L I B HA FLY OF THE U N I VLRS ITY Of ILLINOIS GIFT OF ERNEST INGOLD CLASS OF 1909 822 J73 1879 & 0 I v. ■ THE WORKS OF BEN JONSON. G-erartL Honthcrst. ■ S. Hdlrinscnv. JOI SOM. LODROH GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SODS, BROADWAY. LUDGATE HILL. THE IttJj a Mmwfa. ii II ILL I A S I ? FO I O I J O "M. ©EOMGE MUT1LiEB©E AJTO BMOAjyWAY* IL.HJBCJAT'E HIM,, - THE WORKS OF BEN JONSON. WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR, BY WILLIAM GIFFORD. 4 A NEW EDITION. LONDON: GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS, BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL. NEW YORK : 416, BROOME STREET. 1879 LONDON: BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. fAX \2n<\ TO ROBERT SOUTHEY, ESQ. LL.D POET LAUREATE, ETC. ^Tijts IStittton OF THE WORKS OE BEN JONSON, 13 INSCRIBED BY November, 1838. THE PUBLISHER. • « CONTENTS - » - PAGE BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR ..9 ANCIENT COMMENDATORY VERSES ON BEN JONSON.73 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR .1 EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR .29 CYNTHIA’S REVELS ; OR, THE FOUNTAIN OF SELF-LOVE ... 69 THE POETASTER; OR, HIS ARRAIGNMENT .105 SEJANUS HIS FALL... . . 137 VOLPONE; OR, THE FOX. 173 EPICCENE; OR, THE SILENT WOMAN.207 THE ALCHEMIST.238 CATILINE HIS CONSPIRACY.272 BARTHOLOMEW FAIR.305 THE DEVIL IS AN ASS.343 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. 375 THE NEW INN; OR, THE LIGHT HEART .406 THE MAGNETIC LADY; OR, HUMOURS RECONCILED .437 A TALE OF A TUB.464 THE SAD SHEPHERD; OR, A TALE OF ROBIN HOOD .490 THE FALL OF MORTIMER .502 THE CASE IS ALTERED.504 ENTERTAINMENTS— PART OF KING JAMES’S ENTERTAINMENT, IN PASSING TO HIS CORONATION . . 527 A PANEGYRE ON THE HAPPY ENTRANCE OF JAMES, OCR SOVEREIGN, TO HIS FIRST HIGH SESSION OF PARLIAMENT IN THIS HIS KINGDOM .... 535 THE SATYR.536 THE PENATES.53^ THE ENTERTAINMENT OF THE TWO KINGS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND DENMARK, AT THEOBALDS.541 AN ENTERTAINMENT OF KING JAMES AND QFEEN ANNE, AT THEOBALDS, WHEN THE HOUSE WAS DELIVERED UP, WITH THE POSSESSION, TO THE QUEEN, BY THE EARL OF SALISBURY. 542 Vlll CONTENTS MASQUES— page THE QUEEN’S MASQUES.-THE MASQUE OF BLACKNESS.544 THE MASQUE OF BEAUTY.547 HYMEN^EI J OR, THE SOLEMNITIES OF MASQUE AND BARRIERS AT A MARRIAGE 552 THE HUE AND CRY AFTER CUPID.562 THE MASQUE OF QUEENS.566 THE SPEECHES AT PRINCE HENRY’S BARRIERS 577 OBERON, THE FAIRY PRINCE.581 LOVE FREED FROM IGNORANCE AND FOLLY. 585 LOVE RESTORED . . . . 588 A CHALLENGE AT TILT .591 THE IRISH MASQUE .593 MERCURY VINDICATED FROM THE ALCHEMISTS.595 THE GOLDEN AGE RESTORED.598 THE MASQUE OF CHRISTMAS.600 THE MASQUE OF LETIIE .603 THE VISION OF DELIGHT.605 PLEASURE RECONCILED TO VIRTUE.607 FOR THE HONOUR OF WALES.' . 610 NEWS FROM THE NEW WORLD DISCOVERED IN THE MOON.614 A MASQUE OF THE METAMORPHOSED GIPSIES.618 THE MASQUE OF AUGURS, WITH THE SEVERAL ANTIMASQUES.630 TIME VINDICATED TO HIMSELF AND TO HIS HONOURS ... ... 635 neptune’s triumph for the return of albion.639 PAN’s ANNIVERSARY ; OR, THE SHEPHERD’S HOLIDAY.643 THE MASQUE OF OWLS.646 THE FORTUNATE ISLES, AND THEIR UNION 648 LOVE’S TRIUMPH THROUGH CALLIPOLIS.653 CHLORIDIA .655 AN EXPOSTULATION WITH INIGO JONES 658 love’s WELCOME; THE king’s ENTERTAINMENT AT WELBECK, IN NOTTINGHAM¬ SHIRE .660 love’s WELCOME; THE KING AND queen’s ENTERTAINMENT AT BOLSOVER . 663 EPIGRAMS.665 THE FOREST.680 UNDERWOODS.687 LEGES CONVIVALES.726 TRANSLATIONS FROM THE LATIN POETS.728 TIMBER; OR DISCOVERIES MADE UPON MEN AND MATTER . . .741 THE ENGLISH GRAMMAR.766 JONSONUS VIRBIUS ; OR, THE MEMORY OF BEN JONSON .... 791 GLOSSARY . . .... 807 INDEX •.815 MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON BY WILLIAM GIFFORD. FpO write tlie Life of Jonson as it has been usually written, would be neither a very long nor a very difficult task ; since I should have only to transcribe from former biographers the vague accounts which each, in succession, has taken from his predecessor ; and to season the whole with the captious and splenetic insinuations of the critics, and commentators on our dramatic poetry. A due respect for the public seemed to require something more. It was fully time to examine into the authenticity of the charges incessantly urged against this eminent man ; and this has been, at least, attempted. The result has not accorded with the general persuasion concerning him. The reader, therefore, who has the courage to follow me through these pages, must be prepared to see many of his prejudices over¬ thrown, to hear that he has been imposed upon by the grossest fabrications, and, (however mortifying the discovery may prove,) that many of those who have practised on his integrity and surprised his judgment, are weak at once and worthless, with few pretensions to talents and none to honesty. Benjamin, or (as the name is usually abbreviated by himself) Ben Jonson*, was born in the early part of the year 1574+. His grandfather was a man of some family and fortune, * Jonson.] The attacks on our author begin at a pretty early period. He knew his own name, it seems, and persisted in writing it correctly, though “ some of his best friends ” misspelt it! This is produced, in the “ Biographia Brilannica,” as “ an instance of that affectation which so strongly marks the poet’s character.” But this perse¬ verance in the right was a family failing, for his mother (as it appears), wrote it in the same manner. His “ singu¬ larity” in this respect, (these writers think,) “ would have been discovered, had he been more communicative—but it is observable, that though his descent was very far from being a discredit to him, yet we never find him once men¬ tioning his family upon any occasion.” From critics so disposed, Jonson must have had unusual good fortune to escape with justice. The fact, however, is that he is once found mentioning his family. He talked of it to Drum¬ mond, and had it pleased that worthy gentleman to be less sparing of his malice, and somewhat more liberal of his information, we might have obtained enough on this head, to satisfy the most ardent curiosity. t The year 1574.] The writers of the Bio Brit, are somewhat embarrassed here, by a line in the Poem left in Scotland, in which Jonson says that he had then “ Told seven and forty years.” Now, this, say they, as the poet was there in 1619, fixes his birth to the year 1572, and makes him two years older than is commonly supposed. But these critics should have looked into Drummond, instead of reasoning upon a fact which is not to be found there. In Drummond the line stands, “ Told six and forty years and the date subjoined is January 1619-20. Jonson was then in his forty-sixth year : in short, there seems no plea for questioning the received opinion. The second folio is of various dates, and of little authority. That Jonson was born on the eleventh of June, which is also affirmed by those writers, is taken on the credit of another blunder in this volume, where, in the verses on Sir Kenelm Digby, “ my birthday,” is printed for “ his birthday, ’ &c. In the l2tno. edit., 1640, both the lines stand as here given. [The poem in question was certainly composed in January 3S I 2 MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. originally settled at Annandale, in Scotland, from which place he removed to Carlisle, and was subsequently taken into the service of Henry VIII. His father, who was probably about the court, suffered a long imprisonment under Queen Mary, and was finally deprived of his estate* *. If religion was the cause, as is universally supposed, persecution only served to increase his zeal; for he entered, some time afterwards, into holy orders, and became, as Antony Wood informs us, “ a grave minister of the gospel.” Jonson was a posthumous child, and “made his first entry (the Oxford Antiquary says,) on the stage of this vain world, about a month after his father’s death, within the city of West¬ minster.” Fuller observes, that though he could not, with all his inquiry, find him in his cradle, he could fetch him from his long coats. It would seem from this, that the residence of his father was unknown. Mr. Malone supposes, and on very good grounds+, that his mother married again in somewhat less than two years after the death of her first husband, and it was at this period, perhaps, that Fuller’s researches found him, “ a little child, in Hartshorn-Lane, near Charing Cross.” His father-in-law was a master-bricklayer by profession ; and there is no cause for believing that he was either unable or unwilling to bestow on his new charge such a portion of education as then commonly fell to the children of respectable craftsmen ; and Jonson was accordingly sent, when of a proper age, to a private school in the church of St. Martin in the Fields. From this school it was natural to suppose that he would be taken to follow the occupation of his step-father ; but this was not the case. Respect for the memory of Mr. Jonson, or what is equally probable, a remarkable aptitude in the child for learning, raised him up a friend, who sent him, at his own expense, to Westminster school. Camden, a name dear to literature, was then the second master of this celebrated establishment; young Jonson naturally fell under his care, and he was not slow in discovering, nor negligent in cultivating, the extraordinary talents of his pupil. No record enables us to state how long he continued with this great man. Mr. Malone supposes that he was taken from him, when he had reached his thirteenth year ; but “ lord Winton,” (G. Morley, bishop of Winchester, who, as Izaac Walton tells us, knew Ben Jonson very well,) “says he was in the sixth, i.e. the uppermost form in the school^,” when he was removed ; and he could scarcely have attained this situation, as schools were then constituted, at thirteen. 1619, not in January 1619-21: it therefore fixes Jonson’s birth in 1573. See Mr. D. Laing’s remark on Notes of B. Jonson’s Conversations with IV. Drummond, &c. p. 39, printed for the Shakespeare Society. What Jonson told Drummond concerning his family is as folloAvs:—“ His Grandfather came from Carlisle, and, he thought, from Anandale to it: he served King Henry 8, and was a gentleman. His Father losed all his estate under Queen Marie, having been cast in prisson and forfaitted ; at last turn’d Minister; so he was a minister's son.”— Notes, &c., p. 18. If Jonson’s grandfather came from Annandale, he must have written his name Johnstone. —A. Dyce.] * This is our author’s own account; it is therefore worse than folly to repeat from hook to book, after Aubrey, that “ Ben Jonson was a Warwickshire man.” Mr. Malone says, that “ a collection of poems by Ben Jonson, jun. (the son of our author) was published in 1672, with some lines addressed to all the ancient family of the Lucys, in which the writer describes himself as a ‘little stream from their clear spring ;’ a fact (continues he) which adds support to Dr. Bathurst’s account ” (the impossible story just quoted from Aubrey) “ of his father’s birth-place.”— Shak., vol. ii. p. 311'. This is a strange passage. Young Jonson died before his father, in 1635, and the collection of which Mr. Malone speaks, contains several pieces written after the Restoration. The very first poem in the book is addressed by the author to John, Earl of Rutland, and his son, Lord Roos, who was not born till both young Jonson and his father were dead ! Had Mr. Malone even looked at the title-page of this little volume, he must have seen that the name of Ben Jonson, jun. was a mere catch-word ; for the poems are there expressly said to he “composed by W. S. gent.” f On very good grounds.'] “ I found, in the Register of St. Martin’s, that a Mrs. Margaret Jonson was married in November 1575, to Mr. Thomas Fowler.”— Malone. Shak., vol. i. p. 622. There cannot, I think, be a reasonable doubt on the person here named ; unquestionably she was the poet’s mother. $ Letters by Eminent Persons, &c. 1813. vol. iii. p. 416. There is yet a difficulty. Grant was head master from 1572 to 1593, so that if Jonson was in the sixth form, and if the business of the school was conducted then as it is at pre¬ sent (which, however, does not appear,) he must have been under him ; yet of Grant he says nothing. It is probable that Camden, who had a great affection for our author, continued to assist his studies. 1 The edition of Shakspeare referred to here, and elsewhere, is uniformly that in fifteen vols. 8vo., published in MDCCXCIII. MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. 3 Jonson, wlio had a warm and affectionate heart, and ever retained an extraordinary degree of respect for his old master, thus addresses him in his Epigrams : “ Camden, most reverend head, to whom I owe All that I am in arts, and all I know-'’ and in the dedication of Every Man in his Humour , he tells his “most learned and honoured friend,” that he “is not one of those who can suffer the benefit conferred upon his youth to perish with his age and he adds that, in accepting the comedy, he will find no occasion to repent of having been his instructor. All this appears to argue greater maturity, and deeper studies than are usually allowed ; and I should therefore incline to refer the period of his leaving Westminster to his sixteenth year. From school Jonson seems to have gone, at once, to the University. The person who had hitherto befriended him, and whose name is unfortunately lost, gave a farther proof of kind¬ ness, on this occasion, and, if we may trust Aubrey, procured him an exhibition at Cambridge, where, according to Fuller, “ he was statutably admitted into St. John’s College * * * § No note of his matriculation is to be found. By some accident there is an omission of names in the University Register, from June 1589, (when Jonson was in his sixteenth year), to June 1802 ; this may serve to corroborate the opinion given above, that the period fixed upon by Mr. Malone for our author’s removal to the University is somewhat too early. The exhibition, whatever might be its value, was found inadequate to his support ; and, as his parents were evidently unable to assist him, Jonson was compelled to relinquish his situa¬ tion at Cambridge, and return to the house of his father+. How long he continued at college cannot be known. Fuller says “a few weeks ;” it was more probably many months : he had unquestionably a longer connection with Cambridge than is usually supposed ; and he speaks of his obligations to the members of that University in terms which cannot be justified by a slight acquaintance +. On returning to his parents, he was immediately taken into the business of his father-in-law. These good people have not been kindly treated. Wood terms the mother a silly woman ; an 1 the father is perpetually reflected on for calling his son home, to work at his own profes¬ sion. The mother, however, was not “silly ; ” on the contrary, she was a high-spirited woman, fully sensible of the rank of her first husband, in life, and of the extraordinary merits of her son ; but she was not, apparently, in circumstances to maintain him without labour; and as his father-in-law had readily acquiesced, for many years, in a mode of his education, which must have occasioned some expense, there seems little cause for the ill humour with which the mention of their names is sure to be accompanied. Jonson, however, who, both from birth and education, had probably been encouraged to look to the church for an establishment, was exceedingly mortified at this new destination. That he worked with a trowel in one hand, and a Horace or a Homer in the other ; that he was admired, pitied, and relieved by Sutton, as Chetwood says, or by Camden, as others say §, and * Aubrey says “ Trinity College and indeed if Jonson had been on the foundation at Westminster, and went, regularly, to Cambridge, this must have been the College : but his name does not appear among the candidates. t In how many circumstances may not a resemblance be traced between Jonson and his great namesake! [ t Jonson told Drummond that “ he was Master of Arts in both the Universities, by their favour, not his studie.” Notes of B. Jonson's Conversations, &c., p. 19 : and Mr. D. Laing, in his note on the passage, observes that “ there is no evidence that he had ever the benefit of an academical education.” The probability, I think, is, that Jonson spent a short time at Cambridge as an undergraduate.—A. Dyce.] § Fuller tells us that “some gentlemen, pitying that his parts should be buried under the rubbish of so mean a calling, did by their bounty manumise him freely to follow his own ingenious inclinations.”— Worthies of England, vol. ii. p.112. This, however, is no better founded than the rest. Another story is told by Wood, (probably, on Aubrey’s authority) that Jonson was taken from his father’s business to accompany young Raleigh in his travels. Young Raleigh was at this time unborn—at any rate, he was “ mewling and puking in his nurse’s arms this, however, signifies nothing—the story is too good to be lost, as it tends to degrade Jonson, and it is therefore served up in every account of his life. “ Mr. Camden recommended him to Sir W. Raleigh, who intrusted him with the education of his eldest son, a gay spark, who could not brook Ben’s rigorous treatment; but perceiving one foible in his disposi¬ tion, made use of that to throw off the yoke of his government, and that was an unlucky habit Ben had contracted, through his love of jovial company, of being overtaken with liquor, which Sir Walter did of all vices most abomi¬ nate.”—And yet Sir Walter, who undoubtedly knew Jonson as well as his son, trusted this hubitual drunkard with b 2 4 MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. sent back to his studies, are figments pleasing enough to merit to he believed ; hut, unfortu¬ nately, they have no foundation in truth. Neither friend nor admirer followed him to his humble employment ; and he certainly experienced, at this time, no tokens of kindness.—His own account is, “that he could not endure the occupation of a bricklayer and, as his aver¬ sion increased, he made one desperate effort to escape from it altogether, not by returning to Cambridge, hut by withdrawing to the Continent, and entering, as a volunteer, into the army then employed in Flanders. Such is the simple narrative of Jonson’s life till he arrived at the age of eighteen. It is chiefly extracted from his own conversations, and has the merit of being at once probable and consistent. IIow long our author had continued with his father-in-law, is no where mentioned. It could not be a twelvemonth (though Mr. Malone strangely supposes it to have been five years * ;) but it was yet long enough to furnish a theme for illiberal sarcasm while he lived. “ Let not those blush,” says the worthy Fuller, “ that have, but those that have not, a lawful calling a piece of advice which was wholly lost upon the poet’s contemporaries, who recur perpetually to what Mr. A. Chalmers calls his “ degrading occupation.” Decker and others, who were, at the very moment, pledging their future labours for the magnificent loan of “ five shillings,” or writing “penny books” in spunging-houses, are high in mirth, at the expense of the “brick¬ layer,” and ring the changes on the “hod and trowel,” the “lime and mortar poet,” very success¬ fully, and, apparently, very much to their own satisfaction. Jonson’s stay in the Low Countries did not extend much beyond one campaign : he had, however, an opportunity of signalizing his courage ; having, as he told Drummond, encountered and killed an enemy (whose spoils he carried off), in the sight of both armies. This achieve¬ ment is undoubtedly dwelt upon with too much complacency by the writers of the Bio. Brit. for which they are properly checked by Mr. A. Chalmers, who is not, himself, altogether free from blame. “ One man’s killing and stripping another (he says) is a degree of military prowess of no very extraordinary kind.” Mr. Chalmers does not see that this was not a general action, in which, as he justly observes, such circumstances are sufficiently common ; but a single combat, decided in the presence of both armies. In those days, when great battles were rarely fought, and armies lay for half a campaign in sight of each other, it was not unusual for champions to advance into the midst, and challenge their adversaries. In a bravado of this nature, Jonson fought and conquered ; and though we may question the wisdom his education ! and yet Camden, who never lost sight of him from his youth, recommended him!—“ One day, when Ben had taken a plentiful dose, and was fallen into a profound sleep, young Raleigh got a great basket, and a couple of men, who laid Ben in it, and then with a pole carried him between their shoulders to Sir Walter, telling him their young master had sent home his tutor.”— Oldys’s MS. Notes to Langbaine. This absurd tale, which is merely calculated for the meridian of Mr. Joseph Miller, Mr. Malone quotes at full as an irrefragable proof that “ Jonson was, at some period, tutor to this hopeful youth.” As young Raleigh was not born till 1595, Jonson could not well be tutor to him in 1593, the period usually assigned. In 1603, when the child had barely attained his eighth year. Sir Walter was committed close prisoner to the Tower, where he remained under sentence of death, till March, 1615, a few months before he sailed for Guiana. Of this the story-teller was probably ignorant ; and he therefore talks as familiarly of Raleigh’s home , as if he had been always living at large. The “ shouldering ” of Jonson, in a basket, through the streets of London, the triumphant entrance of the “ porters ” (with a train of boys at their heels) into the Tower, then guarded with the most jealous vigilance, and the facility with which they penetrate into the interior apartments, and lay their precious burden at the feet of the state prisoner—all these, and a hundred other improbabilities, awaken no suspicion in the commen¬ tators, nor, as far as I can find, in the reader! Mr. A. Chalmers (General Biography ) rejects Wood’s account; yet he adds—“ So many of Jonson’s contemporaries have mentioned his connexion with the Raleigh family, that it is probable he was in some shape befriended by them.” Notone of Jonson’s contemporaries has a syllable on the subject 1 In fact, Jonson never much admired the moral character of Sir Walter Raleigh : his talents, indeed, he held in great respect, and he was well able to appreciate them, for he was personally acquainted with Sir Walter, and assisted him in writing his History of the World ; he also wrote some good lines explanatory of the grave frontispiece to that celebrated work. [It is now ascertained that Jonson did act as tutor to Sir Walter’s son, not indeed in 1593 but in 1613, and that young Raleigh, not in England but in France, did treat him nearly in the manner above mentioned. “ Sir W. Raulighe sent him (Jonson) governour with his Son, anno 1613, to France. This youth being knavishly inclyned, among other pastimes.caused him to be drunken, and dead drunk, so that he knew not wher he was, tlierafter laid him on a carr, which he made to be drawen by pioners through the streets, at every corner showing his governour streetched out, and telling them, that was a more lively image of the Crucifix then any they had : at which sport young Raughlie’s mother delyghted much (saying, his father young was so inclyned), though the Father abhorred it.”— Notes of B. Jonson’s Conversations, &e. p. 21. —A. Dyck.j * From 1538 to 1593.— Shak. vol. i. p. 624. MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. 5 of the exploit, we may surely venture, without much violation of candour, to admit its gal¬ lantry. Jonson himself always talked with complacency of his military career. He loved, he says, the profession of arms ; and he boldly affirms, in an appeal to “ the true soldier,” that while he followed it, he “ did not shame it by his actions * * * § . ” Jonson brought little from Flanders, (whence he was probably induced to return by the death of his father,) but the reputation of a brave man, a smattering of Dutch, and an empty purse. Nothing, in fact, could be more hopeless than his situation. In the occupation of a bricklayer, he had evidently attained no skill ; at all events, having already sacrificed so much to his aversion for it, he was not likely to recur to it a second time, and he had no visible means of subsistence. His biographers say, that he now went to Cambridge ; but without money, this was not in his power; and, indeed, the circumstance appears altogether impro¬ bable. His father-in-law might, perhaps, be no more ; but his mother was still alive, and in London, and in her house he appears to have taken up his abode. He was not of a humour, however, to profit, in long inactivity, of her scanty resources, and he therefore adopted the resolution of turning his education to what account he could, and, like most of the poets, his contemporaries, seeking a subsistence from the stage. He was now about nineteen. “ Jonson began his theatrical career,” Mr. Malone says, and he is followed by all who have since written on the subject, “as a strolling player, and after having rambled for some time by a play-waggon in the country, repaired to London, and endeavoured, at the Curtain, to obtain a livelihood among the actors, till, not being able to set a good face upon’t , he could not get a service among the mimics.” Although Mr. Malone gives this, and much more, from the Satiromastix, as if he really believed it, yet nothing is so questionable. What Decker means by “ not setting a good face upon’t,” is easily understood + : Jonson was of a scorbutic habit, and his face might be affected with it at the period of Decker’s writing ; but it had not been always so, and Aubrey expressly mentions that he was in his youth “ of a clear and fair skin : ” nor is it easy to be believed that he could not get a service among the wretched mimics in the skirts of the town. “ I never,” says the Duchess of Newcastle, whom Mr. Malone (upon another occasion indeed,) allows to be a good judge, “ I never heard any man read well but my husband ; and I have heard him say, he never heard any man read well but Ben Jonson ; and yet he hath heard many in his time £.” With the advantages, therefore, of youth, person, voice, and somewhat more of literature than commonly fell to the share of every obscure actor in a strolling company, Jonson could scarcely fail to get a service among the mimics, notwithstand¬ ing the grave authority of captain Tucca§. That our author ever ambled by the side of a waggon, and took mad Jeronymo’s party though Mr. Malone repeats it with full conviction ||, is also very questionable, or rather false altogether. It cannot have failed to strike every one * It is not improbable that these daring feats were encouraged by the English general. Stanley had delivered up a fort, which disgraced, as well as dispirited the army; and Vere, who now commanded, made extraordinary efforts of gallantry to revive the ancient ardour. He stormed Daventer, and seemed to court danger. In 1591-2, large reinforcements were sent to Ostend, then held by an English garrison, and with these, I doubt not Jonson went. t It would be ridiculous to adopt this clumsy piece of wit, and argue from it that Jonson was a bad actor. Capell, who also quotes the passage, says, “ This is meant of Jonson’s ugliness , which is frequently played upon in this satire.”— School of Shakspeare, vol. iii. p. 232. That Jonson was ugly is the dream of Capell; his features were good. Decker adds, that he had “a very lad face for a soldier.” Now he certainly did not play this part amiss. His courage was never doubted :—but the quotation may serve to shew the absurdity of founding positive charges upon such vague expressions. To do the commentators justice, they were ignorant of the existence of this last passage ; for they never examine their way, but boldly and blindly follow one another. $ His house was open to every man of genius and learning for more than half a century,— Letters of the Duchess of Newcastle, fol. 1664, p. 362. § Tucca is the creation of Jonson. He is described as a general railer, a man whose whole conversation is made up of scurrilous exaggerations and impossible falsehoods : yet he is the sole authority for this part of Jonson’s life. The captain says in another place, “ When thou rann’st mad for the death of Horatio, thou borrow’dst a gown of Roscius, the stager, and sent’st it home lowsy;” upon which the editor (Hawkins) wisely remarks—“Ben Jonson played the part of Jeronymo, as appears from this passage.” || “ The first observation which I shall make on Aubrey’s account is, that the latter part of it, which informs ua that Ben Jonson was a bad actor,” ( not a good one, is Aubrey’s expression), “ is incontestibly confirmed by Decker,” (in the passage just quoted)— Shak. vol. ii. p. 322. It seems to have escaped Mr. Malone, that to repeat a story after another, is not to confirm it. Aubrey merely copies Decker. 6 MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. who has read this production of Kyd, (among whom I do not reckon Mr. Malone,) that the author trusted for a great part of the effect of his tragedy, to the contrast between the diminu¬ tive size of the marshal (Jeronymo) and the strutting of his language and action : (< I’ll not be long away, As, short my body, short shall be my stay.” (C My mind’s a giant, though my bulk be small.” “ I had need wax too ; Our foes will stride else over me and you.” lie is thus addressed by Balthazar : “ Thou inch of Spain, Thou man, from thy hose downward, scarce so much : Thou very little longer than thy beard, Speak not such big words, they will throw thee down, Little Jeronymo, words greater than thyself.” * And he signs himself “ little Jeronymo, marshal.” In a word, so many allusions of the most direct kind, are made to this circumstance in every part of the play, that no tall or bulky figure could attempt the character without devoting it to utter ridicule. The fact is, that Jonson was employed by the manager to “ write adycions ” for this popular drama; and that was sufficient for Decker’s purpose. Wood rejects the story of his ambling after a waggon, and tells us that upon his return from Cambridge (where he assuredly had not then been), “ he did recede to a nursery or obscure play-house, called the Green Curtain + ; but that his first action and writing there were both ill.” Wood’s authority, unfortunately, is of little weight in this case, being wholly derived from a vague report picked up by Aubrey from one John Greenhill. It is not too lightly to be credited that Jonson should be singled out for his incapacity amongst the unfledged nestlings of the “ Green Curtain in Shoreditch.”—But the matter is of little moment; since wherever he acted or wherever he wrote, his labours were abruptly terminated by an event of a very serious nature, which took place almost immediately after his return from Flanders. It appears that he had some kind of dispute with a person whose rank or condition in life is not known, but who is commonly supposed to be a player £. Inconsequence of this he was called out, or, as he says, “ appealed, to a duel.” He was not of a humour to decline the invitation. They met, and he killed his antagonist §, who seems to have acted with little honour ; having brought to the field, as our author told Drummond, a sword ten inches longer . than his own. His victory, however, left him little cause for exultation : he was severely wounded in the arm, thrown into prison for murder, and, as he says himself, “ brought near the gallows.” [* “ It is evident,” says Mr. Collier, “ that if there he any truth in Dekker’s assertion (controverted by Gifford) that Ben Jonson originally performed the part of Jeronimo, he must allude, not to the tragedy now under consideration [The First Part of Jeronimo'], but to The Spanish Tragedy, where nothing is said regarding the personal appearance of the hero or his representative.”— Hist, of Eng. Dram. Poet. iii. 208. Gifford’s reasoning, however, still holds good. The Spanish Tragedy forms a Second Part to The First Part of Jeronimo ; and surely an audience, to whom the diminutive hero of the First Part was so familiar, would hardly have tolerated such an absurdity as the personation of that character in the Second Part by a tall or bulky actor.—A. Dyce-1 t Oldys, in his MS. notes to Langbaine, says that Jonson was himself the master of a play-house in the Barbican. —He adds, that the poet speaks of his theatre ; and Mr. A. Chalmers repeats from this idle authority, that “ in his writings mention is made of his theatre!" So the blind lead the blind! Jonson’s theatre is his book of Epigrams. See p. 665. t I know of no authority for this but captain Tucca. “ Art not famous enough yet, my mad Harostratus, for killing a player, but thou must eat men alive.” Satiromastix. §“IIe killed,” Aubrey says, “Mr. Marlow the poet, on Bunhill, coming from the Green Curtain play-house." Mr. Marlow, the poet, whose memory Jonson held in high estimation, was killed at least two years before this period, in a brothel squabble :—but whoever expects a rational account of any fact, however trite, from Aubrey, will meet with disappointment. Had any one told this “ maggoty-pated” man that Jonson had killed “ Mr. Shakspeare the poet,” he would have received the tale with equal facility, and recorded it with as little doubt of its truth. In short, Aubrey thought little, believed much, and confused every thing.—[The antagonist whom Jonson killed was named Gabriel (in all probability Gabriel Spenser), an actor belonging to Henslowe’s company. They fought in Hoxtou Fields, in 1518. See Mr. J. P. Collier’s Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, &c., p. 50— printed for the Shakespeare Society—A. Dvce.J MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. 7 Here lie was visited by a popish priest, who took advantage of the unsettled state of his religious opinions, to subvert his mind, and induce him to renounce the faith in which he had been bred, for the errors of the Romish church. This has been attributed by some to his fears. “ His tough spirit,” say the authors of his life, in the Bio. Brit. “ sunk into some degree of melancholy, so that he became a fit object to be subdued by the crafty attacks of a popish priest.” Others, following the opinion of Drummond, attribute the change to an indifference about all religions. It is probable, that neither was the cause. Such conversions were among the daily occurrences of the time ; even among those who had more years than Jonson, and far more skill in controversy than he could possibly have. His own account of the matter is very concise : he took, he says, the priest’s word : he did not however always continue in this state of ignorance ; and it is to his praise that, at a more mature age, he endeavoured to understand the ground of his belief, and diligently studied the fathers, and those wiser guides who preached the words of truth in simplicity *. While he was in prison, there were (as he told Drummond) spies set to catch him ; but he was put upon his guard by the gaoler, to whose friendly warning he probably owed his life ; as he was the most incautious of men in his conversation. These spies could have nothing to do with the cause of his imprisonment, and must therefore have been employed about him solely on account of his connection with the Popish priest. The years 1593 and 1594 were years of singular disquietude and alarm. The Catholics, who despaired of effecting anything against the queen by open force, engaged in petty conspiracies to take her off by sudden violence. The nation was agitated by these plots, which were multiplied by fear; and several semi¬ naries, as the popish priests educated abroad were then called, were actually convicted of attempts to poison the queen, and executed. Jonson revenged himself for the insidious attacks made on his life, by an epigram which he afterwards printed, and which is not one of his best:— “ Spies, you are lights in state, but of base stuff, * Who, when you’ve burnt yourselves down to the snuff, Stink, and are thrown aside :—End fair enough ! ” It is not known to what, or whom, Jonson finally owed his deliverance from prison. Circum¬ stances were undoubtedly in his favour, for he had received a challenge, and he had been unfairly opposed in the field : as criminal causes were then conducted, these considerations might not, however, have been sufficient to save him. The prosecution was probably dropt by his enemies. On his release, he naturally returned to his former pursuits, unpromising as they are represented to be. With that happy mode of extricating himself from a part of his difficulties which men of genius sometimes adopt, he now appears to have taken a wife f. She was young, and a Catholic like himself; in no respect, indeed, does his choice seem to have discredited his judgment; which is more, perhaps, than can fairly be said for his partner : but she was a woman of domestic habits, and content, perhaps, to struggle with poverty, for the sake of her children. She was dead when Jonson visited Scotland in 1618, and in the * I know not why Jonson should be reproached for this change, as he frequently is: far from arguing a total carelessness, as they say, it would seem rather a proof of the return of a serious mind. The great and good Jeremy Taylor was a convert to popery for a short time; so was Chillingworth, and so were a thousand more of the same description. In fact, young men (and Jonson was at this time a very young mam of a serious way of thinking, of warm imaginations, and of ill-digested studies, are not among the most unfavourable subjects for proselytism. t Jonson was now in his 20th year. I have followed the writers of the Bio. Brit, who suppose that his first child was a daughter. In the beautiful Epitaph on her, beginning,— “ Here lies, to each her parents’ ruth, Mary, the daughter of their youth she is said, by the poet, to be “ his first daughter she might not, however, have been his first child : yet, I believe, from other circumstances, that the biographers are correct. In this case, Jonson’s marriage must have taken place, at latest, in 1594, as we know that he had a son born in 1596. This date is the first of which we can speak decidedly; it is therefore of some moment in our author’s life. From 1596 the years are sufficiently marked : antecedently to *his period some latitude must be allowed. 8 MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. costive and splenetic abridgment of his conversations with Drummond, she is shortly men¬ tioned as having been shrewish, but honest ( i . e. faithfully attached) to her husband. But what were the pursuits by which Jonson had hitherto been enabled to procure a preca¬ rious subsistence ?—Assuredly not ambling by a waggon, nor u acting and writing ill ” at the Green Curtain. The fortunate preservation of Mr. Ilenslowe’s memorandums, amidst the wreck of so much valuable matter through the sloth and ignorance of the members of Dulwich College, has given a sort of precision to this period of dramatic history, which no one was san¬ guine enough to expect. From the extracts made by Mr. Malone, and introduced into his excellent History of the English Stage, we are enabled to trace the early part of Jonson’s dramatic career with some degree of accuracy ; and we find him, as might be expected, follow¬ ing the example of contemporary poets, and writing in conjunction with those who were already in possession of the stage: a practice encouraged by the managers, whose chance of loss it diminished *. The notices which Mr. Malone has copied from the MS. respecting the dramatic writers, begin with 1597; but he has given a curious account of the pieces performed by Mr. Henslowe’s companies, which commences at an earlier period. As we know not the titles of Jonson’s first dramas, it is not possible to discover whether any of those mentioned previously to 1596, belong to him. Every Man in his Humour, is the first piece in the list which we can appropriate; and this was then a popular play ; having been acted, as Mr. Henslowe says, eleven times between the 25th of November 159G, and the 10th of May in the succeeding year. Before this period, however, he must have written for the stage both alone and with others ; and with such success as to induce Henslowe and his son-in-laAv, the celebrated Alleyn, to advance money upon several of his plots in embryo ; a sufficient confutation of the oft-repeated tale of his “ill writing,” &c. In this year his wife brought him a son + ; so that he had occasion for all his exertions. In Every Man in his Humour , and in the Prologue to it, which breathes a similar spirit, we find strong traces of the onnobling idea, which Jonson had already formed of poetry in general, and of the true and dignified office of the Dramatic Muse. “ Indeed, if you will look on Poesie, As she appears in many, poor and lame, Patch’d up in remnants, and old worn-out rags, Half-starv’d for want of her peculiar food, Sacred Invention ; then I must confirm Both your conceit and censure of her merit. But view her in her glorious ornaments, Attired in the majesty of art, Set high in spirit with toe precious taste Of sweet philosophy, and, which is most, Crown’d with the rich traditions of a soul That hates to have her dignity profaned With any relish of an earthly thought ; Oh then how proud a presence does she bear ! Then is she like herself; fit to be seen Of none but grave and consecrated eyes ! ” These lines, which were probably written before he had attained his twenty-second year, do not discredit him; and let it be added, to his honour, that he invariably supported, through * They usually hired the writers, and advanced them money upon the credit of their talents, and the progress of tneir work, which was shewn or reported to them from time to time. + To this child, perhaps, the players stood god-fathers. A foolish story is told in some old jest book, which would scarcely be worth repeating here, were it not for the notable use which is made of it by the commentators on Shakspeare. “ Shakspeare was god-father to one of Ben Jonson’s children, and after the christening, being in deep study, Jonson came to cheer him up; and asked him why he was so melancholy ? No faith, Ben, says he, not I; but I have been considering a great while what should be the fittest gift for me to bestow upon my god-child, and I have resolved at last, I prithee what? says he. I’faith, Ben, I’ll e’en give her a dozen good Latin (latten'i spoons, and thou slialt translate them. This jest (it is Capell who speaks) will stand in need of no comment with those who are at all acquainted with Jonson: it must have cut to the quick ; and endangered the opening some old sores about the latter’s Scjanus , whose latinity produced its damnation : this play was brought upon Shakspeare’s stage in every period of liis chequered life, the lofty character with -which his youthful fancy had invested the Muse. Some judgment of Jonson’s situation at this time maybe formed from a memorandum of Mr. Ilenslowe’s, recording an advance of “five shillings yet even this could not induce him to have recourse for success to the popular expedients of hustle, and warlike shew, which he believed, with his classic masters, to outrage probability, and violate the decorum of the stage. In the Prologue, he says— “ Though need make many poets, and some, such As art and nature have not better’d much ; Yet otrii’s, for ivant hath not so lov'd the stage As he dare serve th’ ill customs of the age; Or purchase your delight at such a rate, As, for it, he himself must justly hate.” * * From a resolution thus early formed, he never deviated, and when it is considered that, in 1603, (the first year of his management,) and he performed in it himself : and the miscarriage sour’d Jonson, and he broke with the manager; venting his spleen against him in some of his prefaces, in terms oblique but intelligible, and breathing malice and envy: the breach was healed at this time; but with some remembrance of it on the part of Shakspeare.” Notes on Shak. vol. i. p. 94. It would be a mere loss of time to strive to fix a period for an event which never took place; though it may not be irrelevant to observe upon it, that in every occurrence between Jonson and Shakspeare which has crept into the story-books of those times, the latter is invariably represented as the aggressor. Had the foregoing anecdote been founded on fact, it would only have proved that the wit and good manners of Shakspeare’s return to Ben’s eivility were pretty nearly equal. As the story appears in Capell, (who thought of nothing less than serving Jonson), it has yet a worse aspect. * This Prologue assumes a considerable degree of importance from its being made the principal basis of the calumny against Jonson; and the reader must therefore indulge me in some remarks on it. “ All Shakspeare’s plays are ridiculed in it,” cry the commentators; and a thousand voices re-echo, “ all Shakspeare’s plays are ridiculed in it.” It might puzzle a man of plain sense (indeed, Mr. Malone confesses that it puzzled himself at first,) to comprehend how what was written in 1596 could possibly “ ridicule” what was not in existence till nearly twenty years after¬ wards :—but the difficulty is thus solved. The Prologue was not published with the 4to. edition of Every Man in his Humour; —therefore it was not written till some time before the appearance of the folio ;— therefore it ridicules all Shakspeare’s plays! That any rational being should persuade himself, or hope to persuade another, that the lines -were composed and spoken at this late period, can only be accounted for by the singular power of self-delusion. For many years before and after 1616 (the date of the folio), Jonson was in a state of the highest prosperity: the favourite of princes, the companion of nobles, the pride and delight of the theatre, yet he is supposed to say that “ though poverty made many poets, and himself, among the rest, it should not compel him to disgrace his judgment, &c.!— Every Man in his Humour had been a stock-play for nearly twenty years, during which it had probably been represented an hundred times, yet the author is imagined to beseech the audience that they would b e pleased, to-day, to see one such a play, &c.! As if all this was not sufficient to fool the credulous reader to the top of his bent, he is further required to believe, that, after the Fox, the Silent Woman, the Alchemist, in a word, after eleven of his best pieces had obtained full possession of the stage, Jonson came forward, for the first time, to tell the public on what principles he proposed to construct his dramas—concluding with a hope that the spectators would like the specimen which he was now about to offer them!—And why is the public called upon to swallow these monstrous absurdities ? Because the commentators cannot otherwise prove that the great object of “ Jonson’s life was to persecute Shak¬ speare.” “ If the Prologue was not written about 1614,” says one of the most furious of them, very ingenuously, “ my speculations fall to the ground !” If it be asked why the author did not print the Prologue with the play for which it was written, it may be demanded in return, why many other things which appear in the folio were not printed in the 4tos. and why much that ap¬ pears in the 4tos. is not found in the folio? No better reason, I believe, can be given, than that such was the publisher’s pleasure. It is more than time to advert to the proofs produced by the commentators to shew how the Prologue bears on all Shakspeare’s plays. “ To make a child new swaddled, to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, To fourscore years.” “ This is a sneer at the Winter’s Tale, written in 1604,” in which Perdita, as all the world knows, undergoes these various changes! f -- “ with three rusty swords And help of some few foot-and-half-foot words. Fight over York’s and Lancaster’s long jars”— “ This is a sneer at Shakspeare’s three parts of Henry VI.” I have endeavoured, Mr. Malone says, Shak. vol. i. p. 492, to prove that two of these three parts were not written originally by Shakspeare.” Papce! Again: There were two f Mr. Malone also proves that the Puchess of Malfy was written in 1616, simply because Jonson sneers at it in these lines. Shak. vol. xi. p. 545. Mr. Steevens, still more mal-d-droit, in a moment of heedlessness, informs us “ that in Lily’s Endymion, which comprises nearly half a century, all the personages of the drama, with one excep¬ tion, continue unchanged, wearing the same beard and weed for more than forty years.” These discoveries are unluckily made—as they may lead those who think at all, to suspect that Jonson might have other persons in view than Perdita. 10 MEMOIRS OE REN JONSON. consequence of it, he braved want and obloquy, whatever may be thought of his prudence, the praise of consistency must, at least, be awarded to him. What else he wrote in 1597 is not known : two sums of u fo' sr pounds,” and “ twenty shillings,” were advanced to him by Mr. Ilenslowe, upon the credf , of two plays *, which he had then in hand : but their titles do not occur ; at least with his name. The “ book of which he shewed the company the plotte,” preceding dramas, one of which was called the contention of York and Lancaster .” Why then might not this be the drama meant ’—But were there not two score old plays on this subject on the stage ?—Undoubtedly there were : and I could produce numerous passages in which plays on the long jars between the two houses are mentioned, all anterior to this period. “ With three rusty swords.” f This, however, with the rest of the quotation, is merely a versification, as Mr. Gilchrist has well observed, of what Sir Philip Sidney had written many years before on the poverty and ignorance of the old stage. Sir Philip, indeed, says “ four swords:” of their “ rustiness” he takes no notice, and so far Jonson has shewn his spite to Shakspeare. But how happens it that a yet stronger passage than this escaped the vigilant malice of the commentators ? -“ to disgrace With four or five most vile and ragged foils, Right ill-disposed, in brawl ridiculous, The name of Agincourt.” Ilere the sneer is evident! Here, indeed, as Mr. Malone says, “ old Ben speaks out!” Here every thing is changed for the worse : the rusty sivord for “a most vile and ragged foiland the long jars of York and Lancaster, for «a ridiculous brawl!” Ecquid, Jupiter, tarn lente, audis !—“ Not to keep the reader in suspense,” however, this atro¬ cious attack on Shakspeare was made—by Shakspeare himself ! It is found in one of his most beautiful choruses to Henry V. One curious circumstance is yet to be noticed : although the commentators dwell upon every trifling expression on which they can possibly raise a note, yet this striking passage is slipped over by them all in solemn silence; Shak. vol.ix. p. 401. “ There’s method in this madness!” The “ foot-and-half words” are “ a sneer at Richard III., where we find such epithets as childish-foolish, senseless- obstinate,” &c. It is not Jonson’s fault if his persecutors prove as ignorant as they are malicious. Before the date of this Prologue (1596) he had probably translated the Art of Poetry: there, the lines are thus rendered :— Telephus, et Peleus cum pauper et exul uterque, Projicit arnpullas et sesquipedalia verba ; “ -Peleus and Telephus, When they are poor and banish’d, must throw by Their bombard phrase, and foot-and-half-foot words.” Here the poet, with his wonted accuracy, uses “ foot-and-half-foot words”—not for feeble epithets linked together by hyphens, but for swelling, vaunting, bombast language. “ Where neither chorus wafts you o’er the seas. Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please, -nor tempestuous drum.” There was scarcely a play on the stage when Jonson first came to it, which did not avail itself of a chorus to waft its audience over sea and land, or over wide intervals of time. Enough of both maybe found in Pericles, Faustus, Fortunatus, and other dramas which yet remain ; to say nothing of those to which allusions are made by the old critics, and which have long since worthily perished. “ The creaking throne is a sneer at Cymbeline ,” in which Jupiter, it seems, “ descends on an eagle!” “ The tempestuous drum is a ridicule of the Tempest;” and as that comedy was not written till 1611-12-13, it ascertains the date of the Prologue to a nicety. It is to be regretted that Mr. Malone never read Jonson, as he might have saved himself and Mr. G. Chalmers a world of trouble in dandling this play backwards and forwards, on account of the last-quoted passage. In a *•' Speech according to Horace,” (p. 709,) undoubtedly subsequent to-the Tempest, we find the words “ tempestuous grandlings.” Here the allusion is not only to the title of the play, but most palpably to Gonzalo, Adrian, Francisco, and, perhaps, to Prospero himself! After such overwhelming proofs it cannot but surprise the reader to hear one of Jonson’s critics speak thus doubt- ingly : “ Perhaps Shakspeare himself, by the help of a proper application, was designed, to be included!” O the power of candour ! But far better is the writer’s amended judgment. “ Other dramatists had indeed written on the jars of York and Lancaster, but Jonson doth not appear to have thought them worthy of his notice ”! And bestof all is the liberal conclusion of Steevens: “ The whole of Ben Jonson’s Prologue to Every Man in his Humour is a malicious sneer at Shakspeare,” vol. xiii. p. 249. * “The following curious notices (says Mr. Malone, Shak. vol. ii. p. 484,) occur relative to Sliakspeare’s old antago¬ nist, Ben Jonson.”—When it is considered that Jonson was at this time scarcely 22, (Shakspeare was 32.) that by Mr. Malone’s own account, he was not known to Shakspeare, whom he could in no possible way have offended, the justice of calling him the old antagonist of our great poet is not a little questionable.—The notices are : “ Lent unto Benjemen Johnson player, the 22d of July 1597, in ready money, the some of fower poundes, to be payed yt agen whensoever either I or my sonne (Alleyn) shall demand yt.” “ Lent unto Benjemen Johnsone the 3d of december 1597, upon a book which he was towritte for us before crysmas nexte after the date here of, which he showed the plotte unto the company : I say lent unto hime in redy money, the some of xxs.” t It is observed by Mr. Malone, Shak. vol. ii. p. 220, that “ such was the poverty of the old stage, that the same person played two or three parts, and battles, on which the fate of an empire was supposed to depend, were decided by three combatants on a side.” Though this be true, yet I hardly expected to find the critic joining our author in tneering at Shakspeare. MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. 11 might have been the Case is Altered *. He was now recent from the Roman writers of comedy, and, in this pleasant piece, both Plautus and Terence are laid under frequent contribution. The success of Every Man in Ids Humour appears to have encouraged the author to attempt to render it yet more popular : accordingly he transferred the scene, which in the former play lay in the neighbourhood of Florence, to London, changed the Italian names for English ones ; and introduced such appropriate circumstances as the place of action seemed to require. In fact, the attempt was to be expected, from the improvement which was visibly taking place in his mind. Young + as he was, when he wrote this drama, it is scarcely to be wondered, that he should fall into the common practice, and while he placed his scene in Italy, draw all his incidents from his own country. It must be added to his praise, that he did not entirely neglect the decorum of place, even in this performance : but there was yet too much of English man¬ ners, and the reformation of the piece was therefore well-timed and judicious. Jonson fell into no subsequent incongruities of this kind, for the Fox is without any tincture of foreign customs, and his two tragedies are chastly Roman. “But notwithstanding (Whalley says) the art and care of Jonson to redress the incon¬ gruities taken notice of, a remarkable instance of Italian manners is still preserved, which, in transferring the scene, he forgot to change. It is an allusion to the custom of poisoning, of which we have instances of various kinds, in the dark and fatal revenges of Italian jealousy. Ivitely is blaming Well-bred for promoting the quarrel between Bobadil and Downright, and Well-bred otfers to excuse himself by saying that no harm had happened from it. Kitely’s wife then objects to him ; ‘But what harm might have come of it, brother?’ to whom Well- bred replies, ‘Might, sister ? so might the good warm clothes your husband wears be poisoned W anything he knows ; or the wholesome wine he drank even now at table.’ Kitely’s jealous apprehension is immediately alarmed, and he breaks out in a passionate exclamation:— ‘ Now God forbid. O me ! now I remember My wife drank to me last, and changed the cup ; And bade me wear this cursed suit to-day.’ And thus he goes on, imagining that he feels the poison begin to operate upon him. Nothing could be more in character than this surmise, supposing the persons, as was the case at first, to have been natives of Italy. But had Jonson recollected, it is probable he would have varied the thought to adapt it more consistently to the genius and manners of the speaker.”— Preface , p. xii. I have given this tedious passage at large, because the happy discovery which it holds forth has been received with vast applause by the critics. In Hurd’s letter to Mason On the Marks of Imitation , it is said, “ The late editor of Jonson’s works observes very well the impropriety of * This Comedy is usually assigned to 1598, principally because of its allusion to Antony Munday, which appeared in the Wit’s Treasurie, published in that year. But Antony might have been called “ our best plotter” before Meares wrote his pedantic conundrums ; and, indeed, the words have to me the air of a quotation. I am almost inclined to set down this, as the earliest of our author’s dramas ; in 1598 it was already a popular piece, and it bears about it the marks of juvenility. It is doubted in the Bio. Dram, whether Jonson he the author of this piece, because, says the writer, it is printed without a dedication, which is commonly prefixed to his early plays, &c. I cannot stoop to contend with sheer igno¬ rance:—hut in the first place, the play was not published by Jonson ; and in the second, his dedications are more frequent in the folio, than in the 4tos. f The reader of the present day, who has been acoustomed to hear of nothing but “ old Ben,” will start, perhaps, to find that ho once was young. The appellation was first given to him by Sir John Suckling, a gay, careless, good- humoured wit of the court, in 1637 : “ The next that approached was good old Ben.” “ Good,” the commentators are careful to omit; but “ old Ben” they are never weary of repeating. Mr. Malone says that this title was not familiarly given to him during his life. In fact, it was never familiarly given to him, till he and his friend Steevens took it up, aud applied it a3 a term of ridicule and contempt in every page. That Ben was termed old on one occasion shortly after his death, is scarcely a sufficient plea for making the appellation perpetual, or we might confer it on all the writers of his time. We hear of old Massinger, and old Shirley ; and the publishers of Beaumont and Fletcher advertise their readers, “that after they shall have reprinted Jonson’s two volumes, they hope to reprint old Shakspeare,” See the Booksellers’ address, fbl. 1679. What would Mr. Malone have said if the editors of any of our old dramatists had nauseated their readers from page to page (on this authority) with a repetition of old Shakspeare ? 12 MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. leaving a trait of Italian manners in his Every Man in his Humour , when he fitted up that play with English characters. Had the scene been originally laid in England, and that trait been given us, it had convicted the poet of imitation” p. 18. Such solemn absurdity is intolerable. The truth is, that Jonson could not have devised a more characteristic “ trait” of the times in which he wrote. Poisoning was unfortunately too well understood, and too common in this country. Elizabeth had a favourite, who, if he is not greatly belied, did not yield to the subtlest poisoner that Italy ever produced. Osborn says that “he had frequently heard Elizabeth blamed for not removing Mary, Queen of Scots, in the Italian fashion, by poisoning her gar¬ ments,” cStc., p. 231. And, in fact, Elizabeth herself lived from 1594 to 1598 in constant dread of being taken off in this way ; and many attempts, which kept the people in a state of agita¬ tion, were actually made to effect it. Two men were hanged in 1598 for poisoning the queen’s saddle ; the arm-chair of Essex w r as found to be rubbed with some deleterious mixture ; and several poisoned articles of dress, (among others, a girdle,) and pieces of furniture were publicly burned in Smithfield. According to the custom of the times, Jonson regained the property of his comedy by these numerous alterations : it was thus acted, for the first time, in 1598, at the Black Friars, and Shakspeare’s name stands at the head of the principal performers in it*. The commentators appear to consider this as a mark of peculiar condescension on the part of our great poet, choosing to forget that he was an actor by profession, and that he derived his fortune from the theatre. He was not yet so independent of wealth but that he continued on the stage at least sixteen years longer ; and, in the course of that time probably played a part in more than one piece not greatly superior to the present comedy, without suspecting that lie was conferring any very particular obligation on the authors. To this period (1598) is commonly assigned the commencement of our author’s acquaint¬ ance with Shakspeare. “ Ben Jonson presented Every Man in his Humour to one of the leading players in that company of which Shakspeare was a member. After casting his eye over it superficially, the comedian was on the point of returning it with a peremptory refusal; when Shakspeare, who perhaps had never till that instant seen Jonson +, desired he might look into the play. He was so well pleased with it on perusal, that he recommended the work and the author to his fellows. Notwithstanding this kindness, the prologue to his play is nothing less than a satirical picture of the Tempest, Lear , Henry V., &c.”— Dram. Miscel ., vol. ii. p. 5G. “ Every Man in his Humour , (says Mr. Malone, in twenty places,) was acted in 1598: it appears to be Jonson’s first performance, and we may presume that it was the very play which was brought on the stage by the good offices of Shakspeare, who himself acted in it. Malignant and envious as Jonson was,” &c.— Shale., vol. i. p. 540. And the writers of our author’s life in the Bio. Brit., after giving us the same story a little embellished, are pleased to subjoin— “this goodness of Shakspeare was the more remarkable, as ‘Jonson was, in his personal character, the very reverse of Shakspeare, as surly, ill-natured, proud, and disagreeable, as Shakspeare w r as gentle, good-natured, easy, and amiable %.’ ” * The old play probably remained at the Rose, where it had been brought out. + Mr. Davies is subject to little fits of inconsistency, lie seems to think, and not indeed without cause, that provided he indulges his malignity towards Jonson, the public will readily forgive the want of truth and sense. “ At this time,” he says, i. e. 1597, a year before Shakspeare (according to his own statement) had seen or known anything of our poet, “ to have observed Ben Jonson with an assumed countenance of gaiety, and with envy in his heart, join the groupe of laughers and applauders of Henry IV. must have added to the pleasure of Shakspeare’s real friends,” vol. i. p. 278. This is forthwith taken for proved ; and the passage is boldly referred to in the Index under the head of Jonson. “ Ben Jonson envious of Shakspeare !” But thus the life of our great poet is written ; and his admirers are not ashamed of it! 4: This exquisite character of Jonson is quoted by the biographers, with great precision, from the “ Works of his friend Drummond, Ediri. 1711, fol. p. 222.” It is given on the same authority in the enlarged edition of the Theatrum Poetarum ; and more recently, by Mr. A. Chalmers, in the Gen. Diet, who, after repeating the poet’s conversation with that hospitable gentleman, breaks out—“In short, Drummond adds, Jonson was,” Ac. vol. xix. p. 156. What will the reader say, what will he think, when he is assured that not one syllable of this quotation is to bo found in any part of Drummond ? It is the fabrication of one Sliiels, a Scotchman, who compiled, for the booksellers, the Collection called Cibber's Lives of the Poets, and who, not finding his countryman’s character of Jonson quite to his taste, inter¬ polated, with kindred rancour, the abusive paragraph in question. This work was published in 1753; the Bio. Brit MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. 13 Jonson was at this period struggling for a mere subsistence :—when his persevering pursuit of knowledge, therefore, amidst difficulties of every kind, when his lofty ideas of poesy, his moral purpose ir, dramatic satire, liis scorn of the popularity procured h}' sacrificing to what he deemed the vicious habits of the stage, are taken into consideration, it may almost be wondered why such singular pleasure should be found in combining to overwhelm him with obloquy. With respect to the story just quoted, no words, I presume, are needed to prove it an arrant fable. Nor is the variation of it, which is found in Rowe, any thing better. “Sliak- speare’s acquaintance with Ben Jonson began with a remarkable piece of humanity. Mr. Jonson, who was at that time altogether unknown to the world , had offered one of his plays to the players to have it acted ; and the person into whose hands it was put, after having turned it carelessly and superciliously over, was just upon the point of returning it to him with an ill-natured answer, that it would be of no service to their company, when Shakspeare luckily cast his eye upon it, and found something so well in it, as to engage him to read it through, and afterwards to recommend Mr. Jonson and his writings to the public favour — Shak., vol. i. p. 12. That Jonson was altogether “ unknown to the world,” is a palpable untruth. At this period, (1598) Jonson was as well known as Shakspeare, and perhaps, better. He was poor, indeed, and very poorf, and a mere retainer of the theatres ; but he was intimately acquainted with llenslovve and Alleyn, and with all the performers at their houses. He was familiar with Drayton and Chapman, and Rowley, and Middleton, and Fletcher ; he had been writing for three years, in conjunction with Marston, and Decker, and Chettle, and Porter, and Bird, and with most of the poets of the day : he was celebrated by Meares as one of the principal writers of tragedy J ; and he had long been rising in reputation as a scholar and poet among the most distinguished characters of the age. At this moment he was employed on Every Man out of his Humour , which was acted in 1599 ; and, in the elegant Dedication of that comedy to the “ Gentlemen of the Inns of Court,” he says, “ When I wrote this poem, I had friendship with divers in your Societies, who, as they were great names in learning, so were they no less examples of living. Of them and then, that I say no more, it was not despised.”—And yet, Jonson was, at this time, “altogether unknown to the world !” and offered a virgin comedy in 1757. the others later. It thus appears, that of all who have so confidently quoted this passage “ from Drummond,” not one ever looked into him ; and thus has the scurrility of an obscure and hackney scribbler, who lived two centu¬ ries after Jonson, been palmed upon the public as the express testimony of one “ who spoke of the poet from personal knowledge.” The detection of this flagrant imposture, “this innocent jeu d’esprit,” will be ill-received. A calumny against Jonson is precious in the eyes of the commentators. I shall be quite satisfied, however, if, when they repeat this ribaldry, which they will be sure to do, they give it on the authority of Mr. Robert Shiels, and noton that of “ Jonson’s friend, Drummond of Hawthornden.” * In the first edition of his Life of Shakspeare, Rowe inserted the usual charges against Jonson of ingratitude, jealousy, - 42 MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. the office of Master of the Revels. The king, by letters patent dated Oct. 5, 1621, granted him, by the style and addition of “ our beloved servant Benjamin Jonson, gentleman, the said office to be held and enjoyed by him and his assigns, during his life, from and after the death of sir George Buc, and sir John Astley, or as soon as the office should become vacant by resignation, forfeiture, or surrender* * * § .” In contemplation, perhaps, of his speedy accession to this office, James was desirous of conferring upon him the honour of knighthood. Jonson, for whom wealth and title had no charms, and who was well aware that a distinction of this nature would exasperate the envy which pursued him from his earliest years, shrunk from the meditated kindness of his sovereign, and prevailed on some of his friends about the court to dissuade his royal master from his purpose .+ Jonson received no advantage from the grant specified above, as sir J. Astley survived him : it appears, however, that, finding himself incapable, during his last illness, of performing the duties of the office, supposing it to devolve upon him, he had been graciously permitted by Charles to transfer the patent to his son, who died in 1635. Why Mr. Malone should suppose (Shale, vol. ii. p. 311) that he was not on good terms with his father, I cannot tell. Fuller only says that Jonson “ was not very happy in his children but an indulgent and tender parent like Jonson may be sensibly afflicted by the conduct of a child, without much diminution of affection, or interruption of kindness. From 1621, when the Gipsies Metamorphosed was performed at Windsor, Jonson continued, apparently, to pass his time greatly to his satisfaction. Every Twelfth-night produced a Masque ; and visits to his friends, correspondence with the literati of this and other countries, and occasional pieces of poetry, filled up the rest of his time Mr. Malone, who, from his crazy tripod, pronounces that Jonson had “ stalked, for two centuries, on the stilts of artificial reputation,” was little aware, perhaps, of the extent of his acquaintance with the learned, and of the estimation in which they held his talents : at any rate, the following passage from the Geneva edit, of Farnaby’s Martial (and I could produce many such) must have escaped his knowledge : “ Martialem solum a clariss. tiro Petro Scriverio emendatum editumque desiderabam, quem nulla mea aut amicorum cura parare potuit ; cujus tamen xicem non raro supplevit arnica opera Ben Jonsonii viri (quod qua; ille per ludum scripserit , serio legentibus liquido apparehit) in poetis omnibus xersatissimi , historiarum , morum , rituum , antiquitatum indagatoris exquisitissimi , et (quod semper in illo adxerti) non contenti bracldo led tesqua et dignos xindice nodos transmitter e, sed penitissimos usque sensus ratione,lectione, ingenio eruere desudantis ; digni denique (utcunque a probatis merito probetur suo) meliori theatro quam quo malevolorum invidiam pascat,§ quanquam et hoc regium est p>osse inxidium cum mereri turn pati. Ille , inquam, mild emendationes aliquot suppeditaxit ex C. V. Scrixerii Martiale , cujus copia illi facta Lugduni Bat. a xiro non sine doctrines et liumanitatis lionorifica prafatione nominando Ban. Ileinsio, 4'C.” || * Shak. vol. i. p. 626. Mr. Malone observes that “ it would appear from a passage in the Satiromastix that Ben had made some attempts to procure the reversion of this place before the death of Elizabeth.” Mr. Malone is unquestion¬ ably right; though he has failed to draw from it the only proper conclusion—namely, that at this period, Jonson was neither so obscure nor so unfriended as he would have us believe. t “ A friend told me this Faire time (Stourbridge) that Ben Johnson was not knighted, but scaped it narrowly, for that his majestie would have done it, had there not been means made (himself not unwilling) to avoyd it. Sep. 15, 1621,” Extracted from a letter of the celebrated Joseph Mead of C. Col. Cambridge to sir Martin Stuteville. Baker’s MSS. vol. xxxii., p. 355. Sir M. Stuteville was a friend and admirer of Jonson. One of his family has some verses on the poet’s death, preserved among the Ashmole papers. They are kind and laudatory; but merit no particular notice. i lie is said to have assisted Middleton and Fletcher in writing The Widow, which must have appeared about this time. This comedy was very popular, and, not undeservedly, for it has a considerable degree of merit. I cannot, however, discover many traces of Jonson in it. The authors’ names rest, I believe, on the authority of the editor, A. Gough, who sent the play to the press in 1652. § This learned man, we see, notices the malevolence which incessantly pursued Jonson on the stage. We now hear of nothing but Jor.son’s envy: —those who lived and conversed with him, speak of the envy of others :_It was then the lowest description of scribblers which persecuted him ; and I should wrong the modesty of those who abuse him now, if I termed them the lights of the age. II Jonson presented a copy of this edit, to Mr. Briggs, (probably a relation of the celebrated mathematician,) with the following letter written on a blank leaf: MEMOIRS OF BEN JONSON. 43 It has not been hitherto observed that Jonson was in possession of a most excellent library, which, assisted by a readiness of memory altogether surprising, facilitated the acquirement of that information for which he was so frequently solicited by his own countrymen, as well as strangers hie began to collect the best editions of the classics at an early period, and it may be doubted whether any private library in the kingdom Avas, at that time, so rich in scarce and valuable books as his oavu. He Avas ever ready to communicate them to his friends : not only Avas his study open to their researches* * * * § ; but its contents Avere always at their disposal. It cannot be too often repeated that this writer, avIio has been described as a mere mass of spleen and ill-nature, was, in fact, the frankest and most liberal of mankind. I am fully warranted in saying that more valuable books given to individuals by Jonson are yet to be met with, than by any person of that age. Scores of them have fallen under my oavu inspec¬ tion, and I have heard of abundance of othersf. The following passage may amuse the reader from the exquisite absurdity of its conclusion. “ In the Upper Library of Trinity College,” (it is Warton who speaks,) “ is a Vossius’s Greek Historians , with a series of INIS, notes. It appears, by a Latin mem. in Dr. Bathurst’s hand-Avriting, that this book originally belonged to Ben Jonson, avIio gave it to Dr. Langbaine.—Jonson’s name being mentioned, I cannot forbear adding”—(Here I verily expected some compliment to his learning,or liberal¬ ity)—“that in the character of Yolpone, Aubrey tells us, Jonson intended Sutton, the founder of the Charter-house ! ” Life of Bathurst, 8vo. p. 148. It seems as if it Avere indis¬ pensable that the name of Jonson must always befolloAved by some stupid calumny J. We have long lost sight of Inigo Jones; he noAv reappears as Jonson’s coadjutor in the Masque of Time Vindicated , 1823 §. As none of those pieces which appear in the folio of 1G41 Avere given to the press by Jonson, it is not possible to say Avhether he shared in any produced “ Amico Su.aiiuo D. R. Bkiggesio. Eccum, tibi librum, mi, Briggesie, quern fieri, gene cum convitio, a me efflagitasti, mitto. Volute aa ze affio ,.. jtfam hodie, ne diutiits moratus, me Icesi officii reum apud te/aceret. E.st Farnabii mei Martialis. Non ille Jesuitarum castratus, eviratus, et prorsus sine Martiali Martialis. Iste ilium integrum tibi virumque preebet, nec minus casturn sed magis virilem. Annotaliones etiam, suas apposuit, tales autem ut videri possit sine commentario, commentator. Tu/ac ut illam perlegas, protegas, et fareas homini in tanto sale, epulisque Mart, nec insulso neejejuno. Dignus cnim est, qui Virgiliis suis mereatur, ut foret Toto notus in orbe Martialis, quod de se ingeniosissimus poeta prcedicare ausus sit, et vere ; suffiragante etiam Qui x°. Aug. m. dcxxiii. amicitice et studii ergo hoc levidense D. D .” JONSUNIO TUO. * The learned Selden, in speaking of a book which he had occasion to examine, and Avhich was not in his extensive collection, says—“ I presume that I have sufficiently manifested this out of Euripides his Orestes, which when I was to use, not having the scholiast, out of whom I hoped some aid, I went, for this purpose, to see it in the well furnisht librarie of my beloved friend, that singular poet, master Ben Jonson, whose special worth in literature, accurate judgment, and performance, known only to that few which are truly able to know him, hath had from me, ever since 1 began to learn, an increasing admiration.” Titles of Honour, 1614. fol. p. 93. t I have great pleasure in copying the following passage from Mr. Disraeli, because it is the result of conviction acting on a liberal mind. “ No poet has left behind him, in MS. so many testimonies of personal fondness as Jonson, by inscriptions and addresses, in the copies of his Avorks, which he presented to his friends: Of these, I have seen more than one, fervent and impressive.” Quar. of Authors, vol. iii. p. 25. + It may be added here, that AVarton appears to have known about as much of Jonson and his writings as Mr. Headley. In his notes on Milton’s Arcades, he says (but Avith no friendly voice) that “Echo frequently appears in the masques of Jonson.” Frequently! In Pan’s Anniversary (as I think) a musical close is directed to be repeated:— and this is all the Echo. Again : “ Jonson Avas too proud to assist or be assisted,” a sentiment quoted for its justice by Mr. Chalmers. Noav, Jonson solicited and accepted assistance, or, as he calls it, “ succour,” from Selden, Cotton, CareAV, and many others; and he undoubtedly assisted, or joined with, more Avriters than any person of the age in which he lived! § The mention of this Masque gives me an opportunity of noticing a Avell-knoAvn song by G. Wither, “Shall I, Avasting in despair,” IA02 ON SEJANUS. When in the Globe’s fair ring, our world’s best stage I saw Sejanus set with that rich foil, I look’d the author should have born the spoil Of conquest, from the writers of the age : But when I view’d the people’s beastly rage, Bent to confound thy grave, and learned toil, That cost thee so much sweat, and so much oil, My indignation 1 could hardly assuage. COMMENDATORY VERSES. And many there (in passion) scarce could tell Whether thy fault, or theirs deserv’d most blame ; Thine, for so shewing, theirs, to wrong the same : But both they left within that doubtful hell, From whence, this publication sets thee free : They, for their ignorance, still damned be. EV. B. AMICISSIMO, ET MERITISSIMO BEN. JONSON, IN VOLPONEM. Quod arte ausus es hie tud, Poeta , Si auderent hominum deique juris Consulti, veteres sequi cemularierque, O omnes saperemus ad salutem. His sed sunt veteres araneosi; Tam next o velerum est sequutor, ut tu Jllos quod sequeris novator audis. Fac tamen quod agis; tuique primd Libri canitie induantur hord: Ham chartis pueritia est neganda, Nascunturque senes , oportet , Mi Libri , queis dare vis perennitatem. Priscis, ingenium facit, laborque Te parent ; hos superes, ut et futuros, Ex nostra vitiositate sumas, Qua priscos superamus, et futuros. J. DONNE. AD UTRAMQUE ACADEMIAM, DE BENJAMIN JONSONIO, IN VOLPONEM. Hie ille est primus , qui doctum drama Britannis, Graiorum antiqua, et Lalii monimenta theatri , Tanquam explorator versans, foelicibus ausis Praebebit: magnis coeptis, gemina astra, favete. Alterulra veteres contenti laude : Cothurnum hie, Atque pari soccum tractat Sol scenicus arte ; Das Volpone jocos, fletus Sejane dedisti. At si Jonsonias mulctalas lirnite musas Angusto plangent quiquam: Vos, dicite, contra , O nimium miseros quibus Anglis Anglica lingua , Aut non sat nota est; aut queis (seu trans mare natis ) Haud nota omnino ! Vegetet cum tempore vates, Mutabit patriam,fietque ipse Anglus Apollo. E. BOLTON. TO MY DEAR FRIEND MASTER BEN. JONSON, UPON HIS FOX. If it might stand with justice, to allow The swift conversion of all follies ; now, Such is my mercy, that I could admit All sorts should equally approve the wit Of this thy even work : whose growing fame Shall raise thee high, and thou it, with thy name. And did not manners, and my love command Me to forbear to make those understand, Whom thou, perhaps, hast in thy wiser doom Long since, firmly resolv’d, shall never come To know more than they do ; I would have shewn To all the world, the art, which thou alone COMMENDATORY VERSES. 7» Hast tauglit our tongue, the rules of time, of place, And other rites, delivered with the grace Of comic style, which only, is far more Than any English stage hath known before. But since our subtle gallants think it good To like of nought that may be understood, Lest they should he disprov’d : or have, at best. Stomachs so raw, that nothing can digest Biit what’s obscene, or barks : let us desire They may continue, simply, to admire Fine cloatlis, and strange words ; and may live, in age, To see themselves ill brought upon the stage, And like it. Whilst thy bold, and knowing Muse Contemns all praise, but such as thou wouldst choose. FRANCIS BEAUMONT. ON VOLPONE. If thou dar’st bite this Fox, then read my rhymes ; Thou guilty art of some of these foul crimes : Which else, are neither his nor thine, but Time’s. If thou dost like it, well; it will imply Thou lik’st with judgment, or best company : And he, that doth not so, doth yet envy The ancient forms reduced, as in this age The vices, are ; and bare-faced on the stage : So boys were taught to abhor seen drunkards rage. T. It. TO MY GOOD FRIEND MASTER JONSON. The strange new follies of this idle age, In strange new forms, presented on the stage By thy quick muse, so pleas’d judicious eyes ; That th’ once admired ancient comedies’ Fashions, like clothes grown out of fashion, lay Lock’d up from use : until thy Fox’ birth-day, In an old garb, shew’d so much art, and wit, As they the laurel gave to thee, and it. D. D. ON VOLPONE. The Fox, that eas’d thee of thy modest fears, And earth’d himself, alive, into our ears Will so, in death, commend his worth, and thee As neither can, by praises, mended be : ’Tis friendly folly, thou may’st thank, and blame, To praise a book, whose forehead bears thy name, Then Jonson, only this (among the rest,) I, ever, have observ’d, thy last work’s best: Pace, gently on ; thy worth, yet higher, raise; ’Till thou write best, as well as the best plays. J. c COMMENDATORY VERSES. 73 ON VOLPONE. Come, yet, more forth, Volpone, and thy chase Perform to all length, for thy breath will serve thee ; The usurer shall, never, wear thy case : Men do not hunt to kill, but to preserve thee. Before the best hounds, thou dost, still, but play ; And, for our whelps, alas, they yelp in vain : Thou hast no earth ; thou hunt’st the milk-white way ; And, through th’ Elysian fields, dost make thy train. And as the symbol of life’s guard, the hare, That, sleeping, wakes ; and, for her fear, was saf’t: So, thou shalt be advanc’d, and made a star, Pole to all wits, believ’d in, for thy craft. In which the scenes both mark, and mystery Is hit, and sounded, to please best, and worst; To all which, since thou mak’st so sweet a cry, Take all thy best fare, and be nothing curst. g. e. ON VOLPONE. Volpone now is dead indeed, and lies Exposed to the censure of all eyes, And mouths ; now he hath run his train, and shewn His subtle body, where he best was known ; In both Minerva’s cities : he doth yield, His well-form’d limbs upon this open field. Who, if they now appear so fair in sight, How did they, when they were endow’d witli spright Of action ? In thy praise let this be read, The Fox will live, when all his hounds be dead. e. s. TO BEN JONSON, ON VOLPONE. Forgive thy friends ; they would, but cannot praise, Enough the wit, art, language of thy plays : Forgive thy foes ; they will not praise thee. Why r Thy fate hath thought it best, they should envy. Faith, for thy Fox’s sake, forgive then those Who are nor worthy to be friends, nor foes. Or, for their own brave sake, let them be still Fools at thy mercy, and like what they will. J p. ON THE SILENT WOMAN. Hear, you bad writers, and though you not see, I will inform you where you happy be : Provide the most malicious thoughts you can, And bend them all against some private man, To bring him, not his vices, on the stage ; Your envy shall be clad in some poor rage, And your expressing of him shall be such. That he himself shall think he hath no touch. Where he that strongly writes, although he mean To scourge but vices in a labour’d scene, Yet private faults shall be so well exprest, As men do act ’em, that each private breast, That finds these errors in itself, shall say, He meant me, not my vices, in the play. FRANCIS BEAUMONT. COMMENDATORY VERSES. TO MY FRIEND BEN JONSON, UPON HIS ALCHEMIST A master, read in flattery’s great skill, Could not pass truth, though he would force his will, By praising this too much, to get more praise In his art, than you out of yours do raise. Nor can full truth he utter’d of your worth, Unless you your own praises do set forth *. None else can write so skilfully, to shew Your praise : Ages shall pay, yet still must owe. All I dare say, is, you have written well; In what exceeding height, I dare not tell. GEORGE LUCY. ON THE ALCHEMIST. The Alchemist, a play for strength of wit, And true art, made to shame what hath been writ In former ages ; I except no worth Of what or Greeks or Latins have brought forth ; Is now to be presented to your ear, For which I wish each man were a Muse here To know, and in his soul be fit to be Judge of this master-piece of comedy ; That when we hear but once of Jon son’s name. Whose mention shall make proud the breath of fame, We may agree, and crowns of laurel bring A justice unto him the poet’s king. Iiut he is dead : time, envious of that bliss Which we possest in that great brain of his, By putting out this light, hath dark’ned all The sphere of Poesy, and we let fall At best unworthy elegies on his hearse, A tribute that we owe his living verse ; Which, though some men that never reach’d him may Decry, that love all folly in a play, The wiser few shall this distinction have, To KNEEL, NOT TREAD, UPON HIS HONOUR’D GRAVE. JAMES SHIRLEY. Jonson, t’ whose name wise art did bow, and wit Is only justified by honouring it: To hear whose touch, how would the learned quire With silence stoop ? and when he took his lyre, Apollo stopt his lute, asham’d to see A rival to the god of harmony, &c. Shirley’s Poems, p. 159. TO MY FRIEND BEN JONSON, UPON HIS CATILINE. If thou had’st itch’d after the wild applause Of common people, and hadst made thy laws In writing, such, as catch’d at present voice, L should commend the thing, but not thy choice. But thou hast squar’d thy rules by what is good, And art three ages, yet, from understood And (I dare say) in it there lies much wit Lost, till the readers can grow up to it. Which they can ne’er out-grow, to find it ill, But must fall back again, or like it still. FRANCIS BEAUMONT. COMMENDATORY VERSES. 81 TO MY WORTHY FRIEND BEN JONSON, ON IIIS CATILINE. He, that dares wrong this play, it should appear Dares utter more than other men dare hear, That have their wits about them ; yet such men, Dear friend, must see your book, and read ; and then Out of their learned ignorance, cry ill, And lay you by, calling for mad Pasquil, Or Green’s dear Groatsworth, or Tom Coryate, Or the new Lexicon, with the errant pate : And pick away, from all these several ends. And dirty ones, to make their as-wise friends Believe they are translators. Of this, pity ! There is a great plague hanging o’er the city ; Unless she purge her judgment presently. But, 0 thou happy man, that must not die, As these things shall; leaving no more behind But a thin memory, like a passing wind That blows, and is forgotten, ere they are cold. Thy labours shall outlive thee ; and, like gold Stampt for continuance, shall be current, where There is a sun, a people, or a year. JOHN FLETCHER. TO HIS WORTHY AND BELOVED FRIEND MASTER BEN JONSON ON HIS CATILINE. Had the great thoughts of Catiline been good, The memory of his name, stream of his blood, His plots past into acts, (which would have turn’d His infamy to fame, though Rome had burn’d,) Had not begot him equal grace with men. As this, that he is writ by such a pen : Whose inspirations, if great Rome had bad, Her good things had been better’d, and her bad Undone ; the first for joy, the last for fear, That such a Muse should spread them, to our ear. But woe to us then ! for thy laureat brow If Rome enjoy’d had, we had wanted now. But, in this age, where jigs and dances move, How few there are, that this pure work approve. Yet, better than I rail at, thou canst scorn Censures that die, ere they be thoroughly born. Each subject, thou, still thee each subject raises, And whosoe’er thy book, himself dispraises. NAT. FIELD. AD V. Cl. BEN. JONSONIUM, CARMEN PROTREPTICON. Raptam Threicii lyram Neanthus Pulset ; carmina circuits Palcemoti Scribat ; qui manibus facit deabus Illotis, metuat Probum. Placere Te doctis jurat auribus, placere Te raris juvat auribus. Camcenas Cum totus leyerem tuas (Camcence Nam toium rogitant luce, nec ullam Qui pigre trahat oscilationem, Lectorem) et numeros, acumen, arlem y Mirum judicium, quod ipse censor, Jonsoivi, nimium licet malignus, Si doctus simul, exigat , viderem, COMMENDATORY VERSES. b 2 Sermonem et nitidum, facetinsque Dtjnas Mercurio, novdsque gnomas Morum sed veterum , tuique juris Quicquid dramaticum tui legebam, Tam semper fore, tamque te loquutum t Ut nee Lemnia notior sigillo Tellies, nec macula sacrandus Apis , Non cesto Venus, aut comis Apollo, Quam musd fueris sciente notus, Quam musd fueris tub. notatus, Ilia, qiue unica, sidus ut refulgens, Stricturas, superat comis, minorum : In mentem subiit Stolonis illud, Lingua Pieridas fuisse Plauti Usuras, Ciceronis atque dictum, Saturno genitum phrasi Platonis, Musce si Latio, Jovisque Athenis Dixissent. Fore jam sed hunc et illas lonsoni nurneros puto loquutos, Anglis si fuerint ulrique fati. Tam , mi, tu sophiam doces amoene Sparsim tamque sophos amcena sternis! Sed, tot delicias, minus placebat, Sparsis distraherent tot in libellis Cerdoi caculce. Volumen unum, Quod scri Britonum terant nepotes, Optabam, et thyasus chorusque amantum Musas hoc cupiunt, tui laborum Et quicquid reliquum est, adhuc tuisque Servaturn pluteis. Tibi at videmur Non tarn queer ere quam par are nobis Laudem, dum volumus palam merentis Tot laurus cupidi reposta scripta ; Dum secernere te tuasque musas Audemus numero ungulce liquorem Gustante, et veteres novem sorores Et Sirenibus et solent cicadis: Dum et secernere posse te videmur, Efflictim petimus novumque librum, Qui nullo sacer haut petatur cevo, Qui nullo sacer exolescat cevo, Qui curis niteat tuis secundis ; Ut nos scire illiquid simul putetur. Atqui hoc made sies, velutque calpar, Quod diis inferium, tibi sacremus, Ut nobis bene sit ; tudmque frontem Perfundant ederce recentiores Et splendor novus. Incident coronam Hanc iantam patrice tibique (quantd JEternum a merito tuo superbum Anglorum genus esse posAt olim) Tantum qui penitus volant amcenas Sublatas literas, timentve lucent lonsoni nimiam tenebriones. J. (Wl.D KV. i COMMENDATORY VERSES. 83 TO BEN JONSON, ON HIS WORKS. May I subscribe a name ? dares my bold quill Write that or good or ill, Whose frame is of that height, that, to mine eye, Its head is in the sky ? Yes. Since the most censures, believes, and saith By an implicit faith : Lest their misfortune make them chance amiss, I’ll waft them right by this. Of all I know thou only art the man That dares but what he can : Yet by performance sIioavs he can do more Than hath been done before, Or will be after ; (such assurance gives Perfection where it lives.) Words speak thy matter; matter fills thy words : And choice that grace affords. That both are best : and both most fitly placed, Are with neAv Venus graced From artful method. All in this point meet, With good to mingle sweet. These are thy loAver parts. What stands above Who sees not yet must love, When on the base he reads Ben Jonson’s name, And hears the rest from fame. This from my lo\ T e of truth : Avhicli pays this due To your just worth, not you. ED. IIEYAVAIID. ON THE AUTHOR OF THIS VOLUME, THE POET LAUREAT, BEN JONSON. Here is a poet! Avhose unmuddled strains Shew that he held all Helicon in’s brains. What here is writ, is sterling ; every line Was Avell alloAv’d of by the Muses nine. When for the stage a drama he did lay, Tragic or comic, he still bore aAvay The sock and buskin ; clearer notes than his No SAvan e’er sung upon our Thamesis ; For lyric SAveetness in an ode, or sonnet, To Ben the best of wits might A T ail their bonnet. His genius justly, in an entlieat rage, Oft lash’d the dull-sworn factors for the stage : For Alchymy, though’t make a glorious gloss, Compar’d Avith Gold is bullion and base dross. AVILL. HODGSON. ON IIIS ELABORATED PLAYS.—EPIGRAM. Each like an Indian ship or hull appears, That took a voyage for some certain years, To plough the sea, and furroAV up the main, And brought rich ingots from his loaden brain. His art the sun ; his labours Avere the lines ; His solid stuff the treasure of his mines. WILL. IIODGSON. COMMENDATORY VERSES. ill IN BENJAMINUM JONSONUM, POETAM LAUREATUM, ET DRAMA TICORUM SUI SECULI FACILE PRINCIPEM. foNsovE, Angliacce decus immortale Camoence, Mague pater vatum, Aonice Coryphcee catervce , lienjamine, (tibi nec vanum nominis omen,) Cui tarn dextera Pallas adest, tarn dexter Apollo; Laurigeros egit quoties tua Musa triumphos ! Laudibus en quanlis, quanto evehit Anglia plausu Jonsonum , pleni moderantem frcena theatri ! Per te scena loqui didicit: tibi Candida vena, Et jocus innocuus ; nec quern tua fabula mordet Rente Theonino, sed pravis aspera tantum Moribus, insanurn multo sale defricat cecum. Nec fescennino ludit tua carmine Musa ; Nec petulans aures amat incestare theatri, Aut fcedare oculos obscceuis improba nugis : Sunt tibi tam castce veneres, plencequc pudoris. Scenam nulla tuam perfrictd fronte puella Intrat, nec quenquam tenerce capit illice vocis , Nec spectatorem patranti frangit ocello , Dramate tu recto, tu linguae idiomate puro , Exornas soccosque leves, grandesque cothurnos. Si Lyricus , tu jam Flaccus ; si comicus, alter Plautus es ingenio, tersive Terentius oris Anglicus, aut, Grcecos si forte imitere, Menander , Cujus versa usus , ceu sacro emblemate, Paulas: Sin Tragicus, magni jam prceceptore Neronis Altius eloqueris , Seneca et prcedivite major, (Ingenii at tantum dives tu divite vend,) Grandius ore tonas, verborum et fulmina vibras. Tu captatores, locupleti hamata, senique, Munera mittentes, Vulpino decipis astu Callidus incautos, et fraudcm fraude retexis : Atque hceredipetas corvos deludis hiantes, Valid spe lactans , cera nec scribis in ima. Per te nec leno aut meretrix impune per urbem Grassatur, stolidce et tendit sua retia pubi. Nec moechus, nec fur, incastigatus oberrat, Illcesusve, tuce prudenti verbere scenes. Sic vitium omne vafer tuus ipse at Horatius olim, Tangis, et admissus circura prsecordia ludis. Per te audax Catilina , nefas horrendus Alastor Dum strait infandum, ccedesque et funera passim Molitur Romce, facundi consulis ore Ingenioque perit ; patrice et dam perfidus eases Intentat jugulo, franguntur colla Cethegi ; Quicquid Sylla minax, ipsis e faucibu j Orci, Et fortunati demurmur et umbra tyranni : Nempe facesJlammdsque extinguitjlumine lactis Tullius, Angliaco melius sic ore locutus. Vulmine tu rapiens magnum devolvis ab alto Sejanum ; ille potens populum, pavidumque senatum Rexerat imperio nuper , dum solus habenas Tractaret Romce, nutu et trcmefecerat orbem, Ccesare confisus ; nunc verso cardine rerum Mole sua miser ipse cadens , et pondere pressus, Concutit attonitum lapsu graviore theatrum, Ingentemque irahit lurbd plaudente ruinam. COMMENDATORY VERSES, 85 Sic nullum exemplo crimen tu linquis inultum % Sive et avarities, et amor vesanus habendi, Site sit ambitio, et dominandi cceca libido. Crimina sic hominum versu tortore flag e lias, Et vitia exponis toti ludibria plebi; Profinus ilia tuo sordent explosa theatro, Dramaque virtutis schola Jit, prcelectio scena, Histrio philosophus, morum vel denique censor , Etludi, Jonsone, tui sic seria ducunt. Ergo tua effigies, nostris spectanda plateis, ( Quam melius toti ostendit tua Pagina mundo) Non hominis , sed viva Poesios extat imago ; Benjamini icon , capitisque insigne poetce ; Nomen et ingenii, Jonsoni nomen habetur.* SIR EDWARD HERBERT, UPON HIS FRIEND MR. BEN JONSON, AND IIIS TRANSLATION. ’Twas not enough, Ben Jonson, to be thought Of English poets best, hut to have brought In greater state, to their acquaintance, one Made equal to himself and thee ; that none Might be thy second ; while thy glory is To be the Horace of our times, and his. TO BEN JONSON. u ’Tis dangerous to praise ; besides the task Which to do’t well, will ask An age of time and judgment; who can then Be prais’d, and by what pen ? Yet, I know both, whilst thee I safely cliuse My subject, and my Muse. For sure, henceforth our poets shall implore Thy aid, which lends them more, Than can their tired Apollo, or the Nine She wits, or mighty wine. The deities are bankrupts, and must be Glad to beg art of thee. Some they might once perchance on thee bestow : But, now, to thee they owe : Who dost in daily bounty more wit spend, Than they could ever lend. Thus thou didst build the Globe, which, but for thee, Should want its axle-tree ; And, like a careful founder, thou dost now Leave rules for ever, how To keep’t in reparations, which will do More good, than to build two. It was an able stock, thou gav’st before ; Yet, lo, a richer store ! Which doth, by a prevention, make us quit With a dear year of wit: Come when it will, by this thy name shall last Until Fame’s utmost blast,” &c. BARTON HOI. Y D A \ • Musce Subseciva J. Duporti, Cantabrigice. 8*x> 1676, p. 8 8fi COMMENDATORY VERSES. TO MASTER .TONSON. Bex, The world is much in debt, and though it may Some petty reck’nings to small poets pay : Pardon if at thy glorious sum they stick, Being too large for their arithmetic. If they could prize the genius of a scene, The learned sweat that makes a language clean. Or understand the faith of ancient skill, Drawn from the tragic, comic, lyric quill; The Greek and Roman denizen’d by thee, And both made richer in thy poetry; This they may know, and knowing this still grudge. That yet they are not fit of thee to judge. I prophesy more strength to after time. Whose joy shall call this isle the poets’ clime, Because ’twas thine, and unto thee return The borrow’d flames, Avith which thy Muse shall burn. Then when the stock of others fame is spent, Thy poetry shall keep its oaaui old rent. ZOUCH TOWXLEV AD BENJAMINUM JONSONUM. Injun te voco, Jonsoni ve^iito: Adsum, qui plagii et malce raping Te ad Phcebi peragam reum tribunal , Assidente choro novem dearum. Qucedam dramata scilicet diserta , Nuper quce Elysii roseti in umbrd, Fcestivissimus omnium poeta, Plautus composuit, diisque tandem Stellato exhibuit poll in theatro, Movendo superis leves cachinnos , Et risos tetrico Jovi ciendo, Axe plausibus intonante utroque ; Hcec tu dramata scilicet diserta, Clepsisti superis negotiosis, Quce tu nunc tua venditare pergis : In jus te voco, Jonsoni venito. En pro te pater ipse , Rexque Phoebus Assurgit modo, Jonsoni , palamque Testatur, tua serio fuisse Ilia dramata , teque condidisse Sese non modo conscio, at juvante: Unde ergo sibi Plautus ilia tandem Nactus exhibuit, Jovi Deisque ? Maice Filius, et Nepos Atlantis, Pennatus celeres pedes, at ungues Viscatus, volucer puer, vaferque , Furto condere quidlibet jocoso, Ut quondam facibus suis Amorem Per ludos viduavit, et pharetrd, Sic nuper ( siquidem solet frequenter Tecum ludere, plaudere, et jocari) Neglectas tibi clepsit has papyrus Secumque ad superis abire jussit: Jam victus taceo pudore, vincis Phcebo Judice , Jon soni, el PatronoJ * Caroli Fitzgeofrtdi A fan. Oxonice, COMMENDATORY VERSES. ON BEN JONSON. Mirror of poets, mirror of our age ! Which her whole face beholding on thy stage, Pleas’d and displeas’d with her own faults, endures A remedy like those whom music cures. Thou hast alone those various inclinations, Which Nature gives to ages, sexes, nations, So traced with thy all-resembling pen, That whate’er custom has impos’d on men, Or ill-got habit, which deforms them so, That scarce a brother can his brother know. Is represented to the wond’ring eyes Of all that see or read thy comedies ; Whoever in those glasses looks, may find The spots return’d, or gr aces of his mind : And by the help of so divine an art, At leisure view, and dress his nobler part. Narcissus cozened by that flatt’ring well, Which nothing could but of his beauty tell, Had here, discovering the deform’d estate Of his fond mind, preserv’d himself with hate ; But virtue too, as well as vice, is clad In flesh and blood so well, that Plato had Beheld what his high fancy once embraced Virtue with colours, speech, and motion graced The sundry postures of thy copious Muse, Who would express a thousand tongues must use : Whose fate’s no less peculiar than thy art, For as thou couldst all characters impart: So none could render thine, who still escapes Like Proteus in variety of shapes : Who was, nor this, nor that, but all we find, And all we can imagine in mankind. E. WALLER. ON MASTER BENJAMIN JONSON. After the rare arch-poet Jonson died, The sock grew loathsome, and the buskin’s pride, Together with the stage’s glory, stood Each like a poor and pitied widowhood. The cirque prophan’d was ; and all postures rackt: For men did strut, and stride, and stare, not act. Then temper flew from words ; and men did squeak. Look red, and blow, and bluster, but not speak : No holy rage, or frantic fires did stir, Or flash about the spacious theatre. No clap of hands, or shout, or praises-proof Did crack the play-house sides, or cleave her roof. Artless the scene was ; and that monstrous sin Of deep and arrant ignorance came in ; Such ignorance as theirs was, who once hist At thy unequall’d play, the Alchemist: Oh fie upon ’em ! Lastly too, all wit In utter darkness did, and still will sit; Sleeping the luckless age out, till that she Hev VQ Rurrection lias again with thee. Herrick’s Hesperides, 1C48, p. 173. COMMENDATORY VERSES. 83' ON BEN JONSON. Here lies Jonson with the rest Of the poets ; but the best. Reader, would’st thou more have known ? Ask his story, not this stone ; That will speak what this can’t tell, Of his glory. So farewell! Ibid, p.342. AN ODE FOR BEN JONSON. Ah Ben ! Say how, or when Shall we thy guests Meet at those lyric feasts, Made at the Sun, The Dog, the Triple Tun ? Where we such clusters had. As made us nobly wild, not mad ; And yet each verse of thine Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine. My Ben Or come agen ; Or send to us Thy wits great over-plus : t But teach us yet Wisely to husband it; Lest we that talent spend : And having once brought to an end That precious stock ; the store Of such a wit: the world should have no more. Ibid. p. 342 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. TO THE MOST LEARNED, AND MY HONOURED FRIEND, MASTER CAMDEN, CLARENCIEUX. Sir,— There are, no doubt, a supercilious race in the world, who will esteem all office, done you in this kind, an injury ; so solemn a vice it is with them to use the authority of their ignorance, to the crying down of Poetry, or the professors: hut my gratitude must not leave to correct their error; since I am none of those that can suffer the benefits conferred upon my youth to perish with my age. It is a frail memory that remembers hut present things: and, had the favour of the times so conspired with my disposition, as it could have brought forth other, or better, you had had the same proportion, and number of the fruits, the first. Now I pray you to accept this; such wherein neither the con¬ fession of my manners shall make you blush; nor of my studies, repent you to have been the instructer : and for the profession of my thankfulness, I am sure it will, with good men, find either praise or excuse. Your true lover, Ben Jonson. DRAMATIS PERSONA:. Knowell, an old Gentleman. Edward Knowell, his Son. Brain worm, the Father's Man. George Downright, a plain Squire. Wellbred, his Half-Brother. Kitely, a Merchant. CArTAiN Bobadill, a Paul's Man. Master Stephen, a Country Gull. Master Mathew, the Town Gull. Thomas Cash, Kitely 's Cashier. Oliver Cob, a Water-bearer. Justice Clement, an old merry Magistrate. Roger Formal, his Clerk. Wellbred's Servant. Dame Kitely, Kitely's Wife. Mistress Bridget, his Sister. Tib, Cob's Wife. Servants, §c. SCENE,— London. PROLOGUE. Though need make many poets, and some such As art and nature have not better’d much; Yet ours for want hath not so loved the stage, As he dare serve the ill customs of the age, O r purchase your delight at such a rate, As, for it, he himself must justly hate : To make a child now swaddled, to proceed Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed, Past threescore years ; or, with three rusty swords. And help of some few foot and half-foot words, Fight over York and Lancaster’s long jars, And in the tyring-house bring wounds to scars. He rather prays you will be pleas’d to see One such to-day, as other plays should be ; Where neither chorus wafts you o’er the seas, Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please : Nor nimble squib is seen to make afeard The gentlewomen ; nor roll’d bullet heard To say, it thunders ; nor tempestuous drum Rumbles, to tell you when the storm doth come ; But deeds, and language, such as men do use, And persons, such as comedy would choose, When she would 6liew an image of the times, And sport with human follies, not with crimes. Except we make them such, by loving still Our popular errors, when we know they’re ill. I mean such errors as you’ll all confess, By laughing at them, they deserve no less : Which when you heartily do, there’s hope left then, You, that have so grac’d monsters, may like men. ACT I. SCENE I .—A Street. Enter Knowell, at the door of his house. Know. A goodly day toward, and a fresh morn¬ ing.—Brainworm! Enter Brainworm. Call up your young master : bid him rise, sir. Tell him, I have some business to employ him. Brai. I will, sir, presently. Know. But hear you, sirrah, If he be at his book, disturb him not. Brai. Very good, sir. [Exit. Know. How happy yet should I esteem myself, Could I, by any practice, wean the boy From one vain course of study he affects. He is a scholar, if a man may trust B I EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. act u The liberal voice of fame in her report, Of good account in both our Universities, Either of which hath favoured him with graces: But their indulgence must not spring in me A fond opinion that he cannot err. Myself was once a student, and indeed, Fed with the self-same humour he is now, Dreaming on nought but idle poetry, That fruitless and unprofitable art, Good unto none, but least to the professors ; Which then I thought the mistress of all know¬ ledge : But since, time and the truth have waked my judg¬ ment, And reason taught me better to distinguish The vain from the useful learnings. Enter Master Stephen. Cousin Stephen, What news with you, that you are here so early ? Step. Nothing, but e’en come to see how you do, uncle. Know. That’s kindly done; you are welcome, coz. Step. Ay, I know that, sir; I would not have 1 ? dost thou inhabit here. Cob ? scene iv. EVERY MAN RV HIS HUMOUR. 5 Cob. Ay, sir, I and my lineage have kept a poor house here, in our days. Mat. Thy lineage, monsieur Cob ! what lineage, what lineage ? Cob. Why, sir, an ancient lineage, and a princely. Mine ance’try came from a king’s belly, no worse man; and yet no man neither, by your worship’s leave, I did lie in that, but herring, the king of fish (from his belly I proceed), one of the monarchs of the world, I assure you. The first red herring that was broiled in Adam and Eve’s kitchen, do I fetch my pedigree from, by the harrot’s book. His cob was my great, great, mighty great grandfather. Mat. Why mighty, why mighty, I pray thee? Cob. O, it was a mighty while ago, sir, and a mighty great cob. Mai. How know’st thou that ? Cob. How know I! why, I smell his ghost ever and anon. Mat. Smell a ghost! O unsavoury jest! and the ghost of a herring cob ? Cob. Ay, sir : With favour of your worship’s nose, master Mathew, why not the ghost of a herring cob, as well as the ghost of Rasher Bacon ? Mat. Roger Bacon, thou would’st say. Cob. I say Rasher Bacon. They were both broiled on the coals ; and a man may smell broiled meat, I hope ! you are a scholar, upsolve me that now. Mat. O raw ignorance !—Cob, canst thou shew me of a gentleman, one captain Bobadill, where his lodging is ? Cob. O, my guest, sir, you mean. Mat. Thy guest! alas, ha, ha, ha! Cob. Why do you laugh, sir ? do you not mean captain Bobadill ? Mat. Cob, pray thee advise thyself well : do not wrong the gentleman, and thyself too. I dare be sworn, he scorns thy house; he ! he lodge in such a base obscure place as thy house ! Tut, I know his disposition so well, he would not lie in thy bed if thou’dst give it him. Cob. I will not give it him though, sir. Mass, I thought somewhat was in it, we could not get him to bed all night: Well, sir ; though he lie not on my bed, he lies on my bench : an’t please you to go up, sir, you shall find him with two cushions under his head, and his cloak wrapt about him, as though he had neither won nor lost, and yet, I warrant, he ne’er cast better in his life, than he has done to-night. Mat. Why, was he drunk ? Cob. Drunk, sir ! you hear not me say so : per¬ haps he swallowed a tavern-token, or some such device, sir, I have nothing to do withal. I deal with water and not with wine —Give me my tankard there, ho !—God be wi’ you, sir. It’s six o’clock : I should have carried two turns by this. What ho ! my stopple ; come. Enter Tib with a water-tankard. Mat. Lie in a water-bearer’s house! a gentle¬ man of his havings ! Well, I’ll tell him my mind. Cob. What, Tib ; shew this gentleman up to the captain. [ Exit Tib with Master Mathew.] Oh, an my house were the Brazen-head now ! faith it would e’en speak Moe fools yet. You should have some now would take this Master Mathew to De a gentleman, at the least. His father’s an nonest man, a worshipful fishmonger, and so forth ; and now does he creep and wriggle into acquaint¬ ance with all the brave gallants about the town, such as my guest is, (O, my guest is a fine man !) and they flout him invincibly. He useth every day to a merchant’s house where I serve water, one master Kitely’s, in the Old Jewry ; and here’s the jest, he is in love with my master’s sister, Mrs. Bridget, and calls her mistress; and there he will sit you a whole afternoon sometimes, reading of these same abominable, vile (a pox on ’em! I can¬ not abide them,) rascally verses, poetrie, poetrie, and speaking of interludes; ’twill make a man burst to hear him. And the wenches, they do so jeer, and ti-he at him—Well, should they do so much to me, I’d forswear them all, by the foot of Pharaoh! There’s an oath! How many water- bearers shall you hear swear such an oath ? 0,1 have a guest—he teaches me—he does swear the legiblest of any man christened : By St. George ! ike foot of Pharaoh ! the body of me ! as I am a gentleman and a soldier ! such dainty oaths ! and withal he does take this same filthy roguish tobacco, the finest and cleanliest! it would do a man good to see the fume come forth at’s tonnels.—Well, he owes me forty shillings, my wife lent him out of her purse, by sixpence at a time, besides his lodg¬ ing: I would I had it! I shall have it, he says, the next action. Helter skelter, hang sorrow, care’ll kill a cat, up-tails all, and a louse for the hangman [Exit - o — SCENE IV.— A Room in Cob’s House. Bobadill discovered lying on a bench. Bob. Hostess, hostess ! Enter Tib. Tib. What say you, sir ? Bob. A cup of thy small beer, sweet hostess. Tib. Sir, there’s a gentleman below would speak with you. Bob. A gentleman ! ’odso, I am not within. Tib. My husband told him you were, sir. Bob. What a plague—what meant he ? Mat. {below.) Captain Bobadill! Bob. Who’s there ?—Take away the bason, good hostess;—Come up, sir. Tib. He would desire you to come up, sir. You come into a cleanly house, here ! Enter Mathew. Mat. Save you, sir; save you, captain ! Bob. Gentle master Mathew! Is it you, sir? please you to sit down. Mat. Thank you, good captain ; you may see I am somewhat audacious. Bob. Not so, sir. I was requested to supper last night by a sort of gallants, where you were wished for, and drunk to, I assure you. Mat. Vouchsafe me, by whom, good captain ? Bob. Marry, by young Wellbred, and others.— Why, hostess, a stool here for this gentleman. Mat. No haste, sir, ’tis very well. Bob. Body o’ me 1 it was so late ere we parted last night, I can scarce open my eyes yet; I was but new risen, as you came : how passes the day abroad, sir? you can tell. Mat. Faith, some half hour to seven : Now, trust me, you have an exceeding fine lodging here, very neat and private. Bob. Ay, sir : sit down, I pray you. Master G EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. act i Mathew, in any case possess no gentlemen of our acquaintance with notice of my lodging. Mat. Who, I, sir? no. Bob. Not that I need to care who know it, for the cahin is convenient; but in regard I would not be too popular, and generally visited, as some are. Mat. True, captain, I conceive you. Bob. For, do you see, sir, by the heart of valour in me, except it be to some peculiar and choice spirits, to whom I am extraordinarily en¬ gaged, as yourself, or so, I could not extend thus far. Mat. O Lord, sir! I resolve so. Bob. I confess I love a cleanly and quiet privacy, above all the tumult and roar of fortune. What new book have you there ? What! Go by, Hiero- nymo ? Mat. Ay: did you ever see it acted? Is’t not well penned ? Bob. Well penned! I -would fain see all the poets of these times pen such another play as that was : they’ll prate and swagger, and keep a stir of art and devices, when, as I am a gentleman, read ’em, they are the most shallow, pitiful, barren fellows, that live upon the face of the earth again. [ While Master Mathew reads, Boeadill makes himself ready. Mat. Indeed here are a number of fine speeches in this book. O eyes , no eyes, hit fountains fraught with tears ! there’s a conceit! fountains fraught with tears ! O life , no life, but lively form of death! another. O world , no ivorld, but mass of public ivrongs ! a third. Confused and fill'd with murder and misdeeds ! a fourth. O, the muses! Is’t not excellent ? Is’t not simply the best that ever you heard, captain ? Ha ! how do you like it ? Bob. ’Tis good. Mat. To thee, the purest object to my sense, The most refined essence heaven covers , Send I these lines, ivherein I do commence The happy state of turtle-billing lovers. If they prove rough , unpolish'd, harsh, and rude , Haste made the ivasfe : thus mildly I conclude. Bob. Nay, proceed, proceed. Where’s this ? Mat. This, sir! a toy of mine own, in my non¬ age ; the infancy of my muses. But when will you come and see my study ? good faith, I can shew you some very good things I have done of late— That boot becomes your leg passing well, captain, methinks. Bob. So, so; it’s the fashion gentlemen now use. Mat. Troth, captain, and now you speak of the fashion, master Wellbred’s elder brother and I are fallen out exceedingly : This other day, I happened to enter into some discourse of a hanger, w’hich, I assure you, both for fashion and workmanship, was most peremptory beautiful and gentlemanlike : yet he condemned, and cried it down for the most pied and ridiculous that ever he saw. Bob. Squire Downright, the half-brother, was’t not ? Mat. Ay, sir, he. Bob. Hang him, rook! he ! why he has no more judgment than a malt-horse : By St. George, I wonder you’d lose a thought upon such an ani¬ mal ; the most peremptory absurd clown of Christendom, this day, he is holden. I protest to you, as I am a gentleman and a soldier, I ne’er changed words with his like. By his discourse, he should eat nothing but hay : he was born for the manger, pannier, or pack-saddle. He has not so much as a good phrase in his belly, but all old iron, and rusty proverbs : a good commodity for some smith to make hob-nails of. Mat. Ay, and he thinks to carry it away with his manhood still, where he comes: he brags he will give me the bastinado, as I hear. Bob. How ! he the bastinado ! how came he by that word, trow ? Mat. Nay, indeed, he said cudgel me ; I termed it so, for my more grace. Bob. That may be ; for I was sure it was none of his word : but when, when said he so ? Mat. Faith, yesterday, they say ; a young gal¬ lant, a friend of mine, told me so. Bob. By the foot of Pharaoh, an ’twere my case • now, I should send him a char tel presently. The bastinado ! a most proper and sufficient depend¬ ence, warranted by the great Caranza. Come hither, you shall chartel him ; I’ll show you a trick or two you shall kill him with at pleasure • the first stoccata, if you will, by this air. Mat. Indeed, you have absolute knowledge in the mystery, I have heard, sir. Bob. Of whom, of whom, have you heard it, 1 beseech you ? Mat. Troth, I have heard it spoken of divers, that you have very rare, and un-in-one-breath- utterable skill, sir. Bob. By heaven, no, not I; no skill in the earth ; some small rudiments in the science, as to know my time, distance, or so. I have professed it more for noblemen and gentlemen’s use, than mine own practice, I assure you.—Hostess, accom¬ modate us with another bed-staff here quickly. Lend us another bed-staff—the woman does not understand the words of action.—Look you, sir: exalt not your point above this state, at any hand, and let your poniard maintain your defence, thus : —give it the gentleman, and leave us. \_Eocit Tib.] So, sir. Come on : O, twine your body more about, that you may fall to a more sweet, comely, gentleman-like guard; so ! indifferent : hollow your body more, sir, thus : now, stand fasto’your left leg, note your distance, keep your due proportion of time—oh, you disorder your point most irregu¬ larly. Mat. How is the bearing of it now, sir ? Bob. O, out of measure ill: a well-experiencti/ hand would pass upon you at pleasure. Mat. How mean you, sir, pass upon me ? Bob. Why, thus, sir,—make a thrust at me— [Master Mathew pushes at Bobadill.] come in upon the answer, control your point, and make a full career at the body : The best-practised gallants of the time name it the passado ; a most desperate thrust, believe it. Mat. Well, come, sir. Bob. Why, you do not manage your weapon with any facility or grace to invite me. I have no spirit to play with you ; your dearth of judgment renders you tedious. Mat. But one venue, sir. Bob. Yenue ! fie ; most gross denomination as ever I heard : O, the stoccata, while you live, sir; note that.—Come, put on your cloke, and we’il go to some private place where you are acquainted ; some tavern, or so—and have a bit. I’ll send for one of these fencers, and he shall breathe you, by EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 7 my direction ; and then I will teach you your trick : you shall kill him with it at the first, if you please. Why, I will learn you, by the true judgment of the eye, hand, and foot, to control any enemy’s point in the world. Should your adversary confront you with a pistol, ’twere nothing, by this hand! you should, by the same rule, control his bullet, in a line, except it were hail-shot, and spread. What money have you about you, master Mathew ? Mat. Faith, I have not past a two shilling or so. Bob. ’Tis somewhat with the least; but come ; we will have a bunch of radish and salt to taste our wine, and a pipe of tobacco to close the ori¬ fice of the stomach : and then we’ll call upon young Wellbred: perhaps we shall meet, the Corydon his brother there, and put him to the question. ACT II. SCENE I.— The Old Jewry. A Hall in Kitely’s House. Enter Kitely, Cash, and Downright. Kit. Thomas, come hither. There lies a note within upon my desk ; Here take my key : it is no matter neither.— Where is the boy ? Cash. Within, sir, in the warehouse. Kit. Let him tell over straight that Spanish gold, And weigh it, with the pieces of eight. Do you See the delivery of those silver stuffs To Master Lucar : tell him, if he. will, He shall have the grograns, at the rate I told him, And I will meet him on the Exchange anon. Cash. Good, sir. [Exit. Kit. Do you see that fellow, brother Down¬ right ? Dow. Ay, what of him ? Kit. He is a jewel, brother. I took him of a child up at my door, And christen’d him, gave him mine own name, Thomas ; Since bred him at the Hospital; where proving A toward imp, I call’d him home, and taught him So much, as I have made him my cashier, And giv’n him, who had none, a surname, Cash : And find him in his place so full of faith, That I durst trust my life into his hands. Dow. So would not I in any bastard’s, brother, As it is like he is, although 1 knew Myself his father. But you said you had some¬ what To tell me, gentle brother ; what is’t, what is’t ? Kit. Faith, I am very loath to utter it, As fearing it may hurt your patience : But that I know your judgment is of strength, Against the nearness of affection- Dow. What need this circumstance ? pray you, be direct. Kit. I will not say how much I do ascribe Unto your friendship, nor in -what regard I hold your love ; but let my past behaviour, And usage of your sister, [both] confirm How well I have been affected to your- Dow. You are too tedious ; come to the matter, the matter. Kit. Then, without further ceremony, thus. My brother Wellbred, sir, I know not how, Of late is much declined in what he was, And greatly alter’d in his disposition. When he came first to lodge here in my house, Ne’er trust me if I were not proud of him : Methought he bare himself in such a fashion, So full of man, and sweetness in his carriage, And what was chief, it show’d not borrow’d in him, But all he did became him as his own, And seem’d as perfect, proper, and possest, As breath with life, or colour with the blood. But now, his course is so irregular. So loose, affected, and deprived, of grace, And he himself withal so far fallen off From that first place, as scarce no note remains, To tell men’s judgments where he lately stood. He’s grown a stranger to all due respect, Forgetful of his friends ; and not content To stale himself in all societies, He makes my house here common as a mart, A theatre, a public receptacle For giddy humour, and diseased riot; And here, as in a tavern or a stews, He and his wild associates spend their hours, In repetition of lascivious jests, Swear, leap, drink, dance, and revel night by night, Control my servants ; and, indeed, what not? Dow. ’Sdeins, I know not what I should say to him, in the whole world! He values me at a crack’d three-farthings, for aught I see. It will never out of the flesh that’s bred in the bone. I have told him enough, one would think, if that would serve; but counsel to him is as good as a shoulder of mut¬ ton to a sick horse. Well! he knows what to trust to, for George : let him spend, and spend, and domineer, till his heart ake; an he think to be relieved by me, when he is got into one o’ your city pounds, the counters., he has the wrong sow by the ear, i’ faith ; and daps his dish at the wrong man’s door : I’ll lay my hand on my halfpenny, ere I part with it to fetch him out, I’ll assure him. Kit. Nay, good brother, let it not trouble you thus. Dow. ’Sdeath! he mads me; I could eat my very spur-leathers for anger! But, why are von so tame ? why do not you speak to him, and tell him how he disquiets your house ? Kit. O, there are divers reasons to dissuade me. But, would yourself vouchsafe to travail in it, (Though but with plain and easy circumstance,) It would both come much better to his sense, And savour less of stomach, or of passion. You are his elder brother, and that title Both gives and warrants your authority, Which, by your presence seconded, must breed A kind of duty in him, and regard : Whereas, if I should intimate the least, It would but add contempt to his neglect, Heap worse on ill, ma-ke up a pile of hatred, That in the rearing would come tottering down, And in the ruin bury all our love. Nay, more than this, brother; if I should speak, He would be ready, from his heat of humour, And overflowing of the vapour in him, To blow the ears of his familiars, 3 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. act v With the false breath of telling what disgraces, And low disparagements, I had put upon him. Whilst they, sir, to relieve him in the fable, Make their loose comments upon every word, Gesture, or look, I use ; mock me all over, From my flat cap unto my shining shoes; And, out of their impetuous rioting phant’sies, Beget some slander that shall dwell with me. And what would that be, think you ? marry, this : They would give out, because my wife is fair, Myself but lately married, and my sister Here sojourning a virgin in my house, That I were jealous !—nay, as sure as death, That they would say : and, how that I had quar- My brother purposely, thereby to find [rell’d An apt pretext to banish them my house. Dow. Mass, perhaps so ; they’re like enough to do it. Kit. Brother, they would, believe-it; so should I, Like one of these penurious quack-salvers, But set the bills up to mine own disgrace, And try experiments upon myself; Lend scorn and envy opportunity To stab my reputation and good name- Enter Master Mathew struggling with Bosadill. Mat. I will speak to him. Bob. Speak to him ! away! By the foot of Pharaoh, you shall not! you shall not do him that grace.—The time of day to you, gentleman o’ the house. Is master Wellbred stirring ? Dow. How then ? what should he do ? Bob. Gentleman of the house, it is to you: is he within, sir ? Kit. He came not to his lodging to-night, sir, I assure you. Dow. Why, do you hear ? you ! Bob. The gentleman citizen hath satisfied me ; I’ll talk to no scavenger. [ Exeunt Bob and Mat. Dow. How! scavenger! stay, sir, stay! Kit. Nay, brother Downright. Dow. ’Heart! stand you away, an you love me. Kit. You shall not follow him now, I pray you, brother, goodfaith you shall not; I will overrule you. Dow. Ha! scavenger ! well, go to, I say little : but, by this good day (God forgive me I should swear), if I put it up so, say I am the rankest cow that ever pist. ’Sdeins, an I swallow this, I’ll ne’er draw my sword in the sight of Fleet-street again while I live; I’ll sit in a barn with madge- howlet, and catch mice first. Scavenger! heart! —and I’ll go near to fill that huge tumbrel-slop of yours with somewhat, an I have good luck : your Garagantua breech cannot carry it away so. Kit. Oh, do not fret yourself thus ; never think on’t. Dow. These are my brother’s consorts, these! these are his camerades, his walking mates! lie’s a gallant, a cavaliero too, right hangman cut! Let me not live, an I could not find in my heart to swinge the whole gang of ’em, one after an¬ other, and begin with him first. I am grieved it should be said he is my brother, and take these courses: Well, as he brews, so shall he drink, for George, again. Yet he shall hear on’t, and that tightly too, an I live, i’ faith. Kit. But, brother, let your reprehension, then, Run in an easy current, not o’er high Carried with rashness, or devouring choler ; But rather use the soft persuading way, Whose powers will work more gently, and compose The imperfect thoughts you labour to reclaim ; More winning, than enforcing the consent. Dow. Ay, ay, let me alone for that, I warrant you. Kit. How now ! [ Bell rings.'] Oh, the bell rings to breakfast. Brother, I pray you go in, and bear my wife company till I come ; I’ll but give order for some despatch of business to my servants. [Exit Downright. Enter Cob, with his tankard. Kit. What, Cob ! our maids will have you by the back, i’ faith, for coming so late this morning. Cob. Perhaps so, sir ; take heed somebody have not them by the belly, for walking so late in the evening. [Exit. Kit. Well; yet my troubled spirit’s somewhat Though not reposed in that security [eased. As I could wish : but I must be content, Howe’er I set a face on’t to the world. Would I had lost this finger at a venture, So Wellbred had ne’er lodged within my house. Why’t cannot be, wdiere there is such resort Of wanton gallants, and young revellers, That any woman should be honest long. Is’t like, that factious beauty will preserve The public weal of chastity unshaken, When such strong motives muster, and make head Against her single peace ? No, no : beware. When mutual appetite doth meet to treat, And spirits of one kind and quality Come once to parley in the pride of blood, It is no slow conspiracy that follows. Well, to be plain, if I but thought the time Had answer’d their affections, all the world Should not persuade me but I w T ere a cuckold. Marry, I hope they have not got that start; For opportunity hath balk’d them yet, And shall do still, while I have eyes and ears To attend the impositions of my heart. My presence shall be as an iron bar, ’Twixt the conspiring motions of desire : Yea, every look or glance mine eye ejects, Shall check occasion, as one doth his slave, When he forgets the limits of prescription. Enter Dame Kitjely and Bridget. Dame K. Sister Bridget, pray you fetch down the rose-water above in the closet. [Exit Bridget.] —Sweet-heart, will you come in to breakfast ? Kit. An she have overheard me now !— Dame K. I pray thee, good muss, w T e stay for yon. Kit. By heaven, I would not for a thousand angels. Dame K. What ail you, sweet-heart ? are you not well ? speak, good muss. Kit. Troth my head akes extremely on a sudden. Dame K. [patting her hand to his forehead .] O, the Lord! Kit. How now ! What ? Dame K. Alas, how it burns ! Muss, keep you warm; good truth it is this new disease, there’s a number are troubled withal. For love : s sake, sweet-heart, come in, out of the air. [swers ! Kit. How simple, and how subtle are her an- A new disease, and many troubled with it ? Why true; she heard me, all the world to nothing. Dame K. I pray thee, good sweet-heart, come in ; the air will do you harm, in troth. Kit. The air! she has me in the wind.—Sweet- SCENE II. EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. heart, I’ll come to you presently; ’twill away, I hope. Dame K. Pray Heaven it do. [Exit. Kit. A new disease ! I know not, new or old, But it may well be call’d poor mortals plague ; For, like a pestilence, it doth infect The houses of the brain. First it begins Solely to work upon the phantasy, Filling her seat with such pestiferous air, As soon corrupts the judgment; and from thence, Sends like contagion to the memory : Still each to other giving the infection, Which as a subtle vapour spreads itself Confusedly through every sensive part, Till not a thought or motion in the mind Be free from the black poison of suspect. Ah ! but what misery is it to know this ? Or, knowing it, to want the mind’s erection In such extremes? Well, I will once more strive, In spite of this black cloud, myself to be, And shake the fever off that thus shakes me. [Exit. -v- SCENE II.— Moorfields. Enter Brainworm disguised like a maimed Soldier. Brain. ’Slid, I cannot choose but laugh to see myself translated thus, from a poor creature to a creator; for now must I create an intolerable sort of lies, or my present profession loses the grace : and yet the lie, to a man of my coat, is as ominous a fruit as the fico. O, sir, it holds for good polity ever, to have that outwardly in vilest estimation, that inwardly is most dear to us : so much for my borrowed shape. Well, the troth is, my old master intends to follow my young master, dry-foot, over Moorfields to London, this morning ; now, I know¬ ing of this hunting-match, or rather conspiracy, and to insinuate with my young master (for so must we that are blue waiters, and men of hope and service do, or perhaps -we may wear motley at the year’s end, and who wears motley, you know), have got me afore in this disguise, determining here to lie in ambuscado, and intercept him in the mid-way. If I can but get his cloke, his purse, his hat, nay, any thing to cut him off, that is, to stay his journey, Veni, vidi, vici , I may say wdth captain Csesar, I am made for ever, i’ faith. Well, now must I practise to get the true garb of one of these lance-knights, my arm here, and my- Odso I my young master, and his cousin, master Stephen, as I am true counterfeit man of war, and no soldier! Enter E. Knowell and Stephen E. Knoiv. So, sir ! and how then, coz ? Step. ’Sfoot! I have lost my purse, I think. E. Know. How ! lost your purse ? where ? when had you it ? Step. I cannot tell; stay. Brai. ’Slid, I am afeard they will know me : would I could get by them ! E. Know. What, have you it ? Step. No; I think I was bewitched, I- [ Cries. E. Know. Nay, do not weep the loss ; hang it, let it go. Step. Oh, it’s here: No, an it had been lost, I had not cared, but for a jet riug mistress Mary sent me. J> E. Know. A jet ring ! O the poesie, the poesie? Step. Fine, i’ faith— Though Fancy sleep. My love is deep. Meaning, that though I did not fancy her, yet she loved me dearly. E. Know. Most excellent! Step. And then I sent her another, and my poesie was, The deeper the sweeter. I’ll he judg’d by St. Peter. E. Know. How, by St. Peter ? I do not con¬ ceive that. Step. Marry, St. Peter, to make up the metre. E. Know. Well, there the saint was your good patron, he help’d you at your need; thank him, thank him. Brai. I cannot take leave on ’em so ; I will venture, come what will. [ Comes forward.'] Gen¬ tlemen, please you change a few crowns for a very excellent good blade here ? I am a poor gentle¬ man, a soldier ; one that, in the better state of my fortunes, scorned so mean a refuge ; but now it is the humour of necessity to have it so. You seem to be gentlemen well affected to martial men, else I should rather die with silence, than live with shame : however, vouchsafe to remember it is my want speaks, not myself; this condition agrees not with my spirit- E. Know. Where hast thou served ? Brai. May it please you, sir, in all the late wars of Bohemia, Hungary, Dalmatia, Poland, where not, sir ? I have been a poor servitor by sea and land any time this fourteen years, and followed the fortunes of the best commanders in Christendom. I was twice shot at the taking of Aleppo, once at the relief of Vienna ; I have been at Marseilles, Naples, and the Adriatic gulf, a gentleman-slave in the gallies, thrice ; where I was most dangerously shot in the head, through both the thighs ; and yet, being thus maimed, I am void of maintenance, nothing left me but my scars, the noted marks of my resolution. Step. How will you sell this rapier, friend ? Brai. Generous sir, I refer it to your own judg¬ ment ; you are a gentleman, give me what you please. Step. True, I am a gentleman, I know that, friend ; but what though ! I pray you say, what would you ask ? Brai. I assure you, the blade may become the side or thigh of the best prince in Europe. E. Know. Ay, with a velvet scabbard, I think. Step. Nay, an’t be mine, it shall have a velvet scabbard, coz, that’s flat; I’d not wear it as it is, an you would give me an angel. Brai. At your worship’s pleasure, sir : nay, ’tis a most pure Toledo. Step. I had rather it were a Spaniard. But tell me, what shall I give you for it? An it had a silver hilt— E. Know. Come, come, you shall not buy it; hold, there’s a shilling, fellow ; take thy rapier. Step. Why, but I will buy it now, because you say so ; and there’s another shilling, fellow ; I scorn to be out-bidden. What, shall I walk with a cudgel, like Higginbottom, and may have a rapier for money! _ £. Know. You may buy one in the city. 10 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. act ii. Step. Tut! I’ll buy tills i’ the field, so I will; I have a mind to’t, because ’tis a field rapier. Tell me your lowest price. E. Know. You shall not buy it, I say. Step. By this money, but I will, though I give more than ’tis worth. E. Know. Come away, you are a fool. Step. Friend, I am a fool, that’s granted; but I’ll have it, for that word’s sake. Follow me for your money. Brai. At your service, sir. \_Exeunt. —»— SCENE III.— Another Part o/Moorfields. Enter Knowjsll. Know. I cannot lose the thought yet of this letter, Sent to my son; nor leave t’ admire the change Of manners, and the breeding of our youth Within the kingdom, since myself was one.— When I was young, he lived not in the stews Durst have conceived a scorn, and utter’d it, On a gray head ; age was authority Against a buffoon, and a man had then A certain reverence paid unto his years, That had none due unto his life : so much The sanctity of some prevail’d for others. But now we all are fallen ; youth, from their fear, And age, from that which bred it, good example. Nay, would ourselves were not the first, even parents, That did destroy the hopes in our own children; Or they not learn’d our vices in their cradles, And suck’d in our ill customs with their milk ; Ere all their teeth be born, or they can speak, We make their palates cunning; the first words We form their tongues with, are licentious jests : Can it call whore ? cry bastard ? O, then, kiss it! A witty child ! can’t swear? the father’s darling! Give it two plums. Nay, rather than’t shall learn No bawdy song, the mother herself will teach it!— But this is in the infancy, the days Of the long coat; when it puts on the breeches, It will put off all this : Ay, it is like, When it is gone into the bone already! No, no ; this dye goes deeper than the coat, Or shirt, or skin ; it stains into the liver, And heart, in some : and, rather than it should not, Note what we fathers do ! look how we live ! What mistresses we keep! at what expense, In our sons’ eyes ! where they may handle our gifts, Hear our lascivious courtships, see our dalliance, Taste of the same provoking meats with us, To ruin of our states ! Nay, when our own Portion is fled, to prey on their remainder, We call them into fellowship of vice ; Bait ’em with the young chamber-maid, to seal, And teach ’em all bad ways to buy affliction. This is one path : but there are millions more, In which we spoil our own, with leading them. Well, I thank heaven, I never yet was he That travell’d with my son, before sixteen, To shew him the Venetian courtezans ; Nor read the grammar of cheating I had made, To my sharp boy, at twelve ; repeating still The rule, Get money ; still, get money , boy ; No matter by what means; money will do More, boy , than my lord’s letter. Neither have I Drest snails or mushrooms curiously before him. Perfumed my sauces, and taught him to make them; Preceding still, with my gray gluttony, At all the ord’naries, and only fear’d His palate should degenerate, not his manners. These are the trade of fathers now ; however, My son, I hope, hath met within my threshold None of these household precedents, which are strong, And swift, to rape youth to their precipice. But let the house at home be ne’er so clean Swept, or kept sweet from filth, nay dust and cobwebs, If he will live abroad with his companions, In dung and leystals, it is worth a fear; Nor is the danger of conversing less Than all that I have mention’d of example. Enter Brainworji, disguised as before. Brai. My master! nay, faith, have at you; I am flesh’d now, I have sped so well, [asicfe.] Wor¬ shipful sir, I beseech you, respect the estate of a poor soldier ; I am ashamed of this base course of life,—God’s my comfort—but extremity provokes me to’t: what remedy ? Kno. I have not for you, now. Brai. By the faith I bear unto truth, gentleman, it is no ordinary custom in me, but only to preserve manhood. I protest to you, a man I have been: a man I may be, by your sweet bounty. Kno. Pray thee, good friend, be satisfied. Brai. Good sir, by that hand, you may do the part of a kind gentleman, in lending a poor soldier the price of two cans of beer, a matter of small value ; the king of heaven shall pay you, and I shall rest thankful: Sweet worship.- Kno. Nay, an you be so importunate—- Brai. Oh, tender sir ! need will have its course: I was not made to this vile use. Well, the edge of the enemy could not have abated me so much : it’s hard when a man hath served in his prince's cause, and be thus [weeps]. Honourable worship, let me derive a small piece of silver from you, it shall not be given in the course of time. By this good ground, I was fain to pawn my rapier last night for a poor supper ; I had suck’d the hilts long before, I am a pagan else : Sweet honour- Kno. Believe me, I am taken with some wonder, To think a fellow of thy outward presence. Should, in the frame and fashion of his mind, Be so degenerate, and sordid-base. Art thou a man ? and sham’st thou not to beg, To practise such a servile kind of life ? Why, were thy education ne’er so mean, Having thy limbs, a thousand fairer courses Offer themselves to thy election. Either the wars might still supply thy wants, Or service of some virtuous gentleman, Or honest labour ; nay, what can I name, But would become thee better than to beg : But men of thy condition feed on sloth, As doth the beetle on the dung she breeds in ; Not caring how the metal of your minds , Is eaten with the rust of idleness. i Now, afore me, whate’er he be, that should Relieve a person of thy quality, While thou insist’st in this loose desperate course, I w r ould esteem the sin not thine, but his. B rai. Faith, sir, I would gladly find some other course, if so- Kno. Ay, You’d gladly find it, but you will not seek it. SCENE 1 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 11 Brai. Alas, sir, where should a man seek? in the wars, there’s no ascent by desert in these days ; but-and for service, would it were as soon purchased, as wished for! the air’s my comfort.— [Sighs .']—I know what I would say. Kno. What’s thy name ? Brai. Please you, Fitz-Sword, sir. Kno. Fitz-Sword! Say that a man should entertain thee now, Wouldst thou be honest, humble, just, and true ? Brai. Sir, by the place and honour of a sol¬ dier— Kno. Nay, nay, I like not these affected oaths ; Speak plainly, man, what think’st thou of my words ? Brai. Nothing, sir, but wish my fortunes were as happy as my service should be honest. Kno. Well, follow me; I’ll prove thee, if thy deeds Will carry a proportion to thy words. [Exit. Brai. Yes, sir, straight; I’ll but garter my hose. Oh that my belly were hoop’d now, for I am ready to burst with laughing ! never was bottle or bagpipe fuller. ’Slid, was there ever seen a fox in years to betray himself thus! now shall I be possest of all his counsels ; and, by that conduit, my young mas¬ ter. Well, he is resolved to prove my honesty; faith, and I’m resolved to prove his patience : Oh, I shall abuse him intolerably. This small piece of service will bring him clean out of love with the soldier for ever. He will never come within the sign of it, the sight of a cassock, or a musket-rest again. He will hate the musters at Mile-end for it, to his dying day. It’s no matter, let the world think me a bad counterfeit, if I cannot give him the slip at an instant: why, this is better than to have staid his journey : well, I’ll follow him. Oh, how I long to be employed ! [Exit. ACT SCENE I.— The Old Je wry. A Room in the Windmill Tavern. Enter Master Mathew, Wellbred, and Bobadile. Mat. Yes, faith, sir, we were at your lodging to seek you too. Wei. Oh, I came not there to-night. Bob. Your brother delivered us as much. Wei. Who, my brother Downright? Bob. He. Mr. Wellbred, I know not in what kind you hold me ; but let me say to you this : as sure as honour, I esteem it so much out of the sun¬ shine of reputation, to throw the least beam of regal'd upon such a- Wel. Sir, I must hear no ill words of my brother. Bob. I protest to you, as I have a thing to be saved about me, I never saw any gentleman-like part- Wei. Good captain, faces about to seme other discourse. Bob. With your leave, sir, an there were no more men living upon the face of the earth, I should not fancy him, by St. George! Mat. Troth, nor I ; he is of a rustical cut, I know not how : he doth not carry himself like a gentleman of fashion. Wel. Oh, master Mathew, that’s a grace pecu¬ liar but to a few, quos cequus amavit Jupiter. Mat. I understand you, sir. Wei. No question, you do,—or you do not, sir. Enter E. Knowell and Master Stephen. Ned Knowell! by my soul, -welcome : how dost thou, sweet spirit, my genius? ’Slid, I shall love Apollo and the mad Thespian girls the better, while I live, for this, my dear Fury; now, I see there’s some love in thee. Sirrah, these be the two I writ to thee of: nay, what a drowsy humour is this now! why dost thou not speak ? E. Know. Oh, you are a fine gallant; you sent me a rare letter. Wei. Why, was’t not rare? E. Know. Yes, I’ll be sworn, I was ne’er guilty of reading the like; match it in all Plfny, or Sym'- ' machus’s epistles, and I’ll have my judgment burn’d in the ear for a rogue : make much of thy III. vein, for it is inimitable. But I marie what camel it was, that had the carriage of it; for, doubtless, he was no ordinary beast that brought it. Wei. Why? E. Know. Why, say’st thou! why, dost thou think that any reasonable creature, especially in the morning, the sober time of the day too, could have mistaken my father for me ? Wei. ’Slid, you jest, I hope. E. Know. Indeed, the best use we can turn it to, is to make a jest on’t, now : but I’ll assure you, my father had the full view of your flourishing style some hour before I saw it. Wei. What a dull slave was this ! but, sirrah, what said he to it, i’faith ? E. Know. Nay, I know not what he said ; but I have a shrewd guess what he thought. Wei. What, what ? E. Know. Marry, that thou art some strange, dissolute young fellow, and I—a grain or two bet¬ ter, for keeping thee company. Wei. Tut! that thought is like the moon in her last quarter, ’twill change shortly: but, sirrah, I pray thee be acquainted with my two hang-by’s here ; thou wilt take exceeding pleasure in them, if thou hear’st ’em once go ; my wind-instruments; I’ll wind them up-But what strange piece of silence is this, the sign of the Dumb Man ? E. Know. Oh, sir, a kinsman of mine, one that may make your music the fuller, an he please ; he has his humour, sir. Wei. Oh, what is’t, what is’t ? E. Know. Nay, I’ll neither do your judgment nor his folly that wrong, as to prepare your appre¬ hension : I’ll leave him to the mercy of your search ; if you can take him, so! Wei. Well, captain Bobadill, master Mathew, pray you know this gentleman here ; he is a friend of mine, and one that will deserve your affection. I know not your name, sir, \_io Stephen,] but I shall be glad of any occasion to render me more familiar to you. Step. My name is master Stephen, sir; *1 am this gentleman’s own cousin, sir ; his father is mine uncle, sir: I am somewhat melancholy, but you shall 12 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. ACT III command me, sir, in whatsoever is incident to a gentleman. Bob. Sir, I must tell you this, I am no general man; but for master Wellbred’s sake, (you may embrace it at what height of favour you please,) I do communicate with you, and conceive you to be a gentleman of some parts ; I love few words. E. Know. And I fewer, sir; I have scarce enough to thank you. Mat. But are you, indeed, sir, so given to it ? Step. Ay, truly, sir, I am mightily given to melancholy. Mat. Oh, it’s your only fine humour, sir; your true melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit, sir. I am melancholy myself, divers times, sir, and then do I no more but take pen and paper, presently, and overflow you half a score, or a dozen of son¬ nets at a sitting. E. Know. Sure he utters them then by the gross. [Aside. Step. Truly, sir, and I love such things out of measure. E. Know. I’faith, better than in measure, I’ll undertake. Mat. Why, I pray you, sir, make use of my study, it’s at your service. Step. I thank you, sir, I shall be bold I warrant you; have you a stool there to be melancholy upon ? Mat. That I have, sir, and some papers there of mine own doing, at idle hours, that you’ll say there’s some sparks of wit in ’em, when you see them. Wei. Would the sparks would kindle once, and become a fire amongst them ! I might see self-love burnt for her heresy. [Aside. Step. Cousin, is it well? am I melancholy enough ? E. Know. Oh ay, excellent. Wei. Captain Bobadill, why muse you so ? E. Know. He is melancholy too. Bob. Faith, sir, I was thinking of a most honourable piece of service, was performed to¬ morrow, being St. Mark’s day, shall be some ten years now T . E. Know. In what place, captain ? Bob. Why, at the beleaguering of Strigonium, where, in less than two hours, seven hundred resolute gentlemen, as any were in Europe, lost their lives upon the breach. I’ll tell you, gentle¬ men, it was the first, but the best leaguer that ever I beheld with these eyes, except the taking in of—what do you call it ? last year, by the Geno- ways ; but that, of all other, was the most fatal and dangerous exploit that ever I was ranged in, since I first bore arms before the face of the enemy, as I am a gentleman and a soldier! Step. So ! I had as lief as an angel I could swear as well as that gentleman. E. Know. Then, you were a servitor at both, it seems ; at Strigonium, and w r hat do you call’t ? Bob. O lord, sir ! By St. George, I was the first man that entered the breach ; and had I not effected it with resolution, I had been slain if I had had a million of lives. E. Know. ’Twas pity you had not ten ; a cat’s and your own, i’faith. But, was it possible ? Mat. Pray you mark this discourse, sir. Step. So I do. Bob. I assure you, upon my reputation, ’tis true, and yourself shall confess. E. Know. You must bring me to the rack, first. [Aside. Bob. Observe me judicially, sweet sir; they had planted me three demi-culverins just in the mouth of the breach ; now, sir, as we were to give on, their master-gunner (a man of no mean skill and mark, you must think), confronts me with his lin¬ stock, ready to give fire ; I, spying his intendment, discharged my petronel in his bosom, and with these single arms, my poor rapier, ran violently upon the Moors that guarded the ordnance, and put ’em pell-mell to the sword. Wei. To the sword ! To the rapier, captain. E. Know. Oh, it was a good figure observed, sir : but did you all this, captain, without hurting your blade ? Bob. Without any impeach o’ the earth : you shall perceive, sir. [ Shews his rapier.'} It is the most fortunate weapon that ever rid on poor gentle¬ man’s thigh. Shall I tell you, sir? You talk of Morglay, Excalibur, Durindana, or so; tut! I lend no credit to that is fabled of ’em: I know the virtue of mine own, and therefore I dare the boldlier maintain it. Step. I marie whether it be a Toledo or no. Bob. A most perfect Toledo, I assure you, sir. Step. I have a countryman of his here. Mat. Pray you, let’s see, sir; yes, faith, it is. Bob. This a Toledo ! Pish ! Step. Why do you pish, captain ? Bob. A Fleming, by heaven ! I’ll buy them fora guilder a-piece, an I would have a thousand of them. E. Knoiv. How say you, cousin ? I told you thus much. Wei. Where bought you it, master Stephen ? Step. Of a scurvy rogue soldier: a hundred of lice go with him ! He swore it was a Toledo. Bob. A poor provant rapier, no better. Mat. Mass, I think it be indeed, now I look on’t better. E. Know. Nay, the longer you look on’t, the worse. Put it up, put it up. Step. Well, I will put it up ; but by—I have forgot the captain’s oath, I thought to have sworn by it—an e’er I meet him- Wei. O, it is past help now, sir; you must have patience. Step. Whoreson, coney-catching rascal! I could eat the very hilts for anger. E. Know. A sign of good digestion ; you have an ostrich stomach, cousin. Step. A stomach! would I had him here, you should see an I had a stomach. Wei. It’s better as it is.—Come, gentlemen, shall we go ? Enter Braixworm, disguised as before. E. Know. A miracle, cousin; look here, look here ! Step. Oh—od’s lid! By your leave, do you know me, sir ? Brai. Ay, sir, I know you by sight. Step. You sold me a rapier, did you not? Brai. Yes, marry did I, sir. Step. You said it was a Toledo, ha ? Brai. True, I did so. Step. But it is none. Brai. No, sir, I confess it; it is none. Step. Do you confess it ? Gentlemen, bear witness, he has confest it:—Od’s will, an you had not confest it- * SC IS N E II EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 13 E. Know. Oh, cousin, forbear, forbear! Step. Nay, I have done, cousin. Wei. Why, you have done like a gentleman ; he has confest it, what would you more ? Step. Yet, by his leave, he is a rascal, under his favour, do you see. E. Know. Ay, by his leave, he is, and under favour : a pretty piece of civility ! Sirrah, how dost thou like him ? Wei. Oh it’s a most precious fool, make much on him : I can compare him to nothing more hap¬ pily than a drum ; for every one may play upon him. E. Knoiv. No, no, a child’s whistle were far the fitter. Brai. Sir, shall I intreat a word with you ? E. Know. With me, sir ? you have not another Toledo to sell, have you ? Brai. You are conceited, sir: Your name is Master Knowell, as I take it ? E. Know. You are in the right; you mean not to proceed in the catechism, do you ? Brai. No, sir ; I am none of that coat. E. Know. Of as bare a coat, though: well, say sir. Brai. [talcing E. Know, aside.] Faith, sir, I am but servant to the drum extraordinary, and indeed, this smoky varnish being washed off, and three or four patches removed, I appear your worship’s in reversion, after the decease of your good father, Brainworm. E. Know. Brainworm! ’Slight, what breath of a conjurer hath blown thee hither in this shape ? Brai. The breath of your letter, sir, this morn¬ ing ; the same that blew you to the Windmill, and your father after you. E. Know. My father! Brai. Nay, never start, ’tis true ; he has followed you over the fields by the foot, as you would do a hare in the snow. E. Know. Sirrah Wellbred, what shall we do, sirrah ? my father is come over after me. Wel. Thy father ! Where is he ? Brai. At justice Clement’s house, in Coleman- street, w T here he but stays my return ; and then— Wei. Who’s this? Brainworm! Brai. The same, sir. Wei. Why how, in the name of wit, com’st thou transmuted thus ? Brai. Faith, a device, a device; nay, for the love of reason, gentlemen, and avoiding the dan¬ ger, stand not here ; withdraw, and I’ll tell you all. Wei. But art thou sure he will stay thy return ? Brai. Do I live, sir ? what a question is that ! Wei. We’ll prorogue his expectation, then, a little : Brainworm, thou shalt go with us.—Come on, gentlemen.—Nay, I pray thee, sweet Ned, droop not; ’heart, an our wits be so wretchedly dull, that one old plodding brain can outstrip us all, would we were e’en prest to make porters of, and serve out the remnant of our days in Thames- street, or at Custom-house key, in a civil war against the carmen ! Brai. Amen, amen, amen, say I. [Exeunt. SCENE II.— The Old Jewry. Kitely’s Warehouse. Enter EsrKirt and Cash. Kit. What says he, Thomas ? did you speak with him ? Cash. He will expect you, sir, within this half hour. Kit. Has he the money ready, can you tell ? Cash. Yes, sir, the money was brought in last night. Kit. O, that is w r ell; fetch me my cloak, my cloak !— [Exit Cash. Stay, let me see, an hour to go and come; Ay, that will be the least; and then ’twill be An hour before I can dispatch with him, Or very near; well, I will say two hours. Two hours ! ha ! things never dreamt of yet, May be contrived, ay, and effected too, In two hours’ absence ; well, I will not go. Two hours ! No, fleering Opportunity, I will not give your subtilty that scope. Who will not judge him worthy to be robb’d, That sets his doors wide open to a thief, And shews the felon where his treasure lies ? Again, what earthy spirit but will attempt To taste the fruit of beauty’s golden tree, When leaden sleep seals up the dragon’s eyes ? I will not go. Business, go by for once. No, beauty, no ; you are of too good caract, To be left so, without a guard, or open. Your lustre, too, ’ll inflame at any distance, Draw courtship to you, as a jet doth straws ; Put motion in a stone, strike fire from ice, Nay, make a porter leap you with his burden. You must be then kept up, close, and well watch’d, For, give you opportunity, no quick-sand Devours or swallows swifter ! He that lends His wife, if she be fair, or time or place, Compels her to be false. I will not go ! The dangers are too many :—and then the dressing Is a most main attractive ! Our great heads. Within this city, never were in safety, [’em ; Since our wives wore these little caps: I’ll change I’ll change ’em straight in mine: mine shall no more Wear three-piled acorns, to make my horns ake. Nor will 1 go ; I am resolved for that. Re-enter Cash with a cloak. Carry in my cloak again. Yet stay. Yet do, too : I will defer going, on all occasions. Cash. Sir, Snare, your scrivener, will be there with the bonds. Kit. That’s true : fool on me! I had clean for- I must go. What’s a clock ? [got it; Cash. Exchange-time, sir. Kit. ’Heart, then will Wellbred presently be With one or other of his loose consorts, [here too, I am a knave, if I know what to say, What course to take, or which way to resolve. My brain, methinks, is like an hour-glass, Wherein my imaginations run like sands, Filling up time ; but then are turn’d and turn’d : So that I know not what to stay upon, And less, to put in act.—It shall be so. Nay, I dare build upon his secrecy, He knows not to deceive me.—Thomas ! Cash. Sir. Kit. Yet now I have bethought me too, I will Thomas, is Cob within ? [not.— Cash. I think he be, sir. [him. Kit. But he’ll prate too, there is no speech of No, there were no man on the earth to Thomas, If I durst trust him ; there is all the doubt. But should he have a chink in him, I were gone, i4 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. act iu Lost in my fame for ever, talk for th’ Exchange! The manner he hath stood with, till this present, Doth promise no such change : what should I fear then ? Well, come what will, I’ll tempt my fortune once. Thomas—you may deceive me, but, I hope— Your love to me is more- Cash. Sir, if a servant’s Duty, with faith, may be call’d love, you are More than in hope, you are possess’d of it. Kit. I thank you heartily, Thomas : give me your hand : With all my heart, good Thomas. I have, Thomas, A secret to impart unto you—but, When once you have it, I must seal your lips up ; So far I tell you, Thomas. Cash. Sir, for that— Kit. Nay, hear me out. Think I esteem you, Thomas, When I will let you in thus to my private. It is a thing sits nearer to my crest, Than thou art ’ware of, Thomas ; if thou should’st Reveal it, but- Cash. How, I reveal it ? Kit. Nay, I do not think thou would’st; but if thou should’st, ’Twere a great weakness. Cash. A great treachery : Give it no other name. Kit. Thou wilt not do’t, then ? Cash. Sir, if I do, mankind disclaim me ever ! Kit. He will not swear, he has some reservation, Some conceal’d purpose, and close meaning sure; Else, being urg’d so much, how should he choose But lend an oath to all this protestation ? He’s no precisian, that I’m certain of, Nor rigid Roman Catholic : he’ll play At fayles, and tick-tack ; I have heard him swear. What should I think of it ? urge him again, And by some other way ! I will do so. Well, Thomas, thou hast sworn not to disclose:— Yes, you did swear? Cash. Not yet, sir, but I will, Please you- Kit. No, Thomas, I dare take thy word, But, if thou wilt swear, do as thou think’st good ; I am resolv’d without it; at thy pleasure. Cash. By my soul’s safety then, sir, I protest, My tongue shall ne’er take knowledge of a word Deliver’d me in nature of your trust. Kit. It is too much; these ceremonies need not: I know thy faith to be as firm as rock. Thomas, come hither, near ; we cannot be Too private in this business. So it is, —Now he has sworn, I dare the safelier venture. [Aside. I have of late, by divers observations- But whether his oath can bind him, yea, or no, Being not taken lawfully ? ha ! say you ? I will ask council ere I do proceed :— [Aside. Thomas, it will be now too long to stay, I’ll spy some fitter time soon, or to-morrow. Cash. Sir, at your pleasure. Kit. I will think :—and, Thomas, I pray you search the books ’gainst my return, For the receipts ’twixt me and Traps. Cash. I will, sir. Kit. And hear you, if your mistress’s brother, Chance to bring hither any gentleman, [Wellbred, Ere I come back, let one straight bi'ing me word. Cash. Very well, sir. Kit. To the Exchange, do you hear ? Or here in Coleman-street, to justice Clement’s. Forget it not, nor be not out of the way. Cash. I will not, sir. Kit. I pray you have a care on’t. Or, whether he come or no, if any other, Stranger, or else ; fail not to send me word. Cash. I shall not, sir. Kit. Be it your special business Now to remember it. Cash. Sir, I warrant you. Kit. But, Thomas, this is not the secret, Thomas, I told you of. Cash. No, sir ; I do suppose it. Kit. Believe me, it is not. Cash. Sir, I do believe you. [Thomas, Kit. By heaven it is not, that’s enough: but, I would not you should utter it, do you see, To any creature living ; yet I care not. Well, I must hence. Thomas, conceive thus much; It was a trial of you, when I meant So deep a secret to you, I mean not this, But that I have to tell you; this is nothing, this. But, Thomas, keep this from my wife, I charge you, Lock’d up in silence, midnight, buried here.— No greater hell than to be slave to fear. [Exit. Cash. Lock'd up in silence , midnight , hurled here! . [head ? ha! Whence should this flood of passion, trow, take Best dream no longer of this running humour, For fear I sink ; the violence of the stream Already hath transported me so far, That I can feel no ground at all: but soft— Oh, ’tis our water-bearer: somewhat has crost him now. Enter Cob, hastily. Cob. Fasting-days ! what tell you me of fasting- days ? ’Slid, would they w T ere all on a light fire for me ! they say the whole world shall be con¬ sumed with fire one day, but w r ould I had these Ember-weeks and villanous Fridays burnt in the mean time, and then- Cash. Why, how now, Cob ? what moves thee to this choler, ha ? Cob. Collar, master Thomas ! I scorn your collar, I, sir ; I am none o’ your cart-horse, though I carry and draw water. An you offer to ride me with your collar or halter either, I may hap shew you a jade’s trick, sir. Cash. O, you’ll slip your head out of the collar? why, goodman Cob, you mistake me. Cob. Nay, I have my rheum, and I can be angry as well as another, sir. Cash. Thy rheum, Cob! thy humour, thy humour—thou mistak’st. Cob. Humour ! mack, I think it be so indeed ; what is that humour ? some rare thing, I warrant. Cash. Marry I’ll tell thee, Cob : it is a gentle¬ man-like monster, bred in the special gallantry of our time, by affectation; and fed by folly. Cob. How ! must it be fed ? Cash. Oh ay, humour is nothing if it be not fed: didst thou never hear that? it’s a common phrase, feed my humour. Cob. I’ll none on it: humour, avaunt! I know you not, be gone! let who will make hungry meals for your monstership, it shall not be I. scene ii. EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 15 Feed you, quotli be! ’slid, I have much ado to feed myself; especially on these lean rascally days too ; an’t had been any other day but a fast¬ ing-day—a plague on them all for me ! By this light, one might have done the commonwealth good service, and have drown’d them all in the flood, two or three hundred thousand years ago. O, I do stomach them hugely. I have a maw now, an ’twere for sir Bevis his horse, against them. Cash. I pray thee, good Cob, what makes thee so out of love with fasting-days? Cob. Marry, that which will make any man out of love with ’em, I think ; their bad conditions, an you will needs know. First, they are of a Flemish breed, I am sure on’t, for they raven up more butter than all the days of the week beside; next, they stink of fish and leek-porridge miserably; thirdly, they’ll keep a man devoutly hungry all day, and at night send him supperless to bed. Cash. Indeed, these are faults, Cob. Cob. Nay, an this were all, ’twere something ; but they are the only known enemies to my gene¬ ration. A fasting-day no sooner comes, but my lineage goes to wrack ; poor cobs ! they smoak for it, they are made martyrs o’ the gridiron, they melt in passion : and your maids too know this, and yet would have me turn Hannibal, and eat my own flesh and blood. My princely coz, [pulls out a red herring ] fear nothing; I have not the heart to devour you, an I might be made as rich as king Cophetua. O that I had room for my tears, I could weep salt-water enough now to pre¬ serve the lives of ten thousand thousand of my kin ! But I may curse none but these filthy almanacks; for an’t were not for them, these days of persecution would never be known. I’ll be bang’d an some fishmonger’s son do not make of ’em, and puts in more fasting-days than he should do, because he would utter his father’s dried stock-fish and stinking conger. Cash. ’Slight peace! tliou’lt be beaten like a stock-fish else : here’s master Mathew. Enter Wellbred, E. Knowelb, Brainworm, Mathew, Bobabill, and Stephen. Now must I look out for a messenger to my master. [Exit with Cob. Wei. Beshrew me, but it was an absolute good jest, and exceedingly well carried ! E. Know. Ay, and our ignorance maintain’d it as well, did it not ? Wei. Yes, faith; but was it possible thou shouldst not know him ? I forgive master Stephen, for he is stupidity itself. E. Know. ’Fore God, not I, an I might have been join’d patten with one of the seven wise masters for knowing him. He had so writhen himself into the habit of one of your poor infantry, your decayed, ruinous, worm-eaten gentlemen of the round ; such as have vowed to sit on the skirts of the city, let your provost and his half-dozen of halberdiers do what they can ; and have translated begging out of the old hackney-pace to a fine easy amble, and made it run as smooth off the tongue as a shove-groat shilling. Into the likeness of one of these reformados had he moulded himself so perfectly, observing every trick of their action, as, varying the accent, swearing with an emphasis, indeed, all with so special and exquisite a grace, that.hadst thou seen him,thouwouldst have sworn he might have been seijeant-major, if not lieu- tenant-coronel to the regiment. Wei. Why, Brainworm, who would have thought thou hadst been such an artificer ? E. Know. An artificer! an architect. Except a man had studied begging all his life time, and been a weaver of language from his infancy for the cloathing of it, I never saw his rival. Wei. Where got’st thou this coat, I marie ? Brai. Of a Hounsditch man, sir, one of the devil’s near kinsmen, a broker. Wei. That cannot be, if the proverb hold ; for A crafty knave needs no broker. Brai. True, sir ; but I did need a broker , ergo — Wei. Well put off:— no crafty knave , you’ll say. E. Know. Tut, he has more of these shifts. Brai. And yet, where I have one the broker has ten, sir. Re-enter Cash. Cash. Francis ! Martin! ne’er a one to be found now ? what a spite’s this ! Wei. How now, Thomas ? Is my brother Kitely within ? Cash. No, sir, my master went forth e’en now ; but master Downright is within_Cob 1 what, Cob ! Is he gone too ? Wei. Whither went your master, Thomas, canst thou tell ? Cash. I know not: to justice Clement’s, I think, sir—Cob ! [Exit. E. Know. Justice Clement! what’s he ? Wei. Why, dost thou not know him ? He is a city-magistrate, a justice here, an excellent good lawyer, and a great scholar; but the only mad, merry old fellow in Europe. I shewed him you the other day. E. Know. Oh, is that he? I remember him now. Good faith, and he is a very strange pre¬ sence, methinks ; it shews as if he stood out of the rank from other men: I have heard many of his jests in the University. They say he will commit a man for taking the wall of his horse. Wei. Ay, or wearing his cloak on one shoulder, or serving of God ; any thing, indeed, if it come in the way of his humour. Re-enter Cash. Cash. Gasper ! Martin ! Cob ! ’Heart, where should they be, trow ? Bob. Master Kitely’s man, pray thee vouchsafe us the lighting of this match. Cash. Fire on your match ! no time but now to vouchsafe ?—Francis ! Cob ! [Exit. Bob. Body o’ me ! here’s the remainder of seven pound since yesterday was seven-night. ’Tis your right Trinidado : did you never take any, master Stephen ? Step. No, truly, sir; but I’ll learn to take it now, since you commend it so. Bob. Sir, believe me, upon my relation for what I tell you, the world shall not reprove. I have been in the Indies, where this herb grows, where neither myself, nor a dozen gentlemen more of my knowledge, have received the taste of any other nutriment in the world, for the space of one-and-twenty weeks, but the fume of this simple only: therefore, it cannot be, but ’tis most divine. Further, take it in the nature, in the true kind ; so, it makes an antidote, that, had you taken the most deadly poisonous plant in all Italy, it should 1G EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. ACl III expel it, and clarify you, with as much ease as I speak. And for your green wound,—your Bal- samum and your St. John’s wort, are all mere gulleries and trash to it, especially your Trinidado: your Nicotian is good too. I could say what I know of the virtue of it, for the expulsion of rheums, raw humours, crudities, obstructions, with a thousand of this kind ; but I profess myself no quacksalver. Only thus much ; by Hercules, I do hold it, and will affirm it before any prince in Europe, to be the most sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of man. E. Know. This speech would have done decently in a tobacco-trader’s mouth. Re-enter Cash with Cob. Cash . At justice Clement’s he is, in the middle of Coleman-street. Cob. Oh, oh ! Bob. Where’s the match I gave thee, master Kitely’s man ? Cash. Would his match and he, and pipe and all, were at Sancto Domingo! I had forgot it. [Exit. Cob. Ods me, I marie what pleasure or felicity they have in taking this roguish tobacco. It’s good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers : there were four died out of one house last week with taking of it, and two more the bell went for yesternight; one of them, they say, will never scape it: he voided a bushel of soot yesterday, upward and downward. By the stocks, an there were no wiser men than I, I’d have it present whipping, man or ■woman, that should but deal with a tobacco-pipe : why, it will stifle them all in the end, as many as use it; it’s little better than ratsbane or rosaker. {Bobadill beats him . All. Oh, good captain, hold, hold ! Bob. You base cullion, you ! Re-enter Cash Cash . Sir, here’s your match.—Come, thou must needs be talking too, thou’rt well enough served. Cob. Nay, he will not meddle with his match, I warrant you : well, it shall be a dear beating, an I live. Bob. Do you prate, do you murmur ? E. Know. Nay, good captain, will you regard the humour of a fool? Away, knave. Wei. Thomas, get him away. [Exit Cash with Cob. Bob. A whoreson filthy slave, a dung-worm, an excrement 1 Body o’ Caesar, but that I scorn to let forth so mean a spirit, I’d have stabb’d him to the earth. Wei. Marry, the law forbid, sir ! Bob. By Pharaoh’s foot, I would have done it. Step. Oh, he swears most admirably! By Pha¬ raoh’s foot! Body o’ Caesar !—I shall never do it, sure. Upon mine honour, and by St. George!— No, I have not the right grace. Mat. Master Stephen, will you any? By this air, the most divine tobacco that ever I drunk. Step. None, I thank you, sir. O, this gentle¬ man does it rarely too : but nothing like the other. By this air! [ practises at the post .] As I a-m a gentleman! By- [ Exeunt Bob. and Mat. Brai. [pointing to Master Stephen.] Master, glance, glance ! master Wellbred L Step. As I have somewhat to be saved, I pro¬ test— Wei. You are a fool; it needs no affidavit. E. Know. Cousin, will you any tobacco? Step. I, sir ! Upon my reputation- E. Know. How now, cousin ! Step. I protest, as I am a gentleman, but no soldier, indeed- Wei. No, master Stephen! As I remember, your name is entered in the artillery-garden. Step. Ay, sir, that’s true. Cousin, may I swear, as I am a soldier, by that ? E. Know. O yes, that you may; it is all you have for your money. Step. Then, as I am a gentleman, and a soldier, it is “ divine tobacco !” Wei. But soft, where’s master Mathew? Gone? Brai. No, sir ; they went in here. Wei. O let’s follow them : master Mathew is gone to salute his mistress in verse; we shall have the happiness to hear some of his poetry now ; he never comes unfurnished.—Brainworm ! Step. Brainworm ! Where ? Is this Brain- worm ? E. Know. Ay, cousin ; no words of it, upon your gentility. Step. Not I, body of me! By this air! St. George ! and the foot of Pharaoh ! Wei. Rare! Your cousin’s discourse is simply drawn out with oaths. E. Know. ’Tis larded with them ; a kind of French dressing, if you love it. [Exeunt. .—♦— SCENE III— Coleman-street. * A Room in Justice Clement’s House. Enter Ivitely and Cob. Kit. Ha ! how many are there, say’st thou ? Cob. Marry, sir, your brother, master Well- bred— Kit. Tut, beside him : what strangers are there, man ? Cob. Strangers? let me see, one, two; mass, 1 know not well, there are so many. Kit. Howl so many ? Cob. Ay, there’s some five or six of them at the most. Kit. A swarm, a swarm ! Spite of the devil, how they sting my head^ With forked stings, thus wide and large! But, Cob. How long hast thou been coming hither, Cob ? Cob. A little while, sir. Kit. Didst thou come running ? Cob. No, sir. Kit. Nay, then I am familiar with thy haste. Bane to my fortunes ! what meant I to marry ? I, that before was rank’d in such content, My mind at rest too, in so soft a peace, Being free master of mine own free thoughts, And now become a slave ? What! never sigh ; Be of good cheer, man ; for thou art a cuckold : ’Tis done, ’tis done! Nay, when such flowing store, Plenty itself, falls into my wife’s lap, The cornucopise will be mine, I know_ But, Cob, What entertainment had they ? I am sure [ba? My sister and my wife would bid them welcome : Cob. Like enough, sir; yet I heard not a word of it. EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 17 SCENE III. Kit. No; Their lips were seal’d with kisses, and the voice, Drown’d in a flood of joy at their arrival, Had lost her motion, state and faculty.— Cob, Which of them was it that first kiss’d my wife, My sister, I should say ?—My wife, alas ! I fear not her : ha ! who was it say’st thou ? [of it ? Cob. By my troth, sir, will you have the truth Kit. Oh, ay, good Cob, I pray thee heartily. Cob. Then I am a vagabond, and fitter for Bridewell than your worship’s company, if I saw any body to be kiss’d, unless they would have kiss’d the post in the middle of the warehouse ; for there I left them all at their tobacco, with a pox! Kit. How ! were they not gone in then ere thou Cob. O no, sir. [cam’st ? Kit. Spite of the devil! what do I stay here then? Cob, follow me. [Exit. Cob. Nay, soft and fair; I have eggs on the spit; I cannot go yet, sir. Now am I, for some five and fifty reasons, hammering, hammering revenge : oh for three or four gallons of vinegar, to sharpen my wits! Revenge, vinegar revenge, vinegar and mus¬ tard revenge! Nay, an he had not lien in my house, ’twould never have grieved me ; but being my guest, one that, I’ll be sworn, my wife has lent him her smock off" her back, while his own shirt has been at washing ; pawned her neck-ker- chers for clean bands for him ; sold almost all my platters, to buy him tobacco ; and he to turn mon¬ ster of ingratitude, and strike his lawful host! Well, I hope to raise up an host of fury for’t: here comes justice Clement. Enter Justice Clement, Knowell, and Formal. Clem. What’s master Kitely gone, Roger ? Form. Ay, sir. Clem. ’Heart o’me! what made him leave us so abruptly ?—How now, sirrah! what make you here ? what would you have, ha? Cob. An’t please your worship, I am a poor neighbour of your worship’s- Clem. A poor neighbour of mine ! Why, speak, poor neighbour. Cob. I dwell, sir, at the sign of the Water-tank¬ ard, hard by the Green Lattice : I have paid scot and lot there any time this eighteen years. Clem. To the Green Lattice ? Cob. No, sir, to the parish: Marry, I have sel¬ dom scaped scot-free at the Lattice. Clem. O, well; what business has my poor neighbour with me ? Cob. An’t like your worship, I am come to crave the peace of your worship. Clem. Of me, knave ! Peace of me, knave ! Did I ever hurt thee, or threaten thee, or wrong thee, ha ? Cob. No, sir; but your worship’s warrant for one that has wrong’d me, sir : his arms are at too much liberty, I would fain have them bound to a treaty of peace, an my credit could compass it with your worship. Clem. Thou goest far enough about for’t, I am sure. Kno. Why, dost thou go in danger of thy life for him, friend ? Cob. No, sir ; but I go in danger of my death every hour, by his means ; an I die within a twelve- month and a day, I may swear by the law of the land that he killed me. Clem. How, how, knave, swear he killed thee, and by the law ? What pretence, what colour hast thou for that ? Cob. Marry, an’t please your worship, both black and blue ; colour enough, I warrant you. I have it here to shew your worship. Clem. What is he that gave you this, sirrah t Cob. A gentleman and a soldier, he says, he is, of the city here. Clem. A soldier of the city! What call you him ? Cob. Captain Bobadill. Clem. Bobadill! and why did he bob and beat you, sirrah ? How began the quarrel betwixt you, ha? speak truly, knave, I advise you. Cob. Marry, indeed, an’t please your worship, only because I spake against their vagrant tobacco, as I came by them when they were taking on’t; for nothing else. Clem. Ha! you speak against tobacco? For¬ mal, his name. Form. What’s your name, sirrah? Cob. Oliver, sir, Oliver Cob, sir. Clem. Tell Oliver Cob he shall go to the jail, Formal. Form. Oliver Cob, my master, justice Clement, says you shall go to the jail. Cob. O, I beseech your worship, for God’s sake, dear master justice ! Clem. ’Sprecious! an such drunkards and tank¬ ards as you are, come to dispute of tobacco once, I have done : Away with him ! Cob. O, good master justice ! Sweet old gentle¬ man! [To Knowell. Know. “ Sweet Oliver,” would I could do thee any good !—justice Clement, let me intreatyou, sir. Clem. What! a thread-bare rascal, a beggar, a slave that never drunk out of better than piss-pot metal in his life ! and he to deprave and abuse the virtue of an herb so generally received in the courts of princes, the chambers of nobles, the bowers of sweet ladies, the cabins of soldiers !— Roger, away with him! Od’s precious-1 say, go to. Cob. Dear master justice, let me be beaten again, I have deserved it; but not the prison, I beseech you. Know. Alas, poor Oliver ! Clem. Roger, make him a warrant:—he shall not go, I but fear the knave. Form. Do not stink, sweet Oliver, you shall not go ; my master will give you a warrant. Cob. O, the lord maintain his worship, his worthy worship ! Clem. Away, dispatch him. [Exeunt Form, and Cob.] How now, master Knowell, in dumps, in dumps ! Come, this becomes not. Knoiv. Sir, would I could not feel my cares. Clem. Your cares are nothing : they are like my cap, soon put on, and as soon put off. What ! your son is old enough to govern himself; let him run his course, it’s the only way to make him a staid man. If he were an unthrift, a ruffian, a drunkard, or a licentious liver, then you had reason; you had reason to take care: but, being none of these, mirth’s my witness, an I had twice so many cares as you have, I’d drown them all in a cup of sack. Come, come, let’s try it: I muse your parcel of a soldier returns not all this while. r lExeunt. 18 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. a.t iv. ACT IV. SCENE I. — A Room in Kitely’s House. Enter Downright and Dame Kitely. Down. Well, sister, I tell you true ; and you’ll find it so in the end. Dame K. Alas, brother, what would you have me to do ? I cannot help it; you see my brother brings them in here ; they are his friends. D own. His friends ! his fiends. ’Slud ! they do nothing hut haunt him up and down like a sort of unlucky spirits, and tempt him to all manner of villainy that can be thought of. Well, by this light, a little thing would make me play the devil with some of them : an ’twere not more for your hus¬ band’s sake than any thing else, I’d make the house too hot for the best on ’em ; they should say, and swear, hell were broken loose, ere they went hence. But, by God’s will, ’tis nobody’s fault but yours; for an you had done as you might have done, they should have been parboiled, and baked too, every mother’s son, ere they should have come in, e’er a one of them. Dame K. God’s my life! did you ever hear the like? what a strange man is this! Could I keep out all them, think you ? I should put myself against half a dozen men, should I ? Good faith, you’d mad the patient’st body in the world, to hear you talk so, without any sense or reason. Enter Mistress Bridget, Master Mathew, and Bobadill ; followed, at a distance, by Wellbred, E. Knowell, Stephen, and Bratnvvorm. Brid. Servant, in troth you are too prodigal Of your wit’s treasure, thus to pour it forth Upon so mean a subject as my w’orth. Mat. You say well, mistress, and I mean as well. Down. Hoy-day, here is stuff! Well. O, now stand close ; pray Heaven, she can get him to read ! he should do it of his own natu¬ ral impudency. Brid. Servant, what is this same, I pray you ? Mat. Marry, an elegy, an elegy, an odd toy— Down. To mock an ape withal! O, I could sew up his mouth, now. Dame K. Sister, I pray you let’s hear it. Down. Are you rhime-given too ? Mat. Mistress, I’ll read it if you please. Brid. Pray you do, servant. Down. O, here’s no foppery! Death! I can endure the stocks better. lExit. E. Know. What ails thy brother ? can he not hold his water at reading of a ballad ? Wei. O, no; a rhyme to him is worse than cheese, or a bag-pipe; but mark ; you lose the protestation. Mat. Faith, I did it in a humour; 1 know not how it is ; but please you come near, sir. This gentleman has judgment, he knows how to censure of a-pray you, sir, you can judge. Step. Not I, sir; upon my reputation, and by the foot of Pharaoh! Wei. O, chide your cousin for swearing. E. Knoiv. Not I, so long as he does not for¬ swear himself. Bob. Master Mathew, you abuse the expectation of your dear mistress, and her fair sister: fie! while ou live avoid this prolixity. Mat. I shall, sir; well, incipere dulce. E. Know. How ! insipere dulce ! a sweet thing to be a fool, indeed! Wei. What, do you take incipere in that sense ? E. Knoiv. You do not, you! This was your villainy, to gull him with a motte. Wei. O, the benchers’ phrase: pauca verba, pauca verba ! Mat. Rare creature, let me speak without offence , Would God my rude ivords had the influence To rule thy thoughts, as thy fair looks do mine , Then shouldst thou be his prisoner, who is thine. E. Know. This is in Hero and Leander. Wel. O, ay : peace, w T e shall have more of this. Mat. Be not unkind and fair: misshapen stuff Is of behaviour boisterous and rough. Wei. How like you that, sir ? [Master Stephen shakes his head. E. Know. ’Slight, he shakes his head like a bottle, to feel an there be any brain in it. Mat. But observe the catastrophe, now : And I in duty will exceed all other, As you in beauty do excel Love's mother. E. Know. Well, I’ll have him free of the wit- brokers, for he utters nothing but stolen remnants. Wei. O, forgive it him. E. Knoiv. A filching rogue, hang him !—and from the dead ! it’s worse than sacrilege. Wellbred, E. Knowell, and Master Stephen, come forward. Wei. Sister, what have you here, verses ? pray you let’s see: who made these verses ? they are excellent good. Mat. O, Master Wellbred, ’tis your disposition to say so, sir. They were good in the morning; I made them ex tempore this morning. Wei. How! ex tempore ? Mat. Ay, would I might be hanged else; ask Captain Bobadill: he saw me write them, at the -pox on it !—the Star, yonder. Brai. Can he find in his heart to curse the stars so ? E. Knoiv. Faith, his are even with him; they have curst him enough already. Step. Cousin, how do you like this gentleman’s verses ? E. Know. O, admirable ! the best that ever I heard, coz. Step. Body o’ Caesar, they are admirable ! the best that I ever heard, as I am a soldier! Re-enter Downright. Down. I am vext, I can hold ne’er a bone of me still: Heart, I think they mean to build and breed here. Wei. Sister, you have a simple servant here, that crowns your beauty with such encomiums and de¬ vices ; you may see what it is to be the mistress of a wit, that can make your perfections so transpa¬ rent, that every blear eye may look through them, and see him drowned over head and ears in the deep well of desire: Sister Kitely, I marvel you get you not a servant that can rhyme, and do tricks too. Down. O, monster ! impudence itself! tricks! Dame K. Tricks, brother! what tricks* scene ii. EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 19 Brid. Nay, speak, I pray you, what tricks ? Dame K. Ay, never spare any body here ; but say, what tricks. Brid. Passion of my heart, do tricks ! Wei. ’Slight, here’s a trick vied and revied ! Why, you monkies, you, what a eater-wauling do you keep ! has he not given you rhimes and verses and tricks ? Down. O, the fiend! Wei. Nay, you lamp of virginity, that take it in snuff so, come, and cherish this tame poetical fury in your servant; you’ll be begg’d else shortly for a concealment : go to, reward his muse. You can¬ not give him less than a shilling in conscience, for the book he had it out of cost him a teston at least. How now, gallants ! Master Mathew ! Captain ! what, all sons of silence, no spirit? Down. Come, you might practise your ruffian tricks somewhere else, and not here, I wuss; this is no tavern nor drinking-school, to vent your ex¬ ploits in. Wei. How now ; whose cow has calved? Down. Marry, that has mine, sir. Nay, boy, never look askance at me for the matter ; I’ll tell you of it, I, sir ; you and your companions mend yourselves when I have done. Wei. My companions ! Down. Yes, sir, your companions, so I say ; I am not afraid of you, nor them neither ; your hang- byes here. You must have your poets and your pollings, your soldados and foolados to follow you up and down the city; and here they must come to domineer and swagger. Sirrah, you bal¬ lad-singer, and slops your fellow there, get you out, get you home; or by this steel, I’ll cut off your ears, and that presently. Wei. ’Slight, stay, let’s see what he dare do ; cut off his ears ! cut a whetstone. You are an ass, do you see; touch any man here, and by this hand I’ll run my rapier to the hilts in you. Down. Yea, that would I fain see, boy. {They all draw. Dame K. O Jesu ! murder! Thomas ! Gasper! Brid. Help, help ! Thomas ! Enter Cash and some of the house to part them. E. Know. Gentlemen, forbear, I pray you. . Bob. Well, sirrah, you Ilolofernes ; by my hand, I will pink your flesh full of holes with my rapier for this ; 1 will, by this good heaven ! nay, let him come, let him come, gentlemen ; by the body of St. George, I’ll not kill him. {Offer to fight again, and are parted. Cash. Hold, hold, good gentlemen. Down. You whoreson, bragging coystril! Enter Kitely. Kit. Why, how now ! what’s the matter, what's the stir here ? Whence springs the quarrel ? Thomas ! where is he ? Put up your weapons, and put off this rage : My wife and sister, they are cause of this. What, Thomas ! where is this knave ? Cash. Here, sir. Wei. Come, let’s go : this is one of my brother’s ancient humours, this. Step. I am glad nobody was hurt by his ancient humour. [Exeunt Wel.. Step., E. Kno., Bob, and Brai. Kit. Why, how now, brother, who enforced this brawl ? Down. A sort of lewd rake-hells, that care nei¬ ther for God nor the devil. And they must come here to read ballads, and roguery, and trash ! I’ll mar the knot of ’em ere I sleep, perhaps ; espe¬ cially Bob there, he that’s all manner of shapes; and songs and sonnets, his fellow. Brid. Brother, indeed you are too violent, Too sudden in your humour : and you know My brother Wellbred's temper will not bear Any reproof, chiefly in such a presence, Where every slight disgrace he should receive Might wound him in opinion and respect. Down. Respect! what talk you of respect among such, as have no spark of manhood, nor good man¬ ners ? ’Sdeins, I am ashamed to hear you! respect! [Exit, Brid. Yes, there was one a civil gentleman, And very worthily demean’d himself. Kit. O, that was some love of yours, sister. Brid. A love of mine ! I would it were no worse, brother; You’d pay my portion sooner than you think for. Dame K. Indeed he seem’d to be a gentleman of an exceeding fair disposition, and of very ex¬ cellent good parts. {Exeunt Dame Eatery and Bridget. Kit. Her love, by heaven ! my wife’s minion. Fair disposition ! excellent good parts ! Death ! these phrases are intolerable. Good parts ! how should she know his parts ? His parts ! Well, well, well, well, well, well; It is too plain, too clear : Thomas, come hither. What, are they gone ? Cash. Ay, sir, they went in. My mistress, and your sister- Kit. Are any of the gallants within ? Cash. No, sir, they are all gone. Kit. Art thou sure of it ? Cash. I can assure you, sir. Kit. What gentleman was that they praised so, Thomas ? Cash. One, they call him Master Knowell, a handsome young gentleman, sir. Kit. Ay, I thought so ; my mind gave me as much : I’ll die, but they have hid him in the house, Somewhere; I’ll go and search; go with me, Thomas: Be true to me, and thou slialt find me a master. {Exeunt. —♦— SCENE II. — The Lane before Cob’s House. Enter Cob. Cob. [ knocks at the door.'] What, Tib! Tib, I say ! Tib. [ivithin.] How now, what cuckold is that knocks so hard ? Enter Tib. O, husband ! is it you ? What’s the news ? Cob. Nay, you have stunn’d me, i’faith ; you have given me a knock o’ the forehead will stick by me. Cuckold! ’Slid, cuckold ! Tib. Away, you fool! did I know it was you that knock’d ? Come, come, you may call me as bad when you list. Cob. May I ? Tib, you are a whore. Tib. You lie in your throat, husband. C 2 20 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. act rv Cob. How, the lie! and in my throat too ! do you long to be stabb’d, ha ? Tib. Why, you are no soldier, I hope. Cob. O, must you be stabb'd by a soldier? Mass, that’s true ! when was Bobadill here, your captain ? that rogue, that foist, that fencing Burgullion ? I’ll tickle him, i’faith. Tib. Why, what’s the matter, trow ? Cob. O, he has basted me rarely, sumptuously! but I have it here in black and white, [ pulls out the warrant,'] for his black and blue, shall pay him. O, the justice, the honestest old brave Trojan in London ; I do honour the very flea of his dog. A plague on him, though, he put me once in a vil- lanous filthy fear; marry, it vanished away like the smoke of tobacco ; but I was smoked soundly first. I thank the devil, and his good angel, my guest. Well, wife, or Tib, which you will, get you in, and lock the door; I charge you let nobody in to you, wife; nobody in to you; those are my words: not Captain Bob himself, nor the fiend in his like¬ ness. You are a woman, you have flesh and blood enough in you to be tempted ; therefore keep the door shut upon all comers. Tib. I warrant you, there shall nobody enter here without my consent. Cob. Nor with your consent, sweet Tib ; and so I leave you. Tib. I t’s more than you know, whether you leave me so. Cob. How ? Tib. Why, siveet. Cob. Tut, sweet or sour, thou art a flower. Keep close thy door, I ask no more. [ Exeunt. SCENE III.— A Room in the Windmill Tavern. Enter E. Knowell,Wellbred, Stephen, and Brainworm, disguised as before. E. Know. Well, Brainworm, perform this busi¬ ness happily, and thou makest a purchase of my love for ever. Wei. V faith, now let thy spirits use their best faculties: but, at any hand, remember the message to my brother ; for there’s no other means to start him. Brai. I warrant you, sir; fear nothing; I have a nimble soul has waked all forces of my phant’sie by this time, and put them in true motion. What you have possest me withal, I’ll discharge it amply, sir ; make it no question. [ Exit. Wei. Forth, and prosper, Brainworm. Faith, Ned, how dost thou approve of my abilities in this device ? E. Know. Troth, well, howsoever ; but it will come excellent if it take. Wei. Take, man ! why it cannot choose but take, if the circumstances miscarry not: but, tell me ingenuously, dost thou affect my sister Bridget as thou pretend’st ? E. Knoiv. Friend, am I worth belief? Wei. Come, do not protest. In faith, she is a maid of good ornament, and much modesty ; and, except I conceived very worthily of her, thou should’st not have her. E. Know. Nay, that I am afraid will be a ques¬ tion yet, whether I shall have her, or no. Wei. ’Slid, thou shalt have her; by this light thou shalt. E. Know. Nay, do not swear. Wei. By this hand thou shalt have her ; I’ll go fetch her presently. ’Point but where to meet, and as I am an honest man I'll bring her. E. Know. Hold, hold, be temperate. Wei. Why, by-what shall I swear by? thou shalt have her, as I am- E. Know. Praythee, be at peace, I am satisfied; and do believe thou wilt omit no offered occasion to make my desires complete. Wei. Thou shalt see, and know, I will not. lExeunt. — <> — SCENE IV.— The Old Jewry. Enter Formal and Knowell.*. Form. Was your man a soldier, sir ? Know. Ay, a knave, I took him begging o’ the way, this morning, As I came over Moorfields. Enter Brainworm, disguised as before. O, here he is !—you’ve made fair speed, believe me Where, in the name of sloth, could you be thus ? Brai. Marry, peace be my comfort, where I thought I should have had little comfort of your worship’s service. Know. How so ? Brai. O, sir, your coming to the city, your entertainment of me, and your sending me to watch -indeed all the circumstances either of your charge, or my employment, are as open to your son, as to yourself. Know. How should that be, unless that villain, Brainworm, Have told him of the letter, and discover’d All that I strictly charg’d him to conceal ? ’Tis so. Brai. I am partly o’ the faith ’tis so, indeed. Know. But, how should he know thee to be my man ? Brai. Nay, sir, I cannot tell; unless it be by the black art. Is not your son a scholar, sir ? Know. Yes, but I hope his soul is not allied Unto such hellish practice : if it were, I had just cause to weep my part in him, And curse the time of his creation. But, where didst thou find them, Fitz-Sword? Brai. You should rather ask where they found me, sir ; for I’ll be sworn, I was going along in the street, thinking nothing, when, of a sudden, a voice calls, Mr. Knowell's man ! another cries, Soldier ! and thus half a dozen of them, till they had call’d me within a house, where I no sooner came, but they seem’d men, and out flew all their rapiers at my bosom, with some three or four score oaths to ac¬ company them ; and all to tell me, I was but a dead man, if I did not confess where you were, and how I was employed, and about what; which when they could not get out of me, (as, I protest, they must have dissected, and made an anatomy of me first, and so I told them,) they lock’d me up into a room in the top of a high house, whence by great miracle (having a light heart) I slid down by a bottom of packthread into the street, and so ’scaped. But, sir, thus much I can assure you, for I heard it while I was lock’d up, there were a great many rich merchants and brave citizens’ wives with them at a feast; and your son, master Edward, withdrew with one of them, and has ’pointed to meet her anon at one Cob’s house, a water-bearer that dwells by the scene v. EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 21 Wall. Now, there your worship shall be sure to take him, for there he preys, and fail he will not. Know. Nor will I fail to break his match, I doubt not. Go thou along with justice Clement’s man, And stay there for me. At one Cob’s house, say’st thou ? Brai. Ay, sir, there you shall have him. [Exit Know.] Yes—invisible I Much wench, or much son! ’Slight, when he has staid there three or four hours, travailling with the expectation of wonders, and at length be deliver’d of air! O the sport that I should then take to look on him, if I durst! But now I mean to appear no more afore him in this shape : I have another trick to act yet. O that I w T ere so happy as to light on a nupson now of this justice’s novice !—Sir, I make you stay somewhat long. Form. Not a whit, sir. Pray you what do you mean, sir ? Brai. I was putting up some papers. Form. You have been lately in the wars, sir, it seems. Brai . Marry have I, sir, to my loss, and expense of all, almost. Form. Troth, sir, I would be glad to bestow a pottle of wine on you, if it please you to accept it— Brai. O, sir- Form. But to hear the manner of your services, and your devices in the wars; they say they be very strange, and not like those a man reads in the Roman histories, or sees at Mile-end. Brai. No, I assure you, sir; why at any time when it please you, I shall be ready to discourse to you all I know;—and more too somewhat. [ Aside. Form. No better time than now, sir ; w r e’ll go to the Windmill: there we shall have a cup of neat grist, we call it. I pray you, sir, let me request you to the Windmill. Brai. I’ll follow you, sir;—and make grist of you, if I have good luck. [Aside.] [ Exeunt. -+— SCENE V.— Moorfields. Enter Mathew, E. Knoweel, Bobadiel, and Stephen. Mat. Sir, did your eyes ever taste the like clown of him where we were to-day, Mr. Wellbred’s half brother? I think the whole earth cannot shew his parallel, by this daylight. E. Know. We were now speaking of him: captain Bobadill tells me he is fallen foul of you too. Mat. O, ay, sir, he threatened me with the bastinado. Bob. Ay, but I think, I taught you prevention this morning, for that: You shall kill him beyond question ; if you be so generously minded. Mat. Indeed, it is a most excellent trick. [ Fences. Bob. O, you do not give spirit enough to your motion, you are too tardy, too heavy ! O, it must be done like lightning, hay ! [Practises at a post with his cudgel. Mat. Rare, captain! Bob. Tut! ’tis nothing, an’t be not done in a --punto. E. Know. Captain, did you ever prove yourself upon any of our masters of defence here ? Mat. O good sir ! yes, I hope he has. Bob. I will tell you, sir. Upon-my first coming to the city, after my long travel for knowledge, in that mystery only, there came three or four of them to me, at a gentleman’s house, where it was my chance to be resident at that time, to intreat my presence at their schools : and withal so much importuned me, that I protest to you, as I am a gentleman, I w'as ashamed of their rude demeanour out of all measure : Well, I told them that to come to a public school, they should pardon me, it was opposite, in diameter, to my humour; but, if so be they would give their attendance at my lodging, I protested to do them what right or favour I could, as I was a gentleman, and so forth. E. Know. So, sir ! then you tried their skill ? Bob. Alas, soon tried: you shall hear, sir. Within two or three days after, they came ; and, by honesty, fair sir, believe me, I graced them exceedingly, shewed them some two or three tricks of prevention have purchased them since a credit to admiration : they cannot deny this; and yet now they hate me, and why ? because I am excellent; and for no other vile reason on the earth. E. Know. This is strange and barbarous, as ever I heard. Bob. Nay, for a more instance of their prepos¬ terous natures ; but note, sir. They have assaulted me some three, four, five, six of them together, as I have walked alone in divers skirts i’ the town, as Turnbull, Whitechapel, Shoreditch, which were then my quarters ; and since, upon the Exchange, at my lodging, and at my ordinary : where I have driven them afore me the whole length of a street, in the open view of all our gallants, pitying to hurt them, believe me. Yet all this lenity will not over¬ come their spleen ; they will be doing with the pis¬ mire, raising a hill a man may spurn abroad with his foot at pleasure. By myself, I could have slain them all, but I delight not in murder. I am loth to bear any other than this bastinado for them: yet I hold it good polity not to go disarmed, for though I be skilful, I may be oppressed with mul¬ titudes. E. Know. Ay, believe me, may you, sir: and in my conceit, our whole nation should sustain the loss by it, if it were so. Bob. Alas, no ! what’s a peculiar man to a na¬ tion ? not seen. E. Know. O, but your skill, sir. Bob. Indeed, that might be some loss ; but who respects it ? I will tell you, sir, by the way of pri¬ vate, and under seal; I am a gentleman, and live here obscure, and to myself; but were I known to her majesty and the lords,—observe me,—I would undertake, upon this poor head and life, for the public benefit of the state, not only to spare the entire lives of her subjects in general; but to save the one half, nay, three parts of her yearly charge in holding war, and against what enemy soever. And how would I do it, think you ? E. Know. Nay, I know not, nor can I conceive. Bob. Why thus, sir. I wmuld select nineteen more, to myself, throughout the laud; gentlemen they should be of good spirit, strong and able con¬ stitution ; I would choose them by an instinct, a character that I have : and I would teach these nineteen the special rules, as your punto, your re- verso, your stoccata, your imbroccato, your pas- sada, your montanto; till they could all play very near, or altogether as well as myself. This done, say the enemy were forty thousand strong, we twenty would come into the field the tenth of 22 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. ACT IV. March, or thereabouts ; and we would challenge twenty of the enemy ; they could not in their honour refuse us : Well, we would kill them; challenge twenty more, kill them; twenty more, kill them ; twenty more, kill them too; and thus would we kill every man his twenty a day, that’s twenty score; twenty score, that’s two hundred ; two hundred a day, five days a thousand; forty thousand; forty times five, five times forty, two hundred days kills them all up by computation. And this will I venture my poor gentleman-like carcase to perform, pro¬ vided there be no treason practised upon us, by fair and discreet manhood ; that is, civilly by the sword. E. Know. Why, are you so sure of your hand, captain, at all times ? Bob. Tut! never miss thrust, upon my repu¬ tation with you. E. Know. I would not stand in Downright’s state then, an you meet him, for the wealth of any one street in London. Bob. Why, sir, you mistake me : if he were here now, by this welkin, I would not draw my weapon on him. Let this gentleman do bis mind: but I will bastinado him, by the bright sun, wherever I meet him. Mat. Faith, and I’ll have a fling at him, at my distance. E. Know. Ods so, look where he is! yonder he goes. [Downright crosses tlic stage. Down. What peevish luck have I, I cannot meet with these bragging rascals ? Bob. It is not he, is it ? E. Know. Yes faith, it is he. Mat. I’ll be hang’d then if that were he. E. Know. Sir, keep your hanging good for some greater matter, for I assure you that were he. Step. Upon my reputation, it was he. Bob. Had I thought it had been he, he must not have gone so : but I can hardly be induced to be¬ lieve it was he yet. E. Know. That I think, sir. Re-enter Downright. But see, he is come again. Down. O, Pharaoh’s foot, have I found you ? Come, draw to your tools ; draw, gipsy, or I’ll thrash you. Bob. Gentleman of valour, I do believe in thee; hear me- Down. Draw your weapon then. Bob. Tall man, I never thought on it till now -Body of me, I had a warrant of the peace served on me, even now as I came along, by a water-bearer; this gentleman saw it, Master Mathew. Down. ’Sdeath! you will not draw then ? [Disarms and beats him. Mathew runs away. Bob. Hold, hold ! under thy favour forbear ! Down. Prate again, as you like this, you whore¬ son foist you! You’ll control the point, you! Your consort is gone ; had he staid he had shared with you, sir. {Exit. Bob. Well, gentlemen, bear witness, I was bound to the peace, by this good day. E. Know. No, faith, it’s an ill day, captain, never reckon it other : but, say you were bound to the peace, the law allows you to defend yourself: that will prove but a poor excuse. Bob. I cannot tell, sir ; I desire good construc¬ tion in fair sort. I never sustain’d the like dis¬ grace, by heaven ! sure I was struck with a planet thence, for I had no power to touch my weapon. E. Know. Ay, like enough ; I have heard of many that have been beaten under a planet: go, get you to a surgeon. ’Slid! an these be your tricks, your passadoes, and your montantos, I’ll none of them. [Exit Bobadill.] O, manners ! that this age should bring forth such creatures ! that nature should be at. leisure to make them! Come, coz. Step. Mass, I’ll have this cloak. E. Know. ’Ods wall, ’tis Downright’s. Step. Nay, it’s mine now, another might have ta’en it up as well as I : I’ll wear it, so I will. E. Know. How an he see it ? he’ll challenge it, assure yourself. Step. Ay, but he shall not have it: I’ll say I bought it. E. Know. Take heed you buy it not too dear, coz. [Exeunt. -♦- SCENE VI. — A Room in Kitely’s House. Enter Kitely, Welebred, Dame Kitely, and Bridget. Kit. Now, trust me, brother, you were much to blame, T’incense his anger, and disturb the peace Of my poor house, where there are centinels, That every minute watch to give alarms Of civil war, without adjection Of your assistance or occasion. Wei. No harm done, brother, I warrant you : since there is no harm done, anger costs a man nothing ; and a tall man is never his own man till he be angry. To keep his valour in obscurity, is to keep himself as it were in a cloak-bag. What’s a musician, unless he play ? What’s a tali man unless he fight? For, indeed, all this my wise brother stands upon absolutely ; and that made me fall in with him so resolutely. Dame K. Ay, but what harm might have come of it, brother ? Wei. Might, sister? so might the good warm clothes your husband wears be poisoned, for any thing he knows : or the wholesome wine he drank, even now at the table. Kit. Now, God forbid ! O me ! now I remember My wife drank to me last, and changed the cup, And bade me wear this cursed suit to day. See, if Heaven suffer murder undiscover’d ! I feel me ill; give me some mithridate, Some mithridate and oil, good sister, fetch me; O, I am sick at heart! I burn, I burn. If you will save my life, go fetch it me. Wei. O strange humour! my very breath has poison’d him. Brid. Good brother, be content, what do you mean ? [you. The strength of these extreme conceits will kill Dame K. Beshrew your heart-blood, brother Wellbred, now, For putting such a toy into his head! IVel. Is a fit simile a toy? will he be poison’d with a simile ? Brother Kitely, what a strange and idle imagination is this! For shame, be wiser. O’ my soul there’s no such matter. Kit. Am I not sick? how am I then not poison’d? Am I not poison’d? how am I then so sick? ! scene vi. EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 23 Dame K. If you be sick, your own thoughts make you sick. Wei. His jealousy is the poison he has taken. Enter Brainworm, disguised in Formal’s clothes. Brai. Master Kitely, my master, justice Cle¬ ment, salutes you ; and desires to speak with you with all possible speed. Kit. No time but now, when I think I am sick, very sick! well, I will wait upon his worship. Thomas! Cob ! I must seek them out, and set them sentinels till I return. Thomas! Cob ! Thomas! [Exit. Wei. This is perfectly rare, Brainworm ; [ takes him aside.~\ but how got’st thou this apparel of the justice’s man ? Brai. Marry, sir, my proper fine pen-man would needs bestow the grist on me, at the Windmill, to hear some martial discourse ; where I so mar- shall'd him, that I made him drunk with admira¬ tion : and, because too much heat was the cause of his distemper, I stript him stark naked as he lay along asleep, and borrowed his suit to deliver this counterfeit message in, leaving a rusty armour, and an old brown bill to watch him till my return ; which shall be, when I have pawn’d his apparel, and spent the better part o’ the money, perhaps. Wei. Well, thou art a successful merry knave, Brainworm : his absence will be a good subject for more mirth. I pray thee return to thy young mas¬ ter, and will him to meet me and my sister Bridget at the Tower instantly ; for, here, tell him the house is so stored with jealousy, there is no room for love to stand upright in. We must get our fortunes committed to some larger prison, say; and than the Tower, I know no better air, nor where the liberty of the house may do us more present service. Away. [Exit Brai. Re-enter Kitely, talking aside to Cash. Kit. Come hither, Thomas. Now my secret’s ripe, And thou shalt have it: lay to both thine ears. Hark what I say to thee. I must go forth, Thomas; Be careful of thy promise, keep good watch, Note every gallant, and observe him well, That enters in my absence to thy mistress : If she would shew him rooms, the jest is stale, Follow them, Thomas, or else hang on him, And let him not go after ; mark their looks ; Note if she offer but to see his band, Or any other amorous toy about him ; But praise his leg, or foot; or if she say The day is hot, and bid him feel her hand, How hot it is; O, that’s a monstrous thing! Note me all this, good Thomas, mark their sighs, And if they do but whisper, break ’em off: I’ll bear thee out in it. Wilt thou do this ? Wilt thou be true, my Thomas ? Cash. As truth’s self, sir. Kit. Why, I believe thee: Where is Cob, now ? Cob ! [Exit. Dame K. He’s ever calling for Cob : I wonder how he employs Cob so. Wcl. Indeed, sister, to ask how he employs Cob, is a necessary question for you that are his wife, and a thing not very easy for you to be satis¬ fied in; but this I’ll assure you, Cob’s wife is an excellent bawd, sister, and oftentimes your hus¬ band haun f s her house ; marry, to what end ? I cannot altogether accuse him ; imagine you what you think convenient: but I have known fair hides have foul hearts ere now, sister. Dame K. Never said you truer than that, bro¬ ther, so much I can tell you for your learning. Thomas, fetch your cloak and go with me. [Exit Cash.] I’ll after him presently : I would to for¬ tune I could take him there, i’ faith, I’d return, him his own, I warrant him ! [Exit. Wei. So, let ’em go ; this may make sport anon. Now, my fair sister-in-law, that you knew but how happy a thing it were to be fair and beautiful. Brid. That touches not me, brother. Wei. That’s true; that’s even the fault of it; for indeed, beauty stands a woman in no stead, un¬ less it procure her touching.—But, sister, whether it touch you or no, it touches your beauties ; and I am sure they will abide the touch; an they do not, a plague of all ceruse, say I! and it touches me too in part, though not in the- Well, there’s a dear and respected friend of mine, sister, stands very strongly and worthily affected toward you, and hath vowed to inflame whole bonfires of zeal at his heart, in honour of your perfections. I have already engaged my promise to bring you where you shall hear him confirm much more. Ned Knowell is the man, sister: there’s no excep¬ tion against the party. You are ripe for a hus¬ band ; and a minute’s loss to such an occasion, is a great trespass in a wise beauty. What say you, sister ? On my soul he loves you; will you give him the meeting ? Brid. Faith I had very little confidence in mine own constancy, brother, if 1 durst not meet a man : but this motion of yours savours of an old knight adventurer’s servant a little too much, me- thinks. Wei. What’s that, sister ? Brid. Marry, of the squire. Wei. No matter if it did, I would be such an one for my friend. But see, who is return’d to hinder us ! Re-enter Kitely. Kit. What villany is this ? call’d out on a false message ! This was some plot; I was not sent for.—Bridget, Where is your sister ? Brid. I think she be gone forth, sir. Kit. How ! is my wife gone forth ? whither, for God’s sake ? Brid. She’s gone abroad with Thomas. Kit. Abroad with Thomas ! oh, that villain dors He hath discover’d all unto my wife. [me : Beast that I was, to trust him ! whither, I pray you, Went she ? Brid. I know not, sir. Wei. I’ll tell you, brother, Whither I suspect she’s gone. Kit. Whither, good brother ? Wei. To Cob’s house, I believe : but, keep my counsel. Kit. I will, I will: to Cob’s house ! doth she haunt Cob’s ? She’s gone a purpose now to cuckold me, With that lewd rascal, who, to win her favour, Hath told her all. [Exit. Wei. Come, he is once more gone, Sister, let’s lose no time; the affair is worth it. [Exeunt. 24 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. ACT IV. SCENE VII.— A Street. Enter Mathew and Bobadill. Mat. I wonder, captain, what they will say of my going away, ha ? Bob. Why, what should they say, but as of a discreet gentleman; quick, wary, respectful of nature’s fair lineaments ? and that’s all. Mat. Why so! but what can they say of your beating ? Bob. A rude part, a touch with soft wood, a kind of gross battery used, laid on strongly, borne most patiently ; and that's all. Mat. Ay, but would any man have offered it in Venice, as you say ? Bob. Tut! I assure you, no : you shall have there your nobilis, your gentilezza, come in bravely upon your reverse, stand you close, stand you firm, stand you fair, save your retricato with his left leg, come to the assalto with the right, thrust with brave steel, defy your base wood ! But wherefore do I awake this remembrance? I was fascinated, by Jupiter; fascinated; but I will be unwitch’d, and revenged by law. Mat. Do you hear? is it not best to get a war¬ rant, and have him arrested and brought before justice Clement ? Bob. It were not amiss ; would we had it! Enter Brainworm disguised as Formal, Mat. Why, here comes his man; let’s speak to him. Bob. Agreed, do you speak. Mat. Save you, sir ! Brai. With all my heart, sir. Mat. Sir, there is one Downright hath abused this gentleman and myself, and we determine to make our amends by law : now, if you would do us the favour to procure a warrant, to bring him afore your master, you shall be well considered, I assure you, sir. Brai. Sir, you know my service is my living; such favours as these gotten of my master is his only preferment, and therefore you must consider me as I may make benefit of my place. Mat. How is that, sir? Brai. Faith, sir, the thing is extraordinary, and the gentleman may be of great account; yet, be he what he will, if you will lay me down a brace of angels in my hand you shall have it, otherwise not. Mat. How shall we do, captain ? he asks a brace of angels, you have no money ? Bob. Not a cross, by fortune. Mat. Nor I, as I am a gentleman, but twopence left of my two shillings in the morning for wine and radish : let’s find him some pawn. Bob. Paw r n! we have none to the value of his demand. Mat. O, yes; I’Ll pawn this jewel in my ear, and you may pawn your silk-stockings, and pull up your boots, they will ne’er be mist: it must be done now. Bob. Well, an there be no remedy, I’ll step aside and pull them off. [ Withdraws. Mat. Do you hear, sir? we have no store of money at this time, but you shall have good pawns ; look you, sir, this jewel, and that gentleman’s silk- stockings ; because we would have it dispatch’d ere we went to our chambers. Brai. I am content, sir; I will get you the war¬ rant presently. What’s his name, say you ? Down right ? Mat. Ay, ay, George Downright. Brai. What manner of man is he? Mat. A tall big man, sir; he goes in a cloak most commonly of silk-russet, laid about with rus¬ set lace. Brai. ’Tis very good, sir. Mat. Here, sir, here’s my jewel. Bob. [returning .] And here are my stockings. Brai. Well, gentlemen, I’ll procure you this warrant presently ; but who will you have to serve it ? Mat. That’s true, captain ; that must be consi¬ dered. Bob. Body o’ine, I know not; ’tis service of danger. Brai. Why, you were best get one o’the varlets of the city, a serjeant: I’ll appoint you one, if you please. Mat. Will you, sir ? why, we can wish no better. Bob. We’ll leave it to you, sir. [Exeunt Bob and Mat. Brai. This is rare ! Now will I go pawn this cloak of the justice’s man’s at the broker’s, for a varlet’s suit, and be the varlet myself; and get either more pawns, or more money of Downright, for the arrest. [Exit SCENE VIII.— The Lane before Cob’s House. Enter Ivnowell. Know. Oh, here it is ; I am glad I have found IIo ! who is within here ? [it now: Tib. [ within .] I am within, sir ; what’s your pleasure ? Know. To know who is within beside yourself. Tib. Why, sir, you are no constable, I hope ? Know. O, fear you the constable ? then I doubt not, You have some guests within deserve that fear ; I’ll fetch him straight. Enter Tib. Tib. O’ God’s name, sir! Know. Go to : Come, tell me, is not young Knowell here ? Tib. Young Knowell! I know none such, sir, o’mine honesty. Know. Your honesty, dame ! it flies too lightly from you. There is no way but fetch the constable. Tib. The constable ! the man is mad, I think. [Exit, and claps to the door. Enter Dame Kitely and Cash. Cash. Ho ! who keeps house here ? Know. O, this is the female copesmate of my Now shall I meet him straight. [son : Dame K. Knock, Thomas, hard. Cash. Ho, goodwife! Re-enter Tib. Tib. Why, what’s the matter with you ? Dame K. Why, woman, grieves it you to ope your door ? Belike you get something to keep it shut. Tib. What mean these questions, pray ye ? Dame K. So strange you make it! is not my husband here ? Know. Her husband! Dame K. My tried husband, master Kitely ? SCENE IX. EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 2.5 Tib. I hope he needs not to be tried here. Dame K. No, dame, he does it not for need, but pleasure. Tib. Neither for need nor pleasure is he here. Know. This is but a device to baulk me withal: Enter Kitely, muffled in his cloak. Soft, who is this ? ’tis not my son disguised ? Dame K. [spies her husband, and runs to him .] O, sir, have I forestall’d your honest market, Found your close walks ? You stand amazed now. do you ? I’faith, I am glad I have smok’d you yet at last. What is your jewel, trow ? In, come, let’s see her ; Fetch forth your housewife, dame ; if she be fairer, In any honest judgment, than myself, I’ll be content with it: but she is change, She feeds you fat, she soothes your appetite, And you are well! Your wife, an honest woman, Is meat twice sod to you, sir! O, you treachour ! Know. She cannot counterfeit thus palpably. Kit. Out on thy more than strumpet impudence! Steal’st thou thus to thy haunts ? and have I taken Thy bawd and thee, and thy companion, This hoary-headed letcher, this old goat, Close at your villany, and would’st thou ’scuse it With this stale harlot’s jest, accusing me ? O, old incontinent, [to Knowell.] dost thou not shame, When all thy powers in chastity are spent, To have a mind so hot ? and to entice, And feed the enticements of a lustful woman ? Dame K. Out, I defy thee, I, dissembling wretch! Kit. Defy me, strumpet! Ask thy pander here, Can he deny it; or that wicked elder ? Know. Why, hear you, sir. Kit. Tut, tut, tut; never speak: Thy guilty conscience will discover thee. [man ? Know. What lunacy is this, that haunts this Kit. Well, good wife bawd, Cob’s wife, and you, That make your husband such a hoddy-doddy ; And you, young apple-squire, and old cuckold- maker ; I’ll have you every one before a justice: Nay, you shall answer it, I charge you go. Know. Marry, with all my heart, sir, I go willingly ; Though I do taste this as a trick put on me, To punish my impertinent search, and justly, And half forgive my son for the device. Kit. Come, will you go ? Dame K. Go! to thy shame believe it. Enter Cob. Cob. Why, what’s the matter here, what’s here to do ? Kit. O, Cob, art thou come? I have been abused, And in thy house ; was never man so wrong’d ! Cob. ’Slid, in my house, my master Kitely! who wrongs you in my house ? Kit. Marry, young lust in old, and old in young here: Tliy wife’s their bawd, here have I taken them. Cob. How, bawd ! is my house come to that ? Am I preferr’d thither ? Did I not charge you to keep your doors shut, Isbel? and—you let them lie open for all comers ! [Beats his wife. Know. Friend, know some cause, before thou beat’st thy wife. This is madness in thee. Cob. Why, is there no cause ? Kit. Yes, I'll shew cause before the justice, Cob .* Come, let her go with me. Cob. Nay, she shall go. Tib. Nay, I will go. I’ll see an you may be allowed to make a bundle of hemp of your right and lawful wife thus, at every cuckoldy knave’s pleasure. Why do you not go ? Kit. A bitter quean ! Come, we will have you tamed. \_Exeunt. - ♦ —- SCENE IX.— A Street. Enter Brainworiu, disguised as a City Serjeant. Brai. Well, of all my disguises yet, now am I most like myself, being in this Serjeant’s gown. A man of my present profession never counter¬ feits, till he lays hold upon a debtor, and says, he rests him; for then he brings him to all manner of unrest. A kind of little kings we are, bearing the diminutive of a mace, made like a young artichoke, that always carries pepper and salt in itself. Well, I know not what danger I undergo by this exploit; pray Heaven I come well off! Enter Mathew and Bobawll. Mat. See, I think, yonder is the varlet, by his gown. Bob. Let’s go in quest of him. Mat. ’Save you, friend! are not you here by appointment of justice Clement’s man ? Brai. Yes, an’t please you, sir; he told me, two gentlemen had will’d him to procure a war¬ rant from his master, which I have about me, to be served on one Downright. Mat. It is honestly done of you both; and see where the party comes you must arrest; serve it upon him quickly, afore he be aware. Bob. Bear back, master Mathew. Enter Stephen in Downright’s cloak. Brai. Master Downright, I arrest you in the queen’s name, and must carry you afore a justice by virtue of this warrant. Step. Me, friend ! I am no Downright, I; I am master Stephen: You do not well to arrest me, I tell you truly ; I am in nobody’s bonds nor books, I would you should know it. A plague on you heartily, for making me thus afraid afore my time! Brai. Why, now you are deceived, gentlemen. Bob. He wears such a cloak, and that deceived us: but see, here a’comes indeed; this is he, officer. Enter Downright. Down. Why how now, signior gull! are you turn’d filcher of late ? Come, deliver my cloak. Step. Your cloak, sir! I bought it even now, in open market. Brai. Master Downright, I have a warrant I must serve upon you, procured by these two gen¬ tlemen. Down. These gentlemen ? these rascals ! [Qfflers to beat them. Brai. Keep the peace, I charge you in her majesty’s name. Down. I obey thee. What must I do, officer ? Brai. Go before master justice Clement, to answer that they can object against you, sir : I I will use you kindly, sir. 26 EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. act v. Mat. Come, let’s before, and make the justice, captain. Bob. The varlet’s a tall man, afore heaven ! [.Exeunt Bob. and Mat. Down. Gull, you’ll give me my cloak. Step. Sir, I bought it, and I’ll keep it. Down. You will? Step. Ay, that I will. Down. Officer, there’s thy fee, arrest him. Brai. Master Stephen, I must arrest you. Step. Arrest me! I scorn it. There, take your cloak, I’ll none on’t. Down. Nay, that shall net serve your turn no.w, sir. Officer, I’ll go with thee to the justice’s ; bring him along. Step. Why, is not here your cloak ? what would you have ? Down. I’ll have you answer it, sir. Brai. Sir, I’ll take your word, and this gentle¬ man’s too, for his appearance. Doiv. I’ll have no words taken: bring him along. Brai. Sir, I may choose to do that, I may take bail. Down. ’Tis true, you may take bail, and choose at another time ; but you shall not now, varlet: bring him along, or I’ll swinge you. B rai. Sir, I pity the gentleman’s case : here’s your money again. Down. ’Sdeins, tell not me of my money ; bring him away, I say. Brai. I warrant you he will go with you of himself, sir. Dow. Yet more ado ? Brai. I have made a fair mash on’t. [Aside. Step. Must I go ? B> •ai. I know no remedy, master Stephen. Down. Come along afore me here; I do not love your hanging look behind. Step. Why, sir, I hope you cannot hang me for it: can he, fellow ? Brai. I think not, sir ; it is but a whipping matter, sure. Step. Why then let him do his worst, I am resolute. [Exeunt. ACT V. SCENE I.—Coleman Street. A Hall in Justice Clement’s House. Enter Clement, Knowell, Kitely, Dame Kitely, Tib, Cash, Cob, and Servants • Clem. Nay, but stay, stay, give me leave : my chair, sirrah. You, master Knowell, say you went thither to meet your son ? Know. Ay, sir. Clem. But who directed you thither ? Know. That did mine own man, sir. Clem. Where is he ? Know. Nay, I know not now ; I left him with your clerk, and appointed him to stay here forme. Clem. My clerk ! about what time was this ? Know. Marry, between one and two, as I take it. Clem. And what time came my man with the false message to you, master Kitely ? Kit. After two, sir. Clem. Very good: but, mistress Kitely, how chance that you were at Cob’s, ha ? Dame K. An’t please you, sir. I’ll tell you: my brother Wellbred told me, that Cob’s house was a suspected place- Clem. So it appears, methinks ; but on. Dame K. And that my husband used thither daily. Clem. No matter, so he used himself well, mistress. Dame K. True, sir : but you know what grows by such haunts oftentimes. Clem. I see rank fruits of a jealous brain, mistress Kitely: but did you find your husband there, in that case as you suspected ? Kit. I found her there, sir. Clem. Di-d you so ! that alters the case. Who gave you knowledge of your wife’s being there ? Kit. Marry, that did my brother Wellbred. Clem. How, Wellbred first tell her; then tell you after ! Where is Wellbred ? Kit. Gone with my sister, sir, I know not whither. Clem. Why, this is a mere trick, a device ; you are gull’d in this most grossly all. Alas, poor wench! wert thou beaten for this ? Tib. Yes, most pitifully, an’t please you. Cob. And worthily, I hope, if it shall prove so. Clem. Ay, that’s like, and a piece of a sen¬ tence.— Enter a Servant. How now, sir ! what’s the matter ? Sen i. Sir, there’s a gentleman in the court without, desires to speak with your worship. Clem. A gentleman! what is he ? Sew. A soldier, sir, he says. Clem. A soldier! take down my armour, my sword quickly. A soldier speak -with me ! Why, when, knaves ? Come on, come on ; [Arms him¬ self.'] hold my cap there, so ; give me my gorget, my sword : stand by, I will end your matters anon. - Let the soldier enter. [Exit Servant. Elites' Bobadill, followed by Mathew. Now, sir, what have you to say to me ? Bob. By your worship’s favour- Clem. Nay, keep out, sir; I know not vour pretence. You send me word, sir, you are a soldier : why, sir, you shall be answer’d here : here be them have been amongst soldiers. Sir, your pleasure. Bob. Faith, sir, so it is, this gentleman and myself have been most uncivilly wrong’d and beaten by one Downright, a coarse fellow-, about the town here ; and for mine ow T n part, I protest, being a man in no sort given to this filthy humour of quarrelling, he hath assaulted me in the w r ay of my peace, despoiled me of mine honour, disarmed me of my -weapons, and rudely laid me along in the open streets, when I not so much as once offered to resist him. Clem. O, God’s precious! is this the soldier \ Here, take my armour off quickly, ’twill make him swoon, I fear; he is not fit to look on’t, that will put up a blow. Mat. An’t please your worship, he was bound to the peace. SCENE i. EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. 27 Clem. Why, an he were, sir, his hands were not bound, were they ? Re-enter Servant. Serv. There’s one of the varlets of the city, sir, has brought two gentlemen here ; one, upon your worship’s warrant. Clem. My warrant! Serv. Yes, sir ; the officer says, procured by these two. Clem. Bid him come in. [Exit Servant.] Set by this picture. Enter Downright, Stephen, and Brainworm, disguised as before. What, Master Downright! are you brought at Master Freshwater’s suit here ? Down. I’faith, sir : and here’s another brought at my suit. Clem. What are you, sir? Step. A gentleman, sir. O, uncle! Clem. Uncle ! who, Master Knowell? Know. Ay, sir ; this is a wise kinsman of mine. Step. God’s my witness, uncle, I am wrong’d here monstrously ; he charges me with stealing of his cloak, and would I might never stir, if I did not find it in the street by chance. Down. O, did you find it now ? You said you bought it ere-while. Step. And you said, I stole it: nay, now my uncle is here, I’ll do well enough with you. Clem. Well, let this breathe awhile. You that have cause to complain there, stand forth : Had you my warrant for this gentleman’s apprehension ? Bob. Ay, an’t please your worship. Clem. Nay, do not speak in passion so : where had you it ? Bob. Of your clerk, sir. Clem. That’s well! an my clerk can make war¬ rants, and my hand not at them ! Where is the warrant—officer, have you it ? Brai. No sir.; your worship's man, Master For¬ mal, bid me do it for these gentlemen, and he would be my discharge. Clem. Why, Master Downright, are you such a novice, to be served and never see the warrant ? Down. Sir, he did not serve it on me. Clem. No! how then? Down. Marry, sir, he came to me, and said he must serve it, and he would use me kindly, and so- Clem. O, God’s pity, was it so, sir ? He must serve it ! Give me my long sword there, and help me off. So, come on, sir varlet, I must cut off your legs, sirrah; [Brainworm kneels.'] nay, stand up, I’ll use you kindly ; I must cut off your legs, I say. [ Flourishes over him with his long sword. Brai. O, good sir, 1 beseech you; nay, good master justice ! Clem. I must do it, there is no remedy ; I must cut off your legs, sirrah, I must cut off your ears, you rascal, I must do it; I must cut off your nose, I must cut off your head. Brai. O, good your worship ! Clem. Well, rise ; how dost thou do now? dost thou feel thyself well ? hast thou no harm ? Brai. No, I thank your good worship, sir. Clem. Why so ! I said 1 must cut off thy legs, and I must cut off thy arms, and I must cut off thy head ; but I did not do it : so you said you must serve this gentleman with my warrant, but you did not serve him. You knave, you slave, you rogue, do you say you must , sirrah! away with him to the jail; I’ll teach you a trick for your must, sir. Brai. Good sir, I beseech you, be good to me. Clem. Tell him he shall to the jail; away with him, I say. Brai. Nay, sir, if you will commit me, it shall be for committing more than this : I will not lose by my travail any grain of my fame, certain. [Throws off his sergeant's gown. Clem. How is this ? Know. My man Brainworm ! Step. O, yes, uncle; Brainworm has been with my cousin Edward and I all this day. Clem. I told you all there was some device. Brai. Nay, excellent justice, since I have laid myself thus open to you, now stand strong for me; both with your sword and your balance. Clem. Body o’me, a merry knave ! give me a bowl of sack : if he belong to you, Master Knowell, I bespeak your jalienee. Brai. That is it I have most need of; Sir, if you’ll pardon me only, I’ll glory in all the rest of my exploits. Know. Sir, you know I love not to have my fa¬ vours come hard from me. You have your pardon, though I suspect you shrewdly for being of counsel with my son against me. Brai. Yes, faith, I have, sir, though you retain’d me doubly this morning for yourself: first as Brain¬ worm ; after, as Fitz-Sword. I was your reform’d soldier, sir. ’Twas I sent you to Cob’s upon the errand without end. Know. Is it possible ? or that thou should’st disguise thy language so as I should not know thee ? B rax. O, sir, this has been the day of my meta¬ morphosis. It is not that shape alone that I have run through to-day. I brought this gentleman, master Kitely, a message too, in the form of mas¬ ter Justice’s man here, to draw him out o’ the way, as well as your worship, while master Wellbred might make a conveyance of mistress Bridget to my young master. Kit. How! my sister stolen away ? Know. My son is not married, I hope. Brai. Faith, sir, they are both as sure as love, a priest, and three thousand pound, which is her portion, can make them; and by this time are ready to bespeak their wedding-supper at the Windmill, except some friend here prevent them, and invite them home. Clem. Marry, that will I; I thank thee for put¬ ting me in mind on’t. Sirrah, go you and fetch them hither upon my warrant. [Exit Servant.] Nei- ther’s friends have cause to be sorry, if I know the young couple aright. Here, I drink to thee for thy good news. But I pray thee, what hast thou done with my man, Formal ? Brai. Faith, sir, after some ceremony past, as making him drunk, first with story, and then with wine, (but all in kindness,) and stripping him to his shirt, I left him in that cool vein; departed, sold your worship’s warrant to these two, pawn’d his livery for that varlet’s gown, to serve it in ; and thus have brought myself by my activity to your worship’s consideration. Clem. And T will consider thee in another cup of sack. Here’s to thee, which having drunk off 2a EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR. act v this is my sentence : Pledge me. Thou hast done, or assisted to nothing, in my judgment, but de¬ serves to be pardon’d for the wit of the offence. If thy master, or any man here, be angry with thee, I shall suspect his ingine, while I know him, for’t. How now, what noise is that ? Enter Servant. Serv. Sir, it is Roger is come home. Clem. Bring him in, bring him in. Enter Formal in a suit of armour. What! drunk? in arms against me ? your reason, your reason for this ? Form. I beseech your worship to pardon me ; I happened into ill company by chance, that cast me into a sleep, and stript me of all my clothes. Clem. Well, tell him I am Justice Clement, and do pardon him : but what is this to your armour ? what may that signify ? Form. An’t please you, sir, it hung up in the room where I was stript ; and I borrow’d it of one of the drawers to come home in, because I was loth to do penance through the street in my shirt. Clem. Well, stand by a while. Enter E. Knowell, Wellbred, and Bridget. Who be these? 0, the young company; welcome, welcome ! Give you joy. Nay, Mistress Bridget, blush not ; you are not so fresh a bride, but the news of it is come hither afore you. Master bride¬ groom, I have made your peace, give me your hand: so will I for all the rest ere you forsake my roof. E. Know. We are the more bound to your hu¬ manity, sir. Clem. Only these two have so little of man in them, they are no part of my care. IVel. Yes, sir, let me pray you for this gentle¬ man, he belongs to my sister the bride. Clem. In what place, sir? Wei. Of her delight, sir, below the stairs, and in public : her poet, sir. Clem. A poet! I will challenge him myself pre¬ sently at extempore, Mount up thy Phlegon, Muse, and testify, How Saturn, sitting in an ebon cloud, Disrobed his podex, white as ivory, And through the welkin thunder'd all aloud. Wei. He is not for extempore, sir: he is all for the pocket muse ; please you command a sight of it. Clem. Yes, yes, search him for a taste of his vein. [ They search Mathew’s pockets. Wei. You must not deny the queen’s justice, sir, under a writ of rebellion. Clem. What! all this verse? body o’ me, he car¬ ries a whole realm, a commonwealth of paper in his hose : let us see some of his subjects. [Reads. Unto the boundless ocean of thy face, Runs this poor river , charg'd with streams of eyes. How! this is stolen. E. Know. A parody! a parody ! with a kind of miraculous gift, to make it absurder than it was. Clem. Is all the rest of this batch ? bring me a torch ; lay it together, and give fire. Cleanse the air. [Acte the papers on fire .] Here was enough to have infected the whole city, if it had not been taken in time. See, see, how our poet’s glory shines ! brighter and brighter ! still it increases ! O, now it is at the highest ; and now it declines as fast. You may see, sic transit gloria mundi! Know. There’s an emblem for you, son, and your studies. Clem. Nay, no speech or act of mine be drawn against such as profess it worthily. They are not born every year, as an alderman. There goes more to the making of a good poet, than a sheriff. Master Kitely, you look upon me !— though I live in the city here, amongst you, I will do more re¬ verence to him, when I meet him, than I will to the mayor out of his year. But these paper- pedlars ! these ink-dabblers ! they cannot expect reprehension or reproach ; they have it with the fact. E. Know. Sir, you have saved me the labour of a defence, Clem. It shall be discourse for supper between your father and me, if he dare undertake me. But to dispatch away these, you sign o’ the soldier, and picture of the poet, (but both so false, I will not have you hanged out at my door till midnight,) while we are at supper, you two shall penitently fast it out in my court without ; and, if you will, you may pray there that we may be so merry within as to forgive or forget you when we come out. Here’s a third, because we tender your safety, shall watch you, he is provided for the purpose. Look to your charge, sir. Step. And what shall I do ? Clem. O ! I had lost a sheep an he had not bleated: why, sir, you shall give master Downright his cloak ; and I will intreat him to take it. A trencher and a napkin you shall have in the but¬ tery, and keep Cob and his wife company here ; whom I will intreat first to be reconciled ; and you to endeavour with your wit to keep them so. Step. I’ll do my best. Cob. Why, now I see thou art honest, Tib, I receive thee as my dear and mortal wife again. Tib. And I you, as my loving and obedient husband. Clem. Good compliment ! It will be their bridal night too. They are married anew. Come, I con¬ jure the rest to put off all discontent. You, master Downright, your anger ; you master Knowell, your cares ; master Kitely and his wife, their jealousy. For, I must tell you both, while that is fed, Horns in the mind are worse than on the head. Kit. Sir,' thus they go from me ; kiss me, sweetheart. See what a drove of horns fly in the air, Wing'd with my cleansed and my credulous breath! Watch 'em suspicious eyes, watch where they fall. See, see ! on heads that think they have none at all! 0 , what a plenteous ivorld of this will come ! When air rains horns, all may be sure of some. I have learn’d so much verse out of a jealous man’s part in a play. Clem. ’Tis well, ’tis well ! This night we’ll de¬ dicate to friendship, love, and laughter. Master bridegroom, take your bride and lead; every one a fellow. Here is my mistress, Brainworm ! to whom all my addresses of courtship shall have their reference : whose adventures this day, when ou. grandchildren shall hear to be made a fable, I doubt not but it shall find both spectators and applause. [ Exeunt. EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR TO THE NOBLEST NURSERIES OF HUMANITY AND LIBERTY IN THE KINGDOM, THE INNS OF COURT. I understand you, Gentlemen, not your houses : and a worthy succession of you, to all time, as being born the judges of these studies. When I wrote this poem, I had friendship with divers in your societies; who, as they were great names in learning, so they were no less examples of living. Of them, and then, that I say no more, it was not despised. Now that the printer, by a doubled charge, thinks it worthy a longer life than commonly the air of such things doth promise, I am careful to put it a servant to their pleasures, who are the inheritors of the first favour born it. Yet, I command it lie not in the way of your more noble and useful studies to the public : for so I shall suffer for it. But when the gown and cap is off, and the lord of liberty reigns, then, to take it in your hands, perhaps may make some bencher, tincted with humanity, read and not repent him. By your true honourer, Ben Jonson. DRAMATIS Asper, the Presenter. Macilente. Puntarvolo, —liis Lady Waiting Gent. — Huntsman .— Servingmen.—Bog and Cat. Carlo Buffone. Fastidious Brisk, —Cinedo, his Page. Deliro, Fallace,— Fido, their Servant. — Musicians. Saviolina. PERSONAE. Sordido. —His Hind. Fungoso.— Tailor, Haberdasher, Shoemaker. Sogliardo. Shift — Rustics. Notary. Clove, Orange.—A Groom.—Drawers.—Constable, and Officers . Grex —Cordatus.—Mitis. THE CHARACTER Asper, He is of an ingenious and free spirit, eager and constant in reproof, without fear controlling the world’s abuses. One whom no servile hope of gain, or frosty apprehension of danger, can make to be a parasite, either to time, place, or opinion. Macilente, A man well parted, a sufficient scholar, and travelled; who, wanting that place in the world’s account which he thinks his merit capable of, falls into such an envious apoplexy, with which his judgment is so dazzled and distasted, that he grows violently impatient of any opposite happiness in another. Puntarvolo, A vain-glorious knight, over-englishing his travels, and wholly consecrated to singularity; the very Jacob’s staff of compliment; a sir that hath lived to see the revolution of time in most of his apparel. Of presence good enough, but so palpably affected to his own praise, that for want of flatterers he commends himself, to the floutage of his own family. He deals upon returns, and strange performances, resolving, in despite of public de¬ rision, to stick to his own particular fashion, phrase, and gesture. Carlo Buffone, A public, scurrilous, and profane jester, that more swift than Circe, with absurd similes, will transform any person into deformity. A good feast- hound or banquet-beagle, that will scent you out a sup¬ per some three miles off, and swear to his patrons, damn him! he came in oars, when he was but wafted over in a sculler. A slave that hath an extraordinary gift in pleasing his palate, and will swill up more sack at a sitting than would make all the guard a posset. His re¬ ligion is railing, and his discourse ribaldry. They stand highest in his respect, whom he studies most to reproach. Fastidious Brisk, A neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that wears clothes well, and in fashion; practiseth by his glass how to salute; speaks good remnants, not¬ withstanding the base viol and tobacco ; swears tersely, and with variety; cares not what lady’s favour he belies, i OF THE PERSONS. or great man’s familiarity: a good property to perfume the boot of a coach. He will borrow another man’s horse to praise, and backs him as his own. Or, for a need, on foot can post himself into credit with his mer¬ chant, only with the gingle of his spur, and the jerk of his wand. Deliro, A good doting citizen, who, it is thought, might be of the common-council for his wealth; a fellow sin¬ cerely besotted on his own wife, and so wrapt with a conceit of her perfections, that he simply holds himself unworthy of her. And, in that hood-wink’d humour,, lives more like a suitor than a husband; standing in as true dread of her displeasure, as when he first made love to her. He doth sacrifice two-pence in juniper to her every morning before she rises, and wakes her with vil- lanous-out-of-tune music, which she out of her contempt (though not out of her judgment) is sure to dislike. Fallace, Deliro’s wife, and idol; a proud mincing peat, and as perverse as he is officious. She dotes as perfectly upon the courtier, as her husband doth on her, and only wants the face to be dishonest. Saviolina, A court-lady, whose weightiest praise is a light wit, admired by herself, and one more, her servant Brisk. Sordido, A wretched hob-nailed chuff, whose recreation is reading of almanacks; and felicity, foul weather. One that never pray’d but for a lean dearth, and ever wept in a fat harvest. Fungoso, The son of Sordido, and a student; one that lias revelled in his time, and follows the fashion afar off, like a spy. He makes it the whole bent of his endeavours to¬ wring sufficient means from his wretched father, to put him in the courtiers’ cut; at which he earnestly aims, but so unluckily, that he still lights short a suit. Sogliardo, An essential clown, brother to Sordido, yet so enamoured of the name of a gentleman, that he will have it, though he buys it. He comes up every term to learn to take tobacco, and see new motions. He is in his so EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. kingdom when lie can get himself into company where he may he well laughed at. Shift, A thread-bare shark ; one that never was a soldier, yet lives upon lendings. His profession is skeldring and odling, his bank Paul’s, and his warehouse Picthatch. Takes up single testons upon oaths, till doomsday. Falls under executions of three shillings, and enters into five- groat bonds. He way-lays the reports of services, and cons them without book, damning himself he came new from them, when all the while he was taking the diet in the bawdy-house, or lay pawned in his chamber for rent and victuals. He is of that admirable and happy me¬ mory, that he will salute one for an old acquaintance that he never saw in his life before. He usurps upon cheats, quarrels, and robberies, which he never did, only to get him a name. His chief exercises are, taking the whiff - , squiring a cockatrice, and making privy searches for imparters. Clove and Orange, An inseparable case of coxcombs, city born; the Gemini, or twins of foppery ; that like a pair of wooden foils, are fit for nothing but to be prac¬ tised upon. Being well flattered they'll lend money, and repent when they have done. Their glory is to invite players, and make suppers. And in company of better rank, to avoid the suspect of insufficiency, will inforce their ignorance most desperately, to set upon the under¬ standing of any thing. Orange is the most humorous of the two, (whose small portion of juice being squeezed out,) Clove serves to stick him with commendations. Cordatus, The author’s friend; a man inly acquainted with the scope and drift of his plot; of a discreet and understanding judgment; and has the place of a mo¬ derator. Mitis, Is a person of no action, and therefore we have reason to afford him no character. THE STAGE. After the second sounding. Enter Cordatus, Asper, and Mitis. Cor. Nay, my dear Asper. Mit. Stay your mind. Asp. Away ! Who is so patient of this impious world, That he can check his spirit, or rein his tongue V Or who hath such a dead unfeeling sense, That heaven’s horrid thunders cannot wake ? To see the earth crack’d with the rveight of sin, Hell gaping under us, and o’er our heads Black, ravenous ruin, with her sail-stretch’d tvings, Ready to sink us down, and cover us. Who can behold such prodigies as these. And have his lips seal'd up ? Not I: my soul Was never ground into such oily colours, To flatter vice, and daub iniquity : But, with an armed and resolved hand, I’ll strip the ragged follies of the time Naked as at their birth— Cor. Be not too bold. Asp. You trouble me—and with a whip of steel, Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs. I fear no mood stamp'd in a private brow. When I am pleased t’unmask a public vice. I fear no strumpet’s drugs, nor ruffian’s stab, Should I detect their hateful luxuries : No broker’s, usurer’s, or lawyer’s gripe, Were I disposed to say, they are all corrupt. I fear no courtier’s frown, should I applaud The easy flexure of his supple hams. Tut, these are so innate and popular, That drunken custom would not shame to laugh, In scorn, at him, that should but dare to tax ’em : And yet, not one of these, but knoivs his ivorks, Knows ivhat damnation is, the devil , and hell; Yet hourly they persist, groiv rank in sin, Puffing their souls away in perjurous air, To cherish their extortion, pride, or lusts. Mit. Forbear, good Asper ; be not like your name. Asp. O, but to such whose faces are all zeal, And, with the words of Hercules, invade Such crimes as these ! that will not smell of sin, But seem as they were made of sanctity / ^lelioion in their garments, and their hair I Cut shorter than their eye-brows ! when the con¬ science Is vaster than the ocean, and devours More wretches than the counters. Mit. Gentle Asper, Contain your spirits in more stricter bounds, And be not thus transported with the violence Of your strong thoughts. Cor. Unless your breath had power To melt the ivorhl, and mould it new again, It is in vain to spend it in these moods. Asp. [turning to the stage.] I not observed this thronged round till now ! Gracious and kind spectators, you are welcome ; Apollo and the Muses feast your eyes With gracef ul objects, and may our Minerva Answer your hopes, unto their largest strain ! Yet here mistake me not, judicious friends ; I do not this, to beg your patience, Or servilely to fawn on your applause, Like some dry brain, despairing in his merit. Let me be censured by the austerest brow, Where I want art or judgment, tax me freely . Let envious censors, with their broadest eyes, Look through and through me, I pursue no favour ; Only vouchsafe me your attentions, And I will give you music worth your ears. O, how I hate the monstrousness of time, Where every servile imitating spirit, Plagued with an itching leprosy of ivit, In a mere halting fury, strives to fling His ulcerous body in the Thespian spring, And straight leaps forth a poet! but as lame As Vulcan, or the founder of Cripplegate. Mit. In faith this humour will come ill to some, You will be thought to be too peremptory. Asp. This humour 9 good! and why this humour, Mitis 9 Nay, do not' turn, but answer. Mit. Answer, what 9 Asp. I will not stir your patience, pardon me I urged it for some reasons, and the rather To give these ignorant well-spoken days Some taste of their abuse of this word humour. Cor. O, do not let your purpose fall, gccii Asper ; It cannot but arrive most acceptable, Chiefly to such as have the happiness EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. 51 Daily to see how the poor innocent word s rack'd and tortured. . Mit. Ay, I pray yon proceed. Asp. Ha, ivhat 9 ichat is't 9 Cor. For the abuse of humour. Asp. O, I crave pardon , I had lost my thoughts. Why, humour, as ’tis ens, ice thus define it, i To be a quality of air, or ivater. And in itself holds these two properties, Moisture and Jluxure : as, for demonstration, Pour water on this floor, ’twill wet and run : Likewise the air, forced through a horn or trumpet, Flows instantly away, and leaves behind A kind of dew ; and hence we do conclude. That whatsoe’er hath fluxure and humidity, , As ivanting power to contain itself, Is humour. So in every human body, The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood, By reason that they flow continually In some one part, and are not continent, Receive the name of humours. Noiv thus far It may, by metaphor, apply itself Unto the general disposition : As ivhen some one peculiar quality Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw All his affects, his spirits, and his powers, In their confluctions, all to run one way, This may be truly said to be a humour. But that a rook, by wearing a pyed feather, The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff, A yard of shoe-tye, or the Switzer’s knot On his French garters, should affect a humour ! O, it is more than most ridiculous. Cor. He speaks pure truth ; now if an idiot Have but an apish or fantastic strain, It is his humour. Asp. Well, I will scourge those apes, And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror, As large as is the stage whereon we act; Where they shall see the time's deformity Anatomized in every nerve, and sinew, With constant courage,, and contempt of fear. Mit. Asper, (I urge it as your friend,) take heed, The days are dangerous, full of exception, And men are grown impatient of reproof Asp. Ha, ha ! You might as well have told me, yond' is heaven. j This earth, these men, and all had moved alike .— Do not I know the time’s condition 9 Yes, Mitis, and their souls ; and who they be That either will or can except against me. None but a sort of fools, so sick in taste, That they contemn all physic of the mind, And, like gall’d camels, kick at every touch. Good men, and virtuous spirits, that loath their vices, Will cherish my free labours, love my lines, And with the fervour of their shining grace Make my brain fruitful, to bring forth more objects, Worthy their serious and intentive eyes. But why enforce I this ? as fainting 9 no. If any here chance to behold himself, Let him not dare to challenge me of ivrong ; For, if he shame to have his follies known, : First he should shame to act 'em : my strict hand Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe Squeeze out the humour of such spongy souls, As lick up every idle vanity. Cor. Why, this is right furor poeticus J Kind gentlemen, ice hope your patience Will yet conceive the best, or entertain This supposition,, that a madman speaks. Asp. What, are you ready there 9 Mitis , sit down, And my Cordatus. Sound ho ! and begin. I leave you two, as censors, to sit here: Observe ivhat I present, and liberally Speak your opinions upon every scene, As it shall pass the view of these spectators. Nay, now y'are tedious, sirs ; for shame begin. And, Mitis, note me ; if in all this front You can espy a gallant of this mark, Who, to be thought one of the judicious, Sits ivitli his arms thus wreath’d, his hat pull'd here, Cries mew, and nods, then shakes his empty head r Will shew more several motions in his face Than the new London, Rome, or Niniveh, And, now and then, breaks a dry biscuit jest, Which, that it may more easily be chew'd, He steeps in his own laughter. Cor. Why, will that Make it be sooner swallow'd 9 Asp. O, assure you. Or if it did not, yet, as Horace sings, Mean cates are welcome still to hungry guests. Cor. ’Tis true; but why should we observe them, Asper 9 Asp. O, I would know ’em ; for in such assemblies They are more infectious than the pestilence : And therefore I would give them qrills to purge, And make them fit for fair societies. How monstrous and detested is't to see A fellow, that has neither art nor brain, Sit like an Aristarchus, or stark ass, Taking men's lines with a tobacco face, In snuff\ still spitting, using his wry’d looks, In nature of a vice, to wrest and turn The good aspect of those that shall sit near him r From what they do behold ! O, 'tis most vile. Mit. Nay, Asper. Asp. Peace, Mitis, I do know your thought ; You'll say, your guests here will except at this r Pish! you are too timorous, and full of doubt. Then he, a patient, shall reject all physic, 'Cause the physician tells him, you are sick : Or, if I say, that he is vicious, You will not hear of virtue. Come, you are fond. Khali I be so extravagant, to think, That happy judgments, and composed spirits, Will challenge me for taxing such as these 9 I am ashamed. Cor. Nay, but good, pardon us ; We must not bear this peremptory sail, But use our best endeavours how to please. Asp. Why, therein I commend your careful And I will mix with you in industry [ thoughts, To please : but whom 9 attentive auditors, Such as will join their profit ivith their pleasure, And come to feed their understanding parts : For these I'll prodigally spend myself, And speak away my spirit into air ; For these, I'll melt my brain into invention, Coin neio conceits, and hang my richest words As polish'd jewels in their bounteous ears 9 But stay, I lose myself, and ivrong their patience EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. 32 If I dwell here, they’ll not begin, I see. Friends, sit you still, and entertain this troop With some familiar and by-conference, I'll haste them sound. Now, gentlemen, I go To turn an actor, and a humorist, Where, ere I do resume my present person, We hope to make the circles of your eyes Flow with distilled laughter : if we fail, We must impute it to this only chance, Art hath an enemy call'd ignorance. [Exit. Cor. I low do you like his spirit, Mitis 9 Mit. I should like it much better, if he were less confident. Cor. Why, do you suspect his merit 9 Mit. No; but I fear this will procure him much envy. Cor. O, that sets the stronger seal on his desert: if he had no enemies, I should esteem his fortunes most wretched at this instant. Mit. You have seen his play, Cordatus : pray you, how is it 9 Cor. Faith, sir, I must refrain to judge ; only this I can say of it, 't.is strange, and of a particu¬ lar kind by itself, somewhat like Vetus Comoeclia; a ivork that hath bounteously pleased me ; how it will answer the general expectation, I know not. Mit. Does he observe all the laws of comedy in it 9 Cor. What laws mean you 9 Mit. Why, the equal division of it into acts and scenes, according to the Terentian manner ; his true number of actors ; the furnishing of the scene with Grex or Chorus, and that the whole argument fall within compass of a day’s busi¬ ness. Cor. O no, these are too nice observations. Mit. They are such as must be received, by your favour, or it cannot be authentic. Cor. Troth, I can discern no such necessity. Mit. No l Cor. No, I assure you, signior. If those laivs you speak of had been delivered us ab initio, and in their present virtue and perfection, there had been some reason of obeying their powers ; but ’tis extant, that that which we call Comoedia, ivas at first nothing but a simple and continued song, sung by one only person, till Susario invented a second; after him, Epicliarmus a third ; Phor- mus and Chionides devised to have four actors, ivith a prologue and chorus ; to which Cratinus, long after, added a fifth and sixth : Eupolis, more ; Aristophanes, more than they ; every man in the dignity of his spirit and judgment supplied some¬ thing. And, though that in him this kind of poem appeared absolute, and fully perfected, yet how is the face of it changed since, in Menander, Philemon, Cecilius, Plautus, and the rest ! who have utterly excluded the chorus, altered the pro¬ perty of the persons, their names, and natures, and augmented it with all liberty, according to the elegancy and disposition of those times wherein they wrote. I see not then, but we should enjoy the same license, or free power to illustrate and heighten our invention, as they did; and not be tied to those strict and regular forms which the niceness of a few, who are nothing but form, would thrust upon us. Mit. Well, we will not dispute of this now ; but what's his scene 9 Cor Marry, Insula Fortunata, sir. Mit. O, the Fortunate Island: mass, he has bound himself to a strict la w there. Cor. Why so 9 Mit. He cannot lightly alter the scene, without crossing the seas. Cor. He needs not, having a whole island to run through, I think. Mit. No ! hoiv comes it then, that in some one play ice see so many seas, countries, and kingdoms, passed over with such admirable dexterity 9 Cor. O, that but shews how well the authors can travel in their vocation, and outrun the ap¬ prehension of their auditory. But, leaving this, I would they would begin once : this protrac¬ tion is able to sour the best seeded patience in the theatre. [The third sounding. Mit. They have answered your wish, sir ; they sound. Cor. O, here comes the Prologue. Enter Prologue. Now, sir, if you had staid a little longer, I meant to have spoke your prologue for you, i\faith. Prol. Marry, ivith all my heart, sir, you shall do it yet, and I thank you. [Going. Cor. Nay, nay, stay, stay ; hear you 9 Prol. You could not have studied to have done me a greater benefit at the instant ; for I protest to you, I am unperfect, and, had I spoke it, I must of necessity have been out. Cor. Why, but do you speak this seriously 9 Prol. Seriously ! ay, wit's my help, do I ; and esteem myself indebted to your kindness for it. Cor. For what 9 Prol. Why, for undertaking the prologue for me. Cor. How ! did I undertake it for you 9 Prol. Did you ! I appeal to all these gentle¬ men, whether you did or no. Come, come, it pleases you to cast a strange look on't now ; but ’twill not serve. Cor. 'Fore me, but it must serve ; and there¬ fore speak your prologue. Prol. An I do, let me die poisoned ivith some venomous hiss, and never live to look as high as the two-penny room again. [Exit. Mit. He has put you to it, sir. Cor. ' Sdeath, what a humorous fellow is this ! Gentlemen, good faith I can speak no prologue, howsoever his weak wit has had thefortune to make this strong use of me here before you : but I pro¬ test — Enter Carlo Buffo.ve, followed by a Boy with wine. Car. Come , come, leave these fustiafi protesta¬ tions ; away, come, I cannot abide these grey¬ headed ceremonies. Boy, fetch me a glass quickly . I may bid these gentlemen welcome ; give them a health here. [Exit Boy.] I mar'le whose wit it was to put a prologue in yond' sackbut's mouth ; they might well think he'd be out of tune, and yet you’d play upon him too. Cor. Hang him, dull block ! Car. O.good words, good words ; a well-timber'd fellow, he would have made a good column, an he had been thought on, when the house was a build¬ ing— Re-enter Boy with glasses. O, art thou come 9 Well said ; give me, boy ; fill, so ! Here’s a cup of wine sparkles like a dia - SCET T E I. LVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. 33 mond. Gentleivomen (lam sworn to 'put them in first) and gentlemen, around, in place of a bad prologue, I drink this good draught to your health here, Canary, the very elixir and spirit of wine. [Drinks.] This is that our poet calls Castalian liquor, ichen he comes abroad now and then, once in a fortnight, and makes a good meal among players, where he has caninum appetitum; marry, at home he keeps a good philosophical diet, beans and buttermilk ; an honest pure rogue, he will take you off three, four, five of these, one after another, and look villainously when he has done, like a one-headed Cerberus.—He does not hear me, I hope—And then, when his belly is well ballaced, and his brain rigged a little, he sails away withal, as though he would ivork wonders when he comes home. He has made a play here, and he calls it, Every Man out of his Humour : but an he get me out of the humour he has put me in, I’ll trust none of his tribe again while I live. Gentles, all I can say for him is, you are ivelcome. I could wish my bottle here amongst you ; but there’s an old rule. No pledging your own health. Marry, if any here be thirsty for it, their best way (that I know) is, sit still, seal up their lips, and drink so much of the play in at their ears. [Exit Mit. What may this fellow be, Cordatus ? Cor. Faith, if the time will suffer his descrip¬ tion, I’ll give it you. He is one, the author calls him Carlo Buffone, an impudent common jester , a violent railer, and an incomprehensible epicure ; one whose company is desired of all men, but be¬ loved of none ; he will sooner lose his soul than a jest, and profane even the most holy things, to excite laughter : no honourable or reverend per¬ sonage whatsoever can come within the reach of his eye, but is turned into all manner of variety, by his adulterate similes. Mit. You paint forth a monster. Cor. He will prefer all countries before his native, and thinks he can never sufficiently, or with admiration enough, deliver his affectionate conceit of foreign atheistical policies. But stay — Enter Macilente. Observe these : he’ll appear himself anon. Mit. O, this is your envious man, Macilente, 1 think. Cor. The same, sir. ACT I. SCENE I.— The Country. Enter Macilente, with a book. Mad. Viri est, fortunes ccecitatem facile ferre. ’Tis true ; but, Stoic, where, in the vast world, Doth that man breathe, that can so much command His blood and his affection ? Well, I see I strive in vain to cure my wounded soul; For every cordial that my thoughts apply Turns to a corsive and doth eat it farther. There is no taste in this philosophy; ’Tis like a potion that a man should drink, Put turns his stomach with the sight of it. I am no such pill’d Cynick to believe, That beggary is the only happiness ; Or with a number of these patient fools, To sing: My mind to me a kingdom is, When the lank hungry belly barks for food, I look into the world, and there I meet With objects, that do strike my blood-shot eyes Into my brain : where, when I view myself, Having before observ’d this man is great, Mighty and fear’d ; that lov’d and highly favour’d : A third thought wise and learn’d ; a fourth rich, And therefore honour’d ; a fifth rarely featur’d ; A sixth admired for his nuptial fortunes : When I see these, I say, and view myself, [ wish the organs of my sight were crack’d; And that the engine of my grief could cast Mine eyeballs, like two globes of wildfire, forth, To melt this unproportion’d frame of nature. Oh, they are thoughts that have transfix’d my heart, And often, in the strength of apprehension, Made my cold passion stand upon my face, Like drops of dew on a stiff cake of ice. Cor. This alludes well to that of the poet, Invidus suspirat, gemit,incutitque dentes, Sudat frigidus, intuens quod odit. Mit. O, peace, you break the scene. Enter Sogliardo and Carlo Buffone. Mad. Soft, who be these ? I’ll lay me down awhile till they be past. [ Lies down. Cor. Signior, note this gallant, I pray you. Mit. What is he ? Cor. A tame rook, you’ll take him presently; list. Sog. Nay, look you, Carlo ; this is my humour now ! I have land and money, my friends left me well, and I will be a gentleman whatsoever it cost me. Car. A most gentlemanlike resolution. Sog. Tut! an I take an humour of a thing once, I am like your tailor’s needle, I go through : but, for my name, signior, how think you? will it not serve for a gentleman’s name, when the signior is put to it, ha ? Car. Let me hear; how is it ? Sog. Signior Insulso Sogliardo: methinks it sounds well. Car. O excellent! tut! an all fitted to your name, you might very well stand for a gentleman : I know many Sogliardos gentlemen. Sog. Why, and for my wealth I might be a jus¬ tice of peace. Car. Ay, and a constable for your wit. Sog. All this is my lordship you see here, and those farms you came by. Car. Good steps to gentility too, marry : but, Sogliardo, if you affect to be a gentleman indeed, you must observe all the rare qualities, humours, and compliments of a gentleman. Sog. I know it, signior, and if you please to instruct, I am not too good to learn, I’ll assure you. Car. Enough, sir.—I’ll make admirable use in the projection of my medicine upon this lump of copper here. [Aside.] —I’ll bethink me for you, sir. Sog. Signior, I will both pay you, and pray you,, and thank you, and think on you. d 34 EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. ACT 1. Cor. Is this not purely pood ? Maci. S’blood, wliy should such a prick-ear’d hind as this Be rich, ha? a fool! such a transparent gull That may be seen through ! wherefore should he have land, Houses, and lordships ? O, I could eat my entrails, And sink my soul into the earth with sorrow. Car. First, to be an accomplished gentleman, that is, a gentleman of the time, you must give over housekeeping in the country, and live alto¬ gether in the city amongst gallants; where, at your first appearance, ’twere good you turn’d four or five hundred acres of your best land into two or three trunks of apparel—you may do it without going to a conjurer—and be sure you mix yourself still with such as flourish in the spring of the fashion, and are least popular; study their carriage and behaviour in all; learn to play at primero and passage, and ever (when you lose) have two or three peculiar oaths to swear by, that no man else swears : but, above all, protest in your play, and affirm, Upon your credit, As you are a true gentleman, at every cast; you may do it with a safe conscience, I warrant you. Soy. O admirable rare ! he cannot choose but be a gentleman that has these excellent gifts : more, more, I beseech you. Car. You must endeavour to feed cleanly at your ordinary, sit melancholy, and pick your teeth when you cannot speak: and when you come to plays, be humorous, look with a good starch’d face, and ruffle your brow like a new boot, laugh at nothing but your own jests, or else as the noble¬ men laugh. That’s a special grace you must ob¬ serve. Soy. I warrant you, sir. Car. Ay, and sit on the stage and flout, provided you have a good suit. Soy. O, I’ll have a suit only for that, sir. Car. You must talk much of your kindred an_ ,»llies. Soy. Lies! no, signior, I shall not need to do so, I have kindred in the city to talk of: I have a niece is a merchant’s wife ; and a nephew, my brother Sordido’s son, of the Inns of court. Car. O, but you must pretend alliance with courtiers and great persons: and ever when you are to dine or sup in any strange presence, hire a fellow with a great chain, (though it be copper, it’s no matter,) to bring you letters, feign’d from such a nobleman, or such a knight, or such a lady, To their worshipful, riyht rare , and nobly qualified friend and kinsman , siynior Insulso Soyliardo : give your¬ self style enough. And there, while you intend cir¬ cumstances of news, or enquiry of their health, or so, one of your familiars, whom you must carry about you still, breaks it up, as ’twere in a jest, and reads it publicly at the table : at which you must seem to take as unpardonable offence, as if he had torn your mistress’s colours, or breath’d upon her picture, and pursue it with that hot grace, as if you would advance a challenge upon it presently. Soy. Stay, I do not like that humour of chal¬ lenge, it may be accepted ; but I’ll tell you what’s my humour now, I will do this : I will take occa¬ sion of sending one of my suits to the tailor’s, to have the pocket repaired, or so ; and there such a letter as you talk of, broke open and all shall be left; O, the tailor will presently give out what I am, upon the reading of it, worth twenty of your gallants. Car. But then you must put on an extreme face of discontentment at your man’s negligence. Soy. O, so I will, and beat him too: I’ll have a man for the purpose. Mac. You may; you have land and crowns : O partial fate ! Car. Mass, well remember’d, you must keep your men gallant at the first, fine pied liveries laid with good gold lace; there’s no loss in it, they may rip it off and pawn it when they lack victuals. Soy. By ’r Lady, that is chargeable, signior, ’twill bring a man in debt. Car. Debt! why that’s the more for your credit, sir : it’s an excellent policy to owe much in these- days, if you note it. Soy. As how, good signior? I would fain be a politician. Cor. O ! look where you are indebted any great sum, your creditor observes you with no less re¬ gard, than if he were bound to you for some huge benefit, and will quake to give you the least cause of offence, lest he lose his money. I assure you, in these times, no man has his servant more obse¬ quious and pliant, than gentlemen their creditors : to whom, if at any time you pay but a moiety, or a fourth part, it comes more acceptably than if you gave them a new-year’s gift. Soy. I perceive you, sir : I will take up, and bring myself in credit, sure. Car. Marry this, always beware you commerce not with bankrupts, or poor needy Ludgathians they are impudent creatui'es, turbulent spirits, they care not what violent tragedies they stir, nor how they play fast and loose with a poor gentleman's fortunes, to get their own. Marry, these rich fellows that have the world, or the better part of it, sleeping in their counting-houses, they are ten times more placable, they; either fear, hope, or modesty, restrains them from offering any outrages : but this is nothing to your followers, you shall not run a penny more in arrearage for them, an you list, yourself. Soy. No ! how should I keep ’em then ? Car. Keep ’em! ’sblood, let them keep them¬ selves, they are no sheep, are they? what, you shall come in houses, where plate, apparel, jewels, and divers other pretty commodities lie negligently scattered, and I would have those Mercuries follow me, I trow, should remember they had not then fingers for nothing. Soy. That’s not so good, methinks. Car. Why, after you have kept them a fortnight, or so, and shew’d them enough to the world, yon may turn them away, and keep no more but a boy, it’s enough. Soy. Nay, my humour is not for boys, I’ll keep men, an I keep any ; and I’ll give coats, that’s my humour : but I lack a cullisen. Car. Why, now you ride to the city, you may buy one ; I’ll bring you where you shall have your choice for money. Soy. Can you, sir ? Car. O, ay: you shall have one take measure of you, and make you a coat of arms to fit you, o! j what fashion you will. Soy. By word of mouth, I thank you, signior, SCENE I. EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. 35 I’ll be once a little prodigal in a humour, i’faitli, and have a most prodigious coat. Mac. Torment and death ! break head and brain at once, To be deliver’d of your fighting issue. Who can endure to see blind Fortune dote thus ? To be enamour’d on this dusty turf, This clod, a whoreson puck-fist! O G— — ! I could run wild with grief now, to behold The rankness of her bounties, that doth breed Such bulrushes ; these mushroom gentlemen, That shoot up in a night to place and worship. Car. [seeing Macilente.] Lethimalone; some stray, some stray. Sog. Nay, I will examine him before I go, sure. Car. The lord of the soil has all wefts and strays here, has he not? Sog. Yes, sir. Car. Faith then I pity the poor fellow, he’s fallen into a fool’s hands. [Aside. Sog. Sirrah, who gave you a commission to lie in my lordship ? Mac. Your lordship ! Sog. How ! my lordship ? do you know me, sir ? Mac. I do know you, sir. Car. He answers him like an echo. [Aside. Sog. Why, Who am I, sir ? Mac. One of those that fortune favours. Car. The periphrasis of a fool. I’ll observe this better. [Aside. Sog. That fortune favours ! how mean you that, friend ? Mac. I mean simply : that you are one that lives not by your wits. Sog. By my wits! no sir, I scorn to live by my wits, I. I have better means, I tell thee, than to take such base courses, as to live by my wits. What, dost thou think I live by my wits ? Mac. Methinks, jester, you should not relish this well. Car. Ha! does he know me ? Mac. Though yours be the worst use a man can put his wit to, of thousands, to prostitute it at every tavern and ordinary; yet, methinks, you should have turn’d your broadside at this, and have been ready with an apology, able to sink this hulk of ignorance into the bottom and depth of his contempt. Car. Oh, ’tis Macilente ! Signior, you are well encountered ; how is it?—O, we must not regard what he says, man, a trout, a shallow fool, he has no more brain than a butterfly, a mere stuft suit; he looks like a musty bottle new wicker’d, his head’s the cork, light, light! [Aside lo Macilente.] — I am glad to see you so well return’d, signior. Mac. You are ! gramercy, good Janus. Sog. Is he one of your acquaintance ? I love him the better for that. Car. Od’s precious, come away, man, what do you mean ? an you knew him as I do, you’d shun him as you would do the plague. Sog. Why, sir ? Car. O, he’s a black fellow, take heed of him. Sog. Is he a scholar, or a soldier? Car. Both, both ; a lean mongrel, he looks as if he were chop-fallen, with barking at other men’s good fortunes : ’ware how you offend him ; he carries oil and fire in his pen, will scald where it drops : his spirit is like powder, quick, violent; he’ll blow a man up with a jest: I fear him worse than a rotten wall does the cannon ; shake an hour after at the report. Away, come not near him. Sog. For God’s sake let’s be gone; an he be a scholar, you know I cannot abide him ; I had as lieve see a cockatrice, specially as cockatrices go now. Car. What, you’ll stay, signior ? this gentleman Sogliardo, and I, are to visit the knight Puntar- volo, and from thence to the city; we shall meet there. [Exit with Sogliardo. Mac. Ay, when I cannot shun you, we will meet. ’Tis strange ! of all the creatures I have seen, I envy not this Buffone, for indeed Neither his fortunes nor his parts deserve it : But I do hate him, as I hate the devil, Or that brass-visaged monster Barbarism. O, ’tis an open-throated, black-mouth’d cur, That bites at all, but eats on those that feed him. A slave, that to your face will, serpent-like, Creep on the ground, as he would eat the dust, And to your back will turn the tail, and sting More deadly than a scorpion : stay, who’s this ? Now, for my soul, another minion Of the old lady Chance’s ! I’ll observe him. Enter Sordido with an Almanack in his hand. Sord. O rare ! good, good, good, good, good! I thank my stars, I thank my stars for it. Mac. Said I not true ? doth not his passion Out of my divination ? O my senses, [speak Why lose you not your powers, and become Dull’d, if not deaded, with this spectacle ? I know him, it is Sordido, the farmer, A boor, and brother to that swine was here. [Aside. Sord. Excellent, excellent, excellent! as I would wish, as 1 would wish. Mac. See how the strumpet fortune tickles him, And makes him swoon with laughter, O, O, O ! Sord. Ha, ha, ha! I w r ill not sow my grounds this year. Let me see, what harvest shall we have ? June, July ? Mac. What, is’t a prognostication raps him so? Sord. The 20, 21, 22 days, rain and wind. O good, good ! the 23, and 24, rain and some wind, good! the 25, rain , good still! 26, 27, 28, wind and some rain ; would it had been rain and some wind ! well, ’tis good, when it can be no better. 29, inclining to rain: inclining to rain! that’s not so good now : 30, and 31, wind and no rain , no rain! ’slid, stay: this is worse and worse: What says he of St. Swithin’s? turn back, look, saint Swithin’s : no rain ! Mac. O, here’s a precious, dirty, damned rogue, That fats himself with expectation Of rotten weather, and unseason’d hours ; And he is rich for it, an elder brother ! His barns are full, his ricks and mows well trod, His garners ci'ack with store ! O, ’tis well; ha, ha, ha! A plague consume thee, and thy house ! Sord. O here, St. Swithin's, the 15 day, variable weather , for the most part rain, good ! for the most part rain : why, it should rain forty days after, now, more or less, it was a rule held, afore I was able to hold a plough, and yet here are two days no rain ; ha ! it makes me muse. We’ll see how the next month begins, if that be better. August 1, 2, 3, and 4, days, rainy and blustering ; this .is well now : 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, rainy, with some thun- 36 EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. act r. der ; Ay marry, this is excellent; the other was false printed sure: the 10 and 11, great store of rain ; O good, good, good, good, good! the 12, 13, and 14, dags , rain; good still: 15, and 16, rain ; good still: 17 and 18, rain, good still: 19 and 20, good still, good still, good still, good still, good still! 21, some rain; some rain! well, we must he patient, and attend the heavens’ pleasure, would it were more though : the 2'2, 23, great tem¬ pests of rain, thunder and lightning. O good again, past expectation good ! I thank my blessed angel; never, never Laid I [a] penny better out than this, To purchase this dear book : not dear for price, And yet of me as dearly prized as life, Since in it is contain’d the very life, Blood, strength, and sinews, of my happiness. Blest be the hour wherein I bought this book ; His studies happy that composed the book, And the man fortunate that sold the book ! Sleep with this charm, and be as true to me, As I am joy’d and confident in thee. [Puts it up. Enter a Hind, and gives Sordido a paper to read. Mac. Ha, ha, ha ! Is not this good? Is it not pleasing this ? Ha, ha, ha ! God pardon me ! ha, ha ! Is’t possible that such a spacious villain Should live, and not be plagued? or lies he hid Within the wrinkled bosom of the world, Where Heaven cannot see him? S’blood! methinks ’Tis rare, and strange, that he should breathe and walk, Feed with digestion, sleep, enjoy his health, And, like a boisterous whale swallowing the poor, Still swim in wealth and pleasure ! is’t not strange ? Unless his house and skin were thunder proof, I wonder at it! Methinks, now, the hectic, Gout, leprosy, or some such loath’d disease, Might light upon him ; or that fire from heaven Might fall upon his barns ; or mice and rats Eat up his grain ; or else that it might rot Within the hoary ricks, even as it stands : Methinks this might be well; and after all The devil might come and fetch him. Ay, ’tis true ! Meantime he surfeits in prosperity, And thou, in envy of him, gnaw’st thyself: Peace, fool, get hence, and tell thy vexed spirit, Wealth in this age will scarcely look on merit. [Rises and exit. Sord. Who brought this same, sirrah ? Hind. Marry, sir, one of the justice’s men ; he says ’tis a precept, and all their hands be at it. Sord. Ay, and the prints of them stick in my flesh, Deeper than in their letters : they have sent me Pills wrapt in paper here, that, should I take them, Would poison all the sweetness of my book, And turn my honey into hemlock-juice. But I am wiser than to serve their precepts, Or follow their prescriptions. Here’s a device, To charge me bring my grain unto the markets : Ay, much ! when I have neither barn nor garner, Nor earth to hide it in, I’ll bring’t; till then, Each corn I send shall be as big as Paul’s. O, but (say some) the poor are like to starve. Why, let ’em starve, what s that to me ? are bees Bound to keep life in drones and idle moths ? no : Why such are these that term themselves the poor, Only because they would be pitied, But are indeed a sort of lazy beggars, Licentious rogues, and sturdy vagabonds, Bred by the sloth of a fat plenteous year, Like snakes in heat of summer, out of dung ; And this is all that these cheap times are good for : Whereas a wholesome and penurious dearth Purges the soil of such vile excrements, And kills the vipers up. ; Hind. O, but master, Take heed they hear you not. Sord. Why so ? Hind. They will exclaim against you. Sord. Ay, their exclaims Move me as much, as thy breath moves a mountain. Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home Can be contented to applaud myself, To sit and clap my hands, and laugh, and leap, Knocking my head against my roof, with joy To see how plump my bags are, and my barns. Sirrah, go hie you home, and bid your fellows Get all their flails ready again I come. Hind. I will, sir. [Exit. Sord. I’ll instantly set all my hinds to thrashing ; Of a whole rick of corn, which I will hide Under the ground ; and with the straw thereof I’ll stuff the outsides of my other mows : That done, I’ll have them empty all my garners, And in the friendly earth bury my store, That, when the searchers come, they may suppose All’s spent, and that my fortunes were belied. And to lend more opinion to my want, And stop that many-mouthed vulgar dog, Which else would still be baying at my door, Each market-day I will be seen to buy Part of the purest wheat, as for my household; Where when it comes, it shall increase my heaps : ’Twill yield me treble gain at this dear time, Promised in this dear book : I have cast all. Till then I will not sell an ear, I’ll hang first. O, I shall make my prices as I list; My house and I can feed on peas and barley. What though a world of wretches starve the while; He that will thrive must think no courses vile. [Exit. Cor. Now, signior, how approve you this ? have the humourists exprest themselves truly or no ? Mit. Yes, if it be well prosecuted, ’tis hitherto happy enough : but methinks Macilente went hence too soon ; he might have been made to stay, and speak somewhat in reproof of Sordido's wretch¬ edness now at the last. Cor. O, no, that had been extremely improper ; besides, he had continued the scene too long with him, as ’ twas, being in no more action. Mit. You may inforce the length as a necessary reason ; but for propriety, the scene would very well have borne it, in my judgment. Cor. O, ivorst of both; why, you mistake his humour utterly then. Mit. How do I mistake it ? Is it not envy ? Cor. Yes, but you must understand, signior, he envies him not as he is a villain, a wolf in the commonwealth, but as he is rich and fortunate ; for the true condition of envy is, dolor aliense feli- citatis, to have our eyes continually fixed upon another man's prosperity, that is, his chief happi¬ ness,and to grieve at that. Whereas, if we make his monstrous and abhorr d actions our object, the grief we take then comes nearer the nature of hate scene i. EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. 37 than envy , as being bred out of a kind of contempt and loathing in ourselves. Mit. So you'll infer it had been hate, not envy in him, to reprehend the humour of Sor dido ? Cor. Right, for what a man truly envies in another, he could always love and cherish in him¬ self ; but no man truly reprehends in another, what he loves in himself; therefore reprehension is out of his hate. And this distinction hath he himself made in a speech there, if you marked it, where he says, I envy not this Buffone, but I hate him. Mit. Stay, sir: I envy not this Buffone, but I hate him. Why might he not as well have hated Sordido as him ? Cor. Ho, sir, there ivas subject for his envy in Sordido, his wealth : so was there not in the other. He stood possest of no one eminent gift, but a most odious and fiend-like disposition, that would turn charity itself into hate, much more envy, for the present. Mit. You have satisfied me, sir. O, here comes the fool, and the jester again, methinks. Cor. ’ Twere pity they should be parted, sir. Mit. What bright-shining gallant's that with them f the knight they went to ? Cor. No, sir, this is one monsieur Fastidious Brisk, otherwise called the fresh Frenchified courtier. Mit. A humourist too $ Cor. As humorous as quicksilver ; do but ob¬ serve him ; the scene is the country still, remember ACT II. SCENE I_ The Country; before Puntarvolo’s House. Enter Fastidious Brisk, Cinedo, Carlo Buffone, and SOGLIARDO. Fast. Cinedo, watch when the knight comes, and give us word. Cin. I will, sir. [Exit. Fast. How lik’st thou my boy, Carlo? Car. O, well, well. He looks like a colonel of the Pigmies horse, or one of these motions in a great antique clock ; he would shew well upon a haberdasher’s stall, at a corner shop, rarely. Fast. ’Sheart, what a damn’d witty rogue’s this! How he confounds with his similes ! Car. Better with similes than smiles : and whi¬ ther were you riding now, signior ? Fast. Who, I ? What a silly jest’s that! Whi¬ ther should I ride but to the court ? Car. O, pardon me, sir, twenty places more; your hot-house, or your whore-house- Fast. By the virtue of my soul, this knight dwells in Elysium here. Car. He’s gone now, I thought he would fly out presently. These be our nimble-spirited catsos, that have their evasions at pleasure, will run over a bog like your wild Irish ; no sooner started, but they’ll leap from one thing to another, like a squir¬ rel, heigh ! dance and do tricks in their discourse, from fire to water, from water to air, from air to earth, as if their tongues did but e’en lick the four elements over, and away. Fast. Sirrah, Carlo, thou never saw’st my gray hobby yet, didst thou ? Car. No ; have you such a one ? Fast. The best in Europe, my good villain, thou’lt say when thou seest him. Car. But when shall I see him ? Fast. There was a nobleman in the court offered me a hundred pound for him, by this light: a fine little fiery slave, he runs like a—oh, excellent, ex¬ cellent !—with the very sound of the spur. Car. How! the sound of the spur ? Fast. O, it’s your only humour now extant, sir; a good gingle, a good gingle. Car. ’Sblood! you shall see him turn morrice- dancer, he has got him bells, a good suit, and a hobby-horse. Sog. Signior, now you talk of a hobby-horse, I know where one is will not be given for a brace of angels. Fast. How is that, sir ? Sog. Marry, sir, I am telling this gentleman of a hobby-horse; it was my father’s indeed, and, though I say it- Car. That should not say it—on, on. Sog. He did dance in it, with as good humour and as good regard as any man of his degree what¬ soever, being no gentleman: I have danc’d in it myself too. Car. Not since the humour of gentility was upon you, did you ? Sog. Yes, once; marry, that was but to shew what a gentleman might do in a humour. Car. O, very good. Mit. Why, this fellow's discourse were nothing but for the ivord humour. Cor. O bear with him ; an he should lack mat¬ ter and words too, 'twere pitiful. Sog. Nay, look you, sir, there’s ne’er a gentleman in the country has the like humours, for the hobby¬ horse, as I have ; I have the method for the thread¬ ing of the needle and all, the- Car. How, the method? Sog. Ay, the leigerity for that, and the whighhie, and the daggers in the nose, and the travels of the egg from finger to finger, and all the humours inci¬ dent to the quality. The horse hangs at home in my parlour. I’ll keep it for a monument as long as I live, sure. Car. Do so; and when you die, ’twill be an ex¬ cellent trophy to hang over your tomb. Sog. Mass, and I’ll have a tomb, now I think on’t; ’tis but so much charges. Car. Best build it in your lifetime then, your heirs may hap to forget it else. Sog. Nay, I mean so, I’ll not trust to them. Car. No, for heirs and executors are grown damnable careless, ’specially since the ghosts of testators left walking.—How like you him, signior? Fast. ’Fore heavens, his humour arrides me ex¬ ceedingly. Car. Arrides you ! Fast. Ay, pleases me: a pox on’t 1 I am so haunted at the court, and at my lodging, with your refined choice spirits, that it makes me clean of 38 EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. ACT li mother garb, another sheaf, I know not how! I cannot frame me to your harsh vulgar phrase, ’tis against my genius. Sog. Signior Carlo ! [Takes him aside. Cor. This is right to that of Horace , Dura vi- tant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt; so this gal¬ lant, labouring to avoid 'popularity , falls into a habit of affectation, ten thousand times hatefuller than the former. Car. [pointing to Fastidious.] Who, he 1 a gull, a fool, no salt in him i’ the earth, man; he looks like a fresh salmon kept in a tub ; he’ll be spent shortly. His brain’s lighter than his feather already, and his tongue more subject to lye, than that is to wag; he sleeps with a musk-cat every night, and walks all day hang’d in pomander chains for penance; he has liis skin tann’d in civet, to make his complexion strong, and the sweetness of his youth lasting in the sense of his sweet lady ; a good empty puff, he loves you well, signior. Sog. There shall be no love lost, sir, I’ll assure you. Fast. [advancing to them.'] Nay, Carlo, I am not happy in thy love, I see : pray thee suffer me to enjoy thy company a little, sweet mischief: by this air, I shall envy this gentleman’s place in thy affections, if you be thus private, i’faith. Enter Cinedo. How now ! Is the knight arrived ? Cin. No, sir, but ’tis guess’d he will arrive pre¬ sently, by his fore-runners. Fast. His hounds! by Minerva, an excellent figure ; a good boy. Car. You should give him a French crown for it; the boy would find two better figures in that, and a good figure of your bounty beside. Fast. Tut, the boy wants no crowns. Car. No crown; speak in the singular number, and we’ll believe you. Fast. Nay, thou art so capriciously conceited now. Sirrah damnation, I have heard this knight Puntarvolo reported to be a gentleman of exceed¬ ing good humour, thou know’st him ; prithee, how is his disposition ? I never was so favoured of my stars, as to see him yet. Boy, do you look to the hobby ? Cin. Ay, sir, the groom has set him up. [As Cinedo is going out, Sogliardo takes him aside. Fast. ’Tis well: I rid out of my way of intent to visit him, and take knowledge of his-Nay, good Wickedness, his humour, his humour. Car. Why, he loves dogs, and hawks, and his wife well; he has a good riding face, and he can sit a great horse ; he will taint a staff well at tilt; when he is mounted he looks like the sign of the George, that’s all I know; save, that instead of a dragon, he will brandish against a tree, and break his sword as confidently upon the knotty bark, as the other did upon the scales of the beast. Fast. O, but this is nothing to that’s delivered of him. They say he has dialogues and discourses between his horse, himself, and his dog ; and that he will court his own lady, as she were a stranger never encounter’d before. Car. Ay, that he will, and make fresh love to ner every morning ; this gentleman has been a spec¬ tator of it, Signior Insulso. Sog. I am resolute to keep a page.—Say you, sir ? [Leaps from whispering with Cinedo. Car. You have seen Signior Puntarvolo accost his lady ? Sog. O, ay, sir. Fast. And how is the manner of it, prithee, good signior ? Sog. Faith, sir, in very good sort; he has his humours for it, sir ; as first, (suppose he were now to come from riding or hunting, or so,) he has his trumpet to sound, and then the waiting-gentle¬ woman she looks out, and then he speaks, and then she speaks,—-—very pretty, i’faith, gentlemen. Fast. Why, but do you remember no particulars, signior ? Sog. O, yes, sir, first, the gentlewoman, she looks out at the window. Car. After the trumpet has summon’d a parle, not before ? Sog. No, sir, not before ; and then says he,— ha, ha, ha, ha ! Car. What says he ? be not rapt so. Sog. Says he,—ha, ha, ha, ha! Fast. Nay, speak, speak. Sog. Ha, ha, ha i—says he, God save you, says he ;—ha, ha ! Car. Was this the ridiculous motive to all this passion ? Sog. Nay, that that comes after is,—ha, ha, ha, ha ! Car. Doubtless he apprehends more than he utters, this fellow ; or else- [A cry of hounds within, j Sog. List, list, they are come from hunting; , stand by, close under this terras, and you shall see i it done better than I can show it. Car. So it had need, ’twill scarce poise the ob¬ servation else. Sog. Faith, I remember all, but the manner of it is quite out of my head. Fast. O, withdraw, withdraw, it cannot be but a most pleasing object. [They stand aside. Eider Tvntarvolo, followed by his Huntsman leading a greyhound. Punt. Forester, give wind to thy horn.