SCENE I.--_A Room in_ EYRE’S _House_.

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Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Non-italicized text within italic text is enclosed by

carat characters (example: _and ~Soldiers~. They pass

over the stage_)

A carat character is used to denote superscription. A

single character following the carat is superscripted

(example: xxxx^s).

The Mermaid Series.

Edited by Havelock Ellis.

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THE BEST PLAYS OF THE OLD DRAMATISTS.

THOMAS DEKKER.

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[Illustration:

_THE FORTUNE PLAYHOUSE._

_Golden Lane, Erected 1622._

_From a View Taken in 1811._]

The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists.

THOMAS DEKKER

Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Ernest Rhys.

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UNEXPURGATED EDITION.

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CONTENTS.

PAGE

THOMAS DEKKER vii

THE SHOEMAKER’S HOLIDAY 1

THE HONEST WHORE.--Part the First 89

THE HONEST WHORE.--Part the Second 191

OLD FORTUNATUS 287

THE WITCH OF EDMONTON 387

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

THOMAS DEKKER.

IN Henslowe’s Diary, among the curious items which Alleyn’s

fellow manager in the Fortune and other theatres set down

concerning his transactions in the plays of the time, the name

of a certain “Mr. Dickers,” will be found under date 8th of

January, 1597. In this way, the adventure of Thomas Dekker into

the precarious field of dramatic authorship is first recorded

for us. The entry refers to some twenty shillings “lent unto

Thomas Dowton” to buy a book of Dekker’s, no doubt the MS. of

some play written by him, the name of which, however, is not

given. A week later, a second entry notes again a disbursement,

this time of four pounds, also for a book of his “called

Fayeton” (Phaeton), possibly a further part of the same work.

The third entry referring to him is ominous: “Lent unto the

companey, the 4 of febreary 1598, to disecharge Mr. Dicker owt

of the cownter in the powltrey, the some of fortie shillings.

I saye dd to Thomas Dowton ... xxxx^s.” In the sorry indication

of these three entries, showing first the promising emergence

of the young playwright, and then immediately the coming of

disaster upon him, and his being lodged for debt in “the Counter

in the Poultry,” we have at once the key to Dekker’s career.

Dekker, perhaps the most original and most striking figure among

the lesser known men of that brilliant array which follows

Marlowe, is at the same time one of the most unfortunate in his

life and its artistic outcome, judged by the standard of his

own genius. It was as if Fortune, to take a figure from his

own play, having first presented him with the gift which, as

a poet of the time, he most desired,--the playwright’s great

opportunity, then turned upon him, and said,--

“But now go dwell with cares, and quickly die.”

If, however, he lived with cares, he laughed at them, and he was

too strong to let them kill him outright. But, nevertheless,

there they were; they never perhaps quite upset that undaunted

good-humour of his, but they defeated him as an artist, they

allied themselves insidiously with his own natural weaknesses to

defeat the consummation of a really great poetic faculty.

Dekker, however, is one of those authors whose personal effect

tends to outgo the purely artistic one. He has the rare gift

of putting heart into everything he says, and because of this

abounding heartiness of his, it is hard to measure him by the

absolute standards of criticism. Indeed, after the endless

shortcomings and disappointments of his verse and prose have

been estimated and written against him, he remains, after all

has been set down, still the same lovable, elusive being,

a man of genius, a child of nature. For this reason, it is

disappointing that so little is to be actually known of his

life. As one reads his plays, and marks the strong individuality

shown in them, the desire to know how he adjusted himself to the

everyday life, and took its little defeats and encouragements,

springs very strongly. It is the natural interest that one takes

in men of his cordial humanity, and it is disappointing to be

balked of its satisfaction.

The outline of Dekker’s life is indeed singularly blank. We do

not know exactly when he was born, or where; there is scarcely

any clue to the important period of his youth, and his early

struggles as a poet and playwright; we do not even know when he

died. A few further entries in Henslowe’s Diary, whose value

an uneasy sense of J. Payne Collier’s editorial methods tends

to depreciate, and a few incidental references in Dekker’s own

works, chiefly in the dedications and introductions to his

plays, form the whole of the exact record which we have to rely

upon.

In the dedication to _Match Me in London_, perhaps the most

interesting of all the plays by him not included in this

volume, which was published in 1631, he says, sadly enough,

“I have been a Priest in Apollo’s Temple many years, my voice

is decaying with my Age, yet yours being clear and above mine

shall much honour me, if you but listen to my old tunes.”

Again in 1637, in the dedicatory epistle of his prose tract,

_English Villainies Seven Several Times Pressed to Death_, he

refers more definitely to his “three-score years.” Sixty years

back from 1637 gives us 1577, but as Collier[1] tells us that

he was married before 1594, and as we know that he had already

won recognition as a young playwright in 1597, it will be well

to read the term “three-score years” pretty freely, as meaning

generally the term between sixty and seventy, and to put down

the date of his birth at about the year 1569-70, or even a

little earlier.

[1] “Memoirs of Actors,” xvi., xvii.

There is less uncertainty about his birthplace: various

references in his prose tracts prove pretty certainly that he

was born in London, as seems so fit in one of the most devoted

of those poets who have celebrated the English capital. “O

thou beautifullest daughter of two united Monarchies!” he

cries, in his _Seven Deadly Sins of London_; “from thy womb

received I my being, from thy breasts my nourishment.” This is

confirmed by similar passages in the _Dead Term_, _The Rod for

Runaways_, and other of the prose pamphlets. The particular

spot in London where he was born is not however to be learnt,

although Collier surmises that he was born in Southwark. The

name itself,--whether Dekker or Decker, suggests a Dutch origin,

which is further corroborated by the curious knowledge shown in

the plays and prose tracts of Dutch people and Dutch books, to

say nothing of the frequent Dutch realism of Dekker’s dramatic

method. Dr. Grosart, whose indefatigable energy of research was

probably never exercised to so little purpose in the case of any

author, discovered on the title-page of one copy of the civic

“Entertainment” by Dekker, _Troia-Nova-Triumphans, or London

Triumphing_, the words “Merchant-Tailor” written opposite his

name, as if by one who had known him. From this we may again

conjecture that his father was a tailor, and that possibly the

boy went to Merchant Tailor’s School, and was intended for that

trade. The intimate knowledge of the daily routine of tailors’

and shoemakers’ shops displayed in _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_,

and other of the plays, bear every evidence of being drawn from

actual experience. It is not a very wild imagination, therefore,

to imagine that the boy Dekker may have been apprenticed in the

ordinary way as a shoemaker or tailor, making escape from the

craftsman’s life as his poetic ambition grew hot, and at last

inevitable, in its hazardous issue upon the path of a playwright

and man of letters.

It is only by free inference from his works that we can possibly

fill up the early part of his life, until, in 1597, as already

noted, we find him committed to the life of an author and

playwright, and tasting, no doubt, of its sweets, as in the

early part of 1598 he had a sharp foretaste of its bitterness.

Much of the description in his plays casts a vivid light upon

this wild life of the playhouse and tavern which he, with

other young poets of the extraordinary decade terminating the

sixteenth century must have lived. Some of the scenes in _The

Honest Whore_, and again in _Satiromastix_ and other of the

lesser known comedies, are full of this interest; and luminous

passages also occur in the plays of his various collaborators.

In some of his own prose works, especially in his singular guide

to the gallant’s life in Elizabethan London, _The Gull’s Horn

Book_, Dekker has indirectly supplied a still more realistic

account of the life lived by the young bloods who frequented

the playhouses and taverns. From this inimitable book one

gathers much curious detail for the picture of Dekker’s daily

surroundings. In Chapter V., which is headed, “How a Gallant

should behave himself in an Ordinary,” the young hero of the

period is advised to repair to the “ordinary,” or eating-house,

so early as “some half-hour after eleven; for then you shall

find most of your fashion-mongers planted in the room waiting

for meat.” Amongst the types of gallant to whom Dekker gives

special advice as to behaviour at the ordinary, is the poet:--

“If you be a Poet,” he says, “and come into the Ordinary;

though it can be no great glory to be an ordinary Poet;

order yourself thus. Observe no man; doff not cap to that

gentleman to-day at dinner, to whom, not two nights since,

you were beholden for a supper; but, after a turn or two in

the room, take occasion, pulling out your gloves, to have

some _Epigram_, or _Satire_, or _Sonnet_ fastened in one of

them.... Marry, if you chance to get into your hands any

witty thing of another man’s, that is somewhat better; I

would counsel you then, if demand be made who composed it,

you may say: ‘Faith, a learned Gentleman, a very worthy

friend.’ And this seeming to lay it on another man will be

counted either modesty in you, or a sign that you are not

ambitious of praise, or else that you dare not take it upon

you for fear of the sharpness it carries with it.”

At dinner, directions are given in the same vein of irony, as to

the manner of eating and so forth; and after dinner, among other

occupations and diversions proposed for the afternoon figures

the play. The next chapter is devoted accordingly to expounding

“How a Gallant should behave himself in a Playhouse.” From the

point of view of Dekker’s dramatic work, this is naturally the

most interesting part of the book. It gives us a vivid idea of

the associations which would colour his thoughts as, the dinner

hour over, the stream of gallants, ’prentices and so forth,

issued from the ordinaries, the fashionable promenade in the

Middle Aisle of St. Paul’s, and elsewhere, and wended their way

at afternoon to the play. Dekker, it is quite evident, speaks

feelingly, remembering his own troubles, in these ironical

counsellings to the “Gull,” who in his seat on the stage seems

to have acted as a sort of irresponsible _chorus_, hindering

rather than aiding the understanding of the play, however, and

resented equally by the playwright and the playgoers in pit or

gallery. “Whither,” proceeds the Horn Book,--

“Whither therefore the gatherers of the public, or private

Playhouse stand to receive the afternoon’s rent; let our

Gallant having paid it, presently advance himself up to

the Throne of the stage; I mean not into the lord’s room,

which is now but the stage’s suburbs; no, ... but on the

very rushes where the comedy is to dance, yea, and under

the state of Cambyses himself, must our feathered ostrich,

like a piece of ordnance, be planted valiantly, because

impudently, beating down the mews and hisses of the opposed

rascality.” Here it continues--“By sitting on the stage, you

may, without travelling for it, at the very next door ask

whose play it is; and, by that _Quest of Inquiry_, the law

warrants you to avoid much mistaking; if you know not the

author, you may rail against him, and peradventure so behave

yourself, that you may enforce the author to know you.”

The refinements of torture to which the Elizabethan playwright

was subject under this arrangement, must indeed have been

infinite. Dekker further enlarges with the piteous irony of a

long-suffering experience:--

“It shall crown you with rich commendation, to laugh aloud

in the middest of the most serious and saddest scene of the

terriblest tragedy; and to let that clapper, your tongue, be

tossed so high, that all the house may ring of it.”

Again, even more suggestively--

“Now, sir; if the writer be a fellow that hath either

epigrammed you, or hath had a flirt at your mistress, or

hath brought either your feather, or your red beard, or

your little legs, etc., on the stage; you shall disgrace

him worse than by tossing him in a blanket, or giving him

the bastinado in a tavern, if, in the middle of his play,

be it Pastoral or Comedy, Moral or Tragedy, you rise with a

screwed and discontented face from your stool to be gone.”

From another passage, it is clear that the first arrival of the

gallant upon the stage, as seen from the front of the house,

must have been almost as striking as this precipitate exit.

“Present not yourself on the stage,” it advises “especially

at a new play, until the quaking Prologue hath, by rubbing,

got colour into his cheeks, and is ready to give the

trumpets their cue that he is upon point to enter; for then

it is time, as though you were one of the properties, or

that you dropt out of the hangings, to creep from behind

the arras, with your tripos or three-footed stool, in one

hand, and a teston (tester,--sixpence) mounted between a

forefinger and a thumb in the other.”

From the ordinary to the playhouse, from the playhouse to the

tavern, the satirist follows still as good-humouredly:--“the

next places that are filled, after the playhouses be emptied

are, or ought to be, taverns; into a tavern then let us next

march, where the brains of one hogshead must be beaten out to

make up another.”

The ordinary, the playhouse, the tavern:--Dekker no doubt knew

them only too well, but it is not to be inferred because of this

that his life was an idle one. His extraordinary energy, at the

beginning of his career at any rate, becomes clear when we turn

to the record of his plays. We have already referred to those

which he had been engaged to write for Henslowe, and which no

doubt were written and duly performed before the appearance of

_The Shoemaker’s Holiday_, the first of those actually remaining

to us. The year 1599 especially, towards the middle of which

_The Shoemaker’s Holiday_ was published, must have been a year

of immense activity. On the 9th and 16th April, Henslowe records

a play by Dekker and Chettle, _Troilus and Cressida_. On the

2nd of May, a payment of five shillings was made to him, “in

earnest of a book called _Orestes’ Furies_,” and again in the

same month there are payments to him and Chettle, for _The

Tragedy of Agamemnon_. In July and August, _The Step-mother’s

Tragedy_, is mentioned; and on the 1st of August, he receives

forty shillings “for a book called _Bear-a-brain_.” In September

he is associated with Jonson and Chettle, “on account of a play

called _Robert the Second, King of Scots Tragedy_.” In January,

1599-1600, a book called _Truth’s Supplication to Candlelight_

is mentioned, and the next month _The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy_ in

which Haughton and Day appear to have collaborated, and which,

it has been thought, is the same as the play called _Lust’s

Dominion_ sometime assigned to Marlowe. This has brought us past

the time of the publication of _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_, the

first edition of which probably appeared in July, 1599, if we

are right in taking the entry against the 17th of that month

in Henslowe’s Diary to refer to the buying of a book actually

published, and not one merely in MS.

