The principal character of Jonson’s Silent Woman is founded upon a sketch by a Greek writer of the fourth century, Libanius. Jonson designates this character by the name of “Morose;” and his peculiarity is that he can bear no kind of noise, not even that of ordinary talk. The plot turns upon this affectation; for having been entrapped into a marriage with the “Silent Woman,” she and her friends assail him with tongues the most obstreperous, and clamours the most uproarious, until, to be relieved of this nuisance, he comes to terms with his nephew for a portion of his fortune and is relieved of the “Silent Woman,” who is in reality a boy in disguise. We extract the dialogue of the whole scene; the speakers being “Truewitt,” “Clerimont,” and a “Page”:—
“True. I met that stiff piece of formality, Master Morose, his uncle, yesterday, with a huge turban of night-caps on his head, buckled over his ears.
“Cler. O! that’s his custom when he walks abroad. He can endure no noise, man.
“True. So I have heard. But is the disease so ridiculous in him as it is made? They say he has been upon divers treaties with the fish-wives and orange-women; and articles propounded between them: marry, the chimney-sweepes will not be drawn in.
“Cler. No, nor the broom-men: they stand out stiffly. He cannot endure a costard-monger; he swoons if he hear one.
“True. Methinks a smith should be ominous.
“Cler. Or any hammer-man. A brasier is not suffer’d to dwell in the parish, nor an armourer. He would have hang’d a pewterer’s ’prentice once upon a Shrove-Tuesday’s riot, for being of that trade, when the rest were quit.
“True. A trumpet should fright him terribly, or the hautboys.
“Cler. Out of his senses. The waits of the City have a pension of him not to come near that ward. This youth practised on him one night like the bellman, and never left till he had brought him down to the door with a long sword; and there left him flourishing with the air.