Eastward Ho! | The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson

Edited by Suzanne Gossett and W. David Kay

Introduction

Eastward Ho!, written with George Chapman and John Marston, is the only one of Ben Jonson’s collaborations that he was apparently willing to acknowledge and publish without removing all traces of his fellow authors. This unusual situation may result from the circumstances of the play’s production and publication, neither of which Jonson alone controlled. Collaboration may have stimulated him to experiment with new dramatic methods and styles. Unlike his early humour comedies, Eastward Ho! is not merely a study in affected manners, but also an allusive piece of intertextual wit. Written for the Children of the Queen’s Revels at Blackfriars, it plays on the title of Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho!, written for the rival Children of Paul’s, where suspicions about a group of city wives’ infidelity moves the action from London to the western suburb of Brentford, just as the intrigue of Sir Petronel Flash to escape with his lover Winifred to Virginia propels the characters of Eastward Ho! from London towards easterly locales such as Cuckold’s Haven and the Isle of Dogs. (In their response, Northward Ho!, later the same year, Dekker and Webster move the sexual intrigue north to Ware.) At the same time, the play deftly blends satire on prodigal gallants and the Jacobean court with subtle parody of plays for the public theatres that glorify citizen life, such as The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599), The Four Prentices of London (1599), and the second part of If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody (1604–5). Eastward Ho!’s unique mixture of intrigue, satire, theatrical allusions, and parody – including a running joke on Hamlet – makes it a richer and more complex work than the other two Ho! plays with which it is linked.

The three authors’ wit, however, was not directed only at theatrical rivals, and their intemperate gibes at court servility and Scots courtiers quickly landed them in trouble. Despite Jonson’s claim during his subsequent imprisonment that ‘it hath ever been my destiny to be misreported’ (Letter 2, 16–17), it seems likely that collaboration had only strengthened the tendency of these three irrepressibly satiric writers to disregard well-understood, if sometimes unspoken, norms of political and social acceptability. Jonson’s confinement for his part in The Isle of Dogs (1597) had been followed by his difficulties regarding Sejanus (1603). Marston, whose licentious poetry had been an adolescent offence to his distinguished jurist father, within three years would be in trouble again for his part in a lost play that satirized King James’s ‘mine d’Escosse’ – meaning either the King’s Scottish face or his abortive Scottish silver mines – and would abandon the stage in the middle of writing The Insatiate Countess (Finkelpearl, 1990, 65; Chambers, ES, 2.53). That same year, 1608, Chapman, too, would give up the stage after offending with a scene in The Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron that led the French ambassador to lodge a protest. These confrontational authors, given a free hand in writing for an early Jacobean boys’ company notorious for satire – the plays that proved flashpoints for censorship in the first decade of James’s reign were all produced by the boys at the Blackfriars – were professionally positioned and personally disposed to offend.

Eastward Ho! is tightly tied to its precise moment. The play must date between the appearance of ‘that which is opposed to ours in title’, Westward Ho!, in winter 1604–5 (entered in the Stationers’ Register 2 March 1605) and the entrance of Eastward Ho! into the Stationers’ Register on 4 September 1605 ‘vnder the handes of Master Wilson and Master ffeild warden’ (Arber, 3.128). Further constricting the dating are a series of letters that Chapman and Jonson wrote begging release from imprisonment for an unnamed play that seems unquestionably to be Eastward Ho! One of these is addressed to the Earl of Salisbury and another to the Earl of Montgomery; their earldoms were only created on 5 March 1605.

Even if Eastward Ho! were under way early in 1605, we may infer from Chapman’s letter to ‘the Lord Chamberlain’ (not further identified) that it did not reach the stage until summer. There Chapman regrets that ‘our unhappy book was presented without Your Lordship’s allowance, for which we can plead nothing by way of pardon, but your person so far removed from our required attendance, our play so much importuned, and our clear opinions that nothing it contained could worthily be held offensive’ (Letter (b), 2–5). We may dismiss the last clause – not one of these experienced playwrights was either foolish or innocent – but the first few assertions sketch a possible scenario of production. From 16 July to 31 August 1605 James was on progress to Oxford with many of his courtiers, including his Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Suffolk. ‘Putting on an unlicensed production while the court and its Lord Chamberlain were away from London . . . was . . . a common and predictable occurrence’ (Dutton, 1991, 174). In 1608 the French Ambassador de la Boderie would complain that the comedians had taken advantage of the court’s absence to stage Chapman’s Byron (Chambers, ES, 3.257); similar circumstances attended Middleton’s A Game at Chess.

Furthermore, the company that performed the collaborators’ play was – at least until they presented Eastward Ho! – the daring Children of Her Majesty’s Revels. In June 1604, a year before Eastward Ho!, the previous French Ambassador, M. de Beaumont, had asked rhetorically, ‘what must be the state and condition of a prince . . . whom the comedians of the metropolis bring upon the stage, whose wife attends these representations in order to enjoy the laugh against her husband’ (Dutton, 1991, 190). That same year the disgrace of Samuel Daniel, nominally the Master of the Revels for Queen Anne, over his Philotas complicated the question of control of the children’s company. Daniel gave up his authority as Licenser for the children in April 1605, but it is unclear who took over responsibility for approving their plays. Technically Queen Anne’s Lord Chamberlain, Robert Sidney, Lord Lisle, was Daniel’s superior; nevertheless, Suffolk had a general remit for all theatrical matters. Sidney, like Suffolk, was gone in August; he had sailed for Flushing, but was blown off course and then spent September extricating himself from accusations of consorting with the Spanish enemy. Thus, a sense of safety grounded in the tolerant attitude of their royal patron, combined with an absence of supervision, apparently encouraged the children’s company to welcome a pointed satire that even they might not have risked in the autumn. Either the authors or the company could have been ‘importuned’ by enemies of the new Scottish dominance at court, by members of the ancient nobility annoyed by the inflation of honours, or by gentle persons who, short of cash, had already seen their land ‘fly’ into the hands of city usurers like Security (1.1.27).

According to Jonson’s account to Drummond more than a decade later, what happened next was that ‘He was delated [reported] by Sir James Murray to the King for writing something against the Scots in a play, Eastward Ho!, and voluntarily imprisoned himself with Chapman and Marston, who had written it amongst them. The report was that they should then had their ears cut and noses’ (Informations, 207–10). Murray was a Scots courtier knighted in 1603, whose brother, Sir John Murray, was groom of the King’s Bedchamber; the Murrays may have been offended by satire on Scots, on cheaply purchased knighthoods (4.1.140–2), or on my lord’s ‘groom of his close-stool’ who ‘rules the roost’ and has crept ‘by pandarism into his chamber’ (2.2.66–8) (see Tricomi, 1989, 32–3). The involvement of James Murray increases the likelihood that the unlicensed performance occurred during the progress: he ‘was not among the courtiers who received degrees at Oxford on 30 August 1605; and the probability is that domestic affairs kept him in London. At the christening of his child on 25 September, he received a gift from the King of “one cup and cover of silver gilt”’ (Brettle, 1928–9, 301, n.2). Presumably Murray told the King about the play upon his return, the authors were sought out, and the two that could be found were thrown into ‘a vile prison’, uncomfortably similar to that to which they consign their characters and from which their surviving letters form a frightened but perhaps equally dubious version of the repentance staged by their prodigal apprentice Quicksilver (cf. Leinwand, 1999). Despite his later (mis?)recollection, in his letter to Salisbury Jonson says only that he is committed ‘and, with me, a gentleman . . . one Master George Chapman’; none of the letters mentions Marston. However, Anthony Nixon’s 1606 reference in The Black Year to Marston being ‘“sent Westward” for carping at city, state, and country’ may mean that the third collaborator was also ‘detained or imprisoned, albeit elsewhere’ (Tricomi, 1989, 44).

One question has always been how Eastward Ho! could have been entered properly, and then published, if the authors were already in trouble about the performance. Van Fossen proposes that the play was ‘rushed to print . . . to provide a justification for the authors who were in prison’ (6). Given the amount of satire that remains in the play, this conjecture seems unlikely. Greg (1928) and Chambers (ES, 3.255) presume the imprisonment was actually caused by the publication. More probably, as Brettle and J. Q. Adams (1931) argue, the authors, or the company, suspecting that the unlicensed performances would rapidly be suppressed, sold the script quickly to the stationers Aspley and Thorpe, who in turn gave it to George Eld to print.

The printing may have been begun but not completed before the authors were imprisoned. Jonson tells Salisbury that he and Chapman, ‘a learned and honest man’, are imprisoned ‘unexamined or unheard’ and begs him not to ‘trust to rumour’, implying that Salisbury could not read the play himself (Letter 2, 10–13, 30). We infer the rest of the history from bibliographical information. The first quarto of Eastward Ho! exists in two issues, the second of which (Qc) contains a half-sheet insert that replaces the original E3r–E4v. The first issue (Qu) is very rare: the only complete copy is British Library Ashley 371, and even that does not contain its original title page. The cancelled pages have also been inserted into the copy of Qc in the Dyce collection. Tabs where the cancel has been cut out are visible in the Bodleian copy, and in the Clark Library copy the half-sheet containing the revised signatures E3 and E4 has been mistakenly inserted before signatures E1 and E2. This half-sheet insert was printed hastily: its text introduces a number of new, uncorrected errors.

The major deletions from the original version are in two passages sometimes identified with the ‘two clauses’ that Chapman, in his letter to James, calls the ‘chief offences . . . and both of them not our own’ (Letter (a), 4–5), thus passing the blame to the absent Marston or, possibly, to actors speaking more than ‘was set down for them’. Describing the wonders to be found in Virginia, Captain Seagull originally concluded that

you shall live freely there, without sergeants, or courtiers, or lawyers, or intelligencers; only a few industrious Scots, perhaps, who indeed are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on’t, in the world than they are. And for my part, I would a hundred thousand of ’em were there, for we are all one countrymen now, ye know, and we should find ten times more comfort of them there then we do here. (3.3.29–35)

The other offending clause followed fast, ‘you may be an alderman there and never be scavenger; you may be a nobleman and never be a slave’ (3.3.36–8). A reasonable inference is that the first copies of Q1 had already been printed and sold before the authorities – or Chapman and Jonson themselves – ordered the printer to pull two formes and make rapid substitutions. Harder to explain is what does and does not remain in the text, which proved so popular that there were two more quartos, Q2 and Q3, before the end of 1605. The condition of Q1 even in its first issue may reflect a hurried and inadequate attempt to eliminate dangerous material in the course of printing. The spacing on a number of pages is odd, as if lines or brief passages had been cut out. (Petter estimates that type hypothetically removed from A3, A4v, C1v, and C2 would equal fourteen lines; Herford and Simpson arrive at seventeen.) Possibly Eld or the authors became worried about certain passages and began intermittent censoring after the play was cast off, creating, for example, five short lines and a noticeable blank space at 1.2.39–40 on A4v, instead of continuing Gertrude’s speech in the prose which precedes these lines. On the other hand, Eld may merely have erred in estimating his material and found himself forced to spread out certain lines, with the censorship coming later and separately.

One reason for uncertainty about censorship as a cause for the printing anomalies is that if Eld or the authors were trying to make the text inoffensive, first by self-censorship during the original printing and then by striking the two dangerous clauses to create the second issue, they missed some stunning material, particularly the confrontation between the two Gentlemen and the penniless Sir Petronel Flash, shipwrecked on the notorious Isle of Dogs while trying to flee to Virginia (4.1.119–42). Here a knowing conversation about James’s sale of knighthoods at discount prices concludes with an open invitation for an actor’s mimicry, ‘I ken the man weel, he’s one of my thirty pound knights.’ The sequence of circumstances supports the view that performance, initial publication, ‘delation’, imprisonment, and censorship must have occurred in rapid order during late summer of 1605. By October 9 the brouhaha was over and Jonson was at dinner with Robert Catesby. Chapman’s third letter mentions that ‘His Highness hath remitted one of us wholly to Your Lordship’s favour, and . . . the other had still Your Lordship’s passing noble remembrance for his joint liberty’ (Letter (c), 6–8); it is thus likely that Suffolk, Lord Chamberlain and a powerful Privy Counsellor, had intervened, earning the gratitude Chapman expresses in his dedicatory poem to Sejanus later that year. The Blackfriars’ boys had, however, lost the Queen’s patronage, and their title was changed to the Children of the Revels.

The control copy for this edition is BL Ashley 371, collated against the other fourteen remaining copies of Q1 (see the Textual Essay, Electronic Edition). In general, Q1 was carefully printed, though uneven inking in some copies has created the appearance of variant readings where none may actually exist. Corrections were made in thirteen of the eighteen formes, with particular care taken about Sir Petronel’s French at 4.1.127–31. Q2 and Q3 were merely reprints of Qc, though Eld saved a sheet through various devices of compression and the later quartos collate A–H where Q1 collates A–I. Q2 and Q3 have no special textual authority but provide evidence that the play appealed more strongly to the immediate reading public than did any of Jonson’s other works except Every Man Out of His Humour.

That appeal no doubt derived from the three collaborators’ ability to exploit the social, political, and theatrical moment. Eastward Ho! might well be subtitled with Touchstone’s injunction, ‘London look about.’ The two years since James’s accession to the throne had allowed his accent, his inflation of honours, his preference for Scottish courtiers, to become familiar enough to be mocked. Although interest in American colonization was renewed by George Waymouth’s voyage to ‘North Virginia’ (Massachusetts and Maine) between 5 March and 18 July 1605 and planning for a Virginia Company was already beginning (see Harrison, 1941, 204, 217–18, 376–7), it was still two years before the first permanent settlement at Jamestown, a moment when voyages of exploration may have seemed convenient for escaping London creditors but empire, commercial or otherwise, appeared elusive. Sir Francis Drake’s ship has become a place where Petronel can serve supper, and social life has become uncomfortably mobile for those who believe in hierarchical order and ascribed status. From the first scene the play focuses on the interpenetration of social classes. Pulling off his apprentice Quicksilver’s cloak, Master Touchstone discovers concealed signs of higher status: ‘Sword, pumps, here’s a racket indeed.’ Quicksilver’s justification reveals a seething resentment: ‘Why, ’sblood, sir, my mother’s a gentlewoman, and my father a Justice of Peace and of Quorum, and though I am a younger brother and a prentice, yet I hope I am my father’s son’ (1.1.16–17, 1.1.21–3). An afternoon theatre audience would contain such downwardly mobile ‘younger brothers’, without expectations and forced into apprenticeships, curateships, or crime, from which they could only look back wistfully on their gentle forebears. To ‘be like a gentleman’, Quicksilver believes, is to ‘be idle’; his fellow prentice Golding instead holds that honour springs ‘From trades, from arts, from valour’ (1.1.120) and that ‘the trade I have learned of my master . . . taints not my blood’ (3.2.87–8). The play is thus built on a binary structure. Its prodigal and provident apprentices are paralleled by Touchstone’s foolish daughter Gertrude, eager to be ladified by Sir Petronel, and her modest sister Mildred, content with marriage to the humble but virtuous Golding. The apex of this structure is Touchstone – goldsmith, employer, father, and purveyor of proverbial wisdom.

Touchstone is a member of one of the great London guilds and a nascent capitalist. In contrast to Security the usurer, who ‘hungers and thirsts’ to loan his victims money at ‘moderate profit – thirty or forty i’th’hundred’ (2.2.80–1), Touchstone claims to have risen slowly and honestly (see 1.1.39–42). His ‘thrifty sentences’ stress the virtues of hard work, frugality, and prudence, and his defiant catchphrase, ‘work upon that now’, expresses scorn for those who are idle. The difference between him and his slippery apprentice Quicksilver is partly a difference between high risk ventures and long-term growth and partly a difference in personal creed. The roguish Quicksilver not only diverts money owed by Touchstone’s customers to fund his own pleasures (see 4.2.191–3), he also forms a knavish compact with his ‘Dad’ Security to cheat his companions in prodigality, even as he and Petronel intrigue to strip Gertrude of her dowry and carry off Security’s young wife Winifred. The cynical relationships among these three intriguers are exemplified by Petronel’s maxim, ‘A man in the course of this world should be like a surgeon’s instrument: work in the wounds of others and feel nothing himself’ (3.2.163–5). By contrast, Golding and Mildred advocate a course of life distinguished by humility, piety, diligence, and thrift.

Two lively critical debates about Eastward Ho! concern the play’s attitude towards its action and the division of its authorship. These issues may be inseparable, as the treatment of key figures, particularly the mercurial Quicksilver, seems to vary in different sections. Most investigators from Parrott and, with exceptions, Simpson, to Van Fossen and Petter have agreed upon a largely sequential composition, with Marston primarily responsible for 1.1–2.1, Chapman for 2.2–3.3, and Jonson essentially for 4.2 to the end. (On 4.1, see below.) Lake concludes that ‘the three authors wrote compact allotments of work: Chapman had the largest share (1,461 lines), followed by Jonson (974 lines) and then Marston (328 lines)’ (1981, 166). Parrott, however, implies a different structural division by ascribing to Chapman the Security–Winifred–Petronel plot, based on the thirty-fourth story in the Novellino of Masuccio Salernitano (printed 1476 and not translated into English before the nineteenth century) (1961, 2.838–48). Nevertheless, certain scenes, e.g. 2.1, have been assigned by different scholars to each of the three authors, Lake giving it to Chapman and Simpson seeing the authorship split between Marston and Jonson (H&S, 9.640).

Underlying the disagreement about specifics are fundamentally divergent assumptions about the methodology implied by Jonson’s opaque phrase, ‘had written it amongst them’ (Informations, 209). Those, like Parrott, who believe that collaborators did not, even could not, write jointly, slide quickly over parallels to the work of one author in scenes assigned to another and brush aside clusters of anomalous forms pointing to a second hand. They disregard the implications of the long and central 4.1, where most disintegrators acknowledge signs of all three dramatists, and seek for compact divisions, resisting interruptions of the presumed sequence. Lake, for example, denies Marston 3.4 on these grounds (1981, 165). On the other hand, those like Van Fossen, who accept Schoenbaum’s suggestion that some dramatists preferred ‘to work in intimate association, going over one another’s drafts, revising, deleting, and interpolating’ and thus hypothesize a more intimate collaboration leading to conscious adjustment or unconscious contamination during joint composition, find evidence for the style and habitual usages of each author more widely dispersed and acknowledge instances of ‘touching up’ dismissed by the first group (10). Finally, Hirschfeld, who holds that the collaborating authors of Eastward Ho! indulged in a ‘rhetorical strategy of stylistic erasure designed to eliminate, and thereby protect, the writers’ individual signatures from the play’ (1999, 186–7), would seem to bar entirely the possibility of specific authorial assignment for parts of the comedy.

The current editors are persuaded that many scenes of the play, at least by the time they reached their final form, had been worked on by more than one author. Some, like 3.2, appear to combine sections composed separately. These hypotheses are not irreconcilable: assuming that the men planned the play together (or perhaps agreed to work from one of ‘Benjamin’s’ plots) and each then made a preliminary draft of his assigned sections, they might nevertheless have had meetings at which they improved each other’s drafts. Marstonian elements and echoes in the acts presumably by Chapman and Jonson run the gamut from a paradoxical praise of usury, to favourite words, proverbs, and Shakespearean echoes, to a cluster of his preferred form, ‘them’, in ‘Chapman’s’ 3.3. The staging of the prison scenes (5.3 and 5.5), in which Security, heard but not seen, tells Bramble that his case ‘is stone walls, and iron grates’, seems to be based on Marston’s Antonio’s Revenge, where Mellida, imprisoned, ‘goes from the grate’. On the other hand, in ‘Marston’s’ Act 1 there are conspicuous echoes of Chapman and Jonson, including Golding calling Quicksilver a ‘common shot-clog’, a Jonsonian coinage (see OED), first found in Every Man Out (1599) and again in Poetaster (1601), and the drunken Quicksilver quoting a line from Chapman’s Blind Beggar of Alexandria (1596) that had already been quoted by Jonson in Poetaster. And it was Chapman who had previously used the proverbial ‘cut your thongs unto your leather’ found in 5.5.110, a section traditionally ascribed to Jonson.

An example of the division of opinion concerns the prologue. This is assigned by Parrott and Simpson to Jonson, largely on grounds of the scornful tone. Petter assigns it to Marston, claiming that two appearances of ‘de’ for ‘ed’ indicate that it could not be Jonson’s. Petter also comments that Marston’s connection to the Queen’s Revels Company makes the ascription ‘most plausible’ (xviii). Disregarding ‘ed’ ‘de’, Lake finds ‘no linguistic evidence’ for the authorship of the prologue or epilogue (1981, 166). No one has assigned the prologue to Chapman since Sykes in 1915, who pointed out its similarity to the prologue to the second quarto of Bussy D’Ambois. That, however, was printed late – 1641 – and its prologue is presumed to be a contemporary addition. Yet the citation from Plutarch in line 10 of Eastward Ho!’s prologue, ‘Honour the sun’s fair rising, not his setting’, occurs in Plutarch’s Life of Pompey and again in his Morals, both drawn on by Chapman shortly before in Caesar and Pompey (1604–5), and the ironic tone of the first ten lines resembles the mocking comparison of wits and poets in the prologue to Chapman’s All Fools. Thus Chapman, we believe, is the most likely author of the introductory poem, unless the prominently placed prologue was itself the result of collaboration.

