Quiney. Some sorts of park-palings, as he was married at eighteen,
he could not break so lightly as Burns did,--some outlying deer he
could not so readily shoot at, perhaps, but I am not surprised if he
assailed other deer, and was in troubles many. Unlike Burns, he had
a keen eye for the main chance. Everything was going to ruin with
his father; school-mastering, if he tried it (I merely follow
tradition), was not satisfactory. His opinion of dominies, if he
wrote the plays, was identical with that frequently expressed, in
fiction and privately, by Sir Walter Scott.

Something must be done! Perhaps the straitest Baconian will not deny
that companies of players visited Stratford, or even that he may have
seen and talked with them, and been attracted. He was a practical
man, and he made for London, and, by tradition, we first find him
heading straight for the theatre, holding horses at the door, and
organising a small brigade of boys as his deputies. According to Ben
Jonson he shone in conversation; he was good company, despite his
rustic accent, that terrible bar! The actors find that out; he is
admitted within the house as a "servitor"--a call-boy, if you like;
an apprentice, if you please.

By 1592, when Greene wrote his Groatsworth, "Shakescene" thinks he
can bombast out a blank verse with the best; he is an actor, he is
also an author, or a furbisher of older plays, and, as a member of
the company, is a rival to be dreaded by Greene's three author
friends: whoever they were, they were professional University
playwrights; the critics think that Marlowe, so near his death, was
one of them.

Will, supposing him to come upon the town in 1587, has now had, say,