_The Shoemaker’s Holiday_ represents Dekker admirably on the

side of his facile humour and bright dramatic realism, as

_Old Fortunatus_, which must have followed it very closely,

represents him on the more purely poetical side. Taken as a

whole, and as a successful accomplishment of what it attempts,

this hearty comedy--so full of overflowing good humour--gives

us Dekker on his happiest side. It displays all that genial

interest in everything human, all that ready democratic

sympathy, which, among the Elizabethans, Dekker has peculiarly

displayed. The comedy is indeed the most perfect presentation of

the brightness and social interest of the everyday Elizabethan

life which is to be found in the English drama. It realises

with admirable vividness certain simpler types of character,

of which the _people_, as opposed to the aristocratic classes

from which most of the dramatists drew their characters, was

formed. The craftsman’s life, merging itself in the citizen’s,

is the end and all of the play; the King himself is but a shadow

of social eminence compared with the Lord Mayor. Simon Eyre,

the shoemaker, jolliest, most exuberant of all comedy types,

is the very incarnation of the hearty English character on its

prosperous workaday side, untroubled by spiritual misgivings

and introspections; and he is so set amidst the rest of the

characters as to delightfully fulfil the joyous main intention

of the play.

The plot proper, as stated in the prose Argument, dealing with

the romance of Lacy and his disguise as a shoemaker in order to

win the love of Rose, is of less consequence indeed than the

interest centred in the doings of Simon Eyre and his journeymen

in the shoemaker’s shop. Of these Firk is a capital low-comedy

character, a healthy, lusty animal, serving as an excellent

dramatic foil to his more delicate companion Ralph, and to Lacy

in his disguise as Hans, the Dutchman. Of the female characters,

Eyre’s wife is a good sample of foolish, conventional

femininity, well realised in the little she has to say and do.

The most taking of the female parts, however, is Jane: the whole

episode of Ralph’s going to the wars, his delayed return to her,

her wooing by Hammon, and her final rescue at the last moment by

the band of shoemakers, is worked out with singular sweetness,

and with great feeling for simple dramatic effect. One of the

prettiest scenes in the whole of Dekker, is that where Jane is

shown sitting alone in the shop sewing when Hammon approaches,

and tries by fair means and foul to win her love. Compared with

her, Rose, the heroine in chief, is indistinct. Sybil, the maid,

however, is an excellent counterpart to Firk, the feminine to

his masculine,--as unabashed in her innuendo as he in his blunt

animalism.

Taken all through, this “Pleasant Comedy of the Gentle Craft” is

one to be remembered with the score or so of the best comedies

of pure joy of life which were produced by the Elizabethans;

and remembered it probably will be even when Dekker’s stronger

and maturer work is overlooked. The abounding happiness that

fills it is contagious; only here and there the note of trouble

for Ralph and Jane occurs to set off the unadulterated comedy

of the rest. The whole spirit of the play is expressed in the

words of Simon Eyre when he sums up his philosophy for the

edification of the Lord Mayor, who says to him, laughing--“Ha,

ha, ha! I had rather than a thousand pound, I had an heart but

half so light as yours;” and Eyre replies, “Why, what should I

do, my Lord? A pound of care pays not a dram of debt. Hum, let’s

be merry whiles we are young; old age, sack and sugar, will

steal upon us, ere we be aware.” As pointed out in the notes

to the play, it is worth remembering that Robert Herrick, who

was a goldsmith’s apprentice in London when the play was first

performed there, seems to have in part appropriated these words

of Eyre’s, and paraphrased them in one of his inimitable verses.

Dekker has himself twice overflowed into song in the play, and

the shoemaker’s drinking-song shows at once the exquisite lyric

faculty which he possessed. Its chorus lingers long in the

memory as an echo of the happy, boisterous life, well nourished

with cakes and ale, of the Elizabethan craftsman:--

“Trowl the bowl, the jolly nut-brown bowl,

And here, kind mate, to thee:

Let’s sing a dirge for Saint Hugh’s soul,

And down it merrily.”

_The Shoemaker’s Holiday_ serves well as an instance of Dekker’s

realistic method. One sees in it a natural outcome of his

prentice life in London, as a shoemaker, a “seamster,” or what

not. In coming to _Old Fortunatus_ on the other hand, we have

Dekker as pure poet and idealist. Instead of the lusty zest

of comedy, we have the romantic spirit in its perfection; the

glamour of romance is cast over everything. Founded upon one

of those fabulous histories in which the sixteenth century so

loved to indulge its imagination, the play appeals directly to

the sense of wonder and adventure which the poets, playwrights

and story-tellers of the day, could always count upon in their

audience. As pointed out in the preliminary note to the play,

Dekker’s version is founded upon an earlier one which was

performed some three years before he began his. It would be

interesting to discover what the character of the original

version was, both in its general lines and in its details.

In his admirable book, “Studies in the Literary Relations

of England and Germany in the sixteenth century,” Mr. C. H.

Herford has pointed out the resemblance in certain parts of the

original legend and of the play to the story of Faustus. This

indirectly leads us to the consideration of how far the writer

of the earlier play may have been influenced, if at all, by

the dramatic method of Marlowe. For in some parts of Dekker’s

version, the resemblance in the structure of the blank verse

on occasion, and in the scenic and other detail, to Marlowe is

striking. Only, in the verse, it is _Tamburlaine_ rather than

_Dr. Faustus_ that is suggested, as for instance in Fortune’s

address to Fortunatus, when she appears to him with her array of

discrowned kings and kings new-created.

“These have I ruined, and exalted those:

These hands have conquered Spain: these brows fill up

The golden circle of rich Portugal.

Viriat a monarch now, but born a shepherd:

This Primislaus, a Bohemian King,

Last day a carter; this monk Gregory,

Now lifted to the Papal dignity.”

The preceding passage, beginning “Thou shalt be one of Fortune’s

minions,” which contains too a direct reference to--

“that great Scythian swain,

Fortune’s best minion, warlike Tamburlaine,”

is still more like Marlowe. Dekker’s verse, it is true, does

not march mail-clad like Marlowe’s: it has a plasticity and a

suppleness which the other’s “mighty line” lacked, while it

fails to achieve the same state and sustained dignity. But after

all differences are allowed for, there is much in the blank

verse in some parts of _Old Fortunatus_, which only Marlowe

could have inspired.

This is not said with any thought of depreciating Dekker, who

has so often been depreciated in order to add to the lustre

of others, but because it marks an interesting point in his

development as a poet and dramatist. Two things were enough

in themselves to prevent his carrying on the tradition of

Marlowe: one, and an insuperable one, his faculty of humour;

the second, springing from the first, his lack of that sense of

his own artistic dignity, failing which his genius never rose

to its potential height. Signs of the power to achieve the very

highest in poetry are scattered extravagantly all through ‘_Old

Fortunatus_,’ so that one does not wonder at Charles Lamb’s

tremendous compliment. There are lines in it which have rarely

been surpassed, and there are fewer lapses in the play than is

usual with Dekker, in the inspired recklessness of his method.

Dekker’s theory of blank verse, in especial, was not a severe

one. It admitted of a free interspersion of rhymed lines, and

of other dubious modifications of the strict measure. But it is

remarkable how successful many of the passages are in spite of

these irregularities. Dekker had the privilege of genius, and

the faculty of putting into words that rhythmical unction and

natural charm which defy the exacter laws of prosody.

Part of the structural defects of the play are due to one of

those exigencies to which the Elizabethan playwrights were

peculiarly liable. Mr. C. H. Herford, in the book before

alluded to, has shewn that Dekker had practically finished the

play on the lines of the original fable of Fortunatus, when

it was ordered for performance at Court, whereupon further

special additions were made with a view to this. Thus, it will

be perceived that there are two prologues; while a serious

interference with the original lines of the play is shown in

the intrusion of Virtue and Vice, in the fashion of a “Masque”

or “Triumph,” so as to upset the simple dramatic motive of the

supremacy of Fortune. In this way, as Mr. Herford says, the

right moral tension of the tragedy gives way to the decorous

conventionalities of the Masque. For, the apparent moral effect

gained by the triumph of Virtue over Vice and over Fortune is

only one of appearance. Dekker had already, according to his

wont, moralised the original story, which is innocent of moral

intention. For instance, Andelocia, who like Fortunatus is in

Dekker’s hands a prodigal upon whom Fortune wreaks a tragic

retribution, is in the original romance a hero to the last,

using the immoral supremacy afforded by the Purse and Wishing

Cap without either moral recoil or material injury to himself.

There are other parts, fine in themselves, but insufficiently

related to the main line of the plot, whose inconsequence can

not be excused because of any exterior later addition, as for

instance, the Orleans episode. It is hard, at the same time,

to have to find fault with an intrusion which has resulted so

delightfully in itself; and we may best take leave of the play

in the tempered eulogy of Mr. J. Addington Symonds, who, after

speaking of certain of these defects, goes on to say, “Among

the poet’s most perfect achievements, however, are the scenes

in which Orleans indulges a lover’s lunacy in a passion of

wild fancies. To quote passages would be to murder the effect.

Nothing can be imagined finer than the paradoxes of this witty

fanatic, in whose opinion the whole world is mad and he the

only wise man left; who scorns the scorn of sober folk, extols

deformity, and adores the very horns that sprout upon his lady’s

brow. The mastery of Dekker is shown throughout this comedy in

the flesh and blood reality which he has given to abstractions;

even the subordinate characters define each a clearly defined

quality. Fortunatus and his sons have a higher degree of

reality; while Virtue, Vice, and Fortune, withdrawn from human

action and anxiety, survey the world from thrones and feel

such passions only as befits immortals. They enter and depart

in pomps and pageants to solemn strains of music.... To have

conceived the comedy of _Old Fortunatus_ proves Dekker a poet of

no common order. A little more firmness in its ground-plan would

have made it a masterpiece.”[2]

[2] “The Academy,” vol. v., 1874, pp. 136-7.

It may seem that undue attention has been given to these two

plays, but in them will be found so characteristic an embodiment

of Dekker’s qualities as a playwright,--as a realistic writer of

comedy and as a romantic poet, that they serve as an admirable

illustration of the whole of his dramatic works. The next play

of which we have any record is the famous burlesque upon Ben

Jonson, _Satiromastix_, which was published in 1602. As an

artistic whole, this deserves, no doubt, all that has been said

against it; Dekker’s awkward fashion of interweaving two more

or less inconsequent dramatic motives was never displayed more

unfortunately. But as a young poet’s retort upon an unsparing

antagonist of Ben Jonson’s autocratic position, the thing is

surely not contemptible. The exaggerated reproduction of

Jonson’s Captain Tucca, in especial, which has been pointed to

as proving a lack of invention on Dekker’s part, was no doubt

one of the favourite hits of the piece, an out-Heroding of Herod

which could not fail to immensely tickle the playgoers of the

day. And the appearance of Horace cleverly got up in imitation

of the author of _The Poetaster_, labouring over an ode by

candlelight, must have brought down the house.

“O me thy priest inspire,

For I to thee and thine immortal name,

In--sacred raptures flowing, flowing--swimming, swimming:

In sacred raptures swimming,

Immortal name, game, dame, tame, lame, lame, lame,

---- ---- hath,--shame, proclaim, oh?--

In sacred raptures flowing, will proclaim, not--

O me thy priest inspire!

For I to thee and thine immortal name,

In flowing numbers filled with sprite and flame,

(Good, Good!) In flowing numbers filled with sprite and flame.”

What is remarkable about Dekker’s retort is its perfect

good-humour; there is not a trace of vindictiveness in all its

satire. Dekker probably took up the cudgels, as beforetime he

first entered upon the literary career, more “for the fun of

it,” than with any very deliberate or serious intention. Though

the episode of Cœlestine has no conceivable reference to the

“Untrussing of the Humourous Poet,” it is worth turning to for

its own sake. Mr. Swinburne’s conjecture that this part of the

play was originally designed for another purpose, and was only

used here for want of material to fill out the Jonson burlesque

to the required length, is probably the correct one.

