Case Is Altered | The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson

Edited by Robert Miola

Introduction

Writing in 1598 or in January 1599, Ben Jonson’s contemporary and collaborator, Thomas Nashe, remembered the ‘merry cobbler’s cut [style] in that witty play of The Case Is Altered’ (ed. McKerrow (1958), 3.220). A refugee from London authorities, Nashe was probably recalling a play he had seen before leaving London the previous summer, 1597. In the spring of that year Nashe and Jonson had collaborated on the ill-fated, now vanished The Isle of Dogs, which landed Jonson in prison for sedition, occasioned Nashe’s flight to Yarmouth, and caused the closure of all the London theatres for a six-month period from 28 July. Since The Case Is Altered could not have been performed then without difficulty, it probably dates to the first half of 1597. Of course, Nashe could have seen the play in 1598 after the theatres reopened. The references to humours scattered throughout the play (e.g., 1.1.30, 71; 1.2.9–11; 2.2.4; 2.3.22; 4.8.85; 5.1.59) align it well with the ‘humours’ comedy that was all the rage in 1598, both on the page in satires by John Marston (Pygmalion’s Image) and Everard Guilpin (Skialethia), and onstage in Jonson’s own Every Man In His Humour and Every Man Out of His Humour. But George Chapman had already begun the trend of humours comedy with The Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1595–6) and An Humorous Day’s Mirth (May, 1597); Shakespeare had already experimented successfully with humours in Henry the Fourth, Part One (1596–7); and Joseph Hall had begun the trend of verse satire with Virgidemiarum (1597). Moreover, in September 1598 Jonson presented the Italian version of Every Man In His Humour to its first audiences and then suffered imprisonment until some time in October for killing Gabriel Spencer in a duel. The play could conceivably have gone on in the autumn of that year but pre-July 1597 remains the most plausible date for The Case Is Altered, Jonson’s earliest surviving play.

Providing a clue to its dating and context, Nashe’s appreciation of the merry Juniper in Jonson’s ‘witty play’ constitutes also its first critical notice. Juniper begins the play in song, and proceeds to mangle the language in comic misuse, Latinate vocabulary, and malapropism. He haughtily dismisses attempts to understand him: ‘I may say frustra [in vain] to the comprehension of your intellection’ (1.5.79). He pronounces judgement on the love-struck Onion: ‘Come, thou art enamoured with the influence of her profundity’ (4.7.7). Anyone who has enjoyed Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, or Mrs Malaprop in Sheridan’s The Rivals, knows that good actors can make audiences laugh heartily at such pomposity and error. A raucous, extravagant wordsmith himself, Nashe well directs our attention to the other kinds of verbal wit in the play. Count Ferneze speaks dignified, sententious verse soliloquies that contrast with his quick emotional shifts and passionate outbursts, his dressing-down of the servants (1.5), sudden confession of love for Rachel while mourning the recent death of his wife (2.6.34ff.), his insults to Maximilian (4.8.41ff.), and his attempted violence on the prisoner (5.5.1ff.). Aurelia and Angelo spar in verse love-duets that alternate with the similar sparring of Francisco and Phoenixella (1.5; 2.4). Jaques’s verse soliloquies and asides (2.1; 3.2; 3.5; 4.7; 5.1) characterize him as a conventional miser who locks up his daughter, frets about his gold, and adores it rhapsodically. Valentine satirically reviews theatregoing in Utopia (i.e. England) (2.7.1–62); Angelo defends his betrayal of Paolo with sophistic argument (3.1.1–20); Paolo blusters in rhetorical outrage at Angelo’s attempted rape (5.4.43ff.). Throughout, the page Pacue speaks a hotchpotch of French and heavily accented English. Quoting Edward Dyer’s ‘My mind to me a kingdom is’ (1.1.54) and other verse, Onion nevertheless seeks professional poetic help for courtship. He sputters in a homely idiom that centres on his own name and desire for food: ‘an ever I see a more roguish thing, I am a piece of cheese and no onion’ (1.1.76–7; cf. 2.7.76). On hearing Pacue say fort bien (very well), he responds: ‘“Bean”, quoth he? Would I were in debt of a pottle of beans’ (4.3.27). Such linguistic play, often lost on modern ears, particularly delighted audiences at the turn of the sixteenth century. And Jonson’s use of language to mark social difference here anticipates further explorations in Every Man In His Humour and Cynthia’s Revels.

Other contemporaries, evidently, appreciated The Case Is Altered. John Bodenham culled four sententious reflections from it for his anthology, Belvedere; or, The Garden of the Muses (1600), which arranged excerpts from the best poets under topical and moral headings. Edward Pudsey recorded in his commonplace book quotations from The Case Is Altered amid others from plays around 1600 (Dekker, ed. Hoy, 1980, 1.197). Charles Fitz-Geffrey published a Latin epigram praising Jonson for his adaptation of Plautus in Affaniae (Oxford, 1601). The speaker solemnly calls Jonson to judgement for his thefts from Plautus, then concludes that the shade of Plautus presently gives readings of Jonson to a delighted audience of immortals (H&S, 11.370). Thomas Dekker probably paid tribute to Juniper in the creation of his irrepressible Simon Eyre, the leading character in The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599). Four Elizabethan booksellers in two separate partnerships selected the play for printing twelve years after its first appearance onstage. They secured copyright and invested in its publication as a quarto in 1609. Later, the best actor of his generation, David Garrick, gave a copy of this quarto to Jonson’s first modern editor, Peter Whalley (1756, 1.xxv), thus rescuing the play from oblivion. And Charles Lamb printed several generous selections from the play in his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets (1808, 297–300).

The 1609 quarto, a copy of which Garrick supplied to Whalley, has been the basis of all subsequent editions of The Case Is Altered. The text shows no evidence of Jonson’s involvement in publication and has a host of problems – inconsistencies in names of characters and act/scene divisions, errors in foreign languages, confusions of verse and prose, and sloppy printing and proofing. (See Textual Essay for fuller discussion.) There is also some internal evidence of revision. Jonson apparently added to the original play text some satiric bits, including the appearance of Antonio Balladino, ‘pageant poet to the city of Milan’ (1.1.45), which sends up Anthony Munday, contemporary poet, playwright, and creator of the Lord Mayor’s annual London pageant. Juniper asks Balladino to write amorous poetry for Onion, but Onion later is upset with Valentine for not doing so (4.5.23ff.), probably an uncancelled trace of Jonson’s original plan and evidence of the later Balladino interpolation. Similarly, Balladino’s aversion to those who ‘write you nothing but humours’ (1.1.71), satirizes the humours comedy that Chapman, Shakespeare, and Jonson himself made popular in 1598 and the years following. The joke would not have had much point in 1597, when the trend was just beginning. In another probable addition Valentine refers to the public theatre (‘Ay, in the common theatres, I tell you’, 2.7.30), thus alluding to the competition between public and private theatre which heated up with the revival of the boys’ companies in 1599–1600. Jonson’s satire here recalls his similar jab at Munday, the ‘Hall Beadle or Poet Nuntius’, in the fall of 1598 (EMI (Q), 1.1.154). And Onion says that Balladino is ‘in print already for the best plotter’ (84), alluding to Francis Meres’s praise of Munday as ‘our best plotter’ (Palladis Tamia, 283v), so the revisions must have occurred after Meres’s work appeared in late 1598. The evidence points, then, to at least one layer of revision in the quarto, probably made some time between 1599 and 1604, the year in which the records of the Haberdashers show that Anthony Munday and Ben Jonson collaborated on the Lord Mayor’s pageant (Bergeron, 1985, xi). Jonson, of course, may have remembered the collaboration acrimoniously and sought poetic revenge later.

As David Kay (1970) has observed, the early information concerning The Case Is Altered contradicts the standard notion that this play failed on stage and that Jonson achieved his first theatrical success with Every Man In His Humour (1598), which begins his folio collection, Works (1616). Part of the reason for this assumption and, indeed, the single most important fact in the critical history of The Case Is Altered, is its absence from the folio. Critics have largely agreed that Jonson disowned the earlier work, choosing instead to start his collection with a revised Every Man In His Humour in order to show his development as a satiric playwright. This theory is plausible, but relies on unproven (and unprovable) assumptions about the author’s intentions and construction of his career. Moreover, it ignores the facts of early modern copyright law and publication. Authors then did not own the rights to published plays. The pertinent references in the Stationers’ Register indicate that copyright for The Case Is Altered in the years preceding the folio still belonged to the booksellers who published the quarto in 1609. Of these original four especially noteworthy is Henry Walley, whose dealings later with Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida suggest that he did not easily give up his plays for reprinting. It is entirely possible that Jonson did not disown The Case Is Altered at the time of the folio, but that he did not own it, i.e. he did not have the rights to it for republication.

Another possible explanation for the absence of The Case Is Altered from the folio is that Jonson did not alone own the play, in other words, that it was a collaboration. Leaving aside The Spanish Tragedy, for which he wrote additions in 1602, Jonson collaborated on at least six plays early in his career: The Isle of Dogs (1597), with Thomas Nashe and (possibly) others; Hot Anger Soon Cold (1598), with Henry Chettle and Henry Porter; Page of Plymouth (1599), with Thomas Dekker; Robert Ⅱ, King of Scots (1599), with Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle, and another, possibly John Marston; Sejanus (1603), with another, probably George Chapman; and Eastward Ho! (1605), with George Chapman and John Marston. None of these plays appeared in the folio and Jonson, apparently, took little interest in preserving these joint productions in any form, as only Eastward Ho! survives in its composite state. When Jonson published the quarto of Sejanus in 1605, he painstakingly excised all traces of the ‘second pen’ (To his Readers, 40). The Prologue to Volpone (1607) defiantly proclaims sole authorship of the play, ‘From his own hand, without a coadjutor, / Novice, journeyman, or tutor’ (17–18). Taking a personal and proprietary interest in his plays, Jonson may simply have excluded The Case Is Altered from his Works because it was not solely his.

Certainly, the anomalous mixture of styles and plots in The Case Is Altered raises the possibility of multiple authors. Selin (1917) argues for Jonson’s sole hand on the basis of five tests – parallel passages, diction, characters, situations, and prosody – but admits that his results are not conclusive (1917, xxviii). Chambers (ES, 3.358) notes in passing the possibility of Jonson’s collaboration with George Chapman. Herford and the Simpsons (1925, 1.324–7) adduce parallel situations and conclude tentatively that Jonson ‘almost certainly wrote considerable sections’ of the play. Huntley (1962) hypothesizes without evidence that Jonson revised an Anthony Munday play. Most interestingly, J. M. Nosworthy (1952) speculates that The Case Is Altered renames the lost collaboration, Hot Anger Soon Cold, surely an apt proverbial description of the dual climax of the play – the enraged Count Ferneze’s discovery that his prisoner is his long-lost son, and the transformation of the angry miser Jaques into the repentant Melun. Nosworthy convincingly traces verbal and stylistic resemblances between the Aurelia – Phoenixella scenes and the badinage in Henry Porter’s The Two Angry Women of Abingdon. He notes the abrupt breaks from blank verse into rhyming repartee, the use of identical rhyme, and verbal echoes. (These scenes proved relatively barren ground for Selin and Herford and the Simpsons in their search for Jonson parallels.) Nosworthy’s theory about a retitled Hot Anger Soon Cold remains speculative, as he concedes, because there is little evidence to be had of Chettle’s role in the collaboration. But, despite the paucity of Porter’s surviving canon, Nosworthy does demonstrate his possible hand in specific scenes of The Case Is Altered (2.3, 2.4, 2.5, and 4.1). If collaboration elsewhere in the play proceeded by communal effort rather than by exclusive assignment, as the editors below argue is largely the case for Eastward Ho!, then further discernment of different hands in The Case Is Altered is unlikely.

In 1597 Jonson and Nashe were working for Pembroke’s Men, the company of players who probably first performed The Case Is Altered. As the property of Pembroke’s men the play probably appeared first at the Swan Theatre, their regular, contracted venue. According to Arend van Buchell’s copy of a lost drawing by Johannes de Witt (c. 1596) and other evidence, the Swan was a polygonal public theatre with capacity for about 3,000 spectators. Like other public theatres, it had a tiled roof, tiring house, three stories/galleries, a heavens or cover over the rear of the stage, supported by columns, one of which could have served for Onion’s tree-climbing (4.7). The stage probably had a trap-door, which could have provided a hiding place for the gold (3.5.; 4.7), though that might have been placed anywhere onstage. The back wall had two tiring-house doors, which, in classical fashion, represented the chief localities of Jonson’s play, the opposed houses of Count Ferneze (with Juniper’s shop in its ground level) and Jaques the miser. The long platform stage (43 by 27.5 feet) often represented the street in front of either house, also in classical fashion. The quarto says that The Case Is Altered was ‘sundry times acted by the children of the Blackfriars’, which means that it moved later to a different company and to a private theatre, Blackfriars – smaller, pricier, indoors, featuring three stage doors instead of two. Perhaps Jonson revised the play for this performance.

Like Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors early in his career, Jonson’s The Case Is Altered draws inspiration from two Plautine plays. Captivi (The Captives) supplies the overplot concerning the wars between the French and the Milanese (originally the Aetolians and Elians), and the switch in identities perpetrated by the captured master and servant (4.1; cf. Captivi, 407ff.). Disguised as his own servant, the master, Chamont, gets freedom to arrange a prisoner swap while the servant, Camillo/Gaspar, disguised as the master, stays behind. The victor, Count Ferneze, discovers the deception (4.5; cf. Captivi, 510ff.) and threatens to torture the captive, who bears up courageously and nobly (4.9; 5.5; cf. Captivi, 658ff.) until Chamont returns. All discover that the imprisoned Gaspar is actually Camillo, long-lost son of Count Ferneze (5.6.44; cf. Captivi, 990). Aulularia (The Pot of Gold) supplies the scenes involving the miser Jaques, who keeps his daughter within (2.1.53ff.; cf. Aulularia, 89ff.), receives wooers suspiciously (3.2; 3.3; cf. Aulularia, 190ff.), hides his gold (3.5; cf. Aulularia, 583), searches a suspected thief (4.7.45ff.; cf. Aulularia, 628ff.), and rages at the theft of his treasure (4.7; 5.5; cf. Aulularia, 713ff.). Heavily dependent on classical example yet restless with it, Jonson weaves the two plots together by creating characters who play roles in both: Jaques is the miser and also a former servant of the disguised master’s father; the Count is an elderly wooer of the miser’s daughter and also the victor who recovers his lost son; Rachel is the miser’s adopted daughter and Isabel, Chamont’s sister. Jonson practises an inventive imitation that sophisticates, combines, and multiplies. Unlike her prototype in Aulularia, Rachel has no fewer than five suitors in love with her. The discovery of Rachel’s true identity and that of Jaques expands the climax of Captivi into a grand sequence of final reversals and revelations, prompting characters to comment ‘the case is altered’ six times in the last act.

As Baskervill (1911, 90–106) has noted, Jonson adds elements from other traditions into the play. The witty Aurelia, Juniper (the cobbler), and Onion (the clownish servant) are familiar Elizabethan stage types. The last two satirize current affectations and extravagances in speech rather than being personal satires on Gabriel Harvey and Thomas Nashe, as H. C. Hart (1903) argued. Electronic databases like OED, LION, and EEBO make abundantly clear that vocabulary once thought uniquely characteristic of individuals like Harvey (e.g. changeling, paraphrase, capricious) occurs elsewhere in the period, often frequently. The play lies outside the battle zone of the satirical ‘personations’ that occur in the later War of the Theatres, 1599–1601 (see Steggle, 1998). Though he could have found precedents elsewhere, Jonson probably borrowed characters and situations from Shakespeare. The Two Gentlemen of Verona may supply the love triangle of Paolo, Angelo, and Rachel, Angelo’s attempted rape of Rachel in the wilderness, and Paolo’s intervention and forgiveness. And Shylock’s attitude towards Jessica in The Merchant of Venice seems to colour Jaques’s relations with Rachel.

Although The Case Is Altered exudes energy and invention, it has enjoyed only two amateur revivals in modern times: a performance at the University of Chicago, 17 May 1902, with male actors playing the leading female roles; and one at Birbeck College, 12–13 December 1924, with an Elizabethan jig and a selection of Elizabethan music. The Case Is Altered presents two challenges for modern readers and audiences who would enjoy the merry cobbler and the ‘witty’ play. First, moderns need to recover delight in what they hear, to find actors and a theatrical style that can revel in linguistic misfire and verbal play. The resulting laughter at Jonson’s characters and collisions can enable acceptance of the admittedly crowded plot, and appreciation of those scenes connected loosely or not at all to the main narrative – those featuring Balladino, Valentine’s travel reminiscences, Martino’s cudgelling of Onion, and Pacue and Finio’s salutation display. Second, readers and audiences must accept Jonson’s invitation, tendered hesitantly and fitfully, to connect emotionally to the characters and stories presented – the Count’s losses (his wife, his infant son, then his adult son), Camillo/Gaspar’s noble sacrifice and suffering, Chamont’s dedication and friendship, or the sketched love affairs. Anne Barton (1984, 36) remarks that ‘friendship and trust are vibrant areas’ in the play, and that Jonson characteristically invests the father–son relationship with ‘emotionalism’. To be sure, Jonson did not warm to the presentation of the lovers, giving Paolo and Rachel, for example, only one scene together of sweet leave-taking (1.5). Rachel, object of five men’s desire, speaks fewer than forty lines. The other pair who eventually marry, Chamont and Aurelia, never speak to each other onstage. Yet, Jonson tries for pathos intermittently and scatters tantalizing hints of inner life. Jaques reveals a deeper self beyond the stereotype, suggesting a previous affair with Rachel’s mother (2.1.42–7). Characters, surprisingly, often intuit hidden truths: Paolo first hesitates to trust Angelo (1.4.7ff.); Phoenixella feels a powerful attraction to her lost brother, who strangely resembles her mother (4.2.48–49); Chamont senses Gaspar/Camillo’s innate nobility (4.4.17ff.); the Count sees a mysterious ‘form’ that stops him from attacking unwittingly his son (5.5.21). Readers and actors who can capitalize on such opportunities can engage with the characters and thus experience more fully their reversals of fortune, the breaking of expectations and alterings of the case that constitute the action of Jonson’s earliest surviving theatrical success.

