A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09

by Unknown

ACTUS III., SCAENA 1.

SIR RADERIC, RECORDER, PAGE, SIGNIOR IMMERITO.

SIR RADERIC. Signior Immerito, you remember my caution for the tithes, and my promise for farming my tithes at such a rate?

IMMERITO.
Ay, and please your worship, sir.

SIR RADERIC. You must put in security for the performance of it, in such sort as I and Master Recorder shall like of.

IMMERITO.
I will, an't please your worship.

SIR RADERIC. And because I will be sure that I have conferred this kindness upon a sufficient man, I have desired Master Recorder to take examination of you.

PAGE. My master, it seems, takes him for a thief; but he hath small reason for it. As for learning, it's plain he never stole any; and for the living, he knows himself how he comes by it; for let him but eat a mess of furmenty this seven year, and yet he shall never be able to recover himself. Alas, poor sheep, that hath fallen into the hands of such a fox! [Aside.

SIR RADERIC. Good Master Recorder, take your place by me, and make trial of his gifts: is the clerk there to record his examination? O, the page shall serve the turn.

PAGE. Trial of his gifts! never had any gifts a better trial: why, Immerito's gifts have appeared in as many colours as the rainbow; first, to Master Amoretto, in colour of the satin suit he wears: to my lady, in the similitude of a loose gown: to my master, in the likeness of a silver basin and ewer: to us pages, in the semblance of new suits and points. So Master Amoretto plays the gull in a piece of a parsonage; my master adorns his cupboard with a piece of a parsonage; my mistress, upon good days, puts on a piece of a parsonage; and we pages play at blowpoint for a piece of a parsonage: I think here's trial enough for one man's gifts. [Aside.

RECORDER. Forasmuch as nature hath done her part in making you a handsome likely man—

PAGE. He is a handsome young man indeed, and hath a proper gelded parsonage.[93] [Aside.

RECORDER. In the next place, some art is requisite for the perfection of nature: for the trial whereof, at the request of my worshipful friend, I will in some sort propound questions fit to be resolved by one of your profession. Say, what is a person that was never at the university?

IMMERITO. A person that was never in the university is a living creature that can eat a tithe-pig.

RECORDER. Very well answered; but you should have added—and must be officious to his patron. Write down that answer to show his learning in logic.

SIR RADERIC. Yea, boy, write that down. Very learnedly, in good faith. I pray now, let me ask you one question that I remember: whether is the masculine gender or the feminine more worthy?

IMMERITO.
The feminine, sir.

SIR RADERIC. The right answer, the right answer. In good faith, I have been of that mind always. Write, boy, that to show he is a grammarian.

PAGE. No marvel my master be against the grammar; for he hath always made false Latin in the genders. [Aside.

RECORDER.
What university are you of?

IMMERITO.
Of none.

SIR RADERIC. He tells truth; to tell truth is an excellent virtue. Boy, make two heads, one for his learning, another for his virtues; and refer this to the head of his virtues, not of his learning.

PAGE. What, half a mess of good qualities referred to an ass' head? [Aside.

SIR RADERIC. Now, Master Recorder, if it please you, I will examine him in an author that will sound him to the depth—a book of astronomy, otherwise called an almanac.

RECORDER. Very good, Sir Raderic; it were to be wished that there were no other book of humanity, then there would not be such busy, state-frying fellows as are nowadays. Proceed, good sir.

SIR RADERIC.
What is the dominical letter?

IMMERITO.
C, sir, and please your worship.

SIR RADERIC.
A very good answer, a very good answer, the very answer of the book.
Write down that, and refer it to his skill in philosophy.

PAGE. C the dominical letter? It is true: Craft and Cunning do so domineer; yet, rather C and D are dominical letters, that is, crafty duncery. [Aside.

SIR RADERIC.
How many days hath September?

IMMERITO. April, June, and November, February hath twenty-eight alone; and all the rest hath thirty and one.

SIR RADERIC.
Very learnedly, in good faith, he hath also a smack in poetry. Write
down that, boy, to show his learning in poetry. How many miles from
Waltham to London?

IMMERITO.
Twelve, sir.

SIR RADERIC,
How many from Newmarket to Grantham?

IMMERITO.
Ten, sir.

PAGE.
Without doubt, he hath been some carrier's horse. [Aside.