The reputation which Dekker won by _Satiromastix_ seems to have

been the cause of something of a new departure in the year

following its publication; we find him then appearing for the

first time as a prose-writer. He had already been engaged in

writing _Canaan’s Calamity; the Destruction of Jerusalem_, in

sensational doggrel,--the wretched hack-work of a few hasty

hours, no doubt, written for some urgent bookseller, which I am

afraid there is no sufficient reason to think with Mr. Swinburne

that he did not compose. And now he may be said to have

seriously begun his career as a man of letters, as distinct from

a playwright, by the publication of an interesting work whose

title-page well suggests its contents. The title runs:--_The

Wonderful Year_: “Wherein is shewed the picture of London lying

sick of the Plague. At the end of all (like a merry Epilogue to

a dull Play) certain tales are cut out in sundry fashions of

purpose to shorten the lives of long winter’s nights, that lie

watching in the dark for us.” Passages in this work show clearly

enough that Dekker had the making in him too of a prose writer,

if he could only learn to master and rightly direct his faculty

of words, but there is no pervading sense of the art of prose in

it. Immediately following _The Wonderful Year_, however, came

another prose-work which in its way is perfect. _The Bachelor’s

Banquet_ is a delightful satire on the life matrimonial,

“pleasantly discoursing the variable humours of women, their

quickness of wits and unsearchable deceits.” Here we have Dekker

at his best. His facile humour for once served him capably from

beginning to end, and the result is a satire of inimitable

pleasantry, full of his hearty spontaneity of fun, and all the

more effective because, like _Satiromastix_, it is so devoid of

any real offence. As if to offer atonement for having satirised

woman-kind at all, it must have been about this time that he

collaborated with Haughton and Chettle, in _The Pleasant Comedy

of Patient Grissill_, with its charming picture of a woman’s

ideal patience. As this play is to be given in a later volume,

it need not be examined at length here.

And now, in 1604, we come to the work, of all Dekker’s, which

most fully and characteristically represents his genius, with

its fund of great qualities and great defects--_The Honest

Whore_. The second part of the play, it is true, was not

published until many years later, but it will be convenient

to take both parts together in considering it here, noting

only significant changes in style and so forth. With the play

as a whole, Hazlitt’s well-known criticism has become so

inseparably identified and forms so incomparable an exposition,

that I prefer to give it here instead of commentary of my own,

completing it by what further notes seem to be required.

“Old honest Dekker’s Signior Orlando Friscobaldo I shall

never forget! I became only of late acquainted with this

last-mentioned worthy character! but the bargain between

us is, I trust, for life. We sometimes regret that we had

not sooner met with characters like this, that seem to

raise, revive, and give a new zest to our being.... The

execution is, throughout, as exact as the conception is new

and masterly. There is the least colour possible used; the

pencil drags; the canvas is almost seen through: but then,

what precision of outline, what truth and purity of tone,

what firmness of hand, what marking of character! The words

and answers all along are so true and pertinent, that we

seem to see the gestures, and to hear the tone with which

they are accompanied. So when Orlando, disguised, says to

his daughter, ‘You’ll forgive me,’ and she replies, ‘I am

not marble, I forgive you;’ or again, when she introduces

him to her husband, saying simply, ‘It is my father,’ there

needs no stage-direction to supply the relenting tones of

voice or cordial frankness of manner with which these words

are spoken. It is as if there were some fine art to chisel

thought, and to embody the inmost movements of the mind in

every-day actions and familiar speech.

“Simplicity and extravagance of style, homeliness and

quaintness, tragedy and comedy, interchangeably set their

hands and seals to this admirable production. We find the

simplicity of prose with the graces of poetry. The stalk

grows out of the ground; but the flowers spread their

flaunting leaves in the air. The mixture of levity in

the chief character bespeaks the bitterness from which

it seeks relief; it is the idle echo of fixed despair,

jealous of observation or pity. The sarcasm quivers on

the lip, while the tear stands congealed on the eyelid.

This ‘tough senior,’ this impracticable old gentleman,

softens into a little child; this choke-pear melts in the

mouth like marmalade. In spite of his resolute professions

of misanthropy, he watches over his daughter with kindly

solicitude; plays the careful housewife; broods over her

lifeless hopes; nurses the decay of her husband’s fortune,

as he had supported her tottering infancy; saves the

high-flying Matheo from the gallows more than once, and is

twice a father to them. The story has all the romance of

private life, all the pathos of bearing up against silent

grief, all the tenderness of concealed affection: there is

much sorrow patiently borne, and then comes peace.... The

manner too in which Infelice, the wife of Hippolito, is

made acquainted with her husband’s infidelity, is finely

dramatic; and in the scene where she convicts him of his

injustice, by taxing herself with incontinence first,

and then turning his most galling reproaches to her into

upbraidings against his own conduct, she acquits herself

with infinite spirit and address. The contrivance by which,

in the first part, after being supposed dead, she is

restored to life, and married to Hippolito, though perhaps a

little far-fetched, is affecting and romantic.”

It must be constantly borne in mind, when reading the two parts

of the play, that an interval of twenty-five years separates

them, and that Orlando Friscobaldo is the creation of an

obviously more matured imagination than are the characters of

the earlier part. Indeed, the way in which Bellafront’s casual

mention of her father’s name in the earlier part is developed

into so masterly a characterisation is very significant. In

the period between, Dekker had gone through strange and bitter

experience. According to Collier, he married early, and a

daughter was baptised in his name as early as 1594, and we can

only wonder what dark sorrow he had known, that he came to shape

out of himself the inexpressible tragi-comedy of Bellafront’s

shame and her father’s love. There is all the difference between

youth and age, indeed, in the two parts; and it is impressive

to note how a conception, prompted mainly by the humourist’s

artistic interest in the first instance, came to be wrought out

and carried to the end with such a bitter freight of actuality.

In this grim masterpiece, Dekker has used his realistic method

with terrible sincerity, and yet, with so cunning a grasp of

the nettle of shame that with its sting it yields a fragrance

as of the perfect flower of love. The weakest parts of the play

are those where Dekker conforms most to conventional dramatic

methods, as in the forensic contest between Bellafront and

Hippolito, which is dramatically weak, though in passages not

ineffective. In Henslowe’s Diary, Middleton is mentioned as a

collaborator in the play with Dekker, and there are parts of

it which might very well be from his hand. Mr. A. H. Bullen

conjectures that the scenes where Bellafront is first discovered

in her chamber and again the shop scenes where the gallants

try to irritate Candido, are chiefly Middleton’s. Mr. J.

Addington Symonds considers also that the play as a whole has

“the movement of one of Middleton’s acknowledged plays.” Making

due allowance for every assistance of the kind, the essential

merit of the whole work is so unmistakeably Dekker’s, however,

that the reader may safely leave Middleton out of court in

considering the play as a whole, and put it down as Dekker’s to

all intents and purposes.

Before the publication of the first part, Dekker had, in

1603, in his _Magnificent Entertainment given to King James_,

inserted some lines of Middleton’s, which proves that they

were in contact about the time when the play was being

written. After its publication Dekker apparently gave himself

up for a while to prose-writing. In 1606, one of his best

known pamphlets, _The Seven Deadly Sins of London_, appeared,

which he himself affirmed on the title-page was only a week’s

work, “Opus Septem Dierum.” The satire, though here and there

forced, and roughly written, is not unimpressive, and contains

many passages of vivid imaginative power. The Seven Deadly

Sins, or as Dekker has it, “The Names of the Actors in this

Old Interlude of Iniquity,” are not at all what one would be

likely to expect. The terms by which they are designated are

extravagantly metaphorical, and including “Politic Bankruptism,”

“Candlelight,” and “Shaving,” and there is a special addendum to

say that “Seven may easily play this, but not without a Devil.”

Published in the same year, _News from Hell, brought by the

Devil’s Carrier_, which resolves itself into “The Devil’s Answer

to Pierce Pennylesse,” is a confused, gruesomely humoresque

description of the nether regions, and of a Mephistophelian

journey thence to London and other places in the upper world.

_The Double PP_, a rather ungainly satire on the Papists, partly

in prose, partly in verse, inspired by the Gunpowder Plot of

1605, also appeared in 1606.

The year 1607 shows Dekker at his worst as a playwright. The

production of _The Whore of Babylon_ marks the low-water mark

of his unfortunate career. It is a sort of allegory, presenting

Elizabeth as Titania, and other national and international

topics in a hopelessly cumbrous disguise. As a rule Dekker

illuminates even his hastiest productions with some gleam of

true humour or imagination, but here there is hardly a redeeming

touch of either, or, if one does exist, the dull atmosphere of

the whole keeps it hidden from sight. Dekker atoned a little

for his sins as a playwright in this year, however, by the

issue of an interesting miscellany of prose writings, whose

comprehensive title may be quoted in full:--_Jests to make you

Merry_: “With the Conjuring up of Cock Watt (the Walking Spirit

of Newgate) to tell tales. Unto which is added the Misery of a

Prison, and a Prisoner. And a Paradox in Praise of Serjeants.

Written by T. D. and George Wilkins.” George Wilkins, says Dr.

Grosart, “was in a small way a contemporary playwright;” and

it is impossible to say exactly what share he may have had in

this strange composition. But some of the little stories among

the “Jests” bear very clearly Dekker’s touch, and “The Misery

of a Prison and a Prisoner” is unmistakeably the pitiful and

bitter expression of his own sorry experiences. In this year

was also re-issued under the new title of _A Knight’s Conjuring

done in Earnest, discovered in Jest_, the before-mentioned _News

from Hell_, without anything to show that the book was chiefly

a republication. There are some few additions to it, however,

including an interesting vision of Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe,

Greene, Peele, and Nash in the haunts of Apollo.

Now, too, we find Dekker in collaboration with Webster, in the

plays _Westward Ho_, _Northward Ho_, and _Sir Thomas Wyatt_. Of

these, the first two are lively comedies of intrigue, affording

many striking pictures of contemporary life, grossly realistic

often, but not more so than is usual in comedies of the time.

In _Northward Ho_ the social diversions of the Greenshields and

the Mayberrys are amusingly contrived, and there are passages

in _Westward Ho_ of a higher and poetic kind, as in the passage

(Act iv., Sc. ii.) quoted by Mr. J. A. Symonds in his essay on

Dekker:--

“Go let Music

Charm with her excellent voice an awful silence

Through all this building, that her sphery soul

May, on the wings of air, in thousand forms,

Invisibly fly, yet be enjoyed.”

The speeches of the earl in this play contain other rare

imaginative touches, in strange contrast with the reckless

farcical tenour of the piece generally. _Sir Thomas Wyatt_ is

less satisfactory, a medley of absurd printer’s errors adding

to the confusion of what was probably a confused work at best.

Marston’s protest, as to the unfairness of taking seriously and

critically plays which were hastily and carelessly written to

meet the demand of the hour, must be remembered in judging plays

like this. In addition to the plays which their authors revised

and set forth with their deliberate _imprimatur_, many were

written without any idea of publication; the playwrights looked

upon them merely as a sort of journalism, which they did not

wish to have judged by permanent artistic standards. It would be

waste of time to deliberate over the exact share to be alloted

to Dekker and Webster in these three plays. It will be noted,

however, in the two comedies, that certain of the characters, as

the Welsh captain and Hans in _Northward Ho_, speak in a dialect

suspiciously like that of the dialect parts in Dekker’s other

plays.

For the next two or three years Dekker appears to have occupied

himself again chiefly with prose. In 1608 appeared _The Bellman

of London_, which is a sort of unconventional cyclopedia of

thieving and vagabondage, containing much curious information

about the shady side of Elizabethan life. Its importance in

relation to Dekker’s fondness for the same subject-maker in

his plays, however, is somewhat lessened when we discover that

the work is partly appropriated from a book first published

about forty years before, in 1567, entitled _A Caveat or

Warning for Common Cursitors, vulgarly called Vagabonds_; by

Thomas Harman. _The Bellman of London_ seems to have been

successful; for it was followed the next year by a second book

of the same kind, _Lanthorn and Candle-light; or, The Bellman’s

Second Night Walk_: also in part taken from Harman. In 1609

_The Gull’s Horn-book_, which has already been referred to,

was published,--by far the most important and interesting of

all Dekker’s prose works. Its value will be apparent from the

passages already quoted, but to anyone who wishes to realise

intimately the everyday life of the time, and its relation to

Dekker’s own environment, the book is simply indispensable.

The initial conception, like most of Dekker’s conceptions, was

not original. The idea of it is taken from a Dutch book which

Dekker had thought of translating into English verse, but,

finding difficulties in the way, he decided instead to write

a new prose work on the same lines. The earlier parts of the

book are the least reliable, as here Dekker made free use of the

Dutch original; but from Chap. iv., “How a Gallant should behave

Himself in Paul’s Walk,” onwards, the book is probably as true

as it is humorously realistic in its descriptions, forming a

delightful prose complement to the plays. The rest of Dekker’s

prose works, interesting as they are in themselves, have not

enough bearing upon the plays to warrant me in any lengthy

examination of them. Between the two “Bellman” books appeared

_The Dead Term; or, Westminster’s Complaint for Long Vacations

and Short Terms_, which, amid some extravagance, contains a

great deal in the way of description of London life, which is

picturesque and historically valuable. In 1609 two other works

followed or preceded _The Gull’s Horn-book_. The most valuable

of the two is entitled, _Work for Armourers; or, the Peace

is Broken_, which contains some suggestive autobiographical

references to Dekker’s delight in history, to the hard lot of

poetry and the drama, and to many other matters, interesting,

personally, in approaching its main fancifully treated thesis

of the struggle between _Poverty and Money_. _The Raven’s

Almanack_, the second of the two, is chiefly a budget of

stories, with “A Song sung by an Old Woman in a Meadow,” which

has something of Dekker’s rougher lyrical quality in it.

