XXIII. THE LONDON ROAD 368 XXIV. HOW A NEW INCIDENT WAS ADDED TO AN OLD PLAY 375 XXV. SIR HARRY AND LADY MARRYOTT 398 NOTES 409 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE QUEEN ELIZABETH AND HARRY MARRYOTT _Frontispiece_ "SHE GAVE NO OUTWARD SIGN OF ANGER" 190 "THE BRAZEN NOTES CLOVE THE AIR" 267 "RUMNEY ... BACKED QUICKLY TO THE WINDOW, AND MOUNTED THE LEDGE" 327 A GENTLEMAN PLAYER. CHAPTER I. THE FIRST PERFORMANCE OF "HAMLET." "Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"--_Quoted in "As You Like It," from Marlowe's "Hero and Leander."_ At three o'clock in the afternoon of the cold first Monday in March, 1601, a red flag rose, and a trumpet sounded thrice, from a little gabled turret protruding up out of a large wooden building in a field in that part of Southwark known as the Bankside and bordering on the Thames west of London Bridge. This rude edifice, or enclosure, was round (not like its successor, hexagonal) in shape; was in great part roofless; was built on a brick and stone foundation, and was encircled by a ditch for drainage. It was, in fact, the Globe Theatre; and the flag and trumpet meant that the "Lord Chamberlain's servants" were about to begin their performance, which, as the bill outside the door told in rough letters, was to be that of a new "Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmark," written by William Shakespeare. London folk knew this Master Shakespeare well as one of the aforesaid "servants," as the maker of most of the plays enacted now by those servants, and, which was deemed far more to his honor, as the poet of "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece." Many who read the playbill guessed rightly that the new "tragicall historie" was based in part upon another author's old play, which they had seen performed many times in the past.[1]