A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Viii Part 8

Haste therefore each degree To welcome destiny: Heaven is our heritage, Earth but a player's stage.

Mount we unto the sky.

I am sick, I must die.

Lord, have mercy on us_!

SUM. Beshrew me, but thy song hath moved me.

WILL SUM. "Lord, have mercy on us," how lamentable 'tis!

_Enter_ VERTUMNUS, _with_ CHRISTMAS _and_ BACKWINTER.

VER. I have despatched, my lord; I have brought you them you sent me for.

WILL SUM. What say'st thou? hast thou made a good batch? I pray thee, give me a new loaf![128]

SUM. Christmas, how chance thou com'st not as the rest, Accompanied with some music or some song?

A merry carol would have grac'd thee well: Thy ancestors have us'd it heretofore.

CHRIST. Ay, antiquity was the mother of ignorance: this latter world, that sees but with her spectacles, hath spied a pad in those sports more than they could.

SUM. What, is't against thy conscience for to sing?

CHRIST. No, not to say, by my troth, if I may get a good bargain.

SUM. Why, thou should'st spend, thou should'st not care to get: Christmas is G.o.d of hospitality.

CHRIST. So will he never be of good husbandry. I may say to you, there is many an old G.o.d that is now grown out of fashion; so is the G.o.d of hospitality.

SUM. What reason canst thou give he should be left?

CHRIST. No other reason, but that gluttony is a sin, and too many dunghills are infectious. A man's belly was not made for a powdering beef-tub; to feed the poor twelve days, and let them starve all the year after, would but stretch out the guts wider than they should be, and so make famine a bigger den in their bellies than he had before. I should kill an ox, and have some such fellow as Milo to come and eat it up at a mouthful; or, like the Sybarites,[129] do nothing all one year but bid guests against the next year. The sc.r.a.ping of trenchers you think would put a man to no charges: it is not a hundred pound a year would serve the scullion in dishclouts. My house stands upon vaults; it will fall, if it be overladen with a mult.i.tude. Besides, have you never read of a city that was undermined and destroyed by moles? So, say I, keep hospitality and a whole fair of beggars bid me to dinner every day. What with making legs[130], when they thank me at their going away, and settling their wallets handsomely on their backs, they would shake as many lice on the ground as were able to undermine my house, and undo me utterly. Is it their prayers would build it again, if it were overthrown by this vermin, would it? I pray, who began feasting and gormandis[ing]

first, but Sardanapalus, Nero, Heliogabalus, Commodus? tyrants, wh.o.r.emasters, unthrifts. Some call them emperors, but I respect no crowns but crowns in the purse. Any man may wear a silver crown that hath made a fray in Smithfield, and lost but a piece of his brain-pan; and to tell you plain, your golden crowns are little better in substance, and many times got after the same sort.

SUM. Gross-headed sot! how light he makes of state!

AUT. Who treadeth not on stars, when they are fall'n?

Who talketh not of states, when they are dead?

A fool conceits no further than he sees, He hath no sense of aught but what he feels.

CHRIST. Ay, ay; such wise men as you come to beg at such fools' doors as we be.

AUT. Thou shutt'st thy door; how should we beg of thee?

No alms but thy sink carries from thy house.

WILL SUM. And I can tell you that's as plentiful alms for the plague as the Sheriff's tub to them of Newgate.

AUT. For feast thou keepest none; cankers thou feed'st.

The worms will curse thy flesh another day, Because it yieldeth them no fatter prey.

CHRIST. What worms do another day, I care not, but I'll be sworn upon a whole kilderkin of single beer, I will not have a worm-eaten nose, like a pursuivant, while I live. Feasts are but puffing up of the flesh, the purveyors for diseases; travel, cost, time, ill-spent. O, it were a trim thing to send, as the Romans did, round about the world for provision for one banquet. I must rig ships to Samos for peac.o.c.ks; to Paphos for pigeons; to Austria for oysters; to Phasis for pheasants; to Arabia for phoenixes; to Meander for swans; to the Orcades for geese; to Phrygia for woodc.o.c.ks; to Malta for cranes; to the Isle of Man for puffins; to Ambracia for goats; to Tartole for lampreys; to Egypt for dates; to Spain for chestnuts--and all for one feast.

