SCENE I. -- THE PALACE STAIRS.

EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR

By Ben Jonson

INTRODUCTION

THE greatest of English dramatists except Shakespeare, the first

literary dictator and poet-laureate, a writer of verse, prose,

satire, and criticism who most potently of all the men of his time

affected the subsequent course of English letters: such was Ben

Jonson, and as such his strong personality assumes an interest to

us almost unparalleled, at least in his age.

Ben Jonson came of the stock that was centuries after to give to

the world Thomas Carlyle; for Jonson's grandfather was of

Annandale, over the Solway, whence he migrated to England.

Jonson's father lost his estate under Queen Mary, "having been cast

into prison and forfeited." He entered the church, but died a

month before his illustrious son was born, leaving his widow and

child in poverty. Jonson's birthplace was Westminster, and the

time of his birth early in 1573. He was thus nearly ten years

Shakespeare's junior, and less well off, if a trifle better born.

But Jonson did not profit even by this slight advantage. His

mother married beneath her, a wright or bricklayer, and Jonson was

for a time apprenticed to the trade. As a youth he attracted the

attention of the famous antiquary, William Camden, then usher at

Westminster School, and there the poet laid the solid foundations

of his classical learning. Jonson always held Camden in

veneration, acknowledging that to him he owed,

"All that I am in arts, all that I know;"

and dedicating his first dramatic success, "Every Man in His

Humour," to him. It is doubtful whether Jonson ever went to either

university, though Fuller says that he was "statutably admitted

into St. John's College, Cambridge." He tells us that he took no

degree, but was later "Master of Arts in both the universities, by

their favour, not his study." When a mere youth Jonson enlisted as

a soldier, trailing his pike in Flanders in the protracted wars of

William the Silent against the Spanish. Jonson was a large and

raw-boned lad; he became by his own account in time exceedingly

bulky. In chat with his friend William Drummond of Hawthornden,

Jonson told how "in his service in the Low Countries he had, in the

face of both the camps, killed an enemy, and taken opima spolia

from him;" and how "since his coming to England, being appealed to

the fields, he had killed his adversary which had hurt him in the

arm and whose sword was ten inches longer than his." Jonson's

reach may have made up for the lack of his sword; certainly his

prowess lost nothing in the telling. Obviously Jonson was brave,

combative, and not averse to talking of himself and his doings.

In 1592, Jonson returned from abroad penniless. Soon after he

married, almost as early and quite as imprudently as Shakespeare.

He told Drummond curtly that "his wife was a shrew, yet honest";

for some years he lived apart from her in the household of Lord

Albany. Yet two touching epitaphs among Jonson's "Epigrams," "On

my first daughter," and "On my first son," attest the warmth of the

poet's family affections. The daughter died in infancy, the son of

the plague; another son grew up to manhood little credit to his

father whom he survived. We know nothing beyond this of Jonson's

domestic life.

How soon Jonson drifted into what we now call grandly "the

theatrical profession" we do not know. In 1593, Marlowe made his

tragic exit from life, and Greene, Shakespeare's other rival on the

popular stage, had preceded Marlowe in an equally miserable death

the year before. Shakespeare already had the running to himself.

Jonson appears first in the employment of Philip Henslowe, the

exploiter of several troupes of players, manager, and father-in-law

of the famous actor, Edward Alleyn. From entries in "Henslowe's

Diary," a species of theatrical account book which has been handed

down to us, we know that Jonson was connected with the Admiral's

men; for he borrowed 4 pounds of Henslowe, July 28, 1597, paying

back 3s. 9d. on the same day on account of his "share" (in what is

not altogether clear); while later, on December 3, of the same

year, Henslowe advanced 20s. to him "upon a book which he showed

the plot unto the company which he promised to deliver unto the

company at Christmas next." In the next August Jonson was in

collaboration with Chettle and Porter in a play called "Hot Anger

Soon Cold." All this points to an association with Henslowe of

some duration, as no mere tyro would be thus paid in advance upon

mere promise. From allusions in Dekker's play, "Satiromastix," it

appears that Jonson, like Shakespeare, began life as an actor, and

that he "ambled in a leather pitch by a play-wagon" taking at one

time the part of Hieronimo in Kyd's famous play, "The Spanish

Tragedy." By the beginning of 1598, Jonson, though still in needy

circumstances, had begun to receive recognition. Francis Meres --

well known for his "Comparative Discourse of our English Poets with

the Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets," printed in 1598, and for his

mention therein of a dozen plays of Shakespeare by title -- accords

to Ben Jonson a place as one of "our best in tragedy," a matter of

some surprise, as no known tragedy of Jonson from so early a date

has come down to us. That Jonson was at work on tragedy, however,

is proved by the entries in Henslowe of at least three tragedies,

now lost, in which he had a hand. These are "Page of Plymouth,"

"King Robert II. of Scotland," and "Richard Crookback." But all of

these came later, on his return to Henslowe, and range from August

1599 to June 1602.

Returning to the autumn of 1598, an event now happened to sever for

a time Jonson's relations with Henslowe. In a letter to Alleyn,

dated September 26 of that year, Henslowe writes: "I have lost one

of my company that hurteth me greatly; that is Gabriel [Spencer],

for he is slain in Hogsden fields by the hands of Benjamin Jonson,

bricklayer." The last word is perhaps Henslowe's thrust at Jonson

in his displeasure rather than a designation of his actual

continuance at his trade up to this time. It is fair to Jonson to

remark however, that his adversary appears to have been a notorious

fire-eater who had shortly before killed one Feeke in a similar

squabble. Duelling was a frequent occurrence of the time among

gentlemen and the nobility; it was an impudent breach of the peace

on the part of a player. This duel is the one which Jonson

described years after to Drummond, and for it Jonson was duly

arraigned at Old Bailey, tried, and convicted. He was sent to

prison and such goods and chattels as he had "were forfeited." It

is a thought to give one pause that, but for the ancient law

permitting convicted felons to plead, as it was called, the benefit

of clergy, Jonson might have been hanged for this deed. The

circumstance that the poet could read and write saved him; and he

received only a brand of the letter "T," for Tyburn, on his left

thumb. While in jail Jonson became a Roman Catholic; but he

returned to the faith of the Church of England a dozen years later.

On his release, in disgrace with Henslowe and his former

associates, Jonson offered his services as a playwright to

Henslowe's rivals, the Lord Chamberlain's company, in which

Shakespeare was a prominent shareholder. A tradition of long

standing, though not susceptible of proof in a court of law,

narrates that Jonson had submitted the manuscript of "Every Man in

His Humour" to the Chamberlain's men and had received from the

company a refusal; that Shakespeare called him back, read the play

himself, and at once accepted it. Whether this story is true or

not, certain it is that "Every Man in His Humour" was accepted by

Shakespeare's company and acted for the first time in 1598, with

Shakespeare taking a part. The evidence of this is contained in

the list of actors prefixed to the comedy in the folio of Jonson's

works, 1616. But it is a mistake to infer, because Shakespeare's

name stands first in the list of actors and the elder Kno'well

first in the dramatis personae, that Shakespeare took that

particular part. The order of a list of Elizabethan players was

generally that of their importance or priority as shareholders in

the company and seldom if ever corresponded to the list of

characters.

"Every Man in His Humour" was an immediate success, and with it

Jonson's reputation as one of the leading dramatists of his time

was established once and for all. This could have been by no means

Jonson's earliest comedy, and we have just learned that he was

already reputed one of "our best in tragedy." Indeed, one of

Jonson's extant comedies, "The Case is Altered," but one never

claimed by him or published as his, must certainly have preceded

"Every Man in His Humour" on the stage. The former play may be

described as a comedy modelled on the Latin plays of Plautus. (It

combines, in fact, situations derived from the "Captivi" and the

"Aulularia" of that dramatist). But the pretty story of the

beggar-maiden, Rachel, and her suitors, Jonson found, not among the

classics, but in the ideals of romantic love which Shakespeare had

already popularised on the stage. Jonson never again produced so

fresh and lovable a feminine personage as Rachel, although in other

respects "The Case is Altered" is not a conspicuous play, and, save

for the satirising of Antony Munday in the person of Antonio

Balladino and Gabriel Harvey as well, is perhaps the least

characteristic of the comedies of Jonson.

"Every Man in His Humour," probably first acted late in the summer

of 1598 and at the Curtain, is commonly regarded as an epoch-making

play; and this view is not unjustified. As to plot, it tells

little more than how an intercepted letter enabled a father to

follow his supposedly studious son to London, and there observe his

life with the gallants of the time. The real quality of this

comedy is in its personages and in the theory upon which they are

conceived. Ben Jonson had theories about poetry and the drama, and

he was neither chary in talking of them nor in experimenting with

them in his plays. This makes Jonson, like Dryden in his time, and

Wordsworth much later, an author to reckon with; particularly when

we remember that many of Jonson's notions came for a time

definitely to prevail and to modify the whole trend of English

poetry. First of all Jonson was a classicist, that is, he believed

in restraint and precedent in art in opposition to the prevalent

ungoverned and irresponsible Renaissance spirit. Jonson believed

that there was a professional way of doing things which might be

reached by a study of the best examples, and he found these

examples for the most part among the ancients. To confine our

attention to the drama, Jonson objected to the amateurishness and

haphazard nature of many contemporary plays, and set himself to do

something different; and the first and most striking thing that he

evolved was his conception and practice of the comedy of humours.

As Jonson has been much misrepresented in this matter, let us quote

his own words as to "humour." A humour, according to Jonson, was a

bias of disposition, a warp, so to speak, in character by which

"Some one peculiar quality

Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw

All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,

In their confluctions, all to run one way."

But continuing, Jonson is careful to add:

"But that a rook by wearing a pied feather,

The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff,

A yard of shoe-tie, or the Switzers knot

On his French garters, should affect a humour!

O, it is more than most ridiculous."

Jonson's comedy of humours, in a word, conceived of stage

personages on the basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable

simplification of actual life be it observed in passing); and,

placing these typified traits in juxtaposition in their conflict

and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name

indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the

braggart who is incidentally, and with delightfully comic effect, a

coward; Brainworm's humour is the finding out of things to the end

of fooling everybody: of course he is fooled in the end himself.

But it was not Jonson's theories alone that made the success of

"Every Man in His Humour." The play is admirably written and each

character is vividly conceived, and with a firm touch based on

observation of the men of the London of the day. Jonson was

neither in this, his first great comedy (nor in any other play that

he wrote), a supine classicist, urging that English drama return to

a slavish adherence to classical conditions. He says as to the

laws of the old comedy (meaning by "laws," such matters as the

unities of time and place and the use of chorus): "I see not then,

but we should enjoy the same licence, or free power to illustrate

and heighten our invention as they [the ancients] did; and not be

tied to those strict and regular forms which the niceness of a few,

who are nothing but form, would thrust upon us." "Every Man in His

Humour" is written in prose, a novel practice which Jonson had of

his predecessor in comedy, John Lyly. Even the word "humour" seems

to have been employed in the Jonsonian sense by Chapman before

Jonson's use of it. Indeed, the comedy of humours itself is only a

heightened variety of the comedy of manners which represents life,

viewed at a satirical angle, and is the oldest and most persistent

species of comedy in the language. None the less, Jonson's comedy

merited its immediate success and marked out a definite course in

which comedy long continued to run. To mention only Shakespeare's

Falstaff and his rout, Bardolph, Pistol, Dame Quickly, and the

rest, whether in "Henry IV." or in "The Merry Wives of Windsor,"

all are conceived in the spirit of humours. So are the captains,

Welsh, Scotch, and Irish of "Henry V.," and Malvolio especially

later; though Shakespeare never employed the method of humours for

an important personage. It was not Jonson's fault that many of his

successors did precisely the thing that he had reprobated, that is,

degrade the humour: into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity of

manner, of dress, or cut of beard. There was an anonymous play

called "Every Woman in Her Humour." Chapman wrote "A Humourous

Day's Mirth," Day, "Humour Out of Breath," Fletcher later, "The

Humourous Lieutenant," and Jonson, besides "Every Man Out of His

Humour," returned to the title in closing the cycle of his comedies

in "The Magnetic Lady or Humours Reconciled."

With the performance of "Every Man Out of His Humour" in 1599, by

Shakespeare's company once more at the Globe, we turn a new page in

Jonson's career. Despite his many real virtues, if there is one

feature more than any other that distinguishes Jonson, it is his

arrogance; and to this may be added his self-righteousness,

especially under criticism or satire. "Every Man Out of His

Humour" is the first of three "comical satires" which Jonson

contributed to what Dekker called the poetomachia or war of the

theatres as recent critics have named it. This play as a fabric of

plot is a very slight affair; but as a satirical picture of the

manners of the time, proceeding by means of vivid caricature,

couched in witty and brilliant dialogue and sustained by that

righteous indignation which must lie at the heart of all true

satire -- as a realisation, in short, of the classical ideal of

comedy -- there had been nothing like Jonson's comedy since the

days of Aristophanes. "Every Man in His Humour," like the two

plays that follow it, contains two kinds of attack, the critical or

generally satiric, levelled at abuses and corruptions in the

abstract; and the personal, in which specific application is made

of all this in the lampooning of poets and others, Jonson's

contemporaries. The method of personal attack by actual caricature

of a person on the stage is almost as old as the drama.

Aristophanes so lampooned Euripides in "The Acharnians" and

Socrates in "The Clouds," to mention no other examples; and in

English drama this kind of thing is alluded to again and again.

What Jonson really did, was to raise the dramatic lampoon to an

art, and make out of a casual burlesque and bit of mimicry a

dramatic satire of literary pretensions and permanency. With the

arrogant attitude mentioned above and his uncommon eloquence in

scorn, vituperation, and invective, it is no wonder that Jonson

soon involved himself in literary and even personal quarrels with

his fellow-authors. The circumstances of the origin of this

'poetomachia' are far from clear, and those who have written on the

topic, except of late, have not helped to make them clearer. The

origin of the "war" has been referred to satirical references,

apparently to Jonson, contained in "The Scourge of Villainy," a

satire in regular form after the manner of the ancients by John

Marston, a fellow playwright, subsequent friend and collaborator of

Jonson's. On the other hand, epigrams of Jonson have been

discovered (49, 68, and 100) variously charging "playwright"

(reasonably identified with Marston) with scurrility, cowardice,

and plagiarism; though the dates of the epigrams cannot be

ascertained with certainty. Jonson's own statement of the matter

to Drummond runs: "He had many quarrels with Marston, beat him,

and took his pistol from him, wrote his "Poetaster" on him; the

beginning[s] of them were that Marston represented him on the

stage."*

[footnote] *The best account of this whole subject is to be found

in the edition of "Poetaster" and "Satiromastrix" by J. H. Penniman

in "Belles Lettres Series" shortly to appear. See also his earlier

work, "The War of the Theatres," 1892, and the excellent

contributions to the subject by H. C. Hart in "Notes and Queries,"

and in his edition of Jonson, 1906.

Here at least we are on certain ground; and the principals of the

quarrel are known. "Histriomastix," a play revised by Marston in

1598, has been regarded as the one in which Jonson was thus

"represented on the stage"; although the personage in question,

Chrisogonus, a poet, satirist, and translator, poor but proud, and

contemptuous of the common herd, seems rather a complimentary

portrait of Jonson than a caricature. As to the personages

actually ridiculed in "Every Man Out of His Humour," Carlo Buffone

was formerly thought certainly to be Marston, as he was described

as "a public, scurrilous, and profane jester," and elsewhere as the

grand scourge or second untruss [that is, satirist], of the time

(Joseph Hall being by his own boast the first, and Marston's work

being entitled "The Scourge of Villainy"). Apparently we must now

prefer for Carlo a notorious character named Charles Chester, of

whom gossipy and inaccurate Aubrey relates that he was "a bold

impertinent fellow...a perpetual talker and made a noise like a

drum in a room. So one time at a tavern Sir Walter Raleigh beats

him and seals up his mouth (that is his upper and nether beard)

with hard wax. From him Ben Jonson takes his Carlo Buffone

['i.e.', jester] in "Every Man in His Humour" ['sic']." Is it

conceivable that after all Jonson was ridiculing Marston, and that

the point of the satire consisted in an intentional confusion of

"the grand scourge or second untruss" with "the scurrilous and

profane" Chester?

We have digressed into detail in this particular case to exemplify

the difficulties of criticism in its attempts to identify the

allusions in these forgotten quarrels. We are on sounder ground of

fact in recording other manifestations of Jonson's enmity. In "The

Case is Altered" there is clear ridicule in the character Antonio

Balladino of Anthony Munday, pageant-poet of the city, translator

of romances and playwright as well. In "Every Man in His Humour"

there is certainly a caricature of Samuel Daniel, accepted poet of

the court, sonneteer, and companion of men of fashion. These men

held recognised positions to which Jonson felt his talents better

entitled him; they were hence to him his natural enemies. It seems

almost certain that he pursued both in the personages of his satire

through "Every Man Out of His Humour," and "Cynthia's Revels,"

Daniel under the characters Fastidious Brisk and Hedon, Munday as

Puntarvolo and Amorphus; but in these last we venture on quagmire

once more. Jonson's literary rivalry of Daniel is traceable again

and again, in the entertainments that welcomed King James on his

way to London, in the masques at court, and in the pastoral drama.

As to Jonson's personal ambitions with respect to these two men, it

is notable that he became, not pageant-poet, but chronologer to the

City of London; and that, on the accession of the new king, he came

soon to triumph over Daniel as the accepted entertainer of royalty.

"Cynthia's Revels," the second "comical satire," was acted in 1600,

and, as a play, is even more lengthy, elaborate, and impossible

than "Every Man Out of His Humour." Here personal satire seems to

have absorbed everything, and while much of the caricature is

admirable, especially in the detail of witty and trenchantly

satirical dialogue, the central idea of a fountain of self-love is

not very well carried out, and the persons revert at times to

abstractions, the action to allegory. It adds to our wonder that

this difficult drama should have been acted by the Children of

Queen Elizabeth's Chapel, among them Nathaniel Field with whom

Jonson read Horace and Martial, and whom he taught later how to

make plays. Another of these precocious little actors was

Salathiel Pavy, who died before he was thirteen, already famed for

taking the parts of old men. Him Jonson immortalised in one of the

sweetest of his epitaphs. An interesting sidelight is this on the

character of this redoubtable and rugged satirist, that he should

thus have befriended and tenderly remembered these little

theatrical waifs, some of whom (as we know) had been literally

kidnapped to be pressed into the service of the theatre and whipped

to the conning of their difficult parts. To the caricature of

Daniel and Munday in "Cynthia's Revels" must be added Anaides

(impudence), here assuredly Marston, and Asotus (the prodigal),

interpreted as Lodge or, more perilously, Raleigh. Crites, like

Asper-Macilente in "Every Man Out of His Humour," is Jonson's

self-complaisant portrait of himself, the just, wholly admirable,

and judicious scholar, holding his head high above the pack of the

yelping curs of envy and detraction, but careless of their puny

attacks on his perfections with only too mindful a neglect.

The third and last of the "comical satires" is "Poetaster," acted,

once more, by the Children of the Chapel in 1601, and Jonson's only

avowed contribution to the fray. According to the author's own

account, this play was written in fifteen weeks on a report that

his enemies had entrusted to Dekker the preparation of

"Satiromastix, the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet," a dramatic

attack upon himself. In this attempt to forestall his enemies

Jonson succeeded, and "Poetaster" was an immediate and deserved

success. While hardly more closely knit in structure than its

earlier companion pieces, "Poetaster" is planned to lead up to the

ludicrous final scene in which, after a device borrowed from the

"Lexiphanes" of Lucian, the offending poetaster, Marston-Crispinus,

is made to throw up the difficult words with which he had

overburdened his stomach as well as overlarded his vocabulary. In

the end Crispinus with his fellow, Dekker-Demetrius, is bound over

to keep the peace and never thenceforward "malign, traduce, or

detract the person or writings of Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Jonson]

or any other eminent man transcending you in merit." One of the

most diverting personages in Jonson's comedy is Captain Tucca.

"His peculiarity" has been well described by Ward as "a buoyant

blackguardism which recovers itself instantaneously from the most

complete exposure, and a picturesqueness of speech like that of a

walking dictionary of slang."

It was this character, Captain Tucca, that Dekker hit upon in his

reply, "Satiromastix," and he amplified him, turning his abusive

vocabulary back upon Jonson and adding "an immodesty to his

dialogue that did not enter into Jonson's conception." It has been

held, altogether plausibly, that when Dekker was engaged

professionally, so to speak, to write a dramatic reply to Jonson,

he was at work on a species of chronicle history, dealing with the

story of Walter Terill in the reign of William Rufus. This he

hurriedly adapted to include the satirical characters suggested by

"Poetaster," and fashioned to convey the satire of his reply. The

absurdity of placing Horace in the court of a Norman king is the

result. But Dekker's play is not without its palpable hits at the

arrogance, the literary pride, and self-righteousness of

Jonson-Horace, whose "ningle" or pal, the absurd Asinius Bubo, has

recently been shown to figure forth, in all likelihood, Jonson's

friend, the poet Drayton. Slight and hastily adapted as is

"Satiromastix," especially in a comparison with the better wrought

and more significant satire of "Poetaster," the town awarded the

palm to Dekker, not to Jonson; and Jonson gave over in consequence

his practice of "comical satire." Though Jonson was cited to

appear before the Lord Chief Justice to answer certain charges to

the effect that he had attacked lawyers and soldiers in

"Poetaster," nothing came of this complaint. It may be suspected

that much of this furious clatter and give-and-take was pure

playing to the gallery. The town was agog with the strife, and on

no less an authority than Shakespeare ("Hamlet," ii. 2), we learn

that the children's company (acting the plays of Jonson) did "so

berattle the common stages...that many, wearing rapiers, are afraid

of goose-quills, and dare scarce come thither."

Several other plays have been thought to bear a greater or less

part in the war of the theatres. Among them the most important is

a college play, entitled "The Return from Parnassus," dating

1601-02. In it a much-quoted passage makes Burbage, as a

character, declare: "Why here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them

all down; aye and Ben Jonson, too. O that Ben Jonson is a

pestilent fellow; he brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill,

but our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that made him

bewray his credit." Was Shakespeare then concerned in this war of

the stages? And what could have been the nature of this "purge"?

Among several suggestions, "Troilus and Cressida" has been thought

by some to be the play in which Shakespeare thus "put down" his

friend, Jonson. A wiser interpretation finds the "purge" in

"Satiromastix," which, though not written by Shakespeare, was

staged by his company, and therefore with his approval and under

his direction as one of the leaders of that company.

The last years of the reign of Elizabeth thus saw Jonson recognised

as a dramatist second only to Shakespeare, and not second even to

him as a dramatic satirist. But Jonson now turned his talents to

new fields. Plays on subjects derived from classical story and

myth had held the stage from the beginning of the drama, so that

Shakespeare was making no new departure when he wrote his "Julius

Caesar" about 1600. Therefore when Jonson staged "Sejanus," three

years later and with Shakespeare's company once more, he was only

following in the elder dramatist's footsteps. But Jonson's idea of

a play on classical history, on the one hand, and Shakespeare's and

the elder popular dramatists, on the other, were very different.

Heywood some years before had put five straggling plays on the

stage in quick succession, all derived from stories in Ovid and

dramatised with little taste or discrimination. Shakespeare had a

finer conception of form, but even he was contented to take all his

ancient history from North's translation of Plutarch and dramatise

his subject without further inquiry. Jonson was a scholar and a

classical antiquarian. He reprobated this slipshod amateurishness,

and wrote his "Sejanus" like a scholar, reading Tacitus, Suetonius,

and other authorities, to be certain of his facts, his setting, and

his atmosphere, and somewhat pedantically noting his authorities in

the margin when he came to print. "Sejanus" is a tragedy of

genuine dramatic power in which is told with discriminating taste

the story of the haughty favourite of Tiberius with his tragical

overthrow. Our drama presents no truer nor more painstaking

representation of ancient Roman life than may be found in Jonson's

"Sejanus" and "Catiline his Conspiracy," which followed in 1611. A

passage in the address of the former play to the reader, in which

Jonson refers to a collaboration in an earlier version, has led to

the surmise that Shakespeare may have been that "worthier pen."

There is no evidence to determine the matter.

In 1605, we find Jonson in active collaboration with Chapman and

Marston in the admirable comedy of London life entitled "Eastward

Hoe." In the previous year, Marston had dedicated his

"Malcontent," in terms of fervid admiration, to Jonson; so that the

wounds of the war of the theatres must have been long since healed.

Between Jonson and Chapman there was the kinship of similar

scholarly ideals. The two continued friends throughout life.

"Eastward Hoe" achieved the extraordinary popularity represented in

a demand for three issues in one year. But this was not due

entirely to the merits of the play. In its earliest version a

passage which an irritable courtier conceived to be derogatory to

his nation, the Scots, sent both Chapman and Jonson to jail; but

the matter was soon patched up, for by this time Jonson had

influence at court.

With the accession of King James, Jonson began his long and

successful career as a writer of masques. He wrote more masques

than all his competitors together, and they are of an extraordinary

variety and poetic excellence. Jonson did not invent the masque;

for such premeditated devices to set and frame, so to speak, a

court ball had been known and practised in varying degrees of

elaboration long before his time. But Jonson gave dramatic value

to the masque, especially in his invention of the antimasque, a

comedy or farcical element of relief, entrusted to professional

players or dancers. He enhanced, as well, the beauty and dignity

of those portions of the masque in which noble lords and ladies

took their parts to create, by their gorgeous costumes and artistic

grouping and evolutions, a sumptuous show. On the mechanical and

scenic side Jonson had an inventive and ingenious partner in Inigo

Jones, the royal architect, who more than any one man raised the

standard of stage representation in the England of his day. Jonson

continued active in the service of the court in the writing of

masques and other entertainments far into the reign of King

Charles; but, towards the end, a quarrel with Jones embittered his

life, and the two testy old men appear to have become not only a

constant irritation to each other, but intolerable bores at court.

In "Hymenaei," "The Masque of Queens," "Love Freed from Ignorance,"

"Lovers made Men," "Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue," and many more

will be found Jonson's aptitude, his taste, his poetry and

inventiveness in these by-forms of the drama; while in "The Masque

of Christmas," and "The Gipsies Metamorphosed" especially, is

discoverable that power of broad comedy which, at court as well as

in the city, was not the least element of Jonson's contemporary

popularity.

But Jonson had by no means given up the popular stage when he

turned to the amusement of King James. In 1605 "Volpone" was

produced, "The Silent Woman" in 1609, "The Alchemist" in the

following year. These comedies, with "Bartholomew Fair," 1614,

represent Jonson at his height, and for constructive cleverness,

character successfully conceived in the manner of caricature, wit

and brilliancy of dialogue, they stand alone in English drama.

