A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09

by Unknown

ACTUS IV., SCAENA 1.

SIR RADERIC and PRODIGO at one corner of the stage; RECORDER and AMORETTO at the other: two PAGES scouring of tobacco-pipes.

SIR RADERIC. Master Prodigo, Master Recorder hath told you law—your land is forfeited; and for me not to take the forfeiture were to break the Queen's law. For mark you, it's law to take the forfeiture; therefore not to take[110] it is to break the Queen's law; and to break the Queen's law is not to be a good subject, and I mean to be a good subject. Besides, I am a justice of the peace; and, being justice of the peace, I must do justice—that is, law—that is, to take the forfeiture, especially having taken notice of it. Marry, Master Prodigo, here are a few shillings over and besides the bargain.

PRODIGO. Pox on your shillings! 'Sblood, a while ago, before he had me in the lurch, who but my cousin Prodigo? You are welcome, my cousin Prodigo. Take my cousin Prodigo's horse. A cup of wine for my cousin Prodigo. Good faith, you shall sit here, good cousin Prodigo. A clean trencher for my cousin Prodigo. Have a special care of my cousin Prodigo's lodging. Now, Master Prodigo with a pox, and a few shillings for a vantage. A plague on your shillings! Pox on your shillings! If it were not for the sergeant, which dogs me at my heels, a plague on your shillings! pox on your shillings! pox on yourself and your shillings! pox on your worship! If I catch thee at Ostend—I dare not stay for the sergeant. [Exit.

SIR RADERIC'S PAGE.
Good faith, Master Prodigo is an excellent fellow. He takes the Gulan
Ebullitio so excellently.

AMORETTO'S PAGE. He is a good liberal gentleman: he hath bestowed an ounce of tobacco upon us; and, as long as it lasts, come cut and long tail, we'll spend it as liberally for his sake.

SIR RADERIC'S PAGE. Come, fill the pipe quickly, while my master is in his melancholy humour; it's just the melancholy of a collier's horse.

AMORETTO'S PAGE. If you cough, Jack, after your tobacco, for a punishment you shall kiss the pantofle.

SIR RADERIC. It's a foul oversight, that a man of worship cannot keep a wench in his house, but there must be muttering and surmising. It was the wisest saying that my father ever uttered, that a wife was the name of necessity, not of pleasure; for what do men marry for, but to stock their ground, and to have one to look to the linen, sit at the upper end of the table, and carve up a capon; one that can wear a hood like a hawk, and cover her foul face with a fan. But there's no pleasure always to be tied to a piece of mutton; sometimes a mess of stewed broth will do well, and an unlaced rabbit is best of all. Well, for mine own part, I have no great cause to complain, for I am well-provided of three bouncing wenches, that are mine own fee-simple; one of them I am presently to visit, if I can rid myself cleanly of this company. Let me see how the day goes [he pulls his watch out]. Precious coals! the time is at hand; I must meditate on an excuse to be gone.

RECORDER. The which, I say, is grounded on the statute I spake of before, enacted in the reign of Henry VI.

AMORETTO. It is a plain case, whereon I mooted[111] in our Temple, and that was this: put case, there be three brethren, John a Nokes, John a Nash, and John a Stile. John a Nokes the elder, John a Nash the younger, and John a Stile the youngest of all. John a Nash the younger dieth without issue of his body lawfully begotten. Whether shall his lands ascend to John a Nokes the elder, or descend to John a Stile the youngest of all? The answer is, the lands do collaterally descend, not ascend.

RECORDER. Very true; and for a proof hereof I will show you a place in Littleton which is very pregnant in this point.

ACTUS IV., SCAENA 2.

Enter INGENIOSO, FUROR, PHANTASMA.

