“I begin to take your meaning, Master Shakespeare,” said the Queen. “I had supposed that when these children of your fancy laughed and made merry, you also rejoiced. But I had forgotten that even in these plays of yours the sadness outweighs the mirth as is the case with life itself, whereby a double burden is laid upon the endurance of their creator.” “Yes, your grace, that is indeed true. And yet that is not the full measure of a poet’s unhappiness.” “In what does a poet’s unhappiness consist, Master Shakespeare?” “It consists, your grace, in this. A poet sees too much, feels too much, knows too much. He is stretched perpetually on the rack of his excess. He reads more into life than life itself will hold. Of a most private grief he will make a little song. He will amuse the groundlings with the tale of some deep injury he has suffered in his bones. When he moves the crowd to tears, his fees are paid in blood.” There was something in the nature of the answer which held the Queen. Good sense was her highest quality, and it was that quality in others which never failed to speak to her. She was captivated by the bearing of this man, in whom she recognized not only the master of his craft, but also what pleased her even more, a mature mind which had much to say to her own acute and worldly wise one. Indeed, so gratified was the Queen with the demeanor and the mental quality of Mr. William Shakespeare, that, as a signal mark of her favor, he was commanded to sit in her presence. The sovereign was prone to carry her Tudor sense of importance to ridiculous lengths, but there was some subtle instinct lurking within her which sought equality between “the fair vestal throned by the west” and the monarch of an empire infinitely wider than her own. CHAPTER XXXIII IT was such a spectacle as could rarely have been seen in that place, this homely fellow without airs or graces or pretensions to fashion, seated in the presence of his sovereign and treated by her with a respect she extended to few. But not by word, deed or gesture did he claim the estate of an equal. He was William Shakespeare, the play-actor, and she was Elizabeth Tudor, the conqueror of Spain. But the kingdom of the mind is no Venetian oligarchy. Those who speak the same language are all made free of it. And queen and mime, alone perhaps among that assembly, were able to address each other in the universal tongue. Seldom, of late years at least, had this crabbed, difficult and arrogant woman, been seen in a mood so accessible. She spoke freely to this man of things of which few had heard her speak. And presently she said: “I hope, Master Shakespeare, you will devise a new play for our diversion.” “Already, your grace,” said the dramatist, “there is a new play taking shape in my head. And if on a day it should have the great good fortune to please the fancy of your grace, the least of your servants will be the happiest man in your realm.”