"Volpone, or the Fox," is, in a sense, a transition play from the

dramatic satires of the war of the theatres to the purer comedy

represented in the plays named above. Its subject is a struggle of

wit applied to chicanery; for among its dramatis personae, from

the villainous Fox himself, his rascally servant Mosca, Voltore

(the vulture), Corbaccio and Corvino (the big and the little

raven), to Sir Politic Would-be and the rest, there is scarcely a

virtuous character in the play. Question has been raised as to

whether a story so forbidding can be considered a comedy, for,

although the plot ends in the discomfiture and imprisonment of the

most vicious, it involves no mortal catastrophe. But Jonson was on

sound historical ground, for "Volpone" is conceived far more

logically on the lines of the ancients' theory of comedy than was

ever the romantic drama of Shakespeare, however repulsive we may

find a philosophy of life that facilely divides the world into the

rogues and their dupes, and, identifying brains with roguery and

innocence with folly, admires the former while inconsistently

punishing them.

"The Silent Woman" is a gigantic farce of the most ingenious

construction. The whole comedy hinges on a huge joke, played by a

heartless nephew on his misanthropic uncle, who is induced to take

to himself a wife, young, fair, and warranted silent, but who, in

the end, turns out neither silent nor a woman at all. In "The

Alchemist," again, we have the utmost cleverness in construction,

the whole fabric building climax on climax, witty, ingenious, and

so plausibly presented that we forget its departures from the

possibilities of life. In "The Alchemist" Jonson represented, none

the less to the life, certain sharpers of the metropolis, revelling

in their shrewdness and rascality and in the variety of the

stupidity and wickedness of their victims. We may object to the

fact that the only person in the play possessed of a scruple of

honesty is discomfited, and that the greatest scoundrel of all is

approved in the end and rewarded. The comedy is so admirably

written and contrived, the personages stand out with such lifelike

distinctness in their several kinds, and the whole is animated with

such verve and resourcefulness that "The Alchemist" is a new marvel

every time it is read. Lastly of this group comes the tremendous

comedy, "Bartholomew Fair," less clear cut, less definite, and less

structurally worthy of praise than its three predecessors, but full

of the keenest and cleverest of satire and inventive to a degree

beyond any English comedy save some other of Jonson's own. It is

in "Bartholomew Fair" that we are presented to the immortal

caricature of the Puritan, Zeal-in-the-Land Busy, and the

Littlewits that group about him, and it is in this extraordinary

comedy that the humour of Jonson, always open to this danger,

loosens into the Rabelaisian mode that so delighted King James in

"The Gipsies Metamorphosed." Another comedy of less merit is "The

Devil is an Ass," acted in 1616. It was the failure of this play

that caused Jonson to give over writing for the public stage for a

period of nearly ten years.

"Volpone" was laid as to scene in Venice. Whether because of the

success of "Eastward Hoe" or for other reasons, the other three

comedies declare in the words of the prologue to "The Alchemist":

"Our scene is London, 'cause we would make known

No country's mirth is better than our own."

Indeed Jonson went further when he came to revise his plays for

collected publication in his folio of 1616, he transferred the

scene of "Every Man in His Humour" from Florence to London also,

converting Signior Lorenzo di Pazzi to Old Kno'well, Prospero to

Master Welborn, and Hesperida to Dame Kitely "dwelling i' the Old

Jewry."

In his comedies of London life, despite his trend towards

caricature, Jonson has shown himself a genuine realist, drawing

from the life about him with an experience and insight rare in any

generation. A happy comparison has been suggested between Ben

Jonson and Charles Dickens. Both were men of the people, lowly

born and hardly bred. Each knew the London of his time as few men

knew it; and each represented it intimately and in elaborate

detail. Both men were at heart moralists, seeking the truth by the

exaggerated methods of humour and caricature; perverse, even

wrong-headed at times, but possessed of a true pathos and largeness

of heart, and when all has been said -- though the Elizabethan ran

to satire, the Victorian to sentimentality -- leaving the world

better for the art that they practised in it.

In 1616, the year of the death of Shakespeare, Jonson collected his

plays, his poetry, and his masques for publication in a collective

edition. This was an unusual thing at the time and had been

attempted by no dramatist before Jonson. This volume published, in

a carefully revised text, all the plays thus far mentioned,

excepting "The Case is Altered," which Jonson did not acknowledge,

"Bartholomew Fair," and "The Devil is an Ass," which was written

too late. It included likewise a book of some hundred and thirty

odd "Epigrams," in which form of brief and pungent writing Jonson

was an acknowledged master; "The Forest," a smaller collection of

lyric and occasional verse and some ten "Masques" and

"Entertainments." In this same year Jonson was made poet laureate

with a pension of one hundred marks a year. This, with his fees

and returns from several noblemen, and the small earnings of his

plays must have formed the bulk of his income. The poet appears to

have done certain literary hack-work for others, as, for example,

parts of the Punic Wars contributed to Raleigh's "History of the

World." We know from a story, little to the credit of either, that

Jonson accompanied Raleigh's son abroad in the capacity of a tutor.

In 1618 Jonson was granted the reversion of the office of Master of

the Revels, a post for which he was peculiarly fitted; but he did

not live to enjoy its perquisites. Jonson was honoured with

degrees by both universities, though when and under what

circumstances is not known. It has been said that he narrowly

escaped the honour of knighthood, which the satirists of the day

averred King James was wont to lavish with an indiscriminate hand.

Worse men were made knights in his day than worthy Ben Jonson.

From 1616 to the close of the reign of King James, Jonson produced

nothing for the stage. But he "prosecuted" what he calls "his

wonted studies" with such assiduity that he became in reality, as

by report, one of the most learned men of his time. Jonson's

theory of authorship involved a wide acquaintance with books and

"an ability," as he put it, "to convert the substance or riches of

another poet to his own use." Accordingly Jonson read not only the

Greek and Latin classics down to the lesser writers, but he

acquainted himself especially with the Latin writings of his

learned contemporaries, their prose as well as their poetry, their

antiquities and curious lore as well as their more solid learning.

Though a poor man, Jonson was an indefatigable collector of books.

He told Drummond that "the Earl of Pembroke sent him 20 pounds every

first day of the new year to buy new books." Unhappily, in 1623,

his library was destroyed by fire, an accident serio-comically

described in his witty poem, "An Execration upon Vulcan." Yet even

now a book turns up from time to time in which is inscribed, in

fair large Italian lettering, the name, Ben Jonson. With respect

to Jonson's use of his material, Dryden said memorably of him:

"[He] was not only a professed imitator of Horace, but a learned

plagiary of all the others; you track him everywhere in their

snow....But he has done his robberies so openly that one sees he

fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a

monarch, and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in

him." And yet it is but fair to say that Jonson prided himself,

and justly, on his originality. In "Catiline," he not only uses

Sallust's account of the conspiracy, but he models some of the

speeches of Cicero on the Roman orator's actual words. In

"Poetaster," he lifts a whole satire out of Horace and dramatises

it effectively for his purposes. The sophist Libanius suggests the

situation of "The Silent Woman"; a Latin comedy of Giordano Bruno,

"Il Candelaio," the relation of the dupes and the sharpers in "The

Alchemist," the "Mostellaria" of Plautus, its admirable opening

scene. But Jonson commonly bettered his sources, and putting the

stamp of his sovereignty on whatever bullion he borrowed made it

thenceforward to all time current and his own.

The lyric and especially the occasional poetry of Jonson has a

peculiar merit. His theory demanded design and the perfection of

literary finish. He was furthest from the rhapsodist and the

careless singer of an idle day; and he believed that Apollo could

only be worthily served in singing robes and laurel crowned. And

yet many of Jonson's lyrics will live as long as the language. Who

does not know "Queen and huntress, chaste and fair." "Drink to me

only with thine eyes," or "Still to be neat, still to be dressed"?

Beautiful in form, deft and graceful in expression, with not a word

too much or one that bears not its part in the total effect, there

is yet about the lyrics of Jonson a certain stiffness and

formality, a suspicion that they were not quite spontaneous and

unbidden, but that they were carved, so to speak, with

disproportionate labour by a potent man of letters whose habitual

thought is on greater things. It is for these reasons that Jonson

is even better in the epigram and in occasional verse where

rhetorical finish and pointed wit less interfere with the

spontaneity and emotion which we usually associate with lyrical

poetry. There are no such epitaphs as Ben Jonson's, witness the

charming ones on his own children, on Salathiel Pavy, the

child-actor, and many more; and this even though the rigid law of

mine and thine must now restore to William Browne of Tavistock the

famous lines beginning: "Underneath this sable hearse." Jonson is

unsurpassed, too, in the difficult poetry of compliment, seldom

falling into fulsome praise and disproportionate similitude, yet

showing again and again a generous appreciation of worth in others,

a discriminating taste and a generous personal regard. There was

no man in England of his rank so well known and universally beloved

as Ben Jonson. The list of his friends, of those to whom he had

written verses, and those who had written verses to him, includes

the name of every man of prominence in the England of King James.

And the tone of many of these productions discloses an affectionate

familiarity that speaks for the amiable personality and sound worth

of the laureate. In 1619, growing unwieldy through inactivity,

Jonson hit upon the heroic remedy of a journey afoot to Scotland.

On his way thither and back he was hospitably received at the

houses of many friends and by those to whom his friends had

recommended him. When he arrived in Edinburgh, the burgesses met

to grant him the freedom of the city, and Drummond, foremost of

Scottish poets, was proud to entertain him for weeks as his guest

at Hawthornden. Some of the noblest of Jonson's poems were

inspired by friendship. Such is the fine "Ode to the memory of Sir

Lucius Cary and Sir Henry Moryson," and that admirable piece of

critical insight and filial affection, prefixed to the first

Shakespeare folio, "To the memory of my beloved master, William

Shakespeare, and what he hath left us," to mention only these. Nor

can the earlier "Epode," beginning "Not to know vice at all," be

matched in stately gravity and gnomic wisdom in its own wise and

stately age.

But if Jonson had deserted the stage after the publication of his

folio and up to the end of the reign of King James, he was far from

inactive; for year after year his inexhaustible inventiveness

continued to contribute to the masquing and entertainment at court.

In "The Golden Age Restored," Pallas turns the Iron Age with

its attendant evils into statues which sink out of sight; in

"Pleasure Reconciled to Virtue," Atlas figures represented as an

old man, his shoulders covered with snow, and Comus, "the god of

cheer or the belly," is one of the characters, a circumstance which

an imaginative boy of ten, named John Milton, was not to forget.

"Pan's Anniversary," late in the reign of James, proclaimed that

Jonson had not yet forgotten how to write exquisite lyrics, and

"The Gipsies Metamorphosed" displayed the old drollery and broad

humorous stroke still unimpaired and unmatchable. These, too, and

the earlier years of Charles were the days of the Apollo Room of

the Devil Tavern where Jonson presided, the absolute monarch of

English literary Bohemia. We hear of a room blazoned about with

Jonson's own judicious "Leges Convivales" in letters of gold, of a

company made up of the choicest spirits of the time, devotedly

attached to their veteran dictator, his reminiscences, opinions,

affections, and enmities. And we hear, too, of valorous potations;

but in the words of Herrick addressed to his master, Jonson, at the

Devil Tavern, as at the Dog, the Triple Tun, and at the Mermaid,

"We such clusters had

As made us nobly wild, not mad,

And yet each verse of thine

Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine."

But the patronage of the court failed in the days of King Charles,

though Jonson was not without royal favours; and the old poet

returned to the stage, producing, between 1625 and 1633, "The

Staple of News," "The New Inn," "The Magnetic Lady," and "The Tale

of a Tub," the last doubtless revised from a much earlier comedy.

None of these plays met with any marked success, although the

scathing generalisation of Dryden that designated them "Jonson's

dotages" is unfair to their genuine merits. Thus the idea of an

office for the gathering, proper dressing, and promulgation of news

(wild flight of the fancy in its time) was an excellent subject for

satire on the existing absurdities among newsmongers; although

as much can hardly be said for "The Magnetic Lady," who, in her

bounty, draws to her personages of differing humours to reconcile

them in the end according to the alternative title, or "Humours

Reconciled." These last plays of the old dramatist revert to

caricature and the hard lines of allegory; the moralist is more

than ever present, the satire degenerates into personal lampoon,

especially of his sometime friend, Inigo Jones, who appears

unworthily to have used his influence at court against the

broken-down old poet. And now disease claimed Jonson, and he was

bedridden for months. He had succeeded Middleton in 1628 as

Chronologer to the City of London, but lost the post for not

fulfilling its duties. King Charles befriended him, and even

commissioned him to write still for the entertainment of the court;

and he was not without the sustaining hand of noble patrons and

devoted friends among the younger poets who were proud to be

"sealed of the tribe of Ben."

Jonson died, August 6, 1637, and a second folio of his works, which

he had been some time gathering, was printed in 1640, bearing in

its various parts dates ranging from 1630 to 1642. It included all

the plays mentioned in the foregoing paragraphs, excepting "The

Case is Altered;" the masques, some fifteen, that date between 1617

and 1630; another collection of lyrics and occasional poetry called

"Underwoods", including some further entertainments; a translation

of "Horace's Art of Poetry" (also published in a vicesimo quarto in

1640), and certain fragments and ingatherings which the poet would

hardly have included himself. These last comprise the fragment

(less than seventy lines) of a tragedy called "Mortimer his Fall,"

and three acts of a pastoral drama of much beauty and poetic

spirit, "The Sad Shepherd." There is also the exceedingly

interesting "English Grammar" "made by Ben Jonson for the benefit

of all strangers out of his observation of the English language now

spoken and in use," in Latin and English; and "Timber, or

Discoveries" "made upon men and matter as they have flowed out of

his daily reading, or had their reflux to his peculiar notion of

the times." The "Discoveries," as it is usually called, is a

commonplace book such as many literary men have kept, in which

their reading was chronicled, passages that took their fancy

translated or transcribed, and their passing opinions noted. Many

passages of Jonson's "Discoveries" are literal translations from the

authors he chanced to be reading, with the reference, noted or not,

as the accident of the moment prescribed. At times he follows the

line of Macchiavelli's argument as to the nature and conduct of

princes; at others he clarifies his own conception of poetry and

poets by recourse to Aristotle. He finds a choice paragraph on

eloquence in Seneca the elder and applies it to his own

recollection of Bacon's power as an orator; and another on facile

and ready genius, and translates it, adapting it to his

recollection of his fellow-playwright, Shakespeare. To call such

passages -- which Jonson never intended for publication --

plagiarism, is to obscure the significance of words. To disparage

his memory by citing them is a preposterous use of scholarship.

Jonson's prose, both in his dramas, in the descriptive comments of

his masques, and in the "Discoveries," is characterised by clarity

and vigorous directness, nor is it wanting in a fine sense of form

or in the subtler graces of diction.

When Jonson died there was a project for a handsome monument to his

memory. But the Civil War was at hand, and the project failed. A

memorial, not insufficient, was carved on the stone covering his

grave in one of the aisles of Westminster Abbey:

"O rare Ben Jonson."

FELIX E. SCHELLING.

THE COLLEGE,

PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.

The following is a complete list of his published works: --

DRAMAS:

Every Man in his Humour, 4to, 1601;

The Case is Altered, 4to, 1609;

Every Man out of his Humour, 4to, 1600;

Cynthia's Revels, 4to, 1601;

Poetaster, 4to, 1602;

Sejanus, 4to, 1605;

Eastward Ho (with Chapman and Marston), 4to, 1605;

Volpone, 4to, 1607;

Epicoene, or the Silent Woman, 4to, 1609 (?), fol., 1616;

The Alchemist, 4to, 1612;

Catiline, his Conspiracy, 4to, 1611;

Bartholomew Fayre, 4to, 1614 (?), fol., 1631;

The Divell is an Asse, fol., 1631;

The Staple of Newes, fol., 1631;

The New Sun, 8vo, 1631, fol., 1692;

The Magnetic Lady, or Humours Reconcild, fol., 1640;

A Tale of a Tub, fol., 1640;

The Sad Shepherd, or a Tale of Robin Hood, fol., 1641;

Mortimer his Fall (fragment), fol., 1640.

To Jonson have also been attributed additions to Kyd's Jeronymo,

and collaboration in The Widow with Fletcher and Middleton, and

in the Bloody Brother with Fletcher.

POEMS:

Epigrams, The Forrest, Underwoods, published in fols., 1616, 1640;

Selections: Execration against Vulcan, and Epigrams, 1640;

G. Hor. Flaccus his art of Poetry, Englished by Ben Jonson, 1640;

Leges Convivialis, fol., 1692.

Other minor poems first appeared in Gifford's edition of Works.

PROSE:

Timber, or Discoveries made upon Men and Matter, fol., 1641;

The English Grammar, made by Ben Jonson for the benefit of

Strangers, fol., 1640.

Masques and Entertainments were published in the early folios.

WORKS:

Fol., 1616, volume. 2, 1640 (1631-41);

fol., 1692, 1716-19, 1729;

edited by P. Whalley, 7 volumes., 1756;

by Gifford (with Memoir), 9 volumes., 1816, 1846;

re-edited by F. Cunningham, 3 volumes., 1871;

in 9 volumes., 1875;

by Barry Cornwall (with Memoir), 1838;

by B. Nicholson (Mermaid Series), with Introduction by

C. H. Herford, 1893, etc.;

Nine Plays, 1904;

ed. H. C. Hart (Standard Library), 1906, etc;

Plays and Poems, with Introduction by H. Morley (Universal

Library), 1885;

Plays (7) and Poems (Newnes), 1905;

Poems, with Memoir by H. Bennett (Carlton Classics), 1907;

Masques and Entertainments, ed. by H. Morley, 1890.

SELECTIONS:

J. A. Symonds, with Biographical and Critical Essay,

(Canterbury Poets), 1886;

Grosart, Brave Translunary Things, 1895;

Arber, Jonson Anthology, 1901;

Underwoods, Cambridge University Press, 1905;

Lyrics (Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher), the Chap Books,

No. 4, 1906;

Songs (from Plays, Masques, etc.), with earliest known

setting, Eragny Press, 1906.

LIFE:

See Memoirs affixed to Works;

J. A. Symonds (English Worthies), 1886;

Notes of Ben Jonson Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden;

Shakespeare Society, 1842;

ed. with Introduction and Notes by P. Sidney, 1906;

Swinburne, A Study of Ben Jonson, 1889.

EVERY MAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR

TO THE NOBLEST NURSERIES OF HUMANITY AND LIBERTY IN THE KINGDOM

THE INNS OF COURT

I UNDERSTAND you, Gentlemen, not your houses: and a worthy succession of

you, to all time, as being born the judges of these studies. When I wrote

this poem, I had friendship with divers in your societies; who, as they

were great names in learning, so they were no less examples of living. Of

them, and then, that I say no more, it was not despised. Now that the

printer, by a doubled charge, thinks it worthy a longer life than commonly

the air of such things doth promise, I am careful to put it a servant to

their pleasures, who are the inheritors of the first favour born it. Yet,

I command it lie not in the way of your more noble and useful studies to

the public: for so I shall suffer for it. But when the gown and cap is

off, and the lord of liberty reigns, then, to take it in your hands,

perhaps may make some bencher, tincted with humanity, read and not repent

him.

By your true honourer,

BEN JONSON.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

ASPER, the Presenter.

MACILENTE.

PUNTARVOLO, -- his Lady. -- Waiting Gent. -- Huntsman. --

Servingmen. -- Dog and Cat.

CARLO BUFFONE.

FASTIDIOUS BRISK, -- Cinedo, his Page.

DELIRO, FALLACE, -- Fido, their Servant. -- Musicians.

SAVIOLINA.

SORDIDO. -- His Hind.

FUNGOSO. -- Tailor, Haberdasher, Shoemaker

SOGLIARDO.

SHIFT. -- Rustics.

NOTARY.

CLOVE, ORANGE. -- A Groom. -- Drawers. -- Constable, and Officers.

GREX. -- CORDATUS -- MITIS.

THE CHARACTERS OF THE PERSONS

ASPER, he is of an ingenious and free spirit, eager and constant in

reproof, without fear controlling the world's abuses. One whom no servile

hope of gain, or frosty apprehension of danger, can make to be a parasite,

either to time, place, or opinion.

MACILENTE, a man well parted, a sufficient scholar, and travail'd; who,

wanting that place in the world's account which he thinks his merit capable

of, falls into such an envious apoplexy, with which his judgment is so

dazzled and distasted, that he grows violently impatient of any opposite

happiness in another.

PUNTARVOLO, a vain-glorious knight, over-englishing his travels, and wholly

consecrated to singularity; the very Jacob's staff of compliment; a sir

that hath lived to see the revolution of time in most of his apparel. Of

presence good enough, but so palpably affected to his own praise, that for

want of flatterers he commends himself, to the floutage of his own family.

He deals upon returns, and strange performances, resolving, in despite of

public derision, to stick to his own fashion, phrase, and gesture.

CARLO BUFFONE, a public, scurrilous, and profane jester, that more swift

than Circe, with absurd similes, will transform any person into deformity.

A good feast-hound or banquet-beagle, that will scent you out a supper some

three miles off, and swear to his patrons, damn him! he came in oars, when

he was but wafted over in a sculler. A slave that hath an extraordinary

gift in pleasing his palate, and will swill up more sack at a sitting than

would make all the guard a posset. His religion is railing, and his

discourse ribaldry.

FASTIDIOUS BRISK, a neat, spruce, affecting courtier, one that wears

clothes well, and in fashion; practiseth by his glass how to salute; speaks

good remnants, notwithstanding the base viol and tobacco; swears tersely

and with variety; cares not what lady's favour he belies, or great man's

familiarity: a good property to perfume the boot of a coach. He will

borrow another man's horse to praise, and backs him as his own. Or, for a

need, on foot can post himself into credit with his merchant, only with the

gingle of his spur, and the jerk of his wand.

DELIRO, a good doting citizen, who, it is thought, might be of the

common-council for his wealth; a fellow sincerely besotted on his own wife,

and so wrapt with a conceit of her perfections, that he simply holds

himself unworthy of her. And, in that hood-wink'd humour, lives more like

a suitor than a husband; standing in as true dread of her displeasure, as

when he first made love to her. He doth sacrifice two-pence in juniper to

her every morning before she rises, and wakes her with

villainous-out-of-tune music, which she out of her contempt (though not out

of her judgment) is sure to dislike.

FALLACE, Deliro's wife, and idol; a proud mincing peat, and as perverse as

he is officious. She dotes as perfectly upon the courtier, as her husband

doth on her, and only wants the face to be dishonest.

SAVIOLINA, a court-lady, whose weightiest praise is a light wit, admired by

herself, and one more, her servant Brisk.

SORDIDO, a wretched hob-nailed chuff, whose recreation is reading of

almanacks; and felicity, foul weather. One that never pray'd but for a

lean dearth, and ever wept in a fat harvest.

FUNGOSO, the son of Sordido, and a student; one that has revelled in his

time, and follows the fashion afar off, like a spy. He makes it the whole

bent of his endeavours to wring sufficient means from his wretched father,

to put him in the courtiers' cut; at which he earnestly aims, but so

unluckily, that he still lights short a suit.

SOGLIARDO, an essential clown, brother to Sordido, yet so enamoured of the

name of a gentleman, that he will have it, though he buys it. He comes up

every term to learn to take tobacco, and see new motions. He is in his

kingdom when in company where he may be well laughed at.

SHIFT, a thread-bare shark; one that never was a soldier, yet lives upon

lendings. His profession is skeldring and odling, his bank Paul's, and his

warehouse Picthatch. Takes up single testons upon oaths, till doomsday.

Falls under executions of three shillings, and enters into five-groat

bonds. He way-lays the reports of services, and cons them without book,

damning himself he came new from them, when all the while he was taking the

diet in the bawdy-house, or lay pawned in his chamber for rent and

victuals. He is of that admirable and happy memory, that he will salute

one for an old acquaintance that he never saw in his life before. He

usurps upon cheats, quarrels, and robberies, which he never did, only to

get him a name. His chief exercises are, taking the whiff, squiring a

cockatrice, and making privy searches for imparters.

CLOVE and ORANGE, an inseparable case of coxcombs, city born; the Gemini,

or twins of foppery; that like a pair of wooden foils, are fit for nothing

but to be practised upon. Being well flattered they'll lend money, and

repent when they have done. Their glory is to invite players, and make

suppers. And in company of better rank, to avoid the suspect of

insufficiency, will inforce their ignorance most desperately, to set upon

the understanding of any thing. Orange is the most humorous of the two,

(whose small portion of juice being squeezed out,) Clove serves to stick

him with commendations.

CORDATUS, the author's friend; a man inly acquainted with the scope and

drift of his plot; of a discreet and understanding judgment; and has the

place of a moderator.

MITIS, is a person of no action, and therefore we afford him no character.

THE STAGE. After the second sounding.

ENTER CORDATUS, ASPER, AND MITIS.

COR. Nay, my dear Asper.

MIT. Stay your mind.

ASP. Away!

Who is so patient of this impious world,

That he can check his spirit, or rein his tongue?

Or who hath such a dead unfeeling sense,

That heaven's horrid thunders cannot wake?

To see the earth crack'd with the weight of sin,

Hell gaping under us, and o'er our heads

Black, ravenous ruin, with her sail-stretch'd wings,

Ready to sink us down, and cover us.

Who can behold such prodigies as these,

And have his lips seal'd up? Not I: my soul

Was never ground into such oily colours,

To flatter vice, and daub iniquity:

But, with an armed and resolved hand,

I'll strip the ragged follies of the time

Naked as at their birth --

COR. Be not too bold.

ASP. You trouble me -- and with a whip of steel,

Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs.

I fear no mood stamp'd in a private brow,

When I am pleased t'unmask a public vice.

I fear no strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's stab,

Should I detect their hateful luxuries:

No broker's usurer's, or lawyer's gripe,

Were I disposed to say, they are all corrupt.

I fear no courtier's frown, should I applaud

The easy flexure of his supple hams.

Tut, these are so innate and popular,

That drunken custom would not shame to laugh,

In scorn, at him, that should but dare to tax 'em:

And yet, not one of these, but knows his works,

Knows what damnation is, the devil, and hell;

Yet hourly they persist, grow rank in sin,

Puffing their souls away in perjurous air,

To cherish their extortion, pride, or lusts.

MIT. Forbear, good Asper; be not like your name.

ASP. O, but to such whose faces are all zeal,

And, with the words of Hercules, invade

Such crimes as these! that will not smell of sin,

But seem as they were made of sanctity!

Religion in their garments, and their hair

Cut shorter than their eye-brows! when the conscience

Is vaster than the ocean, and devours

More wretches than the counters.

MIT. Gentle Asper,

Contain our spirits in more stricter bounds,

And be not thus transported with the violence

Of your strong thoughts.

COX. Unless your breath had power,

To melt the world, and mould it new again,

It is in vain to spend it in these moods.

ASP. [TURNING TO THE STAGE.]

I not observed this thronged round till now!

Gracious and kind spectators, you are welcome;

Apollo and Muses feast your eyes

With graceful objects, and may our Minerva

Answer your hopes, unto their largest strain!

Yet here mistake me not, judicious friends;

I do not this, to beg your patience,

Or servilely to fawn on your applause,

Like some dry brain, despairing in his merit.

Let me be censured by the austerest brow,

Where I want art or judgment, tax me freely.

Let envious censors, with their broadest eyes,

Look through and through me, I pursue no favour;

Only vouchsafe me your attentions,

And I will give you music worth your ears.

