A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09

by Unknown

THE RETURN FROM PARNASSUS.

ACTUS I, SCAENA 1.

INGENIOSO, with Juvenal in his hand.

INGENIOSO.
Difficile est satyram non scribere. Nam quis iniquae
Tam patiens Urbis, tam ferreus,[32] ut teneat se?
Ay, Juvenal, thy jerking hand is good,
Not gently laying on, but fetching blood;
So, surgeon-like, thou dost with cutting heal,
Where nought but lancing[33] can the wound avail:
O, suffer me, among so many men,
To tread aright the traces of thy pen,
And light my link at thy eternal flame,
Till with it I brand everlasting shame
On the world's forehead, and with thine own spirit
Pay home the world according to his merit.
Thy purer soul could not endure to see
Ev'n smallest spots of base impurity,
Nor could small faults escape thy cleaner hands.
Then foul-fac'd vice was in his swaddling-bands,
Now, like Anteus, grown a monster is,
A match for none but mighty Hercules:
Now can the world practise in plainer guise
Both sins of old and new-born villanies:
Stale sins are stole; now doth the world begin
To take sole pleasure in a witty sin:
Unpleasant as[34] the lawless sin has been,
At midnight rest, when darkness covers sin;
It's clownish, unbeseeming a young knight,
Unless it dare outface the glaring light:
Nor can it nought our gallant's praises reap,
Unless it be done in staring Cheap,
In a sin-guilty coach, not closely pent,
Jogging along the harder pavement.
Did not fear check my repining sprite,
Soon should my angry ghost a story write;
In which I would new-foster'd sins combine,
Not known erst by truth-telling Aretine.

ACTUS I, SCAENA 2.

Enter JUDICIO and INGENIOSO.

JUDICIO. What, Ingenioso, carrying a vinegar bottle about thee, like a great schoolboy giving the world a bloody nose?[35]

INGENIOSO. Faith, Judicio, if I carry the vinegar bottle, it's great reason I should confer it upon the baldpated world: and again, if my kitchen want the utensils[36] of viands, it's great reason other men should have the sauce of vinegar; and for the bloody nose, Judicio, I may chance, indeed, give the world a bloody nose, but it shall hardly give me a crack'd crown, though it gives other poets French crowns.

JUDICIO. I would wish thee, Ingenioso, to sheathe thy pen, for thou canst not be successful in the fray, considering thy enemies have the advantage of the ground.

INGENIOSO. Or rather, Judicio, they have the grounds with advantage, and the French crowns with a pox; and I would they had them with a plague too: but hang them, swads, the basest corner in my thoughts is too gallant a room to lodge them in. But say, Judicio, what news in your press? did you keep any late corrections upon any tardy pamphlets?

JUDICIO. Veterem jubes renovare dolorem, Ingenioso: whate'er befalls thee, keep thee from the trade of the corrector of the press.

INGENIOSO. Marry, so I will, I warrant thee; if poverty press not too much, I'll correct no press but the press of the people.

JUDICIO. Would it not grieve any good spirits to sit a whole month knitting out a lousy, beggarly pamphlet, and, like a needy physician, to stand whole years tossing and tumbling the filth that falleth from so many draughty inventions as daily swarm in our printing-house.

INGENIOSO. Come, I think we shall have you put finger in the eye, and cry, O friends, no friends! Say, man, what new paper hobby-horses, what rattle-babies, are come out in your late May morris-dance?

JUDICIO. Fly[37] my rhymes as thick as flies in the sun; I think there be never an alehouse in England, not any so base a maypole on a country green, but sets forth some poet's petronels or demi-lances to the paper wars in Paul's Churchyard.

INGENIOSO. And well too may the issue of a strong hop learn to hop all over England, when as better wits sit, like lame cobblers, in their studies. Such barmy heads will always be working, when as sad vinegar wits sit souring at the bottom of a barrel; plain meteors, bred of the exhalation of tobacco and the vapours of a moist pot, that soar[38] up into the open air, when as sounder wit keeps below.

JUDICIO. Considering the furies of the times, I could better endure to see those young can-quaffing hucksters shoot off their pellets, so they would keep them from these English Flores poetarum; but now the world is come to that pass, that there starts up every day an old goose that sits hatching up those eggs which have been filched from the nest of crows and kestrels. Here is a book, Ingenioso; why, to condemn it to clear [fire,][39] the usual Tyburn of all misliving papers, were too fair a death for so foul an offender.