[List of Characters

COUNT FERNEZE: a nobleman
PAOLO FERNEZE: his son, in love with Rachel de Prie
CAMILLO FERNEZE: the Count’s lost son, supposed Gaspar, friend to Chamont
AURELIA: the Count’s daughter
PHOENIXELLA: another daughter 5
MAXIMILIAN: the general of the Milanese
CHAMONT: a French general, friend to Camillo Ferneze supposed Gaspar
ANGELO: a lady’s man, friend to Paolo Ferneze
FRANCISCO COLONNIA: a visiting nobleman 10
VALENTINE: his servant
JAQUES DE PRIE: a miser supposed a beggar, actually Melun, steward to Chamont’s father
RACHEL DE PRIE: supposed Jaques’s daughter, actually Isabel, Chamont’s sister 15
JUNIPER: a cobbler
PETER ONION: groom of the hall to Count Ferneze
ANTONIO BALLADINO: pageant poet of Milan
CHRISTOPHERO: the steward to Count Ferneze
SEBASTIAN, MARTINO, VINCENTIO, BALTHASAR: 20
servants to Count Ferneze
PACUE: Chamont’s French page 25
FINIO: Francisco’s Italian page
BOY: Paolo Ferneze’s servant
NUNTIUS
SEWER
SERVINGMEN: 30
SOLDIERS

the scene: milan]

THE CASE IS ALTERED

1.1 [Trumpet] sound [s] after a flourish. JUNIPER, a cobbler, is discovered, sitting at work in his shop and singing.

JUNIPER

‘Now, woeful wights, give ear awhile,

And mark the tenor of my style,

Which shall such trembling hearts unfold

As seldom hath tofore been told.

Such chances rare and doleful news’ – 5

Enter ONION in haste.

ONION

Fellow Juniper! Peace, i’God’s name!

JUNIPER

‘As may attempt your wits to muse’.

ONION

Godso, hear, man! A pox o’God on you!

JUNIPER

‘And cause such trickling tears to pass,

Except your hearts be flint or brass’ – 10

ONION

Juniper, Juniper!

JUNIPER

‘To hear the news which I shall tell,

That in Castella once befell.’

’Sblood, where didst thou learn to corrupt a man in the midst of a verse, ha?

ONION

God’s lid, man, service is ready to go up, man. You must slip on your coat 15

and come in. We lack waiters pitifully.

JUNIPER

A pitiful hearing, for now must I of a merry cobbler become a mourning

creature.

ONION

Well, you’ll come?

JUNIPER

Presto. Go to, a word to the wise. Away, fly, vanish! 20 Exit Onion.

‘Lie there, the weeds that I disdain to wear.’

[Enter] ANTONIO BALLADINO .

ANTONIO

God save you, Master Juniper.

JUNIPER

What, Signor Antonio Balladino! Welcome, sweet ingle.

ANTONIO

And how do you, sir?

JUNIPER

[Putting on a black coat] Faith, you see, put to my shifts here as poor 25

retainers be oftentimes. Sirrah Antony, there’s one of my fellows mightily

enamoured of thee and, i’faith, you slave, now you’re come I’ll bring you

together. It’s Peter Onion, the groom of the hall. Do you know him?

ANTONIO

No, not yet, I assure you.

JUNIPER

Oh, he is one as right of thy humour as may be, a plain, simple rascal, 30

a true dunce. Marry, he hath been a notable villain in his time. He is in love,

sirrah, with a wench, and I have preferred thee to him. Thou shalt make him

some pretty paradox or some allegory. How does my coat sit? Well?

ANTONIO

Ay, very well.

Enter ONION.

ONION

Nay, Godso, fellow Juniper, come away! 35

JUNIPER

Art thou there, mad slave? Ay, come with a powder! Sirrah

fellow Onion, I must have you peruse this gentleman well and do him good offices of

respect and kindness, as instance shall be given. [Exit.]

[Onion makes a submissive gesture.]

ANTONIO

Nay, good master Onion, what do you mean? I pray you, sir, you are

too respective, in good faith. 40

ONION

I would not you should think so, sir; for though I have no learning, yet

I honour a scholar in any ground of the earth, sir. Shall I request your name,

sir?

ANTONIO

My name is Antonio Balladino.

ONION

Balladino? You are not pageant poet to the city of Milan, sir, are you? 45

ANTONIO

I supply the place, sir, when a worse cannot be had, sir.

ONION

I cry you mercy, sir, I love you the better for that, sir. By Jesu, you must

pardon me; I knew you not, but I’d pray to be better acquainted with you, sir.

I have seen of your works.

ANTONIO

I am at your service, good master Onion. But concerning this maiden 50

that you love, sir, what is she?

ONION

Oh, did my fellow Juniper tell you? Marry, sir, she is, as one may say, but

a poor man’s child, indeed; and for mine own part, I am no gentleman born, I

must confess, but ‘My mind to me a kingdom is’, truly.

ANTONIO

Truly, a very good saying. 55

ONION

’Tis somewhat stale, but that’s no matter.

ANTONIO

Oh, ’tis the better. Such things ever are like bread, which, the staler it

is, the more wholesome.

ONION

This is but a hungry comparison, in my judgement.

ANTONIO

Why, I’ll tell you, Master Onion, I do use as much stale stuff, though 60

I say it myself, as any man does in that kind, I am sure. Did you see the last

pageant I set forth?

ONION

No, faith, sir, but there goes a huge report on’t.

ANTONIO

Why, you shall be one of my Maecen-asses. I’ll give you one of the

books. Oh, you’ll like it admirably. 65

ONION

Nay, that’s certain. I’ll get my fellow Juniper to read it.

ANTONIO

Read it, sir? I’ll read it to you.

ONION

Tut, then, I shall not choose but like it.

ANTONIO

Why, look you, sir, I write so plain and keep that old decorum that you

must of necessity like it. Marry, you shall have some now – as for example, in 70

plays – that will have every day new tricks and write you nothing but humours.

Indeed, this pleases the gentlemen, but the common sort, they care not for’t.

They know not what to make on’t; they look for good matter, they, and are

not edified with such toys.

ONION

You are in the right. I’ll not give a halfpenny to see a thousand on ’em. 75

I was at one the last term, but an ever I see a more roguish thing, I am a piece

of cheese and no onion. Nothing but kings and princes in it; the fool came not

out a jot.

ANTONIO

True, sir, they would have me make such plays, but as I tell ’em, an

they’ll give me twenty pound a play, I’ll not raise my vein. 80

ONION

No, it were a vain thing an you should, sir.

ANTONIO

Tut, give me the penny, give me the penny. I care not for the gentlemen,

I. Let me have a good ground. No matter for the pen; the plot shall carry it.

ONION

Indeed, that’s right; you are in print already for the best plotter.

ANTONIO

Ay, I might as well ha’ been put in for a dumb show too. 85

ONION

Ay, marry, sir, I mar’l you were not. Stand aside, sir, a while.

Exit Antonio.

Enter an armed Sewer, some half dozen in mourning coats following, and pass by with service [and thus exeunt].

Enter VALENTINE.

ONION

How now, friend, what are you there? Be uncovered. Would you speak

with any man here?

VALENTINE

Ay, or else I must ha’ returned you no answer.

ONION

Friend, you are somewhat too peremptory. Let’s crave your absence, Nay90

.never scorn it; I am a little your better in this place.

VALENTINE

I do acknowledge it.

ONION

Do you acknowledge it? Nay, then, you shall go forth. I’ll teach you

how you shall acknowledge it another time. Go to, void. I must have the hall

purged. No setting up of a rest here. Pack, begone. 95

VALENTINE

I pray you, sir, is not your name Onion?

ONION

Your friend, as you may use him, and Master Onion. Say on.

VALENTINE

Master Onion with a murrain! Come, come, put off this lion’s hide;

your ears have discovered you. Why, Peter, do not I know you, Peter?

ONION

Godso, Valentine! 100

VALENTINE

Oh, can you take knowledge of me now, sir?

ONION

Good Lord, sirrah, how thou art altered with thy travel!

VALENTINE

Nothing so much as thou art with thine office. But, sirrah Onion, is

the Count Ferneze at home?

ONION

Ay, bully, he is above, and the Lord Paolo Ferneze, his son, and Madam 105

Aurelia and Madam Phoenixella, his daughters. But, oh, Valentine!

VALENTINE

How now, man, how dost thou?

ONION

Faith, sad, heavy, as a man of my coat ought to be.

VALENTINE

Why, man, thou wert merry enough even now.

ONION

True, but thou knowest, 110

‘All creatures here sojourning

Upon this wretched earth

Sometimes have a fit of mourning

As well as a fit of mirth.’

Oh, Valentine, mine old lady is dead, man. 115

VALENTINE

Dead!

ONION

I’faith.

VALENTINE

When died she?

ONION

Marry, tomorrow shall be three months. She was seen going to heaven,

they say, about some five weeks agone. How now, trickling tears, ha? 120

VALENTINE

[Weeping] Faith, thou hast made me weep with this news.

ONION

Why, I have done but the part of an onion. You must pardon me.

1.2 Enter the Sewer, pass by with service again. The Servingmen take knowledge of Valentine as they go [and thus exeunt].

JUNIPER [enters from his cobbler’s shop and] salutes him [and hands Onion a dish].

JUNIPER

What, Valentine? Fellow Onion, take my dish, I prithee. Exit Onion.

[To Valentine] You rogue, sirrah, tell me how thou dost, sweet ingle?

VALENTINE

Faith, Juniper, the better to see thee thus frolic.

JUNIPER

Nay, ’Slid, I am no changeling, I am Juniper still. I keep the pristinate.

Ha, you mad hieroglyphic, when shall we swagger? 5

VALENTINE

‘Hieroglyphic’? What meanest thou by that?

JUNIPER

Mean? Godso, is’t not a good word, man? What, stand upon meaning

with your friends? Pooh, absconde.

VALENTINE

Why, but stay, stay. How long has this sprightly humour haunted

thee? 10

JUNIPER

Faugh, humour? A foolish, natural gift we have in the equinoctial.

VALENTINE

Natural? ’Slid, it may be supernatural, this.

JUNIPER

Valentine, I prithee, ruminate thyself welcome. What, fortuna de la

guerra.

VALENTINE

[Aside] Oh, how pitifully are these words forced, as though they were 15

pumped out on’s belly!

JUNIPER

Sirrah ingle, I think thou hast seen all the strange countries in Christendom

since thou went’st.

VALENTINE

I have seen some, Juniper.

JUNIPER

You have seen Constantinople? 20

VALENTINE

Ay, that I have.

JUNIPER

And Jerusalem, and the Indies, and Goodwin Sands, and the tower of

Babylon, and Venice, and all?

VALENTINE

Ay, all. [Aside] No mar’l an he have a nimble tongue, if he practise to

vault thus from one side of the world to another. 25

JUNIPER

Oh, it’s a most heavenly thing to travel and see countries, especially at

sea, an a man had a patent not to be sick.

VALENTINE

[Aside] Oh, seasick jest, and full of the scurvy!

1.3 Enter ANTONIO, SEBASTIAN, MARTINO, VINCENTIO, [and] BALTHASAR.

SEBASTIAN

Valentine, welcome, i’faith. How dost, sirrah?

MARTINO

How do you, good Valentine?

VINCENTIO

Troth, Valentine, I am glad to see you.

BALTHASAR

Welcome, sweet rogue.

SEBASTIAN

Before God, he never looked better in his life. 5

BALTHASAR

And how is’t, man? What, allo coraggio!

VALENTINE

Never better, gentlemen, i’faith.

JUNIPER

’Swill, here comes the steward.

[Enter] CHRISTOPHERO.

CHRISTOPHERO

Why, how now, fellows, all here? And nobody to wait above

now they are ready to rise? Look up, one or two. 10

Exeunt Juniper, Martino, Vincentio.

[To Valentine] Signor Francisco Colonnia’s man, how does your good master?

VALENTINE

In health, sir. He will be here anon.

CHRISTOPHERO

Is he come home, then?

VALENTINE

Ay, sir, he is not past six miles hence. He sent me before to learn if

Count Ferneze were here and return him word. 15

CHRISTOPHERO

Yes, my lord is here, and you may tell your master he shall come

very happily to take his leave of Lord Paolo Ferneze, who is now instantly to

depart with other noble gentlemen upon special service.

VALENTINE

I will tell him, sir.

CHRISTOPHERO

I pray you, do. – Fellows, make him drink. 20[Exit.]

VALENTINE

Sirs, what service is’t they are employed in?

SEBASTIAN

Why, against the French. They mean to have a fling at Milan again,

they say.

VALENTINE

Who leads our forces, can you tell?

SEBASTIAN

Marry, that does Signor Maximilian. He is above now. 25

VALENTINE

Who? Maximilian of Vicenza?

BALTHASAR

Ay, he. Do you know him?

VALENTINE

Know him? Oh, yes, he’s an excellent brave soldier.

BALTHASAR

Ay, so they say, but one of the most vainglorious men in Europe.

VALENTINE

He is indeed, marry, exceeding valiant. 30

SEBASTIAN

And that is rare.

BALTHASAR

What?

SEBASTIAN

Why, to see a vainglorious man valiant.

VALENTINE

Why, he is so, I assure you.

Enter JUNIPER.

JUNIPER

What, no further yet? – Come on, you precious rascal, Sir Valentine. 35

I’ll give you a health, i’faith; for the heavens, you mad capriccio, hold, hook and

line! [Exeunt.]

1.4 Enter LORD PAOLO FERNEZE, his BOY following him.

PAOLO

Boy!

BOY

My lord?

PAOLO

Sirrah, go up to Signor Angelo,

And pray him, if he can, devise some means

To leave my father and come speak with me. 5

BOY

I will, my lord. [Exit.]

PAOLO

Well, heaven be auspicious in the event!

For I do this against my genius,

And yet my thoughts cannot propose a reason

Why I should fear or faint thus in my hopes 10

Of one so much endearèd to my love.

Some spark it is, kindled within the soul,

Whose light yet breaks not to the outward sense,

That propagates this timorous suspect.

His actions never carried any face 15

Of change or weakness. Then I injury him

In being thus cold conceited of his faith.

Oh, here he comes.

Enter ANGELO [and the BOY].

ANGELO

How now, sweet lord, what’s the matter?

PAOLO

[Aside] Good faith, his presence makes me half-ashamed 20

Of my strayed thoughts. – Boy, bestow yourself. Exit Boy.

Where is my father, Signor Angelo?

ANGELO

Marry, in the gallery, where Your Lordship left him.

PAOLO

That’s well. Then, Angelo, I will be brief.

Since time forbids the use of circumstance, 25

How well you are received in my affection

Let it appear by this one instance only,

That now I will deliver to your trust

The dearest secrets treasured in my bosom.

Dear Angelo, you are not every man, 30

But one whom my election hath designed

As the true, proper object of my soul.

I urge not this t’insinuate my desert,

Or supple your tried temper with soft phrases –

True friendship loathes such oily compliment – 35

But from th’abundance of that love that flows

Through all my spirits is my speech enforced.

ANGELO

Before Your Lordship do proceed too far,

Let me be bold to intimate thus much:

That whatsoe’er your wisdom hath t’expose, 40

Be it the weightiest and most rich affair

That ever was included in your breast,

My faith shall poise it; if not –

PAOLO

Oh, no more!

Those words have rapt me with their sweet effects,

So freely breathed and so responsible 45

To that which I endeavoured to extract,

Arguing a happy mixture of our souls.

ANGELO

Why, were there no such sympathy, sweet lord,

Yet the impressure of those ample favours

I have derived from your unmatchèd spirit 50

Would bind my faith to all observances.

PAOLO

How, favours, Angelo? Oh, speak not of them.

They are mere paintings and import no merit.

Looks my love well? Thereon my hopes are placed;

Faith that is bought with favours cannot last. 55

Enter BOY.

BOY

My lord!

PAOLO

How now?

BOY

You are sought for all about the house within.

The Count, your father, calls for you.

PAOLO

God, what cross events do meet my purposes! 60

Now will he violently fret and grieve

That I am absent. – Boy, say I come presently. Exit Boy.

Sweet Angelo, I cannot now insist

Upon particulars; I must serve the time.

The main of all this is, I am in love. [He starts suddenly.] 65

ANGELO

Why starts Your Lordship?

PAOLO

I thought I heard my father coming hitherward.

List! Ha?

ANGELO

I hear not anything.

It was but your imagination, sure.

PAOLO

No. 70

ANGELO

No, I assure Your Lordship.

PAOLO

I would work safely.

ANGELO

Why, has he no knowledge of it, then?

PAOLO

Oh, no, no creature yet partakes it but yourself

In a third person, and believe me, friend, 75

The world contains not now another spirit

To whom I would reveal it. – Hark, hark!

SERVANTS

(Within) Signor Paolo! Lord Ferneze!

ANGELO

A pox upon those brazen-throated slaves!

What, are they mad, trow?

PAOLO

Alas, blame not them. 80

Their services are, clock-like, to be set

Backward and forward at their lord’s command.

You know my father’s wayward, and his humour

Must not receive a check, for then all objects

Feed both his grief and his impatience; 85

And those affections in him are like powder,

Apt to inflame with every little spark

And blow up reason. Therefore, Angelo, peace.

COUNT

(Within) Why, this is rare. Is he not in the garden?

CHRISTOPHERO

(Within) I know not, my lord. 90

COUNT

(Within) See. Call him.

PAOLO

He is coming this way. Let’s withdraw a little. Exeunt.

SERVANTS

(Within) Signor Paolo! Lord Ferneze! Lord Paolo!

1.5 Enter COUNT FERNEZE, MAXIMILIAN, AURELIA, PHOENIXELLA, SEBASTIAN, [and] BALTHASAR.

COUNT

Where should he be, trow? Did you look in the armoury?

SEBASTIAN

No, my lord.

COUNT

No? Why, there! Oh, who would keep such drones?

Exeunt Sebastian and Balthasar.

Enter MARTINO.

