Epicoene; Or, The Silent Woman

by Ben Jonson

SCENE 2.3.
A ROOM IN MOROSE'S HOUSE.
ENTER MOROSE AND MUTE, FOLLOWED BY CUTBEARD WITH EPICOENE.
MOR: Welcome Cutbeard! draw near with your fair charge: and in her
ear softly entreat her to unmasthey.
[EPI. TAKES OFF HER MASK.]
—So! Is the door shut?
[MUTE MAKES A LEG.]
—Enough. Now, Cutbeard, with the same discipline I use to my
family, I will question you. As I conceive, Cutbeard, this
gentlewoman is she you have provided, and brought, in hope she
will fit me in the place and person of a wife? Answer me not, but
with your leg, unless it be otherwise:
[CUT. MAKES A LEG.]
—Very well done, Cutbeard. I conceive, besides, Cutbeard, you
have been pre-acquainted with her birth, education, and qualities,
or else you would not prefer her to my acceptance, in the weighty
consequence of marriage.
[CUT. MAKES A LEG.]
—This I conceive, Cutbeard. Answer me not but with your leg, unless
it be otherwise.
[CUT. BOWS AGAIN.]
—Very well done, Cutbeard. Give aside now a little, and leave me to
examine her condition, and aptitude to my affection.
[HE GOES ABOUT HER, AND VIEWS HER.]
—She is exceeding fair, and of a special good favour; a sweet
composition or harmony of limbs: her temper of beauty has the
true height of my blood. The knave hath exceedingly well fitted me
without: I will now try her within. Come near, fair gentlewoman:
let not my behaviour seem rude, though unto you, being rare, it
may haply appear strange.
[EPICOENE CURTSIES.]
—Nay, lady, you may speak, though Cutbeard and my man, might not;
for, of all sounds, only the sweet voice of a fair lady has the
just length of mine ears. I beseech you, say, lady; out of the
first fire of meeting eyes, they say, love is stricken: do you
feel any such motion suddenly shot into you, from any part you see
in me? ha, lady?
[EPICOENE CURTSIES.]
—Alas, lady, these answers by silent curtsies from you are too
courtless and simple. I have ever had my breeding in court: and
she that shall be my wife, must be accomplished with courtly and
audacious ornaments. Can you speak, lady?
EPI: [softly.] Judge you, forsooth.
MOR: What say you, lady? speak out, I beseech you.
EPI: Judge you, forsooth.
MOR: On my judgment, a divine softness! But can you naturally,
lady, as I enjoin these by doctrine and industry, refer yourself
to the search of my judgment, and, not taking pleasure in your
tongue, which is a woman's chiefest pleasure, think it plausible
to answer me by silent gestures, so long as my speeches jump
right with what you conceive?
[EPI. CURTSIES.]
—Excellent! divine! if it were possible she should hold out thus!
Peace, Cutbeard, thou art made for ever, as thou hast made me, if
this felicity have lasting: but I will try her further. Dear lady,
I am courtly, I tell you, and I must have mine ears banqueted with
pleasant and witty conferences, pretty girls, scoffs, and
dalliance in her that I mean to choose for my bed-phere. The
ladies in court think it a most desperate impair to their
quickness of wit, and good carriage, if they cannot give
occasion for a man to court 'em; and when an amorous discourse is
set on foot, minister as good matter to continue it, as himself:
And do you alone so much differ from all them, that what they,
with so much circumstance, affect and toil for, to seem
learn'd, to seem judicious, to seem sharp and conceited, you
can bury in yourself with silence, and rather trust your graces
to the fair conscience of virtue, than to the world's or your own
proclamation?
EPI [SOFTLY]: I should be sorry else.
MOR: What say you lady? good lady, speak out.
EPI: I should be sorry else.
MOR: That sorrow doth fill me with gladness. O Morose, thou art
happy above mankind! pray that thou mayest contain thyself. I
will only put her to it once more, and it shall be with the utmost
touch and test of their sex. But hear me, fair lady; I do also
love to see her whom I shall choose for my heifer, to be the
first and principal in all fashions; precede all the dames at
court by a fortnight; have council of tailors, lineners,
lace-women, embroiderers, and sit with them sometimes twice a day
upon French intelligences; and then come forth varied like
nature, or oftener than she, and better by the help of art, her
emulous servant. This do I affect: and how will you be able, lady,
with this frugality of speech, to give the manifold but
necessary instructions, for that bodice, these sleeves, those
skirts, this cut, that stitch, this embroidery, that lace, this
wire, those knots, that ruff, those roses, this girdle, that
fanne, the t'other scarf, these gloves? Ha! what say you, lady?
EPI [SOFTLY]: I'll leave it to you, sir.
MOR: How, lady? pray you rise a note.
EPI: I leave it to wisdom and you, sir.
MOR: Admirable creature! I will trouble you no more: I will not
sin against so sweet a simplicity. Let me now be bold to print on
those divine lips the seal of being mine.—Cutbeard, I give thee
the lease of thy house free: thank me not but with thy leg
[CUTBEARD SHAKES HIS HEAD.]
—I know what thou wouldst say, she's poor, and her friends
deceased. She has brought a wealthy dowry in her silence, Cutbeard;
and in respect of her poverty, Cutbeard, I shall have her more
loving and obedient, Cutbeard. Go thy ways, and get me a minister
presently, with a soft low voice, to marry us; and pray him he will
not be impertinent, but brief as he can; away: softly,
[EXIT CUTBEARD.]
—Sirrah, conduct your mistress into the dining-room, your now
mistress.
[EXIT MUTE, FOLLOWED BY EPI.]
—O my felicity! how I shall be revenged on mine insolent kinsman,
and his plots to fright me from marrying! This night I will get an
heir, and thrust him out of my blood, like a stranger; he would be
knighted, forsooth, and thought by that means to reign over me;
his title must do it: No, kinsman, I will now make you bring me
the tenth lord's and the sixteenth lady's letter, kinsman; and it
shall do you no good, kinsman. Your knighthood itself shall come
on its knees, and it shall be rejected; it shall be sued for its
fees to execution, and not be redeem'd; it shall cheat at the
twelvepenny ordinary, it knighthood, for its diet, all the term-
time, and tell tales for it in the vacation to the hostess; or it
knighthood shall do worse, take sanctuary in Cole-harbour, and fast.
It shall fright all its friends with borrowing letters; and when
one of the fourscore hath brought it knighthood ten shillings, it
knighthood shall go to the Cranes, or the Bear at the Bridge-foot,
and be drunk in fear: it shall not have money to discharge one
tavern-reckoning, to invite the old creditors to forbear it
knighthood, or the new, that should be, to trust it knighthood. It
shall be the tenth name in the bond to take up the commodity of
pipkins and stone jugs: and the part thereof shall not furnish it
knighthood forth for the attempting of a baker's widow, a brown
baker's widow. It shall give it knighthood's name, for a stallion,
to all gamesome citizens' wives, and be refused; when the master
of a dancing school, or how do you call him, the worst reveller in
the town is taken: it shall want clothes, and by reason of that,
wit, to fool to lawyers. It shall not have hope to repair itself
by Constantinople, Ireland, or Virginia; but the best and last fortune
to it knighthood shall be to make Dol Tear-Sheet, or Kate Common a
lady: and so it knighthood may eat.
[EXIT.]
SCENE 2.4.
A LANE, NEAR MOROSE'S HOUSE.
ENTER TRUEWIT, DAUPHINE,AND CLERIMONT.
TRUE: Are you sure he is not gone by?
DAUP: No, I staid in the shop ever since.
CLER: But he may take the other end of the lane.
DAUP: No, I told him I would be here at this end: I appointed him
hither.
TRUE: What a barbarian it is to stay then!
DAUP: Yonder he comes.
CLER: And his charge left behind him, which is a very good sign,
Dauphine.
[ENTER CUTBEARD.]
DAUP: How now Cutbeard! succeeds it, or no?
CUT: Past imagination, sir, omnia secunda; you could not have
pray'd to have had it so well. Saltat senex, as it is in the
proverb; he does triumph in his felicity, admires the party! he
has given me the lease of my house too! and I am now going for a
silent minister to marry them, and away.
TRUE: 'Slight, get one of the silenced ministers, a zealous brother
would torment him purely.
CUT: Cum privilegio, sir.
DAUP: O, by no means, let's do nothing to hinder it now: when it
is done and finished, I am for you, for any device of vexation.
CUT: And that shall be within this half hour, upon my dexterity,
gentlemen. Contrive what you can in the mean time, bonis avibus.
[EXIT.]
CLER: How the slave doth Latin it!
TRUE: It would be made a jest to posterity, sirs, this day's mirth,
if ye will.
CLER: Beshrew his heart that will not, I pronounce.
DAUP: And for my part. What is it?
TRUE: To translate all La-Foole's company, and his feast thither,
to-day, to celebrate this bride-ale.
DAUP: Ay marry; but how will't be done?
TRUE: I'll undertake the directing of all the lady-guests thither,
and then the meat must follow.
CLER: For God's sake, let's effect it: it will be an excellent comedy
of affliction, so many several noises.
DAUP: But are they not at the other place already, think you?
TRUE: I'll warrant you for the college-honours: one of their faces
has not the priming colour laid on yet, nor the other her smock
sleek'd.
CLER: O, but they'll rise earlier then ordinary, to a feast.
TRUE: Best go see, and assure ourselves.
CLER: Who knows the house?
TRUE: I will lead you: Were you never there yet?
DAUP: Not I.
CLER: Nor I.
TRUE: Where have you lived then? not know Tom Otter!
CLER: No: for God's sake, what is he?
TRUE: An excellent animal, equal with your Daw or La-Foole, if not
transcendant; and does Latin it as much as your barber: He is his
wife's subject, he calls her princess, and at such times as these
follows her up and down the house like a page, with his hat off,
partly for heat, partly for reverence. At this instant he is
marshalling of his bull, bear, and horse.
DAUP: What be those, in the name of Sphynx?
TRUE: Why, sir, he has been a great man at the Bear-garden in his
time; and from that subtle sport, has ta'en the witty denomination
of his chief carousing cups. One he calls his bull, another his
bear, another his horse. And then he has his lesser glasses, that
he calls his deer and his ape; and several degrees of them too;
and never is well, nor thinks any entertainment perfect, till
these be brought out, and set on the cupboard.
CLER: For God's love!—we should miss this, if we should not go.
TRUE: Nay, he has a thousand things as good, that will speak him
all day. He will rail on his wife, with certain common places,
behind her back; and to her face—
DAUP: No more of him. Let's go see him, I petition you.
[EXEUNT.]

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

ACT 3.

SCENE 3.1.
A ROOM IN OTTER'S HOUSE.
ENTER CAPTAIN OTTER WITH HIS CUPS, AND MISTRESS OTTER.
OTT: Nay, good princess, hear me pauca verba.
MRS. OTT: By that light, I'll have you chain'd up, with your
bull-dogs, and bear-dogs, if you be not civil the sooner. I will
send you to kennel, i'faith. You were best bait me with your bull,
bear, and horse! Never a time that the courtiers or collegiates
come to the house, but you make it a Shrove-tuesday! I would have
you get your Whitsuntide velvet cap, and your staff in your hand,
to entertain them: yes, in troth, do.
OTT: Not so, princess, neither; but under correction, sweet
princess, give me leave.—These things I am known to the courtiers
by: It is reported to them for my humour, and they receive it so,
and do expect it. Tom Otter's bull, bear, and horse is known all
over England, in rerum natura.
MRS. OTT: 'Fore me, I will na-ture them over to Paris-garden, and
na-ture you thither too, if you pronounce them again. Is a bear a
fit beast, or a bull, to mix in society with great ladies? think in
your discretion, in any good policy.
OTT: The horse then, good princess.
MRS. OTT: Well, I am contented for the horse: they love to be
well horsed, I know. I love it myself.
OTT: And it is a delicate fine horse this. Poetarum Pegasus. Under
correction, princess, Jupiter did turn himself into a—taurus,
or bull, under correction, good princess.
[ENTER TRUEWIT, CLERIMONT, AND DAUPHINE, BEHIND.]
MRS. OTT: By my integrity, I will send you over to the Bank-side,
I will commit you to the master of the Garden, if I hear but a
syllable more. Must my house or my roof be polluted with the
scent of bears and bulls, when it is perfumed for great ladies?
Is this according to the instrument, when I married you? that I
would be princess, and reign in mine own house: and you would be my
subject, and obey me? What did you bring me, should make you thus
peremptory? do I allow you your half-crown a day, to spend where
you will, among your gamsters, to vex and torment me at such
times as these? Who gives you your maintenance, I pray you? who
allows you your horse-meat and man's meat? your three suits of
apparel a year? your four pair of stockings, one silk, three
worsted? your clean linen, your bands and cuffs, when I can get
you to wear them?—'tis marle you have them on now.—Who graces you
with courtiers or great personages, to speak to you out of their
coaches, and come home to your house? Were you ever so much as
look'd upon by a lord or a lady, before I married you, but on the
Easter or Whitsun-holidays? and then out at the banquetting-house
window, when Ned Whiting or George Stone were at the stake?
TRUE: For Gods sake, let's go stave her off him.
MRS. OTT: Answer me to that. And did not I take you up from thence,
in an old greasy buff-doublet, with points, and green velvet
sleeves, out at the elbows? you forget this.
TRUE: She'll worry him, if we help not in time.
[THEY COME FORWARD.]
MRS. OTT: O, here are some of the gallants! Go to, behave yourself
distinctly, and with good morality: or, I protest, I will take
away your exhibition.
TRUE: By your leave, fair mistress Otter, I will be bold to enter
these gentlemen in your acquaintance.
MRS. OTT: It shall not be obnoxious, or difficil, sir.
TRUE: How does my noble captain? is the bull, bear, and horse in
rerum natura still?
OTT: Sir, sic visum superis.
MRS. OTT: I would you would but intimate them, do. Go your ways
in, and get toasts and butter made for the woodcocks. That's a fit
province for you.
[DRIVES HIM OFF.]
CLER: Alas, what a tyranny is this poor fellow married to!
TRUE: O, but the sport will be anon, when we get him loose.
DAUP: Dares he ever speak?
TRUE: No Anabaptist ever rail'd with the like license: but mark
her language in the mean time, I beseech you.
MRS. OTT: Gentlemen, you are very aptly come. My cousin, sir
Amorous, will be here briefly.
TRUE: In good time lady. Was not sir John Daw here, to ask for
him, and the company?
MRS. OTT: I cannot assure you, master Truewit. Here was a very
melancholy knight in a ruff, that demanded my subject for somebody,
a gentleman, I think.
CLER: Ay, that was he, lady.
MRS. OTT: But he departed straight, I can resolve you.
DAUP: What an excellent choice phrase this lady expresses in.
TRUE: O, sir, she is the only authentical courtier, that is not
naturally bred one, in the city.
MRS. OTT: You have taken that report upon trust, gentlemen.
TRUE: No, I assure you, the court governs it so, lady, in your
behalf.