INGENIOSO. I'll pawn my wits, that is, my revenues, my land, my money, and whatsoever I have, for I have nothing but my wit, that they are at hand. Why, any sensible snout may wind Master Amoretto and his pomander, Master Recorder and his two neat's feet that wear no socks, Sir Raderic by his rammish complexion; Olet Gorgonius hircum, sicut Lupus in fabula. Furor, fire the touch-box of your wit: Phantasma, let your invention play tricks like an ape: begin thou, Furor, and open like a flap-mouthed hound: follow thou, Phantasma, like a lady's puppy: and as for me, let me alone; I'll come after, like a water-dog, that will shake them off when I have no use of them. My masters, the watchword is given. Furor, discharge.

FUROR to SIR RADERIC.
The great projector of the thunderbolts,
He that is wont to piss whole clouds of rain
Into the earth, vast gaping urinal,
Which that one-ey'd subsizer of the sky,
Dan Phoebus, empties by calidity;
He and his townsmen planets brings to thee
Most fatty lumps of earth's fecundity.[112]

SIR RADERIC.
Why, will this fellow's English break the Queen's peace?
I will not seem to regard him.

PHANTASMA to AMORETTO. [Reads from a Horace, addressing himself.] Mecaenas, atavis edite regibus, O, et praesidium et dulce decus meum, Dii faciant votis vela secunda tuis.

INGENIOSO.
God save you, good Master Recorder, and good fortunes follow your
deserts.
I think I have cursed him sufficiently in few words. [Aside.

SIR RADERIC.
What have we here? three begging soldiers?
Come you from Ostend or from Ireland?

PAGE. Cujum pecus? an Melibaei? I have vented all the Latin one man had.

PHANTASMA. Quid dicam amplius? domini similis os.

AMORETTO'S PAGE.
Let him [not] alone, I pray thee. To him again: tickle him there!

PHANTASMA. Quam dispari domino dominaris?

RECORDER. Nay, that's plain in Littleton; for if that fee-simple and fee-tail be put together, it is called hotch-potch. Now, this word hotch-potch in English is a pudding; for in such a pudding is not commonly one thing only, but one thing with another.

AMORETTO. I think I do remember this also at a mooting in our Temple. So then this hotch-potch seems a term of similitude?

FUROR to SIR RADERIC.
Great Capricornus, of thy head take keep:
Good Virgo, watch, while that thy worship sleep;
And when thy swelling vents amain,
Then Pisces be thy sporting chamberlain.

SIR RADERIC.
I think the devil hath sent some of his family to torment me.

AMORETTO. There is tail-general and tail-special, and Littleton is very copious in that theme; for tail-general is when lands are given to a man and his heirs of his body begotten; tail-special is when lands are given to a man and to his wife, and to the heirs of their two bodies lawfully begotten; and that is called tail-special.

SIR RADERIC. Very well; and for his oath I will give a distinction. There is a material oath and a formal oath; the formal oath may be broken, the material may not be broken: for mark you, sir, the law is to take place before the conscience, and therefore you may, using me your councillor, cast him in the suit. There wants nothing to be full meaning of this place.

PHANTASMA. Nihil hic nisi carmina desunt.

INGENIOSO. An excellent observation, in good faith. See how the old fox teacheth the young cub to worry a sheep; or rather sits himself, like an old goose, hatching the addle brain of Master Amoretto. There is no fool to the satin fool, the velvet fool, the perfumed fool; and therefore the witty tailors of this age put them under colour of kindness into a pair of cloth bags, where a voider will not serve the turn. And there is no knave to the barbarous knave, the moulting knave, the pleading knave.—What, ho! Master Recorder? Master Noverint universi per presentes,—not a word he, unless he feels it in his fist.

PHANTASMA. Mitto tibi merulas, cancros imitare legendo.

SIR RADERIC to FUROR.
Fellow, what art thou, that art so bold?

FUROR.
I am the bastard of great Mercury,
Got on Thalia when she was asleep:
My gaudy grandsire, great Apollo hight,[113]
Born was, I hear, but that my luck was ill,
To all the land upon the forked hill.