[Count]

How now, ha’ ye found him?

MARTINO

No, my lord. 5

COUNT

‘No, my lord.’ I shall have shortly all my family speak naught but ‘No,

my lord.’ Where is Christophero?

Enter CHRISTOPHERO.

[To Martino] Look how he stands! You sleepy knave! Exit Martino.

– What, is he not in the garden?

CHRISTOPHERO

No, my good lord. 10

COUNT

Your ‘good lord’? Oh, how this smells of fennel!

Enter SEBASTIAN [and] BALTHASAR.

You have been in the garden, it appears. Well? Well?

BALTHASAR

We cannot find him, my lord.

SEBASTIAN

He is not in the armoury.

COUNT

He is not? He is nowhere, is he? 15

MAXIMILIAN

Count Ferneze!

COUNT

Signor?

MAXIMILIAN

Preserve your patience, honourable count.

COUNT

Patience? A saint would lose his patience to be crossed

As I am with a sort of motley brains. 20

See, see, how like a nest of rooks they stand,

Enter ONION.

Gaping on one another! – Now, Diligence,

What news bring you?

ONION

An’t please Your Honour –

COUNT

Tut, tut, leave pleasing of my honour. 25

Diligence, you double with me. Come.

ONION

[Aside] How, does he find fault with ‘please His Honour’? ’Swounds, it has

begun a servingman’s speech ever since I belonged to the blue order. I know

not how it may show, now I am in black, but–

COUNT

What’s that you mutter, sir? Will you proceed? 30

ONION

An’t like Your good Lordship –

COUNT

Yet more! God’s precious!

ONION

[Aside] What, do not this like him neither?

COUNT

What say you, sir knave?

ONION

Marry, I say Your Lordship were best to set me to school again to learn 35

how to deliver a message.

COUNT

What, do you take exceptions at me, then?

ONION

Exception? I take no exceptions but, by Godso, your humours –

COUNT

Go to. You are a rascal. Hold your tongue.

ONION

Your Lordship’s poor servant, I. 40

COUNT

Tempt not my patience.

ONION

Why, I hope I am no spirit, am I?

MAXIMILIAN

[To The Count] My lord, command your steward to correct the slave.

ONION

Correct him? ’Sblood, come you and correct him an you have a

mind to it. Correct him! That’s a good jest, i’faith. The steward and you both, come and 45

correct him.

COUNT

[To Servingmen] Nay, see, away with him. Pull his cloth over his ears.

ONION

Cloth? Tell me of your cloth? [He takes off his black coat.] Here’s your cloth.

Nay, an I mourn a minute longer, I am the rottenest onion that ever spake

with a tongue! They thrust him out. 50

MAXIMILIAN

What call you your hind, Count Ferneze?

COUNT

His name is Onion, signor.

MAXIMILIAN

I thought him some such saucy companion.

COUNT

Signor Maximilian!

MAXIMILIAN

Sweet lord? 55

COUNT

Let me entreat you you would not regard

Any contempt flowing from such a spirit

So rude, so barbarous.

MAXIMILIAN

Most noble count,

Under your favour –

COUNT

Why, I’ll tell you, signor,

He’ll bandy with me word for word – nay, more, 60

Put me to silence, strike me perfect dumb,

And so amaze me – that oftentimes I know not

Whether to check or cherish his presumption.

Therefore, good signor –

MAXIMILIAN

Sweet lord, satisfy yourself, I am not now to learn how to manage 65

my affections. I have observed and know the difference between a base wretch

and a true man. I can distinguish them. The property of the wretch is, he would

hurt and cannot; of the man, he can hurt and will not.

COUNT

[To Aurelia] Go to, my merry daughter. Oh, these looks

Agree well with your habit, do they not? 70

Enter JUNIPER [talking to Onion offstage].

JUNIPER

Tut, let me alone. – By your favour, this is the gentleman, I think. [To the Count]

Sir, you appear to be an honourable gentleman. I understand and could

wish for mine own part that things were condent otherwise than they are. But,

the world knows, a foolish fellow, somewhat proclive and hasty; he did it in

a prejudicate humour. Marry, now, upon better computation, he wanes, he 75

melts, his poor eyes are in a cold sweat. Right noble signor, you can have but

compunction. I love the man; tender your compassion.

MAXIMILIAN

Doth any man here understand this fellow?

JUNIPER

Oh, God, sir, I may say frustra to the comprehension of your intellection.

MAXIMILIAN

Before the Lord, he speaks all riddle, I think. I must have a comment 80

ere I can conceive him.

COUNT

Why he sues to have his fellow, Onion, pardoned, and you must grant it,

signor.

MAXIMILIAN

Oh, with all my soul, my lord. Is that his motion?

JUNIPER

Ay, sir, and we shall retort these kind favours with all alacrity of spirit 85

we can, sir, as may be most expedient as well for the quality as the cause;

till when, in spite of this compliment, I rest, a poor cobbler, servant to my

honourable lord here, your friend, and Juniper. Exit.

MAXIMILIAN

How, Juniper?

COUNT

Ay, signor. 90

MAXIMILIAN

He is a sweet youth. His tongue has a happy turn when he sleeps.

COUNT

Ay, for then it rests.

Enter PAOLO FERNEZE, FRANCISCO COLONNIA, ANGELO, [and] VALENTINE.

[To Paolo] Oh, sir, you’re welcome.

Why, God be thankèd you are found at last. –

Signor Colonnia, truly you are welcome.

I am glad to see you, sir, so well returned. 95

FRANCISCO

I gladly thank Your Honour; yet, indeed,

I am sorry for such cause of heaviness

As hath possessed Your Lordship in my absence.

COUNT

Oh, Francisco, you knew her what she was!

FRANCISCO

She was a wise and honourable lady. 100

COUNT

Ay, was she not? Well, weep not she is gone.

Passion’s dulled eye can make two griefs of one.

Whom death mark out, virtue nor blood can save;

Princes, as beggars, all must feed the grave.

MAXIMILIAN

Are your horse ready, Lord Paolo? 105

PAOLO

Ay, signor, they stay for us at the gate.

MAXIMILIAN

Well, ’tis good. – Ladies, I will take my leave of you. Be your

fortunes as yourselves: fair. – Come, let us to horse. Count Ferneze, I bear a

spirit full of thanks for all your honourable courtesies.

COUNT

Sir, I could wish the number and value of them more in respect of your 110

deservings. But, Signor Maximilian, I pray you, a word in private.

[They walk aside.]

AURELIA

[To Paolo] I’faith, brother, you are fitted for a general yonder. Beshrew

my heart, if I had Fortunatus’s hat here, an I would not wish myself a man and

go with you only t’enjoy his presence.

PAULO

Why, do you love him so well, sister? 115

AURELIA

No, by my troth, but I have such an odd, pretty apprehension of his

humour, methinks that I am e’en tickled with the conceit of it. Oh, he is a fine

man.

ANGELO

And methinks another may be as fine as he.

AURELIA

Oh, Angelo, do you think I do urge any comparison against you? No, I 120

am not so ill-bred as to be a depraver of your worthiness. Believe me, if I had

not some hope of your abiding with us, I should never desire to go out of black

whilst I lived, but learn to speak i’the nose and turn puritan presently.

ANGELO

I thank you, lady. I know you can flout.

AURELIA

Come, do you take it so? I’faith, you wrong me. 125

FRANCISCO

[To Phoenixella, as they talk apart] Ay, but madam,

Thus to disclaim in all the affects of pleasure

May make your sadness seem too much affected,

And then the proper grace of it is lost.

PHOENIXELLA

Indeed, sir, if I did put on this sadness 130

Only abroad and in society,

And were in private merry and quick-humoured,

Then might it seem affected and abhorred.

But as my looks appear, such is my spirit,

Drowned up with confluence of grief and melancholy 135

That like to rivers run through all my veins,

Quenching the pride and fervour of my blood.

[Maximilian and the Count converse apart.]

MAXIMILIAN

My honourable lord, no more.

There is the honour of my blood engaged

For your son’s safety.

COUNT

Signor, blame me not 140

For tending his security so much.

He is mine only son, and that word ‘only’

Hath with his strong and repercussive sound

Struck my heart cold, and given it a deep wound.

MAXIMILIAN

Why, but stay, I beseech you. Had Your Lordship ever any more 145

sons than this?

COUNT

Why, have not you known it, Maximilian?

MAXIMILIAN

Let my sword fail me, then.

COUNT

I had one other, younger born than this

By twice so many hours as would fill 150

The circle of a year; his name Camillo,

Whom in that black and fearful night I lost.

’Tis now a nineteen years agone at least,

And yet the memory of it sits as fresh

Within my brain as ’twere but yesterday. 155

It was that night wherein the great Chamont,

The general for France, surprised Vicenza.

Methinks the horror of that clamorous shout

His soldiers gave when they attained the wall

Yet tingles in mine ear. Methinks I see 160

With what amazèd looks, distracted thoughts,

And minds confused, we that were citizens

Confronted one another. Every street

Was filled with bitter, self-tormenting cries,

And happy was that foot that first could press 165

The flow’ry champaign bordering on Verona.

Here I, employed about my dear wife’s safety,

Whose soul is now in peace, lost my Camillo,

Who sure was murdered by the barbarous soldiers,

Or else I should have heard – my heart is great. 170

Sorrow is faint, and passion makes me sweat.

MAXIMILIAN

Grieve not, sweet count. Comfort your spirits. You have a son, a

noble gentleman. He stands in the face of honour. For his safety, let that be no

question. I am master of my fortune and he shall share with me. Farewell, my

honourable lord. Ladies, once more, adieu. [To Aurelia] For yourself, madam, 175

you are a most rare creature. I tell you so, be not proud of it, I love you. – Come,

Lord Paolo, to horse.

PAOLO

Adieu, good Signor Francisco. – Farewell, sister.

Sound a tucket, and, as they pass, every one severally depart.

Maximilian, Paolo Ferneze, and Angelo remain.

ANGELO

[To Paolo] How shall we rid him hence?

PAOLO

Why, well enough. – Sweet Signor Maximilian, 180

I have some small occasion to stay.

If it may please you, but take horse afore;

I’ll overtake you ere your troops be ranged.

MAXIMILIAN

Your motion doth taste well. Lord Ferneze, I go. Exit Maximilian.

PAOLO

Now, if my love, fair Rachel, were so happy 185

But to look forth –

Enter RACHEL.

See, fortune doth me grace,

Before I can demand! – How now, love,

Where is your father?

RACHEL

Gone abroad, my lord.

PAOLO

That’s well.

RACHEL

Ay, but I fear he’ll presently return. 190

[Paolo starts to leave.]

Are you now going, my most honoured lord?

PAOLO

Ay, my sweet Rachel.

ANGELO

[Aside] Before God, she is a sweet wench.

PAOLO

Rachel, I hope I shall not need to urge

The sacred purity of our affects, 195

As if it hung in trial or suspense,

Since in our hearts and by our mutual vows

It is confirmed and sealed in sight of heaven.

[She weeps.]

Nay, do not weep. Why start you? Fear not, love.

Your father cannot be returned so soon. 200

Ay, prithee, do not look so heavily.

Thou shalt want nothing.

RACHEL

No? Is your presence nothing?

I shall want that, and wanting that, want all,

For that is all to me.

PAOLO

Content thee, sweet.

I have made choice here of a constant friend, 205

This gentleman, on whose zealous love

I do repose more than on all the world,

Thy beauteous self excepted; and to him

Have I committed my dear care of thee,

As to my genius or my other soul. 210

Receive him, gentle love, and what defects

My absence proves his presence shall supply.

The time is envious of our longer stay.

Farewell, dear Rachel.

RACHEL

Most dear lord, adieu.

Heaven and honour crown your deeds and you! 215Exit Rachel.

PAOLO

Faith, tell me, Angelo, how dost thou like her?

ANGELO

Troth, well, my lord, but shall I speak my mind?

PAOLO

Ay, prithee, do.

ANGELO

She is derived too meanly to be wife

To such a noble person, in my judgement. 220

PAOLO

Nay, then, thy judgement is too mean, I see.

Didst thou ne’er read, in difference of good

’Tis more to shine in virtue than in blood?

ANGELO

Come, you are so sententious, my lord.

Enter JAQUES.

PAOLO

Here comes her father. – How dost thou, good Jaques? 225

ANGELO

God save thee, Jaques.

JAQUES

[Aside] What should this mean? [Calling] Rachel, open the door.

Exit Jaques.

ANGELO

’Sblood, how the poor slave looks, as though

He had been haunted by the spirit, Lar,

Or seen the ghost of some great Satrapas, 230

In an unsavoury sheet.

PAOLO

I muse he spake not; belike he was amazed,

Coming so suddenly and unprepared.

Well, let’s go. Exeunt.

2.1 Enter JAQUES solus.

JAQUES

So now enough, my heart; beat now no more,

At least for this affright. What a cold sweat

Flowed on my brows and over all my bosom!

Had I not reason? To behold my door

Beset with unthrifts, and myself abroad? 5

Why, Jaques, was there nothing in the house

Worth a continual eye, a vigilant thought,

Whose head should never nod, nor eyes once wink?

Look on my coat, my thoughts, worn quite threadbare,

That time could never cover with a nap, 10

And by it learn never with naps of sleep

To smother your conceits of that you keep.

But yet, I marvel why these gallant youths

Spoke me so fair, and I esteemed a beggar!

The end of flattery is gain or lechery. 15

If they seek gain of me, they think me rich;

But that they do not. For their other object,

’Tis in my handsome daughter, if it be.

And, by your leave, her handsomeness may tell them

My beggary counterfeits, and that her neatness 20

Flows from some store of wealth; that breaks my coffers

With this same engine: love to mine own breed.

But this is answered: ‘Beggars will keep fine

Their daughters, being fair, though themselves pine.’

Well, then, it is for her, ay, ’tis sure for her, 25

And I make her so brisk for some of them

That I might live alone once with my gold.

Oh, ’tis a sweet companion, kind and true!

A man may trust it when his father cheats him,

Brother, or friend, or wife. O wondrous pelf! 30

That which makes all men false is true itself.

But now this maid is but supposed my daughter,

For I, being steward to a lord of France,

Of great estate and wealth, called Lord Chamont,

He gone into the wars, I stole his treasure – 35

But hear not, anything! – I stole his treasure,

And this his daughter, being but two years old,

Because it loved me so that it would leave

The nurse herself to come into mine arms,

And, had I left it, it would sure have died. 40

Now herein I was kind and had a conscience.

And, since her lady mother, that did die

In childbed of her, loved me passing well,

It may be nature fashioned this affection,

Both in the child and her. But he’s ill-bred 45

That ransacks tombs and doth deface the dead.

I’ll therefore say no more; suppose the rest.

Here have I changed my form, my name, and hers,

And live obscurely, to enjoy more safe

My dearest treasure. But I must abroad. – 50

Rachel!

Enter RACHEL.

RACHEL

What is your pleasure, sir?

JAQUES

Rachel, I must abroad.

Lock thyself in, but yet take out the key,

That whosoever peeps in at the keyhole 55

May yet imagine there is none at home.

RACHEL

I will, sir.

JAQUES

But, hark thee, Rachel. Say a thief should come

And miss the key; he would resolve indeed

None were at home and so break in the rather. 60

Ope the door, Rachel, set it open, daughter.

But sit in it thyself and talk aloud,

As if there were some more in house with thee.

Put out the fire, kill the chimney’s heart,

That it may breathe no more than a dead man. 65

The more we spare, my child, the more we gain. Exeunt.

2.2 Enter CHRISTOPHERO, JUNIPER, and ONION.

CHRISTOPHERO

What says my fellow Onion? Come on.

ONION

All of a house, sir, but no fellows; you are my lord’s steward. But I pray

you, what think you of love, sir?

CHRISTOPHERO

Of love, Onion? Why, it’s a very honourable humour.

ONION

Nay, if it be but worshipful, I care not. 5

JUNIPER

Go to, it’s honourable. Check not at the conceit of the gentleman.

ONION

But in truth, sir, you shall do well to think well of love, for it thinks well

of you in me, I assure you.

CHRISTOPHERO

Gramercy, fellow Onion, I do think well. Thou art in love, art

thou? 10

ONION

Partly, sir, but I am ashamed to say wholly.

CHRISTOPHERO

Well, I will further it in thee to any honest woman or maiden,

the best I can.

JUNIPER

Why, now you come near him, sir. He doth vail, he doth remunerate, he

doth chaw the cud in the kindness of an honest imperfection to Your Worship. 15

CHRISTOPHERO

But who is it thou lovest, fellow Onion?

ONION

Marry, a poor man’s daughter, but none of the honestest, I hope.

CHRISTOPHERO

Why, wouldst thou not have her honest?

ONION

Oh, no, for then I am sure she would not have me. ’Tis Rachel de Prie.

CHRISTOPHERO

Why, she hath the name of a very virtuous maiden. 20

JUNIPER

So she is, sir; but the fellow talks in quiddits, he.

CHRISTOPHERO

[To Onion] What wouldst thou have me do in the matter?

ONION

Do nothing, sir, I pray you, but speak for me.

CHRISTOPHERO

In what manner?

ONION

My fellow Juniper can tell you, sir. 25

JUNIPER

Why, as thus, sir: Your Worship may commend him for a fellow fit for

consanguinity, and that he shaketh with desire of procreation, or so.

CHRISTOPHERO

That were not so good, methinks.

JUNIPER

No, sir? Why so, sir? What if you should say to her, ‘Corroborate thyself,

sweet soul; let me distinguish thy paps with my fingers, divine Mumps, pretty 30

Pastorella. Lookest thou so sweet and bounteous? Comfort my friend here.’

CHRISTOPHERO

Well, I perceive you wish I should say something may do him

grace and further his desires, and that, be sure, I will.

ONION

I thank you, sir. God save your life, I pray God, sir.

JUNIPER

Your Worship is too good to live long. You’ll contaminate me no 35

service?

CHRISTOPHERO

‘Command’, thou wouldst say. No, good Juniper.

JUNIPER

Health and wealth, sir. Exeunt Onion and Juniper.

