"'Tis an old saw and a true one, which saith, the miracles that happen daily we suffer to go by us unregarded; as the sunrise, and the return of consciousness after sleep, and so following," said the pageant master, in his small reed voice, "and the same holds as with the rest, with plays also; namely, that what is too well known is still neglected, and where no itch of expectancy is, there will no wits be scratching. 'Twas a reproach of the Athenians of old, master, that they went continually in hopes to see or hear some new thing, and your stage-audiences differ in nothing from your Athenians, save only in the tongue they use, and the clothes they wear. I know not how the truth came to be revealed to me," he proceeded pensively, "but come it did and in a good hour; I mean the truth that every man loveth secrecy and concealment, as a child his coral. What did I then, but clap all my stock together, my mysteries, miracles, pageants, interludes and all, pell mell, Herod and Pilate their proper speeches and cues to boot: the diverting jests of Noah's wife with the admonitions of Abraham and the sentences of the Angel; and from this medley so made I fished forth such chanceable and ill-matched dialogues as a man must needs be Solomon or a very ass that would read sense into them, or confess to discovering a propriety between speaker and spoken word. Why, list but a moment, and I will show you the whole matter," and with that he drew forth a torn quire of unstitched papers that was marked at the head, "The Masque of the Noble Shepherds," which word _Masque_, said Ptolemy, served to cover all such impertinent matter as he should choose to bring in, and acquainted me plainly with the way he had gone about his authorship; in which, nevertheless, I perceived so great an ingenuity, and such apparent gravity and fantastick leading up to nothing in the world as, although I could comprehend no meaning in the piece (there being none to comprehend) yet I could well enough imagine the curious and close attention with which it would be heard and seen. "I tell you I have had all sorts of men come away pleased with it," said Ptolemy in conclusion; "and each for a different reason, and because he saw in it something that seemed to him to mean this, which another said was that, and a third, the other." He looked upon me triumphantly, and then added: "Why, I mind me how at Lambeth once, where I played, a Bishop and two Canons of the Church thanked me handsomely for my holding up the new sect to ridicule; and contrariwise, a little after, a Puritanical grocer demanded of me in a whisper how in this play I dared to rail as I did upon Church Government." "But do you represent your persons still as prophets and peasants as they used to appear?"