The stagewright saw an opportunity for the introduction of a stage ship or shipwreck, hence {179}he puts in the borrowed "sea-coast." He needs an alarum of guns to impress his audience on the coming evening with the fact that a tight is in progress. And even if it should occur to him to doubt if there were any guns at the siege of Ilium, he is pretty certain that it will not occur to the groundlings or the penny seats, from whose pocket all is grist that comes to his mill, if he makes the guns and the cannon a part of the "business." So, again, we have only to understand this, and the characters of Hym and Bardolph--supposed to have puzzled the critics since critics first began to busy themselves with these dramas--is explained. Bardolph is the walking comedian, inserted by the experienced manager to tickle the frieti ciceris et nucis emptor, with his fiery nose, and corporal Nym to break in with his "There's the humor of it," just as rip Van Winkle dwells upon his favorite toast, and Solon Shingle upon his ancestor who "fitted into the Revolution." And to many minds this accounts for the little dashes of obscene display, the lewd innuendo, which came never from the same pen as the masterstrokes, but which they prefer to conceive of an actor or manager interpolating to the delight of Monsieur Taine's audience, and for the stolen delectation of the maids of honor and city dames who went, in men's clothes, to mingle with them. This, too, might account for the poems dedicated to Southampton. In the lax court and reign of the Virgin Queen, there was at least one man bold and reckless enough to stand patron to the "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece"--the noble young libertine of nineteen, Southampton. Similarly, there may have been but one man available upon {180}whom to father them, and so the joint or several productions of certain young men about town, "curled darlings" who affected Shakespeare's green-room, were sworn upon the complacent manager, who doubtless saw his profit in it. We have rumor, indeed, that his profit was no less a sum than one thousand pounds. But, as we have seen, and shall see further, this thousand pounds story is not only without authority, but incredible: that Southampton's means did not justify him in giving away any such sum--that Shakespeare did not need it, and that none of Southampton's coterie ever heard of it.