THE ROSE PLAY-HOUSE 129

‘Heywood flushed.

“Nay, Tom, don’t be nettled; ’t is not the fault of thy
play. There ’s naught will serve. We ’ve tried old Mar-
lowe and Robin Greene, Peele, Nash, and all the rest; but,
what! they will not do—’t is Shakspere, Shakspere; our
City flat-caps will ha’ nothing but Shakspere! ”

Nick listened eagerly. Master Will Shakspere must
indeed be somebody in London town! He stared across
into the drifting cloud of mist and smoke which hid the
city like a pall, and wondered how and where, in that ter-
rible hive of more than a hundred thousand men, he could
find one man.

“T tell thee, Tom Heywood, there ’s some magic in the
fellow, or my name ’s not Henslowe!” cried the manager.
“ His very words bewitch one’s wits as nothing else can do.
Why, I ’ve tried them with ‘Pierce Penniless,’ ‘Groat’s
Worth of Wit, ‘Friar Bacon,’ ‘Orlando,’ and the ‘Battle
of Alcazar’ Why, tush! they will not even listen! And
here I ’ve put Martin Gosset into purple and gold, and
Jemmy Donstall into a peach-colored gown laid down with
silver-gilt, for ‘Volteger’; and what? Why, we play to
empty stools; and the rascals owe me for those costumes
yet—sixty shillings full! A murrain on Burbage and
Will Shakspere too !—but I wish we had him back again.
We ’d make their old Blackfriars sick!” He shook his
fist at a great gray pile of buildings that rose above the
rest out of the fog by the landing-place beyond the river.

Nick stared. That the play-house of Master Shakspere
and the Burbages? Will Shakspere playing there, just

a .