Part 28

Way[564] for an innocent, ho! What, a poor fool? Not so, pure ass. Ass! where went you to school? With innocents. That makes the fool to prate. Fool, will you any? Yes, the fool shall ha’t. Wisdom, what shall he have? The fool at least. Provender for the ass, ho! stalk up the beast. What, shall we have a railing innocent? No, gentle gull, a wise man’s precedent. Then forward, wisdom. Not without I list. Twenty to one this fool’s some satirist. Still doth the fool haunt me; fond[565] fool, begone! No, I will stay, the fool to gaze upon. Well, fool, stay still. Still shall the fool stay? no. Then pack, simplicity! Good innocent, why so? Nor go nor stay, what will the fool do then? Vex him that seems to vex all other men. ’Tis impossible; streams that are barr’d their course Swell with more rage and far more greater force, Until their full-stuft gorge a passage makes Into the wide maws of more scopious[566] lakes. Spite me! not spite itself can discontent My steelèd thoughts, or breed disparagement: Had pale-fac’d coward fear been resident Within the bosom of me, innocent, I would have hous’d me from the eyes of ire, Whose bitter spleen vomits forth flames of fire. A resolute ass! O for a spurring rider! A brace of angels![567] What, is the fool a briber? Is not the ass yet weary of his load? What, with once bearing of the fool abroad? Mount again, fool. Then the ass will tire, And leave the fool to wallow in the mire. Dost thou think otherwise? good ass, then begone! I stay but till the innocent get on. What, wilt thou needs of the fool bereave me? Then pack, good, foolish ass! and so I leave thee.

EPILOGUE

TO THE

LAST SATIRE OF THE FIRST BOOK.[568]

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Thus may we see by folly of[t] the wise Stumble and fall into fool’s paradise, For jocund wit of force must jangling be; Wit must have his will, and so had he: Wit must have[569] his will, yet, parting of the fray, Wit was enjoin’d to carry the fool away.

_Qui color[570] albus erat, nunc est contrarius albo._

_On the death[571] of that great master in his art and quality, painting and playing_, R[ICHARD] BURBAGE.

Astronomers and star-gazers this year Write but of four eclipses; five appear, Death interposing Burbage; and their staying Hath made a visible eclipse of playing. THO. MIDDLETON.

_In the just worth[572] of that well-deserver, Master_ JOHN WEBSTER, _and upon this masterpiece of tragedy_.

In this thou imitat’st one rich and wise, That sees his good deeds done before he dies; As he by works, thou by this work of fame Hast well provided for thy living name. To trust to others’ honourings is worth’s crime; Thy monument is rais’d in thy life-time; And ’tis most just, for every worthy man Is his own marble, and his merit can Cut him to any figure, and express More art than death’s cathedral palaces, Where royal ashes keep their court. Thy note Be ever plainness, ’tis the richest coat: Thy epitaph only the title be,— Write _Duchess_, that will fetch a tear for thee; For who e’er saw this duchess live and die, That could get off under a bleeding eye?

_In Tragœdiam._

_Ut lux ex tenebris ictu percussa tonantis, Illa, ruina malis, claris fit vita poetis._ THOMAS MIDDLETONUS, _Poeta et Chron. Londinensis_.

THE BLACK BOOK.

_The Blacke Booke. London Printed by T. C. for Jeffrey Chorlton._ 1604. 4to.

THE EPISTLE TO THE READER;

OR, THE TRUE CHARACTER OF THIS BOOK.

