MASTER SHAKSPERE MET THEM WITH OUTSTRETCHED HANDS




MASTER SKYLARK



CHAPTER I


THE LORD ADMIRAL'S PLAYERS

There was an unwonted buzzing in the east end of Stratford on that next
to the last day of April, 1596. It was as if some one had thrust a stick
into a hive of bees and they had come whirling out to see.

The low stone guard-wall of old Clopton bridge, built a hundred years
before by rich Sir Hugh, sometime Mayor of London, was lined with
straddling boys, like strawberries upon a spear of grass, and along the
low causeway from the west across the lowland to the town, brown-faced,
barefoot youngsters sat beside the roadway with their chubby legs
a-dangle down the mossy stones, staring away into the south across the
grassy levels of the valley of the Stour.

Punts were poling slowly up the Avon to the bridge; and at the outlets
of the town, where the streets came down to the waterside among the
weeds, little knots of men and serving-maids stood looking into the