they called "Bess."

William and myself took part in several of the joint circus and theatrical
performances, and at the conclusion of one of the plays--"Virtue
Victorious," Queen Elizabeth called up William and a purple page named
Francis Bacon, patted them on the head with her royal digits, and said they
would soon be great men!

I must acknowledge that I felt a little envious at the encomium, not so
much to William, as to the proud peacock, Bacon, who came in the train of
the Queen.

At sunrise of the 27th of July, 1575, the festivities closed, and the royal
cavalcade with a following of ten thousand loyal subjects, accompanied the
ruling monarch to the borders of Warwickshire, with universal shouts and
ovations on her triumphal march to London.

_"I would applaud thee to the very echo,
That should applaud again."_

_"All that glitters is not gold,
Often you have heard that told;
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold!"_

CHAPTER II.

LAUNCHED. APPRENTICE BOY. AMBITION.

_"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our Stars,
But in ourselves that we are underlings."_

Will Shakspere and myself left school when we were fourteen years of age.
Our parents being reduced in worldly circumstances, needed the financial
fruits of our labor.

Shakspere was bound to a butcher named John Bull, for a term of three
years, while I was put at the trade of stone-cutting with Sam Granite for
the same period.

Will was one of the finest looking boys in the town of Stratford,
aristocratic by nature, large and noble in appearance, and the pride of all
the girls in the county of Warwick; for his fame as a runner, boxer,
drinker, dancer, reciter, speaker, hunter, swimmer and singer was well
known in the surrounding farms and villages, where he had occasion to
drive, purchase and sell meat animals for his butcher boss, John Bull.
Shakspere's father assisted Bull in selling hides and buying wool.

In the winter of 1580, Will and myself joined a new thespian society,
organized by the boys and girls of Stratford, with a contingent of
theatrical talent from Shottery, Snitterfield, Leicester, Kenilworth and
Coventry.

Strolling players, chartered by Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester,
often visited Stratford and the surrounding towns, infusing into the young,
and even the old, a desire for that innocent fun of tragic or comic
philosophy that wandering minstrels an