BEEFEATER.
In the queen’s name I charge you all to drop Your swords and daggers! [They drop their swords and daggers.]
SNEER.
That is a contrivance indeed!
PUFF.
Ay—in the queen’s name.
SIR CHRISTOPHER HATTON.
Come, niece!
SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
Come, niece! [Exeunt with the two NIECES.]
DON FEROLO WHISKERANDOS.
What’s he, who bids us thus renounce our guard?
BEEFEATER.
Thou must do more—renounce thy love!
DON FEROLO WHISKERANDOS.
Thou liest—base Beefeater!
BEEFEATER.
Ha! hell! the lie! By Heaven thou’st roused the lion in my heart! Off, yeoman’s habit!—base disguise! off! off! [Discovers himself by throwing off his upper dress, and appearing in a very fine waistcoat.] Am I a Beefeater now? Or beams my crest as terrible as when In Biscay’s Bay I took thy captive sloop?
PUFF.
There, egad! he comes out to be the very captain of the privateer who had taken Whiskerandos prisoner—and was himself an old lover of Tilburina’s.