O, how I hate the monstrousness of time,

Where every servile imitating spirit,

Plagued with an itching leprosy of wit,

In a mere halting fury, strives to fling

His ulcerous body in the Thespian spring,

And straight leaps forth a poet! but as lame

As Vulcan, or the founder of Cripplegate.

MIT. In faith this humour will come ill to some,

You will be thought to be too peremptory.

ASP. This humour? good! and why this humour, Mitis?

Nay, do not turn, but answer.

MIT. Answer, what?

ASP. I will not stir your patience, pardon me,

I urged it for some reasons, and the rather

To give these ignorant well-spoken days

Some taste of their abuse of this word humour.

COR. O, do not let your purpose fall, good Asper;

It cannot but arrive most acceptable,

Chiefly to such as have the happiness

Daily to see how the poor innocent word

Is rack'd and tortured.

MIT. Ay, I pray you proceed.

ASP. Ha, what? what is't?

COR. For the abuse of humour.

ASP. O, I crave pardon, I had lost my thoughts.

Why humour, as 'tis 'ens', we thus define it,

To be a quality of air, or water,

And in itself holds these two properties,

Moisture and fluxure: as, for demonstration,

Pour water on this floor, 'twill wet and run:

Likewise the air, forced through a horn or trumpet,

Flows instantly away, and leaves behind

A kind of dew; and hence we do conclude,

That whatsoe'er hath fluxure and humidity,

As wanting power to contain itself,

Is humour. So in every human body,

The choler, melancholy, phlegm, and blood,

By reason that they flow continually

In some one part, and are not continent,

Receive the name of humours. Now thus far

It may, by metaphor, apply itself

Unto the general disposition:

As when some one peculiar quality

Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw

All his affects, his spirits, and his powers,

In their confluctions, all to run one way,

This may be truly said to be a humour

But that a rook, by wearing a pyed feather,

The cable hat-band, or the three-piled ruff,

A yard of shoe-tye, or the Switzer's knot

On his French garters, should affect a humour!

O, it is more than most ridiculous.

COR. He speaks pure truth; now if an idiot

Have but an apish or fantastic strain,

It is his humour.

ASP. Well, I will scourge those apes,

And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror,

As large as is the stage whereon we act;

Where they shall see the time's deformity

Anatomised in every nerve, and sinew,

With constant courage, and contempt of fear.

MIT. Asper, (I urge it as your friend,) take heed,

The days are dangerous, full of exception,

And men are grown impatient of reproof.

ASP. Ha, ha!

You might as well have told me, yond' is heaven,

This earth, these men, and all had moved alike. --

Do not I know the time's condition?

Yes, Mitis, and their souls; and who they be

That either will or can except against me.

None but a sort of fools, so sick in taste,

That they contemn all physic of the mind,

And like gall'd camels, kick at every touch.

Good men, and virtuous spirits, that loath their vices,

Will cherish my free labours, love my lines,

And with the fervour of their shining grace

Make my brain fruitful, to bring forth more objects,

Worthy their serious and intentive eyes.

But why enforce I this? as fainting? no.

If any here chance to behold himself,

Let him not dare to challenge me of wrong;

For, if he shame to have his follies known,

First he should shame to act 'em: my strict hand

Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe

Squeeze out the humour of such spongy souls,

As lick up every idle vanity.

COR. Why, this is right furor poeticus!

Kind gentlemen, we hope your patience

Will yet conceive the best, or entertain

This supposition, that a madman speaks.

ASP. What, are you ready there? Mitis, sit down,

And my Cordatus. Sound ho! and begin.

I leave you two, as censors, to sit here:

Observe what I present, and liberally

Speak your opinions upon every scene,

As it shall pass the view of these spectators.

Nay, now y'are tedious, sirs; for shame begin.

And, Mitis, note me; if in all this front

You can espy a gallant of this mark,

Who, to be thought one of the judicious,

Sits with his arms thus wreath'd, his hat pull'd here,

Cries mew, and nods, then shakes his empty head,

Will shew more several motions in his face

Than the new London, Rome, or Niniveh,

And, now and then, breaks a dry biscuit jest,

Which, that it may more easily be chew'd,

He steeps in his own laughter.

COR. Why, will that

Make it be sooner swallowed?

ASP. O, assure you.

Or if it did not, yet as Horace sings,

Mean cates are welcome still to hungry guests.

COR. 'Tis true; but why should we observe them, Asper?

ASP. O, I would know 'em; for in such assemblies

They are more infectious than the pestilence:

And therefore I would give them pills to purge,

And make them fit for fair societies.

How monstrous and detested is't to see

A fellow that has neither art nor brain,

Sit like an Aristarchus, or start ass,

Taking men's lines with a tobacco face,

In snuff still spitting, using his wry'd looks,

In nature of a vice, to wrest and turn

The good aspect of those that shall sit near him,

From what they do behold! O, 'tis most vile.

MIT. Nay, Asper.

ASP. Peace, Mitis, I do know your thought;

You'll say, your guests here will except at this:

Pish! you are too timorous, and full of doubt.

Then he, a patient, shall reject all physic,

'Cause the physician tells him, you are sick:

Or, if I say, that he is vicious,

You will not hear of virtue. Come, you are fond.

Shall I be so extravagant, to think,

That happy judgments, and composed spirits,

Will challenge me for taxing such as these?

I am ashamed.

COR. Nay, but good, pardon us;

We must not bear this peremptory sail,

But use our best endeavours how to please.

ASP. Why, therein I commend your careful thoughts,

And I will mix with you in industry

To please: but whom? attentive auditors,

Such as will join their profit with their pleasure,

And come to feed their understanding parts:

For these I'll prodigally spread myself,

And speak away my spirit into air;

For these, I'll melt my brain into invention,

Coin new conceits, and hang my richest words

As polish'd jewels in their bounteous ears?

But stay, I lose myself, and wrong their patience:

If I dwell here, they'll not begin, I see.

Friends, sit you still, and entertain this troop

With some familiar and by-conference,

I'll hast them sound. Now, gentlemen, I go

To turn an actor, and a humorist,

Where, ere I do resume my present person,

We hope to make the circles of your eyes

Flow with distilled laughter: if we fail,

We must impute it to this only chance,

Art hath an enemy call'd ignorance.

[EXIT.

COR. How do you like his spirit, Mitis?

MIT. I should like it much better, if he were less confident.

COR. Why, do you suspect his merit?

MIT. No; but I fear this will procure him much envy.

COR. O, that sets the stronger seal on his desert: if he had no enemies,

I should esteem his fortunes most wretched at this instant.

MIT. You have seen his play, Cordatus: pray you, how is it?

COR. Faith, sir, I must refrain to judge; only this I can say of it, 'tis

strange, and of a particular kind by itself, somewhat like 'Vetus

Comoedia'; a work that hath bounteously pleased me; how it will answer the

general expectation, I know not.

MIT. Does he observe all the laws of comedy in it?

COR. What laws mean you?

MIT. Why, the equal division of it into acts and scenes, according to the

Terentian manner; his true number of actors; the furnishing of the scene

with Grex or Chorus, and that the whole argument fall within compass of a

day's business.

COR. O no, these are too nice observations.

MIT. They are such as must be received, by your favour, or it cannot be

authentic.

COR. Troth, I can discern no such necessity.

MIT. No!

COR. No, I assure you, signior. If those laws you speak of had been

delivered us 'ab initio', and in their present virtue and perfection, there

had been some reason of obeying their powers; but 'tis extant, that that

which we call 'Comoedia', was at first nothing but a simple and continued

song, sung by one only person, till Susario invented a second; after him,

Epicharmus a third; Phormus and Chionides devised to have four actors, with

a prologue and chorus; to which Cratinus, long after, added a fifth and

sixth: Eupolis, more; Aristophanes, more than they; every man in the

dignity of his spirit and judgment supplied something. And, though that in

him this kind of poem appeared absolute, and fully perfect, yet how is the

face of it changed since, in Menander, Philemon, Cecilius, Plautus, and the

rest! who have utterly excluded the chorus, altered the property of the

persons, their names, and natures, and augmented it with all liberty,

according to the elegancy and disposition of those times wherein they

wrote. I see not then, but we should enjoy the same license, or free power

to illustrate and heighten our invention, as they did; and not be tied to

those strict and regular forms which the niceness of a few, who are nothing

but form, would thrust upon us.

MIT. Well, we will not dispute of this now; but what's his scene?

COR. Marry, 'Insula Fortunata', sir.

MIT. O, the Fortunate Island: mass, he has bound himself to a strict law

there.

COR. Why so?

MIT. He cannot lightly alter the scene, without crossing the seas.

COR. He needs not, having a whole island to run through, I think.

MIT. No! how comes it then, that in some one play we see so many seas,

countries, and kingdoms, passed over with such admirable dexterity?

COR. O, that but shews how well the authors can travel in their vocation,

and outrun the apprehension of their auditory. But, leaving this, I would

they would begin at once: this protraction is able to sour the

best-settled patience in the theatre.

[THE THIRD SOUNDING.

MIT. They have answered your wish, sir; they sound.

COR. O, here comes the Prologue.

[ENTER PROLOGUE.

Now, sir, if you had staid a little longer, I meant to have spoke your

prologue for you i'faith.

PROL. Marry, with all my heart, sir, you shall do it yet, and I thank you.

[GOING.

COR. Nay, nay, stay, stay; hear you?

PROL. You could not have studied to have done me a greater benefit at the

instant; for I protest to you, I am unperfect, and, had I spoke it, I must

of necessity have been out.

COR. Why, but do you speak this seriously?

PROL. Seriously! ay, wit's my help, do I; and esteem myself indebted to

your kindness for it.

COR. For what?

PROL. Why, for undertaking the prologue for me.

COR. How! did I undertake it for you?

PROL. Did you! I appeal to all these gentlemen, whether you did or no.

Come, come, it pleases you to cast a strange look on't now; but 'twill not

serve.

COR. 'Fore me, but it must serve; and therefore speak your prologue.

PROL. An I do, let me die poisoned with some venomous hiss, and never live

to look as high as the two-penny room again.

[EXIT.

MIT. He has put you to it, sir.

COR. 'Sdeath, what a humorous fellow is this! Gentlemen, good faith I can

speak no prologue, howsoever his weak wit has had the fortune to make this

strong use of me here before you: but I protest --

[ENTER CARLO BUFFONE, FOLLOWED BY A BOY WITH WINE.

CAR. Come, come, leave these fustian protestations; away, come, I cannot

abide these grey-headed ceremonies. Boy, fetch me a glass quickly, I may

bid these gentlemen welcome; give them a health here. [EXIT BOY.] I

mar'le whose wit it was to put a prologue in yond' sackbut's mouth; they

might well think he'd be out of tune, and yet you'd play upon him too.

COR. Hang him, dull block!

CAR. O, good words, good words; a well-timber'd fellow, he would have made

a good column, an he had been thought on, when the house was a building --

[RE-ENTER BOY WITH GLASSES..

O, art thou come? Well said; give me, boy; fill so! Here's a cup of wine

sparkles like a diamond. Gentlewomen (I am sworn to put them in first) and

gentlemen, around, in place of a bad prologue, I drink this good draught to

your health here, Canary, the very elixir and spirit of wine. [DRINKS.]

This is that our poet calls Castalian liquor, when he comes abroad now and

then, once in a fortnight, and makes a good meal among players, where he

has 'caninum appetitum'; marry, at home he keeps a good philosophical diet,

beans and butter-milk; an honest pure rogue, he will take you off three,

four, five of these, one after another, and look villainously when he has

done, like a one-headed Cerberus. -- He does not hear me, I hope. -- And

then, when his belly is well ballaced, and his brain rigged a little, he

snails away withal, as though he would work wonders when he comes home. He

has made a play here, and he calls it, 'Every Man out of his Humour': but

an he get me out of the humour he has put me in, I'll trust none of his

tribe again while I live. Gentles, all I can say for him is, you are

welcome. I could wish my bottle here amongst you; but there's an old rule,

No pledging your own health. Marry, if any here be thirsty for it, their

best way (that I know) is, sit still, seal up their lips, and drink so much

of the play in at their ears.

[EXIT.

MIT. What may this fellow be, Cordatus?

COR. Faith, if the time will suffer his description, I'll give it you. He

is one, the author calls him Carlo Buffone, an impudent common jester, a

violent railer, and an incomprehensible epicure; one whose company is

desired of all men, but beloved of none; he will sooner lose his soul than

a jest, and profane even the most holy things, to excite laughter: no

honourable or reverend personage whatsoever can come within the reach of

his eye, but is turned into all manner of variety, by his adulterate

similes.

MIT. You paint forth a monster.

COR. He will prefer all countries before his native, and thinks he can

never sufficiently, or with admiration enough, deliver his affectionate

conceit of foreign atheistical policies. But stay --

[ENTER MACILENTE.

Observe these: he'll appear himself anon.

MIT. O, this is your envious man, Macilente, I think.

COR. The same, sir.

ACT I

SCENE I. -- The Country.

ENTER MACILENTE, WITH A BOOK.

MACI. "Viri est, fortunae caecitatem facile ferre."

'Tis true; but, Stoic, where, in the vast world,

Doth that man breathe, that can so much command

His blood and his affection? Well, I see

I strive in vain to cure my wounded soul;

For every cordial that my thoughts apply

Turns to a corsive and doth eat it farther.

There is no taste in this philosophy;

'Tis like a potion that a man should drink,

But turns his stomach with the sight of it.

I am no such pill'd Cynick to believe,

That beggary is the only happiness;

Or with a number of these patient fools,

To sing: "My mind to me a kingdom is,"

When the lank hungry belly barks for food,

I look into the world, and there I meet

With objects, that do strike my blood-shot eyes

Into my brain: where, when I view myself,

Having before observ'd this man is great,

Mighty and fear'd; that lov'd and highly favour'd:

A third thought wise and learn'd; a fourth rich,

And therefore honour'd; a fifth rarely featur'd;

A sixth admired for his nuptial fortunes:

When I see these, I say, and view myself,

I wish the organs of my sight were crack'd;

And that the engine of my grief could cast

Mine eyeballs, like two globes of wildfire, forth,

To melt this unproportion'd frame of nature.

Oh, they are thoughts that have transfix'd my heart,

And often, in the strength of apprehension,

Made my cold passion stand upon my face,

Like drops of dew on a stiff cake of ice.

COR. This alludes well to that of the poet,

"Invidus suspirat, gemit, incutitque dentes,

Sudat frigidus, intuens quod odit."

MIT. O, peace, you break the scene.

[ENTER SOGLIARDO AND CARLO BUFFONE.

MACI. Soft, who be these?

I'll lay me down awhile till they be past.

[LIES DOWN.

CAR. Signior, note this gallant, I pray you.

MIT. What is he?

CAR. A tame rook, you'll take him presently; list.

SOG. Nay, look you, Carlo; this is my humour now! I have land and money,

my friends left me well, and I will be a gentleman whatsoever it cost me.

CAR. A most gentlemanlike resolution.

SOG. Tut! an I take an humour of a thing once, I am like your tailor's

needle, I go through: but, for my name, signior, how think you? will it

not serve for a gentleman's name, when the signior is put to it, ha?

CAR. Let me hear; how is it?

SOG. Signior Insulso Sogliardo: methinks it sounds well.

CAR. O excellent! tut! an all fitted to your name, you might very well

stand for a gentleman: I know many Sogliardos gentlemen.

SOG. Why, and for my wealth I might be a justice of peace.

CAR. Ay, and a constable for your wit.

SOG. All this is my lordship you see here, and those farms you came by.

CAR. Good steps to gentility too, marry: but, Sogliardo, if you affect to

be a gentleman indeed, you must observe all the rare qualities, humours,

and compliments of a gentleman.

SOG. I know it, signior, and if you please to instruct, I am not too good

to learn, I'll assure you.

CAR. Enough, sir. -- I'll make admirable use in the projection of my

medicine upon this lump of copper here. [ASIDE] -- I'll bethink me for

you, sir.

SOG. Signior, I will both pay you, and pray you, and thank you, and think

on you.

COR. Is this not purely good?

MACI. S'blood, why should such a prick-ear'd hind as this

Be rich, ha? a fool! such a transparent gull

That may be seen through! wherefore should he have land,

Houses, and lordships? O, I could eat my entrails,

And sink my soul into the earth with sorrow.

CAR. First, to be an accomplished gentleman, that is, a gentleman of the

time, you must give over housekeeping in the country, and live altogether

in the city amongst gallants: where, at your first appearance, 'twere good

you turn'd four or five hundred acres of your best land into two or three

trunks of apparel -- you may do it without going to a conjurer -- and be

sure you mix yourself still with such as flourish in the spring of the

fashion, and are least popular; study their carriage and behaviour in all;

learn to play at primero and passage, and ever (when you lose) have two or

three peculiar oaths to swear by, that no man else swears: but, above all,

protest in your play, and affirm, "Upon your credit, As you are a true

gentleman", at every cast; you may do it with a safe conscience, I warrant you.

SOG. O admirable rare! he cannot choose but be a gentleman that has these

excellent gifts: more, more, I beseech you.

CAR. You must endeavour to feed cleanly at your ordinary, sit melancholy,

and pick your teeth when you cannot speak: and

when you come to plays, be humorous, look with a good starch'd face, and

ruffle your brow like a new boot, laugh at nothing but your own jests, or

else as the noblemen laugh. That's a special grace you must observe.

SAG. I warrant you, sir.

CAR. Ay, and sit on the stage and flout, provided you have a good suit.

SOG. O, I'll have a suit only for that, sir.

CAR. You must talk much of your kindred and allies.

SOG. Lies! no, signior, I shall not need to do so, I have kindred in the

city to talk of: I have a niece is a merchant's wife; and a nephew, my

brother Sordido's son, of the Inns of court.

CAR. O, but you must pretend alliance with courtiers and great persons:

and ever when you are to dine or sup in any strange presence, hire a fellow

with a great chain, (though it be copper, it's no matter,) to bring you

letters, feign'd from such a nobleman, or such a knight, or such a lady,

"To their worshipful, right rare, and nobly qualified friend and kinsman,

signior Insulso Sogliardo": give yourself style enough. And there, while

you intend circumstances of news, or enquiry of their health, or so, one of

your familiars whom you must carry about you still, breaks it up, as 'twere

in a jest, and reads it publicly at the table: at which you must seem to

take as unpardonable offence, as if he had torn your mistress's colours, or

breath'd upon her picture, and pursue it with that hot grace, as if you

would advance a challenge upon it presently.

SOG. Stay, I do not like that humour of challenge, it may be accepted; but

I'll tell you what's my humour now, I will do this: I will take occasion

of sending one of my suits to the tailor's, to have the pocket repaired, or

so; and there such a letter as you talk of, broke open and all shall be

left; O, the tailor will presently give out what I am, upon the reading of

it, worth twenty of your gallants.

CAR. But then you must put on an extreme face of discontentment at your

man's negligence.

SOG. O, so I will, and beat him too: I'll have a man for the purpose.

MAC. You may; you have land and crowns: O partial fate!

CAR. Mass, well remember'd, you must keep your men gallant at the first,

fine pied liveries laid with good gold lace; there's no loss in it, they

may rip it off and pawn it when they lack victuals.

SOG. By 'r Lady, that is chargeable, signior, 'twill bring a man in debt.

CAR. Debt! why that's the more for your credit, sir: it's an excellent

policy to owe much in these days, if you note it.

SOG. As how, good signior? I would fain be a politician.

CAR. O! look where you are indebted any great sum, your creditor observes

you with no less regard, than if he were bound to you for some huge

benefit, and will quake to give you the least cause of offence, lest he

lose his money. I assure you, in these

times, no man has his servant more obsequious and pliant, than gentlemen

their creditors: to whom, if at any time you pay but a moiety, or a fourth

part, it comes more acceptably than if you gave them a new-year's gift.

SOG. I perceive you, sir: I will take up, and bring myself in credit, sure.

CAR. Marry this, always beware you commerce not with bankrupts, or poor

needy Ludgathians; they are impudent creatures, turbulent spirits, they

care not what violent tragedies they stir, nor how they play fast and loose

with a poor gentleman's fortunes, to get their own. Marry, these rich

fellows that have the world, or the better part of it, sleeping in their

counting-houses, they are ten times more placable, they; either fear, hope,

or modesty, restrains them from offering any outrages: but this is nothing

to your followers, you shall not run a penny more in arrearage for them, an

you list, yourself.

SOG. No! how should I keep 'em then?

CAR. Keep 'em! 'sblood, let them keep themselves, they are no sheep, are

they? what, you shall come in houses, where plate, apparel, jewels, and

divers other pretty commodities lie negligently scattered, and I would have

those Mercuries follow me, I trow, should remember they had not their

fingers for nothing.

SOG. That's not so good, methinks.

CAR. Why, after you have kept them a fortnight, or so, and shew'd them

enough to the world, you may turn them away, and keep no more but a boy,

it's enough.

SOG. Nay, my humour is not for boys, I'll keep men, an I keep any; and

I'll give coats, that's my humour: but I lack a cullisen.

CAR. Why, now you ride to the city, you may buy one; I'll bring you where

you shall have your choice for money.

SOG. Can you, sir?

CAR. O, ay: you shall have one take measure of you, and make you a coat

of arms to fit you, of what fashion you will.

SOG. By word of mouth, I thank you, signior; I'll be once a little

prodigal in a humour, i'faith, and have a most prodigious coat.

MAC. Torment and death! break head and brain at once,

To be deliver'd of your fighting issue.

Who can endure to see blind Fortune dote thus?

To be enamour'd on this dusty turf,

This clod, a whoreson puck-fist! O G----!

I could run wild with grief now, to behold

The rankness of her bounties, that doth breed

Such bulrushes; these mushroom gentlemen,

That shoot up in a night to place and worship.

CAR. [SEEING MACILENTE.] Let him alone; some stray, some stray.

SOG. Nay, I will examine him before I go, sure.

CAR. The lord of the soil has all wefts and strays here, has he not?

SOG. Yes, sir.

CAR. Faith then I pity the poor fellow, he's fallen into a fool's hands.

[ASIDE.

SOG. Sirrah, who gave you a commission to lie in my lordship?

MAC. Your lordship!

SOG. How! my lordship? do you know me, sir?

MAC. I do know you, sir.

CAR. He answers him like an echo.

[ASIDE.

SOG. Why, Who am I, sir?

MAC. One of those that fortune favours.

CAR. The periphrasis of a fool. I'll observe this better.

[ASIDE.

SOG. That fortune favours! how mean you that, friend?

MAC. I mean simply: that you are one that lives not by your wits.

SOG. By my wits! no sir, I scorn to live by my wits, I. I have better

means, I tell thee, than to take such base courses, as to live by my wits.

What, dost thou think I live by my wits?

MAC. Methinks, jester, you should not relish this well.

CAR. Ha! does he know me?

MAC. Though yours be the worst use a man can put his wit to, of thousands,

to prostitute it at every tavern and ordinary; yet, methinks, you should

have turn'd your broadside at this, and have been ready with an apology,

able to sink this hulk of ignorance into the bottom and depth of his

contempt.

CAR. Oh, 'tis Macilente! Signior, you are well encountered; how is it?

O, we must not regard what he says, man, a trout, a shallow fool, he has no

more brain than a butterfly, a mere stuft suit; he looks like a musty

bottle new wicker'd, his head's the cork, light, light! [ASIDE TO

MACILENTE.] -- I am glad to see you so well return'd, signior.

MAC. You are! gramercy, good Janus.

SOG. Is he one of your acquaintance? I love him the better for that.

CAR. Od's precious, come away, man, what do you mean? an you knew him as

I do, you'd shun him as you would do the plague.

SOG. Why, sir?

CAR. O, he's a black fellow, take heed of him.

SOG. Is he a scholar, or a soldier?

CAR. Both, both; a lean mongrel, he looks as if he were chop-fallen, with

barking at other men's good fortunes: 'ware how you offend him; he carries

oil and fire in his pen, will scald where it drops: his spirit is like

powder, quick, violent; he'll blow a man up with a jest: I fear him worse

than a rotten wall does the cannon; shake an hour after at the report.

Away, come not near him.

SOG. For God's sake let's be gone; an he be a scholar, you know I cannot

abide him; I had as lieve see a cockatrice, specially as cockatrices go now.

CAR. What, you'll stay, signior? this gentleman Sogliardo, and I, are to

visit the knight Puntarvolo, and from thence to the city; we shall meet there.

[EXIT WITH SOGLIARDO.

MAC. Ay, when I cannot shun you, we will meet.

'Tis strange! of all the creatures I have seen,

I envy not this Buffone, for indeed

Neither his fortunes nor his parts deserve it:

But I do hate him, as I hate the devil,

Or that brass-visaged monster Barbarism.

O, 'tis an open-throated, black-mouth'd cur,

That bites at all, but eats on those that feed him.

A slave, that to your face will, serpent-like,

Creep on the ground, as he would eat the dust,

And to your back will turn the tail, and sting

More deadly than the scorpion: stay, who's this?

Now, for my soul, another minion

Of the old lady Chance's! I'll observe him.

[ENTER SORDIDO WITH AN ALMANACK IN HIS HAND.

SORD. O rare! good, good, good, good, good!

I thank my stars, I thank my stars for it.

MAC. Said I not true? doth not his passion speak

Out of my divination? O my senses,

Why lost you not your powers, and become

Dull'd, if not deaded, with this spectacle?

I know him, it is Sordido, the farmer,

A boor, and brother to that swine was here.

[ASIDE.

SORD. Excellent, excellent, excellent! as I would wish, as I would wish.

MAC. See how the strumpet fortune tickles him,

And makes him swoon with laughter, O, O, O!

SORD. Ha, ha, ha! I will not sow my grounds this year. Let me see, what

harvest shall we have? "June, July?"

MAC. What, is't a prognostication raps him so?

SORD. "The 20, 21, 22 days, rain and wind." O good, good! "the 23, and

24, rain and some wind," good! "the 25, rain," good still! "26, 27, 28,

wind and some rain"; would it had been rain and some wind! well, 'tis

good, when it can be no better. "29, inclining to rain": inclining to

rain! that's not so good now: "30, and 31, wind and no rain": no rain!

'slid, stay: this is worse and worse: What says he of St. Swithin's?

turn back, look, "saint Swithin's: no rain!"

MAC. O, here's a precious, dirty, damned rogue,

That fats himself with expectation

Of rotten weather, and unseason'd hours;

And he is rich for it, an elder brother!

His barns are full, his ricks and mows well trod,

His garners crack with store! O, 'tis well; ha, ha, ha!

A plague consume thee, and thy house!

SORD. O here, "St. Swithin's, the 15 day, variable weather, for the most

part rain", good! "for the most part rain": why, it should rain forty

days after, now, more or less, it was a rule held, afore I was able to hold

a plough, and yet here are two days no rain; ha! it makes me muse. We'll

see how the next month begins, if that be better. "August 1, 2, 3, and 4,

days, rainy and blustering:" this is well now: "5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, rainy,

with some thunder;" Ay marry, this is excellent; the other was false

printed sure: "the 10 and 11, great store of rain"; O good, good, good,

good, good! "the 12, 13, and 14 days, rain"; good still: "15, and 16,

rain"; good still: "17 and 18, rain", good still: "19 and 20", good

still, good still, good still, good still, good still! "21, some rain";

some rain! well, we must be patient, and attend the heaven's pleasure,

would it were more though: "the 22, 23, great tempests of rain, thunder

and lightning".

