Part 5

DAW: Grave asses! mere essayists: a few loose sentences, and that's all. A man would talk so, his whole age: I do utter as good things every hour, if they were collected and observed, as either of them.

DAUP: Indeed, sir John!

CLER: He must needs; living among the wits and braveries too.

DAUP: Ay, and being president of them, as he is.

DAW: There's Aristotle, a mere common-place fellow; Plato, a discourser; Thucydides and Livy, tedious and dry; Tacitus, an entire knot: sometimes worth the untying, very seldom.

CLER: What do you think of the poets, sir John?

DAW: Not worthy to be named for authors. Homer, an old tedious, prolix ass, talks of curriers, and chines of beef. Virgil of dunging of land, and bees. Horace, of I know not what.

CLER: I think so.

DAW: And so Pindarus, Lycophron, Anacreon, Catullus, Seneca the tragedian, Lucan, Propertius, Tibullus, Martial, Juvenal, Ausonius, Statius, Politian, Valerius Flaccus, and the rest--

CLER: What a sack full of their names he has got!

DAUP: And how he pours them out! Politian with Valerius Flaccus!

CLER: Was not the character right of him?

DAUP: As could be made, i'faith.

DAW: And Persius, a crabbed coxcomb, not to be endured.

DAUP: Why, whom do you account for authors, sir John Daw?

DAW: Syntagma juris civilis; Corpus juris civilis; Corpus juris canonici; the king of Spain's bible--

DAUP: Is the king of Spain's bible an author?

CLER: Yes, and Syntagma.

DAUP: What was that Syntagma, sir?

DAW: A civil lawyer, a Spaniard.

DAUP: Sure, Corpus was a Dutchman.

CLER: Ay, both the Corpuses, I knew 'em: they were very corpulent authors.

DAW: And, then there's Vatablus, Pomponatius, Symancha: the other are not to be received, within the thought of a scholar.

DAUP: 'Fore God, you have a simple learned servant, lady,-- in titles. [ASIDE.]

CLER: I wonder that he is not called to the helm, and made a counsellor!

DAUP: He is one extraordinary.

CLER: Nay, but in ordinary: to say truth, the state wants such.

DAUP: Why that will follow.

CLER: I muse a mistress can be so silent to the dotes of such a servant.

DAW: 'Tis her virtue, sir. I have written somewhat of her silence too.

DAUP: In verse, sir John?

CLER: What else?

DAUP: Why? how can you justify your own being of a poet, that so slight all the old poets?

DAW: Why? every man that writes in verse is not a poet; you have of the wits that write verses, and yet are no poets: they are poets that live by it, the poor fellows that live by it.

DAUP: Why, would not you live by your verses, sir John?

CLER: No, 'twere pity he should. A knight live by his verses? he did not make them to that end, I hope.

DAUP: And yet the noble Sidney lives by his, and the noble family not ashamed.

CLER: Ay, he profest himself; but sir John Daw has more caution: he'll not hinder his own rising in the state so much. Do you think he will? Your verses, good sir John, and no poems.

DAW: Silence in woman, is like speech in man, Deny't who can.

DAUP: Not I, believe it: your reason, sir.

DAW: Nor, is't a tale, That female vice should be a virtue male, Or masculine vice a female virtue be: You shall it see Prov'd with increase; I know to speak, and she to hold her peace. Do you conceive me, gentlemen?

DAUP: No, faith; how mean you "with increase," sir John?

DAW: Why, with increase is, when I court her for the common cause of mankind; and she says nothing, but "consentire videtur": and in time is gravida.

DAUP: Then this is a ballad of procreation?

CLER: A madrigal of procreation; you mistake.

EPI: 'Pray give me my verses again, servant.

DAW: If you'll ask them aloud, you shall. [WALKS ASIDE WITH THE PAPERS.]

[ENTER TRUEWIT WITH HIS HORN.]

CLER: See, here's Truewit again!--Where hast thou been, in the name of madness! thus accoutred with thy horn?

TRUE: Where the sound of it might have pierced your sense with gladness, had you been in ear-reach of it. Dauphine, fall down and worship me: I have forbid the bans, lad: I have been with thy virtuous uncle, and have broke the match.

DAUP: You have not, I hope.