INGENIOSO.
What's the name of it, I pray thee, Judicio?

JUDICIO.
Look, it's here; "Belvidere."[40]

INGENIOSO. What, a bell-wether in Paul's Churchyard! so called because it keeps a bleating, or because it hath the tinkling bell of so many poets about the neck of it? What is the rest of the title?

JUDICIO. "The Garden of the Muses."

INGENIOSO. What have we here, the poet garish, gaily bedecked, like fore-horses of the parish? What follows?

JUDICIO. Quem, referent musae, vivet, dum robora tellus, Dum coelum stellas, dum vehit amnis aquas. Who blurs fair paper with foul bastard rhymes, Shall live full many an age in latter times: Who makes a ballad for an alehouse door, Shall live in future times for evermore: Then ( )[41] thy muse shall live so long, As drafty ballads to thy praise are sung. But what's his device? Parnassus with the sun and the laurel?[42] I wonder this owl dares look on the sun; and I marvel this goose flies not the laurel: his device might have been better, a fool going into the market-place to be seen, with this motto: Scribimus indocti; or, a poor beggar gleaning of ears in the end of harvest, with this word: Sua cuique gloria.

JUDICIO. Turn over the leaf, Ingenioso, and thou shalt see the pains of this worthy gentleman: Sentences, gathered out of all kind of poets, referred to certain methodical heads, profitable for the use of these times, to rhyme upon any occasion at a little warning. Read the names.

INGENIOSO.
So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them.

Edmund Spenser. Thomas Watson.
Henry Constable. Michael Drayton.
Thomas Lodge. John Davis.
Samuel Daniel. John Marston.
Kit Marlowe.

Good men and true; stand together; hear your censure. What's thy judgment of Spenser?

JUDICIO.
A sweeter[43] swan than ever sung in Po,
A shriller nightingale than ever bless'd
The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome.
Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud,
While he did chant his rural minstrelsy:
Attentive was full many a dainty ear,
Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue,
While sweetly of his Fairy Queen he sung;
While to the waters' fall he tun'd for fame,
And in each bark engrav'd Eliza's name:
And yet for all this unregarding soil
Unlac'd the line of his desired life,
Denying maintenance for his dear relief;
Careless care to prevent his exequy,
Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye.

INGENIOSO.
Pity it is that gentler wits should breed,
Where thickskin chuffs laugh at a scholar's need.
But softly may our honour's ashes rest,
That lie by merry Chaucer's noble chest.
But, I pray thee, proceed briefly in thy censure, that I may be proud
of myself; as in the first, so in the last, my censure may jump with
thine.—Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel,[44] Thomas Lodge, Thomas Watson.

JUDICIO.
Sweet Constable[45] doth take the wond'ring ear,
And lays it up in willing prisonment:
Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage
War with the proudest big Italian,
That melts his heart in sugar'd sonneting;
Only let him more sparingly make use
Of others' wit, and use his own the more,
That well may scorn base imitation.
For Lodge[46] and Watson,[47] men of some desert,
Yet subject to a critic's marginal;
Lodge for his oar in ev'ry paper boat,
He, that turns over Galen ev'ry day,
To sit and simper Euphues' Legacy.[48]

INGENIOSO.
Michael Drayton?

JUDICIO.
Drayton's sweet muse is like a sanguine dye,
Able to ravish the rash gazer's eye.

INGENIOSO. However, he wants one true note of a poet of our times, and that is this: he cannot swagger it well in a tavern, nor domineer in a hothouse. John Davis?[49]

JUDICIO.
Acute John Davis, I affect thy rhymes,
That jerk in hidden charms these looser times;
Thy plainer verse, thy unaffected vein,
Is graced with a fair and sweeping[50] train.

INGENIOSO.
Lock and Hudson?[51]

JUDICIO. Lock and Hudson, sleep, you quiet shavers, among the shavings of the press, and let your books lie in some old nooks amongst old boots and shoes; so you may avoid my censure.

