Art is long, time fleeting. It was a poor thing, but it would have to serve, since the Queen had called for it to be played before her next Thursday se’nnight in her palace at Richmond. And it made the playwright sigh to think that there was only young Parflete to play _Rosalind_, that fair emblem of victorious girlhood, upon which he had feasted and quickened his imagination. The prosperity of the play depended on a single character, and Parflete, with all his grace and talent, came not near the poet’s ideal of the part. Perhaps no mortal youth could ever hope to do that, and yet what a glorious _Rosalind_ had walked up that street but an hour ago! It was a stroke of perverse fate that his eyes had been ravished by that charming gypsy boy. But for that sight, Parflete, for whom the part had been designed from the first, would have contented him. But now having seen the true _Rosalind_, for all that he was so fine-drawn and shy, so ill-kempt and rustical, it made the poet sad to think of Parflete in the rôle, youth of breeding and talent as he was. The playwright sighed heavily as he turned the last page. Alas! he felt already that he had leaned too heavily on his chief female character. Oh, if--! But such a speculation was idle ... he must dismiss it. Let him spend his mind more profitably in seeking a name for the plaguy piece. But how was it possible to find a name for such a patched coat of fantasy? While William Shakespeare was in this mental travail, his friend Richard Burbage came out of the tavern. “Dick,” said he, “of your charity give me a name for this curst piece. I know no more what to christen it than does a blind tinker his dog.” Richard Burbage removed from his mouth his pipe of tobacco, a fashionable action which seemed to call for a slight air of magniloqence. “A name, my William, for the curst piece?” The tragedian shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands nonchalantly, while the light of a large good-humor shone in his shrewd face. “Oh, call it as you like it or what you will.” The fist of the playwright descended upon the bench in front of him. “Dick, you’ve hit it at the first shot!” he cried. “As You Like It!--you’ve hit the target right in the middle.” “Why take two bites at a cherry, my son?” said the tragedian, with another amused shrug. “In fact, the matter merely amounts to this: If William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon in Warwickshire, would engage one Richard Burbage, an honest good fellow, to write his plaguy pieces for him, it would save him a vast deal of trouble and inconvenience and the world would never be able to tell the difference.” Thereupon Mr. Richard Burbage sauntered back into the Crown Tavern with that large air of benevolent tolerance which should be the attitude of a superior mind toward all men and all things. “As You Like It,” said the playwright. “The name is as good as a better, confound me if it is not!”