Ben Jonson

Epicoene, or the silent woman





Texto utilizado para esta edición digital:
Jonson, Ben. Epicene, or The Silent Woman. Edited by Richard Dutton. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. The Revels Plays. ((Reproduced by kind permission of Manchester University Press and Richard Dutton. Copyright 2003 by Richard Dutton))
Marcación digital para Artelope:
  • Soler Sánchez, Victoria (Artelope)

TO THE TRULY NOBLE, BY ALL TITLES,

Sir Francis Stuart:
Sir,
My hope is not so nourished by example, as it will conclude this dumb piece should please you because it hath pleased others before; but by trust, that when you have read it, you will find it worthy to have displeased none. This makes that I now number you not only in the name of favour but the names of justice to what I write; and do presently call you to the exercise of that noblest and manliest virtue, as coveting rather to be freed in my fame by the authority of a judge than the credit of an undertaker. Read therefore, I pray you, and censure. There is nor a line or syllable in it changed from the simplicity of the first copy. And, when you shall consider, through the certain hatred of some, how much a man’s innocency may be endangered by an uncertain accusation, you will, I doubt not, so begin to hate the iniquity of such natures I shall love the contumely done me, whose end was so honourable as to be wiped off by your sentence.
Your unprofitable but true lover,
Ben Jonson


THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

MOROSE, a gentleman that loves no noise.
[SIR] DAUPHINE EUGENIE, a knight, his nephew
[NED] CLERIMONT, a gentleman, his friend.
TRUEWIT, another friend.
EPICENE, a young gentleman suppos’d the silent woman.
[SIR] JOHN DAW, a knight, her servant.
[SIR] AMOROUS LA FOOLE, a knight also.
CUTBEARD, a barber.
MUTE, one of Morose his servants.
BOY
THOMAS OTTER, a land and sea captain
MADAME HAUGHTY
MADAME CENTAURE
MISTRESS DOL MAVIS
MISTRESS TRUSTY, Lady Haughty’s woman
MISTRESS OTTER, the captain’s wife
PARSON
PAGES
SERVANTS
MUSICIANS



ACT 1 SCENE 1

[Enter] CLERIMONT: he comes out making himself ready, [followed by] Boy.

CLERIMONT
Ha’ you got the song yet perfect I ga’ you, boy?

BOY
Yes, sir.

CLERIMONT
Let me hear it.

BOY
You shall, sir, but i’ faith let nobody else.

CLERIMONT
Why, I pray?

BOY
It will get you the dangerous name of a poet in town, sir, besides me a perfect deal of ill will at the mansion you wot of, whose lady is the argument of it: where now I am the welcom’st thing under a man that comes there.

CLERIMONT
I think, and above a man too, if the truth were rack’d out of you.

BOY
No, faith, I’ll confess before, sir. The gentlewomen play with me and throw me o’ the bed, and carry me in to my lady, and she kisses me with her oiled face, and puts a peruke o’ my head, and asks me an’ I will wear her gown, and I say, no; and then she hits me a blow o’ the ear and calls me innocent and lets me go.

CLERIMONT
No marvel if the door be kept shut against your master, when the entrance is so easy to you.— Well, sir, you shall go there no more, lest I be fain to seek your voice in my lady’s rushes a fortnight hence. Sing, sir.

BOY sings.
[Enter TRUEWIT.]

TRUEWIT
Why, here’s the man that can melt away his time, and never feels it! What between his mistress abroad and his ingle at home, high fare, soft lodging, fine clothes, and his fiddle, he thinks the hours ha’ no wings or the day no post-horse. Well, sir gallant, were you struck with the plague this minute or condemned to any capital punishment tomorrow, you would begin then to think and value every article o’ your time, esteem it at the true rate, and give all for’t.

CLERIMONT
Why, what should a man do?

TRUEWIT
Why, nothing; or that which, when ’tis done is as idle. Hearken after the next horse-race or hunting-match; lay wagers, praise Puppy, or Peppercorn, Whitefoot, Franklin (horses o’the time); swear upon Whitemane’s party; spend aloud that my lords may hear you; visit my ladies at night and be able to give ’em the character of every bowler or better o’ the green. These be the things wherein your fashionable men exercise themselves, and I for company.

CLERIMONT
Nay, if I have thy authority, I’ll not leave yet. Come, the other are considerations when we come to have grey heads and weak hams, moist eyes and shrunk members. We’ll think on ’em then; then we’ll pray and fast.

TRUEWIT
Ay, and destine only that time of age to goodness which our want of ability will not let us employ in evil?

CLERIMONT
Why then ’tis time enough.

TRUEWIT
Yes, as if a man should sleep all the term and think to effect his business the last day. Oh, Clerimont, this time, because it is an incorporeal thing and not subject to sense, we mock ourselves the fineliest out of it, with vanity and misery indeed, not seeking an end of wretchedness, but only changing the matter still.

CLERIMONT
Nay, thou’lt not leave now—

TRUEWIT
See but our common disease! With what justice can we complain that great men will not look upon us nor be at leisure to give our affairs such dispatch as we expect, when we will never do it to ourselves, nor hear nor regard ourselves.

CLERIMONT
Foh, thou hast read Plutarch’s Morals now, or some such tedious fellow, and it shows so vilely with thee, ’fore God, ’twill spoil thy wit utterly. Talk me of pins, and feathers and ladies, and rushes, and such things, and leave stoicity alone till thou mak’st sermons.

TRUEWIT
Well, sir, if it will not take, I have learned to lose as little of my kindness as I can. I’ll do good to no man against his will, certainly. When were you at the college?

CLERIMONT
What college?

TRUEWIT
As if you knew not!

CLERIMONT
No, faith, I came but from court yesterday.

TRUEWIT
Why, is it not arrived there yet, the news? A new foundation, sir, here i’ the town, of ladies that call themselves the Collegiates, an order between courtiers and country madams, that live from their husbands and give entertainment to all the Wits and Braveries o’ the time, as they call ’em: cry down or up what they like or dislike in a brain or a fashion, with most masculine or rather hermaphroditical authority, and every day gain to their college some new probationer.

CLERIMONT
Who is the president?

TRUEWIT
The grave and youthful matron, the Lady Haughty.

CLERIMONT
A pox of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! There’s no man can be admitted till she be ready nowadays, till she has painted and perfumed and washed and scoured, but the boy here; and him she wipes her oiled lips upon like a sponge. I have made a song, I pray thee hear it, o’ the subject.

[Boy sings again.]

BOY
Still to be neat, still to be dressed,
As you were going to a feast;
Still to be powdered, still perfumed:
Lady, it is to be presumed,
Though art’s hid causes are not found,
All is not sweet, all is not sound.
Give me a look, give me a face,
That makes simplicity a grace;
Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:
Such sweet neglect more taketh me,
Than all th’ adulteries of art.
They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

TRUEWIT
And I am clearly o’ the other side: I love a good dressing before any beauty o’ the world. Oh, a woman is then like a delicate garden; nor is there one kind of it: she may vary every hour, take often counsel of her glass and choose the best. If she have good ears, show ’em; good hair, lay it out; good legs, wear short clothes; a good hand, discover it often; practise any art to mend breath, cleanse teeth, repair eyebrows, paint, and profess it.

CLERIMONT
How, publicly?

TRUEWIT
The doing of it, not the manner: that must be private. Many things that seem foul i’ the doing, do please, done. A lady should indeed study her face when we think she sleeps; nor when the doors are shut should men be inquiring; all is sacred within, then. Is it for us to see their perukes put on, their false teeth, their complexion, their eyebrows, their nails? You see gilders will not work but enclosed. They must not discover how little serves with the help of art to adorn a great deal. How long did the canvas hang afore Aldgate? Were the people suffered to see the city’s Love and Charity while they were rude stone, before they were painted and burnished? No. No more should servants approach their mistresses but when they are complete and finished.

CLERIMONT
Well said, my Truewit.

TRUEWIT
And a wise lady will keep a guard always upon the place, that she may do things securely. I once followed a rude fellow into a chamber, where the poor madam, for haste, and troubled, snatched at her peruke to cover her baldness: and put it on the wrong way.

CLERIMONT
Oh prodigy!

TRUEWIT
And the unconscionable knave held her in compliment an hour, with that reversed face, when I still looked when she should talk from the tother side.

CLERIMONT
Why, thou shouldst ha’ relieved her.

TRUEWIT
No faith, I let her alone as we’ll let this argument, if you please, and pass to another. When saw you Dauphine Eugenie?

CLERIMONT
Not these three days. Shall we go to him this morning? He is very melancholic, I hear.

TRUEWIT
Sick o’ the uncle, is he? I met that stiff piece of formality, his uncle, yesterday, with a huge turban of nightcaps on his head, buckled over his ears.

CLERIMONT
Oh, that’s his custom when he walks abroad. He can endure no noise, man.

TRUEWIT
So I have heard. But is the disease so ridiculous in him as it is made? They say he has been upon divers treaties with the fishwives and orange-women, and articles propounded between them. Marry, the chimney-sweepers will not be drawn in.

CLERIMONT
No, nor the broom-men: they stand out stiffly. He cannot endure a costardmonger, he swoons if he hear one.

TRUEWIT
Methinks a smith should be ominous.

CLERIMONT
Or any hammerman. A brazier is not suffered to dwell in the parish, nor an armourer. He would have hanged a pewterer’s ’prentice once upon a Shrove Tuesday’s riot for being o’ that trade, when the rest were quit.

TRUEWIT
A trumpet should fright him terribly, or the hau’boys?

CLERIMONT
Out of his senses. The waits of the city have a pension of him, not to come near that ward. This youth practised on him one night like the bellman, and never left till he had brought him down to the door with a long sword, and there left him flourishing with the air.

BOY
Why, sir, he hath chosen a street to lie in so narrow at both ends that it will receive no coaches nor carts nor any of these common noises, and therefore we that love him devise to bring him in such as we may, now and then, for his exercise, to breathe him. He would grow resty else in his ease. His virtue would rust without action. I entreated a bearward one day to come down with the dogs of some four parishes that way, and I thank him he did, and cried his games under Master Morose’s window till he was sent crying away with his head made a most bleeding spectacle to the multitude. And another time a fencer, marching to his prize, had his drum most tragically run through for taking that street in his way, at my request.

TRUEWIT
A good wag. How does he for the bells?

CLERIMONT
Oh, i’ the Queen’s time he was wont to go out of town every Saturday at ten o’clock or on holiday eves. But now, by reason of the sickness, the perpetuity of ringing has made him devise a room with double walls and treble ceilings, the windows close shut and caulked: and there he lives by candlelight. He turned away a man last week for having a pair of new shoes that creaked. And this fellow waits on him now in tennis-court socks, or slippers soled with wool, and they talk each to other in a trunk. See who comes here.

ACT 1 SCENE 2

[Enter] DAUPHINE.

DAUPHINE
How now ! What ail your sirs? Dumb?

TRUEWIT
Struck into stone almost, I am here, with tales o’ thine uncle! There was never such a prodigy heard of.

DAUPHINE
I would you would once lose this subject, my masters, for my sake. They are such as you are that have brought me into that predicament I am with him.

TRUEWIT
How is that?

DAUPHINE
Marry, that he will disinherit me, no more. He thinks I and my company are authors of all the ridiculous acts and monuments are told of him.

TRUEWIT
’Slid, I would be the author of more to vex him; that purpose deserves it : it gives thee law of plaguing him. I’ll tell thee what I would do. I would make a false almanac, get it printed, and then ha’ him drawn out on a coronation day of the Tower-wharf, and kill him with the noise of the ordnance. Disinherit thee ! He cannot, man. Art not thou next of blood, and his sister’s son?

DAUPHINE
Ay, but he will thrust me out of it, he vows, and marry.

TRUEWIT
How! That’s a more portent. Can he endure no noise, and will venture on a wife ?

CLERIMONT
Yes. Why, thou art a stranger, it seems, to his best trick yet. He has employed a fellow this half year all over England to hearken him out a dumb woman, be she of any form or any quality, so she be able to bear children. Her silence is dowry enough, he says.

TRUEWIT
But I trust to God he has found none.

CLERIMONT
No, but he has heard of one that’s lodged i’ the next street to him, who is exceedingly soft-spoken, thrifty of her speech, that spends but six words a day. And her he’s about now and shall have her.

TRUEWIT
Is’t possible! Who is his agent i’ the business?

CLERIMONT
Marry, a barber, one Cutbeard, an honest fellow, one that tells Dauphine all here.

TRUEWIT
Why, you opress me with wonder! A woman and a barber, and love no noise!

CLERIMONT
Yes, faith. The fellow trims him silently and has not the knack with his shears or his fingers; and that continence in a barber he thinks so eminent a virtue as it has made him chief of his counsel.

TRUEWIT
Is the barber to be seen? or the wench?

CLERIMONT
Yes, that they are.

TRUEWIT
I pray thee, Dauphine, let’s go thither.

DAUPHINE
I have some business now; I cannot i’ faith.

TRUEWIT
You shall have no business shall make you neglect this, sir. We’ll make her talk, believe it; or if she will not, we can give out at least so much as shall interrupt the treaty. We will break it. Thou art bound in conscience, when he suspects thee without cause, to torment him.

DAUPHINE
Not I, by any means. I’ll give no suffrage to’t. He shall never ha’ that plea against me that I opposed the least fant’sy of his. Let it lie upon my stars to be guilty, I’ll be innocent.

TRUEWIT
Yes, and be poor and beg; do, innocent, when some groom of his has got him an heir, or this barber, if he himself cannot. Innocent! —I pray thee, Ned, where lies she? Let him be innocent still.

CLERIMONT
Why, right over against the barber’s, in the house where Sir John Daw lies.

TRUEWIT
You do not mean to confound me!

CLERIMONT
Why?

TRUEWIT
Does he that would marry her know so much?

CLERIMONT
I cannot tell.

TRUEWIT
’Twere enough of imputation to her, with him.

CLERIMONT
Why?

TRUEWIT
The only talking sir i’ th’ town! Jack Daw! And he teach her not to speak—God b’ w’ you. I have some business too.

CLERIMONT
Will you not go thither then?

TRUEWIT
Not with the danger to meet Daw, for mine ears.

CLERIMONT
Why, I thought you two had been upon very good terms.

TRUEWIT
Yes, of keeping distance.

CLERIMONT
They say he is a very good scholar.

TRUEWIT
Ay, and he says it first. A pox on him, a fellow that pretends only to learning, buys titles, and nothing else of books in him.

CLERIMONT
The world reports him to be very learned.

TRUEWIT
I am sorry the world should so conspire to belie him.

CLERIMONT
Good faith, I have heard very good things come from him.

TRUEWIT
You may. There’s none so desperately ignorant to deny that : would they were his own. God b’ w’ you gentlemen.

[Exit .]

CLERIMONT
This is very abrupt.

ACT 1 SCENE 3

DAUPHINE
Come, you are a strange open man to tell everything thus.

CLERIMONT
Why, believe it Dauphine, Truewit’s a very honest fellow.

DAUPHINE
I think no other, but this frank nature of his is not for secrets.

CLERIMONT
Nay, then, you are mistaken, Dauphine. I know where he has been well trusted, and discharged the trust very truly and heartily.

DAUPHINE
I contend not, Ned, but with the fewer a business is carried, it is ever the safer. Now we are alone, if you’ll go thither, I am for you.

CLERIMONT
When were you there?

DAUPHINE
Last night, and such a Decameron of sport fallen out! Boccace never thought of the like. Daw does nothing but court her, and the wrong way. He would lie with her, and praises her modesty; desires that she would talk and be free, and commends her silence in verses, which he reads and swears are the best that ever man made. Then rails at his fortunes, stamps, and mutines why he is not made a counselor and called to affairs of state.

CLERIMONT
I pray thee, let’s go. I would fain partake this.− Some water, boy.

[Exit BOY.]

DAUPHINE
We are invited to dinner together, he and I, by one that came thither to him, Sir La Foole.

CLERIMONT
Oh, that’s a precious manikin!

DAUPHINE
Do you know him?

CLERIMONT
Ay, and he will know you too, if e’er he saw you but once, though you should meet him at church in the midst of prayers. He is one of the Braveries though he be none o’ the Wits. He will salute a judge upon the bench and a bishop in the pulpit, a lawyer when he is pleading at the bar, and a lady when she is dancing in a masque, and put her out. He does give plays and suppers, and invites his guests to ’em aloud out of his window as they ride by in coaches. He has a lodging in the Strand for the purpose, or to watch when ladies are gone to the china-houses or the Exchange, that he may meet ’em by chance and give ’em presents, some two or three hundred pounds’ worth of toys, to be laugh’d at. He is never without a spare banquet or sweetmeats in his chamber, for their women to alight at and come up to, for a bait.

DAUPHINE
Excellent! He was a fine youth last night, but now he is much finer! What in his Christian name ? I ha’ forgot.

[Enter BOY.]

CLERIMONT
Sir Amorous La Foole.

BOY
The gentleman is here below that owns that name.

CLERIMONT
’Heart, he’s come to invite me to dinner, I hold my life.

DAUPHINE
Like enough. Pray thee, let’s ha’ him up.

CLERIMONT
Boy, marshal him.

BOY
With a truncheon, sir?

CLERIMONT
Away, I beseech you. [Exit Boy] I’ll make him tell us his pedegree now, and what meat he has to dinner, and who are his guests, and the whole course of his fortunes, with a breath.

ACT 1 SCENE 4

[Enter] LA FOOLE.

LA FOOLE
’Save, dear sir Dauphine, honoured Master Clerimont!

CLERIMONT
Sir Amorous! You have very much honested my lodging with your presence.

LA FOOLE
Good faith, it is a fine lodging, almost as delicate a lodging as mine.

CLERIMONT
Not so, sir.

LA FOOLE
Excuse me, sir, if it were i’ the Strand, I assure you. I am come, Master Clerimont, to entreat you wait upon two or three ladies to dinner today.

CLERIMONT
How, sir ! Wait upon ’em? Did you ever see me carry dishes?

LA FOOLE
No, sir, dispense with me; I meant to bear ’em company.

CLERIMONT
Oh, that I will, sir. The doubtfulness o’ your phrase, believe it, sir, would breed you a quarrel once an hour with the terrible boys, if you should but keep ’em fellowship a day.

LA FOOLE
It should be extremely against my will, sir, if I contested with any man.

CLERIMONT
I believe it, sir. Where hold you your feast?

LA FOOLE
At Tom Otter’s, sir.

DAUPHINE
Tom Otter? What’s he?

LA FOOLE
Captain Otter, sir. He is a kind of gamester, but he has had command both by sea and by land.

DAUPHINE
Oh, then he is animal amphibium?

LA FOOLE
Ay, sir. His wife was the rich china-woman that the courtiers visited so often, that gave the rare entertainment. She commands all at home.

CLERIMONT
Then she is Captain Otter?

LA FOOLE
You say very well, sir. She is my kinswoman, a La Foole by the mother side, and will invite any great ladies, for my sake.

DAUPHINE
Not of the La Fooles of Essex?

LA FOOLE
No sir, the La Fooles of London.

CLERIMONT
[To Dauphine.] Now he’s in.