CHRISTOPHERO

This wench will I solicit for myself,

Making my lord and master privy to it; 40

And if he second me with his consent,

I will proceed, as having long ere this

Thought her a worthy choice to make my wife. Exit.

2.3 Enter AURELIA [and] PHOENIXELLA.

AURELIA

Room for a case of matrons coloured black!

How motherly my mother’s death hath made us!

I would I had some girls now to bring up.

Oh, I could make a wench so virtuous

She should say grace to every bit of meat 5

And gape no wider than a wafer’s thickness;

And she should make French curtsies so most low

That every touch should turn her over backward.

PHOENIXELLA

Sister, these words become not your attire,

Nor your estate. Our virtuous mother’s death 10

Should print more deep effects of sorrow in us

Than may be worn out in so little time.

AURELIA

Sister, faith, you take too much tobacco;

It makes you black within as y’are without.

What, true-stitch, sister? Both your sides alike? 15

Be of a slighter work for, of my word,

You shall be sold as dear, or rather dearer.

Will you be bound to customs and to rites?

Shed profitable tears, weep for advantage,

Or else do all things as you are inclined. 20

‘Eat when your stomach serves’, saith the physician,

‘Not at eleven and six.’ So if your humour

Be now affected with this heaviness,

Give me the reins and spare not, as I do

In this my pleasurable appetite. 25

It is precisianism to alter that

With austere judgement that is given by nature.

I wept, you saw, too, when my mother died,

For then I found it easier to do so,

And fitter with my mood than not to weep. 30

But now ’tis otherwise. Another time

Perhaps I shall have such deep thoughts of her

That I shall weep afresh, some twelvemonth hence,

And I will weep, if I be so disposed,

And put on black as grimly then as now. 35

Let the mind go still with the body’s stature!

Judgement is fit for judges; give me nature.

2.4 Enter FRANCISCO [and] ANGELO.

FRANCISCO

See, Signor Angelo, here are the ladies.

Go you and comfort one; I’ll to the other.

ANGELO

Therefore I come, sir. I’ll to the eldest. –

God save you, ladies. These sad moods of yours,

That make you choose these solitary walks, 5

Are hurtful for your beauties.

AURELIA

If we had them.

[Angelo and Aurelia come forward.]

ANGELO

Come, that condition might be for your hearts

When you protest faith, since we cannot see them.

But this same heart of beauty, your sweet face,

Is in mine eye still.

AURELIA

Oh, you cut my heart 10

With your sharp eye.

ANGELO

Nay, lady, that’s not so;

Your heart’s too hard.

AURELIA

My beauty’s heart?

ANGELO

Oh, no,

I mean that regent of affection, madam,

That tramples on all love with such contempt

In this fair breast.

AURELIA

No more; your drift is savoured. 15

I had rather seem hard-hearted –

ANGELO

Than hard-favoured?

Is that your meaning, lady?

AURELIA

Go to, sir.

Your wits are fresh, I know; they need no spur.

ANGELO

And therefore you will ride them.

AURELIA

Say I do.

They will not tire, I hope.

ANGELO

No, not with you. 20

Hark you, sweet lady.

[They walk aside.]

[Francisco and Phoenixella come forward.]

FRANCISCO

’Tis much pity, madam,

You should have any reason to retain

This sign of grief, much less the thing designed.

PHOENIXELLA

Griefs are more fit for ladies than their pleasures.

FRANCISCO

That is for such as follow naught but pleasures. 25

But you that temper them so well with virtues,

Using your griefs so, it would prove them pleasures,

And you would seem in cause of griefs and pleasures

Equally pleasant.

PHOENIXELLA

Sir, so I do now.

It is the excess of either that I strive 30

So much to shun in all my proved endeavours.

Although perhaps unto a general eye

I may appear most wedded to my griefs,

Yet doth my mind forsake no taste of pleasure –

I mean that happy pleasure of the soul, 35

Divine and sacred contemplation

Of that eternal and most glorious bliss

Proposèd as the crown unto our souls.

FRANCISCO

I will be silent. Yet that I may serve

But as a decade in the art of memory, 40

To put you still in mind of your own virtues

When your too serious thoughts make you too sad,

Accept me for your servant, honoured lady.

PHOENIXELLA

Those ceremonies are too common, Signor Francis,

For your uncommon gravity and judgement, 45

And fits them only that are naught but ceremony.

[They walk aside.]

[Angelo and Aurelia come forward.]

ANGELO

Come, I will not sue stalely to be your servant;

But a new term: will you be my refuge?

AURELIA

Your refuge? Why, sir?

ANGELO

That I might fly to you when all else fail me. 50

AURELIA

An you be good at flying, be my plover.

ANGELO

Nay, take away the ‘p’.

AURELIA

Tut, then you cannot fly.

ANGELO

I’ll warrant you, I’ll borrow Cupid’s wings.

AURELIA

Mass, then I fear me you’ll do strange things. 55

I pray you, blame me not if I suspect you;

Your own confession simply doth detect you.

Nay, an you be so great in Cupid’s books,

’Twill make me jealous. You can with your looks,

I warrant you, inflame a woman’s heart, 60

And at your pleasure take love’s golden dart

And wound the breast of any virtuous maid.

Would I were hence! Good faith, I am afraid

You can constrain one, ere they be aware,

To run mad for your love.

ANGELO

Oh, this is rare! 65

2.5 [Enter] COUNT [FERNEZE ].

COUNT

Close with my daughters, gentlemen? Well done.

’Tis like yourselves. Nay, lusty Angelo,

Let not my presence make you balk your sport;

I will not break a minute of discourse

’Twixt you and one of your fair mistresses. 5

ANGELO

One of my mistresses? Why, thinks Your Lordship

I have so many?

COUNT

Many? No, Angelo,

I do not think th’hast many. Some fourteen

I hear thou hast, even of our worthiest dames

Of any note in Milan. 10

ANGELO

Nay, good my lord, fourteen? It is not so.

COUNT

By the mass, that is’t. [He gives a paper. ] Here are their names to show

Fourteen or fifteen t’one. Good Angelo,

You need not be ashamed of any of them.

They are gallants all.

ANGELO

’Sblood, you are such a lord! [He starts to go.] 15

COUNT

Nay, stay, sweet Angelo. I am disposed

A little to be pleasant past my custom. Exit Angelo.

– He’s gone, he’s gone. I have disgraced him shrewdly.

Daughters, take heed of him; he’s a wild youth.

Look what he says to you, believe him not. 20

He will swear love to everyone he sees.

Francisco, give them counsel, good Francisco;

I dare trust thee with both, but him with neither.

FRANCISCO

Your Lordship yet may trust both them with him.

COUNT

Well, go your ways. Away! Exeunt [Aurelia, Phoenixella, and Francisco]. 25

2.6 [Enter] CHRISTOPHERO.

COUNT

How now, Christopher, what news with you?

CHRISTOPHERO

I have an humble suit to Your good Lordship.

COUNT

A suit, Christopher? What suit, I prithee?

CHRISTOPHERO

I would crave pardon at Your Lordship’s hands

If it seem vain or simple in your sight. 5

COUNT

I’ll pardon all simplicity, Christopher.

What is thy suit?

CHRISTOPHERO

Perhaps being now so old a bachelor,

I shall seem half unwise to bend myself

In strict affection to a poor young maid. 10

COUNT

What, is it touching love, Christopher?

Art thou disposed to marry? Why, ’tis well.

CHRISTOPHERO

Ay, but Your Lordship may imagine now

That I, being steward of Your Honour’s house,

If I be married once, will more regard 15

The maintenance of my wife and of my charge

Than the due discharge of my place and office.

COUNT

No, no, Christopher, I know thee honest.

CHRISTOPHERO

Good faith, my lord, Your Honour may suspect it,

But – 20

COUNT

Then I should wrong thee. Thou hast ever been

Honest and true, and will be still, I know.

CHRISTOPHERO

Ay, but this marriage alters many men,

And you may fear it will do me, my lord.

But ere it do so, I will undergo 25

Ten thousand several deaths.

COUNT

I know it, man.

Who wouldst thou have, I prithee?

CHRISTOPHERO

Rachel de Prie,

If Your good Lordship grant me your consent.

COUNT

Rachel de Prie? What, the poor beggar’s daughter?

She’s a right handsome maid, how poor soever, 30

And thou hast my consent, with all my heart.

CHRISTOPHERO

I humbly thank Your Honour. I’ll now ask her father.

COUNT

Do so, Christophero; thou shalt do well. Exit [Christophero].

’Tis strange, she being so poor, he should affect her,

But this is more strange, that myself should love her! 35

I spied her lately at her father’s door,

And if I did not see in her sweet face

Gentry and nobleness, ne’er trust me more.

But this persuasion fancy wrought in me,

That fancy being created with her looks; 40

For where Love is, he thinks his basest object

Gentle and noble. I am far in love,

And shall be forced to wrong my honest steward,

For I must sue and seek her for myself.

How much my duty to my late dead wife 45

And my own dear renown soe’er it sways,

I’ll to her father straight. Love hates delays. Exit.

2.7 Enter ONION, JUNIPER, VALENTINE, SEBASTIAN, BALTHASAR, [and] MARTINO.

ONION

Come on, i’faith, let’s to some exercise or other, my hearts. –

Fetch the hilts. Exit Martino.

Fellow Juniper, wilt thou play?

JUNIPER

I cannot resolve you. ’Tis as I am fitted with the ingenuity, quantity, or

quality of the cudgel. 5

VALENTINE

How, dost thou bastinado the poor cudgel with terms?

JUNIPER

Oh, ingle, I have the phrases, man, and the anagrams, and the epitaphs

fitting the mystery of the noble science.

ONION

I’ll be hanged an he were not misbegotten of some fencer.

SEBASTIAN

Sirrah Valentine, you can resolve me now: have they their masters 10

of defence in other countries as we have here in Italy?

VALENTINE

Oh, Lord, ay, especially they in Utopia. There they perform their

prizes and challenges with as great ceremony as the Italian or any nation else.

BALTHASAR

Indeed? How is the manner of it, for God’s love, good Valentine?

JUNIPER

Ingle, I prithee, make recourse unto us. We are thy friends and familiars, 15

sweet ingle.

VALENTINE

Why, thus, sir –

ONION

God-a-mercy, good Valentine, nay, go on.

JUNIPER

Silentium, bonus socius Onionus. Good fellow, Onion, be not so ingenious

and turbulent. [To Valentine] So, sir. And how? How, sweet ingle? 20

VALENTINE

Marry, first they are brought to the public theatre.

JUNIPER

What? Ha’ they theatre there?

VALENTINE

Theatres? Ay, and plays too, both tragedy and comedy, and set forth

with as much state as can be imagined.

JUNIPER

By Godso, a man is nobody till he has travelled. 25

SEBASTIAN

And how are their plays? As ours are, extemporal?

VALENTINE

Oh, no, all premeditated things, and some of them very good, i’faith.

My master used to visit them often when he was there.

BALTHASAR

Why, how, are they in a place where any man may see them?

VALENTINE

Ay, in the common theatres, I tell you. But the sport is at a new 30

play to observe the sway and variety of opinion that passeth it. A man shall

have such a confused mixture of judgement poured out in the throng there,

as ridiculous as laughter itself: one says he likes not the writing; another likes

not the plot; another, not the playing. And sometimes a fellow that comes not

there past once in five years, at a Parliament time or so, will be as deep-mired 35

in censuring as the best, and swear by God’s foot he would never stir his foot

to see a hundred such as that is.

ONION

I must travel to see these things. I shall ne’er think well of myself else.

JUNIPER

Fellow Onion, I’ll bear thy charges an thou wilt but pilgrimize it along

with me to the land of Utopia. 40

SEBASTIAN

Why, but methinks such rooks as these should be ashamed to judge.

VALENTINE

Not a whit. The rankest stinkard of them all will take upon him as

peremptory as if he had writ himself in artibus magister.

SEBASTIAN

And do they stand to a popular censure for anything they present?

VALENTINE

Ay, ever, ever, and the people generally are very acceptive and apt 45

to applaud any meritable work; but there are two sorts of persons that most

commonly are infectious to a whole auditory.

BALTHASAR

What be they?

JUNIPER

Ay, come, let’s know them.

ONION

It were good they were noted. 50

VALENTINE

Marry, one is the rude, barbarous crew, a people that have no brains

and yet grounded judgements. These will hiss anything that mounts above

their grounded capacities. But the other are worth the observation, i’faith.

ALL

What be they? What be they?

VALENTINE

Faith, a few capricious gallants. 55

JUNIPER

‘Capricious’? Stay, that word’s for me.

VALENTINE

And they have taken such a habit of dislike in all things that

they will approve nothing, be it never so conceited or elaborate, but sit

dispersed, making faces and spitting, wagging their upright ears, and cry,

‘Filthy, filthy!’, simply uttering their own condition and using their wried 60

countenances instead of a vice to turn the good aspects of all that shall sit near

them from what they behold.

Enter MARTINO with cudgels.

ONION

Oh, that’s well said. – Lay them down. – Come, sirs, who plays? Fellow

Juniper, Sebastian, Balthasar? Somebody take them up, come.

JUNIPER

Ingle Valentine? 65

VALENTINE

Not I, sir, I profess it not.

JUNIPER

Sebastian?

SEBASTIAN

Balthasar?

BALTHASAR

Who, I?

ONION

Come, but one bout. I’ll give ’em thee, i’faith. 70

BALTHASAR

Why, here’s Martino.

ONION

Faugh, he? Alas, he cannot play a whit, man.

JUNIPER

That’s all one. No more could you in stata quo prius. Martino, play with

him. Every man has his beginning and conduction.

MARTINO

Will you not hurt me, fellow Onion? 75

ONION

Hurt thee? No. An I do, put me among pot-herbs and chop me to pieces.

Come on.

JUNIPER

By your favour, sweet bullies, give them room. Back! So, Martino, do

not look so thin upon the matter.

[They fight with cudgels.]

ONION

Ha, well played! Fall over to my leg now; so, to your guard again. Excellent! 80

To my head now. Make home your blow; spare not me, make it home. Good!

Good again!

[Martino strikes Onion on the head.]

SEBASTIAN

Why, how now, Peter?

VALENTINE

Godso, Onion has caught a bruise.

JUNIPER

Coraggio! Be not capricious. What? 85

ONION

Capricious? Not I. I scorn to be capricious for a scratch. Martino must

have another bout. Come!

VALENTINE, SEBASTIAN, BALTHASAR

No, no, play no more, play no more!

ONION

[Hurt] Faugh, ’tis nothing, a fillip, a device. Fellow Juniper, prithee, get

me a plantain. I had rather play with one that had skill by half. 90

MARTINO

By my troth, fellow Onion, ’twas against my will.

ONION

Nay, that’s not so, ’twas against my head. But come, we’ll ha’ one bout

more.

JUNIPER

Not a bout, not a stroke.

ALL

No more, no more! 95 [Exit Martino.]

JUNIPER

Why, I’ll give you demonstration how it came. [Demonstrating] Thou

opened’st the dagger to falsify over with the back sword trick, and he interrupted

before he could fall to the close.

ONION

No, no, I know best how it was, better than any man here. I felt his play

presently, for, look you, [demonstrating] I gathered upon him thus, thus – do 100

you see? – for the double lock, and took it single on the head.

VALENTINE

He says very true; he took it single on the head.

SEBASTIAN

Come, let’s go.

Enter MARTINO with a cobweb.

MARTINO

Here, fellow Onion, here’s a cobweb.

ONION

How, a cobweb, Martino? I will have another bout with you. ’Swounds, 105

do you first break my head and then give me a plaster in scorn? Come to it, I

will have a bout.

MARTINO

God’s my witness –

ONION

Tut, your witness cannot serve.

JUNIPER

’Sblood, why, what, thou art not lunatic, art thou? An thou be’st, avoid, 110

Mephistopheles! Say the sign should be in Aries now, as it may be for all us,

where were your life? Answer me that.

SEBASTIAN

He says well, Onion.

VALENTINE

Ay, indeed, does he.

JUNIPER

Come, come, you are a foolish naturalist. Go, get a white of an egg and 115

a little flax, and close the breach of the head. It is the most conducible thing

that can be. Martino, do not insinuate upon your good fortune, but play an

honest part and bear away the bucklers.

[Martino picks up the cudgels.] Exeunt.

3.1 Enter ANGELO solus.

ANGELO

My young and simple friend, Paolo Ferneze,

Bound me with mighty, solemn conjurations

To be true to him in his love to Rachel

And to solicit his remembrance still

In his enforcèd absence. Much, i’faith! 5

True to my friend in cases of affection?

In women’s cases? What a jest it is!

How silly he is that imagines it!

He is an ass that will keep promise strictly

In anything that checks his private pleasure, 10

Chiefly in love. ’Sblood, am not I a man?

Have I not eyes that are as free to look,

And blood to be inflamed, as well as his?

And when it is so, shall I not pursue

Mine own love’s longings, but prefer my friend’s? 15

Ay, ’tis a good fool. Do so, hang me then,

Because I swore. Alas, who does not know

That lovers’ perjuries are ridiculous?

Have at thee, Rachel! I’ll go court her sure,

For now I know her father is abroad. 20

Enter JAQUES.

[Aside] ’Sblood! See, he is here. Oh, what damned luck is this!

This labour’s lost. I must by no means see him.

[He sings.] ‘Tau, dery, dery.’ Exit.

3.2 JAQUES [comes forward].

JAQUES

Mischief and hell! What is this man, a spirit?

Haunts he my house’s ghost? Still at my door?

He has been at my door; he has been in,

In my dear door. Pray God my gold be safe!

Enter CHRISTOPHERO.

God’s pity, here’s another! [Calling] Rachel! Ho, Rachel! 5

CHRISTOPHERO

God save you, honest father.

JAQUES

[Calling] Rachel! God’s light, come to me! Rachel, Rachel!

Exit [into his house].

CHRISTOPHERO

Now in God’s name, what ails he? This is strange!

He loves his daughter so, I’ll lay my life,

That he’s afraid, having been now abroad, 10

I come to seek her love unlawfully.

Enter JAQUES.

JAQUES

[Aside] ’Tis safe, ’tis safe. They have not robbed my treasure.

