Page images
PDF
EPUB

in the collar; and I will once turn dog-leech: stand from about me, or you'll find me terrible and furious.

Nit. Ladies, good ladies, dear madam, Morosa! Flo. Honest Secco!

Sil. What was the cause? what wrong has he done to thee?

Clar. Why dost thou fright us so, and art so peremptory

Where we are present, fellow?

Mor. Honey-bird, spouse, cat-a-mountain! ah, the child, the pretty poor child, the sweet-faced child!

Spa. That very word halters the earwig.

Sec. Off I say, or I shall lay bare all the naked truth to your faces! his fore-parts have been too lusty, and his posteriors must do penance for't. Untruss, whiskin, untruss! away, burs! out mare-hag mule! avaunt! thy turn comes next,' avaunt! the horns of my rage are advanced; hence, or I shall gore ye!

Spa. Lash him soundly; let the little ape show

tricks.

Nit. Help, or I shall be throttled!

Mor. Yes, I will help thee, pretty heart; if my tongue cannot prevail, my nails shall. Barbarous minded man, let go, or I shall use my talons. [They fight.

5 Avaunt! thy turn comes next,] The printer has repeated these words by mistake: they are now removed from the text.

Spa. Well played, dog; well played, bear! sa, sa, sa! to't, to't!

Sec. Fury, whore, bawd, my wife and the devil! Mor. Toss-pot, stinkard, pandar, my husband and a rascal!

Spa. Scold, coxcomb, baggage, cuckold!
Crabbed age and youth

Cannot jump together;
One is like good luck,

T'other like foul weather.

Troy. Let us fall in now.--(Comes forward with CAST.) What uncivil rudeness Dares offer a disturbance to this company ? Peace and delights dwell here, not brawls and outrage:

Sirrah, be sure you show some reasons why You so forget your duty, quickly show it, Or I shall tame your choler; what's the ground on't? Spa. Humph, how's that? how's that? is he there, with a wannion?! then do I begin to dwindle.-O, oh! the fit, the fit; the fit's upon me now, now, now, now! Sec. It shall out. First then, know all Christian people, Jews, and infidels, he's and she's, by

[Aside.

Crabbed age and youth, &c.] This is patched up from a despicable ditty in the Passionate Pilgrim; foolishly attributed to Shakspeare. Spadone seems to have a sort of natural taste for these tuneful parodies.

"With a wannion.] A kind of petty imprecation, often used by our old dramatists, and equivalent to the modern vulgarism with a vengeance! with a plague! &c. See the Introduction, p. cxlvi. What follows is the burden of an old song, not worth quoting. It is found also in Shirley.

these presents, that I am a beast; see what I say, I say a very beast.

Troy. 'Tis granted.

Sec. Go to, then; a horned beast, a goodly tall, horned beast; in pure verity, a cuckold :nay, I will tickle their trangdidos.

-.

Mor. Ah, thou base fellow! would'st thou confess it an it were so? but 'tis not so; and thou liest, and loudly.

Troy. Patience, Morosa:-you are, you say, a cuckold?

Sec. I'll justify my words, I scorn to eat them; this sucking ferret hath been wriggling in my old coney-burrow.

Mor. The boy, the babe, the infant! I spit at thee.

Cast. Fie, Secco, fie.

Sec. Appear, Spadone! my proofs are pregnant and gross; truth is the truth; I must and I will be divorced: speak, Spadone, and exalt thy voice.

Spa. Who? I speak? alas, I cannot speak, I. Nit. As I hope to live to be a man

Sec. Damn the prick of thy weason-pipe !— where but two lie in a bed, you must be bodkin, bitch-baby, must you?-Spadone, am I a cuckold or no cuckold?

Spa. Why, you know I [am] an ignorant, unable trifle in such business; an oaf, a simple alcatote, an innocent."

A simple alcatote, an innocent.] This is pretty nearly the sense which the word still bears in the North of Devon; where I have

Sec. Nay, nay, nay, no matter for that; this ramkin hath tupp'd my old rotten carrion-mutton. Mor. Rotten in thy maw, thy guts and garbage!

Sec. Spadone, speak aloud what I am.
Spa. I do not know.

Sec. What hast thou seen them doing together? doing?

Spa. Nothing.

Mor. Are thy mad brains in thy mazer now, thou jealous bedlam?

Sec. Didst not thou, from time to time, tell me as much?

Spa. Never.

Sec. Hey-day! ladies and signor, I am abused; they are agreed to scorn, jeer, and run me out of my wits, by consent. This gelded hobet-a-hoy is a corrupted pandar, this page a milk-livered dildoe, my wife a whore confest, and I myself a cuckold arrant.

Spa. Truly, Secco, for the ancient good woman I dare swear point-blank; and the boy, surely, I ever said, was to any man's thinking, a very chrisome in the thing you wot; that's my opinion clearly.

Clar. What a wise goose-cap hast thou shew'd thyself!

frequently heard it; to Ford it must have been quite familiar. Totle and alcatotle are both used in the Exmoor Dialogues, as in the text, for "silly elf, or foolish oaf."

[ocr errors]

9 A very chrisome] i, e. an infant, a child within the first month. Thus Fuller, in a pretty passage, They say when Crysomes (infants, as he explains it) smile, it is because of some intercourse between them and their guardian angels."

Sec. Here in my forehead it sticks, and stick it shall. Law I will have: I will never more tumble in sheets with thee, I will father no misbegotten of thine; the court shall trounce thee, the city cashier thee, diseases devour thee, and the spittle confound thee. [Exit. Cast. The man has dream'd himself into a lu

nacy.

Sil. Alas, poor Nitido!

Nit. Truly, I am innocent.

Mor. Marry art thou; so thou art. The world says, how virtuously I have carried my good name in every part about me these threescore years and odd; and at last to slip with a child! there are men, men enough, tough and lusty, I hope, if one would give their mind to the iniquity of the flesh; but this is the life I have led with him a while, since when he lies by me as cold as a dry stone. Troy. This only, ladies, is a fit of novelty; All will be reconciled.-I doubt, Spadone, your hand in this, howe'er denied.

Here is

Spa. Faithfully, in truth forsooth

Troy. Well, well, enough.-Morosa, be less troubled;

This little jarr is argument of love,

It will prove lasting.-Beauties, I attend you. [Exeunt all but SPA. and NIT. Spa. Youngling, a word, youngling; have not you scaped the lash handsomely? thank me for't. Nit. I fear thy roguery, and I shall find it. Spa. Is't possible? Give me thy little fist; we

« PreviousContinue »