Ultimately, the problem of determining authorship in Eastward Ho! is complicated by the need to correlate two kinds of evidence and two views of authorship. The first looks for stylistic and linguistic markers and assumes that dramatic documents were composed by individuals with discoverable histories, habits, and canons. The second stresses that collaboration was a different kind of composition, constricting the agency of the individual subject. In this view collaboration led to something more like a chemical melding than a simple accumulation of parts, undermining analyses that begin from the presumption of identifiable personal work. Van Fossen points out the ubiquity of Jonson’s characteristic abbreviation ’hem. Perhaps after the last of the collaborators’ meetings Jonson went over the whole, making improvements and changes and copying out the final draft. Yet the numerous passages that echo more than one of the three authors’ mannerisms suggest that the uniformity of style for which Eastward Ho! is famous had been achieved by a broadly diffuse collaboration. The presence of ’hem throughout may merely indicate that the manuscript was copied by a scribe who favoured that form.

However composed, Eastward Ho! is, finally, a fairly sardonic play about economics and material conditions – the normal stuff of city comedy – around which eddy a series of fantasies. It is this conjuncture that causes the tonal uncertainty. The most striking of these fantasies is the meteoric rise not of a master tradesman like Simon Eyre, but of Golding, the apprentice who, on the first day of his freedom, is made an alderman’s deputy. Foolish Gertrude lives on ‘pretty waking dreams’, fairies who ‘do miracles and bring ladies money’, and only slowly discovers that hers is a castle in the air and that ‘The knighthood nowadays are nothing like the knighthood of old time’ (5.1.69, 61, 26–7). Winifred, the adulterous young wife, imposes fantasy on her husband as she metamorphoses back into the pure and proper Puritan: ‘O my dear husband! Where have you been tonight? All night abroad at taverns? . . . Alas! Is this seemly for a man of your credit?’ (4.1.204–6). She is so persuasive that the old cuckold ends up apologizing himself. The greatest fantasist is Quicksilver and the most unlikely fantasy that, imprisoned on suspicion of felony, an offence ‘such as he cannot hope of life’, he can escape hanging merely by singing a ballad of repentance.

The complexity of the playwrights’ stance towards their action is revealed by Eastward Ho!’s three key scenes of spectatorship. In the first (3.2) the city wives Mistress Fond and Mistress Gazer observe as the newly ladified Gertrude takes coach for her non-existent castle in the country; in the second (4.1) the butcher’s apprentice Slitgut, high above the stage and the Thames, watches as one by one those who took boat the night before pull themselves dripping from the river; in the final prison scene (5.5) Quicksilver enacts his repentance before Touchstone, whose reaction is watched in turn by Golding and the prison-keeper. These scenes, which involve all the plots, are a key to the ambiguity of tone. By incorporating spectators who are ‘fond’ (foolish), socially inferior (Slitgut is a butcher’s apprentice to whom Quicksilver seems a ‘fine young gentleman’), and difficult to interpret (neither Touchstone’s morality nor his anger at Quicksilver is entirely believable) the dramatists deny the audience a fixed and trustworthy perspective for judgement.

Intertextuality further complicates evaluation. Is the reduction of Hamlet to a footman, of Ophelia to the half-drowned Winifred, of Richard Ⅲ to the cuckolded Security offering ‘a full hundred marks for a boat!’ merely a playful joke for the knowing spectator of a private theatre boys’ play, or is it intended to deflate the pretensions of the play’s characters and action? Is Eastward Ho! ultimately a citizen comedy like Westward Ho!, where the bourgeois virtues of marital fidelity, financial probity, and class solidarity are victorious, or is it a city comedy like Marston’s Dutch Courtesan, also 1605, primarily satirical and subversive? Touchstone’s prophecy that Golding will be reckoned among London worthies, ‘to be remembered the same day with the Lady Ramsey and grave Gresham, when the famous fable of Whittington and his puss shall be forgotten’ (4.2.54–6), aligns the play generically with such adult company plays as Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me for Queen Anne’s Men, where Lady Ramsey and Gresham are celebrated. But it also anticipates the Citizen’s call for the actors to perform ‘The Legend of Whittington, or The Life and Death of Sir Thomas Gresham, with the Building of the Royal Exchange’ in Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) for Eastward Ho!’s own Revels’ Children, where the satire is unquestionable. Finally, the parallel between the play and the exemplary narratives in contemporary murder and repentance pamphlets may be intended seriously, but Quicksilver’s Repentance may instead be ‘a patent parody of the last dying speech and the literary genres based upon it’ (Lake and Questier, 2002, 403; cf. Leggatt, 1973).

The difficulty of satire lies in determining the standards against which it is to be measured. It is complicated in Eastward Ho! by collaboration and by the play’s shifting attitudes, which allow citizen virtue to triumph over foolish aspiration, self-indulgent prodigality, and politic scheming while remaining detached from rogues and righteous alike. As the comedy reaches its climax, assessing the relative authority of the increasingly manic Touchstone and the seemingly reformed Quicksilver becomes the crucial challenge to evaluating the play’s moral stance. Although the authors deflect the negative aspects of capitalist production and reproduction onto Security, Touchstone’s habit of thinking in proverbs and aphorisms, bolstered by extensive borrowings from John Heywood’s Dialogue of Proverbs, is presented ambiguously. His reliance on folk wisdom satirizes bourgeois self-satisfaction even while it evokes the common-sense perspective by which prodigality and improvident marriages may be judged. Likewise Quicksilver’s mercurial shift in 4.1 from desperation to confidence – ‘I have some tricks in this brain of mine shall not let us perish’ (157–8) – calls into question his later performance of the tropes of repentance. Yet his failure ever to take the audience into his confidence prevents us from celebrating him as a purely cynical trickster. Quicksilver’s final wish, ‘Oh, may you find in this our pageant here / The same contentment which you came to seek’ (Epilogus, 5–6), obscures judgement with one last play on words. The ‘pageant’ may be the show the theatre audience has just seen or the repentance the prodigal is performing as he walks out of prison. Eastward Ho! is thus finally neither a straightforward prodigal-son drama nor a clever trickster play that simply burlesques the form, but a complex dramatic satire whose comic resolution holds both alternatives in suspension.

Prologus

Not out of envy, for there’s no effect

Where there’s no cause; nor out of imitation,

For we have ever more been imitated;

Nor out of our contention to do better

Than that which is opposed to ours in title, 5

For that was good, and better cannot be.

And for the title, if it seem affected

We might as well have called it, ‘God you good even’,

Only that eastward westwards still exceeds –

Honour the sun’s fair rising, not his setting. 10

Nor is our title utterly enforced,

As by the points we touch at you shall see.

Bear with our willing pains, if dull or witty;

We only dedicate it to the city.

[The Persons of the Play

TOUCHSTONE: a goldsmith of Cheapside
MISTRESS TOUCHSTONE: his wife, a gentlewoman
GERTRUDE: his elder daughter
MILDRED: his younger daughter
FRANCIS QUICKSILVER: his prodigal apprentice 5
GOLDING: his dutiful apprentice
SINDEFY: Quicksilver’s lover, later employed as Gertrude’s maid
SIR PETRONEL FLASH: a ‘thirty-pound knight’, engaged to Gertrude
CAPTAIN SEAGULL: a ship’s captain employed by Petronel to Virginia
SPENDALL, SCAPETHRIFT}: 10 adventurers with Captain Seagull
DRAWER: of the Blue Anchor Tavern in Billingsgate
SECURITY: an elderly usurer; bawd to Quicksilver
WINIFRED: Security’s young wife
BRAMBLE: a lawyer 15
SCRIVENER
POLDAVY: a tailor
BETTRICE: a lady’s maid
MISTRESS FOND, MISTRESS GAZER}: city women 20
COACHMAN: to Gertrude
HAMLET: a footman to Gertrude
POTKIN: a tankard bearer
FIRST GENTLEMAN, SECOND GENTLEMAN}: at the Isle of Dogs 25
WOLF: the keeper of the Counter, a prison
HOLDFAST: a prison guard
FIRST PRISONER
SECOND PRISONER [TOBY]
FRIEND: of the prisoners 30
SLITGUT: a butcher’s apprentice
PAGE
MESSENGER
CONSTABLE
OFFICERS

THE SCENE: LONDON AND VICINITY]

1.1 Enter Master TOUCHSTONE and QUICKSILVER at several doors, QUICKSILVER with his hat, pumps, short sword, and dagger, and a [tennis] racket trussed up under his cloak. At the middle door, enter GOLDING discovering a goldsmith’s shop and walking short turns before it.

TOUCHSTONE

[To Quicksilver] And whither with you now? What loose action are

you bound for? Come, what comrades are you to meet withal? Where’s the

supper? Where’s the rendezvous?

QUICKSILVER

Indeed, and in very good sober truth, sir –

TOUCHSTONE

‘Indeed, and in very good sober truth, sir’! Behind my back thou 5

wilt swear faster than a French footboy and talk more bawdily than a common

midwife, and now ‘indeed, and in very good sober truth, sir’! But if a privy

search should be made, with what furniture are you rigged now? Sirrah, I tell

thee I am thy master, William Touchstone, goldsmith, and thou my prentice,

Francis Quicksilver, and I will see whither you are running. Work upon that 10

now!

QUICKSILVER

Why, sir, I hope a man may use his recreation with his master’s

profit.

TOUCHSTONE

Prentices’ recreations are seldom with their masters’ profit. Work

upon that now! You shall give up your cloak, though you be no alderman. 15

(Touchstone uncloaks Quicksilver.) Heyday, Ruffians’ Hall! Sword, pumps, here’s

a racket indeed.

QUICKSILVER

Work upon that now!

TOUCHSTONE

Thou shameless varlet, dost thou jest at thy lawful master contrary

to thy indentures? 20

QUICKSILVER

Why, ’sblood, sir, my mother’s a gentlewoman and my father

a Justice of Peace and of Quorum, and though I am a younger brother and

a prentice, yet I hope I am my father’s son; and by God’s lid, ’tis for your

worship and for your commodity that I keep company. I am entertained among

gallants, true. They call me cousin Frank, right. I lend them moneys, good. 25

They spend it, well. But when they are spent, must not they strive to get more?

Must not their land fly? And to whom? Shall not Your Worship ha’ the refusal?

Well, I am a good member of the city if I were well considered. How would

merchants thrive, if gentlemen would not be unthrifts? How could gentlemen

be unthrifts if their humours were not fed? How should their humours be fed 30

but by white meat and cunning secondings? Well, the city might consider us.

I am going to an ordinary now: the gallants fall to play; I carry light gold with

me; the gallants call, ‘Cousin Frank, some gold for silver!’; I change, gain by

it; the gallants lose the gold and then call ‘Cousin Frank, lend me some silver.’

Why – 35

TOUCHSTONE

Why? I cannot tell. Seven score pound art thou out in the cash,

but look to it, I will not be gallanted out of my moneys. And as for my rising

by other men’s fall, God shield me! Did I gain my wealth by ordinaries? No.

By exchanging of gold? No. By keeping of gallants company? No. I hired me a

little shop, fought low, took small gain, kept no debt book, garnished my shop, 40

for want of plate, with good wholesome thrifty sentences, as ‘Touchstone, keep

thy shop and thy shop will keep thee’; ‘Light gains makes heavy purses’; ‘’Tis

good to be merry and wise.’ And when I was wived, having something to stick

to, I had the horn of suretyship ever before my eyes. You all know the device of

the horn, where the young fellow slips in at the butt end and comes squeezed 45

out at the buccal. And I grew up, and, I praise Providence, I bear my brows now

as high as the best of my neighbours. But thou – well, look to the accounts;

your father’s bond lies for you; seven score pound is yet in the rear.

QUICKSILVER

Why, ’slid, sir, I have as good, as proper, gallants’ words for it

as any are in London, gentlemen of good phrase, perfect language, passingly 50

behaved, gallants that wear socks and clean linen and call me ‘kind cousin

Frank’, ‘good cousin Frank’, for they know my father. And by God’s lid, shall

not I trust ’em? Not trust?

Enter a PAGE as inquiring for TOUCHSTONE’S shop.

GOLDING

What do ye lack, sir? What is’t you’ll buy, sir?

TOUCHSTONE

Ay, marry, sir, there’s a youth of another piece. There’s thy fellow 55

prentice, as good a gentleman born as thou art, nay, and better meaned. But

does he pump it or racket it? Well, if he thrive not, if he outlast not a hundred

such crackling bavins as thou art, God and men neglect industry.

GOLDING

(To the Page) It is his shop, and here my master walks.

TOUCHSTONE

With me, boy? 60

PAGE

My master, Sir Petronel Flash, recommends his love to you and will

instantly visit you.

TOUCHSTONE

To make up the match with my eldest daughter, my wife’s dilling,

whom she longs to call madam. He shall find me unwillingly ready, boy.

Exit Page.

There’s another affliction, too. As I have two prentices, the one of a boundless 65

prodigality, the other of a most hopeful industry, so have I only two daughters,

the eldest of a proud ambition and nice wantonness, the other of a modest

humility and comely soberness. The one must be ladified, forsooth, and be

attired just to the court cut and long tail. So far is she ill-natured to the place

and means of my preferment and fortune that she throws all the contempt 70

and despite hatred itself can cast upon it. Well, a piece of land she has, ’twas

her grandmother’s gift: let her, and her Sir Petronel, flash out that. But as for

my substance, she that scorns me as I am a citizen and tradesman shall never

pamper her pride with my industry, shall never use me as men do foxes: keep

themselves warm in the skin and throw the body that bare it to the dunghill. 75

I must go entertain this Sir Petronel. [To Golding] Golding, my utmost care’s

for thee, and only trust in thee. Look to the shop. [To Quicksilver] As for you,

Master Quicksilver, think of husks, for thy course is running directly to the

prodigal’s hogs’ trough. Husks, sirrah! Work upon that now. Exit Touchstone.

QUICKSILVER

Marry faugh, goodman flat cap! ’Sfoot, though I am a prentice I 80

can give arms, and my father’s a justice o’ peace by descent, and ’sblood –

GOLDING

Fie, how you swear!

QUICKSILVER

’Sfoot, man, I am a gentleman, and may swear by my pedigree,

God’s my life. Sirrah Golding, wilt be ruled by a fool? Turn good fellow,

turn swaggering gallant, and ‘let the welkin roar, and Erebus also’. Look not 85

westward to the fall of Don Phoebus, but to the east – eastward ho!

‘Where radiant beams of lusty Sol appear,

And bright Eoüs makes the welkin clear.’

We are both gentlemen, and therefore should be no coxcombs. Let’s be no

longer fools to this flat cap Touchstone. Eastward, bully! This satin-belly and 90

canvas-backed Touchstone – ’slife, man, his father was a maltman and his

mother sold gingerbread in Christ Church.

GOLDING

What would ye ha’ me do?

QUICKSILVER

Why, do nothing; be like a gentleman, be idle. The curse of man is

labour. Wipe thy bum with testons and make ducks and drakes with shillings. 95

What, eastward ho! Wilt thou cry, ‘What is’t ye lack?’, stand with a bare pate

and a dropping nose under a wooden penthouse, and art a gentleman? Wilt

thou bear tankards and mayst bear arms? Be ruled, turn gallant, eastward ho!

[He sings.] ‘Ta lirra, lirra, ro.’ [He declaims.] ‘Who calls Jeronimo? Speak, here I

am.’ God’s so, how like a sheep thou look’st! O’my conscience, some cowherd 100

begot thee. Thou Golding of Golding Hall, ha, boy?

GOLDING

Go, ye are a prodigal coxcomb. I a cowherd’s son because I turn not a

drunken whore-hunting rakehell like thyself?

QUICKSILVER

Rakehell? Rakehell?

[Quicksilver] offers to draw, and Golding trips up his heels and holds him.

GOLDING

Pish! In soft terms ye are a cowardly bragging boy. I’ll ha’ you 105

whipped.

QUICKSILVER

Whipped? That’s good, i’faith. Untruss me?

GOLDING

No, thou wilt undo thyself. Alas, I behold thee with pity, not with

anger. Thou common shot-clog, gull of all companies, methinks I see thee

already walking in Moorfields without a cloak, with half a hat, without a band, 110

a doublet with three buttons, without a girdle, a hose with one point and no

garter, with a cudgel under thine arm, borrowing and begging threepence.

QUICKSILVER

Nay, ’slife, take this and take all. As I am a gentleman born, I’ll

be drunk, grow valiant, and beat thee. Exit.

GOLDING

Go, thou most madly vain, whom nothing can recover but that which 115

reclaims atheists and makes great persons sometimes religious: calamity. As

for my place and life, thus I have read:

‘Whate’er some vainer youth may term disgrace,

The gain of honest pains is never base.

From trades, from arts, from valour honour springs; 120

These three are founts of gentry, yea, of kings.’

[He closes the shop. Exit.]

[1.2] Enter GERTRUDE, MILDRED, BETTRICE, and POLDAVY a tailor, Poldavy with a fair gown, Scotch farthingale, and French fall in his arms; Gertrude in a French head attire and citizen’s gown; Mildred sewing; and Bettrice leading a monkey after her.

GERTRUDE

For the passion of patience, look if Sir Petronel approach, that sweet,

that fine, that delicate, that – for love’s sake tell me if he come. Oh, sister Mil,

though my father be a low-capped tradesman, yet I must be a lady, and, I praise

God, my mother must call me medam. Does he come? Off with this gown, for

shame’s sake, off with this gown! Let not my knight take me in the city cut in 5

any hand. Tear’t, pax on’t! Does he come? Tear’t off. [She removes her gown.]

[Sings] ‘Thus whilst she sleeps I sorrow for her sake,’ etc.

MILDRED

Lord, sister, with what an immodest impatiency and disgraceful scorn

do you put off your city tire! I am sorry to think you imagine to right yourself

in wronging that which hath made both you and us. 10

GERTRUDE

I tell you I cannot endure it. I must be a lady. Do you wear your

coif with a London licket, your stammel petticoat with two guards, the buffin

gown with the tuftaffety cape and the velvet lace. I must be a lady, and I

will be a lady. I like some humours of the city dames well: to eat cherries only at

an angel a pound, good; to dye rich scarlet black, pretty; to line a grogram gown 15

clean through with velvet, tolerable. Their pure linen, their smocks of three

pound a smock are to be borne withal. But your mincing niceries, taffeta

pipkins, durance petticoats, and silver bodkins – God’s my life, as I shall be a

lady I cannot endure it. Is he come yet? Lord, what a long knight ’tis!

[Sings] ‘And ever she cried, “Shoot home!”’– 20

and yet I knew one longer –

‘and ever she cried, “Shoot home!”

Fa, la, ly, re, lo, la.’

MILDRED

Well, sister, those that scorn their nest oft fly with a sick wing.

GERTRUDE

Bow-bell! 25

MILDRED

Where titles presume to thrust before fit means to second them, wealth

and respect often grow sullen and will not follow. For sure, in this I would for

your sake I spake not truth. ‘Where ambition of place goes before fitness of

birth, contempt and disgrace follow.’ I heard a scholar once say that Ulysses,

when he counterfeited himself mad, yoked cats and foxes and dogs together to 30

draw his plough, whilst he followed and sowed salt. But sure I judge them truly

mad that yoke citizens and courtiers, tradesmen and soldiers, a goldsmith’s

daughter and a knight. Well, sister, pray God my father sow not salt too.

GERTRUDE

Alas, poor Mil! When I am a lady I’ll pray for thee yet, i’faith. Nay,

and I’ll vouchsafe to call thee sister Mil still, for though thou art not like to 35

be a lady as I am, yet sure thou art a creature of God’s making, and mayst

peradventure to be saved as soon as I. – Does he come? –

[Sings] ‘And ever and anon she doubled in her song.’

Now lady’s my comfort, what a profane ape’s here! Tailor, Poldavis, prithee fit

it, fit it! Is this a right Scot? Does it clip close and bear up round? 40

POLDAVY

Fine and stiffly, i’faith. ’Twill keep your thighs so cool and make your

waist so small! Here was a fault in your body, but I have supplied the defect

with the effect of my steel instrument, which, though it have but one eye, can

see to rectify the imperfection of the proportion.

[He puts the farthingale and new gown on her.]

GERTRUDE

Most edifying tailor! I protest, you tailors are most sanctified members 45

and make many crooked things go upright. How must I bear my hands?

Light? Light?

POLDAVY

Oh, ay, now you are in the lady fashion you must do all things light.

Tread light, light. Ay, and fall so; that’s the court amble.

She trips about the stage.

GERTRUDE

Has the court ne’er a trot? 50

POLDAVY

No, but a false gallop, lady.

GERTRUDE

(She sings.) ‘And if she will not go to bed –’.

BETTRICE

The knight’s come, forsooth.

Enter Sir PETRONEL, Master TOUCHSTONE, and MISTRESS TOUCHSTONE [and GOLDING].

GERTRUDE

Is my knight come? Oh, the lord, my band! Sister, do my cheeks look

well? Give me a little box o’the ear that I may seem to blush. Now, now! So, 55

there, there, there! Here he is. O my dearest delight! Lord, lord, and how does

my knight?

TOUCHSTONE

Fie, with more modesty!

GERTRUDE

Modesty! Why, I am no citizen now. Modesty! Am I not to be

married? You’re best to keep me modest now I am to be a lady. 60

PETRONEL

Boldness is good fashion, and court-like.

GERTRUDE

Ay, in a country lady I hope it is, as I shall be. And how chance ye

came no sooner, knight?

PETRONEL

Faith, I was so entertained in the progress with one Count

Epernoum, a Welsh knight. We had a match at balloon, too, with my Lord 65

Whachum, for four crowns.

GERTRUDE

At baboon? Jesu! You and I will play at baboon in the country,

knight.

PETRONEL

Oh, sweet lady, ’tis a strong play with the arm.

GERTRUDE

With arm, or leg, or any other member, if it be a court sport. And 70

when shall ’s be married, my knight?

PETRONEL

I come now to consummate it, an your father may call a poor knight

son-in-law.