LA FOOLE
They all come out of our house, the La Fooles o’ the north, the La Fooles of the west, the La Fooles of the east and south—we are as ancient a family as any is in Europe—but I myself am descended lineally of the French La Fooles—and we do bear for our coat yellow or or, checkered azure and gules, and some three or four colours more, which is a very noted coat and has sometimes been solemnly worn by divers nobility of our house—but let that go, antiquity is not respected now—I had a brace of fat does sent me, gentlemen, and half a dozen of pheasants, a dozen or two of godwits, and some other fowl, which I would have eaten while they are good, and in good company—there will be a great lady or two, my Lady Haughty, my Lady Centaure, Mistress Dol Mavis—and they come a’ purpose to see the silent gentlewoman, Mistress Epicene, that honest Sir John Daw has promised to bring thither—and then Mistress Trusty, my Lady’s woman, will be there too, and this honorable knight, Sir Dauphine, with yourself, Master Clerimont— and we’ll be very merry and have fiddlers and dance—I have been a mad wag in my time and have spent some crowns since I was a page in court to my Lord Lofty, and after my Lady’s gentlemen-usher, who got me knighted in Ireland, since it pleased my elder brother to die—I had as fair a gold jerkin on that day as any was worn in the Island Voyage or at Caliz, none dispraised, and I came over in it hither, showed myself to my friends in court and after went down to my tenants in the country and surveyed my lands, let new leases, took their money, spent it in the eye o’ the land here, upon ladies—and now I can take up at my pleasure.

DAUPHINE
Can you take up ladies, sir ?

CLERIMONT
Oh, let him breath, he has not recovered.

DAUPHINE
Would I were your half in that commodity—

LA FOOLE
No sir, excuse me: I meant money, which can take up anything. I have another guest or two to invite and say as much to, gentlemen. I’ll take my leave abruptly, in hope you will not fail—Your servant.

[Exit.]

DAUPHINE
We will not fail you, sir precious La Foole; but she shall that your ladies come to see, if I have credit afore sir Daw.

CLERIMONT
Did you ever hear such a wind-fucker as this?

DAUPHINE
Or such a rook as the other, that will betray his mistress to be seen! Come, ’tis time we prevented it.

CLERIMONT
Go.

[Exeunt.]

ACT 2

ACT 2 SCENE I

[Enter] MOROSE [and] MUTE.

MOROSE
Cannot I yet find out a more compendious method than by this trunk to save my servants the labour of speech and mine ears the discord of sounds? Let me see. All discourses but my own afflict me; they seem harsh, impertinent, and irksome. Is it not possible, that thou shouldst answer me by signs, and I apprehend thee, fellow? Speak not, though I question you. You have taken the ring off from the street door, as I bade you? Answer me not by speech, but by silence, unless it be otherwise.− Very good. [At the breaches, still the fellow makes legs or signs.] And you have fastened on a thick quilt or flock-bed on the outside of the door, that if they knock with their daggers, or with brickbats, they can make no noise? But with your leg, your answer, unless it be otherwise− Very good. This is not only fit modesty in a servant, but good state and discretion in a master. And you have been with Cutbeard, the barber, to have him come to me?−Good. And, he will come presently? Answer me not but with your leg, unless it be otherwise; if it be otherwise, shake your head, or shrug.−So. Your Italian and Spaniard are wise in these, and it is a frugal and comely gravity. How long will it be ere Cutbeard come? Stay, if an hour, hold up your whole hand; if half an hour, two fingers; if a quarter, one−. [MUTE holds up a finger bent.] Good; half a quarter? ‘Tis well. And have you given him a key to come in without knocking?−Good. And is the lock oiled, and the hinges, today? − Good. And the quilting of the stairs nowhere worn out and bare?−Very good. I see by much doctrine and impulsion, it may be effected. Stand by. The Turk in this divine discipline is admirable, exceeding all the potentates of the earth; still waited on by mutes, and all his commands so executed, yea, even in the war (as I have heard) and in his marches, most of his charges and directions given by signs and with silence: an exquisite art! And I am heartily ashamed and angry oftentimes that the princes of Christendom should suffer a barbarian to transcend ’em in so high a point of felicity. I will practise it hereafter. [One winds a horn without.] How now? Oh! Oh! What villain, what prodigy of mankind is that? Look. [Exit MUTE. Horn sounds again.] Oh! cut his throat, cut his throat! What murderer, hell-hound, devil can this be?

[Re-enter MUTE]

MUTE
It is a post from the court−

MOROSE
Out, rogue! And must thou blow thy horn too?

MUTE
Alas, it is a post from the court, sir, that says he must speak with you, pain of death−

MOROSE
Pain of thy life, be silent.

ACT 2 SCENE 2

[Enter] TRUEWIT [with a posthorn and a halter].

TRUEWIT
By your leave, sir (I am a stranger here) is your name Master Morose? [To Mute] Is your name Master Morose? Fishes, Pythagoreans all! This is strange! What say you, sir? Nothing? Has Harpocrates been here with his club among you? Well sir, I will believe you to be the man at this time; I will venture upon you, sir. Your friends at court commend ’em to you, sir−

MOROSE
[Aside] O men! O manners! Was there ever such an impudence?

TRUEWIT
And are extremely solicitous for you, sir.

MOROSE
Whose knave are you?

TRUEWIT
Mine own knave, and your compeer, sir.

MOROSE
Fetch me my sword−

TRUEWIT
You shall taste the one half of my dagger if you do, groom, and you the other if you stir, sir: Be patient, I charge you, in the King’s name, and hear me without insurrection. They say you are to marry? to marry! Do you mark, sir?

MOROSE
How then, rude companion!

TRUEWIT
Marry, your friends do wonder, sir, the Thames being so near, wherein you may drown so handsomely; or London Bridge at a low fall with a fine leap, to hurry you down the stream; or, such a delicate steeple i’the town as Bow, to vault from; or, a braver height, as Paul’s; or if you affected to do it nearer home and a shorter way, an excellent garret window into the street; or a beam in the said garret, with this halter [He shows him a shalter] which they have sent, and desire that you would sooner commit your grave head to this knot than to the wedlock noose; or take a little sublimate, and go out of the world like a rat, or a fly (as one said) with a straw i’ your arse: any way rather than to follow this goblin matrimony. Alas, sir, do you ever think to find a chaste wife in these times? Now? When there are so many masques, plays, puritan preachings, mad folks, and other strange sights to be seen daily, private and public? If you had lived in King Ethelred’s time, sir, or Edward the Confessor’s, you might, perhaps, have found one in some cold country hamlet, then, a dull frosty wench would have been contented with one man. Now, they will as soon be pleased with one leg, or one eye. I’ll tell you, sir, the monstrous hazards you shall run with a wife.

MOROSE
Good sir, have I ever cozened any friends of yours of their land? bought their possessions? taken forfeit of their mortgage? begged a reversion from ’em? bastarded their issue? What have I done that may deserve this?

TRUEWIT
Nothing, sir, that I know, but your itch of marriage.

MOROSE
Why? If I had made an assassinate upon your father, vitiated your mother, ravished your sisters−

TRUEWIT
I would kill you, sir, I would kill you, if you had.

MOROSE
Why, you do more in this, sir. It were a vengeance centuple for all facinorous acts that could be named, to do that you do−

TRUEWIT
Alas, sir, I am but a messenger: I but tell you what you must hear. It seems your friends are careful after your soul’s health, sir, and would have you know the danger (but you may do your pleasure for all them; I persuade not, sir). If after you are married your wife do run away with a vaulter, or the Frenchman that walks upon ropes, or him that dances the jig, or a fencer for his skill at his weapon, why it is not their fault; they have discharged their consciences when you know what may happen. Nay, suffer valiantly, sir, for I must tell you all the perils that you are obnoxious to. If she be fair, young and vegetous, no sweetmeats ever drew more flies; all the yellow doublets and great roses i’ the town will be there. If foul and crooked, she’ll be with them, and buy those doublets and roses, sir. If rich, and that you marry her dowry, not her, she’ll reign in your house as imperious as a widow. If noble, all her kindred will be your tyrants. If fruitful, as proud as May, and humorous as April; she must have her doctors, her midwives, her nurses, her longings every hour, though it be for the dearest morsel of man. If learned, there was never such a parrot. All your patrimony will be too little for the guests that must be invited to hear her speak Latin and Greek; and you must lie with her in those languages too, if you will please her. If precise, you must feast all the silenced brethren once in three days, salute the sisters, entertain the whole family or wood of ’em; and hear longwinded exercises, singings and catechisings, which you are not given to and yet must give for, to please the zealous matron your wife, who for the holy cause will cozen you, over and above. You begin to sweat, sir? But this is not half, i’faith: you may do your pleasure notwithstanding, as I said before; I come not to persuade you. [The MUTE is stealing away.] Upon my faith, master servingman, if you do stir, I will beat you.

MOROSE
Oh, what is my sin! what is my sin!

TRUEWIT
Then, if you love your wife, or rather dote on her, sir, oh, how she’ll torture you and take pleasure i’ your torments! You shall lie with her but when she lists; she will not hurt her beauty, her complexion; or it must be for that jewel or that pearl when she does; every half hour’s pleasure must be bought anew, and with the same pain and charge you wooed her at first. Then you must keep what servants she please, what company she will; that friend must not visit you without her license; and him she loves most she will seem to hate eagerliest, to decline your jealousy. Or feign to be jealous of you first, and for that cause go live with her she-friend, or cousin at the college, that can instruct her in all the mysteries of writing letters, corrupting servants, taming spies; where she must have that rich gown for such a great day, a new one for the next, a richer for the third; be served in silver; have the chamber filled with a succession of grooms, footmen, ushers, and other messengers, besides embroiderers, jewellers, tire-women, sempsters, feathermen, perfumers; while she feels not how the land drops away, nor the acres melt; nor foresees the change when the mercer has your woods for her velvets; never weighs what her pride costs, sir, so she may kiss a page or a smooth chin that has the despair of a beard; be a states-woman, know all the news; what was done at Salisbury, what at the Bath, what at court, what in progress; or, so she may censure poets and authors and styles, and compare ’em, Daniel with Spenser, Jonson with the tother youth, and so forth; or be thought cunning in controversies or the very knots of divinity, and have often in her mouth the state of the question: and then skip to the mathematics and demonstration, and answer in religion to one, in state to another, in bawdry to a third.

MOROSE
Oh, oh!

TRUEWIT
All this is very true, sir. And then her going in disguise to that conjuror, and this cunning woman: where the first question is, how soon you shall die? next, if her present servant love her? next that, if she shall have a new servant? and how many? which of her family would make the best bawd, male or female? what precedence she shall have by her next match? And sets down the answers, and believes ’em above the scriptures. Nay, perhaps she’ll study the art.

MOROSE
Gentle sir, ha’ you done? Ha’you had your pleasure o’ me? I’ll think of these things.

TRUEWIT
Yes sir. And then comes reeking home of vapour and sweat with going afoot, and lies in a month of a new face, all oil and birdlime, and rises in asses’ milk, and is cleansed with a new focus. God b’ w’ you, sir. One thing more (which I had almost forgot). This too, with whom you are to marry, may have made a conveyance of her virginity aforehand, as your wise widows do of their states, before they marry, in trust to some friend, sir. Who can tell? Or if she have not done it yet, she may do upon the wedding day, or the night before, and antedate you cuckold. The like has been heard of in nature. ’Tis no devised impossible thing, sir. God b’ w’' you. I’ll be bold to leave this rope with you, sir, for a remembrance. Farewell, Mute.

[Exit.]

MOROSE
Come, ha’ me to my chamber, but first shut the door. [The horn again.] Oh, shut the door, shut the door. Is he come again?

[Enter CUTBEARD.]

CUTBEARD
’Tis I, sir, your barber.

MOROSE
Oh, Cutbeard, Cutbeard, Cutbeard! here has been a cutthroat with me: help me in to my bed, and give me physic with thy counsel.

[Exeunt.]

ACT 2 SCENE 3

[Enter] DAW, CLERIMONT, DAUPHINE, EPICENE.

DAW
Nay, and she will, let her refuse at her own charges: ’tis nothing to me, gentlemen. But she will not be invited to the like feasts or guests every day.

CLERIMONT
Oh, by no means, she may not refuse− [They dissuade her privately.] to stay at home if you love your reputation. ’Slight, you are invited thither o’purpose to be seen and laughed at by the lady of the college and her shadows. This trumpeter hath proclaimed you.

DAUPHINE
You shall not go; let him be laughed at in your stead, for not bringing you: and put him to his extemporal faculty of fooling and talking loud, to satisfy the company.

CLERIMONT
He will suspect us, talk aloud.− Pray, Mistress Epicene, let’s see your verses. We have Sir John Daw’s leave; do not conceal your servant’s merit, and your own glories.

EPICENE
They’ll prove my servant’s glories if you have his leave so soon.

DAUPHINE
His vainglories, lady!

DAW
Show ’em, show ’em, mistress, I dare own ’em.

EPICENE
Judge you what glories!

DAW
Nay, I’ll read ’em myself too: an author must recite his own works. It is a madrigal of modesty.
ErrorMetrica
Modest and fair, for fair and good are near
Neighbours, howe’er−

DAUPHINE
Very good.

CLERIMONT
Ay, is’t not?

DAW
No noble virtue ever was alone,
but two in one.

DAUPHINE
Excellent!

CLERIMONT
That again, I pray, Sir John.

DAUPHINE
It has something in’t like rare wit and sense.

CLERIMON
Peace.

DAW
No noble virtue ever was alone,
but two in one.
Then, when I praise sweet modesty, I praise
Bright beauty’s rays:
And having praised both beauty’s and modestee,
I have praised thee.

DAUPHINE
Admirable!

CLERIMONT
How it chimes, and cries tink i’ the close, divinely!

DAUPHINE
Ay, ’tis Seneca.

CLERIMONT
No, I think ’tis Plutarch.

DAW
The dor on Plutarch, and Seneca, I hate it: they are mine own imaginations, by that light. I wonder those fellows have such credit with gentlemen!

CLERIMONT
They are very grave authors.

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 ’em.

DAUPHINE
Indeed, Sir John!

CLERIMONT
He must needs, living among the Wits and Braveries too.

DAUPHINE
Ay, and being president of ’em, as he is.

DAW
There’s Aristotle, a mere commonplace fellow; Plato, a discourser; Thucydides and Livy, tedious and dry; Tacitus, an entire knot, sometimes worth the untying, very seldom.

CLERIMONT
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.

CLERIMONT
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−

CLERIMONT
What a sackful of their names he has got!

DAUPHINE
And how he pours ’em out! Politian with Valerius Flaccus!

CLERIMONT
Was not the character right of him?

DAUPHINE
As could be made, i’faith.

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

DAUPHINE
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−

DAUPHINE
Is the King of Spain’s Bible an author?

CLERIMONT
Yes, and Syntagma.

DAUPHINE
What was that Syntagma, sir?

DAW
A civil lawyer, a Spaniard.

DAUPHINE
Sure, Corpus was a Dutchman.

CLERIMONT
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.

DAUPHINE
’Fore God, you have a simple learned servant, lady, in titles.

CLERIMONT
I wonder that he is not called to the helm and made a councillor!

DAUPHINE
He is one extraordinary.

CLERIMONT
Nay, but in ordinary! To say truth, the state wants such.

DAUPHINE
Why that will follow.

CLERIMONT
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.

DAUPHINE
In verse, sir John?

CLERIMONT
What else?

DAUPHINE
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.

DAUPHINE
Why, would not you live by your verses, Sir John?

CLERIMONT
No, ’twere pity he should. A knight live by his verses? He did not make ’em to that end, I hope.

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

CLERIMONT
Ay, he professed himself; but Sir John Daw has more caution: he’ll not hinder his own rising i’ 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.

DAUPHINE
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
Proved with increase,
I know to speak, and she to hold her peace.
Do you conceive me, gentlemen?

DAUPHINE
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.

DAUPHINE
Then this is a ballad of procreation?

CLERIMONT
A madrigal of procreation; you mistake.

EPICENE
Pray give me my verses again, servant.

DAW
If you’ll ask them aloud, you shall.

[Walks apart with EPICENE]

CLERIMONT
See, here’s Truewit again!

ACT 2 SCENE 4

[Enter] TRUEWIT [with his post-horn]

CLERIMONT
Where hast thou been, in the name of madness, thus accoutred with thy horn?

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

DAUPHINE
You ha’ not, I hope.

TRUEWIT
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 feigning to be a post; but when I got in once, I proved none, but rather the contrary, turned him into a post or a stone or what is stiffer, with thund’ring 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 o’ the benefit.

DAUPHINE
Did not I tell you? mischief!−

CLERIMONT
I would you had placed this benefit somewhere else.

TRUEWIT
Why so?

CLERIMONT
’Slight, you have done the most inconsiderate, rash, weak thing that ever man did to his friend.

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

TRUEWIT
Wherein, for God’s sake? Gentlemen, come to yourselves again.

DAUPHINE
But I presaged thus much afore to you.

CLERIMONT
Would my lips had been soldered when I spake on’t. ’Slight, what moved you to be thus impertinent?

TRUEWIT
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?

DAUPHINE
’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 professed 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.

CLERIMONT
Thus ’tis when a man will be ignorantly officious, do services and not know his why. I wonder what courteous itch possessed you! You never did absurder part i’ your life, nor a greater trespass to friendship, to humanity.

DAUPHINE
Faith, you may forgive it best; ’twas your cause principally.

CLERIMONT
I know it; would it had not.

[Enter CUTBEARD.]

DAUPHINE
How now, Cutbeard, what news?

CUTBEARD
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 talked him out of his wits with threatening him from marriage−

DAUPHINE
On, I pray thee.

CUTBEARD
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 today, instantly, and not defer it a minute longer.

DAUPHINE
Excellent! Beyond our expectation!

TRUEWIT
Beyond your expectation? By this light, I knew it would be thus.

DAUPHINE
Nay, sweet Truewit, forgive me.

TRUEWIT
No, I was ‘ignorantly officious, impertinent’; this was the ‘absurd, weak part’.

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

TRUEWIT
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. Show me how it could be otherwise.

DAUPHINE
Nay, gentlemen, contend not; ’tis well now.

TRUEWIT
Alas, I let him go with ‘inconsiderate’, and ‘rash’, and what he pleased.

CLERIMONT
Away, thou strange justifier of thyself, to be wiser than thou wert by the event.

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

DAUPHINE
Nay, gentlemen, ’tis well now. Do you two entertain Sir John Daw with discourse while I send her away with instructions.

TRUEWIT
I’ll be acquainted with her first, by your favour.

(They approach Epicene and Daw.)

CLERIMONT
Master Truewit, lady, a friend of ours.

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

CLERIMONT
Faith, an’ you had come sooner, you should ha’ seen and heard her well celebrated in Sir John Daw’s madrigals.

[Exeunt DAUPHINE, EPICENE and CUTBEARD.]

TRUEWIT
Jack Daw, God save you, when saw you La Foole?

DAW
Not since last night, master Truewit.

TRUEWIT
That’s a miracle! I thought you two had been inseparable.

