As Grasp, in some alarm, seized upon his blue bag and withdrew more into the corner, the elder of the strangers, as if to keep from the fray, seated himself in the chair the lawyer had left, and whilst he puffed out huge volumes of smoke from his pipe, abstracted from amongst the papers the will the Templar had been perusing. Handing it then to his youthful companion, the latter seized a pen, and, unobserved, wrote a codicil to it. He then restored it to its place, and as the riot increased and Grasp seized upon his papers and thrust them into his bag, the pair took an opportunity of withdrawing as quietly as they had entered.
CHAPTER LII.
THE PLAYER IN HIS LODGING.
All that Shakespeare had lately seen and gone through made considerable impression upon his mind. In the short period during which the national convulsion we have described was taking place, it seemed to him that he had lived whole years.
Those events, and the great men which the stirring times had produced, seemed indeed to have passed before the poet, for the very purpose of finishing and perfecting the great mind of the man.
He sat himself down on his return to London, and, as he thought over the past experience of his life, such a chaos of bright thoughts and wondrous images presented themselves before and seemed to overflow his brain, that, at first, it seemed utterly impossible to turn them to shape.
Already had his "muse of fire" given him employment at various times, and even taken a dramatic shape; nay, the room he inhabited was filled with fragments—unfinished beginnings; and one or two of the novels of the period had been partially dramatized and then cast aside, after the inspiration which called them forth had, in other pursuits, been forgotten.
His avocations as a player had too frequently led him into scenes of revelry. His way of life was still desultory. He knew not his own value. And whilst his brilliant wit and companionable qualities had kept him too much among the society of men in his own class, he had failed to carry out any of his bright conceptions. His companions hunted him, haunted him, took him from his own thoughts, and dragged him, even when satiated with revelry, into more company; for what party was complete amongst them that had not in it that one—that "foremost man of all the world."
His poetry was beginning to be appreciated ere the national danger had fully occupied men's minds, and so fully employed them that all else for the time being was necessarily forgotten. He had written a poem peculiarly suited to the taste of the age, and which was greatly the fashion amongst the gay cavaliers of Elizabeth's Court. This he had dedicated to Lord Southampton, a nobleman, whose acquaintance he had made on the boards of the theatre. Added to this, some sonnets, which had almost by accident found their way into circulation (for no man was more careless or thoughtless of his own works than William Shakespeare) were greatly admired. Nay, the Queen had been so much struck with one or two of them, that she had shewn favour to the poet; and spoken words of encouragement in his ear.