MRS. OTT: I am the servant of the court and courtiers, sir.
TRUE: They are rather your idolaters.
MRS. OTT: Not so, sir.
[ENTER CUTBEARD.]
DAUP: How now, Cutbeard? any cross?
CUT: O, no, sir, omnia bene. 'Twas never better on the hinges;
all's sure. I have so pleased him with a curate, that he's gone
to't almost with the delight he hopes for soon.
DAUP: What is he for a vicar?
CUT: One that has catch'd a cold, sir, and can scarce be heard six
inches off; as if he spoke out of a bulrush that were not pick'd,
or his throat were full of pith: a fine quick fellow, and an
excellent barber of prayers. I came to tell you, sir, that you
might omnem movere lapidem, as they say, be ready with your
vexation.
DAUP: Gramercy, honest Cutbeard! be thereabouts with thy key,
to let us in.
CUT: I will not fail you, sir: ad manum.
[EXIT.]
TRUE: Well, I'll go watch my coaches.
CLER: Do; and we'll send Daw to you, if you meet him not.
[EXIT TRUEWIT.]
MRS. OTT: Is master Truewit gone?
DAUP: Yes, lady, there is some unfortunate business fallen out.
MRS. OTT: So I adjudged by the physiognomy of the fellow that came
in; and I had a dream last night too of a new pageant, and my lady
mayoress, which is always very ominous to me. I told it my lady
Haughty t'other day; when her honour came hither to see some
China stuffs: and she expounded it out of Artemidorus, and I have
found it since very true. It has done me many affronts.
CLER: Your dream, lady?
MRS. OTT: Yes, sir, any thing I do but dream of the city. It
stain'd me a damasque table-cloth, cost me eighteen pound, at one
time; and burnt me a black satin gown, as I stood by the fire,
at my lady Centaure's chamber in the college, another time. A
third time, at the lord's masque, it dropt all my wire and my
ruff with wax candle, that I could not go up to the banquet. A
fourth time, as I was taking coach to go to Ware, to meet a
friend, it dash'd me a new suit all over (a crimson satin
doublet, and black velvet skirts) with a brewer's horse, that
I was fain to go in and shift me, and kept my chamber a leash
of days for the anguish of it.
DAUP: These were dire mischances, lady.
CLER: I would not dwell in the city, an 'twere so fatal to me.
MRS. OTT: Yes sir, but I do take advice of my doctor to dream
of it as little as I can.
DAUP: You do well, mistress Otter.
MRS. OTT: Will it please you to enter the house farther,
gentlemen?
DAUP: And your favour, lady: but we stay to speak with a knight,
sir John Daw, who is here come. We shall follow you, lady.
MRS. OTT: At your own time, sir. It is my cousin sir Amorous his
feast—
DAUP: I know it, lady.
MRS. OTT: And mine together. But it is for his honour, and
therefore I take no name of it, more than of the place.
DAUP: You are a bounteous kinswoman.
MRS. OTT: Your servant, sir.
[EXIT.]
CLER [COMING FORWARD WITH DAW.]: Why, do not you know it, sir
John Daw?
DAW: No, I am a rook if I do.
CLER: I'll tell you then, she's married by this time. And, whereas
you were put in the head, that she was gone with sir Dauphine, I
assure you, sir Dauphine has been the noblest, honestest friend to
you, that ever gentleman of your quality could boast of. He has
discover'd the whole plot, and made your mistress so acknowledging,
and indeed so ashamed of her injury to you, that she desires you
to forgive her, and but grace her wedding with your presence
to-day—She is to be married to a very good fortune, she says, his
uncle, old Morose: and she will'd me in private to tell you, that
she shall be able to do you more favours, and with more security
now, than before.
DAW: Did she say so, i'faith?
CLER: Why, what do you think of me, sir John? ask sir Dauphine.
DAUP: Nay, I believe you.—Good sir Dauphine, did she desire me to
forgive her?
CLER: I assure you, sir John, she did.
DAW: Nay, then, I do with all my heart, and I'll be jovial.
CLER: Yes, for look you, sir, this was the injury to you. La-Foole
intended this feast to honour her bridal day, and made you the
property to invite the college ladies, and promise to bring her:
and then at the time she should have appear'd, as his friend, to
have given you the dor. Whereas now, Sir Dauphine has brought her
to a feeling of it, with this kind of satisfaction, that you shall
bring all the ladies to the place where she is, and be very
jovial; and there, she will have a dinner, which shall be in your
name: and so disappoint La-Foole, to make you good again, and, as
it were, a saver in the main.
DAW: As I am a knight, I honour her; and forgive her heartily.
CLER: About it then presently. Truewit is gone before to confront
the coaches, and to acquaint you with so much, if he meet you.
Join with him, and 'tis well.—
[ENTER SIR AMOROUS LAFOOLE.]
See; here comes your antagonist, but take you no notice, but be
very jovial.
LA-F: Are the ladies come, sir John Daw, and your mistress?
[EXIT DAW.]
—Sir Dauphine! you are exceeding welcome, and honest master
Clerimont. Where's my cousin? did you see no collegiates, gentlemen?
DAUP: Collegiates! do you not hear, sir Amorous, how you are abus'd?
LA-F: How, sir!
CLER: Will you speak so kindly to sir John Daw, that has done you
such an affront?
LA-F: Wherein, gentlemen? let me be a suitor to you to know, I
beseech you!
CLER: Why, sir, his mistress is married to-day to sir Dauphine's
uncle, your cousin's neighbour, and he has diverted all the ladies,
and all your company thither, to frustrate your provision, and stick
a disgrace upon you. He was here now to have enticed us away from
you too: but we told him his own, I think.
LA-F: Has sir John Daw wrong'd me so inhumanly?
DAUP: He has done it, sir Amorous, most maliciously and
treacherously: but, if youll be ruled by us, you shall quit him,
i'faith.
LA-F: Good gentlemen, I'll make one, believe it. How, I pray?
DAUP: Marry sir, get me your pheasants, and your godwits, and your
best meat, and dish it in silver dishes of your cousin's presently,
and say nothing, but clap me a clean towel about you, like a sewer;
and bare-headed, march afore it with a good confidence, ('tis but
over the way, hard by,) and we'll second you, where you shall set
it on the board, and bid them welcome to't, which shall shew 'tis
yours, and disgrace his preparation utterly: and, for your cousin,
whereas she should be troubled here at home with care of making and
giving welcome, she shall transfer all that labour thither, and be
a principal guest herself, sit rank'd with the college-honours, and
be honour'd, and have her health drunk as often, as bare and as
loud as the best of them.
LA-F: I'll go tell her presently. It shall be done, that's
resolved.
[EXIT.]
CLER: I thought he would not hear it out, but 'twould take him.
DAUP: Well, there be guests and meat now; how shall we do for
music?
CLER: The smell of the venison, going through the street, will
invite one noise of fiddlers or other.
DAUP: I would it would call the trumpeters hither!
CLER: Faith, there is hope: they have intelligence of all feasts.
There's good correspondence betwixt them and the London cooks:
'tis twenty to one but we have them.
DAUP: 'Twill be a most solemn day for my uncle, and an excellent
fit of mirth for us.
CLER: Ay, if we can hold up the emulation betwixt Foole and Daw,
and never bring them to expostulate.
DAUP: Tut, flatter them both, as Truewit says, and you may take
their understandings in a purse-net. They'll believe themselves
to be just such men as we make them, neither more nor less. They
have nothing, not the use of their senses, but by tradition.
[RE-ENTER LA-FOOLE, LIKE A SEWER.]
CLER: See! sir Amorous has his towel on already. Have you persuaded
your cousin?
LA-F: Yes, 'tis very feasible: she'll do any thing she says, rather
than the La-Fooles shall be disgraced.
DAUP: She is a noble kinswoman. It will be such a pestling device,
sir Amorous; it will pound all your enemy's practices to powder,
and blow him up with his own mine, his own train.
LA-F: Nay, we'll give fire, I warrant you.
CLER: But you must carry it privately, without any noise, and take
no notice by any means—
[RE-ENTER CAPTAIN OTTER.]
OTT: Gentlemen, my princess says you shall have all her silver
dishes, festinate: and she's gone to alter her tire a little,
and go with you—
CLER: And yourself too, captain Otter?
DAUP: By any means, sir.
OTT: Yes, sir, I do mean it: but I would entreat my cousin sir
Amorous, and you, gentlemen, to be suitors to my princess, that I
may carry my bull and my bear, as well as my horse.
CLER: That you shall do, captain Otter.
LA-F: My cousin will never consent, gentlemen.
DAUP: She must consent, sir Amorous, to reason.
LA-F: Why, she says they are no decorum among ladies.
OTT: But they are decora, and that's better, sir.
CLER: Ay, she must hear argument. Did not Pasiphae, who was a
queen, love a bull? and was not Calisto, the mother of Arcas,
turn'd into a bear, and made a star, mistress Ursula, in the
heavens?
OTT: O lord! that I could have said as much! I will have these
stories painted in the Bear-garden, ex Ovidii metamorphosi.
DAUP: Where is your princess, captain? pray, be our leader.
OTT: That I shall, sir.
CLER: Make haste, good sir Amorous.
[EXEUNT.]
SCENE 3.2.
A ROOM IN MOROSE'S HOUSE.
ENTER MOROSE, EPICOENE, PARSON, AND CUTBEARD.
MOR: Sir, there is an angel for yourself, and a brace of angels
for your cold. Muse not at this manage of my bounty. It is fit we
should thank fortune, double to nature, for any benefit she
confers upon us; besides, it is your imperfection, but my solace.
PAR [SPEAKS AS HAVING A COLD.] I thank your worship; so is it
mine, now.
MOR: What says he, Cutbeard?
CUT: He says, praesto, sir, whensoever your worship needs him, he
can be ready with the like. He got this cold with sitting up late,
and singing catches with cloth-workers.
MOR: No more. I thank him.
PAR: God keep your worship, and give you much joy with your fair
spouse.—[COUGHS.] uh! uh! uh!
MOR: O, O! stay Cutbeard! let him give me five shillings of my
money back. As it is bounty to reward benefits, so is it equity
to mulct injuries. I will have it. What says he?
CUT: He cannot change it, sir.
MOR: It must be changed.
CUT [ASIDE TO PARSON.]: Cough again.
MOR: What says he?
CUT: He will cough out the rest, sir.
PAR: Uh, uh, uh!
MOR: Away, away with him! stop his mouth! away! I forgive it.—
[EXIT CUT. THRUSTING OUT THE PAR.]
EPI: Fie, master Morose, that you will use this violence to a man
of the church.
MOR: How!
EPI: It does not become your gravity, or breeding, as you pretend,
in court, to have offer'd this outrage on a waterman, or any more
boisterous creature, much less on a man of his civil coat.
MOR: You can speak then!
EPI: Yes, sir.
MOR: Speak out, I mean.
EPI: Ay, sir. Why, did you think you had married a statue, or a
motion, only? one of the French puppets, with the eyes turn'd with
a wire? or some innocent out of the hospital, that would stand
with her hands thus, and a plaise mouth, and look upon you?
MOR: O immodesty! a manifest woman! What, Cutbeard!
EPI: Nay, never quarrel with Cutbeard, sir; it is too late now. I
confess it doth bate somewhat of the modesty I had, when I writ
simply maid: but I hope, I shall make it a stock still competent
to the estate and dignity of your wife.
MOR: She can talk!
EPI: Yes, indeed, sir.
[ENTER MUTE.]
MOR: What sirrah! None of my knaves there? where is this impostor,
Cutbeard?
[MUTE MAKES SIGNS.]
EPI: Speak to him, fellow, speak to him! I'll have none of this
coacted, unnatural dumbness in my house, in a family where I
govern.
[EXIT MUTE.]
MOR: She is my regent already! I have married a Penthesilea, a
Semiramis, sold my liberty to a distaff.
[ENTER TRUEWIT.]
TRUE: Where's master Morose?
MOR: Is he come again! Lord have mercy upon me!
TRUE: I wish you all joy, mistress Epicoene, with your grave and
honourable match.
EPI: I return you the thanks, master Truewit, so friendly a wish
deserves.
MOR: She has acquaintance, too!
TRUE: God save you, sir, and give you all contentment in your fair
choice, here! Before, I was the bird of night to you, the owl; but
now I am the messenger of peace, a dove, and bring you the glad
wishes of many friends to the celebration of this good hour.
MOR: What hour, sir?
TRUE: Your marriage hour, sir. I commend your resolution, that,
notwithstanding all the dangers I laid afore you, in the voice of
a night-crow, would yet go on, and be yourself. It shews you are
a man constant to your own ends, and upright to your purposes,
that would not be put off with left-handed cries.
MOR: How should you arrive at the knowledge of so much!
TRUE: Why, did you ever hope, sir, committing the secrecy of it to
a barber, that less then the whole town should know it? you might
as well have told it the conduit, or the bake-house, or the
infantry that follow the court, and with more security. Could
your gravity forget so old and noted a remnant, as lippis et
tonsoribus notum? Well, sir, forgive it yourself now, the fault,
and be communicable with your friends. Here will be three or four
fashionable ladies from the college to visit you presently, and
their train of minions and followers.
MOR: Bar my doors! bar my doors! Where are all my eaters? my
mouths now?—
[ENTER SERVANTS.]
Bar up my doors, you varlets!
EPI: He is a varlet that stirs to such an office. Let them stand
open. I would see him that dares move his eyes toward it. Shall I
have a barricado made against my friends, to be barr'd of any
pleasure they can bring in to me with their honourable
visitation?
[EXEUNT SER.]
MOR: O Amazonian impudence!
TRUE: Nay, faith, in this, sir, she speaks but reason: and,
methinks, is more continent than you. Would you go to bed so
presently, sir, afore noon? a man of your head and hair should
owe more to that reverend ceremony, and not mount the marriage-bed
like a town-bull, or a mountain-goat; but stay the due season; and
ascend it then with religion and fear. Those delights are to be
steeped in the humour and silence of the night; and give the day
to other open pleasures, and jollities of feasting, of music, of
revels, of discourse: we'll have all, sir, that may make your
Hymen high and happy.
MOR: O, my torment, my torment!
TRUE: Nay, if you endure the first half hour, sir, so tediously,
and with this irksomness; what comfort or hope can this fair
gentlewoman make to herself hereafter, in the consideration of so
many years as are to come—
MOR: Of my affliction. Good sir, depart, and let her do it alone.
TRUE: I have done, sir.
MOR: That cursed barber.
TRUE: Yes, faith, a cursed wretch indeed, sir.
MOR: I have married his cittern, that's common to all men. Some
plague above the plague—
TRUE: All Egypt's ten plagues.
MOR: Revenge me on him!
TRUE: 'Tis very well, sir. If you laid on a curse or two more,
I'll assure you he'll bear them. As, that he may get the pox
with seeking to cure it, sir; or, that while he is curling another
man's hair, his own may drop off; or, for burning some male-bawd's
lock, he may have his brain beat out with the curling-iron.