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To all those that are truly virtuous, and can touch pitch and yet never defile themselves; read the mischievous lives and pernicious practices of villains, and yet be never the worse at the end of the book, but rather confirmed the more in their honest estates and the uprightness of their virtues;—to such I dedicate myself, the wholesome intent of my labours, the modesty of my phrases, that even blush when they discover vices and unmask the world’s shadowed villanies: and I account him as a traitor to virtue, who, diving into the deep of this cunning age, and finding there such monsters of nature, such speckled lumps of poison as panders, harlots, and ruffians do figure, if he rise up silent again, and neither discover or publish them to the civil rank of sober and continent livers, who thereby may shun those two devouring gulfs, to wit, of deceit and luxury,[573] which swallow up more mortals than Scylla and Charybdis, those two cormorants and Woolners[574] of the sea, one tearing, the other devouring. Wherefore I freely persuade myself, no virtuous spirit or judicial worthy but will approve my politic moral, where, under the shadow of the devil’s legacies, or his bequeathing to villains, I strip their villanies naked, and bare the infectious bulks[575] of craft, cozenage, and panderism, the three bloodhounds of a commonwealth. And thus far I presume that none will or can except at this—which I call the Black Book, because it doubly damns the devil— but some tainted harlot, noseless bawd, obscene ruffian, and such of the same black nature and filthy condition, that poison the towardly spring of gentility, and corrupt with the mud of mischiefs the pure and clear streams of a kingdom. And to spurgall such, who reads me shall know I dare; for I fear neither the ratsbane of a harlot nor the poniard of a villain.

T. M.

A MORAL.

LUCIFER _ascending, as Prologue to his own Play_.

Now is hell landed here upon the earth, When Lucifer, in limbs of burning gold, Ascends this dusty theatre of the world, To join his powers; and, were it number’d well, There are more devils on earth than are in hell. Hence springs my damnèd joy; my tortur’d spleen Melts into mirthful humour at this fate, That heaven is hung so high, drawn up so far, And made so fast, nail’d up with many a star; And hell the very shop-board of the earth, Where, when I cut out souls, I throw the shreds And the white linings of a new-soil’d spirit, Pawn’d to luxurious[576] and adulterous merit. Yea, that’s the sin, and now it takes her turn, For which the world shall like a strumpet burn; And for an instance to fire false embraces, I make the world burn now in secret places: I haunt invisible corners as a spy, And in adulterous circles there rise I; There am I conjur’d up through hot desire, And where hell rises, there must needs be fire. And now that I have vaulted up so high Above the stage-rails of this earthen globe, I must turn actor and join companies, To share my comic sleek-ey’d villanies; For I must weave a thousand ills in one, To please my black and burnt affection. Why, every term-time I come up to throw[577] Dissension betwixt ploughmen that should sow The field’s vast womb, and make the harvest grow: So comes it oft to pass dear years befal, When ploughmen leave the field to till the hall; Thus famine and bleak dearth do greet the land, When the plough’s held between a lawyer’s hand. I fat with joy to see how the poor swains Do box their country thighs, carrying their packets Of writings, yet can neither read nor write: They’re like to candles, if they had no light; For they are dark within in sense and judgment As is the Hole[578] at Newgate; and their thoughts Are, like the men that lie there, without spirit. This strikes my black soul into ravishing music, To see swains plod and shake their ignorant skulls; For they are nought but skull, their brain but burr, Wanting wit’s marrow and the sap of judgment; And how they grate with their hard naily soles The stones in Fleet-street, and strike fire in Paul’s; Nay, with their heavy trot and iron stalk, They have worn off the brass in the Mid-walk.[579] But let these pass for bubbles, and so die, For I rise now to breathe my legacy, And make my last will, which, I know, shall stand As long as bawd or villain strides the land. For which I’ll turn my shape quite out of verse, Mov’d with the Supplication[580] of poor Pierce, That writ so rarely villanous from hence For spending-money to my excellence; Gave me my titles freely;[581] for which giving, I rise now to take order for his living. The black Knight of the Post[582] shortly returns From hell, where many a tobacconist burns, With news to smoky gallants, riotous heirs, Strumpets that follow theatres and fairs, Gilded-nos’d usurers, base-metall’d panders, To copper-captains and Pict-hatch[583] commanders, To all infectious catchpolls through the town, The very speckled vermin of a crown: To these and those and every damnèd one I’ll bequeath legacies to thrive upon; Amongst the which I’ll give for his redress A standing pension to Pierce Pennyless.