SIR RADERIC.
How call you him that is cunning in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and the cypher?

IMMERITO.
A good arithmetician.

SIR RADERIC.
Write down that answer of his, to show his learning in arithmetic.

PAGE. He must needs be a good arithmetician, that counted money so lately. [Aside.

SIR RADERIC.
When is the new moon?

IMMERITO. The last quarter the fifth day, at two of the clock and thirty-eight minutes in the morning.

SIR RADERIC.
Write that down. How call you him that is weatherwise?

IMMERITO.
A good astronomer.

SIR RADERIC.
Sirrah boy, write him down for a good astronomer.

PAGE.
Ass colit ass-tra. [Aside.

SIR RADERIC.
What day of the month lights the Queen's day on?

IMMERITO.
The seventeenth of November.[94]

SIR RADERIC.
Boy, refer this to his virtues, and write him down a good subject.

PAGE. Faith, he were an excellent subject for two or three good wits: he would make a fine ass for an ape to ride upon. [Aside.

SIR RADERIC. And these shall suffice for the parts of his learning. Now it remains to try whether you be a man of good utterance, that is, whether you can ask for the strayed heifer with the white face, as also chide the boys in the belfry, and bid the sexton whip out the dogs. Let me hear your voice.

IMMERITO.
If any man or woman—

SIR RADERIC.
That's too high.

IMMERITO.
If any man or woman—

SIR RADERIC.
That's too low.

IMMERITO. If any man or woman can tell any tidings of a horse with four feet, two ears, that did stray about the seventh hour, three minutes in the forenoon the fifth day—

PAGE. A book of[95] a horse, just as it were the eclipse of the moon. [Aside.

SIR RADERIC. Boy, write him down for a good utterance. Master Recorder, I think he hath been examined sufficiently.

RECORDER.
Ay, Sir Raderic, 'tis so; we have tried him very throughly.

PAGE. Ay, we have taken an inventory of his good parts, and prized them accordingly.

SIR RADERIC. Signior Immerito, forasmuch as we have made a double trial of thee—the one of your learning, the other of your erudition—it is expedient also, in the next place, to give you a few exhortations, considering the greatest clerks are not the wisest men. This is therefore, first, to exhort you to abstain from controversies; secondly, not to gird at men of worship, such as myself, but to use yourself discreetly; thirdly, not to speak when any man or woman coughs—do so, and in so doing, I will persevere to be your worshipful friend and loving patron.

IMMERITO.
I thank your worship, you have been the deficient cause of my preferment.

SIR RADERIC. Lead Immerito into my son, and let him despatch him; and remember—my tithes to be reserved, paying twelvepence a year. I am going to Moorfields to speak with an unthrift I should meet at the Middle-Temple about a purchase; when you have done, follow us.

[Exeunt IMMERITO and the PAGE.

ACTUS III., SCAENA 2.

SIR RADERIC and RECORDER.

SIR RADERIC. Hark you, Master Recorder: I have fleshed my prodigal boy notably, notably, in letting him deal for this living; that hath done him much good, much good, I assure you.

RECORDER.
You do well, Sir Raderic, to bestow your living upon such an one as will
be content to share, and on Sunday to say nothing; whereas your proud
university princox thinks he is a man of such merit the world cannot
sufficiently endow him with preferment. An unthankful viper, an
unthankful viper, that will sting the man that revived him.
Why, is't not strange to see a ragged clerk
Some stamel weaver or some butcher's son,
That scrubb'd a-late within a sleeveless gown,
When the commencement, like a morris-dance,
Hath put a bell or two about his legs,
Created him a sweet clean gentleman;
How then he 'gins to follow fashions:
He, whose thin sire dwells in a smoky roof,
Must take tobacco, and must wear a lock;
His thirsty dad drinks in a wooden bowl,
But his sweet self is serv'd in silver plate.
His hungry sire will scrape you twenty legs
For one good Christmas meal on New-Year's day,
But his maw must be capon-cramm'd each day;
He must ere long be triple-beneficed,
Else with his tongue he'll thunderbolt the world,
And shake each peasant by his deaf man's ear.
But, had the world no wiser men than I,
We'd pen the prating parrots in a cage.
A chair, a candle, and a tinder-box,
A thacked[96] chamber and a ragged gown,
Should be their lands and whole possessions;
Knights, lords, and lawyers should be lodg'd and dwell
Within those over-stately heaps of stone,
Which doating sires in old age did erect.
Well, it were to be wished, that never a scholar in England might have
above forty pound a year.