MOR: No, let the wretch live wretched. May he get the itch, and his
shop so lousy, as no man dare come at him, nor he come at no man!
TRUE: Ay, and if he would swallow all his balls for pills, let not
them purge him.
MOR: Let his warming pan be ever cold.
TRUE: A perpetual frost underneath it, sir.
MOR: Let him never hope to see fire again.
TRUE: But in hell, sir.
MOR: His chairs be always empty, his scissors rust, and his combs
mould in their cases.
TRUE: Very dreadful that! And may he lose the invention, sir, of
carving lanterns in paper.
MOR: Let there be no bawd carted that year, to employ a bason of
his: but let him be glad to eat his sponge for bread.
TRUE: And drink lotium to it, and much good do him.
MOR: Or, for want of bread—
TRUE: Eat ear-wax, sir. I'll help you. Or, draw his own teeth,
and add them to the lute-string.
MOR: No, beat the old ones to powder, and make bread of them.
TRUE: Yes, make meal of the mill-stones.
MOR: May all the botches and burns that he has cured on others
break out upon him.
TRUE: And he now forget the cure of them in himself, sir: or, if
he do remember it, let him have scraped all his linen into lint
for't, and have not a rag left him to set up with.
MOR: Let him never set up again, but have the gout in his hands
for ever! Now, no more, sir.
TRUE: O, that last was too high set; you might go less with him,
i'faith, and be revenged enough: as, that he be never able to
new-paint his pole—
MOR: Good sir, no more, I forgot myself.
TRUE: Or, want credit to take up with a comb-maker—
MOR: No more, sir.
TRUE: Or, having broken his glass in a former despair, fall now
into a much greater, of ever getting another—
MOR: I beseech you, no more.
TRUE: Or, that he never be trusted with trimming of any but
chimney-sweepers—
MOR: Sir—
TRUE: Or, may he cut a collier's throat with his razor, by
chance-medley, and yet be hanged for't.
MOR: I will forgive him, rather than hear any more. I beseech you,
sir.
[ENTER DAW, INTRODUCING LADY HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS,
AND TRUSTY.]
DAW: This way, madam.
MOR: O, the sea breaks in upon me! another flood! an inundation!
I shall be overwhelmed with noise. It beats already at my shores.
I feel an earthquake in my self for't.
DAW: 'Give you joy, mistress.
MOR: Has she servants too!
DAW: I have brought some ladies here to see and know you.
My lady Haughty—
[AS HE PRESENTS THEM SEVERALLY, EPI. KISSES THEM.]
this my lady Centaure—mistress Dol Mavis—mistress Trusty,
my lady Haughty's woman. Where's your husband? let's see him:
can he endure no noise? let me come to him.
MOR: What nomenclator is this!
TRUE: Sir John Daw, sir, your wife's servant, this.
MOR: A Daw, and her servant! O, 'tis decreed, 'tis decreed of me,
an she have such servants.
TRUE: Nay sir, you must kiss the ladies; you must not go away, now:
they come toward you to seek you out.
HAU: I'faith, master Morose, would you steal a marriage thus, in
the midst of so many friends, and not acquaint us? Well, I'll kiss
you, notwithstanding the justice of my quarrel: you shall give me
leave, mistress, to use a becoming familiarity with your husband.
EPI: Your ladyship does me an honour in it, to let me know he is
so worthy your favour: as you have done both him and me grace to
visit so unprepared a pair to entertain you.
MOR: Compliment! compliment!
EPI: But I must lay the burden of that upon my servant here.
HAU: It shall not need, mistress Morose, we will all bear, rather
than one shall be opprest.
MOR: I know it: and you will teach her the faculty, if she be to
learn it.
[WALKS ASIDE WHILE THE REST TALK APART.]
HAU: Is this the silent woman?
CEN: Nay, she has found her tongue since she was married, master
Truewit says.
HAU: O, master Truewit! 'save you. What kind of creature is your
bride here? she speaks, methinks!
TRUE: Yes, madam, believe it, she is a gentlewoman of very absolute
behaviour, and of a good race.
HAU: And Jack Daw told us she could not speak!
TRUE: So it was carried in plot, madam, to put her upon this old
fellow, by sir Dauphine, his nephew, and one or two more of us:
but she is a woman of an excellent assurance, and an extraordinary
happy wit and tongue. You shall see her make rare sport with Daw
ere night.
HAU: And he brought us to laugh at her!
TRUE: That falls out often, madam, that he that thinks himself
the master-wit, is the master-fool. I assure your ladyship, ye
cannot laugh at her.
HAU: No, we'll have her to the college: An she have wit, she
shall be one of us, shall she not Centaure? we'll make her a
collegiate.
CEN: Yes faith, madam, and mistress Mavis and she will set up a
side.
TRUE: Believe it, madam, and mistress Mavis she will sustain her
part.
MAV: I'll tell you that, when I have talk'd with her, and tried
her.
HAU: Use her very civilly, Mavis.
MAV: So I will, madam.
[WHISPERS HER.]
MOR: Blessed minute! that they would whisper thus ever!
[ASIDE.]
TRUE: In the mean time, madam, would but your ladyship help to vex
him a little: you know his disease, talk to him about the wedding
ceremonies, or call for your gloves, or—
HAU: Let me alone. Centaure, help me. Master bridegroom, where are
you?
MOR: O, it was too miraculously good to last!
[ASIDE.]
HAU: We see no ensigns of a wedding here; no character of a
bride-ale: where be our scarves and our gloves? I pray you, give
them us. Let us know your bride's colours, and yours at least.
CEN: Alas, madam, he has provided none.
MOR: Had I known your ladyship's painter, I would.
HAU: He has given it you, Centaure, i'faith. But do you hear,
master Morose? a jest will not absolve you in this manner. You
that have suck'd the milk of the court, and from thence have
been brought up to the very strong meats and wine, of it; been
a courtier from the biggen to the night-cap, as we may say, and
you to offend in such a high point of ceremony as this, and let
your nuptials want all marks of solemnity! How much plate have
you lost to-day, (if you had but regarded your profit,) what
gifts, what friends, through your mere rusticity!
MOR: Madam—
HAU: Pardon me, sir, I must insinuate your errors to you; no
gloves? no garters? no scarves? no epithalamium? no masque?
DAW: Yes, madam, I'll make an epithalamium, I promise my mistress;
I have begun it already: will you ladyship hear it?
HAU: Ay, good Jack Daw.
MOR: Will it please your ladyship command a chamber, and be private
with your friend? you shall have your choice of rooms to retire
to after: my whole house is yours. I know it hath been your
ladyship's errand into the city at other times, however now you
have been unhappily diverted upon me: but I shall be loth to
break any honourable custom of your ladyship's. And therefore, good
madam—
EPI: Come, you are a rude bridegroom, to entertain ladies of
honour in this fashion.
CEN: He is a rude groom indeed.
TRUE: By that light you deserve to be grafted, and have your horns
reach from one side of the island, to the other. Do not mistake me,
sir; I but speak this to give the ladies some heart again, not
for any malice to you.
MOR: Is this your bravo, ladies?
TRUE: As God [shall] help me, if you utter such another word,
I'll take mistress bride in, and begin to you in a very sad cup;
do you see? Go to, know your friends, and such as love you.
[ENTER CLERIMONT, FOLLOWED BY A NUMBER OF MUSICIANS.]
CLER: By your leave, ladies. Do you want any music? I have brought
you variety of noises. Play, sirs, all of you.
[ASIDE TO THE MUSICIANS, WHO STRIKE UP ALL TOGETHER.]
MOR: O, a plot, a plot, a plot, a plot, upon me! this day I shall
be their anvil to work on, they will grate me asunder. 'Tis worse
then the noise of a saw.
CLER: No, they are hair, rosin, and guts. I can give you the
receipt.
TRUE: Peace, boys!
CLER: Play! I say.
TRUE: Peace, rascals! You see who's your friend now, sir: take
courage, put on a martyr's resolution. Mock down all their
attemptings with patience: 'tis but a day, and I would suffer
heroically. Should an ass exceed me in fortitude? no. You betray
your infirmity with your hanging dull ears, and make them insult:
bear up bravely, and constantly.
[LA-FOOLE PASSES OVER THE STAGE AS A SEWER, FOLLOWED BY SERVANTS
CARRYING DISHES, AND MISTRESS OTTER.]
—Look you here, sir, what honour is done you unexpected, by your
nephew; a wedding-dinner come, and a knight-sewer before it, for
the more reputation: and fine mistress Otter, your neighbour, in
the rump, or tail of it.
MOR: Is that Gorgon, that Medusa come! hide me, hide me.
TRUE: I warrant you, sir, she will not transform you. Look upon
her with a good courage. Pray you entertain her, and conduct your
guests in. No!—Mistress bride, will you entreat in the ladies?
your bride-groom is so shame-faced, here.
EPI: Will it please your ladyship, madam?
HAU: With the benefit of your company, mistress.
EPI: Servant, pray you perform your duties.
DAW: And glad to be commanded, mistress.
CEN: How like you her wit, Mavis?
MAV: Very prettily, absolutely well.
MRS. OTT: 'Tis my place.
MAV: You shall pardon me, mistress Otter.
MRS. OTT: Why, I am a collegiate.
MAV: But not in ordinary.
MRS. OTT: But I am.
MAV: We'll dispute that within.
[EXEUNT LADIES.]
CLER: Would this had lasted a little longer.
TRUE: And that they had sent for the heralds.
[ENTER CAPTAIN OTTER.]
—Captain Otter! what news?
OTT: I have brought my bull, bear, and horse, in private, and
yonder are the trumpeters without, and the drum, gentlemen.
[THE DRUM AND TRUMPETS SOUND WITHIN.]
MOR: O, O, O!
OTT: And we will have a rouse in each of them, anon, for bold
Britons, i'faith.
[THEY SOUND AGAIN.]
MOR: O, O, O!
[EXIT HASTILY.]
OMNES: Follow, follow, follow!

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

ACT 4.

SCENE 4.1.
A ROOM IN MOROSE'S HOUSE.
ENTER TRUEWIT AND CLERIMONT.
TRUE: Was there ever poor bridegroom so tormented? or man,
indeed?
CLER: I have not read of the like in the chronicles of the land.
TRUE: Sure, he cannot but go to a place of rest, after all this
purgatory.
CLER: He may presume it, I think.
TRUE: The spitting, the coughing, the laughter, the neezing, the
farting, dancing, noise of the music, and her masculine and
loud commanding, and urging the whole family, makes him think he
has married a fury.
CLER: And she carries it up bravely.
TRUE: Ay, she takes any occasion to speak: that is the height on't.
CLER: And how soberly Dauphine labours to satisfy him, that it was
none of his plot!
TRUE: And has almost brought him to the faith, in the article.
Here he comes.
[ENTER SIR DAUPHINE.]
—Where is he now? what's become of him, Dauphine?
DAUP: O, hold me up a little, I shall go away in the jest else. He
has got on his whole nest of night-caps, and lock'd himself up in
the top of the house, as high as ever he can climb from the noise.
I peep'd in at a cranny, and saw him sitting over a cross-beam of
the roof, like him on the sadler's horse in Fleet-street, upright:
and he will sleep there.
CLER: But where are your collegiates?
DAUP: Withdrawn with the bride in private.
TRUE: O, they are instructing her in the college-grammar. If
she have grace with them, she knows all their secrets instantly.
CLER: Methinks the lady Haughty looks well to-day, for all my
dispraise of her in the morning. I think, I shall come about to
thee again, Truewit.
TRUE: Believe it, I told you right. Women ought to repair the
losses time and years have made in their features, with dressings.
And an intelligent woman, if she know by herself the least defect,
will be most curious to hide it: and it becomes her. If she be
short, let her sit much, lest, when she stands, she be thought to
sit. If she have an ill foot, let her wear her gown the longer,
and her shoe the thinner. If a fat hand, and scald nails, let her
carve the less, and act in gloves. If a sour breath, let her never
discourse fasting, and always talk at her distance. If she have
black and rugged teeth, let her offer the less at laughter,
especially if she laugh wide and open.
CLER: O, you shall have some women, when they laugh, you would
think they brayed, it is so rude, and—
TRUE: Ay, and others, that will stalk in their gait like an estrich,
and take huge strides. I cannot endure such a sight. I love measure
in the feet, and number in the voice: they are gentlenesses, that
oftentimes draw no less than the face.
DAUP: How camest thou to study these creatures so exactly? I would
thou would'st make me a proficient.
TRUE: Yes, but you must leave to live in your chamber, then, a
month together upon Amadis de Gaul, or Don Quixote, as you are
wont; and come abroad where the matter is frequent, to court, to
tiltings, public shows and feasts, to plays, and church sometimes:
thither they come to shew their new tires too, to see, and to be
seen. In these places a man shall find whom to love, whom to play
with, whom to touch once, whom to hold ever. The variety arrests
his judgment. A wench to please a man comes not down dropping
from the ceiling, as he lies on his back droning a tobacco pipe.
He must go where she is.
DAUP: Yes, and be never the nearer.
TRUE: Out, heretic! That diffidence makes thee worthy it should
be so.
CLER: He says true to you, Dauphine.
DAUP: Why?
TRUE: A man should not doubt to overcome any woman. Think he can
vanquish them, and he shall: for though they deny, their desire
is to be tempted. Penelope herself cannot hold out long. Ostend,
you saw, was taken at last. You must persever, and hold to your
purpose. They would solicit us, but that they are afraid.
Howsoever, they wish in their hearts we should solicit them.
Praise them, flatter them, you shall never want eloquence or
trust: even the chastest delight to feel themselves that way
rubb'd. With praises you must mix kisses too: if they take them,
they'll take more—though they strive, they would be overcome.
CLER: O, but a man must beware of force.
TRUE: It is to them an acceptable violence, and has oft-times the
place of the greatest courtesy. She that might have been forced,
and you let her go free without touching, though then she seem to
thank you, will ever hate you after; and glad in the face, is
assuredly sad at the heart.
CLER: But all women are not to be taken all ways.
TRUE: 'Tis true; no more than all birds, or all fishes. If you
appear learned to an ignorant wench, or jocund to a sad, or witty
to a foolish, why she presently begins to mistrust herself. You
must approach them in their own height, their own line: for the
contrary makes many, that fear to commit themselves to noble and
worthy fellows, run into the embraces of a rascal. If she love
wit, give verses, though you borrow them of a friend, or buy them,
to have good. If valour, talk of your sword, and be frequent in
the mention of quarrels, though you be staunch in fighting. If
activity, be seen on your barbary often, or leaping over stools,
for the credit of your back. If she love good clothes or dressing,
have your learned council about you every morning, your French
tailor, barber, linener, etc. Let your powder, your glass, and
your comb be your dearest acquaintance. Take more care for the
ornament of your head, than the safety: and wish the commonwealth
rather troubled, than a hair about you. That will take her. Then,
if she be covetous and craving, do you promise any thing, and
perform sparingly; so shall you keep her in appetite still. Seem
as you would give, but be like a barren field, that yields little,
or unlucky dice to foolish and hoping gamesters. Let your gifts
be slight and dainty, rather than precious. Let cunning be above
cost. Give cherries at time of year, or apricots; and say they
were sent you out of the country, though you bought them in
Cheapside. Admire her tires: like her in all fashions; compare her
in every habit to some deity; invent excellent dreams to flatter
her, and riddles; or, if she be a great one, perform always the
second parts to her: like what she likes, praise whom she praises,
and fail not to make the household and servants yours, yea the
whole family, and salute them by their names: ('tis but light cost
if you can purchase them so,) and make her physician your
pensioner, and her chief woman. Nor will it be out of your gain to
make love to her too, so she follow, not usher her lady's
pleasure. All blabbing is taken away, when she comes to be a part
of the crime.
