yarrr, ye scurvy boy-king, halt ye whinin'

After supper we climbed into his car. He didn't ask what I wanted to see, he just drove me to the corner where the Globe Theater stood. Nothing is there now, the lot is empty. I made him stop the car and I got out and stood on that empty lot and I thought the top of my head would come off.

He got out of the car then, and we prowled the dark alleys nearby - Shakespeare's alleys, still there. And Dickens' alleys: he pointed to an Artful Dodger peering furtively out the window of an ancient pile of stone.

He took me to a pub called The George, and as he opened the door for me he said in that light, neutral voice:

"Shakespeare used to come here."

I mean I went through a door Shakespeare once went through, and into a pub he knew. We sat at a table against the back wall and I leaned my head back, against a wall Shakespeare's head once touched, and it was indescribable.

The pub was crowded. People were standing at the bar and all the tables were full. I was suddenly irritated at all those obtuse citizens eating and drinking without any apparent sense of where they were, and I said snappishly:

"I could imagine Shakespeare walking in now, if it weren't for the people."

And the minute I said it I knew I was wrong. He said it before I could:

"Oh no. The people are just the same."

And of course they were. Look again, and there was a blond, bearded Justice Shallow talking to the bartender. Further along the bar, Bottom the Weaver was telling his ponderous troubles to a sharp-faced Bardolph. And at a table right next to us, in a flowered dress and pot-bellied white hat, Mistress Quickly was laughing fit to kill.

from 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff