“Would you have us believe, Master Shakespeare,” she said, “that the glad world which your inimitable fancy creates for the pleasuring of your fellow-men is not a source of joy and delight to its possessor? And would you have us believe that the homage which all the world has come to pay to you brings not pride nor happiness?” The playwright who stood before his sovereign with a throng of great persons gathered round him, answered these rather embarrassing questions with a curiously unstudied humility. Such a modesty of bearing made an effect of perfect sincerity. Moreover, there was a complete absence of self-regard. Few ordeals could have been more trying for a man of small education, who knew but little of courts, than to be exposed to the gaze of many sharp and jealous eyes, and to be compelled to answer on the spur of the occasion a series of most intimate questions concerning himself and his art. Such an ordeal would have been a tax upon the alert readiness of mind and the self-possession of a highly trained courtier. But there was not a trace of awkwardness in the bearing of this singular man in the black doublet barred with yellow. Indeed, there was nothing to suggest that the situation in which he found himself was in any way unusual. And there was no evidence that the presence of others, of even the highest in the land, was a source of embarrassment to him. No man could have been more completely at his ease or more completely master of himself. “I will answer the second of your questions first, your grace,” he said, speaking very slowly and looking directly at the Queen. “I am indeed a very proud man that the travail of my mind should have given pleasure to those whose favorable opinion must ever be coveted by all honorable men. I unfeignedly rejoice and I am filled with gratitude that your grace and those about you are pleased to approve my labors. And whatever of happiness comes to me comes to me in that.” “That is well spoken, Master Shakespeare,” said the Queen. “You do well to allow that. And now touching the first of these questions I would put to you. Is it that you take no happiness from the possession and the exercise of your most noble gifts?” “None, your grace. They are but the mirror and the counterfeit of life. We makers of plays live in a world of shadows--a world of shadows woven out of our own vitals as a spider weaves his web, and from which by night or day there is no escape.” “Would you escape them, Master Shakespeare, these inimitable children of your fancy?” “Yes, your grace, I would on occasion; I would almost yield life itself to do so.” The Queen was astonished by the almost passionate nature of the answer. This man was no shallow deviser of masques to speed a summer’s day, but one to whom existence was an almost intolerable burden, which admitted of very little alleviation. And he was one who read its riddles with the eyes of a seer.