“By your leave, sir,” he said, “I would not have you exalt me at the expense o’ the piece.”
“To be sure, sir, your modesty does you honor,” said the Master of Balliol College. “But your genius, if I may so express myself, is deserving of something far better than the clumsy work of this rude journeyman.”
The tragedian shook his head.
“Nor would I have you exalt me at the expense of the writer,” he said.
“Ah, my friend, you are too modest,” interposed the Dean of Christ Church in an amiable manner.
“If it is the part of modesty,” said the tragedian bluntly, “to decline to be praised by the ignorant, then I grant you that modest I may be. Because I would have you to know, you learned doctors in your furred gowns, that the play you have just witnessed is by the first dramatic author of this age or of any other.”
The three gentlemen were unable to repress a polite snigger.
“What!” said the Master of Balliol College, “that odd-looking fellow with the beard who sat in the pay box and bit my half-crown as if he feared it was a counterfeit?”
“The same, sir,” said Burbage. “And if you can put a counterfeit upon him, you are an abler man than I have yet cause to consider you.”
“No doubt, sir,” said the Master of Balliol College, with an air of pained dignity. “But, pray, convey my compliments to your Johannes Factotum, and inform him that if he will give his days and nights diligently to the study of Aristotle, he may, by the time he is a very old man, be able to produce a passable play without doing grave violence to the dramatic unities.”