The White Devil Part 2

Cam. We never lay together, but ere morning There grew a flaw between us.

Flam. 'T had been your part To have made up that flaw.

Cam. True, but she loathes I should be seen in 't.

Flam. Why, sir, what 's the matter?

Cam. The duke your master visits me, I thank him; And I perceive how, like an earnest bowler, He very pa.s.sionately leans that way he should have his bowl run.

Flam. I hope you do not think----

Cam. That n.o.bleman bowl booty? faith, his cheek Hath a most excellent bias: it would fain Jump with my mistress.

Flam. Will you be an a.s.s, Despite your Aristotle? or a cuckold, Contrary to your Ephemerides, Which shows you under what a smiling planet You were first swaddled?

Cam. Pew wew, sir; tell me not Of planets nor of Ephemerides.

A man may be made cuckold in the day-time, When the stars' eyes are out.

Flam. Sir, good-bye you; I do commit you to your pitiful pillow Stuffed with horn-shavings.

Cam. Brother!

Flam. G.o.d refuse me.

Might I advise you now, your only course Were to lock up your wife.

Cam. 'Twere very good.

Flam. Bar her the sight of revels.

Cam. Excellent.

Flam. Let her not go to church, but, like a hound In leon, at your heels.

Cam. 'Twere for her honour.

Flam. And so you should be certain in one fortnight, Despite her chast.i.ty or innocence, To be cuckolded, which yet is in suspense: This is my counsel, and I ask no fee for 't.

Cam. Come, you know not where my nightcap wrings me.

Flam. Wear it a' th' old fashion; let your large ears come through, it will be more easy--nay, I will be bitter--bar your wife of her entertainment: women are more willingly and more gloriously chaste, when they are least restrained of their liberty. It seems you would be a fine capricious, mathematically jealous c.o.xcomb; take the height of your own horns with a Jacob's staff, afore they are up. These politic enclosures for paltry mutton, makes more rebellion in the flesh, than all the provocative electuaries doctors have uttered since last jubilee.

Cam. This doth not physic me----

Flam. It seems you are jealous: I 'll show you the error of it by a familiar example: I have seen a pair of spectacles fashioned with such perspective art, that lay down but one twelve pence a' th' board, 'twill appear as if there were twenty; now should you wear a pair of these spectacles, and see your wife tying her shoe, you would imagine twenty hands were taking up of your wife's clothes, and this would put you into a horrible causeless fury.

Cam. The fault there, sir, is not in the eyesight.

Flam. True, but they that have the yellow jaundice think all objects they look on to be yellow. Jealousy is worse; her fits present to a man, like so many bubbles in a basin of water, twenty several crabbed faces, many times makes his own shadow his cuckold-maker. [Enter Vittoria Corombona.] See, she comes; what reason have you to be jealous of this creature? what an ignorant a.s.s or flattering knave might be counted, that should write sonnets to her eyes, or call her brow the snow of Ida, or ivory of Corinth; or compare her hair to the blackbird's bill, when 'tis liker the blackbird's feather? This is all. Be wise; I will make you friends, and you shall go to bed together. Marry, look you, it shall not be your seeking. Do you stand upon that, by any means: walk you aloof; I would not have you seen in 't.--Sister [my lord attend you in the banqueting-house,] your husband is wondrous discontented.

Vit. I did nothing to displease him; I carved to him at supper-time.

Flam. [You need not have carved him, in faith; they say he is a capon already. I must now seemingly fall out with you.] Shall a gentleman so well descended as Camillo [a lousy slave, that within this twenty years rode with the black guard in the duke's carriage, 'mongst spits and dripping-pans!]--

Cam. Now he begins to tickle her.

Flam. An excellent scholar [one that hath a head fill'd with calves'

brains without any sage in them,] come crouching in the hams to you for a night's lodging? [that hath an itch in 's hams, which like the fire at the gla.s.s-house hath not gone out this seven years] Is he not a courtly gentleman? [when he wears white satin, one would take him by his black muzzle to be no other creature than a maggot] You are a goodly foil, I confess, well set out [but cover'd with a false stone-- yon counterfeit diamond].

Cam. He will make her know what is in me.

Flam. Come, my lord attends you; thou shalt go to bed to my lord.

Cam. Now he comes to 't.

Flam. [With a relish as curious as a vintner going to taste new wine.]

[To Camillo.] I am opening your case hard.