— Enough ; by this the sound hath touch’d the ears of the inclos’d: depart, leave the dog, and take with thee what thou hast deserved, the horn and thanks. [Exit Huntsman. Car. Ay, marry, there is some taste in this. Fast. Is’t not good ? Sog. Ah, peace ; now above, now above ! [A Waiting-gentlewoman appears at the window. Hunt. Stay ; mine eye hath, on the instant, through the bounty of the window, received the form of a nymph. I will step forward three paces ; of the which, I will barely retire one ; and, after some little flexure of the knee, with an erected grace salute her ; one, two, and three ! Sweet lady, God save you ! Gent, [above.'] No, forsooth ; I am but the wait¬ ing-gentlewoman. Car. He knew that before. Punt. Pardon me : humanum est errare. Car. He learn’d that of his chaplain. Punt. To the perfection of compliment, (which is the dial of the thought, and guided by the sun of your beauties,) are required these three specials ; the gnomon, the puntilios, and the superficies: the superficies is that we call place ; the puntilios, cir- ftOiSNK i. EVERY MAN OUT cumstance ; and the gnomon, ceremony; in either of which, for a stranger to err, ’tis easy and facile; ; nd such am I. Car. True, not knowing her horizon, he must needs err; which I fear he knows too well. Punt. What call you the lord of the castle, sweet face ? Gent. [ above.'] The lord of the castle is a knight, sir ; signior Puntarvolo. Punt. Puntarvolo 1 O- Car. Now must he ruminate. Fast. Does the wench know him all this while, then ? Car. O, do you know me, man ? why, therein lies the syrup of the jest; it’s a project, a design- ment of his own, a thing studied, and rehearst as ordinarily at his coming from hawking or hunting, is a jig after a play. Sog. Ay, e’en like your jig, sir. Punt. ’Tis a most sumptuous and stately edifice! Of what years is the knight, fair damsel ? Gent. Faith, much about your years, sir. Punt. What complexion, or what stature bears he ? Gent. Of your stature, and very near upon your complexion. Punt. Mine is melancholy,- Car. So is the dog’s, just. Punt. And doth argue constancy, chiefly in love. What are his endowments ? is he courteous ? Gent. O, the most courteous knight in Christian land, sir. Punt. Is he magnanimous ? Gent. As the skin between your brows, sir. Punt. Is he bountiful ? Car. ’Slud, he takes an inventory of his own good parts. Gent. Bountiful 1 ay, sir, I would you should know it; the poor are served at his gate, early and late, sir. Punt. Is he learned? Gent. O, ay, sir, he can speak the French and Italian. Punt. Then he has travelled ? Gent. Ay, forsooth, he hath been beyond seas once or twice. Car. As far as Paris, to fetch over a fashion, and come back again. Punt. Is he religious ? Gent. Religious ! I know not what you call reli¬ gious, but he goes to church, I am sure. Fast. ’Slid, methinks these answers should of¬ fend him. Car. Tut, no ; he knows they are excellent, and to her capacity that speaks them. Punt. Would I might but see his face ! Car. She should let down a glass from the win¬ dow at that word, and request him to look in’t. Punt. Doubtless the gentleman is most exact, and absolutely qualified; doth the castle contain him ? Gent. No, sir, he is from home, but his lady is within. Punt. His lady ! what, is she fair, splendidious, and amiable ? Gent. O, Lord, sir. Punt. Prithee, dear nymph, intreat her beauties to shine on this side of the building. [Exit Waiting-gentlewoman from the window. Car. That he may erect a new dial of compli¬ ment, with his gnomons and his puntilios. OF HIS HUMOUR. 39 Fast. Nay, thou art such another cynic now, a man had need walk uprightly before thee. Car. Heart, can any man walk more upright than he does ? Look, look ; as if he went in a frame, or had a suit of wainscot on : and the dog watching him, lest he should leap out on’t. Fast. O, villain! Car. Well, an e’er I meet him in the city, I’ll have him jointed, I’ll pawn him in Eastcheap, among the butchers, else. Fast. Peace ; who be these, Carlo ? Enter Sordido and Fungoso Sord. Yonder’s your godfather ; do your duty to him, son. Sog. This, sir? a poor elder brother of mine, sir, a yeoman, may dispend some seven or eight hundred a year; that’s his son, my nephew, there. Punt. You are not ill come, neighbour Sordido, though I have not yet said, well-come; what, my godson is grown a great proficient by this. Sord. I hope he will grow great one day, si*\ Fast. What does he study ? the law ? Sog. Ay, sir, he is a gentleman, though his fa¬ ther be but a yeoman. Car. What call you your nephew, signior ? Sog. Marry, his name is Fungoso. Car. Fungoso ! O, he look’d somewhat like a sponge in that pink’d yellow doublet, methought; well, make much of him; I see he was never born to ride upon a mule. Gent, \_reappears at the window .] My lady will come presently, sir. Sog. O, now, now ! Punt. Stand by, retire yourselves a space ; nay, pray you, forget not the use of your hat; the air is piercing. [Sordido and Fungoso withdraw. Fast. What! will not their presence prevail against the current of his humour ? Car. O, no ; it’s a mere flood, a torrent carries all afore it. [Lady Puntarvolo appears at the window. Punt. What more than heavenly pulchritude is What magazine, or treasury of bliss ? [this, Dazzle, you organs to my optic sense, To view a creature of such eminence : O, I am planet-struck, and in yon sphere A brighter star than Venus doth appear ! Fast. How ! in verse! Car. An extacy, an extacy, man. Lady P. \_aboveI\ Is your desire to speak with me, sir knight ? Car. He will tell you that anon; neither his brain nor his body are yet moulded for an answer. Punt. Most debonair, and luculent lady, I de¬ cline me as low as the basis of your altitude. Cor. He makes congies to his wife in geometrical proportions. Mit. Is it possible there should be any such humourist ? Cor. Very easily possible , sir, you see there is. Punt. I have scarce collected my spirits, but lately scattered in the admiration of your form; to which, if the bourfties of your mind be any way responsible, I doubt not but my desires shall find a smooth and secure passage. I am a poor knight- errant, lady, that hunting in the adjacent forest, was, by adventure, in the pursuit of a hart, brought to this place; which hart, dear madam, escaped by EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. ACT II. 40 enchantment: the evening approaching, myself and servant wearied, my suit is, to enter your fair castle and refresh me. Lady. Sir knight, albeit it be not usual with me, chiefly in the absence of a husband, to admit any entrance to strangers, yet in the true regard of those innated virtues, and fair parts, which so strive to express themselves, in you; I am resolved to en¬ tertain you to the best of my unworthy power; which I acknowledge to be nothing, valued with what so worthy a person may deserve. Please you but stay while I descend. [Exit from the window. Punt. Most admired lady, you astonish me. [ Walks aside with Sordido and his son. Car. What! with speaking a speech of your own penning? Fast. Nay, look ; prithee, peace. Car. Pox on’t! I am impatient of such foppery. Fast. O let us hear the rest. Car. What! a tedious chapter of courtship, after sir Lancelot and queen Guenever ? Away ! I marie in what dull cold nook he found this lady out; that, being a woman, she was blest with no more copy of wit but to serve his humour thus. ’Slud, I think he feeds her with porridge, I: she could never have such a thick brain else. Soy. Why, is porridge so hurtful, signior ? Car. O, nothing under heaven more prejudicial to those ascending subtle powers, or doth sooner abate that which we call acumen ingenii, than your gross fare : Why, I’ll make you an instance ; your city-wives, but observe ’em, you have not more perfect true fools in the world bred than they are generally ; and yet you see, by the fineness and de¬ licacy of their diet, diving into the fat capons, drinking your rich wines, feeding on larks, sparrows, potato-pies, and such good unctuous meats, how their wits are refined and rarified; and sometimes a very quintessence of conceit flows from them, able to drown a weak apprehension. Enter Lady Puntarvolo and her Waiting-woman. Fast. Peace, here comes the lady. Lady. Gad’s me, here’s company ! turn in again. [Exit with her Woman, Fast. ’Slight, our presence has cut off the con¬ voy of the jest. Car. All the better, I am glad on’t; for the issue was very perspicuous. Come let’s discover, and salute the. knight [ They come forward. Punt. Stay ; who he these that address them¬ selves towards us ? What, Carlo ! Now by the sin¬ cerity of my soul, welcome ; welcome, gentlemen : and how dost thou, thou Grand Scourge, or Second Untruss of the time ? Car. Faith, spending my metal in this reeling world (here and there), as the sway of my affection carries me, and perhaps stumble upon a yeoman- feuterer, as I do now; or one of fortune’s mules, laden with treasure, and an empty cloak-bag, fol¬ lowing him, gaping when a bag will untie. Punt. Peace, you bandog, peace! What brisk Nymphadoro is that in the white virgin-boot there? Car. Marry, sir, one that I must intreat you to take a very particular knowledge of, and with more than ordinary respect; monsieur Fastidious. Punt. Sir, I could wish, that for the time of your vouchsafed abiding here, and more real en¬ tertainment, this my house stood on the Muses hill, and these my orchards were those of the Ilesperides. Fast. I possess as much in your wish, sir, as if I were made lord of the Indies ; and I pray you believe it. Car. I have a better opinion of his faith, than to think it will be so corrupted. Sog. Come, brother, I’ll bring you acquainted with gentlemen, and good fellows, such as shall do you more grace than- Sord. Brother, I hunger not for such acquaint¬ ance : Do you take heed, lest- [Carlo comes toward them. Sog. Husht! My brother, sir, for want of edu¬ cation, sir, somewhat nodding to the boor, the clown ; but I request you in private, sir. Fung, [looking at Fastidious Brisk.] By hea¬ ven, it is a very fine suit of clothes. [Aside. Cor. Do you observe that, signior? There's another humour has new-crack'd the shell. Mit. What! he is enamour’d ofthe fashion, ishe? Cor. O, you forestall the jest. Fung. I marie what it might stand him in. [Aside. Sog. Nephew ! Fung. ’Fore me, it’s an excellent suit, and as neatly becomes him. [Aside.] —What said you, uncle ? Sog. When saw you my niece ? Fung . Marry, yesternight I supp’d there.—That kind of boot does very rare too. [Aside. Sog. And what news hear you ? Fung. The gilt spur and all! Would I were hang’d, but ’tis exceeding good. [Aside.] —Say you, uncle ? Sog. Your mind is carried away with somewhat else : I ask what news you hear ? Fung. Troth, we hear none.—In good faith, [looking at Fastidious Brisk,] I was never so pleased with a fashion, days of my life. O an I might have but my wish, I’d ask no more of heaven now, but such a suit, such a hat, such a band, such a doublet, such a hose, such a boot, and such a- [ Aside. Sog. They say, there’s a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and the whale, to be seen at Fleet-bridge. You can tell, cousin ? Fung. Here’s such a world of questions with him now!—Yes, I think there be such a thing, I saw the picture.—Would he would once be satisfied! Let me see, the doublet, say fifty shillings the dou¬ blet, and between three or four pound the hose; then boots, hat, and band : some ten or eleven pound will do it all, and suit me, for the heavens ! [Aside. Sog. I’ll see all those devices an I come to London once. Fung. Ods ’slid, an I could compass it, ’twere rare. [Aside.] —Hark you, uncle. Sog. What says my nephew ? Fung. Faith, uncle, I would have desired you to have made a motion for me to my father, in a thing that- Walk aside, and I’ll tell you, sir; no more but this : there’s a parcel of law books (some twenty pounds worth) that lie in a place for little more than half the money they cost; and I think, for some twelve pound, or twenty mark, I could go near to redeem them; there’s Plowden, Dyar, Brooke, and Fitz-Herbert, divers such as I must have ere long ; and you know, I were as good save five or six pound, as not, uncle. I pray you, move it for me. rofvk i. EVERY MAN OUT Sog. That I will; when would you have me do it ? presently ? Fung. O, ay, I pray you, good uncle: [Sogli- A-Rdo takes Sordido aside.'] — send me good luck, Lord, an’t be thy will, prosper it! O my stars, now, now, if it take now, I am made for ever. Fast. Shall I tell you, sir? by this air, I am the most beholden to that lord, of any gentleman living; he does use me the most honourably, and with the greatest respect, more indeed than can be utter’d with any opinion of truth. Punt. Then have you the count Gratiato ? Fast. As true noble a gentleman too as any breathes ; I am exceedingly endear’d to his love : By this hand, I protest to you, signior, I speak it not gloriously, nor out of affectation, but there’s he and the count Frugale, signior Illustre, signior Luculento, and a sort of ’em, that when I am at court, they do share me amongst them; happy is he can enjoy me most private. I do wish myself sometime an ubiquitary for their love, in good faith. Car. There’s ne’er a one of these but might lie a week on the rack, ere they could bring forth his name ; and yet he pours them out as familiarly, as if he had seen them stand by the fire in the pre¬ sence, or ta’en tobacco with them over the stage, in the lord’s room. Punt. Then you must of necessity know our court-star there, that planet of wit, madona Sa- violina ? Fast. O Lord, sir, my mistress. Punt. Is she your mistress ? Fast. Faith, here be some slight favours of hers, sir, that do speak it, she is ; as this scarf, sir, or this ribbon in my ear, or so ; this feather grew in her sweet fan sometimes, though now it be my poor fortune to -wear it, as you see, sir: slight, slight, a foolish toy. Punt. Well, she is the lady of a most exalted and ingenious spirit. Fast. Did you ever hear any woman speak like her ? or enriched with a more plentiful discourse ? Car. O villainous ! nothing but sound, sound, a mere echo; she speaks as she goes tired, in cob¬ web-lawn, light, thin ; good enough to catch flies withal. Punt. O manage your affections. Fast. Well, if thou be’st not plagued for this blasphemy one day- Punt. Come, regard not a jester: It is in the power of my purse to make him speak well or ill of me. Fast. Sir, I affirm it to you upon my credit and judgment, she has the most harmonious and mu¬ sical strain of wit that ever tempted a true ear; and yet to see !—a rude tongue would profane heaven, if it could. Punt. I am not ignorant of it, sir. Fast. Oh, it flows from her like nectar, and she doth give it that sweet quick grace, and exornation in the composure, that by this good air, as I am an honest man, would I might never stir, sir, but— she does observe as pure a phrase, and use as choice figures in her ordinary conferences, as any be in the Arcadia. Car. Or rather in Green’s works, whence she may steal with more security. Sord. Well, if ten pound will fetch ’em, you shall have it; but I’ll part with no more. Fung. I’ll try what that will do, if you please. OF HIS HUMOUR. 41 Sord. Do so ; and when you have them, study hard. Fung. Yes, sir. An I could study to get forty shillings more now ! Well, I will put myself into the fashion, as far as this will go, presently. Sord. I wonder it rains not: the almanack says, we should have store of rain to-day. [Aside. Punt. Why, sir, to-morrow I will associate you to court myself, and from thence to the city about a business, a project I have ; I will expose it to you, sir; Carlo, I am sure, has heard of it. Car. What’s that, sir ? Punt. I do intend, this year of jubilee coming on, to travel: and because I will not altogether go upon expense, I am determined to put forth some five thousand pound, to be paid me five for one, upon the return of myself, my wife, and my dog from the Turk’s court in Constantinople. If all or either of us miscarry in the journey, ’tis gone : if we be successful, why, there will be five and twenty thousand pound to entertain time withal. Nay, go not, neighbour Sordido ; stay to-night, and help to make our society the fuller. Gentle¬ men, frolic: Carlo! what! dull now ? Car. I was thinking on your project, sir, an you call it so. Is this the dog goes with you? Punt. This is the dog, sir. Car. He does not go barefoot, does he ? Punt. Away, you traitor, away ! Car. Nay, afore God, I speak simply; he may prick his foot with a thorn, and be as much as the whole venture is worth. Besides, for a dog that never travell’d before, it’s a huge journey to Con¬ stantinople. I’ll tell you now, an he were mine, I’d have some present conference with a physician, what antidotes were good to give him, preservatives against poison ; for assure you, if once your money be out, there’ll be divers attempts made against the life of the poor animal. Punt. Thou art still dangerous. Fast. Is signior Deliro’s wife your kinswoman? Sog. Ay, sir, she is my niece, my brother’s daughter here, and my nephew’s sister. Sord. Do you know her, sir ? Fast. O Lord, sir ! signior Deliro, her husband, is my merchant. Fung. Ay, I have seen this gentleman there often. Fast. I cry you mercy, sir; let me crave your name, pray you. Fung. Fungoso, sir. Fast. Good signior Fungoso, I shall request to know you better, sir. Fung. I am her brother, sir. Fast. In fair time, sir. Punt. Come, gentlemen, I will be your conduct. Fast. Nay, pray you, sir; we shall meet at signior Deliro’s often. Sog. You shall have me at the herald’s office, sir, for some week or so at my first coming up. Come, Carlo. [Exeunt. Mit. Methinks, Cordatus, he dwelt somewhat too long on this scene ; it hung in the hand. Cor. I see not where he could have insisted less and to have made the humours perspicuous enough . Mit. True, as his subject lies ; but he might have altered the shape of his argument, and ex- plicated them better in single scenes. Cor. That had been single indeed. Why , be 42 EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. ACT II. they not the same persons in this, cm they would have been in those ? and is it not an object of more state, to behold the scene full, and relieved with variety of speakers to the end, than to see a vast empty stage, and the actors come in one by one, as if they were dropt down with a feather into the eye of the spectators ? Mit. Nay, you are better traded with these things than /, and therefore I’ll subscribe to your • udgment; marry , you shall give me leave to make objections. Cor. O, what else ? it is the special intent of the author you should do so ; for thereby others, that are present , may as well be satisfied, who haply would object the same you would do. Mit. So, sir ; but when appearsMacilente again ? Cor. Marry, he stays but till our silence give him leave: here he comes, and with him signior Deliro, a merchant at whose house he is come to sojourn : make your own observation now, only transfer your thoughts to the city, with the scene : relieve suppose they speak. —♦—- SCENE II.— A Room in Deliro’s House. Enter Deliro, Macilente, and Fido with flowers and perfumes. Deli. I’ll tell you by and by, sir,— Welcome, good Macilente, to my house, To sojourn even for ever ; if my best In cates, and every sort of good entreaty, May move you stay with me. [He censeth: the hoy strews flowers. Maci. I thank you, sir.— And yet the muffled Fates, had it pleased them, Might have supplied me from their own full store. Without this word, I thank you, to a fool. I see no reason why that dog call’d Chance, Should fawn upon this fellow more than me: I am a man, and I have limbs, flesh, blood, Bones, sinews, and a soul, as well as he : My parts are every way as good as his; If I said better, why, I did not lie. Nath’less, his wealth, but nodding on my wants, Must make me bow, and cry, I thank you , sir. [Aside. Deli. Dispatch ! take heed your mistress see you not. Fido. I warrant you, sir, I’ll steal by her softly. [Exit. Deli. Nay, gentle friend, be merry ; raise your Out of your bosom : I protest, by heaven, [looks You are the man most welcome in the world. Maci. I thank you, sir.—I know my cue, I think. [Aside. Re-enter Fido, with more perfumes and flowers. Fido. Where will you have them burn, sir ? Deli. Here, good Fido. What, she did not see thee ? Fido. No, sir. Deli. .That is well. Strew, strew, good Fido, the freshest flowers ; so! Maci. What means this, signior Deliro ? all this censing ? Deli. Cast in more frankincense, yet more; 0 Macilente, I have such a wife ! [well said.— So passing fair ! so passing-fa-ir-unkind ! But of such worth, and right to be unkind, Since no man can be worthy of her kindness— Maci. What, can there not ? Deli. No, that is as sure as death, No man alive. I do not say, is not, But cannot possibly be worth her kindness, Nay, it is certain, let me do her right. How, said I ? do her right! as though I could, As though this dull, gross, tongue of mine could utter The rare, the true, the pure, the infinite rights. That sit, as high as I can look, within her ! Maci. This is such dotage as was never heard. Deli. Well, this must needs be granted. Maci. Granted, quoth you ? Deli. Nay, Macilente, do not so discredit The goodness of your judgment to deny it. For I do speak the very least of her : And I would crave, and beg no more of Heaven, For all my fortunes here, but to be able To utter first in fit terms, what she is, And then the true joys I conceive in her. Maci. Is’t possible she should deserve so well, As you pretend ? Deli. Ay, and she knows so well Her own deserts, that, when I strive t’enjoy them, She weighs the things I do, with what she merits: And, seeing my worth out-weigh’d so in her graces, She is so solemn, so precise, so froward, That no observance I can do to her Can make her kind to me : if she find fault, I mend that fault; and then she says, I faulted, That I did mend it. Now, good friend, advise me, How I may temper this strange spleen in her. Maci. You are too amorous, too obsequious, And make her too assured she may command you. When women doubt most of their husbands’ loves, They are most loving. Husbands must take heed They give no gluts of kindness to their wives, But use them like their horses ; whom they feed Not with a mangerful of meat together, But half a peck at once ; and keep them so Still with an appetite to that they give them. He that desires to have a loving wife, Must bridle all the show of that desire: Be kind, not amorous; nor bewraying kindness, As if love wrought it, but considerate duty. Offer no love rites, but let wives still seek them, For when they come unsought, they seldom like them. Deli. Believe me, Macilente, this is gospel. O, that a man were his own man so much, To rule himself thus. I will strive, i’faith, To be more strange and careless; yet I hope I have now taken such a perfect course, To make her kind to me, and live contented, That I shall find my kindness well return’d, And have no need to fight with my affections. She late hath found much fault with every room Within my house ; one was too big, she said, Another was not furnish’d to her mind, And so through all; all which, now, I have alter’d. Then here, she hath a place, on my back-side, Wherein she loves to walk ; and that, she said, Had some ill smells about it: now, this walk Have I, before she knows it, thus perfumed With herbs, and flowers ; and laid in divers places, As ’twere on altars consecrate to her, Perfumed gloves, and delicate chains of amber. To keep the air in awe of her sweet nostrils : This have I done, and this I think will please her. Behold, she comes. EVERY MAN OUT Enter Fallacy. Fal. Here’s a sweet stink indeed! What, shall I ever be thus crost and plagued, And sick of husband ? O, my head doth ache, As it would cleave asunder, with these savours ! All my rooms alter’d, and but one poor walk That I delighted in, and that is made So fulsome with perfumes, that I am fear’d, My brain doth sweat so, I have caught the plague ! Deli. Why, gentle wife, is now thy walk too sw r eet ? Thou said’st of late, it had sour airs about it, And found’st much fault that I did not correct it. Fal. Why, an I did find fault, sir ? Deli. Nay, dear wife, I know thou hast said thou hast loved perfumes, No woman better. Fal. Ay, long since, perhaps ; But now that sense is alter’d : you would have me, Like to a puddle, or a standing pool, To have no motion, nor no spirit within me. No, I am like a pure and sprightly river, That moves for ever, and yet still the same ; Or fire, that burns much wood, yet still one flame. Deli. But yesterday, I saw thee at our garden, Smelling on roses, and on purple flowers ; And since, I hope, the humour of thy sense Is nothing changed. Fal. Why, those were growing flowers, And these within my walk are cut and strewed. Deli. But yet they have one scent. Fal. Ay ! have they so ? [ference In your gross judgment. If you make no dif- Betwixt the scent of growing flowers and cut ones, You have a sense to taste lamp oil, i’faith : And with such judgment have you changed the chambers, Leaving no room, that I can joy to be in, In all your house ; and now my walk, and all, You smoke me from, as if I were a fox, And long, belike, to drive me quite away : Well, walk you there, and I'll walk where I list. Deli. What shall I do ? O, I shall never please her. Maci. Out on thee, dotard! what star ruled his birth, That brought him such a Star ? blind Fortune still Bestows her gifts on such as cannot use them : How long shall I live, ere I be so happy To have a wife of this exceeding form ? [Atide. Deli. Away with ’em! would I had broke a joint When I devised this, that should so dislike her. Away, bear all away. [Exit Pido, with flowers, fyc. Fal. Ay, do ; for fear Aught that is there should like her. O, this man, How cunningly he can conceal himself. As though he loved, nay, honour’d and ador’d!— Deli. Why, my sweet heart? Fal. Sweet heart! O, better still! And asking, why? wherefore? and looking strangely, As if he were as white as innocence ! Alas, you’re simple, you : you cannot change, Look pale at pleasure, and then red with wonder; No, no, not you ! ’tis pity o’ your naturals. I did but cast an amorous eye, e’en now, Upon a pair of gloves that somewhat liked me, A nd straight he noted it, and gave command All should be ta’en away. Deli. Be they my bane then! OF HIS HUMOUR. 43 What, sirrah, Fido, bring in those gloves again You took from hence. .Fal. ’Sbody, sir, but do not: Bring in no gloves to spite me ; if you do- Deli. Ay me, most wretched ; how am I mis¬ construed ! Maci. O, how she tempts my heart-strings with her eye, To knit them to her beauties, or to break ! What mov’d the heavens, that they could noi make Me such a woman! but a man, a beast, That hath no bliss like others? Would to heaven, In wreak of my misfortunes, I were turn’d To some fair water-nymph, that, set upon The deepest whirl-pit of the rav’nous seas, My adamantine eyes might headlong hale This iron world to me, and drown it all. [Aside Cor. Behold , behold, the translated gallant. Mit. O, he is welcome. Enter Fungoso, apparelled like Fastidious Brisk. Fung. Save you, brother and sister ; save you, sir ! 1 have commendations for you out o’ the country. I wonder they take no knowledge of my suit: [Aside. ]—Mine uncle Sogliardo is in town. Sister, methinks you are melancholy ; why are you so sad ? I think you took me for Master Fastidious Brisk, sister, did you not ? Fal. Why should I take you for him ? Fung. Nay, nothing.—I was lately in Master Fastidious’s company, and. methinks we are very like. Deli. You have a fair suit, brother, ’give you joy on’t. Fung. Faith, good enough to ride in, brother; I made it to ride in. Fal. O, now I see the cause of his idle demand was his new suit. Deli. Pray you, good brother, try if you can change her mood. Fung. I warrant you, let me alone : I’ll put hef out of her dumps. Sister, how like you my suit! Fal. O, you are a gallant in print now, brother. Fung. Faith, how like you the fashion ? it is the last edition, I assure you. Fal. I cannot but like it to the desert. Fung. Troth, sister, I was fain to borrow these spurs, I have left my gown in gage for them, pray you lend me an angel. Fal. Now, beshrew my heart then. Fung. Good truth, I’ll pay you again at my next exhibition. I had but bare ten pound of my father, and it would not reach to put me wholly into the fashion. Fal. I care not. Fung. I had spurs of mine own before, but they were not ginglers. Monsieur Fastidious will be here anon, sister. Fal. You jest! Fung. Never lend me penny more while you live then ; and that I’d be loth to say, in truth. Fal. When did you see him ? Fung. Yesterday; I came acquainted wit h him at Sir Puntarvolo’s : nay, sweet sister. Maci. I fain would know of heaven now, why yond fool Should wear a suit of satin ? he ? that rook, That painted jay, with such a deal of outside : What is his inside, trow ? ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Good heaven, give me patience, patience, patience. 44 EVERY MAN OUT A number of these popinjays there are, Whom, if a man confer, and but examine Their inward merit, with such men as want; Lord, lord, what things they are ! [Aside. Fal. [Gives him money.'] Come, w T hen will you pay me again, now ? Fung. O lord, sister ! Mad. Here comes another. Enter Fastidious Brisk, in a new suit. Fast. Save you, signior Deliro! How dost thou, sweet lady ? let me kiss thee. Fung. How ! a new suit ? ah me ! Deli. And how does master Fastidious Brisk ? Fast. Faith, live in court, signior Deliro; in grace, I thank God, both of the noble masculine and feminine. I must speak with you in private by and by. Deli . When you please, sir. Fal. Why look you so pale, brother ? Fung. ’Slid, all this money is cast away now. Mad. Ay, there’s a newer edition come forth. Fung. ’Tis but my hard fortune! well, I’ll have my suit changed, I’ll go fetch my tailor presently, but first I’ll devise a letter to my father. Have you any pen and ink, sister? Fal. What w T ould you do withal ? Fung. I would use it. ’Slight, an it had come but four days sooner, the fashion. [Exit- Fast. There was a countess gave me her hand to kiss to-day, i’ the presence : did me more good by that light than-and yesternight sent her coach twice to my lodging, to intreat me accompany her, and my sweet mistress, with some two or three nameless ladies more : O, I have been graced by them beyond all aim of affection : this is her garter my dagger hangs in : and they do so commend and approve my apparel, with my judicious wearing of it, it’s above wonder. Fal. Indeed, sir, ’tis a most excellent suit, and you do wear it as extraordinary. Fast. Why, I’ll tell you now, in good faith, and by this chair, which, by the grace of God, I intend presently to sit in, I had three suits in one year made three great ladies in love with me : I had other three, undid three gentlemen in imitation : and other three gat three other gentlemen widows of three thousand pound a year. Deli. Is’t possible ? Fast. O, believe it, sir; your good face is the w r itch, and your apparel the spells, that bring all the pleasures of the world into their circle. Fal. Ah, the sweet grace of a courtier ! Mad. Well, would my father had left me but a good face for my portion yet! though I had shared the unfortunate wit that goes with it, I had not cared; I might have passed for somewhat in the world then. Fast. Why, assure you, signior, rich apparel has strange virtues : it makes him that hath it without means, esteemed for an excellent wit: he that enjoys it with means, puts the world in remembrance of his means: it helps the deformities of nature, and gives lustre to her beauties ; makes continual holi¬ day where it shines ; sets the wits of ladies at work, that otherwise would be idle ; furnisheth your two- shilling ordinary; takes possession of your stage at your new play ; and enricheth your oars, as scorn¬ ing to go with your scull. Mad. Pray you, sir, add this ; it gives respect to OF HIS HUMOUR. act ii. your fools, makes many thieves, as many strumpets, and no fewer bankrupts. Fal. Out, out! unworthy to speak where he breatheth. Fast. What’s he, signior? Deli. A friend of mine, sir. Fast. By heaven I wonder at you citizens, what kind of creatures you are ! Deli. Why, sir ? Fast. That you can consort yourselves w r ith such poor seam-rent fellows. Fal. He says true. Deli. Sir, I will assure you, however you esteem of him, he’s a man worthy of regard. Fast. Why, what has he in him of such virtue to be regarded, ha ? Deli. Marry, he is a scholar, sir. Fast. Nothing else! Deli. And he is well travell’d. Fast. He should get him clothes ; I would cherish those good parts of travel in him, and prefer him to some nobleman of good place. Deli. Sir, such a benefit should bind me to you for ever, in my friend’s right; and I doubt not, but his desert shall more than answer my praise. Fast. Why, an he had good clothes, I’d carry him to court with me to-morrow. Deli. He shall not want for those, sir, if gold and the whole city will furnish him. Fast. You say well, sir : faith, signior Deliro, I am come to have you play the alchemist with me, and change the species of my land into that metal you talk of. Deli. With all my heart, sir ; what sum will serve you? Fast. Faith, some three or four hundred. Deli. Troth, sir, I have promised to meet a gen¬ tleman this morning in Paul’s, but upon my return I’ll dispatch you. Fast. I’ll accompany you thither. Deli. As you please, sir; but I go not thither directly. Fast. ’Tis no matter, I have no other designment in hand, and therefore as good go along. Deli. I were as good have a quartain fever follow me now, for I shall ne’er be rid of him. Bring me a cloak there, one. Still, upon his grace at court, I am sure to be visited; I was a beast to give him any hope. Well, would I were in, that I am out with him once, and-Come, signior Macilente, I must confer with you, as we go. Nay, dear wife, I beseech thee, forsake these moods: look not like winter thus. Here, take my keys, open my counting-houses, spread all my wealth before thee, choose any object that delights thee : if thou wilt eat the spirit of gold, and drink dissolved pearl in wine, ’tis for thee. Fal. So, sir! Deli. Nay, my sweet wife. Fal. Good lord, how you are perfumed in your terms and all! pray you leave us. Deli. Come, gentlemen. Fast. Adieu, sweet lady. [Exeunt all but Faluck. Fal. Ay, ay ! let thy words ever sound in mine ears, and thy graces disperse contentment through all my senses ! O, how happy is that lady above other ladies, that enjoys so absolute a gentleman to her servant! A countess gives him her hand to hiss: ah, foolish countess ! he’s a man worthy, if a woman may speak of a man’s worth, to kiss the lips of an empress. SCENE I. EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. 45 Re-enter Fungoso, with his Tailor. Fung. What’s master Fastidious gone, sister ? Fal. Ay, brother.—He has a face like a cherubin! [Aside. Fung. ’Ods me, what luck’s this ? I have fetch’d my tailor and all: which way went he, sister, can you tell ? Fal. Not I, in good faith—and he has a body like an angel! [Aside. Fung. Hotv long is’t since he went ? Fal. Why, but e’en now ; did you not meet him? —and a tongue able to ravish any woman in the earth. [Aside. Fung. O, for God’s sake—I’ll please you for your pains, [to his Tailor.]—But e’en now, say you? Come, good sir: ’slid, I had forgot it too: if any body ask for mine uncle Sogliardo, they shall have him at the herald’s office yonder, by Paul’s. [Exit with his Tailor. Fal. Well, I will not altogether despair : I have heard of a citizen’s wife has been beloved of a cour¬ tier ; and why not I ? heigh, ho ! well, I will into my private chamber, lock the door to me, and think over all his good parts one after another. [Exit. Mit. Well, I doubt, this last scene will endure some grievous torture. Cor. How 9 you fear 'twill be rack'd by some hard construction 9 Mit. Do not you 9 Cor. No, in good faith : unless mine eyes could light me beyond sense. I see no reason why this should be more liable to the rack than the rest: you'll say, perhaps, the city ivill not take it well that the merchant is made here to doat so perfectly upon his wife ; and she again to be so Fastidiously affected as she is. Mit. You have utter'd my thought, sir, indeed. Cor. Why, by that proportion, the court might as well take offence at him we call the courtier, and with much more pretext, by how much the place transcends, and goes before in dignity and virtue : but can you imagine that any noble or true spirit in court, whose sinewy and altogether unaffected graces, very worthily express him a courtier, will make any exception at the opening of such an empty trunk as this Brisk is 9 or think his own worth impeached, by beholding his motley inside 9 Mit. No, sir, I do not. Cor. No more, assure you, will any grave, wise citizen, or modest matron, take the object of this folly in Dcliro and his wife ; but rather apply it ‘ as the foil to their own virtues . For that ivere to affirm, that a man writing of Nero, should mean all emperors ; or speaking of Machiavel, compre¬ hend all statesmen ; or in our Sordido, all farm¬ ers ; and so of the rest: than which nothing can be uttered more malicious or absurd. Indeed there are a sort of these narrow-eyed decypherers, I confess, that will extort strange and abstruse mean¬ ings out of any subject, be it never so conspicuous and innocently delivered. But to such, where'er they sit concealed, let them know, the author defies them and their writing-tables ; and hopes no sound or safe judgment will infect itself with their con¬ tagious comments, who, indeed, come here only tme not. [ Exeunt. Mit. O, then their fear of Carlo, belike , makes them hold their meeting. Cor. Ay, here he comes ; conceive him but to be enter'd the Mitre, and His enough. —♦— SCENE IV.— A Room at the Mitre. Enter Carlo. Car. Holla! where be these shot-sharks ? Enter Drawer. Draw. By and by; you are welcome, good mas¬ ter Buffone. Car. Where’s George ? call me George hither, quickly. Draw. What wine please you have, sir ? I’ll ilraw you that’s neat, master Buffone. Car. Away, neophite, do as I bid thee, bring my dear George to me :— Enter George. Mass, here he comes. George. Welcome, master Carlo. Car. What, is supper ready, George ? 4 George. Ay, sir, almost: Will you have the cloth laid, master Carlo ? Car. O, what else ? Are none of the gallants come yet ? George. None yet, sir. Car. Stay, take me with you, George; let me have a good fat loin of pork laid to the fire, pre¬ sently. George. It shall, sir, Car. And withal, hear you, draw me the biggest shaft you have out of the butt you wot of; away, you know my meaning, George; quick ! George. Done, sir. [Exit. Car. I never hungered so much for anything in my life, as I do to know our gallants’ success at oourt; now is that lean, bald-rib Macilente, that salt villain, plotting some mischievous device, and lies a soaking in their frothy humours like a dry crust, till he has drunk ’em all up: Could the pummice but hold up his eyes at other men’s happiness, in any reasonable proportion, ’slid, the slave were to be loved next heaven, above honour, wealth, rich fare, apparel, wenches, all the delights of the belly and the groin, whatever Re-enter George with two jugs of wine. George. Here, master Carlo. Car. Is it right, boy ? George. Ay, sir, I assure you ’tis right. Car. Well said, my dear George, depart: [ Exit George.]—C ome, my small gimblet, you in the false scabbard, away, so ! [Pwte forth the Drawer , OF HIS HUMOUR. G3 and shuts the door.'] Now to you, sir Burgomaster, let’s taste of your bounty. Mit. What, will he deal upon such quantities of wine , alone 9 Cor. You will perceive that, sir. Car. [drinks.] Ay, marry, sir, here’s purity ; O, George—I could bite off his nose for this now, sweet rogue, he has drawn nectar, the very soul of the grape ! I’ll wash my temples with some on’t presently, and drink some half a score draughts ; ’twill heat the brain, kindle my imagination, I shall talk nothing but crackers and fire-works to-night. So, sir! please you to be here, sir, and I here : so. [Sets the two cups asunder, drinks with the one, and pledges with the other, speaking for each oj the cups, and drinking alternately. Cor. This is worth the observation, signior. Car. 1 Cup. Now, sir, here’s to you; and I present you with so much of my love. 2 Cup. I take it kindly from you, sir, [drinks,] and will return you the like proportion; but withal, sir, remembering the merry night we had at the countess’s, you know where, sir. 1 Cup. By heaven, you put me in mind now oi a very necessary office, which I will propose in your pledge, sir ; the health of that honourable countess, and the sweet lady that sat by her, sir. 2 Cup. I do vail to it with reverence [drinks]. And now, signior, with these ladies, I'll be bold to mix the health of your divine mistress. 1 Cup. Do you know her, sir ? 2 Cup. O lord, sir, ay; and in the respectful memory and mention of her, I could wish this wine were the most precious drug in the world. 1 Cup. Good faith, sir, you do honour me in’t exceedingly. [Drinks.] Mit. Whom should he personate in this, signior 9 Cor. Faith, I know not, sirobserve , observe him. 2 Cup. If it were the basest filth, or mud that runs in the channel, I am bound to pledge it re¬ spectively, sir. [Drinks.] And now, sir, here is a replenish’d bowl, which I will reciprocally turn upon you, to the health of the count Frugale. 1 Cup. The count Frugale’s health, sir? I’ll pledge it on my knees, by this light. [Kneels. 2 Cup. Will you, sir ? I’ll drink it on my knees, then, by the light. Mit. Why this is strange. Cor. Have you heard a better drunken dialogue9 2 Cup. Nay, do me right, sir. 1 Cup. So I do, in faith. 2 Cup. Good faith you do not; mine was fuller. 1 Cup. Why, believe me, it was not. 2 Cup. Believe me it was ; and you do lie. 1 Cup. Lie, sir! 2 Cup. Ay, sir. 1 Cup. ’Swounds! you rascal! 2 Cup. O, come, stab if you have a mind to it. 1 Cup. Stab! dost thou think I dare not ? Car. [speaks in his own person.] Nay, I be¬ seech you, gentlemen, what means this ? nay, look, for shame respect your reputations. [Overturns wine, pot, cups, and all EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. ACT V. «4 Enter Macilente. Maci. Why, how now Carlo! what humour’s this ? Car. O, my good mischief! art thou come? where are the rest, where are the rest ? Maci. Faith, three of our ordnance are burst. Car. Burst! how comes that ? Maci. Faith, overcharged, overcharged. Cur. But did not the train hold ? Maci. O, yes, and the poor lady is irrecoverably blown up. Car. Why, but which of the munition is mis¬ carried, ha ? Maci. Imprimis , sir Puntarvolo; next, the Countenance and Resolution. Car. How, how, for the love of wit ? Maci. Troth, the Resolution is proved recreant; the Countenance hath changed his copy ; and the passionate knight is shedding funeral tears over his departed dog. Car. What! is his dog dead ? Maci. Poison’d, ’tis thought; marry, how, or by whom, that’s left for some cunning woman here o’ the Bank-side to i*esolve. For my parr, I know nothing more than that we are like to have an exceeding melancholy supper of it. Car. ’Slife, and I had purposed to be extraor¬ dinarily merry, I had drunk off a good preparative of old sack here; but will they come, will they come ? Maci. They will assuredly come ; marry, Carlo, as thou lov’st me, run over ’em all freely to-night, and especially the knight; spare no sulphurous jest that may come out of that sweaty forge of thine ; but ply them with all manner of shot, minion, saker, culverin, or anything, what thou wilt. Car. I warrant thee, my dear case of petrionels j so I stand not in dread of thee, but that thou’lt second me. Maci. Why, my good German tapster, I will. Car. V/hat George ! Lomtero, Lomtero, §c. [ Sings and dances. Re-enter George. George. Did you call, master Carlo ? Car. More nectar, George: Lomtero, fyc. George. Your meat’s ready, sir, an your com¬ pany were come. Car. Is the loin of pork enough ? George. Ay, sir, it is enough. [Exit. M*aci. Pork! heart, what dost thou with such a greasy dish ? I think thou dost varnish thy face with the fat on’t, it looks so like a glue-pot. Car. True, my raw-boned rogue, and if thou wouldst farce thy lean ribs with it too, they would not, like ragged laths, rub out so many doublets as they do ; but thou know’st not a good dish, thou. O, it’s the only nourishing meat in the world. No marvel though that saucy, stubborn generation, the Jews, were forbidden it; for what would they have done, well pamper’d with fat pork, that durst murmur at their Maker out of garlick and onions ? ’Slight! fed with it, the whoreson strummel- patch’d, goggled-eyed grumbledories, would have gigautomachized— Re-enter George with wine. Well said, my sweet George, fill, fill. Mit. This savours too much of profanation. Cor. O -Servetur ad imum, Qualis ab incoepto processerit, et sibi constet. The necessity of his vein compels a toleration, for, bar this, and dash him out of humour before his time. Car. ’ Tis an axiom in natural philosophy , what comes nearest the nature of that it feeds, converts quicker to nourishment, and doth sooner essentiate. Now nothing in flesh and entrails assimilates or resembles man more than a hog or swine. [Brinks. Maci. True; and he, to requite their courtesy, oftentimes doffeth his own nature, and puts on theirs ; as when he becomes as churlish as a hog, or as drunk as a sow ; but to your conclusion. [Drinks. Car. Marry, I say, nothing resembling man more than a swine, it follows, nothing can be more nourishing ; for indeed (but that it abhors from our nice nature) if we fed upon one another, we should shoot up a great deal faster, and thrive much better ; I refer me to your usurous cannibals, or such like ; but since it is so contrary, pork, pork, is your only feed. Maci. I take it, your devil be of the same diet; he would never have desired to have been incorpo¬ rated into swine else.—O, here comes the melan¬ choly mess ; upon ’em Carlo, charge, charge ! Enter Puntarvolo, Fastidious Brisk, Sogliardo, and Fungoso. Car. ’Fore God, sir Puntarvolo, I am sorry for your heaviness : body o’ me, a shrew’d mischance! why, had you no unicorn’s horn, nor bezoar’s stone about you, ha ? Punt. Sir, I would request you be silent. Maci. Nay, to him again. Car. Take comfort, good knight, if your cat have recovered her catarrh, fear nothing; your dog’s mischance may be holpen. Fast. Say how, sweet Carlo ; for, so God mend me, the poor knight’s moans draw me into fellow¬ ship of his misfortunes. But be not discouraged, good sir Puntarvolo, I am content your adventure shall be performed upon your cat. Maci. I believe you, musk-cod, I believe you ; for rather than thou would’st make present repay¬ ment, thou would’st take it upon his own bare return from Calais. [Aside. Car. Nay, ’slife, he’d be content, so he were well rid out of his company, to pay him five for one, at his next meeting him in Paul’s. [Aside to Macilente.]—B ut for your dog, sir Puntarvolo, if he be not out-right dead, there is a friend of mine, a quack-salver, shall put life in him again, that’s certain. Fung. O, no, that comes too late. Maci. ’Sprecious ! knight, will you suffer this? Punt. Drawer, get me a candle and hard wax presently. [Exit George. Sog. Ay, and bring up supper; for I am so melancholy. Car. O, signior, where’s your Resolution ? Sog. Resolution! hang him, rascal: O, Carlo, if you love me, do not mention him. Car. Why, how so ? Sog. O, the arrantest crocodile that ever Christian was acquainted with. By my gentry, I shall think the worse of tobacco while I live, for his sake : I did think him to be as tall a man- $<;KN R IV. EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. 05 j Maci. Nay, Buffonc, the knight, the knight. [Aside to Carlo. Car. ’Slud, he looks like an image carved out of box, full of knots ; his face is, for all the world, like a Dutch purse, with the mouth downward, his beard the tassels ; and he walks—let me see— as melancholy as one o’ the master’s side in the Counter.—Do you hear, sir Puntarvolo ? Punt. Sir, I do entreat you, no more, but enjoin you to silence, as you affect your peace. Car. Nay, but dear knight, understand here are none but friends, and such as wish you well, I would have you do this now ; flay me your dog presently, (but in any case keep the head,) and stuff his skin well with straw, as you see these dead monsters at Bartholomew fair. Punt. I shall be sudden, I tell you. Car. Or, if you like not that, sir, get me some¬ what a less dog, and clap into the skin ; here’s a slave about the town here, a Jew, one Yohan : or a fellow that makes perukes will glue it on artifi¬ cially, it shall never be discern’d ; besides, ’twill be so much the warmer for the hound to travel in, you know. Maci. Sir Puntarvolo, death, can you be so patient! Car. Or thus, sir ; you may have, as you come through Germany, a familiar for little or nothing, shall turn itself into the shape of your dog. or any thing, what you will, for certain hours—— [Puntarvolo strikes Aim.]-’Ods my life, knight, -whatdo you mean? you’ll offer no violence, | will you ? hold, hold I Re-enter George, with wax, and a lighted candle. Punt. ’Sdeath. you slave, you ban-dog, you ! Car. As you love wit, stay the enraged knight, gentlemen. Punt. By my knighthood, he that stirs in his rescue, dies.—Drawer, begone! [Exit George. Car. Murder, murder, murder ! Punt. Ay, are you howling, you wolf ?—Gen¬ tlemen, as you tender your lives, suffer no man to enter till my revenge be perfect. Sirrah, Buffone, lie down ; make no exclamations, but down ; down, you cur, or I will make thy blood flow on my rapier hilts. Car. Sweet knight, hold in thy fury, and ’fore heaven I’ll honour thee more than the Turk does Mahomet. Punt. Down, I say! [Carlo lies clown.'] —Who’s there ? [Knocking within. Cons, [within.] Plere’s the constable, open the doors. Car. Good Macilente- Punt. Open no door; if the Adalantado of Spain were here he should not enter : one help me with the light, gentlemen ; you knock in vain, sir officer. Car. Et til , Brute ! Punt. Sirrah, close your lips, or I will drop it in thine eyes, by heaven. Car. O! O! Cons, [within.] Open the door, or I will break it open. Maci. Nay, good constable, have patience a little ; you shall come in presently; we have almost done. [Puntarvolo seals up Carlo’s lips. Punt. So, now, are you Out of your Humour, sir ? Shift, gentlemen. [They all draw, and run out, except Fungoso, who conceals himszlf beneath the table. f Enter Constable and Officers, and seize Fastidious as he it rushing by. Cons. Lay hold upon this gallant, and pursue the rest. Fast. Lay hold on me, sir, for what ? Cons. Marry, for your riot here, sir, with the rest of your companions. Fast. My riot! master constable, take heed what you do. Carlo, did I offer any violence ? Cons. O, sir, you see he is notin case to answer you, and that makes you so peremptory. Re-enter George and Drawer. Fast. Peremptory! ’Slife, I appeal to the drawers, if I did him any hard measure. George. They are all gone, there’s none of them will be laid any hold on. Cons. Well, sir, you are like to answer till the rest can be found out. Fast. ’Slid, I appeal to George here. Cons. Tut, George was not here : away with him to the Counter, sirs.—Come, sir, you were best get yourself drest somewhere. [Exeunt Const, and Officers, tcith Fast, and Car. George. Good lord, that master Carlo could not take heed, and knowing what a gentleman the knight is, if he be angry. D rawer. A pox on ’em, they have left all the meat on our hands; would they were choaked with it for me ! Re-enter Macilente. Maci. What, are they gone, sirs ? George. O, here’s master Macilente. Maci. [pointing to Fungoso.] Sirrah, George, do you see that concealment there, that napkin under the table ? George. ’Ods so, signior Fungoso! Maci. He’s good pawn for the reckoning; be sure you keep him here, and let him not go away till I come again, though he offer to discharge all; I’ll return presently. George. Sirrah, we have a pawn for the reckoning. Draw. What, of Macilente ? George. No ; look under the table. Fung, [creeping out.] I hope all be quiet now; J if I can get but forth of this street, I care not : masters, I pray you tell me, is the constable gone? George. What, master Fungoso ! Fung. Was’t not a good device this same of me, sirs ? George. Yes, faith ; have you been here all this while? Fung. O lord, ay; good sir, look an the coast be clear, I’d fain be going. George. All’s clear, sir, but the reckoning ; and that you must clear and pay before you go, I assure you. Fung. I pay ! ’Slight, I eat not a bit since 1 came into the house, yet. Draw. Why, you may when you please, ’tis all ready below that was bespoken. Fung. Bespoken ! not by me, I hope ? George. By you, sir! I know not that; but ’twas for you and your company, I am sure. Fung. My company ! ’Slid, I was an invited guest, so I w r as. Draw. Faith we have nothing to do with that, sir: they are all gone but you, and we must be answered ; that’s the short and the long on’t. Fung. Nay, if you will grow to extremities, my 66 EVERY MAN OUT masters, then would this pot, cup, and all were in my belly, if I have a cross about me. George. What, and have such apparel! do not say so, signior ; that mightily discredits your clothes. Fung. As I am an honest man, my tailor had all my money this morning, and yet I must be fain to alter my suit too. Good sirs, let me go, ’tis Friday night, and in good truth I have no stomach in the world to eat any thing. Draw. That’s no matter, so you pay, sir. Fung. ’Slight, with what conscience can you ask me to pay that I never drank for ? George. Yes, sir, I did see you drink once. Fung. By this cup, which is silver, but you did not; you do me infinite wrong : I looked in the pot once, indeed, but I did not drink. Draw. Well, sir, if you can satisfy our master, it shall be all one to us. Within. George! George. By and by. \_Exeunt. Cor. Lose not yourself now, signior. —<►—• SCENE V.— A Room in Deliro’s House. Enter Macilente and Deliro. Mad. Tut, sir, you did bear too hard a conceit of me in that ; but I will now make my love to you most transparent, in spite of any dust of suspicion that may be raised to cloud it; and henceforth, since I see it is so against your humour, I will never labour to persuade you. Deli. Why, I thank you, signior; but what is that you tell me may concern my peace so much ? Mad. Faith, sir, ’tis thus. Your wife’s brother, signior Fungoso, being at supper to-night at a tavern, with a sort of gallants, there happened some division amongst them, and he is left in pawn for the reckoning. Now, if ever you look that time shall present you with an happy occasion to do your wife some gracious and acceptable service, take hold of this opportunity, and pre¬ sently go and redeem him ; for, being her brother, and his credit so amply engaged as now it is, when she shall hear, (as he cannot himself, but he must out of extremity report it,) that you came, and offered yourself so kindly, and with that respect of his reputation ; why, the benefit cannot but make her dote, and grow mad of your affections. Deli. Now, by heaven, Macilente, I acknow¬ ledge myself exceedingly indebted to you, by this kind tender of your love ; and I am sorry to re¬ member that I was ever so rude, to neglect a friend of your importance.—Bring me shoes and a cloak here.—I was going to bed, if you had not come. What tavern is it ? Mad. The Mitre, sir. Deli. O ! Why, Fido ! my shoes.—Good faith, it cannot but please her exceedingly. Enter Fallace. Fal. Come, I marie what piece of night-work you have in hand now, that you call for a cloak, and your shoes : What, is this your pander ? Deli. O, sweet wife, speak lower, I would not he should hear thee for a world- Fal. Hang him, rascal, I cannot abide him for his treachery, with his wild quick-set beard there. Whither go you now with him ? OF HIS HUMOUR. Deli. No whither with him, dear wife; I go alone to a place, from whence I will return instantly. —Good Macilente, acquaint not her with it by any means, it may come so much the more ac¬ cepted ; frame some other answer.—I’ll come back immediately. [Exit. Fal. Nay, an I be not worthy to know whither you go, stay till I take knowledge of your coming back. Mad. Hear you, mistress Deliro. Fal. So, sir, and what say you ? Mad. Faith, lady, my intents will not deserve this slight respect, when you shall know them. Fal. Your intents ! why, what may your intents be, for God’s sake ? Mad. Troth, the time allows no circumstance, lady, therefore know this was but a device to remove your husband hence, and bestow him securely, whilst, with more conveniency, I might report to you a misfortune that hath happened to monsieur Brisk-Nay, comfort, sweet lady. This night, being at supper, a sort of young gallants committed a riot, for the which he only is apprehended and carried to the Counter, where, if your husband, and other creditors, should but have knowledge of him, the poor gentleman were undone for ever. Fal. Ah me ! that he were. Mad. Now, therefore, if you can think upon any present means for his delivery, do not foreslowit. A bribe to the officer that committed him will do it. Fal. O lord, sir! he shall not want for a bribe; pray you, will you commend me to him, and say I’ll visit him presently Mad. No, lady, I shall do you better service, in protracting your husband’s return, that you may go with more safety. Fal. Good truth, so you may; farewell, good sir. \_Exit Maci.] —Lord, how a woman may be mistaken in a man ! I would have sworn upon all the Testaments in the world he had not loved master Brisk. Bring me my keys there, maid. Alas, good gentleman, if all I have in this earthly world will pleasure him, it shall be at his service. [Exit. Mit. How Macilente sweats in this lusiness, if you mark him ! Cor. Ay , you shall see the true picture of spite, anon: here comes the pawn and his redeemer. —-»- SCENE VI.— A Room at the Mitre. Enter Deliro, Fungoso, and George. Deli. Come, brother, be not discouraged for this, man; what! Fung. No, truly, I am not discouraged ; but I protest to you, brother, I have done imitating any more gallants either in purse or apparel, but as shall become a gentleman, for good carriage, or so. Deli. You say well.—This is all in the bill here, is it not ? George. Ay, sir. Deli. There’s your money, tell it: and, brother, I am glad I met with so good occasion to shew m) love to you. Fung. I will study to deserve it in good truth an I live. Deli. What, is it right ? George. Ay, sir, and I thank you. SCENE VJl. EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS IlUMOUll. I C7 Fung. Let me have a capon’s leg saved, now the reckoning is paid. George. You shall, sir. [Exit. Enter Macilente. Maci. Where’s signior Deliro ? Deli. Here, Mmilente. Maci. Hark you, sir, have you dispatch’d this same ? Deli. Ay, marry have I. Maci. Well then, I can tell you news ; Brisk is in the Counter. Deli. In the Counter! Maci. ’Tis true, sir, committed for the stir here to-night. Now would I have you send your brother home afore, with the report of this your kindness done him, to his sister, which will so pleasingly pos¬ sess her, and out of his mouth too, that in the mean¬ time you may clap your action on Brisk, and your wife, being in so happy a mood, cannot entertain it ill, by any means. Deli. ’Tis very true, she cannot, indeed, I think. Maci. Think ! why ’tis past thought; you shall never meet the like opportunity, I assure you. Deli. I will do it.—Brother, pray you go home afore, (this gentleman and I have some private busi¬ ness,) and tell my sweet wife I’ll come presently. Fung. I will, brother. Maci. And, signior, acquaint your sister, how liberally, and out of his bounty, your brother has used you, (do you see ?) made you a man of good reckoning ; redeem’d that you never were possest of, credit ; gave you as gentlemanlike terms as might be ; found no fault with your coming behind the fashion; nor nothing. Fung. Nay, I am out of those humours now. Maci. Well, if you be out, keep your distance, and be not made a shot-clog any more.—Come, signior, let’s make haste. [Exeunt. —♦- SCENE VII.— The Counter . Enter Fallace and Fastidious Brisk. Fal. O, master Fastidious, what pity is it to see so sweet a man as you are, in so sour a place ! [Kisses him. Cor. As upon her lips, does she mean ? Mit. O, this is to be imagined the Counter, belike. Fast. Troth, fair lady, ’tis first the pleasure of the fates, and next of the constable, to have it so : but I am patient, and indeed comforted the more in your kind visit. Fal. Nay, you shall be comforted in me more than this, if you please, sir. I sent you word by my brother, sir, that my husband laid to ’rest you this morning ; I know not whether you received it or no. Fast. No, believe it, sweet creature, your brother gave me no such intelligence. Fal. O, the lord! Fast. But has your husband any such purpose ? Fal. O, sweet master Brisk, yes: and therefore be presently discharged, for if he come with his actions upon you, Lord deliver you' you are in for one half-a-score year ; he kept a poor man in Lud- gate once twelve year for sixteen shillings. Where’s your keeper? for love’s sake call him, let him take a bribe, and despatch you. Lord, how my heart trembles ! here are no spies, are there? Fast. No, sweet mistress. Why are you in this passion ? Fal. O lord, master Fastidious, if you knew how I took up my husband to-day, when he said he would arrest you ; and how I railed at him that per¬ suaded him to it, the scholar there, (who, on my conscience, loves you now,) and what care I took to send you intelligence by my brother; and how r I gave him four sovereigns for his pains : and now. how I came running out hither without man or boy with me, so soon as I heard on’t; you’d say I were in a passion indeed. Your keeper, for God’s sake ! O, master Brisk, as ’tis in Euphues, Hurd is the choice , when one is compelled either by silence to die with grief \ or by speaking to live with shame. Fast. Fair lady, I conceive you, and may this kiss assure you, that where adversity hath, as it were, contracted, prosperity shall not-Od's me ! your husband. Enter Deliro and Macilente. Fal. O me! Deli. Ay! Is it thus ? Maci. Why, how now, signior Deliro ! has the wolf seen you, ha? Hath Gorgon’s head made marble of you ? Deli. Some planet strike me dead ! Maci. Why, look you, sir, I told you, you might )ave suspected this long afore, had you pleased, and have saved this labour of admiration now, and passion, and such extremities as this frail lump of flesh is subject unto. Nay, why do you not doat now, signior ? methinks you should say it were some enchantment, deceptio visits , or so, ha! If you could persuade yourself it were a dream now, ’twere excellent: faith, try what you can do, signior: it may be your imagination will be brought to it in time; there’s nothing impossible. Fal. Sweet husband I Deli. Out, lascivious strumpet! [Exit. Maci. What! did you see how ill that stale vein became him afore, of sweet wife, and dear heart; and are you fallen just into the same now, with siveet husband ! Away, follow him, go, keep state: what! remember you are a woman, turn impudent; give him not the head, though you give him the horns. Away. And yet, methinks, you should take your leave of enfant perdu here, your forlorn hope. [Exit Fal.] —How now, monsieur Brisk ? what! Friday night, and in affliction too, and yet your pulpamenta, your delicate morsels! I per¬ ceive the affection of ladies and gentlewomen pur¬ sues you wheresoever you go, monsieur. Fast. Now, in good faith, and as I am gentle, there could not have come a thing in this world to have distracted me more, than the wrinkled fortunes of this poor dame. Maci. O yes, sir ; I can tell you a thing will dis¬ tract you much better, believe it: Signior Deliro has entered three actions against you, three actions, monsieur! marry, one of them (I’ll put you in com¬ fort) is but three thousand, and the other two, some five thousand pound together : trifles, trifles. Fast. O, I am undone. Maci. Nay, not altogether so, sir; the knight must have his hundred pound repaid, that will help too ; and then six score pounds for a diamond, you know where. These be things will weigh, monsieur, they will weigh. Fast. O heaven! EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR. ACT. V. Maci. What 1 do you sigh ? this is to kiss the hand of a countess , to hat e her coach sent for you, to ha?ig poniards in ladies' garters ,' to toear brace¬ lets of their hair, and for every one of these great favours to give some slight jewel of five hundred crowns, or so ; why, ’tis nothing. Now, monsieur, you see the plague that treads on the heels o’ your foppery : well, go your ways in, remove yourself to the two-penny ward quickly, to save charges, and there set up your rest to spend sir Puntarvolo’s hundred pound for him. Away, good pomander, go! [J Exit Fastidious. Why, here’s a change! now is my soul at peace: I am as empty of all envy now, As they of merit to be envied at. My humour, like a flame, no longer lasts Than it hath stuff to feed it; and their folly Being now raked up in their repentant ashes, Affords no ampler subject to my spleen. I am so far from malicing their states, That I begin to pity them. It grieves me To think they have a being. I could wish They might turn wise upon it, and be saved now, So heaven were pleased; but let them vanish, va¬ pours !- Gentlemen, how like you it? has’t not been tedious? Cor. Nay, we have done censuring now, Mit Yes, faith. Maci. How so? Cor. Marry, because we'll imitate your actors , and be out of our humours. Besides, here are those round about you of more ability in censure than we, whose judgments can give it a more satis - fying allowance ; we'll refer you to them. [Exeunt Cordatus and Mitis Maci. [ coming forward .] Ay, is it even so ?— Well, gentlemen, I should have gone in, and re¬ turn’d to you as I was Asper at the first; but by reason the shift would have been somewhat long, and we are loth to draw your patience farther, we’ll entreat you to imagine it. And now, that you may see I will be out of humour for company, I stand wholly to your kind approbation, and indeed am nothing so peremptory as I was in the beginning : marry, I will not do as Plautus in his Amphytrio , for all this, summi Jovis causa plaudite; beg a plaudite for God’s sake; but if you, out of the bounty of your good-liking, will bestow it, why, you may in time make lean Macilente as fat as sir John Falstaff. [Exit. THE EPILOGUE, AT THE PRESENTATION BEFORE QUEEN ELIZABETH. BY MACILENTE. Never till now did object greet mine eyes With any light content: but in her graces All my malicious powers have lost their stings. Envy is fled my soul at sight of her, And she hath chased all black thoughts from my bosom, Like as the sun doth darkness from the world. My stream of humour is run out of me. And as our city’s torrent, bent t’infect The hallow’d bowels of the silver Thames, Is check’d by strength and clearness of the river, Pill it hath spent itself even at the shore ; So in the ample and unmeasured flood Of her perfections, are my passions drown’d ; And I have now a spirit as sweet and clear As the more rarefied and subtle air:— With which, and with a heart as pure as fire, Yet humble as the earth, do I implore, [ Kneels. O heaven, that She, whose presence hath effected This change in me, may suffer most late change In her admired and happy government: May still this Island be call’d Fortunate, And rugged Treason tremble at the sound, When Fame shall speak it with an emphasis. Let foreign polity be dull as lead, And pale Invasion come with half a heart, When he but looks upon her blessed soil. The throat of War be stopt within her land, And turtle-footed Peace dance fairy rings About her court; where never may there come Suspect or danger, but all trust and safety. Let Flattery be dumb, and Envy blind In her dread presence ; Death himself admire her; And may her virtues make him to forget The use of his inevitable hand. Fly from her, Age ; sleep. Time, before her throne; Our strongest wall falls down, when she is gone. CYNTHIA’S REVELS: THE FOUNTAIN OF SELF-LOVE OR, TO THE SPECIAL FOUNTAIN OF MANNERS, THE COURT. Thou art a bountiful and bravo spring, and waterest all the noble plants of this island. In thee the whole kingdom dresseth itself, and is ambitious to use thee as her glass. Beware then thou render men’s figures truly, and teach them no less to hate their deformities, than to love their forms: for, to grace, there should come reverence; and no man can call that lovely, which is not also venerable. It is not powdering, perfuming, and every day smelling of the tailor, that converteth to a beautiful object: but a mind shining through any suit, which needs no false light, either of riches or honours, to help it. Such shalt thou find some here, even in the reign of Cynthia,—a Crites and an Arete. Now, under thy Phcebus, it will be thy province to make more ; except thou desirest to have thy source mix with the spring of self-love, and so wilt draw upon thee as welcome a discovery of thy days, as was then made of her nights. Thy servant, but not 6lave, Ben Jonson. DRAMATIS PERSONAE. Cynthia. Mercury. Hesperus. Crites. Amorphus. Asotus. IIedon. Anaides. Morphides, Prosaites. Morus. Cupid. Echo. Arete. Phantaste. Argurion. Philautia. Moria. Cos. Gelaia. Phronesis, Thauma, Time, SCENE, —Gargaphie. INDUCTION. THE STAGE. After the second sounding, Enter three of the Children struggling. 1 Child. Pray you away ; why, fellows! Gods so, what do you mean ? 2 Child. Marry, that you shall not speak the prologue, sir. 3 Child. Why, do you hope to speak it? 2 Child. Ay, and I think I have most right to it: I am sure I studied it first. 3 Child. That's all one, if the author think I can speak it better. 1 Child. I plead possession of the cloak : gen¬ tles , your suffrages, l pray you. [Within.] Why, children! are you not ashamed? come in there. 3 Child. Slid, I'll play nothing in the play, un¬ less 1 speak it. 1 Child. Why, will you stand to most voices of the gentlemen ? let that decide it. 3 Child. O, no, sir gallant; you presume to have the start of us there , and that makes you offer so prodiyally. 1 Child. No, would I were whipped if I had any stu'h thought ; try it by lots either. 2 Child. Faith, I dare tempt my fortune in a greater venture than this. 3 Child. Well said, resolute Jack ! I am con¬ tent too, so we draw first . Make the cuts. 1 Child. But will you not snatch my cloak while I am stooping ? 3 Child. No, we scorn treachery. 2 Child. Which cut shall speak it ? 3 Child. The shortest. 1 Child. Agreed: draw. [They draw cuts.] The shortest is come to the shortest. Fortune was not altogether blind in this. Notv, sir, I hope I shall go forward without your envy. 2 Child. A spite of all mischievous luck ! I was once plucking at the other. 3 Child. Slay, Jack : ’slid, I'lido somewhat notv afore I go in, though it be nothing but to revenge myself on the author : since I speak not his pro¬ logue, I II go tell all the argument of his play afore-hand, and so stale his invention to the audi¬ tory, before it come forth. 1 Child. O, do not so. 2 Child. By no means. 3 Child. [Advancing to the front of the Stage.] First, the title of his play is Cynthia’s Revels, as any man that hath hope to le saved by his book iO CYNTHIA'S REVELS. can witness ; the scene Gargaphie, which I do vehemently suspect for some fustian country ; hut let that vanish. Here is the court of Cynthia , whither he brings Cupid travelling on foot, re¬ solved to turn page. By the way Cupid meets with Mercury, (as that's a thing to be noted) ; take any of our play-books without a Cupid or a Mercury in it, and burn it for an heretic in poetry. — [In these and the subsequent speeches, at every break, the other two interrupt, and en¬ deavour to stop him.] Pray thee, let me alone. Mercury, he in the nature of a conjuror, raises up Echo, who weeps over her love, or daffodil, Narcis¬ sus, a little ; sings ; curses the spring wherein the pretty foolish gentleman melted himself away: and there's an end of her. - Now I am to inform you, that Cupid and Mercury do both be¬ come pages. Cupid attends on Philautia, or Self- love, a court lady : Mercury follows Hedon, the Voluptuous, and a courtier ; one that ranks him¬ self even with Anaides, or the Impudent, a gal¬ lant, and that's my part; one that keeps Laughter, Gelaia, the daughter of Folly, a wench in boy's attire, to wait on him. - These, in the court, meet ivith Amorphus, or the deformed, a traveller that hath drunk of the fountain, and there tells the ivonders of the water. They presently dispatch aivay their pages with bottles to fetch of it, and themselves go to visit the ladies. But I should have told you — Look, these emmets put me out here—that with this Amorphus, there comes along a citizen's heir, Asotus, or the Prodigal, who, in imitation of the traveller, ivho hath the Whetstone following him, entertains the Beggar, to be his attendant - Now, the nymphs who are mis¬ tresses to these gallants, are Philautia, Self-love ; Phantaste, a light Wittiness ; Argurion, Money ; and their guardian, mother Moria, or mistress Folly. 1 Child. Pray thee, no more. 3 Child. There Cupid strikes Money in love with the Prodigal, makes her dote upon him, give him jewels, bracelets, carcanets, Qc. All which he most ingeniously departs withal to be made known to the other ladies and gallants; and in the heat of this, increases his train with the Fool to follow him, as well as the Beggar - By this time, your Beggar begins to icait close, who is returned with the rest of his fellow bottlemen. - There they all drink, save Argurion , who is fallen into a sudden apoplexy - 1 Child. Stop his mouth. 3 Child. And then, there's a retired scholar there, you would not wish a thing to be better contemn'd of a society of gallants, than it is ; and he applies his service, good gentleman, to the lady Arete, or Virtue, a poor nymph of Cynthia's train, that's scarce able to buy herself a gown ; you shall see her play in a black robe anon: a creature that, I assure you, is no less scorn'd than himself. Where am I now ? at a stand! 2 Child. Come, leave at last, yet. 3 Child. O, the night is come, (' tic as somewhat dark, methought,) and Cynthia intends to come forth ; that helps it a little yet. Alt the courtiers must provide for revels ; they conclude upon a masque, the device of which is - What, will you ravish me? - that each of these Vices, being to appear before Cynthia, would seem other than indeed they are ; and therefore assume the most neighbouring Virtues as their masking habit - I'd cry a rape, but that you are children. 2 Child. Come, we'll have no more of this anti¬ cipation ; to give them the inventory of their cates aforehand, were the discipline of a tavern, and not fitting this presence. 1 Child. Tut, this was but to shew us the hap¬ piness of his memory. I thought at first he would have plaid the ignorant critic with every thing, along as he had gone ; I expected some such device. 3 Child. O, you shall see me do that rarely; lend me thy cloak. 1 Child. Soft, sir, you'll speak my prologue in it. 3 Child. A T o, would I might never stir then. 2 Child. Lend it him, lend it him. 1 Child. Well, you have sworn. [Gives him the cloak. 3 Child. I have. Now, sir, suppose I am one of your genteel auditors, that am come in, having paid my money at the door, with much ado, and here I take my place and sit down : I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket, my light by me, and thus I begin. [At the breaks he takes his tobacco.] By this light, I wonder that any man is so mad, to come to see these rascally tits play here - They do act like so many wrens or pismires - not the fifth part of a good face amongst them all. - And, then their music is abominable - able to stretch a man's ears worse than ten - pillories and their ditties - most lamentable things, like the pitiful fellows that make them - poets. By this vapour, an ’twere not for tobacco - 1 think - the very stench of 'em would poison me, I should not dare to come in at their gates - A man were better visit fifteen jails - or a dozen or two of hospitals - than once adventure to come near them. How is't ?■ well ?■ 1 Child. Excellent ; give me my cloak. 3 Child. Stay; you shall see me do another note, but a more sober, or better-gather'd gallant ; that is, as it may be thought, some friend, or well- wisher to the house: and here I enter. 1 Child. What, upon the stage too ? 2 Child. Yes ; and I step forth like one of the children, and ask you. Would you have a stool, sir? 3 Child. A stool, boy! 2 Child. Ay, sir, if you'll give me sixpence I'll fetch you one. 3 Child. For what, I pray thee ? what shall Ido with it ? 2 Child. O lord, sir ! will you betray your ig¬ norance so much ? why throne yourself in state on the stage, as other gentlemen use, sir. 3 Child. Away, wag; what, would'st thou make an implement of me? 'Slid, the boy takes me for a piece of perspective, I hold my life, or some silk curtain, come to hang the stage here ! Sir crack, I am none of your fresh pictures, that use to beautify the decayed dead arras in a public theatre. 2 Child. ’ Tis a sign, sir, you put not that con¬ fidence in your good clothes, and your better face, that a gentleman should do, sir. But I pray you, sir, let me be a suitor to you, that you will quit our stage then, and take a place ; the play is instant’y to begin. 3 Child. Most willingly, my good wag ; but I would speak with your author : where is he ? 2 Child. Not this way, I assure yon, sir ; we CYNTHIA ire not so officiously befriended by him, as to have his presence in the tiring-house , to prompt us aloud, stamp at the book-holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the music out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit, as some author would , if he had such fine enghles as we. Well, 'tis but our hard for¬ tune ! 3 Child. Nay, crack , be not dishearten'd. 2 Child. Not I, Sir ; but if you please to con¬ fer with our author, by attorney , you may, sir ; our proper self here, stands for him. 3 Child. Troth, I have no such serious affair to negotiate with him, but what may very safely be turn'd upon thy trust. It is in the general behalf of this fair society here that I am to speak, at least the more judicious part of it, which seems much distasted with the immodest and obscene ivriting of many in their plays. Besides, they could wish your poets would leave to be promoters of other men's jests, and to way-lay all the stale apothegms , or old books they can hear of, in print , or otherwise, to farce their scenes withal. That they ivould not so penuriously glean wit from every laundress or hackney-man, or derive their best grace, with servile imitation, from common stages, or observation of the company they converse with ,* as if their invention lived wholly upon another man's trencher. Again, that feeding their friends ivith nothing of their own, but what they have twice or thrice cooked, they should not wantonly give out, how soon they had drest it ; nor how many coaches came to carry away the broken meat, besides hobby-horses and foot-cloth nags. 2 Child. So, sir, this is all the reformation you seek? 3 Child. It is ; do not you think it necessary to be practised, my little wag ? 2 Child. Yes, where any such ill-habited custom is received. 3 Child. 0,(1 had almost forgot it too,) they say, the umbrae or ghosts of some three or four plays departed a dozen years since, have been seen walk¬ ing on your stage here ; take heed , boy, if your house be haunted with such hobgoblins, ' twill fright aivay all your spectators quickly. 2 Child. Good, sir ; but what will you say now, if a poet, untouch'd with any breath of this disease, dnd the tokens upon you, that are of the auditory ? As some one civet-wit among you, that knows no other learning, than the price of satin and velvets: S REVELS. nor other perfection than the wearing of a neat suit; and yet will censure as desperately as the most profess'd critic in the house, presuming his clothes should bear him out in it. Another, vAiom it hath pleased nature to furnish ivith more beard than brain, prunes his mustaccio, lisps, and, with some score of affected oaths, swears down all that sit about him ,* “ That the old Hieronimo, as it was first acted, was the only best, and judiciously penn'd play of Europe." A third great-bellied juggler talks of twenty years since, and when Mon¬ sieur was here, and would enforce all wits to be oj that fashion, because his doublet is still so. A fourth miscalls all by the name of fustian, that his grounded capacity cannot aspire to. A fifth only shakes Ids bottle head, and out of his corky brain squeezeth out a pitiful learned face, and is silent. 3 Child. By my faith. Jack, you have put me down : I would I knew how to get off with any in¬ different grace ! here, take your cloak, and promise some satisfaction in your prologue, or, I’ll be sworn we have marr'd all. 2 Child. Tut, fear not, child, this will never distaste a true sense : be not out, and good enough. I would thou hadst some sugar candied to sweeten thy mouth. The Third Sounding. PROLOGUE. If gracious silence, sweet attention, Quick sight, and quicker apprehension. The lights of judgment's throne, shine any ivhere, Our doubtful author hopes this is their sphere ; And therefore opens he himself to those, To other weaker beams his labours close, As loth to prostitute their virgin-strain. To every vulgar and adulterate brain. In this alone, his Muse her sweetness hath, She shuns the print of any beaten path ; And proves neiv ways to come to learned ears: Pied ignorance she neither loves nor fears. Nor hunts she after popular applause. Or foamy praise, that drops from common jaws : The garland that she wears, their hands must Who can both censure, understand, define \iwxne. What merit is: then cast those piercing rays. Round as a crown, instead of honour'd bays, About his poesy ; which, he knows, affords Words, above action; matter, above ivords. ACT I. SCENE I —A Grove and Fountain. Enter Cupid, and Mercury willi Ids caduceus, on different sides. Cup. Who goes there ? Mer. ’Tis I, blind archer. Cup. Who, Mercury? Mer. Ay. Cup. Farewell. &ler. Stay, Cupid. Cup. Not in your company, Hermes, except veur hands were riveted at your back. Mer. Why so, my little rover ? Cup. Because I know you have not a finger, but is as long as my quiver, cousin Mercury, when you please to extend it. Mer. Whence derive you this speech, boy ? Cup. O! ’tis your best polity to be ignorant. You did never steal Mars his sword out of the sheath, you! nor Neptune’s trident! nor Apollo’s bow! no, not you! Alas, your palms, Jupiter knows, they are as tender as the foot of a foun dered nag, or a lady’s face new mercuried they’ll touch nothing. Mer. Go to, infant, you’ll be daring still. Cup. Daring! O Janus ! what a word is there ? CYNTHIA'S REVELS. ACT I. why, my light feather-lieel’d coz, what are you any more than my uncle Jove’s pander? a lacquey that runs on errands for him, and can whisper a light message to a loose wench with some round volubility ? wait mannerly at a table with a tren¬ cher, warble upon a crowd a little, and fill out nectar when Ganymede’s away ? one that sweeps the gods’ drinking-room every morning, and sets the cushions in order again, which they threw one at another’s head over night; can brush the car¬ pets, call the stools again to their places, play the crier of the court with an audible voice, and take state of a president upon you at wrestlings, plead¬ ings, negotiations, &c. Here’s the catalogue of your employments, now! O no, I err ; you have the marshalling of all the ghosts too that pass the Stygian ferry, and I suspect you for a share with the old sculler there, if the truth were known ; but let that scape. One other peculiar virtue you possess, in lifting, or leiger-du-main, which few of the house of heaven have else besides, I must con¬ fess. But, methinks, that should not make you put that extreme distance ’twixt yourself and others, that we should be said to * over-dare’ in speaking to your nimble deity. So Hercules might challenge priority of us both, because he can throw the bar farther, or lift more join’d stools at the arm’s end, than we. If this might carry it, then we, who have made the whole body of divinity trem¬ ble at the twang of our bow, and enforc’d Saturnius himself to layby his curled front, thunder, and three- fork’d fires, and put on a masking suit, too light for a reveller of eighteen to be seen in- Mer. How now ! my dancing braggart in decimo sexto ! charm your skipping tongue, or I’ll- Cup. What! use the virtue of your snaky tip- staff there upon us ? Mer. No, boy, but the smart vigour of my palm about your ears. You have forgot since I took your heels up into air, on the very hour I was born, in sight of all the bench of deities, when the silver roof of the Olympian palace rung again with applause of the fact. Cup. O no, I remember it freshly, and by a particular instance ; for my mother Venus, at the same time, but stoop’d to embrace you, and, to speak by metaphor, you borrow’d a girdle of her’s, as you did Jove’s sceptre while he was laughing ; and w r ould have done his thunder too, but that ’twas too hot for your itching fingers. Mer. ’Tis well, sir. Cup. I heard, you but look’d in at Vulcan’s forge the other day, and entreated a pair of his new tongs along with you for company: ’tis joy on you, i’ faith, that you will keep your hook’d talons in practice with any thing. ’Slight, now you are on earth, we shall have you filch spoons and candle¬ sticks rather than fail: pray Jove the perfum’d courtiers keep their casting-bottles, pick-tooths, and shittle-cocks from you, or our more ordinary gallants their tobacco-boxes; for I am strangely jealous of your nails. Mer. Never trust me, Cupid, but you are turn’d a most acute gallant of late! the edge of my wit is clean taken off with the fine and subtile stroke of your thin-ground tongue ; you fight with too poig¬ nant a phrase, for me to deal with. Cup. O Hermes, your craft cannot make me confident. I know my own steel 10 be almost spent, and therefore entreat my peace with you, in time : you are too cunning for me to encounter at length, and I think it my safest ward to close. Mer. Well, for once, I’ll suffer you to win upon me, wag; but use not these strains too often, they’ll stretch my patience. Whither might you march, now? Cup. Faith, to recover thy good thoughts, I’ll discover my whole project. The huntress and queen of these groves, Diana, in regard of some black and envious slanders hourly breathed against her, for her divine justice on Acteon, as she pre¬ tends, hath here in the vale of Gargaphie, pro¬ claim’d a solemn revels, which (her godhead put off) she will descend to grace, with the full and royal expense of one of her clearest moons : in which time it shall be lawful for all sorts of inge¬ nious persons to visit her palace, to court her nymphs, to exercise all variety of generous and noble pastimes; as well to intimate how far she treads such malicious imputations beneath her, as also to shew how clear her beauties are from the least wrinkle of austerity they may be charged with. Mer. But, what is all this to Cupid ? Cup. Here do I mean to put off the title of a god, and take the habit of a page, in which dis¬ guise, during the interim of these revels, I will get to follow some one of Diana’s maids, where, if my bow hold, and my shafts fly but with half the wil¬ lingness and aim they are directed, I doubt not but 1 shaLl really redeem the minutes I have lost, by their so long and over nice proscription of my deity from their court. Mer. Pursue it, divine Cupid, it will be rare. Cup. But will Hermes second me? Mer. I am now to put in act an especial de- signment from my father Jove; but, that perform’d, I am for any fresh action that offers itself. Cup. Well, then we part. [Exit, Mer. Farewell, good wag. Now to my charge_Echo, fair Echo, speak, ’Tis Mercury that calls thee ; sorrowful nymph, Salute me with thy repercussive voice, That I may know what cavern of the earth Contains thy airy spirit, how, or where I may direct my speech, that thou may’st hear. Echo, [below .] Here. Mer. So nigh! Echo. Ay. Mer. Know, gentle soul, then, I am sent from Who, pitying the sad burthen of thy woes, [Jove, Still growing on thee, in thy want of words To vent thy passion for Narcissus’ death, Commands, that now, after three thousand years, Which have been exercised in Juno’s spite, Thou take a corporal figure, and ascend, Enrich’d with vocal and articulate power. Make haste, sad nymph, thrice shall my winged rod Strike the obsequious earth, to give thee way. Arise, and speak thy sorrows, Echo, rise, Here, by this fountain, where thy love did pine, Whose memory lives fresh to vulgar fame, Shrined in this yellow flower, that bears his name. Echo. [ ascends .] His name revives, and lifts me up from earth, O, which way shall I first convert myself, Or in what mood shall I essay to speak, That, in a moment, I may be deliver’d Of the prodigious grief I go withal? See, see, the mourning fimnt, whose springs weep Tlx’ untimely fate of that too beauteous boy, [yet CYNTHIA’S REVELS, SCENE r. 73 That trophy of self-love, and spoil of nature, Who, now transform’d into this drooping flower, Hangs the repentant head, back from the stream, As if it wish'd, Would I had never look’d In such a flattering mirror ! O Narcissus, Thou that wast once, and yet art, my Narcissus, Had Echo but been private with thy thoughts, She would have dropt away herself in tears, Till she had all turn’d water ; that in her, As in a truer glass, thou might’st have gazed And seen thy beauties by more kind reflection, But self-love never yet could look on truth But with blear’d beams ; slick flattery and she Are twin-born sisters, and so mix their eyes, As if you sever one, the other dies. Why did the gods give thee a heavenly form, And earthly thoughts to make thee proud of it ? Why do I ask ? ’Tis now the known disease That beauty hath, to bear too deep a sense Of her own self-conceived excellence. O, hadst thou known the worth of heaven’s rich Thou wouldst have turn’d it to a truer use, [gift, And not with starv’d and covetous ignorance, Pined in continual eyeing that bright gem, The glance whereof to others had been more, Than to thy famish’d mind the wide world’s store : So wretched is it to be merely rich! Witness thy youth’s dear sweets here spent un- Like a fair taper, with his own flame wasted, [tasted, Mer. Echo, be brief, Saturnia is abroad, And if she hear, she’ll storm at Jove’s high will. Echo. I will, kind Mercury, be brief as time. Vouchsafe me, I may do him these last rites, But kiss his flower, and sing some mourning strain Over his wat’ry hearse. Mer. Thou dost obtain ; I were no son to Jove, should I deny thee. Begin, and more to grace thy cunning voice, The humourous air shall mix her solemn tunes With thy sad words: strike, music, from the spheres, And with your golden raptures swell our ears. Echo [ accompanied ]. Vloiv, slow, fresh fount , keep time with my salt tears: Yet, slower, yet ; O faintly, gentle springs : List to the heavy part the music bears, Woe weeps out her division, when she sings. Droop herbs and flowers, Fall grief in showers, Our beauties are not ours ; O, I could still , Like melting snow upon some craggy hill , Drop, drop, drop, drop, Since nature's pride is now a wither'd daffodil .— Mer. Now, have you done ? Echo. Done presently, good Hermes : bide a Suffer my thirsty eye to gaze awhile, [little ; But e’en to taste the place, and I am vanish’d. Mer. Forego thy use and liberty of tongue, And thou mayst dwell on earth, and sport thee there. Echo. Here young Acteonfell, pursued and torn By Cynthia’s wrath, more eager than his hounds ; And here—ah me, the place is fatal!—see The weeping Niobe, translated hither From Phrygian mountains ; and by Phoebe rear’d, As the proud trophy of her sharp revenge. Mer. Nay, but hear— Echo. But here, O here, the fountain of self-love, In which Latona, and her careless nymphs, Regardless of my sorrows, bathe themselves In hourly pleasures. Mer. Stint thy babbling tongue! Fond Echo, thou profan’st the grace is done tlies. So idle worldlings merely made of voice, Censure the Powers above them. Come, away, Jove calls thee hence ; and his will brooks no stay. Echo. O, stay : I ha» r e but one poor thought to In airy garments, and then, faith, I go. [clothe Henceforth, thou treacherous and murdering spring, Be ever call’d the fountain of self-love : And with thy water let this curse remain, As an inseparate plague, that who but taste A drop thereof, may, with the instant touch, Grow dotingly enamour’d on themselves. Now, Hermes, I have finish’d. Mer. Then thy speech Must here forsake thee, Echo, and thy voice, As it was wont, rebound but the last words. Farewell. Echo. [retiring .] Well. Mer. Now, Cupid, I am for you, and your mirth, To make me light before I leave the earth. Enter Amorfhus, hastily. Amo. Dear spark of beauty, make not so fast Echo. Away. [away. Mer. Stay, let me observe this portent yet. Amo. I am neither your Minotaur, nor your Centaur, nor your satyr, nor your hyaena, nor your babion, but your mere traveller, believe me. Echo. Leave me. Mer. I guess’d it should be some travelling motion pursued Echo so. Amo. Know you from whom you fly ? or whence ? Echo. Hence. [Exit. Amo. This is somewhat above strange : Anvmph of her feature and lineament, to be so preposter¬ ously rude ! well, I will but cool myself at yon spring, and follow her. Mer. Nay, then, I am familiar with the issue: I’ll leave you too. [_Exit. Amor. I am a rhinoceros, if I had thought a creature of her symmetry could have dared so im- proportionable and abrupt a digression. — Liberal and divine fount, suffer my profane hand to take of thy bounties. \_Takes up some of the water.] By the purity of my taste, here is most ambrosiac water ; I will sup of it again. By thy favour, sweet fount. See, the water, a more running, subtile, and humourous nymph than she, permits me to touch, and handle her. What should I infer? if my behaviours had been of a cheap or customary garb ; my accent or phrase vulgar ; my garments trite ; my countenance illiterate, or un¬ practised in the encounter of a beautiful and brave attired piece ; then I might, with some change of colour, have suspected my faculties : But, knowing myself an essence so sublimated and refined by travel; of so studied and well exercised a gesture ; so alone in fashion ; able to render the face of any statesman living ; and to speak the mere extrac¬ tion of language, one that hath now made the sixth return upon venture ; and was your first that ever enrich’d his country with the true laws of the duello ; whose optics have drunk the spirit o! beauty in some eight score and eighteen prince’s CYNTHIA’S REVELS. act i. courts, where I have resided, and been there fortunate in the amours of three hundred forty and five ladies, all nobly, if not princely descended; whose names I have in catalogue : To conclude, in all so happy, as even admiration herself doth seem to fasten her kisses upon me :—certes, I do neither see, nor feel, nor taste, nor savour the least steam or fume of a reason, that should invite this foolish, fastidious nymph, so peevishly to abandon me. Well, let the memory of her fleet into air; my thoughts and I am for this other element, water. Enter Crttes and Asotus. Cri. What, the well dieted Amorphus become a water drinker! I see he means not to write verses then. Aso. No, Crites ! why ? Cri. Because- Nulla placere diu } nec vivere carmina possunt, Quce scribuntur aquas potoribus. Amo. What say you to your Helicon? Cri. O, the Muses’ well! that’s ever excepted. Amo. Sir, your Muses have no such water, I assure you; your nectar, or the juice of your nepenthe, is nothing to it; ’tis above your me- theglin, believe it. Aso. Metheglin ; what’s that, sir ? may I be so audacious to demand ? Amo. A kind of Greek wine I have met with, sir, in my travels; it is the same that Demos¬ thenes usually drunk, in the composure of all his exquisite and mellifluous orations. Cri. That’s to be argued, Amorphus, if we may credit Lucian, who, in his Encomio Demosthenis , affirms, he never drunk but water in any of his compositions. Amo. Lucian is absurd, he knew nothing: I will believe mine own travels before all the Lucians of Europe. He doth feed you with fittons, figments, and leasings. Cri. Indeed, I think, next a traveller, he does prettily well. Amo. I assure you it was wine, I have tasted it, and from the hand of an Italian antiquary, who derives it authentically from the duke of Ferrara’s bottles. How name you the gentleman you are in rank with there, sir ? Cri. ’Tis Asotus, son to the late deceased Philargyrus, the citizen. Amo. Was his father of any eminent place or means ? Cri. He was to have been praetor next year. Amo. Ha! a pretty formal young gallant, in good sooth ; pity he is not more genteelly propa¬ gated. Hark you, Crites, you may say to him what I am, if you please; though I affect not popularity, yet l would loth to stand out to any, whom you shall vouchsafe to call friend. Cri. Sir, I fear I may do wrong to your suf¬ ficiencies in the reporting them, by forgetting or misplacing some one : yourself can best inform him of yourself, sir ; except you had some cata¬ logue or list of your faculties ready drawn, which you would request me to show him for you, and him to take notice of. Amo. This Crites is sour: [Aside.] —I will think, sir. Cri. Do so, sir.—O heaven! that anything iu the likeness of man should suffer these rack’d ex¬ tremities, for the uttering of his sophisticate good parts. [Aside. Aso. Crites, I have a suit to you; but you must not deny me pray you make this gentleman and I friends. Cri. Friends! why, is there any difference be¬ tween you ? Aso. No ; I mean acquaintance, to know one another. Cri. O, now I apprehend you ; your phrase was without me before. Aso. In good faith, he’s a most excellent rare man, I warrant him. Cri. ’Slight, they are mutually enamour’d by this time. [Aside. Aso. Will you, sweet Crites ? Cri. Yes, yes. Aso. Nay, but when ? you’ll defer it now, and forget it. Cri. Why, is it a thing of such present neces¬ sity, that it requires so violent a dispatch ! Aso. No, but would I might never stir, he’s a most lavishing man! Good Crites, you shall endear me to you, in good faith ; la ! Cri. Well, your longing shall be satisfied, sir. Aso. And withal, you may tell him what my father was, and how well he left me, and that I am his heir. Cri. Leave it to me, I’ll forget none of your dear graces, I warrant you. Aso. Nay, I know you can better marshal these affairs than I can-O gods! I’d give all the world, if I had it, for abundance of such acquaint¬ ance. Cri. What ridiculous circumstance might I de¬ vise now to bestow this reciprocal brace of butter¬ flies one upon another ? [Aside Amo. Since I trod on this side the Alps, I was not so frozen in my invention. Let me see: to accost him with some choice remnant of Spanish, or Italian ! that would indifferently express my languages now : marry, then, if he shall fall out to be ignorant, it -were both hard and harsh. How else? step into some ragioni del stalo , and so make my induction ! that were above him too ; and out of his element, I fear. Feign to have seen him in Venice or Padua ! or some face near his in simili¬ tude ! ’tis too pointed and open. No, it must be a more quaint and collateral device, as-stay : to frame some encomiastic speech upon this our metropolis, or the wise magistrates thereof, in which politic number, ’tis odds but his father fill’d up a room ? descend into a particular admiration of their justice, for the due measuring of coals, burn¬ ing of cans, and such like ? as also their religion, in pulling down a superstitious cross, and advanc¬ ing a Venus, or Priapus, in place of it? ha ! ’twill do well. Or to talk of some hospital, whose walls record his father a benefactor ? or of so many buckets bestow’d on his parish church in his life¬ time, with’ his name at length, for want of arms, trickt upon them ? any of these. Or to praise the cleanness of the street wherein he dwelt ? or the provident painting of his posts, against he should have been prsetor ? or, leaving his parent, come to some special ornament about himself, as his rapier, or some other of his accoutrements ? I have it: thanks, gracious Minerva! Aso. Would I had but once spoke to him, and then-He comes to me ! Amo. ’Tis a most curious and neatly wrought band this same, as I have seen, sir. SCENE I. CYNTHIA'S REVELS. 75 Aso. O lord, sir ! Amo. You forgive the humour of mine eye, in ■observing it. Cri. His eye waters after it, it seems. {.Aside. Aso. O lord, sir! there needs no such apology, I assure you. Cri. I am anticipated ; they’ll make a solemn deed of gift of themselves, you shall see. [Aside. Amo. Your riband too does most gracefully in troth. Aso. ’Tis the most genteel and x-eceived wear now, sir. Amo. Believe me, sir, I speak it not to humour you—I have not seen a young gentleman, generally, put on his clothes with more judgment. Aso. O, ’tis your pleasure to say so, sir. Amo. No, as I am virtuous, being altogether untravell’d, it strikes me into wonder. Aso. I do purpose to travel, sir, at spring. Amo. I think I shall affect you, sir. This last speech of yours hath begun to make you dear to me. Aso. O lord, sir ! I would there were any thing in me, sir, that might appear worthy the least worthiness of your worth, sir. I protest, sir, I should endeavour to shew it, sir, with more than common regaid, sir. Cri. O, here’s rare motley, sir. [Aside. Amo. Both your desert, and your endeavours are plentiful, suspect them not: but your sweet dispo¬ sition to travel, I assui*e you, hath made you another myself in mine eye, and struck me ena¬ mour’d on your beauties. Aso. I would I were the fairest lady of France for your sake, sir ? and yet I would travel too. Amo. O, you should digress from yourself else: for. believe it, your travel is your only thing that rectifies, or, as the Italian says, vi rendi pronto all ’ attioni, makes you fit for action. Aso. I think it be great charge though, sir. Amo. Charge ! why ’tis nothing for a gentle¬ man that goes private, as yourself, or so ; my in¬ telligence shall quit my charge at all time. Good faith, this hat hath possest mine eye exceedingly ; ’tis so pretty and fantastic : what! is it a beaver ? Aso. Ay, sir. I’ll assure you ’tis a beaver, it cost tne eight ci'owns but this morning. Amo. After your French account ? Aso. Yes, sir. Cri. And so near his head ! beshi'ew me, dan¬ gerous. [Aside. Amo. A very pretty fashion, believe me, and a most novel kind of trim : your band is conceited too! Aso. Sir, it is all at your service. Amo. O, pardon me. Aso. I beseech you, sir, if you please to wear it, you shall do me a most infinite grace. Cri. ’Slight, will he be prais'd out of his clothes ? Aso. By heaven, sir, I do not offer it you after the Italian manner ; I would you should conceive so of me. Amo. Sir, I shall fear to appear rude in deny¬ ing your courtesies, especially being invited by so proper a distinction : May I pray your name, sir? Aso. My name is Asotus, sir. Amo. I take your love, gentle Asotus; but let me win you to receive this, in exchange- [They exchange leavers. Cri. Heart! they’ll change doublets anon. f Aside. Amo. And, from this time esteem yourself in the first rank of those few whom I profess to love. What make you in company of this scholar here ? I will bring you known to gallants, as Anaides of the ordinaiy, Hedon the courtier, and others, whose society shall render you graced and re¬ spected : this is a trivial fellow, too mean, too cheap, too coarse for you to converse with. Aso. ’Slid, this is not worth a crown, and mine cost me eight but this morning. Cri. I looked when he would repent him, he has begun to be sad a good while. Amo. Sir, shall I say to you for that hat ? Be not so sad, be not so sad : It is a relic I could not so easily have departed with, but as the hierogly¬ phic of my affection ; you shall alter it to what form you please, it will take any block; I have received it varied on record to the three thousandth time, and not so few : It hath these virtues beside your head shall not ache under it, nor your bi-ain leave you, without license ; it will preserve your complexion to eternity; for no beam of the sun, should you wear it under zona torrida, hath power to approach it by two ells. It is proof against thunder, and enchantment; and was given me by a great man in Russia, as an especial prized present; and constantly affirm’d to be the hat that accom¬ panied the politic Ulysses in his tedious and ten years’ travels. Aso. By Jove, I will not depart withal, whoso¬ ever would give me a million. Enter Cos and Prosaites. Cos. Save you, sweet bloods ! does any of you want a creature, or a dependent ? Cri. Beshrew me, a fine blunt slave ! Amo. A page of good timber! it will now be my grace to entertain him first, though I cashier him again in private.—How r art thou call’d ? Cos. Cos, sir, Cos. Cri. Cos! how happily hath fortune furnish’d him with a w hetstone ? Amo. I do entertain you, Cos; conceal your quality till we be private ; if your parts be worthy of me, I will countenance you; if not, catechize you.— Gentles, shall we go? Aso. Stay, sir: I’ll but entertain this other fel¬ low, and then-I have a great humour to taste of this water too, but I’ll come again alone for that -mark the place.—What’s your name, youth ? Pros. Prosaites, sir. Aso. Prosaites! a very fine name; Ci’ites, is it not ? Cri. Yes, and a very ancient one, sir, the Beggar. Aso. Follow me, good Prosaites ; let’s talk. [Exeunt all but Critks. Cri. He will i*ank even with you, ere’t be long, If you hold on your course. O, vanity, How ai'e thy painted beauties doted on, By light and empty idiots ! how pursued With open and extended appetite ! How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath, Raised on their toes, to catch thy airy forms, Still turning giddy, till they i - eel like drunkards, That buy the merry madness of one hour With the long irksomeness of following time ! O, how despised and base a thing is man, If he not strive t’erect his grovelling thoughts Above the strain of flesh! but how r more cheap, When, ev’n his best and understanding part. 7 G CYNTHIA'S REVELS. ACT 1. The crown and strength of all his faculties, Floats, like a dead drown’d body, on the stream Of vulgar humour, mixt with common’st dregs ! I suffer for their guilt now, and my soul, Like one that looks on ill-affected eyes, Is hurt with mere intention on their follies. Why will I view them then, my sense might ask Or is’t a rarity, or some new object, [me ? That strains my strict observance to this point ? O, would it were ! therein I could afford My spirit should draw a little near to theirs, To gaze on novelties; so vice were one. Tut, she is stale, rank, foul; and were it not That those that woo her greet her with lock’d eyes, In spight of all th’ impostures, paintings, drugs, Which her bawd. Custom, da wbs her cheeks withal, She would betray her loth’d and leptous face, And fright the enamour’d dotards from themselves ; But such is the perverseness of our nature, That if we once but fancy levity, How antic and ridiculous soe’er It suit with us, yet will our muffled thought Choose rather not to see it, than avoid it: And if we can but banish our own sense, We act our mimic tricks with that free license, That lust, that pleasure, that security, As if we practised in a paste-board case, And no one saw the motion, but the motion. Well, check thy passion, lest it grow too loud : While fools are pitied, they wax fat and proud. ACT II. SCENE I.— The Court. Enter Cupid and Mercury, disguised as Pages. Cup. Why, this was most unexpectedly fol¬ lowed, my divine delicate Mercury ; by the beard of Jove, thou art a precious deity. Mer. Nay, Cupid, leave to speak improperly; since we are turn’d cracks, let’s study to be like cracks; practise their language and behaviours, and not with a dead imitation : Act freely, care¬ lessly, and capriciously, as if our veins ran with quicksilver, and not utter a phrase, but what shall come forth steep’d in the very brine of conceit, and sparkle like salt in fire. Cup. That’s not everyone’s happiness, Hermes : Though you can presume upon the easiness and dexterity of your wit, you shall give me leave to be a little jealous of mine; and not desperately to hazard it after your capering humour. Mer. Nay, then, Cupid, I think we must have you hood-wink’d again; for you are grown too provident since your eyes were at liberty. Cup. Not so, Mercury, I am still blind Cupid to thee. Mer. And what to the lady nymph you serve ? Cup. Troth, page, boy, and sirrah: these are all my titles. Mer. Then thou hast not altered thy name, with thy disguise ? Cup. O, no, that had been supererogation ; you shall never hear your courtier call but by one of these three. Mer. Faith, then both our fortunes are the same. Cup. Why, what parcel of man hast thou lighted on for a master ? Mer. Such a one as, before I begin to decipher him, I dare not affirm to be any thing less than a courtier. So much he is during this open time of revels, and would be longer, but that his means are to leave him shortly after. His name is Hedon, a gallant wholly consecrated to his pleasures. Cup. Hedon! he uses much to my lady’s cham¬ ber, I think. Mer. How is she call’d, and then I can shew thee ? Cup. Madam Philautia. Mer. O ay, he affects her very particularly in¬ deed. These are his graces. He doth (besides me) keep a barber and a monkey; he has a rich wrought waistcoat, to entertain his visitants in. with a cap almost suitable. His curtains and bed¬ ding are thought to be his own ; his bathing-tub is not suspected. He loves to have a fencer, a pedant, and a musician seen in his lodging a-mornings. Cup. And not a poet ? Mer. Fie, no: himself is a rhymer, and that’s thought better than a poet. He is not lightly within to his mercer, no, though he come when he takes physic, which is commonly after his play. He beats a tailor very well, but a stocking-seller admirably: and so consequently any one he owes money to, that dares not resist him. He never makes general invitement, but against the publish¬ ing of a new suit; marry, then you shall have more drawn to his lodging, than come to the launching of some three ships ; especially if he be furnish’d with supplies for the retiring of his old wardrobe from pawn : if not, he does hire a stock of apparel, and some forty or fifty pound in gold, for that fore¬ noon, to shew. He is thought a very necessary perfume for the presence, and for that only cause welcome thither : six milliners’ shops afford you not the like scent. He courts ladies with how many great horse he hath rid that morning, or how oft he hath done the whole, or half the pommado in a seven-night before: and sometime ventures so far upon the virtue of his pomander, that he dares tell ’em how many shirts he has sweat at tennis that week ; but wisely conceals so many dozen of balls he is on the score. Here he comes, that is all this. Enter Hedon, Anaides, and Gelaia. lied. Boy! Mer. Sir. Hed. Are any of the ladies in the presence? Mer. None yet, sir. Hed. Give me some gold,—more. Ana. Is that thy boy, Hedon ? Hed. Ay, what think’st thou of him ? Ana. I’d geld him ; I warrant he has the philo¬ sopher’s stone. Hed. Well said, my good melancholy devil: sirrah, I have devised one or two of the prettiest oaths, this morning in my bed, as ever thou heard’st, to protest withal in the presence. Ana. Prithee, let’s hear them. Hed. Soft, thou’lt use them afore me. Ana. No, d—mn me then—I have more oaths than I know how to utter, by this air. Hed. Faith, one is, By the tip of your car, su:eei lady. Is it not pretty, and genteel ? _ _a ———— - - - - - . - ■ - ■ ■■■.- - - ■ ■ ■— — -— scene /. CYNTHIA’S REVELS. 77 Ana. Yes, for the person ’tis applied to, a lady. It should be light and- lied. Nay, the other is better, exceeds it much . the invention is farther fet too. By the white val¬ ley that lies between the alpine h ills of your bosom, 1 protest. -— Ana. Well, you travell’d for that, Iledon. Mer. Ay, in a map, where his eyes were but blind guides to his understanding, it seems. Hed. And then I have a salutation will nick all, by this caper : hay ! Ana. How is that? lied. You know I call madam Philautia, my Honour ; and she calls me, her Ambition. Now, when I meet her in the presence anon, I will come to her, and say, Sweet Honour , I have hitherto contented my sense with the lilies of your hand, but now I ivill taste the roses of your Up ; and, withal, kiss her : to which she cannot but blushing answer, Nay, now you are too ambitious. And then do I reply : I cannot be too Ambitious of Honour, sweet lady. Will’t not be good ? ha ? ha ? Ana. O, assure your soul. Hed. By heaven, I think 'twill be excellent: and a very politic achievement of a kiss. Ana. I have thought upon one for Moria of a sudden too, if it take. Hed. What is’t, my dear Invention ? Ana. Marry, I will come to her, (and she always wears a muff, if you be remembered.) and I will tell her , Madam, your whole self cannot but be perfectly wise ; for your hands have wit enough to ktcp themselves warm. Hed. Now, oefore Jove, admirable! [Gelaia laughs. ] Look, thy page takes it, too. By Phoebus, my sweet facetious rascal, I could eat water- gruel with thee a month for this jest, my dear rogue. Ana. O, Hercules, ’tis your only dish ; above all your potatoes or oyster-pies in the world. Hed. I have ruminated upon a most rare wish too, and the prophecy to it; but I’ll have some friend to be the prophet; as thus: I do wish myself one of my mistress’s cioppini. Another demands, Why w ould he be one of his mistress’s cioppini ? a third answers, Because he would make her higher: a fourth shall say, That will make her proud : and a fifth shall conclude, Then do I prophesy pride will have a fall;—and he shall give it her. Ana. I will be your prophet. Gods so, it will be most exquisite; thou ait a fine inventious rogue, sirrah. Hed. Nay, and I have posies for rings, too, and riddles that they dream not of. Ana. Tut, they’ll do that, when they come to sleep on them, time enough : But were thy devices never in the presence yet, Hedon ? Hed. O, no, I disdain that. Ana. ’Twere good we went afore then, and brought them acquainted with the room where they shall act, lest the strangeness of it put them out of countenance, when they should come forth. [. Exeunt IIeeon and Anaides. Cup. Is that a courtier, too ? Mer. Troth, no; he has two essential parts of the courtier, pride and ignorance ; marry, the rest come somewhat after the ordinary gallant. ’Tis Impudence itself, Anaides; one that speaks all that comes in his cheeks, and will blush no more than a sackbut. He lightly occupies the jester’s room at the table, and keeps laughter, Gelaia, a wench in page’s attire, following him in place of a squire, whom he now and then tickles with some strange ridiculous stuff, utter’d as his land came to him, by chance. He will censure or discourse of any thing, but as absurdly as you would wish. His fashion is not to take knowledge of him that is beneath him in clothes. He never drinks below the salt. He does naturally admire his wit that wears gold lace, or tissue : stabs any man that speaks more contemptibly of the scholar than he. He is a great proficient in all the illiberal sciences, as cheating, drinking, swaggering, whoring, and such like : never kneels but to pledge healths, nor prays but for a pipe of pudding-tobacco. He will blaspheme in his shirt. The oaths which he vomits at one supper would maintain a town of garrison in good swearing a twelvemonth. One other genuine quality he has which crowns all these, and that is this: to a friend in want, he will not depart with the weight of a soldered groat, lest the world might censure him prodigal, or report him a gull: marry, to his cockatrice or punquetto, half a dozen taffata gowns or satin kirtles in a pair or two of months, why, they are nothing. Cup. I commend him, he is one of my clients. [They retire to the hack of the Stage. Enter Ariorphus, Asotus, and Cos. Amo. Come, sir. You are now within regard of the presence, and see, the privacy of this room how sweetly it offers itself to our retired intend¬ ments.—Page, cast a vigilant and enquiring eye about, that we be not rudely surprised by the approach of some ruder stranger. Cos. I warrant you, sir. I’ll tell you when the wolf enters, fear nothing. Mer. O what a mass of benefit shall we possess, in being the invisible spectators of this strange show now to be acted ! Amo. Plant yourself there, sir ; and observe me You shall now, as well be the ocular, as the ear- witness, how clearly I can refel that paradox, or rather pseudodox, of those, which hold the face to be the index of the mind, which, I assure you, is not so in any politic creature : for instance; I will now give you the particular and distinct face of every your most noted species of persons, as your merchant, your scholar, your soldier, your lawyer, courtier, &c. and each of these so truly, as you would swear, but that your eye shall see the varia¬ tion of the lineament, it were my most proper and genuine aspect. First, for your merchant, or city- face, ’tis thus ; a dull, plodding-face, still looking in a direct line, forward: there is no great matter in this face. Then have you your student’s, or academic face, which is here an honest, simple, and metho¬ dical face; but somewhat more spread than the former. The third is your soldier’s face, a me¬ nacing and astounding face, that looks broad and big: the grace of his face consisteth much in a beard. The anti-face to this, is your lawyer’s face, a contracted, subtile, and intricate face, full of quirks and turnings, a labyrintliean face, now angularly, now circularly, every way aspected. Next is your statist’s face, a serious, solemn, and supercilious face, full of formal and square gravity; the eye, for the most part, deeply and artificially shadow’d: there is great judgment required in CYNTHIA’S REVELS. 1 :a the making of this face. But now, to come to your face of faces, or courtier’s face ; ’tis of three sorts, according to our subdivision of a courtier, elementary, practic, and tlieoric. Your courtier theoric, is he that hath arrived to his farthest, and doth now know the court rather by speculation than practice ; and this is his face : a fastidious and oblique face ; that looks as it went with a vice, and were screw’d thus. Your courtier practic, is he that is yet in his path, his course, his way, and hath not touch’d the punctilio or point of his hopes ; his face is here: a most promising, open, smooth, and overflowing face, that seems as it would run and pour itself into you: somewhat a northerly face. Your courtier elementary, is one but newly enter'd, or as it were in the alphabet, or ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la of courtship. Note well this face, for it is this you must practise. Aso. I’ll practise them all, if you please, sir. Amo. Ay, hereafter you may : and it will not be altogether an ungrateful study. For, let your soul be assured of this, in any rank or profession what¬ ever, the more general or major part of opinion goes with the face and simply respects nothing else. Therefore, if that can be made exactly, curiously, exquisitely, thoroughly, it is enough: but for the present you shall only apply yourself to this face of the elementary courtier, a light, revelling, and protesting face, now r blushing, now smiling, which you may help much with a wanton wagging of your head, thus, (a feather will teach you,) or with kiss¬ ing your finger that hath the ruby, or playing with some string of your band, which is a most quaint kind of melancholy besides : or, if among ladies, laughing loud, and crying up your own wit, though perhaps borrow’d, it is not amiss. Where is your page ? call for your casting-bottle, and place your mirror in your hat, as I told you: so! Come, look not pale, observe me, set your face, and enter. Me.r. O, for some excellent painter, to have taken the copy of all these faces ! [Aside. Aso. Prosaites! Amo. Fie ! I premonish you of that: in the court, boy, lacquey, or sirrah. Cos. Master, lupus in -O, ’tis Prosaites. Enter Prosaites. Aso, Sirrah, prepare my casting-bottle ; I think I must be enforced to purchase me another page ; you see how at hand Cos waits here. [Exeunt Amorpiius, Asotus, Cos, and Prosaites. Mer. So will he too, in time. Cup. What’s he, Mercury ? Mer. A notable smelt. One that hath newly entertain’d the beggar to follow him, but cannot get him to wait near enough. ’Tis Asotus, the heir of Philargyrus ; but first I’ll give ye the other’s character, which may make his the clearer. He that is with him is Amorphus, a traveller, one so made out of the mixture of shreds of forms, that himself is truly deform’d. He walks most com¬ monly with a clove or pick-tooth in his mouth, he is the very mint of compliment, all his behaviours are printed, his face is another volume of essays, and his beard is an Aristarchus. He speaks all cream skimm’d, and more affected than a dozen waiting women. He is his own promoter in every place. The wife of the ordinary gives him his diet to maintain her table in discourse; which, cr ii. indeed, is a mere tyranny over her ether guests, for he will usurp all the talk: ten constables are not so tedious. He is no great shifter ; once a yeai his apparel is ready to revolt. He doth use much to arbitrate quarrels, and fights himself, exceeding well, out at a window. He will lie cheaper than any beggar, and louder than most clocks ; for which he is right properly accommodated to the Whetstone, his page. The other gallant is his zany, and doth most of these tricks after him ; sweats to imitate him in every thing to a hair, except a beard, which is not yet extant. He doth learn to make strange sauces, to eat anchovies, maccaroni, bovoli, fagioli, and caviare, because he loves them ; speaks as he speaks, looks, walks, goes so in clothes and fashion : is in all as if he were moulded of him. Marry, before they met, he had other very pretty sufficiencies, which yet he retains some light impression of; as frequent¬ ing a dancing-school, and grievously torturing strangers with inquisition after his grace in his galliard. He buys a fresh acquaintance at any rate. His eyes and his raiment confer much together as he goes in the street. He treads nicely like the fellow that w-alks upon ropes, especially the first Sunday of his silk stockings ; and when he is most neat and new, you shall strip him with commendations. Cup. Here comes another. [Crites passes over the stage Mer. Ay, but one of another strain, Cupid ; this fellow weighs somewhat. Cup. His name. Hermes ? Mer. Crites. A creature of a most perfect and divine temper: one, in whom the humours and elements are peaceably met, without emulation of precedency ; he is neither too fantastically melan¬ choly, too slowly phlegmatic, too lightly sanguine, or too rashly choleric; but in all so composed and ordered, as it is clear Nature went about some full work, she did more than make a man when she made him. His discourse is like his behaviour, uncommon, but not unpleasing; he is prodigal of neither. He strives rather to be that which men call judicious, than to be thought so ; and is so truly learned, that he affects not to shew it. He w r ill think and speak his thought both freely ; but as distant from depraving another man’s merit, as proclaiming his own. For his valour, ’tis such, that he dares as little to offer any injury as receive one. In sum, he hath a most ingenuous and sweet spirit, a sharp and season’d wit, a straight judg¬ ment and a strong mind. Fortune could never break him, nor make him less. He counts it his pleasure to despise pleasures, and is more delighted with good deeds than goods. It is a competency to him that he can be virtuous. He doth neither covet nor fear; he hath too much reason to do either; and that commends all things to him. Cup. Not better than Mercury commend? him. Mer. O, Cupid, ’tis beyond my deity to give him his due praises : I could leave my place in heaven to live among mortals, so I were sure to be no other than he. Cup. ’Slight, I believe he is your minion, you seem to be so ravish’d with him. Mer. He’s one I would not have a wry thought darted against, willingly. Cup. No, but a straight shaft in his bosom I’ll promise him, if I am Cytherea’s son. fcCEKE I. CYNTHIA’S KEVELS. 79 Mer. Shall we go, Cupid ? Cup. Stay, and see the ladies now : they’ll come presently. I’ll help to paint them. Mer. What, lay colour upon colour! that affords but an ill blazon. Cup. Here comes metal to help it, the lady Ar- gurion. [Argurion passes over the stage. Mer. Money, money. Cup. The same. A nymph of a most wandering and giddy disposition, humorous as the air, she’ll run from gallant to gallant, as they sit at primero in the presence, most strangely, and seldom stays w’ith any. She spreads as she goes. To-day you shall have her look as clear and fresh as the morn¬ ing, and to morrow as melancholic as midnight. She takes special pleasure in a close obscure lodg¬ ing, and for that cause visits the city so often, where she has many secret true concealing favour¬ ites. When she comes abroad, she’s more loose and scattering than dust, and will fly from place to place, as she were wrapped with a whirlwind. Your young student, for the most part, she affects not, only salutes him, and away : a poet, nor a philoso¬ pher, she is hardly brought to take any notice of; no, though he be some part of an alchemist. She loves a player well, and a lawyer infinitely ; but your fool above all. She can do much in court for the obtaining of any suit whatsoever, no door but flies open to her, her presence is above a charm. The worst in her is want of keeping state, and too much descending into inferior and base offices ; she’s for any coarse employment you will put upon her, as to be your procurer, or pander. Mer. Peace, Cupid, here comes more work for you, another character or two. Enter Phantaste, Moria, and Philautia. Pha. Stay, sweet Philautia, I’ll but change my fan, and go presently. Mor. Now, in very good serious, ladies, I will have this order revers’d, the presence must be bet¬ ter maintain’d from you . a quarter past eleven, and ne'er a nymph in prospective ! Beshrew my hand, there must be a reform’d discipline. Is that your new ruff, sweet lady-bird ? By my truth, ’tis most intricately rare. Mer. Good Jove, what reverend gentlewoman ill years might this be ? Cup. ’Tis madam Moria, guardian of the nymphs; one that is not now to be persuaded of her wit; she will think herself wise against all the judgments that come. A lady made all of voice and air, talks any thing of any thing. She is like one of you>- ignorant poetasters of the time, who, when they have got acquainted with a strange word, never -est till they have wrung it in, though it loosen the whole fabric of their sense. Mer. That was pretty and sharply noted, Cupid. Cup. She will tell you, Philosophy was a fine reveller, when she was young, and a gallant, and that then, though she say it, she was thought to be the dame Dido and Helen of the court: as also, what a sweet dog she had this time four years, and how it was called Fortune; and that, if the Fates had not cut his thread, he had been a dog to have given entertainment to any gallant in this kingdom ; and unless she had whelp’d it herself, she could not have loved a thing better in this world. Mer.' O, I prithee no more ; I am full of her. Cup, Yes, I must needs tell you she composes a sack-posset well; and would court a young page sweetly, but that her breath is against it. Mer. Now, her breath or something more strong protect me from her ! The other, the other, ■ Cupid ? Cup. O, that’s my lady and mistress madam Philautia. She admires not herself for any one particularity, but for all: she is fair, and she knows it; she has a pretty light wit too, and she knows it; she can dance, and she knows that too ; play at shuttle-cock, and that too : no quality she has, but she shall take a very particular knowledge of, and most lady-like commend it to you. You shall have her at any time read you the history of herself, and very subtilely run over another lady’s sufficiencies to come to her own. She has a good superficial judgment in painting, and would seem to have so in poetry. A most complete lady in the opinion ol some three beside herself. Phi. Faith, how liked you my quip to Hedon, about the garter ? Was’t not witty ? Mor. Exceeding witty and integrate : you did so aggravate the jest withal. Phi. And did I not dance movingly the last night ? Mor. Movingly ! out of measure, in troth, sweet charge. Mer. A happy commendation, to dance out of measure! Mor. Save only you wanted the swim in the turn : O ! when I was at fourteen- Phi. Nay, that’s mine own from any nymph in the court, I’m sure on’t; therefore you mistake me in that, guardian: both the swim and the trip are properly mine; every body will affirm it that has any judgment in dancing, I assure you. Pha. Come now, Philautia, I am for you ; shall we go ? Phi. Ay, good Phantaste: What! have you changed your head-tire ? Pha. Yes, faith, the other was so near the com¬ mon, it had no extraordinary grace ; besides, I had worn it almost a day, in good troth. Phi. I’ll be sworn, this is most excellent for the device, and rare; ’tis after the Italian print we look’d on t’other night. Pha. ’Tis so : by this fan, I cannot abide arv thing that savours the poor over-worn cut, that has any kindred with it; I must have variety, I : this mixing in fashion, I hate it worse than to burn juniper in my chamber, I protest. Phi. And yet we cannot have a new peculiar court-tire, but these retainers will have it; these suburb Sunday-waiters ; these courtiers for high days; I know not what I should call ’em- Pha. O, ay, they do most pitifully imitate ; but I have a tire a coming, i’faith, shall- Mor. In good certain, madam, it makes you look most heavenly; but, lay your hand on your heart, you never skinn’d a new beauty more prosperously in your life, nor more metaphysically: look, good lady ; sweet lady, look. Phi. ’Tis very clear and well, believe me. Bui if you had seen mine yesterday, when ’twas young, you would have-Who’s your doctor, Phantaste ? Pha. Nay, that’s counsel, Philautia; you shall pardon me : yet I’ll assure you he’s the most dainty, sweet, absolute, rare man of the whole college. O 1 his very looks, his discourse, his behaviour, all he does is physic, I protest. 80 CYNTHIA'S REVELS. f Phi. For heaven’s sake, his name, good dear Phan taste ? Pha. No, no, no, no, no, no, believe me, not for a million of heavens: I will not make him cheap. Fie- [Exeunt Phan taste, Moria, and Philautia. Cup. There is a nymph too of a most curious and elaborate strain, light, all motion, an ubiquitary, she is every where, Phantaste- Mer. Her very name speaks her, let her pass. But are these, Cupid, the stars cf Cynthia’s court? Do these nymphs attend upon Diana? Cup. They are in her court, Mercury, but not as stars ; these never come in the presence of Cyn¬ thia. The nymphs that make her train are the divine Arete, Time, Phronesis, Thauma, and others of that high sort. These are privately brought in by Moria in this licentious time, against her know¬ ledge : and, like so many meteors, will vanish when she appears. Enter Prosattes singing, followed by Gelaia and Cos, with bottles. Come folloiv me, my wags, and say, as I say. There's no riches but in rags, hey day, hey day : You that profess this art, come away, come away , And help to bear a part. Hey day, hey day, &c. [Mercury and Cupid come forward. ACT SCENE I .—An Apartment at the Court. Enter Amorphus and Asotus. Amo. Sir, let not this discountenance or disgal- lant you a whit; you must not sink under the first disaster. It is with your young grammatical cour¬ tier, as with your neophyte player, a thing usual to be daunted at the first presence or interview: you saw, there w as Hedon, and Anaides, far more prac¬ tised gallants than yourself, who were both out, to comfort you. It is no disgrace, no more than for your adventurous reveller to fall by some inauspi¬ cious chance in his galliard, or for some subtile politic to undertake the bastinado, that the state might think worthily of him, and respect him as a man w r ell beaten to the world. What 1 hath your tailor provided the property we spake of at your chamber, or no ? Aso. I think he has. Amo. Nay, I entreat you, be not so flat and me¬ lancholic. Erect your mind : you shall redeem this with the courtship I will teach you against the after¬ noon. Where eat you to-day ? Aso. Where you please, sir ; any where, I. Amo. Come, let us go and taste some light din¬ ner, a dish of sliced caviare, or so ; and after, you shall practise an hour at your lodging some few forms that I have recall’d. If you had but so far gathered your spirits to you, as to have taken up a rush when you were out, and wagg’d it thus, or cleansed your teeth with it; or but turn’d aside, and feign’d some business to whisper with your page, till you had recovered yourself, or but found some slight stain in your stocking, or any other pretty invention, so it had been sudden, you might have come off with a most clear and courtly grace. Aso. A poison of all 1 I think I was forespoke, I. ACT HI. Mer. What, those that were our fellow pages but now, so soon preferr’d to be yeomen of the bottles ! The mystery, the mystery, good wags ? Cup. Some diet-drink they have the guard of. Pro. No, sir, we are going in quest of a strange fountain, lutely found cut. Cup. By whom ? Cos. My master, or the great discoverer, Amor¬ phus. Mer. Thou hast well entitled him, Cos, for he will discover all he knows. Gel. Ay, and a little more too, when the spirit is upon him. Pro. O, the good travelling gentleman yonder has caused such a drought in the presence, with reporting the wonders of this new water, that all the ladies and gallants lie languishing upon the rushes, like so many pounded cattle in the midst of harvest, sighing one to another, and gasping, as il each o.f them expected a cock from the fountain to be brought into his mouth ; and without we return quickly, they are all, as a youth would say, no bet¬ ter than a few trouts cast ashore, or a dish of eels in a sand-bag. Mer. Weil then, you were best dispatch, and have a care of them. Come, Cupid, thou and I’ll go peruse this dry wonder. [. Exeunt. III. Amo. No, I must tell you, you are not auda¬ cious enough; you must frequent ordinaries a month more, to initiate yourself: in which time, it will not be amiss, if, in private, you keep good your acquaintance with Crites, or some other of his poor coat; visit his lodging secretly and often ; be¬ come an earnest suitor to hear some of his labours. Aso. O Jove! sir, I could never get him to read a line to me. Amo. You must then wisely mix yourself in rank with such as you know can ; and, as your ears do meet with a new phrase, or an acute jest, take it in : a quick nimble memory will lift it away, and, at your next public meal, it is your own. Aso. But I shall never utter it perfectly, sir. Amo. No matter, let it come lame. In ordinary talk you shall play it away, as you do your light crowns at primero : it will pass. Aso. I shall attempt, sir. Amo. Do. It is your shifting age for wit, and, I assure you, men must be prudent. After this you may to court, and there fall in, first with the waiting-woman, then with the lady. Pc' 1- case they do retain you there, as a fit property, to hire coaches some pair of months, or so; or to read them asleep in afternoons upon some pretty pam¬ phlet, to breathe you ; why, it shall in time em¬ bolden you to some farther achievement: in the interim, you may fashion yourself to be careless and impudent. Aso. How if they would have me to make verses ? I heard Hedon spoke to for some. Amo. Why, you must prove the aptitude of your genius ; if you find none, you must hearken out a vein, and buy; provided you pay for the silence as for the work, then you may securely call it your own. SOENfc XI. CYNTHIA'S REVELS. 81 Aso. Yes, and I’ll give out my acquaintance with all the best writers, to countenance me the more. Amo. Rather seem not to know them, it is your best. Ay, be wise, that you never so much as mention the name of one, nor remember it men¬ tioned ; but if they be offer’d to you in discourse, shake your light head, make between a sad and a smiling face, pity some, rail at all, and commend yourself: ’tis your only safe and unsuspected course. Come, you shall look back upon the court again to-day, and be restored to your colours : I do now partly aim at the cause of your repulse— which was ominous indeed—for as you enter at the door, there is opposed to you the frame of a wolf in the hangings, which, surprising your eye suddenly, gave a false alarm to the heart; and that was it called your blood out of your face, and so routed the whole rank of your spirits : I beseech you labour to forget it. And remember, as I in¬ culcated to you before, for your comfort, Hedon and Anaides. [Exeunt. —♦- SCENE II.— Another Apartment in the same. Enter IIedon and Anaides. Hedon. Heart, was there ever so prosperous an invention thus unluckily perverted and spoiled by a whoreson book-worm, a candle-waster ? Ana. Nay, be not impatient, Hedon. Hed. ’Slight, I would fain know his name. Ana. Hang him, poor grogran rascal! prithee think not of him : I’ll send for him to my lodging, and have him blanketed when thou wilt, man. lied. Ods so, I would thou couldst. Look, here he comes. Enter Critks, and walks in a musing posture at the hack of the stage. Laugh at him, laugh at him ; ha, ha, ha ! Ana. Fough ! he smells all lamp-oil with study¬ ing by candle-light. Hed. How confidently he went by us, and care¬ lessly ! Never moved, nor stirred at any thing ! Did you observe him ? Ana. Ay, a pox on him, let him go, dormouse : he is in a dream now. He has no other time to sleep, but thus when he walks abroad to take the air. Hed. ’Sprecious, this afflicts me more than all the rest, that we should so particularly direct our hate and contempt against him, and he to carry it thus without wound or passion! ’tis insufferable. Ana. ’Slid, my dear Envy, if thou but say’st the word now, I’ll undo him eternally for thee. Hed. How, sweet Anaides ? Ana. Marry, half a score of us get him in, one night, and make him pawn his wit for a supper. Hed. Away, thou hast such unseasonable jests ! By this heaven, I wonder at nothing more than our gentlemen ushers, that will suffer a piece of serge or perpetuana to come into the presence : methinks they should, out of their experience, better distinguish the silken disposition of cour¬ tiers, than to let such terrible coarse rags mix with us, able to fret any smooth or gentle society to the threads with their rubbing devices. Ana. Unless ’twere Lent, Ember-weeks, or fasting- days, when the place is most penuriously J mpty of all other good outsides. D-n me, if I should adventure on his company once more, without a suit of buff to defend my wit! he does nothing but stab, the slave ! How mischievously he cross’d thy device of the prophecy, there ? and Moria, she comes without her muff too, and there my invention was lost. Hed. Well, I am resolved what I’ll do. Ana. What, my good spirituous spark ? Hed. Marry, speak all the venom I can of him ; and poison his reputation in every place where I come. Ana. ’Fore God, most courtly. Hed. And if I chance to be present where any question is made of his sufficiencies, or of any thing he hath done private or public, I’ll censure it slightly and ridiculously. Ana. At any hand beware of that; so thou may’st draw thine own judgment in suspect. No I’ll instruct thee what thou shalt do, and by a safer means : approve any thing thou hearest of his, to the received opinion of it; but if it be extraordi¬ nary, give it from him to some other whom thou more particularly affect’st; that’s the way to plague him, and he shall never come to defend himself. ’Slud, I’ll give out all he does is dictated from other men, and swear it too, if thou’lt have me, and that I know the time and place where he stole it, though my soul be guilty of no such thing ; and that I think, out of my heart, he hates such barren shifts : yet to do thee a pleasure, and him a disgrace, I’ll damn myself, or do any thing. Hed. Grammercy, my dear devil; we’ll put it seriously in practice, i’faith. [Exeunt Hedon and Anaides. Cri. [ coming forward.~\ Do, good Detraction, do, and I the while Shall shake thy spight off with a careless smile. Poor piteous gallants ! what lean idle slights Their thoughts suggest to flatter their starv’d hopes! As if I knew not how to entertain These straw-devices ; but, of force must yield To the weak stroke of their calumnious tongues. What should I care what every dor doth buz In credulous ears ? It is a crown to me That the best judgments can report me wrong’d; Them liars, and their slanders impudent. Perhaps, upon the rumour of their speeches, Some grieved friend will whisper to me; Crites, Men speak ill of thee. So they be ill men, If they spake worse, ’twere better : for of such To be dispraised, is the most perfect praise. What can his censure hurt me, whom the w r orld Hath censured vile before me ! If good Chrestus, Euthus, or Phronimus, had spoke the words, They would have moved me, and I should have call’d My thoughts and actions to a strict account Upon the hearing : but when I remember, ’Tis Hedon and Anaides, alas, then I think but what they are, and am not stirr’d. The one a light voluptuous reveller, The other, a strange arrogating puff, Both impudent, and ignorant enough ; That talk as they are wont, not as I merit; Traduce by custom, as most dogs do bark, Do nothing out of judgment, but disease. Speak ill, because they never could speak well. And who’d be angry with this race of creatures? What wise physician have we ever seen a CYNTHIA'S REVELS. ACT III. 82 Moved with a frantic man ? the game affects That he doth bear to his sick patient, Should a right mind carry to such as these • And I do count it a most rare revenge, That I can thus, with such a sweet neglect,, Pluck from them all the pleasure of their mane , For that’s the mark of all their enginous drifts, To wound my patience, howsoe’er they seem To aim at other objects ; which if miss’d, Their envy’s like an arrow shot upright, That, in the fall, endangers their own heads. Enter Arete. Are. What, Crites ! where have you drawn forth the day, You have not visited your jealous friends ? Cri. Where I have seen, most honour’d Arete, The strangest pageant, fashion’d like a court, (At least I dreamt I saw it) so diffused, So painted, pied, and full of rainbow strains, As never yet, either by time, or place, Was made the food to my distasted sense • Nor can my weak imperfect memory Now render half the forms unto my tongue, That were convolved within this thrifty room. Here stalks me by a proud and spangled sir, That looks three handfuls higher than his foretop ; Savours himself alone, is only kind And loving to himself; one that will speak More dark and doubtful than six oracles ! Salutes a friend, as if he had a stitch ; Is his own chronicle, and scarce can eat For regist’ring himself; is waited on By mimics, jesters, panders, parasites, And other such like prodigies of men. He past, appears some mincing marmoset Made all of clothes and face ; his limbs so set As if they had some voluntary act Without man’s motion, and must move just so In spight of their creation : one that weighs His breath between his teeth, and dares not smile Beyond a point, for fear t’unstarch his look ; Hath travell’d to make legs, and seen the cringe Of several courts, and courtiers ; knows the time Of giving titles, and of taking walls ; Hath read court common-places ; made them his : Studied the grammar of state, and all the rules Each formal usher in that politic school Can teach a man. A third comes, giving nods To his repenting creditors, protests To weeping suitors, takes the coming gold Of insolent and base ambition, That hourly rubs his dry and itchy palms ; Which griped, like burning coals, he hurls away Into the laps of bawds, and buffoons’ mouths. With him there meets some subtle Proteus, one Can change, and vary with all forms he sees ; Be any thing but honest; serves the time; Hovers betwixt two factions, and explores The drifts of both; which, with cross face, he bears To the divided heads, and is received With mutual grace of either: one that dares Do deeds worthy the hurdle or the wheel, To be thought somebody ; and is in sooth Such as the satirist points truly forth, That only to his crimes owes all his worth. Are. You tell us wonders, Crites. Cri. This is nothing. There stands a neophite glazing of his face, Pruning his clothes, perfuming of his hair, Against his idol enters ; and repeats, Like an unperfect prologue, at third music, His part of speeches, and confederate jests, In passion to himself. Another swears His scene of courtship over; bids, believe him, Twenty times ere they will ; anon, doth seem As he would kiss away his hand in kindness ; Then walks off melancholic, and stands wreath’d, As he were pinn’d up to the arras, thus. A third is most in action, swims and frisks, Plays with his mistress’s paps, salutes her pumps, Adores her hems, her skirts, her knots, her curls, Will spend his patrimony for a garter, Or the least feather in her bounteous fan. A fourth, he only comes in for a mute ; Divides the act with a dumb show, and exit. Then must the ladies laugh, straight comes their scene, A sixth times worse confusion than the rest. Where you shall hear one talk of this man’s eye, Another of his lip, a third, his nose, A fourth commend his leg, a fifth, his foot, A sixth, his hand, and every one a limb ; That you would think the poor distorted gallant Must there expire. Then fall they in discourse Of tires and fashions, how they must take place, Where they may kiss, and whom, when to sit down, And with what grace to rise ; if they salute, What court’sy they must use : such cobweb stuff As would enforce the common'st sense abhor Th’ Arachnean workers. Are. Patience, gentle Crites. This knot of spiders will be soon dissolved, And all their webs swept out of Cynthia’s court, When once her glorious deity appears, And but presents itself in her full light: ’Till when, go in, and spend your hours with us, Your honour’d friends, Time and Phronesis, In contemplation of our goddess’ name. Think on some sweet and choice invention now, Worthy her serious and illustrious eyes, That from the merit of it we may take Desired occasion to prefer your worth, And make your service known to Cynthia. It is the pride of Arete to grace Her studious lovers ; and, in scorn of time, Envy, and ignorance, to lift their state Above a vulgar height. True happiness r ’onsists not in the multitude of friends, But in the worth and choice. Nor would I have Virtue a popular regard pursue : Let them be good that love me, though but few. Cri. I kiss thy hands, divinest Arete, And vow myself to thee, and Cynthia. [Exeunt. —♦— SCENE III.— Another Apartment in the same. Enter Amorphus, followed by Asotus and his Tailor. Amo. A little more forward : so, sir. Now go in, discloak yourself, and come forth. [ Exit Asotus.] Tailor, bestow thy absence upon us ; and be not prodigal of this secret, but to a dear customer. [ Exit Tailor. Re-enter Asotus. ’Tis well enter’d, sir. Stay, you come on too fast ,* your pace is too impetuous. Imagine this to be the palace of your pleasure, or place where your lady CYNTHIA’S REVELS. SCENE III. is pleased to be seen. First, you present yourself, thus : and spying her, you fall off, and walk some two turns ; in which time, it is to be supposed, your passion hath sufficiently whited your face, then, stifling a sigh or two, and closing your lips, with a trembling boldness, and bold terror, you advance yourself forward. Prove thus much, I pray you. Aso. Yes, sir;—pray Jove I can light on it! H Are my darts enchanted ? is their vigour gone ? is their virtue- Mer. What! Cupid turned jealous of himself? ha, ha, ha ! Cup. Laughs Mercury ? Mer. Is Cupid angry ? Cup. Hath he not cause, when his purpose is so deluded ? Mer. A rare comedy, it shall be entitled Cupid’s ? Cup. Do not scorn us, Hermes. Mer. Choler and Cupid are two fiery things ; I scorn them not. But I see that come to pass which I presaged in the beginning. Cup. You cannot tell: perhaps the physic will not work so soon upon some as upon others. It may be the rest are not so resty. Mer. Ex ungue ; you know the old adage, as these so are the remainder. Cup. I’ll try : this is the same shaft with which I wounded Argurion. [Waves his arrow again. Mer. Ay, but let me save you a labour, Cupid : there were certain bottles of water fetch’d, and drunk off since that time, by these gallants. Cup. Jove strike me into the earth ! the Foun¬ tain of Self-love ! Mer. Nay, faint not, Cupid. Cup. I remember’d it not. Mer. Faith, it was ominous to take the name of Anteros upon you ; you know not what charm or enchantment lies in the word : you saw, I durst not venture upon any device in our presentment, but was content to be no other than a simple page. Your arrows’ properties (to keep decorum) Cupid, are suited, it should seem, to the nature of him you personate. Cup. Indignity not to be borne ! Mer. Nay rather, an attempt to have been forborne. [The second dance ends. Cup. How might I revenge myself on this in¬ sulting Mercury ? there’s Crites, his minion, he has not tasted of this water. [ JVaves his arrow at Crites.] It shall be so. Is Crites turn’d dotard on himself too ? Mer. That follows not, because the venom of your shafts cannot pierce him, Cupid. Cup. As though there w'ere one antidote for these, and another for him. Mer. As though there were not; or, as if one effect might not arise of divers causes ? What say you to Cynthia, Arete, Phronesis, Tim£, and others there ? Cup. They are divine. Mer. And Crites aspires to be so. [Music ; they begin the third dance. ; Cup. But that shall not serve him. Mer. ’Tis like to do it, at this time. But Cu- ; pid is grown too covetous, that will not spare one of a multitude. Cup. One is more than a multitude. Mer. Arete’s favour makes any one shot-proof against thee, Cupid. I pray thee, light honey¬ bee, remember thou art not now in Adonis’ j garden, but in Cynthia’s presence, where thorns i lie in garrison about the roses. Soft, Cynthia speaks. Cyn. Ladies and gallants of our court, to end, And give a timely period to our sports, Let us conclude them with declining night; SCENE Ill CYNTHIA'S REVELS IOB Our empire is but of tlie darker half. And if you judge it any recompence For your fair pains, t’ have earn’d Diana’s thanks, Diana grants them, and bestows their crown To gratify your acceptable zeal. For you are they, that not, as some have done, Do censure us, as too severe and sour, But as, more rightly, gracious to the good ; Although we not deny, unto the proud, Or the profane, perhaps indeed austere : For so Actaeon, by presuming far, Did, to our grief, incur a fatal doom ; And so, swoln Niobe, comparing more Than he presumed, was troplueed into stone. But are we therefore judged too extreme ? Seems it no crime to enter sacred bowers, And hallow’d places, with impure aspect, Most lewdly to pollute ? Seems it no crime To brave a deity ? Let mortals learn To make religion of offending heaven, And not at all to censure powers divine. To men this argument should stand for firm, A goddess did it, therefore it was good: We are not cruel, nor delight in blood.— But what have serious repetitions To do with revels, and the sports of court ? We not intend to sour your late delights With harsh expostulation. Let it suffice That we take notice, and can take revenge Of these calumnious and lewd blasphemies. For we are no less Cjmthia than we were, Nor is our power, but as ourself, the same: Though we have now put on no tire of shine, But mortal eyes undazzled may endure. Years are beneath the spheres, and time makes weak Things under heaven, not powers which govern And though ourself be in ourself secure, [heaven. Yet let not mortals challenge to themselves Immunity from thence. Lo, this is all: Honour hath store cf spleen, but wanteth gall. Once more we cast the slumber of our thanks On your ta’en toil, which here let take an end. And that we not mistake your several worths, Nor you our favour, from yourselves remove What makes you not yourselves, those clouds of Particular pains particular thanks do ask. [masque ; [The dancers unmask. How ! let me view you. Ha! are we contemn’d ? Is there so little awe of our disdain, That any (under trust of their disguise) Should mix themselves with others of the court, And, without forehead, boldly press so far, As farther none? How apt is lenity To be abused ! severity to be loath’d ! And yet, how much more doth the seeming face Of neighbour virtues, and their borrow’d names, Add of lewd boldness to loose vanities ! Who would have thought that Philautia durst Or have usurped noble Storge’s name, Or with that theft have ventured on our eyes ? Who would have thought, that all of them should So much of our connivence, as to come [hope To grace themselves with titles not their own ? Instead of med’cines, have we maladies? And such imposthumes as Phan taste is Grow in our palace? We must lance these sores, Or all will putrify. Nor are these all, For we suspect a farther fraud than this : Take off our veil, that shadows may depart, And shapes appear, beloved Arete-So, Another face of things presents itself, Than did of late. What! feather’d Cupid masqued, And masked like Anteros ? And stay ! more strange! Dear Mercury, our brother, like a page, To countenance the ambush of the boy 1 Nor endeth our discovery as yet: Gelaia, like a nymph, that, but erewhile. In male attire, did serve Anaides ?— Cupid came hither to find sport and game, Who heretofore hath been too conversant Among our train, but never felt revenge ; And Mercury bare Cupid company. Cupid, we must confess, this time of mirth, Proclaim’d by us, gave opportunity To thy attempts, although no privilege : Tempt us no farther ; we cannot endure Thy presence longer ; vanish hence, away ! [Exit Cupid. You, Mercury, we must entreat to stay, And hear what we determine of the rest; .For in this plot we well perceive your hand. But, (for we mean not a censorian task, And yet to lance these ulcers growm so ripe,) Dear Arete, and Crites, to you two We give the charge ; impose what pains you please Th’ incurable cut off, the rest reform, Remembering ever what we first decreed, Since revels were proclaim’d, let now none bleed. Are. How well Diana can distinguish times, And sort her censures, keeping to herself The doom of gods, leaving the rest to us ! Come, cite them, Crites, first, and then proceed. Cri. First, Philautia, for she was the first, Then light Gelaia in Aglaia’s name, Thirdly, Phantaste, and Moria next, Main Follies all, and of the female crew : Amorphus, or Eucosmos’ counterfeit, Voluptuous Hedon ta’en for Eupathes, Brazen Anaides, and Asotus last, With his two pages, Morus and Prosaites ; And thou, the traveller’s evil. Cos, approach. Impostors all, and male deformities- Are. Nay, forward, for I delegate my power, And will that at thy mercy they do stand, Whom they so oft, so plainly scorn’d before. ’Tis virtue which they want, and wanting it, Honour no garment to their backs can fit. Then, Crites, practise thy discretion. Cri. Adored Cynthia, and bright Arete, Another might seem fitter for this task, Than Crites far, but that you judge not so : For I (not to appear vindicative, Or mindful of contempts, which I contemn’d, As done of impotence) must be remiss ; Who, as I was the author, in some sort. To work their knowledge into Cynthia’s sight, So should be much severer to revenge The indignity hence issuing to her name : But there’s not one of these who are unpain’d, Or by themselves unpunished ; for vice Is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment. But we must forward, to define their doom. You are offenders, that must be confess’d; Do you confess it ? All. We do. Cri. And that you merit sharp correction ? All. Yes. Cri. Then we (reserving unto Delia’s grace Her farther pleasure, and to Arete 104 CYNTHIA’S REVELS. ACT V. What Delia granteth) thus do sentence you : That from this place (for penance known of all, Since you have drunk so deeply of Self-love) You, two and two, singing a Palinode, March to your several homes by Niobe’s stone, And offer up two tears a-piece thereon, That it may change the name, as you must change, And of a stone be called Weeping-cross : Because it standeth cross of Cynthia’s way, One of whose names is sacred Trivia. And after penance thus perform’d you pass In like set order, not as Midas did, To wash his gold off into Tagus’ stream ; But to the well of knowledge, Helicon ; Where, purged of your present maladies, Which are not few, nor slender, you become Such as you fain would seem, and then return, Offering your service to great Cynthia. This is your sentence, if the goddess please To ratify it with her high consent: The scope of wise mirth unto fruit is bent. Cyn. We do approve thy censure,belov’d Crites; Which Mercury, thy true propitious friend, (A deity next Jove beloved of us,) Will undertake to see exactly done. And for this service of discovery, Perform’d by thee, in honour of our name, W e vow to guerdon it with such due grace As shall become our bounty, and thy place. Princes that would their people should do well, Must at themselves begin, as at the head ; For men, by their example, pattern out Their imitations, and regard of laws : A virtuous court, a world to virtue draws. [Exeunt Cynthia and her Nymphs, followed by Arete and Crites :—Amorphus, Phantaste, Sac.go off the stage in pairs, singing the following PALINODE. Amo. From Spanish shrugs, French faces, smirks, irpes, and all affected humours. Chorus. Good Mercury defend us. Pha. From secret friends, sweet servants, loves, doves, and such fantastic humours, Chorus. Good Mercury defend us. Amo. From stabbing of arms, flap-dragODS, healths, whiffs, and all such swaggering humours, Chorus. Good Mercury defend us. Pha. From waving fans, coy glances, glicks, cringes, and all such simpering humours, Chorus. Good Mercury defend us. Amo. From making love by attorney, courting of puppets, and paying for new acquaintance, Chorus. Good Mercury defend us. Pha. From perfumed dogs, monkies, sparrows, dildoes, and paraquettoes, Chorus. Good Mercury defend us. Amo. From wearing bracelets of hair, shoe-ties, gloves, garters, and rings with poesies, Chorus. Good Mercury defend us. Pha. From pargetting, painting, slicking, glaz¬ ing, and renewing old rivelled faces, Chorus. Good Mercury defend us. Amo. From ’squiring to tilt yards, play-houses, pageants, and all such public places, Chorus. Good Mercury defend us. Pha. From entertaining one gallant to gull another, and making fools of either, Chorus. Good Mercury defend us. Amo. From belying ladies’ favours, noblemen’s countenance, coining counterfeit employments, vain-glorious taking to them other men’s services, and all self-loving humours, Chorus. Good Mercury defend us. Mercury and Crites sing. Now each one dry his iveeping eyes, And to the IVell of Knowledge haste ; Where, purged of your maladies, You may of sweeter waters taste : And, ivith refined voice, report The grace of Cynthia, and her court. [ Exeunt . THE EPILOGUE. Gentles, be’t known to you, since I went in I am turn’d rhymer, and do thus begin. The author (jealous how your sense doth take His travails) hath enjoined me to make Some short and ceremonious epilogue ; But if I yet know what, I am a rogue : He ties me to such laws as quite distract My thoughts, and would a year of time exact. I neither must be faint, remiss, nor sorry, Sour, serious, confident, nor peremptory ; But betwixt these. Let’s see ; to lay the blame Upon the children’s action, that were lame. To crave your favour, with a begging knee, Were to distrust the writer’s faculty. To promise better at the next we bring, Prorogues disgrace, commends not any thing. Stiffly to stand on this, and proudly approve The play, might tax the maker of Self-love. I’ll only speak what I have heard him say, “ By-’tis good, and if you like’t, you may.’’ Ecce rubet quidam, pallet, stupet, oscitat, odit. Hoc volo : nunc nobis carmina nostra placent. % THE POETASTER; OR, HIS ARRAIGNMENT. TO THE VIRTUOUS, AND MY WORTHY FRIEND, MR. RICHARD MARTIN. gut,_ A thankful man owes a courtesy ever; the unthankful but when he needs it. To make mine own marie appear, and shew by which of these seals I am known, I send you this piece of what may live of mine; for whose innocence, as for the author’s, you were once a noble and timely undertaker, to the greatest justice of this kingdom. Enjoy now the delight of your goodness, which is, to see that prosper you preserved, and posterity to owe the read in a; of that, without offence, to your name, which so much ignorance and malice of the times then conspired to have supprest. Your true lover, Ben Jonson. DRAMATIS persona:. Augustus C.esar. IIermogenes Tigellius. Mecajnas. Demetrius Fannius. Marc. Ovid. Albius. Cor. Gallus. Minos. Sex. Propertius. Histrio. Fus. Aristius. JEsop. Pub. Ovid. Pyrgi. Virgil. Lictors, Equitii, <$c. Horace. Trebatius. Julia. Asinius Lupus. Cytheris. Pantilius Tucca. Plautta. Luscus. Chloe. Rue. Lab. Crispinus. Maids. SCENE, —Rome. After the second sounding. And thousand such promoting sleights as these. Envy arises in the midst of the stage. Mark how I will begin : The scene is, ha ! Rome ? Rome ? and Rome ? Crack, eye-strings, Light, I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, and your balls Wishing thy golden splendor pitchy darkness. Drop into earth : let me be ever blind. What's here ? The Arraignment ! ay ; this, I am prevented ; all my hopes are crost, Check'd, and abated ; fie, a freezing sweat this is it, That our sunk eyes have waked for all this while : Flows forth at all my pores, my entrails burn : Here will be subject for my snakes and me. What should I do ? Rome ! Rome ! 0 my vext Cling to my neck and wrists, my loving worms. And cast you round in soft and amorous folds. How might I force this to the present state ?■ [soul, Are there no players here ? no poet apes. Till I do bid uncurl ; then , break your knots. That come with basilisk's eyes, whose forked Shoot out yourselves at length, as your forced stings tongues Would hide themselves within his maliced sides, Are steep'd in venom, as their hearts in gall ? Either of these would help me ; they could ivrest, To ivhom I shall apply you. Stay ! the shine Of this assembly here offends my sight ; Pervert, and poison all they hear or see , I'll darken that first, and outface their grace. With senseless glosses, and allusions. Wonder not, if I stare: these fifteen weeks, Note, if you be good devils, fly me not. So long as since the plot was but an embrion, Have I, with burning lights mixt vigilant thoughts, You know what dear and ample faculties I have endowed you with : I'll lend you more. In expectation of this hated play. Here, take my snakes amo7ig you, come and eat, And while the squeez'd juice Jlows in your black To which at last I am arrived as Prologue. Nor would I you should look for other looks, jaws, Gesture, or compliment from me, than what Help me to damn the author. Spit it forth The infected bulk of Envy can afford : Upon his lines, and shew your rusty teeth For I am risse here with a covetous hope, At every word , or accent: or else choose To blast your pleasures and destroy your sports, Out of my longest vipers, to stick down With wrestings, comments, applications, Spy-like suggestions, privy whisperings, In your deep throats; and let the heads come forth 108 ACT I. THE POETASTER. At your rank mouths ; that he may see you arm'd With triple malice, to hiss, sting, and tear His work and him ; to forge, and then declaim, Traduce , corrupt, apply, inform , suggest ; O, these are gifts wherein your souls are blest. What ! do you hide yourselves 9 will none appear 9 None answer 9 what, doth this calm troop affright you 9 Nay, then 1 do despair ; down , sink again: This travail is all lost with my dead hopes. If in such bosoms spite have left to dwell, Envy is not on earth, nor scarce in hell. [Descends slowly. The third sounding, As she disappears, enter Prologue hastily, in armour. Stay, monster, ere thou sink—thus on thy head Set we our bolder foot; with which we tread Thy malice into earth : so Spite should die , Despised and scorn'd by noble Industry. If any muse why I salute the stage, A n armed Prologue ; knoiv, tis a dangerous age : Wherein who writes, had need present his scene* Forty-fold proof against the conjuring means Of base detractors, and illiterate apes, That fill up rooms in fair and formal shapes. ’Gainst these, have we put on this forced defence : Whereof the allegory and hid sense Is, that a well erected confidence Can fright their pride, and laugh their folly hence. Here now, put case our author should, once more, Swear that, his play were good ; he doth implore, You would not argue him of arrogance : Howe’er that common spawn of ignorance, Our fry of writers, may beslime his fame , And give his action that adulterate name. Such full-blown vanity he more doth loth, Than base dejection ; there's a mean ’twixt both , Which with a constant firmness he pursues , As one that knows the strength of his own Muse. And this he hopes all free souls will allow : Others that take it with a rugged brow, Their moods he rather pities than envies : His mind it is above their injuries. ACT I. SCENE I.— Scene draws, and discovers Ovid in his study. Ovid. Tli°n, when this body falls in funeralfire , My name shall live, and my best part aspire. It shall go so. Enter Luscus, with a gown and cap. Lusc. Young master, master Ovid, do you hear? Gods a'me! away with your songs and son¬ nets, and on with your gown and cap quickly : here, here, your father will be a man of this room presently. Come, nay, nay, nay, nay, be brief. These verses too, a poison on ’em ! I cannot abide them, they make me ready to cast, by the banks of Helicon ! Nay, look, what a rascally untoward thing this poetry is ; I could tear them now. Ovid. Give me ; how near is my father ? Lusc. Heart a’man: get a law book in your hand, I will not answer you else. [Ovid puts on his cap and gown.'] Why so! now there’s some formality in you. By Jove, and three or four of the gods more, I am right of mine old master’s humour for that; this villainous poetry will undo you, by the welkin. Ovid. What, hast thou buskins on, Luscus, that thou swearest so tragically and high ? Lusc. No, but I have boots on, sir, and so has your father too by this time ; for he call’d for them ere I came from the lodging. Ovid. Why, was he no readier ? Lusc. O no; and there was the mad skeldering captain, with the velvet arms, ready to lay hold on him as he comes down: he that presses every man he meets, with an oath to lend him money, and cries Thou must do't, old boy, as thou art a man, a man of worship. Ovid. Who, Pantilius Tucca ? Lus. Ay, he; and I met little master Lupus, the tribune, going thither too. Ovid. Nay, an he be under their arrest, I may with safety enough read over my elegy before he come. Lus. Gods a’ me! what will you do ? why, young master, you are not Castalian mad, lunatic, frantic, desperate, ha! Ovid. What ailest thou, Luscus ? Lus. God be with you, sir ; I’ll leave you to your poetical fancies, and furies. I’ll not be guilty, I. _ [Exit. Ovid. Be not, good ignorance. I’m glad th’art For thus alone, our ear shall better judge [gone ; The hasty errors of our morning muse. Envy, why twit'st thou me my time's spent ill, And ca/l'st my verse, fruits of an idle quill 9 Or that., unlike the line from whence I sprung, War’s dusty honours I pursue not young 9 Or that I study not the tedious laics, And prostitute my voice in every cause 9 Thy scope is mortal ; mine, eternal fame, \_name. Which through the world shall ever chaunt my Homer will live ivhilst Tenedos stands, and Ide, Or, to the sea, fleet Simois doth slide: And so shall Hesiod too, while vines do bear, Or crooked sickles crop the ripen’d car. Callimachus, though in invention low, Shall still be sung, since he in art doth flow. No loss shall come to Sophocles’ proud vein ; With sun and moon Aratus shall remain. While slaves be false, fathers hard, and bawds be tchorish, • Whilst harlots flatter, shall Menander flourish. Ennius, though rude, and Accius’s high-rear d strain , A fresh applause in every age shall gain, Of Varro’s name, what ear shall not be told, Of Jason’s Argo and the fleece of gold 9 Then shall Lucretius’ lofty numbers die. When earth and seas in fire and flame shall fry. Tityrus, Tillage, JEnee shall be read. Whilst Rome of all the conquer’d world is head ! scene I. THE POETASTER. 107 Till Cupid's fires be out, and his bow broken, Thy verses, neat Tibullus, shall be spoken. Our Gallus shall be known from east to west ; So shall Lycoris, whom he now loves best. The suffering plough-share or the flint may wear ; But heavenly Poesy no death can fear. Kings shall give place to it, and kingly shows, The banks o'er which gold-bearing Tagus flows. Kneel hinds to trash : me let bright Phoebus swell With cups full flowing from the Muses' well. Frost-fearing myrtle shall impale my head, And of sad lovers I be often read. Envy the living, not the dead, doth bite ! For after death all men receive their right. Then, when this body falls in funeral fire, My name shall live, and my best part aspire. Enter Ovid senior, followed by Luscus, Tucca, and Lupus. Ovid se. Your name shall live, indeed, sir ! you say true : but how infamously, how scorn’d and contemn’d in the eyes and ears of the best and gravest Romans, that you think not on ; you never so much as dream of that. Are these the fruits of all my travail and expenses ? Is this the scope and aim of thy studies ? Are these the hope¬ ful courses, wherewith I have so long flattered my expectation from thee? Verses! Poetry! Ovid, whom I thought to see the pleader, become Ovid the play-maker ! Ovid ju. No, sir. Ovid se. Yes, sir ; I hear of a tragedy of yours coming forth for the common players there, call’d Medea. By my household gods, if I oome to the acting of it, I’ll add one tragic part more than is yet expected to it : believe me, when I promise it. What ! shall I have my son a stager now ? an ■enghle for players ? a gull, a rook, a shot-clog, to make suppers, and be laugh’d at ? Publius, 1 will set thee on the funeral pile first. Ovidju. Sir, I beseech you to have patience. Lus. Nay, this ’tis to have your ears damm’d up to good counsel. I did augur all this to him be¬ forehand, without poring into an ox’s paunch for the matter, and yet he would not be scrupulous. Tuc. How now, goodman slave ! what, rowly- powly ? all rivals, rascal? Why, my master of worship, dost hear? are these thy best projects? is this thy designs and thy discipline, to suffer knaves to be competitors with commanders and gentlemen ? Are we parallels, rascal, are we pa¬ rallels ? Ovid se. Sirrah, go get-my horses ready. You’ll still be prating. Tuc. Do, you perpetual stinkard, do, go ; talk to tapsters and ostlers, you slave ; they are in your element, go ; here be the emperor's captains, you raggamufAn rascal, and not your comrades. [ Exit Luscus. Lup. Indeed, Marcus Ovid, these players are an idle generation, and do much harm in a state, corrupt young gentry very much, I know it; I have not been a tribune thus long and observed nothing: besides, they will rob us, us, that are magistrates, of our respect, bring us upon their stages, and make us ridiculous to the plebeians ; they will play you or me, the wisest men they can come by still, only to bring us in contempt with the vulgar, and make us cheap. Tuc. Thou art in the right, my venerable crop- shin, they will indeed ; the tongue of the oracle never twang’d truer. Your courtier cannot kiss his mistress’s slippers in quiet for them ; nor your white innocent gallant pawn his revelling suit to make his punk a supper. An honest decayed commander cannot skelder, cheat, nor be seen in a bawdy-house, but he shall be straight in one of their wormwood comedies. They are grown licen¬ tious, the rogues ; libertines, flat libertines. They forget they are in the statute, the rascals ; they are blazon’d there ; there they are trick’d, they and their pedigrees ; they need no other heralds, I wiss. Ovid se. Methinks, if nothing else, yet this alone, the very reading of the public edicts, should fright thee from commerce with them, and give thee distaste enough of their actions. But this betrays what a student you are, this argues your proficiency in the law ! Ovidju. They wrong me, sir, and do abuse you more, That blow your ears with these untrue reports. I am not known unto the open stage, Nor do I traffic in their theatres : Indeed, I do acknowledge, at request Of some near friends, and honourable Romans, I have begun a poem of that nature. Ovidse. You have, sir, a poem ! and where is it ? That’s the law you study. Ovid ju. Cornelius Gallus borrowed it to read. Ovid se. Cornelius Gallus ! there’s another gal¬ lant too hath drunk of the same poison, and Ti¬ bullus and Propertius. But these are gentlemen of means and revenues now. Thou art a younger brother, and hast nothing but thy bare exhibition ; which I protest shall be bare indeed, if thou for¬ sake not these unprofitable by-courses, and that timely too. Name me a profest poet, that his poetry did ever afford him so much as a compe¬ tency. Ay, your god of poets there, whom all of you admire and reverence so much, Homer, he whose worm-eaten statue must not be spewed against, but with hallow’d lips and groveling ado¬ ration, what was he ? what was he ? Tuc. Marry, I’ll tell thee, old swaggerer ; he was a poor blind, rhyming rascal, that lived ob¬ scurely up and down in booths and tap-houses, and scarce ever made a good meal in his sleep, the whoreson hungry beggar. Ovid se. He says well :— nay, I know this nettles you now ; but answer me, is it not true ? You’ll tell me his name shall live ; and that now being dead his works have eternized him, and made him divine : but could this divinity feed him while he lived ? could his name feast him ? Tuc. Or purchase him a senator’s revenue, could it ? Ovid se. Ay, or give him place in the common¬ wealth ? worship, or attendants ? make him be carried in his litter ? Tuc. Thou speakest sentences, old Bias. Lup. All this the law will do, young sir, if you’ll follow it. Ovid se. If he be mine, he shall follow and ob¬ serve what I will apt him to, or I profess here openly and utterly to disclaim him. Ovid ju. Sir, let me crave you will forego these I will be any thing, or study any thing ; [moods • I’ll prove the unfashion’d body of the law Pure elegance, and make her rugged’st strains Run smoothly as Propertius’ elegies. THE POETASTER. 103 Ovid sc. Propertius’ elegies? good! Lup. Nay, you take him too quickly, Marcus. Ovid se. Why, he cannot speak, he cannot think out of poetry ; he is bewitch’d with it. Lup. Come, do not misprize him. Ovid se. Misprise ! ay, marry, I would have him use some such words now ; they have some touch, some taste of the law. He should make himself a style out of these, and let his Propertius’ elegies go by. Lup. Indeed, young Publius, he that will now hit the mark, must shoot through the law ; we have no other planet reigns., and in that sphere you may sit and sing with angels. Why, the law makes a man happy, without respecting any other merit; a simple scholar, or none at all, may be a lawyer. Tuc. He tells thee true, my noble neophyte ; my little grammaticaster, he does : it shall never put thee to thy mathematics, metaphysics, philo¬ sophy, and I know not what supposed sufficiencies; if thou canst but have the patience to plod enough, talk, and make a noise enough, be impudent enough, and ’tis enough. Lup. Three books will furnish you. Tuc. And the less art the better : besides, when it shall be in the power of thy chevril conscience, to do right or wrong at thy pleasure, my pretty Alcibiades. Lup. Ay, and to have better men than himself, by many thousand degrees, to observe him, and stand bare. Tuc. True, and he to carry himself proud and stately, and have the law on his sidefor’t, old boy. Ovid, se. Well, the day grows old, gentlemen, and I must leave you. Publius, if thou wilt hold my favour, abandon these idle, fruitless studies, that so bewitch thee. Send Janus home his back face again, and look only forward to the law: intend that. I will allow thee what shall suit thee in the rank of gentlemen, and maintain thy society with the best; and under these conditions I leave thee. My blessings light upon thee, if thou respect them: if not, mine eyes may drop for thee, but thine own heart will ache for itself; and so fare¬ well ! What, are my horses come ? Lus. Yes, sir, they are at the gate without. Ovid se. That’s well.—Asinius Lupus, a word. Captain, I shall take my leave of you ? Tuc. No, my little old boy, dispatch with Co¬ thurnus there : I’ll attend thee, I— Lus. To borrow some ten drachms : I know his project. [Aside. Ovid se. Sir, you shall make me beholding to you. Now, captain Tucca, what say you ? Tuc. Why, what should I say, or what can I say, my flower o’ the order ? Should I say thou art rich, or that thou art honourable, or wise, or va¬ liant, or learned, or liberal ? why, thou art all these, and thou knowest it, my noble Lucullus, thou knowest it. Come, be not ashamed of thy virtues, old stump : honour’s a good brooch to wear in a man’s hat at all times. Thou art the man of war’s Mecsenas, old boy. Why shouldst not thou be graced then by them, as well as he is by his poets ?— Enter Pyrgus and whispers Tree a. How now, my carrier, what news ? Lus. The boy has stayed within for his cue this naif-hour. f Aside. Ai’T I. Tuc. Come, do not whisper to me, but speak it out: what; it is no treason against the state I hope, is it ? Lus. Yes, against the state of my master’s purse. [Aside, and exit. Pyr. Sir, Agrippa desires you to for¬ bear him till the next week ; his mules are not yet come up. Tuc. His mules ! now the bots, the spavin, and the glanders, and some dozen diseases more, light on him and his mules! What, have they the yel¬ lows, his mules, that they come no faster ? or are they foundered, ha ? his mules have the staggers belike, have they ? Pyr. O no, sir :—then your tongue might be suspected for one of his mules. [Aside. Tuc. He owes me almost a talent, and he thinks to bear it away with his mules, does he? Sirrah, you nut-cracker, go your ways to him again, and tell him I must have money, I : I cannot eat stones and turfs, say. What, will he clem me and my followers ? ask him an he will clem me ; do, go. He would have me fry my jerkin, would he ? Away, setter, away. Yet, stay, my little tumbler, this old boy shall supply now. I will not trouble him, I cannot be importunate, I; I cannot be impudent. Pyr. Alas, sir, no ; you are the most maidenly blushing creature upon the earth. [Aside. Tuc. Dost thou hear, my little six and fifty, or thereabouts ? thou art not to learn the humours and tricks of that old bald cheater, Time ; thou hast not this chain for nothing. Men of orth have their chimeras, as well as other creatures ; and they do see monsters sometimes, they do, they do, brave boy. Pyr. Better cheap than he shall see you, I war¬ rant him. [Aside. Tuc. Thou must let me have six—six drachms. I mean, old boy: thou shalt do it; I tell thee, old boy, thou shalt, and in private too, dost thou see ?—Go, walk off : \_to the Boy]—There, there. Six is the sum. Thy son’s a gallant spark, and must not be put out of a sudden. Come hither, Callimachus; thy father tells me thou art too poetical, boy : thou must not be so ; thou must leave them, young novice, thou must; they are a sort of poor starved rascals, that are ever wrapt up in foul linen ; and can boast of nothing but a lean visage, peering out of a seam-rent suit, the very emblems of beggary. No, dost hear, turn lawyer, thou shalt be my solicitor.—’Tis right, old boy, is’t ? Ovid se. You were best tell it, captain. Tuc. No ; fare thou well, mine honest horse¬ man ; and thou, old beaver, [fo Lupus] —Pray thee, Roman, when thou comest to town, see me at my lodging, visit me sometimes ? thou shalt be welcome, old boy. Do not balk me, good swag¬ gerer. Jove keep thy chain from pawning ; go thy ways, if thou lack money I’ll lend thee some ; I’ll leave thee to thy horse now. Adieu. Ovidse. Farewell, good captain. Tuc. Boy, you can have but half a share now, boy. [Exit, followed by Pyrgus. Ovid se. ’Tis a strange boldness that accompa¬ nies this fellow.—Come. Ovidju. I’ll give attendance on you to your horse, sir, please you. Ovid se. No ; keep your chamber, and fall to your studies ; do so: The gods of Rome bless thee ! [Exit with Lcrus SCENE I. THE POETASTER. Ovid ju. And give me stomach to digest this law : That should have follow’d sure, had I been he. O, sacred Poesy, thou spirit of arts, The soul of science, and the queen of souls ; What profane violence, almost sacrilege, Hath here been offered thy divinities! That thine own guiltless poverty should arm Prodigious ignorance to wound thee thus ! For thence is all their force of argument Drawn forth against thee; or, from the abuse Of thy great powers in adulterate brains : When, would men learn but to distinguish spirits, And set true difference ’twixt those jaded wits That run a broken pace for common hire, And the high raptures of a happy muse, Borne on the wings of her immortal thought, That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel, And beats at heaven gates with her bright hoofs; They would not then, with such distorted faces, And desperate censures, stab at Poesy. They would admire bright knowledge, and their minds Should ne’er descend on so unworthy objects As gold, or titles ; they would dread far more To be thought ignorant, than be known poor. The time vyas once, when wit drown’d wealth ; but now, Your only barbarism is t’have wit, and want. No matter now in virtue who excels, He that hath coin, hath all perfection else. Tib. [within.] Ovid! Ovid. Who’s there? Come in. Enter Tibullus. Tib. Good morrow, lawyer. Ovid. Good morrow, dear Tibullus ; welcome : sit down. Tib. Not I. What, so hard at it ? Let’s see, what’s here ? Numa in decimo nono ! Nay, I will see it- Ovid. Prithee away- Tib. If thrice in field a man vanquish his foe, ’ Tis after in his choice to serve or no. How now, Ovid ! Law cases in verse ? Ovid. In troth, I know not; they run from my pen unwittingly, if they be verse. What’s the news abroad ? Tib. Off with this gown ; I come to have thee walk. Ovid. No, good Tibullus, I’m not now in case. Pray let me alone. Tib. How ! not in case ? Slight, thou’rt in too much case, by all this law. Ovid. Troth, if I live, I will new dress the law In sprightly Poesy’s habiliments. Tib. The hell thou wilt! What! turn law into verse ? Thy father has school’d thee, I see. Here, read that same ; There’s subject for you ; and, if I mistake not, A supersedeas to your melancholy. Ovid. How! subscribed Julia 1 O my life, my heaven ! Tib. Is the mood changed ? 10D Ovid. Music of wit! note for th’ harmonious spheres ! Celestial accents, how you ravish me ! Tib. What is it, Ovid ? Ovid. That I must meet my Julia, the princess Julia. Tib. Where ? Ovid. Why, at- Heart, I’ve forgot; my passion so transports me. Tib. I’ll save your pains : it is at Albius’ house. The jeweller’s, where the fair Lycoris lies. Ovid. Who ? Cytheris, Cornelius Gallus’ love ? Tib. Ay, he’ll be there too, and my Plautia. Ovid. And why not your Delia ? Tib. Yes, and your Comma. Ovid. True; but, my sweet Tibullus, keep that secret; I would not, for all Rome, it should be thought I veil bright Julia underneath that name : Julia, the gem and jewel of my soul, That takes her honours from the golden sky, As beauty doth all lustre from her eye. The air respires the pure Elysian sweets In which she breathes, and from her looks descend The glories of the summer. Heaven she is, Praised in herself above all praise ; and he Which hears her speak, would swear the tuneful Turn’d in his zenith only. [orbs Tib. Publius, thou’lt lose thyself. Ovid. O, in no labyrinth can I safelier err, Than when I lose myself in praising her. Hence, law, and welcome Muses, though not rich, Yet are you pleasing : let’s be reconciled, And new made one. Henceforth, I promise faith And all my serious hours to spend with you ; With you, whose music striketh on my heart, And with bewitching tones steals forth my spirit, In Julia’s name ; fair Julia : Julia’s love Shall be a law, and that sweet law I’ll study, The law and art of sacred Julia’s love : All other objects will but abjects prove. Tib. Come, we shall have thee as passionate as Propertius, anon. Ovid. O, how does my Sextus ? Tib. Faith, full of sorrowfor his Cynthia’s death. Ovid. What, still ? Tib. Still, and still more, his griefs do grow upon him As do his hours. Never did I know An understanding spirit so take to heart The common work of Fate. Ovid. O, my Tibullus, Let us not blame him; for against such chances The heartiest strife of virtue is not proof. We may read constancy and fortitude To other souls ; but had ourselves been struck With the like planet, had our loves, like his, Been ravish’d from us by injurious death, And in the height and heat of our best days, It would have crack’d our sinews, shrunk our veins, And made our very heart-strings jar, like his. Come, let’s go take him forth, and prove if mirth Or company will but abate his passion. Tib. Content, and I implore the gods it may. [Exeunt. no THE POETASTER. AUT IJ, ACT II. SCENE I.— A Room in Albius’s House. Enter Albius and Cbispinus. Alb. Master Crispinus, you are welcome : pray use a stool, sir. Your cousin Cytheris will come down presently. We are so busy for the receiving of these courtiers here, that I can scarce be a mi¬ nute with myself, for thinking of them : Pray you sit, sir ; pray you sit, sir. Crisp. I am very well, sir. Never trust me, but you are most delicately seated here, full of sweet delight and blandishment! an excellent air, an excellent air! Alb. Ay, sir, ’tis a pretty air. These courtiers run in my mind still; I must look out. For Jupi¬ ter’s sake, sit, sir ; or please you walk into the garden? There’s a garden on the back-side. Crisp. I am most strenuously well, I thank you, sir. Alb. Much good do you, sir. Enter Chloe, with two Maids. Chloe. Come, bring those perfumes forward a little, and strew some roses and violets here : Fie ! here be rooms savour the most pitifully rank that ever I felt. I cry the gods mercy, [sees Albius.] my husband’s in the wind of us ! Alb. Why, this is good, excellent, excellent! well said, my sweet Chloe ; trim up your house most obsequiously. Chloe. For Yulcan’s sake, breathe somewhere else : in troth, you overcome our perfumes ex¬ ceedingly ; you are too predominant. Alb. Hear but my opinion, sweet wife. Chloe. A pin for your pinion ! In sincerity, if you be thus fulsome to me in every thing, I’ll be divorced. Gods my body ! you know what you were before I married you ; I was a gentlewoman born, I ; I lost all my friends to be a citizen’s wife, because I heard, indeed, they kept their wives as fine as ladies ; and that we might rule our hus¬ bands like ladies, and do what we listed ; do you think I would have married you else ? Alb. I acknowledge, sweet wife:—she speaks the best of any woman in Italy, and moves as mightily ; which makes me, I had rather she should make bumps on my head, as big as my two fingers, than I would offend her.—But, sweet wife- Chloe. Yet again ! Is it not grace enough for you, that I call you husband, and you call me wife ; but you must still be poking me, against my will, to things ? Alb. But you know, wife, here are the greatest ladies, and gallantest gentlemen of Rome, to be entertained in our house now ; and I would fain advise thee to entertain them in the best sort, i’ faith, wife. Chloe. In sincerity, did you ever hear a man talk so idly? You would seem to be master! you would have your spoke in my cart! you would advise me to entertain ladies and gentlemen ! Be¬ cause you can marshal your pack-needles, horse- combs, hobby-horses, and wall-candlesticks in your warehouse better than I, therefore you can tell how to entertain ladies and gentlefolks better than I ? Alb. O, my sweet wife, upbraid me not with that; gain savours sweetly from any thing; he that respects to get, must relish all commodities alike, and admit no difference between oade and frankincense, or the most precious balsamum and a tar-barrel. Chloe. Marry, fob! you sell snuffers too, if you be remember’d ; but I pray you let me buy them out of your hand; for, 1 tell you true, I take it highly in snuff, to leaqr how to entertain gentle¬ folks of you, at these years, i’faith. Alas, man, there was not a gentleman came to your house in your t’other wife’s time, I hope! nor a lady, nor music, nor masques ! Nor you nor your house were so much as spoken of, before I disbased my¬ self, from my hood and my farthingal, to these bum-rowls and your whale-bone bodice. Alb. Look here, my sweet wife ; I am mum, my dear mummia, my balsamum, my spermaceti, and my very city of-She has the most best, true, feminine wit in Rome ! Cm. I have heard so, sir ; and do most vehe¬ mently desire to participate the knowledge of her fair features. Alb. Ah, peace ; you shall hear more anon : be not seen yet, I pray you ; not yet : observe. [Exit. Chloe. ’Sbody! give husbands the head a little more, and they’ll be nothing but head shortly : What’s he there? 1 Maid. I know not, forsooth. 2 Maid • Who would you speak with, sir ? Cris. I would speak with my cousin Cytheris. 2 Maid. He is one, forsooth, would speak with his cousin Cytheris. Chloe. Is she your cousin, sir ? Cris. [coming forward .] Yes, in truth, for¬ sooth, for fault of a better. Chloe. She is a gentlewoman. Cris. Or else she should not be my cousin, 1 assure you. Chloe. Are you a gentleman born ? Cris. That I am, lady ; you shall see mine arms, if it please you. Chloe. No, your legs do sufficiently shew you are a gentleman born, sir; for a man borne upon little legs, is always a gentleman born. Cris. Yet, I pray you, vouchsafe the sight of my arms, mistress; for I bear them about me, to have them seen : My name is Crispinus, or Cris- pinas indeed ; which is well expressed in my arms ; a face crying in chief; and beneath it a bloody toe, between three thorns pungent. Chloe. Then you are welcome, sir; now you are a gentleman born, I can find in my heart to welcome you ; for I am a gentlewoman born too, and will bear my head high enough, though ’tweie my fortune to marry a tradesman. Cris. No doubt of that, sweet feature ; your carriage shews it in any man’s eye, that is carried upon you with judgment. Re enter Albius. Alb. Dear wife, be not angry. Chloe. Gods my passion ! Alb. Hear me but one thing ; let not your males set cushions in the parlour windows, nor in U.< SCENE I. THE POETASTER. 11 J dining-chamber windows; nor upon stools, in either of them, in any case ; for ’tis tavern-like : but lay them one upon another, in some out-room or corner of the dining-chamber. Chloe. Go, go ; meddle with your bed-chamber only ; or rather with your bed in your chamber only; or rather with your wife in your bed only ; or on my faith I’ll not be pleased with you only. Alb. Look here, my dear wife, entertain that gentlett-an kindly, I prithee-mum. [Exit. Chloe. Go, I need your instructions indeed! anger me no more, I advise you. Citi-sin, quotha! she’s a wise gentlewoman, i’faith, will marry herself to the sin of the city. Alb. [re-entering. ] But this time, and no more, by heav’n, wife : hang no pictures in the hall, nor in the dining-chamber, in any case, but in the gal¬ lery only ; for ’tis not courtly else, o’ my word, wife. Chloe. ’Sprecious, never have done! Alb. Wife- iExit. Chloe. Do I not bear a reasonable corrigible hand over him, Crispinus ? Cris. By this hand, lady, you hold a most sweet hand over him. Alb. [ re-entering .] And then, for the great gilt andirons- Chloe. Again ! Would the andirons were in your great guts for me ! Alb. I do vanish, wife. {Exit. Chloe. How shall I do, master Crispinus ? here will be all the bravest ladies in court presently to see your cousin Cytheris : O the gods ! how might 1 behave myself now, as to entertain them most courtly ? Cris. Marry, lady, if you will entertain them most courtly, you must do thus : as soon as ever your maid or your man brings you word they are come, you must say, A pox on 'em ! ivhat do they here ? And yet, when they come, speak them as fair, and give them the kindest welcome in words that can be. Chloe. Is that the fashion of courtiers, Cris¬ pinus ? Cris. I assure you it is, lady ; I have observed it. Chloe. For your pox, sir, it is easily hit on ; but it is not so easy to speak fair after, methinks. Alb. [re-entering.'] O, wife, the coaches are come, on my word; a number of coaches and courtiers. Chloe. A pox on them ! what do they here ? Alb. How now, wife ! would’st thou not have them come ? Chloe. Come ! come, you are a fool, you.—He knows not the trick on’t. Call Cytheris, I pray you : and, good master Crispinus, you can ob¬ serve, you say; let me entreat you for all the ladies’ behaviours, jewels, jests, and attires, that you marking, as well as I, we may put both our marks together, when they are gone, and confer of them. Cris. I warrant you, sweet lady ; let me alone to observe till I turn myself to nothing but ob¬ servation.— Enter Cytheris. Good morrow, cousin Cytheris. Cyth. Welcome, kind cousin. What! are they come ? Alb. Ay, your friend Cornelius Gallus, Ovid, J Tibullus, Propertius, with Julia, the emperor’s daughter, and the lady Plautia, are ’lighted at the door ; and with them Hermogenes Tigellius, the excellent musician. Cyth. Come, let us go meet them, Chloe. Chloe. Observe, Crispinus. Crisp. At a hair’s breadth, lady, I warrant you. As they are going out, enter Cornelius Gallus, Ovid, Tibullus, Propertius, Hermogenes, Julia, and Plau¬ tia. Gal. Health to the lovely Chloe ! you must pardon me, mistress, that I prefer this fair gentle¬ woman. Cyth. I pardon and praise you for it, sir; and I beseech your excellence, reeeive her beauties into your knowledge and favour. Jul. Cytheris, she hath favour and behaviour,, that commands as much of me : and, sweet Chloe, know I do exceedingly love you, and that I will approve in any grace my father the emperor may shew you. Is this your husband ? Alb. For fault of a better, if it please your highness. Chloe. Gods my life, how he shames me ! Cyth. Not a whit, Chloe, they all think you politic and witty; wise women choose not hus¬ bands for the eye, merit, or birth, but wealth and sovereignty. Ovid. Sir, we all come to gratulate, for the good report of you. Tib. And would be glad to deserve your love, sir. Alb. My wife will answer you all, gentlemen I’ll come to you again presently. [Exit- Plan. You have chosen you a most fair com¬ panion here, Cytheris, and a very fair house. Cyth . To both which, you and all my friends- are very welcome, Plautia. Chloe. With all my heart, I assure your lady¬ ship. Plan. Thanks, sweet mistress Chloe. Jul. You must needs come to court, lady, i’faith,. and there be sure your -welcome shall be as great to us. Ovid. She will deserve it, madam ; I see, even- in her looks, gentry, and general worthiness. Tib. I have not seen a more certain character of an excellent disposition. Alb. [re-entering .] Wife ! Chloe. O, they do so commend me here, the courtiers ! what’s the matter now ? Alb. For the banquet, sweet wife. Chloe. Yes ; and I must needs come to court, and be welcome, the princess says. [ Exit with Albius- Gal. Ovid and Tibullus, you may be bold to welcome your mistress here. Ovid. We find it so, sir. Tib. And thank Cornelius Gallus. Ovid. Nay, my sweet Sextus, in faith thou art not sociable. Prop. In faith I am not, Publius ; nor I cannot. Sick minds are like sick men that burn with fevers, Who when they drink, please but a present taste,. And after bear a more impatient fit. Pray let me leave you ; I offend you all, And myself most. Gal. Stay, sweet Propertius. Tib. You yield too much unto your griefs and fate, Which never hurts, but when we say it hurts us Prop. O peace, Tibullus; your philosophy 112 Lends you too rough a hand to search my wounds. Speak they of griefs, that know to sigh and grieve : The free and unconstrained spirit feels No weight of my oppression. [Exit. Ovid. Worthy Roman ! Methinks I taste his misery, and could Sit down, and chide at his malignant stars. Jul. Methinks I love him, that he loves so truly. Cyth. This is the perfect’st love, lives after death. Gal. Such is the constant ground of virtue still. Plau. It puts on an inseparable face. Re-enter Chlos. Cliloe. Have you mark’d every thing, Crispinus ? Cris. Every thing, I warrant you. Chloc. What gentlemen are these? do you know them ? Cris. Ay, they are poets, lady. Chloe. Poets! they did not talk of me since I went, did they ? Cris. O yes, and extolled your perfections to the heavens. Cliloe. Now in sincerity they be the finest kind of men that ever I knew : Poets ! Could not one get the emperor to make my husband a poet, think you ? Cris. No, lady, ’tis love and beauty make poets : and since you like poets so well, your love and beauties shall make me a poet. Chloe. What! shall they ? and such a one as these ? Cris. Ay, and a better than these : I would be sorry else. Chloe. And shall your looks change, and your hair change, and all, like these ? Cris. Why, a man may be a poet, and yet not change his hair, lady. Chloe. Well, we shall see your cunning : yet, if you can change your hair, I pray do. Re-enter Albius. Alb. Ladies, and lordlings, there’s a slight ban¬ quet stays within for you ; please you draw near, and accost it. Jul. We thank you, good Albius: but when shall we see those excellent jewels you are com¬ mended to have ? Alb. At your ladyship's service. —I got that speech by seeing a play last day, and it did me some grace now: I see, ’tis good to collect some¬ times ; I’ll frequent these plays more than I have done, now I come to be familiar with courtiers. [Aside. Gal. Why, how now, Hermogenes ? what ailest tliou, trow? Her. A little melancholy ; let me alone, prithee. Gal. Melancholy ! how so ? Her. With riding: a plague on all coaches for me! Chloe. Is that liard-favour’d gentleman a poet too, Cytheris ? Cyth. No, this is Hermogenes: as humourous as a poet, though : he is a musician. Chloe. A musician ! then he can sing. Cyth. That he can, excellently ; did you never hear him ? Chloe. O no : will he be entreated, think you ? Cyth. I know not.—Friend, mistress Chloe would fain hear Hermogenes sing: are you inte¬ rested in him ? ACT JL Gal. No doubt, his own humanity will com¬ mand him so far, to the satisfaction of so fair a beauty ; but rather than fail, we’ll all be suitors to him. Her. ’Cannot sing. Gal. Prithee, Hermogenes. Her. ’Cannot sing. Gal. For honour of this gentlewoman, to whose house I know thou mayest be ever welcome. Chloe. That he shall, in truth, sir, if he can sing. Ovid. What’s that ? Gal. This gentlewoman is wooing Hermogenes for a song. Ovid. A song! come, he shall not deny her. Hermogenes ! Her. ’Cannot sing. Gal. No, the ladies must do it; he stays but to have their thanks acknowledged as a debt to his cunning. Jul. That shall not want; ourself will be the first shall promise to pay him more than thanks, upon a favour so worthily vouchsafed. Her. Thank you, madam ; but ’will not sing. Jib. Tut, the only way to win him, is to abstain from entreating him. Cris. Do you love singing, lady? Chloe. O, passingly. Cris. Entreat the ladies to entreat me to sing then, I beseech you. Chloe. I beseech your grace, entreat this gen¬ tleman to sing. Jul. That we will, Chloe ; can he sing excel¬ lently ? Chloe. I think so, madam ; for he entreated me to entreat you to entreat him to sing. Cris. Heaven and earth ! would you tell that ? Jul. Good, sir, let’s entreat you to use your voice. Cris. Alas, madam, I cannot, in truth. Pla. The gentleman is modest: I warrant you he sings excellently. Ovid. Hermogenes, clear your throat: I see by him, here’s a gentleman will worthily challenge you. _ Cris. Not I, sir, I’ll challenge no man. Tib. That’s your modesty, sir ; but we, out of an assurance of your excellency, challenge him in your behalf. Cris. I thank you, gentlemen, I’ll do my best. Her. Let that best be good, sir, you were best. Gal. O, this contention is excellent! What is’t you sing, sir ? Cris. If I freely may discover, sir ; I’ll sing that. Ovid. One of your own compositions, Hermo¬ genes. He offers you vantage enough. Cris. Nay, truly, gentlemen, I’ll challenge no man.—I can sing but one staff of the ditty neither. Gal. The better: Hermogenes himself will be entreated to sing the other. Ciuspinits sings. If I freely may discover "What would please me in my lover, I would have her fair and witty, Savouring more of court than city ; A little proud, but full of pity : Light and humourous in her toying, Oft building hopes, and soon destroying. Long, but sweet in the enjoying; Neither too easy nor too hard: All extremes I would have burr'd. THE POE FASTER. SCENE I. THE POETASTER. 113 Gal. Believe me, sir, you sing most excellently. Ovid. If there were a praise above excellence, the gentleman highly deserves it. Her. Sir, all this doth not yet make me envy you ; for I know I sing better than you. Tib. Attend Hermogenes, now. Hermogenes, accompanied. She should be allow’d her passions, So they were but used as fashions ; Sometimes froward, and then frowning, Sometimes sickish and then swowning, Every fit with change still crowning. Purely jealous I would have her, Then only constant when I crave her: ’Tis a virtue should not save her. Thus, nor her delieates would cloy me, Neither her peevishness annoy me. Jul. Nay, Hermogenes, your merit hath long since been both known and admired of us. Her. You shall hear me sing another. Now will I begin. Gal. We shall do this gentleman’s banquet too much wrong, that stays for us, ladies. Jul. ’Tis true ; and well thought on, Cornelius Gallus. Her. Why, ’tis but a short air, ’twill be done presently, pray stay : strike, music. Ovid. No. good Hermogenes ; we’ll end this difference within. Jul. ’Tis the common disease of all your mu¬ sicians, that they know no mean, to be entreated either to begin or end. Alb. Please you lead the way, gentles. All. Thanks, good Albius. [Exeunt all but Albius. Alb. O, what a charm of thanks was here put upon me ! Jove, what a setting forth it is to a man to have many courtiers come to his house! Sweetly was it said of a good old housekeeper, / had rather want meat, than want guests ; especially, if they be courtly guests. For, never trust me, if one of their good legs made in a house be not worth all the good cheer a man can make them. He that would have fine guests, let him have a fine wife! he that would have a fine wife, let him come to me. Re-enter Crispinus: Cris. By your kind leave, master Albius. Alb. What, you are not gone, master Crispinus ? Cris. Yes, faith, 1 have a design draws me hence: pray, sir, fashion me an excuse to the ladies. Alb. Will you not stay and see the jewels, sir ? I pray you stay. Cris. Not for a million, sir, now. Let it suffice, I must relinquish; and so, in a word, please you to expiate this compliment. Alb. Mum. [Exit. Cris. I’ll presently go and enghle some broker for a poet’s gown, and bespeak a garland: and then, jeweller, look to your best jewel, i’faith. [Exit. ACT SCENE I . — The Via Sacra (or Holy Street). Enter Horace, Crispinus following. Hor. Umph! yes, I will begin an ode so ; and it shall be to Mecaenas. Cris. ’Slid, yonder’s Horace ! they say he’s an excellent poet: Mecrenas loves him. I’ll fall into his acquaintance, if I can ; I think he be com¬ posing as he goes in the street! ha I ’tis a good humour, if he be : I’ll compose too. Hor. Swell me a boivl with lusty wine, Till I may see the plump Lyceus swim Above the brim: I drink as I would write, Inflowing measure fill'd with flame and sprite. Cris. Sweet Horace, Minerva and the Muses stand auspicious to thy designs! How farest thou, sweet man ? frolic ? rich ? gallant ? ha ! Hor. Not greatly gallant, sir ; like my fortunes, well: I am bold to take my leave, sir; you’ll nought else, sir, would you ? Cris. Troth, no, but I could wish thou didst know us, Horace ; we are a scholar, I assure thee. Hor. A scholar, sir ! I shall be covetous of your fair knowledge. Cris. Gramercy, good Horace. Nay, we are new turn’d poet too, which is more ; and a satirist too, which is more than that: I write just in thy vein, I. I am for your odes, or your sermons, or any thing indeed ; we are a gentleman besides ; our name is Rufus Laberius Crispinus ; we are a pretty Stoic too. III. Hor. To the proportion of your beard, I think it, sir. Cris. By Phoebus, here’s a most neat, fine street, is’t.not ? I protest to thee, I am enamoured of this street now, more than of half the streets of Rome again ; ’tis so polite and terse ! there’s the front of a building now ! I study architecture too : if ever I should build, I’d have a house just of that pro¬ spective. Hor. Doubtless, this gallant’s tongue has a good turn, when he sleeps. [Aside. Cris. 1 do make verses, when I come in such a street as this : O, your city ladies, you shall have them sit in every shop like the Muses—offering you the Castalian dews, and the Thespian liquors, to as many as have but the sweet grace and auda¬ city to-sip of their lips. Did you never hear any of my verses ? Hor. No, sir;—but I am in some fear I must now. [Aside. Cris. I’ll tell thee some, if I can but recover them, I composed even now of a dressing I saw a jeweller’s wife wear, who indeed was a jewel her¬ self : I prefer that kind of tire now ; what’s thy opinion, Horace? Hor. With your silver bodkin, it does well, sir. Cris. I cannot tell; but it stirs me more than all your court-curls, or your spangles, or your tricks : I affect not these high gable-ends, these Tuscan tops, nor your coronets, nor your arches, nor your pyramids ; give me a fine, sweet-little delicate dressing with a bodkin, as you say; and a mushroom for all your other ornatures ! i 14 THE POETASTER. Hor. Is it not possible to make an escape from iim ? [Aside. Cris. I have remitted my verses all this while ; I think I have forgot them. Hor. Here’s he could wish you had else. [Aside. Cris. Pray Jove I can entreat them of my memory! Hor. You put your memory to too much trouble, sir. Cris. No, sweet Horace, we must not have thee think so. Hor. I cry you mercy ; then they are my ears That must be tortured: well, you must have pa¬ tience, ears. Cris. Pray thee, Horace, observe. Hor. Yes, sir; your satin sleeve begins to fret at the rug that is underneath it, I do observe : and your ample velvet bases are not without evident stains of a hot disposition naturally. Cris. O-I’ll dye them into another colour, at pleasure: How many yards of velvet dost thou think they contain ? Hor. ’Heart! I have put him now in a fresh way To vex me more:—faith, sir, your mercer’s book Will tell you with more patience than I can :— For I am crost, and so’s not that, I think. Cris. ’Slight, these verses have lost me again! I shall not invite them to mind, now. Hor. Rack not your thoughts, good sir; rather defer it To a new time ; I’ll meet you at your lodging, Or where you please: ’till then, Jove keep you, sir! Cris. Nay, gentle Horace, stay ; I have it now. Hor. Yes, sir Apollo, Hermes, Jupiter, Look down upon me [Aside. Cris. Rich was thy hap, sweet dainty cap, There to be placed ; Where thy smooth black , sleek white may smack, And both be graced. White is there usurp’d for her brow; her fore¬ head : and then sleek, as the parallel to smooth, that went before. A kind of paranomasie, or ag¬ nomination : do you conceive, sir ? Hor. Excellent. Troth, sir, I must be abrupt, and leave you. Cris. Why, what haste hast thou ? prithee, stay a little; thou shalt not go yet, by Phoebus. Hor. I shall not! what remedy ? fie, how I sweat with suffering! Cris. And then- Hor. Pray, sir, give me leave to wipe my face a little. Cris. Yes, do, good Horace. Hor. Thank you, sir. Death ! I must crave his leave to p— anon ; Or that I may go hence with half my teeth : I am in some such fear. This tyranny Is strange, to take mine ears up by commission, (Whether I will or no,) and make them stalls To his lewd solecisms, and worded trash. Happy thou, bold Bolanus, now I say ; Whose freedom, and impatience of this fellow, Would, long ere this, have call'd him fool, and fool, And rank and tedious fool! and have flung jests As hard as stones, till thou hadst pelted him Out of the place ; whilst my tame modesty Suffers my wit be made a solemn ass, To bear his fopperies— [Aside. Cris. Horace, thou art miserably affected to be gone, I see. But—prithee let’s prove to enjoy thee a while. Thou hast no business, I assure me. Whither is thy journey dii'ected, ha ? Hor. Sir, I am going to visit a friend that’s sick. Cris. A friend! what is he; do not I know him * Hor. No, sir, you do not know him ; and ’tis not the worse for him. Cris. What’s his name ? where is he lodged ? Hor. Where I shall be fearful to draw you out of your way, sir; a great way hence; pray, sir, let’s part. Cris. Nay, but where is’t? I prithee say. Hor. On the far side of all Tyber yonder, by Caesar’s gardens. Cris. O, that’s my course directly; I am for you. Come, go ; why stand’st thou ? Hor. Yes, sir : marry, the plague is in that part of the city ; I had almost forgot to tell you, sir. Cris. Foil! it is no matter, I fear no pestilence; I have not offended Phoebus. Hor. I have, it seems, or else this heavy scourge Could ne’er have lighted on me. Cris. Come along. Hor. I am to go down some half mile this way, sir, first, to speak with his physician; and from thence to his apothecary, where I shall stay the mixing of divers drugs. Cris. Why, it’s all one, I have nothing to do, and I love not to be idle ; I’ll bear thee company. How call’st thou the apothecary ? Hor. O that I knew a name would fright him now!— Sir, Rhadamanthus, Rhadamanthus, sir. There’s one so called, is a just judge in hell, And doth inflict strange vengeance on all those That here on earth torment poor patient spirits. Cris. He dwells at the Three Furies, by Janus’s temple. Hor. Your pothecary does, sir. Cris. Heart, I owe him money for sweetmeats, and he has laid to arrest me, I hear: but- Hor. Sir, I have made a most solemn vow, I will never bail any man. Cris. Well then, I’ll swear, and speak him fair, if the worst come. But his name is Minos, not Rhadamanthus, Horace. Hor. That may be, sir, I but guess’d at his name by his sign. But your Minos is a judge too, sir. Cris. I protest to thee, Horace, (do but taste me once,) if I do know myself, and mine own virtues truly, thou wilt not make that esteem of Varius, or Virgil, or Tibullus, or any of ’em indeed, as now in thy ignorance thou dost ; which I am content to forgive : I would fain see which of these could pen more verses in a day, or with more facility, than I; or that could court his mistress, kiss her hand, make better sport with her fan or her dog- Hor. I cannot bail you yet, sir. Cris. Or that could move his body more grace¬ fully, or dance better ; you should see me, were it not in the street- Hor. Nor yet. Cris. Why, I have been a reveller, and at my cloth of silver suit, and my long stocking, in my time, and will be again— Hor. If you may be trusted, sir. Cris. And then, for my singing, Hermogenes THE POETASTER. SCENE I. himself envies me, that is your only master of music you have in Rome. Hor. Is your mother living, sir ? Cris. Au! convert thy thoughts to somewhat else, I pray thee. Hor. You have much of the mother in you, sir: Your father is dead ? Cris. Ay, I thank Jove, and my grandfather too, and all my kinsfolks, and well composed in their urns. Hor. The more their happiness, that rest in peace, Free from the abundant torture of thy tongue : Would I were with them too ! Cris. What’s that, Horace ? Hor. I now remember me, sir, of a sad fate A cunning woman, one Sabella, sung, When in her urn she cast my destiny, I being but a child. Cris. What was it, I pray thee ? Hor. She told me I should surely never perish By famine, poison, or the enemy’s sword ; The hectic fever, cough, or pleurisy, Should never hurt me, nor the tardy gout: But in my time, I should be once surprised By a strong tedious talker, that should vex And almost bring me to consumption: Therefore, if I were wise, she warn’d me shun All such long-winded monsters as my bane ; For if I could but ’scape that one discourser, I might no doubt prove an old aged man.'— By your leave, sir. [Going. Cris. Tut, tut; abandon this idle humour, ’tis nothing but melancholy. ’Fore Jove, now I think on’t, I am to appear in court here, to answer to one that has me in suit: sweet Horace, go with me, this is my hour ; if I neglect it, the law pro¬ ceeds against me. Thou art familiar with these things ; prithee, if thou lov’st me, go. Hor. Now, let me die, sir, if I know your laws, Or have the power to stand still half so long In their loud courts, as while a case is argued. Besides, you know, sir, where I am to go. And the necessity- Cris. ’Tis true. Hor. I hope the hour of my release be come : he will, upon this consideration, discharge me, sure. Cris. Troth, I am doubtful what I may best do, whether to leave thee or my affairs, Horace. Hor. O Jupiter 1 me, sir, me, by any means ; I beseech you, me, sir. Cris. No, faith, I’ll venture those now ; thou shalt see I love thee—come, Horace. Hor. Nay, then I am desperate: I follow you, sir. ’Tis hard contending with a man that over¬ comes thus. Cris. And how deals Mecsenas with thee ? libe¬ rally, ha ? is he open-handed ? bountiful ? Hor. He’s still himself, sir. Cris. Troth, Horace, thou art exceeding happy in thy friends and acquaintance ; they are all most choice spirits, and of the first rank of Romans : I do not know that poet, I protest, has used his fortune more prosperously than thou hast. If thou wouldst bring me known to Mecsenas, I should second thy desert well; thou shouldst find a good sure assistant of me, one that would speak all good of thee in thy absence, and be content with the next place, not envying thy reputation with thy patron. Let me not live, but I think thou 115 and I, in a small time, should lift them all out of favour, both Virgil, Varius, and the best of them, and enjoy him wholly to ourselves. Hor. Gods, you do know it, I can hold no longer; This brize has prick’d my patience. Sir, your silkness Clearly mistakes Mecsenas and his house, To think there breathes a spirit beneath his roof, Subject unto those poor affections Of undermining envy and detraction, Moods only proper to base grovelling minds. That place is not in Rome, I dare affirm, More pure or free from such low common evils. There’s no man griev’d, that this is thought more rich, Or this more learned ; each man hath his place, And to his merit his reward of grace, Which, with a mutual love, they all embrace. Cris. You report a wonder : ’tis scarce credible, this. Hor. I am no torturer to enforce you to believe it; but it is so. Cris. Why, this inflames me with a more ardent desire to be his, than before; but I doubt I shall find the entrance to his familiarity somewhat more than difficult, Horace. Hor. Tut, you’ll conquer him, as you have done me ; there’s no standing out against you, sir, I see that: either your importunity, or the intimation of your good parts, or- Cris. Nay, I’ll bribe his porter, and the grooms of his chamber ; make his doors open to me that way first, and then I’ll observe my times. Say he should extrude me his house to-day, shall I there¬ fore desist, or let fall my suit to-morrow ? No ; I’ll attend him, follow him, meet him in the street, the highways, run by his coach, never leave him. What! man hath nothing given him in this life without much labour— Hor. And impudence. Archer of heaven, Phoebus, take thy bow, And with a full-drawn shaft nail to the earth This Python, that I may yet run hence and live : Or, brawny Hercules, do thou come down, And, tho’ thou mak’st it up thy thirteenth labour, Rescue me from this hydra of discourse here. Enter Fuscus Aristius. Art. Horace, well met. Hor. O welcome, my reliever; Aristius, as thou lov’st me, ransom me. Ari. What ail’st thou, man ? Hor. ’Death, I am seized on here By a land remora ; I cannot stir, Nor move, but as he pleases. Cris. Wilt thou go, Horace ? Hor. Heart! he cleaves to me like Alcides’ shirt, Tearing my flesh and sinews : O, I’ve been vex’d And tortured with him beyond forty fevers. For Jove’s sake, find some means to take me from him. Ari. Yes, I will;—but I’ll go first and tell Mecsenas. [ Aside. Cris. Come, shall we go ? Ari. The jest will make his eyes run, i’faith. [Aside. Hor. Nay, Aristius! Ari. Farewell, Horace. [Going Hor. ’Death! will he leave me ? Fuscus Aris I 2 116 THE POETASTER. ACT III. tius! do you hear? Gods of Rome! You said you had somewhat to say to me in private. Ari, Ay, but I see you are now employed with that gentleman; ’twere offence to trouble you; I’ll take some fitter opportunity : farewell. [ Exit . Hor. Mischief and torment! O my soul and heart, How are you cramp’d with anguish! Death itself Brings not the like convulsions. O, this day ! That ever I should view thy tedious face.- Cris. Horace, what passion, what humour is this ? Ilor. Away, good prodigy, afflict me not.— A friend, and mock me thus ! Never was man So left under the axe.- Enter Minos with two Lictors. How now ? Min. That’s he in the embroidered hat, there, with the ash-colour’d feather : his name is Labe- rius Crispinus. Lid. Laberius Crispinus, I arrest you in the emperor’s name. Cris. Me, sir ! do you arrest me ? Lid. Ay, sir, at the suit of master Minos the apothecary. Hor. Thanks, great Apollo, I will not slip thy favour offered me in my escape, for my fortunes. [Exit hastily. Cris. Master Minos ! I know no master Minos. Where’s Horace ? Horace ! Horace ! Min. Sir, do not you know me ? Cris. O yes, I know you, master Minos; cry you mercy. But Horace ? God’s me, is he gone ? Min. Ay, and so would you too, if you knew how.—Officer, look to him. Cris. Do you hear, master Minos ? pray let us be used like a man of our own fashion. By Janus and Jupiter, I meant to have paid you next week every drachm. Seek not to eclipse my reputation thus vulgarly. Min. Sir, your oaths cannot serve you; you know I have forborne you long. Cris. I am conscious of it, sir. Nay, I beseech you, gentlemen, do not exhale me thus, remember ’tis but for sweetmeats- Lid. Sweet meat must have sour sauce, sir. Come along. Cris. Sweet master Minos, I am forfeited to eternal disgrace, if you do not commiserate. Good officer, be not so officious. Enter Tucca and Pyrgi. Tuc. Why, how now, my good brace of blood¬ hounds, whither do you drag the gentleman ? You mongrels, you curs, you ban-dogs ! we are captain Tucca that talk to you, you inhuman pilchers. Min. Sir, he is their prisoner. Tuc. Their pestilence! What are you, sir? Min. A citizen of Rome, sir. Tuc. Then you are not far distant from a fool, sir. Min. A pothecary, sir. Tuc. I knew thou wast not a physician: foh I out of my nostrils, thou stink’st of lotium and the syringe; away, quack-salver!—Follower, my sword. 1 Pyr. Here, noble leader ; you’ll do no harm with it, I’ll trust you. [Aside. Tuc. Do you hear, you goodman, slave? Hook, ram, rogue, catchpole, loose the gentleman, or by my velvet arms- Lid. What will you do, sir ? [Strikes up his heels, and seizes his sword. Tuc. Kiss thy hand, my honourable active var. let, and embrace thee thus. 1 Pyr. O patient metamorphosis ! Tuc. My sword, my tall rascal. Lid. Nay, soft, sir ; some wiser than some. Tuc. What! and a wit too ? By Pluto, thor must be cherish’d, slave ; here’s three drachms fo i thee ; hold. 2 Pyr. There’s half his lendings gone. Tuc. Give me. Lid. No, sir, your first word shall stand ; I’ll hold all. Tuc. Nay, but rogue- Lid. You would make a rescue of our prisoner, sir, you. Tuc. I a rescue ! Away, inhuman varlet. Come, come, I never relish above one jest at most; do not disgust me, sirrah; do not, rogue ! I tell thee, rogue, do not. Lid. How, sir ! rogue ? Tuc. Ay; why, thou art not angry, rascal, art thou ? Lid. I cannot tell, sir ; I am little better upon these terms. Tuc. Ha, gods and fiends ! why, dost hear, rogue, thou ? give me thy hand ; I say unto thee, thy hand, rogue. What, dost not thou know me ? not me, rogue ? not captain Tucca, rogue ? Min. Come, pray surrender the gentleman his sword, officer; we’ll have no fighting here. Tuc. What’s thy name ? Min. Minos, an’t please you. Tuc. Minos ! Come hither, Minos ; thou art a wise fellow, it seems ; let me talk with thee. Cris. Was ever wretch so wretched as unfortu¬ nate I! Tuc. Thou art one of the centumviri, old boy, art not ? Min. No indeed, master captain. Tuc. Goto, thou shaltbethen; I’ll have thee one, Minos. Take my sword from these rascals, dost thou see ! go, do it; I cannot attempt with patience. What does this gentleman owe thee, little Minos ? Min. Fourscore sesterties, sir. Tuc. What, no more ! Come, thou shalt release him, Minos : what, I’ll be his bail, thou shalt take my word, old boy, and cashier these furies : thou shalt do’t, I say, thou shalt, little Minos, thou shalt. Cris. Yes ; and as I am a gentleman and a re¬ veller, I’ll make a piece of poetry, and absolve all, within these five days. Tuc. Come, Minos is not to learn how to use a gentleman of quality, I know.—My sword: If he pay thee not, I will, and I must, old boy. Thou shalt be my pothecary too. Hast good eringos, Minos ? Min. The best in Rome, sir. Tuc. Go to, then-Vermin, know the house. 1 Pyr. I warrant you, colonel. Tuc. For this gentleman, Minos— Min. I’ll take your word, captain. Tuc. Thou hast it. My sword. Min . Yes, sir : But you must discharge the arrest, master Crispinus. Tuc. How, Minos! Look in the gentleman’s face, and but read his silence. Pay, pay; ’tis honour, Minos. Cris. By Jove, sweet captain, you do most infi nitely endear and oblige me to you. ! SCENE I. THE POETASTER. 117 Tuc. Tut, I cannot compliment, by Mars; but, Jupiter love me, as I love good words and good clothes, and there’s an end. Thou shalt give my boy that girdle and hangers, when thou hast worn them a little more. Cris. O Jupiter! captain, he shall have them now, presently:—Please you to be acceptive, young gentleman. 1 Pyr. Yes, sir, fear not; I shall accept; I have a pretty foolish humour of taking, if you knew all. [Aside. Tuc. Not now, you shall not take, boy. Cris. By my truth and earnest, but he shall, captain, by your leave. Tuc. Nay, an he swear by his truth and earnest, take it, boy : do not make a gentleman forsworn. IAct. Well, sir, there’s your sword; but thank master Minos; you had not carried it as you do else. Tuc. Minos is just, and you are knaves, and— Lict. What say you, sir ? Tuc. Pass on, my good scoundrel, pass on, I honour thee: [Exeunt Lictors.] But that I hate to have action with such base rogues as these, you should have seen me unrip their noses now, and have sent them to the next barber’s to stitching ; for do you see-1 am a man of humour, and I do love the varlets, the honest varlets, they have wit and valour, and are indeed good profitable,- errant rogues, as any live in an empire. Dost thou hear, poetaster? [To Crispinus.] second me. Stand up, Minos, close, gather, yet, so! Sir, (thou shalt have a quarter-share, be resolute) you shall, at my request, take Minos by the hand here, little Minos, I will have it so ; all friends, and a health ; be not inexorable. And thou shalt impart the wine, old boy, thou shalt do it, little Minos, thou shalt; make us pay it in our physic. What! we must live, and honour the gods sometimes; now Bac¬ chus, now Comus, now Priapus ; every god a little. [Histrio passes by.~\ What’s he that stalks by there, boy, Pyrgus ? You were best let him pass, sirrah ; do, ferret, let him pass, do- 2 Pyr. ’Tis a player, sir. Tuc. A player! call him, call the lousy slave hither ; what, will he sail by, and not once strike, or vail to a man of war ? ha !—Do you hear, you player, rogue, stalker, come back here !— Enter Histrio. No respect to men of worship, you slave ! what, you are proud, you rascal, are you proud, ha ? you grow rich, do you, and purchase, you two¬ penny tear-mouth? you have Fortune, and the good year on your side, you stinkard, you have, you have! Hist. Nay, sweet captain, be confined to some reason ; I protest I saw you not, sir. Tuc. You did not ? where was your sight, CEdipus ? you walk with hare’s eyes, do you ? I’ll have them glazed, rogue ; an you say the word, tbey shall be glazed for you : come we must have you turn fiddler again, slave, get a base viol at your back, and march in a tawny coat, with one sleeve, to Goose-fair; then you’ll know us, you’ll see us then, you will, gulch, you will. Then, Will't please your worship to have any music , captain ? Hist. Nay, good captain. Tuc. What, do you laugh, Howleglas ! death, you perstemptuous varlet, I am none of your fel¬ lows ; 1 have commanded a hundred and fifty such rogues, I. 2 Pyr. Ay, and most of that hundred and fifty have been leaders of a legion. [Aside. Hist. If I have exhibited wrong, I’ll tender satisfaction, captain. Tuck. Say’st thou so, honest vermin! Give me thy hand; thou shalt make us a supper one of these nights. Hist. When you please, by Jove, captain, most willingly. Tuc. Dost thou swear! To-morrow then; say and hold, slave. There are some of you players honest gentlemen-like scoundrels, and suspected to have some wit, as well as your poets, both at drinking and breaking of jests, and are compa¬ nions for gallants. A man may skelder ye, now and then, of half a dozen shillings, or so. Dost thou not know that Pantalabus there ? Hist. No, I assure you, captain. Tuc. Go ; and be acquainted with him then ; he is a gentleman, parcel poet, you slave; his father was a man of worship, 1 tell thee. Go, he pens high, lofty, in a new stalking strain, bigger than half the rhymers in the town again ; he was born to fill thy mouth, Minotaurus, lie was, he will teach thee to tear and rand. Rascal, to him, cherish his muse, go ; thou hast forty—forty shil¬ lings, I mean, stinkard ; give him in earnest, do, he shall write for thee, slave ! If he pen for thee once, thou shalt not need to travel with thy pumps full of gravel any more, after a blind jade and a hamper, and stalk upon boards and barrel heads to an old crack’d trumpet. Hist. Troth, I think I have not so much about me, captain. Tuc. It’s no matter; give him what thou hast, stiff-toe, I’ll give my word for the rest; though it lack a shilling or two, it skills not: go, thou art an honest shifter; I’ll have the statute repeal’d for thee.—Minos, I must tell thee, Minos, thou hast dejected yon gentleman’s spirit exceedingly ; dost observe, dost note, little Minos ? Min. Yes, sir. Tuc. Go to then, raise, recover, do; suffer him not to droop in prospect of a player, a rogue, a stager: put twentyintohis hand—twenty sesterces I mean, —and let nobody see; go, do it—-the work shall commend itself; be Minos, I’ll pay. Min. Yes, forsooth, captain. 2 Pyr. Do not we serve a notable shark ? [Aside. Tuc. And what new matters have you now a- foot, sirrah, ha ? I would fain come with my cockatrice one day, and see a play, if I knew when there were a good bawdy one ; but they say you have nothing but Humours, Reyei-s, and S atires, that gird and f—t at the time, you slave. Hist. No, I assure you, captain, not we. They are on the other side of Tyber : we have as much ribaldry in our plays as can be, as you would wish, captain : all the sinners in the suburbs come and applaud our action daily. Tuc. I hear you’ll bring me o’the stage there; you'll play me, they say ; I shall be presented by a sort of copper-laced scoundrels of you: life of Pluto ! an you stage me, stinkard, your mansions shall sweat for’t, your tabernacles, varlets, your Globes, and your Triumphs. 118 THE POETASTER. ACT III. Hist. Not we, by Phoebus, captain ; do not do us imputation without desert. Tuc. I will not, my good twopenny rascal; reach me thy neuf. Dost hear ? what wilt thou give me a week for my brace of beagles here, my little point-trussers ? you shall have them act among ye.—Sirrah, you, pronounce.—Thou shalt hear him speak in King Darius’ doleful strain. 1 Pyr. O doleful days ! O direful deadly dump ! O wicked world, and worldly wickedness ! How can I hold my fist from crying, thump, In rue of this right rascal wretchedness ! Tuc. In an amorous vein now, sirrah : peace! 1 Pyr. O, she is wilder , and more hard, withal, Than beast, or bird, or tree , or stony wall. Yet might she love me, to uprear her state : Ay, but perhaps she hopes some nobler mate. Yet might she love me, to content her fire : Ay, but her reason masters her desire. Yet might she love me as her beauty’s thrall: Ay, but I fear she cannot love at all. Tuc. Now, the horrible, fierce soldier, you, sirrah. 2 Pyr. What! will I brave thee ? ay, and beard thee too ; A Roman spirit scorns to bear a brain So full of base pusillanimity. Hist. Excellent! Tuc. Nay, thou shalt see that shall ravish thee anon ; prick up thine ears, stinkard.—The ghost, boys ! 1 Pyr. Vindicta ! 2 Pyr. Timoria ! 1 Pyr. Vindicta ! 2 Pyr. Timoria ! 1 Pyr. Veni ! 2 Pyr. Veni ! Tuc. Now thunder, sirrah, you, the rumbling player. 2 Pyr. Ay, but somebody must cry, Murder ! then, in a small voice. Tuc. Your fellow-sharer there shall do’t: Cry, sirrah, cry. 1 Pyr. Murder , murder ! 2 Pyr. Who calls out murder ? lady, was it you ? Hist. O, admirable good, I protest. Tuc. Sirrah, boy, brace your drum a little straiter, and do the t’other fellow there, he in the -what sha’ call him-and yet stay too. 2 Pyr. Nay, an thou dalliest, then I am thy foe, And fear shall force what friendship cannot win ; Thy death shall bury what thy life conceals. Villain ! thou diest for more respecting her - 1 Pyr. O stay , my lord. 2 Pyr. Than me : Yet speak the truth, and I will guerdon thee ; But if thou dally once again , thou diest. Tuc. Enough of this, boy. 2 Pyr. Why, then lament therefore: d — n'd be thy guts Unto king Pluto’s Hell, and princely Erebus ; For sparrows must have food - Hist. Pray, sweet captain, let one of them do a little of a lady. Tuc. O ! he will make thee eternally enamour’d of him, there : do, sirrah, do ; ’twill allay your fellow’s fury a little. 1 Pyr. Master, mock on ; the scorn thou givest Pray Jove some lady may return on thee. [me, 2 Pyr. Now you shall see me do the Moor : master, lend me your scarf a little. Tuc. Here, ’tis at thy service, boy. 2 Pyr. You, master Minos, hark hither a little. [Exit with Minos, to make himself ready. Tuc. How dost like him ? art not rapt, art not tickled now ? dost not applaud, rascal ? dost not applaud ? Hist. Yes : what will you ask for them a week, captain. Tuc. No, you mangonizing slave, I will not part from them ; you’ll sell them for enghles, you: let’s have good cheer to-morrow night at supper, stalker, and then we’ll talk; good capon and plover, do you hear, sirrah ? and do not bring your eating player with you there ; I cannot away with him : he will eat a leg of mutton while I am in my porridge, the lean Poluphagus, his belly is like Barathrum ; he looks like a midwife in man’s apparel, the slave : nor the villanous out-of-tune fiddler, JEnobarbus, bring not him. What hast thou there ? six and thirty, ha ? Hist. No, here’s all I have, captain, some five and twenty : pray, sir, will you present and ac¬ commodate it unto the gentleman ? for mine own part, I am a mere stranger to his humour; besides, I have some business invites me hence, with mas¬ ter Asinius Lupus, the tribune. Tuc. Well, go thy ways, pursue thy projects, let me alone with this design ; my Poetaster shall make thee a play, and thou shalt be a man of good parts in it. But stay, let me see; do not bring your ASsop, your politician, unless you can ram up his mouth with cloves; the slave smells ranker than some sixteen dunghills, and is seventeen times more rotten. Marry, you may bring Frisker, my zany ; he’s a good skipping swaggerer ; and your fat fool there, my mango, bring him too ; but let him not beg rapiers nor scarfs, in his over-familiar playing face, nor roar out his barren bold jests with a tormenting laughter, between drunk and dry. Do you hear, stiff-toe? give him warning, admoni¬ tion, to forsake his saucy glavering grace, and his goggle eye ; it does not become him, sirrah ; tell him so. I have stood up and defended you, I, to gen¬ tlemen, when you have been said to prey upon puisnes, and honest citizens, for socks or buskins ; or when they have call’d you usurers or brokers, or said you were able to help to a piece of flesh -1 have sworn, I did not think so, nor that you were the common retreats for punks decayed in their practice ; I cannot believe it of you. Hist. Thank you, captain. Jupiter and the rest of the gods confine your modern delights without disgust. Tuc. Stay, thou shalt see the Moor ere thou goest.- Enter Demetrius at a distance. What’s he with the half arms there, that salutes us out of his cloak, like a motion, ha? Hist. O, sir, his doublet’s a little decayed; he is otherwise a very simple honest fellow, sir, one Demetrius, a dresser of plays about the town here; we have hired him to abuse Horace, and bring him in, in a play, with all his gallants, as Tibullus, Meceenas, Cornelius Gallus, and the rest. Tuc. And why so, stinkard ? Hist. O, it will get us a huge deal of money, captain, and we have need on’t; for this winter has made us all poorer than so many starved snakes: 1 nobody comes at us, not a gentleman, nor a- THE POETASTER. SCENE I Tuc. But you know nothing by him, do you, to make a play of ? Hist. Faith, not much, captain ; but our author will devise that that shall serve in some sort. Tuc. Why, my Parnassus here shall help him, if thou wilt*. Can thy author do it impudently enough ? Hist. O, I warrant you, captain, and spitefully enough too; he has one of the most overflowing rank wits in Rome ; he will slander any man that breathes, if he disgust him. Tuc. I’ll know the poor, egregious, nitty rascal; an he have these commendable qualities, I’ll che¬ rish him—stay, here comes the Tartar—I’ll make a gathering for him, I, a purse, and put the poor slave in fresh rags ; tell him so to comfort him.— [Demetrius comes forward. llc-cntcr Minos, with 2 Pyrgus on Ms shoulders, and stalks backward and forward, as the boy acts. Well said, boy. 2 Pyr. Where art thou, boy 9 where is Calipolis 9 Fight earthquakes in the entrails of the earth, And eastern whirlwinds in the hellish shades ; Some foul contagion of the infected heavens Blast all the trees, and in their cursed tops The dismal night raven and tragic owl Breed and become forerunners of my fall! Tuc. Well, now fare thee well, my honest penny- biter : commend me to seven shares and a half, and remember to-morrow.—If you lack a service, ACT SCENE I.— A Room in Albius's House. Enter Chloe, Cytheris, and Attendants. Chloe. But, sweet lady, say; am I well enough attired for the court, in sadness ? Cyth. Well enough ! excellent well, sweet mis¬ tress Chloe; this strait-bodied city attire, I can tell you, will stir a courtier’s blood, more than the finest loose sacks the ladies use to be put in ; and then you are as well jewell’d as any of them ; your ruff and linen about you is much more pure than theirs ; and for your beauty, I can tell you, there’s many of them would defy the painter, if they could change with you. Marry, the worst is, you must look to be envied, and endure a few court-frumps for it. Chloe. O Jove, madam, I shall buy them too cheap !—Give me my muff, and my dog there.— And will the ladies be any thing familiar with me, think you ? Cyth. O Juno 1 why you shall see them flock about you with their puff-wings, and ask you where you bought your lawn, and what you paid for it ? who starches you ? and entreat you to help 'em to some pure laundresses out of the city. Chloe. O Cupid !—Give me my fan, and my mask too.— And will the lords, and the poets there, use one well too, lady ? Cyth. Doubt not of that; you shall have kisses from them, go pit-pat, pit-pat, pit-pat, upon your lips, as thick as stones out of slings at the assault of a city. And then your ears will be so furr’d 119 you shall play in my name, rascals ; but you shall buy your own cloth, and I’ll have two shares for my countenance. Let thy author stay with me. [Exit Histrio Hem. Yes, sir. Tuc. ’Twas well done, little Minos, thou didst stalk well: forgive me that I said thou stunk’st, Minos ; ’twas the savour of a poet I met sweating in the street, hangs yet in my nostrils. Cris. Who, Horace ? Tuc. Ay, he ; dost thou know him ? Cris. O, he forsook me most barbarously, I protest. Tuc. Hang him, fusty satyr, he smells all goat; he carries a ram under his arm-holes, the slave: I am the worse when I see him.—Did not Minos impart ? [Aside to Crispinus. Cris. Yes, here are twenty drachms he did convey. Tuc. Well said, keep them, we’ll share anon ; come, little Minos. Cris. Faith, captain, I’ll be bold to show you a mistress of mine, a jeweller’s wife, a gallant, as we go along. Tuc. There spoke my genius. Minos, some of thy eringos, little Minos; send. Come hither, Parnassus, I must have thee familiar with my little locust here ; ’tis a good vermin, they say— [Horace and Trebatius pass over the stage .]— See, here’s Horace, and old Trebatius, the great lawyer, in his company; let’s avoid him now, he is too well seconded. [Exeunt. IV. with the breath of their compliments, that you cannot catch cold of your head, if you would, in three winters after. Chloe. Thank you, sweet lady. O heaven! and how must one behave herself amongst ’em ? You know all. Cyth. Faith, impudently enough, mistress Chloe, and well enough. Carry not too much under thought betwixt yourself and them ; nor your city- mannerly word, forsooth, use it not too often in any case ; but plain, Ay, madam, and no, madam : nor never say, your lordship, nor your honour ; but, you, and you, my lord, and my lady: the other they count too simple and minsitive. And though they desire to kiss heaven with their titles, yet they will count them fools that give them too humbly. Chloe. O intolerable, Jupiter ! by my troth, lady, I would not for a world but you had lain in my house ; and, ’ifaith, you shall not pay a far¬ thing for your board, nor your chambers. Cyth. O, sweet mistress Chloe! Chloe. 1’faith you shall not, lady; nay, good lady, do not offer it. Enter Gallus and Tibullus. Gal. Come, where be these ladies ? By your leave, bright stars, this gentleman and I are come to man you to court; where your late kind enter¬ tainment is now to be requited with a heavenly banquet. Cyth. A heavenly banquet, Gallus ! 120 THE POETASTER. act rv. Gal. No less, my dear Cytheris. Tib. That were not strange, lady, if the epithet were only given for the company invited thither; your self, and this fair gentlewoman. Chloe. Are we invited to court, sir ? Tib. You are, lady, by the great princess Julia ; who longs to greet you with any favours that may worthily make you an often courtier. Chloe. In sincerity, I thank her, sir. You have a coach, have you not ? Tib. The princess hath sent her own, lady. Chloe. O Venus 1 that’s well: I do long to ride in a coach most vehemently. Cyth. But, sweet Gallus, pray you resolve me why you give that heavenly praise to this earthly banquet? Gal. Because, Cytheris, it must be celebrated by the heavenly powers : all the gods and goddesses will be there ; to two of which you two must be exalted. Chloe. A pretty fiction, in truth. Cyth. A fiction, indeed, Chloe, and fit for the fit of a poet. Gal. Why, Cytheris, may not poets (from whose divine spirits all the honours of the gods have been deduced) entreat so much honour of the gods, to have their divine presence at a poetical banquet ? Cyth. Suppose that no fiction ; yet, where are your liabilities to make us two goddesses at your feast ? Gal. Who knows not, Cytheris, that the sacred breath of a true poet can blow any virtuous hu¬ manity up to deity ? Tib. To tell you the female truth, which is the simple truth, ladies ; and to shew that poets, in spite of the world, are able to deify themselves ; at this banquet, to which you are invited, we in¬ tend to assume the figures of the gods ; and to give our several loves the forms of goddesses. Ovid will be Jupiter ; the princess Julia, Juno ; Gallus here, Apollo; you, Cytheris, Pallas; I will be Bacchus ; and my love Plautia, Ceres : and to in¬ stall you and your husband, fair Chloe, in honours equal with ours, you shall be a goddess, and your husband a god. Chloe. A god !—O my gods ! Tib. A god, but a lame god, lady ; for he shall be Vulcan, and you Venus : and this will make our banquet no less than heavenly. Chloe. In sincerity, it will be sugared. Good Jove, what a pretty foolish thing it is to be a poet! but, hark you, sweet Cytheris, could they not pos¬ sibly leave out my husband ? methinks a body’s husband does not so well at court; a body’s friend, or so—but, husband! ’tis like your clog to your marmoset, for all the world, and the heavens. Cyth. Tut, never fear, Chloe ! your husband will be left without in the lobby, or the great cham¬ ber, when you shall be put in, i’the closet, by this lord, and by that lady. Chloe. Nay, then I am certified ; he shall go. Enter Horace. Gal. Horace! welcome. Hor. Gentlemen, hear you the news ? Tib. What news, my Quintus ! Hor. Our melancholic friend, Propertius, Hath closed himself up in his Cynthia’s tomb ; And will by no entreaties be drawn thence. Enter Albius, introducing Crispinus ancf Demetrius, fol lowed by Tucca. Alb. Nay, good Master Crispinus, pray you bring near the gentleman. Hor. Crispinus ! Hide me, good Gallus ; Ti¬ bullus, shelter me. [Going. Cris. Make your approach, sweet captain. Tib. What means this, Horace ? Hor. I am surprised again ; farewell. Gal. Stay, Horace. Hor. What, and be tired on by yond’ vulture! No : Phoebus defend me ! [Exit hastily. Tib. ’Slight, I hold my life This same is he met him in Holy-street. Gal. Troth, ’tis like enough.—This act of Pro¬ pertius relisheth very strange with me. Tug. By thy leave, my neat scoundrel : what, is this the mad boy you talk’d on ? Cris. Ay, this is master Albius, captain. Tuc. Give me thy hand, Agamemnon; we hear abroad thou art the Hector of citizens : What sayest thou ? are we welcome to thee, noble Neop- tolemus ? Alb. Welcome, captain, by Jove and all tilt; gods in the Capitol- Tuc. No more, we conceive thee. W r hich of these is thy wedlock, Menelaus ? thy Helen, thy Lucrece ? that we may do her honour, mad boy. Cris. She in the little fine dressing, sir, is my mistress. Alb. For fault of a better, sir. Tuc. A better! profane rascal: I cry thee mercy, my good scroyle, was’t thou ? Alb. No harm, captain. Tuc. She is a Venus, a Vesta, a Melpomene : come hither, Penelope ; what’s thy name, Iris ? Chloe. My name is Chloe, sir; I am a gentle¬ woman. Tuc. Thou art in merit to be an empress, Chloe, for an eye and a lip ; thou hast an emperor’s nose • kiss me again : ’tis a virtuous punk ; so ! Before Jove, the gods were a sort of goslings, when they suffered so sweet a breath to perfume the bed of a stinkard : thou hadst ill fortune, Thisbe ; the Fates were infatuate, they were, punk, they were. Chloe. That’s sure, sir : let me crave your name, I pray you, sir. Tuc. I am known by the name of captain Tucca, punk ; the noble Roman, punk : a gentleman, and a commander, punk. Chloe. In good time: a gentleman, and a com¬ mander ! that’s as good as a poet, methinks. [Walks aside. Cris. A pretty instrument ! It’s my cousin Cy- theris’ viol this, is it not ? Cyth. Nay, play, cousin; it wants but such a voice and hand to grace it, as yours is. Cris. Alas, cousin, you are merrily inspired. Cyth. Pray you play, if you love me. Cris. Yes, cousin; you know I do not hate you. Tib. A most subtile wench 1 how she hath baited him with a viol yonder, for a song ! Cris. Cousin, ’pray you call mistress Chloe! she shall hear an essay of my poetry. Tuc. I’ll call her—Come hither, cockatrice : here’s one will set thee up, my sweet punk, ret thee up. Chloe. Are you a poet so soon, sir ? Alb. Wife, mum. so knk ii. THE POETASTER. 121 Crispinus plays and sings. Love is Mind, and a wanton ; In the whole world, there is scant one —Such another: No, not his mother. He hath pluck’d her doves and sparrows, To feather his sharp arrows, And alone prevaileth, While sick Venus waileth. But if Cypris once recover The wag ; it shall behove her To look better to him : Or she will undo him. Alb. O, most odoriferous music! Tuc. Aha, stinkard! Another Orpheus, you slave, another Orpheus ! an Arion riding on the back of a dolphin, rascal! Gal. Have you a copy of this ditty, sir ? Cris. Master Albius has. Alb. Ay, but in truth they are my wife’s verses ; I must not shew them. Tuc. Shew them, bankrupt, shew them ; they have salt in them, and will brook the air, stinkard. Gal. How ! To his bright mistress Canidia ! Cris. Ay, sir, that’s but a borrowed name ; as Ovid’s Corinna, or Propertius his Cynthia, or your Nemesis, or Delia, Tibullus. Gal. It’s the name of Horace his witch, as I remember. Tib. Why, the ditty’s all borrowed ; ’tis Ho¬ race’s : hang him, plagiary ! Tuc. How ! he borrow of Horace ? he shall pawn himself to ten brokers first. Do you hear, Poetasters ? I know you to be men of worship- He shall write with Horace, for a talent! and let Mecaenas and his whole college of critics take his part: thou shalt do’t, young Phoebus ; thou shalt, Phaeton, thou shalt. Dem. Alas, sir, Horace ! he is a mere sponge ; nothing but Humours and observation ; he goes up and down sucking from every society, and when he comes home squeezes himself dry again. I know him, I. Tuc. Thou say’st true, my poor poetical fury, he will pen all he knows. A sharp thorny-tooth’d satirical rascal, fly him ; he carries hay in his horn : he will sooner lose his best friend, than his least jest. What he once drops upon paper, against a man, lives eternally to upbraid him in the mouth of every slave, tankard-bearer, or waterman ; not a bawd, or a boy that comes from the bake-house, but shall point at him : ’tis all dog, and scorpion ; he carries poison in his teeth, and a sting in his tail. Fcugh! body of Jove! I’ll have the slave whipt one of these days for his Satires and his Humours, by one cashier’d clerk or another. Cris. We’ll undertake him, captain. Dem. Ay, and tickle him i’faith, for his arro- gancy and his impudence, in commending his own things; and for his translating, I can trace him, i’faith. O, he is the most open fellow living; I had as lieve as a new suit I were at it. Tuc. Say no more then, but do it; ’tis the only way to get thee a new suit; sting him, my little neufts ; I’ll give you instructions: I’ll be your intelligencer; we’ll all join, and hang upon liim like so many horse-leeches, the players and all. We shall sup together, soon ; and then we’ll conspire, i’faith. Gal. O that Horace had stayed still here! Tib. So would not I; for both these would have turn’d Pythagoreans then. Gal. What, mute ? Tib. Ay, as fishes, i’faith : come, ladies, shall we go ? Cyth. We wait you, sir. But mistress Chloe asks, if you have not a god to spare for this gen¬ tleman. Gal. Who, captain Tucca ? Cyth. Ay, ne. Gal. Yes, if we can invite him along, he shall be Mars. Chloe. Has Mars any thing to do with Venus ? Tib. O, most of all, lady. Chloe. Nay, then I pray let him be invited: And what shall Crispinus be ? Tib. Mercury, mistress Chloe. Chloe. Mercury ! that’s a poet, is it ? Gal. No, lady, but somewhat inclining that way; he is a herald at arms. Chloe. A herald at arms ! good ; and Mercury ! pretty : he has to do with Venus too ? Tib. A little with her face, lady ; or so. Chloe. ’Tis very well; pray let us go, I long to be at it. Cyth. Gentlemen, shall we pray your companies along ? Cris. You shall not only pray, butprevail, lady. —Come, sweet captain. Tuc. Yes, I follow : but thou must not talk of this now, my little bankrupt. Alb. Captain, look here, mum. Dem. I’ll go write, sir. Tuc. Do, do : stay, there’s a drachm to pur¬ chase ginger-bread for thy muse. [ Exeunt. —«- SCENE II.— A Room in Lupus’s House. Enter Lupus, ITistrio, and Lictors. Lup. Come, let us talk here; here we may be private ; shut the door, lictor. You are a player, you say. Hist. Ay, an’t please your wurship. Lup. Good ; and how are you able to give this intelligence ? Hist. Marry, sir, they directed a letter to me and my fellow-sharers. Lup. Speak lower, you are not now in your theatre, stager:—my sword, knave. They directed a letter to you, and your fellow-sharers : forward. Hist. Yes, sir, to hire some of our properties; as a sceptre and crown for Jove ; and a caduceus for Mercury ; and a petasus- Lup. Caduceus and petasus! let me see your letter. This is a conjuration ; a conspiracy, this. Quickly, on with my buskins: I’ll act a tragedy, i’faith. Will nothing but our gods serve these poets to profane ? dispatch ! Player, I thank thee. The emperor shall take knowdedge of thy good service. [A knocking within.] Who’s there now ? Look, knave. {Exit Lictor.] A crown and a sceptre ! this is good rebellion, now. Re-enter Lictor. Lie. ’Tis your pothecary, sir, master Minos. Lup. What tell’st thou me of pothecaries, knave ! Tell him, I have affairs of state in hand; I can talk to no apothecaries now. Heart of me ! Stay the pothecary there. {Walks in a musing THE POETASTER. 122 ACT IV. 'posture.'] You shall see, I have fish’d out a cunning piece of plot now : they have had some intelligence, that their project is discover’d, and now have they dealt with my pothecary, to poison me ; 'tis so ; knowing that I meant to take physic to-day : as sure as death, ’tis there. Jupiter, I thank thee, that thou hast yet made me so much of a politician. Enter Minos. You are welcome, sir ; take the potion from him there; I have an antidote more than you wot of, sir; throw it on the ground there: so! Now fetch in the dog; and yet we cannot tarry to try experiments now : arrest him; you shall go with me, sir; I’ll tickle you, pothecary ; I’ll give you a glister, i’faith. Have I the letter ? ay, ’tis here. —Come, your fasces, lictors: the half pikes and the halberds, take them down from the Lares there. Player, assist me. As they are going out, enter Mec.enas and Horace. Mcc. Whither now, Asinius Lupus, with this armory ? Lup. I cannot talk now ; 1 charge you assist me : treason ! treason ! Hor. How! treason? Lup. Ay: if you love the emperor, and the state, follow me. [ Exeunt . —♦— SCENE III.— An Apartment in the Palace. Enter Ovid, Julia, Gallus, Cytheris, Tibullus, Plau- tia, Albius, Chloe, Tucca, Crispinus, Hermogenes, Pyrgus, characteristically habited, as gods and god¬ desses. Ovid. Gods and goddesses, take your several seats. Now, Mercury, move your caduceus, and, in Jupiter’s name, command silence. Cris. In the name of Jupiter, silence. Her. The crier of the court hath too clarified a voice. Gal. Peace, Momus. Ovid. Oh, he is the god of reprehension ; let him alone : ’tis his office. Mercury, go forward, and proclaim, after Phoebus, our high pleasure, to all the deities that shall partake this high banquet. Cris. Yes, sir. Gal. The great god, Jupiter ,-[Here, and at every break in the line, Crispinus repeats aloud the words of Gallus.]- Of his licentious good¬ ness, - Willing to make this feast no fast - From any manner of pleasure ;- Nor to bind any god or goddess - To be any thing the more god or goddess, for their names : - He gives them all free license - To speak no wiser than persons of baser titles ; - And to be nothing better, than common men, or women. - And therefore no god - Shall need to keep himself more strictly to his goddess - Than any man docs to his wife: - Nor any goddess - Shall need to keep herself more strictly to her god - Than any woman does to her husband. - But, since it is no part of wisdom, - In these days, to come into bonds ; - It shall be lawful for every lover - To break loving oaths, - To change their lovers , and make love to others, - As the heat of every one’s blood, - And the spirit of our nectar, shall inspire. - And Jupiter save Jupiter ! Tib. So; now we may play the fools by authority. Her. To play the fool by authority is wisdom. Jul. Away with your mattery sentences, Momus; they are too grave and wise for this meeting. Ovid. Mercury, give our jester a stool, let him sit by ; and reach him one of our cates. Tuc. Dost hear, mad Jupiter ? we'll have it enacted, he that speaks the first wise word, shall be made cuckold. What say’st thou ? Is it not a good motion ? Ovid. Deities, are you all agreed ? All. Agreed, great Jupiter. Alb. I have read in a book, that to play the fool wisely, is high wisdom. Gal. How now, Vulcan! will you be the first wizard ? Ovid. Take his wife, Mars, and make him cuckold quickly. Tuc. Come, cockatrice. Chloe. No, let me alone with him, Jupiter: I’ll make you take heed, sir, while you live again ; if there be twelve in a company, that you be not the wisest of ’em. Alb. No more ; I will not indeed, wife, here¬ after ; I’ll be here : mum. Ovid. Fill us a bowl of nectar, Ganymede : we will drink to our daughter Venus. Gal. Look to your wife, Vulcan : Jupiter be¬ gins to court her. Tib. Nay, let Mars look to it: Vulcan must do as Venus does, bear. Tuc. Sirrah, boy; catamite : Look you play Ganymede well now, you slave. Do not spill your nectar; carry your cup even: so! You should have rubbed your face with whites of eggs, you rascal; till your brows had shone like our sooty brother’s here, as sleek as a horn-book : or have steept your lips in wine, till you made them so plump, that Juno might have been jealous or them. Punk, kiss me, punk. Ovid. Here, daughter Venus, I drink to thee. Chloe. Thank you, good father Jupiter. Tuc. Why, mother Juno! gods and fiends! what, wilt thou suffer this ocular temptation ? Tib. Mars is enraged, he looks big, and begins to stut for anger. Her. Well played, captain Mars. Tuc. Well said, minstrel Momus : I must put you in, must I ? when will you be in good fooling of yourself, fidler, never ? Her. O, ’tis our fashion to be silent, when there is a better fool in place ever. Tuc. Thank you, rascal. Ovid. Fill to our daughter Venus, Ganymede, who fills her father with affection. Jul. Wilt thou be ranging, Jupiter, before my face ? Ovid. Why not, Juno? why should Jupiter stand in awe of thy face, Juno? Jul. Because it is thy wife’s face, Jupiter. Ovid. What, shall a husband be afraid of his wife’s face? will she paint it so horribly ? we are a king, cotquean; and we will reign in our plea¬ sures ; and we will cudgel thee to death, if thou find fault with us. Jul. I will find fault with thee, king cuckold- maker : What, shall the king of gods turn the king of good-fellows, and have no fellow in wickedness ? . This makes our poets, that know our profaneness, live as profane as we: By my godhead, Jupiter, I will join with all the other gods here, bind thee SCENE III. THE POETASTER. 123 hand and foot, throw thee down into the earth and make a poor poetof thee, if thou abuse me thus. Gal. A good smart-tongued goddess, a right Juno ! Ovid. Juno, we will cudgel thee, Juno : we told thee so yesterday, when thou wert jealous of us for Thetis. Pyr. Nay, to-day she had me in inquisition too. Tuc. Well said, my fine Phrygian fry ; inform, inform. Give me some wine, king of heralds, I may drink to my cockatrice. Ovid. No more, Ganymede; we will cudgel thee, Juno ; by Styx we will. Jul. Ay, ’tis well; gods may grow impudent in iniquity, and they must not be told of it- Ovid. Yea, we will knock our chin against our breast, and shake thee out of Olympus into an oyster-boat, for thy scolding. Jul. Your nose is not long enough to do it, Jupiter, if all thy strumpets thou hast among the stars took thy part. And there is never a star in thy forehead but shall be a horn, if thou persist to abuse me. Cris. A good jest, i’faith. Ovid. We tell thee thou angerest us, cotquean ; and we will thunder thee in pieces for thy cot- queanity. Cris. Another good jest. Alb. O, my hammers and my Cyclops ! This boy fills not wine enough to make us kind enough to one another. Tuc. Nor thou hast not collied thy face enough, stinkard. Alb. I’ll ply the table with nectar, and make them friends. Her. Heaven is like to have but a lame skinker, then. Alb. Wine and good livers make true lovers : I’ll sentence them together. Here, father, here, mother, for shame, drink yourselves drunk, and forget this dissension; you two should cling together before our faces, and give us example of unity. Gal. O, excellently spoken, Vulcan, on the sudden! Tib. Jupiter may do well to prefer his tongue to some office for his eloquence. Tuc. His tongue shall be gentleman-usher to his wit, and still go before it. Alb. An excellent fit office ! Cris. Ay, and an excellent good jest besides. Her. What, have you hired Mercury to cry your jests you make ? Ovid. Mornus, vou are envious. Tuc. Why, ay, you whoreson blockhead, ’tis your only block of wit in fashion now-a-days, to applaud other folks’jests. Her. True ; with those that are not artificers themselves. Vulcan, you nod, and the mirth of the jest droops. Pyr. He has filled nectar so long, till his brain swims in it. Gal. What, do we nod, fellow-gods! Sound music, and let us startle our spirits with a song. Tuc. Do, Apollo, thou art a good musician. Gal. What says Jupiter ? Ovid. Ha! ha ! Gal. A song. Ovid. Why, do, do, sing. Pla. Bacchus, what say you ? Tib. Ceres ? Pla. But, to this song ? Tib. Sing, for my part. Jul. Your belly weighs down your head, Bac¬ chus ; here’s a song toward. Tib. Begin; Vulcan. Alb. What else, what else ? Tuc. Say, Jupiter- Ovid. Mercury- Cris. Ay, say, say. IMusic. Alb. Wake ! our mirth begins to die ; Quicken it with tunes and wine. Raise your notes ; you're out; fie, fie ! This drowsiness is an ill sign. We banish him the quire of gods, That droops agen : Then all are men, For here's not one but nods. Ovid. I like not this sudden and general heavi¬ ness amongst our godheads ; ’tis somewhat omi¬ nous. Apollo, command us louder music, and let Mercury and Momus contend to please and re¬ vive our senses. IMusic. Herm. Then, in a free and lofty strain. Our broken tunes we thus repair ; Cris. And we answer them again, Running division on the panting air ; Ambo. To celebrate this feast of sense, As free from scandal as offence. Herm. Here is beauty for the eye ; Cris. For the ear sweet melody. Herm. Ambrosiac odours, for the smell ; Cris. Delicious nectar, for the taste ; Ambo. For the touch, a lady's waist; Which doth all the rest excel. Ovid. Ay, this has waked us. Mercury, our herald ; go from ourself, the great god Jupiter, to the great emperor Augustus Caesar, and command him from us, of whose bounty he hath received the sirname of Augustus, that, for a thank-offering to our beneficence, he presently sacrifice, as a dish to this banquet, his beautiful and wanton daughter Julia: she’s a curst quean, tell him, and plays the scold behind his back ; therefore let her be sacri¬ ficed. Command him this, Mercury, in our high name of Jupiter Altitonans. Jul. Stay, feather-footed Mercury, and tell Au¬ gustus, from us, the great Juno Saturnia ; if he think it hard to do as Jupiter hath commanded him, and sacrifice his daughter, that he had better do so ten times, than suffer her to love the well¬ nosed poet, Ovid ; whom he shall do well to whip, or cause to be whipped, about the capitol, foi soothing her in her follies. Enter Augustus Caesar, Mec/enas, Horace, Lupus, Histrio, Minus, and Lictors, Coes. What sight is this ? Mecsenas ! Horace ! Have we our senses ? do we hear and see ? [say? Or are these but imaginary objects Drawn by our phantasy ! Why speak you not? Let us do sacrifice. Are they the gods ? [Ovid and the rest kneel. Reverence, amaze, and fury fight in me. What, do they kneel 1 Nay, then I see ’tis true I thought impossible : O, impious sight! Let me divert mine eyes ; the very thought Everts my soul with passion : Look not, man, THE POETASTER. 124 There is a panther, whose unnatural eyes Will strike thee dead : turn, then, and die on her With her own death. {.Offers to kill his daughter. Mec. Hor. What means imperial Caesar ? Coes. What would you have me let the strumpet That, for this pageant, earns so many deaths ? [live Tuc. Boy, slink, boy. Pyr. Pray Jupiter we be not followed by the scent, master. {Exeunt Tucca and Pyrgus. Coes. Say, sir, what are you ? Alb. I play Vulcan, sir. Coes. But what are you, sir? Alb. Your citizen and jeweller, sir. Coes. Ar:,d what are you, dame ? Chloe. I play Venus, forsooth. Coes. I ask not what you play, but what you are. Chloe. Your citizen and jeweller’s wife, sir. Coes. And you, good sir ? Cris. Your gentleman parcel-poet, sir. {Exit. Cobs. O, that profaned name !— And are these seemly company for thee, {To Julia. Degenerate monster? All the rest I know, And hate all knowledge for their hateful sakes. Are, you, that first the deities inspired With skill of their high natures and their powers, The first abusers of their useful light; Profaning thus their dignities in their forms, And making them, like you, but counterfeits ? O, who shall follow Virtue and embrace her, When her false bosom is found nought but air ? And yet of those embraces centaurs spring, That war with human peace, and poison men.— Who shall, with greater comforts comprehend Her unseen being and her excellence ; When you, that teach, and should eternize her, Live as she were no law unto your lives, Nor lived herself, but with your idle breaths ? If you think gods but feign’d, and virtue painted, Know we sustain an actual residence, And with the title of an emperor, Retain his spirit and imperial power ; By which, in imposition too remiss, Licentious Naso, for thy violent wrong, In soothing the declined affections Of our base daughter, we exile thy feet From all approach to our imperial court, On pain of death ; and thy misgotten love Commit to patronage of iron doors ; Since her soft-hearted sire cannot contain her. Mec. O, good my lord, forgive ! be like the gods. Hor. Let royal bounty, Csesar, mediate. Coes. There is no bounty to be shew’d to such As have no real goodness : bounty is A spice of virtue ; and what virtuous act Can take effect on them, that have no power Of equal habitude to apprehend it, But live in worship of that idol, vice, As if there were no virtue, but in shade Of strong imagination, merely enforced ? This shews their knowledge is mere ignorance, Their far-fetch’d dignity of soul a fancy, And all their square pretext of gravity A mere vain-glory; hence, away with them ! I will prefer for knowledge, none but such As rule their lives by it, and can becalm All sea of Humour with the marble trident Of their strong spirits : others fight below Vith gnats and shadows ; others nothing know. [Exeunt. - 4 - ACT IV SCENE V.— A Street before the Palace. Enter Tucca, Crispinus, and Pyrgus. Tuc. What’s become of my little punk, Venus, and the poult-foot stinkard, her husband, ha? Cris. O, they are rid home in the coach, as fast as the wheels can run. Tuc. God Jupiter is banished, I hear, and his cockatrice Juno lock’d up. ’Heart, an all the poetry in Parnassus get me to be a player again, I’ll sell ’em my share for a sesterce. But this is Humours, Horace, that goat-footed envious slave; he’s turn’d fawn now ; an informer, the rogue I ’tis he has betray’d us all. Did you not see him with the emperor crouching ? Cris. Yes. Tuc. Well, follow me. Thou shalt libel, and I’ll cudgel the rascal. Boy, provide me a trun¬ cheon. Revenge shall gratulate him, tam Marti, quam Mercurio. Pyr. Ay, but master, take heed how you give this out; Horace is a man of the sword. Cris. ’Tis true, in troth ; they say he’s valiant. Tuc. Valiant ? so is mine a—. Gods and fiends l I’ll blow him into air when I meet him next: he dares not fight with a puck-fist. {Horace passes over the stage. Pyr. Master, he comes! Tuc. Where? Jupiter save thee, my good poet, my noble prophet, my little fat Horace.—I scorn to beat the rogue in the court ; and I saluted him thus fair, because he should suspect nothing, the rascal. Come, we’ll go see how far forward our journeyman is toward the untrussing of him. Cris. Do you hear, captain? I’ll write nothing in it but innocence, because I may swear I am innocent. {Exeunt. -—-4- SCENE VI. Enter Horace, Mecjenas, Lupus, Histrio, and Lictors. Hor. Nay, why pursue you not the emperor for your reward now, Lupus ? Mec. Stay, Asinius; You and your stager, and your band of lictors : I hope your service merits more respect, Than thus, without a thanks, to be sent hence. His. Well, well, jest on, jest on. Hor. Thou base, unworthy groom ! Lup. Ay, ay, ’tis good. [plot, Hor. Was this the treason, this the dangerous Thy clamorous tongue so bellow’d through the Hadst thou no other project to encrease [court ? Thy grace with Caesar, but this wolfish train, To prey upon the life of innocent mirth And harmless pleasures, bred of noble wit ? Away ! I loath thy presence ; such as thou, They are the moths and scarabs of a state, The bane of empires, and the dregs of courts ; Who, to endear themselves to an employment, Care not whose fame they blast, whose life they en- And, under a disguised and cobweb mask [danger ; Of love unto their sovereign, vomit forth Their own prodigious malice ; and pretending To be the props and columns of their safety, The guards unto his person and his peace, Disturb it most, with their false, lapwing-cries. Lup. Good ! Csesar shall know of this, believe it. Mec. Csesar doth know it, wolf, and to his knowledge, scKisB vii. THE POETASTER. 125 He will, I hope, reward your base endeavours. Princes that will but hear, or give access To such officious spies, can ne’er be safe : They take in poison with an open ear, And, free from danger, become slaves to fear. [Exeunt. —♦— SCENE VII.— An open Space before the Palace. Enter Ovid. Banish’d the court! Let me be banish’d life, Since the chief end of life is there concluded: Within the court is all the kingdom bounded, And as her sacred sphere doth comprehend Ten thousand times so much, as so much place In any part of all the empire else; So every body, moving in her sphere, Contains ten thousand times as much in him, As any other her choice orb excludes. As in a circle, a magician then Is safe against the spirit he excites ; But, out of it, is subject to his rage, And loseth all the virtue of his art: So I, exiled the circle of the court, Lose all the good gifts that in it I ’joy’d. No virtue current is, but with her stamp, And no vice vicious, blanch’d with her white hand. The court’s the abstract of all Rome’s desert, And my dear Julia the abstract of the court. Methinks, now I come near her, I respire Some air of that late comfort I received ; And while the evening, with her modest veil, Gives leave to such poor shadows as myself To steal abroad, I, like a heartless ghost, Without the living body of my love, Will here walk and attend her : for I know Not far from hence she is imprisoned, And hopes, of her strict guardian, to bribe So much admittance, as to speak to me, And cheer my fainting spirits with her breath. Julia. [ appears above at her chamber window .] Ovid ? my love ? Ovid. Here, heavenly Julia. [doth play Jul. Here! and not here! 0, how that word With both our fortunes, differing, like ourselves, Both one ; and yet divided, as opposed ! I high, thou low: O, this our plight of place Doubly presents the two lets of our love, Local and ceremonial height, and lowness : Both ways, I am too high, and thou too low. Our minds are even yet; 0, why should our bodies, That are their slaves, be so without their rule? I’ll cast myself down to thee ; if I die, I’ll ever live with thee : no height of birth, Of place, of duty, or of cruel power, Shall keep me from thee ; should my father look This body up within a tomb of brass, Yet I’ll be with thee. If the forms I hold Now in my soul, be made one substance with it; That soul immortal, and the same ’tis now; Death cannot raze the affects she now retaineth : And then, may she be any where she will. The souls of parents rule not children’s souls, When death sets both in their dissolv’d estates ; Then is no child nor father; then eternity Frees all from any temporal respect. I come, my Ovid ; take me in thine arms, And let me breathe my soul into thy breast. Ovid. 0 stay, my love ; the hopes thou dost con- Of thy quick death, and of thy future life, [ceive Are not authentical. Thou choosest death, So thou might’st ’joy thy love in the other life : But know, my princely love, when thou art dead, Thou only must survive in perfect soul; And in the soul are no affections. We pour out our affections with our blood, And, with our blood’s affections, fade our loves. No life hath love in such sweet state as this ; No essence is so dear to moody sense As flesh and blood, whose quintessence is sense. Beauty, composed of blood and flesh, moves more, And is more plausible to blood and flesh, Than spiritual beauty can be to the spirit. Such apprehension as we have in dreams, When, sleep, the bond of senses, locks them up, Such shall we have, when death destroys them quite. If love be then thy object, change not life ; Live high and happy still: I still below, Close with my fortunes, in thy height shall joy. Jul. Ay me, that virtue, whose brave eagle’s wings, With every stroke blow stars in burning heaven, Should, like a swallow, preying towards storms, Fly close to earth, and with an eager plume, Pursue those objects which none else can see, But seem to all the w r orld the empty air! Thus thou, poor Ovid, and all virtuous men, Must prey, like swallows, on invisible food, Pursuing flies, or nothing : and thus love, And every worldly fancy, is transposed By worldly tyranny to what plight it list. 0 father, since thou gav’st me not my mind, Strive not to rule it; take but what thou gav’st To thy disposure : thy affections Rule not in me ; I must bear all my griefs, Let me use all my pleasures ; virtuous love Was never scandal to a goddess’ state.— But he’s inflexible ! and, my dear love, Thy life may chance be shorten’d by the length Of my unwilling speeches to depart. Farewell, sweet life ; though thou be yet exiled The officious court, enjoy me amply still: My soul, in this my breath, enters thine ears, And on this turret’s floor will I lie dead, Till we may meet again : In this proud height, I kneel beneath thee in my prostrate love, And kiss the happy sands that kiss thy feet. Great Jove submits a sceptre to a cell. And lovers, ere they part, will meet in hell. Ovid. Farewell all company, and, if I could, All light with thee ! hell’s shade should hide my brows, Till thy dear beauty’s beams redeem’d my vows. [Going. Jul. Ovid, my love ; alas ! may we not stay A little longer, think’st thou, undiscern’d ? Ovid. For thine own good, fair goddess, do not Who would engage a firmament of fires [stay. Shining in thee, for me, a falling star ? j Be gone, sweet life-blood ; if I should discern Thyself but touch’d for my sake, I should die. Jul. I will begone, then ; and not heaven itself Shall draw me back. [Going. Ovid. Yet, Julia, if thou wilt, ; A little longer stay. Jul. I am content. ' Ovid. 0, mighty Ovid! what the sway of heaven Could not retire, my breath hath turned back. Jul. Who shall go first, my love ? my passionate Will not endure to see thee turn from me. [eyes 126 THE POETASTER. ACT V, Ovid. If thou go first, my soul will follow thee. Jul. Then we must stay. Ovid. Ay me, there is no stay In amorous pleasures ; if both stay, both die. I hear thy father ; hence, my deity. [Julia retires from the window. Fear forgeth sounds in my deluded ears ; I did not hear him ; I am mad with love. There is no spirit under heaven, that works With such illusion ; yet such witchcraft kill me, Ere a sound mind, without it, save my life ! Here, on my knees, I worship the blest place That held my goddess ; and the loving air, That closed her body in his silken arms. Vain Ovid ! kneel not to the place, nor air ; She’s in thy heart; rise then, and worship there. The truest wisdom silly men can have, Is dotage on the follies of their flesh. [ Exit. ACT V. SCENE I_ An Apartment in the Palace. Enter CLesar, Mecjf.nas, Gallus, Tibullus, IIorace, and Equites Romani. Coes. We, that have conquer’d still, to save the conquer’d, And loved to make inflictions fear’d, not felt; Grieved to reprove, and joyful to reward ; More proud of reconcilement than revenge ; Resume into the late state of our love, Worthy Cornelius Gallus, and Tibullus : You both are gentlemen : and, you, Cornelius, A soldier of renown, and the first provost That ever let our Roman eagles fly On swarthy iEgypt, quarried with her spoils. Yet (not to bear cold forms, nor men’s out-terms, Without the inward fires, and lives of men) You both have virtues, shining through your shapes; To shew, your titles are not writ on posts, Or hollow statues which the best men are, Without Promethean stuffings reach’d from heaven ! Sweet poesy’s sacred garlands crown your gentry : Which is, of all the faculties on earth, The most abstract and perfect; if she be True-born, and nursed with all the sciences. She can so mould Rome, and her monuments, Within the liquid marble of her lines, That they shall stand fresh and miraculous, Even when they mix with innovating dust; In her sweet streams shall our brave Roman spirits Chase, and swim after death, with their choice deeds Shining on their white shoulders ; and therein Shall Tyber, and our famous rivers fall With such attraction, that the ambitious line Of the round world shall to her center shrink, To hear their music : and, for these high parts, Caesar shall reverence the Pierian arts. Mec. Your majesty’s high grace to poesy, Shall stand ’gainst all the dull detractions Of leaden souls ; who, for the vain assumings Of some, quite worthless of her sovereign wreaths, Contain hei worthiest prophets in contempt. Gal. Happy is Rome of all earth’s other states, To have so true and great a president, For her inferior spirits to imitate, As Caesar is ; who addeth to the sun Influence and lustre ; in increasing thus His inspirations, kindling fire in us. Ilor. Phoebus himself shall kneel at Caesar’s shrine, And deck it with bay garlands dew’d with wine, To quit the worship Caesar does to him: Where other princes, hoisted to their thrones By Fortune’s passionate and disorder’d power, Sit in their height, like clouds before the sun, Hindering his comforts ; and, by their excess Of cold in virtue, and cross heat in vice, Thunder and tempest on those learned heads, Whom Caesar with such honour doth advance. Tib. All human business fortune doth command Without all order ; and with her blind hand, She, blind, bestows blind gifts, that still have nurst, They see not who, nor how, but still, the worst. Coes. Caesar, for his rule, and for so much stuff As Fortune puts in his hand, shall dispose it, As if his hand had eyes and soul in it, [gifts With worth and judgment. Hands, that part with Or will restrain their use, without desert, Or with a misery numb’d to virtue’s right, Work, as they had no soul to govern them, And quite reject her; severing their estates From human order. Whosoever can, And will not cherish virtue, is no man. Enter some of the Equestrian Order. Eques. Yirgil is now at hand, imperial Caesar. Coes. Rome’s honour is at hand then. Fetch a chair, And set it on our right hand, where ’tis fit Rome’s honour and our own should ever sit. Now he is come out of Campania, I doubt not he hath finish’d all his iEneids. Which, like another soul, I long to enjoy. What think you three of Yirgil, gentlemen, That are of his profession, though rank’d higher ; Or, Horace, what say’stthou, that art the poorest, And likeliest to envy, or to detract ? Ilor. Caesar speaks after common men in this, To make a difference of me for my poorness ; As if the filth of poverty sunk as deep Into a knowing spirit, as the bane Of riches doth into an ignorant soul. No, Caesar, they be pathless, moorish minds, That being once made rotten with the dung Of damned riches, ever after sink Beneath the steps of any villainy. But knowledge is the nectar that keeps sweet A perfect soul, even in this grave of sin ; And for my soul, it is as free as Caesar’s, For what I know is due I’ll give to all. He that detracts or envies virtuous merit, Is still the covetous and the ignorant spirit. Coes. Thanks, Horace, for thy free and whole* some sharpness, Which pleaseth Caesar more than servile fawns. A flatter’d prince soon turns the prince of fools. And for thy sake, we’ll put no difference more Between the great and good for being poor. Say then, loved Horace, thy true thought of Yirgil. THE POETASTER. SCENE I. Hor. I judge him of a rectified spirit, By many revolutions of discourse, (In his bright reason’s influence,) refined From all the tartarous moods of common men ; Bearing the nature and similitude Of a right heavenly body ; most severe In fashion and collection of himself; And, then, as clear and confident as Jove. Gal. And yet so chaste and tender is his ear, In suffering any syllable to pass, That he thinks may become the honour’d name Of issue to his so examined self, That all the lasting fruits of his full merit, In his own poems, he doth still distaste; As if his mind’s piece, which he strove to paint, Could not with fleshly pencils have her right. Tib. But to approve his works of sovereign worth, This observation, methinks, more than serves, And is not vulgar. That which he hath writ Is with such judgment labour’d, and distill’d Through all the needful uses of our lives, That could a man remember but his lines, He should not touch at any serious point, But he might breathe his spirit out of him. Ccbs. You mean, he might repeat part of his As fit for any conference he can use ? [works, Tib. True, royal Caesar. Ccbs. Worthily observed; And a most worthy virtue in his works. What thinks material Horace of his learning? Hor. His learning savours not the school-like gloss,_ That most consists in echoing words and terms, And soonest wins a man an empty name ; Nor any long or far-fetch’d circumstance Wrapp’d in the curious general ties of arts ; But a direct and analytic sum Of all the worth and first effects of arts. And for his poesy, ’tis so ramm’d with life, That it shall gather strength of life, with being, And live hereafter more admired than now. Ccbs. This one consent in all your dooms of him, And mutual loves of all your several merits, Argues a truth of merit in you all.— Enter Virgil. See, here comes Virgil; we will rise and greet him. Welcome to Caesar, Virgil! Caesar and Virgil Shall differ but in sound; to Caesar, Virgil, Of his expressed greatness, shall be made A second sirname, and to Virgil, Caesar. Where are thy famous iEneids ? do us grace To let us see, and surfeit on their sight. Virg. Worthless they are of Caesar’s gracious eyes, If they were perfect; much more with their wants, Which are yet more than my time could supply. And, could great Caesar’s expectation Be satisfied with any other service, I would not shew them. Ccbs. Virgil is too modest; Oi seeks, in vain, to make our longings more : Shew them, sweet Virgil. Virg. Then, in such due fear As fits presenters of great works to Caesar, I humbly shew them. Ccbs. Let us now behold A human soul made visible in life ; And more refulgent in a senseless paper 127 Than in the sensual complement of kings. Read, read thyself, dear Virgil; let not me Profane one accent with an untuned tongue : Best matter, badly shown, shews worse than bad. See then this chair, of purpose set for thee To read thy poem in ; refuse it not. Virtue, without presumption, place may take Above best kings, whom only she should make. Virg. It will be thought a thing ridiculous To present eyes, and to all future times A gross untruth, that any poet, void Of birth, or wealth, or temporal dignity, Should, with decorum, transcend Caesar’s chair. Poor virtue raised, high birth and wealth set under, Crosseth heaven’s courses, and makes worldlings wonder. Ccbs. The course of heaven, and fate itself, in this, Will Caesar cross ; much more all worldly custom. Hor. Custom, in course of honour, ever errs ; And they are best whom fortune least prefers. Ccbs. Horace hath but more strictly spoke our thoughts. The vast rude swing of general confluence Is, in particular ends, exempt from sense : And therefore reason (which in right should be The special rector of all harmony) Shall shew we are a man distinct by it, From those, whom custom rapteth in her press. Ascend then, Virgil; and where first by chance We here have turn’d thy book, do thou first read. Virg. Great Caesar hath his will; I will ascend. ’Twere simple injury to his free hand, That sweeps the cobwebs from unused virtue, And makes her shine proportion’d to her worth, To be more nice to entertain his grace, Than he is choice, and liberal to afford it. Ccbs. Gentlemen of our chamber, guard the doors, And let none enter; [Exeunt Egiuites.] peace. Begin, good Virgil. Virg. Meanwhile the skies ’gan tJuinder, and in tail Of that, fell 'pouring storms of sleet and hail: The Tyrian lords and Trojan youth, each where With Venus' Dardane nephew, note, in fear, Seek out for several shelter through the plain, Whilst floods come rolling from the hills amain. Dido a cave, the Trojan prince the same Lighted upon. There earth and heaven's great dame, That hath the charge of marriage, first gave sign Unto his contract ; fire and air did shine, As guilty of the match ; and from the hill The nymphs with shriekings do the region fill. Here first began their bane ; this day was ground Of all their ills ; for notv, nor rumour's sound , Nor nice respect of state, moves Dido ought ; Her love no longer now by stealth is sought: She calls this wedlock , and with that fair name Covers her fault. Forthwith the bruit and fame , Through all the greatest Lybian towns is gone ; Fame, a fleet evil, than which is swifter none , That moving groivs, and flying gathers strength ; Little at first , and fearf ul; but at length She dares attempt the skies, and stalking proud With feet on ground, her head doth pierce a cloud ! This child , our parent earth, stirr'd up with spite Of all the gods, brought forth ; and, as some write , She was last sister of that giant race [pace, That thought to scale Jove's court ; right swift of 128 THE POETASTER. ACT V. And swifter far of wing ; a monster vast , And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed On her huge corps, so many waking eyes Stick underneath ; and, which may stranger rise In the report, as many tongues she bears, As many mouths, as many listening ears. Nightly, in midst of all the heaven , she flies, And through the earth's dark shadow shrieking cries ; Nor do her eyes once bend to taste sweet sleep ; By day on tops of houses she doth keep, Or on high towers ; and doth thence affright Cities and towns of most conspicuous site : As covetous she is of tales and lies. As prodigal of truth : this monster - Lup. [within. ] Come, follow me, assist me, second me ! Where’s the emperor ? 1 Eques. [within.'] Sir, you must pardon us. 2 Eques. [ivithin.] Caesar is private now; you may not enter. Tuc. [ivithin.] Not enter! Charge them upon their allegiance, cropshin. 1 Eques. [within.] We have a charge to the con¬ trary, sir. Lup. [within.] I pronounce you all traitors, horrible traitors : What! do you know my affairs ? I have matter of danger and state to impart to Caesar. Cces. What noise is there ? who’s that names Caesar ? Lup. [within.] A friend to Caesar. One that, for Caesar’s good, would speak with Cces. Who is it ? look, Cornelius. [Caesar. 1 Eques. [within.] Asinius Lupus. Cces. O, bid the turbulent informer hence ; We have no vacant ear now, to receive The unseason’d fruits of his officious tongue. Mec. You must avoid him there. Lup. [within.] I conjure thee, as thou art Caesar, or respectest thine own safety, or the safety of the state, Caesar, hear me, speak with me, Caesar; ’tis no common business I come about, but such, as being neglected, may concern the life of Caesar. Cces. The life of Caesar! Let him enter. Yirgil, keep thy seat. Equites. [within.] Bear back, there : whither will you ? keep back ! Enter Lupus, Tucca, and Lictors. Tuc. By thy leave, goodman usher: mend thy peruke ; so. Lup. Lay hold on Horace there ; and on Me- caenas, lictors. Romans, offer no rescue, upon your allegiance: read, royalCaesar. [Gives a paper.] I’ll tickle you, Satyr. Tuc. He will, Humours, he will; he will squeeze you, poet puck-fist. Lup. I’ll lop you off for an unprofitable branch, you satirical varlet. Tuc. Ay, and Epaminondas your patron here, with his flagon chain; come, resign: [takes off Mecsenas’ chain.] though ’twere your great grand¬ father’s, the law has made it mine now, sir. Look to him, my party-coloured rascals ; look to him. Cces. What is this, Asinius Lupus ? I under¬ stand it not. Lup. Not understand it! A libel, Caesar ; a dangerous, seditious libel; a libel in picture. Cces. A libel! Lup. Ay, I found it in this Horace his study, in Mecsenas his house, here; I challenge the pe¬ nalty of the laws against them. Tuc. Ay, and remember to beg their land be¬ times ; before some of these hungry court-hounds scent it out. Cces. Shew it to Horace : ask him if he know it. Lup. Know it! his hand is at it, Caesar. Cces. Then ’tis no libel. IIor. It is the imperfect body ot an emblem. Caesar, I began for Mecsenas. Lup. An emblem! right: that’s Greek for a libel. Do but mark how confident he is. Hor. A just man cannot fear, thou foolish tri¬ bune ; Not, though the malice of traducing tongues. The open vastness of a tyrant’s ear, The senseless rigour of the wrested laws, Or the red eyes of strain’d authority, Should, in a point, meet all to take his life : His innocence is armour ’gainst all these. Lup. Innocence ! O impudence ! let me see, let me see ! Is not here an eagle ! and is not that eagle meant by Caesar, ha ? Does not Caesar give the eagle ? answer me ; what sayest thou ? Tuc. Hast thou any evasion, stinkard ? Lup. Now he’s turn’d dumb. I’ll tickle you, Satyr. Hor. Pish : ha, ha ! Lup. Dost thou pish me ? Give me my long sword. Hor. With reverence to great Caesar, worthy Romans, Observe but this ridiculous commenter ; The soul to my device was in this distich : Thus oft, the base and ravenous multitude Survive, to share the spoils of fortitude. Which in this body I have figured here, A vulture- Lup. A vulture! Ay, now, ’tis a vulture. O abominable ! monstrous ! monstrous ! has not your vulture a beak ? has it not legs, and talons, and wings, and feathers ? Tuc. Touch him, old buskins. Hor. And therefore must it be an eagle ? Mec. Respect him not, good Horace : say your device. Hor. A vulture and a wolf-- Lup. A wolf ! good : that’s I ; I am the wolf: my name’s Lupus ; I am meant by the wolf. On, on ; a vulture and a w T olf- Hor. Preying upon the carcass of an ass- Lup. An ass ! good still: that’s I too ; I am the ass. You mean me by the ass. Mec. Prithee, leave braying then. Hor. If you will needs take it, I cannot with modesty give it from you. Mec. But, by that beast, the old Egyptians Were wont to figure, in their hieroglyphics, Patience, frugality, and fortitude ; For none of which we can suspect you, tribune. Cces. Who was it, Lupus, that inform’d you first, This should be meant by us ? Or was’t your com¬ ment ? Lup. No, Caesar ; a player gave me the first light of it indeed. Tuc. Ay, an honest sycophant-like slave, and a politician besides. Cces. Where is that player ? Tuc. He is without here. SCENE I. THE POETASTER. 129 Cees. Call him in. Tuc. Call in the player there : master iEsop, call him. Equites. [ ivithin .] Player ! where is the player ? bear back : none but the player enter. Enter JEsop , followed by Crispinus and Demetrius. Tuc. Yes, this gentleman and his Achates must. Cris. Pray you, master usher : — we’ll stand close, here. Tuc. ’Tis a gentleman of quality, this ; though he be somewhat out of clothes, I tell ye.—Come, JEsop, hast a bay-leaf in thy mouth ? Well said; be not out, stinkard. Thou shalt have a mono¬ poly of playing confirm’d to thee and thy covey, under the emperor’s broad seal, for this service. Caes. Is this he ? Lup. Ay, Caesar, this is he. Cws. Let him be whipped. Lictors, go take him hence. And, Lupus, for your fierce credulity, One fit him with a pair of larger ears : ’Tis Caesar’s doom, and must not be revoked. We hate to have our court and peace disturb’d With these quotidian clamours. See it done. Lup. Caesar! {Exeunt some of the Lictors, with Lupus and iEsop. Cces. Gag him, [that] we may have his silence. Virg. Caesar hath done like Caesar. Fair and just Is his award, against these brainless creatures. Tis not the wholesome sharp morality, Or modest anger of a satiric spirit, That hurts or wounds the body of the state ; But the sinister application Of the malicious, ignorant, and base Interpreter; who will distort, and strain The general scope and purpose of an author To his particular and private spleen. Coes. We know it, our dear Virgil, and esteem it A most dishonest practice in that man, Will seem too witty in another’s work. What would Cornelius Gallus, and Tibullus ? {They whisper C.usar. Tuc. [to Mec^enas.] Nay, but as thou art a man, dost hear ! a man of worship and honourable : hold, here, take thy chain again. Resume, mad Mecaenas. What! dost thou think I meant to have kept it, old boy ? no: I did it but to fright thee, I, to try how thouwould’st take it. What! will I turn shark upon my friends, or my friends’ friends ? I scorn it with my three souls. Come, I love bully Horace as well as thou dost, I : ’tis an honest hieroglyphic. Give me thy wrist, He¬ licon. Dost thou think I’ll second e’er a rhinoceros of them all, against thee, ha? or thy noble Hippo- crene, here ? I’ll turn stager first, and be whipt too : dost thou see, bully ? Cobs. You have your will of Caesar: use it, Romans. Virgil shall be your praetor : and ourself Will here sit by, spectator of your sports ; And think it no impeach of royalty. Our ear is now too much profaned, grave Maro, With these distastes, to take thy sacred lines : Put up thy book, till both the time and we Be fitted with more hallow’d circumstance For the receiving so divine a work. Proceed with your design. Mec. Gal. Tib. Thanks to great Caesar. Gal. Tibullus, draw you the indictment then, whilst Horace arrests them on the statute of Calumny. Mecaenas and I will take our places here. Lictors, assist him. Hor. I am the worst accuser under heaven. Gal. Tut, you must do it; ’twill be noble mirth. Hor. I take no knowledge that they do malign Tib. Ay, but the world takes knowledge, [me. llor. Would the world knew How heartily I wish a fool should hate me ! Tuc. Body of Jupiter! what! will they arraign my brisk Poetaster and his poor journeyman, ha ? Would I were abroad skeldering for a drachm, so I were out of this labyrinth again! I do feel my¬ self turn stinkard already: but I must set the best face I haveupon’t now. [Aside.~\ —Well said, my divine, deft Horace, bring the whoreson de¬ tracting slaves to the bar, do ; make them hold up their spread golls : I’ll give in evidence for thee, if thou wilt. Take courage, Crispinus ; would thy man had a clean band ! Cris. What must we do, captain ? Tuc. Thou shalt see anon : do not make divi¬ sion with thy legs so. Coes. What’s he, Horace ? Hor. I only know him for a motion, Caesar. Tuc. I am one of thy commanders, Caesar; a man of service and action : my name is Pantilius Tucca; I have served in thy wars against Mark Antony, I. Coes. Do you know him, Cornelius ? Gal. He’s one that hath had the mustering, or convoy of a company now and then : I never noted him by any other employment. Coes. We will observe him better. Tib. Lictor, proclaim silence in the court. Lict. In the name of Caesar, silence ! Tib. Let the parties, the accuser and the ac¬ cused, present themselves. Lict. The accuser and the accused, present yourselves in court. Cris. Hem. Here. Virg. Read the indictment. Tib. Rufus Laberius Crispinus , and Demetrius Fannius, hold up your hands. You are, before this time , jointly and severally indicted, and here presently to be arraigned upon the statute of ca¬ lumny, or Lex. Remmia, the one by the name of Rufus Laberius Crispinus, alias Cri-spinas, poetaster and plagiary ; the other by the name of Demetrius Fannius , play-dresser and plagiary. That you (not having the fear of Phoebus, or his shafts, before your eyes) contrary to the peace of our liege lord, Augustus Ccesar, his crown and dig¬ nity, and against the form of a statute, in that case made and provided, have most ignorantly, foolishly, and, more like yourselves, maliciously, gone about to deprave, and calumniate the person and writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, here present, poet, and priest to the Muses ; and to that end have mutually conspired and plotted , at sundry times, as by several means, and in sundry places, for the better accomplishing your base and envious purpose ; taxing him falsely, of self-love, arro- gancy, impudence, railing, filching by translation, <$c. Of all which calumnies, and every of them, in manner and form aforesaid; what answer you ? Are you guilty, or not guilty ? Tuc. Not guilty, say. Cris. Dem. Not guilty. k Tib. How will you be tried? 130 THE POETASTER. ACT V. Tuc. By the Roman Gods, and the noblest Romans. [Aside to Crispi.vus. Cris. Bern. By the Roman gods, and (he noblest Romans. Virg. Here sits Meccenas, and Cornelius Gal- lus, are you contented to be tried by these ? Tuc. Ay, so the noble captain may be joined with them in commission, say. [Aside. Cris Dcm. Ay, so the noble captain may be joined with them in commission. Virg. What says the plaintiff? Hor. I am content. Virg. Captain, then take your place. Tuc. Alas, my worshipful praetor ! ’tis more of thy gentleness than of my deserving, I wusse. But since it hath pleased the court to make choice of my wisdom and gravity, come, my calumnious varlets ; let’s hear you talk for yourselves, now, an hour or two. What can you say ? Make a noise. Act, act! Virg. Stay, turn, and take an oath first. You shall swear, By thunder-darting Jove, the king of gods, And by the genius of Augustus Ccssar ; By your own ivhite and uncorrupted souls, And the deep reverence of our Homan justice ; To judge this case, with truth and equity : As bound by your religion, and your laws. Now read the evidence : but first demand Of either prisoner, if that writ be theirs. [Gives him two papers. Tib. Shew this unto Crispinus. Is it yours ? Tuc. Say, ay. [ Aside .]