of buxom Dame Quickly.

_"The gods are just, and oft our pleasant vices
Make instruments to scourge us.
Boys, immature in knowledge,
Pawn their experience to their present pleasure."_

The main bar, decorated with variegated lights and shining blue bottles and
glasses, with pewter and silver mugs in theatrical rows, lent a kind of
enchantment to the nightly scene. Round, square and octagonal oak tables
were scattered through the various rooms, and rough leather lounges skirted
the walls.

Promptly at eight o'clock William and myself passed the stony portals of
the Boar's Head, and were ushered into the back ground floor dining room
where we met our friend Field and a playwright named Christopher Marlowe,
standing before a great open chimney, with a blazing fire and a splendid
supper.

Field seemed to take great pride in making us acquainted with Marlowe, the
greatest actor and dramatist of his day, whose plays were even then the
talk and delight of London.

"Tamberlaine the Great" and "Dr. Faustus" had been successfully launched at
the Blackfriars, and young Marlowe was in his glory, the wit and toast of
the town. He was but twenty-five years of age, finely formed, a voluptuary,
high jutting forehead, dark hazel eye, and a typical image of a bohemian
poet. It was a toss up as to who was the handsomest man, William or
Marlowe, yet a stranger, on close inspection could see glinting out of
William's eye a divine light and flashing expression that ever commanded
respect and admiration. He was unlike any other mortal.

I, alone at that period, knew the bursting ability of William; and that his
granary of knowledge was full to the brim, needing only an opportunity to
flood the world with immortal sonnets, Venus and Adonis, and the incubating
passion plays that lay struggling in his burning brain for universal
recognition.

During the evening young actors, politicians, college students and
roystering lords, filled the house and by twelve o'clock Bacchanalian folly
ruled the madcaps of the town, while battered Venus with bedraggled hair
and skirts languished in sensuous display.

Field requested his friend Marlowe to recite a few lines from "Dr. Faustus"
for our instruction and pleasure, and forthwith he gave the soliloquy of
Faust, waiting at midnight for Lucifer to carry him to hell, the terrified
Doctor exclaiming to the devil:

_"Oh mercy! heaven, look not so fierce on me,
Adders and serp