Circumstance and heritage had produced a certain piece of raw material, the very raw material that was me.  Yet, thanks to my father, my sophistication was beyond that of most fen-men.

To the theater we went, an oval, wooden-walled building with its center open to the sky, the galleries thatched.  There were six-penny, two-penny, even penny seats, and if rain fell, it fell upon those in the pit - upon the sailors, mercers, butchers and bakers as well as their apprentices and students who occupied the pit.

There were also private theaters, but the audience for the plays of Will Shakespeare and many others was largely of the working-class and young.

Waiting for the play to begin, they argued boisterously, drinldng beer, eating fruit or bread, cracking nuts.

We found a place in the balcony.  From the pit somebody shouted a coarse remark at Jublain and he replied in kind.  Next to us three young rowdies, albeit of good family, were throwing apple cores and nutshells on the heads below, and those in the pit threw them back.

At one side of thep it was an up-ended hogshead for the relief of those in the audience who had drunk more beer than they could handle.  When the odor grew too great even for those in the pit, a cry went up to "Burn the juniper!"

After the call had come from several throats, an attendant appeared on stage with a metal plate and some twigs of Juniper, which he set afire.  Soon the pungent smell of burning juniper filled the air.

We watched the theater fill.  "He's popular, Will Shakespeare is," Jublain informed us, "and they say Julius Caesar is one of his best."

It was little enough I knew of the theater, and nothing of Shakespeare.  Of Fletcher and Marlowe I'd heard.

"The crowd likes him.  He's been writing two plays a year, and playing parts in dozens of plays, his own and others.  They usually change the bill twice each week.  He's never played in the private theaters, although he has performed at court.

"Owns a part of the theater, Will does.  When Burbage needed money to rebuild his theater on this side of the river he sold off parts of it to several of the actors.  Shakespeare, Kemp, and three or four others put up money.

"But the crowd likes our Will.  They understand what he says and like listening.  He's one of the few who's had no trouble."

"Trouble?"

"They've smashed up some theaters, beaten up a few playwrights... actors, too.  But not our Will."

Suddenly from behind me a harsh voice: "There he is!  Take him!"

Turning swiftly, I saw Rupert Genester.  A half-dozen hardfaced rogues were pushing up from behind him.