PHANTASMA. O crudelis Alexi, nil mea carmina curas? Nil nostri miserere? mori me denique coges?

SIR RADERIC to PAGE. If you use them thus, my master is a justice of peace, and will send you all to the gallows.

PHANTASMA. Hei mihi, quod domino non licet ire tuo?[114]

INGENIOSO.
Good Master Recorder, let me retain you this term—for my cause, good
Master Recorder.

RECORDER. I am retained already on the contrary part. I have taken my fee; begone, begone.

INGENIOSO. It's his meaning I should come off.[115] Why, here is the true style of a villain, the true faith of a lawyer; it is usual with them to be bribed on the one side, and then to take a fee of the other; to plead weakly, and to be bribed and rebribed on the one side, then to be fee'd and refee'd of the other; till at length, per varios casus, by putting the case so often, they make their clients so lank, that they may case them up in a comb-case, and pack them home from the term, as though they had travelled to London to sell their horse only; and, having lost their fleeces, live afterward like poor shorn sheep.

FUROR.
The gods above, that know great Furor's fame,
And do adore grand poet Furor's name,
Granted long since at heaven's high parliament,
That whoso Furor shall immortalise,
No yawning goblins shall frequent his grave;
Nor any bold, presumptuous cur shall dare
To lift his leg against his sacred dust.
Where'er I have my rhymes, thence vermin fly,
All, saving that foul-fac'd vermin poverty.
This sucks the eggs of my invention,
Evacuates my wit's full pigeon-house.
Now may it please thy generous dignity
To take this vermin napping, as he lies
In the true trap of liberality,
I'll cause the Pleiades to give thee thanks;
I'll write thy name within the sixteenth sphere:
I'll make th'Antarctic pole to kiss thy toe.
And Cynthia to do homage to thy tail.

SIR RADERIC. Precious coals! thou a man of worship and justice too? It's even so, he is either a madman or a conjuror. It were well if his words were examined, to see if they be the Queen's or no.

PHANTASMA. Nunc si nos audis, tu qui es divinus Apollo, Dic mihi, qui nummos non habet, unde petat?

AMORETTO.
I am still haunted with these needy Latinist fellows.—The best counsel
I can give is, to be gone.

PHANTASMA. Quod peto da, Caie; non peto consilium.

AMORETTO.
Fellow, look to your brains; you are mad, you are mad.

PHANTASMA. Semel insanivimus omnes.

AMORETTO. Master Recorder, is it not a shame that a gallant cannot walk the street quietly for needy fellows, and that, after there is a statute come out against begging? [He strikes his breast.

PHANTASMA. Pectora percussit, pectus quoque robora fiunt.

RECORDER. I warrant you, they are some needy graduates; the university breaks wind twice a year, and let's fly such as these are.

INGENIOSO. So ho, Master Recorder. You that are one of the devil's fellow-commoners; one that sizeth the devil's butteries, sins, and perjuries very lavishly; one that are so dear to Lucifer, that he never puts you out of commons for nonpayment; you that live, like a sumner, upon the sins of the people; you whose vocation serves to enlarge the territories of hell that, but for you, had been no bigger than a pair of stocks or a pillory; you, that hate a scholar because he descries your ass's ears; you that are a plague-stuffed cloak-bag of all iniquity, which the grand serving-man of hell will one day truss up behind him, and carry to his smoky wardrobe.

RECORDER. What frantic fellow art thou, that art possessed with the spirit of malediction?

FUROR.
Vile, muddy clod of base, unhallowed clay,
Thou slimy-sprighted, unkind Saracen,
When thou wert born, Dame Nature cast her calf;
For age and time hath made thee a great ox,
And now thy grinding jaws devour quite
The fodder due to us of heavenly spright.

PHANTASMA.
Nefasto te posuit die,
Quicunque primum, et sacrilegâ manu
Produxit arbos in nepotum
Perniciem obpropriumque pugi.

