He replied, "Why, the Bard's tragical history of the bloody Scot, certes." He waved his hand toward the portrait of Shakespeare that always sits beside his mirror on top of his reserve makeup box. At first that particular picture of the Bard looked too nancy to me--a sort of peeping-tom schoolteacher--but I've grown used to it over the months and even palsy-feeling. He didn't ask me why I hadn't asked Miss Nefer my question. Everybody in the company knows she spends the hour before curtain-time getting into character, never parting her lips except for that purpose--or to bite your head off if you try to make the most necessary conversation. "Aye, 'tiz _Macbeth_ tonight," Sid confirmed, returning to his frowning-practice: left eyebrow up, right down, reverse, repeat, rest. "And I must play the ill-starred Thane of Glamis." I said, "That's fine, Siddy, but where does it leave us with Miss Nefer? She's already thinned her eyebrows and beaked out the top of her nose for Queen Liz, though that's as far as she's got. A beautiful job, the nose. Anybody else would think it was plastic surgery instead of putty. But it's going to look kind of funny on the Thaness of Glamis." * * * * * Sid hesitated a half second longer than he usually would--I thought, _his timing's off tonight_--and then he harrumphed and said, "Why, Iris Nefer, decked out as Good Queen Bess, will speak a prologue to the play--a prologue which I have myself but last week writ." He owled his eyes. "'Tis an experiment in the new theater." I said, "Siddy, prologues were nothing new to Shakespeare. He had them on half his other plays. Besides, it doesn't make sense to use Queen Elizabeth. She was dead by the time he whipped up _Macbeth_, which is all about witchcraft and directed at King James." He growled a little at me and demanded, "Prithee, how comes it your peewit-brain bears such a ballast of fusty book-knowledge, chit?" I said softly, "Siddy, you don't camp in a Shakespearean dressing room for a year, tete-a-teting with some of the wisest actors ever, without learning a little. Sure I'm a mental case, a poor little A & A existing on your sweet charity, and don't think I don't appreciate it, but--" "A-_and_-A, thou sayest?" he frowned. "Methinks the gladsome new forswearers of sack and ale call themselves AA." "Agoraphobe and Amnesiac," I told him. "But look, Siddy, I was going to sayest that I do know the plays. Having Queen Elizabeth speak a prologue to _Macbeth_ is as much an anachronism as if you put her on the gantry of the British moonship, busting a bottle of champagne over its schnozzle." "Ha!" he cried as if he'd caught me out. "And saying there's a new Elizabeth, wouldn't that be the bravest advertisement ever for the Empire?--perchance rechristening the pilot, copilot and astrogator Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh? And the ship _The Golden Hind_? Tilly fally, lady!"