“I offer my life, your grace, for that of one so far beyond myself that, although I enjoy my days as much as any man alive, there can be no higher privilege than to give them for such a one as he. And the day will surely come when the whole world will rise up and call me blessed.” These were wild words for prosaic ears. There was almost a core of madness in them, yet it was impossible to doubt the grim sincerity of this fanatic. The Queen looked at the Lord Treasurer, and the Lord Treasurer looked at the Queen. One fact at once shone clear in the minds of both. It was no ordinary man who offered life itself on the altar of friendship. “The truth is,” said the Queen at last, “you mad players, who spend your days in mouthing bombast and in tearing passions to tatters, get a kind of swelling in your brains. The truth is, Master Burbage, you over-color all the facts of life. Your speech in consequence is high-flown, your behavior nonsensical, your appearance ridiculous.” “It may be so, your grace.” The player spoke slowly and calmly, and yet without any great show of humility. “But I would entreat your grace not to overlook the fact that Richard Burbage would pay away his life for the boon he craves.” “Yes, sirrah, I appreciate that,” said the Queen. “And to me, Master Burbage, I confess it makes you a subject for confinement in a mad-house. How say you, my lord?” But my lord was thinking so deeply that he failed to answer the question of his august mistress. It was the business of his life to estimate men and things; and for perhaps the first time in his career, he was face to face with men and things with which his recondite knowledge and his remarkable faculty seemed powerless to deal. “Yes, you bombastical players have an inflammation of the mind, there is no doubt about it,” said the Queen. “In your opinion, Master Burbage, I do not doubt the author of ‘As You Like It’ is the greatest man alive.” “Yes, your grace,” said the tragedian, very simply, “he is undoubtedly that in his own province, and as, in my humble judgment his province is the highest of all, I cannot honestly claim less than that precedence for him. But, of course, I speak, your grace, as but a strutter of boards and a mouther of bombast. Yet in my humble opinion, a man must be what he is, and be that only, and with all his heart. Nature fashioned me for the theater. Therefore, my life is consecrated to the theater, which for me is the sum of all things, the highest good. And therefore I say to your grace, that never again will the theater look upon the like of William Shakespeare, who to me, and to many another in this age and in ages yet to come, must ever remain the brightest jewel in Gloriana’s crown. And if it be given to Richard Burbage to purchase with his own life the priceless things that lie as yet unborn in the womb of our immortal poet’s invention, it will be a great end for a poor tragedian.”