Epicene | The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson

Edited by David Bevington

INTRODUCTION

The 1616 folio title-page of Epicene informs us that the play was first acted ‘in the year 1609 by the Children of Her Majesty’s Revels’, formerly the Children of the Chapel Royal, also known as the Blackfriars or the Whitefriars Children. The actual date may have been December 1609 or January 1610; the folio title-page and note on performance at the end of the play both specify the year 1609, but could be using the ‘old style’ chronology in which the year would extend to 25 March (albeit this is not Jonson’s normal style of dating in the folio). Clerimont’s reference to the continual ringing of bells ‘by reason of the sickness’ (1.1.145) would seem to set the action of the play during a recent epidemic of the plague, so severe that it had necessitated an eighteen-month closure of the London theatres which had been lifted only on 8 December, but such a visitation of disease would have been vividly in the audience’s mind throughout December or January. The title-page’s naming of ‘the Children of Her Majesty’s Revels’ suggests a date after 4 January, when they were granted a patent for this title and were authorized to play in the disestablished Carmelite priory of Whitefriars, to which the Prologue alludes (line 24). Conceivably their occupancy might have begun in December with court performances during the Christmas season, but on the whole January seems the likelier date. The play was registered in the Stationers’ Register on 10 September 1610. It was first published in the 1616 folio in a generally reliable text, although some pages of this first edition were reset from a large-paper into a small-paper format that makes for a number of variants, most of which are not substantive; see Textual Essay in the Electronic Edition.

By February 1610 the play was in trouble with the authorities. The Lady Arabella (or Arbella) Stuart, next in line to the English throne by virtue of her descent from Henry Ⅶ and of being a first cousin of King James Ⅰ, complained that Jonson had libelled her in a passing reference to depictions ‘of the Prince of Moldavia, and of his mistress, Mistress Epicene’ (5.1.19–20). As the Venetian Ambassador reported the matter on 8 February, ‘Lady Arabella . . . complains that in a certain comedy the playwright introduced an allusion to her person and the part played by the Prince of Moldavia’ (CSPV, 1607–10, pp. 426–7). In context, Jonson presumably meant ‘his’ to refer to John Daw, since the speaker, La Foole, has just been talking about his friend Daw, and since Daw proclaims himself throughout the play as the servant of his ‘mistress’, Epicene; but the ambiguous pronoun ‘his’ gave Lady Arabella an opportunity to see an affront by identifying herself with Epicene. Lady Arabella had been the unwilling object of a bizarre courtship by one Stephano Janiculo, claimant to the throne of Moldavia (in Romania), who was audacious enough at one point to insinuate that ‘some motions . . . had passed between him and the Lady Arabella of marriage, to succeed when he should be settled in his princedom’ (L. P. Smith, 1907, 1.414). Curiously enough, Janiculo had escaped imprisonment by the Turks in Constantinople in 1606 by disguising himself as a woman. Arabella, who was herself to escape in the disguise of a boy in 1611 from imprisonment brought upon her by her marriage in 1610 without royal permission to Sir William Seymour, was not amused. The Venetian Ambassador reported back to his government on 8 February 1610 that ‘the play’ (presumably Epicene) ‘was suppressed. Her Excellency is very ill pleased and shows a determination in this coming Parliament [due to open 9 February] to secure the punishment of certain persons, we don’t know who’ (CSVP, as cited above).

Whether the play was actually suppressed, as the Ambassador asserted, is hard to determine, but the incident did at any rate provoke Jonson into writing a second prologue for the 1616 edition of the play, ‘Occasioned by some person’s impertinent exception’, and to insist proudly in his dedication of the play to Sir Francis Stuart that ‘not a line or syllable in it’ had been ‘changed from the simplicity of the first copy’. Jonson later hinted to Drummond that the play had not been well received: ‘When his play of a silent woman was first acted, there was found verses after on the stage against him, concluding that that play was well named The Silent Woman; there was never one man to say plaudite to it’ (Informations, 365–7).

