“Wasn’t there anything you could do to stop the blaze?”
“We tried! We got ladders and buckets!”
“Lord, look, now! A wall’s toppling. The hut’s gone. Why it has fallen off. Will, our props are afire. Our scripts! The flames are roaring...”
“Stand back!”
“Stand back or get burned!”
“How long has it been burning?”
“Maybe an hour...”
The flames seemed to meet in a giant peak, a peak that had at the top a great tree of smoke. It was raining harder now; the crowd had moved back.
God, wasn’t it enough to have to fight the plague? One month our doors were closed, next month we were open, next month we were shut again. That was bad enough, but no theatre meant no chance.
“Kemp is sick...the Globe is gone,” I said.