INGENIOSO. I pray you, Monsieur Ploidon, of what university was the first lawyer of? None, forsooth: for your law is ruled by reason, and not by art; great reason, indeed, that a Polydenist should be mounted on a trapped palfry with a round velvet dish on his head, to keep warm the broth of his wit, and a long gown that makes him look like a Cedant arma togae, whilst the poor Aristotelians walk in a short cloak and a close Venetian hose, hard by the oyster-wife; and the silly poet goes muffled in his cloak to escape the counter. And you, Master Amoretto, that art the chief carpenter of sonnets, a privileged vicar for the lawless marriage of ink and paper, you that are good for nothing but to commend in a set speech, to colour the quantity of your mistress's stool, and swear it is most sweet civet; it's fine, when that puppet-player Fortune must put such a Birchen-Lane post in so good a suit, such an ass in so good fortune!

AMORETTO.
Father, shall I draw?

SIR RADERIC.
No, son; keep thy peace, and hold the peace.

INGENIOSO.
Nay, do not draw, lest you chance to bepiss your credit.

FUROR.
Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo.
Fearful Megaera, with her snaky twine,
Was cursed dam unto thy damned self;
And Hircan tigers in the desert rocks
Did foster up thy loathed, hateful life;
Base Ignorance the wicked cradle rock'd,
Vile Barbarism was wont to dandle thee;
Some wicked hellhound tutored thy youth.
And all the grisly sprights of griping hell
With mumming look hath dogg'd thee since thy birth:
See how the spirits do hover o'er thy head,
As thick as gnats in summer eveningtide.
Baleful Alecto, prythee, stay awhile,
Till with my verses I have rack'd his soul;
And when thy soul departs, a cock may be
No blank at all in hell's great lottery—
Shame sits and howls upon thy loathed grave,
And howling, vomits up in filthy guise
The hidden stories of thy villanies.

SIR RADERIC. The devil, my masters, the devil in the likeness of a poet! Away, my masters, away!

PHANTASMA. Arma, virumque cano. Quem fugis, ah demens?

AMORETTO. Base dog, it is not the custom in Italy to draw upon every idle cur that barks; and, did it stand with my reputation—O, well, go to; thank my father for your lives.

INGENIOSO. Fond gull, whom I would undertake to bastinado quickly, though there were a musket planted in thy mouth, are not you the young drover of livings Academico told me of, that haunts steeple fairs? Base worm, must thou needs discharge thy carbine[116] to batter down the walls of learning?

AMORETTO. I think I have committed some great sin against my mistress, that I am thus tormented with notable villains, bold peasants. I scorn, I scorn them! [Exit.

FUROR to RECORDER.
Nay, prythee, good sweet devil, do not thou part;
I like an honest devil, that will show
Himself in a true hellish, smoky hue:
How like thy snout is to great Lucifer's?
Such talents[117] had he, such a gleering eye,
And such a cunning sleight in villany.

RECORDER. O, the impudency of this age! And if I take you in my quarters— [Exit.

FUROR.
Base slave, I'll hang thee on a crossed rhyme,
And quarter—

INGENIOSO.
He is gone; Furor, stay thy fury.

SIR RADERIC'S PAGE.
I pray you, gentlemen, give three groats for a shilling.

AMORETTO'S PAGE.
What will you give me for a good old suit of apparel?

PHANTASMA. Habet et musca splenem, et formicae sua bilis inest.

INGENIOSO. Gramercy,[118] good lads. This is our share in happiness, to torment the happy. Let's walk along and laugh at the jest; it's no staying here long, lest Sir Raderic's army of bailiffs and clowns be sent to apprehend us.

PHANTASMA.
Procul hinc, procul ite, profani.
I'll lash Apollo's self with jerking hand,
Unless he pawn his wit to buy me land.

ACTUS IV., SCAENA 3.

BURBAGE, KEMP.

