“Nor shall it be,” his new friend assured him. “Never fear, most men in a company of players are not poets. Each player may, from time to time, contribute a line or two or an idea, perhaps even a speech, but no one expects every man to write. The Benchers and the Masters of the Arts residing at the Inns of Court have written, in their spare time, many of the plays they act today. Indeed, many plays were first performed there by the young barristers for the better class of people.”

“That is much as I would have assumed,” said Smythe, “that one would have to be a learned scholar in order to write a play. It would seem quite an undertaking.”

“Aye, well, that is what all the academic gentlemen would have you think,” said Shakespeare, with a grimace. “But herein lies the truth of it: No amount of academic training can bestow the gift of words, my friend. It can add to one’s vocabulary, as indeed can a sojourn among Bristol whores and seamen, but it cannot teach the skill of putting words together in novel and surprising patterns which reflect some previously unguessed truth of life. A proper scholar from the Inns of Court might pepper his dramatic stew with references to the Greek classics or to Holinshed, but all the learning in the world will bring him no true insight into the soul of man.”

He set his tankard down upon the table a bit more solidly than necessary and then belched. “Bollocks. We need more ale. And you have scarce touched yours.”

“I have no head for it, nor stomach,” Smythe replied.

“You know, they say you cannot trust a man who will not drink.”

“Well, I think I would hesitate to trust one who drinks too much.”

“Aye, well, there’s the rub,” said Shakespeare, as he signaled for another pot of ale with a raising of his tankard. “In vino Veritas… and so truth served, in his cups, did he like Caesar vidi, vici, veni and then hoisted on his own petard into the bloody state of matrimony…”

Smythe frowned. “I have but a little Latin learning, Will.” What was he babbling? Something about truth in wine and Caesar? What was it? “I saw, I conquered, I came?” That did not sound quite right. It seemed that his new friend had not the head for drinking, either, and yet he drank to rapid stupefaction, as if all in a rush to get there. He found it difficult to follow the man’s cant.

“ ‘Tis nevermind to thee, Symington, old sport.” A frown. He had rather badly slurred the name. “We shall need another name with which to call you, Smythe, old sod, one that trips more off the tongue than trips it up. What shall it be, then? Faith, an’ you barely touch your ale, an’ I am on my fourth pot, or is’t my fifth or sixth? Yet you inhale your food as if Hephaestus himself did hammer in your belly, tucking into it like some ravening beast withal… Hal There we have it! Tuck! You shall be Tuck!” He raised his tankard. “A toast to you, my new friend Tuck! Tuck Smythe, my friend and fellow player!”

“Tuck?” said Smythe. He considered briefly, then he shrugged. “Why not?” It was, to be sure, a lot less cumbersome and high-flown than Symington, and he had always despised having his Christian name shortened to some horrid and cloying familiarity as Symie or Simmie, as they used to do back home. Symington he was christened, and Symington his name would stay, but Tuck his friends would call him. Tuck Smythe. It even sounded like a player’s name. Ned Alleyn and Tuck Smythe. “Why not, indeed?” he said.

“Well, Tuck, my new old friend, I fear I am inebriated.”

“Come on, then, poet,” he said, rising and reaching out to help Shakespeare to his feet. “Let us go and find our room, before we have to lay you out right here, beneath the table.”

“Ah, I have laid beneath the table once or twice before. And lustily upon it, too.”

Smythe wrapped Shakespeare’s arm around his shoulders to support his weight as he staggered toward the stairs, dragging his feet. “Oh, bloody hell,” said Smythe, “hang on. ‘Twill be much easier to carry you.”

“Nay, I am too heavy…”

Smythe hoisted him up onto his shoulder effortlessly. “Zounds! You are strong as an ox!”

“And you are drunk as a lord,” said Smythe, with a grin as he climbed up the stairs.

“ ‘Tis my only lordly ambition.”

“Well, before you swoon, milord, be so kind as to inform me which room is yours.”

“Second door from the top of the stairs.”

“Second door it is.”

“Or perhaps ‘twas the third.”

“Well, which is it?”

“Second. Aye, second door.”

Smythe came to the second door and opened it. However, the room was already occupied. The gentleman who had arrived in the coach earlier that night stood bare-headed and without his cloak in the center of the room and opposite him stood a dark-haired woman Smythe had not seen before. They both turned, startled, at the intrusion, and Smythe caught only a brief glance of them before the servant, Andrew, stepped in front of him, scowling, and slammed the door in his face.

“I think you meant the third door,” Smythe said.

“Third. Aye, third door,” slurred the dead weight on his shoulder.

Smythe sighed and shook his head. He found the right room, entered, and deposited his burden on the bed. The poet rolled over onto his back and promptly started snoring.

“Wonderful,” said Smythe, with a grimace. He sighed. “I start out on my new life and my first bedmate is a drunken poet. But I suppose it does beat sleeping with the horses in the barn.” Though perhaps, he thought, not by very much.

THEY GOT AN EARLY START the next day, leaving the inn as the first grayness of the dawn began to lighten the sky. Having paid for their lodging and victuals the previous evening, they had no accounts left to settle, so they simply packed what few possessions they had (which in Smythe’s case amounted to nothing more than the clothes upon his back, his staff, and the dagger on his belt, and in Shakespeare’s, merely the contents of a small leather satchel) and set off to resume their journey before most of the other travelers were awake.

The road ahead of them was quiet and deserted, and they proceeded without incident, for which Smythe was rather grateful. He observed that the road had grown somewhat wider since they had left the inn, and was clearly more traveled and in better condition, which was a sure sign that they were approaching London. It made him feel excited to know that they would reach the city soon. A new life beckoned.

As they ambled down the road, with the early morning mist undulating lazy tendrils at their feet, they compared their knowledge about the different companies of players and which might be the best one for them to join. They were both in agreement about the Queen’s Players, also known as the Queen’s Men. They had each seen that company perform, and Shakespeare had some contact with the players when they had visited Stratford-upon-Avon while on tour, as they did every season.

“The Queen’s Men are, without a doubt, a most estimable company of players,” the poet said, apparently none the worse for wear from the previous night’s tippling. “And as they were assembled on the orders of Her Majesty, membership in their company would, of course, provide the opportunity to display one’s talents in performances at court, and there can be no more prestigious audience.”

“I saw Dick Tarleton and Will Kemp perform with the Queen’s Players while they were on tour,” said Smythe. “ ‘Twas then that I decided to become a player myself. And I thought from the first that was the very company that I would wish to join.”

Shakespeare smiled. “Well, I felt much the same when they played the Stratford Guildhall. In truth, I was of a mind to leave with them right then and there, and though they did not seem unwilling to take me on as a hired man till I could prove my worth to them, circumstances for my leaving were not favorable at the time. And perhaps ‘twas just as well. One should never make such decisions without proper planning and consideration. Choices made on impulse often have unfortunate results. As for Dick Tarleton, he is an amiable clown, if you like that sort of thing. He is famous for his drollery, but Kemp isn’t half the man that Tarleton is. He can never seem to remember his lines, probably because he does not bother overmuch to learn them in the first place. From what I’ve seen, he fills in what he forgets with extempore or some silly piece of clowning. Some of your more dull-witted groundlings may like that sort of thing, but it is not my meat. I have never cared much for pratfalls and silly prancing and whatall myself. I believe that audiences respond much better to a story, not clowning, jigs, pratfalls and posturing, and silly prancing. And while it is true that a play is a thing to which the entire company usually contributes, a poet labors much too hard over his words to have some clownish player disregard them altogether.”