—What! dost thou stand upon it, pimp ? Do not deny thine own Minerva, thy Pallas, the issue of thy brain. Cris. Yes it is mine. Tib. Shew that unto Demetrius. Is it yours ? Dem. It is. Tuc. There’s a father will net deny his own bastard now, I warrant thee. Virg. Read them aloud. Tib. Ramp up my genius, be not retrograde ; But boldly nominate a spade a spade. What, shall thy lubrical and glibbery muse Live, as she ivere defunct, like punk in stews ! Tuc. Excellent ! Alas ! that ivere no modern consequence. To have cothurnal buskins frighted hence. No, teach thy Incubus to poetize ; Ami throw abroad thy spurious snotteries, Upon that puft-up lump of balmy froth, Tuc. Ah, Ah ! Or clumsy chilblain'd judgment; that with oath Magnijicates his merit; and bespaivls The conscious time, with humourous foam and As if his organons of sense would crack [brawls, The sinews of my patience. Break his back, O poets all and some ! for now we list Of strenuous vengeance to clutch the fist. Crispinus. Tuc. Av, marry, this was written like a Her- cules in poetry, now. Cces. Excellently well threaten’d ! Virg. And as strangely worded, Caesar. Cces. We observe it. Virg. The other now. Tuc. This is a fellow of a good prodigal tongue too, this will do well. Tib. Our Muse, is in mind for th' untrussing a poet; I slip by his name, for most men do know it: A critic, that all the world bescumbers With satiric il humours and lyrical numbers : Tuc. Art thou there, boy ? And for the most part, himself doth advance With much self-love, and more arrogance. Tuc. Good again ! And, but that I would not be thought a prater, I could tell you he ivere a translator. I know the authors from whence he has stole, And could trace him too, but that I understand them not full and whole. Tuc. That line is broke loose from all his fel¬ lows : chain him up shorter, do. The best note I can give you to know him by, Is, that he keeps gallants' company ; Whom I could wish, in time should him fear ,' Lest after they buy repentance too dear. Deme. Fannius. Tuc. Well said ! This carries palm with it. Hor. And why, thou motley gull, why should they fear ? When hast thou known us wrong or tax a friend ? I dare thy malice to betray it. Speak. Now thou curl’st up, thou poor and nasty snake, And shrink’st thy poisonous head into thy bosom: Out, viper ! thou that eat’st thy parents, hence ! Rather, such speckled creatures, as thyself, Should be eschew’d, and shunn’d ; such as will bite Andgnaw their absent friends, not cure their fame ; Catch at the loosest laughters, and affect To be thought jesters ; such as can devise Things never seen, or heard, t’impair men’s names, And gratify their credulous adversaries ; Will carry tales, do basest offices, Cherish divided fires, and still encrease New flames, out of old embers ; will reveal Each secret that’s committed to their trust: These be black slaves ; Romans, take heed of these. Tuc. Thou twang’st right, little Horace : they be indeed a couple of chap-fall’n curs. Come, we of the bench, let’s rise to the urn, and con¬ demn them quickly. Virg. Before you go together, worthy Romans, We are to tender our opinion; And give you those instructions, that may add Unto your even judgment in the cause : Which thus we do commence. First, you must know, That where there is a true and perfect merit, There can be no dejection ; and the scorn Of humble baseness, oftentimes so works In a high soul, upon the grosser spirit, That to his bleared and offended sense, There seems a hideous fault blazed in the object; When only the disease is in his eyes. Here-hence it comes our Horace now stands tax’d Of impudence, self-love, and arrogance, By those who share no merit in themselves ; And therefore think his portion is as small. For they, from their own guilt, assure their souls, If they should confidently praise their works, In them it would appear inflation : Which, in a full and well digested man, Cannot receive that foul abusive name, But the fair title of erection. And, for his true use of translating men, It still hath been a work of as much palm, 1 In clearest judgments, as to invent or make. SCENE I. THE POETASTER. 131 His sharpness,—that is most excusable ; As being forced out of a suffering virtue, Oppressed with the license of the time : And howsoever fools or jerking pedants, Players, or such like buffoon barking wits, May with their beggarly and barren trash Tickle base vulgar ears, in their despite ; This, like Jove’s thunder, shall their pride control, “ The honest satire hath the happiest soul.” Now, Romans, you have heard our thoughts ; withdraw when you please. Tib. Remove the accused from the bar. Tuc. Who holds the urn to us, ha ? Fear no¬ thing, I’ll quit vou, mine honest pitiful stinkards ; I’ll do’t. Cris. Captain, you shall eternally girt me to you, as I am generous. Tuc. Go to. Cess. Tibullus, let there be a case of vizards privately provided; we have found a subject to bestow them on. Tib. It shall be done, Caesar. Cces. Here be words, Horace, able to bastinado a man’s ears. Her. Ay. Please it, great Cresar, I have pills about me, Mixt with the whitest kind of hellebore, Would give him a light vomit, that should purge His brain and stomach of those tumorous heats : Might I have leave to minister unto him. Cces. O, be his Aesculapius, gentle Horace ! You shall have leave, and he shall be vour patient. Virgil, Use your authority, command him forth. Virg. Cresar is careful of your health, Crispinus; And hath himself chose a physician To minister unto you : take his pills. IIor. Tney are somewhat bitter, sir, but very \ wholesome. Take yet another; so : stand by, they’ll work anon. Tib. Romans, return to your several seats : lie- tors, bring forward the urn; and set the accused to the bar. Tuc. Quickly, you whoreson egregious varlets ; come forward. What! shall we sit all day upon you? You make no more haste now, than a beggar upon pattens ; or a physician to a patient that has no money, you pilchers. Tib. Rufus Laberius Crispinus, and Demetrius Fannius, hold up your hands. You have, accord¬ ing to the Roman custom, put yourselves upon trial to the urn, for divers and sundry calumnies, whereof you have , before this time , been indicted, and are now presently arraigned: prepare your¬ selves to hearken to the verdict of your tryers. Cuius Cilnius Meccenas pronounceth you, by this hand-writing, guilty. Cornelius Callus, guilty. Pantilius Tucca - Tuc. Parcel-guilty, I. Bern. He means himself; for it was he indeed Suborn’d us to the calumny. Tuc. I, you whoreson cantharides ! was it I ? Dem. I appeal to your conscience, captain. Tib. Then you confess it. now ? Dem. I do, and crave the mercy of the court. Tib. What saith Crispinus ? Cris. O, the captain, the captain- Ilor. My physic begins to work with my patient, l see. Virg. Captain, stand forth and answer. Tuc. Hold thy peace, poet praetor: I appeal from thee to Caesar, I. Do me right, royal Caesar. Cces. Marry, and I will, sir.—Lictors, gag him ; And put a case of vizards o’er his head, [do. That he may look bifronted, as he speaks. Tuc. Gods and fiends 1 Caesar ! thou wilt not, Caesar, wilt thou ? Away, you whoreson vultures ; away. You think I am a dead corps now, because Caesar is disposed to jest with a man of mark, or so. Held your hook’d talons out of my flesh, you inhuman harpies. Go to, do’t. What! will the royal Augustus cast away a gentleman of worship, a captain and a commander, for a couple of con¬ demn’d caitiff calumnious cargos? Cces. Dispatch, lictors. Tuc. Caesar ! {The vizards arc put upon him. Cces. Forward, Tibullus. Virg. Demand what cause they had to malign Horace. Dem. In troth, no great cause, not I, I must confess ; but that he kept better company, for the most part, than I ; and that better men loved him than loved me ; and that his writings thrived better than mine, and were better liked and graced: nothing else. Virg. Thus envious souls repine at others good. Hor. If this be all, faith, I forgive thee freely. Envy me still, so long as Virgil loves me, Gallus, Tibullus, and the best-best Ceesar, My dear Mecaenas ; while these, with many more, Whose names I wisely slip, shall think me worthy Their honour’d and adored society, And read and love, prove and applaud my poems ; I would not wish but such as you should spite them. Cris. O-! Tib. How now, Crispinus ? Cris. O, 1 am sick-! Hor. A bason, a bason, quickly ; our physic works. Faint not, man. Cris. O —retrograde - reciprocal — -incubus. Cces. What’s that, Horace ? Hor. Retrograde, reciprocal, and incubus, are come up. Gal. Thanks be to Jupiter! Cris. O- glibbery—lubriccil — defunct —0— ! Hor. Well said; here’s some store. Virg. What are they ? Hor. Glibbery, lubriccil , and defunct. Gal. O, they came up easy. Cris. O-O-! Tib. What’s that ? Hor. Nothing yet. Cris. Magnijicate - Mec. Magnijicate! That came up somewhat hard. Hor. Ay. What cheer, Crispinus ? Cris. O ! I shall cast up my— spurious — snot- tcries — Hor. Good. Again. Cris. Chilblain’d -O-O- clumsie - Hor. That clumsie stuck terribly. Mec. What’s all that, Horace? Hor. Spurious, snotteries, chilblain’d, clumsie . Tib. O Jupiter! Gal. Who would have thought there should have been such a deal of filth in a poet? Cris. O- balmy froth - Cces. What’s that ? Cris. — Puffic — inflate — turgidous—venlosily . K a ]y2 THE POETASTER. act v. Ilor. Barmy froth, puffie, inflate , turgidous, and vmtosity are come up. Tib. 0 terrible windy words. Gal. A sign of a windy brain. Cris. 0- oblatrant - fur ibund - fatuate - strenuous - Hor. Here’s a deal )oblatrant,furibund, fatuate, strenuous. Cces. Now all’s come up, I trow. What a tumult he had in his belly ? Hor. No, there’s the often conscious damp be¬ hind still. Cris. 0- conscious - damp. Hor. It is come up, thanks to Apollo and A3s- culapius : yet there’s another ; you were best take a pill more. Cris. 0, no ; 0-0-0-0-0 ! Hor. Force yourself then a little with your finger. Cris. 0-0- prorumped. Tib. Prorumped ! What a noise it made ! as if his spirit would have prorumpt with it. Cris. 0 0 0 ! Virg. Help him, it sticks strangely, whatever it is. Cris. 0- clutcht. Hor. Now it is come ; clutcht. Caes. Clutcht! it is well that’s come up; it had but a narrow passage. Cris. 0-! Virg. Again ! hold him, hold his head there. Cris. Snarling gusts - quaking custard. Hor. How now, Crispinus ? Cris. 0- obstupefacl. Tib. Nay, that are all we, I assure you. Hor. IIow do you feel yourself ? Cris. Pretty and well, I thank you. Virg. These pills can but restore him for a time, Not cure him quite of such a malady, Caught by so many surfeits, which have fill'd His blood and brain thus full of crudities : ’Tis necessary therefore he observe A strict and wholesome diet. Look you take Each morning of old Cato’s principles A good draught next your heart; that walk upon, Till it be well digested : then come home, And taste a piece of Terence, suck his phrase Instead of liquorice ; and, at any hand, Shun Plautus and old Ennius : they are meats Too harsh for a weak stomach. Use to read (But not without a tutor) the best Greeks, As Orpheus, Musseus, Pindarus, Hesiod Callimachus, and Theocrite, High Homer ; but beware of Lycophron, He is too dark and dangerous a dish. You must not hunt for wild outlandish terms, To stuff' out a peculiar dialect; But let your matter run before your words. And if at any time you chance to meet Some Gallo-Belgic phrase, you shall not straight Rack your poor verse to give it entertainment, But let it pass ; and do not think yourself Much damnified, if you do leave it out, When nor your understanding, nor the sense Could well receive it. This fair abstinence, In time, will render you more sound and clear : And this have I prescribed to you, in place Of a strict sentence ; which till he perform, Attire him in that robe. And henceforth learn To bear yourself more humbly ; not to swell, Or breathe your insolent and idle spite On him whose laughter can your worst affright. Tib. Take him away. Cris. Jupiter guard Caesar ! Virg. And for a week or two see him lock’d up In some dark place, removed from company ; He will talk idly else after his physic. Now to you, six', [/o Demetrius.] The extremity Awards you to be bi'anded in the front, [of lav For this your calumny : but since it pleaseth Hoi'ace, the party wrong’d, t’ inti'eat of Caesar A mitigation of that juster doom, With Caesar’s tongue thus we pronounce your sen¬ tence. Demetrius Fannius, thou shalt here put on That coat and cap, and henceforth think thyself No other than they make thee ; vow to wear them In every fair and generous assembly, Till the best sort of minds shall take to knowledge As well thy satisfaction, as thy wi’ongs. Hor. Only, grave pi'aetor, hei'e, in open court, I ci'ave the oath for good behaviour May be administer’d unto them both. Virg. Hox'ace, it shall: Tibullus, give it them. Tib. Rufus Laberius Crispinus, and Demetrius Fannius, lay your hands on your hearts. You shall here solemnly attest and sivear, that never , after this instant, either at booksellers' stalls, in taverns, two-penny rooms, tyi ing-houses, noblemen's but¬ teries, puisnes chambers, ( the best and farthest places where you are admitted to come,) you shall once offer or dare ( thereby to endear yourself the more to any player , enghle, or guilty gull in your company) to malign, traduce, or detract the per¬ son or writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus, or any oilier eminent man, transcending you in merit, whom your envy shall find cause to work upon, either for that, or for keeping himself in better ac¬ quaintance, or enjoying better friends ; or if, transported by any sudden and desperate resolu¬ tion, you do, that then you shall not under the batoon, or in the next presence, being an honour¬ able assembly of his favourers, be brought as voluntary gentlemen to undertake the forswearing of it. Neither shall you, at any time, ambitiously affecting the title of the Untrussers or Whip per* of the age, suffer the itch of writing to over-run your performance in libel, upon pain of being taken up for lepers in wit , and, losing both your time ancl your papers, be irrecoverably forfeited to the hospital of fools. So help you our Roman gods and the Genius of great Ccesar. Virg. So ! now dissolve the court. Hor. Tib. Gal. Mec. And thanks to Caesar, That thus hath exercised his patience. Cces. We have, indeed, you worthiest fi’iends of It is the bane and torment of our eai’s, [Csesai* To hear the discoi’ds of those jangling l'hymers, That with their bad and scandalous pi’actices Bring all time arts and learning in contempt. But let not your high thoughts descend so low As these despised objects ; let them fall, With their flat groveling souls: be you yourselves j And as with our best favours you stand crown’d, So let your mutual loves be still renown’d. Envy will dwell where there is want of merit. Though the deserving man should crack his spirit* Blush, folly, blush ; here’s none that fears The wagging of an ass’s ears, Although a wolfish case he wears. SCENE X. THE POETASTER. 1.3. O c ) Detraction is but baseness’ varlct; And apes are apes, though clothed in scarlet. _ [ Exeunt. Rumpatur, quisquis rumpitur invidia. “ Here, reader, in place of the epilogue, was meant to thee an apology from the author, with his reasons for the publishing of this book : but, since he is no less restrained, than thou deprived of it by authority, he prays thee to think charitably of what thou hast read, till thou mayest hear him speak what he hath written.” HORACE AND TREBATIUS. A DIALOGUE. Sat. 1. Lib. 2. Hor. There are to whom I seem excessive sour, And past a satire's law t’ extend my power : Others, that think whatever I have writ Wants pith and matter to eternize it; And that they could, in one day’s light, disclose A thousand verses, such as I compose. What shall Ido, Trebatius ? say. Treb. Surcease. Hor. And shall my muse admit no more in- Treb. So I advise. [crease ? Hor. An ill death let me die, If 'twere not best; but sleep avoids mine eye, And I use these, lest nights should tedious seem. Treb. Rather, contend to sleep, and live like them, That, holding golden sleep in special price, Rubb’d with sweet oils, swim silver Tyber thrice, And every even with neat wine steeped be : Or, if such love of writing ravish thee, Then dare to sing unconquer’d Caesar’s deeds ; Who cheers such actions with abundant meeds. Hor. That, father, I desire ; but, when I try, I feel defects in every faculty : Nor is’t a labour fit for every pen, To paint the horrid troops of armed men, The lances burst, in Gallia’s slaughter’d forces ; Or wounded Parthians, tumbled from their horses : Great Caesar’s wars cannot be fought with words. Treb. Yet, what his virtue in his peace affords, His fortitude and justice thou canst show As wise Lucilius honour’d Scipio. Hor. Of that, my powers shall suffer no neglect, When such slight labours may aspire respect: But, if 1 watch not a most chosen time, The humble words of Flaccus cannot climb Th’ attentive ear of Caesar ; nor must I With less observance shun gross flattery : For he, reposed safe in his own merit, Spurns back the gloses of a fawning spirit. Treb. But how much better would such accents sound Than with a sad and serious verse to wound Pantolabus, railing in his saucy jests, Or Nomentanus spent in riotous feasts ? In satires, each man, though untouch’d, complains As he were hurt; and hates such biting strains. Hor. What shall I do ? Milonius shakes his heels In ceaseless dances, when his brain once feels The stirring fervour of the wine ascend; And that his eyes false numbers apprehend. Castor his horse, Pollux loves handy-fights ; A thousand heads, a thousand choice delights. My pleasure is in feet my words to close, As, both our better, old Lucilius does: He, as his trusty friends, his books did trust With all his secrets; nor, in things unjust, Or actions lawfful, ran to other men : So that the old man’s life described, was seen As in a votive table in his lines : And to his steps my genius inclines ; Lucanian, or Apulian, I know not whether, For the Venusian colony ploughs either ; Sent thither, when the Sabines were forced thence, As old Fame sings, to give the place defence ’Gainst such as, seeing it empty, might make road Upon the empire; or there fix abode : Whether the Apulian borderer it were, Or the Lucanian violence they fear.— But this my style no living man shall touch, If first I be not forced by base reproach ; But like a sheathed sword it shall defend My innocent life ; for why should I contend To draw it out, when no malicious thief Robs my good name, the treasure of my life ? O Jupiter, let it with rust be eaten, Before it touch, or insolently threaten The life of any with the least disease ; So much I love, and woo a general peace. But, he that wrongs me, better, I proclaim, He never had assay’d to touch my fame. For he shall weep, and walk with every tongue Throughout the city, infamously sung. Servius the prtetor threats the laws, and urn, If any at his deeds repine or spurn ; The witch Canidia, that Albutius got, Denounceth witchcraft, where she loveth not; Thurius the judge, doth thunder worlds of ill, To such as strive with his judicial will. All men affright their foes in what they may, Nature commands it, and men must obey. Observe with me : The wolf his tooth doth use, The bull his horn; and who doth this infuse, But nature ? There’s luxurious Scaeva ; trust His long-lived mother with him ; his so just And scrupulous right-hand no mischief will; No more than with his heel a wolf will kill, Or ox with jaw : marry, let him alone With temper’d poison to remove the croan. But briefly, if to age I destined be, Or that quick death’s black wings environ me ; If rich, or poor ; at Rome ; or fate command I shall be banished to some other land ; What hue soever my whole state shall bear, I will write satires still, in spite of fear. Treb. Horace, I fear thou draw’st no lasting breath; And that some great man’s friend will be thy death. Hor. What! when the man that first did satirize Durst pull the skin over the ears of vice, And make who stood in outward fashion clear, Give place, as foul within ; shall I forbear? Did Lselius, or the man so great with fame, That from sack’d Carthage fetch’d his worthy name, Storm that Lucilius did Metellus pierce. Or bury Lupus quick in famous verse ? Rulers and subjects, by whole tribes he checkt, But virtue and her friends did still protect: And when from sight, or from the judgment-seat, The virtuous Scipio and wise Laelius met, Unbraced, with him in all light sports they shared, Till their most frugal suppers were prepared. JJ34 THE POETASTER. Whate’er I am, though both for wealth and wit Beneath Lucilius I am pleased to sit; Yet Envy, spite of her empoison’d breast, Shall say, I lived in grace here with the best; And seeking in weak trash to make her wound, Shall find me solid, and her teeth unsound : ’Less learn’d Trebatius’ censure disagree. Treb. No, Horace, I of force must yield to thee ; Only take heed, as being advised by me, Lest thou incur some danger : better pause, Than rue thy ignorance of the sacred laws ; There’s justice, and great action may be sued ’Gainst such as wrong men’s fames with verses lewd. Ilor. Ay, with lewd verses, such as libels be, And aim’d at persons of good quality : I reverence and adore that just decree. But if they shall be sharp, yet modest rhymes, That spare men’s persons, and but tax their crimes, Such shall in open court find current pass, Were Caesar judge, and with the maker’s grace. Treb. Nay, I’ll add more; if thou thyself, being Shall tax in person a man fit to bear [clear, Shame and reproach, his suit shall quickly be Dissolved in laughter, and thou thence set free. TO TIIE READER. If, by looking on what is past, thou hast deserved that name, I am willing thou should’st yet know more, by that which follows, an Apologetical Dialogue; which was only once spoken upon the stage, and all the answer I ever gave to sundry impotent libels then cast out (and some yet remaining) against me, and this play. Wherein I take no pleasure to revive the times; but that posterity may make a difference between their manners that provoked me then, and mine that neglected them ever. For, in these strifes, and on such persons, were as wretched to affect a victory, cs it is unhappy to be committed with them. Non annorum canities est laudanda, sed morum. SCENE, The Author’s Lodgings. Enter Nasutus and Polyposes. Nas. I -pray you, let's go see him, how he looks After these libels. Pol. O vex'd, vex'd, I warrant you. Nas. Doyou think so ?■ I should be sorry for him, If I found that. Pol. O, they are such bitter things, He cannot choose. Nas. But, is he guilty of them ? Pol. Fuh ! that's no matter. Nas. No ! Pol. A’o. Here's his lodging. We'll steal upon him : or lei's listen ; stay. He has a humour oft to talk t' himself. Nas. They are your manners lead me, not mine own. [They come forward ; the scene opens, and discovers the Author in his study. Aut. The fates have not spun him the coarsest thread, That (free from knots of perturbation ) Doth yet so live, although but to himself, As he can safely scorn the tongues of slaves, And neglect fortune, more than she can him. It is the happiest thing this, not to be Within the reach of malice ; it provides A man so well, to laugh off injuries ; And never sends him farther for his vengeance, Than the vex'd bosom of his enemy. I, now, but think how poor their spite sets off. Who , after all their waste of sulphurous terms, And burst-out thunder of their charged mouths, Have nothing' left but the unsavoury smoke Of their black vomit, to upbraid themselves : Whilst I, at whom they shot, sit here shot-free, And as unhurt of envy, as unhit. [Pol. and Nas. discover themselves. Pol. Ay, but (he multitude they think not so, sir; They think you hit, and hurt: and dare give out, Your silence argues it in not rejoining To this or that late libel. Aut. 'Las, good rout l I can afford them leave to err so still ; And like the barking students of Bears-college. To swallow up the garbage of the time With greedy gullets, whilst myself sit by, Pleased, and yet tortured, with their beastly feeding. ' Tis a sweet madness runs along with them, ■ To think, all that are aim'd at still are struck : Then , where the shaft still lights, make that the mark: And so each fear or fever-shaken fool May challenge Tcucer's hand in archery. Good troth, if I knew any man so vile. To act the crimes these Whippcrs reprehend, Or what their servile apes gesticulate, I should not then much muse their shreds ivere liked; Since ill men have a lust t' hear others sins. And good men have a zeal to hear sin shamed. But when it is all excrement they vent, Base filth and offal ; or thefts, notable As ocean-piracies, or highway-stands ; And not a crime there tax'd, but is their own, Or what their own foul thoughts suggested to them ; A nd that, in all their heat of taxing others, Not one of them but lives himself, if known, Improbior satiram scribente ciiuedo. What should I say more, than turn stone with wonder ! Nas. I never saw this play bred all this tumult: What was there in it could so deeply offend, And stir so many hornets ? Aut. Shall I tell you ? Nas. Yes, and ingenuously. Aut. Then, by the hope Which I prefer unto all other objects, I can profess, I never writ that piece More innocent or empty of offence. Some salt it had, but neither tooth nor gall, Nor teas there in it any circumstance Which, in the setting down, I could suspect Might be perverted by an enemy's tongue ; Only it had the fault to be call'd mine ; That ivas the crime. Pol. No ! why, they say you tax'd The law and lawyers, captains and the players. By their particular names. Aut. It is not so. I used no name. My books have still been taught To spare the persons, and to speak the vices. These are mere slanders, and enforced by such As have no safer ways to men's disgraces. But their own lies and loss of honesty : Fellows of practised and most laxative tongues , II hose empty and eager bellies, in the year, THE POETASTER. 135 Compel their brains to many desperate shifts, (I spare to name them, for their wretchedness Fury itself ivoidd pardon.) These, or such, Whether of malice, or of ignorance. Or itch t' have me their adversary, I knoio not, Or all these mixt; but sure I am, three years They did provoke me with their petulant styles On every stage : and I at last unwilling. But weary, I confess, of so much trouble. Thought I would try if shame could win upon 'em ; And therefore chose Augustus Caesar's times, IVhen ivit and arts were at their height in Rome, To shew that Virgil, Horace, ana the rest Of those great master-spirits, did not want Detractors then, or practicers against them : And by this line, although no parallel, I hoped at last they would sit down and blush ; But nothing I could find more contrary. And though the impudence of fies be great , Yet this hath so provok'd the angry wasps, Or, as you said, of the next nest, the hornets, That they fly buzzing, mad, about my nostrils, And, like so many screaming grasshoppers Held by the icings, fill every ear with noise. And what? those former calumnies you mention'd. First, of the law : indeed I brought in Ovid Ch id by his angry father for neglecting The study of their laws for poetry : And I am warranted by his own words : Saepe pater dixit, studium quid inutile tentas ? Maeonides nullas ipse reliquit opes. And in far harsher terms elsewhere, as these : Non me verbosas leges ediscere, non me Ingrato voces prostituisse foro. But hoiv this should relate unto our laws, Or the just ministers, with least abuse, I reverence both too much to understand! Then, for the captain, I will only speak An epigram Ihere have made : it i-s Unto true Soldiers. That's the lemma: markit. Strength of my country, whilst I bring to view Such as are mis-call’d captains, and wrong you, And your high names ; I do desire, that thence, Be nor put on you, nor you take offence : I swear by your true friend, my muse, I love Your great profession which I once did prove ; And did not shame it with my actions then, No more than I dare now do with my pen. He that not trusts me, having vow’d thus much, But’s angry for the captain, still : is such. Note for the players, it is true, I tax'd them, And yet but some ; and those so sparingly. As all the rest might have sat still unquestion'd, Had they but had the wit or conscience To think well of themselves. But impotent, they Thought each man's vice belong'd to their whole tribe ; And much good do't them ! What they have done ’gainst me, I am not moved with: if it gave them meat. Or got them clothes, 'tis well; that was their end. Only amongst them, I am sorry for Some better natures, by the rest so drawn, To run in that vile line. Pol. And is this all! Will you not answer then the libels ? Aut. No. Pol. Nor the Untrusscrs ? Aut. Neither. Pol. Y'are undone then. Aut. With whom ? Pol. The ivorId. Aut. The bawd ! Pol. It will be taken To be stupidity or tameness in you. Aut. Rut they that have incensed me, can in soul Acquit me of that guilt. They knoiv I dare To spurn or baffle them, or squirt their eyes With ink or urine ; or I could do worse, Arm'd with Archilochus' Jury, icrite Iambics, Should make the desperate lashers hang themselves ; Rhirne them to death, as they do Irish rats In drumming tunes. Or, living, I could stamp Their foreheads with those deep and public brands, That the whole company of barber-surgeons Should not take off, with all their art and plasters. And these my prints should last, still to be read In their pale fronts ; ivhen, what they write 'gainst me Shall, like a figure drawn in ivater, fleet. And the poor wretched papers be employed To clothe tobacco, or some cheaper drug : This I could do and make them infamous. But, to what end ? when their own deeds have mark'd 'em ; And that I know, within his guilty breast Each slanderer bears a whip that shall torment him Worse than a million of these temporal plagues : Which to pursue, were but a feminine humour, And far beneath the dignity of man. Nas. 'Tis true ; for to revenge their injuries, Were to confess you felt them. Let them go. And use the treasure of the fool, their tongues, Who makes his gain, by speaking ivorst of best. Pol. 0, but they lay particular imputations - Aut. As what? Pol. That all your writing is mere railing. Aut. Ha ? If all the salt in the old comedy Should be so censured, or the sharper wit Of the'bold satire termed scolding rage, What age could then compare with those for buffoons ? What should be said of Aristophanes, Fersius, or Juvenal, whose names we now So glorify in schools, at least pretend it ?— Have they no other ? Pol. Yes ; they sag you are slow, And scarce bring forth a play a year. Aut. ’ Tis true. I would they could not say that I did that! There's all the joy that I take in their trade, Unless such scribes as these might be proscribed 7'h' abused theatres. They would think it strange, now, A man should take but colts-foot for one day f And, between whiles, spit out a better poem Than e'er the master of art, or giver of wit. Their belly, made. Yet, this is possible, If a free mind had but the patience, To think so much together and so vile. But that these base and beggarly conceits Should carry it, by the multitude of voices. Against the most abstracted work, opposed To the stuff'd nostrils of the drunken rout ! 0, this tcould make a team'd and liberal soul TI1E POETASTER, xati To rive his stained quill up to the back, And damn his long-watch d labours to the fire ; Things that were born when none but the still night And his dumb candle , saw his pinching throes ; Were not his own free merit a more crown Unto his travails than their reeling claps. This 'tis that strikes me silent, seals my lips. And apis me rather to sleep out my time, Than I would waste it in contemned strifes With these vile Ibides, these unclean birds, That make their mouths their clysters, and still purge From their hot entrails. But I leave the monsters To their own fate. And, since the Comic Muse Hath proved so ominous to me, I will try If Tragedy have a more kind aspect; Her favours in my next I will pursue , I j i Where, if I prove the pleasure but of one, So lie judicious be, he shall be alone A theatre unto me ; Once I'll say To strike the ear of time in those fresh strains , As shall, beside the cunning of their ground , Give cause to some of ivonder, some despite , And more despair, to imitate their sound. I , that spend half my nights, and all my days, Here in a cell, to get a dark pale face, To come forth worth the ivy or the bays, And in this age can hope no other grace — Leave me ! There's something come into my thought , That must and shall be sung high and aloof, Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof. Naa. I reverence these raptures, and obey them. [The ecene closes. I : SEJANUS: HIS FALL. TO THE NO LESS NOBLE BY VIRTUE TIIAxN BLOOD, ESME LORD AUBIGNY. My Lord, —If ever any ruin were so great as to survive, I thirjc this be one I send you, The Fad of Scjanua It is a poem, that, if I well remember, in your lordship’s sight, suffered no less violence from our people here, than the subject of it did from the rage of the people of Rome; hut with a different fate, as, I hope, merit: for this hath outlived their malice, and begot itself a greater favour than he lost, the love of good men. Amongst whom, if I make your lordship the first it thanks, it is not without a just confession of the bond your benefits have, and ever shall hold upon me. Your lordship’s most faithful lionourer, Ben Jonson. TO THE READERS. The following and voluntary labours of my friends, prefixed to my book, have relieved me in much whereat, without them, I should necessarily have touched. Now I will only use tln-ee or four short and needful notes, and so rest. First, if it be objected, that what I publish is no true poem, in the strict laws of time, I confess it: as also in the want of a proper chorus ; whose habit and moods are such and so difficult, as not any, whom I have seen, since the ancients, no, not they who have most presently affected laws, have yet come in the way of. Nor is it needful, or almost possible in these our times, and to such auditors as commonly things are presented, to observe the old state and splendor of dramatic poems, with preservation of any popular delight. But of this I shall take more seasonable cause to speak, in my observations upon Horace his Art of Poetry, which, with the text translated, I intend shortly to publish. In the mean time, if in truth of argument, dignity of persons, gravity and height of elocution, fulness and frequency of sentence, I have discharged the other offices of a tragic writer, let not the absence of these forms be imputed to me, wherein I shall give you occasion hereafter, and without my boast, to think I could better prescribe, than omit the due use for want of a convenient knowledge. The next is, lest in some nice nostril the quotations might savour affected, I do let you know, that I abhor nothing more; and I have only done it to shew my integrity in the story, and save myself in those common torturers that bring all wit to the rack ; whose noses are over like swine, spoiling and rooting up the Muses’ gardens; and their whole bodies like moles, as blindly working under earth, to cast any, the least, hills upon virtue. Whereas they are in Latin, and the work in English, it was presupposed none but the learned would take the pains to confer them ; the authors thomselves being all in the learned tongues, save one, with whose English side I have had little to do. To which it may be required, since I have quoted the page, to name what editions I followed : Tacit. Lips, in quarto, Antwerp, edit. 1COO; Dio. folio, Hen. Steph. 1592. For the rest, as Sueton. Seneca, &c. the chapter doth sufficiently direct, or the edition is not varied. Lastly, I would inform you, that this book, in all numbers, is not the same with that which was acted on the public 6tage; wherein a second pen had good share : in place of which, I have rather chosen to put weaker, and, no doubt, less pleasing, of mine own, than to defraud so happy a genius of his right by my loathed usurpation. Fare you well, and if you read farther of me, and like, I shall not be afraid of it, though you praise me out. Neque enim mihi cornea fibra est. But that I should plant my felicity in your general saying, good, or well, &c. were a weakness which the better sort of you might worthily contemn, if not absolutely hate me for. jj en j ONSON . Quern Palma negata macrum, donata reducit opimum. and no such. THE ARGUMENT. jElius Sejanus, son to Seius Strabo, a gentleman of Rome, and born at Yulsinium ; after his long service in court, first under Augustus; afterward, Tiberius; grew into that favour with the latter, and won him by those arts, as there wanted nothing but the name to make him a co-partner of the empire. Which greatness of his, Drusus, the emperor’s con, not brooking; after many smothered dislikes, it one day breaking out, the prince struck him publicly cn the face. To revenge which dis¬ grace, Livia, the wife of Drusus (being before corrupted by him to her dishonour, and the discovery of her hus¬ band’s counsels) Sejanus practiscth with, together with her physician called Eudemus, and oneLygdus an eunuch, to poison Drusus. This their inhuman act having suc¬ cessful and unsuspected passage, it emboldeneth Sejanus to further and more insolent projects, even the ambition of the empire; where finding the lets he must encounter to be many and hard, in respect of the issue of Germani- cus, who were next in hope for the succession, he deviseth to make Tiberius’ self his means, and instils into his ears many doubts and suspicions, both against the princes, and their mother Agrippina ; which Caesar jealously hearken¬ ing to, as covetously consenteth to their ruin, and their friends. In this time, the better to mature and strengthen his design, Sejanus labours to marry Livia, and worketh with all his ingine, to remove Tiberius from the know- 138 SEJANUS. ACT I. ledge of public business, with allurements of a quiet and retired life ; the latter of which, Tiberius, out of a prone¬ ness to lust, and a desire to hide those unnatural pleasures which he could not so publicly practise, embraceth: the former enkindleth his fears, and there gives him first cause of doubt or suspect towards Sejanus : against whom he raiseth in private a new instrument, one Sertorius Macro, and by him underworlceth, discovers the other’s counsels, his means, his ends, sounds the affections of the senators, divides, distracts them : at last, when Seja¬ nus least looketh, and is most secure; with pretext of doing him an unwonted honour in the senate, he trains him from his guards, and with a long doubtful letter, in one day hath him suspected, accused, condemned, and torn in pieces by the rage of the people. DRAMATIS PERSONAS. Tiberius. Rufus. Opsius. Drusus senior. Sejanus. Nero. Latiaris. Tribuni. Drusus junior. Varro. Pro; cones. Caligula. Sertorius Macro. Flamen. Lucius Arruntius. Cotta. Tubicincs. Caius Silius. Domitius Afer. Nuntius. Titius Sabinus. IIaterius. Lictorcs. Marcus Lepidus. Sanquinius. Ministri. Cremutius Cordus. POMPONIUS. Tibicines. Asinius Gallus. Julius Posthumus. Servi, <$c. Regulus. Fulcinius Trio. Terentius. Minuti us. Agrippina Gracinus Laco. Satrius Secundus. Livia. Eudemus. Pinnarius Natta. SOS'A. SCENE, —Rome. ACT I. SCENE I.— A Slate Room in the Palace. Enter Sabinus and Silius , followed by Latiaris. Sab. Hail, Caius 1 Silius! Sil. Titius Sabinus, 1 2 hail! You’re rarely met in court. Sab. Therefore, well met. [sphere. Sil. ’Tis true : indeed, this place is not our Sab. No, Silius, we are no good inginers. We want their fine arts, and their thriving use Should make us graced, or favour’d of the times : We have no shift of faces, no cleft tongues. No soft and glutinous bodies, that can stick, Like snails on painted walls; or, on our breasts, Creep up, to fall from that proud height, to which We did by slavery, 3 not by service climb. We are no guilty men, and then no great; We have no place in court, office in state, That we can say, 4 we owe unto our crimes ; We burn with no black secrets, 5 which can make Us dear to the pale authors ; or live fear’d Of their still -waking jealousies, to raise Ourselves a fortune, by subverting theirs. We stand not in the lines, tha-t do advance To that so courted point. Enter Satrius and Natta, at a distance. Sil. But yonder lean A pair that do. Sab. [ salutes Latiaris.] Good cousin Latia¬ ris.- 6 1 De Caio Silio, vid. Tacit. Lips. edit, quarto; Arm. Lib. i. p. 11, Lib. ii. p. 28 et 33. 2 De Titio Sabino, vid. Tacit. Lib. iv. p. 79. • s Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. 2. 4 Juv. Sat. i. v. 75. 5 Juv. Sat. iii. v. 4.9, Ac. 6 De Latiari, cons. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 94, et Dion. Step. edit. fol. Lib. lviii. p. 711. Sil. Satrius Secundus, 7 and Pinnarius Natta. 8 The great Sejanus’ clients ; there be two, Know more than honest counsels ; whose close breasts, Were they ripp’d up to light, it would be found A poor and idle sin, to which their trunks Had not been made fit organs. These can lie, Flatter, and swear, forswear, deprave, 9 inform, Smile, and betray ; make guilty men ; then beg The forfeit lives, to get their livings ; cut Men’s throats with whisperings; sell to gaping suitors The empty smoke, that flies about the palace; Laugh when their patron laughs; sweat when he sweats; Be hot and cold with him ; change every mood, Habit, and garb, as often as he varies ; Observe him, as his watch observes his clock ; And, true, as turquoise in the dear lord’s ring, Look well or ill with him : 10 ready to praise His lordship, if he spit, or but p— fair, Have an indifferent stool, or break wind w-ell; Nothing can ’scape their catch. Sab. Alas ! these things Deserve no note, conferr’d with other vile And filthier flatteries, 11 that corrupt the times ; When, not alone our gentries chief are fain To make their safety from such sordid acts ; But all our consuls, 12 and no little part Of such as have been praetors, yea, the most Of senators, 13 that else not use their voices, 7 De Satrio Secundo, ct 8 Pinnario Natta, leg. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 83. Et de Satrio cons. Scncc. Consol, ad Marciam. 9 Vid. Sen. de Bencf. Lib. iii. cap. 28. 10 Juv. Sat. iii. ver. 105, Ac. 11 Vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. 3. 12 Tacit. Ann. Lib. iii. p. 09. 13 Pedarii. » scene i. SEJANUS. 133 Start up in public senate and there strive Who shall propound most abject things, and base. So much, as oft Tiberius hath been heard, Leaving the court, to cry, 1 0 race of men, Prepared for servitude !—which shew’d that he, Who least the public liberty could like, As lothly brook’d their flat servility. Sil. Well, all is worthy of us, were it more, Who with our riots, pride, and civil hate, Have so provok’d the justice of the gods : We, that, within these fourscore years, were born Free, equal lords of the triumphed world, And knew no masters, but affections ; To which betraying first our liberties, We since became the slaves to one man’s lusts ; And now to many : 2 every minist’ring spy That will accuse and swear, is lord of you, Of me, of all our fortunes and our lives. Our looks are call’d to question, 3 and our words, How innocent soever, are made crimes ; We shall not shortly dare to tell our dreams, Or think, but ’twill be treason. Sab. Tyrants arts Are to give flatterers grace ; accusers, power ; That those may seem to kill whom they devour. Enter Cordus and Arruntius. Now, good Cremutius Cordus. 4 Cor. [salutes Sabinus.] Hail to your lordship! Nat. [whispers Latiaris.] Who’s that salutes your cousin ? Lat. ’Tis one Cordus, A gentleman of Rome : one that has writ Annals of late, they say, and very well. Nat. Annals ! of what times ? Lat. I think of Pompey’s, 5 And Caius Caesar’s ; and so down to these. Nat. How stands he affected to the present state ? Is he or Drusian, fi or Germanican, Or ours, or neutral ? Lat. 1 know him not so far. Nat. Those times are somewhat queasy to be touch’d. IIa*ve you or seen, or heard part of his work ? Lat. Not I ; he means they shall be public shortly. Nat. 0, Cordus do you call him ? Lat. Ay. \Exeunt Natta and Satrius. Sab. But these our times Are not the same, Arruntius. 7 Arr. Times! the men, The men are not the same : ’tis we are base,. Poor, and degenerate from the exalted strain Of our great fathers. Where is now the soul Of god-like Cato ? he, that durst be good, When Caesar durst be evil ; and had power, As not to live his slave, to die his master ? Or where’s the constant Brutus, that being proof Against all charm of benefits, did strike So brave a blow into the monster’s heart That sought unkindly to captive his country ? 0, they are fled the light ! Those mighty spirits Lie raked up with their ashes in their urns, And not a spark of their eternal fire Glows in a present bosom. All’s but blaze, Flashes and smoke, wherewith we labour so, There’s nothing Roman in us ; nothing good, Gallant, or great : ’tis true that Cordus says, “ Brave Cassius was the last of all that race.’’ Drusus passes over the stage, attended by IIaterius, Ac Sab. Stand by ! lord Drusus. 8 Hat. The emperor’s son ! give place. Sil. I like the prince well. Arr. A riotous youth ; 9 There’s little hope of him. Sab. That fault his age Will, as it grows, correct. Methinks he bears Himself each day more nobly than other ; And wins no less on men’s affections, Than doth his father lose. Believe me, I love him ; And chiefly for opposing to Sejanus. 10 Sil. And I, for gracing his young kinsmen so, 11 The sons 12 of prince Germanicus : 13 it shews A gallant clearness in him, a straight mind, That envies not, in them, their father’s name. Arr. His name was, while he lived, above all envy; And, being dead, without it. 0, that man ! If there were seeds of the old virtue left, They lived in him. Sil. He had the fruits, Arruntius, More than the seeds : 14 Sabinus, and myself [him. Had means to know him within ; and can report We were his followers, he would call us friends ; He was a man most like to virtue ; in all, And every action, nearer to the gods, Than men, in nature ; of a body as fair As was his mind ; and no less reverend In face, than fame : 15 he could so use his state, Tempering his greatness with his gravity, As it avoided all self-love in him, And spite in others. What his funerals lack’d In images and pomp, they had supplied With honourable sorrow, soldiers’ sadness, A kind of silent mourning, such, as men, Who know no tears, but from their captives, use To shew in so great losses. Cor. I thought once, Considering their forms, age, manner of deaths, The nearness of the places where they fell, To have parallel’d him with great Alexander : For both were of best feature, of high race, Year’d but to thirty, and, in foreign lands, By their own people alike made away. 1 Tacit. Ann. Lib. iii. p. 69. 2 Lege Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. 24. de Romano, Ilispano, et csctcris, ibid, et Lib. iii. Ann. p. 61 et 62. Juv. Sat. x. v. 87. Suet. Tib. cap. 61. 3 Vid. Tacit. Ann. i. p. 4, ct Lib. iii. p. 62. Suet. Tib. cap. 61. Scncc. de Bencf. I ib. iii. cap. 26. 4 De Crem. Cordo, vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 83, 04. Senec. Cons, ad Marciam. Dio. Lib. lvii. p. 710. Suet. Aug. c. 35. Tib. c. 61. Cal. c. 16. 5 Suet. Aug. cap. 35. 6 Vid. de faction. Tacit. Ann. Lib. ii. p. 39. etLib. iv. p. 79. 7 DeLu. Arrun. isto vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. 6. ct Lib. iii. p. GO. et Dion. Rom. Hist. Lib. 58. 8 Lege cle Druso Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. 9. Suet. Tib. c. 52. Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. lvii. p. 699. 9 Tacit. Ann. Lib. iii. p. 62. 10 Vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 74. 41 Ann. Lib. iv. p. 75. 76. 12 Nero, Drusus, Caius, quiincastrisgemtus, et Caligula nominatus. Tacit. Ann. Lib. 1. 43 De Germanico Cons. Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. 14. et Dion. Rom. Hist. Lib. lvii. p. 694. 44 Vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 79. 43 Tacit. Ann. Lib. ii. p. 47, et Dion. Rom. Hist. Lib lvii. p. 705. 140 SEJANUS. act i. Sab. I know not, for his death, how you might wrest it : But, for his life, it did as much disdain Comparison, with that voluptuous, rash, Giddy, and drunken Macedon’s, as mine Doth with my bondman’s. All the good in him, His valour and his fortune, he made his ; But he had other touches of late Romans, That more did speak him : l Pompey’s dignity, The innocence of Cato, Caesar’s spirit, Wise Brutus’ temperance ; and every virtue, Which, parted unto others, gave them name, Flow’d mix’d in him. He was the soul of good¬ ness ; And all our praises of him are like streams Drawn from a spring, that still rise full, and leave The part remaining greatest. Arr. I am sure He was too great for us, 2 and that they knew Who did remove him hence. Sab. When men grow fast Honour’d and loved, there is a trick in state, Which jealous princes never fail to use, How to decline that growth, with fair pretext, And honourable colours of employment, Either by embassy, the war, or such, To shift them forth into another air, Where they may purge and lessen ; so was he : 3 And had his seconds there, sent by Tiberius, And his more subtile dam, to discontent him ; To breed and cherish mutinies ; detract His greatest actions ; give audacious check To his commands ; and work to put him out In open act of treason. AIL which snares When his wise cares prevented, 4 a fine poison Was thought on, to mature their practices. Enter Sejanus talking to Terentius, folloived by Satrius, Natta, SfC. Cor. Here comes Sejanus. 5 Sil. Now observe the stoops, The bendings, and the falls. Arr. Most creeping base ! Sej. [/o Natta.] I note them well : no more. Say you ? Sat. My lord, There is a gentleman of Rome would buy- Sej. How call you him you talk’d with ? Sat. Please your lordship, It is Eudemus, 6 the physician To Livia, Drusus’ wife. Sej. On with your suit. Would buy, you said Sat. A tribune’s place, my lord. Sej. What will he give ? Sat. Fifty sestertia. 7 Sej. Livia’s physician, say you, is that fellow? Sat. It is, my lord : Your lordship’s answer. Sej. To what ? Sat. The place, my lord. ’Tis for a gentleman Your lordship will well like of, when you see him ; And one, that you may make yours, by the grant. Sej. Well, let him bring his money, and his name. Sat. ’Thank your lordship. He shall, my lord. Sej. Come hither. Know you this same Eudemus ? is he learn'd? Sat. Reputed so, my lord, and of deep practice. Sej. Bring him in, to me, in the gallery ; And take you cause to leave us there together : I would confer with him, about a grief- On. lExcunt Sejanus, Satrius, Terentius, c. Arr. So! yet another? yet? 0 desperate state Of groveling honour ! seest thou this, 0 sun, And do we see thee after ? Methinks, day Should lose his light, when men do lose their shames, And for the empty circumstance of life, Betray their cause of living. Sil. Nothing so. 8 Sejanus can repair, if Jove should ruin. He is now the court god ; and well applied With sacrifice of knees, of crooks, and cringes ; He will do more than all the house of heaven Can, for a thousand hecatombs. ’Tis he Makes us our day, or night ; hell, and elysium Are in his look : we talk of Rhadamanth, Furies, and firebrands ; but it is his frown That is all these ; where, on the adverse part, His smile is more, than e’er yet poets feign’d Of bliss, and shades, nectar -- Arr. A serving boy ! I knew him, at Caius’ trencher, 9 when for hire He prostituted his abused body To that great gormond, fat Apicius ; And was the noted pathic of the time. Sab. And, now, 10 the second face of the whole world ! The partner of the empire, hath his image Rear’d equal with Tiberius, born in ensigns ; Commands, disposes every dignity, Centurions, tribunes, heads of provinces, Praetors and consuls ; all that heretofore Rome’s general suffrage gave, is now his sale. The gain, or rather spoil of all the earth, One, and his house, receives. Sil. He hath of late Made him a strength too, strangely, by reducing All the praetorian bands into one camp, Which he commands : pretending that the soldiers, By living loose and scatter’d, fell to riot ; And that if any sudden enterprize Should be attempted, their united strength Would be far more than sever’d ; and their life More strict, if from the city more removed. Sab. Where, now, he builds what kind of forts he please, Is heard to court the soldier by his name, Woos, feasts the chiefest men of action, Whose wants, not loves, compel them to be his. 8 De ingenio, moribus, et potentia Sejani, leg. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 74. Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. lvii. p. 708. 9 Cains divi Augusti nepos. Cons. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 74, et Dio. Lib. lvii. p. 706. 1(1 Juv. Sat. x. v. 63, &c. Tacit, ibid. Dion. ibid, ct sic passim. ' Vid. apud Yell. Paterc. Lips. 4to. p. 35—47, istorum hominum eharacteres. 2 Yid. Tacit. Lib. ii. Ann. p. 28 et p. 34. Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. lvii. p. 705. 3 Con. Tacit. Ann. Lib. ii. p. 39. de oecultis mandatis Pisoni, et postea p. 42, 43, 48. Orat. D. Celeris. Est Tibi Augusta: conscientia, est Csesaris favor, sed in occulto, &c. Leg, Suet. Tib. c. 52. Dio. p. 706. 4 Vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. ii. p. 40, 47- Lib. iii. p. 54. et Suet. Cal. e. 1 et 2. 5 De Sejano vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. 9. Lib. iv. princip. et per tot. Suet. Tib. Dio. Lib. lvii. lviii. et Plin. et Scncc. 6 De Eudemo isto vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 74. 7 Monetas nostra: 375 lib. vid. Budaeum de asse, Lib. ii. p. 64. SEJANUS. 141 SCENE II. And though he ne’er were liberal by kind, Yet to his own dark ends, he’s most profuse, Lavish, and letting fly, he cares not what To his ambition. Arr. Yet, hath he ambition ? Is there that step in state can make him higher, Or more, or anything he is, but less? Sil. Nothing but emperor. Arr. The name Tiberius, I hope, will keep, howe’er he hath foregone The dignity and power. Sil. Sure, while he lives. Arr. And dead, it comes to Drusus. Should he fail, To the brave issue of Germanicus ; And they are three : x too many—ha ? for him To have a plot upon ! Sab. I do not know The heart of his designs ; but, sure, their face Looks farther than the present. Arr. By the gods, If I could guess he had but such a thought, My sword should cleave him down from head to heart, But I would find it out: and with my hand I’d hui'l his panting brain about the air In mites, as small as atomi, to undo The knotted bed- Sab. You are observ’d, Arruntius. Arr. [(urns to Natta, Terentiys, <|* *c.] Death ! I dare tell him so ; and all his spies : You, sir, I would, do you look ? and you. Sab. Forbear. —*— SCENE II. (The former Scene continued.) A Gallery discovered opening into the State Room. Enter Satrius with Eudemus. Sat. Here he will instant be: let’s walk a turn; You’re in a muse, Eudemus. Eud. Not I, sir. I wonder he should mark me out so ! well, Jove and Apollo form it for the best. [Aside. Sat. Your 2 fortune’s made unto you now, Eu¬ demus, If you can but lay hold upon the means ; Do but observe his humour, and—believe it— He is the noblest Roman, where he takes— Enter Sejanus. Here comes his lordship. Sej. Now, good Satrius. Sat. This is the gentleman, my lord. Sej. Is this ? Give me your hand—we must be more acquainted. Report, sir, hath spoke out your art and learning : And I am glad I have so needful cause, However in itself painful and hard, To make me known to so great virtue.—Look, Who is that, Satrius ? [Exit Sat.] —I have a grief, sir, That will desire your help. Your name’s Eudemus? Eud. Yes. Sej. Sir ? Eud. It is, my lord. 1 Nero, Drusus, et Caligula.—Tacit, ibid. * Lege Terentii defensionem Tacit. Ann. Lib. vi. j. 102. Sej. I hear you are Physician to Livia, 3 4 5 the princess. Eud. I minister unto her, my good lord. Sej. You minister to a royal lady, then. Eud. She is, my lord, and fair. Sej. That’s understood Of all their sex, who are or would be so ; And those that would be, physic soon can make them : For those that are, their beauties fear no colours. Eud. Your lordship is conceited. Sej. Sir, you know it, And can, if need be, read a learned lecture On this, and other secrets. ’Pray you, tell me, What more of ladies besides Livia, Have you your patients ? Eud. Many, my good lord. The great Augusta,* Urgulania,5 Mutilia Prisca, 6 and Plancina ; 7 divers— Sej. And all these tell you the particulars Of every several grief? how first it grew, And then increased ; what action caused that; What passion that: and answer to each point That you will put them ? Eud. Else, my lord, we know not How to prescribe the remedies. Sej. Go to, You are a subtile nation, you physicians! And grown the only cabinets in court, 8 To ladies privacies. Faith, which of these Is the most pleasant lady in her physic? Come, you are modest now. Eud. ’Tis fit, my lord. Sej. Why, sir, I do not ask you of their urines, Whose smell’s most violet, or whose siege is best, Or who makes hardest faces on her stool ? Which lady sleeps with her own face a nights ? Which puts her teeth off, with her clothes, in court? Or, which her hair, which her complexion, And, in which box she puts it; These were ques¬ tions, That might, perhaps, have put your gravity To some defence of blush But, I enquired, Which was the wittiest, merriest, wantonnest ? Harmless intergatories, but conceits.- Methinks Augusta should be most perverse, And fro ward in her fit. Eud. She’s so, my lord. Sej. I knew it: and Mutilia the most jocund. Eud. ’Tis very true, my lord. Sej. And why would you Conceal this from me, now ? Come, what is Livia ? I know she’s quick and quaintly spirited, And will have strange thoughts, when she is at She tells them all to you. [leisure : Eud. My noblest lord, He breathes not in the empire, or on earth, Whom I would be ambitious to serve In any act, that may preserve mine honour, Before your lordship. Sej. Sir, you can lose no honour, 3 Germanici soror, uxor Drusi. Yid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv p. 74. 4 Mater Tiberii. vid. Tacit. Ann 1 , 2, 3 , 4, moritur 5. Suet. Tib. Dio. Rom. Hist. 37, 5ft. 5 Delicium Augustse. Tacit. Ann. Lib. ii. et iv. 6 Adultera Julii Posthumi. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 77- 7 Pisonis uxor. Tacit. Ann. Lib. ii. iii. iv. 8 Yid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 74. et Plin. Nat. Hist. Lib. xxix. c. 1 . ' SEJANUS. ACT 1. 142 By trusting aught to me. The coarsest act Done to my service, I can so requite, As all the world shall style it honourable : Your idle, virtuous definitions, Keep honour poor, and are as scorn’d as vain : Those deeds breathe honour that do suck in gain. Eud. But, good my lord, if I should thus betray The counsels of my patient, and a lady’s Of her high place and worth ; what might your lordship, Who presently are to trust me with your own. Judge of my faith ? Sej. Only the best I sw r ear. Say now that I should utter you my grief, And with it the true cause ; that it were love. And love to Livia ; > you should tell her this : Should she suspect your faith ; I would you could Tell me as much from her ; see if my brain Could be turn’d jealous. Eud. Happily, my lord, I could in time tell you as much and more; So I might safely promise but the lirst To her from you. Sej. As safely, my Eudemus, I now dare call thee so, as I have put The secret into thee. Eud. My lord- Sej. Protest not, Thy looks are vows to me ; use only speed, And but affect her with Sejanus’ love, 2 Thou art a man, made to make consuls. Go. Eud. My lord, I’ll promise you a private meeting This day together. Sej. Canst thou P Eud. Yes. Sej. The place ? Eud. My gardens, whither I shall fetch your lordship. Sej. Let me adore my Aesculapius. Why, this indeed is physic! and outspeaks The knowledge of cheap drugs, or any use Can be made out of it! more comforting Than all your opiates, juleps, apozems, Magistral syrups, or-Be gone, my friend, Not barely styled, but created so ; Expect things greater than thy largest hopes, To overtake thee : Fortune shall be taught To know how ill she hath deserv’d thus long, To come behind thy wishes. Go, and speed. [Exit Eudemus. Ambition makes more trusty slaves than need. These fellows, 3 by the favour of their art. Have still the means to tempt; oft-times the power. If Livia will be now corrupted, then Thou hast the way, Sejanus, to work out His secrets, who, thou know’st, endures thee not, Iter husband, Drusus : and to work against them. Prosper it, Pallas, thou that better’st wit; For Venus hath the smallest share in it. Enter Tiberius and Drusus, attended. Tib. [to IIaterius, who kneels to him.'] We not endure these flatteries ; let him stand ; 1 Cons. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 74. 2 Tacit, ibid. 3 Eud. specie artis frequens secretis. Tacit, ibid. Yid. Tlin. Nat. Hist. Lib. xxix. c. 1. in criminat. nicdicorum. 4 De initio Tiberii principatus vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. S3, Lib. iv. p. 75. et Suet. Tib. c. 27. De Ilatcrio vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. 6. Our empire, ensigns, axes, rods and state Take not away our human nature from us : Look up on us, and fall before the gods. Sej. Flow' like a god speaks Caesar! Arr. There, observe! He can endure that second, that’s no flattery. O, what is it, proud slime will not believe Of his own worth, to hear it equal praised Thus with the gods ! Cor. He did not hear it, sir. Arr. He did not! Tut, he must not, we think meanly. ’Tis your most courtly known confederacy, To have your private parasite redeem What he, in public, subtilely will lose, To making him a name. Hat. Right mighty lord-- [Gives him letters. Tib. We must make up our ears ’gainst these assaults Of charming tongues ; 5 we pray you use no more These contumelies to us ; style not us Or lord, or mighty, who profess ourself The servant of the senate, and are proud T’ enjoy them our good, just, and favouring lords. Cor. Rarely 6 dissembled ! Arr. Prince-like to the life. Sab. When power that may command, so much descends, Their bondage, whom it stoops to, it intends. Tib. Whence are these letters ? Hat. From the senate. Tib. So. [Lat. gives him letters. Whence these ? Lat. From thence too. Tib. Are they sitting now ? Lat. They stay thy answer, Caesar. Sil. If this man Had but a mind allied unto his words, How blest a fate were it to us, and Rome! We could not think that state for which to change, Although the aim were our old liberty : The ghosts 7 of those that fell for that, would grieve Their bodies lived not, now, again to serve. Men are deceived, who think there can be thrall Beneath a virtuous prince : Wish’d liberty Ne’er lovelier looks, than under such a crown. But, when his grace 8 is merely but lip-good, And that, no longer than he airs himself Abroad in public, there, to seem to shun The strokes and stripes of flatterers, which within Are lechery unto him, and so feed His brutish sense with their afflicting sound, As, dead to virtue, he permits himself Be carried like a pitcher by the ears, To every act of vice : this is a case Deserves our fear, and doth presage the nigh And close approach of blood and tyranny. Flattery is midwife 9 unto prince’s rage : And nothing sooner doth help forth a tyrant, 5 Cons. Tacit. Ann. Lib. ii. p. 50. et Suet. Tib. c. 27 et 29. 6 Nullam aequo Tiberius ex virtutibus suis quam dissi- mulationem diligebat. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 95. 7 Bruti, Cassii, Catonis, &c. 8 Yid. Dio. Ilist. Lib. lvii. demoribus Tiberii. 9 Tyrannis fere oritur cx nirnia procenun adulatione in principem. Arist. Pol. Lib. v. c. 10, 11. et delatorum nuo- toritate. Leg. Tacit. Dio. Suet. Tib. per totum. Sub quo decreta accusatoribus praecipua praemia. Yid. Suet. Tib. c. G1, et Sen. Benef. Lib. iii. c. G. scene ii. SEJANUS. 143 Than that and -whisperers’ grace, who have the time, The place, the power, to make all men offenders. Arr. lie should be told this; and be bid dissemble With fools and blind men : we that know the evil, Should hunt the palace-rats, 1 or give them bane ; Fright hence these worse than ravens, that devour The quick, where they but prey upon the dead : He shall be told it. Sab. Stay, Arruntius, We must abide our opportunity ; And practise what is tit, as what is needful. It is not safe t’ enforce a sovereign’s ear : Princes hear well, if they at all will hear. Arr. Ha, say you so ? well ! In the mean time, Jove, (Say not, but I do call upon thee now,) Of all wild beasts preserve me from a tyrant : And of all tame, a flatterer. Sil. ’Tis well pray'd. Tib. [having read the letters.'] Return the lords this voice, - We are their creature, And it is fit a good and honest prince, Whom they, out of their bounty, have instructed 2 With so dilate and absolute a power, Should owe the office of it to their service, And good of all and every citizen. Nor shall it e’er repent us to have wish’d The senate just, and favouring lords unto us, Since their free loves do yield no less defence To a prince’s state, than his own innocence. Say then, there can be nothing in their thought Shall want to please us, that hath pleased them ; Our suffrage rather shall prevent than stay Behind their wills : ’tis empire to obey, Where such, so great, so grave, so good determine. Yet, for the suit of Spain, 3 to erect a temple In honour of our mother and our self, We must, with pardon of the senate, not Assent thereto. Their lordships may object Our not denying the same late request Unto the Asian cities : we desire That our defence for suffering that be known In these brief reasons, with our after purpose. Since deified Augustus hindered not A temple to be built at Pergamum, In honour of himself and sacred Rome ; We, that have all his deeds* and words observed Ever, in place of laws, the rather follow’d That pleasing precedent, because with ours, The senate’s reverence, also, there was join’d. But as, t’ have once received it, may deserve The gain of pardon ; so, to be adored With the continued style, and note of gods, Through all the provinces, were wild ambition, And no less pride : yea, even Augustus’ name Would early vanish, should it be profaned With such promiscuous flatteries. For our part, We here protest it, and are covetous Posterity should know it, we are mortal; And can but deeds of men : ’twere glory enough, Could we be truly a prince. And, they shall add 1 Tineas sorieesque Palatii vocat istos Sex. Aurel. Yict. et Tacit. Hist. Lib. i. p. 233, qui secretis criminat. infamant ignarum, et quo incautior deciperetur, palam laudatum, &c. 2 Yid. Suet. Tib. c. 20. et Dio. Hist. Lib. Ivii. p. 606. 3 Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 84 et 85. 4 Cons. Strab. Lib, vi. de Tib. Abounding grace unto our memory, That shall report us worthy our forefathers, Careful of your affairs, constant in dangers, And not afraid of any private frown For public good. These things shall be to us Temples and statues, reared in your minds, The fairest, and most during imagery : For those of stone or brass, if they become Odious in judgment of posterity, Are more contemn’d as dying sepulchres, Than ta’en for living monuments. We then Make here our suit, alike to gods and men ; The one, until the period of our race, To inspire us with a free and quiet mind, Discerning both divine and human laws ; The other, to vouchsafe us after death, An honourable mention, and fair praise, To accompany our actions and our name : The rest of greatness princes may command, And, therefore, may neglect ; only, a long, A lasting, high, and happy memory They should, without being satisfied, pursue : Contempt of fame begets contempt of virtue. Nat. Rare ! Sat. Most divine ! Sej. The oracles are ceased, That only Caesar, with their tongue, might speak. Arr. Let me begone : most felt and open this ! Cor. Stay. Arr. What ! to hear more cunning and fine words, With their sound flatter’d ere their sense be meant ? Tib. Their choice of Antium,5there to place the gift Vow’d to the goddess 6 for our mother’s health, We will the senate know, we fairly like ; As also of their grant 7 to Lepidus, For his repairing the Ahnilian place, And restoration of those monuments : Their grace 8 too in confining of Silanus To the other isle Cithera, at the suit Of his religious 9 sister, much commends Their policy, so temper’d with their mercy. But for the honours which they have decreed To our Sejanus, 10 to advance his statue In Pompey’s theatre, (whose ruining fire His vigilance and labour kept restrain’d In that one loss,) they have therein out-gone Their own great wisdoms, by their skilful choice, And placing of their bounties on a man, Whose merit more adorns the dignity, Than that can him ; and gives a benefit, In taking, greater than it can receive. Blush not, Sejanus, 11 thou great aid of Rome, Associate of our labours, our chief helper ; Let us not force thy simple modesty With offering at thy praise, for more we cannot, Since there’s no voice can take it. No man hers Receive our speeches as hyperboles : For we are far from flattering our friend, Let envy know, as from the need to flatter. Nor let them ask the causes of our praise : 5 Tacit. Lib. iii. p. 71* 0 Fortuna equestris, ibid. 7 Tacit, ibid. 8 Tacit. Ann. Lib. iii. p. 170. 9 Torquata virgo vestalis, cujas memoriam Bcrvat mar- mor Romas, vid. Lips, comment, in Tacit. 10 Tacit. Ann. Lib. iii. p. 71. 11 Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 74—76. 114 SE JANUS. ACT 11. Princes have still their grounds rear’d with them¬ selves, Above the poor low flats of common men ; And who will search the reasons of their acts, Must stand on ecpial bases. Lead, away : Our loves unto the senate. [Exeunt Tib. Sejan. Natta, IIat. Lat. Officers, §c. Arr. Csesar ! Sab. Peace. Cor. Great Pompey’s theatre 1 was never ruin’d Till now, that proud Sejanus hath a statue Rear’d on his ashes. Arr. Place the shame of soldiers, Above the best of generals ? crack the world, And bruise the name of Romans into dust, Ere we behold it! Sil. Check your passion ; Lord Drusus tarries. Dru. Is my father mad , 2 Weary of life, and rule, lords ? thus to heave An idol up with praise ! make him his mate, His rival in the empire ! Arr. O, good prince. Dru. Allow him statues , 3 titles, honours, such As he himself refuseth ! Arr. Brave, brave Drusus ! Dru. The first ascents to sovereignty are hard ; But, entered once, there never wants or means, Or ministers, to help the aspirer on. Arr. True, gallant Drusus. Dru. We must shortly pray To Modesty, that he will rest contented— Arr. Ay, where he is, and not write emperor. Re-enter Sejanus, Satrius, Latiaris, Clients, <$c. Sej. There is your bill, and yours ; bring you your man. [To Satrius.] I have moved for you, too, Latiaris. Dru. What! Is your vast greatness grown so blindly bold, That you will over us ? Sej. Why then give way. Dru. Give way, Colossus ! do you lift ? advance you? Take that ! 4 [Strikes him. Arr. Good ! brave! excellent, brave prince ! Dru. Nay, come, approach. [ Draws his sword. What, stand you off ? at gaze ? It looks too full of death for thy cold spirits. Avoid mine eye, dull camel, or my sword Shall make thy bravery fitter for a grave, Than for a triumph. I’ll advance a statue O’ your own bulk; but’t shall be on the cross ; 5 Where I will nail your pride at breadth and length, And crack those sinews, which are yet but stretch’d With your swoln fortune’s rage. Arr. A noble prince! All. A Castor , 6 a Castor, a Castor, a Castor! [Exeunt all but Sejanus. Sej. He that, with such wrong moved, can bear it through With patience, and an even mind, knows how To turn it back. Wrath cover’d carries fate : Revenge is lost, if I profess my hate. What was my practice late, I’ll now pursue, As my fell justice : this hath styled it new. [Exit. ACT II. SCENE I.— The Garden o/Eudemus. Enter Sejanus, Livia, and Eudebius. Sej. Physician, thou art worthy of a province, For the great favours done unto our loves ; And, but that greatest Livia bears a part In the requital of thy services, I should alone despair of aught, like means, To give them worthy satisfaction. Liv. Eudemus, I will see it, shall receive A fit and full reward for his large merit.- But for this potion 7 we intend to Drusus, No more our husband now, whom shall we choose As the most apt and able instrument, To minister it to him ? Dud. I say, Lygdus . 8 Sej. Lygdus ? what’s he ? Liv. An eunuch Drusus loves. Eud. Ay, and his cup-bearer. Sej. Name not a second. If Drusus love him, and he have that place, We cannot think a fitter. Eud. True, my lord. For free access and trust are two main aids. Sej. Skilful physician! Liv. But he must be wrought To the undertaking, with some labour’d art. 1 Vid. Sen. Cons. ad. Marc. c. 22. 2 Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 76. 3 Tacit, ibid. 4 Vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 74—76- * Tacit, ibidem. Sej. Is he ambitious ? Liv. No. Sej. Or covetous ? Liv. Neither. Eud. Yet, gold is a good general charm. Sej. What is he, then ? Liv. Faith, only wanton, light. Sej. How ! is he young and fair ? Eud. A delicate youth. Sej. Send him to me , 9 I’ll work him.—Royal lady, Though I have loved you long, and with that height Of zeal and duty, like the fire, which more It mounts it trembles, thinking nought could add Unto the fervour which your eye had kindled; Yet, now I see your wisdom, judgment, strength, Quickness, and will, to apprehend the means To your own good and greatness, I protest Myself through rarified, and turn’d all flame In your affection : such a spirit as yours, W as not created for the idle second To a poor flash, as Drusus ; but to shine 6 Tacit, sequimur Ann. Lib. iv. p. 74, quanquam apuc! Dionem et Zonaram alitcr legitur. 7 Servile, apud Romanos, et ignominiosissimum mortis genus erat supplicium crucis, ut ex Liv. ipso. Tacit. Dio. et omnibus fere antiquis, praesertim historicis constet. vid. Plaut. in. Mil. Amph. Aulii. Hor. Lib. i. Ser. 3. et Jev. Sat. vi. Pone crucem servo, &c. 8 Sic Drusus ob violentiam cognominatus, vid. Dion Rom. Hist. Lib. lvii. p. 701. * Spadonis animum stupro devinxit. Tacit, ibid. UCENE r. SE.IANUS. 146 Bright as the moon among the lesser lights, And share the sov’reignty of all the world. Then Livia triumphs in her proper sphere, When she and her Sejanus shall divide The name of Caesar, and Augusta’s star Be dimm’d with glory of a brighter beam : When Agrippina’s 1 tires are quite extinct, And the scarce-seen Tiberius borrows all His little light from us, whose folded arms Shall make one perfect orb. [ Knocking within.'] Who’s that ? Eudemus, Look. [ Exit Eudemus.] ’Tis not Drusus, lady, do not fear. Liv. Not I, my lord : my fear and love of him Left me at once. Sej. Illustrious lady, stay- Eud. [within.] I’ll tell his lordship. Re-enter Eudemus. Sej. Who is it, Eudemus ? Eud. One of your lordship’s servants brings you word The emperor hath sent for you. Sej. O ! where is he ? With your fair leave, dear princess, I’ll but ask A question and return. [Exit. Eud. Fortunate princess! How are you blest in the fruition Of this unequall’d man, the soul of Rome, The empire’s life, and voice of Ceesar’s world ! Liv. So blessed, my Eudemus, as to know The bliss I have, with what I ought to owe The means that wrought it. How do I look to-day ? Eud. Excellent clear, believe it. This same Was well laid on. [fucus Liv. Methinks ’tis here not white. Eud. Lend me your scarlet, lady. ’Tis the sun, Hath giv’n some little taint unto the ceruse ; 2 You should have used of the white oil I gave you. Sejanus, for your love ! his very name Commandeth above Cupid or his shafts- [Paints her cheeks. Liv. Nay, now you’ve made it worse. Eud. I’ll help it straight- And but pronounced, is a sufficient charm Against all rumour ; and of absolute power To satisfy for any lady’s honour. Liv. What do you now, Eudemus ? Eud. Make a light fucus, To touch you o’er withal.—Honour’d Sejanus ! What act, though ne’er so strange and insolent, But that addition will at least bear out, If’t do not expiate ? Liv. Here, good physician. Eud. I like this study to preserve the love Of such a man, that comes not every hour To greet the world.—’Tis now well, lady, you should Use of the dentifrice I prescribed you too, To clear your teeth, and the prepared pomatum, To smooth the skin :—A lady cannot be Too curious of her form, that still would hold The heart of such a person, made her captive, As you have his : who, to endear him more 1 Germanici vidua. 2 Cerusua (apud Romanos) inter fictitiores colores rrat it qua solem ob calorem timebat. vid. Mart. Lib. ii. Epig. a. Qu® cretata timet Fabulla nimbum, Cerussata timet Sabella solem. In your clear eye, hath put away his wife, 3 The trouble of his bed, and your delights, Fair Apicata, and made spacious room To your new pleasures. Liv. Have not we return’d That with our hate to Drusus, and discovery 4 Of all his counsels ? Eud. Yes, and wisely, lady. The ages that succeed, and stand far off To gaze at your high prudence, shall admire, And reckon it an act without your sex : It hath that rare appearance. Some will think Your fortune could not yield a deeper sound, Than mix’d with Drusus ; but, when they shall That, and the thunder of Sejanus meet, [hear Sejanus, whose high name doth strike the stars, And rings about the concave; great Sejanus, Whose glories, style, and titles are himself, The often iterating of Sejanus : They then will lose their thoughts, and be ashamed To take acquaintance of them. Re-enter Sejanus. Sej. I must make A rude departure, lady : Caesar sends With all his haste both of command and prayer. Be resolute in our plot; you have my soul, As certain yours as it is my body’s. And, wise physician, 5 so prepare the poison, As you may lay the subtile operation Upon some natural disease of his : Your eunuch send to me. I kiss vour hands, Glory of ladies, and commend my love To your best faith and memory. Liv. My lord, I shall but change your words. Farewell. Yet, this Remember for your heed, he loves you not; You know what I have told you : his designs Are full of grudge and danger ; we must use More than a common speed. Sej. Excellent lady, How you do fire my blood ! Liv. Well, you must go ? The thoughts be best, are least set forth to show. [Exit Sejanus. End. When will you take some physic, lady ? Liv. When I shall, Eudemus : but let Drusus’ drug Be first prepared. Eud. Were Lygdus made, that’s done ; I have it ready. And to-morrow morning I’ll send you a perfume, first to resolve And procure sweat, and then prepare a bath To cleanse and clear the cutis ; against when I’ll have an excellent new fucus made, Resistive ’gainst the sun, the rain, or wind, Which you shall lay on with a breath, or oil, As you best like, and last some fourteen hours. This change came timely, lady, for your health, And the restoring your complexion, Which Drusus’ choler had almost burnt up ! Wherein your fortune hath prescribed you better Than art could do. Liv. Thanks, good physician, I’ll use my fortune, you shall see, with reverence. Is my coach ready ? Eud. It attends your highness. [Exeunt. 3 Ex qua tres liberos genuerat, ne pellici suspectaretur Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 74. 4 Leg. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 76. 5 Tacit, ibid, et Dion. Rom. His Lib. lvii. p. 7<*9. u 146 SEJANUS. act n. SCENE II.— An Apartment in the Palace. Enter Sejanus. Sej. If this be not revenge, when I have done And made it perfect, let Egyptian slaves, 1 Parthians, and bare-foot Hebrews brand my face, And print my body full of injuries. Tliou lost thyself, child Drusus, when thou thoughtst Thou couldst outskip my vengeance ; or outstand The power I had to crush thee into air. Thy follies now shall taste what kind of man They have provoked, and this thy father's house Crack in the flame of my incensed rage, Whose fury shall admit no shame or mean.— Adultery ! it is the lightest ill I will commit. A race of wicked acts Shall flow out of my anger, and o’erspread The world’s wide face, which no posterity Shall e’er approve, nor yet keep silent : things That for their cunning, close, and cruel mark, Thy father would wish his : and shall, perhaps, Carry the empty name, but we the prize. On, then, my soul, and start not in thy course; Though heaven drop sulphur, and hell belch out Laugh at the idle terrors ; tell proud Jove, [fire, Between his power and thine there is no odds.: ’Twas only fear first in the world made gods. 2 Enter Tiberius, attended. Tib. Is yet Sejanus come ! Sej. He’s here, dread Caesar. Tib. Let all depart that chamber, and the next. [Exeunt Attendants. Sit down, my comfort. 3 When the master prince Of all the world, Sejanus, saith he fears, Is it not fatal ? Sej. Yes, to those are fear’d. Tib. And not to him ? Sej. Not, if he wisely turn That part of fate he holdeth, first on them. Tib. That nature, blood, and laws of kind forbid. Sej. Do policy and state forbid it? Tib. No. Sej. The rest of poor respects, then, let go by ; State is enough to make the act just, them guilty. Tib. Long hate pursues such acts. Sej. Whom hatred frights, Let him not dream of sovereignty. Tib. Are rites Of faith, love, piety, to be trod down, Forgotten, and made vain ? Sej. All for a crown. The prince who shames a tyrant’s name to bear, Shall never dare do anything, but fear; All the command of sceptres quite doth perish, If it begin religious thoughts to cherish : Whole empires fall, sway’d by those nice respects ; It is the license of dark deeds protects Ev’n states most hated, when no laws resist . The sword, but that it acteth what it list. Tib. Yet so, we may do all things cruelly, Not safely. Sej. Yes, and do them thoroughly. Tib. Knows yet Sejanus whom we point at ? Sej. Ay, Or else my thought, my sense, or both do err: ’Tis Agrippina. 4 Tib. She, and her proud race. Sej. Proud! dangerous, 5 Csesar: for in them apace The father’s spirit shoots up. Germanicus 6 Lives in their looks, their gait, their form, t’ up¬ braid us With his close death, if not revenge the same. Tib. The act’s not known. Sej. Not proved : but whispering Fame Knowledge and proof doth to the jealous give, Who, than to fail, would their own thought believe. It is not safe, the children draw long breath, That are provoked by a parent’s death. Tib. It is as dangerous to make them hence, If nothing but their birth be their offence. Sej. Stay, till they strike at Caesar; then their Will be enough ; but late and out of time [crime For him to punish. Tib. Do they purpose it ? Sej. You know, sir, thunder speaks not till it Be not secure ; none swiftlier are opprest, [hit. Than they whom confidence betrays to rest. Let not your daring make your danger such : All power is to be fear’d, where ’tis too much. The youths are of themselves hot, violent, Full of great thought; and that male-spirited dame, Their mother, slacks no means to put them on, By large allowance, popular presentings, Increase of train and state, suing for titles ; Hath them commended with like prayers, 8 like VOW T S, To the same gods, with Caesar : days and nights She spends in banquets and ambitious feasts For the nobility ; where Caius Silius, Titius Sabinus, old Arruntius, Asinius Gallus, Furnius, Regulus, And others of that discontented list, Are the prime guests. There, and to these, she tells Whose niece she was, 9 whose daughter, and whose wife. And then must they compare her with Augusta, Ay, and prefer her too ; commend her form, Extol her 10 fruitfulness; at which a shower Falls for the memory of Germanicus, Which they blow over straight with windy praise, And puffing hopes of her aspiring sons ; Who, with these hourly ticklings, grow so pleased, And wantonly conceited of themselves, As now, they stick not to believe they’re such As these do give them out; and would be thought More than competitors, immediate heirs. Whilst to their thirst of rule, they win the rout 4 De Agrip. vid. Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. lvii. p. 69. 5 De Sejani consil. in Agrip. leg. Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. 23, et Lib. iv. p. 77 — 79. de Tib. susp. Lib. iii. p. 52. G Gnaris omnibus lmtam Tiberio Germanici mortem male dissimulari. Tacit. Lib. iii. ibid. Hue confer Tacit, narrat. demortePisonis. p. 55. et Lib. iv. p. 74. Germanici mortem inter prospera ducebat. 7 De anim. virili Agrip. cons. Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. 12 et 22. Lib. ii. p. 47. 8 Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 79. 9 Erat enim neptis Augusti, Agrippse et Julia filia, Ger¬ manici uxor. Suet. Aug. c. 64. 10 De fcecund. ejus. vid. Tacit. Ann Lib. ii. p. 39. et Lib. iv. p. 77. 1 Hi apud Romanos barbari et vilissimi aestimab. Juv. Mart. » Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. Iviii. p. 718. M 2 SEJANUS, ACT V. H>4 So early in the temple, as all mark Of that shall be avoided. Reg. If we need, We have commission to 1 possess the palace, Enlarge prince Drusus, and make him our chief. Mac. That secret would have burnt his reverend mouth, Had he not spit it out now : by the gods, You carry things too-Let me borrow a man Or two, to bear these-That of freeing Drusus, Caesar projected as the last and utmost; Not else to be remember’d. Enter Servants. Reg. Here are servants. Mac. These to Arruntius, these to Lepidus ; This bear to Cotta, this to Latiaris. If they demand you of me, say I have ta’en Fresh horse, and am departed. [Exeunt, Servants. You, my lord. To your colleague, and be you sure to hold him With long narration of the new fresh favours, Meant to Sejanus, his great patron ; I, With trusted Laco, here, are for the guards : Then to divide. For, night hath many eyes, Whereof, though most do sleep, yet some are spies. [Exeunt. SCENE IV.— A Sacellum (or Chapel) in Se janus's House. Enter Praecones, 1 2 Flamen, 3 Tubicines, Tibicines, Ministri, Sejanus, Terkntius, Satrius, Natta, $c. Pr.-c. 4 5 6 7 Be all profane far hence ; fly, fly far off: Be absent far ; far hence be all profane l [Tub. and Tib. r > sound while the Flamen washeth. Fla. We have been faulty, but repent us now, And bring pure <>hands, pure vestmeuts, and pure 1 Min. Pure vessels. [minds. 2 Min. And pure offerings. 3 Min. Garlands pure. Fla. Bestow your 7 garlands : and, with reve- The vervin on the altar. [rence, place Prce. 8 Favour your tongues. [While they sound again, 9 10 * the Flamen takes of the honey with hisjingr, and tastes, then ministers to all the rest ; so of the 1 'milk, in an earthen vessel, he deals about; 1 Vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. vi. p. 107- et Suet. Tib. c. 65. 2 Praecones, Flamen, hi omnibus sacrificiis interesse solebant. Ros. Ant. ltorn. Lib. iii. Stuch. de Sac. p. 72. 3 Fx iis, qui Flainines Curiales dieerentur, vid. Lil. Greg. Gvr. Synt. 17 . et Onup. Panvin. Rep. Rom. Com¬ ment. 2. 4 Moris antiqui erat, Praecones praecedere, et sacris arcere profanos. Cons, Briss. Ross. Stuch. Lil. Gyr. &c. 5 Observatum antiquis invenimus, ut qui rem divinam facturus erat, lautus, ae mandus acccderet, et ad suas levandas culpas, se imprimis reum dicere solitum, et noxa? pcenituisse. Lil. Gyr. Synt. 17. 6 In sacris puras maims, puras vestes, pura vasa, &c. antiqui desiderabunt; ut ex Yirg. Plant. Tibul. Ovid. &c. pluribus locis constat. 7 Alius ritus sertis aras coronarc, et verbenas imponere. 8 Ilujusmodi verbis silentium imperatum fuisseconstat. Vid. Son. in lib. de beata vita. Serv. et Don. adeum ver¬ sion, Lib. v. JEneid. Ore faveteomnes, et cingitc tempora ramis. J Vocabatur hie ritus Libatio. Lege Rosin. Ant. Lib. iii. I>as. Brisson. de form.' Lib. i. Stuchium de Sacrif. et Lil. Synt. 17. 10 In sacris Fortunae lacte non vino libabant. iisdem test. Ta’ia sacrificia et vn'pxXia. dicta. Hoc est sobria, et vino carentia. which done, he sprinkleth upon the altar, milkthen im- poseth the honey, and kindletli his gums, and after cens¬ ing about the altar, placeth his censer thereon, into which they put several 11 branches of poppy, and the music ceasing, proceeds. Fla. Great 12 mother Fortune , queen of human Redress of action, arbilress of fate, [state, To ichom aU sicay, all power, all empire botes, Be present, and propitious to our votes ! Free. Favour 13 it with your tongues. Min. Be present and propitious to our vows! Omnes. Accept our 14 offering and be pleased, great goddess. Ter. See, see, the image stirs ! Sat. And turns away ! Nat. Fortune 15 averts her face. Fla. Avert, you gods, The prodigy. Still! stiil, some pious rite We have neglected. Yet, heaven be appeased, And be all tokens false and void, that speak Thy present wrath ! Sej. Be thou dumb, scrupulous priest: And gather up thyself, with these thy wares Which I, in spite of thy blind mistress, or Thy juggling mystery, religion, throw Thus scorned on the earth. [Overturns the statue and the altar. Nay, hold thy look Averted till I woo thee turn again ; And thou shalt stand to all posterity, The eternal game and laughter, with thy neck Writh’d to thy tail, like a ridiculous cat. Avoid these fumes, these superstitious lights, And all these cozening ceremonies : you, Your pure and spiced conscience ! [Exeunt all but Sejanus, Terent. Satrt. and Natta, I, the slave And mock of fools, scorn on my worthy head ! That have been 15 titled and adored a god, Yea, 17 sacrificed unto, myself, in Rome, No less than Jove : and I be brought to do A peevish giglot, rites ! perhaps the thought And shame of that, made fortune turn her face, Knowing herself the lesser deity, And but my servant.—Bashful queen, if so, Sejanus thanks thy modesty.—Who’s that ? Enter Poaiponius and 18 Minutius. Pom. His fortune suffers, till he hears my news : I have waited here too long. Macro, my lord- Sej. Speak lower and withdraw. [Takes him aside- Ter. Are these things true ? Min. Thousands are gazing at it in the streets. Sej. What’s that ? 11 Hoc reddere erat etlicare, id est propitiare, et votum impetrare; secundum Nonium Marcellum. Litare enim Mae. Lib. iii. c. 5 . expMcat, sacrifieio facto placare numen. In quo sens. leg. apud Plaut. Senec. Suet. &e. 12 His solemnibus praifationibus in sacris utebantur. 13 Quibus, in clausu, populus vel cactus a praeconibus favere jubebatur; id est bona verba fari. Talis enim altera hujus formas interpretatio apud Briss. Lib. i. extat. Ovid. Lib. i. Fast. Linguii animisque favete. Et Metam. Lib. xv. ---piumque jEneadae praestant et mentc, et voce favorem. 11 Solemnis formula in lonis cuivis nomini offerendis. 15 Leg. Dio.Rom.Hist. lib. lviii. p. 717- de hoc sacrifieio. 1,5 Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 9t>. 17 Dio. Lib. lviii. p. 716. 18 De Minutio vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. vi. scene v. SEJANUS. ]G5 Ter. Minutius tells us here, my lord, That a new head being set upon your statue, A 1 rope is since found wreath’d about it! and, But now 2 a fiery meteor in the form Of a great ball was seen to roll along The troubled air, where yet it hangs unperfect, The amazing wonder of the multitude ! Sej. No more. That Macro’s come, is more Ter. Is Macro come? [than all ! Pom. I saw him. Ter. Where ? with whom ? Pom. With Regulus. Sej. Terentius ! Ter. My lord. Sej. Send for the 3 tribunes, we will straight have up More of the soldiers for our guard. [Exit Ter.] We pray you go for Cotta, Latiaris, [Minutius, Trio the consul, or what senators You know are sure, and ours. [Exit Min.] You, my good Natta, For Laco, provost of the watch. [ALn7Nat.] Now, Satrius, The time of proof comes on ; arm all our servants, And without tumult. [Exit Sat.] You, Pomponius, Hold some good correspondence with the consul: Attempt him, noble friend. [Exit Pomp.] These things begin To look like dangers, now, worthy my fates. Fortune, I see thy worst: let doubtful states, And things uncertain, hang upon thy will: Me surest death shall render certain still. Yet, why is now my thought turn’d toward death, Whom fates have let go on, so far in breath, Uncheck’d or unreproved ? I, 4 that did help To fell the lofty cedar of the world, Germanicus ; that at one stroke 5 cut down Drusus, that upright elm ; wither’d his vine ; Laid 6 Silius and 7 Sabinus, two strong oaks, Flat on the earth; besides those other shrubs, Cordus 8 and 9 Sosia, 10 Claudia Pulchra, Furnius and 11 Gallus, which I have grubb’d up ; And since, have set my axe so strong and deep Into the root of spreading 12 Agrippina ; Lopt oif and scatter’d her proud branches, Nero, Drusus ; and 13 Caius too, although re-planted. If you will, Destinies, that after all, I faint now ere I touch my period, A oil are but cruel; and I already have done Things great enough. All Rome hath been my slave; The senate sate an idle looker on, And witness of my power ; when I have blush’d More to command than it to suffer: all The fathers have sate ready and prepared, To give me empire, temples, or their throats, When I would ask ’em ; and what crowns the top, 1 Dio. Hist. Rom. Lib. lviii. p. 717. s Vid. Sencc. Nat. Quest. Lib. i. e. 1. 3 Dio. Ilist. Rom. Lib. lviii. j>. 7lib 4 Vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. i. p. 23. 5 Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. pp. 74, 75. et Dio. Lib. Ivii. p. 709. 6 Tacit. Lib. iv. p. 79. I Ibid. p. 94. 8 De Cremut. Cor. vid. Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. Ivii. p. 710. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 83. 9 De Sosia. Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 94. 1 ' De Clau. et Fumio. quaere Tacit. Ann. Lib. iv. p. 89. II De Gallo. Tacit. Lib. iv. p. 95. et Dio. Lib. lviii. p. 713. 1 12 De Agr. Ncr. et Dru. leg. Suet. Tib. cap. 53, 4. 13 Do Caio. cons. Din. Lib lviii. p. 727 . Rome, senate, people, all the world have seen Jove, but my equal; Ceesar, but my second. ’Tis then your malice, Fates, who, but your own, Envy and fear to have any power long known. [Exit SCENE V.— A Room in the same. Enter Terentius and Tribunes. Ter. Stay here : I’ll give his lordship, you are come. Enter Minutius, with Cotta and Latiaris. Min. Marcus Terentius, ’pray you tell my lord Here’s Cotta, and Latiaris. Ter. Sir, I shall. [Exit. Cot. My letter is the very same with yours ; Only requires me to be present there. And give my voice to strengthen his design. Lat. Names he not what it is ? Cot. No, nor to you. Lat. ’Tis strange and singular doubtful! Cot. So it is. It may be all is left to lord Sejanus. Enter Natta and Gracinus Laco. Nat. Gentlemen, where’s my lord ? Tri. We wait him here. Cot. The provost Laco ! what’s the news ? Lat. My lord- Enter Sejanus. Sej. Now, my right dear, noble, and trusted friends, How much I am a captive to your kindness ! Most worthy Cotta, Latiaris, Laco, Your valiant hand ; and, gentlemen, your loves. I wish I could divide myself unto you ; Or that it lay within our narrow powers, To satisfy for so enlarged bounty. Gracinus, we must pray you, hold your guards Unquit when morning comes. Saw you the consul? Min. Tx-io will presently be here, my lord. Cot. They are but giving 14 order for the edict, To warn the senate. Sej. How ! the senate ? Lac. Yes. This morning in Apollo’s temple. Cot. We Are charged by letter to be there, my lord. Sej. By letter ! pray you, let’s see. Lat. Knows not his lordship ? Cot. It seems so! Sej. A senate warn’d! without my knowledge ! And on this sudden! Senators by letters Required to be there! who brought these ? Cot. Macro. Sej. Mine 15 enemy! and when ? Cot. This midnight. Sej. Time, With every other circumstance, doth give It hath some strain of engine in’t!—How now ? Enter Satrius Sal. My lord, Sertorius Macro is without, Alone, and prays t’ have private conference In business of high nature with your lordship, He says to me, and which regards you much. Sej. Let him come here. 14 Vid. Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. lviii, p. 718. Dio. Lib. lviii. p. 718. 166 SEJANUS. act "\ Sat. Better, my lord, withdraw : You will betray what store and strength of friends Are now about you; which he comes to spy. Sej. Is he not arm’d ? Sat. We’ll search him. Sej. No ; but take, And lead him to some room, where you conceal’d May keep a guard upon us. [Exit Sat.] Noble You are our trust; and till our own cohorts [Laco, Can be brought up, your strengths must be our Now, good Minutius, honour’d Latiaris, [guard. [He salutes them humbly. Most worthy and my most unwearied friends : I return instantly. [Exit. Lai. Most worthy lord ; Cot. His lordship is turn’d instant kind, me- I have not observed it in him, heretofore, [thinks; 1 Tri. ’Tis true, and it becomes him nobly. Min. I Am wrapt withal. 2 Tri. By Mars, he has my lives, Were they a million, for this only grace. Lac. Ay, and to name a man ! Lat. As he did me ! Min. And me 1 Lat. Who would not spend his life and fortunes, To purchase but the look of such a lord ? Lac. He that would nor be lord’s fool, nor the world’s. [Aside. —♦— SCENE VI.— Another Room in the same. Enter Sejanus, Macro, and SATarus. Sej. Macro! 1 most welcome, a most coveted friend! Let me enjoy my longings. When arrived you ? Mac. About 2 the noon of night. Sej. Satrius, give leave. [Exit Sat. Mac. I have been, since I came, with both the On a particular design from Caesar. [consuls, Sej. How fares it with our great and royal master ? Mac. Right plentifully well; as, with a prince, That still holds out 3 the great proportion Of his large favours, where his judgment hath Made once divine election : like the god That wants not, nor is wearied to bestow Where merit meets his bounty, as it doth In you, already the most happy, and ere The sun shall climb the south, most high Sejanus. Let not my lord be amused. For, to this end Was I by Csesar sent for to the isle, With special caution to conceal my journey ; And, thence, had my dispatch as privately Again to Rome ; charged to come here by night; And only to the consuls make narration Of his great purpose ; that the benefit Might come more full, and striking, by how much It was less look’d for, or aspired by you, Or least informed to the common thought. Sej. What may this be ? part of myself, dear Macro, If good, speak out; and share with your Sejanus. Mac. If bad, I should for ever loath myself To be the messenger to so good a lord. I do e?rceed my instructions to acquaint 1 Dio. Hist. Rom. Lib. lviii. p. 73. * Meridies noctis, Varr. Marcipor. vid. Non. Mar. cap. vi. s Dio. Lib. lviii. p. 78. Your lordship with thus much ; but ’tis my venture On your retentive wisdom : and because I would no jealous scruple should molest Or rack your peace of thought. For I assure My noble lord, no senator yet knows The business meant: though all by several letters Are warned to be there, and give their voices, Only to add unto the state and grace Of what is purposed. Sej. You take pleasure, Macro, Like a coy wench, in torturing your lover. What can be worth this suffering ? Mac. That which follows, The 4 tribunitial dignity and power : Both which Sejanus is to have this day Conferr’d upon him, and by public senate. Sej. Fortune be mine again! thou hast satisfied For thy suspected loyalty. [Aside. Mac. My lord, 1 have no longer time, the day approacheth, And I must back to Caesar. Sej. Where’s Caligula ? Mac. That I forgot to tell your lordship. Why, He lingers yonder about Capreae, Disgraced; Tiberius hath not seen him yet: He needs would thrust himself to go with me, Against my wish or will; but I have quitted His forward trouble, with as tardy note As my neglect or silence could afford him. Your lordship cannot now command me aught, Because I take no knowledge that I saw you; But I shall boast to live to serve your lordship: And so take leave. Sej. Honest and worthy Macro ; Your love and friendship. [ Exit Macro.] —Who’s there? Satrius, Attend my honourable friend forth.—O ! How vain and vile a passion is this fear, What base uncomely things it makes men do ! Suspect their noblest friends, as I did this, Flatter poor enemies, entreat their servants, Stoop, court, and catch at the benevolence Of creatures, unto whom, within this hour, I would not have vouchsafed a quarter-look, Or piece of face ! By you that fools call gods, Hang all the sky with your prodigious signs, Fill earth with monsters, drop the scorpion down, Out of the zodiac, or the fiercer lion, Shake off the loosen’d globe from her long hinge, Roll all the world in darkness, and let loose The enraged winds to turn up groves and towns! When I do fear again, let me be struck With forked fire, and unpitied die : Who fears, is worthy of calamity. [Exit. —♦- SCENE VII.— Another Room in the same. Enter Terentius, Minutius, Laco, Cotta, Latiaris, and Pomponius; Rkgulus, Trio, and others, on differ nd sides. Pom. Is not my lord here ? Ter. Sir, he will be straight. Cot. What news, Fulcinius Trio ? Tri. Good, good tidings ; But keep it to yourself. My lord Sejanus Is to receive this day in open senate The tribunitial dignity. 4 Dio. Lib. lviii p. 78. vid. Suet, de oppress. Sejan. Tilx. c. 65. SCENE IX. SEJANUS. 1G7 Cot. Is’t true ? Tri. No words, not to your thought: but, sir, Lat. What says the consul ? [believe it. Cot. Speak it not again : He tells me, that to-day my lord Sejanus- Tri. I must entreat you, Cotta, on your honour Not to reveal it. Cot. On my life, sir. Lat. Say. Cot. Is to receive the tribunitial power. But, as you are an honourable man, Let me conjure you not to utter it; For it is trusted to me with that bond. Lat. I am Harpocrates. Ter. Can you assure it ? Pom. The consul told it me, but keep it close. Min. Lord Latiaris, what’s the news ? Lat. I’ll tell you ; But you must swear to keep it secret. Enter Sejanus. Sej. I knew the Fates had on their distaff left More of our thread, than so. Reg. Hail, great Sejanus ! Tri. Hail, the ’most honour’d ! Cot. Happy! Lat. High Sejanus! Sej. Do you bring prodigies too ? Tri. May all presage Turn to those fair effects, whereof we bring Your lordship news. Reg. May’t please my lord withdraw. Sej. Yes :—I will speak with you anon. LTo some that stand, by. Ter. My lord, What is your pleasure for the tribunes ? Sej. Why, Let them be thank’d and sent away. Min. My lord- Lac. Will’t please your lordship to command Sej. No : [me- You are troublesome. Min. The 2 mood is changed. Tri. Not speak, Nor look ! Lac. Ay, he is wise, will make him friends Of such who never love, but for their ends. {Exeunt. Must give our suffrage to it. You will say. It is to make his fall more steep and grievous : It may be so. But think it, they that can With idle wishes ’say to bring back time : In cases desperate, all hope is crime. See, see ! what troops of his officious friends Flock to salute my lord, and start before My great proud lord ! to get a lord-like nod ! Attend my lord unto the senate-house ! Bring back my lord! like servile ushers, make Way for my lord! proclaim his idol lordship, More than ten criers, or six noise of trumpets! Make legs, kiss hands, and take a scatter’d hair From my lord’s eminent shoulder ! [Sanquinius and IIaterius pass over the stage. See, 4 Sauquinius With his slow belly, and his dropsy ! look, What toiling haste he makes ! yet here’s another Retarded with the gout, will be afore him. Get thee 5 Liburnian porters, thou gross fool, To bear thy obsequious fatness, like thy peers. They are met! the gout returns, and his great carriage. [Lictors, Regulus, Trio, Sejanus, Satrius, and many other Senators, pass over the stage. Lict. Give way, make place, room for the consul! San. Hail, Hail, great Sejanus! Hat. Hail, my honour’d lord ! Arr. We shall be mark’d anon, for our not Hail. Leg. That is already done. Arr. It is a note Of upstart greatness, to observe and watch For these poor trifles, which the noble mind Neglects and scorns. I.ep. Ay, and they think themselves Deeply dishonour’d where they are omitted, As if they were 6 necessities that help’d To the perfection of their dignities ; And hate the men that but refrain them. Arr. O ! There is a farther cause of hate. Their breasts Are guilty, that we know their obscure springs, And base beginnings ; thence the anger grows. On. Follow. —♦— SCENE VIII.— A Space before the Temple of Apollo. Enter Arruntius and Lepidus, divers Senators passing by them. Arr. Ay, go, make haste ; take heed you be not To tender your 3 All Hail in the wide hall [last Of huge Sejanus : run a lictor’s pace : Stay not to put your robes on; but away, With the pale troubled ensigns of great friendship Stamp’d in your face ! Now, Marcus Lepidus, You still believe your former augury ! Sejanus must go downward ! You perceive His wane approaching fast! Lep. Believe me, Lucius, I wonder at this rising. Arr. Ay, and that we 1 Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. lviii. p. 718. 2 Dio. ibid. 3 Ave, matntina vox salutanti propria, apud Romanos, vid. Bliss, de form. Lib. viii. SCENE IX .—Another part of the same. Enter Macro and Laco. Mac. When all are enter’d, 7 shut the temple doors; And bring your guards up to the gate. Lac. I will. Mac. If you shall hear commotion in the senate, Present yourself : and charge on any man Shall offer to come forth. Lac. I am instructed. {Exeunt. 4 De Sanquinio vid. Tacit. Ann. Lib. vi. et de Haterio, ibid. 5 Ex Liburnla, magna: et procerae staturae mittebantur, qui crant Rom. Lecticarii; test. Juv. Sat. iii. v. 240. _Turba cedente velietur Dives, et ingenti curvet super ora Liburno, 6 Dio. Rom. Hist.Lib. lviii. 7 Dio. ibid. p. 718. -♦- K>8 SEJANUS. act v. SCENE X.— The Temple of Apollo. Enter ITaterius, Trio, Sanqwnius, Cotta, Regumjs, Sejanus, Pomponius, Latiaius, Lepidus, Arruntius, and divers other Senators ; Praecones, and Lictors. Hat. How well his lordship looks to-day ! Tri. As if He had been born, or made for this hour’s state. Cot. Your fellow consul's come about, methinks ? Tri. Ay, he is wise. San. Sejanus trusts him well. Tri. Sejanus is a noble, 1 bounteous lord. Hat. He is so, and most valiant. Lat. And most wise. 1 Sen. He’s every thing. Lat. Worthy of all. and more Than bounty can bestow. Tri. This dignity Will make him worthy. Pom. Above Caesar. San. Tut, Caesar is but the 2 rector of an isle, He of the empire. Tri. Now he will have power More to reward than ever. Cot. Let us look We be not 3 * * slack in giving him our voices. Lat. Not I. San. Nor I. Cot. The readier we seem To propagate his honours, will more bind His thoughts to ours. Hat. I think right with your lordship ; It is the way to have us hold our places. San. Ay, and get more. Lat. More office and more titles. Pom. I will not lose the part I hope to share In these his fortunes, for my patrimony. Lat. See, how Arruntius sits, and Lepidus ! Tri. Let them alone, they will be mark’d anon. 1 Sen. I'll do with others. 2 Sen. So will I. 3 Sen. And I. Men grow not in the state, but as they are planted Warm in his favours. Cot. Noble Sejanus ! Hat. Honour’d Sejanus ! Lat. Worthy and great Sejanus ! Arr. Gods ! how the sponges open and take in, And shut again ! look, look ! is not he blest That gets a seat in eye-reach of him ? more, That comes in ear, or tongue-reach ? O but most, Can claw his subtle elbow, or with a buz Fly-blow his ears ? Prcet. Proclaim the senate’s peace, And give last summons by the edict. Pros. Silence ! In name of Ctesar, and the senate, silence! Memmius Regulus, and Fulcinius Trio,* con - suls, these present kalends of June, with the first light, shall hold a senate, in the temple of Apollo Palatine all that are fathers, and are registered 1 Vid. acclamation. Senat.Dio. Rom. Ilist. Lib. lviii. p. 710. 2 Dio. p. 715. 3 Dio. p. 719. * Vid. Brissonium de formul. Lib. ii. et Lipsium Sat. JUen'p. s l’alatinus, a monte Palatino dic-tus. fathers, that have right of entering the senate, we warn or command you be frequently present, take knowledge the business is the commonwealth’s : ivhosoever is absent, his fine or mulct will be taken, his excuse will not be taken. Tri. Note who are absent, and record their names. Reg. Fathers conscript, 6 may what I am to utter Turn good and happy for the commonwealth ! And thou, Apollo, in whose holy house We here have met, inspire us all with truth, And liberty of censure to our thought ! The majesty of great Tiberius Caesar Propounds to this grave senate, the bestowing Upon the man he loves, honour’d Sejanus, The 7 tribunitial dignity and power : Here are his letters, signed with his signet. What 8 pleaseth now the fathers to be done? Sen. Read, read them, open, publicly read them. Cot. Caesar hath honour’d his own greatness In thinking of this act. [much Tri. It was a thought Happy, and worthy Caesar. Lat. And the lord As worthy it, on whom it is directed! Hat. Most worthy ! San. Rome did never boast the virtue That could give envy bounds, but his : Sejanus— 1 Sen. Honour'd and noble ! 2 Sen. Good and great Sejanus ! Arr. O, most tame slavery, and fierce fattery ! Pros. Silence! Tiberius C.esar to the Senate, greeting. If you, 9 conscript fathers, with your children, be in health, it is abundantly well: we with our friends here are so. The care of the commonwealth, howsoever we are removed in person, cannot be absent to our thought; although, oftentimes, even to princes most present, the truth of their oivn affairs is hid; than which, nothing falls out more miserable to a state, or makes the art of governing more difficult. But since it hath been our easef ul happiness to enjoy both the aids and industry of so vigilant a senate, we profess to have been the more indulgent to our pleasures, not as being careless of our office, but rather secure of the necessity. Neither do these common rumours of many, and infamous libels published against our retirement, at all afflict us ; bdng born more out of men’s ignorance than their malice: and will, neglected, find their own grave quickly; ivhereas, too sensibly acknowledged, it would make their obloquy ours. Nor do we desire their authors, though found, be censured , since in a xo frce state, as ours, all men ought to enjoy both their minds and tongues free. Arr. The lapwing, the lapwing ! Yet in things which shall ivorthily and more near concern the majesty of a prince, we shall fear to be so unnaturally cruel to our oivn fame, as to neglect them. True it is, conscript fathers, that we have 6 Solemnis pnefutio consulum in relationibus. Dio. p. 718 . 7 Vid. Suet. Tib. cap. 65. 8 Alia formula solemnis, vid. Briss. Lib. ii. et Dio. p. 719. 9 Solenne exordium epistolar. apud Romanos, cons. Briss. de formul. Lib. viii. 10 Firmus et patiens subinde jactabat, in civitatc libera, linguam mentemque liberas esse debere. Suet. Tib. c. 28. scene x. SEJANUS. 1C9 raised Sejanus from obscure, and almost unknown gentry. Sen. How, how ! to the highest and most conspicuous point of great¬ ness, and, we hope, deservingly ; yet not without danger: it being a most bold hazard in that sovereign, who, by his particular love to one, dares adventure the hatred of all his other subjects. Arr. This touches ; the blood turns. Bat we affy in your loves and understandings, and do no way suspect the merit of our Sejanus, to make cur favours offensive to any. Sen. O ! good, good. Though we could have unshed his zeal had run a calmer course against Agrippina and our nephews, hoicsoever the openness of their actions declared them delinquents ; and, that he would have remem¬ bered, no innocence is so safe, but it rejoiceth to stand in the sight of mercy : the use of which in us, he hath so quite taken away, towards them, by his loyal fury, as now our clemency would be thought but wearied cruelty, if we should offer to exercise it. Arr. I thank him;, there I look'd for’t. A good fox! Some there be that 1 would interpret this his public severity to be particular ambition ; and that, wider a pretext of service to us, he doth but remove his own lets: alleging the strengths he hath made to himself, by the praetorian soldiers, by his faction in court and senate, by the offices he holds himself, and confers on others, his popularity and dependents, his urging and almost driving us to this our un¬ willing retirement, and, lastly, his aspiring to be our son-in-law. Sen. This is strange ! Arr. I shall anon believe your vultures, Marcus. Your wisdoms, conscript fathers, are able to ex¬ amine, and censure these suggestions. But, were they left to our absolving voice, we durst pronounce them, as we think them, most malicious. Sen. O, he has restored all; list! Yet are they offered to be averred, and on the lives of the informers. What we should say, or rather what we should not say, lords of the senate, if this be true, our gods and goddesses confound us if we know ! Only we must think, we have placed our benefits ill ; and conclude, that in our choice, either we were wanting to the gods, or the gods to us. [The Senators shift their places. Arr. The place grows hot; they shift. We have not been covetous, honourable fathers, to change ; neither is it now any new lust that alters our affection, or old lathing ; but those needful jealousies of state, that ivarn wiser princes hourly to provide their safely ; and do teach them how learned a thing it is to beware of the humblest enemy ; much more of those great ones, whom their own employ ed favours have made fit for their fears. 1 Sen. Away. 2 Sen. Sit farther. Cot. Let’s remove- Air. Gods! how the leaves drop off, this little wind! We therefore desire, that the offices he holds be first seized by the senate ; and himself suspended from all exercise of place or power - Sen. How ! San. [Thrusting by."] By your leave. 1 De hae epist. vid. Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. lviii. p. 719. et Juv. Sat. x. Arr. Come, porpoise; where’s Haterius? His gout keeps him most miserably constant; Your dancing shews a tempest. Sej. Read no more. Reg. Lords of the senate, hold your seats : read Sej. These letters they are forged. [on. Reg. A guard ! sit still. Enter Laco, with the Guards. Arr. Here’s change! Reg. Bid silence, and read forward. Prce. Silence !■- and himself suspended from all exercise of place or power, but till due and mature trial be made of his innocency, which yet we can faintly apprehend the necessity to doubt. Jf conscript fathers, to your more searching ivisdoms, there shall appear farther cause - or of farther proceeding, either to seizure of lands, goods, or more - it is not our power that shall limit your authority, or our favour that must corrupt your justice: either were dishonourable in you, and both uncharitable to ourself. We would * willingly be present with your counsels in this business ; but the danger of so potent a faction, if it should prove so, forbids our attempting it: except one of the consuls ivould be entreated for our safely, to under¬ take the guard of us home ; then we should most readily adventure. In the mean time, it shall not be fit for us to importune so judicious a senate , who know how much they hurt the innocent, that spare the guilty ; and how grateful a sacrifice to the gods is the life of an ingrateful person. We reflect not, in this, on Sejanus, (notwithstanding, if you keep an eye upon him - and there is Latiaris, a senator, and Pinnarius JYatta, two of his most trusted ministers, and so professed, whom tee desire not to have apprehended,) but as the necessity of the cause exacts it. Reg. A guard on Latiaris ! Arr. O, the spy, The reverend spy is caught! who pities him ? Reward, sir, for your service : now, you have done Your property, you see what use is made 1 [Exeunt Latiaris and Natta, guarded. Hang up the instrument. Sej. Give leave. Lac. Stand, stand! He comes upon his death, that doth advance An inch toward my point. Sej. Have we no friends here ? Arr. Hush’d! Where now are all the hails and acclamations ? Enter Macro. Mac. Hail to the consuls, and this noble senate! Sej. Is Macro here ? O, thou art lost, Sejanus ! [Aside. Mac. Sit still, and unaffrighted, reverend fathers : Macro, by Caesar’s grace, the new-made provost, And now possest of the praetorian bands, An honour late belong’d to that proud man. Bids you be safe: and to your constant doom Of his deservings, offers you the surety Of all the soldiers, tribunes, and centurions, Received in our command. Reg. Sejanus, Sejanus, Stand forth, Sejanus 1 Sej. Am I call’d? 2 Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. lviii. p. 7! 9, et Suet. Tib, 170 SE JANUS. Mac. Ay, tliou, Thou insolent monster, art bid stand. Sej. Why, Macro, It hath been otherwise between you and I; This court, that knows us both, hath seen a differ- And can, if it be pleased to speak, confirm [ence, Whose insolence is most. Mac. Come down, Typhoeus. If mine be most, lo ! thus I make it more ; Kick up thy heels in air, tear off thy robe, Play with thy beard and nostrils. Thus ’tis fit (And no man take compassion of thy state) To use th’ ingrateful viper, tread his brains Into the earth. Reg. Forbear. Mac. If I could lose All my humanity now, ’twere well to torture So meriting a traitor.—Wherefore, fathers, Sit you amazed and silent; and not censure This wretch, who, in the hour he first rebell’d ’Gainst Caesar’s bounty, did condemn himself? Phlegra, the field where all the sons of earth Muster’d against the gods, did ne'er acknowledge So proud and huge a monster. Reg. Take him hence ; And all the gods guard Caesar! Tri. Take him hence. Hat. Hence. Cot. To the dungeon with him. San. He deserves it. Sen. Crown all our 1 doors with bays. San. And let an ov, With gilded horns and garlands, straight be led Unto the Capitol— Hat. And sacrificed To Jove, for Caesar’s safety. Tri. All our gods Be present still to Caesar! Cot. Phoebus. San. Mars. Hat. Diana. San. Pallas. Sen. Juno, Mercury, All guard him! Mac. Forth, thou prodigy of men ! [Exit Sejanus, guarded. Cot. Let all the traitor’s titles be defaced. Tri. His images and statues be pull’d down. Hat. His chariot-wheels be broken. Arr. And the legs Of the poor horses, that deserved nought, Let them be broken too ! \_Exeunt Lictors, Praccones, Macho, Regulus, Trio, IIaterius, and Sanquinius : manent Lepidus, Arruntius, and a few Senators. Lep. O violent change, And whirl of men’s affections ! Arr. Like, as both Their bulks and souls were bound on Fortune’s And must act only with her motion. [wheel, Lep. Who would depend upon the popular air, Or voice of men, that have to-day beheld That which, if all the gods had fore-declared, Would not have been believed, Sejanus’ fall? He, that this morn rose proudly, as the sun, . And, breaking through a mist of clients’ breath, Came on, as gazed at and admired as he, When superstitious Moors salute his light! 1 Leg. Juv. Sat. x. ACT V. That had our servile nobles waiting him As common grooms ; and hanging on his look, No less than human life onMestiny! That had men’s knees as frequent as the gods; And sacrifices 2 more than Rome had altars : And this man fall! fall ? ay, without a look That durst appear his friend, or lend so much Of vain relief, to his changed state, as pity ! Arr. They that before, like gnats, play’d in his beams, And throng’d to circumscribe him, now not seen Nor deign to hold a common seat with him! Others, that waited him unto the senate, Now inhumanely ravish him to prison, Whom, but this morn, they follow’d as their lord ! Guard through the streets, bound like a fugitive, Instead of wreaths give fetters, strokes for stoops. Blind shames for honours, and black taunts foi Who would trust slippery chance ? [titles Lep. They that would make Themselves her spoil; and foolishly forget, When she doth flatter, that she comes to prey. Fortune, thou hadst no deity, if men Had wisdom : we have placed thee so high, By fond belief in thy felicity. [Shout within .] The gods guard Caesar ! All the gods guard Caesar! Re-enter Macro, Regulus, and divers Senators. Mac. Now, 3 great Sejanus, you that awed the And sought to bringthe nobles toyour whip; [state. That would be Caesar’s tutor, and dispose Of dignities and offices ! that had The public head still bare to your designs, And made the general voice to echo yours ! That look’d for salutations twelve score off, And would have pyramids, yea temples, rear’d To your huge greatness; now you lie as flat, As was your pride advanced! Reg. Thanks to the gods ! Sen. And praise to Macro, that hath saved Liberty, liberty, liberty ! Lead on, [Rome ! And praise to Macro, that hath saved Rome ! [ Exeunt all but Arruntius and Lepiucs. Arr. I prophesy, out of the senate’s flattery, That, this new fellow, Macro, will become A greater prodigy in Rome, than he That now is fallen. Enter Terentius. Ter. O you, whose minds are good, And have not forced all mankind from your breasts; That yet have so much stock of virtue left, To pity guilty states, when they are wretched : Lend your soft ears to hear, and eyes to weep, Deeds done by men, beyond the acts of furies. The eager multitude (who never yet Knew why to love or hate, but only pleased T’ express their rage of power) no sooner heard The murmur of Sejanus in decline, But with that speed and heat of appetite, With which they greedily devour the way To some great sports, or a new theatre, They fill’d the Capitol, and Pompey’s Cirque, Where, like so many mastiffs, biting stones, As if his statues now were sensitive Of their wild fury ; first, 4 they tear them down ; 2 Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. lviii. p. 719, &c. 3 Vid. Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. lviii. p. 720, &o. 4 Vid. Juv. Sat. x. •scene x. SEJANUS. 171 Then fastening ropes, drag them along the streets, Crying in scorn, This, this was that rich head Was crown’d with garlands, and with odours, this That was in Rome so reverenced ! Now The furnace and the bellows shall to work, The great Sejanus crack, and piece by piece Drop in the founder’s pit. Lep. 0 popular rage ! Ter. The whilst the senate at 1 the temple of Concord Make haste to meet again, and thronging cry, Let us condemn him, tread him down in water, While he doth lie upon the bank ; away ! While some more tardy, cry unto their bearers, He will be censured ere we come ; run, knaves, And use that furious diligence, for fear Their bondmen should inform against their slack- And bring their quaking flesh unto the hook : [ness, The rout they follow with confused voice. Crying, they’re glad, say, they could ne’er abide him, Enquire what man he was, what kind of face, What beard he had, what nose, what lips ? Protest They ever did presage he’d come to this ; They never thought him wise, nor valiant ; ask After his garments, when he dies, what death ; And not a beast of all the herd demands, What was his crime, or who were his accusers, Under what proof or testimony he fell ? There came, says one, a huge long-worded letter From Caprese against him. Did there so ? 0, they are satisfied ; no more. Lep. Alas ! They follow 2 Fortune, and hate men condemn’d, Guilty or not. Arr. But had Sejanus thrived In his design, and prosperously opprest The old Tiberius : then, in that same minute, These very rascals, that now rage like furies, Would have proclaim’d Sejanus emperor. Lep. But what hath follow’d ? Ter. Sentence 3 by the senate, To lose his head ; which was no sooner off, But that and the unfortunate trunk w r ere seized By the rude multitude; who not content With what the forward justice of the state Officiously had done, with violent rage Have rent it limb from limb. A thousand heads, A thousand hands, ten thousand tongues and voices, Employ’d at once in several acts of malice ! Old men not staid with age, virgins with shame, Late wives with loss of husbands, mothers of chil- Losing all grief in joy of his sad fall, [dren, Run quite transported with their cruelty ! These mounting at his head, these at his face, These digging out his eyes, those w r ith his brains Sprinkling themselves, their houses and their friends ; Others are met, have ravish’d thence an arm, And deal small pieces of the flesh for favours ; These with a thigh, this hath cut off bis hands, And this his feet ; these fingers and these toes ; That hath his liver, he his heart : there wants Nothing but room for wrath, and place for hatred! 1 Dio. Rom. Hist. Lib. lviii. p. 720. 2 *Tuv. Sat. x. 3 Dio. Rom. Ilist. Lib. lviii. p.720. Scnec. lib. deTranq. Ar.im. e. 11. Quo die ilium senatus dcduxerat, populus in frusta divisit, &c. What cannot oft be done, is now o’erdone. The whole, and all of what was great Sejanus, And, next to Caesar, did possess the world, Now torn and scatter’d, as he needs no grays j Each little dust covers a little part : So lies he no where, and yet often buried! Enter NuxTiua Arr. More of Sejanus ? Nun. Yes. Lep. What can be added ? We know him dead. Nun. Then there begin your pity. There is enough behind to melt ev’n Rome, And Caesar into tears ; since never slave Could yet so highly offend, but tyranny, In torturing him, would make him worth lament¬ ing. — A son and daughter to the dead Sejanus, (Of whom 4 there is not now so much remaining As would give fast’ning to the hangman’s hook,) Have they drawn forth for farther sacrifice ; Whose tenderness of knowledge, unripe years, And childish silly innocence was such, As scarce would lend them feeling of their danger : The 5 girl so simple, as she often ask’d “ Where they would lead her ? for what cause they dragg’d her?’’ Cried, “ She would do no morethat she could take “ Warning with beating.” And because our laws Admit no virgin 6 immature to die, The wittily and sti’angely cruel Macro Deliver’d her to be deflower’d and spoil’d, By the rude lust of the licentious hangman, Then to be strangled with her harmless brother. Lep. O, act most worthy hell, and lasting night, To hide it from the world ! Nun. Their bodies thrown Into the Gemonies, (I know not how. Or by what accident return’d,) the mother. The expulsed- 7 Apicata, finds them there ; Whom when she saw lie spread on the 8 degrees, After a world of fury on herself, Tearing her hair, defacing of her face, Beating her breasts and womb, kneeling amaz’d, Crying to heaven, then to them ; at last, Her drowned voice gat up above her woes, And with such black and bitter execrations, As might affright the gods, and force the sun Run backward to the east ; nay, make the old Deformed chaos rise again, to o’erwhelm Them, us, and all the world, she fills the air, Upbraids the heavens with their partial dooms, Defies their tyrannous powers, 9 and demands, What she, and those poor innocents have trans¬ gress’d, That they must suffer such a share in vengeance, Whilst Livia, Lygdus, and Eudemus live, Who, as she says, and firmly vows to prove it To Caesar and the senate, poison’d Drusus ? Lep. Confederates with her husband ! 4 Vid. Scnec. lib. de Tranq. Ani. c. xi. 5 Tac. Ann. Lib. v. p. 99. Et Dio. Lib. lviii. p. 720. c Lex non tam virginitati ignotum cautumque voluii quam adati. Cons. Lips, comment. Tac. 7 Dio. Lib. lviii. c. 720. 8 Scalar Gemoniae in quas erant prejecta damnator. cor¬ pora. 9 Dio. Lib. lviii. p. 720. 172 SEJANUS. act v. Nun. Ay. Lep. Strange act! Arr. And strangely open’d : what says now my monster, The multitude ? they reel now, do they not ? Nun. Their gall is gone, and now they ’gin to weep The mischief they have done. Arr. I thank ’em, rogues. Nun. Part are so stupid, or so flexible, As they believe him innocent; all grieve : And some whose hands yet reek with his warm blood, And gripe the part which they did tear of him, Wish him collected and created new. Lep. How Fortune plies her sports, when she begins To practise them ! pursues, continues, adds, Confounds with varying her impassion’d moods! Arr. Dost thou hope, Fortune, to redeem thy crimes, To make amend for thy ill placed favours, With these strange punishments ? Forbear, you things That stand upon the pinnacles of state, To boast your slippery height; when you do fall, You pash yourselves in pieces, ne’er to rise ; And he that lends you pity, is not wise. Ter. Let this example move the insolent man, Not to grow proud and careless of the gods. It is an odious wisdom to blaspheme. Much more to slighten, or deny their powers : For, whom the morning saw so great and high, Thus low and little, ’fore the even doth lie. [ Exeuni VOLPONE; OR, THE FOX. TO THE MOST NOBLE AND MOST EQUAL SISTERS, THE TWO FAMOUS UNIVERSITIES, FOR THEIR LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE SHEWN TO IIIS POEM IN TIIE PRESENTATION; BEN JONSON, THE GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGER, DEDICATES BOTH IT AND HIMSELF. Never, most equal Sisters, had any man a wit so presently excellent, as that it could raise itself ; hut there must come both matter, occasion, commanders, and favourers to it. If this be true, and that the fortune of all writers doth daily prove it, it behoves the careful to provide well towards these accidents ; and, having acquired them, to preserve that part of reputation most tenderly, wherein the benefit of a friend is also defended. Hence is it, that I now render myself grateful, and am studious to justify the bounty of your act; to which, though your mere authority were satisfy¬ ing, yet it being an age wherein poetry and the professors of it hear so ill on all sides, there will a reason be looked for in the subject. It is certain, nor can it with any forehead be opposed, that the too much license of poetasters in this time, hath much deformed their mistress ; that, every day, their manifold and manifest ignorance doth stick unnatural reproaches upon her: but for their petulancy, it were an act of the greatest injustice, either to let the learned suffer, or so divine a skill (which indeed should not be attempted with unclean hands) to fall under the least contempt. For, if men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to them¬ selves the impossibility of any man’s being the good poet, without first being a good man. He that is said to be able to inform young men to all good disciplines, inflame grown men to all great virtues, keep old men in their best and supreme state, or, as they decline to childhood, recover them to their first strength ; that comes forth the interpreter and arbiter of nature, a teacher of things divine no less than human, a master in manners; and can alone, or with a few, effect the business of mankind : this, I take him, is no subject for pride and ignorance to exercise their railing rhetoric upon. But it will here be hastily answered, that the writers of these days are other things ; that not only their manners, but their natures, are inverted, and nothing remainingwitli them of the dignity of poet, but the abused name, which every scribe usurps ; that now, especially in dramatic, or, as they term it, stage-poetry, nothing but ribaldry, profanation, blasphemy, all license of offence to God and man is practised. I dare not deny a great part of this, and am sorry I dare not, because in some men’s abortive features (and would they had never boasted the light) it is over true: but that all are embarked in this bold adventure for hell, is a most uncharitable thought, and, uttered, a more malicious slander. For my particular, I can, and from a most clear conscience, affirm, that I have ever trembled to think toward the least profaneness; have loathed the use of such foul and unwashed bawdry, as is now made the food of the scene : and, how¬ soever I cannot escape from some, the imputation of sharpness, but that they will say, I have taken a pride, or lust, to be bitter, and not my youngest infant hut hath come into the world with all his teeth ; I would ask of these supercilious politics, what nation, society, or general order or state, I have provoked? What public person? Whether I have not in all these preserved their dignity, as mine own person, safe? My works are read, allowed, (I speak of those that are intirely mine,) look into them, what broad reproofs have I used 9 where have I been particular ? where personal ? except to a mimic, cheater, bawd, or buffoon, creatures, for their insolencies, worthy to be taxed ? yet to which of these so pointingly, as he might not either ingenuously have confest, or wisely dissembled his disease ? But it isnot rumour can make men guilty, much less entitle me to other men’s crimes. I know, that nothing can be so innocently writ or carried, but may be made obnoxious to construction ; marry, whilst I bear mine innocence about me, I fear it not. Application is now grown a trade with many; and there are that profess to have a key for the decyphering of every thing: but let wise and noble persons take heed how they be too credulous, or give leave to these invading interpreters to be over¬ familiar with their fames, who cunningly, and often, utter their own virulent malice, under other men’s simplest meanings. As for those that will (by faults which charity hath raked up, or common honesty concealed) make them¬ selves a name with the multitude, or, to draw their rude and beastly claps, care not whose living faces they intrench with their petulant styles, may they do it without a rival, for me! I choose rather to live graved in obscurity, than share with them in so preposterous a fame. Nor can I blame the wishes of those severe and wise patriots, who pro¬ viding the hurts these licentious spirits may do in a state, desire rather to see fools and devils, and those antique relics of barbarism retrieved, with all other ridiculous and exploded follies, than behold the wounds of private men, of princes and nations: for, as Horace makes Trebatius speak among these, “ Sibi quisque timet, quanquam est intactus, et odit.” And men may justly impute such rages, if continued, to the writer, as his sports. The increase of which lust in liberty, together with the present trade of the stage, in all their miscelline interludes, what learned or liberal soul doth not already abhor ? where nothing but the filth of the time is uttered, and with such impropriety of phrase, such plenty of solecisms, such dearth of sense, so bold prolepses, so racked metaphors, with brotlielry, able to violate the ear of a pagan, and blasphemy, to turn the blood of a Christian to water. I cannot but be serious in a cause of this nature, wherein my fame, and the reputation of divers honest and learned are the question; when a name so full of authority, antiquity, and all great mark, is, through their insolence, become the lowest scorn of the age; and those men subject to the petulancy of every vernaculous orator, that were wont to be the care of kings and happiest monarens. This it is that hath not only rapt me to present indignation, but made me studious heretofore, and by all my actions, to stand off from them; which may most appear in this my latest work, which you, most learned Arbitresses, have seen, judged, tmd to my crown, approved ; wherein I have laboured for their instruction and amendment, to reduce not only the 174 THE FOX. T ancient forms, but manners of the scene, the easiness, the propriety, the innocence, and last, the doctrine, which is the principal end of poesie, to inform men in the best reason of living. And though my catasti’ophe may, in the strict rigour of comic law, meet with censure, as turning back to my promise ; I desire the learned and charitable critic, to have so much faith in me, to think it was done of industry : for, with what ease I could have varied it nearer his scale (but that I fear to boast my own faculty) I could here insert. Hut my special aim being to put the snaffle in theii mouths, that cry out, We never punish vice in our interludes, &c., I took the more liberty ; though not without some lines of example, drawn even in the ancients themselves, the goings out of whose comedies are not always joyful, but oft times the bawds, the servants, the rivals, yea, and the masters are mulcted ; and fitly, it being the office of a comic poet to imitate justice, and instruct to life, as well as purity of language, or stir up gentle affections ; to which 1 shall take the occasion elsewhere to speak. For the present, most reverenced Sisters, as I have cared to be thankful for your affections past, and here made the understanding acquainted with some ground of your favours; let me not despair their continuance, to the maturing of some worthier fruits; wherein, if my muses be true to me, I shall raise the despised head of poetry again, and stripping her out of those rotten and base rags wherewith the times have adulterated her form, restore her to her primitive habit, feature, and majesty, and render her worthy to bo embraced and kist of all the great and master¬ spirits of our world. As for the vile and slothful, who never affected an act worthy of celebration, or are so inward with their own vicious natures, as they worthily fear her, and think it an high point of policy to keep her in contempt, with their declamatory and windy invectives ; she shall out of just rage incite her servants (who are genus irrHabile) to spout ink in their faces, that shall eat farther than their marrow into their fames; and not Cinnamus the barber, with his art, shall be able to take out the brands; but they shall live, and be read, till the wretches die, as thing! worst deserving of themselves in chief, and then of all mankind. From my House in the Black-Friars, this 1 lth dag of February, 1607. DRAMATIS PERSONS. Volpone, a Magnijico. Mosca, his Parasite. Voltore, an Advocate. Corbaccio, an old Gentleman. Corvino, a Merchant. Bonario, son to Corbaccio. Sir Politick Would-be, a Knight. Peregrine, a Gentleman Traveller. Nano, a Dwarf. Castiione, an Eunuch. Andkogyno, an Hermaphrodite. Grege (or Mob.) Commandadori, Officers of Justice. Mercatori, three Merchants. Avocatori, four Magistrates. Notario, the Itegistcr. Lady Would-be, Sir Politick’s Wife. Celia, Corvino's Wife. Servitori, Servants, two Waiting-women, Ijc, SCENE,— Venice THE ARGUMENT. V olpone, childless, rich, feigns side, despairs, O ffers his state to hopes of several heirs, L ies languishing : his parasite receives P resents of all, assures, deludes ; then weaves O ther cross plots, ivhich ope themselves, are told. \ N eiv tricks for safety are sought ; they thrive: ivhen hold, ) E ach tempts the other again, and all are sold. J PROLOGUE. IVoiv, luck yet send us, and a little wit Will serve to make our play hit ; According to the palates of the season ) Here is rhime , not empty of reason. This ive ivere bid to credit from our poet, Whose true scope , if you ivould know it, In all his poems still hath been this measure, To mix profit with your pleasure ; And not as some, whose throats their envy failing. Cry hoarsely, All he writes is railing : And when his plays come forth, think they can flout them, With saying , he teas a year about them. To this there needs no lie, but this his creature, Which teas two months since no feature ; And though he dares give them five lives to mend it, ’ Tis known, five weeks fully penn d it, From his own hand, without a co-adjutor, Novice, journey-man , or tutor. Yet thus much I can give you as a token Of his play's worth, no eggs are broken, Nor quaking custards with fierce teeth affrighted, Wherewith your rout are so delighted ; Nor hales he in a gull old ends reciting, To stop gaps in his loose writing ; With such a deal of monstrous and forced action. As might make Belhlem a faction : Nor made he his play for jests stolen from each But makes jests to fit his fable ; \_table, And so presents quick comedy refined, As best critics have designed ; The laws of time, place, persons he observeth. From no needful rule he swerveth. All gall and copperas from his ink he draineth, Only a little salt remaineth , Wherewith he’ll rub your cheeks, till red, with laughter. They shall look fresh a iveek after. scene i. THE FOX. 175 ac: SCENE I. — A Room in Volpone’s House. Enter Volpone and Mosca. Volp. Good morning to the day ; and next, my gold !— Open the shrine, that I may see my saint. [Mosca withdraws the curtain, and discovers piles of gold, plate, jewels, <§c. Hail the world’s soul, and mine ! more glad than is The teeming earth to see the long’d-for sun Peep through the horns of the celestial Ram, Am I, to view thy splendor darkening his ; That lying here, amongst my other hoards, Shew’st like a flame by night, or like the day Struck out of chaos, when all darkness fled Unto the centre. O thou son of Sol, But brighter than thy father, let me kiss, With adoration, thee, and every reliclc Of sacred treasure in this blessed room. Well did wise poets, by thy glorious name, Title that age which they would have the best ; Thou being the best of things, and far transcending All style of joy, in children, parents, friends, Or any other waking dream on earth : Thy looks when they to Venus did ascribe, They should have given her twenty thousand Cupids ; Such are thy beauties and our loves ! Dear saint, Riches, the dumb god, thatgiv’st all men tongues, Thou canst do nought, and yet mak’st men do all things ; The price of souls ; even hell, with thee to boot, Is made worth heaven. Thou art virtue, fame, Honour, and all things else. Who can get thee, He shall be noble valiant, honest, wise - Mos. And what he will, sir. Riches are in fortune A greater good than wisdom is in nature. Volp. True, my beloved Mosca. Yet I glory More in the cunning purchase of my wealth, Than in the glad possession, since I gain No common way ; I use no trade, no venture ; I wound no earth with plough-shares, fat no beasts, To feed the shambles ; have no mills for iron, Oil, corn, or men, to grind them into powder : I blow no subtle glass, expose no ships To threat’nings of the furrow-faced sea ; I turn no monies in the public bank, Nor usure private. Mos. No, sir, nor devour Soft prodigals. You shall have some will swallow A melting heir as glibly as your Dutch Will pills of butter, and ne’er purge for it; Tear forth the fathers of poor families Out of their beds, and coffin them alive In some kind clasping prison, where their bones May be forth-coming, when the flesh is rotten : But your sweet nature doth abhor these courses ; You lothe the widow’s or the orphan’s tears Should wash your pavements, or their piteous cries Ring in your roofs, and beat the air for vengeance. Volp. Right, Mosca ; I do lothe it. Mos. And besides, sir, You are not like the thresher that doth stand With a huge flail, watching a heap of corn, And, hungry, dares not taste the smallest grain, But feeds on mallows, and such bitter herbs ; Nor like the merchant, who hath fill’d his vaults D I. With Romagnia, and rich Candian wines, Yet drinks the lees of Lombard’s vinegar : You will lie not in straw, whilst moths and worms Feed on your sumptuous hangings and soft beds ; You know the use of riches, and dare give now From that bright heap, to me, your poor observer, Or to your dwarf, or your hermaphrodite, Your eunuch, or what other household trifle Your pleasure allows maintenance- Volp. Hold thee, Mosca, [Gives him money. Take of my hand ; thou strik’st on truth in all, And they are envious term thee parasite. Call forth my dwarf, my eunuch, and my fool, And let them make me sport. [Exit Mos.] What should I do, But cocker up my genius, and live free To all delights my fortune calls me to ? I have no wife, no parent, child, ally, To give my substance to ; but whom I make Must be my heir : and this makes men observe me : This draws new clients daily to my house, Women and men of every sex and age, That bring me presents, send me plate, coin, jewels, With hope that when I die (which they expect Each greedy minute) it shall then return Ten-fold upon them ; whilst some, covetous Above the rest, seek to engross me whole, And counter-work the one unto the other, Contend in gifts, as they would seem in love : All which I suffer, playing with their hopes, And am content to coin them into profit, And look upon their kindness, and take more, ; And look on that ; still bearing them in hand, Letting the cherry knock against their lips, And draw it by their mouths, and back again. — How now ! Re-enter Mosca with Naxo, Androgyxo, and Castroke. Nan. Noiv, room for fresh gamesters , who do will you to know, They do bring you neither play nor university show ,• And therefore do intreat you, that ichatsoever they rehearse, May not fare a whit the worse, for the false pace of the verse. If you wonder at this , you will wonder more ere ive pass, For knoiv, here is inclosed ihesoulof Pythagoras , That juggler divine, as hereafter shall follow ; Which soul, fast and loose , sir, came first from Apollo, And teas breath'd into JEthalides, Mercurius his son, Where it had the gift to remember all that ever was done. From thence it fled forth, and made quick transmi¬ gration To goldly-lock'd Euphorbus, who ivas killed in good fashion, At the siege of old Troy, by the cuckold of Sparta. Hermotimus was neat (/ find it in my charta ) To whom it did pass, ivhere no sooner it was missing Put with one Pyrrhus of Delos it team'd to go a fishing ; And thence did it enter the sophist of Greece. From Pytliagore, she went into a beautiful piece, THE FOX. i i7<» ACT I. [light Aspasia, the merelrix ; and the next toss of her IVas again of a ivhore, she became a philosopher , Crates the cgnick, as it self doth relate it: Since kings, knights, and beggars, knaves, lords, and fools gat it, Besides ox and ass, camel, mule, goat , and brock, In all ivhich it hath spoke, as in the cobler's cock. But I come not here to discourse of that matter, Or his one, tivo, or three, or his great oath, By Q.UATER ! His musics, his trigon, his golden thigh, Or his telling how elements shift, but I Would ask, how of late thou hast suffered trans¬ lation, And shifted thy coat in these days of reformation. And. Like one of the reformed, a fool , as you see, Counting all old doctrine lxeresie. Nan. But not on thine own forbid meats hast thou ventured 9 And. Oil fish, when first a Carthusian I enter'd. Nan. Why, then thy dogmatical silence hath left thee 9 And.- Of that an obstreperous lawyer bereft me. Nan. O iconderful change, when sir lawyer forsook thee ! For Pythagore's sake , what body then took thee 9 And. A good dull mule. Nan. And how ! by that means Thouwert brought to allow of the eating of beans9 And. Yes. Nan. But from the mule into whom didst thou pass 9 And. Into a very strange beast, by some writers call'd an ass ; By others, a precise, pure, illuminate brother, Of those devour flesh, and sometimes one another ; And will drop you forth a libel, or a sanctified lie, Betwixt every spoonful of a nativity-pie. Nan. Now quit thee, for heaven , of that profane nation, And gently report thy next transmigration. And. To the same that I am. Nan. A creature of delight, And, ivhatis more than a fool, anhermaphrodite ! Now, prithee, sweet soul, in all thy variation. Which body would’st thou choose, to keep tip thy station 9 And. Troth, this I am in : even here would I tarry. Nan. ’Cause here the delight of each sex thou const vary 9 And. A fas, those pleasures be stale and forsaken ; No, Us your fool ivherewith 1 am so taken, The only one creature that I can call blessed ; For all other forms I have provedmost distressed. Nan. Spoke true, as thou wertin Pythagoras still. This learned opinion we celebrate will, Fellow eunuch, as behoves us, with all our wit and art, To dignify that whereof ourselves are so great and special a part. Volp. Now, very, very pretty! Mosca, this Was thy invention ? Mos. If it please my patron, Not else. Volp. It doth, good Mosca. Mos. Then it was, sir. Nano and Castrone sing. Fools, they are the only nation Worth men’s envy or admiration ; Free from care or sorrow-talcing. Selves and others merry making: All they speak or do is sterling. Your fool he is your great man’s darling. And your ladies’ sport and pleasure; Tongue and bauble are his treasure. E’en his face begetteth laughter, And he speaks truth free from slaughter; He’s the grace of every feast. And sometimes the chiefest guest; Hath his trencher and his stool, When wit waits upon the fool. O, who would not be He, he, lie ? \_Knocking without. Volp. Who’s that? Away! [ Exeunt Nano and Castrone.] Look, Mosca. Fool, begone ! Androgyno Mos. ’Tis signior Voltore, the advocate ; I know him by his knock. Volp. Fetch me my gown, My furs and night-caps; say, my couch is changing, And let him entertain himself awhile Without i’ the gallery. [ Exit Mosca.] Now, now, my clients Begin their visitation ! Vulture, kite, Raven, and gorcrow, all my birds of prey, That think me turning carcase, now they come ; I am not for them yet — Ile-entcr Mosca, with the gown, §c. How now ! the news ? Mos. A piece of plate, sir. Volp. Of what bigness ? Mos. Huge, Massy, and antique, with your name inscribed, And arms engraven. Volp. Good ! and not a fox Stretch’d on the earth, with fine delusive sleights, Mocking a gaping crow ? ha, Mosca ! Mos. Sharp, sir. Volp. Give me my furs. [Puts on his sick dress.'} Why dost thou laugh so, man ? Mos. I cannot choose, sir, when I apprehend What thoughts he has without now, as he walks : That this might be the last gift he should give ; That this would fetch you ; if you died to-day, And gave him all, what he should be to-morrow ; What large return would come of all his ventures ; How he should worship’d be, and reverenced ; Ride with his furs, and foot-cloths ; waited on By herds of fools, and clients ; have clear way Made for his mule, as letter’d as himself; Be call’d the great and learned advocate: And then concludes, there’s nought impossible. Volp. Yes, to be learned, Mosca. Mos. O, no : rich Implies it. Hood an ass with reverend purple, So you can hide his two ambitious ears, And he shall pass for a cathedral doctor. Volp. My caps, my caps, good Mosca. Fetch him in. Mos. Stay, sir ; your ointment for your eyes. Volp. That’s true; Dispatch, dispatch : I long to have possession Of my new present. Mos. That, and thousands more. I hope to see you lord of. Volp. Thanks, kind Mosca. Mos. And that, when I am lost in blended dust And hundred such as I am, in succession- Volp. Nay, that were too much, Mosca. SCENE I. THE Mos. You shall live, Still, to delude these harpies. Volp. Loving Mosca ! ’Tis well: my pillow now, and let him enter. [Exit Mosca. Now, my feign’d cough, my phthisic, and my gout, My apoplexy, palsy, and catarrhs, Help, with your forced functions, this my posture, Wherein, this three year, I have milk’d their hopes. He comes ; I hear him—Uh ! [ coughing .] uh ! \ih ! uh 1 O— Re-enter Mosca, introducing Voltore, with a piece of Plate. Mos. You still are what you were, sir. Only you, Of all the rest, are he commands his love, And you do wisely to preserve it thus, With early visitation, and kind notes Of your good meaning to him, which, I know, Cannot but come most grateful. Patron! sir ! Here’s signior Voltore is come- Volp. [ faintly .] What say you ? Mos. Sir, signior Voltore is come this morning To visit you. Volp. I thank him. Mos. And hath brought A piece of antique plate, bought of St. Mark, With which he here presents you. Volp. He is welcome. Pray him to come more often. Mos. Yes, Volt. What says he ? Mos. He thanks you, and desires you see him Volp. Mosca. [often. Mos. My patron! Volp. Bring him near, where is he? I long to feel his hand. Mos. The plate is here, sir. Volt. How fare you, sir ? Volp. I thank you, signior Voltore ; Where is the plate ? mine eyes are bad. Volt, [putting it into his hands. ] I’m sorry, To see you still thus weak. Mos. That he’s not weaker. [Aside. Volp. You are too munificent. Volt. No, sir ; would to heaven, I could as well give health to you, as that plate ! . Volp. You give, sir, what you can : I thank you. Your love Hath taste in this, and shall not be unanswer’d : I pray you see me often. Volt. Yes, I shall, sir. Volp. Be not far from me. Mos. Do you observe that, sir ? Volp. Hearken unto me still; it will concern you. Mos. You are a happy man, sir; know your good. Volp. I cannot now last long- Mos. You are his heir, sir. Volt. Am I ? Volp. I feel me going ; Uh ! uh ! uh ! uh ! I'm sailing to my port, Uh ! uh! uh ! uh ! And I am glad I am so near my haven. Mos. Alas, kind gentleman! Well, we must all Volt. But, Mosca- [go- Mos. Age will conquer. Volt. ’Pray thee, hear me : Am I inscribed his heir for certain ? Mos. Are you ! I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe To w r rite me in your family. All my hopes Depend upon your worship : I am lost, Except the rising sun do shine on me. Volt. It shall both shine, and warm thee, Mosca. Mos. Sir, I am a man, that hath not done your love All the worst offices : here I wear your keys, See all your coffers and your caskets lock’d, Keep the poor inventory of your jewels, Your plate and monies ; am your steward, sir, Husband your goods here. Volt. But am I sole heir ? Mos. Without a partner, sir; confirm’d this morning : The wax is warm yet, and the ink scarce dry Upon the parchment. Volt. Happy, happy, me ! By what good chance, sweet Mosca ? Mos. Your desert, sir ; I know no second cause. Volt. Thy modesty Is not to know it; well, we shall requite it. Mos. He ever liked your course, sir ; that first took him. I oft have heard him say, how he admired Men of your large profession, that could speak To every cause, and things mere contraries, Till they were hoarse again, yet all be law; That, with most quick agility, could turn, And [re-] return ; [could] make knots, and undo Give forked counsel; take provoking gold [them ; On either hand, and put it up : these men, He knew, would thrive with their humility. And, for his part, he thought he should be blest To have his heir of such a suffering spirit, So wise, so grave, of so perplex’d a tongue, And loud withal, that would not wag, nor scarce Lie still, without a fee ; when every word Your worship but lets fall, is a chequin !— [Knocking without. Who’s that ? one knocks ; I would not have you seen, sir. And yet—pretend you came, and went in haste : I’ll fashion an excuse-—and, gentle sir, When you do come to swim in golden lard, Up to the arms in honey, that your chin Is borne up stiff, with fatness of the flood, Think on your vassal; but remember me : I have not been your worst of clients. Volt. Mosca!- Mos. When will you have your inventory brought, sir ? Or see a copy of the will ?-Anon !— I’ll bring them to you, sir. Away, be gone, Put business in your face. [Exit Voltore. Volp. [springing up. ] Excellent Mosca! Come hither, let me kiss thee. Mos. Keep you still, sir. Here is Corbaccio. Volp. Set the plate away : The vulture’s gone, and the old raven’s come! Mos. Betake you to your silence, and your sleep. Stand there and multiply. [ Putting the plate to the rest.'] Now, shall we see A wretch who is indeed more impotent Than this can feign to be ; yet hopes to hop Over his grave— Enter Corbaccto. Signior Corbacciol You’re very welcome, sir. N 173 TIIE Corb. How does your patron ? Mos. Troth, as he did, sir; no amends. Corb. What! mends he ? Mos. No, sir : he’s rather worse. Corb. That’s well. Where is he ? Mos. Upon his couch, sir, newly fall’n asleep. Corb. Does he sleep well ? Mos. No wink, sir, all this night. Nor yesterday ; but slumbers. Corb. Good ! he should take Some counsel of physicians : I have brought him An opiate here, from mine own doctor. Mos. He will not hear of drugs. Corb. Why? I myself Stood by while it was made, saw all the ingredients: And know, it cannot but most gently work : My life for his, ’tis but to make him sleep. Volp. Ay, his last sleep, if he would take it. lAside. Mos. Sir, He has no faith in physic. Corb. Say you, say you? Mos. He has no faith in physic : he does think Most of your doctors are the greater danger, And worse disease, to escape. I often have Heard him protest, that your physician Should never be his heir. Corb. Not I his heir ? Mos. Not your physician, sir. Corb. O, no, no, no, I do not mean it. Mos. No, sir, nor their fees He cannot brook : he says, they flay a man, Before they kill him. Corb. Right, I do conceive you. Mos. And then they do it by experiment; For which the law not only dotn absolve them, But gives them great reward : and he is loth To hire his death, so. Corb. It is true, they kill With as much license as a judge. Mos. Nay, more; For he but kills, sir, where the law condemns, And these can kill him too. Corb. Ay, or me ; Or any man. How does his apoplex? Is that strong on him still? Mos. Most violent. His speech is broken, and his eyes are set, His face drawn longer than ’twas wont- Corb. How ! how ! Stronger than he was wont ? Mos. No, sir: his face Drawn longer than ’twas wont. Corb. O, good! Mos. His mouth Is ever gaping, and his eyelids hang. Corb. Good. Mos. A freezing numbness stiffens all his joints, And makes the colour of his flesh like lead. Corb. ’Tis good. Mos. His pulse beats slow, and dull. Corb. Good symptoms still. Mas. And from his brain- Corb. I conceive you ; good. Mos. Flows a cold sweat, with a continual rheum, Forth the resolved corners of his eyes. Corb. Is’t possible? Yet I am better, ha! How does he, with the swimming of his head ? Mos. O, sir, ’tis past the scotomy ; he now FOX. act i. Hath lost his feeling, and hath left to snort: You hardly can perceive him, that he breathes. Corb. Excellent, excellent! sure I shall out¬ last him : This makes me young again, a score of years. Mos. I was a coming for you, sir. Corb. Has he made his will ? What has he given me ? Mos. No, sir. Corb. Nothing ! ha ? Mos. He has not made his will, sir. Corb. Oh, oh, oh ! What then did Voltore, the lawyer, here? Mos. He smelt a carcase, sir, when he but heard My master was about his testament; As I did urge him to it for your good—— Corb. He came unto him, did he ? I thought so. Mos. Yes, and presented him this piece of plate. Corb. To be his heir ? Mos. I do not know, sir. Corb. True : I know it too. Mos. By your own scale, sir. \_Aside. Corb. Weil, I shall prevent him, yet. See, Mosca, look. Here, I have brought a bag of bright chequines, Will quite weigh down his plate. Mos. [ Taking the bag.] Yea, marry, sir. This is true physic, this your sacred medicine ; No talk of opiates, to this great elixir ! Corb. ’Tis aurum palpabile, if not potabile. Mos. It shall be minister’d to him, in his bowl. Corb. Ay, do, do, do. Mos. Most blessed cordial 1 This will recover him. Corb. Yes, do, do, do. Mos. I think it were not best, sir. Corb. What ? Mos. To recover him. Corb. O, no, no, no ; by no means. Mos. Why, sir, this Will work some strange effect, if he but feel it. Corb. ’Tis true, therefore forbear; I’ll take my Give me it again. [venture : Mos. At no hand ; pardon me : You shall not do yourself that wrong, sir. I Will so advise you, you shall have it all. Corb. How? Mos. All, sir; ’tis your right, your own: no Can claim a part: ’tis yours, without a rival, [man Decreed by destiny. Corb. How, how, good Mosca? Mos. I'll tell you, sir. This fit he shall recover. Corb. I do conceive you. Mos. And, on first advantage Of his gain'd sense, will I re-importune him Unto the making of his testament : And shew him this. [Pointing to the money. Corb. Good, good. Mos. ’Tis better yet, If you will hear, sir. Corb. Yes, with all my heart. Mos. Now, would I counsel you, make home with speed ; There, frame a will; whereto you shall inscribe My master your sole heir. Corb. And disinherit My son ! Mos. O, sir, the better : for that colour Shall make it much more taking. SCENE I. 1HE Corb. O, but colour ? Mos. This will, sir, you shall send it unto me. Now, when I come to inforce, as I will do, Your cares, your watchings, and your many prayers, Your more than many gifts, your this day’s present, And last, produce your will; where, without thought, Or least regard, unto your proper issue, A son so brave, and highly meriting, The stream of your diverted love hath thrown you Upon my master, and made him your heir : He cannot be so stupid, or stone-dead, But out of conscience, and mere gratitude- Corb. He must pronounce me his ? Mos. ’Tis true. Corb. This plot Did I think on before. Mos. 1 do believe it. Corb. Do you not believe it? Mos. Yes, sir. Corb. Mine own project. Mos. Which, when he hath done, sir- Corb. Publish’d me his heir ? Mos. And you so certain to survive him- Corb. Ay. Mos. Being so lusty a man- Corb. ’Tis true. Mos. Yes, sir- Corb. I thought on that too. See, how he should be The very organ to express my thoughts ! Mos. You have not only done yourself a Corb. But multiplied it on my son. [good- Mos. ’Tis right, sir. Corb. Still, my invention. Mos. ’Las, sir! heaven knows, It hath been all my study, all my care, V I e’en grow gray withal,) how to work things- Corb. I do conceive, sweet Mosca. Mos. You are he, For whom I labour here. Corb. Ay, do, do, do: I’ll straight about it. [Going. Mos. Rook go with you, raven! Corb. I know thee honest. Mos. You do lie, sir! [Aside. Corb. And- Mos. Your knowledge is no better than your ears, sir. Corb. I do not doubt, to be a father to thee. Mos. Nor I to gull my brother of his blessing. Corb. I may have my youth restored to me, why not ? Mos. Yourworship is a precious ass! Corb. What say’st thou ? ' Mos. I do desire your worship to make haste, sir. Corb. ’Tis done, ’tis done; I go. [Exit. Vo Ip. [leaping from his couch.] 0,1 shall burst! Let out my sides, let out my sides—* Mos. Contain \ r our flux of laughter, sir : you know this hope Is such a bait, it covers any hook. Volp. O, but thy working, and thy placing it! I cannot hold ; good rascal, let me kiss thee: 1 never knew thee in so rare a humour. Mos. Alas, sir, I but do as I am taught; Follow your grave instructions ; give them words ; Pour oil into their ears, and send them hence. fox. m Volp. ’Tis true, ’tis true. What a rare punish- Is avarice to itself! [ment Mos. Ay, with our help, sir. Volp. So many cares, so many maladies, So many fears attending on old age, Y’ea, death so often call’d on, as no wish Can be more frequent with them, their limbs faint, Their senses dull, their seeing, hearing, going, All dead before them ; yea, their very teeth, Their instruments of eating, failing them : Y 7 et this is reckon’d life ! nay, here was one, Is now gone home, that wishes to live longer 1 Feels not his gout, nor palsy ; feigns himself Y’ounger by scores of years, flatters his age With confident belying it, hopes he may, With charms, like iEson, have his youth restored : And with these thoughts so battens, as if fate Would be as easily cheated on, as he, And all turns air ! | Knocking within.] Who’s that there, now ? a third ! Mos. Close, to your couch again ; I hear his It is Corvino, our spruce merchant. [voice : Volp. [ lies down as before.] Dead. Mos. Another bout, sir, with your eyes. [ Anoint - ing them.] —.Who’s there ? Enter Corvino. Signior Corvino! come most wish’d for! O, How happy were you, if you knew it, now ! Corv. Why ? what ? wherein ? Mos. The tardy hour is come, sir. Corv. He is not dead ? Mos. Not dead, sir, but as good ; He knows no man. Corv. How shall I do then? Mos. Why, sir? Corv. I have brought him here a pearl. Mos. Perhaps he has So much remembrance left, as to know you, sir : He still calls on you ; nothing but your name Is in his mouth. Is your pearl orient, sir ? Corv. Venice was never owner of the like. Volp. [faintly.] Signior Corvino ! Mos. Hark. Volp. Signior Corvino ! Mos. He calls you; step and give it him.— He’s here, sir, And he has brought you a rich pearl. Corv. How do you, sir ? Tell him, it doubles the twelfth caract. Mos. Sir, He cannot understand, his bearing’s gone ; And yet it comforts him to see you- Corv. Say, I have a diamond for him, too. Mos. Best shew it, sir ; Put it into his hand ; ’tis only there He apprehends : he has his feeling, yet. See how he grasps it! Corv. ’Las, good gentleman ! How pitiful the sight is ! Mos. Tut! forget, sir. The weeping of an heir should still be laughter Under a visor. Corv. Why, am I his heir? Mos. Sir, I am sworn, I may not shew the will Till he be dead; but here has been Corbaccio, Here has been Voltore, here were others too, I cannot number ’em, they were so many ; All gaping here for legacies : but I, nr 2 180 Taking the vantage of his naming you, Signior Corvino , Signior Corvino , took Paper, and pen, and ink, and there I asked him, Whom he would have his heir? Corvino. Who Should be executor ? Corvino. And, To any question he was silent to, I still interpreted the nods he made, Through weakness, for consent: and sent home th’ others, Nothing bequeath’d them, but to cry and curse. Corv. O, mydearMosca! [They embrace.] Does he not perceive us ? Mos. No more than a blind harper. He knows no man, No face of friend, nor name of any servant, Who ’twas that fed him last, or gave him drink : Not those he hath begotten, or brought up, Can he remember. Corv. Has he children ? Mos. Bastards, Some dozen, or more, that he begot on beggars, Gypsies, and Jews, and black-moors, when he was drunk. Knew you not that, sir ? ’tis the common fable. The dwarf, the fool, the eunuch, are all his ; He’s the true father of his family, In all, save me :—but he has given them nothing. Corv. That’s well, that’s well! Art sure he does not hear us ? Mos. Sure, sir ! why, look you, credit your own sense. [.Shouts in Vol.’s ear. The pox approach, and add to your diseases, If it would send you hence the sooner, sir, For your incontinence, it hath deserv’d it Thoroughly, and thoroughly, and the plague to boot !— You may come near, sir.—Would you would once close Those filthy eyes of yours, that flow with slime, Like two frog-pits ; and those same hanging cheeks, Cover’d with hide instead of skin—Nay, help, sir— That look like frozen dish-clouts set on end! Corv. [aloud.] Or like an old smoked wall, on Ran down in streaks ! [which the rain Mos. Excellent, sir! speak out: You may be louder yet; a culverin Discharged in his ear would hardly bore it. Corv. His nose is like a common sewer, still running. Mos. ’Tis good ! And what his mouth ? Corv. A very draught. Mos. O, stop it up- Corv. By no means. Mos. ’Pray you, let me : Faith I could stifle him rarely with a pillow', As well as any woman that should keep him. Corv. Do as you will; but I’ll begone. Mos. Be so : It is your presence makes him last so long. Corv. I pray you, use no violence. Mos. No, sir! why? Why should you be thus scrupulous, pray you, sir? Corv. Nay, at your discretion. Mos. Well, good sir, begone. [pearl. Corv. I will not trouble him now, to take my Mos. Puli ! nor your diamond. What a needless Is this afflicts you ? Is not all here yours ? [care Am not I here, whom you have made your creature? ' That owe my being to you ? i. Corv. Grateful Mosca ! Thou art my friend, my fellow, my companion, My partner, and shalt share in all my fortunes. Mos. Excepting one. Corv. What’s that ? Mos. Your gallant wife, sir,— [Exit Corv. Now is he gone : we had no other means To shoot him hence, but this. Volp. My divine Mosca ! Thou hast to-day outgone thyself. [Knocking within.] —Who’s there ? I will be troubled with no more. Prepare Me music, dances, banquets, all delights ; The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasures, Than will Volpone. [Exit Mos.] Let me see ; a pearl! A diamond ! plate ! cliequines ! Good morning’s purchase. Why, this is better than rob churches, yet; Or fat, by eating, once a month, a man— Re-enter Mosca. Who is’t ? Mos, The beauteous lady Would-be, sir, Wife to the English knight, sir Politick Would-be, (This is the style, sir, is directed me,) Hath sent to know how you have slept to-night, And if you would be visited? Volp. Not now : Some three hours hence— Mos. I told the squire so much. Volp. When I am high with mirth and wine ; then, then : ’Fore heaven, I wonder at the desperate valour Of the bold English, that they dare let loose Their wives to all encounters ! Mos. Sir, this knight Had not his name for nothing, he is politick, And knows, howe’er his wife affect strange airs, She hath not yet the face to be dishonest: But had she signior Corvino’s wife’s face — Volp. Has she so rare a face ? Mos. O, sir, the wonder, The blazing star of Italy ! a wench Of the first year ! a beauty ripe as harvest! Whose skin is whiter than a swan all over, Than silver, snow, or lilies ! a soft lip, Would tempt you to eternity of kissing! And flesh that melteth in the touch to blood ! Bright as your gold, and lovely as your gold! Volp. Why had not I known this before ? Mos. Alas, sir, Myself but yesterday discover’d it. Volp. How might I see her? Mos. O, not possible; She’s kept as warily as is your gold ; Never does come abroad, never takes air, But at a window. All her looks are sweet, As the first grapes or cherries, and are watch’d As near as they are. Volp. I must see her. Mos. Sir, There is a guard of spies ten thick upon her, All his whole household ; each of which is set Upon his fellow, and have all their charge, When he goes out, when he comes in, examined. Volp. I will go see her, though but at her Mos. In some disguise, then- [window. Volp. That is true ; I must Maintain mine own shape still the same : we’ll think. [Exeunt THE FOX. SCENE I. THE FOX. 181 ACT II. SCENE I.— St. Mark’s Place ; a retired corner before Corvino’s House. Enter Sir Politick Would-be, and Peregrine. Sir P. Sir, to a wise man, all the world’s his soil: It is not Italy, nor France, nor Europe, That must bound me, it' my fates call me forth. Yet, I protest, it is no salt desire Of seeing countries, shifting a religion, Nor any disaffection to the state Where I was bred, and unto which I owe My dearest plots, hath brought me out; much less, That idle, antique, stale, gray-headed project Of knowing men’s minds and manners, with But a peculiar humour of my wife’s [Ulysses ! Laid for this height of Venice, to observe, To quote, to learn the language, and so forth— I hope you travel, sir, with license ? Per. Yes. Sir P. I dare the safelier converse-How Since you left England ? [long) sir, Per. Seven weeks. Sir P. So lately ! You have not been with my lord ambassador ? Per. Not yet, sir. Sir P. Pray you, what news, sir, vents our climate ? ] heard last night a most strange thing reported By some of my lord’s followers, and 1 long To hear how ’twill be seconded. Per. What w^as’t, sir ? Sir P. Marry, sir, of a raven that should build In a ship royal of the king’s. Per. This fellow, Does he gull me, trow ? or is gull’d ? [Aside.] Your name, sir. Sir P. My name is Politick Would-be. Per. O, that speaks him.— [Aside]. A knight, sir ? Sir P. A poor knight, sir. Per. Your lady Lies here in Venice, for intelligence Of tires, and fashions, and behaviour, Among the courtezans ? the fine lady Would-be ? Sir P. Yes, sir ; the spider and the bee, oftimes, Suck from one flower. Per. Good sir Politick, I cry you mercy ; I have heard much of you : ’Tis true, sir, of your raven. Sir P. On your knowledge? Per. Yes, and your lion’s whelping in the Tower. Sir P. Another whelp ! Per. Another, sir. Sir P. Now heaven ! What prodigies be these ? The fires at Berwick ! And the new star ! these things concurring, strange, And full of omen ! Saw you those meteors ? Per. I did, sir. Sir P. Fearful! Pray you, sir, confirm me, Were there three porpoises seen above the bridge, As they give out ? Per. Six, and a sturgeon, sir. Sir P. 1 am astonish’d, Per. Nay, sir, be not so ; I’ll tell you a greater prodigy than these. Sir P. What should these things portend ? Per. The very day | (Let me be sure) that I put forth from London, There was a whale discover’d in the river, As high as Woolwich, that had waited there, Few know how many months, for the subversion Of the Stode fleet. Sir P. Is’t possible ? believe it, ’Twas either sent from Spain, or the archdukes : Spinola’s whale, upon my life, my credit! Will they not leave these projects ? Worthy sir, Some other news. Per. Faith, Stone the fool is dead, And they do lack a tavern fool extremely. Sir P. Is Mass Stone dead ? Per. He’s dead, sir; why, I hope You thought him not immortal ?—O, this knight, Were he well known, would be a precious thing To fit our English stage : he that should write But such a fellow, should be thought to feign Extremely, if not maliciously. [Aside. Sir P. Stone dead ! Per. Dead.—Lord ! how deeply, sir, you ap¬ ple was no kinsman to you ? [prehend it ? Sir P. That I know of. Well! that same fellow was an unknown fool. Per. And yet you knew him, it seems ? Sir P. I did so. Sir, I knew him one of the most dangerous heads Living within the state, and so I held him. Per. Indeed, sir? Sir P. While he lived, in action. He has received weekly intelligence, Upon my knowledge, out of the Low Countries, For all parts of the world, in cabbages ; And those dispensed again to ambassadors, In oranges, musk-melons, apricocks, Lemons, pome-citrons, and such-like; sometimes In Colchester oysters, and your Selsey cockles. Per. You make me wonder. Sir P. Sir, upon my knowledge. Nay, I’ve observed him, at your public ordinary, Take his advertisement from a traveller, A conceal’d statesman, in a trencher of meat; And instantly, before the meal was done, Convey an answer in a tooth-pick. Per. Strange ! How could this be, sir ? Sir P. Why, the meat was cut So like his character, and so laid, as he Must easily read the cipher. Per. I have heard, He could not read, sir. Sir P. So ’twas given out, In policy, by those that did employ him : But he could read, and had your languages, And to’t, as sound a noddle- Per. I have heard, sir, That your baboons were spies, and that they were A kind of subtle nation near to China. Sir P. Ay, ay, your Mamaluehi. Faith, they had Their hand in a French plot or two ; but they Were so extremely given to women, as They made discovery of all: yet I Had my advices here, on Wednesday last. From one of their own coat, they were return’d. Made their relations, as the fashion is, And now stand fair for fresh employment. !82 THE FOX. act n. Per. ’Heart! This sir Pol will be ignorant of nothing. [Asitte. It seems, sir, you know all. Sir P. Not all, sir, but I have some general notions. 1 do love To note and to observe: though I live out, Free from the active torrent, yet I’d mark The currents and the passages of things, For mine own private use ; and know the ebbs And flows of state. Per. Believe it, sir, I hold Myself in no small tie unto my fortunes, For casting me thus luckily upon you, Whose knowledge, if your bounty equal it, May do me great assistance, in instruction For my behaviour, and my bearing, which Is yet so rude and raw. Sir P. Why, came you forth Empty of rules for travel? Per. Faith, 1 had Some common ones, from out that vulgar grammar, Which he that cried Italian to me, taught me. Sir P. Why this it is that spoils all our brave bloods, Trusting our hopeful gentry unto pedants, Fellows of outside, and mere bark. You seem To be a gentleman, of ingenuous race :- I not profess it, but my fate hath been To be, where I have been consulted with, In this high kind, touching some great men’s sons, Persons of blood and honour.- Enter Mosca and Nano disguised, followed by persons with materials for erecting a Stage. Per. Who be these, sir ? Mos. Under that window, there ’t must be. The same. Sir P. Fellows, to mount a bank. Did your instructor In the dear tongues, never discourse to you Of the Italian mountebanks? Per. Yes, sir. Sir P. Why, FI ere you shall see one. Per. They are quacksalvers ; Fellows, that live by venting oils and drugs. Sir P. Was that the character he gave you of Per. As I remember. [ them ? Sir P. Pity his ignorance. They are the only knowing men of Europe ! Great general scholars, excellent physicians, Most admired statesmen, protest favourites, And cabinet counsellors to the greatest princes; The only languaged men of all the world ! Per. And, I have heard, they are most lewd impostors ; Made all of terms and shreds ; no less beliers Of great men’s favours, than their own vile med’cines; Which they will utter upon monstrous oaths : Selling that drug for two-pence, ere they part, Which they have valued at twelve crowns before. Sir P. Sir, calumnies are answer’d best with silence. Yourself shall judge.—Who is it mounts, my Mos. Scoto of Mantua, sir. [friends? Sir P. Is’t he ? Nay, then I’ll proudly promise, sir, you shall behold Another man than has been phant’sied to you. I wonder yet, that he should mount his bank, Here in this nook, that has been wont t’appear In face of the Piazza!—Here he comes. Enter Volpone, disguised as a mountebank Doctor, and followed by a crowd of people. Volp. Mount, zany, [/o Nano ] Mob. Follow, follow, follow, follow ! Sir P. See how the people follow him! he’s a man May write ten thousand crowns in bank here. Note, [Volpone mounts the Stage. Mark but his gesture :—I do use to observe The state he keeps in getting up. Per. ’Tis worth it, sir. Volp. Most noble gentleman, and my worthy patrons ! It may seem strange, that 7, your Scoto Alantuano, who teas ever wont to fix my bank in face of the public Piazza, near the shelter of the Portico to the Procuratia , should now, after eight months absence from this illustrious city of Venice, humbly retire myself into an obscure nook of the Piazza. Sir P. Did not I now object the same? Per. Peace, sir. Volp. Let me tell you : lam not, as your Lom¬ bard proverb saith , cold on my feet ; or content to part with my commodities at a cheaper rate, than 1 accustomed: look not for it. Nor that the calum¬ nious reports of that impudent detractor , and shame to our profession, (Alessandro Butlone, I mean,) who gave out, in public , I was condemned a sfor- zato to the galleys, for poisoning the cardinal Bem- bo's - cook, hath at all attached, much less de¬ jected me. No, no, worthy gentlemen; to tell you true , I cannot endure to see the rabble of these ground ciarlitani, that spread their cloaks on the pavement, as if they meant to do feats of activity, and then come in lamely, with their mouldy tales out of Boccacio, like stale Tabarine, the fabulist: some of them discoursing their travels, and of their tedious captivity in the Turks gallies, when, indeed , were the truth known, they were the Christians gallies , where very temperately they eat bread, and drunk water, as a wholesome penance, enjoined them by their confessors, for base pilfcries. Sir P. Note but his bearing, and contempt of these. Volp. These tur dy-facy-nasty-paty-lousy-farti- cal rogues, with one poor groat's worth of unpre¬ pared antimony , finely wrapt up in several scar- toccios, are able, very well, to kill their twenty a week, and play ; yet , these meagre, starved spirits, who have half stopt the organs of their minds with earthy oppilations, leant not their favourers among your shrivel!d sallad-eating artizans, who are overjoyed that they may have their half-pe’rth oj physic ; though it purge them into another world, it makes no matter. Sir P. Excellent! have you heard better lan¬ guage, sir. Volp. Well , let them go. And , gentlemen, ho¬ nourable gentlemen , know, that for this time, our bank, being thus removed from the clamours of the canaglia , shall be the scene of pleasure and delight; for I have nothing to sell, little or nothing to sell. Sir P. I told you, sir, his end. Per. You did so, sir. Volp. I protest, I, and my six servants, are not able to make of this precious liquor, so fast as it is fetch'd a Way from my lodging by gentlemen of SCENE I. THE FOX your city ; strangers of the Terra-firma ; worship¬ ful merchants ; ay, and senators too: who, ever since my arrival, have detained me to their uses, by their splendidous liberalities. And worthily ; for, what avails your rich man to have his maga¬ zines stuft with moscadelli, or of the purest grape, when his physicians prescribe him, on pain of death, to drink nothing but water coded with ani¬ seeds ? O, health ! health ! the blessing of the rich ! the riches of the poor ! who can buy thee at too dear a rate, since there is no enjoying this world without thee ? Be not then so sparing of your purses, honourable gentlemen, as to abridge the natural course of life - Per. You see liis end. Sir P. Ay, is’t not good ? Volp. For, when a humid flux, or catarrh, by the mutability of air, falls from your head into an arm or shoulder, or any other part; take you a ducket, or your chequin of gold, a-nd apply to the place affected: see what good effect it can work. No, no, ’tis this blessed unguento, this rare extrac¬ tion, that hath only power to disperse all malig¬ nant humours, that proceed either of hot, cold, moist, or windy causes - Per. I would he had put in dry too. Sir P. ’Pray you, observe. Volp. To fortify the most indigest and crude stomach, ay, were it of one that, through extreme weakness, vomited blood, applying only a warm napkin to the place, after the unction and fricace ; —for the vertigine in the head, putting but a drop into your nostrils, likewise behind the ears ; a most sovereign and approved remedy : the mal caduco, cramps, convulsions, paralysies, epilepsies, tremor- cordia, retired nerves, ill vapours of the spleen, stopping of the liver, the stone, the strangury, her¬ nia ventosa, iliaca passio ; stops a dysenteria imme¬ diately ; easeth the torsion of the small guts ; and cures melancholia hypondriaca, being taken and applied according to my printed receipt. [Pointing to his bill and his vial.] For, this is the physician, this the medicine ; this counsels, this cures; this gives the direction, this works the effect; and, in sum, berth together may be termed an abstract of the theorick and practick in the JEsculapian art. ’ Twill cost you eight crowns. And,—Zan Fri- tada, prithee sing a verse extempore in honour of it. Sir P. How do you like him, sir ? Per. Most strangely, I ! Sir P. Is not his language rare? Per. But alchemy, l never heard the like ; or Broughton’s books. Nano sings. Had old Hippocrates, or Galen, That to their books put med’eines all in, But known this secret, they had never (Of which they will be guilty ever) Been murderers of so much paper, Or wasted many a h urtless taper; No Indian drug had e'er been famed, Tobacco, sassafras not named; Nc yet, of guacum one small stick, sir, Nor Raymund Lully’s great elixir. Ne had been known the Danish Gonswart, Or Paracelsus, with his long sword. Per. All this, yet, will not do ; eight crowns is high. Volp. No more. — Gentlemen, if I had but time discourse to you the miraculous effects of this ] b:j my oil, surnamed Oglio del Scoto ; with the count¬ less catalogue of those 1 have cured of the afore¬ said, and many more diseases ; the patents and privileges of all the princes and commonwealths oj Christendom ; or but the depositions of those that appeared on my part, before the signiory of the Sanita and most learned College of Physicians ; where I was authorized, upon notice taken of the admirable virtues of my medicaments, and mine own excellency in matter of rare and unknown secrets, not only to disperse them publicly in this famous city, but in all the territories, that happily joy under the government of the most pious and magnificent states of Italy. But may some other gallant fellow say, O, there be divers that make profession to have as good, and as experimented receipts as yours: indeed, very many have assayed, like apes, in imitation of that , which is really and essentially in me, to make of this oil; bestowed great cost in furnaces, stills, alembecks, continual fires, and preparation of the ingredients, (as in¬ deed there goes to it six hundred several simples, besides some quantity of human fat, for the con¬ glutination, which we buy of the anatomists,) but, when these practitioners come to the last decoction, blow, blow, puff, puff, and all flies in fumo: ha, ha, ha! Poor wretches! I rather pity their folly and indiscretion, than their loss of time and money ; for these may be recovered by industry: but to be a fool born, is a disease incurable. For myself, I always from my youth have endea¬ voured to get the rarest secrets, and book them , either in exchange, or for money: I spared nor cost nor labour, where any thing ivas worthy to be learned. And, gentlemen, honourable gentlemen, I will undertake, by virtue of chemical art, out oj the honourable hat that covers your head, to extract the four elements ; that is to say, the fire, air, water, and earth, and return you your felt without burn or stain. For, whilst others have been at the Balloo, I have been at my book ; and am now past the craggy paths of study, and come to the flowery plains of honour and reputation. Sir P. I do assure you, sir, that is his aim. Volp. But to our price - Per. And that withal, sir Pol. Volp. You all know, honourable gentlemen, I never valued this ampulla, or vial, at less than eight crowns ; but for this time, I am content to be deprived of it for six : six crowns is the price, and less in courtesy I know you cannot offer me ; take it or leave it, howsoever, both it and I am at your service. I ask you not as the value of the thing, for then I should demand of you a thousand crowns, so the cardinals Montalto, Fernese, the great Duke of Tuscany, my gossip, with divers other princes, have given me ; but I despise money. Only to shew my affection to you, honourable gentlemen , and your illustrious State here, I have neglected the messages of these princes, mine own offices, framed my journey hither, only to present you with the fruits of my travels .— Tune your voices once more to the touch of your instruments, and give the honourable assembly some delightful recre¬ ation. Per. What monstrous and most painful circum. stance Is here, to get some three or four gazettes, Some three-pence in the whole ! for that ’twill come to. 304 THE FOX. act ii. Nano sings. You that would last long, list to my song, Make no more coil, hut buy of this oil. Would you be ever fair and young ? Stout of teeth, and strong of tongue? Tart of palate ? quick of ear ? Sharp of sight ? of nostril clear ? Moist of hand ? and light of foot ? Or, I will come nearer to’t, AVould you live free from all diseases? Do the act your mistress pleases, Yet fright all aches from your bones? Here’s a med’cine for the nones. Volp. Well, Tam in a humour at this time to make a present of the small quantity my coffer contains ; to the rich in courtesy, and, to the poor for God's sake. Wherefore now mark: I ask'd you six crowns ; and six crowns, at other times, you have paid me ; you shall not give me six crowns, nor five , nor four, nor three, nor two , nor one ; nor half a ducat ; no, nor a moccinigo. Six- pence it will cost you, or six hundred pound - expect no lower price, for, by the banner of my front, I will not bate a bagatine, — that I will have, only, a pledge of your loves, to carry something from, amongst you, to shew I am not contemn'd by you. Therefore, now, toss your handkerchiejs, cheerfully cheerfully ; and be advertised , that the first heroic spirit that deigns to grace me with a handkerchief, I will give it a little remembrance of something , beside, shall please it better, than if I had presented it with a double pistolet. Per . Will you be that heroic spark , sir Pol ? [Celia at a window above, throws down her handkerchief. O, see ! the window has prevented you. Yolp. Lady, I kiss your bounty ; and for this timely grace you have done your poor Scoto of Mantua, I will return you, over and above my oil , a secret of that high and inestimable nature, shall make you for ever enamour'd on that minute, ivlierein your eye first descended on so mean, yet not altogether to be despised, an object. Here is a powder conceal'd in this paper, of which , if I should speak to the worth, nine thousand volumes were but as one page, that page as a line, that line as a word; so short is this pilgrimage of man ( which some call life ) to the expressing of it. Would I reflect on the price ? why, the whole world is but as an empire, that empire as a pro¬ vince, that province as a bank, that bank as a pri¬ vate purse to the purchase of it. 1 will only tell you ; it is the powder that made Venus a goddess, ( given her by Apollo ,) that kept her perpetually young, clear'd her wrinkles, firm'd her gums, fill'd her skin, colour'd her hair ; from her derived to Helen , and at the sack of Troy unfortunately lost : till now, in this our age, it was as happily reco¬ vered, by a studious antiquary, out of some ruins of Asia, ivho sent a moiety of it to the court of France, (but much sophisticated ,) wherewith the ladies there, now, colour their hair. The rest, at this present, remains with me ; extracted to a quint¬ essence : so that, wherever it but touches, in youth it perpetually preserves, in age restores the com¬ plexion ; seats your teeth, did they dance like vir¬ ginal jacks, firm as a wall ; makes them white as ivory, that were black as - Enter Corvino. Cor. Spight o’ the devil, and my shame ! come down, here ; Come down ;—No house but mine to make youi scene ? Signior Flaminio, will you down, sir ? down ? What, is my wife your Franciscina, sir? No windows on the whole Piazza, here, To make your properties, but mine? but mine? [Beats away Volponk, Nano, $c. Heart! ere to-morrow I shall be new-christen’d, And call’d the Pantalone di Besogniosi, About the town. Per. What should this mean, sir Pol ? Sir P. Some trick of state, believe it; I will home. Per. It may be some design on you. Sir P. I know not, I’ll stand upon my guard. Per. It is your best, sir. Sir P. This three weeks, all my advices, all my They have been intercepted. [letters, Per. Indeed, sir i Best have a care. Sir P. Nay, so I will. Per. This knight, I may not lose him, for my mirth, till night. [ Exeunt. —♦—■ SCENE II.— A Room in Volpone’s House. Enter Volpone and Mosca. Volp. 0, I am wounded I Mos. Where, sir ? Volp. Not without; Those blows were nothing : I could bear them ever But angry Cupid, bolting from her eyes, Hath shot himself into me like a dame ; Where, now, he dings about his burning heat, As in a furnace an ambitious dre, Whose vent is stopt. The dght is all within me. I cannot live, except thou help me, Mosca ; My liver melts, and I, without the hope Of some soft air, from her refreshing breath, Am but a heap of cinders. Mos. ’Las, good sir, Would you had never seen her ! Volp. Nay, would thou Had’st never told me of her ! Mos. Sir, ’tis true ; 1 do confess I was unfortunate, And you unhappy : but I’m bound in conscience, No less than duty, to effect my best To your release of torment, and I will, sir. Volp. Dear Mosca, shall I hope ? Mos. Sir, more than dear, I will not bid you to despair of aught Within a human compass. Volp. O, there spoke My better angel. Mosca, take my keys, Gold, plate, and jewels, all’s at thy devotion ; Employ them how thou wilt; nay, coin me too : So thou, in this, but crown my longings, Mosca. Mos. Lise but your patience. Volp. So I have. Mos. I doubt not To bring success to your desires. Volp. Nay, then, I not repent me of my late disguise. Mos. If you can horn him, sir, you need not. Volp. True : Besides, I never meant him for my heir.— Is not the colour of my beard and eyebrows To make me known ? scene hi. THE FOX. 1 8.5 Mos. No jot. Volp. I did it well. Mos. So well, would I could follow you in mine, With half the happiness !—and yet I would Escape your epilogue. [Aside. Volp. But were they gull’d With a belief that I was Scoto ? Mos. Sir, Scoto himself could hardly have distinguish’d! 1 have not time to flatter you now ; we’ll part ; And as I prosper, so applaud my art. [ Exeunt . -♦- SCENE III.— A Room in Corvino’s House. Enter Corvino, with his sword in his hand, dragging in Celia. Corv. Death of mine honour, with the city’s fool! A juggling, tooth-drawing, prating mountebank ! And at a public window ! where, whilst he, With his strain’d action, and his dole of faces, To his drug-lecture draws your itching ears, A crew of old, unmarried, noted letchers, Stood leering up like satyrs ; and you smile Most graciously, and fan your favours forth, To give your hot spectators satisfaction! What, was your mountebank their call ? their whistle ? Or were you enamour’d on his copper rings, His saffron jewel, with the toad-stone in’t, Or his embroider’d suit, with the cope-stitch, Made of a herse cloth ? or his old tilt-feather ? Or his starch’d beard ? Well, you shall have him, He shall come home, and minister unto you [yes ! The fricace for the mother. Or, let me see, I think you’d rather mount; would you not mount ? Why, if you’ll mount, you may; yes, truly, you And so you may be seen, down to the foot. [may : Get you a cittern, lady Vanity, And be a dealer with the virtuous man ; Make one: I’ll but protest myself a cuckold, And save your dowry. I’m a Dutchman, I! For, if you thought me an Italian, You would be damn’d, ere you did this, you whore ! Thou’dst tremble, to imagine, that the murder Of father, mother, brother, all thy race, Should follow, as the subject of my justice. Cel. Good sir, have patience. Corv. What couldst thou propose Less to thyself, than in this heat of wrath, And stung with my dishonour, I should strike This steel into thee, with as many stabs, As thou wert gaz’d upon with goatish eyes ? Cel. Alas, sir, be appeased! I could not think My being at the window should more now Move your impatience, than at other times. Corv. No ! not to seek and entertain a parley With a known knave, before a multitude ! You were an actor with your handkerchief, Which he most sweetly kist in the receipt, And might, no doubt, return it with a letter, And point the place where you might meet; yonr sister’s, Your mother’s, or your aunt’s might serve the turn. Cel. Why, dear sir, when do I make these ex- Or ever stir abroad, but to the church ? [cuses, And that so seldom- Corv. Well, it shall be less ; And thy restraint before was liberty, To what I now decree : and therefore mark me. First, I will have this bawdy light damm’d up ; And till’t be done, some two or three yards off, I’ll chalk a line : o’er which if thou but chance To set thy desperate foot, more hell, more horror, More wild remorseless rage shall seize on thee, Than on a conjuror, that had heedless left His circle’s safety ere his devil was laid. Then here’s a lock which I will hang upon thee, And, now I think on’t, I will keep thee backwards ; Thy lodging shall be backwards ; thy walks back¬ wards ; Thy prospect, all be backwards ; and no pleasure, That thou shalt know but backwards: nay, since My honest nature, know, it isyour own, [you force Being too open, makes me use you thus : Since you will not contain your subtle nostrils In a sweet room, but they must snuff the air Of rank and sweaty passengers. [Knocking within. ] —One knocks. Away, and be not seen, pain of thy life ; Nor look toward the window : if thou dost- Nay, stay, hear this—let me not prosper, whore, But I will make thee an anatomy, Dissect thee mine own self, and read a lecture Upon thee to the city, and in public. Away ! — [Exit Celia, Enter Servant. "Who’s there? Serv. ’Tis signior Mosca, sir. Corv. Let him come in. [Exit Serv.] His mas¬ ter’s dead: there’s yet Some good to help the bad.— Enter Mosca. My Mosca, welcome! I guess your news. Mos. I fear you cannot, sir. Corv. Is’t not his death ? ' Mos. Rather the contrary. Corv. Not his recovery ? Mos. Yes, sir. Corv. I am curs’d, I am bewitch’d, my crosses meet to vex me. How ? how ? how ? how ? Mos. Why, sir, with Scoto’s oil; Corbaccio and Voltore brought of it, Whilst I was busy in an inner room- Corv. Death ! that damn’d mountebank ; but for the law Now, I could kill the rascal: it cannot be, His oil should have that virtue. Have not I Known him a common rogue, come fidling in To the osteria, with a tumbling whore, And, when he has done all his forced tricks, been glad Of a poor spoonful of dead wine, with flies in’t? It cannot be. All his ingredients Are a sheep’s gall, a roasted bitch’s marrow, Some few sod earwigs, pounded caterpillars, A little capon’s grease, and fasting spittle: I know them to a dram. Mos. I know not, sir ; But some on’t, there, they pour’d into his ears, Some in his nostrils, and recover’d him ; Applying but the fricace. Corv. Pox o’ that fricace ! Mos. And since, to seem the more officious And flatt’ring of his health, there, they have had. At extreme fees, the college of physicians Consulting on him, how they might restore him ; J8f) THE FOX. ACT fJI. Where one would have a cataplasm of spices, Another a flay’d ape clapp’d to his breast, A third would have it a dog, a fourth an oil, With wild cats’ skins : at last, they all resolved That, to preserve him, was no other means, But some young woman must be straight sought Lusty, and full of juice, to sleep by him ; [out, And to this service, most unhappily, And most unwillingly, am I now employ’d, Which here I thought to pre-acquaint you with, For your advice, since it concerns you most; Because, I would not do that thing might cross Your ends, on whom I have my whole dependance, Yet, if I do it not, they may delate [sir : My slackness to my patron, work me out Of his opinion ; and there all your hopes, Ventures, or whatsoever, are all frustrate! I do but tell you, sir. Besides, they are all Now striving, who shall first present him; there¬ fore— I could entreat you, briefly conclude somewhat; Prevent them if you can. Corv. Death to my hopes, This is my villainous fortune ! Best to hire Some common courtezan. Mos. Ay, I thought on that, sir ; But they are all so subtle, full of art—- And age again doting and flexible, So as —I cannot tell—we may, perchance, Light on a quean may cheat us all. Corv. ’Tis true. Mos. No, no : it must be one that has no tricks, Some simple thing, a creature made unto it; [sir, Some wench you may command. Have you no kinswoman ? [think, sir. Odso—Think, think, think, think, think, think, One o’ the doctors offer’d there his daughter. Corv. How ! Mos. Yes, signior Lupo, the physician. Corv. His daughter ! Mos. And a virgin, sir. Why, alas, He knows the state of’s body, what it is ; That nought can warm his blood, sir, but a fever; Nor any incantation raise his spirit: A long forgetfulness hath seized that part. Besides, sir, who shall know it ? some one or two— Corv. I pray thee give me leave. [ Walks aside .] If any man But I had had this luck—The thing in’t self, I know, is nothing—Wherefore should not I As well command my blood and my affections, As this dull doctor ? In the point of honour, The cases are all one of wife and daughter. Mos. I hear him coming. [Aside. Corv. She shall do’t: ’tis done. Slight ! if this doctor, who is not engaged, Unless’t be for his counsel, which is nothing, Offer his daughter, wdrnt should I, that am So deeply in ? I will prevent him : Wretch ! Covetous wretch !—Mosca, I have determined. Mos. How, sir? Corv. We’ll make all sure. The party you wot Shall be mine own wife, Mosca. [of Mos. Sir, the thing, But that I would not seem to counsel you, I should have motion’d to you, at the first: And make your count, you have cut all their throats. Why, ’tis directly taking a possession ! And in his next fit, we may let him go. ’Tis but to pull the pillow from his head, And he is throttled : it had been done before, But for your scrupulous doubts. Corv. Ay, a plague on’t, My conscience fools my wit! Well, I’ll be brief, And so be thou, lest they should be before us : Go home, prepare him, tell him with what zeal And willingness I do it; swear it was On the first hearing, as thou may’st do, truly, Mine own free motion. Mos. Sir, I warrant you, I’ll so possess him with it, that the rest Of his starv’d clients shall be banish’d all; And only you received. But come not, sir, Until I send, for I have something else To ripen for your good, you must not know’t. Corv. But do not you forget to send now. Mos. Fear not. [Exit. Corv. Where are you, wife ? my Celia! wife ! Re-enter Celia. •—What, blubbering ? Come, dry those tears. I think thou thought’st me in earnest; Ha! by this light I talk’d so but to try thee: Methinks the lightness of the occasion Should have confirm’d thee. Come, I am not Cel. No! [jealous. Corv. Faith I am not, I, nor never was; It is a poor unprofitable humour. Do not I know, if women have a will, They’ll do ’gainst all the watches of the world, And that the fiercest spies are tamed with gold ? Tut, I am confident in thee, thou shalt see’t; And see I’ll give thee cause too. to believe it. Come kiss me. Go, and make thee ready, straight, In all thy best attire, thy choicest jewels, Put them all on, and, with them, thy best looks: We are invited to a solemn feast, At old Volpone’s, where it shall appear How far I am free from jealousy or fear. [ Exeunt . ACT III. SCENE I .—A Street. Enter Mosca. Mos, I fear, I shall begin to grow in love With my dear self, and my most prosperous parts, They do so spring and burgeon ; I can feel A whimsy in my blood : I know not how, Success hath made me wanton. I could skip Out of my skin, now, like a subtle snake, I am so limber. O! your parasite Is a most precious thing, dropt from above, Notbred ’mongst clods and clodpoles, here on earth, I muse, the mystery was not made a science, It is so liberally profest! almost All the wise world is little else, in nature, But parasites or sub-parasites.—And, yet, I mean not those that have your bare town-art. To know wdio’s fit to feed them ; have no house. SCENE II. THE FOX. No family, no care, and therefore mould Tales for men’s ears, to bait that sonse ; or get Kitchen-invention, and some stale receipts To please the belly, and the groin ; nor those, With their court dog-tricks, that can fawn and fleer, Make their revenue out of legs and faces, Echo my lord, and lick away a moth : But your fine elegant rascal, that can rise, And stoop, almost together, like an arrow; Shoot through the air as nimbly as a star; Turn short as doth a swallow; and be here, And there, and here, and yonder, all at once; Present to any humour, all occasion; And change a visor, swifter than a thought! This is the creature had the art born with him; i Toils not to learn it, but doth practise it Out of most excellent nature : and such sparks Are the true parasites, others but their zanis. Enter Bonario. Who’s this? Bonario, old Corbaccio’s son? The person I was bound to seek.—Fair sir, You are happily met. Bon. That cannot be by thee. Mos. Why, sir? Bon. Nay, pray thee, know thy way, and leave I would be loth to interchange discourse [me : With such a mate as thou art. Mos. Courteous sir, Scorn not my poverty. Bon. Not I, by heaven ; But thou shalt give me leave to hate thy baseness. Mos. Baseness ! Bon. Ay; answer me, is not thy sloth Sufficient argument ? thy flattery ? Thy means of feeding ? Mos. Heaven be good to me ! These imputations are too common, sir, And easily stuck on virtue when she's poor. You are unequal to me, and however Y"our sentence may be righteous, yet you are not That, ere you know me, thus proceed in censure: St. Mark bear witness 'gainst you, ’tis inhuman. [ Weeps. Bon. What! does he weep ? the sign is soft and good : I do repent me that I was so harsh. [Aside. Mos. ’Tis true, that, sway’d by strong necessity, I am enforced to eat my careful bread With too much obsequy ; ’tis true, beside, That I am fain to spin mine own poor raiment Out of my mere observance, being not born To a free fortune : but that I have done Base offices, in rending friends asunder, Dividing families, betraying counsels, Whispering false lies, or mining men with praises, Train’d their credulity with perjuries, Corrupted chastity, or am in love With mine own tender ease, but would not rather Prove the most rugged, and laborious course, That might redeem my present estimation, Let me here perish, in all hope of goodness. Bon. This cannot be a personated passion.— [Aside. . I was to blame, so to mistake thy nature; Prithee, forgive me : and speak out thy business. Mos. Sir, it concerns you; and though I may seem, At first to make a main offence in manners, And in my gratitude unto my master; 137 Yet, for the pure love, which I bear all right, And hatred of the wrong, I must reveal it. This very hour your father is in purpose To disinherit you- Bon. How ! Mos. And thrust you forth, As a mere stranger to his blood; ’tis true, sir, The work no way engageth me, but, as I claim an interest in the g-eneral state Of goodness and true virtue, which I hear To abound in you: and, for which mere respect. Without a second aim, sir, I have done it. Bon. This tale hath lost thee much of the late Thou hadst with me ; it is impossible : [trust I know not how to lend it any thought, My father should be so unnatural. Mos. It is a confidence that well becomes, Your piety ; and form’d, no doubt, it is From your own simple innocence : which makes Your wrong more monstrous and abhorr’d. But, I now will tell you more. This very minute, [sir. It is, or will be doing ; and, if you Shall be but pleased to go with me, I’ll bring you, I dare not say where you shall see, but where Your ear shall be a witness of the deed; Hear yourself written bastard, and protest The common issue of the earth. Bon. I am amazed ! Mos. Sir, if I do it not, draw y T our just sword, And score your vengeance on my front and face: Mark me your villain : you have too much wrong, And I do suffer for you, sir. My heart Weeps blood in anguish- Bon. Lead ; I follow thee. [Exeunt. SCENE II .—A Room in Folpone’s Home. Enter Vorpone. Volp. Mosca stays long, methinks.—Bring forth your sports, And help to make the wretched time more sweet. Enter Nano, Androgyno, and Castrone. Nan. Dwarf, fool, and eunuch, well met here we be. A question it were now, whether of us three, Being all the known delicates of a rich man. In pleasing him, claim the precedency can % Cas. 1 claim for myself. And. And so doth the fool. Nan. ’ Tis foolish indeed : let me set you both to school. First for your dwarf , he's little and witty, A?id every thing . as it is little, is pretty ; Else why do men say to a creature of my shape , So soon as they see him , It’s a pretty little ape ? And why a pretty ape , but for pleasing imitation Of greater men’s actions, in a ridiculous fashion $ Beside, this feat body of mine doth not crave Half the meat , drink, and cloth, one of your bulks will have. Admit your fool’s face be the mother of laughter. Yet, for his brain, it must always come after: And though that do feed him, it’s a pitif ul case, His body is beholding to such a bad face. [Knocking within. Volp. Who’s there ? my couch ; away ! look ! Nano, see : [Exc. Ann. and Cab 188 TIIE FOX. act in. Give me my caps, first-go, enquire. [Exit Nano.]— Now, Cupid Send it be Mosca, and with fair return ! Nan. [within.'] It is the beauteous madam- Vol. Would-be-is it ? Nan. The same. Vol. Now torment on me ! Squire her in ; For she will enter, or dwell here for ever: Nay, quickly. [ Retires to his couch.] —That my fit were past! 1 fear A second hell too, that my lothing this Will quite expel my appetite to the other : Would she were taking now her tedious leave. Lord, how it threats me what I am to suffer ! Re-enter Nano, with Lady Politick Would-be. Lady P. I thank you, good sir. ’Pray you sig- Unto your patron, I am here.—This band [nify Shews not my neck enough—I trouble you, sir ; Let me request you, bid one of my women Come hither to me.—In good faith, I am drest Most favourably to-day ! It is no matter : ’Tis well enough.— Enter 1 Waiting-woman. Look, see, these petulant things, How they have done this ! Volp. 1 do feel the fever Entering in at mine ears ; O, for a charm, To fright it hence ! [Aside. Lady P. Come nearer : is this curl In his right place, or this ? Why is this higher Than all the rest? You have not wash’d your eyes, Or do they not stand even in your head ? [yet! Where is your fellow ? call her. [Exit 1 Woman. Nan. Now, St. Mark Deliver us ! anon, she’ll beat her women, Because her nose is red. Re-enter 1 with 2 Woman. Lady P. I pray you, view This tire, forsooth : are all things apt, or no ? 1 Worn. One hair a little, here, sticks out, for¬ sooth. Lady P. Does’t so, forsooth! and where was your dear sight, When it did so, forsooth ! What now ! bird-eyed ? And you, too? ’Pray you, both approach and mend it. Now, by that light, I muse you are not ashamed ! I, that have preach’d these things so oft unto you, Read you the principles, argued all the grounds, Disputed every fitness, every grace, Call’d you to counsel of so frequent dressings— Nan. More carefully than of your fame or honour. [Aside. Lady P. Made you acquainted, what an ample dowry The knowledge of these things would be unto you, Able, alone, to get you noble husbands At your return : and you thus to neglect it ! Besides you seeing what a curious nation The Italians are, what will they say of me ? The English lady cannot dress herself. Here’s a fine imputation to our country! Well, go your ways, and stay in the nex>t room. This fucus was too coarse too ; it’s no matter.— Good sir, you’ll give them entertainment ? [Exeunt Nano and Waiting-women. Volp. The storm comes toward me. Lady P. [goes to the couch.] How does my Volpone ? Volp. Troubled with noise, I cannot sleep; I dreamt That a strange fury enter’d, now, my house, And, with the dreadful tempest of her breath, Did cleave my roof asunder. Lady P. Believe me, and I Had the most fearful dream, could I remember’t— Volp. Out on my fate! I have given her the occasion How to torment me : she will tell me her’s. [Aside. Lady P. Me thought, the golden mediocrity, Polite and delicate- Volp. O, if you do love me, No more : I sweat, and suffer, at the mention Of any dream ; feel how I tremble yet. Lady P. Alas, good soul 1 the passion of the he-art. Seed-pearl were good now, boil’d with syrup of Tincture of gold, and coral, citron-pills, [apples, Your elicampane root, myrobalanes- Volp. Ah me, I have ta’en a grass-hopper by the wing! [Aside. Lady P. Burnt silk, and amber: You have mus- Good in the house- [cadel Volp. You will not drink, and part? Lady P. No, fear not that. I doubt, we shall not get Some English saffron, half a dram would serve ; Your sixteen cloves, a little musk, dried mints, Bugloss, and barley-meal- Volp. She’s in again ! Before I feign’d diseases, now I have one. [Aside. Lady P. And these applied with a right scarlet cloth. Volp. Another flood of words ! a very torrent! [Aside. Lady P. Shall I, sir, make you a poultice ? Volp. No, no, no, I’m very well, you need prescribe no more. Lady P. I have a little studied physic; but now, I’m all for music, save, in the forenoons, An hour or two for painting. I would have A lady, indeed, to have all, letters and arts, Be able to discourse, to write, to paint, But principal, as Plato holds, your music, And so does wise Pythagoras, I take it, Is your true rapture : when there is concent In face, in voice, and clothes: and is, indeed, Our sex’s chiefest ornament. Volp. The poet As old in time as Plato, and as knowing, Says, that your highest female grace is silence. Lady P. Which of your poets ? Petrarch, or Tasso, or Dante ? Guarini ? Ariosto ? Aretine ? Cieco di Hadria ? I have read them all. Volp. Is every thing a cause to my destruction ? [Aside. Lady P. I think I have two or three of them about me. Volp. The sun, the sea, will sooner both stand still Than her eternal tongue ! nothing can ’scape it. [Aside. Lady p, Here’s Pastor Fido- Volp. Profess obstinate silence ; That’s now my safest. [Aside Lady P. All our English writers, SCENE III. THE I mean such as are happy in the Italian, Will deign to steal out of this author, mainly : Almost as much as from Montagnie : He has so modern and facile a vein, Fitting the time, and catching the court-ear! Your Petrarch is more passionate, yet he, In days of sonnetting, trusted them with much : Dante is hard, and few can understand him. But, for a desperate wit, there’s Aretine ; Only, his pictures are a little obscene- You mark me not, Volp. Alas, my mind’s perturb’d. Lody P. Why, in such cases, we must cure our- Make use of our philosophy- [selves, Volp. Oh me! Lady P. And as we find our passions do rebel, Encounter them with reason, or divert them, By giving scope unto some other humour Of lesser danger : as, in politic bodies, There’s nothing more doth overwhelm the judg¬ ment, And cloud the understanding, than too much Settling and fixing, and, as ’twere, subsiding Upon one object. For the incorporating Of these same outward things, into that part, Which we call mental, leaves some certain faeces That stop the organs, and as Plato says, Assassinate our knowledge. Volp. Now, the spirit Of patience help me! [Aside. Lady P. Come, in faith, I must Visit you more a days ; and make you well: Laugh and be lusty. Volp. My good angel save me ! [Aside. Lady P. There was but one sole man in all the world, With whom I e’er could sympathise ; and he Would lie you, often, three, four hours together To hear me speak ; and be sometime so rapt, As he would answer me quite from the purpose, Like you, and you are like him, just. I’ll discourse, An’t be but only, sir, to bring you asleep, How we did spend our time and loves together, For some six years. Volp. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh ! Lady P. Forwewere coaetanei, and brought up— Volp. Some power, some fate, some fortune rescue me! Enter Mosca. Mos. God save you, madam ! Lady P. Good sir. Volp. Mosca ! welcome, Welcome to my redemption. Mos. Why, sir ? Volp. Oh, Rid me of this my torture, quickly, there ; My madam, with the everlasting voice : The bells, in time of pestilence, ne’er made Like noise, or were in that perpetual motion ! The Cock-pit comes not near it. All my house, But now, steam’d like a bath with her thick breath, A lawyer could not have been heard ; nor scarce Another woman, such a hail of words She has let fall. For hell’s sake, rid her hence. Mos. Has she presented ? Volp. O, I do not care ; I’ll take her absence, upon any price, With any loss. Mos. Madam- FOX. 189 Lady P. I have brought your patron A toy, a cap here, of mine own work. Mos. ’Tis well. I had forgot to tell you, I saw your knight, Where you wnuld little think it.- Lady P. Where ? Mos. Marry, Where yet, if you make haste, you may apprehend Rowing upon the water in a gondole With the most cunning courtezan of Venice. Lady P. Is’t true ? Mos. Pursue them, and believe your eyes : Leave me, to make your gift. [Exit Lady P. has¬ tily.'] —I knew ’twould take : For, lightly, they that use themselves most license, Are still most jealous. Volp. Mosca, hearty thanks, For thy quick fiction, and delivery of me. Now to my hopes, what say’st thou ? Re-enter Lady P. Would-be, Lady P. But do you hear, sir?- Volp. Again ! I fear a paroxysm. Lady P. Which way Row’d they together ? Mos. Toward the Rialto. Lady P. I pray you lend me your dwarf. Mos. I pray you take him.— [Exit Lady P Your hopes, sir, are like happy blossoms, fair, And promise timely fruit, if you will stay But the maturing ; keep you at your couch, Corbaccio will arrive straight, with the Will; When he is gone, I’ll tell you more. [Exit Volp. My blood, My spirits are return’d ; I am alive : And, like your wanton gamester at primero, Whose thought had whisper’d to him, not go less, Methinks I lie, and draw-for an encounter. [The scene closes upon Volpone. -♦—- SCENE II.— The Passage leading to Volpone’s Chamber. Enter Mosca and Bonario. Mos. Sir, here conceal’d, [shews him a closet.] you may hear all. But, pray you, Have patience, sir ; [knocking within.] —the same’s your father knocks: I am compell’d to leave you. [Exit. Bon. Do so.—Yet Cannot my thought imagine this a truth. [Goes into the closet, -♦- SCENE III.— Another Part of the same. Enter Mosca and Corvjno, Celia following. Mos. Death on me ! you are come too soon, Did not I say, I would send ? [what meant you ? Corv. Yes, but I fear’d You might forget it, and then they prevent us. Mos. Prevent ! did e’er man haste so, for his horns ? A courtier would not ply it so, fora place. [Aside. Well, now there is no helping it, stay here ; I’ll presently return. [Exit. Corv. Where are you, Celia ? You know not wherefore I have brought you Cel. Not well, except you told me. [hither? Corv. Now, I will: Hark hither. [Exeunt. iWO THE SCENE IV .—A Closet opening into a Gallery. Enter Mosca and Bonario. Mos. Sir, vour father hath sent word, It will he half an hour ere he come ; And therefore, if you please to walk the while Into that gallery—at the upper end, There are some books to entertain the time : And I’ll take care no man shall come unto you, sir. Bon. Yes, I will stay there.—I do doubt this fellow. [ Aside , and exit. Mos. [Looking after him.'] There; he is far enough ; he can hear nothing : And, for his father, I can keep him off. [Exit. SCENE V.—Volpone’s Chamber. — Volpone on his couch. Mosca sitting by him. Enter Corvino, forcing in Celia. Core. Nay, now, there is no starting back, and Resolve upon it: 1 have so decreed. [therefore, It must be done. Nor would 1 move’t afore, Because I would avoid all shifts and tricks, That might deny me. Cel. Sir, let me beseech you, Affect not these strange trials ; if you doubt My chastity, why, lock me up for ever ; Make me the heir of darkness. Let me live. Where I may please your fears, if not your trust. Core. Believe it, I have no such humour, I. All that I speak I mean; yet I’m not mad ; Nor horn-mad, see you ? Go to, shew yourself Obedient, and a wife. Cel. O heaven ! Corv. I say it, Do so. Cel. Was this the train ? Corv. I’ve told you reasons ; What the physicians have set down : how much It may concern me ; what my engagements are ; My means ; and the necessity of those means, For my recovery : wherefore, if you be Loyal, and mine, be won, respect my venture. Cel. Before your honour ? Corv. Honour ! tut, a breath : There’s no such thing in nature : a mere term Invented to awe fools. What is my gold Tne worse for touching, clothes for being look’d on ? Why, this's no more. An old decrepit wretch, That has no sense, no sinew; takes his meat With others fingers ; only knows to gape, When you do scald his gums ; a voice, a shadow ; And, what can this man hurt you ? Cel. Lord ! what spirit Is this hath enter’d him ? [Aside. Corv. And for your fame, That’s such a jig; as if I would go tell it, Cry it on the Piazza ! shall know it, But he that cannot speak it, and this fellow, Whose lips are in my pocket ? save yourself, (If you’ll proclaim’t, you may,) I know no other Shall come to know it. Cel. Are heaven and saints then nothing? Will they be blind or stupid ? Corv. How ! Cel. Good sir, Be jealous still, emulate them ; and think What hate they burn with toward every sin. FOX. Corv. I grant you : if I thought it were a sin, I would not urge you. Should I offer this To some young Frenchman, or hot Tuscan blood That had read Aretine, conn’d all his prints, Knew every quirk within lust’s labyrinth, And were professed critic in lechery ; And I would look upon him, and applaud him, This were a sin : but here, ’tis contrary, A pious work, mere charity for physic, And honest polity, to assure mine own. Cel. O heaven ! canst thou suffer such a change? Volp. Thou art mine honour, Mosca, and my pride, My joy, my tickling, my delight ! Go bring them. Mos. [advancing .] Please you draw near, sir. Corv. Come on, what- You will not be rebellious? by that light- Mos. Sir, Signior Corvino, here, is come to see you. Volp. Oh ! Mos. And hearing of the consultation had, So lately, for your health, is come to offer, Or rather, sir, to prostitute- Corv. Thanks, sweet Mosca. Mos. Freely, unask’d, or unintreated- Corv. Well. Mos. As the true fervent instance of his love, His own most fair and proper wife ; the beauty, Only of price in Venice- Corv. ’Tis well urged. Mos. To be your comfortress, and to preserve you. Volp. Alas, I am past, already! Pray you, thank him For his good care and promptness ; but for that, ’Tis a vain labour e’en to fight ’gainst heaven ; Applying fire to stone—uh, uh, uli, uh ! [coughing.] Making a dead leaf grow again. I take His wishes gently, though ; and you may tell him, What I have done for him : marry, my state is hopeless. Will him to pray for me; and to use his fortune With reverence, when he comes to’t. Mos. Do you hear, sir ? Go to him with your wife. Corv. Heart of my father ! Wilt thou persist thus ? come, I pray thee, come. Thou seest ’tis nothing, Celia. By this hand, I shall grow violent. Come, do’t, I say. Cel. Sir, kill me, rather: I will take down poison, Eat burning coals, do any thing.- Corv. Be damn’d! Heart, I will drag thee hence, home, by the hair; Cry thee a strumpet through the streets ; rip up Thy mouth unto thine ears ; and slit thy nose, Like a raw rochet!—Do not tempt me ; come, Yield, I am loth—Death ! I will buy some slave Whom I will kill, and bind thee to him, alive ; And at my window hang you forth, devising Some monstrous crime, which I, in capital letters, Will eat into thy flesh with aquafortis, And burning corsives, on this stubborn breast. Now, by the blood thou hast incensed, I’ll do it! Cel. Sir, what you please, you may, I am your martyr. Corv. Be not thus obstinate, I have not deserved it: Think who it is intreats you. ’Prithee, sweet;— Good faith, thou shalt have jewels, gowns, attires, scene V. THE FOX. 19\ What thou wilt think, and ask. Do but go kiss him. Or touch him, but. For my sake. — At my suit.— This once. — No 1 not ! I shall remember this. Will you disgrace me thus? Do you thirst my undoing ? Mos. Nay, gentle lady, be advised. Forv . No, no. She has watch’d her time. Ods precious, this is scurvy, ’Tis very scurvy ; and you are— Mos. Nay, good sir. Cow. An arrant locust, by heaven, a locust ! Whore, crocodile, that hast thy tears prepared, Expecting how thou’lt bid them flow - Mos. Nay, ’pray you, sir ! She will consider. Cel. Would my life w r ould serve To satisfy — Cow. S’death ! if she would but speak to him, And save my reputation, it were somewhat ; But spightfully to affect my utter ruin ! Mos. Ay, now you have put your fortune in her hands. Why i’faith, it is her modesty, I must quit her. If you were absent, she would be more coming ; I know it : and dare undertake for her. What woman can before her husband? ’pray you, Let us depart, and leave her here. Cow. Sweet Celia, Thou may’st redeem all, yet; I’ll say no more : If not, esteem yourself as lost. Nay, stay there. [Shuts the door, and exit with Mosca. Cel. 0 God, and his good angels 1 whither, whither, Is shame fled human breasts? that with such ease, Men dare put off your honours, and their own? Is that, which ever was a cause of life, Now placed beneath the basest circumstance, And modesty an exile made, for money ? Volp. Ay, in Corvino, and such earth-fed minds, [Leaping from his couch. That never tasted the true heaven of love. Assure thee, Celia, he that would sell thee, Only for hope of gain, and that uncertain, He would have sold his part of Paradise For ready money, had he met a cope-man. Why art thou m .zed to see me thus revived ? Rather applaud thy beauty’s miracle ; ’Tis thy great work : that hath, not now alone, But sundry times raised me, in several shapes, 4nd, but this morning, like a mountebank, To see thee at thy window : ay, before i would have left my practice, for thy love, In varying figures, I would have contended With the blue Proteus, or the horned flood. Now art thou welcome. Cel. Sir 1 Volp. Nay, fly me not. Nor let thy false imagination That I was bed-rid, make thee think I am so . Thou shalt not find it. I am, now, as fresh, As hot, as high, and in as jovial plight, As when, in that so celebrated scene, At recitation of our comedy, For entertainment of the great Valois, I acted young Antinous ; and attracted The eyes and ears of all the ladies present, To admire each graceful gesture, note, and footing. [Sings. Come, my Celia, let us prove. While we can, the sports of love, Time will not be ours for ever, He, at length, our good will sever ; Spend not then his gifts in vain ; Suns, that set, may rise again ; But if once we lose this light, ’Tis with us perpetual night. Why should we defer our joys ? Fame and rumour are but toys. Cannot we delude the eyes Of a few poor household spies ? Or his easier ears beguile, Thus removed by our wile ?— ’Tis no sin love’s fruits to steal; But the sweet thefts to reveal; To be taken, to be seen, These have crimes accounted been. i Cel. Some serene blast me, or dire lightning 1 This my offending face ! [strike j Volp. Why droops my Celia ? Thou hast, in place of a base husband, found A worthy lover : use thy fortune well, With secrecy and pleasure. See, behold, What thou ai't queen of ; not in expectation, As I feed others : but possess’d and crown’d. See, here, a rope of pearl ; and each, more orient Than that the brave /Egyptian queen caroused : Dissolve and drink them. See, a carbuncle, May put out both the eyes of our St. Mark ; A diamond, would have bought Lollia Paulina, When she came in like star-light, hid with jewels, That were the spoils of provinces ; take these, And wear, and iose them : yet remains an ear-ring To purchase them again, and this whole state. A gem but worth a private patrimony, Is nothing : we will eat such at a meal. The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales, The brains of peacocks, and of estriches, Shall be our food : and, could we get the phoenix, Though nature lost her kind, she were our dish. Cel. Good sir, these things might move a mind affected With such delights ; but I, whose innocence Is all I can think wealthy, or worth th’ enjoying, And which, once lost, I have nought to lose beyond Cannot be taken with these sensual baits : [it, If you have conscience - Volp. ’Tis the beggar’s virtue ; If thou hast wisdom, hear me, Celia. Thy baths shall be the juice of July-flowers, Spirit of roses, and of violets, The milk of unicorns, and panthers’ breath Gather’d in bags, and mixt with Cretan wines. Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber ; Which we will take, until my roof whirl round With the vertigo : and my dwarf shall dance, My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antic, Whilst we, in changed shapes, act Ovid’s tales, Thou, like Europa now, and I like Jove, Then I like Mars, and thou like Erycine : So, of the rest, till we have quite run through, And wearied all the fables of the gods. Then will I have thee in more modern forms, Attired like some sprightly dame of France, Brave Tuscan lady, or proud Spanish beauty ; Sometimes, unto the Persian sophy’s wife ; Or the grand signior’s mistress ; and, for change, To one of our most artful courtezans, Or some quick Negro, or cold Russian ; And I wall meet thee in as many shapes : IX'Z THE FOX. act in. Where we may so transfuse onr wandering souls Out at our lips, and score up sums of pleasures, [Sings. That the curious shall not know How to tell them as they flow; And the envious, when they find What their number is, be pined. Cel. If you have ears that will be pierced—or eyes That can be open’d—a heart that may be touch’d— Or any part that yet sounds man about you— If you have touch of holy saints—or heaven— Do me the grace to let me ’scape—if not, Be bountiful and kill me. You do know, I am a creature, hither ill betray’d, By one, whose shame I would forget it were : If you will deign me neither of these graces. Yet feed your wrath, sir, rather than your lust, (It is a vice comes nearer manliness,) And punish that unhappy crime of nature, Which you miscall my beauty : flay my face, Or poison it with ointments, for seducing Your blood to this rebellion. Rub these hands, With what may cause an eating leprosy, E’en to my bones and marrow : any thing, That may disfavour me, save in my honour— And I will kneel to you, pray for you, pay down A thousand hourly vows, sir, for your health ; Report, and think you virtuous- Volp. Think me cold, Frozen and impotent, and so report me ? That I had Nestor’s hernia, thou wouldst think. I do degenerate, and abuse my nation, To play with opportunity thus long ; I should have done the act, and then have parley’d. Yield, or I’ll force thee. [Seizes her. Cel. 0 ! just God ! Volp. In vain- Bon. [rushing in.] Forbear, foul ravisher, libi¬ dinous swine! Free the forced lady, or thou diest, impostor. But that I’m loth to snatch thy punishment Out of the hand of justice, thou shouldst, yet, Be made the timely sacrifice of vengeance, Before this altar, and this dross, thy idol.-- l ady, let’s quit the place, it is the den Of villainy ; fear nought, you have a guard : And he, ere long, shall meet his just reward. [Exeunt Bon. and Cel. Volp. Fall on me, roof, and bury me in ruin ! Become my grave, that wert my shelter! 0 ! I am unmask’d, unspirited, undone, Betray’d to beggary, to infamy- Enter Mosca, wounded and Heeding. Mos. Where shall I run, most wretched shame To beat out my unlucky brains ? [of men, Volp. Here, here. What! dost thou bleed ? Mos. 0 that his well-driv’n sword Had been so courteous to have cleft me down Unto the navel, ere I lived to see My life, my hopes, my spirits, my patron, all Thus desperately engaged, by my error ! Volp. Woe on thy fortune ! Afos. And my follies, sir. Volp. Thou hast made me miserable. Mos. And myself, sir. Who would have thought he would have hearken’d Volp. What shall we do? [so? Mos. I know not; if my heart Could expiate the mischance, I’d pluck it out. Will you be pleased to hang me, or cut my throat? And I’ll requite you, sir. Let’s die like Romans, Since we have lived like Grecians. [Knocking within. Volp. Hark ! who’s there ? I hear some footing; officers, the saffi, Come to apprehend us ! I do feel the brand Hissing already at my forehead ; now, Mine ears are boring. Mos. To your couch, sir, you, Make that place good, however. [Volpone lies down , as before.] —Guilty men Suspect what they deserve still. Enter Corbaccio. Signior Corbaccio ! Corb. Why, how now, Mosca ? Mos. 0, undone, amazed, sir. Your son, I know not by what accident, Acquainted with your purpose to my patron, Touching your Will, and making him your heir, Enter’d our house with violence, his sword drawn Sought for you, call’d you wretch, unnatural, Vow’d he would kill you. Corb. Me ! Afos. Yes, and my patron. Corb. This act shall disinherit him indeed; Here is the Will. Afos. ’Tis well, sir. Corb. Right and well: Be you as careful now for me. Enter Voltore, behind. Afos. My life, sir, Is not more tender’d ; I am only yours. Corb. How does he ? will he die shortly, think’st Afos. I fear [thou? He’ll outlast May. Corb. To-day ? Afos. No, last out May, sir. Corb. Could’st thou not give him a dram ? Mos. O, by no means, sir. Corb. Nay, I’ll not bid you. Volt. [ coming forward .] This is a knave, I see. Afos. [seeing Voltore.] How! signior Voltore ! did he hear me ? [Aside. Volt. Parasite! Mos. Who’s that ?—0, sir. most timely wel¬ come— Volt. Scarce, To the discovery of your tricks, I fear. You are his, only ? and mine also, are you not? Afos. Who ? I, sir ? Volt. You, sir. What device is this About a Will ? Afos. A plot for you, sir. Volt. Come, Put not your foists upon me ; I shall scent them. Afos. Did you not hear it ? Volt. Yes, I hear Corbaccio Hath made your patron there his heir. Afos. ’Tis true, By my device, drawn to it by my plot, With hope- Volt. Your patron should reciprocate? And you have promised ? Afos. For your good, I did, sir. Nay, more, I told his son, brought, hid him here. Where he might hear his father pass the deed : Being persuaded to it by this thought, sir, «CE' T F I. THE FOX. 103 I That the unnaturalness, first, of the act, And then his father’s oft disclaiming in him, 'Which I did mean t’help on,) would sure enrage To do some violence upon his parent, [him On which the law should take sufficient hold, And you be stated in a double hope : Truth be my comfort, and my conscience, My only aim was to dig you a fortune Out of these two old rotten sepulchres— Volt. I cry thee mercy, Mosca. Mas. Worth your patience, And your great merit, sir. And see the change ! Volt. Why, what success ? Mos. Most hapless ! you must help, sir. Whilst we expected the old raven, in comes Corvino’s wife, sent hither by her husband — Volt. What, with a present? Mos. No, sir, on visitation ; (I’ll tell you how anon ,) and staying long. The youth he grows impatient, rushes forth, Seizeth the lady, wounds me, makes her swear (Or he would murder her, that was his vow) To affirm my patron to have done her rape : Which how unlike it is, you see ! and hence, With that pretext he’s gone, to accuse his father. Defame my patron, defeat you- Volt. Where is her husband ? Let him be sent for straight. Mos. Sir, I’ll go fetch him. Volt. Bring him to the Scrutineo. Mos. Sir, I will. Volt. This must be stopt. Mos. O you do nobly, sir. Alas, ’twas labour’d all, sir, for your good; Nor was there want of counsel in the plot : But fortune can, at any time, o’erthrow The projects of a hundred learned clerks, sir. Corb. [listening .] What’s that? Volt. Will’t please you, sir, to go along ? [Exit Corbaccio, followed by Yoltotie. Mos. Patron, go in, and pray for our success. Volp. [rising from his couch.'] Need makes devotion : heaven your labour bless ! [Exeunt. ACT IV. SCENE I.— A Street. Enter Sir Politick Would-be and Peregrine. Sir P. I told you, sir, it was a plot; you see What observation is! You mention’d me For some instructions : I will tell you, sir, (Since we are met here in this height of Venice,) Some few particulars I have set down, Only for this meridian, fit to be known Of your crude traveller ; and they are these. I will not touch, sir, at your phrase, or clothes, For they are old. Per. Sir, I have better. Sir P. Pardon, I meant, as they are themes. Per. O, sir, proceed : I’ll slander you no more of wit, good sir. Sir P. First, for your garb, it must be grave and serious, Very reserv’d and lock’d ; not tell a secret On any terms, not to your father; scarce A fable, but with caution : make sure choice Both of your company, and discourse ; beware You never speak a truth- Per. How ! Sir P. Not to strangers, For those be they you must converse with most ; Others I would not know, sir, but at distance, So as I still might be a saver in them : You shall have tricks else past upon you hourly. And then, for your religion, profess none, But wonder at the diversity, of all: And, for your part, protest, were there no other But simply the laws o’ th’ land, you could content Nic. Machiavel, and Monsieur Bodin, both [you, Were of this mind. Then must you learn the use And handling of your silver fork at meals, The metal of your glass ; (these are main matters With your Italian ;) and to know the hour V hen you must eat your melons, and your figs. Per. Is that a point of state too ? Sir P. Here it is : For your Venetian, if he see a man Preposterous in the least, he has him straight; He has ; he strips him. I’ll accjuaint you, sir, I now have lived here, ’tis some fourteen months Within the first week of my landing here, All took me for a citizen of Venice, I knew the forms so well- Per. And nothing else. [AsitJe. Sir P. I had read Contarene, took me a house. Dealt with my Jews to furnish it with moveables— Well, if I could but find one man, one man To mine own heart, whom I durst trust, 1 would— Per. What, what, sir ? Sir P. Make him rich ; make him a fortune : He should not think again. I would command it. Per. As how ? Sir P. With certain projects that I have ; Which I may not discover. Per. If I had But one to wager with, I would lay odds now. He tells me instantly. Aside, j Sir P. One is, and that I care not greatly who knows, to serve the state Of Venice with red herrings for three yeais. And at a certain rate, from Rotterdam, Where I have correspondence. There’s a letter, Sent me from one o’ the states, and to that purpose: He cannot write his name, but that’s his mark. Per. He is a chandler ? Sir P. No, a cheesemonger. There are some others too with whom I treat About the same negociation ; And I will undertake it : for, ’tis thus. I’ll do’t with ease, I have cast it all: Your hoy Carries but three men in her, and a boy ; And she shall make me three returns a year : So, if there come but one of three, I save; If two, I can defalk :—but this is now 7 , If my main project fail. Per. Then you have others ? Sir P. I should be loth to draw 7 the subtle air Of such a place, without my thousand aims. I’ll not dissemble, sir : where’er I come, o THE FOX. ACT TV. lOt 1 love to be considerative ; and ’tis true, 1 have at my free hours thought upon Some certain goods unto the state of Venice, Which I do call my Cautions ; and, sir, which I mean, in hope of pension, to propound To the Great Council, then unto the Forty, So to the Ten. My means are made already— Per. By whom ? Sir P. Sir, one that, though his place be obscure, Yet he can sway, and they will hear him. He’s A commandador. Per. What! a common serjeant ? Sir P. Sir, such as they are, put it in their mouths, What they should say, sometimes ; as well as greater : I think I have my notes to shew you— [Searching his pockets. Per. Good sir. Sir P. But you shall swear unto me, on your Not to anticipate— [gentry, Per. I, sir! Sir P. Nor reveal A circumstance-My paper is not with me. Per. O, but you can remember, sir. Sir P. My first is Concerning tinder-boxes. You must know. No family is here without its box. Now, sir, it being so portable a thing, Put case, that you or I were ill affected Unto the state, sir; with it in our pockets, Might not I go into the Arsenal, Or you, come out again, and none the wiser ? Per. Except yourself, sir. Sir P. Go to, then. I therefore Advertise to the state, how fit it were, That none but such as were known patriots, Sound lovers of their country, should be suffer’d To enjoy them in their houses ; and even those Seal'd at some office, and at such a bigness As might not lurk in pockets. Per. Admirable! [resolv’d, Sir P. My next is, how to enquire, and be By present demonstration, whether a ship, Newly arrived from Soria, or from Any suspected part of all the Levant, Be guilty of the plague : and where they use To lie out forty, fifty days, sometimes, About the Lazaretto, for their trial; I’ll save that charge and loss unto the merchant, And in an hour clear the doubt. Per. Indeed, sir! Sir P. Or-1 will lose my labour. Per. ’My faith, that’s much. Sir P. Nay, sir, conceive me. It will cost me in Some thirty livres- [onions, Per. Which is one pound sterling. Sir P. Beside my water-works : for this I do, sir. First, I bring in your ship ’twixt two brick walls ; But those the state shall venture : On the one I strain me a fair tarpauling, and in that I stick my onions, cut in halves : the other Is full of loop-holes, out at which I thrust The noses of my bellows ; and those bellows I keep, with water-works, in perpetual motion, Which is the easiest matter of a hundred. Now, sir, your onion, which doth naturally Attract the infection, and your bellows blowing The air upon him, will show, instantly, By his changed colour, if there be contagion; Or else remain as fair as at the first. —Now it is known, ’tis nothing. Per. You are right, sir Sir P. I would I had my note. Per. ’Faith, so would I : But you have done well for once, sir. Sir P. Were I false, Or would be made so, I could show you reasons How 1 could sell this state now to the Turk, Spite of their gallies, or their- [Examining his papers. Per. Pray you, sir Pol. Sir P. I have them not about me. Per. That I fear’d : They are there, sir. Sir P. No, this is my diary, Wherein I note my actions of the day. Per. Pray you, let’s see, sir. What is here ? Notandum, [Reads. A rat had gnawn my spur-leathers ; not withstand- I put on neiv, and did go forth : but first [ ing 7 I threw three beans over the threshold. Item, I iveut and bought two tooth-picks, whereof one I burst immediately , in a discourse With a Dutch merchant, 'bout ragion del stato. From him I went and paid a moccinigo For piecing my silk stockings ; by the ivay I cheapen'd sprats ; and at St. Mark’s I mined. ’Faith these are politic notes ! Sir P. Sir, I do slip No action of my life, but thus I quote it. Per. Believe me, it is wise ! Sir P. Nay, sir, read forth. Enter, at a distance, Lady Politick Would-be, Nano, and two Waiting-women. Lady P. Where should this loose knight be. trow ? sure he’s housed. Nan. Why, then he’s fast. Lady P. Ay, he plays both with me. I pray you stay. This heat will do more harm To my complexion, than his heart is worth. (I do not care to hinder, but to take him.) How it comes off! [Rubbing her cheeks. 1 Worn. My master’s yonder. Lady P. Where ? 2 Worn. With a young gentleman. Lady P. That same’s the party ; In man’s apparel! ’Pray you, sir, jog my knight: I will be tender to his reputation, However he demerit. Sir P. [Seeing her."] My lady ! Per. Where ? Sir P. ’Tis she indeed, sir; you shall know her. She is, Were she not mine, a lady of that merit, For fashion and behaviour; and for beauty I durst compare- Per. It seems you are not jealous, That dare commend her. Sir P. Nay, and for discourse- Per. Being ycur wife, she cannot miss that. Sir P. [ introducing Per.] Madam, Here is a gentleman, pray you, use him fairly; He seems a youth, but he is- Lady P. None. Sir P. Y r es, one Has put his face as soon into the world- Lady P. You mean, as early? but to-day ? Sir P. How’s this ? SCENE II. THE FOX. 195 Lady P. Why, in this habit, sir ; you appre¬ hend me :— Well, master Would-be, this doth not beeome you ; I had thought the odour, sir, of your good name Had been more precious to you ; that you would not Have done this dire massacre on your honour ; One of your gravity and rank besides ! But knights, I see, care little for the oath They make to ladies ; chiefly, their own ladies. Sir P. Now, by my spurs, the symbol of my knighthood,— Per. Lord, how his brain is humbled for an oath ! [Aside. Sir P. I reach you not. Lady P. Right, sir, your policy May bear it through thus.—Sir, a word with you. [To Per. I would be loth to contest publicly With any gentlewoman, or to seem Froward, or violent, as the courtier says ; It comes too near rusticity in a lady, Which I would shun by all means : and however I may deserve from master Would-be, yet T’have one fair gentlewoman thus be made The unkind instrument to wrong another, And one she knows not, ay, and to persever ; In my poor judgment, is not warranted From being a solecism in our sex, If not in manners. Per. How is this ! Sir P. Sweet madam, Come nearer to your aim. Lady P. Marry, and will, sir. Since you provoke me with your impudence, I And laughter of your light land-syren here, Your Sporus, your hermaphrodite- Per. What’s here ? Poetic fury, and historic storms ! Sir P. The gentleman, believe it, is of worth, And of our nation. Lady P. Ay, your White-friars nation, j Come, I blush for you, master Would-be, I ; : And am asham’d you should have no more fore- Than thus to be the patron, or St. George, [head, To a lewd harlot, a base fricatrice, A female devil, in a male outside. Sir P. Nay, An you be such a one, I must bid adieu To your delights. The case appears too liquid. [Exit. Lady P. Ay, you may carry’t clear, with your state-face! — But for your carnival concupiscence, Who here is fled for liberty of conscience, From furious persecution of the marshal, Her will I dis’ple. Per. This is fine, i’faith ! And do you use this often ? Is this part Of your wit’s exercise, ’gainst you have occasion ? Madam- Lady P. Go to, sir. Per. Do you hear me, lady ? Why, if your knight have set you to beg shirts, Or to invite me home, you might have done it A nearer way, by far. Lady P. This cannot work you Out of my snare. Per. Why, am I in it, then ? Indeed your husband told me you were fair. And so you are ; only your nose inclines, That side that's next the sun, to the queen-apple. Lady P. This cannot be endur’d by any pa¬ tience. Eater Mosca. Mos. What is the matter, madam? Lady P. If the senate Right not my quest in this, I will protest them To all the world, no aristocracy. Mos. What is the injury, lady? Lady P. Why, the callet \ ou told me of, here I have ta’en disguised. Mos. Who ? this ! what means your ladyship ? the creature I mention’d to you is apprehended now, Before the senate ; you shall see her- Lady P. Where? Mos. I’ll bring you to her. This young gentle- I saw him land this morning at the port. [man, Lady P. Is’t possible ! how has my judgment wander’d ? Sir, I must, blushing, say to you, I have err’d ; And plead your pardon. Per. What, more changes yet! Lady P. I hope you have not the malice to re- A gentlewoman’s passion. If you stay [member In Venice here, please you to use me, sir- Mos. Will you go, madam ? Lady P. ’Pray you, sir, use me ; in faith, The more you see me, the more I shall conceive You have forgot our quarrel. [Exeunt Lady Would-be, Mosca, Nano, anl Waiting-women. Per. This is rare ! Sir Politick Would-be ? no ; sir Politick Bawd, To bring me thus acquainted with his wife! Well, wise sir Pol, since you have practised thus Upon my freshman-ship, I’ll try your salt-head, What proof it is against a counter-plot. [Exit. —«- SCENE II.— The Scruthieo,or Senate-House. Enter Yoltore, Corbaccio, Corvino, and Mosca. Volt. Well, now you know the carriage of the Your constancy is all that is required [business, Unto the safety of it. j Mos. Is the lie Safely convey’d amongst us ? is that sure ? Knows every man his burden ? Core. Yes. 71 los. Then shrink not. Core. But knows the advocate the truth ? Mos. O, sir, By no means ; I devised a formal tale, That salv’d your reputation. But be valiant, sir. Corv. I fear no one but him, that this his plead- Should make him stand for a co-heir-[ing Mos. Co-halter ! Hang him ; we will but use his tongue, his noise, As we do croakers here. Corv. Ay, what shall he do ? Mos. When we have done, you mean ? Corv. Yes. Mos. Why, we’ll think : Sell him for mummia; lie’s half dust already. Do you not smile, [/o Yoltore. ]to see this buffalo, How he doth sport it with his head ?—I should, If all were well and past. [ Aside .]—Sir, [to Cor¬ baccio.] only you 0 2 196 THE Are lie that shall enjoy the crop of all, And these not know for whom they toil. Corb. Ay, peace. Mos. [ turning /oCorvino.] But you shall eat it. Much ! [Aside.] —Worshipful sir, [to Yoltore.J Mercury sit upon your thundering tongue, Or the French Hercules, and make your language As conquering as his club, to beat along, As with a tempest, flat, our adversaries; But much more yours, sir. Volt. Here they come, have done. Mos. I have another witness, if you need, sir, I can produce. Volt. Who is it ? Mos . Sir, 1 have her. Enter Avocatori and take their scats, Bonario, Celia, Notario, Commandadori, Saffi, and other Officers of justice. 1 A voc. The like of this the senate never heard of. 2 A voc. ’Twill come most strange to them when we report it. 4 Avoc. The gentlewoman has been ever held Of unreproved name. 3 Avoc. So has the youth. 4 Avoc. The more unnatural part that of his 2 Avoc. More of the husband. [father. 1 Avoc. I not know to give His act a name, it is so monstrous ! 4 Avoc. But the impostor, he’s a thing created To exceed example ! 1 Avoc. And all after-times ! 2 Avoc. I never heard a true voluptuary Described, but him. 3 Avoc. Appear yet those were cited ? Not. All but the old magnifico, Yolpone. 1 Avoc. Why is not he here ? Mos. Please your fatherhoods, Here is his advocate : himself’s so weak, So feeble- 4 Avoc. What are you ? Bon. His parasite, His knave, his pandar : I beseech the court, He may be forced to come, that your grave eyes May bear strong witness of his strange impostures. Volt. Upon my faith and credit with your vir- He is not able to endure the air. [tues, 2 Avoc. Bring him, however. 3 Avoc. We will see him. 4 Avoc. Fetch him. Volt. Your fatherhoods’ fit pleasures be obey’d; [Exeunt Officers. But sure, the sight will rather move your pities, Than indignation. May it please the court, In the mean time, he may be heard in me : I know this place most void of prejudice, And therefore crave it, since we have no reason To fear our truth should hurt our cause. 3 Avoc. Speak free. Volt. Then know, most honour’d fathers, I must Discover to your strangely abused ears, [now The most prodigious and most frontless piece Of solid impudence, and treachery, That ever vicious nature yet brought forth To shame the state of Yenice. This lewd woman, That wants no artificial looks or tears To help the vizor she has now put on, Hath long been known a close adulteress To that lascivious youth there ; not suspected, FOX. act jv I say, but known, and taken in the act With him ; and by this man, the easy husband, Pardon’d ; whose timeless bounty makes him now Stand here, the most unhappy, innocent person, That ever man’s own goodness made accused. For these not knowing how to owe a gift Of that dear grace, but with their shame; being So above all powers of their gratitude, [placed Began to hate the benefit; and, in place Of thanks, devise to extirpe the memory Of such an act: wherein I pray your fatherhoods To observe the malice, yea, the rage of creatures Discover’d in their evils; and what heart Such take, even from their crimes :—but that anon Will more appear.—This gentleman, the father, Hearing of this foul fact, with many others, Which daily struck at his too tender ears, And grieved in nothing more than that he could Preserve himself a parent, (his son’s ills [not Growing to that strange flood,) at last decreed To disinherit him. 1 Avoc. These be strange turns ! 2 Avoc. The young man’s fame was ever fair and honest. Volt. So much more full of danger is his vice, That can beguile so under shade of virtue. But, as I said, my honour’d sires, his father Having this settled purpose, by what means To him betray’d, we know not, and this day Appointed for the deed ; that parricide, I cannot style him better, by confederacy Preparing this his paramour to be there, Enter’d Volpone’s house, (who was the man, Your fatherhoods must understand, design’d For the inheritance,) there sought his father :— But with what purpose sought he him, my lords ? I tremble to pronounce it, that a son Unto a father, and to such a father, Should have so foul, felonious intent! It was to murder him: when being prevented By his more happy absence, what then did he ? Not check his wicked thoughts; no, now new deed3 (Mischief doth never end where it begins) An act of horror, fathers ! he dragg’d forth The aged gentleman that had there lain bed-rid Three years and more, out of his innocent couch, Naked upon the floor, there left him ; wounded His servant in the face : and, with this strumpet The stale to his forged practice, who was glad To be so active,—(I shall here desire Your fatherhoods to note but my collections, As most remarkable,—) thought at once to stop His father’s ends, discredit his free choice In the old gentleman, redeem themselves, By laying ini’amy upon this man, To whom, with blushing, theyshould owe their lives. 1 Avoc. What proofs have you of this? Bon. Most honoured fathers, I humbly crave there be no credit given To this man’s mercenary tongue. 2 Avoc. Forbear. Bon. His soul moves in his fee. 3 Avoc. O, sir. Bon. This fellow, For six sols more, would plead against his Maker. 1 Avoc. You do forget yourself. Volt. Nay, nay, grave fathers. Let him have scope : can any man imagine That he will spare his accuser, that would not Have spared his parent ? SCENE II. 1 Avoc. Well, produce your proofs. Cel. I would I could forget I were a creature. Volt. Signior Corbaccio! [Corbaccio comes forward . 4 Avoc. What is be? Volt. The father. 2 Avoc. Has he had an oath ? Not. Yes. Corb. What must I do now ? Not. Your testimony’s craved. C.orb. Speak to the knave ? I’ll have my mouth first stopt with earth; my heart Abhors his knowledge : I disclaim in him. 1 Avoc. But for what cause? Corb. The mere portent of nature ! He is an utter stranger to my loins. Bon. Have they made you to this ? Corb. I will not hear thee. Monster of men, swine, goat, wolf, parricide ! Speak not, thou viper. Bon. Sir, I will sit down, And rather wish my innocence should suffer, Than I resist the authority of a father. Volt. Signior Corvino! [Corvino comes forward. 2 Avoc. This is strange. 1 Avoc. Who’s this ? Not. The husband. 4 Avoc. Is he sworn? Not. He is. 3 Avoc. Speak, then. Corv. This woman, please your fatherhoods, is a whore, Of most hot exercise, more than a partrich, Upon record- 1 Avoc. No more. Corv. Neighs like a jennet. Not. Preserve the honour of the court. Corv. I shall, And modesty of your most reverend ears. And yet I hope that I may say, these eyes Have seen her glued unto that piece of cedar, That fine well-timber’d gallant; and that here The letters may be read, thorough the horn, That make the story perfect. Mos. Excellent! sir. Corv. There is no shame in this now, is there? [Aside to Mosca Mos. None. Corv. Or if I said, I hoped that she were onward To her damnation, if there be a hell Greater than whore and woman ; a good catholic May make the doubt. 3 Avoc. His grief hath made him frantic. 1 Avoc. Remove him hence. 2 Avoc. Look to the woman. [Celia stcoons . Corv. Rare ! Prettily feign’d, again! 4 Avoc. Stand from about her. 1 A roc. Give her the air. 3 Avoc. What can you say ? [To Mosca. Mos. My wound, May it please your wisdoms, speaks for me, re¬ in aid of my good patron, when he mist [ceived His sought-for father, when that well-taught dame Had her cue given her, to cry out, A rape ! Bon. O most laid impudence ! Fathers- 3 Avoc. Sir, be silent; lou had your hearing free, so must they theirs. 2 Avoc. I do begin to doubt the imposture here. 4 Avoc. This woman has too many moods. 107 Volt. Grave fathers. She is a creature of a most profest And prostituted lewdness. Corv. Most impetuous, Unsatisfied, grave fathers ! Volt. May her feignings Not take your wisdoms : but this day she baited A stranger, a grave knight, with her loose eyes, And more lascivious kisses. This man saw them Together on the water, in a gondola. Mos. Here is the lady herself, that saw them Without; who then had in the open streets [too ; Pursued them, but for saving her knight’s honour. 1 Avoc. Produce that lady. 2 Avoc. Let her come. [Exit Mosca. 4 Avoc. These things, They strike with wonder. 3 Avoc. I am turn’d a stone. R-enter Mosca icith Lady Would-be. Mos. Be resolute, madam. Lady P. Ay, this same is she. [Pointing to Celia. Out, thou camelion harlot! now thine eyes Vie tears with the hyrnna. Dar’st thou look Upon my wronged face ?—I cry your pardons, I fear I have forgettingly transgrest Against the dignity of the court- 2 Avoc. No, madam. Lady P. And been exorbitant- 2 Avoc. You have not, lady. 4 Avoc. These proofs are strong. Lady P. Surely, I had no purpose To scandalize your honours, or my sex’s. 3 Avoc. We do believe it. Lady P. Surely, you may believe it. 2 Avoc. Madam, we do. Lady P. Indeed you may ; my breeding Is not so coarse- 4 Avoc. We know it. Lady P. To offend With pertinacy-- 3 Avoc. Lady— Lady P. Such a presence ! No surely. 1 Avoc. We well think it. Lady P. You may think it. 1 Avoc. Let her o’ercome. What witnesses To make good your report ? [have you Bon. Our consciences. Cel. And heaven, that never fails the innocent. 4 A voc. These are no testimonies. Bon. Not in your courts. Where multitude, and clamour overcomes. 1 Avoc. Nay, then you do wax insolent. Re-enter Officers, bearing Yolpone on a couch. Volt. Here, here, • The testimony comes, that will convince, And put to utter dumbness their bold tongues . See here, grave fathers, here’s the ravisher, The rider on men’s wives, the great impostor, The grand voluptuary ! Do you not think These limbs should affect venery ? or these eyes Covet a concubine ? pray you mark these hands ; Are they not fit to stroke a lady’s breasts ?— Perhaps he doth dissemble ! Bon. So he does. Volt. Would you have him tortured ? Bon. I would have him proved. [irons; Volt. Best try him then with goads, or burning THE FOX. THE FOX. ACT V JD8 Pat liim to the strappado : I have heard The rack hath cured the gout; ’faith, give it him, And help him of a malady; be courteous. I’ll undertake, before these honour’d fathers, He shall have yet as many left diseases, As she has known adulterers, or thou strumpets.— O, my most equal hearers, if these deeds, Acts of this bold and most exorbitant strain, May pass with sufferance, what one citizen But owes the forfeit of his life, yea, fame, To him that dares traduce him ? which of you Are safe, my honour’d fathers ? I would ask. With leave of your grave fatherhoods, if their plot Have any face or colour like to truth ? Or if, unto the dullest nostril here, It smell not rank, and most abhorred slander? I crave your care of this good gentleman, Whose life is much endanger’d by their fable ; And as for them, I will conclude with this, That vicious persons, when they’re hot and flesh’d In impious acts, their constancy abounds : Damn’d deeds are done with greatest confidence. 1 Avoc. Take them to custody, and sever them. 2 Avoc. ’Tis pity two such prodigies should live. 1 Avoc. Let the old gentleman be return’d with care. [ Exeunt Officers with Yolpone. I’m sorry our credulity hath wrong’d him, 4 Avoc. These are two creatures ! 3 Avoc. I’vg an earthquake in me. 2 Avoc. Their shame, even in their cradles, fled their faces. 4 Avoc. You have done a worthy service to the state, sir, In their discovery. [To Volt. 1 Avoc. You shall hear, ere night, What punishment the court decrees upon them. {Exeunt Avocat. Not. and Officers with Bonario and Celia. Volt. We thank your fatherhoods.—How like Mos. Rare. [you it ? I’d have your tongue, sir, tipt with gold for this ; I’d have you be the heir to the whole city ; The earth I’d have want men, ere you want living : They’re bound to erect your statue in St. Mark’s. Signior Corvino, I would have you go And shew yourself, that you have conquer’d. Corv. Yes. Mos. It was much better that you should pro¬ fess Yourself a cuckold thus, than that the other Should have been proved. Corv. Nay, I consider’d that: Now it is her fault. Jlfos. Then it had been yours. Corv. True; I do doubt this advocate still. Mos. I’faith You need not, I dare ease you of that care. Corv. I trust thee, Mosca. I Exit Mos. As your own soul, sir. Corb. Mosca! Mos. Now for your business, sir. Corb. How ! have you business ? Mos. Yes, your’s sir. Corb. O, none else ? Mos. None else, not I. Corb. Be careful, then. Mos. Rest you with both your eyes, sir. Corb. Dispatch it. Mos. Instantly. Corb. And look that all, Whatever, be put in, jewels, plate, moneys. Household stuff, bedding, curtains. M is. Curtain-rings, sir : Only the advocate’s fee must be deducted. Corb. I’ll pay him now ; you’ll be too prodigal. Mos. Sir, I must tender it. Corb. Two chequines is well. Mos. No, six, sir. Corb. ’Tis too much. Mos. He talk’d a great while ; You must consider that, sir. Corb. Well, there's three- Mos. I’ll give it him. Corb. Do so, and there’s for thee. [Exit. Mos. Bountiful bones! What horrid strange offence Did he commit ’gainst nature, in his youth, Worthythis age? [Aside.] —Yousee,sir, [to Volt.] how I work Unto your ends : take you no notice. Volt. No, I’ll leave you. [Exit Mos. All is yours, the devil and all: Good advocate ! — Madam, I’ll bring you home. Lady P. No, I'll go see your patron. Mos. That you shall not: I’ll tell you why. My purpose is to urge My patron to reform his Will; and for The zeal you have shewn to-day, whereas before You were but third or fourth, you shall be now Put in the first; which would appear as begg’d, If you were present. Therefore- Lady P. You shall sway me. [Exeunt. ACT V. SCE% T E I .—A Room in Volpone’s House. Enter Yolpone. Volp. Well, I am here, and all this brunt is past. I ne’er was in dislike with my disguise Till this fled moment: here ’twas good, in private ; But in your public ,—cave whilst I breathe. Fore God, my left leg ’gan to have the cramp, And I apprehended straight some power had struck me Y ith a dead palsy : Well! I must be merry, And shake it off. A many of these fears Y ould put me into some villainous disease, Should they come thick upon me: I’ll prevent ’em. Give me a bowl of lusty wine, to fright This humour from my heart. [Drinks.] —hum, hum, hum ! ’Tis almost gone already ; I shall conquer. Any device, now, of rare ingenious knavery, That would possess me with a violent laughter, Would make me up again. [Drinks again.] —So, so, so, so ! This heat is life; ’tis blood by this time :—Mosca! Enter Mosca. Mos. How now, sir ? does the day look clear again ? I SCENE I. THE Are we recover’d, and wrought out of error, Into our way, to see our path before us ? Is our trade free once more ? Volp. Exquisite Mosca ! Afos. Was it not carried learnedly ? Volp. And stoutly : Good wits are greatest in extremities. Mos. It were a folly beyond thought, to trust Any grand act unto a cowardly spirit: You are not taken with it enough, methinks. Volp. O, more than if I had enjoy’d the wench : The pleasure of all woman-kind’s not like it. Mos. Why now you speak, sir. We must here be fix’d; Here we must rest; this is our master-piece ; We cannot think to go beyond this. Volp. True, Thou hast play’d thy prize, my precious Mosca. ‘ Mos. Nay, sir, To gull the court- Volp. And quite divert the torrent Upon the innocent. Mos. Yes, and to make So rare a music out of discords- Volp. Right. That yet to me’s the strangest, how thou hast borne it! That these, being so divided ’mongst themselves, Should not scent somewhat, or in me or thee, Or doubt their own side. Mos. True, they will not see’t. Too much light blinds them, I think. Each of them Is so possest and stuft with his own hopes, That any thing unto the contrary, Never so true, or never so apparent, Never so palpable, they will resist it-■ Volp. Like a temptation of the devil. Mos. Right, sir. Merchants may talk of trade, and your great signiors Of land that yields well ; but if Italy Have any glebe more fruitful than these fellows, I am deceiv’d. Did not your advocate rare ? Volp. O —My most honour'd fathers, my (/rave Under correction of your fatherhoods, [fathers, What face of (ruth is here ? If these stranye deeds May pass, most honour'd fathers —I had much ado To forbear laughing. Mos. It seem’d to me, you sweat, sir. Volp. In troth, I did a little. Mos. But confess, sir, Were you not daunted ? Volp. In good faith, I was A little in a inist, but not dejected ; Never, but still my self. Mos. I think it, sir. Now, so truth help me, I must needs say this, sir, And out of conscience for your advocate, He has taken pains, in faith, sir, and deserv’d, In my poor judgment, I speak it under favour, Not to contrary you, sir, very richly— Well—to be cozen’d. Volp. Troth, and I think so too, By that I heard him, in the latter end. Mos. O, but before, sir: had you heard him first 1 Draw it to certain heads, then aggravate, Then use his vehement figures—I look’d still When he would shift a shirt: and, doing this Out of pure love, no hope of gain- Volp. ’Tis right. I cannot answer him Mosca, as I would, FOX. 199 Not yet; but for thy sake, at thy entreaty, I will begin, even now—to vex them all, This very instant. Mos. Good sir. Volp. Call the dwarf And eunuch forth. Mos. Castrone, Nano ! Enter Castrone and Nano. Nano. Here. Volp. Shall we have a jig now ? Mos. What you please, sir. Volp. Go, Straight give out about the streets, you two, That I am dead; do it with constancy, Sadly, do you hear ? impute it to the grief Of this late slander. \_Exeunt Cast, and Nano. Mos. What do you mean, sir ? Volp. O, I shall have instantly my Vulture, Crow, Raven, come flying hither, on the news, To peck for carrion, my she-wolf, and all, Greedy, and full of expectation— Mos. And then to have it ravish’d from their mouths ! Volp. ’Tis true. I will have thee put on a gown, And take upon thee, as thou wert mine heir: Shew them a will: Open that chest, and reach Forth one of those that has the blanks ; I’ll straight Put in thy name. Mos. It will be rare, sir. [Gives him a paper. Volp. Ay, When they ev’n gape, and find themselves deluded— Mos. Yes. Volp. And thou use them scurvily ! Dispatch, get on thy gown. Mos. [putting on a gown.] But what, sir, if they After the body ? [ask Volp. Say, it was corrupted. Mos. I’ll say, it stunk, sir; and was fain to have Coffin’d up instantljq and sent away. [it Volp - Any thing ; what thou wilt. Hold, here’s my will. Get thee a cap, a count-book, pen and ink, Papers afore thee ; sit as thou wert taking An inventory of parcels : I’ll get up Behind the curtain, on a stool, and hearken; Sometime peep over, see how they do look, With what degrees their blood doth leave their faces, O, ’twill afford me a rare meal of laughter! Mos. [putting on a cap, and setting out the table, <%c. ] Your advocate will turn stark dull upon it. Volp. It will take off his oratory’s edge. Mos. But your clarissimo, old round-back, he Will crump you like a hog-louse, with the touch. Volp. And what Corvino ? AIos. O, sir, look for him, To-morrow morning, with a rope and dagger, To visit all the streets ; he must run mad. My lady too, that came into the court, To bear false witness for your worship— Volp. Yes, And kiss’d me ’fore the fathers, when my face Flow’d all with oils. AIos. And sweat, sir. Why, your gold Is such another med’eine, it dries up All those offensive savours : it transforms The most deformed, and restores them lovely, I As ’twere the strange poetical girdle. Jove 200 THE Could not invent t’ himself a shroud more subtle To pass Act-isms’ guards. It is the thing Makes all the world her grace, her youth, her Volp. I think she loves me. [beauty. Mos. Who ? the lady, sir ? She’s jealous of you. Volp . Dost thou say so ? [Knocking within. Mos. Hark, There’s some already. Volp. Look. Mos. It is the Vulture ; He has the quickest scent. Volp. I’ll to my place, Thou to thy posture. LGoes behind the curtain. Mos. I am set. Volp. But, Mosca, Play the artificer now, torture them rarely. Enter Voltore. Volt. How now, my Mosca ? Mos. [writing.] Turkey carpets, nine - Volt. Taking an inventory ! that is well. Mos. Two suits of bedding , tissue - Volt. Where’s the Will ? Let me read that the while. Enter Servants, with Corbaccio in a chair. Corb. So, set me down, And get you home. [Exeunt Servants. Volt. Is he come now, to trouble us ! Mos. Of cloth of gold, two more - Corb. Is it done, Mosca ? Mos. Of several velvets eight - Volt. I like his care. Corb. Dost thou not hear ? Enter Corvino. Corb. Ha! is the hour come, Mosca? Volp. peeping over the curtain.'] Ay, now they muster. Corv. What does the advocate here, Or this Corbaccio ? Corb. What do these here ? Enter Lady Ton. Would-be. Lady P. Mosca! Is his thread spun ? Mos. Eight chests of linen — Volp. O, My fine dame Would-be, too ! Corv. Mosca, the Will, «. That 1 may shew it these, and rid them hence. bios. Six chests of diaper four of damask. —There. [Gives than the Will carelessly, over his shoulder. Corb. Is that the Will ? Mos. Doum-beds and bolsters — Volp. Rare! Be busy stiil. Now they begin to flutter : They never think of me. Look, see, see, see ! How their swift eyes run over the long deed, Unto the name, and to the legacies, What is bequeathed them there — Mos. Ten suits of hangings — Volp. Ay, in their garters, Mosca. Nov/ their Are at the gasp. [hopes Volt. Mosca the heir ! Corb. What’s that ? Volp. My advocate is dumb ; look to my mer¬ chant, He has heard of some strange storm, a ship is lost, He faints ; my lady will swoon. Old glazen eyes, He hath not reach’d his despair yet. Corb. All these Are out of hope ; I am, sure, the man. [ Takes the Will Corv. But, Mosca-- Mos. Tivo cabinets. Corv. Is this in earnest ? Mos. One Of ebony - Corv. Or do you but delude me? Mos. The other, mother of pearl —I am very busy. Good faith, it is a fortune thrown upon me— Item, one salt of agate —not my seeking. Lady P. Do you hear, sir ? Mos. A perfumed box —’Pray you forbear, You see I’m troubled— made of an onyx — Lady P. How ! Mos. To-morrow or next day, I shall be at To talk with you all. [leisure Corv. Is this my large hope’s issue ? Lady P. Sir, I must have a fairer answer. Mos. Madam ! Marry, and shall: ’pray you, fairly quit my house. Nay, raise no tempest with your looks; but hark Remember what your ladyship offer’d me [you, To put you in an heir ; go to, think on it: And what you said e’en your best madams did For maintenance ; and why not you ? Enough. Go home, and use the poor sir Pol, your knight, well, For fear I tell some riddles ; go, be melancholy. [Exit Lady Would-be. Volp. O, my fine devil! Corv. Mosca, ’pray you a word. Mos. Lord ! will you not take your dispatch hence yet ? Methinks, of all, you should have been the example. Why should you stay here ? with what thought, what promise ? Hear you ; do you not know, 1 know you an ass, And that you would most fain have been a wittol, If fortune would have let you ? that you are A declared cuckold, on good terms? This pearl, You’ll say, was yours ? right: this diamond ? I’ll not deny’t, but thank you. Much here else ? It may be so. Why, think that these good works May help to hide your bad. I’ll not betray you ; Although you be but extraordinary, And have it only in title, it sufficeth : Go home, be melancholy too, or mad. [Exit Corvino. Volp. Rare Mosca ! how his villainy becomes him! Volt. Certain he doth delude all these for me. Corb. Mosca the heir ! Volp. O, his four eyes have found it. Corb. I am cozen’d, cheated, by a parasite slave ; Harlot, thou hast gull’d me. Mos. Yes, sir. Stop your mouth, Or I shall draw the only tooth is left. Are not you he, that filthy covetous wretch. With the three legs, that here, in hope of prey, Have, any time this three years, snuff’d about, With your most grovelling nose, and would have Me to the poisoning of my patron, sir ? [hir< f Are not you he that have to-day in court Profess’d the disinheriting of your son? Perjured yourself? Go home, and die, and stiuk. If you but croak a syllable, all comes out: Away, and call your porters ! [ Exit Corbaccio. 1 Go, go, stink. SCENE II. THE Volp. Excellent varlet! Volt. Now, my faithful Mosca, I find thy constancy. Mos. Sir ! Volt. Sincere. Mos. [Writing.] A table Of porphyry —I marie you’ll be thus troublesome. Volt. Nay, leave off now, they are gone. Mos. Why, who are you ? What! who did send for you ? O, cry you mercy, Reverend sir! Good faith, I am grieved for you, That any chance of mine should thus defeat Your (1 mu^t needs say) most deserving travails : But I protest, sir, it was cast upon me, And I could almost wish to be without it, But that the will o’ the dead must be observ’d. Marry, my joy is that you need it not; You have a gift, sir, (thank your education,) Will never let you want, while there are men, And malice, to breed causes. Would I had But half the like, for all my fortune, sir ! It' I have any suits, as I do hope, Things being so easy and direct, I shall not, I will make bold with your obstreperous aid, Conceive me,—for your fee, sir. In mean time, You that have so much law, I know have the con¬ science Not to be covetous of what is mine. Good sir, I thank you for my plate ; ’twill help To set up a young man. Good faith, you look As you were costive ; best go home and purge, sir. [Exit VoLTORE. Volp. [ comes from behind the curtain.'] Bid him eat lettuce well. My witty mischief, Let me embrace thee. O that I could now Transform thee to a Venus !—Mosca, go, Straight take my habit of clarissimo, And walk the streets ; be seen, torment them more : We must pursue, as well as plot. Who would Have lost this feast? Mos. I doubt it will lose them. Volp. O, my recovery shall recover all. That I could now but think on some disguise To meet them in, and ask them questions : How I would vex them still at every turn ! Mos. Sir, I can fit you. Volp. Canst thou ? Mos. Y r es, I know One o’ the commandadori, sir, so like you ; Him will I straight make drunk, and bring you his habit. Volp. A rare disguise, and answering thy brain ! 0,1 will be a sharp disease unto them. Mos. Sir, you must look for curses- Volp. Till they burst; The Eox fares ever best when he is curst. [ Exeunt. SCENE IT.— A Hall in Sir Politick’s House. Enter Peregrine disguised, and three Merchants. Per. Am I enough disguised ? 1 Mer. I warrant you. Per. All my ambition is to fright him only. 2 J\Ter. If you could ship him away, ’twere excel- 3 Mer. To Zant, or to Aleppo ? [lent. Per. Y r es, and have his Adventures put i’ the Book of Voyages, And his gull’d story register’d for truth, Well, gentlemen, when I am in a while, FOX. 201 And that you think us warm in our discourse, Know your approaches. 1 Mer. Trust it to our care. [Exeunt- Merchants. Enter Waiting- woman. Per. Save you, fair lady ! Is Sir Pol within ? Worn. I do not know, sir. Per. Pray you say unto him, Here is a merchant, upon earnest business, Desires to speak with him. JVo/n. I will see, sir. [Exit. Per. Pray you— I see the family is all female here. lle-enter Waiting-woman. Worn. He says, sir, he has weighty affairs of state, That now require him whole ; some other time You may possess him. Per. Pray you say again, If those require him whole, these will exact him, Whereof I bring him tidings. [Exit Woman.]— What might be His grave affair of state now ! how to make Bolognian sausages here in Venice, sparing One o’ the ingredients ? Re-enter Waiting-woman. Worn. Sir, he says, he knows By your word tidings, that you are no statesman, And therefore walls you stay. Per. Sweet, pray you return him ; I have not read so many proclamations, And studied them for words, as he has done— But—here he deigns to come. [Exit Woman. Enter Sir Politick. Sir P. Sir, I must crave Your courteous pardon. There hath chanced to-day, Unkind disaster ’twixt my lady and me ; And I w r as penning my apology, To give her satisfaction, as you came now. Per. Sir, I am grieved 1 bring you worse disaster: The gentleman you met at the port to-day, That told you, he was newly arrived- Sir P. Ay, was A fugitive punk ? Per. No, sir, a spy set on you ; And he has made relation to the senate, That you protest to him to have a plot To sell the State of Venice to the Turk. Sir P. O me ! Per. For which, warrants are sign’d by this time, To apprehend you, and to search your study For papers-- Sir P. Alas, sir, I have none, but notes Drawn out of play-books- Per. All the better, sir. Sir P. And some essays. What shall I do ? Per. Sir, best Convey yourself into a sugar-chest; Or, if you could lie round, a frail were rare, And I could send you aboard. Sir P. Sir, I but talk’d so, For discourse sake merely. [Knocking within. Per. Hark ! they are there. Sir P. I am a wretch, a wretch! Per. What will you do, sir ? Have you ne’er a currant-butt to leap into? They’ll put you to the rack ; you must be sudden, ?02 THE Sir P. Sir, I have an ingine- 3 Mcr. [within.] Sir Politick Would-be! 2 Mer. [ within .] Where is he ? Sir P. That I have thought upon before time. Per. What is it ? Sir P. I shall ne’er endure the torture. Marry, it is, sir, of a tortoise-shell, Fitted for these extremities : pray you, sir, help Here I’ve a place, sir, to put back my legs, [me. Please you to lay it on, sir, [Lies down while Pere¬ grine places the shell upon him.] —with this cap, And my black gloves. I’ll lie, sir, like a tortoise, 'Till they are gone. Per. And call you this an ingine ? Sir P. Mine own device-Good sir, bid my wife’s women To burn my papers. [Exit Peregrine. The three Merchants rush in. 1 Mer. Where is he hid ? 3 Mer. We must, And will sure find him. 2 Mer. Which is his study ? Re-enter Peregrine. 1 Mer. What Are you, sir ? Per. I am a merchant, that came here To look upon this tortoise. 3 Mer. How! 1 Mer. St. Mark ! What beast is this ! Per. It is a fish. 2 Mer. Come out here ! Per. Nay, you may strike him, sir, and tread He’ll bear a cart. [upon him ; 1 Mer. What, to run over him ? Per. Yes, sir. 3 Mer. Let’s jump upon him. 2 Mer. Can he not go ? Per. He creeps, sir. 1 Mer. Let’s see him creep Per. No, good sir, you will hurt him. 2 Mer. Heart, I will see him creep, or prick his 3 Mer. Come out here! [guts. Per. Pray you, sir !—Creep a little. [Aside to Sir Politick. 1 Mer. Forth. 2 Mer. Yet farther. Per. Good sir !—Creep. 2 Mer. We’ll see his legs. [The>/ pull off the shell and discover him. 3 Mer. Ods so, he has garters ! 1 Mer. Ay, and gloves ! 2 Mer. Is this Your fearful tortoise? Per. [discovering himself.] Now, Sir Pol, we are even; For your next project I shall be prepared : I am sorry for the funeral of your notes, sir. 1 Mtr. ’Twere a rare motion to be seen in Fleet-street. 2 Mer. Ay, in the Term. 1 Mer. Or Smithfield, in the fair. 3 Mer. Methinks ’tis but a melancholy sight. Per. Farewell, most politic tortoise ! [Exeunt Per, and Merchants. Re enter Waiting-woman. Sir P. Where’s my lady ? Knows she of this ? FOX. ACT V. IV i om. I know not, sir. Sir P. Enquire.— O, I shall be the fable of all feasts, The freight of the gazetti, ship-boy’s tale ; And, -which is worst, even talk for ordinaries. Worn. My lady’s come most melancholy home, And says, sir, she will straight to sea, for physic. Sir P. And I to shun this place and clime for ever, Creeping with house on back, and think it well To shrink my poor head in my politic shell. [Exeunt -♦- SCENE III.— A Room in Volpone’s House. Enter Mosca in the habit of a Clarissimo, and Vci.pone in that of a Commandadore. Volp. Am I then like him ? Mos. O, sir, you are he : No man can sever you. Volp. Good. Mos. But what am I ? Volp. ’Fore heaven, a brave clarissimo; thou Pity thou wert not born one. [becom’st it! Mos. If I hold My made one, ’twill be well. [Aside. Volp. I'll go and see What news first at the court. [Exit, Mos. Do so. My Fox Is out of his hole, and ere he shall re-enter, I’ll make him languish in his borrow'd case, Except he come to composition with me.— Androgyno, Castrone, Nano! Enter Androgyno, Castrone, and Nano. All. Here. Mos. Go, recreate yourselves abroad; go sport.— [Exeunt. So, now I have the keys, and am possest. Since he will needs be dead afore his time, I’ll bury him, or gain by him : I am his heir, And so will keep me, till he share at least. To cozen him of all, were but a cheat Well placed ; no man would construe it a sin : Let his sport pay for’t. This is call’d the Fox-trap. [Exit - « - SCENE IV.— A Street. Enter Corbaccio and Corvino. Corb. They say, the court is set. Core. We must maintain Our first tale good, for both our reputations. Corb. Why, mine’s no tale : my son would there have kill’d me. Core. That’s true, I had forgot:—mine is, I’m sure. [Aside. But for your Will, sir. Corb. Ay, I’ll come upon him For that hereafter, now his patron’s dead. Enter Yolpone. Volp. Signior Corvino ! and Corbaccio! sir, Much joy unto you. Core. Of what? Volp. The sudden good Dropt down upon you- Corb. Where? Volp. And none knows how, From old Volpone, sir. Corb. Out, arrant knave ! THE FOX. 203 SCENE VI. Volp . Let not your too much wealth, sir, make Corb. Away, thou varlet! [you furious. Volp. Why, sir 5 Corb. Dost thou mock me ? Volp. You mock the world, sir; did you not Corb. Out, harlot! [change Wills ? Volp. O ! belike you are the man, Signior Corvino ? ’faith, you carry it well; You grow not mad withal; I love your spirit: You are not over-leaven’d with your fortune. Y r ou should have some would swell now, like a wine-fat, With such an autumn—Did he give you all, sir ? Corv. Avoid, you rascal! Volp. Troth, your wife has shewn Herself a very woman ; but you are well, Y T ou need not care, you have a good estate, To bear it out, sir, better by this chance : Except Corbaccio have a share. Corb. Hence, varlet. Volp. You will notbeacknown, sir; why, ’tis wise. Thus do all gamesters, at all games, dissemble : No man will seem to win. [ Exeunt Corvino and Corbaccio.] —Here comes my vulture, Heaving his beak up in the air, and snuffing. Enter Voltore. Volt. Outstript thus, by a parasite ! a slave, Would run on errands, and make legs for crumbs! Well, what I’ll do- Volp. The court stays for your worship. I e’en rejoice, sir, at your worship’s happiness, And that it fell into so learned hands, That understand the fingering- Volt. What do you mean? Volp. I mean to be a suitor to your worship, For the small tenement, out of reparations, That, at the end of your long row of houses, By the Piscaria: it was, in Volpone’s time, Your predecessor, ere he grew diseased, A handsome, pretty, custom’d bawdy-house As any was in Venice, none dispraised; But fell with him : his body and that house Decay’d together. Volt. Come, sir, leave your prating. Volp. Why, if your worship give me but your That I may have the refusal, I have done, [hand, ’Tis a mere toy to you, sir; candle-rents ; As your learn’d worship knows- Volt. What do I know? Volp. Marry, no end of your wealth, sir; God decrease it! Volt. Mistaking knave ! what, mock’st thou my misfortune ? [_ Exit. Volp. His blessing on your heart, sir; would ’twere more !- Now to my first again, at the next corner. [Exit. —❖- SCENE V.— Another part of the Street. Enter Corbaccio and Corvino Mosca passes over the Stage, before them. Corb. See, in out habit! see the impudent varlet! Corv. That I could shoot mine eyes at him like gun-stones ! Enter Volpone. Volp. But is this true, sir, of the parasite? Corb. Again, to afflict us ! monster ! Volp. In good faith, sir, I’m heartily grieved, a beard of your grave length Should be so over-reach’d. 1 never brook’d That parasite’s hair; methought his nose should cozen : There still was somewhat in his look, did promise The bane of a clarissimo. Corb. Knave- Volp. Metliinks Yet you, that are so traded in the world, A witty merchant, the fine bird, Corvino, That have such moral emblems on your name, Should not have sung your shame, and dropt your ! To let the Fox laugh at your emptiness, [cheese, Corv. Sirrah, you think the privilege of the place, And your red saucy cap, that seems to me Nail'd to your jolt-head with those two chequines, Can warrant your abuses ; come you hither: You shall perceive, sir, I dare beat you ; approach. Volp. No haste, sir, I do know your valour well, Since you durst publish what you are, sir. Corv. Tarry, I’d speak with you. Volp. Sir, sir, another time- Corv. Nay, now. Volp. O lord, sir! I were a wise man, Would stand the fury of a distracted cuckold. [As he is running off , re-enter Mosca. Corb. What, come again ! Volp. Upon ’em, Mosca; save me. Corb. The air’s infected where he breathes. Corv. Let’s fly him. [Exeunt Corv. and Corb. Volp. Excellent basilisk ! turn upon the vulture. Enter Voltore. Volt. Well, flesh-fly, it is summer with you now; Your winter will come on. Mos. Good advocate, Prithee not rail, nor threaten out of place thus ; Thou’lt make a solecism, as madam says. Get you a biggrn more, your brain breaks loose. [Exit. Volt. Well, sir. Volp. Would you have me beat the insolent Throw dirt upon his first good clothes ? [sla 7 e, Volt. This same Is doubtless some familiar. Volp. Sir, the court, In troth, stays for you. I am mad, a mule That never read Justinian, should get up, And ride an advocate. Had you no quirk To avoid gullage, sir, by such a creature ? I hope you do but jest; he has not done it ’Tis but confederacy, to blind the rest. You are the heir. Volt. A strange, officious, Troublesome knave ! thou dost torment me. Volp. I know- It cannot be, sir, that you should be cozen’d; ’Tis not within the wit of man to do it; You are so wise, so prudent; and ’tis fit That wealth and wisdom still should go together. [Exeunt. -♦— SCENE VI.— The Scrutineo or Senate-House. Enter Avocatori, Notario, Bonario, Celia, Corb4ccio, Corvino, Commandadori, gaff, S/c. 1 Avoc. Are all the parties here ? Not. All but the advocate. 2 Avoc. And here he comes. 204 THE FOX. ACT V. Enter Voltore and Volpone. 1 Avoc. Then bring them forth to sentence. Volt. O, my most honour’d fathers, let your mercy Once win upon your justice, to forgive— I am distracted- Volp. What will he do now ? [Aside. Volt. O, I know not which to address myself to first; Whether your fatherhoods, or these innocents— Corv. Will he betray himself ? [Aside. Volt. Whom equally I have abused, out of most covetous ends- Corv. The man is mad ! Corb. What’s that ? Corv. He is possest. Volt. For which, now struck in conscience, here I prostrate Myself at your offended feet, for pardon. 1, 2 Avoc. Arise. Cel. O heaven, how T just thou art ! Volp. I am caught In mine own noose- [Aside. Corv. [ to Corbaccio.] Beconstant, sir: nought Can help, but impudence. [now 1 Avoc. Speak forward. Com. Silence! Volt. It is not passion in me, reverend fathers, But only conscience, conscience, my good sires, That makes me now tell truth. That parasite, That knave, hath been the instrument of all. 1 Avoc. Where is that knave ? fetch him. Volp. I go. [Exit. Corv. Grave fathers, This man’s distracted ; he confest it now : For, hoping to be old Yolpone’s heir, Who now is dead- 3 Avoc. How ! 2 Avoc. Is Volpone dead ? Corv. Dead since, grave fathers. Bon. O sure vengeance! 1 Avoc. Stay, Then he was no deceiver. Volt. O no, none : The parasite, grave fathers. Corv. He does speak Out of mere envy, ’cause the servant’s made The thing he gaped for : please your fatherhoods, This is the truth, though I’ll not justify The other, but he may be some-deal faulty. Volt. Ay, to your hopes, as well as mine, Cor- vino: But I’ll use modesty. Pleaseth your wisdoms, To view these certain notes, and but confer them ; As I hope favour, they shall speak clear truth. Corv. The devil has enter’d him ! Bon. Or bides in you. 4 Avoc. We have done ill, by a public officer To send for him, if he be heir. 2 Avoc. For whom ? 4 Avoc. Him that they call the parasite. 3 Avoc. 'Tis true, He is a man of great estate, now left. 4 Avoc. Go you, and learn his name, and say, the court Entreats his presence here, but to the clearing Of some few doubts. [Exit Notary. 2 Avoc. This same’s a labyrinth ! 1 Avoc. Stand you unto your first report ? Corv. My state, My life, my fame-- Bon. Where is it ? Corv. Are at the stake. 1 Avoc. Is yours so too ? Corb. The advocate’s a knave, And has a forked tongue- 2 Avoc. Speak to the point. Corb. So is the parasite too. 1 Avoc. This is confusion. Volt. I do beseech your fatherhoods, read but those— [Giving them papers. Corv. And credit nothing the false spirit hath It cannot be, but lie’s possest, grave fathers, [writ: [The scene closes. ■—♦- SCENE VII.— A Street. Enter Volpone. Volp. To make a snare for mine own neck ! and My head into it, wilfully! with laughter ! [run When I had newly ’scaped, was free, and clear, * Out of mere wantonness ! O, the dull devil Was in this brain of mine, when I devised it. And Mosca gave it second ; he must now Help to sear up this vein, or we bleed dead.— Enter Nano, Androoyno, and Castrone. How now ! who let you loose ? whither go you now? What, to buy gingerbread, or to drown kitlings ? Nan. Sir, master Mosca call’d us out of doors. And bid us all go play, and took the keys. And. Yes. Volp. Did master Mosca take the keys ? why so ! I’m farther in. These are my fine conceits ! I must be merry, with a mischief to me! What a vile wretch was I, that could not bear My fortune soberly ? I must have my crotchets, And my conundrums ! Well, go you, and seek him : His meaning may be truer than my fear. Bid him, he straight come to me to the court; Thither will I, and, if’t be possible, Unscrew my advocate, upon new hopes : When I provoked him, then I lost myself. [Exeunt. -♦— SCENE VIII.— The Scrutineo, or Senate-House. Avocatori, Bonario, Celta, Corbaccio, Corvino, Comman- dadori, Saffi, &c. as before. I Avoc. These things can ne’er be reconciled. He, here, [Shewing the Papers. Professeth, that the gentleman was wrong’d, And that the gentlewoman was brought thither, Forced by her husband, and there left. Volt. Most true. Cel. How ready is heaven to those that pray! 1 Avoc. But that Volpone would have ravish’d her, he holds Utterly false, knowing his impotence. Corv. Grave fathers, he’s possest; again, I say, Possest: nay, if there be possession, and Obsession, he has both. 3 Avoc. Here comes our officer. Enter Volpone. Volp. The parasite will straight be here, grave fathers. 4 Avoc. You might invent some other name, sir 3 Avoc. Did not the notary meet him? [varlet. Volp. Not that I know. 4 Avoc. His coming will clear all. scene vnr. THE 2 Avoc. Yet, it is misty. Volt. May’t please your fatherhoods- Vo Ip. [whispers Volt.] Sir, the parasite Will’d me to tell you, that his master lives ; That you are still the man ; your hopes the same ; And this was only a jest- Volt. How ? Volp. Sir, to try If you were firm, and how you stood affected. Volt. Art sure he lives ? Volp. Do I live, sir? Volt. O me ! I was too violent. Volp. Sir, you may redeem it. They said, you were possest; fall down, and seem so : I’ll help to make it good. [Voltore falls.'] — God bless the man !- Stop your wind hard, and swell — See, see, see, see ! He vomits crooked pins ! his eyes are set, Like a dead hare’s hung in a poulter’s shop ! His mouth’s running away ! Do you see, signior ? Now it is in his belly. Corv. Ay, the devil! Volp. Now in his throat. Corv. Ay, I perceive it plain. Volp. ’Twill out, ’twill out! stand clear. See where it flies, In shape of a blue toad, with a bat’s wings ! Do you not see it, sir? Corb. What ? I think I do. Corv. ’Tis too manifest. Volp. Look! he comes to himself! Volt. Where am I ? Volp. Take good heart, the worst is past, sir. You are dispossest. 1 Avoc. What accident is this ! 2 Avoc. Sudden, and full of wonder ! 3 Avoc. If he were Possest, as it appears, all this is nothing. Corv. He has been often subject to these fits. 1 Avoc. Shew him that writing :—do you know it, sir? Volp. [rvhispers Volt.] Deny it, sir, forswear it; know it not. Volt. Yes, I do know it well, it is my hand ; But all that it contains is false. Bon. O practice! 2 Avoc. What maze is this! 1 Avoc. Is he not guilty then, Whom you there name the parasite ? Volt. Grave fathers, No more than his good patron, old Volpone. 4 Avoc. Why, he is dead. Volt. O no, my honour’d fathers. He lives- 1 Avoc. How! lives? Volt. Lives. 2 Avoc. This is subtler yet! 3 Avoc. You said he was dead. Volt. Never. 3 Avoc. You said so. Corv. I heard so. 4 Avoc. Here comes the gentleman ; make him way. Enter Mosca. 3 Avoc. A stool. 4 Avoc. A proper man ; and, were Volpone dead, A fit match for my daughter. [Aside. 3 Avoc. Give him wav. FOX. 205 Volp. Mosca, I was almost lost; the advocate Had betrayed all ; but now it is recovered ; All’s on the hinge again-Say, I am living. [Aside to Mos. Mos. What busy knave is this !—Most reverend fathers, I sooner had attended your grave pleasures, But that my order for the funeral Of my dear patron, did require me- Volp. Mosca ! [Aside. Mos. Whom I intend to bury like a gentleman. Volp. Ay, quick, and cozen me of all. [Aside. 2 Avoc. Still stranger ! More intricate ! 1 Avoc. And come about again! 4 Avoc. It is a match, my daughter is bestow’d. [Aside. Mos. Will you give me half? [Aside to Volp. Volp. First, I’ll be hang’d. Mos. I know Your voice is good, cry not so loud. 1 Avoc. Demand The advocate.—Sir, did you not affirm Volpone was alive? Volp. Yes, and he is ; This gentleman told me so.—Thou slialt have half.— [Aside to Mos. Mos. Whose drunkard is this same ? speak, some that know him : I never saw his face.—I cannot now Afford it you so cheap. [Aside to Volt. Volp. No ! 1 Avoc. What say you? Volt. The officer told me. Volp. I did, grave fathers, And will maintain he lives, with mine own life. And that this creature [ points to Mosca.] told me. —I was born With all good stars my enemies. [Aside. Mos. Most grave fathers, If such an insolence as this must pass Upon me, I am silent: ’twas not this For which you sent, I hope. 2 Avoc. Take him away. Volp. Mosca! 3 Avoc. Let him be whipt. Volp. Wilt thou betray me ? Cozen me ? 3 Avoc. And taught to bear himself Toward a person of his rank. 4 Avoc. Away. [The Officers seize Volpone. Mos. I humbly thank your fatherhoods. Volp. Soft, soft: Whipt! And lose all that I have ! If I confess, It cannot be much more. [Aside. 4 Avoc. Sir, are you married? Volp. They’ll be allied anon ; I must be resolute : The Fox shall here uncase. [Throws off his disguise. Mcs. Patron ! Volp. Nay, now My ruins shall not come alone: your match I’ll hinder sure : my substance shall not glue you, Nor screw you into a family. Mos. Why, patron! Volp. I am Volpone, and this is my knave ; [Pointing to Mosca. This, [ to Volt.] his own knave ; this, [to Corb.] avarice’s fool ; This, [to Corv.] a chimera of wittol, fool, and knave : £06 THE FOX. ACT V. And, reverend fathers, since we all can hope Nought but a sentence, let’s not now despair it. You hear me brief. Corv. May it please your fatherhoods- Com. Silence. 1 Avoc. The knot '»s now undone by miracle. 2 Avoc. Nothing can be more clear. 3 Avoc. Or can more prove These innocent. 1 Avoc. Give them their liberty. Bon. Heaven could not long let such gross crimes be hid. 2 Avoc. If this he held the high-way to get riches, May I be poor ! 3 Avo. This is not the gain, but torment. 1 Avoc. These possess wealth, as sick men pos¬ sess fevers, Which trulier may be said to possess them. 2 A voc. Disrobe that parasite. Corv. Mos. Most honour’d fathers !- 1 Avoc. Can you plead aught to stay the course If you can, speak. [of justice ? Corv. Volt. We beg favour. Cel. And mercy. 1 Avoc. You hurt your innocence, suing for the guilty. Stand forth ; and first the parasite : You appear T’have been the chiefest minister, if not plotter, In all these lewd impostures ; and now', lastly, Have with your impudence abused the court, And habit of a gentleman of Venice, Being a fellow of no birth or blood : For which our sentence is, first, thou be whipt; Then live perpetual prisoner in our gallies. Volp. 1 thank you for him. Mos. Bane to thy wolvish nature ! 1 Avoc. Deliver him to the saffi. [Mosca is carried out.~\ —Thou, Volpone, By blood and rank a gentleman, canst not fall Under like censure ; but our judgment on thee Is, that thy substance all be straight confiscate To the hospital of the Incurabili: And, since the most was gotten by imposture, By feigning lame, gout, palsy, and such diseases, Thou art to lie in prison, cramp’d with irons, Till thou be’st sick and lame indeed.—Remove him. [//e is taken from the Bar. Volp. This is call’d mortifying of a Fox. 1 Avoc. Thou, Voltore, to take away the scandm Thou hast given all worthy men of thy profession, Art banish’d from their fellowship, and our state. Corbaccio !—bring him near—We here possess Thy son of all thy state, and confine thee To the monastery of San Spirito; Where, since thou knewest not how to live well Thou shalt be learn’d to die well. [here, Corb. Ah ! w'hat said he ? Com. You shall know anon, sir. 1 Avoc. Thou, Corvino, shalt Be straight embark’d from thine owm house, and row’d Round about Venice, through the grand cana’le, Wearing a cap, with fair long ass’s ears, Instead of horns ; and so to mount, a paper Pinn'd on thy breast, to the Berlina- Corv. Yes, And have mine eyes beat out with stinking fish, Bruised fruit, and rotten eggs-’Tis w r eil. I am I shall not see my shame yet. [glad 1 Avoc. And to expiate Thy wrongs done to thy wife, thou art to send her Home to her father, with her dowry trebled : And these are all your judgments. All. Honour’d fathers.— 1 Avoc. Which may not be revoked. Now you begin, When crimes are done, and past, and to be punish’d, To think what your crimes are: away with them. Let all that see these vices thus rewarded, Take heart and love to study ’em! Mischiefs feed Like beasts, till they be fat, and then they bleed. [Exeunt. Volpone comes forivard. The seasoning of a play, is the applause. Now, though the Fox be punish'd by the lai ?, lie yet doth hope, there is no suffering due, For any fact which he hath done ’gainst you ; If there be, censure him ; here he doubtful stands If not, fare jovially, and clap your hands. [Exit EPICCENE; OR, THE SILENT WOMAN. TO THE TRULY NOBLE BY ALL TITLES, SIR FRANCIS STUART. Sir, —My hope is not so nourished by example, as it will conclude, this dumb piece should please you, because it natli pleased others before ; but by trust, that when you have read it, you will find it worthy to have displeased none. This makes that I now number you, not only in the names of favour, but the names of justice to what I write; and do presently call you to the exercise of that noblest, and manliest virtue; as coveting rather to be freed in my fame, by the authority of a judge, than the credit of an undertaker. Read, therefore, I pray you, and censure. There is not a line, or syllable in it, changed from the simplicity of the first copy. And, when you shall consider, through the certain hatred of some, how much a man’s innocency may be endangered by an uncertain accusation ; you will, I doubt not, so begin to hate the iniquity of such natures, as I shall love the contumely done me, whose end was so honourable as to be wiped off by your sentence. Your unprofitable, but true Lover, Ben. Jonson. DRAMATIS PERSONA:. Morose, a gentleman that loves no noise. Sir Dauphine Eugenie, a Knight, his Nephew. Ned Clerimont, a Gentleman, his Friend. Tp.uewit, another Friend. Sir John Daw, a Knight. Sir Amorous La-Foole, a Knight also. Thomas Otter, a Land and Sea Captain. Cutbeard, a Barber. Mute, one c^Morose's Servants. Parson. Page to Cleremont. Epiccene, supposed the Silent Woman. Lady Haughty, 'j Lady Centaure, \Ladics Collegiatcs. Mistress Dol. Mavis, j Mistress Otter, the Captain's Wife, ) Mistress Trusty, Lady Haughty's Woman, C 1 lcten “ ert ' Pages, Servants, ^ c. SCENE, —London. PROLOGUE. Truth says, of old the art of making plays JFas to content the people ; and their praise Was to the poet money , wine, and bays. But in this aye, a sect of writers are, That , only, for particular likings care, And will taste nothing that is popular. With such we mingle neither brains nor breasts ; Our wishes, like to those make public feasts, Are not to please the cook's taste but the guests. Yet, if those cunning palates hither come, They shall find guests entreaty, and good room ; And though all relish not, sure there will be some, That, when they leave their seats, shall make them say, Who wrote that piece, could so have ivrote a play, But that he knew this teas the better way. For, to present all custard, or all tart, And have no other meats to bear a part, Or to leant bread, and salt, were but coarse art. The poet prays you then, with better thought To sit ; and, when his cates are all in brought, Though there be none far-fet, there will dear- bought. Be fit for ladies: some for lords, knights,’squires ; Some for your waiting-wench, and city-wires ; Some for your men, and daughters of While- friars. Nor is it, only, while you keep your seat Here, that his feast will last; but you shall eat A week at ord'naries, on his broken meat: If his muse be true, Who commends her to you. ANOTHER. The ends of all, who for the scene do write, Are, or should be, to pn'ojit and delight. A nd still't hath been the praise of all best times, So persons ivere not touch'd , to tax the crimes. Then, in this play, which we present to-night, And make the object of your ear and sight, On forfeit of yourselves, think nothing true : Lest so you make the maker to judge you. For he knows, poet never credit gain'd By writing truths, but things, like truths, welt feign'd. If any yet will, with particular sleight Of application, ivrest what he doth write ; And that he meant, or him, or her, ivill say : They make a libel, which he made a play. f 20ft THE SILENT WOMAN. act i ACT I. SCENE I.— A Room in Clerimon't's House. Euler Ci.eri.moxt, making himself ready, followed by his Page. Cler. Have you got the song yet perfect, I gave you, boy ? Page. Yes, sir. Cler. Let me hear it. Page. You shall, sir; but i’faitli let nobody else. Cler. Why, I pray ? Page. It will get you the dangerous name of a poet in town, sir; besides me a perfect deal of ill-will at the mansion you wot of, whose lady is the argument of it; where now I am the w'elcomest thing under a man that comes there. Cler. I think ; and above a man too, if the truth were rack’d out of you. Page. No, faith, I’ll confess before, sir. The gentlewomen play with me, and throw me on the bed, and carry me in to my lady : and she kisses me with her oil’d face, and puts a peruke on my head; and asks me an I will wear her gown ? and I say no: and then she hits me a blow o’ the ear, and calls me Innocent! and lets me go. Cler. No marvel if the door be kept shut against your master, when the entrance is so easy to you -well, sir, you shall go there no more, lest I be fain to seek your voice in my lady’s rushes, a fortnight hence. Sing, sir. [Page sings. Still to bo neat, still to be drest— Enter True wit. True. Why, here’s the man that can melt away his time and never feels it! What between his mis¬ tress abroad and his ingle at home, high fare, soft lodging, tine clothes, and his fiddle; he thinks the hours have no wings, or the day no post-horse. Well, sir gallant, were you struck with the plague this minute, or condemn’d to any capital punish¬ ment to-morrow, you would begin then to think, and value every article of your time, esteem it at the true rate, and give all for it. Cler. Why what should a man do ? True. Why, nothing; or that which, when ’tis done, is as idle. Hearken after the next horse¬ race, or hunting-match, lay wagers, praise Puppy, or Peppercorn, White-foot, Franklin ; swear upon Whitemane’s party ; speak aloud, that my lords may hear you ; visit my ladies at night, and be able to give them the character of every bowler or better on the green. These be the things wherein your fashionable men exercise themselves, and I for company. Cler. Nay, if I have thy authority, I’ll not leave yet. Come, the other are considerations, when we come to have gray heads and weak hams, moist eyes and shrunk members. We’ll think on ’em then ; then we’ll pray and fast. True. Ay, and destine only that time of age to goodness, which our want of ability will not let us employ in evil! Cler. Why, then ’tis time enough. True. Yes; as if a man should sleep all the term, and think to effect his business the last day. O, Clerimont, this time, because it is an incor¬ poreal thing, and not subject to sense, we mock ourselves the fineliest out of it, with vanity and misery indeed ! not seeking an end of wretched¬ ness, but only changing the matter still. Cler. Nay, thou’lt not leave now— True. See but our common disease! with what justice can we complain, that great men will not look upon us, nor be at leisure to give our affairs such dispatch as we expect, when we will never do it to ourselves ? nor hear, nor regard ourselves ? Cler. Fob ! thou hast read Plutarch’s morals, now, or some such tedious fellow; and it shews so vilely with thee ! ’fore God, ’twill spoil thy wit utterly. Talk to me of pins, and feathers, and ladies, and rushes, and such things : and leave this Stoicity alone, till thou mak’st sermons. True. Well, sir; if it will not take, I have learn’d to lose as little of my kindness as I can ; I’ll do good to no man against his will, certainly. When were you at the college ? Cler. What college ? True. As if you knew not! Cler. No, faith, I came but from court yester¬ day. True. Why, is it not arrived there yet, the news? A new foundation, sir, here in the town, of ladies, that call themselves the collegiates, an order between courtiers and country-madams, that live from their husbands ; and give entertainment to all the wits, and braveries of the time, as they call them : cry down, or up, what they like or dis¬ like in a brain or a fashion, with most masculine, or rather hermaphroditical authority; and every day gain to their college some new probationer. Cler. Who is the president ? True. The grave and youthful matron, the lady Haughty. Cler. A pox of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty ! there’s no man can be admitted till she be ready, now-a-days, till she has painted, and perfumed, and w r asli’d, and scour’d, but the boy, here ; and him she wipes her oil’d lips upon, like a sponge. I have made a song (I pray thee hear it) on the subject. [Page sing. Still to be neat, still to be drest, As you were going to a feast; Still to be powder’d, still perfum’d : Lady, it is to be presumed. Though art’s hid causes are not found, All is not sweet, all is not sound. Give me a look, give me a face, That makes simplicity a grace ; Itobes loosely flowing, hair as free: Such sweet neglect more taketli me. Than all the adulteries of art; They strike mine eyes, but not my heart. True. And I am clearly on the other side : I love a good dressing before any beauty o’ the world. O, a woman is then like a delicate garden ; nor is there one kind of it; she may vary every hour; take often counsel of her glass, and choose the best. If she have good ears, shew them ; good hair, lay it out; good legs, wear short clothes; a good hand, discover it often : practice any art to mend breath, cleanse teeth, repair eye-brows; paint, and profess it. Cler. How! publicly? True. The doing of it, not the manner : tlun must be private. Many things that seem foul jmjiwe i. THE SILENT WOMAN. 209 in the doing, do please done. A lady should, indeed, study her face, when we think she sleeps ; nor, when the doors are shut, should men be enquiring ; all is sacred within, then. Is it for us to see their perukes put on, their false teeth, their complexion, their eye-brows, their nails? You see gilders will not work, but inclosed. They must not discover how little serves, with the help of art, to adorn a great deal. How long did the canvas hang afore Aldgate ? Were the people suffered to see the city’s Love and Charity, while they were rude stone, before they were painted and burnish’d ? No; no more should servants approach their mistresses, but when they are com¬ plete and finish’d. Cler. Well said, my Truewit. True. And a wise lady will keep a guard always upon the place, that she may do things securely. I once followed a rude fellow into a chamber, where the poor madam, for haste, and troubled, snatch’d at her peruke to cover her baldness; and put it on the wrong way. Cler. O prodigy! True. And the unconscionable knave held her in compliment an hour with that reverst face, when I still look’d when she should talk from the t’other Bide. Cler. Why, thou shouldst have relieved her. True. No, faith, I let her alone, as we’ll let this argument, if you please, and pass to another. When saw you Dauphine Eugenie ? Cler. Not these three days. Shall we go to him this morning ? he is very melancholy, I hear. True. Sick of the uncle, is he ? I met that stiff piece of formality, his uncle, yesterday, with a huge turban of night-caps on his head, buckled over his ears. Cler. O, that’s his custom when he walks abroad. He can endure no noise, man. True. So I have heard. But is the disease so ridiculous in him as it is made ? They say he has been upon divers treaties with the fish-wives and orange-women; and articles propounded between them: marry, the chimney-sweepers will not be drawn in. Cler. No, nor the broom-men : they stand out stiffly. He cannot endure a costard-monger, he swoons if he hear one. True. Methinks a smith should be ominous. Cler. Or any hammer-man. A brasier is not suffer’d to dwell in the parish, nor an armourer. He would have hang’d a pewterer’s prentice once upon aShrove-tuesday’s riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were quit. True. A trumpet should fright him terribly, or the hautboys. Cler. Out of his senses. The waights of the city have a pension of him not to come near that ward. This youth practised on him one night like the bell-man ; and never left till he had brought him down to the door with a long sword; and there left him flourishing with the air. Page. Why, sir, he hath chosen a street to lie in so narrow at both ends, that it will receive no coaches, nor carts, nor any of these common noises: and therefore we that love him, devise to bring him in such as we may, now and then, for his exercise, to breathe him. He would grow resty else in his ease: his virtue would rust without action. I entreated a bearward, one day, to come down with the dogs of some four parishes that way, and I thank him he did ; and cried his games under master Morose’s window: till he was sent crying away, with his head made a most bleeding spectacle to the multitude. And, another time, a fencer marching to his prize, had his drum most tragically run through, for taking that street in his way at my request. True. A good wag ! How does he for the bells ? Cler. O, in the Queen’s time, he was wont to go out of town every Saturday at ten o’clock, or on holy day eves. But now, by reason of the sickness, the perpetuity of ringing has made him devise a room, with double walls and treble ceilings; the windows close shut and caulk’d: and there he lives by candle-light. He turn’d away a man, last week, for having a pair of new shoes that creak’d. And this fellow waits on him now in tennis-court socks, or slippers soled with wool: and they talk each to other in a trunk. See, who comes here ! Enter Sir Dauphine Eugenie. Daup. How now ! what ail you, sirs ? dumb ? True. Struck into stone, almost, I am here, with tales o’ thine uncle. There was never such a prodigy heard of. Daup. I would you would once lose this sub¬ ject, my masters, for my sake. They are such as you are, that have brought me into that predica¬ ment I am with him. True. How is that ? Daup. Marry, that he will disinherit me ; no more. He thinks, I and my company are authors of all the ridiculous Acts and Monuments are told of him. True. ’Slid, I would be the author of more to vex him ; that purpose deserves it: it gives thee law of plaguing him. I’ll tell thee what I would do. I would make a false almanack, get it printed ; and then have him drawn out on a coronation day to the Tower-wharf, and kill him with the noise of the ordnance. Disinherit thee! he cannot, man. Art not thou next of blood, and his sister’s son ? Daup. Ay, but he will thrust'me out of it, he vows, and marry. True. How! that’s a more portent. Can he endure no noise, and will venture on a wife ? Cler. Yes: why thou art a stranger, it seems, to his best trick, yet. He has employed a fellow this half year all over England to hearken him out a dumb woman; be she of any form, or any quality, so she be able to bear children : her silence is dowry enough, he says. True. But I trust to God he has found none. Cler. No ; but he has heard of one that’s lodged in the next street to him, who is exceedingly soft- spoken ; thrifty of her speech ; that spends but six words a day. And her he’s about now, and shall have her. True. Is’t possible! who is his agent in the business ? Cler. Marry, a barber, one Cutbeard; an ho¬ nest fellow, one that tells Dauphine ail here. True. Why you oppress me with wonder: a woman, and a barber, and love no noise ! Cler. Yes, faith. The fellow trims him silently, and has not the knack with his sheers or his fingers : and that continence in a barber he thinks so emi¬ nent a virtue, as it has made him chief of his counsel. 210 THE SILENT WOMAN. act r. True. Is the barber to be seen, or the wench ? Cler. Yes, that they are. True. I prithee, Dauphine, let’s go thither. Daup. I have some business now: I cannot, i’ faith. True. You shall have no business shall make you neglect this, sir: we’ll make her talk, believe it; or, if she will not, we can give out at least so much as shall interrupt the treaty; we will break it. Thou art bound in conscience, when he suspects thee without cause, to torment him. Daup. Not I, by any means. I’ll give no suf¬ frage to't. He shall never have that plea against me, that I opposed the least phant’sy of his. Let it lie upon my stars to be guilty, I’ll be innocent. True. Yes, and be poor, and beg ; do, innocent: when some groom of his has got him an heir, or this barber, if he himself cannot. Innocent !—I prithee, Ned, where lies she ? let him be innocent still. Cler. Why, right over against the barber’s ; in the house where sir John Daw lies. True. You do not mean to confound me ! Cler. Why ? True. Does he that would marry her know so much ? Cler. I cannot tell. True. ’Twere enough of imputation to her with Cler. Why ? [him. True. The only talking sir in the town ! Jack Daw ! and he teach her not to speak ! — God be wi’ you. I have some business too. Cler. Will you not go thither, then ? True • Not with the danger to meet Daw, for mine ears. Cler. Why, I thought you two had been upon very good terms. True. Yes, of keeping distance. Cler. They say, he is a very good scholar. True. Ay, and he says it first. A pox on him, a fellow that pretends only to learning, buys titles, and nothing else of books in him! Cler. The world reports him to be very learned. True. I am sorry the world should so conspire to belie him. Cler. Good faith, I have heard very good things come from him. True. You may ; there’s none so desperately ignorant to deny that: would they were his own ! God be wi’ you, gentlemen. [ Exit hastily. Cler. This is very abrupt! Daup. Come, you are a strange open man, to tell every thing thus. Cler. Why, believe it, Dauphine, Truewit’s a very honest fellow . Daup. I think no other: but this frank nature of his is not for secrets. Cler. Nay, then, you are mistaken, Dauphine : I know where he has been well trusted, and dis¬ charged the trust very truly, and heartily. Daup. I contend not, Ned ; but with the fewer a business is carried, it is ever the safer. Now we are alone, if you’ll go thither, I am for you. Cler. When were you there ? Daup. Last night: and such a Decameron of Eport fallen out! Boccace never thought of the like. Daw does nothing but court her; and the Wrong way. He would lie with her, and praises her modesty ; desires that she would talk and be free, and commends her silence in verses; which he reads, and swears are the best that ever man made. Then rails at his fortunes, stamps, and mutines, why he is not made a counsellor, and call’d to affairs of state. Cler. I prithee let’s go. I would fain partake tins.—Some water, boy. [Exit Page. Daup. We are invited to dinner together, he and I, by one that came thither to him, sir La-Foole. Cler. O, that’s a precious mannikin ! Daup. Do you know him ? Cler. Ay, and he will know you too, if e’er he saw you but once, though you should meet him at church in the midst of prayers. He is one of the braveries, though he be none of the wits. He will salute a judge upon the bench, and a bishop in the pulpit, a lawyer when he is pleading at the bar, and a lady when she is dancing in a masque, and put her out. He does give plays, and suppers, and invites his guests to them, aloud, out of his window, as they ride by in coaches. He has a lodging in the Strand for the purpose : or to watch when ladies are gone to the china-houses, or the Exchange, that he may meet them by chance, and give them presents, some two or three hundred pounds worth of toys, to be laugh’d at. He is never without a spare banquet, or sweet-meats in his chamber, for their women to alight at, and come up to for a bait. Daup. Excellent! he was a fine youth last night; but now he is much finer! what is his Christian name ? I have forgot. Re-enter Page. Cler. Sir Amorous La-Foole. Page. The gentleman is here below that owns that name. Cler. ’Heart, he’s come to invite me to dinner, I hold my life. Daup. Like enough : prithee, let’s have him up. Cler. Boy, marshal him. Page. With a truncheon, sir ? Cler. Away, I beseech you. [ Exit Page.]—I’ll make him tell us his pedigree now ; and what meat he has to dinner ; and who are his guests; and the whole course of his fortunes ; with a breath. Enter Sir Amorous La-Foole. La-F. ’Save, dear sir Dauphine! honoured master Clerimont! Cler. Sir Amorous! you have very much honested my lodging with your presence. La-F. Good faith, it is a fine lodging : almost as delicate a lodging as mine. Cler. Not so, sir. La-F. Excuse me, sir, if it were in the Strand, I assure you. I am come, master Clerimont, to entreat you to wait upon two or three ladies, to dinner, to-day. Cler. How, sir ! wait upon them ? did you ever see me carry dishes ? La-F. No, sir, dispense with me; I meant, to bear them company. Cler. O, that I will, sir: the doubtfulness of your phrase, believe it, sir, would breed you a quarrel once an hour, with the terrible boys, if you should but keep them fellowship a day. La-F. It should be extremely against my will, sir, if I contested with any man. Cler. I believe it, sir: Where hold you your feast ? La-F. At Tom Otter’s, sir. THE SILENT WOMAN. SCENE I. 211 Daup. Tom Otter! what’s he ? La-F. Captain Otter, sir; he is a kind of gamester, but he has had command both by sea and by land. Daup. O, then he is animal amphibium ? La-F. Ay, sir: his wife was the rich china- woman, that the courtiers visited so often; that gave the rare entertainment. She commands all at home. Cler. Then she is captain Otter. La-F. You say very well, sir ; she is my kins¬ woman, a La-Foole by the mother-side, and will invite any great ladies for my sake. Daup. Not of the La-Fooles of Essex? La-F. No, sir, the La-Fooles of London. Cler. Now, he’s in. [Aside. La-F. They all come out of our house, the La- Fooles of the north, the La-Fooles of the west, the La-Fooles of the east and south—we are as ancient a family as any is in Europe—but I myself am descended lineally of the French La-Fooles—and, we do bear for our coat yellow, or or, checker’d azure , and gules, and some three or four colours more, which is a very noted coat, and has, some¬ times, been solemnly worn by divers nobility of our house—but let that go, antiquity is not re¬ spected now.—I had a brace of fat does sent me, gentlemen, and half a dozen of pheasants, a dozen or two of godwits, and some other fowl, which I would have eaten, while they are good, and in good company :—there will be a great lady or two, my lady Haughty, my lady Centaure, mistress Dol Mavis—and they come o’ purpose to see the silent gentlewoman, mistress Epicoene, that honest sir John Daw has promised to bring thither—and then, mistress Trusty, my lady’s woman, will be there too, and this honourable knight, sir Dau- phine, with yourself, master Clerimont—and we’ll be very merry, and have fidlers, and dance_I have been a mad wag in my time, and have spent some cx’owns since I was a page in court, to my lord Lofty, and after, my lady’s gentleman-usher, who got me knighted in Ireland, since it pleased my elder brother to die.—I had as fair a gold jerkin on that day, as any worn in the island voyage, or at Cadiz, none dispraised ; and I came over in it hither, shew’d myself to my friends in court, and after went down to my tenants in the country, and surveyed my lands, let new leases, took their money, spent it in the eye o’ the land here, upon ladies :—and now I can take up at my pleasui’e. Daup. Can you take up ladies, sir ? Cler. O, let him breathe, he has not recover’d. Daup. Would I were your half in that commo¬ dity ! La-F. No, sir, excuse me: I meant money, which can take up any thing. I have another guest or two, to invite, and say as much to, gentlemen. I’ll take my leave abruptly, in hope you will not fail-Your servant. [Exit, ^ Daup. We will not fail you, sir precious La- Foole ; but she shall, that your ladies come to see, if I have credit afore sir Daw. Cler. Did you ever hear such a wind-sucker, as this ? Daup. Or such a rook as the other, that will betray his mistress to be seen! Come, ’tis time we prevented it. Cler. Go. [Exeunt. ACT II. SCENE I.— A Room in Morose’s House. Enter Morose, with a tube in his hand, followed by Mute. Mor. Cannot I, yet, find out a more compen¬ dious method, than by this trunk, to save my servants the labour of speech, and mine ears the discords of sounds ? Let me see: all discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, imper¬ tinent, and irksome. Is it not possible, that thou shouldst answer me by signs, and I apprehend thee, fellow? Speak not, though I question you. You have taken the ring off from the street door, as I bade you ? answer me not by speech, but by silence; unless it be otherwise [Mute makes a leg.] —very good. And you have fastened on a thick quilt, or flock-bed, on the outside of the door ; that if they knock with their daggers, or with brick-bats, they can make no noise?—But with your leg, your answer, unless it be otherwise. [makes a leg ]—Very good. This is not only fit modesty in a servant, but good state and discretion in a master And you have been with Cutbeard the barber, to have him come to me ? [makes a leg.] •—Good. And, he will come presently ? Answer me not but with your leg, unless it be otherwise : if it be otherwise, shake your head, or shrug. [makes a leg.] —So! Your Italian and Spaniard are wise in these: and it is a frugal and comely gravity. How long will it be ere Cutbeard come ? Stay; if an hour, hold up your whole hand; if half an hour, two fingers ; if a quarter, one ; [holds tip a finger bent.] —Good: half a quarter? ’tis well. And have you given him a key, to come in without knocking? [makes a leg.] —good. And, is the lock oil’d, and the hinges, to-day ? [makes a leg.] —good. And the quilting of the stairs no where worn out and bare ? [makes a leg.] —Very good. I see, by much doctrine, and impulsion, it may be effected; stand by. The Turk, in this diviiK discipline, is admirable, exceeding all the poten¬ tates of the earth; still waited on by mutes; and all his commands so executed; yea, even in the war, as I have heard, and in his marches, most of his charges and directions given by signs, and with silence : an exquisite art! and I am heartily ashamed, and angry oftentimes, that the princes of Christendom should suffer a barbarian to transcend them in so high a point of felicity. I will practise it hereafter. [A horn winded within.] —How now? oh! oh ! what villain, what prodigy of mankind is that? look. Mute.] — [Hornagain.] —Oh! cut his throat, cut his throat! what murderer, hell-hound, devil can this be ? Re-enter Mute. Mute. It is a post from the court- Mor. Out, rogue! and must thou blow thy horn too ? Mute. Alas, it is a post from the court, sir, that says, he must speak with you, pain of death— Mor. Pain of thy life, be silent! THE SILENT WOMAN. ACT II. 212 Enter Truewit with a post-horn, and a halter in his hand. True. By your leave, sir;—I am a stranger here :—Is your name master Morose ? is your name master Morose ? Fishes ! Pythagoreans all! This is strange. What say you, sir ? nothing ! Has Harpocrates been here with his club, among you? Well, sir, I will believe you to be the man at this time: I will venture upon you, sir. Your friends at court commend them to you, sir- Mor. O men ! O manners ! was there ever such an impudence ? True. And are extremely solicitous for you, sir. Mor. Whose knave are you ? True. Mine own knave, and your compeer, sir. Mor. Fetch me my sword- True. You shall taste the one half of my dagger, if you do, groom ; and you the other, if you stir, sir: Be patient, I charge you, in the king’s name, and hear me without insurrection. They say, you are to marry ; to marry ! do you mark, sir ? Mor. How then, rude companion! True. Marry, your friends do wonder, sir, the Thames being so near, wherein you may drown, so handsomely; or London-bridge, at a low fall, with a fine leap, to hurry you down the stream ; or, such a delicate steeple in the town, as Bow, to vault from; or, a braver height, as Paul’s : Or, if you affected to do it nearer home, and a shorter way, an excellent garret-window into the street; or, a beam in the said garret, with this halter [ shews him the halter. ]—which they have sent, and desire, that you would sooner commit your grave head to this knot, than to the wedlock noose ; or, take a little sublimate, and go out of the world like a rat; or a fly, as one said, with a straw in your arse : any way, rather than follow this goblin Matrimony. Alas, sir, do you ever think to find a chaste wife in these times? now? when there are so many masques, plays, Puritan preachings, mad folks, and other strange sights to be seen daily, private and public? If you had lived in king Etheldred’s time, sir, or Edward the Confessor, you might, perhaps, have found one in some cold country hamlet, then, a dull frosty wench, would have been contented with one man : now, they will as soon be pleased with one leg, or one eye. I’ll tell you, sir, the monstrous hazards you shall run with a wife. Mor. Good sir, have I ever cozen’d any friends of yours of their land ? bought their possessions ? taken forfeit of their mortgage ? begg’d a reversion from them ? bastarded their issue ? What have I done, that may deserve this ? Trxie. Nothing, sir, that I know, but your itch of marriage. Mor. Why, if I had made an assassinate upon your father, vitiated your mother, ravished your sisters- True. I would kill you, sir, I would kill you, if you had. Mor. Why, you do more in this, sir: it were a vengeance centuple, for all facinorous acts that could be named, to do that you do. True. Alas, sir, I am but a messenger: I but tell you, what you must hear. It seems your friends are careful after your soul’s health, sir, and would have you know the danger : (but you may do your pleasure for all them, I persuade not, sir.) If, after you are married, your wife do run away with a vaulter, or the Frenchman that walks upon ropes, or him that dances the jig, or a fencer for his skill at his weapon; why it is not their fault, they have discharged their consciences ; when you know what may happen. Nay, suffer valiantly, sir, for I must tell you all the perils that you are obnoxious to. If she be fair, young and vegetous, no sweetmeats ever drew more flies; all the yellow doublets and great roses in the town will be there. If foul and crooked, she’ll be with them, and buy those doublets and roses, sir. If rich, and that you marry her dowry, not her, she’ll reign in your house as imperious as a widow. If noble, all her kindred will be your tyrants. If fruitful, as proud as May, and humorous as April; she must have her doctors, her midwives, her nurses, her longings every hour; though it be for the dearest morsel of man. If learned, there was never such a parrot; all your patrimony will be too little for the guests that must be invited to hear her speak Latin and Greek ; and you must lie with her in those languages too, if you will please her. If precise, you must feast all the silenced brethren, once in three days ; salute the sisters ; entertain the whole family, or wood of them; and hear long-winded exercises, singings and cate- chisings, which you are not given to, and yet must give for ; to please the zealous matron your wife, who for the holy cause, will cozen you over and above. You begin to sweat, sir! but this is not half, i’faith : you may do your pleasure, not¬ withstanding, as I said before : I come not to persuade you. [Mute is stealing away .]—Upon my faith, master serving-man, if you do stir, I will beat you. Mor. O, what is my sin ! what is my sin ! True. Then, if you love your wife, or rather dote on her, sir; O, how she’ll torture you, and take pleasure in your torments 1 you shall lie with her but when she lists ; she will not hurt her beauty, her complexion ; or it must be for that jewel, or that pearl, when she does : every half hour’s pleasure must be bought anew, and with the same pain and charge you woo’d her at first. Then you must keep what servants she please; what company she will; that friend must not visit you without her license; and him she loves most, she will seem to hate eagerliest, to decline your jealousy; or, feign to be jealous of you first; and for that cause go live with her she-friend, or cousin at the college, that can instruct her in all the mys¬ teries of writing letters, corrupting servants, taming spies ; where she must have that rich gown for such a great day ; a new one for the next; a richer for the third ; be served in silver ; have the chamber fill’d with a succession of grooms, foot¬ men, ushers, and other messengers; besides em¬ broiderers, jewellers, tire-women, sempsters, fea- thermen, perfumers ; whilst she feels not how the land drops away, nor the acres melt; nor foresees the change, when the mercer has your woods for her velvets; never weighs what her pride costs, sir; so she may kiss a page, or a smooth chin, that has the despair of a beard: be a stateswoman, know all the news, what was done at Salisbury, what at the Bath, what at court, what in progress; or, so she may censure poets, and authors, and styles, and compare them ; Daniel with Spenser, Jonson with the t’other youth, and so forth : or be thought cunning in controversies, or the very knots of divinity ; and have often in her mouth the state of scene II. THE SILENT WOMAN. 213 the question; and then skip to the mathematics, and demonstration : and answer in religion to one, in state to another, in bawdry to a third. Mor. 0, 0 ! True. All this is very true, sir. And then her going in disguise to that conjurer, and this cunning woman : where the first question is, how soon you shall die ? next, if her present servant love her ? next, if she shall have a new servant ? and how many ? which of her family would make the best bawd, male or female ? what precedence she shall have by her next match ? and sets down the answers, and believes them above the scriptures. Nay, perhaps she’ll study the art. Mor. Gentle sir, have you done ? have you had your pleasure of me ? I’ll think of these things. True. Yes, sir: and then comes reeking home of vapour and sweat, with going a foot, and lies in a month of a new face, all oil and birdlime ; and rises in asses’ milk, and is cleansed with a new fucus : God be wi’ you, sir. One thing more, which I had almost forgot. This too, with whom you are to marry, may have made a conveyance of her virginity afore hand, as your wise widows do of their states, before they marry, in trust to some friend, sir : Who can tell ? Or if she have not done it yet, she may do, upon the wedding-day, or the night before, and antedate you cuckold. The like has been heard of in nature. ’Tis no devised, impossible thing, sir. God be wi’ you: I’ll be bold to leave this rope with you, sir, for a remembrance.—Farewell, Mute! [Exit. Mor. Come, have me to my chamber: but first shut the door. [Truewit winds the horn without .] 0 , shut the door, shut the door ! is he come again ? Enter Cutbeard. Cut. ’Tis I, sir, your barber. Mor. 0, Cutbeard, Cutbeard, Cutbeard! here has been a cut-throat with me : help me in to my bed, and give me physic with thy counsel. [Exeunt. - 4 - SCENE II.— A Room in Sir John Daw’s House. Enter Daw, Clerimont, Dauphins, and Epiciene. Daw. Nay, an she will, let her refuse at her own charges ; ’tis nothing to me, gentlemen : but she will not be invited to the like feasts or guests every day. Cler. 0, by no means, she may not refuse- to stay at home, if you love your reputation: ’Slight, you are invited thither o’ purpose to be seen, and laughed at by the lady of the college, and her sha¬ dows. This trumpeter hath proclaim’d you. [Aside to Epi. Daup. You shall not go ; let him be laugh’d at in your stead, for not bringing you : and put him to his extemporal faculty of fooling and talking loud, to satisfy the company. [Aside to Epi. Cler. He will suspect us; talk aloud.—’Pray, mistress Epicoene, let’s see your verses ; we have sir John Daw’s leave ; do not conceal your servant’s merit, and your own glories. Epi. They’ll prove my servant’s glories, if you have his leave so soon. Daup. His vain-glories, lady ! Daw. Shew them, shew them, mistress; I dare own them. Epi. Judge you, what glories. Daw. Nay, I’ll read them myself too : an author must recite his own works. It is a madrigal of Modesty. Modest and fair , for fair and good are near Neighbours , howe’er.— Daup. Very good. Cler. Ay, is’t not ? Daw. No noble virtue ever was alone , But two in one. Daup. Excellent! Cler. That again, I pray, sir John. Daup. It has something in’t like rare wit and sense. Cler. Peace. Daw. No noble virtue ever u as alone , But two in one Then , when I praise sweet modesty, I praise Bright beauty's rays: And having praised both beauty and modesty , I have praised thee. Daup. Admirable ! Cler. How it chimes, and cries tink in the close, divinely ! Daup. Ay, ’tis Seneca. Cler. No, I think ’tis Plutarch. Daw. The dor on Plutarch and Seneca! I hate it: they are mine own imaginations, by that light. I wonder those fellows have such credit with gen¬ tlemen. Cler. They are very grave authors. Daw. Grave asses ! mere essayists: a few loose sentences, and that’s all. A man would talk so, his whole age: I do utter as good things every hour, if they were collected and observed, as either of them. Daup. Indeed, sir John ! Cler. He must needs ; living among the wits and braveries too. Daup. Ay, and being president of them, as he is. Daw. There’s Aristotle, a mere common-place fellow ; Plato, a discourser ; Thucydides and Livy, tedious and dry; Tacitus, an entire knot: some¬ times worth the untying, very seldom. Cler. What do you think of the poets, sir John? Daw. Not worthy to be named for authors. Homer, an old tedious, prolix ass, talks of curriers, and chines of beef; Virgil of dunging of land, and bees ; Horace, of I know not what. Cler. I think so. Daw. And so, Pindarus, Lycophron, Anacreon, Catullus, Seneca the tragedian, Lucan, Propertius, Tibullus, Martial, Juvenal, Ausonius, Statius, Po- litian, Valerius Flaccus, and the rest- Cler. What a sack full of their names he has got! Daup. And how he pours them out! Politian with Valerius Flaccus! Cler. Was not the character right of him ? Daup. As could be made, i’faith. Daw. And Persius, a crabbed coxcomb, not to be endured. Daup. Why, whom do you account for authors, sir John Daw ? Daw. Syntagma juris civilis ; Corpus juris civi- lis ; Corpus juris canonici; the king of Spain’s bible- Daup. Is the king of Spain’s bible an author ? Cler. Yes, and Syntagma. Daup. What was that Syntagma, sir? Daw. A civil lawyer, a Spaniard. Daup. Sure, Corpus was a Dutchman i k 214 THE SILENT WOMAN. act ii Cler. Ay, both the Corpuses, I knew 'em : they were very corpulent authors. Daw. And then there’s Vatablus, Pomponatius, Symancha: the other are not to be received, within the thought of a scholar. Daup. ’Fore God, you have a simple learned servant, lady,—in titles. [Aside. Cler. I wonder that he is not called to the helm, and made a counsellor. Daup. He is one extraordinary. Cler. Nay, but in ordinary: to say truth, the state wants such. Daup. Why that will follow. Cler. I muse a mistress can be so silent to the dotes of such a servant. Daw. ’Tis her virtue, sir. I have written some¬ what of her silence too. Daup. In verse, sir John? Cler. What else ? Daup. Why, how can you justify your own being of a poet, that so slight all the old poets ? Daw. Why, every man that writes in verse, is not a poet; you have of the wits that write verses, and yet are no poets : they are poets that live by it, the poor fellows that live by it. Daup. Why, would not you live by your verses, sir John ? Cler. No, ’twere pity he should. A knight live by his verses ! he did not make them to that end, I hope. Daup. And yet the noble Sidney lives by his, and the noble family not ashamed. Cler. Ay, he profest himself; but sir John Daw has more caution : he’ll not hinder his own rising in the state so much. Do you think he will ? Your verses, good sir John, and no poems. Daw. Silence in woman, is like speech in man; Deny'l who can. Daup. Not I, believe it: your reason, sir. Daw. Nor is’t a tale, That female vice should be a virtue male, Or masculine vice a female virtue be: You shall it see Prov’d with increase; I know to speak, and she to hold her peace. Do you conceive me, gentlemen ? Daup. No, faith; how mean you with increase, sir John ? Daw. Why, with increase is, when I court her for the common cause of mankind, and she says nothing, but consentire videtur ; and in time is gravida. Daup. Then this is a ballad of procreation ? Cler. A madrigal of procreation ; you mistake. Epi. ’Pray give me my verses again, servant. Daw. If you’ll ask them aloud, you shall; [ Walks aside with the papers. Enter Truewit with his horn. Cler. See, here’s Truewit again !—Where hast thou been, in the name of madness, thus accoutred with thy horn ? True. Where the sound of it might have pierced your senses with gladness, had you been in ear- reach of it. Dauphine, fall down and worship me; I have forbid the bans, lad : I have been with thy virtuous uncle, and have broke the match. Daup. You have not, I hope. True. Yes, faith ; an thou shouldst hope other¬ wise, I should repent me: this horn got me en¬ trance ; kiss it. I had no other way to get in, but by feigning to be a post; but when I got in once, I proved none, but rather the contrary, turn’d him into a post, or a stone, or wdiat is stiffer, with thundering into him the incommodities of a wife, and the miseries of marriage. If ever Gorgon were seen in the shape of a woman, he hath seen her in my description: I have put him olf o’ that scent for ever.—Why do you not applaud and adore me, sirs? why stand you mute? are you stupid? You are not worthy of the benefit. Daup. Did not I tell you ? Mischief!— Cler. I would you had placed this benefit some¬ where else. True. Why so ? Cler. ’Slight, you have done the most inconsi¬ derate, rash, weak thing, that ever man did to his friend. Daup. Friend! if the most malicious enemy I have, had studied to inflict an injury upon me, it could not be a greater. True. Wherein, for God’s sake ? Gentlemen, come to yourselves again. Daup. But I presaged thus much afore to you. Cler. Would my lips had been solder’d when I spake on’t! Slight, what moved .vou to be thus impertinent ? True. My masters, do not put on this strange face to pay my courtesy ; off with this vizor. Have good turns done you, and thank ’em this way ! Daup. ’Fore heaven, you have undone me. That which I have plotted for, and been maturing now these four months, you have blasted in a minute : Now I am lost, I may speak. This gentlewoman was lodged here by me o’ purpose, and, to be put upon my uncle, hath profest this obstinate silence for my sake ; being my entire friend, and one that for the requital of such a fortune as to marry him, would have made me very ample conditions ; where now, all my hopes are utterly miscarried by this unlucky accident. Cler. Thus ’tis when a man will be ignorantly officious, do services, and not know his why: I wonder what courteous itch possest you. You never did absurder part in your life, nor a greater trespass to friendship or humanity. Daup. Faith, you may forgive it best; ’twas your cause principally. Cler. I know it; would it had not. Enter Cutbeard. Daup. How now, Cutbeard ! what news ? Cut. The best, the happiest that ever was, sir. There has been a mad gentleman with your uncle this morning, [ seeing Truewit.]—I think this be the gentleman—that has almost talk’d him out of his wits, with threatening him from marriage- Daup. On, I prithee. Cut. And ,your uncle, sir, he thinks ’twas done by your procurement; therefore he will see the party you wot of presently ; and if he like her, he says, and that she be so inclining to dumb as I have told him, he swears he will marry her to-day, instantly, and not defer it a minute longer. Daup. Excellent! beyond our expectation ! True. Beyond our expectation ! By this light, I knew it would be thus. Daup. Nay, sweet Truewit, forgive me. True. No, I was ignorantly officious, imperil - nent; this was the absurd, weak part. Cler. Wilt thou ascribe that to merit now, was mere fortune 1 THE SILENT WOMAN. SCENE III. True. Fortune ! mere providence. Fortune hud not a finger in’t. I saw it must necessarily In nature fall out so . my genius is never false to me in these things. Shew me how it could be otherwise. Daup. Nay, gentlemen, contend not; ’tis well now. True. Alas, I let him go on with inconsiderate , and rash, and what he pleased. Cler. Away, thou strange justifier of thyself, to be wiser than thou wert, by the event 1 True. Event! by this light, thou shalt never persuade me, but I foresaw it as well as the stars themselves. Daup. Nay, gentlemen, ’tis well now. Do you two entertain sir John Daw with discourse, while I send her away with instructions. True. I’ll be acquainted with her first, by your favour. Cler. Master Truewit, lady, a friend of ours. True. I am sorry I have not known you sooner, lady, to celebrate this rare virtue of your silence. [ Exeunt Daup. Epi. and Cutbeard. Cler. Faith, an you had come sooner, you should have seen and heard her well celebrated in sir John Daw’s madrigals. True. [advances to Daw.] Jack Daw, God save you ! when saw you La-Foole ? Daw. Not since last night, master Truewit. True. That’s a miracle ! I thought you two had been inseparable. Daw. He’s gone to invite his guests. True. ’Odso ! ’tis true ! What a false memory have I towards that man! I am one : I met him even now, upon that he calls his delicate fine black horse, rid into foam, with posting from place to place, and person to person, to give them the cue- Cler. Lest they should forget ? True. Yes : There was never poor captain took more pains at a muster to show men, than he, at this meal, to show friends. Daw. It is his quarter-feast, sir. Cler. What! do you say so, sir John ? True. Nay, Jack Daw will not be out, at the best friends he has, to the talent of his wit: Where’s his mistress, to hear and applaud him ? is she gone ? Daw. Is mistress Epicoene gone ? Cler. Gone afore, with sir Dauphine, I warrant, to the place. True. Gone afore ! that were a manifest injury, a disgrace and a half; to refuse him at such a festival-time as this, being a bravery, and a wit too ! Cler. Tut, he’ll swallow it like cream : lie’s better read in Jure civili, than to esteem anything a disgrace, is offer’d him from a mistress. Daw. Nay, let her e’en go ; she shall sit alone, and be dumb in her chamber a week together, for John Daw, I warrant her. Does she refuse me ? Cler. No, sir, do not take it so to heart; she does not refuse you, but a little neglects you. Good faith, Truewit, you were to blame, to put it into his head, that she does refuse him. True. Sir, she does refuse him palpably, how¬ ever you mince it. An I were as he, I would swear to speak ne’er a word to her to-day for’t* Daw. By this light, no more I will not. True. Nor to any body else, sir. Daw. Nay, I will not say so, gentlemen. 215 Cler. It had been an excellent happy condition for the company, if you could have drawn him to it. [Aside. Daw. I’ll be very melancholy, i’faith. Cler. As a dog, if I were as you, sir John. True. Or a snail, or a hog-louse : I would roll myself up for this day ; in troth, they should not unwind me. Daw. By this pick-tooth, so I will. Cler. ’Tis well done : He begins already to be angry with his teeth. Daw. Will you go, gentlemen ? Cler. Nay, you must walk alone, if you be l ight melancholy, sir John. True. Yes, sir, we’ll dog you, we’ll follow you afar off. [Exit Daw. Cler. Was there ever such a two yards of knight¬ hood measured out by time, to be sold to laughter ? True. A mere talking mole, hang him ! no mushroom was ever so fresh. A fellow so utterly nothing, as he knows not what he would be. Cler. Let’s follow him : but first let’s go to Dauphine, he’s hovering about the house to hear what news. True. Content. [Exeunt ■ - 4 - SCENE III.— A Room in Morose’s House. Enter Morose and Mute, followed by Cutbeard with Epicqsne. Mor. Welcome, Cutbeard ! draw near with your fair charge : and in her ear softly entreat her to unmask. [Epi. takes off her mask.'] —So ! Is the door shut? [Mute makes a leg.] —Enough. Now, Cutbeard, with the same discipline I use to my family, I will question you. As I conceive, Cut¬ beard, this gentlewoman is she you have provided, and brought, in hope she will fit me in the place and person of a wife ? Answer me not but with your leg, unless it be otherwise : [Cut. makes a leg.] —Yery well done, Cutbeard. I conceive besides, Cutbeard, you have been pre-acquainted with her birth, education, and qualities, or else you would not prefer her to my acceptance, in the weighty consequence of marriage. [ makes a leg.] —This I conceive, Cutbeard. Answer me not but with your leg, unless it be otherwise. [ boios again. ] —Yery well done, Cutbeard. Give aside now a little, and leave me to examine her condition, and aptitude to my affection. [ goes about her and vieivs her.] —She is exceeding fair, and of a special good favour ; a sweet composition or harmony of limbs ; her temper of beauty has the true height of my blood. The knave hath exceedingly well fitted me without: I will now try her within.—Come near, fair gentlewoman; let not my behaviour seem rude, though unto you, being rare, it may haply appear strange. [Epiccene curtsies.] Nay, lady, you may speak, though Cutbeard and my man might not; for of all sounds, only the sweet voice of a fair lady has the just length of mine ears. I beseech you, say, lady; out of the first fire of meeting eyes, they say, love is stricken: do you feel any such motion suddenly shot into you, from any part you see in me ? ha, lady ? [Epi. curtsies.] —Alas, lady, these answers by silent curtsies from you are too courtless and simple. I have ever had my breeding in court; and she that shall be my wife, must be accomplished with courtly and audacious ornaments. Can you speak, lady ? 210 THE SILENT WOMAN. act ii. Epi. [softly.]* Judge you, forsooth. Mor. What say you, lady ? Speak out, I beseech you. Epi. Judge you, forsooth. Mor. On my judgment, a divine softness ! But can you naturally, lady, as I enjoin these by doctrine and industry, refer yourself to the search of my judgment, and, not taking pleasure in your tongue, which is a woman’s chiefest pleasure, think it plausible to answer me by silent gestures, so long as my speeches jump right with what you con¬ ceive? [Epi .curtsies.] —Excellent! divine 1 if it were possible she should hold out thus !—Peace, Cutbeard, thou art made for ever, as thou hast made me, if this felicity have lasting: but I will try her further. Dear lady, I am courtly, I tell you, and I must have mine ears banquetted with pleasant and witty conferences, pretty girds, scoffs, and dalliance in her that I mean to choose for my bed-phere. The ladies in court think it a most desperate impair to their quickness of wit, and good carriage, if they cannot give occasion for a man to court ’em ; and when an amorous discourse is set on foot, minister as good matter to continue it, as himself: And do you alone so much differ from all them, that what they, with so much cir¬ cumstance, affect and toil for, to seem learn’d, to seem judicious, to seem sharp and conceited, you can bury in yourself with silence, and rather trust your graces to the fair conscience of virtue, than to the world’s or your own proclamation ? Epi. [softly.] I should be sorry else. Mor. What say you, lady ? good lady, speak out. Epi. I should be sorry else. Mor. That sorrow doth fill me with gladness. O Morose, thou art happy above mankind ! pray that thou mayest contain thyself. I will only put her to it once more, and it shall be with the utmost touch and test of their sex. But hear me, fair lady; I do also love to see her whom I shall choose for my heifer, to be the first and principal in all fashions, precede all the dames at court by a fort¬ night, have council of tailors, lineners, lace-women, embroiderers ; and sit with them sometimes twice a day upon French intelligences, and then come forth varied like nature, or oftener than she, and better by the help of art, her emulous servant. This do I affect: and how will you be able, lady, with this frugality of speech, to give the manifold but necessary instructions, for that bodice, these sleeves, those skirts, this cut, that stitch, this embroidery, that lace, this wire, those knots, that ruff, those roses, this girdle, that fan, the t’other scarf, these gloves ? Ha ! what say you, lady ? Epi. [softly.] I’ll leave it to you, sir. Mor. How, lady? pray you rise a note. Epi. I leave it to wisdom and you, sir. Mor. Admirable creature 1 I will trouble you no more : I will not sin against so sweet a simplicity. Let me now be bold to print on those divine lips the seal of being mine.—Cutbeard, I give thee the lease of thy house free ; thank me not but with thy leg. [Cutbeard shakes his head.] —I know what thou wouldst say, she’s poor, and her friends deceased. She has brought a wealthy dowry in her silence, Cutbeard; and in respect of her poverty, Cutbeard, 1 shall have her more loving and obedient, Cutbeard. Go thy ways, and get me a minister presently, with a soft low voice, to marry us ; and pray him he will not be imperti¬ nent, but brief as he can ; away : softly, Cutbeard. [Exit Cut.] —Sirrah, conduct your mistress into the dining- room, your now mistress. [Exit Mute, followed by Epi.] —O my felicity ! how shall I be revenged on mine insolent kinsman, and his plots to fright me from marrying! This night I will get an heir, and thrust him out of my blood, like a stranger. He would be knighted, forsooth, and thought by that means to reign over me ; his title must do it: No, kinsman, I will now make you bring me the tenth lord’s and the sixteenth lady’s letter, kinsman; and it shall do you no good, kins¬ man. Your knighthood itself shall come on its knees, and it shall be rejected ; it shall be sued for its fees to execution, and not be redeem’d ; it shall cheat at the twelve-penny ordinary, it knighthood, for its diet, all the term-time, and tell tales for it in the vacation to the hostess ; or it knighthood shall do worse, take sanctuary in Cole-harbour, and fast. It shall fright all it friends with borrow¬ ing letters; and when one of the fourscore hath brought it knighthood ten shillings, it knighthood shall go to the Cranes, or the Bear at the Bridge- foot, and be drunk in fear ; it shall not have money to discharge one tavern-reckoning, to invite the old creditors to forbear it knighthood, or the new, that should be, to trust it knighthood. It shall be the tenth name in the bond to take up the com¬ modity of pipkins and stone-jugs: and the part thereof shall not furnish it knighthood forth for the attempting of a baker’s widow, a brown baker’s widow. It shall give it knighthood’s name for a stallion, to all gamesome citizens wives, and be refused, when the master of a dancing-school, or how do you call him, the worst reveller in the town is taken : it shall want clothes, and by reason of that, wit, to fool to lawyers. It shall not have hope to repair itself by Constantinople, Ireland, or Virginia; but the best and last fortune to it knight¬ hood shall be to make Dol Tear-sheet, or Kate Common a lady, and so it knighthood may eat. {Exit. —»- SCENE IV.— A Lane, near Morose’s House. Enter Trukwit, Dauphine, and Clerimont. True. Are you sure he is not gone by ? Daup. No, I staid in the shop ever since. Cler. But he may take the other end of the lane. Daup. No, I told him I would be here at this end : I appointed him hither. True. What a barbarian it is to stay then! Daup. Yonder he comes. Cler. And his charge left behind him, which is a very good sign, Dauphine. Enter Cutbeard. Daup. How now, Cutbeard ! succeeds it, or no ? Cut. Past imagination, sir, omnia secunda ; you could not have pray’d to have had it so well Saltat senex, as it is in the proverb; he does triumph in his felicity, admires the party ! he has given me the lease of my house too ! and I am now going for a silent minister to marry them, and away. True. ’Slight! get one of the silenced ministers ; a zealous brother would torment him purely. Cut. Cum privilegio, sir. SCENE I. THE SILENT WOMAN. Daup. O, by no means ; let’s do nothing to hinder it now: when ’tis done and finished, I am for you, for any device of vexation. Cut. And that shall be within this half hour, upon my dexterity, gentlemen. Contrive what you can in the mean time, bonis avibus. [Exit. Cler. How the slave doth Latin it! True. It would be made a jest to posterity, sirs, this day’s mirth, if ye will. Cler. Beshrew his heart that will not, I pro¬ nounce. Daup. And for my part. What is it ? True. To translate all La-Foole’s company, and his feast thither, to-day, to celebrate this bride-ale. Daup. Ay, marry ; but how will’t be done ? True. I’ll undertake the directing of all the lady-guests thither, and then the meat must follow. Cler. For God’s sake, let’s effect it; it will be an excellent comedy of affliction, so many several noises. Daup. But are they not at the other place, already, think you ? True. I’ll warrant you for the college-honours : one of their faces has not the priming colour laid on yet, nor the other her smock sleek’d. Cler. O, but they’ll rise earlier than ordinary to a feast. True. Best go see, and assure ourselves. Cler. Who knows the house ? True. I’ll lead you : Were you never there yet ? Daup. Not I. ACT SCENE 1— A Room in Otter’s House. Enter Captain Otter with his cups, and Mistress Otter. Ott. Nay, good princess, hear me pauca verba. Mrs. Ott. By that light, I’ll have you chain’d up, with your bull-dogs and bear-dogs, if you be not civil the sooner. I’ll send you to kennel, i’faith. You were best bait me with your bull, bear, and horse. Never a time that the courtiers or collegi- ates come to the house, but you make it a Shrove- tuesday ! I would have you get your Whitsuntide velvet cap, and your staff in your hand, to enter¬ tain them : yes, in troth, do. Ott. Not so, princess, neither; but under cor¬ rection, sweet princess, give me leave.-These things I am known to the courtiers by : It is re¬ ported to them for my humour, and they receive it so, and do expect it. Tom Otter’s bull, bear, and horse is known all over England, in rerum natura. Mrs. Ott. ’Fore me, I will na-ture them over to Paris-garden, and na-ture you thither too, if you pronounce them again. Is a bear a fit beast, or a bull, to mix in society with great ladies ? think in your discretion, in any good policy. Ott. The horse then, good princess. Mrs. Ott. Well, I am contented for the horse ; they love to be well horsed, I know : I love it myself. Ott. And it is a delicate fine horse this: Poeta- rum Pegasus. Under correction, princess, Jupiter did turn himself into a— taurus, or bull, under cor¬ rection, good princess. Enter Truewit, Clerimont, and Dauphine, behind. Mrs. Ott. By my integrity, I’ll send you over to the Bank-side; I’ll commit you to the master of 21 4 Cler. Nor I. True. Where have you lived then? not know Tom Otter ! Cler. No : for God’s sake, what is he ? True. An excellent animal, equal with your Daw or La-Foole, if not transcendant; and does Latin it as much as your barber : He is his wife’s subject; he calls her princess, and at such times as these follows her up and down the house like a page, with his hat off, partly for heat, partly for reverence. At this instant he is marshalling of his bull, bear, and horse. Daup. What be those, in the name of Sphynx ? True. Why, sir, he has been a great man at the Bear-garden in his time; and from that subtle sport has ta’en the witty denomination of his chief carousing cups. One he calls his bull, another his bear, another his horse. And then he has his les¬ ser glasses, that he calls his deer and his ape ; and several degrees of them too ; and never is well, nor thinks any entertainment perfect, till these be brought out, and set on the cupboard. Cler. For God’s love !—we should miss this, if we should not go. True. Nay, he has a thousand things as good, that will speak him all day. He will rail on his wife, with certain common places, behind her back ; and to her face- Daup. No more of him. Let’s go see him, I petition you. f Exeunt III. the Garden, if I hear but a syllable more. Must my house or my roof be polluted with the scent of bears and bulls, when it is perfumed for great ladies ? Is this according to the instrument, when I married you? that I would be princess, and reign in mine own house ; and you would be my subject, and obey me ? What did you bring me, should make you thus peremptory ? do I allow you your half- crown a day, to spend where you will, among your gamesters, to vex and torment me at such times as these ? Who gives you your maintenance, I pray you ? who allows you your horse-meat and man’s meat ? your three suits of apparel a year ? your four pair of stockings, one silk, three worsted ? your clean linen, your bands and cuffs, when I can get you to wear them ?—’tis marie you have them on now.—Who graces you with courtiers or great per¬ sonages, to speak to you out of their coaches, and come home to your house? Were you ever so much as look’d upon by a lord or a lady, before I married you, but on the Easter or Whitsun-holidays ? and then out at the banqueting-house window, when Ned Whiting or George Stone were at the stake? True. For God’s sake, let’s go stave her off him. Mrs. Ott. Answer me to that. And did not I take you up from thence, in an old greasy buff- doublet, with points, and green velvet sleeves, out at the elbows ? you forget this. True. She’ll worry him, if we help not in time. [They come forward. Mrs. Ott. O, here are some of the gallants! Go to, behave yourself distinctly, and with good mo¬ rality ; or, I protest, I’ll take away your exhibi* tion. 218 THE SILENT WOMAN. act hi. True. By your leave, fair mistress Otter, I’ll be bold to enter these gentlemen in your acquaintance. Mrs. Ott. It shall not be obnoxious, or difficil, sir. True. How does my noble captain ? is the bull, bear, and horse in rerum natura still ? Ott. Sir, sic visum superis. Mrs. Ott. I would you would but intimate them, do. Go your ways in, and get toasts and butter made for the woodcocks : that’s a lit province for you. [ Drives him off. Cler. Alas, what a tyranny is this poor fellow married to ! True. 0, but the sport will be anon, when we get him loose. Daup. Dares he ever speak ? True. No Anabaptist ever rail’d with the like license : but mark her language in the mean time, I beseech you. Mrs. Ott. Gentlemen, you are very aptly come. My cousin, sir Amorous, will be here briefly. True. In good time, lady. Was not sir John Daw here, to ask for him, and the company ? Mrs. Ott. I cannot assure you, master Truewit. Here was a very melancholy knight in a ruff, that demanded my subject for somebody, a gentleman, I think. Cler. Ay, that was he, lady. Mrs. Ott. But he departed straight, I can resolve you. Daup. What an excellent choice phrase this lady expresses in. True. 0, sir, she is the only authentical cour¬ tier, that is not naturally bred one, in the city. Mrs. Ott. You have taken that report upon trust, gentlemen. True. No, I assure you, the court governs it so, lady, in your behalf. Mrs. Ott. I am the servant of the court and courtiers, sir. True. They are rather your idolaters. Mrs. Ott. Not so, sir. Enter Cutbeard. Daup. How now, Cutbeard ! any cross ? Cut. 0 no, sir, omnia bene. ’Twas never better on the hinges ; all’s sure. I have so pleased him with a curate, that he’s gone to’t almost with the delight he hopes for soon. Daup. What is he for a vicar ? Cut. One that has catch’d a cold, sir, and can scarce be heard six inches off; as if he spoke out of a bulrush that were not pick’d, or his throat were full of pith : a fine quick fellow, and an excel¬ lent barber of prayers. 1 came to tell you, sir, that you might omnem movere lapidem, as they say, be ready with your vexation. Daup. Gramercy, honest Cutbeard ! be there¬ abouts with thy key, to let us in. Cut. I will not fail you, sir ; ad manum. [Exit. True. Well, I’ll go watch my coaches. Cler. Do ; and we’ll send Daw to you, if you meet him not. [Exit Truewit. Mrs. Ott. Is master Truewit gone ! Daup. Yes, lady, there is some unfortunate business fallen out. Mrs. Ott. So I adjudged by the physiognomy of the fellow that came in ; and I had a dream last night too of the new pageant, and my lady mayor¬ ess, which is always very ominous to me. I told it my lady Haughty t’other day, when her honoui came hither to see some China stuffs ; and she expounded it out of Artemidorus, and I have found it since very true. It has done me many affronts. Cler. Your dream, lady? Mrs. Ott. Yes, sir, any thing I do but dream of the city. It stain’d me a damask table-cloth, cost me eighteen pound, at one time; and burnt 1 me a black satin gown, as I stood by the fire, at my lady Centaure’s chamber in the college, another time. A third time, at the lords’ masque, it dropt all my ware and my ruff with wax candle, that I could not go up to the banquet. A fourth time, as I was taking coach to go to Ware, to meet a friend, it dash’d me a new suit all over (a crimson satin doublet, and black velvet skirts) with a brew¬ er’s horse, that I was fain to go in and shift me, and kept my chamber a leash of days for the anguish of it. Daup. These were dire mischances, lady. Cler. I would not dwell in the city, an ’twere so fatal to me. Mrs. Ott. Yes, sir ; but I do take advice of my doctor to dream of it as little as I can. Daup. You do well, mistress Otter. Enter Sir John Daw, and is taken aside by Clerimont. Mrs. Ott. Will it please you to enter the house farther, gentlemen? Daup. And your favour, lady : but we stay to speak with a knight, sir John Daw, who is here come. We shall follow you, lady. Mrs. Ott. At your own time, sir. It is my cousin sir Amorous his feast - Daup. I know it, lady. Mrs. Ott. And mine together. But it is for his honour, and therefore I take no name of it, more than of the place. Daup. You are a bounteous kinswoman. Mrs. Ott. Your servant, sir. [Exit. Cler. [ coming forward with Daw.] W T hy, do not you know it, sir John Daw ? Daw. No, I am a rook if I do. Cler. I’ll tell you, then; she’s married by this time. And, whereas you were put in the head, that she was gone with sir Dauphine, I assure you, sir Dauphine has been the noblest, honestest friend to you, that ever gentleman of your quality could boast of. He has discover’d the whole plot, and made your mistress so acknowledging, and indeed so ashamed of her injury to you, that she desires you to forgive her, and but grace her wedding with your presence to-day—She is to be married to a very good fortune, she says, his uncle, old Morose; and she will’d me in private to tell you, that she shall be able to do you more favours, and with more security now than before. Daw. Did she say so, i’faith ? Cler. Why, what do you think of me, sir John 1 ask sir Dauphine. Daw. Nay, I believe you. — Good sir Dauphine did she desire me to forgive her ? Daup. I assure you, sir John, she did. Daw. Nay, then, I do with all my heart, and I’ll be jovial. Cler. Yes, for look you, sir, this was the injury to you. La-Foole intended this feast to honour her bridal day, and made you the property to invite the college ladies, and promise to bring her; and then at the time she would have appear’d, as his friend, to have given you the dor. Whereas THE SILENT WOMAN. SCENE II. now, sir Dauphine has brought her to a feeling of it, with this kind of satisfaction, that you shall bring all the ladies to the place where she is, and be very jovial; and there, she will have a dinner, which shall be in your name : and so disappoint La-Foole, to make you good again, and, as it were, a saver in the main. Daw. As I am a knight, I honour her; and forgive her heartily. Cler. About it then presently. Truewit is gone before to confront the coaches, and to acquaint you with so much, if he meet you. Join with him, and 'tis well.— Enter Sir Amorous La-Foole. See ; here comes your antagonist; but take you no notice, but be very jovial. La-F. Are the ladies come, sir John Daw, and your mistress? [ Exit Daw.] —Sir Dauphine ! you are exceeding welcome, and honest master Cleri- mont. Where’s my cousin? did you see no collegi- ates, gentlemen? Daup. Collegiates! do you not hear, sir Amorous, how you are abused ? La-F. How, sir! Cler. Will you speak so kindly to sir John Daw, that has done you such an affront ? La-F. Wherein, gentlemen ? let me be a suitor to you to know, I beseech you. Cler. Why, sir, his mistress is married to-day to sir Dauphine’s uncle, your cousin’s neighbour, and he has diverted all the ladies, and all your company thither, to frustrate your provision, and stick a disgrace upon you. He was here now to have enticed us away from you too : but we told him his own, I think. La-F. Has sir John Daw wrong’d me so in¬ humanly ? Daup. He has done it, sir Amorous, most malici¬ ously and treacherously : but, if you’ll be ruled by us, you shall quit him, i’faith. La-F. Good gentlemen, I’ll make one, believe it. How, I pray ? Daup. Marry, sir, get me your pheasants, and your godwits, and your best meat, and dish it in silver dishes of your cousin’s presently; and say nothing, but clap me a clean towel about you, like a sewer; and, bare-headed, march afore it with a good confidence, (’tis but over the way, hard by,) and we’ll second you, where you shall set it on the board, and bid them welcome to’t, which shall shew ’tis yours, and disgrace his preparation utterly : and for your cousin, whereas she should be troubled here at home with care of making and giving welcome, she shall transfer all that labour thither, and be a principal guest herself; sit rank’d with the college-honours, and be honour’d, and have her health drunk as often, as bare, and as loud as the best of them. La-F . I’ll go tell her presently. It shall be done, that’s resolved. [.Exit. Cler. I thought he would not hear it out, but 'twould take him. Daup. Well, there be guests and meat now; how shall we do for music ? Cler. The smell of the venison, going through the street, will invite one noise of fiddlers or other. Daup. I would it would call the trumpeters hither ! 219 Cler. Faith, there is hope; they have intelli¬ gence of all feasts. There’s good correspondence betwixt them and the London cooks : ’tis twenty to one but we have them. Daup. ’Twill be a most solemn day for my uncle, and an excellent fit of mirth for us. Cler. Ay, if we can hold up the emulation be¬ twixt Foole and Daw, and never bring them to expostulate. Daup . Tut, flatter them both, as Truewit says, and you may take their understandings in a purse- net. They’ll believe themselves to be just such men as we make them, neither more nor less. They have nothing, not the use of their senses, but by tradition. Re-enter La-Foole, like a Sewer. Cler. See! sir Amorous has his towel on already. Have you persuaded your cousin ? La-F. Yes, ’tis very feasible: she’ll do any thing, she says, rather than the La-Fooles shall be disgraced. Daup. She is a noble kinswoman. It will be such a pestling device, sir Amorous; it will pound all your enemy’s practices to powder, and blow him up with his own mine, his own train. La-F. Nay, we’ll give fire, I warrant you. Cler. But you must carry it privately, without any noise, and take no notice by any means- Re-enter Captain Otter. Ott. Gentlemen, my princess says you shall have all her silver dishes, festinate: and she’s gone to alter her tire a little, and go with you'-- Cler. And yourself too, captain Otter? Daup. By any means, sir. Ott. Yes, sir, I do mean it: but I would entreat my cousin sir Amorous, and you, gentlemen, to be suitors to my princess, that I may carry my bull and my bear, as well as my horse. Cler. That you shall do, captain Otter. La-F. My cousin will never consent, gentlemen. Daup. She must consent, sir Amorous, to reason. La-F. Why, she says they are no decorum among ladies. Ott. But they are decora, and that’s better, sir. Cler. Ay, she must hear argument. Did not Pasiphae, who was a queen, love a bull? and was not Calisto, the mother of Areas, turn’d into a bear, and made a star, mistress Ursula, in the heavens ? Ott. O lord I that I could have said as much! I will have these stories painted in the Bear¬ garden, ex Ovidii metamorphosi. Daup. Where is your princess, captain ? pray, be our leader. Ott. That I shall, sir. Cler. Make haste, good sir Amorous. [Exeunt. —♦— SCENE II.— A Room in Morose’s House. Enter Morose, Epiccene, Parson, and Cujbeard. Mor. Sir, there’s an angel for yourself, and a brace of angels for your cold. Muse not at this manage of my bounty. It is fit we should thank fortune, double to nature, for any benefit she con¬ fers upon us ; besides, it is your imperfection, but my solace. 220 THE SILENT WOMAN. act iii Par. [ speaks as having a cold.'] I thank your worship ; so it is mine, now. Mor. What says he, Cutbeard ? Cut. He says, prcesto, sir, whensoever your worship needs him, he can be ready with the like. He got this cold with sitting up late, and singing catches with cloth-workers. Mor. No more. I thank him. Par. God keep your worship, and give you much joy with your fair spouse!—uh! uh! uh! Mor. O, O ! stay, Cutbeard! let him give me five shillings of my money back. As it is bounty to reward benefits, so it is equity to mulct injuries. I will have it. What says he ? Cler. He cannot change it, sir. Mor. It must be changed. Cut. Cough again. [Aside to Parson. Mor. What says he ? Cut. He will cough out the rest, sir. Par. Uh, uh, uh ! Mor. Away, away with him ! stop his mouth! away ! I forgive it.- [Exit Cut. thrusting out the Par. Epi. Fie, master Morose, that you will use this violence to a man of the church. Mor. How! Epi. It does not become your gravity, or breed¬ ing, as you pretend, in court, to have offer’d this outrage on a waterman, or any more boisterous creature, much less on a man of his civil coat. Mor. You can speak then ! Epi. Yes, sir. Mor. Speak out, I mean. Epi. Ay, sir. Why, did you think you had married a statue, or a motion only ? one of the French puppets, with the eyes turn’d with a wire ? or some innocent out of the hospital, that would stand with her hands thus, and a plaise mouth, and look upon you ? Mor. O immodesty! a manifest woman! What, Cutbeard ! Epi. Nay, never quarrel with Cutbeard, sir ; it is too late now. I confess it doth bate somewhat of the modesty I had, when I writ simply maid : but I hope I shall make it a stock still competent to the estate and dignity of your wife. Mor. She can talk ! Epi. Yes, indeed, sir. Enter Mute. Mor. What sirrah ! None of my knaves there ? where is this impostor Cutbeard ? [Mute makes signs. Epi. Speak to him, fellow, speak to him ! I’ll have none of this coacted, unnatural dumbness in my house, in a family where I govern. [Exit Mute. Mor. She is my regent already ! I have married a Penthesilea, a Semiramis; sold my liberty to a distaff. Enter Truewit. True. Where’s master Morose ? Mor. Is he come again ! Lord have mercy upon me ! True. I wish you all joy, mistress Epicoene, with your grave and honourable match. Epi. I return you the thanks, master Truewit, bo friendly a wish deserves. Mor. She has acquaintance, too ! True. God save you, sir, and give you all con¬ tentment in your fair choice, here ! Before, I was the bird of night to you, the owl; but now I am the messenger of peace, a dove, and bring you the glad wishes of many friends to the celebration of this good hour. Mor. What hour, sir ? True. Your marriage hour, sir. I commend your resolution, that, notwithstanding all the dangers I laid afore you, in the voice of a night- crow, would yet go on, and be yourself. It shews you are a man constant to your own ends, and upright to your purposes, that would not be put off with left-handed cries. Mor. How should you arrive at the knowledge of so much ? True. Why, did you ever hope, sir, committing the secrecy of it to a barber, that less than the whole town should know it ? you might as well have told it the conduit, or the bake-house, or the infantry that follow the court, and with more security. Could your gravity forget so old and noted a remnant, as, lippis et tonsoribus notum ? Well, sir, forgive it yourself now, the fault, and be communicable with your friends. Here will be three or four fashionable ladies from the college to visit you presently, and their train of minions and followers. Mor. Bar my doors ! bar my doors! Where are all my eaters ? my mouths, now ?— Enter Servants. Bar up my doors, you varlets ! Epi. He is a varlet that stirs to such an office. Let them stand open. I would see him that dares move his eyes toward it. Shall I have a barricado made against my friends, to be barr’d of any plea¬ sure they can bring in to me with their honourable visitation? [Exeunt Set. Mor. O Amazonian impudence ! True. Nay, faith, in this, sir, she speaks but reason ; and, methinks, is more continent than you. Would you go to bed so presently, sir, afore noon ? a man of your head and hair should owe more to that reverend ceremony, and not mount the mar¬ riage-bed like a town-bull, or a mountain-goat; but stay the due season ; and ascend it then with religion and fear. Those delights are to be steeped in the humour and silence of the night; and give the day to other open pleasures, and jollities of feasting, of music, of revels, of discourse: we’ll have all, sir, that may make your Hymen h'gh and happy. Mor. O my torment, my torment! True. Nay, if you endure the first half hour, sir, so tediously, and with this irksomeness; what comfort or hope can this fair gentlewoman make to herself hereafter, in the consideration of so many years as are to come- Mor. Of my affliction. Good sir, depart, and let her do it alone. True. I have done, sir. Mor. That cursed barber. True. Yes, faith, a cursed wretch indeed, sir. Mor. I have married his cittern, that’s common to all men. Some plague above the plague- True. All Egypt’s ten plagues. Mor. Revenge me on him ! True. ’Tis very well, sir. If you laid on a curse or two more, I’ll assure you he’ll bear them. As, that he may get the pox with seeking to cure scene II. THE SILENT WOMAN. 221 it, sir; or, that while he is curling another man’s hair, his own may drop off; or, for burning some male-bawd’s lock, he may have his brain beat out with the curling iron. Mor. No, let the wretch live wretched. May he get the itch, and his shop so lousy, as no man dare come at him, nor he come at no man ! True. Ay, and if he would swallow all his balls for pills, let not them purge him. Mor. Let his warming-pan be ever cold. True. A pereptual frost underneath it, sir. Mor. Let him never hope to see fire again. True. But in hell, sir. Mor. His chairs be always empty, his scissars mst, and his combs mould in their cases. True. Yery dreadful that! And may he lose the invention, sir, of carving lanterns in paper. Mor. Let there be no bawd carted that year, to employ a bason of his : but let him be glad to eat his sponge for bread. True. And drink lotium to it, and much good do him. Mor. Or, for want of bread- True. Eat ear-wax, sir. I’ll help you. Or, draw his own teeth, and add them to the lute-string. Mor. No, beat the old ones to powder, and make bread of them. True. Yes, make meal of the mill-stones. Mor. May all the botches and burns that he has cured on others break out upon him. True. And he now forget the cure of them in himself, sir ; or, if he do remember it, let him have scraped all his linen into lint for’t, and have not a rag left him for to set up with. Mor. Let him never set up again, but have the gout in his hands for ever !—Now, no more, sir. True. O, that last was too high set; you might go less with him, i’faith, and be revenged enough : as, that he be never able to new-paint his pole- Mor. Good sir, no more, I forgot myself. True. Or, want credit to take up with a comb- maker— Mor. No more, sir. True. Or, having broken his glass in a former despair, fall now into a much greater, of ever get¬ ting another- Mor. I beseech you, no more. True. Or, that he never be trusted with trim¬ ming of any but chimney-sweepers- Mor. Sir- True. Or, may he cut a collier’s throat with his razor, by chance-medley, and yet be hanged for’t. Mor. I will forgive him, rather than hear any more. I beseech you, sir. Enter Daw, introducing Lady Haughty, Centaure, Mavis, and Trusty. Daw. This way, madam. Mor. O, the sea breaks in upon me ! another flood! an inundation ! I shall be overwhelmed with noise. It beats already at my shores. I feel an earthquake in my self for’t. Daw. ’Give you joy, mistress. Mor. Has she servants too ! Daw. I have brought some ladies here to see and know you. My lady Haughty—[as he presents them severally , Epi. kisses them.'] this my lady Centaure—mistress Dol Mavis—mistress Trusty, my lady Haughty’s woman. Where’s your husband ? let’s see him: can he endure no noise ? let me come to him. Mor. What nomenclator is this! True. Sir John Daw, sir, your wife’s servant, this. Mor. A Daw, and her servant! O, ’tis decreed, ’tis decreed of me, an she have such servants. [Going. True. Nay, sir, you must kiss the ladies ; you must not go away, now : they come toward you to seek you out. Hau. I’ faith, master Morose, would you steal a marriage thus, in the midst of so many friends, and not acquaint us? Well, I’ll kiss you, notwith¬ standing the justice of my quarrel: you shall give me leave, mistress, to use a becoming familiarity with your husband. Epi. Your ladyship does me an honour in it, to let me know he is so worthy your favour: as you have done both him and me grace to visit so unprepared a pair to entertain you. Mor. Compliment! compliment! Epi. But I must lay the burden of that upon my servant here. Hau. It shall not need, mistress Morose; we will all bear, rather than one shall be opprest. Mor. I know it: and you will teach her the faculty, if she be to learn it. [Walks aside while the rest talk apart. Hau. Is this the silent woman P Cen. Nay, she has found her tongue since she was married. Master Truewit says. Hau. O, master Truewit! ’save you. What kind of creature is your bride here ? she speaks, methinks ! True. Yes, madam, believe it, she is a gentle¬ woman of very absolute behaviour, and of a good race. Hau. And Jack Daw told us she could not speak! True. So it was carried in plot, madam, to put her upon this old fellow, by sir Dauphine, his nephew, and one or two more of us : but she is a woman of an excellent assurance, and an extraor¬ dinary happy wit and tongue. You shall see her make rare sport with Daw ere night. Hau. And he brought us to laugh at her ! True. That falls out often, madam, that he that thinks himself the master-wit, is the master-fool. I assure your ladyship, ye cannot laugh at her. Hau. No, we’ll have her to the college : An she have wit, she shall be one of us, shall she not, Centaure ? we’ll make her a collegiate. Cen. Yes, faith, madam, and Mavis and she will set up a side. True. Believe it, madam, and mistress Mavis she will sustain her part. Mav. I’ll tell you that, when I have talk’d with her, and tried her. Hau. Use her very civilly, Mavis. Mav. So I will, madam. [ Whispers her. Mor. Blessed minute! that they would whisper thus ever! [Aside. True. In the mean time, madam, would but your ladyship help to vex him a little : you know his disease, talk to him about the wedding ceremonies, or call for your gloves, or- Hau. Let me alone. Centaure, help me.—Mas¬ ter bridegroom, where are you? Mor. O, it was too miraculously good to last! [Aside, Hau. We see no ensigns of a wedding here ; no 222 THE SILENT WOMAN. act iy. character of a bride-ale : where be our scarves and our gloves ? I pray you, give them us. Let us know your bride’s colours, and yours at least. Cen. Alas, madam, he has provided none. Mor. Had I known your ladyship’s painter, I would. Hau. He has given it you, Centaure, i’faitli. But do you hear, master Morose ? a jest will not absolve you in this manner. You that have suck’d the milk of the court, and from thence have been brought up to the very strong meats and wine of it; been a courtier from the biggen to the night¬ cap, as we may say, and you to olfend in such a high point of ceremony as this, and let your nup¬ tials want all marks of solemnity ! How much plate have you lost to-day, (if you had but regarded your profit,) what gifts, what friends, through your mere rusticity! Mor. Madam- Hau. Pardon me, sir, I must insinuate your errors to you; no gloves ? no garters ? no scarves ? no epithalamium? no masque? Daw. Yes, madam, I’ll make an epithalamium, I promise my mistress ; I have begun it already : will your ladyship hear it ? Hau. Ay, good Jack Daw. Mor. Will it please your ladyship command a chamber, and be private with your friend ? you shall have your choice of rooms to retire to after : my whole house is yours. I know it hath been your ladyship’s errand into the city at other times, how¬ ever now you have been unhappily diverted upon me; but I shall be loth to break any honourable custom of your ladyship’s. And therefore, good madam- Epi. Come, you are a rude bridegroom, to en¬ tertain ladies of honour in this fashion. Cen. He is a rude groom indeed. True. By that light you deserve to be grafted, and have your horns reach from one side of the island to the other.—Do not mistake me, sir ; I but speak this to give the ladies some heart again, not for any malice to you. Mor. Is this your bravo, ladies ? True. As God [shall] help me, if you utter such another word, I’ll take mistress bride in, and begin to you in a very sad cup ; do you see ? Go to, know your friends, and such as love you. Enter Clerimont , followed by a number 0/Musicians. Cler. By your leave, ladies. Do you want any music ? I have brought you variety of noises. Play, sirs, all of you. [Aside to the Musicians, who strike up all together. Mor. O, a plot, a plot, a plot, a plot, upon me! ACT SCENE I. —A Room in Morose’s House. Enter Truewit and Clerimont. True. Was there ever poor bridegroom so tor¬ mented? or man, indeed? Cler. I have not read of the like in the chroni¬ cles of the land. True. Sure, he cannot but go to a place of rest, after all this purgatory. Cler. He may presume it, I think. this day I shall be their anvil to work on, they will grate me asunder. ’Tis worse than the noise of a saw. Cler. No, they are hair, rosin, and guts : I can give you the receipt. True. Peace, boys ! Cler. Play ! I say. True. Peace, rascals ! You see who’s your friend now, sir : take courage, put on a martyr’s resolu¬ tion. Mock down all their attemptings with pa¬ tience : ’tis but a day, and I would suffer heroically. Should an ass exceed me in fortitude ? no. You betray your infirmity with your hanging dull ears, and make them insult: bear up bravely, and constantly. [La-Foole passes over the stage as a Sewer, followed by Servants carrying dishes, and Mistress Otter.] — Look you here, sir, what honour is done you unexpected, by your nephew ; a wedding-dinner come, and a knight-sewer before it, for the more reputation: and fine mistress Otter, your neighbour, in the rump or tail of it. Mor. Is that Gorgon, that Medusa come ! hide me, hide me. True. I warrant you, sir, she will not transform you. Look upon her with a good courage. Pray you entertain her, and conduct your guests in. No !—Mistress bride, will you entreat in the ladies? your bridegroom is so shame-faced, here. Epi. Will it please your ladyship, madam ? Hau. With the benefit of your company, mistress. Epi. Servant, pray you perform your duties. Daiv. And glad to be commanded, mistress. Cen. How like you her wit, Mavis? Mav. Very prettily, absolutely well. Mrs. Ott. ’Tis my place. Mav. You shall pardon me, mistress Otter. Mrs. Ott. Why, I am a collegiate. Mav. But not in ordinary. Mrs. Ott. But I am. Mav. We’ll dispute that within. [.Exeunt Ladies. Cler. Would this had lasted a little longer. True. And that they had sent for the heralds. Enter Captain Otter. —Captain Otter ! what news ? Ott. I have brought my bull, bear, and horse, in private, and yonder are the trumpeters without, and the drum, gentlemen. [The drum and trumpets sound within. Mor. 0,0,0! Ott. And we will have a rouse in each of them, anon, for bold Britons, i’faith. [They sound again. Mor. 0,0,0! [Exit hastily. Omnes. Follow, follow, follow ! [Exeunt. IV. True. The spitting, the coughing, the laughter’ the neezing, the farting, dancing, noise of the music, and her masculine and loud commanding, and urging the whole family, makes him think he has married a fury. Cler. And she carries it up bravely. True. Ay, she takes any occasion to speak: that’s the height on’t. Cler. And how soberly Dauphine labours to satisfy him, that it was none of his plot! scene i. THE SILENT WOMAN. 223 True. And has almost brought him to the faith, In the article. Here he comes.— Enter Sir Dauthine. Where is he now? what’s become of him, Dauphine? Daup. 0, hold me up a little, I shall go away in the jest else. He has got on his whole nest of night-caps, and lock’d himself up in the top of the house, as high as ever he can climb from the noise. I peep’d in at a cranny, and saw him sitting over a cross-beam of the roof, like him on the saddler’s horse in Fleet-street, upright: and he will sleep there. Cler. But where are your collegiates ? Daup. Withdrawn with the bride in private. True. 0, they are instructing her in the col¬ lege-grammar. If she have grace with them, she knows all their secrets instantly. Cler. Methinks the lady Haughty looks well to¬ day, for all my dispraise of her in the morning. I think, I shall come about to thee again, Truewit. True. Believe it, I told you right. Women ought to repair the losses time and years have made in their features, with dressings. And an intelligent woman, if she know by herself the least defect, will be most curious to hide it: and it be¬ comes her. If she be short, let her sit much, lest, when she stands, she be thought to sit. If she have an ill foot, let her wear her gown the longer, and her shoe the thinner. If a fat hand, and scald nails, let her carve the less, and act in gloves. If a sour breath, let her never discourse fasting, and always talk at her distance. If she have black and rugged teeth, let her offer the less at laughter, especially if she laugh wide and open. Cler. 0, you shall have some women, when they laugh, you would think they brayed, it is so rude and - True. Ay, and others, that will stalk in their gait like an estrich, and take huge stx-ides. I can¬ not endure such a sight. I love measure in the feet, and number in the voice: they are gentlenesses, that oftentimes draw no less than the face. Daup. How earnest thou to study these crea¬ tures so exactly ? I would thou wouldst make me a proficient. True. Yes, but you must leave to live in your chamber, then, a month together upon Amadis de Gaul, or Don Quixote, as you are wont; and come abroad where the matter is frequent, to court, to tiltings, public shows and feasts, to plays, and church sometimes : thither they come to shew their new tires too, to see, and to be seen. In these places a man shall find whom to love, whom to play with, whom to touch once, whom to hold ever. The variety arrests his judgment. A wench to please a man comes not down dropping from the ceiling, as he lies on his back droning a tobacco- pipe. He must go where she is. Daup. Yes, and be never the nearer. True. Out, heretic ! That diffidence makes thee worthy it should be &o. Cler. He says true to you, Dauphine. Daup. Why ? True. A man should not doubt to overcome any woman. Think he can vanquish them, and he shall: for though they deny, their desire is to be tempted. Penelope herself cannot hold out long. Ostend, you saw, was taken at last. You must persever, and hold to your purpose. They would solicit us, but that they are afraid. Howsoever, they wish in their hearts we should solicit them. Praise them, flatter them, you shall never want eloquence or trust : even the chastest delight to feel themselves that way rubb’d. With praises you must mix kisses too : if they take them, they’ll take more—though they strive, they would be overcome. Cler. O, but a man must beware of force. True. It is to them an acceptable violence, and has oft-times the place of the greatest courtesy. She that might have been forced, and you let her go free without touching, though then she seem to thank you, will ever hate you after; and glad in the face, is assuredly sad at the heart. Cler. But all women are not to be taken all ways. True. ’Tis true ; no more than all birds, or all fishes. If you appear learned to an ignorant wench, or jocund to a sad, or witty to a foolish, why she presently begins to mistrust herself. You must approach them in their own height, their own line ; for the contrary makes many, that fear to commit themselves to noble and worthy fellows, run into the embraces of a rascal. If she love wit, give verses, though you borrow them of a friend, or buy them, to have good. I*f valour, talk of your sword, and be frequent in the mention of quarrels, though you be staunch in fighting. If activity, be seen on your barbary often, or leaping over stools, for the credit of your back. If she love good clothes or dressing, have your learned council about you every morning, your French tailor, barber, linener, &c. Let your powder, your glass, and your comb be your dearest acquaintance. Take more care for the ornament of your head, than the safety ; and wish the commonwealth rather troubled, than a hair about you. That will take her. Then, if she be covetous and craving, do you promise any thing, and perform sparingly; so shall you keep her in appetite still. Seem as you would give, but be like a barren field, that yields little ; or unlucky dice to foolish and hoping gamesters. Let your gift3 be slight and dainty, rather than precious. Let cunning be above cost. Give cherries at time of year, or apricots ; and say, they were sent you out of the country, though you bought them in Cheap- side. Admire her tires : like her in all fashions ; compare her in every habit to some deity ; invent excellent dreams to flatter her, and riddles ; or, if she be a great one, perform always the second parts to her : like what she likes, praise whom she praises, and fail not to make the household and servants yours, yea the whole family, and salute them by their names, (’tis but light cost, if you can pur¬ chase them so,) and make her physician your pen¬ sioner, and her chief woman. Nor will it be out of your gain to make love to her too, so she follow, not usher her lady’s pleasure. All blabbing is taken away, when she comes to be a part of the crime. Daup. On what courtly lap hast thou late slept, to come forth so sudden and absolute a courtling ? True. Good faith, I should rather question you, that are so hearkening after these mysteries. I begin to suspect your diligence, Dauphine. Speak, art thou in love in earnest ? Daup. Yes, by my troth, am I; ’twere ill dis¬ sembling before thee. True. With which of them, I prithee? Daup. With all the collegiates. Cler. Out on thee ! We’ll keep you at home, believe B it, in the stable, an you be such a stallion. 224 THE SILENT WOMAN. act iv. True. No; I like him well. Men should love wisely, and all women; some one for the face, and let her please the eye ; another for the skin, and let her please the touch; a third for the voice, and let her please the ear; and where the objects mix, let the senses so too. Thou would’st think it strange, if I should make them all in love with thee afore night! Daup. I would say, thou hadst the best philtre in the world, and couldst do more than madam Medea, or doctor Foreman. True . If I do not, let me play the mountebank for my meat, while I live, and the bawd for my drink. Daup. So be it, I say. Enter Otter, with his three Cups, Daw, and La-Foole. Ott. O lord, gentlemen, how my knights and I have mist you here ! Cler. Why, captain, what service, what service ? Ott. To see me bring up my bull, bear, and horse to fight. Daw. Yes, faith, the captain says we shall be his dogs to bait them. Daup. A good employment. True. Come on, let’s see your course, then. La-F. I am afraid my cousin will be offended, if she come. Ott. Be afraid of nothing.—Gentlemen, I have placed the drum and the trumpets, and one to give them the sign when you are ready. Here’s my bull for myself, and my bear for sir John Daw, and my horse for sir Amorous. Now set your foot to mine, and yours to his, and- La-F. Pray God my cousin come not. Ott. St. George, and St Andrew, fear no cousins. Come, sound, sound! [ Drum and trumpets sound.'] Et rauco strepuerunt cornua cantu. [ They drink. True. Well said, captain, i’faith ; well fought at the bull. Cler. Well held at the bear. True. Low, low ! captain. Daup. 0, the horse has kick’d off his dog already. La-F. I cannot drink it, as I am a knight. True. Ods so! off with his spurs, somebody. La-F. It goes against my conscience. My cousin will be angry with it. Daw. I have done mine. True. You fought high and fair, sir John. Cler. At the head. Daup. Like an excellent bear-dog. Cler. You take no notice of the business, I hope? Daw. Not a word, sir ; you see we are jovial. Ott. Sir Amorous, you must not equivocate. It must be pull’d down, for all my cousin. Cler. ’Sfoot, if you take not your drink, they’ll think you are discontented with something ; you’ll betray all, if you take the least notice. La-F. Not I; I’ll both drink and talk then. Ott. You must pull the horse on his knees, sir Amorous ; fear no cousins. Jacta est alea. True. 0, now he’s in his vein, and bold. The least hint given him of his wife now, will make him rail desperately. Cler. Speak to him of her. True. Do you, and I’ll fetch her to the hearing of it. [Exit. Daup. Captain He-Otter, your She-Otter is coming, your wife. Ott. Wife ! buz ? titivilitium ! There’s no such thing in nature. I confess, gentlemen, I have a cook, a laundress, a house-drudge, that serves my necessary turns, and goes under that title ; but he’s an ass that will be so uxorious to tie his affections to one circle. Come, the name dulls appetite. Here, replenish again ; another bout. [ Fills the cups again.] Wives are nasty, sluttish animals. Daup. 0, captain. Ott. As ever the earth bare, tribus verbis. — Where’s master Truewit? Daw. He’s slipt aside, sir. Cler. But you must drink and be jovial. Daw. Yes, give it me. La-F. And me too. Daw. Let’s be jovial. La-F. As jovial as you will. Ott. Agreed. Now you shall have the bear, cousin, and sir John Daw the horse, and I’ll have the bull still. Sound, Tritons of the Thames ! \_Drum, and trumpets sound again.] Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero- - Mor. [above.] Villains, murderers, sons of the earth, and traitors, what do you there ? Cler. 0, now the trumpets have waked him, we shall have his company. Ott. A wife is a scurvy clogdogdo, an unlucky thing, a very foresaid bear-whelp, without any good fashion or breeding, mala bestia. Re-enter Truewit behind, with Mistress Otter. Daup. Why did you marry one then, captain ? Ott. A pox!-1 married with six thousand pound, I. I was in love with that. I have not kissed my Fury these forty weeks. Cler. The more to blame you, captain. True. Nay, mistress Otter, hear him a little first. Ott. She has a breath worse than my grand¬ mother’s, profecto. Mrs. Ott. O treacherous liar! kiss me, sweet master Truewit, and prove him a slandering knave. True. I’ll rather believe you, lady. Ott. And she has a peruke that’s like a pound of hemp, made up in shoe-threads. Mrs. Ott. 0 viper, mandrake ! Ott. A most vile face ! and yet she spends me forty pound a year in mercury and hogs-bones. All her teeth were made in the Black-friars, both her eye-brows in the Strand, and her hair in Sil¬ ver-street. Every part of the town owns a piece of her. Mrs. Ott. [comes forward.] I cannot hold. Ott. She takes herself asunder still when she goes to bed, into some twenty boxes; and about next day noon is put together again, like a great German clock : and so comes forth, and rings a tedious larum to the whole house, and then is quiet again for an hour, but for her quarters—Have you done me right, gentlemen ? Mrs. Ott. [ falls upon him, and beats him.] No, sir, I’ll do you right with my quarters, with my quarters. Ott. O, hold, good princess. True. Sound, sound ! [Brum and trumpets sound. Cler. A battle, a battle 1 Mrs. Ott. You notorious stinkardly bearward. does my breath smell ? Ott. Under correction, dear princess.—Look to my bear and my horse, gentlemen. THE SILENT WOMAN. 22A Mrs. Ott. Do I want teeth, and eyebrows, thou buil-dog ? True. Sound, sound still. [They sound again. Olt. No, I protest, under correction— Mrs. Ott. Ay, now you are under correction, you protest: but you did not protest betore cor¬ rection, sir. Thou Judas, to offer to betray thy princess' I’ll make thee an example— [Beats him. Enter Morose with his long sword. Mor. I will have no such examples in my house, ladv Otter. Mrs. Ott. Ah !- [Mrs. Otter, Daw, and La-Foole, run off. Mor. Mistress MaryAmbree, your examples are dangerous.—Rogues, hell-hounds, Stentors ! out of my doors, you sons of noise and tumult, begot on an ill May-day, or when the galley-foist is afloat to Westminster! [ Drives out the musicians .] A trumpeter could not be conceived but then. Dat/p. What ails you, sir? Mor. They have rent my roof, walls, and all my windows asunder, with their brazen throats. [Exit. True. Best follow him, Dauphine. Daup. So 1 will. [Exit. t'ler. Where’s Daw and La-Foole? Ott. They are both run away, sir. Good gen¬ tlemen, help to pacify my princess, and speak to the great ladies for me. Now must I go lie with the bears this fortnight, and keep out of the way, till my peace be made, for this scandal she has taken. Did you not see my bull-head, gentlemen ? Cler. Is’t not on, captain? True. No; but he may make a new one, by that is on. Ott. O, here it is. An you come over, gentle¬ men, and ask for Tom Otter, we’ll go down to Ratcliff, and have a course i’faith, for all these disasters. There is bona spes left. True. Away, captain, get off while you are well. [Exit Otter. Cler. I am glad we are rid of him. True. You had never been, unless we had put his wife upon him. His humour is as tedious at last, as it was ridiculous at first. [Exeunt. —♦- SCENE II.— A long open Gallery in the same. Enter Lady Haughty, Mistress Otter, Mavis, Daw, La-Foole, Centaure, and Epiccene. Hau. We wonder’d why you shriek'd so, mis¬ tress Otter. Mrs. Ott. O lord, madam, he came down with a huge long naked weapon in both his hands, and look’d so dreadfully ! sure he’s beside himself. Mav. Why, what made you there, mistress Otter ? Mrs. Ott. Alas, mistress Mavis, I was chastising my subject, and thought nothing of him. Daw. Faith, mistress, you must do so too: learn to chastise. Mistress Otter corrects her husband so, he dares not speak but under cor¬ rection. La-F. And with his hat off to her : ’twould do you good to see. Hau. In sadness, ’tis good and mature counsel; practise it, Morose. I’ll call you Morose still now, as I call Centaure and Mavis ; we four will be all one. (i Cen. And you’ll come to the college, and live with us ? Ilau. Make him give milk and honey. Mav. Look how you manage him at first, you shall have him ever after. Cen. Let him allow you your coach, and four horses, your woman, your chamber-maid, your page, your gentleman-usher, your French cook, and four grooms. Hau. And go with us to Bedlam, to the china - houses, and to the Exchange. Cen. It will open the gate to your fame. Hau. Here’s Centaure has immortalized herself, with taming of her wild male. Mav. Ay, she has done the miracle of the king¬ dom. Enter Clerimont and Truewit. Epi. But, ladies, do you count it lawful to have such plurality of servants, and do them all graces? Hau. Why not? why should women deny their favours to men? are they the poorer or the worse 3 Daw. Is the Thames the less for the dyers’ water, mistress ? La-F. Or a torch for lighting many torches ? True. Well said, La-Foole ; what a new one he has got! Cen. They are empty losses women fear in thi> kind. Hau. Besides, ladies should be mindful of the approach of age, and let no time want his due use. The best of our days pass first. Mav. We are rivers, that cannot be call’d back, madam : she that now excludes her lovers, may live to lie a forsaken beldame, in a frozen bed. Cen. ’Tis true, Mavis : and who will wait on us to coach then ? or write, or tell us the news then, make anagrams of our names, and invite us to the Cockpit, and kiss our hands all the play-time, and draw their weapons for our honours ? Hau. Not one. Daw. Nay, my mistress is not altogether unin¬ telligent of these things ; here be in presence have tasted of her favours. Cler. What a neighing hobby-horse is this ! Epi. But not with intent to boast them again, servant.—And have you those excellent receipts, madam, to keep yourselves from bearing of chil¬ dren ? Hau. O yes, Morose: how should we maintain our youth and beauty else? Many births of a wo¬ man make her old, as many crops make the earth barren. Enter Morose and Dauphine. Mor. O my cursed angel, that instructed me to this fate! Daup. Why, sir ? Mor. That I should be seduced by so foolish a devil as a barber will make ! Daup. I would I had been worthy, sir, to have partaken your counsel; you should never have trusted it to such a minister. Mor. Would I could redeem it with the loss of an eye, nephew, a hand, or any other member. Daup. Marry, God forbid, sir, that you should geld yourself, to anger your wife. Mor. So it would rid me of her !—and, that I did supererogatory penance in a belfry, at West- minster-hall, in the Cockpit, at the fall of a stag, the Tower-wharf—what place is there else ?— London-bridge, Paris-garden, Billinsgate, when TIIE SILENT WOMAN. ACT IV. I 220 the noises are at their height, and loudest. 1 would sit out a play, that were nothin; fights at sea, drum, trumpet, and target. Daup. I hope there shall be no such need, sir. Take patience, good uncle. This is but a day, and ’tis well worn too now. Mor. O, ’twill be so for ever, nephew, I foresee it, for ever. Strife and tumult are the dowry that comes with a wife. True. 1 told you so, sir, and you would not believe me. Mor. Alas, do not rub those wounds, master Truewit, to blood again: ’twas my negligence. Add not affliction to affliction. I have perceived the effect of it, too late, in madam Otter. Epi. How do you, sir? Mor. Did you ever hear a more unnecessary question ? as if she did not see ! Why, I do as you see, empress, empress. Epi. You are not well, sir; you look very ill: something has distemper'd you. Mor. O horrible, monstrous impertinencies! would not one of these have served, do you think, sir ? would not one of these have served ? True. Yes, sir; but these are but notes of female kindness, sir; certain tokens that she Las a voice, sir. Mor. O, is it so! Come, an’t be no otherwise -What say you ? Epi. How do you feel yourself, sir ? Mor. Again that ! True. Nay, look you, sir, you would be friends with your wife upon unconscionable terms; her silence. Epi. They say you are run mad, sir. Mor. Not for love, I assure you, of you; do you see ? Epi. O lord, gentlemen! lay hold on him, for God’s sake. What shall I do ? who’s his physi¬ cian, can you tell, that knows the state of his body best, that I might send for him ? Good sir, speak ; I’ll send for one of my doctors else. Mor. What, to poison me, that I might die intestate, and leave you possest of all 1 Epi. Lord, how idly he talks, and how his eyes sparkle ! he looks green about the temples ! do you see what blue spots he has! Cler. Ay, ’tis melancholy. Epi. Gentlemen, for Heaven’s sake, counsel me. Ladies ;—servant, you have read Pliny and Para¬ celsus ; ne’er a word now to comfort a poor gen¬ tlewoman ? Ay me, what fortune had I, to marry a distracted man ! Daw. I’ll tell you, mistress-- True. Howrarely she holds it up ! [ Aside to Cler. Mor. What mean you, gentlemen ? Epi. What will you tell me, servant ? Daw. The disease in Greek is called p.v.via.. in Latin insania, furor, vel ecstasis melancliolica , that is, egressio, when a man ex melanchilico evadil fanaticus. Mor. Shall I have a lecture read upon me alive ? Daw. But he may be but phreneticus yet, mis¬ tress; and phrenetis is only delirium , or so. Epi. Ay, that is for the disease, servant; hut what is this to the cure ? We are sure enough of the disease. Mor. Let me go. True. Why, we’ll entreat her to hold her peace, sir Mor. O no, labour not to stop her. She is like a conduit-pipe, that will gush out with more force when she opens again. IIdu. I’ll tell you, Morose, you must talk divinity to him altogether, or moral philosophy. La-F. Ay, and there’s an excellent book of moral philosophy, madam, of Reynard the Fox, and all the beasts, called Doni’s Philosophy. Cen. There is indeed, sir Amorous La-Foole. Mor. O misery! La-F. I have read it, my lady Centaure, all over, to my cousin here. Mrs. Ott. Ay, and ’tis a very good book as any is, of the moderns. Daw. Tut, he must have Seneca read to him, and Plutarch, and the ancients ; the moderns are not for this disease. Cler. Why, you discommended them too, to¬ day, Sir John. Daw. Ay, in some cases : but in these they are best, and Aristotle’s ethics. Mav. Say you so, Sir John? I think you are deceived ; you took it upon trust. Hau. Where’s Trusty, my woman? I’ll end this difference. I prithee, Otter, call her. Her father and mother were both mad, when they put her to me. Mor. I think so.—Nay, gentlemen, I am tame. This is but an exercise, I know, a marriage cere¬ mony, which I must endure. Hau. And one of them, I know not which, was cured with the Sick Man's Salve, and the other with Green’s Groat’s-worth of Wit. True. A very cheap cure, madam. Enter Trusty. I7au. Ay, ’tis very feasible. Mrs. Ott. My lady call’d for you, mistress Trusty: you must decide a controversy. Ilau. O, Trusty, which was it you said, your father, or your mother, that was cured with the Sick Man’s Salve ? Trus. My mother, madam, with the Salve. True. Then it was the sick woman’s salve ? Trus. And my father with the Groat’s-worth of Wit. But there was other means used : we had a preacher that would preach folk asleep still; and so they were prescribed to go to church, by an old woman that was their physician, thrice a week- Epi. To sleep ? Trus. Yes, forsooth : and every night they read themselves asleep on those books. Epi. Good faith, it stands with great reason. 1 would I knew where to procure those books. Mor. Oh ! La-F. I can help you with one of them, mis¬ tress Morose, the Groat’s-worth of Wit. Epi. But I shall disfurnish you, sir Amorous: can you spare it ? La-F. O yes, for a week, or so ; I’ll read it myself to him. Epi. No, I must do that, sir ; that must be my office. Mor. Oh, oh ! Epi. Sure he would do well enough, if he could sleep. Mor. No, I should do well enough, if you could sleep. Have 1 no friend that will make her drunk, or give her a little laudanum, or opium ? True. Why, sir, she talks ten times worse in her sleep. Nay, ? but SOfcNE 11. THE SILENT W OMAN. 227 1ST or. H ow ! Cler. Do you not know that, sir? never ceases all night. True. And snores like a porpoise. Mer. O redeem me, fate ; redeem me, fate ! For how many causes may a man be divorced, nephew ? Daup. I know not, truly, sir. True. Some divine must resolve you in that, sir, or canon-lawyer. Mor. I will not rest, I will not think of any other hope or comfort, till I know. [Exit with Dauphine. Cler. Alas, poor man ! True. You'll make him mad indeed, ladies, if you pursue this. Han. No, we’ll let him breathe now, a quarter of an hour or so. Cler. By my faith, a large truce! Hau. Is that his keeper, that is gone with him ? Daw. It is his nephew, madam. La-F. Sir Dauphine Eugenie. Cen. He looks like a very pitiful knight- Daw. As can be. This marriage has put him ouc of all. La-F. He has not a penny in his purse, madam. Daw. He is ready to cry all this day. La-F. A very shark ; he set me in the nick t’other night at Primero. True. How these swabbers talk ! Cler. Ay, Otter’s wine has swell’d their humours above a spring-tide. Hau. Good Morose, let’s go in again. I like your couches exceeding well; we’ll go lie and talk there. [Exeunt IIau. Cen. Mav. Trus. La-Foolr, and Daw. Epi. [following them.'] I wait on you, madam. True. [stopping her.] ’Slight, I will have them as silent as signs, and their post too, ere I have done. Do you hear, lady-bride ? I pray thee now, as thou art a noble wench, continue this discourse of Dauphine within ; hut praise him exceedingly : magnify him with all the height of affection thou canst;—I have some purpose in't: and but beat off these two rooks, Jack Daw and his fellow, with any discontentment, hither, and I’ll honour thee for ever. Epi. I was about it here. It angered me to the soul, to hear them begin to talk so malepert. True. Pray thee perform it, and thou winn’st me an idolater to thee everlasting. Epi. Will you go in and hear me do’t? True. No, I’ll stay here. Drive them out of your company, ’tis all I ask ; which cannot be any way better done, than by extolling Dauphine, whom they have so slighted. Epi. I warrant you; you shall expect one of them presently. [Exit. Cler. What a cast of kestrils are these, to hawk after ladies, thus ! True. Ay, and strike at such an eagle as Dauphine. Cler. He will be mad when we tell him. Here he comes. Re-enter Dauphine. Cler. O sir, you are welcome. True. Where’s thine uncle ? Daup. Run out of doors in his night-caps, to talk with a casuist about his divorce. It works admirably. True. Thou wouldst have said so, an thou hadst been here ! The ladies have laugh’d at thee most comically, since thou went’st, Dauphine. Cler. And ask’d, if thou wert thine uncle’s keeper. True. And the brace of baboons answer’d, Yes ; and said thou wert a pitiful poor fellow, and didst live upon posts, and hadst nothing but three suits of apparel, and some few benevolences that the lords gave thee to fool to them, and swagger. Daup. Let me not live, I’ll beat them : I’ll bind them both to grand-madam’s bed-posts, and have them baited with monkies. True. Thou shalt not need, they shall be beaten to thy hand, Dauphine. I have an execution to serve upon them, I warrant thee, shall serve ; trust my plot. Daup. Ay, you have many plots ! so you had one to make all the wenches in love with me. True. Why, if I do it not yet afore night, as near as ’tis, and that they do not every one invite thee, and be ready to scratch for thee, take the mortgage of my wit. Cler. ’Fore God, I’ll be his witness thou shalt have it, Dauphine : thou shalt be his fool forever, if thou dost not. True. Agreed. Perhaps ’twill be the better estate. Do you observe this gallery, or rather lobby, indeed? Here are a couple of studies, at each end one: here will I act such a tragi-comedy between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Daw and La-Foole-which of them comes out first, will I seize on ;—you two shall be the chorus behind the arras, and whip out between the acts and speak—If I do not make them keep the peace for this rem¬ nant of the day, if not of the year, I have failed once-1 hear Daw coming: hide, [they with¬ draw] and do not laugh, for God’s sake. Re-enter Daw. Daw. Which is the way into the garden, trow ? True. O, Jack Daw ! I am glad I have met with you. In good faith, I must have this matter go no further between you : I must have it taken up. Daw. What matter, sir ? between whom ? True. Come, you disguise it: sir Amorous and you. If you love me, Jack, you shall make use of your philosophy now, for this once, and deliverme your sword. This is not the wedding the Centaurs were at, though there be a she one here. [Takes his sword.] The bride has entreated me I will see no blood shed at her bridal: you saw her whisper me erewhile. Daw. As I hope to finish Tacitus, I intend no murder. True. Do you not wait for sir Amorous ? Daup. Not I, by my knighthood. True. And your scholarship too ? Daw. And my scholarship too. True. Go to, then I return you your sword, and ask you mercy; but put it not up, for you will be assaulted. I understood that you had apprehended it, and yvalked here to brave him ; and that you had held your life contemptible, in regard of your honour. Daw. No, no ; no such thing, I assure you. He and I parted now, as good friends as could be. True. Trust not you to that visor. I saw r him since dinner with another face: I have known many men in my time vex’d with losses, with deaths, and with abuses ; but so offended a wight Q 2 THE SILENT WOMAN. 228 ACT IV as sir Amorous, did I never see or read of. For taking away his guests, sir, to-day, that’s the cause ; and he declares it behind your hack with such threatenings and contempts-He said to Dauphine, you were the arrant’st ass- Daw. Ay, he may say his pleasure. True. And swears you are so protested a coward, that he knows you will never do him any manly or single right; and therefore he will take his course. Daw. I’ll give him any satisfaction, sir—but fighting. True. Ay, sir : but who knows what satisfaction he’ll take : blood he thirsts for, and blood he will have ; and whereabouts on you he will have it, who knows but himself? Daw. I pray you, master Truewit, be you a mediator. True. Well, sir, conceal yourself then in this study till I return. [ Puts him into the study.] Nay, you must be content to be lock’d in ; for, for mine own reputation, I would not have you seen to receive a public disgrace, while I have the matter in managing. Ods so, here he comes; keep your breath close, that he do not hear you sigh.—In good faith, sir Amorous, he is not this way; I pray you be merciful, do not murder him ; he is a Christian, as good as you : you are arm’d as if you sought revenge on all his race. Good Dauphine, get him away from this place. I never knew a man's choler so high, but he would speak to his friends, he would hear reason.—Jack Daw, Jack! asleep ! Daw. [within \ Is he gone, master Truewit ? True. Ay; did you hear him ? Daw. O lord ! yes. True. What a quick ear fear has ! Daw. [comes out of the closet .] But is he so arm’d, as you say ? True. Arm’d ! did you ever see a fellow set out to take possession ? Daw. Ay, sir. True. That may give you some light to conceive of him ; but ’tis nothing to the principal. Some false brother in the house has furnish’d him strangely; or, if it were out of the house, it was Tom Otter. Daw. Indeed he’s a captain, and his wife is his kinswoman. True. He has got some body’s old two-hand sword, to mow you off at the knees ; and that sword hath spawn’d such a dagger!—But then he is so hung with pikes, halberds, petronels, calivers and muskets, that he looks like a justice of peace’s hall; a man of two thousand a-vear is not cess’d at so many weapons as he has on. There was never fencer challenged at so many several foils. You would think he meant to murder all St. Pulchre’s parish. If he could but victual himself for half a-year in his breeches, he is sufficiently arm’d to over-run a country. Daw. Good lord ! what means he, sir ? I p ay you, master Truewit, be you a mediator. True. Well, I’ll try if he will be appeased with a leg or an arm ; if not you must die once. Daw. I would be loth to lose my right arm, for wr ting madrigals. True. Why, if he will be satisfied with a thumb or a little finger, all’s one to me. You must think, I’ll do my best. [Shuts him up again . Daw. Good sir, do. [G'lkrimont and Dauphine come forward . Cler. What hast thou done ? True. He will let me do nothing, he does all afore ; he offers his left arm. Cler. His left wing for a Jack Daw. Damp. Take it by all means. True. How ! maim a man for ever, for a jest? What a conscience hast thou ! Daup. ’Tis no loss to him ; he has no employ¬ ment for his arms, but to eat spoon-meat. Beside, as good maim his body as his reputation. True. He is a scholar and a wit, and yet he does not think so. But he loses no reputation with us ; for we all resolved him an ass before. To your places again. Cler. I pray thee, let be me in at the other a little. True. Look, you’ll spoil all; these be ever your tricks. Cler. No, but I could hit of some things that thou wilt miss, and thou wilt say are good ones. True. I warrant you. I pray forbear, I’ll leave it off, else. Daup. Come away, Clerimont. [Daup. and Cler. withdraw as before. Enter La-Foole. True. Sir Amorous ! La-F. Master Truewit. True. Whither were you going ? La-F. Down into the court to make water. True. By no means, sir ; you shall rather tempt your breeches. La-F. Why, sir ? True. Enter here, if you love your life. [Opening the door of the other study. La-F. Why? why? True. Question till your throat be cut, do: dally till the enraged soul find you. La-F. Who is that ? True. Daw it is : will you in ? La-F. Ay, ay, I’ll in : what’s the matter ? True. Nay, if he had been cool enough to tell us that, there had been some hope to atone you ; but he seems so implacably enraged ! La-F. ’Slight, let him rage ! I’ll hide myself. True. Do, good sir. But what have you done to him within, that should provoke him thus ? You have broke some jest upon him afore the ladies. La-F. Not I, never in my life, broke jest upon any man. The bride was praising sir Dauphine, and he went away in snuff, and I followed him ; unless he took offence at me in his drink erevvhile, that I would not pledge all the horse full. True. By my faith, and that may be; you remember well : but he walks the round up and down, through every room o’ the house, with a towel in his hand, crying, Where's La-Foole ? Who saiv La-Foole ? And when Dauphine and I demanded the cause, we can force no answer from him, but—O revenge , how sweet art thou ! I will strangle him in this towel —which leads us to con¬ jecture that the main cause of his fury is, for bringing your meat to-day, with a towel about you, to his discredit. La-F. Like enough. Why, an he be angry for that, I’ll stay here till his anger be blown over. True. A good becoming resolution, sir ; if you can put it on o’ the sudden. La-F. Yes, I can put it on: or, I’ll away into the country presently. True. How will you go out of the house, sir? SCENE II. THE SILENT WOMAN, 220 he knows you are in the house, and he’ll watch this se’ennight, but he’ll have you : he’ll outwait a serjeant for you. La-F. Why, then I’ll stay here. True. You must think how to victual yourself in time then. La-F. Why, sweet master Truewit, will you entreat my cousin Otter to send me a cold venison pasty, a bottle or two of wine, and a cliamber-pot ? True. A stool were better, sir, of sir Ajax his invention. La-F. Ay, that will be better, indeed ; and a pallat to iie on. True. O, I would not advise you to sleep by any means. La-F. Would you not, sir? Why, then I will not. True. Yet, there’s another fear- La-F. Is there ! whatis’t? True. No, he cannot break open this door with his foot, sure. La-F. I’ll set my back against it, sir. I have a good back. True. But then if he should batter. La-F. Batter ! if he dare, I’ll have an action of battery against him. True. Cast you the worst. He has sent fox- powder already, and what he will do with it, no man knows : perhaps blow up the corner of the house where he suspects you are. Here he comes ; in quickly. in La-Foole and shuts the door .]—I protest, sir John Daw, he is not this way : what will you do ? Before God, you shall hang no petard here : I’ll die rather. Will you not take my woi'd ? I never knew one but would be satisfied. —Sir Amorous, [speaks through the key hole, ] there’s no standing out : he has made a petard of an old brass pot, to force your door. Think upon some satisfaction, or tei-ms to offer him. I^a-F. [ within .] Sir, I’ll give him any satisfac¬ tion : I dare give any terms. True. You’ll leave it to me then ? La-F. Ay, sir : I’ll stand to any conditions. True, [beckoningforward Cler. and Dauph.] How now, what think you, sirs ? weae’t not a diffi¬ cult thing to detei-mine which of these two fear’d most ? Cler. Yes, but this fears the bravest: the other a whiniling dastard, Jack Daw ! But La-Foole, a brave heroic coward! and is afraid in a great look and a stout accent; I like him rai'ely. True. Had it not been pity these two should have been concealed ? Cler. Shall I make a motion ? True. Briefly : for I must strike while ’tis hot. Cler. Shall I go fetch the ladies to the cata¬ strophe ? True. Umph ! ay, by my troth. Daup. By no mortal means. Let them continue in the state of ignorance, and ei*r still ; think them wits and fine fellows, as they have done. ’Twere sin to reform them. True. Well, I will have them fetch’d, now I think on’t, for a private purpose of mine : do, Olerimont, fetch them, and discom-se to them all that’s past, and bring them into the gallery here. Daup. This is thy extreme vanity, now : thou think’st thou wert undone, if every jest thou mak’st were not published. True. Thou shalt see how unjust thou art pre¬ sently. Clerimont, say it was Dauphine’s plot. [Exit Clerimont.] Trust me not, if the whole drift be not for thy good. There is a carpet in the next room, put it on, with this scarf over thy face, and a cushion on thy head, and be ready when I call Amorous. Away! Daup.] John Daw! [Goes to Daw’s closet and brings him out Daiv. What good news, sir ? True. Faith, I have followed and argued with him hard for you. I told him you were a knight, and a scholar, and that you knew fortitude did consist magis patiendo quam faciendo, magis fe¬ re ado quam fcriendo. Daw. It doth so indeed, sir. True. And that you would suffer, I told him : so at first he demanded by my troth, in my conceit, too much. Daw. What was it, sir? True. Your upper lip, and six of your fore-teeth. Daw. ’Twas um-easonable. True. Nay, I told him plainly, you could not spare them all. So after long argument pro et con . as you know, I brought him down to your two but¬ ter-teeth, and them he would have. Daw. O, did you so ? Why, he shall have them. True. But he shall not, sir, by your leave. The conclusion is this, sir : because you shall be very good friends hereafter, and this never to be remem¬ bered or upbraided ; besides, that he may not boast he has done any such thing to you in his own per¬ son ; he is to come here in disguise, give you five kicks in private, sir, take your sword from you, and lock you up in that study during pleasure : which will be but a little while, we’ll get it released pre¬ sently. Daw. Five kicks ! he shall have six, sir, to be friends. True. Believe me, you shall not over-shoot yourself, to send him that word by me. Daw. Deliver it, sir ; he shall have it with all my heart, to be friends. True. Fi’iends ! Nay, an he should not be so, and heartily too, upon these terms, he shall have me to enemy while I live. Come, sir, bear it bravely. Daw. O lord, sir, ’tis nothing. True. True : what’s six kicks to a man that reads Seneca ? Daw. I have had a hundred, sir. True. Sir Amoi-ous ! llc-enter Dauphine, disguised. No speaking one to another, or reheai*sing old mat¬ ters. Daw. [as Daup. kicks him..] One, two, three, four, five. I pi-otest, Sir Amorous, you shall have six. Tru. Nay, I told you, you should not talk. Come give him six, an he will needs. [Daupiiine kicks him again.'] —Your swoi’d. [takes his sword. ] Now return to your safe custody ; you shall pre¬ sently meet afore the ladies, and be the dearest friends one to another. [Puts Daw into the study.] —Give me the scarf now, thou shalt beat the other bare-faced. Standby: [Dauphine retires, and Truewit goes to the other closet, and releases La- Foole.] —Sir Amorous ! La-F. What’s here ! A sword ? True. I cannot help it, without I should take the quarrel upon myself. Here he has sent you his sword—— 230 THE SILENT WOMAN. act it La-F. I’ll receive none on’t. True. And he wills you to fasten it against a wall, and break your head in some few several places against the hilts. La-F. I will not: tell him roundly. I cannot endure to shed my own blood. True. Will you not? La-F. No. I’ll beat it against a fair flat wall, if that will satisfy him : if not, he shall beat it him¬ self, for Amorous. True. Why, this is strange starting off, when a man. undertakes fot you ! I offer’d him another condition ; will you stand to that ? La-F. Ay, what is’t ? True. That you will be beaten in private. La F. Yes, I am content, at the blunt. Enter, above, Haughty, Centaure, Mavis, Mistress Otter, Epjccene, and Trusty. True. Then you must submit yourself to be hoodwinked in this scarf, and be led to him, where he will take your sword from you, and make you bear a blow over the mouth, gules, and tweaks by the nose sans nornbre. La-F. I am content. But why must I be blinded? True. That’s for your good, sir; because, if he should grow insolent upon this, and publish it here¬ after to your disgrace, (which I hope he will not do,) you might swear safely, and protest, he never heat you, to your knowledge. La-F. 0, I conceive. True. I do not doubt but you’ll be perfect good friends upon’t, and not dare to utter an ill thought one of another in future. La-F. Not I, as God help me, of him. True. Nor he of you, sir. If he should, {hinds his eyes.] —Come, sir. {leads him forward.] — All kid , Sir John ! Enter Dauphine, and tweaks him by the nose. La-F. Oh, Sir John, Sir John ! Oh, o-o-o-o-o- Oh True. Good Sir John, leave tweaking, you’ll blow his nose off.—’Tis Sir John’s pleasure, you should retire into the study. {Puts him up again.] —Why, now you are friends. All bitterness be¬ tween you, I hope, is buried ; you shall come forth by and by, Damon and Pythias upon’t, and embrace with all the rankness of friendship that can be.— I trust, we shall have them tamer in their language hereafter. Dauphine, I worship thee_God’s will, the ladies have surprised us ! Enter Haughty, Centaure, Mavis, Mistress Otter, Epkxkne, and Trusty, behind. Hau. Centaui'e, how our judgments were im¬ posed on by these adulterate knights 1 Cen. Nay, madam, Mavis was more deceived than we ; ’twas her commendation utter'd them in the college. Mav. I commended but their wits, madam, and their braveries. 1 never look’d toward their valours. Hau. Sir Dauphine is valiant, and a wit too, it seems. Mav. And a bravery too. Hau. Was this his project? Mrs. Ott. So master Clerimont intimates, madam. Hau. Good Morose, when you come to the col¬ lege, will you bring him with you? he seems a very perfect gentleman. Epi. He is so madam, believe it. Cen. But when will you come, Morose ? Epi. Three or four days hence, madam, when I have got me a coach and horses. Hau. No, to-morrow, good Morose; Centaure shall send you her coach. Mav. Yes faith, do, and bring sir Dauphine with you. Hau. She has promised that, Mavis. Mav. He is a very worthy gentleman in hie exteriors, madam. Hau. Ay, he shews he is judicial in his clothes Cen. And yet not so superlatively neat as some, madam, that have their faces set in a brake. Hau. Ay, and have every hair in form* Mav. That wear purer linen than ourselves, ano profess more neatness than the French hermaphro¬ dite ! Epi. Ay, ladies, they, what they tell one of us have told a thousand ; and are the only thieves ol our fame, that think to take us with that perfume or with that lace, and laugh at us unconscionabl) when they have done. Hau. But Sir Dauphine’s carelessness become! him. Cen. I could love a man for such a nose. Mav. Or such a leg. Cen. He has an exceeding good eye, madam. Mav. And a very good lock. Cen. Good Morose, bring him to my chamber first. Mrs. Ott. Please your honours to meet at my house, madam. True. See how they eye thee, man ! they arr taken, I warrant thee. [Haughty comes forward Hau. You have unbraced our brace of knights here, master Truewit. True. Not I, madam ; it was Sir Dauphine’s ingine: who, if he have disfu.rnish’d your ladyshij of any guard or service by it, is able to make the place good again in himself. Hau. There is no suspicion of that, sir. Cen, God so, Mavis, Haughty is kissing. Mav. Let us go too, and take part. \They come forward. Hau. But I am glad of the fortune (beside the discovery of two such empty caskets) to gain the knowledge of so rich a mine of virtue as Sir Dau¬ phine. Cen. We would be all glad to style him of our friendship, and see him at the college. Mav. He cannot mix with a sweeter society, I’ll prophesy ; and I hope he himself wall think so. Daup. I should be rude to imagine otherwise, lady. True. Did not I tell thee, Dauphine! Why, all their actions are governed by crude opinion, without reason or cause ; they know not why they do any thing ; but, as they are inform’d, believe, judge, praise, condemn, love, hate, and in emula¬ tion one of another, do all these things alike. Only they have a natural inclination sways them generally to the worst, when they are left to them¬ selves. But pursue it, now thou hast them. Hau. Shall we go in again, Morose ? Epi. Yes, madam. Cen. We’ll entreat sir Dauphine’s company. True. Stay, good madam, the interview of the two friends, Pylades and Orestes : I’ll fetch them out to you straight. Hau. Will you. master Truewit ? •JCKNE I. THE SILENT WOMAN. 231 Daup. Ay, but noble ladies, do not confess in your countenance, or outward bearing to them, any discovery of tlieir follies, that we may see how they will bear up again, with what assurance and erection. Hau. We will not, sir Dauphine. Cen. Mav. Upon our honours, sir Dauphine. True. [ goes to the first closet .] Sir Amorous, sir Amorous! The ladies are here. La-F. [within .] Are they? True. Yes; but slip out by and by, as their backs are turn’d, and meet sir John here, as by chance, when I call you. [Goes to the other.'] — Jack Daw. Date. [ within .] What say you, sir? True. Whip out behind me suddenly, and no anger in your looks to your adversary. Now, now! [La-Foole and Daw slip out of their respective closds, and salute each other. La-F. Noble sir John Daw, where have you been? Daw. To seek you, sir Amorous. La-F . Me ! I honour you. Daw. I prevent you, sir. Cler. They have forgot their rapiers. True. O, they meet in peace, man. Daup. Where’s your sword, sir John ? Cler. And yours, sir Amorous? Date. Mine ! my boy had it forth to mend the handle, e’en now. La-F. And my gold handle was broke too, and my boy had it forth. Daup. Indeed, sir!—How their excuses meet! Cler. What a consent there is in the handles! True. Nay, there is so in the points too, I warrant you. Enter Morose, with the two swords, drawn in his hands. Mrs. Ott. O me! madam, he comes again, the madman! Away 1 [Ladies, Daw, and La-Foole, run off. Mor. What make these naked weapons here, gentlemen ? True. O sir! here hath like to have been murder since you went; a couple of knights fallen out about the bride’s favours! We were fain to take away their weapons ; your house had been begg’d by this time else. Mar. For what? Cler. For manslaughter, sir, as being accessary. Mor. And for her favours ? True. Ay, sir, heretofore, not present—Cleri- mont, carry them their swords now. They have done all the hurt they will do. [ Exit Cler. with the two swords. Daup. Have you spoke with the lawyer, sir? Mor. O no ! there is such a noise in the court, that they have frighted me home with more violence than I went! such speaking and counter¬ speaking, with their several voices of citations, appellations, allegations, certificates, attachments, intergatories, references, convictions, and afflictions indeed, among the doctors and proctors, that the noise here is silence to’t, a kind of calm midnight ! Tru. Why, sir, if you would be resolved indeed, I can bring you hither a very sufficient lawyer, and a learned divine, that shall enquire into every least scruple for you. Mor. Can you, master Truewit? True. Yes, and are very sober, grave persons, that will dispatch it in a chamber, with a whisper or two. Mor. Good sir, shall I hope this benefit from you, and trust myself into your hands ? True. Alas, sir ! your nephew and I have been ashamed and oft-times mad, since you went, to think how you are abused. Go in, good sir, and lock yourself up till we call you ; we’ll tell you more anon, sir. Mor. Do your pleasure with me, gentlemen; I believe in you, and that deserves no delusion. [Exit. True. You shall find none, sir;—but heap’d, heap’d plenty of vexation. Daup. What wilt thou do now, Wit? True. Recover me hither Otter and the barber, if you can, by any means, presently. Daup. Why ? to what purpose ? True. O, I’ll make the deepest divine, and gravest lawyer, out of them two for him- Daup. Thou canst not, man ; these are waking dreams. True. Do not fear me. Clap but a civil gown with a welt on the one, and a canonical cloke wfith sleeves on the other, and give them a few terms in their mouths, if there come not forth as able a doctor and complete a parson, for this turn, as may be wish’d, trust not my election : and I hope, without wronging the dignity of either profession, since they are but persons put on, and for mirth’s sake, to torment him. The barber smatters Latin, I remember. Daup. Yes, and Otter too. True. Well then, if I make them not wrangle out this case to his no comfort, let me be thought a Jack Daw or La-Foole or anything worse. Go you to your ladies, but first send for them. Daup. I will. [Exeunt. ACT SCENE I .—A Room in Morose’s House. Enter La-Foole, Clerimont, and Daw. La-F. Where had you our swords, master Cle¬ rimont ? Cler. Why, Dauphine took them from the madman. La-F. And he took them from our boys, I warrant you. Cler. Very like, sir. La-F . Thank you, good master Clerimont. Sir John Daw' and I are both beholden to you. Y. Cler. "Would I knew how to make you so, gen¬ tlemen ! Daio. Sir Amorous and I are your servants, sir. Enter Mavis. Mav. Gentlemen, have any of you a pen and ink ? I would fain write out a riddle in Italian, for sir Dauphine to translate. Cler. Not I, in troth, lady; I am no scrivener. Daw. I can furnish you, I think, lady. [Exeunt Daw and Mavis, Cler. He has it in the haft of a knife, I believe. 232 THE SILENT WOMAN. La-F. No, he has his box of instruments. Cler. Like a surgeon ! La-F. For the mathematics r his square, his compasses, his brass pens, and black-lead, to draw maps of every place and person where he comes. Cler. How, maps of persons ! La-F. Yes, sir, of Nomentack when he was here, and of the prince of Moldavia, and of his mistress, mistress Epicoene. Re-enter Daw. Cler. Away ! he hath not found out her latitude, I hope. La-F. You are a pleasant gentleman, sir. Cler. Faith, now we are in private, let's wanton it a little, and talk waggishly. —Sir John, I am telling sir Amorous here, that you two govern the ladies wherever you come ; you carry the feminine gender afore you. Daw. They shall rather carry us afore them, if they will, sir. Cler. Nay, I believe that they do, withal—but that you are the prime men in their affections, and direct all their actions- Daw. Not I ; sir Amorous is. La-F. I protest, sir John is. Daw. As I hope to rise in the state, sir Amo¬ rous, you have the person. La-F. Sir John, you have the person, and the discourse too. Daw. Not I, sir. I have no discourse—and then you have activity beside. La-F. I protest, sir John, you come as high from Tripoly as I do, every whit: and lift as many join’d stools, and leap over them, if you would use it. Cler. Well, agree on’t together, knights ; for between you, you divide the kingdom or common¬ wealth of ladies’ affections : I see it, and can per¬ ceive a little how they observe you, and fear you, indeed. You could tell strange stories, my masters, if you would, I know. Daw. Faith, we have seen somewhat, sir. La-F. That we have-velvet petticoats, and wrought smocks, or so. Daw. Ay, and- Cler. Nay, out with it, sir John; do not envy your friend the pleasure of hearing, when you have had the delight of tasting. Daw. Why—a—Do you speak, sir Amorous. La-F. No, do you, sir John Daw. Daw. I’ faith, you shall. La-F. I’ faith, you shall. D aw. Why, we have been-- La-F. In the great bed at Ware together in our time. On, sir John. Daw. Nay, do you, sir Amorous. Cler. And these ladies with you, knights ? La-F. No, excuse us, sir. Daw. We must not wound reputation. La-F. No matter—they were these, or others. Our bath cost us fifteen pound when we came home. Cler. Do you hear, sir John ? You shall tell me but one thing truly, as you love me. Daw. If I can, I will, sir. Cler. You lay in the same house with the bride here ? Dmo. Yes, and conversed with her hourly, sir. Cler. And what humour is she of? Is she com¬ ing and open, free ? Daw. O, exceeding open, sir. I was tier servant, and sir Amorous was to be. Cler. Come, you have both had favours from her : I know, and have heard so much. Daw. O, no, sir. La-F. You shall excuse us. sir; we must not wound reputation. Cler. Tut, she is married now, and you cannot hurt her with .any report; and therefore speak plainly : how many times, i’ faith? which of you led first? ha! La-F. Sir John had her maidenhead, indeed. Date. O, it phases him to say so, sir; but sir Amorous knows what’s what, as well. Cler. Dost thou, i’ faith, Amorous ? La-F. In a manner, sir. Cle^. Why, I commend you, lads. Little knows don Bridegroom of this ; nor shall he, for me. Daw. Hang him, mad ox ! Cler. Speak softly; here comes his nephew, with the lady Haughty : he’ll get the ladies from you, sirs, if you look not to him in time La-F. Why, if he do, we’ll fetch them home again, I warrant you. [Exit with Daw. Cler. walks aside. Enter Dauphine and Haughty. Hau. I assure you, sir Dauphine, it is the price and estimation of your virtue only, that hath embark’d me to this adventure ; and I could not but make out to tell you so: nor can I repent me of the act, since it is always an argument of some virtue in our selves, that we love and affect it so in others. Daup. Your ladyship sets too high a price on my weakness. Hau. Sir I can distinguish gems from pebbles — Daup. Are you so skilful in stones? [Aside. Hau. And howsoever I may suffer in such a judgment as yours, by admitting equality of rank or society with Centaure or Mavis- Daup. You do not, madam; I perceive they are your mere foils. Hau. Then, are you a friend to truth, sir ; it makes me love you the more. It is not the outward, but the inward man that I affect. They are not apprehensive of an eminent perfection, but love flat and dully. Cen. [within. ] Where are you, my lady Haughty ? Hau. I come presently, Centaure.—My cham¬ ber, sir, my page shall shew you; and Trusty, my woman, shall be ever awake for you : you need not fear to communicate any thing with her, for she is a Fidelia. I pray you wear this jewel for my sake, sir Dauphine— Enter Centaure. Where’s Mavis, Centaure ? Cen. Within, madam, a writing. I’ll follow you presently : [Exit Hau.] I’ll but speax a word with sir Dauphine. Daup. W T ith me, madam? Cen. Good sir Dauphine, do not trust Haughty, nor make any credit to her whatever you do be¬ sides. Sir Dauphine, I give you this caution, she is a perfect courtier, and loves nobody but for her uses ; and for her uses she loves all. Besides, her physicians give her out to be none o’ the clearest, whether she pay them or no, heaven knows ; and she’s above fifty too, and pargets 1 See her in a forenoon. Here comes Mavis, a worse face than she ! you would not like this by candle-light. SCENE 1 THE SILENT WOMAN. 233 Re enter Mavis. If you’ll come to my chamber one o’ these morn¬ ings early, or late in an evening, I’ll tell you more. Where’s Haughty, Mavis ? Mav. Within, Centaure. Cen. W T liat have you there ? Mav. An Italian riddle for sir Dauphine,—you shall not see it, i’faith, Centaure.—[ Exit Cen.] Good sir Dauphine, solve it for me : I’ll call for it anon. [Exit. Cler. [coming forward.'] How now, Dauphine! how dost thou quit thyself of these females? Daup. ’Slight, they haunt me like fairies, and give me jewels here ; 1 cannot be rid of them. Cler. O, you must not tell though. Daup. Mass, I forgot that: 1 was never so assaulted. One loves for virtue, and bribes me with this; [shews the jewel.] —another loves me with caution, and so would possess me ; a third brings me a riddle here: and all are jealous, and rail each at other. Cler. A riddle ! pray let me see it. [Reads. Sir Dauphine, I chose this way of intimation for privacy. The ladies here, I know, have both hope and purpose to make a collegiate and servant of you. If I might be so honoured, as to appear at any end of so noble a work, I would enter into a fame of taking physic to-morrow, and continue it four or five days, or longer, for your visitation. Mavis. By my faith, a subtle one ! Call you this a rid¬ dle ? what’s their plain-dealing, trow ? Daup. We lack Truewit to tell us that. Cler. We lack him for somewhat else too : his knights reformadoes are wound up as high and insolent as ever they w r ere. Daup. You jest. Cler. No drunkards, either with wine or vanity, ever confess’d such stories of themselves. I would not give a fly’s leg in balance against all the women’s reputations here, if they could be but thought to speak truth: and for the bride, they have made their affidavit against her directly- Daup. What, that they have lain with her ? Cler. Yes ; and tell times and circumstances, with the cause why, and the place where. I had almost brought them to affirm that they had done it to-day. Daup. Not both of them ? Cler. Yes, faith ; with a sooth or two more I had effected it. They would have set it down under their hands. Daup. Why, they will be our sport, I see, still, whether we will or no. Enter Truewit, True. O, are you here ? Come, Dauphine ; go call your uncle presently : I have fitted my divine and my canonist, dyed their beards and all. The knaves do not know themselves, they are so exalted and altered. Preferment changes any man. Thou shalt keep one door and I another, and then Cleri- mont in the midst, that he may have no means of escape from their cavilling, when they grow hot once again. And then the women, as I have given the bride her instructions, to break in upon him in the l’envoy. O, ’twill be full and twanging ! Away! fetch him. [Exit Dauphine. Enter Otter disguised as a divine, and Cutbeard as a canon lawyer. Come, master doctor, and master parson, look to your parts now, and discharge them bravely ; you are well set forth, perform it as well. If you chance to be out, do not confess it with standing still, or humming, or gaping one at another; but go on, and talk aloud and eagerly ; use vehement action, and only remember your terms, and you are safe. Let the matter go where it will: you have many will do so. But at first be very solemn and grave, like your garments, though you loose your selves after, and skip out like a brace of jugglers on a table. Here he comes: set your faces, and look superciliously, while I present you. Re-enter Dauphine with Morose. Mor. Are these the two learned men ? True. Yes, sir ; please you salute them. Mor. Salute them ! I had rather no any thing, than wear out time so unfruitfully, sir. I wonder how these common forms, as God save you, and You are ivelcome , are come to be a habit in our lives : or, I am glad to see you ! when I cannot see what the profit can be of these words, so long as it is no whit better with him whose affairs are sad and grievous, that he hears this salutation. True. ’Tis true, sir ; we’ll go to the matter then. —Gentlemen, master doctor, and master parson, I have acquainted you sufficiently with the business for which you are come hither ; and you are not now to inform yourselves in the state of the question, I know. This is the gentleman who expects your resolution, and therefore, when you please, begin. Ott. Please you, master doctor. Cut. Please you, good master parson. Ott. I would hear the canon-law speak first. Cut. It must give place to positive divinity, sir. Mor. Nay, good gentlemen, do not throw me into circumstances. Let your comforts arrive quickly at me, those that are. Be swift in affording me my peace, if so I shall hope any. 1 love not your disputations, or your court-tumults. And that it be not strange to you, I will tell you: My father, in my education, was wont to advise me, that I should always collect and contain my mind, not suffering it to flow loosely ; that I should look to what things were necessary to the carriage of my life, and what not; embracing the one and eschewing the other : in short, that I should endear myself to rest, and avoid turmoil; which now is grown to be another nature to me. So that I come not to your public pleadings, or your places of noise; not that I neglect those things that make for the dignity of the commonwealth ; but for the mere avoiding of clamours and impertinences of orators, that know not how to be silent. And for the cause of noise, am I now a suitor to you. You do not know in what a misery I have been exercised this day, what a torrent of evil ! my very house turns round with the tumult! I dwell in a windmill: the perpetual motion is here, and not at Eltham. True. Well, good master doctor, w ill you break the ice ? master parson will wade after. Cut. Sir, though unworthy, and the weaker, I will presume. Ott. ’Tis no presumption, domine doctor. Mor. Yet again! Cut. Your question is, For how many causes a man may have divortium legitimum, a lawful di¬ vorce ? First, you must understand the nature of the word, divorce, a divertendo - 234 THE SILENT WOMAN. act v. Mor. No excursions upon words, good doctor ; to ttie question briefly. Cut I answer then, the canon law affords di¬ vorce but in few cases ; and the principal is in the common case, the adulterous case: But there are duodecim impedimenta , twelve impediments, as we call them, all which do not dirimere contractual, but irritum reddere matrimonium, as we say in the canon law, not take away the bond , but cause a nullity therein. Mor. I understood you before : good sir, avoid your impertinency of translation. Olt. He cannot open this too much, sir, by your favour. Mor. Yet more ! True. O, you must give the learned men leave, sir.—To your impediments, master doctor. Cut. The first is impedimentum erroris. Ott. Of which there are several species. Cut. Ay, as error personae. Ott. If you contract yourself to one person, thinking her another. Cut. Then, error fortunes. Ott. If she be a beggar, and you thought her rich. Cut. Then, error qualitatis. Ott. If she prove stubborn or head-strong, that you thought obedient. Mor. How! is that, sir, a lawful impediment? One at once, I pray you, gentlemen. Ott. Ay, ante copulam, but not post copulam, sir. Cut. Master parson says right. Nec post nup- tiarum benedictionem. It doth indeed but irrita reddere sponsalia, annul the contract ; after mar¬ riage it is of no obstancy. True. Alas, sir, what a hope are we fallen from by this time! Cut. The next is conditio : if you thought her free born, and she prove a bond-woman, there is impediment of estate and condition. Ott. Ay, but, master doctor, those servitudes are sublatce now, among us Christians. Cut. By your favour, master parson- Ott. You shall give me leave, master doctor. Mor. Nay, gentlemen, quarrel not in that ques¬ tion ; it concerns not my case : pass to the third. Cut. Well then, the third is votum : if either party have made a vow of chastity. But that prac¬ tice, as master parson said of the other, is taken away among us. thanks be to discipline. The fourth is cognatio ; if the persons be of kin within the degrees. Olt. Ay: do you know what the degrees are, sir? Mor. No, nor I care not, sir; they offer me no comfort in the question, I am sure. Cut. But there is a branch of this impediment may, which is cognatio spiritualis: if you were her godfather, sir, then the marriage is incestuous. Ott. That comment is absurd and superstitious, master doctor: I cannot endure it. Are we not all brothers and sisters, and as much akin in that, as godfathers and god-daughters ? Mor. O me ! to end the controversy, I never ■was a godfather, I never was a godfather in my life, sir. Pass to the next. Cut. The fifth is crimen adulterii ; the known case. The sixth, cu/tus disparitas, difference of religion : Have you ever examined her, what re¬ ligion she is of ? Mor. No, I would rather she were of none, than be put to the trouble of it. Ott. You may have it done for you, sir. Mor. By no means, good sir; on to the rest: shall you ever come to an end, think you ? True. Yes, he has done half, sir. Ou to the rest.—Be patient, and expect, sir. Cut. The seventh is, vis: if it were upon com¬ pulsion or force. Mor. O no, it was too voluntary, mine; too voluntary. Cut, The eighth is, ordo ; if ever she have taken holy orders. Ott. That’s superstitious too. Mor. No matter, master parson; Would she would go into a nunnery yet. Cut. The ninth is, ligamen ; if you were bound, sir, to any other before. Mor. I thrust myself too soon into these fetters. Cut. The tenth is, publica honestas ; which is inchoata quaedam affinitas. Ott. Ay, or affinitas orta ex sponsalibus ; and is but leve impedimentum. Mor. I feel no air of comfort blowing to me, in all this. Cut. The eleventh is, affinitas ex fornicatione. Ott. Which is no less vera affinitas, than the other, master doctor. Cut , True, quae, oritur ex legitimo matrimonio. Ott. You say right, venerable doctor: and, nascitur ex eo, quod per conjugium duce person.ee efficiuntur una oaro --— True. Hey-day, now they begin ! Cut. I conceive you, master parson : ita per fornicationem ceque est verus pater, qui sic gene- rat — Ott. Et vere filius qui sic generatur - Mor. What’s all this to me ? Cler Nowit grows warm. Cut. The twelfth and last is, si forte coire ne- quibis. Ott. Ay, that is impedimentum gravissimum: it doth utterly annul, and annihilate, that. If you have manifestam frigiditatem, you are well, sir. True. Why, there is comfort come at length, sir. Confess yourself but a man_unable, and she will sue to be divorced first. Ott. Ay, or if there be morbus perpetuus, et in- sana,bills: as paralysis, elephantiasis, or so- Daup. O, but frigiditas is the fairer way, gen¬ tlemen. Ott. You say troth, sir, and as it is in the canon, master doctor— Cut. I conceive you, sir. Cler. Before he speaks ! Ott. That a boy, or child, under years, is not fit for marriage, because he cannot reddere debitum. So your ornnipotentes - True. Your irnpotentes, you whoreson lobster ! [Aside to Ott. Ott. Your irnpotentes, I should say, are minirne apti ad contrahenda matrimonium. True. Matrimonium ! we shall have most un- matrimonial Latin with you : matrimonia, and be hang’d. Daup. You put them out, man. Cut. But then there will arise a doubt, masfei parson, in our case, post matrimonium : that Jri- ! gidilatepreeditus —do you conceive me, sir ? Ott. Very well. sir. scknk i. THE SILENT WOMAN. 235 Cut. Who cannot uti uxore pro uxore , may habere earn pro sorore. Ott. Absurd, absurd, absurd, and merely apo- statical ! Cut. You shall pardon me, master parson, I can prove it. Ott. You can prove a will, master doctor ; you can prove nothing else. Does not the verse of your owu canon say, Hcec socianda vetant connubia, facta retractant ? Cut. I grant you; but how do they retractare , master parson ? Mor. 0, this was it I feared. Ott. In aeternum, sir. Cut. That’s false in divinity, by your favour. Ott. ’Tis false in humanity to say so. Is he not prorsus inutilis ad thorurn ? Can he prcestare Hdem datam ? I would fain know. Cut. Yes ; how if he do cortva/ere ? Ott. He cannot convalere, it is impossible. True. Nay, good sir, attend the learned men ; they’ll think you neglect them else. Cut. Or, if he do simulare himself frigidum, odio uxoris, or so ? Ott. I say, he is adulter manifestus then. Daup. They dispute it very learnedly, i’faith. Ott. And prostitutor uxoris; and this is positive. Mor. Good sir, let me escape. True. You will not do me that w'rong, sir? Ott. And, therefore, if he be manifesle frigidus, sir— Cut. Ay, if he be manifeste frigidus , 1 grant you— Ott. Why, that was my conclusion. Cut. And mine too. True. Nay, hear the conclusion, sir. Ott. Then, frigiditatis causa - Cut. Yes, causa frigiditatis - Mor. 0, mine ears ! Ott. She may have libellum divortii against you. Cut. Ay, divortii libellum she will sure have. Mor. Good echoes, forbear. Ott. If you confess it. Cut. Which I would do, sir- Mor. I will do any thing. Ott. And clear myself in foro conscientice - Cut. Because you want indeed- Mor. Yet more ! Ott. Exercendi potentate. ErrctF.NE rushes in, followed by Haughty, Centaure, Mavis, Mistress Otter, Daw, and La-Foolic. Epi. I will not endure it any longer. Ladies, I beseech you, help me. This is such a wrong as never was offered to poor bride before: upon her marriage-day to have her husband conspire against her, and a couple of mercenary companions to be brought in for form’s sake, to persuade a separation! If you had blood or virtue in you, gentlemen, you would not suffer such earwigs about a husband, or scorpions to creep between man and wife. Mor. 0 the variety and changes of my torment! lluu. Let them be cudgell’d out of doors by our grooms. Cen. I’ll lend you my footman. Mav. We’ll have our men blanket them in the hall. Mrs. Ott. As there was one at our house, madam, for peeping in at the door. Daw. Content, i’ faith. True. Stay, ladies and gentlemen ; you’ll hear before you proceed? Mav. I’d have the bridegroom blanketted too. Cen. Begin with him first. Hau. Yes, by my troth. Mor. 0 mankind generation ! Daup. Ladies, for my sake forbear. Hau. Yes, for sir Dauphine’s sake. Cen. He shall command us. La-F. He is as fine a gentleman of his inches, madam, as any is about the town, and wears as good colours when he lists. True. Be brief, sir, and confess your infirmity; she’ll be a-fire to be quit of you, if she but hear that named once, you shall not entreat her to stay : she’ll fly you like one that had the marks upon him. Mor. Ladies, I must crave all your pardons— True. Silence, ladies. Mor. For a wrong I have done to your whole sex, in marrying this fair and virtuous gentle* woman - Cler. Hear him, good ladies. Mor. Being guilty of an infirmity, which, before I conferred with these learned men, I thought I might have concealed —• True. But now being better informed in his conscience by them, he is to declare it, and give satisfaction, by asking your public forgiveness. Mor. I am no man, ladies. All. How! Mor. Utterly unabled in nature, by reason of frigidity, to perform the duties, or any the least office of a husband. Mav. Now out upon him, prodigious creature 1 Cen. Bridegroom uncarnate ! Hau. And would you offer it to a young gen¬ tlewoman ? Mrs. Ott. A lady of her longings ? Epi. Tut, a device, a device, this ! it smells rankly, ladies. A mere comment of his own. True. Why, if you suspect that, ladies, you may have him search’d — Daw. As the custom is, by a jury of physicians. La-F. Yes, faith, ’twill be brave. Mor. 0 me, must I undergo that? Mrs. Ott. No, let women search him, madam ; we can do it ourselves. Mor. Out on me ! worse. Epi. No, ladies, you shall not need, I'll take him with all his faults. Mor. Worst of all! Cler. Why then, ’tis no divorce, doctor, if she consent not ? Cut. No, if the man be, frigidus, it is de parte uxoris, that we grant libellum divortii, in the law. Ott. Ay, it is the same in theology. Mor. Worse, worse than worst ! True. Nay, sir, be not utterly disheartened; we have yet a small relic of hope left, as near as our comfort is blown out. Clerimont, produce your brace of knights. What was that, master parson, you told me in errore qualitatis, e’en now ?— Dauphine, whisper the bride, that she carry it as if she were guilty, and ashamed [Aside Ott. Marry, sir, in errore qualitatis, (which master doctor did forbear to urge,) if she be found corrupta, that is, vitiated or broken up, that was pro virgine desponsa, espoused for a maid - Mor. What then, sir ? 236 THE SILENT WOMAN. act v. Ott. It doth dirimere contractum , and irritum reddere too. True. If this be true, we are happy again, sir, once more. Here are an honoux-able brace of knights, that shall affirm so much. Daw. Pardon us, good master Clerimont. La-F. You shall excuse us, master Clerimont. Cler. Nay, you must make it good now, knights, there is no remedy ; I’ll eat no words for you, nor no men : you know you spoke it to me. Daw. Is this gentleman-like, sir? True. Jack Daw, he’s worse than sir Amorous ; fiercer a great deal. [ Aside to Daw.] —Sir Amo¬ rous, beware, there be ten Daws in this Clerimont. [Aside to La-Foole. La-F. I’ll confess it, sir. Daw. Will you, sir Amorous, will you wound reputation ? La-F. I am resolved. True. So should you be too, Jack Daw: what should keep you off? she’s but a woman, and in disgrace : he’ll be glad on’t. Daw. Will he ? I thought he would have been angry. Cler. You will dispatch, knights ; it must be done, i’faith. True. Why, an it must, it shall, sir, they say: they’ll ne’er go back.—Do not tempt his patience. [Aside to them. Daw. Is it true indeed, sir ? La-F. Yes, I assure you, sir. Mor. What is true, gentlemen? what do you assure me? Daw. That we have known your bride, sir- La-F. In good fashion. She was our mistress, or so- Cler. Nay, you must be plain, knights, as you were to me. Ott. Ay, the question is, if you have carnaliter, or no ? La-F. Carnaliter ! what else, sir ? Ott. It is enough ; a plain nullity. Epi. I am undone, I am undone ! Mor. O let me worship and adore you, gen¬ tlemen ! Epi. I am undone. [Weeps. Mor. Yes, to my hand, I thank these knights. Master parson, let me thank you otherwise. [Gives him money. Cen. And have they confess’d ? Mav. Now out upon them, informers! True. You see what creatures you may bestow your favours on, madams. Hau. I would except against them as beaten knights, wench, and not good witnesses in law. Mrs. Ott. Poor gentlewoman, how she takes it! Ilau. Be comforted, Morose, I love you the better for’t. Cen. So do I, I protest. Cut. But, gentlemen, you have not known her since matrimonium ? Daw. Not to-day, master doctor. La-F. No, sir, not to-day. Cut. Why, then I say, for any act before, the matrimonium is good and perfect; unless the worshipful bridegroom did precisely, before witness, demand, if she were virgo ante nuptias. Epi. No, that he did not, I assure you, master doctor. Cut. If he cannot prove that, it is ratum con- jugium, notwithstanding the premisses ; and they do no way impedire. And this is my sentence, this I pronounce. Ott. I am of master doctor’s resolution too, sir ; if you made not that demand ante nuptias. Mor. O my heart! wilt thou break ? wilt thou break ? this is worst of all worst worsts that hell could have devised! Marry a whore, and so much noise! Daup. Come, I see now plain confederacy in this doctor and this parson, to abuse a gentleman. You study his affliction. I pray be gone, compa¬ nions.—And, gentlemen, I begin to suspect you for having parts with them.—Sir, will it please you hear me ? Mor. O do not talk to me; take not from me the pleasure of dying in silence, nephew. Daup. Sir, I must speak to you. I have been long your poor despised kinsman, and many a hard thought has strengthened you against me : but now it shall appear if either I love you or your peace, and prefer them to all the world beside. I will not be long or grievous to you, sir. If I free you of this unhappy match absolutely, and instantly, after all this trouble, and almost in your despair, now— Mor. It cannot be. Daup. Sir, that you be never troubled with a murmur of it more, what shall I hope for, or deserve of you ? Mor. O, what thou wilt, nephew! thou shalt deserve me, and have me. Daup. Shall 1 have your favour perfect to me, and love hereafter ? Mor. That, and any thing beside. Make thine own conditions. My whole estate is tliine ; manage it, I will become thy ward. Daup. Nay, sir, I will not be so unreasonable. Epi. Will sir Dauphine be mine enemy too ? Daup. You know I have been long a suitor to you, uncle, that out of your estate, which is fifteen hundred a-year, you would allow me but five hun¬ dred during life, and assure the rest upon me after; to which I have often, by myself and friends, ten¬ dered you a writing to sign, which you would never consent or incline to. If you please but to effect it now- Mor. Thou shalt have it, nephew: I will do it, and more. Daup. If I quit you not presently, and for ever, of this cumber, you shall have power instantly, afore all these, to revoke your act, and I will become whose slave you will give me to, for ever. Mor. Where is the writing ? I will seal to it, that, or to a blank, and write thine own conditions. Epi. O me, most unfortunate, wretched gentle¬ woman ! Hau. Will sir Dauphine do this ? Epi. Good sir, have some compassion on me. Mor. O, my nephew knows you, belike ; away, crocodile ! Cen. He does it not sure without good ground. Daup. Here, sir. [Gives him the parchments. Mor. Come, nephew, give me the pen ; I will subscribe to any thing, and seal to what thou wilt, for my deliverance. Thou art my restorer. Here, I deliver it thee as my deed. If there be a word in it lacking, or writ with false orthography, I pro¬ test before [heaven] I will net take the advantage. [Returns the writings. Daup. Then here is your release, sir. [takes off SCENE 1. THE SILENT WOMAN. 2:17 Epicckne’s peruke and other disguises.'] You have married a boy, a gentleman's son, that I have brought up this half year at my great charges, and for this composition, which I have now made with you.—What say you, master doctor? This is justum imp■ dimentum, 1 hope, error personae ? Ott Yes, sir, in primo grudu. Cut. In primo gradu. Daup. I thank you, good doctor Cutbeard, and parson Otter, [pulls their false beards and gowns off.] You arebeholden to them, sir, that have taken this pains for you ; and my friend, master Truewit, who enabled them for the business. Now you may go in and rest; be as private as you will, sir. [ Exit Morose.] I’ll not trouble you, till you trouble me with your funeral, which I care not how soon it come. — Cutbeard, I’ll make your lease good. Thank me not , but with your leg, Cutbeard. And Tom Otter, your princess shall be reconciled to you.—How now, gentlemen, do you look at me? Cler. A boy! Daup. Yes, mistress Epicoene. True. Well, Dauphine, you have lurch’d your friends of the better half of the garland, by con¬ cealing this part of the plot: but much good do it thee, thou deserv’st it, lad. And, Clerimont, for thy unexpected bringing these two to confession, wear my part of it freely. Nay, sir Daw and sir La-Foole, you see the gentlewoman that has done you the favours ! we are all thankful to you, and so should the woman-kind here, specially for lying on her, though not with her ! you meant so, I am sure. But that we have stuck it upon you to-day, in your own imagined persons, and so lately, this Amazon, the champion of the sex, should beat you now thriftily, for the common slanders which ladies receive from such cuckoos as you are. You are they that, when no merit or fortune can make you hope to enjoy their bodies, will yet lie with their reputations, and make their fame suffer. Away, you common moths of these, and all ladies’ honours. Go, travel to make legs and faces, and come home with some new matter to be laugh’d at; you deserve to live in an air as corrupted as that where¬ with you feed rumour. [Exeunt Daw and La- Foole.] —Madams, you are mute, upon this new metamorphosis ! But here stands she that has vin¬ dicated your fames. Take heed of such insectse hereafter. And let it not trouble you, that you have discovered any mysteries to this young gentle¬ man : he is almost of years, and will make a good visitant within this twelvemonth. In the mean time, we’ll all undertake foi his secrecy, that can speak so well of his silence. [ Coming forward .]— Spectators, if you like this comedy, rise cheerfully, and now Morose is gone in, clap your hands. It may be, that noise will cure him , at least please him. [ Exeunt THE ALCHEMIST TO THE LADY MOST DESERVING HER NAME AND BLOOD, LADY MARY WROTH. Madam,— In the age of sacrifices, the truth of religion was not in the greatness and fat of the offerings, hut in the devotion and zeal of the sacrificers: else what could a handful of gums have done in the sight of a hecatomb ? or how might I appear at this altar, except with those affections that no less love the light and witness, than they have the con¬ science of your virtue ? If what I offer bear an acceptable odour, and hold the first strength, it is your value of it, which remembers where, when, and to whom it was kindled. Otherwise, as the times are, there comes rarely forth that thing so full of authority or example, but by assiduity and custom grows less, and loses. This, yet, safe in your judgment (which is a Sidney’s) is forbidden to speak more, lest it talk or look like one of the ambitious faces of the time, who, the more they paint, are the less themselves. Your ladyship’s true honourer, Ben Jonso.v. TO THE Ik thou beest more, thou art an understander, and then I trust thee. If thou art one that takest up, and but a pretender, beware of what hands thou receivest thy com¬ modity ; for thou wert never more fair in the way to be cozened, than in this age, in poetry, especially in plays: wherein, now the concupiscence of dances and of antics so relgneth, as to run away from nature, and be afraid of her, is the only point of art that tickles the spectators. But how out of purpose, and place, do I name art? When the professors are grown so obstinate contemners of it, and pre- sumers on their own naturals, as they are deriders of all diligence that way, and, by simple mocking at the terms, when they understand not the things, think to get off wit¬ tily with their ignorance. Nay, they are esteemed the more learned, and sufficient for this, by the many, through their excellent vice of judgment. For they commend writers, as they do fencers or wrestlers; who if they come in robust- uously, and put for it with a great deal of violence, are received for the braver fellows: when many times their i READER. own rudeness is the cause of their disgrace, and a little touch of their adversary gives all that boisterous force the foil. I deny not, but that these men, who always seek to do more than enough, may some time happen on some thing that is good, and great; but very seldom; and when it comes it doth not recompense the rest of their ill. It sticks out, perhaps, and is more eminent, because all is sordid and vile about it: as lights are more discerned in a thick darkness, than a faint shadow. I speak not this, out of a hope to do good to any man against his will ; for I know, if it were put to the question of theirs and mine, the worse would find more suffrages : because the most favour com¬ mon errors. But I give thee this warning, that there is a great difference between those, that, to gain the opinion of copy, utter all they can, however unfitly ; and those that use election and a mean. For it is only the disease of the unskilful, to think rude things greater than polished; or scattered more numerous than composed. Subtle, the Alchemist. Face, the Housekeeper. Dol Common, their Colleague. Dapper, a Lawyer’s Clerk. Diutgger, a Tobacco Man. Lovewit, Master of the House. Sm Epicure Mammon, a Knight. DRAMATIS PERSON/E. Pkutinax Surly, a Gamester. Tribulation Wholesome, a Pastor of Amsterdam. Ananias, a Deacon there. Kastrill, the angry Boy. Dame 1’i.iant, his Sister, a Widow. Neighbours. Officers, Attendants, &c. Scene,— LONDON. ARGUMENT. T he sickness hot, a master quit, for fear, H is house in town, and left one servant there ; E ase him corrupted , and gave means to know A Cheater, and his punk ; who now brought low , L earning their narrow practice, were become C ozeners at large ; and onh] wanting some H oust to set up, with him they here, contract, E ach for a share , and all begin to act. M uch company they draw, and much abuse, I n casting figures, telling fortunes, news, S elling of files, fiat bawdry with the stone, T ill it, and they, and all in fume are gone. SOKN K THE ALCHEMIST. 230 PROLOGUE. Fortune, that favours fools, these two short hours, We wish away , hath for your sakes and ours, Judging spectators ; and desire , in place, To the author justice, to ourselves but grac°. Our scene is London, 'cause roe would make known, No country’s mirth is better than our own : No clime breeds better matter for your whore, Bared, squire, impostor, many persons more, Whose mannt rs ,now call'd humours feed the stage; And which have still been subject for the rage Or spleen of comic ivriters. Though this pen Did never aim to grieve, but better men ; Howe’er the age he lives in doth endure The vices that she breeds, above their cure. But when the wholesome remedies are sweet, And in their working gain and profit meet, He hopes to find no spirit so much diseased. But will with such fair correctives be pleased j For here he doth not fear who can apply. If there be any that will sit so nigh Unto the stream, to look what it doth run, They shall find things, they'd think or wish we> e Tlwy are so natural follies, but so shown, [done ; As even the doers may see, and yet not own. ACT I. SCENE I.— A Room in Lovewit’s House. Enter Face, in a captain’s uniform , with his sword drawn, and Subtle with a vial, quarrelling, and followed by Pol Common. Face. Believe’t, I will. Sub. Thy worst. I fart at thee. Dol. Have you your wits? why, gentlemen ! for love— Face. Sirrah, I’ll strip you- Sub. What to do ? lick figs Out at my- Face. Rogue, rogue !—out of all your sleights. Dol. Nay, look ye, sovereign, general, are you madmen ? Sub. O, let the wild sheep loose. I’ll gum your With good strong water, an you come. [silks Dol. Will you have The neighbours hear you ? will you betray all ? Hark ! 1 hear somebody. Face. Sirrah- Sub. I shall mar All that the tailor has made, if you approach. Face. You most notorious whelp, you insolent Dare you do this ? [slave, Sub. Yes, faith ; yes, faith. Face. Why, who Am I, my mungrel ? who am I ? Sub. I’ll tell you, Since you know not yourself. Face. Speak lower, rogue. Sub. Yes, you were once (time's not long past) the good, Honest,plain, livery-three-pound-thrum, that kept Your master’s worship’s house here in the Friars, For the vacations- Face. Will you be so loud ? Sub. Since, by my means, translated suburb- Face. By your means, doctor dog 1 [captain. Sub. "Within man’s memory, All this I speak of. Face. Why, I pray you, have I Been countenanced by you, or you by me ? Do but collect, sir, where I met you first. Sub. I do not hear well. Face. Not of this, I think it. But I shall put you in mind, sir;—at Pie-corner, Taking your meal of steam in, from cooks’ stalls, Where, like the father of hunger, you did walk Piteously costive, with your pinch’d-horn-nose, And your complexion of the Roman wash, Stuck full of black and melancholic worms, Like powder corns shot at the artillery-yard. Sub. I wish you could advance your voice a little. Face. When you went pinn’d up in the several rags You had raked and pick’d from dunghills, before day ; Your feet in mouldy slippers, for your kibes ; A felt of rug, and a thin threaden cloke, That scarce would cover your no buttocks- Sub. So, sir ! Face. When all your alchemy, and your algebra, Your minerals, vegetals, and animals, Your conjuring, cozening, and your dozen of trades, Could not relieve your corps with so much linen Would make you tinder, but to see a fire ; I gave you countenance, credit for your coals, Your stills, your glasses, your materials ; Built you a furnace, drew you customers, Advanced all your black arts; lent you, beside, A house to practise in- Sub. Your master’s house ! Face. Where you have studied the more thriving Of bawdry since. [skill Sub. Yes, in your master’s house. You and the rats here kept possession. Make it not strange. I know you were one could keep The buttery-hatch still lock’d, and save the chip- Sell the dole beer to aqua-vitae men, [pings, The which, together with your Christmas vails At post-and-pair, your letting out of counters, Made you a pretty stock, some twenty marks, And gave you credit to converse with cobwebs, Here, since your mistress’ death hath broke up Face. You might talk softlier, rascal. [house. Sub. No, you scarab, I’ll thunder you in pieces: I will teach you How to beware to tempt a Fury again, That carries tempest in his hand and voice. Face. The place has made you valiant. Sub. No, your clothes.— Thou vermin, have I ta’en thee out of dung, So poor, so wretched, when no living thing Would keep thee company, but a spider, or worse? Rais’d thee fi'om brooms, and dust, and watering- pots, Sublimed thee, and exalted thee, and fix’d thee In the third region, call’d our state of grace : Wrought thee to spirit, to quintessence, with pains 240 THE ALCHEMIST. act i. Would twice have won me the philosopher’s work ? Put thee in words and fashion, made thee fit For more than ordinary fellowships ? Giv’n thee thy oaths, thy quarrelling dimensions, Thy rules to cheat at horse-race, cock-pit, cards, Dice, or whatever gallant tincture else? Made thee a second in mine own great art? And have I this for thanks ! Do you rebel, Do you fly out in the projection ? Would you be gone now ? Dol. Gentlemen, what mean you? Will you mar all ? Sub. Slave, thou hadst had no name- Dol. Will you undo yourselves with civil war ? Sub. Never been known, past equx clibanum, The heat of horse-dung, under ground, in cellars, Or an ale-house darker than deaf John's; been lost To all mankind, but laundresses and tapsters, Had not I been. Dol. Do you know who hears you, sovereign ? Face. Sirrah- Dol. Nay, general, I thought you were civil. Face. I shall turn desperate, if you grow thus Sub. And hang thyself, 1 care not. [loud. Face. Hang thee, collier, And all thy pots, and pans, in picture, I will, Since thou hast moved me- Dol. O, this will o’erthrow all. Face. Write thee up bawd in Paul’s, have all thy tricks Of cozening with a hollow cole, dust, scrapings, Searching for things lost, with a sieve and sheers, Erecting figures in your rows of houses, And taking in of shadows with a glass, Told in red letters ; and a face cut for thee, Worse than Gamaliel Ratsey’s. Dol. Are you sound ? Have you your senses, masters? Face. I will have A book, but barely reckoning thy impostures, Shall prove a true philosopher's stone to printers. Sub. Away, you trencher-rascal! Face. Out, you dog-leacli! The vomit of all prisons- Dol. Will you be Your own destructions, gentlemen ? Face. Still spew’d out For lying too heavy on the basket. Sub. Cheater! Face. Bawd ! Sub. Cow-herd! Face. Conjurer! Sub. Cut-purse! Face. Witch ! Dol. O me ! We are ruin’d, lost! have you no more regard To your reputations? where’s your judgment? ’slight, Have yet some care of me, of your republic- Face. Away, this brach I I’ll bring thee, rogue, The statute of sorcery, tricesimo tertio [within Of Harry the Eighth : ay, and perhaps, thy neck Within a noose, for laundring gold and barbing it. Dol. [ Snatches Face’s sword.~\ You'll bring your head within a cockscomb, will you ? And you, sir, with your menstrue— [Dashes Subtle’s vial out of his hand. Gather it up.— ’Sdeath, you abominable pair of stinkards, Leave off your barking, and grow one again. Or, by the light that shines, I’ll cut your throats. I’ll not be made a prey unto the marshal, For ne’er a snarling dog-holt of you both. Have you together cozen’d all this while, And all the world, and shall it now be said, You’ve made most courteous shift to cozen your¬ selves ? You will accuse him! you will bring him in [To Face. Within the statute ! Who shall take your woid ? A whoreson, upstart, apocryphal captain, Whom not a Puritan in Blackfriars will trust So much as for a feather : and you, too, [To Subtle. Will give the cause, forsooth ! you will insult, And claim a primacy in the divisions ! You must be chief ! as if you only had The powder to project with, and the work Were not begun out of equality ? The venture tripartite? all things in common? Without priority ? ’Sdeath ! you perpetual curs, Fall to your couples again, and cozen kindly, And heartily, and lovingly, as you should, And lose not the beginning of a term, Or, by this hand, I shall grow factious too. And take my part, and quit you. Face. ’Tis his fault; He ever murmurs, and objects his pains, And says, the weight of all lies upon him. Sub. Why, so it does. Dol. How does it? do not we Sustain our parts ? Sub. Yes, but they are not equal. Dol. Why, if your part exceed to-day, I hope Ours may, to-morrow, match it. Sub. Ay, they may. Dol. May, murmuring mastiff! ay, and do. Death on me ! Help me to throttle him. [Seizes Sub. ly the throat. Sub. Dorothy ! mistress Dorothy ! ’Ods precious, I’ll do any thing. What do you mean ? Dol. Because o’ your fermentation and cibation ? Sub. Not I, by heaven- Dol. Your Sol and Luna-help me. [To Face. Sub. Would I were bang’d then ! I’ll conform myself. Dal. Will you, sir ? do so then, and quickly: Sub. What should I swear ? [swear. Dol. To leave your faction, sir, And labour kindly in the common work. Sub. Let me not breathe if I meant aught beside. I only used those speeches as a spur To him. Dol. I hope we need no spurs, sir. Do we? Face. ’Slid, prove te-day, who shall shark best. Sub. Agreed. Dol. Yes, and work close and friendly. Sub. ’Slight, the knot Shall grow the stronger for this breach, with me. [They shake hands. Dol. Why, so, my good baboons ! Shall we go A sort of sober, scurvy, precise neighbours, [make That scarce have smiled twice since the king came A feast of laughter at our follies ? Rascals, [in, Would run themselves from breath, to see me ride, Or you t’ have but a hole to thrust your heads in, For which you should pay ear-rent? No, agree. And may don Provost ride a feasting long, In his old velvet jerkin and stain’d scarfs, My noble sovereign, and worthy general, SCENE I. THE ALCHEMIST. 241 Ere we contribute a new crewel garter To his most worsted worship. Sub. Royal Dol! Spoken like Claridiana, and thyself. Face. For which at supper, thou shalt sit in triumph, And not be styled Dol Common, but Dol Proper, Dol Singular : the longest cut at night, Shall draw thee for his Doll Particular. [Bell rings without. Sub. Who’s that ? one rings. To the window, Dol: [Exit Dol.] —pray heaven, The master do not trouble us this quarter. Face. O, fear not him. While there dies one a week O’ the plague, he’s safe, from thinking toward Lon- Beside, he’s busy at his hop-yards now ; [don : I had a letter from him. If be do, He’ll send such word, for airing of the house, As you shall have sufficient time to quit it: Though we break up a fortnight, ’tis no matter. Re-enter Dol. Sub. Who is it, Dol ? Dol. A fine young quodling. Face. O, My lawyer’s clerk, I lighted on last night, In Holborn, at the Dagger. He would have (I told you of him) a familiar, To rifie with at horses, and win cups. Dol. O, let him in. Sub. Stay. Who shall do’t ? Face. Get you Your robes on: I will meet him as going out. Dol. And what shall I do ? Face. Not be seen ; away ! [Exit Dol. Seem you very reserv’d. Sub. Enough. [Exit. Face. [ aloud and retiring. ] God be wi’ you, sir, I pray you let him know that I was here : His name is Dapper. I would gladly have staid, Dap. [within.'] Captain, I am here. [but— Face. Who’s that ?—He’s come, I think, doctor. Enter Dapper. Good faith, sir, I was going away. Dap. In truth, I am very sorry, captain. Face. But I thought Sure I should meet you. Dap. Ay, I am very glad. I had a scurvy writ or two to make, And I had lent my watch last night to one That dines to-day at the sheriff’s, and so was robb’d Of my past-time. Re-enter Subtle, in his velvet Cap ancl down. Is this the cunning-man ? Face. This is bis w r orship. Dap. Is he a doctor ? Face. Yes. Dap. And you have broke with him, captain ? Face. Ay. Dap. And how ? Face. Faith, he does make the matter, sir, so I know not what to say. [dainty Dap. Not so, good captain. Face. Would I were fairly rid of it, believe me. Dap. Nay, now you grieve me, sir. Why should you wish so ? 1 dare assure you, I’ll not De ungrateful. Face. I cannot think you will, sir. But the law Is such a thing-and then he says, Read’s matter Falling so lately. Dap. Read ! he was an ass, And dealt, sir, with a fool. Face. It was a clerk, sir. Dap. A clerk! Face. Nay, hear me, sir, you know the law Better, I think- Dap. I should, sir, and the danger : You know, I shew’d the statute to you. Face. You did so. Dap. And will I tell then ! By this hand of flesh, Would it might never write good court-hand more, If I discover. What do you think of me, That I am a cbiaus ? Face. What’s that ? Dap. The Turk was here. As one would say, do you think I am a Turk ? Face. I’ll tell the doctor so. Dap. Do, good sweet captain. Face. Come, noble doctor, pray thee let’s prevail; This is the gentleman, and he is no cbiaus. Sub. Captain, I have return’d you all my answer. I would do much, sir, for your love-But this I neither may, nor can. Face. Tut, do not say so. You deal now with a noble fellow, doctor, One that will thank you richly; and he is no chiaus ; Let that, sir, move you. Sub. Pray you, forbear- Face. He has Four angels here. Sub. You do me wrong, good sir. Face. Doctor, wherein ? to tempt you with these spirits ? Sub. To tempt my art and love, sir, to my peril. Fore heaven, I scarce can think you are my friend, That so would draw me to apparent danger. Face. I draw you! a horse draw you, and a You, and your flies together- [halter, Dap. Nay, good captain. Face. That know no difference of men. Sub. Good words, sir. Face. Good deeds, sir, doctor dogs-meat. ’Slight. I bring you No cheating Clim o’ the Cloughs, or Claribels, That look as big as five-and-fifty, and flush ; And spit out secrets like hot custard— Dap. Captain ! Face. Nor any melancholic under-scribe, Shall tell the vicar ; but a special gentle, That is the heir to forty marks a year, Consorts with the small poets of the time, Is the sole hope of his old grandmother ; That knows the law, and writes you six fair hands, Is a fine clerk, and has his cyphering perfect, Will take his oath o’ the Greek Testament, If need be, in his pocket; and can court His mistress out of Ovid. Dap. Nay, dear captain- Face. Did you not tell me so ? Dap. Yes; but I’d have you Use master doctor with some more respect. Face. Hang him, proud stag, with his broad velvet head!— But for your sake, I’d choak, ere I would change An article of breath with such a puckfist: Come, let’s be gone. [Gom-a Sub. Pi-ay you let me speak with you. r 242 THE ALCHEMIST. ACT I. Dap. His worship calls you, captain. Face. I am sorry I e’er embark’d myself in such a business. Dap. Nay, good sir ; he did call you. Face. Will he take then ? Sub. First, hear me- Face. Not a syllable, ’less you take. Sub. Pray you, sir- Face. Upon no terms, but an assumpsit. Sub. Your humour must be law. [He takes the four angels. Face. Why now, sir, talk. Now I dare hear you with mine honour. Speak. So may this gentleman too. Sub. Why, sir-[ Offering to whisper Face. Face. No whispering. Sub. Fore heaven, you do not apprehend the You do yourself in this. [loss Face. Wherein ? for what ? Sub. Marry, to be so importunate for one, That, when he has it, will undo you all: He’ll win up all the money in the town. Face . How ! Sub. Yes, and blow up gamester after gamester, As they do crackers in a puppet play. If I do give him a familiar, Give you him all you play for ; never set him : For he will have it. Face. You are mistaken, doctor. Why he does ask one but for cups and horses, A rifling fly ; none of your great familiars. Dap. Yes, captain, I would have it for all games. Sub. I told you so. Face. [Taking Dap. aside.'] ’Slight, that is a new business ! I understood you, a tame bird, to fly Twice in a term, or so, on Fi'iday nights, When you had left the office, for a nag Of forty or fifty shillings. Dap. Ay, ’tis true, sir ; But I do think now I shall leave the law, And therefore- Face. Why, this changes quite the case. Do you think that I dare move him ? Dap. If you please, sir ; All’s one to him, I see. Face. What! for that money ? I cannot with my conscience ; nor should you Make the request, methinks. Dap. No, sir, I mean To add consideration. Face. Why then, sir, I’ll try.— [Goes to Subtle.] Say that it were for all games, doctor ? Sub. I say then, not a mouth shall eat for him At any ordinary, but on the score, That is a gaming mouth, conceive me. Face. Indeed ! Sub. He’ll draw you all the treasure of the realm, If it be set him. Face. Speak you this from art ? Sub. Ay, sir, and reason too, the ground of art. He is of the only best complexion, The queen of Fairy loves. Face. What! is he ? Sub. Peace. He’ll overhear you. Sir, should she but see him— Face. What ? Sub. Do not yon tell him. Face. Will he win at cards too ? Sub. The spirits of dead Holland, living Tsaac, You’d swear were in him; such a vigorous luck As cannot be resisted. ’Slight, he’ll put Six of your gallants to a cloke, indeed. Face. A strange success, that some man shall be Sub. He hears you, man- [born to ! Dap. Sir, I’ll not be ingrateful. Face. Faith, I have confidence in his good na- You hear, he says he will not be ingrateful. [lure: Sub. Why, as you please; my venture follows yours. Face. Troth, do it, doctor; think him trusty, and make him. He may make us both happy in an hour ; Win some five thousand pound, and send us two Dap. Believe it, and I will, sir. [on’t. Face. And you shall, sir. [Takes him aside. You have heard all ? Dap. No, what was’t ? Nothing, I, sir. Face. Nothing ! Dap. A little, sir. Face. Well, a rare star Reign’d at your birth. Dap. At mine, sir ! No. Face. The doctor Swears that you are- Sub. Nay, captain, you’ll tell all now. Face. Allied to the queen of Fairy. Dap. Who ? that I am ? Believe it, no such matter- Face. Yes, and that You were born with a cawl on your head. Dap. Who says so ? Face. Come, You know it well enough, though you dissemble it. Dap. I’fac, I do not: you are mistaken. Face. How ! Swear by your fac, and in a thing so known Unto the doctor ? How shall we, sir, trust you In the other matter ? can we ever think, When you have won five or six thousand pound, You’ll send us shares in’t, by this rate? Dap. By Jove, sir, I’ll win ten thousand pound, and send you half. I’ fac’s no oath. Sub. No, no, he did but jest. Face. Go to. Go thank the doctor : lie’s your To take it so. [friend, Dap. I thank his worship. Face . So! Another angel. Dap. Must I ? Face. Must you! ’slight, What else is thanks ? will you be trivial ?—Doctor, [Dapper gives him t)-\ movep. When must he come for his familiar ? Dap. Shall I not have it with me ? Sub. O, good sir ! There must a world of ceremonies pass ; You must be bath’d and fumigated first: Besides the queen of Fairy does not rise Till it be noon. Face. Not, if she danced, to-night. Sub. And she must bless it. Face. Did you never see Her royal grace yet ? Dap. Whom? Face. Your aunt of Fairy ? Sub. Not since she kist him in the cradle, I can resolve you that. [captain ; scene I. THE ALCHEMIST. 2-13 Face. Well, see her grace, Whate’er it cost you, for a thing that I know. It will be somewhat hard to compass ; but However, see her. You are made, believe it, If you can see her. Her grace is a lone woman, And very rich ; and if she take a fancy, She will do strange things. See her, at any hand. ’Slid, she may hap to leave you all she has : It is the doctor’s fear. Dap. How will’t be done, then ? Face. Let me alone, take you no thought. Do But say to me, captain, I’ll see her grace. [you Dap. Captain , I'll see her grace. Face. Enough. [Knocking within. Sub. Who’s there ? Anon.—Conduct him forth by the back way.— [Aside to Face. Sir, against one o’clock prepare yourself; Till when you must be fasting ; only take Three drops of vinegar in at your nose, Two at your mouth, and one at either ear ; Then bathe your fingers ends and wash your eyes, To sharpen your five senses, and cry hum Thrice, and then buz as often ; and then come. [Exit. Face. Can you remember this ? Dap. I warrant you. Face. Well then, away. Itis but your bestowing Some twenty nobles ’mong her grace’s servants, And put on a clean shirt: you do not know What grace her grace may do you in clean linen. [Exeunt Face and Dapper. Sub. [within.’] Come in! Good wives, I pray you forbear me now; Troth I can do you no good till afternoon— Re-enters, followed by Drugger. What is your name, say you, Abel Drugger ? Drug. Yes, sir. Sub. A seller of tobacco ? Drug. Yes, sir. Sub. Umph ! Free of the grocers ? Drug. Ay, an’t please you. Sub. Well Your business, Abel? Drug. This, an’t please your worship ; I am a young beginner, and am building Of anew shop, an’t like your worship, just At corner of a street: —Here is the plot on’t—■ And I would know by art, sir, of your worship, • Which way I should make my door, by necro¬ mancy, And where my shelves; and which should be for boxes, And which for pots. I would be glad to thrive, sir : And I was wish’d to your worship by a gentleman, One captain Face, that says you know men’s And their good angels, and their bad. [planets, Sub. I do, If I do see them- Re-enter Face. Face. What! my honest Abel ? Thou art well met here. Drug. Troth, sir, I was speaking, Just as your worship came here, of your worship : I pray you speak for me to master doctor. Face. He shall do anything.—Doctor, do you This is my friend, Abel, an honest fellow ; [hear ! He lets me have good tobacco, and he does not Sophisticate it with sack-lees or oil, Nor washes it in muscadel and grains, Nor buries it in gravel, under ground, Wrapp’d up in greasy leather, or piss’d clouts ; But keeps it in fine lily pots, that, open’d, Smell like conserve of roses, or French beans. He has his maple block, his silver tongs, Winchester pipes, and fire of Juniper : A neat, spruce, honest fellow, and no goldsmith. Sub. He is a fortunate fellow, that I am sure on. Face. Already, sir, have you found it ? Lo thee, Sub. And in right way toward riches— [Abel ! Face. Sir ! Sub. This summer He will be of the clothing of his company, And next spring call’d to the scarlet ; spend what Face. What, and so little beard ? [he can. Sub. Sir, you must think, He may have a receipt to make hair come: But he’ll be wise, preserve his youth, and fine for’t ; His fortune looks for him another way. Face. ’Slid, doctor, how canst thou know this I am amused at that ! [so soon ? Sub. By a rule, captain, In metoposcopy, which I do work by ; A certain star in the forehead, which you see not. Your chesnut or your olive-colour’d face Does never fail: and your long ear doth promise. I knew’t by certain spots, too, in his teeth, And on the nail of his mercurial finger. Face. Which finger’s that ? Sub. His little finger. Look. You were born upon a Wednesday ? Drug. Yes, indeed, sir. Sub. The thumb, in chiromancy, we give Venus ; The fore-finger, to Jove ; the midst, to Saturn ; The ring, to Sol ; the least, to Mercury, Who was the lord, sir, of his horoscope, His house of life being Libra ; which fore-show’d, He should be a merchant, and should trade with balance. Face. Why, this is strange ! Is it not, honest Nab? Sub. There is a ship now, coming from Ormus, That shall yield him such a commodity Of drugs-This is the west, and this the south ? [Pointing to the plan. Drug. Yes, sir. Sub. And those are your two sides ? Drug. Ay, sir. Sub. Make me your door, then, south; your broad side, west : And on the east side of your shop, aloft, Write Mathlai, Tarmiel, and Baraborat; Upon the north part, Rael, Velel, Thiel. They are the names of those mercurial spirits, That do fright flies from boxes. Drug. Yes, sir. Sub. And Beneath your threshold, bury me a load-stone To draw in gallants that wear spurs : the rest, They’ll seem to follow. Face. That’s a secret, Nab ! Sub. And, on your stall, a puppet, with a vice And a court-fucus to call city-dames : You shall deal much with minerals. Drug. Sir, I have At home, already- Sub. Ay, I know you have arsenic, Vitriol, sal-t .rtar, argaile, alkali, R g 244 THE ALCHEMIST. act ii. Cinoper : I know all.—This fellow, captain, Will come, in time, to be a great distiller, And give a say—I will not say directly, But very fair—at the philosopher's stone. Face. Wliy, how now, Abel! is this true ? Drug. Good captain, What must I give ? [Aside to Face. Face. Nay, I’ll not counsel thee. Thou hear’st what wealth (he says, spend what Thou’rt like to come to. [thou canst,) Drug. I would gi’ him a crown. Face. A crown! and toward such a fortune ? heart, Thou shalt rather gi’ him thy shop. No gold about thee? Drug. Yes, I have a portague, I have kept this half year. Face . Out on thee, Nab ! ’Slight, there was such an offer— Shalt keep’t no longer, I’ll give’t him for thee. Doctor, Nab prays your worship to drink this, and swears He will appear more grateful, as your skill Does raise him in the world. Drug. I would entreat Another favour of his worship. Face. What is’t, Nab ? Drug. But to look over, sir, my almanack, And cross out my ill days, that I may neither Bargain, nor trust upon them. Face. That he shall, Nab ; Leave it, it shall be done, ’gainst afternoon. Sub. And a direction for his shelves. Face. Now, Nab, Art thou well pleased, Nab ? Drug. ’Thank, sir, both your worships. Face. Away.— [Exit Drugger. Why, now, you smoaky persecutor of nature ! Now do you see, that something’s to be done, Beside your beech-coal, and your corsive waters, Your crosslets, crucibels, and cucurbites? You must have stuff brought home to you, to work And yet you think, I am at no expense [on : In searching out these veins, then following them, ACT SCENE I .—AnOuter Room mLovewit’s House. Enter Sir Epicure Mammon and Surly. Mam. Come on, sir. Now, you set your foot In Novo Orbe ; here’s the rich Peru: [on shore And there within, sir, are the golden mines, Great Solomon’s Ophir ! he was sailing to’t, Three years, but we have reach’d it in ten months. This is the day, wherein, to all my friends, I will pronounce the happy word, Be rich ; This day you shall be spectatissimi. You shall no more deal with the hollow dye, Or the frail card. No more be at charge of keeping The livery-punk for the young heir, that must Seal, at all hours, in his shirt: no more, If he deny, have him beaten to’t, as he is That brings him the commodity. No more Shall thirst of satin, or the covetous hunger Of velvet entrails for a rude-spun cloke, To be display’d at madam Augusta’s make Then trying them out. ’Fore Go-1, ny intelli¬ gence Costs me more money, than my share oft comes to, In these rare works. Sub. You are pleasant, sir.— Re-enter Dol. How now! What says my dainty Dolkin? Dol. Yonder fish-wife Will not away. And there’s your giantess, The bawd of Lambeth. Sub. Heart, I cannot speak with them. Dol. Not afore night, I have told them in a voice, Thorough the trunk, like one of your familiars. But I have spied sir Epicure Mammon- Sub. Where ? Dol. Coming along, at far end of the lane, Slow of his feet, but earnest of his tongue To one that’s with him. Sub. Face, go you, and shift. [Exit Face, Dol, you must presently make ready, too. Dol. Why, what’s the matter ? Sub. O, I did look for him With the sun’s rising : ’marvel he could sleep, This is the day I am to perfect for him The magisterium, our great work, the stone ; And yield it, made, into his hands : of which He has, this month, talk’d as he were possess’d. And now he’s dealing pieces on’t away— Methinks I see him entering ordinaries, Dispensing for the pox, and plaguy houses, Reaching his dose, walking Moorfields for lepera, And offering citizens’ wives pomander-bracelets, As his preservative, made of the elixir; Searching the spittal, to make old bawds young ; And the highways, for beggars, to make rich: I see no end of his labours. He will make Nature asham’d of her long sleep : when art, Who’s but a step-dame, shall do more than she. In her best love to mankind, ever could: If his dream lasts, he’ll turn the age to gold. [Exeunt II. The sons of Sword and Hazard fall before The golden calf, and on their knees, -whole nights. Commit idolatry with wine and trumpets : Or go a feasting after drum and ensign. No more of this. You shall start up young viceroys, And have your punks, and punketees, my Surly. And unto thee I speak it first, Be rich. Where is my Subtle, there? Within, ho ! Face. [ Within.'] Sir, he’ll come to you by and by- Mam. That is his fire-drake, His Lungs, his Zephyrus, he that puffs his coals, Till he firk nature up, in her own centre. You are not faithful, sir. This night, I’ll change All that is metal, in my house, to gold : And, early in the morning, will I send To all the plumbers and the pewterers, And buy their tin and lead up; and to Lothbury For all the copper. Sur. What, and turn that too ? THE ALCHEMIST. SCENE I. Mam . Yes, and I’ll purchase Devonshire and Cornwall, And make them perfect Indies! you admire now ? Sur. No, faith. Mam. But when you see th’ effects of the Great Medicine, Of which one part projected on a hundred Of Mercury, or Venus, or the moon, Shall turn it to as many of the sun ; Nay, to a thousand, so ad infinitum : You will believe me. Sur. Yes, when I see’t, I will. But if my eyes do cozen me so, and I Giving them no occasion, sure I’ll have A whore, shall piss them out next day. Mam. Ha ! why ? Do you think I fable with you ? I assure you, He that has once the flower of the sun, The perfect ruby, which we call elixir, Not only can do that, but, by its virtue, Can confer honour, love, respect, long life ; Give safety, valour, yea, and victory, To whom he will. In eight and twenty days, I’ll make an old man of fourscore, a child. Sur. No doubt; he’s that already. Mam. Nay, I mean, Restore his years, renew him, like an eagle. To the fifth age ; make him get sons and daughters, Young giants ; as our philosophers have done, The ancient patriarchs, afore the flood, But taking, once a week, on a knife’s point, The quantity of a grain of mustard of it; Become stout Marses, and beget young Cupids. Sur. The decay’d vestals of Pict-hatch would That keep the fire alive, there. [thank you, Mam. ’Tis the secret Of nature naturiz’d ’gainst all infections, Cures all diseases coming of all causes ; A month’s grief in a day, a year’s in twelve ; And, of what age soever, in a month : Past all the doses of your dragging doctors. I’ll undertake, withall, to fright the plague Out of the kingdom in three months. Sur. And I’ll Be bound, the players shall sing your praises, then, Without their poets. Mam. Sir, I’ll do’t. Mean time, I’ll give away so much unto my man, Shall serve the whole city, with preservative, Weekly; each house his dose, and at the rate— Sur. As he that built the Water-work, does with Mam. You are incredulous. [water? Sur. Faith I have a humour, I would not willingly be gull’d. Your stone Cannot transmute me. Mam. Pertinax, [my] Surly, Will you believe antiquity ? records ? I’ll shew you a book where Moses and his sister, And Solomon have written of the art; Ay, and a treatise penn’d by Adam— Sur. How! Mam. Of the philosopher’s stone, and in High Dutch. Sur. Did Adam write, sir, in High Dutch? Mam. He did; Which proves it was the primitive tongue. Sur. What paper? Mam. On cedar board. Sur. O that, indeed, they say, Will last ’gainst worms. 245 Mam. ’Tis like your Irish wood, ’Gainst cob-webs. I have a piece of Jason’s fleece, Which was no other than a book of alchemy, [too Writ in large sheep-skin, a good fat ram-vellum. Such was Pythagoras’ thigh, Pandora’s tub, And, all that fable of Medea’s charms, The manner of our work ; the bulls, our furnace, Still breathing fire ; our argent-vive, the dragon : The dragon’s teeth, mercury sublimate, That keeps the whiteness, hardness, and the biting? And they are gather’d into Jason’s helm, The alembic, and then sow’d in Mars his field, And thence sublimed so often, till they’re fix’d. Both this, the Hesperian garden, Cafimus’ story, Jove’s shower, the boon of Midas, Argus’ eyes, Boccace his Demogorgon, thousands more, All abstract riddles of our stone.— Enter Face, as a Servant. How now! Do we succeed ? Is our day come ? and holds it ? Face. The evening will set red upon you, sir ; You have colour for it, crimson : the red ferment Has done his office ; three hours hence prepare yoi To see projection. Mam. Pertinax, my Surly, Again I say to thee, aloud, Be rich. This day, thou shalt have ingots ; and, to-morrow, Give lords th’ affront.—Is it, my Zephyrus, right \ Blushes the bolt’s-head ? Face. Like a wench with child, sir, That were but now discover’d to her master. Mam. Excellent witty Lungs !—my only care is, Where to get stuff enough now, to project on; This town will not half serve me. Face. No, sir ! buy The covering off o’ churchee. Mam, That’s true. Face. Yes. Let them stand bare, as do their auditory; Or cap them, new, with shingles. Mam. No, good thatch: Thatch will lie light upon the rafters, Lungs.— Lungs, I will manumit thee from the furnace; I will restore thee thy complexion, Puffe, Lost in the embers ; and repair this brain, Hurt with the fume o’ the metals. Face. I have blown, sir, Hard for your worship ; thrown by many a coal, When ’twas not beech ; weigh’d those I put in, just. To keep your heat still even; these blear’d eyes Have wait’d to read your several colours, sir, Of the pale citron, the green lion, the crow, The peacock’s tail, the plumed swan. Mam. And, lastly, Thou hast descry’d the flower, the sanguis agni ? Face. Yes, sir. Mam. Where’s master ? Face. At his prayers, sir, he ; Good man, he’s doing his devotions For success. Mam. Lungs, I will set a period To all thy labours ; thou shalt be the master Of my seraglio. Face. Good, sir. Mam. But do you hear ? I’ll geld you, Lungs. Face. Yes, sir. Mam. For I do mean To have a list of wives and concubines, ‘ 246 THE ALCHEMIST. act i Equal with Solomon, who had the stone Alike with me ; and I will make me a back With the elixir, that shall be as tough As Hercules, to encounter fifty a night.— Thou art sure thou saw’st it blood ? Face. Both blood and spirit, sir. Mam. I will have all my beds blown up, not stuft: Down is too hard: and then, mine oval room Fill’d with such pictures as Tiberius took From Elephantis, and dull Aretine But coldly imitated. Then, my glasses Cut in more subtle angles, to disperse And multiply the figures, as I walk Naked between my succubas. My mists I’ll have of perfume, vapour’d ’bout the room, To lose ourselves in ; and my baths, like pits To fall into ; from whence we will come forth, And roll us dry in gossamer and roses.— Ts it arrived at ruby ?- Where I spy A wealthy citizen, or [a] rich lawyer, Have a sublimed pure wife, unto that fellow I’ll send a thousand pound to be my cuckold. Face. And I shall carry it ? Mam. No. I’ll have no bawds, But fathers and mothers : they will do it best, Best of all others. And my flatterers Shall be the pure and gravest of divines, That I can get for money. My mere fools, Eloquent burgesses, and then my poets The same that writ so subtly of the fart, Whom I will entertain still for that subject. The few that would give out themselves to be Court and town-stallions, and, each-where, bely Ladies who are known most innocent for them ; Those will I beg, to make me eunuchs of: And they shall fan me with ten estrich tails A-piece, made in a plume to gather wind. We will be brave, Puffe, now we have the med’cine. My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells, Dishes of agat set in gold, and studded With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies. The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels’ heels, Boil’d in the spirit of sol, and dissolv’d pearl, Apicius’ diet, ’gainst the epilepsy : And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber, Headed with diamond and carbuncle. My foot-boy shall eat pheasants, calver’d salmons, Knots, godwits, lampreys : I myself will have The beards of barbels served, instead of sallads ; Oil’d mushrooms ; and the swelling unctuous paps Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off, Drest with an exquisite, and poignant sauce ; For which, I’ll say unto my cook, There's gold, Go forth, and be a knight. Face. Sir, I’ll go look A little, how it heightens. [Exit. Mam. Do.—My shirts I’ll have of taffeta-sarsnet, soft and light As cobwebs ; and for all my other raiment, It shall be such as might provoke the Persian, Were he to teach the world riot anew. My gloves of fishes and birds’ skins, perfumed With gums of paradise, and eastern air - Sur. And do you think to have the stone with this ? Mam. No, I do think t’ have all this with the stone. Sur. Why, I have heard, he must be homo frugi, A pious, holy, and religious man, One free from mortal sin, a very virgin. Mam. That makes it, sir ; he is so : but I buy it ; My venture brings it me. He, honest wretch, A notable, superstitious, good soul, Has w T orn his knees bare, and his slippers bald, With prayer and fasting for it : and sir, let him Do it alone, for me, still. Here he comes. Not a profane word afore him : ’tis poison. — Enter Subtle. Good morrow, father. Sub. Gentle son, good morrow. And to your friend there. What is he, is with you? Mam. An heretic, that I did bring along, In hope, sir, to convert him. Sub. Son, I doubt You are covetous, that thus you meet your time In the just point : prevent your day at morning. This argues something, worthy of a fear Of importune and carnal appetite. Take heed you do not cause the blessing leave you, With your ungovern’d haste. I should be sorry To see my labours, now even at perfection, Got by long watching and large patience, Not prosper where my love and zeal hath placed them. Which (heaven I call to witness, with your self, To whom I have pour’d my thoughts) in all my ends, Have look’d no way, but unto public good, To pious uses, and dear charity Now grown a prodigy with men. Wherein If you, my son, should now prevaricate, And, to your own particular lusts employ So great and catholic a bliss, be sure A curse will follow, yea, and overtake Your subtle and most secret ways. Mam. I know, sir ; You shall not need to fear me : I but come, To have you confute this gentleman. Sur. Who is, Indeed, sir, somewhat costive of belief Toward your stone ; would not be gull’d. Sub. Well, son, All that I can convince him in, is this, The work is done, bright sol is in his robe. We have a medicine of the triple soul, The glorified spirit. Thanks be to heaven, And make us worthy of it !— Ulen Spiegel ! Face. [ within .] Anon, sir. Sub. Look well to the register. And let your heat still lessen by degrees, To the aludels. Face. [ within .] Yes, sir. Sub. Did you look 0 the bolt’s-head yet ? Face. \ within .] Which? on D, sir? Sub. Ay ; What’s the complexion ? Face. [ within .] Whitish. Sub. Infuse vinegar, To draw his volatile substance and his tincture : And let the water in glass E be filter’d, And put into the gripe’s egg. Lute him well ; And leave him closed in balneo. Face. [ within .] I will, sir. Sur. What a brave language here is ! next to canting. Sub. I have another work, you never saw, son That three days since past the philosopher’s wheel In the lent heat of Athanor ; and’s become Sulphur of Nature. scene i. THE ALCHEMIST. 247 Mam. But ’ tis for me ? Sub. What need you ? You have enough in that is perfect. Mam. 0 but Sub. Why, this is covetise ! Mam. No, I assure you, I shall employ it all in pious uses, Founding of colleges and grammar schools, Marrying young virgins, building hospitals, And now and then a church. Re-enter Face. Sub. How now ! Face. Sir, please you, Shall I not change the filter ? Sub. Marry, yes ; And bring me the complexion of glass B. [Exit Face. Mam. Have you another ? Sub. Yes, son ; were I assured— Your piety were firm, we would not want The means to glorify it: but I hope the best.— I mean to tinct C in sand-heat to-morrow, And give him imbibition. Mam. Of white oil ? Sub. No, sir, of red. F is come over the helm I thank my Maker, in S. Mary’s bath, [too, And shews lac virginis. Blessed be heaven ! I sent you of his faeces there calcined : Out of that calx, I have won the salt of mercury. Mam. By pouring on your rectified water ? Sub. Yes, and reverberating in Athanor. Re-enter Face. How now ! what colour says it ? Face. The ground black, sir. Mam. That’s your crow’s head ? Sur. Your cock’s-comb’s, is it not? Sub. No, ’tis not perfect. Would it were the That work wants something. [crow ! Sur. 0, I look’d for this. The hay’s a pitching. [Aside. Sub. Are you sure you loosed them In their own menstrue ? Face. Yes, sir, and then married them, And put them in a bolt’s-head nipp’d to digestion, According as you bade me, when I set The liquor of Mars to circulation In the same heat. Sub. The process then was right. Face. Yes, by the token, sir, the retort brake, And what was saved was put into the pelican, And sign’d with Hermes’ seal. Sub. I think ’twas so. We should have a new amalgama. Sur. 0, this ferret Is rank as any pole-cat. [Aside. Sub. But I care not : Let him e’en die ; we have enough beside, In embrion. H has his white shirt on? Face. Yes, sir, lie’s ripe for inceration, he stands warm, In his ash-fire. I would not you should let Any die now, if I might counsel, sir, For luck’s sake to the rest : it is not good. Mam. He says right. Sur. Ay, are you bolted ? [Aside. Face. Nay, I know’t, sir, I have seen the ill fortune. What is some three Of fresh materials ? [ounces Mam. Is’t no more ? Face. No moi’e, sir, Of gold, t’amalgame with some six of mercury. Mam. Away, here’s money. What will serve ? Face. Ask him, sir. Mam. How much ? Sub. Give him nine pound : —you may give him Sur. Y”es, twenty, and be cozen’d, do. [ten. Mam. There ’tis. [Gives Face the money. Sub. This needs not ; but that you will have it To see conclusions of all : for two [so, Of our inferior works are at fixation, A third is in ascension. Go your ways. Have you set the oil of luna in kemia ? Face. Yes, sir. Sub. And the philosopher’s vinegar ? Face. Ay. [Exit Sur. We shall have a sallad ! Mam. When do you make projection? Sub. Son, be not hasty, I exalt our med’cine, By hanging him in balneo vaporoso , And giving him solution ; then congeal him ; And then dissolve him ; then again congeal him : For look, how oft I iterate the work, So many times I add unto his virtue. As, if at first one ounce convert a hundred, After his second loose, he’ll turn a thousand ; His third solution, ten ; his fourth, a hundred : After his fifth, a thousand thousand ounces Of any imperfect metal, into pure Silver or gold, in all examinations, As good as any of the natural mine. Get you your stuff here against afternoon, Your brass, your pewter, and your andirons. Mam. Not those of iron? Sub. Yes, you may bring them too : We’ll change all metals. Sur. I believe you in that. Mam. Then I may send my spits ? Sub. Yes, and your racks. Sur. And dripping pans, and pot-hangers, and Shall he not ? hooks, Sub. If he please. Sur. —To be an ass. Sub. How, sir ! Mam. This gentleman you must bear withal : I told you he had no faith. Sur. And little hope, sir ; But much less charity, should I gull myself. Sub. Why, what have you observ’d, sir, in our Seems so impossible ? [art, Sur. But your whole work, no moi-e. That you should hatch gold in a furnace, sir, As they do eggs in Egypt ! Sub. Sir, do you Believe that eggs are hatch’d so ? Sur. If I should ? Sub. Why, I think that the greater miracle. No egg but differs from a chicken more Than metals in themselves. Sur. That cannot be. The egg’s ordain’d by nature to that end, And is a chicken in potentia. Sub. The same we say of lead and other metals, Which would be gold, if they had time. Mam. And that Oux : art doth further. Sub. Ay, for ’twere absurd To think that nature in the earth bred gold Perfect in the instant : something went before. There must be remote matter. MS THE ALCHEMIST. act a. Sur. Ay, what is that ? Sub. Marry, we say— Mam. Ay, now it heats: stand, fathei, Pound him to dust. Sub. It is, of the one part, A humid exhalation, which we call Materia liquida, or the unctuous water ; On the other part, a certain crass and vicious Portion of earth ; both which, concorporate, Do make the elementary matter of gold ; Which is not yet propria materia , But common to all metals and all stones ; For, where it is forsaken of that moisture, And hath more driness, it becomes a stone : Where it retains more of the humid fatness, It turns to sulphur, or to quicksilver, Who are the parents of all other metals. Nor can this remote matter suddenly Progress so from extreme unto extreme, As to grow gold, and leap o’er all the means. Nature doth first beget the imperfect, then Proceeds she to the perfect. Of that airy And oily w T ater, mercury is engender’d ; Sulphur of the fat and earthy part; the one, Which is the last, supplying the place of male, The other of the female, in all metals. Some do believe hermaphrodeity, That both do act and suffer. But these two Make the rest ductile, malleable, extensive. And even in gold they are ; for we do find Seeds of them, by our fire, and gold in them ; And can produce the species of each metal More perfect thence, than nature doth in earth. Beside, who doth not see in daily practice Art can beget bees, hornets, beetles, wasps, Out of the carcasses and dung of creatures ; Yea, scorpions of an herb, being rightly placed? And these are living creatures, far more perfect And excellent than metals. Mam. Well said, father ! Nay, if he take you in hand, sir, with an argument, He’ll bray you in a mortar. Sur. Pray you, sir, stay. Rather than I’ll be bray’d, sir, I’ll believe That Alchemy is a pretty kind of game, Somewhat like tricks o’the cards, to cheat a man With charming. Sub. Sir ? Sur. What else are all your terms, Whereon no one of your writers ’grees with other? Of your elixir, your lac virginis, Your stone, your med’eine, and your chrysosperme. Your sal, your sulphur, and your mercury, Your oil of height, your tree of life, your blood, Your marchesite, your tutie, your magnesia, Your toad, your crow, your dragon, and your pan¬ ther ; Your sun, your moon, your firmament, your adrop, Your lato, azoch, zernich, chibrit, heautarit, And then your red man, and your white woman, With all your broths, your menstrues, and mate¬ rials, Of piss and egg-shells, women’s terms, man’s blood, Hair o' the head, burnt clouts, chalk, merds, and clay, Powder of bones, scalings of iron, glass, And worlds of other strange ingredients, Would burst a man to name ? Sub. And all these named, Intending but one thing : which art our writers Used to obscure their art. Mam. Sir, so I told him— Because the simple idiot should not learn it, And make it vulgar. Sub. Was not all the knowledge Of the ^Egyptians writ in mystic symbols? Speak not the scriptures oft in parables ? Are not the choicest fables of the poets, That w r ere the fountains and first springs of wis- Wrapp’d in perplexed allegories ? [dom, Mam. I urg’d that, And clear’d to him, that Sysiphus was damn’d To roll the ceaseless stone, only because He would have made Ours common. [Dol appears at the door. ]—Who is this? Sub. ’Sprecious !—What do you mean? go in, good lady, Let me entreat you. [Dol retires .]—Where’s this varlet ? lie-enter Face. Face. Sir. Sub. You very knave ! do you use me thus ? Face. Wherein, sir? Sub. Go in and see, you traitor. Go! [Exit Face. Mam. Who is it, sir? Sub. Nothing, sir ; nothing. Mam. What’s the matter, good sir ? I have not seen you thus distemper’d : who is’t ? Sub. All arts have still had, sir, their adversa- But ours the most ignorant.— [ries, Re-enter Face. What now ? Face. ’Twas not my fault, sir ; she would speak with you. Sub. Would she, sir ! Follow me. [Exit. Mam. [stopping him.'] Stay, Lungs. Face. I dare not, sir. Man. Stay, man ; what is she ? Face. A lord’s sister, sir. Mam. How ! pray thee, stay. Face. She’s mad, sir, and sent hither— He’ll be mad too— Mam. I warrant thee.— Why sent hither ? Face. Sir, to be cured. Sub. [within.] Why, rascal! Face. Lo you !—Here, sir! [Exit. Mam. ’Fore God, a Bradamante, a brave piece. Sur. Heart, this is a bawdy-house ! I will be burnt else. Mam. 0, by this light, no: do not -wrong him. Too scrupulous that way : it is his vice. [He’s No, he’s a rare physician, do him right, An excellent Paracelsian, and has done Strange cures with mineral physic. He deals all With spirits, he ; he will not hear a word Of Galen, or his tedious recipes.— Re-enter Face. How now, Lungs ! Face. Softly, sir; speak softly. I meant To have told your worship all. This must not hear. Mam. No, he will not be “gull’d:” let him alone. Face. You are very right, sir, she is a most rare scholar, And is gone mad with studying Broughton’s w r orks. If you but name a word touching the Hebrew, SCENE I. THE ALCHEMIST. 249 She falls into her fit, and will -discourse So learnedly of genealogies, As you would run mad too, to hear her, sir. Mam. How might one do t’ have conference with her, Lungs ? Face. O divers have run mad upon the confer- I do not know, sir. I am sent in haste, [ence : To fetch a vial. Sur. Be not gull’d, sir Mammon. Mam. Wherein ? pray ye, be patient. Sur. Yes, as you are, And trust confederate knaves and bawds and whores. Mam. You are too foul, believe it.—Come here, One word. [Ulen, Face. I dare not, in good faith. [ Going. Mam. Stay, knave. Face. He is extreme angry that you saw her, sir. Mam. Drink that. [Gives him money^ What is she when she’s out of her fit ? Face. O, the most affablest creature, sir! so merry! So pleasant! she’ll mount you up, like quick-silver, Over the helm ; and circulate like oil, A very vegetal: discourse of state, Of mathematics, bawdry, any thing- Mam. Is she no way accessible ? no means, No trick to give a man a taste of her-wit- Or so ? Sub. [ within .] Ulen ! Face. I’ll come to you again, sir. [Exit. Mam. Surly, I did not think one of your breed- Would traduce personages of worth. [ing Sur. Sir Epicure, Your friend to use ; yet still loth to be gull’d : I do not like your philosophical bawds. Their stone is letchery enough to pay for, Without this bait. Mam. ’Heart, you abuse yourself. I know the lady, and her friends, and means, The original of this disaster. Her brother Has told me all. Sur. And yet you never saw her Till now! Mam. O yes, but I forgot. I have, believe it, One of the treacherousest memories, I do think, Of all mankind. Sur. What call you her brother ? Mam. My lord- He will not have his name known, now I think on’t. Sur. A very treacherous memory ! Mam. On my faith- Sur. Tut, if you have it not about you, pass it, Till w r e meet next. Mam. Nay, by this hand, ’tis true. He’s one I honour, and my noble friend ; And I respect his house. Sur. Heart 1 can it be, That a grave sir, a rich, that has no need, A wise sir, too, at other times, should thus, With his own oaths, and arguments, make hard To gull himself? An this be your elixir, [means Your lapis mineralis, and your lunary, Give me your honest trick yet at primero, Or gleek; and take your lutum sapientis, Your menstruum simplex l I’ll have gold before you, And with less danger of the quicksilver, Or the hot sulphur. Re-enter Face. Face. Here’s one from captain Face, sir, [ to Surly.] Desires you meet him in the Temple-church, Some half hour hence, and upon earnest business. Sir, [ whispers Mammon.] if you please to quit us, now ; and come Again within two hours, you shall have My master busy examining o’ the works ; And I will steal you in, unto the party, That you may see her converse.—Sir, shall I say, You’ll meet the captain’s worship ? Sur. Sir, I will.— [ Walks aside. But, by attorney, and to a second purpose. Now, I am sure it is a bawdy-house ; I’ll swear it, were the marshal here to thank me: The naming this commander doth confirm it. Don Face ! why he’s the most authentic dealer In these commodities, the superintendant To all the quainter traffickers in town ! He is the visitor, and does appoint, Who lies with whom, and at what hour ; what price; Which gown, and in what smock ; what fall; what Him will I prove, by a third person, to find [tire. The subtleties of this dark labyrinth : Which if I do discover, dear sir Mammon, You’ll give your poor friend leave, though no philosopher, To laugh : for you that are, ’tis thought, shall weep. Face. Sir, he does pray, you’ll not forget. Sur. I will not, sir. Sir Epicure, I shall leave you. [Exit. Mam. I follow you, straight. Face. But do so, good sir, to avoid suspicion. This gentleman has a parlous head. Mam.. But wilt thou, Ulen, Be constant to thy promise ? Face. As my life, sir. Mam. And wilt thou insinuate what I am, and And say, I am a noble fellow ? [praise me, Face. O, what else, sir ? And that you’ll make her royal with the stone, An empress; and yourself, king of Bantam. Mam. Wilt thou do this ? Face. Will I, sir ! Mam. Lungs, my Lungs ! I love thee. Face. Send your stuff, sir, that my master May busy himself about projection. Mam. Thou hast witch’d me, rogue : take, go. [Gives him money. Face. Your jack, and all, sir. Mam. Thou art a villain—I will send my jack, And the weights too. Slave, I could bite thine ear. Away, thou dost not care for me. Face. Not I, sir ! Mam. Come, I was born to make thee, my good weasel, Set thee on a bench, and have thee twirl a chain With the best lord’s vermin of ’em all. Face. Away, sir. Mam. A count, nay, a count palatine- Face. Good, sir, go. Mam. Shall not advance thee better: no, nor faster. [ Exit. Re-enter Subtle and Dol. Sub. Has he bit ? has he bit ? Face. And swallowed too, my Subtle. I have given him line, and now he plays, i’ faith. Sub. And shall we twitch him? Face. Thorough both the gills. A wench is a rare bait, with which a man No sooner’s taken, but he straight firks mad. 250 THE ALCHEMIST. act ii. Sub. Dol, my lord What’ts’hums sister, you Bear yourself statelich. [must now Dol. O let me alone. I’ll not forget my race, I warrant you. I’ll keep my distance, laugh and talk aloud ; Have all the tricks of a proud scurvy lady, 4nd be as rude as her woman. Face. Well said, sanguine! Sub. But will he send his andirons ? Face. His jack too, 4nd’s iron shoeing horn; I have spoke to him. I must not lose my wary gamester yonder. [Well, Sub. O monsieur Caution, that will not beguil'd. Face. Ay, If I can strike a fine hook into him, now ! The Temple-church, there I have cast mine angle. Well, pray for me. I’ll about it. [ Knocking without. Sub. What, more gudgeons ! Dol, scout, scout ! [Dol goes to the window.] Stay, Face, you must go to the door, ’Pray God it be my anabaptist.—Who is’t, Dol ? Dol. I know him not: he looks like a gold-end- man. Sub. Ods so ! ’tis he, he said he would send what call you him ? The sanctified elder, that should deal For Mammon’s jack and andirons. Let him in. Stay, help me off, first, with my gown. [Exit Face ivith the gown.'] Away, Madam, to your withdrawing chamber. [Exit Dol.] Now, In a new tune, new gesture, but old language_ This fellow is sent from one negociates with me About the stone too ; for the holy brethren Of Amsterdam, the exiled saints ; that hope To raise their discipline by it. I must use him In some strange fashion, now, to make him admire me.— Enter Ananjas. Where is my drudge ? [Aloud. Re-enter Face. Face. Sir ! Sub. Take away the recipient, And rectify your menstrue from the phlegma. Then pour it on the Sol, in the cucurbite, And let them macerate together. Face. Yes, sir. And save the ground ? Sub. No : terra daw.nata Must not have entrance in the work—Who are you? Ana. A faithful brother, if it please you. Sub. What’s that ? A Lullianist ? a Ripley ? Filius artis ? Can you sublime and dulcify ? calcine? Know you the sapor pontic ? sapor stiptic ? Or what is homogene, or heterogene ? Ana. I understand no heathen language, truly. Sub. Heathen! you Knipper-doling? is Ars Or chrysopoeia, or spagyrica, [sacra, Or the pamphysic, or panarchic knowledge, A heathen language ? Ana. Heathen Greek, I take it. Sub. How ! heathen Greek ? Ana. All’s heathen but the Hebrew. Sub. Sirrah, my varlet, stand you forth and speak to him, Like a philosopher: answer in the language. Name the vexations, and the martyrizations Of metals in the work. Face. Sir, putrefaction, Solution, ablution, sublimation, Cohobation, calcination, ceration, and Fixation. Sub. This is heathen Greek, to you, now !— And when comes vivification ? Face. After mortification. Sub. What’s cohobation? Face. ’Tis the pouring on Your aqua regis, and then drawing him oft’, To the trine circle of the seven spheres. Sub. What’s the proper passion of metals ? Face. Malleation. Sub. What’s your ultimum supplicium auri ? Face. Antimonium. Sub. This is heathen Greek to you!—And what’s your mercury ? Face. A very fugitive, he will be gone, sir. Sub. How know you him ? Face. By his viscosity, His oleosity, and his suscitability. Sub. How do you sublime him ? Face. With the calce of egg-shells, White marble, talc. Sub. Your magisterium, now, What’s that? Face. Shifting, sir, your elements, Dry into cold, cold into moist, moist into hot, Hot into dry. Sub. This is heathen Greek to you still! Your lapis philosophicus ? Face. ’Tis a stone, And not a stone ; a spirit, a soul, and a body : Which if you do dissolve, it is dissolved; If you coagulate, it is coagulated ; If you make it to fly, it flieth. Sub. Enough. [.Exit Facs. This is heathen Greek to you! What are you, sir? Ana. Please you, a servant of the exiled bre¬ thren, That deal with widows and with orphans’ goods; And make a just account unto the saints : A deacon. Sub. O, you are sent from master Wholsome, Your teacher ? Ana. From Tribulation Wholsome, Our very zealous pastor. Sub. Good ! I have Some orphans’ goods to come here. Ana. Of what kind, sir. Sub. Pewter and brass, andirons and kitchen- Metals, that we must use our medicine on: [ware, Wherein the brethren may have a pennyworth, For ready money. Ana. Were the orphans’ parents Sincere professors ? Sub. Why do you ask ? Ana. Because We then are to deal justly, and give, in truth, Their utmost value. Sub. ’Slid, you’d cozen else, And if their parents were not of the faithful!— I will not trust you, now I think on it, ’Till I have talk’d with your pastor. Have you To buy more coals ? [brought money Ana. No, surely. Sub. No! how so ? Ana . The brethren bid me say unto you, sir, Surely, they will not venture any more, Till they may see projection. THE ALCHEMIST. SCENE T. Sub. How! Ana. You have had, For the instruments, as bx'icks, and lome. and glasses, Already thirty pound ; and for materials, They say, some ninety more : and they have heard That one at Heidelberg, made.it of an egg, [since, And a small paper of pin-dust. Sub. What’s your name ? Ana. My name is Ananias. Sub. Out, the varlet That cozen’d the apostles ! Hence, away! Flee, mischief! had your holy consistory No name to send me, of another sound, Than wicked Ananias ? send your elders Hither to make atonement for you quickly, And give me satisfaction; or out goes The fire; and down th’ alembics, and the furnace, Piger Henricus, or what not. Thou wretch ! Both sericon and bufo shall be lost, Tell them. All hope of rooting out the bishops, Or the anti Christian hierarchy, shall perish, If they stay threescore minutes : the aqueity, Terreity, and sulphureity Shall run together again, and all be annull’d, Thou wicked Ananias ! [Exit Ananias.] This will fetch ’em, And make them haste towards their gulling more. A man must deal like a rough nurse, and fright Those that are froward, to an appetite. Re-enter Face in his uniform , folloived , by Drugger. Face. He is busy with his spirits, but we’ll upon him. Sub. How now ! what mates, what Baiards have we here ? Face. I told you, he would be furious.—Sir, here’s Nab, Has brought you another piece of gold to look on : ■—We must appease him. Give it me,—and prays You would devise—what is it, Nab ? [you, Drxtg. A sign, sir. Face. Ay, a good lucky one, a thriving sign, Sub. I was devising now. [doctor. Face. ’Slight, do not say so, He will repent he gave you any more— What say you to his constellation, doctor, The Balance ? Sub. No, that way is stale, and common. A townsman born in Taurus, gives the bull, Or the bull’s-head : in Aries, the ram, A poor-device ! No, I will have his name Form’d in some mystic character ; whose radii, Striking the senses of the passers by, Shall, by a virtual influence, breed affections, That may result upon the party owns it: As thus- Face. Nab ! Sub. He shall have a bel, that’s Abel; And by it standing one whose name is Dee, In a rug gown, there’s D, and Rug, that’s drug : And right anenst him a dog snarling er ; There’s Drugger, Abel Drugger. That’s his sign. And here’s now mystery and hieroglyphic ! Face. Abel, thou art made. Drug. Sir, I do thank his worship. Face. Six o’ thy legs more will not do it, Nab. He has brought you a pipe of tobacco, doctor. Drug. Yes, sir: I have another thing I would impart- 251 Face. Out with it, Nab. Drug. Sir, there is lodged, hard by me, A rich young widow- Face. Good ! a bona roba ? Drug. But nineteen, at the most. Face. Very good, Abel. Drug. Marry, she’s not in fashion yet; she A hood, but it stands a cop. [wears Face. No matter, Abel. Drug. And I do now and then give her afucus— Face. What! dost thou deal, Nab ? Sub. I did tell you, captain. Drug. And physic too, sometime, sir; for which she trusts me With all her mind. She’s come up here of purpose To learn the fashion. Face. Good (his match too !)—On, Nab. Drug. And she does strangely long to know her fortune. Face. Ods lid, Nab, send her to the doctor, hither. Drug. Yes, I have spoke to her of his worship But she’s afraid it will be blown abroad, [already ; And hurt her marriage. Face. Hurt it! ’tis the way To heal it, if ’twere hurt; to make it more Follow’d and sought: Nab, thou shalt tell her this. She’ll be more known, more talk’d of; and your Are ne’er of any price till they be famous; [widows Their honour is their multitude of suitors : Send her, it may be thy good fortune. What! Thou dost not know. Drug. No, sir, she’ll never marry Under a knight: her brother has made a vow. Face. What! and dost thou despair, my little Nab, Knowing what the doctor has set down for thee, And seeing so many of the city dubb’d ? One glass o’ thy water, with a madam I know, Will have it done, Nab : what’s her brother, a knight ? Drug. No, sir, a gentleman newly warm in his land, sir, Scarce cold in his one and twenty, that does His sister here ; and is a man himself [govern Of some three thousand a year, and is come up To learn to quarrel, and to live by his wits, And will go down again, and die in the country. Face. How! to quarrel? Drug. Yes, sir, to carry quarrels, As gallants do ; to manage them by line. Face. ’Slid, Nab, the doctor is the only man In Christendom for him. He has made a table, With mathematical demonstrations, Touching the art of quarrels : he will give him An instrument to quarrel by. Go, bring them both, Him and his sister. And, for thee, with her The doctor happ’ly may persuade. Go to : ’Shalt give his worship a new r damask suit Upon the premises. Sub . O, good captain ! Face. He shall; He is the honestest fellow, doctor—Stay not, No offers ; bring the damask, and the parties. Drug. I’ll try my power, sir, Face. And thy will too, Nab. Sub. ’Tis good tobacco, this! what is’t an ounce? Face. He’ll send you a pound, doctor. Sub. O no. Face. He will do’t THE ALCHEMIST 252 ACT III. It is the goodest soul!—Abel, about it. Thou shalt know more anon. Away, be gone.— [Exit Abel. A miserable rogue, and lives with cheese, And has the worms. That was the cause, indeed, Why he came now : he dealt with me in private, To get a med’cine for them. Sub. And shall, sir. This works. Face. A wife, a wife for one of us, my dear Subtle! We’ll e’en draw lots, and he that fails, shall have The more in goods, the other has in tail. Sub. Rather the less : for she may be so light She may want grains. Face. Ay, or be such a burden, A man would scarce endure her for the whole. Sub. Faith, best let’s see her first, and then determine. Face. Content: but Dol must have no breath on’t. Sub. Mum. Away you, to your Surly yonder, catch him. Face. ’Pray God I have not staid too long. Sub. I fear it. [Exeunt. ACT SCENE I .—The Lane before Lovewit’s House. Enter Tribulation, Wholesome, and Ananias. Tri. These chastisements are common to the And such rebukes, we of the separation [saints, Must bear with willing shoulders, as the trials Sent forth to tempt our frailties. Ana. In pure zeal, I do not like the man, he is a heathen, And speaks the language of Canaan, truly. Tri. I think him a profane person indeed. Ana. He bears The visible mark of the beast in his forehead. And for his stone, it is a work of darkness, And with philosophy blinds the eyes of man. Tri. Good brother, we must bend unto all means That may give furtherance to the holy cause. Ana. Which his cannot: the sanctified cause Should have a sanctified course. Tri. Not always necessary : The children of perdition are oft-times Made instruments even of the greatest works : Beside, we should give somewhat to man’s nature, The place he lives in, still about the fire, And fume of metals, that intoxicate The brain of man, and make him prone to passion. Where have you greater atheists than your cooks ? Or more profane, or choleric, than your glass-men? More antichristian than your bell-founders ? What makes the devil so devilish, I would ask you, Satlian, our common enemy, but his being Perpetually about the fire, and boiling Brimstone and arsenic? We must give, 1 say, Unto the motives, and the stirrers up Of humours in the blood. It may be so, When as the work is done, the stone is made, This heat of his may turn into a zeal, And stand up for the beauteous discipline, Against the menstruous cloth and rag of Rome. We must await his calling, and the coming Of the good spirit. You did fault, t’upbraid him With the brethren’s blessing of Heidelberg, weigh- What need we have to hasten on the work, [ing For the restoring of the silenced saints, Which ne’er will be, but by the philosopher’s stone. And so a learned elder, one of Scotland, Assured me ; aurum potabile being The only med’cine, for the civil magistrate, T’ incline him to a feeling of the cause ; And must be daily used in the disease. Ana. I have not edified more, truly, by man ; III. Not since the beautiful light first shone on me : And I am sad my zeal hath so offended. Tri. Let us call on him then. Ana. The motion’s good, And of the spirit; I will knock first. [Knocks.'] Peace be within! [The door is opened, and they entei -♦- SCENE II. — A Room in Lovewit’s House. Enter Subtle, followed by Tribulation and Ananias. Sub, O, are you come? ’twas time. Your threescore minutes Were at last thread, you see ; and down had gone Furnus acedioe, turris circulatorius : Lembec, bolt’s-head, retort and pelican Had all been cinders.—Wicked Ananias ! Art thou return’d? nay then, it goes down yet. Tri. Sir, be appeased ; he is come to humble Himself in spirit, and to ask your patience, If too much zeal hath carried him aside From the due path. Sub. Why, this doth qualify ! Tri. The brethren had no purpose, verily, To give you the least grievance : but are ready To lend their willing hands to any project The spirit and you direct. Sub. This qualifies more ! Tri. And for the orphan’s goods, let them be valued, Or what is needful else to the holy work, It shall be numbered ; here, by me, the saints, Throw down their purse before you. Sub. This qualifies most ! Why, thus it should be, now you understand. Have I discours’d so unto you of our stone, And of the good that it shall bring your cause ? Shew’d you (beside the main of hiring forces Abroad, drawing the Hollanders, your friends, From the Indies, to serve you, with all their fleet) That even the med’cinal use shall make you a faction, And party in the realm ? As, put the case, That some great man in state, he have the gout, Why, you but send three drops of your elixir, You help him straight: there you have made a Another has the palsy or the dropsy, [friend. He takes of your incombustible stuff, He’s young again : there you have made a friend. A lady that is past the feat of body. Though not of mind, and hath her face decay’d scene it. THE ALCHEMIST. 253 Beyond all cure of paintings, you restore, With the oil of talc: there you have made a friend; And all her friends. A lord that is a leper, A knight that has the bone-ache, or a squire That hath both these, you make them smooth and sound, With a bare fricace of your med’cine : still You increase your friends. Tri. Ay, it is very pregnant. Sub. And then the turning of this lawyer’s pewter To plate at Christmas.- Ana. Christ-tide, I pray you. Sub. Yet, Ananias ! Ana. I have done. Sub. Or changing His parcel gilt to massy gold. You cannot But raise you friends. Withal, to be of power To pay an army in the field, to buy The king of France out of his realms, or Spain Out of his Indies. What can you not do Against lords spiritual or temporal, That shall oppone you ? Tri. Verily, ’tis true. We may be temporal lords ourselves, I take it. Sub. You may be any thing, and leave off to Long-winded exercises ; or suck up [make Your ha / and hum ! in a tune. I not deny, But such as are not graced in a state, May, for their ends, be adverse in religion, And get a tune to call the flock together : For, to say sooth, a tune does much with women, And other phlegmatic people; it is your bell. Ana. Bells are profane ; a tune may be religious. Sub. No warning with you ! then farewell my patience. ’Slight, it shall down : I will not be thus tortured. Tri. I pray you, sir. Sub. All shall perish. I have spoke it. Tri. Let me find grace, sir, in your eyes ; the He stands corrected : neither did his zeal, [man But as your self, allow a tune somewhere, [need. Which now, being tow’rd the stone, we shall not Sub. No, nor your holy vizard, to win widows To give you legacies ; or make zealous wives To rob their husbands for the common cause : Nor take the start of bonds broke but one day, And say, they were forfeited by providence. Nor shall you need o’er night to eat huge meals, To celebrate your next day’s fast the better ; The whilst the brethren and the sisters humbled, Abate the stiffness of the flesh. Nor cast Before your hungry hearers scrupulous bones ; As whether a Christian may hawk or hunt, Or whether matrons of the holy assembly May lay their hair out, or wear doublets, Or have that idol starch about their linen. Ana. It is indeed an idol. Tri. Mind him not, sir. I do command thee, spirit of zeal, but trouble, To peace within him ! Pray, you, sir, go on. Sub. Nor shall you need to libel ’gainst the prelates, And shorten so your ears against the hearing Of the next wire-drawn grace. Nor of necessity Rail against plays, to please the alderman Whose daily custard you devour : nor lie With zealous rage till you are hoarse. Not one Of these so singular arts. Nor call your selves By names of Tribulation, Persecution, Restraint, Long-patience, and such like, affected By the whole family or wood of you, Only for glory, and to catch the ear Of the disciple. Tri. Truly, sir, they are Ways that the godly brethren have invented, For propagation of the glorious cause, As very notable means, and whereby also Themselves grow soon, and profitably, famous. Sub. O, but the stone, all’s idle to it! nothing! The art of angels’ nature’s miracle, The divine secret that doth fly in clouds From east to west; and whose tradition Is not from men, but spirits. Ana. I hate traditions ; I do not trust them.- Tri. Peace ! Ana. They are popish all. I will not peace : I will not- Tri. Ananias ! Ana. Please the profane, to grieve the godly; I may not. Sub. Well, Ananias, thou shalt overcome. Tri. It is an ignorant zeal that haunts him, sir ; But truly, else, a very faithful brother, A botcher, and a man, by revelation, That hath a competent knowledge of the truth. Sub. Has he a competent sum there in the bag To buy the goods within? > I am made guardian, And must, for charity, and conscience sake, Now see the most be made for my poor orphan ; Though I desire the brethren too good gainers : There they are within. When you have view’d, and bought ’em, And ta’en the inventory of what they are, They are ready for projection; there’s no more To do: cast on the med’cine, so much silver As there is tin there, so much gold as brass, I’ll give’t you in by weight. Tri. But how long time, Sir, must the saints expect yet ? Sub. Let me see, How’s the moon now ? Eight, nine, ten days hence, He will be silver potate ; then three days Before he citronise : Some fifteen days, The magisterium will be perfected. Ana. About the second day of the third week, In the ninth month ? Sub. Yes, my good Ananias. Tri. What will the orphan’s goods arise to, think you ? Sub. Some hundred marks, as much as fill’d three cars, Unladed now : you’ll make six millions of them.— But I must have more coals laid in. Tri. How ! Sub. Another load, And then we have finish’d. We must now increase Our fire to ignis ardens , we are past Fimus equinus, balnei, cineris, And all those lenter heats. If the holy purse Should with this draught fall low, and that the Do need a present sum, I have a trick [saints To melt the pewter, you shall buy now, instantly, And with a tincture make you as good Dutch As any are in Holland. [dollars Tri. Can you so ? Sub. Ay, and shall ’bide the third examination. Ana. It will be joyful tidings to the brethren. Sub. But you must carry it secret. THE ALCHEMIST. 254 Tri. Ay; but stay, This act of coining, is it lawful ? Ana. Lawful! We know no magistrate ; or, if we did, This is foreign coin. Sub. It is no coining, sir. It is but casting. Tri. Ha ! you distinguish well : Casting of money may be lawful. Ana. ’Tis, sir. Tri. Truly, I take it so. Sub. There is no scruple, Sir, to be made of it; believe Ananias : This case of conscience he is studied in. Tri. I’ll make a question of it to the brethren. Ana. The brethren shall approve it lawful, doubt not. Where shall it be done ? [Knocking without. Sub. For that we’ll talk anon. There’s some to speak with me. Go in, I pray you, And view the parcels. That’s the inventory. I’ll come to you straight. [ Exeunt Trib. and Ana.] Who is it ?—Face ! appear. Enter Face, in his uniform. How now ! good prize ? Face. Good pox ! yond’ costive cheater Never came on. Sub. How then? Face. I have walk’d the round Till now, and no such thing. Sub. And have you quit him ? Face. Quit him! an hell would quit him too, he were happy. Slight! would you have me stalk like a mill-jade, All day, for one that will not yield us grains ? I know him of old. Sub. O, but to have gull’d him, Had been a mastery. Face. Let him go, black boy ! And turn thee, that some fresh news may possess A noble count, a don of Spain, my dear [thee, j Delicious compeer, and my party-bawd, Who is come hither private for his conscience, And brought munition with him, six great slops, Bigger than three Dutch hoys, beside round trunks, Furnished with pistolets, and pieces of eight, Will straight be here, my rogue, to have thy bath, (That is the colour,) and to make his battery Upon our Dol, our castle, our cinque-port, Our Dover pier, our what thou wilt. Where is she ? She must prepare perfumes, delicate linen, The bath in chief, a banquet, and her wit, For she must milk his epididimis. Where is the doxy ? Sub. I’ll send her to thee: And but dispatch my brace of little John Leydens, And come again my self. Face. Are they within then ? Sub. Numbering the sum. Face. How much ? Sub. A hundred marks, boy. [Exit. Face. Why, this is a lucky day. Ten pounds of Mammon! Three of my clerk ! a portague of my grocer ! This of the brethren ! beside reversions, And states to come in the widow, and my count! My share to-day will not be bought for forty- act in. Enter Dol. Dol. What ? Face. Pounds, dainty Dorothy! art thou so near ? Dol. Yes; say, lord general, how fares our camp ? Face. As with the few that had entrench’d themselves Safe, by their discipline, against a world, Dol, And laugh’d within those trenches, and grew fat With thinking on the booties, Dol, brought in Daily by their small parties. This dear hour, A doughty don is taken with my Dol; And thou mayst make his ransom what thou wilt, My Dousabel; he shall be brought here fetter’d With thy fair looks, before he sees thee; and thrown In a down-bed, as dark as any dungeon ; Where tlioushalt keep him waking with thy drum ; Thy drum, my Dol, thy drum ; till he be tame As the poor black-birds were in the great frost, Or bees are with a bason ; and so hive him In the swan-skin coverlid, and cambric sheets, Till he work honey and wax, my little God’s-gift. Dol. What is he, general ? Face. An adalantado, A grandee, girl. Was not my Dapper here yet? Dol. No. Face. Nor my Drugger ? Dol. Neither. Face. A pox on ’em, They are so long a furnishing ! such stinkards Would not be seen upon these festival days.— Re-enter Subtle. How now ! have you done ? Sub. Done. They are gone : the sum Is here in bank, my Face. I would we knew Another chapman now would buy ’em outright. Face. ’Slid, Nab shall do’t against he have the To furnish household. [widow, Sub. Excellent, well thought on : Pray God he come ! Face. I pray he keep away Till our new business be o’erpast. Sub. But, Face, How cam’st thou by this secret don? Face. A spirit Brought me th’ intelligence in a paper here, As I was conjuring yonder in my circle For Surly ; I have my flies abroad. Your bath Is famous, Subtle, by my means. Sweet Dol, You must go tune your virginal, no losing O’ the least time : and, do you hear? good action. Firk, like a flounder ; kiss, like a scallop, close ; And tickle him with thy mother-tongue. His great Verdugoship has not a jot of language ; So much the easier to be cozen’d, my Dolly. He will come here in a hired coach, obscure, And our own coachman, whom I have sent as guide, No creature else. [ Knocking without .] Who’s that ? [Exit Dol. Sub. It is not he ? Face. O no, not yet this hour. ' l Re-enter Do/.. Sub. Who is’t ? Dol. Dapper, Your clerk. 1 Face. God’s will then, queen of Fairy, scene n. THE ALCHEMIST. 255 On with your tire ; [Exit Dol.] and, doctor, with Let’s dispatch him for God’s sake. [your robes. Sub. ’Twill be long. Face. I warrant you, take but the cues I give you, It shall be brief enough. [Goes to the ivindow.~\ ’Slight, here are more! Abel, and I think the angry boy, the heir, That fain would quarrel, Sub. And the widow? Face. No, Not that I see. Away ! [Exit Sub, Enter Dapper. —0 sir, you are welcome. The doctor is within a moving for you ; I have had the most ado to win him to it !— He swears you’ll be the darling of the dice : He never heard her highness dote till now. Your aunt has given you the most gracious words That can be thought on. Dap. Shall I see her grace ? Face. See her, and kiss her too.— Enter Abel, followed by Kastril. What, honest Nab! Hast brought the damask? Drug. No, sir; here’s tobacco. Face. ’Tis well done, Nab : thou’lt bring the damask too ? Drug. Yes : here’s the gentleman, captain, I have brought to see the doctor, [master Kastril, Face. Where’s the widow ? Drug. Sir, as he likes, his sister, he says, shall come. Face. 0, is it so ? good time. Is your name Kastril, sir? Kas. Ay, and the best of the Kastrils, I’d be sorry else, By fifteen hundred a year. Where is the doctor ? My mad tobacco-boy, here, tells me of one That can do things : has he any skill ? Face. Wherein, sir? Kas. To carry a business, manage a quarrel Upon fit terms. [fairly, Face. It seems, sir, you are but young About the town, that can make that a question. Kas. Sir, not so young, but I have heard some speech Of the angry boys, and seen them take tobacco ; And in his shop; and I can take it too. And I would fain be one of ’em, and go down And practise in the country. Face. Sir, for the duello, The doctor, I assure you, shall inform you, To the least shadow of a hair ; and show you An instrument he has of his own making, Wherewith no sooner shall you make report Of any quarrel, but he will take the height on’t Most instantly, and tell in what degree Of safety it lies in, or mortality. And how it may be borne, wdiether in a right line, Or a half circle ; or may else be cast Into on angle blunt, if not acute : All this he will demonstrate. And then, rules To give and take the lie by. Kas. How ! to take it? Face. Yes,in oblique he’ll show you, or in circle ; But never in diameter. The whole town Study his theorems, and dispute them ordinarily At the eating academies. Kas. But does he teach Living by the wits too ? Face. Anything whatever. You cannot think that subtlety, but he reads it. He made me a captain. I was a stark pimp, Just of your standing, ’fore I met with him ; It is not two months since. I’ll tell youhis method : First, he will enter you at some ordinary. Kas. No, I’ll not come there : you shall pardon Face. For why, sir ? [me. Kas. There’s gaming there, and tricks. Face. Why, would you be A gallant, and not game? Kas. Ay, ’twill spend a man. Face. Spend you ! it will repair you when you are spent: How do they live by their wits there, that have Six times your fortunes ? [vented Kas. What, three thousand a-year ! Face. Ay, forty thousand. Kas. Are there such ? Face. Ay, sir, And gallants yet. Here’s a young gentleman Is born to nothing, — [Points to Dapper.] forty marks a-year, Which I count nothing : —he is to be initiated, And have a fly of the doctor. He will win you, By unresistible luck, within this fortnight, Enough to buy a barony. They will set him Upmost, at the groom porters, all the Christmas : And for the whole year through, at every place, Where there is play, present him with the chair; The best attendance, the best drink ; sometimes Two glasses of Canary, and pay nothing ; The purest linen, and the sharpest knife, The partridge next his trencher : and somewhere The dainty bed, in private, with the dainty. You shall have your ordinaries bid for him, As play-houses for a poet ; and the master Pray him aloud to name what dish he affects, Which must be butter’d shrimps : and those that drink To no mouth else, will drink to his, as being The goodly president mouth of all the board. Kas. Do you not gull one ? Face. ’Ods my life ! do you think it ? You shall have a cast commander, (can but get In credit with a glover, or a spurrier, For some two pair of either’s ware aforehand,) Will, by most swift posts, dealing [but] with him, Arrive at competent means to keep himself, His punk and naked boy, in excellent fashion, And be admired for’t. Kas. Will the doctor teach this ? Face. He will do more, sir : w r hen your land is gone, As men of spirit hate to keep earth long, In a vacation, when small money is stirring, And ordinaries suspended till the term, He’ll show a perspective, where on one side You shall behold the faces and the persons Of all sufficient young heirs in town. Whose bonds are current for commodity; On th’ other side, the merchants’ forms, and others, That without help of any second broker, Who would expect a share, will trust such parcels : In the third square, the very street and sign Where the commodity dwells, and does but wait To be deliver’d, be it pepper, soap, Hops, or tobacco, oatmeal, woad, or cheeses. 256 THE ALCHEMIST act All which you may so handle, to enjoy To your own use, and never stand obliged. Kas. I’faith ! is he such a fellow ? Face. Why, Nab here knows him. And then for making matches for rich widows, Young gentlewomen, heirs, the fortunat’st man! He’s sent to, far and near, all over England, To have his counsel, and to know their fortunes. Kas. God’s will, my suster shall see him. Face. I’ll tell you, sir, What he did tell me of Nab. It’s a strange thing :— By the way, you must eat no cheese, Nab, it breeds melancholy, And that same melancholy breeds worms ; but pass it :— He told me, honest Nab here was ne’er at tavern But once in’s life ! Drug-. Truth, and no more I was not. Face. And then he was so sick— Drug. Could he tell you that too ? Face. How should I know it ? Drug. In troth we had been a shooting, And had a piece of fat ram-mutton to supper, That lay so heavy o’ my stomach— Face. And he has no head To bear any wine; for what with the noise of the fidlers, And care of his shop, for he dares keep no servants— Drug. My head did so ach— Face. As he was fain to be brought home, The doctor told me : and then a good old woman— Drug. Yes, faith, she dwells in Sea-coal-lane, —did cure me, With sodden ale, and pellitory of the wall; Cost me but two-pence. I had another sickness Was worse than that. Face. Ay, that was with the grief Thou took’st for being cess’d at eighteen-pence, For the water-work. Drug. In truth, and it w r as like T’ have cost me almost my life. Face. Thy hair went off ? Drug. Yes, sir; ’twas done for spight. Face. Nay, so says the doctor. Kas. Pray thee, tobacco-boy, go fetch my suster ; I’ll see this learned boy before I go ; And so shall she. Face. Sir, he is busy now : But if you have a sister to fetch hither, Perhaps your own pains may command her sooner ; And he by that time will be free. Kas. I go. [Exit. Face. Drugger, she’s thine : the damask !— [ Exit Abel.] Subtle and I Must wrestle for her. [ Aside .]—Come on, master You see how I turn clients here away, [Dapper, To give your cause dispatch ; have you perform’d The ceremonies were enjoin’d you ? Dap. Yes, of the vinegar, And the clean shirt. Face. ’Tis well: that shirt may do you More worship than you think. Your aunt’s a-fire, But that she will not show it, t’ have a sight of you. Have you provided for her grace’s servants ? Dap. Yes, here are six score Edward shillings. Face. Good ! Dap. And an old Harry’s sovereign. Face. Very good ! Dap. And three James shillings, and an Eliza- Just twenty nobles. [beth groat, Face. O, you are too just. I would you had had the other noble in Maries. Dap. I have some Philip and Maries. Face. Ay, those same Are best of all : where are they ? Hark, the doctor. Enter Subtle, disguised like a priest of Fairy, with a stripe of cloth. Sub. \_In a feigned voice.] Is yet her grace’s cousin come ? Face. He is come. Sub. And is he fasting? Face. Yes. Sub. And hath cried hum? Face. Thrice, you must answer. Dap. Thrice. Sub. And as oft buz ? Face. If you have, say. Dap. I have. Sub. Then, to her cuz, Hoping that he hath vinegar’d his senses, As he was bid, the Fairy queen dispenses, By me, this robe, the petticoat of fortune ; Which that he straight put on, she doth importune. And though to fortune near be her petticoat, Yet nearer is her smock, the queen doth note : And therefore, ev’n of that a piece she hath sent, Which, being a child, to wrap him in was rent; And prays him for a scarf he now will wear it, With as much love as then her grace did tear it, About his eyes, [ They blind him with the rag,] to shew he is fortunate. And, trusting unto her to make his state, He’ll throw away all w r orldly pelf about him ; Which that he will perform, she doth not doubt him. Face. She need not doubt him, sir. Alas, he has nothing, But what he will part withal as willingly, Upon her grace’s word — throw away your purse — As she would ask it ; —handkerchiefs and all — [He throws away, as they bid him. She cannot bid that thing, but he’ll obey. — If you have a ring about you, cast it off, Or a silver seal at your wrist ; her grace will send Her fairies here to search you, therefore deal Directly with her highness : if they find That you conceal a mite, you are undone. Dap. Truly, there’s all. Face. All what ? Dap. My money ; truly. Face. Keep nothing that is transitory about you. Bid Dol play music. [ Aside to Subtle.] — Look, the elves are come [Dol plays on the cittern within. To pinch you, if you tell not truth. Advise you. [They pinch him. Dap. 0 ! I have a paper with a spur-ryal in’t. Face. Ti, ti. They knew’t, they say. Sub. Ti, ti, ti, ti. He has more yet. Face. Ti, ti-ti-ti. In the other pocket. [Aside to Sub. Sub. Titi, titi, titi, titi, titi. They must pinch him or he will never confess, they say. [They pinch him again. Dap. O, 0 ! Face. Nay, pray you hold : he is her grace’s nephew. Ti, ti, ti ? What care you ? good faith, you shall care. — SCENE I. THE ALCHEMIST. 2.57 Deal plainly, sir, and sliame tlie fairies. Shew You are innocent. Dap. By this good light, I have nothing. Sub. Ti, ti, ti, ti, to, ta. He does equivocate, she says : Ti, ti do ti, ti ti-do, ti da ; and swears by the light when he is blinded. Dap. By this good dark, I have nothing but a half-crown Of gold about my wrist, that my love gave me ; And a leaden heart I wore since she forsook me. Face. I thought ’twas something. And would you incur Your aunt’s displeasure for these trifles ? Come, I had rather you had thrown away twenty half- crowns. [Takes it off. You may wear your leaden heart still— Enter Dol, hastily. How now! Sub. What news, Dol ? Dol. Yonder’s your knight, Sir Mammon. Face. ’Ods lid, we never thought of him till now! Where is he ? Dol. Here hard by : he is at the door. Sub. And you are not ready, now ! Dol, get his suit. [Exit Dol. He must not be sent back. Face. O by no means. What shall we do with this same puffin here, Now he’s on the spit ? Sub. Why, lay him back awhile, With some device. Re-enter Dol, with Face’s clothes. — Ti, ti, ti, ti, ti, ti, Would her grace speak with me ? £ come.—Help, Dol! [Knocking without. Face. [ Speaks through the key-hole.] Who’s there ? sir Epicure, My master’s in the way. Please you to walk Three or four turns, but till his back be turn’d, And I am for you.—Quickly, Dol! Sub. Her grace Commends her kindly to you, master Dapper. Dap. I long to see her grace. Sub. She now is set At dinner in her bed, and she has sent you From her own private trencher, a dead mouse, And a piece of ginger-bread, to be merry withal, And stay your stomach, lest you faint with fasting • Yet if you could hold out till she saw you, she says, It would be better for you. Face. Sir, he shall Hold out, an ’twere this two hours, for her highness; I can assure you that. We will not lose All we have done.- Sub. He must not see, nor speak To any body, till then. Face. For that we’ll put, sir, A stay in’s mouth. Sub. Of what? Face. Of gingerbread. Make you it fit. He that hath pleas’d her grace Thus far, shall not now crincle for a little.— Gape sir, and let him fit you. [They thrust a gag of gingerbread in his mouth Sub. Where shall we now Bestow him ? Dol. In the privy. Sub. Come along, sir, I now must shew you Fortune’s privy lodgings. Face. Are they perfum’d, and his bath ready ? Sub. All: Only the fumigation’s somewhat strong. Face. [ Speaking through the key-hole.] Sii Epicure, I am yours, sir, by and by. [Exeunt with Dapper ACT SCENE I. — A Room in Loveavit’s House. Enter Face and Mammon. Face. O sir, you are come in the only finest Mam. Where’s master ? [time.— Face. Now preparing for projection, sir. Your stuff will be all changed shortly. Mam. Into gold? Face. To gold and silver, sir. Mam. Silver I care not for. Face. Yes, sir, a little to give beggars. Mam. Where’s the lady ? Face. At hand here. I have told her such brave things of you, Touching your bounty, and your noble spirit— Mam. Hast thou ? Face. As she is almost in her fit to see you. But, good sir, no divinity in your conference, For fear of putting her in rage.— Mam. I warrant thee. Face. Six men [sir] will not hold her down : and If the old man should hear or see you- [then, Mam. Fear not. Face. The very house, sir, would run mad. You know it, IV. How scrupulous he is, and violent, ’Gainst the least act of sin. Physic, or mathema- Poetry, state, or bawdry, as I told you, [tics, She will endure, and never startle ; but No word of controversy. Mam. I am school’d, good Ulen. Face. And you must praise her house, remem- And her nobility. [ber that, Mam. Let me alone : No herald, no, nor antiquary, Lungs, Shall do it better. Go. Face. Why, this is yet A kind of modern happiness, to have Dol Common for a great lady. [Aside and exit. Mam. Now, Epicure, Heighten thyself, talk to her all in gold ; Rain her as many showers as Jove did drops Unto his Danae ; shew the god a miser, Compared with Mammon. Whatl the stone will do’t. She shall feel gold, taste gold, hear gold, sleep gold; Nay, we will concumbere gold : I will be puissant, And mighty in my talk to her.— Re-enter Face, with Dol richly dressed. Here she comes. S THE ALCHEMIST. -?>8 Face. To him, Dol, suckle him.—This is the I told your ladyship- [noble knight, Mam. Madam, with your pardon, I kiss your vesture. Dol. Sir, I were uncivil If I would suffer that; my lip to you, sir. Mam. I hope my lord your brother be in health, lady. Dol. My lord, my brother is, though I no lady, sir. Face. Well said, my Guinea bird. [Aside. Mam. Right noble madam- Face. O, we shall have most fierce idolatry. [Aside. Mam. ’Tis your prerogative. Dol. Rather your courtesy. Mam. Were there nought else to enlarge your virtues to me, These answers speak your breeding and your blood. Dol. Blood we boast none, sir, a poor baron’s daughter. Mam. Poor ! and gat you ? profane not. Plad Slept all the happy remnant of his life [your father After that act, lien but there still, and panted, He had done enough to make himself, his issue, And his posterity noble. Dol. Sir, although We may be said to want the gilt and trappings, The dress of honour, yet we strive to keep The seeds and the materials. Mam. I do see The old ingredient, virtue, was not lost, Nor the drug money used to make your compound. There is a strange nobility in your eye, This lip, that chin ! melhinks you do resemble One of the Austriac princes. Face. Very like! Her father was an Irish costarmonger. [Aside. Mam. The house of Valois just had such a nose, And such a forehead yet the Medici Of Florence boast. Dol. Troth, and I have been liken’d To all these princes. Face. I’ll be sworn, I heard it. Mam. I know not how ! it is not any one, But e’en the very choice of all their features. Face. I’ll in, and laugh. [Aside and exit. Mam. A certain touch, or air, That sparkles a divinity, beyond An earthly beauty! Dol. O, you play the courtier. Mam. Good lady, give me leave- Dol. In faith, I may not, To mock me, sir. Mam. To burn in this sweet flame ; The phoenix never knew a nobler death. Dol. Nay, now you court the courtier, and destroy What you would build : this art, sir, in your words, Calls your whole faith in question. Mam. By my soul- Dol. Nay, oaths are made of the same air, sir. Mam. Nature Never bestow’d upon mortality A more unblamed, a more harmonious feature ; She play’d the step-dame in all faces else : Sweet Madam, let me be particular- Dol. Particular, sir 1 I pray you know your distance. Mam. In no ill sense, sweet lady; but to ask How your fair graces pass the hours ? I see ACT IT. You are lodg’d here, in the house of a rare man, An excellent artist; but what’s that to you ? Dol. Yes, sir ; I study here the mathematics, And distillation. Mam. O, I cry your pardon. He’s a divine instructor ! can extract The souls of all things by his art; call all The virtues, and the miracles of the sun, Into a temperate furnace; teach dull nature What her own forces are. A man, the emperor Has courted above Kelly ; sent his medals And chains, to invite him. Dol. Ay, and for his physic, sir- Mam. Above the art of Aesculapius, That drew the envy of the thunderer ! I know all this, and more. Dol. Troth, I am taken, sir, Whole with these studies, that contemplate nature. Mam. It is a noble humour ; but this form Was not intended to so dark a use. Had you been crooked, foul, of some coarse mould A cloister had done well; but such a feature That might stand up the glory of a kingdom, To live recluse ! is a mere soloecism, Though in a nunnery. It must not be. I muse, my lord your brother will permit it: You should spend half my land first, were I he. Does not this diamond better on my finger, Than in the quarry? Dol. Yes. Mam. Why, you are like it. You were created, lady, for the light. Here, you shall wear it; take it, the first pledge Of what I speak, to bind you to believe me. Dol. In chains of adamant? Mam. Yes, the strongest bands. And take a secret too—here, by your side, Doth stand this hour, the happiest man in Europe. Dol. You are contented, sir ! Mam. Nay, in true being, The envy of princes and the fear of states. Dol. Say, you so, sir Epicure? Mam. Yes, and thou shalt prove it, Daughter of honour. I have cast mine eye Upon thy form, and I will rear this beauty Above all styles. Dol. You mean no treason, sir? Mam. No, I will take away that jealousy. I am the lord of the philosopher’s stone, And thou the lady. Dol. How sir ! have you that ? Mam. I am the master of the mastery. This day the good old wretch here o’the house Has made it for us; now he’s at projection. Think therefore thy first wish now, let me hear it; And it shall rain into thy lap, no shower, But floods of gold, whole cataracts, a deluge, To get a nation on thee. Dol. You are pleased, sir, To work on the ambition of our sex. Mam. I am pleased the glory of her sex should know, This nook, here, of the Friers is no climate For her to live obscurely in, to learn Physic and surgery, for the constable’s wife Of some odd hundred in Essex ; but come forth, And taste the air of palaces ; eat, drink The toils of empirics, and their boasted practice ; Tincture of pearl, and coral, gold and amber ; Be seen at feasts and triumphs ; have it ask’d, scene I. THE ALCHEMIST. . 251/ What miracle she is ? set all the eyes Of court a-fire, like a burning glass, And work them into cinders, when the jewels Of twenty states adorn thee, and the light Strikes out the stars ! that when thy name is men¬ tion’d, Queens may look pale ; and we but shewing our Nero’s Poppsea may be lost in story ! [love, Thus will we have it. Dol. I could well consent, sir. But, in a monarchy, how will this be ? The prince will soon take notice, and both seize You and your stone, it being a wealth unfit For any private subject. Mam. If he knew it. Dol. Yourself do boast it, sir. Mam. To thee, my life. Dol. 0, but beware, sir ! you may come to end The remnant of your days in a loth’d prison, By speaking of it. Mam. ’Tis no idle fear : We’ll therefore go withal, my girl, and live In a free state, where we will eat our mullets, Soused in high-country wines, sup pheasants’ eggs, And have our cockles boil’d in silver shells; Our shrimps to swim again, as when they liv’d, In a rare butter made of dolphin’s milk, W’hose cream does look like opals ; and with these Delicate meats set ourselves high for pleasure, And take us down again, and then renew Our youth and strength with drinking the elixir, And so enjoy a perpetuity Of life and lust ! And thou shalt have thy ward¬ robe Richer than nature’s, still to change thy self, And vary oftener, for thy pride, than she, Or art, her wise and almost-equal servant. Re-enter Face. Face. Sir, you are too loud. I hear you every Into the laboratory. Some fitter place ; [word The garden, or great chamber above. How like you her ? Mam. Excellent! Lungs. There’s for thee. [Gives him money. Face. But do you hear ? Good sir, beware, no mention of the rabbins. Mam. We think not on ’em. [.Exeunt Mam. and Dol. Face. 0, it is well, sir.—Subtle ! Enter Subtle. Dost thou not laugh ? Sub. Yes ; are they gone ? Face. All’s clear. Sub. The widow is come. Face. And your quarrelling disciple ? Sub. Ay. Face. I must to my captainship again then. Sub. Stay, bring them in first. Face. So I meant. What is she ? A bonnibel ? Sub. I know not. Face. We’ll draw lots : You’ll stand to that ? Sub. What else ? Face. 0, for a suit, To fall now like a curtain, flap ! Sub. To the door, man. Face. You’ll have the first kiss, ’cause 1 am not ready. S 2 [Exit. Sub. Yes, and perhaps hit you through both the nostrils. Face. [ within .] Who would you speak with ? Kas. [within.] Where’s the captain? Face, [within.] Gone, sir, About some business. Kas. [ivithin.] Gone! Face, [ivithin.] He’ll return straight. But master doctor, his lieutenant, is here. Enter Kastril, followed by Dame Pliant. Sub. Come near, my worshipful boy, my terra fili, That is, my boy of land ; make thy approaches! Welcome : I know thy lusts, and thy desires, And I will serve and satisfy them. Begin, Charge me from thence, or thence, or in this line ; Here is my centre : ground thy quarrel. Kas. You lie. Sub. How, child of wrath and anger! the loud For what, my sudden boy ? [lie ? Kas. Nay, that look you to, I am afore-hand. Sub. 0, this is no true grammar, And as ill logic ! You must render causes, child, Your first and second intentions, know your canons And your divisions, moods, degrees, and differ¬ ences, Your predicaments, substance, and accident, Series, extern and intern, with their causes, Efficient, material, formal, final, And have your elements perfect? Kas. What is this ! The angry tongue he talks in ? [Jsid& Sub. That false precept, Of being afore-hand, has deceived a number, And made them enter quarrels, often-times, Before they were aware ; and afterward, Against their wills. Kas. How must I do then, sir ? Sub. I cry this lady mercy: she should first Have been saluted. [ATisses her.] I do call you Because you are to be one, ere’t be long, [lady, My soft and buxom widow. Kas. Is she, i ’faith ? Sub. Yes, or my art is an egregious liar Kas. How know you ? Sub. By inspection on her forehead, And subtlety of her lip, which must be tasted Often, to make a judgment. [ATmes her again. J ’Slight, she melts Like a myrobolane :—here is yet a line, In rivo frontis, tells me he is no knight. Dame P. What is he then, sir ? Sub. Let me see your hand. O, your linea fortunae makes it plain ; And Stella here in monte Veneris. But, most of all, junctura annularis. He is a soldier, or a man of art, lady, But shall have some great honour shortly. Dame P. Brother, He’s a rare man, believe me ! Re-enter Face, in his uniform. Kas. Hold your peace. Here comes the t’ other rare man.—’Save you, captain. Face. Good master Kastril! Is this your sister ? Kas. Ay, sir. Please you to kuss her, and be proud to know her THE ALCHEMIST. £G0 Face. I shall be proud to know you, lady. [Kisses her. Dame P. Brother, He calls me lady too. Kas. Ay, peace : I heard it. [ Takes her aside. Face. The count is come. Sub. Where is he ? Face. At the door. Sub. Why, you must entertain him. Face. What will you do With these the while ? Sub. Why, have them up, and shew them Some fustian book, or the dark glass. Face. Fore God, She is a delicate dab-chick ! I must have her. [Exit. Sub. Must you! ay, if your fortune will, you must.— Come, sir, the captain will come to us presently : I'll have you to my chamber of demonstrations, Where 1 will shew you both the grammar, and logic, And rhetoric of quarrelling ; my whole method Drawn out in tables ; and my instrument, That hath the several scales upon’t, shall make you Able to quarrel at a straw’s-breadth by moon-light. And, lady, I’ll have you look in a glass, Some half an hour, but to clear your eye-sight, Against you see your fortune ; which is greater, Than I may judge upon the sudden, trust me. [Exit, followed by Kast. and Dame P. Re-enter Face. Face. Where are you, doctor ? Sub. [ within .] I’ll come to you presently. Face. I will have this same widow, now I have On any composition. [seen her, Re-enter Subtle. Sub. What do you say ? Face. Have you disposed of them. Sub. I have sent them up. Face. Subtle, in troth, I needs must have this Sub. Is that the matter ? [widow. Face. Nay, but hear me. Sub. Go to. If you rebel once, Dol shall know it all: Therefore be quiet, and obey your chance. Face. Nay, thou art so violent now—Do but conceive, Thou art old, and canst not serve- Sub. Who cannot ? I ? ’Slight, I will serve her with thee, for a- Face. Nay, But understand : I’ll give you composition. Sub. I will not treat with thee ; what ! sell my fortune ? 'Tis better than my birth-right. Do not murmur: Win her, and carry her. If you grumble, Dol Knows it directly. Face. Well, sir, I am silent. Will you go help to fetch in Don in state ? [Exit. Sub. I follow you, sir: we must keep Face in Or he will over-look us like a tyrant. [awe, Re-enter Face, introducing Surly disguised as a Spaniard. Brain of a tailor ! who comes here ? Don John ! Sur. Senores, beso las manos a vuestras mer- cedes. Sub. Would you had stoop’d a little, and kist our anos ! Face. Peace. Subtle. ACT IV. Sub. Stab me ; I shall never hold, man. He looks in that deep rulf like a head in a platter, Serv’d in by a short cloke upon two trestles. Face. Or, what do you say to a collar of brawn, cut down Beneath the souse, and wriggled with a knife ? Sub. ’Slud, he does look too fat to be a Spaniard. Face. Perhaps some Fleming or some Hollander got him In d’Alva’s time ; count Egmont’s bastard. Sub. Don, Your scurvy, yellow, Madrid face is welcome. Sur. Gratia. Sub. He speaks out of a fortification. Pray God he have no squibs in those deep sets. Sur. For dios, senores , muy linda casa / Sub. What says he ? Face. Praises the house, I think; I know no more but’s action. Sub. Yes, the casa, My precious Diego, will prove fair enough To cozen you in. Do you mark ? you shall Be cozen’d, Diego. Face. Cozen’d, do you see, My worthy Donzel, cozen’d. Sur. Entiendo. Sub. Do you intend it ? so do we, dear Don. Have you brought pistolets, or portagues, My solemn Don ?—Dost thou feel any ? Face. [Feels his pockets.'] Full. Sub. You shall be emptied, Don, pumped and Dry, as they say. [drawn Face. Milked, in troth, sweet Don. Sub. See all the monsters ; the great lion of all, Don. Sur. Con licencia, se puede ver a esta senora 9 Sub. What talks he now? Face. Of the sennora. Sub. O, Don, That is the lioness, which you shall see Also, my Don. Face. ’Slid, Subtle, how shall we do ? Sub. For what ? Face. Why Dol’s employ’d, you know. Sub. That’s true. ’Fore heaven, I know not: he must stay, that’s all. Face. Stay ! that he must not by no means. Sub. No! why? Face. Unless you’ll mar all. ’Slight, he will suspect it: And then he will not pay, not half so well. This is a travelled punk-master, and does know All the delays ; a notable hot rascal, And looks already rampant. Sub. ’Sdeath, and Mammon Must not be troubled. Face. Mammon 1 in no case. Sub. What shall we do then? Face. Think : you must be sudden. Sur. Entiendo que la senora es tan hermosa , que codicio tan verla, como la bien avenluranza de mi vida. Face. Mi vida ! ’Slid, Subtle, he puts me ir mind o’ the widow. What dost thou say to draw her to it, ha ! And tell her ’tis her fortune ? all our venture Now lies upon’t. It is but one man more. Which of us chance to have her: and beside, There is no maidenhead to be fear’d or lost. What dost thou think on’t, Subtle? THE ALCHEMIST. SCENE II, 2C1 Sub. Who, I ? why- Face. The credit of our house too is engaged. Sub. You made me an offer for my share ere- What wilt thou give me, i’faith? [while. Face. O, by that light I’ll not buy now : You know your doom to me. E’en take your lot, obey your chance, sir ; win her, And wear her out, for me. Sub. ’Slight, I’ll not w r ork her then. Face. It is the common cause ; therefore bethink Dol else must know it, as you said. [you. Sub. 1 care not. Sur. Seriores, porque se tarda tanto ? Sub. Faith, I am not fit, I am old. Face. That’s now no reason, sir. Sur. Puede ser de hazer burla de mi amor ? Face. You hear the Don too ? by this air, I call, And loose the hinges : Dol! Sub. A plague of hell- Face. Will you then do ? Sub. You are are a terrible rogue! I’ll think of this : will you, sir, call the widow? Face. Yes, and I’ll take her too with all her Now I do think on’t better. [faults, Sub. With all my heart, sir ; Am I discharged o’ the lot ? Face. As you please. Sub. Hands. [ They take hands. Face. Remember now, that upon any change, You never claim her. Sub. Much good joy, and health to you, sir. Marry a whore! fate, let me wed a witch first. Sur. Por estas honradas barbas - Sub. He swears by his beard. Dispatch, and call the brother too. [Exit Face. Sur. Tengo duda , sefiores, que no me hagan alguna traycion. Sub. How, issue on? yes, preesto, sennor. Please Enthratha the chambrata, worthy don : [you Where if you please the fates, in your bathada, You shall be soked, and stroked, and tubb’d, and rubb’d, And scrubb’d, and fubb’d, dear don, before you go. You shall in faith, my scurvy baboon don. Be curried, claw’d and flaw’d, and taw’d, indeed. I will the heartlier go about it now, And make the widow a punk so much the sooner, To be revenged on this impetuous Face : The quickly doing of it, is the grace. [Exeunt Sub. and Surly. -♦- SCENE II.— Another Room in the same. Enter Face, Kastril, and Dame Pliant. Face. Come, lady: I knew the Doctor would not leave, Till he had found the very nick of her fortune. Kas. To be a countess, say you, a Spanish countess, sir? Dame P. Why, is that better than an English countess ? Face Better ! ’Slight, make you that a question, lady ? Kas. Nay, she is a fool, captain, you must par¬ don her. Face. Ask from your courtier, to your inns-of- court-man, To your mere milliner; they will tell you all, Y our Spanish gennet is the best horse; your Spanish Stoup is the best garb : your Spanish beard Is the best cut; your Spanish ruffs are the best Wear ; your Spanish pavin the best dance ; Your Spanish titillation in a glove The best perfume : and for your Spanish pike, And Spanish blade, let your poor captain speak— Here comes the doctor. Enter Subtle, with a paper. Sub. My most honour’d lady, For so I am now to style you, having found By this my scheme, you are to undergo An honourable fortune, very shortly. What will you say now, if some- Face. I have told her all, sir ; And her right worshipful brother here, that she shall be A countess; do not delay them, sir: a Spanish countess. Sub. Still, my scarce-worshipful captain, you can keep No secret! Well, since he has told you, madam, Do you forgive him, and I do. Kas. She shall do that, sir ; I’ll look to’t, ’tis my charge. Sub. Well then : nought rests But that she fit her love now to her fortune. Dame P. Truly I shall never brook a Spaniard. Sub. No ! Dame P. Never since eighty-eight could I abide them, And that was some three year afore I was born, in truth. Sub. Come, you must love him, or be miserable Choose which you will. Face. By this good rush, persuade her, She will cry strawberries else within this twelve- month. Sub. Nay, shads and mackarel, which is worse. Face. Indeed sir! Kas. Ods lid, you shall love him, or I’ll kick Dame P. Why, [you. I’ll do as you will have me, brother. Kas. Do, Or by this hand I’ll maul you. Face. Nay, good sir, Be not so fierce. Sub. No, my enraged child ; She will be ruled. What, when she comes to taste The pleasures of a countess 1 to be courted- Face. And kiss’d, and ruffled ! Sub. Ay, behind the hangings. Face. And then come forth in pomp ! Sub. And know her state! Face. Of keeping all the idolators of the chamber Barer to her, than at their prayers ! Sub. Is serv’d Upon the knee! Face. And has her pages, ushers, Footmen, and coaches-- Sub. Her six mares- Face. Nay, eight! Sub. To hurry her through London, to the Ex- Bethlem, the china-houses- [change, Face. Yes, and have The citizens gape at her, and praise her tires, And my lord’s goose-turd bands, that ride with her Kas. Most brave! By this hand, you are not If you refuse. [my sustet Dame P. I will not refuse, brother. THE ALCHEMIST. k 2(52 Enter Surly. Sur. Que es esto, seiiores, que no venga ? Esta tardanza me mata ! Face. It is the count come : The doctor knew he would be here, by his art. Sub. En gallanta madama, Don ! gallantissima ! Sur. For todos los dioses, la mas acabada hermo- sura, que he visto en mi vida ! Face. Is’t not a gallant language that they speak t Kas. An admirable language ! 1s t not French ? Face. No, Spanish, sir. Kas. It goes like law-French, And that, they say, is the courtliest language. Face. List, sir. Sur. El sol ha perdido su lumbre, con el esplan- dor que trae esta dama ! Valgame dios ! Face. He admires your sister. Kas. Must not she make curt’sy ? Sub. Ods will, she must go to him, man, and It is the Spanish fashion, for the women [kiss him! To make first court. Face. ’Tis true he tells you, sir : His art knows all. Sur. Porque no se acude ? Kas. He speaks to her, I think. Face. That he does, sir. Sur. Por el amor de dios, que es esto que se tarda? Kas. Nay, see: she will not understand him ! . Noddy. [gull, Dame P. What say you, brother ? Kas. Ass, my suster. Go kuss him, as the cunning man would have you ; I’ll thrust a pin in your buttocks else. Face. O no, sir. Sur. Sehora mia, mi persona esta muy indigna de allegar a tanta hermosura. Face. Does he not use her bravely? Kas. Bravely, i’faith! Face. Nay, he will use her better. Kas. Do you think so ? Sur. Sehora, si sera servida, entremonos. \_Exit with Dame Pliant. Kas. Where does he carry her ? Face. Into the garden, sir; Take you no thought: I must interpret for her. Sub. Give Dol the word. [Aside to Face, who goes out.'] —Come, my fierce child, advance, We’ll to our quarrelling lesson again. Kas. Agreed. I love a Spanish boy with all my heart. Sub. Nay, and by this means, sir, you shall be To a great count. [bi’other Kas. Ay, I knew that at first. This match will advance the house of the Kastrils. Sub. ’Pray God your sister prove but pliant! Kas. Why, Her name is so, by her other husband. Sub. How! Kas. The widow Pliant. Knew you not that ? Sub. No faith, sir ; Yet, by erection of her figure, I guest it. Come, let’s go practise. Kas. Yes, but do you think, doctor, I e’er shall quarrel well ? Sub. I warrant you. [ Exeunt. —♦—• ACT IV SCENE III. —Another Room in the same. Enter Dol in her Jit of raving, followed by Mammon. Dol. For after Alexander's death — Mam. Good lady- Dol. That Perdiccas and Antigonus, were slain, The two that stood, Seleud, and Ptolomee - Man. Madam. Dol. Made up the two legs, and the fourth beast, That was Gog-north, and Egypt-south: which after Was call'd Gog-iron-leg, and South-iron-leg —— Mam. Lady- Dol. And then Gog-horned. So was Egypt, toe: Then Egypt-clay-leg, and Gog-clay-leg - Mam. Sweet madam. Dol. And last Gog-dust, and Egypt-dust, which fall. In the last link of the fourth chain. And these Be stars in story, which none see, or look at——. Mam. What shall I do ? Dol. For, as he says, except We call the rabbins, and the heathen Greeks - Mam. Dear lady. Dol. To come from Salem, and from Athens, And teach the people of Great Britain - Fnier Face, hastily, in his Servant's Dress. Face. What’s the matter, sir ? Dol. To speak the tongue of Eber, and Javan — Mam. O, She’s in her fit. Dol. We shall know nothing - Face. Death, sir, We are undone! Dol. Where then a learned linguist Shall see the ancient used communion Of vowels and consonants - Face. My master will hear ! Dol. A wisdom, which Pythagoras held most Mam. Sweet honorable lady I [high — Dol. To comprise All sounds of voices, in few marks of letters - Face. Nay, you must never hope to lay her now. [ They all speak together. Dol. And so we may arrive by Talmud skill. And profane Greek, to raise the building up Of Helen's house against the Ismaelite, King of Tliogarma, and his habergions Brimstony, blue, and fiery ; and the force Of king Abaddon, and the beast of Cittim : Which rabbi David Kimchi, Onkelos, And Aben Ezra do interpret Rome. Face. How did you put her into’t ? Mam. Alas! I talk’d Of a fifth monarchy I would erect. With the philosopher's stone, by chance, and she Falls on the other four straight. Face. Out of Broughton! I told you so. ’Slid, stop her mouth. Mam. Is’t best ? Face. She’ll never leave else. If the old man We are but faeces, ashes. [hear her, Sub. [Within.] What’s to do there? Face. O, we are lost! Now she hears him, she is quiet. Enter Subtle, they run different ways. Mam. Where shall I hide me ! Sub. How ! what sight is here ? Close deeds of darkness, and that shun the light! THE ALCHEMIST. SCENE IV. Bring him again. Who is he ? What, my son ! O, I have lived too long. Mam. Nay, good, dear father, There was no unchaste purpose. Sub. Not! and flee me, When I come in ? Mam. That was my error. Sub. Error! Guilt, guilt, my son: give it the right name. No marvel, If I found check in our great work within, When such affairs as these were managing! Mam. Why, have you so ? Sub. It has stood still this half hour : And all the rest of our less works gone back. Where is the instrument of wickedness, My lewd false drudge ? Mam. Nay, good sir, blame not him; Believe me, ’twas against his will or knowledge : I saw her by chance. Sub. Will you commit more sin, To excuse a varlet ? Mam. By my hope, ’tis true, sir. Sub. Nay, then 1 wonder less, if you, for whom The blessing was prepared, would so tempt heaven, And lose your fortunes. Mam. Why, sir? Sub. This will retard The work, a month at least. Mam. Why, if it do, What remedy ? But think it not, good father : Our purposes were honest. Sub. As they were, So the reward will prove.— [A loud explosion ‘within. How now! ah me ! God, and all saints be good to us.— Re-enter Face. Wliat’s that ? Face. O, sir, we are defeated ! all the works Are flown in fumo, every glass is burst: Furnace, and all rent down ! as if a bolt Of thunder had been driven through the house. Retorts, receivers, pelicans, bolt-heads, All struck in shivers 1 [Subtle falls down as in a swoon. Help, good sir ! alas, Coldness, and death invades him. Nay, sir Mam- Do the fair offices of a man ! you stand, [mon, As you were readier to depart than he. [Knocking within. Who’s there ? my lord her brother is come. Mam. Ha, Lungs! Face. His coach is at the door. Avoid his sight, For he’s as furious as his sister’s mad. Mam. Alas! Face. My brain is quite undone with the fume, I ne’er must hope to be mine own man again, [sir, Mam. Is all lost, Lungs? will nothing be pre- Of all our cost? [serv’d Face. Faith, very little, sir ; A peck of coals or so, which is cold comfort, sir. Mam. O my voluptuous mind! I am justly Face. And so am 1, sir. [punish’d. Mam. Cast from all my hopes-- Face. Nay, certainties, sir. Mam. By mine own base affections. Sub. [ Seeming to come to himself .] O, the curst Mam. Good father, [fruits of vice and lust! It was my sin. Forgive it. Sub. Hangs my roof 203 Over us still, and will not fall, O justice, Upon us, for this wicked man ! Face. Nay, look, sir, You grieve him now with staying in his sight: Good sir, the nobleman will come too, and take And that may breed a tragedy. [you, Mam. I’ll go. Face. Ay, and repent at home, sir. It may be, For some good penance you may have it yet; A hundred pound to the box at Bethlem- Mam. Yes. Face. For the restoring such as—have their wits. Mam. I’ll do’t. Face. I’ll send one to you to receive it. Mam. Do. Is no projection left? Face. All flown, or stinks, sir. Mam. Will nought be sav’d that’s good for med’cine, tliink’st thou ? Face. I cannot tell, sir. There will be perhaps, Something about the scraping of the shards, Will cure the itch,—though not your itch of mind, sir. [Aside It shall be saved for you, and sent home. Good This way, for fear the lord should meet you. [sir, [Exit Mammon. Sub. [ Raising his head.] Face ! Face. Ay. Sub. Is he gone ? Face. Yes, and as heavily As all the gold he hoped for were in’s blood. Let us be light though. Sub. [Leaping up.] Ay, as balls, and bound And hit our heads against the roof for joy : There’s so much of our care now cast away. Face. Now to our don. Sub. Yes, your young widow by this time Is made a countess, Face ; she has been in travail Of a young heir for you. Face. Good sir. Sub. Off with your case, And greet her kindly, as a bridegroom should, After these common hazards. Face. Very well, sir. Will you go fetch don Diego off, the while ? Sub. And fetch him over too, if you’ll be pleased, sir: Would Dol were in her place, to pick his pockets now! Face. Why, you can do’t as well, if you would I pray you prove your virtue. [set to’t. Sub. For your sake, sir. [Exeunt. —o— SCENE IY.— Another Room in the same. Enter Surly and Dame Pliant. Sur. Lady, you see into what hands you are fall’n; ’Mongst what a nest of villains ! and how near Your honour was t’have catch d a certain clap, Through your credulity, had I but been So punctually forward, as place, time, And other circumstances would have made a man; For you’re a handsome woman : would you were I am a gentleman come here disguised, [wise too! Only to find the knaveries of this citadel; And where I might have wrong’d your honour, and have not, I claim some interest in your love. You are, They say, a widow, rich; and I’m a batchelor, 264 THE ALCHEMIST. act iv. Worth nought: your fortunes may make me a man, As mine have preserv’d you a woman. Think upon And whether I have deserv’d you or no. [it, Dame P. I will, sir. Sur. And for these household-rogues, let me To treat with them. [alone Enter Subtle. Sub. How doth my noble Diego, And my dear madam countess ? hath the count Been courteous, lady ? liberal, and open ? Donzel, methinks you look melancholic, After your coitum, and scurvy : truly, I do not like the dulness of your eye ; It hath a heavy cast, ’tis upsee Dutch, And says you are a lumpish whore-master. Be lighter, I will make your pockets so. [. Attempts to pick them. Sur. [Throws open his cloak.] Will you, don bawd and pick-purse? [strikes him down.] how now ! reel you ? Stand up, sir, you shall find, since I am so heavy, I’ll give you equal weight. Sub. Help ! murder ! Sur. No, sir, There’s no such thing intended : a good cart, And a clean whip shall ease you of that fear. I am the Spanish don that should be cozen'd, Do you see, cozen'd! Where’s your captain Face, That parcel broker, and whole-bawd, all rascal! Enter Face, in his uniform. Face. How, Surly! Sur. O, make your approach, good captain. I have found from whence your copper rings and spoons Come, now, wherewdth you cheat abroad in taverns. ’Twas here you learn’d t’ anoint your boot with brimstone, Then rub men’s gold on’t for a kind of touch, And say ’twas naught, when you had changed the colour, That you might have’t for nothing. And this doc- Your sooty, smoky-bearded compeer, he [tor, Will close you so much gold, in a bolt’s-head, And, on a turn, convey in the stead another With sublimed mercury, that shall burst in the heat, And fly out all in fumo ! Then weeps Mammon ; Then swoons his worship. [Face slips out.] Or, he is the Faustus, That casteth figures and can conjure, cures Plagues, piles, and pox, by the ephemerides, And holds intelligence with all the bawds And midwives of three shires : while you send in— Captain—what! is he gone?—damsels with child, Wives that are barren, or the waiting-maid With the green sickness. [Seizes Subtle as he is retiring. Nay, sir, you must tarry, Though he be scaped ; and answer by the ears, sir. Re-enter Face, with Kastb.il. Face. Why, now’s the time, if ever you will quar- Well, as they say, and be a true-born child : [rel The doctor and your sister both are abused. Kas. Where is he ? which is he? he is a slave, Whate’er he is, and the son of a whore.—Are you The man, sir, I would know ? Sur. I should be loth, sir, To confess so much. Kas. Then you lie in your throat. Sur. How! Face, f to Kastrtl.] A very errant rogue, sir, Employ’d here by another conjurer [and a cheater, That does not love the doctor, and would cross him, If he knew how. Sur. Sir, you are abused. Kas. You lie: And ’tis no matter. Face. W T ell said, sir! He is The impudent’st rascal- Sur. You are indeed : Will you hear me, sir? Face. By no means : bid him be gone. Kas. Begone, sir, quickly. Sur. This ’s strange!—Lady, do you inform your brother. Face. There is not such a foist in all the town, The doctor had him presently; and finds yet, The Spanish count will come here.—Bear up, Subtle. [Aside. Sub. Yes, sir, he must appear within this hour. Face. And yet this rogue would come in a dis- By the temptation of another spirit, [guise, To trouble our art, though he could not hurt it! Kas. Ay, I know—Away, [to his Sister,] you talk like a foolish mauther. Sur. Sir, all is truth she says. Face. Do not believe him, sir. He is the lying’st swabber ! Come your ways, sir. Sur. You are valiant out of company ! Kas. Yes, how then, sir ? Enter Drugger, with a piece of damask. Face. Nay, here’s an honest fellow, too, that knows him, And all his tricks. Make good what I say, Abel, This cheater would have cozen’d thee o’ the widow.— ' [Aside to Drug. He owes this honest Drugger here, seven pound, He has had on him, in two-penny’orths of tobacco. Drug. Yes, sir. And he has damn’d himself three terms to pay me. Face. And what does he owe for lotium ? Drug. Thirty shillings, sir; And for six syringes. Sur. Hydra of villainy ! Face. Nay, sir, you must quarrel him out o’ the house. Kas. I will: —Sir, if you get not out o’ doors, you lie ; And you are a pimp. Sur. Why, this is madness, sir, Not valour in you; I must laugh at this. Kas. It is my humour: you are a pimp and a trig, < And an Amadis de Gaul, or a Don Quixote. Drug. Or a knight o’ the curious coxcomb, do you see ? Enter Ananias. Ana. Peace to the household ! Kas. I’ll keep peace for no man. Ana. Casting of dollars is concluded lawful. Kas. Is he the constable ? Sub. Peace, Ananias. Face. No, sir. Kas. Then you are an otter, and a shad, a whit A very tim. Sur. You’ll hear me, sir? Kas. I will not. Ana. What is the motive? SCENE IV. THE ALCHEMIST. 265 Sub. Zeal in the young gentleman, Against his Spanish slops. Ana. They are profane, Lewd, superstitious, and idolatrous breeches. Sur. New rascals ! Kas. Will you begone, sir ? Ana. Avoid, Sathan ! Thou art not of the light: That ruff of pride About thy neck, betrays thee ; and is the same With that which the unclean birds, in seventy-seven, Were seen to prank it with on divers coasts : Thou look’st like antichrist, in that lewd hat. Sur. I must give way. Kas. Be gone, sir. Sur. But I’ll take A course with you- Ana. Depart, proud Spanish fiend ! Sur. Captain and Doctor. Ana. Child of perdition 1 Kas. Hence, sir ! [Exit Surly. Did I not quarrel bravely ? Face. Yes, indeed, sir. Kas. Nay, an I give my mind to’t, I shall do’t. Face. O, you must follow, sir, and threaten him lie'll turn again else. [tame : Kas. I’ll re-turn him then. [Exit. [Subtle takes Ananias aside. Face. Drugger, this rogue prevented us for thee: We had determin’d that thou should’st have come In a Spanish suit, and have carried her so ; and he, A brokerly slave ! goes, puts it on himself. Hast brought the damask ? Drug. Yes, sir. Face. Thou must borrow A Spanish suit: hast thou no credit with the players ? Drug. Yes, sir; did you never see me play the Fool ? Face. I know not, Nab :—Thou shalt, if I can help it.— Hieronimo’s old cloak, ruff, and hat will serve ; I’ll tell thee more when thou bring’st ’em. [Exit Drugger. Ana. Sir, I know The Spaniard hates the brethren, and hath spies Upon their actions: and that this was one I make no scruple_But the holy synod Have been in prayer and meditation for it; And ’tis reveal’d no less to them than me, That casting of money is most lawful. Sub. True, But here I cannot do it; if the house Shou’d chance to be suspected, all would out, And we be lock’d up in the Tower for ever, To make gold there for the state, never come out; And then are you defeated. Ana. I will tell This to the elders and the weaker brethren, That the whole company of the separation May join in humble prayer again. Sub. And fasting. Ana. Yea, for some fitter place. The peace of mind Rest with these walls ! [Exit. Sub. Thanks, courteous Ananias. Face. What did he come for ? Sub. About casting dollars, Presently out of hand. And so I told him, A Spanish minister came here to spy, Against the faithful- Face. I conceive. Come, Subtle, Thou art so down upon the least disaster ! How wouldst thou ha’ done, if I had not help’t thee out ? Sub. I thank thee, Face, for the angry hoy, i’ faith. Face. Who would have look'd it should have been that rascal, Surly? he had dyed his beard and all. Well, sir, Here’s damask come to make you a suit. Sub. Where’s Drugger? Face. He is gone to borrow me a Spanish habit; I’ll be the count, now. Sub. But where’s the widow ? Face. Within, with my lord’s sister: madam Is entertaining her. [Dol Sub. By your favour, Face, Now she is honest, I will stand again. Face. You will not offer it. Sub. Why? Face. Stand to your word, Or—here comes Dol, she knows- Sub. You are tyrannous still. Enter Dol, hastily. Face. Strict for my right.—How now, Dol Hast [thou] told her, The Spanish count will come ? Dol. Yes ; but another is come, You little look’d for! Face. Who is that ? Dol. Your master; The master of the house. Sub. How, Dol! Face. She lies, This is some trick. Come, leave your quiblins, Dorothy. Dol. Look out, and see. [Face goes to the window. Sub. Art thou in earnest ? Dol. ’Slight, Forty o’ the neighbours are about him, talking. Face. ’Tis he, by this good day. Dol. ’Twill prove ill day For some on us. Face. We are undone, and taken. Dol. Lost, I’m afraid. Sub. You said he would not come, While there died one a week within the liberties. Face. No : ’twas within the walls. Sub. Was’t so ! cry you mercy. I thought the liberties. What shall we do now, Face ? Face. Be silent: not a word, if he call or knock. I’ll into mine old shape again and meet him, Of Jeremy, the butler. In the mean time, Do you two pack up all the goods and purchase, That we can carry in the two trunks. I’ll keep him Off for to-day, if I cannot longer : and then At night, I’ll ship you both away to Ratcliff, Where we will meet to-morrow, and there we’ll share. Let Mammon’s brass and pewter keep the cellar; We’ll have another time for that. But, Dol, ’Prythee go heat a little water quickly ; Subtle must shave me : all my captain’s beard Must off, to make me appear smooth Jeremy. You’ll do it? Sub. Yes, I’ll shave you, as well as I can. Face. And not cut my throat, but trim me ? Sub. You shall see, sir. [Exeunt THE ALCHEMIST. ACT V. £u6 ACT Y. SCENE I. — Before Lovewit’s Door. Enter Lovewit, with several of the Neighbours. Love. Has there been such resort, say you ? 1 Nei. Daily, sir. 2 Nei. And nightly, too 3 Nei. Ay, some as brave as lords. 4 Nei. Ladies and gentlewomen. 5 Nei. Citizens’ wives. 1 Nei. And knights. 6 Nei. In coaches. 2 Nei. Yes, and oyster women. 1 Nei. Beside other gallants. 3 Nei. Sailors’ wives. 4 Nei. Tobacco men. 5 Nei. Another Pimlico ! Love. What should my knave advance, To draw this company ? he hung out no banners Of a strange calf with five legs to be seen, Or a huge lobster with six claws ? 6 Nei. No, sir. 3 Nei. We had gone in then, sir. Love. He has no gift Of teaching in the nose that e’er I knew of. You saw no bills set up that promised cure Of agues, or the tooth-ach ? 2 Nei. No such thing, sir. Love. Nor heard a drum struck for baboons or 5 Nei. Neither, sir. [puppets ? Love. What device should he bring forth now ? I love a teeming wit as I love my nourishment: ’Pray God he have not kept such open house, That he hath sold my hangings, and my bedding ! I left him nothing else. If he have eat them, A plague o’ the moth, say I! Sure he has got Some bawdy pictures to call all this ging ! The friar and the nun ; or the new motion Of the knight’s courser covering the parson’s mare; The boy of six year old with the great thing : Or’t may be, he has the fleas that run at tilt Upon a table, or some dog to dance. When saw you him ? 1 Nei. Who, sir, Jeremy? 2 Nei. Jeremy butler? We saw him not this month. Love. How ! 4 Nei. Not these five weeks, sir. 6 Nei. These six weeks at the least. Love. You amaze me, neighbours ! 5 Nei. Sure, if your worship know not where He’s slipt away. [he is, G Nei. Pray God, he be not made away. Love. Ha ! it’s no time to question, then. [Knocks at the Door. 6 Nei. About Some three weeks since, I heard a doleful cry, As I sat up a mending my wife’s stockings. Love. ’Tis strange that none will answ'er ! Didst A cry, sayst thou ? [thou hear 6 Nei. Yes, sir, like unto a man That had been strangled an hour, and could not speak. 2 Nei. I heard it too, just this day three weeks, Next morning. [at two o’clock Love. These be miracles, or you make them so! A man an hour strangled, and could not speak, And both you heard him cry ? 3 Nei. Yes, downward, sir. Love. Thou art a wise fellow. Give me thy What trade art thou on? [hand, I pray thee, 3 Nei. A smith, an’t please your worship. Love. A smith ! then lend me thy help to get this door open. 3 Nei. That I will presently, sir, but fetch my tools— C Exit. 1 Nei. Sir, best to knock again, afore you break Love. [Knocks again.] I will. [it. Enter Face, in his butler's livery. Face. What mean you, sir ? 1, 2, 4 Nei. O, here’s Jeremy ! Face. Good sir, come from the door. Love. Why, what’s the matter? Face. Yet farther, you are too near yet. Love. In the name of w T onder, What means the fellow! Face. The house, sir, has been visited. Love. What, with the plague ? stand thou then farther. Face. No, sir, I had it not. Ijove. Who had it then ? I left None else but thee in the house. Face. Yes, sir, my fellow, The cat that kept the buttery, had it on her A w 7 eek before I spied it; but I got her Convey’d away in the night: and so I shut The house up for a month- Love. How ! Face. Purposing then, sir, T’have burnt rose-vinegar, treacle, and tar, And have made it sweet, that you shou’d ne’er have known it; Because I knew the news w r ould but afflict you, sir. Love. Breathe less, and farther off! Why this is stranger: The neighbours tell me all here that the doors Have still been open- Face. How, sir! Love. Gallants, men and women, And of all sorts, tag-rag, been seen to flock here In threaves, these ten weeks, as to a second Hogsder., In days of Pimlico and Eye-bright. Face. Sir, Their wisdoms will not say so. Love. To-day they speak Of coaches, and gallants ; one in a French hood Went in, they tell me; and another was seen In a velvet gown at the window : divers more Pass in and out. Face. They did pass through the doors then, Or walls, I assure their eye-sights, and their spectacles; For here, sir, are the keys, and here have been, In this my pocket, now above twenty days : And for before, I kept the fort alone there. But that ’tis yet not deep in the afternoon, I should believe my neighbours had seen double Through the black pot, and made these apparitions! For, on my faith to your worship, for these three weeks And upwards the door has not been open’d. Love. Strange ! 1 Nei. Good faith, I think I saw a coach. niiENE I. THE ALCHEMIST. 267 2 Nei. And I too, I’d have been sworn. Love. Do you but think it now ? And but one coach ? 4 Nei. We cannot tell, sir : Jeremy Is a very honest fellow. Face. Did you see me at all ? 1 Nei. No ; that we are sure on. 2 Nei. I’ll be sworn o’ that. Love. Fine rogues to have your testimonies built on! Re-enter Third Neighbour, with his Tools. 3 Nei. Is Jeremy come ! 1 Nei. O, yes ; you may leave your tools ; We were deceived, he says. 2 Nei. He has had the keys ; And the door has been shut these three weeks. 3 Nei. Like enough. Love. Peace and get hence, you changelings. Enter Surly and Mammon. Face. Surly come! And Mammon made acquainted ! they’ll tell all. How shall I beat them off ? what shall I do ? Nothing’s more wretched than a guilty conscience. [Aside. Sur. No, sir, he was a great physician. This, It was no bawdy house, but a mere chancel! You knew the lord and his sister. Mam. Nay, good Surly— Sur. The happy word, Be rich — Mam. Play not the tyrant.— Aur. Should be to-day pronounced to all your friends. And where be your andirons now ? and your brass pots, That should have been golden flagons, and great wedges ? Mam. Let me but breathe. What, they have shut their doors, Methinks 1 Sur. Ay, now ’tis holiday with them. Mam. Rogues, [He and Surly knock. Cozeners, impostors, bawds ! Face. What mean you, sir ? Mam. To enter if we can. Face. Another man’s house ! Here is the owner, sir : turn you to him, And speak your business. Mam. Are you, sir, the owner? Love. Yes, sir. Mam. And are those knaves within your cheaters? I,ove. What knaves, what cheaters ? Mam. Subtle and his Lungs. Face. The gentleman is distracted, sir! No lungs, Nor lights have been seen here these three weeks, Within these doors, upon my word. [sir, Sur. Your word, Groom arrogant 1 Face. Yes, sir, I ?.m the housekeeper, And know the keys have not been out of my hands. Sur. This is a new Face. Face. You do mistake the house, sir: What sign was’t at ? Sur. You rascal! this is one Of the confederacy. Come, let’s get officers, And force the door. Love. ’Pray you stay, gentlemen. • Sur. No, sir, we’ll come with warrant. Mam. Ay, and then We shall have your doors open. [Exeunt Mam. and Sur. Love. What means this ? Face. I cannot tell, sir. 1 Nei. These are two of the gallants That we do think we saw. Face. Two of the fools ! You talk as idly as they. Good faith, sir, I think the moon has crazed ’em all.—O me, Enter Kastril. The angry boy come too ! He’ll make a noise, And ne’er away till he have betray’d us all. [Aside. Kas . [knocking.'] What rogues, bawds, slaves, you’ll open the door, anon ! Punk, cockatrice, my suster! By this light I’ll fetch the marshal to you. You are a whore To keep your castle- Face. Who would you speak with, sir ? Kas. The bawdy doctor, and the cozening cap- And puss my suster. [tain, Love. This is something, sure. Face. Upon my trust, the doors were never open, sir. Kas. I have heard all their tricks told me twice By the fat knight and the lean gentleman. rover, Love. Here comes another. Enter Ananias and Tribulation. Face. Ananias too! And his pastor! Tri. [ beating at the door .] The doors are shut against us. Ana. Come forth, you seed of sulphur, sons of Your stench it is broke forth ; abomination [fire ! Is in the house. Kas. Ay, my suster’s there. Ana. The place, It is become a cage of unclean birds. Kas. Yes, I will fetch the scavenger, and the Tri. You shall do well. [constable. Ana. We’ll join to weed them out. Kas. You will not come then, punk devise, my sister ! Ana. Call her not sister ; she’s a harlot verily Kas. I’ll raise the street. Love. Good gentleman, a word. Ana. Satan avoid, and hinder not our zeal! [Exeunt Ana. Trib. and Kast, Love. The world’s turn’d Bethlem. Face. These are all broke loose, Out of St. Katherine’s, where they use to keep The better sort of mad-folks. 1 Nei. All these persons We saw go in and out here. 2 Nei. Yes, indeed, sir. 3 Nei. These were the parties. Face. Peace, you drunkards! Sir, I wonder at it: please you to give me leave To touch the door, I’ll try an the lock be chang’d., Love. It mazes me ! Face. [Goes to the door."] Good faith, sir, I believe There’s no such thing: ’tis all deceptio visus — Would I could get him away. [Aside. Dap. [within.'] Master captain! master doctor ! Love. Who’s that ? Face. Our clerk within, that I forgot! [Aside.] I know not, sir. Dap. [within.] For God’s sake, when will her Face. Ha ! I grace be at leisure ? THE ALCHEMIST. Illusions, some spirit o’ the air!—His gag is melted, And now he sets out the throat. [Aside. Dap. [within.] I am almost stifled- Face. Would you were altogether. [Aside. Love. ’Tis in the house. Ila! list. Face. Believe it, sir, in the air. Love. Peace, you. Dap. [within.] Mine aunt’s grace does not use Sub. [within.'] You fool, [me well. Peace, you’ll mar all. Face, [speaks through the key-hole, while Love • wit advances to the door unobserved.] Or you will else, you rogue. Love . O, is it so ? then you converse with spirits !— Come, sir. No more of your tricks, good Jeremy, The truth, the shortest way. Face. Dismiss this rabble, sir.— What shall I do? I am catch’d. [Aside. Love. Good neighbours, I thank you all. You may depart. [Exeunt Neighbours.] —Come sir, You know that I am an indulgent master ; And therefore conceal nothing. What’s your medicine, To draw so many several sorts of wild fowl ? Face. Sir, you were wont to affect mirth and wit— But here’s no place to talk on’t in the street. Give me but leave to make the best of my fortune, And only pardon me the abuse of your house : It’s all I beg. I’ll help you to a widow, In recompence, that you shall give me thanks for, Will make you seven years younger, and a rich one. ’Tis but your putting on a Spanish cloak : I have her within. You need not fear the house ; It was not visited. Love. But by me, who came Sooner than you expected. Face. It is true, sir. ’Pray you forgive me. Love. Well: let’s see your widow. [Exeunt. SCENE II.— A Room in the same. Enter Subtle, leading in Dapper, with his eyes bound as before. Sub. How ! have you eaten your gag ? Dap. Yes faith, it crumbled Away in my mouth. Sub. You have spoil’d all then. Dap. No! I hope my aunt of Fairy will forgive me. Sub. Your aunt’s a gracious lady ; but in troth You were to blame. Dap. The fume did overcome me, And I did do’t to stay my stomach. ’Pray you So satisfy her grace. Enter Face, in his uniform. Here comes the captain, Face. How now ! is his mouth down ? Sub. Ay, he has spoken ! Face. A pox, I heard him, and you too_He’s undone then.— I have been fain to say, the house is haunted With spirits, to keep churl back. Sub. And hast thou done it ? ACT t. Face. Sure, for this night. Sub. Why, then triumph and sing Of Face so famous, the precious king Of present wits. Face. Did you not hear the coil About the door ? Sub. Yes, and I dwindled with it. Face. Shew him his aunt, and let him be dis¬ patch’d : I’ll send her to you. > [Exit Face. Sub. Well, sir, your aunt her grace Will give you audience presently, on my suit, And the captain’s word that you did not eat your gag In any contempt of her highness. [Unbinds his eyes. Dap. Not I, in troth, sir. Enter Dol, like the Queen of Fairy. Sub. Here she is come. Down o’ your knees and wriggle : She has a stately presence, [Dapper kneels, and sli7iffl.es towards her.] Good ! Yet nearer, And bid, God save vou ! Dap. Madam ! Sub. And your aunt. Dap. And my most gracious aunt, God save your grace. Dol. Nephew, we thought to have been angry with you ; But that sweet face of yours hath turn’d the tide, And made it flow with joy, that ebb’d of love. Arise, and touch our velvet gown. Sub. The skirts, And kiss ’em. So ! Dol. Let me now stroak that head. Much, nephew, shalt thou win, much shalt thou spend, Much shalt thou give away, much shalt thou lend. Sub. Ay, much ! indeed. [Aside.] Why do you not thank her grace ? Dap. I cannot speak for joy. Sub. See the kind wretch ! Your grace’s kinsman right. Dol. Give me the bird. Here is your fly in a purse, about your neck, cousin ; Wear it, and feed it about this day sev’n-night, On your right wrist- Sub. Open a vein with a pin. And let it suck but once a week; till then, You must not look on’t. Dol. No : and kinsman, Bear yourself worthy of the blood you come on. Sub. Her grace would have you eat no more Woolsack pies, Nor Dagger frumety. Dol. Nor break his fast In Heaven and Hell. Sub. She’s with you every where ! Nor play with costarmongers, at mum-chance, tray-trip, God make you rich ; (when as your aunt has done But keep it;) The gallant’st company, and the best games- Dap. Yes, sir. Sub. Gleek and primero : and what you get, be true to us. Dap. By this hand, I will. Sub. You may bring’s a thousand pound Before to-morrow night, if but three thousand Be stirring, an you will. Dap. I swear I will then. I THE ALCHEMIST. SCENE II. Sub. Your fly will learn you all games. Face. \within.~\ Have you done there? Sub. Your grace will command him no moie Dol. No : [duties ? But come, and see me often. I may chance To leave him three or four hundred chests of trea¬ sure, And some twelve thousand acres of fairy land, If he game well and comely with good gamesters. Sub. There's a kind aunt! kiss her departing part.— But you must sell your forty mark a year, now. Dap. Ay, sir, I mean. Sub. Or, give’t away; pox on’t ! Dap. I’ll give’t mine aunt: I’ll go and fetch the writings. [Exit. Sub. ’Tis well—away ! Re-enter Face. Face. Where’s Subtle? Sub. Here: what news? Face. Drugger is at the door, go take his suit, And bid him fetch a parson, presently ; Say, he shall marry the widow. Thou slialt spend A hundred pound by the service ! [Exit Subtle.] Now, queen Dol, Have you pack’d up all? Dol. Yes. Face. And how do you like The lady Pliant ? Dol. A good dull innocent. Re-enter Subtle. . Sub. Here’s your Hieronimo’s cloak and hat. Face. Give me them. Sub. And the ruff too? Face. Yes ; I’ll come to you presently. [Exit. Sub. Now he is gone about his project, Dol, I told you of, for the widow. Dol. ’Tis direct Against our articles. Sub. Well, we will fit him, wench. Hast thou gull’d her of her jewels or her bracelets ? Dol. No ; but I will do’t. Sub. Soon at night, my Dolly, When we are shipp’d, and all our goods aboard, Eastward for Ratcliff ; we will turn our course To Brainford, westward, if thou sayst the word, And take our leaves of this o’er-weening rascal, This peremptory Face. Dol. Content, I’m weary of him. Sub. Thou’st cause, when the slave will run a wiving, Dol, Against the instrument that was drawn between Dol. I’ll pluck his bird as bare as I can. [us Sub. Yes, tell her, She must by any means address some present To the cunning man, make him amends for wrong- His art with her suspicion ; send a ring [ing Or chain of pearl; she will be tortured else Extremely in her sleep, say, and have strange things Come to her. Wilt thou ? Dol. Yes. Sub. My fine flitter-mouse, My bird o’ the night! we’ll tickle it at the Pigeons, When we have all, and may unlock the trunks, And say, this’s mine, and thine ; and thine, and mine. [They kiss. Re-enter Face. Face. What now ! a billing ? Sub. Yes, a little exalted 201) In the good passage of our stock-affairs. Face. Drugger has brought his parson ; take him in, Subtle, And send Nab back again to wash his face. Sub. I will: and shave himself. [Exit. Face. If you can get him. Dol. You are hot upon it, Face, whate’er it is 1 Face. A trick that Dol shall spend ten pound a month by. Re-enter Subtle. Is he gone ? Sub. The chaplain waits you in the hall, sir. Face. I’ll go bestow him. [Exit Dol. He’ll now marry her, instantly. Sub. He cannot yet, he is not ready. Dear Dol, Cozen her of all thou canst. To deceive him Is no deceit, but justice, that would break Such an inextricable tie as ours was. Dol. Let me alone to lit him. Re-enter Face. Face. Come, my venturers, You have pack’d up all? where be the trunks? Sub. Here. [bring forth. Face. Let us see them. Where’s the money ? Sub. Here, In this. Face. Mammon’s ten pound; eight score before : The brethren’s money, this. Drugger’s and Dap- What paper’s that ? [per’s. Dol. The jewel of the waiting-maid’s, That stole it from her lady, to know certain- Face. If she should have precedence of her mis- Dol. Yes. [tress ? Face. What box is that ? Sub. The fish-wives’ rings, I think, And the ale-wives’ single money. Is’t not, Dol? Dol. Yes ; and the whistle that the sailor’s wife Brought you to know an her husband were with Ward. Face. We’ll wet it to-morrow; and our silver- beakers And tavern cups. Where be the French petticoats, And girdles and hangers ? Sub. Here, in the trunk, And the bolts of lawn. Face. Is Drugger’s damask there, And the tobacco ? Sub. Yes. Face. Give me the keys. Dol. Why you the keys? Sub. No matter, Dol; because We shall not open them before he comes. Face. ’Tis true, you shall not open them, indeed ; Nor have them forth, do you see ? not forth, Dol. Dol. No ! Face. No, my smock rampant. The right is, my master Knows all, has pardon’d me, and he will keep them ; Doctor, ’tis true—you look—for all your figures : I sent for him indeed. Wherefore, good partners, Both he and she be satisfied ; for here Determines the indenture tripartite ’Twixt Subtle, Dol, and Face. All I can do Is to help you over the wall, o’ the back-side, Or lend you a sheet to save your velvet gown, Dol. Here will be officers presently, bethink you Of some course suddenly to ’scape the dock : For thither you will come else. [ Loud knocking. Hark you, thunder. 270 THE ALCHEMIST. ACT V Sub. You are a preoious fiend ! Offi. [ without .] Open the door. Face. Dol, I am sorry for thee, i’ faith; but hear’st thou ? It shall go hard but I will place thee somewhere : Thou slialt have my letter to mistress Amo— Dol. Hang you ! Face. Or madam Caesarean. Dol. Pox upon you, rogue, Would I had but time to beat thee ! Face. Subtle, Let’s know where you set up next; I will send you A customer now and then, for old acquaintance : What new course have you ? Sub. Rogue, I’ll hang myself; That I may walk a greater devil than thou, And haunt thee in the flock-bed and the buttery. [Exeunt. SCENE III— An outer Room in the same. Enter Lovewit in the Spanish dress, with the Parson. [Loud knocking at the door.') Love. What do you mean, my masters ? Mam. [without .] Open your door, Cheaters, bawds, conjurers. Offi. [ without .] Or we will break it open. Love. What warrant have you ? Offi. [without.) Warrant enough, sir, doubt not, If you’ll not open it. Love. Is there an officer, there ? Offi. [without.) Yes, two or three for failing. Love. Have but patience, And I will open it straight. Enter Face, as butler. Face. Sir, have you done ? Is it a marriage? perfect? Love. Yes, my brain. Face. Oft’ with your ruff and cloak then ; be yourself, sir. Sur. [without.) Down with the door. Kas. [without.) ’Slight, ding it open. Love, [opening the door.) Hold, Hold, gentlemen, what means this violence ? Mammon, Surly, Kastril, Ananias, Tribulation, and Officers, rush in. Mam. Where is this collier ? Sur. And my captain Face ? Mam. These day owls. Sur. That are birding in men’s purses. Mam. Madam suppository. Kas. Doxy, my suster. Ana. Locusts Of the foul pit. Tri. Profane as Bel and the dragon. Ana. Worse than the grasshoppers, or the lice of Egypt. Love. Good gentlemen, hear me. Are you And cannot stay this violence ? [officers, 1 Offi. Keep the peace. Love. Gentlemen, what is the matter ? whom do you seek ? Mam. The chemical cozener. Sur. And the captain pander. Kas. The nun my suster. Mam. Madam Rabbi Ana. Scorpions, And caterpillars. Love. Fewer at once, I pay you. 2 Offi. One after another, gentlemen, I charge By virtue of my staff. [you, Ana. They are the vessels Of pride, lust, and the cart. Love. Good zeal, lie still A little while. Tri. Peace, deacon Ananias. Love. The house is mine here, and the doors are open ; If there be any such persons as you seek for, Use your authority, search on o’ God’s name. I am but newly come to town, and finding This tumult ’bout my door, to tell you true, It somewhat mazed me ; till my man, here, fearing My more displeasure, told me he had done Somewhat an insolent part, let out my house (Belike, presuming on my known aversion From any air o’ the town while there was sick¬ ness,) To a doctor and a captain : who, what they are Or where they be, he knows not. Mam. Are they gone ? Love. You may go in and search, sir. [Mam- mom, Ana. and Trib. go in.) Here, I find The empty walls worse than I left them, smoak’d. A few crack’d pots, and glasses, and a furnace : The ceiling fill’d with poesies of the candle, And madam with a dildo writ o’ the walls : Only one gentlewoman, I met here, That is within, that said she was a widow- Kas. Ay, that’s my suster; I’ll go thump her. Where is she ? [Goes in. Love. And should have married a Spanish count but he, When he came to’t, neglected her so grossly, That I, a widower, am gone through with her. Sur. How ! have I lost her then ? Love. Were you the don, sir ? Good faith, now, she does blame you extremely, and says You swore, and told her you had taken the pains To dye your beard, and umbre o’er your face, Borrowed a suit, and ruff, all for her love ; And then did nothing. What an oversight, And want of putting forward, sir, was this ! Well fare an old harquebuzier, yet, Could prime his powder, and give fire, and hit, All in a twinkling ! Re-enter Mammon. Mam. The whole nest are fled ! Love. What sort of birds were they ? Mam. A kind of choughs, Or thievish daws, sir, that have pick’d my purse Of eight score and ten pounds within these five Beside my first materials ; and my goods, [weeks, That lie in the cellar, which I am glad they have I may have home yet. [left, Love. Think you so, sir ? Mam. Ay. Love. By order of law, sir, but not otherwise. Mam. Not mine own stuff! Love. Sir, I can take no knowledge That they are yours, but by public means. If you can bring certificate that you were gull’d of Or any formal writ out of a court, [them, That you did cozen your self, 1 will not hold them. Mam. I’ll rather lose them. Love. That you shall not, sir, scene in. THE ALCHEMIST. 272 By me, in troth : upon these terms, they are yours. What! should they have been, sir, turn’d into gold, Mam. No, [all? I cannot tell—It may be they should—What then ? Love. What a great loss in hope have you sus- Mam. Not I, the common-wealth has. [tain’d ! Face. Ay, he would have built The city new ; and made a ditch about it Of silver, should have run with cream from Hogsden; That, every Sunday, in Moor-fields, the younkers, And tits and tom-boys should have fed on, gratis. Mam. I will go mount a turnip-cart, and preach The end of the world, within these two months. What ! in a dream ? [Surly, Sur. Must I needs cheat myself, With that same foolish vice of honesty ! Come, let us go and hearken out the rogues : That Face I’ll mark for mine, if e’er I meet him. Face. If I can hear of him, sir, I’ll bring you word, Unto your lodging; for in troth, they were strangers To me, I thought them honest as my self, sir. [Exeunt Mam. and Sur. Re-enter Ananias and Tribulation. Tri. ’Tis well, the saints shall not lose all yet. And get some carts - [Go, Love. For what, my zealous friends ? Ana. To bear away the portion of the righteous Out of this den of thieves. Love. What is that portion ? Ana. The goods sometimes the orphan’s, that Bought with their silver pence. [the brethren Love. "What, those in the cellar, The knight sir Mammon claims ? Ana. I do defy The wicked Mammon, so do ail the brethren, Thou profane man ! I ask thee with what conscience Thou canst advance that idol against us, That have the seal ? were not the shillings num¬ ber’d, That made the pounds ; were not the pounds told Upon the second day of the fourth week, [out, In the eighth month, upon the table dormant, The year of the last patience of the saints, Six hundred and ten ? Love. Mine earnest vehement botcher, And deacon also, I cannot dispute with you : But if you get you not away the sooner, I shall confute you with a cudgel. Ana. Sir! Tri. Be patient, Ananias. Ana. I am strong, And will stand up, well girt, against an host That threaten Gad in exile. Love. I shall send you To Amsterdam, to your cellar. Ana. I will pray there, Against thy house : may dogs defile thy walls, And wasps and hornets breed beneath thy roof, This seat of falsehood, and this cave of cozenage ! [Exeunt Ana. and Trie. Enter Druggew Love. Another too ? Drug. Not I, sir, I am no brother. Love, [heats him.] Away, you Harry Nicholas ! do you talk ? [Exit Drug. Face. No, this was Abel Drugger. Good sir, go, [To the Parson. And satisfy him ; tell him all is done : He staid too long a washing of his face. The doctor, he shall hear of him at West-chester ; > And of the captain, tell him, at Yarmouth, or Some good port-town else, lying for a wind. [Exit Parson. If you can get off the angry child, now, sir - Enter Kastril, dragging in his sister. Kas. Come on, you ewe, you have match’d most sweetly, have you not ? Did not I say, I would never have you tupp’d But by a dubb’d boy, to make you a lady-tom ? ’Slight, you are a mamraet ! 0, I could touse you, Death, mun’ you marry, with a pox ! [now. Love. You lie, boy ; As sound as you ; and I’m aforehand with you. Kas. Anon ! Love. Come, will you quarrel ? I will feize you, Why do you not buckle to your tools ? [sirrah ; Kas. Od’s light, This is a fine old boy as e’er I saw ! Love. What, do you change your copy now ? proceed, Here stands my dove: stoop at her, if you dare. Kas. ’Slight, I must love him ! I cannot choose, i’ faith, An I should be hang’d for’t ! Suster, I protest, I honour thee for this match. Love. 0, do you so, sir ? Kas. Yes, an thou canst take tobacco and drink, old boy, I’ll give her five hundred pound more to her Than her own state. [marriage, Love. Fill a pipe full, Jeremy. Face. Yes ; but go in and take it, sir. Love. We will— I will be ruled by thee in anything, Jeremy. Kas. ’Slight, thou art not hide-bound, thou art a jovy boy ! Come, let us in, I pray thee, and take our whiffs. Love. Whiff in with your sister, brother boy. [Exeunt Kas. and Dame P.] That master That had received such happiness by a servant, In such a widow, and with so much wealth, Were very ungrateful, if he would not be A little indulgent to that servant’s wit, And help his fortune, though with some small strain Of his own candour, [advancing .]— Therefore , gentlemen, And kind spectators, if I have outstript An old man's gravity , or strict canon, think What a young wife and a good brain may do ; Stretch age's truth sometimes, and crack it too. Speak for thy self, knave. Face. So I will, sir. [advancing to the front of the stage.] Gentlemen, My part a little fell in this last scene , Yet 'twas decorum. And though I am clean Got off from Subtle, Surly, Mammon, Dol, Hot Ananias, Dapper, Drugger , all With whom I traded : yet I put my self On you, that are my country : and this pelf , Which I have got, if you do quit me, rests To feast you often , and invite new guests. [ExeunA CATILINE HIS CONSPIRACY. TO THE GREAT EXAMPLE OF HONOUR AND VIRTUE, THE MOST NOBLE WILLIAM, EARL OF PEMBROKE, My Lord,—I n so thick light, and by that to be read. LORD CHAMBERLAIN, ETC. and dark an ignorance, as now almost covers the age, I crave leave to stand near your Posterity may pay your benefit the honour and thanks, when it shall know, that you dare, in these jig-given times, to countenance a legitimate Poem. I call it so, against all noise of opinion ; from whose crude and airy reports, I appeal to the great and singular faculty of judgment in your lordship, able to vindicate truth from error. It is the first, of this race, that ever I dedicated to any person; and had I not thought it the best, it should have been taught a less ambition. Nowit approacheth your censure cheerfully, and with the same assurance that innocency would appear before a magistrate. Your lordship’s most faithful honourer, I3en Jonson. TO THE READER IN ORDINARY. The muses forbid that I should restrain your meddling, whom I see already busy with the title, and tricking over the leaves : it is your own. I departed with my right, when I let it first abroad ; and now, so secure an interpreter I am of my chance, that neither praise nor dispraise from you can affect me. Though you commend the two first acts, with the people, because they are the worst; and dislike the oration of Cicero, in regard you read some pieces of it at school, and understand them not yet: I shall find the way to forgive you. Be anything you will be at your own charge. Would I had deserved but half so well of it in translation, as that ought to deserve of you in judgment, if you have any. I know you will pretend, whosoever you are, to have that, and more: but all pretensions are not just claims. The commendation of good things may fall within a many, the approbation but in a few ; for the most commend out of affection, self-tickling, an easiness, or imitation: but men judge only out of knowledge. That is the trying faculty : and to those works that will bear a judge, nothing is more dangerous than a foolish praise. You will say, I shall not have yours therefore ; but rather the contrary, all vexation of censure. If I were not above such molestations now, I had great cause to think unworthily of my studies, or they had so of me. But I leave you to your exercise. Begin. TO THE READER EXTRAORDINARY. You I would understand to be tho better man, though places in court go otherwise: to you I submit myself and work. Farewell. Ben Jonson. DRAMATIS PERSONAS. Sylla’s Ghost. L. Sergius Catiline. Publius Lentulus. Caios Cethegus. Autronius. Quintus Curius. Vargunteius. Lucius Cassius Longinus. Porcius Lecca. Fulvius. Lucius Bestia. Gabinius Cim ier. Statilius. Ceparius. C. Cornelius. VoLTURTIUS. Cicero. Caius Antonius. Cato. Catulus. Crassus. Caisar. Qu. Cicero. Syllanus. Flaccus. PoMTINIUS. Q. Fabius Sanoa. Petreius. Senators. Allobroges. Aurelia Orestilla. Fulvia. Sempronia. Galla. Soldiers, Porters, Lictors, Servants, Pages, SfC. Chorus. SCENE, -PARTLY AT RoMEj AND PARTLY IN FeSUL/E. CATILINE. SCENE I. i’,73 ACT I. SCENE I. —A Room in Catiline’s House. The Ghost o/Sylla rises. Dost thou not feel me, Rome ? not yet ! is night So heavy on thee, and my weight so light ? Can Sylla's ghost arise within thy walls, Less threatening than an earthquake , the quick falls Of thee and thine ? Shake not the frighted heads Of thy steep towers , or shrink to their first beds ? Or, as their ruin the large Tyber fills, Make that swell up, and drown thy seven proud hills ? What sleep is this doth seize thee sp like death, And is not it ? wake, feel her in my breath : Behold, I come, sent from the Stygian sound, As a dire vapour that had cleft the ground. To ingender with the night, and blast the day ; Or like a pestilence that should display Infection through the world: which thus I do .— [The curtain draws, and Catiline is discovered in his study. Pluto be at thy counsels, and into Thy darker bosom enter Sylla's spirit ! All that was mine, and bad, thy breast inherit. Not heaven itself from thy impiety : Let night grow blacker with thy plots, and day. At shewing but thy head forth, start away From this half-sphere; and leave Rome's blinded tvalls To embrace lusts, hatreds, slaughters, funerals, And not recover sight till their own flames Do light them to their ruins ! All the names Of thy confederates too be no less great In hell than here: that when we would repeat Our strengths in muster, we may name you all, And furies upon you for furies call! Whilst what you do may strike them into fears, Or make them grieve, and wish your mischief theirs. [Sinks. Catiline r ises, and comes forward. Cat. It is decreed : nor shall thy fate, O Rome, Resist my vow. Though hills were set on hills, And seas met seas to guard thee, I would through j Ay, plough up rocks, steep as the Alps, in dust, And lave the Tyrrhene waters into clouds, But I would reach thy head, thy head, proud city 1 The ills that I have done cannot be safe But by attempting greater ; and I feel A spirit within me chides my sluggish hands, Arid says, they have been innocent too long. Was I a man bred great as Rome herself, One form’d for all her honours, all her glories, Equal to all her titles ; that could stand Close up with Atlas, and sustain her name As strong as he doth heaven! and was I, Of all her brood, mark’d out for the repulse By her no-voice, when I stood candidate To be commander in the Pontic war 1 I will hereafter call her step-dame ever. If she can lose her nature, I can lose My piety, and in her stony entrails Dig me a seat; where I will live again, The labour of her womb, and be a burden Weightier than all the prodigies and monsters That she hath teem’d with, since she first knew Mars— Enter Aurelia Orestjlla. Who’s there ? Aur. ’Tis I. Cat. Aurelia ? Aur. Yes. Cat. Appear, And break like day, my beauty, to this circle: Upbraid thy Phoebus, that he is so long In mounting to that point, which should give thee Thy proper splendour. Wherefore frowns my sweet ? Have I too long been absent from these lips, This cheek, these eyes ? [ Kisses them.'] What is my trespass, speak ? Aur. It seems you know, that can accuse your Cat. I will redeem it. [self. Aur. Still you say so. When ? Cat. When Orestilla, by her bearing well These my retirements, and stol’n times for thought, Shall give their effects leave to call her queen Of all the world, in place of humbled Rome. Aur. You court me now. Cat. As I would always, love, By this ambrosiac kiss, and this of nectar, Wouldst thou but hear as gladly as I speak. Alas, how weak is that for Catiline! Did I but say—vain voice !—all that was mine ? — All that the Gracchi, Cinna, Marius would, What noiv, had I a body again, I could. Coming from hell, what fiends would wish should And Hannibal could not have wish'd to see, \be, Think thou, and practise. Let the long-hid seeds Of treason in thee, now shoot forth in deeds Ranker than horror ; and thy former facts Not fall in mention, but to urge new acts. Conscience of them provoke thee on to more : Be still thy incests, murders, rapes, before Thy sense ; thy forcing first a vestal nun ; Thy parricide, late, on thine own only son, After his mother, to make empty way For thy last wicked nuptials ; worse than they, That blaze that act of thy incestuous life, Which got thee at once a daughter and a wife. I leave the slaughters that thou didst for me, Of senators ; for which, I hid for thee Thy murder of thy brother, being so bribed, And writ him in the list of my proscribed After thy fact, to save thy little shame ; Thy incest with thy sister , I not name: These are too light; fate will have thee pursue Deeds, after which no mischief can be new ; The ruin of thy country : Thou icert built For such a work, and born for no less guilt. What though defeated once thou'st been, and known, Tempt it again : That is thy act , or none. What all the several ills that visit earth, Brought forth by night with a sinister birth, Plagues, famine, fire, could not reach unto, The sword, nor surfeits ; let thy fury do : Make all past, present, future ill thine own ; And conquer all example in thy one. Nor let thy thought find any vacant time To hate an old, but still a fresher crime Drown the remembrance ; let not mischief cease, But while it is in punishing, increase : Conscience and care die in thee ; and be free v 274 CATILINE. act r. Could my Aurelia think I meant her less, When, wooing her, I first removed a wife, And then a son, to make my bed and house Spacious and fit to embrace her ? these were deeds Not to have begun with, but to end with more And greater: He that, building, stays at one Floor, or the second, hath erected none. ’Twas how to raise thee I was meditating, To make some act of mine answer thy love ; That love, that, when my state was now quite sunk, Came with thy wealth and weigh’d it up again, And made my emergent fortune once more look Above the main ; which now shall hit the stars, And stick my Orestilla there amongst them, If any tempest can but make the billow, And any billow can but lift her greatness. But I must pray my love, she will put on Like habits with myself; I have to do With many men, and many natures : Some That must be blown and sooth’d ; as Lentulus, Whom I have heav’d with magnifying his blood, And a vain dream out of the Sybil’s books, That a third man of that great family Whereof he is descended, the Cornelii, Should be a king in Rome : which I have hired The flattering augurs to interpret Him, Cinna and Sylla dead. Then bold Cethegus, Whose valour I have turn’d into his poison, And praised so into daring, as he would Go on upon the gods, kiss lightning, wrest The engine from the Cyclops, and give fire At face of a full cloud, and stand his ire, When I would bid him move. Others there are, Whom envy to the state draws, and puts on For contumelies received, (and such are sure ones,) As Curius, and the forenamed Lentulus, Both which have been degraded in the senate, And must have their disgraces still new rubb’d, To make them smart, and labour of revenge. Others whom mere ambition fires, and dole Of provinces abroad, which they have feign’d To their crude hopes, and I as amply promised : These, Lecca, Vargunteius, Bestia, Autronius. Some whom their wants oppress, as the idle cap¬ tains Of Sylla’s troops ; and divers Roman knights, The profuse wasters of their patrimonies, So threaten’d with their debts, as they will now Run any desperate fortune for a change. These, for a time, we must relieve, Aurelia, And make our house their safeguard : like for those That fear the law, or stand within her gripe, For any act past or to come ; such will, From their own crimes, be factious, as from ours. Some more there be, slight airlings, will be won With dogs and horses, or perhaps a whore ; Which must be had : and if they venture lives For us, Aurelia, we must hazard honours A little. Get thee store and change of women, As I have boys ; and give them time and place, And all connivance : be thy self, too, courtly; And entertain and feast, sit up, and revel; Call all the great, the fair, and spirited dames Of Rome about thee ; and begin a fashion Of freedom and community: some will thank thee, Though the sour senate frown, whose heads must ache In fear and feeling too. We must not spare Or cost or modesty: It can but shew Like one of Juno’s or of Jove’s disguises, In either thee or me : and will as soon, When things succeed, be thrown by, or let fall, As is a veil put off, a visor changed, Or the scene shifted in our theatres— [Noise within. Who’s that ? It is the voice of Lentulus. Aur. Or of Cethegus. Cat. In, my fair Aurelia, And think upon these arts: they must not see How far you’re trusted with these privacies, Though on their shoulders, necks and heads you rise. [Exit Aurelia. Enter Lentulus, in discourse with Cethegus. < Lent. It is, methinks, a morning full of fate! It riseth slowly, as her sullen car Had all the weights of sleep and death hung at it! She is not rosy-finger’d, but swoll’n black ; Her face is like a water turn’d to blood, And her sick head is bound about with clouds, As if she threaten’d night ere noon of day! It does not look as it would have a hail Or health wish’d in it, as on other morns. Cet. Why, all the fitter, Lentulus ; our coming Is not for salutation, we have business. Cat. Said nobly, brave Cethegus! Where’s Cet. Is he not come ? [Autronius ? Cat. Not here. Cet. Nor Vargunteius ? Cat. Neither. Cet. A fire in their beds and bosoms, That so will serve their sloth rather than virtue ! They are no Romans,—and at such high need As now ! Len. Both they, Longinus, Lecca, Curius, Fulvius, Gabinius, gave me word, last night, By Lucius Bestia, they would all be here. And early. Cet. Yes ; as you, had I not call’d you. Come, we all sleep, and are mere dormice ; flies A little less than dead : more dullness hangs On us than on the morn. We are spirit-bound In ribs of ice, our whole bloods are one stone, And honour cannot thaw us, nor our wants, Though they burn hot as fevers to our states. Cat. I muse they would be tardy at an hour Of so great purpose. Cet. If the gods had call’d Them to a purpose, they would just have come With the same tortoise speed; that are thus slow To such an action, which the gods will envy, As asking no less means than all their powers, Conjoin’d, to effect! 1 would have seen Rome burn By this time, and her ashes in an urn; The kingdom of the senate rent asunder, And the degenerate talking gown run frighted Out of the air of Italy. Cat. Spirit of men ! Thou heart of our great enterprise ! how much I love these voices in thee ! Cet. 0, the days Of Sylla’s sway, when the free sword took leave To act all that it would ! Cat. And was familiar With entrails, as our augurs. Cet. Sons kill’d fathers, Brothers their brothers. scene i. CATILINE. 275 Cat. And had price and praise. All hate had license given it, all rage reins. Cet. Slaughter bestrid the streets, and stretch’d himself To seem more huge ; whilst to his stained thighs The gore he drew flow’d up, and carried down Whole heaps of limbs and bodies through his arch. No age was spared, no sex. Cat. Nay, no degree. Cet. Not infants in the porch of life were free. The sick, the old, that could but hope a day Longer by nature’s bounty, not let stay. Virgins, and widows, matrons, pregnant wives, All died. Cat. ’Twas crime enough, that they had lives : To strike but only those that could do hurt, Was dull and poor : some fell to make the number, As some the prey. Cet. The rugged Charon fainted, And ask’d a navy, rather than a boat, To ferry over the sad world that came : The maws and dens of beasts could not receive The bodies that those souls were frighted from ; And e’en the graves were fill’d with men yet living, Whose flight and fear had mix’d them with the dead. Cat. And this shall be again, and more, and Now Lentulus, the third Cornelius, [more, Is to stand up in Rome. Lent. Nay, urge not that Is so uncertain. Cat. How! Lent. I mean, not clear’d, And therefore not to be reflected on. Cat. The Sybil’s leaves uncertain! or tWa comments Of our grave, deep, divining men not clear Lent. All prophecies, you know, suffer the torture. Cat. But this already hath confess’d, without: And so been weigh’d, examined and compared, As ’twere malicious ignorance in him Would faint in the belief. Lent. Do you believe it ? Cat. Do I love Lentulus, or pray to see it ? Lent. The augurs all are constant 1 am meant. Cat. They had lost their science else. Lent. They count from Cinna. Cat. And Sylla next, and so make you the third ; All that can say the sun is risen, must think it. Lent. Men mark me more of late, as I come forth. Cat. Why, what can they do less ? Cinna and Sylla Are set and gone ; and we must turn our eyes On him that is, and shines. Noble Cethegus, But view him with me here ! he looks already As if he shook a sceptre o’er the senate, And the awed purple dropp’d their rods and axes: The statues melt again, and household gods In groans confess the travail of the city ; The very walls sweat blood before the change, And stones start out to ruin ere it comes. Cet. But he, and we, and all are idle still. Lent. I am your creature, Sergius; and whate’er The great Cornelian name shall win to be, It is not augury nor the Sybil’s books, But Catiline that makes it. Cat. I am shadow To honour’d Lentulus and Cethegus here, Who are the heirs of Mars. Cet. By Mars himself, T.2 Catiline is more my parent; for whose virtue Earth cannot make a shadow great enough, Though envy should come too. [Noise within.] O, here they are. Now we shall talk more, though we yet do nothing. Enter Autronius, Varguntbius,.Longinus, Curius, Lecca. Bestia, Fulvius, Gabinius, &c. and Servants. Aut. Hail, Lucius Catiline. Var. Hail, noble Sergius. Lon. Hail, Publius Lentulus. Cur. Hail, the third Cornelius. Lee. Caius Cethegus, hail. Cet. Hail, sloth and words, Instead of men and spirits ! Cat. Nay, dear Caius- Cet. Are your eyes yet unseel’d ? dare they look In the dull face ? [day Cat. He’s zealous for the affair, And blames your tardy coming, gentlemen. Cet. Unless we had sold ourselves to sleep and And would be our slaves’ slaves— [ease, Cat. Pray you forbear. Cet. The north is not so stark and cold. Cat. Cethegus- lies. We shall redeem all if your fire will let us. Cat. You are too full of lightning, noble Caius. Boy, see all doors be shut, that none approach us On this part of the house. [Exit Servant.] Go you, and bid The priest, he kill the slave I mark’d last night, And bring me of his blood, when I shall call him ; Till then, wait all without. [Exeunt Servants. Var. How is’t, Autronius ? Aut. Longinus? Lon. Curius? Cur. Lecca ? Var. Feel you nothing ? Lon. A strange unwonted horror doth invade I know not what it is. [me, f A darkness comes over the place. Lee. The day goes back, Or else my senses ! Cur. As at Atreus’ feast! Ful. Darkness grows more and more ! Len. The vestal flame, I think, be out. [A groan of many people is heard under ground. Gab. What groan was that ? Cet. Our phant’sies: Strike fire out of ourselves, and force a day. [A second groan. Aut. Again it sounds ! Bes. As all the city gave it! Cet. We fear what ourselves feign. [A fiery light appears . Var. What light is this ? Cur. Look forth. Len. It still grows greater! Lee. From whence comes it ? Lon. A bloody arm it is that holds a pine Lighted above the capitol! and now It waves unto us ! Cat. Brave, and ominous ! Our enterprise is seal’d. Cet. In spite of darkness, That would discountenance it. Look no more ; We lose time and ourselves. To what we came Speak, Lucius, we attend you. [for,— Cat. Noblest Romans, If you were less, or that your faith and virtue 276 CATILINE. ACT I. Did not hold good that title, with your blood, I should not now unprofitably spend My self in words, or catch at empty hopes, By airy ways, for solid certainties ; But since in many, and the greatest dangers, I still have known you no less true than valiant, And that I taste in you the same affections, To will or nil, to think things good or bad, Alike with me, which argues your firm friendship ; I dare the boldlier with you set on foot, Or lead unto this great and goodliest action. What I have thought of it afore, you all Have heard apart: I then express’d my zeal Unto the glory ; now, the need inflames me. When I forethink the hard conditions Our states must undergo, except in time We do redeem our selves to liberty, And break the iron yoke forged for our necks; For what less can we call it, when we see, The common-wealth engross’d so by a few, The giants of the state, that do by turns Enjoy her, and defile her ! all the earth, Her kings and tetrachs, are their tributaries ; People and nations pay them hourly stipends ; The riches of the world flow to their coffers, And not to Rome’s. While, (but those few,) the rest, However great we are, honest, and valiant, Are herded with the vulgar, and so kept, As we were only bred to consume corn, Or wear out wool; to drink the city’s water; Ungraced, without authority or mark, Trembling beneath their rods ; to whom, if all Were well in Rome, we should come forth bright All places, honours, offices are theirs, [axes, Or where they will confer them : they leave us The dangers, the repulses, judgments, wants; Which how long will you bear, most valiant spirits ? Were we not better to fail once with virtue, Than draw a wretched and dishonour’d breath, To lose with shame, when these men’s pride will laugh ? I call the faith of Gods and men to question, The power is in our hands, our bodies able, Our minds as strong; o’ the contrary, in them All things grown aged, with their wealth and years: There wants but only to begin the business, The issue is certain. Cet. Lon. On 1 let us go on ! Cur. Bes. Go on, brave Sergius! Cat. It doth strike my soul, And who can scape the stroke, that hath a soul, Or but the smallest air of man within him ? To see them swell with treasure, which they pour Out in their riots, eating, drinking, building, Ay, in the sea! planing of hills with valleys, And raising valleys above hills ! whilst we Have not to give our bodies necessaries. They have their change of houses, manors, lord- ships ; We scarce a fire, or a poor household Lar ! They buy rare Attic statues, Tyrian hangings, Ephesian pictures, and Corinthian plate, Attalic garments, and now new-found gems, Since Pompey went for Asia, which they purchase At price of provinces ! the river Phasis Cannot afford them fowl, nor Lucrine lake Oysters enow : Circei too is search’d, To please the witty gluttony of a meal! Their ancient habitations they neglect, And set up new ; then, if the echo like not In such a room, they pluck down those, build Alter them too ; and by all frantic ways, [newer, Vex their wild wealth, as they molest the people, From whom they force it! Yet they cannot tame, Or overcome their riches ! not by making Baths, orchards, fish-pools, letting in of seas Here, and then there forcing them out again With mountainous heaps, for which the earth hath Most of her ribs, as entrails ; being now [lost Wounded no less for marble, than for gold ! We, all this while, like calm benumb’d spectators, Sit till our seats do crack, and do not hear The thund’ring ruins ; whilst at home our wants, Abroad, our debts do urge us ; our states daily Bending to bad, our hopes to worse ; and what Is left but to be crush’d ? Wake, wake, brave friends, And meet the liberty you oft have wish’d for. Behold, renown, riches, and glory court you! Fortune holds out these to you, as rewards. Methinks, though I were dumb, the affair itself, The opportunity, your needs, and dangers, With the brave spoil the war brings, should invite Use me, your general, or soldier: neither [you. My mind nor body shall be wanting to you : And, being consul, I not doubt to effect All that you wish, if trust not flatter me, And you’d not rather still be slaves, than free. Cet. Free, Free ! Lon. ’Tis Freedom. Cur. Freedom we all stand for. Cat. Why these are noble voices! Nothing wants, But that we take a solemn sacrament, [then, To strengthen our design. Cet. And most to act it: Deferring hurts, where powers are so prepared. Aut. Yet, ere we enter into open act, With favour, ’twere no loss, if’t might be inquired, What the condition of these arms would be. Var. Ay, and the means to carry us through. Cat. Haw, friends ! Think you that I would bid you grasp the wind Or call you to th’ embracing of a cloud ! Put your known valours on so dear a business, And have no other second than the danger, Nor other garland than the loss ? Become Your own assurances. And for the means, Consider, first, the stark security The commonwealth is in now ; the whole senate Sleepy, and dreaming no such violent blow ; Their forces all abroad ; of which the greatest, That might annoy us most, is farthest off, In Asia, under Pompey ; those near hand, Commanded by our friends ; one army in Spain, By Cneus Piso ; the other in Mauritania, By Nucerinus ; both which I have firm, And fast unto our plot. My self, then, standing Now to be consul, with my hoped colleague Caius Antonius, one no less engaged By his wants, than we; and whom I’ve power to melt, And cast in any mould: beside, some others, That will not yet be named, both sure, and great ones, Who, when the time comes, shall declare themselves Strong for our party ; so that no resistance In nature can be thought. For our reward then, First, all our debts are paid; dangers of law, Actions, decrees, judgments against us r, uitted CATILINE SCENE I. CATILINE. The rich men, as in Sylla’s times, proscribed, And publication made of all their goods : That house is yours ; that land is his ; those waters, Orchards, and walks, a third's ; he has that honour, And he that office : such a province falls To Yargunteius; this to Autronius ; that To bold Cetliegus ; Rome to Lentulus. You share the world, her magistracies, priesthoods, Wealth and felicity, amongst you, friends ; And Catiline your servant. Would you, Curius, Revenge the contumely stuck upon you, In being removed from the senate ? now, Now is your time. Would Publius Lentulus Strike for the like disgrace ? now is his time. Would stout Longinus walk the streets of Rome, Facing the Praetor? now has he a time To spurn and tread the fasces into dirt, Made of the usurers’ and the Motors’ brains. Is there a beauty here in Rome you love ? An enemy you would kill? what head’s not your’s ? Whose wife, which boy, whose daughter, of what race, That the husband, or glad parents, shall not bring And boasting of the office ? only spare [you, Yourselves, and you have all the earth beside, A field to exercise your longings in. I see you raised, and read your forward minds High in your faces. Bring the wine and blood You have prepared there. Enter Servants, with a bowl. Lon. How! Cat. I have kill’d a slave, And of his blood caused to be mix’d with wine : Fill every man his bowl. There cannot be A fitter drink to make this sanction in. Here I begin the sacrament to all. O for a clap of thunder now, as loud As to be heard throughout the universe, To tell the world the fact, and to applaud it! Be firm, my hand, not shed a drop; but pour Fierceness into me with it, and fell thirst Of more and more, till Rome be left as bloodless As ever her fears made her, or the sword. And when I leave to wish this to thee, step-dame, Or stop to affect it, with my powers fainting, So may my blood be drawn, and so drunk up. As is this slave’s. [Brinks. Lon. And so be mine. Len. And mine. Aut. And mine. Var. And mine. [They drink. Cet. Swell me my bowl yet fuller. Here, I do drink this, as I would do Cato’s, Or the new fellow Cicero’s, with that vow Which Catiline hath given. [ Drinks. Cur. So do I. Lee. And I. Bes. And I. Ful. And I. Gab. And all of us. [ They drink. Cat. Why now’s the business safe, and each man strengthen’d— Sirrah, what ail you? Page. Nothing. Bes. Somewhat modest. Cat. Slave, I will strike your soul out with my foot, Let me but find you again with such a face: You whelp- 277 Bes. Nay, Lucius. Cat. Are you coying it. When I command you to be free, and general To all ? Bes. You’ll be observed. Cat. Arise ! and shew But any least aversion in your look To him that bourds you next; and your throat opens.— Noble confederates, thus far is perfect. Only your suffrages I will expect At the assembly for the choosing consuls, And all the voices you can make by friends To my election : then let me work out Your fortunes and mine own. Meanwhile, all rest Seal’d up and silent, as when rigid frosts Have bound up brooks and rivers, forced wild beasts Unto their caves, and birds into the woods, Clowns to their houses, and the country sleeps : That, when the sudden thaw comes, we may break Upon them like a deluge, bearing down Half Rome before us, and invade the rest With cries, and noise, able to wake the urns Of those are dead, and make their ashes fear. The horrors that do strike the world, should come Loud, and unlook’d for ; till they strike, be dumb. Cet. Oraculous Sergius! Len. God-like Catiline ! [Exeunt. CHORUS. Can nothing great, and at the height. Remain so long, but its own weight Will ruin it ? or is’t blind chance. That still desires new states to advance, And quit the old ? else why must Rome Be by itself now overcome ? Hath she not foes enow of those Whom she hath made such, and enclose Her round about ? or are they none. Except she first become her own: O wretchedness of greatest states, To be obnoxious to these fates! That cannot keep what they do gain; And what they raise so ill sustain! Rome now is mistress of the whole World, sea and land, to either pole; And even that fortune will destroy The pow’r that made it: she doth joy So much in plenty, wealth, and ease, As now th’ excess is her disease. She builds in gold, and to the stars. As if she threaten’d heav’n with wars; And seeks for hell in quarries deep. Giving the fiends, that there do keep, A hope of day. Her women wear The spoils of nations in an ear, } Changed for the treasure of a shell; And in their loose attires do swell, More light than sails, when all winds play: Yet are the men more loose than they More kemb’d, and bath’d, and rubb’d, and trimm’d, More sleek, more soft, and slacker limb’d ; As prostitute; so much, that kind May seek itself there, and not find. They eat on beds of silk and gold. At ivory tables, or wood sold Dearer than it; and leaving plate. Do drink in stone of higher rate. They hunt all grounds, and draw all seas. Fowl every brook and bush, to please Their wanton taste; and in request Have new and rare things, not the best. 273 CATILINE. -ACT II. lienee comes that wild and vast expense. That hath enforced Rome’s virtue thence, Which simple poverty first made: And now ambition doth invade Her state, with eating avarice. Riot, and every other vice. Decrees are bought, and laws are sold. Honours, and offices, for gold; The people’s voices, and the free Tongues in the senate, bribed be: Such ruin of her manners Rome Doth suffer now, as she’s become (AVithout the gods it soon gainsay) Both her own spoiler, and own prey. So, Asia, art thou cru’lly even AVith us, for all the blows thee given ; AVhen we, whose virtue conquer’d thee. Thus, by thy vices, ruin’d be. ACT II. SCENE I.— A Room in Fulvia’s House. Enter Ful via, Galla, and Servant. Ful. Those rooms do smell extremely. Bring And table hither.—Galla! [my glass Gal. Madam. Ful. Look Within, in my blue cabinet, for the pearl I had sent me last, and bring it. Gal. That from Clodius ? Ful. From Caius Caesar. You are for Clodius still, Or Curius. [ Exit Galla.] —Sirrah, if Quintus Curius come, I am not in fit mood ; I keep my chamber : Give warning so without. [Exit Servant. Re-enter Galla. Gal. Is this it, madam ? Ful. Yes ; help to hang it in mine ear. Gal. Believe me, It is a rich one, madam. Ful. I hope so : It should not be worn there else. Make an end, And bind my hair up. Gal. As ’twas yesterday? Ful. No, nor the t’other day: when knew you me Appear two days together in one dressing ? Gal. Will you have’t in the globe or spire ? Ful. How thou wilt; Any way, so thou wilt do it, good impertinence. Thy company, if I slept not very well A-nights, would make me an arrant fool, with ques- Gal. Alas, madam- [tions. Ful. Nay, gentle half o’ the dialogue, cease. Gal. I do it indeed but for your exercise, As your physician bids me. Ful. How ! does he bid you To anger me for exercise ? Gal. Not to anger you, But stir your blood a little ; there is difference Between lukewarm and boiling, madam. Ful. Jove ! She means to cook me, I think. Pray you, have Gal. I mean to dress you, madam. [done. Ful. O, my Juno, Be friend to me! offering at wit too ? why, Galla, Where hast thou been? Gal. Why, madam ? Ful. What hast thou done With thy poor innocent self? Gal. Wherefore, sweet madam ? Ful. Thus to come forth, so suddenly, a wit- worm ? Gal. It pleases you to flout one. I did dream Of lady Sempronia- Ful. O, the wonder’s out! That did infect thee : well, and how ? Gal. Methought She did discourse the best- Ful. That ever thou heard’st ? Gal. Yes. Ful. In thy sleep ! of what was her discourse ? Gal. Of the republic, madam, and the state, And how she was in debt, and where she meant To raise fresh sums : she’s a great stateswoman ! Ful. Thou dream’st all this? Gal. No, but you know she is, madam ; And both a mistress of the Latin tongue, And of the Greek. Ful. Ay, but I never dreamt it, Galla, As thou hast done ; and therefore you must pardon Gal. Indeed you mock me, madam. [me. Ful. Indeed, no : Forth with your learned lady. She has a wit too? Gal. A very masculine one. Ful. A she-critic, Galla ? And can compose in verse, and make quick jests, Modest, or otherwise ? Gal. Yes, madam. Ful. She can sing too ? And play on instruments ? Gal. Of all kinds, they say. Ful. And doth dance rarely? Gal. Excellent! so well, As a bald senator made a jest, and said, ’Twas better than an honest woman need. Ful. Tut, she may bear that: few wise women's Will do their courtship hurt. [honesties Gal. She’s liberal too, madam. Ful. What, of her money or her honour, prithee? Gal. Of both; you know not which she doth Ful. A comely commendation ! [spare least. Gal. Troth, ’tis pity She is in years. Ful. Why, Galla ? Gal. For it is. Ful. O, is that all! I thought thou'dst had a reason. Gal. Why, so I have : she has been a fine lady, And yet she dresses herself, except you, madam, One of the best in Rome; and paints, and hides Her decays very well. Ful. They say, it is Rather a visor, than a face, she wears. Gal. They wrong her verily, madam ; she doth sleek With crumbs of bread and milk, and lies a-nights In as neat gloves-But she is fain, of late, To seek, more than she’s sought to, the fame is, And so spends that way. Ful. Thou know’st all! but, Galla, What say you to Catiline’s lady, Orestilla? There is the gallant! scene i. CATILINE. 270 Gal. She does well. She has Very good suits, and very rich ; but then She cannot put them on ; she knows not how To wear a garment. You shall have her all Jewels and gold sometimes, so that her self Appears the least part of herself. No, in troth, As I live, madam, you put them all down With your mere strength of judgment, and do draw, too, The world of Rome to follow you ! You attire Your self so diversly, and with that spirit, Still to the noblest humours, they could make Love to your dress, although your face were away, they say. Ful. And body too, and have the better match Say they not so too, Galla? [on’t. Re-enter Servant. Now! what news Travails your countenance with ? Serv. If’t please you, madam, The lady Sempronia is lighted at the gate. Gai. Castor, my dream, my dream ! Serv. And comes to see you. Gal. For Venus’ sake, good madam, see her. [Exit Serv. Ful. Peace, The fool is wild, I think. Gal. And hear her talk, Sweet madam, of state-matters and the senate. Enter Sempronia. ' Sern. Fulvia, good wench, how dost thou ? Ful. Well, Sempronia. Whither are you thus early addrest ? Sem. To see Aurelia Orestilla: she sent for me. I came to call thee with me ; wilt thou go ? Ful. I cannot now, in troth ; I have some letters To write and send away. Sem. Alas, I pity thee. I have been writing all this night, and am So very weary, unto all the tribes, And centuries, for their voices, to help Catiline In his election. We shall make him consul, I hope, amongst us. Crassus, I, and Caesar Will carry it for him. Ful. Does he stand for it ? Sem. He’s the chief candidate. Ful. Who stands beside ?— Give me some wine and powder for my teeth. Sem. Here’s a good pearl, in troth. Ful. A pretty one. Sem. A very orient one !—there are competi¬ tors, Caius Antonius, Publius Galba, Lucius Cassius Longinus, Quintus Cornificius, Caius Licinius, and that talker Cicero. But Catiline and Antonius will be chosen ; For four of the other, Licinius, Longinus, Galba and Cornificius, will give way : And Cicero they will not choose. Ful. No ! why ? Sem. It will be cross’d by the nobility. Gal. How she does understand the common business! [Aside. Sem. Nor were it fit. He is but a new fellow, An inmate here in Rome, as Catiline calls him, And the patricians should do very ill To let the consulship be so defiled As’t would be, if he obtain’d it! a mere upstart, That has no pedigree, no house, no coat, No ensigns of a family ! Ful. He has virtue. Sem. Hang virtue! where there is no blood, ’tis vice, And in him sauciness. Why should he presume To be more learned or more eloquent Than the nobility ? or boast any quality Worthy a nobleman, himself not noble ? Ful. ’Twas virtue only, at first, made all men noble. Sem. I yield you, it might at first, in Rome’s poor age, When both her kings and consuls held the plough, Or garden’d well; but now we have no need To dig, or lose our sweat for’t. We have wealth, Fortune, and ease: and then their stock to spend Of name, for virtue ; which will bear us out [on, ’Gainst all new comers, and can never fail us, While the succession stays. And w r e must glorify A mushroom! one of yesterday! a fine speaker ! ’Cause he has suck’d at Athens! and advance him, To our own loss ! no, Fulvia ; there are they Can speak Greek too, if need were. Caesar and I, Have sat upon him ; so hath Crassus too, And others. We have all decreed his rest, For rising farther. Gal. Excellent rare lady ! Ful. Sempronia, you are beholden to my woman She does admire you. [here, Sem. O good Galla, how dost thou ? Gal. The better for your learned ladyship. Sem. Is this grey powder a good dentifrice? Ful. You see I use it. Sem. I have one is whiter. Ful. It may be so. Sem. Yet this smells well. Gal. And cleanses Very well, madam, and resists the crudities. Sem. Fulvia, I pray thee, who comes to thee Which of our great patricians ? [now, Ful. Faith, I keep No catalogue of them : sometimes I have one, Sometimes another, as the toy takes their bloods. Sem. Thou hast them all. Faith, when was Thy special servant, here ? [Quintus Curius, Ful. My special servant! Sem. Yes, thy idolater, I call him. Ful. He may be yours, If you do like him. Sem. How! Ful. He comes not here ; I have forbid him hence. Sem. Venus forbid! Ful. Why? Sem. Your so constant lover! Ful. So much the rather. I would have change; so would you too, I am sure s And now you may have him. | Sem. He’s fresh yet, Fulvia ; Beware how you do tempt me. Ful. Faith, for me He’s somewhat too fresh indeed ; the salt is gone, That gave him season : his good gifts are done. He does not yield the crop that he was wont: And for the act, I can have secret fellows, With backs worth ten of him, and they shall please Now that the land is fled, a myriad better. [me, Sem. And those one may command. CATILINE. 280 Ful. ’Tis true : these lordlings, Your noble Fauns, they are so imperious, saucy, Rude, and as boisterous as centaurs, leaping A lady at first sight. Sem. And must be borne Both with and out, they think. Ful. Tut, I’ll observe None of them all, nor humour them a jot Longer than they come laden in the hand, And say, Here’s one for t’other. Sem. Does Csesar give well ? Ful. They shall all give and pay well, that come here. If they will have it; and that, jewels, pearl, Plate, or round sums to buy these. I’m not taken With a cob-swan, or a high-mounting bull, As foolish Leda and Europawere ; But the bright gold, with Danae. For such price I would endure a rough, harsh Jupiter, Or ten such thund’ring gamesters, and refrain To laugh at ’em, till they are gone, with my much suffering. Sem. Thou’rt a most happy wench, that thus canst make Use of thy youth and freshness, in the season ; And hast it to make use of. Ful. Which is the happiness. Sem. I am now fain to give to them, and keep And a continual table to invite them. [music, Ful. Yes, and they study your kitchen more than you. Sem. Eat myself out with usury, and my lord And all my officers, and friends besides, [too, To procure money for the needful charge I must he at, to have them ; and yet scarce Can I achieve them so. Ful. Why, that’s because You affect young faces only, and smooth chins, Sempronia. If you’d love beards and bristles. One with another, as others do, or wrinkles- [Knocking within. Who’s that ? look, Galla. Gal. ’Tis the party, madam. Ful. What party ? has he no name ? Gal. ’Tis Quintus Curius. Ful. Did I not bid them say, I kept my chamber ? Gal. Why, so they do. Sem. I’ll leave you, Fulvia. Ful. Nay, good Sempronia, stay. Sem. In faith, I will not. Ful. By Juno, I would not see him. Sem. I’ll not hinder you. Gal. You know he will not be kept out, madam. Sem. No, Nor shall not, careful Galla, by my means. Ful. As I do live, Sempronia- Sem. What needs this ? Ful. Go, say I am asleep, and ill at ease. Sem. By Castor, no, I’ll tell him, youareawake ; And very well: stay, Galla ; farewell, Fulvia, I know my manners. Why do you labour thus, With action against purpose ? Quintus Curius, She is, i’ faith, here, and in disposition. [Exit. Ful. Spight with your courtesy ! how shall I be tortured ! Enter Curius. Cur. Where are you, fair one, that conceal yourself, And keep your beauty within locks and bars here, Like a fool’s treasure ? ACT II. Ful. True, she was a fool, When first she show'd it to a thief. Cur. How, pretty sullenness, So harsh and short! Ful. The fool’s artillery, sir. Cur. Then take my gown off for the encounter. [Takes off his gown. Ful. Stay, sir, I am not in the mood. Cur. I’ll put you into ’t. Ful. Best put yourself in your case again, and keep Your furious appetite warm against you have place Cur. What! do you coy it ? [for’t. Ful. No, sir ; I am not proud. Cur. I would you were 1 You think this state becomes you, By Hercules, it does not. Look in your glass now, And see how scurvily that countenance shows ; You would be loth to own it. Ful. I shall not change it. Cur. Faith, but you must, and slack this bended brow; And shoot less scorn : there is a Fortune coming Towards you, dainty, that will take thee thus, And set thee aloft, to tread upon the head Of her own statue here in Rome. Ful. I wonder Who let this promiser in! Did you, good dili¬ gence ? Give him his bribe again : or, if you had none, Pray you demand him, why he is so venturous, To press thus to my chamber, being forbidden, Both by myself and servants ? Cur. How ! this is handsome, And somewhat a new strain I Ful. ’Tis not strain’d, sir; ’Tis very natural. Cur. I have known it otherwise Between the parties, though. Ful. For your foreknowledge, Thank that which made it: It will not be so Hereafter, I assure you. Cur. No, my mistress ! Ful. No ; though you bring the same materials. Cur. Hear me, You over-act when you should under-do. A little call your self again, and think. If you do this to practise on me, or find At what forced distance you can hold your servant; That it be an artificial trick to inflame, And fire me more, fearing my love may need it, As heretofore you have done, why, proceed. Ful. As I have done heretofore ! Cur. Yes, when you’d feign Your husband’s jealousy, your servants’ watches, Speak softly, and run often to the door, Or to the window, from strange fears that were not; As if the pleasure were less acceptable, That were secure. Ful. You are an impudent fellow. Cur. And, when you might better have done it To take me in at the casement. [at the gate, Ful. I take you in! Cur. Yes, you, my lady. And then, being a-bed with you, To have your well-taught waiter here come run- ning, And cry, her lord l and hide me without cause, Crush’d in a chest, or thrust up in a chimney: CATILINE. SCENE i. When he, tame crow, was winking at his farm ; Or, had he been here, and present, would have kept Both eyes and beak seel’d up, for six sesterces. Ful. You have a slanderous, beastly, unwash’d tongue In your rude mouth, and savouring yourself, Unmanner’d lord. Cur. How now! Ful. It is your title, sir ; Who, since you’ve lost your own good name, and know not What to lose more, care not whose honour you wound, Or fame you poison with it. You should go And vent your self in the region where you live, Among the suburb-brothels, bawds, and brokers, Whither your broken fortunes have design’d you. Cur. Nay, then I must stop your fury, I see ; and pluck The tragic visor off. Come, lady Cypris, Know your'own virtues, quickly. I’ll not be Put to the wooing of you thus, afresh, At every turn, for all the Yenus in you. Yield, and be pliant, or by Pollux-[ Offers to force her, she draws her knife. ] How now! Will Lais turn a Lucrece ? Ful. No, but by Castor, Hold off your ravisher’s hands, I pierce your heart else. I’ll not be put to kill myself, as she did, For you, sweet Tarquin. What! do you fall off? Nay, it becomes you graciously ! Put not up. You’ll sooner draw your weapon on me, I think it, Than on the senate, who have cast you forth Disgracefully, to be the common tale Of the whole city ; base, infamous man ! For, were you other, you would there employ Your desperate dagger. Cur. Fulvia, you do know The strengths you have upon me : do not use Your power too like a tyrant; I can bear, Almost until you break me. Ful. I do know, sir. So does the senate too know, you can bear. Cur. By all the gods, that senate will smart deep For your upbraidings. I should be right sorry To have the means so to be venged on you, At least, the will, as I shall shortly on them. But go you on still: fare you well, dear lady ; You could not still be fair, unless you were proud. You will repent these moods, and ere’t be long, too: I shall have you come about again. Ful. Do you think so ? Cur. Yes, and I know so. Ful. By what augury ? Car. By the fair entrails of the matron’s chests, Gold, pearl, and jewels here in Rome, which Fulvia Will then, but late, say that she might have shared ; And grieving miss. Ful. Tut, all your promised mountains, And seas, I am so stalely acquainted with- Cur. But, when you see the universal flood Run by your coffers ; that my lords, the senators, Are sold for slaves, their wives for bondwomen, Their houses, and fine gardens, given away, 281 And all their goods, under the spear at outcry, And you have none of this, but are still Fulvia, Or perhaps less, while you are thinking of it; You will advise then, coyness with your cushion, And look on your fingers; say, how you were wish’d— And so he left you. [Exit. Ful. Call him again, Galla : [Exit Galla. This is not usual. Something hangs on this That I must win out of him. Re-enter Curius. Cur. How now, melt you ? Ful. Come, you will laugh now, at my easiness : But ’tis no miracle : doves, they say, will bill, After their pecking and their murmuring. Cur. Yes, And then ’tis kindly. I would have my love Angry sometimes, to sweeten off the rest Of her behaviour. Ful. You do see, I study How I may please you then.—But you think, Curius, ’Tis covetise hath wrought me ; if you love me, Change that unkind conceit. Cur. By my loved soul, I love thee, like to it; and ’tis my study, More than mine own revenge, to make thee happy. Ful. And ’tis that just revenge doth make me happy To hear you prosecute ; and which, indeed, Hath won me to you, more than all the hope Of what can else be promised. I love valour Better than any lady loves her face, Or dressing—than my self does. Let me grow Still where I do embrace. But what good means Have you to effect it ? shall I know your project ? Cur. Thou shalt, if thou’lt be gracious. Ful. As I can be. Cur. And wilt thou kiss me then ? Ful. As close as shells Of cockles meet. Cur. And print them deep ? Ful. Quite through Our subtle lips. Cur. And often ? Ful. I will sow them Faster than you can reap. What is your plot? Cur. Why now my Fulvia looks like her bright name, And is herself ! Ful. Nay, answer me, your plot: I pray thee tell me, Quintus. Cur. Ay, these sounds Become a mistress. Here is harmony ! When you are harsh, I see the way to bend you Is not with violence, but service. Cruel, A lady is a fire ; gentle, a light. Ful. Will you not tell me what I ask you ? [Kisses andjlatters him along still. Cur. All That I can think, sweet love, or my breast holds, I’ll pour into thee. Ful. What is your design then ? Cur. I’ll tell thee; Catiline shall now be consul: But you will hear more shortly. Ful. Nay, dear love- Cur. I’ll speak it in thine arms ; let us go in. Rome will be sack’d, her wealth will be our prize ; By public ruin private spirits mu? 4 rise. [Exeunt, 282 CATILINE. act ra. CHORUS. Great father Mars, and greater Jove, By whose high auspice Rome hath stood So long; and first was built in blood Of your great nephew, that then strove Not with his brother, but your rites: Be present to her now, as then, And let not proud and factious men Against your wills oppose their mights. Our consuls now are to be made; O, put it in the public voice To make a free and worthy choice; Excluding such as would invade The commonwealth. Let whom we name Have wisdom, foresight, fortitude, Be more with faith than face endued, And study conscience above fame. Such as not seek to get the start In state, by power, parts or bribes, Ambition’s bawds; but move the tribes By virtue, modesty, desart. Such as to justice will adhere. Whatever great one it offend: And from th’ embraced truth not bend For envy, hatred, gifts or fear; That by their deeds will make it known, Whose dignity they do sustain ; And life, state, glory, all they gain, Count the republic’s, not their own. • Such the old Bruti, Decii were. The Cipi, Curtii, who did give Themselves for Rome, and would not live As men, good only for a year. Such were the great Camilli too; The Fabii, Scipios; that still thought No work at price enough was bought. That for their country they could do. And to her honour so did knit, As all their acts were understood The sinews of the public good; And they themselves, one soul with it. These men were truly magistrates, These neither practised force nor forms ; Nor did they leave the helm in storms ; And such they are make happy states. ACT III. SCENE I .— The Field of Mars. Enter Cicero, Cato, Catulus, Antonius, Crassus, Cjesar, Lictors, and People. Cic. Great honours are great burdens, but on whom They are cast with envy, he doth bear two loads. His cares must still be double to his joys, In any dignity ; where, if he err, He finds no pardon : and for doing well A most small praise, and that wrung out by force. I speak this, Romans, knowing what the weight Of the high charge, you have trusted to me, is : Not that thereby I would with art decline The good, or greatness of your benefit; For I ascribe it to your singular grace, And vow to owe it to no title else, Except the Gods, that Cicero is your consul. I have no urns, no dusty monuments, No broken images of ancestors, Wanting an ear, or nose; no forged tables Of long descents, to boast false honours from, Or be my undertakers to your trust; But a new man, as I am styled in Rome, Whom you have dignified ; and more, in whom You have cut a way, and left it ope for virtue Hereafter to that place: which our great men Held, shut up with all ramparts, for themselves. Nor have but few of them in time been made Your consuls, so ; new men, before me, none: At my first suit, in my just year ; preferr’d To all competitors! and some the noblest- Cra. [ Aside to Caesar.] Now the vein swells I Cces. Up, glory. Cic. And to have Your loud consents from your own utter'd voices, Not silent books ; nor from the meaner tribes, But first and last, the universal concourse ! This is my joy, my gladness. But my care, My industry and vigilance now must work, That still your counsels of me be approved, Both by yourselves, and those, to whom you have, With grudge, preferred me: Two things I must labour, That neither they upbraid, nor you repent you ; For every lapse of mine will now be call’d Your error, if I make such: but my hope is, So to bear through, and out, the consulship, As spite shall ne’er wound you, though it may me. And for myself, I have prepared this strength, To do so well, as, if there happen ill Unto me, it shall make the gods to blush; And be their crime, not mine, that I am envied. Cces. O confidence! more new than is the man. Cic. I know well in what terms I do receive The commonwealth, how vexed, how perplex’d : In which there’s not that mischief, or ill fate, That good men fear not, wicked men expect not. I know, besides, some turbulent practices Already on foot, and rumours of more dangers— Cras. Or you will make them, if there be none. [Aside. Cic. Last, I know ’twas this, which made the envy and pride Of the great Roman blood bate, and give way To my election. Cato. Marcus Tullius, true ; Our need made thee our consul, and thy virtue. Cces. Cato, you will undo him with your praise. Cato. Caesar will hurt himself with his own envy. People. The voice of Cato is the voice of Rome. Cato. The voice of Rome is the consent of heaven! And that hath placed thee, Cicero, at the helm, Where thou must render now thyself a man, And master of thy art. Each petty hand Can steer a ship becalm’d; but he that will Govern and carry her to her ends, must know His tides, his currents ; how to shift his sails; What she will bear in foul, what in fair weathers ; Where her springs are, her leaks; and how to stop ’em; What sands, what shelves, what rocks do threaten her; The forces and the natures of all winds, SCENE I. CATILINE. Gusts, storms, and tempests; when her keel ploughs hell, And deck knocks heaven; then to manage her, Becomes the name and office of a pilot. Cic. Which I’ll perform with all the diligence And fortitude I have ; not for my year, But for my life ; except my life be less, And that my year conclude it: if it must, Your will, loved gods. This heart shall yet employ A day, an hour is left me, so for Rome, As it shall spring a life out of my death, To shine for ever glorious in my facts : The vicious count their years, virtuous their acts. People. Most noble consul! let us wait him home. [Exeunt Cato, Cicero, Lictors, and People. Coes. Most popular consul he is grown, methinks! Cras. How the rout cling to him ! Cces. And Cato leads them ! Cras. You, his colleague Antonius, are not Ant.. Not I, nor do I care. [look’d on. Cces. He enjoys rest, And ease the while: let the other’s spirit toil, And wake it out, that was inspired for turmoil. Catu. If all reports be true yet, Caius Csesar, The time hath need of such a watch and spirit. Cces. Reports! do you believe them, Catulus ? Why, he does make and breed ’em for the people, To endear his service to them. Do you not taste An art that is so common ? Popular men, They must create strange monsters, and then quell them, To make their arts seem something. Would you Such an Herculean actor in the scene, [have And not his hydra ? they must sweat no less To fit their properties, than to express their parts. Cras. Treasons and guilty men are made in Too oft, to dignify the magistrates. [states, Catu. Those states be wretched that are forced Their rulers fame with their own infamy, [to buy Cras. We therefore should provide that ours do Cces. That will Antonius make his care. [not. Ant. I shall. Cces. And watch the watcher. Catu. Here comes Catiline. How does he brook his late repulse ? Cces. I know not, But hardly sure. Catu. Longinus too did stand ? Cces. At first: but he gave way unto his friend. Catu. Who’s that come ? Lentulus ? Cces. Yes ; he is again Taken into the senate. Ant. And made praetor. Catu. I know’t; he had my suffrage, next the consuls. Cces. True, you were there, prince of the senate, then. Enter Catiline, Longinus, and Lentulus. Cat. Hail, noblest Romans ! The most worthy I gratulate your honour. [consul, Ant. I could wish It had been happier by your fellowship, Most noble Sergius, had it pleased the people. Cat. It did not please the Gods, who instruct the people: And their unquestion’d pleasures must be serv’d. They know what’s fitter for us than ourselves ; And ’twere impiety to think against them. Catu. You bear it rightly, Lucius ; and it glads To find your thoughts so even. [me, Cat. I shall still Study to make them such to Rome, and heaven. I would withdraw with you a little, Julius. [Aside to C^sar. Cces. I’ll come home to you: Crassus would not have you To speak to him ’fore Quintus Catulus. [Aside. Cat. I apprehend you. No, when they shall judge Honours convenient for me, I shall have them, With a full hand; I know it. In mean time, They are no less part of the commonwealth, That do obey, than those that do command. Catu. O let me kiss your forehead, Lucius. How are you wrong’d ! Cat. By whom ? Catu. Public report; That gives you out to stomach your repulse, And brook it deadly. Cat. Sir, she brooks not me. Believe me rather, and yourself, now of me : It is a kind of slander to trust rumour. Catu. I know it: and I could be angry with it. Cat. So may not I: Where it concerns himself, Who’s angry at a slander makes it true. Catu. Most noble Sergius! this your temper melts me. Cras. Will you do office to the consul, Quintus ? Cces. Which Cato and the rout have done the other ? Catu. I wait when he will go. Be still yourself. He wants no state, or honours, that hath virtue. [Exeunt Catulus, Antonius, C.esar, Crassus, Lictors, SfC. Cat. Did I appear so tame as this man thinks me! Look’d I so poor ? so dead ? so like that nothing, Which he calls virtuous ? O my breast, break quickly; And shew my friends my in-parts, lest they think I have betray’d them. [Aside. Lon. Where’s Gabinius ? Len. Gone. Lon. And Vargunteius ? Len. Slipt away ; all shrunk : Now that he miss’d the consulship. Cat. I am The scorn of bondmen, who are next to beasts. What can I worse pronounce myself, that’s fitter, The owl of Rome, whom boys and girls will hoot! That were I set up for that wooden god That keeps our gardens, could not fright the crows, Or the least bird, from muting on my head ! [Aside. Lon. ’Tis strange how he should miss it! Len. Is’t not stranger, The upstart Cicero should carry it so, By all consents, from men so much his masters ? Lon. ’Tis true. Cat. To what a shadow am I melted ! [Aside. Lon. Antonius won it but by some few voices. Cat. Struck through, like air, and feel it not! My wounds Close faster than they’re made. [Aside Len. The whole design And enterprise is lost by it: all hands quit it, Upon his fail. Cat. I grow mad at my patience: It is a visor that hath poison’d me : Would it had burnt me up, and I died inward, My heart first turn’d to ashes ! Lon. Here’s Cethegus yet. 234 CATILINE. act hi. Enter Cethegus. Cat. Repulse upon repulse ! an in-mate consul!— That I could reach the axle, where the pins are Which bolt this frame; that I might pull them out, And pluck all into Chaos, with myself ! Cet. What! are we wishing now ? Cat. Yes, my Cethegus ; Who would not fall with all the world about him ? Cet. Not I, that would stand on it, when it falls ; And force new nature out to make another. These wishings taste of woman, not of Roman ; Let us seek other arms. Cat. What should we do ? Cet. Do, and not wish ; something that wishes take not: So sudden, as the gods should not prevent, Nor scarce have time to fear. Cat. 0 noble Caius! Cet. It likes me better that you are not consul. I would not go through open doors, but break ’em ; Swim to my ends through blood ; or build a bridge Of carcasses; make on upon the heads Of men struck down like piles, to reach the lives Of those remain and stand : then is’t a prey, When danger stops, and ruin makes the way. Cat. How thou dost utter me, brave soul, that may not At all times shew such as I am, but bend Unto occasion! Lentulus, this man, If all our fire were out, would fetch down new, Out of the hand of Jove ; and rivet him To Caucasus, should he but frown ; and let His own gaunt eagle fly at him, to tire. Len. Peace, here comes Cato. Cat. Let him come, and hear; I will no more dissemble. Quit us all; I, and my loved Cethegus here, alone Will undertake this giants’ war, and carry it. Re-enter Cato. Len. What needs this, Lucius ? Lon. Sergius, be more wary. Cat. Now, Marcus Cato, our new consul’s spy, What is your sour austerity sent to explore ? Cato. Nothing in thee, licentious Catiline; Halters and racks cannot express from thee More than thy deeds : ’tis only judgment waits thee. Cat. Whose ? Cato’s ! shall he judge me? Cato. No, the gods, Who ever follow those, they go not with; And senate, who with fire must purge sick Rome Of noisome citizens, whereof thou art one. Be gone, or else let me. ’Tis bane to draw The same air with thee. Cet. Strike him. Len. Hold, good Caius. Cet. Fear’st thou not, Cato ? Cato. Rash Cethegus, no. ’Twere wrong with Rome, when Catiline and thou Do threat, if Cato fear’d. Cat. The fire you speak of, If any flame of it approach my fortunes, I’ll quench it not with water, but with ruin. Cato. You hear this, Romans. [Exit. Cat. Bear it to the consul. Cet. I would have sent away his soul before him. You are too heavy, Lentulus, and remiss ; It is for you we labour, and the kingdom Promised you by the Sybils. Cat. Which his prgetorship, And some small flattery of the senate more, Will make him to forget. Len. You wrong me, Lucius. Lon. He will not need these spurs. Cet. The action needs them ; These things, when they proceed not, they go Len. Let us consult then. [backward, Cet. Let us first take arms : They that deny us just things now, will give All that we ask, if once they see our swords. Cat. Our objects must be sought with wounds, not words. [ Exeunt. - - SCENE II. —Cicero’s House. Enter Cicero and Fulvja. Cic. Is there a heaven, and gods ? and can it be They should so slowly hear, so slowly see ! Hath Jove no thunder, or is Jove become Stupid as thou art, 0 near-wretched Rome, When both thy senate and thy gods do sleep, And neither thine, nor their own states do keep ! What will awake thee, heaven ? what can excite Thine anger, if this practice be too light ? His former drifts partake of former times, But this last plot was only Catiline’s ; 0, that it were his last ! but he before Hath safely done so much, he’ll still dare more. Ambition, like a torrent, ne’er looks back ; And is a swelling, and the last affection A high mind can put off ; being both a rebel Unto the soul and reason, and enforceth All laws, all conscience, treads upon religion, And offereth violence to nature’s self. But here is that transcends it ! A black purpose To confound nature ; and to ruin that, Which never age nor mankind can repair ! — Sit down, good lady ; Cicero is lost In this your fable : for, to think it true Tempteth my reason, it so far exceeds All insolent fictions of the tragic scene ! The common-wealth yet panting underneath The stripes and wounds of a late civil war, Gasping for life, and scarce restored to hope ; To seek t’ oppress her with new cruelty, And utterly extinguish her long name, With so prodigious and unheard of fierceness ! What sink of monsters, wretches of lost minds, Mad after change, and desperate in their states, Wearied and gall’d with their necessities, For all this I allow them, durst have thought it? Would not the barbarous deeds have been believed, Of Marius and Sylla, by our children, Without this fact had risse forth greater for them ? All that they did was piety to this ! They yet but murder’d kinsfolk, brothers, parents, Ravish’d the virgins, and perhaps some matrons ; They left the city standing, and the temples : The gods and majesty of Rome were safe yet ! — These purpose to fire it, to despoil them, (Beyond the other evils) and lay waste The far triumphed world : for, unto whom Rome is too little, what can be enough ? Ful. ’Tis true, my lord, I had the same dis¬ course. Cic. And then, to take a horrid sacrament In human blood, for execution Of this their dire design ; which might be call’d The height of wickedness : butthatthat was higher For which they did it ! scene ii. CATILINE. 286 i Ful. I assure your lordship, The extreme horror of it almost turn’d me To air, when first I heard it; I was all A vapour when ’twas told me, and I long’d To vent it any where: ’twas such a secret, I thought it would have burnt me up, Cic. Good Fulvia, Fear not your act; and less repent you of it. Ful. 1 do not, my good lord ; I know to whom I’ve utter’d it. Cic. You have discharged it safely. Should Rome, for whom you’ve done the happy service, Turn most ingrate, yet were your virtue paid In conscience of the fact: so much good deeds Reward themselves! Ful. My lord, I did it not To any other aim but for itself; To no ambition. Cic. You have learn’d the difference Of doing office to the public weal, And private friendship : and have shewn it, lady. Be still your self. I have sent for Quintus Curius, And for your virtuous sake, if I can win him Yet to the commonwealth, he shall be safe too. Ful. I’ll undertake, my lord, he shall be won. Cic. Pray you join with me then, and help to work him. Enter a Lictor. Cic. How now ! Is he come ? Lict. He’s here, my lord. Cic. Go presently, Pray my colleague Antonius I may speak with him, About some present business of the state ; And, as you go, call on my brother Quintus, And pray him, with the tribunes, to come to me. Bid Curius enter. [ Exit Lict.]—Fulvia, you will Ful. It is my duty. [aid me ? Enter Cijrius. Cic. O, my noble lord ! I have to chide you, i’faith. Give me your hand,— Nay, be not troubled; it shall be gently, Curius. You look upon this lady ? what! do you guess My business yet ? come, if you frown, I thunder ; Therefore put on your better looks and thoughts : There’s nought but fair and good intended to you ; And I would make those your complexion. Would you, of whom the senate had that hope As, on my knowledge, it was in their purpose, Next sitting to restore you, as they had done The stupid and ungrateful Lentulus,— Excuse me, that I name you thus together, For yet you are not such—would you, I say, A person both of blood and honour, stock’d In a long race of virtuous ancestors, Embark your self for such a hellish action, With parricides and traitors, men turn’d furies, Out of the waste and ruin of their fortunes ? (For ’tis despair that is the mother of madness,) Such as want that, which all conspirators. But they, have first, mere colour for their mischief? 0, I must blush with you. Come, you shall not labour To extenuate your guilt, but quit it clean : Bad men excuse their faults, good men will leave them. He acts the third crime that defends the first. Here is a lady that hath got the start In piety of us all, and for whose virtue I could almost turn lover again, but that Terentia would be jealous. What an honour Hath she achieved to herself! what voices, Titles, and loud applauses will pursue her Through every street! what windows will be fill’d, To shoot eyes at her ! what envy and grief in matrons, They are not she, when this her act shall seem Worthier a chariot, than if Pompey came With Asia chain’d ! all this is, while she lives ; But dead, her very name will be a statue, Not wrought for time, but rooted in the minds Of all posterity ; when brass and marble, Ay, and the Capitol itself is dust! Ful. Your honour thinks too highly of me. Cic. No ; I cannot think enough, and 1 would have Him emulate you. ’Tis no shame to follow The better precedent. She shews you, Curius, What claim your country lays to you, and what You owe to it: be not afraid to break [duty With murderers and traitors, for the saving A life so near and necessary to you, As is your country’s. Think but on her right. No child can be too natural to his parent : She is our common mother, and doth challenge The prime part of us ; do not stop, but give it. He that is void of fear, may soon be just ; And no religion binds men to be traitors. Ful. My lord, he understands it, and will follow Your saving counsel; but his shame yet stays him. I know that he is coming. Cur • Do you know it ? Ful. Yes ; let me speak with you. [ Takes him aside Cur. 0, you are- Ful. What am I ? Cur. Speak not so loud. Ful. I am what you should be. [Lowering her voice. Come, do you think I’d walk in any plot Where madam Sempronia should take place of me, And Fulvia come in the rear, or on the by ? That I would be her second in a business, Though it might vantage me all the sun sees ? It was a silly phant’sy of yours. Apply Yourself to me and the consul, and be wise ; Follow the fortune I have put you into : You may be something this way, and with safety Cic. Nay, I must tolerate no whisperings, lady. Ful. Sir, you may hear : I tell him in the way Wherein he was, how hazardous his course was. Cic. How hazardous ! how certain to all ruin. Did he, or do yet any of them imagine The gods would sleep to such a Stygian practice, Against that commonwealth which they have founded With so much labour, and like care have kept, Now near seven hundred years ? It is a madness. Wherewith heaven blinds them, when it would confound them, That they should think it. Come, my Curius, I see your nature’s right; you shall no more Be mention’d with them : I will call you mine, And trouble this good shame no farther. Stand Firm for your country, and become a man Honour’d and loved : it were a noble life, To be found dead, embracing her. Know you What thanks, what titles, what rewards the senate Will heap upon you, certain, for your service ? 280 CATILINE. act hi. Let not a desperate action more engage you, Than safely should ; and wicked friendship force, What honesty and virtue cannot work. Ful. He tells you right, sweet friend : ’tis saving counsel. Cur. Most noble consul, I am yours and hers, I mean my country’s ; you have form’d me new, Inspiring me with what I should be truly: And I entreat, my faith may not seem cheaper For springing out of penitence. Cic. Good Curius, It shall be dearer rather ; and because I’d make it such, hear how I trust you more. Keep still your former face, and mix again With these lost spirits; run all their mazes with them ; For such are treasons : find their windings out, And subtle turnings; watch their snaky ways, Through brakes and hedges, into woods of dark¬ ness Where they are fain to creep upon their breasts In paths ne’er trod by men, but wolves and panthers. Learn, beside Catiline, Lentulus, and those Whose names I have, what new ones they draw in ; Who else are likely; what those great ones are They do not name ; what ways they mean to take ; And whether their hopes point to war, or ruin By some surprise. Explore all their intents ; And what you find may profit the republic, Acquaint me with it, either by your self, Or this your virtuous friend, on whom I lay The care of urging you : I’ll see that Rome Shall prove a thankful and a bounteous mother. Be secret as the night. Cur. And constant, sir. Cic. I do not doubt it, though the time cut off All vows : The dignity of truth is lost With much protesting. Who is there ? Enter a Servant. This way, Lest you be seen and met. And when you come, Be this your token [whispers with him.'] to this fellow. Light them. [Exit Servant with Cur. and Fulvia. O Rome, in what a sickness art thou fallen! How dangerous and deadly, when thy head Is drown’d in sleep, and all thy body fevery ! No noise, no pulling, no vexation wakes thee, Thy lethargy is such : or if, by chance, Thou heav’st thy eye-lids up, thou dost forget, Soonerthan thou wert told, thy proper danger. I did unreverently to blame the gods, Who wake for thee, though thou snore to thy self. Is it not strange thou should’st be so diseased, And so secure ? but more, that the first symptoms Of such a malady should not rise out From any worthy member, but a base And common strumpet, worthless to be named A hair, or part of thee? Think, think, hereafter, What thy needs were, when thou must use such means ; And lay it to thy breast, how much the gods Upbraid thy foul neglect of them, by making So vile a thing the author of thy safety. They could have wrought by nobler ways, have struck Thy foes with forked lightning, or raram’d thunder ; Thrown hills upon them in the act; have sent Death, like a damp, to all their families ; Or caus’d their consciences to burst them : but When they will shew thee what thou art, and make A scornful difference ’twixt their power and thee, They help thee by such aids as geese and harlots. Re-enter Lictor. How now, what answer? is he come ? Lict. Your brother Will straight be here, and your colleague, Antonius, Said coldly he would follow me. [Exit. Cic. Ay, that Troubles me somewhat, and is worth my fear. He is a man ’gainst whom I must provide, That, as he’ll do no good, he do no harm. He, though he be not of the plot, will like it, And wish it should proceed; for, unto men Prest with their wants, all change is ever welcome, I must with offices and patience win him, Make him by art that which he is not born, A friend unto the public, and bestow The province on him, which is by the senate Decreed to me; that benefit will bind him : ’Tis well, if some men will do well for price; So few are virtuous when the reward’s away. Nor must I be unmindful of my private ; For which I have call’d my brother and the tri¬ bunes, My kinsfolks, and my clients, to be near me. He that stands up ’gainst traitors, and their ends, Shall need a double guard, of law, and friends Especially in such an envious state, That sooner will accuse the magistrate, Than the delinquent; and will rather grieve The treason is not acted, than believe. [ Exit . SCENE III .—A Room in Catiline’s House. Enter CiESAR and Catiline. Cces. The night grows on, and you are for your meeting ; I’ll therefore end in few. Be resolute, And put your enterprise in act. The more Actions of depth and danger are consider’d, The less assuredly they are perform’d: And thence it happeneth, that the bravest plots, Not executed straight, have been discover’d. Say, you are constant, or another, a third, Or more ; there may be yet one wretched spirit, With whom the fear of punishment shall work ’Bove all the thoughts of honour and revenge. You are not now to think what’s best to do, As in beginnings, but what must be done, Being thus enter’d ; and slip no advantage That may secure you. Let them call it mischief; When it is past, and prosper’d, ’twill be virtue. They’re petty crimes are punish’d, great rewarded. Nor must you think of peril, since attempts Begun with danger, still do end with glory ; And, when need spurs, despair will be call’d wisdom. Less ought the care of men, or fame to fright you ; For they that win, do seldom receive shame Of victory, howe’er it be achieved ; And vengeance, least: for who, besieged with wants, Would stop at death, or anything beyond it? Come, there was never any great thing yet Aspired, but by violence or fraud : aCKNE hi. CATILINE. 287 And he that sticks for folly of a conscience To reach it- Cat. Is a good religious fool. Cess. A superstitious slave, and will die beast. Good night. You know what Crassus thinks, and By this. Prepare your wings as large as sails, [I, To cut through air, and leave no print behind you. A serpent, ere he comes to be a dragon, Does eat a bat ; and so must you a consul, That watches. What you do, do quickly, Sergius. [Going. You shall not stir for me. Cat. Excuse me.—Lights there! Coes. By no means. Cat. Stay then. All good thoughts to Csesar, And like to Crassus. Coes. Mind but your friends’ counsels. [Exit. Cat. Or I will bear no mind.— Enter Aurelia. How now, Aurelia! Are your confederates come, the ladies ? Aur. Yes. Cat. And is Sempronia there ? Aur. She is. Cat. That’s well. She has a sulphurous spirit, and will take Light at a spark. Break with them, gentle love, About the drawing as many of their husbands Into the plot, as can ; if not, to rid them : That will be the easier practice unto some, Who have been tired with them long. Solicit Their aids for money, and their servants’ help, In firing of the city at the time Shall be design’d. Promise them states and empires, And men for lovers, made of better clay Than ever the old potter Titan knew. Enter Lecca. Who’s that? O, Porcius Lecca! Are they met ? Lee. They are all here. Cat. Love, you have your instructions : I’ll trust you with the stuff you have to work on, You’ll form it! [Exit Aurelia.] Porcius, fetch the silver eagle I gave you in charge ; and pray ’em they will enter. [Exit Lecca. Enter Cethegus, Curius, Lentulus, Vargunteius, Lon- oinus, Gabinius, Ceparius, Autronius, fyc . Cat. O friends, your faces glad me! This will Our last, I hope, of consultation. [be Cet. So it had need. Cur. We lose occasion daily. Cat. Ay, and our means; whereof one wounds me most That was the fairest: Piso is dead in Spain. Cet. As we are here. Lon. And, as ’tis thought, by envy Of Pompey’s followers. Len. He too’s coming back, Now, out of Asia. Cat. Therefore, what we intend We must be swift in. Take your seats, and hear. I have already sent Septimius Into the Picene territory, and Julius, To raise force for us in Apulia ; Manlius, at Fesulse is by this time up, With the old needy troops that follow’d Sylla* And all do but expect when we will give The blow at home. Re-enter P. Lecca with the eagle. Behold this silver eagle, ’Twas Marius’ standard in the Cimbrian war, Fatal to Rome ; and as our augurs tell me, Shall still be so: for which one ominous cause, I’ve kept it safe, and done it sacred rites, As to a godhead, in a chapel built Of purpose to it. Pledge then all your hands, To follow it with vows of death and ruin, Struck silently and home. So waters speak When they run deepest. Now’s the time, this year, The twentieth from the firing of the Capitol, As fatal too to Rome, by all predictions ; And in which honour’d Lentulus must rise A king, if he pursue it. Cur. If he do not, He is not worthy the great destiny. Len. It is too great for me; but what the gods And their great loves decree me, I must not Seem careless of. Cat. No, nor we envious, We have enough beside; all Gallia, Belgia, Greece, Spain and Africk. Cur. Ay, and Asia too, Now Pompey is returning. Cat. Noblest Romans, Methinks our looks are not so quick and high, As they were wont. Cur. No ! whose is not ? Cat. We have No anger in our eyes, no storm, no lightning: Our hate is spent, and fumed away in vapour, Before our hands be at work : I can accuse Not any one, but all, of slackness. Cet. Yes, And be yourself such, while you do it. Cat. Ha! ’Tis sharply answer’d, Caius. Cet. Truly, truly. Len. Come, let us each one know his part to do, And then be accused. Leave these untimely quarrels. Cur. I would there were more Romes than one Cet. More Romes ! more worlds. [to ruin ! Cur. Nay then, more gods and natures, If they took part. Len. When shall the time be first ? Cat. I think, the Saturnals ! Cet. ’Twill be too long. Cat. They are not now far off, ’tis not a month. Cet. A week, a day, an hour is too far off: Now were the fittest time. Cat. We have not laid All things so safe and ready. Cet. While we are laying, We shall all lie and grow to earth. Would I Were nothing in it, if not now: these things, They should be done, ere thought. Cat. Nay, now your reason Forsakes you, Caius. Think but what commodity That time will minister ; the city’s custom Of being then in mirth and feast- Len. Loos’d whole In pleasure and security- Aut. Each house Resolved in freedom- Cur. Every slave a master- Lon. And they too no mean aids - Cur. Made from their hope Of liberty- Len. Or hate unto their lords. CATILINE. 288 Var. ’Tis sure, there cannot he a time found More apt and natural. [out Len. Nay, good Cethegus, Why do your passions now disturb our hopes ? Cet. Why do your hopes delude your certainties ? Cat. You must lend him his way. [ Aside to Lentulus.] Think for the order, And process of it. Lon. Yes. Len. I like not fire, ’Twill too much waste my city. Cat. Were it embers, There will be wealth enough raked out of them, To spring a new. It must be fire, or nothing. Lon. What else should fright or terrify them ? Var. True. In that confusion must be the chief slaughter. Cur. Then we shall kill them bravest. Cep. And in heaps. Aut. Strew sacrifices. Cur. Make the earth an altar. Lon. And Rome the fire. Lee. 'Twill be a noble night. Var. And worth all Sylla’s days. Cur. When husbands, wives, Grandsires, and nephews, servants, and their lords, Virgins, and priests, the infant and the nurse, Go all to hell together in a fleet. Cat. I would have you, Longinus and Statilius, To take the charge o’ the firing, which must be, At a sign given with a trumpet, done In twelve chief places of the city at once. The flax and sulphur are already laid In, at Cethegus’ house; so are the weapons. Gabinius, you, with other force, shall stop The pipes and conduits, and kill those that come For water. Cur. What shall I do ? Cat. All will have Employment, fear not: ply the execution. Cur. For that, trust me and Cethegus. Cat. I will be At hand with the army, to meet those that scape: And, Lentulus, begirt you Pompey’s house, To seize his sons alive; for they are they Must make our peace with him : all else cut off, As Tarquin did the poppy-heads, or mowers A field of thistles ; or else, up, as ploughs Do barren lands, and strike together flints And clods, th’ ungrateful senate and the people; Till no rage gone before, or coming after, May weigh with yours, though horror leap’d herself Into the scale : but, in your violent acts, The fall of torrents and the noise of tempests, The boiling of Charybdis, the sea’s wildness, The eating force of flames, and wings of winds, Be all out-wrought by your transcendant furies. It had been done ere this, had I been consul; We had had no stop, no let. Len. How find you Antonius? Cat. The other has won him,—lost: that Cicero Was born to be my opposition, And stands in all our ways. Cur. Remove him first. Cet. May that yet be done sooner ? Cat. Would it were done. Cur. Var. I’ll do’t. Cet. It is my province ; none usurp it. Len. What ar.e your means ? Cet. Enquire not. He shall die. ACT JIT. Shall, was too slowly said ; lie’s dying : that Is yet too slow; he’s dead. Cat. Brave, only Roman, Whose soul might be the world's soul, were that dying; Refuse not yet the aids of these your friends. Len. Here’s Vargunteius holds good quarter with Cat. And under the pretext of clientele [him. And visitation, with the morning hail, Will be admitted. Cet. What is that to me ? Var. Yes, we may kill him in his bed, and safely. Cet. Safe is your way then, take it: mine's mine own. [Exit. Cat. Follow him, Vargunteius, and persuade, The morning is the fittest time. Lon. The night Will turn all into tumult. Len. And perhaps Miss of him too. Cat. Entreat and conjure him In all our names- Len. By all our vows and friendships. [Exit Varguntkil’8, Enter Sempronia, Aurelia, and Fulvia. Sent. What! is our council broke up first ? Aur. You say, Women are greatest talkers. [ Whispers with Cat. while Fur. takes Cur. ashle. Sem. We have done, And are now fit for action. Lon. Which is passion ; There is your best activity, lady. Sem. How Knows your wise fatness that ? Lon. Your mother’s daughter Did teach me, madam. Cat . Come, Sempronia, leave him ; He is a giber, and our present business Is of more serious consequence. Aurelia Tells me, you’ve done most masculinely within, And play’d the orator. Sem. But we must hasten To our design as well, and execute; Not hang still in the fever of an accident. Cat. You say well, lady. Sem. I do like our plot Exceeding well; ’tis sure, and we shall leave Little to fortune in it. Cat. Your banquet stays. Aurelia, take her in. Where’s Fulvia ? Sem. O, the two lovers are coupling. Cur. In good faith, She’s very ill with sitting up. Sem. You’d have her Laugh, and lie down. Ful. No, faith, Sempronia, I am not well; I’ll take my leave, it draws Toward the morning. Curius shall stay with you. Madam, I pray you pardon me ; my health I must respect. Aur. Farewell, good Fulvia. Cur. [Aside to Fulvia.] Make haste, and bid him get his guards about him ; For Vargunteius and Cornelius Have underta’en it, should Cethegus miss: Their reason, that they think his open rashness Will suffer easier discovery Than their attempt, so veiled under friendship CATILINE. SCENE V. I f ll bring you to your coach. Tell him, beside, Of Caesar’s coming forth here. Cat. My sweet madam, Will you be gone ? Ful. I am, my lord, in truth, In some indisposition. Cat. I do wish You had all your health, sweet lady. Lentulus, You’ll do her service. Len. To her coach,—and duty. [Exeunt all but Catiline. Cat. What ministers men must for practice use, The rash, the ambitious, needy, desperate, Foolish and wretched, e’en the dregs of mankind, To whores and women ! still it must be so. Each have their proper place, and in their rooms They are the best. Grooms fittest kindle fires, Slaves carry burdens, butchers are for slaughters, Apothecaries, butlers, cooks, for poisons ; As these for me : dull stupid Lentulus, My stale, with whom I stalk; the rash Cethegus, My executioner ; and fat Longinus, Statilius, Curius, Ceparius, Cirnber, My labourers, pioneers, and incendiaries : With these domestic traitors, bosom thieves, Whom custom hath call’d wives : the readiest helps To strangle headstrong husbands, rob the easy, And lend the moneys on returns of lust. Shall Catiline not do now, with these aids, So sought, so sorted, something shall be call’d Their labour, but his profit ? and make Csesar Repent his venturing counsels to a spirit So much his lord in mischief? when all these Shall, like the brethren sprung of dragons’ teeth, Ruin each other, and he fall amongst them, With Crassus, Pompey, or who else appears But like, or near a great one. May my brain Resolve to water, and my blood turn phlegm, My hands drop off unworthy of my sword, And that be inspired of itself to rip My breast for my lost entrails, when I leave A soul that will not serve ; and who will, are The same with slaves, such clay I dare not fear. The cruelty I mean to act, I wish Should be call’d mine, and tarry in my name; Whilst after-ages do toil out themselves In thinking for the like, but do it less : And were the power of all the fiends let loose, With fate to boot, it should be still example, When, what the Gaul or Moor could not effect, Nor emulous Carthage, with their length of spight, Shall be the work of one, and that my night. [Exit. —♦— SCENE IY.— A Room in Cicero’s House. Enter Cicero, Fulvia, and Attendant. Cic. I thank your vigilance. Where’s my bro¬ ther Quintus ? Call all my servants up ! [Exit Attendant.] Tell noble Curius, And say it to yourself, you are my savers: But that’s too little for you; you are Rome’s. What could I then hope less ? Enter Quintus Cicero. O brother ! now The enginers I told you of are working, The machine ’gins to move. Where are your wea- Arra all my household presently, and charge [pons ? The porter, he let no man in till day. 289 Qui. Not clients, and your friends ? Cic. They wear those names, That come to murder me. Yet send for Cato, And Quintus Catulus ; those I dare trust; And Flaccus and Pomptinius, the praetors, By the back way. Qui. Take care, good brother Marcus, Your fears be not form’d greater than they should; And make your friends grieve, while your enemies laugh. Cic. ’Tis brother’s counsel, and worth thanks. But do As I entreat you. [Exit Quintus.] I provide, not Was Caesar there, say you? [fear.— Ful. Curius says he met him Coming from thence. Cic. O, so. And had you a council Of ladies too ? who was your speaker, madam ? Ful. She that would be, had there been forty more; Sempronia, who had both her Greek and figures, And ever and anon would ask us, if The witty consul could have mended that, Or orator Cicero could have said it better ? Cic. She is my gentle enemy. Would Cethegus Had no more danger in him ! But my guards Are you, great Powers, and the unbated strengths Of a firm conscience, which shall arm each step Ta’en for the state ! and teach me slack no pace For fear of malice. lle-cnter Quintus. How now, brother? Qui. Cato, And Quintus Catulus were coming to you, And Crassus with them. I have let them in By the garden. Cic. What would Crassus have ? Qui. I hear Some whispering ’bout the gate, and making doubt Whether it be not yet too early or no ? But I do think, they are your friends and clients, Are fearful to disturb you. Cic. You will change To another thought anon. Have you given the The charge I will’d you ? [porter Qui. Yes. Cic. Withdraw and hearken. [ Exeunt. —♦— SCENE V. — The Street before Cicero’s House. Enter Vargunteius and Cornelius, with armed men. Varg. The door’s not open yet. Cor. You were best to knock. Varg. Let them stand close then ; and, when we are in, Rush after us. Cor. But where’s Cethegus ? Var. He Has left it, since he might not do’t his way. r Knocks, For. [within.] Who’s there? Var. A friend, or more. Por. [within.] I may not let Any man in, till day. Var. No ! why ? Cor. Thy reason? For. [within.] I am commanded 80 . Var. By whom ? Cor. I hope We are not discover’d. V CATILINE. 290 ACT IT Var. Yes, by revelation !— Pray thee, good slave, who has commanded thee ? Por. [within.] He that may best, the consul. Var. We are his friends. Por. [within.] All’s one. Cor. Best give your name. Var. Dost thou hear, fellow ? I have some instant business with the consul. My name is Vargunteius. Cic. [appears at the ivindow above, with Cato, Catulus, and Crassus.] True, he knows it, And for what friendly office you are sent. Cornelius too is there— Var. We are betray’d. Cic. And desperate Cethegus, is he not ? Var. Speak you, he knows my voice. Cic. What say you to’t ? Cor. You are deceived, sir. Cic. No, ’tis you are so ; Poor misled men. Your states are yet w r orth pity, If you would hear, and change your savage minds. Leave to be mad ; forsake your purposes Of treason, rapine, murder, fire, and horror: The commonwealth hath eyes that wake as sharply Over her life, as yours do for her ruin. Be not deceived, to think her lenity Will be perpetual; or, if men be wanting, The gods will be to such a calling cause. Consider your attempts, and while there’s time, Repent you of them. It doth make me tremble, There should those spirits yet breathe, that when they cannot Live honestly, would rather perish basely. Cato. You talk too much to ’em, Marcus ; they Go forth, and apprehend them. [are lost: Catu. If you prove This practice, what should let the commonwealth To take due vengeance? Var. Let us shift away! The darkness hath conceal’d us yet. We’ll say, Some have abus’d our names. Cor. Deny it all. [Exeunt below. Cato. Quintus, w T hat guards have you ? call the tribunes’ aid, ACT SCENE I .—A Street at the foot of the Capitol. [The Storm continued.'] Enter the Allobrogian Ambassadors. Divers Senators pass by them, quaking and trembling. 1 Am. Can these men fear, who are not only ours, But the world’s masters ! Then I see the Gods Upbraid our suff’rings, or would humble them, By sending these affrights while we are here ; That we might laugh at their ridiculous fear, Whose names we trembled at beyond the Alps. Of all that pass, I do not see a face Worthy a man ; that dares look up and stand One thunder out: but downward all, like beasts, Running away from every flash is made. The falling world could not deserve such baseness. Are we employed here by our miseries, Like superstitious fools, or rather slaves, And raise the city. Consul, you are too mild, The foulness of some facts takes thence all mercy ; Report it to the senate. [It thunders and lightens violently on a sudden .] Hear ! the gods Grow angry with your patience. ’Tis their care, And must be yours, that guilty men escape not: As crimes do grow, justice should rouse itself. [Exeunt above. CHORUS. What is it, heavens, you prepare With so much swiftness, and so sudden rising ? There are no sons of earth that dare, Again, rebellion ? or the gods’ surprising ? The world doth shake, and nature fears ; Yet is the tumult and the horror greater Within our minds, than in our ears: So much Rome’s faults (now grown her fate) do threat her. The priests and people run about, Each order, age, and sex amaz’d at other; And at the ports all thronging out, As if their safety were to quit their mother : Yet find they the same dangers there. From which they make such haste to be preserved : For guilty states do ever bear The plagues about them which they have deserved. And till those plagues do get above The mountain of our faults, and there do sit. We see them not: thus still we love Th’ evil we do, until we suffer it. But most ambition, that near vice To virtue, hath the fate of Rome provoked ; And made that now Rome’s self [’s] no price To free her from the death wherewith she’s yoked. That restless ill that still doth build Upon success, and ends not in aspiring: But there begins; and ne’er is fill’d While ought remains that seems but worth desiring, Wherein the thought, unlike the eye. To which things far seem smaller than they are, Deems all contentment placed on high; And thinks there’s nothing great but what is far. O, that in time Rome did not cast Her errors up this fortune to prevent! To have seen her crimes ere they were past, And felt her faults before her punishment. IV. To plain our griefs, wrongs, and oppressions, To a mere clothed senate, whom our folly Hath made, and still intends to keep, our tyrants ? It is our base petitionary breath That blows them to this greatness ; which this prick [Points to his sword. Would soon let out, if we were bold and wretched. When they have taken all we have, our goods, Crop, lands and houses, they will leave us this : A weapon and an arm will still be found, Though naked left, and lower than the ground. Enter Cato, Catulus, and Cicero. Cato. Do; urge thine anger still, good heaven and just! Tell guilty men what powers are above them. In such a confidence of wickedness, ’Twas time they should know something fit to fear. CatU. I never saw a morn more full of horror. CENE IT. CATILINE. 291 Cato. To Catiline and his : but to just men, Though heaven should speak with all his wrath at once, That with his breath the hinges of the world Did crack, we should stand upright and ubfear’d. Cic. Why so we do, good Cato. Who he these ? Catu. Ambassadors from the Allobroges, I take them, by their habits. 1 Am. Ay, these men Seem of another race ; let’s sue to these, There’s hope of justice with their fortitude. Cic. Friends of the senate and of Rome, to-day We pray you to forbear us : on the morrow, What suit you have, let us, by Fabius Sanga, Whose patronage your state doth use, but know it, And on the consul’s word, you shall receive Dispatch, or else an answer worth your patience. 2 Am. We could not hope for more, most worthy consul. [Exeunt Cato, Catulus, and Cicero. This magistrate hath struck an awe into me, \nd by his sweetness won a more regard Unto his place, than all the boist’rous moods That ignorant greatness practiseth, to fill The large, unfit authority it wears. How easy is a noble spirit discern’d From harsh and sulphurous matter, that flies out In contumelies, makes a noise, and stinks ! May we find good and great men : that know how To stoop to w r ants and meet necessities, And will not turn from any equal suits ! Such men, they do not succour more the cause They undertake with favour and success, Than by it their own judgments they do raise, In turning just men’s needs into their praise. SCENE II.— The Temple of Jupiter Stator. Enter Cicero, Antonies, Cato, Catulus, Cajsar, Crassus, and many other Senators, Prstor, Officers, <$c. Pros. Room for the consuls ! Fathers, take your places. Here in the house of Jupiter the Stayer, By edict from the consul, Marcus Tullius, You’re met, a frequent senate. Hear him speak. Cic. What may be happy and auspicious still To Rome and hers ! Honour’d and conscript fathers, If I were silent, and that all the dangers Threat’ning the state and you, were yet so hid In night, or darkness thicker in their breasts, That are the black contrivers, so that no Beam of the light could pierce them ; yet the voice Of heaven, this morning hath spoke loud enough T’ instruct you with a feeling of the horror, And wake you from a sleep as stark as death. I have of late spoke often in this senate Touching this argument, but still have wanted Either your ears or faith ; so incredible Their plots have seem’d, or I so vain, to make These things for mine own glory and false greatness, As hath been given out. But be it so. When they break forth, and shall declare them¬ selves By their too foul effects, then, then the envy Of my just cares will find another name. For me, I am but one, and this poor life, So lately aim'd at, not an hour yet since, They cannot with more eagerness pursue, Than I with gladness would lay down and lose To buy Rome’s peace, if that would purchase it. But when I see they’d make it but the step To more and greater; unto yours, Rome’s, all; I would with those preserve it, or then fall. Cces. Ay, ay, let you alone, cunning artificer ! See how his gorget peers above his gown, To tell the people in what danger he was. It was absurdly done of Vargunteius, To name himself before he was got in. [Aside to Crassus. Cras. It matters not, so they deny it all: And can but carry the lie constantly. Will Catiline be here ? Cobs. I have sent for him. Crasr And have you bid him to be confident ? Cces. To that his own necessity will prompt him. Cras. Seem to believe nothing at all that Cicero Relates us. Cces. It will mad him. Cras. O, and help The other party. Enter Q. Cicero, with the Tribunes and Guards. Who is that, his brother ? What new intelligence has he brought him now ? Cces. Some cautions from his wife, how to behave him. Cic. Place some of them without, and some bring in. Thank their kind loves : it is a comfort yet, That all depart not from their country’s cause. Cces. How now, what means this muster, consul Antonius ? Ant. Ido not know; ask my colleague, he’ll tell you. There is some reason in state that I must yield to, And I have promised him ; indeed he has bought i f , With giving me the province. Cic. I profess, It grieves me, fathers, that I am compell’d To draw these arms, and aids for your defence ; And more, against a citizen of Rome, Born here amongst you, a patrician, A man, I must confess, of no mean house, Nor no small virtue, if he had employ’d Those excellent gifts of fortune and of nature, Unto the good, not ruin of the state. But being bred in his father’s needy fortunes, Brought up in his sister’s prostitution. Confirm’d in civil slaughter, entering first The commonwealth with murder of the gentry ; Since, both by study and custom conversant With all licentiousness, what could be hoped In such a field of riot, but a course Extreme pernicious ? though I must protest, I found his mischiefs sooner with mine eyes Than with my thought; and with these hands of Before they touch’d at my suspicion. [mine, Cces. What are his mischiefs, consul? you declaim Against his manners, and corrupt your own : No wise man should, for hate of guilty men. Lose his own innocence. Cic. The noble Cresar Speaks god-like truth. But when he hears I can Convince him, by his manners, of his mischiefs, He might be silent; and not cast away u ^ 202 CATILINE. act tv. His sentences in vain, where they scarce look Toward his subject. Enter Catiline, and sits down by Cato, who quits his place. Cato. Here he comes himself. If he be worthy any good man’s voice, That good man sit down by him : Cato will not. Catu. If Cato leave him, I’ll not keep aside. [Rises. Cat. What face is this the senate here puts on Against me, fathers ? give my modesty Leave to demand the cause of so much strange¬ ness. Ccbs. It is reported here, you are the head To a strange faction, Lucius. Cic. Ay, and will Be proved against him. Cat. Let it be. Why, consul, If in the commonwealth there be two bodies, One lean, weak, rotten, and that hath a head, The other strong and healthful, but hath none ; If I do give it one, do I offend ? Restore your selves unto your temper, fathers, And, without perturbation, hear me speak. Remember who I am, and of what place, What petty fellow this is that opposes ; One that hath exercised his eloquence Still to the bane of the nobility, A boasting, insolent tongue-man !— Cato. Peace, lewd traitor, Or wash thy mouth. He is an honest man, And loves his country; would thou didst so too. Cat. Cato, you are too zealous for him. Cato. No; Thou art too impudent. Catu. Catiline, be silent. Cat. Nay then, I easily fear my just defence Will come too late to so much prejudice. Cces. Will he sit down ? [Aside. Cat. Yet let the world forsake me, My innocence must not. Cato. Thou innocent! So are the furies. Cic. Yes, and Ate too. Dost thou not blush, pernicious Catiline, Or hath the paleness of thy guilt drunk up Thy blood, and drawn thy veins as dry of that, As is thy heart of truth, thy breast of virtue ? Whither at length wilt thou abuse our patience ? Still shall thy fury mock us ! to what license Dares thy unbridled boldness run itself! Do all the nightly guards kept on the palace, The city’s watches, with the people’s fears, The concourse of all good men, this so strong And fortified seat here of the senate, The present looks upon thee, strike thee nothing ? Dost thou not feel thy counsels all laid open, And see thy wild conspiracy bound in With each man’s knowledge? Which of all this order Canst thou think ignorant, if they will but utter Their conscience to the right, of what thou didst Last night, what on the former, where thou wert, Whom thou didst call together, what your plots O age and manners ! this the consul sees, [were ? The senate understands, yet this man lives !— Lives ! ay, and comes here into council with us, Partakes the public cares, and with his eye Marks and points out each man of us to slaughter. And we, good men, do satisfy the state, If we can shun but this man’s sword and madness. There was that virtue once in Rome, when good men Would, with more sharp coercion, have restrain’d A wicked citizen, than the deadliest foe. We have that law still, Catiline, for thee ; An act as grave as sharp : the state’s not wanting, Nor the authority of this senate ; we, We that are consuls, only fail ourselves. This twenty days the edge of that decree We have let dull and rust; kept it shut up, As in a sheath, which drawn, should take thy head. Yet still thou liv’st: and liv’st not to lay by Thy wicked confidence, but to confirm it. I could desire, grave fathers, to be found Still merciful, to seem, in these main perils Grasping the state, a man remiss and slack; But then I should condemn myself of sloth, And treachery. Their camp’s in Italy, Pitch’d in the jaws here of Hetruria ; Their numbers daily increasing, and their general Within our walls ; nay, in our council! plotting Hourly some fatal mischief to the public. If, Catiline, I should command thee now, Here to be taken, kill’d ; I make just doubt, Whether all good men would not think it done Rather too late, than any man too cruel. Cato. Except he were of the same meal and batch. Cic. But that which ought to have been done long since, I will, and for good reason, yet forbear. Then will I take thee, when no man is found So lost, so wicked, nay, so like thyself, But shall profess, ’tis done of need and right. While there is one that dares defend thee, live ; Thou shalt have leave, but so as now thou liv’st; Watch’d at a hand, besieged, and opprest From working least commotion to the state. I have those eyes and ears shall still keep guaid, And spial on thee, as they’ve ever done, And thou not feel it. What then canst thou hope ? If neither night can with her darkness hide Thy wicked meetings, nor a private house Can, in her walls, contain the guilty whispers Of thy conspiracy : if all break out, All be discover’d, change thy mind at last, And lose thy thoughts of ruin, flame, and slaughter. Remember how I told here to the senate, That such a day thy lictor, Caius Manlius, Would be in arms. Was I deceived, Catiline, Or in the fact, or in the time, the hour? I told too in this senate, that thy purpose Was, on the fifth o’the kalends of November, To have slaughter’d this whole order: which my caution Made many leave the city. Canst thou here Deny, but this thy black design was hinder’d That very day, by me ? thy self closed in Within my strengths, so that thou could’st not move Against a public reed ; when thou wert heard To say upon the parting of the rest, Thou would’st content thee with the murder of ns That did remain ? Hadst thou not hope beside, By a surprise by night to take Praeneste ? Where when thou cam’st, didst thou not find th« place Made good against thee with my aids, my watches? SCENE II. CATILINE. 293 My garrisons fortified it. Thou dost nothing, Sergius, Thou canst endeavour nothing, nay, not think, But I both see and hear it; and am with thee, By and before, about and in thee too. Call but to mind thy last night’s business—Come, I’ll use no circumstance—at Lecca’s house, The shop and mint of your conspiracy, Among your sword-men, where so many associates Both of thy mischief and thy madness met. Dar’st thou deny this ? wherefore art thou silent ? Speak, and this shall convince thee : here they are, I see them in this senate, that were with thee. O, ye immortal Gods ! in what clime are we. What region do we live in, in what air ? What commonwealth or state is this we have ? Here, here, amongst us, our own number, fathers, In this most holy council of the world They are, that seek the spoil of me, of you, Of ours, of all; what I can name’s too narrow : Follow the sun, and find not their ambition. These I behold, being consul: nay, I ask Their counsels of the state, as from good patriots : Whom it were fit the axe should hew in pieces, I not so much as wound yet with my voice. Thou wast last night with Lecca, Catiline, Your shares of Italy you there divided ; Appointed who, and whither each should go ; What men should stay behind in Rome, were chosen , Your offices set down; the parts mark’d out, And places of the city, for the fire ; Thyself, thou affirm’dst, wast ready to depart, Only a little let there was that stay’d thee, That I yet lived. Upon the word, stepp’d forth Three of thy crew, to rid thee of that care ; Two undertook this morning, before day, To kill me in my bed. All this I knew, Your convent scarce dismiss’d, arm’d all my ser¬ vants, Call’d both my brother and friends, shut out your clients You sent to visit me ; whose names I told To some there of good place, before they came. Cato. Yes, I, and Quintus Catulus can affirm it. Cobs. He’s lost and gone ! His spirits have for¬ sook him. [Aside. Cic. If this be so, why, Catiline, dost thou stay ? Go where thou mean’st. The ports are open ; forth! The camp abroad wants thee, their chief too long. Lead with thee all thy troops out; purge the city. Draw dry that noisome and pernicious sink, Which, left behind thee, would infect the world. Thou wilt free me of all my fears at once, To see a wall between us. Dost thou stop To do that, now commanded, which, before, Of thine own choice, thou wert prone to ? Go ! the consul Bids thee, an enemy, to depart the city : Whither, thou’lt ask, to exile ? I not bid Thee that: but ask my counsel, I persuade it. What is there here in Rome, that can delight thee ? Where not a soul, without thine own foul knot, But fears and hates thee. What domestic note Of private filthiness, but is burnt in Into thy fife, what close and secret shame, But is grown one with thine own infamy? What lust was ever absent from thine eyes, What lewd fact from thy hands, what wickedness From thy whole body ? where’s that youth drawn Within thy nets, or catch’d up with thy baits, [in Before whose rage thou hast not borne a sword, And to whose lusts thou hast not held a torch ? Thy latter nuptials I let pass in silence, Where sins incredible on sins were heap’d; Which I not name, lest in a civil state So monstrous facts should either appear to be, Or not to be revenged. Thy fortunes too I glance not at, which hang but till next ides. I come to that which is more known, more public ; The life and safety of us all, by thee Threaten’d and sought. Stood’st thou not in the field, When Lepidus and Tullus were our consuls, Upon the day of choice, arm’d, and with forces, To take their lives, and our chief citizens ? When not thy fear, nor conscience changed thy mind, But the mere fortune of the commonwealth Withstood thy active malice ? Speak but right. How often hast thou made attempt on me? How many of thy assaults have I declined With shifting but my body, as we’d say ? Wrested thy dagger from thy hand, how oft ? How often hath it fallen, or slipt, by chance ? Yet can thy side not want it : which, how vow’d, Or with what rites ’tis sacred of thee, I know not, That still thou mak’st it a necessity, To fix it in the body of a consul. But let me lose this way, and speak to thee, Not as one moved with hatred, which I ought, But pity, of which none is owing thee. Cato. No more than unto Tantalus or Tityus. Cic. Thou cam’st erewhile into this senate : Who Of such a frequency, so many friends And kindred thou hast here, saluted thee ? Were not the seats made bare upon thy entrance ? Risse not the consular men, and left their places, So soon as thou sat’st down, and fled thy side, Like to a plague or ruin, knowing how oft They had by thee been mark’d out for the shambles r How dost thou bear this ? Surely, if my slaves At home fear’d me with half the affright and hor- That here thy fellow-citizens do thee, [ ror , I should soon quit my house, and think it need too Yet thou dar’st tarry here ! go forth at last, Condemn thyself to flight and solitude. Discharge the commonwealth of her deep fear.— Go ; into banishment, if thou wait’st the word : Why dost thou look ? they all consent unto it. Dost thou expect the authority of their voices, Whose silent wills condemn thee ? while they sit, They approve it; while they suffer it, they decree it; And while they are silent to it, they proclaim it. Prove thou there honest, I’ll endure the envy. But there’s no thought thou shouldst be ever he, Whom either shame should call from filthiness, Terror from danger, or discourse from fury. Go ; I entreat thee : yet why do I so ? When I already know they are sent afore, That tarry for thee in arms, and do expect thee On the Aurelian way. I know the day Set down ’twixt thee and Manlius, unto whom The silver eagle too is sent before ; Which I do hope shall prove to thee as baneful As thou conceiv’st it to the commonwealth. But, may this wise and sacred senate say, What mean’st thou, MarcusTullius? if thou know’st That Catiline be look’d for to be chief 194 CATILINE. act iv Of an intestine war ; that he’s the author Of such a wickedness : the caller out Of men of mark in mischief, to an action Of so much horror ; prince of such a treason ; Why dost thou send him forth ? why let him ’scape? This is to give him liberty and power: Rather thou should’st. lay hold upon him, send him To deserv’d death, and a just punishment. To these so holy voices thus I answer : If I did think it timely, conscript fathers, To punish him with death, I would not give The fencer use of one short hour to breathe ; But when there are in this grave order some, Who, with soft censures, still do nurse his hopes ; Some that, with not believing, have confirm’d His designs more, and whose authority The weaker, as the worst men too, have follow’d, I would now send him where they all should see Clear as the light, his heart shine ; where no man Could be so wickedly or fondly stupid, But should cry out, he saw, touch’d, felt, and grasp’d it. Then, when he hath run out himself, led forth His desperate party with him, blown together Aids of all kinds, both shipwreck’d minds and fortunes; Not only the grown evil that now is sprung And sprouted forth, would be pluck’d up and weeded, But the stock, root, and seed of all the mischiefs Choking the commonwealth: where, should we take, Of such a swarm of traitors, only him, Our cares and fears might seem awhile relieved, But the main peril would bide still inclosed Deep in the veins and bowels of the state. As human bodies labouring with fevers, While they are tost with heat, if they do take Cold water, seem for that short space much eased, But afterward are ten times more afflicted. Wherefore, I say, let all this wicked crew Depart, divide themselves from good men, gather Their forces to one head ; as I said oft, Let them be sever’d from us with a wall; Let them leave off attempts upon the consul In his own house ; to circle in the praetor; To gird the court with weapons ; to prepare Fire and balls, swords, torches, sulphur, brands ; In short, let it be writ in each man’s forehead What thoughts he bears the public. I here pro- Fatliers conscript, to you, and to myself, [mise, That diligence in us consuls, for my honour’ll Colleague abroad, and for myself at home ; So great authority in you ; so much Virtue in these, the gentlemen of Rome, Whom I could scarce restrain to-day in zeal From seeking out the parricide, to slaughter; So much consent in all good men and minds, As on the going out of this one Catiline, All shall be clear, made plain, oppress’d, reveng’d. And with this omen go, pernicious plague ! Out of the city, to the wish’d destruction Of thee and those, that, to the ruin of her, Have ta’en that bloody and black sacrament. Thou, Jupiter, whom we do call the Stayer Both of this city and this empire, wilt, With the same auspice thou didst raise it first, Drive from thy altars, and all other temples, And buildings of this city, from our walls, Lives, states and fortunes of our citizens, This fiend, this fury, with his complices. And all th’ offence of good men, these known trai Unto their country, thieves of Italy, [tors Join’d in so damn’d a league of mischief, thou Wilt with perpetual plagues, alive and dead, Punish for Rome, and save her innocent head. Cat. If an oration, or high language, fathers, Could make me guilty, here is one hath done it: He has strove to emulate this morning’s thunder, With his prodigious rhetoric. But I hope This senate is more grave than to give credit Rashly to all he vomits, ’gainst a man Of your own order, a patrician, And one whose ancestors have more deserv’d Of Rome than this man’s eloquence could utter, Turn’d the best way ; as still it is the worst. Cato. His eloquence hath more deserv’d to-day, Speaking thy ill, than all thy ancestors Did, in their good; and that the state will find, Which he hath saved. Cat. How, he ! were I that enemy That he would make me, I’d not wish the state More wretched than to need his preservation. What do you make him, Cato, such a Hercules ? An Atlas ? a poor petty inmate ! Cato. Traitor 1 Cat. He save the state! a burgess’ son of Arpinum. The gods would rather twenty Romes should perish Than have that contumely stuck upon them, That he should share with them in the preserving A shed, or sign-post. Cato. Peace, thou prodigy ! Cat. They would be forced themselves again, and In the first rude and indigested heap, [lost Ere such a wretched name as Cicero Should sound with theirs. Catu. Away, thou impudent head. Cat. Do you all back him ? are you silent too ? Well, I will leave you, fathers, I will go. [He turns suddenly on Cicero. But—my fine dainty speaker- Cic. What now, fury, Wilt thou assault me here ? Omnes. Help, aid the consul. Cat. See, fathers, laugh you not? who threat¬ en’d him ? In vain thou dost conceive, ambitious orator, Hope of so brave a death as by this hand. Cato. Out of the court with the pernicious traitor ! Cat. There is no title that this flattering senate, Nor honour the base multitude can give thee, Shall make thee worthy Catiline’s anger. Cato. Stop, Stop that portentous mouth. Cat. Or when it shall, I’ll look thee dead. Cato. Will none restrain the monster ? Catu. Parricide ! Qui. Butcher ! traitor ! leave the senate. Cat. I am gone to banishment, to please you, Thrust headlong forth ! [fathers, Cato. Still dost thou murmur, monster ? Cat. Since I am thus put out, and made a- Cic. What? Catu. Not guiltier than thou art. Cat. I will not burn Without my funeral pile. Cato. What says the fiend ? Cat. I will have matter, timber. Cato. Sing out, screech-owl. scene jv. CATILINE. 295 Cat. It shall be in- Catu. Speak thy imperfect thoughts. Cat. The common fire, rather than mine own : For fall I will with all, ere fall alone. [Rushes out of the Senate. Cra. He’s lost, there is no hope of him. [Aside to Caesar. Cees. Unless He presently take arms, and give a blow Before the consul’s forces can be levied. Cic. What is your pleasure, fathers, shall be done ? Catu. See, that the commonwealth l-eceive no loss. Cato. Commit the cai'e thereof unto the consuls. Cra. ’Tis time. Cces. And need. [Goes aside with Crassus. Cic. Thanks to this frequent senate. But what decree they unto Curius, And Fulvia ? Catu. What the consul shall think meet. Cic. They must receive reward, though it be not known ; Lest when a state needs ministers, they’ve none. Cato. Yet, Marcus Tullius, do not I believe, But Crassus and this Caesar here ring hollow. Cic. And would appear so, if that we durst prove them. Cato. Why dare we not ? what honest act is that, The Roman senate should not dare and do ! Cic. Not an unprofitable dangerous act, To stir too many serpents up at once. Caesar and Crassus, if they be ill men. Are mighty ones ; and we must so provide, That while we take one head from this foul hydra, There spring not twenty more. Cato. I approve your counsel. Cic. They shall be watch’d and look’d to. Till they do Declare themselves, I will not put them out By any question. There they stand. I’ll make Myself no enemies, nor the state no traitors. [Exeunt. -♦—- SCENE III.— Catiline’s House. Enter Catiline, Lentulus, Cethegus, Curius, Gabinius, Longinus, and Statilius. Cat. False to ourselves ? all our designs disco- To this state-cat ? [ver'd Cet. Ay ; had I had my way, He had mew’d in flames at home, not in the senate; I had singed his furs by this time. Cat. Well, there’s now No time of calling back, or standing still. Friends, be yourselves; keep the same Roman hearts And ready minds you had yester-night. Prepare To execute what we resolv’d ; and let not Labour, or danger, or discovery fright you. I’ll to the army; you, the while, mature Things here at home : draw to you any aids That you think fit, of men of all conditions, Of any fortunes, that may help a war. I’ll bleed a life, or win an empire for you. Within these few days look to see my ensigns Here, at the walls : be you but firm within. Mean time, to draw an envy on the consul, And give a less suspicion of our course, Lot it be given out here in the city, That I am gone, an innocent man, to exile Into Massilia ; willing to give way To fortune and the times; being unable To stand so great a faction, without troubling The commonwealth ; whose peace I rather seek, Than all the glory of contention, Or the support of mine own innocence. Farewell the noble Lentulus, Longinus, Curius, the rest! and thou, my better genius, The brave Cethegus : when we meet again, We’ll sacrifice to liberty. Cet. And revenge ; That we may praise our hands once. Len. O ye fates, Give fortune now her eyes, to see with whom She goes along, that she may ne'er forsake him. Cur. He needs not her nor them. Go but on, Sergius: A valiant man is his own fate and fortune. Lon. The fate and fortune of us all go with him Gab. Sta. And ever guard him ! Cat. I am all your creature. [Exit Len. Now, friends, ’tis left with us. I have al¬ ready Dealt by Umbrenus with the Allobroges Here resiant in Rome ; whose state, I hear, Is discontent with the great usuries They are oppress’d with: and have made complaints Divers unto the senate, but all vain. These men I have thought (both for their own op- As also that by nature they’re a people [pressions, Wai'like and fierce, still watching after change, And now in present hatred with our state,) The fittest, and the easiest to be drawn To our society, and to aid the war : The rather for their seat; being next borderers On Italy ; and that they abound with horse, Of which one want our camp doth only labour : And I have found them coming. They will meet Soon at Sempronia’s house, where I would pray All to be present, to confirm them more. [you The sight of such spirits hurts not, nor the store. Gab. I will not fail. Sta. Nor I. Cur. Nor I. Cet. Would I Had somewhat by myself apart to do ; I have no genius to these many counsels : Let me kill all the senate for my share, I’ll do it at next sitting. Len. Worthy Caius, Your presence will add much. Cet. I shall mar more. [Exeunt. -♦- SCENE IV.— The House of Brutus. Enter Cicero and Sanga. Cic. The state’s beholden to you, Fabius Sanga, For this great care : and those Allobroges Are more than wretched, if they lend a listening To such persuasion. San. They, most worthy consul, As men employ’d here from a grieved state, Groaning beneath a multitude of wrongs, And being told there was small hope of ease To be expected to their evils from hence, Were willing at the first to give an ear To anything that sounded liberty: But since, on better thoughts, and my urg’d reasons, 200 CATILINE. act iv They’re come about, and won to the true side. The fortune of the commonwealth has conquer’d. Cic. What is that same Umbrenus was the San. One that hath had negotiation [agent ? In Gallia oft, and known unto their state. Cic. Are the ambassadors come with you ? San. Yes. Cic. Well, bring them in; if they be firm and Never had men the means so to deserve [honest, Of Rome as they. [Exit Sanga.] A happy wish’d occasion, And thrust into my hands for the discovery And manifest conviction of these traitors : Be thank’d, O Jupiter! Re-enter Sanga, ivith the Allobrogian Ambassadors. My worthy lords, Confederates of the senate, vou are welcome ! I understand by Quintus Fabius Sanga, Your careful patron here, you have been lately Solicited against the commonwealth, By one Umbrenus—take a seat, I pray you— From Publius Lentulus, to be associates In their intended war. I could advise, That men whose fortunes are yet flourishing, And are Rome’s friends, would not without a cause Become her enemies ; and mix themselves And their estates with the lost hopes of Catiline, Or Lentulus, whose mere despair doth arm them : That were to hazard certainties for air, And undergo all danger for a voice. Believe me, friends, loud tumults are not laid With half the easiness that they are raised : All may begin a war, but few can end it. The senate have decreed that my colleague Shall lead their army against Catiline, And have declared both him and Manlius traitors : Metellus Celer hath already given Part of their troops defeat. Honours are promised To all will quit them ; and rewards proposed Even to slaves, that can delect their courses. Here in the city, I have, by the praetors And tribunes, placed my guards and watches so, That not a foot can tread, a breath can whisper, But I have knowledge. And be sure, the senate And people of Rome, of their accustom’d greatness, Will sharply and severely vindicate Not only any fact, but any practice Or purpose ’gainst the state : therefore, my lords, Consult of your own ways, and think which hand Is best to take. You now are present suitors For some redress of wrongs : I’ll undertake Not only that shall be assured you ; but What grace, or privilege else, senate or people Can cast upon you worthy such a service, As you have now the way and means to do them, If but your wills consent with my designs. 1 Amb. We covet nothing more, most worthy consul. And howsoe’er we have been tempted lately To a defection, that not makes us guilty : We are not yet so wretched in our fortunes, Nor in our wills so lost, as to abandon A friendship, prodigally, of that price, As is the senate and the people of Rome’s, For hopes that do precipitate themselves. Cic. You then are wise and honest. Do but this then— When shall vou speak with Lentulus and the rest ? 1 Amb. We are to meet anon at Brutus’ house. Cic. Who, Decius Brutus ? he is not in Rome. San. O, but his wife Sempronia. Cic. You instruct me, She is a chief. Well, fail not you to meet them, And to express the best affection You can put on, to all that they intend. Like it, applaud it, give the commonwealth And senate lost to ’em : promise any aids By arms or counsel. What they can desire, I would have you prevent. Only say this, You have had dispatch in private by the consul, Of your affairs ; and for the many fears The state’s now in, you are will’d by him this evening To depart Rome : which you, by all sought means, Will do, of reason, to decline suspicion. Now for the more authority of the business They have trusted to you, and to give it credit With your own state at home, you would desire Their letters to your senate and your people, Which shown, you durst engage both life and honour, The rest should every way answer their hopes. Those had, pretend sudden departure, you, And as you give me notice at what port You will go out, I’ll have you intercepted, And all the letters taken with you : so As you shall be redeem’d in all opinions, And they convicted of their manifest treason. Ill deeds are well turn’d back upon their authors ; And ’gainst an injurerthe revenge is just. This must be done now. 1 Amb. Cheerfully and firmly, We are they would rather haste to undertake it, Than stay to say so. Cic. With that confidence, go : Make yourselves happy while you make Rome so. By Sanga let me have notice from you. 1 ylmb. Yes. lExeunt —♦—• SCENE V. — A Room in Brutus’ (Sempuonia’s) House. Enter Sempronia and Lentulus. Sem. When come these creatures, the ambas¬ sadors ? I would fain see them. Are they any scholars ? Len. I think not, madam. Sem. Have they no Greek ? Len. No surely. Sem. Fie, what do I here waiting on ’em then, If they be nothing but mere statesmen ? Len. Yes, Your ladyship shall observe their gravity, And their reservedness, their many cautions, Fitting their persons. Sem. I do wonder much, That states and commonwealths employ not women To be ambassadors, sometimes ; we should Do as good public service, and could make As honourable spies, for so Thucydides Calls all ambassadors— Enter Cethegus. Are they come, Cethegus ? Cet. Do you ask me! am I your scout or bawd ? Len. O, Caius, it is no such business. Cet. No ! What does a woman at it then ? SCENE VII. CATILINE. 297 Sem. Good sir, There are of us can be as exquisite traitors, As e’er a male-conspirator of you all. Cet. Ay, at smock-treason, matron, I believe And if I were your husband ;—but when I [you ; Trust to your cobweb-bosoms any other, Let me there die a fly, and feast you, spider. Len. You are too sour and harsh, Cethegus. Cet. You Are kind and courtly. I’d be torn in pieces, With wild Hippolytus, nay prove the death Every limb over, ere I’d trust a woman With wind, could I retain it. Sem. Sir, they’ll be trusted With as good secrets yet as you have any ; And carry them too as close and as conceal’d, As you shall for your heart. Cet. I’ll not contend with you Either in tongue or carriage, good Calypso. Enter Longinus. Lon. The ambassadors are come. Cet. Thanks to thee, Mercury, That so hast rescued me! Enter Volturtius, Statilius, and Gabinius, with the Allobrogian Ambassadors. Len. How now, Volturtius ? Vol. They do desire some speech with you in private. . Len. O! ’tis about the prophecy belike, And promise of the Sibyls. IHe takes them apart. Gab. It may be. Sem. Shun they to treat with me too ? Gab. No, good lady, You may partake ; I have told them who you are. Sem. I should be loth to be left out, and here too. Cet. Can these, or such, be any aids to us ? Look they as they were built to shake the world, Or be a moment to our enterprize ? A thousand such as they are, could not make One atom of our souls. They should be men Worth heaven’s fear, that looking up but thus, Would make Jove stand upon his guard, and draw Himself within his thunder ; which, amazed, He should discharge in vain, and they unhurt: Or if they were like Capaneus at Thebes, They should hang dead upon the highest spires, And ask the second bolt to be thrown down— Why, Lentulus, talk you so long ? this time Had been enough to have scatter’d all the stars, To have quench’d the sun and moon, and made the Despair of day, or any light but ours. [world Len. How do you like this spirit ? In such men Mankind doth live : they are such souls as these, That move the world. Sem. Ay, though he bear me hard, I yet must do him right: he is a spirit Of the right Martian breed. 1 Amb. He is a Mars. Would we had time to live here, and admire him ! Len. Well, I do see you would prevent the consul, And I commend your care; it was but reason, To ask our letters, and we had prepared them : Go in, and we will take an oath, and seal them. You shall have letters too to Catiline, To visit him i’ the way, and to confirm The association. This our friend, Volturtius, Shall go along with you. Tell our great general That we are ready here ; that Lucius Bestia, The tribune, is provided of a speech, To lay the envy of the war on Cicero ; That all but long for his approach and person ; And then you are made freemen as ourselves. SCENE VI.— A Room in Cicero’s House. Enter Cicero, Flaccus, and Pomtinius. Cic. I cannot fear the war but to succeed well, Both for the honour of the cause, and worth Of him that doth command : for my colleague, Being so ill affected with the gout, Will not be able to be there in person ; And then Petreius, his lieutenant, must Of need take charge o’ the army; who is much The better soldier, having been a tribune, Prsefect, lieutenant, praetor in the war, These thirty years, so conversant in the army, As he knows all the soldiers by their names. Flac. They’ll fight then bravely with him. Pom. Ay, and he Will lead them on as bravely. Cic. They have a foe Will ask their braveries, whose necessities Will arm him like a fury : but, however, I’ll trust it to the manage and the fortune Of good Petreius, who’s a worthy patriot: Metellus Celer, with three legions too, Will stop their course for Gallia. Enter Fabius Sanga. How now, Fabius ? San. The train hath taken. You must instantly Dispose your guards upon the Milvian bridge, For by that way they mean to come. Cic. Then thither, Pomtinius and Flaccus, I must pray you To lead that force you have, and seize them all; Let not a person ’scape : the ambassadors Will yield themselves. If there be any tumult, I’ll send you aid. [ Exeunt Flaccus and Pomti¬ nius.] I, in mean time, will call Lentulus to me, Gabinius, and Cethegus, Statilius, Ceparius, and all these, By several messengers : who no doubt will come Without sense or suspicion. Prodigal men Feel not their own stock wasting. When I have them, I’ll place those guards upon them, that they start not. San. But what will you do with Sempronia ? Cic. A state’s anger Should not take knowledge either of fools or women. I do not know whether my joy or care Ought to be greater, that I have discover’d So foul a treason, or must undergo The envy of so many great men’s fate. But happen what there can, I will be just; My fortune may forsake me, not my virtue : That shall go with me, and before me still, And glad me doing well, though I hear ill. ^ Exeunt . —♦- SCENE VII.— The Milvian Bridge. Enter Flaccus and Pomtinius, with Guards, on one side, and Volturtius, with the Allobrogian Ambassadors, on the other. Flac. Stand! who goes there?. £98 CATILINE. ACT V. 1 Amb. We are the Allobroges, And friends of Rome. Pom. If you be so, then yield Yourselves unto the praetors, who, in name Of the whole senate, and the people of Rome, Yet till you clear yourselves, charge you of practice Against the state. Vol. Die, friends ; and be not taken. Flac. What voice is that ? down with them all. 1 Amb. We yield. Pom. What’s he stands out? Kill him there. Vol. Hold, hold, hold. I yield upon conditions. Flac. We give none To traitors ; strike him down. Vol. My name’s Volturtius, I know Pomtinius. Pom. But he knows not you, While you stand out upon these traitorous terms. Vol. I’ll yield upon the safety of my life. Pom. If it be forfeited, we cannot save it. Vol. Promise to do your best. I’m not so guilty As many others I can name, and will, If you will grant me favour. Pom. All we can, Is to deliver you to the consul.—Take him, And thank the Gods that thus have saved Rome. [Exeunt. CHORUS. Now do our ears, before our eyes, Like men in mists, Discover who’d the state surprise, And who resists ? And as these clouds do yield to light, Now do we see Our thoughts of things, how they did fight. Which seem’d t’ agree ? Of what strange pieces are we made, Who nothing know; But as new airs our ears invade, Still censure so ? That now do hope and now do fear And now envy; And then do hate and then love dear, But know not why: Or if we do, it is so late, As our best mood, Though true, is then thought out of date. And empty of good. How have wo changed and come about In every doom, Since wicked Catiline went out, And quitted Rome ? One while we thought him innocent; And then we accused The consul, for his malice spent, And power abused. Since that we hear he is in arms, We think not so: Yet charge the consul with our harms, That let him go. So in our censure of the state, We still do wander; And make the careful magistrate The mark of slander. What age is this, where honest men, Placed at the helm, A sea of some foul mouth or pen Shall overwhelm ? And call their diligence, deceit; Their virtue, vice; Their watchfulness, but lying in wait; And blood, the price ? O, let us pluck this evil seed Out of our spirits: And give to every noble deed The name it merits. Lest we seem fallen, if this endures, Into those times, To love disease, and brook the cures Worse than the crimes. ACT V SCENE I.—Etruria. The CountrynearFESVLJE. Enter Petreius, marching, at the head of his Army. Pet. It is my fortune and my glory, soldiers, This day, to lead you on ; the worthy consul Kept from the honour of it by disease : And I am proud to have so brave a cause To exercise your arms in. We not now Fight for how long, how broad, how great, and large Th’ extent and bounds o’ the people of Rome shall But to retain what our great ancestors, [be; With all their labours, counsels, arts, and actions, For us, were purchasing so many years. The quarrel is not now of fame, of tribute, Or of wrongs done unto confederates, For which the army of the people of Rome Was wont to move : but for your own republic, For the raised temples of the immortal Gods, For all your fortunes, altars, and your fires, For the dear souls of your loved wives and chil¬ dren, Your parents’ tombs, your rites, laws, liberty, And, briefly, for the safety of the world ; Against such men, as oidy by their crimes Are known ; thrust out by riot, want, or rashness. One sort, Sylla’s old troops, left here in Fesulee, Who, suddenly made rich in those dire times, Are since, by their unbounded, vast expense, Grown needy and poor ; and have but left to expect From Catiline new bills, and new proscriptions. These men, they say, are valiant: yet, I think them Not worth your pause : for either their old virtue Is in their sloth and pleasures lost; or, if It tarry with them, so ill match to yours, As they are short in number or in cause. The second sort are of those city-beasts, Rather than citizens, who, whilst they reach After our fortunes, have let fly their own ; These whelm’d in wine, swell’d up with meats, and weaken’d With hourly whoredoms, never left the side Of Catiline in Rome ; nor here are loosed From his embraces : such as, trust me, never In riding or in using well their arms, Watching, or other military labour, Did exercise their youth ; but learn’d to love, Drink, dance, and sing, make feasts, and be fine gamesters : CATILINE. SCENE IV. And these will wish more hurt to you than they bring you. The rest are a mixt kind, all sorts of furies, Adulterers, dicers, fencers, outlaws, thieves, The murderers of their parents, all the sink And plague of Italy met in one torrent, To take, to-day, from us the punishment, Due to their mischiefs, for so many years. And who in such a cause, and ’gainst such fiends, Would not now wish himself all arm and weapon, To cut such poisons from the earth, and let Their blood out to be drawn away in clouds, And pour’d on some inhabitable place, Where the hot sun and slime breeds nought but monsters ? Chiefly when this sure joy shall crown our side, That the least man that falls upon our party This day, (as some must give their happy names To fate, and that eternal memory Of the best death, writ with it, for their country,) Shall walk at pleasure in the tents of rest; And see far off, beneath him, all their host Tormented after life ; and Catiline there Walking a wretched and less ghost than he. I’ll urge no more : move forward with your eagles, And trust the senate’s and Rome’s cause to heaven. Omnes. To thee, great father Mars, and greater Jove ! [ Exeunt. SCENE II. —Rome. A Street near the Temple of Concord. Enter Cjesar and Crassus. Cces. I ever look’d for this of Lentulus, When Catiline was gone. Cras. I gave them lost, Many days since. Cces. But wherefore did you bear Their letter to the consul, that they sent you To warn you from the city ? Cras. Did I know Whether he made it ? it might come from him, For aught I could assure me : if they meant I should be safe among so many, they might Have come as -well as writ. Cces. There is no loss In being secure.: I have of late too plied him Thick with intelligences, but they have been Of things he knew before. Cras. A little serves To keep a man upright on these state-bridges, Although the passage were more dangerous : Let us now take the standing part. Cces. We must, And be as zealous for’t as Cato. Yet, I w T ould fain help these wretched men. Cras. You cannot: Who would save them, that have betray’d them¬ selves ? [Exeunt. —*■—- SCENE III.— Cicero’s House. Enter Cicero, Q. Cicero, and Cato. Cic. I will not be wrought to it, brother Quintus. There’s no man’s private enmity shall make Me violate the dignity of another. If there were proof ’gainst Csesar, or whoever, To speak him guilty, I would so declare him. But Quintus Catulus and Piso both 299 Shall know, the consul will not, for their grudge, Have any man accused or named falsely. Quin. Not falsely : but if any circumstance, By the Allobroges, or from Volturtius, Would carry it. Cic. That shall not be sought by me. If it reveal itself, I would not spare You, brother, if it pointed at you, trust me. Cato. Good Marcus Tullius, which is more than Thou had’st thy education with the Gods, [great, Cic. Send Lentulus forth, and bring away the rest. This office I am sorry, sir, to do you. [Exeunt ■ —*— SCENE IV.— The Temple of Concord. Enter Lictors, Cicero, (with letters,) Cato, Q,. Cicero, Cassar, Crassus, Syllanus, and other Senators. Cic. What may be happy still and fortunate, To Rome and to this senate 1 Please you, fathers, To break these letters, and to view them round, If that be not found in them which I fear, I yet entreat, at such a time as this, My diligence be not contemn’d.— [Gives the letters to the Senate. Enter (the Prcetors) , Fla ecus and Pomtinius. Have you brought, The weapons hither from Cetliegus’ house ? Prce. They are without. Cic. Be ready, with Volturtius, To bring him when the senate calls ; and see None of the rest confer together. [Exeunt P tors.~\ —Fathers, What do you read? Is it yet worth your care, If not your fear, what you find practised there ? Cces. It hath a face of horror 1 Cras. I am amazed ! Cato. Look there. Syl. Gods ! can such men draw common air ? Cic. Although the greatness of the mischief, fathers, Hath often made my faith small in this senate, Yet since my casting Catiline out, (for now I do not fear the envy of the word, Unless the deed be rather to be fear’d, That he went hence alive, when those I meant Should follow him did not,) I have spent both days And nights in watching what their fury and rage Was bent on, that so stay’d against my thought; And that I might but take them in that light, Where, when you met their treason with your eyes, Your minds at length would think for your own safety : And now ’tis done. There are their hands and seals. Their persons too are safe, thanks to the Gods 1 Bring in Volturtius and the Allobroges. Re-enter Praetors, with Volturtius and the Allobrogian Ambassadors. These be the men were trusted with their letters. Vol. Fathers, believe me, I knew nothing ; I Was travelling for Gallia, and am sorry-- Cic. Quake not, Volturtius ; speak the truth, and hope Well of this senate, on the consul’s word. Vol. Then, I knew all: but truly, I was drawn in But t’other day. Cces. Say what thou know’st, and fear not 300 CATILINE. ACT V. Thou hast the senate’s faith and consul’s word, To fortify thee. Vol. [Speaks with fears and interruptions .] I was sent with letters- And had a message too-from Lentulus- To Catiline-that he should use all aids- Servants or others-and come with his army, As soon unto the city as he could- For they were ready, and but stay’d for him- To intercept those that should flee the fire : These men, the Allobroges, did hear it too. 1 A mb. Yes, fathers, and they took an oath to us, Besides their letters, that we should be free ; And urged us for some present aid of horse. [The weapons and arms are brought in. Cic. Nay, here be other testimonies, fathers, Cethegus’ armoury. Cras. What, not all these ? Cic. Here’s not the hundred part. Call in the fencer, That we may know the arms to all these weapons. Enter Cethegus, guarded. Come, my brave sword-player, to what active use Was all this steel provided ? Cet. Had you ask’d In Sylla’s days, it had been to cut throats ; But now it was to look on only : I loved To see good blades, and feel their edge and points, To put a helm upon a block and cleave it. And now and then to stab an armour through. Cic . Know you that paper ? that will stab you through. Isit your hand? [Cethegus tears the letters] hold, save the pieces. Traitor, Hath thy guilt waked thy fury ? Cet. I did write I know not what, nor care not; that fool Lentulus Did dictate, and I, t’other fool, did sign it. Cic. Bring in Statilius : does he know his hand And Lentulus. [too ? Enter Statilius and P. Lentulus, guarded. Beach him that letter. Slat. I Confess it all. Cic. Know you that seal yet, Publius ? Len. Yes, it is mine. Cic. Whose image is that on it ? Len. My grandfather’s. Cic. What, that renown’d good man, That did so only embrace his country, and loved His fellow citizens ! Was not his picture, Though mute, of power to call thee from a fact So foul— Len. As what, impetuous Cicero ? Cic. As thou art, for I do not know what’s fouler. Look upon these. [Points to the Allobrogian Am¬ bassadors.] Do not these faces argue Thy guilt and impudence ? Len. What are these to me ? I know them not. 1 A mb. No, Publius ! we were with you At Brutus’ house. Vol. Last night. Len. What did you there ? Who sent for you ? 1 Amb. Yourself did. We had letters From you, Cethegus, this Statilius here, Gabinius Cimber, ail but from Longinus, Who would not write, because he was to come Shortly in person after us, he said. To take the charge of the horse, which we should Cic. And he is fled to Catiline, I hear. [levy. Len. Spies! spies! 1 Amb. You told us too o’ the Sibyl’s books. And how you were to be a king this year, The twentieth from the burning of the capitol; That three Cornelii were to reign in Rome, Of which you were the last: and praised Cethegus, And the great spirits were with you in the action. Cet. These are your honourable ambassadors, My sovereign lord! Cato. Peace, that too bold Cethegus. 1 Amb. Besides Gabinius, your agent, named Autronius, Servius Sylla, Vargunteius, And divers others. Vol. I had letters from you To Catiline, and a message, which I’ve told Unto the senate truly word for word; For which I hope they will be gracious to me. I was drawn in by that same wicked Cimber, And thought no hurt at all. Cic. Yolturtius, peace— Where is thy visor or thy voice now, Lentulus ? Art thou confounded ? wherefore speak’st thou not? Is all so clear, so plain, so manifest, That both thy eloquence and impudence, And thy ill nature too, have left thee at once ? Take him aside. There’s yet one more, Gabinius, The enginer of all. [Gabinius Cimber is brought in.~\ Shew him that paper, If he do know it ? Gab. I know nothing. Cic. No ! Gab. No ; neither will I know. Cato. Impudent head! Stick it into his throat; were I the consul, I’d make thee eat the mischief thou hast vented. Gab. Is there a law for’t, Cato ? Cato. Dost thou ask After a law, that would’st have broke all laws Of nature, manhood, conscience, and religion ? Gab. Yes, I may ask for’t. Cato. No, pernicious Cimber. The inquiring after good does not belong Unto a wicked person. Gab. Ay, but Cato Does nothing but by law. Cras. Take him aside. There’s proof enough, though he confess not. Gab. Stay, I will confess. All’s true your spies have told you, Make much of them. Cet. Yes, and reward them well, For fear you get no more such. See they do not Die in a ditch, and stink, now you have done with ’em; Or beg o’ the bridges here in Rome, whose arches Their active industry hath saved. Cic. See, fathers, What minds and spirits these are, that being con- Of such a treason, and by such a cloud [victed Of witnesses, dare yet retain their boldness ! What would their rage have done if they had con I thought when I had thrust out Catiline, [quer’d? Neither the state nor I should need to have fear’d Lentulus’ sleep here, or Longinus’ fat, Or this Cethegus’ rashness ; it was he I only watch’d, while he was in our walls, As one that had the brain, the hand, the heart. CATILINE. scene iv. But now we find the contrary ! where was there A people grieved, or a state discontent, Able to make or help a w r ar ’gainst Rome, But these, the Allobroges, and those they found ? Whom had not the just Gods been pleased to make More friends unto our safety than their own, As it then seem’d, neglecting these men’s offers, Where had we been, or where the commonwealth? When their great chief had been call’d home ; this man, Their absolute king, (whose noble grand-father, Arm’d in pursuit of the seditious Gracchus, Took a brave wound for dear defence of that Which he would spoil,) had gather’d all his aids Of ruffians, slaves, and other slaughtermen, Given us up for murder to Cethegus, The other rank of citizens to Gabinius, The city to be fired by Cassius, And Italy, nay the world, to be laid waste By cursed Catiline and his complices. Lay but the thought of it before you, fathers, Think but with me you saw this glorious city, The light of all the earth, tower of all nations, Suddenly falling in one flame ! Imagine You view’d your country buried with the heaps Of slaughter’d citizens that had no grave ; This Lentulus here, reigning, as he dreamt, And those his purple senate ; Catiline come With his fierce army; and the cries of matrons, The flight of children, and the rape of virgins, Shrieks of the living, with the dying groans, On every side t’ invade your sense ; until The blood of Rome were mixed with her ashes ! This was the spectacle these fiends intended. To please their malice. Cet. Ay, and it would Have been a brave one, consul. But your part Had not then been so long as now it is : I should ha quite defeated your oration, And slit that fine rhetorical pipe of yours, In the first scene. Cato. Insolent monster ! Cic. Fathers, Is it your pleasures they shall be committed Unto some safe, but a free custody, Until the senate can determine farther ? Omnes. It pleaseth well. Cic. Then, Marcus Crassus, Take you charge of Gabinius; send him home Unto your house. You, Csesar, of Statilius. Cethegus shall be sent to Cornificius ; And Lentulus to Publius Lentulus Spinther, Who now is aedile. Cato. It were best, the praetors Carried them to their houses, and deliver’d ’em. Cic. Let it be so. Take them from hence. Ccbs. But first Let Lentulus put off his praetorship. Len. I do resign it here unto the senate. [ Exeunt Praetors and Guards, with Lentulus, Cethegus, Statilius, and Gabinius. Cces. So, now there’s no offence done to religion. Cato. Caesar, ’twas piously and timely urged. Cic. What do you decree to the Allobroges, That were the lights to this discovery ? Cras. A free grant from the state of all their suits. Cces. And a reward out of the public treasure. Cato. Ay, and the title of honest men, to crown Cic. What to Yolturtius ? [them. 301 Cces. Life and favour’s well. Vol. I ask no more. Cato. Yes, yes, some money, thou need’st it: ’Twill keep thee honest; want made thee a knave. Syl. Let Flaccus and Pomtinius, the praetors, Have public thanks, and Quintus Fabius Sanga, For their good service. Cras. They deserve it all. Cato. But what do we decree unto the consul, Whose virtue, counsel, watchfulness, and wisdom Hath freed the commonwealth, and without tumult, Slaughter, or blood, or scarce raising a force, Rescued us all out of the jaws of fate ? Cras. We owe our lives unto him, and our fortunes. Cces. Our wives, our children, parents and our Syl. We all are saved by his fortitude. [Gods. Cato. The commonwealth owes him a civic He is the only father of his country, [garland: Cces. Let there be public prayer to all the Gods, Made in that name for him. Cras. And in these words : For that he hath , by his vigilance , preserv'd Rome from the flame, the senate from the sword, A nd all her citizens from massacre. Cic. How are my labours more than paid, grave fathers, In these great titles, and decreed honours ! Such as to me, first of the civil robe, Of any man since Rome was Rome, have happen’d; And from this frequent senate : which more glads me, That I now see you have sense of your own safety. If those good days come no less grateful to us, Wherein we are preserv’d from some great danger, Than those wherein we’re born and brought to light, Because the gladness of our safety is certain, But the condition of our birth not so ; And that we are sav’d with pleasure, but are born Without the sense of joy : why should not then This day, to us, and all posterity Of ours, be had in equal fame and honour, With that when Romulus first rear’d these walls, When so much more is saved, than he built ? Cces. It ought. Cras. Let it be added to our Fasti. [Noise without. Cic. What tumult’s that? Re-enter Flaccus. Flac. Here’s one Tarquinius taken, Going to Catiline, and says he was sent By Marcus Crassus, whom he names to be Guilty of the conspiracy. Cic. Some lying varlet. Take him away to prison. Cras. Bring him in, And let me see him. Cic. He is not worth it, Crassu3. Keep him up close and hungry, till he tell By whose pernicious counsel he doth slander So great and good a citizen. Cras. By yours, I fear, ’twill prove. Syl. Some of the traitors, sure To give their action the more credit, bid him Name you, or any man. Cic. I know myself, CATILINE. ACT V, #02 By all the tracts and courses of this business, Crassus is noble, just, and loves his country. Fine. Here is a libel too, accusing Caesar, From Lucius Yectius, and confirm’d by Curius. Cio. Away with all, throw it out o’ the court. Cces. A trick on me too ! Cic. It is some men’s malice. I said to Curius I did not believe him. Cces. Was not that Curius your spy, that had Reward decreed unto him the last senate, With Fulvia, upon your private motion ? Cic. Yes. Cces. But he has not that reward yet ? Cic. No. Let not this trouble you, Caesar ; none believes it. Cces. It shall not, if that he have no reward : But if he have, sure I shall think myself Very untimely and unsafely honest, Where such as he is may have pay to accuse me. Cic. You shall have no wrong done you, noble But all contentment. [Caesar, Cces. Consul, I am silent. {Exeunt. ■—♦—■ SCENE V — The Country near Fesul^e. Enter Catiline with his Army. Cat. I never yet knew, soldiers, that in fight Words added virtue unto valiant men ; Or that a general’s-oration made An army fall or stand : but how much prowess, Habitual or natural, each man’s breast Was owner of, so much in act it shew’d. Whom neither glory, or danger can excite, ’Tis vain to attempt with speech ; for the mind’s fear Keeps all brave sounds from entering at that ear. I yet would warn you some few things, my friends, And give you reason of my present counsels. You know, no less than I, what state, what point Our affairs stand in ; and you all have heard What a calamitous misery the sloth And sleepiness of Lentulus hath pluck’d Both on himself, and us ; how, whilst our aids There, in the city, look’d for, are defeated, Our entrance into Gallia too is stopt. Two armies w T ait us ; one from Rome, the other From the Gaul provinces : and where we are, Although I most desire it, the great want Of corn and victuals forbids longer stay : So that of need we must remove, but whither, The sword must both direct, and cut the passage. I only therefore wish you, when you strike, To have your valours and your souls about you ; And think you carry in your labouring hands The things you seek, glory, and liberty, Your country, which you want now, with the fates, That are to be instructed by our swords. If we can give the blow, all will be safe to us, We shall not want provision, nor supplies. The colonies and free towns will lie open ; Where, if we yield to fear, expect no place, Nor friend, to shelter those whom their own fortune, And ill-used arms, have left without protection. You might have lived in servitude, or exile, Or safe at Rome, depending on the great ones ; But that you thought those things unfit for men; And, in that thought, you then were valiant: For no man ever yet changed peace for war, But he that meant to conquer. Hold that purpose. There’s more necessity you should be such, In fighting for yourselves, than they for others. He’s base that trusts his feet, whose hands are arm’d. Methinks I see Death and the Furies waiting What we will do, and all the heaven at leisure For the great spectacle. Draw then your swords ; And if our destiny envy our virtue The honour of the day, yet let us care To sell ourselves at such a price as may Undo the world to buy us, and make Fate, While she tempts ours, fear her own estate. {Exeunt marching. -«- SCENE YI.— Rome. The Temple of Jupiter Stator. Enter Lictors, Praetors, (Pomtinius and Flaccus,) Cicero, Syllanus, Calsar, Cato, Crassus, and other Senators. 1 Sen. What means this hasty calling of the senate ? 2 Sen. We shall know straight: wait till the consul speaks. Pom. Fathers conscript, bethink you of your safeties, And what to do with these conspirators : Some of their clients, their freed-men, and slaves, ’Gin to make head. There’s one of Lentulus’ bawds Runs up and down the shops, through every street, With money to corrupt the poor artificers, And needy tradesmen, to their aid ; Cethegus Hath sent too to his servants, who are many, Chosen and exercised in bold attemptings, That forthwith they should arm themselves and His rescue : all will be in instant uproar, [prove If you prevent it not with present counsels. We have done what we can to meet the fury, And will do more : be you good to yourselves. Cic. What is your pleasure, fathers, shall be Syllanus, you are consul next design’d ; [done ? Your sentence of these men. Syl. ’Tis short, and this. Since they have sought to blot the name of Rome Out of the world, and raze this glorious empire With her own hands and arms turn’d on herself, I think it fit they die : and could my breath Now execute ’em, they should not enjoy An article of time, or eye of light, Longer to poison this our common air. 1 Sen. I think so too. 2 Sen. And I. 3 Sen. And I. 4 Sen. And I. Cic. Your sentence, Caius Ceesar. Cces. Conscript fathers, In great affairs, and doubtful, it behoves Men that are ask’d their sentence, to be free From either hate or love, anger or pity: For where the least of these do hinder, there The mind not easily discerns the truth. I speak this to you in the name of Rome, For whom you stand ; and to the present cause : That this foul fact of Lentulus, and the rest, Weigh not more with you than your dignity; And you be more indulgent to your passion, Than to your honour. If there could be found A pain or punishment eqxial to their crimes, I would devise and help : but if the greatness Of what they have done exceed all man’s invention, bcene vi. CATILINE. 303 I think it fit to stay where our laws do. Poor petty states may alter upon humour, Where, if they offend with anger, few do know it, Because they are obscure; their fame and fortune Is equal and the same : but they that are Head of the world, and live in that seen height, All mankind knows their actions. So we see, The greater fortune hath the lesser license. They must not favour, hate, and least be angry ; For what with others is call’d anger, there Is cruelty and pride. I know Syllanus, Who spoke before me, a just, valiant man, A lover of the state, and one that would not, In such a business, use or grace or hatred ; I know too, well, his manners and his modesty; Nor do I think his sentence cruel, (for ’Gainst such delinquents what can be too bloody?) But that it is abhorring from our state; Since to a citizen of Rome offending, Our laws give exile, and not death. Why then Decrees he that? ’twere vain to think, for fear ; When by the diligence of so worthy a consul, All is made safe and certain. Is’t for punishment? Why, death’s the end of evils, and a rest Rather than torment: it dissolves all griefs ; And beyond that, is neither care nor joy. You hear my sentence would not have them die. How then ? set free, and increase Catiline’s army ? So will they, being but banish’d. No, grave fathers, I judge them, first, to have their states confiscate ; Then, that their persons remain prisoners In the free towns, far off from Rome, and sever’d ; Where they might neither have relation, Hereafter, to the senate or the people. Or, if they had, those towns then to be mulcted, As enemies to the state, that had their guard. Omnes. ’Tis good, and honourable, Caesar hath utter’d. Cic. Fathers, I see your faces and your eyes All bent on me, to note, of these two censures, Which I incline to. Either of them are grave, And answering the dignity of the speakers, The greatness of the affair, and both severe. One urgeth death ; and he may well remember This state hath punish’d wicked citizens so : The other, bonds, and those perpetual, which He thinks found out for the more singular plague. Decree which you shall please : you have a consul, Not readier to obey, than to defend, Whatever you shall act for the republic; And meet with willing shoulders any burden, Or any fortune, with an even face, Though it were death; which to a valiant man Can never happen foul, nor to a consul Be immature, nor to a wise man wretched. Syl. Fathers, I spake but as I thought the needs Of the commonwealth required. Cato. Excuse it not. Cic. Cato, speak you your sentence. Cato. This it is. You here dispute on kinds of punishment, And stand consulting what you should decree ’Gainst those of whom you rather should beware : This mischief is not like those common facts, Which when they’re done, the laws may prosecute ; But this, if you provide not ere it happen, When it is happen’d, will not wait your judgment. Good Caius Caesar here hath very well, And subtlely discours’d of life and death, As if he thought those things a pretty fable That are deliver’d us of hell and furies, Or of the divers ways that ill men go From good, to filthy, dark, and ugly places : And therefore he would have these live, and long too ; But far from Rome, and in the small free towns, Lest here they might have rescue : as if men Fit for such acts were only in the city, And not throughout all Italy; or, that boldness Could not do more, where it found least resistance 1 ’Tis a vain counsel, if he think them dangerous : Which if he do not, but that he alone, In so great fear of all men, stand unfrighted, He gives me cause, and you too, more to fear him. I am plain, fathers. Here you look about One at another, doubting what to do, With faces, as you trusted to the gods, That still have saved you ; and they can do it: but They are not wishings, or base womanish pray’rs, Can draw their aids ; but vigilance, counsel, action; Which they will be ashamed to forsake. ’Tis sloth they hate, and cowardice. Here you have The traitors in your houses ; yet you stand, Fearing what to do with them ; let them loose, And send them hence with arms too, that your mercy May turn your misery, as soon as’t can!— O, but they are great men, and have offended But through ambition; we would spare their honour. Ay, if themselves had spared it, or their fame, Or modesty, or either god or man ; Then I would spare them. But as things now stand, Fathers, to spare these men, were to commit A greater wickedness than you would revenge. If there had been but time and place for you To have repair’d this fault, you should have made it; It should have been your punishment, to have felt Your tardy error : but necessity Now bids me say, let them not live an hour, If you mean Rome should live a day. I have done. Omnes. Cato hath spoken like an oracle. Cras. Let it be so decreed. Sen. We all were fearful. Syl. And had been base, had not his virtue raised us. Sen. Go forth, most worthy consul, we’ll assist you. Coes. I am not yet changed in my sentence, Cato. No matter. [fathers. Enter a Messenger with letters. What be those ? 1 Sen. Letters for Csesar ! Cato. From whom ? let them be read in open Fathers, they come from the conspirators, [senate. I crave to have them read, for the republic. Cces. Cato, read you it. ’Tis a love-letter, From your dear sister to me : though you hate me, Do not discover it. [ Aside to Cato. Cato. Hold thee, drunkard.—Consul, Go forth, and confidently. Cces. You’ll repent This rashness, Cicero. Pros. Csesar shall repent it. [ The Praetors attempt to seize him. Cic. Hold, friends ! Prce. He’s scarce a friend unto the public. Cic. No violence. Csesar, be safe. [ They all rise.} —Lead on. Where are the public executioners ? 804 CATILINE. ACT V Bid them wait on us. On to Spinther’s house. Bring Lentulus forth. [ He is brought out .]—Here, you, the sad revengers Of capital crimes against the public, take This man unto your justice ; strangle him. Len. Thou dost well, consul. ’Twas a cast at dice, In fortune’s hand, not long since, that thyself Should’st have heard these, or other words as fatal. [Exit Len. guarded. Cic. Lead on to Quintus Cornificius’ house. Bring forth Cethegus. \Ile is brought out .]—Take him to the due Death that he hath deserv’d, and let it be Said, he was once. Cet. A beast, or what is worse, A slave, Cethegus. Let that be the name For all that’s base, hereafter ; that would let This worm pronounce on him, and not have tramp- His body into-Ha! art thou not moved? [led Cic. Justice is never angry. Take him hence. Cet. O, the whore Fortune, and her bawds the Fates, That put these tricks on men, which knew the way To death by a sword ! strangle me, I may sleep ; I shall grow angry with the gods else. [Exit, guarded. Cic. Lead To Caius Caesar, for Statilius. Bring him and rude Gabinius out. [ They are brought out.~\ —Here take them To your cold hands, and let them feel death from Gab. I thank you, you do me a pleasure, [you. Stat. And me too. [Exe. Gab. and Stat. guarded. Cato. So, Marcus Tullius, thou may’st now stand And call it happy Rome, thou being consul, [up, Great parent of thy country ! go, and let The old men of the city, ere they die, Kiss thee, the matrons dwell about thy neck, The youths and maids lay up, ’gainst they are old, What kind of man thou wert, to tell their nephews, When, such a year, they read, within our Fasti, Thy consulship— Enter Petreius. Who’s this ? Petreius ! Cic. Welcome, Welcome, renowned soldier. What’s the news ? This face can bring no ill with’t unto Rome. How does the worthy consul, my colleague? Pet. As well as victory can make him, sir. He greets the fathers, and to me hath trusted The sad relation of the civil strife ; For, in such war, the conquest still is black. Cic. Shall we withdraw into the house of Con¬ cord ? Cato. No, happy consul; here let all ears take The benefit of this tale. If he had voice To spread unto the poles, and strike it through The centre to the antipodes, it would ask it. Pet. The straits and needs of Catiline being such, As he must fight with one of the two armies, That then had ne’er inclosed him ; it pleased fate To make us the object of his desperate choice, Wherein the danger almost poised the honour: And as he rose, the day grew black with him, And Fate descended nearer to the earth, As if she meant to hide the name of things Under her wings, and make the world her quarry. At this we roused, lest one small minute’s stay Had left it to be inquired, what Rome was; And, as we ought, arm’d in the confidence Of our great cause, in form of battle stood ; Whilst Catiline came on, not with the face Of any man, but of a public ruin. His countenance was a civil war itself, And all his host had standing in their looks The paleness of the death that was to come; Yet cried they out like vultures, and urged on, As if they would precipitate our fates. Nor stay’d we longer for them : but himself Struck the first stroke ; and with it fled a life. Which cut, it seem’d a narrow neck of land Had broke between two mighty seas, and either Flow’d into other ; for so did the slaughter ; And whirl’d about, as when two violent tides Meet, and not yield. The Furies stood on hills, Circling the place, and trembling to see men Do more than they; whilst Piety left the field, Grieved for that side, that in so bad a cause They knew not what a crime their valour was. The sun stood still, and was, behind the cloud The battle made, seen sweating, to drive up His frighted horse, whom still the noise drove back- And now had fierce Enyo, like a flame, [ward. Consumed all it could reach, and then itself, Had not the fortune of the commonwealth Come, Pallas-like, to every Roman thought: Which Catiline seeing, and that now his troops Cover’d that earth they had fought on, with their Ambitious of great fame to crown his ill, [trunks, Collected all his fury, and ran in, Arm’d with a glory high as his despair, Into our battle, like a Libyan lion Upon his hunters, scornful of our weapons, Careless of wounds, plucking down lives about him,. Till he had circled in himself with death : Then fell he too, t’ embrace it where it lay. And as in that rebellion ’gainst the gods, Minerva holding forth Medusa’s head, One of the giant-brethren felt himself Grow marble at the killing sight, and now Almost made stone, began to inquire, what flint, What rock it was, that crept through all his limbs ; And ere he could think more, was that he fear’d ; So Catiline, at the sight of Rome in us, Became his tomb : yet did his look retain Some of his fierceness, and his hands still moved, As if he labour’d yet to grasp the state With those rebellious parts. Cato. A brave bad death ! Had this been honest now, and for his country, As ’twas against it, who had e’er fall’n greater ? Cic. Honour’d Petreius, Rome, not I, must thank you. How modestly has he spoken of himself 1 Cato. He did the more. Cic. Thanks to the immortal gods, Romans, I now am paid for all my labours, My watchings, and my dangers! here conclude Your praises, triumphs, honours, and rewards, Decreed to me : only the memory Of this glad day, if I may know it live Within your thoughts, shall much affect my con- Which I must always study before fame, [scieuce, Though both be good, the latter yet is worst, And ever is ill got, without the first. [ Exeunt. t BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. DRAMATIS PERSONS. John Littlewit, a Proctor. Zeal-of-the-Land Busy, Suitor to Dame Pure- craft, a Banbury Man. Winwife, his rival, a Gentleman. Tom Quarlous, companion to Winwife, a Game¬ ster. Bartholomew Cokes, an Esquire of Harrow. Humphrey Waspe, his Man. Adam Overdo, a Justice of Peace. Lanthorn Leatherhead, a Hobby-Horse Seller, (Toyman). Ezechiel Edgworth, a Cutpurse. Nightingale, a Ballad-Singer. Mooncalf, Tapster to Ursula. Dan. Jordan Knockem, a Horse-Courser, and a Ranger of Turnbull. Val. Cutting, a Roarer, or Bully. Captain Whit, a Bawd. Trouble-all, a Madman. Bristle, Haggtse, Watchmen. Pocher, a Beadle. Filcher ) Sharkwell, f Door - kec Pers to the Puppet-Show. Solomon, Littlewit’s Man. Northern, a Clothier, (a Northern Man). Puppy, a Wrestler, (a Western Man). Win-the-Fight Littlewit. Dame Purecraft, her Mother, and a Widow. Dame Overdo. Grace Wellborn, Ward to Justice Overdo. Joan Trash, a Gingerbread-Woman. Ursula, a Pig-Woman. Alice, Mistress o’ the game. Costard-Monger, Mousetrap-Man, Corn-Cutter, Watcli, Porters, Puppets, Passengers, Mob, Boys, SfC. PROLOGUE. TO THE KING’S MAJESTY. Your Majesty is welcome to a Fair ; Such place, such men, such language, and such ware You must expect : with these , the zealous noise Of your land's faction, scandalized at toys, As babies, hobby-horses, puppet-plays, And such like rage, whereof the petulant ways Yourself have known , and have been vext with long. These for your sport, without particular wrong, Or just complaint of any private man, Who of himself, or shall think well, or can , The maker doth present: and hopes, to-night To give you for a fairing, true delight. THE INDUCTION. THE STAGE. Enter the Stage-lceeper. Stage. Gentlemen, have a little patience, they are e’en upon coming, instantly. He that should begin the play, master Littlewit, the proctor, -»as a stitch new fallen in his black silk stocking ; ’twill be drawn up ere you can tell twenty : he plays one o’ the Arches that dwells about the hospital, and he has a very pretty part. But for the whole play, will you have the truth on’t ?—I am looking, lest the poet hear me, or his man, master Brome, behind the arras—it is like to be a very conceited scurvy one, in plain English. When’t comes to the Fair once, you were e’en as good go to Virginia, for anything there is of Smith- held. He has not hit the humours, he does not know them: he has not conversed with the Bar¬ tholomew birds, as they say ; he has ne’er a sword and buckler-man in his Fair; nor a little Davy, to take toll o’ the bawds there, as in my time ; nor a Kindheart, if any body’s teeth should chance to ache in his play ; nor a juggler with a well-educated ape, to come over the chain for a king of England, and back again for the prince, and sit still on his arse for the pope and the king of Spain. None of these fine sights ! Nor has he the canvas-cut in the night, for a hobby-horse-man to creep into his she- neighbour, and take his leap there. Nothing ! No : an some writer that I know had had but the pen¬ ning o’ this matter, he would have made you such a jig-a-jog in the booths, you should have thought an earthquake had been in the Fair ! But these master poets, they will have their own absurd courses ; they will be informed of nothing, He has (sir reverence) kick'd me three or four times about the tiring-house, I thank him, for but offering to put in with my experience. I’ll be judged by you, gentlemen, now, but for one conceit of mine: would not a fine pomp upon the stage have done well, for a property now ? and a punk set under upon hei head, with her stern upward, and have x 306 BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. been soused by my witty young masters o’ the Inns of Court ? What think you of this for a show, now ? he will not hear o’ this ! I am an ass ! I ! and yet I kept the stage in master Tarleton’s time, I thank my stars. Ho ! an that man had lived to have played in Bartholomew Fair, you should have seen him have come in, and have been cozen’d in the cloth-quarter, so finely ! and Adams, the rogue, have leaped and capered upon him, and have dealt his vermin about, as though they had cost him nothing ! and then a substantial watch to have stolen in upon them, and taken them away, with mistaking words, as the fashion is in the stage- practice. Enter the Booldiolder with a Scrivener. Book. How now ! what rare discourse are you fallen upon, ha ? have you found any familiars here, that you are so free ! what’s the business ? Stage. Nothing, but the understanding gentle¬ men o’ the ground here ask’d my judgment. Book. Your judgment, rascal ! for what ? sweep¬ ing the stage, or gathering up the broken apples for the bears within ? Away, rogue, it’s come to a fine degree in these spectacles, when such a youth as you pretendto a judgment. [Exit Stage-Keeper.] —And yet he may, in the most of this matter, i’ faith : for the author has writ it just to his meridian, and the scale of the grounded judgments here, his play-fellows in wit.—Gentlemen, [ comes forward ] not for want of a prologue, but by way of a new one, I am sent out to you here, with a scrivener, and certain articles drawn out in haste between our author and you ; which if you please to hear, and as they appear reasonable, to approve of ; the play will follow presently.—Read, scribe; give me the counterpane. Scriv. Articles of agreement, indented, between the spectators or hearers, at the Hope on the Bankside in the county of Surry, on the one party ; and the author of Bartholomew Fair, in the said place and county , on the other party : the one and thirtieth day of October, 16T4, and in the twelfth year of the reign of our sovereign lord. James, by the grace of God , king of England, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith ; and of Scotland the seven and fortieth. Imprimis. It is covenanted and agreed, by ana between the parties aforesaid , and the said specta¬ tors and hearers, as well the curious and envious , as the favouring and judicious, as also the grounded judgments and understandings, do for themselves severally covenant and agree to remain in the places their money or friends have put them in, with patience, for the space of two hours and an half, and somewhat more. In which time the author promisetli to present them by us, with a new sufficient play, called Bartholomew Fair, merry, and as full of noise, as sport: made to delight all, and to offend none; provided they have either the wit or the honesty to think well of themselves. It is further agre lots at the lottery: marry, if he drop but six pence at the door, and will censure a crown' s-w or Ih, it is thought there is no conscience or justice in that. It is also agreed, that every man here exercise his own judgment, and not censure by contagion, or upon trust, from another's voice or face, that site by him, be he never so first in the commission oj wit; as also, that he be fixed and settled in his censure that what he approves or not approves to-day, he will do the same to-morrow ; and if to¬ morrow, the next day, and so the next week, if need be : and not to be brought about by any that sits on the bench with him, though they indite and arraign plays daily. He that will swear, Jero¬ nimo or Andronicus, are the best plays yet, shall pass unexcepted at here, as a man whose judgment shows it is constant, and hath stood still these fiu e and-twenty or thirty years. Though it be an ignorance it is a virtuous and staid ignorance ; and next to truth, a confirmed error does well ; such a one the author knows ivherc to find him. It is further covenanted, concluded, and agreed, That hoiv great soever the expectation he, no per¬ son here is to erpect more than he knows, or belter ware than a fair will afford : neither to look back to the sword and buckler age of Smithfield, but content himself with the present. Instead of a little Davy to take toll o' the bawds, the author doth promise a strutting horse-courser, with a leer drunkard, two or three to attend him, in as good equipage as you would wish. And then for Kind- heart the tooth drawer, a fine oily pig-woman with her tapster, to bid you ivelcome, and a consort of roarers for musick. A wise justice of peace meditant, instead of a juggler with an ape. A civil cutpurse sear chant. A sweet singer of new ballads allurant: and as fresh an hypocrite, as ever teas broached, rampant. If there be never a servant- monster in the fair, who can help it, he says, nor a nest of antiques ? he is loth to make nature afraid in his plays, like those that beget tales, tempests, and such like drolleries, to mix his head ivith other -men’s heels ; let the concupiscence of ) jigs and dances reign as strong as it will amongst you : yet if the puppets wifi please any body, they shall be intreated to come in. In consideration of which, it is finally agreed , by the aforesaid hearers and spectators, That they neither in themselves conceal, nor suffer by them to be concealed, any state - decy pher er, or politic pick- lock of the scene, so solemnly ridiculous, as to search out , who was meant by the gingerbread- woman, who by the hobby-horse man, who by the costard-monger, nay, who by their wares. Or that will pretend to affirm on his own inspired igno¬ rance, what Mirror of Magistrates is meant by the justice, what great lady by the pig-woman, what concealed statesman by the seller < f mouse¬ traps, and so of the rest. But that such person, or persons, so found, be left discovered to the mercy of the author, as a forfeiture to the stage, and your laughter aforesaid. As also such as shall so des¬ perately, or ambitiously play the fool by his place aforesaid, to challenge the author of scurrility, because the language somewhere savours of Smith- field, the booth, and the pigb^oth, or of profane¬ ness, because a madman cries, God quit you. o* BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. SCENE 1. bless you ! In witness ivliereof, as you have pre- vosterously put to your seals already, which is your money , you will now add the other part of suffrage , your hands. The play shall presently begin. And though the Fair be not kept in the same region that some here, perhaps, would have it; yet think, that therein the author hath observed 807 a special decorum, the place being as dirty as Smithfield, and as stinking every whit. Howsoever , he prays you to believe , his ware is still the same, else you will make him justly suspect that he that is so loth to look on a baby or an hobby¬ horse here , would be glad to take up a commodity of them, at any laughter or loss in another place. f Exeunt. ACT I. SCENE I.— A Room in Littlewit’s House. Enter Littlewit with a license in Ms hand. Lit. A pretty conceit, and worth the finding ! I have such luck to spin out these fine things still, and, like a silk-worm, out of my self. Here’s master Bartholomew Cokes, of Harrow o’ the Hill, in the county of Middlesex, esquire, takes forth his license to marry mistress Grace ’Wellborn, of the said place and county: and when does he take it forth? to-day! the four and twentieth of August! Bartholomew-day ! Bartholomew upon Bartholo¬ mew ! there’s the device ! who would have marked such a leap-frog chance now ! A very - - - - less than ames-ace, on two dice! Well, go thy ways, John Littlewfit, proctor John Littlewit: one of the pretty wits of Paul’s, the Littlewit of London, so thou art called, and something beside. When a quirk or a quiblin does ’scape thee, and thou dost not watch and apprehend it, and bring it afore the constable of conceit, (there now, I speak quib too,) let them carry thee out o’ the archdeacon’s court into his kitchen, and make a Jack of thee, instead of a John. There I am again la !— Enter Mrs. Littlewit. Win, good-morrow, Win ; ay, marry, Win, now you look finely indeed, Win ! this cap does con¬ vince ! You’d not have worn it, Win, nor have had it velvet, but a rough country beaver, with a cop¬ per band, like the coney-skin woman of Budge- row ; sweet Win, let me kiss it ! And her fine high shoes, like the Spanish lady ! Good Win, go a lit¬ tle, I would fain see thee pace, pretty Win ; by this fine cap, I could never leave kissing on’t. Mrs. Lit. Come indeed la, you are such a fool still ! Lit. No, but half a one, Win, you are the t’other half: man and wife make one fool, Win. Good ! Is there the proctor, or doctor indeed, in the dio¬ cese, that ever had the fortune to win him such a Win ! There I am again! I do feel conceits com¬ ing upon me, more than I am able to turn tongue to. A pox o’ these pretenders to wit! your Three Cranes, Mitre and Mermaid men ! not a corn of true salt, not a grain of right mustard amongst them all. They may stand for places, or so, again the next wit-fall, and pay two-pence in a quart more for their canary than other men. But give me the man can start up a justice of wit out of six shillings beer, and give the law to all the poets and poet-suckers in town :—because they are the play¬ er’s gossips! ’Slid! other men have wives as fine as the players, and as well drest. Come hither, Win ! [Kisses her. Enter Winwife. Winw. Why, how now, master Littlewit! mea¬ suring of lips, or moulding of kisses ? which is it? Lit. Troth, I am a little taken with my Win’s dressing here : does it not fine, master Winwife ? How do you apprehend, sir ? she would not have worn this habit. 1 challenge all Cheapside to shew such another : Moor-fields, Pimlico-path, or the Exchange, in a summer evening, with a lace to boot, as this has. Dear Win, let master Winwife kiss you. He comes a wooing to our mother, Win, and may be our father perhaps, Win. There’s no harm in him, Win. Winw. None in the earth, master Littlewit. [Kisses her Lit. I envy no man my delicates, sir. IVinw. Alas, you have the garden where they grow still! A wife here with a strawberry breath, cherry-lips, apricot cheeks, and a soft velvet head, like a melicotton. Lit. Good, i’faith! now dulness upon me, that I had not that before him, that I should not light on’t as well as he ! velvet head ! Winw. But my taste, master Littlewit, tends to fruit of a later kind; the sober matron, your wife’s mother. Lit. Ay, we know you are a suitor, sir; Win and I both wish you well : By this license here, would you had her, that your two names were as fast in it as here are a couple ! Win would fain have a fine young father i’law, with a feather ; that her mother might hood it and chain it with mistress Overdo. But you do not take the right course, master Winwife. Winw. No, master Littlewit, why? Lit. You are not mad enough. Wimv. How ! is madness a right course ? Lit. I say nothing, but 1 wink upon Win. You have a friend, one master Quarlous, comes here sometimes. Winw. Why, he makes no love to her, does he ? Lit. Not a tokenworth that ever I saw, I assure you : but-- Winw. What? Lit. He is the more mad-cap of the two. You do not apprehend me. Mrs. Lit. You have a hot coal in your mouth, now, you cannot hold. Lit. Let me out with it, dear Win. Mrs. Lit. I’ll tell him myself. Lit. Do, and take all the thanks, and much good do thy pretty heart, Win. Mrs. Lit. Sir, my mother has had her nativity- water cast lately by the cunning-men in Cow-lane, and they have told her her fortune, and do ensure her, she shall never have happy hour, unless she i marry within this sen’night ; and when it is, it must be a madman, they say. Lit. Ay, but it must be a gentleman madman. 308 BARTHOLOMEW' FAIR. act i. Mrs. Lit. Yes, so the t’other man of Moorfields says. Winw. But does she believe them? Lit. Yes, and has been at Bedlam twice since every day, to inquire if any gentleman be there, or to come there mad. Winw. Why, this is a confederacy, a mere piece of practice upon her by these impostors. Lit. I tell her so ; or else, say I, that they mean some young madcap gentleman ; for the devil can equivocate as well as a shop keeper : and therefore would I advise you to be a little madder than master Quarlous hereafter. Winw. Where is she, stirring yet ? Lit. Stirring! yes, and studying an old elder come from Banbury, a suitor that puts in here at meal tide, to praise the painful brethren, or pray that the sw r eet singers may be restored ; says a grace as long as his breath lasts him! Some time the spirit is so strong with him, it gets quite out of him, and then my mother, or Win, are fain to fetch it again with malmsey or aqua coelestis. Mrs. Lit. Yes, indeed, we have such a tedious life with him for his diet, and his clothes too ! he breaks his buttons, and cracks seams at every saying he sobs out. Lit. He cannot abide my vocation, he says. Mrs. Lit. No; he told my mother, a proctor was a claw of the beast, and that she had little less than committed abomination in marrying me so as she has done. Lit. Every line, he says, that a proctor writes, when it comes to be read in the bishop’s court, is along black hair, kemb’d out of the tail of Anti¬ christ. Winw. When came this proselyte ? Lit. Some three days since. Enter Quarlous. Quar. O sir, have you ta’en soil here ? It’s well a man may reach you after three hours’ running yet! What an umei'cifui companion art thou, to quit thy lodging at such ungentlemanly hours! none but a scattered covey of fidlers, or one of these rag-rakers in dunghills, or some marrow-bone man at most, would have been up when thou wert gone abroad, by all description. I pray thee what ailest thou, thou canst not sleep ? hast thou thorns in thy eye-lids, or thistles in thy bed ? Winw. I cannot tell: it seems you had neither in your feet, that took this pain to find me. Quar. No, an I had, all the lime hounds o ’the city should have drawn after you by the scent rather. Master John Littlewit! God save you, sir. ’Twas a hot night with some of us, last night, John : shall we pluck a hair of the same wolf to-day, proctor J ohn ? Lit. Do you remember, master Quarlous, what we discoursed on last night ? Quar. Not I, John, nothing that I either dis¬ course or do ; at those times I forfeit all to forget¬ fulness. Lit. No! not concerning Win? look you, there she is, and drest, as I told you she should be : hark you, sir, [ whispers him.'] had you forgot ? Quar. By this head I’ll beware how I keep you company, John, when I [am] drunk, an you have this dangerous memory : that’s certain. Lit. Why, sir? Quar. Why! we were all a little stained last night, sprinkled with a cup or two, and I agreed with proc¬ tor John here, to come and do somewhat with Win (I know not what ’twas) to-day ; and he puts me in mind on’t now; he says he was coming to fetch me. Before truth, if you have that fearful quality, John, to remember when you are sober, John, what you promise drunk, John ; I shall take heed of you, John. For this once I am content to wink at you. Where’s your wife ? come hither, Win. [Kissesher. Mrs. Lit. Why, John! do you see this, John? look you ! help me, John. Lit. O Win, fie, what do you mean, Win? be womanly, Win; make an outcry to your mother, Win ! master Quarlous is an honest gentleman, and our worshipful good friend, Win ; and he is master Winwife’s friend too : and master Whnwife comes a suitor to your mother, Win ; as I told you before, Win, and may perhaps be our father, Win: they’ll do you no harm, Win ; they are both our worshipful good friends. Master Quarlous ! you must know master Quarlous, Win; you must not quarrel with master Quarlous, Win. Quar. No, we’ll kiss again, and fall in. [Kisses her again. Lit. Yes, do, good Win. Mrs. Lit. In faith you are a fool, John. Lit. A fool-John, she calls me; do you mark that, gentlemen ? pretty Littlewit of velvet ? a focl- John. Quar. She may call you an apple-John, if you use this. [Aside. [Kisses her again. Winw. Pray thee forbear, for my respect, some¬ what. Quar. Hoy-day! how respective you are become o’the sudden? I fear this family will turn you re¬ formed too ; pray you come about again. Because she is in possibility to be your daughter-in-law, and may ask you blessing hereafter, when she courts it to Totenham to eat cream ! Well, I will forbear, sir ; but i’faith, would thou wouldst leave thy ex¬ ercise of widow-hunting once ; this drawing after an old reverend smock by the splay-foot! There cannot be an ancient tripe or trillibub in the town, but thou art straight nosing it, and ’tis a fine occu¬ pation thou’lt confine thyself to, when thou hast got one ; scrubbing a piece of buff, as if thou hadst the perpetuity of Pannier-ally to stink in ; or per¬ haps -worse, currying a carcass that thou hast bound thyself to alive. I’ll be sworn, some of them that thou art, or hast been suitor to, are so old, as no chaste or married pleasure can ever become them; the honest instrument of procreation has forty years since left to belong to them ; thou must visit them as thou wouldst do a tomb, with a torch or three handfuls of link, flaming hot, and so thou may’st hap to make them feel thee and after come to inhe¬ rit according to thy inches. A sweet course for a man to waste the brand of life for, to be still raking himself a fortune in an old woman’s embers ! W 7 e shall have thee, after thou hast been but a month married to one of them, look like the quartan ague and the black jaundice met in a face, and walk as if thou hadst borrow’d legs of a spinner, and voice of a cricket. I would endure to hear fifteen ser¬ mons a week for her, and such coarse and loud ones, as some of them must be ! I would e’en de¬ sire of fate, I might dwell in a drum, and take in my sustenance with an old broken tobacco-pipe and a straw. Dost thou ever think to bring thine ears or stomach to the patience of a dry grace, as SCENE 1. BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. S0{? long as thy table-cloth ; and droned out by thy son here (that might be thy father) till all the meat on thy board has forgot it was that day in the kitchen ? or to brook the noise made in a question of predestination, by the good labourers and pain¬ ful eaters assembled together, put to them by the matron your spouse ; who moderates with a cup of wine, ever and anon, and a sentence out of Knox between ? Or the perpetual spitting before and after a sober-drawn exhortation of six hours, whose better part was the hum-lia-hum ? or to hear pray¬ ers, groaned out over thy iron chests, as if they were charms to break them ? And all this for the hope of two apostle-spoons, to suffer ! and a cup to eat a caudle in ! for that will be thy legacy. She’ll have convey’d her state safe enough from thee, an she be a right widow. Winw. Alas, I am quite off that scent now. Quar. How so? Winw. Put off by a brother of Banbury, one that, they say, is come here, and governs all al¬ ready. Quar. What do you call him ? I knew divers of those Banburians when I was in Oxford. Winw. Master Littlewit can tell us. Lit. Sir !—Good Win go in, and if master Bar¬ tholomew Cokes, his man, come f or the license, (the little old fellow,) let him speak with me. [Exit Mrs. Littlewit.] —What say you, gentlemen ? Winw. What call you the reverend elder you told me of, your Banbury man ? Lit. Rabbi Busy, sir ; he is more than an elder, he is a prophet, sir Quar. (3, I know him ! a baker, is he not ? Lit. He was a baker, sir, but he does dream now, and see visions; he has given over his trade. Quar. I remember that too ; out of a scruple he took, that, in spiced conscience, those cakes he made, were served to bridals, may-poles, morrices, and such profane feasts and meetings. His christian-name is Zeal-of-the-land. Lit. Yes, sir ; Zeal-of-the-land Busy. Winrv. How ! what a name’s there ! Lit. O they have all such names, sir ; he was witness for Win here,—they will not be call’d godfathers—and named her Win-the-fight: you thought her name had been Winnifred, did you not ? Winw. I did indeed. Lit. He would have thought himself a stark reprobate, if it had. Quar. Ay, for there was a blue-starch woman of the name at the same time. A notable hypocri¬ tical vermin it is ; 1 know him. One that stands upon his face, more than his faith, at all times : ever in seditious motion, and reproving for vain¬ glory ; of a most lunatic conscience and spleen, and affects the violence of singularity in all he does : he has undone a grocer here, in Newgate- market, that broke with him, trusted him with currants, as arrant a zeal as he, that’s by the way : —By his profession he will ever be in the state of innocence though, and childhood; derides all antiquity, defies any other learning than inspira¬ tion ; and what discretion soever years should afford him, it is all prevented in his original igno¬ rance : have not to do with him, for he is a fellow of a most arrogant and invincible dulness, I assure you.—Who is this ? lie-enter Mrs. Littlewit with Waste. Waspe. By your leave, gentlemen, with all my heart to you; and god give you good morrow!— master Littlewit, my business is to you: is this license ready ? Lit. Here I have it for you in my hand, mastei Humphrey. Waspe. That’s well: nay, never open or read it to me, it’s labour in vain, you know. I am no clerk, I scorn to be saved by my book, i’ faith, I’U hang first; fold it up on your word, and give it me. What must you have for it ? Lit. We’ll talk of that anon, master Humphrey. Waspe. Now t , or not at all, good master Proc¬ tor ; I am for no anons, I assure you. Lit. Sweet Win, bid Solomon send me the little black-box within in my study. Waspe. Ay, quickly, good mistress, I pray you; for I have both eggs on the spit, and iron in the fire. [Exit Mrs. Littlewit.] —Say what you must have, good master Littlewit. Lit. Why, you know the price, master Nurnps. Waspe. I know ! I know nothing, I: what tell you me of knowing? Now I am in haste, sir, I do not know, and I will not know, and I scorn to know, and yet, now I think on’t, I will, and do know as well as another ; you must have a mark for your thing here, and eight-pence for the box; I could have saved two-pence in that, an 1 had bought it myself; but here's fourteen shillings for you. Good Lord, how long your little wife stays ! pray God, Solomon, your clerk, be not looking in the wrong box, master proctor. Lit. Good i’ faith! no, I warrant you Solomon is wiser than so, sir. Waspe. Fie, fie, fie, by your leave, master Littlewit, this is scurvy, idle, foolish, and abomin¬ able, with all my heart; I do not like it. [ Walks aside. Winw. Do you hear! Jack Littlewit, what business does thy pretty head think this fellow may have, that he keeps such a coil with? Quar. More than buying of gingerbread in the cloister here, for that we allow him, or a gilt pouch in the fair ? Lit. Master Quarlous, do not mistake him; he is his master’s both-hands, I assure you. Quar. What ! to pull on his boots a mornings or his stockings, does he ? Lit. Sir, if you have a mind to mock him, mock him softly, and look t’other way : for if he appre¬ hend you flout him once, he will fly at you presently. A terrible testy old fellow, and his name is Waspe too. Quar. Pretty insect! make much on him. Waspe. A plague o’ this box, and the pox too, and on him that made it, and her that went for’t, and all that should have sought it, sent it, or brought it! do you see, sir. Lit. Nay, good master Waspe. Waspe. Good master Hornet, t—in your teeth, hold you your tongue : do not I know you ? your father was a ’pothecary, and sold clysters, more than he gave, I wusse : and t—in your little wife’s teeth too—here she comes— Re-enter Mrs. Littlewit, with the box. ’twill make her spit, as fine as she is, for all hex velvet custard on her head. sir. 310 BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. act i. Lit . O, be civil, master Numps. Waspe. Why, say I have a humour not to he civil; how then ? who shall compel me, you ? Lit. Here is the box now. Waspe. Why, a pox o’ your box, once again! let your little wife stale in it, an she will. Sir, I would have you to understand, and these gentle¬ men too, if they please- Winw. With all our hearts, sir. Waspe. That I have a charge, gentlemen. Lit. They do apprehend, sir. Waspe. Pardon me, sir, neither they nor you can apprehend me yet. You are an ass.—I have a young master, he is now upon his making and marring ; the whole care of his well-doing is now mine. His foolish schoolmasters have done nothing but run up and down the country with him to beg puddings and cake-bread of his tenants, and almost spoil’d him; he has learn’d nothing but to sing catches, and repeat Rattle bladder, rattle ! and O Madge ! I dare not let him walk alone, for fear of learning of vile tunes, which he will sing at supper, and in the sermon-times ! If he meet but a carman in the street, and I find him not talk to keep him off on him, he will whistle him and all his tunes over at night in his sleep ! He has a head full of bees ! I am fain now, for this little time I am absent, to leave him in charge with a gentle¬ woman: ’tis true she is a justice of peace his wife, and a gentlewoman of the hood, and his natural sister; but what may happen under a woman’s government, there’s the doubt. Gentle¬ men, you do not know him ; he is another man¬ ner of piece than you think for: but nineteen years old, and yet he is taller than either of you by the head, God bless him ! Quar. Well, methinks this is a fine fellow. Winw. Pie has made his master a finer by this description, I should think. Quar. ’Faith, much about one, it is cross and pile, whether for a new farthing. Waspe. I’ll tell you, gentlemen- Lit. Will’t please you drink, master Waspe. Waspe. Why, I have not talk’d so long to be dry, sir. You see no dust or cobwebs come out o’ my mouth, do you ? you’d have me gone, would you ? Lit. No, but yott were in haste e’en now, master Numps. Waspe. What an I were ! so I am still, and yet I will stay too ; meddle you with your match, your Win there, she has as little wit as her husband, it seems : I have others to talk to. Lit. She’s my match indeed, and as little wit as I, good! Waspe. We have been but a day and a half in town, gentlemen, ’tis true; and yesterday in the afternoon we walked London to shew the city to the gentlewoman he shall marry, mistress Grace; but afore I will endure such another half day with him, I’ll be drawn with a good gib-cat, through the great pond at home, as his uncle Hodge was. Why, we could not meet that heathen thing all the day, but staid him ; he would name you all the signs over, as he went, aloud: and where he spied a parrot or a monkey, there he was pitched, with all the little long coats about him, male and female ; no getting him away ! I thought he would have run mad o’ the black boy in Bucklersburv, that takes the scurvy, roguy tobacco there. Lit. You say true, master Numps ; there’s such a one indeed. Waspe. It’s no matter whether there be or no, what’s that to you ? Quar. He will not allow of John’s reading at any hand. Enter Cokes, Mistress Overdo, and Grace. Colees. O Numps ! are you here, Numps ? look where I am, Numps, and mistress Grace too! Nay, do not look angerly, Numps : my sister is here and all, I do not come without her. Waspe. What the mischief do you come with her ; or she with you ? Cokes. We came all to seek you, Numps. Waspe. To seek me ! why, did you all think I was lost, or run away with your fourteen shillings worth of small ware here ? or that I had changed it in the fair for hobby-horses ? S’precious-to seek me ! Mrs. Over. Nay, good master Numps, do you show discretion, though he be exorbitant, as master Overdo says, and it be but for conservation of the peace. Waspe. Marry gip, goody She-justice, mistress Frenehhood ! t—in your teeth, and t—in your Frenchhood’s teeth too, to do you service, do you see! Must you quote your Adam to me! you think you are madam Regent still, mistress Overdo, when I am in place ; no such matter, I assure you, your reign is out, when I am in, dame. Mrs. Over. I am content to be in abeyance, sir, and be governed by you ; so should he too, if he did well ; but ’twill be expected you should also govern your passions. Waspe. Will it so, forsooth! good Lord, how sharp you are, with being at Bedlam yesterday ! Whetstone has set an edge upon you, has he ? Mrs. Over. Nay, if you know not what belongs to your dignity, I do yet to mine. Waspe. Very well then. Cokes. Is this the license, Numps ? for love’s sake let me see’t; I never saw a license. Waspe. Did you not so ? why, you shall not see’t then. Cokes. An you love me, good Numps. Waspe. Sir, I love you, and yet I do not love you in these fooleries : set your heart at rest, there’s nothing in it but hard words ;—and what would you see it for ? Cokes. I would see the length and the breadth on’t, that’s all; and I will see it now, so I will. Waspe. You shall not see it here. Cokes. Then I’ll see it at home, and I’ll look upon the case here. Waspe. Why, do so; a man must give way to him a little in trifles, gentlemen. These are errors, diseases of youth; which he will mend when he comes to judgment and knowledge of matters. I pray you conceive so, and I thank you : and I pray you pardon him, and I thank you again. Quar. Well, this dry nurse-, I say still, is a delicate man. Mrs. Lit. And I am, for the cosset his charge : did you ever see a fellow’s face more accuse him for an ass ? Quar. Accuse him ! it confesses him one without accusing. What pity ’tis yonder wench should marry such a Cokes ! Winw ’Tis true. scene i. BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. 311 Quar. She seems to be discreet, and as sober as she is handsome. Winw. Ay, and if you mark her, what a restrained scorn she cas f s upon all his behaviour and speeches ? Cokes. Well, Numps, I am now for another piece of business more, the Fair, Numps, and then- Waspe. Bless me', deliver me ! help, hold me ! the Fair! Cokes. Nay, never fidge up and down, Numps, and vex itself. I am resolute Bartholomew in this ; I’ll make no suit on’t to you ; ’twas all the end of my journey indeed, to shew mistress Grace my Fair. I call it my Fair, because of Bartholomew: you know my name is Bartholomew, and Bar¬ tholomew Fair. Lit. That was mine afore, gentlemen; this morning. I had that, i’faitli, upon his license, believe me, there he comes after me. Quar. Come, John, this ambitious wit of yours, I am afraid, will do you no good in the end. ‘Lit. No! why, sir ? Quar. You grow so insolent with it, and over¬ doing, John, that if you look not to it, and tie it up, it will bring you to some obscure place in time, and there ’twill leave you. Winw. Do not trust it too much, John, be more sparing, and use it but now and then ; a wit is a dangerous thing in this age ; do not over-buy it. Lit. Think you so, gentlemen? I’ll take heed on’t hereafter. Mrs. Lit. Yes, do, John. Cokes. A pretty little soul, this same mistress Littlewit, would I might marry her! Grace. So would I; or any body else, so I might scape you. [Aside. Cokes. Numps, I will see it, Numps, ’tis decreed: never be melancholy for the matter. Waspe. Why, see it, sir, see it, do, see it: who hinders you ? why do you not go see it ? ’slid see it. Cokes. The Fair, Numps, the Fair. Waspe. Would the Fair, and all the drums and rattles in it, were in your belly for me! they are already in your brain. He that had the means to travel your head now, should meet finer sights than any are in the Fair, and make a finer voyage on’t; to see it all hung with cockle shells, pebbles, fine wheat straws, and here and there a chicken’s feather, and a cobweb. Quar. Good faith, he looks, methinks, an you mark him, like one that were made to catch flies, with his sir Cranion-legs. Winw. And his Numps, to flap them away. Waspe. God be wi’ you, sir, there’s your bee in a box, and much good do’t you. [Gives Cokes the box. Cokes. Why, your friend, and Bartholomew ; an you be so contumacious. Quar. What mean you, Numps ? [Takes Waspe aside as he is going out. Waspe. I’ll not be guilty, I, gentlemen. Over. You will not let him go, brother, and lose him ? Cokes. Who can hold that will away? I had rather lose him than the Fair, I wusse. Wa$pe. You do not know the inconvenience, gentlemen, you persuade to, nor what trouble I have with him in these humours. If he go to the Fair, he will buy of every thing to a baby there ; and household stuff for that too. If a leg or an arm on him did not grow on, he would lose it in the press. Pray heaven I bring him off with one stone 1 And then he is such a ravener after fruit! —you will not believe what a coil I had t’other day to compound a business between a Cather’ne- pear woman, and him, about snatching: ’tis in¬ tolerable, gentlemen. Winw. O, but you must not leave him now to these hazards, Numps. Waspe. Nay he knows too well I will not leave him, and that makes him presume : Well, sir, will you go now ? if you have such an itch in your feet, to foot it to the Fair, why do you stop, am I [o’J your tarriers ? go, will you go, sir ? why do you not go ? Cokes. O Numps, have I brought you about ? come mistress Grace, and sister, I am resolute Bat, i’faith, stiil. Gra. Truly, I have no such fancy to the Fair, nor ambition to see it; there’s none goes thither of any quality or fashion. Cokes. O Lord, sir ! you shall pardon me, mis¬ tress Grace, we are enow of ourselves to make it a fashion; and for qualities, let Numps alone, he’ll find qualities. Quar. What a rogue in apprehension is this, to understand her language no better ! Winw. Ay, and offer to marry her! Well, I will leave the chase of my widow for to-day, and directly to the Fair. These flies cannot, this hot season, but engender us excellent creeping sport. Quar. A man that has but a spoonful of brain would think so.—Farewell, John. [Exeunt Quarlous and Win wife. Lit. Win, you see ’tis in fashion to go to the Fair, Win ; we must to the Fair too, you and I, Win, I have an affair in the Fair, Win, a puppet- play of mine own making, say nothing, that I writ for the motion-man, which you must see, Win. Mrs. Lit. I would I might, John; but my mother will never consent to such a profane motion, she will call it. Lit. Tut, we’ll have a device, a dainty one; Now Wit, help at a pinch, good Wit come, come good Wit, an it be thy will! I have it, Win, I have it i’faith, and ’tis a fine one. Win, long to eat of a pig, sweet Win, in the Fair, do you see, in the heart of the Fair, not at Pye-corner. Your mother will do any thing, Win, to satisfy your longing, you know ; pray thee long presently; and be sick o’ the sudden, good Win. I’ll go in and tell her ; cut thy lace in the mean time, and play the hypocrite, sweet Win. Mrs. Lit. No, I’ll not make me unready for it : I can be hypocrite enough, though I were never so strait-laced. Lit. You say true, you have been bred in the family, and brought up to’t. Our mother is a most elect hypocrite, and has maintained us all this seven year with it, like gentlefolks. Mrs. Lit. Ay, let her alone, John, she is not a wise wilful widow for nothing; nor a sanctified sister for a song. And let me alone too, I have somewhat of the mother in me, you shall see; fetch her, fetch her —[ Exit Littlewit.] Ah ! ah ! [Seems to sivoon. Re-enter Littlewit tviih Dame Purecraft. Pure. Now, the blaze of the beauteous disci- 312 BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. ACT I. pline, fright away this evil from our house! how now, Win-the-fight, child ! how do you ? sweet child, speak to me. Mrs. Lit. Yes, forsooth. Pure. Look up, sweet Win-the-fight, and suffer not the enemy to enter you at this door, remember that your education has been with the purest: What polluted one was it, that named first the unclean beast, pig, to you, child? Mrs. Lit. Uh, uh ! Lit. Not I, on my sincerity, mother? she longed above three hours ere she would let me know it.—Who was it, Win ? Mrs. Lit. A profane black thing with a beard, John. Pure. O, resist it, Win-the-fight, it is the tempter, the wicked tempter, you may know it by the fleshly motion of pig; be strong against it, and its foul temptations, in these assaults, whereby it broacheth flesh and blood, as it were on the weaker side ; and pray against its carnal provoca¬ tions ; good child, sweet child, pi'ay. Lit. Good mother, I pray you, that she may cat some pig, and her belly full too; and do not you cast away your own child, and perhaps one of mine, with your tale of the tempter. How do you do, Win, are you not sick ? Mrs. Lit. Yes, a great deal, John, uh, uh! Pure. What shall we do? Call our zealous brother Busy hither, for his faithful fortification in this charge of the adversary. [Exit Littlewit.] Child, my dear child, you shall eat pig; be com¬ forted, my sweet child. Mrs. Lit. Ay, but in the Fair, mother. Pure. I mean in the Fair, if it can be any way made or found lawful.— Re-enter Littlewit. Where is our brother Busy ? will he not come ? Look up, child. Lit. Presently, mother, as soon as he has cleansed his beard. I found him fast by the teeth in the cold turkey-pie in the cupboard, with a great white loaf on his left hand, and a glass of malmsey on his right. Pure. Slander not the brethren, wicked one. Lit. Here he is now, purified, mother. Enter Zeal-of-the-land Busy. Pure. O brother Busy ! your help here, to edify and raise us up in a scruple: my daughter Win- the-fight is visited with a natural disease of women, called a longing to eat pig. Lit. Ay sir, a Bartholomew pig; and in the Fair. Pure. And I would be satisfied from you, reli- giously-wise, whether a widow of the sanctified assembly, or a widow’s daughter, may commit the act without offence to the weaker sisters. Busy. Verily, for the disease of longing, it is a disease, a carnal disease, or appetite, incident to women; and as it is carnal and incident, it is natural, very natural: now pig, it is a meat, and a meat that is nourishing and may be longed for, and so consequently eaten ; it may be eaten ; very exceeding well eaten; but in the Fair, and as a Bartholomew pig, it cannot be eaten ; for the very calling it a Bartholomew pig, and to eat it so, is a spice of idolatry, and you make the Fair no better than one of the high-places. This, I take it, is the state of the question : a liigh-place. Lit. Ay, but in state of necessity, place should give place, master Busy. I have a conceit left yet. Pure. Good brother Zeal-of-the-land, think to make it as lawful as you can. Lit. Yes, sir, and as soon as you can ; for it must be, sir : you see the danger my little wife is in, sir. Pure. Truly, I do love my child dearly, and I would not have her miscarry, or hazard her first- fruits, if it might be otherwise. Bus. Surely, it may be otherwise, but it is subject to construction, subject, and hath a face of offence with the weak, a great face, a foul face ; but that face may have a veil put over it, and be shadowed as it were ; it may be eaten, and in the Fair, I take it, in a booth, the tents of the wicked: the place is not much, not very much, we may be religious in the midst of the profane, so it be eaten with a reformed mouth, with sobriety and humble¬ ness ; not gorged in with gluttony or greediness, there’s the fear : for, should she go there, as taking pride in the place, or delight in the unclean dressing, to feed the vanity of the eye, or lust of the palate, it were not well, it were not fit, it were abominable, and not good. Lit. Nay, I knew that afore, and told her on’t; but courage, Win, we’ll be humble enough, we’ll seek out the homeliest booth in the Fair, that’s certain ; rather than fail, we’ll eat it on the ground. Pure. Ay, and I’ll go with you myself, Win- the-fight, and my brother Zeal-of-the-land shall go with us too, for our better consolation. Mrs. Lit. Uh, uh ! Lit. Ay, and Solomon too, Win, the more the merrier. Win, we’ll leave Rabbi Busy in a booth. [Aside to Mrs. Lit.] —Solomon 1 my cloak. Enter Solomon with the cloak. Sal. Here, sir. Bus. In the way of comfort to the weak, I will go and eat. I will eat exceedingly, and prophesy ; there may be a good use made of it too, now I think on’t: by the public eating of swine’s flesh, to profess our hate and loathing of Judaism, ■whereof the brethren stand tax’d. I will therefore eat, yea, I will eat exceedingly. Lit. Good, i’faith, I will eat heartily too, be¬ cause I will be no Jew, I could never away with that stiff-necked generation: and truly, I hope nay little one will be like me, that cries for pig so in the mother’s belly. Bus. Very likely, exceeding likely, very exceed¬ ing likely. [ Exeunt . BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. SCENE 1. 313 ACT II. SCENE I.— The Fair. A number of Booths, Stalls, &c. set out. Lanthorn Leatherhead, Joan Trash, and others, sitting by their wares. Enter Justice Overdo, at a distance, in disguise. Over. Well, in justice name, and the king’s, and for the commonwealth! defy all the world, Adam Overdo, for a disguise, and all story; for thou hast fitted thyself, I swear. Fain would I meet the Linceus now, that eagle’s eye, that pierc¬ ing Epidaurian serpent (as my Quintus Horace calls him) that could discover a justice of peace (and lately of the Quorum) under this covering. They may have seen many a fool in the habit of a justice ; but never till now, a justice in the habit of a fool. Thus must we do though, that wake for the public good ; and thus hath the wise magis¬ trate done in all ages. There is a doing of right out of wrong, if the way be found. Never shall I enough commend a worthy worshipful man, some¬ time a capital member of this city, for his high wisdom in this point, who would take you now the habit of a porter, now of a carman, now of the dog-killer, in this month of August; and in the winter, of a seller of tinder-boxes. And what would he do in all these shapes ? marry, go you into every alehouse, and down into every cellar ; measure the length of puddings; take the gage of black pots and cans, ay, and custards, with a stick ; and their circumference with a thread ; weigh the loaves of bread on his middle finger; then would he send for them home ; give the puddings to the poor, the bread to the hungry, the custards to his children ; break the pots, and burn the cans him¬ self : he would not trust his corrupt officers, he j would do it himself. Would all men in authority j would follow this worthy precedent!. for alas, as we are public persons, what do we know ? nay, what can we know ? we hear with other men's ears, we see with other men’s eyes. A foolish constable or a sleepy watchman, is all our information ; he slanders a gentleman by the virtue of his place, as he calls it, and we, by the vice of ours, must believe him. As, a while agone, they made me, yea me, to mistake an honest zealous pursuivant for a seminary ; and a proper young bachelor of musick, for a bawd. This we are subject to that live in high place ; all our intelligence is idle, and most of our intelligencers knaves ; and, by your leave, our¬ selves thought little better, if not arrant fools, for believing them. I, Adam Overdo, am resolved therefore to spare spy-money hereafter, and make mine own discoveries. Many are the yearly enor¬ mities of this Fair, in whose courts of Pie-poudres I have had the honour, during the three days, sometimes to sit as judge. But this is the spe¬ cial day for detection of those foresaid enor¬ mities. Here is my black book for the purpose ; this the cloud that hides me; under this covert I shall see and not be seen. On, Junius Brutus. And as I began, so I’ll end ; in justice name, and the king’s, and for the commonwealth ! ['Advances to the Booths, and stands aside. Leath. The Fair’s pestilence dead methinks ; people come not abroad to-day, whatever the mat¬ ter is. Do you hear, sister Trash, lady of the basket ? sit farther with your gingerbread progeny there, and hinder not the prospect of my shop, or I’ll have it proclaimed in the Fair, what stuff they are made on. Trash. Why, what stuff are they made on, bro¬ ther Leatherhead ? nothing but what’s wholesome, I assure you. Leath. Yes, stale bread, rotten eggs, musty gin¬ ger, and dead honey, you know. Over. Ay ! have I met with enormity so soon ? [Aside. Leath. I shall mar your market, old Joan. Trash. Mar my market, thou too-proud pedlar ! do thy worst, I defy thee, I, and thy stable of hobby-horses. I pay for my ground, as well as thou dost: an thou wrong’st me, for all thou art parcel-poet, and an inginer, I’ll find a friend shall right me, and make a ballad of thee, and thy cattle all over. Are you puft up with the pride of your wares ? your arsedine ? Leath. Go to, old Joan, I’ll talk with you anon ; and take you down too, afore justice Overdo: he is the man must charm you, I’ll have you in the Pie-poudres. Trash. Charm me ! I’ll meet thee face to face, afore his worship, when thou darest: and though I be a little crooked o’ my body, I shall be found as upright in my dealing as any woman in Smith- field, I ; charm me! Over. I am glad to hear my name is their terror yet, this is doing of justice. [Aside. [A number of People pass over the Stage. Leath. What do you lack ? what is't you buy ? what do you lack ? rattles, drums, halberts, horses, babies o’ the best, fiddles of the finest ? Enter Costard-monger followed by Nightjngale. Cost. Buy any pears, pears, fine, very fine pears ! Trash. Buy any gingerbread, gilt gingerbread ! Night. Hey, [Sings. Now the Fair’s a filling ! O, for a tune to startle The birds o’ the booths here billing, Yearly with old saint Bartle ! The drunkards they are wading, The punks and chapmen trading; Who’d see the Fair without his lading ? Buy any ballads, new ballads ? Enter Ursula, from her Booth. Urs. Fie upon’t: who would wear out their youth and prime thus, in roasting of pigs, that had any cooler vocation? hell’s a kind of cold cellar to’t, a very fine vault, o’ my conscience !—What, Mooncalf! Moon. [ within.'] Here, mistress. Night. How now Ursula? in a heat, in a heat? ' Urs. My chair, you false faucet you ; and my morning’s draught, quickly, a bottle of ale, to quench me, rascal. I am all fire and fat, Night¬ ingale, I shall e’en melt away to the first woman, a rib again, I am afraid. I do water the ground in knots, as I go, like a great garden pot; you may follow me by the SS. I make. Night. Alas, good Urse ! was Zekiel here this morning ? Urs. Zekiel? what Zekiel? Night. Zekiel Edgworth, the civil cutpurse 314 BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. act ii. know him well enough ; he that talks bawdy to you still : I call him my secretary. Urs. He promised to be here this morning, I rememoer. Night. When he comes, bid him stay : I’ll be hack again presently. Urs. Best take your morning dew in your belly, Nightingale. — Enter Mooncalf, with the Chair. Come sir, set it here; did not I bid you should get a chair let out o’ the sides for me, that my hips might play ? you’ll never think of anything, till your dame be rump-gall’d ; ’tis well, changeling : because it can take in your grasshopper’s thighs, you care for no more. Now, you look as you had been in the corner of the booth, fleaing your breech with a candle’s end, and set tire o’ the Fair. Fill, Stote, fill. Over. This pig-woman do I know, and I will put her in, for my second enormity ; she hath been before me, punk, pinnace, and bawd, any time these two and twenty years upon record in the Pie-poudres. Aside. Urs. Fill again, you unlucky vermin ! Moon. ’Pray you be not angry, mistress, I’ll have it widen’d anon. Urs. No, no, I shall e’en dwindle away to’t, ere the Fair be done, you think, now you have heated me : a poor vex’d thing I am, I feel myself drop¬ ping already as fast as I can ; two stone o’ suet a day is my proportion. I can but hold life and soul together, with this, (here’s to you, Nightingale,) and a whiff of tobacco at most. Where’s my pipe now ? not fill’d ! thou arrant incubee. Night. Nay, Ursula, thou’lt gall between the tongue and the teeth, with fretting, now. Urs. How can I hope that ever he’ll discharge his place of trust, tapster, a man of reckoning under me, that remembers nothing I say to him? [Exit Night.] but look to’t sirrah, you weie best. Three-pence a pipe-full, I will have made, of all my whole half-pound of tobacco, and a quarter of pound of colts-foot mixt with it too, to [eke] it out. I that have dealt so long in the fire, will not be to seek in smoke, now. Then six and twenty shillings a barrel I will advance on my beer, and fifty shillings a hundred on my bottle ale; I have told you the ways how to raise it. Froth your cans well in the filling, at length, rogue, and jog your bottles o’ the buttock, sirrah, then skink out the first glass ever, and drink with all companies, though you be sure to be drunk ; you’ll misreckon the better, and be less ashamed on’t. But your true trick, rascal, must be, to be ever busy, and mistake away the bottles and cans, in haste, before they be half drunk off, and never hear any body call, (if they should chance to mark you,) till you have brought fresh, and be able to forswear them. Give me a drink of ale. Over. This is the very womb and bed of enor¬ mity ! gross as herself ! this must all down for enormity, all, every whit on’t. [Aside. [Knocking within. Urs. Look who’s there, sirrah : five shillings a pig is my price, at least; if it be a sow pig, six¬ pence more; if she be a great-bellied wife, and long for’t, sixpence more for that. Over. 0 tempora ! O mores ! I would not have lost my discovery of this one grievance, for my place, and worship o’ the bench. How is the poor subject abused here ! Well, I will fall in with her, and with her Mooncalf, and win out wonders of enormity. [Comes forward.] —By thy leave, goodly woman, and the fatness of the Fair, oily as the king’s constable’s lamp, and shining as his shoo- ing-horn ! hath thy ale virtue, or thy beer strength, that the tongue of man may be tickled, and his palate pleased in the morning ? Let thy pretty nephew here go search and see. Urs. What new roarer is this ? Moon. 0 Lord! do you not know him, mis¬ tress ? ’tis mad Arthur of Bradley, that makes the orations.—Brave master, old Arthur of Bradley, how do you? welcome to the Fair ! when shall we hear you again, to handle your matters, with your back against a booth, ha? I have been one of your little disciples, in my days. Over. Let me drink, boy, with my love, thy aunt, here ; that I may be eloquent : but of thy best, lest it be bitter in my mouth, and my words fall foul on the Fair. Urs. Why dost thou not fetch him drink, and offer him to sit ? Moon. Is it ale or beer, master Arthur? Over. Thy best, pretty stripling, thy best ; the same thy dove drinketh, and thou drawest on holydays. Urs. Bring him a sixpenny bottle of ale: they say, a fool’s handsel is lucky. Over. Bring both, child. [£«7.s down in the booth.'] Ale for Arthur, and Beer for Bradley. Ale for thine aunt, boy. [Exit Moon.] —My disguise takes to the very wish and reach of it. I shall, by the benefit of this, discover enough, and more : and yet get off with the reputation of what I would be : a certain middling thing, between a fool and a madman. [Aside. Enter Knockem. Knock. What! my little lean Ursula! my slie- bear ! art thou alive yet, with thy litter of pigs to grunt out another Bartholomew Fair ? ha ! Urs. Yes, and to amble a foot, when the Fair is done, to hear you groan out of a cart, up the heavy hill Knock. Of Holbourn, Ursula, meanst thou so ? for what, for what, pretty Urse ? Urse. For cutting halfpenny purses, or stealing little penny dogs out o’ the Fair. Knock. 0 ! good words, good words, Urse. Over. Another special enormity. A cutpurse of the sword, the boot, and the feather ! those are his marks. [Aside. Re-enter Mooncalf, with the ale, §c. Urs. You are one of those horse-leaches that gave out I was dead, in Turnbull-street, of a sur¬ feit of bottle-ale and tripes ? Knock. No, ’twas better meat, Urse : cows udders, cows udders ! Urs. Well, I shall be meet with your mumbling mouth one day. Knock. What! thou’lt poison me with a newt in a bottle of ale, wilt tliou? or a spider in a tobacco-pipe, Urse? Come, there’s no malice in these fat folks, I never fear thee, an I can scape thy lean Mooncalf here. Let’s drink it out, good Urse, and no vapours ! [Exit Ursula. Over. Dost thou hear, boy ? There’s for thy ale, and the remnant for thee.—Speak in thy faith of a faucet, now ; is this goodly person before us here, this vapours, a knight of the knife? iCENE I. BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. 315 Moon. What mean you by that, master Arthur ? Over. I mean a child of the horn-thumb, a babe of booty, boy, a cutpurse. Moon. O Lord, sir ! far from it. This is master Daniel Knockem Jordan : the ranger of Turnbull. He is a horse-courser, sir. Over. Thy dainty dame, though, call’d him cutpurse. Moon. Like enough, sir; she’ll do forty such things in an hour (an you listen to her) for her recreation, if the toy take her in the greasy ker¬ chief : it makes her fat, you see ; she battens with it. Over. Here I might have been deceived now, and have put a fool’s blot upon myself, if I had not played an after game of discretion ! [Aside. Re-enter Ursula, dropping. Knock. Alas, poor Urse! this is an ill season for thee. Urs• Hang yourself, hackney-mar!! Knock. How, how, Urse! vapours? motion breed vapours ? Urs. Vapours 1 never tusk, nor twirl your dibble, good Jordan, I know what you’ll take to a very drop. Though you be captain of the roarers, and fight well at the case of piss-pots, you shall not fright me with your lion-chap, sir, nor your tusks; you angry ! you are hungry. Come, a pig’s head will stop your mouth, and stay your stomach at all times. Knock. Thou art such another mad, merry Urse, still! troth I do make conscience of vexing thee, now in the dog-days, this hot weather, for fear of foundering thee in the body, and melting down a pillar of the Fair. Pray thee take thy chair again, and keep state ; and let’s have a fresh bottle of ale, and a pipe of tobacco ; and no vapours. I’ll have this belly o’ thine taken up, and thy grass scoured, wench.— Enter Edgworth. Look, here’s Ezekiel Edgworth ; a fine boy of liis inches, as any is in the Fair ! has still money in his purse, and will pay all, with a kind heart, and good vapours. Edg. That I will indeed, willingly, master Knockem ; fetch some ale and tobacco. [Exit Moon. — People cross the stage. Leatli. What do you lack, gentlemen ? maid, see a fine hobby-horse for your young master ; cost you but a token a-week his provender. Re-enter Nightingale, with Corn-cutter, and Mousetrap- man Corn. Have you any corns in your feet and toes ? Mouse. Buy a mousetrap, a mousetrap, or a tormentor for a flea ? Trash. Buy some gingerbread? Night. Ballads, ballads ! fine new ballads : Hear for your love , and buy for your money. A delicate ballad o' the ferret and the coney. A 'preservative again’ the punk’s evil. Another of goose-green starch , and the devil. A dozen of divine points, and the godly garters : The fairing of good counsel, of an ell and three quarters. What is’t you buy ? The windmill blown down by the witch’s fart. Gr saint George, that, O ! did break the dragon’s heart. Re-enter Mooncalf, with ale and tobacco. Edg. Master Nightingale, come hither, leave your mart a little. Night. O my secretary ! what says my secre¬ tary ? [They walk into the booth. Over. Child of the bottles, what’s he ? what’s he ? [Points to Eugwortk. Moon. A civil young gentleman, master Arthur, that keeps company with the roarers, and disburses all still. He has ever money in his purse ; he pays for them, and they roar for him ; one does good offices for another. They call him the secretary, but he serves nobody. A great friend of the ballad-man’s, they are never asunder. Over. WTiat pity ’tis, so civil a young man should haunt this debauched company ? here’s the bane of the youth of our time apparent. A proper pen¬ man, I see’t in his countenance, he has a good clerk’s look with him, and I warrant him a quick hand. Moon. A very quick hand, sir. [Exit. Edg. [Whispering with Nightingale and Ursula.] All the purses, and purchase, I give you to-day by conveyance, bring hither to Ursula’s presently. Here we will meet at night in her lodge, and share. Look you choose good places foi your standing in the Fair, when you sing, Night¬ ingale. Urs. Ay, near the fullest passages; and shift them often. Edg. And in your singing, you must use your hawk’s eye nimbly, and fly the purse to a mark still, where ’tis worn, and on which side ; that you may give me the sign with your beak, or hang your head that way in the tune. Urs. Enough, talk no more on’t: your friend¬ ship, masters, is not now to begin. Drink your draught of indenture, your sup of covenant, and away : the Fair fills apace, company begins to come in, and I have ne’er a pig ready yet. Knock. Well said! fill the cups, and light the tobacco : let’s give fire in the works, and noble vapours. Edg. And shall we have smocks, Ursula, and good whimsies, ha! Urs. Come, you are in your bawdy vein !—the best the Fair will afford, Zekiel, if bawd Whit keep his word.— Re-enter Mooncalf. How do the pigs, Mooncalf? Moon. Very passionate, mistress, one of ’em has wept out an eye. Master Arthur o’ Bradley is melancholy here, nobody talks to him. Will you any tobacco, master Arthur ? Over. No, boy ; let my meditations alone. Moon, tie’s studying for an oration, now. Over. If I can with this day’s travail, and all my policy, but rescue this youth here out of the hands of the lewd man and the strange woman, I will sit down at night, and say with my friend Ovid, Jamque opus exegi, quqd nec Jovis ira, nec ignis , &c. [Aside. Knock. Here, Zekiel, here’s a health to Ursula, and a kind vapour ; thou hast money in thy purse still, and store ! how dost thou come by it ? pray thee vapour thy friends some in a courteous vapour Edg. Half I have, master Dan. Knockem, is always at your service. [Pulls out his purse. BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. 310 Over. Ha, sweet nature ! what goshawk would prey upon such a lamb ? [Aside. Knock. Let’s see what ’tis, Zekiel; count it, come, fill him to pledge me. Enter Win wife and Quarlous. Winw. We are here before them, methinks. Quar. All the better, we shall see them come in now. Leath. What do you lack, gentlemen, what ls’t you lack ? a fine horse ? a lion ? a bull ? a bear ? a dog, or a cat ? an excellent fine Bartholomew- bird ? or an instrument ? what is’t you lack ? Quar. ’Slid ! here’s Orpheus among the beasts, with his fiddle and all! Trash. Will you buy any comfortable bread, gentlemen ? Quar. And Ceres selling her daughter’s picture, in ginger-work. Winw. That these people should be so ignorant to think us chapmen for them ! do we look as if we would buy ginger-bread, or hobby-horses ? Quar. Why, they know no better ware than they have, nor better customers than come: and our very being here makes us fit to be demanded, as well as others. Would Cokes would come ! there were a true customer for them. Knock, [to Edgworth.] How much is’t? thirty shillings? Who’s yonder ! Ned Winwife and Tom Quarlous, I think! yes : (give me it all, give it me all.)—Master Winwife ! Master Quarlous ! will you take a pipe of tobacco with us ?—Do not discredit me now, Zekiel. [Edgworth gives him his purse. Winw. Do not see him : he is the roaring horse-courser, pray thee let’s avoid him: turn down this way. Quar. ’Slud, I’ll see him, and roar with him too, an he roared as loud as Neptune; pray thee go with me. Winw. You may draw me to as likely an incon¬ venience, when you please, as this. Quar. Go to then, come along; we have nothing to do, man, but to see sights now. [They advance to the booth. Knock. Welcome, master Quarlous, and master Winwife ; w ill you take any froth and smoke with us ? Quar. Yes, sir ; but you’ll pardon us if we knew not of so much familiarity between us afore. Knock. As what, sir ? Quar. To be so lightly invited to smoke and froth. Knock. A good vapour ! will you sit down, sir? this is old Ursula’s mansion; how like you her bower ? Here you may have your punk and your pig in state, sir, both piping hot. Quar. I had rather have my punk cold, sir. Over. There’s for me : punk ! and pig ! [Aside. Urs. [ within .] What, Mooncalf, you rogue! Moon. By and by, the bottle is almost off, mis¬ tress ; here, master Arthur. Urs. [within.2 Ill part you and your play-fel¬ low there, in the garded coat, an you sunder not the sooner. Knock. Master Winwife, you are proud, me¬ thinks, you do not talk, nor drink ; are you proud ? Winw. Not of the company I am in, sir, nor the place, I assure you. Knock. You do not except at the company, do you ! are you in vapours, sir? ACT II Moon. Nay, good master Daniel Knockem, re¬ spect my mistress’s bow r er, as you call it; for the honour of our booth, none o’ your vapours here. Enter Ursula with a fire-brand. Urs. Why, you thin, lean polecat you, an they have a mind to be in their vapours must you hinder ’em ? What did you knows vermin, if they would have lost a cloke, or such trifle ? must you be draw¬ ing the air of pacification here, while I am tor¬ mented within i’ the fire, you w r easel ? [Aside to Mooncalf. Moon. Good mistress, ’twas in behalf of your booth’s credit that I spoke. Urs. Why ! would my booth have broke, if they had fallen out in’t, sir ? or would their heat have fired it ? In, you rogue, and wipe the pigs, and mend the fire, that they fall not, or I’ll both baste and roast you ’till your eyes drop out like them.— Leave the bottle behind you, and be curst awhile ! [Exit Moon. Quar. Body o’ the Fair! what’s this ? mother of the bawds ? Knock. No, she’s mother of the pigs, sir, mother of the pigs. Winw. Mother of the furies, I think, by her fire-brand. Quar. Nay, she is too fat to be a fury, sure some ! walking sow of tallow ! Winw. An inspired vessel of kitchen stuff! Quar. She’ll make excellent geer for the coach- makers here in Smithfield, to anoint wheels and axletrees with. [She drinks this while. Urs. Ay, ay, gamesters, mock a plain plump soft wench of the suburbs, do, because she’s juicy and wholesome; you must have your thin pinched ware, pent up in the compass of a dog-collar, (or ’twill not do) that looks like a long laced conger, set upright, and a green feather, like fennel in the joli on’t. Knock. Well said, Urse, my good Urse ! to ’em, Urse ! Quar. Is she your quagmire, Daniel Knockem ? is this your bog ? Night. We shall have a quarrel presently. Knock. How! bog ! quagmire ? foul vapours ! humph! Quar. Yes, he that would venture.for’t, I assure him, might sink into her and be drown’d a week ere any friend he had could find where he were. Winw. And then he would be a fortnight weigh¬ ing up again. Quar. ’Twere like falling into a whole shire of butter ; they had need be a team of Dutchmen should draw him out. Knock. Answer ’em, Urse : where’s thy Bartho¬ lomew wit now, Urse, thy Bartholomew wit? Urs. Hang ’em, rotten, roguy cheaters, I hope to see them plagued one day (pox’d they are already, I am sure) with lean playhouse poultry, that has the bony rump, sticking out like the ace of spades, or the point of a partizan, that every rib of them is like the tooth of a saw ; and will so grate them with their hips and shoulders, as (take ’em altogether) they were as good lie with a hurdle. Quar. Out upon her, how she drips! she’s able to give a man the sweating sickness with looking on her. Urs. Marry look off, with a patch on your face, and a dozen in your breech, though they be of SCENE I. BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. 317 scarlet, sir! 1 have seen as fine outsides as either of yours, bring lousy linings to the brokers, ere now, twice a week. Quar. Do you think there may be a fine new cucking-stool in the Fair, to be purchased; one large enough, I mean ? I know there is a pond of capacity for her. Urs. For your mother, you rascal! Out, you rogue, you hedge-bird, you pimp, you pannier- man’s bastard, you! Quar. Ha, ha, ha ! Urs. Do you sneer, you dog’s-head, you tren- dle-tail! you look as you were begotten a top of a cart in harvest time, when the whelp was hot and eager. Go, snuff after your brother’s bitch, mis¬ tress Commodity ; that’s the livery you wear, ’twill be out at the elbows shortly. It’s time you went to’t for the t’other remnant. Knock. Peace, Urse, peace, Urse;—they’ll kill the poor whale, and make oil of her. Pray thee, go in. Urs. I’ll see them pox’d first, and piled, and double piled. Winw. Let's away, her language grows greasier than her pigs. Urs. Does it so, snotty-nose ? good lord ! are you snivelling? You were engendered on a she- beggar in a barn, when the bald thrasher, vour sire, was scarce warm. Winw. Pray thee let’s go. Quar. No, faith ; I’ll stay the end of her now ; I know she cannot last long : I find by her smiles she wanes apace. Urs. Does she so ? I’ll set you gone. Give me my pig-pan hither a little: I’ll scald you hence, an you will not go. [ Exit. Knock. Gentlemen, these are very strange vapours, and very idle vapours, I assure you. Quar. You are a very serious ass, we assure you. Knock. Humph, ass ! and serious ! nay, then pardon me my vapour. I have a foolish vapour, j gentlemen : Any man that does vapour me the ass, ! master Quarlous— Quar. What then, master Jordan? Knock. I do vapour him the lie. Quar. Faith, and to any man that vapours me the lie, I do vapour that. [Strikeshim. Knock. Nay then, vapours upon vapours. [They fight. Re-enter Ursula, with the dripping-pan. Edg. Night. ’Ware the pan, the pan, the pan ! i she comes with the pan, gentlemen! [Ursula falls with the pan. ]—God bless the woman. Urs. Oh ! [Exeunt Quarlous and Winwife. Trash, [runs in.'] What’s the matter ? Over. Goodly woman! Moon. Mistress! Urs. Curse of hell! that ever I saw these fiends ! oh! I have scalded mv leg, my leg, my leg, my leg ! I have lost a limb in the service! run for some cream and sallad-oil, quickly. Are you under-peering, you baboon ? rip off my hose, an you be men, men, men. Moon. Run you for some cream, good mother Joan. I’ll look to your basket. [Exit Trash. Leath. Best sit up in your chair, Ursula. Help, gentlemen. Knock. Be of good cheer, Urse; thou hast hindered me the currying of a couple of stallions here, that abused the good race-bawd of Smith- field ; ’twas time for them to go. Night. I’faith, when the pan came,'—they had made you run else. This had been a fine time for purchase, if you had ventured. [Aside to Edoworth. Edg. Not a whit, these fellows were too fine to carry money. Knock. Nightingale, get some help to carry her leg out of the air : take off her shoes. Body o’ me! she has the mallanders, the scratches, the crown scab, and the quitter bone in the t’other leg. Urs. Oh, the pox ! why do you put me in mind of my leg thus, to make it prick and shoot ? Would you have me in the hospital afore my time ? Knock. Patience, Urse, take a good heart, ’tis but a blister as big as a windgall. I’ll take it away with the white of an egg, a little honey and hog’s grease, have thy pasterns well roll’d, and thou shalt pace again by to-morrow. I’ll tend thy booth, and look to thy affairs the while : thou shalt sit in thy chair, and give directions, and shine Ursa major. [Exeunt Knockem and Mooncalf, with Ursula in her chair. Over. These are the fruits of bottle-a,e and tobacco ! the foam of the one, and the fumes of the other ! Stay, young man, and despise not the wisdom of these few hairs that are grown grey in care of thee. Edg. Nightingale, stay a little. Indeed I’ll hear some of this ! Enter Cokes, with his box, Waspe, Mistress Overdo, and Grace. Cokes. Come, Numps, come, where are you? Welcome into the Fair, mistress Grace. Edg. ’Slight, he will call company, you shall see, and put us into doings presently. Over. Thirst not after that frothy liquor, ale ; for who knows when he openeth the stopple, what may be in the bottle ? Hath not a snail, a spider, yea, a newt been found there? thirst not after it, youth ; thirst not after it. Cokes. This is a brave fellow, Numps, let’s hear him. Waspe. ’Sblood! how brave is he? in agarded coat! You were best truck with him ; e’en strip, and truck presently, it will become you. Why will you hear him ? because he is an ass, and may be a-kin to the Cokeses? Cokes. O, good Numps. Over. Neither do thou lust after that tawney weed tobacco. Cokes. Brave words ! Over. Whose complexion is like the Indian’s that vents it. Cokes. Are they not brave words, sister? Over. And who can tell, if before the gathering and making up thereof, the Alligarta hath not piss’d thereon ? Waspe. ’Heart! let ’em be brave words, as brave as they will! an they were all the brave words in a country, how then ? Will you away yet, have you enough on him ? Mistress Grace, come you away; I pray you, be not you accessary. If you do lose your license, or somewhat else, sir, with listening to his fables, say Numps is a witch, with all my heart, do, say so. Cokes. Avoid in your satin doublet, Numps. Over. The creeping venom of which subtle 318 BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. act m serpent, as some late writers affirm, neither the cutting of the perilous plant, nor the drying of it, nor the lighting or burning, can any way persway or assuage. Cokes. Good, i’faith ! is it not, sister? Over. Hence it is that t-he lungs of the tobacco¬ nist are rotted, the liver spotted, the brain smoked like the backside of the pig-woman's booth here, and the whole body within, black as her pan you saw e’en now, without. Cokes. A fine similitude that, sir! did you see the pan ? Edg. Yes, sir. Over. Nay, the hole in the nose here of some tobacco-takers, or the third nostril, if I may so call it, which makes that they can vent the tobacco out, like the ace of clubs, or rather the flower-de¬ lis, is caused from the tobacco, the mere tobacco ! when the poor innocent pox, having nothing to do there, is miserably and most unconscionably slan¬ dered. Cokes. Who would have missed this, sister ? Mrs. Over. Not any body but Numps. Cokes. He does not understand. Edg. [Picks Cokes’s jtocket of his purse.] Nor you feel. [Aside. Cokes. What would you have, sister, of a fellow that knows nothing but a basket-hilt, and an old fox in’t ? the best musick in the Fair will not move a log. Edg. [Gives the purse aside to Night,] In, to Ursula, Nightingale, and carry her comfort: see it told. This fellow was sent to us by Fortune, for our first fairing. [Exit Night. Over. But what speak I of the diseases of the body, children of the Fair ? Cokes. That’s to us, sister. Brave, i’faith ! Over. Hark, O you sons and daughters of Smit’nfield ! and hear what malady it doth the mind : it causeth swearing, it causeth swaggering, it causeth snuffling and snarling, and now and then a hurt. Mrs. Over. He hath something of master Overdo, methinks, brother. Cokes. So methought, sister, very much of my brother Overdo : and ’tis when he speaks. Over. Look into any angle of the town, the Streights, or the Bermudas, where the quarrelling lesson is read, and how do they entertain the time, but with bottle-ale and tobacco ? The lecturer is o’ one side, and his pupils o’ the other ; but the seconds are still bottle-ale and tobacco, for which the lecturer reads, and the novices pay. Thirty pound a week in bottle-ale ! forty in tobacco! and ten more in ale again. Then for a suit to drink in, so much, and, that being slaver’d, so much for another suit, and then a third suit, and a fourth suit! and still the bottle-ale slavereth, and the tobacco stinketh. Waspe. Heart of a madman! are you rooted here ? will you never away ? what can any man find out in this bawling fellow, to grow here for? He is a full handfull higher sin’ he heard him. WiH you fix here, and set up a booth, sir? Over. I will conclude briefly- Waspe. Hold your peace, you roaring rascal, I’ll run my head in your chaps else. You were nest build a booth, and entertain him; make your will, an you say the word, and him your heir ! heart. I never knew one taken with a mouth of a peck afore. By this light, I’ll carry you away on my back, an you will not come. [He gets Cokes up on pick-back Cokes. Stay, Numps, stay, set me down : I have lost my purse, Numps. O my purse ! One of my fine purses is gone ! Mrs. Over. Is it indeed, brother? Cokes. Ay, as I am an honest man, would I were an arrant rogue else! a plague of all roguy damn’d cut-pui'ses for me. [Examines his pockets. Waspe. Bless ’em with all my heart, with all my heart, do you see! now, as I am no infidel, that 1 know of, I am glad on’t. Ay, I am, (here’s my witness,) do you see, sir ? I did not tell you of his fables, I ! no, no, I am a dull malt horse, I, I know nothing. Are you not justly served, in your con¬ science, now, speak in your conscience ? Much good do you with all my heart, and his good heart that has it, with all my heart again. Edg. This fellow is very charitable, would he had a purse too ! but I must not be too bold all at a time. [Aside. Cokes. Nay, Numps, it is not my best purse. Waspe. Not your best! death! why should it be your worst ? why should it be any, indeed, at all? answer me to that, give me a reason from you, why it should be any ? Cokes. Nor ray gold, Numps ; I have that yet, look here else, sister. [Sheu-s the other purse. Waspe. Why so, there’s all the feeling he has ! Mrs. Over. I pray you, have a better care of that, brother. Cokes. Nay, so I will, I warrant you; let him catch this that catch can. I would fain see him get this, look you here. Wasp. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so ! very good. Cokes. I would have him come again now, and but offer at it. Sister, will you take notice of a good jest? I will put it just where the other was, and if we have good luck, you shall see a delicate fine trap to catch the cut-purse nibbling. Edg. Faith, and heTl try ere you be out o’ the Fair. [Aside. Cokes. Come, mistress Grace, prithee be not melancholy for my mischance; sorrow will not keep it, sweet heart. Grace. I do not think on’t, sir. Cokes. ’Twas but a little scurvy white money, hang it! it may hang the cut-purse one day. I have gold left to give thee a fairing yet, as hard as the world goes. Nothing angers me but that no body here look’d like a cut-purse, unless ’twere Numps. Waspe. How! I, I look like a cut-purse ? death ! your sister’s a cut-purse ! and your mother and father, and all your kin were cut-purses ! and here is a rogue is the bawd o’ the cut-purses, whom I will beat to begin with. [Beats Overdo. Over. Hold thy hand, child of wrath, and heii of anger, make it not Childermass day in thy fury, or the feast of the French Bartholomew, parent of the massacre. Cokes. Numps, Numps! Mrs. Over. Good master Humphrey! Waspe. You are the Patrico, are you? the pa¬ triarch of the cut-purses ? You share, sir, they say; let them share this with you. Are you in your hot fit of preaching again ? I’ll cool you. [Beals him again . Over. Murther, murther, murther! [Exeunt SCENE I. BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. 519 ACT III. SCENE I.— The Fair. Lanthorn Leatherhead, Joan Trash, and others, sit¬ ting by their wares, as before. Enter Yal. Whit, IIaggise, and Bristle. Whit. Nay, tish all gone, now ! dish tish, plien tou wilt not be phitin call, master offisher, phat ish a man te better to lishen out noyshes for tee, and tou art in an oder orld, being very shuffishient noyshes and gallantsh too ? one o’ their brabblesh would have fed ush all dish fortnight, but tou art so bushy about beggersh still, tou hast no leshure to intend shentlemen, and’t be. Hag. Why, I told you, Davy Bristle. Bri. Come, come, you told me a pudding, Toby IIaggise ; a matter of nothing ; I am sure it came to nothing. You said, let’s go to Ursula’s, indeed ; but then you met the man with the monsters, and I could not get you from him. An old fool, not leave seeing yet ! Hag. Why, who would have thought any body would have quarrell’d so early ; or that the ale o’ the fair would have been up so soon ? Whit. Phy, phat a clock toest tou tink it ish, man ? Hag. I cannot tell. Whit. Tou art a vish vatcliman, i’ te mean teem. Had. Why, should the watch go by the clock, or the clock by the watch, I pray? Bri. One should go by another, if they did well. Whit. Tou art right now ! plien didst tou ever know or hear of a shuffishient vatchment, but he did tell the clock, phat bushiness soever he had? Bri. Nay, that’s most true, a sufficient watch¬ man knows what a clock it is. Whit. Shleeping orvaking : ash well as te clock himshelf, or te Jack dat shtrikes him. Bri. Let’s enquire of master Leatherhead, or Joan Trash here.—Master Leatherhead, do you hear, master Leatherhead ? Whit. If it be a Ledderliead, tLh a very tick Ledderhead, tat sho mush noisli vill not piersh him. Leath. I have a little business now, good friends, do not trouble me. Whit. Phat, because o’ ty wrought neet-cap, and ty phelvet sherkin, man ? phy ! I have sheene tee in ty ledder sherkin, erenow, mashter o’ dehobby¬ horses, as bushy and stately as tou sheemest to be. Trash. Why, what an you have, captain Whit ? he has his choice of jerkins, you may see by that, md his caps too, I assure you, when he pleases to be either sick or employed. Leath. God-a-mercy Joan, answer for me. Whit. Away, be not sheen in my company, here be shentlemen, and men of vorship. [Exeunt IIaggise and Bristle. Enter Quarlous and Winwife. Quar. We had wonderful ill luck, to miss this prologue o’ the purse : but the best is, we shall have five acts of him ere night : he’ll be spectacle enough, I’ll answer for’t. Whit. O creesh, duke Quarlous, how doslit tou ? tou dosht not know me, I fear : I am te vishesht man, but justish Overdo, in all Bartholomew Fair now. Give me twelve pence from tee, I vill help tee to a vife vorth forty marks for’t, and’t be. Quar. Away, rogue ; pimp, away. Whit. And she shall shew tee as fine cut orke for’t in her shrnock too as tou cansht vish i’faith ; vilt tou have her, vorshipful Yinvife ? I vill help tee toiler here, be an’t be, into pig-quarter, gi’ me ty twelve pence from tee. Winw. Why, there’s twelve pence, pray thee wilt thou begone ? Whit. Tou art a vorthy man, and a vorshipful man still. Quar. Get you gone, rascal. Whit. I do mean it, man. Prinsh Quarlous, if tou hasht need on me, tou shalt find me here at Ursla’s, I vill see phat ale and punque ish i’ te pigsty for tee, bless ty good vorship. [Exit. Quar. Look ! who comes here : John Littlewit! Winw. And his wife, and my widow, her mo¬ ther : the whole family. Quar. ’Slight, you must give them all fairings now. Winw. Not I, I’ll not see them. Quar. They are going a feasting. What school¬ master’s that is with ’em ? Winw. That’s my rival, I believe, the baker. Enter Rabbi Busy, Dame Purecraft, John Littlewit, and Mrs. Littlewit. Busy. So, walk on in the middle way, fore-right, turn neither to the right hand nor to the left; let not your eyes be drawn aside with vanity, nor you: ear with noises. Quar. O, I know him by that start. Leath. What do you lack, what do you buy, mistress? a fine hobby-horse, to make your son a filter ? a drum to make him a soldier ? a fiddle to make him a reveller? what is’t you lack? little dogs for your daughters? or babies, male or female f Busy. Look not toward them, hearken not; the place is Smithfield, or the field of smiths, the grove of hobby-horses and trinkets, the wares are the wares of devils, and the whole Fair is the shop of Satan: they are hooks and baits, very baits, that are hung out on every side, to catch you, and to hold you, as it were, by the gills, and by the nostrils, as the fisher doth ; therefore you must not look nor turn toward them.—The heathen man could stop his ears with wax against the harlot of the sea; do you the like with your fingers against the bells of the beast. Winw, What flashes come from him ! Quar. O, he has those of his oven ; a notable hot baker ’twas when he plied the peel; he is lead, ing his flock into the Fair now 7 . Winw. Rather driving them to the pens* for he will let them look upon nothing. Enter Knockkm and Whit from Ursula’s booth. Knock. Gentlew’omen, the weather’s hot; whi¬ ther walk you ? have a care of your fine velvet caps, the Fair is dusty. Take a sweet delicate booth, with boughs, here in the w r ay, and cool yourselves in the shade ; you and your friends. The best pig and bottle-ale in the Fair, sir. Old Ursula is cook, there you may read ; [ Points to the sign, a pig's head, with a large writing under itf\ the pig’s head speaks it. Poor soul, she has had a string, halt, the maryhinclico ; but she’s prettily amended- Whit. A delicate show-pig, little mistress, with . shweet sauce, and crackling, like de bay-leaf i’ de 320 BARTHOLOMEW FAIR. ACT lit. fire, la! tou shalt ha* de clean side o’ de table-clot, and di glass vasli’d with phatersh of dame Annesh Cleare. Lit. [Gazing at the inscription.'] This is fine verily. Here he the best pigs, and she docs roast them as well as ever she did, the pig’s head says. Knock. Excellent, excellent, mistress ; with fire o’ juniper and rosemary branches ! the oracle of the pig’s head, that, sir. Pare. Son, were you not warn’d of the vanity of the eye ? have you forgot the wholesome admo¬ nition so soon ? Lit. Good mother, how shall we find a pig, if we do not look about for’t: will it run off o’the spit, into our mouths, think you, as in Lubber- land, and cry, wee, wee ! Busy. No, but your mother, religiously-wise, conceiveth it may offer itself by other means to the sense, as by way of steam, which I think it doth here in this place—huh, huh—yes, it doth. [He scents after it like a hound.] And it were a sin of obstinacy, great obstinacy, high and horrible obsti¬ nacy, to decline or resist the good titillation of the famelic sense, which is the smell. Therefore be bold—huh, huh, huh—follow the scent: enter the tents of the unclean, for once, and satisfy your wife’s frailty. Let your frail wife be satisfied ; your zealous mother, and my suffering self, will also be satisfied. Lit. Come, Win, as good winny here as go far¬ ther, and see nothing. . Busy. We scape so much of the other vanities, by our early entering. Pure. It is an edifying consideration. Mrs. Lit. This is scurvy, that we must come into the Fair, and not look on’t. Lit. Win, have patience, Win, I’ll tell you more anon. [Exeunt, into the booth, LiTTLEwrr, Mrs. Littlewit, Busy, and Purecraft. Knock. Mooncalf, entertain within there, the best pig in the booth, a pork-like pig. These are Banbury-bloods, o’ the sincere stud, come a pig¬ hunting. Whit, wait, Whit, look to your charge. [Exit Whit. Busy, [within.] A pig prepare presently, let a pig be prepared to us. Enter Mooncalf and Ursula. Moon. ’Slight, who be these ? Urs. Is this the good service, Jordan, you’d do me ? Knock. Why, Urse, why, Urse ? thou’lt have vapours i’ thy leg again presently, pray thee go in, it may turn to the scratches else. Urs. Hang your vapours, they are stale, and stink like you! Are these the guests o’the game you promised to fill my pit withal to-day? Knock. Ay, what ail they, Urse? Urs. Ail they ! they are all sippers, sippers o’ the city ; they look as they would not drink off two pen’orth of bottle-ale amongst ’em. Moon. A body may read that in their small printed ruffs. Knock. Away, thou art a fool, Urse, and thy Mooncalf too : in your ignorant vapours now ! hence ! good guests, I say, right hypocrites, good gluttons. In, and set a couple o’ pigs on the board, and half a dozen of the biggest bottles afore ’em, and call Whit. [Exit Mooncalf.] I do not love to hear innocents abused : fine ambling hypocrites ! and a stone puritan with a sorrel head and beard J good mouth’d gluttons ; two to a pig, away. Urs. Are you sure they are such ? Knock. O’ the right breed, thou shalt try ’em by the teeth, Urse ; where’s this Whit? Re-enter Whit. Whit. Behold , man , and see, What a worthy man am ee ! With the fury of my sword, And the shaking of my beard, I will make ten thousand men afeard. K?iock. Well said, brave Whit! in, and/ , t ; /.) Too honest for my place, sir, did advise me, If I did love myself,—as that I do, I must confess— Meer. Spare your parenthesis. Amb. To give my body a little evacuation- Meer. Well, and you went to a whore ? Amb. No, sir, I durst not (For fear it might arrive at somebody’s ear It should not) trust myself to a common house ; [Tells this vnth extraordinary speed. But got the gentlewoman to go with me, And carry her bedding to a conduit-head, Hard by the place toward Tyburn, which they call My Lord Mayor’s banqueting-house. Now, sir, this morning Was execution; and I never dreamt on’t, Till I heard the noise of the people, and the horses ; And neither I, nor the poor gentlewoman, Durst stir, till all was done and past: so that, In the interim, we fell asleep again. [Heflags. Meer. Nay, if you fall from your gallop, I am gone, sir. Amb. But when I waked, to put on my clothes, I made new for the action, it was gone, [a suit And all my money, with my purse, my seals, My hard-wax, and my table-books, my studies, And a fine new device I had to carry My pen and ink, my civet, and my tooth-picks, All under one. But that which grieved me, was The gentlewoman’s shoes, (with a pair of roses, And garters, I had given her for the business,) So as that made us stay till it was dark : For I was fain to lend her mine, and walk In a rug, by her, barefoot, to St. Giles’s. Meer. A kind of Irish penance! Is this all, sir ? Amb. To satisfy my lady. Meer. I will promise you, sir. Amb. I have told the true disaster. Meer. I cannot stay with you, Sir, to condole ; but gratulate your return. [Exit. Amb. An honest gentleman; but he’s never at leisure To be himself, he has such tides of business. [Exit. SCENE II .—Another Room in the same. Enter Pug. Pug. O call me home again, dear chief, and put To yoking foxes, milking of he-goats, [me Pounding of water in a mortar, laving The sea dry with a nut-shell, gathering all The leaves are fallen this autumn, drawing farts Out of dead bodies, making ropes of sand, Catching the winds together in a net, Mustering of ants, and numbering atoms ; all That hell and you thought exquisite torments, rather Than stay me here a thought more : I would sooner Keep fleas within a circle, and be accomptant A thousand year, which of them, and how far, Out-leap’d the other, than endure a minute Such as I have within. There is no hell To a lady of fashion ; all your tortures there Are pastimes to it! ’Twould be a refreshing For me, to be in the fire again, from hence— Enter Ambler, and stirveys him . Amb. This is my suit, and those the shoes and roses! [Aside. Pug. They have such impertinent vexations, A general council of devils could not hit- Ha ! [ sees Ambler.] this is he I took asleep with his wench, And borrow’d his clothes. What might I do to balk him ? [Aside. Amb. Do you hear, sir ? Pug. Answer him, but not to the purpose. [Aside. Amb. What is your name, I pray you, sir? Pug. Is’t so late, sir ? Amb. I ask not of the time, but of your name, sir. Pug. I thank you, sir : yes, it does hold, Ais, certain. Amb. Hold, sir ! what holds? I must both hold, About these clothes. [and talk to you. Pug. A very pretty lace; But the tailor cozen’d me. Amb. No, I am cozen’d By you ; robb’d. Pug. Why, when you please, sir ; I am, For three-penny gleek, your man. Amb. Pox o’ your gleek, And three-pence ! give me an answer. Pug. Sir, My master is the best at it. Amb. Your master! Who is your master ? Pug. Let it be Friday night. Amb. What should be then? Pug. Your best song’s Tom o’ Bethlem. Amb. I think you are he.—Does he mock me trow, from purpose, Or do not I speak to him what I mean ?— Good sir, your name. Pug. Only a couple of cocks, sir; If we can get a widgeon, ’tis in season. Amb. He hopes to make one of these sciptic* of me, (I think 1 name them right,) and does not fly me ; I wonder at that: ’tis a strange confidence ! I’ll prove another way, to draw his answer. [Exeunt severally, SCENE III .—A Room in Fitzdottrel’s House. Enter Meercraft, Fitzdottrel, and Everili,. Meer. It is the easiest thing, six*, to be done, As plain as fizzling : roll but with your eyes, And foam at the mouth. A little castle-soap Will do’t, to rub your lips; and then a nut-shell, With tow, and touch-wood in it, to spit fire. Did you ne’er read, sir, little Darrel’s tricks With the boy of Burton, and the seven in Lan¬ cashire, Somers at Nottingham ? all these do teach it. And we’ll give out, sir, that your wife has bewitch'd you. Ever. And practis’d with those two as sorcerers. Meer. And gave you potions, by which means you were Not compos mentis, when you made your feoffment. There’s no recovery of your state but this ; This, sir, will sting. Ever. And move in a court of equity. Meer. For it is more than manifest, that this was A plot of your wife’s, to get your land. Fitz. I think it. Ever. Sir, it appears. Meer. Nay, and my cousin has known These gallants in these shapes— B B THE DEVIL IS AN ASS. ACT V. ' 370 Ever. To have done strange things, sir, One as toe lady, the other as the squire. Meer. How a man’s honesty may be fool’d ! I A very lady. [thought him Fitz. So did I; renounce me else. Meer. But this way, sir, you’ll be revenged at Ever. Upon them all. [height. Meer. Yes, faith, and since your wife Has run the way of woman thus, e’en give her— Fitz. Lost, by this hand, to me; dead to all joys Of her dear Dottrel; I shall never pity her, That could [not] pity herself. Meer. Princely resolv’d, sir, And like yourself still, in potentia. Enter Gilthead, Plutarckus, Sledge, and Serjeants. Meer. Gilthead! what news ? Fitz. O, sir, my hundred pieces ! Let me have them yet. Gilt. Yes, sir.—Officers, Arrest him. Fitz. Me! 1 Serj. I arrest you. Sledge. Keep the peace, I charge you, gentlemen. Fitz. Arrest me ! why ? Gilt. For better security, sir. My son Plutarchus Assures me, you are not worth a groat. Flu. Pardon me, father, I said his worship had no foot of land left: And that I’ll justify, for I writ the deed. Fitz. Have you these tricks in the city ? Gilt. Yes, and more: Arrest this gallant too, here, at my suit. [. Points to Meercraft. Sledge. Ay, and at mine : he owes me for his Two year and a quarter. [lodging Meer. Why, master Gilthead,—landlord, Thou art not mad, though thou art constable, Puft up with the pride of the place. Do you hear, Have I deserv’d this from you two, for all [sirs, My pains at court, to get you each a patent? Gilt. For what? Meer. Upon my project of the forks. Sledge. Forks ! what be they ? Meer. The laudable use of forks, Brought into custom here, as they are in Italy, To the sparing of napkins : that, that should have made Your bellows go at the forge, as his at the furnace. I have procured it, have the signet for it, Dealt with the linen-drapers on my private, Because I fear’d they were the likeliest ever To stir against, to cross it: for ’twill be A mighty saver of linen through the kingdom, As that is one o’ my grounds, and to spare washing. Now, on you two had I laid all the profits : Gilthead to have the making of all those Of gold and silver, for the better personages ; And you, of those of steel for the common sort: And both by patent. I had brought you your seals in, But now you have prevented me, and I thank you. Sledge. Sir, I will bail you, at mine own apperil. Meer. Nay, choose. Phi. Do you so too, good father. Gilt. I like the fashion of the project well, The forks ! it may be a lucky one ! and is Not intricate, as one would say, but fit for Plain heads, as ours, to deal in.—Do you hear, Officers, we discharge you. [Exeunt Serjeants. Meer. Why, this shews A little good-nature in you, I confess ; But do not tempt your friends thus.—Little Gilt¬ head, Advise your sire, great Gilthead, from these courses : And, here, to trouble a great man in reversion, For a matter of fifty, in a false alarm ! Away, it shews not well. Let him get the pieces And bring them : you’ll hear more else. Plu. Father. [ Exeunt Gilt, and Plot. Enter Ambler, dragging in Pug. Amb. O, master Sledge, are you here ? I have been to seek you. You are the constable, they say. Here’s one That I do charge with felony, for the suit He wears, sir. Meer. Who ? master Fitzdottrel’s man.! Ware what you do, master Ambler. Enter Fitzdottrel. Amb. Sir, these clothes I’ll swear are mine ; and the shoes the gentle¬ woman’s I told you of : and have him afore a justice I will. Pug. My master, sir, will pass his word for me Amb. O, can you speak to purpose now? Fitz. Not I, If you be such a one, sir, I will leave you To your godfathers in law : let twelve men work. Pug. Do you hear, sir, pray, in private. [Takes him aside, Fitz. Well, what say you ? Brief, for I have no time to lose. Pug. Truth is, sir, I am the very Devil, and had leave To take this body I am in to serve you; Which was a cut-purse’s, and hang’d this morn- And it is likewise true, I stole this suit [ing ; To clothe me with ; but, sir, let me not go To prison for it. I have hitherto Lost time, done nothing ; shown, indeed, no part Of my devil’s nature : now, I will so help Your malice, ’gainst these parties ; so advance The business that you have in hand, of witchcraft, And your possession, as myself were in you ; Teach you such tricks to make your belly swell, And your eyes turn, to foam, to stare, to gnash Your teeth together, and to beat yourself, Laugh loud, and feign six voices- Fitz. Out, you rogue ! You most infernal counterfeit wretch, avaunt! Do you think to gull me with youriEsop’s fables ? Here, take him to you, I have no part in him. Pug. Sir— Fitz. Away ! I do disclaim, I will not hear you. [Exit Sledge with Pua. Meer. What said he to you, sir? Fitz. Like a lying rascal, Told me he was the Devil. Meer. How ! a good jest. Fitz. And that he would teach me such fine For our new resolution. [devil’s tricks Ever. O, pox on him 1 ’Twas excellent wisely done, sir, not to trust him. Meer. Why, if he were the Devil, we shall not need him, If you’ll be ruled. Go throw yourself on a bed, sir, And feign you ill. We’ll not be seen with you SCENE IV. THE DEVIL IS AN ASS. O "1 oi x Till after, that yon hare a fit; and all Confirm’d within. Keep you with the two ladies, [To Everill. And persuade them. I will to justice Eitherside, And possess him with all. Trains shall seek out Engine, And they two fill the town with’t; every cable Is to be veer’d. We must employ out all Our emissaries now. Sir, I will send you Bladders and -bellows. Sir, be confident, ’Tis no hard thing t’outdo the Devil in ; A boy of thirteen year old made him an ass, But t’other day. Fitz. Well, I’ll begin to practise, And scape the imputation of being cuckold, By mine own act. Meer. You are right. [Exit Fitz. Ever. Come, you have put Yourself to a simple coil here, and your friends, By dealing with new agents, in new plots. Meer. No more of that, sweet cousin. Ever. What had you To do with this same Wittipol, for a lady ? Meer. Question not that; ’tis done. Ever. You had some strain Bove e-la ? Meer. I liad indeed. Ever. And now you crack for’t. Meer. Do not upbraid me. Ever. Come, you must be told on’t; You are so covetous still to embrace More than you can, that you lose all. Meer. ’Tis right: What would you more than guilty ? Now, your succours. [Exeunt. —♦— SCENE IY.— A Cell in Neivgate. Enter Shackles, with Pug in chains. Ska. Here you are lodged, sir ; you must send If you’ll be private. [your garnish, Pug. There it is, sir : leave me. [Exit Shackles. To Newgate brought! how is the name of devil Discredited in me ! what a lost fiend Shall I be on return ! my chief will roar In triumph, now, that I have been on earth A day, and done no noted thing, but brought That body back here, was hang’d out this morning. Well! would it once were midnight, that I knew My utmost. I think Time be drunk and sleeps, He is so still, and moves not! I do glory Now in my torment. Neither can I expect it, 1 have it with my fact. Enter Iniquity. Iniq. Child of hell, be thou merry: Put a look on as round, boy, and red as a cherry. Cast care at thy posterns, and firk in thy fetters : They are ornaments, baby, have graced thy betters: Look upon me, and hearken. Our chief doth salute thee, And lest the cold iron should chance to confute thee, He hath sent thee grant-parole by me, to stay longer A month here on earth, against cold, child, or Pug. How! longer here a month? [hunger. Iniq. Yes, boy, till the session, That so thou mayst have a triumphal egression. Pug. In a cart to be hang’d ! Iniq. No, child, in a car, The chariot of triumph, which most of them are. And in the meantime, to be greasy, and bouzy, And nasty, and filthy, and ragged, and lousy, With damn me! renounce me! and all the fine phrases, That bring unto Tyburn the plentiful gazes. Pug. He is a devil, and may be our chief, The great superior devil, for his malice ! Arch-devil! I acknowledge him. He knew What I would suffer, when he tied me up thus In a rogue’s body ; and he has, I thank him, His tyrannous pleasure on me, to confine me To the unlucky carcase of a cut-purse, Wherein I could do nothing. Enter Satan. Sat. Impudent fiend, Stop thy lewd mouth. Dost thou not shame and tremble To lay thine own dull, damn’d defects upon An innocent case there ? Why, thou heavy slave ! The spirit that did possess that flesh before, Put more true life in a finger and a thumb, Than thou in the whole mass : yet thou rebell’st And murmur’st! What one proffer hast thou made. Wicked enough, this day, that might be call’d Worthy thine own, much less the name that sent thee ? First, thou didst help thyself into a beating, Promptly, and with’t endangered’st too thy tongue : A devil, and could not keep a body entire One day ! that, for our credit: and to vindicate it, Hinder’dst, for aught thou know’st, a deed of darkness : Which was an act of that egregious folly, As no one, toward the devil, could have thought on. This for your acting.—But, for suffering !—why Thou hast been cheated on, with a false beard, And a turn’d cloke : faith, would your predecessor The cut-purse, think you, have been so ? Out upon thee ! The hurt thou hast done, to let men know their strength, And that they are able to outdo a devil Put in a body, will for ever be A scar upon our name ? Whom hast thou dealt with, Woman or man, this day, but have outgone thee Some way, and most have proved the better fiends ? Yet you would be employ’d ! yes ; hell shall make you Provincial of the cheaters, or bawd-ledger, For this side of the town! no doubt, you’ll render A rare account of things I Bane of your itch. And scratching for employment! I’ll have brim¬ stone To allay it sure, and fire to singe your nails off.— But that I would not such a damn’d dishonour Stick on our state, as that the devil were hang’d, And could not save a body, that he took From Tyburn, but it must come thither again ; You snould e’en ride. But up, away with him— [Iniquity takes him on his back. Iniq. Mount, dearlingof darkness, my shoulders are broad : He that carries the fiend is sure of his load. The devil was wont to carry away the Evil, But now the Evil outcarries the devil. [Exeunt b B 2 [A loud explosion , smoke, dc. 872 THE DEVJL IS AN ASS. act t. Enter Shackles, and the Under-keepers, affrighted . Shack. O me ! 1 Keep. What’s this ? 2 Keep. A piece of Justice-hall Is broken down. 3 Keep . Fough ! what a steam of brimstone Is here ! 4 Keep. The prisoner’s dead, came in but now. Shack. Ila! where? 4 Keep. Look here. 1 Keep. ’Slid, I should know his countenance : It is Gill Cutpurse, was hang’d out this morning. Shack. ’Tis he ! 2 Keep. The devil sure has a hand in this ! ;> Keep. What shall we do ? Shack. Carry the news of it Unto the sheriffs. 1 Keep. And to the justices. 4 Keep. This is strange. 3 Keep. And savours of the devil strongly. 2 Keep. I have the sulphur of hell-coal in my 1 Keep. Fough ! [nose. Shack. Carry him in. 1 Keep. Away. 2 Keep . How rank it is ! [ Exeunt with the body . ■—♦— SCENE V. — A Room in Fitzdottrel’s House. Fitzdottrel discovered in bed ; Lady Eitherside, Tail- bush, Ambler", Trains, and Pitfall, standing by him . Enter Sir Paul Eitherside, Meercraft, and Everill. Sir P. Eith. This was the notablest conspiracy That e’er I heard of. Meer. Sir, they had given him potions, That did enamour him on the counterfeit lady— Ever. Just to the time o’ delivery of the deed. Meer. And then the witchcraft ’gan to appear, He fell into his fit. [for straight Ever. Of rage at first, sir, Which since has so increased. Lady T. Good sir Paul, see him, And punish the impostors. Sir P. Eith. Therefore I come, madam. Lady E. Let master Eitherside alone, madam. Sir P. Eith. Do you hear? Call in the constable, I will have him by; He’s the king’s officer : and some citizens Of credit ; I’ll discharge my conscience clearly. Meer. Yes, sir, and send for his wife. Ever. And the two sorcerers, By any means. [Exit Ambler. Lady T. I thought one a true lady, I should be sworn : so did you, Eitherside. Lady E. Yes, by that light, would I might ne’er stir else, Tailbush. Lady T. And the other, a civil gentleman. Ever. But, madam, You know what I told your ladyship. J.ady T. I now see it. I was providing of a banquet for them, After I had done instructing of the fellow, De-vile, the gentleman’s man. Meer. Who is found a thief, madam, And to have robb’d your usher, master Ambler, This morning. Lady T. How! Meer. I’ll tell you more anon. Fitz. Give me some garlic , garlic , garlic, garlic ! [lie begins his fit . Meer. Hark, the poor gentleman, how he is tormented! Fitz. My wife is a whore, I’ll kiss her no moic : and why ? May st not thou be a cuckold as well as 19 Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha ! Sir P. Eith. That is the devil speaks and laughs Meer. Do you think so, sir? [in him. Sir P. Eith. I discharge my conscience. Fitz. And is not the devil good company ? yes, Ever. How he changes, sir, his voice! [ wis. Fitz. And a cuckold is, Wherever he put his head, with a wannion, If his horns be forth, the devil’s companion. Look, look, look, else! Meer. How he foams ! Ever. And swells! Lady T. O me, what’s that there rises in liia belly ? Lady E. A strange thing : hold it down. Tra. Pit. We cannot, madam. Sir P. Eith. ’Tis too apparent this ! Fitz. Wittipol, Wittipol! Enter Wittipol, Manly, and Mrs. Fitzdottrel. Wit. How now ! what play have we here? Man. What fine new matters ? Wit. The cockscomb and the coverlet. Meer. O strange impudence, That these should come to face their sin ! Ever. And outface Justice ! they are the parties, sir. Sir P. Eith. Say, nothing. Meer. Did you mark, sir, upon their coming How he call’d Wittipol ? [in, Ever. And never saw them. Sir P. Eith. I warrant you did I: let them play Fitz. Buz, buz, buz, buz ! [awhile. Lady T. ’Las, poor gentleman, How he is tortured ! Mrs. Fit*:, [goes to him.] Fie, master Fitz- What do you mean to counterfeit thus ? [dottrel Fitz. O, O ! She comes with a needle, and thrusts it in, She pulls out that, and she puts in a pin, And now, and now, I do not know how, nor where, But she pricks me here, and she pricks me there : Sir P. Eith. Woman, forbear. [ Oh, oh ! Wit. What, sir ? Sir P. Eith. A practice foul For one so fair. Wit. Hath this, then, credit with you ? Man. Do you believe in’t? Sir P. Eith. Gentlemen, I’ll discharge My conscience : ’tis a clear conspiracy, A dark and devilish practice ! I detest it. Wit. The justice sure will prove the merrier Man. This is most strange, sir. [man. Sir P. Eith. Come not to confront Authority with impudence ; I tell you, I do detest it.— Re-enter Ambler, with Sledge and Gilthead. Here comes the king’s constable, And with him a right worshipful commoner, My good friend, master Gilthead. I am glad 1 can, before such witnesses, profess My conscience, and my detestation of it. Horrible! most unnatural! abominable! Ever. You do not tumble enough. Meer. Wallow, gnash. [They whisper him SCENE V. THE DEVIL IS AN ASS. 373 Lady T. O, how he is vexed ! ■Sir P. Eith. ’Tis too manifest. Ever. Give him more soap to foam with. [7o Meer.] Now lie still. Meer. And act a little. Lady T. What does he now, sir ? Sir P. Eith. Shew The taking of tobacco, with which the devil Is so delighted. Fitz. Hum ! Sir P. Eith. And calls for hum. You takers of strong waters and tobacco, Mark this. Fitz. Yellow, yellow , yellow, yellow ! Sir P. Eith. That’s starch! the devil’s idol of that colour. He ratifies it with clapping of his hands ; The proofs are pregnant. Gilt. How the devil can act! Sir P. Eith. He is the master of players, master Gilthead, And poets too : you heard him talk in rhyme, I had forgot to observe it to you, erewhile ! Lady T. See, he spits fire ! Sir P. Eith. O no, he plays at figgum ; The devil is the author of wicked figgum. Man. Why speak you not unto him ? Wit. If I had All innocence of man to be endanger’d, And he could save or ruin it, I’d not breathe A syllable in request, to such a fool He makes himself. Fitz. O they whisper , whisper , whisper, We shall have more of devils a score, To come to dinner, in me the sinner. Lady E. Alas, poor gentleman ! Sir P. Eith. Put them asunder ; Keep them one from the other. Man. Are you phrenetic, sir ? Or what grave dotage moves you to take part With so much villainy ? we are not afraid Either of law or trial; let us be Examined what our ends were, what the means To work by, and possibility of those means : Do not conclude against us ere you hear us. Sir P. Eith. I will not hear you, yet I will con- Out of the circumstances. [elude Man. Will you so, sir? Sir P. Eith. Yes, they are palpable. Man. Not as your folly. Sir P. Eith. I will discharge my conscience, To the meridian of justice. [and do all, Gilt. You do well, sir. Fitz. Provide me to eat , three or four dishes 0 ’ good meat, I'll feast them and their trains, a justice head Shall be the first .— [and brains Sir P. Eith. The devil loves not justice, There you may see. Fitz. A spare rib of my wife, And a whore's purtenance ; a Gilthead whole Sir. P. Eith. Be not you troubled, sir, the devil speaks it. Fitz. Yes, wis, knight, shite, Poul, joul, owl, foul, troul, boul! Sir P. Eith. Crambo! another of the devil's games. Meer. Speak, sir, some Greek, if you can. [ Aside to Fitz.] Is not the justice A solemn gamester ? Ever. Peace. Fitz. Ol go 1, KCLKobaiyoov, Kat TpuTKaKobaigcov, /cal Terpdxis, ual itsvt&kis, Kal 8a)5e/cd/as ical gupiduis. Sir P. Eith. He curses In Greek, I think. Ever. Your Spanish, that l taught you. [Aside to Fnss, Fitz. Quebremos el ojo de burlas. Ever. How !—your rest- Let’s break his neck in jest, the devil says. Fitz. Di gratia, signor mio, se havete denari fatamene parte. Meer. What! would the devil borrow money r Fitz. Ouy , ouy, monsieur, un pauvre diable, diabletin. Sir P. Eith. It is the devil, by his several lan¬ guages. Enter Shackles, with the things found on the body of the Cut-purse. Shack. Where’s sir Paul Eitherside ? Sir P. Eith. Here ; what’s the matter ? Shack. O, such an accident fallen out at New¬ gate, sir : A great piece of the prison is rent down ! The devil has been there, sir, in the body Of the young cut-purse, was hang’d out this morning, But in new clothes, sir ; every one of us know him. These things were found in his pocket. Amb. Those are mine, sir. Shack. I think he was committed on your charge, For a new felony. [sir, Amb. Yes. Shack. He’s gone, sir, now, And left us the dead body ; but withal, sir, Such an infernal stink and steam behind, You cannot see St. Pulchre’s steeple yet: They smell’t as far as Ware, as the wind lies, By this time, sure. Fitz. [starts up.~] Is this upon your credit, friend? Shack. Sir, you may see, and satisfy yourself. Fitz. Nay then, ’tis time to leave off counter¬ feiting.— Sir, I am not bewitch’d, nor have a devil, No more than you ; I do defy him, I, And did abuse you: these two gentlemen Put me upon it. (I have faith against him.) They taught me all my tricks. I will tell truth, And shame the fiend. See here, sir, are my belle wa, And my false belly, and my mouse, and all That should have come forth. Man. Sir, are you not ashamed Now of your solemn, serious vanity? Sir P. Eith. I will make honourable amends to truth. Fitz. And so will I. But these are cozeners still. And have my land, as plotters, with my wife ; Who, though she be not a witch, is worse, a whore. Man. Sir, you belie her : she is chaste and vir- And we are honest. I do know no glory [tuous, A man should hope, by venting his own follies ; But you’ll still be an ass in spite of providence. Please you go in, sir, and hear truths, then judge ’em, And make amends for your late rashness : when You shall but hear the pains, and care was taken To save this fool from ruin, his Grace of Drown’d* Fitz. My land is drown’d indeed-[land— Sir P. Eith. Peace. ( 371 THE DEVIL IS AN ASS. ACT V. Man. And how much j His modest and too worthy wife hath suffer’d By misconstruction from him, you will blush, First, for your own belief, more for his actions His land is his ; and never by my friend, Or by myself, meant to another use, But for her succours, who hath equal right If any other had worse counsels in it, (I know I speak to those can apprehend me) Let them repent them, and be not detected.- It is not manly to take joy or pride In human errors : we do all ill things ; Th.eg. Are those news registered That emissai’y Buz sent in last night, Of Spinola and his eggs ? Nath. Yes, sir, and filed. Reg. What are you now upon ? Nath. That our new emissary Westminster gave us, of the golden heir. Reg. Dispatch; that’s news indeed, and of importance.— Enter a Countrywoman. What would you have, good woman ? Worn. I would have, sir, A groatsworth of any news, I care not what, To carry down this Saturday to our vicar. Reg. O! you are abutter-woman; ask Nathaniel, The clerk there. Nath. Sir, I tell her she must stay Till emissary Exchange, or Paul’s send in, And then I’ll fit her. Reg. Do, good woman, have patience.; It is not now, as when the captain lived. Nath. You’ll blast the reputation of the office Now in the bud, if you dispatch these groats So soon: let them attend, in the name of policy. Enter Cymbal and Fitton, introducing Pennyboy, jun. P. jun. In troth they are dainty rooms ; what place is this ? Cym. This is the outer room, where my clerks sit, And keep their sides, the register in the midst; The examiner, he sits private there, within ; And here I have my several rolls and files Of news by the alphabet, and all put up Under their heads. P. jun. But those too subdivided ? Cym. Into authentical, and apocryphal- Fit. Or news of doubtful credit, as barbers news— Cym,. And tailors’ news, porters’ and water¬ men’s news. Fit. Whereto, besides theCoranti, andGazetti— Cym. I have the news of the season— Fit. As vacation-news, Term-news, and christmas-news. Cym. And news of the faction. Fit. As the reformed-news; Protestant-news;— Cym. And pontificial-news ; of all which several, The day-books, characters, precedents are kept, Together with the names of special friends-- Fit. And men of correspondence in the coun¬ try— Cym. Yes, of all ranks, and all religions.—— Fit. Factors and agents- Cym. Liegers, that lie out Through all the shires of the kingdom. P.jun. This is fine, And bears a brave relation ! But what says Mercurius Britannicus to this ? Cym. O sir, he gains by’t half in half. Fit. Nay more, I’ll stand to’t. For where he was wont to get In hungry captains, obscure statesmen- Cym. Fellows To drink with him in a dark room in a tavern, And eat a sausage- Fit. We have seen it. Cym. As fain to keep so many politic pens Going, to feed the press- Fit. And dish out news, Were’t true or false- 380 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. act j. Cym. Now all that charge is saved. The public chronicler— Fit. How do you call him there ? Cym. And gentle reader— Fit. He that has the maidenhead Of all the books. Cym. Yes, dedicated to him— Fit. Or rather prostituted— P. jun. You are right, sir. Cym. No more shall be abused ; nor country Of the inquisition, nor busy justices [parsons Trouble the peace, and both torment themselves, And their poor ignorant neighbours, with enquiries After the many and most innocent monsters, That never came in the counties they were charged with. P.jun. Why, methinks, sir, if the honest com¬ mon people Will be abused, why should not they have their pleasure, In the believing lies are made for them ; As you in the office, making them yourselves ? Fit. O, sir ! it is the printing we oppose. Cym. We not forbid that any news be made, But that it be printed ; for when news is printed, It leaves, sir, to be news ; while ’tis but written— Fit. Tho’ it be ne’er so false, it runs news still. P. jun. See divers men’s opinions ! unto some The very printing of ’em makes them news ; That have not the heart to believe anything, But what they see in print. Fit. Ay, that’s an error Has abused many ; but we shall reform it, As many things beside, (we have a hope,) Are crept among the popular abuses. Cym. Nor shall the stationer cheat upon the time, By buttering o’er again- Fit. Once in seven years, As the age doats- Cym. And grows forgetful of them, His antiquated pamphlets with new dates: But all shall come from the mint. Fit. Fresh and new-stamp’d. Cym. With the office-seal, staple commodity. Fit. And if a man will insure his news, he may ; Two-pence a sheet he shall be warranted, And have a policy for it. P. jun. Sir I admire The method of your place : all things witliin’t Are so digested, fitted, and composed, As it shews Wit had married Order. Fit. Sir. Cym. The best we could to invite the times. Fit. It has Cost sweat and freezing. Cym. And some broken sleeps, Before it came to this. P. jun. I easily think it. Fit. But now it has the shape- Cym. And is come forth— P.jun. A most polite neat thing, with all the As sense can taste ! [limbs, Cym. It is, sir, though I say it, As well begotten a business, and as fairly Help’d to the world. P.jun. You must be a midwife, sir, Or else the son of a midwife (pray you pardon me) Have help’d it forth so happily !—What news have you ? News of this morning ? I would fain hear some, Fresh from the forge ; as new as day, as they say. Cym. And such we have, sir. Rey. Shew him the last roll, Of emissary Westminster’s, The heir. Enter Barber. P. jun. Come nearer, Tom ! Nath. There is a brave young heir Is come of aqe this morninq. master Pennyboy. P. jun. That’s I ? [Aside. Nath. His father died on this day seven-night. P. jun. True ! [Aside. Nath. At six o' the clock in the morning , just a Ere he ivas one and twenty. [ week P. jun. I am here, Tom !— Proceed, I pray thee. Nath. An old canting beggar Brough t him first neivs , whom he has entertain'd To follow him since. P. jun. Why, you shall see him ;—Founder ! Come in — Enter Pennyboy Canter. No follower, but companion : I pray thee put him in, friend; [^oNath.] there’s an angel- Thou dost not know, he is a wise old fellow, Though he seem patch’d thus, and made up ol pieces. [Exit Nath. Founder, we are in here, in, i’ the News-office ! In this day’s roll already !—I do muse How you came by us, sirs. Cym. One master Picklock, A lawyer that hath purchased here a place This morning of an emissary under me— Fit. Emissary Westminster. Cym. Gave it into the office. Fit. For his essay, his piece. P. jun. My man of law ! He’s my attorney and solicitor too ! A fine pragmatic ! what is his place worth ? Cym. A nemo-scit, sir. Fit. ’Tis as news come in. Cym. And as they are issued. I have the just For my part: then the other moiety [moiety Is parted into seven : the four emissaries, Whereof my cousin Fitton here's for Court, Ambler for Paul’s, and Buz for the Exchange, Picklock for Westminster, with the examiner, And register, they have full parts : and then one Is under-parted to a couple of clerks. [part And there’s the just division of the profits. P.jun. Have you those clerks, sir ? Cym. There is one desk empty, But it has many suitors. P.jun. Sir, may I Present one more, and carry it, if his parts Or gifts, which you will call them— Cym. Be sufficient, sir. P. jun. What are your present clerk’s abilities? How is he qualified ? Cym. A decay’d stationer He was, but knows news well, can sort and rank Fit. And for a need can make them. [them. Cym. True Paul’s, bred In the church-yard. P. jun. And this at the west-door On the other side; he is my barber, Tom, A pretty scholar, and a master of arts Was made, or went out master of arts in a throng At the university ; as before, one Christmas, bOENE II THE STAPLE OF NEWS. 381 He got into a masque at court, by his wit, And the good means of his- cittern, holding up thus For one of the music : lie’s a nimble fellow, And alike skill’d in every liberal science, As having certain snaps of all; a neat Quick vein in forging news too : I do love him, And promised him a good turn, and I would do it. What is your price ? the value ? Cym. Fifty pounds, sir. P. jun. Get in, Tom, take possession, I instal thee. Here, tell your money. Give thee joy, good Tom ! And let me hear from thee every minute of news, While the New Staple stands, or the office lasts, Which I do wish may ne’er be less, for thy sake. lie-enter Nathaniel. Nath. The emissaries, sir, would speak with you And master Fitton ; they have brought in news, Three bale together. Cym. Sir, you are welcome here. Fit. So is your creature. Cym. Business calls us off, sir, That may concern the office. P. jun. Keep me fair, sir, Still in your staple ; I am here your friend, On the same floor. Fit. We shall be your servants. [Exeunt all but P. jun. and P. Cant. P. jun. How dost thou like it, founder? P. Can. All is well, But that your man of law, methinks, appears not In his due time. O ! here comes master’s worship. Enter Picklock. Pick. How does the heir, bright master Pennvboy? Is he awake yet in his one and twenty ?- Why, this is better far, than to wear cypress, Dull smutting gloves, or melancholy blacks, And have a pair of twelve-penny broad ribands. Laid out like labels. P. jun. I should have made shift To have laugh’d as heartily in my mourner’s hood, As in this suit, if it had pleased my father To have been buried with the trumpeters. Pick. The heralds of arms, you mean. P.jun. I mean, All noise that is superfluous ! Pick. All that idle pomp, And vanity of a tombstone, your wise father Did by his will prevent. Your worship had— P.jun. A loving and obedient father of him, I know it [I] ; a right kind-natured man, To die so opportunely. Pick. And to settle All things so well! compounded for ycur wardship The week afore, and left your state entire, Without any charge upon’t. P.jun. I must needs say, I lost an officer of him, a good bailiff, And I shall want him : but all peace be with him ! I will not wish him alive again, not I, For all my fortune. Give your worship joy Of your new place, your emissaryship In the News-office ! Pick. Know you why I bought it, sir ? P. jun. Not I. Pick. To work for you, and carry a mine Against the master of it, master Cymbal, Who hath a plot, upon a gentlewoman Was once design’d for you, sir. P. jun. Me ? Pick. Your father, Old master Pennyboy, of happy memory, And wisdom too, as any in the county, Careful to find out a fit match for you, In his own life-time, (but he was prevented,) Left it in writing in a schedule here, To be annexed to his will, that you, His only son, upon his charge and blessing, Should take due notice of a gentlewoman Sojourning with your uncle, Richer Pennyboy. P.jun. A Cornish gentlewoman ; I do know her, Mistress Pecunia Do-all. Pick. A great lady, Indeed, she is, and not of mortal race, Infanta of the mines ; her grace’s grandfather Was duke, and cousin to the king of Ophyr, The Subterranean. Let that pass. Her name is, Or rather her three names are (for such she is) Aurelia Clara Pecunia, a great princess, Of mighty power, though she live in private, With a contracted family! Her secretary- P. Can. Who is her gentleman usher too. Pick. One Broker; And then two gentlewomen, mistress Statute And mistress Band, with Wax the chambermaid, And mother Mortgage the old nurse, two grooms, Pawn and his fellow : you have not many to bribe, The work is feasible, and the approaches easy, [sir. By your own kindred. Now, sir, Cymbal thinks, The master here, and governor of the Staple, By his fine arts, and pomp of his great place, To draw her ! He concludes, she is a woman, And that so soon as she hears of the new office, She’ll come to visit it, as they all have longings, After new sights and motions ! But your bounty, Person, and bravery, must achieve her. P. Can. She is The talk o’ the time ! the adventure of the age ! Pick. You cannot put yourself upon an action Of more importance. P. Can. All the world are suitors to her. Pick. All sorts of men, and all professions. P. Can. You shall have stall-fed doctors, cramm’d divines, Make love to her, and with those studied And perfumed flatteries, as no room can stink More elegant, than where they are. Pick. Well chanted, Old Canter ! thou sing’st true. P. Can. And, by your leave, Good master’s worship, some of your velvet coat Make corpulent curt’sies to her, till they crack for’t. Pick. There’s doctor Almanac woos her, one of A fine physician. [the jeerers, P. Can. Your sea-captain, Shunfield, Gives out, he’ll go upon the cannon for her. Pick. Though his loud mouthing get him little credit. P. Can. Young master Piedmantle, the fine Professes to derive her through all ages, [herald, From all the kings and queens that ever were. Pick. And master Madrigal, the crowned poet Of these our times, doth offer at her praises As fair as any, when it shall please Apollo That wit and rhyme may meet both in one subject. P. Can. And you to bear her from all these, it Pick. A work of fame. [will be— P. Can. Of honour. 382 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. ACT II. Pick. Celebration. P. Can. Worthy your name. Pick. The Pennyboys to live in’t. P. Can. It is an action you were built for, sir. Pick. And none but you can do it. P. jun. I’ll undertake it. P. Can. And carry it. P. jun. Fear me not; for since I came Of mature age, I have had a certain itch In my right eye, this corner here, do you see ? To do some work, and worthy of a chronicle. [ Exeunt. Mirth. How now, gossip ! how does the play please you 9 Cen. Very scurvily, methinks, and sufficiently naught. Expect. Asa body would wish : here's nothing but a young prodigal come of age, who makes much of the barber, buys him a place in a new office, in the air, I know not where ; and his man of law to follow him, with a beggar to boot, and they two help him to a wife. Mirth. Ay, she is a proper piece! that such creatures can broke for. Tat. I cannot abide that nasty fellow, the beggar ; if he had been a court-beggar in good clothes, a beggar in velvet, as they say, I could have endured him. Mirth. Or a begging scholar in black, or one of these beggarly poets, gossip, that could hang upon a young heir like a horseleech. Expect. Or a threadbare doctor of physic, a poor quacksalver. Cen. Or a sea-captain half starved. Mirth. Ay, these were tolerable beggars, beggars of fashion ! you shall see some such anon. Tat. I would fain see the fool, gossip ; the fool is the finest man in the company, they say, and has all the ivit: he is the very justice o' peace of the play, and can commit whom he will, and ivhat he will, error, absurdity, as the toy takes him, and no man say black is his eye, but laugh at him. Mirth. But they have no fool in this play, I am afraid, gossip. Tat. It is a wise play, then! Expect. They are all fools, the rather, in that. Cen. Like enough. Tat. My husband, Timothy Tattle, God rest his poor soul! was wont to say, there teas no play without a fool and a devil in' t; he ivas for the devil still, God bless him ! The devil for his money, would he say, I would fain see the devil. And why would you so fain see the devil9 would I say. Because he has horns, wife, and may he a cuckold as well as a devil, he would answer. You are e'en such another ! husband, quoth I. Was the devil ever married 9 Where do you read, the devil was ever so honourable to commit matrimony 9 The play will tell us that, says he, we'll go see it to¬ morrow, The Devil is an Ass. He is an errant learned man that made it, and can ivrite, they say, and I am foully deceived but he can read too. Mirth. I remember it, gossip, I went with you : by the same token Mistress Trouble-truth dis¬ suaded us, and told us he was a profane poet, and all his plays had devils in them ; that he kept school upon the stage, could conjure there, above the school of Westminster, and doctor Lamb too : not a play he made but had a devil in it ; and that he would learn us all to make our husbands cuckolds at plays : by another token, that a young married, wife in the company said, she could find in her heart to steal thither, and see a little of the vanity through her mask, and come practise at home. Tat. O, it was mistress - Mirth. Nay, gossip, I name nobody : It may be 'twas myself. Expect. But teas the devil a proper man, gossip 9 Mirth. As fine a gentleman of his inches as ever I saw trusted to the stage, or any where else ; and loved the commonwealth as well as ever a patriot of them all: he would carry away the Vice on his back, quick to hell, in every play where he came, and reform abuses. Expect. There teas the Devil of Edmonton, no such man, I warrant you. Cen. The conjuror cozened him with a candle's end ; he was an ass. Mirth. But there was one Smug, a smith, would have made a horse laugh, and broke his halter, as they say. Tat. O, but the poor man had got a- shrewd mischance one day. Expect. How, gossip 9 Tat. He had drest a rogue jade in the morning, that had the staggers, and had got such a spice of them himself by noon, as they would not away all the play time, do what he could for his heart. Mirth. 'Tivas his part, gossip ,* he was to be drunk by his part. Tat. Say you so? I understood not so much. Expect. Would we had such another part, and such a man in this play ! I fear ’twill be an ex¬ cellent dull thing. Cen. Expect, intend it. ACT II. SCENE I. —A Room in Pennyboy senior’s House. Enter Pennyboy sen. Pecunia, Mortgage, Statute, Band, and Broker. P. sen. Your grace is sad, methinks, and melancholy, You do not look upon me with that face As you were wont, my goddess, bright Pecunia! Altho’ you grace be fallen off two in the hundred, In vulgar estimation ; yet am I Your grace’s servant still: and teach this body To bend, and these my aged knees to buckle, In adoration, and just worship of you. Indeed, I do confess, I have no shape To make a minion of, but I am your martyr, Your grace’s martyr. I can hear the rogues, As I do walk the streets, whisper and point, “ There goes old Pennyboy, the slave of money, Rich Pennyboy, lady Pecunia’s drudge, A sordid rascal, one that never made Good meal in his sleep, but sells the acates are sent him, SCENE I. THE STAPLE OF NEWS. Fish, fowl, and venison, and preserves himself, Like an old hoary rat, with mouldy pie-crust! ” This I do hear, rejoicing I can suffer This, and much more for your good grace’s sake. Pec. Why do you so, my guardian ? I not bid Cannot my grace be gotten, and held too, [you : Without your self-tormentings and your watches, Your macerating of your body thus, With cares and scantings of your diet and rest ? P. sen. O no, your services, my princely lady, Cannot with too much zeal of rites be done, They are so sacred. Pec. But my reputation May suffer, and the worship of my family, When by so servile means they both are sought. P. sen. You are a noble, young, free, gracious lady, And would be every body’s in your bounty, But you must not be so. They are a few That know your merit, lady, and can value it. Yourself scarce understands your proper powers, They are all-mighty, and that we, your servants, That have the honour here to stand so near you, Know and can use too. All this nether world Is yours, you command it, and do sway it; The honour of it, and the honesty, The reputation, ay, and the religion, (I was about to say, and had not err’d,) Is oueen Pecunia’s : for that style is yours, If mortals knew your grace, or their own good. Mor. Please your grace to retire. Band. I fear your grace Hath ta’en too much of the sharp air. Pec. O, no ! I could endure to take a great deal more, (And with my constitution,) were it left Unto my choice ; what think you of it, Statute ? Sta. A little now and then does well, and keeps Your grace in your complexion. Band. And true temper. Mor. But too much, madam, may increase cold rheums, Nourish catarrhs, green sicknesses, and agues, And put you in consumption. P. sen. Best to take Advice of your grave women, noble madam, They know the state of your body, and have studied Your grace’s health. Band. And honour. Here’ll be visitants, Or suitors by and by; and ’tis not fit They find you here. Sta. ’Twill make your grace too cheap To give them audience presently. Mor. Leave your secretary To answer them. Pec. Wait you here, broker. Bro. I shall, madam, [Exeunt all but Broker. And do your grace’s trusts with diligence. Enter Pikdmantle. Pie. What luck is this? I am come an inch too late! Do you hear, sir ? is your worship of the family Unto the lady Pecunia ? Bro. I serve her grace, sir, Aurelia Clara Pecunia, the Infanta. Pie. Has she all those titles, and her grace besides! I must correct that ignorance and oversight, Before I do present. Sir, I have drawn 383 A pedigree for her grace, though yet a notice In that so noble study. Bro. A herald at arms ? Pie. No, sir, a pursuivant, my name is Pied- Bro. Good master Piedmantle. [mantle. Pie. I have deduced her- Bro. From all the Spanish mines in the West Indies, I hope ; for she comes that way by her mother, But by her grandmother she is duchess of mines. Pie. From man’s creation I have brought her. Bro. No farther! Before, sir, long before, you have done nothing else ; Your mines were before Adam, search your office, Boll five and twenty, you will find it so. I see you are but a novice, master Piedmantle, If you had not told me so. Pie. Sir, an apprentice In armory. I have read the Elements, And Accidence, and all the leading books; And I have now upon me a great ambition How to be brought to her grace, to kiss her hands. Bro. Why, if you have acquaintance with mis- ' tress Statute, Or mistress Band, my lady’s gentlewomen, They can induce you. One is a judge’s daughter, But somewhat stately; the other mistress Band, Her father’s but a scrivener, but she can Almost as much with my lady as the other, Especially if Rose Wax the chambermaid Be willing. Do you not know her sir, neither? Pie. No, in troth, sir. Bro. She’s a good pliant wench, And easy to be wrought, sir ; but the nurse, Old mother Mortgage, if you have a tenement, Or such a morsel, though she have no teeth, She loves a sweetmeat, any thing that melts In her warm gums, she could command it for you On such a trifle, a toy. Sir, you may see How for your love, and this so pure complexion, (A perfect sanguine) I have ventur’d thus, The straining of a ward, opening a door Into the secrets of our family. Pie. I pray you let me know, sir, unto whom I am so much beholden ; but your name. Bro. My name is Broker ; I am secretary And usher to her grace. Pie. Good master Broker! Bro. Good master Piedmantle ! Pie. Why, you could do me, If you would, now, this favour of yourself. Bro. Truly I think I could; but if J would, I hardly should, without, or mistress Band, Or mistress Statute, please to appear in it; Or the good nurse I told you of, mistress Mort- We know our places here, we mingle not [gage, One in another’s sphere, but all move orderly In our own orbs; yet we are all concentrics. Pie. Well, sir, I’ll wait a better season. Bro. Do, [ Makes a mouth at him. And study the right means; get mistress Band To urge on your behalf, or little Wax. Pie. I have a hope, sir, that I may, by chance, Light on her grace, as she is taking the air. Bro. That air of hope has blasted many an aiery Of castrils like yourself, good master Piedmantle. [Exit Piedmantle P. sen. [springs forward.'] Well said, master secretary, I stood behind ,j34 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. act ii. And heard thee all. I honour thy dispatches. P. sen. I am for justice; when did I leave If thev be rude, untrained in our method justice ? And have not studied the rule, dismiss them quickly. We knew 'twas theirs, they had right and title to’t r Wheie's Lickfinger, my cook, that unctuous ras- Now- cal ? Lick. You can spare them nothing. He’ll never keep his hour, that vessel of kitchen- P. sen. Very little. stuff! Lick. As good as nothing. Enter Lickfinger. P. sen. They have bound our hands Bro. Here he is come, sir. P. sen. Pox upon him, kidney, With their wise solemn act, shorten’d our arms. Lick. Beware those worshipful ears, sir, be not Always too late! shorten’d, And you play Crop in the Fleet, if you use this Lick. To wish them you, I confess, That have them already. license. P. sen. What ? P. sen. What license, knave, informer? I.ick. The pox! Lick. I am Lickfinger, P. sen. The piles, Your cook. The plague, and all diseases light on him P. sen. A saucy Jack you are, that’s once. Knows not to keep his word ! I’d keep my word What said I, Broker ? sure; Bro. Nothing that I heard, sir. I hate that man that will not keep his word. Lick. I know his gift, he can be deaf when he When did I break my word ? list. Lick. Or I, till now? P. sen. Have you provided me my bushel of eggs And ’tis but half an hour. I did bespeak ? I do not care how stale P. sen. Half a year, Or stinking that they be ; let ’em be rotten : To me, that stand upon a minute of time : For ammunition here to pelt the boys I am a just man, I love still to be just. That break my windows. Lick. Why, you think I can run like light-foot Lick. Yes, sir, I have spared them Ralph, Out of the custard-politic for you, the mayor’s. Or keep a wheel-barrow with a sail in town here, P. sen. ’Tis well ; go in, take hence all that To whirl me to you. I have lost two stone excess, Of suet in the service, posting hither : Make what you can of it, your best ; and when I have friends that I invite at home, provide me You might have followed me like a watering-pot, And seen the knots I made along the street ; Such, such, and such a dish, as I bespeak ; My face dropt like the skimmer in a fritter-pan, One at a time, no superfluity. And my whole body is yet, to say the truth, Or if you have it not, return me money : A roasted pound of butter, with grated bread in’t ! P. sen. Believe you he that list ; you staid of You know my ways. Lick. They are a little crooked. purpose P. sen. How knave? To have my venison stink, and my fowl mortified, Lick. Because you do indent. That you might have them - P. sen. ’Tis true, sir, Lick. A shilling or two cheaper ! I do indent you shall return me money. That is your jealousy. Lick. Rather than meat, I know it ; you are P. sen. Perhaps it is. just still. Will you go in, and view, and value all? P. sen. I love it still ; and therefore if you spend Yonder is venison sent me, fowl, and fish, The red-deer pies in your house, or sell them forth, Cast so, that I may have their coffins all [sir, In such abundance, I am sick to see it ; 1 wonder what they mean ! I have told them of it ! Return’d here, and piled up : I would be thought To burden a weak stomach, and provoke To keep some kind of house. A dyiug appetite ! thrust a sin upon me I ne’er was guilty of ! nothing but gluttony, Lick. By the mouldy signs ! P. sen. And then remember meat for my two Gross gluttony, that will undo this land ! dogs ; Lick. And bating two in the hundred. Fat flaps of mutton, kidneys, rumps of veal, P. sen. Ay, that same’s Good plenteous scraps ; my maid shall eat the relics. A crying sin, a fearful damn’d device, Lick. When you and your dogs have dined ! a Eats up the poor, devours them - sweet reversion. I.ick. Sir, take heed P. sen. Who’s here ? my courtier, and my little What you give out. doctor ? P. sen. Against your grave great Solons, My muster-master ? And what plover’s that Numse Pompilii, they that made that law, To take aw r ay the poor’s inheritance ! They have brought to pull? Bro. I know not, some green plover. It was their portion, I will stand to it ; I’ll find him out. And they have robb’d them of it, plainly robb’d them. Enter Fitton, Almanac, Shunfield, and Madrigal, I still am a just man, I tell the truth. P. sen. Do, for I know the rest : When moneys went at ten in the hundred, I, They are the jeerers, mocking, flouting Jacks. Fit. How now, old Moneybawd ! We are come— And such as I, the servants of Pecunia, Could spare the poor two out of ten, and did if: P. sen. To jeer me, How say you, Broker ? As you were w r ont; I know you. Lick. Ask your echo ! - Aim. No, to give thee Bro. You did it. Some good security, and see Pecunia. I SCENE I. THE STAPLE OF NEWS. 385 P. sen. What is’t ? Fit. Ourselves. Aim. We’ll be one bound for another. Fit. This noble doctor here. Aim. This worthy courtier. Fit. This man of war, he was our muster-master. Aim. But a sea-captain now, brave captain Shunfield. [P- sen. holds up his nose. Shun. You snuff the air now, has the scent dis¬ pleased you ? Fit. Thou need’st not fear him, man, his credit is sound. Aim. And season’d too, since he took salt at sea. P. sen. I do not love pickled security; Would I had one good fresh man in for all; For truth is, you three stink. Shun. You are a rogue. P. sen. I think I am ; but I will lend no money On that security, captain. Aim. Here’s a gentleman, A fresh-man in the world, one master Madrigal. Fit. Of an untainted credit; what say you to him ? [ Exit Madrigai, with Broker. Shun. He’s gone, methinks ; where is he ?— Madrigal! P. sen. He has an odd singing name; is he an Fit. An heir to a fair fortune. [heir ? Aim. And full hopes : A dainty scholar, and a pretty poet! P. sen. You have said enough. I have no money, gentlemen, An he go to’t in rhyme once, not a penny. [He snuffs again. Shun. Why, he’s of years, though he have little beard. P. sen. His beard has time to grow: I have no money. Let him still dabble in poetry. No Pecunia Is to be seen. Aim. Come, thou lov’st to be costive Still in thy courtesy ; but I have a pill, A golden pill, to purge away this melancholy. Shun. ’Tis nothing but his keeping of the house With his two drowsy dogs. [here Fit. A drench of sack At a good tavern, and a fine fresh pullet, Would cure him. Lick. Nothing but a young heir in white-broth ; I know his diet better than the doctor. Shun. What, Lickfinger, mine old host of Ram- You have some market here. [alley ! Aim. Some dosser of fish Or fowl, to fetch off. Fit. An odd bargain of venison To drive. P. sen. Will you go in, knave ? Lick. I must needs, You see who drives me, gentlemen. [P. sen. thrusts him in. Aim. Not the devil. Fit. He may in time, he is his agent now* P.sen. You are all cogging Jacks, a covey of wits, Thejeerers, that still call together at meals, Or rather an aiery ; for you are birds of prey, And fly at all; nothing’s too big or high for you ; And are so truly fear’d, but not beloved One of another, as no one dares break Company from the rest, lest they should fall Upon him absent Aim. O, the only oracle That ever peep’d or spake out of a doublet! Shun. How the rogue stinks ! worse than a fisli- Fit. Or currier’s hands. [monger’s sleeves. Shun. And such a parboil’d visage ! Fit. His face looks like a dyer’s apron, just. Aim. A sodden head, and his whole brain a posset-curd. P. sen. Ay, now you jeer, jeer on ; I have no money. Aim. I wonder what religion he is of. Fit. No certain species sure : a kind of mule, That’s half an ethnic, half a Christian ! P. sen. I have no money, gentlemen. Shun. This stock, He has no sense of any virtue, honour, Gentry, or merit. P. sen. You say very right, My meritorious captain, as I take it, Merit will keep no house, nor pay no house-rent. Will mistress Merit go to market, think you, Set on the pot, or feed the family ? Will gentry clear with the butcher, or the baker, Fetch in a pheasant, or a brace of partridges, From good-wife poulter, for my lady’s supper ? Fit. See this pure rogue ! P. sen. This rogue has money though ; My worshipful brave courtier has no money ; No, nor my valiant captain. Shun. Hang you, rascal. P. sen. Nor you, my learned doctor. I loved you While you did hold your practice, and kill tripe- wives, And kept you to your urinal; but since youi thumbs Have greased the Ephemerides, casting figures, And turning over for your candle-rents, And your twelve houses in the zodiac, With your almutens, alma-cantaras, Troth you shall cant alone for Pennyboy. Shun. I told you what we should find him, a Fit. A rogue, a cheater. [mere bawd. P. sen. What you please, gentlemen : I am of that humble nature and condition, Never to mind your worships, or take notice Of what you throw away thus. I keep house here, Like a lame cobler, never out of doors. With my two dogs, my friends : and, as you say, Drive a quick pretty trade, still. I get money : And as for titles, be they rogue or rascal, Or what your worships fancy, let them pass, As transitory things ; they are mine to-day, And yours to-morrow. Aim. Hang thee, dog! Shun. Thou cur! P. sen. You see how I do blush, and am ashamed Of these large attributes ! yet you have no money. Aim. Well, wolf, hyena, you old pocky rascal, You will have the hernia fall down again Into your scrotum, and I shall be sent for : I will remember then, that, and your fistula In ano, I cured you of. P. sen. Thank your dog-leech craft! They were wholesome piles afore you meddled with them. Aim. What an ungrateful wretch is this ! Shun. He minds A courtesy no more than London bridge What arch was mended last- c THE STAPLE OF NEWS. ACT II. 36G Fit. He never thinks, More than a log, of any grace at court A man may do him ; or that such a lord Reach’d him his hand. P. sen. O yes ! if grace would strike The brewer’s tally, or my good lord’s hand Would quit the scores: but, sir, they will not do it; Here is a piece, my good lord Piece doth all; Goes to the butcher’s, fetches in a mutton ; Then to the baker’s, brings in bread, makes fires, Gets wine, and does more real courtesies Than all my lords I know : my sweet lord Piece ! \_HoIds up a p iece of gold. You are my lord, the rest are cogging Jacks, Under the rose. Shun. Rogue, I could beat you now. P. sen. True, captain, if you durst beat any other, 1 should believe you ; but indeed you are hungry ; You are not angry, captain, if I know you Aright, good captain. No Pecunia Is to be seen, though mistress Band would speak, Or little blushet Wax be ne’er so easy ; I’ll stop mine ears with her, against the Syrens, Court, and philosophy. God be wi’ you, gentle¬ men ! Provide you better names, Pecunia is for you. [ Exit. Fit. What a damn’d harpy it is! Where’s Is he sneak’d hence ? [Madrigal? Shun. Here he comes with Broker, Pecunia’s secretary. Re-enter Madrigal and Broker. Aim. He may do some good With him perhaps.—Where have you been, Madrigal ? Mad. Above, with my lady’s women, reading verses. Fit. That was a favour.—Good morrow, master Secretary ! Shun. Good morrow, master Usher ! Aim. Sir, by both Your worshipful titles, and your name, mas Broker, Good morrow! Mad. I did ask him if he were Amphibion Broker. Shun. Why? Mad. A creature of two natures, Because he has two offices. Bro. You may jeer, You have the wits, young gentlemen: but your Of Helicon will never carry it here, [hope With our fat family ; we have the dullest, Most unbored ears for verse amongst our females ! I grieved you read so long, sir; old nurse Mortgage She snored in the chair, and Statute, if you mark’d her, Fell fast asleep, and mistress Band she nodded, But not with any consent to what you read. They must have somewhat else to chink than rhymes. If you could make an epitaph on your land, (Imagine it on departure,) such a poem Would wake them, and bring Wax to her true Mad. I’faith, sir, and I’ll try [temper. Bro. It is hut earth, Fit to make bricks and tiles of. Shun. Pox upon’t, ’Tis but for pots, or pipkins at the best. If it would keep us in good tobacco-pipes— Bro. It were worth keeping. Fit. Or in porcelain dishes, There were some hope. Aim. But this is a hungry soil, And must be help’d. Fit. Who would hold any land, To have the trouble to marie it ? Shun. Not a gentleman. Bro. Let clowns and hinds affect it, that loy ploughs, And carts and harrows, and are busy still In vexing the dull element. Aim. Our sweet songster Shall rarify’t into air. Fit. And you, mas Broker, Shall have a feeling. Bro. So it supple, sir, The nerves. Mad. O, it shall be palpable, Make thee run thorough a hoop, or a thumb-ring, The nose of a tobacco-pipe, and draw Thy ductile bones out like a knitting-needle, To serve my subtile turns. Bro. I shall obey, sir, And run a thread, like an hour-glass. Re-enter Pennyboy sen. P. sen. Where is Broker ? Are not these flies gone yet ? Pray quit my house, I’ll smoke you out else. Fit. O the prodigal! Will you be at so much charge with us, and loss? Mad. I’ve heard you have offer’d, sir, to lock up smoke, And calk your windows, spar up all your doors, Thinking to keep it a close prisoner with you, And wept when it went out, sir, at your chimney. Fit. And yet his eyes were drier than a pumice. Shun. A wretched rascal, that will bind about The nose of his bellows, lest the wind get out When he’s abroad. Aim. Sweeps down no cobwebs here, But sells them for cut fingers ; and the spiders, As creatures rear’d of dust, and cost him nothing, To fat old ladies’ monkeys. Fit. He has offer’d To gather up spilt water, ana preserve Each hair falls from him, to stop balls withal. Shun. A slave, and an idolater to Pecunia! P. sen. You all have happy memories, gentle¬ men, In rocking my poor cradle. I remember too, When you had lands and credit, worship, friends, Ay, and could give security : now you have none, Or will have none right shortly. This can time, And the vicissitude of things ! I have All these, and money too, and do possess them, And am right heartily glad of all our memories, And both the changes. Fit. Let us leave the viper. [ Exeunt all but P. sen. and Broker. P. sen. He’s glad he is rid of his torture, and so soon.— Broker, come hither : up, and tell your lady, She must be ready presently, and Statute, Band, Mortgage, Wax : my prodigal young kins- man Will straight be here to see her ; top of our house. ■wa i. THE STAPLE OF NEWS. 38? The flourishing and flaunting Pennyboy ! We were but three of us in all the world, My brother Francis, whom they call’d Frank Pennyboy, Father to this ; he’s dead : this Pennyboy Is now the heir! I, Richer Pennyboy, Not Richard, but old Harry Pennyboy, And, to make rhyme, close, wary Pennyboy, I shall have all at last, my hopes do tell me. Go, see all ready; and where my dogs have faulted, Remove it with a broom, and sweeten all With a slice of juniper, not too much, but sparing, We maybe faulty ourselves else, and turn prodigal, In entertaining of the prodigal. ' [Exit Broker. Here he is, and with him — what ? a clapper- dudgeon ! That’s a good sign, to have the beggar follow him So near, at his first entry into fortune. Enter Pennyboy jun. Pennyboy Canter, and Picklock. P. jun. How now, old uncle ! I am come to see thee, And the brave lady here, the daughter of Ophir, They say thou keep’st. P. sen. Sweet nephew, if she were The daughter of the Sun, she’s at your service, And so am I, and the whole family, Worshipful nephew. P. jun. Say’st thou so, dear uncle ! Welcome my friends then : here is dominie Pick- My man of law, solicits all my causes, flock, Follows my business, makes and compounds my quarrels Between my tenants and me; sows all my strifes, And reaps them too ; troubles the country for me, And vexes any neighbour that I please. P. sen. But with commission ? P. jun. Under my hand and seal. P. sen. A worshipful place ! Pick. I thank his worship for it. P. sen. But what is this old gentleman ? P. Can. A rogue, A very canter, I sir, one that maunds Upon the pad : we should be brothers though ; For you are near as wretched as myself, You dare not use your money, and I have none. P. sen. Not use my money, cogging Jack! who uses it At better rates, lets it for more in the hundred Than I do, sirrah ? P. jun. Be not angry, uncle. P. sen. What! to disgrace me, with my queen, I did not know her value. [as if P. Can. Sir, I meant, You durst not to enjoy it. P. sen. Hold your peace, You are a Jack. P. jun. Uncle, he shall be a John, An you go to that ; as good a man as you are : And I can make him so, a better man ; Perhaps I will too. Come, let us go. [Going. P. sen. Nay, kinsman, My worshipful kinsman, and the top of our house, Do not your penitent uncle that affront, For a rash word, to leave his joyful threshold, Before you see the lady that you long for, The Venus of the time and state, Pecunia ! I do perceive your bounty loves the man, For some concealed virtue that he hides Under those rags. P. Can. I owe my happiness to him, The waiting on his worship, since I brought him The happy news welcome to all young heirs. P. jun. Thou didst indeed, for which I thank thee yet. Your fortunate princess, uncle, is long a coming. P. Can. She is not rigg’d, sir ; setting forth some lady Will cost as much as furnishing a fleet_ Here she is come at last, and like a galley Gilt in the prow. Enter Pecunia in state, attended by Broker, Statute, Band, Wax, and Mortgage. P. jun. Is this Pecunia ? P. sen. Vouchsafe my toward kinsman, gracious The favour of your hand. [madam, Pec. Nay, of my lips, sir, [Kisses him. To him. P. jun. She kisses like a mortal creature. [Aside. Almighty madam, I have long’d to see you. Pec. And I have my desire, sir, to behold That youth and shape, which in my dreams and I have so oft contemplated, and felt [wakes Warm in my veins, and native as my blood. When I was told of your arrival here, I felt my heart beat, as it would leap out In speech ; and all my face it was a flame : But how it came to pass, I do not know. P. jun. O, beauty loves to be more proud than That made you blush. I cannot satisfy [nature, My curious eyes, by which alone I am happy, In my beholding you. [Kisses her. P. Can. They pass the compliment Prettily well. Pick. Ay, he does kiss her, I like him. P. jun. My passion was clear contrary, and doubtful, I shook for fear, and yet I danced for joy, I had such motions as the sun-beams make Against a wall* or playing on a water, Or trembling vapour of a boiling pot - P. sen. That’s not so good ; it should have been a crucible With molten metal, she had understood it. P. jun. I cannot talk, but I can love you, madam : Are these your gentlewomen ? I love them too. [Kisses them, And which is mistress Statute ? mistress Band ? They all kiss close, the last stuck to my lips. Pro. It was my lady’s chambermaid, soft Wax. P.jun. Soft lips she has, I am sure on’t* Mother Mortgage I’ll owe a kiss, till she be younger. Statute, Sweet mistress Band, and honey little Wax, We must be better acquainted. [Kisses them again, Sia. We are but servants, sir. Band. But whom her grace is so content to We shall observe. [grace, Wax. And with all fit respect. Mor. In our poor places. Wax. Being her grace’s shadows. P. jun. A fine, well-spoken family !— What’s Bro. Broker. [thy name? P. jun. Methinks my uncle should not need thee, Who is a crafty knave enough, believe it. [Aside to Brokei Art thou her grace’s steward ? c c 2 388 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. act ii. Bro. No, her usher, sir. P. jun. What, of the hall ? thou hast a sweeping Thy beard is like a broom, [face, Bro. No barren chin, sir. I am no eunuch, though a gentleman-usher. P. jun. Thou shalt go with us.—Uncle, I must My princess forth to-day. [have P. sen. Whither you please, sir ; You shall command her. Pec. I will do all grace To my new servant. P. sen. Thanks unto your bounty ; He is my nephew and my chief, the point, Tip, top, and tuft of all our family !— But, sir, condition’d always you return Statute and Band home, with my sweet soft Wax, And my good nurse, here, Mortgage. P. jun. O, what else? P. sen. By Broker. P. jun. Do not fear. P. sen. She shall go with you, Whither you please, sir, any where. P. Can. I see A money-bawd is lightly a flesh-bawd too. Pick. Are you advised ? Now, on my faith, this Canter Would make a good grave burgess in some barn. P. jun. Come, thou shalt go with us, uncle. P. sen. By no means, sir. P. jun. We’ll have both sack and fidlers. P. sen. I’ll not draw That charge upon your worship. P. Can. He speaks modestly, And like an uncle. P. sen. But mas Broker here, He shall attend you, nephew ; her grace’s usher. And what you fancy to bestow on him, Be not too lavish, use a temperate bounty, I’ll take it to myself. P. jun. I will be princely, While I possess my princess, my Pecunia. P. sen. Where is’t you eat ? P. jun. Hard by, at Picklock’s lodging, Old Lickfinger’s the cook, here in Ram-alley. P. sen. He has good cheer ; perhaps I’ll come and see you. P. Can. O fie ! an alley, and a cook’s shop, gross! ’Twill savour, sir, most rankly of them both : Let your meat rather follow you to a tavern. [To P. jun. Pick. A tavern’s as unfit too for a princess. P. Can. No, I have known a princess, and a great Come forth of a tavern. [one, Pick. Not go in, sir, though. P. Can. She must go in, if she came forth : the Pokahontas, as the historian calls her, [blessed And great king’s daughter of Virginia, Hath been in womb of tavern ;—and besides, Your nasty uncle will spoil all your mirth, And be as noisome.— Pick. That is true. P. Can. No ’faith, Dine in Apollo with Pecunia, At brave duke Wadloe’s, have your friends about And make a day on’t. [you, P. jun. Content, i’faith ; Our meat shall be brought thither: Simon the king Will bid us welcome. Pick. Patron, I have a suit. P. jun. What’s that ? Pick. That you will carry the Infanta To see the Staple; her grace will be a grace To all the members of it. P.jun. I will do it, And have her arms set up there, with her titles, Aurelia Clara Pecunia, the Infanta, And in Apollo ! Come, sweet princess, go. P. sen. Broker, be careful of your charge. Bro. I warrant you. [Exeunt. Cen. Why this is duller and duller / intolerable, scurvy, neither.devil nor fool in this play ! pray God some on tts be not a witch, gossip, to forespeak the matter thus. Mirth. I fear we are all such, an we were old enough : but we are not all old enough to make one witch. How like you the Vice in the play 9 Expect. Which is he 9 Mirth. Three or four: Old Covetousness, the sordid Penny-boy, the Money-bawd, who is a flesh-bawd too, they say. Tat. But here is never a fiend to carry him away. Besides, he has never a wooden dagger ! I would not give a rush for a Vice, that has riot a wooden dagger to snap at every body he meets. Mirth. That was the old way, gossip, when Ini¬ quity came in like Hokos Pokos, in a juggler's jer¬ kin, with false skirts, like the knave of clubs ; but now they are attired like men and women of the time, the vices male and female. Prodigality, like a young heir, and his mistress Money, ( whose fa¬ vours he scatters like counters ,) pranked up like a prime lady, the Infanta of the mines. Cent. Ay, therein they abuse an honourable princess, it is thought. Mirth. By whom is it so thought 9 or where lies the abuse 9 Cen. Plain in the styling her Infanta, and giving her three names . Mirth. Take heed it lie not in the vice of your interpretation ; what have A urelia, Clara, Pecunia, to do with any person 9 do they any more but ex¬ press the property of Money, which is the daughter of Earth , and drawn out of the mines 9 Is there nothing to be call'd Infanta, but what is subject to exception 9 why not the infanta of the beggars , or infanta of the gypsies , as well as king of beggars, and king of gypsies 9 Cen. Well, an there were no wiser than I, I ivould sew him in a sack, and send him by sea to his princess. Mirth. Faith, an he heard you, Censure, he would go near to stick the ass's ears to your high dressing, and perhaps to all ours for hearkening to you. Tat. By'r Lady, but he should not to mine ; I would hearken, and hearken , and censure, if I saw cause, for the other princess' sake Pokahontas, surnamed the Blessed, whom helms abused indeed, and I do censure him, and will censure him : —To say she came forth of a tavern , was said like a paltry poet. Mirth. That's but one gossip’s opinion, and my gossip Tattle's too ! but what says Expectation here 9 She sits sullen and silent. Expect. Troth, I expect their office, their great office, the Staple , what it will be ! they have talk'd on't, but we see it not open yet. — Would Butter would come in, and spread itself a little to us ! CENE I. THE STAPLE OF NEWS. 389 Mirth. Or the butter-box. Buz, the emissary. Tat. When it is churn'd and dish'd we shall hear of it. Expect. If it be fresh and sweet butter ; but say it be sour and wlieyish ? Mirth. Then it is worth nothing, mere pot but¬ ter, fit to be spent in suppositories, or greasing coach-wheels, stale stinking butter, and such, I fear, it is, by the being barrelled up so long. Expect. Or rank Irish butter. Cen. Have patience, gossip ; say that, contrary to our expectation, it prove right , seasonable, salt butter ? ACT SCENE I.— The Office of the Staple. Enter Cymbal, Register, Clerk, and Tho. Barber. Fit. You hunt upon a wrong scent still, and think The air of things will carry them ; but it must Be reason and proportion, not fine sounds, My cousin Cymbal, must get you this lady. You have entertain’d a pettyfogger here, Picklock, with trust of an emissary’s place, And he is all for the young prodigal; You see he has left us. Cym. Come, you do not know him, That thus speak of him : he will have a trick To open us a gap by a trap-door, When they least dream on’t. Here he comes. Enter Picklock. What news ? Pick. Where is my brother Buz, my brother Ambler ? The register, examiner, and the clerks ? Appear, and let us muster all in pomp, For here will be the rich Infanta presently, To make her visit. Pennyboy the heir, My patron, has got leave for her to play With all her train, of the old churl her guardian. Now is your time to make all court unto her, That she may first but know, then love the place, And shew it by her frequent visits here : And afterwards get her to sojourn with you. She will be weary of the prodigal quickly. Cym. Excellent news! Fit. And counsel of an oracle ! Cym. How say you, cousin Fitton ? Fit. Brother Picklock, I shall adore thee for this parcel of tidings, It will cry up the credit of our office Eternally, and make our Staple immortal! Pick. Look your addresses then be fair and fit, And entertain her and her creatures too, With all the migniardise, and quaint caresses You can put on them. Fit. Thou seem’st by thy language, No less a courtier than a man of law. I must embrace thee. Pick. Tut, I am Vertumnus, On every change, or chance, upon occasion, A true camelion, I can colour for it. I move upon my axle like a turnpike, Fit my face to the parties, and become Straight one of them. Enter Nathaniel, Tho. Barber, and Register. Cym. Sirs, un into your desks Mirth. Or to the time of year, in Lent, delicate almond butter / I have a sweet tooth yet, and I will hope the best, and sit down as quiet and calm as butter, look smooth and soft as butter, be merry and melt like butter, laugh and be fat like butter: so butter answer my expectation, and be not mad butter; - “ if it be. It shall both July and December see l f} I say no more, but -Dixi, III. And spread the rolls upon the table,—so ! Is the examiner set ? Reg. Yes, sir. Cym. Ambler and Buz Are both abroad now. Pick. We’ll sustain their parts. No matter, let them ply the affairs without, Let us alone within, I like that well. On with the cloke, and you with the Staple gown, [Fit. puts on the office cloke, and Cym. the goum. And keep your state, stoop only to the Infanta; We’ll have a flight at Mortgage, Statute, Band, And hard but we’ll bring Wax to the retrieve : Each know his several province, and discharge it. [ They take their seats. Fit. I do admire this nimble engine, Picklock. Cym. Coz, what did I say ? Fit. You have rectified my error. Enter Pennyboy jun., P. Canter, Pecunia, Statute, Band, Mortgage, Wax, and Broker. P. jun. By your leave, gentlemen, what news ? good, good still, In your new office? Princess, here’s the Staple ! This is the governor, kiss him, noble princess, For my sake.—Tom, how is it, honest Tom? How does thy place, and thou?—my creature, princess, This is my creature, give him your hand to kiss, He was my barber, now he writes clericus I I bought this place for him, and gave it him. P. Can. He should have spoke of that, sir, and Two do not do one office well. [not you: P. jun. ’Tis true, But I am loth to lose my courtesies. P. Can. So are all they that do them to vain ends ; And yet you do lose when you pay yourselves. P. jun. No more of your sentences, Canter, they are stale; We come for news, remember where you are. I pray thee let my princess hear some news, Good master Cymbal. Cym. What news would she hear ? Or of what kind, sir ? P. jun. Any, any kind, So it be news, the newest that thou hast, Some news of state for a princess. Cym. Read from Rome there,. Tho. They xvrite , the king of Spain is chosen P. jun. How ! [pope. Tho. And emperor too, the thirtieth of February. P. hm. Is the emoeror dead? v fl90 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. act hi. Cym. No, but be has resign’d, A.nd trails a pike now under Tilly. Fit. For penance. P. jun. These will beget strange turns in Christ¬ endom ! Tho. And Spinola is made general of the Jesuits. P. jun. Stranger! Fit. Sir, all are alike true and certain. Cym. All the pretence to the fifth monarchy Was held but vain, until the ecclesiastic And secular powers were united thus, Both in one person. Fit. It has been long the aim Of the house of Austria. Cym. See but Maximilian His letters to the baron of Bouttersheim. Or Scheiter-huyssen. Fit. No, of Leichtenstein, Lord Paul, I think. P. jun. I have heard of some such thing. Don Spinola made general of the Jesuits! A priest! Cym. O, no, he is dispens’d withal- And the whole society, who do now appear The only enginers of Christendom. P. jun. They have been thought so long, and rightly too. Fit. Witness the engine that they have pre¬ sented him, To wind himself with up into the moon. And thence make all his discoveries I Cym. Read on. Tho. And Vitellesco, he that was last general, Being notv turn’d cook to the society, Has drest his excellence such a dish of eggs - P. jun. What, potch’d? Tho. No, powder’d. Cym. All the yolk is wild-fire, As he shall need beleaguer no more towns, But throw his egg in. Fit. It shall clear consume Palace and place : demolish and bear down All strengths before it 1 Cym. Never be extinguish’d, Till all become one ruin ! Fit. And from Florence. Tho. They write was found in Galilceo’s study, A burning glass, which they have sent him too, To fire any fleet that’s out at sea. - Cym.. By moonshine, is’t not so? Tho. Yes, sir, in the water. P. jun. His strengths will be unresistible, if this hold. Have you no news against him on the contrary? Nath. Yes, sir. They write here , one Cornelius- Iiath made the Hollanders an invisible eel [Aon, To swim the haven at Dunkirk, and sink all The shipping there. P. jun. Why have not you this, Tom ? Cym. Because he keeps the pontificial side. P. jun. How ! Change sides, Tom, ’twas never in my thought To put thee up against ourselves. Come down, Quickly. Cym. Why, sir ? P. jun. I ventured not my money U pon those terms : if he may change, why so ! I’ll have him keep his own side, sure. Fit. Why, let him, It is but writing so much over again. P. jun. For that I’ll bear the charges : there's two pieces. Pit. Come, do not stick with the gentleman. Cym. I’ll take none, sir, And yet he shall have the place. P. jun. They shall be ten then. Up, Tom, and the office shall take them. Keep your side, Tom. [Tho. changes his side. Know your own side, do not forsake your side, Tom. Cym. Read. Tho. They write here one Cornelius-Son Hath made the Hollanders an invisible eel To swim the haven at Dunkirk, and sink all The shipping there. P. jun. But how is’t done? Cym. I’ll shew you, sir. It is an automa, runs under water, With a snug nose, and has a nimble tail Made like an auger, with which tail she wriggles Betwixt the costs of a ship, and sinks it straight. P. jun. Whence have you this news? Fit. From a right hand, I assure you, The eel boats here, that lie before Queen-hythe ; Came out of Holland. P. jun. A most brave device, To murder their flat bottoms. Fit. I do grant you : But what if Spinola have a new project, To bring an army over in cork-shoes, And land them here at Harwich? all his horse Are shod with cork, and fourscore pieces of ord¬ nance, Mounted upon cork carriages, with bladders Instead of wheels, to run the passage over At a spring tide. P. jun. Is’t true ? Fit. As true as the rest. P. jun. He’ll never leave his engines : I would Some curious news. [hear now Cym. As what ? P. jun. Magic or alchemy, Or flying in the air, I care not what. Nath. They write from Libtzig (reverence to your ears) The art of drawing farts out of dead bodies, Is by the brotherhood of the Rosie Cross Produced unto perfection, in so sweet And rich a tincture - Fit. As there is no princess But may perfume her chamber with the extraction. P. jun. There’s for you, princess ! P. Can. What, a fart for her ? P. jun. I mean the spirit. P. Can. Beware how she resents it. P. jun. And what hast thou, Tom? Tho. The perpetual motion, Is here found, out by an ale-ivife in Saint-Kathe- At the sign of the Dancing Bears. [vine’s, P. jun. What, from her tap ? I’ll go see that, or else I’ll send old Canter : He can make that discovery. P. Can. Yes, in ale. [Noise without. P. jun. Let me have all this news made up and seal’d. [sir, Reg. The people press upon us. Please you, Withdraw with your fair princess : there’s a room Within, sir, to retire to. P. jun. No, good register, We’ll stand it out here, and observe your office ; What news it issues. scene i. THE STAPLE OF NEWS. 391 Reg. ’Tis the House of Fame, sir, Where both the curious and the negligent, The scrupulous and careless, wild and stay’d, The idle and laborious, all do meet, To taste the cornu-copiae of her rumours, Which she, the mother of sport, pleaseth to scatter Among the vulgar : baits, sir, for the people ! And they will bite like fishes. Enter a crowd of Customers. P. jun. Let us see it. 1 Cust. Have you in your profane shop any Of the saints at Amsterdam ? [news Reg. Yes ; how much would you ? 2 Cust. Six penny-worth. Reg. Lay your money down.—Read, Thomas. Tho. The saints do ivrite, they expect a prophet The prophet Baal, to be sent over to them, [ shortly, To calculate a time, and half a time, And the whole time, according to Naometry. P.jun. What’s that? Tho. The measuring of the temple ; a cabal Found out but lately, and set out by Archie, Or some such head, of whose long coat they have And, being black, desire it. [heard, 1 Cust. Peace be with them ! Reg. So there had need, for they are still by the One with another. [ears 1 Cust. It is their zeal. Reg. Most likely. 1 Cust. Have you no other of that species? Reg. Yes, But dearer ; it will cost you a shilling. 1 Cust. Verily, There is a nine pence, I will shed no more. Reg. Not to the good of the saints ? 1 Cust. I am not sure That man is good. Reg. Read from Constantinople Nine penn’orth. Tho. They give out here, the grand signior Is certainly turn'd Christian ; and to clear The controversy 'twixt the pope and him. Which is the Antichrist, he means to visit The church at Amsterdam this very summer And quit all marks of the beast. 1 Cust. Now joyful tidings ! Who brought in this ! which emissary ? Reg. Buz, Your countryman. 1 Cust. Now, blessed be the man, And his whole family, with the nation! Reg. Yes, for Amboyna, and the justice there ! This is a Dopper, a she Anabaptist! Seal and deliver her her news, dispatch. 2 Cust. Have you any news from the Indies ? ' any miracle Done in Japan by the Jesuits, or in China ? Nath. No, but we hear of a colony of cooks To be set ashore on the coast of America, For the conversion of the cannibals, And making them good eating Christians. Here comes the colonel that undertakes it. Enter Lickfinger. 3 Cust. Who, captain Lickfinger? Lick. News, news, my boys I am to furnish a great feast to-day, h nd I would have what news the office affords. Nath. We were venting some of you, of your new project. Reg. Afore ’twas paid for! you were somewhat too hasty. P. jun. What, Lickfinger! wilt thou convert With spit and pan divinity ? [the cannibals Lick. Sir, for that I will not urge, but for the fire and zeal To the true cause ; thus I have undertaken With two lay brethren, to myself, no more One of the broach, the other of the boiler, In one six months, and by plain cookery, No magic to it, but old Japhet’s physic, The father of the European arts, To make such sauces for the savages, And cook their meats with those enticing steams, As it would make our cannibal-christians Forbear the mutual eating one another, Which they do do more cunningly than the wild Antliropophdgi, that snatch only strangers, Like my old patron’s dogs there. P. jun. 0, my uncle’s ! Is dinner ready, Lickfinger ? Lick. When you please, sir, I was bespeaking but a parcel of news, To strew out the long meal withal, but it seems You are furnished here already. P.jun. 0, not half. Lick. What court news is'there ? any proclama- Or edicts to come forth ? [tions Tho. Yes, there is one, That the king’s barber has got, for aid of our trade, Whereof there is a manifest decay. A precept for the wearing of long hair, To run to seed, to sow bald pales ivilhal. And the preserving fruitful heads and chins To help a mystery almost antiquated. Such as are bald and barren beyond hope , Are to be separated and set by For ushers to old countesses : and coachmen To mount their boxes reverently, and drive Like lapwings, with a shell upon their heads Thorough the streets. Lick. Have you no news of the stage ? They’ll ask me about new plays at dinner-time, And I should be as dumb as a fish. Tho. 0, yes. There is a legacy left to the king s players. Both for their various shifting of their scene. And dextrous change of their persons to all shapes And all disguises, by the right reverend Archbishop of Spalato. Lick. He is dead That play’d him ! Tho. Then he has lost his share of the legacy. Lick. What news of Gondomar ? Tho. A second fistula, Or an excoriation, at the least. For putting the poor English play, was writ oj To such a sordid use, as, is said, he did, [ him , Of cleansing his posteriors. Lick. Justice ! justice ! Tho. Since when, he lives condemn'd to his share at Bruxels And there sits filing certain politic hinges, To hang the states on he has heaved off the hooks. Lick. What must you have for these ? P.jun. Thou shalt pay nothing, But reckon them in the bill. [Exit Lick.] There’s twenty pieces, Her grace bestows upon the office, Tom : Write thou that down for news. 392 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. ACT I1L Reg. "W e may well do’t, We have not many such. P. jun. There’s twenty more, If you say so ; my princess is a princess ! And put that too under the office seal. Cym. [ Takes Pecunia aside , while Fitton courts the Waiting-women.] If it will please your grace to sojourn here, And take my roof for covert, you shall know The x’ites belonging to your blood and birth, Which few can apprehend: these sordid servants, Which rather are your keepers, than attendants, Should not come near your presence. I would have You waited on by ladies, and your train Born up by persons of quality and honour ; Your meat should be served in with curious dances, And set upon the board with virgin hands, Tuned to their voices ; not a dish removed, But to the music, nor a drop of wine Mixt with his water, without harmony. Pec. You are a courtier, sir, or somewhat more, That have this tempting language. Cym. I am your servant, Excellent princess, and would have you appear That which you are: come forth the state and wonder Of these our times, dazzle the vulgar eyes, And strike the people blind with admiration. P. Can. Why that’s the end of wealth! thrust riches outward, And remain beggars within ; contemplate nothing But the vile sordid things of time, place, money, And let the noble and the precious go : Virtue and honesty; hang them, poor thin mem¬ branes Of honour ! who respects them ? 0, the fates, How hath all just true reputation fallen, Since money, this base money "gan to have any ! [Aside. Band. Pity the gentleman is not immortal. Wax. As he gives out the place is by descrip¬ tion. Fit. A very paradise, if you saw all, lady. Wax. I am the chamber-maid, sir, you mistake, My lady may see all. Fit. Sweet mistress Statute, gentle mistress Band, And mother Mortgage, do but get her grace To sojourn here. Pick. I thank you, gentle Wax. Mor. If it were a chattel, I would try my credit. Pick. So it is, for term of life, we count it so. Sta. She means inheritance to him and his heirs : Or that he could assure a state of years ; I’ll be his Statute staple, Statute-merchant, Or what he please. Pick. He can expect no more. Band. His cousin, alderman Security, That he did talk of so, e’en now- Sta. Who is The very brooch of the bench, gem of the city. Band. He and bis deputy, but assure his life For one seven years— Sta. And see what we’ll do for him, Upon his scarlet motion. Band. And old chain, That draws the city ears. Wax. When he says nothing. But twirls it thus. Sta. A moving oratory ! Band. Dumb rhetoric , and silent eloquence ! As the fine poet says. Fit. Come, they all scorn us : Do you not see’t ? the family of scorn 1 Bro. Do not believe him : gentle master Pick- lock, They understood you not; the gentlewomen, They thought you would have my lady sojourn with you, And you desire but now and their a visit. Pick. Yes, if she pleased, sir, it would much advance Unto the office, her continual residence: I speak but as a member. Bro. ’Tis enough. I apprehend you : and it shall go hard, But I’ll so work, as somebody shall work her. Pick. Pray you change with our master but a word about it. P. jun. Well, Lickfinger, see that our meat be Thou hast news enough. [ready. Lick. Something of Bethlem Gabor, And then I am gone. Tho. We hear he has devised A drum, to Jill all Christendom with the sound: But that he cannot draw his forces near it , To march yet, for the violence of the noise. And therefore he is fain, by a design, To carry them in the air , and at some distance, * Till he be married , then they shall appear. Lick. Or never! well, God be wi’ you ! stay, who’s there ? A little of the Duke of Bavier, and then— Nath. He has taken a grey habit, and is turn'd The church's miller , grinds the catholic grist With every wind ; and Tilly takes the toll. 4 Cust. Have you any news of the pageants to send down Into the several counties ? All the country Expected from the city most brave speeches, Now, at the coronation. Lick. It expected More than it understood; for they stand mute, Poor innocent dumb things : they are but wood, As is the bench, and blocks they were wrought on : yet If May-day come, and the sun shine, perhaps, They’ll sing like Memnon’s statue, and be vocal. 5 Cust. Have you any forest news ? Tho. None very wild, sir, Some tame there is, out of the forest of fools. A new park is a making there, to sever Cuckolds of antler, from the rascals. Such Whose wives are dead, and have since cast their heads, Shall remain cuckolds pollard. Lick. I’ll have that news. 1 Cust. And I. 2 Cust. And I. 3 Cust. And I. 4 Cust. And I. 5 Cust. And I. Cym. Sir, I desire to be excused ; [to P. juti.] and, madam, I cannot leave my office the first day. My cousin Fitton here shall wait upon you, And emissary Picklock. P. jun. And Tom Clericus ? Cym. I cannot spare him yet, but he shaft follow vou. scene II. THE STAPLE OF NEWS. 39H When they have order’d the rolls. Shut up the When you have done, till two o’clock. [office, [Exeunt all but Thomas and Nath. Enter Shunfield, Almanac, and Madrigal. Shun. By your leave, clerks, Where shall we dine to-day? do you know ? Nath. The jeerers Aim. Where is my fellow Fitton ? Tho. New gone forth. Shun. Cannot your office tell us, what brave fellows Do eat together to-day, in town, and where? Tho. Yes, there’s a gentleman, the brave heir, Dines in Apollo. [young Pennyboy, Mad. Come, let’s thither then, I have supt in Apollo. Aim. With the Muses ? Mad. No, But with two gentlewomen, call’d the Graces. Aim. They were ever three in poetry. Mad. This was truth, sir. Tho. Sir, master Fitton’s there too. Shun. All the better. Aim. We may have a jeer, perhaps. Shun. Yes, you’ll drink, doctor, If there be any good meat, as much good wine As would lay up a Dutch Ambassador. [now, Tho. If he dine there, he’s sure to have good For Lickfinger provides the dinner. [meat, Aim. Who ! The glory of the kitchen ! that holds cookery A trade from Adam, quotes his broths and sallads, And swears he is not dead yet, but translated In some immortal crust, the paste of almonds ! Mad. The same. He holds no man can be a poet, That is not a good cook, to know the palates, And several tastes of the time. He draws all arts Out of the kitchen, but the art of poetry, Which he concludes the same with cookery. Shun. Tut, he maintains more heresies than that. He’ll draw the magisterium from a minced-pie, And prefer jellies to your julaps, doctor. Aim. I was at an olla podrida of his making, Was a brave piece of cookery : at a funeral! But opening the pot-lid, he made us laugh, Who had wept all day, and sent us such a tickling Into our nostrils, as the funeral feast Had been a wedding-dinner ! Shun. Give him allowance, And that but a moderate, he will make a syren Sing in the kettle, send in an Arion, In a brave broth, and of a watery green, Just the sea-colour, mounted on the back Of a grown conger, but in such a posture, As all the world would take him for a dolphin. Mad. He’s a rare fellow, without question ! but He holds some paradoxes. Aim. Ay, and pseudodoxes. Marry for most, he’s orthodox in the kitchen. Mad. And knows the clergy’s taste ! Aim. Ay, and the laity’s ! Shun. You think not of your time ; we shall come too late, If we go not presently. Mad. Away then. Shun. Sirs, You must get of this news, to store your office, Who dines and sups in the town; where, and with whom; It will be beneficial: when you are stored, And as we like our fare, we shall reward you. Nath. A hungry trade, ’twill be. Tho. Much like duke Humphry’s, But, now and then, as the wholesome proverb says, ’Twill ohsonare famem ambulando. Nath. Shut up the office, gentle brotlierThomas, Tho. Brother Nathaniel, I have the wine for you. I hope to see us, one day, emissaries. Nath. Why not? ’Slid, I despair not to be master ! [ Exeunt. —♦- SCENE II.— A Room in Pennyboy senior’s House. Enter Pennyboy sen. and Broker, at different doors. P. sen. How now 1 I think I was born under Hercules’ star, Nothing but trouble and tumult to oppress me! Why come you back ? where is your charge? Bro. I have brought A gentleman to speak with you. P. sen. To speak with me ! You know ’tis death for me to speak with any man. What is he ? set me a chair. Bro. He is the master Of the great office. P. sen. What ? Bro. The Staple of News, A mighty thing, they talk six thousand a-year. P. sen. Well, bring your six in. Where have you left Pecunia ? Bro. Sir, in Apollo, they are scarce set. P. sen. Bring six. [Exit Broker, and returns with Cymbal. Bro. Here is the gentleman. P. sen. He must pardon me, I cannot rise, a diseased man. Cym. By no means, sir; Respect your health and ease. P. sen. It is no pride in me, But pain, pain : What’s your errand, sir, to me ? Broker, return to your charge, be Argus-eyed, Aw'ake to the affair you have in hand, Serve in Apollo, but take heed of Bacchus. [Exit Broker. Go on, sir. Cym. I am come to speak with you. P. sen. ’Tis pain for me to speak, a very death ; But I will hear you. Cym. Sir, you have a lady, That sojourns with you. P. sen. Ha ! 1 am somewhat short In my sense too-- Cym. Pecunia. P. sen. O’ that side Very imperfect; on- Cym. Whom I would draw Oftener to a poor office, I am master of- P. sen. My hearing is very dead, you must speak quicker. Cym. Or, if it please you, sir, to let her sojourn, In part with me ; I have a moiety We will divide, half of the profits. P. sen. Ha! I hear you better now. How come they in ? Is it a certain business, or a casual ? For I am loth to seek out doubtful courses 304 the staple of news. ACT III. Run any hazardous paths ; I love straight ways, A just and upright man ! now all trade totters; The trade ot' money is fall’n two in the hundred: That was a certain trade, while the age was thrifty, And men good husbands, look’d unto their stocks, Had their minds bounded ; now the public riot Prostitutes all, scatters away in coaches, In footmen’s coats, and waiting women’s gowns, They must have velvet haunches, with a pox ! Now taken up, and yet not pay the use ! Bate of the use! I am mad with this time’s manners. [ Vehemently and loud. Cym. You said e’en now, it was death for you to speak. P. sen. Ay, but an anger, a just anger, as this Puts life in man. Who can endure to see [is, [Startsfrom his chair. The fury of men’s gullets, and their groins ? What fires, what cooks, what kitchens might be spared ? What stews, ponds, parks, coops, garners, maga¬ zines ? What velvets, tissues, scarfs, embroideries, And laces they might lack ? They covet things Superfluous still; when it were much more honour They could want necessary : what need hath nature Of silver dishes, or gold chamber-pots ? Of perfumed napkins, or a numerous family To see her eat ? poor, and wise, she requires Meat only ; hunger is not ambitious : Say, that you were the emperor of pleasures, The great dictator of fashions, for all Europe, And had the pomp of all the courts, and kingdoms, Laid forth unto the shew, to make yourself Gazed and admired at; you must go to bed, And take your natural rest: then all this vanisheth. Your bravery was but shown ; ’twas not possest: While it did boast itself, it was then perishing. Cym. This man has healthful lungs. [Aside. P. sen. All that excess Appear’d as little yours, as the spectators: It scarce fills up the expectation Of a few hours, that entertains men’s lives. Cym. He has the monopoly of sole-speaking. [Aside. Why, good sir, you talk all. P. sen. [angrily.'] Why should I not? Is it not under mine own roof, my ceiling ? Cym. But I came here to talk with you. P. sen. Why, an I will not Talk with you, sir! you are answer’d ; who sent Cym. No body sent for me- [for you? P. sen. But you came ; why then Go as you came, here’s no man holds you ; there, There lies your way, you see the door. Cym. This is strange ! P. sen. ’Tis my civility, when I do not relish The party, or his business. Pray you be gone, sir, I’ll have no venture in your shop, the office, Your bark of six, if ’twere sixteen, good sir. Cym. You are a rogue. P. sen. I think I am, sir, truly. Cym. A rascal, and a money-bawd. P. sen. My surnames. Cym. A wretched rascal— P. sen. You will overflow. And spill all. Cym. Caterpillar, moth, Horse-leech, and dung-worm——* P. sen. Still you lose your labour. I am a broken vessel, all runs out: A shrunk old dryfat. Fare you well, good six! [Exeunt. Cen. A notable tough rascal, this old Pennyboy ! right city-bred l Mirth. In Silver-street, the region of money, a ( good seat for an usurer. Tat. He has rich ingredients in him, I warrant you, if they tv ere extracted; a true receipt to make an alderman, an he were well wrought upon, according io art. Expect. I would fain see an alderman in chimia, that is, a treatise of aldermanity truly written ! Cen. To sheiv how much it differs from urbanity. Mirth. Ay, or humanity. Either would appear in this Pemiyboy, an he were rightly distill’d. But hoiv like you the news 9 you are gone from that. Cen. O, they are monstrous ! scurvy, and stale, and too exotic ! ill cook’d and ill-dish’d ! Expect. They were as good, yet, as butter could make them ! Tat. In a word, they were beastly buttered: he shall never come on my bread more, nor in my mouth, if I can help it. I have better news from the bake-house, by ten thousand parts , in a morn¬ ing ; or the conduits in Westminster: all the news of Tuttle-street, and both the Alm’ries, the two Sanctuaries, long and round Wool-staple, with King’s-street, and Canon-row to boot. Mirth. Ay, my gossip Tattle knew what fine slips grew in Gardener’s-lane; who kist the butcher's wife with the cow’s breath ; what matches ivere made in the Bowling-alley, and what bets were won and lost; how much grist went to the mill, and what besides: who conjured in Tuttle- fields, and how many, when they never came there ; and which boy rode upon doctor Lamb in the like¬ ness of a roaring lion, that run away with him in his teeth, and has not devour'd him yet. Tat. Why , I had it from my maid Joan Hear¬ say ; and she had it from a limb o’ the school , she says, a little limb of nine year old ; ivho told her, the master left out his conjuring booh one day, and he found it, and so the fable came about. But whether it ivere true or no, we gossips are bound to believe it, an’t be once out, and afoot.: how should we entertain the time else, or find ourselves in fashionable discourse, for all companies, if we do not credit all, and make more of it in the reporting 9 Cen. For my part, I believe it: an there were no wiser than I, I would have ne’er a cunning schoolmaster in England. I mean, a cunning man a schoolmaster ; that is, a conjurer, or a poet, or that had any acquaintance with a poet. They make all their scholars play-boys ! Is’t not a fine sight, to see all our children made interluders 9 Do we pay our money for this 9 we send them to learn their grammar and their Terence, and they learn their pi ay-books ! Well, they talk ice shall have no more parliaments, God bless us ! but an tve have, I hope, Zeal-of-the-land Busy and my gossip Rabbi Troubletruth ivill start up, and see tve shall have painful good ministers to keep school, and catechise our youth, and not teach them to speak plays, and act fables of false news, hi this manner, to the super-vexation of town and country with a wannion. SOEWB I. the staple of news. m ACT IV. SCENE I— The Devil Tavern. The Apollo. Pennyboy jun. Fitton, Shunfield, Almanac, Madrigal, Pennyboy Canter, and Picklock, discovered at table, P. jun. Come, gentlemen, let's breathe from healths awhile. This Lickfinger has made us a good dinner, For our Pecunia : what shall’s do with ourselves, While the women water, and the fidlers eat ? Fit. Let's jeer a little. P.jun. Jeer! what’s that ? Shun. Expect, sir. Aim. We first begin with ourselves, and then Shun. A game we use. [at you. Mad. We jeer all kind of persons We meet withal, of any rank or quality, And if we cannot jeer them, we jeer ourselves. P. Can. A pretty sweet society, and a grateful! Pick. Pray let’s see some. Shun. Have at you then, lawyer. They say there was one of your coat in Bethlem lately. Aim. I wonder all his clients were not there. Mad. They were the madder sort. Pick. Except, sir, one Like you, and he made verses. Fit. Madrigal, A jeer ! Mad. I know. Shun. But what did you do, lawyer, When you made love to Mistress Band, at dinner ? Mad. Why, of an advocate, he grew the client. P.jun. Well play’d, my poet. Madl. And shew’d the law of nature Was there above the common-law. Shun. Quit, quit! P. jun. Call you this jeering ! I can play at this, ’Tis like a ball at tennis. Fit. Very like ; But we were not well in. Aim. It is indeed, sir, When we do speak at volley, all the ill We can one of another. Shun. As this morning, (I would you had heard us,) of the rogue your Aim. That money-bawd. [uncle. Mad. We call’d him a coat-card, Of the last order. P. jun. What is that, a knave ? Mad. Some readings have it so, my manuscript Doth speak it varlet. P. Can. And yourself a fool Of the first rank, and one shall have the leading Of the right-hand file, under this brave commander. P. jun. What say’st thou, Canter. P. Can. Sir, I say this is A very wholesome exercise, and comely. Like lepers shewing one another their scabs, Or flies feeding on ulcers. P. jun. What news, gentlemen, Have you any news for after dinner ? methinks We should not spend our time unprofitably. P. Can. They never lie, sir, between meals ; ’gainst supper You may have a bale or two brought in Fit. This Canter Is an old envious knave 1 Aim. A very rascal! Fit. I have mark’d him all this meal, he has done nothing But mock, with scurvy faces, all we said. Aim. A supercilious rogue! he looks as if He were the patrico- Mad. Or arch-priest of Canters. Shun. He is some primate metropolitan rascal, Our shot-clog makes so much of him. Aim. The law, And he does govern him. P. jun. What say you, gentlemen ? Fit. We say, we wonder not, your man of law Should be so gracious with you ; but how it comes, This rogue, this Canter— P. jun. O, good words. Fit. A fellow That speaks no language- Aim. But what jingling gypsies, And pedlars trade in- Fit. And no honest Christian Can understand- P. Can. Why, by that argument You are all Canters, you, and you, and you: All the whole world are Canters, I will prove it In your professions. P. jun. 1 would fain hear this : But stay, my princess comes ; provide the while I’ll call for it anon. Enter Lickfinger, Pecunia, Statute, Band, Wax, and Mortgage. How fares your grace ? Lick. I hope the fare was good. Pec. Yes, Lickfinger, And we shall thank you for it, and reward you. Mad. Nay, I’ll not lose my argument, Lick < Before these gentlewomen, I affirm, [finger; The perfect and true strain of poetry Is rather to be given the quick cellar, Than the fat kitchen. [P.jun. takes Pecunia aside and courts her . Licit. Heretic, I see Thou art for the vain Oracle of the Bottle. The hogshead, Trismegistus, is thy Pegasus. Thence flows thy muse’s spring, from that hard Seduced poet, I do say to thee, [hoof. A boiler, range, and dresser were the fountains Of all the knowledge in the universe. And they’re the kitchens, where the master- cook— Thou dost not know the man, nor canst thou know him, Till thou hast serv’d some years in that deep school, That’s both the nurse and mother of the arts, And hear’st him read, interpret and demonstrate— A master-cook ! why, he’s the man of men, For a professor ! he designs, he draws, He paints, he carves, he builds, he fortifies, Makes citadels of curious fowl and fish, Some he dry-dishes, some motes round with broths; Mounts marrow bones, cuts fifty-angled custards, Rears bulwark pies, and for his outer works, He raiseth ramparts of immortal crust; And teacheth all the tactics, at one dinner : What ranks, what files, to put his dishes in; The whole art military. Then he knows The influence of the stars upon his meats, 396 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. ACT III. And all their seasons, tempers, qualities, And so to fit his relishes and sauces. He has nature in a pot, ’hove all the chy mists* Or airy brethren of the Rosie-cross. He is an architect, an engineer, A soldier, a physician, a philosopher, A general mathematician. Mad. It is granted. Lick. And that you may not doubt him for a poet— Aim. This fury shews, if there were nothing else, And ’tis divine ! I shall for ever hereafter Admire the wisdom of a cook. Band. And we, sir. P. jun. O, how my princess draws me with her And hales me in, as eddies draw in boats, [looks, Or strong Charybdis ships, that sail too near The shelves of love ! The tides of your two eyes, Wind of your breath, are such as suck in all That do approach you. Pec. Who hath changed my servant ? P. jun. Yourself, who drink my blood up with your beams, As doth the sun the sea ! Pecunia shines More in the world than he ; and makes it spring Where’er she favours ! please her but to show Her melting wrists, or bare her ivory hands, She catches still ! her smiles they are love’s fetters ! Her breasts his apples ! her teats strawberries ! Where Cupid, were he present now, would cry, Farewell my mother’s milk, here’s sweeter nectar ! Help me to praise Pecunia, gentlemen ; She is your princess, lend your wits. Fit. A lady The Graces taught to move 1 Aim. The Hours did nurse ! Fit. Whose lips are the instructions of all lovers. Aim. Her eyes their lights, and rivals to the stars ! Fit. A voice, as if that harmony still spake ! Aim. And polish’d skin, whiter than Venus’ foot ! Fit. Young Hebe’s neck, or Juno’s arms ! Aim. A hair, Large as the morning’s, and her breath as sweet As meadows after rain, and but new mown ! Fit. Leda might yield unto her for a face! Aim. Hermione for breasts ! Fit. Flora for cheeks ! Aim. And Helen for a mouth ! P. jun. Kiss, kiss ’em, princess. [Pecunia kisses them. Fit. The pearl doth strive in whiteness with her neck— Aim. But loseth by it : here the snow thaws One frost resolves another. [snow; Fit , O, she has A front too slippery to be look’d upon ! Aim. And glances that beguile the seer’s eyes ! P. jun. Kiss, kiss again. [Pecunia kisses Alm. and Fit.] What says my man of war ? Shun. I say she’s more than fame can promise of her, A theme that’s overcome with her own matter! Praise is struck blind and deaf and dumb with her: She doth astonish commendation! P. jun. Well pump’d, i’faith, old sailor : kiss him too. Though he be a slug. \_She kisses him.~] What says my poet-sucker ? He’s chewing his muse’s cud, I do see by him. Mad. I have almost done. I want but e’en ‘"0 finish. Fit. That’s the ill luck of all his works still. P jun. What ? Fit. To begin many works but finish none. P. jun. How does he do his mistress’ work ? Fit. Imperfect. Aim. I cannot think he finished that. P. jun. Let’s hear. Mad. It is a madrigal ; I affect that kind Of poem much. P. jun. And thence you have the name. Fit. It is his rose, he can make nothing else. Mad. I made it to the tune the fiddlers play’d. That we all liked so well. P. jun. Good ! read it, read it. Mad. The sun is father of all metals, you know, Silver and Gold. P. jun. Ay, leave your prologues, say. Mad. As bright as is the sun her sire, Or earth , her mother , in her best attire , Or Mint , the midwife, ivith her fire, Comes forth her grace ! P. jun. That Mint, the midwife, does well. The splendour of the wealthiest mines. The stamp and strength of all imperial lines , Both majesty and beauty shines , In her sweet face ! Fit. That’s fairly said of money. Look hoiv a torch of taper light , Or of that torch’s flame , a beacon bright ; P. jun. Good ! Mad. Now there, I want a line to finish, sir. P. jun. Or of that beacon's fire , moonlight. Mad. So takes she place l Fit. ’Tis good. Mad. And then I have a saraband- She makes good cheer , she keeps full boards , She holds a fair of knights and lords, A market of all offices , And shops of honours more or less. According to Pecunia's grace , The bride hath beauty , blood, and places The bridegroom virtue, valour , wit. And wisdom as he stands for it. P. jun. Call in the fiddlers. Enter the Fiddlers and Nicholas. Nick the boy shall sing it. Sweet princess, kiss him, kiss them all, dear madam, [Pecunia kisses them. And at the close vouchsafe to call them cousins. Pec. Sweet cousin Madrigal, and cousin Fitton, My cousin Shunfield, and my learned cousin — Pick. Al-manach, though they call him Al¬ manac. P. Can. Why, here's the prodigal prostitutes his mistress ! [Aside. P. jun. And Picklock, he must be a kinsman My man of law will teach us all to win, [too. And keep our own.—Old founder ! P. Can. Nothing, I sir. I am a wretch, a beggar : She the fortunate, Can want no kindred; we the poor know none. Fit. Nor none shall know by my consent. Aim. Nor mine. SCENE I. THE STAPLE OF NEWS. 39? P. jun. Sing, boy, stand here. Nich. [straps.] As bright , fyc. [Music. P. Can. Look, look, how all their eyes Dance in their heads, observe, scatter’d with lust, At sight of their brave idol! hew they are tickled With a light air, the bawdy saraband ! They are a kind of dancing engines all, And set by nature, thus to run alone To every sound ! all things within, without them, Move, but their brain, and that stands still! mere monsters, Here in a chamber, of most subtile feet, And make their legs in tune, passing the streets! These are the gallant spirits of the age, The miracles of the time ! that can cry up And down men’s wits, and set what rate on things Their half-brain’d fancies please ! now, pox upon See how solicitously he learns the jig, . [them ! As if it were a mystery of his faith. [Aside. Shun . A dainty ditty ! Fit. O, he’s a dainty poet, When he sets to it! P. jun. And a dainty scholar ! Aim. No, no great scholar; he writes like a Shun. Pox o’ your scholar ! [gentleman. P. Can. Pox o’ your distinction ! As if a scholar were no gentleman. With these, to write like a gentleman, will in time Become all one, as to write like an ass. These gentlemen! these rascals ; I am sick Of indignation at them. [Aside. P.jun. How do you like’t, sir ? Fit. ’Tis excellent! Aim. ’Twas excellently sung! Fit. A dainty air! P. jun. What says my Lickfinger ? Lick. I am telling mistress Band and mistress Statute, What a brave gentleman you are, and Wax, here ! How much ’twere better, that my lady’s grace Would here take up, sir, and keep house with you. P. jun. What say they ? Sta. We could consent, sir, willingly. Band. Ay, if we knew her grace had the least liking. Wax. We must obey her grace’s will and pleasure. P. jun. I thank you, gentlewomen.—Ply them, Give mother Mortgage, there- [Lickfinger. Lick. Her dose of sack. I have it for her, and her distance of hum. Pec. Indeed therein, I must confess, dear I am a most unfortunate princess. [cousin, Aim. And You still will be so, when your grace may help it! [The gallants gather all about Pecunia. Mad. Who’d lie in a room with a close-stool, and garlic, And kennel with his dogs that had a prince, Like this young Pennyboy, to sojourn with ! Shun. He’ll let you have your liberty- Aim. Go forth, Whither you please, and to what company- Mad. Scatter yourself amongst us- P. jun. Hope of Parnassus ! Thy ivy shall not wither, nor thy bays ; Thou shalt be had into her grace’s cellar, And there know sack and claret, all December : Thy vein is rich, and we must cherish it. Poets and bees swarm now a-days ; but yet There are not those good taverns, for the one sort, As there are flowery fields to feed the other. Though bees be pleased with dew, ask little wax, That brings the honey to her lady’s hive : The poet must have wine ; and he shall have it. Enter Pennyboy sen. hastily. P. sen. Broker ! wn&i, Broker ! P. jun. Who’s that, my uncle ? P. sen. I am abused ; where is my knave, my Broker ? Lick. Your Broker is laid out upon a bench, yonder; Sack hath seized on him, in the shape of sleep. Pick. He hath been dead to us almost this hour. P. sen. This hour ! P. Can. Why sigh you, sir? ’cause he’s at rest ? P. sen. It breeds my unrest. Ijick. Will you take a cup, And try if you can sleep ? P. sen. No, cogging Jack, Thou and thy cups too, perish. [Strikes the cup out of his hand. Shun. O, the sack ! Mad. The sack, the sack ! P. Can. A madrigal on sack ! Pick. Or rather an elegy, for the sack is gone. Pec. Why do you this, sir? spill the wine, and For Broker’s sleeping ? [rave, P. sen. What through sleep and sack, My trust is wrong’d : but I am still awake, To wait upon your grace, please you to quit This strange lewd company, they are not for you. Pec. No, guardian, I do like them very well. P. sen. Your grace’s pleasure be observ’d ; but you, Statute, and Band, and Wax will go with me ? Sta. Truly, we will not. Band. We will stay, and wait here Upon her grace, and this your noble kinsman. P. sen. Noble! how noble ! who hath made him noble ? P. jun. Why, my most noble Money hath, or shall, My princess here ; she that, had you but kept And treated kindly, would have made you noble, And wise too : nay, perhaps have done that for you, An act of parliament could not, made you honest. The truth is, uncle, that her grace dislikes Her entertainment, ’specially her lodging. Pec. Nay, say her jail! never unfortunate princess Was used so by a jailor. Ask my women : Band, you can tell, and Statute, how he has used me, Kept me close prisoner, under twenty bolts- Sta. And forty padlocks- Band. All malicious engines A wicked smith could forge out of his iron; As locks and keys, shackles and manacles, To torture a great lady. Sta. He has abused Your grace’s body. Pec. No, he would have done ; That lay not in his power : he had the use Of our bodies, Band and Wax, and sometimes Statute’s: But once he would have smothered me in a chest. And strangled me in leather, but that you Came to my rescue then, and gave me air. 898 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. ACT III. Sta. For which he cramm’d us up in a close box, All three together, where we saw u‘o sun In one six months. Wax. A cruel man he is ! Band. He has left my fellow Wax out in the cold— Sta. Till she was stiff as any frost, and crumbled Away to dust, and almost lost her form. Wax. Much ado to recover me. P. sen. Women jeerers ! Have you learn’d too the subtle faculty ? Come, I will shew you the way home, if drink Or too full diet have disguised you. Band. Troth, We have not any mind, sir, of return- Sta. To be bound back to back- Band. And have our legs Turn’d in, or writh’d about- Wax. Or else display’d- Sta. Be lodged with dust and fleas, as we were Band. And dieted with dogs-dung. [wont— P. sen. Why, you whores, My bawds, my instruments, what should I call you, Man may think base enough for you ? P. jan. Hear you, uncle : I must not hear this of my princess’ servants, And in Apollo, in Pecunia’s room. Go, get you down the stairs ; home, to your kennel, As swiftly as you can. Consult your dogs, The Lares of your family; or believe it, The fury of a footman and a drawer Hangs over you. Shun. Cudgel and pot do threaten A kind of vengeance. Mad. Barbers are at hand. Aim. Washing and shaving will ensue. Fit. The pump Is not far off; if ’twere, the sink is near, Or a good jordan. Mad. You have now no money. Shun. But are a rascal. P. sen. I am cheated, robb’d, Jeer’d by confederacy. Fit. No, you are kick’d, And used kindly, as you should be. Shun. Spurn’d From all commerce of men, who are a cur. [ They kick him. Aim. A stinking dog in a doublet, with foul Mad. A snarling rascal, hence ! [linen. Shun. Out! P. sen. Well, remember, I am cozen’d by my cousin, and his wliore. Bane o’ these meetings in Apollo ! Lick. Go, sir, You will be tost like Block in a blanket, else. P. jun. Down with him, Lickfinger. P. sen. Saucy Jack, away : Pecunia is a whore. P. jun. Play him down, fidlers, And drown his noise. [ Exeunt P. sen. and Lick- fin g hr.] —Who’s this ? Enter Piedmantle with Pecunia’s pedigree. Fit. O, master Piedmantle! Pie. By your leave, gentlemen. Fit. Her grace’s herald ? Aim. No herald yet, a heraldet. P. jun. What’s that ? P. Can. A canter. P. jun. O, thou saidst thou’dst prove us all so ! P. Can. Sir, here is one will prove himself so, So shall the rest, in time. [straight; Pec. My pedigree ? I tell you, friend, he must be a good scholar Can my descent: I am of princely race; And as good blood as any is in the mines Runs through my veins. I am, every limb, a princess ! Dutchess of mines was my great-grandmother ; And by the father’s side, I come from Sol: My grandfather was duke of Or, and match’d In the blood-royal of Ophir. Pie. Here is his coat. Pec. I know it, if I hear the blazon. Pie. He bears In a field azure, a sun proper, beamy, Twelve of the second. P. Can. How far is this from canting ? P. jun. Her grace doth understand it. P. Can. She can cant, sir. Pec. What be these, bezants ? Pie. Yes, an’t please your grace. Pec. That is our coat too, as we come from Or. What line is this ? Pie. The rich mines of Potosi, The Spanish mines in the West Indies. Pec. This ? Pie. The mines of Hungary, this of Barbary. Pec. But this, this little branch ? Pie. The Welsh mine that. Pec. I have Welsh blood in me too ; blaze, sir that coat. Pie. She bears, an’t please you, argent, three leeks vert, In canton or, and tassell’d of the first. P. Can. Is not this canting ? do you understand him ? P. jun. Not I ; but it sounds well, and the whole thing Is rarely painted : I will have such a scroll, Whate’er it cost me. Pec. Well, at better leisure We’ll take a view of it, and so reward you. P. jun. Kiss him, sweet princess, and style him a cousin. Pec. 1 will, if you will have it.—Cousin Pied¬ mantle. [.She kisses him. P. jun. I love all men of virtue, from my prin- Unto my beggar here, old Canter. On, [cess On to thy proof; whom prove you the next canter ? P. Can. The doctor here ; I will proceed with When he discourseth of dissection, [the learned. Or any point of anatomy ; that he tells you Of vena cava, and of vena porta, The meseraics, and the mesenterium : What does he else but cant ? or if he run To his judicial astrology, And trowl the Trine, the Quartile, and the Sextile Platic aspect, and Partile, with his Hyleg, Or Alchochoden, Cuspes, and Horoscope ; Does not he cant ? who here does understand him Aim. This is no canter, though ! P. Can. Or when my muster-master Talks of his tactics, and his ranks and files, His bringers-up, his leaders-on, and cries Faces about to the right hand , the left, Now, as you were ; then tells you of redoubts, Of cats, and cortines ; doth not he cant ? scene i. THE STAPLE OF NEWS. t %« P.jun. Yes, faith. P. Can. My egg-chin’d laureat here, when he comes forth With dimeters, and trimeters, tetrameters, Pentameters, hexameters, catalectics, H is hyper and his brachy-eatalectics, His pyrrhics, epitrites, and choriambics . What is all this, but canting ? Mad. A rare fellow ! Shun. Some begging scholar ! Fit. A decay’d doctor, at least! P. jun. Nay, I do cherish virtue, though in rags. P. Can. And you, mas courtier— [To Fitton. P. jun. Now he treats of you, Stand forth to him fair. P. Can. With all your fly-blown projects. And looks-out of the politics, your shut faces, And reserv’d questions and answers, that you game with; as, Is’t a clear business 9 ivill it manage icell 9 My name must not be used else. Here ’tivill dash — Your business has receiv'd a taint,—give off\ I may not prostitute myself. Tut, tut, That little dust I can blow off at pleasure .— Here's no such mountain, yet, in the whole work, But a light purse may level.—I ivill tide This affair for you ; give it freight, and pas¬ sage :— And such mint phrase, as’tis the worst of canting, By how much it affects the sense it has not. Fit. This is some other than he seems ! P. jun. How like you him ? Fit. This cannot be a canter ! P. jun. But he is, sir, And shall be still, and so shall you be too: We’ll all be canters. Now I think of it, A noble whimsy’s come into my brain : I’ll build a college, I and my Pecunia, And call it Canters College : sounds it well? Aim. Excellent! P. jun. And here stands my father rector, And you professors ; you shall all profess Something, and live there, with her grace and me, Your founders : I’ll endow it with lands and means, And Lickfinger shall be my master-cook. W^hat, is he gone ? P. Can. And a professor? P.jun . Yes. P. Can. And read Apicius de re culinaria To your brave doxy and you! P.jun. You, cousin Fitton, Shall, as a courtier, read the politics ; Doctor Almanac he shall read Astrology; Shunfield shall read the military arts. P. Can. As carving and assaulting the cold custard. P. jun. And Horace here, the art of poetry. His lyrics and his madrigals ; fine songs, Which we will have at dinner, steep’d in claret, And against supper, soused in sack. Mad. In troth, A divine whimsy! Shun. And a worthy work, Fit for a chronicle 1 P. jun. Is it not ? Shun. To all ages. P. jun. And Piedmantle shall give us all our arms : But Picklock, what wouldst thou be ? thou canst cant too. Pick. In all the languages in Westminster-hall Pleas, Bench or Chancery. Fee-farm, fee-tail, Tenant in dower, at will, for term of life, By copy of court-roll, knights service, homage, Fealty, escuage, soccage, or frank almoigne, Grand serjeantry, or burgage. P.jun. Thou appear’st, Kar e|oxV, a canter. Thou shalt read All Littleton’s Tenures to me, and indeed, All my conveyances. Pick. And make them too, sir : Keep all your courts, be steward cf your lands, Let all your leases, keep your evidences. But first, I must procure and pass your mortmain, You must have license from above, sir. P.jun. Fear not, Pecunia’s friends shall do it. P. Can. But I shall stop it. [Throws off his patched cloke, §c. and discovers himself. Your worship’s loving and obedient father , Your painf ul steward, „nd lost officer ! Who have done this, to try how you would use Pecunia when you had her ; which since I see, I will take home the lady to my charge, And these her servants, and leave you my cloke, To travel in to Beggars-bush ! A seat Is built already, furnish’d too, worth twenty Of your imagined structures, Canters College. Fit. It is his father 1 Mad. He’s alive, methinks. Aim. I knew he was no rogue. P. Can. Thou prodigal, Was I so careful for thee, to procure And plot with my learn’d counsel, master Picklock, This noble match for thee, and dost thou prostitute, Scatter thy mistress’ favours, throw away Her bounties, as they were red-burning coals. Too hot for thee to handle, on such rascals, Who are the scum and excrements of men ! If thouhadst sought out good and virtuous person* Of these professions, I had loved thee and them : For these shall never have that plea against me, Or colour of advantage, that I hate Their callings, but their manners and their vices. A worthy courtier is the ornament Of a king’s palace, his great master’s honour ; This is a moth, a rascal, a court-rat, [Points to Fitton. That gnaws the commonwealth with broking suits, And eating grievances! so, a true soldier, He is his country’s strength, his sovereign’s safety. And to secure his peace, he makes himself The heir of danger, nay the subject of it, And runs those virtuous hazards that this scarecrow Cannot endure to hear of. Shun. You are pleasant, sir. P. Can. With you I dare be! here is Piedmantle; ’Cause he’s an ass, do not I love a herald, Who is the pure preserver of descents, The keeper fair of all nobility, Without which all would run into confusion ? Were he a learned herald, I would tell him He can give arms and marks, he cannot honour; No more than money can make noble : it may Give place, and rank, but it can give no virtue : And he would thank me for this truth. This dog- leach, You style him doctor, ’cause he can compile An almanack, perhaps erect a scheme For my great madam’s monkey, when’t has ta’en 400 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. ACT IV. A glyster, and bewray’d the Ephemerides. Do I despise a learn’d physician, In calling him a quacksalver? or blast The ever-living garland, always green, Of a good poet, when I say his wreath Is pieced and patch’d of dirty wither’d flowers?—■ Away ! I am impatient of these ulcers, That I not call you worse. There is no sore Or plague but you to infect the times : I abhor Your very scent.—Come, lady, since my prodigal Knew not to entertain you to your worth, I’ll see if l have learn’d how to receive you, With more respect to you, and your fair train here. Farewell, my beggar in velvet, for to-day; To -morrow you may put on that grave robe, [Points to Ids patch'd cloke. And enter your great work of Canters College, Your work, and worthy of a chronicle ! [ Exeunt. Tat. Why, this was the worst of all, the cata¬ strophe ! Cen. The matter began to be good but now ; and he has spoil’d it all with his beggar there ! Mirth. A beggarly Jack it is, I warrant him, and akin to the poet. Tat. Like enough, for he had the chiefest part in his play, if you mark it. Expect. Absurdity on him, for a huge overgrown play-maker ! why should he make him live again, when they and we all thought him dead ? if he had left him to his rags, there had been an end of him. Tat. Ay, but set a beggar on horseback, he'll never lin till he be a gallop. Cen. The young heir grew a fine gentleman in this last act. Expect. So he did, gossip, and kept the best company. Cen. And feasted them and his mistress. Tat. And shew'd her to themall: was not jealous! Mirth. But very communicative and liberal, and began to be magnificent, if the churl his father would have let him alone. Cen. It was spitefully done of the poet, to make the chuff take him off in his height, when he was going to do ail his brave deeds. Expect. To found an academy. Tat. Erect a college. Expect. Plant his professors, and water his lec¬ tures. Mirth. With wine, gossips, as he meant to do ; — and then to defraud his purposes ! Expect. Kill the hopes of so many towardly young spirits .— Tat. As the doctors — Cen. And the courtiers ! I protest I was in love with master Fitton : he did wear all he had, from the hatband to the shoe-tie, so politically, and u ould stoop, and leer ! Mirth. And lie so in wait for a piece of wit, like a mouse-trap ! Expect. Ir, deed, gossip, so wovM the little doctor ; all his behaviour was mere glyster. O' my con¬ science, he would make any party’s physic in the world work ivith his discourse. Mirth. I wonder they would suffer it ; a foolish old fornicating father to ravish away his son’s mistress. Cen. And all her women at once, as he did. Tat. I would have flown in his gypsy’s face, Vfaith. Mirth. It was a plain piece of political inoest, and worthy to be brought afore the high commis¬ sion of wit. Suppose we were to censure him ; you are the youngest voice, gossip Tattle, begin. Tat. Marry, I would have the old coney-catcher cozen’d of all he has, in the young heir's defence, by his learned counsel, master Picklock ! Cen. I would rather the courtier had found out some trick to beg him for his estate ! Expect. Or the captain had courage enough to beat him ! Cen, Or the fine Madrigal-man in rhyme, to have run him out of the country, like an Irish rat. Tat. JVo, I would have master Piedmantle, her grace’s herald, to pluck down his hatchments, re¬ verse his coat armour, and nullify him for no gen¬ tleman. Expect. Nay, then, let master doctor dissect him, have him opened, and his tripes translated to Lick- finger, to make a probation-dish of. Cen. Tat. Agreed, agreed ! Mirth. Faith, I would have him fiat disinherited by a decree of court, bound to make restitution of the lady Pecunia, arid the use of her body, to his son. Expect. And her train to the gentlemen. Cen. And both the poet, and, himself, to ask them all forgiveness / Tat. And us too. Cen. In two large sheets of paper - Expect. Or to stand in a skin of parchment, which the court please. Cen. A nd those fill’d with news ! Mirth. And dedicated to the sustaining of the Staple ! Expect. Which their poet hath let fall most abruptly. Mirth. Bankruptly indeed. Cen. You say wittily, gossip ; and therefore let a protest go out against him. Mirth. A mournival of protests, or a gleek, at least. Expect. In all our names. Cen. For a decay'd wit - Expect. Broken - Tat. Non-solvent - Cen. And for ever forfeit - Mirth. To scorn of Mirth ! Cen. Censure ! Expect. Expectation ! Tat. Subsign'd, Tattle. Stay, they come again. scene i. THE STAPLE OF NEWS. 401 ACT Y. SCENE I.— Pennyboy’s Lodgings. Enter Pknnyboy jun. in the patched and ragged rfoke his father left him. P.jun. Nay, they are fit, as they had been made for me, And I am now a thing worth looking at, The same I said I would be in the morning ! No rogue, at a comitia of the canters, Did ever there become his parent’s robes Better than I do these. Great fool and beggar ! Why do not all that are of those societies Come forth, and gratulate me one of theirs ? Methinks I should be on every side saluted, Dauphin of beggars, prince of prodigals ! That have so fallen under the ears, and eyes, And tongues of all, the fable of the time, Matter of scorn, and mark of reprehension ! I now begin to see my vanity Shine in this glass, reflected by the foil!— Where is my fashioner, my feather man, My linener, perfumer, barber, all That tail of riot follow’d me this morning ? Not one ! but a dark solitude about me, Worthy my cloke and patches ; as I had The epidemical disease upon me ; And I’ll sit down with it. ISeats himself on the floor. Enter Tho. Barber. Tho. My master, maker ! How do you ? why do you sit thus on the ground, Hear you the news ? [sir ? P. jun. No, nor I care to hear none. Would 1 could here sit still, and slip away The other one and twenty, to have this Forgotten, and the day razed out, expunged In every ephemerides, or almanac! Or if it must be in, that time and nature Have decreed ; still let it be a day Of tickling prodigals about the gills, Deluding gaping heirs, losing their loves, And their discretions, falling from the favours Of their best friends and parents, their own hopes, And entering the society of canters. Tho. A doleful day it is, and dismal times Are come upon us ! I am clear undone. P. jun. How, Tom ? Tho. Why, broke, broke ; wretchedly broke. P.jun. Ha! Tho. Our Staple is all to pieces, quite dissolv’d. P. jun. Ha! Tho. Shiver’d, as in an earthquake! heaid you The crack and ruins ? we are all blown up ! [not Soon as they heard the Infanta was got from them, Whom they had so devoured in their hopes, To be their patroness, and sojourn with them, Our emissaries, register, examiner, Flew into vapour : our grave governor Into a subtler air, and is return’d, As we do hear, grand captain of the jeerers. I and my fellow melted into butter, And spoil’d our ink, and so the office vanish’d. The last hum that it made, was, that your father And Picklock are fall’n out, the man of law. P.jun. [starting up.~\ How! this awakes me from my lethargy. Tho. And a great suit is like to be between them: Picklock denies the feoffment, and the trust. Your father says he made of the whole estate Unto him, as respecting his mortality, When he first laid his late device, to try you. P. jun. Has Picklock then a trust ? Tho. I cannot tell. Here comes the worshipful- [P. jun. makes a sign to Tho., who retires behind the hangings. Enter Picklock. Pick. What, my velvet heir Turn’d beggar in mind, as robes ! P. jun. You see what case Your, and my father’s plots have brought me to. Pick. Your father’s, you may say, indeed, not mine. He’s a hard-hearted gentleman ; I am sorry To see his rigid resolution ! That any man should so put off affection, And human nature, to destroy his own, And triumph in a victory so cruel! He’s fallen out with me, for being yours, And calls me knave, and traitor to his trust; Says he will have me thrown over the bar- P. jun. Have you deserv’d it ? Pick. O, good Heaven knows My conscience, and the silly latitude of it; A narrow-minded man! my thoughts do dwell All in a lane, or line indeed ; no turning, Nor scarce obliquity in them. I still look Right forward, to the intent and scope of that Which he would go from now. P. jun. Had you a trust then ? Pick. Sir, I had somewhat will keep you still lord Of all the estate, if I be honest, as I hope I shall. My tender scrupulous breast Will not permit me see the heir defrauded, And like an alien thrust out of the blood. The laws forbid that I should give consent To such a civil slaughter of a son! P. jun. Where is the deed ? hast thou it with Pick. No. [thee? It is a thing of greater consequence, Than to be borne about in a black box, Like a Low-Country vorloffe, or Welsh brief. It is at Lickfinger’s, under lock and key. P. jun. O, fetch it hither. Pick. I have bid him bring it, That you might see it. P. jun. Knows he what he brings ? Pick. No more than a gardener’s ass, what roots he carries. P. jun. I was a sending my father, like an ass, A penitent epistle ; but I am glad I did not now. Pick. Hang him, an austere grape, That has no juice, but what is verjuice in him ! P. jun. I’ll shew you my letter. [ExiL Pick. Shew me a defiance ! If I can now commit father and son, And make my profits out of both ; commence A suit with the old man for his whole state, And go to law with the son’s credit, undo Both, both with their own money, it were a piece Worthy my night-cap, and the gown I wear, A Picklock’s name in law.—Where are you, sir? What do you do so long ? dd _ 402 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. act y. Re-enter Pennyboy jun. P. fun. 1 cannot find Where I have laid it; but I have laid it safe. Pick. No matter, sir; trust you unto my Trust, ’Tis that that shall secure you, an absolute deed! And I confess it was in trust for you, Lest any thing might have happen’d mortal to him : But there must be a gratitude thought on, And aid, sir, for the charges of the suit, Which will be great, ’gainst such a mighty man As is your father, and a man possest Of so much land, Pecunia and her friends. I am not able to wage law with him, Yet must maintain the thing, as my own right, Still for your good, and therefore must be bold To use your credit for moneys. P. jun. What thou wilt, So we be safe, and the trust bear it. Pick. Fear not, ’Tis he must pay arrearages in the end. We’ll milk him and Pecunia, draw their cream Before he get the deed into his hands. [down, My name is Picklock, but he’ll find me a padlock. Enter Pennyboy Canter. P. Can. How now! conferring with your learned counsel Upon the cheat! Are you of the plot to cozen me ? P. jun. What plot ? P. Can. Your counsel knows there, master Will you restore the trust yet ? [Picklock, Pick. Sir, take patience And memory unto you, and bethink you, What trust? where does’t appear? I have your deed ; Doth your deed specify any trust ? Is it not A perfect act, and absolute in law, Seal’d and deliver’d before witnesses, The day and date emergent ? P. Can. But what conference, What oaths and vows preceded ? Pick. I will tell you, sir, Since I am urged of those; as I remember. You told me you had got a grown estate, By griping means, sinisterly-— P. Can. How! Pick. And were Even weary cf it; if the parties lived From whom you had wrested it- P. Can. Ha! Pick. You could be glad To part with all, for satisfaction : But since they had yielded to humanity, And that just Heavenhadsent youforapunisliment, You did acknowledge it, this riotous heir, That would bring all to beggary in the end, And daily sow’d consumption where he went— P. Can. You would cozen both then ? your con¬ federate too ? Pick. After a long mature deliberation, You could not think where better how to place P. Can. Than on you, rascal ? [it-- Pick. What you please, in your passion; But with your reason, you will come about, And think a faithful and a frugal friend To be preferr’d. P. Can. Before a son ? Pick. A prodigal, A tub without a bottom, as you term’d him! For which 1 might return you a vow or two, And seal it with an oath of thankfulness, I not repent it, neither have I cause ; yet- P. Can. Forehead of steel, and mouth of brass, hath impudence Polish’d so gross a lie, and dar’st thou vent it ? Engine, composed of all mixt metals ! hence, I will not change a syllable with thee more. Till I may meet thee at a bar in court, Before thy judges. Pick. Thither it must come, Before I part with it to you, or you, sir. P. Can. I will not hear thee. P. jun. Sir, your ear to me though— Not that I see through his perplexed plots, And hidden ends ; nor that my parts depend Upon the unwinding this so knotted skean, Do I beseech your patience. Unto me, He hath confest the trust. Pick. How ! I confess it ? P. jun. Ay, thou false man. P. Can. Stand up to him, and confront him. Pick. Where, when, to whom ? P. jun. To me, even now, and here : Canst thou deny it ? Pick. Can I eat or drink, Sleep, wake, or dream, arise, sit, go, or stand, Do any thing that’s natural? P. jun. Yes, lie It seems thou canst, and perjure ; that is natural. Pick. 0 me, what times are these of frontless carriage! An egg of the same nest! the father’s bird ! It runs in a blood, I see. P. jun. I’ll stop your mouth. Pick. With what ? P. jun. With truth. Pick. With noise ; I must have witness : Where is your witness ? you can produce witness ? P. jun. As if my testimony were not twenty, Balanced with thine! Pick. So say all prodigals, Sick of self-love ; but that’s not law, young Scat- I live by law. [tergood ; P. jun. Why, if thou hast a conscience, That is a thousand witnesses. Pick. No court Grants out a writ of summons for the conscience, That I know, nor subpoena, nor attachment. I must have witness, and of youi producing, Ere this can come to hearing, and it must Be heard on oath and witness. P. jun. Come forth, Tom ! Re-enter Tho. Barber. Speak what thou heard’st, the truth, and the whole truth, And nothing but the truth. What said this varlet ? Pick. A rat behind the hangings ? Tho. Sir, he said, It was a trust! an act, the which your father Had will to alter ; but his tender breast Would not permit to see the heir defrauded , And , like an alien , thrust out of the blood. The laws forbid that he should give consent To such a civil slaughter of a son - P. jun. And talk’d of a gratuity to be given, And aid unto the charges of the suit; Which he was to maintain in his own name, But for my use, he said. P. Can. It is enough. scene I. THE STAPLE OF NEWS. 403 Tho. And he would milk Pecunia , and draw Her cream , before you got the trust again, [down P. Can. Your ears are in my pocket, knave, go The little while you have them. [shake ’em Pick. You do trust To your great purse. P. Can. I have you in a purse-net, Good master Picklock, with your worming brain, And wriggling engine-head of maintenance, Which I shall see you hole with very shortly ! A fine round head, when those two lugs are off, To trundle through a pillory ! You are sure You heard him speak this ? P- jun. Ay, and more. Tho. Much more. Pick. I’ll prove yours maintenance and combi- And sue you all. [nation, P. Can. Do, do, my gowned vulture, Crop in reversion ! I shall see you quoited Over the bar, as bargemen do their billets. Pick. This ’tis, when men repent of their good deeds, And would have ’em in again—They are almost mad : But I forgive their lucida intervalla. Enter Lickfinger. O, Lickfinger! come hither. [Comes forward with Lickfinger ; while P. jun. discovers the plot, aside, to his father, and that he is in possession of the deed. Where’s my writing? Lick. I sent it you, together with your keys. Pick. How ? Lick. By the porter that came for it from you, And by the token, you had given me the keys, And bade me bring it. Pick. And why did you not ? Lick. Why did you send a countermand ? Pick. Who, I ? Lick. You, or some other you, you put in trust. Pick. In trust! Lick. Your trust’s another self, you know ; And without trust, and your trust, how should he Take notice of your keys, or of my charge ? Pick. Know you the man? Lick. I know he was a porter, And a seal’d porter ; for he bore the badge Od his breast, I am sure. Pick. I am lost: a plot! I scent it. Lick. Why, and I sent it by the man you sent, Whom else I had not trusted. Pick. Plague on your trust! I am truss’d up among you— P. jun. Or you may be. Pick. In mine own halter ; I have made the noose. [Exit. P. jun. What was it, Lickfinger ? Lick. A writing, sir, He sent for’t by a token ; I was bringing it, But that he sent a porter, and he seem’d A man of decent carriage. P. Can. ’Twas good fortune ! To cheat the cheater, was no cheat, but justice. Put off your rags, and be yourself again : This act of piety and good affection Hath partly reconciled me to you. P.jun. Sir— P. Can. No vows, no promises; too much protestation Makes that suspected oft, we would persuade. Lick. Hear you the news ? P. jun. The office is down, how should we F Lick. But of your uncle ? P. jun. No. Lick. He is run mad, sir. P. Can. How, Lickfinger ? Lick. Stark staring mad, your brother, He has almost kill’d his maid— P. Can. Now heaven forbid ! Lick. But that she is cat-lived and squirrel- limb’d, With throwing bed-staves at her : he has set wide His outer doors, and now keeps open house For all the passers by to see his justice. First, he has apprehended his two dogs, As being of the plot to cozen him ; And there he sits like an old worm of the peace, Wrapp’d up in furs, at a square table, screwing, Examining, and committing the poor curs To two old cases of close-stools, as prisons : The one of which he calls his Lollard’s tower, T’other his Block-house, ’cause his two dogs’ Are Block and Lollard. [names P.jun. This would be brave matter Unto the jeerers. P. Can. Ay, if so the subject Were not so wretched. Lick. Sure I met them all, I think, upon that quest. P. Can. ’Faith, like enough : The vicious still are swift to show their natures. I’ll thither too, but with another aim, • If all succeed well, and my simples take. [Exeunt. -♦- SCENE II.— A Room in Pennyboy senior’s House. Pennyboy sen. discovered sitting at table with papers, <$c. before him ; Porter, and Block and Lollard (two dogs., P. sen. Where are the prisoners ? For. They are forth-coming, sir, Or coming forth, at least. P. sen . The rogue is drunk, Since I committed them to his charge.—Come hither, Near me, yet nearer; breathe upon me. [He smells him.'] Wine ! Wine o’ my worship ! sack, Canary sack ! Could not your badge have been drunk with fulsom Or beer, the porters element? but sack! [ale, Por. I am not drunk ; we had, sir, but one pint, An honest carrier and myself. P. sen. Who paid for’t ? Por. Sir, I did give it him. P. sen. What, and spend sixpence ! A frock spend sixpence ! sixpenoe ! Por. Once in a year, sir. P. sen. In seven years, varlet ! know’st thou what thou hast done, What a consumption thou hast made of a state ? It might please heav’n (a lusty knave and young) To let thee live some seventy years longer, Till thou art fourscore and ten, perhaps a hundred. Say seventy years ; how many times seven in seventy ? Why seven times ten, is ten times seven, mark me, I will demonstrate to thee on my fingers. Sixpence in seven year, use upon use, Grows in that first seven year to be a twelve-pence ! 404 THE STAPLE OF NEWS. act y That, in the next, two shillings ; the third, four shillings ; The fourth seven year, eight shillings ; the fifth, sixteen ; The sixth, two and thirty; the seventh, three pound four ; The eighth, six pound and eight; the ninth, twelve pound sixteen; And the tenth seven, five and twenty pound Twelve shillings. This thou art fall’n from by thy riot, Should’st thou live seventy years, by spending sixpence Once in the seven : but in a day to waste it! There is a sum that number cannot reach ! Out of my house, thou pest of prodigality, Seed of consumption, hence! a wicked keeper Is oft worse than the prisoners. There’s thy penny, Four tokens for thee. Out, away ! [ Exit Por.] My dogs May yet be innocent and honest: if not, I have an entrapping question or two more, To put unto them, a cross intergatory, And I shall catch them. Lollard ! Peace : [He calls forth Lollard. What whispering was that you had with Mortgage, When you last lick’d her feet ? the truth now. Ha ! Did you smell she was going 9 Put down that. And not , Not to return 9 You are silent: goodl And when Leap’d you on Statute? As she went forth9 Consent! There was consent, as she was going forth. ’Twould have been fitter at her coming home, But you knew that she would not 9 To your tower : You are cunning, are you? I will meet your craft. [Commits him again. Block, show your face; leave your caresses : tell me, [Calls forth Bloch. And tell me truly, what affronts do you know Were done Pecunia, that she left my house? None , say you so ? not that you know 9 or will know 9 I fear me, I shall find you an obstinate cur. Why did your fellow Lollard cry this morning ? ' Cause Broker kick'd him 9 Why did Broker kick him ? Because he pist against my lady's goivn 9 Why, that was no affront, no, no distaste. You knew of none 9 you are a dissembling tyke, To your hole again, your Block-house. [Commits him.'] Lollard, arise. Where did you lift your leg up last, ’gainst what ? Are you struck dummerer now, and whine for mercy ? Whose kirtle was’t you gnaw’d too, mistress Band’s ? And Wax’s stockings 9 Who ? Did Bloch be- scumber Statute s white suit , with the parchment lace there ; And Broker's satin doublet 9 All will out, They had offence, offence enough to quit me. Appear, Block, foh ! ’tis manifest; he shows it, Should he forswear’t, make all the affidavits Against it, that he could afore the bench And twenty juries, he would be convinced. He bears an air about him doth confess it. Enter Cymbal, Fitton, Shunfield, Almanac, and Madrigal behind. To px*ison again, close prison. Not you, Lollard; You may enjoy the liberty of the house : And yet there is a quirk come in my head, For which I must commit you too, and close. Do not repine, it will be better for you— Cym. This is enough to make the dogs mad too: Let’s in upon him. [They come forward. P. sen. How now, what’s the matter ? Come you to force the prisoners ? make a rescue ? Fit. We come to bail your dogs. P. sen. They are not bailable, They stand committed without bail or mainprise, Your bail cannot be taken. Shun. Then the truth is, We come to vex you. Aim. Jeer you. Mad. Bait you, rather. Cym. A baited usurer will be good flesh. Fit. And tender, -we are told. P. sen. Who is the butcher, Amongst you, that is come to cut my throat ? Shun. You would die a calf’s death fain; but Is meant you. [’tis an ox’s Fit. To be fairly knock’d o’ the head. Shun. With a good jeer or two. P. sen. And from your jaw-bone, Don Assinigo ? Cym. Shunfield, a jeer ; you have it. Shun. I do confess, a swashing blow; but, Snarl, You that might play the third dog, for your teeth You have no money now? Fit. No, nor no Mortgage. Aim. Nor Band. Mad. Nor Statute. Cym. No, nor blushet Wax. P. sen. Nor you no office, as I take it. Shun. Cymbal, A mighty jeer! Fit. Pox o’ these true jests, I say ! Mad. He’ll turn the better jeerer. Aim. Let’s upon him, And if we cannot jeer him down in wit- Mad. Let’s do’t in noise. Shun. Content. Mad. Charge, man of war. Aim. Lay him aboard. Shun. We’ll give him a broadside first. Fit. Where is your venison now? Cym. Your red-deer pies ? Shun. With your baked turkeys ? Aim. And your partridges? Mad. Your pheasants and fat swans ! P. sen. Like you, turn’d geese. Mad. But such as will not keep your Capitol. Shun. You were wont to have your breams— Aim. And trouts sent in. Cym. Fat carps and salmons. Fit. Ay, and now and then, An emblem of yourself, an o’ergrown pike. P. sen. You are a jack, sir. Fit. You have made a shift To swallow twenty such poor jacks ere now. Aim. If he should come to feed upon poor John— ATad. Or turn pure Jack-a-lent after all this ? Fit. Tut, he will live like a grasshopper- Mad. On dew. Shun. Or like a bear, with licking his own claws. Cym. Ay, if his dogs were away. 8CENE II. THE STAPLE OF NEWS. 405 Aim. He’ll eat tliem first, While they are fat. Fit. Faith, and when they are gone, Here’s nothing to be seen beyond. Cym. Except His kindred spiders, natives of the soil. Aim. Dust he will have enough here, to breed fleas. Mad. But by that time he’ll have no blood to rear them. Shun. He will be as thin as a lanthorn, we shall see through him. Aim. And his gut colon tell his intestina. P. sen. Rogues ! rascals ! [The dogs hark. (Bow, wow!) Fit. He calls his dogs to his aid. Aim. O, they but rise at mention of his tripes. Cym. Let them alone, they do it not for him. Mad. They bark se defendendo. Shun. Or for custom, As commonly curs do, one for another. Enter Liokfinger. Lick. Arm, arm you, gentlemen jeerers! the old Canter Is coming in upon you with his forces, The gentleman that was the Canter. Shun. Hence! Fit. Away ! Cym. What is he ? Aim. Stay not to ask questions. Fit. He is a flame. Shun. A furnace. Aim. A consumption, Kills where he goes. [Cym. Fit. Mad. Alm. and Shun, run off. Lick. See ! the whole covey is scatter’d ; ’Ware, ’ware the hawks! I love to see them fly. Enter Pennyboy Canter, Pennyboy jun., Pecunia, Sta¬ tute, Band, Wax, and Mortgage. P. Can. You see by this amazement and dis¬ traction, What your companions were, a poor, affrighted, And guilty race of men, that dare to stand | No breath of truth ; but conscious to themselves Of their no-wit, or honesty, ran routed At every panic terror themselves bred. 1 Where else, as confident as sounding brass, Their tinkling captain, Cymbal, and the rest, Dare put on any visor, to deride The wretched, or with buffoon license jest At whatsoe’er is serious, if not sacred. P. sen. Who’s this ? my brother ! and restored to life ! [wits ; P. Can. Yes, and sent hither to restore your If your short madness be not more than anger Conceived for your loss! which I return you. See here, your Mortgage, Statute, Band, and Wax, Without your Broker, come to abide with you, And vindicate the prodigal from stealing Away the lady. Nay, Pecunia herself Is come to free him fairly, and discharge All ties, but those of love unto her person, To use her like a friend, not like a slave, Or like an idol. Superstition Doth violate the deity it worships, No less than scorn doth; and believe it, brother, The use of things is all, and not the store : Surfeit and fulness have kill’d more than famine. The sparrow with his little plumage flies, While the proud peacock, overcharg’d with pens, Is fain to sweep the ground with his grown train, And load of feathers. P. sen. Wise and honour’d brother! None but a brother, and sent from the dead, As you are to me, could have alter’d me : I thank my destiny, that is so gracious. Are there no pains, no penalties decreed From whence you come, to us that smother money In chests, and strangle her in bags ? P. Can. O, mighty, Intolerable fines, and mulcts imposed, Of which I come to warn you: forfeitures Of whole estates, if they be known and taken. P. sen. I thank you, brother, for the light you have given me; I will prevent them all. First, free my dogs, Lest what I have done to them, and against law, Be a praemunire ; for by Magna Charta They could not be committed as close prisoners, My learned counsel tells me here, my cook: And yet he shew’d me the way first. Lick. Who did? I! I trench the liberty of the subjects ! P. Can. Peace, Picklock, your guest, that Stentor, hath infected you, Whom I have safe enough in a wooden collar. P. sen. Next, I restore these servants to theii lady, With freedom, heart of cheer, and countenance ; It is their year and day of jubilee. Omnes. We thank you, sir. P. sen. And lastly, to my nephew I give my house, goods, lands, all but my vices, And those I go to cleanse; kissing this lady, Whom I do give him too, and join their hands. P. Can. If the spectators will join theirs, we thank ’em. P. jun. And wish they may, as I, enjov Pecunia Pec. And so Pecunia herself doth wisu, That she may still be aid unto their uses, Not slave unto their pleasures, or a ty’ ant Over their fair desires ; but teach them all The golden mean ; the prodigal how to live ; The sordid and the covetous how to die: That, with sound mind; this, safe frugality. [Exeunt. THE EPILOGUE. Thus have you seen the maker's double scope , To profit and delight; wherein our hope Is, though the clout we do not always hit , It will not he imputed to his wit :— A tree so tried, and bent, as 'twillnot start: Nor doth he often crack a string of art; Though there may other accidents as strange Happen, the weather of your looks may change , Or some high wind of misconceit arise, To cause an alteration in our skies: If so, we are sorry , that have so misspent Our time and tackle ; yet he's confident, And vows, the next fair day he'll have us shoot The same match o'er for him, if you'll come to't . THE NEW INN; OR, THE LIGHT HEART TO THE READER. Ip thou bo such.. I make thee my patron, and dedicate the piece to thee: if not so much, would I had been at the charge of thy better literature. Howsoever, if thou canst hut spell, and join my sense, there is more hope of thee, than of a hundred fastidious impertinents, who were there present the first day, yet never made piece of their prospect the right way. What did they come for, then? thou wilt ask me. I will as punctually answer: To see, and to be seen: to make a general muster of themselves in their clothes of credit; and possess the stage against the play: to dislike all, but mark nothing. And by their confidence of rising between the acts, in oblique lines, make affidavit to the whole house, of their not understanding one scene. Armed with this prejudice, as the stage furniture, or arras- clothes, they were there, as spectators, away : for the faces in the hangings, and they, beheld alike. So I wish they may do ever ; and do trust myself and my book, rather to thy rustic candour, than all the pomp of their pride, and solemn ignorance to boot. Fare thee well, and fall to. Read. But first, THE ARGUMENT. Ben Jonson. The Lord Frampul, a noble gentleman, well educated, and bred a scholar in Oxford, was married young, to a virtuous gentlewoman, Sylly’s daughter of the South, whose worth, though he truly enjoyed, he never could rightly value; but, as many green husbands, (given over to their extravagant delights, and some peccant humours of their own,) occasioned in his over-loving wife so deep a melancholy, by his leaving her in the time of her lying-in of her second daughter, she having brought him only two daughters, Frances and Lsetitia: and (out of her hurt fancy) inter¬ preting that to be a cause of her husband’s coldness in affection, her not being blest with a son, took a resolution with herself, after her month’s time, and thanksgiving rightly in the church, to quit her home, with a vow never to return, till by reducing her lord, she could bring a wished happiness to the family. He in the mean time returning, and hearing of this departure of his lady, began, though over-late, to resent the injury he had done her: and out of his cock-brain’d resolution, entered into as solemn a quest of her. Since when, neither of them had been heard of. But the eldest daughter, Frances, by the title of Lady Frampul, enjoyed the estate her sister being lost young, and is the sole relict of the family. Hero begins our Comedy. ACT I. This lady, being a brave, bountiful lady, and enjoying this free and plentiful estate, hath an ambitious disposi¬ tion to be esteemed the mistress of many servants, but loves none. And hearing of a famous New-Inn, that is kept by a merry host, call’d Goodstock, in Barnet, invites some lords and gentlemen to wait on her thither, as well to see the fashions of the place, as to make themselves merry, with the accidents on the by. It happens there is a melancholy gentleman, one Master Lovel, hath been lodged there some days before in the inn, who (unwilling to be seen) is surprised by the lady, and invited by Prudence, the lady’s chambermaid, who is elected go¬ verness of the sports in the inn for that day, and install’d their sovereign. Lovel is persuaded by the host, and yields to the lady’s invitation, which concludes the first act. Having revealed his quality before to the host. ACT II. In this, Prudence and her lady express their anger con¬ ceiv’d at the tailor, who had promised to make Prudence a new suit, and bring it home, as on the eve, against this day. But ho failing of his word, the lady had com¬ manded a standard of her own best apparel to be brought down; and Prudence is so fitted. The lady being put in mind, that she is there alone without other company of women, borrows, by the advice of Prue, the host’s son of the house, whom they dress, with the host’s consent, like a lady, and send out the coachman with the empty coach, as for a kinswoman of her ladyship’s. Mistress Lastitia Sylly, to bear her company: who attended with his nurse, an old charewoman in the inn, drest odly by the host’s counsel, is believed to bo a lady of quality, and so receiv’d, entertain’d, and love made to her by the young Lord Beaufort, &c. In the mean time the Fly of the Inn is discover’d to Colonel Glorious, with the Militia of the house, below the stairs, in the Drawer, Tapster, Chambei- lain, and Hostler, inferior Officers; with the Coachman Trundle, Ferret, &c. And the preparation is made to the lady’s design upon Lovel, his upon her, and the sovereign’s upon both. ACT IH. Here begins the Epitasis , or business of the Play. Lovel, by the dexterity and wit of the sovereign of the sports, Prudence, having two hours assign’d him of free colloquy, and love-making to his mistress, one after dinner, the other after supper, the court being set, is de¬ manded by the Lady Frampul, what love is : as doubting if there were any such power, or no. To whom he, first by definition, and after by argument, answers; proving and describing the effects of love so vively, as she who had derided the name of love before, hearing his discourse, is now so taken both with the man and his matter, as she confesseth herself enamour’d of him, and, but for the ambition she hath to enjoy the other hour, had presently declared herself: which gives both him and the spectators occasion to think she yet dissembles, notwithstanding the payment of her kiss, which he celebrates. And the court dissolves, upon news brought of a new lady, a newer coach, and a new coachman call’d Barnaby. ACT IV. The house being put into a noise, with the rumour of this new lady, and there being drinking below in the court, the colonel, Sir Glorious, with Bat Burst, a broken citizen, and Hodge Huffie, his champion; she falls into their hands, and being attended but with one footman, is uncivilly entreated by them, and a quarrel commenced, but is rescued by the valour of Lovel; which beheld by the Lady Frampul, from the window, she is invited up for safety, where coming, and conducted by the host, her gown is first discovered to bo the same with the whole THE NE W INN. 407 suit, which was bespoken for Prue, and she herself, upon examination, found to be Pinnacia Stuff, the tailor’s wife, who was wont to he pre-occupied in all his customers’ best clothes, by the footman her husband. They are both con¬ demned and censured, she stript like a doxy, and sent home a-foot. In the interim, the second hour goes on, and the question, at suit of the Lady Frampul, is changed from love to valour; which ended, he receives his second kiss, and, by the rigour of the sovereign, falls into a fit of melancholy, worse, or more desperate than the first. ACT Y. Is the catastrophe, or knitting up of all, where Fly brings word to the host of the Lord Beaufort’s being married privately in the New Stable, to the supposed lady, his son; which the host receives as an omen of mirth; but complains that Lovel is gone to bed melan¬ cholic, when Prudence appears drest in the new suit, applauded by her lady, and employed to retrieve Lovel. The host encounters them, with this relation of Lord Beaufort’s marriage, which is seconded by the Lord Lati¬ mer, and all the servants of the house. In this while, Lord Beaufort comes in, and professes it, calls for his bed and bride-bowl to be made ready ; the host forbids both, shews whom he hath married, and discovers him to be his son, a boy. The lord bridegroom confounded, the nurse enters like a frantic bedlamite, cries out on Fly, says she is undone in her daughter, who is confessed to be the Lord Frampul’s child, sister to the other lady, the host to be their father, she his wife. He finding his children, bestows them one on Lovel, the other on the Lord Beaufort, the Inn upon Fly, who had been a gypsy with him; offers a portion with Prudence, for her wit, which is refused ; and she taken by the Lord Latimer, to wife; for the crown of her virtue and goodness. And all are contented. DRAMATIS PERSONAE. WITH SOME SHOUT CHARaCTERISM OF THE CHIEF ACTORS. Goodstock, the Host, (play'd well,) alias the Lord Fram¬ pul. He pretends to be a gentleman and a scholar, neg¬ lected by the times, turns host, and keeps an Inn, the sign of the Light-Heart, in Barnet: is supposed to have one only son, but is found to have none, but two daugh¬ ters, Frances, and Ljetitia, who was lost young, 8,c. Lovel, a complete Gentleman, a soldier and a scholar, is a melancholy guest in the Inn: first quarrell’d, after much honoured and beloved by the host. He is known to have been Page to the old Lord Beaufort, follow'd him in the French wars, after a companion of his studies, and left guardian to his son. He is assisted in his love to the Lady Frampul, by the host and the chambermaid Prudence. He was one that acted well too. Ferret, who is called Stote and Vermin, is Lovel’s /Ser¬ vant, a fellow of a quick, nimble wit, knows the manners and affections of people, and can make profi table and timely discoveries of them. Frank, supposed a boy, and the host’s son, borrowed to be drest for a lady, and set up as a stale by Prudence, to catch Beaufort or Latimer, proves to beltMimA, sister to Frances, and Lord Frampul’s younger daughter, stolen by a beggar woman, shorn, put into boy’s apparel, sold to the host, and brought up by him as his son. Nurse, a poor Chare-Woman in the Inn, with one eye, that tends the boy, is thought the Irish beggar that sold him, but is truly the Lady Frampul, who left her home melancholic, and jealous that her lord loved her not, be¬ cause she brought him none but daughters; and lives unknown to her husband, as he to her. Frances, supposed the Lady Frampul, being reputed his sole daughter and heir, the barony descending upon her, is a lady of great fortune, and beauty, but phantastical; thinks nothing a felicity, but to have a multitude of ser¬ vants, and be call’d mistress by them, comes to the Inn to be merry, with a chambermaid only, and her servaiits her guests, 8$c. Prudence, the Chambermaid, is elected sovereign of the sports in the Inn, governs all, commands, and so orders, as the Lord Latimer is exceedingly taken with her, and takes her to his wife, in conclusion. Lord Latimer, and Lord Beaufort, are a pair of young lords, servants and guests to the Lady Frampul ; but as Latimer falls enamour’d of Prudence, so doth Beau¬ fort on the boy, the host’s son, set up for Ljetitia, the younger sister, which she proves to be indeed. Sir Glorious Tipto, a Knight, and Colonel, hath the luck to think well of himself, without a rival, talks gloriously of any thing, but very seldom is in the right. He is the lady’s guest, and her servant too ; but this day utterly neglects his service, or that him. For he is so enamour’d on the Fly of the Inn, and the Militia below stairs, zvith Hodge Huffle and Bat Burst, guests that come in. and Trundle, Barnaey, §c. as no other society rclisheth with him. Fly, is the Parasite of the Inn, visitor-general of the house, one that had been a strolling gypsy, but now is reclaim'd, to be inflamer of the reckonings. Pierce, the Drawer, knighted by the Colonel, styled Sir Pierce, and Young Anon, one of the chief of the in¬ fantry. Jordan, the Chamberlain, another of Vie Militia, and an Officer, commands the tertia of the beds. Jug, the Tapster, a thoroughfare of news. Peck, the Hostler. Bat Burst, a broken Citizen, an in-and-in man. Hodge Huffle, a Cheater, his Champion. Nick Stuff, the Ladies’ Tailor. Pinnacia Stuff, his Wife. Trundle, a Coachman. Barnaey, a hired Coachman. Staggers, the Smith, \ , , Tree, the Sadler, j only talked on > SCENE, —Barnet. THE PROLOGUE. You are welcome , welcome all to the New Inn: Though the old house, we hope our cheer will win Your acceptation: we have the same cook Still, and the fat, who sags, you shall not look Long for your bill of fare, but every dish Be serv’d in i’ the time, and to your wish : any thing be set to a wrong taste, ’Tis not the meat there, but the mouih’s displaced-, Remove but that sick palate, all is well. For this the secure dresser bade me tell, Nothing more hurts just meetings, than a eroded ; Or, when the expectation’s grown too loud : That the nice stomach would have this or that, And being ask’d, or urged, it knows an' what 408 When sharp or sweet, have been too much a feast, And, both outlived the palate of the guest. Beware to bring such appetites to the stage, They do confess a weak, sick, queasy age ; And a shrewd grudging too of ignorance. When clothes and faces ’bove the men advance : ACT 1. Hear for your health, then, but at any hand, Before you judge, vouchsafe to understand, Concoct, digest: if then, it do not hit, Some are in a consumption of wit, Deep he dares say, he will not think, that all — For hectics are not epidemical . THE NEW INN. ACT I. SCENE I.— A Room in the Inn. Enter Host, followed by Ferret. Host. I am not pleased, indeed, you are in the right; Nor is my house pleased, if my sign could speak, The sign of the Light Heart. There you may So may your master too, if he look on it. [read it; A heart weigh’d with a feather, and outweigh’d too: A brain-child of my own, and I am proud on’t! And if his worship think, here, to be melancholy, In spite of me or my wit, he is deceived ; I will maintain the rebus against all humours, And all complexions in the body of man, That is my word, or in the isle of Britain! Fer. You have reason, good mine host. Host. Sir, I have rhyme too. Whether it be by chance or art, A heavy purse makes a light heart. There *tis exprest: first, by a purse of gold, A heavy purse, and then two turtles, makes, A heart with a light stuck in it, a Light Heart. Old abbot Islip could not invent better, Or prior Bolton with his bolt and ton. I am an inn-keeper, and know my grounds, And study them ; brain o’ man ! I study them. I must have jovial guests to drive my ploughs, And whistling boys to bring my harvest home, Or I shall hear no flails thwack. Here, your master And you have been this fortnight, drawing fleas Out of my mats, and pounding them in cages Cut out of cards, and those roped round with pack thread Drawn thorough birdlime, a fine subtility ! Or poring through a multiplying-glass, Upon a captived crab-louse, or a cheese-mite To be dissected, as the sports of nature, With a neat Spanish needle ! speculations That do become the age, I do confess ! As measuring an ant’s eggs with the silk-worm’s, By a phantastic instrument of thread, Shall give you their just difference to a hair ! Or else recovering of dead flies with crumbs, Another quaint conclusion in the physics, Which I have seen you busy at, through the key¬ hole— But never had the fate to see a fly Enter Lovel. Alive in your cups, or once heard, Drink, mine host! Or such a cheerful chirping charm come from you. Lov. What’s that, what’s that ? Fer. A buzzing of mine host About a fly ; a murmur that he has. Host. Sir, I am telling your Stote here, monsieur Ferret, For that I hears his name, and dare tell you, sir, If you have a mind to be melancholy, and musty, There’s Footman’s inn at the town’s end, ths stocks, Or Carrier’s place, at sign of the Broken Wain, Mansions of state ! take up your harbour there, There are both flies and fleas, and all variety Of vermin, for inspection or dissection. Lov. We have set our rest up here, sir, in yom Heart. Host. Sir, set your heart at rest, you shall not Unless you can be jovial. Brain of man ! [do it, Be jovial first, and drink, and dance, and drink. Your lodging here, and with your daily dumps, Is a mere libel ’gain my house and me ; And, then, your scandalous commons— Lov. How, mine host! Host. Sir, they do scandal me upon the road A poor quotidian rack of mutton, roasted [here. Dry to he grated! and that driven down With beer and butter-milk, mingled together, Or clarified whey instead of claret! It is against my freehold, my inheritance, My Magna Charta, cor Icetificat, To drink such balderdash, or bonny-clabber! Give me good wine, or catholic, or Christian, Wine is the word-that glads the heart of man : And mine’s the house of wine : Sack, says my bush, Be merry, and drink sherry ; that’s my posie! For I shall never joy in my light heart, So long as I conceive a sullen guest, Or any thing that’s earthy. Lov. Humorous host! Host. I care not if I be. Lov. But airy also ! Not to defraud you of your rights, or trench Upon your privileges, or great charter, For those are every hostler’s language now, Say, you were born beneath those smiling stars, Have made you lord and owner of the Heart, Of the Light Heart in Barnet: suffer us Who are more saturnine, to enjoy the shade Of your round roof yet. Host. Sir, I keep no shades Nor shelters, I, for either owls or rere-mice. Enter Frank. Fer. He’ll make you a bird of night, sir. Host. Bless you child!— lAside to Frank You’ll make yourselves such. Lov. That your son, mine host? Host. He’s all the sons I have, sir. Lov. Pretty boy! Goes he to school? Fer. O lord, sir, he prates Latin, An it were a parrot, or a play-boy. Lov. Thou Commend’st him fitly! Fer. To the pitch he flies, sir. He’ll tell you what is Latin for a looking-glass, A beard-brush, rubber, or quick-warming pan. SCENE I. THE NEW INN. 409 Lov. What’s that? Fer. A wench, in the inn-phrase, is all these ; A looking-glass in her eye , A beard-brush with her lips , A rubber with her hand , And a warming-pan with her hips. Host. This, in your scurril dialect: but my inn Knows no such language. Fer. That’s because, mine host, You do profess the teaching him yourself. Host. Sir, I do teach him somewhat: by degrees, And with a funnel, I make shift to fill The narrow vessel; he is but yet a bottle. Lov. O let him lose no time though. Host. Sir, he does not. Lov. And less his manners. Host. I provide for those too.— Come hither, Frank, speak to the gentleman In Latin ; he is melancholy : say, I long to see him merry, and so would treat him. Fra. Subtristis visn’ es esse aliquantulum patri , qui te laute excipere , etiam ac tractare gesiit. Lov. Pulchre. Host. Tell him, I fear it bodes us some ill luck, His too reservedness. Fra. Veretur pater , ne quid nobis mail ominis apportet iste nimis prceclusus vultus. Lov. Belle.. A fine child ! You will not part with him, mine host ? Host. Who told you I would not ? Lov. I but ask you. Host. And I answer To whom ? for what? Lov. To me, to be my page. Host. I know no mischief yet the child hath To deserve such a destiny. [done, Lov. Why ? Host. Go down, boy, And get your breakfast. [ Exeunt Frank and Ferret.] —Trust me, I had rather Take a fair halter, wash my hands, and hang him Myself, make a clean riddance of him, than- Lov. What ? Host. Than damn him to that desperate course of life. Lov. Call you that desperate, which by a line Of institution, from our ancestors, Hath been derived down to us, and received In a succession, for the noblest way Of breeding up our youth, in letters, arms, Fair mein, discourses, civil exercise, And all the blazon of a gentleman ? Where can he learn to vault, to ride, to fence, To move his body gracefuller, to speak His language purer, or to tune his mind, Or manners, more to the harmony of nature, Than in these nurseries of nobility ? Host. Ay, that was when the nursery’s self was And only virtue made it, not the market, [noble, That titles were not vented at the drum, Or common out-cry; goodness gave the greatness, And greatness worship : every house became An academy of honour, and those parts- We see departed, in the practice now Quite from the institution. Lov. Why do you say so, Or think so enviously? do they not still Learn there the Centaur’s skill, the art of Thrace, To ride ? or Pollux’ mystery, to fence ? The Pyrrhic gestures, both to dance and spring In armour, to be active for the wars ? To study figures, numbers, and proportions, May yield them great in counsels, and the arts Grave Nestor and the wise Ulysses practised, To make their English sweet upon their tongue, As reverend Chaucer says ? Host. Sir, you mistake; To play sir Pandarus, my copy hath it, And carry messages to madam Cressid, Instead of backing the brave steed, o’ mornings, To mount the chambermaid ; and for a leap Of the vaulting-horse, to ply the vaulting-house : For exercise of arms, a bale of dice, Or two or three packs of cards to shew the cheat, And nimbleness of hand ; mistake a cloak From my lord’s back, and pawn it; ease his pocketj Of a superfluous watch, or geld a jewel Of an odd stone or so ; twinge three or four buttons From off" my lady’s gown: these are the arts, Or seven liberal deadly sciences Of pagery, or rather paganism, As the tides run ! to which, if he apply him He may, perhaps, take a degree at Tyburn, A year the earlier ; come, to read a lecture Upon Aquinas at St. Thomas a, Waterings, And so go forth a laureat in hemp circle ! Lov. You are tart, mine host, and talk above your seasoning, O’er what you seem : it should not come, me- thinks, Under your cap, this vein of salt and sharpness, These strikings upon learning, now and then. How long have you, if your dull guest may ask it, Drove this quick trade, of keeping the Light Heart, Your mansion, palace, here, or hostelry? Host. Troth, I was born to somewhat, sir, above it. Lov. I easily suspect that: mine host, your name? Host. They call me Goodstock. Lov. Sir, and you confess it, Both in your language, treaty, and your bearing. Host. Yet all, sir, are not sons of the white hen: Nor can we, as the songster says, come all To be wrapt soft and warm in fortune’s smock. When she is pleas’d to trick or tromp mankind, Some may be coats, as in the cards ; but, then, Some must be knaves, some varlets, bawds, and As aces, duces, cards of ten, to face it [ostlers. Out in the game, which all the world is.— Lov. But, It being in your free-will (as ’twas) to choose What parts you would sustain, methinks a man Of your sagacity, and clear nostril, should Have made another choice, than of a place So sordid, as the keeping of an inn : Where every jovial tinker, for his chink, May cry, Mine host, to crambe ! Give us drink ; And do not slink , but skink, cr else you stink. Rogue,bawd, and cheater, call youbythe surnames, And known synonyma of your profession. Host. But if I be no such, who then’s the rogue, In understanding, sir, I mean ? who errs, Who tinkles then, or personates Tom Tinker ? Your weazel here may tell you I talk bawdy, And teach my boy it; and you may believe him ; But, sir, at your own peril, if I do not; And at his too, if he do lie, and affirm it, No slander strikes, less hurts, the innocent. If I be honest, and that all the cheat 410 THE NEW INN. act i Be of myself, in keeping this Light Heart, Where, I imagine all the world’s a play ; The state, and men’s affairs, all passages Of life, to spring new scenes ; come in, go out, And shift, and vanish ; and if I have got A seat to sit at ease here, in mine inn, To see the comedy ; and laugh, and chuck At the variety and throng of humours And dispositions, that come justling in And out still, as they one drove hence another ; Why will you envy me my happiness ? Because you are sad and lumpish ; carry a load¬ stone In your pocket, to hang knives on ; or jet rings, To entice young straws to leap at them ; are not With the alacrities of an host! ’Tis more, [taken And justlier, sir, my wonder, why you took My house up, Fidlers-hall, the seat of noise, And mirth, an inn here, to be drowsy in, And lodge your lethargy in the Light Heart : As if some cloud from court had been your harbinger, Or Cheapside debt-books, or some mistress’ charge, Seeing your love grow corpulent, gave it a diet, By absence, some such mouldy passion! Lov. ’Tis guess’d unhappily. [Aside. Re-enter Ferret. Fer. Mine host, you’re call’d. Host. I come, boys. [Exit. Lov. Ferret, have not you been ploughing With this mad ox, mine host, nor he with you ? Fer. For what, sir ? Lov. Why, to find my riddle out. Fer. I hope you do believe, sir, I can find Other discourse to be at, than my master, With hosts and hostlers, Lov. If you can, ’tis well: Go down, and see, who they are come in, what guests ; And bring me word. [Exit Ferret. Lov. 0 love, what passion art thou ! So tyrannous and treacherous ! first to enslave, And then betray all that in truth do serve thee ! That not the wisest, nor the wariest creature, Can more dissemble thee, than he can bear Hot burning coals, in his bare palm, or bosom : And less conceal, or hide thee, than a flash Of enflamed powder, whose whole light doth lay it Open to all discovery, even of those Who have but half an eye, and less of nose. An host, to find me ! who is, commonly, The log, a little of this side the sign-post; Or at the best some round-grown thing, a jug Faced with a beard, that fills out to the guests, And takes in from the fragments of their jests ! But I may wrong this out of sullenness, Or my mistaking humour : pray thee, phant’sy, Be laid again : and, gentle melancholy, Do not oppress me ; I will be as silent , As the tame lover should be, and as foolish. 1 Re-enter Host. Host. My guest, my guest, be jovial, I beseech thee. I have fresh golden guests, guests of the game, Three coachful! lords ! and ladies ! new come in ; And I will cry them to thee, and thee to them, So I can spring a smile but in this brow, That, like the rugged Roman alderman, Old master Gross, surnam'd ’AyeAavTos, Was never seen to laugh, but at an ass. Re-enter Ferret. Fer. Sir, here’s the lady Frampul. Lov. How ! Fer. And her train, Lord Beaufort, and lord Latimer, the colonel Tipto, with mistress Prue, the chambermaid, Trundle, the coachman - Lov. Stop — discharge the house, And get my horses ready ; bid the groom Bring them to the back gate. [Exit Ferret, Host. What mean you, sir ? Lov. To take fair leave, mine host. Host. I hope, my guest, Though I have talk’d somewhat above my share, At large, and been in the altitudes, the extrava- gants, Neither my self nor any of mine have given you The cause to quit my house thus on the sudden. Lov. No, I affirm it on my faith Excuse me From such a rudeness ; I was now beginning To taste and love you : and am heartily sorry, Any occasion should be so compelling, To urge my abrupt departure thus. But - Necessity’s a tyrant, and commands it. Host. She shall command me first to fire my busn ; Then break up house : or, if that will not serve, To break with all the world ; turn country bankrupt In mine own town, upon the market-day, And be protested for my butter and eggs, To the last bodge of oats, and bottle of hay. Ere you shall leave me I will break my Heart ; Coach and coacli-horses, lords and ladies pack : All my fresh guests shall stink. I’ll pull my sign down, Convert mine Inn to an alms-house, or a spittle For lazars, or switch-sellers ; turn it to An academy of rogues ; or give it away For a free-school to breed up beggars in, And send them to the canting universities, Before you leave me ! Lov. Troth, and I confess I am loth, mine host, to leave you : your expres¬ sions Both take and hold me. But, in case I stay, I must enjoin you and your whole family To privacy, and to conceal me ; for The secret is, I would not willingly See, or be seen, to any of this ging, Especially the lady. Host. Brain o’ man ! What monster is she, or cockatrice in velvet, That kills thus ? Lov. 0 good words, mine host. She is A noble lady, great in blood and fortune, Fair, and a wit ! but of so bent a phant’sy, As she thinks nought a happiness, but to have A multitude of servants ; and to get them, Though she be very honest, yet she ventures Upon these precipices, that would make her Not seem so, to some prying narrow natures. We call her, sir, the lady Frances Frampul, Daughter and heir to the lord Frampul. Host. Who ! He that did live in Oxford, first a student, And after, married with the daughter of -- Lov. Sylly. scene I. THE NEW INN. 411 Host. Right. Of whom the tale went, to turn puppet-master. Lov. And travel with young Goose, the motion- man. Host. And lie and live with the gipsies half a year Together, from his wife. Lov. The very same : The mad lord Frampul! and this same is his daughter, But as cock-brain’d as e’er the father was ! There were two of them, Frances and Lsetitia, But Lsetitia was lost young; and, as the rumour Flew then, the mother upon it lost herself; A fond weak woman, went away in a melancholy. Because she brought him none but girls, she thought Her husband loved her not: and he as foolish, Too late resenting the cause given, went after, In quest of her, and was not heard of since. Host. A strange division of a family ! Lov. And scattered as in the great confusion ! Host. But yet the lady, the heir, enjoys the land ? Lov. And takes all lordly ways howto consume it As nobly as she can : if clothes, and feasting, And the authorised means of riot will do it. Host. She shews her extract, and I honour her for it. Re-enter Ferret. Fer. Your horses, sir, are ready ; and the house Dis- Lov. —Pleased, thou think’st? Fer. I cannot tell; discharged I am sure it is. Lov. Charge it again, good Ferret, And make unready the horses ; thou know’st how. Chalk, and renew the rondels, I am now Resolved to stay. Fer. I easily thought so, When you should hear what’s purposed. Lov. What? Fer. To throw The house out of the window. Host. Brain o’ man, I shall have the worst of that! will they not throw My household stuff out first, cushions and carpet, Chairs, stools, and bedding ? is not their sport my ruin ? Lov. Fear not, mine host, I am not of the fellowship. Fer. I cannot see, sir, how you will avoid it; They know already, all, you are in the house. Lov. Who know ? Fer. The lords: they have seen me, and enquired Lov. Why were you seen ? [it. Fer. Because indeed I had No medicine, sir } to go invisible : No fern seed in my pocket; nor an opal Wrapt in bay-leaf, in my left fist, to ckarm Their eyes with. Host. He does give you reasons, [sir,] As round as Gyges’ ring ; which, say the ancients, Was a hoop ring ; and that is, round as a hoop. Lov. You will have your rebus still, mine host. Host. I must. Fer. My lady too look’d out of the window, and call’d me. And see where secretary Prue comes from her, Employ’d upon some embassy unto you. Host. I’ll meet her if she come upon employ¬ ment :— Enter Prudence. Fair lady, welcome, as your host can maKe you! Pru. Forbear, sir; I am first to have mine audience, Before the compliment. This gentleman Is my address to. Host. And it is in state. Pru. My lady, sir, is glad of the enco unter To find a servant here, and such a servant, Whom she so values ; with her best respects, Desires to be remember’d ; and invites Your nobleness to be a part, to-day, Of the society, and mirth intended By her, and the young lords, your fellow-servants. Who are alike ambitious of enjoying The fair request; and to that end have sent Me, their imperfect orator, to obtain it. Which if I may, they have elected me, And crown’d me, with the title of a sovereign Of the day’s sports devised in the inn, So you be pleased to add your suffrage to it. Lov. So I be pleased, my gentle mistress Prudence! You cannot think me of that coarse disposition, To envy you any thing. Host. That’s nobly said, And like my guest! Lov. I gratulate your honour, And should, with cheer, lay hold on any handle That could advance it: but for me to think, I can be any rag or particle Of your lady’s care, more than to fill her list, She being the lady, that professeth still To love no soul or body, but for ends, Which are her sports; and is not nice to speak this, But doth proclaim it, in all companies— Her ladyship must pardon my weak counsels, And weaker will, if I decline to obey her. Pru. O, master Lovel, you must not give credit To all that ladies publicly profess, Or talk o’ the volde, unto their servants. Their tongues and thoughts oft-times lie far asunder. Yet when they please, they have their cabinet- counsels, And reserv’d thoughts, and can retire themselves As well as others. Host. Ay, the subtlest of us. All that is born within a lady’s lips- Pru. Is not the issue of their hearts, mine host Host. Or kiss, or drink afore me. Pru. Stay, excuse me ; Mine errand is not done. Yet, if her ladyship’s Slighting, or disesteem, sir, of your service, Hath formerly begot any distaste, Which I not know of; here I vow unto you, Upon a chambermaid’s simplicity, Reserving still the honour of my lady, I will be bold to hold the glass up to her, To shew her ladyship where she hath err’d, And how to tender satisfaction ; So you vouchsafe to prove but the day’s venture. Host. What say you, sir ? where are you, are you within ? [ Strikes Lovel on the breast. Lov. Yes, I will wait upon her and the com¬ pany. 412 THE NEW INN. act n. Host. It is enough, queen Prudence ; I will bring him: And on this kiss.— [ Kisses her. Exit Prudence.] I long’d to kiss a queen. I.ov. There is no life on earth, but- being in love! There are no studies, no delights, no business, No intercourse, or trade of sense, or soul, But what is love ! I was the laziest creature, The most unprofitable sign of nothing, The veriest drone, and slept away my life Beyond the dormouse, till I was in love! And now, I can outwake the nightingale, Out-watch an usurer, and out-walk him too ; Stalk like a ghost, that haunted ’bout a treasure, And all that phant’sied treasure, it is love. Host. But is your name Love-ill, sir, or Love- I would know that. [well ? Lov. I do not know’t myself, Whether it is ; but it is love hath been The hereditary passion of our house, My gentle host, and, as I guess, my friend : The truth is, I have loved this lady long, And impotently, with desire enough, But no success: for I have still forborne To express it, in my person, to her. Host. How then ? Lov. I have sent her toys, verses, and ana¬ grams, Trials of wit, mere trifles she has commended, But knew not whence they came, nor could she guess. Host. This was a pretty riddling way of wooing ! Lov. I oft have been too in her company; And look’d upon her a whole day ; admired her ; Loved her, and did not tell her so ; loved still, Look’d still, and loved; and loved, and look’d, and sigh’d : But, as a man neglected, I came off, And unregarded- Host. Could you blame her, sir, When you were silent, and not said a word ? Lov. O but I loved the more; and she might Best in my silence, had she been- [read it Host. As melancholic. As you are ! Pray you, why would you stand mute, sir ? Lov. O, thereon hangs a history, mine host. Did you e’er know, or hear of the lord Beaufort, Who serv’d so bravely in France ? I was his page, And ere he died, his friend: I follow’d him, First, in the wars, and, in the times of peace, I waited on his studies ; which were right. He had no Arthurs, nor no Rosicleers, No knights o’ the sun, nor Amadis de Gauls, Primalions, Pantagruels, public nothings ; Abortives of the fabulous dark cloyster, Sent out to poison courts and infest manners • But great Achilles, Agamemnon’s acts, Sage Nestor’s counsels, and Ulysses’ slights, Tydides’ fortitude, as Homer wrought them In his immortal phant’sy, for examples Of the heroic virtue. Or, as Virgil, That master of the epic poem, limn’d Pious zEneas, his religious prince, Bearing his aged parent on his shoulders, Rapt from the flames of Troy, with his young son: And these he brought to practice, and to use. He gave me first my breeding, I acknowledge, Then shower’d his bounties on me, like the Hours, That open-handed sit upon the clouds, And press the liberality of heaven Down to the laps of thankful men ! But then The trust committed to me at his death, Was above all, and left so strong a tie On all my powers, as time shall not dissolve, Till it dissolve itself, and bury all! The care of his brave heir, and only son : Who being a virtuous, sweet, young, hopeful lord, Hath cast his first affections on this lady. And though I know, and may presume her such, As, out of humour, will return no love ; And therefore might indifferently be made The courting-stock, for all to practice on, As^she doth practice on alius, to scorn : Yet, out of a religion to my charge, And debt profess’d, I have made a self-decree, Ne’er to express my person, though my passion Burn me to cinders. Host. Then you are not so subtle Or half so read in love-craft as I took you; Come, come, you are no phoenix ; an you were, I should expect no miracle from your ashes. Take some advice. Be still that rag of love, You are : burn on till you turn tinder. This chambermaid may hap to prove the steel, To strike a sparkle out of the flint, your mistress, May beget bonfires yet; you do not know, What light may be forced out, and from what darkness. Lov. Nay, I am so resolv’d, as still I’ll love, Though not confess it. Host. That’s, sir, as it chances ; We’ll throw the dice for it: cheer up. Lov. I do. [ Exeunt. ACT II. SCENE I .—A Room in the Inn. Enter Lady Frampul, and Prudence pinning on her lady's gown. LadyF. Come, wench, this suit will serve;— dispatch, make ready ; It was a great deal with the biggest for me, Which made me leave it off after once wearing. How does it fit ? will it come together ? Pru. Hardly. Lady F. Thou must make shift with it; pride feels no pain. Girt thee hard, Prue. Pox o’ this errant tailor, He angers me beyond all mark of patience 1 These base mechanics never keep their word, In any thing they promise. Pru. ’Tis their trade, madam, To swear and break; they all grow rich by break¬ ing More than their words ; their honesties and credits, Are still the first commodity they put off. Lady F. And worst, it seems; which makes them do it so often. 6cene i. THE NEW INN. 413 If he had but broke with me, I had not cared, But with the company ! the body politic !- Pru. Frustrate our whole design, having that time, And the materials in, so long before! Lady F. And he to fail in all, and disappoint us S The rogue deserves a torture - Pru. To be cropp’d With his own scissors. Lady F. Let’s devise him one. Pru. And have the stumps sear’d up with his own searing candle. Lady F. Close to his head, to trundle on his pillow.— I’ll have the lease of his house cut out in measures. Pru. And he be strangled with them. LadyF. No, no life I would have touch’d, but stretch’d on his own yard He should be a little, have the strappado— Pru. Or an ell of taffata Drawn through his guts, by way of glyster, and fired With aqua vitse. Lady F. Burning in the hand With the pressing-iron, cannot save him. Pru. Yes, Now I have got this on ; I do forgive him, What robes he should have brought. Lady F. Thou art not cruel, Although strait-laced, I see, Prue. Pru. This is well. Lady F. ’Tis rich enough, but ’tis not what I meant thee I would have had thee braver than myself, And brighter far. ’Twill fit the players yet, When thou hast done with it, and yield thee somewhat. Pru. That were illiberal, madam, and mere sordid In me, to let a suit of yours come there. Lady F. Tut, all are players, and but serve the scene, Prue: Dispatch ; I fear thou dost not like the province, Thou art so long a fitting thyself for it. Here is a scarf to make thee a knot finer. Pru. You send me a-feasting, madam. Lady F. Wear it, wench. Pru. Yes ; but with leave of your ladyship, I would tell you, This can but bear the face of an odd journey. Lady F. Why, Prue ? Pru. A lady of your rank and quality, To come to a public inn, so many men, Young lords and others, in your company, And not a woman but myself, a chamber-maid! Lady F. Thou doubt’st to be o’erlaid, Prue, fear it not, I’ll bear my part, and share with thee in the venture. Pru. O but the censure, madam, is the main. What will they say of you, or judge of me, To be translated thus, above all the bound Of fitness or decorum ? LadyF. How now, Prue! Turn’d fool upon the sudden, and talk idly In thy best clothes ! shoot bolts and sentences To affright Dabies with ! as if I lived T° other scale than what’s my own, I/* 6oujf‘»t myself, without myself, from home! Pru. 1 our ladyship will pardon me my fault; If I have over-shot, I’ll shoot no more. Lady F. Yes, shoot again, good Prue ; I’ll have thee shoot, And aim, and hit ; I know ’tis love in thee, And so I do interpret it. Pru. Then, madam, I’d crave a farther leave. Lady F. Be it to license, It shall not want an ear, Prue. Say, what is it ? Pru. A toy I have, to raise a little mirth To the design in hand. Lady F. Out with it, Prue, If it but chime of mirth. Pru. Mine host has, madam, A pretty boy in the house, a dainty child, His son, and is of your ladyship’s name, too, Francis, Whom if your ladyship would borrow of him, And give me leave to dress him as I would, Should make the finest lady and kinswoman, To keep you company, and deceive my lords, Upon the matter, with a fountain of sport. Lady F. I apprehend thee, and the source of That it may breed ; but is he bold enough, [mirth The child, and well assured ? Pru. As I am, madam : Have him in no suspicion, more than me. Here comes mine host; will you but please to ask Or let me make the motion ? [him. Lady F. Which thou wilt, Prue. Enter Host. Host. Your ladyship, and all your train are wel- Lady F. I thank my hearty host. [come. Host. So is your sovereignty, Madam, I wish you joy of your new gown. T.ady F. It should have been, my host; but Stuff, our tailor, Has broke with us ; you shall be of the counsel. Pru. He will deserve it, madam. My lady has heard You have a pretty son, mine host, she’ll see him. Lady F. Ay, very fain ; I pray thee let me see him, host. Host. Your ladyship shall presently.— [Goes to the door. Bid Frank come hither anon, unto my lady. — It is a bashful child, homely brought up, In a rude hostelry: but the Light Heart Is now his father’s, and it may be his. Here he comes.— Enter Frank. Frank, salute my lady. Frank. I do What, madam, I am design’d to do, by my birth¬ right, As heir of the Light Heart, bid you most welcome. Lady F. And I believe your most , my pretty boy, Being so emphased by you. Frank. Your ladyship, madam, If you believe it such, are sure to make it. Lady F. Prettily answered ! Is your name Frank. Yes, madam. [Francis? Lady F. I love mine own the better. Frank. If I knew yours, I should make haste to do so too, good madam. Lady F. It is the same with yours. Frank. Mine then acknowledges The lustre it receives, by being named after. Lady F. You will win upon me in compliment. Frank. By silence. 414 THE NEW INN. ACT II. Lady F: A modest and a fair well-spoken child. Host. Her ladyship shall have him, sovereign Or what I have beside ; divide my Heart [Prue, Between you and your lady : make your use of it: My house is yours, my son is yours. Behold, I tender him to your service ; Frank, become What these brave ladies would have you. Only this, There is a chare- woman in the house, his nurse, An Irish woman, I took in a beggar, That waits upon him, a poor, silly fool, But an impertinent and sedulous one As ever was; will vex you on all occasions, Never be off, or from you, but in her sleep ; Or drink which makes it: she doth love him so, Or rather doat on him. Now, for her, a shape, And we may dress her, and I’ll help to fit her, With a tuft-taffata cloke, an old French hood, And other pieces, heterogene enough. Pru. We have brought a standard of apparel Because this tailor fail’d us in the main. [down, Host. She shall advance the game. Pru. About it then, And send but Trundle hither, the coachman, to me. Host. I shall: but, Prue, let Lovel have fair quarter. [Aside. Pru. The best. [Exit Host. Lady F. Our host, methinks, is very gamesome. Pru. How like you the boy ? Lady F. A miracle ! Pru. Good madam, But take him in, and sort a suit for him. I’ll give our Trundle his instructions ; And wait upon your ladyship in the instant. Lady F. But, Prue, what shall we call him, when we have drest him ? Pru. My lady Nobody, any thing, what you will. Lady F. Call him Lsetitia, by my sister’s name, And so 'twill mend our mirth too we have in hand. [Exit. Enter Trundle. Pru. Good Trundle, you must straight make ready the coach, And lead the horses out but half a mile, Into the fields, whither you will, and then Drive in again, with the coach-leaves put down, At the back gate, and so to the back stairs, As if you brought in somebody to my lady, A kinswoman that she sent for. Make that answer, If you be ask’d ; and give it out in the house so. Trim. What trick is this, good mistress secre- You’d put upon us ? [tary, Pru. Us ! do you speak plural ? Trun. Me and my mares are us. Pi 'U. If you so join them, Elegant Trundle, you may use your figures : I can but urge, it is my lady’s service. Trun. Good mistress Prudence, you can urge I know you are secretary to my lady, [enough ; And mistress steward. Pru. You will still be trundling, And have your wages stopt now at the audit. Trun. ’Tis true, you are gentlewoman o’ the horse too ; Or what you will beside, Prue. I do think it My best t’ obey you. Pru. And I think so too, Trundle. [Exeunt. SCENE II.— Another Room in the tame. Enter Lord Beaufort and Lord Latimer. Lord B. Why, here’s return enough of both our If we do make no more discovery. [ventures, Lord L. What? Than of this parasite ? Lord B. O he’s a dainty one! The parasite of the house. Lord L. Here comes mine host. Enter Host. Host. My lords, you both are welcome to the Lord B. To the Light Heart, we hope. [Heart. Lord L. And merry, I swear. We never yet felt such a fit of laughter, As your glad Heart hath offered us since we enter’d. Lord B. How came you by this property? Host. Who, my Fly ? Lord B. Your Fly, if you call him so. Host. Nay, he is that, And will be still. Lord B. In every dish and pot? Host. In every cup and company, my lords, A creature of all liquors, all complexions, Be the drink what it will, he’ll have his sip. Lord L. He’s fitted with a name. Host. And he joys in it. I had him when I came to take the Inn here, Assigned me over in the inventory, As an old implement, a piece of household stuff, And so he doth remain. Lord B. Just such a thing We thought him. Lord L. Is he a scholar ? Host. Nothing less ; But colours for it as you see ; wears black, And speaks a little tainted, fly-blown Latin, After the school. Lord B. Of Stratford o’ the Bow: For Lillie’s Latin is to him unknown. Lord L. What calling has he ? Host. Only to call in still, Enflame the reckoning, bold to charge a bill, Bring up the shot in the rear, as his own word is. Lord B. And does it in the discipline of the house, As corporal of the field, maestro del campo ? Host. And visiter general of all the rooms : He has form’d a fine militia for the Inn too. Lord B. And means to publish it ? Host. With all his titles ; Some call him deacon Fly, some doctor Fly; Some captain, some lieutenant: but my folks Do call him quarter-master Fly, which he is. Enter Colonel Tipto and Fly. Tip. Come, quarter-master Fly. Host. Here's one already Hath got his titles. Tip. Doctor. Fly. Noble colonel, No doctor, yet a poor professor of ceremony, Here in the Inn, retainer to the host, I discipline the house. Tip. Thou read’st a lecture Unto the family here : when is the day? Fly. This is the day. Tip. I’ll hear thee, and I’ll have thee a doctor, Thou shalt be one, thou hast a doctor’s look. A face disputative, of Salamanca. scene ii. THE NEW INN. 415 Host. Who’s this ? Lcrd L. The glorious colonel Tipto, host. Lord B. One talks upon his tiptoes, if you’ll hear him. Tip. Thou hast good learning in thee ; made , Fly. And I say made to my colonel. [Fly* Host . Well rnacted of them both. Lord B. They are match’d, i’ faith. Tip. But, Fly, why made ? Fly. Quasi magis aude, My honourable colonel. Tip. What a critic ! Host. There is another accession, critic Fly. Lord L. I fear a taint here in the mathematics. They say, lines parallel do never meet; He has met his parallel in wit and school-craft. Lord B. They side, not meet, man; mend your metaphor, And save the credit of your mathematics. Tip. But Fly, how cam’st thou to be here, com- Unto this Inn? * [mitted Fly. Upon suspicion of drink, sir. I was taken late one night here with the tapster, And the under officers, and so deposited. Tip. I will redeem thee, Fly, and place thee With a fair lady. [better, Fly. A lady, sweet sir Glorious ! Tip. A sovereign lady. Thou shalt be the bird To sovereign Prue, queen of our sports, her Fly, The Fly in household and in ordinary ; Bird of her ear, and she shall wear thee there, A Fly of gold, enamell’d, and a school-fly. Host. The school then, are my stables, or the Where he doth study deeply, at his hours, [cellar, Cases of cups, I do not know how spiced With conscience, for the tapster and the hostler; as Whose horses may be cosen’d, or what jugs Fill’d up with froth ? that is his way of learning. Tip. What antiquated feather’s that that talks ? Fly. The worshipful host, my patron, master Goodstock, A merry Greek, and cants in Latin comely, Spins like the parish top. Tip. I’ll set him up then. — Art thou the Dominuj ? Host. Fac-totum here, sir. Tip. Host real of the house, and cap of main¬ tenance ? Host. The lord of the Light Heart, sir, cap- a-pie ; Whereof the feather is the emblem, colonel, Put up with the ace of hearts. Tip. But why in cuerpo ? I hate to see an host, and old, in cuerpo. Host. Cuerpo ! what’s that? Tip. Light-skipping hose and doublet, The horse-boy’s garb ! poor blank and half blank They relish not the gravity of an host, [cuei'po, Who should be king at arms, and ceremonies, In his own house ; know all, to the gold weights. Lord B. Why, that his Fly doth for him here, your bird. Tip. But I would do it myself were I my host, I would not speak unto a cook of quality, Your lordship's footman, or my lady’s Trundle, In cuerpo : if a dog but stay’d below, That were a dog of fashion, and well nosed, And could present himself ; I would put on The Savoy chain about my neck, the ruff knd cuffs of Flanders, then the Naples hat, i__ With the Rome hatband, and the Florentine agat, The Milan sword, the cloke of Genoa, set With Brabant buttons ; all my given pieces, Except my gloves, the natives of Madrid, To entertain him in ; and compliment With a tame coney, as with a prince that sent it. Host. The same deeds, though, become not every man ; That fits a colonel will not fit an host. Tip. Your Spanish host is never seen in cuerpo, Without his paramentos, cloke and sword. Fly. Sir, He has the father of swords within, a long sword ; Blade Cornish styled of sir Rud Hughdebras. Tip. And why a long sword, bully bird ? thy sense ? Fly. To note him a tall man, and a master of fence. Tip. But doth he teach the Spanish way of don Fly. No, the Greek master he. [Lewis? Tip. What call you him ? Fly. Euclid. Tip. Fart upon Euclid, he is stale and antic! Give me the moderns. Fly. Sir, he minds no moderns, Go by , Hieronimo ! Tip. What was he ? Fly. The Italian, That play’d with abbot Antony in the Friars, And Blinkinsops the bold. Tip. Ay, marry, those Had fencing names ; What is become of them ? Host. They had their times, and we can say, they were. So had Caranza his ; so had don Lewis. Tip. Don Lewis of Madrid is the sole master Now of the world. Host. But this of the other world, Euclid demonstrates. He ! he is for all: The only fencer of name, now in Elysium. Fly. He does it all by lines and angles, colonel; By parallels and sections, has his diagrams. Lord B. Wilt thou be flying, Fly ? Lord L. At all, why not ? The air’s as free for a fly as for an eagle. Lord B. A buzzard ! he is in his contemplation. Tip. Euclid a fencer, and in the Elysium ! Host. He play’d a prize last week with Archi- And beat him, I assure you. [medes, Tip. Do you assure me ? For what ? Host. For four i’ the hundred. Give me five, And I assure you again. Tip. Host peremptory, You may be ta’en. But where, whence had you this ? Host. Upon the road. A post that came from thence, Three days ago, here, left it with the tapster. Fly. Who is indeed a thoroughfare of news, Jack Jug with the broken belly, a witty fellow 1 Host. Your bird here heard him. Tip. Did you hear him, bird ? Host. Speak in the faith of a Fly. [Exit, Fly. Yes, and he told us Of one that was the prince of Orange’ fencer. Tip. Stevinus ? Fly. Sir, the same had challenged Euclid At thirty weapons more than Archimedes E’er saw, and engines; most of his own invention^ 11G THE NEW INN. Aor u. Tip. This may have credit, and chimes reason, If any man endanger Euclid, bird, [this ! Observe, that had the honour to quit Europe This forty year, ’tis he. He put down Scaliger. Fly. And he was a great master. Lord B. Not of fence, Fly. Tip. Excuse him, lord, he went on the same grounds. Lord B. On the same earth, I think, with other mortals. Tip. I mean, sweet lord, the mathematics. Basta! When thou know’st more, thou wilt take less green honour. He had his circles, semicircles, quadrants— Fly. He writ a book of the quadrature of the Tip. Cyclometria, I read- [circle— Lord B. The title only. Lord L. And indice. Lord B. If it had one ; of that, quaere ?— What insolent, half-witted things these are ! Lord L. So are all smatterers, insolent and Lord B. They lightly go together, [impudent. Lord L. ’Tis my wonder Two animals should hawk at all discourse thus, Fly every subject to the mark, or retrieve- Lord B. And never have the luck to be in the Lord L. ’Tis some folks fortune. [right! Lord B. Fortune is a bawd, And a blind beggar ; ’tis their vanity, And shews most vilely. Tip. 1 could take the heart now To write unto don Lewis into Spain, To make a progress to the Elysian fields Next summer- Lord B. And persuade him die for fame, Of fencing with a shadow ! Where’s mine host ? I would he had heard this bubble break, i’faith. Re-enter Host, with Prudence richly dressed, Frank as a lady. Nurse, and Lady Frampul. Host. Make place, stand by, for the queen- regent, gentlemen ! Tip. This is thy queen that shall be, bird, our Lord B. Translated Prudence ! [sovereign. Pru. Sweet my lord, hand off: It is not now, as when plain Prudence lived, And reach’d her ladyship- Host. The chamber pot. Pru. The looking-glass, mine host: lose your house metaphor ! You have a negligent memory indeed. Speak the host’s language. Here is a young lord Will make’t a precedent else. Lord L. Well acted, Prue. Host. First minute of her reign ! What will she Forty years hence, God bless her l [do Pru. If you’ll kiss, Or compliment, my lord, behold a lady, A stranger, and my lady’s kinswoman. Lord B. I do confess my rudeness, that had To have mine eye directed to this beauty. [need Frank. It was so little, as it ask’d a perspicil. Lord B. Lady, your name? Frank. My lord, it is Lsetitia. Lord B. Laetitia ! a fair omen, and I take it: Let me have still such Lettice for my lips. But that of your family, lady? Frank. Sylly, sir. Lord B. My lady’s kinswoman ? Frank. I am so honour’d. Host. Already it takes. [ Aside to Lady F. Lady F. An excellent fine boy. Nurse. He is descended of a right good stock, Lord B. What’s this, an antiquary? [sir. Host. An antiquity, By the dress, you’d swear ! an old Welsh herald’s widow: She’s a wild Irish born, sir, and a hybride, That lives with this young lady a mile off here, And studies Vincent against York. Lord B. She’ll conquer If she read Vincent. Let me study her. Host. She’s perfect in most pedigrees, most descents. Lord B. A bawd, I hope, and knows to blaze a coat. [Aside. Host. And judgeth all things with a single eye. Fly, come you hither ! no discovery Of what you see, to your colonel Toe, or Tip, here, But keep all close; though you stand in the way o’ preferment, Seek it off from the road; no flattery for’t, No lick-foot, pain of losing your proboscis, My liquorish fly. [ Aside to Fry. Tip. What says old velvet-head ? Fly. He will present me himself, sir, if you will not. Tip. Who, he present! what ? whom ? an host, a groom, Divide the thanks with me ? share in my glories ? Lay up : I say no more. Host. Then silence, sir, And hear the sovereign. Tip. Hostlers to usurp Upon my Sparta or province, as they say ! No broom but mine ! Host. Still, colonel, you mutter. Tip. I dare speak out, as cuerpo. Fly. Noble colonel- Tip. And carry what I ask- Host. Ask what you can, sir, So it be in the house. Tip. I ask my rights and privileges ; And though for form I please to call’t a suit, I have not been accustomed to repulse. Pru. No, sweet sir Glorious, you may still command— Host. And go without. Pru. But yet, sir, being the first, And call’d a suit, you’ll look it shall be such As we may grant. Lady F. It else denies itself. Pru. You hear the opinion of the court. Tip I mind no court opinions. Pru ’Tis my lady’s, though. Tip My lady is a spinster at the law, And my petition is of right. Pru. What is it ? Tip. It is for this poor learned bird. Host. The fly. Tip. Professor in the Inn, here, of small mat- Lord L. How he commends him ! [ters Host. As to save himself in him. Lady F. So do all politics in their commenda¬ tions. Host. This is a state-bird, and the verier fly. Tip. Hear him problematize. Pru. Bless us, what’s that ? Tip. Or syllogize, elenchize. SCENE II. THE NEW INN. Lady F. Sure, petards To blow us up. Lord L. Some enginous strong words. Host. He means to erect a castle in the air, And make his fly an elephant to carry it. Tip. Bird of the arts he is, and Ely by name. Pru. Buz ! Host. Blow him off, good Prue, they’ll mar all else. Tip. The sovereign’s honour is to cherish learn- Pru. What in a fly ? [ing. Tip. In any thing industrious. Pru. But flies are busy. Lady F. Nothing more troublesome, Or importune. Tip. There’s nothing more domestic, Tame or familiar, than your fly in cuerpo. Host. That is when his wings are cut, he is tame indeed, else Nothing more impudent and greedy ; licking— Lady F. Or saucy, good sir Glorious. Pru. Leave your advocateship, Except that w T e shall call you orator Fly, And send you down to the dresser and the dishes. Host. A good flap that! Pru. Commit you to the steam. Lady F. Or else condemn you to the bottles. Pru. And pots. There is his quarry. Host. He will chirp far better, Your bird, below. Lady F. And make you finer music. Pru. His buz will there become him. Tip. Come away, Buz, in their faces : give them all the buz, Dor in their ears and eyes, hum, dor, and buz 1 I will statuminate and under-prop thee. If they scorn us, let us scorn them—We’ll find The thoroughfare below, and quaere him ; Leave these relicts, buz : they shall see that I, Spite of their jeers, dare drink, and with a fly. [Exeunt Tipto and Fly. Lord L. A fair remove at once of two imperti- nents ! Excellent Prue, I love thee for thy wit, No less than state. Pru. One must preserve the other. Enter Lovel. Lady F. Who’s here ? Pru. O Lovel, madam, your sad servant. Lady F. Sad ! he is sullen still, and wears a cloud About his brows ; I know not how to approach him. Pru. I will instruct you, madam, if that be all; Go to him, and kiss him. Lady F. How, Prue ! Pru. Go, and kiss him, I do command it. Lady F. Thou art not wild, wench. Pru. No, i me, and exceeding tame, but still your sovereign. Lady F. Hath too much bravery made thee mad? Pru. Nor proud. Do what I do enjoin you. No disputing Of my prerogative, with a front, or frown ; Do not detract; you know the authority Is mine, and I will exercise it swiftly, If you provoke me. Lady F. I have woven a net e e 417 To snare myself in !—[To Lovel.] Sir, I am en- To tender you a kiss : but do not know [join’d Why, or wherefore, only the pleasure royal Will have it so, and urges-Do not you Triumph on my obedience, seeing it forced thus. There ’tis. [Kisses him. Loo. And welcome.—Was there ever kiss That relish’d thus ! or had a sting like this, Of so much nectar, but with aloes mixt! [Aside. Pru. No murmuring nor repining, I am fixt. Lov. It had, methinks, a quintessence of either, But that which was the better, drown’d the bitter. How soon it pass’d away, how unrecover’d 1 The distillation of another soul Was not so sweet; and till I meet again That kiss, those lips, like relish, and this taste, Let me turn all consumption, and here waste. [Aside. Pru. The royal assent is past and cannot alter. Lady F. You’ll turn a tyrant. Pru. Be not you a rebel. It is a name is alike odious. Lady F. You’ll hear me ? Pru. No, not on this argument. Would you make laws, and be the first that break The example is pernicious in a subject, [them? And of your quality, most. Lord L. Excellent princess! Host. Just queen! Lord L. Brave sovereign ! Host. A she Trajan, this ! LordB. Whatis’t? proceed, incomparable Prue: I am glad I am scarce at leisure to applaud thee. Lord L. It’s well for you, you have so happy expressions. Lady F. Yes, cry her up with acclamations, do, And cry me down ; run all with sovereignty : Prince Power will never want her parasites- Pru. Nor murmur her pretences : master Lovel, For so your libel here, or bill of complaint, Exhibited, in our high court of sovereignty, At this first hour of our reign, declares Against this noble lady, a disrespect You have conceived, if not received, from her. Host. Received; so the charge lies in our bill. Pru. We see it, his learned counsel, leave your We that do love our justice above all [planing. Our other attributes, and have the nearness, To know your extraordinary merit, As also to discern this lady’s goodness, And find how loth she’d be to lose the honour And reputation she hath had, in having So worthy a servant, tlio’ but for few minutes ; Do here enjoin— Host. Good! Pru. Charge, will, and command Her ladyship, pain of our high displeasure, And the committing an extreme contempt Unto the court, our crown, and dignity— Host. Excellent sovereign, and egregious Prue! Pru. To entertain you for a pair of hours, Choose, when you please, this day, with all respects, And valuation of a principal servant, To give you all the titles, all the privileges, The freedoms, favours, rights, she can bestow— Host. Large ample words, of a brave latitude 1 Pru. Or can be expected, from a lady of honour Or quality, in discourse, access, address.— Host. Good ! Pru. Not to give ear, or admit conference 4TB THE NEW INN. act ii, With any person but yourself : nor there, Of any other argument but love, And the companion of it, gentle courtship. For which your two hours’ service, you shall take Two kisses. Host. Noble ! Pru. For each hour a kiss, To be ta’en freely, fully, and legally, Before us ; in the court here, and our presence. Host. Rare l Pru. But those hours past, and the two kisses The binding caution is, never to hope [paid, Renewing of the time, or of the suit, On any circumstance. Host. A hard condition ! Lord L. Had it been easier, I should have The sovereign’s justice. [suspected Host. O you are [a] servant, My lord, unto the lady, and a rival: In point of law, my lord, you may be challenged. Lord L. I am not jealous. Host. Of so short a time Your lordship needs not, and being done in foro. Pru. What is the answer? Host. He craves respite, madam, To advise with his learned council. Pru. Be you he, And go together quickly. [Lovel and Host walk aside. Lady F. You are no tyrant! Pru. If I be, madam, you were best appeal me. Lord L. Beaufort- Lord B. I am busy, prithee let me alone ; I have a cause in hearing too. Lord L. At what bar ? Lord B. Love’s court of Requests. Lord L. Bring it into the sovereignty, It is the nobler court, afore judge Prue; The only learned mother of the law, And lady of conscience, too ! Lord B. ’Tis well enough Before this mistress of requests, where it is. Host. Let them not scorn you : bear up, master Lovel, And take your hours and kisses, they are a fortune. Lov. Which I cannot approve, and less make use of. [use of ? Host. Still in this cloud ! why cannot you make Lov. Who would be rich to be so soon undone? The beggar’s best is wealth he doth not know; And, but to shew it him, inflames his want. Host. Two hours at height! Lov. That joy is too, too narrow, Would bound a love so infinite as mine ; And being past, leaves an eternal loss. Who so prodigiously affects a feast, To forfeit health and appetite, to see it ? Or but to taste a spoonful, would forego All gust of delicacy ever after ? Host. These, yet, are hours of hope. Lov. But all hours following Years of despair, ages of misery ! Nor can so short a happiness, but spring A world of fear, with thought of losing it; Better be never happy, than to feel A little of it, and then lose it ever. Host. I do confess, it is a strict injunction ; But then the hope is, it may not be kept. A thousand things may intervene ; we see The wind shift often, thrice a day sometimes: Decrees may alter upon better motion, And riper hearing. The best bow may start, And the hand vary. Prue may be a sage In law, and yet not sour ; sweet Prue, smooth Prue, Soft, debonaire, and amiable Prue, May do as well as rough and rigid Prue ; And yet maintain her, venerable Prue, Majestic Prue, and serenissimous Prue. Try but one hour first, and as you like The loose of that, draw home and prove the other. Lov. If one hour could the other happy make, I should attempt it. Host. Put it on ; and do. Lov. Or in the blest attempt that I might die! Host. Ay, marry, there were happiness indeed! Transcendent to the melancholy, meant. It were a fate above a monument, And all inscription, to die so ! A death For emperors to enjoy, and the kings Of the rich East to pawn their regions for; To sow their treasure, open all their mines, Spend all their spices to embalm their corps, And wrap the inches up in sheets of gold, That fell by such a noble destiny I And for the wrong to your friend, that fear’s away, He rather wrongs himself, following fresh light, New eyes to swear by. If lord Beaufort change, It is no crime in you to remain constant, And upon these conditions, at a game So urg’d upon yom Pru. Sir, your resolution ? Host. How is the lady affected ? Pru. Sovereigns use not To ask their subjects’ suffrage where ’tis due, But where conditional. Host. A royal sovereign ! Lord L. And a rare stateswoman ! I admire her In her new regiment. [bearing Host. Come, choose your hours, Better be happy for a part of time, Than not the whole; and a short part, than never. Shall I appoint them, pronounce for you ? Lov. Your pleasure. [dinner ; Host. Then he designs his first hour after His second after supper. Say ye, content ? Pru. Content. Lady F. I am content. Host. Content. Frank. Content. Lord B. What’s that ? I am content too. Lord L. You have reason, You had it on the bye, and w T e observed it. Nur. Trot’ I am not content: in fait’ I am not. [nien ? Host. Why art not thou content, good Slielee- Nurse. He tauk so desperate, and so debausht, So baudy like a courtier and a lord, God bless him, one that tak’th tobacco. Host. Verv well mixt! What did he say ? Nurse. Nay, nothing to the purposh, Or very little, nothing at all to purposh. Host, Let him alone, Nurse. Nurse. I did tell him of Serly Was a great family come out of Ireland, Descended of O Neal, Mac Con, Mac Dermot, Mac Murrogh, but he mark’d not. Host. Nor do I ; Good queen of heralds, ply the bottle, and sleep. [Exeunt. SCENE I. THE NEW INN. 419 ACT III. SCENE I_ A Lower Roc?n In the Inn. F.ntcr Col. Tipto, Fly, ancl Juo. Tip. I like the plot of your militia well. It is a fine militia, and well order’d, And the division’s neat! ’twill be desired Only, the expressions were a little more Spanish ; For there’s the best militia of the world. To call them tertias—tertia of the kitchen, Tertia of the cellar, tertia of the chamber, And tertia of the stables. Fly. That I can, sir ; And find out very able, fit commanders In every tertia. Tip. Now you are in the right. As in the tertia of the kitchen, yourself, j Being a person elegant in sauces, There to command, as prime maestro del campo, Chief master of the palate, for that tertia, Or the cook under you; ’cause you are the marshal, And the next officer in the field, to the host. Then for the cellar, you have young Anon, Is a rare fellow—what’s his other name ? Fly. Pierce, sir. Tip. Sir Pierce, I’ll have him a cavalier. Sir Pierce Anon will pierce us a new hogshead. And then your thoroughfare, Jug here, his alfarez : An able officer, give me thy beard, round Jug, I take thee by this handle, and do love One of thy inches. In the chambers, Jordan here; He is the don del campo of the beds. And for the stables, what’s his name ? Fly. Old Peck. Tip. Maestro del campo, Peck! his name is curt, A monosyllable, but commands the horse well. Fly. O, in an inn, sir, we have other horse, Let those troops rest a while. Wine is the horse, That we must charge with here. Tip. Bring up the troops, Or call, sweet Fly ; ’ tis an exact militia, And thou an exact professor ; Lipsius Fly Thou shalt be call’d, and Jouse :— i Enter Ferret and Trundle. Jack Ferret, welcome. Old trench-master, and colonel of the pioneers, What canst thou bolt us now ; a coney or two Out of Tom Trundle’s burrow, here, the coach ? This is the master of the carriages. How is thy driving, Tom, good, as it was ? Trun. It serves my lady, and our officer Prue. Twelve miles an hour! Tom has the old trundle still. Tip. I am taken wdth the family here, fine Viewing the muster-roll. [fellows ! Trun. They are brave men. Fer. And of the Fly-blown discipline all, the quarter-master. Tip. The Fly is a rare bird in his profession. Let’s sip a private pint with him : I would have him Quit this light sign of the Light Heart, my bird, And lighter house. It is not for his tall And growing gravity, so cedar-like, To be the second to an host in cuerpo, That Itnows no elegances : U3S his Dictamen, and his genius : I would have him Fly high, and strike at all,— Enter Pierce. Here’s young Anon too. Pierce. What wine is’t, gentlemen, white or Tip. White, [claret ? My brisk Anon. Pierce. I’ll draw you Juno’s milk That dyed the lilies, colonel. [Exit. Tip. Do so, Pierce. Enter Peck. Peck. A plague of all jades, what a clap he has Fly. Why, how now, cousin ? [gi’en me ! Tip. Who’s that? Fer. The hostler. Fly. What ail’st thou, cousin Peck ? [ Takes him aside. Peck. O me, my hanches ! As sure as you live, sir, he knew perfectly I meant to cozen him. He did leer so on me, And then he sneer’d, as wdio would say, take heed, sirrah ; And when he saw T our half-peck, which you know W as but an old court-dish, lord, how he stamp’d, I thought ’t had been for joy : when suddenly He cuts me a back-caper with his heels, And takes me just o’ the crupper. Down come I And my whole ounce of oats ! Then he neigh’d out, As if he had a mare by the tail. Fly. Troth, cousin, You are to blame to use the poor dumb Christians So cruelly, defraud ’em of their dimensum. Yonder’s the colonel’s horse (there I look’d in) Keeping our Lady’s eve ! the devil a bit He has got, since he came in yet! there he stands And looks and looks, but ’tis your pleasure, coz, He should look lean enough. Peck. He has hay before him. Fly. Yes, but as gross as hemp, and as soon will choke him, Unless he eat it butter’d. He had four shoes, And good ones, wdien he came in: it is a wonder, With standing still, he should cast three. Peck. Troth, quarter-master, This trade is a kind of mystery, that corrupts Our standing manners quickly : once a 'week, I meet with such a brush to mollify me, Sometimes a brace, to awake my conscience, Yet still I sleep securely. Fly. Cousin Peck, You must use better dealing, faith, you must. Peck. Troth, to give good example to my suc¬ cessors, I could be w r ell content to steal but two girths, And now and then a saddle-cloth, change a bridle, For exercise ; and stay there. Fly. If you could, There were some hope on you, coz : but the fate is, You are drunk so early, you mistake whole saddles; Sometimes a horse. Peck. Ay, there’s- Re-enter Pierce with wine. Fly. The wine ! come, coz, I’ll talk with you anon. 2 b 2 [ Tli ey come for ward 420 THE NEW INN. act iii. Peck. Do, lose no time, Good quarter-master. Tip. There are the horse, come, Fly. Fly. Charge, in boys, in— Enter Jordan. Lieutenant of the ordnance, Tobacco and pipes. Tip. Who’s that ? Old Jordan ! good. A comely vessel, and a necessary. New scour’d he is : Here’s to thee, marshal Fly ; In milk, my young Anon says. [Drinks. Pierce. Cream of the grape, That dropt from Juno’s breasts and sprung the lily! 1 can recite your fables, Fly. Here is, too, The blood of Venus, mother of the rose ! [Music within. Jor. The dinner is gone up. Jug. I hear the whistle. Jor. Ay, and the fidlers: We must all go wait. Pierce. Pox o’ this waiting, quarter-master Fly. Fly. When chambermaids are sovereigns, wait their ladies; Fly scorns to breathe.— Peck. Or blow upon them, he. Pierce. Old parcel Peck, art thou there ? how now, lame! Peck. Yes faith : it is ill halting afore cripples ; I have got a dash of a jade here, will stick by me. Pierce. O you have had some phant’sy, fellow Some revelation- [Peck, Peck. What? Pierce. To steal the hay Out of the racks again. Fly. I told him so, When the guests’ backs were turn’d. Pierce. Or bring his peck, The bottom upwards, heap’d with oats j and cry, Here’s the best measure upon all the road ! when, You know, the guest put in his hand to feel, And smell to the oats, that grated all his fingers Upon the wood- Peck. Mum ! Pierce. And found out your cheat. Peck. I have been in the cellar, Pierce. Pierce. You were then there, Upon your knees, I do remember it, To have the fact conceal’d. I could tell more, Soaping of saddles, cutting of horse-tails, And cropping—pranks of ale, and hostelry- Fly. Which he cannot forget, he says, young knight, No more than you can other deeds of darkness, Done in the cellar. Tip. Well said, bold professor. Fer. We shall have some truth explain’d. Pierce. We are all mortal, And have our visions. Peck. Truly, it seems to me, That every horse has his whole peck, and tumbles Up to the ears in litter. Fly. WheD, indeed, There’s no such matter, not a smell of provender. Fer. Not so much straw as would tie up a horse¬ tail. Fly. Nor anything in the rack but two old cobwebs, And so much rotten hay as had been a hen’s nest. Trun. And yet lie’s ever apt to sweep the Fer. But puts in nothing. [mangers ! Pierce. These are fits and fancies, Which you must leave, good Peck. Fly. And you must pray It may be reveal’d to you at some times, Whose horse you ought to cozen ; with what con¬ science ; The how, and when : a parson’s horse may suffer— Pierce. Whose master’s double beneficed ; put in that. Fly. A little greasing in the teeth ; ’tis whole- And keeps him in a sober shuffle. [some; Pierce. His saddle too May want a stirrup. Fly. And, it may be sworn, His learning lay o’ one side, and so broke it. Peck. They have ever oats in their cloke-bags, to affront us. Fly. And therefore ’tis an office meritorious, To tithe such soundly. Pierce. And a grazier’s may— : — Fer. O, they are pinching puckfists ! Trun. And suspicious. Pierce. Suffer before the master’s face, some¬ times. Fly. He shall think he sees his horse eat half a bushel— Pierce. When the slight is, rubbing his gums with salt Till all the skin come off, he shall but mumble, Like an old woman that were chewing brawn, And drop them out again. Tip. Well argued, cavalier. Fly. It may do well; and go for an example. But, coz, have a care of understanding horses, Horses with angry heels, nobility horses, Horses that know the world ; let them have meat Till their teeth ake, and rubbing till their ribs Shine like a wench’s forehead : they are devils else, Will look into your dealings. Peck. For mine own part, The next I cozen of the pamper’d breed, I wish he may be foundred. Fly. Foun-der-ed. Prolate it right. Peck. And of all four, I wish it, I love no crupper-compliments. Pierce. Whose horse was it? Peck. Why, master Burst’s. Pierce. Is Bat Burst come ? Peck. An hour He has been here. Tip. What Burst ? Pierce. Mas Bartolmew Burst. One that hath been a citizen, since a courtier, And now a gamester : hath had all his whirls, And bouts of fortune, as a man would say, Once a bat and ever a bat I a rere-mouse, And bird of twilight, he has broken thrice. Tip. Your better man, the Genoway proverb Men are not made of steel. [says * Pierce. Nor are they bound Always to hold. Fly. Thrice honourable colonel, Hinges will crack. Tip. Though they be Spanish iron. Pierce. He is a merchant still, adventurer, At in-and-in ; and is our thoroughfare’s friend. Tiv. Who, Ju 6 ’s ? SCENE II. THE Pierce. The same : and a fine gentleman Was with him. Peck. Master Huffle. Pierce. Who, Hodge Huffle ! Tip. What’s he? Pierce. A cheater, and another fine gentleman, A friend o’ the chamberlain’s, Jordan’s. Master He’s Burst’s protection. [Huffle, Fly. Fights and vapours for him. Pierce. He will be drunk so civilly—■ Fly. So discreetly— Pierce. And punctually ! just at this hour. Fly. And then Call for his Jordan with that hum and state, As if he piss’d the politics. Pierce. And sup With his tuft-taffata night gear, here, so silently ! Fly. Nothing but music. Pierce. A dozen of bawdy songs. Tip. And knows the general this ? Fly. O no, sir ; dormit , Dormit patr onus still, the master sleeps, They’ll steal to bed. Pierce. In private, sir, and pay The fidlers with that modesty, next morning. Fly. Take a dejeune of muskadel and eggs. Pierce. And pack away in their trundling cheats, like gipsies. Trun. Mysteries, mysteries, Ferret. Fer. Ay, we see, Trundle, What the great officers in an inn may do; I do not say the officers of the Crown, But the Light Heart. Tip. I’ll see the Bat and Huffle. Fer. I have some business, sir, I crave your Tip. What? [pardon— Fer. To be sober. [Exit. Tip. Pox, go get you gone then. Trundle shall, stay. Trun. No, I beseech you, colonel. Your lordship has a mind to be drunk private, With these brave gallants ; I will step aside Into the stables, and salute my mares. [Exit. Pierce. Yes, do, and sleep with them. — Let him go, base whip-stock; He is as drunk as a fish now, almost as dead. Tip. Come, I will see the flicker-mouse, my Fly. [Exeunt. SCENE II.— Another Room in the same, fur¬ nished as a Tribunal, Qc. Music. Enter the Host, ushering Prudence, who takes her seat of judicature, assisted by lord Beaufort, and lord Latimer; the Nurse, Frank, Jug, Jordan, Trun¬ dle, and Ferret. Pru. Here set the hour ; but first produce the parties ; And clear the court: the time is now of price. Host. Jug, get you down, and, Trundle, get you You shall be crier ; Ferret here, the clerk. [up, Jordan, smell you without, till the ladies call you; Take down the fidlers too, silence that noise, Deep in the cellar, safe. [Exeuut Jug, Jordan, and Musicians. Pru. Who keeps the watch ? Host. Old Sheelinin, here, is the madam Tell- clock. Nurse. No fait’ and trot’, sweet maister, I shall I’ fait’, I shall. [sleep ; NEW INN. 421 LordB. I prithee do then, screech-owl. She brings to mind the fable of the dragon, That kept the Hesperian fruit. Would I could charm her! Host. Trundle will do it with his hum. Come, Precede him Ferret, in the form. [Trundle : Fer. Oyez, oyez, oyez. Trun. Oyez, oyez, oyez. Fer. Whereas there hath been awarded.- Trun. Whereas there hath, &c. [As Ferret proclaims, Trundle repeats after him , at the breaks here, and through the rest of this scene. Fer. By the queen regent of love,- In this high court of sovereignty,- Two special hours of address,- To Herbert Lovel, appellant,- Against the lady Frampul, defendant.- Herbert Lovel come into the court,- Make challenge to thy first hour,- And save thee and thy bail,- Trun. And save thee, &c. Enter Lovel, and ranges himself on the one side. Host. Lo, louting, where he comes into the court! Clerk of the sovereignty, take his appearance, And how accoutred, how design’d he comes ! Fer. ’Tis done. Now, crier, call the lady Frampul, And by the name of Frances, lady Frampul, defendant,- Trun. Frances, lady Frampul, &c. Fer. Come into the court.- Make answer to the award,- And save thee and thy bail,- Trun. And save thee, &c. Enter Lady Frampul, and takes her place on the other side Host. She makes a noble and a just appearance. Set it down likewise, and how arm’d she comes. Pru Usher of Love’s court, give them [both] their oath, According to the form, upon Love’s missal. Host. Arise, and lay your hands upon the book. Herbert Lovel, appellant, and lady Frances Frampul, defendant, you shall swear upon the liturgy of Love, Ovid de arte arnandi, that you neither have, ne will have, nor in any wise bear about you, thing or things, pointed, or blunt, within these lists, other than what are natural and allow’d by the court: no inchanted arms, or weapons, stones of virtue, herb of grace, charm, character, spell, philtre, or other power than Love’s only, and the justness of your cause. So help you Love, his mother, and the con¬ tents of this book: kiss it. [Lov. kisses the book. Return unto your seats_Crier, bid silence. Trim. Oyez, oyez, oyez, oyez. Fer. In the name of the sovereign of Love,— Trun. In the name of thee, &c. Fer. Notice is given by the court,- To the appellant, and defendant,- That the first hour of address proceeds,-- And Love save the sovereign,—— Trun. And Love save, &c. Every man or woman keep silence, pain of im¬ prisonment. Pru. Do your endeavours in the name of Love. Lov. To make my first approaches, then, in love. Lady F. Tell us what love is, that we may be sure There’s such a thing, and that it is in nature. Lov. Excellent lady, I did not expect 422 THE NEW INN. * act 11 . To meet an infidel, much less an atheist, Here in Love's list! of so much unbelief To raise a question of his being! Host. Well charged! Lov. I rather thought, and with religion think, Had all the characters of love been lost, His lines, dimensions, and whole signature Razed and defaced, with dull humanity, That both his nature, and his essence, might Have found their mighty instauration here ; Here, where the confluence of fair and good Meets to make up all beauty. For what else Is love, but the most noble, pure affection Of what is truly beautiful and fair, Desire of union with the thing beloved ? Lord B. Have the assistants of the court their votes, And writ of privilege, to speak (hem freely? Pru. Yes, to assist, but not to interrupt. Lord B. Then I have read somewhere, that man and woman Were, in the first creation, both one piece, And being cleft asunder, ever since Love was an appetite to be rejoin’d. As for example- [Kisses Frank. Nurse. Cramo-cree! what mean’sh tou ? Lord B. Only to kiss and part. Host. So much is lawful. Lord L. And stands with the prerogative of Love’s court. Lov. It is a fable of Plato’s, in his banquet, And utter’d there by Aristophanes. Host. ’Tis well remember’d here, and to good use. Rut on with your description, what love is : Desire of union with the thing beloved. Lov. I meant a definition. For I make The efficient cause, what’s beautiful and fair ; The formal cause, the appetite of union : The final cause, the union itself. But larger if you’ll have it; by description, It is a flame and ardour of the mind, Dead, in the proper corps, quick in another’s ; Transfers the lover into the be-loved. The he or she that loves, engraves or stamps The idea of what they love, first in themselves : Or like to glasses, so their minds take in The forms of their beloved, and then reflect. It is the likeness of affections, Is both the parent and the nurse of love. Love is a spiritual coupling of two souls, So much more excellent, as it least relates Unto the body ; circular, eternal, Not feign’d, or made, but born ; and then so precious, As nought can value it but itself; so free, As nothing can command it but itself; And in itself so round and liberal, As where it favours it bestows itself. Lord B. And that do I; here my whole self I According to the practice of the court. [tender, [To Frank, Nurse. Ay, ’tish a naughty practish, u .ewd practish, Be quiet man, dou shalt not leip her here. Lord B. Leap her ! I lip her, foolish queen at arms, Thy blazon’s false: wilt thou blaspheme thine office ? Lov. But we must take and understand this love, Along still, as a name of dignity ; Not pleasure. Host. Mark you that, my light young lord ? [To Lord B Lov. True love hath no unworthy thought, no Loose, unbecoming appetite, or strain, [light But fixed, constant, pure, immutable. Lord B. I relish not these philosophical feasts ; Give me a banquet of sense, like that of Ovid : A form to take the eye ; a voice mine ear; Pure aromatic to my scent: a soft, Smooth, dainty hand to touch ; and for my taste, Ambrosiac kisses to melt down the palate. Lov. They are the earthly, lower form of lovers, Are only taken with what strikes the senses ; And love by that loose scale. Although I grant, We like what’s fair and graceful in an object, And, true, would use it, in the all we tend to, Both of our civil and domestic deeds ; In ordering of an army, in our style, Apparel, gesture, building, or what not: All arts and actions do affect their beauty. But put the case, in travel I may meet Some gorgeous structure, a brave frontispiece, Shall I stay captive in the outer court, Surprised with that, and not advance to know Who dwells there, and inhabiteth the house ? There is my friendship to be made, within, With what can love me again: not with the walls, Doors, windows, architraves, the frieze, and cornice. My end is lost in loving of a face, An eye, lip, nose, hand, foot, or other part, Whose all is but a statue, if the mind Move not, which only can make the return. The end of love, is to have two made one In will, and in affection, that the minds Be first inoculated, not the bodies. Lord B. Give me the body, if it be a good one. [Kisses Frank. Frank. Nay, sweet, my lord, I must appeal the sovereign For better quarter, if you hold your practice. Trun. Silence, pain of imprisonment! hear the court. Lov. The body’s love is frail, subject to change, And alters still with it ; the mind’s is firm, One and the same, proceedeth first from weighing, And well examining what is fair and good ; Then what is like in reason, fit in manners ; That breeds good-will: good-will desire of union. So knowledge first begets benevolence, Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love : And where it starts or steps aside from this, It is a mere degenerous appetite, A lost, oblique, depraved affection, And bears no mark or character of love. Lady F. How am I changed ! by what alchemy Of love, or language, am I thus translated ! His tongue is tipt with the philosopher’s stone, And that hath touched me through every vein ! I feel that transmutation of my blood, As I were quite become another creature, And all he speaks it is projection. Prue. Well feign’d, my lady : now her parts Lord L. And she will act them subtily. [begin. Pru. She fails me else. Lov. Nor do they trespass within bounds of pardon, That giving way, and license to their love, Divest him of his noblest ornaments, scene i. THE NEW INN. 423 Which are his modesty and shamefacedness : And so they do, that have unfit designs Upon the parties they pretend to love. For what’s more monstrous, more a prodigy, Than to hear me protest truth of affection Unto a person that I would dishonour ? And what’s a more dishonour, than defacing Another’s good with forfeiting mine own ; And drawing on a fellowship of sin ? From note of which, though for awhile, we may Be both kept safe by caution, yet the conscience Cannot be cleans’d : for what was hitherto Call’d by the name of love, becomes destroy’d Then, with the fact ; the innocency lost, The bateing of affection soon will follow ; And love is never true that is not lasting : No more than any can be pure or perfect, That entertains more than one object. Dixi. Lady F. O speak, and speak for ever ! let mine Be feasted still, and filled with this banquet! [ear No sense can ever surfeit on such truth, It is the marrow of all lovers’ tenets ! Who hath read Plato, Heliodore, or Tatius, Sidney, D’Urfe, or all Love’s fathers, like him ? He’s there the Master of the Sentences, Their school, their commentary, text, and gloss, And breathes the true divinity of love ! Pru. Excellent actor, how she hits this passion ! Lady F. Where have I lived, in heresy, so long Out of the congregation of Love, And stood irregular, by all his canons ? Lord L. But do you think she plays ? Pru. Upon my sovereignty ; Mark her anon. Lord L. I shake, and am half jealous. Lady F. What penance shall I do to be received, And reconciled to the church of Love ? Go on procession, barefoot, to his image, And say some hundred penitential verses, There, out of Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressid ? Or to his mother’s shrine, vow a wax-candle As large as the town May-pole is, and pay it ? Enjoin me any thing this court thinks fit, For I have trespass’d, and blasphemed Love : I have, indeed, despised his deity, Whom (till this miracle wrought on me) I knew Now I adore Love, and would kiss the rushes [not. That bear this reverend gentleman, his priest, If that would expiate-but I fear it will not. For, though he be somewhat struck in years, and Enough to be my father, he is wise, [old And only wise men love, the other covet. I could begin to be in love with him, But will not tell him yet, because I hope To enjoy the other hour with more delight, And prove him farther. ACT SCENE I .-—A Boom in the Inn. Enter Jug, Barnaby, and Jordan. Jag. O Barnaby! Jor. Welcome, Barnaby! where hast thou been? Bar. In the foul weather. Jug. Which has wet thee, Barnaby. Bar. As dry as a chip. Good Jug, a cast of thy \s well as thy office : two jugs. [name, Pru. Most Socratic lady, Or, if you will ironic ! give you joy Of your Platonic love here, master Lovel! But pay him his first kiss yet, in the court, Which is a debt, and due : for the hour’s run. Lady F. How swift is time, and slily steals away From them would hug it, value it, embrace it! I should have thought it scarce had run ten minutes, When the whole hour is fled. Here, take your kiss, sir, Which I most willingly tender you in court. [Kisses Lov. Lord B. And we do imitate. [Kisses Frank. Lady F. And I could wish, It had been twenty—so the sovereign’s Poor narrow nature had decreed it so-- But that is past, irrevocable, now : She did her kind, according to her latitude- Pru. Beware you do not conjure up a spirit You cannot lay. Lady F. I dare you, do your worst: Shew me but such an injustice ; I would thank you To alter your award. Lord L. Sure she is serious ! I shall have another fit of jealousy, I feel a grudging. Host. Cheer up, noble guest, We cannot guess what this may come to yet; The brain of man or woman is uncertain. Lov. Tut, she dissembles ; ail is personated, And counterfeit comes from her ! if it were not, The Spanish monarchy, with both the Indies, Could not buy off the treasure of this kiss, Or half give balance for my happiness. Host. Why, as it is yet, it glads my Light Heart To see you rouzed thus from a sleepy humour Of drowsy, accidental melancholy ; And all those brave parts of your soul awake, That did before seem drown’d, and buried in you. That you express yourself as you had back’d The Muses’ horse, or got Bellerophon’s arms—■ Enter Fly. What news with Fly ? Fly. News of a newer lady, A finer, fresher, braver, bonnier beauty, A very bona-roba, and a bouncer, In yellow, glistering, golden satin. Lady F. Prue, Adjourn the court. Pru. Cry, Trundle. Trun. Oyez, Any man, or woman, that hath any personal attendance To give unto the court; keep the second hour, And Love save the sovereign ! [Exeunt. IV. Jug. By and by. [Exit. Jor. What lady’s this thou hast brought here ? Bar. A great lady ! I know no more ; one that will try you, Jordan ; She’ll find your gage, your circle, your capacity. How does old Staggers the smith, and Tree the Keep they their penny club still? [sadler? Jor. And the old catch too. Of Whoop-Barnahy ! 424 THE NEAT INN. act iv. Bar. Do tliey sing at me ? Jor. They are reeling at it in the parlour now. Re-enter Jug with wine. Bar. I’ll to them : give me a drink first. [Drinks Jor. Where’s thy hat ? Bar. I lost it by the way—Give me another. Jug. A hat! Bar. A drink. [Drinks. Jug. Take heed of taking cold, Bar- Bar. The wind blew’t off at Highgate, and my Would not endure me light to take it up ; [lady But made me drive bareheaded in the rain. Jor. That she might be mistaken for a countess ? Bar. Troth, like enough: she might be an For aught I know. [o’ergrown dutchess, Jug. What, with one man ! Bar. At a time, They carry no more, the best of them. Jor. Nor the bravest. Bar. And she is very brave. Jor. A stately gown And petticoat, she has on ! Bar. Have you spied that, Jordan ? You are a notable peerer, an old rabbi, At a smock’s hem, boy. Jug. As he is chamberlain, He may do that by his place. Jor. What is her squire ? Bar. A toy, that she allows eight-pence a-day, A slight mannet, to port her up and down : Come, shew me to my play-fellows, old Staggers, And father Tree. Jor. Here, this way, Barnaby. [Exeunt. ■ ——- SCENE II.— The Court of the Inn. Enter Tipto, Burst, Huffle, and Fly. Tip. Come, let us take in fresco, here, one quart. [stinted. Burst. Two quarts, my man of war, let’s not be IIvf. Advance three Jordans, varlet of the house. Tip. I do not like your Burst, bird; he is saucy : Some shop-keeper he was ? Fig. Yes, sir. Tip. I knew it, Abroke-wing’d shop-keeper? I nose them straight. He had no father, I warrant him, that durst own him ; Some foundling in a stall, or the church-porch ; Brought up in the hospital; and so bound prentice; Then master of a shop ; then one o’ the inquest; Then breaks out bankrupt, or starts alderman: The original of both is a church-porch- Fly. Of some, my colonel. Tip. Good faith, of most Of your shop citizens : they are rude animals ! And let them get but ten mile out of town, They out-swagger all the wapentake. Fly. What’s that ? Tip. A Saxon word to signify the hundred. Burst. Come, let us drink, sir Glorious, some Upon our tip-toes. [brave health Tip. To the health of the Bursts. Burst. Why Bursts ? Tip. Why Tiptos ? Burst. O, I cry you mercy ! Tip. It is sufficient. Uuf. What is so sufficient ? 1 ip. To drink to you is sufficient. IIuf. On what terms ? Tip. That you shall give security to pledge me. Huf. So you will name no Spaniard, I will pledge you. [ever, Tip. I rather choose to thirst, and will thirst Than leave that cream of nations uncried up. Perish all wine, and gust of wine ! [Throws the wine at him. Iluf. IIow ! spill it? Spill it at me ? Tip. 1 reck not; but I spilt it. Fly. Nay, pray you be quiet, noble bloods. Burst. No Spaniards, I cry, with my cousin Huffle. Huf. Spaniards 1 pilchers. [sleeps, Tip. Do not provoke my patient blade; it And would not hear thee : Huffle, thou art rude, And dost not know the Spanish composition. Burst. What is the recipe ? name the ingre- Tip. Valour. [dients. Burst. Two ounces! Tip. Prudence. Burst. Half a dram ! Tip. Justice. Burst. A pennyweight! Tip. Religion. Burst. Three scruples ! Tip. And of gravidad. Burst. A face-full. Tip. He carries such a dose of it in his looks, Actions and gestures, as it breeds respect To him from savages, and reputation With all the sons of men. Burst. Will it give him credit With gamesters, courtiers, citizens, or tradesmen? Tip. He’ll borrow money on the stroke of his Or turn of his mustaccio ! his mere cuello, [beard, Or ruff about his neck, is a bill of exchange In any bank in Europe : not a merchant That sees his gait, but straight will furnish him Upon his pace. Huf. I have heard the Spanish name Is terrible to children in some countries ; And used to make them eat their bread and butter, Or take their worm-seed. Tip. Huffle, you do shuffle. Enter Stuff, and Pinnacia his tvife richly habited. Burst. ’Slid, here’s a lady! Huf. And a lady gay! Tip. A well-trimm’d lady ! Huf. Let us lay her aboard. Burst. Let’s hail her first. Tip. By your sweet favour, lady. Stuff. Good gentlemen be civil, we are strangers. Burst. An you were Flemings, sir— Huf. Or Spaniards— Tip. They are here, have been at Sevil in their And at Madrid too. [days Pin. He is a foolish fellow, I pray you mind him not, he is my Protection. Tip. In your protection he is safe, sweet lady. So shall you be in mine. Huf. A share, good colonel. Tip. Of what ? Huf. Of your fine lady : I am Hodge, My name is Huffle. Tip. Huffling Hodge, be quiet. Burst. And I pray you, be you so, glorious Hodge Huffle shall be quiet. [colonel SCENE 111. THE NEW INN. 425 ^ Uuf [singing.] A lady gay, gay: . [gay. For she is a lady gay , gay , gay. For she is a lady Tip. laird of the vespers, vespertilio Burst, You are a gentleman of the first head ; But that head may be broke, as all the body is—• Burst, if you tie not up your Huffle quickly. Hvf. Tie dogs, not men. Burst. Nay, pray thee, Hodge, be still, [vain. Tip. This steel here rides not on this thigh in Huf. Shew’st thou thy steel and thigh, thou glorious dirt ! Then Hodge sings Samson, and no ties shall hold. {They fight. Enter Pierce, Jug, and Jordan. Pierce. Keep the peace, gentlemen : what do you mean ? Tip. I will not discompose myself for Huffle. [Exeunt all (but Stuff and 1'inJ fighting . Pin. You see what your entreaty and pressure Of gentlemen, to be civil, doth bring on : [still A quarrel, and perhaps man-slaughter. You Will carry your goose about you still, your planing-iron ! Your tongue to smooth all! is not here fine Stuff. Why, wife ? [stuff ! Pin. Your wife ! have not I forbidden you that ? Do you think I’ll call you husband in this gown, Or any thing, in that jacket, but protection? Here, tie my shoe, and shew my velvet petticoat, And my silk stocking. Why do you make me a If I may not do like a lady in fine clothes ? [lady, Stuff. Sweet heart, you may do what you will with me. Pin. Ay, I knew that at home; what to do with you; But why was I brought hither? to see fashions ? Stuff. And wear them too, sweet heart; but this wild company- Pin. Why do you bring me in wild company ? You’d have me tame and civil in wild company ! I hope I know r wild company are fine company, And in fine company, where I am fine myself, A lady may do any thing, deny nothing To a fine party, I have heard you say it. Re-enter Pierce. Pierce. There are a company of ladies above Desire your ladyship’s company, and to take The surety of their lodgings from the affront Of these half beasts were here e’en now, the Pin. Are they fine ladies ? [Centaurs. Pierce. Some very fine ladies. Pin. As fine as I ? Pierce. I dare use no comparisons, Being a servant, sent- Pin. Spoke like a fine fellow! I would thou wert one ; I’d not then deny thee : But, thank thy lady. [Exit Pierce. Enter Host. Host. Madam, I must crave you To afford a lady a visit, would excuse Some harshness of the house, you have received From the brute guests. Pin. This is a fine old man ! I’d go with him an he were a little finer. Stuff. You may, sweetheart, it is mine host. Pin. Mine host ! Host. Yes, madam, I must bid you welcome. Pin. Do, then Stuff. But do not stay. Pin. I’ll be advised by you ! yes. [Exeunt. SCENE III.— A Room in the same. Enter Lord Latimer, Lord Beaufort, Lady Framtul, Prudence, Frank, and Nurse. Lord L. What more than Thracian barbarism was this ? Lord B. The battle of the Centaurs with the Lapithes ! Lady F. There is no taming of the monster, drink. Lord L. But what a glorious beast our Tipto shew’d ! He would not discompose himself, the don! Your Spaniard ne’er doth discompose himself. LordB. Yet, how he talk’d, and roar’d in the beginning! Pru. And ran as fast as a knock’d marrow¬ bone. LordB. So they did at last, when Lovel went And chased them ’bout the court. [down, Lord L. For all’s don Lewis, Or fencing after Euclid. Lady F. I ne’er saw A lightning shoot so, as my servant did, His rapier was a meteor, and he waved it Over them, like a comet, as they fled him. I mark’d his manhood ! every stoop he made Was like an eagle’s at a flight of cranes : As I have read somewhere. Lord B. Bravely exprest. Lord L. And like a lover. Lady L\ Of his valour, I am. He seem’d a body rarified to air ; Or that his sword, and arm were of a piece, They went together so !—Here comes the lady. Enter Host, with Pinnacia. Lord B. A bouncing bona-roba! as the Fly said. Frank. She is some giantess : I will stand off, For fear she swallow me. Lady F. Is not this our gown, Prue, That I bespoke of Stuff? Pru. It is the fashion. Lady F. Ay, and the silk; feel: sure it is the same ! Pru. And the same petticoat, lace and all! Lady F. I’ll swear it. How came it hither ? make a bill of enquiry. Pru. You have a fine suit on, madam, and a Lady F. And of a curious making, [rich one. Pru. And a new. Pin. As new as day. Lord L. She answers like a fish-wife. Pin. I put it on since noon, I do assure you. Pru. Who is your tailor ? Lady F. Pray you, your fashioner’s name ? Pin. My fashioner is a certain man of mine own; He is in the house : no matter for his name. Host. O, but to satisfy this bevy of ladies, Of which a brace, here, long’d to bid you welcome. Pin. He is one, in truth, I title my Protection : Bid him come up. Host. [ calls.~\ Our new lady’s Protection ! What is your ladyship’s style ? Pin. Countess Pinnacia. Host. Countess Pinnacia’s man, come to your lady! 42o THE NEW" INN. ACT IV Enter Stuff. Pru. Your ladyship's tailor! master Stuff! Lady F. How, Stuff! He the Protection! Host. Stuff looks like a remnant. Stuff. I am undone, discover'd. [Falls on his knees. Pru. ’Tis the suit, madam, Now, without scruple : and this some device To bring it home with. Pin. Why upon your knees? Is this your lady godmother ? Stuff. Mum, Pinnacia. It is the lady Frampul; my best customer. Lady F. What shew is this that you present us with ? Stuff. I do beseech your ladyship, forgive me ; She did but say the suit on. Lady F. Who ? which she ? Stuff. My wife, forsooth. Lady F. How ! mistress Stuff, your wife ! Is that the riddle ? Pru. We all look’d for a lady, A dutchess, or a countess at the least. Stuff. .She’s my own lawfully begotten wife, In wedlock : we have been coupled now seven years. Lady F. And why thus mask’d ? you like a foot- And she your countess ! [man, ha ! Pin. To make a fool of himself, And of me too. Stuff. I pray thee, Pinnace, peace. Pin. Nay, it shall out, since you have call’d me wife, And openly dis-ladied me : Though I am dis- countess’d I am not yet dis-countenanced. These shall see. Host. Silence ! Pin. It is a foolish trick, madam, he has ; For though he be your tailor, he is my beast: I may be bold with him, and tell his story. When he makes any fine garment will fit me, Or any rich thing that he thinks of price, Then must I put it on, and be his countess, Before he carry it home unto the owners. A coach is hired, and four horse ; he runs In his velvet jacket thus, to Rumford, Croydon, Hounslow, or Barnet, the next bawdy road : And takes me out, carries me up, and throws me Upon a bed—• Lady F. Peace, thou immodest woman !— She glories in the bravery of the vice. Lord L. It is a quaint one. Lord B. A fine species Of fornicating with a man’s own wife, Found out by—what’s his name ? Lord L. Master Nic. Stuff. Host. The very figure of pre-occupation In all his customers’ best clothes. Lord L. He lies With his own succuba, in all your names. Lord B. And all your credits. Host. Ay, and at all their costs. Lord L. This gowm was then bespoken for the sovereign. Lord 13. Ay, marry was it. Lord L. And a main offence Committed ’gainst the sovereignty; being not brought Home in the time : beside, the profanation Which may call on the censure of the court. Host. Let him be blanketted. Call up the Deliver him o’er to Fly. [quarter-master. Enter Fly. Stuff. O good, my lord. Host. Pillage the Pinnace. Lady F. Let his wife be stript. Lord B. Blow off her upper deck. Lord L. Tear all her tackle. Lady F. Pluck the polluted robes over her ears ; Or cut them all to pieces, make a fire of them. Pru. To rags and cinders burn th’ idolatrous vestures. Host. Fly, and your fellow's, see that the whole Be thoroughly executed. [censure Fly. We’ll toss him bravely, Till the stuff stink again. Host. And send her home, Divested to her flannel, in a cart. Lord L. And let her footman beat the bason Fly. The court shall be obey’d. [afore her. Host. Fly, and his officers, Will do it fiercely. Stuff. Merciful queen Prue ! Pru, I cannot help you. [Exit Fly, with Stuff and Pinnacia. Lord 13. Go thy ways, Nic. Stuff, Thou hast nickt it for a fashioner of venery. Lord L. For his own hell ! though he run ten mile for it. Pru. O, here comes Lovel, for his second hour. Lord B. And after him the type of Spanish valour. Enter Lovel with a Paper, followed by Tipto. Lady F. Servant, w’hat have you there ? Lov. A meditation, Or rather a vision, madam, and of beauty, Our former subject. Lady F. Pray you let us hear it. Lov. It was a beauty that I saw , So pure, so perfect, as the frame Of all the universe was lame, To that one figure, could I draw, Or give least line of it a law ! A skein of silk without a knot, A fair march made without a halt , A curious form without a fault, A printed book without a blot. All beauty, and without a spot ! Lady F. They are gentle words, and wrnuld de- Set to them, as gentle. [serve a note, Lov. I have tried my skill, To close the second hour, if you will hear them ; My boy by that time will have got it perfect. Lady F. Yes, gentle servant. In what calm he After this noise and tumult, so unmoved, [speaks, With that serenity of countenance, As if his thoughts did acquiesce in that Which is the object of the second hour, And nothing else. Pru. Well then, summon the court. Lady F. I have a suit to the sovereign of Love, If it may stand with the honour of the court, To change the question but from love to valour To hear it said, but what true valour is, Which oft begets true love. Lord L. It is a question SCENE III. THE NEW INN, 427 Fit for the court to take true knowledge of, And hath my just assent. Pru. Content. Lord B. Content. Frank. Content. I am content, give him his oath. Host. Herbert Lovel , Thou shalt sioear upon the Testament of Love , to make answer to this question propounded to thee by the court, What true valour is ? and therein to tell the truth , the whole truth , and nothing but the truth. So help thee Love , and thy bright sword at need. Lov. So help me, Love, and my good sword at It is the greatest virtue, and the safety [need. Of all mankind, the object of it is danger. A certain mean ’twixt fear and confidence : No inconsiderate rashness or vain appetite Of false encountering formidable things ; But a true science of distinguishing What’s good or evil. It springs out of reason, And tends to perfect honesty, the scope Is always honour, and the public good : It is no valour for a private cause. Lord B. No! not for reputation ? Lov. That’s man’s idol, Set up ’gainst God, the maker of all laws, Who hath commanded us we should not kill; And yet we say, we must for reputation. What honest man can either fear his own, Or else will hurt another’s reputation ? Fear to do base unworthy things is valour ; If they be done to us, to suffer them, Is valour too. The office of a man That’s truly valiant, is considerable, Three ways : the first is in respect of matter, Which still is danger ; in respect of form, Wherein he must preserve his dignity ; And in the end, which must be ever lawful. Lord L. But men, when they are heated, and in Cannot consider. [passion, Lov. Then it is not valour. I never thought an angry person valiant: Virtue is never aided by a vice. What need is there of anger and of tumult; When reason can do the same things, or more ? Lord B. O yes, ’tis profitable, and of use ; It makes us fierce, and fit to undertake. Lov. Why, so will drink make us both bold and rash, Or phrensy if you will : do these make valiant ? They are poor helps, and virtue needs them not. No man is valianter by being angry, But he that could not valiant be without: So that it comes not in the aid of virtue, But in the stead of it. Lord L. He holds the right. Lov. And 'tis an odious kind of remedy, To owe our health to a disease. Tip. If man Should follow the dictamen of his passion, He could not ’scape- Lord B. To discompose himself. Lord L. According to don Lewis ! Host. Or Caranza! Lov. Good colonel Glorious, whilst we treat of Dismiss yourself. [valour, Lord L. You are not concern’d. Lov. Go drink, And congregate the hostlers and the tapsters, The under-officers of your regiment; Compose with them, and be not angry valiant. [Exit Tipto. Lord B. How does that differ from true valour ? Lov. Thus. In the efficient, or that which makes it: For it proceeds from passion, not from judgment : Then brute beasts have it, v/icked persons ; there It differs in the subject; in the form, ’Tis carried rashly, and with violence : Then in the end, where it respects not truth, Or public honesty, but mere revenge. Now confident, and undertaking valour, Sways from the true, two other ways, as being A trust in our own faculties, skill, or strength, And not the right, or conscience of the cause, That works it: then in the end, which is the vic- And not the honour. [tory, Lord B. But the ignorant valour, That knows not why it undertakes, but doth it To escape the infamy merely- Lov. Is worst of all : That valour lies in the eyes o’ the lookers on ; And is called valour with a witness. Lord B. Right. Lov. The things true valour’s exercised about, Are poverty, restraint, captivity, Banishment, loss of children, long disease : The least is death. Here valour is beheld, Properly seen ; about these it. is present: Not trivial things, which but require our confidence. And yet to those we must object ourselves, Only for honesty ; if any other Respects be mixt, we quite put out her light. And as all knowledge, when it is removed, Or separate from justice, is call’d craft, Rather than wisdom ; so a mind affecting, Or undertaking dangers, for ambition, Or any self-pretext not for the public, Deserves the name of daring, not of valour. And over-daring is as great a vice, As over-fearing. Lord L. Yes, and often greater. Lov. But as it is not the mere punishment, But cause that makes a martyr, so it is not Fighting or dying, but the manner of it, Renders a man himself. A valiant man Ought not to undergo, or tempt a danger, But w r orthily, and by selected ways : He undertakes with reason, not by chance. His valour is the salt to his other virtues, They are all unseasoned without it. The waiting- maids, Or the concomitants of it, are his patience, His magnanimity, his confidence, His constancy, security, and quiet; He can assure himself against all rumour, Despairs of nothing, laughs at contumelies, As knowing himself advanced in a height Where injury cannot reach him, nor aspersion Touch him with soil! Lady F. Most manly utter’d all! As if Achilles had the chair in valour, And Hercules were but a lecturer. Who would not hang upon those lips for ever. That strike such music ! I could run on them; But modesty is such a school-mistress To keep our sex in awe— Pru. Or you can feign ; My subtle and dissembling lady mistress. 428 THE NEW INN. ACT IV. Lord L. I fear she means it, Prue, in too good earnest. Lov. The purpose of an injury ’tis to vex And trouble me; now nothing can do that To him that’s valiant. He that is affected With the least injury, is less than it. It is but reasonable to conclude That should be stronger still which hurts, than that Which is hurt. Now no wickedness is stronger Than what opposeth it: not Fortune’s self, When she encounters virtue, but comes off Both lame and less ! why should a wise man then Confess himself the weaker, by the feeling Of a fool’s wrong ? There may an injury Be meant me. I may choose, if I will take it. But we are now come to that delicacy, And tenderness of sense, we think an insolence Worse than an injury, bearwords worse than deeds; We are not so much troubled with the wrong, As with the opinion of the wrong ; like children, We are made afraid with visors : such poor sounds As is the lie or common words of spite, Wise laws thought never worthy a revenge ; And ’tis the narrowness of human nature, Our poverty, and beggary of spirit, To take exception at these things. He laugh’d at He broke a jest! a third took place of me ! [me! How most ridiculous quarrels are all these ? Notes of a queasy and sick stomach, labouring With want of a true injury : the main part Of the wrong, is our vice of taking it. Lord L. Or our interpreting it to be such. Lov. You take it rightly. If a woman, or child Give me the lie, would I be angry ? no, Not if I were in my wits, sure, I should think it No spice of a disgrace. No more is theirs, If I will think it, who are to be held In as contemptible a rank, or worse. I am kept out a masque, sometime thrust out, Made wait a day, two, three, for a great word, Which, when it comes forth, is all frown and fore¬ head : What laughter should this breed, rather than anger! Out of the tumult of so manv errors, To feel with contemplation, mine own quiet! If a great person do me an affront, A giant of the time, sure I will bear it Or out of patience, or necessity : Shall I do more for fear, than for my judgment ? For me now to be angry with Hodge Huffle, Or Burst, his broken charge, if he be saucy, Or our own type of Spanish valour, Tipto, Who were he now necessited to beg, Would ask an alms, like Conde Olivares, Were just to make myself such a vain animal As one of them. If light wrongs touch me not, No more shall great ; if not a few, not many. There’s nought so sacred with us but may find A sacrilegious person, yet the thing is No less divine, ’cause the profane can reach it. He is shot free, in battle, is not hurt, Not he that is not hit: so he is valiant, That yields not unto wrongs ; not he that ’scapes them. They that do pull clown churches, and deface The holiest altars, cannot hurt the Godhead. A calm wise man may shew as much true valour, Amidst these popular provocations. As can an able captain shew security By his brave conduct, through an enemy’s country. A wise man never goes the people’s way: But as the planets still move contrary To the world’s motion ; so doth he, to opinion. He will examine, if those accidents Which common fame calls injuries, happen to him Deservedly or no ? Come they deservedly, They are no wrongs then, but his punishments: If undeservedly, and he not guilty, The doer of them, first, should blush, not he. Lord L. Excellent! Lord B. Truth, and right! Frank. An oracle Could not have spoken more ! Lady F. Been more believed ! Pru. The whole court runs into your sentence, And see your second hour is almost ended. [sir : Lady F. It cannot be! O clip the wings of time, Good Prue, or make him stand still with a charm. Distil the gout into it, cramps, all diseases To arrest him in the foot, and fix him here : O, for an engine, to keep back all clocks, Or make the sun forget his motion!— If I but knew what drink the time now loved, To set my Trundle at him, mine own Barnaby! Prue. Why, I’ll consult our Shelee-nien Thomas. [Shakes her. Nurse. Er yrae Chreest. Lord B. Wake her not. Nurse. Tower een cuppaw D'usque-bagh, doone. Pru. Usquebaugh’s her drink, But ’twill not make the time drunk. Host. As it hath her. Away with her, my lord, but marry her first. [Exit Lord B. with Frank Pru. Ay, That will be sport anon too for my lady, But she hath other game to fly at yet.— The hour is come, your kiss. Lady F. My servant’s song, first. Pru. I say the kiss, first; and I so enjoin’d it: At your own peril, do, make the contempt. Lady F. Well, sir, you must be pay’d, and legally. [Kisses Loved. Pru. Nay, nothing, sir, beyond. Lov. One more-1 except. This was but half a kiss, and I would change it. Pru. The court’s dissolv’d, removed, and the play ended, No sound, or air of love more, I decree it. Lov. From what a happiness hath that one word Thrown me into the gulph of misery ! To what a bottomless despair ! how like A court removing, or an ended play, Shews my abrupt precipitate estate, By how much more my vain hopes were increased By these false hours of conversation ! Did not I prophesy this of myself, And gave the true prognostics ? O my brain, How art thou turned ! and my blood congeal’d, My sinews slacken’d, and my marrow melted, That I remember not where I have been, Or what I am ! only my tongue’s on fire; And burning downward, hurls forth coals and cinders, To tell, this temple of love will soon be ashes ! Come, indignation, now, and be my mistress. No more of Love’s ungrateful tyranny ; His wheel of torture, and his pits of birdlime, His nets of nooses, whirlpools of vexation. SCENE I. THE NEW INN. 429 His mills to grind his servants into powder— I will go catch the wind first in a sieve, Weigh smoak, and measure shadows: plough the water, And sow my hopes there, ere I stay in love. Lord L. My jealousy is off, I am now secure. [Aside and exit. Lov. Farewell the craft of crocodiles, women’s piety, _ And practice of it, in this art of flattering, And fooling men! I have not lost my reason, Though I have lent myself out for two hours, Thus to be baffled by a chambermaid, And the good actor, her lady, afore mine host Of the Light Heart, here, that hath laugh’d at Host. Who, I ? [all- Lov. Laugh on, sir, I’ll to bed and sleep, And dream away the vapour of love, if the house And your leer drunkards let me. [Exeunt all but Lady F., Prudence, and Nurse. Lady F. Prue ! Pru. Sweet madam. Lady F. Why would you let him go thus ? Pru. In whose power Was it to stay him, properer than my lady’s ? Lady F. Why in your lady’s ? are not you the sovereign ? Pru. Would you in conscience, madam, have His patience more ? [me vex Lady F. Not, but apply the cure, Now it is vext. Pru. That’s but one body’s work ; Two cannot do the same thing handsomely. Lady F. But had not you the authority absolute? Pru. And were not you in rebellion, lady From the beginning ? [Frampul, Lady F. I was somewhat froward, I must confess, but frowardness, sometime Becomes a beauty, being but a visor Put on. You’ll let a lady wear her mask, Prue! Pru. But how do I know, when her ladyship is To leave it off, except she tell me so ? [pleased Lady F. You might have known that by my looks, and language, Had you been or regardant, or observant. One woman reads another’s character Without the tedious trouble of deciphering, If she but give her mind to’t; you knew well, It could not sort with any reputation Of mine, to come in first, having stood out So long, without conditions for mine honour. Pru. I thought you did expect none, you so And put him off with scorn. [jeer’d him, Lady F. Who, I, with scorn ? I did express my love to idolatry rather, And so am justly plagued, not understood. Pru. I swear I thought you had dissembled, madam, And doubt you do so yet. Lady F. Dull, stupid wench ! Stay in thy state of ignorance still, be damn’d, An idiot chambermaid ! Hath all my care, My breeding thee in fashion, thy rich clothes, Honour, and titles wrought no brighter effects On thy dark soul, than thus? Well! go thy ways ; Were not the tailor’s wife to be demolish’d, Ruin’d, uncased, thou should’st be she, I vow. Pru. Why, take your spangled properties, your gown And scarfs. [ Tearing off her gown. Lady F. Prue, Prue, what dost thou mean ? Pru. I will not buy this play-boy’s bravery At such a price, to be upbraided for it, Thus, every minute. Lady F. Take it not to heart so. Pru. The tailor’s wife ! there was a word of scorn ! Lady F. It was a word fell from me, Prue, by chance. Pru. Good madam, please to undeceive yourself, I know when words do slip, and when they are darted With all their bitterness : uncased , demolish'd ! An idiot chambermaid , stupid and dull! Be damn’d fur ignorance ! I will be so ; And think I do deserve it, that, and more, Much more I do. Lady F. Here comes mine host: no crying, Good Prue !— Re-entei' Host. Where is my servant Lovel, host ? Host. You have sent him up to bed, would you would follow him, And make my house amends ! LadyF. Would you advise it ? Host. I would I could command it! My light Should leap till midnight. [heart Lady F. Pray thee be not sullen, I yet must have thy counsel. Thou shalt wear, The new gown yet. [Prue, Pru. After the tailor’s wife ! Lady F. Come, be not angry or grieved: I have a project. [ Exeunt Lady F. and Pru. Host. Wake Shelee-nien Thomas ! Is this your heraldry, And keeping of records to lose the main ? Where is your charge ? Nurse. Grae Chreest! Host. Go ask the oracle Of the bottle, at your girdle, there you lost it: You are a sober setter of the watch ! [Exeunt. ACT V. SCENE I .—A Room in the Inn. Enter Host and Fly. Host. Come, Fly and Legacy, the bird o’ the Heart : Prime insect of the Inn, professor, quarter-master, As ever thou deserved’st thy daily drink, Padling in sack, and licking in the same, Now shew thyself an implement of price, And help to raise a nap to us out of nothing.— Thou saw’st them married ? Fly. I do think I did, And heard the words, I Philip, take thee Lattice. I gave her too, was then the father Fly, And heard the priest do his part, far as five nobles Would lead him in the lines of matrimony. Host. Where were they married ? Fly, In the new stable. 430 THE NEW INN. ACT V. Host. Ominous ! I have known many a church been made a stable, But not a stable made a church till now: I wish them joy. Fly, was he a full priest ? Fly. He belly’d for it, had his velvet sleeves, And his branch’d cassock, a side sweeping gown, All his formalities, a good cramm’d divine ! I went not far to fetch him, the next inn, Where he was lodged, for the action. Ilost. Had they a license ? Fly. License of love; I saw no other ; and purse To pay the duties both of church and house : The angels flew about. Host. Those birds send luck ; And mirth will follow. I had thought to have sacrificed To merriment to-night in my Light Heart, Fly, And like a noble poet, to have had My last act best; but all fails in the plot. Lovel is gone to bed ; the lady Frampul And sovereign Prue fall’n out: Tipto and his regiment Of mine-men, all drunk dumb, from his whoop Barnaby, To his hoop Trundle : they are his two tropics. No project to rear laughter on, but this, The marriage of lord Beaufort with Lsetitia. Stay, what is here ? the satin gown redeem’d, And Prue restored in’t to her lady’s grace! Fly. She is set forth in’t, rigg’d for some employ- Host. An embassy at least. [ment! Fly. Some treaty of state. Host. ’Tis a fine tack about; and worth the observing. [.They stand aside. Enter Lady Frampul, ami Prudence magnificently dressed. Lady F. Sweet Prue, ay, now thou art a queen indeed! These robes do royally, and thou becom’st them! So they do thee! rich garments only fit The parties they are made for; they shame others. How did they shew on goody tailor’s back ? Like a caparison for a sow, God save us ! Thy putting ’em on hath purged and hallow’d them From all pollution meant by the mechanics. P> 'll. Hang him, poor snip, a secular shop-wit! He hath nought but his sheers to claim by, and his measures : His prentice may as well put in for his needle. And plead a stitch. I.ady F. They have no taint in them Now of the tailor. Pru. Yes, of his wife’s handles, Thus thick of fat; I smell them, of the say. Lady F. It is restorative, Prue: with thy but chafing it. A barren hind’s grease may work miracles.— Find but his chamber-door, and he will rise To thee ; or if thou pleasest, feign to be The wretched party herself, and com’st unto him In forma pauperis, to crave the aid Of his knight-errant valour, to the rescue Of thy distressed robes : name but thy gown, And he will rise to that. Pru. I’ll fire the charm first, I had rather die in a ditch with mistress Shore, Y ithout a smock, as the pitiful matter has it, Than owe my wit to clothes, or have it beholden. Host. Still spirit of Prue ! Fly. And smelling of the sovereign ! Pru. No, I will tell him, as it is indeed ; I come from the fine, froward, frampul lady, One was run mad with pride, wild with self-love, But late encountering a wise man who scorn’d her, And knew the way to his own bed, without Borrowing her warming-pan, she hath recover’d Part of her wits ; so much as to consider How far she hath trespass’d, upon whom, and how, And now sits penitent and solitary, Like the forsaken turtle, in the volary Of the Light Heart, the cage, she hath abused, Mourning her folly, weeping at the height She measures with her eyes, from whence she is fall’n, Since she did branch it on the top o’ the wood. Lady F. I prithee, Prue, abuse me enough, that’s use me As thou think’st fit, any coarse way, to humble me, Or bring me home again, or Lovel on : Thou dost not know my sufferings, what I feel, My fires and fears are met; I burn and freeze, My liver’s one great coal, my heart shrunk up With all the fibres, and the mass of blood Within me, is a standing lake of fire, Curl’d with the cold wind of my gelid sighs, That drive a drift of sleet through all my body, And shoot a February through my veins. Until I see him, I am drunk with thirst, And surfeited with hunger of his presence. I know not wh6r I am, or no ; or speak, Or whether thou dost hear me. Pru. Spare expressions. I’ll once more venture for your ladyship, So you will use your fortunes reverently. Lady F. Religiously, dear Prue: Love and his mother, I’ll build them several churches, shrines, and altars, And over head, I’ll have, in the glass windows, The story of this day be painted, round, For the poor laity of love to read : I’ll make myself their book, nay, their example, To bid them take occasion by the forelock, And play no after-games of love hereafter. Host, [coming forward with Fly.] And here your host and’s Fly witness your vows, And like two lucky birds, bring the presage Of a loud jest; Lord Beaufort’s married. Lady F. Ha ! Fly. All to-be-married. Pru. To whom, not your son ? Host. The same, Prue. If her ladyship could take truce A little with her passion, and give way To their mirth now running— Lady F. Runs it mirth ! let it come, It shall be well received, and much made of it. Pru. We must of this, it was our own concep¬ tion. Enter Lord Latimer. Lord L. Room for green rushes, raise the fid- lers, chamberlain, Call up the house in arms ! Host. This will rouse Lovel. Fly. And bring him on too. Lord L. Sheelee-nien Thomas Runs like a heifer bitten with the brize, About the court, crying on Fly, and cursing. SCENE I. THE NEW INN. Fly. For what, my lord ? Lord L. You were best hear that from her, It is no office, Fly, fits my relation. Here come the happy couple !— Enter Lord Beaufort, Frank, Ferret, Jordan, and Jug, Fiddlers, Servants, SfC. Joy, lord Beaufort! Fly. And my young lady too. Host. Much joy, my lord ! Lord B. I thank you all; I thank thee, father Madam, my cousin, you look discomposed, [Fly. I have been bold with a sallad after supper, Of your own lettice here. Lady F. You have, my lord : But laws of hospitality, and fair rites, Would have made me acquainted. LordB. In your own house, I do acknowledge ; else I much had trespass’d. But in an inn, and public, where there is license Of all community ; a pardon of course May be sued out. Lord I,. It will, my lord, and carry it. I do not see, how any storm or tempest Can help it now. Pi 'u. The thing being done and past, You bear it wisely, and like a lady of judgment. Lord B. She is that, secretary Prue. Pru. Why secretary, My wise lord ? is your brain [too] lately married! Lord B. Your reign is ended, Prue, no sovereign now : Your date is out, and dignity expired. Pru. I am annull’d ; how can I treatwith Lovel, Without a new commission ? Lady F. Thy gown’s commission. Host. Have patience, Prue, expect, bid the lord j°y- pru. And this brave lady too. I wish them joy! Pierce. Joy ! Jor. J oy ! Jug. All joy! Host. Ay, the house full of joy. Fly. Play the bells, fiddlers, crack your strings with joy. [Music. Pru. But, lady Lsetice, you slievv’d a neglect Un-to-be-pardon’d, to’ards my lady, your kins- Not to advise with her. [woman, Lord B. Good politic Prue, Urge not your state-advice, your after-wit; ’Tis near upbraiding. Get our bed ready, cham¬ berlain, And host, a bride-cup ; you have rare conceits, And good ingredients ; ever an old host, Upon the road, has his provocative drinks. Lord L. He is either a good bawd, or a physi¬ cian. Lord B. ’Twas well he heard you not, his back was turn’d. A bed, the genial bed! a brace of boys, To-night, 1 play for. Pru. Give us points, my lord. Lord B. Here take them, Prue, my cod-piece point, and all. I have clasps, my Lsetice’ arms ; here take them, bovs. [Throws off his doublet, Sjc. What, is the chamber ready? Speak, why stare On one another. [you Jor. No, sir. Lord B. And why no? 431 Jor. My master has forbid it: he yet doubts, That you are married. Lord B. Ask his vicar-general, His Fly, here. Fly. I must make that good ; they are married. Host. But I must make it bad, my hot young lord.— Give him his doublet again, the air is piercing ; You may take cold, my lord. See whom you have Your host’s son., and a boy ! [married, [Pulls ojf Frank’s head - dress . Fly. You are abused. Lady F. Much joy, my lord ! Pru. If this be your Leetitia, She’ll prove a counterfeit mirth, and a clipp’d lady. Ser. A boy, a boy, my lord has married a boy ! Lord L. Raise all the house in shout and laughter, a boy! Host. Stay, what is here ! peace, rascals, stop your throats.— Enter Nurse, hastily . Nurse. That maggot, worm, that insect! O my child, My daughter ! where’s that Fly ? I’ll fly in his face, The vermin, let me come to him. Fly. Why, nurse Sheelee ? Nurse. Hang thee, thou parasite, thou son of crumbs And orts, thou hast undone me, and my child, My daughter, my dear daughter ! Host. What means this ? Nurse. O, sir, my daughter, my dear child is ruin’d, By this your Fly, here, married in a stable, And sold unto a husband. Host. Stint thy cry, Harlot, if that be all; didst thou not sell him To me for a boy, and brought’st him in boy’s rags Here to my door, to beg an alms of me? Nurse. I did, good master, and I crave your But ’tis my daughter, and a girl. [pardon : Host. Why saidst thou It was a boy, and sold’st him then to me With such entreaty, for ten shillings, carlin? Nurse. Because you were a charitable man, I heard, good master, and would breed him well; I would have given him you for nothing gladly. Forgive the lie of my mouth, it was to save The fruit of my womb. A parent’s needs are urgent, And few do know that tyrant o’er good natures : But you relieved her, and me too, the mother, And took me into your house to be the nurse, For which heaven heap all blessings on your head, Whilst there can one be added. Host. Sure thou speak’st Quite like another creature than thou hast lived Here, in the house, a Slieelee-nien Thomas, An Irish beggar. Nurse. So I am, God help me. Host. What art thou ? tell: the match is a good match, For aught I see ; ring the bells once again. [Music. Lord B. Stint, I say, fidlers. Lady F. No going off, my lord. Lord B. Nor coming on, sweet lady, things thus standing. Fly. But what’s the heinousness of my offence Or the degrees of wrong you suffer’d by it ? 432 THE NEW INN. act v. In having your daughter match’d thus happily, Into a noble house, a brave young blood, And a prime peer of the realm ? Lord B. Was that your plot, Fly? Give me a cloke, take her again among you. I’ll none of your Light Heart fosterlings, no inmates, Supposititious fruits of an host’s brain, And his Fly’s hatching, to be put upon me. There is a royal court of the Star-chamber, Will scatter all these mists, disperse these vapours, And clear the truth : Let beggars match with beg- Tliat shall decide it; I will try it there. [gars— Nurse. Nay then, my lord, it’s not enough, I see, You are licentious, but you will be wicked. You are not alone content to take my daughter, Against the law ; but having taken her, You would repudiate and cast, her off, Now at your pleasure, like a beast of power, Without all cause, or colour of a cause, That, or a noble, or an honest man, Should dare to except against, her poverty; Is poverty a vice ? Lord B. The age counts it so. Nurse. God help your lordship, and your peers that think so, If any be ; if not, God bless them all, And help the number of the virtuous, If poverty be a crime ! You may object Our beggary to us, as an accident, But never deeper, no inherent baseness. And I must tell you now, young lord of dirt, As an incensed mother, she hath more, And better blood, running in those small veins, Than all the race of Beauforts have in mass, Though they distil their drops from the left rib Of John o’ Gaunt. Host. Old mother of records, Thou know’st her pedigree then : whose daughter is she ? Nurse. The daughter and co-heir to the lord This lady’s sister. [Frampul, Lady F. Mine ! what is her name ? Nurse. Lsetitia. Lady F. That was lost! Nurse. The true Lsetitia. Lady F. Sister, 0 gladness ! Then you are our Nurse. I am, dear daughter. [mother? Lady F. On my knees I bless The light I see you by. Nurse. And to the author Of that blest light, I ope my other eye, Which hath almost, now, seven years been shut, Dark as my vow was, never to see light, Till such a light restoi’ed it, as my children, Or your dear father, who, I hear, is not. Lord B. Give me my wife, I own her now, and will have her. Host. But you must ask my leave first, my young lord. Leave is but light.—Ferret, go bolt your master, Here’s gear will startle him. [Exit Ferret.] —I cannot keep The passion in me, I am e’en turn’d child, And I must weep.—Fly, take away mine host, [Pulls off his disguise. My beard and cap here from me, and fetch my lord.— [ Exit Fly. I am her father, sir, and you shall now \sk my consent, before you have her.—Wife ! My dear and loving wife! my honour’d wife! Who here hath gain’d but I ? I am lord Frampul. The cause of all this trouble ; I am he Have measured all the shires of England over, Wales, and her mountains, seen those wilder nations Of people in the Peak, and Lancashire ; Their pipers, fidlers, rushers, puppet-masters, Jugglers, and gipsies, all the sorts of canters, And colonies of beggars, tumblers, ape-carriers ; For to these savages I was addicted, To search their natures, and make odd discoveries: And here my wife, like a she-Mandevile, Ventured in disquisition after me. Re-enter Fly, with Lord Frajupul’s robes. Nurse. I may look up, admire, I cannot speak Yet to my lord. Host. Take heart, and breathe, recover, Thou hast recover’d me, who here had coffin’d Myself alive, in a poor hostelry, In penance of my wrongs done unto thee, Whom I long since gave lost. Nurse. So did I vou, Till stealing mine own daughter from her sister, I lighted on this error hath cured all. Lord B. And in that cure, include my trespass, And father, for my wife- [mother, Host. No, the Star-chamber. Lord B. Away with that, you sour the sweetest Was ever tasted. [lettice Host. Give you joy, my son ; Cast her not off again.— Enter Lovel. 0 call me father, Lovel, and this your mother, if you like. But take your mistress, first, my child; I have power To give her now, with her consent; her sister Is given already to your brother Beaufort. Lov. Is this a dream now, after my first sleep, Or are these phant’sies made in the Light Heart, And sold in the New Inn? Host. Best go to bed, And dream it over all. Let’s all go sleep, Each with his turtle. Fly, provide us lodgings, Get beds prepared ; you are master now of the inn, The lord of the Light Heart, I give it you. Fly was my fellow-gipsy. All my family, Indeed, were gipsies, tapsters, ostlers, chamberlains, Reduced vessels of civility.— But here stands Px-ue, neglected, best deserving Of all that are in the house, or in my Heart, Whom though I cannot help to a fit husband, I’ll help to that will bring one, a just portion : I have two thousand pound in bank for Prue, Call for it when she will. L.ord B. And I as much. Host. There’s somewhat yet, four thousand pound! that’s better, Than sounds the proverb, four bare legs in a bed. Lov. Me and her mistress, she hath power to Up into what she will. [coin Lady F. Indefinite Prue ! Lord L. But I must do the crowning act of Host. What’s that, my lord? [bounty Lord //. Give her myself, which here By all the holy vows of love I do. Spare all your promised portions ; she’s a dowry So all-sufficient in her virtue and manners. That fortune cannot add to her. Fru. My lord. THE NEW INN. 433 Your praises are instructions to mine ears, Whence you have made your wife to live your servant. Host. Lights 1 get us several lights ! Loo. Stay, let my mistress But hear my vision sung, my dream of beauty, Which I have brought, prepared, to bid us joy, And light us all to bed, ’twill be instead Of airing of the sheets with a sweet odour. Host. ’Twill be an incense to our sacrifice Of love to-night, where I will woo afresh, And like Msecenas, having but one wife, I’ll marry her every hour of life hereafter. [Exeunt with a song EPILOGUE. Plays in themselves have neither hopes nor fears ; Their fate is only in their hearers' ears: If you expect more than you had to-night, The maker is sick, and sad. But do him right: He meant to please you : for he sent things fit , In all the numbers both of sense and wit ; If they have not miscarried 1 if they have, All that his faint and faltering tongue doth crave, Is, that you not impute it to his brain. That's yet unhurt, although, set round ivith pain , It cannot long hold out. All strength must yield ; Yet judgment would the last be in the field, With a true poet. He could have haled in The drunkards, and the noises of the Inn, In his last act ; if he had thought it fit To vent you vapours in the place of wit : But better ’twas that they should sleep, or spue, Than in the scene to offend or him or you. This he did think ; and this do you forgive: Whene'er the carcass dies, this art will live. And had he lived the care of king and queen, His art in something mo^eyet had been seen ; But mayors and shrieves may yearly fill the stage: A king's, or poet's birth doth ask an age. ANOTHER EPILOGUE THERE WAS, MADE FOR THE PLAY, IN THE POEt’s DEFENCE. BUT THE PLAY LIVED NOT, IN OPINION, 10 HAVE IT SPOKEN. A jovial host, and lord of the New Inn, ’Clept the Light Heart, with all that past therein, Hath been the subject of our play to-night, To give the king, and queen, and court delight. But then we mean the court above the stairs, And past the guard ; men that have more of cars, Than eyes to judge us : such as will not hiss, Because the chambermaid was named Cis. We think it would have served our scene as true, If, as it is, at first we had call'd her Prue , For any mystery we there have found, Or magic in the letters, or the sound. She only meant was for a girl of wit, To whom her lady did a province fit: Which she would have discharg'd, and done as well , Had she been christen'd Joyce, Grace, Doll, or Nell. THE JUS’*, INDIGNATION THE AUTHOR TOOK AT THE VULGAR CENSURE OF HIS PLAY, BY SOME MALICIOUS SPECTATORS, BEGAT THIS FOLLOWING ODE (to himself). Come leave the loathed stage, And the more loathsome age ; Where pride and impudence, in faction knit, Usurp the chair of wit! Indicting and arraigning every day, Something they call a play. Let their fastidious, vain Commission of the brain Run on and rage, sweat, censure and condemn ; They were not made for thee, less thou for them. Say that thou pour’st them wheat, And they will acorns eat; ’Twere simple fury still thyself to waste On such as have no taste ! To offer them a surfeit of pure bread, Whose appetites are dead ! No, give them grains their fill, Husks, draff to drink and swill: If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, Envy them not, their palate’s with the swine, f f No doubt some mouldy tale, Like Pericles, and stale As the shrieve’s crusts, and nasty as his fish— Scraps, out of every dish Thrown forth, and raked into the common tub. May keep up the Play-club : There, sweepings do as well As the best-order’d meal; For who the relish of these guests will fit, Needs set them but the alms-basket of wit. And much good do’t you then . Brave plush and velvet-men, Can feed on orts ; and, safe in your stage-clothes, Dare quit, upon your oaths, The stagers and the stage-wrights too, your peers, Of larding your large ears With their foul comic socks, Wrought upon twenty blocks ; [enough, Which if they are torn, and turn’d, and patch’d The gamesters share your gilt, and you their stuff.— 4154 THE NEW INN. Leave things so prostitute, And take the Alcaic lute ; Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon’s lyre; Warm thee hy Pindar’s fire : And though thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be Ere years have made thee old, [cold Strike that disdainful heat Throughout, to their defeat, As curious fools, and envious of thy strain, May, blushing, swear no palsy’s in thy brain. 1 But when they hear thee sing The glories of thy king, His zeal to God, and his just awe o’er men : They may, blood-shaken then, Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers As they shall cry “ Like ours, In sound of peace or wars, No harp e’er hit the stars, In tuning forth the acts of his sweet reign ; And raising Charles his chariot ’bove his Wain.” AN ANSWER TO THE ODE, “ Come leave the loathed Stage,” S^c. (by OWEN FELTHAM.) Come leave this saucy way Of baiting those that pay Dear for the sight of your declining wit: ; Tis known it is not fit, That a sale poet, just contempt once thrown, Should cry up thus his own. I wonder by what dower, Or patent, you had power From all to rape a judgment. Let’t suffice, Had you been modest, you’d been granted wise. Why rage then ! when the show Should judgment be and know¬ ledge, there are in plush who scorn to drudge For stages, yet can judge Not only poets looser lines, but wits, And all their perquisits. A gift as rich, as high Is noble poesie: Yet though in sport it be for kings a play, ’Tis next mechanics, when it works for pay. ’Tis known you can do well, And that you do excell, As a Translator : But when things require A genius, and fire, Not kindled heretofore by others pains ; As oft you’ve wanted brains And art to strike the white, As you have levell’d right: Yet if men vouch not things apocryphal, You bellow, rave, and spatter round your gall. Alcseus lute had none, Nor loose Anacreon Ere taught so bold assuming of the bays, When they deserv’d no praise. To rail men into approbation, Is new to yours alone; And prospers not: for know, Fame is as coy, as you Can be disdainful; and who dares to prove A rape on her, shall gather scorn, not lcve. Jug, Pierce, Peck, Fly, and all Your jests so nominal, Are things so far beneath an able brain, As they do throw a stain Through all th’ unlikely plot, and do displease As deep as Pericles, Where, yet, there is not laid Before a chambermaid Discourse so weigh’d as might have serv’d of old For schools, when they of love and valour told. Leave then this humour vain, And this more humorous strain, Where self-conceit, and choler of the blood Eclipse what else is good : Then if you please those raptures high to touch, Whereof you boast so much ; And but forbear your crown, Till the world puts it on : No doubt from all you may amazement draw. Since braver theme no Phoebus ever saw. AN ANSWER TO BEN JONSON’S ODE, TO PERSUADE HIM NOT TO LEAVE THE STAGE. (BY T. RANDOLPH.) Ben, do not leave the stage, ’Cause ’tis a loathsome age : For pride and impudence will grow too bold, When they shall hear it told They frighted thee; stand high as is thy cause, Their hiss is thy applause : More just were thy disdain, Had they approved thy vein : So thou for them, and they for thee were born, They to incense, and thou as much to scorn. Will’t thou engross thy store Of wheat, and pour no more, Because their bacon-brains have such a taste, As more delight in mast: No ! set them forth a board of dainties, full As thy best Muse can cull; Whilst they the while do pine And thirst, midst all their wine. What greater plague can hell itself devise, Than to be willing thus to tantalize ? THE NEW INN. Thou canst not find them stuff, That will be bad enough To please their palates : let ’em them refuse, For some Pye-Corner Muse ; She is too fair an hostess, ’twere a sin For them to like thine Inn : ’Twas made to entertain Guests of a nobler strain ; Yet if they will have any of thy store, Give them some scraps, and send them from thy door. And let those things in plush, Till they be taught to blush, Like what they will, and more contented be With what Brome swept from thee. I know thy worth, and that thy lofty strains Write not to clothes, but brains ; But thy great spleen doth rise, ’Cause moles will have no eyes : This only in my Ben I faulty find, He’s angry, they’ll not see him that are blind. 485 Why should the scene be mute, ’Cause thou canst touch thy lute, And string thy Horace ? let each Muse of nine Claim thee, and say, Thou’rt mine. ’Twere fond to let all other flames expire, To sit by Pindar’s fire : For by so strange neglect, I should myself suspect, The palsy were as well thy brain’s disease, If they could shake thy Muse which way they please. And though thou well canst sing The glories of thy King ; And on the wings of verse his chariot bear, To heaven, and fix it there ; Yet let thy Muse as well some raptures raise, To please him, as to praise. I would not have thee choose Only a treble Muse ; But have this envious, ignorant age to know, Thou that canst sing so high, canst reach as low. TO BEN JONSON, UPON OCCASION OF HIS ODE OF DEFIANCE ANNEXED TO HIS PLAY OF THE NEW INN. (by T. CAREW.) ’Tis true, dear Ben, thy just chastizing hand Hath fix’d upon the sotted age a brand To their swoln pride, and empty scribbling due ; It can nor judge, nor write : and yet ’tis true, Thy comic Muse from the exalted line Touch’d by the Alchemist, doth since decline From that her zenith, and foretels a red And blushing evening, when she goes to bed ; Yet such, as shall outshine the glimmering light, With which all stars shall gild the following night. Nor think it much (since all thy eaglets may Endure the sunny trial) if we say This hath the stronger wing, or that doth shine, Trick’d up in fairer plumes, since all are thine : Who hath his flock of cackling geese compared With thy tuned quire of swans ? or else who dared To call thy births deform’d ? but if thou bind, By city custom, or by gavel-kind, In equal shares thy love on all thy race, We may distinguish of their sex, and place ; Though one hand form them, and though one brain strike Souls into all, they are not all alike. Why should the follies then of this dull age Draw from thy pen such an immode.jt rage, As seems to blast thy else-immortal bays, When thine own tongue proclaims thy itch of praise ? Such thirst will argue drought. No, let be hurl’d Upon thy works, by the detracting world, What malice can suggest: let the rout say, “ The running sands, that, ere thou make a play, Count the slow minutes, might a Godwin frame, To swallow, when thou hast done, thy shipwreck’d Let them the dear expense of oil upbraid, [name.’' Suck’d by thy watchful lamp, “ that hath betray’d To theft the blood of martyr’d authors, spilt Into thy ink, whilst thou grow’st pale with guilt.” Repine not at the taper’s thrifty waste, That sleeks thy terser poems ; nor is haste Praise, but excuse ; and if thou overcome A knotty writer, bring the booty home : Nor think it theft if the rich spoils, so torn From conquer’d authors, be as trophies worn. Let others glut on the extorted praise Of vulgar breath, trust thou to after days : Thy labour’d works shall live, when Time devours The abortive offspring of their hasty hours. Thou art not of their rank ; the quarrel lies Within thine own verge : then let this suffice, The wiser world doth greater thee confess Than all men else, than thyself only less. F F 2 430 THE NEW INN. ODE TO BEN JONSON, UPON HIS ODE TO HIMSELF. (by J. CLEVELAND.) Proceed in thy brave rage, Which hath rais’d up our stage Unto that height, as Rome in all her state, Or Greece might emulate ; Whose greatest senators did silent sit, Hear and applaud the wit, Which those more temperate times, Used when it tax’d their crimes : Socrates stood, and heard with true delight, All that the sharp Athenian Muse could write Against his supposed fault; And did digest the salt That from that full vein did so freely flow : And though that we do know The Graces jointly strove to make that breast A temple for their rest, We must not make thee less Than Aristophanes : He got the start of thee in time and place, But thou hast gain’d the goal in art and grace. But if thou make thy feasts For the high-relish’d guests, And that a cloud of shadows shall break in, It were almost a sin To think that thou sliouldst equally delight Each several appetite; Though Art and Nature strive Thy banquets to contrive : Thou art our whole Menander, and dost look Like the old Greek ; think, then, but on his Cook. If thou thy full cups bring Out of the Muses’ spring, And there are some foul mouths had rather drink Out of the common sink; There let them seek to quench th’ hydropic thirst, Till the swo^n humour burst. Let him who daily steals From thy most precious meals, Since thy strange plenty finds no loss it, Feed himself with the fragments of thy wit. And let those silken men That know not how, or when To spend their money, or their time, maintain With their consumed no-brain, Their barbarous feeding on such gross base stuff As only serves to puff Up the weak empty mind, Like bubbles, full with wind, And strive t’ engage the scene with their damn’d oaths, As they do with the privilege of their clothes. Whilst thou tak’st that high spirit, Well purchas’d by thy merit: Great Prince of Poets, though thy head be gray,. Crown it with Delphic bay, And from the chief [pin] in Apollo’s quire, Take down thy best tuned lyre, Whose sound shall pierce so far It shall strike out the star, Which fabulous Greece durst fix in heaven, whilst thine, With all due glory, here on earth shall shine. Sing, English Horace, sing The wonders of thy King ; Whilst his triumphant chariot runs his whole Bright course about each pole : Sing down the Roman harper ; he shall rain His bounties on thy vein ; And with his golden rays, So gild thy glorious bays, That Fame shall bear on her unwearied wing 1 , What the best Poet sung of the best King. THE MAGNETIC LADY; OR, HUMOURS RECONCILED. DRAMATIS PERSONAE. Compass, a Scholar Mathematic. Captain Ironside, his Brother, a Soldier. Parson Palate, Prelate of the Parish. Rut, Physician to Lady Loadstone. Tim. Item, his Apothecary. Sir Diaphanous Silkworm, a Courtier. Practice, a Lawyer. Sir Moth Interest, an Usurer, or Moncy-Bawd. Bias, a Vi-Politic, or Sub-Secretary. Needle, the Lady’s Steward and Tailor. Lady Loadstone, the Magnetic Lacy. Polish, her Gossip and She-Parasite. Placentia, her Niece. Pleasance, her Waiting-Worn an. Keep, the Niece’s Nurse. Chair, the Midwife. Servant to Sir Moth, Serjeants, The Chorus (Probee, Damplay, and Boy of the house ) by way of Induction. SCENE,— London. INDUCTION, OR CHORUS. THE STAGE. Enter Master Probee and Master Damplay, met by a Boy of the house. Boy. What do you lach, gentlemen, ivhat is't yon lack 7 any fine fancies, figures, humours, cha¬ racters, ideas, definitions of lords and ladies 7 Waiting-women, parasites, knights, captains, courtiers, lawyers 7 what do you lack ? Pio. A pretty prompt boy for the poetic shop ! Dam. And a bold ! Where’s one of your mas¬ ters, sirrah, the poet 7 Boy. Which of them, sir 7 we have divers that drive that trade, now ; poets, poetaccios, poetasters, poetitos - Dam. And all haberdashers of small wit, I pre¬ sume ; we would speak with the poet of the day, boy. Boy. Sir, he is not here. But I have the domi¬ nion of the shop, for this time, under him, and can shew you all the variety the stage will afford for the present. Pro. Therein you will express your own good parts, boy. Dam. And tie us two to you for the gentle office. Pro. We are a pair of public persons (this gentleman and myself) that are sent thus coupled unto you, upon state-business. Boy. It concerns but the state of the stage, I hope. Dam. O, you shall know that by degrees, boy. No man leaps into a business of state, without fording first the state of the business. Pro. We are sent unto you, indeed, from the people. Boy. The people ! which side of the people 7 Dam. The venison side, if you know it, boy. Boy. That's the left side. I had rather they had been the right. Pro. So they are. Not the faeces, or grounds of your people, that sit in the oblique caves and wedges of your house, your sinful sixpenny me¬ chanics — Dam. But the better and braver sort of your people, plush and velvet outsides ! that stick your house round like so many eminences - Boy. Of clothes, not understandings! they are at pawn. Well, I take these as a part of your people though ; what bring you to me from these people 7 Dam. You have heard, boy, the ancient poets had it in their purpose, still to please this people. Pro. Ay, their chief aim was -- Dam. Populo ut placerent: if he understands so much .— Boy. Quas fecissentfabulas. —I understand that since I team'd Terence, in the third form at Westminster : go on, sir. Pro. Now, these people have employed us to you, in all their names, to entreat an excellent play from you. Dam. For they have had very mean ones from this shop of late, the stage as you call it. Boy. Troth, gentlemen, I have no wares which I dare thrust upon the people with praise. But this, such as it is, I will venture jvith your people, your gay gallant people: so as you, again, will undertake for them, that they shall know a good play when they hear it; and rvill have the con¬ science and ingenuity beside to confess it. Pro. We'll pass our words for that ; you shall have a brace of us to engage ourselves. Boy. You'll tender your names, gentlemen, to our book then ? Dam. Yes ; here's master Probee, a man of most powerful speech, and parts to persuade. Pro. And master Damplay will make good all he undertakes. THE MAGNETIC LADY. 488 ACT I. Boy. Good master Probee, and master Damplay! I like your securities : whence do you write your¬ selves ? Pro. 0/ London, gentlemen ; but knights' bro¬ thers, and knights' friends, I assure you. Dam. And knights' fellows too: every poet ivrites squire notv. Boy. You are good names ! very good men, both of you ; I accept you. Dam. And what is the title of your play here, The Magnetic Lady ? Boy. Yes, sir, an attractive title the author has given it. Pro. A magnete, I warrant you. Dam. O no, from magnus, magna, magnum. Boy. This gentleman hath found the true mag¬ nitude — Dam. Of his portal or entry to the work , ac¬ cording to Vitruvius. Boy. Sir, all our work is done ivilhout a portal, or Vitruvius. In foro, as a true comedy should be. And what is conceald within, is brought out, and made present by report. Dam. We see not that always observed by your authors of these times ; or scarce any other. Boy. Where it is not at all known, how should it be observed ? The most of those your people call authors, never dreamt of any decorum, or what ivas proper in the scene ; but grope at it in the dark, and feel or fumble for it: I speak it, both with their leave, and the leave of your people. Dam. But, why Humours Reconciled, I would fain know ? Boy. I can satisfy you there too, if you will. But perhaps you desire not to be satisfied. Dam. No ! why should you conceive so, boy ? Boy. My conceit is not ripe yet ; I'll tell you that anon. The author beginning his studies of this kind, with Every Man in his Humour; and after Every Man out of his Humour; and since, continuing in all his plays, especially those of the comic thread, whereof the New Inn was the last, some recent humours still, or manners of men, that went along with the times ; finding himself now near the close, or shutting up of his circle, hath fancied to himself, in idea, this Magnetic Mistress: a lady, a brave bountiful housekeeper, and a vir¬ tuous widow ; who having a young niece, ripe for a man, and marriageable, he makes that his centre attractive, to draw thither a diversity of guests, all persons of different humours to make up his peri¬ meter. And this he hath called Humours Re¬ conciled. Pro. A bold undertaking, and far greater than the reconciliation of both churches ; the quarrel between humours having been much the ancienter , and, in my poor opinion, the root of all schism ana faction both in church and commonwealth. Boy. Such is the opinion of many ivise men, that meet at this shop still; but how he will speed in it, we cannot tell, and he himself, it seems, less cares: for he will not be entreated by us, to give it a prologue. He has lost too much that way already, he says. He will not woo the gentle igno¬ rance so much. But careless of all vulgar censure, as not depending on common approbation, he is confident it shall super-please judicious spectators, and to them lie leaves it to work with the rest, by example or otherwise. Dam. He may be deceived in that, boy: few fol¬ low examples now, especially if they be good. Boy. The play is ready to begin, gentlemen ; I tell you, lest you might defraud the expectation of the people, for whom you are delegates: please you take a couple of seats, and plant yourselves, here, as near my standing as you can: fly every thing you see to the mark, and censure it freely ; so you interrupt not the series or thread of the argument, to break or pucker it, with unnecessary questions. For, I must tell you, (not out of mine own dictamen, but the author's,) a good play is like a skein of silk ; ivhich if you take by the right end, you may wind off at pleasure, on the bottom or card of your discourse, in a tale or so ; hoiv you ivill: but if you light on the wrong end, you will pull all into a knot or elf-lock; which nothing but the sheers, or a candle, will 'undo or separate. Dam. Stay, who be these, I pray you ? Boy. Because it is your first question, and these be the prime persons, it would in civility require an answer: but I have heard the poet affirm, that to be the most unlucky scene in a play, which needs an interpreter ; especially, when the auditory are awake: and such are you he presumes ; ergo— ACT I. SCENE I.— The Street before Lady Loadstone’s House. Enter Compass, and Captain Ironside, meeting. Com. Welcome, good captain Ironside, and brother ; You shall along with me. I am lodged hard by, Here, at a noble lady’s house in the street, The lady Loadstone’s, one will bid us welcome; Where there are gentlewomen and male guests, Of several humours, carriage, constitution, Profession too ; but so diametral One to another, and so much opposed, As if I can but hold them altogether, And draw them to a sufferance of themselves, But till the dissolution of the dinner, I shall have just occasion to believe My wit is magisterial; and ourselves Take infinite delight in the success. Iron. Troth, brother Compass, you shall pardon I love not so to multiply acquaintance [me; At a meal’s cost; ’twill take off o’ my freedom So much ; or bind me to the least observance. Com. Why, Ironside, you know I am a scholar. And part a soldier ; I have been employ’d By some the greatest statesmen of the kingdom, These many years; and in my time convers’d With sundry humours, suiting so myself To company, as honest men and knaves, Good-fellows, hypocrites, all sorts of people, Though never so divided in themselves, Have studied to agree still in the usage And handling of me, which hath been fair too. Iron. Sir, I confess you to be one well read scene I. THE MAGNETIC LADY. 439 In men and manners ; and that usually, The most ungovern’d persons, you being present, Rather subject themselves unto your censure, Than give you least occasion of distaste, By making you the subject of their mirth. But, to deal plainly with you, as a brother, Whenever I distrust in my own valour, I’ll never bear me on another’s wit, Or offer to bring off, or save myself, On the opinion of your judgment, gravity, Discretion, or what else. But, being away, You are sure to have less wit-work, gentle brother, My humour being as stubborn as the rest, And as unmanageable. Com. You do mistake. My caract of your friendship all this while, Or at what rate I reckon your assistance ; Knowing by long experience, to such animals, Half-hearted creatures, as these are, your fox there, Unkennell’d with a choleric, ghastly aspect, On two or three comminatory terms, W'ould run their fears to any hole of shelter, Worth a day’s laughter ! I am for the sport; For nothing else. Iron. But, brother, I have seen A coward meeting with a man as valiant As our St. George, not knowing him to be such, Or having least opinion that he was so, Set to him roundly, ay, and swinge him soundly ; And in the virtue of that error, having Once overcome, resolv’d for ever after To err; and think no person, nor no creature More valiant than himself. Com. I think that too : But, brother, could I over entreat you, I have some little plot upon the rest, If you would be contented to endure A sliding reprehension at my hands, To hear yourself or your profession glanced at In a few slighting terms ; it would beget Me such a main authority, on the bye, And do yourself no disrepute at all. Iron. Compass, I know that universal causes In nature produce nothing, but as meeting Particular causes to determine those, And specify their acts. This is a piece Of Oxford science, stays with me e’er since I left that place ; and I have often found The truth thereof, in my [own] private passions : For I do never feel myself perturb’d W r ith any general words ’gainst my profession, Unless by some smart stroke upon myself They do awake, and stir me : else, to wise And well experienced men, words do not signify ; They have no power, save with dull grammarians, W T hose souls are nought but a syntaxis of them. Com. Here comes our parson, parson Palate A venerable youth, (1 must salute him,) [here, And a great clerk ! he’s going to the ladies ; And though you see him thus, without his cope, I do assure you he’s our parish pope.— Enter Palate. God save my reverend clergy, parson Palate ! Pal. The witty master Compass ! how is’t with you? Com. My lady stays for you, and for your counsel, Touching her niece, mistress Placentia Steel, Who strikes the fire of full fourteen to-day, Ripe for a husband! Pal. Ay, she chimes, she chimes. Saw you the doctor Rut, the house physician ? He’s sent for too. Com. To council! time you were there : Make haste, and give it a round quick dispatch, That we may go to dinner betimes, parson; And drink a health or two more to the business. [Exit Palate. Iron. This is a strange put off; a reverend youth ! You use him most surreverently methinks. What call you him ? Palate Please, or Parson Palate ? Com. All’s one, but shorter. I can give you his character. He is the prelate of the parish here, And governs all the dames, appoints the cheer, Writes down the hills of fare, pricks all the guests, Makes all the matches and the marriage feasts Within the ward ; draws all the parish wills, Designs the legacies, and strokes the gills Of the chief mourners ; and, whoever lacks. Of all the kindred, he hath first his blacks. Thus holds he weddings up, and burials, As his main tithing ; ivith the gossips stalls, Their pews ; he's top still, at the public mess : Comforts the widoio, and the fatherless, In funeral sack ; sits 'bove the alderman ; For of the wardmote quest, he better can The mystery , than the Levitic law : That piece of clerkship doth his vestry awe. He is as he conceives himself, a fine Well furnish'd, and apparelled divine. Iron. Who made this epigram, you ? Com. No, a great clerk As any is of his bulk, Ben Jonson, made it. Iron. But what’s the other character, doctor Rut? Com. The same man made them both ; but his is shorter, And not in rhyme, but blanks : I’ll tell you that, too. Put is a young physician to the family : That, letting God alone, ascribes to nature More than her share ; licentious in discourse, And in his life a profest voluptuary ; The slave of money, a buffoon in manners ; Obscene in language, which he vents for wit ; Is saucy in his logics, and disputing, Is anything but civil, or a man - Re-enter Palate with Rut and Lady Loadstone, in discourse. See here they are ! and walking with my lady, In consultation, afore the door ; We will slip in, as if we saw them not. [Iron, and Com. go into the house. Lady L. Ay, ’tis his fault she’s not bestow’d, My brother Interest’s. Pal. Who, old sir Moth ? Lady L. He keeps off all her suitors, keeps th< portion Still in his hands; and will not part withal, On any terms. Pal. Hinc illce lachrymce : Thence flows the cause of the main grievance. 140 THE MAGNETIC LADY. ACT l. Rut. That!— It is a main one ; how much is the portion ? Lady L. No petty sum. Pal. But sixteen thousand pound. Rut. He should be forced, madam, to lay it When is it payable? [down : Lady L. When she is married. Pal. Marry her, marry her, madam. Rut. Get her married. Lose not a day, an hour- Pal. Not a minute. Pursue your project real, master Compass Advised you to : he is the perfect instrument Your ladyship should sail by. Rut. Master Compass Is a fine witty man : I saw him go in, now. Lady L. Is he gone in ? Pal. Yes, and a feather with him ; He seems a soldier. Rut. Some new suitor, madam. Lady L. I am beholding to him ; he brings ever Variety of good persons to my table, And I must thank him, though my brother Interest Dislike of it a little. Pal. He likes nothing That runs your way. Rut. Troth, and the other cares not. He’ll go his own way, if he think it right. Lady L. He’s a true friend : and there is master Practice, The fine young man of law, comes to the house: My brother brooks him not, because he thinks He is by me assigned for my niece : He will not hear of it. Rut. Not of that ear; But yet your ladyship doth wisely in it. Pal. ’Twill make him to lay down the portion sooner, If he but dream you’ll match her with a lawyer. Lady L. So master Compass says. It is between The lawyer, and the courtier, which shall have her. Pal. Who, sir Diaphanous Silkworm? Rut. A fine gentleman, Old master Silkworm’s heir. Pal. And a neat courtier, Of a most elegartf; thread. Lady L. And so my gossip Polish assures me. Here she comes.— Enter Mistress Polish. Good Polish, Welcome in troth ! how dost thou, gentle Polish ? Rut. Who’s this ? [Aside to Palate. Pal. Dame Polish, her she-parasite, Her talking, soothing, sometime governing gossip. Pol. Your ladyship is still the lady Loadstone, That draws, and draws unto you, guests of all sorts; The courtiers, and the soldiers, and the scholars, The travellers, physicians, and divines, As doctor Ridley wrote, and doctor Barlow : They both have writ of you and master Compass. Lady L. We mean they shall write more ere it be long. Pol. Alas, they are both dead, an’t please you! but Your ladyship means well, and shall mean well, So long as I live. How does your fine niece, My charge, mistress Placentia Steel? l.ady L. She is not well. Pol. Not well? Lady L. Her doctor says so. Rut. Not very well; she cannot shoot at butts, Or manage a great horse; but she can crancli A sack of small-coal, eat you lime, and hair, Soap-ashes, loam, and has a dainty spice Of the green sickness— Pol. ’Od shield 1 Rut. Or the dropsy : A toy, a thing of nothing. But my lady, here, Her noble aunt— Pol. She is a noble aunt; And a right worshipful lady, and a virtuous ; I know it well 1 Rut. Well, if you know it, peace. Pal. Good sister Polish, hear your betters speak. Pol. Sir, I will speak, with my good lady’s leave, And speak, and speak again; I did bring up My lady’s niece, mistress Placentia Steel, With my own daughter, who's Placentia too, And waits upon my lady, is her woman;— Her ladyship well knows, mistress Placentia Steel, as I said, her curious niece, was left A legacy to me, by father and mother. With the nurse Keep that tended her: her mother She died in child-bed of her, and her father Lived not long after ; for he loved her mother ! They were a godly couple ; yet both died, As we must all. —No creature is immortal, I have heard our pastor say; no, not the faithful! And they did die, as I said, both in one month— Rut. Sure, she is not long-lived if she spend breath thus. Pol. And did bequeath her to my care and hand, To polish and bring up. I moulded her, And fashion’d her, and form’d her; she had the sweat Both of my brows and brains, my lady knows it, Since she could write a quarter old. Lady L. I know not That she could write so early, my good gossip : But I do know she was so long your care, Till she was twelve year old ; that I call’d for her, And took her home ; for which I thank you, Polish, And am beholden to you. Rut. I sure thought She had a lease of talking for nine lives — - Pal. It may be she has. Pol. Sir, sixteen thousand pound Was then her portion, for she was, indeed, Their only child: and this was to be paid Upon her marriage, so she married still With my good lady’s liking here, her aunt: I heard the will read. Master Steel, her father, The world condemn’d him to be very rich, And very hard; and he did stand condemn’d With that vain world, till, as ’twas proved after, He left almost as much more to good uses In sir Moth Interest’s hands, my lady’s brother, Whose sister he had married: he holds all In his close gripe. But master Steel was liberal, And a fine man ; and she a dainty dame, And a religious, and a bountiful- Enter Compass, and Ironside from the house. You knew her, master Compass— Com. Spare the torture, I do confess without it. Pol. And her husband, What a fine couple they were, and how they lived—- SCENE I. THE MAGNETIC LADY Com. Yes. Pol. And loved together like a pair of turtles— Com. Yes. Pol. And feasted all the neighbours ? Com. Take her off, Somebody that hath mercy— Rut. O he knows her, It seems. Com. Or any measure of compassion : Doctors, if you be Christians, undertake One for the soul, the other for the body. Pol. She would dispute with the doctors of divinity, At her own table ; and the Spittle preachers : And find out the Armenians. Rut. The Arminians. Pol. I say, the Armenians. Com. Nay, I say so too. Pol. So master Polish call’d them, the Arme¬ nians. Com. And Medes and Persians, did he not ? Pol. Yes, he knew them, And so did mistress Steel; she was his pupil. The Armenians, he would say, were worse than papists : And then the Persians were our Puritans, Had the fine piercing wits. Com. And who, the Medes ? Pol. The middle men, the luke-warm protes- Rut. Out, out! [tants. Pol. Sir, she would find them by their branching: Their branching sleeves, branch’d cassocks, and Beside their texts. [branch’d doctrine, Rut. Stint, carline ; I’ll not hear. Confute her, parson. Pol. I respect no parsons, Chaplains, or doctors, I will speak. Lady L. Yes, so it be reason, Let her. Rut. Death, she cannot speak reason. Com. Nor sense, if we be master of our senses. Iron. What mad woman have they got here to bait ? Pol. Sir, I am mad in truth, and to the purpose; And cannot but be mad, to hear my lady’s Dead sister slighted, witty mistress Steel. /? on. If she had a wit, death has gone near to Assure yourself. [spoil it, Pol. She was both witty and zealous, And lighted all the tinder of the truth (As one said) of religion, in our parish ; She was too learned to live long with us! She could the Bible in the holy tongue, And read it without pricks ; had all her Masoreth, Knew Burton and his Bull, and scribe Pryrme gent. Praesto-be-gone, and all the Pharisees. Lady L. Dear gossip, Be you gone, at this time, too, and vouchsafe To see your charge, my niece. Pol. I shall obey If your wise ladyship think fit: I know To yield to my superiors. [ Exit. Lady L. A good woman ! But when she is impertinent, grows earnest, A little troublesome, and out of season : Her love and zeal transport her. Com. I am glad That any thing could pore her hence : we now Have hope of dinner, after her long grace. I have brought your ladyship an hungry guest here, A soldier, and my brother, captain Ironside ; Who being by custom grown a sanguinary, The solemn and adopted son of slaughter, Is moi*e delighted in the cl»se of an enemy, An execution of three days and nights, Than all the hope of numerous succession, Or happiness of issue could bring to him. Rut. He is no suitor then ! [ Aside to Pal. Pal. So it should seem. Com. And if he can get pardon at heaven’s hand For all his murthers, is in as good case As a new christen’d infant: his employments Continued to him, without interruption, And not allowing him or time or place To commit any other sin, butihose.— Please you to make him welcome for a meal, madam ? Lady L. The nobleness of his profession makes His welcome perfect; though your coarse descrip- Would seem to sully it. [tion Iron. Never, where a beam Of so much favour doth illustrate it, Right knowing lady. Pal. She hath cured all well. Rut. And he hath fitted well the compliment. Enter Sir Diaphanous Silkworm and Practice. Com. No, here they come ; the prime magnetic guests Our lady Loadstone so respects : the Arctic, And the Antarctic ! sir Diaphanous Silkworm, A courtier extraordinary ; who by diet Of meats and drinks, his temperate exercise, Choice music, frequent baths, his horary shifts Of shirts and waistcoats, means to immortalize Mortality itself, and makes the essence Of his whole happiness the trim of court. Sir Dia. I thank you, master Compass, for your Encomiastic. [short Rut. It is much in little, sir. Pal. Concise and quick; the true style of an orator. Com. But master Practice here, my lady’s lawyer, Or man of law, (for that is the true writing,) A man so dedicate to his profession, And the preferments go along with it, As scarce the thundering bruit of an invasion, Another eighty-eight, threatening his country With ruin, would no more work upon him, Than Syracusa’s sack on Archimede ; So much he loves that niglit-cap ! the bench-gown, With the broad gard on the back ! these shew a man Betroth’d unto the study of our laws. Prac. Which you but think the crafty impo¬ sitions Of subtile clerks, feats of fine understanding, To abuse clots and clowns with, master Compass; Having no ground in nature to sustain it, Or light, from those clear causes, to the inquiry And search of which, your mathematical head Hath so devow’d itself. Com. Tut, all men are Philosophers, to their inches. There’s within Sir Interest, as able a philosopher, In buying and selling! has reduced his thrift To certain principles, and in that method, As he will tell you instantly, by logarithms, The utmost profit of a stock employed ; Be the commodity what it will: the place, Or time, but causing very very little, *42 THE MAGNETIC LADY. ACT Or, J may say, no parallax at all, {n his pecuniary observations ! lie has brought your niece’s portion with him, madam ; At least, the man that must receive it: here They come negociating the affair; You may perceive the contract in their faces, And read the indenture. If you’ll sign them, so ! Enter Sir Moth Interest and Bias. Pal. What is he, master Compass ? Com. A vi-politic, Or a sub-aiding instrument of state : A kind of a laborious secretary To a great man, and likely to come on ; Full of attendance, and of such a stride In business politic or economic, As well his lord may stoop to advise with him; And be prescribed by him in affairs Of highest consequence, when he is dull’d, Or wearied with the less. Sir Dia. ’Tis master Bias, Lord Whach’um’s politic. Com. You know the man. Sir Dia. I have seen him wait at court, there, Of papers and petitions. [with his maniples Prac. He is one That over-rules though, by his authority Of living there; and cares for no man else : Neglects the sacred letter of the law; And holds it all to be but a dead heap Of civil institutions : the rest only Of common men, and their causes, a farrago, Or a made dish in court; a thing of nothing. Com. And that’s your quarrel at him! a just plea. Sir Moth. I tell you, sister Loadstone- Com. Hang your ears This way, and hear his praises : now Moth opens. [Aside. Sir Moth. I have brought you here the very man, the jewel Of all the court, close master Bias, sister! Apply him to your side : or you may wear him Here on your breast, or hang him in your ear, He’s a fit pendant for a lady’s tip ! A chrysolite, a gem, the very agate Of state and policy, cut from the quar Of Machiavel; a true Cornelian As Tacitus himself, and to be made The brooch to any true state-cap in Europe! Lady L. You praise him, brother, as you had hope to sell him. Com. No, madam, as he had hope to sell your Unto him. [niece Lady L. ’Ware your true jests, master Compass; They will not relish. Sir Moth. I will tell you, sister, I cannot cry his caract up enough ; He is unvaluable : all the lords Have him in that esteem for his relations, Corants, avisos, correspondences With this ambassador, and that agent! he Will screw you out a secret from a statist- Com. So easy, as some cobler worms a dog. Sir Moth. And lock it in the cabinet of his memory- Com. Till it turn a politic insect or a fly, Thus long! Sir Moth. You may be merry, master Compass; But though you have the reversion of an office, You are not in it, sir. Bias. Remember that. Com. Why should that fright me, master Bi—, Whose—ass you are ? [from telling Sir Moth. Sir, he is one can do His turns there, and deliver too his letters As punctually, and in as good a fashion, As e’er a secretary can in court. Iron. Why, is it any matter in what fashion A man deliver his letters, so he not open them ? Bias. Yes, we have certain precedents in court, From which w T e never swerve once in an age : And (whatsoe’er he thinks) I know the arts And sciences do not directlier make A graduate in our universities, Than an habitual gravity prefers A man in court. Com. Which, by the truer style, Some call a formal flat servility. Bias. Sir, you may call it what you please ; but we That tread the path of public businesses, Know what a tacit shrug is, or a shrink ; The wearing the callot, the politic hood, And twenty other parerga, on the bye, You seculars understand not: I shall trick him, If his reversion come in my loi'd’s way. Sir Dia. What is that, master Practice ? you Master Compasses reversion? [sure know ; Prac. A fine place, Surveyor of the projects general; I would I had it. Pal. What is’t w r orth? Prac. O sir, A nemo scit. Lady L. We’ll think on’t afore dinner. [ Exeunt. Boy. Now, gentlemen, what censure you of our protasis, or first act ? Pro. Well, boy, it is a fair presentment of your actors ; and a handsome promise of someivhat to come hereafter. Dam. But there is nothing done in it, or con¬ cluded : therefore I say, no act. Boy. A fine piece of logic ! do you look, master Damplay,for conclusions in a protasis ?- I thought the laic of comedy had reserved [ them ] to the catastrophe; and that the epitasis, as we are taught, and the catastasis, had been intervening parts, to have been expected. But you would have all come together, it seems : the clock should strike five at once, with the acts. Dam. Why, if it could do so, it were well, boy. Boy. Yes, if the nature of a clock were to speak, not strike. So, if a child could be born in a play, and grow up to a man, in the first scene, before he went off the stage: and then after to come forth a squire, and be made a knight: and that knight to travel between the acts, and do wonders in the Holy Land or elsewhere ; kill Paynims, wild boars, dun coivs, and other monsters ; beget him a reputa¬ tion and marry an emperor's daughter for /As mistress: convert her father's country ; and i t last come home lame, and all-to-be laden with miracles. Dam. These miracles would please, I assun you, and take the people : for there be of tho people, that will expect miracles, and more than miracles from this pen. THE MAGNETIC LADY. SOKNE T. Boy. Do they think this pen can juggle ? I would we had Ilokos-pokos for 'em then, your people ; or Travitanto Tudesco, Dam. Who's that, boy ? Boy. Another juggler, with a long name. Or that your expecters would be gone hence now, at the first act; or expect no more hereafter than they understand. Dam. Why so, my peremptory Jack $ Boy. My name is John, indeed - Because, who expect what is impossible or beyond nature, defraud themselves. Pro. Nay, there the boy said ivell; they do de¬ fraud themselves, indeed. Boy. And therefore, master Damplay, imless, like a solemn justice of wit, you will damn our play unheard or unexamined, I shall entreat your mistress, madam Expectation, if she be among these ladies, to have patience but a pissing ivhile: give our springs leave to open a little, by degrees ; a source of ridiculous matter may break forth anon, that shall steep their temples, and bathe their brains in laughter, to the fomenting of stupidity itself, and the awaking any velvet lethargy in the house. 443 Pro. Why do you maintain your poet's quarrel so with velvet and good clothes, boy ? we have seen him in indifferent good clothes ere now. Boy. And may do in better, if it please the king his master to say Amen to it, and allow it, to whom he acknowledgeth all. But his clothes shall never be the best thing about him, though ; he iqill have somewhat beside, either of human letters, or severe honesty, shall speak him a man, though h* ivcnt naked. Pro. He is beholden to you, if you can make this good, boy. Boy. Himself hath done that already, against envy. Dam. What is your name, sir, or your country ?■ Boy. John Try-gust my name; a Cornish youth, and the poet's servant. Dam. West country breed I thought, you were so bold. Boy. Or rather saucy ; to find out your palate, master Damplay. 'Faith we do call a spade a spade, in Cornwall. If you dare damn our play in the ivrong place, we shall take heart to tell you so ! Pro. Good boy. ACT II. SCENE I .—A Room in Lady Loadstone’s House. Enter Nurse Keep, Placentia, and Pleasance. Keep. Sweet mistress, pray you be merry ; you are sure To have a husband now. Pla. Ay, if the store Hurt not the choice. Plea. Store is no sore, young mistress, My mother is wont to say. Keep. And she’ll say wisely As any mouth in the parish. Fix on one, Fix upon one, good mistress. Pla. At this call too, Here’s master Practice who is call’d to the bench Of purpose. Keep. Yes, and by my lady’s means. Plea. ’Tis thought to be the man. Keep. A lawyer’s wife. Plea. And a fine lawyer’s wife. Keep. Is a brave calling. Plea. Sweet mistress Practice ! Keep. Gentle mistress Practice ! Plea. Fair, open mistress Practice 1 Keep. Ay, and close, And cunning mistress Practice ! Pla. I not like that; The courtier’s is the neater calling. Plea. Yes, My lady Silkworm. Keep. And to shine in plush. Plea. Like a young night-crow, a Diaphanous Silkworm. Keep. Lady Diaphanous sounds most delicate. Plea. Which would you choose now, mistress ? Pla. ’Cannot tell. The copy does confound one. Pica. Here’s my mother. Enter Polish. Pol. How now, my dainty charge, and diligent nurse ? What were you chanting on? [Pleasance kneels.] God bless you, maiden. Peep. We are inchanting all; wishing a husband For my young mistress here : a man to please her. Pol. She shall have a man, good nurse, and must have a man, A man and a half, if we can choose him out; We are all in council within, and sit about it: The doctors and the scholars, and my lady, Who’s wiser than all us.—Where’s master Needle ? Her ladyship so lacks him to prick out The man! [Exit Pleasance.] How does my sweet young mistress ? You look not well, methinks; how do you, dear charge ? You must have a husband, and you shall have a husband, There’s two put out to making for you; a third Your uncle promises : but you must still Be ruled by your aunt, according to the will Of your dead father and mother, who are in heaven. Your lady-aunt has choice in the house for you : We do not trust your uncle : he would keep you A batchelor still, by keeping of your portion ; And keep you not alone without a husband, But in a sickness ; ay, and the green sickness, The maiden’s malady; which is a sickness : A kind of a disease, I can assure you. And like the fish our mariners call remora - - Keep. A remora, mistress ! Pol. How now, goody nurse, Dame Keep of Katerns ? what! have you an osr In the cock-boat, ’cause you are a sailor's wife, And come from Shadwell ? 444 THE MAGNETIC LADY. ACT II, Enter Needle:. I say a remora, For it will stay a ship that’s under sail; And stays are long and tedious things to maids ! And maidens are young ships that would be sailing When they be rigg’d ; wherefore is all their trim else ? Nee. True ; and for them to be staid- Pol. The stay is dangerous : You know it, master Needle. Nee. I know somewhat; And can assure you from the doctor’s mouth, She has a dropsy, and must change the air, Before she can recover. Pol. Say you so, sir ? Nee. The doctor says so. Pol. Says his worship so ? I warrant them he says true then ; they sometimes Are soothsayers, and always cunning men. Which doctor was it ? Nee. E’en my lady’s doctor, The neat house doctor; but a true stone doctor. Pol. Why, hear you, nurse ? how comes this geer to pass ? This is your fault in truth ; it shall be your fault, And must be your fault: why is your mistress sick ? She had her health the while she was with me. Keep. Alas, good mistress Polish, I am no saint. Much less my lady, to be urged give health, Or sickness, at my will: but to await The stars’ good pleasure, and to do my duty. Pol. You must do more than your duty, foolish nurse: You must do all you can, and more than you can, More than is possible ; when folks are sick, Especially a mistress, a young mistress. Keep. Here’s master doctor himself cannot do that. [Exit. Enter Lady Loadstone and Rut. Pol. Doctor Do-all can do it; thence he’s Rut. Whence ? what is he call’d ? [call’d so. Pol. Doctor, do all you can, I pray you, and beseech you, for my charge here. Lady L. She is my tendering gossip, loves my niece. Pol. I know you can do all things, what you please, sir, For a young damsel, my good lady’s niece, here ; You can do what you list. Rut. Peace, Tiffany. Pol. Especially in this new case of the dropsy. The gentlewoman, I do fear, is leaven’d. Rut. Leaven’d! what’s that? Pol. Puft, blown, an’t please your worship. Rut. What! dark by darker ? what is blown, English— [puft? speak Pol. Tainted, an’t please you, some do call it. She swells, and so swells with it- Rut. Give her vent, If she do swell. A gimblet must be had ; It is a tympanites she is troubled with. There are three kinds : the first is anasarca, Under the flesh a tumour ; that’s not her’s. The second is ascites, or aquosus, A watery humour ; that is not her’s neither. But tympanites, which we call the drum, A wind-bombs in her belly, must be unbraced, And with a faucet or a peg, let out, And she’ll do well: get her a husband. Pol. Yes, I say so, master doctor, and betimes too. Lady L. As soon as we can : let her bear up to* day, Laugh and keep company at gleek or crimp. Pol. Your ladyship says right, crimp sure will cure her. Rut. Yes, and gleek too ; peace, gossip Tittle- She must to-morrow down into the country, [tattle. Some twenty miles ; a coach and six brave horses : Take the fresh air a month there, or five weeks ^ And then return a bride up to the town, For any husband in the hemisphere To chuck at, when she has dropt her tympany. Pol. Must she then drop it ? Rut. Thence ’tis call’d a dropsy. The tympanites is one spice of it: A toy, a thing of nothing, a mere vapour; I’ll blow’t away. Lady L. Needle, get you the coach Ready, against to-morrow morning. Nee. Yes, madam. [Exit. Lady L. I’ll down with her myself, and thank the doctor. Pol. We all shall thank him : but, dear madam, Resolve upon a man this day. [think, Lady L. I have done it. To tell you true, sweet gossip—here is none But master doctor, he shall be of the council.— The man I have design’d her to, indeed, Is master Practice ; he’s a neat young man, Forward, and growing up in a profession : Like to be somebody, if the Hall stand, And pleading hold ! A prime young lawyer’s wife, Is a right happy fortune. Rut. And she bringing So plentiful a portion, they may live Like king and queen at common law together : Sway judges, guide the courts, command the clerks, And fright the evidence ; rule at their pleasures, Like petty sovereigns in all cases. Pol. O, that Will be a work of time ; she may be old Before her husband rise to a chief judge, And all her flower be gone. No, no, a lady Of the first head I would have her, and in court, The lady Silkworm, a Diaphanous lady : And be a vicountess, to carry all Before her, as we say, her gentleman-usher, And cast off pages, bare, to bid her aunt Welcome unto her honour, at her lodgings. Rut. You say well, lady’s gossip ; if my lady Could admit that, to have her niece precede her. Lady L. For that, I must consult mine own My zealous gossip. [ambition, Pol. O, you shall precede her: You shall be a countess, sir Diaphanous Shall get you made a countess! here he comes Has my voice, certain. Enter behind Sir Diaphanous Silkworm and Palate in discourse. O fine courtier ! O blessed man ! the bravery pick’d out, To make my dainty charge a vicountess, And my good lady, her aunt, countess at large ! Sir Dia. I tell thee, parson, if I get her, reckon Thou hast a friend in court; and shalt command A thousand pound, to go on any errand, For any church-preferment thou hast a mind to. scene 1. THE MAGNETIC LADY. 445 Pal. I thank your worship ; I will so work for As you shall study all the ways to thank me : [you, Vll work my lady, and my lady’s friends; Her gossip, and this doctor, and squire Needle, And master Compass, who is all in all ; The very fly she moves by : he is one That went to sea with her husband, sir John Loadstone, And brought home the rich prizes ; all that wealth Is left her ; for which service she respects him : A dainty scholar in the mathematics ; And one she wholly employs. Now dominus Practice Is yet the man, appointed by her ladyship ; But there’s a trick to set his cap awry, If I know any thing : he hath contest To me in private that he loves another, My lady’s woman, mistress Pleasance; therefore Secure you of rivalship. Sir Dia. I thank thee, My noble parson; there’s five hundred pound Waits on thee more for that. Pal. Accost the niece, Yonder she walks alone ; I’ll move the aunt: But here’s the gossip ; she expects a morsel. Have you ne’er a ring or toy to throw away ? Sir Dia. Yes, here’s a diamond of some three¬ score pound, I pray you give her that. Pal. If she will take it. Sir Dia. And there’s an emerald for the doctor too : Thou parson, thou slialt coin me ; I am thine. Pal. Here master Compass comes. Enter Compass. Do you see my lady, And all the rest, how they do flutter about him ? He is the oracle of the house and family. Now is your time ; go nick it with the niece : [Exit Sir D/a. I will walk by, and hearken how the chimes go. [ JFaZ&s aside. Com. Nay, parson, stand not off: you may approach; This is no such hid point of state we handle, But you may hear it ; for we are all of counsel. The gentle master Practice hath dealt clearly, And nobly with you, madam. Lady L. Have you talk’d with him, And made the overture ? Com. Yes, first I moved The business trusted to me by your ladyship, •In your own words, almost your very syllables, Save where my memory trespass’d ’gainst their elegance, For which I hope your pardon. Then I enlarged, In my own homely style, the special goodness And greatness of your bounty in your choice, And free conferring of a benefit So without ends, conditions, any tie But his mere virtue, and the value of it, To call him to your kindred, to your veins, Insert him in your family, and to make him A nephew by the offer of a niece, With such a portion ; which when he had heard, And most maturely acknowledg’d (as his calling Tends all unto maturity) he return’d A thanks as ample as the courtesy, In my opinion : said it was a grace Too great to be rejected or accepted By him : but as the terms stood with his fortune, He was not to prevaricate with your ladyship, But rather to require ingenuous leave, He might with the same love that it was offer’d Refuse it, since he could not with his honesty, (Being he was engaged before,) receive it. Pal. The same he said to me. Com. And named the party ? Pal. He did and he did not. Com. Come, leave your schemes, And fine amphibolies, parson. Pal. You’ll hear more. Pol. Why, now your ladyship is free to choose The courtier sir Diaphanous : he shall do it, I’ll move it to him myself. Lady L. What will you move to him ? Pol. The making you a countess. Lady L. Stint fond woman. Know you the party master Practice means? Com. No, but your parson says he knows, madam. Lady L. I fear he fables ; parson, do you know Where master Practice is engaged ? Pal. I’ll tell you, But under seal ; her mother must not know : ’Tis with your Ladyship’s woman, mistress Plea- Corn. How ! [sancc. Lady L. He is not mad ? Pal. 0 hide the hideous secret From her ; she’ll trouble all else. You do hold A cricket by the wing. Com. Did he name Pleasance ? Are you sure, parson ? Lady L. O ’tis true, your mistress ! I find where your shoe wrings you, master Com- But you’ll look to him there. [pass : Com. Yes ; here’s sir Moth, Your brother, with his Bias, and the party Deep in discourse ; ’twill be a bargain and sale, I see, by their close working of their heads, And running them together so in counsel. Enter at a distance, in discourse. Sir Moth Interest, Practice, and Bias. Lady L. Will master Practice be of counsel against us ? Com. He is a lawyer, and must speak for his fee, Against his father and mother, all his kindred, His brothers or his sisters ; no exception Lies at the common law. He must not alter Nature for form, but go on in his path ; If may be, he’ll be for us. Do not you Offer to meddle, let them take their course. Dispatch, and marry her off to any husband ; Be not you scrupulous ; let who can have her : So he lay down the portion, though he geld it, It will maintain the suit against him, somewhat ; Something in hand is better than no birds ; He shall at last accompt for the utmost farthing, If you can keep your hand from a discharge. [Exit Lady L, Pol. [to Diaphanous.] Sir, do but make hei worshipful aunt a countess, And she is yours, her aunt has worlds to leave you : The wealth of six East-Indian fleets at least. Her husband, sir John Loadstone, was the governor Of the company seven years. Sir Dia. And came there home Six fleets in seven years ? Pol. I cannot tell, I must attend my gossip her good ladyship, 1 [Exit. 44G THE MAGNETIC LADY. act ii Pla. And will you make me a vicountess too, How do they make a countess ; in a chair, [sir? Or on a bed ? SirDia. Both ways, sweet bird ; I’ll shew you. [Exeunt Sir Diaphanous and Placentia. Sir Moth. [coming forward.'] The truth is, master Practice, now we are sure That you are off, we dare come on the bolder; The portion left was sixteen thousand pound, I do confess it, as a just man should. And call here master Compass, with these gentle- To the relation ; I will still be just. [men, Now for the profits every way arising, It was the donor’s wisdom, those should pay Me for my watch, and breaking of my sleeps ; It is no petty charge, you know, that sum, To keep a man awake for fourteen year. Prac. But, as you knew to use it in that time, It would reward your waking. Sir Moth. That’s my industry, As it might be your reading, study, and counsel, And now your pleading ; who denies it you ? I have my calling too. Well, sir, the contract Is with this gentleman; ten thousand pound. An ample portion for a younger brother, With a soft, tender, delicate rib of man’s flesh, That he may work like wax, and print upon.— He expects no more than that sum to be tender’d, And he receive it; these are the conditions. Prac. A direct bargain, and sale in open market. Sir Moth. And what I have furnish’d him withal o’ the by, To appear or so ; a matter of four hundred, To be deduced upon the payment- Bia. Right: You deal like a just man still. Sir Moth. Draw up this, Good master Practice, for us, and be speedy. Prac. But here’s a mighty gain, sir, you have made Of this one stock : the principal first doubled, In the first seven year ; and that redoubled In the next seven ! beside six thousand pound, There’s threescore thousand got in fourteen year, After the usual rate of ten in the hundred, And the ten thousand paid. Sir Moth. I think it be. Prac. How w T ill you ’scape the clamour and the envy ? Sir Moth. Let them exclaim and envy, what care I? Their murmurs raise no blisters in my flesh. My monies are my blood, my parents, kindred ; And he that loves not these, he is unnatural. I am persuaded that the love of money Is not a virtue only in a subject, But might befit a prince: and were there need, I find me able to make good the assertion, To any reasonable man’s understanding, And make him to confess it. Com. Gentlemen, Doctors, and scholars, you’ll hear this, and look for As much true secular wit, and deep lay-sense, As can be shown on such a common place. Sir Moth. First, we all know the soul of man is infinite In what it covets. Who desireth knowledge, Des ires it infinitely ; who covets honour, Covets it infinitely: It will be then No hard thing for a coveting man to prove, Or to confess, he aims at infinite wealth. Com. His soul lying that way. Sir Moth. Next, every man Is in the hope or possibility Of a whole world ; this present world being nothing, But the dispersed issue of [the] first one. And therefore I not see, but a just man May, with just reason, and in office ought Propound unto himself- Com. An infinite wealth ! I’ll bear the burden; go you on, sir Moth. Sir Moth. Thirdly, if we consider man a member But of the body politic, we know By just experience, that the prince hath need More of one wealthy, than ten fighting men. Com. There you went out of the road, a little from us. Sir Moth. And therefore, if the prince’s aims be It must be in that which makes all. [infinite, Com. Infinite wealth ! Sir Moth. Fourthly, ’tis natural to all good subjects, To set a price on money, more than fools Ought on their mistress’ picture; every piece, From the penny to the twelve-pence, being the hieroglyphic, And sacred sculpture of the sovereign. Com. A manifest conclusion, and a safe one ! Sir Moth. Fifthly, wealth gives a man the leading voice At all conventions ; and displaceth worth, With general allowance to all parties : It makes a trade to take the wall of virtue, And the mere issue of a shop right honourable. Sixthly, it doth enable him that hath it, To the performance of all real actions, Referring him to himself still, and not binding His will to any circumstance, without him. It gives him precise knowledge of himself; For, be he rich, he straight with evidence knows Whether he have any compassion. Or inclination unto virtue, or no ; Where the poor knave erroneously believes, If he were rich, he would build churches, or Do such mad things. Seventhly, your wise poor Have ever been contented to observe [men Rich fools, and so to serve their turns upon them ; Subjecting all their wit to the others wealth, And become gentlemen parasites, squire bawds, To feed their patron’s honourable humours. Eighthly, ’tis certain that a man may leave His wealth, or to his children, or his friends ; His wit he cannot so dispose by legacy, As they shall be a Harrington the better for’t. Enter Captain Ironside. Com. He may entail a jest upon his house, Or leave a tale to his posterity, To be told after him. Iron. As you have done here ? To invite your friend and brother to a feast, Where all the guests are so mere heterogene, And strangers, no man knows another, or cares If they be Christians, or Mahometans, That here are met. Com. Is’t any thing to you, brother, To know religions more than those you fight for ? Iron. Yes, and with whom I eat. I may dispute And how shall I hold argument with such. scene I. THE MAGNETIC LADY. 417 I neither know their humours, nor their heresies, Which are religions now, and so received ? Here’s no man among these that keeps a servant, To inquire his master of; yet in the house I hear it buzz’d there are a brace of doctors, A fool, and a physician ; with a courtier, That feeds on mulberry leaves, like a true silk- A lawyer, and a mighty money-bawd, [worm : Sir Moth, has brought his politic Bias with him, A man of a most animadverting humour ; Who, to endear himself unto his lord, Will tell him, you and I, or any of us, That here are met, are all pernicious spirits, And men of pestilent purpose, meanly affected Unto the state we live in ; and beget Himself a thanks with the great men of the time, By breeding jealousies in thorn of us, Shall cross our fortunes, frustrate our endeavours, Twice seven years after : and this trick be call’d Cutting of throats with a whispering, or a pen-knife. I must cut his throat now : I am bound in honour, And by the law of arms, to see it done ; I dare to do it, and I dare profess The doing of it; being to such a rascal, Who is the common offence grown of mankind, And worthy to be torn up from society. Com. You shall not do it here, sir. Iron. Why, will you Entreat yourself into a beating for him, My courteous brother ? If you will, have at you. No man deserves it better, now I think on’t, Than you, that will keep consort with such fidlers, Pragmatic flies, fools, publicans, and moths, And leave your honest and adopted brother. Sir Moth. Best raise the house upon him to secure us ; He’ll kill us all ! [Exit. Pal. I love no blades in belts. [Exit. Rut. Nor I. [Exit. Bia. Would I were at my shop again, In court, safe stow’d up with my politic bundles. [Exit. Com. How they are scattered ! Iron. Run away like cimici, Into the crannies of a rotten bed-stead. Com. I told you, such a passage would disperse them, Although the house were their fee-simple in law, And they possest of all the blessings in it. Iron. Pray heaven they be not frighted from their stomachs, That so my lady’s table be disfurnish’d Of the provisions ! Com. No, the parson’s calling, By this time, all the covey again together. Here comes good tidings— Enter Pleasance. Dinner’s on the board. — [Exit Ironside. Stay, mistress Pleasance, I must ask you a Have you any suits in law ? [question : Plea. I, master Compass ! Com. Answer me briefly, it is dinner-time. They say you have retain’d brisk master Practice, Here, of your counsel ; and are to be join’d A patentee -with him. Plea. In what? who says so? You are disposed to jest. Com. No, I am in earnest. * is given out in the house so, I assure you; But keep your right to yourself, and not acquaint A common lawyer with your case: if he Once find the gap, a thousand will leap after. I’ll tell you more anon. [Exit. Plea. This riddle shews A little like a love trick, o’ one face. If I could understand it. I will study it. [Exit. Dam. But whom doth your poet mean now by this master Bias 9 what lord’s secretary doth he purpose to personate or perstringe 9 Boy. You might as well ask me, what alderman, or alderman’s mate, he meant by sir Moth Interest, or what eminent lawyer, by the ridiculous master Practice 9 who hath rather his name invented for laughter, than any offence or injury it can stick on the reverend professors of the law : and so the wise ones will think. Pro. It is an insidious question, brother Dam- play : iniquity itself would not have urged it. It is picking the lock of the scene, not opening it the fair way with a key. A play, though it apparel and present vices in general, flies from all parti¬ cularities in persons. Would you ask of Plautus, and Terence, if they both lived now, ivho were Davus or Pseudolus in the scene, who Pyrgopoli- nices or Thraso 9 who Euclio or Mcnedemus ? Boy. Yes, heivould: and enquire of Martial, or any other epigrammatist, whom he meant by Tithes or Seius, (the common John a Noke, or John a Stile,) under whom they note all vices and errors taxable to the times 9 as if there could not be a name for a folly fitted to the stage, but there must be a person in nature found out to own it. Dam. Why, I can fancy a person to myself, boy, ivho shall hinder me 9 Boy. And in not publishing him, you do no man an injury. But if you ivill utter your own ill meaning on that person, under the author’s words, you make a libel of his comedy. Dam. O, he told us that, in a prologue, long since. Boy. If you do the same reprehensible ill things, still the same reprehension will serve you, though you heard it afore : they are his own ivords, I can invent no better, nor he. Pro. It is the solemn vice of interpretation that deforms the figure of many a fair scene, by draiving it awry ; and, indeed, is the civil murder of most good plays : if I see a thing vively presented on the stage, that the glass of custom, which is comedy, is so held up to me by the poet, as I can therein vieio the daily examples of men’s lives, andimayes of truth, in their manners, so drawn for my de¬ light or profit, as I may, either way, use them : and will I, rather than make that true use, hunt out the persons to defame by my malice of misap¬ plying, and imperil the innocence and candour of the author by this calumny ! It is an unjust way of hearing and beholding plays, this, and inost un¬ becoming a gentleman to appear malignantly witty in another’s work. Boy. They are no other but narrow and shrunk natures, shrivell'dup, poor things, that cannot think well of themselves, who dare to detract others. That signature is upon them, and it ivill last. A half-witted barbarism, which no barber’s art, or his balls will ever expunge or take out l Dam. Why, boy, this were a strange empire, or rather a tyranny, you would entitle your poet t& 448 THE MAGNETIC LADY. ac r ji: over gentlemen, that they should come to hear and see plays, and say nothing for their money. Boy. O, yes, say what you will; so it be to pur¬ pose, and in place. Dam. Can any thing be out of purpose at a play ? J see no reason, if I come here, and give my eighteen pence or two shillings for my seat, but I should take it out in censure on the stage. Boy. Your two shilling ivorth is allow'd you : but you will take your ten shilling worth, your twenty shilling worth, and more ; and teach others about you to do the like, that follow your leading face ; as if you were to cry up and down every scene by confederacy, be it right or ivrong. Dam. Who ihould teach us the right or wrong at a play ? Boy. If your own science cannot do it, or the love of modesty and truth ; all other entreaties or attempts are vain. You are fitter spectators for the bears, than vs, or the puppets. This is a popular ignorance indeed, somewhat better apparelled in you, than the people ; but a hard-handed and stiff ignorance worthy a trowel or a hammerman ; and not only fit to be scorned, but to be triumphed over. Dam. By whom, boy ? Boy. A To particular, but the general neglect and silence. Good master Damplay, be yourself still, without a second: few here are of your opinion to-day, I hope ; to-morrow, I am sure there will be none, when they have ruminated this. Pro. Let us mind ivhat you come for , the play, which will draw on to the epitasis now. ACT III. SCENE I.— A Room in Lady Loadstone’s House. Enter Timothy Item, Needle, and Nurse Keep. Item. Where’s master doctor ? Nee. O, master Timothy Item, His learned pothecary, you are welcome ! He is within at dinner. Item. Dinner! death, That he will eat now, having such a business, That so concerns him ! Nee. Why, can any business Concern a man like his meat? Item. O, twenty millions, To a physician that’s in practice : I Do bring him news from all the points o’ the compass, That’s all the parts of the sublunary globe, Of times and double times. Nee. In, in, sweet Item, And furnish forth the table with your news : Deserve your dinner, sow out your whole bagfull; The guests will hear it. Item. I heard they were out. Nee. But they are pieced, and put together again; You may go in, you’ll find them at high eating: The parson has an edifying stomach, And a persuading palate, like his name ; He hath begun three draughts of sack in doc¬ trines, And four in uses. Item. And they follow him ? Nee. No, sir Diaphanous is a recusant I n sack ; he only takes it in French wine, With an allay of water. In, in, Item, And leave your peeping. [Exit Item. Keep. I have a month’s mind To peep a little too. Sweet master Needle, H ow are they set ? Nee. At the board’s end, my lady- Keep. And my young mistress by her ? Nee. Yes, the parson On the right hand (as he’ll not lose his place For thrusting) and against him mistress Polish ; Next, sir Diaphanous against sir Moth ; Knights, one again another: then the soldier, The man of war; and man of peace, the lawyer ; Then the pert doctor, and the politic Bias, And master Compass circumscribeth all. [A noise within. Plea, [within.] Nurse Keep, nurse Keep! Nee. What noise is that within ? Plea, [within.] Come to my mistress, all their weapons are out. Nee. Mischief of men, what day, what hour is this ! Keep. Run for the cellar of strong waters, quickly. [Exeunt, SCENE II. —Another Room in the Same. Enter Ironside, followed by Compass. Com. Were you a madman to do this at table, And trouble all the guests, to affright the ladies, And gentlewomen ? Iron. Pox upon your women. And your half-man there, court sir Ambergris, A perfumed braggart! he must drink his wine With three parts water; and have amber in that too ! Com. And you must therefore break his face And wash his nose in wine ? [with a glass, Iron. Cannot he drink In orthodox, but he must have his gums, And paynim drugs? Com. You should have used the glass Rather as balance, than the sword of Justice ; But you have cut his face with it, he bleeds. Come, you shall take your sanctuary with me ; The whole house will be up in arms against you else, Within this half hour : this way to my lodging. [Exeunt. SCENE III. —Another Room in the same. Enter Rut, Lady Loadstone, Polish, and Keep carrying Placentia; Pleasance and Item following. Rut. A most rude action ! carry her to her bed; And use the fricace to her, with those oils. Keep your news, Item, now, and tend this business. Lady L. Good gossip, look to her. Pol. How do you, sweet charge ? Keep. She’s in a sweat. Pol. Ay, and a faint sweat, marry. scene III. THE MAGNETIC LADY. 449 Rut. Let her alone to Tim ; he has directions : I’ll hear your news, Tim Item, when you have done. [Exeunt Item, Polish, Keep, and Pleasance, unth Placentia. Lady L. Was ever such a guest brought to my table ? Rut. These boisterous soldiers have no better Here master Compass comes : [breeding. Enter Compass. Where is your captain, Rudhudibrass de Ironside ? Com. Gone out of doors. Lady L. Would he had ne’er come in them, I may wish! He has discredited my house and board, With his rude swaggering manners, and endanger’d My niece’s health, by drawing of his weapon, God knows how far; for master Doctor does not. Com. The doctor is an ass then, if he say so, And cannot with his conjuring names, Hippocrates, Galen or Rasis, Ayicen, Averroes, Cure a poor wench’s falling in a swoon ; Which a poor farthing changed in rosa solis, Or cinnamon water would. lie-enter Keep and Polish. Lady L. How now ! how does she ? Keep. She’s somewhat better: master Item has A little about. [brought her Pol. But there’s sir Moth, your brother. Is fallen into a fit o’ the happyplex;— It were a happy place for him and us, If he could steal to heaven thus ! all the house Are calling master Doctor, master Doctor. [ Exit Rtrr. The parson he has given him gone, this half hour; He’s pale in the mouth already for the fear Of the fierce captain. Lady L. Help me to my chamber, Nurse Keep : would I could see the day no more, But night hung over me, like some dark cloud ; That, buried with this loss of my good name, I and my house might perish thus forgotten ! [Exeunt Lady L., Keep, and Polish. Com. Her taking it to heart thus more afflicts me Than all these accidents, for they’ll blow over. Enter Practice and sir Diaphanous Silkworm. Prac. It was a barbarous injury, I confess : But if you will be counseled, sir, by me, The reverend law lies open to repair Your reputation. That will give you damages : Five thousand pound for a finger, I have known Given in court; and let me pack your jury. Sir Dia. There’s nothing vexes me, but that he has stain’d My new white satin doublet, and bespatter’d My spick and span silk-stockings on the day They were drawn on ; and here’s a spot in my hose too ! Com. Shrewd maims ! your clothes are wounded desperately; And that, I think, troubles a courtier more, An exact courtier, than a gash in his flesh. Sir Dia. My flesh ! I swear had he given me % twice so much, '[ never should have reckon’d it: but my clothes ;l'o be defaced and stigmatized so foully ! g g I take it as a contumely done me, Above the wisdom of our laws to right. Com. Why, then you’ll challenge him ? Sir Dia. I will advise ; Though master Practice here doth urge the law, And reparation it will make me of credit, Beside great damages—let him pack my jury. Com. He speaks like master Practice, one that is The child of a profession he is vow’d to, And servant to the study he hath taken, A pure apprentice at law ! but you must have The counsel of the sword, and square your action Unto their canons, and that brotherhood, If you do right. Prac. I tell you, master Compass, You speak not like a friend unto the laws, Nor scarce a subject, to persuade him thus Unto the breach of the peace : sir, you forget There is a court above, of the Star-chamber, To punish routs and riots. Com. No, young master, Although your name be Practice there in term-time, I do remember it. But you’ll not hear What I was bound to say; but like a wild Young haggard justice, fly at breach of the peace, Before you know whether the amorous knight Dares break the peace of conscience in a duel. Sir Dia. Troth, master Compass, I take you my friend ; You shall appoint of me in any matter That’s reasonable, so we may meet fair, On even terms. Com. I shall persuade no other; And take your learned counsel to advise you, I’ll run along with him. You say you’ll meet him On even terms. I do not see indeed How that can be ’twixt Ironside and you, Now I consider it: he is my brother, I do confess we have call’d so twenty year : But you are, sir, a knight in court, allied there, And so befriended, you may easily answer The worst success : he a known, noted, bold Boy of the sword, hath all men’s eyes upon him ; And there’s no London jury, but are led In evidence, as far by common fame, As they are by present deposition. Then you have many brethren, and near kinsmen. If he kill you, it will be a lasting quarrel ’Twixt them and him : whereas Rud Ironside, Although he have got his head into a beaver, With a huge feather, is but a currier’s son, And has not two old cordovan skins to leave In leather caps to mourn him in, if he die. Again ; you are generally beloved, he hated So much, that all the hearts and votes of men Go with you, in the wishing all prosperity Unto your purpose : he is a fat, corpulent, Unwieldy fellow ; you, a dieted spark, Fit for the combat. He has kill’d so many, As it is ten to one his turn is next: You never ftxig^t with any, less, slew any ; And therefore have the [better] hopes before you. I hope these things, thus specified unto you, Are fair advantages ; you cannot encounter Him upon equal terms. Beside, sir Silkworm, He hath done you wrong in a most high degree ; And sense of such an injury received Should so exacuate, and whet your choler, As you should count yourself an host of men. Compared to him : and therefore you, brave sir, THE MAGNETIC LADY. 460 Have no more reason to provoke, or challenge Him than the huge great porter has to try His strength upon an infant. Sir Dia. Master Compass, You rather spur me on, than any way Abate my courage to the enterprise. Com. All counsel’s as ’tis taken : if you stand On point of honour, not to have any odds, I have rather then dissuaded you, than otherwise : If upon terms of humour and revenge, I have encouraged you. So that I think, I have done the part of a friend on either side ; In furnishing your fear with matter first, If you have any ; or, if you dare fight, To heighten and confirm your resolution. Prac. I now do crave your pardon, master Compass : I did not apprehend your way before, The true perimeter of it: you have circles, And such fine draughts about! Sir Dia . Sir, I do thank you, I thank you, master Compass, heartily. I must confess, I never fought before. And I’d be glad to do things orderly, In the right place ; I pray you instruct me, sir : Is't best I fight ambitiously, or maliciously ? Com. Sir, if you never fought before, be wary, Trust not yourself too much. Sir Dia. Why? I assure you, I am very angry. Com. Do not suffer, though, The flatuous, windy choler of your heart, To move the clapper of your understanding, Which is the guiding faculty, your reason : You know not, if you’ll fight, or no, being brought Upon the place, Sir D ia. O yes, I have imagined Him treble arm’d, provoked too, and as furious As Homer makes Achilles ; and I find Myself not frighted with his fame one jot. Com. Well, yet take heed. These fights ima¬ ginary, Are less than skirmishes ; the fight of shadows : For shadows have their figure, motion, And their umbratil action, from the real Posture and motion of the body’s act : Whereas imaginably, many times, Those men may fight dare scarce eye one another, And much less meet. But if there be no help, Faith I would wish you send him a fair challenge. Sir Dia. I will go pen it presently. Com. But word it In the most generous terms. Sir Dia. Let me alone. Prac. And silken phrase ; the courtliest kind of quarrel. Com. He’ll make it a petition for his peace. Prac. O, yes, of right, and he may do’t bylaw. [Exeunt. —♦— SCENE IY.— Another Room in the Same. Enter Rut, Palate, and Bias, bringing out Sir Moth Interest in a chair : Item and Polish following. Rut. Come, bring him out into the air a little : There, set him down. Bow him, yet bow him more, Dasli that same glass of water in his face ; Now tweak him by the nose—hard, harder yet: If it but call the blood up from the heart, I ask no more. See, what a fear can do ! ACT III. Pinch him in the nape of the neck now ; nip him nip him. Item. He feels ; there’s life in him. Pal. He groans, and stirs. Rut. Tell him the captain’s gone. Sir Moth. Ha! Pal. He’s gone, sir. Rut. Give him a box, hard, hard, on his left ear. Sir Moth. O ! Rut. How do you feel yourself ? Sir Moth. Sore, sore. Rut. But where ? Sir Moth. In my neck. Rut. 1 nipt him there. Sir Moth. And in my head. Rut. I box’d him twice or thrice, to move those Bias. I swear you did. [sinews. Pol. What a brave man’s a doctor, To beat one into health ! I thought his blows Would e’en have kill’d him ; he did feel no more Than a great horse. Sir Moth. Is the wild captain gone, That man of murder ? Bias. All is calm and quiet. Sir Moth. Say you so, cousin Bias, then all’s Pal. How quickly a man is lost ! [well. Bias. And soon recover’d ! Pol. Where there are means, and doctors learned men, And there apothecaries, who are not now, As Chaucer says, their friendship to begin. Well, could they teach each other how to win In their swath bands- Rut. Leave your poetry, good gossip. Your Chaucer’s clouts, and wash your dishes with We must rub up the roots of his disease, [them ; And crave your peace a while, or else your absence. Pol. Nay, I know when to hold my peace. Rut. Then do it.— Give me your hand, sir Moth. Let’s feel your It is a pursiness, a kind of stoppage, [pulse ; Or tumour of the purse, for want of exercise, That you are troubled with : some ligatures In the neck of your vesica , or marsupium, Are so close knit, that you cannot evaporate ; And therefore you must use relaxatives. Beside, they say, you are so restive grown, You cannot but with trouble put your hand Into your pocket to discharge a reckoning, And this we sons of physic do call chiragra , A kind of cramp, or hand-gout. You shall purge for’t. Item. Indeed your worship should do well to advise him To cleanse his body, all the three high-ways ; That is, by sweat, purge, and phlebotomy. Rut. You say well, learned Tim; I’ll first pre¬ scribe him To give his purse a purge, once, twice a-week At dice, or cards; and when the weather is open, Sweat at a bowling-alley ; or be let blood In the lending vein, and bleed a matter of fifty Or threescore ounces at a time; then put youi thumbs Under your girdle, and have somebody else Pull out your purse for you, till with more ease, And a good habit, you can do it yourself, And then be sure always to keep good diet, And have your table furnish’d from one end Unto the t’other ; it is good for the eyes: scene IV. THE MAGNETIC LADY. 451 But feed you on one dish still, have your diet- Ever in bottles ready, which must come [drink From the King’s-head : I will prescribe you nothing, But what I’ll take before you mine ownself; That is my course with all my patients. Pal. Very methodical, secundum artem. Bias. And very safe pro captu recipientis. Pol. All errant learned men, how they ’spute Latin ! Rut. I had it of a Jew, and a great rabbi, Who every morning cast his cup of white-wine With sugar, and by the residence in the bottom. Would make report of any chronic malady, Such as sir Moth’s is, being an oppilation In that you call the neck of the money-bladder, Most anatomical, and by dissection- Enter Nurse Keep, hastily. Keep. O, master doctor, and his ’pothecary, Good master Item, and my mistress Polish, We need you all above 1 she’s fallen again In a worse fit than ever. Pol. Who? Keep. Your charge. Pol. Come away, gentlemen. Sir Moth. This fit with the doctor Hath mended me past expectation. [Exeunt all hut Bias. Enter Compass, Sir Diaphanous Silkworm, and Practice. Com. O sir Diaphanous ! have you done ? Sir Dia I have brought it. Prac. That’s well. Com. But who shall carry it now ? Sir Dia. A friend: I’ll find a friend to carry it; master Bias here Will not deny me that. Bias. Wbat is’t ? Sir Dia. To carry A challenge I have writ unto the captain. Bias. Faith, but I will, sir ; you shall pardon me For a twi-reason of state : I’ll bear no challenges ; I will not hazard my lord’s favour so ; Or forfeit mine own judgment with his honour, To turn a ruffian : I have to commend me Nought but his lordship’s good opinion; And to it my kalligraphy, a fair hand, Fit fora secretary : now you know, a man’s hand Being his executing part in fight, Is more obnoxious to the common peril. Sir Dia. You shall not fight, sir, you shall only My antagonist; commit us fairly there [search Upon the ground on equal terms. Bias. O, sir, But if my lord should hear I stood at end Of any quarrel, ’twere an end of me In a state-course! I have read the politics ; And heard the opinions of our best divines. Com. The gentleman has reason. Where was first The birth of your acquaintance, or the cradle Of your strict friendship made ? Sir Dia. We met in France, sir. Com. In France! that garden of humanity, The very seed-plot of all courtesies: I wonder that your friendship suck’d that aliment, The milk of France ; and see this sour effect It doth produce, ’gainst all the sweets of travel. There, every gentleman professing arms, Thinks he is bound in honour to embrace The bearing of a challenge for another, Without or questioning the cause, or asking Least colour of a reason. There’s no cowardice, No poltronery, like urging why? wherefore? But carry a challenge, do the thing, and die. Bias. Why, hear you, master Compass, I but crave Your ear in private : [ takes him aside.] I would carry his challenge, If I but hoped your captain angry enough To kill him ; for, to tell you truth, this knight Is an impertinent in court, we think him, And troubles my lord’s lodgings, and his table With frequent, and unnecessary visits, Which we, the better sort of servants, like not: Being his fellows in all other places, But at our master’s board ; and we disdain To do those servile offices, oft-times, His foolish pride and empire will exact, Against the heart, or humour of a gentleman. Com. Truth, master Bias, I would not have you I speak to flatter you ; but you are one [think Of the deepest politics I ever met, And the most subtly rational. I admire you. But do not you conceive in such a case, That you are accessary to his death, From whom you carry a challenge with such pur¬ pose ? Bias. Sir, the corruption of one thing in nature, Is held the generation of another ; And therefore, I had as lief be accessary Unto his death, as to his life. Com. A new Moral philosophy too ! you’ll carry it then ? Bias. If I were sure ’twould not incense his To beat the messenger. [choler Com. O, I’ll secure you ; You shall deliver it in my lodging, safely, And do your friend a service worthy thanks. Enter Ironside. Bias. I’ll venture it upon so good induction, To rid the court of an impediment, This baggage knight. Iron. Peace to you all, gentlemen. Save to this mushroom, who I hear is menacing Me with a challenge; which I come to anticipate, And save the law a labour.—Will you fight, sir? Sir Dia. Yes, in my shirt. [Throws off his doublet. Iron. O, that’s to save your doublet; I know it a court-trick ; you had rather have An ulcer in your body, than a pink More in your clothes. Sir Dia. Captain, you are a coward, If you’ll not fight in your shirt. Iron. Sir, I do not mean To put it off for that, nor yet my doublet: You have cause to call me coward, that more fear The stroke of the common and life-giving ah’, Than all your fury, and the panoply— Prac. Which is at best, but a thin linen armour I think a cup of generous wine were better, Than fighting in your shirts. Sir Dia. Sir, sir, my valour, It is a. valour of another nature, Than to be mended by a cup of wine. Com. I should be glad to hear of any valour 3 r Differing in kind ; who have known hitherto, Only one virtue they call fortitude, Worthy the name of valour. g g 2 452 THE MAGNETIC LADY. ACT III. Iron. Which who hath not, Is justly thought a coward ; and he is such. Sir Dia. O, you have read the play there, the New Inn , Of Jonson’s, that decries all other valour, But what is for the public. Iron. I do that too, But did not learn it there ; I think no valour Lies for a private cause. Sir Dia. Sir, I’ll redargue you By disputation. Com. O, let’s hear this : i long to hear a man dispute in his shirt Of valour, and his sword drawn in his hand ! Prac. His valour will take cold, put on your doublet. Com. His valour will keep cold, you are de¬ ceived ; And relish much the sweeter in our ears ; It may be too, in the ordinance of nature, Their valours are not yet so combatant, Or truly antagonistic, as to fight, But may admit to hear of some divisions Of fortitude, may put them off their quarrel. Sir Dia. I would have no man think me so un- Or subject to my passion but I can [govern’d, Read him a lecture ’twixt my undertakings And executions : I do know all kinds Of doing the business, which the town calls valour. Com. Yes, he has read the town, Town-top’s Your first? [his author ! Sir Dia. Is a rash headlong unexperience. Com. Which is in children, fools, or your street- Of the first head. [gallants Prac. A pretty kind of valour ! Com. Commend him, he will spin it out in’s Fine as that thread. [shir,, Sir Dia. The next, an indiscreet Presumption, grounded upon often scapes. Com. Or the insufficiency of adversaries And this is in your common fighting brothers, Your old Perdue’s, who, after time, do think, The one, that they are shot-free, the other sword- Your third ? [free. Sir Dia. Is nought but an excess of choier, That reigns in testy old men- Com. Noblemen’s porters, And self-conceited poets. Sir Dia. And is rather A pevishness, than any part of valour. Prac. He but rehearses, he concludes no valour. Com. A history of distempers as they are prac¬ tised, His harangue undertaketh, and no more. Your next ? Sir Dia. Is a dull desperate resolving. Com. In case of some necessitous misery, or Incumbent mischief. Prac. Narrowness of mind, Or ignorance being the root of it. Sir Dia. Which you shall find in gamesters quite blown up. Com. In bankrupt merchants, and discovered traitors. Prac. Or your exemplified malefactors, That have survived their infamy and punishment. Com. One that hath lost his ears by a just sentence Of the Star-chamber, a right valiant knave-- And is a histvionical contempt Of what a man fears most; it being a mischief In his own apprehension unavoidable. Prac. Which is in cowards wounded mortally, Or thieves adjudged to die. Com. This is a valour T should desire much to see encouraged ; As being a special entertainment For our rogue people, and make oft good sport Unto them, from the gallows to the ground. Sir Dia. But mine is a judicial resolving, Or liberal undertaking of a danger- Com. That might be avoided. Sir Dia. Ay, and with assurance, That it is found in noblemen and gentlemen Of the best sheaf. Com. Who having lives to lose, Like private men, have yet a world of honour And public reputation to defend. Sir Dia. Which in the brave historified Greeks, And Romans, you shall read of. Com. And no doubt, May in our aldermen meet it, and their deputies, The soldiers of the city, valiant blades, Who, rather than their houses should be ransack’d, Would fight it out, like so many wild beasts; Not for the fury they are commonly arm’d with, But the close manner of their fight and custom Of joining head to head, and foot to foot. Iron. And which of these so well-prest resolu- Am I to encounter now ? for commonly, [tions Men that have so much choice before them, have Some trouble to resolve of any one. Bias, There are three valours yet, which sir Hath, with his leave, not touch’d. [Diaphanous Sir Dia. Yea ! which are those ? Prac. He perks at that. Com. Nay, he does more, he chatters. Bias. A philosophical contempt of death Is one ; then an infused kind of valour, Wrought in us by our genii, or good spirits ; Of which the gallant ethnics had deep sense, Who generally held that no great statesman, Scholar, or soldier, e’er did any thing Sine divino aliquo affiatu. Prac. But there’s a Christian valour ’hove these Bias. Which is a quiet patient toleration [two. Of whatsoever the malicious world With injury doth unto you ; and consists In passion more than action, sir Diaphanous. Sir Dia. Sure, I do take mine to be Christian valour. Com. You may mistake though. Can you justify, On any cause, this seeking to deface The divine image in a man ? Bias. O, sir, Let them alone : is not Diaphanous As much a divine image, as is Ironside ? Let images fight, if they will fight, a God’s name. Enter Nurse Keep, hastily. Keep. Where’s master Needle ? saw you master We are undone. [Needle ? Com. What ails the frantic nurse ? Keep. My mistress is undone! she’s crying out! Where is this man trow, master Needle ? Enter Needle. Nee. Here. [Takes her aside. ( Keep. Run for the party, mistress Chair, the midwife. THE MAGNETIC LADY. 1CENE I. 453 Nay, look how the man stands as he were gowk’d ! She’s lost if you not haste away the party. Nee. Where is the doctor? Keep. Where a scoffing man is, And his apothecary little better ; They laugh and jeer at all: will you dispatch, And fetch the party quickly to our mistress ? We are all undone ! the tympany will out else. [Exeunt Needle and Keep. Enter Sir Moth Interest. Sir Moth. News, news, good news, better than butter’d news ! My niece is found with child, the doctor tells me, And fallen in labour. Com. How! [Exit. Sir Moth. The portion’s paid, The portion-O the captain ! is he here ? [Exit. Prac. He has spied your swords out: put them up, put up, You have driven him hence, and yet your quarrel’s Iron. In a most strange discovery. [ended. Prac. Of light gold. Sir Dia. And cracked within the ring. I take As a good omen. [the omen Prac. Then put up your sword, And on your doublet. Give the captain thanks. Sir Dia. I have been slurr’d else. Thank you, Your quarrelling caused all this. [noble captain! Iron. Where’s Compass ? Prac. Gone, Shrunk hence, contracted to his centre, I fear. Iron. The slip is his then. Sir Dia. I had like t’ have been Abused in the business, had the slip slurr’d on me, A counterfeit. Bias. Sir, we are all abused, As many as were brought on to be suitors ; And we will join in thanks all to the captain, And to his fortune that so brought us off. [ Exeunt. Dam. This was a pitiful poor shift of your poet, boy, to make his prime woman with child, and fall in labour, just to compose a quarrel. Boy. With whose borrowed ears have you heard, sir, all this while, that you can mistake the cur¬ rent of our scene so % The stream of the argu¬ ment threatened her being ivith child from the very beginning ; for it presented her in the first of the second act with some apparent note of infirmity or defect, from knowledge of which the auditory were rightly to be suspended by the author, till the quar¬ rel, which was but the accidental cause, hastened on the discovery of it, in occasioning her affright, which made her fall into her throes presently, and within that compass of time allowed to the comedy : wherein the poet exprest his prime artifice, rather than any error , that the detection of her being with child should determine the quarrel, which had produced it. Pro. The boy is too hard for you, brother Dam- play ; best mark the play, and let him alone. Dam. I care not for marking the play ; I'll damn it, talk, and do that I come for. I will not have gentlemen lose their privilege, nor I myselj my prerogative, for never an overgrown or super¬ annuated poet of them all. He shall not give me the law : I will censure and be witty, and take my tobacco, and enjoy my Magna Charta of reprehen¬ sion, as my predecessors have done before me. Boy. Even to license and absurdity. Pro. Not now, because the gentlewoman is in travail, and the midwife may come on the sooner, to put her and us out of our pain. Dam. Well, look to your business afterward, boy, that all things be clear, and come properly forth, suited and set together ; for I ivill search what follows severely, and to the nail. Boy. Let your nail run smooth then, and not scratch, lest the author be bold to pare it to the quick, and make it smart: you'll find him as severe as yourself Dam. A shrewd boy, and has me every where ! The midwife is come, she has made haste. ACT IV. SCENE I.— A Room in Lady Loadstone’s House. Enter Mother Chair and Needle. Chair. Stay, master Needle, you do prick too fast Upon the business, I must take some breath ; Lend me my stool; you have drawn a stitch upon In faith, son Needle, with your haste. [me, Nee. Good mother, Piece up this breach; I’ll give you a new gown, A new silk grogoran gown: I’ll do it, mother. Enter Nurse Keep. Keep. What will you do! you have done too much already, With your prick-seam, and through-stitch, master I pray you sit not fabling here old tales, [Needle. Good mother Chair, the midwife, but come up. [Exeunt Chair and Needle. Enter Compass and Practice. Com. How now, Nurse 1 where’s my lady ? Keep. In her chamber, Lock’d up, I think : she’ll speak with nobody. Com. Knows she of this accident ? Keep. Alas, sir, no : Would she might never know it! [Exit. Prac. I think her ladyship Too virtuous, and too nobly innocent, To have a hand in so ill-form’d a business. Com. Your thought, sir, is a brave thought, and a safe one : The child now to be born is not more free From the aspersion of all spot than she. She have her hand in a plot ’gainst master Prac¬ tice, If there were nothing else, whom she so loves, Cries up, and values ! knows to be a man Mark’d out for a chief justice in his cradle, Or a lord paramount, the head of the hall, The top, or the top-gallant of our law I Assure yourself she could not so deprave The rectitude of her judgment, to wish you Unto a wife might prove your infamy, v 454 THE MAGNETIC LADY, act ii . Whom she esteem’d that part of the commonwealth, And had [raised] up for honour to her blood. Prac. I must confess a great beholdingness Unto her ladyship’s offer, and good wishes : But the truth is, I never had affection, Or any liking to this niece of hers. Com. You foresaw somewhat then ? Prac. I had my notes, And my prognostics. Com. You read almanacs, And study them to some purpose, I believe. Prac. I do confess I do believe, and pray too, According to the planets, at some times. Com. And do observe the sign in making love : Prac. As in phlebotomy. Com. And choose your mistress By the good days, and leave her by the bad ? Prac. I do and I do not. Com. A little more Would fetch all his astronomy from Allestree. Prac. I tell you, master Compass, as my friend, \.nd under seal, I cast my eyes long since Upon the other wench, my lady’s woman, Another manner of piece for handsomeness, Than is the niece : but that is sub sigillo , And as I give it you, in hope of your aid And counsel in the business. Com. You need counsel! The only famous counsel of the kingdom, And in all courts ! That is a jeer in faith, Worthy your name, and your profession too, Sharp master Practice. Prac. No, upon my law, As I am a bencher, and now double reader, X meant in mere simplicity of request. Com. If you meant so, the affairs are now perplex’d, And full of trouble ; give them breath and settling, I’ll do my best. But in meantime do you Prepare the parson.—I am glad to know This ; for myself liked the young maid before, And loved her too. [Aside.'] —Have you a license? Prac. No ; But I can fetch one straight. Com. Do, do, and mind The parson’s pint, to engage him [in] the business; A knitting cup there must be. Prac. I shall do it. [Exit. Enter Bias and Sir Moth Interest. Bias. ’Tis an affront from you, sir ; you here Unto my lady’s, and to woo a wife, [brought me Which since is proved a crack’d commodity: She hath broke bulk too soon. Sir Moth. No fault of mine, If she be crack’d in pieces, or broke round : It was my sister’s fault that owns the house Where she hath got her clap, makes all this noise. I keep her portion safe, that is not scatter’d; The monies rattle not, nor are they thrown, To make a muss yet, ’mong the gamesome suitors. Com. Can you endure that flout, close master And have been so bred in the politics ? [Bias, The injury is done you, and by him only: He lent you imprest money, and upbraids it; Furnish’d you for the wooing, and now waves you. Bias. That makes me to expostulate the wrong So with him, and resent it as I do. Com. But do it home then. Bias. Sir, my lord shall know it. Com. And all the lords of the court too. Bias. What a Moth You are, sir Interest! Sir Moth. Wherein, I entreat you, Sweet master Bias ? Com. To draw in young statesmen, And heirs of policy into the noose Of an infdmous matrimony. Bias. Yes, Infamous, quasi in communem famam : And matrimony, quasi matter of money. Com. Learnedly urged, my cunning master Bias. Bias. With his lewd known and prostituted niece. Sir Moth. My known and prostitute ! how you mistake, And run upon a false ground, master Bias ! Your lords will do me right. Now she is prostitute, And that I know it, please you understand me, I mean to keep the portion in my hands, And pay no monies. Com. Mark you that, don Bias ? l And you shall still remain in bonds to him, For wooing furniture, and imprest charges. Sir Moth. Good master Compass, for the sums he has had Of me, I do acquit him ; they are his own : Here, before you, I do release him. Com. Good! Bias. O sir— Com. ’Slid, take it; I do witness it: He cannot hurl away his money better. Sir Moth. He shall get so much, sir, by my acquaintance, To be my friend ; and now report to his lords As I deserve, no otherwise. Com. But well; And I will witness it, and to the value : Four hundred is the price, if I mistake not, Of your true friend in court. Take hands, you have And bought him cheap. [bought him, Bias. I am his worship’s servant. Com. And you his slave, sir Moth, seal’d and deliver’d. Have you not studied the court-compliment ?— [. Exeunt Sir Moth and Bias. Here are a pair of humours reconciled now, That money held at distance, or their thoughts, Baser than money. Enter Polish, driving in Nurse Keep. Pol. Out, thou caitiff witch, Bawd, beggar, gipsey; any thing, indeed, But honest woman! Keep. What you please, dame Polish, My lady’s stroker. Com. What is here to do ! The gossips out! [Aside. Pol. Thou art a traitor to me, An Eve, the apple, and the serpent too; A viper, that hast eat a passage through me. Through mine own bowels, by thy recklessness. Com. W T hat frantic fit is this ? I’ll step aside, And hearken to it. L Retires Pol. Did I trust thee, wretch, With such a secret, of that consequence, Did so concern me, and my child, our livelihood, And reputation ! and hast thou undone us, By thy connivance, nodding in a corner, And suffering her be got with child so basely ? THE MAGNETIC LADY. SCENE I. Sleepy, unlucky hag !—thou bird of night, And all mischance to me ! Keep. Good lady empress, Had I the keeping of your daughter’s clicket In charge, was that committed to my trust ? Com. Her daughter ! [Aside. Pol. Softly, devil, not so loud : You’d have the house hear and be witness, would you ? Keep. Let all the world be witness : afore I’ll Endure the tyranny of such a tongue, And such a pride- Pol. What will you do ? Keep. Tell truth, And shame the she-man-devil in puff’d sleeves ; Run any hazard, by revealing all Unto my lady ; how you changed the cradles, And changed the children in them. Pol. Not so high ! Keep. Calling your daughter Pleasance there Placentia, And my true mistress by the name of Pleasance. Com. A horrid secret this; worth the discovery, Pol. And must you be thus loud ? Keep . I will be louder, And cry it through the house, through every ro And every office of the laundry-maids, Till it be borne hot to my lady’s ears : Ere I will live in such a slavery, I’ll do away myself. Pol. Didst thou not swear To keep it secret! And upon what book ?— I do remember now, The Practice of Piety. Keep. It was a practice of impiety, Out of your wicked forge, I know it now, My conscience tells me : first, against the infants, To rob them of their names and their true parents ; To abuse the neighbourhood, keep them in error ; But most my lady ; she has the main wrong, And I will let her know it instantly. Repentance, if it be true, ne’er comes too late. [Exit. Pol. What have I done ? conjured a spirit up, I shall not lay again! drawn on a danger And ruin on myself thus, by provoking A peevish fool, whom nothing will pray off Or satisfy, I fear ! her patience stirr’d, Is turn’d to fury. I have run my bark On a sweet rock, by mine own arts and trust; And must get off again, or dash in pieces. [Exit. Com. [ coming forward .] This was a business worth the listening after. Enter Pleasance. Plea. O master Compass, did you see my mother ? M istress Placentia, my lady’s niece, Is newly brought to bed of the bravest boy ! Will you go see it? Com. First, I’ll know the father, Ere I approach these hazards. Plea. Mistress midwife Has promised to find out a father for it, If there be need. Com. She may the safelier do it, By virtue of her place.—But, pretty Pleasance, I have a news for you I think will please you. Plea. What is it, master Compass ? Com. Stay, you must Deserve it ere you know it. Where’s my lady ? Plea. Retired unto her chamber, and shut up. 455 Com. She hears of none of this yet ? Weil, do Command the coach, and fit yourself to travel [you A little way with me. Plea. Whither, for God’s sake ? Com. Where I’ll entreat you not to your loss, If you dare trust yourself. [believe it, Plea. With you the world o’er. Com. The news will well requite the pains, I assure you, And in this tumult you will not be miss’d. Command the coach, it is an instant business, Will not be done without you. [Exit Pleasance. Enter Palate. Parson Palate ! Most opportunely met; step to my chamber ; I’ll come to you presently : there is a friend Or two will entertain you. [Exit Palate Enter Practice. Master Practice, Have you the license ? Prac. Here it is. Com . Let’s see it: Your name’s not in it. Prac. I’ll fill that presently. It has the seal, which is the main, and register'd ; The clerk knows me, and trusts me. Com. Have you the parson? Prac. They say he’s here, he ’pointed to come hither. Com. I would not have him seen here for a world, To breed suspicion. Do you intercept him, And prevent that. But take your license with you, And fill the blank ; or leave it here with me, I’ll do it for you ; stay you for us at his church, Behind the Old Exchange, we’ll come in the coach, And meet you there within this quarter at least. Prac. I am much bound unto you, master Compass ; You have all the law and parts of squire Practice For ever at your use. I’ll tell you news too : Sir, your reversion’s fallen ; Thinwit’s dead, Surveyor of the projects general. Com. When died he ? Prac. Even this morning ; I received it From a right hand. Com. Conceal it, master Practice, And mind the main affair you are in hand with. [Exit Pr actios. Re-enter Pleasance. Plea. The coach is ready, sir. Com. ’Tis well, fair Pleasance, Though now we shall not use it; bid the coachman Drive to the parish church, and stay about there, Till master Practice come to him, and employ him. [Exit Pleasance, I have a license now, which must have entry Before my lawyer’s.— Re-enter Palate. Noble parson Palate, Thou slialt be a mark advanced ; here is a piece, [Gives Mm money And do a feat for me. Pal. What, master Compass ? Com. But run the words of matrimony over My head and mistress Pleasance’s in my chamber; There’s captain Ironside to be a witness, And here’s a license to secure thee.—Parson What do you stick at ? Pal. It is afternoon, sir ; THE MAGNETIC LADY. ACT IV I 45G ! _ Directly against the canon of the church : You know it, master Compass : and beside, I am engaged unto your worshipful friend, The learned master Practice, in that business. Com. Come on, engage yourself: who shall be To say you married us but in the morning, [able The most canonical minute of the day, If you affirm it ? That’s a spiced excuse, And shews you have set the canon law before Any profession else, of love or friendship. Re-enter Pleasance. Come, mistress Pleasance, we cannot prevail With the rigid Parson here ; but, sir, I’ll keep you Lock’d in my lodging, ti'll’t be done elsewhere, And under fear of Ironside. Pal. Do you hear, sir ? Com. No, no, it matters not. Pal. Can you think, sir, I would deny you any thing, not to loss Of both my livings ? I will do it for you ; Have you a wedding ring ? Com. Ay, and a posie : Annulus hie nobis, quod sic uterque , dabit. Pal. Good! This ring will give you what you both desire. I’ll make the whole house chant it, and the parish. Com. Why, well said, parson. Now, to you my news, That comprehend my reasons, mistress Pleasance. [ Exeunt. -4- SCENE II.— Another Room in the same. Enter Mother Chair with a child, Polish, Keep, and Needle. Chair. Go, get a nurse, procure her at what rate You can ; and out of the house with it, son Needle ; It is a bad commodity. Nee. Good mother, I know it, but the best would now be made on’t. [Exit with the child. Chair. And shall. You should not fret so, mistress Polish, Nor you, dame Keep ; my daughter shall do well, When she has ta’en my caudle. I have known Twenty such breaches pieced up and made whole. Without a bum of noise. You two fall out, And tear up one another ! Pol. Blessed woman! Blest be the peace-maker ! Keep. The pease-dresser ! I’ll hear no peace from her. I have been wrong'd, So has my lady, my good lady’s worship, And I will right her, hoping she’ll right me. Pol. Good gentle Keep, I pray thee mistress Pardon my passion, I was misadvised ; [nurse, Be thou yet better, by this grave sage woman, Who is the mother of matrons and great persons, And knows the world. Keep. I do confess, she knows Something-and I know something- Pol. Put your somethings Together then. Chair. Ay, here’s a chance fallen out You cannot help; less can this gentlewoman; 1 can, and will, for both. First, I have sent By-chop away ; the cause gone, the fame ceaseth. Then by my caudle and my cullice, I set My daughter on her feet, about the house here ; She’s young, and must stir somewhat for necessity Her youth will bear it out. She shall pretend To have had a fit o’ the mother ; there is all. If you have but a secretary laundress, To blanch the linen—Take the former counsels Into you; keep them safe in your own breasts, And make your market of them at the highest. Will you go peach, and cry yourself a fool At grannam’s cross ! be laugh’d at and despised 1 Betray a purpose, which the deputy Of a double ward, or scarce his alderman, With twelve of the wisest questmen could find out, Employed by the authority of the city ! Come, come, be friends ; and keep these women- matters, Smock-secrets to ourselves, in our own verge : We shall mar all, if once we ope the mysteries Of the tiring-house, and tell what’s done within. No theatres are more cheated with appearances, Or these shop-lights, than the ages, and folk in That seem most curious. [them, Pol. Breath of an oracle ! You shall be my dear mother; wisest woman That ever tipp’d her tongue with point of reasons, To turn her hearers! Mistress Keep, relent, I did abuse thee ; I confess to penance, And on my knees ask thee forgiveness. \_Kneels. Chair. Rise, She doth begin to melt, I see it. Keep. Nothing Grieved me so much as when you call’d me bawd : Witch did not trouble me, nor gipsey ; no, Nor beggar : but a bawd was such a name ! Chair. No more rehearsals ; repetitions Make things the worse : the more we stir—you The proverb, and it signifies—a stink. [know What’s done and dead, let it be buried : New hours will fit fresh handles to new thoughts. [Exeunt. SCENE III.— Another Room in the same. Enter Sir Moth Interest and Servant. Sir Moth. Run to the church, sirrah ; get all the drunkards To ring the bells, and jangle them for joy : My niece has brought an heir unto the house, A lusty boy ! [ Exit Servant.] Where is my sister Loadstone ?— Enter Lady Loadstone. Asleep at afternoons ! it is not wholesome ; Against all rules of physic, lady sister. The little doctor will not like it. Our niece Is new deliver’d of a chopping child, Can call the father by the name already, If it but ope the mouth round. Master Compass, He is the man, they say, fame gives it out, Hath done that act of honour to our house, And friendship, to pump out a son and heir That shall inherit nothing, surely nothing From me, at least. Enter Compass. I come to invite your ladyship To be a witness ; I will be your partner, And give it a horn spoon, and a treen-dish, Bastard, and beggar’s badges, with a blanket For dame the doxy to march round the circuit, With bag and baggage. scene HI. THE MAGNETIC LADY. 45? Com. Thou malicious knight, Envious sir Moth, that eats on that which feeds thee, And frets her goodness that sustains thy being ! What company of mankind would own thy bro- But as thou hast a title to her blood, [therhood, Whom thy ill-nature hath chose out t’ insult on, And vex thus, for an accident in her house, As if it were her crime, good innocent lady ! Thou shew’st thyself a true corroding vermin, Such as thou art. Sir Moth. Why, gentle master Compass ? Because I wish you joy of your young son, And heir to the house, you have sent us ? Corn. I have sent you ! I know not what I shall do. Come in, friends : Enter Ironside, Sir Diaphanous Silkworm, Palate, and Pleasance. Madam, I pray you be pleased to trust yourself Unto our company. Lady L. I did that too late ; Which brought on this calamity upon me, With all the infamy I hear ; your soldier, That swaggering guest. Com. Who is return’d here to you, Your vowed friend and servant; comes to sup with you, (So we do all,) and will prove he hath deserv’d That special respect and favour from you, As not your fortunes, with yourself to boot, Cast on a feather-bed, and spread on the sheets Under a brace of your best Persian carpets, Were scarce a price to thank his happy merit. Sir Moth. What impudence is this ! can you To hear it, sister? [endure Com. Yes, and you shall hear it, Who will endure it worse. What deserves he, In your opinion, madam, or weigh’d judgment, That, things thus hanging as they do in doubt, Suspended and suspected, all involv’d, And wrapt in error, can resolve the knot ? Redintegrate the fame first of your house, Restore your ladyship’s quiet, render then Your niece a virgin and unvitiated, And make all plain and perfect as it was, A practice to betray you, and your name ? Sir Moth. He speaks impossibilities. Com. Here he stands, Whose fortune hath done this, and you must thank him. To what you call his swaggering, we owe all this : And that it may have credit with you, madam, Here is your niece, whom I have married, witness These gentlemen, the knight, captain, and parson, And this grave politic tell-troth of the court. Lady L. What’s she that I call niece then ? Com. Polish’s daughter : Her mother, goody Polish, has confess’d it To grannam Keep, the nurse, how they did change The children in their cradles. Lady L. To what purpose ? Com. To get the portion, or some part of it, Which you must now disburse entire to me, sir. If I but gain her ladyship’s consent. Lady L. I bid God give you joy, if this be true. Com. As true it is lady, lady, in the song. The portion’s mine, with interest, sir Moth; I will not bate you a single Harrington, Of interest upon interest: In mean time, I do commit you to the guard of Ironside, My brother here, captain Rudhudibrass ; From whom I will expect you or your ransom. Sir Moth. Sir, you must prove it, and the pos« Ere I believe it. [sibility, Com. For the possibility, I leave to trial. Enter Practice. Truth shall speak itself. O, master Practice, did you meet the coach ? Prac. Yes, sir, but empty. Com. Why, I sent it for you. The business is dispatch’d here ere you come: Come in, I’ll tell you how ; you are a man Will look for satisfaction, and must have it. All. So we do all, and long to hear the right. [Exeunt. Dam. Troth, I am one of those that labour with the same longing, for it is almost pucker'd, and pulled into that knot by your poet, which I cannot easily, with all the strength of my imagination, untie. Boy. Like enough, nor is it in your office to be troubled or perplexed with it, but to sit still, and expect. The more your imagination busies itself, the more it is intangled, especially if (as I told in the beginning) you happen on the wrong end. Pro. He hath said sufficient, brother Damplay: our parts that are the spectators, or should hear a comedy, are to wait the process and events of things, as the poet presents them, not as we would corruptly fashion them. We come here to behold plays, and censure them, as they are made, and fitted for us ; not to beslave our own thoughts, with censorious spittle tempering the poet's clay, as we were to mould every scene anew : that were a mere plastic or potter's ambition, most unbe¬ coming the name of a gentleman. No, let us mark , and not lose the business on foot, by talking. Follow the right thread , or find it. Dam. Why, here his play might have ended, if he would have let it ; and have spared us the vexation of a fifth act yet to come, which every one here knows the issue of already, or may in part conjecture. Boy. That conjecture is a kind of figure-fling¬ ing, or throwing the dice, for a meaning was never in the poet's purpose perhaps. Stay, and see his last act, his catastrophe, how he will perplex that, or spring some fresh cheat, to entertain the spec¬ tators, with a convenient delight, till some unex¬ pected and new encounter break out to rectify all, and make good the conclusion. Pro. Which ending here, would have shown dull, flat, and unpointed: without any shape or sharpness, brother Damplay. Dam. Well, let us expect then: and wit be with us, on the poet's part. 468 THE MAGNETIC LAD.. act y ACT V. SCENE I. — A Room in Lady Loadstone’s House. Enter Needle and Item. Nee. Troth, master Item, here’s a house divided, And quarter’d into parts, by your doctor’s ingine. He has cast o.ut such aspersions on my lady’s Niece here, of having had a child ; as hardly Will be wiped off, I doubt. Item. Why, is’t not true ? Nee. True ! did you think it? Item. Was she not in labour, The midwife sent for ? Nee. There’s your error now! You have drunk of the same water. Item. I believed it, And gave it out too. Nee. More you wrong’d the party; She had no such thing about her, innocent creature! Item. What had she then? Nee. Only a fit of the mother : They burnt old shoes, goose-feathers, assafoetida, A few horn-shavjngs, with a bone or two, And she is well again, about the house. Item. Is’t possible ? Nee. See it, and then report it. Item. Our doctor’s urinal judgment is half- crack’d then. Nee. Crack’d in the case most hugely with my And sad sir Moth, her brother ; who is now [lady, Under a cloud a little. Item. Of what ? disgrace ? Nee. He is committed to Rudhudibrass, The captain Ironside, upon displeasure, From master Compass ; but it will blow off. Item. The doctor shall reverse this instantly. And set all right again ; if you’ll assist But in a toy, squire Needle, comes in my noddle now. Nee. Good i Needle and noddle ! what may’t be ? I long for’t. Item. Why, but to go to bed, feign a distemper, Of walking in your sleep, or talking in’t A little idly, but so much, as on it The doctor may have ground to raise a cure For his reputation. Nee. Any thing, to serve The worship of the man I love and honour. \_Exeunt. - —♦— SCENE II.— Another Room in the same. Enter Polish and Pleasance. Pol. O ! give you joy, mademoiselle Compass, You are his whirlpool, now : all-to be-married, Against your mother’s leave, and without counsel! He has fish’d fair, and caught a frog, I fear it. What fortune have you to bring him in dower ? You can tell stories now; you know a world Of secrets to discover. Plea. I know nothing But what is told me, nor can I discover Any thing. Pol. No, you shail not, I’ll take order. Go, get you in there: [ Exit Pleasance. 1 It is Ember-week, I’ll keep you fasting from his flesh awhile. Enter Chair and Keep with Placentia. Chair. See who is here ! she lias' been with my lady, Who kist her, all-to-be-kist her, twice or thrice. Keep. And call’d her niece again, and view’d her linen. Pol. You have done a miracle, mother Chair. Chair. Not I, My caudle has done it: thank my caudle heartily. Pol. It shall be thank’d, and you too, wisest mother ; You shall have a new, brave, four-pound beaver Set with enamell’d studs, as mine is here ; [hat, And a right pair of crystal spectacles, Crystal o’ the roek, thou mighty mother of dames 1 Hung in an ivory case, at a gold belt; And silver bells to gingle, as you pace Before your fifty daughters in procession To church, or from the church. Chair. Thanks, mistress Polish. Keep. She does deserve as many pensions As there be pieces in a-maiden-head, Were I a prince to give them. Pol. Come, sweet charge, You shall present yourself about the house ; Be confident, and bear up ; you shall be seen. [Exeunt. -♦— SCENE III.— Another Room in the same. Enter Compass, Ironside, and Practice. Com. What! I can make you amends, my And satisfy a greater injury [learned counsel, To chafed master Practice. Who would think That you could be thus testy ? Iron. A grave head, Given over to the study of our laws. Com. And the prime honours of the common- Iron. And you to mind a wife ! [wealth. Com. What should you do With such a toy as a wife, that might distract you, Or hinder you in your course ? Iron. He shall not think on’t. Com. I will make over to you my possession Of that same place is fall’n, you know, to satisfy; Surveyor of the projects general. Iron. And that’s an office you know how to stir Com. And make your profits of. [in. Iron. Which are indeed The ends of a gown’d man : shew your activity, And how you are built for business. Prac. I accept it As a possession, be it but a reversion. Com. You first told me ’twas a possession Prac. Ay, 1 told you that I heard so. Iron. All is one, He’ll make a reversion a possession quickly. Com. But I must have a general release from Prac. Do one, I’ll do the other. [you Com. It’s a match, Before my brother Ironside. Prac. ’Tis done. Com. We two are reconciebd then. Iron. To a lawyer, That can make use of a place, any half title Is better than a wife. THE MAGNETIC LADY. SCENE IV. Com. And will save charges Of coaches, vellute gowns, and cut-work smocks. Iron. He is to occupy an office wholly. Com. True ; I must talk with you nearer, mas¬ ter Practice, About recovery of my wife’s portion, What way I were best to take. Prac. The plainest way. Com. What’s that, for plainness ? Prac. Sue him at common law : Arrest him on an action of choke-bail, Five hundred thousand pound ; it will affright him, And all his sureties. You can prove your marriage? Com. Yes. We’ll talk of it within, and hear my lady. [Exeunt. —♦- SCENE IY.— Another Room in the same. Enter Sir Moth Interest, and Lady Loadstone. Sir Moth. I am sure the vogue of the house went all that way ; She was with child, and master Compass got it. Lady L. Why, that, you see, is manifestly false ; He has married the other, our true niece, he says, He would not woo them both : he is not such A stallion, to leap all. Again, no child Appears, that I can find with all my search, And strictest way of inquiry, I have made Through all my family. A fit of the mother, The women say she had, which the midwife cured, With burning bones and feathers. Enter Rut. Here’s the doctor. Sir Moth. O, noble doctor, did not you and Tell me our niece was in labour ? [your Item Rut. If I did, What follows ? Sir Moth. And that mother Midnight Was sent for ? Rut. So she was, and is in the house still. Sir Moth. But here has a noise been since, she was deliver’d Of a brave boy, and master Compass’s getting. Rut. I know no rattle of gossips, nor their noises : I hope you take not me for a pimp-errant, To deal in smock affairs. Where is the patient, The infirm man I was sent for, squire Needle ? Lady L. Is Needle sick ? Rut. My pothecary tells me He is in danger— Enter Item. How is it, Tim ? where is he ? Item. I cannot hold him down. He is up and walks, And talks, in his perfect sleep, with his eyes shut, As sensibly as he were broad awake. See, here he comes ; he’s fast asleep, observe him. Enter Needle, followed by Polish, Chair, Keep, and Placentia. * Rut. He’ll tell us wonders. What do these women here, Hunting a man half naked ? you are fine beagles, You’d have his doucets ! Nee. I have linen breeks on. Rut. He hears, but he sees nothing. Nee. Yes, I see Who hides the treasure yonder. 459 Sir Moth. Ha ! what treasure ? Rut. If you ask questions, he wakes presently, And then you’ll hear no more till his next fit. Nee. And whom she hides it for. Rut. Do you mark, sir, list. Nee. A fine she spirit it is, an Indian magpye. She was an alderman’s widow, and fell in love With our sir Moth, my lady’s brother. Rut. Hear you? Nee. And she has hid an alderman’s estate, Dropt through her bill, in little holes, in the garden, And scrapes earth over them ; where none can spy But I, who see all by the glow-worm’s light, That creeps before. [Exeunt Needle, Chair, Keep, and Placentia, Pol. I knew the gentlewoman. Alderman Parrot’s widow, a fine speaker, As any was in the clothing, or the bevy ; She did become her scarlet and black velvet, Her green and purple- Rut. Save thy colours, rainbow ! Or she will run thee o’er, and all thy lights. Pol. She dwelt in Do-little-lane, a top o’ the hill there, In the round cage was after sir Chime Squirrel’s : She would eat nought but almonds, I assure you. Rut. Would thouhadst a dose of pills, a double dose, [way! Of the best purge to make thee turn tail t’other Pol. You are a foul-mouth’d, purging, absurd doctor; I tell you true, and I did long to tell it you. You have spread a scandal in my lady’s house here, On her sweet niece, you never can take off With all your purges, or your plaister of oaths ; Though you distil your damn-me, drop by drop, In your defence. That she hath had a child, Here she doth spit upon thee, and defy thee, Or I do’t for her ! Rut. Madam, pray you bind her To her behaviour : tie your gossip up, Or send her unto Bethlem. Pol. Go thou thither, That better hast deserv’d it, shame of doctors ! Where could she be deliver’d ? by what charm, Restored to her strength so soon ? who is the father, Or where the infant ? ask your oracle, That walks and talks in his sleep. Rut. WTiere is he gone ? You have lost a fortune, listening to her tabor. [Aside to Sir Moth. Good madam, lock her up. Lady L. You must give losers Their leave to speak, good doctor. Rut. Follow his footing Before he get to his bed ; this rest is lost else. [Exeunt Rut and Sir Moth. Enter Compass, Practice, and Ironside. Corn. Where is my wife ? what have you done Gossip of the counsels ? [with my wife, Pol. I, sweet master Compass ! I honour you and your wife. Com,. Well, do so still? I will not call you mother though, but Polish. Good gossip Polish, where have you hid my wife? Pol. I hide your wife ! Com. Or she is run away. Lady L. That would make all suspected, sir afresh: Come, we will find her if she be in the house. THE MAGNETIC LADY. ACT V 460 Pol. Why should I hide your wife, good master Compass ? Com. I know no cause, but that you are goody Polish, That’s good at malice, good at mischief, all That can perplex or trouble a business thoroughly. Pol. You may say what you will; you are master Compass, And carry a large sweep, sir, in your circle. Lady L. I’ll sweep all corners, gossip, to spring this, If’t be above ground. I will have her cried By the common-crier, thorough all the ward, But I will find her. Iron. It will be an act Worthy your justice, madam. Prac. And become The integrity and worship of her name. [.Exeunt, -♦— SCENE Y.— Another Room in the same. Enter Rut and Sir Moth Interest. Rut. ’Tis such a fly, this gossip, with her buz, She blows on every thing, in every place ! Sir Moth. A busy woman is a fearful grievance 1 . Will he not sleep again ? Rut. Yes, instantly, As soon as he is warm. It is the nature Of the disease, and all these cold dry fumes That are melancholic, to work at first, Slow and insensibly in their ascent; Till being got up, and then distilling down Upon the brain, they have a pricking quality That breeds this restless rest, which we, the sons Of physic, call a walking in the sleep, And telling mysteries, that must be heard Softly, with art, as we were sewing pillows Under the patient’s elbows ; else they’d fly Into a phrensy, run into the woods, Where there are noises, huntings, shoutings, hal- lowings, Amidst the brakes and furzes, over bridges Fall into waters, scratch their flesh, sometimes Drop down a precipice, and there be lost. Enter Item. How now ! what does he ? Item. He is up again, And ’gins to talk. Sir Moth. Of the former matter, Item ? Item. The treasure and the lady, that’s his argument. Sir Moth. O me, [most] happy man ! he cannot I shall know all then. [off it: Rut. With what appetite Our own desires delude us! [. Aside .]—Hear you, Let no man interrupt us. [Tim, Item. Sir Diaphanous And master Bias, his court-friends, desire To kiss his niece’s hands, and gratulate The firm recovery of her good fame And honour. Sir Moth. Good ! Say to them, master Item, My niece is on my lady’s side ; they’ll find her I pray to be but spared for half an hour: [there. I’ll see them presently. Rut. Do, put them off, Tim, And tell them the importance of the business. Here, he is come ! sooth ; and have all out of him. Enter Needle, talking as in his sleep. Nee. How do you, lady-bird ? so hard at work, still! _ [bird, What’s that you say ? do you bid me walk, sweet And tell our knight? I will, How! walk, knave , walk ! I think you’re angry with me, Pol. Fine Pol! Pol is a fine bird ! O find lady Pol! Almond for Parrot. Parrot’s a brave bird. Three hundred thousand pieces have you stuck Edge-long into the ground, within the garden ? O bounteous bird ! Sir Moth. And me most happy creature ! Rut. Smother your joy. Nee. How ! and dropp’d twice so many- Sir Moth. Ha! where? Rut. Contain yourself. Nee. In the old well ? Sir Moth. I cannot, I am a man of flesh and blood: Who can contain himself, to hear the ghost Of a dead lady do such works as these, And a city lady too of the strait waist? Nee. I will go try the truth of it. [Exit. Rut. He’s gone. Follow him, Tim ; see what he does. [ Exit Item.] If he bring you A say of it now !— Sir Moth. I’ll say he’s a rare fellow, And has a rare disease. Rut. And I will work As rare a cure upon him. Sir Moth. How, good doctor? Rut. When he hath utter’d all that you would know of him, I’ll cleanse him with a pill as small as a pease, And stop his mouth : for there his issue lies, Between the muscles of the tongue. Re-enter Item. Sir Moth. He’s come. Rut. What did he, Item ? Item. The first step he stept Into the garden, he pull’d these five pieces Up, in a finger’s breadth one of another : The dirt sticks on them still. Sir Moth. I know enough. Doctor, proceed with your cure, I’ll make thee famous, Famous among the sons of the physicians, Machaon, Podalirius, Esculapius. Thou slialt have a golden beard, as well as he had ; And thy Tim Item here, have one of silver ; A livery beard ! and all thy pothecaries Belong to thee.—Where is squire Needle? gone? Item. He is prick’d away, now he has done the work. Rut. Prepare his pill, and give it him afore supper. [Exit Item. Sir Moth. I’ll send for a dozen of labourers to- To turn the surface of the garden up. [morrow, Rut. In mold I bruise every clod. Sir Moth. And have all sifted, For I’ll not lose apiece of the bird’s bounty ; And take an inventory of all. Rut. And then, I would go down into the well- Sir Moth. Myself; No trusting other hands : six hundred thousand, To the first three ; nine hundred thousand pound— scene VI. THE MAGNETIC LADY 461 Rut. ’Twill purchase the whole bench of alder- Stript to their shirts. [inanity, Sir Moth. There never did accrue So great a gift to man, and from a lady I never saw but once : now I remember, We met at Merchant-tailors-hall, at dinner, In Threadneedle-street. Rut. Which was a sign squire Needle Should have the threading of this thread. Sir Moth. ’Tis true ; I shall love parrots better while I know him. Rut. I’d have her statue cut now in white marble. Sir Moth. And have it painted in most orient colours. Rut. That’s right! all city statues must be painted, Else they be worth nought in their subtle judg¬ ments. Enter Bjas. Sir Moth. My truest friend in court, dear master Bias ! You hear of the recovery of our niece In fame and credit ? Bias. Yes, I have been with her, And gratulated to her ; but I am sorry To find the author of the foul aspersion Here in your company, this insolent doctor. Sir Moth. You do mistake him ; he is clear got off on’t: A gossip’s jealousy first gave the hint. He drives another way now as I would have him ; He’s a rare man, the doctor, in his way. He has done the noblest cure here in the house, On a poor squire, my sister’s tailor, Needle, That talk’d in’s sleep; would walk to St. John’s wood, And Waltham forest, scape by all the ponds And pits in the way ; run over two-inch bridges, With his eyes fast, and in the dead of night!— I’ll have you better acquainted with him. Doctor, Here is my dear, dear, dearest friend in court, 1 Wise, powerful master Bias ; pray you salute Each other, not as strangers, but true friends. Rut. This is the gentleman you brought to-day, A suitor to your niece. Sir Moth. Yes. Rut. You were Agreed, I heard; the writings drawn between you. Sir Moth. And seal’d. Rut. What broke you off? Sir Moth. This rumour of her: Was it not, master Bias ? Bias. Which I find Now false, and therefore come to make amends In the first place. I stand to the old conditions. Rut. Faith, give them him, sir Moth, whate’er they were. You have a brave occasion now to cross The flanting master Compass, who pretends Right to the portion, by the other intail. Sir Moth. And claims it. You do hear he’s married? Bias. We hear his wife is run away from him, Within : she is not to be found in the house, With all the hue and cry is made for her Through every room; the larders have been search’d, The bake-houses and boulting tub, the ovens, Wash-house and brew-house, nay the very furnace. And yet she is not heard of. Sir Moth. Be she ne’er heard of, The safety of Great Britain lies not on’t. You are content with the ten thousand pound, Defalking the four hundred garnish-money ? That’s the condition here, afore the doctor, And your demand, friend Bias ? Bias. It is, sir Moth. Enter Palate. Rut. Here comes the parson then, shall make all sure. Sir Moth. Go you with my friend Bias, parson Palate, Unto my niece ; assure them we are agreed. Pal. And mistress Compass too is found within. Sir Moth. Where was she hid? Pal. In an old bottle-house, Where they scraped trenchers ; there her mother had thrust her. Rut. You shall have time, sir, to triumph on him, When this fine feat is done, and his Rud-Ironside. [Exeunt. ■- 4 - SCENE VI.— Another Room in the Same. Enter Compass, Lady Loadstone, Practice, Polish, Chair, and Keep. Com. Was ever any gentlewoman used So barbarously by a malicious gossip, Pretending to be mother to her too ? Pol. Pretending ! sir, I am her mother, and challenge A right and power for what I have done. Com. Out, hag! Thou that hast put all nature off, and woman, For sordid gain, betray’d the trust committed Unto thee by the dead, as from the living ; Changed the poor innocent infants in their cradles ; Defrauded them of their parents, changed their names, Calling Placentia, Pleasance : Pleasance, Placentia, Pol. How knows he this ? [Aside. Com. Abused the neighbourhood ; But most this lady : didst enforce an oath To this poor woman, on a pious book, To keep close thy impiety. Pol. Have you told this ? [Aside to the Nurse. Keep. I told it! no, he knows it, and much more, As he’s a cunning man. Pol. A cunning fool, If that be all. Com. But now to your true daughter, That had the child, and is the proper Pleasance, We must have an account of that too, gossip. Pol. This is like all the rest of master Compass. Enter Rut, running. Rut. Help, help, for charity ! sir Moth Interest Is fallen into the well. Lady L. Where, where ? Rut. In the garden. A rope to save his life ! Com. How came he there ? Rut. He thought to take possession of a fortune There newly dropt him, and the old chain broke, And down fell he in the bucket. Com. Is it deep? Rut. We cannot tell. A rope, help with a rope! 462 THE MAGNETIC LADY. act v filter Sir Diaphanous Silkworm, Ironside, Item, and Needle, leading in Sir Moth Interest. Sir Dia. He is got out again. The knight is saved. Iron. A little soused in the water; Needle saved him. Item. The water saved him, 'twas a fair escape. Nee. Have you no hurt ? Sir Moth. A little wet. Nee. That’s nothing. Rut. I wish’d you stay, sir, till to-morrow ; and told you It was no lucky hour : since six o’clock All stars were retrograde. Lady L. In the name Of fate or folly, how came you in the bucket ? Sir Moth. That is a qucere of another time, sister; The doctor will resolve you-who hath done The admirablest cure upon your Needle ! Give me thy hand, good Needle; thou cam’st timely. Take off my hood and coat; and let me shake Myself a little. I have a world of business. Where is my nephew Bias ? and his wife ? Enter Bias and Placentia. Who bids God give them joy ? here they both As sure affianced as the parson, or words, [stand, Can tie them. Rut. We all wish them joy and happiness. Sir Dia. I saw the contract, and can witness it. Sir M. He shall receive ten thousand pounds to-morrow. You look’t for’t, Compass, or a greater sum, But ’tis disposed of, this, another way : I have but one niece, verily, [master] Compass. Enter a Serjeant. Com. I’ll find another.—Yarlet, do your office. Serj. I do arrest your body, sir Moth Interest, In the king’s name ; at suit of master Compass, And dame Placentia his wife. The action’s enter’d, Five hundred thousand pound. Sir Moth. Hear you this, sister ? And hath your house the ears to hear it too, And to resound the affront ? Lady L. I cannot stop The laws, or hinder justice : I can be Your bail, if it may be taken. Com. With the captain’s, I ask no better. Rut. Here are better men, Will give their bail. Com. But yours will not be taken, Worshipful doctor; you are good security For a suit of clothes to the tailor that dares trust you: But not for such a sum as is this action.— Yarlet, you know my mind. Serj. You must to prison, sir, Unless you can find bail the creditor likes. Sir Moth. I would fain find it, if you’d shew me where. Sir Dia. It is a terrible action; more indeed Than many a man is worth; and is call’d Fright- bail. Iron. Faith, I will bail him at mine own apperil. Varlet, begone : I’ll once have the reputation, To be security for such a sum. Bear up, sir Moth. Rut. He is not worth the buckles About his belt, and yet this Ironside clashes! Sir Moth. Peace, lest he hear you, doctor; we’ll make use of him. What doth your brother Compass, captain Ironside, Demand of us, by way of challenge, thus ? Iron. Your niece’s portion; in the right of his wife. Sir Moth. I have assured one portion to one niece, And have no more to account for, that I know of: What I may do in charity-if my sister Will bid an offering for her maid and him, As a benevolence to them, after supper, I’ll spit into the bason, and entreat My friends to do the like. Com. Spit out thy gall, And heart, thou viper ! I will now no mercy, No pity of thee, thy false niece, and Needle ; Enter Pleasance. Bring forth your child, or I appeal you of murder You, and this gossip here, and mother Chair. Chair. The gentleman’s fallen mad ! Plea. No, mistress midwife. I saw the child, and you did give it me, And put it in my arms ; by this ill token, You wish’d me such another; and it cried. Prac. The law is plain ; if it were heard to cry And you produce it not, he may indict All that conceal it, of felony and murder. Com. And I will take the boldness, sir, to do it, Beginning with sir Moth here, and his doctor. Sir Dia. Good faith, this same is like to turn a business. Pal. And a shrewd business, marry; they all start at it. Com. I have the right thread now, and I wil ? keep it. You, goody Keep, confess the truth to my lady, The truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth Pol. I scorn to be prevented of my glories. I plotted the deceit, and I will own it. Love to my child, and lucre of the portion Provoked me; wherein, though the event hath fail’d In part, I will make use of the best side. This is my daughter, [ Points to Placentia.] and she hath had a child This day, unto her shame, I now profess it, By this mere false stick, squire Needle; but Since this wise knight hath thought it good to The foolish father of it, by assuring [change Her to his dear friend, master Bias ; and him Again to her, by clapping of him on With his free promise of ten thousand pound, Afore so many witnesses- Sir Dia. Whereof I Am one. Pal. And I another. Pol. I should be unnatural To my own flesh and blood, would I not thank him.— I thank you, sir ; and I have reason for it. For here your true niece stands, fine mistress Compass, (I’ll tell you truth, you have deserv’d it from me,) To whom you are by bond engaged to pay The sixteen thousand pound, which is her portion, Due to her husband, on her marriage-day. I speak the truth, and nothing but the. truth. scene VI. THE MAGNETIC LADY. 4G3 Iron. You’ll pay it now, sir Moth, with interest: You see the truth breaks out on every side of you. Sir Moth. Into what nets of cozenage am I cast On every side! each thread is grown a noose, A very mesh : I have run myself into A double brake, of paying twice the money. Bias. You shall be released of paying me a penny, With these conditions. Pol. Will you leave hei then? Bias. Yes, and the sum twice told, ere take a wife, To pick out monsieur Needle’s basting-threads. Com. Gossip, you are paid : though he be a fit nature, Worthy to have a whore justly put on him ; He is not bad enough to take your daughter, On such a cheat. Will you yet pay the portion ? Sir Moth. What will you bate ? Com. No penny the law gives. Sir Moth. Yes, Bias’s money. Com. What, your friend in court! I will not rob you of him, nor the purchase, Nor your dear doctor here ; stand all together, Birds of a nature all, and of a feather. Lady L. Well, we are all now reconciled to truth, There rests yet a gratuity from me, To be conferr’d upon this gentleman; Who, as my nephew Compass says, was cause First of the offence, but since of all the amends. The quarrel caused the affright, that fright brought on The travail, which made peace ; the peace drew on This new discovery, which endeth all In RECONCILEMENT. Com. When the portion Is tender’d, and received. Sir Moth. Well, you must have it; As good at first as last. Lady L. ’Tis well said, brother. And I, if this good captain will accept me, Give him myself, endow him with my estate, And make him lord of me, and all my fortunes : He that hath saved my honour, though by chance, I’ll really study his, and how to thank him. Iron. And I embrace you, lady, and your good¬ ness, And vow to quit all thought of war hereafter ; Save what is fought under your colours, madam. Pal. More work then for the parson ; I shall cap The Loadstone with an Ironside, I see. Iron. And take in these, the forlorn couple, with us, Needle and his Thread, whose portion I will think on; As being a business waiting on my bounty : Thus I do take possession of you, madam, My true Magnetic mistress, and my ladv. [Exeunt. CHORUS CHANGED INTO AN EPILOGUE TO THE KING. Well, gentlemen, I now must, under seal. And the author's charge, wave you, and make my appeal To the supremest power, my lord the king ; Who best can judge of what we humbly bring . He knows our weakness , and the poet’s faults ; Where he doth stand upright, go firm, or halts ; And he will doom him. To which voice he stands, And prefers that, ’fore all the people’s hands . f A TALE OF A TUB DRAMATIS PERSONAE. Chanon (Canon) Hugh, Vicar of Pancras, and Cap¬ tain Thums. Squire Tub, or Tripoly, of Totten-Court. Basket Hilts, his Mail and Governor. Justice Preamble, alias Bramble, of Maribone. Miles Metaphor, his Clerk. Pol Martin, Huisher to Lady Tub. Tobie Turfe, High Constable of Kentish Town. John Clay, of Kilborn, Tilemaker, the Bridegroom. In-and-In Medlay, of Islington, Cooper and Head- borough. Rasi’ Clench, of Hamstead, Farrier and Petty Con¬ stable. To-Pan, Tinker , or Metal-Man of Belsise, Third- borough. Diogenes Scriben, of Chalcot, the great Writer. Hannibal (Ball) Puppy, the High Constable’s Man. Father Rosin, the Minstrel, and his two Boys Black Jack, Lady Tub’s Butler. Lady Tub, of Totten, the Squire’s Mother. Dido Wispe, her Woman. Sibil Turfe, Wife to the High Constable. Awdrey Turfe, her Daughter, the Bride. Joan, Joyce, Madge, Parnel, Grisel, and Kate, Maids of the Bridal. Servants. SCENE, —Finsbury Hundred. PROLOGUE. No state-affairs, nor any politic club , Pretend we in our Tale, here, of a Tub : But acts of clowns and consta bles, to-day Stuff out the scenes of our ridiculous play. A cooper's wit, or some such busy spark, Illumining the high constable, and his clerk , And all the neighbourhood, from old records, Of antique proverbs, drawn from Whitson-lords. And their authorities, at Wakes and Ales, With country precedents, and old wives' tales, We bring you now, to shew what different things The cotes of dozens are from the courts of kings. ACT I. SCENE I. — Totten-Court.—Before lady Tub’s House. Enter Canon Hugh. Hugh. Now on my faith, old bishop Valentine, You have brought us nipping weather.— Februere Doth cut and shear —your day and diocese Are very cold. All your parishioners, As well your laics as your quiristers, Had need to keep to their warm feather beds, If they be sped of loves : this is no season, To seek new makes in; though sir Hugh of Pancras Be hither come to Totten, on intelligence, To the young lord of the manor, ’squire Tripoly, On such an errand as a mistress is. What, ’squire! I say.— [Calls.] Tub I should call him too: Sir Peter Tub was his father, a saltpetre-man ; Who left his mother, lady Tub of Totten- Court, here, to revel, and keep open house in; With the youug ’squire her son, and’s governor Basket- Hilts, both by sword and dagger : [Calls again.'] Domine A.rmiger Tub, ’squire Tripoly ! Expergiscere ! I dare not call aloud lest she should hear me, And think I conjured up the spirit, her son, In priest’s lack-Latin : O she is jealous Of all mankind for him. Tub. [appears at the window.] Canon, is’t you? Hugh. The vicar of Pancras, ’squire Tub ! wa’hoh ! Tub. I come, I stoop unto the call, sir Hugh ! Hugh. He knows my lure is from his love, fair Awdrey, The high constable’s daughter of Kentish-town Tobias Turfe. [here, mastei Enter Tub in his night-gown. Tub. What news of him ? Hugh. He has waked me An hour before I would, sir ; and my duty To the young worship of Totten-Court, ’squire Tripoly l Who hath my heart, as I have his : Your mistress Is to be made away from you this morning, St. Valentine's day : there are a knot of cIowds, The council of Finsbury, so they are styled, Met at her father’s ; all the wise of the hundred ; Old Rasi’ Clench of Hamstead, petty constable, In-and-in Medlay, cooper of Islington, And headborough ; with loud To-Pan, the tinker, ! * %VE II. Or metal-man of Belsise, the thirdborough ; Arid D’ogenes Scriben, the great writer of Chalcot. Tub. And why all these ? Hugh. Sir, to conclude in council, A husband or a make for mistress Aw'drey ; Whom they have named and pricked down, Clay of Kilborn, A tough young fellow, and a tilemaker. Tub. And what must he do ? Hugh. Cover her, they say ; And keep her warm, sir : mistress Awdrey Turfe, Last night did draw him for her Valentine ; Which chance, it hath so taken her father and mother, Because themselves drew so on Valentine’s eve Was thirty year,) as they will have her married To-day by any means ; they have sent a messenger Tc Kilborn, post, for Clay; which when I knew, I posted with the like to worshipful Tripoly, The squire of Totten : and my advice to cross it. Tub. What is’t, sir Hugh ? Hugh. Where is your governor Hilts? Basket must do it. Tub. Basket shall be call’d.— Hilts ! can you see to rise ? \_Aloud. Hilis. [appears at the window. ] Cham not blind, sir, With too much light. Tub. Open your t’other eye, And ^iew if it be day. HiUs. Che can spy that At’s little a hole as another, through a milstone. [Exit above. Tub. He will have the last word, though he talk bilk for’t. Hugh. Bilk! what’s that ? Tub. Why, nothing : a word Signifying doming ; and borrowed here to express nothing. Hugh. A fine device ! Tub. Yes, till we hear a finer. What’s your device now, canon Hugh ? Hugh. In private, Lend it your ear ; I will not trust the air with it, Or scarce my shirt; my cassock shall not know it; If I thought it did I’d burn it. Tub. That’s the way, You have thought to get a new one, Hugh : is’t worth it ? Let’s hear it first. Hugh. Then hearken, and receive it. [ Whispers him. This ’tis, sir. Do you relish it ? Enter Hilts, and walks by, making himself ready. Tub. If Hilts Be close enough to x.arry it; there’s all. Hilts. It is no sand, nor butter-milk: if it be, Ich’am no zive, or watering-pot, to draw Knots i’ your ’casions. If you trust me, zo If not, praform it your zelves. Cham no man’s wife, But resolute Hilts : you’ll vind me in the buttry. lExit. Tub. A testy, but a tender clown as wool, And melting as the weather in a thaw ! He’ll weep you like all April; but he’ll roar you Like middle March afore : he will be as mellow, And tipsy too, as October; and as grave And bound up like a frost (with the new year) In January ; as rigid as he is rustic. 465 Hugh. You know his nature, and describe it well; I’ll leave him to your fashioning. Tub. Stay, sir Hugh; Take a good angel with you for your guide ; IGives him a piece of money. And let this guard you homeward, as the blessing To our device. lExit. Hugh. I thank you, ’squire’s worship, Most humbly—for the next: for this I am sure of. O for a quire of these voices, now, To chime in a man’s pocket, and cry chink! One doth not chirp, it makes no harmony. Grave justice Bramble next must contribute ; His charity must offer at this wedding : I’ll bid more to the bason and the bride-ale, Although but one can bear away the bride. I smile to think how like a lottery These weddings are. Clay hath her in possession, The ’squire he hopes to circumvent the Tile-kin ; And now, if justice Bramble do come off, ’Tis two to one but Tub may lose his bottom. lExit. ■—♦— SCENE II.— Kentish Town. —A Room in Turfe’s House. Enter Clench, Medlay, D’ooe Sciuben, Ball, Puppy and Pan. Clench. Why, it is thirty year, e’en as this day now, Zin Valentine’s day, of all days kursin’d, look you; And the zame dav o’ the month as this Zin Valen- tine, Or I am vowly deceived— Med. That our high constable, Master Tobias Turfe, and his dame were married: I think you are right. But what was that Zin Valentine ? Did you ever know ’un, goodman Clench ? Clench. Zin Valentine ! He was a deadly zin, and dwelt at Highgate, As I have heard ; but ’twas avore my time : He was a cooper too, as you are, Medlay, An In-and-in : a woundy brag young vellow, As the ’port went o’ hun then, and in those days. Seri. Did he not write his name Sim Valentine Vor I have met no Sin in Finsbury books ; And yet I have writ them six or seven times over. Pan. O you mun look for the nine deadly Sins, In the church-books, D’oge: not [in] the high constable’s ; Nor in the county’s : zure, that same zin Valentine, He was a stately zin, an’ he were a zin, And kept brave house. Clench. At the Cock-and-Hen in Highgate. You have fresh’d my memory well in’t, neigh¬ bour Pan : He had a place in last king Harry’s time, Of sorting all the young couples ; joining them, And putting them together ; which is yet Praform’d, as on his day-zin Valentine • As being the zin of the shire, or the whole county: I am old Rivet still, and bear a brain, The Clench, the varriei, and true leach of Ham- stead. Pan. You are a shrewd antiquity, neighbour Clench, And a great guide to all the parishes! h h A TALE OF A TUB. A TALE OF A TUB. X4f ; m , The very bell-weather of the hundred, here, As I may zay. Master Tobias Turfe, High constable, would not miss you, for a score on us, When he do ’scourse of the great charty to us. Pup. What’s that, a horse ? can ’scourse nought but a horse, And that in Smithveld. Charty ! I ne’er read o* hun, In the old Fabian’s chronicles ; nor I think In any new: he may be a giant there, For aught I know. Seri. You should do well to study Records, fellow Ball, both law and poetry. Pup. Why, all’s but writing and reading, is it, Scriben ? An it be any more, it is mere cheating zure, Vlat cheating ; all your law and poets too. Pan. Master high constable comes. Enter Turfe. Pup. I’ll zay’t afore ’hun. Turfe. What’s that makes you all so merry and loud, sirs, ha ? I could have heard you to my privy walk. Clench. A contrevarsie ’twixt two learned men here: Hannibal Puppy says that law and poetry Are both flat cheating ; all’s but writing and read- He says, be’t verse or prose. [ing-, Turfe. I think in conzience, He do zay true : who is’t do thwart ’un, ha ? Med. Why, my friend Scriben, an it please your worship. Turfe. Who, D’oge, my D’ogenes? a great writer, marry ! He’ll vace me down [sii’s,] me myself sometimes, That verse goes upon veet, as you and I do : But I can gi’ un the hearing ; zit me down, And laugh at ’un ; and to myself conclude, The greatest clerks are not the wisest men Ever. Here they are both ! what, sirs, disputing, And holding arguments of verse and prose, And no green thing afore the door, that shews, Or speaks a wedding! Seri. Those were verses now, four worship spake, and run upon vive veet. Turfe. Feet, vrom my mouth, D’oge! leave your ’zui'd upinions, And get me in some boughs. Seri. Let them have leaves first. There’s nothing green but bays and rosemary. Pup. And they ai'e too good for strewings, your maids say. Turfe. You take up ’doi’ity still to vouch against me. All the twelve smocks in the house, zure, are your authors. Get some fresh hay then, to lay under foot; Some holly and ivy to make vine the posts : Is’t not zon Valentine’s day, and mistress Awdrey, Your young dame, to be married? [Exit Puppy.] I wonder Clay Should be so tedious ? he’s to play son Valentine: And the clown sluggard is not come fro’ Kilborn yet! Med. Do you call your son in law clown, an’t please your worship ? Turfe. Yes and vor worship too, my neighbour Medlay, A Middlesex clown, and one of Finsbury. They were the first colons of the kingdom be:c, The primitory colons, my Diogenes says, Where’s D’ogenes, my writer, now ? What weig those You told me, D’ogenes, were the first colons Of the country, that the Romans brought i n here Seri. The coloni, sir ; colonus is an inhabitant^ A clown original: as you’d say, a farmer, A tiller of the earth, e’er since the Romans Planted their colony first; which was in Middlesex. Turfe. Why so ! I thank you heartily, good Diogenes, You ha’ zertified me. I had rather be An ancient colon, (as they say,) a clowti o! Middlesex, A good rich farmer, or high constable. I’d play hun ’gain a knight, or a good ’squire, Or gentleman of any other county In the kingdom. Pan. Outcept Kent, for there they landed All gentlemen, and came in with the conqueror, Mad Julius Csesar, who built Dover-castle -. My ancestor To-Pan, beat the first kettle-drum Avore ’hun, here vrom Dover on the march. Which piece of monumental copper hangs Up, scour’d, at Hammersmith yet; for there they came Over the Thames, at a low water-mark ; Vore either London, ay, or Kingston-briJge, I doubt, were kursin’d. Re-enter Puppy with John Clay. Turfe. Zee, who is here : John Clay! Zon Valentine, and bridegroom ! have you zeen Your Valentine-bride yet, sin’ you came, John Clay ? Clap. No, wusse. Che lighted I but now ia the yard, Puppy has scarce unswaddled my legs yet. Turfe. What, wisps on your wedding-day zon this is right Originous Clay, and Clay o’ Kilborn too ! I would ha’ had boots on this day, zure, zon John. Clay. I did it to save chai'ges : we mun dance, On this day, zure; and who can dance in boots ? No, I got on my best straw-colour’d stockings, And swaddled them over to zave charges, I. Turfe. And his new chamois doublet too with, points ! I like that yet: and his long sausage-hose, Like the commander of four smoaking tile-kilns, Which he is captain of, captain of Kilborn ; Clay with his hat turn’d up o’ the leer side too, As if he would leap my daughter yet ere night, And spring a new Turfe to the old house !— Enter Joice, Joan, and the other Maids, with ribands rosemary, and bay for the bride-men. Look ! an the wenches ha’ not found ’un out, And do parzent ’un with a van of rosemary, And bays, to vill a bow-pot, trim the head Of my best vore-liorse ! we shall all ha’ bride-laces Or points, I zee ; my daughter will be valiant, And prove a very Mary Ambry in the business. Clench. They zaid your worship had ’sured ner to ’squire Tub Of Totten-Court here; all the hundred rings on’t. Turfe. A Tale of a Tub, sir, a mere Taie of a Tub. Lend it no ear, I pray you : the ’squire Tuo scene iii. A TALE OF A TUB. 407 Is a fine man, but he is too fine a man, And has a lady Tub too to his mother; I’ll deal with none of these fine silken Tubs : John Clay and clotli-breecli for my money and daughter. Here comes another old boy too vor his colours. Enter Rosin, and his two Boys. Will stroak down my wives udder of purses, empty Of all her milk-money this winter quarter : Old father Rosin, the chief minstrel here, Chief minstrel too of Highgate, she has hired him And all his two boys for a day and a half; And now they come for ribanding and rosemary: Give them enough, girls, give them enough, and take it Out in his tunes anon. Clench. I’ll have Tom Tiler, For our John Clay’s sake, and the tile-kilns, zure. Med. And I the Jolly Joiner for mine own sake. Pan. I’ll have the Jovial Tinker for To-Pan’s sake. Turfe. We’ll all be jovy this day vor son Va¬ lentine, My sweet son John’s sake. Seri. There’s another reading now : My master reads it Son and not Sin Valentine. Pup. Nor Zim : and he’s in the right; he is high-constable, And who should read above ’un, or avore ’hun ? Turfe. Son John shall bid us welcome all, this day; We’ll zerve under his colours : lead the troop, John, And Puppy, see the bells ring. Press all noises Of Finsbury, in our name : Diogenes Scx-iben Shall di’aw a score of warrants vor the business. Does any wight perzent hir majesty’s person This hundred, ’bove the high constable ? All. No, no. Turfe. Use our authoidty then to the utmost on’t. [Exeunt. —' ♦-- SCENE III.— Maribone. — A Room in Justice Preamble’s House. Enter Canon Hugh and Justice Preamble. Hugh. So you are sure, sir, to prevent them all, And throw a block in the bridegroom’s way, John Clay, That he will hardly leap o’er. Pre. I conceive you, Sir Hugh ; as if your rhetoric would say, Whereas the father of her is a Turfe, A very superficies of the earth ; He aims no higher than to match in clay, And there hath pitch’d his rest. Hugh. Right, justice Bramble ; You have the winding wit, compassing all. Pre. Subtle sir Hugh, you now are in the wrong, And err with the whole neighbourhood, I must tell you, For you mistake my name. Justice Pi'eamble I write myself; which, with the ignorant clowns here, Because of my profession of the law, And place of the peace, is taken to be Bramble : But all my warrants, sir, do run Preamble, Richard Preamble. Hugh. Sir, I thank you for it, That your good worship would not let me run Longer in ei'ror, but would take me up thus. Pre. You are my learned and canonic neighbour, I would not have you stray ; but the incorrigible Nott-headed beast, the clowns, or constables, Still let them graze, eat sallads, chew the cud : All the town music will not move a log. Hugh. The beetle and wedges will where you will have them. Pre. True, true, sir Hugh.— Enter Metaphor. Here comes Miles Metaphor, My clerk ; he is the man shall carry it, canon, By my instructions. Hugh. He will do it ad unguem, Miles Metaphor! he is a pi'etty fellow. Pre. I love not to keep shadows, or half-wits. To foil a business.—Metaphor, you have seen A king ride forth in state. Met. Sir, that I have : King Edward our late liege, and sovereign lord ; And have set down the pomp. Pre. Therefore I ask’d you. Have you observ’d the messengers of the chamber, What habits they were in ? Met. Y”es, minor coats, Unto the guard, a di'agon and a greyhound, For the supporters of the arms. Pre. Well mark’d! You know not any of them ? Met. Here’s one dwells In Maribone. Pre. Have you acquaintance with him, To borrow his coat an hour ? Hugh. Or but his badge, ’Twill serve ; a little thing he wears on his breast. Pre. His coat, I say, is of more authority : Borrow his coat for an hour. I do love To do all things completely, canon Hugh ; Borrow his coat, Miles Metaphor, or nothing. Met. The taberd of his office I will call it, Or the coat-armour of his place ; and so Insinuate with him by that trope. Pre. I know Your powers of rhetoric, Metaphor. Fetch him off In a fine figure for his coat, I say. [Exit Metaphor. Hugh. I’ll take my leave, sir, of your worship Because I may expect the issue anon. [too, Pre. Stay, my diviner counsel, take your fee : We that take fees, allow them to our counsel; And our prime learned counsel, double fees. There are a brace of angels to support you In your foot-walk this frost, for fear of falling, Or spi-aying of a point of matrimony, When you come at it— Hugh. In your worship’s service : That the exploit is done, and you possest Of mistress Awdrey Turfe.— Pre. I like your project. [Exit. Hugh. And I, of this effect of two to one ; It worketh in my pocket, ’gainst the ’squire, And his half bottom here, of half a piece, Which was not worth the stepping o’er the stile for: His mother has quite marr’d him, lady Tub, She’s such a vessel of faeces : all dried earth, Terra damnata ! not a drop of salt, Or petre in her! all her nitre is gone. [Exit, li ii 2 468 A TALE OF A TUB. ACT I. SCENE IV.— Totten Court. — Before Lady Tub’s House. Enter Lady Tub and Pol Martin. Lady T. Is the nag ready, Martin ? call *he ’squire. This frosty morning we will take the air, About the fields ; for I do mean to be Somebody’s Valentine, in my velvet gown, This morning, though it be but a beggar-man. Why stand you still, and do not call my son ? Pol. Madam, if he had couched with the lamb, He had no doubt been stirring with the lark : But he sat up at play, and watch’d the cock, Till his first warning chid him off to rest. Late watchers are no early wakers, madam : But if your ladyship will have him call’d— Lady T. Will have him call’d! wherefore did I, sir, bid him Be call’d, you weazel, vermin of an huisher ? You will return your wit to your first stile Of Martin Polecat, by these stinking tricks, If you do use them ; I shall no more call you Pol Martin, by the title of a gentleman, If you go on thus. Pol. I am gone. [Exit. Lady T. Be quick then, In your come off; and make amends, you stote ! Was ever such a fulmart for an huisher, To a great worshipful lady, as myself! Who, when I heard his name first, Martin Polecat, A stinking name, and not to be pronounced In any lady’s presence without a reverence ; My very heart e’en yearn’d, seeing the fellow Young, pretty, and handsome; being then, I say, A basket-carrier, and a man condemn’d To the salt-petre works ; made it my suit To master Peter Tub, that I might change it; And call him as I do now, by Pol Martin, To have it sound like a gentleman in an office, And made him mine own foreman, daily waiter. And he to serve me thus ! ingratitude, Beyond the coarseness yet of any clownage, Shewn to a lady !— Re-enter Pol Martin. What now, is he stirring ? Pol. Stirring betimes out of his bed, and ready. Lady T. And comes he then ? Pol. No, madam, he is gone. Ijady T. Gone ! whither ? Ask the porter where is he gone. Pol. I met the porter, and have ask’d him for him ; He says, he let him forth an hour ago. Lady T. An hour ago ! what business could he have So early; where is his man, grave Basket-hilts, His guide and governor? Pol. Gone with his master. Lady T. Is he gone too! O that same surly knave Is his right-hand ; and leads my son amiss. He has carried him to some drinking match or other. Pol Martin,—I will call you so again, I am friends with you now—go, get your horse and ride To all the towns about here, where his hauncs are, And cross the fields to meet, and bring me word; He cannot be gone far, being a-foot. Be curious to inquire him : and bid Wispe, My woman, come, and wait on me. [Exit Pol.] The love We mothers bear our sons we have bought with pain, Makes us oft view them with too carefui eyes. And overlook them with a jealous fear, Out-fitting mothers. Enter Dido Wispe. Lady T. How now, Wispe ! have you A Valentine yet ? I am taking the air to choose one. Wispe. Fate send your ladyship a fit one then. Lady T. What kind of one is that ? Wispe. A proper man To please your ladyship. Lady T. Out of that vanity That takes the foolish eye ! any poor creature, Whose w r ant may need my alms or courtesy, I rather wish ; so bishop Valentine Left us example to do deeds of charity; To feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit The weak and sick ; to entertain the poor, And give the dead a Christian funeral; These were the works of piety he did practise, And bade us imitate ; not look for lovers, Or handsome images to please our senses.— I pray thee, Wispe, deal freely with me now, We are alone, and may be merry a little : Thou art none of the court glories, nor the wonders For wit or beauty in the city ; tell me, What man would satisfy thy present fancy, Had thy ambition leave to choose a Valentine, Within the queen’s dominion, so a subject ? Wispe. You have given me a large scope, madam, I confess, And I will deal with your ladyship sincerely; I’ll utter my whole heart to you. I would have him The bravest, richest, and the properest, man A tailor could make up ; or all the poets, With the perfumers : I would have him such, As not another woman but should spite me ; Three city ladies should run mad for him, And country madams infinite. Lady T. You would spare me, And let me hold my wits ? Wispe. I should with you, For the young ’squire, my master’s sake, dispense A little, but it should be very little. Then all the court-wives I’d have jealous of me, As all their husbands jealous too of them ; And not a lawyer’s puss of any quality, But lick her lips for a snatch in the term-time. Lady T. Come, Let’s walk ; we’ll hear the rest as we go on : You are this morning in a good vein, Dido; Would I could be as merry! My son’s absence Troubles me not a little, though I seek These ways to put it off; which will not help • Care that is entered once into the breast, Will have the whole possession ere it resL 'Es.vtn t. A TALE OF A TUB. 4(to ACT II. SCENE I.— The fields near Pancras. Enter, in procession, with ribands, rosemary and bay, Turfe, Clay, Medlay, Clench, To-Pan, Scriben, and Puppy with the bride-cake, as going to church. Turfe. Zon Clay, cheer up, the better leg avore, This is a veat is once done, and no more. Clench. And then ’tis done vor ever, as they say. Med. Right! vor a man has his hour, and a dog his day. Turfe. True, neighbour Medlay, you are still In-and-in. Med. I would be, master constable, if che could win. Pan. I zay, John Clay keep still on his old gate : Wedding and hanging both go at a rate. Turfe. Well said, To-Pan; you have still the hap to hit The nail o’ the head at a close : I think there never Marriage was managed with a more avisement, Than was this marriage, though I say it that should Especially ’gain mine own flesh and blood, [not; My wedded wife. Indeed my wife would ha’ had All the young batchelors, and maids forsooth, Of the zix parishes hereabouts ; but I Cried none, sweel Sybil; none of that gear, I : It would lick zalt, I told her, by her leave. No, three or vour our wise, choice, honest neigh¬ bours, Ubstantial persons, men that have born office, And mine own family would be enough To eat our dinner. What! dear meat’s a thief; I know it by the butchers and the market-volk. Hum drum, I cry. No half ox in a pye : A man that’s bid to a bride-ale, if he have cake And drink enough, he need not vear his stake. Clench. ’Tis right; he has spoke as true as a gun, believe it. Enter Dame Turfe and Awdrey, followed by Joan, Joyce, Madge, Parnel, Grisel, and Kate, dressed for the wedding. Turfe. Come, Sybil, come ; did not I tell you o’ this, This pride and muster of women would mar all ? Six women to one daughter, and a mother ! The queen (God save her) ha’ no more herself. Dame T. Why, if you keep so many, master Turfe, Why should not all present our service to her ? Turfe. Your service! good! I think you’ll write to her shortly, Your very loving and obedient mother. Come, send your maids off, I will have them sent Home again, wife ; I love no trains of Kent, Or Christendom, as they say. Joyce. We will not back, And leave our dame. Madge. Why should her worship lack Her tail of maids, more than you do of men ? Turfe. What, mutining, Madge ? Joan. Zend back your clowns agen, And we will vollow. All. Else we’ll guard our dame. Turfe. I ha’ zet the ne6t of wasps all on a flame. Dame T. Come, you are such another, master Turfe, A clod you should be call’d, of a high constable : To let no music go afore your child To church, to chear her heart up this cold morning ! Turfe. You are for father Rosin and his consort Of Fiddling boys, the great Feates and the less ; Because you have entertain’d them all from High- gate. To show your pomp, you’d have your daughters and maids Dance o’er the fields like faies to church, this frost. I’ll have no rondels, I, in the queen’s paths ; Let ’em scrape the gut at home, where they have At afternoon. [fill’d it, Dame T. I’ll have them play at dinner. Clench. She is in the right, sir ; vor your wed- Is starv’d without the music. [ding-dinner Med. If the pies Come not in piping hot, you have lost that proverb. Turfe. I yield to truth : wife, are you sussified ? Pan. A right good man ! when he knows right, he loves it. Seri. And he will know’t and shew’t too by his Of being high constable, if no where else. [place Enter Hilts, with a false beard, booted and spurred. Hills. Well overtaken, gentlemen ! I pray you Which is the queen’s high constable among you ? Pup. The tallest man ; who should be else, do you think ? Hilts. It is no matter what I think, young Your answer savours of the cart. [clown ; Pup. How! cart And clown ! do you know whose team you speak to ? Hilts. No, nor I care not: Whose jade may you be ? Pup. Jade! cart! and clown! O for a lash of Three knotted cord ! [whip-cord, Hilts. Do you mutter ! sir, snorle this way, That I may hear, and answer what you say, With my school-dagger ’bout your costard, sir. Look to’t, young growse: I’ll lay it on, and sure ; Take’t it off who wull. [Draws his sword. Clench. Nay, ’pray you, gentleman—— Hilts. Go to, I will not bate him an ace on’t. What rowly-powly, maple face ! all fellows ! Pup. Do you hear, friend ? I would wish you, for your good, Tie up your brended bitch there, your dun, rusty, Pannier-hilt poniard ; and not vex the youth With shewing the teeth of it. We now are going To church in way of matrimony, some on us ; They ha’ rung all in a’ ready. If it had not, All the horn-beasts are grazing in this close Should not have pull’d me hence, till this ash- plant Had rung noon on your pate, master Broombeard. Hilts. That I would fain zee, quoth the blind Of Holloway : come, sir. [George Awd. O their naked weapons ! Pan. For the passion of man, hold gentleman Clay. Murder, O murder ! [and Puppy. Awd. O my father and mother ! Dame T. Husband, what do you mean ? son Clay, for God’s sake- 470 A TALE OF A TUB. act ii. Turfe. I charge you in the queen’s name, keep the peace. Hilts. Tell me o’ no queen or lceysar; I must A leg or ahanch of him ere I go. [have Med. But, zir, You must obey the queen’s high officers. Hilts. Why must I, goodmanMust? Med. You must an’ you wull. Turfe. Gentlemen, I am here for fault, high Hilts. Are you zo ! what then ? [constable- Turfe. I pray you, sir, put up Your weapons; do, at my request: for him, On my authority, he shall lie by the heels, Verbatim continente, an I live. Dame T. Out on him for a knave, what a dead fright He has put me into ! come, Aw r drey, do not shake. Awd. But is not Puppy hurt, nor the t’other man ? Clay. No bun? but had not I cried murder, I wuss- Pup. Sweet goodman Clench, I pray you revise my master, I may not zit in the stocks till the wedding be past, Dame, mistress Awdrey: I shall break the bride¬ cake else. Clench. Zomething must be to save authority, Dame T. Husband- [Puppy. Clench. And gossip- Awd. Father- Turfe. ’Treat me not, It is in vain. If he lie not by the heels, I’ll lie there for ’un ; I will teach the hind To carry a tongue in his head to his superiors. Hilts. This’s a wise constable ! where keeps he school? Clench. In Kentish-town ; a very servere man. Hilts. But, as servere as he is, let me, sir, tell him He shall not lay his man by the heels for this. This was my quarrel; and by his office’ leave, If it carry ’un for this, it shall carry double ; Yor he shall cariy me too. Turfe. Breath of man ! He is my chattel, mine own hired goods : An if you do abet 'un in this matter, I’ll clap you both by the heels, ankle to ankle. Hilts. You’ll clap a dog of wax as soon, old Blurt. Come, spare not me, sir, I am no man’s wife ; I care not I, sir, not three skips of a louse for you, An you were ten tall constables, not I. Turfe. Nay, pray you, sir, be not angry, but content; My man shall make you what amends you’ll ask ’un. Hilts. Let ’un mend his manners then, and know his betters ; It’s all I ask ’un ; and ’twill be his own, And’s master’s too another day; che vore ’un. Med. As right as a club still! Zure this angry man Speaks very near the mark when he is pleased. Pup. I thank you, sir, an’ I meet you at Kentish-town, I ha’ the courtesy o’ the hundred for you. Hilts. Gramercy, good high constable’s hind ! But hear you ? Mass constable, I have other manner of matter To bring you about than this. And so it is, I do belong to one of the queen’s captains, , A gentleman o’ the field, one captain Thums, I know not whether you know ’un or no : it may You do, and it may be you do not again. [be Turfe. No, I assure you on my constableship, I do not know ’un. Hilts. Nor I neither, i’ faith— 'Aside. It skills not much ; my captain and myself Having occasion to come riding by here This morning, at the corner of St. John’s wood, Some mile [west] o’ this town, were set upon By a sort of country-fellows, that not only Beat us, but robo’dus most sufficiently, And bound us to our behaviour hand and foot; And so they left us. Now, don constable, I am to charge you in her majesty’s name, As you will answer it at your apperil, That forthwith you raise hue and cry in the hundred, For all such persons as you can despect, By the length and breadth of your office : for I tell you, The loss is of some value ; therefore look to’t. Turfe. As fortune mend me now, or any office Of a thousand pound, if I know what to zay. Would I were dead, or vaire hang’d up at Tyburn, If I do know what course to take, or how To turn myself just at this time too, now My daughter is to be married ! I’ll but go To Pancridge-ehurch hard by, and return instantly, And all my neighbourhood shall go about it. Hilts. Tut, Pancridge me no Pancridge ! if you let it Slip, you will answer it, an your cap be of w r ool; Therefore take heed, you’ll feel the smart else, constable. [Going. Turfe. Nay, good sir, stay.—Neighbours, -what think you of this ? Dame T. Faith, man-- Turfe. Odds precious, woman, hold your tongue, And mind your pigs on the spit at home ; you must Have [an] oar in every thing—Pray you, sir, what Of fellows were they ? [kind Hilts. Thieves-kind, I have told you. Turfe. I mean, what kind of men ? Hilts. Men of our make. Turfe. Nay, but with patience, sir: We that are officers Must ’quire the special marks, and all the tokens Of the despected parties ; or perhaps else Be ne’er the near of our purpose in ’prehending them. Can you tell what ’parrel any of them wore ? Hills. Troth, no ; there were so many o’ ’em So one another ; now I remember me, [all like There was one busy fellow was their leader, A blunt squat swad, but lower than yourself ; He had on a leather-doublet with long points, And a pair of pinn’d-up breeches, like pudding- bags With yellow stockings, and his hat turn’d up With a silver clasp on his leer side. Dame T. By these Marks it should be John Clay, now bless the man! Turfe. Peace, and be nought! I think the woman be phrensic. Hilts. John Clay! what’s he, good mistress? Awd. He that shall be My husband. Hilts. How! your husband, pretty one? SCENE I. A T ALE OF A TUB. 471 Awd. Yes, I shall anon be married ; that is he. Turfe. Passion o’ me, undone ! Pup. Bless master’s son! Hilts. O, you are well ’prehended: know you me, sir ? Clay. No’s my record; I never zaw you avore. Hilts. You did not! where were your eyes then, out at washing ? Turfe. What should a man zay, who should he trust In these days ? Hark you, John Clay, if you have Done any such thing, tell troth and shame the devil. Clench. Vaitli, do ; my gossip Turfe zays well to you, John. Med. Speak, man ; but do not convess, nor be avraid. Pan. A man is a man, and a beast’s a beast, look to’t. . Dame T. In the name of men or beasts, what do you do ? Hare the poor fellow out on his five wits, And seven senses ! do not weep, John Clay. I swear the poor wretch is as guilty from it As the child was, was born this very morning. Clay. No, as I am a kyrsin soul, would I were If ever I-alas, I would I were out [bang’d Of my life ; so I would I were, and in again— Pup. Nay, mistress Awdrey will say nay to that ; No, in-and-out: an you were out of your life, How should she do for a husband ? who should fall Aboard of her then ?—Ball ? he’s a puppy! No, Hamiibal has no breeding ! well, I say little ; But hitherto all goes well, pray it prove no better. [Aside. Awd. Come, father; I would we were married ! I am a-cold. Hilts. Well, master constable, this your fine groom here, Bridegroom, or what groom else soe’er he be, I charge him with the felony, and charge you To carry him back forthwith to Paddington Unto my captain, who stays my return there : I am to go to the next justice of peace, To get a warrant to raise hue and cry, And bring him and his fellows all afore ’un. Fare you well, sir, and look to ’un, I charge you \s you will answer it. Take heed ; the business you defer, may prejudicial you More than you think for; zay I told you so. [Exit. Turfe. Here’s a bride-ale indeed ! ah zon John, zon Clay 1 I little thought you would have proved a piece Of such false metal. Clay. Father, will you believe me ? Would I might never stir in my new shoes, If ever I would do so voul a fact. Turfe. Well, neighbours, I do charge you to assist me With ’un to Paddington. Be he a true man, so ! The better for ’un. I will do mine office, An he were my own begotten a thousand times. Dame T. Why, do you hear, man ? husband, master Turfe ? What shall my daughter do ? Puppy, stay here. [.Exeunt all but Awdrey and Purpy. Awd. Mother, I’ll go with you and with my father. Pup. Nay, stay, sweet mistress Awdrey : here are none But one friend, as they zay, desires to speak A word or two, cold with you : how do you veel Yourself this frosty morning ? Awd. What have you To do to ask, I pray you ? I am a-cold. Pup. It seems you are hot, good mistress Awdrey. Awd. You lie ; I am as cold as ice is, feel else. Pup. Nay, you have cool’d my courage; I am I ha’ done feeling with you. [past it, Awd. Done with me ! I do defy you, so I do, to say You ha’ done with me : you are a saucy Puppy. Pup. O you mistake ! I meant not as you mean. Awd. Meant you not knavery, Puppy ? Pup. No, not I. Clay meant you all the knavery, it seems, Who rather than he would be married to you, Chose to be wedded to the gallows first. Awd. I thought he was a dissembler ; he would prove A slippery merchant in the frost. He might Have married one first, and have been bang’d after, If he had had a mind to’t. But you men— Fie on you! Pup. Mistress Awdrey, can you vind In your heart to fancy Puppy ? me poor Ball ? Awd. You are disposed to jeer one, master Hannibal— Re-enter Hilts. Pity o’ me, the angry man with the beard ! Hilts. Put on thy hat, I look for no despect. Where is thy master ? Pup. Marry, he is gone With the picture of despair to Paddington. Hilts. Prithee run after ’un, and tell ’un he shall Find out my captain lodged at the Red-Lion, In Paddington ; that’s the inn. Let ’un ask Yor captain Thums; and take that for thy pains : He may seek long enough else. Hie thee again. Pup. Yes, sir ; you’ll look to mistress bride the while ? Hilts. That I will: prithee haste. [Exit. Puppy. Awd. What, Puppy ! Puppy ! Hilts. Sweet mistress bride, he’ll come again presently.— Here was no subtle device to get a wench ! This Canon has a brave pate of his own, A shaven pate, and a right monger y’ vaitli ; This was his plot. I follow captain Thums ! We robb’d in St. John’s wood! In my t’other hose!— I laugh to think what a fine fool’s finger they have O’ this wise constable, in pricking out This captain Thums to his neighbours : you shall The tile-man too set fire on his own kiln, [see And leap into it to save himself from hanging. You talk of a bride-ale, here was a bride-ale broke In the nick ! Well, I must yet dispatch this bride To mine own master, the young ’squire, and then My task is done.— [Aside.] —Gentlewoman, I have in sort Done you some wrong, but now I’ll do you what I can : it’s true, you are a proper woman; [right But to be cast away on such a clown-pipe As Clay ! methinks your friends are not so wise 472 A TALE OF A TUB. act ii. As nature might have made ’em ; well, go to : There’s better fortune coming towards you, An you do not deject it. Take a vool’s Counsel, and do not stand in your own light; It may prove better than you think for, look you. Awd. Alas, sir, what is’t you would have me do ? I'd fain do all for the best, if I knew how. Hilts. Forsake not a good turn when it is offer’d you, Fair mistress Awdrey—that’s your name, I take it. Awd. No mistress, sir, my name is Awdrey. Hilts. Well; so it is, there is a bold young ’squire, The blood of Totten, Tub, and Tripoly- Awd. ’Squire Tub, you mean: I know him, he knows me too. Hilts. He is in love with you ; and more, lie’s mad for you. Awd. Ay, so he told me in his wits, I think. But lie’s too fine for me ; and has a lady Tub to his mother. Enter Tub. Here he comes himself! Tab. O you are a trusty governor ! Hilts. What ails you ? You do not know when you are well, I think. You’d ha’ the calf with the white face, sir, would you? I have her for you here ; what would you more ? Tub. Quietness, Hilts, and hear no more of it. Hilts. No more of it, quoth you ! I do not care If some on us had not heard so much of it. I tell you true ; a man must carry and vetch Like Bungy’s dog for you. Tub. What’s he ? Hilts. A spaniel— And scarce be spit in the mouth for’t. A £0od dog Deserves, sir, a good bone, of a free master ; But, an your turns be serv’d, the devil a bit You care for a man after, e’er a laird of you. Like will to like, y-faith, quoth the scabb’d ’squire To the mangy knight, when both met in a dish Of butter’d vish. One bad, there’s ne’er a good ; And not a barrel the better herring among you. Tub. Nay, Hilts, I pray thee grow not fram- pull now. Turn not the bad cow after thy good soap. Our plot hath hitherto ta’en good effect, And should it now be troubled or stopp’d up, ’Twould prove the utter ruin of my hopes. I pray thee haste to Pancridge, to the Canon, And give him notice of our good success. Will him that all things be in readiness : Fair Awdrey and myself will cross the fields The nearest path. Good Hilts, make thou some haste, And meet us on the way.—Come, gentle Awdrey. Hilts. Vaith, would I had a few more geances on’t! An you say the word, send me to Jericho. Outcept a man were a post-horse, I have not known The like on it; yet, an he had [had] kind words, ’Twould never irke ’un : but a man may break His heart out in these days, and get a flap With a fox-tail, when he has done—and there is all! Tub. Nay, say not so, Hilts: hold thee, there are crowns My love bestows on thee for thy reward ; If gold will please thee, all my land shall drop In bounty thus, to recompense thy merit. Hilts. Tut, keep your land, and your gold too, sir, I Seek neither—neither of ’un. Learn to get More ; you will know to spend that zum you have Early enough ; you are assured of me : I love you too too well to live o’ the spoil— For your own sake, would there were no worse than I ! All is not gold that glisters. I’ll to Pancridge. [Exit crying. Tub. See how his love does melt him into tears! An honest faithful servant is a jewel.— Now the advent’rous squire hath time and leisure To ask his Awdrev how she does, and hear A grateful answer from her. She not speaks.— Hath the proud tyrant Frost usurp’d the seat Of former beauty, in my love's fair cheek ; Staining the roseate tincture of her blood With the dull dye of blue congealing cold ? No, sure the weather dares not so presume To hurt an object of her brightness. Yet, The more I view her, she but looks so, so. Ha ! give me leave to search this mystery—. O now I have it: Bride, I know your grief; The last night’s cold hath bred in you such horror Of the assigned bridegroom’s constitution, The Kilborn clay-pit; that frost-bitten marl, That lump in courage, melting cake of ice ; That the conceit thereof hath almost kill’d thee : But I must do thee good, wench, and refresh thee. Awd. You are a merry man, ’squire Tub of Totten! I have heard much o’ your words, but not o’ your deeds. Tub. Thou sayst true, sweet; I have been too slack in deeds. Awd. Yet I was never so strait-laced to you, ’squire. Tub. Why, did you ever love me, gentle Awdrey ? Awd. Love you ! I cannot tell: I must hate no My father says. [body, Tub. Yes, Clay and Kilborn, Awdrey, You must hate them. Awd. It shall be for your sake then. Tub. And for my sake shall yield you that gratuity. [Offers to kiss her. Awd. Soft and fair, ’squire, there go two words to a bargain. [ Puts him back. Tub. What are those, Awdrey? Awd. Nay, I cannot tell. My mother said, zure, if you married me, You’d make me a lady the first week ; and put me In—I know not what, the very day. Tub. What was it ? Speak, gentle Awdrey, thou shalt have it yet. Awd. A velvet dressing for my head, it is, They say, will make one brave ; I will not know Bess Moale, nor Margery Turn-up : I will look Another way upon them, and be proud. Tub. Troth, I could wish my wench a better wit; But what she wanteth there, her face supplies. There is a pointed lustre in her eye Hath shot quite through me, and hath hit my heart: And thence it is I first received the wound, That rankles now, which only she can cure. Fain would I work myself from this conceit; SCENE I. A TALE OF A TUB. 4711 But, being flesh, I cannot. I must love her, The naked truth is ; and I will go on, Were it for nothing but to cross my rivals. [Aside- Come, Awdrey, I am now resolv’d to have thee. Enter Justice Preamble, and Metaphor disguised as a pursuivant. Pre. Nay, do it quickly, Miles ; why shak’st thou, man ? Speak but his name, I’ll second thee myself. Met. What is his name ? Pre. ’Squire Tripoly, or Tub ; Any thing- Met. ’Squire Tub, I do arrest you In the queen’s majesty’s name, and all the council’s. Tub. Arrest me, varlet! Pre. Keep the peace, I charge you. Tub. Are you there, justice Bramble! where’s your warrant ? Pre. The warrant is directed here to me, From the whole table ; wherefore I would pray Be patient ’squke, and make good the peace, [you, Tub. Well, at your pleasure, justice. I am wrong’d : Sirrah, what are you have arrested me ? Pre. He is a pursuivant at arms, ’squire Tub. Met. I am a pursuivant; see by my coat else. Tub. Well, pursuivant, go with me: I'll give you bail. Pre. Sir, he may take no bail: it is a warrant In special from the council, and commands Your personal appearance. Sir, your weapon I must require ; and then deliver you A prisoner to this officer, ’squire Tub. I pray you to conceive of me no other, Than as your friend and neighbour : let my person Be sever’d from my office in the fact, And I am clear. Here, pursuivant, receive him Into your hands, and use him like a gentleman. Tub. I thank you, sir : but whither must I go now? Pre. Nay, that must not be told you till you come Unto the place assign’d by his instructions : I’ll be the maiden’s convoy to her father, For this time, ’squire. Tub. I thank you, master Bramble. I doubt or fear you will make her the balance To weigh your justice in. Pray ye do me right, And lead not her, at least, out of the way : Justice is blind, and having a blind guide, She may be apt to slip aside. Pre. I’ll see to her. [Exit Pre. with Awd. Tub. I see my wooing will not thrive. Arrested, As I had set my rest up for a wife ! And being so fair for it as I was !—Well, fortune, Thou art a blind bawd and a beggar too, To cross me thus ; and let my only rival To get her from me ! that’s the spight of spights. But most I muse at, is, that I, being none O’ the court, am sent for thither by the council: My heart is not so light as it was in the morning. Re-enter Hilts. Hilts. You mean to make a hoiden or a hare Of me, to hunt counter thus, and make these doubles : And you mean no such thing as you send about. Where is your sweetheart now, I marie ? Tub. Oh Hilts l Hilts. I know you of old ! ne’er halt afore a cripple. Will you have a caudle? where’s your grief, sir? speak. Met. Do you hear, friend, do you serve this gentleman ? Hilts. How then, sir ? what if I do ? peradventure yea, Peradventure nay ; what’s that to you, sir ? say. Met. Nay, pray you, sir, I meant no harm in But this good gentleman is arrested. [truth ; Hilts. How ! Say me that again. Tub. Nay, Basket, never storm ; I am arrested here, upon command From the queen’s council; and I must obey. Met. You say, sir, very true, you must obey. An honest gentleman, in faith. Hilts. He must! Tub. But that which most tormenteth me is this, That justice Bramble hath got hence my Awdrey. Hilts. How ! how ! stand by a little, sirrah, you With the badge on your breast. [ Draws his sword .] Let’s know, sir, what you are. Met. I am, sir,— pray you do not look so A pursuivant. [terribly—- Hilts. A pursuivant! your name, sir ? Met. My name, sir- Hilts. Wliat is’t ? speak. Met. Miles Metaphor ; And justice Preamble’s clerk. Tub. What says he ? Hilts. Pray you, Let us alone. You are a pursuivant ? Met. No, faith, sir, would I might never stir from you, I is made a pursuivant against my will. Hilts. Ha! and who made you one? tell true, Shall make you nothing instantly. [or my will Met. [kneels.] Put up Your frightful blade, and your dead-doing look, And I shall tell you all. Hilts. Speak then the truth, And the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Met. My master, justice Bramble, hearing your master, The ’squire Tub, was coming on this way, With mistress Awdrey, the high constable’s daughter, Made me a pursuivant, and gave me warrant To arrest him ; so that he might get the lady, With whom he is gone to Pancridge, to the vicar, Not to her father’s. This was the device, Which I beseech you do not tell my master. Tub. O wonderful! well, Basket, let him rise ; And for my free escape forge some excuse. I’ll post to Paddington to acquaint old Turfe With the whole business, and so stop the marriage. [Exit. Hilts. Well, bless thee : I do wish thee grace to Thy master’s secrets better, or be hang’d. [keep Met. [rises.] I thank you for your gentle admonition. Pray you, let me call you god-father hereafter ; And as your godson Metaphor, I promise To keep my master's pri/ities seal’d up In the vallies of my trust, lock’d close for ever, Or let me be truss’d up at Tyburn shortly. Hilts. Thine own wish save or choke thee ! come away. [ Exeunt. 474 A TALE OF A TUB. ACT III ACT III. SCENE I.— Kentish Town. Filter Turfe, Clench, Medlay, To-Pan, Scriben, and Clay. Turfe. Passion of me, was ever a man tlius cross’d ! Ail things run arsie versie, up-side down. High constable ! now by our lady of Walsingham, I had rather be mark’d out Tom Scavinger, And with a shovel make clean the highways, Than have this office of a constable, And a high constable ! the higher charge, It brings more trouble, more vexation with it. Neighbours, good neighbours, ’vize me what to do ; How we shall bear us in this hue and cry. We cannot find the captain, no such man Lodged at the Lion, nor came thither hurt, The morning we have spent in privy search ; And by that means the bride-ale is deferr’d : The bride, she’s left alone in Puppy’s charge ; The bridegroom goes under a pair of sureties, And held of all as a respected person. How should we bustle forward ? give some counsel How to bestir our stumps in these cross ways. Clench. Faith, gossip Turfe, you have, you say, remission To comprehend all such as are despected: Now would I make another privy search Thorough this town, and then you have search’d two towns. Med. Masters, take heed, let us not vind too many : One is enough to stay the hangman’s stomach. There is John Clay, who is yvound already, A proper man, a tile-man by his trade, A man, as one would zay, moulded in clay : As spruce as any neighbour’s child among you i And he (you zee) is taken on conspition, And two or three, they zay, what call you ’em ? Zuch as the justices of coram nobis Grant—I forget their names, you have many on Master high constable, they come to you.— [’em, I have it at my tongue’s ends—coney-boroughs, To bring him strait avore the zessions-liouse. Turfe. O you mean warrens, neighbour, do you not? Med. Ay, ay, thik same ! you know ’em well enough. Turfe. Too well, too well; would I had never known them ! We good vreeholders cannot live in quiet, But every hour new purcepts, hues and cries, Put us to requisitions night and day.— What sliud a man say ? shud we leave the zearch, I am in danger to reburse as much As he was robb’d on ; ay, and pay his hurts. If I should vollow it, all the good cheer That was provided for the wedding-dinner Is spoil’d and lost. O, there are two vat pigs A zindging by the vire: now by St. Tony, Too good to eat, but on a wedding-day ; And then a goose will bid you all, come cut me. Zon Clay, zon Clay, for I must call thee so, Be of good comfort: take my muckinder, And dry thine eyes. If thou be’st true and honest, And ifthoufind’st thy conscience clear vrom it, Pluck up a good heart, we’ll do well enough : If not, confess a-truth’s name. But in faith, I durst be sworn upon all holy books, John Clay would ne’er commit a robbery On his own head. Clay. No, truth is my rightful judge; I have kept my hands herehence from evil¬ speaking, Lying, and slandering; and my tongue from stealing. He do not live this day can say, John Clay, I have zeen thee, but in the way of honesty. Pan. Faith, neighbour Medlay, I durst be his burrough, He would not look a true man in the vace. Clay. I take the town to concord, where I dwell, All Kilborn be my witness, if I were not Begot in bashfulness, brought up in shamefaced- Let ’un bring a dog but to my vace that can [ness. Zay I have beat ’un, and without a vault; Or but a cat will swear upon a book, I have as much as zet a vire her tail, And I’ll give him or her a crown for ’mends. But to give out and zay I have robb’d a captain ! Receive me at the latter day, if I E’er thought of any such matter, or could mind it. Med. No, John, you are come of too good personage: I think my gossip Clench and master Turfe Both think you would ratempt no such voul matter. Turfe. But how unhappily it comes to pass Just on the wedding-day! I cry me mercy, I had almost forgot the hue and cry: Good neighbour Pan, you are the thirdborough, And D’ogenes Scriben, you my learned writer, Make out a new purcept—Lord for thy goodness, I had forgot my daughter all this while ! The idle knave hath brought no news from her. Here comes the sneaking puppy.— Enter Purpy and dame Turfe, on different sidet. What’s the news ? My heart! my heart! I fear all is not well, Something’s mishapp’d ; that he is come without her. Pup. O, where’s my master, my master, my master ? Dame T. Thy master ! what would’st have with There is thy master. [thy master, man ? Turfe. What’s the matter, Puppy? Pup. O master, oh dame ! oh dame ! oh master ! Dame T. What say’st thou to thy master or thy dame ? Pup. Oh, John Clay, John Clay, John Clay ! Turfe. What of John Clay? Med. Luck grant he bring not news he shall be hang’d! Clench. The world forfend 1 I hope it is not so well. Clay. O Lord! oh me! what shall I do ? poor John ! Pup. Oh John Clay, John Clay, John Clay ! Clay. Alas, That ever I was bom ! I will not stay by’t, For all the tiles in Kilborn. [Run* off. Dame T. What of Clay ? Speak, Puppy; what of him? SCENE IJ. A TALE OF A TUB. Pup. He hath lost, he hath lost— Turfe. For luck sake speak, Puppy, what hath Pup. Oh Awdrey, Awdrey, Awdrey! [he lost! Dame T. What of my daughter Awdrey ? Pup. I tell you, Awdrey—do you understand me ? Awdrey, sweet master, Awdrey, my dear dame— Turfe. Where is she? what’s become of her, I pray thee ? Pup. Oh, the serving-man, the serving-man, the serving-man! Turfe. What talk’st thou of the serving-man ! where’s Awdrey ? Pup. Gone with the serving-man, gone with the serving-man. Dame T. Good Puppy, whither is she gone with him ? Pup. I cannot tell: he bade me bring you word The captain lay at the Lion, and before I came again, Awdrey was gone with the serving- man ; I tell you, Awdrey’s run away with the serving- man. Turfe. ’Od’socks, my woman, what shall we do now ? Dame T. Now, so you help not, man, I know not, I. Turfe. This was your pomp of maids! I told you on’t. Six maids to vollow you, and not leave one To wait upon your daughter ! I zaid pride Would be paid one day her old vi’pence, wife. Med. What of John Clay, Ball Puppy? Pup. He hath lost- Med. His life for velony ? Pup. No, his wife by villany. Turfe. Now villains both ! oh that same hue and cry! Oh neighbours ! oh that cursed serving-man ! O maids ! O w'ife ! but John Clay, where is he?— How ! fled for fear, zay ye ? will he slip us now ? We that are sureties must require ’un out. How shall we do to find the serving-man ? Cock’s bodikins, we must not lose John Clay : Awdrey, my daughter Awdrey too ! let us zend To all the towns and zeek her ;—but, alas, The hue and cry, that must be look’d unto. Enter Tub. Tub. What, in a passion, Turfe? Turfe. Ay, good ’squire Tub. Were never honest varmers thus perplext. Tub. Turfe, I am privy to thy deep unrest: The ground of which springs from an idle plot, Cast by a suitor to your daughter Awdrey-. And thus much, Turfe, let me advertise you ; Your daughter Awdrey met I on the way, With justice Bramble in her company ; Who means to marry her at Pancras-ehurch. And there is canon Hugh to meet them ready : Which to prevent, you must not trust delay ; But winged speed must cross their sly intent: Then hie thee, Turfe, haste to forbid the banes. Turfe. Hath justice Bramble got my daughter Awdrey ? A little while shall he enjoy her, zure. But O, the hue and cry ! that hinders me ; I must pursue that, or neglect my journey : I’ll e’en leave all, and with the patient ass, The over-laden ass, throw off my burden, 475 And cast mine office : pluck in my large ears Betimes, lest some disjudge ’em to be horns : I’ll leave to beat it on the broken hoof, And ease my pasterns ; I’ll no more high con¬ stables. Tub. I cannot choose but smile to see thee troubled With such a bald, half-hatched circumstance. The captain was not robb’d, as is reported ; That trick the justice craftily devised, To break the marriage with the tileman Clay. The hue and cry was merely counterfeit: The rather may you judge it to be such, Because the bridegroom was described to be One of the thieves first in the felony ; Which, how far 'tis from him, yourselves may guess. ’Twas justice Bramble’s fetch to get the wench. Turfe. And is this true, ’squire Tub ? Tub. Believe me, Turfe, As I am a ’squire ; or less, a gentleman. Turfe. I take my office back, and my authority, Upon your worship’s words : —Neighbours, I am High constable again. Where’s my zon Clay ? He shall be zon yet; wife, your meat by leisure: Draw back the spits. Dame T. That’s done already, man. Turfe. I’ll break this marriage off; and after- She shall be given to her first betroth’d. [ward, Look to the meat, wife, look well to the roast. [Exit, followed by his neighbours. Tub. I’ll follow him aloof to see the event. [Exit. Pup. Dame, mistress, though I do not turn the I hope yet the pig’s head. [spit, Dame T. Come up, Jack sauce ; It shall be serv’d into you. Pup. No, no service, But a reward for service. Dame T. I still took you For an unmannerly Puppy : will you come, And vetch more wood to the vire, master Ball ? [Exit. Pup. I, wood to the vire! I shall piss it out You think to make me e’en your ox or ass, [first: Or any thing : though I cannot right myself On you, I’ll sure revenge me on your meat. [Exit. —$— SCENE II.— The Same.—Before Turfe’s House. Enter Lady Tub, Pol, Martin, and Wispk. Pol. Madam, to Kentish Town we are got at length ; But by the way we cannot meet the ’squire. Nor by inquiry can we hear of him. Here is Turfe’s house, the father of the maid. Lady T. Pol Martin, see! the streets are strew’d with herbs ; And here hath been a wedding, Wispe, it seems., Pray heaven this bride-ale be not for my son \ Good Martin, knock, knock quickly; ask foi Turfe. My thoughts misgive me, I am in such a doubt— Pol. [knocking.'] Who keeps the house here ? Pup. [within.] Why the door and walls Do keep the house. Pol. I ask then, who’s within? Pup. [within.] Not you that are without. 170 A TALE OF A TUB. ACT Ii£ Pol. Look forth, and speak Into the street here. Come before my lady. Pup. [wi/Am.] Before my lady ! Lord have mercy upon me : If I do come before her, she will see The handsomest man in all the town, pardee ! Enter Poppy from the house. Now stand I vore her, what zaith velvet she ? Lady T. Sirrah, whose man are you ? Pup. Madam, my master’s. Lady T. And who’s thy master ? Pup. What you tread on, madam. Lady T. T tread on an old Turfe. Pup. That Turfe’s my master. Lady T. A merry fellow ! what’s thy name ? Pup. Ball Puppy They call me at home ; abroad Hannibal Puppy. Lady T. Come hither, I must kiss thee, valen- Wispe, have you got a valentine ? [tine Puppy. Wispe. None, madam: He’s the first stranger that I saw. Lady T. To me He is so, and as such, let’s share him equally. ['They struggle to kiss him. Pup. Help, help, good dame ! A rescue, and in time. Instead of bills, with colstaves come; instead of spears, with spits; Your slices serve for slicing swords, to save me and my wits: A lady and her woman here, their huisher eke by side, (But he stands mute,) have plotted how your Puppy to divide. Enter Dame Turfe, Joan, Joyce, Madge, $c. Dame T. How now, what noise is this with you, Ball Puppy ? Pup. Oh dame, and fellows of the kitchen ! arm, Arm, for my safety ; if you love your Ball: Here is a strange thing call’d a lady, a mad-dame, And a device of hers, yclept her woman, Have plotted on me in the king’s highway, To steal me from myself, and cut me in halfs, To make one valentine to serve them both ; This for my right-side, that my left-hand love. Dame T. So saucy, Puppy! to use no more reverence Unto my lady and her velvet gown ? Lady T. Turfe’s wife, rebuke him not; your man doth please me With his conceit: hold, there are ten old nobles, To make thee merrier yet, half-valentine. Pup. I thank you, right side ; could my left as much, ’Twould make me a man of mark, young Hannibal! Lady T. Dido shall make that good, or I will for her. Here, Dido Wispe, there’s for your Hannibal; He is your countryman as well as valentine. Wispe. Here,master Hannibal, my lady’s bounty For her poor woman, Wispe. Pup. Brave Carthage queen ! And such was Dido : I will ever be Champion to her, who Juno is to thee. Dame T. Your ladyship is very welcome here. Please you, good madam, to go near the house. Lady T. Turfe’s wife, I come thus far to seek thy husband, Having some business to impart unto him ; Is he at home ? Dame T. O no, an it shall please you : He is posted hence to Pancridge, with a witness. Young justice Bramble has ke.pt level coyl Here in our quarters, stole away our daughter, And master Turfe’s run after, as he can, To stop the marriage, if it will be stopp’d. Pol. Madam, these tidings are not much amiss : For if the justice have the maid in keep, You need not fear the marriage of your son. Lady T. That somewhat easeth my suspicious breast. Tell me, Turfe’s wife, when was my son with Awdrey ? How long is it since you saw him at your house ? Pup. Dame, let me take this rump out of your mouth. Dame T. What mean you by that, sir? Pup. Rump and taile's all one, But I would use a reverence for my lady: I would not zay, sur-reverence, the tale Out of your mouth, but rather take the rump. Dame T. A well-bred youth ! and vull of favour you are. Pup. What might they zay, when I were gone, if I Not weigh’d my words ? This Puppy is a vooi. Great Hannibal’s an ass ; he hath no breeding : No, lady gay, you shall not zay That your Val. Puppy, was so unlucky, In speech to fail, as to name a tail, Be as be may be, ’vore a fair lady. Lady T. Leave jesting; tell us when you saw Pup. Marry, it is two hours ago. [our son. Lady T. Since you saw him ? Pup. You might have seen him too, if you had For it shined as bright as day. [look’d up ; Lady T. I mean my son. Pup. Your sun, and our sun, are they not all one? Lady T. Fool, thou mistak’st; I ask’d thee for my son. Pup. I had thought there had been no more sons than one. I know not what you ladies have, or may have. Pol. Didst thou ne’er hear my lady had a son ? Pup. She may have twenty; but for a son, unless She mean precisely, ’squire Tub, her zon, He was here now, and brought my master woi'd That justice Bramble had got mistress Awdrey : But whither he be gone, here’s none can tell. Lady T. Martin, I wonder at this strange discourse: The fool, it seems, tells true ; my son the squire Was doubtless here this morning : for the match, I’ll smother what I think, and staying here, Attend the sequel of this strange beginning.— Turfe’s wife, my people and 1 will trouble thee Until we hear some tidings of thy husband ; The rather for my party-valentine. [ Exeunt . SCENE III.— Pancras. Enter Turfe, Awdrey, Clench, Medlay, Pan, ana Sriben. Turfe. Well, I have carried it, and will triumph Over this justice as becomes a constable, And a high constable : next our St. George, A TALE OF A TUB. 477 SCENE IV. Who rescued the king’s daughter, I will ride ; Above prince Arthur. Clench. Or our Shoreditch duke. Med. Or Pancridge earl. Pan. Or Bevis, or sir Guy, Who were high constables both. Clench. One of Southampton- Med. The t’other of Warwick castle. Turfe. You shall work it Into a story for me, neighbour Medlay, Over my chimney. Seri. I can give you, sir, A Roman story of a petty-constable, That had a daughter that was call’d Virginia, Like mistress Awdrey, and as young as she ; And how her father bare him in the business, ’Gainst justice Appius, a decemvir in Rome, And justice of assize. Turfe. That, that, good D’ogenes ! A learned man is a chronicle. Seri. I can tell you A thousand of great Pompey, Csesar, Trajan, All the high constables there. Turfe. That was their place ! They were no more. Seri. Dictator and high constable Were both the same. Med. High constable was more though : He laid Dick Tator by the heels. Pan. Dick Toter ! He was one o’ the waights o’ the city, I have read o’ ’un ; He was a fellow w r ould be drunk, debauch’d— And he did zet ’un in the stocks indeed : His name was Vadian, and a cunning toter. Awd. Was ever silly maid thus posted off, That should have had three husbands in one day; Yet, by bad fortune, am possest of none ! I went to church to have been wed to Clay, Then ’squire Tub he seized me on the way, And thought to have had me, but he mist his aim ; And justice Bramble, nearest of the three, Was well nigh married to me; When by chance, In rush’d my father, and broke off that dance. Turfe. Ay, girl, there’s ne’er a justice on ’em all Shall teach the constable to guard his own: Let’s back to Kentish-town, and there make merry: These news will be glad tidings to my wife. Thou shalt have Clay, my wench : that word shall stand. He’s found by this time, sure, or else he’s drown’d ; The wedding-dinner will be spoil’d : make haste. Awd. Husbands, they say, grow thick, but thin I care not who it be, so I have one. [are sown ; Turfe. Ay, zay you zo! perhaps you shall ha’ none for that. Awd. None, out upon me! what shall I do then ? Med. Sleep, mistress Awdrey, dream on proper men. [ Exeunt. -«- SCENE IV.— Another part of the same. Enter Sir Hugh and Preamble. Hugh. O bone Deus, have you seen the like ! Here was, Hodge hold thine ear fair, whilst I .strike. Body o’ me, how came this geer about ? Pre. I know not, Canon, but it falls out cross. Nor can I make conjecture by the circumstance Of these events ; it was impossible, Being so close and politicly carried, To come so quickly to the ears of Turfe. O priest! had but thy slow delivery Been nimble, and thy lazy Latin tongue But run the forms o’er with that swift dispatch As had been requisite, all had been well. Hugh. What should have been, that never loved the friar; But thus you see the old adage verified, Multa cadunt inter -you can guess the rest, Many things fall between the cup and lip ; And though they touch, you are not sure to drink. You lack’d good fortune, we had done our parts : Give a man fortune, throw him in the sea. The properer man, the worse luck : stay a time ; Tempus edax—In time the stately ox ,— Good counsels lightly never come too late. Pre. You, sir, will run your counsels out of breath. Hugh. Spur a free horse, he’ll run himself to death. Sancti Evangelistce ! here comes Miles ! Enter Metaphor. Pre. What news, man, with our new-made pursuivant ? Met. A pursuivant! would I were—or more pursie, And had more store of money ; or less pursie, And had more store of breath: you call me pur- But I could never vaunt of any purse [suivant, I had, sin’ you w r ere my godfathers and god- And gave me that nick-name. [mothers, Pre. What’s now the matter ? Met. Nay, ’tis no matter, I have been simply beaten. Hugh. What is become of the ’squire and thy prisoner ? Met. The lines of blood run streaming from my head, Can speak what rule the ’squire hath kept with me. Pre. I pray thee, Miles, relate the manner how. Met. Be’t known unto you by these presents then, That I, Miles Metaphor, your worship’s clerk, Have e’en been beaten to an allegory, By multitude of hands. Had they been but Some five or six, I had whipp’d them all, like tops In Lent, and hurl’d them into Hobler’s hole, Or the next ditch ; I had crack’d all their costards, As nimbly as a squirrel will crack nuts, And flourished like to Hercules the porter Among the pages. But when they came on Like bees about a hive, crows about carrion, Flies about sweetmeats ; nay, like watermen About a fare : then was poor Metaphor Glad to give up the honour of the day, To quit his charge to them, and run away To save his life, only to tell this news. Hugh. How indirectly all things are fallen out! I cannot choose but wonder what they were Rescued your rival from the keep of Miles ; But most of all, I cannot well digest The manner how our purpose came to Turfe. Pre. Miles, I will see that all thy hurts be drest. As for the ’squire’s escape, it matters not, We have by this means disappointed him ; And that was all the main I aimed at. But canon Hugh, now muster up thy wits, And call thy thoughts into the consistory A TALE OF A TUB. ACT III. 478 Search all the secret corners of thy cap, To find another quaint devised drift, To disappoint her marriage with this Clay : Do that, and I’ll reward thee jovially. Hugh. Well said, magister justice. Jflfityounot With such a new and well-laid stratagem, As never yet your ears did hear a finer, Call me with Lilly, Bos, Fur, Sus atque Sacerdos. Po'e. I hear there’s comfort in thy words yet, I’ll trust thy regulars, and say no more. [Canon. [.Exeunt Hugh and Pre. Met. I’ll follow too. And if the dapper priest Be but as cunning, point in his device, As I was in my lie, my master Bramble Will stalk, as led by the nose with these new pro- mises, And fatted with supposes of fine hopes. [Exit. —$- SCENE Y.— Kentish Town.—Before Turfe’s House. Enter Turfe, Dame Turfe, Lady Tub, Pol Martin, Awdrey, and Puppy. Turfe. Well, madam, I may thank the ’squire your son ; For, but for him, I had been over-reach’d. Dame T. Now heaven’s blessing light upon his We are beholden to him, indeed, madam, [heart ! Lady T. But can you not resolve me where he is, Nor about what his purposes were bent? Turfe. Madam, they no whit were concerning And therefore was I less inquisitive. [me, Lady T. Fair maid, in faith, speak truth, and not dissemble ; Does he not often come and visit you ? Awd. His worship now and then, please you, takes pains To see my father and mother; but, for me, I know myself too mean for his high thoughts To stoop at, more than asking a light question, To make him merry, or to pass his time. Lady T. A sober maid ! call for my woman Martin. Pol. The maids and her half-valentine have plied her With courtesy of the bride-cake and the bowl, As she is laid awhile. Lady T. O let her rest. We will cross o’er to Canbury in the interim, And so make home_Farewell, good Turfe, and thy wife; I wish your daughter joy. [Exeunt Lady T. and Pol. Turfe. Thanks to your ladyship.— Where is John Clay now, have you seen him yet ? Dame T. No, he has hid himself out of the way, For fear of the hue and cry. Turfe. What, walks that shadow Avore 'un still?—Puppy, go seek ’an out, Search all the corners that he haunts unto, And call ’un forth. We’ll once more to the church, And try our vortunes : luck, son Valentine ! Where are the wise men all of Finsbury ? Pup. Where wise men should be; at the ale and bride-cake. I would this couple had their destiny, Or to be bang’d, or married out o’ the way : Enter Clench, Medlay, Scriben, §c. Man cannot get the mount’nance of an egg-shell To stay his stomach. Vaith, for mine own part, j I have zupp’d up so much broth as would have cover’d A leg o’ beef o’er head and ears in the porridge-pot, And yet I cannot sussifie wild nature. Would they were once dispatch’d, we might to dinner. I am with child of a huge stomach, and long, Till by some honest midwife piece of beef I be deliver’d of it: I must go now And hunt out for this Kilborn calf, John Clay, Whom where to find, I know not, nor which way. [Exit. Enter Sir Hugh, disguised as a captain. Hugh. Thus as a beggar in a king’s disguise, Or an old cross well sided with a may-pole, Comes canon Hugh accoutred as you see. Disguised, soldado-like. Mark his device : The canon is that captain Thums was robb’d, These bloody scars upon my face are wounds, This scarf upon mine arm shews my late hurts, And thus am I to gull the constable. Now have among you for a man at arms! [Aside. Friends, by your leave, which of you is one Turfe ? Turfe. Sir, I am Turfe, if you would speak with me. Hugh, With thee, Turfe, if thou be’st high constable. Turfe. I am both Turfe, sir, and high constable. Hugh. Then, Turfe or Scurfe, high or low constable, Know, I was once a captain at St. Quintin’s, And passing cross the ways over the country, This morning, betwixt this and Hampstead-lieath, Was by a crew of clowns robb’d, bobb’d and hurt. No sooner had I got my wounds bound up, But with much pain I went to the next justice, One master Bramble, here at Maribone : And here a warrant is, which he hath directed For you, one Turfe, if your name be Toby Turfe, Who have let fall, they say, the hue and cry ; And you shall answer it afore the justice. Turfe. Heaven and hell, dogs and devils, what is this ! Neighbours, was ever constable thus cross’d ? VYliat shall we do ? Med. Faitb, all go bang ourselves ; I know no other way to escape the law. Re-enter Puppy. Pup. News, news, 0 news- Turfe. What, hast thou found out Clay ? Pup. No, sir, the news is, that I cannot find him. Hugh. Why do you dally, you damu’d russet- coat ? You peasant, nay, you clown, you constable! See that you bring forth the suspected party, Or by mine honour, which I won in field, I’ll make you pay for it afore the justice. Turfe. Fie, fie ! O wife, I’m now in a fine pickle. He that was most suspected is not found ; And which now makes me think he did the deed, He thus absents him, aud dares not be seen. Captain, my innocence will plead for me. Wife, I must go, needs, whom the devil drives : Pray for me, wife and daughter, pray for me. Hugh. I’ll lead the way—thus is the match put off,— And if my plot succeed, as I have laid it, My captainship shall cost him many a crown. [Aside. Exeunt all but Dame T., Awd., and Puppy. scene i. A TALE OF A TUB. 47$) Dame T. So, we have brought our eggs to a fair market. Out on that villain Clay ! would he do a robbery? I’ll ne’er trust smooth-faced tileman for his sake. Awd. Mother, the still sow eats up all the draff. [.Exeunt Dame T. and Awd. Pup. Thus is my master, Toby Turfe, the pattern Of all the painful adventures now in print! I never could hope better of this match, This bride-ale ; for the night before to-day, (Which is within man’s memory, I take it,) At the report of it an ox did speak, Who died soon after ; a cow lost her calf; The bell-weather was flay’d for’t; a fat hog Was singed, and wash’d, and shaven all over, to Look ugly ’gainst this day : the ducks they quack’d, The hens too cackled ; at the noise whereof A drake was seen to dance a headless round; The goose was cut in the head to hear it too : Brave chant-it-clear, his noble heart was done, His comb was cut; and two or three of his wives, Or fairest concubines, had their necks broke Ere they would zee this day : to mark the verven Heart of a beast! the very pig, the pig This very morning, as he was a roasting, Cried out his eyes, and made a shew, as he would Have bit in two the spit; as he would say, There shall no roast-meat be this dismal day. And zure, I think, if Iliad not got his tongue Between my teeth and eat it, he had spoke it. Well, I will in and cry too; never leave Crying until our maids may drive a buck With my salt tears at the next washing-day. [Exit, ACT SCENE I.— Maribone. — A Room in Justice Preamble’s House. Enter Justice Preamble, Sir Hugh, disguised as before, Turfe, and Metaphor. Pre. Keep out those fellows; I’ll have none come in But the high constable, the man of peace, And the queen’s captain, the brave man of war. Now, neighbour Turfe, the cause why you are call’d Before me by my warrant, but unspecified, Is this ; and pray you mark it thoroughly. Here is a gentleman, and, as it seems, Both of good birth, fair speech, and peaceable ; Who was this morning robb’d here in the wood j You, for your part, a man of good report, Of credit, landed, and of fair demeans, And by authority, high constable ; Are, notwithstanding, touch’d in this complaint, Of being careless in the hue and cry. I cannot choose but grieve a soldier’s loss ; And I am sorry too for your neglect, Being my neighbour : this is all I object. Hugh. This is not all; I can allege far more, And almost urge him for an accessary. Good master justice, give me leave to speak, For I am plaintiff: let not neighbourhood Make him secure, or stand on privilege. Pre. Sir, I dare use no partiality ; Object then what you please, so it be truth. Hugh. This more, and which is more than he can answer; Besides his letting fall the hue and cry, He doth protect the man charged with the felony, And keeps him hid, I hear, within his house, Because he is affied unto his daughter. Turfe. I do defy ’un, so shall she do too. I pray your worship’s favour let me have hearing. I do convess, ’twas told me such a velony, And’t not disgrieved me a little, when ’twas told me, Yor I was going to church to marry Awdrey : And who should marry her but this very Clay, Who was charged to be the chief thief o’ ’em all. Now I (the halter stick me if I tell four worships any leazins) did fore-think ’un IV. The truest man, till he waz run away : I thought I had had ’un as zure as in a zaw-pit, Or in mine oven ; nay, in the town-pound : I was zo zure o’ ’un, I’d have gi’n my life for ’un, Till he did start: but now I zee ’un guilty, Az var as I can look at ’un. Would you ha’ more ? Hugh. Yes, I will have, sir, what the law will give me. You gave your word to see him safe fortli-coming ; I challenge that: but that is forfeited ; Beside, your carelessness in the pursuit, Argues your slackness and neglect of duty, Which ought be punish’d with severity. Pre. He speaks but reason, Turfe. Bring forth the man And you are quit; but otherwise, your word Binds you to make amends for all his loss, And think yourself befriended, if he take it Without a farther suit or going to law. Come to a composition with him, Turfe, The law is costly, and will draw on charge. Turfe. Yes, I do know, I vurst mun vee a returney, And then make legs to my great man o’ law, To be o’ my counsel, and take trouble-vees, And yet zay nothing for me, but devise All district means, to ransackle me o’ my money. A pest’lence prick the throats o’ ’em ! I do know ’em, As well az I waz in their bellies, and brought up there. What would you ha’ me do, what would you ask of Hugh. I ask the restitution of my money, [me ? And will not bate one penny of the sum ; Fourscore and five pound : and I ask, besides, Amendment for my hurts ; my pain and suffering Are loss enough for me, sir, to sit down with. I’ll put it to your worship ; what you award me, I’ll take, and give him a general release. Pre. And what say you now, neighbour Turfe ? Turfe. I put it Even to your worship’s bitterment, liab, nab. I shall have a chance o’ the dice for’t, I hope, let ’em e’en run : and- Pre. Faith, then I’ll pray you, ’cause he is 'ny neighbour, To take a hundred pound, and give him day. .j8^ A TALE OF A TUB. act jv. Hugh. Saint Valentine’s day, I will, this very Before sun-set; my bond is forfeit else. [day, Turfe. Where will you have it paid ? Hugh. Faith, I am a stranger Here in the country ; know you canon Hugh, The vicar of Pancras ? Turfe. Yes, who [knows] not him ? Hugh. I’ll make him my attorney to receive it, And give you a discharge. Turfe. Whom shall I send for’t ? Pre. Why, if you please, send Metaphor my clerk: And, Turfe, I much commend thy willingness ; It’s argument of thy integrity. Turfe. But my integrity shall be my zelf still: Good master Metaphor, give my wife this key, And do but whisper it into her hand ; She knows it well enough ; bid her, by that, Deliver you the two zeal’d bags of silver, That lie in the corner of the cupboard, stands At my bed-side, they are vifty pound a piece ; And bring them to your master. Met. If I prove not As just a carrier as my friend Tom Long w r as, Then call me his curtal; change my name of Miles, To Guiles, Wiles, Piles, Biles, or the foulest name You can devise, to crambo with for ale. Hugh. [toteMET. aside. ] Come hither, Miles ; bring by that token too Fair Awdrey; say, her father sent for her. Say, Clay is found, and waits at Pancras-church, Where I attend to marry them in haste : For, by this means, Miles, I may say’t to thee, Thy master must to Awdrey married be. But not a word but mum : go, get thee gone, Be wary of thy charge, and keep it close. Met. O super-dainty canon, vicar incony? Make no delay, Miles, but away ; And bring the wench and money. [Exit. Hugh. Now, sir, I see you meant but honestly : And, but that business calls me hence away, I would not leave you till the sun were lower.— But, master justice, one word, sir, with you. [Aside to Pre. By the same token, is your mistress sent for By Metaphor, your clerk, as from her father ; Who, when she comes, I’ll marry her to you, Unwitting to this Turfe, who shall attend Me at the parsonage : this was my plot, Which I must now make good, turn canon again, In my square cap. I humbly take my leave. [ Exit. Pre. Adieu, good captain.—Trust me, neighbour He seems to be a sober gentleman : [Turfe, But this distress hath somewhat stirr’d his patience. And men, you know, in such extremities, Apt not themselves to points of courtesy ; I’m glad you have made this end. Turfe. You stood my friend, I thank your justice-worship ; pray you be Prezent anon at tendering of the money, And zee me have a discharge; vor I have no craft In your law quiblins. Pre, I’ll secure you, neighbour. [ Exeunt. —♦— SCENE II.— The Country near Maribone. Enter Medlay, Clench, Pan, and Scriben. Med. Indeed there is a woundy luck in names, And a vain mystery, an’ a man knew where [sirs, To vind it. My godsire’s name, I’ll tell you, Was In-and-in Shittle, and a weaver he was, And it did fit his craft: for so his shittle Went in and in still; this way, and then that way. And he named me In-and-in Medlay; which A joiner’s craft, because that we do lay [serves Things in and in, in our work. But I am truly Architectonicus professor, rather ; That is, as one would zay, an architect. Clench. As I am a varrier and a visicary ; Horse-smith of Hamstead, and the whole town leach. Med. Yes, you have done woundy cures, gossip Clench. Clench. An I can zee the stale once through a urine-hole, I’ll give a shrewd guess, be it man or beast. I cured an ale-wife once that had the staggers Worse than five horses, without rowelling. My god-phere was a Rabian or a Jew, (You can tell, D’oge,) they call’d ’un doctor Rasi. Seri. One Rasis was a great Arabic doctor. Clench. He was king Harry’s doctor, and my god-phere, Pan. Mine was a merry Greek, To-Pan of A jovial tinker, and a stopper of holes ; [Twiford, Who left me metal-man of Belsise, his heir. Med. But what was yours, D’oge ? Seri. Vaitli, I cannot tell, If mine were kyrsin’d or no : but zure he had A kyrsin name, that he left me, Diogenes. A mighty learned man, but pestilence poor ; Vor he had no house, save an old tub, to dwell in, (I vind that in records,) and still he turn’d it In the wind’s teeth, as’t blew on his backside, And there they would lie routing one at other, A week sometimes. Med. Thence came, A Tale of a Tub, And the virst Tale of a T'ub, old D’ogenes Tub. Seri. That was avore sir Peter Tub or his lady. Pan. Ay, or the ’squire their son, Tripoly Tub. Clench. The ’squire is a fine gentleman. Med. He is more, A gentleman and a half; almost a knight, Within zix inches ; that is his true measure. Clench. Zure you can gage ’un. Med. To a streak, or less ; I know his d’ameters and circumference : A knight is six diameters, and a ’squire Is vive, and zomewhat more ; I know’t by compass And scale of man. I have upon my rule here The just perportions of a knight, a ’squire ; With a tame justice, or an officer rampant, Upon the bench, from the high constable Down to the headborough, or tithing-man, Or meanest minister of the peace, God save ’un ! Pan. Why you can tell us by the squire, neigh¬ bour, Whence he is call’d a constable, and whaffore. Med. No, that’s a book-case : Scriben can do That’s writing and reading, and records. [that. Seri. Two words, Cyning and staple, make a constable ; As we w 7 ould say, a hold or stay for the king. Clench. All constables are truly Johns for the king, Whate’er their names are, be they Tony or Roger. Med. And all are sworn as vingars o’ the one hand, To hold together ’gainst the breach o’ the peace ; scene ii. A TALE OF A TUB. 481 The high constable is the thumb, as one would zay, The hold-fast o’ the rest. ran. Pray luck he speed Well in the business between captain Thums And him ! Med. I’ll warrant 'un for a groat; I have his measures here in rithmetique, How he should hear ’un self in all the lines Of’s place and office : let us zeek ’un out. [ Exeunt. —♦—■ SCENE III.— The Country near Kentish Town. Enter Tub and Hilts. Tub. Hilts, how dost thou like of this our good day’s work ? Ililts. As good e’en ne’er a whit, as ne’er the better. Tub. Shall we to Pancridge or to Kentish-town, Hilts? Hilts. Let Kentish-town or Pancridge come to If either will: I will go home again. [us, Tub. Faith, Basket, our success hath been but And nothing prospers that we undertake; [bad, For we can neither meet with Clay nor Awdrey, The canon Hugh, nor Turfe the constable : We are like men that wander in strange woods, And lose ourselves in search of them we seek. Hilts. This was because we rose on the wrong side; But as I am now here, just in the mid-way, I’ll zet my sword on the pummel, and that line The point vails to, we’ll take, whether it be To Kentish Town, the church, or home again. Tub. Stay, stay thy hand: here’s justice Bramble’s clerk, Enter Mktaphor. The unlucky hare hath crossed us all this day. I’ll stand aside whilst thou pump’st out of him His business, Hilts ; and how he’s now employed. [ Walhs aside. Hilts. Let me alone, I’ll use him in this kind. Met. Oh for a pad-horse, pack-horse, or a post- horse, To bear me on his neck, his back, or his croup ! I am as weary with running as a mill-horse That hath led the mill once, twice, thrice about, After the breath hath been out of his body. I could get up upon a pannier, a pannel, Or, to say truth, a very pack-saddle, Till all my honey were turn’d into gall, And I could sit in the seat no longer :— Oh [for] the legs of a lackey now, or a footman, Who is the surbater of a clerk currant, And the confounder of his trestles dormant! But who have we here, just in the nick ? Hilts. I am neither nick, nor in the nick ; You lie, sir Metaphor. [therefore Met. Lie ! how ? Hilts. Lie so, sir. [Strikes up his titcis. Met. I lie not yet in my throat. Hilts. Thou best on the ground. Dost thou know me? Met. Yes, I did know you too late, Hilts. What is my name, then ? Met. Basket. Hilts. Basket what ? Met. Basket the great- Hilts The great what ? Met. Lubber- I should say, lover, of the ’squire his master. Hilts. Great is my patience, to forbear thee thus, Thou scrape-hill scoundrel, and thou scum of man ; Uncivil, orange-tawney-coated clerk ! Thou cam’st but half a thing into the world, And wast made up of patches, parings, shreds : Thou, that when last thou wert put out of service, Travell’dst to Hamstead-heath on an Ash-We’nes- day, Where thou didst stand six weeks the Jack of Lent, For boys to hurl, three throws a penny, at thee, To make thee a purse : seest thou this bold bright blade ? This sword shall shred thee as small unto the grave, As minced meat for a pye. I’ll set thee in earth All, save thy head and thy right arm at liberty, To keep thy hat off while I question thee What, why, and whither thou wert going now, With a face ready to break out with business ? And tell me truly, lest I dash’t in pieces. Met. Then, Basket, put thy smiter up, and hear ; I dare not tell the truth to a drawn sword. Ililts. ’Tis sheath’d; stand up, speak without fear or wit. Met. [rises.] I know not what they mean; but constable Turfe Sends here his key for monies in his cupboard, Which he must pay the captain that was robb’d This morning. Smell you nothing? Hilts. No, not I ; Thy breeches yet are honest. Met. As my mouth. Do you not smell a rat ? I tell you truth, I think all’s knavery ; for the canon whisper’d Me in the ear, when Turfe had gi’n me his key, By the same token to bring mistress Awdrey, As sent for thither ; and to say, John Clay Is found, which is indeed to get the wench Forth for my master, who is to be married When she comes there : the canon has his rules Ready, and all there, to dispatch the matter. Tub. [comes forward .] Now, on my life, this is the canon’s plot.— Miles, I have heard all thy discourse to Basket. Wilt thou be true, and I’ll reward thee well, To make me happy in my mistress Awdrey ? Met. Your worship shall dispose of Metaphor, Through all his parts, e’en from the sole of the head To the crown of the foot, to manage of your service. Tub. Then do thy message to the mistress Turfe, Tell her thy token, bring the money hither, And likewise take young Awdrey to thy charge ; Which done, here, Metaphor, we will attend, And intercept thee : and for thy reward You two shall share the money, I the maid ; If any take offence, I’ll make all good. Met. But shall I have half the money, sir, in faith ? Tub. Ay, on my ’squireship shalt thou, and m ■ land. Met. Then, if I make not, sir, the cleanliest ’scuse To get her hither, and be then as careful To keep her for you, as ’twerefor myself, j x 482 A TALE OF A TUB. ACT IV Down on your knees, and pray that honest Miles May break his neck ere he get o’er two stiles. Tub. Make haste, then ; we will wait here thy return. [Exit Met. This luck unlook’d for hath reviv’d my hopes, Which were opprest with a dark melancholy : In happy time wc linger’d on the way, To meet these summons of a better sound, Which are the essence of my soul’s content. Ililts. This heartless fellow, shame to serving- men, Stain of all liveries, what fear makes him do ! How sordid, wretched and unworthy things ! Betray his master’s secrets, ope the closet Of his devices, force the foolish justice Make way for your love, plotting of his own ; Like him that digs a trap to catch another, And falls into’t himself ! Tub. So would I have it. And hope ’twill prove a jest to twit the justice with. Hilts. But that this poor white-liver’d rogue And merely out of fear ! [should do it, Tub. And hope of money, Hilts : A valiant man will nibble at that bait. Hilts. Who, but a fool, will refuse money proffer’d ? Tub. And sent by so good chance ? Pray heaven he speed. Hilts. If he come empty-handed, let him count To go back empty-headed ; I’ll not leave him So much of brain in’s pate, with pepper and vinegar, To be serv’d in for sauce to a calf’s head. Tub. Thou [wilt] serve him rightly, Hilts. Hilts. I’ll seal [to] as much With my hand, as I dare say now with my tongue. But if you get the lass from Dargison, What will you do with her ? Tub. We’ll think of that When once we have her in possession, governor. [ [Exeunt. Pup. Farewell, line Metaphor. [Exit. Met. Come, gentle mistress, will you please to walk ? Awd. I love not to be led ; I would go alone. Met. Let not the mouse of my good meaning, lady, Be snapp’d up in the trap of your suspicion, To lose the tail there, either of her truth, Or swallow’d by the cat of misconstruction. Awcl. You are too finical for me ; speak plain, sir. Enter Tub and Hilts. Tub. Welcome again, my Awdrey, welcome, love ! You shall with me ; in faith deny me not: I cannot brook the second hazard, mistress. Awd. Forbear, squire Tub, as mine own mother says, I am not for your mowing : you’ll be flown Ere I be fledge. Hilts. Hast thou the money, Miles ? Met. Here are two bags, there’s fifty pound in each. Tub. Nay, Awdrey, I possess you for this time— Sirs, take that coin between you, and divide it. My pretty sweeting, give me now the leave To challenge love and marriage at your hands. Aivd. Now, out upon you, are you not asham’d ! What will my lady say ? In faith, I think She was at our house, and I think she ask’d for you ; And I think she hit me in the teeth with you, I thank her ladyship : and I think she means Not to go hence till she has found you. Tub. How say you ! Was then my lady mother at your house? Let’s have a word aside. Awd. Yes, twenty words. [They %valk aside. Enter Lady Tub and Pol Martin. -♦- SCENE IV.— Another Part of the Same. Enter Puppy, and Metaphor with Awdrey. Pup. You see we trust you, master Metaphor, With mistress Awdrey ; pray you use her well, As a gentlewoman should be used. For my part, I do incline a little to the serving-man; We have been of a coat-1 had one like yours ; Till it did play me such a sleeveless errand, As I had nothing where to put mine arms in, And then I threw it off. Pray you go before her, Serving-man like, and see that your nose drop not. As for example, you shall see me : mark, How I go afore her ! so do you, sweet Miles. She for her own part is a woman cares not What man can do unto her in the way Of honesty and good manners : so farewell, Fair mistress Awdrey ; farewell, master Miles. I have brought you thus far onward o’ your way : I must go back now to make clean the rooms, Where my good lady has been. Pray you com¬ mend me To bridegroom Clay, and bid him bear up stiff. Met. Thank you, good Hannibal Puppy; I shall fit The leg of your commands with the strait buskins Of dispatch presently. Lady T. ’Tis strange, a motion, but I know not what, Comes in my mind, to leave the way to Totten, And turn to Kentish Town again my journey— And see ! my son, Pol Martin, with his Awdrey ! Erewhile we left her at her father’s house, And hath he thence removed her in such haste ! What shall I do, shall I speak fair, or chide ? Pol. Madam, your worthy son with duteous care Can govern his affections ; rather then, Break off their conference some other way, Pretending ignorance of what you know. Tub. An this be all, fair Awdrey, I am thine. Lady T. [comes forward.'] Mine you were once. though scarcely now your own. Hilts. ’Slid, my lady, my lady ! Met. Is this my lady bright ? [Exit. Tub. Madam, you took me now a little tardy. Lady T. At prayers I think you were: what, so devout Of late, that you will shrive you to all confessors You meet by chance ! come, go with me, good squire, And leave your linen : I have now a business, And of importance, to impart unto you. Tub. Madam, I pray you spare me but an hour; Please you to walk before, I follow you. Lady T. It must be now, my business lies this way. scene v. A TALE OF A TUB. 4HJ3 Tub. Will not an hour hence, madam, excuse me ? Lady T. ’Squire, these excuses argue more your guilt. You have some new device now to project, Which the poor tileman scarce will thank you for. What ! will you go ? Tub. I have ta’en a charge upon me, To see this maid conducted to her father, Who, with the canon Hugh, stays her at Pancras, To see her married to the same John Clay. Lady T. ’Tis very well; but, ’squire, take you no care, I’ll send Pol Martin with her for that office : You shall along with me ; it is decreed. Tub. I have a little business with a friend, madam. Lady T. That friend shall stay for you, or you for him— Pol Martin, take the maiden to your care ; Commend me to her father. Tub. I will follow you. Lady T. Tut, tell not me of following. Tub. I’ll but speak A word. Lady T. No whispering ; you forget yourself, And make your love too palpable : a squire, And think so meanly ! fall upon a cowshard ! You know my mind. Come, 1 will to Turfe’s house, And see for Dido and our Valentine.— Pol Martin, look to your charge, I’ll look to mine. [Exeunt Lady T., Tub, and IIilts. Pol. I smile to think, after so many proffers This maid hath had, she now should fall to me, That I should have her in my custody ! ’Twere hut a mad trick to make the essay, And jump a match with her immediately. She’s fair and handsome, and she’s rich enough ; Both time and place minister fair occasion : Have at it then! [Aside.] — Fair lady, can you love ? Awd. No, sir ; what’s that ? Pol. A toy which women use. Awd. If it be a toy, it’s good to play withal. Pol. We will not stand discoursing of the toy ; The way is short, please you to prove it, mistress. Awd. If you do mean to stand so long upon it, I pray you let me give it a short cut, sir. Pol. It’s thus, fair maid : are you disposed to Awd. You are disposed to ask. [marry ? Pol. Are you to grant? Awd. Nay, now I see you are disposed indeed. Pol. I see the wench wants but a little wit, And that defect her wealth may well supply : In plain terms, tell me, will you have me, Awdrey ? Awd. In as plain terms, I tell you who would have me, John Clay would have me, but he hath too hard I like not him ; besides, he is a thief. [hands, And justice Bramble, he would fain have catch’d me : But the young ’squire, he rather than his life, Would have me yet ; and make me a lady, he says, And be my knight to do me true knight’s service, Before his lady mother. Can you make me A lady, would I have you ? Pol. I can give you A silken gown and a rich petticoat, And a French hood. — All fools love to be brave : I find her humour and I will pursue it. [Aside. Exeunt. SCENE V.— Kentish Town. Enter Lady Tub, Dame Turfe, Squire Tub, and Hilts. j Lady T. And, as I told thee, she was inter¬ cepted ; By the ’squire, here, my son, and this bold ruffian, His man, who safely would have carried her Unto her father, and the canon Hugh ; But for more care of the security, My huisher hath her now in his grave charge. Dame T. Now on my faith and holydom, we are Beholden to your worship. She’s a girl, A foolish girl, and soon may tempted be; But if this day pass well once o’er her head, I’ll wish her trust to herself: for I have been A very mother to her, though I say it. Tub. Madam, ’tis late, and Pancridge is in your I think your ladyship forgets yourself. [way ; • Lady T. Your mind runs much on Pancridge. Well, young squire, The black ox never trod yet on your foot; These idle phant’sies will forsake you one day. Come, mistress Turfe, will you go take a walk Over the fields to Pancridge, to your husband ? Dame T. Madam, I had been there an hour ago, But that I waited on my man, Ball Puppy.— What, Ball, I say !—I think the idle slouch Be fallen asleep in the barn, he stays so long. Enter Puppy hastily from the barn. Pup. Sattin, in the name of velvet-sattin, dame 1 The devil, O the devil is in the barn ! Help, help ! a legion [of] spirits, [a] legion, Is in the barn! in every straw a devil! Dame T. Why dost thou bawl so, Puppy ? speak, what ails thee ? Pup. My name’s Ball Puppy, I have seen the devil Among the straw. 0 for a cross ! a collop Of friar Bacon, or a conjuring stick. Of doctor Faustus ! spirits are in the barn. Tub. How, spirits in the barn !—Basket, go see. Hilts. Sir, an you were my master ten times over, And ’squire to boot ; I know, and you shall pardon me : Send me ’mong devils ! I zee you love me not. Hell be at their game ; I will not trouble them. Tub. Go see; I warrant thee there’s no such matter. Hilts. An they were giants, ’twere another But devils ! no, if I be torn in pieces, [matter, What is your warrant worth ? I’ll see the fiend Set fire o’ the barn, ere I come there. Dame T. Now all zaints bless us, and if he be He is an ugly spright, I warrant. [there. Pup. As ever Held flesh-hook, dame, or handled fire-fork rather, They have put me in a sweet pickle, dame ; But that my lady Valentine smells of musk, I should be ashamed to press into this presence. Lady T. Basket, I pray tbee see what is the miracle. Tub. Come, go with me ; I’ll lead. Whystand’st thou, man ? Hilts. Cock’s precious, master, you are not mad indeed. You will not go to hell before your time ? Tub. Why art thou thus afraid ? 484 A TALE OF A TUB. ACT V TIilts. No, not afraid ? But, by your leave, I’ll come no nearer the barn. Dame T. Pappy, wilt thou go with me ? Pup. How, go with you ! Whither, into the barn? to whom, the devil ? Or to do what there ? to be torn amongst 'urn ! Stay for my master, the high constable, Or In-and-in the headborough ; let them go Into the barn with warrant, seize the fiend, And set him in the stocks for his ill rule : ’Tis not for me that am but flesh and blood, To meddle with ’un ; vor I cannot, nor I wu’ not. Lady T. I pray thee, Tripoly, look what is the matter. Tub. That shall I, madam. [Goes into the barn. Hilts. Heaven protect my master ! I tremble every joint till he be back. Pup. Now, now, even now, they are tearing him in pieces ; Now are they tossing of his legs and arms, Like loggets at a pear-tree ; I’ll to the hole, Peep in, and look whether he lives or dies. Ililts. I would not be in my master’s cont fov thousands. Pup. Then pluck it off, and turn thyself away. O the devil, the devil, the devil! Hilts. Where, man, where ? Dame T. Alas, that ever we were born ! So near too ? Pup. The ’squire hath him in his hand, and leads Out by the collar. [him Re-enter Tub, dragging in Clay. Dame T. O this is John Clay. Lady T. John Clay at Pancras, is there to be married. Tub. This was the spirit revell’d in the barn. Pup. The devil he was ! was this he was crawling Among the wheat-straw ? had it been the barley, I should have ta’en him for the devil in drink ; The spirit of the bride-ale : but poor John, Tame John of Clay, that sticks about the bung- hole— Hilts. If this be all your devil, I would take In hand to conjure him : but hell take me, If e’er I come in a right devil’s walk, If I can keep me out on’t. Tub. Well meant, Hilts. [Exit. Lady T. But how came Clay thus hid here in the straw, When news was brought to you all he was at And you believed it? [Pancridge, Dame T. Justice Bramble’s man Told me so, madam ; and by that same token. And other things, he had away my daughter, And two seal’d bags of money. Lady T. Where’s the squire, Is he gone hence ? Dame T. He was here, madam, but now. Clay. Is the hue and cry past by ? Pup. Ay, ay, John Clay. Clay. And am I out of danger to be bang’d ? Pup. Hang’d, John! yes, sure ; unless, as with the proverb, You mean to make the choice of your own gallows. Clay. Nay, then all’s well : hearing your news, Ball Puppy, You brought from Paddington, I e’en stole home here, And thought to hide me in the barn e’er since. Pup. O wonderful ! and news was brought us here, You were at Pancridge, ready to be married. Clay. No, faith, I ne’er was further than the barn. Dame T. Haste, Puppy, call forth mistress Dido My lady’s gentlewoman, to her lady ; [Wispe, And call yourself forth, and a couple of maids, To wait upon me : we are all undone, My lady is undone, her fine young son, The ’squire, is got away. Lady T. Haste, haste, good Valentine. Dame T. And you, John Clay, you are undone My husband is undone by a true key, [too ! all! But a false token ; and myself’s undone, By parting with my daughter, who’ll be married To somebody that she should not, if we haste not. . [Exeunt. ACT V. SCENE I .—The Fields near Kentish Town. Enter Squire Tub and Pol Martin. Tub. I pray thee, good Pol Martin, shew thy diligence, And faith in both ; get her, but so disguised The canon may not know her, and leave me To plot the rest: I will expect thee here. [Exit. Pol. You shall, 'squire. I’ll perform it with all care, If all my lady’s wardrobe will disguise her.— Come, mistress Awdrev. Enter Awdrey. Awd. Is the ’squire gone? Pol. He’ll meet us by and by, where he ap¬ pointed ; You shall be brave anon, as none shall know you. [Exeunt. * — » — SCENE II.— Kentish Town. Enter Clench, Medlay, Pan, and Scriben. Clench. I wonder where the queen’s high con- I vear they ha’ made ’un away. [stable is. Med. No zure ; the justice Dare not conzent to that : he’ll zee ’un forth¬ coming. Pan. He must, vor we can all take corpulent We zaw ’un go in there. [oath Seri. Ay, upon record : The clock dropt twelve at Maribone. Med. You are right, D’oge, Zet down to a minute; now ’tis a’ most vowre. Clench. Here comes ’squire Tub. Seri. And’s governor, master Basket— Enter Tub and Hilts. Hilts ; do you know ’un ? a valiant wise fellow As tall a man on his hands as goes on veet 1 Bless you, mass’ Basket. scene ii. A TALE OF A TUB. 483 Hilts. Thank you, good D’oge. Tub. Who’s that ? Hilts. D’oge Scriben the great writer, sir, of Tub. And who the rest ? [Chalcot. Hilts. The wisest heads o’ the hundred. Medlay the joiner, headborough of Islington, Pan of Belsise, and Clench the leach of Hamstead, The high constable’s counsel here of Finsbury. Tub. Present me to them, Hilts, ’squire Tub of Totten. Hilts. Wise men of Finsbury, make place for a ’squire, I bring to your acquaintance, Tub of Totten. ’Squire Tub, my master, loves all men of virtue, And longs, as one would zay, till he be one o’ you. Clench. His worship’s welcum to our company : Would it were wiser for ’un ! Pan. Here be some on us Are call’d the witty men over a hundred. Seri. And zome a thousand, when the muster- day comes. Tub. I long, as my man Hilts said, and my governor, To be adopt in your society. Can any man make a masque here in this company ? Pan. A masque ! what’s that ? Seri. A mumming or a show, With vizards and fine clothes. Clench. A disguise, neighbour, Is the true word: There stands the man can do’t, Medlay the joiner, In-and-in of Islington, [sir ; The only man at a disguise in Middlesex. Tub. But who shall write it? Hilts. Scriben, the great writer. Seri. He’ll do’t alone, sir; he will join with no man, Though he be a joiner, in design he calls it, He must be sole inventer. In-and-in Draws with no other in’s project, he will tell you, It cannot else be feazible, or conduce : Those are his ruling words ; pleaze you to hear 'un ? Tub. Yes; master In-and-in, I have heard of Med. I can do nothing, I. [you. Clench. He can do all, sir. Med. They’ll tell you so. Tub. I’d have a toy presented, A Tale of a Tub, a story of myself, You can express a Tub ? Med. If it conduce To the design, whate’er is feasible : I can express a wash-house, if need be, With a whole pedigree of Tubs. Tub. No, one Will be enough to note our name and family; ’Squire Tub of Totten, and to show my adventures This very day. I’d have it in Tub’s Hall, At Totten-Court, my lady mother’s house ; My house indeed, for I am heir to it. Med. If I might see the place, and had survey’d I could say more : for all invention, sir, [it, Comes by degrees, and on the view of nature ; A world of things concur to the design, Which makes it feasible , if art conduce. Tub. You say well, witty master In-and-in. How long have you studied ingine ? 1 Med. Since I first Join’d, or did in-lay in wit, some forty year. Tub. A pretty time!—Basket, go you and wait On master In-and-in to Totten-Court, And all the other wise masters ; show them the hall, And taste the language of the buttery to them. Let them see all the tubs about the house, That can raise matter, till I come—which shall be Within an hour at least. Clench. It will be glorious, If In-and-in will undertake it, sir : He has a monstrous Medlay-wit of his own. Tub. Spare for no cost, either in boards or hoops, To architect your tub : have you ne’er a cooper, At London, call’d Vitruvius ? send for him ; Or old John Heywood, call him to you, to help. Seri. He scorns the motion, trust to him alone. [Exeunt all but Tub. Enter Lady Tub, Dame Turfe, Clay, Puppy, and Wispe. Lady T. O, here’s the ’squire ! you slipp’d us finely, son. These manners to your mother will commend you ; But in another age, not this : well, Tripoly, Your father, good sir Peter, rest his bones, Would not have done this ; where’s my huisher, And your fair mistress Awdrey ? [Martin, Tub. I not see them, No creature but the four wise masters here, Of Finsbury hundred, came to cry their constable, Who, they do say, is lost. Dame T. My husband lost, And my fond daughter lost, I fear me too ! Where is your gentleman, madam ? poor John Clay, Thou has lost thy Awdrey. Clay. I have lost my wits, My little wits, good mother ; I am distracted. Pup. And I have lost my mistress, Dido Wispe, Who frowns upon her Puppy, Hannibal. Loss, loss on every side! a public loss ! Loss of my master ! loss of his daughter ! loss Of favour, friends, my mistress 1 loss of all! Enter Turfe and Preamble. Pre. What cry is this ? Turfe. My man speaks of some loss. Pup. My master’s found 1 good luck, an’t be Light on us all. [thy will, Dame T. O husband, are you alive ! They said you were lost. Turfe. Where’s justice Bramble’s clerk ? Had he the money that I sent for ? Dame T. Yes, Two hours ago, two fifty pounds in silver, And Awdrey too. Turfe. Why Awdrey ? who sent for her ? Dame T. You, master Turfe, the fellow said. Turfe. He lied. I am cozen’d, robb’d, undone : your man’s a thief, And run away with my daughter, master Bramble, And with my money. Lady T. Neighbour Turfe, have patience ; I can assure you that your daughter’s safe, But for the monies, I know nothing of. Turfe. My money is my daughter, and my She is my money, madam. [daughter Pre. I do wonder Your ladyship comes to know anything In these affairs. Lady T. Yes, justice Preamble, I met the maiden in the fields by chance, In the ’squire’s company, my son : how he Lighted upon her, himself best can tell. Tub. I intercepted her as coming hither. A TALE OF A TUB. ACT V. V 486 To her father, who sent for her by Miles Metaphor, Justice Preamble’s clerk. And had your ladyship Not hinder’d it, I had paid fine master justice For his young warrant, and new pursuivant, He serv’d it by this morning. Pre. Know you that, sir ? Lady T. You told me, ’squire, a quite other tale, But I believed you not; which made me send Awdrey another way, by my Pol Martin, And take my journey back to Kentish Town, Where we found John Clay hidden in the barn, To scape the hue and cry; and here he is. Turfe. John Clay agen! nay, then—set cock- a-hoop : I have lost no daughter, nor no money, justice. John Clay shall pay ; I’ll look to you now, John. Vaith, out it must, as good at night as morning. I am e’en as vull as a piper’s bag with joy, Or a great gun upon carnation-day. I could weep lions’ tears to see you, John: ’Tis but two vifty pounds I have ventured for you, But now I have you, you shall pay whole hundred. Run from your burroughs, son ! faith, e’en be hang’d. An you once earth yourself, John, in the barn, I have no daughter vor you : who did verret ’un? Dame T. My lady’s son, the ’squire here, vetch’d ’un out. Puppy had put us all in such a vright, We thought the devil was in the barn; and nobody Durst venture on ’un. Turfe. I am now resolv’d Who shall have my daughter. Dame T. Who ? Turfe. He best deserves her. Here comes the vicar.— Enter Sir Hugh. Canon Hugh, we have vound John Clay agen ! the matter’s all come round. Hugh. Is Metaphor return’d yet ? [Aside toVRR. Pre. All is turn’d Here to confusion, we have lost our plot; 1 fear my man is run away with the money, And Clay is found, in whom old Turfe is sure To save his stake. Hugh. What shall we do then, justice ? Pre. The bride was met in the young ’squire’s Hugh. And what’s become of her ? [hands. Pre. None here can tell. Tub. Was not my mother’s man, Pol Martin, with you, And a strange gentlewoman in his company, Of late here, canon ? Hugh. Yes, and I dispatch’d them. Tub. Dispatch’d them ! how do you mean ? Hugh. Why, married them, As they desired, but now. Tub. And do you know What you have done, sir Hugh ? Hugh. No harm, I hope. Tub. You have ended all the quarrel; Awdrey Lady T. Married ! to whom ? [is married. Turfe. My daughter Awdrey married, And she not know of it 1 Dame T. Nor her father or mother ! Lady T. Whom hath she married ? Tub. Your Pol Martin, madam ; A groom was never dreamt of. Turfe. Is he a man ? Lady T. That he is, Turfe, and a gentleman I have made him. Dame T. Nay, an he be a gentleman, let hei shift. Hugh. She was so brave, I knew her not, I swear; And yet I married her by her own name ; But she was so disguised, so lady-like, I think she did not know herself the while ! I married them as a mere pair of strangers, And they gave out themselves for such. Lady T. I wish them Much joy, as they have given me heart’s ease. Tub. Then, madam, I’ll entreat you now remit Your jealousy of me ; and please to take All this good company home with you to supper : We’ll have a merry night of it, and laugh. Lady T. A right good motion, ’squire, which I yield to ; And thank them to accept it.—Neighbour Turfe, I’ll have you mei'ry, and your wife ; and you, Sir Hugh, be pardon’d this your happy error, By justice Preamble, your friend and patron. Pre. If the young ’squire can pardon it, I do. [Exeunt all but Puppy, Wispe, and Hugh. Pup. Stay, my dear Dido ; and, good vicar Hugh, We have a business with you ; in short, this : If you dare knit another pair of strangers, Dido of Carthage, and her countryman, Stout Hannibal stands to’t. I have ask’d consent, And she hath granted. Hugh. But saith Dido so ? Wispe. From what Ball Hanny hath said, I dare not go. Hugh. Come in then, I’ll dispatch you: a good supper Would not be lost, good company, good discourse ; But above all, where wit hath any source. [Exeunt. — P — SCENE III.— Totten-Court. — Before the House . Enter Pol Martin, Awdrey, Tub, Lady Tub, Preamble, Turfe, Dame Turfe, and Clay. Pol. After the hoping of your pardon, madam, For many faults committed, here my wife And I do stand expecting your mild doom. Lady T. I wish thee joy, Pol Martin, and thy wife As much, mistress Pol Martin. Thou hast trick’d Up very fine, methinks. [her Pol. For that I made Bold with your ladyship’s wardrobe, but have trespass’d Within the limits of your leave-1 hope. Lady T. I give her what she wears ; I know all women Love to be fine : thou hast deserv’d it of me ; I.am extremely pleased with thy good fortune. Welcome, good justice Preamble ; and, Turfe, Look merrily on your daughter: she has married A gentleman. Turfe. So methinks. I dare not touch her, She is so fine ; yet I will say, God bless her! Dame T. And I too, my fine daughter! could love her Now twice as well as if Clay had her. scene v. A TALE OF A TUB. 487 Tub. Come, come, my mother is pleased; I pardon all : Pol Martin, in and wait upon my lady. Welcome, good guests 1 see supper be serv’d in, With all the plenty of the house and worship. I must confer with master In-and-in About some alterations in my masque : Send Hilts out to me ; bid him bring the council Of Finsbury hither. [Exeunt all but Tub.] I’ll have such a night Shall make the name of Totten-court immortal, And be recorded to posterity_ Enter Medlay, Clench, Pan, and Scriben. O master In-and-in! what have you done ? Med. Survey’d the place, sir, and design’d the ground, Or stand-still of the work : and this it is. First, I have fixed in the earth a tub, And an old tub, like a salt-petre tub, Preluding by your father’s name, sir Peter, And the antiquity of your house and family, Original from salt-petre. Tub. Good, i’faith, You have shewn reading and antiquity here, sir. Med. I have a little knowledge in design, Which I can vary, sir, to infinito. Tub. Ad infinitum, sir, you mean. Med. I do, I stand not on my Latin; I’ll invent, But I must be alone then, join’d with no man: This we do call the stand-still of our work. Tub. Who ai’e those We you now join’d to yourself ? Med. I mean myself still in the plural number. And out of this we raise Our Tale of a Tub. Tub. No, master In-and-in, My Tale of a Tub, By your leave ; I am Tub, the Tale’s of me, And my adventures ! I am ’squire Tub, Subjectum fabulce. Med. But I the author. Tub. The workman, sir, the artificer ; I grant you. So Skelton-laureat was of Elinour Rumming, But she the subject of the rout and tunning. Clench. He has put you to it, neighbour In- and-in. Pan. Do not dispute with him ; he still will win That pays for all. Seri. Are you revised o’ that ? A man may have wit, and yet put off his hat. Med. Now, sir, this Tub I will have capt with A fine oil’d lanthorn paper that we use. [paper, Pan. Yes, every barber, every cutler has it. Med. Which in it doth contain the light to the business ; And shall with the very vapour of the candle Drive all the motions of our matter about, As we present them. For example, first, The worshipful lady Tub- Tub. Right worshipful, I pray you, I am worshipful myself. Med. Your ’squireship’s mother passeth by (her huislier, Master Pol Martin bare-headed before her) In her velvet gown. Tub. But how shall the spectators, As it might be I, or Hilts, know ’tis my mother, Or that Pol Martin, there, that walks before her ? Med. O we do nothing, if we clear not that. Clench. You have seen none of his works, sir ! Pan. All the postures Of the trained bands of the country. Seri. All their colours. Pan. And all their captains. Clench. All the cries of the city, And all the trades in their habits. Seri. He has His whistle of command, seat of authority, And virge to interpret, tipt with silver, sir ; You know not him. Tub. Well, I will leave all to him. Med. Give me the brief of your subject. Leave State of the thing to me. [the whole Enter Hilts. Hilts. Supper is ready, sir, My lady calls for you. Tub. I’ll send it you in writing. Med. Sir, I will render feasible and facile What you expect. Tub. Hilts, be it your care, To see the wise of Finsbury made welcome : Let them want nothing. Is old Rosin sent for ? Hilts. He’s come within. lExit Tea Seri. Lord, what a world of business The ’squire dispatches ! Med. He’s a learned man : I think there are but vew o’ the inns of court, Or the inns of chancery like him. Clench. Care to fit ’un then. lExeunt. - 4 - SCENE IV.— The Same.—A Room in the House. Enter Black Jack and Hilts. Jack. Yonder’s another wedding, master Basket, Brought in by vicar Hugh. Hilts. What are they, Jack ? Jack. The high constable’s man, Ball Hanny, Our lady’s woman. [and mistress Wispe, Hilts. And are the table merry ? Jack. There’s a young tilemaker makes ’em all laugh; He will not eat his meat, but cries at the board, He shall be hang’d. Hilts. He has lost his wench already : As good be hang’d. Jack. Was she that is Pol Martin, Our fellow’s mistress, wench to that sneak-John ? Hilts. I’faith, Black Jack, he should have been her bridegroom: But I must goto wait on my wise masters. Jack, you shall wait on me, and see the masque anon; 1 am half lord-chamberlain in my master’s absence. Jack. Shall we have a masque ? who makes it ? Hilts. In-and-in, The maker of Islington : come, go with me To the sage sentences of Finsbury. [ Exeunt. -- SCENE V.— Another Room in the same, with a curtain drawn across it. Enter Tub, followed by two Grooms, with chairs, <$c., and Rosin and his two Boys. 1 Groom. Come, give us in the great chair for my lady, And set it there; and this for justice Bramble. ioii 2 Groom. This for the ’squire my master, on the right-hand. 1 Groom. And this for the high-constable, 2 Groom. This his wife. 1 Groom. Then for the bride and bride-groom here, Pol Martin. 2 Groom. And she Pol Martin at my lady’s feet. 1 Groom. Right. 2 Groom. And beside them master Hannibal Puppy. 1 Groom. And his She-Puppy, mistress Wispe that was : Here’s all are in the note. 2 Groom. No, master vicar ; The petty canon Hugh. 1 Groom. And cast-by Clay : There they are all. Tub. Then cry a hall ! a hall! ’Tis merry in Tottenham-hall, when beards wag all: Come, father Rosin, with your fiddle now, And two tall toters ; flourish to the masque. [ Loud music. Enter Preamble, Lady Tub, Turfe, Dame Turfe, Pol Martin, Avvdrey, Puppy, Wispe, Hugh, Clay ; all take their seats. Hilts waits on the by. Lady T. Neighbours all, welcome ! Now doth Totten-hall Shew like a court: and hence shall first be call’d so. Your witty short confession, master vicar, Within, hath been the prologue, and hath open’d Much to my son’s device, his Tale of a Tub. Tub. Let my masque shew itself, and In-and-in, The architect, appear: I hear the whistle. Hills. Peace ! Medlay appears above the curtain . Med. Thus rise I first in my liyht linen breeches , To run llie meaning over in short speeches. Here is a Tub, a Tub of Totten-Court, An ancient Tub has call’d you to this sport: His father was a knight, the rich sir Peter, Who got his wealth by a Tub, and by salt-petre ; And left all to his lady Tub, the mother Of this bold ’squire Tub, and to no other. Now of this Tub and’s deeds, not done in ale, Observe, and you shall see the very Tale. [He draws the curtain, and discovers the top of the Tub. THE FIRST MOTION. Med. Here canon Hugh first brings to Totten- hall The high constable's council, tells the ’squire all ; Which, though discover'd, give the devil his due, The wise of Finsbury do still pursue. Then with the justice doth he counterplot, A rid his clerk Metaphor, to cut that knot ; Whilst lady Tub, in her sad velvet gown, Missing her son, doth seek him up and down. Tub. With her Pol Martin bare before her. Med. Yes, / have exprest it here in figure, and Mis¬ tress Wispe, her woman, holding up her train. Tub. In the next page report your second strain. ACT v. THE SECOND MOTION. Med. Here the high constable and sages icalk To church : the dame, the daughter, bride-maids talk Of wedding-business ; till a fellow in comes, Relates the robbery of one captain 1'hums: Chargeth the bridegroom with it, troubles all. And gets the bride ; who in the hands doth fall Of the bold ’squire ; but thence soon is ta’en By the sly justice and his clerk profane, In shape of pursuivant ; which he not long Holds, but betrays all with his trembling tongue : As truth will break out and show — Tub. O thou hast made him kneel there in a corner, I see now : there’s a simple honour for you, Hilts ! Hilts. Did I not make him to confess all to you ? Tub. True, In-and-in hath done you right, you see— Thy third, I pray thee, witty In-and-in. Clench. The ’squire commends ’un; he doth like all well. Pan. He cannot choose: this is gear made to sell. THE THIRD MOTION. Med. The careful constable here drooping comes In his deluded search of captain Thums. Puppy brings word his daughter’s run away With the tall serving-man, he frights groom Clay Out of his wits : Returneth then the 'squire, Mocks all their pains, and gives fame out a liar, For falsely charging Clay, when ’twas the plot Of subtle Bramble, who had Awdrey got Into his hand by this winding device. The father makes a. rescue in a trice : A nd with his daughter, like St. George on foot, Comes home triumphing to his dear heart-root, And tells the lady Tub, whom he meets there, Of her son’s courtesies, the batchelor, Whose words had made 'em fall the hue and cry. When captain Thums coming to ask him, why lie had so done ; he cannot yield him cause : But so he runs his neck into the laws. THE FOURTH MOTION. Med. The laws, who have a noose to crack his neck, As justice Bramble tells him, who doth peck A hundred pound out of his purse, that comes Like his teeth from him, unto captain Thums. Thums is the vicar in a false disguise ; And employs Metaphor to fetch this prize. Who tells the secret unto Basket Hilts, For fear of beating. This the ’squire quilts Within his cap ; and bids him but purloin The wench for him ; they two shall share the coin. Which the sage lady in her ’foresaid gown, Breaks off, returning unto Kentish Town, To seek her Wispe ; taking the 'squire along , Who finds Clay John, as hidden in straw throng. Hilts. O how am I beholden to the inventor, That would not, on record, against me enter, My slackness here to enter in the barn : Well, In-and-in, I see thou canst discern 1 Tub. On with your last, and come to a con¬ clusion. A I ALE OF A TUB. THE FIFTH MOTION. Med. The last is known, and needs but small infusion Into your memories, by leaning in These figures as you sit. I, In-and-in, Present you with the show first, of a lady Tub, and her son, of whom this masque here made I. Then bridegroom Pol, and mistress Pol the bride. With the sub-couple, who sit them beside. Tub. That only verse I alter’d for the better, E v<<. Enter Clarion and Lionel. Cla. O here is Karol! was not that the Sad Shepherd slipp’d from him? Lio. Yes, I guess it was. Who was that left you, Karol ? Kar. The lost man ; scene n. THE SAD SHEPHERD. £01 Whom we shall never see himself again, Or ours, I fear; he starts away from hand so, And all the touches or soft strokes of reason You can apply ! no colt is so unbroken, Or hawk yet half so haggard or unmaim’d ! He takes all toys that his wild phant’sie proffers, And flies away with them : he now conceives That my lost sister, his Earine, Is lately turn’d a sphere amid the seven ; And reads a music-lecture to the planets ! And with this thought he’s run to call ’em hearers. Cla. Alas, this is a strain’d but innocent I’ll follow' him, and find him if I can : [phant’sie! Meantime, go you with Lionel, sweet Karol; He will acquaint you with an accident, Which much desires your presence on the place. [ Exit. Kar. What is it, Lionel, wherein I may serve Why do you so survey and circumscribe me, [you? As if you struck one eye into my breast, And wfith the other took my whole dimensions ? Lio. I wish you had a window in your bosom, Or in your back, I might look thorough you, And see your in-parts, Karol, liver, heart ; For there the seat of Love is : whence the boy, The winged archer, hath shot home a shaft Into my sister’s breast, the innocent Amie, Who now cries out, upon her bed, on Karol, Sweet-singing Karol, the delicious Karol, That kiss’d her like a Cupid! In your eyes, She says, his stand is, and between your lips He runs forth his divisions to her ears, But will not’bide there, less yourself dobring him. Go with me, Karol, and bestow a visit In charity upon the afflicted maid, Who pineth with the languor of your love. [As they are going out, enter Maudlin (in the shape of Marian,) and Douce. Maud. Whither intend you? Amie is recover’d, Feels no such grief as she complain’d of lately. This maiden hath been with her from her mother Maudlin, the cunning woman, who hath sent her Herbs for her head, and simples of that nature, Have wrought upon her a miraculous cure ; Settled her brain to all our wish and wonder. Lio. So instantly! you know I now but left her, Possess’d with such a fit almost to a phrensie : Yourself too fear’d her, Marian, and did urge My haste to seek out Karol, and to bring him. Maud. I did so: but the skill of that wise And her great charity of doing good, [woman, Hath by the ready hand of this deft lass. Her daughter, wrought effects beyond belief, And to astonishment; we can but thank, And praise, and be amazed, while w r e tell it. [Exit with Douce. Lio. ’Tis strange, that any art should so help In her extremes. [nature Kar. Then it appears most real, When the other is deficient. Enter Robin Hood, Rob. Wherefore stay you [cours Discoursing here, and haste not with your suc- To poor afflicted Amie, that so needs them ? Lio. She is recovered well, your Marian told us But now here : Re-enter Maudlin as before. See, she is return’d to affirm it Rob. My Marian ! Maud. Robin Hood ! is he here ? [.Attempts to run out. Rob. Stay; What was’t you told my friend ? [He seizes Maud by the girdle, and runs out with her, but returns immediately with the broken girdle in his hand, followed at a distance by the ivilch, in her own shape. Maud. Help, murder, help! You will not rob me, outlaw ? thief, restore My belt that ye have broken ! Rob. Yes, come near. Maud. Not in your gripe. Rob. Was this the charmed circle, The copy that so cozen’d and deceiv’d us ? I’ll carry hence the trophy of your spoils : My men shall hunt you too upon the start, And course you soundly. Maud. I shall make them sport, And send some home without their legs or arms. I’ll teach them to climb stiles, leap ditches, ponds, And lie in the waters, if they follow me. Rob'. Out, murmuring hag. [Exeunt all but Maud. Maud. I must use all my powers, Lay all my wits to piecing of this loss. Things run unluckily : where’s my Puck-hairy ? Hath he forsook me ? Enter Puck-hairy. Puck. At your beck, madam. Maud. O Puck, my goblin ! I have lost my belt, The strong thief, Robin Outlawq forced it from me. Puck. They are other clouds and blacker threat you, dame ; You must be wary, and pull in your sails, And yield unto the weather of the tempest. You think your power’s infinite as your malice, And would do all your anger prompts you to ; But you must wait occasions, and obey them : Sail in an egg-shell, make a straw your mast, A cobweb all your cloth, and pass unseen, Till you have ’scaped the rocks that are about you. Maud. What rocks about me ? Puck. Ido love, madam, To shew you all your dangers,—when you’re past them ! Come, follow me, I’ll once more be your pilot, And you shall thank me. [Exit. Maud. Lucky, my loved goblin ! [As she is going out, Lorel meets her. Where are you gaang now ? Lor. Unto my tree, To see my maistress. Maud. Gang thy gait, and try Thy turns with better luck, or hang thyseh-^ THE FALL OF MORTIMER THE ARGUMENT. The First Act comprehends Mortimer’s pride and Security, raised to the degree of an earl, by the queen’s favour and love; with the counsels of Adam d’Orlton, the politic bishop of Worcester, against Lancaster. The Chorus of Ladies, celebrating the worthiness of the queen, in rewarding Mortimer's services, and the Viskov’s. The Second Act shews the Icing’s love and respect to his mother, that will hear nothing against Mortimer’s great¬ ness, or believe any report of her extraordinary favours to him ; but imputes all to his cousin Lancaster’s envy, and commands thereafter an utter silence of those matters. v he Chorus of Courtiers celebrating the king’s ivorthiness of nature, and affection to his mother, who will hear nothing that may trench upon her honour, though de¬ livered by his kinsman, of such nearness; and thereby take occasion to extol the king’s piety, and their own happiness under such a king. The Third Act relates (by the occasion of a vision the blind earl of Lancaster had) to the king’s brother, earl of Cornwall, the horror of their father’s death, and the cunning making away of their uncle, the earl of Kent, by Mortimer’s hired practice. The Chorus of Country Justices, and their Wives, telling hoiv they were deluded, and made believe the old king lived, by the shew of him in Corfe Castle; and how they saw him eat, and use his knife like the old king, S$c. with the description of the feigned lights and masques there, that deceived them, all which came from the court. The Fourth Act expressetli, by conference between the king and his brother, a change, and intention to explore the truth of those reports, and a charge of employing W. Mountacute to get the keys of the castle of Nottingham into the king’s power, and draw the constable, sir Robert d’Eland, to their party. Mortimer’s security, scorn of the nobility, too much fa¬ miliarity with the queen, related by the Chorus. The report of the king’s surprising him in his mother’s bed chamber ; a general gladness. His being sent to execu¬ tion. The Fifth Act, the earl of Lancaster’s following the cry, and meeting the report. The celebration of the king’s justice. DRAMATIS Mortimer, Earl of March. Adam d’Orlton, Bishop of Worcester. Edward III., King of England. John, the King’s Brother, Earl of Cornwall. IIenrv, the King’s Cousin, Earl of Lancaster. \V. Mountacute, King’s Servant. PERSON M. Ro. d’Eland, Constable of Nottingham Castle. Nuncius, or a Herald. Isabel, Queen Mother. Chorus of Ladies, Knights, Esquires, %c. ACT I. SCENE I.— The Palace. 5 Enter Mortimer. ISIor. This rise is made yet, and we now stand rank’d To view about us, all that were above us ! Nought hinders now our prospect, all are even, We walk upon a level. Mortimer Is a great lord of late, and a new thing ! A prince, an earl, and cousin to the king. At what a divers price, do divers men Act the same things ! another might have had Perhaps the hurdle, or at least the axe, For what I have this crownet, robes, and wax. There is a fate that flies with towering spirits Home to the mark, and never checks at conscience. Poor plodding priests, and preaching friars may Their hollow pulpits, and the empty iles [make Of churches ring with that round word ; but we That draw the suhtile and more piercing air, In that sublimed region of a court, Know all is good, we make so ; and go on Secured by the prosperity of our crimes. To-day is Mortimer made Earl of March. For what ? For that, the very thinking it Would make a citizen start; some politic tradesman Curl with the caution of a constable! But I, who am no common-council-man, Knew injuries of that dark nature done Were to be thoroughly done, and not be left To fear of a revenge : they are light offences Which admit that: the great ones get above it. Man doth not nurse a deadlier piece of folly To his high temper, and brave soul, than that Of fancying goodness, and a scale to live by So differing from man’s life. As if with lions, Bears, tygers, wolves, and all those beasts of prey, He would affect to be a sheep 1 Can man SCENE I. THE FALL OF MORTIMER. 503 Neglect what is so, to attain what should be, As X’ather he will call on his own ruin, Than work to assure his safety 2 I should think When ’mongst a world of bad, none can be good, (I mean, so absolutely good and perfect, As our religious confessors would have us) It is enough we do decline the rumour Of doing monstrous things : And yet, if those Were of emolument unto our ends, Even of those, the wise man will make friends, For all the brand, and safely do the ill, As usurers rob, or our physicians kill. Enter Isabel. lsab. My lord ! sweet Mortimer ! Mor. My queen ! my mistress ! My sovereign, nay, my goddess, and my Juno ! What name or title, as a mark of power Upon me, should I give you 2 lsab. Isabel, Your Isabel, and you my Mortimer : Which are the marks of parity, not power, And these are titles best become our love. Mor. Can you fall under those 2 lsab. Yes, and be happy. Walk forth, my loved and gentle Mortimer, And let my longing eyes enjoy their feast, And fill of thee, my fair-shaped, godlike man : Thou art a banquet unto all my senses : Thy form doth feast mine eye, thy voice mine ear, Thy breath my smell, thy every kiss my taste, And softness of thy skin, my very touch, As if I felt it ductile through my blood. I ne’er was reconciled to these robes, This garb of England, till I saw thee in them. Thou mak’st they seem not boisterous nor rude, Like my rough haughty lords cle Enrjle-terre , With whom I have so many yeai’s been troubled. Mor. But now redeem’d, and set at liberty, Queen of yourself and them— THE CASE IS ALTERED. DRAMATIS PERSONAE. Count Ferneze. Lord Paulo Ferneze, Ms Son. Camillo Ferneze, supposed Gasper. Maximilian, General of the Forces. Chamont, Friend to Gasper. Angelo, Friend to Paulo. Francisco Colonnia. Jaques de Prie, a Beggar. Antonio Balladino, Pageant Poet. Christophero, Count Ferneze’s Steward. Sebastian, Martino, Yincentio, j Balthasar,'' if is Servants. Valentine, Servant to Colonnij . Peter Onion, Groom of the llall. Juniper, a Coblcr. Pacue, Page to Gasper. Finio, Page to Camillo. Page to Paulo. Aurelia, Phcknixella, Daughtei Rachel de Prie. 's to Count Fernuza Sewer, Messenger, Servants, <$ r. SCENE— Milan. ACT I. SCENE I.— After a Flourish. Juniper is discovered, sitting at tvork in his shop, and singing. Jun. You woful wights, give ear a while, 4 nd mark the tenor of my style, Which shall such trembling hearts unfold, As seldom hath to-fore been told. Such chances rare, and dolef ul news, Enter Onion, in haste. Oni. Fellow Juniper ! peace a God’s name. Jun. As may attempt your wits to muse. Oni. Od’s so, hear, man! a pox on you ! Jun. And cause such trickling tears to pass, Except your hearts be flint, or brass : Oni. Juniper! Juniper! Jun. To hear the news which I shall tell, That in Castella once befel .— 'Sblood, where didst thou learn to corrupt a man in the midst of a verse, ha ? Oni. Od’slid, man, service is ready to go up, man ; you must slip on your coat, and come in ; we lack waiters pitifully. Jun. A pitiful hearing ; for now must I of a merry cobler become [a] mourning creature. Oni. Well, you’ll come ? Jun. Presto. Go to, a word to the wise ; away, fly, vanish ! [Exit Onion. Lie there the weeds that I disdain to wear. Enter Antonio Balladino. Ant. God save you, master Juniper ! Jun. What, signiorAntonio Balladino! welcome, sweet ingle. Ant. And how do you, sir ? Jun. Faith you see, put to my shifts here, as poor retainers be oftentimes. Sirrah Antony, there’s one of my fellows mightily enamour’d of thee ; and i’faith, you slave, now you are come, I’ll bring you together : it’s Peter Onion, the groom of the hall; do you know him ? Ant. No, not yet, I assure you. Jun. O, he is one as right of thy humour as may be, a plain simple rascal, a true dunce ; marry, he hath been a notable villain in his time : he is in love, sirrah, with a wench, and I have preferred thee, to him ; thou shalt make him some pretty paradox or some allegory. How does my coat sit? well ? Ant. Ay, very well. Re-enter Onion. Oni. Nay, God’s so, fellow Juniper, come away. Jun. Art thou there, mad slave ? I come with a powder! Sirrah, fellow Onion, I must have you peruse this gentleman well, and do him good offices of respect and kindness, as instance shall be given. [Exit. Ant. Nay, good master Onion, what do you mean ? I pray you, sir—you are too respective, in good faith. Oni. I would not you should think so, sir ; for though I have no learning, yet I honour a scholar in any ground of the earth, sir. Shall I request your name, sir ? Ant. My name is Antonio Balladino. Oni. Balladino ! you are not pageant poet to the city of Milan, sir, are you ? Ant. I supply the place, sir, when a worse cannot be had, sir. Oni. I cry you mercy, sir ; I love you the better for that, sir; by Jesu, you must pardon me, I knew you not; but I would pray to be better ac¬ quainted with you, sir : I have seen of your works. Ant. I am at your service, good master Onion ; but concerning this maiden that you love, sir, what is she? fCENE I. THE CASE IS ALTERED. 5()5 0)ii. O, did my fellow Juniper tell you ? Marry, sir, she is, as one may say, but a poor man’s child indeed, and for mine own part, I am no gentleman born, I must confess ; but my mind, to me a king¬ dom is. Ant. Truly a very good saying. Oni. ’Tis somewhat stale; but that’s no matter. Ant. O , tis the better; such things ever are like bread, which the staler it is, the more whole¬ some. Oni. This is but a hungry comparison, in my judgment. Ant. Why I’ll tell you, master Onion, I do use as much stale stuff, though I say it myself, as any man does in that kind, I am sure. Did you see the last pageant I set forth ? Oni. No faith, sir; but there goes a huge report on’t. Ant. Why you shall be one of my Maecen-asses : I’ll give you one of the books ; O you’ll like it admirably. Oni. Nay, that’s certain ; I’ll get my fellow Juniper to read it. Ant. Read it, sir! I’ll read it to you. Oni. Tut, then I shall not choose but like it. Ant. Why look you, sir, I write so plain, and keep that old decorum, that you must of necessity like it: marry you shall have some now (as for example, in plays) that will have every day new tricks, and write you nothing but humours : indeed this pleases the gentlemen, but the common sort they care not for’t; they know not what to make on’t; they look for good matter they, and are not edified with such toys. Oni. You are in the right, I’ll not give a half¬ penny to see a thousand of them. I was at one the last term ; but an ever I see a more roguish thing, I am a piece of cheese, and no Onion ; no¬ thing but kings and princes in it ; the fool came not out a jot. Ant. True, sir ; they would have me make such plays; but as I tell them, an they ’ll give me twenty pounds a-play, I’ll not raise my vein. Oni. No, it were a vain thing an you should, sir. Ant. Tut, give me the penny, give me the penny, I care not for the gentlemen, I ; let me have a good ground, no matter for the pen, the plot shall carry it. Oni. Indeed that’s right, you are in print already for the best plotter. Ant. Ay, I might as well have been put in for a dumb shew too. Oni. Ay, marry, sir, I marie you were not. Stand aside, sir, a while.— [Exit Antonio. [An armed Sewer, followed by Juniper, Sebastian, Martino, Balthasar, \ .ncentio, and other Servants in mourning, with dishes, $c. passes over the stage. Enter Valentine. How now, friend, what are you there? be uncover¬ ed. Would you speak with any man here ? Val. Ay, or else I must have returned you no answer. Oni. Friend, you are somewhat too peremptory, let’s crave your absence; nay, never scorn it, I am a little your better in this place. Val. I do acknowledge it. Oni. Do you acknowledge it? nay, then you shall go forth I’ll teach you how [you] shall acknowledge it another time ; go to, void, I must have the hall purged ; no setting up of a rest here ; pack, begone! Val. 1 pray you, sir, is not your name Onion ? Oni. Your friend as you may use him, and master Onion ; say on. Val. Master Onion, with a murrain! come, come, put off this lion’s hide, your ears have dis¬ covered you. Why, Peter! do not I know you, Peter ? Oni. God’s so, Valentine ! Val. O, can you take knowledge of me now, sir ? Oni. Good Lord, sirrah, how thou art altered with thy travel! Val. Nothing so much as thou art with thine office ; but, sirrah Onion, is the count Ferneze at home ? Oni. Ay, bully, he is above, and the lord Paulo Ferneze, his son, and madam Aurelia and madam Phoenixella, his daughters ; but, O Valentine ! Val. How now, man! how dost thou ? Oni. Faith, sad, heavy, as a man of my coat ought to be. Val. Why, man, thou wert merry enough even now. Oni. True; but thou knowest All creatures here sojourning, Upon this wretched earth, Sometimes have a fit of mourning, As well as a fit of mirth. O Valentine, mine old lady is dead, man. Val. Dead ! Oni. I’faith. Val. When died she? Oni. Marry, to-morrow shall be three months, she was seen going to heaven, they say, about some five weeks agone—how now ? trickling tears, ha ! Val. Faith, thou hast made me weep with this news. Oni. Why I have done but the part of an Onion ; you must pardon me. Re-enter the Sewer, followed by the Servants with dishet, as before ; they all pass over the stage but Juniper. Jun. What, Valentine! fellow Onion, take my dish, I prithee. [Exit Onion with the dish.] You rogue, sirrah, tell me how thou dost, sweet ingle. Val. Faith, Juniper, the better to see thee thus froelich. Jun. Nay ! slid I am no changeling, I am Juniper still, I keep the pristinate ; ha, you mad hierogly¬ phic, when shall we swagger ? Val. Hieroglyphic! what meanest thou by that ? Jun. Mean ! od’so, is it not a good word, man ? what, stand upon meaning with your friends ? Puli! abscond. Val. Why, but stay, stay; how long has this sprightly humour haunted thee ? Jun. Foil, humour ! a foolish natural gift we have in the iEquinoxial. Val. Natural! slid it may be supernatural, this. Jun. Valentine, 1 prithee ruminate thyself wel¬ come. What, fortuna de la guerra ! Val. O how pitifully are these words forced ! as though they were pumpt out on’s belly. Jun. Sirrah ingle, I think thou hast seen all the strange countries in Christendom since thou went’st. Val. I have seen some, Juniper. THE CASE IS ALTERED. ACT I. 606 Jun. You have seen Constantinople? Val. Ay, that I have. Jun. And Jerusalem, and the Indies, and Good- win-sands, and the tower of Babylon, and Venice, and ail ? Val. Ay, all; no marie an he have a nimble tongue, if he practise to vault thus from one side of the world to another. [Aside. Jun. O, it’s a most heavenly thing to travel, and see countries; especially at sea, an a man had a patent not to be sick. Val. O, sea-sick jest, and full of the scurvy! Re-enter Sebastian, Martino, Vincentio, and Balthasar. Set). Valentine! welcome, i’faith; how dost, sirrah ? Mar. How do you, good Valentine? Vin. Troth, Valentine, I am glad to see you. Bal. Welcome, sw r eet rogue. Seb. Before God, he never look’d better in his life. Bal. And how is’t, man ? what alio cor agio ! Val. Never better, gentlemen, i’faith. Jun. ’Swill! here comes the steward. Enter Christophero. Chris. Why, how now, fellows! all here, and nobody to wait above, now they are ready to rise ? lookup, one or two. \_Exeunt Juniper, Martino, and Vincentio.] Signior Francisco Colonnia’s man, how does our good master ? Val. In health, sir ; he will be here anon. Chris. Is he come home, then ? Val. Ay, sir; he is not past six miles hence ; he sent me before to learn if count Ferneze were here, and return him word. Chris. Yes, my lord is here; and you may tell your master, he shall come very happily to take his leave of lord Paulo Ferneze ; who is now in¬ stantly to depart, with other noble gentlemen, upon special service. Val. I will tell him, sir. Chris. I pray you do; fellows, make him drink. Val. Sirs, what service is it they are employed in ? Seb. Why, against the French ; they mean to have a fling at Milan again, they say. Val. Who leads our forces, can you tell ? Seb. Marry, that does Signior Maximilian ; he is above now. Val. Who, Maximilian ofVincenza? Balt. Ay, he ; do you know him ? Val. Know him! O yes, lie’s an excellent brave soldier. Balt. Ay, so they say ; but one of the most vain-glorious men in Europe. Val. He is, indeed ; marry, exceeding valiant. Seb. And that is rare. Balt. What? Seb. Why, to see a vain-glorious man valiant. Val. Well, he is so, I assure you. Re-enter Juniper. Jun. What, no further yet! come on, you pre¬ cious rascal, sir Valentine, I’ll give you a health i’faith, for the heavens, you mad Capricio, hold hook and line. [Exeunt. . — « — SCENE II.— A AoowiinCountFERNEze’s House. Enter Lord Paulo Ferneze, followed by his Page. Pau. Boy! Page. My lord. Pau. Sirrah, go up to signior Angelo, And pray him, if he can, devise some means To leave my father, and come speak with me. Page. I will, my lord. [Exit Pau. Well, heaven be auspicious in the event, For I do this against my Genius! And yet my thoughts cannot propose a reason Why I should fear, or faint thus in my hopes, Of one so much endeared to my love. Some spark it is, kindled within the soul, Whose light yet breaks not to the outward sense That propagates this timorous suspect; His actions never carried any face Of change, or weakness ; then I injure him In being thus cold-conceited of his faith. O, here he comes. Re-enter Pago with Angelo. Ang. Flow now, sweet lord, what’s the matter? Pau. Good faith, his presence makes me hall ashamed Of my stray’d thoughts.—Boy, bestow yourself.— [Exit Page. Where is my father, signior Angelo ? Ang. Marry, in the gallery, where your lorashij left him. Pau. That’s well. Then, Angelo, I will be brief Since time forbids the use of circumstance. How well you are received in my affection, Let it appear by this one instance only, That now I will deliver to your trust The dearest secrets, treasured in my bosom. Dear Angelo, you are not every man, But one, whom my election hath design’d, As the true proper object of my soul. I urge not this to insinuate my desert, Or supple your tried temper with soft phrases ; True friendship loathes such oily compliment: But from the abundance of that love that flows Through all my spirits, is my speech enforced. Ang. Before your lordship do proceed too far, Let me be bold to intimate thus much ; That whatsoe’er your wisdom hath to expose, Be it the weightiest and most rich affair That ever was included in your breast, My faith shall poise it, if not- Pau. O, no more ; Those words have rapt me w r ith their sweet effects, So freely breath’d, and so responsible To that which I endeavour’d to extract; Arguing a happy mixture of our souls. Ang. Why, were there no such sympathy, sweet Yet the impressure of those ample favours [lord, I have derived from your unmatched spirit, Would bind my faith to all observances. Pau. How! favours, Angelo ! O speak not of them, They are mere paintings, and import no merit. Looks my love w r ell? thereon my hopes are placed; Faith, that is bought with favours cannot last. Re-enter Page. Page. My lord. Pau. How now! Page. You are sought for all about the house within ; the count your father calls for you. SCENE IT. THE CASE IS ALTERED. Pau Lord ! What cross events do meet my purposes ! Now will he violently fret and grieve That I am absent.—Boy, say I come presently. [Exit Boy. Sweet Angelo, I cannot now insist Upon particulars, I must serve the time; The main of all this is, I am in love. Ang. Why starts your lordship ? Pau. I thought I heard my father coming hitherward, List, ah! Ang. I hear not any thing, It was but your imagination sure. Pau. No ! Ang. No, I assure your lordship. Pau. I would work safely. Ang. Why, Has he no knowledge of it then ? Pau. O no ; No creature yet partakes it but yourself. In a third person ; and believe me, friend, The world contains not now another spirit, To whom I would reveal it. Hark ! hark ! Servants within . ] Signior Paulo ! lord Ferneze ! Ang. A pox upon those brazen-throated slaves ! What are they mad, trow ? Pau. Alas, blame not them, Their services are, clock-like, to be set Backward and forward, at their lord’s command. You know my father’s wayward, and his humour Must not receive a check ; for then all objects Feed both his grief and his impatience. And those affections in him are like powder, Apt to inflame with every little spark, And blow up reason; therefore, Angelo, peace. Count F. [within.'] Why, this is rare ; is he not in the garden ? Chris, [within.] I know not, my lord. Count F. [within.] See, call him. Pau. He is coming this way, let’s withdraw a little. [Exeunt. Ser. [within.] Signior Paulo! lord Ferneze! lord Paulo ! Enter Count Ferneze, Maximilian, Aurelia, Phcenix- ella, Sebastian, and Balthasar. Count F. Where should he be, trow ? did you Seb. No, my lord. [look in the armory ? Count F. No? why there ! O, who would keep such drones !— [Exeunt Seb. and Bal. Enter Martino. How now, have you found him ? Mart. No, my lord. Count F. No, my lord ! I shall have shortly all my family speak nought but, No, my lord. Where is Christophero ? Look how he stands ! you sleepy knave— [Exit Martino. Enter Christophero. What, is he not in the garden ? Chris. No, my good lord. Count F. Your good lord ! O, how this smells of fennel! You have been in the garden, it appears : well, well. Re-enter Sebastian and Balthasar. Bal. We cannot find him, my lord. Seb. He is not in the armory. Count F. He is not! he is no where, is he ? U.7 Max. Count Ferneze ! Count F. Signior. Max. Preserve your patience, honourable count, Count F. Patience! A saint would lose his patience, to be crost As I am, w 7 ith a sort of motley brains ; See, see, how like a nest of rooks they stand Gaping on one another 1 Enter Onion. Now, Diligence! What new T s bring you ? Oni. An’t please your honour— Count F. Tut, tut, leave pleasing of my honour, You double with me, come. [Diligence Oni. How ! does he find fault with please his honour ? ’Swounds, it has begun a serving-man’s speech, ever since I belonged to the blue order; I know not how it may shew, now I am in black ; but— [Aside. Count F. What’s that you mutter, sir; will you proceed ? Oni. An’t like your good lordship— Count F. Yet more ! od’s precious ! Oni. What, does not this like him neither ? [Aside. Count F. What say you, sir knave ? Oni. Marry, I say your lordship were best to set me to school again, to learn how to deliver a message. Count F. What, do you take exceptions at me then ? Oni. Exceptions ! I take no exceptions ; but, by god’s so, your humours- Count F. Go to, you are a rascal; hold your tongue. Oni. Your lordship’s poor servant, I. Count F. Tempt not my patience. Oni. Why I hope I am no spirit, am I ? Max. My lord, command your steward to cor¬ rect the slave. Oni. Correct him! ’sblood, come you and cor¬ rect him, an you have a mind to it. Correct him! that’s a good jest, i’faith : the steward and you both come and correct him. Count F. Nay, see! away with him, pull his cloth over his ears. Oni. Cloth ! tell me of your cloth ! here’s your cloth ; nay, an I mourn a minute longer, I am the rottenest Onion that ever spake with a tongue. [They thrust him out. Max. What call [you] your hind’s [name,] count Ferneze ? Count F. His name is Onion, signior. Max. I thought him some such saucy companion. Count F. Signior Maximilian. Max. Sweet lord. Count F. Let me entreat you, you would not Any contempt flowing from such a spirit; [regard So rude, so barbarous. Max. Most noble count, Under your favour— Count F. Why, I’ll tell you, signior ; He’ll bandy with me word for word; nay more, Put me to silence, strike me perfect dumb ; And so amaze me, that often-times I know not Whether to check or cherish his presumption : Therefore, good signior— Max. Sweet lord, satisfy yourself, I am not now to learn how to manage my affections ; I have ob served, and know the difference between a base 603 THE CASE IS ALTERED. acta. wretch and a true man ; I can distinguish them : the property of the wretch is, he would hurt, and cannot; of the man, he can hurt, and will not. [Aurelia smiles. Count F. Go to, my merry daughter ; 0, these Agree well with your habit, do they not? [looks Enter Juniper, in his Ccbler's dress. Jun. Tut, let me alone. By your favour,—this is the gentleman, I think : sir, you appear to be an honourable gentleman ; I understand, and could wish for mine own part, that things were conden’t otherwise than they are : but, the world knows, a foolish fellow, somewhat proclive and hasty, he did it in a prejudicate humour ; marry now, upon better computation, he wanes, he melts, his poor eyes are in a cold sweat. Right noble signior, you can have but compunction ; I love the man; tender your compassion. Max. Doth any man here understand this fellow? Jun. 0 Lord, sir ! I may say frustra to the comprehension of your intellection. Max. Before the Lord, he speaks all riddle, I think. I must have a comment ere I can conceive him. Count F. Why he sues to have his fellow Onion pardon’d; and you must grant it, signior. Max. 0, with all my soul, my lord ; is that his motion ? Jun. Ay, sir; and we shall retort these kind favours with all alacrity of spirit we can, sir, as may be most expedient, as well for the quality as the cause ; till when, in spite of this compliment, I rest apoorcobler, servant to my honourable lord here, your friend and Juniper. [Exit. Max. How, Juniper! Count F. Ay, signior. Max. He is a sweet youth, his tongue lias a happy turn when he sleeps. Enter Paulo Ferneze, Francisco Colonnia, Angelo, and Valentine. Count F. Ay, for then it rests.—0, sir, you’re welcome. Why, God be thanked, you are found at last : Signior Colonnia, truly you are welcome, I am glad to see you, sir, so well return’d. Fran. I gladly thank your honour ; yet, indeed, 1 am sorry for such cause of heaviness As hath possest your lordship in my absence. Count F. O, Francisco, you knew her what she was ! Fran. She was a wise and honourable lady. Count F. Ay, was she not ! well, weep not, she is gone. Passion’s dull’d eye can make two griefs of one. Whom death marks out, virtue nor blood can save : Princes, as beggars, all must feed the grave. Max. Are your horses ready, lord Paulo ? Pau. Ay, signior ; they stay for us at the gate. Max. Well, ’tis good.—Ladies, I will take my leave of you ; be your fortunes, as yourselves, fair !—Come, let us to horse; Count Ferneze, I bear a spirit full of thanks for all your honourable courtesies. Count F. Sir, I could wish the number and value of them more, in respect of your deservings. But, signior Maximilian, J pray you a word in private. [ They walk aside. Aur. I’faith, brother, you are fitted for a general yonder. Beshrew my heart if I had Fortunatus’ hat here, an I would not wish myself a man, and go with you, only to enjoy his presence. Pau. Why, do you love him so well, sister ? Aur. No, by my troth ; but I have such an odd pretty apprehension of his humour, methinks, that I am e’en tickled with the conceit of it. O, he is a fine man. Ang. And methinks another may be as fine as he. Aur. 0, Angelo ! do you think I urge any com¬ parison against you ? no, I am not so ill bred, as to be a depraver of your worthiness : believe me, if I had not some hope of your abiding with us, I should never desire to go out of black whilst I lived ; but learn to speak in the nose, and turn puritan presently. Ang. I thank you, lady ; I know you can flout. Aur. Come, do you take it so ? i’faith, you wrong me. Fran. Ay, but madam, Thus to disclaim in all the effects of pleasure, May make your sadness seem too much affected ; And then the proper grace of it is lost. Pham. Indeed, sir, if I did put on this sadness Only abroad, and in society, And were in private merry, and quick humour’d, Then might it seem affected, and abhorr’d: But, as my looks appear, such is my spirit, Drown’d up with confluence of grief and melan¬ choly ; That, like to rivers, run through all my veins, Quenching the pride and fervour of my blood. Max. My honourable lord, no more. There is the honour of my blood engaged For your son’s safety. Count F. Signior, blame me not For tending his security so much ; He is mine only son, and that word only Hath, with his strong and repercussive sound, Struck my heart cold, and given it a deep wound. Max. Why, but stay, I beseech you; had your lordship ever any more sons than this ? Count F. Why, have not you known it, Maxi- Max. Let my sword fail me then. [milian ? Count F. I had one other, younger born than By twice so many hours as would fill [this, The circle of a year, his name Camillo, Whom in that black and fearful night I lost, (’Tis now a nineteen years agone at least, And yet the memory of it sits as fresh Within my brain as ’twere but yesterday) It was that night wherein the great Chamont, The general for France, surprised Vicenza ; Methinks the horror of that clamorous shout His soldiers gave, when they attain’d the wall, Yet tingles in mine ears : methinks I see With what amazed looks, distracted thoughts, And minds confused, we, that were citizens, Confronted one another ; every street Was fill’d with bitter seif-tormenting cries, And happy was that foot, that first could press The flowery champain bordering on Verona. Here I, employ’d about my dear wife’s safety, Whose soul is now in peace, lost my Camillo ; Who sure was murder’d by the barbarous soldiers Or else I should have heard—my heart is great. “ Sorrow is faint, and passion makes me sweat.” Max. Grieve not, sweet count, comfort your spirits; you have a son, a noble gentleman, he stands in the face of honour ; for his safety let that be no question ; I am master of my fortune, and SCENE III. THE CASE IS ALTERED. 509 he shall share with me. Farewell, my honourable lord: ladies, once more adieu. For yourself, madam, you are a most rare creature, I tell you so, be not proud of it: I love you.—Come, lord Paulo, to horse. Pom. Adieu, good signior Francisco ; farewell, sisters. [A tucket sounds. Exeunt severally. •-♦- SCENE III.— The Street before Jaques de Prie’s House. Enter Paulo Ferneze, and Angelo, folloived by Maximilian. Ang. How shall we rid him hence? Pan. Why well enough.—Sweet signior Maxi- I have some small occasion to stay; [milian, If it may please you but take horse afore, I’ll overtake you ere your troops be ranged. Max. Your motion doth taste well; lord Fer- neze, I go. [Exit. Pau. Now, if my love, fair Rachel, were so happy But to look forth.—See, fortune doth me grace Enter Rachel. Before I can demand.—How now, love ! Where is your father? Rach. Gone abroad, my lord. Pau. That’s well. Rach. Ay, but I fear he’ll presently return. Are you now going, my most honour’d lord ? Pau. Ay, my sweet Rachel. Ang. Before God, she is a sweet wench. [Aside. Pau. Rachel, I hope I shall not need to urge The sacred purity of our affects, As if it hung in trial or suspense ; Since, in our hearts, and by our mutual vows, It is confirm’d and seal’d in sight of heaven. Nay, do not weep ; why start you? fear not, love ! Your father cannot be return’d so soon. I prithee do not look so heavily; Thou shalt want nothing. Rach. No ! is your presence nothing ? I shall want that, and wanting that, want all ; For that is all to me. Pau. Content thee, sweet! I have made choice here of a constant friend, This gentleman ; one, [on] whose zealous love I do repose more, than on all the world, Thy beauteous self excepted ; and to him Have I committed my dear care of thee, As to my genius, or my other soul. Receive him, gentle love ! and what defects My absence proves, his presence shall supply. The time is envious of our longer stay. Farewell, dear Rachel ! Rach. Most dear lord, adieu ! Heaven and honour crown your deeds and you. [Exit. Paul. Faith, tell me, Angelo, how dost thou like her? Ang. Troth, well, my lord ; but, shall I speak my mind ? Pau. I prithee do. Ang. She is derived too meanly to be wife To such a noble person, in my judgment. Pau. Nay, then thy judgment is too mean, I see < Didst thou ne’er read, in difference of good, ’Tis more to shine in virtue than in blood. Ang. Come, you are so sententious, my lord. Enter Jaques. Pau. Here comes her father.—How dost thou, good Jaques ? Ang. God save thee, Jaques ! Jaq. What should this mean?—Rachel! open the door. [Exit. Ang. S’blood how the poor slave looks [aghast], as though He had been haunted by the spirit, Lar ; Or seen the ghost of some great Satrapas In an unsavoury sheet. Pau. I muse he spake not; Belike he was amazed, coming so suddenly, And unprepared.—Well, let us go. [Exeunt. ACT II. tiCENE I —The Court-yard at the lack of Jaques’ House. Enter Jaques. So, now enough, my heart, beat now no more ; At least for this affright. What a cold sweat Flow’d on my brows, and over all my bosom ! H ad I not reason ? to behold my door Beset with unthrifts, and myself abroad? Why, Jaques ! was there nothing in the house Worth a continual eye, a vigilant thought, Whose head should never nod, nor eyes once wink ? Look on my coat, my thoughts, worn quite thread- That time could never cover with a nap, [bare, And by it learn, never with naps of sleep To smother your conceits of that you keep. But yet, I marvel why these gallant youths Spoke me so fair, and I esteem’d a beggar ! The end of flattery is gain, or lechery : If they seek gain of me, they think me rich ; But that they do not: for their other object, ’Tis in my handsome daughter, if it be : And, by your leave, her handsomeness may tell them My beggary counterfeits, and, that her neatness Flows from some store of wealth, that breaks my coffers With this same engine, love to mine own breed; But this is answer’d : Beggars will keep fine Their daughters, being fair, though themselves pine. Well, then, it is for her; ay, ’tis sure for her: And I make her so brisk for some of them. That I might live alone once with my gold ! O, tis a sweet companion ! kind and true; A man may trust it when his father cheats him, Brother, or friend, or wife. O, wondrous pelf! That which makes all men false, is true itself.— But now, this maid is but supposed my daughter; For I being steward to a lord of France, Of great estate and wealth, call’d lord Chamonf, He gone into the wars, I stole his treasure; ( But hear not any thing) I stole his treasure. 510 THE CASE IS ALTERED. act ii I And this his daughter, being but two years old, Because it loved me so, that it would leave The nurse herself, to come into mine arms ; And had I left it, it would sure have died. Now herein I was kind, and had a conscience : And since her lady-mother, that did die In child-bed of her, loved me passing well, It may be nature fashion’d this affection, Both in the child and her : but he’s ill bred Tiiat ransacks tombs, and doth deface the dead. I’ll therefore say no more ; suppose the rest. Here have I changed my form, my name and hers, And live obscurely, to enjoy more safe My dearest treasure : But I must abroad.—- Rachel! Enter Rachel. Rack. What,is your pleasure, sir? Jaq. Rachel, I must abroad. Lock thyself in, but yet take out the key ; That whosoever peeps in at the key-hole May yet imagine there is none at home. Rack. I will, sir. Jaq. But hark thee, Rachel; say a thief should come, And miss the key, he would resolve indeed None were at home, and so break in the rather : Ope the door, Rachel; set it open, daughter ; But sit in it thyself, and talk aloud, As if there were some more in th’ house with thee : Put out the fire, kill the chimney’s heart, That it may breathe no more than a dead man ; The more we spare, my child, the more we gain. [ Exeunt . —❖— SCENE II.— A Room in Count Ferneze’s House. Enter Christopiiero, Juniper, and Onion. Chris. What says my fellow Onion ? come on. Oni. All of a house, sir, but no fellows ; you are my lord’s steward : but, I pray you, what think you of love, sir ? Chris. Of love, Onion ? why, it is a very honour¬ able humour. Oni. Nay, if it be but worshipful, I care not. Jun. Go to, it is honourable ; check not at the conceit of the gentleman. Oni. But, in truth, sir, you shall do well to think well of love : for it thinks well of you, in me, I assure you. Chris. Gramercy, fellow Onion; I do think well, thou art in love ; art thou ? Oni. Partly, sir ; but I am ashamed to say wholly. Chris. Well, I will further it in thee, to any honest woman, or maiden, the best I can. Jun. Why, now you come near him, sir; he doth vail, he doth remunerate, he doth chew the cud, in the kindness of an honest imperfection to | your worship. Chris. But, who is it thou lovest, fellow Onion? Oni. Marry, a poor man’s daughter; but none of the honestest, I hope. Chris. Why, wouldst thou not have her honest ? Oni. O no, for then I am sure she would not have me. ’Tis Rachel de Prie. Chris. Why she hath the name of a very virtuous maiden. Jun. So she is, sir; but the fellow talks in fiuiddits, he. Chris. What wouldst thou have me do in the matter ? Oni. Do nothing, sir, I pray you, but speak for me. Chris. In what manner ? Oni. My fellow Juniper can tell you, sir. Jun. Why, as thus, sir. Your worship may commend him for a fellow fit for consanguinity, and that he shaketh with desire of procreation, or so. Chris. That were not so good, metliinks. Jun. No, sir ! why so, sir ? What if you should say to her, Corroborate thyself, sweet soul, let me distinguish thy paps with my fingers, divine Mumps, pretty Pastorella ! lookest thou so sweet and boun¬ teous ? comfort my friend here. Chris. Well, I perceive you wish I should say something may do him grace, and further his desires; and that, be sure, I will. Oni. I thank you, sir; God save your life, I pray, sir. Jim. Your worship is too good to live long: you’ll contaminate me no service. Chris. Command, thou wouldst say; no, good Juniper. Jun. Health and wealth, sir. [ Exeunt Onion and Juniper, Chris. This wench will I solicit for myself, Making my lord and master privy to it; And if he second me with his consent, I will proceed, as having long ere this, Thought her a worthy choice to make my wife. lExit. -—<>- SCENE III.— Another Room in the same. Enter Aurelia and Piicenixella. Aur. Room for a case of matrons, colour’d black, How motherly my mother’s death hath made us ! I would I had some girls now to bring up. O I could make a wench so virtuous, She should say grace to every bit of meat, And gape no wider than a wafer’s thickness ; And she should make French court’sies so most low, That every touch should turn her over backward. Phcen. Sister, these words become not your attire, Nor your estate ; our virtuous mother’s death Should print more deep effects of sorrow in us, Than may be worn out in so little time. Aur. Sister, i’faith, you take too much tobacco, It makes you black within, as you are without. What, true-stitch, sister ! both your sides alike,! Be of a slighter work ; for of my word, You shall be sold as dear, or rather dearer. Will you be bound to customs and to rites ? Shed profitable tears, weep for advantage, Or else do all things as you are inclined : Eat when your stomach serves, saitli the physician, Not at eleven and six. So if your humour Be now affected with this heaviness, Give it the reins, and spare not, as I do In this my pleasurable appetite. It is precisianism to alter that With austere judgment, that is given by nature, I wept, you saw too, when my mother died ; For then I found it easier to do so, And fitter with my mood, than not to weep ; But now ’tis otherwise; another time SCENE III. THE CASE IS ALTERED. 511 Perhaps I shall have such deep thoughts of her, That I shall weep afresh some twelvemonth hence ; And I will weep, if I be so disposed, And put on black as grimly then as now. Let the mind go still with the body’s stature, Judgment is fit for judges, give me nature. Enter Francisco Colonnia, and Angelo. Fran. See, signior Angelo, here are the ladies ; Co you and comfort one, I’ll to the other. Ang. Therefore I come, sir ; I will to the eldest. God save you, ladies ! these sad moods of yours, That make you choose these solitary walks, Are hurtful for your beauties. Aur. If we had them. Ang. Come, that condition might be for your hearts, When you protest faith, since we cannot see them: But this same heart of beauty, your sweet face, Is in mine eye still. Aur. O, you cut my heart With your sharp eye. Ang. Nay, lady, that’s not so, Your heart’s too hard. Aur. My beauty’s heart? Ang. O no. I mean that regent of affection, madam, That tramples on all love with such contempt In this fair breast. Aur. No more, your drift is savour’d ; I had rather seem hard-hearted- Ang. Than hard-favour’d; Is that your meaning, lady ? Aur. Goto, sir; Your wits are fresh, I know, they need no spur. Ang. And therefore you will ride them. Aur. Say I do, They will not tire, I hope. Ang. No, not with you. Hark you, sweet lady. [ Walks aside with Aur. Fran. ’Tis much pity, madam, You should have any reason to retain This sign of grief, much less the thing design’d. Phcen. Griefs are more fit for ladies than their pleasures. Fran. That is for such as follow nought but pleasures. But you that temper them so well with virtues, Using your griefs so, it would prove them pleasures; And you would seem, in cause of griefs and pleasures, Equally pleasant. Fhoen. Sir, so I do now. It is the excess of either that I strive So much to shun, in all my proved endeavours, Although perhaps, unto a general eye, I may appear most wedded to my griefs ; Yet doth my mind forsake no taste of pleasure, I mean that happy pleasure of the soul, Divine and sacred contemplation Of that eternal and most glorious bliss, Proposed as the crown unto our souls. Fran. I will be silent; yet that I may serve But as a decade in the art of memory, To put you still in mind of your own virtues, When your too serious thoughts make you too sad, Accept me for your servant, honour’d lady. Fhoen. Those ceremonies are too common, sig¬ nior, For your uncommon gravity and judgment, &nd fit them only that are nought but ceremony Ang. Come, I will not sue stalely ta be your But a new term, will you be my refuge ? [servant, [Comes forward with Aur. Aur. Your refuge! why, sir? Ang. That I might fly to you when all else fail me. A ur. An you be good at flying, be my plover. Ang. Nay, take away the P. Aur. Tut, then you cannot fly. Ang. I’ll warrant you: I’ll borrow Cupid’s wings. Aur. Mass, then I fear me you will do strange things. I pray you blame me not, if I suspect you ; Your own confession simply doth detect you. Nay, an you be so great in Cupid’s books, ’Twill make me jealous. You can with your looks, I warrant you, inflame a woman’s heart, And at your pleasure take Love’s golden dart, And wound the breast of any virtuous maid. Would I were hence ! good faith, I am afraid You can constrain one, ere they be aware, To run mad for your love. Ang. O, this is rare! Enter Count Ferneze. Count F. Close with my daughters, gentlemen! well done, ’Tis like yourselves : nay, lusty Angelo, Let not my presence make you baulk your sport: I will not break a minute of discourse ’Twixt you and one of your fair mistresses. Ang. One of my mistresses ! why thinks your I have so many? [lordship Count F. Many ! no, Angelo, I do not think thou hast many ; some fourteen I hear thou hast, even of our worthiest dames Of any note, in Milan. Ang. Nay, good my lord, fourteen ! it is not so. Count F. By the mass that is’t; here are their names to shew, Fourteen or fifteen to one. Good Angelo, You need not be ashamed of any of them, They are gallants all. Ang. ’Sblood! you are such a lord. [Exit. Count F. Nay, stay, sweet Angelo, I am disposed A little to be pleasant past my custom— He’s gone, he’s gone ! I have disgraced him shrewdly.— Daughters, take heed of him, lie’s a wild youth ; Look what he says to you, believe him not, He will swear love to every one he sees. Francisco, give them counsel, good Francisco, I dare trust thee with both, but him with neither. Fran. Your lordship yet may trust both them with him. Count F. Well, go your ways, away !— [Exeunt Aur., Phcen., and Francisco. Enter Christophero. How now, Christophero ! What news with you ? Chris. I have an humble suit to your good lordship Count F. A suit, Christophero ! what suit, I prithee ? Chris. I would crave pardon at your lordship’s If it seem vain or simple in your sight. [hands, Count F. I’ll pardon all simplicity, Christophero ; What is thy suit ? Chris. Perhaps, being now so old a batche’or, 512 THE CASE IS ALTERED. act ii. I shall seem half unwise, to bend myself In strict affection to a poor young maid. Count F. What, is it touching love, Christophero? Art thou disposed to marry ! why, ’tis well. Chris. Ay, but your lordship may imagine now, That I, being steward of your honour’s house, If 1 be married once, will more regard The maintenance of my wife, and of my charge, Than the due discharge of my place and office. Count F. No, no, Christophero, I know thee honest. Chris. Good faith, my lord, your honour may But- [suspect it; Count F. Then I should wrong thee ; thou hast ever been Honest and true ; and wilt be still, I know. Chris. Ay, but this marriage alters many men, And you may fear it will do me, my lord : But ere it do so, I will undergo Ten thousand several deaths. Count F. I know it, man. Who wouldst thou have, I prithee ? Chris. Rachel de Prie, If your good lordship grant me your consent. Count F. Rachel de Prie! what, the poor beg- gar’s daughter ? She’s a right handsome maid, how poor soever, And thou hast my consent with all my heart. Chris. I humbly thank your honour; I’ll now ask Her father. [Exit. Count F. Do so, Christophero; thou shalt do well. ’Tis strange, she being so poor, he should affect her! But this is more strange that myself should love I spied her lately at her father’s door, [her. And if I did not see in her sweet face Gentry and nobleness, ne’er trust me more ; But this persuasion fancy wrought in me, That fancy being created with her looks ; For where love is, he thinks his basest object Gentle and noble; I am far in love, And shall be forced to wrong my honest steward, For I must sue and seek her for myself. How much my duty to my late dead wife, And my own dear renown, soe’er it sways: I’ll to her father strait, love hates delays. [Exit. —♦— SCENE IV.— A Hall in the Same. Enter Onion, Juniper, Valentine, Sebastian, Baltha¬ sar, Martino. Oni. Come on, i’faith, let’s to some exercise or Atner, my hearts.—Fetch the hilts. [Exit Martino. -Fellow Juniper, wilt thou play? Jun. I cannot resolve you: ’tis as I am fitted with the ingenuity, quantity, or quality of the cudgel. Val. How dost thou bastinado the poor cudgel with terms! Jun. O ingle, I have the phrases, man, and the anagrams, and the epitaphs, fitting the mystery of the noble science. Oni. I’ll be bang’d an he were not misbegotten of some fencer. Seb. Sirrah, Valentine, you can resolve me now, have they their masters of defence in other countries, as we have here in Italy ? Val. O Lord, ay ; especially they in Utopia : there they perform their prizes and challenges with as great ceremony as the Italian, or any nation else. Bal. Indeed ! how is the manner of it, for God's love, good Valentine ? Jun. Ingle, I prithee make recourse unto us-, ■we are thy friends and familiars, sweet ingle. Val. Why thus, sir— Oni. God a mercy, good Valentine ; nay, go on. Jun. Silentium, bonus socius Onionus , good fellow Onion, be not so ingenious and turbulent. So, sir ; and how ? how, sweet ingle ? Val. Marry, first they are brought to the public theatre. Jun. What, have they theatres there ? Val. Theatres ! ay, and plays too, both tragedy and comedy, and set forth with as much state as can be imagined. Jun. By god’s so, a man is nobody till he has travelled. Seb. And how are their plays ? as ours are, ex¬ temporal ? Val. O no ; all premeditated things, and some of them very good, i’faith ; my master used to visit them often when he was there. Bal. Why how, are they in a place where any man may see them ? Val. Ay, in the common theatres, I tell you. But the sport is at a new play, to observe the sway and variety of opinion that passeth it. A man shall have such a confused mixture of judgment, poured out in the throng there, as ridiculous as laughter itself. One says he likes not the writing, another likes not the plot, another not the playing : and sometimes a fellow, that comes not there past once in five years, at a parliament time, or so, will be as deep mired in censuring as the best, and swear by god’s foot he would never stir his foot to see a hundred such as that is. Oni. I must travel to see these things, I shall never think well of myself else. Jun. Fellow Onion, I’ll bear thy charges, an thou wilt but pilgrimize it along with me to the land of Utopia. Seb. Why, but methinks such rooks as these should be ashamed to judge. Val. Not a whit; the rankest stinkard of them all will take upon him as peremptory, as if he had writ himself in artibus magister. Seb. And do they stand to a popular censure for any thing they present ? Val. Ay, ever, ever ; and the people generally are very acceptive, and apt to applaud any merita- ble work ; but there are two sorts of persons that most commonly are infectious to a whole auditory. Bal. What be they ? Jun. Ay, come, let’s know them. Oni. It were good they were noted. Val. Marry, one is the rude barbarous crew, a people that have no brains, and yet grounded judgments ; these will hiss any thing that mounts above their grounded capacities ; but the other are worth the observation, i’faith. Omnes. What be they, what be they ? Val. Faith, a few capricious gallants. Jun. Capricious ! stay, that word’s for me. Val. And they have taken such a habit of dislike in all things, that they will approve nothing, be it never so conceited or elaborate ; but sit dispersed, making faces, and spitting, wagging their upright ears, and cry, filthy / filthy ! simply uttering the.it sc™,: iv. THE CASE IS ALTERED. filfl own condition, and using their wryed countenances instead of a vice, to turn the good aspects of all that shall sit near them, from what they behold. Re-enter Martino with cudgels. Oni. O that’s well said ; lay them down ; come, sirs, who plays ? fellow Juniper, Sebastian, Bal¬ thasar ? somebody take them up, come. JU7i. Ingle Valentine. Val. Not I, sir, I profess it not. Jua. Sebastian. Seb. Balthasar. Bal. Who, I ? Oni. Come, but one bout; I’ll give them thee, i’faith. Bal. Why, here’s Martino. Oni. Foh, he ! alas, he cannot play a whit, man. Jan. That’s all one ; no more could you in statu quo prius. —Martino play with him; every man has his beginning and conduction. Mart. Will you not hurt me, fellow Onion? Oni. Hurt thee ! no ; an I do, put me among pot-herbs, and chop me to pieces. Come on. t Tun. By your favour, sweet bullies, give them room, back, so!—Martino, do not look so thin upon the matter. [Mart, and Onion play a bout at cudgels. Oni. Ha ! well play’d, fall over to my leg now : so, to your guard again; excellent! to my head now ; make home your blow ; spare not me, make it home, good, good again ! [Mart, breaks his head. Seb. Why how now, Peter ! Val. Odso, Onion has caught a bruise. Jun. Coragio ! be not capricious ; what! Oni. Capricious ! not I, I scorn to be capricious for a scratch. Martino, I must have another bout; come. Jun. No, no, play no more, play no more. Oni. Foh, *tis nothing, a fillip, a device ; fellow ACT SCENE I. — The Street before Jaciues dePrie’s House. Enter Angelo. Ang. My young and simple friend, Paulo Ferneze, Bound me with mighty solemn conjurations To be true to him, in his love to Rachel; And to solicit his remembrance still In his enforced absence. Much, i’faith ! True to my friend in cases of affection ! In women’s cases ! what a jest it is, How silly he is that imagines it! He is an ass that will keep promise strictly In any thing that checks his private pleasure, Chiefly in love. ’Sblood, am not I a man, Have I not eyes that are as free to look, And blood to be inflamed as well as his ? And when it is so, shall I not pursue Mine own love’s longings, but prefer my friends’? Ay, ’tis a good fool, do so ; hang me then. Because I swore ? alas, who does not know That lovers’ perjuries are ridiculous ? Have at thee, Rachel; I’ll go court her sure, Juniper, prithee get me a plantain ; I had rather play with one that had skill by half. Mart. By my troth, fellow Onion, ’twas against my will. Oni. Nay, that’s not so, ’twas against my head but come, we’ll have one bout more. Jun. Not a bout, not a stroke. Omnes. No more, no more. [Exit Martino. Jun. Why, I’ll give you demonstration how it came : thou open’dst the dagger to falsify over with the backsword trick, and he interrupted be¬ fore he could fall to the close. Oni. No, no, I know best how it was, better than any man here. I felt his play presently ; for look you, I gathered upon him thus, thus, do you see, for the double lock, and took it single on the head. Val. He says very true, he took it single on the head. Seb. Come, let’s go. Re-enter Martino with a cobweb. Mart. Here, fellow Onion, here’s a cobweb. Oni. How, a cobweb, Martino! I will have another bout with you. ’Swounds, do you first break my head, and then give me a plaister in scorn ? Come, to it, I will have a bout. Mart. God’s my witness.— Oni. Tut ! your witness cannot serve. Jun. ’Sblood, why what! thou art not lunatic, art thou ? an thou be’st, avoid, Mephostophilus ! Say the sign should be in Aries now, as it may be for all us, where were your life? answer me that ? Seb. He says well, Onion. Val. Indeed does he. Jun. Come, come, you are a foolish naturalist ; go, get a white of an egg, and a little flax, and close the breach of the head, it is the most conducible thing that can be. Martino, do not insinuate upon your good fortune, but play an honest part, and bear away the bucklers. [ Exeunt. III. For now I know her father is abroad— ’Sblood, see, he’s here. Enter Jaques. O what damn’d luck is this ! This labour’s lost, I must by no means see him. Tau, dery , dery. [Exit singing. Jaq. Mischief and hell! what is this man ? a spirit' Haunts he, my house’s ghost, still at my door?—- He has been at my door, he has been in, In my dear door ; pray God my gold be safe! Enter Christophero. Od’s pity, here’s another !—Rachel! ho, Rachel 1 Chris. God save you, honest father. Jaq. Rachel! odslight, come to me; Rachel! Rachel! [Exit. Chris. Now in God’s name what ails he ? this is strange ! He loves his daughter so, I’ll lay my life That he’s afraid, having been now abroad, I come to seek her love unlawfully. Re-enter Jaques. Jaq. ’Tis safe, ’tis safe, they have not robb’d my treasure. l l [Aside. 614 THE CASE IS ALTERED. Ch ris. Let it not seem offensive to you, sir. Jaq. Sir! God’s my life, sir! sir! call me sir! [Aside. Chris. Good father, hear me. Jaq. You are most welcome, sir ; I meant almost: and would your worship speak, Would you abase yourself to speak to me? Chris. ’Tis no abasing, father ; my intent Is to do further honour to you, sir, Than only speak ; which is, to be your son. Jaq. My gold is in his nostrils, he has smelt it; Break breast, break heart, fall on the earth, my entrails, With this same bursting admiration ! He knows my gold, he knows of all my treasure— [Aside. How do you know, sir ? whereby do you guess ? Chris. At what, sir ? what is it you mean ? Jaq. I ask, An’t please your gentle worship, how you know— I mean, how I should make your worship know That I have nothing- To give with my poor daughter ? I have nothing : The very air, bounteous to every man, Is scant to me, sir. Chris. I do think, good father, You are but poor. Jaq. He thinks so ; hark ! but thinks so. He thinks not so, he knows of all my treasure. [Aside and exit. Chris. Poor man, he is so overjoy’d to hear His daughter may be past his hopes bestow’d, That betwixt fear and hope, if I mean simply, He is thus passionate. Re-enter Jaques. Jaq. Yet all is safe within : is none without ? Nobody break my walls ? Chris. What say you, father, shall I have your daughter ? Jaq. I have no dowry to bestow upon her. Chris. I do expect none, father. Jaq. That is well. Then I beseech your worship make no question Of that you wish ; ’tis too much favour to me. Chris. I’ll leave him now to give his passions breath, Which being settled, I will fetch his daughter; I shall but move too much, to speak now to him. [Exit. Jaq. So ! he is gone ; would all were dead and g°ne,. That I might live with my dear gold alone! Enter Count Ferneze. Count F. Here is the poor old man. Jaq. Out o’ my soul, another ! comes he hither? Count F. Be not dismay’d, old man, I come to Jaq. To me, by heaven ! [cheer you. Turn ribs to brass, turn voice into a trumpet, To rattle out the battles of my thoughts ; One comes to hold me talk, while t’other robs me. [Aside and exit. Count F. He has forgot me, sure ; what should this mean ? He fears authority, and my want of wife Will take his daughter from him to defame her : He that has nought on earth but one poor daughter, May take this extasy of care to keep her. Re-enter Jaques. Jaq. And yet’tis safe: they mean not to use force, But fawning cunning. I shall easily know, By his next question, if he think me rich. [Aside. Whom see I ? my good lord ? Count F. Stand up, good father, I call thee not [good] father for thy age, But that I gladly wish to be thy son, In honour’d marriage with thy beauteous daughter. Jaq. O, so, so, so, so, so ! this is for gold. Now it is sure this is my daughter’s neatness Makes them believe me rich. [Aside.'] —No, my good lord, I’ll tell you all, how my poor hapless daughter Got that attire she wears from top to toe. Count F. Why, father, this is nothing. Jaq. O yes, good ray lord. Count F. Indeed it is not. Jaq. Nay, sweet lord, pardon me ; do not dis¬ semble ; Hear your poor beadsman speak : ’tis requisite That I, so huge a beggar, make account Of things that pass my calling. She was born To enjoy nothing underneath the sun ; But that, if she had more than other beggars. She should be envied: I will tell you then How she had all she wears. Her warm shoes God wot, A kind maid gave her, seeing her go barefoot In a cold frosty morning; God requite her ! Her homely stockings- Count F. Father, I’ll hear no more, thou mov’st too much With thy too curious answer for thy daughter, That doth deserve a thousand times as much. I’ll be thy son-in-law, and she shall wear The attire of countesses. Jaq. O, good my lord, Mock not the poor ; remembers not your lordship That poverty is the precious gift of God, As well as riches ? tread upon me, rather [Kneels. Than mock my poorness. Count F. Rise, I say; When I mock poorness, then heaven make me poor. [Exit Jaques. Enter a Messenger. Mes. See, here’s the count Ferneze, I will tell The hapless accident of his brave son, [him That he may seek the sooner to redeem him.— God save your lordship ! Count F. You are right welcome, sir. Mes. I would I brought such news as might deserve it. Coimt F. What! bring you me ill news ? Mes. ’Tis ill, my lord, Yet such as usual chance of war affords, And for which all men are prepared that use it, And those that use it not but in their friends, Or in their children. Count F. Ill news of my son, My dear and only son, I’ll lay my soul! Ah me accurs’d ! thought of his death doth woun. And the report of it will kill me quite. [me Mes. ’Tis not so ill, my lord. Count F. How then ? Mes. He's taken prisoner, And that is all. Count F. That is enough, enough ; scene III. THE CASE IS ALTERED. 515 I set my thoughts on love, on servile love, Forget my virtuous wife, feel not the dangers, The bands and wounds of mine own flesh and blood, And therein am a madman ; therein plagued With the most just affliction under heaven. Is Maximilian taken prisoner too ? Mes. No, good my lord ; he is return’d with prisoners. Count F. ls’t possible ! can Maximilian Return and view my face without my son, For whom he swore such care as for himself ? Mes. My lord, no care can change the events of war. Count F. O, in what tempests do my fortunes sail! Still wrack’d with winds more foul and contrary Than any northern gust, or southern flaw, That ever yet inforced the sea to gape, And swallow the poor merchant’s traffic up. First in Vicenza-lost I my first son, Next here in Milan my most dear-loved lady, And now my Paulo prisoner to the French ; Which last being printed with my other griefs, Doth make so huge a volume, that my breast Cannot contain them. But this is my love ! I must make love to Rachel ! heaven hath thrown This vengeance on me most deservedly, Were it for nought but wronging of my steward. Mes. My lord, since only money may redress The worst of this misfortune, be not grieved ; Prepare his ransom, and your noble son Shall greet your cheered eyes with the more honour. Count F. I will prepare his ransom; gracious heaven Grant his imprisonment may be his worst, Honour’d and soldier-like imprisonment, And that he be not manacled and made A drudge to his proud foe ! And here I vow, Never to dream of seemless amorous toys, Nor aim at any other joy on earth, But the fruition of my only son. [ Exeunt. —♦- SCENE II.— A Court-yard, at the back of Jaciues’ House. Enter Jaques with his gold, and a scuttle full of dung. Jaq. He’s gone: I knew it; this is our hot lover. I will believe them, I! they may come in Like simple wooers, and be arrant thieves, And I not know them ! ’Tis not to be told What servile villainies men will do for gold.— O it began to have a huge strong smell, With lying so long together in a place; I’ll give it vent, it shall have shift enough; And if the devil, that envies all goodness, Have told them of my gold, and where I kept it, I’ll set his burning nose once more a work, To smell where I removed it. Here it is ; I’ll hide, and cover it with this horse dung. [Digs a hole in the ground. Who will suppose that such a precious nest Is crown’d with such a dunghill excrement? In, my dear life! sleep sweetly, my dear child! Scarce lawfully begotten, but yet gotten, Vnd that’s enough. Rot all hands that come near thee, Except mine own ! burn out all eyes that see thee, Except mine own! all thoughts of thee be poison To their enamour’d hearts, except mine own ! I’ll take no leave, sweet prince, great emperor, But see thee every minute : king of kings, I’ll not be rude to thee, and turn my back In going from thee, but go backward out, With my face toward thee, with humble courtesies. None is within, none overlooks my walL; To have gold, and to have it safe, is all. [Exit. SCENE III.— A Gallery in Count Ferneze’s House. Enter Maximilian, with Soldiers, Chamont, Camillo, and Pacue. Max. Lord Chamont, and your valiant friend there, I cannot say, welcome to Milan ; your thoughts and that word are not musical; but I can say, you are come to Milan. Pac. Mort dieu! Cha. Garmon! [Takes Pacue aside. Max. Gentlemen, (I would call an emperor so,) you are now my prisoners ; I am sorry : marry this, spit in the face of your fortunes, for your usage shall be honourable. Cam. We know it, signior Maximilian ; The fame of all your actions sounds nought else But perfect honour, from her swelling cheeks. Max. It shall do so still, I assure you, and I will give you reason: there is in this last action, you know, a noble gentleman of our party, and a right valiant, semblably prisoner to your general, as your honour’d selves to me; for whose safety this tongue has given warrant to his honourable father, the count Ferneze. You conceive me ? Cam. Ay, signior. Max. Well, then I must tell you your ransoms be to redeem him. What think you? your answer. Cam. Marry, with my lord’s leave here, I say, This free and ample offer you have made [signior, Agrees well with your honour, but not ours ; For I think not but Chamont is as well born As is Ferneze; then, if I mistake not, He scorns to have his worth so underprised, That it should need an adjunct in exchange Of any equal fortune. Noble signior, I am a soldier, and I love Chamont; Ere I would bruise his estimation With the least ruin of mine own respect In this vile kind, these legs should rot with irons, This body pine in prison, till the flesh Dropt from my bones in flakes, like wither’d leaves, In heart of autumn, from a stubborn oak. Max. Monsieur Gasper, (I take it so is your name,) misprise me not; I will trample on the heart, on the soul of him that shall say I will wrong you : what I purpose you cannot now know, but you shall know, and, doubt not, to your con¬ tentment_Lord Chamont, I will leave you, whilst I go in and present myself to the honourable count; till my regression, so please you, your noble feet may measure this private, pleasant, and most pri nce¬ ly walk_Soldiers, regard them and respect them. [Exit. Pac. O ver bon ! excellenta gull, he taka my lord Chamont for monsieur Gaspra, and monsieur Gaspra for my lord Chamont. Oh dis be brave for make a me laugha, ha, ha, ha 1 O my heart tick la. l l 2 [Atiue 616 THE CASE IS ALTERED. ACT IV. Cam. Ay, but your lordship knows not what hard fate Might have pursued us, therefore, howsoe’er, The changing of our names was necessary, And we must now be careful to maintain This error strongly, which our own device Hath thrust into their ignorant conceits ; For should we (on the taste of*this good fortune) Appear ourselves, ’twould both create in them A kind of jealousy, and perchance invert Those honourable courses they intend. Cha. True, my dear Gasper; but this hang-by Will, at one time or other, on my soul, [here Discover us. A secret in his mouth Is like a wild bird put into a cage, Whose door no sooner opens, but ’tis out,— But, sirrah, if I may but know thou utter’st it— Pac. Uttera vat, monsieur? Cha. That he is Gasper, and I true Chamont. Pac. O pardonnez moy, fore my tongue shall put out de secreta, shall breed de cankra in my mouth. Cam. Spsak not so loud, Pacue. Pac. Foh 1 you shall not hear de fool, for all your long ear. Regardez, monsieur: you be Cha¬ mont, Chamont be Gaspra. Re-enter Maximilian, with Count Ferneze, Francisco, Aurelia, Phcenixella, and Finio. Cha. Peace, here comes Maximilian. Cam. O, belike That is the count Ferneze, that old man. Cha. Are those his daughters, trow ? Cam. Ay sure, I think they are. Cha. Fore God, the taller is a gallant lady. Cam. So are they both, believe me. Max. True, my honourable lord, that Chamont was the father of this man. Count F. O that may be, for when I lost my son, This was but young, it seems. Fran. Faith, had Camillo lived, He had been much about his years, my lord. Count F. He had indeed! Well, speak no more of him. Max. Signior, perceive you the error? ’twas no good office in us to stretch the remembrance of so dear a loss. Count Ferneze, let summer sit in your eye; look cheerfully, sweet count; will you do me the honour to confine this noble spirit within the circle of your arms ? Count F. Honour’d Chamont, reach me your valiant hand; I could have wish’d some happier accident Had made the way unto this mutual knowledge, Which either of us now must take of other ; But since it is the pleasure of our fates, That we should thus be rack’d on fortune’s wheel, Let us prepare with steeled patience To tread on torment, and with minds confirm’d, Welcome the worst of envy. Max. Noble lord, ’tis thus. I have here, in mine honour, set this gentleman free, without ransom : he is now himself, his valour hath deserved it, in the eye of my judgment.—Monsieur Gasper, you are dear to me: fortuna non mutat genus. But, to the main;—if it may square with your lordship’s liking, and his love, I could desire that he were now instantly employed to your noble general in the exchange of Ferneze for yourself! it is a business that requires the tender hand of a friend. Count F. Ay, and it would be with more speed If he would undertake it. [effected, Max. True, my lord.—Monsieur Gasper, how stand you affected to this motion? Cha. My duty must attend his lordship’s will. Max. What says the lord Chamont? Cam. My will doth then approve what these have urged. Max. Why there is good harmony, good music in this. Monsieur Gasper, you shall protract no time, only I will give you a bowl of rich wine to the health of your general, another to the success of your journey, and a third to the love of my sword. Pass. [ Exeunt all hut Aur. and Phcen. Aur. Why, how now, sister ! in a motley muse ? Go to, there’s somewhat in the wind, I see. Faith, this brown study suits not with your black, Your habit and your thoughts aie of two colours. Phcen. Good faith, methinks that this young lord Chamont Favours my mother, sister ; does he not ? Aur. A motherly conceit; O blind excuse, Blinder than Love himself! Well, sister, well; Cupid has ta’en his stand in both your eyes, The case is altered. Phcen. And what of that ? Aur. Nay, nothing:—But, a saint! Another Bridget! one that for a face Would put down Vesta, in whose looks doth swim The very sweetest cream of modesty, You, to turn tippet! fie, fie ! Will you give A packing penny to virginity ! I thought you’d dwell so long in Cypres isle, You’d worship madam Venus at the length : But come, the strongest fall, and why not you ? Nay, do not frown. Phcen. Go, go, you fool. Adieu ! [Exit. Aur. Well, I may jest, or so ; but Cupid knows My taking is as bad, or worse than hers. O, monsieur Gasper, if thou be’st a man, Be not afraid to court me; do but speak, Challenge thy right, and wear it; for I swear, Till thou arriv’dst, ne’er came affection here. [Exit. ACT SCENE I. —A Boom in Count Ferneze’s House. Enter Pacue ana Finio. Fin. Come on, my sweet finical Pacue, the very prime of pages, here’s an excellent place for us to practise in ; nobody sees us here ; come, let’s to it. Enter Onion. Pac. Contenta ; Regardez vous le premier. IV. Oni. Sirrah, Finio. Pac. Mort dieu, le paisant! Oni. Didst thou see Valentine ? Fin. Valentine, no. Oni. No! Fin. No. Sirrah Onion, whither goest ? Oni. O, I am vext; he that would trust any of these lying travellers.— •m'.MNE III. THE CASE IS ALTEIIED. Fin. I prithee stay, good Onion. Pac. Monsieur Onion, venez 5 a, come hidera, je vous prie. By gar, me ha see two, tree, four liundra tousand of your cousan hang. Lend me your hand, shall pray for know you bettra. Oni. I thank you, good signior Parlez-vous. O that I were in another world, in the Ingies, or some¬ where, that I might have room to laugh ! Pac. Ah, oui, fort bien! stand, you dere—now, me come, Bon jour, monsieur. Fin. Good morrow, good signior. Pac. By gar, me be much glad for see you. Fin. I return you most kind thanks, sir. Oni. How, how ! ’sblood this is rare. Pac. Nay, shall make you say rare, by and by ; reguardez: monsieur Finio. Fin. Signior Pacue. Pac. Dieu vous garde, monsieur. Fin. God save you, sweet signior. Pac. Monsieur Onion, is not fort bien ? Oni. Bean, quoth he ! would I were in debt of a pottle of beans, I could do as much ! Fin. Welcome, signior : what’s next ? Pac. O here; voyez de grand admiration, as should meet perchance monsieur Finio. Fin. Monsieur Pacue. Pac. By gar, who think we shall meete here ? Fin. By this hand, I am not a little proud of it, sir. Oni. This trick is only for the chamber, it can¬ not be cleanly done abroad. Pac. Yell, vat say you for dis den, monsieur ? Fin. Nay, pray, sir. Pac. Par ma foy, vous voila bien encountre ! Fin. What do you mean, sir? let your glove alone. Pac. Comment se porte la sante ? Fin. Faith, exceeding well, sir. Pac. Trot, be mush joy for hear. Fin. And how is it with you, sweet signior Pacue ? Pac. Fait, comme vous voyez. Oni. Young gentlemen, spirits of blood, if ever you’ll taste of a sweet piece of mutton, do Onion a good turn now. Pac. Que, que ? parlez, monsieur, vat ist? Oni. Faith, teach me one of these tricks. Pac. O me shall do presently; stand you dere, you signior dere, myself is here ; so, fort bien ! now I parlez to monsieur Onion, Onion pratla to you, you speaka to me, so : and as you parlez, change the bonet.—Monsieur Onion ! Oni. Monsieur Finio ! Fin. Monsieur Pacue ! Pac. Pray be covera. Oni. Nay, I beseech you, sir. Fin. What do you mean ? Pac. Pardonnez moi, shall be so. Oni. O Lord, sir ! Fin. Not I, in good faith, sir. Pac. By gar, you must. Oni. It shall be yours. Fin. Nay, then you wrong me. Oni. Well, an ever I come to be great— Pac. You be big enough for de Onion already. Oni. I mean a great man. Fin. Then thou’dst be a monster. Oni. Well, God knows not what fortune may do, command me, use me from the soul to the 517 crown, and the crown to the soul; meaning not. only from the crown of the head, and the sole of the foot, but also the foot of the mind and the crowns of the purse. I cannot stay now, young gentlemen; but- time was, time is, and time shall be. [ Exeunt. -+— SCENE II.— Another Room in the Same. Enter Chamont and Camillo. Cha. Sweet Gasper, I am sorry we must part; But strong necessity enforces it. Let not the time seem long unto my friend, Till my return ; for, by our love I swear, (The sacred sphere wherein our souls are knit,) I will endeavour to effect this business With all industrious care and happy speed. Cam. My lord, these circumstances would come To one less capable of your desert [well Than I ; in whom your merit is confirm’d With such authentical and grounded proofs. Cha. Well, I will use no more. Gasper, adieu. Cam. Farewell, my honour’d lord. Cha. Commend me to the lady, my good Gasper. Cam.. I had remember’d that, had not you urged Cha. Once more adieu, sweet Gasper. [it. Cam. My good lord. [Exit. Cha. Thy virtues are more precious than thy name ; Kind gentleman, I w r ould not sell thy love For ali the earthly objects that mine eyes Have ever tasted. Sure thou art nobly born, However fortune hath obscured thy birth ; For native honour sparkles in thine eyes. How may I bless the time wherein Chamont, My honour’d father, did surprise Vicenza, Where this my friend (known by no name) was found, Being then a child, and scarce of power to speak, To whom my father gave this name of Gasper, And as his own respected him to death : Since when we two have shared our mutual for¬ tunes With equal spirits, and, but death’s rude hand, No violence shall dissolve this sacred band. [Exit. -♦- SCENE III.— Juniper is discovered in his shop, singing. Enter Onion. Oni. Fellow Juniper, no more of thy songs and sonnets; sweet Juniper, no more of thy hymns and madrigals ; thou sing’st, but I sigh. Jun. What’s the matter, Peter, ha ? what, in an academy still! still in sable and costly black array, ha ? Oni. Prithee rise, mount, mount, sweet Juniper; for I go down the wind, and yet I puff, for I am vext. Jun. Ha, bully, vext! what, intoxicate! is thy brain in a quintessence, an idea, a metamorphosis, an apology, ha, rogue ? Come, this love feeds upon thee, I see by thy cheeks, and drinks healths of vermilion tears, I see by thine eyes. Oni. I confess Cupid’s carouse, he plays super negulum with my liquor of life. Jun. Tut, thou art a goose to be Cupid’s gull; go to; no more of these contemplations and cal¬ culations ; mourn not, for Rachel’s thine own. 518 THE CASE IS ALTERED. act iv. Oni. For that let the higher powers work : but, sweet Juniper, I am not sad for her, and yet for her in a second person, or if not so, yet in a third. Jun. How, second person ! away, away. In thy crotchets already ! longitude and latitude! what second, what person, ha ? Oni. Juniper, I’ll bewray myself before thee, for thy company is sweet unto me ; but I must intreat thy helping hand in the case. Jun. Tut, no more of this surquedry ; I am thine own ad unguem, upsie freeze, pell mell; come, what case, what case ? Oni. For the case, it may be any man’s case, as well as mine. Rachel I mean ; but I’ll meddle with her anon : in the meantime, Valentine is the man hath wronged me. Jun. How, my ingle wrong thee ! is’t possible ? Oni. Your ingle! hang him, infidel. Well, and if I be not revenged on him, let Peter Onion (by the infernal gods) be turned to a leek, ora scallion. ” spake to him for a ditty for this handkerchief. Jun. Why, has he not done it? Oni. Done it ? not a verse, by this hand. Jun. O in diebus illis ! O preposterous ! well, come, be blithe; the best inditer of them all is sometimes dull. Fellow Onion, pardon mine ingle; he is a man has imperfections and declin¬ ations, as other men have; his muse sometimes cannot curvet, nor prognosticate and come off, as it should; no matter, I’ll hammer out a para¬ phrase for thee myself. Oni. No, sweet Juniper, no; danger doth breed delay: love makes me choleric, I can bear no longer. Jun. Not bear what, my mad meridian slave ? not bear what? Oni. Cupid’s burthen ; ’tis too heavy, too tole¬ rable ; and as for the handkerchief and the posie, I will not trouble thee; but if thou wilt go with me into her father’s back-side, old Jaques’ back¬ side, and speak for me to Rachel, I will not be in¬ gratitude : the old man is abroad and all. Jun. Art thou sure on’t? Oni. As sure as an obligation. Jun. Let's away then ; come, we spend time in a vain circumference ; trade, I cashier thee till to¬ morrow : fellow Onion, for thy sake I finish this workiday. Oni. God-a-mercy ; and for thy sake I’ll at any time make a holiday. [ Exeunt. - 4 - SCENE IV.— The Court-yard at the back of J acutes’ House. Enter Angelo and Rachel. Ang. Nay, I prithee, Rachel; I come to com¬ fort thee, Be not so sad. Rach. O, signior Angelo, No comfort but his presence can remove This sadness from my heart. Ang. Nay, then you are fond, And want that strength of judgment and election That should be attendant on your years and form. Will you, because your lord is taken prisoner, Blubber and weep, and keep a peevish stir, As though you would turn turtle with the news ? Come, come, be wise. ’Sblood, say your lord should die. And you go mar your face as you begin, What would you do, trow? who would care for you ? But this it is, when nature will bestow Her gifts on such as know not how to use them ; You shall have some, that had they but one quarter Of your fair beauty, they would make it shew A little otherwise than you do this, Or they would see the painter twice an hour And I commend them, I, that can use art With such judicial practice. Rach. You talk idly ; If this be your best comfort, keep it still, My senses cannot feed on such sour cates. Ang. And why, sweet heart? Rach. Nay, leave, good signior. Ang. Come, I have sweeter viands yet in store. Jun. [within.] Ay, in any case.—Mistress Rachel! Ang. Rachel ! Rach. Od’s pity, signior Angelo, I hear my father ; away for God’s sake. Ang. ’Sblood, I am bewitch’d, I think; this is twice now I have been served thus. [Exit. Rach. Pray God he meet him not. [Exit. Enter Onion and Juniper. Oni. O brave! she’s yonder : O terrible ! she’s gone. Jun. Yea, so nimble in your dilemmas, and your hyperboles ! Hey my love l O my love ! at the first sight, by the mass. Oni. O how she scudded ! O sweet scud, how she tripped ! O delicate trip and go ! Jun. Come, thou art enamoured with the in¬ fluence of her profundity ; but, sirrah, hark a little. Oni. O rare! what, what? passing, i’faithl what is’t, what is’t ? Jun. What wilt thou say now, if Rachel stand now, and play hity-tity through the key hole, to behold the equipage of thy person ? Oni. O sw r eet equipage! try, good Juniper, tickle her, talk, talk ; O rare ! Jun. Mistress Rachel!—watch then if her father come.— [Goes to the door.] —Rachel! Madona ! Rachel ! No ? Oni. Say I am here; Onion, or Peter, or so. Jun. No, I’ll knock; we’ll not stand upon horizons and tricks, but fall roundly to the matter. Oni. Well said, sweet Juniper. Horizons, hang ’em! knock, knock. [Juniper knocks. Rach. [within.] Who’s there ? father ? Jun. Father ! no ; and yet a father, if you please to be a mother. Oni. Well said, Juniper ; to her again ; a smack or two more of the mother. Jun. Do you hear, sweet soul, sweet Radamant, sweet Machavel ? one word, Melpomene, are you at leisure ? Rach. [within.] At leisure ! what to do ? Jun. To do what! to do nothing, but to be liable to the extacy of true love’s exigent, or so; you smell my meaning. Oni. Smell! filthy, fellow Juniper, filthy! smell! O most odious 1 Jun. How, filthy? Oni. Filthy, by this finger ! Smell! smell a rat, smell a pudding. Away, these tricks are for trulls ; a plain wench loves plain dealing; I’ll upon her myself. Smell ! to a marchpane wench ? Jun. With ail my heart: I’ll be legitimate and scene iv. THE CASE IS ALTERED. 619 silent as an apple-squire ; I’ll see nothing, and say nothing. Oni. Sweet heart! sweet heart! Jun. And bag pudding, ha, ha, ha ! Jaq. [ within .] What, Rachel, my girl! what, Rachel! Oni. Od’s lid. Jaq. [within.] What, Rachel! Rack, [within.] Here I am. Oni. What rakehell calls Rachel." 0 treason to my love! Jun. It is her father, on my life ; how shall we intrench and edify ourselves from him ? Oni. O coney-catching Cupid ! [Gets up into a tree. Enter Jaques. Jaq. How, in my back-side! where ? what come they for ? Where are they ? Rachel! thieves ! thieves ! Stay, villain, slave ! [Seizes Jun. as he is running out.] Rachel, untie my dog. Nay, thief, thou canst not ’scape. Jun. I pray you, sir. Oni. [above.] Ah, pitiful Onion, that thou hadst a rope ! Jaq. Why, Rachel, when, I say! let loose my Garlick, my mastiff, let him loose, I say. [dog, Jun. For God’s sake hear me speak, keep up your cur. Oni. [above.] I fear not Garlick, he’ll not bite Onion, his kinsman ; pray God he come out, and then they’ll not smell me. Jaq. Well then deliver ; come, deliver, slave. Jun. What should I deliver ? Jaq. 0 thouwouldst have me tell thee, wouldst thou ? Shew me thy hands, what hast thou in thy hands ? Jun. Here be my hands. Jaq. Stay, are thy fingers’ ends begrimed with dirt ? no, thou hast wiped them. Jun. Wiped them! Jaq. Ay, thou villain ; thou art a subtle knave. Put off thy shoes ; come, I will see them ; give me a knife here, Rachel, I’ll rip the soles. Oni. [above.] No, matter, he’s a cobler, he can mend them. Jun. What, are you mad, are you detestable ? would you make an anatomy of me ? think you I am not true orthography ? Jaq. Orthography ! anatomy ! Jun. For God’s sake be not so inviolable, I am no ambuscado. What predicament call you this ? why do you intimate so much ? Jaq. I can feel nothing. Oni. [above.] By’r Lady, but Onion feels some¬ thing. Jaq. Soft, sir, you are not yet gone ; shake your legs, come ; and your arms, be brief:—stay, let me see these drums, these kilderkins, these bom¬ bard slops, what is it crams them so ? Jun. Nothing but hair. Jaq. That’s true, I had almost forgot this rug, this hedgehog’s nest, this hay-mow, this bear’s skin, this heath, this furze-bush. [Pulls him by the hair. Jun. 0, let me go! you tear my hair, you re¬ volve my brains and understanding. Jaq. Heart, thou art somewhat eased ; half of my fear Hath ta’en his leave of me, the other half Still keeps possession in despight of hope, Until these amorous eyes court my fair gold. Dear, I come to thee. [Aside.] —Fiend, why art not gone ? Avoid, my soul’s vexation ! Satan, hence ! Why dost thou stare on me ? why dost thou stay, Why por’st thou on the ground with thievish eyes ? What seest thou there, thou cur, what gap’st thou at? Hence from my house.—Rachel, send Garlick forth. Jun. I am gone, sir, I am gone ; for God’s sake, stay. . [1 Exit. Jaq. Pack ; and thank God thou scap’st so well away. Oni. [above.] If I scape this tree, destinies I defy you. Jaq. I cannot see, by any characters Writ on this earth, that any felon foot Hath ta’en acquaintance of this hallow’d ground. None sees me: knees, do homage to your lord. [Kneels down and removes the dung from his treasure. ’Tis safe ! ’tis safe! it lies and sleeps so soundly, ’Twould do one good to look on’t. If this bliss Be given to any man that hath much gold, Justly to say ’tis safe , I say ’tis safe. O ! what a heavenly round these two words dance Within me and without me ! first I think them : And then I speak them ; then I w T atch their sound, And drink it greedily with both mine ears : Then think, then speak, then drink their sound again, And racket round about this body’s court, These, two sweet words, ’tis safe. Stay, I will feed My other senses. [ Takes up some of the gold and smells to it.] O how sweet it smells ! Oni. [above.] I marie he smells not Onion, being so near it. Jaq. Down to thy grave again, thou beauteous Angels, men say, are spirits ; spirits be [ghost! Invisible ; bright angels, are you so ?— Be you invisible to every eye, Save only these : sleep, I’ll not break your rest, Though you break mine. Dear saints, adieu, adieu! My feet part from you, but my soul dwells with you. [Rises and exit. Oni. Is he gone ? 0 Fortune my friend, and not Fortune my foe , I come down to embrace thee, and kiss thy great toe. [Comes down from the tree . Re-enter Juniper. Jun. Fellow Onion ! Peter! Oni. Fellow Juniper. Jun. What’s the old Panurgo gone, departed, cosmografied, ha? Oni. 0, ay ! and hark, sirrah.—Shall I tell him ? no. Jun. Nay, be brief, and declare ; stand not upon conundrums now : thou knowest what contagious speeches 1 have suffered for thy sake: an he should come again and invent me here— Oni. He says true, it was for my sake: I will tell him.-—Sirrah, Juniper !—and yet I will not. Jun. What sayst thou, sweet Onion ? Oni. An thou hadst smelt the scent of me when I was in the tree, thou wouldst not have said so ; but, sirrah, the case is altered with me, my heart has given love a box of the ear, made him kick up the heels, i’faith. Jun . Sayst thou me so, mad Greek ! how liape it, how chances it ? 520 THE CASE IS ALTERED. act 17 . Oni. I cannot hold it.—Juniper, have an eye, look; have an eye to the door; the old proverb’s true, I see, Gold is but muck. Nay, god’s so, Juniper to the door; an eye to the main chance. [ Removes thedung, and shews him the gold.'} Here, you slave, have an eye ! Jun. O inexorable ! O infallible ; O intricate, divine, and superficial fortune 1 Oni. Nay, it will be sufficient anon ; here, look here! Jun. O insolent good luck ! how didst thou produce the intelligence of the gold minerals? Oni. I’ll tell you that anon! here, make shift, convey, cram. I’ll teach you how you shall call for Garbck again, i’faith. Jun. Sblood, what shall we do with all this ? we shaL never bring it to a consumption. Oni. Consumption ! why we’ll be most sump¬ tuously attired, man. Jun. By this gold, I will have three or four most stigmatical suits presently. Oni. I’ll go in my foot-cloth, I’ll turn gentleman. Jun. So wfill I. Oni. But what badge shall we give, what cullison ? Jun. As for that, let’s use the infidelity and commiseration of someharrot of arms, he shall give us a gudgeon. Oni. A gudgeon ! a scutcheon thou wouldst say, man. Jun. A scutcheon, or a gudgeon, all is one. Oni. Well, our arms be good enough, let’s look to our legs. Jun. Content; we’ll be jogging. Oni. Rachel, we retire ; Garlick, god b’ye. Jun. Farewell, sweet Jaques 1 Oni. Farewell, sweet Rachel! sweet dog, adieu! \Exeunt. SCENE V.— A Room in Count Ferneze’s House. Enter Maximilian, Count Ferneze, Aurelia, Phcentxella, and Pacue. Max. Nay, but sweet count. Count F. Away ! I’ll hear no more ; Never was man so palpably abused :— My son so basely marted, and myself Am made the subject of your mirth and scorn. Max. Count Ferneze, you tread too hard upon my patience ; do not persist, I advise your lordship. Count F. I will persist, and unto thee I speak ; Thou, Maximilian, thou hast injured me. Max. Before the Lord— Aur. Sweet signior. Phcen. O my father. Max. Lady, let your father thank your beauty. Pac. By gar, me shall be hang for tel la dis same ; me tella mademoiselle, she tell her fadera. Count F. The true Chamont set free, and one left here Of no descent, clad barely in his name ! Sirrah, boy, come hither, and be sure you speak the simple truth. Pac. O pardonnez moy, monsieur. Count F. Come, leave your pardons, and di¬ rectly say, What villain is the same that hath usurp’d The honour’d name and person of Chamont. Pac. O, monsieur, no point villain, brave cheva- ber, monsieur Gasper. Count F. Monsieur Gasper! On what occasion did they change their names, What was their policy, or their pretext ? Pac. Me canno tell, par ma foy, monsieur. Max. My honourable lord ! Count F. Tut, tut, be silent. Max. Silent, count Ferneze ! I tell thee, if Amurath, the great Turk, were here, I would speak, and he should hear me. Count F. So will not I. Max. By my father’s hand, but thou shait, count. I say, till this instant I was never touch’d in my reputation. Hear me, you shall know that you have wrong’d me, and I will make you ac¬ knowledge it; if I cannot, my sword shall. Count F. By heaven I will not, I will stop mine ears, My senses loath the savour of thy breath ; ’Tis poison to me ; I say, I will not hear. What shall I know ? ’tis you have injured me. What will you make ? make me acknowledge it! Fetch forth that Gasper, that lewd counterfeit; I’ll make him to your face approve your wrongs. Enter Servants with Camillo. Come on, false substance, shadow to Chamont, Had you none else to work upon but me ? Was I your fittest project ? well, confess What you intended by this secret plot, And by whose policy it was contrived. Speak truth, and be intreated courteously; But double with me, and resolve to prove The extremest rigour that I can inflict. Cam. My honour’d lord, hear me with patience; Nor hope of favour, nor the fear of torment, Shall sway my tongue from uttering of truth. Count F. ’Tis well, proceed then. Cam. The morn before this battle did begin. Wherein my lord Chamont and I were ta’en, We vow’d one mutual fortune, good or bad, That day should be embraced of us both ; And urging that might worse succeed our vow, We there concluded to exchange our names. Count F. Then Maximilian took you for Cha- Cam. True, noble lord. [mont? Count F. ’Tis false, ignoble wretch ; ’Twas but a complot to betray my son. Max. Count, thou liest in thy bosom, count. Count F. Lie ! Cam. Nay, I beseech you, honour’d gentlemen, Let not the untimely ruin of your love Follow these slight occurrents ; be assured Chamont’s return will heal these wounds again, And break the points of your too piercing thoughts. Count F. Return! ay, when? when will Cha¬ mont return ? He’ll come to fetch you, will he? ay, ’tis like I You’d have me think so, that’s your policy. No, no, young gallant, your device is stale ; You cannot feed me with so vain a hope. Cam. My lord, I feed you not with a vain hope ; I know assuredly he will return, And bring your noble son along with him. Max. Ay, I dare pawn my soul he will return. Count F. O impudent derision ! open scorn ! Intolerable wrong 1 is’t not enough That you have play’d upon me all this wffiile, But still to mock me, still to jest at me ? Fellows, away with him; thou ill-bred slave, That sett’st no difference ’twixt a noble spirit scene v. THE CASE IS ALTERED. 521 And thy own slavish humour, do not think But I’ll take worthy vengeance on thee, wretch. Cam. Alas, these threats are idle, like the wind, And breed no terror in a guiltless mind. Count F. Nay thou slialt want no torture, so resolve ; Bring him away. [Exit. Cam. Welcome the worst, I suffer for a friend, Your tortures will, my love shall never, end. [Exeunt Servants with Camillo and Pacue. Phoen. Alas, poor gentleman ! my father’s rage Is too extreme, too stern and violent. O that I knew with all my strongest powers How to remove it from thy patient breast ! But that I cannot, yet my willing heart Shall minister, in spite of tyranny, To thy misfortune ; something there is in him That doth enforce this strange affection With more than common rapture in my breast: For being but Gasper, he is still as dear To me, as when he did Cliamont appear. [Aside and exit. Aur. But in good sadness, slgnior, do you think Chamont will return ? Max. Do I see your face, lady ? Aur. Ay sure, if love have not blinded you. Max. That is a question ; but I will assure you no : I can see, and yet love is in mine eye. Well, the count your father simply hath dishonoured me, and this steel shall engrave it on his burgonet. Aur. Nay, sweet signior ! Max. Lady, I do prefer my reputation to my life ;—but you shall rule me. Come, let’s march. [Exit. Aur. I’ll follow, signior. O sweet queen of love ! Sovereign of all my thoughts, and thou, fair Fortune, Who more to honour my affections, Hast thus translated Gasper to Chamont ! Let both your flames now burn in one bright sphere, And give true light to my aspiring hopes : Hasten Chamont’s return, let him affect me, Though father, friends, and all the world reject me. [Ex { t. ACT V. SCENE I _ The Court at the back of Jaques’ House. Enter Angelo and Christopher*). Ang. Sigh for a woman ! Would I fold mine Rave in my sleep, talk idly being awake, [arms, Pine and look pale, make love-walks in the night, To steal cold comfort from a day-star’s eyes ! Kit, thou’rt a fool; wilt thou be wise ? then, lad, Renounce this boy-god’s nice idolatry, Stand not on compliment, and coying tricks ; Thou lov’st Old Jaques’ daughter, dost thou ? Chris. Love her! Ang. Come, come, I know’t; be ruled, and she’s thine own. Tliou’lt say, her father Jaques, the old beggar, Hath pawn’d his word to thee, that none but thou Shalt be his son-in-law. Chris. He has. Ang. He has! Wilt thou believe him, and be made a cokes, To wait on such an antique weathercock? Why, he is more inconstant than the sea, His thoughts, camelion-like, change every minute : No, Kit, work soundly, steal the wench away, Wed her, and bed her ; and when that is done, Then say to Jaques, Shall I be your son ? But come, tq our device, where is this gold ? Chris. Here, signior Angelo. Ang. Bestow it, bid thy hands shed golden drops; Let these bald French crowns be uncovered, In open sight to do obeisance To Jacques’ staring eyes when he steps forth ; The needy beggar will be glad of gold— So ! now keep thou aloof, and as he treads This gilded path, stretch out his ambling hopes With scattering more and more, and as thou goest, Cry Jaques 1 Jaques ! Chris. Tush, let me alone. Ang. But first I’ll play the ghost, I’ll call him out; Kit, keep aloof. Chris. But, signior Angelo, Where will yourself and Rachel stay for me, After the jest is ended? Ang. Mass; that’s true : At the old prichy behind St. Foy’s. Chris. Agreed, no better place ; I’ll meet you there. [Retires, dropping the gold L Ang. Do, good fool, do; but I’ll not meet you there. Now to this gear—Jaques ! Jaques ! what, Jaques ? Jaq. [ within.] Who calls ? who’s there ? Ang. Jaques! Jaq. [within.'] Who calls ? Ang. Steward, he comes, he comes.—Jaques ! [Retires. Enter Jaques. Jaq. What voice is this? No body here ! was I not call’d ? I was ; And one cried Jaques with a hollow voice. I was deceived ; no, I was not deceived. [Sees the gold See, see, it was an angel call’d me forth. Gold, gold, man-making gold ; another star ! Drop they from heaven ? no, no, my house, I hope, Is haunted with a fairy. My dear Lar, My household god, my fairy, on my knees— Christ, [within.] Jaques ! Jaq. My Lar doth call me ; O sweet voice, Musical as the spheres ! see, see, more gold ! Chris, [within.] Jaques ! Jaq. What Rachel, Rachel! Enter Rachel. Lock my door, Look to my house. Chris, [within. ] Jaques! Jaq. Shut fast my door. A golden crown ! Jaques shall be a king. [Exit, .following the sound, and picking up the goto. Ang. [comes forward.] To a fool’s paradise th<*t path will bring Thee and thy household Lar. 522 THE CASE IS ALTERED. act v Rack. What means my father ? I wonder what strange humour- Ang. Come, sweet soul, Leave wondering, start not, ’twas I laid this plot, To get thy father forth. Rack. O, Angelo ! Ang. O me no O’s, but hear; my lord, your Paulo Ferneze, is return’d from war, [love, Lingers at Pont Valerio, and from thence, By post, at midnight last, I was conjured To man you thither. Stand not on replies, A horse is saddled for you, will you go? And 1 am for you ; if you will stay, why so. Rack. O Angelo, each minute is a day Till my Ferneze come ; come, we’ll away. {.Exit. Ang. Sweet soul, I guess thy meaning by thy At Pont Valerio thou thy love shalt see, [looks But not Ferneze. Steward, fare you well; You wait for Rachel too : when ! can you tell ? {Exit hastily. Re-enter Jaques, with his hands full of money. Jaq. O in what golden circle have I danced ! Milan, these odorous and enflower’d fields Are none of thine ; no, here’s Elysium ; Here blessed ghosts do walk ; this is the court And glorious palace, where the god of gold Shines like the sun, of sparkling majesty. O [my] fair-feather’d, my red-breasted birds, Come fly with me, I’ll bring you to a choir, Whose consort being sweeten’d with your sound, The music will be fuller, and each hour The ears shall banquet with your harmony. O ! O ! O! {Exit. Re-enter Christophero. Chris. At the old priory behind St. Foy’s, That was the place of our appointment, sure ; I hope he will not make me lose my gold, And mock me too; perhaps they are within : I’ll knock. Jaq. {within.'] O lord! the case is altered. Chris. Rachel 1 Angelo ! signior Angelo ! Re-enter Jaques. Jaq. Angels! ay, where ? mine angels! where’s my gold ? Why, Rachel ! O thou thievish cannibal! Thou eat’st my flesh in stealing of my gold. Chris. What gold ? Jaq. What gold ? Rachel! call help, come forth! I’ll rip thine entrails, but I’ll have my gold. Rachel! why com’st thou not ? I am undone. Ah me, she speaks not! thou hast slain my child. {Exit. Chris. What, is the man possest, trow ? this is Rachel, I see, is gone with Angelo. [strange! Well, I will once again unto the priory, And see if I can meet them. {Exit. Re-enter Jaques. Jaq. ’Tis too true, Thou hast made away my child, thou hast my gold: O what hyena call’d me out of doors ? The thief is gone, my gold’s gone, Rachel’s gone, All’s gone ! save I that spend my cries in vain ; But I’ll hence too, and die, or end this pain. {Exit. — ♦— SCENE II. — The Street before Count Ferneze’s House. Enter Juniper and Onion richly dressed, and drunk, followed by Finio and Valentine. Jun. ’Swounds, let me go; hey, catso ! catch him alive; I call, I call, boy; I come, I come, sweetheart. Oni. Page, hold my rapier, while I hold my friend here. Val. O here’s a sweet metamorphosis, a couple of buzzards turn’d to a pair of peacocks. Jun. Signior Onion, lend me thy boy to unhang my rapier. Oni. Signior Juniper, for once or so but troth is, you must inveigle, as I have done, my lord’s page here, a poor follower of mine. Jun. Hey ho ! your page then shall not be super- intendant upon me ? he shall not be addicted ? he shall not be incident, he shall not be incident, he shall not be incident, shall he ? {Hefoins with his rapier. Fin. O sweet signior Juniper. Jun. ’Sblood, stand away, princox! do not aggravate my joy. Val. Nay, good master Onion. Oni. Nay, an he have the heart to draw my blood, let him come. Jun. I’ll slice you, Onion ; I’ll slice you. Oni. I’ll cleave you, Juniper. Val. Why hold, hold, ho ! what do you mean ? Jun. Let him come, ingle ; stand by, boy, his alabaster blade cannot fear me. Fin. Why hear you, sweet signior, let not there be any contention between my master and you about me ; if you want a page, sir, I can help you to a proper stripling. Jun. Canst thou! what parentage, what ances¬ try, what genealogy is he ? Fin. A French boy, sir. Jun. Has he his French linguist ? has he ? Fin. Ay, sir. Jun. Then transport him; here’s a crusado for thee. Oni. You will not embezzle my servant with your benevolence, will you ? hold, boy, there’s a portmanteau for thee. Fin. Lord, sir! Oni. Do, take it, boy; it’s three pounds ten shillings, a portmanteau. Fin. I thank your lordship. {Exit. Jun. Sirrah, ningle, thou art a traveller, and I honour thee. I prithee discourse, cherish thy muse, discourse. Val. Of what, sir ? Jun. Of what thou wilt; ’sblood, hang sorrow. Oni. Prithee, Valentine, assoil me one thing. Val. ’Tis pity to soil you, sir, your new appa¬ rel— Oni. Mass, thou say’st true, apparel makes a man forget himself. Jun.. Begin, find your tongue, ningle. Val. Now will I gull these ganders rarely. Gentlemen, having in my peregrination through Mesopotamia- Jun. Speak legibly, this game’s gone without the great mercy of — Here’s a fine tragedy in¬ deed ! there’s a keisar royal! ’slid, nor king, nor * keisar shall— THE CASE IS ALTERED. *23 SCENE nr. Re-enter Finio with Pacue, Balthasar, and Martino. Bal. Where, where, Finio, where be they ? Jun. Go to, I’ll be with you anon. Oni. O here’s the page, signior Juniper. Jun. What says monsieur Onion, boy? Fin. What say you, sir ? Jun. Tread out, boy. Fin. Take up, you mean, sir. Jun. Tread out, I say ; so ! I thank you,—is this the boy ? Pac. Oui, monsieur. Jun. Who gave you that name ? Pac. Give me de name, vat name ? Oni. He thought your name had been We. Young gentleman, you must do more than his legs can do for him, bear with him, sir. Jun. Sirrah, give me instance of your carriage ; you’ll serve my turn, will you ? Pac. Vat turn ? upon the toe ! Fin. O signior, no. Jun. Page, will you follow me ? I’ll give you good exhibition. Pac. By gar, shall not alone follow you, but shall lead you too. Oni. Plaguy boy ! he sooths his humour ; these French villains have pocky wits. Jun. Here, disarm me, take my semitary. Val. O rare! this would be a rare man, an he had a little travel.—Balthasar, Martino, put off your shoes, and bid him cobble them. Jun. Friends, friends, but pardon me for fel¬ lows, no more in occupation, no more in corpora¬ tion ; ’tis so, pardon me; the case is altered ; this is law, but I’ll stand to nothing. Pac. Fait, so me tink. Jun. Well, then God save the duke’s majesty ; is this any harm now ? speak, is this any harm now ? Oni. No, nor good neither, ’sblood !— Jun. Do you laugh at me, do you laugh at me, do you laugh at me ? Val. Ay, sir, we do. Jun. You do indeed? Val. Ay, indeed, sir. Jun. ’Tis sufficient; page, carry my purse ; dog me. [Exit. Oni. Gentlemen, leave him not! you see in what case he is; he is not in adversity, his purse is full of money ; leave him not. [Exeunt. -*- SCENE III.— The open Country. Enter Angelc with Rachel. Ang. Nay, gentle Rachel Each. Away ! forbear, ungentle Angelo ! Touch not my body with those impious hands, That, like hot irons, sear my trembling heart, And make it hiss at your disloyalty. Enter Paulo Ferneze and Chamont, at a distance. Was this your drift, to use Ferneze’s name ? Was he your fittest stale ? O vile dishonour ! Paul. Stay, noble sir. [Holding back Chamont. Ang. ’Sblood, how like a puppet do you talk now! Dishonour ! what dishonour ? come, come, fool; Nay, then I see you are peevish. S’heart, dis- To have you to a priest, and marry you, [honour ! And put you in an honourable state. Each. To marry me ! O heaven ! can it be, That men should live with such unfeeling souls, Without or touch or conscience of religion ? Or that their warping appetites should spoil Those honoured forms, that the true seal of friend- Had set upon their faces ? [ship Ang. Do you hear ? What needs all this ? say, will you have me, or no ? Each. I’ll have you gone, and leave me if you would. Ang. Leave you! I was accurst to bring you hither, And make so fair an offer to a fool. A pox upon you, why should you be coy, What good thing have you in you to be proud of? Are you any other than a beggar’s daughter ?— Because you have beauty !—O God’s light! a blast! Pau. Ay, Angelo ! Ang. You scornful baggage, I loved thee not so much, but now I hate thee. Each. Upon my knees, you heavenly powers, I thank you, That thus have tamed his wild affections. Ang. This will not do, I must to her again. [Aside. Rachel! O that thou saw’st my heart, or didst behold The place from whence that scalding sigh evented Rachel, by Jesu, I love thee as my soul, Rachel, sweet Rachel! Each. What, again return’d Unto this violent passion ! Ang. Do but hear me ; By heaven I love you, Rachel. Each. Pray forbear. O that my lord Ferneze were but here ! Ang. ’Sblood ! an he were, what would he do ? Pau. [ Pushes forward,.'] This would he do, base villain. [Flings him off. Each. My dear lord ! [Runs into his arms. Pau. Thou monster, even the soul of treachery ! O what dishonour’d title of reproach May my tongue spit in thy deserved face! Methinks my very presence should invert The steeled organs of those traitorous eyes. To take into thy heart, and pierce it through. Turn’st thou them on the ground ? wretch, dig a grave With their sharp points, to hide thy abhorred head.— Sweet love, thy wrongs have been too violent Since my departure from thee, I perceive; But now true comfort shall again appear, And, like an armed angel, guard thee safe From all the assaults of cover’d villainy. Come, monsieur, let us go, and leave this wretch To his despair. Ang. My noble [lord] Ferneze! Pau. What, canst thou speak to me, and not thy tongue, Forced with the torment of thy guilty sou! Break that infected circle of thy mouth, Like the rude clapper of a crazed bell ! I, [I] that in thy bosom lodg’d my soul. With all her train of secrets, thinking them To be as safe and richly entertain’d As in a prince’s court, or tower of strength ; And thou to prove a traitor to my trust. And basely to expose it! O this world ! Ang. My honourable loid. Pau. The very owl, 1 Whom other birds do stare and wonder at. 624 THE CASE IS Shall hoot at thee ; and snakes in every bush, Shall deaf thine ears with their - Cha. Nay, good my lord, Give end unto your passions. A rig. You shall see I will redeem your lost opinion. Rack. My lord, believe him. Cha. Come, be satisfied : Sweet lord, you know our haste ; let us to horse. The time ror my engaged return is past. Be friencs again, take him along with you. Pau. ,-,flme, Angelo, hereafter prove more true. [Exeunt. -♦- SCENE IY. — A Room in Count Ferneze’s House. Fr.ter Count Ferneze, Maximilian and Francisco. Count F. Tut, Maximilian, for your honour’d I am persuaded; but no words shall turn [self The edge of purposed vengeance on that wretch : Come bring him forth to execution.— Enter Servants with Camillo hound. I’ll hang him for my son, he shall not ’scape, Had he a hundred lives.—Tell me, vile slave, Think’st thou I love my son ? is he my flesh ? Is he my blood, my life? and shall all these Be tortured for thy sake, and not revenged ?— Truss up the villain. Max. My lord, there is no law to confirm this action : ’tis dishonourable. Count F. Dishonourable, Maximilian! It is dishonourable in Chamont: The day of his prefixed return is past, And he shall pay for it. Cam. My, lord, my lord, Use your extremest vengeance ; I’ll be glad To suffer ten times more for such a friend. Count F. O resolute and peremptory wretch ! Franc. My honour’d lord, let us intreat a word ! Count F. I’ll hear no more; I say, he shall not live; Myself will do it. Stay, what form is this Stands betwixt him and me, and holds my hand? What miracle is this ? ’tis my own fancy Carves this impression in me; my soft nature, That ever hath retain’d such foolish pity Of the most abject creature’s misery, That it abhors it. What a child am I To have a child ? ah me ! my son, my son ! [Weeps, and walks aside. Enter Christopherq. Ch ris. O my dear love, what is become of thee ? What unjust absence layest thou on my breast, Like weights of lead, when swords are at my back, That run me thorough with thy unkind flight 1 My gentle disposition waxeth wild; I shall run frantic : O my love, my love! Enter Jaques. Jaq. My gold, my gold, my wife, my soul, my heaven ! What is become of thee ? see, I'll impart My miserable loss to my good lord_ Let me have search, my lord, my gold is gone. Count F. My son, Christophero, think’st thou it possible I ever shall behold his face again ? ALTERED. Chris. O father, where’s my love ? were vou so careless To let an unthrift steal away your child ? Jaq. I know your lordship may find out my gold. For God’s sake pity me ; justice, sweet lord! Count F. Now they have young Chamont, Christophero, Surely they never will restore my son. Chris. Who would have thought you could have been so careless, To lose your only daughter ? Jaq. Who would think That looking to my gold with such hare’s eyes, That ever open, ay, even when they sleep, I thus should lose my gold ! my noble lord, What says your lordship ? Count F. O my son, my son ! Chris. My dearest Rachel! Jaq. My most honey gold 1 Count F. Hear me, Christophero. Chris. Nay, hear me, Jaques. Jaq. Hear me, most honour’d lord. Max. What rule is here ? Count F. O God, that we should let Chamont escape! Chris. Ay, and that Rachel, such a virtuous Should be thus stolen away ! [maid, Jaq. And that my gold, Being so hid in earth, should be found out! Max. O confusion of languages, and yet no tower of Babel! Enter Aurelia, and Phcenixella. Fran Ladies, beslirew me, if you come not fit To make a jangling consort; will you laugh To see three constant passions ? Max. Stand by, I will urge them. Sweet count, will you be comforted? Count F. It cannot be But he is handled the most cruelly That ever any noble prisoner was. Max. Steward, go cheer my lord. Chris. Well, if Rachel took her flight willingly— Max. Sirrah, speak you touching your daugh¬ ter’s flight. Jaq. O that I could so soon forget to know The thief again that had my gold, my gold ! Max. Is not this pure ? Count F. O thou base wretch, I’ll drag thee through the streets ; And as a monster make tbee wonder’d at.— Enter Balthasar. How now ? [Balthasar whispers with him. Phoen. Sweet gentleman, how too unworthily Art thou thus tortured !—Brave Maximilian, Pity the poor youth, and appease my father. Count F. How! my son return’d! O Maximilian. Francisco, daughters ! bid him enter here. Dost thou not mock me ?— Enter Paulo Ferneze, Rachel, Chamont, and Angelo. O, my dear Paulo, welcome. Max. My Lord Chamont! Cha. My Gasper! Chris. Rachel! Jaq. My gold, Rachel, my gold ! Count F. Somebody bid the beggar cease his noise. Chris. O signior Angelo, would you deceive SCENE IV. THE CASE IS ALTERED. Your honest friend, that simply trusted you?— VVell, Rachel, I am glad thou art here again. Ang. I’faith, she is not for you, steward. Jaq. I beseech you, madam, urge your father. Phcen. I will anon ; good Jaques, be content. Aur. Now God a mercy Fortune, and sweet Let Cupid do his part, and all is well. [Venus : Phoen. Methinks my heart’s in heaven with this comfort. Cha. Is this the true Italian courtesy ? Ferneze, were you tortured thus in France ? By my soul’s safety- Count F. My most noble lord, [Kneels. I do beseech your lordship. Cha. Honour’d count, [Raises him. Wrong not your age with flexure of a knee, I do impute it to those cares and griefs That did torment you in your absent son. Count F. O worthy gentleman, I am ashamed That my extreme affection to my son Should give my honour so uncured a maim ; But my first son being in Vicenza lost— Cha. How ! in Vicenza ! lost you a son there ? About what time, my lord? Count F. O, the same night Wherein your noble father took the town. Cha. How long’s that since, my lord, can you remember ? Count F. ’Tis now well nigh upon the twentieth Cha. And how old was he then? [yeai Count F. I cannot tell; Between the years of three and four, I take it Cha. Had he no special note in his attire, Or otherwise, that you call to mind? Count F. I cannot well remember his attire; But I have often heard his mother say, He had about his neck a tablet, Given to him by the emperor Sigismund, His godfather, with this inscription, Under the figure of a silver globe, In minimo mundus. Cha. How did you call Your son, my lord ? Count F. Camillo, lord Chamont. Cha. Then, no more my Gasper, but Camillo, Take notice of your father.—Gentlemen, Stand not amazed ; here is a tablet, With that inscription, found about his neck, That night and in Vicenza, by my father, Who, being ignorant what name he had, Christen’d him Gasper ; nor did I reveal This secret, till this hour, to any man. Count F. O happy revelation ! O blest hour! O my Camillo! Phoen. O strange ! my brother ! Fran. Maximilian, Behold now the abundance of his joy Drowns him in tears of gladness. Count F. O, my hoy, Forgive thy father’s late austerity. Max. My lord, I delivered as much before, but your honour would not be persuaded ; I will here¬ after give more observance to my visions ; I dreamt of this. Jaq. I can be still no longer; my good lord, Do a poor man some grace ’mongst all your joys. Count F. Why, what’s the matter, Jaques ? Jaq. I am robb’d ; I am undone, my lord ; robb’d and undone. A heap of thirty thousand golden crowns 525 Stolen from me in one minute, and I fear By her confederacy that calls me father; But she is none of mine, therefore, sweet lord, Let her be tortured to confess the truth. Max. More wonders yet. Count F. How, Jaques! is not Rachel then thy daughter ? Jaq. No, I disclaim in her ; I spit at her; She is a harlot, and her customers, Your son, this gallant, and your steward here, Have all been partners with her in my spoil; No less than thirty thousand. Count F. Jaques, Jaques, This is impossible ; how shouldst thou come To the possession of so huge a heap, Being always a known beggar ? Jaq. Out, alas ! I have betray’d myself with my own tongue ; The case is alter’d. [Going Count F. Some one stay him here. Max. What, means he to depart ?—Count Fer neze, upon my soul, this beggar is a counterfeit Urge him.—Didst thou lose gold ? Jaq. O no, I lost no gold. Max. Said I not true ? Count F. How! didst thou first lose thirty thousand crowns, And now no gold ? was Rachel first thy child, And is she now no daughter? sirrah, Jaques, You know how far our Milan laws extend For punishment of liars. Jaq. Ay, my lord.— What shall I do ? I have no starting-holes. [Aside. Monsieur Chamont, stand you my honour’d lord. Cha. For what, old man ? Jaq. Ill-gotten goods ne’er thrive ; I play’d the thief, and now am robb’d myself. I am not what I seem, Jaques de Prie, Nor was I born a beggar as 1 am ; But some time steward to your noble father. Cha. What, Melun ! That robb’d my father’s treasure, stole my sister? Jaq. Ay, ay ; that treasure’s lost, but Isabel, Your beauteous sister, here survives in Rachel ; And therefore on my knees- Max. Stay, Jaques, stay; The case still alters. Count F. Fair Rachel, sister to the lord Chamont ! Ang. Steward, your cake is dough, as well as mine. Pau. I see that honour’s flames cannot be hid, No more than lightning in the blackest cloud. Max. Then, sirrah, it is true, you have lost this gold ? Jaq. Ay, worthy signior, thirty thousand crowns. Count F. Mass, who was it told me, that a couple of my men were become gallants of late ? Fran. Marry ’twas I, my lord ; my man told me. Enter Onion and Juniper, dressed as before. Max. How now ! what pageant is this ? Jun. Come, signior Onion, let’s not be ashamed to appear; keep state, look not ambiguous now. Oni. Not I, while I am in this suit. Jun. Lordlings, equivalence to you all. Oni. We thought good to be so good as see you, gentlemen. Max. What, monsieur Onion ! 526 THE CASE IS ALTERED. ACT V Oni. How dost thou, good captain ? Count F. What, are my hinds turn’d gentlemen ? Oni. Hinds, sir! ’sblood, an that word will bear an action, it shall cost us a thousand pound a piece, but we’ll be revenged. Jun. Wilt thou sell thy lordship, count? Count F. What! peasants purchase lordships ? Jun. Is that any novels, sir ? Max. O transmutation of elements ! it is certi¬ fied you had pages. Jun. Ay, sir; but it is known they proved lidiculous, they did pilfer, they did purloin, they did procrastinate our purses; for the which wast¬ ing of our stock, we have put them to the stocks. Count F. And thither shall you two presently. These be the villains that stole Jaques’ gold ; Away with them, and set them with their men. Max. Onion, you will now be peel’d. Fran. The case is alter’d now. Oni. Good my lord, good my lord !— Jun. Away, scoundrel! dost thou fear a little elocution ? shall we be confiscate now ? shall we droop now ? shall we be now in helogabolus ? Oni. Peace, peace, leave thy gabling. Count F. Away, away with them ; what’s this they prate ? [. Exeunt Servants with Jun. and Onion. Keep the knaves sure, strict inquisition Shall presently be made for Jaques’ gold, To be disposed at pleasure of Chamont. Cha. She is your own, lord Paulo, if your father Give his consent. Aug. How now, Christopliero! The case is alter’d. Chris. With you as well as me ; I am content, sir. Count F. With all my heart; and in exchange of her, If with your fair acceptance it may stand, I tender my Aurelia to your love. Cha. I take her from your lordship with all thanks, And bless the hour wherein I was made prisoner, For the fruition of this present fortune, So full of happy and unlook’d-for joys.— Melun, I pardon thee ; and for the treasure. Recover it, and hold it as thine own : It is enough for me to see my sister Live in the circle of Ferneze’s arms, My friend, the son of such a noble father ; And my unworthy self rapt above all, By being the lord to so divine a dame. Max. Well, I will now swear the case is al¬ tered. —Lady, fare you well; I will subdue my affections.—Madam, as for you, you are a profest virgin, and I will be silent.—My honourable lord Ferneze, it shall become you at this time not be frugal, but bounteous, and open-handed; your fortune hath been so to you.—Lord Chamont, you are now no stranger ; you must be welcome ; you have a fair, amiable, and splendid lady:—but, signor Paulo, signior Camillo, I know you valiant, be loving.—Lady, I must be better known to you. — Signiors, for you, I pass you not, though I let you pass ; for in truth I pass not of you.—Lovers to your nuptials, lordings to your dances. March fair all, for a fair March is worth a king's ransom ! [ Exeunt ENTERTAINMENTS. rART OF KING JAMES’S ENTERTAINMENT, IN PASSING TO HIS CORONATION. AT FEN-CHURCII. The scene presented itself in a square and flat upright, like to the side of a city; the top thereof, above the vent and crest, adorn’d with houses, towers, and steeples, set off in prospective. Upon the battlements, in a great capital letter, was in¬ scribed, LONDINIUM: according to Tacitus, Annal. lib. 14. At Sueto¬ nius mira constantia medios infer hostels Londi- nium perrexit, cognomento quidern Colonice non insigne, sed copia negotiatorum, et commeatu maxime celebre. Beneath that, in a less and dif¬ ferent character, was written CAMERA REGIA, which title immediately after the Norman conquest it began to have; {Cam. Brit. 374,) and by the indulgence of succeeding princes, hath been hitherto continued. In the frieze over the gate it seemeth to speak this verse : PAR POM US H2EC C(ELO, SEP MINOR EST POMINO, taken out of Martial {lib. 8, epig. 36,) and imply¬ ing, that though this city (for the state and magni¬ ficence) might by hyperbole be said to touch the stars, and reach up to heaven, yet was it far infe¬ rior to the master thereof, who was his majesty; and in that respect unworthy to receive him. The highest person advanced therein, was MONARCHIA BRITANNICA; and fitly ; applying to the abovementioned title of the city, THE KING’S CHAMBER, and there¬ fore here placed as in the proper seat of the empire : for so the glory and light of our kingdom, M. Cam¬ den, {Brit. 3, 7,) speaking of London, saith, she is totius Britannice epitome , Britannicique impe¬ rii sedes, regumque Anglice camera , tanturn inter omneis cminet, quantum (ut ait ille) inter viburna cupressus. She was a woman, richly attired in cloth of gold and tissue ; a rich mantle; over her state two crowns hanging, with pensile shields tho¬ rough them ; the one limned with the particular coat of England, the other of Scotland : On either side also a crown, with the like scutcheons, and peculiar coats of France and Ireland. In her hand she holds a sceptre; on her head a fillet of gold, interwoven with palm and laurel; her hair bound into four several points, descending from her crowns ; and in her lap a little globe, inscribed upon ORB IS BRITANNICUS, and, beneath, the word PI VIS US AB ORBE, to shew that this empire is a world divided from the world ; and alluding to that of Claudian, De Mallii Theodor, cons, panegyr. - Et nostro diducta Britannia mundo ; and Virgil, Et penitus toto divisos orbe Britannos.' 1 The wreath denotes victory and happiness; the sceptre and crowns sovereignty ; the shields the precedency of the countries, and their distinctions. At her feet was set THEOSOPIIIA, or Divine Wisdom, all in white, a blue mantle seeded wfith stars, a crown of stars on her head. Her garments figured truth, innocence, and clear¬ ness. She was always looking up ; in her one hand she sustained a dove, in the other a serpent: the last to shew her subtilty, the first her simplicity: alluding to that text of Scripture, 2 3 Estote ergo pru- dentes sicut serpentes , et simplices sicut columbee. Her word, PER ME REGES REGNANT , 9 intimating, how by her all kings do govern, and that she is the foundation and strength of kingdoms: to which end, she was here placed upon a cube, at the foot of the monarchy, as her base and stay. Directly beneath her stood GENIUS URBIS, 4 * * * a person attired rich, reverend, and antique: his hair long and white, crowned with a wreath of plane-tree, which is said to be arbor genialis; his mantle of purple, and buskins of that colour: he held in one hand a goblet, in the other a branch full of little twigs, to signify increase and indulgence. His word, HIS ARMIS; pointing to the two that supported him, whereof the one on the right hand was BOULEUTES, figuring the council of the city, and was suited in 1 Eclog. 1. 2 Matt. x. 16. 3 Prov. viii. 15. 4 Antiqui genium omnium gignendarum rerum existi- marunt deum : et tarn urbib. quam hominib. vel c*teris rebus natum. Lil. Gr. Gyr. in Synt. Deor. 15. and Rosin. Antia. Ro. 1. 2. e. 14. 528 PART OF THE KING’S ENTERTAINMENT. black and purple ; a wreath of oak 1 upon his head : sustaining, for his ensigns, on his left arm a scar¬ let robe, and in his right hand the fasces, 2 as tokens of magistracy, with this inscription ; SERVARE CIVES. The other on the left hand, POLEMIUS, the warlike force of the city, in an antique coat or armour with a target and sword ; his helm on, and crowned with laurel, implying strength and con¬ quest : in his hand he bore the standard of the city, with this word, EXTINGUERE ET HOSTEIS, expressing by those several mots, connexed, that with those arms of counsel and strength, the Genius was able to extinguish the king’s enemies, and pre¬ serve his citizens, alluding to these verses in Seneca, Oct. act. 2. Extinguere hostem maxima est virtus ducts. Servare cives major est 'patriae patri. Underneath these, in an aback thrust out before the rest, lay TAMESIS, the river, as running along the side of the city; in a skin-coat, made like flesh, naked and blue. His mantle of sea-green or water-colour, thin, and boln out like a sail; bracelets about his wrists, of willow and sedge, a crown of sedge and reed upon his head, mixed with water-lilies; alluding to Virgil’s descrip¬ tion of Tyber; •- Deus ipse loci, Jluvio Tyberinus amceno, Populeas inter senior se attollere frondes Visits, eum tenuis glauco velabat amictu Carbasus, et crineis umbrosa tegebat arundo. 3 His beard and hair long, and overgrown. He mans his arm upon an earthen pot, out of which, water, with live fishes, are seen to run forth, and play about him. His word, FLU MINA SENSE RUNT IPSA, an hemistich of Ovid’s; the rest of the verse being, - quid esset amor A affirming, that rivers themselves, and such inani¬ mate creatures, have heretofore been made feensible of passions and affections ; and that he now no less partook the joy of his majesty’s grateful approach to this city, than any of those persons, to whom he pointed, which were the daughters of the Genius, and six in number: who, in a spreading ascent, upon several grices, help to beautify both the sides. The first, EUPIIROSYNE, or Gladness, was suited in green, a mantle of divers colours, embroidered with all variety of flowers : on her head a garland of myrtle, in her right hand a crystal cruse filled with wine, in the left a cup of 1 Civica corona fit & fronde querna, quoniam cibus victusque antiquissimus querceus capi solitus sit. Ros. lib. 10. cap. 27 - 2 Fasciculi virgarum, intra quas obligata securis erat, sic ut ferrum in summo fasce extaret. Ros. lib. 7- cap. 3. Ubi notandum est, non debere praecipitem et solutam iram esse magistratus. Mora enim allata, et cunctatio, duni sensim virgae solvuntur, identidem consilium mutavit deplectendo. Quando autem vitiaquaedamsunt corrigibilia, deplorata alia; castigant virgae, quod revocari valet, im- medicabile secures praecidunt. Plut. Prob. Rom. 82. » Ain. lib. 8. 4 Amor. 3. el. 5. gold ; at her feet a timbrel, harp, and other -astru- ments, all ensigns of gladness, Natis in it sum Icetitice scyphis, §c. b And in another place, Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero Pulsanda tellus, SjcA Her word, IUEC 7EVI MIHI PRIM A DIES. 1 As if this were the first hour of her life, and the minute wherein she began to be ; beholding so long coveted, and looked for a presence. The second, SEBAS1S, or Veneration, was varied in an ash-coloured suit, and dark mantle, a veil over her head of ash-colour : her hands crossed before her, and her eyes half closed. Her word, MIHI SEMPER DEUS. Implying both her office of reverence, and the dig¬ nity of her object, who being as god on earth, should never be less in her thought. The third, PROTHYMIA, or Promptitude, was attired in a short-tucked gar¬ ment of flame-colour, wings at her back : her hair bright, and bound up with ribands ; her breast open, virago-like; her buskins so ribbanded : she was crowned with a chaplet of tri-foly, to express rea¬ diness and openness every way ; in her right hand she held a squirrel, as being the creature most full of life and quickness : in the left a close round cen¬ ser, with the perfume suddenly to be vented forth at the sides. Her word, QUA DATA PORTAA taken from another place in Virgil, where iEolus, at the command of Juno, lets forth the wind ; - Ac venti velut agmine facto Qua data porta ruunt, et terras turbine perflantA 0 And shewed that she was no less prepared with promptitude and alacrity, than the winds were, upon the least gate that shall be opened to his high command. The fourth, AGRYPNIA, or Vigilance, in yellow, a sable mantle, seeded with waking eyes, and silver fringe : her chaplet of Ilelio- tropium, or turnsole : in her one hand a lamp, or cresset; in her other a bell. The lamp signified search and sight, the bell warning; the Heliotro- pium care, and respecting her object. Her word, SPECULAMUR IN OMNEIS, alluding to that of Ovid, where he describes the office of Argus; - Ipse procul montis sublime cacumen Occupat, unde sedens partes speciilatur in omneis. u and implying the like duty of care and vigilance in herself. The fifth, AGAPE, or Loving Affection, in crimson fringed with gold, a mantle of flame-colour, her chaplet of red and white roses ; in her hand, a flaming heart: the flame expressed zeal; the red and white roses, a mixture 5 Hor. car. i. ode 27. c Ode 37. 7 Stat. Syl. 4. Ep. Domit. s Yirg. Eel. 1. 9 Ain. 1. 10 Ain. 1. 11 Met. 1. PART OF THE KING’S ENTERTAINMENT. 529 of simplicity with love; her robes freshness and fervency. Her word, NON SIC EXCUB I IE, out of Claudian, in following - Nec circumstantia pila Qudm tutatur amor. 1 Inferring, that though her sister before had pro¬ tested watchfulness and circumspection, yet no watch or guard could be so safe to the estate or person of a prince, as the love and natural affections of his subjects : which she in the city’s behalf pro¬ mised. The sixth, OMOTHYMIA, or Unanimity, in blue, her robe blue, and buskins. A chaplet of blue lilies, shewing one truth and en¬ tireness of mind. In her lap lies a sheaf of arrows bound together, and she herself sits weaving certain small silver twists. Her word, FIRM A CONCENSUS FAC IT. Auxilia humiliafirma, SfC . 2 Intimating, that even the smallest and weakest aids, by consent, are made strong: herself personating the unanimity, or consent of soul, in all inhabitants of the city to his service. These are all the personages, or live figures, whereof only two were speakers, (Genius and Ta- mesis,) the rest were mutes. Other dumb compli¬ ments there w r ere, as the arms of the kingdom on the one side, with this inscription, HIS VIREAS. With these may est thou flourish. On the other side, the arms of the city, with, HIS VINCAS. With these mayest thou conquer. In the centre, or midst of the pegme, there was an aback, or square, wherein this elogy was written: MAXIMUS HIC REX EST ET LUCE SERENIOR IPSA PRINCIPE gUTE TALEM CERNIT IN URBE BUCEM ; CUJUS FORTUNAM SUPERAT SIC UNICA VIRTUS, UNUS UT IS RELIQUOS VINCIT UTRAQUE VIROS. PRJECEPTIS ALII POPULOS, MULTAQUE FATIGANT LEGE ; SED EXEMPLO NOS RAPiT ILLE SUO. CUIQUE FRUI TOTA FAS EST UXORE MARITO, ET SUA FAS SIMILl PIGNORA NOSSE PATRI. ECCE UBI PIGNORIBUS CIKCUMSTIPATA CORUSCIS IT COMES, ET TANTO VIX MINOR ANNA VIRO. HAUD METUS EST, REGEM POSTHAC NE PROXIMU3 UTERES, NEU SUCCESSOREM NON AMET ILLE SUUM. This, and the whole frame, was covered with a curtain of silk, painted like a thick cloud, and at the approach of the king was instantly to be drawn. The allegory being, that those clouds were gathered upon the face of the city, through their long want of his most wished sight: but now, as at the rising of the sun, all mists were dispersed and fled. When suddenly, upon silence made to the music, a voice was heard to utter this verse ; Totus adest oculis, aderat qui mentibus olim. 3 Signifying, that he was now really objected to their eyes, who before had been only, but still, present in their minds. Thus far the complimental part of the first; wherein was not only laboured the expression of state and magnifi¬ cence (as proper to a triumphal arch) but the very site, fabric, strength, policy, dignity, and affections of the city 1 De 4. cons. Hon. paneg. 8 Pub. Syr. * Claud, do laud. Stil. lib. 3. M M were all laid down to life: the nature and property of these devices being, to present always some one entire body, or figure, consisting of distinct members, and each of those expressing itself in its own active sphere, yet all with that general harmony so connexed, and disposed, as no one. little part can be missing to the illustration of the whole where also is to be noted, that the symbols used are not, neither ought to be, simply hieroglyphics, emblems, or im- preses, but a mixed character, partaking somewhat of all, and peculiarly apted to these more magnificent inventions : wherein the garments and ensigns deliver the nature of the person, and the word the present office. Neither was it becoming, nor could it stand with the dignity of these shews, (after the most miserable and desperate shift of the puppets) to require a truchman, or, with the ignorant painter, one to write, This is a dog; or, This is a hare: but so to be presented, as upon the view, they might, without cloud, or obscurity, declare themselves to the sharp and learned: and for the multitude, no doubt but their grounded judgments did gaze, said it was fine, and were satisfied. THE SPEECHES OF GRATULATION. GENIUS. Time, Fate, and Fortune have at length conspired, To give our age the day so much desired. What all the minutes, hours, weeks, months, and That hang in file upon these silver hairs, [years, Could not produce, beneath the Britain stroke, 4 The Roman, Saxon, Dane, and Norman yoke, 5 This point of time hath done. Now, London, rear Thy forehead high, and on it strive to wear Thy choicest gems; teach thy steep towers to rise Higher with people : set with sparkling eyes Thy spacious windows; and in ev’ry street, Let thronging joy, love, and amazement meet. Cleave all the air with shouts, and let the cry Strike through as long, and universally, As thunder; for thou now art bless’d to see That sight, for which thou didst begin to be, When Brutus’ 6 plough first gave thee infant bounds. And I, thy Genius, walk’d auspicious rounds In every furrow ; 7 then did I forelook, And saw this day 8 mark’d white in Clotho’s 9 book. 4 As being the first free and natural government of this island, after it came to civility. 5 In respect they were all conquests, and the obedienco of the subject more enforced. 6 Rather than the city should want a founder, we chose to follow the received story of Brute, whether fabulous, or true, and not altogether unwarranted in poetry : since it is a favour of antiquity to few cities, to let them know their first authors. Besides, a learned poet of our time, in a most elegant work of his, Con. Tam. et Isis, celebrating London, hath this verse of her : Aimula matei-me tollens sua lumina Trojan. Here is also an ancient rite alluded to in the building of cities, which was to give them their bounds with a plough, according to Virg. IE n. lib. 10. Interea iEneas urbem designat aratro. And Isidore, lib. 15. cap. 2. Urbs vocata aborbe, quodantiquae civitates in orbem fiebant; vel ab urbo parte aratri, quo muri designabantur, unde est illud, Optavitque locum regno et concludero sulco. 7 Primigenius sulcus dicitur, qui in condend& novil urbe, tauro et vacca designation^ causa imprimitur; hitherto respects that of Camd. Brit. 368, speaking of this city, Quicunque autem condiderit, vitaligenioconstructam fuisse ipsius fortuna docuit. 8 For so all happy days were, Plin. cap. 40. lib. 7- Nat. Hist. To which Horace alludes, lib. 1. ode 36. Cressa ne careat pulclira dies nota. And the other, Plin. epist. 11. lib. 6. O diem laetum, notandumque mihi candidissimo calculo. With many other in many places. Mart. lib. 8. ep. 45, lib. 9. ep. 53. lib. 10. ep. 38. lib. 11. ep. 37- Stat. lib. 4. sy. 6. Pers. 6at. 2. Catull. epig. 69, Ac. 8 The Parcas, or Fates, Martian us calls them scirba# I 630 PART OF THE KING'S ENTERTAINMENT. The several circles, * 1 both of change and sway, \ Within this isle, there also figured lay : Of which the greatest, perfectest, and last Was this, whose present happiness we taste.— Why keep you silence, daughters ? what dull peace Is this inhabits you? Shall office cease ! Upon the aspect of him, to whom you owe More than you are, or can be ? Shall Time know 1 That article, wherein your flame stood still, And not aspired ? now lieav’n avert an ill Of that black look ! Ere pause possess your breasts, I wish you more of plagues : zeal when it rests, Leaves to be zeal. Up, thou tame River, wake; And from thy liquid limbs this slumber shake : Thou drown’st thyself in inofficious sleep ; And these thy sluggish waters seem to creep, Rather than flow. Up, rise, and swell with pride Above thy banks : Now is not every tide. TAMESIS. To what vain end should I contend to show My weaker powers, when seas of pomp o’erflow The city’s face : and cover all the shore With sands more rich than Tagus’ wealthy ore ? When in the flood of joys that comes with him, He drowns the world ; yet makes it live and swim, And spring with gladness : not my fishes here, Though they be dumb, out do express the cheer Of those bright streams : no less may these and I 2 Boast our delights, albeit we silent lie. GENIUS. Indeed true gladness doth not always speak : Joy bred and born but in the tongue, is weak. Yet (lest the fervor of so pure a flame As this my city bears, might lose the name Without the apt eventing of her heat) Know, greatest JAMES, and no less good than great, In the behalf of all my virtuous sons, Whereof my eldest there thy pomp foreruns, 3 * (A man without my flattering, or his pride, As worthy, as he’s blest* to be thy guide) In his grave name, and all his brethren’s right, Who thirst to drink the nectar of thy sight, The council, commoners, and multitude ; Glad that this day, so long denied, is view’d, I tender thee the heartiest welcome, yet, That ever king had to his empire’s seat : 5 Never came man more long’d for, more desired ; And being come, more reverenced, loved, admired: Hear and record it: “In a prince it is No little virtue, to know who are his.” ac librarias superum ; whereof Clotho is said to be the eldest, signifying in Latin Evocatio. 1 Those beforementioned of the Britain, Roman, Saxon, &c., and to this register of the Fates allude those verses of Ovid, Met. 15.— Cernes illic molimine vasto, Ex aere, et solido rerum tabularia ferro : Quae neque concussum cceli, neque fulminis iram, Nee metuunt ullas tuta atque aeterna ruinas. Invenies illis incisa adamante perenni Fata, &c. 2 Understanding Euphrosyne, Sebasis, Prothymia, &c. 3 The lord mayor, who for his year hath senior place of the rest, and for this day was chief serjeant to the king. * Above the blessing of his present office, the word had Borne particular allusion to his name, which is Bennet, and hath (no doubt) in time been ijie contraction of Benedict. [Sir Thomas Bennet was now Lord Mayor.] b The city, which title is touched before. With like devotions, 6 * do I stoop t’emorace This springing glory of thy godlike race ;7 His country’s wonder, hope, love, joy, and pride : How well doth be become the royal side Of this erected and broad-spreading tree, Under whose shade may Britain ever be ! And from this branch may thousand branches more Shoot o'er the main, and knit with every shore In bonds of marriage, kindred and increase ; And style this land the navel of their peace ; 8 This is your servants wish, your cities vow, Which still shall propagate itself, with you ; And free from spurs of hope, that slow minds move: “ He seeks no hire, that owes his life to love.” And here she comes that is no less a part 9 In this day’s greatness, than in my glad heart. Glory of queens, and glory of your name, 10 Whose graces do as far outspeak your fame, As fame doth silence, when her trumpet rings You daughter, sister, wife of several kings : X1 Besides alliance, and the style of mother, In which one title you drown all your other. Instance, be that fair shoot, is gone before, 12 Your eldest joy, and top of all your store, With those, 13 whose sight to us is yet denied, But not our zeal to them, or aught beside The city can to you : for whose estate She hopes you will be still good advocate To her best lord. So, whilst you mortal are, No taste of sour mortality once dare Approach your house; nor fortune greet your grace, But coming on, and with a forward face. AT TEMPLE-BAR. The Scene carried the frontispiece of a temple, the walls of which and gates were brass ; their pillars silver, their capitals and bases gold : in the highest point of all was erected a Janus’ head, and over it written, JANO QUADRIFRONTI SACRUM. 44 Which title of Quadrifrons is said to be given him, as he respecteth all climates, and fills all parts of the world with his majesty : which Martial would seem to allude unto in that hendecasyllable, Et lingua pariter locutus omniM Others have thought it by reason of the four elements, which brake out of him, being Chaos: for Ovid is not afraid to make Chaos and Janus the same, in these verses, Me Chaos antiqui (nam sum res prisca) vocabant, Adspice, #c. 16 6 To the Prince. 7 An attribute given to great persons, fitly above other humanity, and in frequent use with all the Greek poets, especially Homer, Iliad «.—Sios ’Ax^Aeus. And in tlia same book —Kai aundeov TloXvcpTjp.oi'. 8 As Luctatius calls Parnassus, umbilicum terras. 9 To the queen. 10 An emphatical speech, and well reinforcing her great ness ; being, by this match, more than either her brother, father, &c. 11 Daughter to Frederick II. king of Denmark and Norway, sister to Cliristierne IV. now there reigning, and wife to James our sovereign. 12 The prince Henry Frederick. 13 Charles duke of Rothsey, and the lady Elizabeth. 14 Bassus apud Macrob. I. i. Satur. cap. 9. 15 Lib. 8. ep. 2. 16 Fast. lib. 1. PART OF THE KING'S ENTERTAINMENT 631 But we rather follow, and that more particularly, the opinion of the ancients, 1 who have entitled him Quadrifrons, in regard of the year, which, under his sway, is divided into four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and ascribe unto him the beginnings and ends of things. See M. Cic. 2 Cumque in omnibus rebus vim haberent maximum prima et extrema, principem in sacrificando Janum esse voluerunt , quod 3 4 ab eundo nomen est deduc- tum : ex quo transitiones pervice Jani ,foresque in liminibus prophanarum eedium, Januanominatur, <$c. As also the charge and custody of the whole world, by Ovid : Quicquid ubique vides, caelum, mare, nubila, terras, Omnia sunt nostra clausa patentque manu. Me penes est unum vasti custodia mundi, Etjus vertendi cardinis omne meum est.* About his four heads he hath a wreath of gold, in which was graven this verse, TOT VULTUS MIHI NBC SATIS PUTAVI. 5 Signifying, that though he had four faces, yet he thought them not enough, to behold the greatness and glory of that day ; beneath, under the head, was written, ET MODO SACRIFICO CLUSIUS ORE VOCOR. 6 For being open, he was styled Patulcius, but then upon the coming of his majesty, being to be shut, he was to be called Clusius. Upon the outmost front of the building was placed the entire arms of the kingdom, with the garter, crown, and support¬ ers, cut forth as fair and great as the life, with an hexastic written underneath, all expressing the dignity and power of him that should close that Temple. QUI DUDUM ANGUSTIS TANTUM REGNAVIT IN ORIS PARVOQUE IMPERrO SE TOTI PRiEBUIT ORBI ESSE REGENDO PAREM, TRIA REGNA (UT NULLA DKE3SET VIRTUTI FORTUNA) SUO FELICITER UNI JVNCTA SIMUL SENSIT I FAS UT SIT CREDERE VOTIS NON JAM SANGUINEA FRUITUROS PACE BRITANNOS. In a great frieze, below, that ran quite along the breadth of the building, were written these two verses out of Horace, 7 JURANDASQUE STIUM PER NOMEN PONIMUS ARAS, NIL ORITURUM ALIAS, NIL ORTUM TALE FATENTESL The first and principal person in the temple, was IRENE, or Peace ; she was placed aloft in a cant, her attire white, semined with stars, her hair loose and large: a wreath of olive on her head, on her shoulder a silver dove: in her left hand she held forth an olive branch, with an handful of ripe ears, in the other a crown of laurel, as notes of victory and plenty. By her stood PLUTUS, or Wealth, 8 * a little boy, bare-headed, his locks curled, and spangled with gold, of a fresh aspect, his body almost naked, saving some rich robe 1 Lege Marlianum, lib. 4. cap. 8. Alb. in deorum. 2 De nat. deorum, lib. 2. 3 Quasi Eanus. 4 Fast. ibid. 5 Mart. lib. 8. ep. 2. e Ov. Fast. 1. 7 Lib. 2. epist. 1. ad Aug. 8 So Cephisiodotus hath feigned him. See Paus. in Bceot. et Phil, in Imag. contrary to Aristoph. Theogn. Lucian, and others, who make him blind and deformed. cast over him ; in his arms a heap of gold ingots So express riches, whereof he is the god. Beneath his feet lay ENYALIUS, or Mars, groveling, his armour scattered upon him in several pieces, and sundry sorts of weapons broken about him. Her word to all was UNA TRIUMPHIS INNUMERIS POTIOR. - pax optima rerum Quas homini novisse datum est, pax una triumpliis Innumeris potior Signifying that peace alone was better, and more to be coveted than innumerable triumphs. Besides, upon the right hand of her, but with some little descent, in a hemicycle was seated ESYCIIIA, or Quiet, the first handmaid of Peace; a woman of a grave and venerable aspect, attired in black, upon her head an artificial nest, out of which ap¬ peared storks heads, to manifest a sweet repose. Her feet were placed upon a cube, to shew stability, and in her lap she held a perpendicular or level, as the ensign of evenness and rest: on the top of it sat an halcyon, or king’s-fisher. She had lying at her feet TARACHE, or Tumult, in a garment, of divers but dark colours, her hair wild, and disordered, a foul and troubled face ; about her lay staves, swords, ropes, chains, hammers, stones, and such-like, to express turmoil. The word was, PERAGIT TRANQUILLA POTESTAS. Quod violenta nequit: mandataque fortius urgct Imperiosa quies . l0 To shew the benefit of a calm and facile power, being able to effect in a state that which no vio¬ lence can. On the other side the second handmaid was, ELEUTHERIA, or Liberty, her dressing white, and somewhat an¬ tique, but loose and free : her hair flowing down her back and shoulders : in her right hand she bare a club, on her left a hat, the characters of freedom and power : at her feet a cat was placed, the crea¬ ture most affecting and expressing liberty. She trod on DOULOSIS, or Servitude, a woman in old and worn garments, lean and meagre, bearing fetters on her feet and hands ; about her neck a yoke, to insinuate bond¬ age, and the word NEC UNQUAM GRATIOR, alluding to that other of Claud. Nunquam libertas gratior extat Quam sub rege pio. 11 And intimated that liberty could never appear more graceful and lovely, than now under so good a prince. The third handmaid was SOTERIA, or Safety, a damsel in carnation, the colour signi¬ fying cheer, and life ; she sat high : upon her head she wore an antique helm, and in her right hand a spear for defence, and in her left a cup for medi- o Sil. Ital. i° Claud, de Malii Theo. cons, panec, n De laud. Stil. 1. 3. 532 PART OF THE KING'S ENTERTAINMENT. cine : at her feet was set a pedestal, upon which a serpent rolled up did lie. Beneath was PEIRA, or Danger, a woman despoiled, and almost naked; the little garment she hath left her, of several colours, to note her various disposition. Besides her lies a torch out, and her sword broken, (the instrument of her fury) with a net and wolf ’s-skin (the ensigns of her malice) rent in pieces. The word, TERGA DEDERE METUS, borrowed from Mart. 1 and implying that now all fears have turned their backs, and our safety might become security, danger being so wholly depressed, and unfurnished of all means to hurt. The fourth attendant is, EUDAIMONIA, or Felicity, varied on the second hand, and appa¬ relled richly in an embroidered robe, and mantle : a fair golden tress. In her right hand a Caduceus, the note of peaceful wisdom : in her left, a Cornu- copiee filled only with flowers, as a sign of flou¬ rishing blessedness ; and crowned with a garland of the same. At her feet, DYSPRAGIA, or Unhappiness, a woman bare-headed, her neck, arms, breast, and feet naked, her look hollow and pale; she holds a Cornucopise turned downward, with all the flowers fallen out and scattered : upon her sits a raven, as the augury of ill fortune : and the soul was REDEUNT SATURNIA REGNA, out of Virgil, 2 to shew that now those golden times were returned again, wherein Peace was with us so advanced, Rest received, Liberty restored, Safety assured, and all blessedness appearing in every of these virtues, her particular triumph over her opposite evil. This is the dumb argument of the frame, and illustrated with this verse of Virgil, written in the under frieze, NULLA SALUS BELLO : PACEM TE POSCIMUS OMNES. 3 The speaking part was performed, as within the temple, where there was erected an altar, to which, at the approach of the king, appears the Flamen MARTIALIS. 4 And to him, GENIUS URBIS. The Genius we attired before: to the Flamen we appoint this habit. A long crimson robe to witness his nobility, his tippet and sleeves white, as re¬ flecting on purity in his religion, a rich mantle of gold with a train to express the dignity of his function. Upon his head a hat of delicate wool,s whose top ended in a cone, and was thence called apex, according to that of Lucan, lib. 1, Attollensque apicem generoso verticeflamen. This apex was covered with a fine net of yam, 6 which they named apiculum, and was sustained with a bowed twig of pomegranate tree ; 7 it was also in the hot time of summer to be bound with ribands, and thrown behind them, as Scaliger 8 teacheth. In his hand he bore a golden censer with perfume, and censing about the altar, (having first kindled his fire on the top) is interrupted by the Genius. GENIUS. Stay, what art thou, that in this strange attire, Dar’st kindle stranger and unhallow'd fire Upon this altar ? FLAMEN. Rather what art thou That dar’st so rudely interrupt my vow? My habit speaks my name. GENIUS. A Flamen ? FLAMEN. Yes, And Martialis call’d. 9 GENIUS. I so did guess By my short view ; but whence didst thou ascend Hither ? or how? or to what mystic end? FLAMEN. The noise, and present tumult of this day, Roused me from sleep, and silence, where I lay Obscured from light: which when I wak’d to see, I wondering thought what this great pomp might When, looking in my kalendar, I found [be. The Ides of March 10 were enter’d, and I bound With these, to celebrate the genial feast Of Anna styled Perenna, 11 Mars’s guest, 12 Who, in this month of his, is yearly call’d To banquet at his altars ; and install’d 6 To this looks that other conjecture of Varro, lib. 4. de lingua Latina : Flamines quod licio in capite velati erant semper, ac caput cinctum habebant filo, flamines dicti. 7 Which in their attire was called Stroppus, in their wives’ Inarculum. 8 Seal. ibid, in con. Pone enim regerebant apicem, ne gravis esset summis sestatis caloribus. Amentis enim, quoe offendices dicebantur sub mentum abductis, ro- ligabant ; ut cum vellent, regererent, et pone pendere permitterent. 9 Of Mars, whose rites (as we have touch’d before) this Flamen did specially celebrate. 10 With us the fifteenth of March, which was the pre¬ sent day of this triumph : and on which the great feast of Anna Perenna (among the Romans) was yearly, and with such solemnity remembered. Ovid. Fast. 3, Idibus est, Annae festum geniale Perenna;, Ilaud procul a ripis, &c. 11 Who this Anna should be (with the Romans them selves) hath been no trifling controversy. Some have thought her fabulously the sister of Dido, some a nymph of Numicius, some Io, some Themis. Others an old woman of Bovilla, that fed the seditious multitude in Monte Sacro, with wafers, and fine cakes, in time of their penury : to whom, afterwards (in memory of the benefit) their peace being made with the nobles, they ordained this feast. Yet they that have thought nearest, have missed all these, and directly imagined her the moon : and that she was called ANNA,Quia mensibus impleat annum, Ovid. ib. To which the vow that they used in her rites, somewhat confirmingly alludes, which was, ut Annare, et Perennare commode liceret. Macr. Sat. lib. 1. cap. 12. 12 So Ovid, ibid. Fast, makes Mars speaking to her, Mense meo coleris, junxi mea tempora tecum. 1 Lib. 12. ep. 6. 2 Eclog. v. 3 JEn. 1.11. 4 One of the three Flamines that, as some think, Numa Pompilius first instituted ; hut we rather, with Varro, take him of Romulus’s institution, whereof there were only two, he and Dialis : to whom he was next in dignity, lie was always created out of the nobility, and did perform the rites to Mars, who was thought the father of Romulus. 5 Scaliger in conject. in Var. saith, Totus pileus, vel potius velamenta, fiammeum dicebatur, unde flamines dicti. PART OF THE KING’S ENTERTAINMENT r •> o *.j e_/ ij A goddess with him, 1 since she fills the year, And knits 2 the oblique scarf that girts the sphere. Whilst four-faced Janus turns his vernal look 3 4 5 Upon their meeting hours, as if he took High pride and pleasure. GENIUS. Sure thou still dost dream, And both thy tongue, and thought rides on the Of phantasy : behold here he nor she, [stream Have any altar, fane, or deity. Stoop ; read but this inscription : 4 and then view To whom the place is consecrate. ’Tis true That this is Janus’ temple, and that now He turns upon the year his freshest brow ; That this is Mars’s month ; and these the Ides, Wherein his Anne was honour’d ; both the tides, Titles, and place, we know : but these dead rites Are long since buried ; and new power excites More high and hearty flames. Lo, there is he, Who brings with him a greater Anne than she : 5 Whose strong and potent virtues have defaced 6 7 Stern Mars’s statues, and upon them placed His,7 and the world’s best blessings: this hath brought Sweet peace to sit in that bright state she ought, Unbloody, or untroubled ; hath forced hence All tumults, fears, or other dark portents That might invade weak minds ; hath made men Once more the face of welcome liberty : [see And doth in all his present acts restore That first pure world, made of the better ore. Now innocence shall cease to be the spoil Of ravenous greatness, or to steep the soil Of rased peasantry with tears and blood ; No more shall rich men, for their little good. Suspect to be made guilty ; or vile spies Enjoy the lust of their so murdering eyes : Men shall put off their iron minds, and hearts ; The time forget his old malicious arts With this new minute ; and no print remain Of what was thought the former age’s stain. Back, Flamen, with thy superstitious fumes, And cense not here ; thy ignorance presumes Too much in acting any ethnic rite In this translated temple : here no wight To sacrifice, save my devotion, comes, That brings, instead of those thy masculine gums, 8 * 1 Nuper erat dea facta, &c. Ibid. 2 Where is understood the meeting of the zodiac in March, the month wherein she is celebrated. 3 That face wherewith he beholds the spring. 4 Written upon the altar, for which we refer you to col. 2 of this page. 5 The queen : to which in our inscription we spake to the king MARTE MAJORI. ® The temple of Janus we apprehend to be both the house of war and peace : of war, when it'is open; of peace, when it is shut: and that there, each over the other is interchangeably placed, to the vicissitude of times. 7 Which are peace, rest, liberty, safety, Ac. and were his actively, but the world’s passively. 8 Somewhat a strange epithet in our tongue, but proper to the thing: for they were only masculine odours, which were offered to the altars, Yirg. Eel. 8. Verhenasque adole pingueis, et mascula thura. And Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 12. cap. 14. speaking of these, saith, Quod ex rotunditate guttse pependit, masculum vocamus, cum alias non fere mas vocetur, ubi non sit foemina: religioni tributum ne sexus alter usurparetur. Masculum aliqui putant a specie testium dictum. See him also lib. 34. cap. 11. And Arnob. lib. 7. advers. gent. Non si mille tu pondera masculi thuris incendas, &e. My city’s heart; which shall for ever bum Upon this altar, and no time shall turn The same to ashes : here I fix it fast, Flame bright, flame high, and may it ever last. Whilst I, before the figure of thy peace. Still tend the fire ; and give it quick increase With prayers, wishes, vows ; whereof be these The least, and weakest: that no age may leese The memory of this so rich a day; But rather that it henceforth yearly may Begin our spring, and with our spring the prime, And first account of years, of months, 9 of time ; 10 And may these Ides as fortunate appear To thee, as they to Caesar fatal were. 11 Be all thy thoughts born perfect, and thy hopes In their events still crown’d beyond their scopes. Let not wide heav’n that secret blessing know To give, which she on thee will not bestow. Blind Fortune be thy slave ; and may her store, The less thou seek’st it, follow thee the more. Much more I would : but see, these brazen gates Make haste to close, as urged by thy fates. Here ends my city’s office, here it breaks: Yet with my tongue, and this pure heart, she speaks A short farewell: and lower than thy feet, With fervent thanks, thy royal pains doth greet. Pardon, if my abruptness breed disease : “ He merits not to offend, that hastes to please." OVER THE ALTAR WAS WRITTEN THIS INSCRIP¬ TION : D. I. O. M. BRITANNIARUM. IMP. PACIS. VINDICI. MARTE. MAJORI. P. P. F. S. AUGUSTO. NOVO. GENTIUM. CONJUNCTARUM. NUMINI. TUTELARI. D. A. CONSERV ATRICI. ANNiE. IPS^E. PERENN^E. DEABUSQUE. UNIVERSIS. OPTATIORI. SUI. FOR- TUNATISSIMI. THALAMI. SOCLE. ET CONSORTI. PULCHERRIMiE. AUGUSTISSIM^E. ET H. F. P. FILIO. SUO. NOBILISSIMO. OB. ADVENTUM. AD. URBEM. HANC. SUAM. EXPECTATISSIMUM. GRATISSIMUM. CELEBRATISSIMUM. CUJUS. NON. RADII. SED. SOLES. POTIUS. FUNESTISSIMAM. NUPER. AERIS. INTEMPERIEM. SERENARUNT. S. P. Q. L. VOTIS. X. VO TIS. XX. ARDENTISSIMIS. L. M. HANC. ARAM P. 9 According to Romulus his institution, who made March the first month, and consecrated it to his father, of whom it was called Martius. Varr. Fest. in frag. Martius mensis initium anni fuit, et in Latio, et post Romam conditam, &c. And Ovid. Fast. 3. A te princi- pium Romano dicimus anno: Primus de patrio nomine mensis erit. Vox rata fit, &c. See Macr. lib. 1. cap. 12. and Solin. in Polyhist. cap. 3. Quod hoc mense mereedcs exolverint magistris, quas completas annus debcrl fecisse, &c. 10 Some, to whom we have read this, have taken it for a tautology, thinking Time enough expressed before in years and months. For whose ignorant sakes we must confess to have taken the better part of this travail, in noting a thing not usual, neither affected of us, but where there is necessity, as here, to avoid their dull censures. Where in years and months we alluded to that is observed in our former note: but by Time we understand the present, and that from this instant we should begin to reckon, and make this the first of our time. Which ia also to be helped by emphasis. 11 In which he was slain in the senate. 534 PART OF THE KING'S ENTERTAINMENT. AND UPON THE GATE, BEING SHUT, IMP. JACOBUS. MAX. CiESAR. AUG. P. P. PACE POPULO BRITANNICO TERRA MARIQUE PARTA JANUM CLUSIT. S. C. IN THE STRAND. The invention was a rainbow, the moon, sun, and those seven stars, which antiquity hath styled the Pleiades or Vergilim, advanced between two magni¬ ficent pyramids of seventy foot in height, on which were drawn his majesty’s several pedigrees Eng. and Scot. To which body (being framed before) we were to apt our soul. And finding that one of these seven lights, Electra, is rarely or not at all to be seen, as Ovid. lib. 4. Fast, affirmeth Pleiades incipient humeros relevare paternos ; Quce septem did, sex tamen esse solent. And by and by after, Sive quod Electra Trojce spectare ruinas Eon tulit; ante oculos opposuitque manum. And Festus Avien . 1 Fama vetus septem memorat genitore creatas Longcevo: sex se rutila inter sidera tantum Sustollunt, AfC. And beneath, - Cerni sex solas carmine Mynthes Asserit: Electram ccelo abscessisse pro/undo, $c. We ventured to follow this authority, and made her the speaker: presenting her hanging in the air, in figure of a comet; according to Anonymus. Electra non sustinens videre casum pronepotum fugerit; unde et illam dissolutis crinibus propter luctum ire asserunt, et propter comas quidam Cometen appellant. THE SPEECH. ELECTRA. The long laments 1 2 3 4 5 I spent for ruin’d Troy, Are dried ; and now mine eyes run tears of joy. No more shall men suppose Electra dead, Though from the consort of her sisters fled Unto the arctic circle,3 here to grace, And gild this day with her serenest face : 4 And see, my daughter Iris 5 hastes to throw Her roseat wings, in compass of a bow, About our state, as sign 6 of my approach : Attracting to her seat from Mithra’s coach, 7 1 Paraph, in Arat. Phaenom. 2 Fest. Avi. paraph. Pars ait Idaese deflentem incendia Trojae, Et numerosa suas lugentem funera gentis, Elec¬ tram tetris mcestum dare nubibus orbem. Besides the reference to antiquity, this speech might be understood by allegory of the town here, that had been so ruined with sickness, &c. 3 Hyginus. Sed postquam Troja fuit capta, et pro¬ genies ejus quae k Dardano fuit eversa, dolore permotam ab his se removisse, et in circulo qui arcticus dicitur con- stitisse, &c. 4 Electra signifies serenity itself, and is compounded of s t]\ios, which is the sun, and &9pios, that signifies serene. She is mentioned to be Anima sphaerae solis, by Proclus. Com. in Hesiod. 5 She is also feigned to be the mother of the rain-bow. Nascitur enim Iris ex aqua et serenitate, k refractione radiorum scilicet. Arist. in meteorol. 0 Val. Flac. Argonaut. 1. makes the rainbow indicem serenitatis. Emicuit reserata dies ccelumque resolvit Arcus, et in summos redierunt nubila montes. A thousand different and particular hues, Which she throughout her body doth diffuse. The sun, as loth to part from this half sphere, Stands still; and Phoebe labours to appear In all as bright, if not as rich, as he : And, for a note of more serenity, My six 8 * fair sisters hither shift their lights, To do this hour the utmost of her rites. Where lest the captious, or profane might doubt, How these clear heavenly bodies come about All to be seen at once ; yet neither’s light Eclips’d, or shadow’d by the other’s sight: Let ignorance know, great king, this day is thine, And doth admit no night; but all do shine As well nocturnal, as diurnal fires, To add unto the flame of our desires. Which are, now thou hast closed up Janus' gates,® And given so general peace to all estates, That no offensive mist, or cloudy stain, May mix with splendor of thy golden reign ; But, as thou’st freed thy Chamber from the noise 10 * Of war and tumult; thou wilt pour those joys Upon this place, 11 which claims to be the seat 12 Of all the kingly race : the cabinet To all thy counsels, and the judging chair To this thy special kingdom. Whose so fair And wholesome laws, in every court, shall strive By equity, and their first innocence to thrive ; The base and guilty bribes of guiltier men Shall be thrown back, and justice look, as when She loved the earth, and fear’d not to be sold For that, 13 which worketh all things to it, gold. The dam of other evils, avarice, Shall here lock down her jaws, and that rude vice Of ignorant and pitied greatness, pride, Decline with shame ; ambition now shall hide Her face in dust, as dedicate to sleep, That in great portals wont her watch to keep. All ills shall fly the light: thy court be free No less from envy, than from flattery; All tumult, faction, and harsh discord cease, That might perturb the music of thy peace : The querulous nature shall no longer find Room for his thoughts : one pure consent of mind Shall flow in every breast, and not the air, Sun, moon, or stars shine more serenely fair. This from that loud, blest oracle, I sing ! Who here, and first, pronounced thee Britain's king. Long may’st thou live, and see me thus appear, As ominous a comet, 14 from my sphere, 7 A name of the sun, Stat. The. 1. 1. torquentem cornua Mithran. And Martian. Capel. 1. 3. de nup. Mer. et Phil. Te Serapim. Nilus, Memphis veneratur Osirin; Dissona sacra Mithran, &c. 8 Alcyone, Celaeno, Taygete, Asterope, Merope, Maia, which are also said to be the souls of the other spheres, as Electra of the sun Proclus, ibi in com. Alcyone Veneris, Celaeno Saturni, Taygete Lunae, Asterope Jovis, Merope Martis, Maia Mercurii. 9 Alluding back to that of our temple. 10 London. 11 His city of Westminster, in whose name, and at whose charge, together with the dutchy of Lancaster, this arch was erected. 12 Since here, they not only sat being crowned, but also first received their crowns. 13 Hor. Car. lib. 4. ode 9. Ducentisad se cuneta pecuniar 14 For our more authority to induce her thus, see Fest Avien. paraph, in Arat. speaking of Electra, Nonnun A PANEGYRE. 535 Unto thy reign; as that did auspicate 1 So lasting glory to Augustus’ state. quam oceani tamen istam surgere ab undis, In convexa poli, sed sede carere sororum; Atque os discretum procul edere, detestatam : Germanosque choros sobolis lacrymare ruinas Diffusamque comas cerni, crinisque solut* Mon- strari effigie, &c. 1 All comets were not fatal, some were fortunately ominous, as tliis to which we allude ; and wherefore we have Pliny’s testimony, Nat. Hist. lib. 2. cap. 25. Cometes in uno totius orbis loco colitur in templo Roma;, admodum faustus Divo Augusto judicatus ab ipso: qui incipiente eo. apparuit ludis quos faciebat Yeneri Genetrici, non. multo post obitum patris Caesaris, in collegio ab eo instituto. Namque his verbis id gaudium prodidit. Iis ipsis ludorum meorum diebus, sydus crinitum per septem dies in rcgione coeli, qua; sub septentrionibus est, conspectum. Id orieba- tur circa undecimam horam diei, clarumque et omnibus terris conspicuum fuit. . Eo sydere significari vulgus credidit, Caesaris animam inter Deorum immortalium numina receptam: quo nomine id insigne simulacra capitis ejus, quod mox in foro consecravimus, adjectum est. Ha;c ille in publicum, interiore gaudio sibi ilium natum seque in eo nasci interpretatus est. Et si verum fatemur, salutare id terris fuit. A PANEGYRE ON THE HAPPY ENTRANCE OF JAMES, OUR SOVEREIGN, TO HIS FIRST HIGH SESSION OF PARLIAMENT IN THIS HIS KINGDOM, The 19 th of March, 1603. Licet toto nunc Helicone frui.—Mart. Heaven now not strives, alone, our breasts to fill With joys; but urgeth his full favours still. Again, the glory of our western world Unfolds himself; and from his eyes are hurl’d To-day, a thousand radiant lights that stream To every nook and angle of his realm. His former rays did only clear the sky ; But these his searching beams are cast, to pry Into those dark and deep concealed vaults, Where men commit black incest with their faults, And snore supinely in the stall of sin : Where murther, rapine, lust, do sit within, Carousing human blood in iron bowls, And make their den the slaughter-house of souls : From whose foul reeking caverns first arise Those damps, that so offend all good men’s eyes, And would, if not dispers’d, infect the crown, And in their vapour her bright metal drown. To this so clear and sanctified an end, I saw, when reverend Themis did descend Upon his state : letdown in that rich chain, That fast’neth heavenly power to earthly reign: Beside her stoop’d on either hand, a maid, Fair Dic6, and Eunomia, who were said To be her daughters ; and but faintly known On earth, till now, they come to grace his throne. Her third, Irene, help’d to bear his train; And in her office vow’d she would remain, Till foreign malice, or unnatural spight (Which fates avert) should force her from her right. With these he pass’d, and with his people’s hearts, Breath’d in his way ; and souls, their better parts, Hasting to follow forth in shouts, and cries, Upon his face all threw their covetous eyes, As on a wonder : some amazed stood, As if they felt, but had not known their good. Other would fain have shown it in their words ; But, when their speech so poor a help affords Unto their zeal’s expression, they are mute ; And only with red silence him salute. Some cry from tops of houses ; thinking noise The fittest herald to proclaim true joys ; Others on ground run gazing by his side, All, as unwearied, as unsatisfied : And every window grieved it could not move Along with him, and the same trouble prove. They that had seen, but four short days before, His gladding look, now long’d to see it more. And as of late, when he through London went, The amorous city spared no ornament, That might her beauties heighten ; but so drest, As our ambitious dames, when they make feast, And would be courted : so this town put on Her brightest tire; and in it equal shone To her great sister ; save that modesty, Her place, and years, gave her precedency. The joy of either was alike, and full; No age, nor sex, so weak, or strongly dull, That did not bear a part in this consent Of heart, and voices. All the air was rent, As with the murmur of a moving wood ; The ground beneath did seem a moving flood; Walls, windows, roofs, tow’rs, steeples, all were se With several eyes, that in this object met. Old men were glad their fates till now did last; And infants, that the hours had made such haste, To bring them forth: whilst riper aged, and apt To understand the more, the more were rapt. This was the people’s love, with which did strive The nobles zeal, yet either kept alive The other’s flame, as doth the wick and wax, That, friendly temper’d, one pure taper makes. Meanwhile the reverend Themis draws aside The king’s obeying will, from taking pride In these vain stirs, and to his mind suggests How he may triumph in his subjects’ breasts, With better pomp. She tells him first, “ That kings Are nere on earth the most conspicuous things : That they, by heav’n are placed upon his throne, To rule like heav’n ; and have no more their own, As they are men, than men. That all they do Though hid at home, abroad is search’d into : And being once found out, discover’d lies Unto as many envies there, as eyes. THE SATYR. 53G That princes, since they know it is their fate, Oft-times, to have the secrets of their state Betray’d to fame, should take more care, and fear In public acts what face and form they bear. She then remember’d to his thought the place Where he was going; and the upward race Of kings, preceding him in that high court; Their laws, their ends ; the men she did report: And all so justly, as his ear was joy’d To hear the truth, from spight or flattery void. She show’d him who made wise, who honest acts ; Who both, who neither : all the cunning tracts, And thriving statutes, she could promptly note ; The bloody, base, and barbarous she did quote ; Where laws were made to serve the tyrant’s will; Where sleeping they could save, and waking kill; Where acts gave license to impetuous lust To bury churches in forgotten dust, And with their ruins raise the pander’s bowers: When public justice borrow’d all her powers From private chambers ; that could then create Laws, judges, counsellors, yea, prince and state. All this she told, and more, with bleeding eyes ; For Right is as compassionate as wise.” Nor did he seem their vices so to love, As once defend, what Themis did reprove. For though by right, and benefit of times, He own’d their crowns, he would not so their crimes. He knew that princes, who had sold their fame To their voluptuous lusts, had lost their name ; And that no wretch was more unblest than he, Whose necessary good ’twas now to be An evil king : and so must such be still, Who once have got the habit to do ill. One wickedness another must defend; For vice is safe, while she hath vice to friend. He knew that those who would with love command, Must with a tender, yet a stedfast, hand Sustain the reins, and in the check forbear To offer cause of injury, or fear ; That kings, by their example, more do sway Than by their power ; and men do more obey When they are led, than when they are compell’d. In all these knowing arts our prince excell’d. And now the dame had dried her drooping eyne, When, like an April Iris, flew her shine About the streets, as it would force a spring From out the stones, to gratulate the king. She blest the people, that in slioais did swim To hear her speech ; which still began in him, And ceas’d in them. She told them what a fate Was gently fall’n from heaven upon the state ; How dear a father they did now enjoy, That came to save, what discord would destroy, And entering with the power of a king, The temperance of a private man did bring, That wan affections ere his steps wan ground ; And was not hot, or covetous to be crown’d Before men’s hearts had crown’d him. Who (unlike Those greater bodies of the sky, that strike The lesser fires dim) in his access Brighter than all, hath yet made no one less ; Though many greater : and the most, the best. Wherein his choice was happy with the rest Of his great actions, first to see, and do What all men’s wishes did aspire unto. Hereat the people could no longer hold Their bursting joys ; but through the air was roll’d The lengthen’d shout, as when th’ artillery Of heaven is discharg’d along the sky. And this confession flew from every voice, “ Never had land more reason to rejoice, Nor to her bliss could aught now added be, Save, that she might the same perpetual see.” Which when time, nature, and the fates denied, With a twice louder shout again they cried, “ Yet let blest Britain ask, without your wrong, Still to have such a king, and this king long.” Solus rex et poeta non quotannxs nascitur. THE SATYR. A Satyr, lodged in a little spinet, by which her Majesty and the Prince were to come, at the report of certain cornets that were divided in several places of the park, to signify her approach, advanced his head above the top of the wood, wondering, and, with his pipe in his hand, began as followeth: Here ! there! and every where ! Some solemnities are near, That these changes strike mine ear. My pipe and I a part shall bear. [After a short strain with his pipe ; Look, see !—beshrew this tree ! What may all this wonder be ? Pipe it who that list for me: I’ll fly out abroad, and see. C Here he leaped down, and gazed the Queen and the Prince in the face. That is Cyparissus’ face! And the dame hath Syrinx’ grace 1 O that Pan were now in place— Sure they are of heavenly race. \llere he ran into the wood again, and hid himself, whilst to the sound of excellent soft music, that was concealed in the thicket, there came tripping up the lawn a bevy of Fairies, attending on Mab their queen, who falling into an artificial ring, began to dance a round, while their mistress spake as followeth. Mab. Hail and welcome, worthiest queen 1 Joy had never perfect been, To the nymphs that haunt this green, Had they not this evening seen. Now they print it on the ground With their feet in figures round ; Marks that will be ever found, To remember this glad stound. Sat. [ Peeping out of the bush.'] Trust her not, you bonnibell, She will forty leasings tell; I do know her pranks right well. THE SATYR. 637 Mab. Satyr, we must have a spell For your tongue, it runs too fleet. Sat. Not so nimbly as your feet, When about the cream-bowls sw T eet, You and all your elves do meet. [Here he came hopping forth, and mixing himself with the Fairies, skipped in, out, and about their circle, while they made many offers to catch at him. This is Mab, the mistress Fairy, That doth nightly rob the dairy, And can hurt or help the cherning, As she please, without discerning. 1 Fai. Pug, you will anon take warning ? Sat. She that pinches country wenches, If they rub not clean their benches, And with sharper nails remembers When they rake not up their embers r. But if so they chance to feast her, In a shoe she drops a tester. 2 Fai. Shall we strip the skipping jester ? Sat. This is she that empties cradles, Takes out children, puts in ladles : Trains forth midwives in their slumber, With a sieve the holes to number; And then leads them from her burrows, Home through ponds and water-furrows. 1 Fai. Shall not all this mocking stir us ? Sat. She can start our Franklin’s daughters, In their sleep, with shrieks and laughters ; And on sweet St. Anna’s night, Feed them with a promised sight, Some of husbands, some of lovers, Which an empty dream discovers. 1 Fai. Satyr, vengeance near you hovers. Sat. And in hope that you would come here Yester-eve, the lady Summer 1 She invited to a banquet— But (in sooth) I con you thank yet, That you could so well deceive her Of the pride which gan up-heave her ! And, by this, would so have blown her As no wood-god should have known her. [Skips vito the wood. Fai. Mistress, this is only spite: For you would not yesternight Kiss him in the cock-shut light. Sat. [returning .] By Pan, and thou hast hit it right. Mab. Fairies, pinch him black and blue, Now you have him, make him rue. [They lay hold on him, and nig him. Sat. O, hold, [mistress] Mab! I sue. Fai. Nay, the devil shall have his due. [Here he ran quite away, and left them in a confusion. Mab. Pardon, lady, this wild strain, Common with the sylvan train, That do skip about this plain :— Elves, apply your gyre again. 1 For she was expected there on Midsummer-day at night, but came not till the day following. And whilst some do hop the ring, Some shall play, and some shall sing: We’ll express, in ev’ry thing, Oriana’s well-coming. 2 SONG. This is she, this is she In whose world of grace Every season, person, place, That receive her happy be; For with no less. Than a kingdom’s happiness, 3 Doth she private Lares bless, 4 And ours above the rest; By how much we deserve it least. Long live Oriana T’ exceed, whom she succeeds, our late Diana Mab. Madam, now an end to make, Deign a simple gift to take ; Only for the Fairies’ sake, Who about you still shall wake. ’Tis done only to supply His suspected courtesy, Who, since Thamyra did die, Hath not brook’d a lady’s eye, Nor allow’d about his place, Any of the female race. Only we are free to trace All his grounds, as he to chase. For which bounty to us lent, Of him unknowledg’d, or unsent, We prepared this compliment, And as far from cheap intent, [Gives her a jewel In particular to feed Any hope that should succeed, Or our glory by the deed, As yourself are from the need. Utter not, we you implore, Who did give it, nor wherefore : And whenever you restore Your self to us, you shall have more. Highest, happiest queen, farewell; But beware you do not tell. Here the Fairies hopt away in a fantast ic dance, when, on a sudden, the Satyr discovered himself again. Sat. Not tell? ha! ha! I could smile At this old and toothless wile. Lady, I have been no sleeper; She belies the noble keeper. Say, that here he likes the groves, And pursue no foreign loves : Is he therefore to be deem’d Rude, or savage? or esteem’d But a sorry entertainer, ’Cause he is no common strainer, After painted nymphs for favours. Or that in his garb he savours Little of the nicety, In the sprucer courtiery ; As the rosary of kisses, With the oath that never misses, 2 Quasi Oriens ANNA. 3 Bringing with her the prince, which is the greatest felicity of kingdoms. 4 For households. 538 THE SATYR. This, “ believe me on the breast,” And then telling some man’s jest, Thinking to prefer his wit, Equal with his suit by it, I mean his clothes ? No, no, no ; Here doth no such humour flow. He can neither bribe a grace, Nor encounter my lord’s face With a pliant smile, and flatter, Though this lately were some matter To the making of a courtier. Now he hopes he shall resort there, Safer, and with more allowance ; Since a hand hath governance, That hath given these customs chace, And hath brought his own in place. O that now a wish could bring, The god-like person of a king ! Then should even envy find, Cause of wonder at the mind Of our woodman : but lo, where His kingly image doth appear, And is all this while neglected. Pardon, lord, you are respected, Deep as is the keeper’s heart, And as dear in every part. See, for instance, where he sends His son, his heir; who humbly bends [Fetches out of the wood the lord Spencer's eldest son, attired and appointed like a huntsman. Low as is his father’s earth, To the womb that gave you birth : So he was directed first, Next to you, of whom the thirst Of seeing takes away the use Of that part, should plead excuse For his boldness, which is less By his comely shamefacedness. Rise up, sir, I will betray All I think you have to say; That your father gives you here (Freely as to him you were) To the service of this prince: And with you these instruments Of his wild and sylvan trade. Better not Actseon had ; The bow was Phoebe’s, and the horn, By Orion often worn : The dog of Sparta breed, and good, As can ring within a wood ; Thence his name is : you shall try How he hunteth instantly. But perhaps the queen, your mother, Rather doth affect some other Sport, as coursing : we will prove Which her highness most doth love.— Satyrs, let the woods resound ; They shall have their welcome crown’d With a brace of bucks to ground. At that the whole wood and place resounded with the noise of cornets, horns, and other hunting music, and a brace of choice deer put out, and as fortunately killed, as they were meant to be, even in the sight of her majesty. This was the First Night’s Show. The next day being Sunday, the Queen rested, and on Monday till after dinner ; where there was a speech suddenly thought on, to induce a morris of the clowns thereabout, who most officiously presented themselves ; but by reason of the throng of the country that came in, their speaker could not be heard, who was in the person of Nobody, to deliver this following speech, and attired in a pair of breeches which were made to come up to his neck, with his arms out at his pockets, and a cap drowning his face. If my outside move your laughter, Pray Jove, my inside be thereafter. Quern, prince, duke, earls, Countesses, you courtly pearls ! (And I hope no mortal sin, If I put less ladies in) Fair saluted be you all! At this time it doth befall, We are the huisher to a morris, A kind of masque, whereof good store is In the country hereabout, But this, the choice of all the rout, Who, because that no man sent them, Have got Nobody to present them. These are things have no suspicion Of their ill-doing; nor ambition Of their well: but as the pipe Shall inspire them, mean to skip : They come to see, and to be seen, And though they dance afore the queen, There’s none of these doth hope to come by Wealth to build another Holmby: All those dancing days are done, Men must now have more than one Grace, to build their fortunes on, Else our soles would sure have gone, All by this time to our feet.— I not deny where graces meet In a man, that quality Is a graceful property: But when dancing is his best, Beshrew me, I suspect the rest. But I am Nobody, and my breath, Soon as it is born, hath death. Come on, clowns, forsake your dumps, And bestir your hob-nail’d stumps, Do your worst, I’ll undertake, Not a jerk you have shall make Any lady here in love. Perhaps your fool, or so, may move Some lady’s woman with a trick, And upon it she may pick A pair of revelling legs, or two, Out of you, with much ado. But see, the hobby-horse is forgot. Fool, it must be your lot, To supply his want with faces, And some other buffoon graces, You know how; piper, play, And let Nobody hence away. [Here the morris.dancers entered THE PENATES. There was also another parting speech, which was to have been presented in the person of a youth, and accom¬ panied with divers gentlemen’s younger sons of the country: but by reason of the multitudinous press, was also hindered. And which we have here adjoined. And will you then, mirror of queens, depart? Shall nothing stay you? not my master’s heart, That pants to lose the comfort of your light, And see his day, ere it be old, grow night? You are a goddess, and your will be done : Yet this our last hope is, that as the sun Cheers objects far removed, as well as near; So, wheresoe’er you shine, you’ll sparkle here. And you, dear lord, on whom my covetous eye Doth feed itself, but cannot satisfy, 539 O shoot up fast in spirit, as in years; That when upon her head proud Europe wears Her stateliest tire, you may appear thereon The richest gem, without a paragon. Shine bright and fixed as the arctic star: And when slow time hath made you fit for war, Look over the strict ocean, and think where You may but lead us forth, that grow up here Against a day, when our officious swords Shall speak our actions, better than our words. Till then, all good event conspire to crown Your parents hopes, our zeal, and your renown. Peace usher now your steps, and where you come, Be Envy still struck blind, and Flattery dumb. THE PENATES. The King and Queen being entered in at the gate, the Penates, or household gods, received them, attired after the antique manner, ivith javelins in their hands, standing on each side of the porch. 1 Pen . Leap, light hearts, in ev’ry breast, Joy is now the fittest passion ; Double majesty hath blest All the place, with that high grace Exceedetli admiration ! 2 Pen. Welcome, monarch of this isle, Europe’s envy, and her mirror ; Great in each part of thy style ; England’s wish, and Scotland’s bliss, Both France and Ireland’s terror. 1 Pen. Welcome are you ; and no less, Your admired queen : the glory Both of state, and comeliness. Every line of her divine Form, is a beauteous story. 2 Pen. High in fortune, as in blood, So are both ; and blood renowned By oft falls, that make a flood In your veins : yet all these strains Are in your virtues drowned. 1 Pen. House, be proud: for of earth’s store These two only are the wonder : In them she’s rich, and is no more. Zeal is bound their praise to sound As loud as fame, or thunder. 2 Pen. Note, but how the air, the spring Concur in their devotions ; Pairs of turtles sit and sing On each tree, o’er-joy’d to see In them like love, like motions. 1 Pen. Enter, sir, this longing door, Whose glad lord nought could have Equally : I’m sure not more, [blessed Than this sight: save of your right, When you were first possessed. 2 Pen . That, indeed, transcended this. Since which hour, wherein you gain’d For this grace, both he and his, [it, Every day, have learn’d to pray, And now they have obtain’d it. Here the Penates lead them in, thorough the house, into the garden, where Mercury received them, walking before them. Mer. Retire, you household-gods, and leave these excellent creatures to be entertained by a more eminent deity. [Exeunt Pen.] Hail, king and queen of the Islands, called truly Fortunate, and by you made so. To tell you who I am, and wear all these notable and speaking ensigns about me, were to challenge you of most impossible ignorance, and accuse myself of as palpable glory: it is enough that you know me here, and come with the license of my father Jove, who is the bounty of heaven, to give you early welcome to the bower of my mother Maia, no less the goodness of earth. And may it please you to walk, I will tell you no wonderful story. This place, whereon you are now advanced (by the mighty power of poetry, and the help of a faith that can remove mountains) is the Arcadian hill Cyllene, the place where myself was both begot and born : and of which I am frequently called Cyllenius : Under yond’ purslane tree stood sometime my cradle. Where now behold my mo¬ ther Maia, sitting in the pride of their plenty, glad¬ ding the air with her breath, and cheering the spring with her smiles. At her feet, the blushing Aurora, who, with her rosy hand, casteth her lioney-dews on those sweeter herbs, accompanied with that gentle wind Favonius, whose subtile spirit, in the breathing forth, Flora makes into flowers, and sticks them in the grass, as if she contended to have the embroidery of the earth richer than the cope of the sky. Here, for her month, the yearly delicate May keeps state ; and from this mount takes pleasure to display these valleys, yond’ lesser hills, those statelier edifices and towers, that seem enamoured so far off, and are rear’d on end to be¬ hold her, as if their utmost object were her beau¬ ties. Hither the Dryads of the valley, and nymphs of the great river come every morning to taste of her favours ; and depart away with laps filled with her bounties. But, see! upon your approach, their pleasures are instantly remitted. The birds are hush’d, Zephyr is still, the mom forbears her office, Flora is dumb, and herself amazed, to be¬ hold two such marvels, that do more a'dorn place than she can time: pardon, your majesty, the fault, for it is that hath caused it; and till they 540 THE PENATES. can collect their spirits, think silence and wonder the best adoration. Here Aurora, Zephyrus, and Flora, began this Song in three parts. See, see, O see who here is come a maying! The master of the ocean; And his beauteous Orian : Why left we our playing ? To gaze, to gaze. On them, that gods no less than men amaze. Up, nightingale, and sing Jug, jug, jug, jug, &c. Raise, lark, thy note, and wing, All birds their music bring, Sweet robin, linet, thrush, Record from every bush The welcome of the king; And queen: Whose like were never seen, For good, for fair; Nor can be; though fresh May, Should every day Invite a several pair, No, though 6he should invite a several pair. Which ended, Maia (seated in her bower , with all those personages about her, as before described) began to raise herself, and, then declining, spake. Mai. If all the pleasures were distill’d Of every flower in every field, And all that Hybla’s hives do yield, Were into one broad mazer fill’d ; If, thereto, added all the gums, And spice that from Panchaia comes, The odour that Hydaspes lends, Or Phoenix proves before she ends; If all the air my Flora drew, Or spirit that Zephyre ever blew; Were put therein ; and all the dew That ever rosy morning knew ; Yet all diffused upon this bower, To make one sweet detaining hour, Were much too little for the grace, And honour, you vouchsafe the place. But if you please to come again, We vow, we will not then, with vain And empty pastimes entertain Your so desired, tho’ grieved pain. For we will have the wanton fawns, That frisking skip about the lawns, The Panisks, and the Sylvans rude, Satyrs, and all that multitude, To dance their wilder rounds about, And cleave the air, with many a shout, As they would hunt poor Echo out Of yonder valley, who doth flout Their rustic noise. To visit whom You shall behold whole bevies come Of gaudy nymphs, whose tender calls Well-tuned unto the many falls Of sweet, and several sliding rills, That stream from tops of those less hills, Sound like so many silver quills, When Zephyre them with music fills. For these, Favonius here shall blow New flowers, which you shall see to grow, Of which each hand a part shall take, And, for your heads, fresh garlands make. Wherewith, whilst they your temples round, An air of several birds shall sound An Io Paean, that shall drown The acclamations, at your crown.— All this, and more than I have gift of saying, May vows, so you will oft come here a maying. Mer. And Mercury, her son, shall venture the displeasure of his father, with the whole bench of heaven, that day, but he will do his mother’s intents all serviceable assistance. Till then, and ever, live high and happy, you, and your other you; both envied for your fortunes, loved for your graces, and admired for your virtues. [This was the morning's entertainment. After dinner, the king and queen coming again into the garden, Mercury the second time accosted them. Mer. Again, great pair, I salute you ; and with leave of all the gods, whose high pleasure it is, that Mercury make this your holiday. May all the blessings, both of earth and heaven, concur to thank you: for till this day’s sun, I have faintly enjoyed a minute’s rest to my creation. Now I do, and acknowledge it your sole, and no less than divine benefit. If my desire to delight you might not divert to your trouble, I would intreat your eyes to a new and strange spectacle ; a certain son of mine, whom the Arcadians call a god, howsoever the rest of the world receive him : it is the horned Pan, whom in the translated figure of a goat I be¬ got on the fair Spartan Penelope ; May, let both your ears and looks forgive it; these are but the lightest escapes of us deities. And it is better in me to prevent his rustic impudence, by my blush¬ ing acknowledgment, than anon by his rude, and not insolent claim, be inforced to confess him. Yonder he keeps, and with him the wood nymphs, whose leader he is in rounds and dances, to this sylvan music. The place, about which they skip, is the fount of laughter, or Bacchus’ spring ; whose statue is advanced on the top; and from whose pipes, at an observed hour of the day, there flows a lusty liquor, that hath a present virtue to expel sadness; and within certain minutes after it is tasted, force all the mirth of the spleen into the face. Of this is Pan the guardian. Lo ! the fountain begins to run, but the nymphs at your sight are fled, Pan and his satyrs wildly stand at gaze. I will approach, and question him : vouchsafe your ear, and forgive his behaviour, which even to me, that am his parent, will no doubt be rude enough, though otherwise full of salt, which except my presence did temper, might turn to be gall and bitterness ; but that shall charm him. Pan. O, it is Mercury! hollow them, agen. What be all these, father, gods, or men ? Mer. All human. Only these two are deities on earth, but such, as the greatest powers of heaven may resign to. Pan. Why did our nymphs run away, can you Here be sweet beauties love Mercury well; [tell? I see by their looks. How say you, great master ? [Advances to the king. Will you be pleased to hear ? shall I be your taster? Mer. Pan, you are too rude. Pan. It is but a glass, By my beard, and my horns, ’tis a health, and shall Were he a king, and his mistress a queen, [pass. This draught shall make him a petulant spleen. But trow, is he loose, or costive of laughter ? I’d know, to fill him his glass, thereafter, Sure either my skill, or my sight doth mock, Or this lording’s look should not care for the smock; ENTERTAINMENT AT THEOBALDS. 541 And yet he should love both a horse and a hound, And not rest till he saw his game on the ground: Well, look to him, dame ; beshrew me, were I ‘Mongst these bonnibells, you should need a good # eye. Here, mistress; all out. Since a god is your skinker; By my hand, I believe you were born a good drinker. They are things of no spirit, their blood is asleep, That, when it is offer’d them, do not drink deep. Come, who is next ? our liquor here cools. Ladies, I’m sure, you all have not fools At home to laugh at. A little of this, Ta’en down here in private, were not amiss. Believe it, she drinks like a wench that had store Of lord for her laughter, then will you have more ? What answer you, lordings ? will you any or none ? Laugh, and be fat, sir, your penance is known. They that love mirth, let them heartily drink, ’Tis the only receipt to make sorrow sink. The young nymph that’s troubled with an old Let her laugh him away, as fast as she can. [man, Nay drink, and not pause, as who would say, Must you ? But laugh at the wench, that next doth trust you. To you, sweet beauty ; nay, ’pray you come Ere you sit out, you’ll laugh at a feather, [hither I’ll never fear you, for being too witty, You sip so like a forsooth of the city. Lords, for yourselves, your own cups crown, The ladies, i’faith, else will laugh you down. Go to, little blushet, for this, anan, You’ll steal forth a laugh in the shade of your fan. This, and another thing, I can tell ye, Will breed a laughter as low as your belly. Of such sullen pieces, Jove send us not many, They must be tickled, before they will any. What! have we done ? they that want let ’em Gallants, of both sides, you see here is all [call, Pan’s entertainment: look for no more ; Only, good faces, I read you, make store Of your amorous knights, and ’squires hereafter, They are excellent sponges, to drink up your laughter. Farewell, I must seek out my nymphs, that you frighted; Thank Hermes, my father, if aught have delighted. « [Exit. Mer. I am sure, thy last rudeness cannot; for it makes me seriously ashamed.—I will not labour his excuse, since I know you more ready to par¬ don, than he to trespass : but for your singular patience, tender you all abundance of thanks ; and, mixing with the master of the place in his wishes, make them my divinations : That your loves be ever flourishing as May, and your house as fruitful: that your acts exceed the best, and your years the longest of your predecessors : that no bad fortune touch you, nor good change you. But still, that you triumph in this facility over the ridiculous pride of other princes ; and for ever live safe in the love, rather than the fear, of your sub« jects. AND THUS IT ENDED. THE ENTERTAINMENT OF THE TWO KINGS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND DENMARK, At Theobalds, July 24, 1606. The Kings being entered the Inner Court; above, over the porch, sat the three Hours, upon clouds, as at the ports of heaven ; crowned with several floioers: of which one bore a sun-dial; the other, a clock; the third, an hour-glass ; signifying as by their names. Law, Justice, and Peace: and for those faculties chosen to gratulate their coming with this speech. Enter, O long’d-for princes, bless these bowers, And us, the three, by you made happy, Hours : We that include all time, yet never knew Minute like this, or object like to you, Two kings, the world’s prime honours, whose access Shews either’s greatness, yet makes neither less : Vouchsafe your thousand welcomes in this shewer ; The master vows, not Sybil’s leaves were truer. Expressed to tlie king of Denmark, thus : Qui colit has oedeis, ingentia gaudia adumbrans, Cernendo reges pace coire pares, Nos tempestivas, ad limina, collocat Iloras, Qabd bona sub nobis omnia proveniant. Unum ad laetitiae cumulum tristatur abesse, QuM nequeat signis Lcetitiam exprimere. Sed quia res solum ingentes hac parte laborant, Utcunque expressam credidit esse satis. At, quod non potnit dominus, supplevit abunde Frondoso tellus munere facta loquax. Eccos quam grati veniant quos terra salutat ! Verior his foliis nulla Sybilla fuit. The inscriptions on the walls were, DATE VENIAM SUBITIS. DEBENTUR QV/E SUNT, QUASQUE FUTURA. Epigrams hung up. Ad Reges Serenissimos. Scope Theobaldce (sortis bonitate beatce) Excepere suos sub pia tecta deos ; Haucl simul atgeminos : sed enim potuisse nega - Nec fas est tales posse putare duos. [bant: Fortunata anteliac , sed nunc domus undique feelix, At dommus quanto (si licet usque) magis l Et licet, 6 Magni, foliis sifiditis istis, Queis Horae summam contribuere fidem. M2 ENTERTAINMENT AT THEOBALDS. Ad Serenissimum Jacobum. Miraris, cur hospitio te accepimus IIores, Cujus ad obsequium non satis annus erat ? Nempe quod adveniant ingentia gaudia raro, Et quando adveniant vix datur horafrui. Ad Serenissimum Christianum. Miraris, cur hospitio te accepimus Home, Quas Solis famulas Gracia docta vocat ? Talis ab adveniu vestro lux fulsit in cedeis , Ut dominus solem crederet esse novum. Others, at their departure. Ad Serenissimum Jacobum. Hospitio qui te cepit, famulantibus Horis, Cedere abhinc, nulla concomitante, sinit ; Nempe omneis horas veniendi duxit arnicas , Sed discedendi nulla minuta probat. Ad Serenissimum Christianum. Te veniente , novo domus licec frondebat amictu ; Te discessuro, non prout ante viret: Nempe , sub accessu soils, novus incipit annus, Et, sub discessu squalida scevit hyems. AN ENTERTAINMENT OF KING JAMES AND QUEEN ANNE, AT THEOBALDS, WHEN THE HOUSE WAS DELIVERED UP, WITH THE POSSESSION, TO THE QUEEN, BY THE EARL OP SALISBURY, The 22 d of May, 1607. THE PRINCE JANVILE, BROTHER TO TIIE DUKE OF GUISE, BEING THEN PRESENT. The King and Queen, with the princes of Wales and Lorrain, and the nobility, being entered into the gal¬ lery, after dinner there was seen nothing but a traverse of white across the room: which suddenly drawn, was discovered a gloomy obscure place, hung all with black silks, and in it only one light, which the Genius of the house held, sadly attired; his Cornucopia ready to fall out of his hand, his gyrland drooping on his head, his eyes fixed on the ground ; when, out of this pensive posture, after some little pause, he brake and began. GENIUS. Let not your glories darken, to behold The place, and me, her Genius here, so sad ; Who, by bold rumour, have been lately told, That I must change the loved lord I had. And he, now, in the twilight of sere age, Begin to seek a habitation new ; And all his fortunes, and himself engage Unto a seat, his fathers never knew. And I, uncertain what I must endure, Since all the ends of destiny are obscure. MERCURY. \_From behind the darkness .] Despair not, Genius, thou shalt know thy fate. And withal, the black vanishing, was discovered a glo¬ rious place, figuring the Lararium, or seat of the household gods, where both the Lares and Penates were painted in copper colourerected with columns and architrave, frieze and cornice, in which were placed divers diaphanal glasses, filled with several waters, that shewed like so many stones of orient and trans¬ parent hues. Within, as farther off, in landscape, were seen clouds riding, and in one corner, a boy figuring Good Event attired in white, hovering in the air, with wings displayed, having nothing seen to sustain him by, all the time the shew lasted. At the other corner, a Mercury descended in a fiying pos¬ ture, with his caduccus in his hand, who spake to the three Parca, that sate low in a grate, with an iron roof, the one holding the rock, the other the spindle, and the third the sheers, with a book of adamant lying open before them. But first the Genius, surprized by wonder, urged this doubt. GENIUS. [Aside.] What sight is this, so strange, and full of state ! The son of Maia, making his descent Unto the fates, and met with Good Event ?— MERCURY. Daughters of Night and Secrecy, attend; You that draw out the chain of destiny, Upon whose threads,both lives and times depend, And all the periods of mortality ; The will of Jove is, that you straight do look The change, and fate unto this house decreed, And speaking from your adamantine book, Unto the Genius of the place it read ; That he may know, and knowing bless his lot, That such a grace beyond his hopes hath got. CLOTHO. [ Reads .] When underneath thy roof is seen The greatest king, the fairest queen, With princes an unmatched pair, One, hope of all the earth, their heir; The other styled of Lorrain, Their blood : and sprung from Charlemaine» When all these glories jointly shine, And fill thee with a heat divine. And these reflected, do beget A splendent sun, shall never 8Gt, But here shine fixed, to affright All after-hopes of following night, Then, Genius, is thy period come, To change thy lord: thus fates do doom. GENIUS. But is my patron with this lot content, So to forsake his father’s monument ? Or is it gain, or else necessity, Or will to raise a house of better frame. That makes him shut forth his posterity Out of his patrimony, with his name ? ENTERTAINMENT AT THEOBALDS. 54B MERCURY. Nor gain, nor need ; much less a vain desire, To frame new roofs, or build his dwelling higher; He hath, with mortar, busied been too much, That his affections should continue such GENIUS. / Do men take joy in labours, not t’enjoy ? Or doth their business all their likings spend ? Have they more pleasure in a tedious way, Than to repose them at their journey’s end ? MERCURY. Genius, obey, and not expostulate ; It is your virtue : and such Powers as you. Should make religion of offending fate, Whose dooms are just, and whose designs are true. LACHESIS. The person for whose royal sake, Thou must a change so happy make, Is he, that governs with his smile This lesser world, this greatest isle. His lady’s servant thou must be : Whose second would great nature see, Or Fortune, after all their pain, They might despair to make again. ATROPOS. She is the grace of all that are : And as Eliza, now a star, Unto her crown, and lasting praise, Thy humbler walls, at first, did raise, By virtue of her best aspect; So shall Bel-Anna them protect: And this is all the Fates can say; Which first believe, and then obey. GENIUS. Mourn’d I before ? could I commit a sin So much ’gainst kind, or knowledge, to pro¬ tract A joy, to which I should have ravish’d been, And never shall be happy, till I act ? Vouchsafe, fair queen, my patron’s zeal in me ; Who fly with fervor, as my fate commands, To yield these keys : and wish, that you could see My heart as open to you, as my hands. There might you read my faith, my thoughts— But oh! My joys, like waves, each other overcome ; And gladness drowns where it begins to flow. Some greater powers speak out, for mine are dumb. At this, was the place filled with rare and choice music, to which teas heard the following Song, delivered by an excellent voice, and the burden maintained by the whole quire. O blessed change! And no less glad than strange 1 Where we that lose have won ; And, for a beam, enjoy a sun. Cho. So little sparks become great fires, And high rewards crown low desires. Was ever bliss More full, or clear, than this ! The present month of May Ne’er look’d so fresh, as doth this day Cho. So gentle winds breed happy springs. And duty thrives by breath of king? THE QUEEN’S MASQUES. THE MASQUE OF BLACKNESS, Personated at the Court at Whitehall, on the Twelfth-night, 1605. Salve festa dies, meliorque revertere semper .— Ovid. The honour and splendour of these Spectacles was such in the performance, as, could those hours have lasted, this of mine, now, had been a most unprofitable work. But when it is the fate even of the greatest, and most absolute births, to need and borrow a life of posterity, little had been done to the study of magnificence in these, if presently with the rage of the people, who, (as a part of greatness) are privileged by custom, to deface their carcasses, the spirits had also perished. In duty therefore to that Majesty, who gave them their authority and grace, and, no less than the most royal of predecessors, deserves eminent celebration for these solemnities, I add this later hand to redeem them as well from ignorance as envy, two common evils, the one of censure, the other of oblivion. Pliny, 1 Solinus, 2 3 Ptolemy , 2 and of late Leo 4 the African, remember unto us a river in Ethiopia, famous by the name of Niger; of which the people were called Nigritse, now Negroes; and are the blackest nation of the world. This river 5 taketh spring out of a certain lake, eastward ; and after a long race, falleth into the western ocean. Hence (because it was her majesty’s will to have them blackmoors at first) the invention was derived by me, and presented thus: First, for the scene, was drawn a Iantfts’rijiip (landscape) consisting of small woods, and here and there a void place filled with huntings; which falling, an artificial sea was seen to shoct forth, as if it flowed to the land, raised with waves which seemed to move, and in some places the billows to break, as imitating that orderly disorder which is common in nature. In front of this sea were placed six tritons , 6 7 in moving and sprightly actions, their upper parts human, save that their hairs were blue, as partaking of the sea-colour : their desinent parts fish, mounted above their heads, and all varied in disposition. From their backs were borne out cer¬ tain light pieces of taffata, as if carried by the wind, and their music made out of wreathed shells. Be¬ hind these, a pair of sea-maids, for song, were as conspicuously seated ; between which, two great sea-horses, as big as the life, put forth themselves; the one mounting aloft, and writhing his head from the other, which seemed to sink forward; so intended for variation, and that the figure behind might come off better •? upon their backs, Oceanus and Niger were advanced. Oceanus presented in a human form, the colour of his flesh blue ; and shadowed with a robe of sea- 1 Nat. Hist. 1. 5. c. 8. 2 Poly. Hist. c. 40, and 43. 3 Lib. 4. c. 5. 4 Descrip. Afric. 5 Some take it to oe the same with Nilus, which is by Lucan called Melas, signifying Niger. Howsoever Pliny in the place above noted, hath this: Nigri fiuvio eadem natura, quae Nilo, calamum, papyrum, et easdem gignit animantes. See Solin. abovementioned. 6 The form of these tritons, with their trumpets, you may read lively described in Ov. Met. lib. 1. Caeruleum Tritona vocat, &c. ; and in Yirg. iEneid. 1. 10. Ilunc vehit immanis triton, et sequent. 7 Lucian in PHTOP. AtSair. presents Nilus so, Equo fluviatiii insidentem. And Statius Neptune, in Theb. green; his head gray, and horned , 8 as he is de¬ scribed by the ancients : his beard of the like mixed colour : he was garlanded with alga, or sea-grass ; and in his hand a trident. Niger, in form and colour of an iEthiop; his hair and rare beard curled, shadowed with a blue and bright mantle : his front, neck, and wrists adorned with pearl, and crowned with an artificial wreath of cane and paper-rush. These induced the masquers, which were twelve nymphs, negroes, and the daughters of Niger; at¬ tended by so many of the Oceanise , 9 which w r ere their light-bearers. The masquers were placed in a great concave shell, like mother of pearl, curiously made to move on those waters and rise with the billow; the top thereof was stuck with a cheveron of lights, which indented to the proportion of the shell, struck a glorious beam upon them, as they were seated one above another : so that they were all seen, but in an extravagant order. On sides of the shell did swim six huge sea-mon¬ sters, varied in their shapes and dispositions, bear ing on their backs the twelve torch-bearers, who were planted there in several graces ; so as the hacks of some were seen ; some in purfle, or side ; others in face ; and all having their lights burning out of whelks, or murex-shells. The attire of the masquers was alike in all, with- 8 The ancients induced Oceanus always with a bull’s head: propter vim ventorum, a quibus incitatur, et impellitur: vel quia tauris similem fremitum emittat; vel quia tanquam taurus furibundus, in littora feratur. Euripid. in Orest. ’ClKeavos 6v Taupdapavos aynctAcus iAiaawu, KVKAel x® oua ' And rivers sometimes were so called. Look Yirg. de Tiberi et Eridano. Georg. 4. ASneid 8. Hor. Car. lib. 4. ode 14, and Euripid. in lone. 9 The daughters of Oceanus and Tethys. See Hesiod, in Theogon. Orph. in Hym. and Virgil in Georg. THE MASQUE OE BLACKNESS. 645 but difference : the colours azure and silver; but returned on the top with a scroll and antique dress¬ ing of feathers, and jewels interlaced with ropes of pearl. And for the front, ear, neck, and wrists, the ornament was of the most choice and orient pearl; best setting off from the black. For the light-bearers, sea-green, waved about the skirts with gold and silver; their hair loose and flowing, gyrlanded with sea-grass, and that stuck with branches of coral. These thus presented, the scene behind seemed a vast sea, and united with this that flowed forth, from the termination, or horizon of which (being the level of the state, which was placed in the upper end of the hall) was drawn by the lines of prospec¬ tive, the whole work shooting downwards from the eye; which decorum made it more conspicuous, »nd caught the eye afar off with a wandering Deauty : to which was added an obscure and cloudy night-piece, that made the whole set off. So much for the bodily part, whichwas of master Inigo Jones’s design and act. By this, one of the tritons, with the two sea¬ maids, began to sing to the others’ loud music, their voices being a tenor and two trebles. SONG. Sound, sound aloud The welcome of the orient flood, Into the west; Fair Niger,i son to great Oceanus, Now honour’d, thus. With all his beauteous race: Who, though but black in face. Yet are they bright, And full of life and light. To prove that beauty best, Which, not the colour, but the feature Assures unto the creature. Ooea. Be silent, now the ceremony’s done And, Niger, say, how comes it, lovely son, That thou, the JEthiop’s river, so far east. Art seen to fall into the extremest west Of me, the king of floods, Oceanus, And in mine empire’s heart, salute me thus ? My ceaseless current, now, amazed stands To see thy labour through so many lands, Mix thy fresli billow with my brackish stream ; 2 And, in the sweetness, stretch thy diadem To these far distant and unequall’d skies, This squared circle of celestial bodies. Niger. Divine Oceanus, ’tis not strange at all, That, since th’ immortal souls of creatures mortal, Mix with their bodies, yet reserve for ever A power of separation, I should sever 1 All rivers are said to he the sons of the Ocean ; for, as the ancients thought, out of the vapours exhaled by the heat of the sun, rivers and fountains were begotten. And both by Orph. in Hym. and Homer, II. £. Oceanus is celebrated tanquam pater, et origo diis, et rebus, quia nihil sine humectatione nascitur, aut putrescit. 2 There wants not enough, in nature, to authorize this part of our fiction, in separating Niger from the ocean, (beside the fable of Alpheus, and that, to which Virgil alludes of Arethusa, in his 10. Eclog. Sic tibi, cum fluctus suhter Lahore Sicanos, Doris amara suam non intermisceat undam.) Examples of Nilus, Jordan, and others, whereof see Nican. lib. 1. de flumin. and Plut. in vita Syllte, even of this our river (as some think) by the name of Mclas. My fresh streams from thy brackish, like things fix’d, Though, with thy powerful saltness, thus far mix’d. “ Virtue, though chain’d to earth, will still live And hell itself must yield to industry.” [free \ Ocea. But what’s the end of thy Herculean labours, Extended to these calm and blessed shores ? Niger. To do a kind and careful father’s part, In satisfying every pensive heart Of these my daughters, my most loved birth : Who, though they were the first form’d dames of earth, 3 * * And in whose sparkling and refulgent eyes, The glorious sun did still delight to rise ; Though he, the best judge, and most formal cause Of all dames beauties, in their firm hues, draws Signs of his fervent’st love ; and thereby shows That in their black, the perfect’st beauty grows ; Since the fixt colour of their curled hair, Which is the highest grace of dames most fair, No cares, no age can change; or there display The fearful tincture of abhorred gray ; Since death herself (herself being pale and blue; Can never alter their most faithful hue; All which are arguments, to prove how far Their beauties conquer in great beauty’s war , And more, how near divinity they be, That stand from passion, or decay so free. Yet, since the fabulous voices of some few Poor brain-sick men, styled poets here with you, Have, with such envy of their graces, sung The painted beauties other empires sprung ; Letting their loose and winged fictions fly To infect all climates, yea, our purity ; As of one Phaeton, 4 that fired the world And that, before his heedless flames were hurl’d About the globe, the AEthiops were as fair As other dames; now black, with black despair: And in respect of their complexions chang’d, Are eachwhere, since, for luckless creatures rang’d ; 5 Which, when my daughters heard, (as women are Most jealous of their beauties) fear and care Possess’d them whole; yea, and believing them, 6 7 They wept such ceaseless tears into my stream, That it hath thus far overflow’d his shore To seek them patience: who have since, e’ermore As the sun riseth,7 charg’d his burning throne With vollies of revilings ; ’cause he shone On their scorch’d cheeks with such intemperate And other dames made queens of all desires, [fires, To frustrate which strange error, oft I sought, Tho’ most in vain, against a settled thought As women’s are, till they confirm’d at length By miracle, what I, with so much strength Of argument resisted ; else they feign’d: For in the lake where their first spring they gain’d, As they sat cooling their soft limbs, one night, Appear’d a face, all circumfused with light; 3 Read Diod. Sicul. lib. 3. It is a conjecture of the old ethnics, that they which dwell under the south, were the first begotten of the earth. ♦ Notissima fabula.Ovid. Met. lib. 2. 6 Alluding to that of Juvenal, Satyr. 5. Et cui per mediam nolis occurrere noctem. 6 The poets. 7 A custom of the JEthiops, notable in Herod, and Diod. Sic. See Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 9. cap. 8. n n 546 THE MASQUE Ob' BLACKNESS (And sure they saw’t, for iEthiops 1 never dream) Wherein they might decipher through the stream, These words: That they a land must forthwith seek. Whose termination, of the Greek, Sounds Tania ; where bright Sol, that heat Their bloods, doth never rise or set, 2 But in his journey passeth by. And leaves that climate of the sky, To comfort of a greater light, Who forms all beauty with his sight. In search of this, have we three princedoms past, That speak out Tania in their accents last; Black Mauritania, first; and secondly, Swarth Lusitania; next we did descry Rich Aquitania : and yet cannot find The place unto these longing nymphs design’d. Instruct and aid me, great Oceanus, What land is this that now appears to us ? Ocea. This land, that lifts into the temperate His snowy cliff, is Albion the fair ; 3 4 * [air So call’d of Neptune’s son,4 who ruleth here : For whose dear guard, myself, four thousand year, Since old Deucalion’s days, have walk’d the round About his empire, proud to see him crown’d Above my waves.- A t this the Moon was discovered in the upper part of the house, triumphant in a silver throne, made in figure of a pyramis. Her garments white and silver, the dressing of her head antique, and crowned with a luminary, or sphere of light: tvhich striking on the clouds, and heightened with silver, reflected as natural clouds do by the splendor of the moon. The heaven about her was vaulted with blue silk, and set with stars of silver, which had in them their several lights burning. The sudden sight of which made Niger to interrupt Oceanus with this present passion. O see, our silver star! Whose pure, auspicious light greets us thus far ! Great ./Ethiopia goddess of our shore,5 Since with particular worship we adore Thy general brightness, let particular grace Shine on my zealous daughters : shew the place Which long their longings urg’d their eyes to see, Beautify them, which long have deified thee. JEtlii. Niger, be glad : resume thy native cheer. Thy daughters labours have their period here, And so thy errors. I was that bright face Reflected by the lake, in which thy race Read mystic lines ; which skill Pythagoras First taught to men. by a reverberate glass. This blessed isle doth with that Tania end, Which there they saw inscribed, and shall extend Wish’d satisfaction to their best desires. Britannia, which the triple world admires, This isle hath now recover’d for her name ; Where reign those beauties that with so much fame The sacred Muses’ sons have honoured, And from bright Hesperus to Eous spread. 1 Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 5. cap. 8. 2 Consult with Tacitus, in vita Agric. and the Paneg. ad Constant. 3 Orpheus, in his Argonaut, calls it A evucuov x^paov. 4 Alluding to the right of styling princes after the name of their princedoms: so is he still Albion, and Neptune’s son that governs. As also his being dear to Neptune, in being so embraced by him. 6 The /Ethiopians worshipped the moon by that lurname. See Step, wept ivoAtwy, in voce AI0IOIIIONt With that great name Britannia, this blest isle Hoth won her ancient dignity, and style, A world divided from the world : and tried The abstract of it, in his general pride. For were the world, with all his wealth, a ring, Britannia, whose new name makes all tongues sing, Might be a diamant worthy to inchase it, Ruled by a sun, that to this height doth grace it: Whose beams shine day and night, and are of force To blanch an ASthiop, and revive a corse. His light sciential is, and, past mere nature, Can salve the rude defects of every creature. Call forth thy honour’d daughters then : And let them, ’fore the Britain men, Indent the land, with those pure traces They flow with, in their native graces. Invite them boldly to the shore ; Their beauties shall be scorch’d no more : This sun is temperate, and refines All things on which his radiance shines. Here the Tritons sounded, and they danced on shore, every couple, as they advanced, severally presenting their fans: in one of which were inscribed their mixt names, in the other a mute hieroglyphic, expressing their mixed qualities , 6 Their own single dance ended, as they were about to make choice of their men: one, from the sea, teas heard to call them with this charm, sung by a tenor voice. Come away, come away, We grow jealous of your stay; If you do not stop your ear. We shall have more cause to fear Syrens of the land, than they To doubt the Syrens of the sea. Here they danced with their men several measures and corantos. All which ended, they were again accited to sea, with a song of two trebles, whose cadences were iterated by a double echo from several parts of the land. Daughters of the subtle flood, Do not let earth longer entertain you ; 1 Ech. Let earth longer entertain you. 2 Ech. Longer entertain you. ’Tis to them enough of good, That you give this little hope to gain you. 1 Ech. Give this little hope to gain you. 2 Ech. Little hope to gain you. If they love, You shall quickly see; For when to flight you move, They’ll follow you, the more you flee. 1 Ech. Follow you, the more you flee 2 Ech. The more you flee. If not, impute it each to other’s matter; They are but earth, and what you vow’d was water. 1 Ech. And what you vow’d was water. 2 Ech. You vow’d was water. JEtlii. Enough, bright nymphs, the night grows And we are grieved we cannot hold [old, You longer light; but comfort take. Your father only to the lake Shall make return : yourselves, with feasts, Must here remain the Ocean’s guests. Nor shall this veil, the sun hath cast Above your blood, more summers last, 6 Which manner of symbol I rather chose, than im prese, as well for strangeness, as relishing of antiquity, and more applying to that original doctrine of sculpture, which the Egyptians are said first to have brought from the .^Ethiopians, Diod. Sicul. Herod. THE MASQUE OF BEAUTY. 547 For which you shall observe these rites : Thirteen times thrice, on thirteen nights, (So often as I fill my sphere With glorious light throughout the year) You shall, when all things else do sleep Save your chaste thoughts, with reverence, steep Your bodies in that purer brine, And wholesome dew, call’d ros-marine : Then with that soft and gentler foam, Of which the ocean yet yields some Whereof, bright Venus, beauty’s queen, Is said to have begotten been, You shall your gentler limbs o’er-lave, And for your pains perfection have : So that, this night, the year gone round, You do again salute this ground; And in the beams of yond’ bright sun, Your faces dry,—and all is done. At which, in a dance, they returned to sea, where they took their shell, and with this full song went out. Now Dian, with her burning face, Declines apace: By which our waters know To ebb, that late did flow. So 2 . 3. { *■{ 5. { 6 . { Back seas, back nymphs; but with a forward grace, Keep still your reverence to the place ; And shout with joy of favour, you have won. In sight of Albion, Neptune’s son. ended the first Masque,- which, beside the singular grace of music and dances, had the success in the nobility of performance, as nothing needs to the illus¬ tration, but the memory by whom it icas personated. THE SYMBOLS. } A golden tree, la¬ den with fruit. ) The figure Isocae- I dron of crystal. 1 A pair of naked 1 feet in a river. \ The Salamander 1 simple. 1 A cloud full of y rain dropping. | An urn sphered The Queen Go. of Bedford La. Herbert . Co. of Derby . La. Rich . . Co. of Suffolk La. Bevill . . La. Effingham THE NAMES. EUPIIORIS, AGLAIA, DIAPHANE, EUCAMPSE, OCYTE, KATHARE, NOTIS, PSYCHROTE, La. El. Howard GLYCYTE, La. Sus. Yere MALACIA, La. Worth . . BARYTE, La. Walsingham PERIPHERE, urn with wine. The Names of the OCEANIAN were, 3 4 5 DORIS, CYDIPPE, BEROE, IANTHE, PETRAEA, GLAUCE, ' ACASTE, LYCORIS, OCYRIIOE, TYCHE, CLYTIA, PLEXAURE. THE MASQUE OF BEAUTY. Two years being now past, that her majesty had intermitted these delights, and the third almost come, it was her highness’s pleasure again to glorify the court, and command that I should think on some fit presentment, which should answer the former, still keeping them the same persons, the daughters of Niger, but their beauties varied according to promise, and their time of absence excused, with four more added to their number. To which limits, when I had apted my invention, and being to bring news of them from the sea, I induced Boreas, one of the winds, as my fittest messenger; presenting ham thus : In a robe of russet and white mixt, full and bagg’d ; his hair and beard rough and horrid ; his wings gray, and full of snow and icicles : his mantle borne from him with wires, and in several puffs ; his feet 1 ending in serpents tails ; and in his hand a leafless branch laden with icicles. But before, in the midst of the hall, to keep the stateof the feast and season, I had placed January 2 in a throne of silver ; his robe of ash-colour, long, fringed with silver; a white mantle; his wings white, and his buskins ; in his hand a laurel-bough; upon his head an anademe of laurel, fronted with the sign Aquarius, and the character : who, as Boreas blustered forth, discovered himself. Boreas. Which, among these, is Albion, Nep¬ tune’s son ? Januarius. What ignorance dares make that question ? Would any ask, who Mars were in the wars, Or which is Hesperus among the stars ? Of the bright planets, which is Sol ? or can A doubt arise, ’mong creatures, which is man ? Behold, whose eyes do dart Promethean fire Throughout this All; whose precepts do inspire The rest with duty ; yet commanding, cheer ; And are obeyed more with love, than fear. 1 So Paus. in Eliacis, reports him to have, as he was carved in area Cipselli. 8 S 90 Tcouolog. di Cesare Itiua. ^ N 2 Boreas. What Power art thou, that thus in- formest me ? Janu. Dost thou not know me ? I too well know thee By thy rude voice, 4 that doth so hoarsely blow; Thy hair, thy beard, thy wings, o’er-hill’d with snow, Thy serpent feet, to be that rough North-wind, Boreas, that to my reign art still unkind. I am the prince of months, call’d January; Because by me, Janus 5 the year doth vary, Shutting up wars, proclaiming peace, and feasts, Freedom and triumphs; making kings Ids guests, Boreas. To thee then thus, and by thee to that That doth thee present honours, do I bring [king, Present remembrance of twelve iEthiop dames : Who, guided hither by the moon’s bright flames, To see his brighter light, were to the sea Enjoin’d again, and (thence assign’d a day For their return) were in the waves to leave Their Blackness, and true Beauty to receive. Janu. Which they received, but broke their day: and yet Have not return’d a look of grace for it, 3 Hesiod, in Theog. 4 Ovid Metam. lib. 6. near the end see,—horridus ir«\ Quas solita est illi, nimiumque domestiea, vento, &c. 5 See the offices and power of Janus, Ovid. Fast. 1. 548 THE MASQUE OF BEAUTY. Shewing a coarse and most unfit neglect. Twice have I come in pomp here, to expect Their presence ; twice deluded, have been fain With other rites 1 my feasts to entertain : And now the third time, turn’d about the year, Since they were look’d for, and yet are not here ! Boreas. It was nor will, nor sloth, that caus’d their stay ; For they were all prepared by their day, And with religion, forward on their way : When Proteus, 2 the gray prophet of the sea, Met them, and made report, how other four Of their black kind (whereof their sire had store) Faithful to that great wonder, so late done Upon their sisters, by bright Albion, Had followed them to seek Britannia forth, And there to hope like favour, as like worth, Which Night envied, as done in her despite, 3 4 5 And mad to see an iEthiop washed white, Thought to prevent in these ; lest men should deem Her colour, if thus chang’d, of small esteem. And so, by malice, and her magic, tost The nymphs at sea, as they were almost lost, Till, on an island, they by chance arriv’d, That floated in the main ; * where, yet, she had gyv’d _ Them so, in chains of darkness, as no might Should loose them thence, but their chang’d sis¬ ters sight. Whereat the twelve, in piety mov’d, and kind, Straight put themselves in act, the place to find ; Which was the Night’s sole trust they so will do, That she with labour might confound them too. For ever since with error hath she held Them wand’ring in the ocean, and so quell’d Their hopes beneath their toil, as (desperate now Of any least success unto their vow ; Nor knowing to return to express the grace, Wherewith they labour to this prince, and place) One of them meeting me at sea, did pray, That for the love of my Orithya,5 Whose very name did heat my frosty breast. And made me shake my snow-fill’d wings and crest, To bear this sad report I would be won, And frame their just excuse ; which here I’ve done. Janu. Would thou hadst not begun, unlucky Wind, That never yet blew’st goodness to mankind ; But with thy bitter and too piercing breath, Strik’st 6 * horrors through the air as sharp as deat h. 1 Two marriages, the one of the earl of Essex, 1606; the other of the Lord Hay, 1607. 2 Read his description, with Yir. Geor. 4. Est in Carpathio Neptuni gurgite vates, Caeruleus Proteus. 3 Because they were before of her complexion. 4 To give authority to this part of our fiction, Pliny hath a chap. 95 of the 2. book, Nat. Hist, de insulis fluc- tuantibus. EtCard. lib. 1. de rerum vari. et cap. 7. reports one to be in his time known, in the lake of Lomond, in Scotland. To let pass that of Delos, &c. 5 The daughter of Erectheus, king of Athens, whom Boreas ravished away into Thrace, as she was playing with other virgins by the flood Ilissus : or (as some will) by the fountain Cephisus. 6 The violence of Boreas Ovid excellently describes in the place above quoted. Hac nubila pello, Hac freta concutio, nodosaque robora verto, Induroque nives, et terras grandine pulso. Here a second wind came in, Vulturnus, in a blue coloured robe and mantle, pu/t as the former, but somewhat sweeter ; his face black, and on his head a red sun, shewing he came from the east: his wings of several colours ; his buskins white, and wrought with gold. Vult. All horrors vanish, and all name of death, Be all things here as calm as is my breath. A gentler wind, Vulturnus, brings you news The isle is found, and that the nymphs now use Their rest and joy. The Night’s black charms are For being made unto their goddess known, [flown. Bright ^Ethiopia, the silver moon, As she was Hecate, she brake them soon : 8 * And now by virtue of their light, and grace, The glorious isle, wherein they rest, takes place Of all the earth for beauty. There, their queens Hath raised them a throne, that still is seen To turn unto the motion of the world ; Wherein they sit, and are, like heaven, whirl’d About the earth ; whilst to them contrary, (Following those noble torches of the sky) A world of little Loves, and chaste Desires, Do light their beauties with still moving fires. And who to heaven’s concent can better move, Than those that are so like it, beauty and love? Hither, as to their new Elysium, The spirits of the antique Greeks are come, Poets, and singers, Linus, Orpheus, all That have excell’d in knowledge musical ; 10 Where set in arbors made of myrtle and gold, They live, again, these beauties to behold. And thence in flowery mazes walking forth, Sing hymns in celebration of their worth. Whilst, to their songs, two fountains flow, one hight Of Lasting Youth, the other Chaste Delight, That at the closes, from their bottoms spring, And strike the air to echo what they sing. But why do I describe what all must see ? By this time, near the coast, they floating be ; For so their virtuous goddess, the chaste moon, Told them the fate of th’ island should, and soon Would fix itself unto thy continent, As being the place, by destiny fore-meant, Where they should flow forth, drest in her attires : And that the influence of those holy fires, First rapt from hence, being multiplied upon The other four, should make their beauties one. Which now expect to see, great Neptune's son, And love the miracle which thyself hast done. Here a curtain was drawn, in which the Night teas painted, and the scene discovered, which (because the former teas marine, and these, yet of necessity, to come from the sea) I devised, should be an island floating on a calm water. In the midst thereof was a seat of state, called the Throne of Beauty, erected. divided into eight squares, and distinguished by so many Ionic pilasters. In these squares, the sixteen masquers were placed by couples: behind them in the centre of the throne was a tralucent pillar, shining with several coloured lights, that reflected on their 7 According to that of Virgil-Denuntiat igneus Euros. 8 She is called (pcvaodiac,9 with th signs: in her hand a compass otf gold, drawing a circle. On the top of all the throne (a« being made out of all these) stood II A RMONIA, a personage, whose dressing had something of all the others, and had her robe painted full of figures. Her head was compass’d with a crown of gold, having in it seven jewels equally set. 10 In her hand a lyra, whereon she rested. This was the ornament of the throne. The ascent to which consisting of six steps, wJiK covered with a multitude of Cupids 11 (chosen out cf the best, and most ingenious youth of the kingdom, noble, and others) that were the torch-bearera i| and all arm’d with bows, quivers, wings, and other ensigns ol love. On the sides of the throne vrare curious and elegant arbors appointed; and behind, in the back-part of the isle, a grove of jr.rowm trees laden with golden fruit, which other little Cupids plucked, and threw at each other, whilst on the ground leve¬ rets 1 * picked up the bruised apples, and left them half eaten. The ground-plat ol the whole was a subtle indented maze : and in the two foremost angles were two fountains that ran continually, the one Hebe’s, 13 the other Hedone’s : 1 4 5 6 7 in the arbors were placed the musicians, who represented the shades of the old poets, and wer« attired in a priest¬ like habit of crimson and purple, with laurel gar¬ lands. The colours, of the masquers were varied; the one half in orange-tawny, and silver: the other in sea-green and silver. The bodies and short skirts on white and gold to both. The habit and dressing for the fashion was most curious, and so exceeding in riches, as the throne whereon they sat seem’d to be a mine of light, struck from their jewels and their garments. This throne, as the whole island moved forward on the water, had a circular motion of its own, imitating that which we call mo turn mundi, from the east to the west, or the right to the left side. For so Horn. Ilia, g, understands by 5e|i 'a, Orien- talia Mundi: by dpicrrepa, Occidentalia. The steps whereon the Cupids sat had a motion con- 8 The sign of honour and dignity. 9 Both that, and the compass, are known ensigns of perfection. 40 She is so described in Iconolog. di Cesare Ripa; his reason of seven jewels, in the crown, alludes to Pythago¬ ras’s comment, with Macr. lib. 2. Som. Scip. of the seven planets and their spheres. n The inducing of many Cupids wants not defence, with the best and most received of the ancients, besides Prop. Stat. Claud. Sido. Apoll. especially Phil, in Icon. Amor, whom I have particularly followed in this descrip¬ tion. 12 They were the notes of loveliness, and sacred to Venus. See Phil, in that place mentioned. 13 Of youth. 11 Of pleasure. '560 THE MASQUE trary, with analogy ad moturn planetarum, from the west to the east: both which turned with their several lights. And with these three varied mo¬ tions, at once, the whole scene shot itself to the land. Above which, the moon was seen in a silver chariot, drawn by virgins, to ride in the clouds, and hold them greater light: with the sign Scorpio, and the character, placed before her. The order of the scene was carefully and inge¬ niously disposed ; and as happily put in act (for the motions) by the king’s master carpenter. The painters, I must needs say, (not to belie them,) lent small colour to any, to attribute much of the spirit of these things to their pencils. But that must not be imputed a crime, either to the inven¬ tion or design. Here the loud music ceased ; and the musicians, which were placed in the arbors, came forth through the mazes to the other land : singing this full song, iterated in the closes by two Echoes, rising out of the fountains. When Love at first, did move From out of Chaos, 1 brightned So was the world, and lightned. As now. 1 Ech. As now ! 2 Ech. As now! Yield Night, then to the light, As Blackness hath to Beauty : Which is but the same duty. It was for Beauty 2 that the world was made, And where she reigns, 3 Love’s lights admit no shade. 1 Ech. Love’s lights admit no shade. 2 Ech. Admit no shade. Which ended, Yulturnus, the wind, spake to the river Thamesis, that lay along between the shores, leaning upon his urn that flowed with water, and crowned with flowers ; with a blue cloth of silver robe about him ; and was personated by master Thomas Giles, who made the dances. Vul. Rise, Aged Thames, and by the hand Receive these nyihphs, within the land. And in those curious squares, and rounds, Wherewith thouflow’st betwixt the grounds Of fruitful Kent, and Essex fair, That lends the garlands for thy hair ; Instruct their silver feet to tread, Whilst we, again, to sea are fled. With which the Winds departed: and the river received them into the land, by couples and fours, .heir Cupids coming before them. These dancing forth a most curious dance, full of excellent device and change, ended it in the figure of a diamond, and so, standing still, were by the musicians with a second song, sung by a loud tenor, celebrated. 1 So is he feigned by Orpheus, to have appeared first of all the gods ; awakened by Clotho: and is therefore called Pbanes, both by him, and Lactantius. 3 An agreeing opinion, both with divines and philoso¬ phers, that the great artificer, in love with his own idea, did therefore frame the world. 3 Alluding to the name of Himerus, and his significa¬ tion in the name, which is Desideriuin post aspectum: and more than Eros, which is only Cupido, ex aspectu sunare. OF BEAUTY. So Beauty on the waters stood, When Love had sever’d earth from flood t* So when he parted air from fire, lie did with concord all inspire! And then a motion he them taught, That elder than himself was thought. Which thought was, yet, the child of earth, 4 5 For Love is elder than his birth. The song ended ; they danced forth their second dance, more subtle and full of change than the former ; and so exquisitely performed, as the king's majesty (in¬ cited first by his own liking, to that ivhicli all others there present unshed) required them both again, after some time of dancing with the lords. Which time to give them respite was intermitted with a song ; first, by a treble voice, in this manner. If all these Cupids, now were blind, As is their wanton brother : 6 Or play should put it in their mind To shoot at one another : What pretty battle they would make, If they their objects should mistake. And each one wound his mother 1 Which was seconded by another treble ; thus, It was no policy of court, Albe’ the place were charmed, To let in earnest, or in sport. So many Loves in, armed. For say, the dames should, with their eyes, Upon the hearts here mean surprize ; Were not the men like harmed ? To which a tenor answered. Yes, were the Loves or false, or straying ; Or beauties not their beauty weighing: But here no such deceit is mix’d, Their flames are pure, their eyes are fix’d : They do not war with different darts. But strike a music of like hearts. After which songs they danced galliards and corantos ; and with those excellent graces, that the music pointed to celebrate them, shewed it could be silent no longer: but, by the first tenor, admired them thus SONG. Had those that dwelt in error foul. And hold that women have no soul, 7 But seen these move ; they would have then Said, women were the souls of mon. So they do move each heart and eye. With the world’s soul, true harmony. 8 Here they danced a third most elegant and curious dance, and not to be described again by any art, but that oj their own footing, which ending in the figure that was to produce the fourth, January from his state saluted them thus. Janu. Your grace is great, as is your beauty, dames ; Enough my feasts have proved your thankful flames. Now use your seat: that seat which was, before, Thought straying, uncertain, floating to each shore, 4 As, in the creation, he is said by the ancients to havo done. 5 That is, born since the world, and out of those dullor apprehensions that did not think he was before. G I make these different from him, which they feign caecum Cupidinem, or petulantem, as I express beneath in the third song, these being chaste Loves that attend a more divine beauty than that of Love’s common parent. 7 There hath been such a profane paradox published. 8 The Platonic’s opinion. See also Mac. lib. 1. and 2. Som. Sc. THE MASQUE OF BEAUTY. 551 And to whose having 1 every clime laid claim, Each land and nation urged as the aim Of their ambition, beauty’s perfect throne, Now made peculiar to this place alone ; And that by impulsion of your destinies, And his attractive beams that lights these skies : Who, though with th’ ocean compass’d, never wets His hair therein, nor wears a beam that sets. Long may his light adorn these happy rites, As I renew them ; and your gracious sights Enjoy that happiness, even to envy, as when Beauty, at large, brake forth, and conquer’d men ! And as his planets go, Your brighter lights do so : May youth and pleasure ever flow. But let your state, the while. Be fixed as the isle. Clio. So all that see your beauties spnffi*, May know the Elysian fields are hern. 1 Ecli. The Elysian fields are here, 2 Ech. Elysian fields are here. The persons who were received on land by the river god were. At which they danced their last dance into their throne againand that turning, the scene closed with this full SONG. Still turn and imitate the heaven In motion swift and even; 1 For what country is it thinks not her own beauty fatreet, yet? The Queen, Countess of Arundel, Countess of Derby, Countess of Bedford, Countess of Montgomery, Lady Eliz. Guilford, Lady Eliz. Hatton, Lady Eliz. Garrard, Lady Arabella, Lady Kat. Peter, Lady Anne Winter, Lady Winsor, Lady Anne Clifford, Lady Mary Neville, Lady Chichester. Lady Walsingham. H YMENiEI ; OR, THE SOLEMNITIES OF MASQUE AND BARRIERS AT A MARRIAGE HYMENiEI, &c. It is a noble and just advantage that the things subjected to understanding have of those which are objected to 6 ense ; that the one sort are but momentary, and merely taking ; the other impressing, and lasting : else the glory of all these solemnies had perished like a blaze, and gone out, in the beholders’ eyes. So short lived are the bodies of all things, in comparison of their souls. And though bodies oftimes have the ill luck to be sensually preferred, they find afterwards the good fortune (when souls live) to be utterly forgotten. This it is hath made the most royal princes, and greatest persons (who are commonly the personaters of these actions) not only studious of riches, and magnificence in the outward celebration or shew, which rightly becomes them ; but curious after the most high and hearty inventions, to furnish the inward parts; and those grounded upon antiquity, and solid learning: which though their voice be taught to 30und to present occasions, their sense or doth or should always lay hold on more removed mysteries. And howsoever some may squeamishly cry out, that all endeavour of learning and sharpness in these transitory devices, especially where it steps beyond their little, or (let me not wrong them,) no brain at all, is superfluous : I am contented, these fastidious stomachs should leave my full tables, and enjoy at home their clean empty trenchers, fittest for such airy tastes ; where perhaps a few Italian herbs, picked up and made into a sallad, may find sweeter acceptance than all the most nourishing and sound meats of the world. For these men’s palates, let not me answer, O Muses. It is not my fault, if I fill them out nectar, and they run to metlieglin. Vaticana bibant, si dslectentur. All the courtesy I can do them, is to cry again : Prcetereant, si quid non/acit ad stomachum. As I will from the thought of them, to my better subject. On the night of the Masques (which were two, one of men, the other of women) the scene being drawn, there was first discovered an altar ; upon which was inscribed, in letters of gold, Ioni. Oimae. IVTimae. TJNIONI. SACR. To this altar entered five pages, attired in white, bearing five tapers of virgin wax-, 1 2 3 behind them, one representing a bridegroom : his hair short,3 and bound with party-coloured ribands, and gold twist ; his garments purple and white. On the other hand, entered Hymen (the god of 1 Mystically implying that both it, the place, and all the succeeding ceremonies were sacred to marriage, or Union; over which Juno was president: to whom there was the like alter erected, at Rome, as she was called Juga Juno, in the street, which thence was named Jugarius. See Fest.; and at which altar, the rite was to join the married pair with bands of silk, in sien of future concord. 2 Those were the Quinque Cerei, which Plutarch in his Quaest. Roman, mentions to be used in nuptials. 3 The dressing of the bridegroom (with the ancients) was chiefly noted in that, Quod tonderetur. Juv. Sat. 6. Jumque a tonsore magistro Pecteris. And Lucan, lib. 2, where he makes Cato negligent of the ceremonies in marriage, saith, Ille nec horrificam sancto dimovit ab ore C'jcsariem. marriage) in a saffron-colour’d robe, his under vestures white, his socks yellow, a yellow veil of silk on his left arm, his head crowned with roses and marjoram ,4 in his right hand a torch of pine- tree.5 After him a youth attired in white,"* bearing another light, of white thorn; under his arm, a little wicker flasket shut: behind him two others 4 See how he is called out, by Catullus in Nup. Jul. et Manl. Cinge tempora floribus Suave olentis amaraci, &c. 5 For so I preserve the reading there in Catul. Pineam quate tcedain, rather than to change it Spineain; and moved by the authority of Virgil in Ciri. where he says, Pronuba nec castos incendet Pinus amores. And Ovid, Fast. lib. 2. Expectet puros pinea taeda dies. Though I deny not, there was also spinea taeda, &c. which Pliny calls Nuptiarum facibus auspicatissimam, Nat. Hist. lib. 16. cap. 18. and whereof Sextus Pompeius Fest. hath left so particular testimony. For which see the following note. 6 This (by the ancients) was called Camillus, quasi minister (for so that signified in the Iletrurian tongue) and was one of the three, which by Sex. Pompei were said to be Patrimi et Matrimi, Pueri praetextati tres, qui nubentem deducunt: unus, qui facem praefert ex spina alba. Duo qui tenent nubentem. To which confer that of Varro, lib. 6. de lingua Lat. Dicitur in nuptiis camil¬ lus, qui cumerum fert: As also that of Fest. lib. 3. Cumerum vocabant antiqui vas quoddam quod opertum in nuptiis ferebant, in quo erant nubentis utensflia, quod et camillum dicebant: eo quod sacroruw minis! rum Ka/xiWou appellabnnt. THE MASQUE OF HYMEN. 550 in white, the one bearing a distaff, the other a spindle. Betwixt these a personated bride, sup¬ ported, her hair flowing, and loose sprinkled with gray; on her head a garland of roses, like a turret; her garments white : and on her back, a wether's fleece hanging down : her zone, or girdle about her waist of white wool, fastened with the Herculean knot. In the midst went the Auspices ; 1 after them, two that sung, in several coloured silks. Of which one bore the water, the other the fire; last of all the musicians , 2 diversly attired, all crowned with roses ; and with this Song began. Bid all profane away; None here may stay To view our mysteries, But who themselves have been, Or will in time be seen, The self-same sacrifice. For Union, mistress of these rites, Will he observed with eyes, As simple as her nights. Cho. Fly then all profane away, Fly far off as hath the day ; Night her curtain doth display. And this is Hymen’s holy-day. The song being ended. Hymen presented himself fore¬ most, and, after some sign of admiration, began to speak. Hy. What more than usual light, Throughout the place extended, Makes Juno’s fane so bright! Is there some greater deity descended? Or reign, on earth, those Powers So rich, as with their beams Grace Union more than ours ; And bound her influence in their happier streams ? ’Tis so : this same is he, The king, and priest of peace : And that his empress, she, That sits so crowned with her own increase ! O you, whose better blisses Have proved the strict embrace Of Union, with chaste kisses, And seen it flow so in your happy race ; That know, how well it binds The fitting seeds of things, Wins natures, sexes, minds, And every discord in true music brings : Sit now propitious aids, To rites so duly prized ; And view two noble maids, Of different sex, to Union sacrificed. In honour of that blest estate, Which all good minds should celebrate. 1 Auspices were those that handfasted the married couple ; that wished them good luck : that took care for the dowry ; and heard them profess that they came together for the cause of children. Juven. Sat. 10. Yeniet cum signatoribus auspex. And Lucan, lib. 2. Junguntur taciti, contentique auspice Bruto. They are also styled Pronubi, Proxenetae, Paranymphi. 2 The custom of music at nuptials, is clear in all antiquity. Ter. Adel. act. 5. Yerum hoc mihi mora est, Tibicina, et Hymenaeum qui cantent. And Claud, in epithal. Ducant per vigil es Carolina tibiae, &c. Here out of a microcosm, or globe, (seep. 558) figuring a man, with a kind of contentious music, issued forth the first masque of eight men. These represented the four Humours 3 4 5 and four Affec¬ tions, all gloriously attired, distinguished only by their several ensigns and colours ; and, dancing out on the stage, in their return at the end of their dance, drew all their sivords, offered to encompass the altar, and disturb the ceremonies. At which Hymen, trou¬ bled, spake: Hy. Save, save the virgins; keep your hallow’d lights Untouch’d ; and with their flame defend ourriteg. The four untemper’d Humours are broke out, And, with their wild Affections, go about To ravish all religion. If there be A power, like reason, left in that huge body Or little world of man, from whence these came, Look forth, and with thy bright and numerous flame 4 Instruct their darkness, make them know and see, In wronging these, they have rebell’d ’gainst thee. Hereat, Reason, seated on the top of the globe, as in the brain, or highest part of man, figured in a venerable personage, her hair white, and trailing to her ivaist, croioned with light, her garments blue, and semined with stars, girded unto her with a white band filled with arithmetical figures, in one hand bearing a lamp, in the other a bright sword, descended and spake: Rea. Forbear your rude attempt; what igno¬ rance Could yield you so profane, as to advance One thought in act against these mysteries ? Are Union’s 5 orgies of so slender price? She that makes souls with bodies mix in love, Contracts the world in one, and therein Jove ; Is spring and end of all things : 0 yet, most strange, 3 That they were personated in men hath already come under some grammatical exception. But there is more than grammar to release it. For, besides that humores and affectus are both masculine in genere, not one of the specials but in some language is known by a masculine word. Again, when their influences are common to both sexes, and more generally impetuous in the male, I see not why they should not, so, be more properly presented. And, for the allegory, though here it be very clear, and such as might well escape a candle, yet because there are some must complain of darkness, that have but thick eyes, I am contented to hold them this light. First, as in natural bodies so likewise in minds, there is no disease or distemperature, but is caused either by some abounding humour, or perverse affection; after the same manner, in politic bodies (where order, ceremony, state, reverence, devotion, are parts of the mind) by the difference or pre¬ dominant will of what wo metaphorically call humours and affections, all things are troubled and confused These, therefore, were tropically brought in, before marriage, as disturbers of that mystical body, and the rites, which were soul unto it; that afterwards, in marriage, being dutifully tempered by her power, they might more fully celebrate the happiness of such as live in that sweet union, to the harmonious laws of nature and reason. 4 Alluding to that opinion of Pythagoras, who held all reason, all knowledge, all discourse of the soul to be mere number. See Plut. de Plac. Phil. 5 Opyia, with the Greeks, value the same that cere- moniae with the Latins; anl imply all sorts of rites: howsoever (abusively) they have been made particular to Bacchus. See Serv. to that of Virg. Aineid. 4. Qualia commotis excita sacris Thyas. 0 Macrob. in Som. Scip. lib. 1, 551 THE MASQUE OF HYMEN. Herself nor suffers spring, nor end, nor change. No wonder they were you, that were so bold ; For none but Humours and Affections would Have dared so rash a venture. You will say It was your zeal that gave your powers the sway; And urge the masqued and disguised pretence Of saving blood, and succouring innocence : So want of knowledge still begetteth jars, When humorous earthlings will control the stars. Inform yourselves, with safer reverence, To these mysterious rites, whose mystic sense, Reason, which all things, but itself, confounds, Shall clear unto you from the authentic grounds. At this the Humours and Affections sheathed their swords, and retired amazed to the side of the stage, while Hymen began to rank the persons, and order the ceremonies: and Reason proceeded to speak. Rea. The pair, which do each other side, Though yet some space doth them divide, This happy night must both make one; Blest sacrifice to Union. Nor is this altar but a sign Of one more soft, and more divine. The genial bed, 1 where Hymen keeps The solemn orgies, void of sleeps : And wildest Cupid, waking, hovers With adoration ’twixt the lovers. The tead of white and blooming thorn, In token of increase, is born: As also, with the ominous light, 12 To fright all malice from the night. Like are the fire and water set ;3 That, e’en as moisture, mixt with heat, Helps every natural birth to life : So, for their race, join man and wife. The blushing veil * shows shamefac’dness Tli’ ingenuous virgin should profess At meeting with the man ; her hair, That flows so liberal,5 and so fair, Is shed with gray, to intimate, She entereth to a matron’s state, For which those utensils 6 7 are born. And, that she should not labour scorn, Herself a snowy fleece 7 doth wear, And these her rock and spindle bear, 8 * To show, that nothing which is good Gives check unto the highest blood. The zone of wool 9 about her waist, Which, in contrary circles cast, Doth meet in one strong knot, 10 that binds, Tells you, so should all married minds. And lastly, these five waxen lights, Imply perfection in the rites : 1 Properly that which was made ready for the new- married bride, and was called Genialis, a generandis liberis. Serv. in 6 iEn. 2 See Ovid. Fast. lib. 6. Sic fatus spinam, qua tristes pellere posset A foribus noxas, liaec erat alba, dedit. 3 Plutar. in Quaest. Rom. and Var. lib. 4. de ling. Lat. 4 Plin. Nat. Hist. lib. 21. cap. 8. 5 Pomp. Fest. Briss. Hotto. de Rit. Nup. 6 Var. lib. 6. de ling. Lat. and Fest. in Frag. 7 Fest. ib. 8 Plutar. in Quaest. Rom. et in Romul. ® Plin. Nat. Ilist. lib. 8. cap. 48. 10 That was Nodus Herculeanus, which the husband at night untied, in sign of good fortune, that he might be happy in propagation of issue, as Hercules was, who left seventy children. See Fest. in voc. Cingul. For five 11 the special number is, Whence hallow’d Union claims her bliss. As being all the sum that grows From the united strength of those Which male and female numbers we 12 Do style, and are first two and three. Which, joined thus, you cannot sever 1 In equal parts, but one will ever Remain as common ; so we see The binding force of Unity : For which alone the peaceful gods In number always love the odds ; And even parts as much despise, Since out of them all discords rise. Here the upper part of the scene, which was all of clouds, and made artificially to swell, and ride like the rack, began to open ; and the air clearing, in the top thereof was discovered Juno , 13 sitting in a throne, supported by two beautiful peacocks; li her attire rich, and like a queen , 15 a ivhite diadem 10 on her head, from whence descended a veil, and that bound with a fascia oj several colour'd silks, 17 set with all sorts of jewels, and raised in the top with lilies and roses : 18 in her right hand she held a sceptre, in the other a timbrel, at her golden feet the hide of a lion 19 was placed: round, about her sat the spirits of the air in several colours, making music: above her the region of fire, with a continual motion, teas seen to whirl circularly, and Jupiter standing in the top (figuring the heaven) brandishing his thunder: beneath her the rainbow, Iris, and on the two sides, eight ladies attired richly, and alike, in the most celestial colours, who repre¬ sented her powers, as she is the governess of marriage, 20 and made the second masque. All ivhich, upon the discovery, Reason made narration of. Rea. And see where J uno, whose great name Is Unio, in the anagram, Displays her glittering state and chair, As she enlightened all the air! 11 Plutarch, in Quaest. Rom. 12 See Mart. Capcl. lib. 6. de Nupt. Phil, et Mor. in numero Pentade. 1 3 4 5 AVith the Greeks, Juno was interpreted to be the air itself. And so Macr. de Som. Scipio. 1. 1. c. 17. calls her. Mar. Cap. surnames her Aeria, of reigning there. 44 They were sacred to Juno, in respect of their colours and temper, so like the air. Ovid de Arte Amand. Laudatas ostendit aves Junonia pennas: And Met. lib. 2. Ilabili Saturnia curru Ingreditur liquidum pavonibus iEtliera pictis. 15 She was called Regina Juno with the Latins, because she was soror et conjux Jo vis, deorurn et hominum regis. 16 Read Apul. describing her, in his 10th of the Ass. 17 After the manner of the antique bend, the varied colours implying the several mutations of the air, as showers, dews, serenity, force of winds, clouds, tempest, snow, hail, lightning, thunder, all which had their noises signified in her timbrel: the faculty of causing these being ascribed to her by Virg. iEneid. lib. 4. where he makes her say, His ego nigrantem commista grandine nimbum Desuper infundain, et tonitru, caelum omne ciebo. 18 Lilies were sacred to Juno, as being made white with her milk that fell upon the earth, when Jove took Hercules away, whom by stealth he had laid to her breast: the j'ose was also called Junonia. 19 So she was figured at Argos, as a step-mother, in¬ sulting on the spoils of her two privigni, Bacchus and Hercules. 20 See Virg. iEneid. lib. 4. Junoni ante omnes cui vincla j jugalia curae : and in another place, Dant signum prima et Tellus et Pronuba Juno: and Ovid, in Phil. Epist. I Junonemque terris quae prassidet alma Maritis. THE MASQUE OF HYMEN, 555 r— --- 1 " Hark how the charming tunes do beat In sacred concords ’bout her seat! And lo ! to grace what these intend, Eight of her noblest Powers descend, Which are enstyledher faculties , 1 That govern nuptial mysteries ; And wear those masques before their faces, Lest dazzling mortals with their graces, As they approach them, all mankind Should be, like Cupid, strucken blind. These Order waits for, on the ground, To keep, that you should not confound Their measured steps, which only move About the harmonious sphere of love. Their descent was made in two great clouds, that put forth themselves severally, and, with one measure of time, were seen to stoop, and fall gently down upon the earth. The manner of their habits came after some statues of Juno, no less airy than glorious. The dressings of their heads, rare ; so likewise of their feet: and all full of splendor, sovereignly, and riches. Whilst they were descending, this Song was sung at the altar. These, these are they, Whom Humour and Affection must obey ; Who come to deck the genial bower, And bring with them the grateful Hour That crowns such meetings, and excites The married pair to fresh delights : As courtings, hissings, coyings, oaths, and vows. Soft whisperings, embracements, all the joys And melting toys. That chaster love allows. Cho. Haste, haste, for Hesperus his head down bows. This song ended, they danced forth in pairs, and each pair with a varied and noble grace, to a rare and full music of twelve lutes, led on by Order, the servant of Reason, who was there rather a person of ceremony than use. His under garment was blue, his upper white, and painted full of arithmetical and geometri¬ cal figures; his hair and beard long, a star on his forehead, and in his hand a geometrical staff: to whom, after the dance, Reason spake. Rea. Convey them, Order, to their places, And rank them so, in several traces, As they may set their mixed powers Unto the music of the Hours ; And these, by joining with them, know In better temper how to flow : Whilst I, from their abstracted names, Report the virtues of the dames. First, Curis 2 comes to deck the bride’s fair tress, 1 They were all eight called by particular surnames of Juno, ascribed to her for some peculiar property in marriage, as somewhere after is more fitly declared. 2 This surname Juno received of the Sabines; from them the Romans gave it her: of tho spear, which (in the Sabine tongue) was called curis, and was that which they named hasta celibaris, which had stuck in the body of a slam sword player, and wherewith the bride’s head was drest, whereof Fest. in voce celibar. gives these reasons : Ut quemadmodum ilia eonjuncta fuerit cum corpore gladiatoris, sic ipsa cum viro sit; vel quia matron* Junonis curitis in tutela sit, quae ita appellabatur & ferenda hasta; vel qu6d fortes viros genituras ominetur ; vel quod nuptiali jure imperio viri subjicitur nubens, quia hasta summa armorum, et imperii est, &c. To most of which Plutarch, in his Quaest. Rom. consents, but adds a better in Romul. That when they divided the bride’s hair with the point of the spear, av/xfioAov elvai tov uera juaxV s Ka ^ noAeuiKws rbu w-pwrou yd/xoy Care of'the ointments Unxia 3 doth profess. Juga,4 her office to make one of twain : Gamelia5 sees that they should so remain. Fair Iterduca® leads the bride her way ; And Domiduca 7 home her steps doth stay : Cinxia 8 the maid, quit of her zone, defends. Telia, 9 for Hymen, perfects all, and ends. By this lime the ladies were paired with the men, and the whole sixteen ranked forth, in order, to dance ; and were with this Song provoked. Now, now, begin to set Your spirits in active heat And, since your hands are met, Instruct your nimble feet. In motions swift and meet, The happy ground to beat; yeveodai, it noted their first nuptials (with the Sabines) were contracted by force, and as with enemies. How¬ soever, that it was a custom with them, this of Ovid. Fast, lib. 2. confirms. Comat virgineas hasta recurva comas. 3 For the surname of Unxia, we have Mart. Capel. hio testimony, De Nup. Phil, et Mercu. lib. 2. qu6d unctioni- bus prasest: as also Servius, libro quarto Aineid. where they both report it a fashion with the Romans, that be¬ fore the new-married brides entered the houses of their husbands, they adorned the posts of the gates with woollen tawdries, or fillets, and anointed them with oils, or the fat of wolves and boars ; being superstitiously possest that such ointments had the virtue of expelling evils from the family : and that thence were they called Uxores, quasi Unxores. 4 She was named Juga, propter Jugum, (as Servius says,) for the yoke which was imposed, in matrimony, on those that were married, or (with Sex. Pomp. Fest.) qu6d Juges sunt ejusdem Jugi Pares, unde et Conjuges, or in respect of the altar (which I have declared before) sacred to Juno, in Yico Jugario. 5 As she was Gamelia, in sacrificing to her, they took away the gall, and threw it behind the altar ; intimating, that (after marriage) there should be known no bitterness, nor hatred, between the joined couple, which might divide or separate them. See Plutarch. Connub. Pr*. This rite I have somewhere following touched at. 6 The title of Iterduca she had amongst them, qubd ad sponsi axles sponsas comitabatur, or was a protectress of their journey. Mart. Capel. de Nupt. Philol. et Mercur. libro secundo. 7 The like of Domiduca, qu6d ad optatas domue duoeret. Mart. ibid. 8 Cinxia, the same author gives unto her, as the defen- dress of maids, when they had put off their girdle, in the bridal chamber ; to which Festus, Cinxioe Junonis nomen sanctum habebatur in nuptiis, quod initio conjugis solutio erat cinguli, quo nova nupta erat cincta. And Arnobius, a man most learned in their ceremonies, lib. 3. advers. Gent, saith, Unctionibus superest Unxia. Cingulorum Cinxia replicationi. 9 Telia signifies erfecta, or, as some translate it, Per- fectrix; with Jul. Pol. Lib. 3. Onomast. 7 ’jpa reAeia values Juno! Prasses Nuptiarum : who saitb, the attri¬ bute depends of TeA eios, which (with the ancients) signified marriage, and thence were they called reAeioi that entered into that state. Servius interprets it tho same with Gamelia jEneid. 4. ad verb. Et Junone secunda. But it implies much more, as including the faculty, too, mature and perfect. See the Greek Scholiast on Pind. Nem. in Hym. ad Thyseum Uliae filium Argi. reAeios 5e d yd/xos Sid t b KaTaaneva^eiv ttjv TeAeibrrjTa tov fi'iov ; that is. Nuptials are therefore called reA hoi, because they affect perfection of life, and do note that maturity which should be in matrimony. For before nuptials, she ia called Juno irapdeuos, that is, Virgo; after nuptials, reAeia, which is, Adulta, or Perfccta. 666 THE MASQUE OF HYMEN. Cho. Whilst all this roof doth ring. And each discording string. With every varied voice. In union doth rejoice. Here they danced forth a most neat and curious measure, full of subtilty and device, which was so excellently performed, as it seemed to take away that spirit from the invention, which the invention gave to it: and left it doubtful, whether the forms flowed more perfectly from the author's brain, or their feet. The strains were all notably different, some of them formed into letters, very signifying to the name of the Bridegroom, and ended in the manner of a chain, linking hands: to which this was spoken. Rea. Such was the golden chain 1 let down from heaven; And not these links more even, Than these : so sweetly temper’d, so combined By union and refined. Here no contention, envy, grief, deceit, Fear, jealousy have weight; But all is peace, and love, and faith, and bliss : What harmony like this ? The gall behind the altar quite is thrown ; This sacrifice hath none. Now no affections rage, nor humours swell; But all composed dwell. O Juno, Hymen, Hymen, Juno! who Can merit with you two ? Without your presence, Venus can do nought, Save what with shame is bought; No father can himself a parent show, Nor any house with prosperous issue grow. O then, what deities will dare With Hymen, or with Juno to compare? This speech being ended, they dissolved: and all took forth other persons, (men and ivomen) to dance other measures, galliards, and corantos: the whilst Inis Song importuned them to a fit remembrance of the time. Think, yet, how night doth waste. How much of time is past, What more than winged haste Your selves would take, If you were hut to taste The joy the night doth cast (O might it ever last) On this bright virgin, and her happy make. Their dances yet lasting, they were the second time impor¬ tuned by speech. Rea. See, see 1 the bright 2 Idalian star, That lighteth lovers to their war, 1 Mentioned by Homer, Ilia. 9, which many have inter¬ preted diversely, all allegorically. Pla. in Thaeteto, under¬ stands it to be the Sun, which while he circles the world in his course, all things are safe, and preserved: others vary it. Macrob. (to whose interpretation I am specially affected in my allusion) considers it thus ; in Som. Scip. libr. 1. cap. 14. Ergo cum ex summo Deo mens, ex mente aniina sit; anirna vero et condat, et vita compleat omnia quae sequuntur, cunctaquehic unus fulgor illuminet, et in universis appareat, ut in multis speculis, per ordinem positis, vultus unus: cumque omnia continuis succession!- bus se sequantur, degenerantia per ordinem ad imum meandi: invenietur pressius intuenti a summo Deo usque ad ultimam rerum faecem una mutuis se vinculis religans, et nusquam interrupta connexio. Et haec est Homeri Catena aurea, quam pendere de caelo in terras Deum jussisse commemorat. To which strength and evenness of connexion, I have not absurdly likened this uniting of Humours and Affections by the sacred Powers of marriage. * Stella Veneris, or Venus, which when it goes before Complains that you her influence lose ; While thus the night-sports you abuse. Hym. The longing bridegroom,3 in the porch, Shews you again the bated torch ; And thrice hath Juno 4 mixt her air With fire, to summon your repair. Rea. See, now she clean withdraws her light; And, as you should, gives place to night, That spreads her broad and blackest wing Upon the world, and comes to bring A 5 thousand several-colour’d loves, Some like sparrows, some like doves, That hop about the nuptial-room, And fluttering there, against you come. Warm the chaste bower, which 6 Cypria strows, With many a lily, many a rose. Hym. Haste, therefore, haste, and call, away The gentle night is prest to pay The usury of long delights, She owes to these protracted rites. At this, the whole scene being drawn again, and all covered with clouds, as a night, they left off their in¬ termixed dances, and returned to their first places ; where, as they were but beginning to move, this Song, the third time, urged them. O know to end, as to begin : A minute’s loss in love is sin. These humours will the night out-wear In their own pastimes here ; You do our rites much wrong. In seeking to prolong These outward pleasures: The night hath other treasures Than these, though long conceal’d. Ere day to be reveal’d. Then, know to end, as to begin ; A minute’s loss in love is sin. Here they danced their last dances, full of excellent de¬ light and change, and, in their latter strain, fell into a fair orb or circle ; Reason standing in the midst, and speaking. Rea. Here stay, and let your sports be crown’d r The perfect’st figure is the round. Nor fell you in it by adventure, When reason was your guide and centre. This, this that beauteous ceston is Of lovers many-coloui’d bliss. the sun, is called Phosphorus, or Lucifer; when it follows, Hesperus, or Noctifer (as Cat. translates it.) See Cic. 2. de Nat. Deor. Mar. Cap. de Nup. Phil, et Mer. 1. 8. The nature of this star Pythagoras first found out: and the present office Clau. expresseth in Fescen. Atollens thalamis Idalium. jubar Dilectus Veneri nascitur Hesperus. 3 It was a custom for the man to stand there, expecting the approach of his bride. See Hotto. de Rit. Nupt. 4 Alluding to that of Virg. iEneid. 4. Priina et Tellus, ' et Pronuba Juno Dant signum: fulsere ignes, et conscius aether Connubii, &c. * Stat. in Epit. Fulcra, torosquo deae, tenerum premit agmen Amorum. And Claud, in Epith. Pennati passim pueri, quo quemque vocavit Umbra, jacent. Both which proved the ancients feigned many Cupids. Read also Prop. eleg. 29. 1. 2. 0 Venus is so induced by Stat., Claud., and others, to celebrate nuptials. 7 Venus’s girdle, mentioned by Homor, Ili. £. which was feigned to be variously wrought with the needle, and in it woven love, desires, sweetness, soft parley, graceful ness, persuasion, and all the powers of Venus. THE MASQUE OF HYMEN. 667 Come, Hymen, make an inner ring, And let the sacrificers sing ; Chear up the faint and trembling bride, That quakes to touch her bridegroom’s side : Tell her what Juno is to Jove, The same shall she be to her love ; His wife : which we do rather measure A 1 name of dignity than pleasure. Up, youths ! hold up your lights in air, And shake abroad 2 their flaming hair. Now move united, and in gait, As you, in pairs, do front the state, With grateful honours thank his grace That hath so glorified the place : And as, in circle, you depart Link’d hand in hand ; so, heart in heart, May all those bodies still remain Whom he with so much sacred pain No less hath bound within his realms Than they are with the ocean’s streams. Long may his Union find increase, As he, to ours, hath deign’d his peace ! With this, to a soft strain of music, they paced once about, in their ring, every pair making their honours, as they came before the state: and then dissolving, went down in couples, led on by Hymen, the bride, and auspices following, as to the nuptial bower. After them, the musicians with this Song. Glad time is at his point arrived, For which love’s hopes were so long lived. Lead, Hymen, lead away; And let no object stay. Nor banquets, but sweet kisses, The turtles from their blisses. s ’Tis Cupid calls to arm ; And this his last alarm. Of this Song, then, only one staff was sung, but because I made it both in form and matter to emulate that kind of poem, which was called Epithalamiumf and by the ancients used to be sung when the bride was led into her chamber, I have here set it down whole ; and do heartily forgive their ignorance whom it chanceth not to please. Hoping that nemo doctus me jubeat Thalassionem verbis dicere non Thalassionis. EPITHALAMION. Glad time is at his point arrived, For which love’s hopes were so long lived. Lead, Hymen, lead away ; And let no object stay, Nor banquets, but sweet kisses, The turtles from their blisses. ’Tis Cupid calls to arm ; And this his last alarm. Shrink not, soft virgin, you will love, Anon, what you so fear to prove. This is no killing war, To which you pressed are ; 1 See the words of iElius Yerus in Spartian. 2 So Cat. in Nupt. Jul. et Manlii hath it. Viden’ ut faces splendidas quatiunt comas ? and by and by after, aureas quatiunt comas. 3 This poem had for the most part versum inter- calarem, or carmen amaebaeum : yet that not always one, but oftentimes varied, and sometimes neglected in the same song, as in ours you shall find observed. 4 It had the name a Thalamo; dictum est autem Qd.Xap.os cubiculum Nuptiale primo suo significatu, irapa rb OdXeiv apa, quod est simul genialem vitam agere. Seal, in Poet. But fair and gentle strife. Which lovers call their life. ’Tis Cupid cries, to arm , And this his last alarm. Help, youths and virgins, help to sing The prize which Hymen here doth bring. And did so lately 5 rap From forth the mother’s lap, To place her by that side Where she must long abide. On Hymen, Hymen call, This night is Hymen’s all. See ! Hesperus is yet in view. What star can so deserve of you ? Whose light doth still adorn Your bride, that, ere the morn, Shall far more perfect be, And rise as bright as he ; When, 6 like to him, her name Is changed, but not her flame. Haste, tender lady, and adventure; The covetous house would have you enter. That it might wealthy be, And you, her 7 8 mistress, see: Haste your own good to meet; And 3 lift your golden feet Above the threshold high, With prosperous augury. Now, youths, let go your pretty arms; The place within chants other charms. Whole showers of roses flow; And violets seem to grow, Strew’d in the chamber there. As Venus’mead it were. On Hymen, Hymen call, This night is Hymen’s all. Good matrons, that so well are known To aged husbands of your own, Place you our bride to-night; And 9 snatch away the light: That 10 she not hide it dead Beneath her spouse’s bed ; Nor 10 he reserve the same To help the funeral flame. So ! now you may admit him in ; The act he covets is no sin. But chaste and holy love, "Which Hymen doth approve ; Without whose hallowing fires All aims are base desires. On Hymen, Hymen call, This night is Hymen’s all. 5 The bride was always feigned to be ravished e:< gremio matris: or (if she were wanting) ex proxima necessitudine, because that had succeeded well to Romu¬ lus, who, by force, gat wives for him and his, from the Sabines. See Fast, and that of Catul. Qui rapis teneram ad virum virginem. 6 When he is Phosphorus, yet the same star, as I have noted before. 7 At the entrance of the bride, the custom was to give her the keys, to signify that she was absolutely mistress of the place, and the whole disposition of the family at her care. Fest. 8 This was also another rite : that she might not touch the threshold as she entered, but was lifted over it. Serviu9 saith, because it was sacred to Vesta. Plut. in Quaest. Rom. remembers divers causes. But that, which I take to come nearest the truth, was only the avoiding of sorcerous drugs, used by witches to be buried under that place, to the destroying of marriage amity, or the power of genera¬ tion. See Alexand. in Genialibus, and Christ. Landus upon Catul. 9 For this, look Fest. in Voc. Rapi. 10 Quo utroque mors propinqua alterius ulterius captarf putatur. Fest. ib. THE MASQUE OF HYMEN M>8 Now free from vulgar spite or noise. May you enjoy your mutual joys; Now, you no fear controls. But lips may mingle souls; And soft embraces bind To each the other’s mind, Which may no power untie, Till one or both must die! And look, before you yield' to slumber, That your delights be drawn past number ; Joys, got with strife, increase. Affect no sleepy peace ; But keep the bride’s fair eyes Awake with her own cries, Which are but maiden fears : And kisses dry such tears. . Then coin them ’twixt your lips so sweet, And let not cockles closer meet; Nor may your murmuring loves Be drown’d by 'Cypris* doves : Let ivy not so bind As when your arms are twined: That you may both ere day, Rise perfect every way. And, Juno, whose great powers protect The marriage-bed, with good effect, The labour of this night Bless thou, for future light: J A frequent surname of Venus, not of the place, as Cj-pria : but qu6d parere faciat, 7] rb kvelv irapEXovaa, Theoph. Phurnut. and the grammarians upon llomer, t*ee them. And thou, thy happy charge, Glad Genius, 2 enlarge; That they may both, ere day, Rise perfect, ev’ry way. And Venus, 3 thou, with timely seed. Which may their after-comforts breed. Inform the gentle womb; Nor let it prove a tomb : But, ere ten moons be wasted, The birth, by Cynthia hasted. So may they both, ere day, Rise perfect every way. And, when the babe to light is shown. Let it be like each parent known ; Much of the father’s face, More of the mother’s grace ; And either grandsire’s spirit, And fame, let it inherit. That men may bless th’ embraces, That joined two such races. Cease, youths and virgins, you have done; Shut fast the door : and as they soon To their perfection haste, So may their ardours last. So either’s strength outlive All loss that age can give: And, though full years be told, Their forms grow slowly old. 2 Deus Naturae, sive gignendi. And is the same in the male, as Juno in the female. Hence Genialis Lectus, qui nuptiis sternitur, in honorem Genii. Fest. Genius meus, quia me genuit. 3 She hath this faculty given by all the ancients. See Horn Iliad. 0. Lucret. in prim. Virg. in 2. Georg, Ac. Hitherto extended the first night’s solemnity, whose grace in the execution, left not where to add unto it, with wishing : I mean (nor do I court them) in those, that sustained the nobler parts. Such was the exquisite performance, as, beside the pomp, splendor, or what we may call apparelling of such presentments, that alone (had all else been absent) was of power to surprize with delight, and steal away the spectators from themselves. Nor was there wanting whatsoever might give to the furniture or complement; either in richness, or strangeness of the habits, delicacy of dances, magnificence of the scene, or divine rapture of music. Only, the envy was, that it lasted not still, or, now it is past, cannot by imagination, much less description, be recovered to a part of that spirit it had in the gliding by. Yet, that I may not utterly defraud the reader of his hope, I am drawn to give it those brief touches, which may leave behind some shadow of what it was: and first of the attires. That of the lords, had part of it, for the fashion, taken from the antique Greek statues, mixed with some modern additions: which made it both graceful and strange. On their heads they wore Persic crowns, that were with scrolls of gold plate turned outward, and wreathed about with a carnation and silver net-lawn ; the one end of which hung care¬ lessly on the left shoulder; the other was tricked up before, in several degrees of folds, between the plaits, and set with rich jewels and great pearl. Their bodies were of carnation cloth of silver, richly wrought, and cut to express the naked, in manner of the Greek thorax ; girt under the breasts with a broad belt of cloth of gold, embroidered, and fastened before with jewels: their labels were of white cloth of silver, laced, and wrought curiously between, suitable to the upper half of their sleeves; whose nether parts with their bases, were of watchet cloth of silver, cheveroned all over with lace. Their mantles were of several-coloured silks, distinguishing their qualities, as they were coupled in pairs; the first, sky-colour; the second, pearl-colour; the third, flame-colour; the fourth, tawny ; and these cut in leaves, which were subtily tacked up, and embroidered with O’s, and between every rank of leaves abroad silver race. They were fastened on the right shoulder, and fell compass down the back in gracious folds, and were again tied with a round knot to the fastening of their swords. Upon their legs they wore silver greaves, answering in work to their labels. And these were their accoutrements. The ladies attire was wholly new, for the invention, and full of glory ; as having in it the most true impression of a celestial figure: the upper part of white cloth of silver, wrought with Juno’s birds and fruits; a loose under garment, full gathered, of carnation, striped with silver, and parted with a golden zone; Beneath that, another flowing garment, of watchet cloth of siver, laced with gold; through all which, though they were round, and swelling, there yet appeared some touch of their delicate lineaments, preserving the sweetness of proportion, and expressing itself beyond expression. The attire of their heads did answer, if not exceed; their hair being carelessly (but yet with more art than if more affected) bound under the circle of a rare and rich coronet, adorned with all variety, and choice oi jewels ; from the top of which flowed a transparent veil, down to the ground; whose verge returning up, was fastened to either side in most sprightly manner. Their shoes were azure and gold, set with rubies and diamonds; so were all their garments; and every part abounding in ornament. No less to be admired, for the grace and greatness, was the whole machine of the spectacle from whence they came: the first part of which was a MIKP0K02M02, or globe, filled with countries, and those gilded; where the sea was exprest, heightened with siver waves. This stood, or rather hung (for no axle was seen to support it) and turning softly, discovered the first masque (as we have before, but too runningly, declared) which was of the men, sitting in fair composition, within a mine of several metals: to which the lights were so placed, as no one was seen ; but seemed ns if only Reason, with the splendor of her crown, illumined the whole grot. On the sides of this, which began the other part, were placed two great statues, feigned of gold, one of Atlas, the THE BARRIERS. 659 other of Hercules, in varied postures, bearing up the clouds, which were of relievo, embossed, and tralucent as naturals: to these a cortine of painted clouds joined, which reached to the utmost roof of the hall; and suddenly opening, revealed the three regions of air: in the highest of which sat Juno, in a glorious throne of gold, circled with comets, and fiery meteors, engendered in that hot and dry region; her feet reaching to the lowest: where was made a rainbow, and within it musicians seated, figuring airy spirits, their habits various, and resembling the several colours caused in that part of the air by reflection. The midst was all of dark and condensed clouds, as being the proper place where rain, hail, and other watery meteors are made ; out of which two concave clouds from the rest thrust forth themselves (in nature of those Nimbi, wherein, by Homer, Virgil, &c., the gods are feigned to descend) and these carried the eight ladies over the heads of the two terms j 1 who, as the engine moved, seemed also to bow themselves (by virtue of their shadows) and discharge their shoulders of their glorious burden: when having set them on the earth, both they and the clouds gathered themselves up again, with some rapture of the beholders. But that, which (as above in place, so in the beauty) was most taking in the spectacle, was the sphere of fire, in the top of all, encompassing the air, and imitated with such art and industry, as the spectators might discern the motion (all the time the shews lasted) without any mover; and that so swift, as no eye could distinguish any colour of the light, but might form to itself five hundred several hues out of the tralucent body of the air, objected betwixt it and them. And this was crowned with a statue of Jupiter the Thunderer. THE BARRIERS. On the next night, whose solemnity was of Barriers, (all mention of the former being utterly removed and taken away) there appeared, at the lower end of the hall, a mist made of delicate perfumes ; out of which (a battle being sounded under the stage) did seem to break forth two ladies, the one representing Truth, the other Opinion ; but both so like attired, as they could by no note be distinguished. The colour of their garments was blue, their socks white ; they were crowned with wreaths of palm, and in their hand each of them sustained a palm-bough. These, after the mist was vanished, began to examine each other curiously with their eyes, and approaching the state, the one expostu¬ lated the other in this manner : Truth. Who art thou, thus that imitat’st my I In steps, in habit, and resembled face? [grace, , Opin. Grave Time 2 and Industry my parents are ; My name is Truth, who, through these sounds of war, Which figure the wise mind’s discursive sight, In mists by nature wrapt, salute the light. Truth. I am that Truth, thou some illusive spright; Whom to my likeness, the black sorceress Night Hath of these dry, and empty fumes created. Opin. Best herald of thine own birth, well related, Put me and mine to proof of words, and facts, In any question this fair hour exacts. Truth. I challenge thee, and fit this time of love, With this position, which Truth comes to prove ; That the most honour’d state of man and wife, Doth far exceed the insociate virgin life. Opin. I take the adverse part; and she that best Defends her side, be Truth by all contest. Truth. It is confirm’d. With what an equal brow To Truth, 3 * * * Opinion’s confident ! and how, Like Truth, her habit shews to sensual eyes ; But whosoe’er thou be, in this disguise, Clear Truth, anon, shall strip thee to the heart; And shew how mere phantastical thou art. 1 Atlas and Hercules, the figures mentioned before. 8 Truth is feigned to be the daughter of Saturn: who indeed, with the ancients, was no other than time, and so his name alludes, Kpoj/os. Plut. in Qusest. To which confer the Greek Adage, ayei Se irpbs (poos ttjv a\{\feiav Xpivos. 3 Hippocrat. in a certain epistle to Philopcem. de- scribeth her, Mulierem, quae non mala videatur, sed audacior aspectu et concitatior. To which Cesare Ripa, in his Iconolog. alludeth in these words, Faccia, ne bella, ne dispiacevole, &c. Know, then, the first production of things Required two ; from mere one nothing springs : Without that knot the theme thou gloriest in, (The unprofitable virgin,) had not been. The golden tree of marriage began In Paradise, and bore the fruit of man; On whose sweet branches angels sat and sung. And from whose firm root all society sprung. Love (whose strong virtue w 7 rapt heaven’s soul in And made a woman glory in his birth) [earth, In marriage opens his inflamed breast ; And lest in him nature should stifled rest, His genial fire about the world he darts ; Which lips with lips combines, and hearts with hearts. Marriage Love’s object is ; at whose bright eyes, He lights his torches, and calls them his skies. For her he wings his shoulders ; and doth fly To her white bosom as his sanctuary : In which no lustful finger can profane him, Nor any earth with black eclipses wane him. She makes him smile in sorrows, and doth stand ’Twixt him and all w r ants, with her silver hand. In her soft locks his tender feet are tied; And in his fetters he takes worthy pride. And as geometricians have approved, That lines and superficies are not moved By their own forces, but do follow still Their bodies’ motions; so the self-loved will Of man or woman should not rule in them, But each with other wear the anadem. Mirrors, though deck’d with diamonds, are nought worth, If the like forms of things they set not forth; So men or women are worth nothing neither, If cither’s eyes and hearts present not either. Opin. Untouch’d Virginity, laugh out; to see Freedom in fetters placed, and urg’d ’gainst thee. What griefs lie groaning on the nuptial bed ? What dull society ? in what sheets of lead Tumble and toss the restless married pair, Each, oft, offended with the other’s air? THE BARRIERS. 50 0 From whence springs all-devouring avarice, But from the cares which out of wedlock rise ? And, where there is in life’s best-temper’d fires An end, set in itself to all desires, A settled quiet, freedom never check’d ; How far are married lives from this effect ? Euripus, 1 that bears ships in all their pride, ’Gainst roughest winds, with violence of his tide, And ebbs and flows seven times in every day, Toils not more turbulent or fierce than they. And then what rules husbands prescribe their wives! In their eyes circles, they must bound their lives. The moon, when farthest from the sun she shines, Is most refulgent, nearest, most declines : But your poor wives far off must never roam, But waste their beauties near their lords at home : And when their lords range out, at home must hide, [Most] like to begged monopolies, all their pride. When their lords list to feed a serious fit, They must be serious ; when to shew their wit In jests and laughter, they must laugh and jest; When they wake, wake; and when they rest, must rest. And to their wives men give such narrow scopes, As if they meant to make them walk on ropes : No tumblers bide more peril of their necks In all their tricks, than wives in husband’s checks. Where virgins, in their sweet and peaceful state, Have all things perfect; spin their own free fate ; Depend on no proud second ; are their own Centre and circle ; now, and always one. To whose example we do still hear nam’d One God, one nature, and but one world fram’d, One sun, one moon, one element of fire, So of the rest; one king, that doth inspire Soul to all bodies, in their royal sphere. Truth. And where is marriage more declar’d than there ? Is there a band more strict than that doth tie The soul and body in such unity ? Subjects to sovereigns ; doth one mind display In the one’s obedience, and the other’s sway ? Believe it, marriage suffers no compare, When both estates are valued, as they are. The virgin were a strange, and stubborn thing, Would longer stay a virgin, than to bring Herself fit use and profit in a make. Opin. How she doth err, and the whole heaven mistake ! Look, how a flower that close in closes grows, Hid from rude cattle, bruised with no ploughs, Which th’ air doth stroke, sun strengthen, showers shoot higher, It many youths, and many maids desire ; The same, when cropt by cruel hand ’tis wither’d, No youths at all, no maidens have desired : So a virgin, while untouch’d she doth remain Is dear to hers ; but when with body’s stain Her chaster flower is lost, she leaves to appea. Or sweet to young men, or to maidens dear. That conquest then may crown me in this war, Virgins, O virgins, fly from Hymen far. Truth. Virgins, O virgins, to sweet Hymen yield, For as a lone vine, in a naked field, Never extols her branches, never bears Ripe grapes, but with a headlong heaviness wears 1 A narrow sea, between Aulis, a port of Bceotia, and tin ale Euboea. See Pomp. Mela, lib. 2. Her tender body, and her highest sprout Is quickly levell’d with her fading root; By whom no husbandman, no youths will dwell; But if by fortune, she be married well To the elm her husband, many husbandmen And many youths inhabit by her, then : So whilst a virgin doth, untouch’d, abide, All unmanur’d, she grows old with her pride; But when to equal wedlock, in fit time, Her fortune, and endeavour lets her climb, Dear to her love, and parents she is held. Virgins, O virgins, to sweet Hymen yield. Opin. These are but words ; hast thou a knight By stroke of arms, the simple verity ? [will try, Truth. To that high proof I would have dared thee. I’ll straight fetch champions for the bride and me. Opin. The like will I do for virginity. Here they loth descended the hall, where at the lower end, a march being sounded with drums and Ji/es, there entered (led forth ly the Earl of Nottingham, who was Lord High Constable for that night, and the Earl of Worcester, Earl Marshal) sixteen knights armed with pikes, and swords; their plumes and colours, carnation and white; all richly accoutred, and making their honours to the state, as they marched by in pairs, were all ranked on one side of the hall. They placed sixteen others like accoutred for riches, and arms, only that their colours ivere varied to vmtehet and white ; who were by the same earls led up, and passing in like manner by the state, placed on the opposite side. By this time, the Bar being brought up, Truth proceeded. Truth. Now join ; and if this varied trial fail, To make my truth in wedlock’s praise prevail, I will retire, and in more power appear, To cease this strife, and make our question clear. Whereat Opinion insulting, followed her with this speech. Opin. Ay, do; it wei’e not safe thou shouldst abide : This speaks thy name, with shame to quit thy side. Here the champions on both sides addrest themselves for fight, first single ; after, three to three: and performed it with that alacrity, and vigour, as if Mars himself had been to triumph before Venus, and invented a new masque. When on a sudden, (the last six having scarcely ended) a striking light seemed to fill all the hall, and out of it an Angel or messenger of glory appearing. Angel. Princes, attend a tale of height and won- Truth is descended in a second thunder, [der, And now will greet you, with judicial state, To grace the nuptial part in this debate ; And end with reconciled hands these wars. Upon her head she wears a crown of stars, Through which her orient hair waves to her waste, By which believing mortals hold her fast, And in those golden cords are carried even, Till with her breath she blows them up to heaven. She wears a robe enchased with eagles eyes, To signify her sight in mysteries : Upon each shoulder sits a milk-white dove, And at her feet do witty serpents move : Her spacious arms do reach from east to west, And you may see her heart shine through her breast. Her right-hand holds a sun with burning rays, Her left a curious bunch of golden keys, With which heaven’s gates she locketh and displays. T1IE BARRIERS. fiOl A crystal mirror liangeth at her breast, By which men’s consciences are search’d, and drest: On her coach-wheels Hypocrisy lies rack’d ; And squint-eyed Slander, with Vain glory back’d. Her bright eyes burn to dust, in which shines Fate : An angel ushers her triumphant gate, Whilst with her fingers fans of stars she twists, And with them beats back Error, clad in mists. Eternal Unity behind her shines, That fire and water, earth and air combines. Her voice is like a trumpet loud and shrill, Which bids all sounds in earth, and heaven be still. And see! descended from her chariot now, In this related pomp she visits you. Enter Truth. Truth. Honour to all that honour nuptials, To whose fair lot, in justice, now it falls, That this my counterfeit be here disclosed, Who, for virginity, hath herself opposed. Nor though my brightness do undo her charms, Let these her knights think, that their equal arms Are wrong’d therein : For valour wins applause, That dares but to maintain the weaker cause. And princes, see, ’tis mere Opinion That in Truth’s forced robe, for Truth hath gone 1 Her gaudy colours, pieced with many folds, Shew what uncertainties she ever holds : Vanish, adulterate Truth ! and never dare With proud maids praise, to press where nuptials are. And, champions, since you see the truth I held, To sacred Hymen, reconciled, yield : Nor (so to yield) think it the least despiglit: “ It is a conquest to submit to right.” This royal judge of our contention Will prop, I know, what I have undergone ; To whose right sacred highness I resign, Low at his feet this starry crown of mine, To shew his rule and judgment is divine ; These doves to him I consecrate withal, To note his innocence, without spot, or gall; These serpents, for his wisdom: and these rays, To shew, his piercing splendour: these bright keys Designing power to ope the ported skies, And speak their glories to his subjects’ eyes. Lastly, this heart, with which all hearts be true : And truth in him make treason ever rae. With this they were led forth, hand in hand, reconcile i as in triumph. And thus the solemnities ended. Vivite Concordes, et nostrum discite siunus. THE HUE AND CHY AFTER CUPID The worthy custom of honouring worthy marriages, with these noble solemnities, hath of late years advanced itself frequently with us; to the reputation no less of our court, than nobles; expressing besides (through the difficulties of expense and travel, with the cheerfulness of undertaking) a most real affection in the personaters, to those, for whose sake they would sustain these persons. It behoves then us, that are trusted with a part of their honour In these celebrations, to do nothing in them beneath the dignity of either. With this proposed part of judgment, I adventure to give that abroad, which in my first conception I intended honourably fit: and, though it hath labour’d since, under censure, I, that know truth to be always of one stature, and so like a rule, as who bends it the least way, must nccd9 do an injury to the right, cannot but smile at their tyrannous ignorance, that will offer to slight me (in these things being an artificer) and give themselves a peremptory license to judge who have never touched so much as to the bark, or utter shell of any knowledge. But their daring dwell with them. They have found a place to pour out their follies ; and 1 a seat, to sleep out the passage. The scene to this Masque, was a high, steep, red cliff, advancing itself into the clouds, figuring the place, from whence (as 1 have been, not fabulously, informed) the honourable family of the Radcliffs first took their name, a clivo rubro , and is to be written with that orthography; as 1 have observed out of master Camden, in his mention of the earls of Sussex. This cliff was also a note of height, greatness, and antiquity. Before which, on the two sides, were erected two pilasters, charged with spoils and trophies of Love and his mother, conse¬ crate to marriage : amongst which, were old and young persons figured, bound with roses, the wed¬ ding garments, rocks and spindles, hearts transfixed with arrows, others flaming, virgins’ girdles, gar¬ lands, and worlds of such like ; all wrought round and bold : and over head two personages, Triumph and Victory, in flying postures, and twice so big as the life, in place of the arch, and holding a garland of myrtle for the key. All which, with the pillars, seemed to be of burnished gold, and embossed out of the metal. Beyond the cliff was seen nothing but clouds, thick, and obscure; till on the sudden, with a solemn music, a bright sky breaking forth, there were discovered first two doves, 1 then two swans 1 with silver geers, drawing forth a trium¬ phant chariot ; in which Venus sat, crowned with her star, and beneath her the three Graces, or Cha- rites, Aglaia, Thalia, Euphrosyne, all attired ac¬ cording to their antique figures. These, from their chariot, alighted on the top of the cliff, and de¬ scending by certain abrupt and winding passages, Venus having left her star only flaming in her seat, came to the earth, the Graces throwing garlands all the way, and began to speak. Ven. It is no common cause, ye will conceive, My lovely Graces, makes your goddess leave Her state in heaven, to-night, to visit earth. Love late is fled away, my eldest birth, Cupid, whom I did joy to call my son ; And, whom long absent, Venus is undone. Spy, if you can, his footsteps on this green; For here, as I am told, he late hath been, Both doves and swans were sacred to this goddess, and as well with the one as the other, her chariot is induced by Ovid, lib. 10 and 11 Metamor. With divers of his brethren, 13 lending light From their best flames, to gild a glorious night; Which I not grudge at, being done for her, Whose honours, to mine own, I still prefer. But he not yet returning, I’m in fear, Some gentle Grace, or innocent Beauty here, Be taken with him : or he hath surprised A second Psyche, and lives here disguised. Find ye no track of his stray’d feet ? 1 Gra. Not I. 2 Gra. Nor I. 3 Gra. Nor 1. Ven. Stay, nymphs, we then will try A nearer way. Look all these ladies’ eyes, And see if there he not concealed lies ; Or in their bosoms, ’twixt their swelling breacts ; The wag affects to make himself such nests : Perchance he hath got some simple heart, to hide His subtle shape in ; I will have him cry’d, And all his virtues told ! that, when they’d know What spright he is, she soon may let him go, That guards him now; and think herself right blest, To be so timely rid of such a guest. Begin, soft Graces, and proclaim reward To her that brings him in. Speak to be heard. 1 Grace. Beauties, have ye seen this toy, Called Love, a little boy, ? Almost naked, wanton, blind ; Cruel now, and then as kind ? If he be amongst ye, say? He is Venus’ runaway. 2 Grace. She that will but now discover Where the w’inged wag doth hover, Shall to-night receive a kiss, How, or where herself would wish : But, who brings him to his mother, Shall have that kiss, and another. 3 Grace. He hath marks about him plenty : You shall know him among twenty. 2 Alluding to the Loves (the torch-bearers) in the Queen’s Masque before. 3 In this Love, I express Cupid, as he is Veneris films, and owner of the following qualities, ascribed him by the antique and later poets. THE HUE AN D CRY AFTER CUPID. 553 All his body is a fire, And his breath a dame entire, That being shot, like lightning, in, Wounds the heart, but not the skin. 1 Grace. At his sight, the sun hath turn'd,' Neptune in the waters burn’d; Hell hath felt a greater heat p Jove himself forsook his seat: From the centre to the sky, Are his trophies reared high.3 2 Grace. Wings he hath, which though ye clip, He will leap from lip to lip, Over liver, lights, and heart, But not stay in any part; And, if chance his arrow misses, He will shoot himself, in kisses. 3 Grace. He doth bear a golden bow, And a quiver, hanging low, Full of arrows, that outbrave Dian’s shafts ; where, if he have Any head more sharp than other, With that drst he strikes his mother. 1 Grace. Still the fairest are his fuel. When his days are to be cruel, Lovers’ hearts are all his food ; And his baths their warmest blood : Nought but wounds his hand doth season, And he hates none like to Reason. 2 Grace. Trust him not; his words, though sweet, Seldom with his heart do meet. All his practice is deceit; Every gift it is a bait; Not a kiss but poison bears ; And most treason in his tears. 3 Grace. Idle minutes are his reign ; Then, the straggler makes his gain, By presenting maids with toys, And would have ye think them joys : ’Tis the ambition of the elf, To have all childish as himself. 1 Grace. If by these ye please to know him, Beauties, be not nice, but show Lim. 2 Grace. Though ye had a will to hide him, Now, we hope, ye’ll not abide him. 3 Grace. Since you hear his falser play; And that lie’s Venus’ runaway. At this, from behind the trophies, Cupid discovered him¬ self, and came forth armed ; attended with twelve boys, most antickly attired, that represented the Sports, and pretty Lightnesses that accompany Love, v nder the titles of Joci and It is us ; and are said to wait on Venus, as she is Prcefect of Marriage.* Cup. Come, my little jocund Sports, Come away; the time now sorts With your pastime : this same night Is Cupid’s day. Advance your light. With your revel fill the room, That our triumphs be not dumb. 1 See Lucian. Dial. Deor. 2 And Claud, in raptu Proserp. 5 Such was the power ascrib’d him, by all the ancients: whereof there is extant an elegant Greek epigram. Phil. Poe. wherein he makes all the other deities despoiled by him, of their ensigns; Jove of his thunder, Phoebus of his arrows, Hercules of his club, &c. * Which Horat. consents to. Car. lib. 1. ode 2, -Erycina ridens, Quam Joeus circum volat, et Cupido. Wherewith they fell into a subtle capricious dance, to as odd a music, each of them bearing tivo torches, and nodding with their antic faces, with other variety of ridiculous gesture, which gave much occasion of mirth and delight to the spectators. The dance ended, Cupid went forward. Cup. Well done, anticks ! now my bow, And my quiver bear to show ; That these beauties, here, may know, By what arms this feat was done, That hath so much honour won Unto Venus and her son. At which, his mother apprehended him: and circling him in, with the Graces, began to demand. Ven. What feat, what honour is it that you boast, My little straggler? I had given you lost, With all your games, here. Cap. Mother! Ven. Yes, sir, she. What might your glorious cause of triumph be ? Have you shot Minerva5 or the. Thespian dames? Heat aged Ops again, 5 6 7 8 with youthful flames? Or have you made the colder Moon to visit Once more, a sheepcote ? Say, what conquest is it Can make you hope such a renown to win ? Is there a second Hercules brought to spin ? Or, for some new disguise, leaves Jove his thunder ? Cup. Nor that, nor those, and yet no less a wonder— 7 [_He espies Hymen. Which to tell, I may not stay. Hymen’s presence bids away ; ’Tis, already, at his night, He can give you further light. You, my Sports, may here abide, Till I call to light the bride. [ Slips from her. Enter Hymen. Ily. Venus, is this a time to quit your car? To stoop to earth, to leave alone your star, Without your influence, and, on such a night,* Which should be crown’d with your most cheering As you were ignorant of what were done [sight, By Cupid’s hand, your all-triumphing son? Look on this state ; and if you yet not know, What crown there shines, whose sceptre here doth grow; Think on thy loved AEneas, and what name, Maro, the golden trumpet of his fame, Gave him, read thou in this. A prince that draws By example more, than others do by laws :9 That is so just to his great act, and thought, To do, not what kings may, but what kings ought. 5 She urges these as miracles, because Pallas, and the Muses, are most contrary to Cupid. See Luc. Dial. Yen. et \ Cupid. 6 Rhea, the mother of the gods, whom Lucian, in that place, makes to have fallen franticly in love by Cupid’s means, with Atys. So of the Moon, with Endymion, Hercules, &c. 7 Here Hymen, the god of marriage, entered ; and was so induced here, as you have him described in my Hymen aei. 8 When she is nuptiis prsefecta, with Juno, Suadela, Diana, and Jupiter himself. Paus. in Messeniac. et Plut. in Problem. * uEneas, the son of Venus, Virgil makes throughout, the most exquisite pattern of piety, justice, prudence, and all other princely virtues, with whom (in way of that excellence) I confer my sovereign, applying in his descrip¬ tion his own word usurped of that poet, Parcere subjectis, et debellare superbos. 504 TIIE HUE AND CRY AFTER CUPID. Who, out of piety, unto peace is vow’d, To spare his subjects, yet to quell the proud; And dares esteem it the first fortitude, To have his passions, foes at home, subdued. That was reserv’d, until the Parcse spun Their whitest wool; and then his thread begun, Which thread, when treason would have burst, 1 a To-day renown’d, and added to my roll,' 2 [soul Opposed ; and, by that act, to his name did bring The honour to be saver of his king. This king whose worth, if gods for virtue love, Should Venus with the same affections move, As her Aeneas ; and no less endear Her love to his safety, than when she did cheer, After a tempest, 3 long-afflicted Troy, Upon the Lybian shore ; and brought them joy. Ven. I love, and know his virtues, and do boast Mine own renown, when I renown him most. My Cupid’s absence I forgive, and praise, That me to such a present grace could raise. His champion shall, hereafter, be my care : But speak his bride, and what her virtues are. Ily. She is a noble virgin, styled, The Maid Of the Red-cliff, and hath her dowry weigh’d No less in virtue, blood, and form, than gold; Thence, where my pillar’s rear’d, you may behold, Fill’d with love’s trophies, doth she take her name. Those pillars did uxorious Vulcan frame,4 Against this day, and underneath that hill, He, and his Cyclopes, are forging still Some stange and curious piece, to adorn the night, And give these graced nuptials greater light. Here Vulcan presented himself, as overhearing Hymen, attired in a cassock girt to him, with bare arms, his hair and beard rough ; his hat of blue, and ending in a cone ; in his hand a hammer and tongs, as coming from the forge. Vul. Which I have done ; the best of all my life; And have my end, if it but please my wife, And she commend it, to the labour’d worth. Cleave, solid rock ! and bring the wonder forth. At which with a loud and full music, the cliff parted in the midst, and discovered an illustrious concave, filled with an ample and glistering light, in which an artificial sphere was made of silver, eighteen foot in the diameter, that turned perpetually : the coluri were heightened with gold ; so were the arctic and antarctic circles, the tropics, the equinoctial, the meridian and horizon ; only the zodiac was of pure gold : in which the masquers, under the characters of the twelve signs, were placed, answering them in number ; whose offices, with the whole frame, as it turned, Vulcan went forward to describe. It is a sphere, I’ve formed round and even, In due proportion to the sphere of heaven, With all his lines and circles ; that compose The perfect’st form, and aptly do disclose The heaven of marriage : which I title it: Within whose zodiac, I have made to sit, In order of the signs, twelve sacred powers, That are presiding at all nuptial hours : The first, in Aries’ place, respecteth pride Of youth, and beauty ; graces in the bride. In Taurus, he loves strength and manliness; The virtues which the bridegroom should profess In Gemini, that noble power is shown, That twins their hearts, and doth of two make one. In Cancer, he that bids the wife give way With backward yielding to her husband’s sway. In Leo, he that doth instil the heat Into the man: which from the following seat Is temper’d so, as he that looks from thence Sees yet they keep a Virgin innocence. In Libra’s room, rules he that doth supply All happy beds with sweet equality. The Scorpion’s place he fills, that makes the jars, And stings in wedlock ; little strifes and wars : Which he, in th’ Archer’s throne, doth soon remove, By making, with his shafts, new wounds of love. And those the follower with more heat inspires, As, in the Goat, the sun renews his fires. In wet Aquarius’ stead, reigns he that showers Fertility upon the genial bowers. Last, in the Fishes place, sits he doth say, In married joys, all should be dumb as they. And this hath Vulcan for his Venus done, To grace the chaster triumph of her son. Ven. And for this gift, will I to heaven return, And vow for ever, that my lamp shall burn With pure and chastest fire ; or never shine, 5 But when it mixeth with thy sphere and mine. Here Venus returned to her chariot, with the Graces while Vulcan, calling out the priests of Hymen, who were the musicians, was interrupted by Pykacmon. 6 Vul. Sing then, ye priests. Pyrac. Stay, Vulcan, shall not these Come forth and dance ? Vul. Yes, my Pyracmon, please The eyes of these spectators with our art.7 Pyrac. Come here then, Brontes, bear a Cy¬ clop’s part, And Steropes, both with your sledges stand, And strike a time unto them as they land; And as they forwards come, still guide their paces, In musical and sweet proportion’d graces ; 1 In that monstrous conspiracy of E. Gowry. 2 Titulo tunc crescere posses. Nunc per te titulus. s Virg. A5neid. lib. 1. 4 The ancient poets, whensoever they would intend any thing to be done with great mastery, or excellent art, made Vulcan the artificer, as Horn. 11 2- in the forging of Achilles’s armour, and Virg. for iEneas, iEneid. 8. He is also said to be the god of fire and light. Sometime taken for the purest beam: and by Orph. in Hym. celebrated for the sun and moon. But more especially by Eurip. in Troad. he is made Facifer in Nuptiis. Which present office we give him here, as being Calor Naturas, and Brasses Luminis. See Plat, in Cratyl. For his description, read j Pausan. in Eliac. 5 As Catul. hath it in nup. Jul. et Manl. without Hymen, which is marriage, Nil potest Venus, fama quod bona comprobet, &c. 6 One of the Cyclops, of whom, with the other two, Brontes and Steropes, see Virg. iEneid. Ferrum exercebant vasto Cyclopes in antro, Brontesque, Steropesque et nudus membra Pyracmon, &c. 7 As when Horn. Iliad. 2, makes Thetis for her sou Achilles, to visit Vulcan’s house, he feigns that Vulcan had made twenty tripods, or stools with golden wheels, to move of themselves miraculously, and go out and return fitly. To which the invention of our dance alludes, and is in the poet a most elegant place, and worthy the tenth reading. THE HUE AND CRY AFTER CUPID 50.5 While I upon the work and frame attend, And Hymen’s priests forth, at their seasons, send To chaunt their hymns; and make this square ad- Our great artificer, the god of fire. [mire Here Ihe musicians, attired, in yellow, with wreaths of marjoram, and veils like Hymen’s priests, sung the first staff of the following Epithalamion: which, be¬ cause it teas sung in pieces between the dances, shewed to be so many several songs ; but was made to be read an entire poem. After the song, they came (descend¬ ing in an oblique motion) from the Zodiac, and danced their first dance ; then music interposed, (but varied with voices, only keeping the same chorus) they danced their second dance. So after, their third and fourth dances, which were all full of elegancy and curious device. And thus it ended. 1 EPITHALAMION. Up, youths and virgins, up, and praise The god, whose nights outshine his days; Hymen, whose hallowed rites Could never boast of brighter lights; Whose bands pass liberty. Two of your troop, that with the morn were free, Are now waged to his war. And what they are, If you’ll perfection see, Yourselves must be. Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished star ! What joy or honours can compare With holy nuptials, when they are Made out of equal parts Of years, of states, of hands, of hearts ! When in the happy choice. The spouse and spoused have the foremost voice 1 Such, glad of Hymen’s war, Live what they are. 1 The two latter dances were made by master Thomas Giles, the two first by master Hier. Herne : who, in the persons of the two Cyclopes, beat a time to them with their hammers. The tunes were master Alplionso Ferrabosco’s. The device and act of the scene master Inigo Jones’s, with addition of the trophies. For the invention of the whole, and the verses, Assertor qui dicat esse meos, imponet plagiario pudorem. The attire of the masquers throughout was most graceful and noble; partaking of the best both ancient and later figure. The colours carnation and silver, enriched both with embroidery and lace. The dressing of their heads, feathers and jewels; and so excellently ordered to the rest of the habit, as all would suffer under any description, after the shew. Their performance of all, so magnificent and illustrious, that nothing can add to the seal of it, but the subscription of their names: The Duke of Lenox, Earl of Arundell, Earl of Pembroke, Earl of Montgomery, Lord D’Aubigny, Lord of Walden, Lord Hay, Lord Sankrk, Sir Ito. Riche, Sir Jo. Kennethie, Master Erskine. And long perfection see: And such ours be. Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished star * The solemn state of this one night Were fit to last an age’s light; But there are rites behind Have less of state, but more of kind : Love’s wealthy crop of kisses, And fruitful harvest of his mother’s blisses. Sound then to Hymen’s war: That what these are, Who will perfection see, May haste to be. Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, tliou wished star ! Love’s commonwealth consisf-s of toys; His council are those antic boys, Games, Laughter, Sport-s, Delights, That triumph with him on these nights: To whom we must give way, For now their reign begins, and lasts till day They sweeten Hymen’s war. And, in that jar, Make all, that married be. Perfection see. Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished start Why stays the bridegroom to invade Her, that would be a matron made ? Good-night, whilst yet we may Good-night, to you a virgin, say : To-morrow rise the same Your mother is, 3 and use a nobler name. Speed well in Hymen’s war, That, what you are, By your perfection, we And all may see. Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished star 1 To-night is Venus’ vigil kept. This night no bridegroom ever slept; And if the fair bride do, The married say, ’tis his fault too. Wake then, and let your lights Wake too; for they’ll tell nothing of your nights But, that in Hymen’s war, You perfect are. And such perfection, we Do pray should be. Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished stai .' That, ere the rosy-finger’d morn Behold nine moons, there may be born A babe, t’uphold the fame Of Ratcliffe’s blood, and Ramsey’s name : That may, in his great seed. Wear the long honours of his father’s deed. Such fruits of Hymen’s war Most perfect are: And all perfection, we Wish you should see. Shine, Hesperus, shine forth, thou wished star l 2 A wife or matron : which is a name of more dignity than Virgin. D. Heins, in Nup. Ottonis Ileurnii. Cras inatri similis redibis. THE MASQUE OF QUEENS; . CELEBRATED FROM THE HOUSE OF FAME; BY THE QUEEN OF GREAT BRITAIN, WITH HER SADIES, At Wlv.teha.ll Feb. 2, 1600. [dedication.] TO TIIE GLORY OF OUR OWN, AND GRIEF OF OTHER NATIONS, MY LORD HENRY, PRINCE OF GREAT BRITAIN, ETC. Sir, —When it hath been my happiness (as would it were more frequent) but to see your face, and, as passing by, to consider you ; I have with as much joy, as I am now far from flattery in professing it, called to mind that doctrine of some great inquisitors in Nature, who hold every royal and heroic form to partake and draw much to it of the heavenly virtue. For, whether it be that a divine soul, being to come into a body, first cliooseth a palace for itself; or, being come, doth make it so; or that Nature be ambitious to have her work equal; I know not: but what is lawful for me to understand and speak, that I dare ; which is, that both your virtue and your form did deserve your fortune. The one claimed that you should be born a prince, the other makes that you do become it. And when Necessity (excellent lord) the mother of the Fates, hath so provided, that your form should not more insinuate you to the eyes of men, than your virtue to their minds: it comes near a wonder to think how sweetly that habit flows in you, and with so hourly testimonies, which to all posterity might hold the dignity of examples. Amongst the rest, your favour to letters, and these gentler studies, that go under the title of Humanity, is not the least honour of your wreath. For, if once the worthy professors of these learnings shall come (as heretofore they were) to be the core of princes, the crowns their sovereigns wear will not more adorn their temples ; nor their stamps live longer in their medals, than in such subjects’ labours. Poetry, my lord, is not born with every man, nor every day: and in her general right, it is now my minute to thank your Highness, who not only do honour her with your care, but are curious to examine her with your eye, and enquire into her beauties and strengths. Where though it hath proved a work of some difficulty to me, to retrieve the particular authorities (according to your gracious command, and a desire born out of judgment) to those things, which I writ out of fullness and memory of my former readings: yet, now I have overcome it, the reward that meets me is double to one act: which is, that thereby your excellent understanding will not only justify me to your own knowledge, but decline the stiffness of other’s original ignorance, already armed to censure. For which singular bounty, if my fate (most excellent Prince, and only delicacy of mankind) shall reserve me to the age of your actions, whether in thecamp or the council-chamber, that I may write, at nights, the deeds of your days ; I will then labour to bring forth some work a9 worthy of your fame, as my ambition therein is of your pardon. By the most true admirer of your Highness's virtues, And most hearty celebrater of them, Ben Jonson. It increasing now to the third time of my being used in these services to hermajesty’s personal presentations, with the ladies whom she pleaseth to honour; it was my first and special regard, to see that the nobility of the invention should be answerable to the dignity of their persons. For which reason I chose the argument to be, A celebration of honourable and true Fame, bred out of Virtue: observing that rule of the best artist, 1 to suffer no object of delight to pass without his mixture of profit and example. And because her majesty (best knowing that a principal part of life, in these spectacles, lay in their variety) had commanded me to think on some dance, or shew, that might precede hers, and have the place of a foil, or false masque ; I was careful to decline, not only from others, but mine own steps in that kind, since the last year, 2 I had an anti-masque of boys; and therefore now devised, that twelve women, in the habit of hags, or witches, sustaining the persons of Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity, &c. the opposites to good Fame, should fill that part; not as a masque, but a spectacle of strangeness, producing multiplicity of gesture, and not unaptly sorting with the current, and whole fall of the device. His majesty, then, being set, and the whole company in full expectation, the part of the scene which first presented itself was an ugly Hell; which flaming beneath, smoked unto the top of the roof. And in respect all evils are morally said to come from hell; as also from that observation of Torrentius upon Horace’s Canidia, 3 quee tot instructa venenis, ex Orcifaucibus profecta videri possit: these witches, with a kind of hollow and infernal music, came forth from thence. First one, then two, and three, and more, till their number increased to eleven ; all differently attired : some with rats on their heads, some on their shoulders ; others with ointment-pots at their girdles ; all with spindles, tim¬ brels, rattles, or other venefical instruments, making a confused noise, with strange gestures. The device of their attire was master Jones’s, with the invention, and architecture of the whole scene, and machine. Only I prescribed them their properties of vipers, snakes, bones, herbs, roots, and other ensigns of their magic, out of the authority of ancient and late writers, wherein the faults are mine, if there be any found ; and for that cause I confess them. 1 nor. in Art. Poetic. s Vide Lasvin. Tor. comment, in Ilor. Epod. lib. 2 In the masque at my lord Haddington’s wedding. ode 5. THE MASQUE OF QUEENS. 5(57 These eleven witches beginning to dance, (« l.ich is an usual ceremony 1 at their convents or meet¬ ings, where sometimes also they are vizarded ami masked,) on the sudden one of them missed their chief, and interrupted the rest with this speech Hag. Sisters, stay, we want our Dame ; 2 3 4 5 6 Call upon her by her name, And the charm we use to say ; That she quickly anoints and come away. i. Charm. Dame, dame ! the watch is set: Quickly come, we all are met.— From the lakes, and from the fens, 11 From the rocks, and from the dens. From the woods, and from the eaves, From the church-yards, from the graves, From the dungeon, from the tree That they die on, here are we ! Comes she not yet ? Strike another heat. 2 Charm. The weather is fair, the wind is good. Up, dame, on your horse of wood Or else tuck up your gray frock, And saddle your goat, 0 or your green cock, 7 1 See the king’s majesty’s book (our sovereign) of Demonology, Bodin. Remig. Delrio. Mai. Malefi. and a wor ld of others in the general: but let us follow particulars. 2 Amongst our vulgar witches, the honour of dame, (for so I translate it) is given with a kind of pre-eminence to some special one at their meetings • which Delrio insinuates, Disquis. Mag. lib. 2. qusest. 9. quoting that of Apuleius, lib. de Asin. aureo. de quadam caupona, regina Sagarum. And adds, ut seias etiarn turn quasdam ab iis hoc titulo honoratas. Which title M. Philipp. Ludwigus Elicit. Daemonomagiac, quscst. 10. doth also remember. 3 When they are to be transported from place to place, they use to anoint themselves, and sometimes the things they ride on. Beside Apul. testimony, see these later, Remig. Daemonolatriae lib. 1. cap. 14. Delrio, Disquis- Mag. 1. 2. quaest. 16. Bodin. Daemonoman. 1. 2. c. 14. Barthol. de Spina. qua:st. de Strigib. Philippo Ludwigus Elicit, quaest. 10. Paracelsus in magn. et occul. Philo- sophia, teacheth the confection. Unguentum ex carne recens natorum infantium, in pulmenti forma coctum, et cum herbis somniferis, quales sunt Papaver, Solanum, Cicuta, &c. And Giov. Bapti. Porta, lib. 2. Mag. Natur. cap. 16. 4 These places, in their own nature dire and dismal, are reckoned up as the fittest from whence such persons should come, and were notably observed by that excellent Lucan in the description of his Erichtho, lib. 6. To which we may add this corollary out of Agrip. de occult, philosop. 1. 1. c. 48. Saturno correspondent loca quaevis feetida, tenebrosa, subterranea, religiosa et funesta, ut cremeteria, busta, et hominibus deserta habitacula, et vetustate caduca, loca obscura, et horrenda, et solitaria antra, cavernas, putei: prreterea piscina?, stagna, paludes, et ejusmodi. And in lib. 3. c. 42. speaking of the like, and in lib. 4. about the end, Aptissima sunt loca plurimum experientia visionum, nocturnarumque ineursionum et consimilium phantasmatum, ut ccemeteria, et in quibus fieri solent executiones criminal is judicii, in quibus recen- tibus annis publiese strages factae sunt, vel ubi occisorum cadavera, needrun expiata, nec rite sepulta, reeentioribus annis subhumata sunt. 5 Delrio, Disq. Mag. lib. 2. qnasst. 6. has a story out of Triezius of this horse of wood : but that which our witches call so, is sometimes a broom-staff, sometimes a reed, sometimes a distaff. See Remig. Daemonol. lib- 1. cap. 14. Bodin. 1. 2. cap. 4. &c. 6 The goat is the Devil himself, upon whom they ride often to their solemnity, as appears by their confessions in Rem. and Bodin. ibid. His majesty also remembers the story of the devil’s appearance to those of Calicut, in that ferm, Dremonol. lib. 2. cap. 3. 7 Of the green eoek we have no other ground (to con- And make his bridle a bottom of thread. To roll up how many miles you have rid. Quickly come away; For we all stay. Nor yet? nay, then, We’ll try her agen. 3 Charm. The owl is abroad, the bat, and the toad, And so is the cat-a-inountain, The ant and the mole sit both in a hole. And the frog peeps out o’ the fountain -, The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play, The spindle is now a turning; 8 The moon it is red, and the 6tars are fled, But all the sky is a burning : The ditch is made, 9 and our nails the spade. With pictures full, of wax and of wool; Their livers I stick, with needles quick ; There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood. Quickly, dame, then bring your part in, Spur, spur upon little Martin, 10 fess ingenuously’) than a vulgar fable of a witch, that with acock of that colour, and a bottom of blue thread, would transport herself through the air; and so escaped (at the time of her being brought to execution) from the hand of justice. It was a tale when I went to school; and somewhat there is like it in Mart. Delr. Disq. Mag. lib. 2. qua?st. 6. of one Zyti, a Bohemian, that, among other his dexterities, aliquoties equis rliedariis vectum, gsllis gallinaeeis ad epirrhedium suum alligatis, subse- quebatur. 8 All this is but a periphrasis of the night, in their charm, and their applying themselves to it with their instruments, whereof the spindle in antiquity was the chief : and beside the testimony of Theocritus, in Phar- maceutria (who only used it in amorous affairs) was of special act to the troubling of the moon. To which Martial alludes, lib. 9. ep. 30. Qua? nunc Thessalico Lunam deducere rliombo, &c. And lib. 12. ep. 57. Cum secta Colcho Luna vapulat rliombo. 9 This rite also of making a ditch with their nails is frequent with our witches, whereof see Bodin. Remig. Delr. Malleus Mai. Godelman. 1. 2. de Lamiis, as also the antiquity of it most vively exprest by Hor. Satyr. 8. lib. 1. where he mentions the pictures, and the blood of a black lamb. All which are yet in use with our modem witch¬ craft. Scalpere terrain (speaking of Canidia and Sagana) Unguibus, et pullam divellere mordicus agnain Coeperunt: cruor in fossam confusus, ut inde Maneis elicerent animas responsa daturas. Lanea et effigies erat, altera cerea, &c. And then by and by, -Serpentes atque vidcres Infernas errare caneis, Lunamque rubentem, IN'e foret his testis, post magna latere sepulchra. Of this ditch Homer makes mention in Circe’s speech to Ulysses, Odyss. K. about the end, B oPpov opv^cu, &c. And Ovid. Metam. lib. 7- in Medea’s magic, Haud procul egesta scrobibus tellure duabus Sacrafacit, cultrosquein gutture velleris atri Conjicit, et patulas perfundit sanguine fossas. And of the waxen images, in Ilypsipyle’s epistle to Jason, where he expresseth that mischief also of the needles: Devovet absentes, simulacraque cerea fingit; Et miserum tenues in jecur urget acus. Bodin. Daemon, lib. 2. cap. 8. hath, (beside the known story of king Duffe out of Hector Boetius) much of the witches later practice in that kind, and reports a relation of a French ambassador’s, out of England, of certain pictures of wax, found in a dunghill near Islington, of our late queen’s: which rumour I myself (being then very young! can yet remember to have been current. 10 Their little Martin is he that calls them to their con¬ venticles, which is done in a human voice, but coming forth, they find him in the shape of a great buck goat, o(58 THE MASQUE OF QUEENS. Merrily, merrily, make him sail, A worm in liis mouth, and a thorn in his tail, Fire above, and fire below. With a whip in your hand, to make him go O, now she’s come ! Let all be dumb. At this the Dame 1 entered to them, nakd-armcd, bare¬ footed, her frock tucked, her hair knotted, and folded with vipers ; in her hand a torch made of a dead man's arm, lighted, girded with a snake. To whom they all did reverence, and she spake, uttering, by way of question, the end wherefore they cameA Dame. Well done, my Hags! And come we fraught with spite, To overthrow the glory of this night? Holds our great purpose? Hag. Yes. Dame. But wants there none Of our just number ? Hags. Call us one by one, And then our dame shall see. Dame. First, then advance^ My drowsy servant, stupid Ignorance, upon whom they ride to their meetings, Delr. Disq. Mag. qua;st. lb. lib. 2. And Bod. Damon, lib. 2. cap. 4. have both the same relation from Paulus Grillandus, of a witch. Adveniente nocte et hora evocabatur voce quadam velut humana ab ipso Daemone, quem non vocant Dsmo- nem, sed Magisterulum, alias Magistrum Martinettum, sive Martinellum. Quae sic evocata, mox sumebat pyxidem unctionis et linebat corpus suum in quibusdam pavtibus et membris, quo linito exibat ex domo, et inveniebat Magisterulum suum in forma hirci illam expectantem apud ostium, super quo mulier equitabat, et applicare solebat fortiter manus ad crineis, etstatim hircus ille adscendMr.it per aerem, et brevissimo tempore deferebat ipsam, &c. 1 This dame I make to bear the person of Ate, or Mischief, (for so I interpret it) out of Homer’s description of her. 11. A. where he makes her swift to hurt mankind, strong, and sound of her feet; and Iliad. T. walking upon men’s heads; in both places using one and the same phrase to signify her power, BXaivTova avdpdi>irovs,l