DAW
He’s gone to invite his guests.

TRUEWIT
Gods so, ’tis true! What a false memory have I towards that man! I am one: I met him e’en 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 ’em the cue−

CLERIMONT
Lest they should forget?

TRUEWIT
Yes; there was never poor captain took more pains at a muster to show men, than he at this meal to show friends.

DAW
It is his quarter-feast, sir.

CLERIMONT
What, do you say so, Sir John?

TRUEWIT
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 Epicene gone?

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

TRUEWIT
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.

CLERIMONT
Tut, he’ll swallow it like cream: he’s better read in jure civili than to esteem anything a disgrace is offered 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 Sir John Daw, I warrant her. Does she refuse me?

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

TRUEWIT
She does refuse him, sir, palpably, however you mince it. An’ I were as he, I would swear to speak ne’er a word to her today for’t.

DAW
By this light, no more I will not.

TRUEWIT
Nor to anybody else, sir.

DAW
Nay, I will not say so, gentlemen.

CLERIMONT
It had been an excellent happy condition for the company if you could have drawn him to it.

DAW
I’ll be very melancholic, i’faith.

CLERIMONT
As a dog, if I were as you, Sir John.

TRUEWIT
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 picktooth, so I will.

CLERIMONT
’Tis well done: he begins already to be angry with his teeth.

DAW
Will you go, gentlemen?

CLERIMONT
Nay, you must walk alone if you be right melancholic, Sir John.

TRUEWIT
Yes, sir, we’ll dog you, we’ll follow you afar off.

[Exit DAW.]

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

TRUEWIT
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.

CLERIMONT
Let’s follow him, but first, let’s go to Dauphine; he’s hovering about the house to hear what news.

TRUEWIT
Content.

[Exeunt.]

ACT 2 SCENE 5

[Enter] MOROSE, EPICENE, CUTBEARD, MUTE.

MOROSE
Welcome Cutbeard; draw near with your fair charge, and in her ear softly entreat her to unmask. [CUTBEARD whispers to EPICENE, who removes 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. [CUBEARD 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.−This I conceive, Cutbeard. Answer me not but with your leg, unless it be otherwise. −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. (She 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? (Curtsy) 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?

EPICENE
She speaks softly. Judge you, forsooth.

MOROSE
What say you, lady? Speak out, I beseech you.

EPICENE
Judge you, forsooth.

MOROSE
O’ 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? (Curtsy) 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-fere. 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 learned, 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?

EPICENE
I should be sorry else.

MOROSE
What say you, lady? Good lady, speak out.

EPICENE
I should be sorry, else.

MOROSE
That sorrow doth fill me with gladness! Oh, Morose, thou art happy above mankind! Pray that thou mayst 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 her council of tailors, lineners, lace-women, embroiderers, and sit with ’em sometimes twice a day upon French intelligences; and then come forth varied like Nature, or oft’ner 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 fan, the tother scarf, these gloves? Ha? What say you, lady?

EPICENE
I’ll leave it to you, sir.

MOROSE
How, lady? Pray you, rise a note.

EPICENE
I leave it to wisdom and you, sir.

MOROSE
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. [Kisses her.] Cutbeard, I give thee the lease of thy house free; thank me not, but with thy leg.− 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, Cutbeard. [Exit CUTBEARD.] Sirrah, conduct your mistress into the dining room, your now-mistress. [Exeunt MUTE and EPICENE.] Oh, 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 redeemed; 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 Coleharbour, and fast. It shall fright all it friends with borrowing letters, and when one of the four-score 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 Tearsheet or Kate Common a lady, and so it knighthood may eat.

[Exit.]

ACT 2 SCENE 6

[Enter] TRUEWIT, DAUPHINE, CLERIMONT.

TRUEWIT
Are you sure he is not gone by?

DAUPHINE
No, I stayed in the shop ever since.

CLERIMONT
But he may take the other end of the lane.

DAUPHINE
No, I told him I would be here at this end; I appointed him hither.

TRUEWIT
What a barbarian it is to stay then!

[Enter CUTBEARD.]

DAUPHINE
Yonder he comes.

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

DAUPHINE
How now, Cutbeard, succeeds it or no?

CUTBEARD
Past imagination, sir, omnia secunda; you could not have prayed to have had it so well. Saltat senex, as it i’ 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 ’em, and away.

TRUEWIT
’Slight, get one o’ the silenced ministers; a zealous brother would torment him purely.

CUTBEARD
Cum privilegio, sir.

DAUPHINE
Oh, by no means, let’s do nothing to hinder it now: when ’tis done and finished, I am for you, for any device of vexation.

CUTBEARD
And that shall be within this half hour, upon my dexterity, gentlemen. Contrive what you can in the meantime, bonis avibus.

[Exit.]

CLERIMONT
How the slave doth Latin it!

TRUEWIT
It would be made a jest to posterity, sirs, this day’s mirth, if ye will.

CLERIMONT
Beshrew his heart that will not, I pronounce.

DAUPHINE
And for my part. What is’t?

TRUEWIT
To translate all La Foole’s company and his feast thither today, to celebrate this bridal.

DAUPHINE
Ay marry; but how will’t be done?

TRUEWIT
I’ll undertake the directing of all the lady guests thither, and then the meat must follow.

CLERIMONT
For God’s sake, let’s effect it; it will be an excellent comedy of affliction, so many several noises.

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

TRUEWIT
I’ll warrant you for the college-honours: one o’ their faces has not the priming colour laid on yet, nor the other her smock sleeked.

CLERIMONT
Oh, but they’ll rise earlier then ordinary to a feast.

TRUEWIT
Best go see and assure ourselves.

CLERIMONT
Who knows the house?

TRUEWIT
I’ll lead you. Were you never there yet?

DAUPHINE
Not I.

CLERIMONT
Nor I.

TRUEWIT
Where have you lived then? Not know Tom Otter!

CLERIMONT
No. For God’s sake, what is he?

TRUEWIT
An excellent animal, equal with your Daw or La Foole, if not transcendent, 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.

DAUPHINE
What be those, in the name of Sphynx?

TRUEWIT
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 o’ them too, and never is well, nor thinks any entertainment perfect, till these be brought out, and set o’ the cupboard.

CLERIMONT
For God’s love, we should miss this if we should not go.

TRUEWIT
Nay, he has a thousand things as good, that will speak him all day. He will rail on his wife, with certain commonplaces, behind her back; and to her face−

DAUPHINE
No more of him. Let’s go see him, I petition you.

[Exeunt.]

ACT 3

ACT 3 SCENE 1

[Enter] OTTER [with his cups], MISTRESS OTTER. TRUEWIT, CLERIMONT, DAUPHINE [follow them, unobserved]

OTTER
Nay, good princess, hear me pauca verba.

MISTRESS OTTER
By that light, I’ll ha’ you chained up with your bull-dogs and bear-dogs, if you be not civil the sooner. I’ll send you to kennel, i’faith. You were best bait me with your bull, bear, and horse! Never a time that the courtiers or Collegiates come to the house, but you make it a Shrove Tuesday! I would have you get your Whitsuntide velvet cap and your staff i’ your hand to entertain ’em. Yes, in troth, do.

OTTER
Not so, princess, neither, but under correction, sweet princess, gi’ me leave −these things I am known to the courtiers by. It is reported to them for my humour, and they receive it so, and do expect it. Tom Otter’s bull,bear and horse is known all over England, in rerum natura.

MISTRESS OTTER
’Fore me, I will ‘na-ture’ ‘em over to Paris Garden, and ‘na-ture’ you thither too, if you pronounce ‘em again. Is a bear a fit beast, or a bull, to mix in society with great ladies? Think i’ your discretion, in any good polity?

OTTER
The horse then, good princess.

MISTRESS OTTER
Well, I am contented for the horse, they love to be well horsed, I know. I love it myself.

OTTER
And it is a delicate fine horse this. Poetarum Pegasus. Under correction, princess, Jupiter did turn himself into a− taurus, or bull, under correction, good princess.

MISTRESS OTTER
By my integrity, I’ll send you over to the Bankside, I’ll commit you to the Master of the Garden, if I hear but a syllable more. Must my house, or my roof, be polluted with the scent of bears and bulls, when it is perfumed for great ladies? Is this according to the instrument when I married you? That I would be princess and reign in mine own house, and you would be my subject and obey me? What did you bring me, should make you thus peremptory? Do I allow you your half-crown a day to spend where you will among your gamsters, to vex and torment me at such times as these? Who gives you your maintenance, I pray you? Who allows you your horse-meat and man’s meat? your three suits of apparel a year? Your four pair of stockings, one silk, three worsted? Your clean linen, your bands and cuffs, when I can get you to wear ’em?_’Tis mar’l you ha’ ’em on now. Who graces you with courtiers or great personages, to speak to you out of their coaches, and come home to your house? Were you ever so much as looked upon by a lord, or a lady, before I married you, but on the Easter or Whitsun holidays? And then out at the Banqueting House window, when Ned Whiting or George Stone were at the stake?

TRUEWIT
[Aside to Clerimont and Dauphine] For God’s sake, let’s go stave her off him.

MISTRESS OTTER
Answer me to that. And did not I take you up from thence in an old greasy buff-doublet, with points, and green velvet sleeves, out at the elbows? You forget this.

TRUEWIT
[Aside to Clerimont and Dauphine] She’ll worry him, if we help not in time.

[They come forward]

MISTRESS OTTER
Oh, here are some o’ the gallants! Go to, behave yourself distinctly, and with good morality. Or I protest, I’ll take away your exhibition.

ACT 3 SCENE 2

TRUEWIT
By your leave, fair Mistress Otter, I’ll be bold to enter these gentlemen in your acquaintance.

MISTRESS OTTER
It shall not be obnoxious or difficil, sir.

TRUEWIT
How does my noble captain? Is the bull, bear and horse in rerum natura still?

OTTER
Sir, sic visum superis.

MISTRESS OTTER
I would you would but intimate ’em, do. Go your ways in, and get toasts and butter made for the woodcocks. That’s a fit province for you.

[Exit OTTER.]

CLERIMONT
[To Truewit and Dauphine] Alas, what a tyranny is this poor fellow married to!

TRUEWIT
Oh, but the sport will be anon, when we get him loose.

DAUPHINE
Dares he ever speak?

TRUEWIT
No Anabaptist ever railed with the like license: but mark her language in the mean time, I beseech you.

MISTRESS OTTER
Gentlemen, you are very aptly come. My cousin, Sir Amorous, will be here briefly.

TRUEWIT
In good time lady. Was not sir John Daw here, to ask for him and the company?

MISTRESS OTTER
I cannot assure you, Master Truewit. Here was a very melancholy knight in a ruff, that demanded my subject for somebody, a gentleman, I think.

CLERIMONT
Ay, that was he, lady.

MISTRESS OTTER
But he departed straight, I can resolve you.

DAUPHINE
What an excellent choice phrase this lady expresses in.

TRUEWIT
Oh, sir, she is the only authentical courtier that is not naturally bred one, in the city.

MISTRESS OTTER
You have taken that report upon trust, gentlemen.

TRUEWIT
No, I assure you, the court governs it so, lady, in your behalf.

MISTRESS OTTER
I am the servant of the court and courtiers, sir.

TRUEWIT
They are rather your idolaters.

MISTRESS OTTER
Not so, sir.

[Enter CUTBEARD. DAUPHINE, TRUEWIT and CLERIMONT talk with him apart. ]

DAUPHINE
How now, Cutbeard? Any cross?

CUTBEARD
Oh, no, sir, omnia bene. ’Twas never better o’ the hinges, all’s sure. I have so pleased him with a curate that he's gone to’t almost with the delight he hopes for soon.

DAUPHINE
What is he for a vicar?

CUTBEARD
One that has catched a cold, sir, and can scarce be heard six inches off, as if he spoke out of a bulrush that were not picked, or his throat were full of pith; a fine quick fellow and an excellent barber of prayers. I came to tell you, sir, that you might omnem movere lapidem (as they say) be ready with your vexation.

DAUPHINE
Gramercy, honest Cutbeard; be thereabouts with thy key, to let us in.

CUTBEARD
I will not fail you, sir: ad manum.

[Exit.]

TRUEWIT
Well, I’ll go watch my coaches.

CLERIMONT
Do, and we’ll send Daw to you if you meet him not.

[Exit TRUEWIT.]

MISTRESS OTTER
Is Master Truewit gone?

DAUPHINE
Yes, lady, there is some unfortunate business fallen out.

MISTRESS OTTER
So I judged by the physiognomy of the fellow that came in, and I had a dream last night too of the new pageant and my Lady Mayoress, which is always very ominous to me. I told it my lady Haughty t’other day, when her honour came hither to see some china stuffs; and she expounded it out of Artemidorus, and I have found it since very true. It has done me many affronts.

CLERIMONT
Your dream, lady?

MISTRESS OTTER
Yes, sir, anything I do but dream o’ the city. It stained me a damask tablecloth, cost me eighteen pound at one time; and burnt me a black satin gown as I stood by the fire at my lady Centaure’s chamber in the college another time. A third time, at the lord’s masque, it dropped all my wire and my ruff with wax candle, that I could not go up to the banquet. A fourth time, as I was taking coach to go to Ware to meet a friend, it dashed me a new suit all over (a crimson satin doublet and black velvet skirts) with a brewer’s horse, that I was fain to go in and shift me, and kept my chamber a leash of days for the anguish of it.

DAUPHINE
These were dire mischances, lady.

CLERIMONT
I would not dwell in the city, an ’twere so fatal to me.

MISTRESS OTTER
Yes, sir, but I do take advice of my doctor, to dream of it as little as I can.

DAUPHINE
You do well, mistress Otter.

[Enter DAW; CLERIMONT takes him aside.]

MISTRESS OTTER
Will it please you to enter the house farther, gentlemen?

DAUPHINE
And your favour, lady; but we stay to speak with a knight, Sir John Daw, who is here come. We shall follow you, lady.

MISTRESS OTTER
At your own time, sir. It is my cousin Sir Amorous his feast−

DAUPHINE
I know it, lady.

MISTRESS OTTER
And mine together. But it is for his honour, and therefore I take no name of it, more than of the place.

DAUPHINE
You are a bounteous kinswoman.

MISTRESS OTTER
Your servant, sir.

[Exit.]

ACT 3 SCENE 3

[CLERIMONT comes forward with DAW.]

CLERIMONT
Why, do not you know it, Sir John Daw?

DAW
No, I am a rook if I do.

CLERIMONT
I’ll tell you then: she’s married by this time! And whereas you were put i’ the head that she was gone with sir Dauphine, I assure you Sir Dauphine has been the noblest, honestest friend to you that ever gentleman of your quality could boast of. He has discovered the whole plot, and made your mistress so acknowledging and indeed so ashamed of her injury to you, that she desires you to forgive her, and but grace her wedding with your presence today. She is to be married to a very good fortune, she says, his uncle, old Morose; and she willed me in private to tell you that she shall be able to do you more favours, and with more security now than before.

DAW
Did she say so, i’faith?

CLERIMONT
Why, what do you think of me, Sir John? Ask Sir Dauphine.

DAUPHINE
Nay, I believe you. Good Sir Dauphine, did she desire me to forgive her?

CLERIMONT
I assure you, Sir John, she did.

DAW
Nay, then, I do with all my heart, and I’ll be jovial.

CLERIMONT
Yes, for look you, sir, this was the injury to you. La Foole intended this feast to honour her bridal day, and made you the property to invite the college ladies and promise to bring her; and then at the time she should have appeared (as his friend) to have given you the dor. Whereas now, Sir Dauphine has brought her to a feeling of it, with this kind of satisfaction, that you shall bring all the ladies to the place where she is, and be very jovial; and there she will have a dinner which shall be in your name, and so disappoint La Foole, to make you good again and (as it were) a saver i’ the main.

DAW
As I am a knight, I honour her and forgive her heartily.

CLERIMONT
About it then presently. Truewit is gone before to confront the coaches, and to acquaint you with so much if he meet you. Join with him, and ’tis well. [Enter LA FOOLE.] See, here comes your antagonist, but take you no notice, but be very jovial.

LA FOOLE
Are the ladies come, Sir John Daw, and your mistress? [Exit DAW.] Sir Dauphine! You are exceeding welcome, and honest Master Clerimont. Where’s my cousin? Did you see no Collegiates, gentlemen?

DAUPHINE
Collegiates! Do you not hear, Sir Amorous, how you are abused?

LA FOOLE
How, sir!

CLERIMONT
Will you speak so kindly to sir John Daw, that has done you such an affront?

LA FOOLE
Wherein, gentlemen? Let me be a suitor to you to know, I beseech you!

CLERIMONT
Why, sir, his mistress is married today to Sir Dauphine’s uncle, your cousin’s neighbour, and he has diverted all the ladies and all your company thither, to frustrate your provision and stick a disgrace upon you. He was here now to have enticed us away from you too, but we told him his own, I think.

LA FOOLE
Has Sir John Daw wronged me so inhumanly?

DAUPHINE
He has done it, Sir Amorous, most maliciously, and treacherously; but, if you’ll be ruled by us, you shall quit him, i’faith.

LA FOOLE
Good gentlemen, I’ll make one, believe it! How, I pray?

DAUPHINE
Marry, sir, get me your pheasants, and your godwits and your best meat, and dish it in silver dishes of your cousin’s presently, and say nothing, but clap me a clean towel about you, like a sewer; and bare-headed, march afore it with a good confidence, (’tis but over the way, hard by) and we’ll second you, where you shall set it o’ the board, and bid ’em welcome to’t, which shall show ’tis yours and disgrace his preparation utterly; and for your cousin, whereas she should be troubled here at home with care of making and giving welcome, she shall transfer all that labour thither and be a principal guest herself, sit ranked with the college-honours, and be honoured, and have her health drunk as often, as bare and as loud as the best of ’em.

LA FOOLE
I’ll go tell her presently. It shall be done, that’s resolved.

[Exit.]

CLERIMONT
I thought he would not hear it out, but ’twould take him.

DAUPHINE
Well, there be guests and meat now; how shall we do for music?

CLERIMONT
The smell of the venison going through the street will invite one noise of fiddlers or other.

DAUPHINE
I would it would call the trumpeters thither.

CLERIMONT
Faith, there is hope; they have intelligence of all feasts. There’s good correspondence betwixt them and the London cooks. ’Tis twenty to one but we have ’em.

DAUPHINE
’Twill be a most solemn day for my uncle, and an excellent fit of mirth for us.

CLERIMONT
Ay, if we can hold up the emulation betwixt Foole and Daw, and never bring them to expostulate.

DAUPHINE
Tut, flatter ’em both (as Truewit says) and you may take their understandings in a purse-net. They’ll believe themselves to be just such men as we make ’em, neither more nor less. They have nothing, not the use of their senses, but by tradition.

[LA FOOLE] enters like a sewer.

CLERIMONT
See! Sir Amorous has his towel on already. Have you persuaded your cousin?

LA FOOLE
Yes, ’tis very feasible: she’ll do anything, she says, rather than the La Fooles shall be disgraced.

DAUPHINE
She is a noble kinswoman. It will be such a pestling device, Sir Amorous! It will pound all your enemy’s practices to powder and blow him up with his own mine, his own train.

