These English are so malt-mad there’s no meddling with ’em;
When they have a fruitful year of barley there,
All the whole island’s thus.”
A similar skit follows on the parson above-mentioned “that run mad for tithe goslings.” But Fletcher’s best effort in this direction is the introduction of the Welshman, who, but for his premature exit might have served as quite a reasonable understudy for Fluellen. “Whaw, Master Keeper,” is his first remark, “Give me some ceeze and onions, give me some wash brew . . . Pendragon was a shentleman, marg you, sir. And the organs at Rixum were made by revelations: There is a spirit blows the bellows, and then they sing.” He will “sing, dance and do anything,” and when the Englishman and the Scholar challenge him, he threatens to “get upon a mountain and call my countrymen.” Dekker, in the “Honest Whore,” is able to hit the lawyers. There are none of that company, he says, among Anselmo’s madmen. “We dare not let a lawyer come in, for he’ll make ’em mad faster than we can recover ’em.” Questioned as to how long it takes to “recover” any of the patients, our informant replies that
“An alderman’s son will be mad a great while. . . . A whore will hardly come to her wits again. A Puritan, there’s no hope of him, unless he may pull down the steeple and hang himself i’ the bell-ropes.”[41:1]
FOOTNOTES:
[8:1] I. Samuel, xvi., 14.
[9:1] “Macbeth,” i., 3, 84.
[10:1] “Twelfth Night,” iv., 2.