TOUCHSTONE

Sir, ye are come. What is not mine to keep I must not be sorry to

forego. A hundred pound land her grandmother left her, ’tis yours. Herself 75

(as her mother’s gift) is yours. But if you expect aught from me, know, my hand

and mine eyes open together; I do not give blindly. Work upon that now.

PETRONEL

Sir, you mistrust not my means? I am a knight.

TOUCHSTONE

Sir, sir, what I know not, you will give me leave to say I am

ignorant of. 80

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Yes, that he is a knight! I know where he had money to pay

the gentlemen ushers and heralds their fees. Ay, that he is a knight, and so

might you have been, too, if you had been aught else than an ass, as well as

some of your neighbours. An I thought you would not ha’ been knighted, as

I am an honest woman I would ha’ dubbed you myself. I praise God I have 85

wherewithal. But as for you, daughter –

GERTRUDE

Ay, mother. I must be a lady tomorrow, and by your leave, mother –

I speak it not without my duty, but only in the right of my husband – I must

take place of you, mother.

MRS TOUCHSTONE

That you shall, lady-daughter, and have a coach as well as 90

I, too.

GERTRUDE

Yes, mother. But by your leave, mother – I speak it not without my

duty, but only in my husband’s right – my coach horses must take the wall of

your coach horses.

TOUCHSTONE

Come, come, the day grows low, ’tis supper time. Use my house; 95

the wedding solemnity is at my wife’s cost. Thank me for nothing but my

willing blessing, for – I cannot feign – my hopes are faint. And sir, respect my

daughter; she has refused for you wealthy and honest matches, known good

men, well monied, better traded, best reputed.

GERTRUDE

Body o’truth, chitizens, chitizens! Sweet knight, as soon as ever we 100

are married, take me to thy mercy out of this miserable chitty; presently carry

me out of the scent of Newcastle coal and the hearing of Bow-bell. I beseech

thee, down with me, for God’s sake!

TOUCHSTONE

Well, daughter, I have read that old wit sings:

‘The greatest rivers flow from little springs. 105

Though thou art full, scorn not thy means at first;

He that’s most drunk may soonest be athirst.’

Work upon that now! All but Touchstone, Mildred, and Golding depart.

No, no; yond stand my hopes. – Mildred, come hither, daughter. And how

approve you your sister’s fashion? How do you fancy her choice? What dost 110

thou think?

MILDRED

I hope, as a sister, well.

TOUCHSTONE

Nay, but, nay, but, how dost thou like her behaviour and

humour? Speak freely.

MILDRED

I am loath to speak ill, and yet – I am sorry of this – I cannot speak

well.

TOUCHSTONE

Well, very good. As I would wish, a modest answer. – Golding,

come hither; hither, Golding.

[Golding comes forward.]

How dost thou like the knight, Sir Flash? Does he not look big? How lik’st

thou the elephant? He says he has a castle in the country. 120

GOLDING

Pray heaven the elephant carry not his castle on his back.

TOUCHSTONE

’Fore heaven, very well! But seriously, how dost repute him?

GOLDING

The best I can say of him is, I know him not.

TOUCHSTONE

Ha, Golding! I commend thee, I approve thee, and will make it

appear my affection is strong to thee. My wife has her humour, and I will ha’ 125

mine. Dost thou see my daughter here? She is not fair, well-favoured, or so –

indifferent – which modest measure of beauty shall not make it thy only work

to watch her, nor sufficient mischance to suspect her. Thou art towardly, she is

modest; thou art provident, she is careful. She’s now mine. Give me thy hand;

she’s now thine. Work upon that now! 130

GOLDING

Sir, as your son I honour you, and as your servant obey you.

TOUCHSTONE

Sayest thou so? – Come hither, Mildred. Do you see yond fellow?

He is a gentleman, though my prentice, and has somewhat to take to; a youth

of good hope, well friended, well parted. Are you mine? You are his. Work you

upon that now!

MILDRED

Sir, I am all yours. Your body gave me life, your care and love happiness

of life. Let your virtue still direct it, for to your wisdom I wholly dispose myself.

TOUCHSTONE

Say’st thou so? Be you two better acquainted. Lip her, lip

her, knave!

[Golding kisses Mildred.]

So, shut up shop; in. We must make holiday. 140Exeunt Golding and Mildred.

This match shall on, for I intend to prove

Which thrives the best, the mean or lofty love;

Whether fit wedlock vowed ’twixt like and like,

Or prouder hopes, which daringly o’erstrike

Their place and means. ’Tis honest time’s expense 145

When seeming lightness bears a moral sense.

Work upon that now! Exit.

2.1 [Enter] TOUCHSTONE.

TOUCHSTONE

Quicksilver! Master Francis Quicksilver! Master Quicksilver!

Enter QUICKSILVER [hiccupping drunkenly].

QUICKSILVER

Here, sir. (Ump!)

TOUCHSTONE

So, sir. Nothing but flat Master Quicksilver, without any familiar

addition, will fetch you. Will you truss my points, sir?

QUICKSILVER

Ay, forsooth. (Ump!) 5

TOUCHSTONE

How now, sir? The drunken hiccup so soon this morning?

QUICKSILVER

’Tis but the coldness of my stomach, forsooth.

TOUCHSTONE

What? Have you the cause natural for it? You’re a very learned

drunkard; I believe I shall miss some of my silver spoons with your learning.

The nuptial night will not moisten your throat sufficiently, but the morning 10

likewise must rain her dews into your gluttonous weasand.

QUICKSILVER

An’t please you, sir, we did but drink (ump!) to the coming off of

the knightly bridegroom.

TOUCHSTONE

To the coming off o’him?

QUICKSILVER

Ay, forsooth. We drunk to his coming on (ump!) when we went 15

to bed, and now we are up we must drink to his coming off. For that’s the chief

honour of a soldier, sir, and therefore we must drink so much the more to it,

forsooth. (Ump!)

TOUCHSTONE

A very capital reason. So that you go to bed late and rise early

to commit drunkenness? You fulfil the scripture very sufficient wickedly, 20

forsooth.

QUICKSILVER

The knight’s men, forsooth, be still o’their knees at it, (ump!) and

because ’tis for your credit, sir, I would be loath to flinch.

TOUCHSTONE

I pray, sir, e’en to ’em again then. You’re one of the separated

crew, one of my wife’s faction, and my young lady’s, with whom and with 25

their great match I will have nothing to do.

QUICKSILVER

So, sir. Now I will go keep my (ump!) credit with ’em, an’t please

you, sir.

TOUCHSTONE

In any case, sir, lay one cup of sack more o’your cold stomach, I

beseech you. 30

QUICKSILVER

Yes, forsooth. Exit Quicksilver.

TOUCHSTONE

This is for my credit! Servants ever maintain drunkenness in their

master’s house ‘for their master’s credit’; a good idle servingman’s reason. I

thank Time the night is past; I ne’er waked to such cost. I think we have stowed

more sorts of flesh in our bellies than ever Noah’s ark received. And for wine, 35

why, my house turns giddy with it, and more noise in it than at a conduit.

Ay me, even beasts condemn our gluttony. Well, ’tis our city’s fault, which,

because we commit seldom, we commit the more sinfully. We lose no time in

our sensuality, but we make amends for it. Oh, that we would do so in virtue

and religious negligences! 40

Enter GOLDING and MILDRED, [opening the shop and] sitting on either side of the stall.

But see, here are all the sober parcels my house can show. I’ll eavesdrop, hear

what thoughts they utter this morning. [He walks aside.]

GOLDING

[To Mildred] But is it possible that you, seeing your sister preferred to

the bed of a knight, should contain your affections in the arms of a prentice?

MILDRED

I had rather make up the garment of my affections in some of the same 45

piece than like a fool wear gowns of two colours or mix sackcloth with satin.

GOLDING

And do the costly garments – the title and fame of a lady, the fashion,

observation, and reverence proper to such preferment – no more inflame

you than such convenience as my poor means and industry can offer to your

virtues? 50

MILDRED

I have observed that the bridle given to those violent flatteries of

fortune is seldom recovered. They bear one headlong in desire from one novelty

to another, and where those ranging appetites reign, there is ever more passion

than reason; no stay, and so no happiness. These hasty advancements are not

natural. Nature hath given us legs to go to our objects, not wings to fly to 55

them.

GOLDING

How dear an object you are to my desires I cannot express, whose

fruition, would my master’s absolute consent and yours vouchsafe me, I should

be absolutely happy. And though it were a grace so far beyond my merit that I

should blush with unworthiness to receive it, yet thus far both my love and my 60

means shall assure your requital: you shall want nothing fit for your birth and

education; what increase of wealth and advancement the honest and orderly

industry and skill of our trade will afford in any, I doubt not will be aspired by

me; I will ever make your contentment the end of my endeavours; I will love

you above all; and only your grief shall be my misery, and your delight, my 65

felicity.

TOUCHSTONE

[Aside] Work upon that now! By my hopes, he woos honestly and

orderly; he shall be anchor of my hopes. Look, see the ill-yoked monster, his

fellow.

Enter QUICKSILVER unlaced, a towel about his neck, in his flat cap, drunk.

QUICKSILVER

Eastward ho! ‘Holla, ye pampered jades of Asia!’ 70

TOUCHSTONE

[Aside] Drunk now downright, o’my fidelity!

QUICKSILVER

(Ump!) Pulldo, pulldo! ‘Showse’, quoth the caliver.

GOLDING

Fie, fellow Quicksilver, what a pickle are you in?

QUICKSILVER

Pickle? Pickle in thy throat! Zounds, pickle? Wa ha ho! Good

morrow, Knight Petronel; ’morrow, lady goldsmith. Come off, knight, with a 75

counterbuff, for the honour of knighthood.

GOLDING

Why, how now, sir? Do ye know where you are?

QUICKSILVER

Where I am? Why, ’sblood, you jolthead, where I am?

GOLDING

Go to, go to! For shame, go to bed and sleep out this immodesty; thou

sham’st both my master and his house. 80

QUICKSILVER

Shame? What shame? I thought thou wouldst show thy bringing

up. An thou wert a gentleman as I am, thou wouldst think it no shame to be

drunk. Lend me some money, save my credit; I must dine with the servingmen

and their wives – and their wives, sirrah!

GOLDING

E’en who you will. I’ll not lend thee threepence. 85

QUICKSILVER

’Sfoot, lend me some money. ‘Hast thou not Hiren here?’

TOUCHSTONE

[Coming forward] Why, how now, sirrah? What vein’s this, hah?

QUICKSILVER

‘Who cries on murder? Lady, was it you?’ How does our master?

Pray thee, cry, ‘Eastward ho!’

TOUCHSTONE

Sirrah, sirrah, you’re past your hiccup now; I see you’re drunk. 90

QUICKSILVER

’Tis for your credit, master.

TOUCHSTONE

And hear you keep a whore in town.

QUICKSILVER

’Tis for your credit, master.

TOUCHSTONE

And what you are out in cash, I know.

QUICKSILVER

So do I. My father’s a gentleman; work upon that now! Eastward 95

ho!

TOUCHSTONE

Sir, ‘Eastward, ho!’ will make you go ‘Westward, ho!’ I will no

longer dishonest my house nor endanger my stock with your licence. There,

sir, there’s your indenture. [He hands him a document.] All your apparel – that I

must know – is on your back, and from this time my door is shut to you. From 100

me be free, but for other freedom and the moneys you have wasted, ‘Eastward

ho!’ shall not serve you.

QUICKSILVER

Am I free o’my fetters? Rent, fly with a duck in thy mouth! And

now I tell thee, Touchstone –

TOUCHSTONE

Good sir. 105

QUICKSILVER

‘When this eternal substance of my soul’ –

TOUCHSTONE

Well said. Change your gold ends for your play ends.

QUICKSILVER

‘Did live imprisoned in my wanton flesh’ –

TOUCHSTONE

What then, sir?

QUICKSILVER

‘I was a courtier in the Spanish court, 110

And Don Andrea was my name.’

TOUCHSTONE

Good master Don Andrea, will you march?

QUICKSILVER

Sweet Touchstone, will you lend me two shillings?

TOUCHSTONE

Not a penny.

QUICKSILVER

Not a penny? I have friends, and I have acquaintance. I will piss at 115

thy shop posts and throw rotten eggs at thy sign. Work upon that now!

Exit, staggering.

TOUCHSTONE

[To Golding] Now, sirrah, you! Hear you! You shall serve me no

more neither, not an hour longer.

GOLDING

What mean you, sir?

TOUCHSTONE

I mean to give thee thy freedom, and with thy freedom my daughter, 120

and with my daughter a father’s love. And with all these such a portion

as shall make Knight Petronel himself envy thee. You’re both agreed, are ye

not?

BOTH

[GOLDING and MILDRED] [Kneeling] With all submission, both of thanks

and duty. 125

TOUCHSTONE

[Raising them] Well, then, the great power of heaven bless and

confirm you! And, Golding, that my love to thee may not show less than my

wife’s love to my eldest daughter, thy marriage feast shall equal the knight’s

and hers.

GOLDING

Let me beseech you, no, sir. The superfluity and cold meat left at their 130

nuptials will with bounty furnish ours. The grossest prodigality is superfluous

cost of the belly. Nor would I wish any invitement of states or friends; only

your reverend presence and witness shall sufficiently grace and confirm us.

TOUCHSTONE

Son to mine own bosom, take her and my blessing! The nice

fondling, my lady sir-reverence, that I must not now presume to call daughter, 135

is so ravished with desire to hansel her new coach and see her knight’s eastward

castle that the next morning will sweat with her busy setting forth. Away will

she and her mother, and while their preparation is making, ourselves, with

some two or three other friends, will consummate the humble match we have

in God’s name concluded. 140[Exeunt Golding and Mildred.]

’Tis to my wish, for I have often read

‘Fit birth, fit age, keeps long a quiet bed.’

’Tis to my wish, for tradesmen, well ’tis known,

Get with more ease than gentry keeps his own. Exit.

[2.2] [Enter] SECURITY alone.

SECURITY

My privy guest, lusty Quicksilver, has drunk too deep of the bridebowl,

but with a little sleep he is much recovered and I think is making himself

ready to be drunk in a gallanter likeness. My house is, as ’twere, the cave where

the young outlaw hoards the stolen vails of his occupation; and here, when

he will revel it in his prodigal similitude, he retires to his trunks and – I may 5

say softly – his punks. He dares trust me with the keeping of both, for I am

security itself; my name is Security, the famous usurer.

Enter QUICKSILVER in his prentice’s coat and cap [and] his gallant breeches and stockings, gartering himself. SECURITY [meets him].

QUICKSILVER

Come, old Security, thou father of destruction. Th’indented

sheepskin is burned wherein I was wrapped, and I am now loose to get more

children of perdition into thy usurous bonds. Thou feed’st my lechery, and I 10

thy covetousness; thou art pandar to me for my wench, and I to thee for thy

cozenages. ‘Ka me, ka thee’, runs through court and country.

SECURITY

Well said, my subtle Quicksilver. These K’s ope the doors to all this

world’s felicity; the dullest forehead sees it. Let not master courtier think he

carries all the knavery on his shoulders. I have known poor Hob in the country, 15

that has worn hobnails on’s shoes, have as much villainy in’s head as he that

wears gold buttons in’s cap.

QUICKSILVER

Why, man, ’tis the London highway to thrift; if virtue be used,

’tis but as a scrap to the net of villainy. They that use it simply, thrive simply,

I warrant. Weight and fashion makes goldsmiths cuckolds. 20

Enter SINDEFY, with Quicksilver’s doublet, cloak, rapier, and dagger.

SINDEFY

Here, sir, put off the other half of your prenticeship.

QUICKSILVER

Well said, sweet Sin! Bring forth my bravery.

Now let my trunks shoot forth their silks concealed.

I now am free and now will justify

My trunks and punks. Avaunt, dull flat cap, then! 25

Via, the curtain that shadowed Borgia!

[He tosses away his prentice’s hat and coat.]

There lie, thou husk of my envassalled state.

I, Samson now, have burst the Philistines’ bands

And in thy lap, my lovely Delilah,

I’ll lie and snore out my enfranchised state. 30

[He attires himself as a gallant, with rapier and dagger.]

[Sings] ‘When Samson was a tall young man

His power and strength increasèd then.’

He sold no more, nor cup, nor can,

But did them all despise.

Old Touchstone, now write to thy friends 35

For one to sell thy base gold ends;

Quicksilver now no more attends

Thee, Touchstone.

[To Security] But Dad, hast thou seen my running gelding dressed today?

SECURITY

That I have, Frank. The ostler o’the Cock dressed him for a breakfast. 40

QUICKSILVER

What, did he eat him?

SECURITY

No, but he eat his breakfast for dressing him, and so dressed him for

breakfast.

QUICKSILVER

Oh, witty age, where age is young in wit,

And all youth’s words have greybeards full of it! 45

SINDEFY

But, alas, Frank, how will all this be maintained now? Your place maintained

it before.

QUICKSILVER

Why, and I maintained my place. I’ll to the court – another manner

of place for maintenance, I hope, than the silly city. I heard my father say, I

heard my mother sing, an old song and a true: ‘Thou art a she fool, and know’st 50

not what belongs to our male wisdom.’ I shall be a merchant, forsooth! Trust

my estate in a wooden trough as he does? What are these ships but tennis balls

for the winds to play withal? Tossed from one wave to another, now under line,

now over the house; sometimes brick-walled against a rock, so that the guts

fly out again; sometimes struck under the wide hazard, and farewell Master 55

Merchant.

SINDEFY

Well, Frank, well, the seas, you say, are uncertain. But he that sails in

your court seas shall find ’em ten times fuller of hazard, wherein to see what

is to be seen is torment more than a free spirit can endure. But when you come

to suffer, how many injuries swallow you? What care and devotion must you 60

use to humour an imperious lord? Proportion your looks to his looks, smiles

to his smiles? Fit your sails to the wind of his breath?

QUICKSILVER

Tush, he’s no journeyman in his craft that cannot do that.

SINDEFY

But he’s worse than a prentice that does it, not only humouring the

lord, but every trencher-bearer, every groom, that by indulgence and intelligence 65

crept into his favour and by pandarism into his chamber. He rules the

roost, and when my honourable lord says, ‘It shall be thus’, my worshipful

rascal, the groom of his close-stool, says, ‘It shall not be thus’, claps the door

after him, and who dares enter? A prentice, quoth you? ’Tis but to learn to live,

and does that disgrace a man? He that rises hardly stands firmly; but he that 70

rises with ease, alas, falls as easily.

QUICKSILVER

A pox on you, who taught you this morality?

SECURITY

’Tis ’long of this witty age, Master Francis. But indeed, Mistress

Sindefy, all trades complain of inconvenience, and therefore ’tis best to have

none. The merchant, he complains and says, ‘Traffic is subject to much 75

uncertainty and loss.’ Let ’em keep their goods on dry land, with a vengeance,

and not expose other men’s substances to the mercy of the winds, under

protection of a wooden wall, as Master Francis says, and all for greedy desire to

enrich themselves with unconscionable gain, two for one, or so; where I, and

such other honest men as live by lending money, are content with moderate 80

profit – thirty or forty i’th’hundred, so we may have it with quietness and

out of peril of wind and weather, rather than run those dangerous courses of

trading, as they do.

QUICKSILVER

Ay, Dad, thou mayst well be called Security, for thou takest the

safest course. 85

SECURITY

Faith, the quieter, and the more contented, and, out of doubt, the

more godly. For merchants in their courses are never pleased, but ever repining

against heaven. One prays for a westerly wind to carry his ship forth; another

for an easterly to bring his ship home; and at every shaking of a leaf he falls into

an agony to think what danger his ship is in on such a coast, and so forth. The 90

farmer, he is ever at odds with the weather. Sometimes the clouds have been

too barren; sometimes the heavens forget themselves, their harvests answer

not their hopes; sometimes the season falls out too fruitful, corn will bear no

price, and so forth. Th’artificer, he’s all for a stirring world; if his trade be

too dull and fall short of his expectation, then falls he out of joint. Where we 95

that trade nothing but money are free from all this. We are pleased with all

weathers: let it rain or hold up, be calm or windy, let the season be whatsoever,

let trade go how it will, we take all in good part, e’en what please the heavens

to send us, so the sun stand not still and the moon keep her usual returns and

make up days, months, and years. 100

QUICKSILVER

And you have good security?

SECURITY

Ay, marry, Frank, that’s the special point.

QUICKSILVER

And yet, forsooth, we must have trades to live withal, for we

cannot stand without legs nor fly without wings, and a number of such scurvy

phrases. No, I say still, he that has wit, let him live by his wit; he that has none, 105

let him be a tradesman.

SECURITY

Witty Master Francis! ’Tis pity any trade should dull that quick brain

of yours. Do but bring Knight Petronel into my parchment toils once, and you

shall never need to toil in any trade, o’my credit. You know his wife’s land?

QUICKSILVER

Even to a foot, sir, I have been often there. A pretty fine seat, good 110

land, all entire within itself.

SECURITY

Well wooded?

QUICKSILVER

Two hundred pounds’ worth of wood ready to fell, and a fine

sweet house that stands just in the midst on’t, like a prick in the midst of a

circle. Would I were your farmer, for a hundred pound a year! 115

SECURITY

Excellent Master Francis, how I do long to do thee good! How I do

hunger and thirst to have the honour to enrich thee! Ay, even to die, that thou

mightest inherit my living. Even hunger and thirst! For o’my religion, Master

Francis – and so tell Knight Petronel – I do it to do him a pleasure.

QUICKSILVER

Marry, Dad, his horses are now coming up to bear down his lady. 120

Wilt thou lend him thy stable to set ’em in?

SECURITY

Faith, Master Francis, I would be loath to lend my stable out of doors.

