Part 10
CLER: No drunkards, either with wine or vanity, ever confess'd such stories of themselves. I would not give a fly's leg, in balance against all the womens' reputations here, if they could be but thought to speak truth: and for the bride, they have made their affidavit against her directly--
DAUP: What, that they have lain with her?
CLER: Yes; and tell times and circumstances, with the cause why, and the place where. I had almost brought them to affirm that they had done it to-day.
DAUP: Not both of them?
CLER: Yes, faith: with a sooth or two more I had effected it. They would have set it down under their hands.
DAUP: Why, they will be our sport, I see, still, whether we will or no.
[ENTER TRUEWIT.]
TRUE: O, are you here? Come, Dauphine; go call your uncle presently: I have fitted my divine, and my canonist, dyed their beards and all. The knaves do not know themselves, they are so exalted and altered. Preferment changes any man. Thou shalt keep one door and I another, and then Clerimont in the midst, that he may have no means of escape from their cavilling, when they grow hot once again. And then the women, as I have given the bride her instructions, to break in upon him in the l'enuoy. O, 'twill be full and twanging! Away! fetch him. [EXIT DAUPHINE.] [ENTER OTTER DISGUISED AS A DIVINE, AND CUTBEARD AS A CANON LAWYER.] Come, master doctor, and master parson, look to your parts now, and discharge them bravely: you are well set forth, perform it as well. If you chance to be out, do not confess it with standing still, or humming, or gaping one at another: but go on, and talk aloud and eagerly; use vehement action, and only remember your terms, and you are safe. Let the matter go where it will: you have many will do so. But at first be very solemn, and grave like your garments, though you loose your selves after, and skip out like a brace of jugglers on a table. Here he comes: set your faces, and look superciliously, while I present you.
[RE-ENTER DAUPHINE WITH MOROSE.]
MOR: Are these the two learned men?
TRUE: Yes, sir; please you salute them.
MOR: Salute them! I had rather do any thing, than wear out time so unfruitfully, sir. I wonder how these common forms, as God save you, and You are welcome, are come to be a habit in our lives: or, I am glad to see you! when I cannot see what the profit can be of these words, so long as it is no whit better with him whose affairs are sad and grievous, that he hears this salutation.
TRUE: 'Tis true, sir; we'll go to the matter then.--Gentlemen, master doctor, and master parson, I have acquainted you sufficiently with the business for which you are come hither; and you are not now to inform yourselves in the state of the question, I know. This is the gentleman who expects your resolution, and therefore, when you please, begin.
OTT: Please you, master doctor.
CUT: Please you, good master parson.
OTT: I would hear the canon-law speak first.
CUT: It must give place to positive divinity, sir.
MOR: Nay, good gentlemen, do not throw me into circumstances. Let your comforts arrive quickly at me, those that are. Be swift in affording me my peace, if so I shall hope any. I love not your disputations, or your court-tumults. And that it be not strange to you, I will tell you: My father, in my education, was wont to advise me, that I should always collect and contain my mind, not suffering it to flow loosely; that I should look to what things were necessary to the carriage of my life, and what not; embracing the one and eschewing the other: in short, that I should endear myself to rest, and avoid turmoil: which now is grown to be another nature to me. So that I come not to your public pleadings, or your places of noise; not that I neglect those things that make for the dignity of the commonwealth: but for the mere avoiding of clamours and impertinencies of orators, that know not how to be silent. And for the cause of noise, am I now a suitor to you. You do not know in what a misery I have been exercised this day, what a torrent of evil! my very house turns round with the tumult! I dwell in a windmill: The perpetual motion is here, and not at Eltham.
TRUE: Well, good master doctor, will you break the ice? master parson will wade after.
CUT: Sir, though unworthy, and the weaker, I will presume.
OTT: 'Tis no presumption, domine doctor.
MOR: Yet again!
CUT: Your question is, For how many causes a man may have divortium legitimum, a lawful divorce? First, you must understand the nature of the word, divorce, a divertendo--
MOR: No excursions upon words, good doctor, to the question briefly.
CUT: I answer then, the canon-law affords divorce but in a few cases; and the principal is in the common case, the adulterous case: But there are duodecim impedimenta, twelve impediments, as we call them, all which do not dirimere contractum, but irritum reddere matrimonium, as we say in the canon-law, not take away the bond, but cause a nullity therein.
