Certain it was, at the moment when the carbuncular smell of London began to pierce the nostrils, that I was overtaken on the road by three merchants, who were jolly enough companions for the nonce, and one of whom, Mr. Trevelyan by name, was honoured above the rest for his breadth of knowledge (as well as by the comfortableness of his breadth of seat), for he had been in Portogal, and down the Afric' coast in a slaver as far as the Great Bight, which he proclaimed as the end of the earth whatever the mapmen might soon declare. When they enquired as to my destination, it transpired that they too had hopes of passing the night at the same north tavern, before breasting the waves of the City, and so it unfolded. As we entered the tavern area in the early dusklight -- a storied inn encircling a common central space attained through an entranceway -- by the greatest of chances, it also happened that a company of players (not my brother's, but some in deadly competition thereunto) were engaged in a late afternoon's undertaking of "Dido and Aeneas", which play appeared to be a stichwork of various poetic and dramatic enterprises by an unknown hand of dubious quality. Notwithstanding this, we entered into the scene upon almost our cue (had we been but Carthaginian spies), and witnessed the lighting of the torches, the hanging down from every opening and hatch of patron and hostellier, and general awe tempered with occasional tumult from a quarrel here, a fretting horse there, and the burble of controversy over which player was the most striking or the most ripe for hanging. Such was the Rose in the early days.

It was during the interminable passing of Dido, who -- as one of our boon companion merchants remarked -- was so long about it that one might at any moment expect her descendant Hannibal upon an elephant to snuff out the threatening pyre with its vast feet or a stream from its proboscis -- that we rose to leave, and as I accosted the servant with a miscalculated bill to our cost, Mr. Trevelyan, eying me close, turned my way as we passed back towards our chambers, and said: "Mr. Shakespeare, from your person and your gaze, I am bound to proclaim that you are in search of the widest of horizons" -- to which I nodded assent -- "and there is no such horizon as the sea, which may indeed be considered all horizon." I again nodded assent. "Mr. Shakespeare, I mean to cast and cask in the Canaries within the month, and were you of a like enterprise, young though you are, I am in search of a lad with a head for figuring." I thanked him for his kind consideration, that I could neither say what I would or would not do until I had spoken with my brother, and then as my way was in those days, with a foolish tongue in my head, I asked him whether he had not sons in fact or in mind, since he was of a robust age, to swell out his corporation. His face darkened, and he then said that he had had a son, dead in the Azores from a knife, and that to say truth he was seeking more than good Canary wine on this voyage. And then he said no more for the night. We travelled together at dawning into the city, and parted at the Aldgate, the three of them to the waterside, and I eagerly to Cheapside.