In a greater matter I will pleasure him, but not in this.

QUICKSILVER

[Aside] A pox of your ‘hunger and thirst’! – Well, Dad, let him have

money. All he could any way get is bestowed on a ship now bound for Virginia, 125

the frame of which voyage is so closely conveyed that his new lady nor any of

her friends know it. Notwithstanding, as soon as his lady’s hand is gotten to

the sale of her inheritance, and you have furnished him with money, he will

instantly hoist sail and away.

SECURITY

Now, a frank gale of wind go with him, Master Frank! We have too few 130

such knight adventurers. Who would not sell away competent certainties to

purchase, with any danger, excellent uncertainties? Your true knight venturer

ever does it. Let his wife seal today; he shall have his money today.

QUICKSILVER

Tomorrow she shall, Dad, before she goes into the country; to

work her to which action with the more engines, I purpose presently to prefer 135

my sweet Sin here to the place of her gentlewoman; whom you, for the more

credit, shall present as your friend’s daughter, a gentlewoman of the country,

new come up with a will for a while to learn fashions, forsooth, and be toward

some lady; and she shall buzz pretty devices into her lady’s ear, feeding her

humours so serviceably – as the manner of such as she is you know – 140

SECURITY

True, good Master Francis.

QUICKSILVER

That she shall keep her port open to anything she commends to

her.

SECURITY

O’my religion, a most fashionable project. As good she spoil the lady

as the lady spoil her, for ’tis three to one of one side. Sweet Mistress Sin, how 145

are you bound to Master Francis! I do not doubt to see you shortly wed one of

the head men of our city.

SINDEFY

But sweet Frank, when shall my father Security present me?

QUICKSILVER

With all festination. I have broken the ice to it already, and will

presently to the knight’s house, whither, my good old Dad, let me pray thee 150

with all formality to man her.

SECURITY

Command me, Master Francis; I do hunger and thirst to do thee

service. – Come, sweet Mistress Sin, take leave of my Winifred, and we will

instantly meet frank Master Francis at your lady’s.

Enter WINIFRED above.

WINIFRED

Where is my Cu there? Cu? 155

SECURITY

Ay, Winnie.

WINIFRED

Wilt thou come in, sweet Cu?

SECURITY

Ay, Winnie, presently. Exeunt [all but Quicksilver.]

QUICKSILVER

‘Ay, Winnie’, quod he? That’s all he can do, poor man; he may

well cut off her name at Winnie. Oh, ’tis an egregious pandar! What will not 160

an usurous knave be, so he may be rich? Oh, ’tis a notable Jew’s trump! I hope

to live to see dog’s meat made of the old usurer’s flesh, dice of his bones

and indentures of his skin; and yet his skin is too thick to make parchment,

’twould make good boots for a peterman to catch salmon in. Your only smooth

skin to make fine vellum is your puritan’s skin; they be the smoothest and 165

slickest knaves in a country. [Exit.]

[2.3] Enter SIR PETRONEL in boots with a riding wand [followed by QUICKSILVER].

PETRONEL

I’ll out of this wicked town as fast as my horse can trot. Here’s now

no good action for a man to spend his time in. Taverns grow dead; ordinaries

are blown up; plays are at a stand; houses of hospitality at a fall; not a feather

waving nor a spur jingling anywhere. I’ll away instantly.

QUICKSILVER

You’d best take some crowns in your purse, knight, or else your 5

eastward castle will smoke but miserably.

PETRONEL

Oh, Frank! My castle? Alas, all the castles I have are built with air,

thou know’st.

QUICKSILVER

I know it, knight, and therefore wonder whither your lady is

going. 10

PETRONEL

Faith, to seek her fortune, I think. I said I had a castle and land

eastward, and eastward she will without contradiction; her coach and the

coach of the sun must meet full butt. And the sun being outshined with Her

Ladyship’s glory, she fears he goes westward to hang himself.

QUICKSILVER

And I fear, when her enchanted castle becomes invisible, Her 15

Ladyship will return and follow his example.

PETRONEL

Oh, that she would have the grace, for I shall never be able to pacify

her when she sees herself deceived so.

QUICKSILVER

As easily as can be. Tell her she mistook your directions, and that

shortly yourself will down with her to approve it. And then, clothe but her 20

crupper in a new gown and you may drive her any way you list. For these

women, sir, are like Essex calves: you must wriggle ’em on by the tail still, or

they will never drive orderly.

PETRONEL

But alas, sweet Frank, thou know’st my ability will not furnish her

blood with those costly humours. 25

QUICKSILVER

Cast that cost on me, sir; I have spoken to my old pandar, Security,

for money or commodity, and commodity, if you will, I know he will procure

you.

PETRONEL

Commodity! Alas, what commodity?

QUICKSILVER

Why, sir, what say you to figs and raisins? 30

PETRONEL

A plague of figs and raisins and all such frail commodities! We shall

make nothing of ’em.

QUICKSILVER

Why, then, sir, what say you to forty pound in roasted beef?

PETRONEL

Out upon’t, I have less stomach to that than to the figs and raisins.

I’ll out of town, though I sojourn with a friend of mine, for stay here I must 35

not; my creditors have laid to arrest me, and I have no friend under heaven but

my sword to bail me.

QUICKSILVER

God’s me, knight, put ’em in sufficient sureties rather than let

your sword bail you. Let ’em take their choice, either the King’s Bench or the

Fleet, or which of the two Counters they like best, for, by the Lord, I like none 40

of ’em.

PETRONEL

Well, Frank, there is no jesting with my earnest necessity; thou

know’st if I make not present money to further my voyage begun, all’s lost,

and all I have laid out about it.

QUICKSILVER

Why, then, sir, in earnest: if you can get your wise lady to set her 45

hand to the sale of her inheritance, the bloodhound Security will smell out

ready money for you instantly.

PETRONEL

There spake an angel! To bring her to which conformity, I must feign

myself extremely amorous, and, alleging urgent excuses for my stay behind,

part with her as passionately as she would from her foisting hound. 50

QUICKSILVER

You have the sow by the right ear, sir. I warrant there was never

child longed more to ride a cockhorse or wear his new coat than she longs to

ride in her new coach. She would long for everything when she was a maid,

and now she will run mad for ’em. I lay my life she will have every year four

children; and what charge and change of humour you must endure while she 55

is with child, and how she will tie you to your tackling till she be with child, a

dog would not endure. Nay, there is no turnspit dog bound to his wheel more

servilely than you shall be to her wheel. For as that dog can never climb the

top of his wheel but when the top comes under him, so shall you never climb

the top of her contentment but when she is under you. 60

PETRONEL

’Slight, how thou terrifiest me!

QUICKSILVER

Nay, hark you, sir. What nurses, what midwives, what fools, what

physicians, what cunning women must be sought for – fearing sometimes she

is bewitched, sometimes in a consumption – to tell her tales, to talk bawdy to

her, to make her laugh, to give her glisters, to let her blood under the tongue 65

and betwixt the toes; how she will revile and kiss you, spit in your face and lick

it off again; how she will vaunt you are her creature, she made you of nothing;

how she could have had thousand mark jointures; she could have been made a

lady by a Scotch knight and never ha’ married him; she could have had panadas

in her bed every morning; how she set you up, and how she will pull you down 70

– you’ll never be able to stand of your legs to endure it.

PETRONEL

Out of my fortune, what a death is my life bound face-to-face to! The

best is, a large, time-fitted conscience is bound to nothing. Marriage is but a

form in the school of policy, to which scholars sit fastened only with painted

chains. Old Security’s young wife is ne’er the further off with me. 75

QUICKSILVER

Thereby lies a tale, sir. The old usurer will be here instantly with

my punk Sindefy, whom you know your lady has promised me to entertain for

her gentlewoman, and he – with a purpose to feed on you – invites you most

solemnly by me to supper.

PETRONEL

It falls out excellently fitly. I see desire of gain makes jealousy 80

venturous.

Enter GERTRUDE.

See, Frank, here comes my lady. Lord, how she views thee! She knows thee not,

I think, in this bravery.

GERTRUDE

How now? Who be you, I pray?

QUICKSILVER

One Master Francis Quicksilver, an’t please Your Ladyship. 85

GERTRUDE

[Aside] God’s my dignity! As I am a lady, if he did not make me blush

so that mine eyes stood a-water! Would I were unmarried again. [Aloud] Where’s

my woman, I pray?

Enter SECURITY and SINDEFY.

QUICKSILVER

See, madam, she now comes to attend you.

SECURITY

God save my honourable knight and his worshipful lady! 90

[He removes his hat and bows.]

GERTRUDE

You’re very welcome. You must not put on your hat yet.

SECURITY

No, madam, till I know Your Ladyship’s further pleasure I will not

presume.

GERTRUDE

And is this a gentleman’s daughter new come out of the country?

SECURITY

She is, madam, and one that her father hath a special care to bestow 95

in some honourable lady’s service, to put her out of her honest humours,

forsooth, for she had a great desire to be a nun, an’t please you.

GERTRUDE

A nun? What nun? A nun substantive or a nun adjective?

SECURITY

A nun substantive, madam, I hope, if a nun be a noun. But I mean,

lady, a vowed maid of that order. 100

GERTRUDE

I’ll teach her to be a maid of the order, I warrant you. [To Sindefy] And

can you do any work belongs to a lady’s chamber?

SINDEFY

What I cannot do, madam, I would be glad to learn.

GERTRUDE

Well said. Hold up, then; hold up your head, I say. Come hither a

little. 105

SINDEFY

I thank Your Ladyship.

GERTRUDE

And hark you – [To Security] Good man, you may put on your hat

now, I do not look on you – I must have you of my faction now, not of my

knight’s, maid.

SINDEFY

No, forsooth, madam, of yours. 110

GERTRUDE

And draw all my servants in my bow, and keep my counsel, and tell

me tales, and put me riddles, and read on a book sometimes when I am busy,

and laugh at country gentlewomen, and command anything in the house for

my retainers, and care not what you spend, for it is all mine; and in any case

be still a maid, whatsoever you do, or whatsoever any man can do unto you. 115

SECURITY

I warrant Your Ladyship for that.

GERTRUDE

Very well. You shall ride in my coach with me into the country

tomorrow morning. – Come, knight, pray thee let’s make a short supper, and

to bed presently.

SECURITY

Nay, good madam, this night I have a short supper at home waits on 120

His Worship’s acceptation.

GERTRUDE

By my faith, but he shall not go, sir; I shall swoon an he sup from

me.

PETRONEL

Pray thee, forbear. Shall he lose his provision?

GERTRUDE

Ay, by’r Lady, sir, rather than I lose my longing. Come in, I say. As I 125

am a lady, you shall not go!

QUICKSILVER

[Aside to Security] I told him what a bur he had gotten.

SECURITY

If you will not sup from your knight, madam, let me entreat Your

Ladyship to sup at my house with him.

GERTRUDE

No, by my faith, sir, then we cannot be abed soon enough after 130

supper.

PETRONEL

What a medicine is this! Well, Master Security, you are new married

as well as I; I hope you are bound as well. We must honour our young wives,

you know.

QUICKSILVER

[Aside to Security] In policy, Dad, till tomorrow she has sealed. 135

SECURITY

I hope in the morning yet your knighthood will breakfast with me?

PETRONEL

As early as you will, sir.

SECURITY

Thank Your good Worship; I do hunger and thirst to do you good,

sir.

GERTRUDE

Come, sweet knight, come. I do hunger and thirst to be abed with 140

thee. Exeunt.

3.1 Enter PETRONEL, QUICKSILVER, SECURITY, BRAMBLE, and WINIFRED.

PETRONEL

Thanks for our feastlike breakfast, good Master Security. I am sorry,

by reason of my instant haste to so long a voyage as Virginia, I am without

means by any kind amends to show how affectionately I take your kindness,

and to confirm by some worthy ceremony a perpetual league of friendship

betwixt us. 5

SECURITY

Excellent knight, let this be a token betwixt us of inviolable friendship.

I am new married to this fair gentlewoman, you know, and, by my hope

to make her fruitful, though I be something in years, I vow faithfully unto you

to make you godfather, though in your absence, to the first child I am blest

withal. And henceforth call me gossip, I beseech you, if you please to accept 10

it.

PETRONEL

In the highest degree of gratitude, my most worthy gossip. For

confirmation of which friendly title, let me entreat my fair gossip, your wife

here, to accept this diamond and keep it as my gift to her first child, wheresoever

my fortune in event of my voyage shall bestow me. 15

[He offers Winifred a ring.]

SECURITY

How now, my coy wedlock, make you strange of so noble a favour?

Take it, I charge you, with all affection, and, by way of taking your leave,

present boldly your lips to our honourable gossip.

[She takes the ring].

QUICKSILVER

[Aside] How vent’rous he is to him, and how jealous to others!

PETRONEL

[Kissing Winifred] Long may this kind touch of our lips print in our 20

hearts all the forms of affection! – And now, my good gossip, if the writings be

ready to which my wife should seal, let them be brought this morning before

she takes coach into the country, and my kindness shall work her to dispatch

it.

SECURITY

The writings are ready, sir. My learned counsel here, Master Bramble 25

the lawyer, hath perused them, and within this hour I will bring the scrivener

with them to your worshipful lady.

PETRONEL

Good Master Bramble, I will here take my leave of you, then. God

send you fortunate pleas, sir, and contentious clients!

BRAMBLE

And you foreright winds, sir, and a fortunate voyage! 30Exit.

Enter a MESSENGER.

MESSENGER

Sir Petronel, here are three or four gentlemen desire to speak with

you.

PETRONEL

What are they?

QUICKSILVER

They are your followers in this voyage, knight, Captain Seagull

and his associates. I met them this morning and told them you would be here. 35

PETRONEL

[To the Messenger] Let them enter, I pray you. [Exit Messenger.]

I know they long to be gone, for their stay is dangerous.

Enter SEAGULL, SCAPETHRIFT, and SPENDALL.

SEAGULL

God save my honourable Colonel!

PETRONEL

Welcome, good Captain Seagull, and worthy gentlemen! If you will

meet my friend Frank here, and me, at the Blue Anchor Tavern by Billingsgate 40

this evening, we will there drink to our happy voyage, be merry, and take boat

to our ship with all expedition.

SPENDALL

Defer it no longer, I beseech you, sir; but as your voyage is hitherto

carried closely and in another knight’s name, so for your own safety and ours

let it be continued, our meeting and speedy purpose of departing known to as

few as is possible, lest your ship and goods be attached.

QUICKSILVER

Well advised, Captain. Our colonel shall have money this morning

to dispatch all our departures. Bring those gentlemen at night to the place

appointed, and with our skins full of vintage we’ll take occasion by the vantage,

and away. 50

SPENDALL

We will not fail but be there, sir.

PETRONEL

Good morrow, good Captain, and my worthy associates. [To Winifred]

Health and all sovereignty to my beautiful gossip! [To Security] For you, sir, we

shall see you presently with the writings.

SECURITY

With writings and crowns to my honourable gossip. I do hunger and 55

thirst to do you good, sir! Exeunt.

3.2 Enter a COACHMAN in haste, in’s frock, feeding.

COACHMAN

Here’s a stir when citizens ride out of town, indeed, as if all the

house were afire! ’Slight, they will not give a man leave to eat ’s breakfast afore

he rises.

Enter HAMLET, a footman, in haste.

HAMLET

What, Coachman! My lady’s coach, for shame! Her Ladyship’s ready to

come down. 5[Exit Coachman.]

Enter POTKIN, a tankard bearer.

POTKIN

’Sfoot, Hamlet, are you mad? Whither run you now? You should brush

up my old mistress! [Exit Hamlet.]

Enter SINDEFY.

SINDEFY

What, Potkin! You must put off your tankard and put on your blue

coat and wait upon Mistress Touchstone into the country. Exit.

POTKIN

I will, forsooth, presently. 10Exit.

Enter MISTRESS FOND and MISTRESS GAZER.

FOND

Come, sweet Mistress Gazer, let’s watch here and see my Lady Flash take

coach.

Gazer

O’my word, here’s a most fine place to stand in. Did you see the new ship

launched last day, Mistress Fond?

Fond

Oh, God, and we citizens should lose such a sight! 15

GAZER

I warrant, here will be double as many people to see her take coach as

there were to see it take water.

FOND

Oh, she’s married to a most fine castle i’th’country, they say.

GAZER

But there are no giants in the castle, are there?

FOND

Oh, no, they say her knight killed ’em all, and therefore he was knighted. 20

GAZER

Would to God Her Ladyship would come away!

Enter GERTRUDE, MISTRESS TOUCHSTONE, SINDEFY, HAMLET, [and] POTKIN.

FOND

She comes, she comes, she comes!

GAZER [and] FOND

Pray heaven bless Your Ladyship!

GERTRUDE

Thank you, good people. My coach, for the love of heaven, my coach!

In good truth, I shall swoon else. 25

HAMLET

Coach, coach, my lady’s coach! Exit.

GERTRUDE

As I am a lady, I think I am with child already, I long for a coach so.

May one be with child afore they are married, mother?

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Ay, by’r lady, madam, a little thing does that. I have seen a

little prick no bigger than a pin’s head swell bigger and bigger till it has come 30

to an ancome, and e’en so ’tis in these cases.

Enter HAMLET.

HAMLET

Your coach is coming, madam.

GERTRUDE

That’s well said. Now, heaven! Methinks I am e’en up to the knees

in preferment.

[Sings] ‘But a little higher, but a little higher, but a little higher,

There, there, there lies Cupid’s fire.’

MRS TOUCHSTONE

But must this young man, an’t please you, madam, run by

your coach all the way afoot?

GERTRUDE

Ay, by my faith, I warrant him. He gives no other milk, as I have

another servant does. 40

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Alas! ’Tis e’en pity, methinks. For God’s sake, madam, buy

him but a hobby-horse; let the poor youth have something betwixt his legs to

ease ’em. Alas, we must do as we would be done to.

GERTRUDE

Go to, hold your peace, dame. You talk like an old fool, I tell you.

Enter PETRONEL and QUICKSILVER.

PETRONEL

Wilt thou be gone, sweet honeysuckle, before I can go with thee? 45

GERTRUDE

I pray thee, sweet knight, let me; I do so long to dress up thy castle

afore thou com’st. But I mar’l how my modest sister occupies herself this

morning, that she cannot wait on me to my coach as well as her mother.

QUICKSILVER

Marry, madam, she’s married by this time to prentice Golding.

Your father, and someone more, stole to church with ’em in all the haste, that 50

the cold meat left at your wedding might serve to furnish their nuptial table.

GERTRUDE

There’s no base fellow, my father, now, but he’s e’en fit to father

such a daughter. He must call me daughter no more now, but ‘madam’, and

‘please you, madam’, and ‘please Your Worship, madam’, indeed. Out upon

him! Marry his daughter to a base prentice! 55

MRS TOUCHSTONE

What should one do? Is there no law for one that marries a

woman’s daughter against her will? How shall we punish him, madam?

GERTRUDE

As I am a lady, an’t would snow, we’d so pebble ’em with snowballs

as they come from church! But sirrah, Frank Quicksilver –

QUICKSILVER

Ay, madam. 60

GERTRUDE

Dost remember since thou and I clapped what-d’ye-call’ts in the

garret?

QUICKSILVER

I know not what you mean, madam.

GERTRUDE

[Sings] ‘His head as white as milk,

All flaxen was his hair; 65

But now he is dead,

And laid in his bed,

And never will come again.’

God be at your labour!

Enter TOUCHSTONE, GOLDING, [and] MILDRED with rosemary.

PETRONEL

[Aside] Was there ever such a lady? 70

QUICKSILVER

See, madam, the bride and bridegroom!

GERTRUDE

God’s my precious! God give you joy, Mistress What-lack-you! Now

out upon thee, baggage, my sister married in a taffeta hat? Marry, hang you!

Westward with a wanion t’ye! Nay, I have done wi’ye, minion, then, i’faith;

never look to have my count’nance any more, nor anything I can do for thee. 75

Thou ride in my coach? Or come down to my castle? Fie upon thee! I charge

thee in My Ladyship’s name, call me sister no more.

TOUCHSTONE

An’t please Your Worship, this is not your sister. This is my

daughter, and she calls me father, and so does not Your Ladyship, an’t please

Your Worship, madam. 80

MRS TOUCHSTONE

No, nor she must not call thee father by heraldry, because

thou mak’st thy prentice thy son as well as she. [To Golding] Ah, thou misproud

prentice, dar’st thou presume to marry a lady’s sister?

GOLDING

It pleased my master, forsooth, to embolden me with his favour. And

though I confess myself far unworthy so worthy a wife (being in part her 85

servant, as I am your prentice) yet (since I may say it without boasting) I am

born a gentleman, and by the trade I have learned of my master (which I trust

taints not my blood) able with mine own industry and portion to maintain

your daughter, my hope is, heaven will so bless our humble beginning that in

the end I shall be no disgrace to the grace with which my master hath bound 90

me his double prentice.

TOUCHSTONE

‘Master’ me no more, son, if thou think’st me worthy to be thy

father.

GERTRUDE

‘Son’! Now, good lord, how he shines, an you mark him! He’s a

gentleman! 95

GOLDING

Ay, indeed, madam, a gentleman born.

PETRONEL

Never stand o’your gentry, master bridegroom. If your legs be no

better than your arms, you’ll be able to stand upon neither shortly.

TOUCHSTONE

An’t please Your good Worship, sir, there are two sorts of

gentlemen. 100

PETRONEL

What mean you, sir?

TOUCHSTONE

Bold to put off my hat to Your Worship –

PETRONEL

Nay, pray forbear, sir, and then forth with your two sorts of

gentlemen.

