A Select Collection of Old English Plays Part 85

WAN. He earn from an old lady: hang him, he's only wicked in his desires; and for adultery he cannot be condemned, though he should have the vanity to betray himself. G.o.d forgive me for belying him so often as I have done; the weak-chined slave hired me once to say I was with child by him.

CAPT. This is pretty. Farewell; and may the next pig thou farrow'st have a promising face, without the dad's fool or gallows in't, that all may swear, at first sight, that's a b.a.s.t.a.r.d; and it shall go hard, but I'll have it called mine. I have the way; 'tis but praising thee, and swearing thou art honest before I am asked: you taught me the trick.

PAR. Next levy I'll preach against thee, and tell them what a piece you are. Your drum and borrowed scarf shall not prevail; nor shall you win with charms, half-ell long (hight ferret riband) the youth of our parish, as you have done.[199]

CAPT. No, lose no time: prythee, study and learn to preach, and leave railing against the surplice, now thou hast preached thyself into linen. Adieu, Abigail! adieu, heir-apparent to Sir Oliver Mar-text! to church, go; I'll send a beadle shall sing your epithalamium.

PAR. Adieu, my captain of a tame band. I'll tell your old lady how you abused her breath, and swore you earned your money harder than those that dig in the mines for't. [_Exit_ CAPTAIN.] A fart fill thy sail, captain of a galley foist.[200] He's gone: come, sweet, let's to church immediately, that I may go and take my revenge: I'll make him wear thin breeches.

WAN. But if you should be such a man as he says you are, what would my friends say when they hear I have cast myself away?

PAR. He says! hang him, lean, mercenary, provand[201] rogue: I knew his beginning, when he made the stocks lousy, and swarmed so with vermin, we were afraid he would have brought that curse upon the country. He says! but what matters what he says? a rogue by sire and dam! his father was a broad, fat pedlar, a what-do-you-lack, sir? that haunted good houses, and stole more than he bought: his dam was a gipsy, a pilfering, canting Sybil in her youth, and she suffered in her old age for a witch. Poor Stromwell, the rogue was a perpetual burthen to her, she carried him longer at her back than in her belly; he dwelt there, till she lost him one night in the great frost upon our common, and there he was found in the morning candied in ice--a pox of their charity that thawed him! You might smell a rogue then in the bud: he is now run away from his wife.

WAN. His wife?

PAR. Yes, his wife; why, do you not know he's married according to the rogues' liturgy? a left-handed bridegroom. I saw him take the ring from a tinker's dowager.

WAN. Is this possible?

PAR. Yes, most possible, and you shall see how I'll be revenged on him: I will immediately go seek the ordinance against reformadoes.

WAN. What ordinance?

PAR. Why, they do so swarm about the town, and are so destructive to trade and all civil government, that the state has declared no person shall keep above two colonels and four captains (of what trade soever) in his family; for now the war is done, broken breech, woodmonger, ragman, butcher, and linkboy (comrades that made up the ragged regiment in this holy war), think to return and be admitted to serve out their times again.

WAN. Your ordinance will not touch the captain, for he is a known soldier.

PAR. He a captain! an apocryphal modern one, that went convoy once to Brentford with those troops that conducted the contribution-puddings in the late holy war, when the city ran mad after their russet Levites, ap.r.o.n-rogues with horn hands. Hang him, he's but the sign of a soldier; and I hope to see him hanged for that commission, when the king comes to his place again.

WAN. You abuse him now he's gone; but----

PAR. Why, dost thou think I fear him? No, wench, I know him too well for a cowardly slave, that dares as soon eat his fox,[202]

as draw it in earnest: the slave's noted to make a conscience of nothing but fighting.

WAN. Well, if you be not a good man and a kind husband----

PAR. Thou knowest the proverb, as happy as the parson's wife during her husband's life.

[_Exeunt._

SCENE II.

_Enter_ MISTRESS PLEASANT, WIDOW WILD, _her aunt, and_ SECRET, _her woman, above in the music-room, as dressing her: a gla.s.s, a table, and she in her night-clothes_.

PLEA. Secret, give me the gla.s.s, and see who knocks.

WID. Niece, what, shut the door? as I live, this music was meant to you: I know my nephew's voice.

PLEA. Yes, but you think his friend's has more music in't.

WID. No, faith, I can laugh with him, or so, but he comes no nearer than my lace.

