MOMUS. For catastrophe, there's never a tale in Sir John Mandeville or Bevis of Southampton, but hath a better turning.
STAGEKEEPER.
What, you jeering ass! begone, with a pox!
MOMUS. You may do better to busy yourself in providing beer; for the show will be pitiful dry, pitiful dry. [Exit.
STAGEKEEPER.
No more of this: I heard the spectators ask for a blank verse.
What we show is but a Christmas jest;
Conceive of this, and guess of all the rest:
Full like a scholar's hapless fortune's penn'd,
Whose former griefs seldom have happy end.
Frame as well we might with easy strain,
With far more praise and with as little pain,
Stories of love, where forne[29] the wond'ring bench
The lisping gallant might enjoy his wench;
Or make some sire acknowledge his lost son:
Found, when the weary act is almost done.[30]
Nor unto this, nor unto that our scene is bent;
We only show a scholar's discontent.
In scholars' fortunes, twice forlorn and dead,
Twice hath our weary pen erst laboured;
Making them pilgrims in Parnassus' Hill,
Then penning their return with ruder quill.
Now we present unto each pitying eye
The scholars' progress in their misery:
Refined wits, your patience is our bliss;
Too weak our scene, too great your judgment is:
To you we seek to show a scholar's state,
His scorned fortunes, his unpity'd fate;
To you: for if you did not scholars bless,
Their case, poor case, were too-too pitiless.
You shade the muses under fostering,
And made[31] them leave to sigh, and learn to sing.
THE NAMES OF THE ACTORS.
INGENIOSO.
JUDICIO.
DANTER.
PHILOMUSUS.
STUDIOSO.
FUROR POETICUS.
PHANTASMA.
Patient.
RICARDETTO.
THEODORE, a Physician.
BURGESS, a Patient.
JAQUES, a Studioso.
ACADEMICO.
AMORETTO.
Page.
SIGNIOR IMMERITO.
STERCUTIO, his Father.
SIR RADERIC.
Recorder.
Page.
PRODIGO.
BURBAGE.
KEMP.
Fiddlers.
Patient's man.
THE RETURN FROM PARNASSUS.
ACTUS I, SCAENA 1.
INGENIOSO, with Juvenal in his hand.
INGENIOSO.
Difficile est satyram non scribere. Nam quis iniquae
Tam patiens Urbis, tam ferreus,[32] ut teneat se?
Ay, Juvenal, thy jerking hand is good,
Not gently laying on, but fetching blood;
So, surgeon-like, thou dost with cutting heal,
Where nought but lancing[33] can the wound avail:
O, suffer me, among so many men,
To tread aright the traces of thy pen,
And light my link at thy eternal flame,
Till with it I brand everlasting shame
On the world's forehead, and with thine own spirit
Pay home the world according to his merit.
Thy purer soul could not endure to see
Ev'n smallest spots of base impurity,
Nor could small faults escape thy cleaner hands.
Then foul-fac'd vice was in his swaddling-bands,
Now, like Anteus, grown a monster is,
A match for none but mighty Hercules:
Now can the world practise in plainer guise
Both sins of old and new-born villanies:
Stale sins are stole; now doth the world begin
To take sole pleasure in a witty sin:
Unpleasant as[34] the lawless sin has been,
At midnight rest, when darkness covers sin;
It's clownish, unbeseeming a young knight,
Unless it dare outface the glaring light:
Nor can it nought our gallant's praises reap,
Unless it be done in staring Cheap,
In a sin-guilty coach, not closely pent,
Jogging along the harder pavement.
Did not fear check my repining sprite,
Soon should my angry ghost a story write;
In which I would new-foster'd sins combine,
Not known erst by truth-telling Aretine.