BURBAGE. Now, Will Kemp, if we can entertain these scholars at a low rate, it will be well; they have oftentimes a good conceit in a part.

KEMP. It's true, indeed, honest Dick, but the slaves are somewhat proud; and besides, it's a good sport in a part to see them never speak in their walk, but at the end of the stage; just as though, in walking with a fellow, we should never speak but at a stile, a gate, or a ditch, where a man can go no further. I was once at a comedy in Cambridge, and there I saw a parasite make faces and mouths of all sorts on this fashion.

BURBAGE. A little teaching will mend these faults; and it may be, besides, they will be able to pen a part.

KEMP.
Few of the university pen play well; they smell too much of that writer
Ovid and that writer Metamorphosis, and talk too much of Proserpina and
Jupiter. Why, here's our fellow Shakespeare puts them all down—ay, and
Ben Jonson too. O, that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow; he brought up
Horace, giving the poets a pill;[119] but our fellow Shakespeare hath
given him a purge that made him bewray his credit.

BURBAGE. It's a shrewd fellow, indeed. I wonder these scholars stay so long; they appointed to be here presently, that we might try them. O, here they come.

STUDIOSO.
Take heart, these lets our clouded thoughts refine;
The sun shines brightest when it 'gins decline.

BURBAGE.
Master Philomusus and Master Studioso, God save you.

KEMP.
Master Philomusus and Master Otioso,[120] well-met.

PHILOMUSUS.
The same to you, good Master Burbage. What, Master Kemp, how doth the
Emperor of Germany?[121]

STUDIOSO. God save you, Master Kemp; welcome, Master Kemp, from dancing the morris over the Alps.

KEMP. Well, you merry knaves, you may come to the honour of it one day. Is it not better to make a fool of the world as I have done, than to be fooled of the world, as you scholars are? But be merry, my lads; you have happened upon the most excellent vocation in the world for money. They come north and south to bring it to our playhouse; and for honours, who of more report than Dick Burbage and Will Kemp? He is not counted a gentleman that knows not Dick Burbage and Will Kemp. There's not a country wench that can dance Sellenger's round,[122] but can talk of Dick Burbage and Will Kemp.

PHILOMUSUS. Indeed, Master Kemp, you are very famous; but that is as well for works in print, as your part in cue.[123]

KEMP.
You are at Cambridge still with size cue, and be lusty humorous poets.
You must untruss; I rode this my last circuit purposely, because I would
be judge of your actions.

BURBAGE. Master Studioso, I pray you, take some part in this book, and act it, that I may see what will fit you best. I think your voice would serve for Hieronimo; observe how I act it, and then imitate me. [He recites.

STUDIOSO.
Who call Hieronimo from his naked bed?
And_, &c.[124]

BURBAGE.
You will do well—after a while.

KEMP.

Now for you. Methinks you should belong to my tuition; and your face, methinks, would be good for a foolish mayor or a foolish justice of peace. Mark me:—

Forasmuch as there be two states of a commonwealth, the one of peace, the other of tranquillity; two states of war, the one of discord, the other of dissension; two states of an incorporation, the one of the aldermen, the other of the brethren; two states of magistrates, the one of governing, the other of bearing rule. Now, as I said even now—for a good thing[125] cannot be said too often. Virtue is the shoeing-horn of justice; that is, virtue is the shoeing-horn of doing well; that is, virtue is the shoeing-horn of doing justly; it behoveth me, and is my part to commend this shoeing-horn unto you. I hope this word shoeing-horn doth not offend any of you, my worshipful brethren; for you, being the worshipful headsmen of the town, know well what the horn meaneth. Now therefore I am determined not only to teach, but also to instruct, not only the ignorant, but also the simple; not only what is their duty towards their betters, but also what is their duty towards their superiors.

Come, let me see how you can do; sit down in the chair.

PHILOMUSUS.
Forasmuch as there be, &c.

