‘You’ll send the report to the man Greenslade?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Jeremy put his freckled hand on Peregrine’s manuscript.

‘What about opening at The Dolphin this time next year with The Glove, a new play by Peregrine Jay?’

‘Gatcha!’

‘Well – why not? For the hell of it,’ Jeremy said, ‘let’s do a shadow casting. Come on.’

‘I have.’

‘Give us a look.’

Peregrine produced a battered sheet of paper, covered in his irregular handwriting.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I know what would be said. That it’s been done before. Clemence Dane for one. And more than that: it’d be a standing target for wonderful cracks at synthetic Bardery. The very sight of the cast. Ann Hathaway and all that lot. You know? It’d be held to stink. Sunk before it started.’

‘I for one don’t find any derry-down tatt in the dialogue.’

‘Yes: but to cast “Shakespeare”. What gall!’

‘He did that sort of thing. You might as well say: “Oo-er! To cast Henry VIII!” Come on: who would you cast for Shakespeare?’

‘It sticks out a mile, doesn’t it?’

‘Elizabethan Angry, really, isn’t he? Lonely. Chancy. Tricky. Bright as the sun. A Pegasus in the Hathaway stable? Enormously over-sexed and looking like the Grafton portrait. In which I entirely believe.’

‘And I. All right. Who looks and plays like that?’

‘Oh God!’ Jeremy said, reading the casting list.

‘Yes,’ Peregrine rejoined. ‘What I said. It sticks out a mile.’

‘Marcus Knight, my God.’

‘Of course. He is the Grafton portrait and as for fire! Think of his Hotspur. And Harry Five. And the Mercutio. And, by heaven, his Hamlet. Remember the Peer Gynt?’

‘What’s his age?’

‘Whatever it is he doesn’t show it. He can look like a stripling.’

‘He’d cost the earth.’

‘This is only mock-up, anyway.’

‘Has he ever been known to get through a production without creating a procession of dirty big rows?’

‘Never.’

‘Custombuilt to wreck the morale of any given company?’

‘That’s Marco.’

‘Remember the occasion when he broke off and told latecomers after the interval to sit down or get the hell out of it?’

‘Vividly.’

‘And when the rest of the cast threw in their parts as one man?’

‘I directed the fiasco.’

‘He’s said to be more than usually explosive just now on account of no knighthood last batch.’

‘He is, I understand, apoplectic, under that heading.’

‘Well,’ said Jeremy, ‘it’s your play. I see you’ve settled for rolling the lovely boy and the seduced fair friend and “Mr W. H.” all up in one character.’

‘So I have.’

‘How you dared!’ Jeremy muttered.

‘There have been madder notions over the centuries.’

‘True enough. It adds up to a damn’ good part. How do you see him?’

‘Very blond. Very male. Very impertinent.’

‘W. Hartly Grove?’

‘Might be. Type casting.’

‘Isn’t he held to be a bad citizen?’

‘Bit of a nuisance.’