DAUP: On what courtly lap hast thou late slept, to come forth so
sudden and absolute a courtling?
TRUE: Good faith, I should rather question you, that are so
harkening after these mysteries. I begin to suspect your
diligence, Dauphine. Speak, art thou in love in earnest?
DAUP: Yes, by my troth am I: 'twere ill dissembling before thee.
TRUE: With which of them, I prithee?
DAUP: With all the collegiates.
CLER: Out on thee! We'll keep you at home, believe it, in the
stable, if you be such a stallion.
TRUE: No; I like him well. Men should love wisely, and all women;
some one for the face, and let her please the eye; another for
the skin, and let her please the touch; a third for the voice, and
let her please the ear; and where the objects mix, let the senses
so too. Thou would'st think it strange, if I should make them all
in love with thee afore night!
DAUP: I would say, thou had'st the best philtre in the world, and
couldst do more than madam Medea, or doctor Foreman.
TRUE: If I do not, let me play the mountebank for my meat, while I
live, and the bawd for my drink.
DAUP: So be it, I say.
[ENTER OTTER, WITH HIS THREE CUPS, DAW, AND LA-FOOLE.]
OTT: O Lord, gentlemen, how my knights and I have mist you here!
CLER: Why, captain, what service? what service?
OTT: To see me bring up my bull, bear, and horse to fight.
DAW: Yes, faith, the captain says we shall be his dogs to bait
them.
DAUP: A good employment.
TRUE: Come on, let's see a course, then.
LA-F: I am afraid my cousin will be offended, if she come.
OTT: Be afraid of nothing. Gentlemen, I have placed the drum and
the trumpets, and one to give them the sign when you are ready.
Here's my bull for myself, and my bear for sir John Daw, and my
horse for sir Amorous. Now set your foot to mine, and yours to
his, and—
LA-F: Pray God my cousin come not.
OTT: Saint George, and saint Andrew, fear no cousins. Come,
sound, sound.
[DRUM AND TRUMPETS SOUND.]
Et rauco strepuerunt cornua cantu.
[THEY DRINK.]
TRUE: Well said, captain, i'faith: well fought at the bull.
CLER: Well held at the bear.
TRUE: Low, low! captain.
DAUP: O, the horse has kick'd off his dog already.
LA-F: I cannot drink it, as I am a knight.
TRUE: Ods so! off with his spurs, somebody.
LA-F: It goes against my conscience. My cousin will be angry with it.
DAW: I have done mine.
TRUE: You fought high and fair, sir John.
CLER: At the head.
DAUP: Like an excellent bear-dog.
CLER: You take no notice of the business, I hope?
DAW: Not a word, sir; you see we are jovial.
OTT: Sir Amorous, you must not equivocate.
It must be pull'd down, for all my cousin.
CLER: 'Sfoot, if you take not your drink, they will think you are
discontented with something: you'll betray all, if you take the
least notice.
LA-F: Not I; I'll both drink and talk then.
OTT: You must pull the horse on his knees, sir Amorous: fear no
cousins. Jacta est alea.
TRUE: O, now he's in his vein, and bold. The least hint given him
of his wife now, will make him rail desperately.
CLER: Speak to him of her.
TRUE: Do you, and I will fetch her to the hearing of it.
[EXIT.]
DAUP: Captain He-Otter, your She-Otter is coming, your wife.
OTT: Wife! buz! titivilitium! There's no such thing in nature.
I confess, gentlemen, I have a cook, a laundress, a house-drudge,
that serves my necessary turns, and goes under that title: but
he's an ass that will be so uxorious to tie his affections to one
circle. Come, the name dulls appetite. Here, replenish again:
another bout.
[FILLS THE CUPS AGAIN.]
Wives are nasty sluttish animalls.
DAUP: O, captain.
OTT: As ever the earth bare, tribus verbis. Where's master
Truewit?
DAW: He's slipt aside, sir.
CLER: But you must drink, and be jovial.
DAW: Yes, give it me.
LA-F: And me too.
DAW: Let's be jovial.
LA-F: As jovial as you will.
OTT: Agreed. Now you shall have the bear, cousin, and sir John
Daw the horse, and I will have the bull still. Sound, Tritons of
the Thames.
[DRUM AND TRUMPETS SOUND AGAIN.]
Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero—
MOR [ABOVE]: Villains, murderers, sons of the earth, and traitors,
what do you there?
CLER: O, now the trumpets have waked him, we shall have his
company.
OTT: A wife is a scurvy clogdogdo, an unlucky thing, a very
foresaid bear-whelp, without any good fashion or breeding: mala
bestia.
[RE-ENTER TRUEWIT BEHIND, WITH MISTRESS OTTER.]
DAUP: Why did you marry one then, captain?
OTT: A pox!—I married with six thousand pound, I. I was in love
with that. I have not kissed my Fury these forty weeks.
CLER: The more to blame you, captain.
TRUE: Nay, mistress Otter, hear him a little first.
OTT: She has a breath worse than my grandmother's, profecto.
MRS. OTT: O treacherous liar! kiss me, sweet master Truewit, and
prove him a slandering knave.
TRUE: I will rather believe you, lady.
OTT: And she has a peruke that's like a pound of hemp, made up in
shoe-threads.
MRS. OTT: O viper, mandrake!
OTT: A most vile face! and yet she spends me forty pound a year
in mercury and hogs-bones. All her teeth were made in the
Black-Friars, both her eyebrows in the Strand, and her hair in
Silver-street. Every part of the town owns a piece of her.
MRS. OTT [COMES FORWARD.]: I cannot hold.
OTT: She takes herself asunder still when she goes to bed, into
some twenty boxes; and about next day noon is put together again,
like a great German clock: and so comes forth, and rings a tedious
larum to the whole house, and then is quiet again for an hour,
but for her quarters. Have you done me right, gentlemen?
MRS. OTT [FALLS UPON HIM, AND BEATS HIM.]: No, sir, I will do you
right with my quarters, with my quarters.
OTT: O, hold, good princess.
TRUE: Sound, sound!
[DRUM AND TRUMPETS SOUND.]
CLER: A battle, a battle!
MRS. OTT: You notorious stinkardly bearward, does my breath smell?
OTT: Under correction, dear princess: look to my bear, and my
horse, gentlemen.
MRS. OTT: Do I want teeth, and eyebrows, thou bull-dog?
TRUE: Sound, sound still.
[THEY SOUND AGAIN.]
OTT: No, I protest, under correction—
MRS. OTT: Ay, now you are under correction, you protest: but you
did not protest before correction, sir. Thou Judas, to offer to
betray thy princess! I will make thee an example—
[BEATS HIM.]
[ENTER MOROSE WITH HIS LONG SWORD.]
MOR: I will have no such examples in my house, lady Otter.
MRS. OTT: Ah!—
[MRS. OTTER, DAW, AND LA-FOOLE RUN OFF.]
OTT: Mistress Mary Ambree, your examples are dangerous. Rogues,
hell-hounds, Stentors! out of my doors, you sons of noise and
tumult, begot on an ill May-day, or when the galley-foist is
afloat to Westminster!
[DRIVES OUT THE MUSICIANS.]
A trumpeter could not be conceived but then!
DAUP: What ails you, sir?
MOR: They have rent my roof, walls, and all my windows asunder,
with their brazen throats.
[EXIT.]
TRUE: Best follow him, Dauphine.
DAUP: So I will.
[EXIT.]
CLER: Where's Daw and La-Foole?
OTT: They are both run away, sir. Good gentlemen, help to pacify
my princess, and speak to the great ladies for me. Now must I go
lie with the bears this fortnight, and keep out of the way, till
my peace be made, for this scandal she has taken. Did you not see
my bull-head, gentlemen?
CLER: Is't not on, captain?
TRUE: No; but he may make a new one, by that is on.
OTT: O, here it is. An you come over, gentlemen, and ask for Tom
Otter, we'll go down to Ratcliff, and have a course i'faith,
for all these disasters. There is bona spes left.
TRUE: Away, captain, get off while you are well.
[EXIT OTTER.]
CLER: I am glad we are rid of him.
TRUE: You had never been, unless we had put his wife upon him.
His humour is as tedious at last, as it was ridiculous at first.
[EXEUNT.]
SCENE 4.2.
A LONG OPEN GALLERY IN THE SAME.
ENTER LADY HAUGHTY, MISTRESS OTTER, MAVIS, DAW, LAFOOLE,
CENTAURE, AND EPICOENE.
HAU: We wonder'd why you shriek'd so, mistress Otter?
MRS. OTT: O lord, madam, he came down with a huge long naked
weapon in both his hands, and look'd so dreadfully! sure he's
beside himself.
HAU: Why, what made you there, mistress Otter?
MRS. OTT: Alas, mistress Mavis, I was chastising my subject,
and thought nothing of him.
DAW: Faith, mistress, you must do so too: learn to chastise.
Mistress Otter corrects her husband so, he dares not speak but
under correction.
LA-F: And with his hat off to her: 'twould do you good to see.
HAU: In sadness, 'tis good and mature counsel: practise it,
Morose. I'll call you Morose still now, as I call Centaure and
Mavis; we four will be all one.
CEN: And you will come to the college, and live with us?
HAU: Make him give milk and honey.
MAV: Look how you manage him at first, you shall have him ever
after.
CEN: Let him allow you your coach, and four horses, your woman,
your chamber-maid, your page, your gentleman-usher, your French
cook, and four grooms.
HAU: And go with us to Bedlam, to the china-houses, and to the
Exchange.
CEN: It will open the gate to your fame.
HAU: Here's Centaure has immortalised herself, with taming of her
wild male.
MAV: Ay, she has done the miracle of the kingdom.
[ENTER CLERIMONT AND TRUEWIT.]
EPI: But, ladies, do you count it lawful to have such plurality
of servants, and do them all graces?
HAU: Why not? why should women deny their favours to men? are
they the poorer or the worse?
DAW: Is the Thames the less for the dyer's water, mistress?
LA-F: Or a torch for lighting many torches?
TRUE: Well said, La-Foole; what a new one he has got!
CEN: They are empty losses women fear in this kind.
HAU: Besides, ladies should be mindful of the approach of age,
and let no time want his due use. The best of our days pass
first.
MAV: We are rivers, that cannot be call'd back, madam: she that
now excludes her lovers, may live to lie a forsaken beldame, in
a frozen bed.
CEN: 'Tis true, Mavis: and who will wait on us to coach then?
or write, or tell us the news then, make anagrams of our names,
and invite us to the Cockpit, and kiss our hands all the play-time,
and draw their weapons for our honours?
HAU: Not one.
DAW: Nay, my mistress is not altogether unintelligent of these
things; here be in presence have tasted of her favours.
CLER: What a neighing hobby-horse is this!
EPI: But not with intent to boast them again, servant. And have
you those excellent receipts, madam, to keep yourselves from
bearing of children?
HAU: O yes, Morose: how should we maintain our youth and beauty
else? Many births of a woman make her old, as many crops make the
earth barren.
[ENTER MOROSE AND DAUPHINE.]
MOR: O my cursed angel, that instructed me to this fate!
DAUP: Why, sir?
MOR: That I should be seduced by so foolish a devil as a barber
will make!
DAUP: I would I had been worthy, sir, to have partaken your
counsel; you should never have trusted it to such a minister.
MOR: Would I could redeem it with the loss of an eye, nephew, a
hand, or any other member.
DAUP: Marry, God forbid, sir, that you should geld yourself, to
anger your wife.
MOR: So it would rid me of her! and, that I did supererogatory
penance in a belfry, at Westminster-hall, in the Cock-pit, at the
fall of a stag; the Tower-wharf (what place is there else?)—
London-bridge, Paris-garden, Billinsgate, when the noises are at
their height, and loudest. Nay, I would sit out a play, that were
nothing but fights at sea, drum, trumpet, and target.
DAUP: I hope there shall be no such need, sir. Take patience, good
uncle. This is but a day, and 'tis well worn too now.
MOR: O, 'twill be so for ever, nephew, I foresee it, for ever.
Strife and tumult are the dowry that comes with a wife.
TRUE: I told you so, sir, and you would not believe me.
MOR: Alas, do not rub those wounds, master Truewit, to blood again:
'twas my negligence. Add not affliction to affliction. I have
perceived the effect of it, too late, in madam Otter.
EPI: How do you, sir?
MOR: Did you ever hear a more unnecessary question? as if she did
not see! Why, I do as you see, empress, empress.
EPI: You are not well, sir; you look very ill; something has
distemper'd you.
MOR: O horrible, monstrous impertinencies! would not one of these
have served, do you think, sir? would not one of these have
served?
TRUE: Yes, sir, but these are but notes of female kindness, sir;
certain tokens that she has a voice, sir.
MOR: O, is it so? Come, an't be no otherwise—What say you?
EPI: How do you feel yourself, sir?
MOR: Again that!
TRUE: Nay, look you, sir: you would be friends with your wife upon
unconscionable terms; her silence—
EPI: They say you are run mad, sir.
MOR: Not for love, I assure you, of you; do you see?
EPI: O lord, gentlemen! lay hold on him, for God's sake. What
shall I do? who's his physician, can you tell, that knows the
state of his body best, that I might send for him? Good sir,
speak; I'll send for one of my doctors else.
MOR: What, to poison me, that I might die intestate, and leave
you possest of all?
EPI: Lord, how idly he talks, and how his eyes sparkle! he looks
green about the temples! do you see what blue spots he has?
TRUE: Ay, 'tis melancholy.
EPI: Gentlemen, for Heaven's sake, counsel me. Ladies;—servant,
you have read Pliny and Paracelsus; ne'er a word now to comfort a
poor gentlewoman? Ay me, what fortune had I, to marry a distracted
man!
DAW: I will tell you, mistress—
TRUE: How rarely she holds it up!
[ASIDE TO CLER.]
MOR: What mean you, gentlemen?
EPI: What will you tell me, servant?
DAW: The disease in Greek is called mania, in Latin insania,
furor, vel ecstasis melancholica, that is, egressio, when a
man ex melancholico evadit fanaticus.
MOR: Shall I have a lecture read upon me alive?
DAW: But he may be but phreneticus yet, mistress? and phrenetis
is only delirium, or so.