O good again, past expectation good!

I thank my blessed angel; never, never

Laid I [a] penny better out than this,

To purchase this dear book: not dear for price,

And yet of me as dearly prized as life,

Since in it is contain'd the very life,

Blood, strength, and sinews, of my happiness.

Blest be the hour wherein I bought this book;

His studies happy that composed the book,

And the man fortunate that sold the book!

Sleep with this charm, and be as true to me,

As I am joy'd and confident in thee

[PUTS IT UP.

[ENTER A HIND, AND GIVES SORDIDO A PAPER TO READ.

MAC. Ha, ha, ha!

Is not this good? Is not pleasing this?

Ha, ha, ha! God pardon me! ha, ha!

Is't possible that such a spacious villain

Should live, and not be plagued? or lies be hid

Within the wrinkled bosom of the world,

Where Heaven cannot see him? S'blood! methinks

'Tis rare, and strange, that he should breathe and walk,

Feed with digestion, sleep, enjoy his health,

And, like a boisterous whale swallowing the poor,

Still swim in wealth and pleasure! is't not strange?

Unless his house and skin were thunder proof,

I wonder at it! Methinks, now, the hectic,

Gout, leprosy, or some such loath'd disease,

Might light upon him; of that fire from heaven

Might fall upon his barns; or mice and rats

Eat up his grain; or else that it might rot

Within the hoary ricks, even as it stands:

Methinks this might be well; and after all

The devil might come and fetch him. Ay, 'tis true!

Meantime he surfeits in prosperity,

And thou, in envy of him, gnaw'st thyself:

Peace, fool, get hence, and tell thy vexed spirit,

Wealth in this age will scarcely look on merit.

[RISES AND EXIT.

SORD. Who brought this same, sirrah?

HIND. Marry, sir, one of the justice's men; he says 'tis a precept, and

all their hands be at it.

SORD. Ay, and the prints of them stick in my flesh,

Deeper than in their letters: they have sent me

Pills wrapt in paper here, that, should I take them,

Would poison all the sweetness of my book,

And turn my honey into hemlock juice.

But I am wiser than to serve their precepts,

Or follow their prescriptions. Here's a device,

To charge me bring my grain unto the markets:

Ay, much! when I have neither barn nor garner,

Nor earth to hid it in, I'll bring 't; till then,

Each corn I send shall be as big as Paul's.

O, but (say some) the poor are like to starve.

Why, let 'em starve, what's that to me? are bees

Bound to keep life in drones and idle moths? no:

Why such are these that term themselves the poor,

Only because they would be pitied,

But are indeed a sort of lazy beggars,

Licentious rogues, and sturdy vagabonds,

Bred by the sloth of a fat plenteous year,

Like snakes in heat of summer, out of dung;

And this is all that these cheap times are good for:

Whereas a wholesome and penurious dearth

Purges the soil of such vile excrements,

And kills the vipers up.

HIND. O, but master,

Take heed they hear you not.

SORD. Why so?

HIND. They will exclaim against you.

SORD. Ay, their exclaims

Move me as much, as thy breath moves a mountain.

Poor worms, they hiss at me, whilst I at home

Can be contented to applaud myself,

To sit and clap my hands, and laugh, and leap,

Knocking my head against my roof, with joy

To see how plump my bags are, and my barns.

Sirrah, go hie you home, and bid your fellows

Get all their flails ready again I come.

HIND. I will, sir.

[EXIT.

SORD. I'll instantly set all my hinds to thrashing

Of a whole rick of corn, which I will hide

Under the ground; and with the straw thereof

I'll stuff the outsides of my other mows:

That done, I'll have them empty all my garners,

And in the friendly earth bury my store,

That, when the searchers come, they may suppose

All's spent, and that my fortunes were belied.

And to lend more opinion to my want,

And stop that many-mouthed vulgar dog,

Which else would still be baying at my door,

Each market-day I will be seen to buy

Part of the purest wheat, as for my household;

Where when it comes, it shall increase my heaps:

'Twill yield me treble gain at this dear time,

Promised in this dear book: I have cast all.

Till then I will not sell an ear, I'll hang first.

O, I shall make my prices as I list;

My house and I can feed on peas and barley.

What though a world of wretches starve the while;

He that will thrive must think no courses vile.

[EXIT.

COR. Now, signior, how approve you this? have the humourists exprest

themselves truly or no?

MIT. Yes, if it be well prosecuted, 'tis hitherto happy enough: but

methinks Macilente went hence too soon; he might have been made to stay,

and speak somewhat in reproof of Sordido's wretchedness now at the last.

COR. O, no, that had been extremely improper; besides, he had continued

the scene too long with him, as 'twas, being in no more action.

MIT. You may inforce the length as a necessary reason; but for propriety,

the scene wou'd very well have borne it, in my judgment.

COR. O, worst of both; why, you mistake his humour utterly then.

MIT. How do I mistake it? Is it not envy?

COR. Yes, but you must understand, signior, he envies him not as he is a

villain, a wolf in the commonwealth, but as he is rich and fortunate; for

the true condition of envy is, 'dolor alienae felicitatis', to have our

eyes continually fixed upon another man's prosperity that is, his chief

happiness, and to grieve at that. Whereas, if we make his monstrous and

abhorr'd actions our object, the grief we take then comes nearer the nature

of hate than envy, as being bred out of a kind of contempt and loathing in

ourselves.

MIT. So you'll infer it had been hate, not envy in him, to reprehend the

humour of Sordido?

COR. Right, for what a man truly envies in another, he could always love

and cherish in himself; but no man truly reprehends in another, what he

loves in himself; therefore reprehension is out of his hate. And this

distinction hath he himself made in a speech there, if you marked it, where

he says, "I envy not this Buffone, but I hate him." Why might he not as

well have hated Sordido as him?

COR. No, sir, there was subject for his envy in Sordido, his wealth: so

was there not in the other. He stood possest of no one eminent gift, but a

most odious and fiend-like disposition, that would turn charity itself into

hate, much more envy, for the present.

MIT. You have satisfied me, sir. O, here comes the fool, and the jester

again, methinks.

COR. 'Twere pity they should be parted, sir.

MIT. What bright-shining gallant's that with them? the knight they went to?

COR. No, sir, this is one monsieur Fastidious Brisk, otherwise called the

fresh Frenchified courtier.

MIT. A humourist too?

COR. As humorous as quicksilver; do but observe him; the scene is the

country still, remember.

ACT II

SCENE I. -- THE COUNTRY; BEFORE PUNTARVOLO'S HOUSE.

ENTER FASTIDIOUS BRISK, CINEDO, CARLO BUFFONE, AND SOGLIARDO.

FAST. Cinedo, watch when the knight comes, and give us word.

CIN. I will, sir.

[EXIT.

FAST. How lik'st thou my boy, Carlo?

CAR. O, well, well. He looks like a colonel of the Pigmies horse, or one

of these motions in a great antique clock; he would shew well upon a

haberdasher's stall, at a corner shop, rarely.

FAST. 'Sheart, what a damn'd witty rogue's this! How he confounds with

his similes!

CAR. Better with similes than smiles: and whither were you riding now,

signior?

FAST. Who, I? What a silly jest's that! Whither should I ride but to the

court?

CAR. O, pardon me, sir, twenty places more; your hot-house, or your

whore-house --

FAST. By the virtue of my soul, this knight dwells in Elysium here.

CAR. He's gone now, I thought he would fly out presently. These be our

nimble-spirited catsos, that have their evasions at pleasure, will run over

a bog like your wild Irish; no sooner started, but they'll leap from one

thing to another, like a squirrel, heigh! dance and do tricks in their

discourse, from fire to water, from water to air, from air to earth, as if

their tongues did but e'en lick the four elements over, and away.

FAST. Sirrah, Carlo, thou never saw'st my gray hobby yet, didst thou?

CAR. No; have you such a one?

FAST. The best in Europe, my good villain, thou'lt say when thou seest him.

CAR. But when shall I see him?

FAST. There was a nobleman in the court offered me a hundred pound for

him, by this light: a fine little fiery slave, he runs like a -- oh,

excellent, excellent! -- with the very sound of the spur.

CAR. How! the sound of the spur?

FAST. O, it's your only humour now extant, sir; a good gingle, a good gingle.

CAR. S'blood! you shall see him turn morrice-dancer, he has got him

bells, a good suit, and a hobby-horse.

SIG. Signior, now you talk of a hobby-horse, I know where one is will not

be given for a brace of angels.

FAST. How is that, sir?

SOG. Marry, sir, I am telling this gentleman of a hobby-horse; it was my

father's indeed, and though I say it --

CAR. That should not say it -- on, on.

SOG. He did dance in it, with as good humour and as good regard as any man

of his degree whatsoever, being no gentleman: I have danc'd in it myself

too.

CAR. Not since the humour of gentility was upon you, did you?

SOG. Yes, once; marry, that was but to shew what a gentleman might do in a

humour.

CAR. O, very good.

MIT. Why, this fellow's discourse were nothing but for the word humour.

COR. O bear with him; an he should lack matter and words too, 'twere pitiful.

SOG. Nay, look you, sir, there's ne'er a gentleman in the country has the

like humours, for the hobby-horse, as I have; I have the method for the

threading of the needle and all, the --

CAR. How, the method?

SOG. Ay, the leigerity for that, and the whighhie, and the daggers in the

nose, and the travels of the egg from finger to finger, and all the humours

incident to the quality. The horse hangs at home in my parlour. I'll keep

it for a monument as long as I live, sure.

CAR. Do so; and when you die, 'twill be an excellent trophy to hang over

your tomb.

SOG. Mass, and I'll have a tomb, now I think on't; 'tis but so much charges.

CAR. Best build it in your lifetime then, your heirs may hap to forget it

else.

SOG. Nay, I mean so, I'll not trust to them.

CAR. No, for heirs and executors are grown damnable careless, 'specially

since the ghosts of testators left walking. -- How like you him, signior?

FAST. 'Fore heavens, his humour arrides me exceedingly.

CAR. Arrides you!

FAST. Ay, pleases me: a pox on't! I am so haunted at the court, and at

my lodging, with your refined choice spirits, that it makes me clean of

another garb, another sheaf, I know not how! I cannot frame me to your

harsh vulgar phrase, 'tis against my genius.

Sog. Signior Carlo!

[TAKES HIM ASIDE.

COR. This is right to that of Horace, "Dum vitant stulti vitia, in

contraria currunt"; so this gallant labouring to avoid popularity, falls

into a habit of affectation, ten thousand times hatefuller than the former.

CAR. [POINTING TO FASTIDIOUS.] Who, he? a gull, a fool, no salt in him

i' the earth, man; he looks like a fresh salmon kept in a tub; he'll be

spent shortly. His brain's lighter than his feather already, and his

tongue more subject to lye, than that is to wag; he sleeps with a musk-cat

every night, and walks all day hang'd in pomander chains for penance; he

has his skin tann'd in civet, to make his complexion strong, and the

sweetness of his youth lasting in the sense of his sweet lady; a good empty

puff, he loves you well, signior.

SOG. There shall be no love lost, sir, I'll assure you.

FAST. [ADVANCING TO THEM.] Nay, Carlo, I am not happy in thy love, I see:

pray thee suffer me to enjoy thy company a little, sweet mischief: by this

air, I shall envy this gentleman's place in thy affections, if you be thus

private, i'faith.

ENTER CINEDO.

How now! Is the knight arrived?

CIN. No, sir, but 'tis guess'd he will arrive presently, by his fore-runners.

FAST. His hounds! by Minerva, an excellent figure; a good boy.

CAR. You should give him a French crown for it; the boy would find two

better figures in that, and a good figure of your bounty beside.

FAST. Tut, the boy wants no crowns.

CAR. No crown; speak in the singular number, and we'll believe you.

FAST. Nay, thou are so capriciously conceited now. Sirrah damnation, I

have heard this knight Puntarvolo reported to be a gentleman of exceeding

good humour, thou know'st him; prithee, how is his disposition? I never

was so favoured of my stars, as to see him yet. Boy, do you look to the

hobby?

CIN. Ay, sir, the groom has set him up.

[AS CINEDO IS GOING OUT, SOGLIARDO TAKES HIM ASIDE.

FAST. 'Tis well: I rid out of my way of intent to visit him, and take

knowledge of his -- Nay, good Wickedness, his humour, his humour.

CAR. Why, he loves dogs, and hawks, and his wife well; he has a good

riding face, and he can sit a great horse; he will taint a staff well at

tile; when he is mounted he looks like the sign of the George, that's all I

know; save, that instead of a dragon, he will brandish against a tree, and

break his sword as confidently upon the knotty bark, as the other did upon

the scales of the beast.

FAST. O, but this is nothing to that's delivered of him. They say he has

dialogues and discourses between his horse, himself, and his dog; and that

he will court his own lady, as she were a stranger never encounter'd before.

CAR. Ay, that he will, and make fresh love to her every morning; this

gentleman has been a spectator of it, Signior Insulso.

SOG. I am resolute to keep a page. -- Say you, sir?

[LEAPS FROM WHISPERING WITH CINEDO.

CAR. You have seen Signior Puntarvolo accost his lady?

SOG. O, ay, sir.

FAST. And how is the manner of it, prithee, good signior?

SOG. Faith, sir, in very good sort; he has his humours for it, sir;

at first, (suppose he were now to come from riding or hunting, or so,) he

has his trumpet to sound, and then the waiting-gentlewoman she looks out,

and then he speaks, and then she speaks, -- very pretty, i'faith, gentlemen.

FAST. Why, but do you remember no particulars, signior?

SOG. O, yes, sir, first, the gentlewoman, she looks out at the window.

CAR. After the trumpet has summon'd a parle, not before?

SOG. No, sir, not before; and then says he, -- ha, ha, ha, ha!

CAR. What says he? be not rapt so.

SOG. Says he, -- ha, ha, ha, ha!

FAST. Nay, speak, speak.

SOG. Ha, ha, ha! -- says he, God save you, says he; -- ha, ha!

CAR. Was this the ridiculous motive to all this passion?

SOG. Nay, that that comes after is, -- ha, ha, ha, ha!

CAR. Doubtless he apprehends more than he utters, this fellow; or else --

[A CRY OF HOUNDS WITHIN.

SOG. List, list, they are come from hunting; stand by, close under this

terras, and you shall see it done better than I can show it.

CAR. So it had need, 'twill scarce poise the observation else.

SOG. Faith, I remember all, but the manner of it is quite out of my head.

FAST. O, withdraw, withdraw, it cannot be but a most pleasing object.

[THEY STAND ASIDE.

ENTER PUNTARVOLO, FOLLOWED BY HIS HUNTSMAN LEADING A GREYHOUND.

PUNT. Forester, give wind to thy horn. -- Enough; by this the sound hath

touch'd the ears of the inclos'd: depart, leave the dog, and take with

thee what thou has deserved, the horn and thanks.

[EXIT HUNTSMAN.

CAR. Ay, marry, there is some taste in this.

FAST. Is't not good?

SOG. Ah, peace; now above, now above!

[A WAITING-GENTLEWOMAN APPEARS AT THE WINDOW.

PUNT. Stay; mine eye hath, on the instant, through the bounty of the

window, received the form of a nymph. I will step forward three paces; of

the which, I will barely retire one; and, after some little flexure of the

knee, with an erected grace salute her; one, two, and three! Sweet lady,

God save you!

GENT. [ABOVE.] No, forsooth; I am but the waiting-gentlewoman.

CAR. He knew that before.

PUNT. Pardon me: 'humanum est errare'.

CAR. He learn'd that of his chaplain.

PUNT. To the perfection of compliment (which is the dial of the thought,

and guided by the sun of your beauties,) are required these three specials;

the gnomon, the puntilios, and the superficies: the superficies is that we

call place; the puntilios, circumstance; and the gnomon, ceremony; in

either of which, for a stranger to err, 'tis easy and facile; and such am I.

CAR. True, not knowing her horizon, he must needs err; which I fear he

knows too well.

PUNT. What call you the lord of the castle, sweet face?

GENT. [ABOVE.] The lord of the castle is a knight, sir; signior Puntarvolo.

PUNT. Puntarvolo! O --

CAR. Now must he ruminate.

FAST. Does the wench know him all this while, then?

CAR. O, do you know me, man? why, therein lies the syrup of the jest;

it's a project, a designment of his own, a thing studied, and rehearst as

ordinarily at his coming from hawking or hunting, as a jig after a play.

SOG. Ay, e'en like your jig, sir.

PUNT. 'Tis a most sumptuous and stately edifice! Of what years is the

knight, fair damsel?

GENT. Faith, much about your years, sir.

PUNT. What complexion, or what stature bears he?

GENT. Of your stature, and very near upon your complexion.

PUNT. Mine is melancholy, --

CAR. So is the dog's, just.

PUNT. And doth argue constancy, chiefly in love. What are his endowments?

is he courteous?

GENT. O, the most courteous knight in Christian land, sir.

PUNT. Is he magnanimous?

GENT. As the skin between your brows, sir.

PUNT. Is he bountiful?

CAR. 'Slud, he takes an inventory of his own good parts.

GENT. Bountiful! ay, sir, I would you should know it; the poor are served

at his gate, early and late, sir.

PUNT. Is he learned?

GENT. O, ay, sir, he can speak the French and Italian.

PUNT. Then he has travelled?

GENT. Ay, forsooth, he hath been beyond seas once or twice.

CAR. As far as Paris, to fetch over a fashion, and come back again.

PUNT. Is he religious?

GENT. Religious! I know not what you call religious, but he goes to

church, I am sure.

FAST. 'Slid, methinks these answers should offend him.

CAR. Tut, no; he knows they are excellent, and to her capacity that speaks

them.

PUNT. Would I might but see his face!

CAR. She should let down a glass from the window at that word, and request

him to look in't.

PUNT. Doubtless the gentleman is most exact, and absolutely qualified;

doth the castle contain him?

GENT. No, sir, he is from home, but his lady is within.

PUNT. His lady! what, is she fair, splendidious, and amiable?

GENT. O, Lord, sir.

PUNT. Prithee, dear nymph, intreat her beauties to shine on this side of

the building.

[EXIT WAITING-GENTLEWOMAN FROM THE WINDOW.

CAR. That he may erect a new dial of compliment, with his gnomons and his

puntilios.

FAST. Nay, thou art such another cynic now, a man had need walk uprightly

before thee.

CAR. Heart, can any man walk more upright than he does? Look, look; as if

he went in a frame, or had a suit of wainscot on: and the dog watching

him, lest he should leap out on't.

FAST. O, villain!

CAR. Well, an e'er I meet him in the city, I'll have him jointed, I'll

pawn him in Eastcheap, among the butchers, else.

FAST. Peace; who be these, Carlo?

ENTER SORDIDO AND FUNGOSO.

SORD. Yonder's your godfather; do your duty to him, son.

SOG. This, sir? a poor elder brother of mine, sir, a yeoman, may dispend

some seven or eight hundred a year; that's his son, my nephew, there.

PUNT. You are not ill come, neighbour Sordido, though I have not yet said,

well-come; what, my godson is grown a great proficient by this.

SORD. I hope he will grow great one day, sir.

FAST. What does he study? the law?

SOG. Ay, sir, he is a gentleman, though his father be but a yeoman.

CAR. What call you your nephew, signior?

SOG. Marry, his name is Fungoso.

CAR. Fungoso! O, he look'd somewhat like a sponge in that pink'd yellow

doublet, methought; well, make much of him; I see he was never born to ride

upon a mule.

GENT. [REAPPEARS AT THE WINDOW.] My lady will come presently, sir.

SOG. O, now, now!

PUNT. Stand by, retire yourselves a space; nay, pray you, forget not the

use of your hat; the air is piercing.

[SORDIDO AND FUNGOSO WITHDRAW.

FAST. What! will not their presence prevail against the current of his

humour?

CAR. O, no; it's a mere flood, a torrent carries all afore it.

[LADY PUNTARVOLO APPEARS AT THE WINDOW.

PUNT. What more than heavenly pulchritude is this.

What magazine, or treasury of bliss?

Dazzle, you organs to my optic sense,

To view a creature of such eminence:

O, I am planet-struck, and in yon sphere

A brighter star than Venus doth appear!

FAST. How! in verse!

CAR. An extacy, an extacy, man.

LADY P. [ABOVE] is your desire to speak with me, sir knight?

CAR. He will tell you that anon; neither his brain nor his body are yet

moulded for an answer.

PUNT. Most debonair, and luculent lady, I decline me as low as the basis

of your altitude.

COR. He makes congies to his wife in geometrical proportions.

MIT. Is it possible there should be any such humorist?

COR. Very easily possible, sir, you see there is.

PUNT. I have scarce collected my spirits, but lately scattered in the

administration of your form; to which, if the bounties of your mind be any

way responsible, I doubt not but my desires shall find a smooth and secure

passage. I am a poor knight-errant, lady, that hunting in the adjacent

forest, was, by adventure, in the pursuit of a hart, brought to this place;

which hart, dear madam, escaped by enchantment: the evening approaching

myself and servant wearied, my suit is, to enter your fair castle and

refresh me.

LADY. Sir knight, albeit it be not usual with me, chiefly in the absence

of a husband, to admit any entrance to strangers, yet in the true regard of

those innated virtues, and fair parts, which so strive to express

themselves, in you; I am resolved to entertain you to the best of my

unworthy power; which I acknowledge to be nothing, valued with what so

worthy a person may deserve. Please you but stay while I descend.

[EXIT FROM THE WINDOW.

PUNT. Most admired lady, you astonish me.

[WALKS ASIDE WITH SORDIDO AND HIS SON.

CAR. What! with speaking a speech of your own penning?

FAST. Nay, look: prithee, peace.

CAR. Pox on't! I am impatient of such foppery.

FAST. O let us hear the rest.

CAR. What! a tedious chapter of courtship, after sir Lancelot and queen

Guenever? Away! I marle in what dull cold nook he found this lady out;

that, being a woman, she was blest with no more copy of wit but to serve

his humour thus. 'Slud, I think he feeds her with porridge, I: she could

never have such a thick brain else.

SOG. Why, is porridge so hurtful, signior?

CAR. O, nothing under heaven more prejudicial to those ascending subtle

powers, or doth sooner abate that which we call 'acumen ingenii', than your

gross fare: Why, I'll make you an instance; your city-wives, but observe

'em, you have not more perfect true fools in the world bred than they are

generally; and yet you see, by the fineness and delicacy of their diet,

diving into the fat capons, drinking your rich wines, feeding on larks,

sparrows, potato-pies, and such good unctuous meats, how their wits are

refined and rarified; and sometimes a very quintessence of conceit flows

from them, able to drown a weak apprehension.

ENTER LADY PUNTARVOLO AND HER WAITING-WOMAN.

FAST. Peace, here comes the lady..

LADY. Gad's me, here's company! turn in again.

[EXIT WITH HER WOMAN.

FAST. 'Slight, our presence has cut off the convoy of the jest.

CAR. All the better, I am glad on't; for the issue was very perspicuous.

Come let's discover, and salute the knight.

[THEY COME FORWARD.

PUNT. Stay; who be these that address themselves towards us? What Carlo!

Now by the sincerity of my soul, welcome; welcome, gentlemen: and how dost

thou, thou 'Grand Scourge', or 'Second Untruss of the time'?

CAR. Faith, spending my metal in this reeling world (here and there), as

the sway of my affection carries me, and perhaps stumble upon a

yeoman-feuterer, as I do now; or one of fortune's mules, laden with

treasure, and an empty cloak-bag, following him, gaping when a gab will

untie.

PUNT. Peace, you bandog, peace! What brisk Nymphadoro is that in the

white virgin-boot there?

CAR. Marry, sir, one that I must interest you to take a very particular

knowledge of, and with more than ordinary respect; monsieur Fastidious.

PUNT. Sir, I could wish, that for the time of your vouchsafed abiding

here, and more real entertainment, this is my house stood on the Muses

hill, and these my orchards were those of the Hesperides.

FAST. I possess as much in your wish, sir, as if I were made lord of the

Indies; and I pray you believe it.

CAR. I have a better opinion of his faith, than to think it will be so

corrupted.

SOG. Come, brother, I'll bring you acquainted with gentlemen, and good

fellows, such as shall do you more grace than --

SORD. Brother, I hunger not for such acquaintance: Do you take heed, lest --

[CARLO COMES TOWARD THEM.

SOG. Husht! My brother, sir, for want of education, sir, somewhat nodding

to the boor, the clown; but I request you in private, sir.

FUNG. [LOOKING AT FASTIDIOUS BRISK.] By heaven, it is a very fine suit of

clothes.

[ASIDE.

COR. Do you observe that signior? There's another humour has new-crack'd

the shell.

MIT. What! he is enamour'd of the fashion, is he?

COR. O, you forestall the jest.

FUNG. I marle what it might stand him in.

[ASIDE.

SOG. Nephew!

FUNG. 'Fore me, it's an excellent suit, and as neatly becomes him.

[ASIDE.] -- What said you, uncle?

SOG. When saw you my niece?

FUNG. Marry, yesternight I supp'd there. -- That kind of boot does very

rare too.

[ASIDE.

SOG. And what news hear you?

FUNG. The gilt spur and all! Would I were hang'd, but 'tis exceeding

good. [ASIDE.] -- Say you, uncle?

SOG. Your mind is carried away with somewhat else: I ask what news you hear?

FUNG. Troth, we hear none. -- In good faith [LOOKING AT FASTIDIOUS BRISK]

I was never so pleased with a fashion, days of my life. O an I might have

but my wish, I'd ask no more of heaven now, but such a suit, such a hat,

such a band, such a doublet, such a hose, such a boot, and such a --

[ASIDE.

SOG. They say, there's a new motion of the city of Nineveh, with Jonas and

the whale, to be seen at Fleet-bridge. You can tell, cousin?

FUNG. Here's such a world of questions with him now! -- Yes, I think there

be such a thing, I saw the picture. -- Would he would once be satisfied!

Let me see, the doublet, say fifty shillings the doublet, and between three

or four pound the hose; then boots, hat, and band: some ten or eleven

pound will do it all, and suit me for the heavens!

[ASIDE.

SOG. I'll see all those devices an I come to London once.

FUNG. Ods 'slid, an I could compass it, 'twere rare [ASIDE.] -- Hark you,

uncle.

SOG. What says my nephew?

FUNG. Faith, uncle, I would have desired you to have made a motion for me

to my father, in a thing that -- Walk aside, and I'll tell you, sir; no

more but this: there's a parcel of law books (some twenty pounds worth)

that lie in a place for a little more than half the money they cost; and I

think, for some twelve pound, or twenty mark, I could go near to redeem

them; there's Plowden, Dyar, Brooke, and Fitz-Herbert, divers such as I

must have ere long; and you know, I were as good save five or six pound, as

not, uncle. I pray you, move it for me.

SOG. That I will: when would you have me do it? presently?