WILL SUM. O sir, you need not: you may buy them at London better cheap.

CHRIST. _Liberalitas liberalitate perit_; Love me little, and love me long[131]: our feet must have wherewithal to feed the stones: our backs, walls of wool to keep out the cold that besiegeth our warm blood; our doors must have bars, our doublets must have b.u.t.tons. Item, for an old sword to sc.r.a.pe the stones before the door with; three halfpence for st.i.tching a wooden tankard that was burst. These water-bearers will empty the conduit and a man's coffers at once. Not a porter that brings a man a letter but will have his penny. I am afraid to keep past one or two servants, lest (hungry knaves) they should rob me; and those I keep (I warrant) I do not pamper up too l.u.s.ty. I keep them under with red herring and poor John all the year long. I have dammed up all my chimneys for fear (though I burn nothing but small coal) my house should be set on fire with the smoke. I will not dine[132] but once in a dozen year, when there is a great rot of sheep, and I know not what to do with them; I keep open house for all the beggars in some of my out-yards: marry, they must bring bread with them; I am no baker.

WILL SUM. As good men as you, and have thought it no scorn to serve their 'prenticeships on the pillory.

SUM. Winter, is this thy son? Hear'st how he talks?

WIN. I am his father, therefore may not speak, But otherwise I could excuse his fault.

SUM. Christmas, I tell thee plain, thou art a snudge[133], And were't not that we love thy father well, Thou shouldst have felt what 'longs to avarice.

It is the honour of n.o.bility To keep high-days and solemn festivals; Then to set their magnificence to view, To frolic open with their favourites, And use their neighbours with all courtesy; When thou in hugger-mugger[134] spend'st thy wealth.

Amend thy manners, breathe thy rusty gold; Bounty will win thee love, when thou art old.

WILL SUM. Ay, that bounty I would fain meet, to borrow money of; he is fairly bless'd now-a-days, that 'scapes blows when he begs. _Verba dandi et reddendi_ go together in the grammar rule: there is no giving but with condition of restoring.

Ah! _benedicite_: Well is he hath no necessity Of gold nor of sustenance: Slow good hap comes by chance; Flattery best fares; Arts are but idle wares: Fair words want giving hands, The _Lento_[135] begs that hath no lands.

Fie on thee, thou scurvy knave, That hast nought, and yet goes brave: A prison be thy deathbed, Or be hang'd all save the head.

SUM. Back-winter, stand forth.

VER. Stand forth, stand forth: hold up your head; speak out.

BACK-WIN. What should I stand, or whither should I go?

SUM. Autumn accuses thee of sundry crimes, Which here thou art to clear or to confess.

BACK-WIN. With thee or Autumn have I nought to do, I would you both were hanged, face to face.

SUM. Is this the reverence that thou ow'st to us?

BACK-WIN. Why not? What art thou? shalt thou always live?

AUT. It is the veriest dog in Christendom.

WIN. That's for he barks at such as knave as thou.

BACK-WIN. Would I could bark the sun out of the sky; Turn moon and stars to frozen meteors, And make the ocean a dry land of ice!

With tempest of my breath turn up high trees, On mountains heap up second mounts of snow Which, melted into water, might fall down, As fell the deluge on the former world!

I hate the air, the fire, the spring, the year, And whatsoe'er brings mankind any good.

O that my looks were lightning to blast fruits!

Would I with thunder presently might die, So I might speak in thunder to slay men.

Earth, if I cannot injure thee enough, I'll bite thee with my teeth, I'll scratch thee thus: I'll beat down the part.i.tion with my heels, That, as a mud-vault, severs h.e.l.l and thee.

Spirits, come up! 'tis I that knock for you; One that envies[136] the world far more than you.

Come up in millions! millions are too few To execute the malice I intend.

SUM. _O scelus inauditum, O vox d.a.m.natorum_!

Not raging Hecuba, whose hollow eyes Gave suck to fifty sorrows at one time, That midwife to so many murders was, Us'd half the execrations that thou dost.