Whatever the actor playing Lord Brimstone said was like expectorating into the River Amazon. For the true S CENE of these events was Neville's Court * on a spring evening, and the true Dramatis Personae a roll that would've consumed many yards of paper and drams of ink to set it out fully. The script was an unpublished masterwork of courtly and collegiate intrigue, comprising hundreds of more or less clever lines being delivered – mostly sotto voce :at the same instant, producing a contrapuntal effect quite intricate but entirely too much for young Daniel Waterhouse to grasp. He had been wondering why persons such as these bothered to go to plays at all, when every day at Whitehall provided more spectacle – now he sensed that they did so because the stories in the theatre were simple, and arrived at fixed conclusions after an hour or two.