FUNG. O, ay, I pray you, good uncle: [SOGLIARDO TAKES SORDIDO ASIDE.] --

send me good luck, Lord, an't be thy will, prosper it! O my stars, now,

now, if it take now, I am made for ever.

FAST. Shall I tell you, sir? by this air, I am the most beholden to that

lord, of any gentleman living; he does use me the most honourably, and with

the greatest respect, more indeed than can be utter'd with any opinion of

truth.

PUNT. Then have you the count Gratiato?

FAST. As true noble a gentleman too as any breathes; I am exceedingly

endear'd to his love: By this hand, I protest to you, signior, I speak it

not gloriously, nor out of affectation, but there's he and the count

Frugale, signior Illustre, signior Luculento, and a sort of 'em, that when

I am at court, they do share me amongst them; happy is he can enjoy me most

private. I do wish myself sometime an ubiquitary for their love, in good

faith.

CAR. There's ne'er a one of them but might lie a week on the rack, ere

they could bring forth his name; and yet he pours them out as familiarly,

as if he had seen them stand by the fire in the presence, or ta'en tobacco

with them over the stage, in the lord's room.

PUNT. Then you must of necessity know our court-star there, that planet of

wit, madona Saviolina?

FAST. O Lord, sir, my mistress.

PUNT. Is she your mistress?

FAST. Faith, here be some slight favours of hers, sir, that do speak it,

she is; as this scarf, sir, or this ribbon in my ear, or so; this feather

grew in her sweet fan sometimes, though now it be my poor fortune to wear

it, as you see, sir: slight, slight, a foolish toy.

PUNT. Well, she is the lady of a most exalted and ingenious spirit.

FAST. Did you ever hear any woman speak like her? or enriched with a more

plentiful discourse?

CAR. O villainous! nothing but sound, sound, a mere echo; she speaks as

she goes tired, in cobweb-lawn, light, thin; good enough to catch flies

withal.

PUNT. O manage your affections.

FAST. Well, if thou be'st not plagued for this blasphemy one day --

PUNT. Come, regard not a jester: It is in the power of my purse to make

him speak well or ill of me.

FAST. Sir, I affirm it to you upon my credit and judgment, she has the

most harmonious and musical strain of wit that ever tempted a true ear; and

yet to see! -- a rude tongue would profane heaven, if it could.

PUNT. I am not ignorant of it, sir.

FAST. Oh, it flows from her like nectar, and she doth give it that sweet

quick grace, and exornation in the composure that by this good air, as I am

an honest man, would I might never stir, sir, but -- she does observe as

pure a phrase, and use as choice figures in her ordinary conferences, as

any be in the 'Arcadia'.

CAR. Or rather in Green's works, whence she may steal with more security.

SORD. Well, if ten pound will fetch 'em, you shall have it; but I'll part

with no more.

FUNG. I'll try what that will do, if you please.

SORD. Do so; and when you have them, study hard.

FUNG. Yes, sir. An I could study to get forty shillings more now! Well,

I will put myself into the fashion, as far as this will go, presently.

SORD. I wonder it rains not: the almanack says, we should have a store of

rain to-day.

[ASIDE.

PUNT. Why, sir, to-morrow I will associate you to court myself, and from

thence to the city about a business, a project I have; I will expose it to

you sir; Carlo, I am sure has heard of it.

CAR. What's that, sir?

PUNT. I do intend, this year of jubilee coming on, to travel: and because

I will not altogether go upon expense, I am determined to put forth some

five thousand pound, to be paid me five for one, upon the return of myself,

my wife, and my dog from the Turk's court in Constantinople. If all or

either of us miscarry in the journey, 'tis gone: if we be successful, why,

there will be five and twenty thousand pound to entertain time withal.

Nay, go not, neighbour Sordido; stay to-night, and help to make our society

the fuller. Gentlemen, frolic: Carlo! what! dull now?

CAR. I was thinking on your project, sir, an you call it so. Is this the

dog goes with you?

PUNT. This is the dog, sir.

CAR. He does not go barefoot, does he?

PUNT. Away, you traitor, away!

CAR. Nay, afore God, I speak simply; he may prick his foot with a thorn,

and be as much as the whole venture is worth. Besides, for a dog that

never travell'd before, it's a huge journey to Constantinople. I'll tell

you now, an he were mine, I'd have some present conference with a

physician, what antidotes were good to give him, preservatives against

poison; for assure you, if once your money be out, there'll be divers

attempts made against the life of the poor animal.

PUNT. Thou art still dangerous.

FAST. Is signior Deliro's wife your kinswoman?

SOG. Ay, sir, she is my niece, my brother's daughter here, and my nephew's

sister.

SORD. Do you know her, sir?

FAST. O Lord, sir! signior Deliro, her husband, is my merchant.

FUNG. Ay, I have seen this gentleman there often.

FAST. I cry you mercy, sir; let me crave your name, pray you.

FUNG. Fungoso, sir.

FAST. Good signior Fungoso, I shall request to know you better, sir.

FUNG. I am her brother, sir.

FAST. In fair time, sir.

PUNT. Come, gentlemen, I will be your conduct.

FAST. Nay, pray you sir; we shall meet at signior Deliro's often.

SOG. You shall have me at the herald's office, sir, for some week or so at

my first coming up. Come, Carlo.

[EXEUNT.

MIT. Methinks, Cordatus, he dwelt somewhat too long on this scene; it hung

in the hand.

COR. I see not where he could have insisted less, and to have made the

humours perspicuous enough.

MIT. True, as his subject lies; but he might have altered the shape of his

argument, and explicated them better in single scenes.

COR. That had been single indeed. Why, be they not the same persons in

this, as they would have been in those? and is it not an object of more

state, to behold the scene full, and relieved with variety of speakers to

the end, than to see a vast empty stage, and the actors come in one by one,

as if they were dropt down with a feather into the eye of the spectators?

MIT. Nay, you are better traded with these things than I, and therefore

I'll subscribe to your judgment; marry, you shall give me leave to make

objections.

COR. O, what else? it is the special intent of the author you should do

so; for thereby others, that are present, may as well be satisfied, who

haply would object the same you would do.

MIT. So, sir; but when appears Macilente again?

COR. Marry, he stays but till our silence give him leave: here he comes,

and with him signior Deliro, a merchant at whose house he is come to

sojourn: make your own observation now, only transfer your thoughts to the

city, with the scene: where suppose they speak.

SCENE II. A ROOM IN DELIRO'S HOUSE.

ENTER DELIRO, MACILENTE, AND FIDO WITH FLOWERS AND PERFUMES.

DELI. I'll tell you by and by, sir, --

Welcome good Macilente, to my house,

To sojourn even for ever; if my best

in cates, and every sort of good entreaty,

May move you stay with me.

[HE CENSETH: THE BOY STREWS FLOWERS.

MACI. I thank you, sir. --

And yet the muffled Fates, had it pleased them,

Might have supplied me from their own full store.

Without this word, 'I thank you', to a fool.

I see no reason why that dog call'd Chance,

Should fawn upon this fellow more than me;

I am a man, and I have limbs, flesh, blood,

Bones, sinews, and a soul, as well as he:

My parts are every way as good as his;

If I said better, why, I did not lie.

Nath'less, his wealth, but nodding on my wants,

Must make me bow, and cry, 'I thank you, sir'.

[ASIDE.

DELI. Dispatch! take heed your mistress see you not.

FIDO. I warrant you, sir, I'll steal by her softly.

[EXIT.

DELI. Nay, gentle friend, be merry; raise your looks

Out of your bosom: I protest, by heaven,

You are the man most welcome in the world.

MACI. I thank you, sir. -- I know my cue, I think.

[ASIDE.

RE-ENTER FIDO, WITH MORE PERFUMES AND FLOWERS.

FIDO. Where will you have them burn, sir?

DELI. Here, good Fido.

What, she did not see thee?

FIDO. No, sir.

DELI. That is well

Strew, strew, good Fido, the freshest flowers; so!

MACI. What means this, signior Deliro? all this censing?

DELI. Cast in more frankincense, yet more; well said. --

O Macilente, I have such a wife!

So passing fair! so passing-fair-unkind!

But of such worth, and right to be unkind,

Since no man can be worthy of her kindness --

MACI. What, can there not?

DELI. No, that is as sure as death,

No man alive. I do not say, is not,

But cannot possibly be worth her kindness,

Nay, it is certain, let me do her right.

How, said I? do her right! as though I could,

As though this dull, gross tongue of mine could utter

The rare, the true, the pure, the infinite rights.

That sit, as high as I can look, within her!

MACI. This is such dotage as was never heard.

DELI. Well, this must needs be granted.

MACI. Granted, quoth you?

DELI. Nay, Macilente, do not so discredit

The goodness of your judgment to deny it.

For I do speak the very least of her:

And I would crave, and beg no more of Heaven,

For all my fortunes here, but to be able

To utter first in fit terms, what she is,

And then the true joys I conceive in her.

MACI. Is't possible she should deserve so well,

As you pretend?

DELI. Ay, and she knows so well

Her own deserts, that, when I strive t'enjoy them,

She weighs the things I do, with what she merits;

And, seeing my worth out-weigh'd so in her graces,

She is so solemn, so precise, so froward,

That no observance I can do to her

Can make her kind to me: if she find fault,

I mend that fault; and then she says, I faulted,

That I did mend it. Now, good friend, advise me,

How I may temper this strange spleen in her.

MACI. You are too amorous, too obsequious,

And make her too assured she may command you.

When women doubt most of their husbands' loves,

They are most loving. Husbands must take heed

They give no gluts of kindness to their wives,

But use them like their horses; whom they feed

But half a peck at once; and keep them so

Still with an appetite to that they give them.

He that desires to have a loving wife,

Must bridle all the show of that desire:

Be kind, not amorous; nor bewraying kindness,

As if love wrought it, but considerate duty.

Offer no love rites, but let wives still seek them,

For when they come unsought, they seldom like them.

DELI. Believe me, Macilente, this is gospel.

O, that a man were his own man so much,

To rule himself thus. I will strive, i'faith,

To be more strange and careless; yet I hope

I have now taken such a perfect course,

To make her kind to me, and live contented,

That I shall find my kindness well return'd,

And have no need to fight with my affections.

She late hath found much fault with every room

Within my house; one was too big, she said,

Another was not furnish'd to her mind,

And so through all; all which, now, I have alter'd.

Then here, she hath a place, on my back-side,

Wherein she loves to walk; and that, she said,

Had some ill smells about it: now, this walk

Have I before she knows it, thus perfumed

With herbs, and flowers; and laid in divers places,

As 'twere on altars consecrate to her,

Perfumed gloves, and delicate chains of amber,

To keep the air in awe of her sweet nostrils:

This have I done, and this I think will please her.

Behold, she comes.

ENTER FALLACE.

FAL. Here's a sweet stink indeed!

What, shall I ever be thus crost and plagued,

And sick of husband? O, my head doth ache,

As it would cleave asunder, with these savours!

All my rooms alter'd, and but one poor walk

That I delighted in, and that is made

So fulsome with perfumes, that I am fear'd,

My brain doth sweat so, I have caught the plague!

DELI. Why, gentle wife, is now thy walk too sweet?

Thou said'st of late, it had sour airs about it,

And found'st much fault that I did not correct it.

FAL. Why, an I did find fault, sir?

DELI. Nay, dear wife,

I know thou hast said thou has loved perfumes,

No woman better.

FAL. Ay, long since, perhaps;

But now that sense is alter'd: you would have me,

Like to a puddle, or a standing pool,

To have no motion nor no spirit within me.

No. I am like a pure and sprightly river,

That moves for ever, and yet still the same;

Or fire, that burns much wood, yet still one flame.

DELI. But yesterday, I saw thee at our garden,

Smelling on roses, and on purple flowers;

And since, I hope, the humour of thy sense

Is nothing changed.

FAL. Why, those were growing flowers,

And these within my walk are cut and strewed.

DELI. But yet they have one scent.

FAL. Ay! have they so?

In your gross judgment. If you make no difference

Betwixt the scent of growing flowers and cut ones,

You have a sense to taste lamp oil, i'faith:

And with such judgment have you changed the chambers,

Leaving no room, that I can joy to be in,

In all your house; and now my walk, and all,

You smoke me from, as if I were a fox,

And long, belike, to drive me quite away:

Well, walk you there, and I'll walk where I list.

DELI. What shall I do? O, I shall never please her.

MACI. Out on thee, dotard! what star ruled his birth,

That brought him such a Star? blind Fortune still

Bestows her gifts on such as cannot use them:

How long shall I live, ere I be so happy

To have a wife of this exceeding form?

[ASIDE.

DELI. Away with 'em! would I had broke a joint

When I devised this, that should so dislike her.

Away, bear all away.

[EXIT FIDO, WITH FLOWERS, ETC.

FAL. Ay, do; for fear

Aught that is there should like her. O, this man,

How cunningly he can conceal himself,

As though he loved, nay, honour'd and ador'd! --

DELI. Why, my sweet heart?

FAL. Sweet heart! O, better still!

And asking, why? wherefore? and looking strangely,

As if he were as white as innocence!

Alas, you're simple, you: you cannot change,

Look pale at pleasure, and then red with wonder;

No, no, not you! 'tis pity o' your naturals.

I did but cast an amorous eye, e'en now,

Upon a pair of gloves that somewhat liked me,

And straight he noted it, and gave command

All should be ta'en away.

DELI. Be they my bane then!

What, sirrah, Fido, bring in those gloves again

You took from hence.

FAL. 'Sbody, sir, but do not:

Bring in no gloves to spite me; if you do --

DELI. Ay me, most wretched; how am I misconstrued!

MACI. O, how she tempts my heart-strings with her eye,

To knit them to her beauties, or to break!

What mov'd the heavens, that they could not make

Me such a woman! but a man, a beast,

That hath no bliss like others? Would to heaven,

In wreak of my misfortunes, I were turn'd

To some fair water-nymph, that set upon

The deepest whirl-pit of the rav'nous seas,

My adamantine eyes might headlong hale

This iron world to me, and drown it all.

[ASIDE.

COR. Behold, behold, the translated gallant.

MIT. O, he is welcome.

ENTER FUNGOSO, APPARELLED LIKE FASTIDIOUS BRISK.

FUNG. Save you, brother and sister; save you, sir! I have commendations

for you out o' the country. I wonder they take no knowledge of my suit:

[ASIDE.] -- Mine uncle Sogliardo is in town. Sister methinks you are

melancholy; why are you so sad? I think you took me for Master Fastidious

Brisk, sister, did you not?

FAL. Why should I take you for him?

FUNG. Nay, nothing. -- I was lately in Master Fastidious's company, and

methinks we are very like.

DELI. You have a fair suit, brother, 'give you joy on't.

FUNG. Faith, good enough to ride in, brother; I made it to ride in.

FAL. O, now I see the cause of his idle demand was his new suit.

DELI. Pray you, good brother, try if you can change her mood.

FUNG. I warrant you, let me alone: I'll put her out of her dumps.

Sister, how like you my suit!

FAL. O, you are a gallant in print now, brother.

FUNG. Faith, how like you the fashion? it is the last edition, I assure you.

FAL. I cannot but like it to the desert.

FUNG. Troth, sister, I was fain to borrow these spurs, I have left my gown

in the gage for them, pray you lend me an angel.

FAL. Now, beshrew my heart then.

FUNG. Good truth, I'll pay you again at my next exhibition. I had but

bare ten pound of my father, and it would not reach to put me wholly into

the fashion.

FAL. I care not.

FUNG. I had spurs of mine own before, but they were not ginglers.

Monsieur Fastidious will be here anon, sister.

FAL. You jest!

FUNG. Never lend me penny more while you live then; and that I'd be loth

to say, in truth.

FAL. When did you see him?

FUNG. Yesterday; I came acquainted with him at Sir Puntarvolo's: nay,

sweet sister.

MACI. I fain would know of heaven now, why yond fool

Should wear a suit of satin? he? that rook,

That painted jay, with such a deal of outside:

What is his inside, trow? ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

Good heavens, give me patience, patience, patience.

A number of these popinjays there are,

Whom, if a man confer, and but examine

Their inward merit, with such men as want;

Lord, lord, what things they are!

[ASIDE.

FAL. [GIVES HIM MONEY.] Come, when will you pay me again, now?

FUNG. O lord, sister!

MACI. Here comes another.

ENTER FASTIDIOUS BRISK, IN A NEW SUIT.

FAST. Save you, signior Deliro! How dost thou, sweet lady? let me kiss thee.

FUNG. How! a new suit? ah me!

DELI. And how does master Fastidious Brisk?

FAST. Faith, live in court, signior Deliro; in grace, I thank God, both of

the noble masculine and feminine. I muse speak with you in private by and

by.

DELI. When you please, sir.

FAL. Why look you so pale, brother?

FUNG. 'Slid, all this money is cast away now.

MACI. Ay, there's a newer edition come forth.

FUNG. 'Tis but my hard fortune! well, I'll have my suit changed. I'll go

fetch my tailor presently but first, I'll devise a letter to my father.

Have you any pen and ink, sister?

FAL. What would you do withal?

FUNG. I would use it. 'Slight, an it had come but four days sooner, the

fashion.

[EXIT.

FAST. There was a countess gave me her hand to kiss to-day, i' the

presence: did me more good by that light than -- and yesternight sent her

coach twice to my lodging, to intreat me accompany her, and my sweet

mistress, with some two or three nameless ladies more: O, I have been

graced by them beyond all aim of affection: this is her garter my dagger

hangs in: and they do so commend and approve my apparel, with my judicious

wearing of it, it's above wonder.

FAL. Indeed, sir, 'tis a most excellent suit, and you do wear it as

extraordinary.

FAST. Why, I'll tell you now, in good faith, and by this chair, which, by

the grace of God, I intend presently to sit in, I had three suits in one

year made three great ladies in love with me: I had other three, undid

three gentlemen in imitation: and other three gat three other gentlemen

widows of three thousand pound a year.

DELI. Is't possible?

FAST. O, believe it, sir; your good face is the witch, and your apparel

the spells, that bring all the pleasures of the world into their circle.

FAL. Ah, the sweet grace of a courtier!

MACI. Well, would my father had left me but a good face for my portion

yet! though I had shared the unfortunate with that goes with it, I had not

cared; I might have passed for somewhat in the world then.

FAST. Why, assure you, signior, rich apparel has strange virtues: it

makes him that hath it without means, esteemed for an excellent wit: he

that enjoys it with means, puts the world in remembrance of his means: it

helps the deformities of nature, and gives lustre to her beauties; makes

continual holiday where it shines; sets the wits of ladies at work, that

otherwise would be idle; furnisheth your two-shilling ordinary; takes

possession of your stage at your new play; and enricheth your oars, as

scorning to go with your scull.

MACI. Pray you, sir, add this; it gives respect to your fools, makes many

thieves, as many strumpets, and no fewer bankrupts.

FAL. Out, out! unworthy to speak where he breatheth.

FAST. What's he, signior?

DELI. A friend of mine, sir.

FAST. By heaven I wonder at you citizens, what kind of creatures you are!

DELI. Why, sir?

FAST. That you can consort yourselves with such poor seam-rent fellows.

FAL. He says true.

DELI. Sir, I will assure you, however you esteem of him, he's a man worthy

of regard.

FAST. Why, what has he in him of such virtue to be regarded, ha?

DELI. Marry, he is a scholar, sir.

FAST. Nothing else!

DELI. And he is well travell'd.

FAST. He should get him clothes; I would cherish those good parts of

travel in him, and prefer him to some nobleman of good place.

DELI. Sir, such a benefit should bine me to you for ever, in my friend's

right; and I doubt not, but his desert shall more than answer my praise.

FAST. Why, an he had good clothes, I'd carry him to court with me to-morrow.

DELI. He shall not want for those, sir, if gold and the whole city will

furnish him.

FAST. You say well, sir: faith, signior Deliro, I am come to have you

play the alchemist with me, and change the species of my land into that

metal you talk of.

DELI. With all my heart, sir; what sum will serve you?

FAST. Faith, some three or four hundred.

DELI. Troth, sir, I have promised to meet a gentleman this morning in

Paul's, but upon my return I'll dispatch you.

FAST. I'll accompany you thither.

DELI. As you please, sir; but I go not thither directly.

FAST. 'Tis no matter, I have no other designment in hand, and therefore as

good go along.

DELI. I were as good have a quartain fever follow me now, for I shall

ne'er be rid of him. Bring me a cloak there, one. Still, upon his grace

at court, I am sure to be visited; I was a beast to give him any hope.

Well, would I were in, that I am out with him once, and -- Come, signior

Macilente, I must confer with you, as we go. Nay, dear wife, I beseech

thee, forsake these moods: look not like winter thus. Here, take my keys,

open my counting-houses, spread all my wealth before thee, choose any

object that delights thee: if thou wilt eat the spirit of gold, and drink

dissolved pearl in wine, 'tis for thee.

FAL. So, sir!

DELI. Nay, my sweet wife.

FAL. Good lord, how you are perfumed in your terms and all! pray you

leave us.

DELI. Come, gentlemen.

FAST. Adieu, sweet lady.

[EXEUNT ALL BUT FALLACE.

FAL. Ay, ay! let thy words ever sound in mine ears, and thy graces

disperse contentment through all my senses! O, how happy is that lady

above other ladies, that enjoys so absolute a gentleman to her servant! "A

countess gives him her hand to kiss": ah, foolish countess! he's a man

worthy, if a woman may speak of a man's worth, to kiss the lips of an

empress.

RE-ENTER FUNGOSO, WITH HIS TAILOR.

FUNG. What's master Fastidious gone, sister?

FAL. Ay, brother. -- He has a face like a cherubin!

[ASIDE.

FUNG. 'Ods me, what luck's this? I have fetch'd my tailor and all: which

way went he, sister, can you tell?

FAL. Not I, in good faith -- and he has a body like an angel!

[ASIDE.

FUNG. How long is't since he went?

FAL. Why, but e'en now; did you not meet him? -- and a tongue able to

ravish any woman in the earth.

[ASIDE.

FUNG. O, for God's sake -- I'll please you for your pains, [TO HIS

TAILOR.] -- But e'en now, say you? Come, good sir: 'slid, I had forgot it

too: if any body ask for mine uncle Sogliardo, they shall have him at the

herald's office yonder, by Paul's

[EXIT WITH HIS TAILOR.

FAL. Well, I will not altogether despair: I have heard of a citizen's

wife has been beloved of a courtier; and why not I? heigh, ho! well, I

will into my private chamber, lock the door to me, and think over all his

good parts one after another.

[EXIT.

MIT. Well, I doubt, this last scene will endure some grievous torture.

COR. How? you fear 'twill be rack'd by some hard construction?

MIT. Do not you?

COR. No, in good faith: unless mine eyes could light me beyond sense. I

see no reason why this should be more liable to the rack than the rest:

you'll say, perhaps, the city will not take it well that the merchant is

made here to doat so perfectly upon his wife; and she again to be so

'Fastidiously' affected as she is.

MIT. You have utter'd my thought, sir, indeed.

COR. Why, by that proportion, the court might as well take offence at him

we call the courtier, and with much more pretext, by how much the place

transcends, and goes before in dignity and virtue: but can you imagine

that any noble or true spirit in court, whose sinewy and altogether

unaffected graces, very worthily express him a courtier, will make any

exception at the opening of such as empty trunk as this Brisk is? or think

his own worth impeached, by beholding his motley inside?

MIT. No, sir, I do not.

COR. No more, assure you, will any grave, wise citizen, or modest matron,

take the object of this folly in Deliro and his wife; but rather apply it

as the foil to their own virtues. For that were to affirm, that a man

writing of Nero, should mean all emperors; or speaking of Machiavel,

comprehend all statesmen; or in our Sordido, all farmers; and so of the

rest: than which nothing can be uttered more malicious or absurd. Indeed

there are a sort of these narrow-eyed decypherers, I confess, that will

extort strange and abstruse meanings out of any subject, be it never so

conspicuous and innocently delivered. But to such, where'er they sit

concealed, let them know, the author defies them and their writing-tables;

and hopes no sound or safe judgment will infect itself with their

contagious comments, who, indeed, come here only to pervert and poison the

sense of what they hear, and for nought else.

ENTER CAVALIER SHIFT, WITH TWO SI-QUISSES (BILLS) IN HIS HAND.

MIT. Stay, what new mute is this, that walks so suspiciously?

COR. O, marry, this is one, for whose better illustration, we must desire

you to presuppose the stage, the middle aisle in Paul's, and that, the west

end of it.

MIT. So, sir, and what follows?

COR. Faith, a whole volume of humour, and worthy the unclasping.

MIT. As how? What name do you give him first?

COR. He hath shift of names, sir: some call him Apple-John, some signior

Whiffe; marry, his main standing name is cavalier Shirt: the rest are but

as clean shirts to his natures.

MIT. And what makes he in Paul's now?

COR. Troth, as you see, for the advancement of a 'si quis', or two;

wherein he has so varied himself, that if any of 'em take, he may hull up

and down in the humorous world a little longer.

MIT. It seems then he bears a very changing sail?

COR. O, as the wind, sir: here comes more.

ACT III

SCENE I. -- THE MIDDLE AISLE OF ST. PAUL'S.

SHIFT. [COMING FORWARD.] This is rare, I have set up my bills without

discovery.

[ENTER ORANGE.

ORANGE. What, signior Whiffe! what fortune has brought you into these

west parts?

SHIFT. Troth, signior, nothing but your rheum; I have been taking an ounce

of tobacco hard by here, with a gentleman, and I am come to spit private in

Paul's. 'Save you, sir.

ORANGE. Adieu, good signior Whiffe.

[PASSES ONWARD.

[ENTER CLOVE.

CLOVE. Master Apple-John! you are well met; when shall we sup together,

and laugh, and be fat with those good wenches, ha?

SHIFT. Faith, sir, I must now leave you, upon a few humours and occasions;

but when you please, sir.

[EXIT.

CLOVE. Farewell, sweet Apple-John! I wonder there are no more store of

gallants here.

MIT. What be these two, signior?

COR. Marry, a couple, sir, that are mere strangers to the whole scope of

our play; only come to walk a turn or two in this scene of Paul's, by

chance.

ORANGE. Save you, good master Clove!

CLOVE. Sweet master Orange.

MIT. How! Clove and Orange?

COR. Ay, and they are well met, for 'tis as dry an Orange as ever grew:

nothing but salutation, and "O lord, sir!" and "It pleases you to say so,

sir!" one that can laugh at a jest for company with a most plausible and

extemporal grade; and some hour after in private ask you what it was. The

other monsieur, Clove, is a more spiced youth; he will sit you a whole

afternoon sometimes in a bookseller's shop, reading the Greek, Italian, and

Spanish, when he understands not a word of either; if he had the tongues to

his suits, he were an excellent linguist.

CLOVE. Do you hear this reported for certainty?

ORANGE. O lord, sir.

[ENTER PUNTARVOLO AND CARLO, FOLLOWED BY TWO SERVING-MEN, ONE LEADING A

DOG, THE OTHER BEARING A BAG.

PUNT. Sirrah, take my cloak; and you, sir knave, follow me closer. If

thou losest my dog, thou shalt die a dog's death; I will hang thee.