LA FOOLE
Nay, we’ll give fire, I warrant you.

CLERIMONT
But you must carry it privately, without any noise, and take no notice by any means−

[Enter OTTER.]

OTTER
Gentlemen, my princess says you shall have all her silver dishes, festinate; and she’s gone to alter her tire a little and go with you−

CLERIMONT
And yourself too, captain Otter.

DAUPHINE
By any means, sir.

OTTER
Yes, sir, I do mean it; but I would entreat my cousin Sir Amorous, and you gentlemen, to be suitors to my princess, that I may carry my bull and my bear, as well as my horse.

CLERIMONT
That you shall do, captain Otter.

LA FOOLE
My cousin will never consent, gentlemen.

DAUPHINE
She must consent, Sir Amorous, to reason.

LA FOOLE
Why, she says they are no decorum among ladies.

OTTER
But they are decora, and that’s better, sir.

CLERIMONT
Ay, she must hear argument. Did not Pasiphae, who was a queen, love a bull? And was not Calisto, the mother of Arcas, turned into a bear and made a star, mistress Ursula, i’ the heavens?

OTTER
Oh, God, that I could have said as much! I will have these stories painted i’the Bear Garden, ex Ovidii metamorphosi.

DAUPHINE
Where is your princess, Captain? Pray’be our leader.

OTTER
That I shall, sir.

CLERIMONT
Make haste, good sir Amorous.

[Exeunt.]

ACT 3 SCENE 4

[Enter] MOROSE, EPICENE, PARSON, CUTBEARD.

MOROSE
Sir, there’s an angel for yourself, and a brace of angels for your cold. Muse not at this manage of my bounty. It is fit we should thank fortune double to nature, for any benefit she confers upon us; besides, it is your imperfection, but my solace.

PARSON
The PARSON speaks as having a cold. I thank your worship; so is it mine now.

MOROSE
What says he, Cutbeard?

CUTBEARD
He says praesto, sir: whensoever your worship needs him, he can be ready with the like. He got this cold with sitting up late and singing catches with cloth-workers.

MOROSE
No more. I thank him.

PARSON
He coughs. God keep your worship and give you much joy with your fair spouse. Umn, uhm.

MOROSE
Oh, Oh! Stay Cutbeard! Let him give me five shillings of my money back. As it is bounty to reward benefits, so is it equity to mulct injuries. I will have it. What says he?

CUTBEARD
He cannot change it, sir.

MOROSE
It must be changed.

CUTBEARD
[To Parson] Cough again.

MOROSE
What says he?

CUTBEARD
He will cough out the rest, sir.

PARSON
[Coughs] again. Umh, umh, umh.

MOROSE
Away, away with him, stop his mouth; away, I forgive it−

[Exit CUTBEARD, with PARSON]

EPICENE
Fie, Master Morose, that you will use this violence to a man of the church.

MOROSE
How!

EPICENE
It does not become your gravity or breeding (as you pretend in court) to have offered this outrage on a waterman, or any more boist’rous creature, much less on a man of his civil coat.

MOROSE
You can speak then!

EPICENE
Yes, sir.

MOROSE
Speak out, I mean.

EPICENE
Ay, sir. Why, did you think you had married a statue? or a motion only? one of the French puppets with the eyes turned with a wire? or some innocent out of the hospital, that would stand with her hands thus, and a plaice-mouth, and look upon you?

MOROSE
Oh immodesty! A manifest woman! What, Cutbeard!

EPICENE
Nay, never quarrel with Cutbeard, sir, it is too late now. I confess it doth bate somewhat of the modesty I had, when I writ simply maid; but I hope I shall make it a stock still competent to the estate and dignity of your wife.

MOROSE
She can talk!

EPICENE
Yes, indeed, sir.

MOROSE
What sirrah! None of my knaves there? [Enter MUTE.] Where is this impostor, Cutbeard?

[MUTE makes signs.]

EPICENE
Speak to him, fellow, speak to him. I’ll have none of this coacted, unnatural dumbness in my house, in a family where I govern.

[Exit MUTE.]

MOROSE
She is my regent already! I have married a Penthesilea, a Semiramis, sold my liberty to a distaff!

ACT 3 SCENE 5

[Enter] TRUEWIT.

TRUEWIT
Where’s Master Morose?

MOROSE
Is he come again? Lord have mercy upon me!

TRUEWIT
I wish you all joy, Mistress Epicene, with your grave and honourable match.

EPICENE
I return you the thanks, Master Truewit, so friendly a wish deserves.

MOROSE
She has acquaintance too!

TRUEWIT
God save you, sir, and give you all contentment in your fair choice here. Before I was the bird of night to you, the owl, but now I am the messenger of peace, a dove, and bring you the glad wishes of many friends to the celebration of this good hour.

MOROSE
What hour, sir?

TRUEWIT
Your marriage hour, sir. I commend your resolution, that (notwithstanding all the dangers I laid afore you, in the voice of a night-crow) would yet go on, and be yourself. It shows you are a man constant to your own ends, and upright to your purposes, that would not be put off with left-handed cries.

MOROSE
How should you arrive at the knowledge of so much?

TRUEWIT
Why, did you ever hope, sir, committing the secrecy of it to a barber, that less then the whole town should know it? You might as well ha’told it the conduit, or the bakehouse, or the infantry that follow the court, and with more security. Could your gravity forget so old and noted a remnant as lippis et tonsoribus notum? Well, sir, forgive it yourself now, the fault, and be communicable with your friends. Here will be three or four fashionable ladies from the college to visit you presently, and their train of minions and followers.

MOROSE
Bar my doors! Bar my doors! Where are all my eaters, my mouths now? [Enter SERVANTS.] Bar up my doors, you varlets!

EPICENE
He is a varlet that stirs to such an office. Let ’em stand open. I would see him that dares move his eyes toward it. Shall I have a barricado made against my friends, to be barred of any pleasure they can bring in to me with their honourable visitation?

[Exit SERVANTS.]

MOROSE
O Amazonian impudence!

TRUEWIT
Nay, faith, in this, sir, she speaks but reason, and methinks is more continent than you. Would you go to bed so presently, sir, afore noon? A man of your head and hair should owe more to that reverend ceremony, and not mount the marriage-bed like a town bull or a mountain goat; but stay the due season, and ascend it then with religion and fear. Those delights are to be steeped in the humour and silence of the night; and give the day to other open pleasures and jollities of feasting, of music, of revels, of discourse: we’ll have all, sir, that may make your hymen high and happy.

MOROSE
Oh, my torment, my torment!

TRUEWIT
Nay, if you endure the first half hour, sir, so tediously, and with this irksomness, what comfort or hope can this fair gentlewoman make to herself hereafter, in the consideration of so many years as are to come−

MOROSE
Of my affliction. Good sir, depart and let her do it alone.

TRUEWIT
I have done, sir.

MOROSE
That cursed barber!

TRUEWIT
(Yes, faith, a cursed wretch indeed, sir.)

MOROSE
I have married his cittern, that’s common to all men. Some plague above the plague−

TRUEWIT
(All Egypt’s ten plagues−)

MOROSE
Revenge me on him.

TRUEWIT
’Tis very well, sir. If you laid on a curse or two more, I’ll assure you he’ll bear ’em. As, that he may get the pox with seeking to cure it, sir? Or, that while he is curling another man’s hair, his own may drop off? Or, for burning some male bawd’s lock, he may have his brain beat out with the curling-iron?

MOROSE
No, let the wretch live wretched. May he get the itch, and his shop so lousy as no man dare come at him, nor he come at no man.

TRUEWIT
(Ay, and if he would swallow all his balls for pills, let not them purge him.)

MOROSE
Let his warming-pan be ever cold.

TRUEWIT
(A perpetual frost underneath it, sir.)

MOROSE
Let him never hope to see fire again.

TRUEWIT
(But in hell, sir.)

MOROSE
His chairs be always empty, his scissors rust, and his combs mould in their cases.

TRUEWIT
Very dreadful that! (And may he lose the invention, sir, of carving lanterns in paper.)

MOROSE
Let there be no bawd carted that year to employ a basin of his, but let him be glad to eat his sponge for bread.

TRUEWIT
And drink lotium to it, and much good do him.

MOROSE
Or for want of bread−

TRUEWIT
Eat ear-wax, sir. I’ll help you. Or, draw his own teeth and add them to the lute-string.

MOROSE
No, beat the old ones to powder and make bread of them.

TRUEWIT
Yes, make meal o’the millstones.

MOROSE
May all the botches and burns that he has cured on others break out upon him.

TRUEWIT
And he now forget the cure of ’em in himself, sir; or, if he do remember it, let him ha’ scraped all his linen into lint for’t, and have not a rag left him to set up with.

MOROSE
Let him never set up again, but have the gout in his hands for ever. Now no more, sir.

TRUEWIT
Oh, that last was too high set! You might go less with him, i’faith, and be revenged enough; as, that he be never able to new-paint his pole−

MOROSE
Good sir, no more, I forgot myself.

TRUEWIT
Or, want credit to take up with a comb-maker−

MOROSE
No more, sir.

TRUEWIT
Or, having broken his glass in a former despair, fall now into a much greater, of ever getting another−

MOROSE
I beseech you, no more.

TRUEWIT
Or, that he never be trusted with trimming of any but chimney-sweepers−

MOROSE
Sir−

TRUEWIT
Or, may he cut a collier’s throat with his razor by chance-medley, and yet be hanged for’t.

MOROSE
I will forgive him, rather than hear any more. I beseech you, sir.

ACT 3 SCENE 6

[Enter] DAW, HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS, TRUSTY.

DAW
This way, madam.

MOROSE
Oh, the sea breaks in upon me! Another flood! An inundation! I shall be o’erwhelmed with noise. It beats already at my shores. I feel an earthquake in myself for’t.

DAW
[Kissing Epicene] ’Give you joy, mistress.

MOROSE
Has she servants too?

DAW
I have brought some ladies here to see and know you. She kisses them severally as he presents them. My lady Haughty, this my lady Centaure, Mistress Dol Mavis, Mistress Trusty, my lady Haughty’s woman. Where’s your husband? Let’s see him: can he endure no noise? Let me come to him.

MOROSE
What nomenclator is this?

TRUEWIT
Sir John Daw, sir, your wife’s servant, this.

MOROSE
A Daw, and her servant! O, ’tis decreed, ’tis decreed of me, and she have such servants.

[He tries to leave]

TRUEWIT
Nay sir, you must kiss the ladies, you must not go away now; they come toward you to seek you out.

HAUGHTY
I’faith, Master Morose, would you steal a marriage thus, in the midst of so many friends, and not acquaint us? Well, I’ll kiss you, notwithstanding the justice of my quarrel. You shall give me leave, mistress, to use a becoming familiarity with your husband.

EPICENE
Your ladyship does me an honour in it, to let me know he is so worthy your favour; as you have done both him and me grace, to visit so unprepared a pair to entertain you.

MOROSE
Compliment! Compliment!

EPICENE
But I must lay the burden of that upon my servant here.

HAUGHTY
It shall not need, Mistress Morose; we will all bear, rather than one shall be oppressed.

MOROSE
I know it, and you will teach her the faculty, if she be to learn it.

[The Collegiates talk apart with Truewit.]

HAUGHTY
Is this the silent woman?

CENTAURE
Nay, she has found her tongue since she was married, Master Truewit says.

HAUGHTY
Oh, Master Truewit! ’Save you. What kind of creature is your bride here? She speaks, methinks!

TRUEWIT
Yes, madam, believe it, she is a gentlewoman of very absolute behavior and of a good race.

HAUGHTY
And Jack Daw told us she could not speak!

TRUEWIT
So it was carried in plot, madam, to put her upon this old fellow, by Sir Dauphine, his nephew, and one or two more of us; but she is a woman of an excellent assurance, and an extraordinary happy wit and tongue. You shall see her make rare sport with Daw ere night.

HAUGHTY
And he brought us to laugh at her!

TRUEWIT
That falls out often, madam, that he that thinks himself the master-wit is the master-fool. I assure your ladyship, ye cannot laugh at her.

HAUGHTY
No, we’ll have her to the college: and she have wit, she shall be one of us! Shall she not, Centaure? We’ll make her a Collegiate.

CENTAURE
Yes, faith, madam, and Mavis and she will set up a side.

TRUEWIT
Believe it, madam, and Mistress Mavis, she will sustain her part.

MAVIS
I’ll tell you that when I have talked with her and tried her.

HAUGHTY
Use her very civilly, Mavis.

MAVIS
So I will, madam.

[MAVIS walks apart with EPICENE]

MOROSE
Blessed minute, that they would whisper thus ever.

TRUEWIT
In the meantime, madam, would but your ladyship help to vex him a little: you know his disease, talk to him about the wedding-ceremonies, or call for your gloves, or−

HAUGHTY
Let me alone. Centaure, help me. Master bridegroom, where are you?

MOROSE
Oh, it was too miraculously good to last!

HAUGHTY
We see no ensigns of a wedding here, no character of a bridal: where be our scarves and our gloves? I pray you give ’em us. Let’s know your bride’s colours and yours at least.

CENTAURE
Alas, madam, he has provided none.

MOROSE
Had I known your ladyship’s painter, I would.

HAUGHTY
He has given it you, Centaure, i’faith. But do you hear, Master Morose, a jest will not absolve you in this manner. You that have sucked the milk of the court, and from thence have been brought up to the very strong meats and wine of it, been a courtier from the biggin to the nightcap (as we may say), and you to offend in such a high point of ceremony as this, and let your nuptials want all marks of solemnity! How much plate have you lost today (if you had but regarded your profit,) what gifts, what friends, through your mere rusticity?

MOROSE
Madam−

HAUGHTY
Pardon me, sir, I must insinuate your errors to you. No gloves? No garters? No scarves? No epithalamium? No masque?

DAW
Yes, madam, I’ll make an epithalamium, I promise my mistress; I have begun it already: will you ladyship hear it?

HAUGHTY
Ay, good Jack Daw.

MOROSE
Will it please your ladyship command a chamber and be private with your friend? You shall have your choice of rooms to retire to after; my whole house is yours. I know it hath been your ladyship’s errand into the city at other times, however now you have been unhappily diverted upon me; but I shall be loath to break any honourable custom of your ladyship’s. And therefore, good madam−

EPICENE
Come, you are a rude bridegroom, to entertain ladies of honour in this fashion.

CENTAURE
He is a rude groom indeed.

TRUEWIT
By that light, you deserve to be grafted, and have your horns reach from one side of the island, to the other−. [To Morose] Do not mistake me, sir; I but speak this to give the ladies some heart again, not for any malice to you.

MOROSE
Is this your bravo, ladies?

TRUEWIT
As God help me, if you utter such another word, I’ll take mistress bride in and begin to you in a very sad cup, do you see? Go to, know your friends and such as love you.

ACT 3 SCENE 7

[Enter] CLERIMONT [with MUSICIANS]

CLERIMONT
By your leave, ladies. Do you want any music? I have brought you variety of noises. Play, sirs, all of you.

Music of all sorts.

MOROSE
Oh, a plot, a plot, a plot, a plot upon me! This day I shall be their anvil to work on, they will grate me asunder. ’Tis worse than the noise of a saw.

CLERIMONT
No, they are hair, rosin, and guts. I can give you the receipt.

TRUEWIT
Peace, boys!

CLERIMONT
Play, I say.

TRUEWIT
Peace, rascals! [To Morose] You see who’s your friend now, sir? Take courage, put on a martyr’s resolution. Mock down all their attemptings with patience. ’Tis but a day, and I would suffer heroically. Should an ass exceed me in fortitude? No. You betray your infirmity with your hanging dull ears, and make them insult: bear up bravely and constantly. Look you here, sir, what honour [LA FOOLE passes over sewing the meat with SERVANTS, followed by MISSTRES OTTER] is done you unexpected by your nephew: a wedding-dinner come, and a knight-sewer before it, for the more reputation; and fine Mistress Otter, your neighbour, in the rump or tail of it.

MOROSE
Is that Gorgon, that Medusa come? Hide me, hide me!

TRUEWIT
I warrant you, sir, she will not transform you. Look upon her with a good courage. Pray you entertain her and conduct your guests in. No?−Mistress bride, will you entreat in the ladies? Your bridegroom is so shamefaced here−

EPICENE
Will it please your ladyship, madam?

HAUGHTY
With the benefit of your company, mistress.

EPICENE
Servant, pray you perform your duties.

DAW
And glad to be commanded, mistress.

CENTAURE
How like you her wit, Mavis?

MAVIS
Very prettily absolutely well.

MISTRESS OTTER
[Trying to take precedence] ’Tis my place.

MAVIS
You shall pardon me, Mistress Otter.

MISTRESS OTTER
Why, I am a collegiate.

MAVIS
But not in ordinary.

MISTRESS OTTER
But I am.

MAVIS
We’ll dispute that within.

[Exit DAW and the ladies]

CLERIMONT
Would this had lasted a little longer.

TRUEWIT
And that they had sent for the heralds. [Enter OTTER.] Captain Otter, what news?

OTTER
I have brought my bull, bear and horse in private, and yonder are the trumpeters without, and the drum, gentlemen.

The drum and the trumpets sound.

MOROSE
Oh, Oh, Oh!

OTTER
And we will have a rouse in each of ’em anon, for bold Britons, i’faith.

[They sound again.]

MOROSE
Oh, Oh, Oh!

[Exit MOROSE.]

ALL
Follow, follow, follow!

[Exeunt.]

ACT 4

ACT 4 SCENE I

[Enter] TRUEWIT, CLERIMONT.

TRUEWIT
Was there ever poor bridegroom so tormented? Or man, indeed?

CLERIMONT
I have not read of the like in the chronicles of the land.

TRUEWIT
Sure, he cannot but go to a place of rest after all this purgatory.

CLERIMONT
He may presume it, I think.

TRUEWIT
The spitting, the coughing, the laughter, the neezing, the farting, dancing, noise of the music, and her masculine and loud commanding and urging the whole family, makes him think he has married a Fury.

CLERIMONT
And she carries it up bravely.

TRUEWIT
Ay, she takes any occasion to speak: that’s the height on’t.

CLERIMONT
And how soberly Dauphine labours to satisfy him that it was none of his plot!

TRUEWIT
And has almost brought him to the faith i’the article. [Enter DAUPHINE.] Here he comes.−Where is he now? What’s become of him, Dauphine?

DAUPHINE
Oh, hold me up a little, I shall go away i’the jest else. He has got on his whole nest of nightcaps, and locked himself up i’the top o’the house, as high as ever he can climb from the noise. I peeped in at a cranny and saw him sitting over a cross-beam o’the roof, like him o’ the saddler’s horse in Fleet Street, upright; and he will sleep there.

CLERIMONT
But where are your Collegiates?

DAUPHINE
Withdrawn with the bride in private.

TRUEWIT
Oh, they are instructing her i’the college grammar. If she have grace with them, she knows all their secrets instantly.

CLERIMONT
Methinks the lady Haughty looks well today, for all my dispraise of her in the morning. I think, I shall come about to thee again, Truewit.