EPI: Ay, that is for the disease, servant: but what is this to
the cure? we are sure enough of the disease.
MOR: Let me go.
TRUE: Why, we'll entreat her to hold her peace, sir.
MOR: O no, labour not to stop her. She is like a conduit-pipe,
that will gush out with more force when she opens again.
HAU: I will tell you, Morose, you must talk divinity to him
altogether, or moral philosophy.
LA-F: Ay, and there's an excellent book of moral philosophy,
madam, of Raynard the fox, and all the beasts, called Doni's
Philosophy.
CEN: There is, indeed, sir Amorous La-Foole.
MOR: O misery!
LA-F: I have read it, my lady Centaure, all over, to my cousin,
here.
MRS. OTT: Ay, and 'tis a very good book as any is, of the moderns.
DAW: Tut, he must have Seneca read to him, and Plutarch, and the
ancients; the moderns are not for this disease.
CLER: Why, you discommended them too, to-day, sir John.
DAW: Ay, in some cases: but in these they are best, and Aristotle's
ethics.
MAV: Say you so sir John? I think you are decived: you took it upon
trust.
HAU: Where's Trusty, my woman? I'll end this difference. I prithee,
Otter, call her. Her father and mother were both mad, when they put
her to me.
MOR: I think so. Nay, gentlemen, I am tame. This is but an exercise,
I know, a marriage ceremony, which I must endure.
HAU: And one of them, I know not which, was cur'd with the Sick
Man's Salve; and the other with Green's Groat's-worth of Wit.
TRUE: A very cheap cure, madam.
[ENTER TRUSTY.]
HAU: Ay, 'tis very feasible.
MRS. OTT: My lady call'd for you, mistress Trusty: you must decide a
controversy.
HAU: O, Trusty, which was it you said, your father, or your mother,
that was cured with the Sick Man's Salve?
TRUS: My mother, madam, with the Salve.
TRUE: Then it was the sick woman's salve?
TRUS: And my father with the Groat's-worth of Wit. But there was
other means used: we had a preacher that would preach folk asleep
still; and so they were prescribed to go to church, by an old woman
that was their physician, thrice a week—
EPI: To sleep?
TRUS: Yes, forsooth: and every night they read themselves asleep on
those books.
EPI: Good faith, it stands with great reason. I would I knew where
to procure those books.
MOR: Oh!
LA-F: I can help you with one of them, mistress Morose, the
Groat's-worth of Wit.
EPI: But I shall disfurnish you, sir Amorous: can you spare it?
LA-F: O, yes, for a week, or so; I'll read it myself to him.
EPI: No, I must do that, sir: that must be my office.
MOR: Oh, oh!
EPI: Sure he would do well enough, if he could sleep.
MOR: No, I should do well enough, if you could sleep. Have I no
friend that will make her drunk? or give her a little laudanum?
or opium?
TRUE: Why, sir, she talks ten times worse in her sleep.
MOR: How!
CLER: Do you not know that, sir? never ceases all night.
TRUE: And snores like a porpoise.
MOR: O, redeem me, fate; redeem me, fate! For how many causes may
a man be divorced, nephew?
DAUP: I know not, truly, sir.
TRUE: Some divine must resolve you in that, sir, or canon-lawyer.
MOR: I will not rest, I will not think of any other hope or comfort,
till I know.
[EXIT WITH DAUPHINE.]
CLER: Alas, poor man!
TRUE: You'll make him mad indeed, ladies, if you pursue this.
HAU: No, we'll let him breathe now, a quarter of an hour or so.
CLER: By my faith, a large truce!
HAU: Is that his keeper, that is gone with him?
DAW: It is his nephew, madam.
LA-F: Sir Dauphine Eugenie.
HAU: He looks like a very pitiful knight—
DAW: As can be. This marriage has put him out of all.
LA-F: He has not a penny in his purse, madam.
DAW: He is ready to cry all this day.
LA-F: A very shark; he set me in the nick t'other night at
Primero.
TRUE: How these swabbers talk!
CLER: Ay, Otter's wine has swell'd their humours above a spring-tide.
HAU: Good Morose, let us go in again. I like your couches exceeding
well; we will go lie and talk there.
[EXEUNT HAU., CEN., MAV., TRUS., LA-FOOLE, AND DAW.]
EPI [FOLLOWING THEM.]: I wait on you, madam.
TRUE [STOPPING HER.]: 'Slight, I will have them as silent as
signs, and their post too, ere I have done. Do you hear, lady-bride?
I pray thee now, as thou art a noble wench, continue this discourse
of Dauphine within; but praise him exceedingly: magnify him with all
the height of affection thou canst;—I have some purpose in't: and
but beat off these two rooks, Jack Daw and his fellow, with any
discontentment, hither, and I'll honour thee for ever.
EPI: I was about it here. It angered me to the soul, to hear them
begin to talk so malepert.
TRUE: Pray thee perform it, and thou winn'st me an idolater to
thee everlasting.
EPI: Will you go in and hear me do't?
TRUE: No, I'll stay here. Drive them out of your company, 'tis all
I ask; which cannot be any way better done, than by extolling
Dauphine, whom they have so slighted.
EPI: I warrant you; you shall expect one of them presently.
[EXIT.]
CLER: What a cast of kestrils are these, to hawk after ladies,
thus!
TRUE: Ay, and strike at such an eagle as Dauphine.
CLER: He will be mad when we tell him. Here he comes.
[RE-ENTER DAUPHINE.]
CLER: O sir, you are welcome.
TRUE: Where's thine uncle?
DAUP: Run out of doors in his night-caps, to talk with a casuist
about his divorce. It works admirably.
TRUE: Thou wouldst have said so, if thou hadst been here! The
ladies have laugh'd at thee most comically, since thou went'st,
Dauphine.
CLER: And ask'd, if thou wert thine uncle's keeper.
TRUE: And the brace of baboons answer'd, Yes; and said thou wert
a pitiful poor fellow, and didst live upon posts: and hadst
nothing but three suits of apparel, and some few benevolences that
lords gave thee to fool to them, and swagger.
DAUP: Let me not live, I will beat them: I'll bind them both to
grand-madam's bed-posts, and have them baited with monkies.
TRUE: Thou shalt not need, they shall be beaten to thy hand,
Dauphine. I have an execution to serve upon them, I warrant thee,
shall serve; trust my plot.
DAUP: Ay, you have many plots! so you had one to make all the
wenches in love with me.
TRUE: Why, if I do not yet afore night, as near as 'tis; and
that they do not every one invite thee, and be ready to scratch
for thee, take the mortgage of my wit.
CLER: 'Fore God, I'll be his witness thou shalt have it,
Dauphine: thou shalt be his fool for ever, if thou doest not.
TRUE: Agreed. Perhaps 'twill be the better estate. Do you observe
this gallery, or rather lobby, indeed? Here are a couple of
studies, at each end one: here will I act such a tragi-comedy
between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Daw and La-Foole—which
of them comes out first, will I seize on:—you two shall be the
chorus behind the arras, and whip out between the acts and
speak—If I do not make them keep the peace for this remnant of
the day, if not of the year, I have failed once—I hear Daw
coming: hide,
[THEY WITHDRAW]
and do not laugh, for God's sake.
[RE-ENTER DAW.]
DAW: Which is the way into the garden trow?
TRUE: O, Jack Daw! I am glad I have met with you. In good faith,
I must have this matter go no further between you. I must have it
taken up.
DAW: What matter, sir? between whom?
TRUE: Come, you disguise it: sir Amorous and you. If you love me,
Jack, you shall make use of your philosophy now, for this once,
and deliver me your sword. This is not the wedding the Centaurs
were at, though there be a she one here.
[TAKES HIS SWORD.]
The bride has entreated me I will see no blood shed at her bridal,
you saw her whisper me erewhile.
DAW: As I hope to finish Tacitus, I intend no murder.
TRUE: Do you not wait for sir Amorous?
DAW: Not I, by my knighthood.
TRUE: And your scholarship too?
DAW: And my scholarship too.
TRUE: Go to, then I return you your sword, and ask you mercy; but
put it not up, for you will be assaulted. I understood that you
had apprehended it, and walked here to brave him: and that you
had held your life contemptible, in regard of your honour.
DAW: No, no; no such thing, I assure you. He and I parted now,
as good friends as could be.
TRUE: Trust not you to that visor. I saw him since dinner with
another face: I have known many men in my time vex'd with losses,
with deaths, and with abuses; but so offended a wight as sir
Amorous, did I never see, or read of. For taking away his guests,
sir, to-day, that's the cause: and he declares it behind your back
with such threatenings and contempts—He said to Dauphine, you
were the arrant'st ass—
DAW: Ay, he may say his pleasure.
TRUE: And swears you are so protested a coward, that he knows you
will never do him any manly or single right, and therefore he will
take his course.
DAW: I'll give him any satisfaction, sir—but fighting.
TRUE: Ay, sir: but who knows what satisfaction he'll take? blood
he thirsts for, and blood he will have: and whereabouts on you he
will have it, who knows but himself?
DAW: I pray you, master Truewit, be you a mediator.
TRUE: Well, sir, conceal yourself then in this study till I
return.
[PUTS HIM INTO THE STUDY.]
Nay, you must be content to be lock'd in: for, for mine own
reputation, I would not have you seen to receive a public
disgrace, while I have the matter in managing. Ods so, here he
comes; keep your breath close, that he do not hear you sigh.
In good faith, sir Amorous, he is not this way; I pray you be
merciful, do not murder him; he is a Christian, as good as you:
you are arm'd as if you sought revenge on all his race. Good
Dauphine, get him away from this place. I never knew a man's
choler so high, but he would speak to his friends, he would hear
reason.—Jack Daw, Jack! asleep!
DAW [within]: Is he gone, master Truewit?
TRUE: Ay; did you hear him?
DAW: O lord! yes.
TRUE: What a quick ear fear has!
DAW [COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET.]: But is he so arm'd, as you say?
TRUE: Arm'd? did you ever see a fellow set out to take possession?
DAW: Ay, sir.
TRUE: That may give you some light to conceive of him: but 'tis
nothing to the principal. Some false brother in the house has
furnish'd him strangely; or, if it were out of the house, it was
Tom Otter.
DAW: Indeed he's a captain, and his wife is his kinswoman.
TRUE: He has got some body's old two-hand sword, to mow you off
at the knees; and that sword hath spawn'd such a dagger!—But
then he is so hung with pikes, halberds, petronels, calivers and
muskets, that he looks like a justice of peace's hall: a man of
two thousand a-year, is not cess'd at so many weapons as he has on.
There was never fencer challenged at so many several foils. You
would think he meant to murder all Saint Pulchre parish. If he
could but victual himself for half a year in his breeches, he is
sufficiently arm'd to over-run a country.
DAW: Good lord! what means he, sir? I pray you, master Truewit, be
you a mediator.
TRUE: Well, I 'll try if he will be appeased with a leg or an arm;
if not you must die once.
DAW: I would be loth to lose my right arm, for writing madrigals.
TRUE: Why, if he will be satisfied with a thumb or a little finger,
all's one to me. You must think, I will do my best.
[SHUTS HIM UP AGAIN.]
DAW: Good sir, do.
[CLERIMONT AND DAUPHINE COME FORWARD.]
CLER: What hast thou done?
TRUE: He will let me do nothing, he does all afore; he offers
his left arm.
CLER: His left wing for a Jack Daw.
DAUP: Take it, by all means.
TRUE: How! maim a man for ever, for a jest? What a conscience hast
thou!
DAUP: 'Tis no loss to him; he has no employment for his arms, but
to eat spoon-meat. Beside, as good maim his body as his reputation.
TRUE: He is a scholar, and a wit, and yet he does not think so.
But he loses no reputation with us; for we all resolved him an ass
before. To your places again.
CLER: I pray thee, let me be in at the other a little.
TRUE: Look, you'll spoil all: these be ever your tricks.
CLER: No, but I could hit of some things that thou wilt miss, and
thou wilt say are good ones.
TRUE: I warrant you. I pray forbear, I will leave it off, else.
DAUP: Come away, Clerimont.
[DAUP. AND CLER. WITHDRAW AS BEFORE.]
[ENTER LA-FOOLE.]
TRUE: Sir Amorous!
LA-F: Master Truewit.
TRUE: Whither were you going?
LA-F: Down into the court to make water.
TRUE: By no means, sir; you shall rather tempt your breeches.
LA-F: Why, sir?
TRUE: Enter here, if you love your life.
[OPENING THE DOOR OF THE OTHER STUDY.]
LA-F: Why? why?
TRUE: Question till you throat be cut, do: dally till the enraged
soul find you.
LA-F: Who is that?
TRUE: Daw it is: will you in?
LA-F: Ay, ay, I will in: what's the matter?
TRUE: Nay, if he had been cool enough to tell us that, there had
been some hope to atone you, but he seems so implacably enraged!
LA-F: 'Slight, let him rage! I'll hide myself.
TRUE: Do, good sir. But what have you done to him within, that
should provoke him thus? You have broke some jest upon him, afore
the ladies.
LA-F: Not I, never in my life, broke jest upon any man. The bride
was praising sir Dauphine, and he went away in snuff, and I
followed him, unless he took offence at me in his drink erewhile,
that I would not pledge all the horse full.
TRUE: By my faith, and that may be, you remember well: but he walks
the round up and down, through every room o' the house, with a
towel in his hand, crying, Where's La-Foole? Who saw La-Foole?
and when Dauphine and I demanded the cause, we can force no
answer from him, but—O revenge, how sweet art thou! I will
strangle him in this towel—which leads us to conjecture that the
main cause of his fury is, for bringing your meat to-day, with a
towel about you, to his discredit.
LA-F: Like enough. Why, if he be angry for that, I'll stay here
till his anger be blown over.
TRUE: A good becoming resolution, sir; if you can put it on o'
the sudden.
LA-F: Yes, I can put it on: or, I'll away into the country
presently.
TRUE: How will you get out of the house, sir? he knows you are in
the house, and he will watch you this se'ennight, but he'll have
you. He'll outwait a serjeant for you.
LA-F: Why, then I'll stay here.
TRUE: You must think how to victual yourself in time then.
LA-F: Why, sweet master Truewit, will you entreat my cousin Otter
to send me a cold venison pasty, a bottle or two of wine, and a
chamber-pot?
TRUE: A stool were better, sir, of sir Ajax his invention.
LA-F: Ay, that will be better, indeed; and a pallet to lie on.
TRUE: O, I would not advise you to sleep by any means.
LA-F: Would you not, sir? why, then I will not.
TRUE: Yet, there's another fear—
LA-F: Is there! what is't?
TRUE: No, he cannot break open this door with his foot, sure.
LA-F: I'll set my back against it, sir. I have a good back.
TRUE: But then if he should batter.
LA-F: Batter! if he dare, I'll have an action of battery against
him.
TRUE: Cast you the worst. He has sent for powder already, and what
he will do with it, no man knows: perhaps blow up the corner of
the house where he suspects you are. Here he comes; in quickly.
[THRUSTS IN LA-FOOLE AND SHUTS THE DOOR.]