CHRISTOPHERO

Let it not seem offensive to you, sir –

JAQUES

[Aside] ‘Sir’? God’s my life! ‘Sir’, ‘sir’, call me ‘sir’?

CHRISTOPHERO

Good father, hear me.

JAQUES

You are most welcome, sir, 15

[Aside] I meant ‘almost’. – And would Your Worship speak?

Would you abase yourself to speak to me?

CHRISTOPHERO

’Tis no abasing, father. My intent

Is to do further honour to you, sir,

Than only speak: which is to be your son. 20

JAQUES

[Aside] My gold is in his nostrils! He has smelt it.

Break, breast! Break, heart! Fall on the earth, my entrails,

With this same bursting admiration!

He knows my gold; he knows of all my treasure.

[Aloud] How do you know, sir? Whereby do you guess? 25

CHRISTOPHERO

At what, sir? What is’t you mean?

JAQUES

I ask,

An’t please Your gentle Worship, how you know –

I mean, how I should make Your Worship know –

That I have nothing –

To give with my poor daughter? I have nothing. 30

The very air, bounteous to every man,

Is scant to me, sir.

CHRISTOPHERO

I do think, good father,

You are but poor.

JAQUES

[Aside] He thinks so. Hark, but ‘think’ so!

He thinks not so; he knows of all my treasure. Exit [into his house].

CHRISTOPHERO

Poor man, he is so overjoyed to hear 35

His daughter may be, past his hopes, bestowed

That betwixt fear and hope, if I mean simply,

He is thus passionate.

Enter JAQUES.

JAQUES

[To himself] Yet, all is safe within. Is none without?

Nobody breaks my walls? 40

CHRISTOPHERO

What say you, father, shall I have your daughter?

JAQUES

I have no dowry to bestow upon her.

CHRISTOPHERO

I do expect none, father.

JAQUES

That is well.

Then I beseech Your Worship, make no question

Of that you wish. ’Tis too much favour to me. 45

CHRISTOPHERO

[Aside] I’ll leave him now to give his passions breath,

Which, being settled, I will fetch his daughter.

I shall but move too much to speak now to him. Exit Christophero.

JAQUES

So, he’s gone. Would all were dead and gone,

That I might live with my dear gold alone! 50

3.3 [Enter] COUNT [FERNEZE].

COUNT

Here is the poor old man.

JAQUES

[Aside] Out, on my soul, another! Comes he hither?

COUNT

Be not dismayed, old man. I come to cheer you.

JAQUES

[Aside] To me, by heaven!

Turn ribs to brass, turn voice into a trumpet 5

To rattle out the battles of my thoughts!

One comes to hold me talk, while th’other robs me.

Exit [into his house].

COUNT

He has forgot me, sure. What should this mean?

He fears authority and my want of wife

Will take his daughter from him to defame her. 10

He that hath naught on earth but one poor daughter

May take this ecstasy of care to keep her.

Enter JAQUES.

JAQUES

[Aside] And yet, ’tis safe. They mean not to use force

But fawning, coming. I shall eas’ly know

By his next question if he think me rich. 15

[Aloud] Whom see I? My good lord!

[He kneels.]

COUNT

Stand up, good father. [Jaques rises.]

I call thee not father for thy age

But that I gladly wish to be thy son,

In honoured marriage with thy beauteous daughter.

JAQUES

[Aside] Oh, so, so, so, so, so, this is for gold! 20

Now it is sure. This is my daughter’s neatness

Makes them believe me rich. [Aloud] No, my good lord,

I’ll tell you all, how my poor, hapless daughter

Got that attire she wears from top to toe.

COUNT

Why, father, this is nothing. 25

JAQUES

Oh, yes, good my lord.

COUNT

Indeed, it is not.

JAQUES

Nay, sweet lord, pardon me. Do not dissemble;

Hear your poor beadsman speak. ’Tis requisite

That I, so huge a beggar, make account

Of things that pass my calling. She was born 30

T’enjoy nothing underneath the sun

But that, if she had more than other beggars,

She should be envied. I will tell you, then,

How she had all she wears. Her warm shoes, God wot,

A kind maid gave her, seeing her go barefoot 35

In a cold, frosty morning, God requite her!

Her homely stockings –

COUNT

Father, I’ll hear no more. Thou mov’st too much

With thy too curious answer for thy daughter,

That doth deserve a thousand times as much. 40

I’ll be thy son-in-law, and she shall wear

Th’attire of countesses.

JAQUES

O good my lord,

Mock not the poor. Remembers not Your Lordship

That poverty is the precious gift of God,

As well as riches? [He kneels.] Tread upon me rather 45

Than mock my poorness.

COUNT

Rise, I say.

When I mock poorness, then heavens make me poor! [Jaques rises.]

3.4 Enter NUNTIUS.

NUNTIUS

[Aside] See, here’s the Count Ferneze. I will tell him

The hapless accident of his brave son,

That he may seek the sooner to redeem him. Exit Jaques.

– God save Your Lordship!

COUNT

You are right welcome, sir.

NUNTIUS

I would I brought such news as might deserve it. 5

COUNT

What, bring you me ill news?

NUNTIUS

’Tis ill, my lord,

Yet such as usual chance of war affords,

And for which all men are prepared that use it,

And those that use it not, but in their friends,

Or in their children.

COUNT

Ill news of my son? 10

My dear and only son, I’ll lay my soul.

Ay, me, accurst! Thought of his death doth wound me,

And the report of it will kill me quite.

NUNTIUS

’Tis not so ill, my lord.

COUNT

How then? 15

NUNTIUS

He’s taken prisoner, and that’s all.

COUNT

That’s enough, enough.

I set my thoughts on love, on servile love,

Forget my virtuous wife, feel not the dangers,

The bands and wounds of mine own flesh and blood, 20

And therein am a madman, therein plagued

With the most just affliction under heaven.

Is Maximilian taken prisoner too?

NUNTIUS

Nay, good my lord, he is returned with prisoners.

COUNT

Is’t possible? Can Maximilian 25

Return and view my face without my son,

For whom he swore such care as for himself?

NUNTIUS

My lord, no care can change the events of war.

COUNT

Oh, in what tempests do my fortunes sail,

Still wracked with winds more foul and contrary 30

Than any northern gust or southern flaw

That ever yet enforced the sea to gape

And swallow the poor merchant’s traffic up!

First, in Vicenza lost I my first son;

Next, here in Milan, my most dear loved lady; 35

And now, my Paolo, prisoner to the French,

Which last, being printed with my other griefs,

Doth make so huge a volume that my breast

Cannot contain them. But this is my love;

I must make love to Rachel! Heaven hath thrown 40

This vengeance on me most deservedly,

Were it for naught but wronging of my steward.

NUNTIUS

My lord, since only money may redress

The worst of this misfortune, be not grieved.

Prepare his ransom, and your noble son 45

Shall greet your cheerèd eyes with the more honour.

COUNT

I will prepare his ransom. Gracious heaven,

Grant his imprisonment may be his worst –

Honoured and soldier-like imprisonment –

And that he be not manacled and made 50

A drudge to his proud foe! And here I vow

Never to dream of seemless amorous toys,

Nor aim at other joy on earth

But the fruition of my only son. Exeunt.

3.5 Enter JAQUES [from his house ] with his gold and a scuttle full of horse dung.

JAQUES

He’s gone. I knew it. This is our hot lover!

I will believe them, ay. They may come in

Like simple wooers and be arrant thieves,

And I not know them. ’Tis not to be told

What servile villainies men will do for gold. 5

Oh, it began to have a huge, strong smell,

Which, lying so long together in a place,

I’ll give it vent. It shall ha’ shift enough.

And if the devil, that envies all goodness,

Have told them of my gold and where I kept it, 10

I’ll set his burning nose once more a-work,

To smell where I removed it. [He uncovers the gold. ] Here it is!

I’ll hide and cover it with this horse dung. [He buries the gold. ]

Who will suppose that such a precious nest

Is crowned with such a dunghill excrement? 15

In, my dear life. Sleep sweetly, my dear child,

Scarce lawfully begotten, but yet gotten,

And that’s enough. Rot, all hands that come near thee,

Except mine own! Burn out, all eyes that see thee,

Except mine own! All thoughts of thee be poison 20

To their enamoured hearts, except mine own!

I’ll take no leave, sweet prince, great emperor,

But see thee every minute, king of kings.

I’ll not be rude to thee and turn my back

In going from thee, but go backward out, 25

With my face toward thee, with humble curtsies.

None is within. None overlooks my wall.

To have gold and to have it safe, is all. Exit [backwards].

4.1 Enter MAXIMILIAN with SOLDIERS, CHAMONT [disguised as Gaspar ], CAMILLO FERNEZE [as Gaspar disguised as Chamont ], [and ] PACUE.

MAXIMILIAN

[To Camillo] Lord Chamont, and your valiant friend there, I cannot

say, ‘welcome’ to Milan. Your thoughts and that word are not musical. But I

can say you are come to Milan.

PACUE

Mort Dieu!

CHAMONT

Garçon! 5

MAXIMILIAN

Gentlemen – I would call an emperor so – you are now my prisoners.

I am sorry. Marry, this: spit in the face of your fortunes, for your usage shall

be honourable.

CAMILLO

We know it, Signor Maximilian,

The fame of all your actions sounds naught else 10

But perfect honour from her swelling cheeks.

MAXIMILIAN

It shall do so still, I assure you, and I will give you reason: there

is in this last action, you know, a noble gentleman of our party and a right

valiant, semblably prisoner to your general as your honoured selves to me,

for whose safety this tongue hath given warrant to his honourable father, the 15

Count Ferneze. You conceive me?

CAMILLO

Ay, signor.

MAXIMILIAN

Well, then I must tell you, your ransoms be to redeem him. What

think you? Your answer?

CHAMONT

[As Gaspar] Marry, with my lord’s leave here, I say, signor, 20

This free and ample offer you have made

Agrees well with your honour, but not ours,

For I think not but Chamont is as well born

As is Ferneze. Then, if I mistake not,

He scorns to have his worth so underprized 25

That it should need an adjunct in exchange

Of any equal fortune. Noble signor,

I am a soldier and I love Chamont.

Ere I would bruise his estimation

With the least ruin of mine own respect 30

In this vile kind, these legs should rot with irons,

This body pine in prison till the flesh

Dropped from my bones in flakes like withered leaves,

In heart of autumn, from a stubborn oak.

MAXIMILIAN

[To Chamont] Monsieur Gaspar – I take it so is your name – misprize 35

me not. I will trample on the heart, on the soul of him that shall say I will wrong

you. What I purpose you cannot now know, but you shall know, and, doubt

not, to your contentment. [To Camillo] Lord Chamont, I will leave you. Whilst I

go in and present myself to the honourable count, till my regression, so please

you, your noble feet may measure this private, pleasant, and most princely 40

walk. – Soldiers, regard them and respect them. [Exit.]

[The Soldiers stand apart.]

PACUE

[Aside] Oh, ver’ bon! Excellenta gull! He take-a my Lord Chamont for

Monsieur Gaspra and Monsieur Gaspra for my Lord Chamont! Oh, dis be

brave for make-a me laugha. Ha, ha, ha. Oh, my heart tickle-a!

CAMILLO

[To Chamont] Ay, but Your Lordship knows not what hard fate 45

Might have pursued us; therefore, howsoe’er,

The changing of our names was necessary,

And we must now be careful to maintain

This error strongly, which our own device

Hath thrust into their ignorant conceits. 50

For should we, on the taste of this good fortune,

Appear ourselves, ’twould both create in them

A kind of jealousy and, perchance, invert

Those honourable courses they intend.

CHAMONT

True, my dear Gaspar, but this hang-by here 55

Will at one time or other, on my soul,

Discover us. A secret in his mouth

Is like a wild bird put into a cage,

Whose door no sooner opens but ’tis out.

[To Pacue] But, sirrah, if I may but know thou utter’st it – 60

PACUE

Uttera vat, Monsieur?

CHAMONT

That he is Gaspar and I, true Chamont.

PACUE

Oh, pardonnez-moi, ’fore my tongue shall put out de secreta, shall breed

de cankra in my mouth!

CHAMONT

Speak not so loud, Pacue! 65

PACUE

Faugh, you shall not hear de fool, for all your long ear.

[To Camillo] Regard, monsieur, you be de Chamont, Chamont be Gaspra.

4.2 Enter COUNT FERNEZE, MAXIMILIAN, FRANCISCO, AURELIA, PHOENIXELLA, [and] FINIO.

[Chamont and Camillo converse apart.]

CHAMONT

Peace, here comes Maximilian.

CAMILLO

Oh, belike that’s the Count Ferneze, that old man.

CHAMONT

Are those his daughters, trow?

CAMILLO

Ay, sure, I think they are.

CHAMONT

’Fore God, the taller is a gallant lady. 5

CAMILLO

So are they both, believe me.

MAXIMILIAN

[To Count Ferneze] True, my honourable lord, that Chamont was the

father of this man. [He gestures towards Camillo.]

COUNT

Oh, that may be, for when I lost my son,

This was but young, it seems.

FRANCISCO

Faith, had Camillo lived, 10

He had been much about his years, my lord.

COUNT

He had, indeed. Well, speak no more of him.

MAXIMILIAN

Signor, perceive you the error? ’Twas no good office in us to stretch

the remembrance of so dear a loss. Count Ferneze, let summer sit in your eye.

Look cheerfully, sweet count. Will you do me the honour to confine this noble 15

spirit within the circle of your arms?

COUNT

Honoured Chamont, reach me your valiant hand.

[He and Camillo shake hands.]

I could have wished some happier accident

Had made the way unto this mutual knowledge

Which either of us now must take of other, 20

But sure it is the pleasure of our fates

That we should thus be wracked on Fortune’s wheel.

Let us prepare with steelèd patience

To tread on torment, and, with minds confirmed,

Welcome the worst of envy. 25

MAXIMILIAN

Noble lord, ’tis thus [gesturing towards Chamont]: I have here, in

mine honour, set this gentleman free without ransom. He is now himself; his

valour hath deserved it, in the eye of my judgement. Monsieur Gaspar, you

are dear to me. Fortuna non mutat genus. But to the main: [to Camillo] if it may

square with Your Lordship’s liking and his love, I could desire that he were 30

now instantly employed to your noble general in the exchange of Ferneze for

yourself. It is the business that requires the tender hand of a friend.

COUNT

Ay, and it would be with more speed effected

If he would undertake it.

MAXIMILIAN

True, my lord. – Monsieur Gaspar, how stand you affected to this 35

motion?

CHAMONT

My duty must attend His Lordship’s will.

MAXIMILIAN

What says the Lord Chamont?

CAMILLO

My will doth then approve what these have urged.

MAXIMILIAN

Why, there is good harmony, good music, in this. Monsieur Gaspar, 40

you shall protract no time. Only, I will give you a bowl of rich wine to the health

of your general, another to the success of your journey, and a third to the love

of my sword. – Pass! Exeunt all but Aurelia and Phoenixella.

AURELIA

Why, how now, sister, in a motley muse?

Go to, there’s somewhat in the wind, I see. 45

Faith, this brown study suits not with your black;

Your habit and your thoughts are of two colours.

PHOENIXELLA

Good faith, methinks that this young Lord Chamont

Favours my mother, sister, does he not?

AURELIA

A motherly conceit. Oh, blind excuse, 50

Blinder than Love himself! Well, sister, well,

Cupid hath ta’en his stand in both your eyes.

The case is altered.

PHOENIXELLA

And what of that?

AURELIA

Nay, nothing but a saint,

Another Bridget, one that for a face 55

Would put down Vesta, in whose looks doth swim

The very sweetest cream of modesty:

You to turn tippet? Fie, fie, will you give

A packing-penny to virginity?

I thought you’d dwell so long in Cyprus isle 60

You’d worship Madam Venus at the length.

But, come, the strongest fall, and why not you?

Nay, do not frown.

PHOENIXELLA

Go to, you fool, adieu. Exit.

AURELIA

Well, I may jest or so, but Cupid knows

My taking is as bad or worse than hers. 65

Oh, Monsieur Gaspar, if thou be’st a man,

Be not afraid to court me! Do but speak.

Challenge thy right and wear it, for I swear,

Till thou arriv’dst, ne’er came affection here. Exit.

4.3 Enter PACUE [and] FINIO.

FINIO

Come on, my sweet, finical Pacue, the very prime of pages, here’s

an excellent place for us to practise in. Nobody sees us here. Come, let’s to it.

Enter ONION.

PACUE

Contenta. Regardez, vous le premier.

ONION

Sirrah Finio!

PACUE

Mort Dieu, le pesant. 5

ONION

Didst thou see Valentine?

FINIO

Valentine? No.

ONION

No? [He starts to leave.]

FINIO

No. Sirrah Onion, whither goest?

ONION

Oh, I am vexed! He that would trust any of these lying travellers – 10

FINIO

I prithee, stay, good Onion.

PACUE

Monsieur Onion, venez ça, come hidera, je vous prie. By gar, me ha’ see two,

tree, four hundra tousand of your cousin hang. Lend me your hand; shall pray

for know you bettra.

ONION

I thank you, good Signor Parlez-vous. [Aside] Oh, that I were in another 15

world, in the Indies or somewhere, that I might have room to laugh!

PACUE

Ah, oui, fort bien. Stand. You be dere now; me come. Bonjour, monsieur.

[ They embrace] under the arm.

FINIO

Good morrow, good signor.

PACUE

By gar, be mush glad for see you.

FINIO

I return you most kind thanks, sir. 20

ONION

How, how? ’Sblood, this is rare!

PACUE

Nay, shall make you say ‘rare’ by and by. – Regard, Monsieur Finio.

[They embrace over] the shoulder.

FINIO

Signor Pacue!

PACUE

Dieu vous garde, monsieur.

FINIO

God save you, sweet signor. 25

PACUE

Monsieur Onion, is not fort bien?

ONION

‘Bean’, quoth he? Would I were in debt of a pottle of beans; I could do as

much.

FINIO

Welcome, signor. What’s next?

