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.Perhaps you are somewhat too young and pretty.Perhaps she will take better to an older, uglier man.’ An older, uglier man came heavily downstairs, yawning, showing stained teeth, his black hair all a tangle.Jowled face, mean eyes.This was Master Chapman.He and WS eyed each other like fighting cocks.‘Ah, Harry,’ said Chapman loudly.He took a seat at the rough well-scrubbed table near the fire, yawning.‘Poetic labour is hard labour,’ he said.‘I have been taking a nap.’‘Homerus dormitat,’ giggled Harry.‘Sometimes your verse reads like hard labour.’Chapman ignored this.To WS he said, ‘When comes Alleyn back with the rest of the Strange snipperados?’‘I hear nothing.I am cut off this whole year from playhouse news.’ WS grinned.‘Snipped off, let us say.’She brought sweet wine, glowing.She was certainly pretty enough.Harry did a furnace-sigh.Well, this was new: his lordship in love with an alewife.He must be cured; a good swift cure, like a Lowestoft herring’s.‘This,’ said WS, ‘seems a cleanly enough inn.It would be cold riding back.Let us lie here tonight.’ And he closed one eye at Harry.Chapman said:‘Your Venus poem had a good epigraph.’ He mouthed the Latin loud, sounding round brown vowels:‘ “Vilia miretur vulgus: mihi flavus ApolloPocula Castalia plena ministret aqua.” ’Then he belched gently though long on his first draught of wine.‘Whether a man can maintain two writing sides I know not.One will corrupt the other, doubtless.’‘Perhaps the better will corrupt the worse,’ said WS.Harry’s eyes could not leave her.‘Well,’ to Chapman, ‘I am glad you at least like the epigraph.’‘Oh, the rest was well enough.There was a sufficiency of lusty country matter in it.Each of us has his own way.One way is not another.We must do as we can, remembering the parable of the talents.’ He then took a large swig and, his mouth dripping, looked Harry full in the eyes and declaimed:‘Presume not then, ye flesh-confounded souls,That cannot bear the full Castalian bowls,Which sever mounting spirits from their senses,To look in this deep fount for thy pretences.’‘You are welcome,’ said WS, ‘to my full Castalian bowls.’‘To Night,’ said Chapman, raising his near-empty Castalian bowl.‘Night is my mistress and my muse.To her I drink.’‘To her I drink,’ said Harry, flesh-confounded, languishing in ridiculous desire.‘We will go to bed soon,’ promised WS, smiling.THEY rode back to Holborn next morning in sharp sunlight, jewelled cobwebs on the bare branches, their breath going up, as they spoke, like the wraith of speech.‘Well,’ said WS, ‘I knew it would be easy for an older man.It is very much a matter of experience.Women will ever go for the experienced man.They can oft see experience in a man’s eyes.’Harry looked unbelieving, then aghast.‘But you did not.You could not.Her chamber-door was locked.’ He was pale.‘No no no, you are joking.’‘To you it was locked, aye.I was not asleep though I snored.It was a fair counterfeit of sleep.I am, after all, a player.’‘But you could not.She would not open for any man.’‘I went out while you were sleeping fast.’‘I was not sleeping fast.I hardly slept at all.I thought you were going to the privy.’Not the privy, not all the time.A quiet half-hour by the embers below.‘Oh, it was no trouble.I knocked and she asked who, and I said I was the Earl of Southampton, the older man who was growing bald.She opened at once.Ah, the bliss.Such warmth, such whiteness.’‘No no, you are lying!’‘As your lordship pleases.Well, I have shown you the way.All you need do now is to follow.’That would teach the young puppy.IV‘ “… THE WARRANT I HAVE OF YOUR HONOURABLE disposition, not the worth of my untutored lines, makes it assured of acceptance.What I have done is yours; what I have to do is yours; being part in all I have, devoted yours …” ’Harry left off reading it aloud.‘And now,’ asked WS, ‘what of Chapman?’‘Chapman may stuff his tutored lines down a privy.This is better than Venus.I did not think it possible, but it is so.’Yes, better.WS knew that, knew too he could go no further in that heroic vein.Restless, he bit his nails.The players were returning to London after so long a wandering absence.Alleyn had left Strange’s Men and was, only figuratively as yet, flying the old Admiral’s flag over a nearly new company; Lord Strange had become the Earl of Derby only to die of (so many said) witchcraft: Kemp and Heminges had come off tour to approach Lord Hunsdon for his patronage.Lord Hunsdon’s Men
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