At the end of the performance there was loud clapping, and the chief actor, who is famous in this country—so famous, indeed, that there is talk of emancipating him from his position as a vagabond and making him equal to a soldier of the Queen—was called on to the stage; nor would the public let him depart until he had spoken to them, which he did. He thanked them for their warm welcome, and for expressing their pleasure at the performance of the fine play which John or James Shicksperry had written. He said he had felt sure that this play would not disappoint them, and he intended before long to give them another of the same kind, in which there would be still more murders, still more fighting, many more ghosts, and yet finer dresses. What the name of that play was, he said, was as yet a secret: who had written it was a secret. Here the audience shouted out: “We all know who has written it, it is old John or James.” (Now I come to think of it, I remember his name was Bill or Billy or Ben.) Since they had guessed, he said, he would not conceal it any longer: it was Billy, and the play, which he knew they would enjoy, and in which there was plenty of clowning, was called “King Lear.”
The audience was pleased at this, and cheered for several minutes. They shouted for the author, for old Ben, and went on shouting while people hurried backward and forward across the stage. The author did not come forward, and the shouting continued. At last the chief actor returned, and bowing to the audience, said that old Ben was no longer in the house: he had gone to the tavern. After this there was more cheering, and the actor, kissing his hand to the audience, left the stage.
Guasconi took me to the Mermaid Tavern, a low place where the actors go after such performances, and where some of the nobles and the learned repair also, for the sake of change and to enjoy the spectacle. Here we were obliged to drink a great deal of a hot and nauseous mixture called sack, which is made of good wines spoilt by the admixture of much sugar and spice. I hate these English mixtures; their sweetmeats are made of sugared cake mixed with meat, and with their meat they eat sugared fruits. You can imagine how nauseous is this system, and indeed it reminds me of their plays. Their plays are like their plum puddings, full of great lumps of suet in which little sweet plums and currants are imbedded, but difficult to find. I said this to Guasconi, but he told me I must not judge of the English either by their food or their plays, but that if I wished to judge of their literature I should read the Sonnets of the Countess of Rutland, and he quoted one which begins:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Moreover, he said, the English were not a literary but a musical nation. Their music was unequalled in all Europe; it was the art (and the only art) in which they excelled; witness the divine melodies of Orlando Gibbons, Morley, and Dowland, which, indeed, I had heard performed at the Court, and had greatly enjoyed, for we have nothing like it in France.
The author of the play, Ben Shicksperry, arrived at the Mermaid late, and a learned man who was there, and whose name they told me was Will Johnson, condescended not only to speak but to drink with him. The players made a great noise, toasting each other, likewise the noblemen, who spent the time in violent disputes on the merits and demerits of this writer and that writer. After a time everybody began to talk of public affairs, of the policy of Spain, and of a party of English politicians whom they called pro-Spaniards: and they all agreed that these latter deserved to be immersed in a horse-trough, and so, late in the night, they set out to accomplish this unrefined joke. The English, in spite of their great culture, and their learning, their wonderful power of speaking foreign languages—for every one of the noblemen speaks perfectly not only Greek and Latin, but five or six other languages, and is well versed in astrology, music, and chess-playing—the English, I repeat, in spite of all this, have something barbarous at heart, which is awakened after they have partaken much of that nauseous potion called sack.
THE POET, THE PLAYER, AND THE LITERARY AGENT
Letter from Mr. Nichols, Literary Agent, to Lord Bacon
My Lord,
I have now submitted the plays which your lordship forwarded to me to seven publishers: Messrs. Butter, Mr. Blount, Mr. Thorpe, Mr. Waterson, Mr. Andrew Wise, Mr. Steevens, and Mr. G. Eld; and I very much regret to inform your lordship that I have not been able to persuade any of these publishers to make an offer for the publication of any of the plays, although Mr. Thorpe would be willing to print them at your lordship’s expense, provided that they appeared under your lordship’s name. The cost, however, would be very great. No one of these publishers is willing to publish the plays anonymously, and they agree in saying that while the plays contain passages of exceptional merit, there is, unfortunately, at the present moment no demand in the market for the literary play. This form of literature is in fact at present a drug on the market; and they suggest that your lordship, whose anonymity I have of course respected, should convert these plays into essays, epics, masques, or any other form which is at present popular with the reading public. There is certainly very little chance at present of my being able to find a publisher for work of this description. Therefore I await your lordship’s instructions before sending them to any other publishers.