LADY ALIMONY.
ACT I., SCENE 1.
Enter Trillo.
Tril. Hey, boys! never did my spirit chirp more cheerfully since I had one. Here is work for Platonics. Never did ladies, brave buxom girls, dispense at easier rates with their forfeited honours. This were an excellent age for that Roman Carvilius to live in, who never loved any sheets worser than those his wife lay in, nor his wife any lodging worse than where her decrepit consort slept in. Divorces are now as common as scolding at Billingsgate. O Alimony, Alimony! a darling incomparably dearer than a sear-icy bed, possessed of the spirit of a dull, inactive husband! A fresh flowery spring and a chill frosty winter never suit well together. He were a rare justice, in these times of separation, who had the ceremonial art to join hearts together as well as hands; but that chemical cement is above the alchemy of his office or verge of his ministerial charge. Heyday! who comes here? The very professed smock-satyr or woman-hater in all Europe; one who, had he lived in that state, or under that zone, might have compared with any Swetnam[105] in all the Albion Island.
SCENE II.
Enter Timon, Siparius, and a Page.
But, sure, he has some high design in hand; he pores so fixedly upon the ground, as on my life he has some swingeing stuff for our fresh Dabrides, who have invested themselves in the Platonic order, and retain courage enough to make an exchange of their old consorts with their new confidants and amorous pretenders. Let us hear him; he mumbles so strangely, he must surely either disburthen [him]self, or stifle his teeming birth for want of timely delivery.
Tim. Good, as I live, wondrous good! this is the way to catch the old one. Be all things ready, Siparius?
Sip. How do you mean, sir?
Tim. What a drolling bufflehead is this! He has been book-holder to my revels for decades of years, and the cuckoldry drone, as if he had slept in Trophonius' cave all his days, desires to know my meaning in the track of his own calling! Sir, shall I question you in your own dialect? Be your stage-curtains artificially drawn, and so covertly shrouded as the squint-eyed groundling may not peep into your discovery?
Sip. Leave that care to me, sir; it is my charge.
Tim. But were our bills posted, that our house may be with a numerous auditory stored? our boxes by ladies of quality and of the new dress crowdingly furnished? our galleries and ground-front answerably to their pay completed?
Sip. Assure yourself, sir, nothing is a-wanting that may give way to the poet's improvement.
Tim. Thou sayest well; this is indeed the poet's third day, and must raise his pericranium deeply steeped in Frontiniac, a fair revenue for his rich Timonic fancy; or he must take a long adieu of the spirit of sack and that noble napry till the next vintage. But, Siparius——
Sip. Your will, sir?
Tim. Be sure that you hold not your book at too much distance. The actors, poor lapwings, are but pen-feathered; and once out, out for ever. We had a time, indeed—and it was a golden time for a pregnant fancy—when the actor could embellish his author, and return a pæan to his pen in every accent; but our great disaster at Cannæ, than which none ever more tragical to our theatre, made a speedy despatch of our rarest Rosciuses, closing them jointly in one funeral epilogue. Now for you, boy: as you play the chorus, so be mindful of your hint. I know you to be a wag by nature, and you must play the waggish actor.
Page. I shall not sleep in my action, sir, if your line have so much life as to provoke a laughter. I shall not strangle the height of your conceit with a dull gesture; nor weaken the weight of your plot with too flat or unbecoming a deportment.
Tim. Thou promisest fairly; go on.
Tril. And so does Timon too, or his judgment fails him. Well, I will accost him.—Health to our stock of stoical wit, ingenious Timon! Come, sir, what brave dramatic piece has your running Mercury now upon the loom? The title of your new play, sir?
Tim. Every post may sufficiently inform you; nay, the fame of the city cannot choose but echo it to you, so much is expected. Neither shall you discover a mouse peeping out of a mountain, believe it.
Nulla fides spectanda feris, nec gratia victis.
Tril. No, nor a monkey dancing his tricotee on a rope, for want of strong lines from the poet's pen.
Corpora distendunt versibus affanda nefandis.
Tim. You are i' th' right on't, Trillo. These pigmies of mine shall not play the egregious puppies in deluding an ignorant rabble with the sad presentment of a roasted savage.
Tempora sunt Cuculi gratissima labilis anni;
Tril. Your conceit is above the scale of admiration. But the subject of your invention, sir? Where may you lay your scene; and what name [do] you bestow upon this long-expected comedy?
Cornua sunt sponsis trista, læta procis.—Auson.
Tim. My scene, Trillo, is Horn Alley: the name it bears is "Lady Alimony." The subject I shall not preoccupate. Let the fancies of my thirsty auditory fall a-working; if ever their small expense confined to three hours' space were better recompensed, I will henceforth disclaim my society with a happy genius, and bestow the remainder of my time in catching flies with Domitian.
