“Go to, Jew!” they said at me. “Avaunt! Sneck up!” Hang yourself Jew they said to me when I asked for my Will's buskins for a memory of him. I almost felt like doing.
So, not such a much to just be looking at Will Kempe wasn't. And since I'm honest, not at all a perfect person he wasn't also. Not like a certain W.S. who he died people such as even Ben Jonson and also others wrote what a perfect somebody he was—and even himself, Master William, he wrote the lines to say for Berowne in Love's Labours about himself, such a merry wit he was and all, such kvelling braggart stuff—but since I'm honest Pincus Perlmutter I'll tell from Will Kempe's failings also and not just his talent!
Saying to be honest, faults, flaws Will Kempe had two main. From wenching. From drinking. I'll tell honest. First wenching, since I think it didn't kill him, a pox from it, even if he worried. “Love spots, Pinky, no mistake on it, verily, love spots!” he said to me, looking his punim in a glass.
“Will,” I always told him, “it's only a serpigo or maybe the king's evil scrofula, get a salve for balm, you'll clear up like new milk!” Still it could be possible, such a hot in the blood wencher he was.
Sweet mouth lecherous the English say it, which Will Kempe was. By nature his humor in his blood it was—he didn't need to eat no sweet potatoes to make him hot, nor like old ladies who eat ginger for the same. His nature. Heavy sweats I seen on him from rallying a jade, moist and ticklish the palms of his hands always! Honest to tell, filthy dalliance and all indecencies he loved. Ladies' plackets he grabbed for. Wherever, who, it shouldn't matter to my Will Kempe. Nor not also when either.
The middle of a play at the Globe, I seen him plenty times if once look out from the upper-story windows looking for the kurveh whores working the penny-price groundlings—down he went with a shilling, probably borrowed from our common purse I kept for safekeeping, hot in his ticklish moist fist, to barter for fleisch, take them back to the tiring house where playactors dressed for his filthy dalliance indecencies even while on the stage there's theatricals happening! Kurveh selling themselves to groundlings, girls selling apples and oranges, some country wife it could be come to the theater from market day—all the same to Will Kempe!
“Will!” I kvetched at him, “where you been, bube, you got to strap on your bells, it's time for doing the jig here!”
“Sweet Pinky,” he told me once—he's wiping his lips with one hand like a man just ate toast spread with marrow, patting his codpiece like a townsman after a feast from half a roast goose and beer pats his belly, “Oh my sweet Pinky,” he says, “think you wherefore I danced one merry dance I'll not have warm blood enough left to dance another not near so jolly?” From a gleek pun he answered me.
The worst was Southwark stews, the sort like Kit Marlowe starb in from a rapier in his eye, the hold-door trade where panders call out to you come inside, something to show and delight they got—low places where a pox comes free with the price!
“Where you been two days almost, Will?” I kvetched when he came back from being gone on a carouse I could easy guess where and what.
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