MOR: I understood you before: good sir, avoid your impertinency of translation.
OTT: He cannot open this too much, sir, by your favour.
MOR: Yet more!
TRUE: O, you must give the learned men leave, sir.--To your impediments, master Doctor.
CUT: The first is impedimentum erroris.
OTT: Of which there are several species.
CUT: Ay, as error personae.
OTT: If you contract yourself to one person, thinking her another.
CUT: Then, error fortunae.
OTT: If she be a begger, and you thought her rich.
CUT: Then, error qualitatis.
OTT: If she prove stubborn or head-strong, that you thought obedient.
MOR: How! is that, sir, a lawful impediment? One at once, I pray you gentlemen.
OTT: Ay, ante copulam, but not post copulam, sir.
CUT: Master Parson says right. Nec post nuptiarum benedictionem. It doth indeed but irrita reddere sponsalia, annul the contract: after marriage it is of no obstancy.
TRUE: Alas, sir, what a hope are we fallen from by this time!
CUT: The next is conditio: if you thought her free born, and she prove a bond-woman, there is impediment of estate and condition.
OTT: Ay, but, master doctor, those servitudes are sublatae now, among us Christians.
CUT: By your favour, master parson--
OTT: You shall give me leave, master doctor.
MOR: Nay, gentlemen, quarrel not in that question; it concerns not my case: pass to the third.
CUT: Well then, the third is votum: if either party have made a vow of chastity. But that practice, as master parson said of the other, is taken away among us, thanks be to discipline. The fourth is cognatio: if the persons be of kin within the degrees.
OTT: Ay: do you know what the degrees are, sir?
MOR: No, nor I care not, sir: they offer me no comfort in the question, I am sure.
CUT: But there is a branch of this impediment may, which is cognatio spiritualis: if you were her godfather, sir, then the marriage is incestuous.
OTT: That comment is absurd and superstitious, master doctor: I cannot endure it. Are we not all brothers and sisters, and as much akin in that, as godfathers and god-daughters?
MOR: O me! to end the controversy, I never was a godfather, I never was a godfather in my life, sir. Pass to the next.
CUT: The fifth is crimen adulterii; the known case. The sixth, cultus disparitas, difference of religion: have you ever examined her, what religion she is of?
MOR: No, I would rather she were of none, than be put to the trouble of it!
OTT: You may have it done for you, sir.
MOR: By no means, good sir; on to the rest: shall you ever come to an end, think you?
TRUE: Yes, he has done half, sir. On, to the rest.--Be patient, and expect, sir.
CUT: The seventh is, vis: if it were upon compulsion or force.
MOR: O no, it was too voluntary, mine; too voluntary.
CUT: The eight is, ordo; if ever she have taken holy orders.
OTT: That's supersitious too.
MOR: No matter, master parson: Would she would go into a nunnery yet.
CUT: The ninth is, ligamen; if you were bound, sir, to any other before.
MOR: I thrust myself too soon into these fetters.
CUT: The tenth is, publica honestas: which is inchoata quaedam affinitas.
OTT: Ay, or affinitas orta ex sponsalibus; and is but leve impedimentum.
MOR: I feel no air of comfort blowing to me, in all this.
CUT: The eleventh is, affinitas ex fornicatione.
OTT: Which is no less vera affinitas, than the other, master doctor.
CUT: True, quae oritur ex legitimo matrimonio.
OTT: You say right, venerable doctor: and, nascitur ex eo, quod per conjugium duae personae efficiuntur una caro--
MOR: Hey-day, now they begin!
CUT: I conceive you, master parson: ita per fornicationem aeque est verus pater, qui sic generat--
OTT: Et vere filius qui sic generatur--
MOR: What's all this to me?
CLER: Now it grows warm.
CUT: The twelfth, and last is, si forte coire nequibis.
OTT: Ay, that is impedimentum gravissimum: it doth utterly annul, and annihilate, that. If you have manifestam frigiditatem, you are well, sir.
TRUE: Why, there is comfort come at length, sir. Confess yourself but a man unable, and she will sue to be divorced first.
