Spendthrift Knight. I have not used the word of loan or borrowing;
Only some private conference I requested.
Fath. Private conference! a new-coined word for borrowing of money. I tell you, your very face, your countenance, tho’ it be glossed with knighthood, looks so borrowingly, that the best words you give me are as dreadful as Stand and Deliver.—Your riotousness abroad, and her long night-watchings at home, shortened my daughter’s days, and cast her into her grave; and ’twas not long before all her estate was buried too.
Spend. I wish my life might have excused
Her’s far more precious; never had a man
A juster cause to mourn.
Fath. Nor mourn’d more justly, it is your only wearing; you have just none other; nor have had any means to purchase better any time these seven years, I take it; by which means you have got the name of the Mourning Knight.
Timothy Hoyden, the Yeoman’s Son, desires to be made a Gentleman. He consults with his friends.
Moneylack. Well, Sir, we will take the speediest course with you.
Hoyd. But must I bleed?
Mon. Yes, you must bleed; your father’s blood must out.
He was but a Yeoman, was he?
Hoyd. As rank a Clown (none dispraised) as any in Somersetshire.
Mon. His foul rank blood of bacon and pease porritch
Must out of you to the last dram—
Springe. Fear nothing, Sir. Your blood shall be taken out by degrees; and your veins replenished with pure blood still, as you lose the puddle.
Hoyd. I was bewitch’d, I think, before I was begot, to have a Clown to my father. Yet my mother said she was a Gentlewoman.
Spr. Said! what will not women say?
Mon. Be content, Sir; here’s half a labour saved: you shall bleed but of one side. The Mother vein shall not be pricked.