A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Ix Part 80

COM. SEN. Phantastes!

PHA. O sir, my left eye is my right in the gla.s.s, do you see? By these lips, my garters hang so neatly, my gloves and shoes become my hands and feet so well. Heuresis, tie my shoe-strings with a new knot--this point was scarce well-trussed, so, 'tis excellent. Looking-gla.s.ses were a pa.s.sing invention. I protest the fittest books for ladies to study on--

MEM. Take heed you fall not in love with yourself. Phantastes, as I remember--Anamnestes, who was't that died of the looking disease?

ANA. Forsooth, Narcissus: by the same token he was turned to a daffodil, and as he died for love of himself, so, if you remember, there was an old ill-favoured, precious-nosed, babber-lipped, beetle-browed, blear-eyed, slouch-eared slave that, looking himself by chance in a gla.s.s, died for pure hate.

PHA. By the lip of my ---- I could live and die with this face.

COM. SEN. Fie, fie, Phantastes, so effeminate! for shame, leave off.

Visus, your objects I must needs say, are admirable, if the house and instrument be answerable. Let's hear therefore in brief your description.

VIS. Under the forehead of Mount Cephalou,[265]

That overpeers the coast of Microcosm, All in the shadow of two pleasant groves, Stand by two mansion-houses, both as round As the clear heavens: both twins, as like each other As star to star, which by the vulgar sort, For their resplendent composition, Are named the bright eyes of Mount Cephalon: With four fair rooms those lodgings are contrived, Four goodly rooms in form most spherical, Closing each other like the heavenly orbs: The first whereof, of nature's substance wrought, As a strange moat the other to defend, Is trained movable by art divine, Stirring the whole compacture of the rest: The second chamber is most curiously Compos'd of burnish'd and transparent horn.

PHA. That's a matter of nothing. I have known many have such bed-chambers.

MEM. It may be so, for I remember, being once in the town's library, I read such a thing in their great book of monuments, called "Cornucopia,"

or rather their "Copiacornu."

VIS. The third's a lesser room of purest gla.s.s; The fourth's smallest, but pa.s.seth all the former In worth of matter: built most sumptuously, With walls transparent of pure crystalline.

This the soul's mirror and the body's guide, Love's cabinet, bright beacons of the realm, Cas.e.m.e.nts of light, quiver of Cupid's shafts, Wherein I sit, and immediately receive The species of things corporeal, Keeping continual watch and sentinel; Lest foreign hurt invade our Microcosm, And warning give (if pleasant things approach), To entertain them. From this costly room Leadeth, my lord, an entry to your house, Through which I hourly to yourself convey Matters of wisdom by experience bred: Art's first invention, pleasant vision, Deep contemplation, that attires the soul In gorgeous robes of flowing literature: Then, if that Visus have deserved best, Let his victorious brow with crown be blest.

COM. SEN. Anamnestes, see who's to come next.

ANA. Presently, my lord.

PHA. Visus, I wonder that amongst all your objects, you presented us not with Plato's idea, or the sight of Nineveh,[266] Babylon, London, or some Stourbridge-fair monsters; they would have done pa.s.sing well. Those motions, in my imagination, are very delightful.

VIS. I was loth to trouble your honours with such toys, neither could I provide them in so short a time.

COM. SEN. We will consider your worth; meanwhile, we dismiss you.

[VISUS _leads his show about the stage, and so goeth out with it_.

SCAENA ULTIMA.

AUDITUS, _&c_.

AUD. Hark, hark, hark, hark! peace, peace, O, peace! O sweet, admirable, swanlike, heavenly! hark, O most mellifluous strain! O, what a pleasant close was there! O fall[267] most delicate!

COM. SEN. How now, Phantastes! is Auditus mad?

PHA. Let him alone, his musical head is always full of old crotchets.

AUD. Did you mark the dainty driving of the last point, an excellent maintaining of the song; by the choice timpan of mine ear, I never heard a better! hist, 'st, 'st, hark! why, there's a cadence able to ravish the dullest stoic.

COM. SEN. I know not what to think on him.

AUD. There how sweetly the plain-song was dissolved into descant, and how easily they came off with the last rest. Hark, hark, the bitter'st[268] sweetest achromatic.

COM. SEN. Auditus!

AUD. Thanks, good Apollo, for this timely grace, Never couldst thou in fitter hour indulge it: O more than most musical harmony!

O most admirable concert! have you no ears?

Do you not hear this music?

PHA. It may be good; but, in my opinion, they rest too long in the beginning.

AUD. Are you then deaf? do you not yet perceive The wondrous sound the heavenly orbs do make With their continual motion? hark, hark, O honey-sweet!

COM. SEN. What tune do they play?

AUD. Why such a tune as never was, nor ever shall be heard.

Mark now, now mark: now, now!

PHA. List, list, list.

AUD. Hark! O sweet, sweet, sweet.

PHA. List! how my heart envies my happy ears.

Hist, by the gold-strung harp of Apollo, I hear the celestial music of the spheres, As plainly as ever Pythagoras did.

O most excellent diapason! good, good.

It plays _Fortune my foe_,[269] as distinctly as may be.

COM. SEN. As the fool thinketh, so the bell clinketh. I protest I hear no more than a post.

PHA. What, the Lavolta![270] eh? nay, if the heavens fiddle, Fancy must needs dance.

COM. SEN. Prythee, sit still, thou must dance nothing but the pa.s.sing measures[271]. Memory, do you hear this harmony of the spheres?

MEM. Not now, my lord; but I remember about some four thousand years ago, when the sky was first made, we heard very perfectly.

ANA. By the same token, the first tune the planets played, I remember Venus the treble ran sweet division upon Saturn the ba.s.s. The first tune they played was Sellenger's round[272], in memory whereof ever since it hath been called "the beginning of the world."

COM. SEN. How comes it we cannot hear it now?

MEM. Our ears are so well acquainted with the sound, that we never mark it. As I remember, the Egyptian Catadupes[273] never heard the roaring of the fall of Nilus, because the noise was so familiar unto them.

COM. SEN. Have you no other objects to judge by than these, Auditus?

AUD. This is the rarest and most exquisite: Most spherical, divine, angelical; But since your duller ears cannot perceive it, May it please your lordship to withdraw yourself Unto this neighbouring grove: there shall you see How the sweet treble of the chirping birds, And the soft stirring of the moved leaves, Running delightful descant to the sound Of the base murmuring of the bubbling brook[274], Becomes a concert of good instruments; While twenty babbling echoes round about, Out of the stony concave of their mouths, Restore the vanished music of each close, And fill your ears full with redoubled pleasure.

COM. SEN. I will walk with you very willingly, for I grow weary of sitting. Come, Master Register and Master Phantastes.

[_Exeunt_ OMNES.