“The rats’ dungeon!” he said, solemnly.
“And is not the pious poet, Robert Southwell, there now on the same charge, popery?”[27] asked Peele.
“True,” said Shakespere.
“And hath he not,” continued Peele, “in cankering languishment written:
“‘I often look upon my face
Most ugly, grisly, bare and thin;
I often view the hollow place
Where eyes and nose had sometime been;
I see the bones across that lie,
Yet little think that I must die.’”
“Is anything more wanting to restrain one in the flourish of one’s pen?”
“Next we shall hear of prizes for stupidity,” ejaculated Shakespere, replacing his pipe between his lips, from where it had been withdrawn during the interval of legal discussion. “My wonder is,” he continued, “that you ever write a line beyond God save the Queen and damn the Pope. Praise God, that my temporary calling is licensed, and that not yet have I been tempted into fields where pitfalls lie concealed, and all else is open to the blazing sky.” [[Note 29.]]
“Well said, friend Will, but let once the honied praise for children of thy brain melt into thy being, and no threat or dread of bodily ill can keep thee wholly from the permanent expression of thy thoughts. And now it is my livelihood,” returned Peele.
“For one of thy calling it would be safer to live in obscurity,” remarked Tamworth.
“Yes, as though dead,” the dramatist answered in a whisper, as though there were others who might overhear his words.