I protest, sir John Daw, he is not this way: what will you do?
before God, you shall hang no petard here. I'll die rather. Will
you not take my word? I never knew one but would be satisfied.—
Sir Amorous,
[SPEAKS THROUGH THE KEY-HOLE,]
there's no standing out: He has made a petard of an old brass
pot, to force your door. Think upon some satisfaction, or terms
to offer him.
LA-F [WITHIN.]: Sir, I will give him any satisfaction: I dare
give any terms.
TRUE: You'll leave it to me, then?
LA-F: Ay, sir. I'll stand to any conditions.
TRUE [BECKONING FORWARD CLERIMONT AND DAUPHINE.]: How now, what
think you, sirs? were't not a difficult thing to determine
which of these two fear'd most.
CLER: Yes, but this fears the bravest: the other a whiniling
dastard, Jack Daw! But La-Foole, a brave heroic coward! and is
afraid in a great look and a stout accent; I like him rarely.
TRUE: Had it not been pity these two should have been concealed?
CLER: Shall I make a motion?
TRUE: Briefly: For I must strike while 'tis hot.
CLER: Shall I go fetch the ladies to the catastrophe?
TRUE: Umph! ay, by my troth.
DAUP: By no mortal means. Let them continue in the state of
ignorance, and err still; think them wits and fine fellows, as
they have done. 'Twere sin to reform them.
TRUE: Well, I will have them fetch'd, now I think on't, for a
private purpose of mine: do, Clerimont, fetch them, and discourse
to them all that's past, and bring them into the gallery here.
DAUP: This is thy extreme vanity, now: thou think'st thou wert
undone, if every jest thou mak'st were not publish'd.
TRUE: Thou shalt see how unjust thou art presently. Clerimont, say
it was Dauphine's plot.
[EXIT CLERIMONT.]
Trust me not, if the whole drift be not for thy good. There is a
carpet in the next room, put it on, with this scarf over thy face,
and a cushion on thy head, and be ready when I call Amorous.
Away!
[EXIT DAUP.]
John Daw!
[GOES TO DAW'S CLOSET AND BRINGS HIM OUT.]
DAW: What good news, sir?
TRUE: Faith, I have followed and argued with him hard for you. I
told him you were a knight, and a scholar, and that you knew
fortitude did consist magis patiendo quam faciendo, magis ferendo
quam feriendo.
DAW: It doth so indeed, sir.
TRUE: And that you would suffer, I told him: so at first he
demanded by my troth, in my conceit, too much.
DAW: What was it, sir.
TRUE: Your upper lip, and six of your fore-teeth.
DAW: 'Twas unreasonable.
TRUE: Nay, I told him plainly, you could not spare them all.
So after long argument pro et con as you know, I brought him
down to your two butter-teeth, and them he would have.
DAW: O, did you so? Why, he shall have them.
TRUE: But he shall not, sir, by your leave. The conclusion is this,
sir: because you shall be very good friends hereafter, and this
never to be remembered or upbraided; besides, that he may not
boast he has done any such thing to you in his own person: he is
to come here in disguise, give you five kicks in private, sir, take
your sword from you, and lock you up in that study during pleasure:
which will be but a little while, we'll get it released presently.
DAW: Five kicks! he shall have six, sir, to be friends.
TRUE: Believe me, you shall not over-shoot yourself, to send him
that word by me.
DAW: Deliver it, sir: he shall have it with all my heart, to be
friends.
TRUE: Friends! Nay, an he should not be so, and heartily too, upon
these terms, he shall have me to enemy while I live. Come, sir, bear
it bravely.
DAW: O lord, sir, 'tis nothing.
TRUE: True: what's six kicks to a man that reads Seneca?
DAW: I have had a hundred, sir.
TRUE: Sir Amorous!
[RE-ENTER DAUPHINE, DISGUISED.]
No speaking one to another, or rehearsing old matters.
DAW [AS DAUPHINE KICKS HIM.]: One, two, three, four, five. I
protest, sir Amorous, you shall have six.
TRUE: Nay, I told you, you should not talk. Come give him six,
an he will needs.
[DAUPHINE KICKS HIM AGAIN.]
—Your sword.
[TAKES HIS SWORD.]
Now return to your safe custody: you shall presently meet
afore the ladies, and be the dearest friends one to another.
[PUTS DAW INTO THE STUDY.]
—Give me the scarf now, thou shalt beat the other bare-faced.
Stand by:
[DAUPHINE RETIRES, AND TRUEWIT GOES TO THE OTHER CLOSET, AND
RELEASES LA-FOOLE.]
—Sir Amorous!
LA-F: What's here? A sword?
TRUE: I cannot help it, without I should take the quarrel upon
myself. Here he has sent you his sword—
LA-F: I will receive none on't.
TRUE: And he wills you to fasten it against a wall, and break
your head in some few several places against the hilts.
LA-F: I will not: tell him roundly. I cannot endure to shed my
own blood.
TRUE: Will you not?
LA-F: No. I'll beat it against a fair flat wall, if that will
satisfy him: if not, he shall beat it himself, for Amorous.
TRUE: Why, this is strange starting off, when a man undertakes
for you! I offer'd him another condition; will you stand to that?
LA-F: Ay, what is't.
TRUE: That you will be beaten in private.
LA-F: Yes, I am content, at the blunt.
[ENTER, ABOVE, HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS, MISTRESS OTTER,
EPICOENE, AND TRUSTY.]
TRUE: Then you must submit yourself to be hoodwinked in this
scarf, and be led to him, where he will take your sword from
you, and make you bear a blow over the mouth, gules, and tweaks
by the nose, sans nombre.
LA-F: I am content. But why must I be blinded?
TRUE: That's for your good, sir: because, if he should grow
insolent upon this, and publish it hereafter to your disgrace,
(which I hope he will not do,) you might swear safely, and
protest, he never beat you, to your knowledge.
LA-F: O, I conceive.
TRUE: I do not doubt but you will be perfect good friends upon't,
and not dare to utter an ill thought one of another in future.
LA-F: Not I, as God help me, of him.
TRUE: Nor he of you, sir. If he should
[BLINDS HIS EYES.]
—Come, sir.
[LEADS HIM FORWARD.]
—All hid, sir John.
[ENTER DAUPHINE, AND TWEAKS HIM BY THE NOSE.]
LA-F: O, sir John, sir John! Oh, o—o—o—o—o—Oh—
TRUE: Good, sir John, leave tweaking, you'll blow his nose off.
'Tis sir John's pleasure, you should retire into the study.
[PUTS HIM UP AGAIN.]
—Why, now you are friends. All bitterness between you, I hope,
is buried; you shall come forth by and by, Damon and Pythias
upon't, and embrace with all the rankness of friendship that can
be. I trust, we shall have them tamer in their language hereafter.
Dauphine, I worship thee.—Gods will the ladies have surprised us!
[ENTER HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS, MISTRESS OTTER, EPICOENE,
AND TRUSTY, BEHIND.]
HAU: Centaure, how our judgments were imposed on by these
adulterate knights!
Nay, madam, Mavis was more deceived than we, 'twas her
commendation utter'd them in the college.
MAV: I commended but their wits, madam, and their braveries.
I never look'd toward their valours.
HAU: Sir Dauphine is valiant, and a wit too, it seems.
MAV: And a bravery too.
HAU: Was this his project?
MRS. OTT: So master Clerimont intimates, madam.
HAU: Good Morose, when you come to the college, will you bring
him with you? he seems a very perfect gentleman.
EPI: He is so, madam, believe it.
CEN: But when will you come, Morose?
EPI: Three or four days hence, madam, when I have got me a coach
and horses.
HAU: No, to-morrow, good Morose; Centaure shall send you her coach.
MAV: Yes faith, do, and bring sir Dauphine with you.
HAU: She has promised that, Mavis.
MAV: He is a very worthy gentleman in his exteriors, madam.
HAU: Ay, he shews he is judicial in his clothes.
CEN: And yet not so superlatively neat as some, madam, that have
their faces set in a brake.
HAU: Ay, and have every hair in form!
MAV: That wear purer linen then ourselves, and profess more
neatness than the French hermaphrodite!
EPI: Ay, ladies, they, what they tell one of us, have told a
thousand; and are the only thieves of our fame: that think to
take us with that perfume, or with that lace, and laugh at us
unconscionably when they have done.
HAU: But, sir Dauphine's carelessness becomes him.
CEN: I could love a man for such a nose.
MAV: Or such a leg!
CEN: He has an exceeding good eye, madam.
MAV: And a very good lock.
CEN: Good Morose, bring him to my chamber first.
MRS. OTT: Please your honours to meet at my house, madam.
TRUE: See how they eye thee, man! they are taken, I warrant thee.
[HAUGHTY COMES FORWARD.]
HAU: You have unbraced our brace of knights here, master Truewit.
TRUE: Not I, madam; it was sir Dauphine's ingine: who, if he have
disfurnish'd your ladyship of any guard or service by it, is able
to make the place good again, in himself.
HAU: There is no suspicion of that, sir.
CEN: God so, Mavis, Haughty is kissing.
MAV: Let us go too, and take part.
[THEY COME FORWARD.]
HAU: But I am glad of the fortune (beside the discovery of two
such empty caskets) to gain the knowledge of so rich a mine of
virtue as sir Dauphine.
CEN: We would be all glad to style him of our friendship, and see
him at the college.
MAV: He cannot mix with a sweeter society, I'll prophesy; and
I hope he himself will think so.
DAUP: I should be rude to imagine otherwise, lady.
TRUE: Did not I tell thee, Dauphine? Why, all their actions are
governed by crude opinion, without reason or cause; they know not
why they do any thing: but, as they are inform'd, believe, judge,
praise, condemn, love, hate, and in emulation one of another, do
all these things alike. Only they have a natural inclination sways
them generally to the worst, when they are left to themselves.
But pursue it, now thou hast them.
HAU: Shall we go in again, Morose?
EPI: Yes, madam.
CEN: We'll entreat sir Dauphine's company.
TRUE: Stay, good madam, the interview of the two friends, Pylades
and Orestes: I'll fetch them out to you straight.
HAU: Will you, master Truewit?
DAUP: Ay, but noble ladies, do not confess in your countenance,
or outward bearing to them, any discovery of their follies, that
we may see how they will bear up again, with what assurance and
erection.
HAU: We will not, sir Dauphine.
CEN. MAV: Upon our honours, sir Dauphine.
TRUE [GOES TO THE FIRST CLOSET.]: Sir Amorous, sir Amorous!
The ladies are here.
LA-F [WITHIN.]: Are they?
TRUE: Yes; but slip out by and by, as their backs are turn'd,
and meet sir John here, as by chance, when I call you.
[goes to the other.]
—Jack Daw.
DAW: What say you, sir?
TRUE: Whip out behind me suddenly, and no anger in your looks to
your adversary. Now, now!
[LA-FOOLE AND DAW SLIP OUT OF THEIR RESPECTIVE CLOSETS, AND
SALUTE EACH OTHER.]
LA-F: Noble sir John Daw, where have you been?
DAW: To seek you, sir Amorous.
LA-F: Me! I honour you.
DAW: I prevent you, sir.
CLER: They have forgot their rapiers.
TRUE: O, they meet in peace, man.
DAUP: Where's your sword, sir John?
CLER: And yours, sir Amorous?
DAW: Mine! my boy had it forth to mend the handle, e'en now.
LA-F: And my gold handle was broke too, and my boy had it forth.
DAUP: Indeed, sir!—How their excuses meet!
CLER: What a consent there is in the handles!
TRUE: Nay, there is so in the points too, I warrant you.
[ENTER MOROSE, WITH THE TWO SWORDS, DRAWN IN HIS HANDS.]
MRS. OTT: O me! madam, he comes again, the madman! Away!
[LADIES, DAW, AND LA-FOOLE, RUN OFF.]
MOR: What make these naked weapons here, gentlemen?
TRUE: O sir! here hath like to have been murder since you went;
a couple of knights fallen out about the bride's favours! We were
fain to take away their weapons; your house had been begg'd by
this time else.
MOR: For what?
CLER: For manslaughter, sir, as being accessary.
MOR: And for her favours?
TRUE: Ay, sir, heretofore, not present—Clerimont, carry them
their swords, now. They have done all the hurt they will do.
[EXIT CLER. WITH THE TWO SWORDS.]
DAUP: Have you spoke with the lawyer, sir?
MOR: O, no! there is such a noise in the court, that they have
frighted me home with more violence then I went! such speaking
and counter-speaking, with their several voices of citations,
appellations, allegations, certificates, attachments,
intergatories, references, convictions, and afflictions indeed,
among the doctors and proctors, that the noise here is silence
to't! a kind of calm midnight!
TRUE: Why, sir, if you would be resolved indeed, I can bring you
hither a very sufficient lawyer, and a learned divine, that shall
enquire into every least scruple for you.
MOR: Can you, master Truewit?
TRUE: Yes, and are very sober, grave persons, that will dispatch
it in a chamber, with a whisper or two.
MOR: Good sir, shall I hope this benefit from you, and trust myself
into your hands?
TRUE: Alas, sir! your nephew and I have been ashamed and oft-times
mad, since you went, to think how you are abused. Go in, good sir,
and lock yourself up till we call you; we'll tell you more anon,
sir.
MOR: Do your pleasure with me gentlemen; I believe in you: and that
deserves no delusion.
[EXIT.]
TRUE: You shall find none, sir: but heap'd, heap'd plenty of
vexation.
DAUP: What wilt thou do now, Wit?
TRUE: Recover me hither Otter and the barber, if you can, by any
means, presently.
DAUP: Why? to what purpose?
TRUE: O, I'll make the deepest divine, and gravest lawyer, out
of them two for him—
DAUP: Thou canst not, man; these are waking dreams.
TRUE: Do not fear me. Clap but a civil gown with a welt on the
one; and a canonical cloak with sleeves on the other: and give
them a few terms in their mouths, if there come not forth as able
a doctor, and complete a parson, for this turn, as may be wish'd,
trust not my election: and, I hope, without wronging the dignity
of either profession, since they are but persons put on, and for
mirth's sake, to torment him. The barber smatters Latin, I
remember.
DAUP: Yes, and Otter too.
TRUE: Well then, if I make them not wrangle out this case to his
no comfort, let me be thought a Jack Daw or La-Foole or anything
worse. Go you to your ladies, but first send for them.
DAUP: I will.
[EXEUNT.]

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

ACT 5.

SCENE 5.1.
A ROOM IN MOROSE'S HOUSE.
ENTER LA-FOOLE, CLERIMONT, AND DAW.
LA-F: Where had you our swords, master Clerimont?
CLER: Why, Dauphine took them from the madman.
LA-F: And he took them from our boys, I warrant you.
CLER: Very like, sir.
LA-F: Thank you, good master Clerimont. Sir John Daw and I are
both beholden to you.
CLER: Would I knew how to make you so, gentlemen!
DAW: Sir Amorous and I are your servants, sir.
[ENTER MAVIS.]
