Perhaps Ben Jonson will come swaggering in, having taken a glass, or two, very likely, or even three, in the tap-room of the Tabard Tavern--the famous Tabard of Chaucer’s tales--which is within practicable drinking distance; and Will Shakespeare, if indeed there, may greet him across two benches with, “Ah, Ben,” and he--tipsily in reply, with “Ah, my good fellow, Will.” Those prim young men, Beaumont and Fletcher, who are just now pluming their wings for such dramatic flights as these two older men have made, may also be there. And the play will open with three little bursts of warning music; always a prologue with a first representation; and it may chance that the very one we have lighted upon, is some special exhibit of that great military spectacle of “Henry V.” which we know, and all the times between have known; and it may be that this Shakespeare, being himself author and in a sense manager of these boards, may come forward to speak the prologue himself; how closely we would have eyed him, and listened:-- “Pardon, gentles all; The flat, unraiséd spirit, that hath dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object: Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O, the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt? Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts, Into a thousand parts divide one man; Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i’ the receiving earth, For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings, Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times; Turning the accomplishment of many years Into an hour-glass.” And then the play begins and we see them all: Gloucester and the brave king, and Bedford, and Fluellen, and the pretty Kate of France (by some boy-player), and Nym, and Pistol, and Dame Quickly; and the drums beat, and the roar of battle breaks and rolls away--as only Shakespeare’s words can make battles rage; and the French Kate is made Queen, and so the end comes. All this might have happened; I have tried to offend against no historic data of places, or men, or dates in this summing up. And from the doors of the Globe, where we are assailed by a clamor of watermen and linkboys, we go down to the river’s edge--scarce a stone’s-throw distant--and take our wherry, on the bow of which a light is now flaming, and float away in the murky twilight upon that great historic river--watching the red torch-fires, kindling one by one along the Strand shores, and catching the dim outline of London houses--the London of King James I.--looming through the mists behind them. In our next chapter I shall have somewhat more to say of the Stratford man--specially of his personality; and more to say of King James, and of his English Bible. CHAPTER II.