PLEA. You do well to keep your smock betwixt.

WID. Faith, wench, so wilt thou, and thou be'st wise, from him and all of them; and, be ruled by me, we'll abuse all the s.e.x, till they put a true value upon us.

PLEA. But dare you forbid the travelled gentlemen, and abuse them and your servant, and swear, with me, not to marry in a twelvemonth, though a lord bait the hook, and hang out the sign of a court Cupid, whipped by a country widow? then I believe we may have mirth cheaper than at the price of ourselves, and some sport with the wits that went to lose themselves in France.

WID. Come, no dissembling, lest I tell your servant, when he returns, how much you're taken with the last new fashion.

SEC. Madam, 'tis almost noon; will you not dress yourself to-day?

WID. She speaks as if we were boarders; prythee, wench, is not the dinner our own I sure, my cook shall lay by my own roast till my stomach be up!

PLEA. But there may be company, and they will say we take too long time to trim. Secret, give me the flowers my servant sent me: he sware 'twas the first the wench made of the kind.

WID. But when he shall hear you had music sent you to-day, 'twill make him appear in his old clothes.

PLEA. Marry, I would he would take exception, he should not want ill-usage to rid me of his trouble. As I live, custom has made me so acquainted with him, that I now begin to think him not so displeasing as at first; and if he fall out with me, I must with him, to secure myself. Sure, aunt, he must find sense and reason absent; for when a question knocks at his head, the answer tells that there is n.o.body at home. I asked him th' other day if he did not find a blemish in his understanding, and he sware a great oath, not he. I told him 'twas very strange, for fool was so visible an eyesore, that neither birth nor fortune could reconcile to me.

WID. Faith, methinks his humour is good, and his purse will buy good company; and I can laugh, and be merry with him sometimes.

PLEA. Why, pray, aunt, take him to yourself, and see how merry we will be. I can laugh at anybody's fool but mine own.

WID. By my troth, but that I have married one fool already, you should not have him. Consider, he asks no portion, and yet will make a great jointure. A fool with these conveniences, a kind, loving fool, and one that you may govern, makes no ill husband, niece. There are other arguments, too, to bid a fool welcome, which you will find without teaching. Think of it, niece: you may lay out your affection to purchase some dear wit or judgment of the city, and repent at leisure a good bargain in this fool.

PLEA. Faith, aunt, fools are cheap in the butchery and dear in the kitchen; they are such unsavoury, insipid things, that there goes more charge to the sauce than the fool is worth, ere a woman can confidently serve him, either to her bed or board. Then, if he be a loving fool, he troubles all the world a-days, and me all night.

SEC. Friendship-love, madam, has a remedy for that.

PLEA. See if the air of this place has not inclined Secret to be a bawd already! No, Secret, you get no gowns that way, upon my word. If I marry, it shall be a gentleman that has wit and honour, though he has nothing but a sword by his side: such a one naked is better than a fool with all his trappings, bells, and baubles.

WID. Why, as I live, he's a handsome fellow, and merry: mine is such a sad soul, and tells me stories of lovers that died in despair, and of the lamentable end of their mistresses (according to the ballad), and thinks to win me by example.

PLEA. Faith, mine talks of nothing but how long he has loved me; and those that know me not think I am old, and still finds new causes (as he calls them) for his love. I asked him the other day, if I changed so fast, or no.

WID. But what think'st thou, Secret? my nephew dances well, and has a handsome house in the Piazza.

PLEA. Your nephew! not I, as I live; he looks as if he would be wooed. I'll warrant you, he'll never begin with a woman, till he has lost the opinion of himself; but since you are so courteous, I'll speak to his friend, and let him know how you suffer for him.

WID. Him! marry, G.o.d bless all good women from him. Why, he talks as if the dairymaid and all her cows could not serve his turn.

Then they wear such bawdy breeches, 'twould startle an honest woman to come in their company, for fear they should break, and put her to count from the fall of them; for I'll warrant the year of the Lord would sooner out of her head than such a sight.

PLEA. I am not such an enemy now to his humour as to your nephew's. He rails against our s.e.x, and thinks, by beating down the price of a woman, to make us despair of merchants; but if I had his heartstrings tied on a true-lover's knot, I would so firk him, till he found physic in a rope.

SEC. He's a scurvy-tongued fellow, I am sure of that; and if I could have got a staff, I had marked him.