"Hast so soon forgot Cayphas his mitre, and the ark of Noah?" said he.
"Now of all the saints," I cried out, "'tis Ptolemy Philpot, the pageant master!" and saw that the sanctuary into which I had entered was within the pageant itself, I having my elbow even then resting on the wooden box of his puppets, while about the narrow chamber were hung the tabards, hats, pencils, fringed gowns of damask and other necessary imagery of the interludes he showed. As to Master Ptolemy himself, he had altered not a jot, so that I marvelled I had not sooner known him, except that I was then heavy with sleep; for he spoke still in the same small child's voice that issued from the middle of his bearded fierce countenance, as a bird may twitter in the jaws of a pard that hath caught her. Methought indeed that the agate colour was somewhat more richly veined upon his nose, and that his body was more comfortably overlaid than I had formerly remembered it, and supposed therefore that his bargain with Skegs had gone happily against my fears and to his advantage; the which he presently certified.
"But it was not by any of the miracles or moralities he sold me, that I have prospered," said he, "for wheresoever I played it none would stay out the Deluge, no, not even in so goodly and well-considered a town as is Devizes, whither I went first of all, and where I enacted the same by the special desire of one Sir Matthew Juke, a principal person there and a famous traveller, as he said; who took upon him to condemn my navigation of the Ark ere I had half concluded: affirming that if ever I should use the sea as he had done, and so handled my ship in the manner of that voyage to Ararat, he would not answer for it, but I should be utterly cast away and my venture lost. Howbeit he gave me, in parting, a tester, which was all I had from that place, and yet more by a sixpence than I got at Winchester whither I proceeded, and where I was fain to exchange the Deluge for the Miracle of Cayphas; but 'twould not serve, and I was suddenly put forth of that town of the beadle. Thereafter I essayed the Pageant of Melchisedec as they have it at Chester, and though some part of it liked the people pretty well, yet I lost as much as I gained by reason of a tempest that broke while the piece was a playing, whereby the motion was all drenched by the rain and the hangings torn by the wind and Father Abraham his beard came ungummed from his jowl, so that it cost me five shillings to repair all that damage. Then did I make shift to patch my patriarch figures with such modern habits and familiar countenances as should betoken our famous captains (as I told you I meant to do), and to that end paid to a clerk of Wallingford fifteen shillings for the writing of a history-comedy, wherein were such assaults and batterings and victories as suited to our late accomplishments at sea; but the illiterate and filthy vulgar would have none of it, swearing I had turned Noah into Captain Drake, and Mount Ararat into Vigo, with so slight addition upon their originals as 'twas scandal to behold; all which was true enough, doubtless, but the outcome mighty unprofitable to me, who thereby beheld my fortune to be slid from under me and myself fallen into absolute beggary."
"How then came you to repair your fortune, Ptolemy?" said I, who had listened with an infinite, though secret, struggling against laughter, the while he had related his tale; "since it seemeth you no longer play your pieces to an unkind audience."
Mr. Philpot plunged his hand into his great beard, holding his chin thoughtfully, and after, withdrawing it, rubbed his forefinger slowly along his nose, as though to assure himself that he had come unchanged, and with all his attributes, through the storm and multitude of accidents that had assailed him.
"'Tis an old saw and a true one, which saith, the miracles that happen daily we suffer to go by us unregarded; as the sunrise, and the return of consciousness after sleep, and so following," said the pageant master, in his small reed voice, "and the same holds as with the rest, with plays also; namely, that what is too well known is still neglected, and where no itch of expectancy is, there will no wits be scratching. 'Twas a reproach of the Athenians of old, master, that they went continually in hopes to see or hear some new thing, and your stage-audiences differ in nothing from your Athenians, save only in the tongue they use, and the clothes they wear. I know not how the truth came to be revealed to me," he proceeded pensively, "but come it did and in a good hour; I mean the truth that every man loveth secrecy and concealment, as a child his coral. What did I then, but clap all my stock together, my mysteries, miracles, pageants, interludes and all, pell mell, Herod and Pilate their proper speeches and cues to boot: the diverting jests of Noah's wife with the admonitions of Abraham and the sentences of the Angel; and from this medley so made I fished forth such chanceable and ill-matched dialogues as a man must needs be Solomon or a very ass that would read sense into them, or confess to discovering a propriety between speaker and spoken word. Why, list but a moment, and I will show you the whole matter," and with that he drew forth a torn quire of unstitched papers that was marked at the head, "The Masque of the Noble Shepherds," which word Masque, said Ptolemy, served to cover all such impertinent matter as he should choose to bring in, and acquainted me plainly with the way he had gone about his authorship; in which, nevertheless, I perceived so great an ingenuity, and such apparent gravity and fantastick leading up to nothing in the world as, although I could comprehend no meaning in the piece (there being none to comprehend) yet I could well enough imagine the curious and close attention with which it would be heard and seen.
"I tell you I have had all sorts of men come away pleased with it," said Ptolemy in conclusion; "and each for a different reason, and because he saw in it something that seemed to him to mean this, which another said was that, and a third, the other." He looked upon me triumphantly, and then added: "Why, I mind me how at Lambeth once, where I played, a Bishop and two Canons of the Church thanked me handsomely for my holding up the new sect to ridicule; and contrariwise, a little after, a Puritanical grocer demanded of me in a whisper how in this play I dared to rail as I did upon Church Government."
"But do you represent your persons still as prophets and peasants as they used to appear?"
"I do not," said Ptolemy, winking upon me very shrewdly, "but rather I have ennobled them all, and call this one a King, and that an Earl, and the other the Knight Alderman of Tavistock—in which place I was born; for it behoveth us to honour the place of our birth; besides that, for the rest, your Englishman loves nothing better than to see great persons on the stage, and aye to follow the fashions that he sees there."
We were interrupted at that time by the drawing aside of the curtain, and a shock-head boy, appearing, said—