OTT: Ay, or if there be morbus perpetuus, et insanabilis; as paralysis, elephantiasis, or so--
DAUP: O, but frigiditas is the fairer way, gentlemen.
OTT: You say troth, sir, and as it is in the canon, master doctor--
CUT: I conceive you, sir.
CLER: Before he speaks!
OTT: That a boy, or child, under years, is not fit for marriage, because he cannot reddere debitum. So your omnipotentes--
TRUE [ASIDE TO OTT.]: Your impotentes, you whoreson lobster!
OTT: Your impotentes, I should say, are minime apti ad contrahenda matrimonium.
TRUE: Matrimonium! we shall have most unmatrimonial Latin with you: matrimonia, and be hang'd.
DAUP: You put them out, man.
CUT: But then there will arise a doubt, master parson, in our case, post matrimonium: that frigiditate praeditus--do you conceive me, sir?
OTT: Very well, sir.
CUT: Who cannot uti uxore pro uxore, may habere eam pro sorore.
OTT: Absurd, absurd, absurd, and merely apostatical!
CUT: You shall pardon me, master parson, I can prove it.
OTT: You can prove a will, master doctor, you can prove nothing else. Does not the verse of your own canon say, Haec socianda vetant connubia, facta retractant?
CUT: I grant you; but how do they retractare, master parson?
MOR: O, this was it I feared.
OTT: In aeternum, sir.
CUT: That's false in divinity, by your favour.
OTT: 'Tis false in humanity to say so. Is he not prorsus inutilis ad thorum? Can he praestare fidem datam? I would fain know.
CUT: Yes; how if he do convalere?
OTT: He cannot convalere, it is impossible.
TRUE: Nay, good sir, attend the learned men, they will think you neglect them else.
CUT: Or, if he do simulare himself frigidum, odio uxoris, or so?
OTT: I say, he is adulter manifestus then.
DAUP: They dispute it very learnedly, i'faith.
OTT: And prostitutor uxoris; and this is positive.
MOR: Good sir, let me escape.
TRUE: You will not do me that wrong, sir?
OTT: And, therefore, if he be manifeste frigidus, sir--
CUT: Ay, if he be manifeste frigidus, I grant you--
OTT: Why, that was my conclusion.
CUT: And mine too.
TRUE: Nay, hear the conclusion, sir.
OTT: Then, frigiditatis causa--
CUT: Yes, causa frigiditatis--
MOR: O, mine ears!
OTT: She may have libellum divortii against you.
CUT: Ay, divortii libellum she will sure have.
MOR: Good echoes, forbear.
OTT: If you confess it.
CUT: Which I would do, sir--
MOR: I will do any thing.
OTT: And clear myself in foro conscientiae--
CUT: Because you want indeed--
MOR: Yet more?
OTT: Exercendi potestate.
[EPICOENE RUSHES IN, FOLLOWED BY HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS, MISTRESS OTTER, DAW, AND LA-FOOLE.]
EPI: I will not endure it any longer. Ladies, I beseech you, help me. This is such a wrong as never was offered to poor bride before: upon her marriage day, to have her husband conspire against her, and a couple of mercenary companions to be brought in for form's sake, to persuade a separation! If you had blood or virtue in you, gentlemen, you would not suffer such ear-wigs about a husband, or scorpions to creep between man and wife.
MOR: O the variety and changes of my torment!
HAU: Let them be cudgell'd out of doors, by our grooms.
CEN: I'll lend you my foot-man.
MAV: We'll have our men blanket them in the hall.
MRS. OTT: As there was one at our house, madam, for peeping in at the door.
DAW: Content, i'faith.
TRUE: Stay, ladies and gentlemen; you'll hear, before you proceed?
MAV: I'd have the bridegroom blanketted too.
CEN: Begin with him first.
HAU: Yes, by my troth.
MOR: O mankind generation!
DAUP: Ladies, for my sake forbear.
HAU: Yes, for sir Dauphine's sake.
CEN: He shall command us.
LA-F: He is as fine a gentleman of his inches, madam, as any is about the town, and wears as good colours when he lists.
TRUE: Be brief, sir, and confess your infirmity, she'll be a-fire to be quit of you, if she but hear that named once, you shall not entreat her to stay: she'll fly you like one that had the marks upon him.
MOR: Ladies, I must crave all your pardons--
TRUE: Silence, ladies.
