Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Board and Lodging in the Palace. 43 if they were to derive full advantage from the " allowance of dyett," as it was called, provided for them at the King's expense. Shakespeare, we may well suppose, would have preferred going home, after the King's officers had been discharged for the day, the Constable having retired to his private rooms with his own followers. We may picture him, if at this time residing in Southwark, walking at dusk, in his red doublet, hose and cloak, across the garden between the Palace and the river, past the golden-winged Pegasus, which stood in the midst of it on a " Parnassus Mount," to "Somerset House Stairs." There he would hail a waterman to row him in a skiff across the river, and down it a little way to " Bankside," where he would land at " Paris Garden Stairs," the nearest to the " Globe " and his own house in " the liberty of the Clink." Perhaps, Phillips, who was also then living in the same neighbourhood—though he soon after bought the house at Mortlake in which he died—would have gone with him. If, on the other hand, Shakespeare was then staying, as Dr. Wallace's recent discoveries would seem to show, in the house of Christopher Mountjoy, the fashionable wig and head-dress maker, at the corner of Silver Street and Muggle Street, in the City, he would have passed across the principal quadrangle of the palace, out through the great gateway into the Strand, and thence walked or ridden home to his lodgings, perhaps in company with Hemynges, who lived atAldermanbury, and Burbage, who lived at Shoreditch— both close by. In the morning the whole Company would doubtless have fore-gathered again in the Presence Chamber of Somerset House for the ceremonial reception of the Constable, when he came forth from the Withdrawing Room, and for the fo... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.