A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Viii Part 3

SUM. Hypocrisy, how it can change his shape!

How base is pride from his own dunghill put!

How I have rais'd thee, Sol. I list not tell, Out of the ocean of adversity, To sit in height of honour's glorious heaven, To be the eyesore[43] of aspiring eyes: To give the day her life from thy bright looks, And let nought thrive upon the face of earth, From which thou shalt withdraw thy powerful smiles.

What hast thou done, deserving such high grace?

What industry or meritorious toil Canst thou produce to prove my gift well-placed?

Some service or some profit I expect: None is promoted but for some respect.

SOL. My lord, what need these terms betwixt us two?

Upbraiding ill-beseems your bounteous mind: I do you honour for advancing me.

Why, 'tis a credit for your excellence To have so great a subject as I am: This is your glory and magnificence, That, without stooping of your mightiness, Or taking any whit from your high state, You can make one as mighty as yourself.

AUT. O arrogance exceeding all belief!

Summer, my lord, this saucy upstart Jack, That now doth rule the chariot of the sun, And makes all stars derive their light from him, Is a most base, insinuating slave, The sum[44] of parsimony and disdain; One that will shine on friends and foes alike, That under brightest smiles hideth black show'rs Whose envious breath doth dry up springs and lake And burns the gra.s.s, that beasts can get no food.

WIN. No dunghill hath so vile an excrement, But with his beams he will thenceforth exhale.

The fens and quagmires t.i.the to him their filth: Forth purest mines he sucks a gainful dross.

Green ivy-bushes at the vintner's doors He withers, and devoureth all their sap.

AUT. Lascivious and intemperate he is: The wrong of Daphne is a well-known tale.

Each evening he descends to Thetis' lap, The while men think he bathes him in the sea.

O, but when he returneth whence he came Down to the west, then dawns his deity, Then doubled is the swelling of his looks.

He overloads his car with orient gems, And reins his fiery horses with rich pearl.

He terms himself the G.o.d of poetry, And setteth wanton songs unto the lute.

WIN. Let him not talk, for he hath words at will, And wit to make the baldest[45] matter good.

SUM. Bad words, bad wit! O, where dwells faith or truth?

Ill usury my favours reap from thee, Usurping Sol, the hate of heaven and earth.

SOL. If envy unconfuted may accuse, Then innocence must uncondemned die.

The name of martyrdom offence hath gain'd When fury stopp'd a froward judge's ears.

Much I'll not say (much speech much folly shows): What I have done you gave me leave to do.

The excrements you bred whereon I feed; To rid the earth of their contagious fumes, With such gross carriage did I load my beam I burnt no gra.s.s, I dried no springs and lakes; I suck'd no mines, I wither'd no green boughs, But when to ripen harvest I was forc'd To make my rays more fervent than I wont.

For Daphne's wrongs and 'scapes in Thetis' lap, All G.o.ds are subject to the like mishap.

Stars daily fall ('tis use is all in all), And men account the fall but nature's course.

Vaunting my jewels hasting to the west, Or rising early from the grey-ey'd morn, What do I vaunt but your large bountyhood, And show how liberal a lord I serve?

Music and poetry, my two last crimes, Are those two exercises of delight, Wherewith long labours I do weary out.

The dying swan is not forbid to sing: The waves of Hebrus[46] play'd on Orpheus' strings, When he (sweet music's trophy) was destroy'd.

And as for poetry, words'[47] eloquence (Dead Phaeton's three sisters' funeral tears That by the G.o.ds were to Electrum turn'd), Not flint or rock, of icy cinders flam'd, Deny the force[48] of silver-falling streams.

Envy enjoyeth poetry's unrest;[49]

In vain I plead; well is to me a fault, And these my words seem the sleight[50] web of art, And not to have the taste of sounder truth.

Let none but fools be car'd for of the wise: Knowledge' own children knowledge most despise.

SUM. Thou know'st too much to know to keep the mean: He that sees all things oft sees not himself.

The Thames is witness of thy tyranny, Whose waves thou dost exhaust for winter show'rs.

The naked channel 'plains her of thy spite, That laid'st her entrails unto open sight.[51]

Unprofitably borne to man and beast, Which like to Nilus yet doth hide his head, Some few years since[52] thou lett'st o'erflow these walks, And in the horse-race headlong ran at race, While in a cloud thou hidd'st thy burning face.

Where was thy care to rid contagious filth, When some men wet-shod (with his waters) droop'd?[53]

Others that ate the eels his heat cast up Sicken'd and died by them impoisoned.

Sleptest, or kept'st thou then Admetus' sheep, Thou drov'st not back these flowings of the deep?

SOL. The winds, not I, have floods and tides in chase.

Diana, whom our fables call the moon, Only commandeth o'er the raging main: She leads his wallowing offspring up and down, She waning, all streams ebb: in the year She was eclips'd, when that the Thames was bare.

SUM. A bare conjecture, builded on per-haps.[54]

In laying thus the blame upon the moon, Thou imitat'st subtle Pythagoras Who, what he would the people should believe, The same he wrote with blood upon a gla.s.s, And turn'd it opposite 'gainst the new moon, Whose beams, reflecting on it with full force, Show'd all those lines to them that stood behind, Most plainly writ in circle of the moon: And then he said: not I, but the new moon, Fair Cynthia, persuades you this and that.

With like collusion shalt thou now blind me; But for abusing both the moon and me Long shalt thou be eclipsed by the moon, And long in darkness live and see no light-- Away with him, his doom hath no reverse!

SOL. What is eclips'd will one day shine again: Though winter frowns, the spring will ease my pain.