MOR: For a wrong I have done to your whole sex, in marrying this fair, and virtuous gentlewoman--
CLER: Hear him, good ladies.
MOR: Being guilty of an infirmity, which, before I conferred with these learned men, I thought I might have concealed--
TRUE: But now being better informed in his conscience by them, he is to declare it, and give satisfaction, by asking your public forgiveness.
MOR: I am no man, ladies.
ALL: How!
MOR: Utterly unabled in nature, by reason of frigidity, to perform the duties, or any the least office of a husband.
MAV: Now out upon him, prodigious creature!
CEN: Bridegroom uncarnate!
HAU: And would you offer it to a young gentlewoman?
MRS. OTT: A lady of her longings?
EPI: Tut, a device, a device, this, it smells rankly, ladies. A mere comment of his own.
TRUE: Why, if you suspect that, ladies, you may have him search'd--
DAW: As the custom is, by a jury of physicians.
LA-F: Yes faith, 'twill be brave.
MOR: O me, must I undergo that?
MRS. OTT: No, let women search him, madam: we can do it ourselves.
MOR: Out on me! worse.
EPI: No, ladies, you shall not need, I will take him with all his faults.
MOR: Worst of all!
CLER: Why then, 'tis no divorce, doctor, if she consent not?
CUT: No, if the man be frigidus, it is de parte uxoris, that we grant libellum divortii, in the law.
OTT: Ay, it is the same in theology.
MOR: Worse, worse than worst!
TRUE: Nay, sir, be not utterly disheartened; we have yet a small relic of hope left, as near as our comfort is blown out. Clerimont, produce your brace of knights. What was that, master parson, you told me in errore qualitatis, e'en now?-- [ASIDE.] Dauphine, whisper the bride, that she carry it as if she were guilty, and ashamed.
OTT: Marry, sir, in errore qualitatis (which master doctor did forbear to urge,) if she be found corrupta, that is, vitiated or broken up, that was pro virgine desponsa, espoused for a maid--
MOR: What then, sir?
OTT: It doth dirimere contractum, and irritum reddere too.
TRUE: If this be true, we are happy again, sir, once more. Here are an honourable brace of knights, that shall affirm so much.
DAW: Pardon us, good master Clerimont.
LA-F: You shall excuse us, master Clerimont.
CLER: Nay, you must make it good now, knights, there is no remedy; I'll eat no words for you, nor no men: you know you spoke it to me.
DAW: Is this gentleman-like, sir?
TRUE [ASIDE TO DAW.]: Jack Daw, he's worse then sir Amorous; fiercer a great deal. [ASIDE TO LA-FOOLE.]--Sir Amorous, beware, there be ten Daws in this Clerimont.
LA-F: I'll confess it, sir.
DAW: Will you, sir Amorous, will you wound reputation?
LA-F: I am resolved.
TRUE: So should you be too, Jack Daw: what should keep you off? she's but a woman, and in disgrace: he'll be glad on't.
DAW: Will he? I thought he would have been angry.
CLER: You will dispatch, knights, it must be done, i'faith.
TRUE: Why, an it must, it shall, sir, they say: they'll ne'er go back. [ASIDE TO THEM.] --Do not tempt his patience.
DAW: It is true indeed, sir?
LA-F: Yes, I assure you, sir.
MOR: What is true gentlemen? what do you assure me?
DAW: That we have known your bride, sir--
LA-F: In good fashion. She was our mistress, or so--
CLER: Nay, you must be plain, knights, as you were to me.
OTT: Ay, the question is, if you have carnaliter, or no?
LA-F: Carnaliter! what else, sir?
OTT: It is enough: a plain nullity.
EPI: I am undone, I am undone!
MOR: O, let me worship and adore you, gentlemen!
EPI [WEEPS.]: I am undone!
MOR: Yes, to my hand, I thank these knights. Master parson, let me thank you otherwise. [GIVES HIM MONEY.]
HAU: And have they confess'd?
MAV: Now out upon them, informers!
TRUE: You see what creatures you may bestow your favours on, madams.
HAU: I would except against them as beaten knights, wench, and not good witnesses in law.
MRS. OTT: Poor gentlewoman, how she takes it!
HAU: Be comforted, Morose, I love you the better for't.
