The author of the play, whose name I have forgotten, but which was something like John or James Shockper or Shicksperry, was himself, they told me, one of the players, which proved that he could neither be a man of education nor capable of writing his own tongue. In the play, they told me, he had played the part of the ghost. If this really be so, he cannot be a man of talent, for he spoke his lines so feebly and so haltingly that the vagabonds in the body of the theatre laughed and interrupted him several times, shouting such things as “Speak louder!” and “Go back to your grave.” The stage plays are, I was told, almost always written by players, for they best know what suits the popular taste, being of the populace and vagabonds themselves. The scene which pleased the audience most was that of a fight in which the players fought bravely, more after the Italian style than the French, and the audience was greatly delighted by the close of the play, and laughed heartily when all the characters were killed and rolled about on the stage, the actor who played the King was especially popular; he had a jovial face, so that whenever he spoke, and sometimes even before he spoke, the audience laughed, heartily enjoying his comic talent. There is no intelligible story in the play, nor is it possible to follow the sequence of events that happen on the stage; but it is rather the aim of the performance to present the public with a series of varied pictures, pleasant to the eye owing to the finery, the brave dresses, the glint of steel rapiers, the tinselled cloaks, and pleasing to the ear owing to the interludes of viol and hautboy playing. At the end of the performance there was loud clapping, and the chief actor, who is famous in this country--so famous, indeed, that there is talk of emancipating him from his position as a vagabond and making him equal to a soldier of the Queen--was called on to the stage; nor would the public let him depart until he had spoken to them, which he did. He thanked them for their warm welcome, and for expressing their pleasure at the performance of the fine play which John or James Shicksperry had written. He said he had felt sure that this play would not disappoint them, and he intended before long to give them another of the same kind, in which there would be still more murders, still more fighting, many more ghosts, and yet finer dresses. What the name of that play was, he said, was as yet a secret: who had written it was a secret. Here the audience shouted out: “We all know who has written it, it is old John or James.” (Now I come to think of it, I remember his name was Bill or Billy or Ben.) Since they had guessed, he said, he would not conceal it any longer: it _was_ Billy, and the play, which he knew they would enjoy, and in which there was plenty of clowning, was called “King Lear.”