Tril. Excellent, excellent! I am confident your acrimonious spirit will discurtain our changeable taffeta ladies to a hair.
Tim. Thou knowest my humour, and let me perish if I do not pursue it. Thou hast heard, no doubt, how I never found any branch more pleasingly fruitful, nor to my view more grateful, than when I found a woman hanging on it; wishing heartily that all trees in mine orchard bore such fruit.
Tril. If your wish had proved true, no doubt but your orchard would have rendered you store of medlars. But your hour, sir, your hour.
Tim. You know, Trillo, our theatral time to a minute. One thing I must tell you, and you will attest it upon our presentment, that never was any stage, since the first erection of our ancient Roman amphitheatres, with suitable properties more accurately furnished, with choicer music more gracefully accommodated, nor by boys, though young, with more virile spirits presented.
Tril. I'm already noosed in your poetical springe, and shall henceforth wish, for your sake, that all crop-eared histriomastixes, who cannot endure a civil, witty comedy, but by his racked exposition renders it downright drollery, may be doomed to Ancyrus, and skip there amongst satyrs for his rough and severe censure.
Tim. Parnassus is a debtor to thee, Trillo, for thy clear and serene opinion of the Muses and their individual darling; of which, meaning to imprint our addresses all the better in your memory, our stage presents ever the most lively and lovely fancy:—
"Where th' stage breathes lines, scenes, subject, action fit,
Th' age must admire it, or it has no wit."
Tril. Yet I have heard, Timon, that you were sometimes stoical, and could not endure the noise of an interlude, but snuff at it, as the satyr did at the first sight of fire.
Tim. All this is most authentically true; but shall I unbosom myself ingeniously[106] to thee, my dear Trillo? As his hate to woman made Eupolis eat nettle pottage, so became I fired in my spirit. My experience of a shrew drove me to turn the shrewd comedian; and yet all our boxes are stored with complete doxies; nay, some, whose carriage give life to this day's action.
Tril. May the poet's day prove fair and fortunate! Full audience and honest door-keepers. I shall, perchance, rank myself amongst your gallery-men.
Tim. We shall hold our labours incomparably heightened by the breath of such approved judgments.
Enter Messenger.
Mes. Sir, here is a proud, peremptory, pragmatical fellow, newly come into our tiring-room, who disturbs our preparation, vowing, like a desperate haxter,[107] that he has express command to seize upon all our properties.
Tim. The devil he has! What furious Mercury might this be?
Mes. Nay, sir, I know not what he may be; but, sure, if he be what he seems to be, he can be no less than one of our city Hectors; but I hope your spirit will conjure him, and make him a Clinias. He speaks nothing less than braving, buff-leather language, and has made all our boys so feverish, as if a quotidian ague had seized on them.
Tim. Sure, it is one of our trepanning decoys, sent forth for a champion to defend those ladies' engaged honour, whom our stage is this day to present! This shall not serve their turn. Call him in; we will collar him.
Tril. Ha-ha-ha! This will prove rare sport, to see how the poet's genius will grapple with this bawdry!
SCENE III.
Enter Haxter.
Hax. Sir!
Tim. Surly sir, your design?
Hax. To ruin your design, illicentiate playwright. Down with your bills, sir.
Tim. Your bill cannot do it, sir.
Hax. But my commission shall, sir. Can you read, sir?
Tim. Yes, sir, and write too, else were I not fit for this employment.
[He reads the paper.
Tril. With what a scurvy, screwed look the myrmidon eyes him! He will surely bastinado our comedian out of his laureate periwig. Hold him tug, poet, or thou runs thy poetical pinnace on a desperate shelf!
Tim. What bugbear has your terrible bladeship brought us here? A mandate from one of our own society to blanch the credit of our comedy! You're in a wrong box, sir; this will not do't.
Hax. You dare not disobey it!
Tim. Dare not! A word of high affront to a professed Parnassian! I dare exchange in pen with you and your penurious poetaster's pike; and if your valour or his swell to that height or heat as it will admit no other cooler but a downright scuffle, let wit perish and fall a-wool-gathering, if with a cheerful brow I leave not the precious rills of Hippocrene, and wing my course for Campus Martius.
Hax. 'Slid, this Musæus is a Martialist; and if I had not held him a feverish white-livered staniel,[108] that would never have encountered any but the Seven Sisters, that knight of the sun[109] who employed me should have done his errand himself. Well, I would I were out of his clutches! The only way, then, is to put on a clear face, lest I bring a storm upon myself. [Aside.] Virtuous sir, what answer will your ingenuity be pleased to return by your most humble and obsequious vassal?