In 1611 Dekker and Middleton came together again, and wrote

conjointly _The Roaring Girl_, a vigorous comedy, whose

heroine, Moll Cutpurse, goes about in the guise of a gallant,

and wreaks summary vengeance upon offenders. In spite of her

aggressive masculinity, she is somehow made in her way really

attractive. Some of the scenes, as those in the “Sempster’s”

shop, and those in which the Gallipots and Tiltyards go

duck-hunting, are full of contemporary colour. The Mayoralty

Pageant of 1612 has already been mentioned. In that year also

appeared an absurd semi-allegorical dramatic fantasy by Dekker,

founded upon Machiavelli’s “Belphegor,”--_If this be not a Good

Play the Devil is in it_, in which Devils, Zanies, Friars,

Dancing Girls, and other human and superhuman elements are

wrought into a curious medley of utter nonsense with real humour

and fancy. From 1613 to 1616, Oldys informs us that Dekker was

in prison again. An interesting and pathetic letter exists from

him to Alleyne, who must have acted generously towards him

throughout; the letter is dated “King’s Bench, Sept. 12, 1616.”

It is significant that in the first year of his re-imprisonment,

he issued a very remarkable book of prayers, entitled _The Four

Birds of Noah’s Ark_, to the profound eloquence and power of

devotional expression in which, as in “A Prayer for a Soldier,”

Mr. Swinburne has paid a well-deserved tribute. With _A Strange

Horse-Race_, published also in 1613, were included the singular

piece of humour,--“The Devil’s last Will and Testament,” and

another prose fantasy, “The Bankrupt’s Banquet.” A much more

notable work is _Dekker his Dream_, which is mainly in verse.

It is a rough and unpolished piece of work, most interesting

autobiographically, but full of vigorous and sometimes very

imaginative descriptions, and with occasional fine passages, as

two lines, taken almost at random, will testify:--

“Each man was both the lion and the prey,

And every corn-field an Aceldema.”

Dekker did not emerge again as a playwright until 1622, when

he appears with still another collaborator, the last man whom

one would have expected him to work with,--Massinger. They

wrote together _The Virgin Martyr_, which is, as might be

expected, a patchwork of incongruous qualities. Dekker probably

supplied both the weakest and the strongest parts of the play,

the atrocious humorous passages, equally with the exquisitely

tender scene, for instance, between Dorothea, the Virgin Martyr,

and Angelo, “a good spirit, serving Dorothea in the habit of

a Page.” This is the scene which won from Charles Lamb in his

“Specimens of the Elizabethan Dramatists,” his unbounded tribute

to Dekker’s genius; and as the scene can be turned to there, I

need not repeat it here, as I should otherwise be inclined to do.

There is no record of the next five years of Dekker’s life.

In 1628 and 1629 he again wrote the Mayoralty pageants under

title _Britannia’s Honour_, and _London’s Tempe_, which at best

contain glimpses of his true quality. In 1631, _Match Me in

London_, a comedy of court intrigue in civic life, has something

of his real genius again. It was in the dedicatory note of

this play, to “The Noble Lover, and deservedly beloved, of the

Muses, Ludovick Carlisle, Esquire, Gentleman of the Bows, and

Groom of the King and Queen’s Privy-Chamber,” that Dekker so

pathetically referred to his voice, “Decaying with my Age.” But

comparatively with some of the second-rate pieces of ten, and

even twenty years before, there is little sign of decay. _Match

Me in London_ shows, it is true, the prose side of Dekker’s

dramatic faculty, rather than its side of poetic exuberance; but

the piece is as full of Dekker’s old picturesque realism and

genial humanity, as ever. The street and shop scenes, supposed

to be placed chiefly in Seville, might just as well be in

London: Dekker transfers the ‘Counter’ there without hesitation,

and except for occasional doubtful attempts at Spanish local

colour, the whole play is as native as anything Dekker has done.

The plot turns chiefly upon the attempt of the King to corrupt

Tormiella, one of the brightest and most taking of all Dekker’s

heroines, whose guileless fidelity to her husband is delicately

portrayed. The usual sub-plot in which Don John, the King’s

brother, conspires for the throne, is less inconsequent than

most of Dekker’s supplementary plots, and the whole comedy is

managed with a higher sense of dramatic form than Dekker often

showed. _Match Me in London_, as being entirely Dekker’s own

composition, certainly deserves to rank with his half-dozen best

plays, and I am sorry that it was not possible to find room for

it in this edition, although the same ground has already been

partly covered in his other comedies.

I confess I find it hard to understand how anyone can seriously

prefer _The Wonder of a Kingdom_, which appeared some few years

later, to _Match Me in London_, as Mr. J. A. Symonds has done.

In the former we find Dekker for once working without any real

pervading humanity; there are touches of his usual heartiness

in it, but as a whole it is a heartless production--more a cold

study of motives and passions than a sympathetic re-creation

of them in forms of art. It was highly appropriate, indeed,

that Dekker long before had been chosen as a champion to meet

Ben Jonson, for the two men mark very clearly two types of

poet and artist. Jonson in his plays worked largely from the

mere curiosity about men’s passions and motives, he wrought

conceptions which sprang too often from an analytical interest,

rather than the emotional human impulse which drives the poet to

reflect men’s strifes and destinies for simple love’s sake. With

Dekker it was different. Without perhaps consciously realising

it, he worked mainly from this impulse of the heart, putting

himself passionately into all that he characterised, in his

exuberant, careless way. For once, however, in _The Wonder of a

Kingdom_, he seems to have laid aside something of his natural

kindliness. The episode of old Lord Vanni’s intrigue with

Alphonsina is repulsive, unvisited as it is by even ordinary

comedy retribution. It is only fair to allow, however, that

Dekker’s kindlier quality crops up in some scenes of the play,

and Hazlitt’s testimony to Gentili, “that truly ideal character

of a magnificent patron,” may be set against the comment of the

German critic, Dr. Schmidt, who has said very truly,--“That

the youthful fire which fills _Fortunatus_ is in this drama

extinguished.”

Although the two remaining plays which Dekker wrote with Ford,

_The Sun’s Darling_ and _The Witch of Edmonton_, were not

published till 1656 and 1658 respectively, they were certainly

written and performed long before _Match Me in London_, probably

helping to fill up the five blank years following that in which

_The Virgin Martyr_ appeared. _The Sun’s Darling_ is a charming

conception, inadequately wrought out, but nevertheless full of

facile and exuberant poetic quality. The lyrics, especially,

the best of which are undoubtedly Dekker’s, are so fresh and

full of impulse that one inclines to think that they date back

to the first half of his life. Some of these have found their

way, infrequently, into the anthologies, as that beginning,

“What bird so sings, yet so does wail,” and again the delightful

country song, in which one can forgive the mixture of musk-roses

and daffodils, haymaking and hunting, lambs and partridges, in

defiance of all rustic tradition, for the sake of its catching

tune:--

“Hay-makers, rakers, reapers and mowers,

Wait on your Summer Queen.

Dress up with musk-rose her eglantine bowers,

Daffodils strew the green....”

The hero of this Moral Masque, as the authors term

it,--Raybright, “The Sun’s Darling,” is shown in progression

through the seasons under the Sun’s guidance, which he perverts

in his restless pursuit of sensuous pleasure. All these scenes

are full of suggestions of beauty, but they are imperfectly

realised. Exquisite passages occur, however, as in the scene

where Spring, Health, Youth, and Delight appear to Raybright,

and Spring, wooing him in vain, proffers him the bay-tree:--

“That tree shall now be thine, about it sit

All the old poets, with fresh laurel crowned,

Singing in verse the praise of chastity.”

When it is too late, Raybright, filled with love for the

Spring, is seized with remorse: so in turn all the seasons pass

by, while Humour and Folly lead him always astray. The Sun’s

peroration in addressing Raybright at the end of his foiled

career is a solemn and profound, if rather fanciful, summing-up

of life. Altogether _The Sun’s Darling_ forms a valuable later

complement to _Old Fortunatus_, and it is only to be regretted

that its authors did not bestow upon it the longer, patient

labour which would have made it worthy of its conception.

_The Witch of Edmonton_, the second play in which Ford and

Dekker worked conjointly, is so utterly different to _The Sun’s

Darling_ that one finds it difficult to believe that the same

hands can have been concerned in its production. Possibly the

initial conception was Rowley’s, and though it would not be

easy to differentiate his exact share in any special scene or

passage, there is a considerable residuum which marks itself

off as unlike the work of Dekker or Ford. Dekker’s share is

more apparent. The scenes where Cuddy Banks and his fellow

villagers disport themselves, some of those where the Witch

herself appears, and again those of Susan’s love and sorrow,

have by general critical consent been awarded to him. Part of

the severer tragedy in the terrible hallucination of Mother

Sawyer, however, which has generally been considered Dekker’s,

I fancy bears the stamp of Ford. In his essay on Ford, Mr.

Swinburne has essayed a comparison of the parts due severally

to Dekker and to Ford, which is too important to be overlooked.

He would assign the part of Mother Sawyer chiefly to Dekker.

“In all this part of the play I trace the hand of Dekker; his

intimate and familiar sense of wretchedness, his great and

gentle spirit of compassion for the poor and suffering with whom

his own lot in life was so often cast, in prison and out.” The

part of Susan also, he allots to Dekker; and of the scene where

Frank Thorney’s guilt is discovered, he remarks suggestively:

“The interview of Frank with the disguised Winifred in this

scene may be compared by the student of dramatic style with the

parting of the same characters at the close; the one has all the

poignant simplicity of Dekker, the other all the majestic energy

of Ford.”

The dates of publication of the two last plays bring us far

beyond the time of Dekker’s death, of which, however, we have no

record at all. None of his prose works reach so late a period;

the last is _A Rod for Runaways_, published in 1625. Collier,

who always made his evidence go as far as possible, himself

admits that there is no further trace of him after 1638, the

year when Milton wrote _Lycidas_, the year when Scotland was

ominously signing the Covenant. In the further oncoming of the

Civil War, Dekker disappears altogether, as uncertainly as he

first entered the scene.

In summing up this strange life and its dramatic outcome, it is

easily seen what is to be said on the adverse side. Dekker had,

let us admit, great defects. He was the type of the prodigal

in literature,--the kindhearted, irresponsible poet whom we

all know, and love, and pardon seventy times seven. But it is

sad to think that with a little of the common talent which

every successful man of affairs counts as part of his daily

equipment, he might have left a different record. He never

attained the serious conception of himself and his dignity as a

worker which every poet, every artist must have, who would take

effect proportionate to his genius. He never seemed to become

conscious in any enduring way of his artistic function, and

he constantly threw aside, under pressure of the moment, those

standards of excellence which none knew better than he how to

estimate. But after all has been said, he remains, by his faults

as well as by his faculties, one of the most individual, one of

the most suggestive, figures of the whole Elizabethan circle.

Because of the breath of simple humanity in them, his works

leave a sense of brightness and human encouragement whose charm

lingers when many more careful monuments of literary effort are

forgotten. His artistic sincerity has resulted in a picture of

life as he saw it, unequalled for its sentiment, for its living

spirit of tears and laughter, as well as for its outspoken

truth. His homely realism brings before us all the pleasant

everyday bustle of the Elizabethan streets--the craftsmen and

prentices, the citizens at their shop doors, the gallants in the

Middle Aisle of St. Paul’s. The general feeling is that of a

summer’s morning in the pleasant Cheapside of those days--more

like the street of a little market-town than the Cheapside

of to-day--where in the clear sunny air the alert cry of the

prentices, “What do you lack?” rings out cheerily, and each

small incident of the common life is touched with vivid colour.

And if the night follows, dark and haunted by grim passions and

sorrows, and the King’s Bench waits for poor poets not far away,

this poet who had known the night and the prison only too well!

sang so undauntedly, that the terrors of them fell away at the

sound.

As he had this faith in the happy issue out of his own troubles,

so Dekker looked unflinchingly as a poet upon the grim and dark

side of human life, seeing it to emerge presently, bright in

the higher vision of earth and Heaven. Much that at first seems

gratuitously obscene and terrible in his dramatic presentation

may in this way be accepted with the same vigorous apprehension

of the comedy and tragedy of life, which he himself showed. The

whole justification of his lifework, indeed, is to be found in

these words of his, from the dedicatory epistle to _His Dream_,

which we may well take as his parting behest:--“So in these of

mine, though the Devil be in the one, God is in the other: nay

in both. What I send you, may perhaps seem bitter, yet it is

wholesome; your best physic is not a julep; sweet sauces leave

rotten bodies. There is a Hell named in our Creed, and a Heaven,

and the Hell comes before; if we look not into the first, we

shall never live in the last.”