TOUCHSTONE

If Your Worship will have it so, I say there are two sorts of gentlemen. 105

There is a gentleman artificial, and a gentleman natural. Now, though

Your Worship be a gentleman natural – Work upon that, now!

QUICKSILVER

Well said, old Touchstone; I am proud to hear thee enter a set

speech, i’faith. Forth, I beseech thee.

TOUCHSTONE

Cry you mercy, sir, Your Worship’s a gentleman I do not know. 110

If you be one of my acquaintance you’re very much disguised, sir.

QUICKSILVER

Go to, old quipper! Forth with thy speech, I say.

TOUCHSTONE

What, sir, my speeches were ever in vain to Your gracious Worship,

and therefore till I speak to you gallantry indeed I will save my breath for

my broth anon. – Come, my poor son and daughter, let us hide ourselves in 115

our poor humility and live safe. Ambition consumes itself with the very show.

Work upon that now! [Exeunt Touchstone, Golding, and Mildred.]

GERTRUDE

Let him go, let him go, for God’s sake. Let him make his prentice

his son, for God’s sake; give away his daughter, for God’s sake; and when they

come a-begging to us, for God’s sake, let’s laugh at their good husbandry, for 120

God’s sake! Farewell, sweet knight; pray thee make haste after.

PETRONEL

What shall I say? I would not have thee go.

QUICKSILVER

[Sings] ‘Now, Oh, now, I must depart;

Parting though it absence move’–

This ditty, knight, do I see in thy looks in capital letters. 125

[Sings] ‘What a grief ’tis to depart,

And leave the flower that has my heart!

My sweet lady, and alack for woe,

Why should we part so?’–

Tell truth, knight, and shame all dissembling lovers: does not your pain lie on 130

that side?

PETRONEL

If it do, canst thou tell me how I may cure it?

QUICKSILVER

Excellent easily: divide yourself in two halves, just by the

girdlestead; send one half with your lady, and keep the tother yourself. Or

else do as all true lovers do: part with your heart and leave your body behind. 135

I have seen’t done a hundred times. ’Tis as easy a matter for a lover to part

without a heart from his sweetheart, and he ne’er the worse, as for a mouse to

get from a trap and leave his tail behind him. See, here comes the writings.

Enter SECURITY with a SCRIVENER.

SECURITY

Good morrow to My worshipful Lady! I present Your Ladyship with

this writing, to which if you please to set your hand, with your knight’s, 140

a velvet gown shall attend your journey, o’my credit.

GERTRUDE

What writing is it, knight?

PETRONEL

The sale, sweetheart, of the poor tenement I told thee of, only to

make a little money to send thee down furniture for my castle, to which my

hand shall lead thee. 145

[He signs the bond.]

GERTRUDE

Very well. Now give me your pen, I pray.

[She signs the bond.]

QUICKSILVER

[Aside] It goes down without chewing, i’faith.

SCRIVENER

Your Worships deliver this as your deed?

BOTH [GERTRUDE and PETRONEL]

We do.

GERTRUDE

So now, knight, farewell till I see thee. 150

PETRONEL

All farewell to my sweetheart!

MRS TOUCHSTONE

God b’ye, son knight.

PETRONEL

Farewell, my good mother.

GERTRUDE

Farewell, Frank. I would fain take thee down if I could.

QUICKSILVER

I thank Your good Ladyship. Farewell, Mistress Sindefy. 155

Exeunt [all except Petronel, Quicksilver, and Security].

PETRONEL

Oh, tedious voyage, whereof there is no end! What will they think of

me?

QUICKSILVER

Think what they list. They longed for a vagary into the country,

and now they are fitted. So a woman marry to ride in a coach, she cares not if

she ride to her ruin. ’Tis the great end of many of their marriages. This is not 160

the first time a lady has rid a false journey in her coach, I hope.

PETRONEL

Nay, ’tis no matter; I care little what they think. He that weighs

men’s thoughts has his hands full of nothing. A man in the course of this

world should be like a surgeon’s instrument: work in the wounds of others

and feel nothing himself. The sharper and subtler, the better. 165

QUICKSILVER

As it falls out now, knight, you shall not need to devise excuses

or endure her outcries when she returns; we shall now be gone before where

they cannot reach us.

PETRONEL

[To Security] Well, my kind compeer, you have now th’assurance we

both can make you. Let me now entreat you the money we agreed on may be 170

brought to the Blue Anchor near to Billingsgate by six o’clock, where I and my

chief friends, bound for this voyage, will with feasts attend you.

SECURITY

The money, my most honourable compeer, shall without fail observe

your appointed hour.

PETRONEL

Thanks, my dear gossip. I must now impart 175

To your approvèd love a loving secret,

As one on whom my life doth more rely

In friendly trust than any man alive.

Nor shall you be the chosen secretary

Of my affections for affection only; 180

For I protest (if God bless my return)

To make you partner in my action’s gain

As deeply as if you had ventured with me

Half my expenses. Know then, honest gossip,

I have enjoyed with such divine contentment 185

A gentlewoman’s bed, whom you well know,

That I shall ne’er enjoy this tedious voyage,

Nor live the least part of the time it asketh,

Without her presence, so I thirst and hunger

To taste the dear feast of her company. 190

And if the hunger and the thirst you vow

As my sworn gossip to my wishèd good

Be – as I know it is – unfeigned and firm,

Do me an easy favour in your power.

SECURITY

Be sure, brave gossip, all that I can do, 195

To my best nerve, is wholly at your service.

Who is the woman, first, that is your friend?

PETRONEL

The woman is your learnèd counsel’s wife,

The lawyer, Master Bramble; whom would you

Bring out this even, in honest neighbourhood, 200

To take his leave with you of me, your gossip,

I, in the meantime, will send this my friend

Home to his house, to bring his wife disguised

Before his face into our company.

For love hath made her look for such a wile 205

To free her from his tyrannous jealousy,

And I would take this course before another,

In stealing her away to make us sport

And gull his circumspection the more grossly.

And I am sure that no man like yourself 210

Hath credit with him to entice his jealousy

To so long stay abroad as may give time

To her enlargement in such safe disguise.

SECURITY

A pretty, pithy, and most pleasant project!

Who would not strain a point of neighbourhood 215

For such a point-device, that, as the ship

Of famous Draco went about the world,

Will wind about the lawyer, compassing

The world himself? He hath it in his arms,

And that’s enough for him without his wife. 220

A lawyer is ambitious, and his head

Cannot be praised nor raised too high

With any fork of highest knavery.

I’ll go fetch him straight. Exit Security.

PETRONEL

So, so. Now, Frank, go thou home to his house, 225

’Stead of his lawyer’s, and bring his wife hither,

Who, just like to the lawyer’s wife, is prisoned

With his stern, usurous jealousy, which could never

Be overreached thus but with overreaching.

Enter SECURITY.

SECURITY

And, Master Francis, watch you th’instant time 230

To enter with his exit. ’Twill be rare:

Two fine horned beasts, a camel and a lawyer! [Exit.]

QUICKSILVER

How the old villain joys in villainy!

Enter SECURITY.

SECURITY

And hark you, gossip, when you have her here,

Have your boat ready; ship her to your ship 235

With utmost haste, lest Master Bramble stay you.

To o’erreach that head that outreacheth all heads,

’Tis a trick rampant, ’tis a very quiblin!

I hope this harvest to pitch cart with lawyers,

Their heads will be so forked. This sly touch 240

Will get apes to invent a number such. Exit.

QUICKSILVER

Was ever rascal honied so with poison?

He that delights in slavish avarice

Is apt to joy in every sort of vice.

Well, I’ll go fetch his wife, whilst he the lawyer. [He starts to exit.] 245

PETRONEL

But stay, Frank, let’s think how we may disguise her

Upon this sudden.

QUICKSILVER

God’s me, there’s the mischief!

But hark you, here’s an excellent device,

’Fore God, a rare one: I will carry her

A sailor’s gown and cap and cover her, 250

And a player’s beard.

PETRONEL

And what upon her head?

QUICKSILVER

I tell you, a sailor’s cap. ’Slight, God forgive me,

What kind of figent memory have you?

PETRONEL

Nay, then, what kind of figent wit hast thou?

A sailor’s cap? How shall she put it off 255

When thou present’st her to our company?

QUICKSILVER

Tush, man, for that, make her a saucy sailor.

PETRONEL

Tush, tush, ’tis no fit sauce for such sweet mutton;

I know not what t’advise.

Enter SECURITY with his wife’s gown.

SECURITY

Knight, knight, a rare device! 260

PETRONEL

[Aside] ’Swounds, yet again!

QUICKSILVER

What stratagem have you now?

SECURITY

The best that ever. You talked of disguising?

PETRONEL

Ay, marry, gossip, that’s our present care.

SECURITY

Cast care away, then. Here’s the best device

For plain Security – for I am no better – 265

I think that ever lived. Here’s my wife’s gown,

Which you may put upon the lawyer’s wife,

And which I brought you, sir, for two great reasons:

One is, that Master Bramble may take hold

Of some suspicion that it is my wife, 270

And gird me so, perhaps, with his law wit;

The other (which is policy indeed)

Is that my wife may now be tied at home,

Having no more but her old gown abroad,

And not show me a quirk while I firk others. 275

Is not this rare?

BOTH [PETRONEL and QUICKSILVER]

The best that ever was!

SECURITY

Am I not born to furnish gentlemen?

PETRONEL

O my dear gossip!

SECURITY

Well, hold, Master Francis;

Watch when the lawyer’s out, and put it in.

And now I will go fetch him. [He starts to] exit [but hesitates].

QUICKSILVER

O my Dad! 280

[Aside to Petronel] He goes as ’twere the devil to fetch the lawyer;

And devil shall he be, if horns will make him.

PETRONEL

[To Security] Why, how now, gossip, why stay you there musing?

SECURITY

A toy, a toy runs in my head, i’faith.

QUICKSILVER

[Aside] A pox of that head! Is there more toys yet? 285

PETRONEL

What is it, pray thee, gossip?

SECURITY

Why, sir, what if you

Should slip away now with my wife’s best gown,

I having no security for it?

QUICKSILVER

For that, I hope, Dad, you will take our words.

SECURITY

Ay, by th’Mass, your word! That’s a proper staff 290

For wise Security to lean upon!

But ’tis no matter. Once I’ll trust my name

On your cracked credits; let it take no shame.

Fetch the wench, Frank.

QUICKSILVER

I’ll wait upon you, sir – Exit [Security].

And fetch you over, you were ne’er so fetched. 295

[To Petronel] Go, to the tavern, knight; your followers

Dare not be drunk, I think, before their captain. Exit.

PETRONEL

Would I might lead them to no hotter service,

Till our Virginian gold were in our purses! Exit.

[3.3] Enter SEAGULL, SPENDALL, and SCAPETHRIFT in the tavern with a DRAWER.

SEAGULL

Come, Drawer, pierce your neatest hogsheads, and let’s have cheer not

fit for your Billingsgate tavern but for our Virginian colonel; he will be here

instantly.

DRAWER

You shall have all things fit, sir. Please you have any more wine?

SPENDALL

More wine, slave? Whether we drink it or no, spill it, and draw more. 5

SCAPETHRIFT

Fill all the pots in your house with all sorts of liquor, and let

’em wait on us here like soldiers in their pewter coats. And though we do not

employ them now, yet we will maintain ’em till we do.

DRAWER

Said like an honourable captain. You shall have all you can command,

sir. 10Exit Drawer.

SEAGULL

Come, boys, Virginia longs till we share the rest of her maidenhead.

SPENDALL

Why, is she inhabited already with any English?

SEAGULL

A whole country of English is there, man, bred of those that were left

there in ’79. They have married with the Indians and make ’em bring forth as

beautiful faces as any we have in England, and therefore the Indians are so in 15

love with ’em that all the treasure they have, they lay at their feet.

SCAPETHRIFT

But is there such treasure there, Captain, as I have heard?

SEAGULL

I tell thee, gold is more plentiful there than copper is with us, and for

as much red copper as I can bring, I’ll have thrice the weight in gold. Why,

man, all their dripping pans and their chamber pots are pure gold; and all the 20

chains with which they chain up their streets are massy gold; all the prisoners

they take are fettered in gold. And for rubies and diamonds, they go forth on

holidays and gather ’em by the seashore to hang on their children’s coats and

stick in their caps, as commonly as our children wear saffron-gilt brooches

and groats with holes in ’em. 25

SCAPETHRIFT

And is it a pleasant country withal?

SEAGULL

As ever the sun shined on; temperate and full of all sorts of excellent

viands. Wild boar is as common there as our tamest bacon is here, venison as

mutton. And then you shall live freely there, without sergeants, or courtiers, or

lawyers, or intelligencers; only a few industrious Scots, perhaps, who indeed 30

are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them, there are no

greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on’t, in the

world than they are. And for my part, I would a hundred thousand of ’em

were there, for we are all one countrymen now, ye know, and we should find

ten times more comfort of them there than we do here. Then for your means 35

to advancement there, it is simple and not preposterously mixed: you may be

an alderman there and never be scavenger; you may be a nobleman and never

be a slave. You may come to preferment enough and never be a pander; to

riches and fortune enough and have never the more villainy nor the less wit.

SPENDALL

God’s me! And how far is it thither? 40

SEAGULL

Some six weeks’ sail, no more, with any indifferent good wind. And if

I get to any part of the coast of Africa, I’ll sail thither with any wind. Or when

I come to Cape Finisterre, there’s a foreright wind continually wafts us till we

come at Virginia. See, our colonel’s come.

Enter Sir PETRONEL [and the DRAWER].

PETRONEL

Well met, good Captain Seagull, and my noble gentlemen! Now the 45

sweet hour of our freedom is at hand. Come, Drawer. Fill us some carouses,

and prepare us for the mirth that will be occasioned presently.

[Drawer pours wine.] [Exit Drawer.]

Here will be a pretty wench, gentlemen, that will bear us company all our

voyage.

SEAGULL

Whatsoever she be, here’s to her health, noble Colonel, both with cap 50

and knee.

[He removes his cap, kneels, and drinks.]

PETRONEL

Thanks, kind Captain Seagull. She’s one I love dearly, and must not

be known till we be free from all that know us. And so, gentlemen, here’s to

her health!

BOTH [SPENDALL and SCAPETHRIFT]

Let it come, worthy Colonel! We do 55

hunger and thirst for it.

PETRONEL

Afore heaven, you have hit the phrase of one that her presence will

touch from the foot to the forehead, if ye knew it.

SPENDALL

Why, then, we will join his forehead with her health, sir. And Captain

Scapethrift, here’s to ’em both. 60

[All kneel and drink.]

Enter SECURITY and BRAMBLE.

SECURITY

See, see, Master Bramble! ’Fore heaven, their voyage cannot but

prosper; they are o’their knees for success to it.

BRAMBLE

And they pray to God Bacchus.

SECURITY

God save my brave colonel, with all his tall captains and corporals!

See, sir, my worshipful learned counsel, Master Bramble, is come to take his 65

leave of you.

PETRONEL

[As he and the sailors rise] Worshipful Master Bramble, how far do you

draw us into the sweet briar of your kindness? Come, Captain Seagull, another

health to this rare Bramble, that hath never a prick about him.

SEAGULL

I pledge his most smooth disposition, sir. Come, Master Security, bend 70

your supporters and pledge this notorious health here.

SECURITY

Bend you yours likewise, Master Bramble, for it is you shall pledge

me.

SEAGULL

Not so, Master Security; he must not pledge his own health.

SECURITY

No, Master Captain? 75

Enter QUICKSILVER with WINNIE disguised.

SECURITY

Why, then, here’s one is fitly come to do him that honour.

QUICKSILVER

[To Petronel] Here’s the gentlewoman your cousin, sir, whom

with much entreaty I have brought to take her leave of you in a tavern; ashamed

whereof, you must pardon her if she put not off her mask.

PETRONEL

Pardon me, sweet cousin. My kind desire to see you before I went 80

made me so importunate to entreat your presence here.

SECURITY

How now, Master Francis? Have you honoured this presence with a

fair gentlewoman?

QUICKSILVER

Pray, sir, take you no notice of her, for she will not be known to

you. 85

SECURITY

But my learned counsel, Master Bramble here, I hope may know her.

QUICKSILVER

No more than you, sir, at this time; his learning must pardon

her.

SECURITY

Well, God pardon her for my part, and I do, I’ll be sworn. And so,

Master Francis, here’s to all that are going eastward tonight, towards Cuckold’s 90

Haven; and so to the health of Master Bramble.

QUICKSILVER

[Kneeling] I pledge it, sir. Hath it gone round, captains?

SEAGULL

It has, sweet Frank, and the round closes with thee.

QUICKSILVER

Well, sir, here’s to all eastward and toward cuckolds, and so to

famous Cuckold’s Haven so fatally remembered. He [drinks and] rises. 95

PETRONEL

[To Winifred] Nay, pray thee, coz, weep not. – Gossip Security?

SECURITY

Ay, my brave gossip?

PETRONEL

A word, I beseech you, sir. [Aside to Security] Our friend, Mistress

Bramble here, is so dissolved in tears that she drowns the whole mirth of our

meeting. Sweet gossip, take her aside and comfort her. 100

SECURITY

[Aside to Winifred] Pity of all true love, Mistress Bramble. What, weep

you to enjoy your love? What’s the cause, lady? Is’t because your husband is so

near, and your heart earns to have a little abused him? Alas, alas, the offence

is too common to be respected. So great a grace hath seldom chanced to so

unthankful a woman, to be rid of an old jealous dotard, to enjoy the arms of a 105

loving young knight that, when your prickless Bramble is withered with grief

of your loss, will make you flourish afresh in the bed of a lady.

Enter DRAWER.

DRAWER

Sir Petronel, here’s one of your watermen come to tell you it will be

flood these three hours, and that ’twill be dangerous going against the tide.

For the sky is overcast, and there was a porpoise even now seen at London 110

Bridge, which is always the messenger of tempests, he says.

PETRONEL

A porpoise? What’s that to th’purpose? Charge him, if he love his

life, to attend us. Can we not reach Blackwall, where my ship lies, against the

tide and in spite of tempests? – Captains and gentlemen, we’ll begin a new

ceremony at the beginning of our voyage, which I believe will be followed of 115

all future adventurers.

SEAGULL

What’s that, good Colonel?

PETRONEL

This, Captain Seagull. We’ll have our provided supper brought

aboard Sir Francis Drake’s ship, that hath compassed the world, where with

full cups and banquets we will do sacrifice for a prosperous voyage. My mind 120

gives me that some good spirits of the waters should haunt the desert ribs of

her and be auspicious to all that honour her memory, and will with like orgies

enter their voyages.

SEAGULL

Rarely conceited! One health more to this motion, and aboard to perform

it. He that will not this night be drunk, may he never be sober! 125

They compass in Winifred, dance the drunken round, and drink carouses.

BRAMBLE

Sir Petronel and his honourable captains, in these young services we

old servitors may be spared. We only came to take our leaves, and with one

health to you all I’ll be bold to do so. Here, neighbour Security, to the health

of Sir Petronel and all his captains! [He drinks.]

SECURITY

You must bend then, Master Bramble. 130

[Bramble and Security kneel.]

So, now I am for you. I have one corner of my brain, I hope, fit to bear one

carouse more. – Here, lady, to you that are encompassed there and are ashamed

of our company.

[They drink and rise.]

Ha, ha, ha! By my troth, my learned counsel Master Bramble, my mind runs

so of Cuckold’s Haven tonight that my head runs over with admiration. 135

BRAMBLE

[Aside to Security] But is not that your wife, neighbour?

SECURITY

[Aside to Bramble] No, by my troth, Master Bramble. Ha, ha, ha! A pox

of all Cuckold’s Havens, I say.

BRAMBLE

[Aside to Security] O’my faith, her garments are exceeding like your

wife’s. 140

SECURITY

[Aside to Bramble] Cucullus non facit monachum, my learned counsel; all

are not cuckolds that seem so, nor all seem not that are so. Give me your hand,

my learned counsel; you and I will sup somewhere else than at Sir Francis

Drake’s ship tonight. [To Petronel] Adieu, my noble gossip.

BRAMBLE

Good fortune, brave captains; fair skies God send ye! 145

ALL

Farewell, my hearts, farewell!

PETRONEL

Gossip, laugh no more at Cuckold’s Haven, gossip.

SECURITY

I have done, I have done, sir. Will you lead, Master Bramble? Ha, ha,

ha! [Exeunt Security and Bramble.]

PETRONEL

Captain Seagull, charge a boat. 150

ALL

[but DRAWER] A boat, a boat, a boat! Exeunt [all but Drawer].

DRAWER

You’re in a proper taking, indeed, to take a boat, especially at this time

of night, and against tide and tempest. They say yet, ‘Drunken men never take

harm’; this night will try the truth of that proverb.Exit.

[3.4] Enter SECURITY.

SECURITY

What, Winnie! Wife, I say! Out of doors at this time? Where should

I seek the gadfly? Billingsgate, Billingsgate, Billingsgate! She’s gone with the

knight, she’s gone with the knight; woe be to thee, Billingsgate. A boat, a boat,

a boat, a full hundred marks for a boat! Exit.

4.1 Enter SLITGUT, with a pair of ox horns, discovering Cuckold’s Haven above.

SLITGUT

All hail, fair haven of married men only! For there are none but married

men cuckolds. For my part, I presume not to arrive here but in my master’s

behalf, a poor butcher of Eastcheap, who sends me to set up – in honour of

Saint Luke – these necessary ensigns of his homage. And up I got this morning,

thus early, to get up to the top of this famous tree that is all fruit and no leaves, 5

to advance this crest of my master’s occupation. Up, then! [He climbs the pole.]

