A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Ix Part 26

[_Exeunt_.

ACTUS I., SCAENA 4.

PHILOMUSUS _in a physician's habit_: STUDIOSO, _that is_, JAQUES _man, and_ PATIENT.

PHILOMUSUS.

t.i.t, t.i.t, t.i.t, non point;[62] non debet fieri phlebotomia in coitu Lunae.

Here is a recipe.

PATIENT.

A recipe?

PHILOMUSUS.

Nos Gallia non curamus quant.i.tatem syllabarum: let me hear how many stools you do make. Adieu, monsieur: adieu, good monsieur.--What, Jaques, il n'y a personne apres ici?

STUDIOSO.

Non.

PHILOMUSUS.

Then let us steal time for this borrowed shape, Recounting our unequal haps of late: Late did the ocean grasp us in his arms; Late did we live within a stranger air, Late did we see the cinders of great Rome: We thought that English fugitives there ate Gold for restorative, if gold were meat.

Yet now we find by bought experience That, wheresoe'er we wander up and down On the round shoulders of this ma.s.sy world, Or our ill-fortunes or the world's ill-eye Forespeak our good, procure[63] our misery.

STUDIOSO.

So oft the northern wind with frozen wings Hath beat the flowers that in our garden grew, Thrown down the stalks of our aspiring youth; So oft hath winter nipp'd our trees' fair rind, That now we seem nought but two bared boughs, Scorn'd by the basest bird that chirps in grove.

Nor Rome, nor Rhemes, that wonted are to give A cardinal cap to discontented clerks, That have forsook the home-bred, thatched[64] roofs, Yielded us any equal maintenance: And it's as good to starve 'mongst English swine, As in a foreign land to beg and pine.

PHILOMUSUS.

I'll scorn the world, that scorneth me again.

STUDIOSO.

I'll vex the world, that works me so much pain.

PHILOMUSUS.

Thy[65] lame revenging power the world well weens.

STUDIOSO.

Flies have their spleen, each silly ant his teens.

PHILOMUSUS.

We have the words, they the possession have.

STUDIOSO.

We all are equal in our latest grave.

PHILOMUSUS.

Soon then, O, soon may we both graved be.

STUDIOSO.

Who wishes death doth wrong wise destiny.

PHILOMUSUS.

It's wrong to force life-loathing men to breathe.

STUDIOSO.

It's sin 'fore doomed day to wish thy death.

PHILOMUSUS.

Too late our souls flit to their resting-place.

STUDIOSO.

Why, man's whole life is but a breathing s.p.a.ce.

PHILOMUSUS.

A painful minute seems a tedious year.

STUDIOSO.

A constant mind eternal woes will bear.

PHILOMUSUS.

When shall our souls their wearied lodge forego?

STUDIOSO.

When we have tired misery and woe.

PHILOMUSUS.

Soon may then fates this gaol[66]-deliver send us: Small woes vex long, [but] great woes quickly end us. But let's leave this capping of rhymes, Studioso, and follow our late device, that we may maintain our heads in caps, our bellies in provender, and our backs in saddle and bridle.

Hitherto we have sought all the honest means we could to live, and now let us dare _aliqua brevibus gyris[67] et carcere dignum_; let us run through all the lewd forms of lime-twig, purloining villanies; let us prove coneycatchers, bawds, or anything, so we may rub out. And first my plot for playing the French doctor--that shall hold; our lodging stands here fitly[68] in Shoe Lane: for, if our comings-in be not the better, London may shortly throw an old shoe after us; and with those shreds of French that we gathered up in our host's house in Paris, we'll gull the world, that hath in estimation foreign physicians: and if any of the hidebound brethren of Cambridge and Oxford, or any of those stigmatic masters of art that abused us in times pa.s.s'd, leave their own physicians, and become our patients, we'll alter quite the style of them; for they shall never hereafter write, Your lordship's most bounden, but, Your lordship's most laxative.

STUDIOSO.

It shall be so: see what a little vermin poverty altereth a whole milky disposition.

PHILOMUSUS.

So then myself straight with revenge I'll sate.[69]

STUDIOSO.

Provoked patience grows intemperate.

ACTUS I, SCAENA 5.

_Enter_ RICHARDETTO, JAQUES, _Scholar learning French_.

JAQUES.