ERNEST RHYS.

[Illustration]

NOTE: Students of Dekker will find Pearson’s

Edition of his Plays in 4 Vols., published in 1873, and Dr.

Grosart’s edition of his Non-Dramatic Works, in 5 Vols.,

published in the Huth Library, 1885-6, sufficient for all

ordinary purposes. There are no notes, however, in Dr.

Grosart’s reprint, and the notes to the plays in Pearson’s

edition are few and far between. Mr. Swinburne’s article on

Dekker (_Nineteenth Century_, January, 1887), will be found

valuable also.

THE OLD FORTUNE THEATRE.

(_See Frontispiece._)

The original Fortune Theatre was built on the site of an old

timber house standing in a large garden near Golden Lane,

Cripplegate, and said to have been formerly a nursery for Henry

the Eighth’s children, who were sent to this then suburban spot

for the benefit of the air. Edward Alleyn the actor acquired

the lease of the house and grounds on December 22, 1599, and,

early the following year, supported by the Lord Admiral (the

Earl of Nottingham), to whose company of players he belonged,

he, in conjunction with Henslowe, his father-in-law, employed

Peter Streete to build there “a newe house and stadge for a

Plaiehowse” for the sum of £440.

Alleyn notes his acquisition of the lease and his expenditure

upon the new theatre in the following terms:--

“What the Fortune cost me Novemb., 1599 [1600].

First for the leas to Brew, £240.

Then for the building the playhouse, £520.

For other privat buildings of myn owne, £120.

So in all it has cost me for the leasse, £880.

Bought the inheritance of the land of the Gills of the Ile

of Man, which is the Fortune, and all the howses in Whight

crosstrett and Gowlding lane, in June, 1610, for the some of

£340.

Bought in John Garretts lease in revertion from the Gills

for 21 years, for £100.

So in all itt cost me £1320.

Blessed be the Lord God everlasting.”

It was at the Fortune that Alleyn’s fame as an actor reached its

height. He was especially popular in the character of Barabas in

Marlowe’s _Jew of Malta_, which he revived at the new theatre.

Here also many of the plays written in the whole or part by

Dekker were originally performed, as Dekker generally wrote

for the Lord Admiral’s company, who played regularly at the

Fortune under Alleyn and Henslowe’s management, while the Lord

Chamberlain’s company, with whom Shakespeare and Burbadge were

associated, played at the Globe.

Some twenty years after the erection of the theatre Alleyn

records in his diary under date December 9, 1621, “This night,

att 12 of ye clock, ye Fortune was burnt.” The year following

the theatre was rebuilt, and leased by Alleyn to various

persons, he having then decided to retire from the stage. On

the suppression of the theatres by the Puritans the inside of

the Fortune was destroyed by a company of soldiers, and the

lessees failed to pay their rent, whereby a considerable loss

was sustained by the authorities of Dulwich College, in whom the

property of the Fortune was vested. This eventually led to the

Court of Assistants ordering the more dilapidated portions of

the theatre to be pulled down, and to their leasing the ground

belonging to it for building purposes. So recently, however, as

the year 1819, the front of the old theatre was still standing,

as represented in the frontispiece to the present volume--a

reduced copy of an engraving in Wilkinson’s “Londina.”

[Illustration]

_THE SHOEMAKER’S HOLIDAY;_

_OR A PLEASANT COMEDY OF_

THE GENTLE CRAFT.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

_The Shoemaker’s Holiday, or a Pleasant Comedy of the Gentle

Craft_, was first published in 1599, as we learn from a passage

in Henslowe’s Diary; but the earliest known edition is the

quarto of 1600, which describes the play as “acted before the

Queen’s most excellent Maiestie New-years day at night last,

by the right honourable the Earle of Nottingham, Lord High

Admirall of England, his seruants.” Other editions followed in

1610, 1618, and 1657. Of modern editions, Germany has produced

the only one which is at all reliable, and upon this edition,

admirably collated and edited by Drs. Karl Warnke and Ludwig

Proescholdt, and published at Halle in 1886, the present reprint

is based, the excellence of text, notes and introduction,

leaving little beyond the modernising and some elucidation here

and there to be done.

Dekker appears to have had a collaborator in the play in Robert

Wilson, the actor, who is said to have created the part of

Firk on its performance, but although Wilson may have provided

some of the situations and dialogue, the credit of the play as

a whole is undoubtedly Dekker’s. _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_ is

the first of Dekker’s plays, in order of publication, which has

survived, although according to Henslowe he began to write for

the stage in 1596.

The conception of Simon Eyre, the Shoemaker, is taken from

a real person of that name, who, according to Stow, was an

upholsterer, and afterwards a draper. He built Leadenhall in

1419, as referred to by Dekker in Act V., Sc. 5, became Sheriff

of London in 1434, was elected Lord Mayor in 1445, and died in

1459. About his character nothing certain is known. “It may well

be,” say the editors of the Halle edition, “that long after

Eyre’s death the builder of Leadenhall was supposed to have

been a shoemaker himself, merely because Leadenhall was used as

a leather-market. This tradition was probably taken up by the

poet, who formed out of it one of the most popular comedies of

the age.”

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

TO ALL GOOD FELLOWS, PROFESSORS OF THE GENTLE CRAFT,[3] OF WHAT

DEGREE SOEVER.

[3] Shoemaking was called “the Gentle Craft,” possibly in part

because the patron saints of shoemakers, St. Crispin and St.

Hugh, were said to be of noble, and even royal, blood; possibly

because of the sedentary nature of the occupation.

Kind gentlemen and honest boon companions, I present you here

with a merry-conceited Comedy, called _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_,

acted by my Lord Admiral’s Players this present Christmas before

the Queen’s most excellent Majesty, for the mirth and pleasant

matter by her Highness graciously accepted, being indeed no way

offensive. The argument of the play I will set down in this

Epistle: Sir Hugh Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, had a young gentleman

of his own name, his near kinsman, that loved the Lord Mayor’s

daughter of London; to prevent and cross which love, the Earl

caused his kinsman to be sent Colonel of a company into France:

who resigned his place to another gentleman his friend, and

came disguised like a Dutch shoemaker to the house of Simon

Eyre in Tower Street, who served the Mayor and his household

with shoes: the merriments that passed in Eyre’s house, his

coming to be Mayor of London, Lacy’s getting his love, and other

accidents, with two merry Three-men’s-songs. Take all in good

worth that is well intended, for nothing is purposed but mirth;

mirth lengtheneth long life, which, with all other blessings, I

heartily wish you. Farewell!

[Illustration]

[Illustration: PROLOGUE]

_As it was pronounced before the Queen’s Majesty._

As wretches in a storm (expecting day),

With trembling hands and eyes cast up to heaven,

Make prayers the anchor of their conquered hopes,

So we, dear goddess, wonder of all eyes,

Your meanest vassals, through mistrust and fear

To sink into the bottom of disgrace

By our imperfect pastimes, prostrate thus

On bended knees, our sails of hope do strike,

Dreading the bitter storms of your dislike.

Since then, unhappy men, our hap is such,

That to ourselves ourselves no help can bring,

But needs must perish, if your saint-like ears

(Locking the temple where all mercy sits)

Refuse the tribute of our begging tongues:

Oh grant, bright mirror of true chastity,

From those life-breathing stars, your sun-like eyes,

One gracious smile: for your celestial breath

Must send us life, or sentence us to death.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: _DRAMATIS PERSONÆ._]

THE KING.

THE EARL OF CORNWALL.

SIR HUGH LACY, Earl of Lincoln.

ROWLAND LACY, otherwise HANS, }

ASKEW } His Nephews.

SIR ROGER OATELEY, Lord Mayor of London.

Master HAMMON }

Master WARNER } Citizens of London.

Master SCOTT }

SIMON EYRE, the Shoemaker.

ROGER, commonly called HODGE[4] }

FIRK } EYRE’S Journeymen.

RALPH }

LOVELL, a Courtier.

DODGER, Servant to the EARL OF LINCOLN.

A DUTCH SKIPPER.

A BOY.

[4] A diminutive of Roger.

Courtiers, Attendants, Officers, Soldiers, Hunters,

Shoemakers, Apprentices, Servants.

ROSE, Daughter of SIR ROGER.

SYBIL, her Maid.

MARGERY, Wife of SIMON EYRE.

JANE, Wife of RALPH.

SCENE--LONDON and OLD FORD.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

_THE SHOEMAKER’S HOLIDAY_

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I.--_A Street in London._

_Enter the_ LORD MAYOR _and the_ EARL OF LINCOLN.

LINCOLN. My lord mayor, you have sundry times

Feasted myself and many courtiers more:

Seldom or never can we be so kind

To make requital of your courtesy.

But leaving this, I hear my cousin Lacy

Is much affected to your daughter Rose.

_L. Mayor._ True, my good lord, and she loves him so well

That I mislike her boldness in the chase.

_Lincoln._ Why, my lord mayor, think you it then a shame,

To join a Lacy with an Oateley’s name?

_L. Mayor._ Too mean is my poor girl for his high birth;

Poor citizens must not with courtiers wed,

Who will in silks and gay apparel spend

More in one year than I am worth, by far:

Therefore your honour need not doubt my girl.

_Lincoln._ Take heed, my lord, advise you what you do!

A verier unthrift lives not in the world,

Than is my cousin; for I’ll tell you what:

’Tis now almost a year since he requested

To travel countries for experience;

I furnished him with coin, bills of exchange,

Letters of credit, men to wait on him,

Solicited my friends in Italy

Well to respect him. But to see the end:

Scant had he journeyed through half Germany,

But all his coin was spent, his men cast off,

His bills embezzled,[5] and my jolly coz,

Ashamed to show his bankrupt presence here,

Became a shoemaker in Wittenberg,

A goodly science for a gentleman

Of such descent! Now judge the rest by this:

Suppose your daughter have a thousand pound,

He did consume me more in one half year;

And make him heir to all the wealth you have,

One twelvemonth’s rioting will waste it all.

Then seek, my lord, some honest citizen

To wed your daughter to.

[5] Wasted, squandered.

_L. Mayor._ I thank your lordship.

(_Aside_) Well, fox, I understand your subtilty.

As for your nephew, let your lordship’s eye

But watch his actions, and you need not fear,

For I have sent my daughter far enough.

And yet your cousin Rowland might do well,

Now he hath learned an occupation;

And yet I scorn to call him son-in-law.

_Lincoln._ Ay, but I have a better trade for him:

I thank his grace, he hath appointed him

Chief colonel of all those companies

Mustered in London and the shires about,

To serve his highness in those wars of France.

See where he comes!--

_Enter_ LOVELL, LACY, _and_ ASKEW.

Lovell, what news with you?

_Lovell._ My Lord of Lincoln, ’tis his highness’ will,

That presently your cousin ship for France

With all his powers; he would not for a million,

But they should land at Dieppe within four days.

_Lincoln._ Go certify his grace, it shall be done. [_Exit_ LOVELL.

Now, cousin Lacy, in what forwardness

Are all your companies?

_Lacy._ All well prepared.

The men of Hertfordshire lie at Mile-end,

Suffolk and Essex train in Tothill-fields,

The Londoners and those of Middlesex,

All gallantly prepared in Finsbury,

With frolic spirits long for their parting hour.

_L. Mayor._ They have their imprest,[6] coats, and furniture;[7]

And, if it please your cousin Lacy come

To the Guildhall, he shall receive his pay;

And twenty pounds besides my brethren

Will freely give him, to approve our loves

We bear unto my lord, your uncle here.

[6] Regimental badge or device.

[7] Weapons and martial equipment.

_Lacy._ I thank your honour.

_Lincoln._ Thanks, my good lord mayor.

_L. Mayor._ At the Guildhall we will expect your coming. [_Exit._

_Lincoln._ To approve your loves to me? No subtilty!

Nephew, that twenty pound he doth bestow

For joy to rid you from his daughter Rose.

But, cousins both, now here are none but friends,

I would not have you cast an amorous eye

Upon so mean a project as the love

Of a gay, wanton, painted citizen.

I know, this churl even in the height of scorn

Doth hate the mixture of his blood with thine.

I pray thee, do thou so! Remember, coz,

What honourable fortunes wait on thee:

Increase the king’s love, which so brightly shines,

And gilds thy hopes. I have no heir but thee,--

And yet not thee, if with a wayward spirit

Thou start from the true bias of my love.

_Lacy._ My lord, I will for honour, not desire

Of land or livings, or to be your heir,

So guide my actions in pursuit of France,

As shall add glory to the Lacys’ name.

_Lincoln._ Coz, for those words here’s thirty Portuguese[8]

And, nephew Askew, there’s a few for you.

