FABELL.
Good old Mounchensey, is thy hap so ill,
That for thy bounty and thy royall parts
Thy kind alliance should be held in scorn,
And after all these promises by Clare
Refuse to give his daughter to thy son,
Only because thy Revenues cannot reach
To make her dowage of so rich a jointure
As can the heir of wealthy Jerningham?
And therefore is the false fox now in hand
To strike a match betwixt her and th’ other;
And the old gray-beards now are close together,
Plotting it in the garden. Is’t even so?
Raymond Mounchensey, boy, have thou and I
Thus long at Cambridge read the liberall Arts,
The Metaphysickes, Magicke, and those parts
Of the most secret deep philosophy?
Have I so many melancholy nights
Watch’d on the top of Peter-house highest Tower?
And come we back unto our native home,
For want of skill to lose the wench thou lov’st?
We’ll first hang Envill in such rings of mist
As never rose from any dampish fen:
I’ll make the brind sea to rise at Ware,
And drown the marshes unto Stratford bridge;
I’ll drive the Deer from Waltham in their walks,
And scatter them like sheep in every field.
We may perhaps be crost, but, if we be,
He shall cross the devil, that but crosses me.
[Enter Raymond and young Jerningham and young Clare.]
But here comes Raymond, disconsolate and sad,
And here’s the gallant that must have the wench.
JERNINGHAM.
I pri’thee, Raymond, leave these solemn dumps:
Revive thy spirits, thou that before hast been
More watchful then the day-proclaiming cock,
As sportive as a Kid, as frank and merry
As mirth herself.
If ought in me may thy content procure,
It is thine own, thou mayst thy self assure.
RAYMOND.
Ha, Jerningham, if any but thy self
Had spoke that word, it would have come as cold
As the bleak Northern winds upon the face
Of winter.
From thee they have some power upon my blood;
Yet being from thee, had but that hollow sound
Come from the lips of any living man,
It might have won the credit of mine ear;
From thee it cannot.
JERNINGHAM.
If I understand thee, I am a villain:
What, dost thou speak in parables to thy friends?
CLARE.
Come, boy, and make me this same groning love,
Troubled with stitches and the cough a’th lungs,
That wept his eyes out when he was a child,
And ever since hath shot at hudman-blind,
Make him leap, caper, jerk, and laugh, and sing,
And play me horse-tricks;
Make Cupid wanton as his mother’s dove:
But in this sort, boy, I would have thee love.
FABELL.
Why, how now, mad-cap? What, my lusty Franke,
So near a wife, and will not tell a friend?
But you will to this geere in hugger-mugger;
Art thou turned miser, Rascall, in thy loves?
JERNINGHAM. Who, I? z’blood, what should all you see in me, that I should look like a married man, ha? Am I bald? are my legs too little for my hose? If I feel any thing in my forehead, I am a villain: do I wear a night-cap? Do I bend in the hams? What dost thou see in me, that I should be towards marriage, ha?
CLARE. What, thou married? let me look upon thee, Rogue; who has given out this of thee? how camst thou into this ill name? What company hast thou been in, Rascall?