Heaven and Saint Luke bless me, that I be not blown into the Thames as I climb,

with this furious tempest! ’Slight, I think the devil be abroad in likeness of a

storm, to rob me of my horns. Hark how he roars! Lord, what a coil the Thames

keeps! She bears some unjust burden, I believe, that she kicks and curvets thus 10

to cast it. Heaven bless all honest passengers that are upon her back now! For

the bit is out of her mouth, I see, and she will run away with ’em. [He attaches the horns.]

So, so, I think I have made it look the right way; it runs against London

Bridge, as it were, even full butt. And now, let me discover from this lofty

prospect what pranks the rude Thames plays in her desperate lunacy. Oh, me, 15

here’s a boat has been cast away hard by. Alas, alas, see one of her passengers

labouring for his life to land at this haven here; pray heaven he may recover

it! His next land is even just under me; hold out yet a little, whatsoever thou

art, pray, and take a good heart to thee., ’Tis a man; take a man’s heart to thee.

Yet a little further; get up o’thy legs, man, now ’tis shallow enough. So, so, 20

so! Alas, he’s down again! Hold thy wind, father. ’Tis a man in a nightcap. So!

Now he’s got up again; now he’s past the worst. Yet thanks be to heaven, he

comes towards me pretty and strongly.

Enter SECURITY wet, without his hat, in a nightcap, band, &c.

SECURITY

Heaven, I beseech thee, how have I offended thee? Where am I cast

ashore now, that I may go a righter way home by land? Let me see. Oh, I am 25

scarce able to look about me. Where is there any sea-mark that I am acquainted

withal?

SLITGUT

Look up, father. Are you acquainted with this mark?

SECURITY

What! Landed at Cuckold’s Haven? Hell and damnation! I will run

back and drown my self. (He falls down.) 30

SLITGUT

Poor man, how weak he is! The water has washed away his strength.

SECURITY

Landed at Cuckold’s Haven? If it had not been to die twenty times

alive, I should never have scaped death. I will never arise more; I will grovel

here and eat dirt till I be choked; I will make the gentle earth do that which

the cruel water has denied me. 35

SLITGUT

Alas, good father, be not so desperate. Rise, man; if you will, I’ll come

presently and lead you home.

SECURITY

Home? Shall I make any know my home that has known me thus

abroad? How low shall I crouch away, that no eye may see me? I will creep on

the earth while I live and never look heaven in the face more. 40Exit creep[ing].

SLITGUT

What young planet reigns now, trow, that old men are so foolish?

What desperate young swaggerer would have been abroad such a weather

as this, upon the water? Ay me, see another remnant of this unfortunate

shipwreck, or some other! A woman, i’faith, a woman! Though it be almost

at Saint Katherine’s, I discern it to be a woman, for all her body is above the 45

water, and her clothes swim about her most handsomely. Oh, they bear her up

most bravely! Has not a woman reason to love the taking up of her clothes the

better while she lives, for this? Alas, how busy the rude Thames is about her!

A pox o’that wave. It will drown her, i’faith, ’twill drown her. Cry God mercy,

she has scaped it! I thank heaven she has scaped it. Oh, how she swims like 50

a mermaid! Some vigilant body look out and save her. That’s well said; just

where the priest fell in, there’s one sets down a ladder and goes to take her up.

God’s blessing o’thy heart, boy. Now take her up in thy arms and to bed with

her. She’s up, she’s up! She’s a beautiful woman, I warrant her; the billows

durst not devour her. 55

Enter the DRAWER in the tavern before, with WINIFRED.

DRAWER

How fare you now, lady?

WINIFRED

Much better, my good friend, than I wish: as one desperate of her

fame, now my life is preserved.

DRAWER

Comfort yourself; that power that preserved you from death can likewise

defend you from infamy, howsoever you deserve it. Were not you one that 60

took boat, late this night, with a knight and other gentlemen at Billingsgate?

WINIFRED

Unhappy that I am, I was.

DRAWER

I am glad it was my good hap to come down thus far after you, to a

house of my friend’s here in Saint Katherine’s, since I am now happily made

a mean to your rescue from the ruthless tempest; which, when you took boat, 65

was so extreme, and the gentleman that brought you forth so desperate and

unsober, that I feared long ere this I should hear of your shipwreck, and

therefore (with little other reason) made thus far this way. And this I must tell

you, since perhaps you may make use of it: there was left behind you at our

tavern, brought by a porter hired by the young gentleman that brought you, 70

a gentlewoman’s gown, hat, stockings, and shoes, which if they be yours, and

you please to shift you, taking a hard bed here in this house of my friend, I will

presently go fetch you.

WINIFRED

Thanks, my good friend, for your more than good news. The gown,

with all things bound with it, are mine; which if you please to fetch as 75

you have promised, I will boldly receive the kind favour you have offered

till your return – entreating you, by all the good you have done in preserving

me hitherto, to let none take knowledge of what favour you do me, or where

such a one as I am bestowed, lest you incur me much more damage in my fame

than you have done me pleasure in preserving my life. 80

DRAWER

Come in, lady, and shift yourself. Resolve that nothing but your own

pleasure shall be used in your discovery.

WINIFRED

Thank you, good friend. The time may come I shall requite you.

EXEUNT [Drawer and Winifred].

SLITGUT

See, see, see! I hold my life, there’s some other a-taking up at Wapping,

now! Look, what a sort of people cluster about the gallows there! In good troth, 85

it is so. Oh, me! A fine young gentleman! What, and taken up at the gallows?

Heaven grant he be not one day taken down there. O’my life, it is ominous.

Well, he is delivered for the time. I see the people have all left him; yet will I

keep my prospect awhile, to see if any more have been shipwrecked.

Enter QUICKSILVER bareheaded [and without cloak or sword].

QUICKSILVER

Accursed, that ever I was saved or born! 90

How fatal is my sad arrival here!

As if the stars and Providence spake to me

And said, ‘The drift of all unlawful courses,

Whatever end they dare propose themselves

In frame of their licentious policies, 95

In the firm order of just destiny

They are the ready highways to our ruins.’

I know not what to do; my wicked hopes

Are, with this tempest, torn up by the roots.

Oh, which way shall I bend my desperate steps 100

In which unsufferable shame and misery

Will not attend them? I will walk this bank

And see if I can meet the other relics

Of our poor shipwrecked crew, or hear of them.

The knight, alas, was so far gone with wine, 105

And th’other three, that I refused their boat

And took the hapless woman in another,

Who cannot but be sunk, whatever fortune

Hath wrought upon the others’ desperate lives. [Exit.]

Enter PETRONEL and SEAGULL, bareheaded [and without cloaks or swords].

PETRONEL

Zounds, Captain, I tell thee we are cast up o’the coast of France. 110

’Sfoot, I am not drunk still, I hope! Dost remember where we were last night?

SEAGULL

No, by my troth, knight, not I. But methinks we have been a horrible

while upon the water, and in the water.

PETRONEL

Ay me, we are undone for ever! Hast any money about thee?

SEAGULL

Not a penny, by heaven. 115

PETRONEL

Not a penny betwixt us, and cast ashore in France?

SEAGULL

Faith, I cannot tell that; my brains nor mine eyes are not mine own

yet.

Enter two GENTLEMEN.

PETRONEL

’Sfoot, wilt not believe me? I know’t by th’elevation of the pole, and

by the altitude and latitude of the climate. See, here comes a couple of French 120

gentlemen; I knew we were in France. Dost thou think our Englishmen are so

frenchified that a man knows not whether he be in France or in England when

he sees ’em? What shall we do? We must e’en to ’em and entreat some relief

of ’em. Life is sweet, and we have no other means to relieve our lives now but

their charities. 125

SEAGULL

Pray you, do you beg on ’em, then; you can speak French.

PETRONEL

Monsieur, plaît-il d’avoir pitié de nôtre grand infortunes? Je suis un pauvre

chevalier d’Angleterre qui a souffri l’infortune de naufrage.

FIRST GENTLEMAN

Un pauvre chevalier d’Angleterre?

PETRONEL

Oui, monsieur, il est trop vrai; mais vous savez bien, nous sommes touts suject 130

à fortune.

SECOND GENTLEMAN

A poor knight of England? A poor knight of Windsor, are

you not? Why speak you this broken French, when you’re a whole Englishman?

On what coast are you, think you?

PETRONEL

On the coast of France, sir. 135

FIRST GENTLEMAN

On the coast of Dogs, sir. You’re i’th’Isle o’Dogs, I tell you.

I see you’ve been washed in the Thames here, and I believe ye were drowned

in a tavern before, or else you would never have took boat in such a dawning

as this was. Farewell, farewell, we will not know you for shaming of you.

[To Second Gentleman] I ken the man weel, he’s one of my thirty pound knights. 140

SECOND GENTLEMAN

No, no, this is he that stole his knighthood o’the grand

day for four pound, giving to a page all the money in’s purse, I wot well.

Exeunt [Gentlemen].

SEAGULL

Death, Colonel, I knew you were overshot.

PETRONEL

Sure I think now, indeed, Captain Seagull, we were something

overshot. 145

Enter QUICKSILVER.

What, my sweet Frank Quicksilver! Dost thou survive to rejoice me? But what,

nobody at thy heels, Frank? Ay me, what is become of poor Mistress Security?

QUICKSILVER

Faith, gone quite from her name, as she is from her fame, I think;

I left her to the mercy of the water.

SEAGULL

Let her go, let her go. Let us go to our ship at Blackwall and shift us. 150

PETRONEL

Nay, by my troth, let our clothes rot upon us, and let us rot in them.

Twenty to one our ship is attached by this time. If we set her not under sail

this last tide, I never looked for any other. Woe, woe is me, what shall become

of us? The last money we could make the greedy Thames has devoured, and if

our ship be attached there is no hope can relieve us. 155

QUICKSILVER

’Sfoot, knight, what an unknightly faintness transports thee! Let

our ship sink, and all the world that’s without us be taken from us, I hope I

have some tricks in this brain of mine shall not let us perish.

SEAGULL

Well said, Frank, i’faith. O my nimble-spirited Quicksilver, ’fore God

would thou hadst been our colonel! 160

PETRONEL

I like his spirit rarely, but I see no means he has to support that

spirit.

QUICKSILVER

Go to, knight, I have more means than thou art aware of. I have

not lived amongst goldsmiths and goldmakers all this while but I have learned

something worthy of my time with ’em. And, not to let thee stink where thou 165

stand’st, knight, I’ll let thee know some of my skill presently.

SEAGULL

Do, good Frank, I beseech thee.

QUICKSILVER

I will blanch copper so cunningly that it shall endure all proofs

but the test: it shall endure malleation, it shall have the ponderosity of Luna,

and the tenacity of Luna, by no means friable.

PETRONEL

’Slight, where learn’st thou these terms, trow?

QUICKSILVER

Tush, knight, the terms of this art every ignorant quacksalver is

perfect in. But I’ll tell you how yourself shall blanch copper thus cunningly.

Take arsenic, otherwise called realga, which indeed is plain ratsbane; sublime

him three or four times; then take the sublimate of this realga and put him into 175

a glass, into chymia, and let him have a convenient decoction natural, four-and-twenty

hours, and he will become perfectly fixed. Then take this fixed powder

and project him upon well-purged copper, et habebis magisterium.

BOTH [PETRONEL and SEAGULL]

Excellent, Frank, let us hug thee!

QUICKSILVER

Nay, this I will do besides: I’ll take you off twelvepence from every 180

angel, with a kind of aquafortis, and never deface any part of the image.

PETRONEL

But then it will want weight.

QUICKSILVER

You shall restore that thus: take your sal achyme prepared, and

your distilled urine, and let your angels lie in it but four-and-twenty hours,

and they shall have their perfect weight again. Come on, now, I hope this is 185

enough to put some spirit into the livers of you; I’ll infuse more another time.

We have saluted the proud air long enough with our bare sconces. Now will I

have you to a wench’s house of mine at London, there make shift to shift us,

and after take such fortunes as the stars shall assign us.

BOTH [PETRONEL and SEAGULL]

Notable Frank! We will ever adore thee. 190

Exeunt [all but Slitgut].

Enter DRAWER with WINIFRED, new attired.

WINIFRED

Now, sweet friend, you have brought me near enough your tavern,

which I desired that I might with some colour be seen near, inquiring for my

husband; who, I must tell you, stale thither last night with my wet gown we

have left at your friend’s – which, to continue your former honest kindness,

let me pray you to keep close from the knowledge of any. And so, with all vow 195

of your requital, let me now entreat you to leave me to my woman’s wit and

fortune.

DRAWER

All shall be done you desire; and so, all the fortune you can wish for

attend you! Exit Drawer.

Enter SECURITY.

SECURITY

I will once more to this unhappy tavern before I shift one rag of me 200

more, that I may there know what is left behind, and what news of their

passengers. I have bought me a hat and band with the little money I had about

me, and made the streets a little leave staring at my nightcap.

WINIFRED

O my dear husband! Where have you been tonight? All night abroad

at taverns? Rob me of my garments? And fare as one run away from me? Alas! 205

Is this seemly for a man of your credit? Of your age and affection to your wife?

SECURITY

What should I say? How miraculously sorts this? Was not I at home

and called thee last night?

WINIFRED

Yes, sir, the harmless sleep you broke; and my answer to you would

have witnessed it, if you had had the patience to have stayed and answered 210

me. But your so sudden retreat made me imagine you were gone to Master

Bramble’s, and so rested patient and hopeful of your coming again till this

your unbelieved absence brought me abroad, with no less than wonder, to

seek you where the false knight had carried you.

SECURITY

Villain and monster that I was, how have I abused thee! I was suddenly 215

gone indeed, for my sudden jealousy transferred me. I will say no more but

this, dear wife: I suspected thee.

WINIFRED

Did you suspect me?

SECURITY

Talk not of it, I beseech thee; I am ashamed to imagine it. I will home,

I will home, and every morning on my knees ask thee heartily forgiveness. 220

Exeunt [Security and Winifred].

SLITGUT

[Climbing down] Now will I descend my honourable prospect, the

farthest seeing sea-mark of the world. No marvel then if I could see two miles

about me. I hope the red tempest’s anger be now overblown, which sure I think

heaven sent as a punishment for profaning holy Saint Luke’s memory with

so ridiculous a custom. Thou dishonest satire, farewell to honest married 225

men; farewell to all sorts and degrees of thee! Farewell, thou horn of hunger

that call’st th’Inns o’Court to their manger; farewell, thou horn of abundance

that adornest the headsmen of the commonwealth; farewell, thou horn of

direction that is the city lantern; farewell, thou horn of pleasure, the ensign of

the huntsman; farewell, thou horn of destiny, th’ensign of the married man; 230

farewell, thou horn tree that bearest nothing but stone fruit! Exit.

[4.2] Enter TOUCHSTONE.

TOUCHSTONE

Ha, sirrah! Thinks my knight adventurer we can no point of our

compass? Do we not know north-north-east, north-east-and-by-east, east-and-by-north,

nor plain eastward? Ha! Have we never heard of Virginia, nor the

Cavallaria, nor the Colonoria? Can we discover no discoveries? Well, mine errant

Sir Flash, and my runagate Quicksilver, you may drink drunk, crack cans, 5

hurl away a brown dozen of Monmouth caps or so in sea-ceremony to your

bon voyage, but for reaching any coast save the coast of Kent or Essex with this

tide or with this fleet, I’ll be your warrant for a Gravesend toast. There’s that

gone afore will stay your admiral and vice-admiral and rear-admiral, were they

all – as they are – but one pinnace and under sail, as well as a remora, doubt 10

it not; and from this sconce, without either powder or shot. Work upon that

now! Nay, an you’ll show tricks, we’ll vie with you a little. My daughter, his

lady, was sent eastward, by land, to a castle of his i’the air – in what region I

know not – and, as I hear, was glad to take up her lodging in her coach, she and

her two waiting-women, her maid and her mother, like three snails in a shell, 15

and the coachman atop on ’em, I think. Since they have all found the way back

again by Weeping Cross. But I’ll not see ’em. And for two on ’em, madam and

her malkin, they are like to bite o’the bridle for William, as the poor horses

have done all this while that hurried ’em, or else go graze o’the common. So

should my Dame Touchstone too, but she has been my cross these thirty years, 20

and I’ll now keep her to fright away sprites, i’faith. I wonder I hear no news of

my son Golding. He was sent for to the Guildhall this morning betimes, and

I marvel at the matter. If I had not laid up comfort and hope in him, I should

grow desperate of all. See, he is come, i’my thought.

Enter GOLDING.

How now, son? What news at the Court of Aldermen? 25

GOLDING

Troth, sir, an accident somewhat strange, else it hath little in it worth

the reporting.

TOUCHSTONE

What? It is not borrowing of money, then?

GOLDING

No, sir. It hath pleased the worshipful commoners of the city to take

me one i’their number at presentation of the inquest – 30

TOUCHSTONE

Ha!

GOLDING

And the alderman of the ward wherein I dwell to appoint me his

deputy –

TOUCHSTONE

How!

GOLDING

In which place, I have had an oath ministered me since I went. 35

TOUCHSTONE

Now my dear and happy son! Let me kiss Thy new Worship, and

a little boast mine own happiness in thee. What a fortune was it, or rather my

judgement, indeed, for me first to see that in his disposition, which a whole

city so conspires to second! Ta’en into the livery of his company the first day

of his freedom! Now, not a week married, chosen commoner and alderman’s 40

deputy in a day! Note but the reward of a thrifty course. The wonder of his

time! Well, I will honour Master Alderman for this act as becomes me, and

shall think the better of the Common Council’s wisdom and worship while

I live, for thus meeting, or but coming after me, in the opinion of his desert.

Forward, my sufficient son, and as this is the first, so esteem it the least step to 45

that high and prime honour that expects thee.

GOLDING

Sir, as I was not ambitious of this, so I covet no higher place; it hath

dignity enough if it will but save me from contempt. And I had rather my

bearing in this or any other office should add worth to it, than the place give

the least opinion to me. 50

TOUCHSTONE

Excellently spoken! This modest answer of thine blushes as if it

said, ‘I will wear scarlet shortly.’ Worshipful son! I cannot contain myself; I

must tell thee I hope to see thee one o’the monuments of our city, and reckoned

among her worthies to be remembered the same day with the Lady Ramsey

and grave Gresham, when the famous fable of Whittington and his puss shall 55

be forgotten, and thou and thy acts become the posies for hospitals; when thy

name shall be written upon conduits, and thy deeds played i’thy lifetime by

the best companies of actors, and be called their get-penny. This I divine. This

I prophesy.

GOLDING

Sir, engage not your expectation farther than my abilities will answer. 60

I, that know mine own strengths, fear ’em; and there is so seldom a loss in

promising the least, that commonly it brings with it a welcome deceit. I have

other news for you, sir.

TOUCHSTONE

None more welcome, I am sure?

GOLDING

They have their degree of welcome, I dare affirm. The Colonel and all

his company, this morning putting forth drunk from Billingsgate, had like

to have been cast away o’this side Greenwich; and (as I have intelligence, by a

false brother) are come dropping to town like so many masterless men, i’their

doublets and hose, without hat, or cloak, or any other –

TOUCHSTONE

A miracle! The justice of heaven! Where are they? Let’s go 70

presently and lay for ’em.

GOLDING

I have done that already, sir, both by constables and other officers,

who shall take ’em at their old Anchor, and with less tumult or suspicion than

if yourself were seen in’t, under colour of a great press that is now abroad, and

they shall here be brought afore me. 75

TOUCHSTONE

Prudent and politic son! Disgrace ’em all that ever thou canst;

their ship I have already arrested. How to my wish it falls out, that thou hast

the place of a justicer upon ’em! I am partly glad of the injury done to me,

that thou mayst punish it. Be severe i’thy place, like a new officer o’the first

quarter, unreflected. You hear how our lady is come back with her train from 80

the invisible castle?

GOLDING

No. Where is she?

TOUCHSTONE

Within, but I ha’ not seen her yet, nor her mother, who now

begins to wish her daughter undubbed, they say, and that she had walked a

foot-pace with her sister. Here they come; stand back. 85

[Enter] MISTRESS TOUCHSTONE, GERTRUDE, MILDRED, SINDEFY.

[To Gertrude] God save Your Ladyship; ’save Your good Ladyship! Your Ladyship

is welcome from your enchanted castle; so are your beauteous retinue. I hear

your knight errant is travelled on strange adventures. Surely in my mind, Your

Ladyship hath ‘fished fair and caught a frog’, as the saying is.

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Speak to your father, madam, and kneel down. 90

GERTRUDE

Kneel? I hope I am not brought so low yet. Though my knight be

run away and has sold my land, I am a lady still.

TOUCHSTONE

Your Ladyship says true, madam, and it is fitter and a greater

decorum that I should curtsy to you, that are a knight’s wife and a lady, than

you be brought o’your knees to me, who am a poor cullion and your father. 95

GERTRUDE

La! My father knows his duty.

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Oh, child!

TOUCHSTONE

And therefore I do desire Your Ladyship, my good Lady Flash, in

all humility, to depart my obscure cottage and return in quest of your bright

and most transparent castle, however presently concealed to mortal eyes. And 100

as for one poor woman of your train here [Taking Mistress Touchstone by the hand],

I will take that order she shall no longer be a charge unto you nor help to spend

your ladyship; she shall stay at home with me, and not go abroad, nor put you

to the pawning of an odd coach-horse, or three wheels, but take part with the

Touchstone. If we lack, we will not complain to Your Ladyship. And so, good 105

madam, with your demoiselle here, please you to let us see your straight backs

in equipage; for truly, here is no roost for such chickens as you are or birds

o’your feather, if it like Your Ladyship.

