So I waked all, and all also suffered Blue Eye ache and pains, and all was rude, insulting me with flouts against me for waking them, heathen paynim Jew they called me, and cruel as any Turk they said I was for waking them.

        But Tom Tapster woke and got his notched stick, and our gallants paid the reckoning, lots monies it was for meats and drink and kurveh they dallied with, but not with soft words they didn't pay, also cursing him for a whoreson bawd and such, and we went from Southwark back across London Bridge home, our gallants to Essex House by the river. Get ye! Tom Tapster said, else he would summon a beadle and see us clapped in stocks. So we went.

        Me and Will to our hired lodging by the Globe, and our gallants to their Essex House where they lived while Earl Essex was away to Ireland to make a war. And we was all surly and sore with Blue Eye on this walk, our link boy gone before us when dawn came I think, I never seen him again, so maybe he fell foul from rogues, I don't know. And Will and our gallants cursed at the beggars out now on the streets, called them cur dogs, and for dismissed soldiers and masterless men and whore wenches the gallants walking with hands on their jeweled sword hilts so nobody didn't accost us. And our gallants said laments from so much monies they spent, the reckoning, and said me and Will was but kept knaves to spend so much our reckoning, but Will said them jesting sallies back, like when was they ever before entertained so merry in their mean, fawning lives, and such he jested.

        Which, when we parted, they went to Essex House by the riverbank, I said to Will, “Such a waste, this carouse, Will Kempe!”

        To which he said, “An' joy you not, Pinky, in thinking 'pon fat Mistress Jane her charms you 'joyed, for all the waste?”

        Which I said, “I seen all her, but didn't shtup, Will, I was too fap and spewed. And I seen from her scars the whipping when she got carted, I was too shamed to do, now still I'm shamed when I think from this!”

        Which he only laughed and said, “An' she's a worser knave than we, for she did take her price from Tom Tapster, this I saw, so if she's whipped, so is it meet should we all be, for we're but bawds and lewdsters all!” And laughed lots and did gleeks from Mutton Jane took her money our gallants paid when she didn't even shtup me, all the way home to our hired lodging he did.

        And now, telling this, I think still this once a carouse to Southwark I went with Will Kempe was a waste and still a shame, for what we did and what I didn't but almost, and for Mutton Jane her scars, even if I'm glad I didn't do with her, which was to risk a pox, the wen by her lip she had could of been but maybe wasn't a chancre. Still, waste and shame, and still when I tell and remember from this, I weep from my eyes some tears.

        And I remember the play Much Ado About Nothing was played again at three o'clock when they put out flags and blowed the trumpet tuckets to say was the play today, the day after this carouse. I worried my Will had too bad the Blue Eye aches to play his Dogberry, which he did so good, but I washed him clean and trimmed his hairs and bart, and bathed his head with vinegar, which is almost so good as a amethyst amulet, and I helped him say his words before he did on the Globe stage that day. So we didn't have to pay the ten shillings fine for not playing or being slow of study, and no monies came from out our common purse for this carouse, because a treat the reckoning paid by our carpet knight gallants.

        Still, mostly waste. And shame.

        But also I remember from Will Kempe playing this Dogberry in the play Much Ado About Nothing, how good he did, and his jig after the play was done playing, for the groundlings he did, and still years gone now I get made merry from remembering this, so lacheln laugh also with my tears weeping.

An earlier version of this chapter was published in Notre Dame Review.