"A man of estate? with coat-of-arms and all?"
"Even that too, with your leave."
"I know—I know. Nescio qua natale solum—those others did not understand: but I understood. Yes, and now I understand that fifth act of thine, which puzzled me afore, and yet had not puzzled me; but I fancied—poor fool!—that the feeling was singular in me. 'Twas a vile life, Will." He jerked a thumb back at Bankside.
"Ay, 'tis vile."
"My cough translates it into the past tense; but—then, or now, or hereafter—'tis vile. Count them up, Will—the lads we have drunk with aforetime. There was Greene, now——"
Shakespeare bent his head for tally.
"—I can see his poor corse staring up at the rafters: there on the shoemaker's bed, with a chaplet of laurel askew on the brow. The woman meant it kindly, poor thing!... She forgot to close his eyes, though. With my own fingers I closed 'em, and borrowed two penny pieces of her for weights. 'Twas the first dead flesh I had touched, and I feel it now.... But George Peele was worse, ten times worse. I forget if you saw him?"
Again Shakespeare bent his head.
"And poor Kit? You saw Kit, I know ... with a hole below the eye, they told me, where the knife went through. And that was our Kit, our hope, pride, paragon, our Daphnis. Damnation, and this is art! Didst hear that blotch-faced youngster, that Scotchman, how he prated of it, laying down the law?"