GERTRUDE

Marry, fist o’your kindness! I thought as much. – Come away, Sin,

we shall as soon get a fart from a dead man as a farthing of court’sy here. 110

MILDRED

Oh, good sister!

GERTRUDE

Sister, sir-reverence? [To Sindefy] Come away, I say. Hunger drops

out at his nose.

GOLDING

Oh, madam, fair words never hurt the tongue.

GERTRUDE

How say you by that? You come out with your gold ends now! 115

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Stay, lady daughter. – Good husband –

TOUCHSTONE

Wife, no man loves his fetters, be they made of gold. I list not

ha’ my head fastened under my child’s girdle; as she has brewed, so let her

drink, i’God’s name. She went witless to wedding; now she may go wisely a-begging.

It’s but honeymoon yet with Her Ladyship: she has coach-horses, 120

apparel, jewels, yet left; she needs care for no friends nor take knowledge of

father, mother, brother, sister, or anybody. When those are pawned, or spent,

perhaps we shall return into the list of her acquaintance.

GERTRUDE

I scorn it, i’faith. – Come, Sin.

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Oh, madam, why do you provoke your father thus? 125

Exeunt Gertrude [and Sindefy].

TOUCHSTONE

Nay, nay, e’en let pride go afore. Shame will follow after, I warrant

you. [To Mistress Touchstone] Come, why dost thou weep now? Thou art not the

first good cow hast had an ill calf, I trust.

Enter CONSTABLE [whispering to GOLDING].

What’s the news with that fellow?

GOLDING

Sir, the knight and your man Quicksilver are without. Will you ha’ 130

’em brought in?

TOUCHSTONE

Oh, by any means. [Exit Constable.]

And son, here’s a chair; appear terrible unto ’em on the first interview. Let

them behold the melancholy of a magistrate and taste the fury of a citizen in

office. 135

GOLDING

Why, sir, I can do nothing to ’em except you charge ’em with

somewhat.

TOUCHSTONE

I will charge ’em and recharge ’em, rather than authority should

want foil to set it off. [He motions Golding to sit.]

GOLDING

No, good sir, I will not. 140

TOUCHSTONE

Son, it is your place; by any means.

GOLDING

Believe it, I will not, sir.

Enter Knight PETRONEL [and] QUICKSILVER [guarded by] CONSTABLE [and] OFFICERS.

PETRONEL

How misfortune pursues us still in our misery!

QUICKSILVER

Would it had been my fortune to have been trussed up at

Wapping, rather than ever ha’come here! 145

PETRONEL

Or mine, to have famished in the island!

QUICKSILVER

Must Golding sit upon us?

CONSTABLE

You might carry an M under your girdle to Master Deputy’s

Worship.

GOLDING

What are those, Master Constable? 150

CONSTABLE

An’t please Your Worship, a couple of masterless men I pressed for

the Low Countries, sir.

GOLDING

Why do you not carry ’em to Bridewell, according to your order,

they may be shipped away?

CONSTABLE

An’t please Your Worship, one of ’em says he is a knight, and we 155

thought good to show him to Your Worship for our discharge.

GOLDING

Which is he?

CONSTABLE

This, sir.

GOLDING

And what’s the other?

CONSTABLE

A knight’s fellow, sir, an’t please you. 160

GOLDING

What? A knight and his fellow thus accoutred? Where are their hats

and feathers, their rapiers and their cloaks?

QUICKSILVER

[To Petronel] Oh, they mock us.

CONSTABLE

Nay, truly, sir, they had cast both their feathers and hats, too, before

we see ’em. Here’s all their furniture, an’t please you, that we found. They say 165

knights are now to be known without feathers, like cock’rels by their spurs,

sir.

GOLDING

What are their names, say they?

TOUCHSTONE

[Aside] Very well, this. He should not take knowledge of ’em in

his place, indeed. 170

CONSTABLE

This is Sir Petronel Flash.

TOUCHSTONE

How!

CONSTABLE

And this Francis Quicksilver.

TOUCHSTONE

[To Petronel] Is’t possible? I thought Your Worship had been gone

for Virginia, sir. You are welcome home, sir. Your Worship has made a quick 175

return, it seems, and no doubt a good voyage. Nay, pray you be covered, sir.

How did your biscuit hold out, sir? Methought I had seen this gentleman

afore. – Good Master Quicksilver! How a degree to the southward has changed

you!

GOLDING

Do you know ’em, father? [To Petronel and Quicksilver, who attempt to speak] 180

Forbear your offers a little; you shall be heard anon.

TOUCHSTONE

Yes, Master Deputy. I had a small venture with them in the

voyage, a thing called a son-in-law, or so. – Officers, you may let ’em stand

alone; they will not run away, I’ll give my word for them. A couple of very

honest gentlemen. One of ’em was my prentice, Master Quicksilver, here, and 185

when he had two year to serve kept his whore and his hunting nag; would play

his hundred pound at gresco or primero as familiarly (and all o’my purse) as

any bright piece of crimson on ’em all; had his changeable trunks of apparel

standing at livery, with his mare, his chest of perfumed linen, and his bathing-tubs,

which when I told him of, why he – he was a gentleman, and I a poor 190

Cheapside groom. The remedy was, we must part. Since when he hath had the

gift of gathering up some small parcels of mine, to the value of five hundred

pound, dispersed among my customers, to furnish this his Virginian venture,

wherein this knight was the chief, Sir Flash – one that married a daughter of

mine, ladyfied her, turned two thousand pounds’ worth of good land of hers 195

into cash within the first week, bought her a new gown and a coach, sent her

to seek her fortune by land whilst himself prepared for his fortune by sea, took

in fresh flesh at Billingsgate for his own diet, to serve him the whole voyage –

the wife of a certain usurer called Security, who hath been the broker for ’em

in all this business. Please, Master Deputy, work upon that now! 200

GOLDING

If my worshipful father have ended –

TOUCHSTONE

I have, it shall please Master Deputy.

GOLDING

Well then, under correction –

TOUCHSTONE

[Aside to Golding] Now, son, come over ’em with some fine gird,

as thus, ‘Knight, you shall be encountered’, that is, had to the Counter; or 205

‘Quicksilver, I will put you in a crucible’, or so.

GOLDING

Sir Petronel Flash, I am sorry to see such flashes as these proceed from

a gentleman of your quality and rank. For mine own part, I could wish I could

say I could not see them; but such is the misery of magistrates and men in

place that they must not wink at offenders. [To the Officers] Take him aside. [To Petronel] 210

I will hear you anon, sir.

TOUCHSTONE

[Aside] I like this well. Yet there’s some grace i’the knight left; he

cries.

GOLDING

Francis Quicksilver, would God thou hadst turned quacksalver rather

than run into these dissolute and lewd courses. It is great pity. Thou art 215

a proper young man, of an honest and clean face, somewhat near a good

one – God hath done his part in thee; but thou hast made too much and been

too proud of that face, with the rest of thy body; for maintenance of which

in neat and garish attire, only to be looked upon by some light housewives,

thou hast prodigally consumed much of thy master’s estate, and being by 220

him gently admonished, at several times, hast returned thyself haughty and

rebellious in thine answers, thund’ring out uncivil comparisons, requiting

all his kindness with a coarse and harsh behaviour, never returning thanks

for any one benefit, but receiving all as if they had been debts to thee and no

courtesies. I must tell thee, Francis, these are manifest signs of an ill nature, 225

and God doth often punish such pride and outrecuidance with scorn and infamy,

which is the worst of misfortune. – My worshipful father, what do you please

to charge them withal? – From the press I will free ’em, Master Constable.

CONSTABLE

Then I’ll leave Your Worship, sir.

GOLDING

No, you may stay; there will be other matters against ’em. 230

TOUCHSTONE

Sir, I do charge this gallant, Master Quicksilver, on suspicion of

felony; and the knight as being accessary, in the receipt of my goods.

QUICKSILVER

Oh, God, sir!

TOUCHSTONE

Hold thy peace, impudent varlet, hold thy peace! With what

forehead or face dost thou offer to chop logic with me, having run such a race 235

of riot as thou hast done? Does not the sight of this worshipful man’s fortune

and temper confound thee, that was thy younger fellow in household, and

now come to have the place of a judge upon thee? Dost not observe this? Which

of all thy gallants and gamesters, thy swearers and thy swaggerers, will come

now to moan thy misfortune or pity thy penury? They’ll look out at a window 240

as thou rid’st in triumph to Tyburn and cry, ‘Yonder goes honest Frank, mad

Quicksilver.’ ‘He was a free boon companion when he had money’, says one.

‘Hang him, fool’, says another, ‘He could not keep it when he had it.’ ‘A pox

o’the cullion his master’, says a third, ‘He has brought him to this.’ When their

pox of pleasure and their piles of perdition would have been better bestowed 245

upon thee, that hast ventured for ’em with the best, and by the clew of thy

knavery brought thyself weeping to the cart of calamity.

QUICKSILVER

[Pleadingly] Worshipful master –

TOUCHSTONE

Offer not to speak, crocodile, I will not hear a sound come from

thee. Thou hast learnt to whine at the play yonder. – Master Deputy, pray you 250

commit ’em both to safe custody till I be able farther to charge ’em.

QUICKSILVER

Oh, me, what an infortunate thing am I!

PETRONEL

[To Touchstone] Will you not take security, sir?

TOUCHSTONE

Yes, marry, will I, Sir Flash, if I can find him and charge him as

deep as the best on you. He has been the plotter of all this; he is your engineer, 255

I hear. Master Deputy, you’ll dispose of these? In the meantime I’ll to my Lord

Mayor and get his warrant to seize that serpent Security into my hands, and

seal up both house and goods to the King’s use, or my satisfaction.

GOLDING

Officers, take ’em to the Counter.

QUICKSILVER [and] PETRONEL

Oh, God! 260

TOUCHSTONE

Nay, on, on. You see the issue of your sloth. Of sloth cometh pleasure,

of pleasure cometh riot, of riot comes whoring, of whoring comes spending,

of spending comes want, of want comes theft, of theft comes hanging;

and there is my Quicksilver fixed. Exeunt.

5.1 [Enter] GERTRUDE [and] SINDEFY [stripped of their finery].

GERTRUDE

Ah, Sin! Hast thou ever read i’the chronicle of any lady and her

waiting-woman driven to that extremity that we are, Sin?

SINDEFY

Not I, truly, madam, and if I had, it were but cold comfort should come

out of books, now.

GERTRUDE

Why, good faith, Sin, I could dine with a lamentable story now. 5

[Sings] ‘O hone, hone, o no nera, etc.’ Canst thou tell ne’er a one, Sin?

SINDEFY

None but mine own, madam, which is lamentable enough. First to

be stolen from my friends, which were worshipful and of good account, by a

prentice in the habit and disguise of a gentleman, and here brought up to

London and promised marriage, and now likely to be forsaken, for he is in 10

possibility to be hanged.

GERTRUDE

Nay, weep not, good Sin. My Petronel is in as good possibility as he.

Thy miseries are nothing to mine, Sin. I was more than promised marriage,

Sin: I had it, Sin, and was made a lady, and by a knight, Sin, which is now as

good as no knight, Sin. And I was born in London, which is more than brought 15

up, Sin; and already forsaken, which is past likelihood, Sin; and instead of land

i’the country, all my knight’s living lies i’the Counter, Sin. There’s his castle

now!

SINDEFY

Which he cannot be forced out of, madam.

GERTRUDE

Yes, if he would live hungry a week or two. ‘Hunger’, they say, 20

‘breaks stone walls.’ But he is e’en well enough served, Sin, that so soon as

ever he had got my hand to the sale of my inheritance run away from me, an I

had been his punk, God bless us. Would the Knight o’the Sun, or Palmerin of

England, have used their ladies so, Sin, or Sir Lancelot, or Sir Tristram?

SINDEFY

I do not know, madam. 25

GERTRUDE

Then thou know’st nothing, Sin. Thou art a fool, Sin. The knighthood

nowadays are nothing like the knighthood of old time. They rid a-horseback,

ours go afoot. They were attended by their squires, ours by their

lackeys. They went buckled in their armour, ours muffled in their cloaks. They

travelled wildernesses and deserts, ours dare scarce walk the streets. They were 30

still pressed to engage their honour, ours still ready to pawn their clothes. They

would gallop on at sight of a monster, ours run away at sight of a sergeant.

They would help poor ladies, ours make poor ladies.

SINDEFY

Ay, madam, they were knights of the Round Table at Winchester that

sought adventures, but these of the square table at ordinaries, that sit at 35

hazard.

GERTRUDE

True, Sin, let him vanish. And tell me, what shall we pawn next?

SINDEFY

Ay, marry, madam, a timely consideration, for our hostess – profane

woman! – has sworn by bread and salt she will not trust us another meal.

GERTRUDE

Let it stink in her hand, then; I’ll not be beholding to her. Let me 40

see: my jewels be gone, and my gowns, and my red velvet petticoat that I was

married in, and my wedding silk stockings, and all thy best apparel, poor Sin.

Good faith, rather than thou shouldest pawn a rag more, I’d lay my ladyship

in lavender, if I knew where.

SINDEFY

Alas, madam, your ladyship? 45

GERTRUDE

Ay, why? You do not scorn my ladyship, though it is in a waistcoat?

God’s my life, you are a peat indeed! Do I offer to mortgage my ladyship for

you and for your avail, and do you turn the lip and the ‘Alas’ to my ladyship?

SINDEFY

No, madam, but I make question who will lend anything upon it?

GERTRUDE

Who? Marry, enough, I warrant you, if you’ll seek ’em out. I’m sure 50

I remember the time when I would ha’ given a thousand pound, if I had had

it, to have been a lady, and I hope I was not bred and born with that appetite

alone. Some other gentle-born o’the city have the same longing, I trust. And

for my part, I would afford ’em a penn’orth; my ladyship is little the worse for

the wearing, and yet I would bate a good deal of the sum. I would lend it – let 55

me see – for forty pound in hand, Sin, – that would apparel us – and ten pound

a year. That would keep me and you, Sin, with our needles, and we should

never need to be beholding to our scurvy parents. Good Lord, that there are

no fairies nowadays, Sin!

SINDEFY

Why, madam? 60

GERTRUDE

To do miracles and bring ladies money. Sure, if we lay in a cleanly

house, they would haunt it, Sin. I’ll try. I’ll sweep the chamber soon at night,

and set a dish of water o’the hearth. A fairy may come and bring a pearl or a

diamond; we do not know, Sin. Or there may be a pot of gold hid o’the backside,

if we had tools to dig for’t. Why may not we two rise early i’the morning, Sin, 65

afore anybody is up, and find a jewel i’the streets worth a hundred pound?

May not some great court lady, as she comes from revels at midnight, look out

of her coach as ’tis running, and lose such a jewel, and we find it? Ha?

SINDEFY

They are pretty waking dreams, these.

GERTRUDE

Or may not some old usurer be drunk overnight, with a bag of 70

money, and leave it behind him on a stall? For God’s sake, Sin, let’s rise tomorrow

by break of day and see. I protest, la, if I had as much money as an alderman,

I would scatter some on’t i’th’streets for poor ladies to find when their knights

were laid up. And now I remember my song o’the Golden Shower. Why may

not I have such a fortune? I’ll sing it, and try what luck I shall have after it. 75

[Sings] ‘Fond fables tell of old,

How Jove in Danaë’s lap

Fell in a shower of gold,

By which she caught a clap.

Oh, had it been my hap, 80

Howe’er the blow doth threaten,

So well I like the play

That I could wish all day

And night to be so beaten.’

Enter MISTRESS TOUCHSTONE.

Oh, here’s my mother! Good luck, I hope. – Ha’ you brought any money, 85

mother? Pray you, mother, your blessing. [She kneels.] Nay, sweet mother, do

not weep.

MRS TOUCHSTONE

God bless you! [She weeps.] I would I were in my grave!

GERTRUDE

Nay, dear mother, can you steal no more money from my father?

[She rises.] Dry your eyes and comfort me. Alas, it is my knight’s fault, and not 90

mine, that I am in a waistcoat and attired thus simply.

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Simply? ’Tis better than thou deserv’st. Never whimper for

the matter. Thou shouldst have looked before thou hadst leaped. Thou wert

afire to be a lady, and now your ladyship and you may both blow at the coal,

for aught I know. Self do, self have. ‘The hasty person never wants woe’, they 95

say.

GERTRUDE

Nay, then, mother, you should ha’ looked to it. A body would think

you were the older. I did but my kind, I. He was a knight, and I was fit to be a

lady. ’Tis not lack of liking but lack of living that severs us. And you talk like

yourself and a citiner in this, i’faith. You show what husband you come on, 100

iwis. You smell the Touchstone – he that will do more for his daughter that

has married a scurvy gold-end man and his prentice than he will for his tother

daughter that has wedded a knight and his customer. By this light, I think he

is not my legitimate father.

SINDEFY

Oh, good madam, do not take up your mother so. 105

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Nay, nay, let her e’en alone. Let Her Ladyship grieve me still with

her bitter taunts and terms. I have not dole enough to see her in this

miserable case, I, without her velvet gowns, without ribbons, without jewels,

without French wires, or cheatbread, or quails, or a little dog, or a gentleman

usher, or anything indeed, that’s fit for a lady – 110

SINDEFY

[Aside] Except her tongue.

MRS TOUCHSTONE

And I not able to relieve her, neither, being kept so short by

my husband. Well, God knows my heart. I did little think that ever she should

have had need of her sister Golding.

GERTRUDE

Why, mother, I ha’ not yet. Alas, good mother, be not intoxicate for 115

me; I am well enough. I would not change husbands with my sister, I. The leg

of a lark is better than the body of a kite.

MRS TOUCHSTONE

I know that. But –

GERTRUDE

What, sweet mother, what?

MRS TOUCHSTONE

It’s but ill food when nothing’s left but the claw. 120

GERTRUDE

That’s true, mother. Ay me!

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Nay, sweet ladybird, sigh not. Child, madam! Why do you

weep thus? Be of good cheer. I shall die if you cry and mar your complexion

thus.

GERTRUDE

Alas, mother, what should I do? 125

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Go to thy sister’s, child; she’ll be proud Thy Ladyship will

come under her roof. She’ll win thy father to release thy knight, and redeem

thy gowns and thy coach and thy horses, and set thee up again.

GERTRUDE

But will she get him to set my knight up, too?

MRS TOUCHSTONE

That she will, or anything else thou’lt ask her. 130

GERTRUDE

I will begin to love her, if I thought she would do this.

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Try her, good chuck, I warrant thee.

GERTRUDE

[To Sindefy] Dost thou think she’ll do’t?

SINDEFY

Ay, madam, and be glad you will receive it.

MRS TOUCHSTONE

That’s a good maiden; she tells you true. Come, I’ll take 135

order for your debts i’the alehouse.

GERTRUDE

Go, Sin, and pray for thy Frank, as I will for my Pet. [Exeunt.]

[5.2] Enter TOUCHSTONE, GOLDING, [and] WOLF [with letters].

TOUCHSTONE

I will receive no letters, Master Wolf; you shall pardon me.

GOLDING

Good father, let me entreat you.

TOUCHSTONE

Son Golding, I will not be tempted. I find mine own easy nature,

and I know not what a well-penned subtle letter may work upon it. There may

be tricks, packing, do you see? [To Wolf] Return with your packet, sir. 5

WOLF

Believe it, sir, you need fear no packing here. These are but letters of

submission, all.

TOUCHSTONE

Sir, I do look for no submission. I will bear myself in this like

blind justice. Work upon that now. When the Sessions come, they shall hear

from me. 10

GOLDING

From whom come your letters, Master Wolf?

WOLF

An’t please you, sir, one from Sir Petronel, another from Francis Quicksilver,

and a third from old Security, who is almost mad in prison. There are

two to Your Worship: one from Master Francis, sir, another from the knight.

[He offers letters to Golding.]

TOUCHSTONE

I do wonder, Master Wolf, why you should travail thus in a business 15

so contrary to kind or the nature o’your place. That you, being the keeper

of a prison, should labour the release of your prisoners! Whereas methinks it

were far more natural and kindly in you to be ranging about for more, and

not let these scape you have already under the tooth. But they say you wolves,

when you ha’ sucked the blood once that they are dry, you ha’ done. 20

WOLF

Sir, Your Worship may descant as you please o’my name, but I protest I

was never so mortified with any men’s discourse or behaviour in prison. Yet

I have had of all sorts of men i’the kingdom under my keys, and almost of

all religions i’the land, as papist, Protestant, puritan, Brownist, Anabaptist,

Millenary, Family o’Love, Jew, Turk, infidel, atheist, good fellow, etc. 25

GOLDING

And which of all these, thinks Master Wolf, was the best religion?

WOLF

Troth, Master Deputy, they that pay fees best. We never examine their

consciences farther.

GOLDING

I believe you, Master Wolf. [He reads his letters.] Good faith, sir, here’s a

great deal of humility i’these letters. 30

WOLF

Humility, sir? Ay, were Your Worship an eyewitness of it, you would

say so. The knight will i’the Knights’ Ward, do what we can, sir, and Master

Quicksilver would be i’the Hole if we would let him. I never knew or saw

prisoners more penitent or more devout. They will sit you up all night singing

of psalms and edifying the whole prison. Only Security sings a note too high, 35

sometimes, because he lies i’the Twopenny Ward, far off, and cannot take his

tune. The neighbours cannot rest for him, but come every morning to ask what

godly prisoners we have.

TOUCHSTONE

Which on ’em is’t is so devout, the knight or the tother?

WOLF

Both, sir, but the young man especially. I never heard his like. He has 40

cut his hair, too. He is so well given, and has such good gifts! He can tell you

almost all the stories of The Book of Martyrs, and speak you all The Sick Man’s

Salve without book.