Tim. Ho! sir, are you there with you[r] bears? How this Gargantua's spirit begins to thaw! Sirrah, you punto[110] of valour!
Hax. I have, indeed, puissant sir, been in my time rallied amongst those blades; but it has been my scorn of late to engage my tuck upon unjust grounds.
Tim. Tucca, thy valour is infinitely beholden to thy discretion. But, pray thee, resolve me: art thou made known to the purport of thine errand?
Hax. In part I am.
Tim. And partly I will tell thee; this squirt-squib wherewith that pragmatical monopolist Nasutius Neapolitanus has here employed thee to obstruct our action shall be received and returned with as much scorn as it was sent us with spiteful impudence! Let him come if he like; he may trouble himself and his own impoverished patience, but we shall slight him on our stage, and tax him of frontless insolence.
Hax. You shall do well, sir.
Tim. Well or ill, sir, we will do it. Pray, tell me, brave spark, what Archias may this be who takes thus upon him to excise the revenues of our theatral pleasure to his purse? Be his monopolising brains of such extent as they have power to engross all inventions to his coffer, all our stage-action to his exchequer?
Hax. I would be loth to praise him too much, because your transcendent self prize him so little; but his travels have highly improved his expression.
Tim. We know it, don, and he knows it too, to his advantage. But no man knows the issue of his travel better than Timon. It is true, he addressed his course for Malagasco; but for what end?—to learn hard words, school himself in the Utopian tongue; and, to close up all, he sticked not, Xerxes-like, to deface bridges in the ruins whereof, poor gentleman, he irreparably suffered.
Hax. To my knowledge, he speaks no more than authentic truth; for I myself, in my own proper person, got a snap by a Neapolitan ferret at the very same time; ever since which hot Ætnean service my legs have been taught to pace iambics, and jadishly to interfere upon any condition.
[Aside.
Tim. Thus much for your despatch. Only this: be it your civility, valiant don, to present my service to his naked savages, monkeys, baboons, and marmosets, advising, withal, your master of the bear-yard, that he henceforth content his hydroptic thoughts with his own box-holders; and, lest he lose by his outlandish properties, be it his care to pick out some doxies of his own, lest those she-sharks whom he has employed upon that trading occasion abuse his confidence.
Hax. Your commands, sir, shall be observed with all punctuality.
Tim. Do so, brave don, lest I call you to account, and return your wages with a bastinado. But withal tell that cockspur, your magnificent Mecænas, that he keep at home, and distemper not our stage with the fury of his visits, lest he be encountered by my little terriers, which will affright him more than all his Spanish gipsies.
Hax. Account me, invincible sir, your most serviceable slave upon all interests. Well, I have secured my crazy bulk as well from a basting as ever mortal did; and if ever I be put on such desperate adventures again, let this weak radish body of mine become stuck round with cloves, and be hung up for a gammon of Westphalia bacon to all uses and purposes.
[Aside. Exit.
Tril. So, you have conjured down the spirit of one furious haxter!
SCENE IV.
Enter Boy.
Tim. And just so must all our tavern tarmagons be used, or they'll trepan you, as they did that old scarified friar, whose bitter experiences furnished with ability enough to discover their carriage and his feverish distemper.
Boy. Sir, all our boxes are already stored and seated with the choicest and eminentest damosellas that all Seville can afford. Besides, sir, all our galleries and ground-stands are long ago furnished. The groundlings within the yard grow infinitely unruly.
Tim. Go to, boy; this plebeian incivility must not precipitate the course of our action. How oft have they sounded?
Boy. They're upon the last sound; but our expectance of that great Count, whose desires are winged for us, foreflow our entry.
Extremâ nocte nullam scænis feliciorem reperi.—Afran.
Tim. These comic presentments may properly resemble our comet apparitions, where their first darting begets impressions of an affectionate wonder or prophetic astonishment. The world, I must confess, is a ball racketed above the line and below into every hazard: but whimseys and careers challenge such influence over the judgment of our gallant refined wits; as their fancies must be humoured, and their humours tickled, or they leave our rooms discontented. So as the comedian's garden must find lettuce for all lips, or the disrelished poet must be untrussed, and paid home with a swingeing censure. This must be my fate; for I can expect no less from these satirical madams, whose ticklish resentment of their injured honour will make them kick before they be galled. But Timon is armed cap-a-pie against all such feminine assailants. They shall find my scenes more modest than some of their actions have merited; and I must tell thee one thing by the way, my ingenious Trillo—that I never found more freedom in my sprightly genius, than in the very last night, when I set my period to this living fancy. But time and conveniences of the stage enjoin me to leave thee; make choice of thy place, and expect the sequel.
Tril. May your acts live to a succeeding age, And the Ladies Alimony enrich your stage.
[Exeunt.
After the third sound—