Time from the brow doth wipe out every stain.

[_Exit_ SOL.

WILL SUM. I think the sun is not so long in pa.s.sing through the twelve signs, as the son of a fool hath been disputing here about _had I wist_.[55] Out of doubt, the poet is bribed of some that have a mess of cream to eat, before my lord go to bed yet, to hold him half the night with raff-raff of the rumming of Elinor.[56] If I can tell what it means, pray G.o.d I may never get breakfast more, when I am hungry. Troth, I am of opinion he is one of those hieroglyphical writers, that by the figures of beasts, plants, and of stones, express the mind, as we do in A B C; or one that writes under hair, as I have heard of a certain notary, Histiaesus,[57] who, following Darius in the Persian wars, and desirous to disclose some secrets of import to his friend Aristagoras, that dwelt afar off, found out this means. He had a servant, that had been long sick of a pain in his eyes, whom, under pretence of curing his malady, he shaved from one side of his head to the other, and with a soft pencil wrote upon his scalp (as on parchment) the discourse of his business, the fellow all the while imagining his master had done nothing but 'noint his head with a feather. After this he kept him secretly in his tent, till his hair was somewhat grown, and then willed him to go to Aristagoras into the country, and bid him shave him as he had done, and he should have perfect remedy. He did so, Aristagoras shaved him with his own hands, read his friend's letter, and when he had done, washed it out, that no man should perceive it else, and sent him home to buy him a nightcap. If I wist there were any such knavery, or Peter Bales's brachygraphy,[58] under Sol's bushy hair, I would have a barber, my host of the Murrion's Head, to be his interpreter, who would whet his razor on his Richmond cap, and give him the terrible cut like himself, but he would come as near as a quart pot to the construction of it. To be sententious, not superfluous, Sol should have been beholding to the barber, and not to the beard-master.[59] Is it pride that is shadowed under this two-legg'd sun, that never came nearer heaven than Dubber's hill? That pride is not my sin, Sloven's Hall, where I was born, be my record. As for covetousness, intemperance, and exaction, I meet with nothing in a whole year but a cup of wine for such vices to be conversant in. _Pergite porro_, my good children,[60] and multiply the sins of your absurdities, till you come to the full measure of the grand hiss, and you shall hear how we shall purge rheum with censuring your imperfections.

SUM. Vertumnus, call Orion.

VER. Orion, Urion, Arion; My lord thou must look upon. Orion, gentleman dog-keeper, huntsman, come into the court: look you bring all hounds and no bandogs. Peace there, that we may hear their horns blow.

_Enter_ ORION _like a hunter, with a horn about his neck, all his men after the same sort hallooing and blowing their horns_.

ORION. Sirrah, was't thou that call'd us from our game?

How durst thou (being but a petty G.o.d) Disturb me in the entrance of my sports?

SUM. 'Twas I, Orion, caus'd thee to be call'd.

ORION. 'Tis I, dread lord, that humbly will obey.

SUM. How happ'st thou left'st the heavens to hunt below?

As I remember thou wert Hyrieus'[61] son, Whom of a huntsman Jove chose for a star, And thou art call'd the Dog-star, art thou not?

AUT. Please it, your honour, heaven's circ.u.mference Is not enough for him to hunt and range, But with those venom-breathed curs he leads, He comes to chase health from our earthly bounds.

Each one of those foul-mouthed, mangy dogs Governs a day (no dog but hath his day):[62]

And all the days by them so governed The dog-days hight; infectious fosterers Of meteors from carrion that arise, And putrified bodies of dead men, Are they engender'd to that ugly shape, Being nought else but [ill-]preserv'd corruption.

'Tis these that, in the entrance of their reign, The plague and dangerous agues have brought in.

They arre[63] and bark at night against the moon, For fetching in fresh tides to cleanse the streets, They vomit flames and blast the ripen'd fruits: They are death's messengers unto all those That sicken, while their malice beareth sway.

ORION. A tedious discourse built on no ground.

A silly fancy, Autumn, hast thou told, Which no philosophy doth warrantise, No old-received poetry confirms.

I will not grace thee by refuting thee; Yet in a jest (since thou rail'st so 'gainst dogs) I'll speak a word or two in their defence.

That creature's best that comes most near to men; That dogs of all come nearest, thus I prove: First, they excel us in all outward sense, Which no one of experience will deny: They hear, they smell, they see better than we.

To come to speech, they have it questionless, Although we understand them not so well.

They bark as good old Saxon as may be, And that in more variety than we.

For they have one voice when they are in chase: Another when they wrangle for their meat: Another when we beat them out of doors.

That they have reason, this I will allege; They choose those things that are most fit for them, And shun the contrary all that they may.[64]

They know what is for their own diet best, And seek about for't very carefully.

At sight of any whip they run away, As runs a thief from noise of hue and cry.

Nor live they on the sweat of others' brows, But have their trades to get their living with-- Hunting and coneycatching, two fine arts.

Yea, there be of them, as there be of men, Of every occupation more or less: Some carriers, and they fetch; some watermen, And they will dive and swim when you bid them; Some butchers, and they worry sheep by night; Some cooks, and they do nothing but turn spits.

Chrysippus holds dogs are logicians, In that, by study and by canva.s.sing, They can distinguish 'twixt three several things: As when he cometh where three broad ways meet, And of those three hath stay'd at two of them, By which he guesseth that the game went not, Without more pause he runneth on the third; Which, as Chrysippus saith, insinuates As if he reason'd thus within himself: Either he went this, that, or yonder way, But neither that nor yonder, therefore this.