SIR RADERIC. Faith, Master Recorder, if it went by wishing, there should never an one of them all have above twenty a year—a good stipend, a good stipend, Master Recorder. I in the meantime, howsoever I hate them all deadly, yet I am fain to give them good words. O, they are pestilent fellows, they speak nothing but bodkins, and piss vinegar. Well, do what I can in outward kindness to them, yet they do nothing but bewray my house: as there was one that made a couple of knavish verses on my country chimney, now in the time of my sojourning here at London; and it was thus— Sir Raderic keeps no chimney cavalier, That takes tobacco above once a year. And another made a couple of verses on my daughter, that learns to play on the viol-de-gambo— Her viol-de-gambo is her best content; For 'twixt her legs she holds her instrument. Very knavish, very knavish, if you look into it, Master Recorder. Nay, they have played many a knavish trick beside with me. Well, 'tis a shame, indeed, there should be any such privilege for proud beggars as Cambridge and Oxford are. But let them go; and if ever they light in my hands, if I do not plague them, let me never return home again to see my wife's waiting-maid!

RECORDER.
This scorn of knights is too egregious:
But how should these young colts prove amblers,
When the old, heavy, galled jades do trot?
There shall you see a puny boy start up,
And make a theme against common lawyers;
Then the old, unwieldy camels 'gin to dance,
This fiddling boy playing a fit of mirth;
The greybeards scrub, and laugh, and cry, Good, good!
To them again, boy; scourge the barbarians.
But we may give the losers leave to talk;
We have the coin, then tell them laugh for me.
Yet knights and lawyers hope to see the day,
When we may share here their possessions,
And make indentures of their chaffer'd skins,
Dice of their bones to throw in merriment.

SIR RADERIC.
O, good faith, Master Recorder, if I could see that day once?

RECORDER. Well, remember another day what I say: scholars are pryed into of late, and are found to be busy fellows, disturbers of the peace. I'll say no more; guess at my meaning. I smell a rat.

SIR RADERIC. I hope at length England will be wise enough, I hope so, i'faith; then an old knight may have his wench in a corner without any satires or epigrams. But the day is far spent, Master Recorder; and I fear by this time the unthrift is arrived at the place appointed in Moorfields. Let us hasten to him. [He looks on his watch.

RECORDER. Indeed, this day's subject transported us too late: [but] I think we shall not come much too late.

[Exeunt.

ACTUS III., SCAENA 3.

Enter AMORETTO, and his Page, IMMERITO booted.

AMORETTO.
Master Immerito, deliver this letter to the poser in my father's name.
Marry, withal some sprinkling, some sprinkling; verbum sapienti sat
est. Farewell, Master Immerito.

IMMERITO.
I thank your worship most heartily.

PAGE. Is it not a shame to see this old dunce learning his induction at these years? But let him go, I lose nothing by him; for I'll be sworn, but for the booty of selling the parsonage, I should have gone in mine old clothes this Christmas. A dunce, I see, is a neighbour-like brute beast: a man may live by him. [Aside.

[AMORETTO seems to make verse.

AMORETTO. A pox on it, my muse is not so witty as she was wont to be: —— Her nose is like —— not yet; plague on these mathematics! they have spoiled my brain in making a verse.

PAGE. Hang me, if he hath any more mathematics than will serve to count the clock, or tell the meridian hour by rumbling of his paunch. [Aside.

AMORETTO. Her nose is like ——

PAGE.
A cobbler's shoeing-horn.

AMORETTO. Her nose is like a beauteous maribone. [Aside.

PAGE.
Marry, a sweet snotty mistress! [Aside.

AMORETTO. Faith, I do not like it yet. Ass as I was, to read a piece of Aristotle in Greek yesternight; it hath put me out of my English vein quite.

PAGE. O monstrous lie! let me be a point-trusser, while I live, if he understands any tongue but English. [Aside.

