So we walked in our link taper's burning light to London Bridge, where it was always some heads stuck up for people did treason or was Catholics or spies they said like Dr. Lopez the Sephardic Jew from Spain, but we didn't see in the dark. We walked in the middle from the streets because you could get a splash from a chamber pot English called jordan, householders and maidservants would try to pour jordan dreck on your head if you made a disturbance of noise in the street nights, and also if you made a disturbance could happen a beadle came to clap you in stocks maybe unless you gave him a big tip from your purse.
We only stopped the once before London Bridge, where Will Kempe said, “An' I nose Rose Alley nigh, an' will join my water with the torrents afore me!” Which he meant we stopped so he could make his piss water, a place in the streets like lots in the city where people did this so it stank from piss always, they called such a place a Rose Alley from the stink. Which my Will did, and also one from the gallants treating us I think I remember from, and they all made coarse gleek puns from rain and thunder and floods and rivers which I didn't listen so don't remember from. Plucking a rose English called this I remember, to do like this, like a dog in the street if it wasn't a common jakes close by to go to. Another gleek, also coarse.
And then we got to London Bridge, and walked through the big Nonesuch House on the bridge you walked through to the Southwark side where was all the stews and bawdy houses from London then.
Natural, because it was late full dark night now, all the shops on London Bridge was shut and locked up against thieves would break in a house if it was monies or plate they thought there to steal, all the city was quiet where we walked, because it wouldn't be people on the streets late except some watch and maybe beadles and possible some whoreson rogues brigands looking to waylay revelers for their purse and weapons and even attire and shoes they stole if they could, but we didn't meet any this once on a carouse with my Will and the several Essex men carpet knight gallants all talking merry and bawdy indecent. Such as one said to Will he should wait until after he did dalliance shtupping with a wench to make his piss water, because English believed to make a hard piss after doing shtup could get rid of a pox before it started inside you if the wench was poxed, the same as letting blood with leeches or a barber's knife let out bad humors.
So, shut up locked was households in the city, also inns and taverns, and on London Bridge the same, but not Southwark. In Southwark, Liberty of the Clink it was also called, from the big prison there, was public houses open with lights from candle lanterns and tapers and fireplaces shining out in the streets, because here came revelers all to make carouses all night, and the streets from Southwark noisy with boisterous revelers, shouting and wenches shrieking and laughing, and in the streets revelers, some gallants, mostly Hob and Dick mechanics and apprentice boys fap cup-shot, and some looked like rogues to me.
Here was inns and tippling houses which was really brothels, this you could see from the signs, a tobacco pipe was one, and the sign from the smock was another, and also you could tell from the whitewash, which was another sign from a brothel so you could know. I said to Will Kempe, “Will, we should go back, here's revelers are possible also knaves and rogues, cut-purses and brigands as bad as Abraham Men in the country!”
To which he said, “An' are we not knaves as arrant as any we'll meet here, Pinky? And mete it is, and not to fear, for wot ye not madcap Will Kempe's as renowned here for his merriment and saucy acts as 'pon any theater's stage or market fair? Nay, Pinky sweet, in sooth I'll show you a gaggle of wags and their wenches will welcome us like brothers, an' all as uncaring for the morrow as if we're fated to live forever! Now show me some likeness of a smile on your sour visage, Pinky, for this life's but a gleek, a short one I trow, but not the less merry for that!” Which I didn't, show him a smile, and we walked lighted by our boy's link in the Southwark streets crowded with revelers, noisy with disturbance, to a stew my Will and his Essex men gallants treating us knew from carouses before.
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