TRUE: Yes faith; if thou shouldst hope otherwise, I should repent me: this horn got me entrance; kiss it. I had no other way to get in, but by faining to be a post; but when I got in once, I proved none, but rather the contrary, turn'd him into a post, or a stone, or what is stiffer, with thundering into him the incommodities of a wife, and the miseries of marriage. If ever Gorgon were seen in the shape of a woman, he hath seen her in my description: I have put him off o' that scent for ever.--Why do you not applaud and adore me, sirs? why stand you mute? are you stupid? You are not worthy of the benefit.

DAUP: Did not I tell you? Mischief!--

CLER: I would you had placed this benefit somewhere else.

TRUE: Why so?

CLER: 'Slight, you have done the most inconsiderate, rash, weak thing, that ever man did to his friend.

DAUP: Friend! if the most malicious enemy I have, had studied to inflict an injury upon me, it could not be a greater.

TRUE: Wherein, for Gods-sake? Gentlemen, come to yourselves again.

DAUP: But I presaged thus much afore to you.

CLER: Would my lips had been solder'd when I spake on't. Slight, what moved you to be thus impertinent?

TRUE: My masters, do not put on this strange face to pay my courtesy; off with this visor. Have good turns done you, and thank 'em this way!

DAUP: 'Fore heav'n, you have undone me. That which I have plotted for, and been maturing now these four months, you have blasted in a minute: Now I am lost, I may speak. This gentlewoman was lodged here by me o' purpose, and, to be put upon my uncle, hath profest this obstinate silence for my sake; being my entire friend, and one that for the requital of such a fortune as to marry him, would have made me very ample conditions: where now, all my hopes are utterly miscarried by this unlucky accident.

CLER: Thus 'tis when a man will be ignorantly officious, do services, and not know his why; I wonder what courteous itch possest you. You never did absurder part in your life, nor a greater trespass to friendship or humanity.

DAUP: Faith, you may forgive it best: 'twas your cause principally.

CLER: I know it, would it had not.

[ENTER CUTBEARD.]

DAUP: How now, Cutbeard! what news?

CUT: The best, the happiest that ever was, sir. There has been a mad gentleman with your uncle, this morning, [SEEING TRUEWIT.] --I think this be the gentleman--that has almost talk'd him out of his wits, with threatening him from marriage--

DAUP: On, I prithee.

CUT: And your uncle, sir, he thinks 'twas done by your procurement; therefore he will see the party you wot of presently: and if he like her, he says, and that she be so inclining to dumb as I have told him, he swears he will marry her, to-day, instantly, and not defer it a minute longer.

DAUP: Excellent! beyond our expectation!

TRUE: Beyond our expectation! By this light, I knew it would be thus.

DAUP: Nay, sweet Truewit, forgive me.

TRUE: No, I was ignorantly officious, impertinent: this was the absurd, weak part.

CLER: Wilt thou ascribe that to merit now, was mere fortune?

TRUE: Fortune! mere providence. Fortune had not a finger in't. I saw it must necessarily in nature fall out so: my genius is never false to me in these things. Shew me how it could be otherwise.

DAUP: Nay, gentlemen, contend not, 'tis well now.

TRUE: Alas, I let him go on with inconsiderate, and rash, and what he pleas'd.

CLER: Away, thou strange justifier of thyself, to be wiser than thou wert, by the event!

TRUE: Event! by this light, thou shalt never persuade me, but I foresaw it as well as the stars themselves.

DAUP: Nay, gentlemen, 'tis well now. Do you two entertain sir John Daw with discourse, while I send her away with instructions.

TRUE: I will be acquainted with her first, by your favour.

CLER: Master True-wit, lady, a friend of ours.

TRUE: I am sorry I have not known you sooner, lady, to celebrate this rare virtue of your silence.

[EXEUNT DAUP., EPI., AND CUTBEARD.]

CLER: Faith, an you had come sooner, you should have seen and heard her well celebrated in sir John Daw's madrigals.

TRUE [ADVANCES TO DAW.]: Jack Daw, God save you! when saw you La-Foole?

DAW: Not since last night, master Truewit.

TRUE: That's a miracle! I thought you two had been inseparable.

DAW: He is gone to invite his guests.

TRUE: 'Odso! 'tis true! What a false memory have I towards that man! I am one: I met him even now, upon that he calls his delicate fine black horse, rid into a foam, with posting from place to place, and person to person, to give them the cue--

CLER: Lest they should forget?