MAV: Gentlemen, have any of you a pen and ink? I would fain write
out a riddle in Italian, for sir Dauphine, to translate.
CLER: Not I, in troth lady; I am no scrivener.
DAW: I can furnish you, I think, lady.
[EXEUNT DAW AND MAVIS.]
CLER: He has it in the haft of a knife, I believe.
LA-F: No, he has his box of instruments.
CLER: Like a surgeon!
LA-F: For the mathematics: his square, his compasses, his brass
pens, and black-lead, to draw maps of every place and person
where he comes.
CLER: How, maps of persons!
LA-F: Yes, sir, of Nomentack when he was here, and of the Prince of
Moldavia, and of his mistress, mistress Epicoene.
[RE-ENTER DAW.]
CLER: Away! he hath not found out her latitude, I hope.
LA-F: You are a pleasant gentleman, sir.
CLER: Faith, now we are in private, let's wanton it a little, and
talk waggishly.—Sir John, I am telling sir Amorous here, that you
two govern the ladies wherever you come; you carry the feminine
gender afore you.
DAW: They shall rather carry us afore them, if they will, sir.
CLER: Nay, I believe that they do, withal—but that you are the
prime men in their affections, and direct all their actions—
DAW: Not I: sir Amorous is.
LA-F: I protest, sir John is.
DAW: As I hope to rise in the state, sir Amorous, you have the
person.
LA-F: Sir John, you have the person, and the discourse too.
DAW: Not I, sir. I have no discourse—and then you have activity
beside.
LA-F: I protest, sir John, you come as high from Tripoly as I do,
every whit: and lift as many join'd stools, and leap over them,
if you would use it.
CLER: Well, agree on't together knights; for between you, you
divide the kingdom or commonwealth of ladies' affections: I see
it, and can perceive a little how they observe you, and fear you,
indeed. You could tell strange stories, my masters, if you would,
I know.
DAW: Faith, we have seen somewhat, sir.
LA-F: That we have—velvet petticoats, and wrought smocks, or so.
DAW: Ay, and—
CLER: Nay, out with it, sir John: do not envy your friend the
pleasure of hearing, when you have had the delight of tasting.
DAW: Why—a—do you speak, sir Amorous.
LA-F: No, do you, sir John Daw.
DAW: I'faith, you shall.
LA-F: I'faith, you shall.
DAW: Why, we have been—
LA-F: In the great bed at Ware together in our time. On, sir
John.
DAW: Nay, do you, sir Amorous.
CLER: And these ladies with you, knights?
LA-F: No, excuse us, sir.
DAW: We must not wound reputation.
LA-F: No matter—they were these, or others. Our bath cost us
fifteen pound when we came home.
CLER: Do you hear, sir John? You shall tell me but one thing
truly, as you love me.
DAW: If I can, I will, sir.
CLER: You lay in the same house with the bride, here?
DAW: Yes, and conversed with her hourly, sir.
CLER: And what humour is she of? Is she coming, and open, free?
DAW: O, exceeding open, sir. I was her servant, and sir Amorous was
to be.
CLER: Come, you have both had favours from her: I know, and have
heard so much.
DAW: O no, sir.
LA-F: You shall excuse us, sir: we must not wound reputation.
CLER: Tut, she is married now, and you cannot hurt her with any
report; and therefore speak plainly: how many times, i'faith?
which of you led first? ha!
LA-F: Sir John had her maidenhead, indeed.
DAW: O, it pleases him to say so, sir, but sir Amorous knows what
is what, as well.
CLER: Dost thou i'faith, Amorous?
LA-F: In a manner, sir.
CLER: Why, I commend you lads. Little knows don Bridegroom of
this. Nor shall he, for me.
DAW: Hang him, mad ox!
CLER: Speak softly: here comes his nephew, with the lady Haughty.
He'll get the ladies from you, sirs, if you look not to him in
time.
LA-F: Why, if he do, we'll fetch them home again, I warrant you.
[EXIT WITH DAW. CLER. WALKS ASIDE.]
[ENTER DAUPHINE AND HAUGHTY.]
HAU: I assure you, sir Dauphine, it is the price and estimation
of your virtue only, that hath embark'd me to this adventure; and
I could not but make out to tell you so; nor can I repent me of
the act, since it is always an argument of some virtue in our
selves, that we love and affect it so in others.
DAUP: Your ladyship sets too high a price on my weakness.
HAU: Sir, I can distinguish gems from pebbles—
DAUP [ASIDE.]: Are you so skilful in stones?
HAU: And howsover I may suffer in such a judgment as yours, by
admitting equality of rank or society with Centaure or Mavis—
DAUP: You do not, madam; I perceive they are your mere foils.
HAU: Then, are you a friend to truth, sir; it makes me love you
the more. It is not the outward, but the inward man that I affect.
They are not apprehensive of an eminent perfection, but love flat,
and dully.
CEN [within.]: Where are you, my lady Haughty?
HAU: I come presently, Centaure.—My chamber, sir, my page shall
shew you; and Trusty, my woman, shall be ever awake for you: you
need not fear to communicate any thing with her, for she is a
Fidelia. I pray you wear this jewel for my sake, sir Dauphine.—
[ENTER CENTAURE.]
Where is Mavis, Centaure?
CEN: Within, madam, a writing. I'll follow you presently:
[EXIT HAU.]
I'll but speak a word with sir Dauphine.
DAUP: With me, madam?
CEN: Good sir Dauphine, do not trust Haughty, nor make any credit
to her, whatever you do besides. Sir Dauphine, I give you this
caution, she is a perfect courtier, and loves nobody but for her
uses: and for her uses she loves all. Besides, her physicians give
her out to be none o' the clearest, whether she pay them or no,
heaven knows: and she's above fifty too, and pargets! See her in
a forenoon. Here comes Mavis, a worse face then she! you would
not like this, by candle-light.
[RE-ENTER MAVIS.]
If you'll come to my chamber one o' these mornings early, or late
in an evening, I will tell you more. Where's Haughty, Mavis?
MAV: Within, Centaure.
CEN: What have you, there?
MAV: An Italian riddle for sir Dauphine,—you shall not see it
i'faith, Centaure.—
[EXIT CEN.]
Good sir Dauphine, solve it for me. I'll call for it anon.
[EXIT.]
CLER [COMING FORWARD.]: How now, Dauphine! how dost thou quit
thyself of these females?
DAUP: 'Slight, they haunt me like fairies, and give me jewels
here; I cannot be rid of them.
CLER: O, you must not tell though.
DAUP: Mass, I forgot that: I was never so assaulted. One loves
for virtue, and bribes me with this;
[SHEWS THE JEWEL.]
—another loves me with caution, and so would possess me; a
third brings me a riddle here: and all are jealous: and rail each
at other.
CLER: A riddle! pray let me see it.
[READS.]
Sir Dauphine, I chose this way of intimation for privacy. The
ladies here, I know, have both hope and purpose to make a
collegiate and servant of you. If I might be so honoured, as to
appear at any end of so noble a work, I would enter into a fame
of taking physic to-morrow, and continue it four or five days,
or longer, for your visitation. Mavis.
By my faith, a subtle one! Call you this a riddle? what's their
plain dealing, trow?
DAUP: We lack Truewit to tell us that.
CLER: We lack him for somewhat else too: his knights reformadoes
are wound up as high and insolent as ever they were.
DAUP: You jest.
CLER: No drunkards, either with wine or vanity, ever confess'd
such stories of themselves. I would not give a fly's leg, in
balance against all the womens' reputations here, if they could
be but thought to speak truth: and for the bride, they have made
their affidavit against her directly—
DAUP: What, that they have lain with her?
CLER: Yes; and tell times and circumstances, with the cause why,
and the place where. I had almost brought them to affirm that they
had done it to-day.
DAUP: Not both of them?
CLER: Yes, faith: with a sooth or two more I had effected it.
They would have set it down under their hands.
DAUP: Why, they will be our sport, I see, still, whether we will
or no.
[ENTER TRUEWIT.]
TRUE: O, are you here? Come, Dauphine; go call your uncle
presently: I have fitted my divine, and my canonist, dyed
their beards and all. The knaves do not know themselves, they
are so exalted and altered. Preferment changes any man. Thou
shalt keep one door and I another, and then Clerimont in the
midst, that he may have no means of escape from their cavilling,
when they grow hot once again. And then the women, as I have
given the bride her instructions, to break in upon him in the
l'enuoy. O, 'twill be full and twanging! Away! fetch him.
[EXIT DAUPHINE.]
[ENTER OTTER DISGUISED AS A DIVINE, AND CUTBEARD AS A CANON
LAWYER.]
Come, master doctor, and master parson, look to your parts now,
and discharge them bravely: you are well set forth, perform it
as well. If you chance to be out, do not confess it with standing
still, or humming, or gaping one at another: but go on, and talk
aloud and eagerly; use vehement action, and only remember your
terms, and you are safe. Let the matter go where it will: you
have many will do so. But at first be very solemn, and grave like
your garments, though you loose your selves after, and skip out
like a brace of jugglers on a table. Here he comes: set your
faces, and look superciliously, while I present you.
[RE-ENTER DAUPHINE WITH MOROSE.]
MOR: Are these the two learned men?
TRUE: Yes, sir; please you salute them.
MOR: Salute them! I had rather do any thing, than wear out time so
unfruitfully, sir. I wonder how these common forms, as God save
you, and You are welcome, are come to be a habit in our lives:
or, I am glad to see you! when I cannot see what the profit can
be of these words, so long as it is no whit better with him whose
affairs are sad and grievous, that he hears this salutation.
TRUE: 'Tis true, sir; we'll go to the matter then.—Gentlemen,
master doctor, and master parson, I have acquainted you
sufficiently with the business for which you are come hither; and
you are not now to inform yourselves in the state of the question,
I know. This is the gentleman who expects your resolution, and
therefore, when you please, begin.
OTT: Please you, master doctor.
CUT: Please you, good master parson.
OTT: I would hear the canon-law speak first.
CUT: It must give place to positive divinity, sir.
MOR: Nay, good gentlemen, do not throw me into circumstances. Let
your comforts arrive quickly at me, those that are. Be swift in
affording me my peace, if so I shall hope any. I love not your
disputations, or your court-tumults. And that it be not strange to
you, I will tell you: My father, in my education, was wont to
advise me, that I should always collect and contain my mind, not
suffering it to flow loosely; that I should look to what things
were necessary to the carriage of my life, and what not; embracing
the one and eschewing the other: in short, that I should endear
myself to rest, and avoid turmoil: which now is grown to be
another nature to me. So that I come not to your public pleadings,
or your places of noise; not that I neglect those things that make
for the dignity of the commonwealth: but for the mere avoiding
of clamours and impertinencies of orators, that know not how to be
silent. And for the cause of noise, am I now a suitor to you. You
do not know in what a misery I have been exercised this day, what
a torrent of evil! my very house turns round with the tumult! I
dwell in a windmill: The perpetual motion is here, and not at
Eltham.
TRUE: Well, good master doctor, will you break the ice? master
parson will wade after.
CUT: Sir, though unworthy, and the weaker, I will presume.
OTT: 'Tis no presumption, domine doctor.
MOR: Yet again!
CUT: Your question is, For how many causes a man may have
divortium legitimum, a lawful divorce? First, you must understand
the nature of the word, divorce, a divertendo—
MOR: No excursions upon words, good doctor, to the question briefly.
CUT: I answer then, the canon-law affords divorce but in a few
cases; and the principal is in the common case, the adulterous
case: But there are duodecim impedimenta, twelve impediments, as
we call them, all which do not dirimere contractum, but irritum
reddere matrimonium, as we say in the canon-law, not take away the
bond, but cause a nullity therein.
MOR: I understood you before: good sir, avoid your impertinency of
translation.
OTT: He cannot open this too much, sir, by your favour.
MOR: Yet more!
TRUE: O, you must give the learned men leave, sir.—To your
impediments, master Doctor.
CUT: The first is impedimentum erroris.
OTT: Of which there are several species.
CUT: Ay, as error personae.
OTT: If you contract yourself to one person, thinking her another.
CUT: Then, error fortunae.
OTT: If she be a begger, and you thought her rich.
CUT: Then, error qualitatis.
OTT: If she prove stubborn or head-strong, that you thought
obedient.
MOR: How! is that, sir, a lawful impediment? One at once, I pray
you gentlemen.
OTT: Ay, ante copulam, but not post copulam, sir.
CUT: Master Parson says right. Nec post nuptiarum benedictionem.
It doth indeed but irrita reddere sponsalia, annul the contract:
after marriage it is of no obstancy.
TRUE: Alas, sir, what a hope are we fallen from by this time!
CUT: The next is conditio: if you thought her free born, and she
prove a bond-woman, there is impediment of estate and condition.
OTT: Ay, but, master doctor, those servitudes are sublatae now,
among us Christians.
CUT: By your favour, master parson—
OTT: You shall give me leave, master doctor.
MOR: Nay, gentlemen, quarrel not in that question; it concerns not
my case: pass to the third.
CUT: Well then, the third is votum: if either party have made a
vow of chastity. But that practice, as master parson said of the
other, is taken away among us, thanks be to discipline. The fourth
is cognatio: if the persons be of kin within the degrees.
OTT: Ay: do you know what the degrees are, sir?
MOR: No, nor I care not, sir: they offer me no comfort in the
question, I am sure.
CUT: But there is a branch of this impediment may, which is
cognatio spiritualis: if you were her godfather, sir, then the
marriage is incestuous.
OTT: That comment is absurd and superstitious, master doctor: I
cannot endure it. Are we not all brothers and sisters, and as much
akin in that, as godfathers and god-daughters?
MOR: O me! to end the controversy, I never was a godfather, I
never was a godfather in my life, sir. Pass to the next.
CUT: The fifth is crimen adulterii; the known case. The sixth,
cultus disparitas, difference of religion: have you ever examined
her, what religion she is of?
MOR: No, I would rather she were of none, than be put to the
trouble of it!
OTT: You may have it done for you, sir.
MOR: By no means, good sir; on to the rest: shall you ever come
to an end, think you?
TRUE: Yes, he has done half, sir. On, to the rest.—Be patient,
and expect, sir.
CUT: The seventh is, vis: if it were upon compulsion or force.
MOR: O no, it was too voluntary, mine; too voluntary.
CUT: The eight is, ordo; if ever she have taken holy orders.
OTT: That's supersitious too.
MOR: No matter, master parson: Would she would go into a nunnery
yet.
CUT: The ninth is, ligamen; if you were bound, sir, to any other
before.
MOR: I thrust myself too soon into these fetters.
CUT: The tenth is, publica honestas: which is inchoata quaedam
affinitas.
OTT: Ay, or affinitas orta ex sponsalibus; and is but leve
impedimentum.
MOR: I feel no air of comfort blowing to me, in all this.
CUT: The eleventh is, affinitas ex fornicatione.
OTT: Which is no less vera affinitas, than the other, master
doctor.
CUT: True, quae oritur ex legitimo matrimonio.
