The play was over. Some few adventurous spirits from the audience approached the tire-room door: Heminge held it warily ajar. "I would speak with your author: where is he?"--"I would have a word with Mr. Shakespeare: is he within?" "Not this way, I assure you, sir: we are not so officiously befriended by him, as to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the book-holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the music out of time, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit."--"Was it not Mr. Shakespeare, then, that played the part of Rosencrantz?" enquired the bewildered ones. "Close the door!" thundered Burbage from within. Followed a sound of bolts and bars.... Meanwhile, Mr. Shakespeare had disappeared from the malodorous precincts of the _Globe_--for the adjacent bear-gardens were notorious for evil effluvia--had crossed the river, and was making his way to the _Mermaid_, where he arrived about six. A plentiful supper was already being partaken of: the rooms were full of steam and savoury smells. Supper was a smaller meal than dinner, but in no way stinted. Lettuces and radishes were usually served first, and afterwards a variety of highly flavoured dishes. Pigeons stuffed with green gooseberries, fiercely-seasoned herring-pies, roast pork with green sorrel sauce--mustard, horseradish, ginger, and honey _ad lib_, and sweet dishes innumerable. Shakespeare did justice to his food, and took copious draughts of light sweet wine: the morning's melancholy had passed away, and was succeeded by an almost feverish gaiety. The artificial stimulus of the theatre had produced a temporary excitement in him--he was flushed, brilliant, loquacious. As his repartees flashed rapier-like across the room, Ben Jonson smiled grimly, seated at the head of the table, and a score of kindred souls, who surrounded it, relished the _verve_ and sparkle of their favourite comrade. Jonson was a man of great size, of immense strength and personal courage--masterful, domineering, jealous. He recognised and allowed the extraordinary genius of Shakespeare--but always with many detractions, "insinuating his incorrectness, or a careless manner of writing, and a want of judgment." That the Stratford shopkeeper's son, utterly unequipped in scholarship or training, should stand so high in popular estimation above himself--the University graduate of great learning--was acutely annoying to Jonson: it may be, too, that, with the littleness of certain minds, he had never forgiven Shakespeare for doing him a good turn in the matter of his comedies. At any rate he resented the Warwickshire man's unparalleled quickness, brightness, and flexibility of tongue; and every evening he inaugurated a duel of words, which almost invariably resulted in a "draw," and which was the delight of those privileged to be present. "At the _Mermaid_," says Fuller, one of these favoured auditors, "many were the wit-combats between