“Ay, that we will, old gossip! Here’s to thee!”
“Here’s to the company, all of us!”
“And a health to the new Lord Chamberlain!”
“God save the Queen!”
With that, they shook each other’s hands, as merry as men could be, and laughed, because their hearts ran short of words; for these were young Lord Hunsdon’s men, late players to the Queen in the old Lord Chamberlain’s troupe; who, for a while deprived of favor by his death, were now, by this succession of his son, restored to prestige at the court, and such preferment as none beside them ever won, not even the Earl of Pembroke’s company.
There was Kemp, the stout tragedian; gray John Lowin, the walking-man; Diccon Burbage, and Cuthbert his brother, master-players and managers; Robin Armin, the humorsome jester; droll Dick Tarlton, the king of fools. There was Blount, and Pope, and Hemynge, and Thomas Greene, and Joey Taylor, the acting-boy, deep in the heart of a honey-bowl, yet who one day was to play “Hamlet” as no man ever has played it since. And there were others, whose names and doings have vanished with them; and beside these—“What, merry hearts!” the big man cried, and clapped his neighbor on the back; “we’ll have a supper at the Mermaid Inn. We’ll feast on reason, reason on the feast, toast the company with wit, and company the wit with toast—why, pshaw, we are good fellows all!” He laughed, and they laughed with him. That was “rare Ben Jonson’s” way.
“There’s some one knocking, master,” said the boy.
A quick tap-tapping rattled on the wicket-gate.
“Who is it?” asked the quiet man.
“’Tis Edmund with the news,” cried one.