KEMP. Thou wilt do well in time, if thou wilt be ruled by thy betters, that is, by myself, and such grave aldermen of the playhouse as I am.

BURBAGE.
I like your face, and the proportion of your body for Richard the Third.
I pray, Master Philomusus, let me see you act a little of it.

PHILOMUSUS. Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by the sun of York.

BURBAGE. Very well, I assure you. Well, Master Philomusus and Master Studioso, we see what ability you are of; I pray, walk with us to our fellows, and we'll agree presently.

PHILOMUSUS.
We will follow you straight, Master Burbage.

KEMP.
It's good manners to follow us, Master Philomusus and Master Otioso.

PHILOMUSUS.
And must the basest trade yield us relief?
Must we be practis'd to those leaden spouts,
That nought down vent but what they do receive?
Some fatal fire hath scorch'd our fortune's wing,
And still we fall, as we do upward spring?
As we strive upward on the vaulted sky,
We fall, and feel our hateful destiny.

STUDIOSO.
Wonder it is, sweet friend, thy pleading breath,
So like the sweet blast of the south-west wind,
Melts not those rocks of ice, those mounts of snow,[126]
Congeal'd in frozen hearts of men below.

PHILOMUSUS.
Wonder, as well thou may'st, why 'mongst the waves—
'Mongst the tempestuous waves on raging sea,
The wailing merchant can no pity crave.
What cares the wind and weather for their pains?
One strikes the sail, another turns the same;
He shakes the main, another takes the oar,
Another laboureth and taketh pain
To pump the sea into the sea again:
Still they take pains, still the loud winds do blow,
Till the ship's prouder mast be laid below.

STUDIOSO.
Fond world, that ne'er think'st on that aged man—
That Ariosto's old swift-paced man,
Whose name is Time, who never lins to run,
Loaden with bundles of decayed names,
The which in Lethe's lake he doth entomb,
Save only those which swan-like scholars take,
And do deliver from that greedy lake.
Inglorious may they live, inglorious die,
That suffer learning live in misery.

PHILOMUSUS.
What caren they what fame their ashes have,
When once they're coop'd up in the silent grave?

STUDIOSO.
If for fair fame they hope not when they die.
Yet let them fear grave's staining infamy.

PHILOMUSUS.
Their spendthrift heirs will those firebrands quench,
Swaggering full moistly on a tavern's bench.

STUDIOSO.
No shamed sire, for all his glosing heir,
Must long be talk'd of in the empty air.
Believe me, thou that art my second self,
My vexed soul is not disquieted,
For that I miss is gaudy-painted state,
Whereat my fortunes fairly aim'd of late:
For what am I, the mean'st of many mo,
That, earning profit, are repaid with woe.
But this it is that doth my soul torment:
To think so many activable wits,
That might contend with proudest bards[127] of Po,
Sit now immur'd within their private cells,
Drinking a long lank watching candle's smoke,
Spending the marrow of their flow'ring age
In fruitless poring on some worm-eat leaf:
When their deserts shall seem of due to claim
A cheerful crop of fruitful swelling sheaf;
Cockle their harvest is, and weeds their grain,
Contempt their portion, their possession, pain.
Scholars must frame to live at a low sail.

PHILOMUSUS.
Ill-sailing, where there blows no happy gale!

STUDIOSO.
Our ship is ruin'd, all her tackling rent.

PHILOMUSUS.
And all her gaudy furniture is spent.

STUDIOSO.
Tears be the waves whereon her ruins bide.

PHILOMUSUS.
And sighs the winds that waste her broken side.

STUDIOSO.
Mischief the pilot is the ship to steer.

PHILOMUSUS.
And woe the passenger this ship doth bear.

STUDIOSO.
Come, Philomusus, let us break this chat.

PHILOMUSUS.
And break, my heart! O, would I could break that!

STUDIOSO.
Let's learn to act that tragic part we have.

PHILOMUSUS.
Would I were silent actor in my grave!