TRUEWIT
Believe it, I told you right. Women ought to repair the losses time and years have made i’ their features with dressings. And an intelligent woman, if she know by herself the least defect, will be most curious to hide it; and it becomes her. If she be short, let her sit much, lest when she stands she be thought to sit. If she have an ill foot, let her wear her gown the longer, and her shoe the thinner. If a fat hand and scald nails, let her carve the less, and act in gloves. If a sour breath, let her never discourse fasting, and always talk at her distance. If she have black and rugged teeth, let her offer the less at laughter, especially if she laugh wide and open.

CLERIMONT
Oh, you shall have some women, when they laugh, you would think they brayed, it is so rude, and−

TRUEWIT
Ay, and others, that will stalk i’ their gait like an ostrich, and take huge strides. I cannot endure such a sight. I love measure i’n the feet and number i’n the voice: they are gentlenesses that oftentimes draw no less than the face.

DAUPHINE
How cam’st thou to study these creatures so exactly? I would thou wouldst make me a proficient.

TRUEWIT
Yes, but you must leave to live i’your chamber, then, a month together upon Amadis de Gaula or Don Quixote, as you are wont, and come abroad where the matter is frequent, to court, to tiltings, public shows and feasts, to plays, and church sometimes: thither they come to show their new tires too, to see, and to be seen. In these places a man shall find whom to love, whom to play with, whom to touch once, whom to hold ever. The variety arrests his judgment. A wench to please a man comes not down dropping from the ceiling, as he lies on his back droning a tobacco-pipe. He must go where she is.

DAUPHINE
Yes, and be never the near.

TRUEWIT
Out, heretic! That diffidence makes thee worthy it should be so.

CLERIMONT
He says true to you, Dauphine.

DAUPHINE
Why?

TRUEWIT
A man should not doubt to overcome any woman. Think he can vanquish’em, and he shall; for though they deny, their desire is to be tempted. Penelope herself cannot hold out long. Ostend, you saw, was taken at last. You must persever and hold to your purpose. They would solicit us, but that they are afraid. Howsoever, they wish in their hearts we should solicit them. Praise’em, flatter ’em, you shall never want eloquence or trust; even the chastest delight to feel themselves that way rubbed. With praises you must mix kisses too. If they take them, they’ll take more. Though they strive, they would be overcome.

CLERIMONT
Oh, but a man must beware of force.

TRUEWIT
It is to them an acceptable violence, and has ofttimes the place of the greatest courtesy. She that might have been forced, and you let her go free without touching, though then she seem to thank you, will ever hate you after; and glad i’ the face, is assuredly sad at the heart.

CLERIMONT
But all women are not to be taken all ways.

TRUEWIT
’Tis true. No more than all birds or all fishes. If you appear learned to an ignorant wench, or jocund to a sad, or witty to a foolish, why, she presently begins to mistrust herself. You must approach them i’ their own height, their own line; for the contrary makes many that fear to commit themselves to noble and worthy fellows run into the embraces of a rascal. If she love wit, give verses, though you borrow ’em of a friend, or buy ’em, to have good. If valour, talk of your sword, and be frequent in the mention of quarrels, though you be staunch in fighting. If activity, be seen o’ your barbary often, or leaping over stools, for the credit of your back. If she love good clothes or dressing, have your learned council about you every morning, your French tailor, barber, linener, etcetera. Let your powder, your glass, and your comb be your dearest acquaintance. Take more care for the ornament of your head than the safety; and wish the commonwealth rather troubled than a hair about you. That will take her. Then, if she be covetous and craving, do you promise anything, and perform sparingly; so shall you keep her in appetite still. Seem as you would give, but be like a barren field that fields little, or unlucky dice to foolish and hoping gamesters. Let your gifts be slight and dainty, rather than precious. Let cunning be above cost. Give cherries at time of year, or apricots; and say they were sent you out o’ the country, though you bought ’em in Cheapside. Admire her tires; like her in all fashions, compare her in every habit to some deity, invent excellent dreams to flatter her, and riddles; or, if she be a great one, perform always the second parts to her: like what she likes, praise whom she praises, and fail not to make the household and servants yours, yea, the whole family, and salute ’em by their names (’tis but light cost if you can purchase ’em so) and make her physician your pensioner, and her chief woman. Nor will it be out of your gain to make love to her too, so she follow, not usher, her lady’s pleasure. All blabbing is taken away when she comes to be a part of the crime.

DAUPHINE
On what courtly lap hast thou late slept, to come forth so sudden and absolute a courtling?

TRUEWIT
Good faith, I should rather question you, that are so harkening after these mysteries. I begin to suspect your diligence, Dauphine. Speak, art thou in love in earnest?

DAUPHINE
Yes, by my troth am I; ’twere ill dissembling before thee.

TRUEWIT
With which of ’em, I pray you?

DAUPHINE
With all the Collegiates.

CLERIMONT
Out on thee. We’ll keep you at home, believe it, i’ the stable, an’ you be such a stallion.

TRUEWIT
No; I like him well. Men should love wisely, and all women: some one for the face, and let her please the eye; another for the skin, and let her please the touch; and third for the voice, and let her please the ear; and where the objects mix, let the senses so too. Thou wouldst think it strange if I should make ’em all in love with thee afore night!

DAUPHINE
I would say thou hadst the best philtre i’ the world, and couldst do more than Madam Medea or Doctor Forman.

TRUEWIT
If I do not, let me play the mountebank for my meat while I live, and the bawd for my drink.

DAUPHINE
So be it, I say.

ACT 4 SCENE 2

[Enter] OTTER, [with his cups], DAW, and LA FOOLE.

OTTER
Oh lord, gentlemen, how my knights and I have missed you here!

CLERIMONT
Why, captain, what service, what service?

OTTER
To see me bring up my bull, bear and horse to fight.

DAW
Yes, faith, the captain says we shall be his dogs to bait ’em.

DAUPHINE
A good employment.

TRUEWIT
Come on, let’s see a course then.

LA FOOLE
I am afraid my cousin will be offended if she come.

OTTER
Be afraid of nothing. Gentlemen, I have placed the drum and the trumpets, and one to give them the sign when you are ready. Here’s my bull for myself, and my bear for Sir John Daw, and my horse for Sir Amorous. Now set your foot to mine, and yours to his, and−

LA FOOLE
Pray God my cousin come not.

OTTER
Saint George and Saint Andrew, fear no cousins. Come, sound, sound. Et rauco strepuerunt cornua cantu.

[Drum and trumpets sound. They drink.]

TRUEWIT
Well said, captain, i’faith; well fought at the bull.

CLERIMONT
Well held at the bear.

TRUEWIT
’Loo, ’loo, captain!

DAUPHINE
Oh, the horse has kicked off his dog already.

LA FOOLE
I cannot drink it, as I am a knight.

TRUEWIT
Gods so! Off with his spurs, somebody.

LA FOOLE
It goes against my conscience. My cousin will be angry with it.

DAW
I ha’ done mine.

TRUEWIT
You fought high and fair, Sir John.

CLERIMONT
At the head.

DAUPHINE
Like an excellent bear-dog.

CLERIMONT
[To Daw] You take no notice of the business, I hope.

DAW
[To Clerimont] Not a word, sir; you see we are jovial.

OTTER
Sir Amorous, you must not equivocate. It must be pulled down, for all my cousin.

CLERIMONT
[To La Foole.] ‘Sfoot, if you take not your drink, they’ll think you are discontented with something; you’ll betray all if you take the least notice.

LA FOOLE
[To Clerimont] Not I; I’ll both drink and talk then.

OTTER
You must pull the horse on his knees, Sir Amorous. Fear no cousins. Iacta est alea.

TRUEWIT
[To Dauphine and Clerimont] Oh, now he’s in his vein, and bold. The least hint given him of his wife now will make him rail desperately.

CLERIMONT
Speak to him of her.

TRUEWIT
Do you, and I’ll fetch her to the hearing of it.

[Exit.]

DAUPHINE
Captain he-Otter, your she-Otter is coming, your wife.

OTTER
Wife! buz! Titivilitium. There’s no such thing in nature. I confess, gentlemen, I have a cook, a laundress, a housedrudge, that serves my necessary turns and goes under that title; but he’s an ass that will be so uxorious to tie his affections to one circle. Come, the name dulls appetite. Here, replenish again: another bout. Wives are nasty sluttish animals.

[He fills the cups again]

DAUPHINE
Oh, captain!

OTTER
As ever the earth bare, tribus verbis. Where’s Master Truewit?

DAW
He’s slipped aside, sir.

CLERIMONT
But you must drink and be jovial.

DAW
Yes, give it me.

LA FOOLE
And me too.

DAW
Let’s be jovial.

LA FOOLE
As jovial as you will.

OTTER
Agreed. Now you shall ha’ the bear, cousin, and Sir John Daw the horse, and I’ll ha’ the bull still. Sound, Tritons o’ the Thames. Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero

[They drink.]MOROSE speaks from above. The trumpets sounding.

MOROSE
Villains, murderers, sons of the earth and traitors, what do you there?

CLERIMONT
Oh, now the trumpets have waked him we shall have his company.

OTTER
A wife is a scurvy clogdogdo, an unlucky thing, a very foresaid bear-whelp, without any good fashion or breeding: mala bestia.

His wife is brought out to hear him [by TRUEWIT].

DAUPHINE
Why did you marry one then, captain?

OTTER
A pox!−I married with six thousand pound, I. I was in love with that. I ha’ not kissed my Fury these forty weeks.

CLERIMONT
The more to blame you, captain.

TRUEWIT
Nay, Mistress Otter, hear him a little first.

OTTER
She has a breath worse than my grandmother’s, profecto.

MISTRESS OTTER
Oh treacherous liar! Kiss me, sweet Master Truewit, and prove him a slandering knave.

TRUEWIT
I’ll rather believe you, lady.

OTTER
And she has a peruke that’s like a pound of hemp made up in shoe-threads.

MISTRESS OTTER
Oh, viper, mandrake!

OTTER
A most vile face! And yet she spends me forty pound a year in mercury and hogs’ bones. All her teeth were made i’ the Blackfriars, both her eyebrows in the Strand, and her hair in Silver Street. Every part o’ the town owns a piece of her.

MISTRESS OTTER
I cannot hold.

OTTER
She takes herself asunder still when she goes to bed, into some twenty boxes, and about next day noon is put together again, like a great German clock; and so comes forth and rings a tedious larum to the whole house, and then is quiet again for an hour, but for her quarters.− Ha’ you done me right, gentlemen?

MISTRESS OTTER
No, sir, I’ll do you right with my quarters, with my quarters.

She falls upon him ad beats him.

OTTER
Oh, hold, good princess.

TRUEWIT
Sound, sound!

[Drum and trumpets sound.]

CLERIMONT
A battle, a battle!

MISTRESS OTTER
You notorious stinkardly bearward, does my breath smell?

OTTER
Under correction, dear princess. Look to my bear and my horse, gentlemen.

MISTRESS OTTER
Do I want teeth and eyebrows, thou bull-dog?

TRUEWIT
Sound, sound still.

[They sound again.]

OTTER
No, I protest, under correction−

MISTRESS OTTER
Ay, now you are under correction, you protest; but you did not protest before correction, sir. Thou Judas, to offer to betray thy princess! I’ll make thee an example−

MOROSE descends with a long sword.

MOROSE
I will have no such examples in my house, Lady Otter.

MISTRESS OTTER
Ah!

[She runs off, with DAW and LA FOOLE.]

MOROSE
Mistress Mary Ambree, your examples are dangerous.−Rogues, hell-hounds, Stentors, out of my doors, you sons of noise and tumult, begot on an ill May-day, or when the galley-foist is afloat to Westminster! A trumpeter could not be conceived but then!

[Drives out the musicians.]

DAUPHINE
What ails you, sir?

MOROSE
They have rent my roof, walls and all my windows asunder, with their brazen throats.

[Exit.]

TRUEWIT
Best follow him, Dauphine.

DAUPHINE
So I will.

[Exit.]

CLERIMONT
Where’s Daw and La Foole?

OTTER
They are both run away, sir. Good gentlemen, help to pacify my princess, and speak to the great ladies for me. Now must I go lie with the bears this fortnight, and keep out o’ the way till my peace be made, for this scandal she has taken. Did you not see my bull-head, gentlemen?

CLERIMONT
Is’t not on, captain?

TRUEWIT
No:− [To Clerimont] but he may make a new one, by that is on.

OTTER
Oh, here ‘tis. An you come over, gentlemen, and ask for Tom Otter, we’ll go down to Ratcliffe, and have a course i’faith, for all these disasters. There’s bona spes left.

TRUEWIT
Away, captain, get off while you are well.

[Exit OTTER.]

CLERIMONT
I am glad we are rid of him.

TRUEWIT
You had never been, unless we had put his wife upon him. His humour is as tedious at last, as it was ridiculous at first.

ACT 4 SCENE 3

[Enter] HAUGHTY, MISTRESS OTTER, MAVIS, DAW, LA FOOLE, CENTAURE, AND EPICENE. [TRUEWIT and CLERIMONT observe them.]

HAUGHTY
We wondered why you shrieked so, Mistress Otter.

MISTRESS OTTER
O God, madam, he came down with a huge long naked weapon in both his hands, and looked so dreadfully! Sure he’s beside himself.

MAVIS
Why, what made you there, Mistress Otter?

MISTRESS OTTER
Alas, Mistress Mavis, I was chastising my subject, and thought nothing of him.

DAW
[To Epicene] Faith, mistress, you must do so too. Learn to chastise. Mistress Otter corrects her husband so, he dares not speak but under correction.

LA FOOLE
And with his hat off to her: ’twould do you good to see.

HAUGHTY
In sadness, ’tis good and mature counsel: practice it, Morose. I’ll call you Morose still now, as I call Centaure and Mavis: we four will be all one.

CENTAURE
And you’ll come to the college and live with us?

HAUGHTY
Make him give milk and honey.

MAVIS
Look how you manage him at first, you shall have him ever after.

CENTAURE
Let him allow you your coach and four horses, your woman, your chambermaid, your page, your gentleman-usher, your French cook, and four grooms.

HAUGHTY
And go with us to Bedlam, to the china-houses, and to the Exchange.

CENTAURE
It will open the gate to your fame.

HAUGHTY
Here’s Centaure has immortalised herself with taming of her wild male.

MAVIS
Ay, she has done the miracle of the kingdom.

EPICENE
But ladies, do you count it lawful to have such plurality of servants, and do ’em all graces?

HAUGHTY
Why not? Why should women deny their favours to men? Are they the poorer, or the worse?

DAW
Is the Thames the less for the dyer’s water, mistress?

LA FOOLE
Or a torch for lighting many torches?

TRUEWIT
[Aside] Well said, La Foole; what a new one he has got!

CENTAURE
They are empty losses women fear in this kind.

HAUGHTY
Besides, ladies should be mindful of the approach of age, and let no time want his due use. The best of our days pass first.

MAVIS
We are rivers, that cannot be called back, madam: she that now excludes her lovers may live to lie a forsaken beldame in a frozen bed.

CENTAURE
’Tis true, Mavis. And who will wait on us to coach then? or write, or tell us the news then? Make anagrams of our names, and invite us to the cockpit, and kiss our hands all the play-time, and draw their weapons for our honours?

HAUGHTY
Not one.

DAW
Nay, my mistress is not altogether unintelligent of these things; here be in presence have tasted of her favours.

TRUEWIT
[Aside] What a neighing hobby-horse is this!

EPICENE
But not with intent to boast ’em again, servant. And have you those excellent receipts, madam, to keep yourselves from bearing of children?

HAUGHTY
Oh yes, Morose. How should we maintain our youth and beauty else? Many births of a woman make her old, as many crops make the earth barren.

ACT 4 SCENE 4

[Enter] MOROSE and DAUPHINE [who speak apart.]

MOROSE
Oh my cursed angel, that instructed me to this fate!

DAUPHINE
Why, sir?

MOROSE
That I should be seduced by so foolish a devil as a barber will make!

DAUPHINE
I would I had been worthy, sir, to have partaken your counsel; you should never have trusted it to such a minister.

MOROSE
Would I could redeem it with the loss of an eye (nephew), a hand, or any other member.

DAUPHINE
Marry, God forbid, sir, that you should geld yourself to anger your wife.

MOROSE
So it would rid me of her! And that I did supererogatory penance, in a belfry, at Westminster Hall, i’n the Cockpit, at the fall of a stag, the Tower Wharf (what place is there else?) London Bridge, Paris Garden, Billinsgate, when the noises are at their height and loudest. Nay, I would sit out a play, that were nothing but fights at sea, drum, trumpet and target!

DAUPHINE
I hope there shall be no such need, sir. Take patience, good uncle. This is but a day, and ’tis well worn too now.

MOROSE
O, ’twill be so for ever, nephew, I foresee it, for ever. Strife and tumult are the dowry that comes with a wife.

TRUEWIT
I told you so, sir, and you would not believe me.

MOROSE
Alas, do not rub those wounds, Master Truewit, to blood again; ’twas my negligence. Add not affliction to affliction. I have perceived the effect of it, too late, in Madam Otter.

EPICENE
[Coming forward] How do you, sir?

MOROSE
Did you ever hear a more unnecessary question? As if she did not see! Why, I do as you see, empress, empress.

EPICENE
You are not well, sir! You look very ill! Something has distempered you.

MOROSE
Oh horrible, monstrous impertinencies! Would not one of these have served? Do you think, sir? Would not one of these have served?

TRUEWIT
Yes, sir, but these are but notes of female kindness, sir; certain tokens that she has a voice, sir.

MOROSE
Oh, is’t so? Come, and’t be no otherwise−what say you?

EPICENE
How do you feel yourself, sir?

MOROSE
Again that!

TRUEWIT
Nay, look you, sir: you would be friends with your wife upon unconscionable terms, her silence−

EPICENE
They say you are run mad, sir.

MOROSE
Not for love, I assure you, of you; do you see?

EPICENE
O lord, gentlemen! Lay hold on him for God’s sake. What shall I do? Who’s his physician (can you tell) that knows the state of his body best, that I might send for him? Good sir, speak. I’ll send for one of my doctors else.

MOROSE
What, to poison me, that I might die intestate and leave you possessed of all?

EPICENE
Lord, how idly he talks, and how his eyes sparkle! He looks green about the temples! Do you see what blue spots he has?

TRUEWIT
Ay, it’s melancholy.

EPICENE
Gentlemen, for heaven’s sake counsel me. Ladies! Servant, you have read Pliny and Paracelsus: ne’er a word now to comfort a poor gentlewoman? Ay me! What fortune had I to marry a distracted man?

DAW
I’ll tell you, mistress−

TRUEWIT
[To Clerimont] How rarely she holds it up!

[TRUEWIT and CLERIMONT prevent MOROSE from leaving.]

MOROSE
What mean you, gentlemen?

EPICENE
What will you tell me, servant?

DAW
The disease in Greek is called mania, in Latin insania, furor, vel ecstasis melancholica, that is, egressio, when a man ex melancholico evadit fanaticus.

MOROSE
Shall I have a lecture read upon me alive?

