Every Man in His Humor Part 14

Cash. Thy rheum, Cob! thy humour, thy humour--thou misstak'st.

Cob. Humour! mack, I think it be so indeed; what is that humour?

some rare thing, I warrant.

Cash. Marry I'll tell thee, Cob: it is a gentlemanlike monster, bred in the special gallantry of our time, by affectation; and fed by folly.

Cob. How! must it be fed?

Cash. Oh ay, humour is nothing if it be not fed: didst thou never hear that? it's a common phrase, feed my humour.

Cob. I'll none on it: humour, avaunt! I know you not, be gone! let who will make hungry meals for your monstership, it shall not be I.

Feed you, quoth he! 'slid, I have much ado to feed myself; especially on these lean rascally days too; an't had been any other day but a fasting-day--a plague on them all for me! By this light, one might have done the commonwealth good service, and have drown'd them all in the flood, two or three hundred thousand years ago. O, I do stomach them hugely. I have a maw now, and 'twere for sir Bevis his horse, against them.

Cash. I pray thee, good Cob, what makes thee so out of love with fasting days?

Cob. Marry, that which will make any man out of love with 'em, I think; their bad conditions, an you will needs know. First they are of a Flemish breed, I am sure on't, for they raven up more b.u.t.ter than all the days of the week beside; next, they stink of fish and leek-porridge miserably; thirdly, they'll keep a man devoutly hungry all day, and at night send him supperless to bed.

Cash. Indeed, these are faults, Cob.

Cob. Nay, an this were all, 'twere something; but they are the only known enemies to my generation. A fasting-day no sooner comes, but my lineage goes to wrack; poor cobs! they smoak for it, they are made martyrs O' the gridiron, they melt in pa.s.sion: and your maids to know this, and yet would have me turn Hannibal, and eat my own flesh and blood. My princely coz, [pulls out a red herring] fear nothing; I have not the heart to devour you, an I might be made as rich as king Cophetua. O that I had room for my tears, I could weep salt-water enough now to preserve the lives of ten thousand thousand of my kin! But I may curse none but these filthy almanacks; for an't were not for them, these days of persecution would never be known. I'll be hang'd an some fish-monger's son do not make of 'em, and puts in more fasting-days than he should do, because he would utter his father's dried stock--fish and stinking conger.

Cash. 'Slight peace! thou'lt be beaten like a stock-fish else: here's master Mathew.

Enter WELLIBRED, E. KNOWELL, BRAINWORM, MATHEW, BOBADILL, and STEPHEN.

Now must I look out for a messenger to my master.

[Exit with Cob.

Wel, Beshrew me, but it was an absolute good jest, and exceedingly well carried!

E. Know. Ay, and our ignorance maintain'd it as well, did it not?

Wel. Yes, faith; but was it possible thou shouldst not know him? I forgive master Stephen, for he is stupidity itself.

E. Know. 'Fore G.o.d, not I, an I might have been join'd patten with one of the seven wise masters for knowing him. He had so writhen himself into the habit of one of your poor infantry, your decayed; ruinous, worm-eaten gentlemen of the round; such as have vowed to sit on the skirts of the city, let your provost and his half-dozen of halberdiers do what they can; and have translated begging out of the old hackney-pace to a fine easy amble, and made it run as smooth off the tongue as a shove-groat shilling. Into the likeness of one of these reformados had he moulded himself so perfectly, observing every trick of their action, as, varying the accent, swearing with an emphasis, indeed, all with so special and exquisite a grace, that, hadst thou seen him, thou wouldst have sworn he might have been sergeant-major, if not lieutenant-colonel to the regiment.

Wel. Why, Brainworm, who would have thought thou hadst been such an artificer?

E. Know. An artificer! an architect. Except a man had studied begging all his life time, and been a weaver of language from his infancy for the cloathing of it, I never saw his rival.

Wel. Where got'st thou this coat, I marle?

Brai. Of a Hounsditch man, sir, one of the devil's near kinsmen, a broker.

Wel. That cannot be, if the proverb hold; for 'A crafty knave needs no broker.'

Brai. True, sir; but I did need a broker, ergo--

Wel. Well put off:--no crafty knave, you'll say.

E. Know. Tut, he has more of these shifts.

Brai. And yet, where I have one the broker has ten, sir.

Reenter CASH Cash. Francis! Martin! ne'er a one to be found now? what a spite's this!

Wel. How now, Thomas? Is my brother Kitely within?

Cash. No, sir, my master went forth e'en now; but master Downright is within.--Cob! what, Cob! Is he gone too?

Wel. Whither went your master, Thomas, canst thou tell?

Cash. I know not: to justice Clement's, I think, sir--Cob!

[Exit E. Know. Justice Clement! what's he? Wel.

Why, dost thou not know him? He is a city-magistrate, a justice here, an excellent good lawyer, and a great scholar; but the only mad, merry old fellow in Europe. I shewed him you the other day.

E. Know. Oh, is that he? I remember him now. Good faith, and he is a very strange presence methinks; it shews as if he stood out of the rank from other men: I have heard many of his jests in the University. They say he will commit a man for taking the wall of his horse.

Wel. Ay, or wearing his cloak on one shoulder, or serving of G.o.d; any thing, indeed, if it come in the way of his humour.

Re-enter CASH.

Cash. Gasper! Martin! Cob! 'Heart, where should they be trow?

Bob. Master Kitely's man, pray thee vouchsafe us the lighting of this match.

[Exit.

Cash. Fire on your match! no time but now to vouchsafe?--Francis!

Cob!

Bob. Body O' me! here's the remainder of seven pound since yesterday was seven-night. 'Tis your right Trinidado: did you never take any master Stephen?

Step. No, truly, sir; but I'll learn to take it now, since you commend it so.

Bob. Sir, believe me, upon my relation for what I tell you, the world shall not reprove. I have been in the Indies, where this herb grows, where neither myself, nor a dozen gentlemen more of my knowledge, have received the taste of any other nutriment in the world, for the s.p.a.ce of one and twenty weeks, but the fume of this simple only: therefore, it cannot be, but 'tis most divine.

Further, take it in the nature, in the true kind; so, it makes an antidote, that, had you taken the most deadly poisonous plant in all Italy, it should expel it, and clarify you, with as much ease as I speak. And for your green wound,--your Balsamum and your St.

John's wort, are all mere gulleries and trash to it, especially your Trinidado: your Nicotian is good too. I could say what I know of the virtue of it, for the expulsion of rheums, raw humours, crudities, obstructions, with a thousand of this kind; but I profess myself no quack-salver. Only thus much; by Hercules, I do hold it, and will affirm it before any prince in Europe, to be the most sovereign and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use of man.

E. Know. This speech would have done decently in a tobacco-trader's mouth.

Re-enter CASH with COB.

Cash. At justice Clement's he is, in the middle of Coleman-street.

Cob. Oh, oh!

Bob. Where's the match I gave thee, master Kitely's man?

Cash. Would his match and he, and pipe and all, were at Sancto Domingo! I had forgot it.

[Exit.

Cob. 'Od's me, I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking this roguish tobacco. It's good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers: there were four died out of one house last week with taking of it, and two more the bell went for yesternight; one of them, they say, will never scape it; he voided a bushel of soot yesterday, upward and downward. By the stocks, an there were no wiser men than I, I'd have it present whipping, man or woman, that should but deal with a tobacco pipe: why, it will stifle them all in the end, as many as use it; it's little better than ratsbane or rosaker.

[Bobadill beats him.