OTT: You say right, venerable doctor: and, nascitur ex eo, quod
per conjugium duae personae efficiuntur una caro—
MOR: Hey-day, now they begin!
CUT: I conceive you, master parson: ita per fornicationem aeque
est verus pater, qui sic generat—
OTT: Et vere filius qui sic generatur—
MOR: What's all this to me?
CLER: Now it grows warm.
CUT: The twelfth, and last is, si forte coire nequibis.
OTT: Ay, that is impedimentum gravissimum: it doth utterly annul,
and annihilate, that. If you have manifestam frigiditatem, you
are well, sir.
TRUE: Why, there is comfort come at length, sir. Confess yourself
but a man unable, and she will sue to be divorced first.
OTT: Ay, or if there be morbus perpetuus, et insanabilis; as
paralysis, elephantiasis, or so—
DAUP: O, but frigiditas is the fairer way, gentlemen.
OTT: You say troth, sir, and as it is in the canon, master
doctor—
CUT: I conceive you, sir.
CLER: Before he speaks!
OTT: That a boy, or child, under years, is not fit for marriage,
because he cannot reddere debitum. So your omnipotentes—
TRUE [ASIDE TO OTT.]: Your impotentes, you whoreson lobster!
OTT: Your impotentes, I should say, are minime apti ad
contrahenda matrimonium.
TRUE: Matrimonium! we shall have most unmatrimonial Latin with
you: matrimonia, and be hang'd.
DAUP: You put them out, man.
CUT: But then there will arise a doubt, master parson, in our
case, post matrimonium: that frigiditate praeditus—do you
conceive me, sir?
OTT: Very well, sir.
CUT: Who cannot uti uxore pro uxore, may habere eam pro sorore.
OTT: Absurd, absurd, absurd, and merely apostatical!
CUT: You shall pardon me, master parson, I can prove it.
OTT: You can prove a will, master doctor, you can prove nothing
else. Does not the verse of your own canon say,
Haec socianda vetant connubia, facta retractant?
CUT: I grant you; but how do they retractare, master parson?
MOR: O, this was it I feared.
OTT: In aeternum, sir.
CUT: That's false in divinity, by your favour.
OTT: 'Tis false in humanity to say so. Is he not prorsus inutilis
ad thorum? Can he praestare fidem datam? I would fain know.
CUT: Yes; how if he do convalere?
OTT: He cannot convalere, it is impossible.
TRUE: Nay, good sir, attend the learned men, they will think you
neglect them else.
CUT: Or, if he do simulare himself frigidum, odio uxoris, or so?
OTT: I say, he is adulter manifestus then.
DAUP: They dispute it very learnedly, i'faith.
OTT: And prostitutor uxoris; and this is positive.
MOR: Good sir, let me escape.
TRUE: You will not do me that wrong, sir?
OTT: And, therefore, if he be manifeste frigidus, sir—
CUT: Ay, if he be manifeste frigidus, I grant you—
OTT: Why, that was my conclusion.
CUT: And mine too.
TRUE: Nay, hear the conclusion, sir.
OTT: Then, frigiditatis causa—
CUT: Yes, causa frigiditatis—
MOR: O, mine ears!
OTT: She may have libellum divortii against you.
CUT: Ay, divortii libellum she will sure have.
MOR: Good echoes, forbear.
OTT: If you confess it.
CUT: Which I would do, sir—
MOR: I will do any thing.
OTT: And clear myself in foro conscientiae—
CUT: Because you want indeed—
MOR: Yet more?
OTT: Exercendi potestate.
[EPICOENE RUSHES IN, FOLLOWED BY HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS,
MISTRESS OTTER, DAW, AND LA-FOOLE.]
EPI: I will not endure it any longer. Ladies, I beseech you,
help me. This is such a wrong as never was offered to poor
bride before: upon her marriage day, to have her husband
conspire against her, and a couple of mercenary companions
to be brought in for form's sake, to persuade a separation!
If you had blood or virtue in you, gentlemen, you would not
suffer such ear-wigs about a husband, or scorpions to creep
between man and wife.
MOR: O the variety and changes of my torment!
HAU: Let them be cudgell'd out of doors, by our grooms.
CEN: I'll lend you my foot-man.
MAV: We'll have our men blanket them in the hall.
MRS. OTT: As there was one at our house, madam, for peeping
in at the door.
DAW: Content, i'faith.
TRUE: Stay, ladies and gentlemen; you'll hear, before you proceed?
MAV: I'd have the bridegroom blanketted too.
CEN: Begin with him first.
HAU: Yes, by my troth.
MOR: O mankind generation!
DAUP: Ladies, for my sake forbear.
HAU: Yes, for sir Dauphine's sake.
CEN: He shall command us.
LA-F: He is as fine a gentleman of his inches, madam, as any
is about the town, and wears as good colours when he lists.
TRUE: Be brief, sir, and confess your infirmity, she'll be a-fire
to be quit of you, if she but hear that named once, you shall not
entreat her to stay: she'll fly you like one that had the marks
upon him.
MOR: Ladies, I must crave all your pardons—
TRUE: Silence, ladies.
MOR: For a wrong I have done to your whole sex, in marrying this
fair, and virtuous gentlewoman—
CLER: Hear him, good ladies.
MOR: Being guilty of an infirmity, which, before I conferred
with these learned men, I thought I might have concealed—
TRUE: But now being better informed in his conscience by them,
he is to declare it, and give satisfaction, by asking your public
forgiveness.
MOR: I am no man, ladies.
ALL: How!
MOR: Utterly unabled in nature, by reason of frigidity, to
perform the duties, or any the least office of a husband.
MAV: Now out upon him, prodigious creature!
CEN: Bridegroom uncarnate!
HAU: And would you offer it to a young gentlewoman?
MRS. OTT: A lady of her longings?
EPI: Tut, a device, a device, this, it smells rankly, ladies.
A mere comment of his own.
TRUE: Why, if you suspect that, ladies, you may have him
search'd—
DAW: As the custom is, by a jury of physicians.
LA-F: Yes faith, 'twill be brave.
MOR: O me, must I undergo that?
MRS. OTT: No, let women search him, madam: we can do it
ourselves.
MOR: Out on me! worse.
EPI: No, ladies, you shall not need, I will take him with all
his faults.
MOR: Worst of all!
CLER: Why then, 'tis no divorce, doctor, if she consent not?
CUT: No, if the man be frigidus, it is de parte uxoris, that we
grant libellum divortii, in the law.
OTT: Ay, it is the same in theology.
MOR: Worse, worse than worst!
TRUE: Nay, sir, be not utterly disheartened; we have yet a
small relic of hope left, as near as our comfort is blown
out. Clerimont, produce your brace of knights. What was that,
master parson, you told me in errore qualitatis, e'en now?—
[ASIDE.]
Dauphine, whisper the bride, that she carry it as if she were
guilty, and ashamed.
OTT: Marry, sir, in errore qualitatis (which master doctor did
forbear to urge,) if she be found corrupta, that is, vitiated or
broken up, that was pro virgine desponsa, espoused for a maid—
MOR: What then, sir?
OTT: It doth dirimere contractum, and irritum reddere too.
TRUE: If this be true, we are happy again, sir, once more. Here
are an honourable brace of knights, that shall affirm so much.
DAW: Pardon us, good master Clerimont.
LA-F: You shall excuse us, master Clerimont.
CLER: Nay, you must make it good now, knights, there is no remedy;
I'll eat no words for you, nor no men: you know you spoke it to
me.
DAW: Is this gentleman-like, sir?
TRUE [ASIDE TO DAW.]: Jack Daw, he's worse then sir Amorous;
fiercer a great deal.
[ASIDE TO LA-FOOLE.]—Sir Amorous, beware, there be ten Daws in
this Clerimont.
LA-F: I'll confess it, sir.
DAW: Will you, sir Amorous, will you wound reputation?
LA-F: I am resolved.
TRUE: So should you be too, Jack Daw: what should keep you off?
she's but a woman, and in disgrace: he'll be glad on't.
DAW: Will he? I thought he would have been angry.
CLER: You will dispatch, knights, it must be done, i'faith.
TRUE: Why, an it must, it shall, sir, they say: they'll ne'er
go back.
[ASIDE TO THEM.]
—Do not tempt his patience.
DAW: It is true indeed, sir?
LA-F: Yes, I assure you, sir.
MOR: What is true gentlemen? what do you assure me?
DAW: That we have known your bride, sir—
LA-F: In good fashion. She was our mistress, or so—
CLER: Nay, you must be plain, knights, as you were to me.
OTT: Ay, the question is, if you have carnaliter, or no?
LA-F: Carnaliter! what else, sir?
OTT: It is enough: a plain nullity.
EPI: I am undone, I am undone!
MOR: O, let me worship and adore you, gentlemen!
EPI [WEEPS.]: I am undone!
MOR: Yes, to my hand, I thank these knights.
Master parson, let me thank you otherwise. [GIVES HIM MONEY.]
HAU: And have they confess'd?
MAV: Now out upon them, informers!
TRUE: You see what creatures you may bestow your favours
on, madams.
HAU: I would except against them as beaten knights, wench,
and not good witnesses in law.
MRS. OTT: Poor gentlewoman, how she takes it!
HAU: Be comforted, Morose, I love you the better for't.
CEN: so do I, I protest.
CUT: But, gentlemen, you have not known her since matrimonium?
DAW: Not to-day, master doctor.
LA-F: No, sir, not to-day.
CUT: Why, then I say, for any act before, the matrimonium is good
and perfect: unless the worshipful bridegroom did precisely,
before witness, demand, if she were virgo ante nuptias.
EPI: No, that he did not, I assure you, master doctor.
CUT: If he cannot prove that, it is ratum conjugium,
notwithstanding the premisses. And they do no way impedire. And
this is my sentence, this I pronounce.
OTT: I am of master doctor's resolution too, sir: if you made
not that demand, ante nuptias.
MOR: O my heart! wilt thou break? wilt thou break? this is worst
of all worst worsts that hell could have devised! Marry a whore,
and so much noise!
DAUP: Come, I see now plain confederacy in this doctor and this
parson, to abuse a gentleman. You study his affliction. I pray
be gone companions.—And, gentlemen, I begin to suspect you for
having parts with them.—Sir, will it please you hear me?
MOR: O do not talk to me, take not from me the pleasure of dying
in silence, nephew.
DAUP: Sir, I must speak to you. I have been long your poor
despised kinsman, and many a hard thought has strengthened
you against me: but now it shall appear if either I love you
or your peace, and prefer them to all the world beside. I will
not be long or grievous to you, sir. If I free you of this
unhappy match absolutely, and instantly, after all this
trouble, and almost in your despair, now—
MOR: It cannot be.
DAUP: Sir, that you be never troubled with a murmur of it more,
what shall I hope for, or deserve of you?
MOR: O, what thou wilt, nephew! thou shalt deserve me, and have
me.
DAUP: Shall I have your favour perfect to me, and love hereafter?
MOR: That, and any thing beside. Make thine own conditions. My
whole estate is thine; manage it, I will become thy ward.
DAUP: Nay, sir, I will not be so unreasonable.
EPI: Will sir Dauphine be mine enemy too?
DAUP: You know I have been long a suitor to you, uncle, that
out of your estate, which is fifteen hundred a-year, you
would allow me but five hundred during life, and assure the
rest upon me after: to which I have often, by myself and
friends tendered you a writing to sign, which you would never
consent or incline to. If you please but to effect it now—
MOR: Thou shalt have it, nephew: I will do it, and more.
DAUP: If I quit you not presently, and for ever of this
cumber, you shall have power instantly, afore all these, to
revoke your act, and I will become whose slave you will give
me to, for ever.
MOR: Where is the writing? I will seal to it, that, or to a
blank, and write thine own conditions.
EPI: O me, most unfortunate, wretched gentlewoman!
HAU: Will sir Dauphine do this?
EPI: Good sir, have some compassion on me.
MOR: O, my nephew knows you, belike; away, crocodile!
HAU: He does it not sure without good ground.
DAUP: Here, sir. [GIVES HIM THE PARCHMENTS.]
MOR: Come, nephew, give me the pen. I will subscribe to any
thing, and seal to what thou wilt, for my deliverance. Thou
art my restorer. Here, I deliver it thee as my deed. If there
be a word in it lacking, or writ with false orthography, I
protest before [heaven] I will not take the advantage.
[RETURNS THE WRITINGS.]
DAUP: Then here is your release, sir.
[TAKES OFF EPICOENE'S PERUKE AND OTHER DISGUISES.]
You have married a boy, a gentleman's son, that I have
brought up this half year at my great charges, and for this
composition, which I have now made with you.—What say you,
master doctor? This is justum impedimentum, I hope, error
personae?
OTT: Yes sir, in primo gradu.
CUT: In primo gradu.
DAUP: I thank you, good doctor Cutbeard, and parson Otter.
[PULLS THEIR FALSE BEARDS AND GOWNS OFF.]
You are beholden to them, sir, that have taken this pains for
you; and my friend, master Truewit, who enabled them for the
business. Now you may go in and rest; be as private as you
will, sir.
[EXIT MOROSE.]
I'll not trouble you, till you trouble me with your funeral,
which I care not how soon it come.
—Cutbeard, I'll make your lease good. "Thank me not, but with
your leg, Cutbeard." And Tom Otter, your princess shall be
reconciled to you.—How now, gentlemen, do you look at me?
CLER: A boy!
DAUP: Yes, mistress Epicoene.
TRUE: Well, Dauphine, you have lurch'd your friends of the
better half of the garland, by concealing this part of the
plot: but much good do it thee, thou deserv'st it, lad. And,
Clerimont, for thy unexpected bringing these two to
confession, wear my part of it freely. Nay, sir Daw, and sir
La-Foole, you see the gentlewoman that has done you the
favours! we are all thankful to you, and so should the
woman-kind here, specially for lying on her, though not
with her! you meant so, I am sure? But that we have stuck it
upon you to-day, in your own imagined persons, and so lately,
this Amazon, the champion of the sex, should beat you now
thriftily, for the common slanders which ladies receive from
such cuckoos as you are. You are they that, when no merit or
fortune can make you hope to enjoy their bodies, will yet
lie with their reputations, and make their fame suffer. Away,
you common moths of these, and all ladies' honours. Go,
travel to make legs and faces, and come home with some new
matter to be laugh'd at: you deserve to live in an air as
corrupted as that wherewith you feed rumour.
[EXEUNT DAW AND LA-FOOLE.]
Madams, you are mute, upon this new metamorphosis! But here
stands she that has vindicated your fames. Take heed of such
insectae hereafter. And let it not trouble you, that you
have discovered any mysteries to this young gentleman: he is
almost of years, and will make a good visitant within this
twelvemonth. In the mean time, we'll all undertake for his
secrecy, that can speak so well of his silence.
[COMING FORWARD.]
—Spectators, if you like this comedy, rise cheerfully, and
now Morose is gone in, clap your hands. It may be, that noise
will cure him, at least please him.
[EXEUNT.]