INGENIOSO. Why, then, clap a lock on their feet, and turn them to commons. John Marston?[52]

JUDICIO.
What, Monsieur Kinsayder, lifting up your leg, and pissing against the
world? put up, man, put up, for shame!
Methinks he is a ruffian in his style,
Withouten bands or garters' ornament:
He quaffs a cup of Frenchman's Helicon;
Then roister doister in his oily terms,
Cuts, thrusts, and foins, at whomsoever he meets,
And strews about Ram-Alley meditations.
Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch'd terms,
Cleanly to gird our looser libertines?
Give him plain naked words, stripp'd from their shirts,
That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine.
Ay, there is one, that backs a paper steed,
And manageth a penknife gallantly,
Strikes his poinardo at a button's breadth,
Brings the great battering-ram of terms to towns;
And, at first volley of his cannon-shot,
Batters the walls of the old fusty world.

INGENIOSO.
Christopher Marlowe?

JUDICIO.
Marlowe was happy in his buskin'd muse;
Alas! unhappy in his life and end:
Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell
Wit lent from heav'n, but vices sent from hell.[53]

INGENIOSO.
Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got,
A tragic penman for a dreary plot.
Benjamin Jonson?

JUDICIO.
The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England.

INGENIOSO. A mere empiric, one that gets what he hath by observation, and makes only nature privy to what he indites; so slow an inventor, that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying; a bold whoreson, as confident now in making of[54] a book, as he was in times past in laying of a brick. William Shakespeare?

JUDICIO.
Who loves Adonis' love or Lucrece' rape,
His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life,
Could but a graver subject him content,
Without love's foolish, lazy[55] languishment.

INGENIOSO.
Churchyard?[56]
Hath not Shore's wife, although a light-skirts she,
Giv'n him a chaste, long-lasting memory?

JUDICIO.
No; all light pamphlets once I finden shall,
A Churchyard and a grave to bury all!
Thomas Nash.[57]

INGENIOSO. Ay, here is a fellow, Judicio, that carried the deadly stock[58] in his pen, whose muse was armed with a gag-tooth,[59] and his pen possessed with Hercules' furies.

JUDICIO.
Let all his faults sleep with his mournful chest,
And then for ever with his ashes rest:
His style was witty, though he had some gall,
Something he might have mended; so may all:
Yet this I say that, for a mother-wit,
Few men have ever seen the like of it.

INGENIOSO reads the rest of the names.

JUDICIO. As for these, they have some of them been the old hedge-stakes of the press; and some of them are, at this instant, the bots and glanders of the printing-house: fellows that stand only upon terms to serve the term,[60] with their blotted papers, write, as men go to stool, for needs; and when they write, they write as a bear pisses, now and then drop a pamphlet.

INGENIOSO. Durum telum necessitas. Good faith, they do, as I do—exchange words for money. I have some traffic this day with Danter[61] about a little book which I have made; the name of it is, A Catalogue of Cambridge Cuckolds. But this Belvidere, this methodical ass, hath made me almost forget my time; I'll now to Paul's Churchyard; meet me an hour hence at the sign of the Pegasus in Cheapside, and I'll moist thy temples with a cup of claret, as hard as the world goes.

[Exit JUDICIO.

ACTUS I., SCAENA 3.

Enter DANTER the Printer.

INGENIOSO. Danter, thou art deceived, wit is dearer than thou takest it to be: I tell thee, this libel of Cambridge has much fat and pepper in the nose; it will sell sheerly underhand, when all these books of exhortations and catechisms lie moulding on thy shopboard.

DANTER. It's true: but, good faith, Master Ingenioso, I lost by your last book; and, you know, there is many a one that pays me largely for the printing of their inventions: but, for all this, you shall have forty shillings and an odd bottle of wine.

INGENIOSO. Forty shillings! a fit reward for one of your rheumatic poets, that beslavers all the paper he comes by, and furnishes all the chandlers with waste-papers to wrap candles in; but as for me, I'll be paid dear even for the dregs of my wit: little knows the world what belongs to the keeping of a good wit in waters, diets, drinks, tobacco, &c. It is a dainty and a costly creature; and therefore I must be paid sweetly. Furnish me with money, that I may put myself in a new suit of clothes, and I'll suit thy shop with a new suit of terms. It's the gallantest child my invention was ever delivered of: the title is, A Chronicle of Cambridge Cuckolds. Here a man may see what day of the month such a man's commons were enclosed, and when thrown open; and when any entailed some odd crowns upon the heirs of their bodies unlawfully begotten. Speak quickly: else I am gone.

