A Warwickshire Lad

V

And Dad was as good as his word. First came Christmastide, with all Master Shakespeare's fellow burgesses to dine and the house agog with preparation. No wonder John Shakespeare had need of money to live up to his estate, for next came the Twelfth Night revels with the mummers and waits to be fed and boxed at the chief bailiff's door. And Mary Shakespeare said never a word, but did her husband's bidding cheerfully, even gayly. She had set herself to go his way with faith in his power to wrest success out of venture, and she was not one to take back her word.

The week following, John Shakespeare carried his little son to see the players.

"And was it not as I said?" Mother asked, when the two returned. "Did not the child fall asleep in the midst of it?"

"Sleep!" laughed Dad, clapping Will, so fine in a little green velvet coat, upon the shoulder. "He sleep! You do not know the boy. His cheeks were like your best winter apples, an' his eyes, bless the rogue, are shining yet. An' trotting homeward at my heels, he has scarce had breath to run for talking of it. 'Tis in the blood, boy; your father before you loves a good play, an' the players, too."

And Will, blowing upon his nails aching with the cold, stands squarely with his small legs apart, and looks up at Father. "An' I shall be a player, too, when I'm a man," says Willy Shakespeare. "I shall be a player and wear a dagger like Herod, an' walk about an' draw it-so--" and struts him up and down while his father laughs and claps hand to knee and roars again, until Mistress Shakespeare tells him he it is who spoils the child.

[Illustration: "'An' I shall be a player, too' ... says Willy Shakespeare"]

But for Will Shakespeare the curtain had risen on a new world, a world of giant, of hero, of story, a world of glitter, of pageant, of scarlet and purple and gold. And now henceforth the flagstoned floor about the chimney was a stage upon which Mother and Brother and Kitty, the maid, at little Will's bidding, with Will himself, played a part; a stage where Virtue, in other words Will with the parcel-gilt goblet upside down upon his head for crown, ever triumphed over Vice, in the person of dull Kitty, with her knitting on the stool; or where, according to the play, in turn, Noah or Abraham or Jesus Christ walked in Heaven, while Herod or Pilate, Cain or Judas, burned in yawning Hell.