CAR. Tut, fear him not, he's a good lean slave; he loves a dog well, I

warrant him; I see by his looks, I: -- Mass, he's somewhat like him. 'Slud

[TO THE SERVANT.] poison him, make him away with a crooked pin, or

somewhat, man; thou may'st have more security of thy life; and -- So sir;

what! you have not put out your whole venture yet, have you?

PUNT. No, I do want yet some fifteen or sixteen hundred pounds; but my

lady, my wife, is 'Out of her Humour', she does not now go.

CAR. No! how then?

PUNT. Marry, I am now enforced to give it out, upon the return of myself,

my dog, and my cat.

CAR. Your cat! where is she?

PUNT. My squire has her there, in the bag; sirrah, look to her. How

lik'st thou my change, Carlo?

CAR. Oh, for the better, sir; your cat has nine lives, and your wife has

but one.

PUNT. Besides, she will never be sea-sick, which will save me so much in

conserves. When saw you signior Sogliardo?

CAR. I came from him but now; he is at the herald's office yonder; he

requested me to go afore, and take up a man or two for him in Paul's,

against his cognisance was ready.

PUNT. What, has he purchased arms, then?

CAR. Ay, and rare ones too; of as many colours as e'er you saw any fool's

coat in your life. I'll go look among yond' bills, an I can fit him with

legs to his arms.

PUNT. With legs to his arms! Good! I will go with you, sir.

[THEY GO TO READ THE BILLS.

ENTER FASTIDIOUS, DELIRO, AND MACILENTE.

FAST. Come, let's walk in Mediterraneo: I assure you, sir, I am not the

least respected among ladies; but let that pass: do you know how to go

into the presence, sir?

MACI. Why, on my feet, sir.

FAST. No, on your head, sir; for 'tis that must bear you out, I assure

you; as thus, sir. You must first have an especial care so to wear your

hat, that it oppress not confusedly this your predominant, or foretop;

because, when you come at the presence-door, you may with once or twice

stroking up your forehead, thus, enter with your predominant perfect; that

is, standing up stiff.

MACI. As if one were frighted?

FAST. Ay, sir.

MACI. Which, indeed, a true fear of your mistress should do, rather than

gum-water, or whites of eggs; is't not so, sir?

FAST. An ingenious observation. Give me leave to crave your name, sir?

DELI. His name is Macilente, sir.

FAST. Good signior Macilente, if this gentleman, signior Deliro, furnish

you, as he says he will, with clothes, I will bring you, to-morrow by this

time, into the presence of the most divine and acute lady in court; you

shall see sweet silent rhetorick, and dumb eloquence speaking in her eye,

but when she speaks herself, such an anatomy of wit, so sinewised and

arterised, that 'tis the goodliest model of pleasure that ever was to

behold. Oh! she strikes the world into admiration of her; O, O, O! I

cannot express them, believe me.

MACI. O, your only admiration is your silence, sir.

PUNT. 'Fore God, Carlo, this is good! let's read them again.

[READS THE BILL.

"If there be any lady or gentlewoman of good carriage that is desirous to

entertain to her private uses, a young, straight, and upright gentleman, of

the age of five or six and twenty at the most; who can serve in the nature

of a gentleman-usher, and hath little legs of purpose, and a black satin

suit of his own, to go before her in; which suit, for the more sweetening,

now lies in lavender; and can hide his face with her fan, if need require;

or sit in the cold at the stair foot for her, as well as another gentleman:

let her subscribe her name and place, and diligent respect shall be given."

PUNT. This is above measure excellent, ha!

CAR. No, this, this! here's a fine slave.

[READS.

"If this city, or the suburbs of the same, do afford any young gentleman of

the first, second, or third head, more or less, whose friends are but

lately deceased, and whose lands are but new come into his hands, that, to

be as exactly qualified as the best of our ordinary gallants are, is

affected to entertain the most gentleman-like use of tobacco; as first, to

give it the most exquisite perfume; then, to know all the delicate sweet

forms for the assumption of it; as also the rare corollary and practice of

the Cuban ebolition, euripus and whiff, which he shall receive or take in

here at London, and evaporate at Uxbridge, or farther, if it please him.

If there be any such generous spirit, that is truly enamoured of these good

faculties; may it please him, but by a note of his hand to specify the

place or ordinary where he uses to eat and lie; and most sweet attendance,

with tobacco and pipes of the best sort, shall be ministered. 'Stet,

quaeso, candide Lector.'"

PUNT. Why, this is without parallel, this.

CAR. Well, I'll mark this fellow for Sogliardo's use presently.

PUNT. Or rather, Sogliardo, for his use.

CAR. Faith, either of them will serve, they are both good properties:

I'll design the other a place too, that we may see him.

PUNT. No better place than the Mitre, that we may be spectators with you,

Carlo. Soft, behold who enters here:

ENTER SOGLIARDO.

Signior Sogliardo! save you.

SOG. Save you, good sir Puntarvolo; your dog's in health, sir, I see: How

now, Carlo?

CAR. We have ta'en simple pains, to choose you out followers here.

[SHOWS HIM THE BILLS.

PUNT. Come hither, signior.

CLOVE. Monsieur Orange, yon gallants observe us; prithee let's talk

fustian a little, and gull them; make them believe we are great scholars.

ORANGE. O lord, sir!

CLOVE. Nay, prithee let us, believe me, -- you have an excellent habit in

discourse.

ORANGE. It pleases you to say so, sir.

CLOVE. By this church, you have, la; nay, come, begin -- Aristotle, in his

daemonologia, approves Scaliger for the best navigator in his time; and in

his hypercritics, he reports him to be Heautontimorumenos: -- you

understand the Greek, sir?

ORANGE. O, good sir!

MACI. For society's sake he does. O, here be a couple of fine tame parrots!

CLOVE. Now, sir, whereas the ingenuity of the time and the soul's

synderisis are but embrions in nature, added to the panch of Esquiline, and

the inter-vallum of the zodiac, besides the ecliptic line being optic, and

not mental, but by the contemplative and theoric part thereof, doth

demonstrate to us the vegetable circumference, and the ventosity of the

tropics, and whereas our intellectual, or mincing capreal (according to the

metaphysicks) as you may read in Plato's Histriomastix -- You conceive me

sir?

ORANGE. O lord, sir!

CLOVE. Then coming to the pretty animal, as reason long since is fled to

animals, you know, or indeed for the more modelising, or enamelling, or

rather diamondising of your subject, you shall perceive the hypothesis, or

galaxia, (whereof the meteors long since had their initial inceptions and

notions,) to be merely Pythagorical, mathematical, and aristocratical --

For, look you, sir, there is ever a kind of concinnity and species -- Let

us turn to our former discourse, for they mark us not.

FAST. Mass, yonder's the knight Puntarvolo.

DELI. And my cousin Sogliardo, methinks.

MACI. Ay, and his familiar that haunts him, the devil with the shining face.

DELI. Let 'em alone, observe 'em not.

[SOGLIARDO, PUNTARVOLO, AND CARLO, WALK TOGETHER.

SOG. Nay, I will have him, I am resolute for that. By this parchment,

gentlemen, I have been so toiled among the harrots yonder, you will not

believe! they do speak in the strangest language, and give a man the

hardest terms for his money, that ever you knew.

CAR. But have you arms, have you arms?

SOG. I'faith, I thank them; I can write myself gentleman now; here's my

patent, it cost me thirty pound, by this breath.

PUNT. A very fair coat, well charged, and full of armory.

SOG. Nay, it has as much variety of colours in it, as you have seen a coat

have; how like you the crest, sir?

PUNT. I understand it not well, what is't?

SOG. Marry, sir, it is your boar without a head, rampant. A boar without

a head, that's very rare!

CAR. Ay, and rampant too! troth, I commend the herald's wit, he has

decyphered him well: a swine without a head, without brain, wit, anything

indeed, ramping to gentility. You can blazon the rest, signior, can you

not?

SOG. O, ay, I have it in writing here of purpose; it cost me two shilling

the tricking.

CAR. Let's hear, let's hear.

PUNT. It is the most vile, foolish, absurd, palpable, and ridiculous

escutcheon that ever this eye survised. -- Save you, good monsieur

Fastidious.

[THEY SALUTE AS THEY MEET IN THE WALK.

COR. Silence, good knight; on, on.

SOG. [READS.] "Gyrony of eight pieces; azure and gules; between three

plates, a chevron engrailed checquy, or, vert, and ermins; on a chief

argent, between two ann'lets sable, a boar's head, proper."

CAR. How's that! on a chief argent?

SOG. [READS.] "On a chief argent, a boar's head proper, between two

ann'lets sable."

CAR. 'Slud, it's a hog's cheek and puddings in a pewter field, this.

[HERE THEY SHIFT. FASTIDIOUS MIXES WITH PUNTARVOLO; CARLO AND SOGLIARDO;

DELIRO AND MACILENTE; CLOVE AND ORANGE; FOUR COUPLE.

SOG. How like you them, signior?

PUNT. Let the word be, 'Not without mustard': your crest is very rare, sir.

CAR. A frying-pan to the crest, had had no fellow.

FAST. Intreat your poor friend to walk off a little, signior, I will

salute the knight.

CAR. Come, lap it up, lap it up.

FAST. You are right well encounter'd, sir; how does your fair dog?

PUNT. In reasonable state, sir; what citizen is that you were consorted

with? A merchant of any worth?

FAST. 'Tis signior Deliro, sir.

PUNT. Is it he? -- Save you, sir!

[THEY SALUTE.

DELI. Good sir Puntarvolo!

MACI. O what copy of fool would this place minister, to one endued with

patience to observe it!

CAR. Nay, look you, sir, now you are a gentleman, you must carry a more

exalted presence, change your mood and habit to a more austere form; be

exceeding proud, stand upon your gentility, and scorn every man; speak

nothing humbly, never discourse under a nobleman, though you never saw him

but riding to the star-chamber, it's all one. Love no man: trust no man:

speak ill of no man to his face; nor well of any man behind his back.

Salute fairly on the front, and wish them hanged upon the turn. Spread

yourself upon his bosom publicly, whose heart you would eat in private.

These be principles, think on them; I'll come to you again presently.

[EXIT.

PUNT. [TO HIS SERVANT.] Sirrah, keep close; yet not so close: thy breath

will thaw my ruff.

SOG. O, good cousin, I am a little busy, how does my niece? I am to walk

with a knight, here.

ENTER FUNGOSO WITH HIS TAILOR.

FUNG. O, he is here; look you, sir, that's the gentleman.

TAI. What, he in the blush-coloured satin?

FUNG. Ay, he, sir; though his suit blush, he blushes not, look you, that's

the suit, sir: I would have mine such a suit without difference, such

stuff, such a wing, such a sleeve, such a skirt, belly and all; therefore,

pray you observe it. Have you a pair of tables?

FAST. Why, do you see, sir, they say I am fantastical; why, true, I know

it, and I pursue my humour still, in contempt of this censorious age.

'Slight, an a man should do nothing but what a sort of stale judgments

about him this town will approve in him, he were a sweet ass: I'd beg him,

i'faith. I ne'er knew any more find fault with a fashion, than they that

knew not how to put themselves into it. For mine own part, so I please

mine own appetite, I am careless what the fusty world speaks of me. Puh!

FUNG. Do you mark, how it hangs at the knee there?

TAI. I warrant you, sir.

FUNG. For God's sake do, not all; do you see the collar, sir?

TAI. Fear nothing, it shall not differ in a stitch, sir.

FUNG. Pray heaven it do not! you'll make these linings serve, and help me

to a chapman for the outside, will you?

TAI. I'll do my best, sir: you'll put it off presently.

FUNG. Ay, go with me to my chamber you shall have it -- but make haste of

it, for the love of a customer; for I'll sit in my old suit, or else lie a

bed, and read the 'Arcadia' till you have done.

[EXIT WITH HIS TAILOR.

RE-ENTER CARLO.

CAR. O, if ever you were struck with a jest, gallants, now, now, now, I do

usher the most strange piece of military profession that ever was

discovered in 'Insula Paulina'.

FAST. Where? where?

PUNT. What is he for a creature?

CAR. A pimp, a pimp, that I have observed yonder, the rarest superficies

of a humour; he comes every morning to empty his lungs in Paul's here; and

offers up some five or six hecatombs of faces and sighs, and away again.

Here he comes; nay, walk, walk, be not seen to note him, and we shall have

excellent sport.

ENTER SHIFT; AND WALKS BY, USING ACTION TO HIS RAPIER.

PUNT. 'Slid, he vented a sigh e'en now, I thought he would have blown up

the church.

CAR. O, you shall have him give a number of those false fires ere he depart.

FAST. See, now he is expostulating with his rapier: look, look!

CAR. Did you ever in your days observe better passion over a hilt?

PUNT. Except it were in the person of a cutlet's boy, or that the fellow

were nothing but vapour, I should think it impossible.

CAR. See again, he claps his sword o' the head, as who should say, well,

go to.

FAST. O violence! I wonder the blade can contain itself, being so provoked.

CAR. "With that the moody squire thumpt his breast,

And rear'd his eyen to heaven for revenge."

SOG. Troth, an you be good gentlemen, let's make them friends, and take up

the matter between his rapier and him.

CAR. Nay, if you intend that, you must lay down the matter; for this

rapier, it seems, is in the nature of a hanger-on, and the good gentleman

would happily be rid of him.

FAST. By my faith, and 'tis to be suspected; I'll ask him.

MACI. O, here's rich stuff! for life's sake, let us go:

A man would wish himself a senseless pillar,

Rather than view these monstrous prodigies:

"Nil habet infelix paupertas durius in se,

Quam quod ridiculos homines facit --"

[EXIT WITH DELIRO.

FAST. Signior.

SHIFT. At your service.

FAST. Will you sell your rapier?

CAR. He is turn'd wild upon the question; he looks as he had seen a serjeant.

SHIFT. Sell my rapier! now fate bless me!

PUNT. Amen.

SHIFT. You ask'd me if I would sell my rapier, sir?

FAST. I did indeed.

SHIFT. Now, lord have mercy upon me!

PUNT. Amen, I say still.

SHIFT. 'Slid, sir, what should you behold in my face, sir, that should

move you, as they say, sir, to ask me, sir, if I would sell my rapier?

FAST. Nay, let me pray you sir, be not moved: I protest, I would rather

have been silent, than any way offensive, had I known your nature.

SHIFT. Sell my rapier? 'ods lid! -- Nay, sir, for mine own part, as I am

a man that has serv'd in causes, or so, so I am not apt to injure any

gentleman in the degree of falling foul, but -- sell my rapier! I will

tell you, sir, I have served with this foolish rapier, where some of us

dare not appear in haste; I name no man; but let that pass. Sell my

rapier! -- death to my lungs! This rapier, sir, has travell'd by my side,

sir, the best part of France, and the Low Country: I have seen Flushing,

Brill, and the Hague, with this rapier, sir, in my Lord of Leicester's

time; and by God's will, he that should offer to disrapier me now, I would

-- Look you, sir, you presume to be a gentleman of sort, and so likewise

your friends here; if you have any disposition to travel for the sight of

service, or so, one, two, or all of you, I can lend you letters to divers

officers and commanders in the Low Countries, that shall for my cause do

you all the good offices, that shall pertain or belong to gentleman of your

---- [LOWERING HIS VOICE.] Please you to shew the bounty of your mind,

sir, to impart some ten groats, or half a crown to our use, till our

ability be of growth to return it, and we shall think oneself ---- 'Sblood!

sell my rapier!

SOG. I pray you, what said he, signior? he's a proper man.

FAST. Marry, he tells me, if I please to shew the bounty of my mind, to

impart some ten groats to his use, or so --

PUNT. Break his head, and give it him.

CAR. I thought he had been playing o' the Jew's trump, I.

SHIFT. My rapier! no, sir; my rapier is my guard, my defence, my revenue,

my honour; -- if you cannot impart, be secret, I beseech you -- and I will

maintain it, where there is a grain of dust, or a drop of water. [SIGHS.]

Hard is the choice when the valiant must eat their arms, or clem. Sell my

rapier! no, my dear, I will not be divorced from thee, yet; I have ever

found thee true as steel, and -- You cannot impart, sir? -- Save you,

gentlemen; -- nevertheless, if you have a fancy to it, sir --

FAST. Prithee away: Is signior Deliro departed?

CAR. Have you seen a pimp outface his own wants better?

SOG. I commend him that can dissemble them so well.

PUNT. True, and having no better a cloak for it than he has neither.

FAST. Od's precious, what mischievous luck is this! adieu, gentlemen.

PUNT. Whither in such haste, monsieur Fastidious?

FAST. After my merchant, signior Deliro, sir.

[EXIT.

CAR. O hinder him not, he may hap lose his title; a good flounder, i'faith.

[ORANGE AND CLOVE CALL SHIFT ASIDE.

CAR. How! signior Whiffe?

ORANGE. What was the difference between that gallant that's gone and you, sir?

SHIFT. No difference; he would have given me five pound for my rapier, and

I refused it; that's all.

CLOVE. O, was it no otherwise? we thought you had been upon some terms.

SHIFT. No other than you saw, sir.

CLOVE. Adieu, good master Apple-John.

[EXIT WITH ORANGE.

CAR. How! Whiffe, and Apple-John too? Heart, what will you say if this

be the appendix or label to both you indentures?

PUNT. It may be.

CAR. Resolve us of it, Janus, thou that look'st every way; or thou,

Hercules, that has travelled all countries.

PUNT. Nay, Carlo, spend not time in invocations now, 'tis late.

CAR. Signior, here's a gentleman desirous of your name, sir.

SHIFT. Sir, my name is cavalier Shift: I am known sufficiently in this

walk, sir.

CAR. Shift! I heard your name varied even now, as I take it.

SHIFT. True, sir, it pleases the world, as I am her excellent tobacconist,

to give me the style of signior Whiffe; as I am a poor esquire about the

town here, they call me master Apple-John. Variety of good names does

well, sir.

CAR. Ay, and good parts, to make those good names; out of which I imagine

yon bills to be yours.

SHIFT. Sir, if I should deny the manuscripts, I were worthy to be banish'd

the middle aisle for ever.

CAR. I take your word, sir: this gentleman has subscribed to them, and is

most desirous to become your pupil. Marry, you must use expedition.

Signior Insulso Sogliardo, this is the professor.

SOG. In good time, sir: nay, good sir, house your head; do you profess

these sleights in tobacco?

SHIFT. I do more than profess, sir, and, if you please to be a

practitioner, I will undertake in one fortnight to bring you, that you

shall take it plausibly in any ordinary, theatre, or the Tilt-yard, if need

be, in the most popular assembly that is.

PUNT. But you cannot bring him to the whiffe so soon?

SHIFT. Yes, as soon, sir; he shall receive the first, second, and third

whiffe, if it please him, and, upon the receipt, take his horse, drink his

three cups of canary, and expose one at Hounslow, a second at Stains, and a

third at Bagshot.

CAR. Baw-waw!

SOG. You will not serve me, sir, will you? I'll give you more than

countenance.

SHIFT. Pardon me, sir, I do scorn to serve any man.

CAR. Who! he serve? 'sblood, he keeps high men, and low men, he! he has

a fair living at Fullam.

SHIFT. But in the nature of a fellow, I'll be your follower, if you please.

SOG. Sir, you shall stay, and dine with me, and if we can agree, we'll not

part in haste: I am very bountiful to men of quality. Where shall we go,

signior?

PUNT. Your Mitre is your best house.

SHIFT. I can make this dog take as many whiffes as I list, and he shall

retain, or effume them, at my pleasure.

PUNT. By your patience, follow me, fellows.

SOG. Sir Puntarvolo!

PUNT. Pardon me, my dog shall not eat in his company for a million.

[EXIT WITH HIS SERVANTS.

CAR. Nay, be not you amazed, signior Whiffe, whatever that stiff-necked

gentleman says.

SOG. No, for you do not know the humour of the dog, as we do: Where shall

we dine, Carlo? I would fain go to one of these ordinaries, now I am a

gentleman.

CAR. So you may; were you never at any yet?

SOG. No, faith; but they say there resorts your most choice gallants.

CAR. True, and the fashion is, when any stranger comes in amongst 'em,

they all stand up and stare at him, as he were some unknown beast, brought

out of Africk; but that will be helped with a good adventurous face. You

must be impudent enough, sit down, and use no respect: when anything's

propounded above your capacity smile at it, make two or three faces, and

'tis excellent; they'll think you have travell'd; though you argue, a whole

day, in silence thus, and discourse in nothing but laughter, 'twill pass.

Only, now and then, give fire, discharge a good full oath, and offer a

great wager; 'twill be admirable.

SOG. I warrant you, I am resolute; come, good signior, there's a poor

French crown for your ordinary.

SHIFT. It comes well, for I had not so much as the least portcullis of

coin before.

MIT. I travail with another objection, signior, which I fear will be

enforced against the author, ere I can be deliver'd of it.

COR. What's that sir?

MIT. That the argument of his comedy might have been of some other nature,

as of a duke to be in love with a countess, and that countess to be in love

with the duke's son, and the son to love the lady's waiting maid; some such

cross wooing, with a clown to their servingman, better than to be thus

near, and familiarly allied to the time.

COR. You say well, but I would fain hear one of these autumn-judgments

define once, "Quid sit comoedia?" if he cannot, let him content himself

with Cicero's definition, till he have strength to propose to himself a

better, who would have a comedy to be 'imitatio vitae, speculum

consuetudinis, imago veritatis'; a thing throughout pleasant and

ridiculous, and accommodated to the correction of manners: if the maker

have fail'd in any particle of this, they may worthily tax him; but if not,

why -- be you, that are for them, silent, as I will be for him; and give

way to the actors.

SCENE II. -- THE COUNTRY.

ENTER SORDIDO, WITH A HALTER ABOUT HIS NECK.

SORD. Nay, God's precious, if the weather and season be so respectless,

that beggars shall live as well as their betters; and that my hunger and

thirst for riches shall not make them hunger and thirst with poverty; that

my sleep shall be broken, and their hearts not broken; that my coffers

shall be full, and yet care; their's empty, and yet merry; -- 'tis time

that a cross should bear flesh and blood, since flesh and blood cannot bear

this cross.

MIT. What, will he hang himself?

COR. Faith, ay; it seems his prognostication has not kept touch with him,

and that makes him despair.

MIT. Beshrew me, he will be 'out of his humour' then indeed.

SORD. Tut, these star-monger knaves, who would trust them? One says dark

and rainy, when 'tis as clear as chrystal; another says, tempestuous blasts

and storms, and 'twas as calm as a milk-bowl; here be sweet rascals for a

man to credit his whole fortunes with! You sky-staring coxcombs you, you

fat-brains, out upon you; you are good for nothing but to sweat night-caps,

and make rug-gowns dear! you learned men, and have not a legion of devils

'a votre service! a votre service!' by heaven, I think I shall die a

better scholar than they: but soft --

ENTER A HIND, WITH A LETTER.

How now, sirrah?

HIND. Here's a letter come from your son, sir.

SORD. From my son, sir! what would my son, sir? some good news, no doubt.

[READS.

"Sweet and dear father, desiring you first to send me your blessing, which

is more worth to me than gold or silver, I desire you likewise to be

advertised, that this Shrove-tide, contrary to custom, we use always to

have revels; which is indeed dancing, and makes an excellent shew in truth;

especially if we gentlemen be well attired, which our seniors note, and

think the better of our fathers, the better we are maintained, and that

they shall know if they come up, and have anything to do in the law;

therefore, good father, these are, for your own sake as well as mine, to

re-desire you, that you let me not want that which is fit for the setting

up of our name, in the honourable volume of gentility, that I may say to

our calumniators, with Tully, 'Ego sum ortus domus meae, tu occasus tuae.'

And thus, not doubting of your fatherly benevolence, I humbly ask your

blessing, and pray God to bless you.

Yours, if his own," [FUNGOSO.]

How's this! "Yours, if his own!" Is he not my son, except he be his own

son? belike this is some new kind of subscription the gallants use. Well!

wherefore dost thou stay, knave? away; go.

[EXIT HIND.]

Here's a letter, indeed! revels? and benevolence? is this a weather to

send benevolence? or is this a season to revel in? 'Slid, the devil and

all takes part to vex me, I think! this letter would never have come now

else, now, now, when the sun shines, and the air thus clear. Soul! If

this hold, se shall shortly have an excellent crop of corn spring out of

the high ways: the streets and houses of the town will be hid with the

rankness of the fruits, that grow there in spite of good husbandry. Go to,

I'll prevent the sight of it, come as quickly as it can, I will prevent the

sight of it. I have this remedy, heaven.

[CLAMBERS UP, AND SUSPENDS THE HALTER TO A TREE.]

Stay; I'll try the pain thus a little. O, nothing, nothing. Well now!

shall my son gain a benevolence by my death? or anybody be the better for

my gold, or so forth? no; alive I kept it from them, and dead, my ghost

shall walk about it, and preserve it. My son and daughter shall starve ere

they touch it; I have hid it as deep as hell from the sight of heaven, and

to it I go now.

[FLINGS HIMSELF OFF.

ENTER FIVE OR SIX RUSTICS, ONE AFTER ANOTHER.

1 RUST. Ah me, what pitiful sight is this! help, help, help!

2 RUST. How now! what's the matter?

1 RUST. O, here's a man has hang'd himself, help to get him again.

2 RUST. Hang'd himself! 'Slid, carry him afore a justice, 'tis

chance-medley, o' my word.

3 RUST. How now, what's here to do?

4 RUST. How comes this?

2 RUST. One has executed himself, contrary to order of law, and by my

consent he shall answer it.

[THEY CUT HIM DOWN.

5 RUST. Would he were in case to answer it!

1 RUST. Stand by, he recovers, give him breath.

SORD. Oh!

5 RUST. Mass, 'twas well you went the footway, neighbour.

1 RUST. Ay, an I had not cut the halter --

SORD. How! cut the halter! ah me, I am undone, I am undone!

2 RUST. Marry, if you had not been undone, you had been hang'd. I can

tell you.

SORD. You thread-bare, horse-bread-eating rascals, if you would needs have

been meddling, could you not have untied it, but you must cut it; and in

the midst too! ah me!

1 RUST. Out on me, 'tis the caterpillar Sordido! how curst are the poor,

that the viper was blest with this good fortune!

2 RUST. Nay, how accurst art thou, that art cause to the curse of the poor?

3 RUST. Ay, and to save so wretched a caitiff?

4 RUST. Curst be thy fingers that loos'd him!

2 RUST. Some desperate fury possess thee, that thou may'st hang thyself too!

5 RUST. Never may'st thou be saved, that saved so damn'd a monster!

SORD. What curses breathe these men! how have my deeds

Made my looks differ from another man's,

That they should thus detest and loath my life!

Out on my wretched humour! it is that

Makes me thus monstrous in true humane eyes.

Pardon me, gentle friends, I'll make fair 'mends

For my foul errors past, and twenty-fold

Restore to all men, what with wrong I robb'd them:

My barns and garners shall stand open still

To all the poor that come, and my best grain

Be made alms-bread, to feed half-famish'd mouths.

Though hitherto amongst you I have lived,

Like an unsavoury muck-hill to myself,

Yet now my gather'd heaps being spread abroad,

Shall turn to better and more fruitful uses.