Fair Honour, in her loftiest eminence,

Stays in France for you, till you fetch her thence.

Then, nephews, clap swift wings on your designs:

Begone, begone, make haste to the Guildhall;

There presently I’ll meet you. Do not stay:

Where honour beckons, shame attends delay. [_Exit._

[8] A gold coin, worth about three pounds twelve shillings.

_Askew._ How gladly would your uncle have you gone!

_Lacy._ True, coz, but I’ll o’erreach his policies.

I have some serious business for three days,

Which nothing but my presence can dispatch.

You, therefore, cousin, with the companies,

Shall haste to Dover; there I’ll meet with you:

Or, if I stay past my prefixèd time,

Away for France; we’ll meet in Normandy.

The twenty pounds my lord mayor gives to me

You shall receive, and these ten Portuguese,

Part of mine uncle’s thirty. Gentle coz,

Have care to our great charge; I know, your wisdom

Hath tried itself in higher consequence.

_Askew._ Coz, all myself am yours: yet have this care,

To lodge in London with all secrecy;

Our uncle Lincoln hath, besides his own,

Many a jealous eye, that in your face

Stares only to watch means for your disgrace.

_Lacy._ Stay, cousin, who be these?

_Enter_ SIMON EYRE, MARGERY _his wife_,

HODGE, FIRK, JANE, _and_

RALPH _with a pair of shoes_.[9]

[9] The quarto has “with a piece.” Piece (old Fr. _bobelin_) was

sometimes loosely used for the shoe itself, as well as for the

piece of leather used in repairs. See _Cotgrave_.

_Eyre._ Leave whining, leave whining! Away with this whimpering,

this puling, these blubbering tears, and these wet eyes! I’ll

get thy husband discharged, I warrant thee, sweet Jane; go to!

_Hodge._ Master, here be the captains.

_Eyre._ Peace, Hodge; hush, ye knave, hush!

_Firk._ Here be the cavaliers and the colonels, master.

_Eyre._ Peace, Firk; peace, my fine Firk! Stand by with your

pishery-pashery,[10] away! I am a man of the best presence;

I’ll speak to them, an they were Popes.--Gentlemen, captains,

colonels, commanders! Brave men, brave leaders, may it please

you to give me audience. I am Simon Eyre, the mad shoemaker of

Tower Street; this wench with the mealy mouth that will never

tire, is my wife, I can tell you; here’s Hodge, my man and my

foreman; here’s Firk, my fine firking journeyman, and this is

blubbered Jane. All we come to be suitors for this honest Ralph.

Keep him at home, and as I am a true shoemaker and a gentleman

of the gentle craft, buy spurs yourselves, and I’ll find ye

boots these seven years.

[10] Twiddle-twaddle.

_Marg._ Seven years, husband?

_Eyre._ Peace, midriff, peace! I know what I do. Peace!

_Firk._ Truly, master cormorant, you shall do God good service

to let Ralph and his wife stay together. She’s a young

new-married woman; if you take her husband away from her a

night, you undo her; she may beg in the day-time; for he’s as

good a workman at a prick and an awl, as any is in our trade.

_Jane._ O let him stay, else I shall be undone.

_Firk._ Ay, truly, she shall be laid at one side like a pair of

old shoes else, and be occupied for no use.

_Lacy._ Truly, my friends, it lies not in my power:

The Londoners are pressed, paid, and set forth

By the lord mayor; I cannot change a man.

_Hodge._ Why, then you were as good be a corporal as a colonel,

if you cannot discharge one good fellow; and I tell you true, I

think you do more than you can answer, to press a man within a

year and a day of his marriage.

_Eyre._ Well said, melancholy Hodge; gramercy, my fine foreman.

_Marg._ Truly, gentlemen, it were ill done for such as you, to

stand so stiffly against a poor young wife, considering her

case, she is new-married, but let that pass: I pray, deal not

roughly with her; her husband is a young man, and but newly

entered, but let that pass.

_Eyre._ Away with your pishery-pashery, your pols and your

edipols![11] Peace, midriff; silence, Cicely Bumtrinket! Let

your head speak.

[11] Apparently one of Eyre’s frequent improvised phrases,

referring here to his wife’s trick of repeating herself, as in

her previous speech.

_Firk._ Yea, and the horns too, master.

_Eyre._ Too soon, my fine Firk, too soon! Peace, scoundrels! See

you this man? Captains, you will not release him? Well, let him

go; he’s a proper shot; let him vanish! Peace, Jane, dry up thy

tears, they’ll make his powder dankish. Take him, brave men;

Hector of Troy was an hackney to him, Hercules and Termagant[12]

scoundrels, Prince Arthur’s Round-table--by the Lord of

Ludgate[13]--ne’er fed such a tall, such a dapper swordsman; by

the life of Pharaoh, a brave, resolute swordsman! Peace, Jane! I

say no more, mad knaves.

[12] An imaginary Saracen god, represented in the old moralities

and plays as of a quite ungodly tendency to violence.

[13] A nick-name, possibly, for some character of the day, used

with a vague reference to King Lud.

_Firk._ See, see, Hodge, how my master raves in commendation of

Ralph!

_Hodge._ Ralph, th’art a gull, by this hand, an thou goest not.

_Askew._ I am glad, good Master Eyre, it is my hap

To meet so resolute a soldier.

Trust me, for your report and love to him,

A common slight regard shall not respect him.

_Lacy._ Is thy name Ralph?

_Ralph._ Yes, sir.

_Lacy._ Give me thy hand;

Thou shalt not want, as I am a gentleman.

Woman, be patient; God, no doubt, will send

Thy husband safe again; but he must go,

His country’s quarrel says it shall be so.

_Hodge._ Th’art a gull, by my stirrup, if thou dost not go. I

will not have thee strike thy gimlet into these weak vessels;

prick thine enemies, Ralph.

_Enter_ DODGER.

_Dodger._ My lord, your uncle on the Tower-hill

Stays with the lord mayor and the aldermen,

And doth request you with all speed you may,

To hasten thither.

_Askew._ Cousin, let’s go.

_Lacy._ Dodger, run you before, tell them we come.--

This Dodger is mine uncle’s parasite, [_Exit_ DODGER.

The arrant’st varlet that e’er breathed on earth;

He sets more discord in a noble house

By one day’s broaching of his pickthank tales,[14]

Than can be salved again in twenty years,

And he, I fear, shall go with us to France,

To pry into our actions.

[14] Tales told to curry favour.

_Askew._ Therefore, coz,

It shall behove you to be circumspect.

_Lacy._ Fear not, good cousin.--Ralph, hie to your colours.

_Ralph._ I must, because there’s no remedy;

But, gentle master and my loving dame,

As you have always been a friend to me,

So in mine absence think upon my wife.

_Jane._ Alas, my Ralph.

_Marg._ She cannot speak for weeping.

_Eyre._ Peace, you cracked groats,[15] you mustard tokens,[16]

disquiet not the brave soldier. Go thy ways, Ralph!

[15] The groat was the silver fourpenny-piece. The simile of a

cracked coin is an obvious expression of worthlessness.

[16] Little yellow spots on the body which denoted the infection

of the plague.

_Jane._ Ay, ay, you bid him go; what shall I do

When he is gone?

_Firk._ Why, be doing with me or my fellow Hodge; be not idle.

_Eyre._ Let me see thy hand, Jane. This fine hand, this white

hand, these pretty fingers must spin, must card, must work;

work, you bombast-cotton-candle-quean;[17] work for your living,

with a pox to you.--Hold thee, Ralph, here’s five sixpences

for thee; fight for the honour of the gentle craft, for the

gentlemen shoemakers, the courageous cordwainers, the flower

of St. Martin’s, the mad knaves of Bedlam, Fleet Street, Tower

Street and Whitechapel; crack me the crowns of the French

knaves; a pox on them, crack them; fight, by the Lord of

Ludgate; fight, my fine boy!

[17] Another of Eyre’s improvised phrases, whose component parts

sufficiently explain its meaning.

_Firk._ Here, Ralph, here’s three twopences: two carry into

France, the third shall wash our souls at parting, for sorrow is

dry. For my sake, firk the _Basa mon cues_.

_Hodge._ Ralph, I am heavy at parting; but here’s a shilling

for thee. God send thee to cram thy slops with French crowns,

and thy enemies’ bellies with bullets.

_Ralph._ I thank you, master, and I thank you all.

Now, gentle wife, my loving lovely Jane,

Rich men, at parting, give their wives rich gifts,

Jewels and rings, to grace their lily hands.

Thou know’st our trade makes rings for women’s heels:

Here take this pair of shoes, cut out by Hodge,

Stitched by my fellow Firk, seamed by myself,

Made up and pinked with letters for thy name.

Wear them, my dear Jane, for thy husband’s sake;

And every morning, when thou pull’st them on,

Remember me, and pray for my return.

Make much of them; for I have made them so,

That I can know them from a thousand mo.

_Drum sounds. Enter the_ LORD MAYOR, _the ~Earl~

of_ LINCOLN, LACY, ASKEW,

DODGER, _and ~Soldiers~. They pass over the stage_;

RALPH _falls in amongst them_; FIRK _and the

rest cry ~“Farewell,” etc.~, and so exeunt_.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

ACT THE SECOND.

SCENE I.--_A Garden at Old Ford._

_Enter_ ROSE, _alone, making a garland_.

Rose. Here sit thou down upon this flow’ry bank,

And make a garland for thy Lacy’s head.

These pinks, these roses, and these violets,

These blushing gilliflowers, these marigolds,

The fair embroidery of his coronet,

Carry not half such beauty in their cheeks,

As the sweet countenance of my Lacy doth.

O my most unkind father! O my stars,

Why lowered you so at my nativity,

To make me love, yet live robbed of my love?

Here as a thief am I imprisonëd

For my dear Lacy’s sake within those walls,

Which by my father’s cost were builded up

For better purposes; here must I languish

For him that doth as much lament, I know,

Mine absence, as for him I pine in woe.

_Enter_ SYBIL.

_Sybil._ Good morrow, young mistress. I am sure you make that

garland for me; against I shall be Lady of the Harvest.

_Rose._ Sybil, what news at London?

_Sybil._ None but good; my lord mayor, your father, and master

Philpot, your uncle, and Master Scot, your cousin, and Mistress

Frigbottom by Doctors’ Commons, do all, by my troth, send you

most hearty commendations.

_Rose._ Did Lacy send kind greetings to his love?

_Sybil._ O yes, out of cry, by my troth. I scant knew him; here

’a wore a scarf; and here a scarf, here a bunch of feathers,

and here precious stones and jewels, and a pair of garters,--O,

monstrous! like one of our yellow silk curtains at home here in

Old Ford house, here in Master Belly-mount’s chamber. I stood at

our door in Cornhill, looked at him, he at me indeed, spake to

him, but he not to me, not a word; marry go-up, thought I, with

a wanion![18] He passed by me as proud--Marry foh! are you grown

humorous, thought I; and so shut the door, and in I came.

[18] With a vengeance.

_Rose._ O Sybil, how dost thou my Lacy wrong!

My Rowland is as gentle as a lamb,

No dove was ever half so mild as he.

_Sybil._ Mild? yea, as a bushel of stamped crabs.[19] He looked

upon me as sour as verjuice. Go thy ways, thought I; thou may’st

be much in my gaskins,[20] but nothing in my nether-stocks. This

is your fault, mistress, to love him that loves not you; he

thinks scorn to do as he’s done to; but if I were as you, I’d

cry: Go by, Jeronimo, go by![21]

[19] Crushed crab apples.

[20] A kind of trousers, first worn by the Gascons.

[21] A phrase from Kyd’s _Spanish Tragedy_.

I’d set mine old debts against my new driblets,

And the hare’s foot against the goose giblets,

For if ever I sigh, when sleep I should take,

Pray God I may lose my maidenhead when I wake.

_Rose._ Will my love leave me then, and go to France?

_Sybil._ I know not that, but I am sure I see him stalk before

the soldiers. By my troth, he is a proper man; but he is proper

that proper doth. Let him go snick-up,[22] young mistress.

[22] _i.e._ Go and be hanged!

_Rose._ Get thee to London, and learn perfectly,

Whether my Lacy go to France, or no.

Do this, and I will give thee for thy pains

My cambric apron and my Romish gloves,

My purple stockings and a stomacher.

Say, wilt thou do this, Sybil, for my sake?

_Sybil._ Will I, quoth a? At whose suit? By my troth, yes I’ll

go. A cambric apron, gloves, a pair of purple stockings, and a

stomacher! I’ll sweat in purple, mistress, for you; I’ll take

anything that comes a God’s name. O rich! a cambric apron!

Faith, then have at ‘up tails all.’ I’ll go jiggy-joggy to

London, and be here in a trice, young mistress. [_Exit._

_Rose._ Do so, good Sybil. Meantime wretched I

Will sit and sigh for his lost company. [_Exit._

[Illustration]

SCENE II.--_A Street in London._

_Enter_ LACY, _disguised as a Dutch Shoemaker_.