TRUE: Yes: There was never poor captain took more pains at a muster to shew men, than he, at this meal, to shew friends.

DAW: It is his quarter-feast, sir.

CLER: What! do you say so, sir John?

TRUE: Nay, Jack Daw will not be out, at the best friends he has, to the talent of his wit: Where's his mistress, to hear and applaud him? is she gone?

DAW: Is mistress Epicoene gone?

CLER: Gone afore, with sir Dauphine, I warrant, to the place.

TRUE: Gone afore! that were a manifest injury; a disgrace and a half: to refuse him at such a festival-time as this, being a bravery, and a wit too!

CLER: Tut, he'll swallow it like cream: he's better read in Jure civili, than to esteem any thing a disgrace, is offer'd him from a mistress.

DAW: Nay, let her e'en go; she shall sit alone, and be dumb in her chamber a week together, for John Daw, I warrant her. Does she refuse me?

CLER: No, sir, do not take it so to heart; she does not refuse you, but a little neglects you. Good faith, Truewit, you were to blame, to put it into his head, that she does refuse him.

TRUE: Sir, she does refuse him palpably, however you mince it. An I were as he, I would swear to speak ne'er a word to her to-day for't.

DAW: By this light, no more I will not.

TRUE: Nor to any body else, sir.

DAW: Nay, I will not say so, gentlemen.

CLER: It had been an excellent happy condition for the company, if you could have drawn him to it. [ASIDE.]

DAW: I'll be very melancholY, i'faith.

CLER: As a dog, if I were as you, sir John.

TRUE: Or a snail, or a hog-louse: I would roll myself up for this day, in troth, they should not unwind me.

DAW: By this pick-tooth, so I will.

CLER: 'Tis well done: He begins already to be angry with his teeth.

DAW: Will you go, gentlemen?

CLER: Nay, you must walk alone, if you be right melancholy, sir John.

TRUE: Yes, sir, we'll dog you, we'll follow you afar off.

[EXIT DAW.]

CLER: Was there ever such a two yards of knighthood measured out by time, to be sold to laughter?

TRUE: A mere talking mole, hang him! no mushroom was ever so fresh. A fellow so utterly nothing, as he knows not what he would be.

CLER: Let's follow him: but first, let's go to Dauphine, he's hovering about the house to hear what news.

TRUE: Content.

[EXEUNT.]

SCENE 2.3.

A ROOM IN MOROSE'S HOUSE.

ENTER MOROSE AND MUTE, FOLLOWED BY CUTBEARD WITH EPICOENE.

MOR: Welcome Cutbeard! draw near with your fair charge: and in her ear softly entreat her to unmasthey. [EPI. TAKES OFF HER MASK.] --So! Is the door shut? [MUTE MAKES A LEG.] --Enough. Now, Cutbeard, with the same discipline I use to my family, I will question you. As I conceive, Cutbeard, this gentlewoman is she you have provided, and brought, in hope she will fit me in the place and person of a wife? Answer me not, but with your leg, unless it be otherwise: [CUT. MAKES A LEG.] --Very well done, Cutbeard. I conceive, besides, Cutbeard, you have been pre-acquainted with her birth, education, and qualities, or else you would not prefer her to my acceptance, in the weighty consequence of marriage. [CUT. MAKES A LEG.] --This I conceive, Cutbeard. Answer me not but with your leg, unless it be otherwise. [CUT. BOWS AGAIN.] --Very well done, Cutbeard. Give aside now a little, and leave me to examine her condition, and aptitude to my affection. [HE GOES ABOUT HER, AND VIEWS HER.] --She is exceeding fair, and of a special good favour; a sweet composition or harmony of limbs: her temper of beauty has the true height of my blood. The knave hath exceedingly well fitted me without: I will now try her within. Come near, fair gentlewoman: let not my behaviour seem rude, though unto you, being rare, it may haply appear strange. [EPICOENE CURTSIES.] --Nay, lady, you may speak, though Cutbeard and my man, might not; for, of all sounds, only the sweet voice of a fair lady has the just length of mine ears. I beseech you, say, lady; out of the first fire of meeting eyes, they say, love is stricken: do you feel any such motion suddenly shot into you, from any part you see in me? ha, lady? [EPICOENE CURTSIES.] --Alas, lady, these answers by silent curtsies from you are too courtless and simple. I have ever had my breeding in court: and she that shall be my wife, must be accomplished with courtly and audacious ornaments. Can you speak, lady?