PACUE

Oh, here, vois de grand admiration, as should meet perchance, Monsieur 30

Finio! [He shows an exaggerated courtesy.]

FINIO

[Bowing] Monsieur Pacue!

PACUE

Jesu! By gar, who think we shall meet here?

FINIO

By this hand, I am not a little proud of it, sir.

ONION

This trick is only for the chamber; it cannot be cleanly done abroad. 35

PACUE

Well, what say you for dis, den, Monsieur?

[He demonstrates a courteous gesture.]

FINIO

Nay, pray, sir.

PACUE

Par ma foi, vous bien encounters!

FINIO

What do you mean, sir? Let your glove alone.

PACUE

Comment se porte la santé? 40

FINIO

Faith, exceeding well, sir.

PACUE

Trot, be mush joy for hear.

FINIO

And how is’t with you, sweet Signor Pacue?

PACUE

Fait, comme vous voyez.

ONION

Young gentlemen, spirits of blood, if ever you’ll taste of a sweet piece of 45

mutton, do Onion a good turn now.

PACUE

Quoi, quoi? Parlez, monsieur, what is’t?

ONION

Faith, teach me one of these tricks.

PACUE

Oh, me shall do presently. Stand you dere; you signor, dere; myself is here.

So, fort bien. Now I parle to Monsieur Onion, Onion parle to you, you speaka to 50

me, so, and as you parle, change the bonnet, Monsieur Onion.

[They greet one another in comically extravagant gestures.]

ONION

Monsieur Finio!

FINIO

Monsieur Pacue!

PACUE

Pray, be covera.

ONION

Nay, I beseech you, sir. 55

FINIO

What do you mean?

PACUE

Pardon-moi, shall be so.

ONION

Oh, God, sir.

FINIO

Not I, in good faith, sir.

PACUE

By gar, you must. 60

ONION

It shall be yours.

FINIO

Nay, then, you wrong me.

ONION

Well, an ever I come to be great –

PACUE

You be big enough for de Onion already.

ONION

I mean a great man. 65

FINIO

Then thou’dst be a monster.

ONION

Well, God knows not what fortune may do. Command me; use me from

the sole to the crown and the crown to the sole, meaning not only from the

crown of the head and the sole of the foot, but also the foot of the mind and

the crowns of the purse. I cannot stay now, young gentlemen, but – time was, 70

time is, and time shall be. Exeunt.

4.4 Enter CHAMONT [and] CAMILLO.

CHAMONT

Sweet Gaspar, I am sorry we must part,

But strong necessity enforceth it.

Let not the time seem long unto my friend

Till my return, for by our love I swear –

The sacred sphere wherein our souls are knit – 5

I will endeavour to effect this business

With all industrious care and happy speed.

CAMILLO

My lord, these circumstances would come well

To one less capable of your desert

Than I, in whom your merit is confirmed 10

With such authentical and grounded proofs.

CHAMONT

Well, I will use no more. Gaspar, adieu.

CAMILLO

Farewell, my honoured lord.

CHAMONT

Commend me to the lady, my good Gaspar.

CAMILLO

I had remembered that, had not you urged it. 15

CHAMONT

Once more, adieu, sweet Gaspar.

CAMILLO

My good lord! Exit Camillo.

CHAMONT

Thy virtues are more precious than thy name.

Kind gentleman! I would not sell thy love

For all the earthly objects that mine eyes

Have ever tasted. Sure, thou art nobly born, 20

However fortune hath obscured thy birth,

For native honour sparkles in thine eyes.

How may I bless the time wherein Chamont,

My honoured father, did surprise Vicenza,

Where this my friend, known by no name, was found, 25

Being then a child and scarce of power to speak,

To whom my father gave this name of Gaspar,

And as his own respected him to death.

Since when we two have shared our mutual fortunes

With equal spirits and, but death’s rude hand, 30

No violence shall dissolve this sacred band. Exit.

4.5 Enter JUNIPER in his shop, singing; to him, ONION.

ONION

Fellow Juniper, no more of thy songs and sonnets, sweet Juniper, no

more of thy hymns and madrigals. Thou sing’st, but I sigh.

JUNIPER

What’s the matter, Peter, ha? What, in an academy still, still in sable

and costly black array, ha?

ONION

Prithee, rise. Mount, mount, sweet Juniper, for I go down the wind and 5

yet I puff, for I am vexed.

JUNIPER

Ha, bully, vexed? What, intoxicate? Is thy brain in a quintessence, an

idea, a metamorphosis, an apology? Ha, rogue? Come, this love feeds upon

thee, I see by thy cheeks, and drinks healths of vermilion tears, I see by thine

eyes. 10

ONION

I confess Cupid’s carouse; he plays super negulum with my liquor of life.

JUNIPER

Tut, thou art a goose to be Cupid’s gull. Go to, no more of this contemplations

and calculations. Mourn not, for Rachel’s thine own.

ONION

For that, let the higher powers work. But, sweet Juniper, I am not sad for

her, and yet for her in a second person or, if not so, yet in a third. 15

JUNIPER

How, second person? Away, away! In the crotchets already? Longitude

and latitude? What second, what person, ha?

ONION

Juniper, I’ll bewray myself before thee, for thy company is sweet unto

me, but I must entreat thy helping hand in the case.

JUNIPER

Tut, no more of this surquedry. I am thine own, ad unguem, upsy Friese, 20

pell mell. Come, what case, what case?

ONION

For the case, it may be any man’s case as well as mine – Rachel, I mean –

but I’ll meddle with her anon. In the meantime, Valentine is the man hath

wronged me.

JUNIPER

How, my ingle wrong thee? Is’t possible? 25

ONION

Your ingle? Hang him, infidel! Well, and if I be not revenged on him, let

Peter Onion, by the infernal gods, be turned to a leek or a scallion! I spake to

him for a ditty for this handkercher.

JUNIPER

Why, has he not done it?

ONION

Done it? Not a verse, by this hand. 30

JUNIPER

Oh, in diebus illis! Oh, preposterous! Well, come, be blithe. The best

inditer of them all is sometimes dull. Fellow Onion, pardon mine ingle. He

is a man, has imperfections and declinations as other men have. His muse

sometimes cannot curvet nor prognosticate and come off, as it should. No

matter. I’ll hammer out a paraphrase for thee myself. 35

ONION

No, sweet Juniper, no. Danger doth breed delay; love makes me choleric.

I can bear no longer.

JUNIPER

Not bear what, my mad meridian slave, not bear what?

ONION

Cupid’s burden. ’Tis too heavy, too tolerable. And as for the handkercher

and the posy, I will not trouble thee. But if thou wilt go with me into her 40

father’s backside, old Jaques’s backside, and speak for me to Rachel, I will not

be ingratitude. The old man is abroad and all.

JUNIPER

Art thou sure on’t?

ONION

As sure as an obligation.

JUNIPER

Let’s away, then. Come, we spend time in a vain circumference. Trade, I 45

cashier thee till tomorrow. Fellow Onion, for thy sake I finish this workaday.

ONION

God-a-mercy, and for thy sake I’ll at any time make a holiday. Exeunt.

4.6 Enter ANGELO [and] RACHEL.

ANGELO

Nay, I prithee, Rachel, I come to comfort thee.

Be not so sad.

RACHEL

Oh, Signor Angelo,

No comfort but his presence can remove

This sadness from my heart.

ANGELO

Nay, then, you’re fond,

And want that strength of judgement and election 5

That should be attendant on your years and form.

Will you, because your lord is taken prisoner,

Blubber and weep and keep a peevish stir,

As though you would turn turtle with the news?

Come, come, be wise. ’Sblood, say your lord should die, 10

And you go mar your face as you begin,

What would you do, trow? Who would care for you?

But this it is: when nature will bestow

Her gifts on such as know not how to use them,

You shall have some that, had they but one quarter 15

Of your fair beauty, they would make it show

A little otherwise than you do this,

Or they would see the painter twice an hour.

And I commend them, ay, that can use art

With such judicial practice.

RACHEL

You talk idly. 20

If this be your best comfort, keep it still.

My senses cannot feed on such sour cates.

ANGELO

And why, sweetheart?

RACHEL

Nay, leave, good signor.

ANGELO

Come, I have sweeter viands yet in store.

JUNIPER

[Within] Ay, in any case. – Mistress Rachel! 25

ANGELO

Rachel?

RACHEL

God’s pity, Signor Angelo, I hear my father! Away, for God’s sake!

ANGELO

’Sblood, I am betwixt, I think. This is twice now I have been served

thus. Exit.

RACHEL

Pray God he meet him not! 30

4.7 Enter ONION and JUNIPER.

ONION

Oh, brave! She’s yonder. Exit Rachel.

Oh, terrible! She’s gone.

JUNIPER

Yea, so nimble in your dilemmas and your hyperboles? ‘Hey, my love’,

‘Oh, my love’, ‘At the first sight’, by the Mass.

ONION

Oh, how she scudded! Oh, sweet scud! How she tripped! Oh, delicate 5

trip-and-go!

JUNIPER

Come, thou art enamoured with the influence of her profundity. But,

sirrah, hark a little.

ONION

Oh, rare! What, what? Passing, i’faith. What is’t, what is’t?

JUNIPER

What wilt thou say now if Rachel stand now and play hity-tity through 10

the keyhole to behold the equipage of thy person?

ONION

O sweet equipage! Try, good Juniper, tickle her, talk, talk. Oh, drare!

JUNIPER

[Calling through the door] Mistress Rachel! – Watch then if her father

come. – Rachel, Madonna, Rachel! – No.

ONION

Say I am here, Onion or Peter or so. 15

JUNIPER

No, I’ll knock. We’ll not stand upon horizons and tricks but fall roundly

to the matter. [He knocks.]

ONION

Well said, sweet Juniper. Horizons? Hang ’em! Knock, knock!

RACHEL

[Within] Who’s there? Father?

JUNIPER

Father? No, and yet a father, if you please to be a mother. 20

ONION

Well said, Juniper. To her again; a smack or two more of the mother.

JUNIPER

[Calling] Do you hear, sweet soul, sweet Rhadamant, sweet Machiavel?

One word, Melpomone. Are you at leisure?

RACHEL

[Within] At leisure? What to do?

JUNIPER

To do what? To do nothing but be liable to the ecstasy of true love’s 25

exigent or so. You smell my meaning?

ONION

Smell? Filthy, fellow Juniper, filthy! Smell? Oh, most odious!

JUNIPER

How ‘filthy’?

ONION

Filthy, by this finger! Smell? Smell a rat, smell a pudding. Away! These

tricks are for trulls. A plain wench loves plain dealing. I’ll upon, myself. Smell, 30

to a marchpane wench!

JUNIPER

With all my heart. I’ll be legitimate and silent as an apple-squire. I’ll

see nothing and say nothing.

ONION

Sweetheart, sweetheart!

JUNIPER

And bagpudding. Ha, ha, ha! 35

JAQUES

(Within) What, Rachel, my girl? What, Rachel!

ONION

God’s lid!

JAQUES

(Within) What, Rachel!

RACHEL

(Within) Here I am.

ONION

What rakehell calls Rachel? Oh, treason to my love! 40

JUNIPER

It’s her father, on my life. How shall we entrench and edify ourselves

from him?

ONION

O coney-catching Cupid!

Enter JAQUES.

JAQUES

How? In my backside? Where? What come they for?

Onion gets up into a tree.

Where are they? Rachel! Thieves, thieves! [He seizes Juniper.] Stay, villain, 45

slave! – Rachel, untie my dog! – Nay, thief, thou canst not scape.

JUNIPER

I pray you, sir.

ONION

[Aside] A pitiful Onion! That thou hadst a rope!

JAQUES

Why, Rachel! When, I say? Let loose my dog! Garlic, my mastiff! Let him

loose, I say! 50

JUNIPER

For God’s sake, hear me speak! Keep up your cur!

ONION

[Aside] I fear not Garlic. He’ll not bite Onion, his kinsman. Pray God he

come out, and then they’ll not smell me.

JAQUES

Well, then, deliver. Come, deliver, slave.

JUNIPER

What should I deliver? 55

JAQUES

Oh, thou wouldst have me tell thee, wouldst thou? Show me thy hands.

What hast thou in thy hands?

JUNIPER

[Showing his hands] Here be my hands.

JAQUES

Stay. Are not thy fingers’ ends begrimed with dirt? No, thou hast wiped

them. 60

JUNIPER

Wiped them?

JAQUES

Ay, thou villain! Thou art a subtle knave. Put off thy shoes. Come, I will

see them. – Give me a knife here, Rachel. – I’ll rip the soles.

ONION

[Aside] No matter. He’s a cobbler; he can mend them.

JUNIPER

What, are you mad? Are you detestable? Would you make an anatomy 65

of me? Think you I am not true orthography?

JAQUES

‘Orthography’? ‘Anatomy’?

JUNIPER

For God’s sake, be not so inviolable. I am no ambuscado. What

predicament call you this? Why do you intimate so much?

JAQUES

[Searching Juniper]I can feel nothing. 70

ONION

[Aside] By’r Lady, but Onion feels something.

JAQUES

Soft, sir, you are not yet gone. Shake your legs, come, and your arms.

Be brief, stay. [Searching his breeches ] Let me see these drums, these kilderkins,

these bombard slops. What is it crams ’em so?

JUNIPER

Nothing but hair. 75

JAQUES

That’s true. [Searching his hair] I had almost forgot this rug, this hedgehog’s

nest, this hay-mow, this bear’s skin, this heath, this furze-bush.

JUNIPER

Oh, let me go! You tear my hair, you revolve my brains and

understanding!

JAQUES

[Aside] Heart, thou art somewhat eased. Half of my fear 80

Hath ta’en his leave of me; the other half

Still keeps possession in despite of hope,

Until these amorous eyes court my fair gold.

Dear, I come to thee! [To Juniper] Fiend, why art not gone?

Avoid, my soul’s vexation! Satan, hence! 85

Why dost thou stare on me? Why dost thou stay?

Why por’st thou on the ground with thievish eyes?

What see’st thou there, thou cur? What gap’st thou at?

Hence from my house! – Rachel, send Garlic forth!

JUNIPER

I am gone, sir, I am gone. For God’s sake, stay! 90 Exit Juniper.

JAQUES

Pack, and thank God thou scap’st so well away!

ONION

[Aside] If I scape this tree, Destinies, I defy you.

JAQUES

I cannot see by any characters

Writ on this earth that any felon foot

Hath ta’en acquaintance of this hallowed ground. 95

None sees me. Knees, do homage to your lord.

[He kneels and digs up the gold.]

’Tis safe, ’tis safe. It lies and sleeps so soundly,

’Twould do one good to look on’t. If this bliss

Be given to any man that hath much gold,

Justly to say, ‘’tis safe’, I say ’tis safe. 100

Oh, what a heavenly round these two words dance

Within me and without me! First, I think ’em,

And then I speak ’em, then I watch their sound,

And drink it greedily with both mine ears,

Then think, then speak, then drink their sound again, 105

And racket round about this body’s court

These two sweet words, ‘’tis safe’. Stay, I will feed

My other senses. [He smells the gold.] Oh, how sweet it smells!

ONION

[Aside ] I mar’l he smells not Onion, being so near it.

JAQUES

[Burying the gold ] Down to thy grave again, thou beauteous

ghost! 110

Angels, men say, are spirits; spirits be

Invisible. Bright angels, are you so?

Be you invisible to every eye,

Save only these. Sleep. I’ll not break your rest,

Though you break mine. Dear saints, adieu, adieu! 115

My feet part from you, but my soul dwells with you Exit.

ONION

Is he gone? O Fortune, my friend and not Fortune my foe, I come down

to embrace thee and kiss thy great toe!

Enter JUNIPER [as Onion climbs down].

JUNIPER

Fellow Onion? Peter?

ONION

Fellow Juniper! 120

JUNIPER

What, ’s the old panurgo gone, departed, cosmographied, ha?

ONION

Oh, ay, and hark, sirrah – [Aside ] Shall I tell him? No.

JUNIPER

Nay, be brief and declare. Stand not upon conundrums now. Thou

knowest what contagious speeches I have suffered for thy sake. An he should

come again and invent me here – 125

ONION

[Aside ] He says true; it was for my sake. I will tell him. – Sirrah Juniper –

[Aside ] And yet I will not.

JUNIPER

What sayest thou, sweet Onion?

ONION

An thou hadst smelt the scent of me when I was in the tree, thou wouldst

not have said so. But, sirrah, the case is altered with me. My heart has given 130

love a box of the ear made him kick up the heels, i’faith.

JUNIPER

Sayest thou me so, mad Greek? How haps it? How chances it?

ONION

[Aside ] I cannot hold it. – Juniper, have an eye, look, have an eye to the

door. [He digs up the gold. ] The old proverb’s true, I see, ‘Gold is but muck.’ Nay,

Godso, Juniper, to the door! An eye to the main chance! Here, you slave, have 135

an eye!

JUNIPER

O inexorable, O infallible, O intricate, divine, and superficial Fortune!

ONION

Nay, it will be sufficient anon. Here, look here!

JUNIPER

O insolent good luck! How didst thou produce th’intelligence of the

gold minerals? 140

ONION

I’ll tell you that anon. [He hands him some gold. ] Here, make shift, convey,

cram. – I’ll teach you how you shall call for Garlic again, i’faith.

JUNIPER

’Sblood, what shall we do with all this? We shall ne’er bring it to a

consumption.

ONION

Consumption? Why, we’ll be most sumptuously attired, man. 145

JUNIPER

By this gold, I will have three or four most stigmatical suits presently.

ONION

I’ll go in my footcloth. I’ll turn gentleman.

JUNIPER

So will I.

ONION

But what badge shall we give, what cullison?

JUNIPER

As for that, let’s use the infidelity and commiseration of some harrot 150

of arms; he shall give us a gudgeon.

ONION

A ‘gudgeon’? A scutcheon, thou wouldst say, man.

JUNIPER

A scutcheon or a gudgeon, all is one.

ONION

Well, our arms be good enough. Let’s look to our legs.

JUNIPER

Content. We’ll be jogging. 155

ONION

Rachel, we retire. Garlic, God be wi’ye.

JUNIPER

Farewell, sweet Jaques.