_Lacy._ How many shapes have gods and kings devised,

Thereby to compass their desired loves!

It is no shame for Rowland Lacy, then,

To clothe his cunning with the gentle craft,

That, thus disguised, I may unknown possess

The only happy presence of my Rose.

For her have I forsook my charge in France,

Incurred the king’s displeasure, and stirred up

Rough hatred in mine uncle Lincoln’s breast.

O love, how powerful art thou, that canst change

High birth to baseness, and a noble mind

To the mean semblance of a shoemaker!

But thus it must be. For her cruel father,

Hating the single union of our souls,

Has secretly conveyed my Rose from London,

To bar me of her presence; but I trust,

Fortune and this disguise will further me

Once more to view her beauty, gain her sight.

Here in Tower Street with Eyre the shoemaker

Mean I a while to work; I know the trade,

I learnt it when I was in Wittenberg.

Then cheer thy hoping spirits, be not dismayed,

Thou canst not want: do Fortune what she can,

The gentle craft is living for a man. [_Exit._

[Illustration]

SCENE III.--_An open Yard before_ EYRE’S _House_.

_Enter_ EYRE, _making himself ready_.[23]

[23] _i.e._ Dressing himself.

_Eyre._ Where be these boys, these girls, these drabs, these

scoundrels? They wallow in the fat brewiss[24] of my bounty,

and lick up the crumbs of my table, yet will not rise to see

my walks cleansed. Come out, you powder-beef[25] queans!

What, Nan! what, Madge Mumble-crust. Come out, you fat

midriff-swag-belly-whores, and sweep me these kennels that the

noisome stench offend not the noses of my neighbours. What,

Firk, I say; what, Hodge! Open my shop-windows! What, Firk, I

say!

[24] Bread soaked in pot liquor, and prepared _secundum

artem_.--_Nares._

[25] Salted beef.

_Enter_ FIRK.

_Firk._ O master, is’t you that speak bandog[26] and Bedlam

this morning? I was in a dream, and mused what madman was got

into the street so early; have you drunk this morning that your

throat is so clear?

[26] A dog kept fastened up as a watch-dog, and therefore given

to loud barking.

_Eyre._ Ah, well said, Firk; well said, Firk. To work, my fine

knave, to work! Wash thy face, and thou’lt be more blest.

_Firk._ Let them wash my face that will eat it. Good master,

send for a souse-wife,[27] if you’ll have my face cleaner.

[27] A woman who washed and pickled pigs’ faces.

_Enter_ HODGE.

_Eyre._ Away, sloven! avaunt, scoundrel!--Good-morrow, Hodge;

good-morrow, my fine foreman.

_Hodge._ O master, good-morrow; y’are an early stirrer. Here’s a

fair morning.--Good-morrow, Firk, I could have slept this hour.

Here’s a brave day towards.

_Eyre._ Oh, haste to work, my fine foreman, haste to work.

_Firk._ Master, I am dry as dust to hear my fellow Roger talk

of fair weather; let us pray for good leather, and let clowns

and ploughboys and those that work in the fields pray for brave

days. We work in a dry shop; what care I if it rain?

_Enter_ MARGERY.

_Eyre._ How now, Dame Margery, can you see to rise? Trip and go,

call up the drabs, your maids.

_Marg._ See to rise? I hope ’tis time enough, ’tis early enough

for any woman to be seen abroad. I marvel how many wives in

Tower Street are up so soon. Gods me, ’tis not noon,--here’s a

yawling![28]

[28] Bawling.

_Eyre._ Peace, Margery, peace! Where’s Cicely Bumtrinket, your

maid? She has a privy fault, she farts in her sleep. Call the

quean up; if my men want shoe-thread, I’ll swinge her in a

stirrup.

_Firk._ Yet, that’s but a dry beating; here’s still a sign of

drought.

_Enter_ LACY _disguised, singing_.

_Lacy._ _Der was een bore van Gelderland

Frolick sie byen;

He was als dronck he cold nyet stand,

Upsolce sie byen.

Tap eens de canneken,

Drincke, schone mannekin._[29]

[29]

There was a boor from Gelderland,

Jolly they be;

He was so drunk he could not stand,

Drunken they be:

Clink then the cannikin,

Drink, pretty mannikin!

_Firk._ Master, for my life, yonder’s a brother of the gentle

craft; if he bear not Saint Hugh’s bones,[30] I’ll forfeit my

bones; he’s some uplandish workman: hire him, good master, that

I may learn some gibble-gabble; ’twill make us work the faster.

[30] St. Hugh was the patron saint of shoemakers, and his bones

were supposed to have been made into shoemaker’s tools, for

which this came to be a common term.

_Eyre._ Peace, Firk! A hard world! Let him pass, let him vanish;

we have journeymen enow. Peace, my fine Firk!

_Marg._ Nay, nay, y’are best follow your man’s counsel; you

shall see what will come on’t: we have not men enow, but we must

entertain every butter-box; but let that pass.

_Hodge._ Dame, ’fore God, if my master follow your counsel,

he’ll consume little beef. He shall be glad of men, and he can

catch them.

_Firk._ Ay, that he shall.

_Hodge._ ’Fore God, a proper man, and I warrant, a fine workman.

Master, farewell; dame, adieu; if such a man as he cannot find

work, Hodge is not for you. [_Offers to go._

_Eyre._ Stay, my fine Hodge.

_Firk._ Faith, an your foreman go, dame, you must take a

journey to seek a new journeyman; if Roger remove, Firk follows.

If Saint Hugh’s bones shall not be set a-work, I may prick mine

awl in the walls, and go play. Fare ye well, master; good-bye,

dame.

_Eyre._ Tarry, my fine Hodge, my brisk foreman! Stay, Firk!

Peace, pudding-broth! By the Lord of Ludgate, I love my men as

my life. Peace, you gallimafry[31] Hodge, if he want work, I’ll

hire him. One of you to him; stay,--he comes to us.

[31] A dish of different hashed meats.

_Lacy._ _Goeden dach, meester, ende u vro oak._[32]

[32] Good day, master, and your wife too.

_Firk._ Nails, if I should speak after him without drinking, I

should choke. And you, friend Oake, are you of the gentle craft?

_Lacy._ _Yaw, yaw, ik bin den skomawker._[33]

[33] Yes, yes, I am a shoemaker.

_Firk._ _Den skomaker_, quoth a! And hark you, _skomaker_, have

you all your tools, a good rubbing-pin, a good stopper, a good

dresser, your four sorts of awls, and your two balls of wax,

your paring knife, your hand- and thumb-leathers, and good St.

Hugh’s bones to smooth up your work?

_Lacy._ _Yaw, yaw; be niet vorveard. Ik hab all de dingen voour

mack skooes groot and cleane._[34]

[34] Yes, yes; be not afraid. I have everything, to make boots

big and little.

_Firk._ Ha, ha! Good master, hire him; he’ll make me laugh so

that I shall work more in mirth than I can in earnest.

_Eyre._ Hear ye, friend, have ye any skill in the mystery of

cordwainers?

_Lacy._ _Ik weet niet wat yow seg; ich verstaw you niet._[35]

[35] I don’t know what you say; I don’t understand you.

_Firk._ Why, thus, man: (_Imitating by gesture a shoemaker at

work_) _Ick verste u niet_, quoth a.

_Lacy._ _Yaw, yaw, yaw; ick can dat wel doen._[36]

[36] Yes, yes, yes; I can do that very well.

_Firk._ _Yaw, yaw!_ He speaks yawing like a jackdaw that gapes

to be fed with cheese-curds. Oh, he’ll give a villanous pull at

a can of double-beer; but Hodge and I have the vantage, we must

drink first, because we are the eldest journeymen.

_Eyre._ What is thy name?

_Lacy._ Hans--Hans Meulter.

_Eyre._ Give me thy hand; th’art welcome.--Hodge, entertain him;

Firk, bid him welcome; come, Hans. Run, wife, bid your maids,

your trullibubs,[37] make ready my fine men’s breakfasts. To

him, Hodge!

[37] Slatterns, sluts.

_Hodge._ Hans, th’art welcome; use thyself friendly, for we

are good fellows; if not, thou shalt be fought with, wert thou

bigger than a giant.

_Firk._ Yea, and drunk with, wert thou Gargantua. My master

keeps no cowards, I tell thee.--Ho, boy, bring him an

heel-block, here’s a new journeyman.

_Enter_ Boy.

_Lacy._ _O, ich wersto you; ich moet een halve dossen

cans betaelen; here, boy, nempt dis skilling, tap eens

freelicke._[38] [_Exit_ Boy.

[38] O, I understand you; I must pay for half-a-dozen cans;

here, boy, take this shilling, tap this once freely.

_Eyre._ Quick, snipper-snapper, away! Firk, scour thy throat,

thou shalt wash it with Castilian liquor.

_Enter_ Boy.

Come, my last of the fives, give me a can. Have to thee, Hans;

here, Hodge; here, Firk; drink, you mad Greeks, and work like

true Trojans, and pray for Simon Eyre, the shoemaker.--Here,

Hans, and th’art welcome.

_Firk._ Lo, dame, you would have lost a good fellow that will

teach us to laugh. This beer came hopping in well.

_Marg._ Simon, it is almost seven.

_Eyre._ Is’t so, Dame Clapper-dudgeon?[39] Is’t seven a clock,

and my men’s breakfast not ready? Trip and go, you soused

conger,[40] away! Come, you mad hyperboreans; follow me, Hodge;

follow me, Hans; come after, my fine Firk; to work, to work a

while, and then to breakfast! [_Exit._

[39] Cant term for a beggar.

[40] Conger-eel.

_Firk._ Soft! _Yaw, yaw_, good Hans, though my master have no

more wit but to call you afore me, I am not so foolish to go

behind you, I being the elder journeyman. [_Exeunt._

[Illustration]

SCENE IV.--_A Field near Old Ford._

_Holloaing within. Enter ~Master~_ WARNER _and ~Master~_ HAMMON,

_attired as ~Hunters~_.

_Ham._ Cousin, beat every brake, the game’s not far,

This way with wingèd feet he fled from death,

Whilst the pursuing hounds, scenting his steps,

Find out his highway to destruction.

Besides, the miller’s boy told me even now,

He saw him take soil,[41] and he holloaed him,

Affirming him to have been so embost[42]

That long he could not hold.

[41] Take cover.

[42] Spent; panting with exhaustion.

_Warn._ If it be so,

’Tis best we trace these meadows by Old Ford.

_A noise of ~Hunters~ within. Enter a ~Boy~._

_Ham._ How now, boy? Where’s the deer? speak, saw’st thou him?

_Boy._ O yea; I saw him leap through a hedge, and then over a

ditch, then at my lord mayor’s pale, over he skipped me, and

in he went me, and “holla” the hunters cried, and “there, boy;

there, boy!” But there he is, ’a mine honesty.

_Ham._ Boy, God amercy. Cousin, let’s away;

I hope we shall find better sport to-day. [_Exeunt._

[Illustration]

SCENE V.--_Another part of the Field._

_Hunting within. Enter_ ROSE _and_ SYBIL.

_Rose._ Why, Sybil, wilt thou prove a forester?

_Sybil._ Upon some, no; forester, go by; no, faith, mistress.

The deer came running into the barn through the orchard and over

the pale; I wot well, I looked as pale as a new cheese to see

him. But whip, says Goodman Pin-close, up with his flail, and

our Nick with a prong, and down he fell, and they upon him, and

I upon them. By my troth, we had such sport; and in the end we

ended him; his throat we cut, flayed him, unhorned him, and my

lord mayor shall eat of him anon, when he comes. [_Horns sound

within._

_Rose._ Hark, hark, the hunters come; y’are best take heed,

They’ll have a saying to you for this deed.

_Enter_ Master HAMMON, Master WARNER,

Huntsmen, _and_ Boy.

_Ham._ God save you, fair ladies.

_Sybil._ Ladies! O gross![43]

[43] Stupid.

_Warn._ Came not a buck this way?

_Rose._ No, but two does.

_Ham._ And which way went they? Faith, we’ll hunt at those.

_Sybil._ At those? upon some, no: when, can you tell?

_Warn._ Upon some, ay?

_Sybil._ Good Lord!

_Warn._ Wounds! Then farewell!

_Ham._ Boy, which way went he?

_Boy._ This way, sir, he ran.

_Ham._ This way he ran indeed, fair Mistress Rose; Our game was

lately in your orchard seen.

_Warn._ Can you advise, which way he took his flight?

_Sybil._ Follow your nose; his horns will guide you right.

_Warn._ Th’art a mad wench.

_Sybil._ O, rich!

_Rose._ Trust me, not I.

It is not like that the wild forest-deer

Would come so near to places of resort;

You are deceived, he fled some other way.

_Warn._ Which way, my sugar-candy, can you shew?

_Sybil._ Come up, good honeysops, upon some, no.

_Rose._ Why do you stay, and not pursue your game?

