“You were always a play-actor,” called out Julian Archer angrily.
A strange smile passed over the pale face of the judge.
“There,” he said, “you are singularly wrong. I was not always a play-actor; I was a very humble and humdrum person until you wanted me and made me a play-actor. But I found the play you acted was something much more real than the life you led. The rhymes we spoke in mummery on that lawn were so much more like life than any life that you were living then. And how very like what we are living now.” His voice did not change but seemed to roll on more rapidly, as if verse were more natural than prose.
“The evil kings sit easy on their thrones
Shame healed with habit; but what panic aloft
What wild white terror if a king were good
What staggering of the stars; what prodigy!
Men easily endure an unjust master
But a just master no men will endure
His nobles shall rise up, his knights betray him,