out of his way. Better to be bold, he thought.

Stews flourished beyond the reach of the London city government, too. A skinny, dirty bare-breasted woman leaned out a window and called to de Vega: "How about it, handsome?"

What went through his mind was, God grant I never grow so desperate. He swept off his hat, bowed, and kept walking. "Cheap bugger!" she shouted after him. "Marican! " Did she know him for a Spaniard, or was that just another insult, one new here since the coming of the Armada? He never found out.

Buildings ended. Fields, orchards, and garden plots began. Plenty of people were making their way toward the Theatre. Lope tremendously admired it and the other theatres on the outskirts of London. No such places in which to put on plays existed in Spain. There, actors performed in a square in front of a tavern, with the audience looking down from the buildings on the other three sides of that square. Real playhouses. Did the Englishmen know how lucky they were? He doubted it. From all he'd seen, they seldom did.

Though brightened with paint, the Theatre's timbers were themselves old and faded; the three-story polygonal building had been standing for more than twenty years. Gay banners on the roof helped draw a crowd. So did a big, colorful signboard above the entrance, advertising the day's show:

IF YOU LIKE IT, A NEW COMEDY BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Dissolute-looking men were making pennies for drink by going-staggering-through the streets bawling out the name of the play.

Lope paid his penny at the door. "Groundling!" called the man who took the coin. Another man directed de Vega to the standing room around the brightly painted stage, where he jostled his way forward. Had he paid tuppence or threepence, he could have had a seat in one of the galleries looking down on the action. Here among the poorer folk, though, he would likely find more of interest.