“You ask me why I did not wait for knowledge about the lady,” at length said Tabbard, thinking that some explanation was still due. “It was then late, and besides the message I had for the Earl’s actors, I wished to see Gabriel Spencer as the king in ‘Edward the Second,’ at the Theater. I could not miss that, Sir Kit.”
“And nearly missed seeing me,” said Kit, absently.
“I expected to see thee there, too. For admission I paid my last penny, or at not seeing thee on the stage I should have gone to the other playhouse. I tried to go into the galleries, but an upstart youth in bare head and with sword at his side, like one of the Queen’s men, forced me back, demanding another penny. Before me went a crowd of women, and the galleries were filled with them. Unlike those in the open pit, they sat under roof and without fear of rain.[6] So into the pit I went, and must needs have paid another penny for a seat had not Dudden, a countryman of mine from near Maidstone, in Kent, whom I had not seen for four years, touched me on the shoulder and bade me squeeze in between him and a friend. They had brought bottles of sack in with them,[7] and not a drink would they take without my joining them.”
“And did that require much urging?”
“Little at first,” answered Tabbard, “but when once the play was well on, I could not drink for fear of taking my eyes from the stage; not that the devil heads on the tops of the posts on each side interested me, or the dandies on the stools and dried rushes on the stage-floor[8] under these heads, but the actors! Ah, but the actors, Sir Kit! Were there ever such crimson doublets and cloaks with copper lacings worn? And the rich dresses that the men wore, who played the parts of the Queen and ladies, made me think that they had broken into the wardrobe at Whitehall. And do ladies never play such parts, Sir Kit?”
“Never,”[9] answered the other, shaking his head.
“But Dudden swore they were ladies, and when one of the spectators on the stage hissed the Queen for forgetting a line he threw one of the empty bottles of sack at him. It was all so grand, so fierce, so bloody. And Dudden went into a drunken fit when the head of Mortimer was brought in. But that was at the end. My own heart was in my throat at the sight of the mowers, with their Welch hooks, taking the king captive.”
“Art thou so easily disturbed, fellow?” asked Kit, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Prut!” exclaimed Tabbard, “Thou couldst never have seen the play, if you say that. What man could sit still when the king moaned; ‘Lay me on a litter and to the gates of hell——’”
“Hold,” interrupted the other, “not quite so. These are the words: ‘A litter hast thou? Lay me in a hearse,
And to the gates of hell convey me hence:
Let Pluto’s bells ring out my fatal knell,
And hags howl for my death at Charon’s shore.’”