TOUCHSTONE

Ay, if he had had grace; he was brought up where it grew, iwis.

On, Master Wolf. 45

WOLF

And he has converted one Fangs, a sergeant, a fellow could neither write

nor read. He was called the bandog o’the Counter, and he has brought him

already to pare his nails and say his prayers, and ’tis hoped he will sell his place

shortly and become an intelligencer.

TOUCHSTONE

No more, I am coming already. If I should give any farther ear I 50

were taken. Adieu, good Master Wolf. – Son, I do feel mine own weaknesses;

do not importune me. Pity is a rheum that I am subject to, but I will resist it. –

Master Wolf, fish is cast away that is cast in dry pools. Tell hypocrisy it will

not do; I have touched and tried too often. I am yet proof, and I will remain

so. When the Sessions come, they shall hear from me. In the meantime, to all 55

suits, to all entreaties, to all letters, to all tricks, I will be deaf as an adder and

blind as a beetle; lay mine ear to the ground and lock mine eyes i’my hand,

against all temptations. Exit.

GOLDING

You see, Master Wolf, how inexorable he is. There is no hope to

recover him. Pray you commend me to my brother knight and to my fellow 60

Francis; present ’em with this small token of my love. [He gives money.]

Tell ’em I wish I could do ’em any worthier office, but in this ’tis desperate.

Yet I will not fail to try the uttermost of my power for ’em. And, sir, as far as

I have any credit with you, pray you let ’em want nothing – though I am not

ambitious they should know so much. 65

WOLF

Sir, both your actions and words speak you to be a true gentleman. They

shall know only what is fit, and no more.Exeunt.

[5.3] [Enter] HOLDFAST [and] BRAMBLE.

HOLDFAST

Who would you speak with, sir?

BRAMBLE

I would speak with one Security that is prisoner here.

HOLDFAST

You’re welcome, sir. Stay there; I’ll call him to you. [He calls.] Master

Security!

SECURITY [appears at a grating].

SECURITY

Who calls? 5

HOLDFAST

Here’s a gentleman would speak with you.

SECURITY

What is he? Is’t one that grafts my forehead, now I am in prison, and

comes to see how the horns shoot up and prosper?

HOLDFAST

[To Bramble] You must pardon him, sir. The old man is a little crazed

with his imprisonment. 10

SECURITY

What say you to me, sir? Look you here.

[Bramble approaches the grate.]

My learned counsel, Master Bramble! Cry you mercy, sir. When saw you my

wife?

BRAMBLE

She is now at my house, sir, and desired me that I would come to visit

you and inquire of you your case, that we might work some means to get you 15

forth.

SECURITY

My case, Master Bramble, is stone walls and iron grates. You see it;

this is the weakest part on’t. And, for getting me forth, no means but hang

myself and so to be carried forth, from which they have here bound me in

intolerable bands. 20

BRAMBLE

Why, but what is’t you are in for, sir?

SECURITY

For my sins, for my sins, sir, whereof marriage is the greatest. Oh,

had I never married I had never known this purgatory, to which hell is a kind

of cool bath in respect. My wife’s confederacy, sir, with old Touchstone, that

she might keep her jubilee and the feast of her new moon. Do you understand 25

me, sir?

Enter QUICKSILVER.

QUICKSILVER

[To Bramble] Good sir, go in and talk with him. The light does

him harm, and his example will be hurtful to the weak prisoners. – Fie, father

Security, that you’ll be still so profane! Will nothing humble you? [Exeunt.]

[As they depart] enter two PRISONERS with a FRIEND.

FRIEND

What’s he? 30

FIRST PRISONER

Oh, he is a rare young man. Do you not know him?

FRIEND

Not I. I never saw him I can remember.

SECOND PRISONER

Why, it is he that was the gallant prentice of London, Master

Touchstone’s man.

FRIEND

Who, Quicksilver? 35

FIRST PRISONER

Ay, this is he.

FRIEND

Is this he? They say he has been a gallant indeed.

SECOND PRISONER

Oh, the royallest fellow that ever was bred up i’the city! He

would play you his thousand pound a night at dice; keep knights and lords

company; go with them to bawdy-houses; had his six men in a livery; kept a 40

stable of hunting horses, and his wench in her velvet gown and her cloth of

silver. Here’s one knight with him here in prison.

FRIEND

And how miserably he is changed!

FIRST PRISONER

Oh, that’s voluntary in him; he gave away all his rich clothes

as soon as ever he came in here, among the prisoners, and will eat o’the basket 45

for humility.

FRIEND

Why will he do so?

SECOND PRISONER

Alas, he has no hope of life. He mortifies himself. He does

but linger on till the Sessions.

FIRST PRISONER

Oh, he has penned the best thing, that he calls his ‘Repentance’ 50

or his ‘Last Farewell’, that ever you heard. He is a pretty poet, and for prose –

you would wonder how many prisoners he has helped out, with penning petitions

for ’em, and not take a penny. Look, this is the knight, in the rug gown.

Stand by.

[They stand aside.]

Enter PETRONEL, BRAMBLE, [and] QUICKSILVER.

BRAMBLE

Sir, for Security’s case, I have told him. Say he should be condemned 55

to be carted or whipped for a bawd, or so, why, I’ll lay an execution on him

o’two hundred pound; let him acknowledge a judgement – he shall do it in

half an hour – they shall not all fetch him out without paying the execution,

o’my word.

PETRONEL

But can we not be bailed, Master Bramble? 60

BRAMBLE

Hardly. There are none of the judges in town, else you should remove

yourself, in spite of him, with a habeas corpus. But if you have a friend to deliver

your tale sensibly to some justice o’the town, that he may have feeling of it,

do you see, you may be bailed. For as I understand the case, ’tis only done in

terrorem, and you shall have an action of false imprisonment against him when 65

you come out, and perhaps a thousand pound costs.

Enter Master WOLF.

QUICKSILVER

How now, Master Wolf? What news? What return?

WOLF

Faith, bad all. Yonder will be no letters received. He says the Sessions shall

determine it. Only, Master Deputy Golding commends him to you, and with

this token wishes he could do you other good. 70

[He gives Quicksilver Golding’s money.]

QUICKSILVER

I thank him. Good Master Bramble, trouble our quiet no more;

do not molest us in prison thus with your winding devices. Pray you depart.

[Exit Bramble.]

For my part, I commit my cause to Him that can succour me; let God work his

will. Master Wolf, I pray you let this be distributed among the prisoners and

desire ’em to pray for us. [He returns the money.] 75

WOLF

It shall be done, Master Francis. [Exit Quicksilver.]

FIRST PRISONER

An excellent temper!

SECOND PRISONER

Now God send him good luck!

Exeunt [Prisoners and Friend].

PETRONEL

But what said my father-in-law, Master Wolf?

Enter HOLDFAST.

HOLDFAST

Here’s one would speak with you, sir. 80

WOLF

I’ll tell you anon, Sir Petronel. [Exit Sir Petronel.]

[To Holdfast] Who is’t?

HOLDFAST

A gentleman, sir, that will not be seen.

Enter GOLDING.

WOLF

Where is he? Master Deputy! Your Worship is welcome –

GOLDING

Peace! 85

WOLF

[To Holdfast] Away, sirrah!

[Exit Holdfast.]

GOLDING

Good faith, Master Wolf, the estate of these gentlemen, for whom

you were so late and willing a suitor, doth much affect me. And because I

am desirous to do them some fair office, and find there is no means to make

my father relent so likely as to bring him to be a spectator of their miseries, I 90

have ventured on a device, which is to make myself your prisoner, entreating

you will presently go report it to my father, and, feigning an action at suit of

some third person, pray him by this token [giving a ring] that he will presently

and with all secrecy come hither for my bail. Which train, if any, I know will

bring him abroad, and then having him here, I doubt not but we shall be all 95

fortunate in the event.

WOLF

Sir, I will put on my best speed to effect it. Please you come in.

GOLDING

Yes, and let me rest concealed, I pray you. [Exit.]

WOLF

See here a benefit truly done, when it is done timely, freely, and to no

ambition.100 Exit.

[5.4] Enter TOUCHSTONE, Wife [MISTRESS TOUCHSTONE], Daughters [MILDRED, GERTRUDE], SINDEFY, [and] WINIFRED.

TOUCHSTONE

I will sail by you and not hear you, like the wise Ulysses.

MILDRED

[Kneeling] Dear father!

MRS TOUCHSTONE

[Kneeling] Husband!

GERTRUDE

[Kneeling] Father!

WINIFRED and SINDEFY

[Kneeling] Master Touchstone! 5

TOUCHSTONE

Away, sirens! I will immure myself against your cries and lock

myself up to your lamentations.

MRS TOUCHSTONE

Gentle husband, hear me.

GERTRUDE

Father, it is I, father, my Lady Flash. My sister and I am friends.

MILDRED

Good father! 10

WINIFRED

Be not hardened, good Master Touchstone.

SINDEFY

I pray you, sir, be merciful.

TOUCHSTONE

I am deaf, I do not hear you; I have stopped mine ears with

shoemaker’s wax and drunk Lethe and mandragora to forget you. All you

speak to me I commit to the air. 15[Exit.]

[The women rise.]

Enter WOLF.

MILDRED

How now, Master Wolf?

WOLF

Where’s Master Touchstone? I must speak with him presently. I have lost

my breath for haste.

MILDRED

What’s the matter, sir? Pray all be well!

WOLF

Master Deputy Golding is arrested upon an execution and desires him 20

presently to come to him forthwith.

MILDRED

Ay me! [Calling] Do you hear, father?

TOUCHSTONE

[Within] Tricks, tricks, confederacy, tricks! I have ’em in my nose,

I scent ’em.

WOLF

Who’s that? Master Touchstone? 25

MRS TOUCHSTONE

[Calling] Why, it is Master Wolf himself, husband.

MILDRED

[Calling] Father!

TOUCHSTONE

[Within] I am deaf still, I say. I will neither yield to the song of

the siren nor the voice of the hyena, the tears of the crocodile nor the howling

o’the wolf. Avoid my habitation, monsters! 30

WOLF

[Calling] Why, you are not mad, sir? I pray you look forth and see the token

I have brought you, sir.

[Enter TOUCHSTONE.]

TOUCHSTONE

Ha! What token is it?

WOLF

[He shows the ring.] Do you know it, sir?

TOUCHSTONE

My son Golding’s ring! Are you in earnest, Master Wolf? 35

WOLF

Ay, by my faith, sir. He is in prison and required me to use all speed and

secrecy to you.

TOUCHSTONE

My cloak there! [To the women] Pray you be patient; I am plagued

for my austerity. – My cloak! – At whose suit, Master Wolf?

WOLF

I’ll tell you as we go, sir.40 Exeunt.

[5.5] Enter FRIEND [and] PRISONERS.

FRIEND

Why, but is his offence such as he cannot hope of life?

FIRST PRISONER

Troth, it should seem so; and ’tis great pity, for he is exceeding

penitent.

FRIEND

They say he is charged but on suspicion of felony yet.

SECOND PRISONER

Ay, but his master is a shrewd fellow. He’ll prove great 5

matter against him.

FRIEND

I’d as lief as anything I could see his ‘Farewell’.

FIRST PRISONER

Oh, ’tis rarely written! Why, Toby may get him to sing it to

you; he’s not curious to anybody.

SECOND PRISONER

Oh, no. He would that all the world should take knowledge 10

of his repentance, and thinks he merits in’t the more shame he suffers.

FIRST PRISONER

[To Second Prisoner] Pray thee, try what thou canst do.

SECOND PRISONER

I warrant you he will not deny it, if he be not hoarse with

the often repeating of it.Exit.

FIRST PRISONER

You never saw a more courteous creature than he is, and the 15

knight too. The poorest prisoner of the house may command ’em. You shall

hear a thing admirably penned.

FRIEND

Is the knight any scholar too?

FIRST PRISONER

No, but he will speak very well, and discourse admirably of

running horses, and Whitefriars, and against bawds, and of cocks, and talk as 20

loud as a hunter, but is none.

Enter WOLF and TOUCHSTONE.

WOLF

Please you stay here, sir, I’ll call His Worship down to you.[Exit.]

[Touchstone stands aside.]

Enter QUICKSILVER, PETRONEL [escorted by SECOND PRISONER; enter separately WOLF and GOLDING, and stand apart].

FIRST PRISONER

See, he has brought him, and the knight too. Salute him, I

pray. [To Quicksilver] Sir, this gentleman, upon our report, is very desirous to

hear some piece of your ‘Repentance’. 25

QUICKSILVER

Sir, with all my heart, and as I told Master Toby, I shall be glad

to have any man a witness of it. And the more openly I profess it, I hope it will

appear the heartier and the more unfeigned.

TOUCHSTONE

[Aside] Who is this? My man Francis? And my son-in-law?

QUICKSILVER

Sir, it is all the testimony I shall leave behind me to the world and 30

my master that I have so offended.

FRIEND

Good sir!

QUICKSILVER

I writ it when my spirits were oppressed.

PETRONEL

Ay, I’ll be sworn for you, Francis.

QUICKSILVER

It is in imitation of Mannington’s, he that was hanged at 35

Cambridge, that cut off the horse’s head at a blow.

FRIEND

So, sir.

QUICKSILVER

To the tune of ‘I wail in woe, I plunge in pain.’

PETRONEL

An excellent ditty it is, and worthy of a new tune.

QUICKSILVER

[Sings] ‘In Cheapside famous for gold and plate, 40

Quicksilver, I did dwell of late.

I had a master good and kind,

That would have wrought me to his mind.

He bade me still, “Work upon that”,

But alas, I wrought I knew not what. 45

He was a touchstone black but true

And told me still what would ensue.

Yet, woe is me, I would not learn;

I saw, alas, but could not discern.’

FRIEND

Excellent! Excellent well. 50

GOLDING

[Aside to Wolf, who moves towards Touchstone] Oh, let him alone! He is

taken already.

QUICKSILVER

[Sings] ‘I cast my coat and cap away;

I went in silks and satins gay.

False metal of good manners I 55

Did daily coin unlawfully.

I scorned my master, being drunk;

I kept my gelding and my punk.

And with a knight, Sir Flash by name,

Who now is sorry for the same –’ 60

PETRONEL

I thank you, Francis.

QUICKSILVER

‘I thought by sea to run away,

But Thames and tempest did me stay.’

TOUCHSTONE

[Aside] This cannot be feigned, sure. Heaven pardon my severity!

The ragged colt may prove a good horse. 65

GOLDING

[Aside to Wolf] How he listens and is transported! He has forgot me.

QUICKSILVER

[Sings] ‘Still “Eastward ho!” was all my word,

But westward I had no regard.

Nor never thought what would come after,

As did, alas, his youngest daughter. 70

At last the black ox trod o’my foot,

And I saw then what ’longed unto’t.

Now cry I, “Touchstone, touch me still,

And make me current by thy skill.”’

TOUCHSTONE

[Starting to come forward] And I will do it, Francis. 75

WOLF

[Aside to Golding] Stay him, Master Deputy; now is the time; we shall lose

the song else.

[Golding and Wolf approach Touchstone.]

FRIEND

[To Quicksilver] I protest, it is the best that ever I heard.

QUICKSILVER

How like you it, gentlemen?

FRIEND and PRISONERS

Oh, admirable, sir! 80

QUICKSILVER

This stanza now following alludes to the story of Mannington,

from whence I took my project for my invention.

FRIEND

Pray you go on, sir.

QUICKSILVER

[Sings] ‘O Mannington, thy stories show

Thou cutt’st a horsehead off at a blow, 85

But I confess, I have not the force

For to cut off the head of a horse.

Yet I desire this grace to win:

That I may cut off the horsehead of Sin

And leave his body in the dust 90

Of sin’s highway and bogs of lust.

Whereby I may take Virtue’s purse

And live with her, for better, for worse.’

FRIEND

Admirable, sir, and excellently conceited.

QUICKSILVER

Alas, sir. 95

TOUCHSTONE

[Aside to Golding and Wolf] Son Golding and Master Wolf, I thank

you. The deceit is welcome [To Golding], especially from thee whose charitable

soul in this hath shown a high point of wisdom and honesty. Listen! I am

ravished with his ‘Repentance’, and could stand here a whole prenticeship to

hear him. 100

FRIEND

Forth, good sir.

QUICKSILVER

This is the last, and the ‘Farewell’.

[Sings] ‘Farewell, Cheapside, farewell, sweet trade

Of goldsmiths all that never shall fade.

Farewell, dear fellow prentices all, 105

And be you warnèd by my fall.

Shun usurers, bawds, and dice and drabs;

Avoid them as you would French scabs.

Seek not to go beyond your tether,

But cut your thongs unto your leather. 110

So shall you thrive by little and little;

Scape Tyburn, Counters, and the Spittle.’

TOUCHSTONE

[He comes forward.] And scape them shalt thou, my penitent and

dear Francis!

QUICKSILVER

Master! [He kneels.] 115

PETRONEL

Father! [He kneels.]

TOUCHSTONE

I can no longer forbear to do your humility right. Arise, and let

me honour your ‘Repentance’ with the hearty and joyful embraces of a father

and friend’s love. Quicksilver, thou hast eat into my breast, Quicksilver, with

the drops of thy sorrow, and killed the desperate opinion I had of thy reclaim. 120

QUICKSILVER

[Rising] Oh, sir, I am not worthy to see your worshipful face.

PETRONEL

[Rising] Forgive me, father.

TOUCHSTONE

Speak no more; all former passages are forgotten, and here my

word shall release you. Thank this worthy brother and kind friend, Francis. –

Master Wolf, I am their bail. 125

A shout in the prison. [SECURITY appears at the grate.]

SECURITY

Master Touchstone! Master Touchstone!

TOUCHSTONE

Who’s that?

WOLF

Security, sir.

SECURITY

Pray you, sir, if you’ll be won with a song, hear my lamentable tune,

too. 130

Song

[Sings] O Master Touchstone,

My heart is full of woe;

Alas, I am a cuckold,

And why should it be so?

Because I was a usurer 135

And bawd, as all you know,

For which, again I tell you,

My heart is full of woe.

TOUCHSTONE

Bring him forth, Master Wolf, and release his bands.

[Exit Wolf.]

[WOLF returns with SECURITY.]

This day shall be sacred to mercy and the mirth of this encounter in the 140

Counter. – See, we are encountered with more suitors.

Enter MISTRESS TOUCHSTONE, GERTRUDE, MILDRED, SINDEFY, [and] WINIFRED.

Save your breath, save your breath! All things have succeeded to your wishes,

and we are heartily satisfied in their events.

GERTRUDE

[To Petronel] Ah, runaway, runaway, have I caught you? And how has

my poor knight done all this while? 145

PETRONEL

Dear lady-wife, forgive me!

GERTRUDE

As heartily as I would be forgiven, knight. [She kneels.] Dear father,

give me your blessing and forgive me, too. I ha’ been proud and lascivious,

father, and a fool, father; and being raised to the state of a wanton coy thing

called a lady, father, have scorned you, father, and my sister, and my sister’s 150

velvet cap, too; and would make a mouth at the city as I rid through it, and

stop mine ears at Bow-bell. I have said your beard was a base one, father; and

that you looked like Twierpipe, the taborer; and that my mother was but my

midwife.

MISTRESS TOUCHSTONE

Now God forgi’ you, child madam! 155

TOUCHSTONE

No more repetitions.

[Gertrude rises.]

What is else wanting to make our harmony full?

GOLDING

Only this, sir, that my fellow Francis make amends to mistress Sindefy

with marriage.

QUICKSILVER

With all my heart. 160

GOLDING

And Security give her a dower, which shall be all the restitution he

shall make of that huge mass he hath so unlawfully gotten.

TOUCHSTONE

Excellently devised! A good motion. What says Master Security?

SECURITY

I say anything, sir, what you’ll ha’ me say. Would I were no cuckold!

WINIFRED

Cuckold, husband? Why, I think this wearing of yellow has infected 165

you.

TOUCHSTONE

Why, Master Security, that should rather be a comfort to you

than a corrosive. If you be a cuckold, it’s an argument you have a beautiful

woman to your wife. Then you shall be much made of; you shall have store of

friends; never want money; you shall be eased of much o’your wedlock pain; 170

others will take it for you. Besides, you being a usurer and likely to go to hell,

the devils will never torment you; they’ll take you for one o’ their own race.

Again, if you be a cuckold and know it not, you are an innocent; if you know

it and endure it, a true martyr.

SECURITY

I am resolved, sir. Come hither, Winnie. 175

TOUCHSTONE

Well, then, all are pleased, or shall be anon. Master Wolf, you

look hungry, methinks. Have you no apparel to lend Francis to shift him?

QUICKSILVER

No, sir, nor I desire none, but here make it my suit that I may go

home through the streets in these, as a spectacle, or rather an example, to the

children of Cheapside. 180

TOUCHSTONE

Thou hast thy wish. Now, London, look about,

And in this moral see thy glass run out.

Behold the careful father, thrifty son;

The solemn deeds, which each of us have done;

The usurer punished, and from fall so steep 185

The prodigal child reclaimed, and the lost sheep.

Epilogus

[Spoken by Quicksilver]

Stay, sir, I perceive the multitude are gathered together to view our coming

out at the Counter. [He gestures at the theatre.] See if the streets and the fronts of

the houses be not stuck with people, and the windows filled with ladies as on

the solemn day of the pageant!

[To the audience] Oh, may you find in this our pageant here 5

The same contentment which you came to seek;

And as that show but draws you once a year,

May this attract you, hither, once a week.Exeunt.

FINIS

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

Eastward Ho! (1605), by George Chapman, Ben Jonson, and John Marston

Edited by Suzanne Gossett and W. David Kay

Introduction

Prologus

[The Persons of the Play

Epilogus