Bless then this man, curse him no more for the saving

My life and soul together. O how deeply

The bitter curses of the poor do pierce!

I am by wonder changed; come in with me

And witness my repentance: now I prove,

No life is blest, that is not graced with love.

[EXIT.

2 RUST. O miracle! see when a man has grace!

3 RUST. Had it not been pity so good a man should have been cast away?

2 RUST. Well, I'll get our clerk put his conversion in the 'Acts and

Monuments'.

4 RUST. Do, for I warrant him he's a martyr.

2 RUST. O God, how he wept, if you mark'd it! did you see how the tears

trill'd?

5 RUST. Yes, believe me, like master vicar's bowls upon the green, for all

the world.

3 RUST. O neighbour, God's blessing o' your heart, neighbour, 'twas a good

grateful deed.

[EXEUNT.

COR. How now, Mitis! what's that you consider so seriously?

MIT. Troth, that which doth essentially please me, the warping condition

of this green and soggy multitude; but in good faith, signior, your author

hath largely outstript my expectation in this scene, I will liberally

confess it. For when I saw Sordido so desperately intended, I thought I

had had a hand of him, then.

COR. What! you supposed he should have hung himself indeed?

MIT. I did, and had framed my objection to it ready, which may yet be

very fitly urged, and with some necessity; for though his purposed violence

lost the effect, and extended not to death, yet the intent and horror of

the object was more than the nature of a comedy will in any sort admit.

COR. Ay! what think you of Plautus, in his comedy called 'Cistellaria'?

there, where he brings in Alcesimarchus with a drum sword ready to kill

himself, and as he is e'en fixing his breast upon it, to be restrained from

his resolved outrage, by Silenium and the bawd? Is not his authority of

power to give our scene approbation?

MIT. Sir, I have this only evasion left me, to say, I think it be so

indeed; your memory is happier than mine: but I wonder, what engine he

will use to bring the rest out of their humours!

COR. That will appear anon, never pre-occupy your imagination withal. Let

your mind keep company with the scene still, which now removes itself from

the country to the court. Here comes Macilente, and signior Brisk freshly

suited; lose not yourself, for now the epitasis, or busy part of our

subject, is an act.

SCENE III. -- AN APARTMENT AT THE COURT

ENTER MACILENTE, FASTIDIOUS, BOTH IN A NEW SUIT, AND CINEDO, WITH TOBACCO.

FAST. Well, now signior Macilente, you are not only welcome to the court,

but also to my mistress's withdrawing chamber -- Boy, get me some tobacco.

I'll but go in, and shew I am here, and come to you presently, sir.

[EXIT.

MACI. What's that he said? by heaven, I mark'd him not:

My thoughts and I were of another world.

I was admiring mine own outside here,

To think what privilege and palm it bears

Here, in the court! be a man ne'er so vile,

In wit, in judgment, manners, or what else;

If he can purchase but a silken cover,

He shall not only pass, but pass regarded:

Whereas, let him be poor, and meanly clad,

Though ne'er so richly parted, you shall have

A fellow that knows nothing but his beef,

Or how to rince his clammy guts in beer,

Will take him by the shoulders, or the throat,

And kick him down the stairs. Such is the state

Of virtue in bad clothes! -- ha, ha, ha, ha!

That raiment should be in such high request!

How long should I be, ere I should put off

To the lord chancellor's tomb, or the shrives' poste?

By heav'n, I think, a thousand, thousand year.

His gravity, his wisdom, and his faith

To my dread sovereign, graces that survive him,

These I could well endure to reverence,

But not his tomb; no more than I'd commend

The chapel organ for the gilt without,

Or this base-viol, for the varnish'd face.

RE-ENTER FASTIDIOUS.

FAST. I fear I have made you stay somewhat long, sir; but is my tobacco

ready, boy?

CIN. Ay, sir.

FAST. Give me; my mistress is upon coming, you shall see her presently,

sir. [PUFFS.] You'll say you never accosted a more piercing wit. -- This

tobacco is not dried, boy, or else the pipe is defective. -- Oh, your wits

of Italy are nothing comparable to her: her brain's a very quiver of

jests, and she does dart them abroad with that sweet, loose, and judicial

aim, that you would -- here she comes, sir.

[SAVIOLINA LOOKS IN, AND DRAWS BACK AGAIN.

MACI. 'Twas time, his invention had been bogged else.

SAV. [WITHIN.] Give me my fan there.

MACI. How now, monsieur Brisk?

FAST. A kind of affectionate reverence strikes me with a cold shivering,

methinks.

MACI. I like such tempers well, as stand before their mistresses with fear

and trembling; and before their Maker, like impudent mountains!

FAST. By this hand, I'd spend twenty pound my vaulting horse stood here

now, she might see do but one trick.

MACI. Why, does she love activity?

CIN. Or, if you had but your long stockings on, to be dancing a galliard

as she comes by.

FAST. Ay, either. O, these stirring humours make ladies mad with desire;

she comes. My good genius embolden me: boy, the pipe quickly.

ENTER SAVIOLINA.

MACI. What! will he give her music?

FAST. A second good morrow to my fair mistress.

SAV. Fair servant, I'll thank you a day hence, when the date of your

salutation comes forth.

FAST. How like you that answer? is't not admirable?

MACI. I were a simple courtier, if I could not admire trifles, sir.

FAST. [TALKS AND TAKES TOBACCO BETWEEN THE BREAKS.] Troth, sweet lady, I

shall [PUFFS] -- be prepared to give you thanks for those thanks, and --

study more officious, and obsequious regards -- to your fair beauties. --

Mend the pipe, boy.

MACI. I never knew tobacco taken as a parenthesis before.

FAST. 'Fore God, sweet lady, believe it, I do honour the meanest rush in

this chamber for your love.

SAV. Ay, you need not tell me that, sir; I do think you do prize a rush

before my love.

MACI. Is this the wonder of nations!

FAST. O, by this air, pardon me, I said 'for' your love, by this light:

but it is the accustomed sharpness of your ingenuity, sweet mistress, to

[TAKES DOWNTHE VIOL, AND PLAYS] -- mass, your viol's new strung, methinks.

MACI. Ingenuity! I see his ignorance will not suffer him to slander her,

which he had done notably, if he had said wit for ingenuity, as he meant it.

FAST. By the soul of music, lady -- HUM, HUM.

SAV. Would we might hear it once.

FAST. I do more adore and admire your -- HUM, HUM -- predominant

perfections, than -- HUM, HUM -- ever I shall have power and faculty to

express -- HUM.

SAV. Upon the viol de gambo, you mean?

FAST. It's miserably out of tune, by this hand.

SAV. Nay, rather by the fingers.

MACI. It makes good harmony with her wit.

FAST. Sweet lady, tune it. [SAVIOLINA TUNES THE VIOL.] -- Boy, some tobacco.

MACI. Tobacco again! he does court his mistress with very exceeding good

changes.

FAST. Signior Macilente, you take none, sir?

MACI. No, unless I had a mistress, signior, it were a great indecorum for

me to take tobacco.

FAST. How like you her wit?

[TALKS AND TAKES TOBACCO BETWEEN AGAIN.

MACI. Her ingenuity is excellent, sir.

FAST. You see the subject of her sweet fingers there -- Oh, she tickles it

so, that -- She makes it laugh most divinely; -- I'll tell you a good jest

now, and yourself shall say it's a good one: I have wished myself to be

that instrument, I think, a thousand times, and not so few, by heaven! --

MACI. Not unlike, sir; but how? to be cased up and hung by on the wall?

FAST. O, no, sir, to be in use, I assure you; as your judicious eyes may

testify. --

SAV. Here, servant, if you will play, come.

FAST. Instantly, sweet lady. -- In good faith, here's most divine tobacco!

SAV. Nay, I cannot stay to dance after your pipe.

FAST. Good! Nay, dear lady, stay; by this sweet smoke, I think your wit

be all fire. --

MACI. And he's the salamander belongs to it.

SAV. Is your tobacco perfumed, servant, that you swear by the sweet smoke?

FAST. Still more excellent! Before heaven, and these bright lights, I

think -- you are made of ingenuity, I --

MACI. True, as your discourse is. O abominable!

FAST. Will your ladyship take any?

SAV. O peace, I pray you; I love not the breath of a woodcock's head.

FAST. Meaning my head, lady?

SAV. Not altogether so, sir; but, as it were fatal to their follies that

think to grace themselves with taking tobacco, when they want better

entertainment, you see your pipe bears the true form of a woodcock's head.

FAST. O admirable simile!

AV. 'Tis best leaving of you in admiration, sir.

[EXIT.

MACI. Are these the admired lady-wits, that having so good a plain song,

can run no better division upon it? All her jests are of the stamp March

was fifteen years ago. Is this the comet, monsieur Fastidious, that your

gallants wonder at so?

FAST. Heart of a gentleman, to neglect me afore the presence thus! Sweet

sir, I beseech you be silent in my disgrace. By the muses, I was never in

so vile a humour in my life, and her wit was at the flood too! Report it

not for a million, good sir: let me be so far endeared to your love.

[EXEUNT.

MIT. What follows next, signior Cordatus? this gallant's humour is almost

spent; methinks it ebbs apace, with this contrary breath of his mistress.

COR. O, but it will flow again for all this, till there come a general

drought of humour among our actors, and then I fear not but his will fall

as low as any. See who presents himself here!

MIT. What, in the old case?

COR. Ay, faith, which makes it the more pitiful; you understand where the

scene is?

ACT IV

SCENE I. -- A ROOM IN DELIRO'S HOUSE.

ENTER FUNGOSO, FALLACE FOLLOWING HIM.

FAL. Why are you so melancholy, brother?

FUNG. I am not melancholy, I thank you, sister.

FAL. Why are you not merry then? there are but two of us in all the

world, and if we should not be comforts one to another, God help us!

FUNG. Faith, I cannot tell, sister; but if a man had any true melancholy

in him, it would make him melancholy to see his yeomanly father cut his

neighbours' throats, to make his son a gentleman; and yet, when he has cut

them, he will see his son's throat cut too, ere he make him a true

gentleman indeed, before death cut his own throat. I must be the first

head of our house, and yet he will not give me the head till I be made so.

Is any man termed a gentleman, that is not always in the fashion? I would

know but that.

FAL. If you be melancholy for that, brother, I think I have as much cause

to be melancholy as any one: for I'll be sworn, I live as little in the

fashion as any woman in London. By the faith of a gentlewoman, beast that

I am to say it! I have not one friend in the world besides my husband.

When saw you master Fastidious Brisk, brother?

FUNG. But a while since, sister, I think: I know not well in truth. By

this hand I could fight with all my heart, methinks.

FAL. Nay, good brother, be not resolute.

FUNG. I sent him a letter, and he writes me no answer neither.

FAL. Oh, sweet Fastidious Brisk! O fine courtier! thou are he makest me

sigh, and say, how blessed is that woman that hath a courtier to her

husband, and how miserable a dame she is, that hath neither husband, nor

friend in the court! O sweet Fastidious! O fine courtier! How comely he

bows him in his court'sy! how full he hits a woman between the lips when

he kisses! how upright he sits at the table! how daintily he carves! how

sweetly he talks, and tells news of this lord and of that lady! how

cleanly he wipes his spoon at every spoonful of any whitemeat he eats! and

what a neat case of pick-tooths he carries about him still! O sweet

Fastidious! O fine courtier!

ENTER DELIRO AT A DISTANCE, WITH MUSICIANS.

DELI. See, yonder she is, gentlemen. Now, as ever you'll bear the name of

musicians, touch your instruments sweetly; she has a delicate ear, I tell

you: play not a false note, I beseech you.

MUSI. Fear not, signior Deliro.

DELI. O, begin, begin, some sprightly thing: lord, how my imagination

labours with the success of it! [THEY STRIKE UP A LIVELY TUNE.] Well

said, good i'faith! Heaven grant it please her. I'll not be seen, for

then she'll be sure to dislike it.

FAL. Hey -- da! this is excellent! I'll lay my life this is my husband's

dotage. I thought so; nay, never play bo-peep with me; I know you do

nothing but study how to anger me, sir.

DELI. [COMING FORWARD.] Anger thee, sweet wife! why, didst thou not send

for musicians at supper last night thyself?

FAL. To supper, sir! now, come up to supper, I beseech you: as though

there were no difference between supper-time, when folks should be merry,

and this time when they should be melancholy. I would never take upon me

to take a wife, if I had no more judgment to please her.

DELI. Be pleased, sweet wife, and they shall have done; and would to fate

my life were done, if I can never please thee!

[EXEUNT MUSICIANS.

ENTER MACILENTE.

MACI. Save you lady; where is master Deliro?

DELI. Here, master Macilente: you are welcome from court, sir; no doubt

you have been graced exceedingly of master Brisk's mistress, and the rest

of the ladies for his sake.

MACI. Alas, the poor fantastic! he's scarce known

To any lady there; and those that know him,

Know him the simplest man of all they know:

Deride, and play upon his amorous humours,

Though he but apishly doth imitate

The gallant'st courtiers, kissing ladies' pumps,

Holding the cloth for them, praising their wits,

And servilely observing every one

May do them pleasure: fearful to be seen

With any man, though he be ne'er so worthy,

That's not in grace with some that are the greatest.

Thus courtiers do, and these he counterfeits,

But sets no such a sightly carriage

Upon their vanities, as they themselves;

And therefore they despise him: for indeed

He's like the zany to a tumbler,

That tries tricks after him, to make men laugh.

FAL. Here's an unthankful spiteful wretch! the good gentleman vouchsafed

to make him his companion, because my husband put him into a few rags, and

now see how the unrude rascal backbites him!

[ASIDE.

DELI. Is he no more graced amongst them then, say you?

MACI. Faith, like a pawn at chess: fills up a room, that's all.

FAL. O monster of men! can the earth bear such an envious caitiff?

[ASIDE.

DELI. Well, I repent me I ever credited him so much: but now I see what

he is, and that his masking vizor is off, I'll forbear him no longer. All

his lands are mortgaged to me, and forfeited; besides, I have bonds of his

in my hand, for the receipt of now fifty pounds now a hundred, now two

hundred; still, as he has had a fan but wagged at him, he would be in a new

suit. Well, I'll salute him by a serjeant, the next time I see him

i'faith, I'll suit him.

MACI. Why, you may soon see him sir, for he is to meet signior Puntarvolo

at a notary's by the Exchange, presently; where he meant to take up, upon

return.

FAL. Now, out upon thee, Judas! canst thou not be content to backbite thy

friend, but thou must betray him! Wilt thou seek the undoing of any man?

and of such a man too? and will you, sir, get your living by the counsel

of traitors?

DELI. Dear wife, have patience.

FAL. The house will fall, the ground will open and swallow us: I'll not

bide here for all the gold and silver in heaven.

[EXIT WITH FUNGOSO.

DELI. O, good Macilente, let's follow and appease her, or the peace of my

life is at an end.

[EXIT.

MACI. Now pease, and not peace, feed that life, whose head hangs so

heavily over a woman's manger!

[EXIT.

SCENE II. -- ANOTHER ROOM IN THE SAME.

ENTER FALLACE AND FUNGOSO RUNNING; SHE CLAPS TO THE DOOR.

FAL. Help me, brother! Ods body, an you come here I'll do myself a mischief.

DELI. [WITHIN.] Nay, hear me, sweet wife; unless thou wilt have me go, I

will not go.

FAL. Tut, you shall never have that vantage of me, to say, you are undone

by me. I'll not bid you stay, I. Brother, sweet brother, here's four

angels, I'll give you towards your suit: for the love of gentry, and as

ever you came of Christian creature, make haste to the water side, (you

know where master Fastidious uses to land,) and give him warning of my

husband's malicious intent; and tell him of that lean rascal's treachery.

O heavens, how my flesh rises at him! Nay, sweet brother, make haste: you

may say, I would have writ to him, but that the necessity of the time would

not permit. He cannot choose but take it extraordinarily from me: and

commend me to him, good brother; say, I sent you.

[EXIT.

FUNG. Let me see, these four angels, and then forty shillings more I can

borrow on my gown in Fetter Lane. -- Well, I will go presently, say on my

suit, pay as much money as I have, and swear myself into credit with my

tailor for the rest.

[EXIT.

SCENE III. -- ANOTHER ROOM IN THE SAME.

ENTER DELIRO AND MACILENTE.

DELI. O, on my soul you wrong her, Macilente. Though she be froward, yet

I know she is honest.

MACI. Well, then have I no judgment. Would any woman, but one that were

wild in her affections, have broke out into that immodest and violent

passion against her husband? or is't possible --

DELI. If you love me, forbear; all the arguments i' the world shall never

wrest my heart to believe it.

[EXEUNT.

COR. How like you the deciphering of his dotage?

MIT. O, strangely: an of the other's envy too, that labours so seriously

to set debate betwixt a man and his wife. Stay, here comes the knight

adventurer.

COR. Ay, and his scrivener with him.

SCENE IV. -- PUNTARVOLO'S LODGINGS.

ENTER PUNTARVOLO, NOTARY, AND SERVANTS WITH THE DOG AND CAT.

PUNT. I wonder monsieur Fastidious comes not! But, notary, if thou please

to draw the indentures the while, I will give thee thy instructions.

NOT. With all my heart, sir; and I'll fall in hand with them presently.

PUNT. Well then, first the sum is to be understood.

NOT. [WRITES.] Good, sir.

PUNT. Next, our several appellations, and character of my dog and cat,

must be known. Shew him the cat, sirrah.

NOT. So, sir.

PUNT. Then, that the intended bound is the Turk's court in Constantinople;

the time limited for our return, a year; and that if either of us miscarry,

the whole venture is lost. These are general, conceiv'st thou? or if

either of us turn Turk.

NOT. Ay, sir.

PUNT. Now, for particulars: that I may make my travels by sea or land, to

my best liking; and that hiring a coach for myself, it shall be lawful for

my dog or cat, or both, to ride with me in the said coach.

NOT. Very good, sir.

PUNT. That I may choose to give my dog or cat, fish, for fear of bones; or

any other nutriment that, by the judgment of the most authentical

physicians where I travel, shall be thought dangerous.

NOT. Well, sir.

PUNT. That, after the receipt of his money, he shall neither, in his own

person, nor any other, either by direct or indirect means, as magic,

witchcraft, or other such exotic arts, attempt, practise, or complot any

thing to the prejudice of me, my dog, or my cat: neither shall I use the

help of any such sorceries or enchantments, as unctions to make our skins

impenetrable, or to travel invisible by virtue of a powder, or a ring, or

to hang any three-forked charm about my dog's neck, secretly conveyed into

his collar; (understand you?) but that all be performed sincerely, without

fraud or imposture.

NOT. So, sir.

PUNT. That, for testimony of the performance, myself am to bring thence a

Turk's mustachio, my dog a Grecian hare's lips, and my cat the train or

tail of a Thracian rat.

NOT. [WRITES.] 'Tis done, sir.

PUNT. 'Tis said, sir; not done, sir. But forward; that, upon my return,

and landing on the Tower-wharf, with the aforesaid testimony, I am to

receive five for one, according to the proportion of the sums put forth.

NOT. Well, sir.

PUNT. Provided, that if before our departure, or setting forth, either

myself or these be visited with sickness, or any other casual event, so

that the whole course of the adventure be hindered thereby, that then he is

to return, and I am to receive the prenominated proportion upon fair and

equal terms.

NOT. Very good, sir; is this all?

PUNT. It is all, sir; and dispatch them, good notary.

NOT. As fast as is possible, sir.

[EXIT.

ENTER CARLO.

PUNT. O Carlo! welcome: saw you monsieur Brisk?

CAR. Not I: did he appoint you to meet here?

PUNT. Ay, and I muse he should be so tardy; he is to take an hundred

pounds of me in venture, if he maintain his promise.

CAR. Is his hour past?

PUNT. Not yet, but it comes on apace.

CAR. Tut, be not jealous of him; he will sooner break all the

commandments, than his hour; upon my life, in such a case trust him.

PUNT. Methinks, Carlo, you look very smooth, ha!

CAR. Why, I came but now from a hot-house; I must needs look smooth.

PUNT. From a hot-house!

CAR. Ay, do you make a wonder on't? why, it is your only physic. Let a

man sweat once a week in a hot-house, and be well rubb'd, and froted, with

a good plump juicy wench, and sweet linen, he shall ne'er have the pox.

PUNT. What, the French pox?

CAR. The French pox! out pox: we have them in as good a form as they,

man; what?

PUNT. Let me perish, but thou art a salt one! was your new-created

gallant there with you, Sogliardo?

CAR. O porpoise! hang him, no: he's a leiger at Horn's ordinary, yonder;

his villainous Ganymede and he have been droning a tobacco-pipe there ever

since yesterday noon.

PUNT. Who? signior Tripartite, that would give my dog the whiffe?

CAR. Ay, he. They have hired a chamber and all, private, to practise in,

for the making of the patoun, the receipt reciprocal, and a number of other

mysteries not yet extant. I brought some dozen or twenty gallants this

morning to view them, as you'd do a piece of perspective, in at a key-hole;

and there we might see Sogliardo sit in a chair, holding his snout up like

a sow under an apple-tree, while the other open'd his nostrils with a

poking-stick, to give the smoke a more free delivery. They had spit some

three or fourscore ounces between 'em, afore we came away.

PUNT. How! spit three or fourscore ounces?

CAR. Ay, and preserv'd it in porrengers, as a barber does his blood, when

he opens a vein.

PUNT. Out, pagan! how dost thou open the vein of thy friend?

CAR. Friend! is there any such foolish thing in the world, ha? 'slid I

never relished it yet.

PUNT. Thy humour is the more dangerous.

CAR. No, not a whit, signior. Tut, a man must keep time in all; I can oil

my tongue when I meet him next, and look with a good sleek forehead; 'twill

take away all soil of suspicion, and that's enough: what Lynceus can see

my heart? Pish, the title of a friend! it's a vain, idle thing, only

venerable among fools; you shall not have one that has any opinion of wit

affect it.

ENTER DELIRO AND MACILENTE.

DELI. Save you, good sir Puntarvolo.

PUNT. Signior Deliro! welcome.

DELI. Pray you, sir, did you see master Fastidious Brisk? I heard he was

to meet your worship here.

PUNT. You heard no figment, sir; I do expect him at every pulse of my watch.

DELI. In good time, sir.

CAR. There's a fellow now looks like one of the patricians of Sparta;

marry, his wit's after ten i' the hundred: a good bloodhound, a

close-mouthed dog, he follows the scent well; marry, he's at fault now,

methinks.

PUNT. I should wonder at that creature is free from the danger of thy tongue.

CAR. O, I cannot abide these limbs of satin, or rather Satan indeed, that

will walk, like the children of darkness, all day in a melancholy shop,

with their pockets full of blanks, ready to swallow up as many poor

unthrifts as come within the verge.

PUNT. So! and what hast thou for him that is with him, now?

CAR. O, d--n me! immortality! I'll not meddle with him; the pure element

of fire, all spirit, extraction.

PUNT. How, Carlo! ha, what is he, man?

CAR. A scholar, Macilente; do you not know him? a rank, raw-boned

anatomy, he walks up and down like a charged musket, no man dares encounter

him: that's his rest there.

PUNT. His rest! why, has he a forked head?

CAR. Pardon me, that's to be suspended; you are too quick, too apprehensive.

DELI. Troth, now I think on't, I'll defer it till some other time.

MACI. Not by any means, signior, you shall not lose this opportunity, he

will be here presently now.

DELI. Yes, faith, Macilente, 'tis best. For, look you, sir, I shall so

exceedingly offend my wife in't, that --

MACI. Your wife! now for shame lose these thoughts, and become the master

of your own spirits. Should I, if I had a wife, suffer myself to be thus

passionately carried to and fro with the stream of her humour, and neglect

my deepest affairs, to serve her affections? 'Slight, I would geld myself

first.

DELI. O, but signior, had you such a wife as mine is, you would --

MACI. Such a wife! Now hate me, sir, if ever I discern'd any wonder in

your wife yet, with all the speculation I have: I have seen some that have

been thought fairer than she, in my time; and I have seen those, have not

been altogether so tall, esteem'd properer women; and I have seen less

noses grow upon sweeter faces, that have done very well too, in my

judgment. But in good faith, signior, for all this, the gentlewoman is a

good, pretty, proud, hard-favour'd thing, marry not so peerlessly to be

doted upon, I must confess: nay, be not angry.

DELI. Well, sir, however you please to forget yourself, I have not

deserv'd to be thus played upon; but henceforth, pray you forbear my house,

for I can but faintly endure the savour of his breath, at my table, that

shall thus jade me for my courtesies.

MACI. Nay, then, signior, let me tell you, your wife is no proper woman,

and by my life, I suspect her honesty, that's more, which you may likewise

suspect, if you please, do you see? I'll urge you to nothing against your

appetite, but if you please, you may suspect it.

DELI. Good sir.

[EXIT.

MACI. Good, sir! now horn upon horn pursue thee, thou blind, egregious

dotard!

CAR. O, you shall hear him speak like envy. -- Signior Macilente, you saw

monsieur Brisk lately: I heard you were with him at court.

MACI. Ay, Buffone, I was with him.

CAR. And how is he respected there? I know you'll deal ingenuously with

us; is he made much of amongst the sweeter sort of gallants?

MACI. Faith, ay; his civet and his casting-glass

Have helpt him to a place amongst the rest:

And there, his seniors give him good slight looks,

After their garb, smile, and salute in French

With some new compliment.

CAR. What, is this all?

MACI. Why say, that they should shew the frothy fool

Such grace as they pretend comes from the heart,

He had a mighty windfall out of doubt!

Why, all their graces are not to do grace

To virtue or desert; but to ride both

With their gilt spurs quite breathless, from themselves.

'Tis now esteem'd precisianism in wit,

And a disease in nature, to be kind

Toward desert, to love or seek good names.

Who feeds with a good name? who thrives with loving?

Who can provide feast for his own desires,

With serving others? -- ha, ha, ha!

'Tis folly, by our wisest worldlings proved,

If not to gain by love, to be beloved.

CAR. How like you him? is't not a good spiteful slave, ha?

PUNT. Shrewd, shrewd.

CAR. D--n me! I could eat his flesh now; divine sweet villain!

MACI. Nay, prithee leave: What's he there?

CAR. Who? this in the starched beard? it's the dull stiff knight

Puntarvolo, man; he's to travel now presently: he has a good knotty wit;

marry, he carries little on't out of the land with him.

MACI. How then?

CAR. He puts it forth in venture, as he does his money upon the return of

a dog and cat.

MACI. Is this he?

CAR. Ay, this is he; a good tough gentleman: he looks like a shield of

brawn at Shrove-tide, out of date, and ready to take his leave; or a dry

pole of ling upon Easter-eve, that has furnish'd the table all Lent, as he

has done the city this last vacation.

MACI. Come, you'll never leave your stabbing similes: I shall have you

aiming at me with 'em by and by; but --

CAR. O, renounce me then! pure, honest, good devil, I love thee above the

love of women: I could e'en melt in admiration of thee, now. Ods so, look

here, man; Sir Dagonet and his squire!

ENTER SOGLIARDO AND SHIFT.