ONION

Farewell, sweet Rachel. Sweet dog, adieu. Exeunt.

4.8 Enter MAXIMILIAN, COUNT FERNEZE, AURELIA, PHOENIXELLA, [and] PACUE.

MAXIMILIAN

Nay, but sweet Count –

COUNT

Away! I’ll hear no more.

Never was man so palpably abused:

My son so basely marted, and myself

Am made the subject of your mirth and scorn.

MAXIMILIAN

Count Ferneze, you tread too hard upon my patience. Do not 5

persist, I advise Your Lordship.

COUNT

I will persist, and unto thee I speak.

Thou, Maximilian, thou hast injured me.

MAXIMILIAN

Before the Lord –

AURELIA

Sweet signor – 10

PHOENIXELLA

O my father!

MAXIMILIAN

Lady, let your father thank your beauty.

PACUE

[Aside ] By gar, me shall be hang for tella dis same. Me tella mademoiselle,

she tell her fadera.

COUNT

The true Chamont set free, and one left here, 15

Of no descent, clad barely in his name!

[To Pacue ] Sirrah boy, come hither, and be sure you speak

The simple truth.

PACUE

Oh, pardonnez-moi, monsieur.

COUNT

Come, leave your ‘pardons’ and directly say

What villain is the same that hath usurped 20

The honoured name and person of Chamont?

PACUE

Oh, monsieur, no point villain, brave chevalier, Monsieur Gaspar!

COUNT

Monsieur Gaspar!

On what occasion did they change their names?

What was their policy or their pretext? 25

PACUE

Me can no tell, par ma foi, monsieur.

MAXIMILIAN

My honourable lord –

COUNT

Tut, tut, be silent!

MAXIMILIAN

Silent? Count Ferneze, I tell thee, if Amurath, the great Turk, were

here, I would speak and he should hear me! 30

COUNT

So will not I.

MAXIMILIAN

By my father’s hand, but thou shalt, count. I say, till this instant I

was never touched in my reputation. Hear me. You shall know that you have

wronged me, and I will make you acknowledge it. If I cannot, my sword shall.

COUNT

By heaven, I will not. I will stop mine ears. 35

My senses loathe the savour of thy breath.

’Tis poison to me. I say, I will not hear.

What shall I know? ’Tis you have injured me.

What will you make? Make me acknowledge it? –

[He goes to the door. ]

Fetch forth that Gaspar, that lewd counterfeit. – 40

Enter SERVING [MEN ] with CAMILLO.

[To Maximilian ] I’ll make him to your face approve your wrongs.

[To Camillo ] Come on, false substance, shadow to Chamont!

Had you none else to work upon but me?

Was I your fittest project? Well, confess

What you intended by this secret plot, 45

And by whose policy it was contrived.

Speak truth, and be entreated courteously,

But double with me, and resolve to prove

The extremest rigour that I can inflict.

CAMILLO

My honoured lord, hear me with patience. 50

Nor hope of favour nor the fear of torment

Shall sway my tongue from utt’ring of a truth.

COUNT

’Tis well. Proceed, then.

CAMILLO

The morn before this battle did begin,

Wherein my Lord Chamont and I were ta’en, 55

We vowed one mutual fortune, good or bad,

That day should be embracèd of us both,

And, urging that might worst succeed our vow,

We there concluded to exchange our names.

COUNT

Then Maximilian took you for Chamont. 60

CAMILLO

True, noble lord.

COUNT

’Tis false, ignoble wretch!

’Twas but a complot to betray my son.

MAXIMILIAN

Count, thou liest in thy bosom, count!

COUNT

Lie?

CAMILLO

Nay, I beseech you, honoured gentlemen, 65

Let not the untimely ruin of your love

Follow these slight occurrents. Be assured,

Chamont’s return will heal these wounds again

And break the points of your too piercing thoughts.

COUNT

Return? Ay, when? When will Chamont return? 70

He’ll come to fetch you, will he? Ay, ’tis like.

You’d have me think so; that’s your policy.

No, no, young gallant, your device is stale.

You cannot feed me with so vain a hope.

CAMILLO

My lord, I feed you not with a vain hope. 75

I know assuredly he will return

And bring your noble son along with him.

MAXIMILIAN

Ay, I dare pawn my soul he will return.

COUNT

Oh, impudent derision, open scorn,

Intolerable wrong! Is’t not enough 80

That you have played upon me all this while,

But still to mock me, still to jest at me?

[To Servingmen ] Fellows, away with him. – Thou ill-bred slave,

That sets no difference ’twixt a noble spirit

And thy own slavish humour, do not think 85

But I’ll take worthy vengeance on thee, wretch.

CAMILLO

Alas, these threats are idle, like the wind,

And breed no terror in a guiltless mind.

COUNT

Nay, thou shalt want no torture, so resolve.

[To Servingmen ] Bring him away! 90

CAMILLO

Welcome the worst. I suffer for a friend.

Your tortures will, my love shall never, end.

Exeunt [Count, and Servingmen with Camillo].

Maximilian, Aurelia, Phoenixella, [and] Pacue remain.

PHOENIXELLA

[Aside] Alas, poor gentleman! My father’s rage

Is too extreme, too stern and violent.

Oh, that I knew, with all my strongest powers, 95

How to remove it from thy patient breast!

But that I cannot. Yet my willing heart

Shall minister, in spite of tyranny,

To thy misfortune. Something there is in him

That doth enforce this strange affection 100

With more than common rapture in my breast;

For, being but Gaspar, he is still as dear

To me as when he did Chamont appear.

AURELIA

But in good sadness, signor, do you think Chamont will return?

MAXIMILIAN

Do I see your face, lady? 105

AURELIA

Ay, sure, if love have not blinded you.

MAXIMILIAN

That is a question; but I will assure you, no. I can see, and yet love

is in mine eye. Well, the Count, your father, simply hath dishonoured me, and

this steel shall engrave it on his burgonet.

AURELIA

Nay, sweet signor. 110

MAXIMILIAN

Lady, I do prefer my reputation to my life, but you shall rule me.

Come, let’s march.

AURELIA

I’ll follow, signor.

Exit Maximilian [with Phoenixella and Pacue].

O sweet queen of love,

Sovereign of all my thoughts, and thou, fair Fortune,

Who, more to honour my affections, 115

Hast thus translated Gaspar to Chamont!

Let both your flames now burn in one bright sphere,

And give true light to my aspiring hopes!

Hasten Chamont’s return! Let him affect me,

Though father, friends, and all the world reject me. 120Exit.

5.1 Enter ANGELO [and] CHRISTOPHERO [carrying gold].

ANGELO

Sigh for a woman? Would I fold mine arms,

Rave in my sleep, talk idly being awake,

Pine and look pale, make love-walks in the night,

To steal cold comfort from a day-star’s eyes?

Kit, thou art a fool. Wilt thou be wise? Then, lad, 5

Renounce this boy-god’s nice idolatry.

Stand not on compliment and wooing tricks.

Thou lovest old Jaques’s daughter, dost thou?

christophero

Love her?

ANGELO

Come, come, I know’t. Be ruled, and she’s thine own.

Thou’lt say her father Jaques, the old beggar, 10

Hath pawned his word to thee that none but thou

Shalt be his son-in-law?

CHRISTOPHERO

He has.

ANGELO

He has?

Wilt thou believe him and be made a rook,

To wait on such an antique weathercock?

Why he is more inconstant than the sea; 15

His thoughts, chameleon-like, change every minute.

No, Kit, work soundly. Steal the wench away,

Wed her and bed her, and, when that is done,

Then say to Jaques, ‘Shall I be your son?’

But come, to our device. Where is this gold? 20

CHRISTOPHERO

[Showing some gold ] Here, Signor Angelo.

ANGELO

Bestow it. Bid thy hands shed golden drops.

Let these bald French crowns be uncovered

In open sight to do obeisance

To Jaques’s staring eyes when he steps forth. 25

The needy beggar will be glad of gold.

So now keep thou aloof, and, as he treads

This gilded path, stretch out his ambling hopes

With scatt’ring more and more, and, as thou go’st,

Cry, ‘Jaques, Jaques!’

CHRISTOPHERO

Tush, let me alone. 30

ANGELO

First I’ll play the ghost; I’ll call him out.

Kit, keep aloof.

CHRISTOPHERO

But, Signor Angelo,

Where will yourself and Rachel stay for me,

After the jest is ended?

ANGELO

Mass, that’s true.

At the old priory behind Saint Foy’s. 35

CHRISTOPHERO

Agreed; no better place. I’ll meet you there.

[He withdraws, dropping gold.]

ANGELO

[Aside ] Do, good fool, do, but I’ll not meet you there.

Now to this gear. – Jaques, Jaques, what, Jaques!

JAQUES

(Within) Who calls? Who’s there?

ANGELO

Jaques! 40

JAQUES

(Within) Who calls?

ANGELO

Steward, he comes, he comes. – Jaques!

Enter JAQUES.

JAQUES

What voice is this?

Nobody here? Was I not called? I was,

And one cried ‘Jaques’ with a hollow voice. 45

I was deceived. [He sees the gold. ] No, I was not deceived.

See, see, it was an angel called me forth!

Gold, gold, man-making gold! Another star!

Drop they from heaven? No, no, my house, I hope,

Is haunted with a fairy! My dear Lar, 50

My household god, my fairy. On my knees. [He kneels. ]

CHRISTOPHERO

[Unseen by Jaques ] Jaques! Exit Christophero.

JAQUES

My Lar doth call me! O sweet voice,

Musical as the spheres! See, see, more gold!

CHRISTOPHERO

(Within) Jaques!

Enter RACHEL.

JAQUES

What, Rachel, Rachel! Lock my door;

Look to my house.

CHRISTOPHERO

(Within) Jaques!

JAQUES

Shut fast my door. 55

[Picking up gold ] A golden crown! Jaques shall be a king. Exit.

ANGELO

[Aside ] To a fool’s paradise that path will bring

Thee and thy household Lar.

RACHEL

[To herself ] What means my father?

I wonder what strange humour?

ANGELO

[Advancing ] Come, sweet soul,

Leave wond’ring. Start not. ’Twas I laid this plot 60

To get thy father forth.

RACHEL

O Angelo!

ANGELO

O me no O’s, but hear: my lord, your love,

Paolo Ferneze, is returned from war,

Lingers at Pont Valerio, and from thence

By post at midnight last I was conjured 65

To man you thither. Stand not on replies.

A horse is saddled for you, will you go,

And I am for you. If you will stay, why, so.

RACHEL

O Angelo, every minute is a day

Till my Ferneze come. Come, we’ll away, sir. 70 [Exit. ]

ANGELO

Sweet soul, I guess thy meaning by thy looks.

At Pont Valerio thou thy love shalt see,

But not Ferneze. – Steward, fare you well.

You wait for Rachel too. When, can you tell? [Exit. ]

Enter JAQUES.

JAQUES

Oh, in what golden circle have I danced! 75

Milan, these od’rous and enflowered fields

Are none of thine. No, here’s Elysium;

Here blessèd ghosts do walk. This is the court

And glorious palace where the god of gold

Shines like the sun of sparkling majesty. 80

[To the gold ] O fair-feathered, my red-breasted birds,

Come fly with me! I’ll bring you to a choir,

Whose consort being sweetened with your sound,

The music will be fuller, and each hour

These ears shall banquet with your harmony. 85

Oh, Oh, Oh! [He goes to dig up the gold. ]

Enter CHRISTOPHERO.

CHRISTOPHERO

[Aside] At the old priory behind Saint Foy’s,

That was the place of our appointment, sure.

I hope he will not make me lose my gold,

And mock me too. Perhaps they are within. 90

I’ll knock. [He knocks at Jaques’s door.]

JAQUES

[Aside, discovering that his gold is gone] Oh, God, the case is altered!

CHRISTOPHERO

Rachel! Angelo! Signor Angelo!

JAQUES

Angels? Ay, where? Mine angels? Where’s my gold?

Why, Rachel – [To Christophero] Oh, thou thievish cannibal! 95

Thou eatest my flesh in stealing of my gold!

CHRISTOPHERO

What gold?

JAQUES

What gold? [Calling] Rachel, call help, come forth!

[To Christophero] I’ll rip thine entrails but I’ll have my gold!

[Calling] Rachel, why comes thou not? I am undone!

Ay, me, she speaks not. – Thou hast slain my child! 100Exit [into his house].

CHRISTOPHERO

What, is the man possessed, trow? This is strange.

Rachel, I see, is gone with Angelo.

Well, I’ll once again unto the priory,

And see if I can meet them. Exit Christophero.

Enter JAQUES.

JAQUES

’Tis too true,

Th’hast made away my child, thou hast my gold! 105

Oh, what hyena called me out of doors?

The thief is gone! My gold’s gone! Rachel’s gone!

All’s gone save I, that spend my cries in vain,

But I’ll hence too and die, or end this pain. Exit.

5.2 Enter JUNIPER, ONION [both in finery ], FINIO, [and ] VALENTINE.

JUNIPER

’Swounds, let me go! Hai, cazzo! Catch him alive! I call, I call, boy. I come,

I come, sweetheart.

ONION

Page, hold my rapier while I hold my friend here.

[He gives his rapier to Finio.]

VALENTINE

[Aside ] Oh, here’s a sweet metamorphosis: a couple of buzzards

turned to a pair of peacocks. 5

JUNIPER

Signor Onion, lend me thy boy to unhang my rapier.

ONION

Signor Juniper, for once or so, but troth is you must inveigle, as I have

done, my lord’s page here, a poor follower of mine.

JUNIPER

Heigh-ho! Your page, then, sha’ not be superintendent upon me? He

shall not be addicted? He shall not be incident, he shall not be incident, he 10

shall not be incident, shall he? He [draws his rapier and ] foins.

FINIO

Oh, sweet Signor Juniper!

JUNIPER

’Sblood, stand away, princox! Do not aggravate my joy.

VALENTINE

Nay, good master Onion.

ONION

[Taking back his rapier ] Nay, an he have the heart to draw my blood, let him 15

come.

JUNIPER

I’ll slice you, Onion, I’ll slice you!

ONION

I’ll cleave you, Juniper!

VALENTINE

Why, hold, hold, ho! What do you mean?

JUNIPER

Let him come, ingle. – Stand by, boy. – His alabaster blood cannot fear 20

me.

FINIO

Why, hear you, sweet signor, let not there be any contention between my

master and you about me. If you want a page, sir, I can help you to a proper

stripling.

JUNIPER

Canst thou? What parentage, what ancestry, what genealogy is he? 25

FINIO

A French boy, sir.

JUNIPER

Has he his French linguist, has he?

FINIO

Ay, sir.

JUNIPER

Then, transport him. Here’s a crusado for thee. [He gives money. ]

ONION

You will not embezzle my servant with your benevolence, will you? Hold, 30

boy, there’s a portmanteau for thee. [He offers money.]

FINIO

Lord, sir!

ONION

Do take it, boy. It’s three pounds, ten shillings, a portmanteau.

FINIO

[Taking the money] I thank Your Lordship. Exit Finio.

JUNIPER

Sirrah ningle, thou art a traveller, and I honour thee. I prithee, 35

discourse. Cherish thy muse; discourse.

VALENTINE

Of what, sir?

JUNIPER

Of what thou wilt. ’Sblood, hang sorrow.

ONION

Prithee, Valentine, assoil me one thing.

VALENTINE

’Tis pity to soil you, sir, your new apparel. 40

ONION

Mass, thou say’st true. Apparel makes a man forget himself.

JUNIPER

Begin. Find your tongue, ningle.

VALENTINE

[Aside ] Now will I gull these ganders rarely. – Gentlemen, having in

my peregrination through Mesopotamia –

JUNIPER

Speak legibly. This game’s gone, without the great mercy of God. Here’s 45

a fine tragedy, indeed. [He shows money.] There’s a Kaiser’s royal. By God’s lid,

nor king nor Kaiser shall –

5.3 Enter FINIO, PACUE, BALTHASAR, [and] MARTINO.

BALTHASAR

Where? Where? Finio, where be they?

JUNIPER

[To Valentine] Go to. I’ll be with you anon.

ONION

Oh, here’s the page, Signor Juniper.

JUNIPER

What sayeth Monsieur Onion, boy?

FINIO

What say you, sir? 5

JUNIPER

Tread out, boy.

FINIO

Take up, you mean, sir.

JUNIPER

Tread out, I say. So, I thank you. Is this the boy?

PACUE

Oui, Monsieur.

JUNIPER

Who gave you that name? 10

PACUE

Give me de name? Vat name?

ONION

He thought your name had been ‘We’. Young gentleman, you must do

more than his legs can do for him: bear with him, sir.

JUNIPER

Sirrah, give me instance of your carriage. You’ll serve my turn, will you?

PACUE

Vat? Turn upon the toe? 15

FINIO

Oh, signor, no.

JUNIPER

Page, will you follow me? I’ll give you good exhibition.

PACUE

By gar, shall not alone follow you, but shall lead you too.

ONION

Plaguy boy! He soothes his humour. These French villains ha’ pocky wits.

JUNIPER

Here, disarm me; take my semitary. [Pacue takes his rapier.] 20

VALENTINE

Oh, rare! This would be a rare man, an he had a little travel. –

Balthasar, Martino, put off your shoes and bid him cobble them.

JUNIPER

Friends, friends, but pardon me for fellows; no more in occupation, no

more in corporation. ’Tis so, pardon me. The case is altered. This is law, but

I’ll stand to nothing. 25

PACUE

Fait, so me tink.

JUNIPER

Well, then, God save the Duke’s Majesty! Is this any harm now?

Speak, is this any harm now?

ONION

No, nor good neither. ’Sblood!

JUNIPER

Do you laugh at me? Do you laugh at me? Do you laugh at me? 30

VALENTINE

Ay, sir, we do.

JUNIPER

You do, indeed?

VALENTINE

Ay, indeed, sir.

JUNIPER

’Tis sufficient. – Page, carry my purse; dog me. Exit.

ONION

Gentlemen, leave him not. You see in what case he is. He is not in adversity; 35

his purse is full of money. Leave him not! Exeunt.

