find a penny for anything over and above the
necessary expenses of your government, save for a war or a salary for
his own nephew.

ELIZABETH. Master Shakespear: you speak sooth; yet cannot I in any
wise mend it. I dare not offend my unruly Puritans by making so lewd
a place as the playhouse a public charge; and there be a thousand
things to be done in this London of mine before your poetry can have
its penny from the general purse. I tell thee, Master Will, it will
be three hundred years and more before my subjects learn that man
cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that cometh from the
mouth of those whom God inspires. By that time you and I will be dust
beneath the feet of the horses, if indeed there be any horses then,
and men be still riding instead of flying. Now it may be that by then
your works will be dust also.

SHAKESPEAR. They will stand, madam: fear nor for that.

ELIZABETH. It may prove so. But of this I am certain (for I know my
countrymen) that until every other country in the Christian world,
even to barbarian Muscovy and the hamlets of the boorish Germans, have
its playhouse at the public charge, England will never adventure. And
she will adventure then only because it is her desire to be ever in
the fashion, and to do humbly and dutifully whatso she seeth everybody
else doing. In the meantime you must content yourself as best you can
by the playing of those two pieces which you give out as the most
damnable ever writ, but which your countrymen, I warn you, will swear
are the best you have ever done. But this I will say, that if I could
speak across the ages to our descendants, I should heartily recommend
them to fulfil your wish; for the Scottish minstrel hath well said
that he that maketh the songs of a nation is mightier than he that
maketh its laws; and the same may well be true of plays and
interludes. _[The clock chimes the first quarter. The warder returns
on his round]._ And now, sir, we are upon the hour when it better
beseems a virgin queen to be abed than to converse alone with the
naughtiest of her subjects. Ho there! Who keeps ward on the queen's
lodgings tonight?

THE WARDER. I do, an't please your majesty.

ELIZABETH. See that you keep it better in future. You have let pass
a most dangerous gallant even to the very door of our royal chamber.
Lead him forth; and bring me word when he is safely locked out; for I
shall scarce dare disrobe until the palace