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There was Blount, and Pope, and Hemynge, and Thomas Greene, and Joey Taylor, the acting-boy, deep in the heart of a honey-bowl, yet who one day was to play "Hamlet" as no man ever has played it since.
My father hath been hunting after thee the whole way up from London town!" There in the Great House garden under the mulberry-trees stood Master Will Shakspere, with Masters Jonson, Burbage, Hemynge, Condell, and a goodly number more, who had just come up from London town, as well as Alderman Henry Walker of Stratford, good old John Combe of the college, and Michael Drayton, the poet of Warwick.
There were about the long table, beside Master Shakspere himself, who sat at the head of the board, Masters Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, Henry Condell, and Peter Hemynge, Master Shakspere's partners; Master Ben Jonson, his dearest friend; Thomas Pope, who played his finest parts; John Lowin, Samuel Gilburne, Robert Nash, and William Kemp, players of the Lord Chamberlain's company; Edmund Shakspere, the actor, who was Master William Shakspere's younger brother, and Master John Shakspere, his father; Michael Drayton, the Midland bard; Burgess Robert Getley, Alderman Henry Walker, and William Hart, the Stratford hatter, brother-in-law to Master Shakspere.
Thomas Pope, the player, and Peter Hemynge, the manager, were there with them at the table under the little window. The play was a comedy of a wicked money-lender named Shylock; but it was a comedy that made Nick shudder as he sat on the bench by the door and listened to it through happy thoughts of going home. Sunday had passed like a wondrous dream. He was free. Master Carew was done for.
Good, then; let us ravenous vagabonds take these two children for our own, Will, thou one, I t' other, and by praiseworthy fostering singe this fellow's very brain with shame." "Why, here, here, Ben Jonson," spoke up Master Burbage, "this is all very well for Will and thee; but, pray, where do Hemynge, Condell, and I come in upon the bill?
Come, man, 'tis a pity if we cannot all stand together in this real play as well as in all the make-believe." "That's my sort!" cried Master Hemynge. "Why, what? Here is a player's daughter who has no father, and a player whose father will not have him, orphaned by fate, and disinherited by folly, common stock with us all! Marry, 'tis a sort of stock I want some of.
The woman who mothered a lad like Master Skylark here is surely fit to rear the little maid." The London players thumped the table. "Why, 'tis the very trick," said Hemynge. "Marry, this is better than a play." "It is indeed," quoth Condell. "See the plot come out!" "Thou'lt do it, Attwood why, of course thou'lt do it," said Master Shakspere. "'Tis an excellent good plan.
"And so it would," spoke up Walter Roche; "for there are our own townsmen, Richard and Cuthbert Burbage, who are cousins of mine, and John Hemynge and Thomas Greene, besides Will Shakspere and his brother Edmund, all playing in the Lord Chamberlain's company in London before the Queen. It would be a black score against them all with the Lord Admiral I doubt not he would pay them out."
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