5.4 Enter ANGELO with RACHEL.

ANGELO

Nay, gentle Rachel!

RACHEL

Away! Forbear! Ungentle Angelo,

Touch not my body with those impious hands,

That like hot irons sear my trembling heart

And make it hiss at your disloyalty. 5

Enter CHAMONT [and] PAOLO FERNEZE [unseen by Angelo and Rachel].

Was this your drift, to use Ferneze’s name?

Was he your fittest stale? Oh, wild dishonour!

PAOLO

[Aside to Chamont] Stay, noble sir!

ANGELO

[To Rachel] ’Sblood, how like a puppet do you talk now!

Dishonour? What dishonour? Come, come, fool. 10

Nay, then, I see you’re peevish. ’Sheart, dishonour?

To have you to a priest and marry you,

And put you in an honourable state?

RACHEL

To marry me? O Heaven, can it be

That men should live with such unfeeling souls, 15

Without or touch or conscience of religion,

Or that their warping appetites should spoil

Those honoured forms that the true seal of friendship

Had set upon their faces?

ANGELO

Do you hear?

What needs all this? Say, will you have me or no? 20

RACHEL

I’ll have you gone, and leave me, if you would.

ANGELO

Leave you? I was accurst to bring you hither

And make so fair an offer to a fool.

A pox upon you! Why should you be coy?

What good thing have you in you to be proud of? 25

Are y’any other than a beggar’s daughter

Because you have beauty? Oh, God’s light, a blast!

PAOLO

[Aside] Ay, Angelo.

ANGELO

You scornful baggage,

I loved thee not so much but now I hate thee! 30

RACHEL

[Kneeling] Upon my knees, you heav’nly powers, I thank you,

That thus have tamed his wild affections.

ANGELO

[Aside] This will not do. I must to her again. –

Rachel, oh, that thou saw’st my heart, or didst behold

The place from whence that scalding sigh evented! 35

Rachel, by Jesu, I love thee as my soul.

Rachel, sweet Rachel!

RACHEL

What, again returned

Unto this violent passion?

ANGELO

Do but hear me!

By heaven, I love you, Rachel.

RACHEL

Pray, forbear!

Oh, that my Lord Ferneze were but here! 40

ANGELO

’Sblood, an he were, what would he do?

[Paolo comes forward.]

PAOLO

This would he do, base villain!

RACHEL

My dear lord!

PAOLO

Thou monster, even the soul of treachery!

Oh, what dishonoured title of reproach

May my tongue spit in thy deservèd face? 45

Methinks my very presence should invert

The steelèd organs of those trait’rous eyes,

To take into thy heart and pierce it through.

Turn’st thou them on the ground? Wretch, dig a grave

With their sharp points to hide th’abhorrèd head! 50

[To Rachel] Sweet love, thy wrongs have been too violent

Since my departure from thee, I perceive.

But now true comfort shall again appear

And, like an armèd angel, guard thee safe

From all th’assaults of covered villainy. 55

[To Chamont] Come, monsieur, let’s go and leave this wretch

To his despair.

ANGELO

My noble Ferneze –

PAOLO

What, canst thou speak to me, and not thy tongue,

Forced with the torment of thy guilty soul,

Break that infected circle of thy mouth, 60

Like the rude clapper of a crazèd bell?

I, that in thy bosom lodged my soul,

With all her train of secrets, thinking them

To be as safe and richly entertained

As in a prince’s court or tower of strength, 65

And thou to prove a traitor to my trust,

And basely to expose it! Oh, this world!

ANGELO

My honourable lord –

PAOLO

The very owl,

Whom other birds do stare and wonder at,

Shall hoot at thee, and snakes in every bush 70

Shall deaf thine ears with their –

CHAMONT

Nay, good my lord,

Give end unto your passions.

ANGELO

You shall see

I will redeem your lost opinion.

RACHEL

[To Paolo] My lord, believe him.

CHAMONT

Come, be satisfied.

Sweet lord, you know our haste. Let us to horse. 75

The time for my engaged return is past.

Be friends again. Take him along with you.

PAOLO

Come, Signor Angelo. Hereafter prove more true. Exeunt.

5.5 Enter COUNT FERNEZE, MAXIMILIAN, [and] FRANCISCO.

COUNT

Tut, Maximilian, for your honoured self,

I am persuaded; but no words shall turn

The edge of purposed vengeance on that wretch.

Come, bring him forth to execution.

Enter CAMILLO bound, with SERVANTS.

I’ll hang him for my son; he shall not scape, 5

Had he an hundred lives. [To Camillo ] Tell me, vile slave,

Thinkest thou I love my son? Is he my flesh?

Is he my blood, my life? And shall all these

Be tortured for thy sake, and not revenged?

[To Servingmen ] Truss up the villain. 10

MAXIMILIAN

My lord, there is no law to confirm this action.

’Tis dishonourable.

COUNT

Dishonourable, Maximilian?

It is dishonourable in Chamont.

The day of his prefixed return is past,

And he shall pay for’t.

CAMILLO

My lord, my lord, 15

Use your extremest vengeance. I’ll be glad

To suffer ten times more for such a friend.

COUNT

Oh, resolute and peremptory wretch!

FRANCISCO

My honoured lord, let us entreat a word.

COUNT

I’ll hear no more. I say he shall not live. 20

Myself will do it.

[He advances threateningly and stops.]

Stay, what form is this

Stands betwixt him and me and holds my hand?

What miracle is this? ’Tis my own fancy

Carves this impression in me, my soft nature,

That ever hath retained such foolish pity 25

Of the most abject creature’s misery,

That it abhors it. What a child am I

To have a child! Ay me, my son, my son!

Enter CHRISTOPHERO.

CHRISTOPHERO

[Aside ] Oh, my dear love, what is become of thee?

What unjust absence layest thou on my breast 30

Like weights of lead, when swords are at my back

That run me through with thy unkind flight?

My gentle disposition waxeth wild!

I shall run frantic. Oh, my love, my love!

Enter JAQUES.

JAQUES

[Aside ] My gold, my gold, my life, my soul, my heaven! 35

What is become of thee? See, I’ll impart

My miserable loss to my good lord.

[To the Count ] Let me have search, my lord! My gold is gone!

COUNT

My son – Christophero, think’st it possible

I ever shall behold his face again? 40

CHRISTOPHERO

[To Jaques ] Oh, father, where’s my love? Were you so careless

To let an unthrift steal away your child?

JAQUES

[To the Count] I know Your Lordship may find out my gold.

For God’s sake, pity me. Justice, sweet lord!

COUNT

Now they have young Chamont, Christophero, 45

Surely they never will restore my son.

CHRISTOPHERO

[To Jaques ] Who would have thought you could have been so careless

To lose your only daughter?

JAQUES

Who would think

That, looking to my gold with such hare’s eyes,

That, ever open – ay, even when they sleep – 50

I thus should lose my gold? [To the Count ] My noble lord,

What says Your Lordship?

COUNT

Oh, my son, my son!

CHRISTOPHERO

My dearest Rachel!

JAQUES

My most honey gold!

COUNT

Hear me, Christophero!

CHRISTOPHERO

Nay, hear me, Jaques!

JAQUES

Hear me, most honoured lord!

MAXIMILIAN

What rule is here? 55

COUNT

Oh, God, that we should let Chamont escape!

Enter AURELIA [and] PHOENIXELLA.

CHRISTOPHERO

Ay, and that Rachel, such a virtuous maid,

Should be thus stol’n away!

JAQUES

And that my gold,

Being so hid in earth, should be found out!

MAXIMILIAN

Oh, confusion of languages, and yet no tower of Babel! 60

FRANCISCO

Ladies, beshrew me if you come not fit to make a jangling consort.

Will you laugh to see three constant passions?

MAXIMILIAN

Stand by. I will urge them. – Sweet count, will you be comforted?

COUNT

It cannot be but he is handled the most cruelly

That ever any noble prisoner was. 65

MAXIMILIAN

[To Christophero] Steward, go cheer my lord.

CHRISTOPHERO

Well, if Rachel took her flight willingly –

MAXIMILIAN

[To Jaques] Sirrah, speak you touching your daughter’s flight?

JAQUES

Oh, that I could so soon forget to know

The thief again that had my gold, my gold! 70

MAXIMILIAN

Is not this pure?

COUNT

[To Camillo] Oh, thou base wretch, I’ll drag thee through the streets,

And, as a monster, make thee wondered at. – How now?

Enter BALTHASAR, and whispers with him.

PHOENIXELLA

[To Camillo] Sweet gentleman, how too unworthily

Art thou thus tortured! – Brave Maximilian, 75

Pity the poor youth and appease my father.

COUNT

How, my son returned? Oh, Maximilian,

Francisco, daughters! Bid him enter here!

5.6 Enter CHAMONT, [PAOLO] FERNEZE, RACHEL, ANGELO [and SERVANTS].

COUNT

Dost thou not mock me? – Oh, my dear Paolo, welcome!

MAXIMILIAN

My Lord Chamont!

CHAMONT

My Gaspar!

CHRISTOPHERO

Rachel!

JAQUES

My gold, Rachel, my gold! 5

COUNT

Somebody bid the beggar cease his noise.

CHRISTOPHERO

O Signor Angelo, would you deceive

Your honest friend that simply trusted you?

Well, Rachel, I am glad thou’rt here again.

ANGELO

[To Christophero ] I’faith, she is not for you, steward. 10

JAQUES

[To Phoenixella ] I beseech you, madam, urge your father.

PHOENIXELLA

I will anon. Good Jaques, be content.

AURELIA

Now, God-a-mercy, Fortune and sweet Venus!

Let Cupid do his part, and all is well.

PHOENIXELLA

Methinks my heart’s in heaven with this comfort. 15

CHAMONT

Is this the true Italian courtesy?

[To the Count ] Ferneze, were you tortured thus in France?

By my soul’s safety!

COUNT

[Kneeling ] My most noble lord,

I do beseech Your Lordship.

CHAMONT

Honoured Count,

Wrong not your age with flexure of a knee. 20

I do impute it to those cares and griefs

That did torment you in your absent son.

COUNT

[Rising] Oh, worthy gentlemen, I am ashamed

That my extreme affection to my son

Should give my honour so uncured a maim. 25

But my first son, being in Vicenza lost –

CHAMONT

How, in Vicenza? Lost you a son there?

About what time, my lord?

COUNT

Oh, the same night

Wherein your noble father took the town.

CHAMONT

How long ’s that since, my lord? Can you remember? 30

COUNT

’Tis now well nigh upon the twentieth year.

CHAMONT

And how old was he then?

COUNT

I cannot tell.

Between the years of three and four, I take it.

CHAMONT

Had he no special note in his attire

Or otherwise that you can call to mind? 35

COUNT

I cannot well remember his attire,

But I have often heard his mother say

He had about his neck a tablet

Given to him by the Emperor Sigismund,

His godfather, with this inscription 40

Under the figure of a silver globe:

In minimo mundus.

CHAMONT

How did you call

Your son, my lord?

COUNT

Camillo, Lord Chamont.

CHAMONT

[To Camillo] Then, no more my Gaspar, but Camillo!

Take notice of your father. – Gentlemen, 45

Stand not amazed. [Producing a medal ] Here is a tablet

With that inscription found about his neck

That night and in Vicenza by my father,

Who, being ignorant what name he had,

Christ’ned him Gaspar. Nor did I reveal 50

This secret till this hour to any man.

COUNT

[Weeping ] Oh, happy revelation! Oh, blest hour!

Oh, my Camillo!

PHOENIXELLA

Oh, strange! My brother!

FRANCISCO

Maximilian,

Behold how the abundance of his joy 55

Drowns him in tears of gladness.

COUNT

Oh, my boy!

Forgive thy father’s late austerity.

MAXIMILIAN

My lord, I delivered as much before, but Your Honour would

not be persuaded. I will hereafter give more observance to my visions. I dreamt

of this. 60

JAQUES

I can be still no longer, my good lord.

Do a poor man some grace ’mongst all your joys.

COUNT

Why, what’s the matter, Jaques?

JAQUES

I am robbed,

I am undone, my lord, robbed and undone!

A heap of thirty thousand golden crowns, 65

Stol’n from me in one minute and, I fear,

By her confed’racy that calls me father!

But she’s none of mine. Therefore, sweet lord,

Let her be tortured to confess the truth.

MAXIMILIAN

More wonders yet! 70

COUNT

How, Jaques! Is not Rachel, then, thy daughter?

JAQUES

No, I disclaim in her, I spit at her.

She is a harlot, and her customers –

Your son, this gallant, and your steward here –

Have all been partners with her in my spoil. 75

No less than thirty thousand.

COUNT

Jaques, Jaques,

This is impossible! How shouldst thou come

To the possession of so huge a heap,

Being always a known beggar?

JAQUES

[Aside ] Out, alas!

I have betrayed myself with my own tongue. 80

The case is altered. [He begins to leave. ]

COUNT

One stay him there!

MAXIMILIAN

What, means he to depart? – Count Ferneze, upon my soul, this

beggar, this beggar is a counterfeit. Urge him. [To Jaques ] Didst thou lose

gold?

JAQUES

Oh, no, I lost no gold. 85

MAXIMILIAN

Said I not true?

COUNT

[To Jaques ] How didst thou first lose thirty thousand crowns,

And now no gold? Was Rachel first thy child,

And is she now no daughter? Sirrah Jaques,

You know how far our Milan laws extend 90

For punishment of liars.

JAQUES

Ay, my lord.

[Aside ] What shall I do? I have no starting-holes. –

Monsieur Chamont, stand you my honoured lord.

CHAMONT

For what, old man?

JAQUES

Ill-gotten goods never thrive.

I played the thief and now am robbed myself. 95

I am not as I seem, Jaques de Prie,

Nor was I born a beggar, as I am,

But sometime steward to your noble father.

CHAMONT

What, Melun,

That robbed my father’s treasure, stole my sister? 100

JAQUES

Ay, ay, that treasure is lost, but Isabel,

Your beauteous sister, here survives in Rachel.

And, therefore, on my knees – [He kneels. ]

MAXIMILIAN

Stay, Jaques, stay. The case still alters.

COUNT

Fair Rachel, sister to the Lord Chamont! 105

ANGELO

[ To Christophero ] Steward, your cake is dough, as well as mine.

PAOLO

I see that honour’s flames cannot be hid,

No more than lightning in the blackest cloud.

MAXIMILIAN

Then, sirrah, ’tis true you have lost this gold?

JAQUES

Ay, worthy signor, thirty thousand crowns. 110

COUNT

Mass, who was it told me that a couple of my men were become gallants

of late?

FRANCISCO

Marry, ’twas I, my lord; my man told me.

Enter ONION and JUNIPER [both in finery ].

MAXIMILIAN

How now, what pageant is this?

JUNIPER

Come, Signor Onion, let’s not be ashamed to appear. Keep state; look 115

not ambiguous now.

ONION

Not I, while I am in this suit.

JUNIPER

Lordings, equivalence to you all.

ONION

We thought good to be so good as see you, gentlemen.

MAXIMILIAN

What? Monsieur Onion? 120

ONION

How dost thou, good captain?

COUNT

What, are my hinds turned gentlemen?

ONION

Hinds, sir? ’Sblood, an that word will bear action, it shall cost us a

thousand pound apiece but we’ll be revenged.

JUNIPER

Wilt thou sell thy lordship, count? 125

COUNT

What, peasants purchase lordships?

JUNIPER

Is that any novels, sir?

MAXIMILIAN

Oh, transmutation of elements! It is certified you had pages.

JUNIPER

Ay, sir, but it is known they proved ridiculous. They did pilfer, they

did purloin, they did procrastinate our purses, for the which wasting of our 130

stock we have put them to the stocks.

COUNT

And thither shall you two presently.

These be the villains that stole Jaques’s gold.

Away with them, and set them with their men!

MAXIMILIAN

Onion, you will now be peeled. 135

FRANCISCO

The case is altered now.

ONION

Good my lord, good my lord!

JUNIPER

Away, scoundrel! Dost thou fear a little elocution? Shall we be confiscate

now, shall we droop now? Shall we be now in helogabalus?

ONION

Peace, peace, leave thy gabbling. 140

COUNT

Away, away with them. What’s this they prate?

Exeunt [Servingmen] with Juniper and Onion.

Keep the knaves sure. Strict inquisition

Shall presently be made for Jaques’s gold,

To be disposed at pleasure of Chamont.

CHAMONT

She is your own, Lord Paolo, if your father 145

Give his consent.

ANGELO

How now, Christophero?

The case is altered.

CHRISTOPHERO

With you as well as me. I am content, sir.

COUNT

[To Chamont ] With all my heart. And in exchange of her,

If with your fair acceptance it may stand, 150

I tender my Aurelia to your love.

CHAMONT

I take her from Your Lordship with all thanks,

And bless the hour wherein I was made prisoner,

For the fruition of this present fortune,

So full of happy and unlooked-for joys. 155

[To Jaques] Melun, I pardon thee, and, for the treasure,

Recover it, and hold it as thine own.

It is enough for me to see my sister

Live in the circle of Ferneze’s arms,

My friend the son of such a noble father, 160

And my unworthy self, rapt above all,

By being the lord to so divine a dame.

MAXIMILIAN

Well, I will now swear the case is altered. [To Aurelia] Lady, fare

you well; I will subdue my affections. [To Phoenixella] Madam, as for you, you

are a professed virgin, and I will be silent. – My honourable Lord Ferneze, it 165

shall become you at this time not be frugal, but bounteous and open-handed;

your fortune hath been so to you. – Lord Chamont, you are now no stranger,

you must be welcome; you have a fair, amiable, and splendious lady. – But

Signor Paolo, Signor Camillo, I know you valiant; be loving. [To Rachel] Lady,

I must be better known to you. [To Christophero and Angelo] Signors, for you, I 170

pass you not, though I let you pass, for in truth I pass not of you. – Lovers,

to your nuptials; lordings, to your dances. March fair, all, for a fair March is

worth a king’s ransom. Exeunt.

FINIS

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

The Case Is Altered (1597)

Edited by Robert Miola

Introduction

[List of Characters

THE CASE IS ALTERED