EPI: [softly.] Judge you, forsooth.

MOR: What say you, lady? speak out, I beseech you.

EPI: Judge you, forsooth.

MOR: On my judgment, a divine softness! But can you naturally, lady, as I enjoin these by doctrine and industry, refer yourself to the search of my judgment, and, not taking pleasure in your tongue, which is a woman's chiefest pleasure, think it plausible to answer me by silent gestures, so long as my speeches jump right with what you conceive? [EPI. CURTSIES.] --Excellent! divine! if it were possible she should hold out thus! Peace, Cutbeard, thou art made for ever, as thou hast made me, if this felicity have lasting: but I will try her further. Dear lady, I am courtly, I tell you, and I must have mine ears banqueted with pleasant and witty conferences, pretty girls, scoffs, and dalliance in her that I mean to choose for my bed-phere. The ladies in court think it a most desperate impair to their quickness of wit, and good carriage, if they cannot give occasion for a man to court 'em; and when an amorous discourse is set on foot, minister as good matter to continue it, as himself: And do you alone so much differ from all them, that what they, with so much circumstance, affect and toil for, to seem learn'd, to seem judicious, to seem sharp and conceited, you can bury in yourself with silence, and rather trust your graces to the fair conscience of virtue, than to the world's or your own proclamation?

EPI [SOFTLY]: I should be sorry else.

MOR: What say you lady? good lady, speak out.

EPI: I should be sorry else.

MOR: That sorrow doth fill me with gladness. O Morose, thou art happy above mankind! pray that thou mayest contain thyself. I will only put her to it once more, and it shall be with the utmost touch and test of their sex. But hear me, fair lady; I do also love to see her whom I shall choose for my heifer, to be the first and principal in all fashions; precede all the dames at court by a fortnight; have council of tailors, lineners, lace-women, embroiderers, and sit with them sometimes twice a day upon French intelligences; and then come forth varied like nature, or oftener than she, and better by the help of art, her emulous servant. This do I affect: and how will you be able, lady, with this frugality of speech, to give the manifold but necessary instructions, for that bodice, these sleeves, those skirts, this cut, that stitch, this embroidery, that lace, this wire, those knots, that ruff, those roses, this girdle, that fanne, the t'other scarf, these gloves? Ha! what say you, lady?

EPI [SOFTLY]: I'll leave it to you, sir.

MOR: How, lady? pray you rise a note.

EPI: I leave it to wisdom and you, sir.

MOR: Admirable creature! I will trouble you no more: I will not sin against so sweet a simplicity. Let me now be bold to print on those divine lips the seal of being mine.--Cutbeard, I give thee the lease of thy house free: thank me not but with thy leg [CUTBEARD SHAKES HIS HEAD.] --I know what thou wouldst say, she's poor, and her friends deceased. She has brought a wealthy dowry in her silence, Cutbeard; and in respect of her poverty, Cutbeard, I shall have her more loving and obedient, Cutbeard. Go thy ways, and get me a minister presently, with a soft low voice, to marry us; and pray him he will not be impertinent, but brief as he can; away: softly, [EXIT CUTBEARD.] --Sirrah, conduct your mistress into the dining-room, your now mistress. [EXIT MUTE, FOLLOWED BY EPI.] --O my felicity! how I shall be revenged on mine insolent kinsman, and his plots to fright me from marrying! This night I will get an heir, and thrust him out of my blood, like a stranger; he would be knighted, forsooth, and thought by that means to reign over me; his title must do it: No, kinsman, I will now make you bring me the tenth lord's and the sixteenth lady's letter, kinsman; and it shall do you no good, kinsman. Your knighthood itself shall come on its knees, and it shall be rejected; it shall be sued for its fees to execution, and not be redeem'd; it shall cheat at the twelvepenny ordinary, it knighthood, for its diet, all the term- time, and tell tales for it in the vacation to the hostess; or it knighthood shall do worse, take sanctuary in Cole-harbour, and fast. It shall fright all its friends with borrowing letters; and when one of the fourscore hath brought it knighthood ten shillings, it knighthood shall go to the Cranes, or the Bear at the Bridge-foot, and be drunk in fear: it shall not have money to discharge one tavern-reckoning, to invite the old creditors to forbear it knighthood, or the new, that should be, to trust it knighthood. It shall be the tenth name in the bond to take up the commodity of pipkins and stone jugs: and the part thereof shall not furnish it knighthood forth for the attempting of a baker's widow, a brown baker's widow. It shall give it knighthood's name, for a stallion, to all gamesome citizens' wives, and be refused; when the master of a dancing school, or how do you call him, the worst reveller in the town is taken: it shall want clothes, and by reason of that, wit, to fool to lawyers. It shall not have hope to repair itself by Constantinople, Ireland, or Virginia; but the best and last fortune to it knighthood shall be to make Dol Tear-Sheet, or Kate Common a lady: and so it knighthood may eat.