DAW
But he may be but phreneticus yet, mistress, and phrenetis is only delirium, or so−

EPICENE
Ay, that is for the disease, servant; but what is this to the cure? We are sure enough of the disease.

MOROSE
Let me go!

TRUEWIT
Why, we’ll entreat her to hold her peace, sir.

MOROSE
Oh no, labour not to stop her. She is like a conduit-pipe, that will gush out with more force when she opens again.

HAUGHTY
I’ll tell you, Morose, you must talk divinity to him altogether, or moral philosophy.

LA FOOLE
Ay, and there’s an excellent book of moral philosophy, madam, of Reynard the Fox and all the beasts, called Doni’s Philosophy.

CENTAURE
There is, indeed, sir Amorous La Foole.

MOROSE
Oh misery!

LA FOOLE
I have read it, my lady Centaure, all over to my cousin, here.

MISTRESS OTTER
Ay, and ’tis a very good book as any is of the moderns.

DAW
Tut, he must have Seneca read to him, and Plutarch and the ancients; the moderns are not for this disease.

CLERIMONT
Why, you discommended them too, today, Sir John.

DAW
Ay, in some cases; but in these they are best, and Aristotle’s Ethics.

MAVIS
Say you so sir John? I think you are deceived: you took it upon trust.

HAUGHTY
Where’s Trusty, my woman? I’ll end this difference. I prithee, Otter, call her. Her father and mother were both mad when they put her to me.

[Exit MISTRESS OTTER.]

MOROSE
I think so.−Nay, gentlemen, I am tame. This is but an exercise, I know, a marriage ceremony, which I must endure.

HAUGHTY
And one of ’em (I know not which) was cured with the Sick Man’s Salve; and the other with Greene’s Groat’s-worth of Wit.

TRUEWIT
A very cheap cure, madam.

HAUGHTY
Ay, it’s very feasible.

[Enter MISTRESS OTTER with TRUSTY.]

MISTRESS OTTER
My lady called for you, Mistress Trusty; you must decide a controversy.

HAUGHTY
Oh, Trusty, which was it you said, your father or your mother, that was cured with the Sick Man’s Salve?

TRUSTY
My mother, madam, with the Salve.

TRUEWIT
Then it was The sick woman’s Salve?

TRUSTY
And my father with The Groat’s-worth of Wit. But there was other means used: we had a preacher that would preach folk asleep still; and so they were prescribed to go to church by an old woman that was their physician, thrice a week−

EPICENE
To sleep?

TRUSTY
Yes, forsooth; and every night they read themselves asleep on those books.

EPICENE
Good faith, it stands with great reason. I would I knew where to procure those books.

MOROSE
Oh!

LA FOOLE
I can help you with one of ’em, Mistress Morose, the Groat’s-worth of Wit.

EPICENE
But I shall disfurnish you, Sir Amorous. Can you spare it?

LA FOOLE
Oh, yes, for a week or so; I’ll read it myself to him.

EPICENE
No, I must do that, sir; that must be my office.

MOROSE
Oh, oh!

EPICENE
Sure, he would do well enough, if he could sleep.

MOROSE
No, I should do well enough, if you could sleep. Have I no friend that will make her drunk? or give her a little laudanum? or opium?

TRUEWIT
Why, sir, she talks ten times worse in her sleep.

MOROSE
How!

CLERIMONT
Do you not know that, sir? Never ceases all night.

TRUEWIT
And snores like a porpoise.

MOROSE
Oh, redeem me, fate, redeem me, fate! For how many causes may a man be divorced, nephew?

DAUPHINE
I know not, truly, sir.

TRUEWIT
Some divine must resolve you in that, sir, or canon lawyer.

MOROSE
I will not rest, I will not think of any other hope or comfort, till I know.

[Exit MOROSE and DAUPHINE.]

CLERIMONT
Alas, poor man!

TRUEWIT
You’ll make him mad indeed, ladies, if you pursue this.

HAUGHTY
No, we’ll let him breathe now a quarter of an hour or so.

CLERIMONT
By my faith, a large truce.

HAUGHTY
Is that his keeper that is gone with him?

DAW
It is his nephew, madam.

LA FOOLE
Sir Dauphine Eugenie.

HAUGHTY
He looks like a very pitiful knight−

DAW
As can be. This marriage has put him out of all.

LA FOOLE
He has not a penny in his purse, madam−

DAW
He is ready to cry all this day.

LA FOOLE
A very shark, he set me i’n the nick t’other night at primero.

TRUEWIT
[To Clerimont] How these swabbers talk!

CLERIMONT
[To Truewit] Ay, Otter’s wine has swelled their humours above a spring-tide.

HAUGHTY
Good Morose, let’s go in again. I like your couches exceeding well; we’ll go lie and talk there.

EPICENE
I wait on you, madam.

[Exeunt HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS, TRUSTY, DAW and LA FOOLE.]

TRUEWIT
’Slight, I will have ’em as silent as signs, and their posts too, ere I ha’ done. Do you hear, lady bride? I pray thee now, as thou art a noble wench, continue this discourse of Dauphine within; but praise him exceedingly. Magnify him with all the height of affection thou canst (I have some purpose in’t) and but beat off these two rooks, Jack Daw and his fellow, with any discontentment hither, and I’ll honour thee for ever.

EPICENE
I was about it here. It angered me to the soul to hear ’em begin to talk so malapert.

TRUEWIT
Pray thee perform it, and thou win’st me an idolater to thee everlasting.

EPICENE
Will you go in and hear me do it?

TRUEWIT
No, I’ll stay here. Drive ’em out of your company, ’tis all I ask; which cannot be any way better done than by extolling Dauphine, whom they have so slighted.

EPICENE
I warrant you; you shall expect one of ’em presently.

[Exit.]

CLERIMONT
What a cast of kestrils are these, to hawk after ladies thus!

TRUEWIT
Ay, and strike at such an eagle as Dauphine.

CLERIMONT
He will be mad when we tell him. Here he comes.

ACT 4 SCENE 5

[Enter] DAUPHINE.

CLERIMONT
O sir, you are welcome.

TRUEWIT
Where’s thine uncle?

DAUPHINE
Run out o’ doors in’s nightcaps to talk with a casuist about his divorce. It works admirably.

TRUEWIT
Thou wouldst ha’ said so if thou hadst been here! The ladies have laughed at thee most comically since thou went’st, Dauphine.

CLERIMONT
And asked if thou wert thine uncle’s keeper.

TRUEWIT
And the brace of baboons answered yes, and said thou wert a pitiful poor fellow and didst live upon posts, and hadst nothing but three suits of apparel and some few benevolences that lords ga’ thee to fool to ’em and swagger.

DAUPHINE
Let me not live, I’ll beat them. I’ll bind ’em both to grand madam’s bed-posts and have ’em baited with monkeys.

TRUEWIT
Thou shalt not need, they shall be beaten to thy hand, Dauphine. I have an execution to serve upon ’em I warrant thee shall serve: trust my plot.

DAUPHINE
Ay, you have many plots! So you had one to make all the wenches in love with me.

TRUEWIT
Why, if I do not yet afore night, as near as ’tis, and that they do not every one invite thee and be ready to scratch for thee, take the mortgage of my wit.

CLERIMONT
’Fore God, I’ll be his witness; thou shalt have it, Dauphine; thou shalt be his fool for ever if thou dost not.

TRUEWIT
Agreed. Perhaps ’twill be the better estate. Do you observe this gallery, or rather lobby, indeed? Here are a couple of studies, at each end one: here will I act such a tragicomedy between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Daw and La Foole. Which of ’em comes out first will I seize on. (You two shall be the chorus behind the arras, and whip out between the acts and speak.) If I do not make ’em keep the peace for this remnant of the day, if not of the year, I have failed once−I hear Daw coming. Hide, and do not laugh, for God’s sake.

[DAUPHINE and CLERIMONT hide.]
[Enter DAW.]

DAW
Which is the way into the garden, trow?

TRUEWIT
Oh, Jack Daw! I am glad I have met with you. In good faith, I must have this matter go no further between you. I must ha’ it taken up.

DAW
What matter, sir? Between whom?

TRUEWIT
Come, you disguise it: Sir Amorous and you. If you love me, Jack, you shall make use of your philosophy now, for this once, and deliver me your sword. This is not the wedding the Centaurs were at, though there be a she-one here. The bride has entreated me I will see no blood shed at her bridal; you saw her whisper me erewhile.

[Takes his sword.]

DAW
As I hope to finish Tacitus, I intend no murder.

TRUEWIT
Do you not wait for Sir Amorous?

DAW
Not I, by my knighthood.

TRUEWIT
And your scholarship too?

DAW
And my scholarship too.

TRUEWIT
Go to, then I return you your sword, and ask you mercy; but put it not up, for you will be assaulted. [Returns his sword.] I understood that you had apprehended it, and walked here to brave him, and that you had held your life contemptible in regard of your honour.

DAW
No, no, no such thing, I assure you. He and I parted now as good friends as could be.

TRUEWIT
Trust not you to that visor. I saw him since dinner with another face. I have known many men in my time vexed with losses, with deaths, and with abuses, but so offended a wight as Sir Amorous did I never see, or read of. For taking away his guests, sir, today, that’s the cause, and he declares it behind your back with such threat’nings and contempts. He said to Dauphine you were the arrant’st ass−

DAW
Ay, he may say his pleasure.

TRUEWIT
And swears you are so protested a coward that he knows you will never do him any manly or single right, and therefore he will take his course.

DAW
I’ll give him any satisfaction, sir−but fighting.

TRUEWIT
Ay, sir, but who knows what satisfaction he’ll take? Blood he thirsts for, and blood he will have; and whereabouts on you he will have it, who knows but himself?

DAW
I pray you, Master Truewit, be you a mediator.

TRUEWIT
Well, sir, conceal yourself then in this study till I return. [He puts him up.] Nay, you must be content to be locked in; for, for mine own reputation, I would not have you seen to receive a public disgrace, while I have the matter in managing. Gods so, here he comes! Keep your breath close, that he do not hear you sigh.−In good faith, Sir Amorous, he is not this way; I pray you be merciful, do not murder him; he is a Christian as good as you; you are armed as if you sought a revenge on all his race. Good Dauphine, get him away from this place. I never knew a man’s choler so high but he would speak to his friends, he would hear reason.−Jack Daw, Jack Daw! Asleep!

DAW
[Within] Is he gone, Master Truewit?

TRUEWIT
Ay, did you hear him?

DAW
Oh God! yes.

TRUEWIT
[Aside] What a quick ear fear has!

DAW
[Comes out of the study.] But is he so armed, as you say?

TRUEWIT
Armed? Did you ever see a fellow set out to take possession?

DAW
Ay, sir.

TRUEWIT
That may give you some light to conceive of him; but ’tis nothing to the principal. Some false brother i’ the house has furnished him strangely. Or, if it were out o’ the house, it was Tom Otter.

DAW
Indeed he’s a captain, and his wife is his kinswoman.

TRUEWIT
He has got somebody’s old two-hand sword, to mow you off at the knees. And that sword hath spawned such a dagger!− But then he is so hung with pikes, halberds, petronels, calivers and muskets, that he looks like a justice of peace’s hall; a man of two thousand a year, is not cessed at so many weapons as he has on. There was never fencer challenged at so many several foils. You would think he meant to murder all Saint Pulchre’s parish. If he could but victual himself for half a year in his breeches, he is sufficiently armed to overrun a country.

DAW
Good lord! what means he, sir? I pray you, Master Truewit, be you a mediator.

TRUEWIT
Well, I’ll try if he will be appeased with a leg or an arm; if not, you must die once.

DAW
I would be loath to lose my right arm, for writing madrigals.

TRUEWIT
Why, if he will be satisfied with a thumb or a little finger, all’s one to me. You must think I’ll do my best.

DAW
Good sir, do.

He puts him up again, and then [DAUPHINE and CLERIMONT] come forth.]

CLERIMONT
What hast thou done?

TRUEWIT
He will let me do nothing, man, he does all afore me; he offers his left arm.

CLERIMONT
His left wing for a Jack Daw.

DAUPHINE
Take it by all means.

TRUEWIT
How! Maim a man for ever for a jest? What a conscience hast thou?

DAUPHINE
’Tis no loss to him: he has no employment for his arms but to eat spoon-meat. Beside, as good maim his body as his reputation.

TRUEWIT
He is a scholar and a Wit, and yet he does not think so. But he loses no reputation with us, for we all resolved him an ass before. To your places again.

CLERIMONT
I pray thee let me be in at the other a little.

TRUEWIT
Look, you’ll spoil all: these be ever your tricks.

CLERIMONT
No, but I could hit of some things that thou wilt miss, and thou wilt say are good ones.

TRUEWIT
I warrant you. I pray forbear, I will leave it off else.

DAUPHINE
Come away, Clerimont.

[They hide again.]
[Enter LA FOOLE.]

TRUEWIT
Sir Amorous!

LA FOOLE
Master Truewit.

TRUEWIT
Whither were you going?

LA FOOLE
Down into the court to make water.

TRUEWIT
By no means, sir; you shall rather tempt your breeches.

LA FOOLE
Why, sir?

TRUEWIT
[Opening the door of the other study.] Enter here if you love your life.

LA FOOLE
Why? Why?

TRUEWIT
Question till your throat be cut, do; dally till the enraged soul find you.

LA FOOLE
Who’s that?

TRUEWIT
Daw it is; will you in?

LA FOOLE
Ay, ay, I’ll in; what’s the matter?

TRUEWIT
Nay, if he had been cool enough to tell us that, there had been some hope to atone you, but he seems so implacably enraged!

LA FOOLE
’Slight, let him rage! I’ll hide myself.

TRUEWIT
Do, good sir. But what have you done to him within that should provoke him thus? You have broke some jest upon him afore the ladies−

LA FOOLE
Not I, never in my life broke jest upon any man. The bride was praising Sir Dauphine, and he went away in snuff, and I followed him, unless he took offence at me in his drink erewhile, that I would not pledge all the horse-full.

TRUEWIT
By my faith, and that may be, you remember well; but he walks the round up and down, through every room o’ the house, with a towel in his hand, crying, ‘Where’s La Foole? Who saw La−Foole?’ And when Dauphine and I demanded the cause, we can force no answer from him but ‘O revenge, how sweet art thou! I will strangle him in this towel’−which leads us to conjecture that the main cause of his fury is for bringing your meat today, with a towel about you, to his discredit.

LA FOOLE
Like enough. Why, and he be angry for that, I’ll stay here till his anger be blown over.

TRUEWIT
A good becoming resolution, sir. If you can put it on o’ the sudden.

LA FOOLE
Yes, I can put it on. Or I’ll away into the country presently.

TRUEWIT
How will you get out o’the house, sir? He knows you are i’the house, and he’ll watch you this se’en-night but he’ll have you. He’ll outwait a sergeant for you.

LA FOOLE
Why then I’ll stay here.

TRUEWIT
You must think how to victual yourself in time then.

LA FOOLE
Why, sweet Master Truewit, will you entreat my cousin Otter to send me a cold venison pasty, a bottle or two of wine, and a chamber-pot?

TRUEWIT
A stool were better, sir, of Sir A-jax his invention.

LA FOOLE
Ay, that will be better indeed; and a pallet to lie on.

TRUEWIT
Oh, I would not advise you to sleep by any means.

LA FOOLE
Would you not, sir? Why then I will not.

TRUEWIT
Yet there’s another fear−

LA FOOLE
Is there, sir? What is’t?

TRUEWIT
No, he cannot break open this door with his foot, sure.

LA FOOLE
I’ll set my back against it, sir. I have a good back.

TRUEWIT
But then if he should batter.

LA FOOLE
Batter! If he dare, I’ll have an action of batt’ry against him.

TRUEWIT
Cast you the worst. He has sent for powder already, and what he will do with it, no man knows; perhaps blow up the corner o’ the house where he suspects you are. Here he comes! In, quickly. [He feigns as if one were present, to fight the other, who is run in to hide himself.] I protest, Sir John Daw, he is not this way. What will you do? Before God, you shall hang no petard here. I’ll die rather. Will you not take my word? I never knew one but would be satisfied.−Sir Amorous, there’s no standing out. He has made a petard of an old brass pot, to force your door. Think upon some satisfaction or terms to offer him.

LA FOOLE
[Within.] Sir, I’ll give him any satisfaction. I dare give any terms.

TRUEWIT
You’ll leave it to me then?

LA FOOLE
Ay, sir. I’ll stand to any conditions.

[TRUEWIT] calls forth CLERIMONT and DAUPHINE.

TRUEWIT
How now, what think you, sirs? Were’t not a difficult thing to determine which of these two feared most?

CLERIMONT
Yes, but this fears the bravest; the other a whiniling dastard, Jack Daw. But La Foole, a brave heroic coward! And is afraid in a great look and a stout accent. I like him rarely.

TRUEWIT
Had it not been pity these two should ha’ been concealed?

CLERIMONT
Shall I make a motion?

TRUEWIT
Briefly. For I must strike while ’tis hot.

CLERIMONT
Shall I go fetch the ladies to the catastrophe?

TRUEWIT
Umh? Ay, by my troth.

DAUPHINE
By no mortal means. Let them continue in the state of ignorance, and err still; think ’em wits and fine fellows as they have done. ’Twere sin to reform them.

TRUEWIT
Well, I will have ‘em fetched, now I think on’t, for a private purpose of mine; do, Clerimont, fetch ’em, and discourse to ’em all that’s past, and bring ’em into the gallery here.

DAUPHINE
This is thy extreme vanity now; thou think’st thou wert undone if every jest thou mak’st were not published.

TRUEWIT
Thou shalt see how unjust thou art presently. Clerimont, say it was Dauphine’s plot. [Exit CLERIMONT.] Trust me not if the whole drift be not for thy good. There’s a carpet i’ the next room; put it on, with this scarf over thy face and a cushion o’ thy head, and be ready when I call Amorous. Away− [Exit DAUPHINE.] John Daw!

[He brings DAW out of his study.]

DAW
What good news, sir?

TRUEWIT
Faith, I have followed and argued with him hard for you. I told him you were a knight and a scholar, and that you knew fortitude did consist magis patiendo quam faciendo, magis ferendo quam feriendo.

DAW
It doth so indeed, sir.

TRUEWIT
And that you would suffer, I told him: so at first he demanded, by my troth, in my conceit too much.

DAW
What was it, sir?

TRUEWIT
Your upper lip, and six o’ your fore-teeth.

DAW
’Twas unreasonable.

TRUEWIT
Nay, I told him plainly, you could not spare ’em all. So after long argument (pro et con, as you know) I brought him down to your two butter-teeth, and them he would have.

DAW
Oh, did you so? Why, he shall have ’em.

[Enter above HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS, MISTRESS OTTER, EPICENE, TRUSTY and CLERIMONT]

TRUEWIT
But he shall not, sir, by your leave. The conclusion is this, sir: because you shall be very good friends hereafter, and this never to be remembered or upbraided, besides that he may not boast he has done any such thing to you in his own person, he is to come here in disguise, give you five kicks in private, sir, take your sword from you, and lock you up in that study, during pleasure. Which will be but a little while, we’ll get it released presently.

