ings, now are concerned with this
unknown world summed up in the magic term, "The Players."

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 Ju