DANTER. O, this will sell gallantly; I'll have it, whatsoever it cost: will you walk on, Master Ingenioso? We'll sit over a cup of wine, and agree on it.

INGENIOSO.
A cup of wine is as good a constable as can be to take up the quarrel
betwixt us.
[Exeunt.

ACTUS I., SCAENA 4.

PHILOMUSUS in a physician's habit: STUDIOSO,
that is, JAQUES man, and PATIENT.

PHILOMUSUS.
Tit, tit, tit, non point;[62] non debet fieri phlebotomia in coitu Lunae.
Here is a recipe.

PATIENT.
A recipe?

PHILOMUSUS.
Nos Galliâ non curamus quantitatem syllabarum: let me hear how many
stools you do make. Adieu, monsieur: adieu, good monsieur.—What,
Jaques, il n'y a personne apres ici?

STUDIOSO.
Non.

PHILOMUSUS.
Then let us steal time for this borrowed shape,
Recounting our unequal haps of late:
Late did the ocean grasp us in his arms;
Late did we live within a stranger air,
Late did we see the cinders of great Rome:
We thought that English fugitives there ate
Gold for restorative, if gold were meat.
Yet now we find by bought experience
That, wheresoe'er we wander up and down
On the round shoulders of this massy world,
Or our ill-fortunes or the world's ill-eye
Forespeak our good, procure[63] our misery.

STUDIOSO.
So oft the northern wind with frozen wings
Hath beat the flowers that in our garden grew,
Thrown down the stalks of our aspiring youth;
So oft hath winter nipp'd our trees' fair rind,
That now we seem nought but two bared boughs,
Scorn'd by the basest bird that chirps in grove.
Nor Rome, nor Rhemes, that wonted are to give
A cardinal cap to discontented clerks,
That have forsook the home-bred, thatched[64] roofs,
Yielded us any equal maintenance:
And it's as good to starve 'mongst English swine,
As in a foreign land to beg and pine.

PHILOMUSUS.
I'll scorn the world, that scorneth me again.

STUDIOSO.
I'll vex the world, that works me so much pain.

PHILOMUSUS.
Thy[65] lame revenging power the world well weens.

STUDIOSO.
Flies have their spleen, each silly ant his teens.

PHILOMUSUS.
We have the words, they the possession have.

STUDIOSO.
We all are equal in our latest grave.

PHILOMUSUS.
Soon then, O, soon may we both graved be.

STUDIOSO.
Who wishes death doth wrong wise destiny.

PHILOMUSUS.
It's wrong to force life-loathing men to breathe.

STUDIOSO.
It's sin 'fore doomed day to wish thy death.

PHILOMUSUS.
Too late our souls flit to their resting-place.

STUDIOSO.
Why, man's whole life is but a breathing space.

PHILOMUSUS.
A painful minute seems a tedious year.

STUDIOSO.
A constant mind eternal woes will bear.

PHILOMUSUS.
When shall our souls their wearied lodge forego?

STUDIOSO.
When we have tired misery and woe.

PHILOMUSUS. Soon may then fates this gaol[66]-deliver send us: Small woes vex long, [but] great woes quickly end us. But let's leave this capping of rhymes, Studioso, and follow our late device, that we may maintain our heads in caps, our bellies in provender, and our backs in saddle and bridle. Hitherto we have sought all the honest means we could to live, and now let us dare aliqua brevibus gyris[67] et carcere dignum; let us run through all the lewd forms of lime-twig, purloining villanies; let us prove coneycatchers, bawds, or anything, so we may rub out. And first my plot for playing the French doctor—that shall hold; our lodging stands here fitly[68] in Shoe Lane: for, if our comings-in be not the better, London may shortly throw an old shoe after us; and with those shreds of French that we gathered up in our host's house in Paris, we'll gull the world, that hath in estimation foreign physicians: and if any of the hidebound brethren of Cambridge and Oxford, or any of those stigmatic masters of art that abused us in times pass'd, leave their own physicians, and become our patients, we'll alter quite the style of them; for they shall never hereafter write, Your lordship's most bounden, but, Your lordship's most laxative.

STUDIOSO. It shall be so: see what a little vermin poverty altereth a whole milky disposition.

PHILOMUSUS.
So then myself straight with revenge I'll sate.[69]

STUDIOSO.
Provoked patience grows intemperate.