THE BLACK BOOK.

No sooner was _Pierce Pennyless_ breathed forth, but I, the light-burning sergeant, Lucifer, quenched my fiery shape, and whipt into a constable’s night-gown, the cunningest habit that could be, to search tipsy taverns, roosting inns, and frothy alehouses; when calling together my worshipful bench of bill-men,[584] I proceeded toward Pict-hatch, intending to begin there first, which (as I may fitly name it) is the very skirts of all brothel-houses. The watchmen, poor night-crows, followed, and thought still they had had the constable by the hand, when they had the devil by the gown-sleeve. At last, I looking up to the casements of every suspected mansion, and spying a light twinkling between hope and desperation, guessed it to be some sleepy snuff, ever and anon winking and nodding in the socket of a candlestick, as if the flame had been a-departing from the greasy body of Simon Snuff the stinkard. Whereupon I, the black constable, commanded my white guard not only to assist my office with their brown bills, but to raise up the house extempory: with that, the dreadful watchmen, having authority standing by them, thundered at the door, whilst the candle lightened in the chamber; and so between thundering and lightening, the bawd risse,[585] first putting the snuff to an untimely death, a cruel and a lamentable murder, and then, with her fat-sagg chin[586] hanging down like a cow’s udder, lay reeking out at the window, demanding the reason why they did summon a parley. I told her in plain terms that I had a warrant to search from the sheriff of Limbo.[587] How? from the sheriff of Lime-street? replied mistress wimble-chin (for so she understood the word Limbo, as if Limbo had been Latin for Lime-street); why then all the doors of my house shall fly open and receive you, master constable. With that, as being the watchword, two or three vaulted out of their beds at once, one swearing, stocks and stones, he could not find his stockings, other that they could not hit upon their false bodies, when to speak troth and shame myself, they were then as close to their flesh as they could, and never put them off since they were twelve year old. At last they shuffled up, and were shut out at the back part, as I came in at the north part. Up the stairs I went to examine the feather-beds, and carry the sheets before the justice, for there was none else then to carry; only the floor was strewed with busk-points,[588] silk garters, and shoe-strings, scattered here and there for haste to make away from me, and the farther such run, the nearer they come to me. Then another door opening rearward, there came puffing out of the next room a villanous lieutenant without a band, as if he had been new cut down, like one at Wapping, with his cruel garters[589] about his neck, which fitly resembled two of Derrick’s necklaces.[590] He had a head of hair like one of my devils in _Doctor Faustus_,[591] when the old theatre cracked and frighted the audience: his brow was made of coarse bran, as if all the flour had been bolted out to make honester men, so ruggedly moulded with chaps and crevices, that I wonder how it held together, had it not been pasted with villany: his eyebrows jetted out like the round casement of an alderman’s dining-room, which made his eyes look as if they had been both dammed in his head; for if so be two souls had been so far sunk into hell-pits, they would never have walked abroad again: his nostrils were cousin-germans to coral, though of a softer condition and of a more relenting humour: his crow-black muchatoes[592] were almost half an ell from one end to the other, as though they would whisper him in the ear about a cheat or a murder; and his whole face in general was more detestable ugly than the visage of my grim porter Cerberus, which shewed that all his body besides was made of filthy dust and sea-coal ashes: a down countenance he had, as if he would have looked thirty mile into hell, and seen Sisyphus rolling, and Ixion spinning and reeling. Thus in a pair of hoary slippers, his stockings dangling about his wrists, and his red buttons like foxes out of their holes, he began, like the true champion of a vaulting-house,[593] first to fray me with the bugbears of his rough-cast beard, and then to sound base in mine ears like the bear-garden drum; and this was the humour he put on, and the very apparel of his phrases: Why, master constable, dare you balk us in our own mansion, ha? What! is not our house our Cole-harbour,[594] our castle of come-down and lie-down? Must my honest wedded punk here, my glory-fat Audrey,[595] be taken napping, and raised up by the thunder of bill-men?