Old tricks, New Year

 

Greetings, fair groundlings! Will hopes that thou hast a wondrous fair New Year.

Will passed the eve with Richard Burbage, that sour toad Ben Jonson, and Kit Marlowe, who did not drink sack after sack with us in celebration this night but poured as he were Bacchus. 'Twas passing strange, methought, until we stumbled us out of the Mermaid as Phoebus raced his chariot from the East.

For there stood Kit, with a plate of eels steeped in cheap port for us, what ye moderns might call a "hair o' the dog." Poor Burbage took sick at once and disembowléd him in the nearest barrel. Ben turned away and heaved mightily. "Similia similibus curantur!" Kit bellowed, meaning "Like cures like." I do but think that cur Marlowe planned this outcome and worse, called us eels.

:-/

A merrie crewe

Greetings, fair groundlings! Will doth wish he couldst write to tell you he hath been faithful scribe to Thaila or her sister Melpomeme of late, but as thou knowest me so well, 'tis best Will be but honest. And if Will be not honest, then he lies with unwelcome bedfellows indeed. Here is a portrait of my brothers in sack, my companions in arms of tankards at the Mermaid with your Will. We are but a merrie crewe, too merrie, it seems, when I should take up my quill.