Shakespeare's Christmas, and other storiesQuiller-Couch, Arthur
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Shakespeare's Christmas, and other stories
Quiller-Couch, Arthur
English fiction -- 20th century; Short stories, English
"There is naught wrong with Shoreditch, forby that it has lost a
theatre: and I am not drunk, Tom Nashe--no, not by one-tenth as drunk
as I deserve to be, seeing that the house is down, every stick of it,
and the bells scarce yet tolling midnight. 'Twas all this man, I tell
you!"
"Down? The Theatre down? Oh, go back, Dick Burbage!"
"Level with the ground, I tell you--his site a habitation for the
satyr. _Cecidit, cecidit Babylon illa magna!_ and the last remains of
it, more by token, following close on my heels in six wagons. Hist,
then, my Thomas, my Didymus, my doubting one!--Canst not hear the
rumble of their wheels? and--and--oh, good Lord!" Burbage caught his
friend by the arm and leaned against him heavily. "_He's_ there, and
following!"
The wagons came rolling over the cobbles of the Clink along the roadway
outside the high boundary-wall of the yard: and as they came, clear
above their rumble and the slow clatter of hoofs a voice like a trumpet
declaimed into the night--
"_Above all ryvers thy Ryver hath renowne,
Whose beryall streamys, pleasaunt and preclare,
Under thy lusty wallys renneth downe,
Where many a swan doth swymme with wyngis fair,
Where many a barge doth sail and row with are_----
We had done better--a murrain on their cobbles!--we had done better,
lad, to step around by Paul's Wharf and take boat.... This jolting ill
agrees with a man of my weight....
_Where many a barge doth sail aund row with are_--
Gr-r-r! Did I not warn thee beware, master wagoner, of the kerbstones
at the corners? We had done better by water, what though it be dark....
Lights of Bankside on the water ... no such sight in Europe, they
tell me.... My Lord of Surrey took boat one night from Westminster
and fired into their windows with a stone-bow, breaking much glass
... drove all the long-shore queans screaming into the streets in
their night-rails.... He went to the Fleet for it ... a Privy Council
matter.... I forgive the lad, for my part: for only think of it--all
those windows aflame on the river, and no such river in Europe!--
_Where many a barge doth sail and row with are;
Where many a ship doth rest with top-royall.
O towne of townes! patrone and not compare,
London, thou art the flow'r of Cities all!_
Who-oop!"
"In the name of----" stammered Nashe, as he listened, Burbage all the
while clutching his arm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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