Some time after this initial setback, Epicene returned to the stage with great success. The children’s company who performed the original production made no appearance at court during the following winter of 1610–11 (Chambers, ES, 2.59), but the play was performed twice at court by the King’s Men in 1636, evidently with John Lowin as Morose. Its popularity continued strong into the Restoration period, when, indeed, it was the first play to be acted when the theatres were allowed to reopen in 1660, first by the Red Bull actors in St John’s Street, Clerkenwell, and then, in November and December, by Thomas Killigrew’s new company with whom the Red Bull actors merged. Epicene appeared at court, at the Cockpit at Whitehall, in November that same year. Pepys hailed it as ‘an excellent play’ when he saw it on 7 January 1661 with Edward Kynaston, the boy actor, in the role of Epicene. Pepys saw the play several times, venturing the opinion on 16 April 1667 that ‘There is more wit in it than goes to ten new plays’ and again on 19 September 1668 that it was ‘the best comedy, I think, that ever was wrote’. Shadwell the poet, with whom Pepys sat on this latter occasion, was ‘big with admiration of it’. By this time, the part of Epicene was being played by Mrs Knepp (establishing a tradition of actresses in the role that continued on into the eight-eenth century and occasionally into modern times), spoiling the point of the play’s surprising denouement but charming the susceptible Pepys nonetheless.

John Dryden, though conceding that some of Epicene’s action appeared crude when judged by the standards of contemporary taste (Epilogue to The Conquest of Granada), insisted nonetheless that the play’s ‘intrigue’ or plot was ‘the greatest and most noble of any pure unmixed comedy in any language’ and hence worthy to be imitated as a model for correct dramatic writing according to the French rules (An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 1668). Taking his advice, many Restoration dramatists – Congreve, Farquhar, Vanbrugh, Wycherley – modelled their satirical characters on those of Epicene. It was praised for its ‘unities of action, place, and time’, ‘the scene unbroken’, and above all Jonson’s ‘humour’ (Dryden, The Maiden Queen, Prologue). The play’s location is indeed limited to London, and the action occupies a single day: Clerimont is getting up and dressing in the first scene, the dinner takes place in the middle of the day, the afternoon is ‘well worn’ by 4.4.16, and at 4.5.18 Truewit talks of bringing his plot to fruition ‘afore night, as near as ’tis’. (Recent criticism has cast considerable doubt on the concept of a unity of action in Epicene, arguing instead for a symbolic unity more related to the ‘festive’ character of native drama than to New or Old Comedy; see particularly Donaldson, 1970, 24ff.)

Virtually all of the great actors and actresses of the eighteenth century – Thomas Betterton, Colley Cibber, Ann Oldfield, John Wilks, Charles Macklin, Sarah Siddons, Hannah Pritchard – appeared in Epicene, generally to great applause. David Garrick’s productions in 1752 and 1776 (in which he did not act) failed, however, despite his desperate attempts to please on the latter occasion with a bowdlerized text. A last move on Garrick’s part was to replace Sarah Siddons with a boy in the role of Epicene, thus ending a tradition of female Epicenes that had begun in 1663. A benefit performance followed in 1784. Thereafter, the play’s theatrical fortunes rapidly declined. Only one production, an all-male faculty-student undertaking at Harvard University in 1895, is recorded during the entire nineteenth century. Critically it has had a mixed reception in the last two hundred years. Coleridge declared it ‘the most entertaining of old Ben’s comedies’, but some other critics have been repelled by its harshness and misogyny. The twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw a number of successful revivals, including those by the Mermaid Repertory Company at the Great Queen Street Theatre in 1905 (directed by Philip Carr), by the Marlowe Dramatic Society at Cambridge in 1909 with an all-male cast, by the Phoenix Society at the Regent Theatre in 1924, by the players of the Oxford Summer Diversions in August 1938 (directed by Nevill Coghill), by the Oxford University Dramatic Society in 1948 (directed by Frank Hauser), by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1989, by other companies in Birmingham and Manchester, and in Washington, D.C. (directed by Michael Kahn, 2003), at which audiences were begged not to give away the secret of Epicene’s sexual identity.