_Sybil._ I’ll hold my life, their hunting-nags be lame.

_Ham._ A deer more dear is found within this place.

_Rose._ But not the deer, sir, which you had in chase.

_Ham._ I chased the deer, but this dear chaseth me.

_Rose._ The strangest hunting that ever I see.

But where’s your park? [_She offers to go away._

_Ham._ ’Tis here: O stay!

_Rose._ Impale me, and then I will not stray.

_Warn._ They wrangle, wench; we are more kind than they.

_Sybil._ What kind of hart is that dear heart, you seek?

_Warn._ A hart, dear heart.

_Sybil._ Who ever saw the like?

_Rose._ To lose your heart, is’t possible you can?

_Ham._ My heart is lost.

_Rose._ Alack, good gentleman!

_Ham._ This poor lost hart would I wish you might find.

_Rose._ You, by such luck, might prove your hart a hind.

_Ham._ Why, Luck had horns, so have I heard some say.

_Rose._ Now, God, an’t be his will, send Luck into your way.

_Enter the_ LORD MAYOR _and_ Servants.

_L. Mayor._ What, Master Hammon? Welcome to Old Ford!

_Sybil._ Gods pittikins, hands off, sir! Here’s my lord.

_L. Mayor._ I hear you had ill luck, and lost your game.

_Ham._ ’Tis true, my lord.

_L. Mayor._ I am sorry for the same.

What gentleman is this?

_Ham._ My brother-in-law.

_L. Mayor._ Y’are welcome both; sith Fortune offers you

Into my hands, you shall not part from hence,

Until you have refreshed your wearied limbs.

Go, Sybil, cover the board! You shall be guest

To no good cheer, but even a hunter’s feast.

_Ham._ I thank your lordship.--Cousin, on my life,

For our lost venison I shall find a wife. [_Exeunt._

_L. Mayor._ In, gentlemen; I’ll not be absent long.--

This Hammon is a proper gentleman,

A citizen by birth, fairly allied;

How fit an husband were he for my girl!

Well, I will in, and do the best I can,

To match my daughter to this gentleman. [_Exit._

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

ACT THE THIRD.

SCENE I.--_A Room in_ EYRE’S _House_.

_Enter_ LACY _otherwise_ HANS, Skipper, HODGE, _and_ FIRK.

SKIP. _Ick sal yow wat seggen, Hans; dis skip, dot comen from

Candy, is al vol, by Got’s sacrament, van sugar, civet, almonds,

cambrick, end alle dingen, towsand towsand ding. Nempt it, Hans,

nempt it vor v meester. Daer be de bils van laden. Your meester

Simon Eyre sal hae good copen. Wat seggen yow, Hans?_[44]

[44] I’ll tell you what, Hans; this ship that is come from

Candia, is quite full, by God’s sacrament, of sugar, civet,

almonds, cambric, and all things; a thousand, thousand things.

Take it, Hans, take it for your master. There are the bills of

lading. Your master, Simon Eyre, shall have a good bargain. What

say you, Hans?

_Firk._ _Wat seggen de reggen de copen, slopen_--laugh, Hodge,

laugh!

_Hans._ _Mine liever broder Firk, bringt Meester Eyre tot det

signe vn Swannekin; daer sal yow finde dis skipper end me. Wat

seggen yow, broder Firk? Doot it, Hodge._[45] Come, skipper.

[_Exeunt._

[45] My dear brother Firk, bring Master Eyre to the sign of the

Swan; there shall you find this skipper and me. What say you,

brother Firk? Do it, Hodge.--[There were at this time two inns

with the sign of the Swan in London, one at Dowgate, the other

in Old Fish Street.]

_Firk._ Bring him, quoth you? Here’s no knavery, to bring my

master to buy a ship worth the lading of two or three hundred

thousand pounds. Alas, that’s nothing; a trifle, a bauble, Hodge.

_Hodge._ The truth is, Firk, that the merchant owner of the ship

dares not shew his head, and therefore this skipper that deals

for him, for the love he bears to Hans, offers my master Eyre

a bargain in the commodities. He shall have a reasonable day

of payment; he may sell the wares by that time, and be an huge

gainer himself.

_Firk._ Yea, but can my fellow Hans lend my master twenty

porpentines as an earnest penny?

_Hodge._ Portuguese,[46] thou wouldst say; here they be, Firk;

hark, they jingle in my pocket like St. Mary Overy’s bells.[47]

[46] A coin worth about three pounds twelve shillings.

[47] “East from the Bishop of Winchester’s house, directly over

against it, stands a fair church, called St. Mary over the Rie,

or Overie, that is, over the water.”--_Stow’s Survey of London._

_Enter_ EYRE _and_ MARGERY.

_Firk._ Mum, here comes my dame and my master. She’ll scold, on

my life, for loitering this Monday; but all’s one, let them all

say what they can, Monday’s our holiday.

_Marg._ You sing, Sir Sauce, but I beshrew your heart,

I fear, for this your singing we shall smart.

_Firk._ Smart for me, dame; why, dame, why?

_Hodge._ Master, I hope you’ll not suffer my dame to take down

your journeymen.

_Firk._ If she take me down, I’ll take her up; yea, and take her

down too, a button-hole lower.

_Eyre._ Peace, Firk; not I, Hodge; by the life of Pharaoh, by

the Lord of Ludgate, by this beard, every hair whereof I value

at a king’s ransom, she shall not meddle with you.--Peace, you

bombast-cotton-candle-quean; away, queen of clubs; quarrel not

with me and my men, with me and my fine Firk; I’ll firk you, if

you do.

_Marg._ Yea, yea, man, you may use me as you please; but let

that pass.

_Eyre._ Let it pass, let it vanish away; peace! Am I not

Simon Eyre? Are not these my brave men, brave shoemakers, all

gentlemen of the gentle craft? Prince am I none, yet am I nobly

born, as being the sole son of a shoemaker. Away, rubbish!

vanish, melt; melt like kitchen-stuff.

_Marg._ Yea, yea, ’tis well; I must be called rubbish,

kitchen-stuff, for a sort of knaves.

_Firk._ Nay, dame, you shall not weep and wail in woe for

me. Master, I’ll stay no longer; here’s an inventory of my

shop-tools. Adieu, master; Hodge, farewell.

_Hodge._ Nay, stay, Firk; thou shalt not go alone.

_Marg._ I pray, let them go; there be more maids than Mawkin,

more men than Hodge, and more fools than Firk.

_Firk._ Fools? Nails! if I tarry now, I would my guts might be

turned to shoe-thread.

_Hodge._ And if I stay, I pray God I may be turned to a Turk,

and set in Finsbury[48] for boys to shoot at.--Come, Firk.

[48] Finsbury was a famous practising ground for archery at this

time.

_Eyre._ Stay, my fine knaves, you arms of my trade, you pillars

of my profession. What, shall a tittle-tattle’s words make you

forsake Simon Eyre?--Avaunt, kitchen-stuff! Rip, you brown-bread

Tannikin;[49] out of my sight! Move me not! Have not I ta’en you

from selling tripes in Eastcheap, and set you in my shop, and

made you hail-fellow with Simon Eyre, the shoemaker? And now do

you deal thus with my journeymen? Look, you powder-beef-quean,

on the face of Hodge, here’s a face for a lord.

[49] A name given to Dutchwomen.

_Firk._ And here’s a face for any lady in Christendom.

_Eyre._ Rip, you chitterling, avaunt! Boy, bid the tapster of

the Boar’s Head fill me a dozen cans of beer for my journeymen.

_Firk._ A dozen cans? O, brave! Hodge, now I’ll stay.

_Eyre._ (_In a low voice to the_ Boy). An the knave fills any

more than two, he pays for them. (_Exit_ Boy. _Aloud._) A dozen

cans of beer for my journeymen. (_Re-enter_ Boy.) Here, you

mad Mesopotamians, wash your livers with this liquor. Where be

the odd ten? No more, Madge, no more.--Well said. Drink and to

work!--What work dost thou, Hodge? what work?

_Hodge._ I am a making a pair of shoes for my lord mayor’s

daughter, Mistress Rose.

_Firk._ And I a pair of shoes for Sybil, my lord’s maid. I deal

with her.

_Eyre._ Sybil? Fie, defile not thy fine workmanly fingers

with the feet of kitchenstuff and basting-ladles. Ladies of

the court, fine ladies, my lads, commit their feet to our

apparelling; put gross work to Hans. Yark and seam, yark and

seam!

_Firk._ For yarking and seaming let me alone, an I come to’t.

_Hodge._ Well, master, all this is from the bias.[50] Do you

remember the ship my fellow Hans told you of? The skipper and he

are both drinking at the Swan. Here be the Portuguese to give

earnest. If you go through with it, you cannot choose but be a

lord at least.

[50] By the way, beside the question.

_Firk._ Nay, dame, if my master prove not a lord, and you a

lady, hang me.

_Marg._ Yea, like enough, if you may loiter and tipple thus.

_Firk._ Tipple, dame? No, we have been bargaining with Skellum

Skanderbag:[51] can you Dutch spreaken for a ship of silk

Cyprus, laden with sugar-candy.

[51] German: Schelm, a scoundrel. Skanderbag, or Scander Beg

(_i.e._ Lord Alexander), a Turkish name for John Kastriota, the

Albanian hero, who freed his country from the yoke of the Turks

(1443-1467).

_Enter ~Boy~ with a velvet coat and an Alderman’s gown._

EYRE _puts them on_.

_Eyre._ Peace, Firk; silence, Tittle-tattle! Hodge, I’ll go

through with it. Here’s a seal-ring, and I have sent for a

guarded gown[52] and a damask cassock. See where it comes; look

here, Maggy; help me, Firk; apparel me, Hodge; silk and satin,

you mad Philistines, silk and satin.

[52] A robe ornamented with guards or facings.

_Firk._ Ha, ha, my master will be as proud as a dog in a

doublet, all in beaten[53] damask and velvet.

[53] Stamped.

_Eyre._ Softly, Firk, for rearing[54] of the nap, and wearing

threadbare my garments. How dost thou like me, Firk? How do I

look, my fine Hodge?

[54] Raising up, ruffling.

_Hodge._ Why, now you look like yourself, master. I warrant you,

there’s few in the city, but will give you the wall, and come

upon you with the right worshipful.

_Firk._ Nails, my master looks like a threadbare cloak new

turned and dressed. Lord, Lord, to see what good raiment doth!

Dame, dame, are you not enamoured?

_Eyre._ How say’st thou, Maggy, am I not brisk? Am I not fine?

_Marg._ Fine? By my troth, sweetheart, very fine! By my troth,

I never liked thee so well in my life, sweetheart; but let that

pass. I warrant, there be many women in the city have not such

handsome husbands, but only for their apparel; but let that pass

too.

_Re-enter_ HANS _and_ Skipper.

_Hans._ _Godden day, mester. Dis be de skipper dat heb de skip

van marchandice; de commodity ben good; nempt it, master, nempt

it._[55]

[55] Good day, master. This is the skipper that has the ship of

merchandise; the commodity is good; take it, master, take it.

_Eyre._ Godamercy, Hans; welcome, skipper. Where lies this ship

of merchandise?

_Skip._ _De skip ben in revere; dor be van Sugar, cyvet,

almonds, cambrick, and a towsand towsand tings, gotz sacrament;

nempt it, mester: ye sal heb good copen._[56]

[56] The ship lies in the river; there are sugar, civet,

almonds, cambric, and a thousand thousand things, by God’s

sacrament, take it, master; you shall have a good bargain.

_Firk._ To him, master! O sweet master! O sweet wares! Prunes,

almonds, sugar-candy, carrot-roots, turnips, O brave fatting

meat! Let not a man buy a nutmeg but yourself.

_Eyre._ Peace, Firk! Come, skipper, I’ll go aboard with

you.--Hans, have you made him drink?

_Skip._ _Yaw, yaw, ic heb veale gedrunck._[57]

[57] Yes, yes, I have drunk well.

_Eyre._ Come, Hans, follow me. Skipper, thou shalt have my

countenance in the city. [_Exeunt._

_Firk._ _Yaw, heb veale gedrunck_, quoth a. They may well be

called butter-boxes, when they drink fat veal and thick beer

too. But come, dame, I hope you’ll chide us no more.

_Marg._ No, faith, Firk; no, perdy,[58] Hodge. I do feel honour

creep upon me, and which is more, a certain rising in my flesh;

but let that pass.

[58] Fr. _Par Dieu_. The word here means “truly.”

_Firk._ Rising in your flesh do you feel, say you? Ay, you may

be with child, but why should not my master feel a rising in

his flesh, having a gown and a gold ring on? But you are such a

shrew, you’ll soon pull him down.

_Marg._ Ha, ha! prithee, peace! Thou mak’st my worship laugh;

but let that pass. Come, I’ll go in; Hodge, prithee, go before

me; Firk, follow me.

_Firk._ Firk doth follow: Hodge, pass out in state. [_Exeunt._

[Illustration]