[EXIT.]

SCENE 2.4.

A LANE, NEAR MOROSE'S HOUSE.

ENTER TRUEWIT, DAUPHINE,AND CLERIMONT.

TRUE: Are you sure he is not gone by?

DAUP: No, I staid in the shop ever since.

CLER: But he may take the other end of the lane.

DAUP: No, I told him I would be here at this end: I appointed him hither.

TRUE: What a barbarian it is to stay then!

DAUP: Yonder he comes.

CLER: And his charge left behind him, which is a very good sign, Dauphine.

[ENTER CUTBEARD.]

DAUP: How now Cutbeard! succeeds it, or no?

CUT: Past imagination, sir, omnia secunda; you could not have pray'd to have had it so well. Saltat senex, as it is in the proverb; he does triumph in his felicity, admires the party! he has given me the lease of my house too! and I am now going for a silent minister to marry them, and away.

TRUE: 'Slight, get one of the silenced ministers, a zealous brother would torment him purely.

CUT: Cum privilegio, sir.

DAUP: O, by no means, let's do nothing to hinder it now: when it is done and finished, I am for you, for any device of vexation.

CUT: And that shall be within this half hour, upon my dexterity, gentlemen. Contrive what you can in the mean time, bonis avibus.

[EXIT.]

CLER: How the slave doth Latin it!

TRUE: It would be made a jest to posterity, sirs, this day's mirth, if ye will.

CLER: Beshrew his heart that will not, I pronounce.

DAUP: And for my part. What is it?

TRUE: To translate all La-Foole's company, and his feast thither, to-day, to celebrate this bride-ale.

DAUP: Ay marry; but how will't be done?

TRUE: I'll undertake the directing of all the lady-guests thither, and then the meat must follow.

CLER: For God's sake, let's effect it: it will be an excellent comedy of affliction, so many several noises.

DAUP: But are they not at the other place already, think you?

TRUE: I'll warrant you for the college-honours: one of their faces has not the priming colour laid on yet, nor the other her smock sleek'd.

CLER: O, but they'll rise earlier then ordinary, to a feast.

TRUE: Best go see, and assure ourselves.

CLER: Who knows the house?

TRUE: I will lead you: Were you never there yet?

DAUP: Not I.

CLER: Nor I.

TRUE: Where have you lived then? not know Tom Otter!

CLER: No: for God's sake, what is he?

TRUE: An excellent animal, equal with your Daw or La-Foole, if not transcendant; and does Latin it as much as your barber: He is his wife's subject, he calls her princess, and at such times as these follows her up and down the house like a page, with his hat off, partly for heat, partly for reverence. At this instant he is marshalling of his bull, bear, and horse.

DAUP: What be those, in the name of Sphynx?

TRUE: Why, sir, he has been a great man at the Bear-garden in his time; and from that subtle sport, has ta'en the witty denomination of his chief carousing cups. One he calls his bull, another his bear, another his horse. And then he has his lesser glasses, that he calls his deer and his ape; and several degrees of them too; and never is well, nor thinks any entertainment perfect, till these be brought out, and set on the cupboard.

CLER: For God's love!--we should miss this, if we should not go.

TRUE: Nay, he has a thousand things as good, that will speak him all day. He will rail on his wife, with certain common places, behind her back; and to her face--

DAUP: No more of him. Let's go see him, I petition you.

[EXEUNT.]

ACT 3.

SCENE 3.1.

A ROOM IN OTTER'S HOUSE.

ENTER CAPTAIN OTTER WITH HIS CUPS, AND MISTRESS OTTER.

OTT: Nay, good princess, hear me pauca verba.