t comes it to?

HOST. The Sharers dinners sixpence a piece. The hirelings--pence.

POST. What, sixpence an egg, and two and two an egg?

HOST. Faith, famine affords no more.

POST. Fellows, bring out the hamper. Chose somewhat out o'th stock.

_Enter the Players._

What will you have this cloak to pawn? What think you its worth?

HOST. Some fewer groats.

ONIN. The pox is in this age; here's a brave world fellows!

POST. You may see what it is to laugh at the audience.

HOST. Well, it shall serve for a pawn.

The further development of this narrative will make it evident beyond
any reasonable doubt that Posthaste, the poet-actor, is intended to
caricature Shakespeare, and Sir Oliver Owlet's company and its
misfortunes to reflect the Earl of Pembroke's company in similar
circumstances in 1593; that Mavortius is the young Earl of Southampton,
to whom Shakespeare dedicated _Venus and Adonis_ in 1593, and _Lucrece_
in the year following; that Landulpho, the Italian lord, represents John
Florio, who, in 1591, in his _Second Fruites_, criticised English
historical drama and praised Italian plays, and who, at about the same
time as teacher of languages entered into the pay and patronage of the
Earl of Southampton, a connection which his odd and interesting
personality enabled him to hold thereafterwards for several years. The
part which Landulpho takes in the play was somewhat developed by Marston
in 1599, at which time it shall later on be shown that the relations
between Florio and Shakespeare had reached a heated stage. The play of
_The Prodigal Child_, which was the play within the play acted by
Posthaste and his fellows in the earlier form of _Histriomastix_, did
not, in my opinion, represent the English original of the translated
German play of _The Prodigal Son_ which Mr. Simpson presents as the
possible original, but was meant to indicate Shakespeare's _Love's
Labours Won_, which was written late in the preceding year as a
reflection of Southampton's intimacy with Florio, and the beginning of
his affair with Mistress Davenant,[25] the Oxford tavern keeper's wife.
The expression _The Prodigal Child_ differs from that of _The Prodigal
Son_ in meaning, in that the word "Child" at that period meant a young
nobleman. There is nothing whatever suggestive of Shakespeare's work in
the translated German play, and it was merely the similarity of title
that led Mr. Simpson to propose it as the play indicated. The