This was surely showing great confidence in a young actor and author--to criticise the play of acknowledged dramatists who had been the talk of the town.
Shakspere modestly remarked: "I fear, sir, your friends, Lodge and Greene, will not like or tolerate my cutting of their play."
"Care not for their opinion! Do as I say, and have the play ready for staging Monday afternoon at two o'clock."
"Your command is law, and I obey," said the Bard--and out rushed the bluffing, busy Burbage.
The constant circulation of bohemian customers, day and night about the Devil's Tavern, was not conducive to careful composition of plays, and William and myself moved to modest quarters near Paris Garden, kept by a Miss Maggie Mellow, a blonde maiden of uncertain age.
William continued to perform his theatrical duties diligently, while I was engaged at the printing shop of Field, translating historic, dramatic and poetic works from Latin authors, thus piecing out the price of food, clothes and shelter in the whirlpool of London joy and misery.
During my apprenticeship with Sam Granite, as a marble cutter, I spent my nights with Master Hunt studying the intricate windings of the Latin language, and became proficient in the translation of ancient authors, delving also into the philosophy of Greek roots, with its Attic phrases and Athenian eloquence.
My parents desired me to leave off the trade of stone cutting and prepare for the priesthood, where I could make an easier living, working on the fears, egotism and hopes of mankind.
I was always too blunt to play the velvet philosopher and saint-like character of a sacerdotal vicaro of any church or creed, feeling full well that the so-called divine teacher and pupil know just as much about the "hereafter" as I do--and that's nothing! Put not thy faith in wind, variable and inconstant.
So, a life of bohemian hack-work for printers, publishers and theatrical managers seemed best suited to my nature, giving me perfect freedom of thought and a disposition to express my honest opinion to prince or peasant, in home, church or state.
God is God, and Nature is His representative!
_While man, vain creature of an hour, Depressed by grief or blessed by power Is but a shadow and a name-- A flash of evanescent fame!_