AMORETTO. Sirrah boy, remember me when I come in Paul's Churchyard to buy a Ronsard and [a] Dubartas in French, and Aretine in Italian; and our hardest writers in Spanish; they will sharpen my wits gallantly. I do relish these tongues in some sort. O, now I do remember, I hear a report of a poet newly come out in Hebrew; it is a pretty harsh tongue, and telleth[97] a gentleman traveller: but come, let's haste after my father; the fields are fitter to heavenly meditations. [Exit.

PAGE. My masters, I could wish your presence at an admirable jest: why presently this great linguist my master will march through Paul's Churchyard, come to a bookbinder's shop, and with a big Italian look and a Spanish face ask for these books in Spanish and Italian; then, turning (through his ignorance) the wrong end of the book upward, use action on this unknown tongue after this sort: First, look on the title, and wrinkle his brow; next make as though he read the first page, and bite 's lip;[98] then with his nail score the margent, as though there were some notable conceit; and, lastly, when he thinks he hath gulled the standers-by sufficiently, throws the book away in a rage, swearing that he could never find books of a true print since he was last in Joadna;[99] inquire after the next mart, and so departs. And so must I; for by this time his contemplation is arrived at his mistress's nose end; he is as glad as if he had taken Ostend.[100] By this time he begins to spit, and cry, Boy, carry my cloak: and now I go to attend on his worship.

[Exit.

ACTUS III., SCAENA 4.

Enter INGENIOSO, FUROR, PHANTASMA.

INGENIOSO. Come, lads; this wine whets your resolution in our design: it's a needy world with subtle spirits; and there's a gentlemanlike kind of begging, that may beseem poets in this age.

FUROR.
Now by the wing of nimble Mercury,
By my Thalia's silver-sounding harp,
By that celestial fire within my brain,
That gives a living genius to my lines,
Howe'er my dulled intellectual
Capers less nimbly than it did afore;
Yet will I play a hunts-up to my muse,
And make her mount from out her sluggish nest.
As high as is the highest sphere in heaven.
Awake, you paltry trulls of Helicon,
Or, by this light, I'll swagger with you straight:
You grandsire Phoebus, with your lovely eye,
The firmament's eternal vagabond,
The heaven's promoter, that doth peep and pry
Into the acts of mortal tennis-balls,
Inspire me straight with some rare delicies,[101]
Or I'll dismount thee from thy radiant coach,
And make thee poor[102] Cutchy here on earth.

PHANTASMA. Currus auriga paterni.

INGENIOSO. Nay, prythee, good Furor, do not rove in rhymes before thy time; thou hast a very terrible, roaring muse, nothing but squibs and fine jerks: quiet thyself a while, and hear thy charge.

PHANTASMA. Huc ades, haec animo concipe dicta tuo.

INGENIOSO. Let us on to our device, our plot, our project. That old Sir Raderic, that new printed compendium of all iniquity, that hath not aired his country chimney once in three winters; he that loves to live in an old corner here at London, and affect an old wench in a nook; one that loves to live in a narrow room, that he may with more facility in the dark light upon his wife's waiting-maid; one that loves alike a short sermon and a long play; one that goes to a play, to a whore, to his bed, in circle: good for nothing in the world but to sweat nightcaps and foul fair lawn shirts, feed a few foggy servingmen, and prefer dunces to livings—this old Sir Raderic, Furor, it shall be thy task to cudgel with thy thick, thwart terms; marry, at the first, give him some sugarcandy terms,[103] and then, if he will not untie purse-strings of his liberality, sting him with terms laid in aquafortis and gunpowder.

FUROR.
In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas.
The servile current of my sliding verse
Gentle shall run into his thick-skinn'd ears;
Where it shall dwell like a magnifico,
Command his slimy sprite to honour me
For my high, tiptoe, strutting poesy:
But if his stars hath favour'd him so ill,
As to debar him by his dunghill thoughts,
Justly to esteem my verses' lowting pitch,
If his earth-rooting snout shall 'gin to scorn
My verse that giveth immortality;
Then Bella per Emathios—

PHANTASMA. Furor arma ministrat.

FUROR.
I'll shake his heart upon my verses' point,
Rip out his guts with riving poniard,
Quarter his credit with a bloody quill.

PHANTASMA. Calami, atramentum, charta, libelli, Sunt semper studiis arma parata tuis.

INGENIOSO.
Enough, Furor, we know thou art a nimble swaggerer with a goose-quill.
Now for you, Phantasma: leave trussing your points, and listen.