SOG. Save you, my dear gallantos: nay, come, approach, good cavalier:

prithee, sweet knight, know this gentleman, he's one that it pleases me to

use as my good friend and companion; and therefore do him good offices: I

beseech you, gentles, know him, I know him all over.

PUNT. Sir, for signior Sogliardo's sake, let it suffice, I know you.

SOG. Why, as I am a gentleman, I thank you, knight, and it shall suffice.

Hark you, sir Puntarvolo, you'd little think it; he's as resolute a piece

of flesh as any in the world.

PUNT. Indeed, sir!

SOG. Upon my gentility, sir: Carlo, a word with you; do you see that same

fellow, there?

CAR. What, cavalier Shirt?

SOG. O, you know him; cry you mercy: before me, I think him the tallest

man living within the walls of Europe.

CAR. The walls of Europe! take heed what you say, signior, Europe's a

huge thing within the walls.

SOG. 'Tut, an 'twere as huge again, I'd justify what I speak. 'Slid, he

swagger'd even now in a place where we were -- I never saw a man do it more

resolute.

CAR. Nay, indeed, swaggering is a good argument of resolution. Do you

hear this, signior?

MACI. Ay, to my grief. O, that such muddy flags,

For every drunken flourish should achieve

The name of manhood, whilst true perfect valour,

Hating to shew itself, goes by despised!

Heart! I do know now, in a fair just cause,

I dare do more than he, a thousand times;

Why should not they take knowledge of this, ha!

And give my worth allowance before his?

Because I cannot swagger. -- Now, the pox

Light on your Pickt-hatch prowess!

SOG. Why, I tell you, sir; he has been the only 'Bid-stand' that ever kept

New-market, Salisbury-plain, Hockley i' the Hole, Gadshill, and all the

high places of any request: he has had his mares and his geldings, he,

have been worth forty, threescore, a hundred pound a horse, would ha'

sprung you over the hedge and ditch like your greyhound: he has done five

hundred robberies in his time, more or less, I assure you.

PUNT. What, and scaped?

SOG. Scaped! i'faith, ay: he has broken the gaol when he has been in

irons and irons; and been out and in again; and out, and in; forty times,

and not so few, he.

MACI. A fit trumpet, to proclaim such a person.

CAR. But can this be possible?

SHIFT. Pardon me, my dear Orestes; causes have their quiddits, and 'tis

ill jesting with bell-ropes.

CAR. How! Pylades and Orestes?

SOG. Ay, he is my Pylades, and I am his Orestes: how like you the conceit?

CAR. O, 'tis an old stale interlude device; no, I'll give you names

myself, look you; he shall be your Judas, and you shall be his elder-tree

to hang on.

MACI. Nay, rather let him be captain Pod, and this his motion: for he

does nothing but shew him.

CAR. Excellent: or thus; you shall be Holden, and he your camel.

SHIFT. You do not mean to ride, gentlemen?

PUNT. Faith, let me end it for you, gallants: you shall be his

Countenance, and he your Resolution.

SOG. Troth, that's pretty: how say you, cavalier, shall it be so?

CAR. Ay, ay, most voices.

SHIFT. Faith, I am easily yielding to any good impressions.

SOG. Then give hands, good Resolution.

CAR. Mass, he cannot say, good Countenance, now, properly, to him again.

PUNT. Yes, by an irony.

MACI. O, sir, the countenance of Resolution should, as he is, be

altogether grim and unpleasant.

ENTER FASTIDIOUS BRISK.

FAST. Good hours make music with your mirth, gentlemen, and keep time to

your humours! -- How now, Carlo?

PUNT. Monsieur Brisk? many a long look have I extended for you, sir.

FAST. Good faith, I must crave pardon: I was invited this morning, ere I

was out of my bed, by a bevy of ladies, to a banquet: whence it was almost

one of Hercules's labours for me to come away,

but that the respect of my promise did so prevail with me. I know they'll

take it very ill, especially one, that gave me this bracelet of her hair

but over night, and this pearl another gave me from her forehead, marry she

-- what! are the writings ready?

PUNT. I will send my man to know. Sirrah, go you to the notary's, and

learn if he be ready: leave the dog, sir.

[EXIT SERVANT.

FAST. And how does my rare qualified friend, Sogliardo? Oh, signior

Macilente! by these eyes, I saw you not; I had saluted you sooner else, o'

my troth. I hope, sir, I may presume upon you, that you will not divulge

my late check, or disgrace, indeed, sir.

MACI. You may, sir.

CAR. He knows some notorious jest by this gull, that he hath him so

obsequious.

SOG. Monsieur Fastidious, do you see this fellow there? does he not look

like a clown? would you think there were any thing in him?

FAST. Any thing in him! beshrew me, ay; the fellow hath a good ingenious

face.

SOG. By this element he is as ingenious a tall man as ever swagger'd about

London: he, and I, call Countenance and Resolution; but his name is

cavalier Shift.

PUNT. Cavalier, you knew signior Clog, that was hang'd for the robbery at

Harrow on the hill?

SOG. Knew him, sir! why, 'twas he gave all the directions for the action.

PUNT. How! was it your project, sir?

SHIFT. Pardon me, Countenance, you do me some wrong to make occasions

public, which I imparted to you in private.

SOG. God's will! here are none but friends, Resolution.

SHIFT. That's all one; things of consequence must have their respects;

where, how, and to whom. -- Yes, sir, he shewed himself a true Clog in the

coherence of that affair, sir; for, if he had managed matters as they were

corroborated to him, it had been better for him by a forty or fifty score

of pounds, sir; and he himself might have lived, in despight of fates, to

have fed on woodcocks, with the rest: but it was his heavy fortune to

sink, poor Clog! and therefore talk no more of him.

PUNT. Why, had he more aiders then?

SOG. O lord, sir! ay, there were some present there, that were the Nine

Worthies to him, i'faith.

SHIFT. Ay, sir, I can satisfy you at more convenient conference: but, for

mine own part, I have now reconciled myself to other courses, and profess a

living out of my other qualities.

SOG. Nay, he has left all now, I assure you, and is able to live like a

gentleman, by his qualities. By this dog, he has the most rare gift in

tobacco that ever you knew.

CAR. He keeps more ado with this monster, than ever Banks did with his

horse, or the fellow with the elephant.

MACI. He will hang out his picture shortly, in a cloth, you shall see.

SOG. O, he does manage a quarrel the best that ever you saw, for terms and

circumstances.

FAST. Good faith, signior, now you speak of a quarrel, I'll acquaint you

with a difference that happened between a gallant and myself; sir

Puntarvolo, you know him if I should name him signior Luculento.

PUNT. Luculento! what inauspicious chance interposed itself to your two

loves?

FAST. Faith, sir, the same that sundered Agamemnon and great Thetis' son;

but let the cause escape, sir: he sent me a challenge, mixt with some few

braves, which I restored, and in fine we met. Now, indeed, sir, I must

tell you, he did offer at first very desperately, but without judgment:

for, look you, sir, I cast myself into this figure; now he comes violently

on, and withal advancing his rapier to strike, I thought to have took his

arm, for he had left his whole body to my election, and I was sure he could

not recover his guard. Sir, I mist my purpose in his arm, rash'd his

doublet-sleeve, ran him close by the left cheek, and through his hair. He

again lights me here, -- I had on a gold cable hatband, then new come up,

which I wore about a murey French hat I had, -- cuts my hatband, and yet it

was massy goldsmith's work, cuts my brims, which by good fortune, being

thick embroidered with gold twist and spangles, disappointed the force of

the blow: nevertheless, it grazed on my shoulder, takes me away six purls

of an Italian cut-work band I wore, cost me three pound in the Exchange but

three days before.

PUNT. This was a strange encounter.

FAST. Nay, you shall hear, sir: with this we both fell out, and breath'd.

Now, upon the second sign of his assault, I betook me to the former manner

of my defence; he, on the other side, abandon'd his body to the same danger

as before, and follows me still with blows: but I being loth to take the

deadly advantage that lay before me of his left side, made a kind of

stramazoun, ran him up to the hilts through the doublet, through the shirt,

and yet miss'd the skin. He, making a reverse blow, -- falls upon my

emboss'd girdle, I had thrown off the hangers a little before -- strikes

off a skirt of a thick-laced satin doublet I had, lined with four taffatas,

cuts off two panes embroidered with pearl, rends through the drawings-out

of tissue, enters the linings, and skips the flesh.

CAR. I wonder he speaks not of his wrought shirt.

FAST. Here, in the opinion of mutual damage, we paused; but, ere I

proceed, I must tell you, signior, that, in this last encounter, not having

leisure to put off my silver spurs, one of the rowels catch'd hold of the

ruffle of my boot, and, being Spanish leather, and subject to tear,

overthrows me, rends me two pair of silk stockings, that I put on, being

somewhat a raw morning, a peach colour and another, and strikes me some

half inch deep into the side of the calf: he, seeing the blood come,

presently takes horse, and away: I, having bound up my wound with a piece

of my wrought shirt --

CAR. O! comes it in there?

FAST. Rid after him, and, lighting at the court gate both together,

embraced, and march'dhand in hand up into the presence. Was not this

business well carried?

MACI. Well! yes, and by this we can guess what apparel the gentleman wore.

PUNT. 'Fore valour, it was a designment begun with much resolution,

maintain'd with as much prowess, and ended with more humanity. --

RE-ENTER SERVANT.

How now, what says the notary?

SERV. He says, he is ready, sir; he stays but your worship's pleasure.

PUNT. Come, we will go to him, monsieur. Gentlemen, shall we entreat you

to be witnesses?

SOG. You shall entreat me, sir. -- Come, Resolution.

SHIFT. I follow you, good Countenance.

CAR. Come, signior, come, come.

[EXEUNT ALL BUT MACILENTE.

MACI. O, that there should be fortune

To clothe these men, so naked in desert!

And that the just storm of a wretched life

Beats them not ragged for their wretched souls,

And, since as fruitless, even as black, as coals!

[EXIT.

MIT. Why, but signior, how comes it that Fungoso appeared not with his

sister's intelligence to Brisk?

COR. Marry, long of the evil angels that she gave him, who have indeed

tempted the good simple youth to follow the tail of the fashion, and

neglect the imposition of his friends. Behold, here he comes, very

worshipfully attended, and with good variety.

SCENE V. -- A ROOM IN DELIRO'S HOUSE

ENTER FUNGOSO IN A NEW SUIT, FOLLOWED BY HIS TAILOR, SHOEMAKER, AND

HABERDASHER.

FUNG. Gramercy, good shoemaker, I'll put to strings myself..

[EXIT SHOEMAKER.] -- Now, sir, let me see, what must you have for this hat?

HABE. Here's the bill, sir.

FUNG. How does it become me, well?

TAI. Excellent, sir, as ever you had any hat in your life.

FUNG. Nay, you'll say so all.

HABE. In faith, sir, the hat's as good as any man in this town can serve

you, and will maintain fashion as long; never trust me for a groat else.

FUNG. Does it apply well to my suit?

TAI. Exceeding well, sir.

FUNG. How lik'st thou my suit, haberdasher?

HABE. By my troth, sir, 'tis very rarely well made; I never saw a suit sit

better, I can tell on.

TAI. Nay, we have no art to please our friends, we!

FUNG. Here, haberdasher, tell this same.

[GIVES HIM MONEY.

HABE. Good faith, sir, it makes you have an excellent body.

FUNG. Nay, believe me, I think I have as good a body in clothes as another.

TAI. You lack points to bring your apparel together, sir.

FUNG. I'll have points anon. How now! Is't right?

HABE. Faith, sir, 'tis too little' but upon farther hopes -- Good morrow

to you, sir.

[EXIT.

FUNG. Farewell, good haberdasher. Well now, master Snip, let me see your

bill.

MIT. Me thinks he discharges his followers too thick.

COR. O, therein he saucily imitates some great man. I warrant you, though

he turns off them, he keeps this tailor, in place of a page, to follow him

still.

FUNG. This bill is very reasonable, in faith: hark you, master Snip --

Troth, sir, I am not altogether so well furnished at this present, as I

could wish I were; but -- if you'll do me the favour to take part in hand,

you shall have all I have, by this hand.

TAI. Sir --

FUNG. And but give me credit for the rest, till the beginning of the next

term.

TAI. O lord, sir --

FUNG. 'Fore God, and by this light, I'll pay you to the utmost, and

acknowledge myself very deeply engaged to you by the courtesy.

TAI. Why, how much have you there, sir?

FUNG. Marry, I have here four angels, and fifteen shillings of white

money: it's all I have, as I hope to be blest

TAI. You will not fail me at the next term with the rest?

FUNG. No, an I do, pray heaven I be hang'd. Let me never breathe again

upon this mortal stage, as the philosopher calls it! By this air, and as I

am a gentleman, I'll hold.

COR. He were an iron-hearted fellow, in my judgment, that would not credit

him upon this volley of oaths.

TAI. Well, sir, I'll not stick with any gentleman for a trifle: you know

what 'tis remains?

FUNG. Ay, sir, and I give you thanks in good faith. O fate, how happy I

am made in this good fortune! Well, now I'll go seek out monsieur Brisk.

'Ods so, I have forgot riband for my shoes, and points. 'Slid, what luck's

this! how shall I do? Master Snip, pray let me reduct some two or three

shillings for points and ribands: as I am an honest man, I have utterly

disfurnished myself, in the default of memory; pray let me be beholding to

you; it shall come home in the bill, believe me.

TAI. Faith, sir, I can hardly depart with ready money; but I'll take up,

and send you some by my boy presently. What coloured riband would you have?

FUNG. What you shall think meet in your judgment, sir, to my suit.

TAI. Well, I'll send you some presently.

FUNG. And points too, sir?

TAI. And points too, sir.

FUNG. Good lord, how shall I study to deserve this kindness of you sir!

Pray let your youth make haste, for I should have done a business an hour

since, that I doubt I shall come too late.

[EXIT TAILOR.]

Now, in good faith, I am exceeding proud of my suit.

COR. Do you observe the plunges that this poor gallant is put to, signior,

to purchase the fashion?

MIT. Ay, and to be still a fashion behind with the world, that's the sport.

COR. Stay: O, here they come from seal'd and deliver'd.

SCENE VI. -- PUNTARVOLO'S LODGINGS.

ENTER PUNTARVOLO, FASTIDIOUS BRISK IN A NEW SUIT, AND SERVANTS WITH THE DOG.

PUNT. Well, now my whole venture is forth, I will resolve to depart shortly.

FAST. Faith, sir Puntarvolo, go to the court, and take leave of the ladies

first.

PUNT. I care not, if it be this afternoon's labour. Where is Carlo?

FAST. Here he comes.

ENTER CARLO, SOGLIARDO, SHIFT, AND MACILENTE.

CAR. Faith, gallants, I am persuading this gentleman [POINTS TO SOGLIARDO]

to turn courtier. He is a man of fair revenue, and his estate will bear

the charge well. Besides, for his other gifts of the mind, or so, why they

are as nature lent him them, pure, simple, without any artificial drug or

mixture of these two threadbare beggarly qualities, learning and knowledge,

and therefore the more accommodate and genuine. Now, for the life itself --

FAST. O, the most celestial, and full of wonder and delight, that can be

imagined, signior, beyond thought and apprehension of pleasure! A man

lives there in that divine rapture, that he will think himself i' the ninth

heaven for the time, and lose all sense of mortality whatsoever, when he

shall behold such glorious, and almost immortal beauties; hear such

angelical and harmonious voices, discourse with such flowing and ambrosial

spirits, whose wits are as sudden as lightning, and humorous as nectar; oh,

it makes a man all quintessence and flame, and lifts him up, in a moment,

to the very crystal crown of the sky, where, hovering in the strength of

his imagination, he shall behold all the delights of the Hesperides, the

Insulae Fortunatae, Adonis' Gardens, Tempe, or what else, confined within

the amplest verge of poesy, to be mere umbrae, and imperfect figures,

conferred with the most essential felicity of your court.

MACI. Well, this ecomium was not extemporal, it came too perfectly off.

CAR. Besides, sir, you shall never need to go to a hot-house, you shall

sweat there with courting your mistress, or losing your money at primero,

as well as in all the stoves in Sweden. Marry, this, sir, you must ever be

sure to carry a good strong perfume about you, that your mistress's dog may

smell you out amongst the rest; and, in making love to her, never fear to

be out; for you may have a pipe of tobacco, or a bass viol shall hang o'

the wall, of purpose, will put you in presently. The tricks your

Resolution has taught you in tobacco, the whiffe, and those sleights, will

stand you in very good ornament there.

FAST. Ay, to some, perhaps; but, an he should come to my mistress with

tobacco (this gentleman knows) she'd reply upon him, i'faith. O, by this

bright sun, she has the most acute, ready, and facetious wit that -- tut,

there's no spirit able to stand her. You can report it, signior, you have

seen her.

PUNT. Then can he report no less, out of his judgment, I assure him.

MACI. Troth, I like her well enough, but she's too self-conceited, methinks.

FAST. Ay, indeed, she's a little too self-conceited; an 'twere not for

that humour, she were the most-to-be-admired lady in the world.

PUNT. Indeed, it is a humour that takes from her other excellences.

MACI. Why, it may easily be made to forsake her, in my thought.

FAST. Easily, sir! then are all impossibilities easy.

MACI. You conclude too quick upon me, signior. What will you say, if I

make it so perspicuously appear now, that yourself shall confess nothing

more possible?

FAST. Marry, I will say, I will both applaud and admire you for it.

PUNT. And I will second him in the admiration.

MACI. Why, I'll show you, gentlemen. -- Carlo, come hither.

[MACI., CAR., PUNT., AND FAST. WHISPER TOGETHER.

SOG. Good faith, I have a great humour to the court. What thinks my

Resolution? shall I adventure?

SHIFT. Troth, Countenance, as you please; the place is a place of good

reputation and capacity.

SOG. O, my tricks in tobacco, as Carlo says, will show excellent there.

SHIFT. Why, you may go with these gentlemen now, and see fashions; and

after, as you shall see correspondence.

SOG. You say true. You will go with me, Resolution?

SHIFT. I will meet you, Countenance, about three or four o'clock; but, to

say to go with you, I cannot; for, as I am Apple-John, I am to go before

the cockatrice you saw this morning, and therefore pray, present me

excused, good Countenance.

SOG. Farewell, good Resolution, but fail not to meet.

SHIFT. As I live.

[EXIT.

PUNT. Admirably excellent!

MACI. If you can but persuade Sogliardo to court, there's all now.

CAR. O, let me alone, that's my task.

[GOES TO SOGLIARDO.

FAST. Now, by wit, Macilente, it's above measure excellent; 'twill be the

only court-exploit that ever proved courtier ingenious.

PUNT. Upon my soul, it puts the lady quite out of her humour, and we shall

laugh with judgment.

CAR. Come, the gentleman was of himself resolved to go with you, afore I

moved it.

MACI. Why, then, gallants, you two and Carlo go afore to prepare the jest;

Sogliardo and I will come some while after you.

CAR. Pardon me, I am not for the court.

PUNT. That's true; Carlo comes not at court, indeed. Well, you shall

leave it to the faculty of monsieur Brisk, and myself; upon our lives, we

will manage it happily. Carlo shall bespeak supper at the Mitre, against

we come back: where we will meet and dimple our cheeks with laughter at

the success.

CAR. Ay, but will you promise to come?

PUNT. Myself shall undertake for them; he that fails, let his reputation

lie under the lash of thy tongue.

CAR. Ods so, look who comes here!

ENTER FUNGOSO.

SOG. What, nephew!

FUNG. Uncle, God save you; did you see a gentleman, one monsieur Brisk, a

courtier? he goes in such a suit as I do.

SOG. Here is the gentleman, nephew, but not in such a suit.

FUNG. Another suit! [HE SWOONS.

SOG. How now, nephew?

FAST. Would you speak with me, sir?

CAR. Ay, when he has recovered himself, poor Poll!

PUNT. Some rosa-solis.

MACI. How now, signior?

FUNG. I am not well, sir.

MACI. Why, this it is to dog the fashion.

CAR. Nay, come, gentlemen, remember your affairs; his disease is nothing

but the flux of apparel.

PUNT. Sirs, return to the lodging, keep the cat safe; I'll be the dog's

guardian myself.

[EXEUNT SERVANTS.

SOG. Nephew, will you go to court with us? these gentlemen and I are for

the court; nay, be not so melancholy.

FUNG. 'Slid, I think no man in Christendom has that rascally fortune that

I have.

MACI. Faith, you suit is well enough, signior.

FUNG. Nay, not for that, I protest; but I had an errand to monsieur

Fastidious, and I have forgot it.

MACI. Why, go along to court with us, and remember it; come, gentlemen,

you three take one boat, and Sogliardo and I will take another; we shall be

there instantly.

FAST. Content: good sir, vouchsafe us your pleasance.

PUNT. Farewell, Carlo: remember.

CAR. I warrant you: would I had one of Kemp's shoes to throw after you.

PUNT. Good fortune will close the eyes of our jest, fear not; and we shall

frolick.

[EXEUNT.

MIT. This Macilente, signior, begins to be more sociable on a sudden,

methinks, than he was before: there's some portent in it, I believe.

COR. O, he's a fellow of a strange nature. Now does he, in this calm of

his humour, plot, and store up a world of malicious thoughts in his brain,

till he is so full with them, that you shall see the very torrent of his

envy break forth like a land-flood: and, against the course of all their

affections, oppose itself so violently, that you will almost have wonder to

think, how 'tis possible the current of their dispositions shall receive so

quick and strong an alteration.

MIT. Ay, marry, sir, this is that, on which my expectation has dwelt all

this while; for I must tell you, signior, though I was loth to interrupt

the scene, yet I made it a question in mine own private discourse, how he

should properly call it "Every Man out of his Humour", when I saw all his

actors so strongly pursue, and continue their humours?

COR. Why, therein his art appears most full of lustre, and approacheth

nearest the life; especially when in the flame and height of their humours,

they are laid flat, it fills the eye better, and with more contentment.

How tedious a sight were it to behold a proud exalted tree kept and cut

down by degrees, when it might be fell'd in a moment! and to set the axe

to it before it came to that pride and fulness, were, as not to have it

grow.

MIT. Well, I shall long till I see this fall, you talk of.

COR. To help your longing, signior, let your imagination be swifter than a

pair of oars: and by this, suppose Puntarvolo, Brisk, Fungoso, and the

dog, arrived at the court-gate, and going up to the great chamber.

Macilente and Sogliardo, we'll leave them on the water, till possibility

and natural means may land them. Here come the gallants, now prepare your

expectations.

ACT V

SCENE I. -- THE PALACE STAIRS.

ENTER PUNTARVOLO, WITH HIS DOG, FOLLOWED BY FASTIDIOUS

BRISK AND FUNGOSO.

PUNT. Come, gentles, Signior, you are sufficiently instructed.

FAST. Who, I, sir?

PUNT. No, this gentleman. But stay, I take thought how to bestow my dog;

he is no competent attendant for the presence.

FAST. Mass, that's true, indeed, knight; you must not carry him into the

presence.

PUNT. I know it, and I, like a dull beast, forgot to bring one of my

cormorants to attend me.

FAST. Why, you were best leave him at the porter's lodge.

PUNT. Not so; his worth is too well known amongst them, to be forth-coming.

FAST. 'Slight, how will you do then?

PUNT. I must leave him with one that is ignorant of his quality, if I will

have him to be safe. And see! here comes one that will carry coals, ergo,

will hold my dog.

ENTER A GROOM, WITH A BASKET.

My honest friend, may I commit the tuition of this dog to thy prudent care?

GROOM. You may, if you please, sir.

PUNT. Pray thee let me find thee here at my return; it shall not be long,

till I will ease thee of thy employment, and please thee. Forth, gentles.

FAST. Why, but will you leave him with so slight command, and infuse no

more charge upon the fellow?

PUNT. Charge! no; there were no policy in that; that were to let him know

the value of the gem he holds, and so to tempt frail nature against her

disposition. No, pray thee let thy honesty be sweet, as it shall be short.

GROOM. Yes, sir.

PUNT. But hark you, gallants, and chiefly monsieur Brisk: when we come in

eye-shot, or presence of this lady, let not other matters carry us from our

project; but, if we can, single her forth to some place --

FAST. I warrant you.

PUNT. And be not too sudden, but let the device induce itself with good

circumstance. On.

FUNG. Is this the way? good truth, here be fine hangings.

[EXEUNT PUNT., FAST., AND FUNGOSO.

GROOM. Honesty! sweet, and short! Marry, it shall, sir, doubt you not;

for even at this instant if one would give me twenty pounds, I would not

deliver him; there's for the sweet: but now, if any man come offer me but

two-pence, he shall have him; there's for the short now. 'Slid, what a mad

humorous gentleman is this to leave his dog with me! I could run away with

him now, an he were worth any thing.

ENTER MACILENTE AND SOGLIARDO.

MACI. Come on, signior, now prepare to court this all-witted lady, most

naturally, and like yourself.

SOG. Faith, an you say the word, I'll begin to her in tobacco.

MACI. O, fie on't! no; you shall begin with, "How does my sweet lady",

or, "Why are you so melancholy, madam?" though she be very merry, it's all

one. Be sure to kiss your hand often enough; pray for her health, and tell

her, how "More than most fair she is". Screw your face at one side thus,

and protest: let her fleer, and look askance, and hide her teeth with her

fan, when she laughs a fit, to bring her into more matter, that's nothing:

you must talk forward, (though it be without sense, so it be without

blushing,) 'tis most court-like and well.

SOG. But shall I not use tobacco at all?

MACI. O, by no means; 'twill but make your breath suspected, and that you

use it only to confound the rankness of that.

SOG. Nay, I'll be advised, sir, by my friends.

MACI. Od's my life, see where sir Puntarvolo's dog is.

GROOM. I would the gentleman would return for his follower here, I'll

leave him to his fortunes else.

MACI. 'Twere the only true jest in the world to poison him now; ha! by

this hand I'll do it, if I could but get him of the fellow. [ASIDE.]

Signior Sogliardo, walk aside, and think upon some device to entertain the

lady with.

SOG. So I do, sir.

[WALKS OFF IN A MEDITATING POSTURE.

MACI. How now, mine honest friend! whose dog-keeper art thou?

GROOM. Dog-keeper, sir! I hope I scorn that, i'faith.

MACI. Why, dost thou not keep a dog?

GROOM. Sir, now I do, and now I do not: [THROWS OFF THE DOG.] I think

this be sweet and short. Make me his dog-keeper!

[EXIT.

MACI. This is excellent, above expectation! nay, stay, sir; [SEIZING THE

DOG.] you'd be travelling; but I'll give you a dram shall shorten your

voyage, here. [GIVES HIM POISON.] So, sir, I'll be bold to take my leave

of you. Now to the Turk's court in the devil's name, for you shall never

go o' God's name. [KICKS HIM OUT.] -- Sogliardo, come.

SOG. I have it i'faith now, will sting it.

MACI. Take heed you leese it not signior, ere you come there; preserve it.

[EXEUNT.

COR. How like you this first exploit of his?

MIT. O, a piece of true envy; but I expect the issue of the other device.

COR. Here they come will make it appear.