The play was over. Some few adventurous spirits from the audience approached the tire-room door: Heminge held it warily ajar. "I would speak with your author: where is he?"--"I would have a word with Mr. Shakespeare: is he within?" "Not this way, I assure you, sir: we are not so officiously befriended by him, as to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the book-holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the music out of time, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit."--"Was it not Mr. Shakespeare, then, that played the part of Rosencrantz?" enquired the bewildered ones. "Close the door!" thundered Burbage from within. Followed a sound of bolts and bars.... Meanwhile, Mr. Shakespeare had disappeared from the malodorous precincts of the _Globe_--for the adjacent bear-gardens were notorious for evil effluvia--had crossed the river, and was making his way to the _Mermaid_, where he arrived about six. A plentiful supper was already being partaken of: the rooms were full of steam and savoury smells. Supper was a smaller meal than dinner, but in no way stinted. Lettuces and radishes were usually served first, and afterwards a variety of highly flavoured dishes. Pigeons stuffed with green gooseberries, fiercely-seasoned herring-pies, roast pork with green sorrel sauce--mustard, horseradish, ginger, and honey _ad lib_, and sweet dishes innumerable. Shakespeare did justice to his food, and took copious draughts of light sweet wine: the morning's melancholy had passed away, and was succeeded by an almost feverish gaiety. The artificial stimulus of the theatre had produced a temporary excitement in him--he was flushed, brilliant, loquacious. As his repartees flashed rapier-like across the room, Ben Jonson smiled grimly, seated at the head of the table, and a score of kindred souls, who surrounded it, relished the _verve_ and sparkle of their favourite comrade. Jonson was a man of great size, of immense strength and personal courage--masterful, domineering, jealous. He recognised and allowed the extraordinary genius of Shakespeare--but always with many detractions, "insinuating his incorrectness, or a careless manner of writing, and a want of judgment." That the Stratford shopkeeper's son, utterly unequipped in scholarship or training, should stand so high in popular estimation above himself--the University graduate of great learning--was acutely annoying to Jonson: it may be, too, that, with the littleness of certain minds, he had never forgiven Shakespeare for doing him a good turn in the matter of his comedies. At any rate he resented the Warwickshire man's unparalleled quickness, brightness, and flexibility of tongue; and every evening he inaugurated a duel of words, which almost invariably resulted in a "draw," and which was the delight of those privileged to be present. "At the _Mermaid_," says Fuller, one of these favoured auditors, "many were the wit-combats between Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, which two I beheld like a Spanish great galleon and English man of war. Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his performance. Shakespeare, like the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all sides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." And thus it befell that the frequenters of the _Mermaid_--such notabilities as Raleigh, Fletcher, Marlowe, Beaumont, Greene,--were accustomed to hear these two great poets disputing, and to join the tournament, in words (as Beaumont put it)