A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Ix Part 52

PETER PLOD-ALL.

Marry, with my lands and livings my father has promised me.

LELIA.

I have heard much of your wealth, but I never knew you manners before now.

PETER PLOD-ALL.

Faith, I have no manors, but a pretty home-stall; and we have great store of oxen and horses, and carts and ploughs and household-stuff 'bomination, and great flocks of sheep, and flocks of geese and capons, and hens and ducks. O, we have a fine yard of pullen! And, thank G.o.d, here's a fine weather for my father's lambs.

LELIA.

I cannot live content in discontent: For as no music can delight the ears, Where all the parts of discords are composed.

So wedlock-bands will still consist in jars, Where in condition there's no sympathy; Then rest yourself contented with this answer-- I cannot love.

PETER PLOD-ALL.

It's no matter what you say: for my father told me thus much before I came, that you would be something nice at first; but he bad me like you ne'er the worse for that, for I were the liker to speed.

LELIA.

Then you were best leave off your suit till Some other time: and when my leisure serves me To love you, I'll send you word.

PETER PLOD-ALL.

Will you? well then I'll take my leave of you; and if I may hear from you, I'll pay the messenger well for his pains. But stay--G.o.d's death! I had almost forgot myself! pray ye, let me kiss your hand, ere I go.

NURSE.

Faith, mistress, his mouth runs a-water for a kiss; a little would serve his turn, belike: let him kiss your hand.

LELIA.

I'll not stick for that. [_He kisseth her hand_.

PETER PLOD-ALL.

Mistress Lelia, G.o.d be with you.

LELIA.

Farewell, Peter. [_Exit_ PETER.

Thus lucre's set in golden chair of state, When learning's bid stand by, and keeps aloof: This greedy humour fits my father's vein, Who gapes for nothing but for golden gain.

_Enter_ CHURMS.

NURSE.

Mistress, take heed you speak nothing that will bear action, for here comes Master Churms the pettifogger.

CHURMS.

Mistress Lelia, rest you merry: what's the reason you and your nurse walk here alone?

LELIA.

Because, sir, we desire no other company but our own.

CHURMS.

Would I were then your own, that I might keep you company.

NURSE.

O sir, you and he that is her own are far asunder.

CHURMS.

But if she please, we may be nearer.

LELIA.

That cannot be; mine own is nearer than myself: And yet myself, alas! am not mine own.

Thoughts, fears, despairs, ten thousand dreadful dreams, Those are mine own, and those do keep me company.

CHURMS.

Before G.o.d, I must confess, your father is too cruel, To keep you thus sequester'd from the world, To spend your prime of youth thus in obscurity, And seek to wed you to an idiot fool, That knows not how to use himself: Could my deserts but answer my desires, I swear by Sol, fair Phoebus' silver eye, My heart would wish no higher to aspire, Than to be grac'd with Lelia's love.

By Jesus, I cannot play the dissembler, And woo my love with courting ambages, Like one whose love hangs on his smooth tongue's end; But, in a word, I tell the sum of my desires, I love fair Lelia: By her my pa.s.sions daily are increas'd; And I must die, unless by Lelia's love they be releas'd.

LELIA.

Why, Master Churms, I had thought that you had been my father's great councillor in all these actions.

CHURMS.

Nay, d.a.m.n me, if I be: by heav'ns, sweet nymph, I am not!

NURSE.

Master Churms, you are one can do much with her father: and if you love as you say, persuade him to use her more kindly, and give her liberty to take her choice; for these made marriages prove not well.

CHURMS.

I protest I will.

LELIA.

So Lelia shall accept thee as her friend:-- Meanwhile, nurse, let's in: My long absence, I know, will make my father muse.

[_Exeunt_ LELIA and NURSE.

CHURMS.

_So Lelia shall accept thee as her friend_:--who can but ruminate upon these words? Would she had said, her love: but 'tis no matter; first creep, and then go; now her friend: the next degree is Lelia's love.

Well, I'll persuade her father to let her have a little more liberty.

But soft; I'll none of that neither: so the scholar may chance cosen me.

Persuade him to keep her in still: and before she'll have Peter Plod-all, she'll have anybody; and so I shall be sure that Sophos shall never come at her. Why, I'll warrant ye, she'll be glad to run away with me at length. Hang him that has no shifts. I promised Sophos to further him in his suit; but if I do, I'll be pecked to death with hens. I swore to Gripe I would persuade Lelia to love Peter Plod-all; but, G.o.d forgive me, 'twas the furthest end of my thought. Tut! what's an oath? every man for himself: I'll shift for one, I warrant ye.

[_Exit_.

_Enter_ FORTUNATUS _solus_.

FORTUNATUS.

Thus have I pa.s.s'd the beating billows of the sea, By Ithac's rocks and wat'ry Neptune's bounds: And wafted safe from Mars his b.l.o.o.d.y fields, Where trumpets sound tantara to the fight, And here arriv'd for to repose myself Upon the borders of my native soil.

Now, Fortunatus, bend thy happy course Unto thy father's house, to greet thy dearest friends; And if that still thy aged sire survive, Thy presence will revive his drooping spirits, And cause his wither'd cheeks be sprent with youthful blood, Where death of late was portray'd to the quick.

But, soft; who comes here? [_Stand aside_.

_Enter_ ROBIN GOODFELLOW.

ROBIN GOODFELLOW.

I wonder I hear not of Master Churms; I would fain know how he speeds, and what success he has in Lelia's love. Well, if he cosen the scholar of her, 'twould make my worship laugh; and if he have her, he may say,--G.o.damercy, Robin Goodfellow: O, ware a good head as long as you live. Why, Master Gripe, he casts beyond the moon, and Churms is the only man he puts in trust with his daughter; and, I'll warrant, the old churl would take it upon his salvation that he will persuade her to marry Peter Plod-all. But I will make a fool of Peter Plod-all; I'll look him in the face, and pick his purse, whilst Churms cosen him of his wench, and my old grandsire Holdfast of his daughter: and if he can do so, I'll teach him a trick to cosen him of his gold too. Now, for Sophos, let him wear the willow garland, and play the melancholy malcontent, and pluck his hat down in his sullen eyes, and think on Lelia in these desert groves: 'tis enough for him to have her in his thoughts, although he ne'er embrace her in his arms. But now there's a fine device comes into my head to scare the scholar: you shall see, I'll make fine sport with him. They say that every day he keeps his walk amongst these woods and melancholy shades, and on the bark of every senseless tree engraves the tenor of his hapless hope. Now when he's at Venus' altar at his orisons, I'll put me on my great carnation-nose, and wrap me in a rowsing calf-skin suit, and come like some hobgoblin, or some devil ascended from the grisly pit of h.e.l.l, and like a scarbabe make him take his legs: I'll play the devil, I warrant ye.