The elder brother, with his easy, tolerant air waved the lad to a seat, and shouted for the drawer, or waiter. "Anon, anon, Sir!" and that functionary hastened up. The _Mermaid_ was emptying now, and the attendants were less hurried and flurried. Shakespeare ordered in a second dinner--for, little though he had eaten, the food was cold: and, patting his brother affectionately on the shoulder, slipped a handful of money into his hand. "Ay, marry, thou hast a good Warwickshire hunger and thirst, Ned," said he, "let it not cry out upon thee in vain. For me, I am away to the _Globe_. They play _Hamlet_ there to-day, and needs must I be present." He did not wait for thanks, but, with his peculiarly pleasant smile, slipped out of the _Mermaid_, and made haste towards his theatre.
"Like the three wanderers in Arden, against the bole of a huge oak."
_Touchstone_. The more fool I, to be in Arden!
[Illustration: ROSALIND, CELIA AND TOUCHSTONE. _Painting by Hugh Thomson._]
The _Globe_ was already crowded when he arrived, although the play did not begin till three (there were no evening performances in those days, except in noblemen's private theatres). Burbage, the favourite tragedian, as _Hamlet_, drew a great following: but the humble part played by the author himself as _Rosencrantz_ was a _succès d'estime_ rather than a genuine one--for Mr. William Shakespeare was no very wonderful actor. "A fellowship in a cry of players" held little glamour for him. The man who could imagine, with every vivid circumstance of detail, the sinister and foreboding atmosphere of Elsinore, had little admiration for the "strutting and bellowing" of the players who interpreted his visions....
On either side of the stage sat the young noblemen, the poetasters, and the shorthand writers who worked for private publishers. In the boxes--priced up to half-a-crown (about £1 of our present money) were various aristocratic and wealthy patrons of the play. The "groundlings" obtained standing room in the pit for a penny (say 6d.) and were vociferous in their applause of the sanguinary scenes, of the Gravediggers, and of the grosser jests. Everyone who could afford it, smoked: the "classes," rich authentic tobacco, and the "masses," men and women alike, an adulterated mixture of coltsfoot and other "hot" herbs. As for the middle classes, the merchant-folk, tradesmen, and _bourgeoisie_ in general, they were chiefly conspicuous by their absence. Strongly pervaded by a growing flavour of Puritanism, and having a wholesome decent horror of "play-acting" as something undoubtedly congruous with all dissolute ways and ill-living, the middle classes avoided Bankside like the pestilence. Had they been present, they would have been sorely put to it to understand what in the world Mr. Shakespeare, through the mouth of Hamlet, was gibing at. Was he decrying actors? Was he contemning audiences? Was he scorching, with bitter disdain, all who wrote for, or acted in, or crowded into playhouses?... The young gallants, uncomfortable and uncertain, were glad when the Play-scene was over, and one arrived at more familiar matters of battle, murder, and sudden death. Too much metaphysics about this Hamlet fellow, so they held. A dramatist should stick to his last, and not drag his hearers into deep waters of conjecture, where a man might well flounder for ever....