CEN: so do I, I protest.
CUT: But, gentlemen, you have not known her since matrimonium?
DAW: Not to-day, master doctor.
LA-F: No, sir, not to-day.
CUT: Why, then I say, for any act before, the matrimonium is good and perfect: unless the worshipful bridegroom did precisely, before witness, demand, if she were virgo ante nuptias.
EPI: No, that he did not, I assure you, master doctor.
CUT: If he cannot prove that, it is ratum conjugium, notwithstanding the premisses. And they do no way impedire. And this is my sentence, this I pronounce.
OTT: I am of master doctor's resolution too, sir: if you made not that demand, ante nuptias.
MOR: O my heart! wilt thou break? wilt thou break? this is worst of all worst worsts that hell could have devised! Marry a whore, and so much noise!
DAUP: Come, I see now plain confederacy in this doctor and this parson, to abuse a gentleman. You study his affliction. I pray be gone companions.--And, gentlemen, I begin to suspect you for having parts with them.--Sir, will it please you hear me?
MOR: O do not talk to me, take not from me the pleasure of dying in silence, nephew.
DAUP: Sir, I must speak to you. I have been long your poor despised kinsman, and many a hard thought has strengthened you against me: but now it shall appear if either I love you or your peace, and prefer them to all the world beside. I will not be long or grievous to you, sir. If I free you of this unhappy match absolutely, and instantly, after all this trouble, and almost in your despair, now--
MOR: It cannot be.
DAUP: Sir, that you be never troubled with a murmur of it more, what shall I hope for, or deserve of you?
MOR: O, what thou wilt, nephew! thou shalt deserve me, and have me.
DAUP: Shall I have your favour perfect to me, and love hereafter?
MOR: That, and any thing beside. Make thine own conditions. My whole estate is thine; manage it, I will become thy ward.
DAUP: Nay, sir, I will not be so unreasonable.
EPI: Will sir Dauphine be mine enemy too?
DAUP: You know I have been long a suitor to you, uncle, that out of your estate, which is fifteen hundred a-year, you would allow me but five hundred during life, and assure the rest upon me after: to which I have often, by myself and friends tendered you a writing to sign, which you would never consent or incline to. If you please but to effect it now--
MOR: Thou shalt have it, nephew: I will do it, and more.
DAUP: If I quit you not presently, and for ever of this cumber, you shall have power instantly, afore all these, to revoke your act, and I will become whose slave you will give me to, for ever.
MOR: Where is the writing? I will seal to it, that, or to a blank, and write thine own conditions.
EPI: O me, most unfortunate, wretched gentlewoman!
HAU: Will sir Dauphine do this?
EPI: Good sir, have some compassion on me.
MOR: O, my nephew knows you, belike; away, crocodile!
HAU: He does it not sure without good ground.
DAUP: Here, sir. [GIVES HIM THE PARCHMENTS.]
MOR: Come, nephew, give me the pen. I will subscribe to any thing, and seal to what thou wilt, for my deliverance. Thou art my restorer. Here, I deliver it thee as my deed. If there be a word in it lacking, or writ with false orthography, I protest before [heaven] I will not take the advantage. [RETURNS THE WRITINGS.]
DAUP: Then here is your release, sir. [TAKES OFF EPICOENE'S PERUKE AND OTHER DISGUISES.] You have married a boy, a gentleman's son, that I have brought up this half year at my great charges, and for this composition, which I have now made with you.--What say you, master doctor? This is justum impedimentum, I hope, error personae?
OTT: Yes sir, in primo gradu.
CUT: In primo gradu.
DAUP: I thank you, good doctor Cutbeard, and parson Otter. [PULLS THEIR FALSE BEARDS AND GOWNS OFF.] You are beholden to them, sir, that have taken this pains for you; and my friend, master Truewit, who enabled them for the business. Now you may go in and rest; be as private as you will, sir. [EXIT MOROSE.] I'll not trouble you, till you trouble me with your funeral, which I care not how soon it come. --Cutbeard, I'll make your lease good. "Thank me not, but with your leg, Cutbeard." And Tom Otter, your princess shall be reconciled to you.--How now, gentlemen, do you look at me?
CLER: A boy!
DAUP: Yes, mistress Epicoene.