[596] Are we disannulled of our first sleep, and cheated of our dreams and fantasies? Is there not law too for stealing away a man’s slumbers, as well as for sheets off from hedges? Come you to search an honest bawdy-house, this seven and twenty years in fame and shame? Go to, then, you shall search, nay, my very boots too; are you well now? the least hole in my house[597] too; are you pleased now? Can we not take our ease in our inn,[598] but we must come out so quickly? Naud,[599] go to bed, sweet Naud; thou wilt cool thy grease anon, and make thy fat cake. This said, by the virtue and vice of my office I commanded my bill-men down stairs; when in a twinkling discovering myself a little, as much as might serve to relish me, and shew what stuff I was made of, I came and kissed the bawd, hugged her excellent villanies and cunning rare conveyances;[600] then turning myself, I threw mine arms, like a scarf or bandileer,[601] cross the lieutenant’s melancholy bosom, embraced his resolute phrases and his dissolute humours, highly commending the damnable trade and detestable course of their living, so excellent-filthy and so admirable-villanous. Whereupon this lieutenant of Pict-hatch[602] fell into deeper league and farther acquaintance with the blackness of my bosom, sometimes calling me master Lucifer the head-borough, sometimes master Devillin the little black constable. Then telling me he heard from Limbo[603] the second of the last month, and that he had the letter to shew, where they were all very merry; marry, as he told me, there were some of his friends in Phlegethon troubled with the heart-burning; yea, and with the soul-burning too, thought I, though thou little dreamest of the torment: then complaining to me of their bad takings all the last plaguy summer,[604] that there was no stirrings, and therefore undone for want of doings: whereupon, after many such inductions to bring the scene of his poverty upon the stage, he desired, in cool terms, to borrow some forty pence of me. I, stuft with anger at that base and lazy petition, knowing that a right true villain and an absolute practised pander could not want silver damnation, but, living upon the revenues of his wits, might purchase the devil and all, half-conquered with rage, thus I replied to his baseness: Why, for shame! a bawd and poor? why, then, let usurers go a-begging, or, like an old Greek, stand in Paul’s with a porringer; let brokers become whole honest then, and remove to heaven out of Houndsditch; lawyers turn feeless, and take ten of a poor widow’s tears for ten shillings; merchants never forswear themselves, whose great perjured oaths a’ land turn to great winds and cast away their ships at sea, which false perfidious tempest splits their ships abroad and their souls at home, making the one take salt water and the other salt fire; let mercers then have conscionable thumbs when they measure out that smooth glittering devil, satin, and that old reveller, velvet, in the days of Monsieur,[605] both which have devoured many an honest field of wheat and barley, that hath been metamorphosed and changed into white money. Pooh, these are but little wonders, and may be easily possible in the working. A usurer to cry bread and meat is not a thing impossible; for indeed your greatest usurer is your greatest beggar, wanting as well that which he hath as that which he hath not; then who can be a greater beggar? He will not have his house smell like a cook’s shop, and therefore takes an order no meat shall be dressed in it: and because there was an house upon Fish-street-hill burnt to the ground once, he can abide by no means to have a fire in his chimney ever since. To the confirming of which I will insert here a pretty conceit[606] of a nimble-witted gentlewoman, that was worthy to be ladified for the jest; who, entering into a usurer’s house in London to take up money upon unmerciful interest for the space of a twelvemonth, was conducted through two or three hungry rooms into a fair dining-room by a lenten-faced fellow, the usurer’s man, whose nose shewed as if it had been made of hollow pasteboard, and his cheeks like two thin pancakes clapt together; a pitiful knave he was, and looked for all the world as if meal had been at twenty shillings a bushel. The gentlewoman being placed in this fair room to await the usurer’s leisure, who was casting up ditches of gold in his counting-house, and being almost frozen with standing—for it was before Candlemas’ frost-bitten term— ever and anon turning about to the chimney, where she saw a pair of corpulent, gigantical andirons, that stood like two burgomasters, at both corners, a hearth briskly dressed up, and a great cluster of charcoal piled up together like black puddings, which lay for a dead fire, and in the dining-room too: the gentlewoman, wondering it was so long a-kindling, at last she caught the miserable conceit of it, and calling her man to her, bade him seek out for a piece of chalk, or some peeling of a white wall, whilst in the meantime she conceited the device; when, taking up the six former[607] coals, one after another, she chalked upon each of them a satirical letter; which six were these,

