze lost in thy clouds of smoke, as if thou sawest visions there?"
"I' faith, I do see a vision there," said Harry, now in the enraptured stage of wine, and eager to unbosom himself. "Would I were a poet, like thee, that I might describe it. Ye gods, what a face! The eyes have burned into my heart. Cupid hath made swift work of me!"
"Why, this must be since yesterday," said Sly.
"Since four o' the clock to-day," cried Hal.
"Then thou canst no more than have seen her," remarked Fletcher.
"To see her was to worship her. Drink with me to her eyes, an ye love me, masters!"
"To her nose also, and mouth and cheeks and ears, an thou wilt," said Sly, suiting action to word.
"Don't think this is love in thee, lad," said Fletcher. "Love is of slower growth."
"Then all our plays are wrong," said Sly.
"Why, certes, it may be love," said Shakespeare. "Love is a flame of this fashion: the first sight of a face will kindle it in shape of a spark. An there be no further matter to fan and feed the spark withal, 'twill soon die, having never been aught but a spark, keen though its scorch for a time; a mere seedling of love, a babe smothered at birth. But an there be closer commerce, to give fuel and breeze to the spark, it shall grow into flame, a flame, look you, that with proper feeding shall endure forever, like sacred fires judiciously replenished and maintained; but too much fuel, or too little, or a change in the wind, will smother it, or starve it, or violently put it out. Harry hath the spark well lighted, as his raving showeth, and whether it shall soon burn out, or wax into a blaze, lies with future circumstance."
Harry declared that, if not otherwise fed, it would devour himself. Thereupon Master Sly suggested drowning it in sack; and one would have thought Hal was trying to do so. But the more he drank, the more was he engulfed in ideas of her who had charmed him. Still having a kind of delusion that she was in a manner present, he discoursed as if for her to overhear.
Ere he knew it, the other players were speaking of bed. Mr. Burbage had already slipped out to fulfil some mysterious engagement for the night within the city, which matter, whatever it was, had been the cause of his coming after supper from his home beyond the bars of Bishopsgate Street without the walls. Master Heminge's apprentices (for Master Heminge was a grocer as well as an actor) had come to escort him and Master Condell to their houses in Aldermanbury; and sturdy varlets were below to serve others of the company in like duty. At this late hour such guards against robbers were necessary in London streets. But Harry, who then lodged in the same house with Mr. Shakespeare, in St. Helen's, Bishopsgate,14 was not yet for going home. He would make the cannikin clink for some hours more. Knowing the lad's ways, and his ability to take care of himself, Mr. Shakespeare left him to his desires; and at last Harry had no other companion than Will Sly, who still had head and stomach for another good-night flagon or two. When Sly in turn was shaky on his legs and half asleep, Harry accompanied him and his man to their door, reluctantly saw it close upon them, and then, solitary in night-wrapped London, looked up and down the narrow street, considering which way to roam in search of congenial souls, minded, like himself, to revel out the merry hours of darkness.
He loathed the thought of going to bed yet, and would travel far to find a fellow wassailer. His three shillings—though that sum then would buy more than a pound buys to-day—had gone at the Mermaid. He bethought himself of the taverns at which he might have credit. The list not offering much encouragement, he at last started off at random, leaving events to chance.
Plunging and swaying, rather than walking, he traversed a few streets, aimlessly turning what corners presented themselves. The creaking of the signs overhead in the wind mingled with the more mysterious sounds of the night. Once he heard a sudden rush of feet from a narrow lane, and instantly backed against a doorway, whipping out rapier and dagger. Two gaunt, ill-looking rascals, disclosed by a lantern hanging from an upper window, stood back and inspected him a moment; then, probably considering him not worth the risk, vanished into the darkness whence they had emerged.
More roaming brought Hal into Paternoster Row, and thence into Ave Maria Lane, giving him an occasional glimpse at the left, between houses, of the huge bulk of St. Paul's blotting darkly a darkness of another tone. At Ludgate, boldly passing himself off upon the blinking watchman as a belated Page_of Sir Robert Cecil's, he got himself let through, when he ought to have been taken before the constable as a night-walker; and so down the hill he went into Fleet Street. The taverns were now closed for the night to all outward appearance, the bells of Bow and other churches having rung the curfew some hours since—at nine o'clock. But Hal knew that merriment was awake behind more than one cross-barred door-post or red lattice; and he tried several doors, but in vain. At last he found himself under the sign of the Devil, on the south side of the street, close to Temple Bar. There was likelihood that Ben Jonson might be there, for Ben also was a fellow of late hours. Hal's heart suddenly warmed toward Master Jonson; he forgot the satire on the Globe plays, the apparent ingratitude to Shakespeare, and thought only of the convivial companion.
Much knocking on the door brought a servant of the tavern, by whom Hal, learning that Master Jonson was indeed above, sent up his name. He was at length admitted, and found his way to a large room in which he beheld the huge form and corrugated countenance of him he sought. Master Jonson filled a great chair at one side of a square table, and was discoursing to a group of variously attired gentlemen. Temple students, and others,