DAW
Five kicks? He shall have six, sir, to be friends.

TRUEWIT
Believe me, you shall not overshoot yourself to send him that word by me.

DAW
Deliver it, sir. He shall have it with all my heart, to be friends.

TRUEWIT
Friends? Nay, and he should not be so, and heartily too, upon these terms, he shall have me to enemy while I live. Come, sir, bear it bravely.

DAW
O God, sir, ’tis nothing.

TRUEWIT
True. Whats’s six kicks to a man that reads Seneca?

DAW
I have had a hundred, sir.

TRUEWIT
Sir Amorous! No speaking one to another, or rehearsing old matters.

DAUPHINE [masked with a scarf] comes forth and kicks him.

DAW
One, two, three, four, five. I protest, Sir Amorous, you shall have six.

TRUEWIT
Nay, I told you, you should not talk. Come, give him six, an he will needs. [DAUPHINE kicks him again.] Your swords. [DAW gives TRUEWIT his sword.] Now return to your safe custody: you shall presently meet afore the ladies, and be the dearest friends one to another− [DAW goes into his study.] Give me the scarf; now thou shalt beat the other barefaced. Stand by, Sir Amorous!

[Exit DAUPHINE; TRUEWIT brings out LA FOOLE.]

LA FOOLE
What’s here? A sword!

TRUEWIT
I cannot help it, without I should take the quarrel upon myself; here he has sent you his sword−

LA FOOLE
I’ll receive none on’t.

TRUEWIT
And he wills you to fasten it against a wall, and break your head in some few several places against the hilts.

LA FOOLE
I will not: tell him roundly. I cannot endure to shed my own blood.

TRUEWIT
Will you not?

LA FOOLE
No. I’ll beat it against a fair flat wall, if that will satisfy him; if not, he shall beat it himself for Amorous.

TRUEWIT
Why, this is strange starting off, when a man undertakes for you! I offered him another condition: will you stand to that?

LA FOOLE
Ay, what is’t?

TRUEWIT
That you will be beaten in private.

LA FOOLE
Yes. I am content, at the blunt.

TRUEWIT
Then you must submit yourself to be hoodwinked in this scarf, and be led to him, where he will take your sword from you, and make you bear a blow over the mouth, gules, and tweaks by the nose sans nombre.

LA FOOLE
I am content. But why must I be blinded?

TRUEWIT
That’s for your good, sir: because, if he should grow insolent upon this and publish it hereafter to your disgrace (which I hope he will not do) you might swear safely and protest he never beat you, to your knowledge.

LA FOOLE
Oh, I conceive.

TRUEWIT
I do not doubt but you’ll be perfect good friends upon’t, and not dare to utter an ill thought one of another in future.

LA FOOLE
Not I, as God help me, of him.

TRUEWIT
Nor he of you, sir. If he should−Come, sir. [Blindfolds him.] All hid, Sir John.

DAUPHINE enters to tweak him.

LA FOOLE
Oh, Sir John, Sir John! Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh−

[DAUPHINE takes his sword.]

TRUEWIT
Good, Sir John, leave tweaking, you’ll blow his nose off. [Exit DAUPHINE with the two swords.] ’Tis Sir John’s pleasure you should retire into the study. [Unbinds LA FOOLE’s eyes and shuts him in.] Why, now you are friends. All bitterness between you, I hope, is buried; you shall come forth by and by Damon and Pythias upon’t, and embrace with all the rankness of friendship that can be. [Enter DAUPHINE.] I trust we shall have ’em tamer i’their language hereafter. Dauphine, I worship thee.−God’s will, the ladies have surprised us!

ACT 4 SCENCE 6

[Enter] HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS, MISTRESS OTTER, EPICENE, TRUSTY [and CLERIMONT], having discovered part of the past scene, above.

HAUGHTY
Centaure, how our judgments were imposed on by these adulterate knights!

CENTAURE
Nay, madam, Mavis was more deceived than we; ’twas her commendation uttered ’em in the college.

MAVIS
I commended but their wits, madam, and their braveries. I never looked toward their valours.

HAUGHTY
Sir Dauphine is valiant, and a Wit too, it seems.

MAVIS
And a Bravery too.

HAUGHTY
Was this his project?

MISTRESS OTTER
So Master Clerimont intimates, madam.

HAUGHTY
Good Morose, when you come to the college, will you bring him with you? He seems a very perfect gentleman.

EPICENE
He is so, madam, believe it.

CENTAURE
But when will you come, Morose?

EPICENE
Three or four days hence, madam, when I have got me a coach and horses.

HAUGHTY
No, tomorrow, good Morose; Centaure shall send you her coach.

MAVIS
Yes, faith, do, and bring Sir Dauphine with you.

HAUGHTY
She has promised that, Mavis.

MAVIS
He is a very worthy gentleman in his exteriors, madam.

HAUGHTY
Ay, he shows he is judicial in his clothes.

CENTAURE
And yet not so superlatively neat as some, madam, that have their faces set in a brake!

HAUGHTY
Ay, and have every hair in form!

MAVIS
That wear purer linen then ourselves, and profess more neatness than the French hermaphrodite!

EPICENE
Ay, ladies, they; what they tell one of us, have told a thousand, and are the only thieves of our fame; that think to take us with that perfume or with that lace, and laugh at us unconscionably when they have done.

HAUGHTY
But Sir Dauphine’s carelessness becomes him.

CENTAURE
I could love a man for such a nose!

MAVIS
Or such a leg!

CENTAURE
He has an exceeding good eye, madam!

MAVIS
And a very good lock!

CENTAURE
Good Morose, bring him to my chamber first.

MISTRESS OTTER
Please your honours to meet at my house, madam?

TRUEWIT
[To Dauphine] See how they eye thee, man! They are taken, I warrant thee.

HAUGHTY
[Approaching Truewit and Dauphine.] You have unbraced our brace of knights here, Master Truewit.

TRUEWIT
Not I, madam, it was sir Dauphine’s engine; who, if he have disfurnished your ladyship of any guard or service by it, is able to make the place good again in himself.

HAUGHTY
There’s no suspicion of that, sir.

CENTAURE
God so, Mavis, Haughty is kissing.

MAVIS
Let us go too and take part.

HAUGHTY
But I am glad of the fortune (beside the discovery of two such empty caskets) to gain the knowledge of so rich a mine of virtue as Sir Dauphine.

CENTAURE
We would be all glad to style him of our friendship, and see him at the college.

MAVIS
He cannot mix with a sweeter society, I’ll prophesy, and I hope he himself will think so.

DAUPHINE
I should be rude to imagine otherwise, lady.

TRUEWIT
[To Dauphine] Did not I tell thee, Dauphine? Why, all their actions are governed by crude opinion, without reason or cause; they know not why they do anything; but as they are informed, believe, judge, praise, condemn, love, hate, and in emulation one of another, do all these things alike. Only, they have a natural inclination sways ’em generally to the worst, when they are left to themselves. But pursue it, now thou hast ’em.

HAUGHTY
Shall we go in again, Morose?

EPICENE
Yes, madam.

CENTAURE
We’ll entreat Sir Dauphine’s company.

TRUEWIT
Stay, good madam, the interview of the two friends, Pylades and Orestes: I’ll fetch ‘em out to you straight.

HAUGHTY
Will you, Master Truewit?

DAUPHINE
Ay, but noble ladies, do not confess in your countenance or outward bearing to ’em any discovery of their follies, that we may see how they will bear up again, with what assurance and erection.

HAUGHTY
We will not, Sir Dauphine.

CENTAURE [and] MAVIS
Upon our honours, Sir Dauphine.

TRUEWIT
Sir Amorous, Sir Amorous! The ladies are here.

LA FOOLE
[Within] Are they?

TRUEWIT
Yes, but slip out by and by as their backs are turned and meet Sir John here, as by chance, when I call you.− Jack Daw!

DAW
[Within] What say you, sir?

TRUEWIT
Whip out behind me suddenly, and no anger i’ your looks to your adversary.−Now, now!

[LA FOOLE and DAW come out of their studies, and salute each other.]

LA FOOLE
Noble Sir John Daw! Where ha’ you been?

DAW
To seek you, Sir Amorous.

LA FOOLE
Me! I honour you.

DAW
I prevent you, sir.

CLERIMONT
They have forgot their rapiers!

TRUEWIT
Oh, they meet in peace, man.

DAUPHINE
Where’s your sword, Sir John?

CLERIMONT
And yours, sir Amorous?

DAW
Mine? My boy had it forth to mend the handle, e’en now.

LA FOOLE
And my gold handle was broke too, and my boy had it forth.

DAUPHINE
Indeed, sir? How their excuses meet!

CLERIMONT
What a consent there is i’ the handles!

TRUEWIT
Nay, there is so i’ the points too, I warrant you.

MISTRESS OTTER
Oh me! Madam, he comes again, the madman! Away!

[Exeunt hastily HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, EPICENE, MAVIS, MISTRESS OTTER, TRUSTY, DAW and LA FOOLE.]

ACT 4 SCENE 7

[Enter] MOROSE [with a sword in each hand;] he had found the two swords drawn within.

MOROSE
What make these naked weapons here, gentlemen?

TRUEWIT
Oh, sir! Here hath like to been murder since you went! A couple of knights fallen out about the bride’s favours. We were fain to take away their weapons, your house had been begged by this time else−

MOROSE
For what?

CLERIMONT
For manslaughter, sir, as being accessary.

MOROSE
And for her favours?

TRUEWIT
Ay, sir, heretofore, not present. Clerimont, carry ’em their swords now. They have done all the hurt they will do.

[Exit CLERIMONT with the two swords]

DAUPHINE
Ha’you spoke with the lawyer, sir?

MOROSE
Oh no! There is such a noise i’ the court that they have frighted me home with more violence then I went! Such speaking and counter-speaking, with their several voices of citations, appellations, allegations, certificates, attachments, intergatories, references, convictions, and afflictions indeed, among the doctors and proctors, that the noise here is silence to’t! A kind of calm midnight!

TRUEWIT
Why, sir, if you would be resolved indeed, I can bring you hither a very sufficient lawyer and a learned divine, that shall enquire into every least scruple for you.

MOROSE
Can you, Master Truewit?

TRUEWIT
Yes, and are very sober grave persons, that will dispatch it in a chamber, with a whisper or two.

MOROSE
Good sir, shall I hope this benefit from you, and trust myself into your hands?

TRUEWIT
Alas, sir! Your nephew and I have been ashamed, and oft-times mad, since you went, to think how you are abused. Go in, good sir, and lock yourself up till we call you; we’ll tell you more anon, sir.

MOROSE
Do your pleasure with me gentlemen; I believe in you, and that deserves no delusion−

TRUEWIT
You shall find none, sir− [Exit Morose] but heaped, heaped plenty of vexation.

DAUPHINE
What wilt thou do now, Wit?

TRUEWIT
Recover me hither Otter and the barber if you can, by any means, presently.

DAUPHINE
Why? To what purpose?

TRUEWIT
Oh, I’ll make the deepest divine and gravest lawyer out o’ them two for him−

DAUPHINE
Thou canst not, man; these are waking dreams.

TRUEWIT
Do not fear me. Clap but a civil gown with a welt o’ the one, and a canonical cloak with sleeves o’ the other, and give ’em a few terms i’ their mouths; if there come not forth as able a doctor and complete a parson for this turn as may be wished, trust not my election. And I hope, without wronging the dignity of either profession, since they are but persons put on, and for mirth’s sake, to torment him. The barber smatters Latin, I remember.

DAUPHINE
Yes, and Otter too.

TRUEWIT
Well then, if I make ’em not wrangle out this case to his no comfort, let me be thought a Jack Daw, or La Foole, or anything worse. Go you to your ladies, but first send for them.

DAUPHINE
I will.

[Exeunt.]

ACT 5

ACT 5 SCENE 1

[Enter] LA FOOLE, CLERIMONT, DAW.

LA FOOLE
Where had you our swords, Master Clerimont?

CLERIMONT
Why, Dauphine took ’em from the madman.

LA FOOLE
And he took ’em from our boys, I warrant you.

CLERIMONT
Very like, sir.

LA FOOLE
Thank you, good Master Clerimont. Sir John Daw and I are both beholden to you.

CLERIMONT
Would I knew how to make you so, gentlemen.

DAW
Sir Amorous and I are your servants, sir.

[Enter MAVIS.]

MAVIS
Gentlemen, have any of you a pen and ink? I would fain write out a riddle in Italian for Sir Dauphine to translate.

CLERIMONT
Not I, in troth, lady, I am no scrivener.

DAW
I can furnish you, I think, lady.

[Exeunt DAW and MAVIS.]

CLERIMONT
He has it in the haft of a knife, I believe!

LA FOOLE
No, he has his box of instruments.

CLERIMONT
Like a surgeon!

LA FOOLE
For the mathematics: his square, his compasses, his brass pens, and black lead, to draw maps of every place and person where he comes.

CLERIMONT
How, maps of persons!

LA FOOLE
Yes, sir, of Nomentack, when he was here, and of the Prince of Moldavia, and of his mistress, Mistress Epicene.

CLERIMONT
Away! He has not found out her latitude, I hope.

LA FOOLE
You are a pleasant gentleman, sir.

[Re-enter DAW.]

CLERIMONT
Faith, now we are in private, let’s wanton it a little and talk waggishly. Sir John, I am telling Sir Amorous here that you two govern the ladies; where’er you come, you carry the feminine gender afore you.

DAW
They shall rather carry us afore them, if they will, sir.

CLERIMONT
Nay, I believe that they do, withal; but that you are the prime men in their affections, and direct all their actions−

DAW
Not I; Sir Amorous is.

LA FOOLE
I protest, Sir John is.

DAW
As I hope to rise in the state, Sir Amorous, you ha’ the person.

LA FOOLE
Sir John, you ha’ the person, and the discourse too.

DAW
Not I, sir. I have no discourse−and then you have activity beside.

LA FOOLE
I protest, Sir John, you come as high from Tripoly as I do every whit, and lift as many joined stools and leap over ’em, if you would use it−

CLERIMONT
Well, agree on’t together, knights, for between you you divide the kingdom or commonwealth of ladies’ affections: I see it and can perceive a little how they observe you, and fear you, indeed. You could tell strange stories, my masters, if you would, I know.

DAW
Faith, we have seen somewhat, sir.

LA FOOLE
That we have: velvet petticoats and wrought smocks or so.

DAW
Ay, and−

CLERIMONT
Nay, out with it, Sir John; do not envy your friend the pleasure of hearing, when you have had the delight of tasting.

DAW
Why−a−you speak, Sir Amorous.

LA FOOLE
No, do you, Sir John Daw.

DAW
I’ faith, you shall.

LA FOOLE
I’ faith, you shall.

DAW
Why, we have been−

LA FOOLE
In the great bed at Ware together in our time. On, Sir John.

DAW
Nay, do you, Sir Amorous.

CLERIMONT
And these ladies with you, knights?

LA FOOLE
No, excuse us, sir.

DAW
We must not wound reputation.

LA FOOLE
No matter; they were these, or others. Our bath cost us fifteen pound, when we came home.

CLERIMONT
Do you hear, Sir John, you shall tell me but one thing truly, as you love me.

DAW
If I can, I will, sir.

CLERIMONT
You lay in the same house with the bride here?

DAW
Yes, and conversed with her hourly, sir.

CLERIMONT
And what humour is she of? Is she coming and open, free?

DAW
Oh, exceeding open, sir. I was her servant, and Sir Amorous was to be.

CLERIMONT
Come, you have both had favours from her? I know and have heard so much.

DAW
Oh no, sir.

LA FOOLE
You shall excuse us, sir: we must not wound reputation.

CLERIMONT
Tut, she is married now, and you cannot hurt her with any report, and therefore speak plainly: how many times, i’ faith? Which of you led first? Ha?

LA FOOLE
Sir John had her maidenhead, indeed.

DAW
Oh, it pleases him to say so, sir, but Sir Amorous knows what is what as well.

CLERIMONT
Dost thou i’faith, Amorous?

LA FOOLE
In a manner, sir.

CLERIMONT
Why, I commend you lads. Little knows Don Bridegroom of this. Nor shall he, for me.

DAW
Hang him, mad ox.

CLERIMONT
Speak softly: here comes his nephew, with the Lady Haughty. He’ll get the ladies from you, sirs, if you look not to him in time.

LA FOOLE
Why, if he do, we’ll fetch them home again, I warrant you.

[Exeunt.]

ACT 5 SCENE 2

[Enter] HAUGHTY, DAUPHINE.

HAUGHTY
I assure you, Sir Dauphine, it is the price and estimation of your virtue only that hath embarked me to this adventure, and I could not but make out to tell you so; nor can I repent me of the act, since it is always an argument of some virtue in ourselves that we love and affect it so in others.

DAUPHINE
Your ladyship sets too high a price on my weakness.

HAUGHTY
Sir, I can distinguish gems from pebbles−

DAUPHINE
[Aside.] Are you so skilful in stones?

HAUGHTY
And howsover I may suffer in such a judgment as yours, by admitting equality of rank or society with Centaure or Mavis−

DAUPHINE
You do not, madam; I perceive they are your mere foils.

HAUGHTY
Then are you a friend to truth, sir. It makes me love you the more. It is not the outward but the inward man that I affect. They are not apprehensive of an eminent perfection, but love flat and dully.

CENTAURE
[Within.] Where are you, my lady Haughty?

HAUGHTY
I come presently, Centaure.−My chamber, sir, my page shall show you; and Trusty, my woman, shall be ever awake for you; you need not fear to communicate anything with her, for she is a Fidelia. I pray you wear this jewel for my sake, sir Dauphine. [Enter CENTAURE.] Where’s Mavis, Centaure?

CENTAURE
Within, madam, a-writing. I’ll follow you presently. I’ll but speak a word with Sir Dauphine.

[Exit HAUGHTY.]

DAUPHINE
With me, madam?

CENTAURE
Good Sir Dauphine, do not trust Haughty, nor make any credit to her, whatever you do besides. Sir Dauphine, I give you this caution: she is a perfect courtier and loves nobody but for her uses; and for her uses she loves all. Besides, her physicians give her out to be none o’ the clearest−whether she pay ’em or no, heav’n knows; and she’s above fifty too, and pargets! See her in a forenoon. Here comes Mavis, a worse face then she! You would not like this by candlelight. If you’ll come to my chamber one o’ these mornings early, or late in an evening, I’ll tell you more. [Enter MAVIS.] Where’s Haughty, Mavis?

MAVIS
Within, Centaure.

CENTAURE
What ha’ you there?

MAVIS
An Italian riddle for Sir Dauphine. (You shall not see it i’faith, Centaure.) Good sir Dauphine, solve it for me. I’ll call for it anon.

[Exeunt MAVIS and CENTAURE]

CLERIMONT
How now, Dauphine? How dost thou quit thyself of these females?

DAUPHINE
’Slight, they haunt me like fairies, and give me jewels here; I cannot be rid of ’em.

CLERIMONT
Oh, you must not tell though.

DAUPHINE
Mass, I forgot that; I was never so assaulted. One loves for virtue, and bribes me with this. Another loves me with caution, and so would possess me. A third brings me a riddle here, and all are jealous and rail each at other.