T. D. C. R. U. S.;

explained thus,

_These dead coals Resemble usurers’ souls._

Then placing them in the same order again, turning the chalked sides inward to try conclusions,[608] which, as it happened, made up the jest the better: by that time the usurer had done amongst his golden heaps, and entertaining the gentlewoman with a cough a quarter of an hour long, at last, after a rotten hawk and a hem, he began to spit and speak to her. To conclude; she was furnished of the money for a twelvemonth, but upon large security and most tragical usury. When, keeping her day the twelvemonth after, coming to repay both the money and the breed of it—for interest may well be called the usurer’s bastard—she found the hearth dressed up in the same order, with a dead fire of charcoal again, and yet the Thames was half-frozen at that time with the bitterness of the season: when turning the foremost rank of coals, determining again, as it seemed, to draw some pretty knavery upon them too, she spied all those six letters which she chalked upon them the twelvemonth before, and never a one stirred or displaced; the strange sight of which made her break into these words:— Is it possible, quoth she, a usurer should burn so little here, and so much in hell? or is it the cold property of these coals to be above a twelvemonth a-kindling? So much to shew the frozen charity of a usurer’s chimney.

And then a broker to be an honest soul, that is, to take but sixpence a-month, and threepence for the bill-making; a devil of a very good conscience! Possible too to have a lawyer bribeless and without fee, if his clientess, or female client, please his eye well: a merchant to wear a suit of perjury but once a quarter or so,—mistake me not, I mean not four times an hour; that shift were too short, he could not put it on so soon, I think: and, lastly, not impossible for a mercer to have a thumb in folio, like one of the biggest of the guard, and so give good and very bountiful measure. But, which is most impossible, to be a right bawd and poor—it strikes my spleen into dulness, and turns all my blood into cool lead. Wherefore was vice ordained but to be rich, shining, and wealthy, seeing virtue, her opponent, is poor, ragged, and needy? Those that are poor are timorous-honest and foolish-harmless; as your carolling shepherds, whistling ploughmen, and such of the same innocent rank, that never relish the black juice of villany, never taste the red food of murder, or the damnable suckets of luxury:[609] whereas a pander is the very oil of villains and the syrup of rogues; of excellent rogues, I mean, such as have purchased five hundreds a-year by the talent of their villany. How many such gallants do I know, that live only upon the revenue of their wits! some whose brains are above an hundred mile about; and those are your geometrical thieves, which may fitly be called so, because they measure the highways with false gallops, and therefore are heirs of more acres than five-and-fifty elder brothers: sometimes they are clerks of Newmarket Heath, sometimes the sheriffs of Salisbury Plain; and another time they commit brothelry, when they make many a man stand at Hockley-in-the-Hole. These are your great head landlords indeed, which call the word _robbing_ the gathering in of their rents, and name all passengers their tenants-at-will.

Another set of delicate knaves there are, that dive into deeds and writings of lands left to young gullfinches, poisoning the true sense and intent of them with the merciless antimony of the Common Law, [610] and so by some crafty clau[s]e or two shove the true foolish owners quite beside the saddle of their patrimonies, and then they hang only by the stirrups, that is, by the cold alms and frozen charity of the gentlemen-defeaters, who—if they take after me, their great grandfather—will rather stamp them down in the deep mire of poverty than bolster up their heads with a poor wisp of charity. Such as these corrupt the true meanings of last wills and testaments, and turn legacies the wrong way, wresting them quite awry, like Grantham steeple.[611]