PHANTASMA. Omne tulit punctum—

INGENIOSO. Mark you, Amoretto, Sir Raderic's son, to him shall thy piping poetry and sugar-ends of verses be directed: he is one that will draw out his pocket-glass thrice in a walk; one that dreams in a night of nothing but musk and civet, and talks of nothing all day long but his hawk, his hound, and his mistress; one that more admires the good wrinkle of a boot, the curious crinkling of a silk-stocking, than all the wit in the world; one that loves no scholar but him whose tired ears can endure half a day together his fly-blown sonnets of his mistress, and her loving, pretty creatures, her monkey and her puppy.[104] It shall be thy task, Phantasma, to cut this gull's throat with fair terms; and, if he hold fast for all thy juggling rhetoric, fall at defiance with him and the poking-stick he wears.

PHANTASMA. Simul extulit ensem.

INGENIOSO. Come, brave imps,[105] gather up your spirits, and let us march on, like adventurous knights, and discharge a hundred poetical spirits upon them.

PHANTASMA. Est deus in nobis: agitante calescimus illo.

[Exeunt.

ACTUS III., SCAENA 5.

Enter PHILOMUSUS, STUDIOSO.

STUDIOSO. Well, Philomusus, we never 'scaped so fair a scouring: why, yonder are pursuivants out for the French doctor, and a lodging bespoken for him and his man in Newgate. It was a terrible fear that made us cast our hair.

PHILOMUSUS.
And canst thou sport at our calamities,
And count'st us happy to 'scape prisonment?
Why, the wide world, that blesseth some with weal,[106]
Is to our chained thoughts a darksome jail.

STUDIOSO.
Nay, prythee, friend, these wonted terms forego;
He doubles grief, that comments on a woe.

PHILOMUSUS.
Why do fond men term it impiety
To send a wearisome, sad, grudging ghost
Unto his home, his long-long, lasting home?
Or let them make our life less grievous be,
Or suffer us to end our misery.

STUDIOSO.
O no; the sentinel his watch must keep,
Until his lord do licence him to sleep.

PHILOMUSUS.
It's time to sleep within our hollow graves,
And rest us in the darksome womb of earth:
Dead things are grav'd, our[107] bodies are no less
Pin'd and forlorn, like ghostly carcases.

STUDIOSO.
Not long this tap of loathed life can run;
Soon cometh death, and then our woe is done:
Meantime, good Philomusus, be content;
Let's spend our days in hopeful merriment.

PHILOMUSUS.
Curs'd be our thoughts, whene'er they dream of hope,
Bann'd be those haps, that henceforth flatter us,
When mischief dogs us still and still for ay,
From our first birth until our burying day:
In our first gamesome age, our doting sires
Carked and cared to have us lettered,
Sent us to Cambridge, where our oil is spent;
Us our kind college from the teat did tear,[108]
And forc'd us walk, before we weaned were.
From that time since wandered have we still
In the wide world, urg'd by our forced will,
Nor ever have we happy fortune tried;
Then why should hope with our rent state abide?
Nay, let us run unto the baseful cave,
Pight in the hollow ribs of craggy cliff,
Where dreary owls do shriek the live-long night,
Chasing away the birds of cheerful light;
Where yawning ghosts do howl in ghastly wise,
Where that dull, hollow-eyed, that staring sire,
Yclep'd Despair, hath his sad mansion:
Him let us find, and by his counsel we
Will end our too much irked misery.

STUDIOSO.
To wail thy haps, argues a dastard mind.

PHILOMUSUS.
To bear[109] too long, argues an ass's kind.

STUDIOSO.
Long since the worst chance of the die was cast.

PHILOMUSUS.
But why should that word worst so long time last?

STUDIOSO.
Why dost thou now these sleepy plaints commence?

PHILOMUSUS.
Why should I e'er be dull'd with patience?

STUDIOSO.
Wise folk do bear with, struggling cannot mend.

PHILOMUSUS.
Good spirits must with thwarting fates contend.

STUDIOSO.
Some hope is left our fortunes to redress.

PHILOMUSUS.
No hope but this—e'er to be comfortless.

STUDIOSO.
Our life's remainder gentler hearts may find.

PHILOMUSUS.
The gentlest hearts to us will prove unkind.