h a cry for wine. It is Armin who gives
the orders, but his companion pays. They spy Alleyn, and Armin must tell
his news. He is the bearer of a challenge from some merry souls at the
"Saba" to the actor-manager; and Ned Alleyn turns white and red when he
hears it. Then he laughs a confident laugh, and accepts the bet. Some
theatre-goers, flushed with wine, have dared him to attempt certain
parts in which Bentley and Knell vastly please them. Ned is incredulous
that men should be so willing to fling away their money; yet here is
Will a witness, and Burbage is staying on at the "Saba" not to let the
challengers escape.

The young man of twenty-four, at the White Horse in Friday Street, is
Tom Nash; and it is Peele who is swearing that he is a monstrous clever
fellow, and helping him to finish his wine. But Peele is glad to see Ned
and Cowley in the doorway, for Tom has a weakness for reading aloud the
good things from his own manuscripts. There is only one of the company
who is not now sick to death of Nash's satires on Martin Marprelate; and
perhaps even he has had enough of them, only he is as yet too obscure a
person to say so. That is Will; and Nash detains him for a moment just
to listen to his last words on the Marprelate controversy. Marprelate
now appears "with a wit worn into the socket, twingling and pinking like
the snuff of a candle; _quantum mutatus ab illo!_ how unlike the
knave he was before, not for malice but for sharpness. The hogshead was
even come to the hauncing, and nothing could be drawne from him but the
dregs." Will says it is very good; and Nash smiles to himself as he puts
the papers in his pockets and thinks vaguely that he might do something
for Will. Shakespeare is not a university man, and they say he held
horses at the doors of the Globe not long ago; but he knows a good thing
when he hears it.

All this time Marlowe is at the Globe, wondering why the others are so
long in coming; but not wondering very much--for it is good wine they
give you at the Globe. Even before the feast is well begun Kit's eyes
are bloodshot and his hands unsteady. Death is already seeking for him
at a tavern in Deptford, and the last scene in a wild, brief life starts
up before us. A miserable ale-house, drunken words, the flash of a
knife, and a man of genius has received his death-blow. What an epitaph
for the greatest might-have-been in English literature: "Christopher
Marlowe, slain by a serving-man in a drun