CLERIMONT
A riddle? Pray’ le’ me see’t? He reads the paper. Sir Dauphine, I chose this way of intimation for privacy. The ladies here, I know, have both hope and purpose to make a collegiate and servant of you. If I might be so honoured as to appear at any end of so noble a work, I would enter into a fame of taking physic tomorrow and continue it four or five days or longer, for your visitation. Mavis. −By my faith, a subtle one! Call you this a riddle? What’s their plain dealing, trow?

DAUPHINE
We lack Truewit to tell us that.

CLERIMONT
We lack him for somewhat else too: his knights reformados are wound up as high and insolent as ever they were.

DAUPHINE
You jest.

CLERIMONT
No drunkards, either with wine or vanity, ever confessed such stories of themselves. I would not give a fly’s leg in balance against all the women’s reputations here, if they could be but thought to speak truth; and for the bride, they have made their affidavit against her directly−

DAUPHINE
What, that they have lain with her?

CLERIMONT
Yes; and tell times and circumstances, with the cause why and the place where. I had almost brought ’em to affirm that they had done it today.

DAUPHINE
Not both of ’em?

CLERIMONT
Yes, faith; with a sooth or two more I had effected it. They would ha’ set it down under their hands.

DAUPHINE
Why, they will be our sport, I see, still! Whether we will or no.

ACT 5 SCENE 3

[Enter] TRUEWIT.

TRUEWIT
Oh, 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. And then the women (as I have given the bride her instructions) to break in upon him i’ the l’envoy. Oh, ‘twill be full and twanging! Away, fetch him. [Exit DAUPHINE.]Enter CUTBEARD disguised as a canon lawyer, OTTER as a divine.] Come, master doctor and master parson, look to your parts now and discharge ’em 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 yourselves 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.

[Enter DAUPHINE and MOROSE.]

MOROSE
Are these the two learned men?

TRUEWIT
Yes, sir; please you salute ’em?

MOROSE
Salute ’em? I had rather do anything 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.

TRUEWIT
’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.

OTTER
Please you, master doctor.

CUTBEARD
Please you, good master parson.

OTTER
I would hear the canon law speak first.

CUTBEARD
It must give place to positive divinity, sir.

MOROSE
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 suff’ring 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.

TRUEWIT
Well, good master doctor, will you break the ice? Master parson will wade after.

CUTBEARD
Sir, though unworthy, and the weaker, I will presume.

OTTER
’Tis no presumption, domine doctor.

MOROSE
Yet again!

CUTBEARD
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

MOROSE
No excursions upon words, good doctor; to the question briefly.

CUTBEARD
I answer then, the canon law affords divorce but in few cases, and the principal is in the common case, the adulterous case: But there are duodecim impedimenta, twelve impediments (as we call ’em) 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.

MOROSE
I understood you before; good sir, avoid your impertinency of translation.

OTTER
He cannot open this too much, sir, by your favour.

MOROSE
Yet more!

TRUEWIT
Oh, you must give the learned men leave, sir. To your impediments, master doctor.

CUTBEARD
The first is impedimentum erroris.

OTTER
Of which there are several species.

CUTBEARD
Ay, as error personae.

OTTER
If you contract yourself to one person, thinking her another.

CUTBEARD
Then, error fortunae.

OTTER
If she be a beggar, and you thought her rich.

CUTBEARD
Then, error qualitatis.

OTTER
If she prove stubborn or headstrong, that you thought obedient.

MOROSE
How? Is that, sir, a lawful impediment? One at once, I pray you, gentlemen.

OTTER
Ay, ante copulam, but not post copulam, sir.

CUTBEARD
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.

TRUEWIT
Alas, sir, what a hope are we fall’n from, by this time!

CUTBEARD
The next is conditio: if you thought her freeborn, and she prove a bondwoman, there is impediment of estate and condition.

OTTER
Ay, but master doctor, those servitudes are sublatae now, among us Christians.

CUTBEARD
By your favour, master parson−

OTTER
You shall give me leave, master doctor.

MOROSE
Nay, gentlemen, quarrel not in that question; it concerns not my case:pass to the third.

CUTBEARD
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.

OTTER
Ay. Do you know what the degrees are, sir?

MOROSE
No, nor I care not, sir; they offer me no comfort in the question, I am sure.

CUTBEARD
But there is a branch of this impediment may, which is cognatio spiritualis. If you were her godfather, sir, then the marriage is incestuous.

OTTER
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?

MOROSE
Oh me! To end the controversy, I never was a godfather, I never was a godfather in my life, sir. Pass to the next.

CUTBEARD
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?

MOROSE
No, I would rather she were of none, than be put to the trouble of it!

OTTER
You may have it done for you, sir.

MOROSE
By no means, good sir; on to the rest. Shall you ever come to an end, think you?

TRUEWIT
Yes, he has done half, sir. (On to the rest.) Be patient and expect, sir.

CUTBEARD
The seventh is vis: if it were upon compulsion or force.

MOROSE
Oh no, it was too voluntary, mine; too voluntary.

CUTBEARD
The eight is ordo: if ever she have taken holy orders.

OTTER
That’s supersitious too.

MOROSE
No matter, master parson: would she would go into a nunnery yet.

CUTBEARD
The ninth is ligament: if you were bound, sir, to any other before.

MOROSE
I thrust myself too soon into these fetters.

CUTBEARD
The tenth is publica honestas, which is inchoate quaedam affinitas.

OTTER
Ay, or affinitas orta ex sponsalibus, and is but leve impedimentum.

MOROSE
I feel no air of comfort blowing to me in all this.

CUTBEARD
The eleventh is affinitas ex fornicatione.

OTTER
Which is no less vera affinitas, than the other, master doctor.

CUTBEARD
True, quae oritur ex legitimo matrimonio.

OTTER
You say right, venerable doctor. And nascitur ex eo, quod per conjugium duae personae efficiuntur una caro

MOROSE
Heyday, now they begin.

CUTBEARD
I conceive you, master parson. Ita per fornicationem aeque est verus pater, qui sic generat

OTTER
Et vere filius qui sic generatur

MOROSE
What’s all this to me?

CLERIMONT
[Aside] Now it grows warm.

CUTBEARD
The twelfth and last is si forte coire nequibis.

OTTER
Ay, that is impedimentum gravissimum. It doth utterly annul and annihilate, that. If you have manifestam frigiditatem, you are well, sir.

TRUEWIT
Why, there is comfort come at length, sir. Confess yourself but a man unable, and she will sue to be divorced first.

OTTER
Ay, or if there be morbus perpetuus et insanabilis; as paralysis, elephantiasis, or so−

DAUPHINE
Oh, but frigiditas is the fairer way, gentlemen.

OTTER
You say troth, sir, and as it is in the canon, master doctor.

CUTBEARD
I conceive you, sir.

CLERIMONT
[Aside] Before he speaks!

OTTER
That ‘a boy or child under years is not fit for marriage because he cannot reddere debitum’. So your omnipotentes

TRUEWIT
[To Otter] Your impotentes, you whoreson lobster.

OTTER
Your impotentes, I should say, are minime apti ad contrahenda matrimonium.

TRUEWIT
[To Otter] Matrimonium? We shall have most unmatrimonial Latin with you: matrimonia, and be hanged.

DAUPHINE
[To Truewit] You put ’em out, man.

CUTBEARD
But then there will arise a doubt, master parson, in our case, post matrimonium: that frigiditate praeditus−(do you conceive me, sir?)

OTTER
Very well, sir.

CUTBEARD
Who cannot uti uxore pro uxore, may habere eam pro sorore.

OTTER
Absurd, absurd, absurd, and merely apostatical.

CUTBEARD
You shall pardon me, master parson, I can prove it.

OTTER
You can prove a will, master doctor, you can prove nothing else. Does not the verse of your own canon say, Haec socianda vetant conubia, facta retractant?

CUTBEARD
I grant you, but how do they retractare, master parson?

MOROSE
(Oh, this was it I feared.)

OTTER
In aeternum, sir.

CUTBEARD
That’s false in divinity, by your favour.

OTTER
’Tis false in humanity to say so. Is he not prorsus inutilis ad thorum? Can he praestare fidem datam? I would fain know.

CUTBEARD
Yes: how if he do convalere?

OTTER
He cannot convalere, it is impossible.

TRUEWIT
[To Morose] Nay, good sir, attend the learned men; they’ll think you neglect ’em else.

CUTBEARD
Or if he do simulare himself frigidum, odio uxoris, or so?

OTTER
I say he is adulter manifestus then.

DAUPHINE
(They dispute it very learnedly, i’faith.)

OTTER
And prostitutor uxoris, and this is positive.

MOROSE
Good sir, let me escape.

TRUEWIT
You will not do me that wrong, sir?

OTTER
And therefore, if he be manifeste frigidus, sir−

CUTBEARD
Ay, if he be manifeste frigidus, I grant you−

OTTER
Why, that was my conclusion.

CUTBEARD
And mine too.

TRUEWIT
Nay, hear the conclusion, sir.

OTTER
Then frigiditatis causa

CUTBEARD
Yes, causa frigiditatis

MOROSE
Oh, mine ears!

OTTER
She may have libellum divortii against you.

CUTBEARD
Ay, divortii libellum she will sure have.

MOROSE
Good echoes, forbear.

OTTER
If you confess it.

CUTBEARD
Which I would do, sir−

MOROSE
I will do anything−

OTTER
And clear myself in foro conscientiae

CUTBEARD
Because you want indeed−

MOROSE
Yet more?

OTTER
Exercendi potestate.

ACT 5 SCENE 4

[Enter] EPICENE, HAUGHTY, CENTAURE, MAVIS, MISTRESS OTTER, DAW, LA FOOLE.

EPICENE
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 earwigs about a husband, or scorpions to creep between man and wife−

MOROSE
Oh the variety and changes of my torment!

HAUGHTY
Let ’em be cudgelled out of doors by our grooms.

CENTAURE
I’ll lend you my footman.

MAVIS
We’ll have our men blanket ’em in the hall.

MISTRESS OTTER
As there was one at our house, madam, for peeping in at the door.

DAW
Content, i’faith.

TRUEWIT
Stay, ladies and gentlemen, you’ll hear before you proceed?

MAVIS
I’d ha’ the bridegroom blanketed too.

CENTAURE
Begin with him first.

HAUGHTY
Yes, by my troth.

MOROSE
Oh, mankind generation!

DAUPHINE
Ladies, for my sake forbear.

HAUGHTY
Yes, for Sir Dauphine’s sake.

CENTAURE
He shall command us.

LA FOOLE
He is as fine a gentleman of his inches, madam, as any is about the town, and wears as good colours when he lists.

TRUEWIT
[To Morose] Be brief, sir, and confess your infirmity, she’ll be afire 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.

MOROSE
Ladies, I must crave all your pardons−

TRUEWIT
Silence, ladies.

MOROSE
For a wrong I have done to your whole sex in marrying this fair and virtuous gentlewoman−

CLERIMONT
Hear him, good ladies.

MOROSE
Being guilty of an infirmity which, before I conferred with these learned men, I thought I might have concealed−

TRUEWIT
But now being better informed in his conscience by them, he is to declare it and give satisfaction by asking your public forgiveness.

MOROSE
I am no man, ladies.

ALL
How!

MOROSE
Utterly unabled in nature, by reason of frigidity, to perform the duties or any the least office of a husband.

MAVIS
Now out upon him, prodigious creature!

CENTAURE
Bridegroom uncarnate.

HAUGHTY
And would you offer it, to a young gentlewoman?

MISTRESS OTTER
A lady of her longings?

EPICENE
Tut, a device, a device, this, it smells rankly, ladies. A mere comment of his own.

TRUEWIT
Why, if you suspect that, ladies, you may have him searched.

DAW
As the custom is, by a jury of physicians.

LA FOOLE
Yes, faith, ’twill be brave.

MOROSE
Oh me, must I undergo that?

MISTRESS OTTER
No, let women search him, madam: we can do it ourselves.

MOROSE
Out on me, worse!

EPICENE
No, ladies, you shall not need; I’ll take him with all his faults.

MOROSE
Worst of all!

CLERIMONT
Why, then ’tis no divorce, doctor, if she consent not?

CUTBEARD
No, if the man be frigidus, it is de parte uxoris that we grant libellum divortii in the law.

OTTER
Ay, it is the same in theology.

MOROSE
Worse, worse than worst!

TRUEWIT
Nay, sir, be not utterly disheartened, we have yet a small relic of hope left, as near as our comfort is blown out. [To Clermimont] Clerimont, produce your brace of knights.− What was that, master parson, you told me in errore qualitatis, e’en now? [To Dauphine] Dauphine, whisper the bride that she carry it as if she were guilty and ashamed.

OTTER
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−

MOROSE
What then, sir?

OTTER
It doth dirimere contractum, and irritum reddere too.

TRUEWIT
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 FOOLE
You shall excuse us, Master Clerimont.

CLERIMONT
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?

TRUEWIT
[To Daw] Jack Daw, he’s worse then Sir Amorous, fiercer a great deal. [To La Foole] Sir Amorous, beware, there be ten Daws in this Clerimont.

LA FOOLE
I’ll confess it, sir.

DAW
Will you, Sir Amorous? Will you wound reputation?

LA FOOLE
I am resolved.

TRUEWIT
So should you be too, Jack Daw: what should keep you off? She is but a woman, and in disgrace. He’ll be glad on’t.

DAW
Will he? I thought he would ha’ been angry.

CLERIMONT
You will dispatch, knights; it must be done, i’faith.

TRUEWIT
Why, an’ it must, it shall, sir, they say. They’ll ne’er go back.
[To Daw and La Foole] Do not tempt his patience.

DAW
It is true indeed, sir?

LA FOOLE
Yes, I assure you, sir.

MOROSE
What is true, gentlemen? What do you assure me?

DAW
That we have known your bride, sir−

LA FOOLE
In good fashion. She was our mistress, or so−

CLERIMONT
Nay, you must be plain, knights, as you were to me.

OTTER
Ay, the question is, if you have carnaliter or no?

LA FOOLE
Carnaliter? What else, sir?

OTTER
It is enough: a plain nullity.

EPICENE
I am undone, I am undone!

MOROSE
Oh, let me worship and adore you, gentlemen!

EPICENE
I am undone!

MOROSE
Yes, to my hand, I thank these knights. Master parson, let me thank you otherwise.

[Gives Otter money.]

HAUGHTY
And ha’ they confessed?

MAVIS
Now out upon ’em, informers!

TRUEWIT
You see what creatures you may bestow your favours on, madams.

HAUGHTY
I would except against ‘em as beaten knights, wench, and not good witnesses in law.

MISTRESS OTTER
Poor gentlewoman, how she takes it!

HAUGHTY
Be comforted, Morose, I love you the better for’t.

CENTAURE
So do I, I protest.

CUTBEARD
But, gentlemen, you have not known her since matrimonium?

DAW
Not today, master doctor.

LA FOOLE
No, sir, not today.

CUTBEARD
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.

EPICENE
No, that he did not, I assure you, master doctor.

CUTBEARD
If he cannot prove that, it is ratum conjugium, notwithstanding the premises. And they do no way impedire. And this is my sentence, this I pronounce.

OTTER
I am of master doctor’s resolution too, sir, if you made not that demand ante nuptias.

MOROSE
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!

DAUPHINE
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 ’em. Sir, will it please you hear me?

MOROSE
Oh, do not talk to me, take not from me the pleasure of dying in silence, nephew.

DAUPHINE
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−

MOROSE
(It cannot be.)

DAUPHINE
Sir, that you be never troubled with a murmur of it more, what shall I hope for or deserve of you?

MOROSE
Oh, what thou wilt, nephew! Thou shalt deserve me and have me.

DAUPHINE
Shall I have your favour perfect to me, and love hereafter?

MOROSE
That and anything beside. Make thine own conditions. My whole estate is thine. Manage it, I will become thy ward.

DAUPHINE
Nay, sir, I will not be so unreasonable.

EPICENE
Will sir Dauphine be mine enemy too?

DAUPHINE
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−

MOROSE
Thou shalt have it, nephew. I will do it, and more.

DAUPHINE
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.

MOROSE
Where is the writing? I will seal to it, that, or to a blank, and write thine own conditions.

EPICENE
Oh me, most unfortunate wretched gentlewoman!

HAUGHTY
Will Sir Dauphine do this?

EPICENE
[Weeps.] Good sir, have some compassion on me.

MOROSE
Oh, my nephew knows you belike; away, crocodile!

HAUGHTY
He does it not, sure, without good ground.

DAUPHINE
Here, sir.

[Gives him papers.]

MOROSE
Come, nephew, give me the pen. I will subscribe to anything, 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− I will not take the advantage.

[Returns papers.]

DAUPHINE
Then here is your release, sir: He takes off Epicene’s peruke. 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?

OTTER
Yes sir, in primo gradu.

CUTBEARD
In primo gradu.

DAUPHINE
I thank you, good Doctor Cutbeard and Parson Otter. He pulls off their beards and disguise. You are beholden to ’em, sir, that have taken this pains for you; and my friend, Master Truewit, who enabled ’em for the business. Now you may go in and rest, be as private as you will, sir. I’ll not trouble you till you trouble me with your funeral, which I care not how soon it come. [Exit MOROSE.] 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?

CLERIMONT
A boy.

DAUPHINE
Yes, Mistress Epicene.

TRUEWIT
Well, Dauphine, you have lurched your friends of the better half of the garland, by concealing this part of the plot! But much good do it thee, thou deserv’st it, lad. And Clerimont, for thy unexpected bringing in these two to confession, wear my part of it freely. Nay, sir Daw and Sir La Foole, you see the gentlewoman that has done you the favours! We are all thankful to you, and so should the womankind here, specially for lying on her, though not with her! You meant so, I am sure? But that we have stuck it upon you today in your own imagined persons, and so lately, this Amazon, the champion of the sex, should beat you now thriftily for the common slanders which ladies receive from such cuckoos as you are. You are they that, when no merit or fortune can make you hope to enjoy their bodies, will yet lie with their reputations and make their fame suffer. Away, you common moths of these and all ladies’ honours. Go, travail to make legs and faces, and come home with some new matter to be laughed at: you deserve to live in an air as corrupted as that wherewith you feed rumour. [Exeunt DAW and LA FOOLE.] Madams, you are mute upon this new metamorphosis! But here stands she that has vindicated your fames. Take heed of such insectae hereafter. And let it not trouble you that you have discovered any mysteries to this young gentleman. He is (a’most) of years, and will make a good visitant within this twelvemonth. In the meantime we’ll all undertake for his secrecy, that can speak so well of his silence. [Coming forward.] Spectators, if you like this comedy, rise cheerfully, and now Morose is gone in, clap your hands. It may be that noise will cure him, at least please him.

[Exeunt.]

Licencia

The comedy was first acted in the year of 1609. By the Children of her Majesty’s Revels.

The principal comedians were
Nathan Field
Giles Carey
Hugh Attawell
John Smith
William Barksted
William Penn
Richard Allin
John Blaney

With the allowance of the Master of Revels.