How vainele doe I offer my strange love?
I marry, and bid states, and entertaine
Ladies with tales, and jests, and Lords with newes,
And keepe a House to feast Acteons hounds
That eate their Master, and let idle guests
Draw me from serious search of things divine?
To bid them sit, and welcome, and take care
To sooth their pallats with choyce kitchin-stuff,
As all must doe that marry, and keepe House,
And then looke on the left side of my yoake
Or on the right perhaps, and see my wife
Drawe in a quite repugnant course from me,
Busied to starch her French purles, and her puffs,
When I am in my Anima reflexa.
Quid est faelicitas? quae origo rerum?
And make these beings that are knowne to be
The onely serious object of true men
Seeme shadowes, with substantiall stir she keeps
About her shadowes, which if husbands love
They must beleeve; and thus my other selfe
Brings me another body to dispose,
That have already much too much of one,
And must not looke for any Soule of her
To helpe to rule two bodies?
Mom. Fie for shame;
I never heard of such an antedame[35].
Doe women bring no helpe of soule to men?
Why, friend, they eyther are mens soules themselves,
Or the most witty Imitatrixes of them;
Or prettiest sweet apes of humaine Soules,
That ever Nature fram'd; as I will prove.
For first they be Substantiae lucidae,
And purer then mens bodies, like their soules,
Which mens harsh haires both of their brest and chinne
Occasioned by their grose and ruder heate
Plainely demonstrats: Then like soules they doe,
Movere corpora, for no power on Earth
Moves a mans body, as a woman does.
Then doe they Dare formas corpori,
Or adde faire formes to men, as their soules doe:
For but for women, who wood care for formes?
I vow I never wood wash face, nor hands,
Nor care how ragg'd, or slovenly I went,
Wer't not for women, who of all mens pompes
Are the true final causes: Then they make
Men in their Seedes immortall, like their soules,
That els wood perish in a spanne of time.
Oh! they be soule-like creatures, and my Neece
The soule of twenty rare soules stil'd in one.
Cla. That, that it is, my Lord, that makes me love.
Mom. Oh are ye come Sir, welcome to my Neece, As I may say, at midnight; gentle friend, What have you wrot I pray?
Cla. Strange stuffe my Lord.
Mom. Indeed the way to believe is to love [Hee reads and comments. And the right way to love is to believe. This I will carry now with pen, and incke, For her to use in answere; see, sweet friend, She shall not stay to call, but while the steele Of her affection is made softe and hott, Ile strike, and take occasion by the brow. Blest is the wooing thats not long a dooing. [Exit.
Cla. Had ever man so true, and noble friend?
Or wood men thinke this sharpe worlds freezing Aire
To all true honour and iuduciall love,
Wood suffer such a florishing pyne in both
To overlooke the boxe-trees of this time?
When the learn'd minde hath by impulsion wrought
Her eyes cleere fire into a knowing flame;
No elementall smoke can darken it,
Nor Northren coldnesse nyppe her Daphnean Flower.
O sacred friendship, thanks to thy kinde power,
That being retir'd from all the faithlesse World,
Appear'st to me in my unworldly friend,
And for thine own sake let his noble minde,
By moving presedent to all his kinde,
(Like just Deucalion) of Earths stony bones
Repaire the World with humaine bloud and flesh,
And dying vertue with new life refresh.
[Exit.
Actvs Qvartvs.
Enter Tales, Kingcob, Eugenia, Hippolyta, Penelope, Winnifred.