Today Epicene enjoys a critical reputation for its acute social observation and its audacious manipulation of theatrical illusion. The play is set in London, and is indeed the first of Jonson’s plays to acknowledge openly that setting. Every Man in His Humour, set in Florence in the original production of 1598, was to be transported to London in the 1616 folio edition, and Jonson may have been working on the revision some time before he wrote Epicene, but the later version had not yet appeared in print. Every Man Out of His Humour (1599) had implied an English location in its decorously vague references to ‘The Fortunate Isle’, and had included an important scene in ‘the middle aisle in Paul’s’ with explicit references to ‘here at London’, but the fictional setting was still tenuous. Epicene is more direct in its satirical commentary because it is a London play, a city comedy.

The area of London that most interests Jonson in Epicene is to the west of the old city along the Strand, a new and fashionable street in what was then a rapidly expanding part of the metropolis. (See Emrys Jones, ‘The First West End Comedy’, 1982.) La Foole has taken lodgings in the Strand so that he can attract to his abode the fashionable ladies who come to shop for expensive imports in the china houses or to frequent the New Exchange just opened in 1609 on the south side of the Strand. (Jonson’s Entertainment at Britain’s Burse was performed on 11 April 1609 to mark the formal opening.) Morose’s house, where much of the play takes place, is on a quiet street with limited access for traffic among the narrow lanes just north of the Strand, near Drury Lane. This house is ‘but over the way, hard by’ (3.3.51) from Captain Otter’s lodgings, where most of Act 3 is located. Sir John Daw’s house, where Epicene is being boarded by secret arrangement, is ‘i’the next street’ (1.2.24) from Morose’s house, and is also ‘right over against the barber’s’ (1.2.49), that is, Cutbeard’s establishment; all of these places are clustered together. Whitefriars and its theatre are not far distant to the east, towards the old city. The location of Clerimont’s lodgings in Act 1 is not specified, but presumably is not far away.

The bustling commercialism and social competitiveness of London are evident throughout Epicene. Captain Otter, in his cups, complains of his wife that ‘her teeth were made i’the Blackfriars, both her eyebrows i’the Strand, and her hair in Silver Street’ (4.2.75–6). Mrs Otter, dreaming anxiously about her faux pas in the presence of ‘my Lady Mayoress’ or at a ‘Lord’s masque’ and banquet, fills her account with details about damask tablecloths, black satin gowns, wired ruffs, and crimson satin doublets (3.2.49–63). Morose tests his prospective bride by inquiring whether she is ambitious to be fashionable and to spend her time consulting with ‘tailors, lineners, lace-women, embroiderers’ about ‘that bodice, these sleeves, those skirts, this cut, that stitch, this embroidery, that lace, this wire, those knots, that ruff, those roses, this girdle, that fan, the tother scarf, these gloves’ (2.5.54–61). Truewit threatens Morose in his marriage with a dismal parade of ‘grooms, footmen, ushers, and other messengers, besides embroiderers, jewellers, tire-women, sempsters, feathermen, perfumers’ (2.2.79–81). London place names abound: the Bear Garden and Paris Garden, Billingsgate, Tower Wharf, Westminster Hall, Coleharbour, the Three Cranes. Everyone seems to be on the make in the London of 1609, not least of all parvenu landowners like La Foole, who have come up to London to establish their social pretentions in high society if they can, and dilettantes like Sir John Daw, who hope to make their mark as amateur scribblers of badly imitative verse.

Jonson’s London is also a very noisy city. Fishwives, orange-women, chimney-sweepers, broom-men, and costermongers pierce the air with their cries as they tout their wares. Braziers, armourers, and pewterers set up a din with their hammers (1.1.119–27). Bellmen mark the hours and give notice of coming events. Church bells toll the passing of human life, ceaselessly so in time of plague. Coaches, carts, and innumerable vehicles crowd the narrow lanes and passageways. Bawds and whores are hauled along behind carts and are whipped in a public humiliation witnessed by large crowds. A bear-keeper, with his dogs gathered out ‘of some four parishes’, advertises his sport right under the city-dwellers’ windows, including those of the noise-hating Morose. A fencer hires a drummer to proclaim his forthcoming match, in a procession through the streets (1.1.130–42). Bands of musicians, hungry for employment, hasten to the sound of any entertainment. Banquets are irrepressibly noisy. Captain Otter bids drum and trumpet to sound whenever he quaffs a draft from one of his favourite drinking cups. Clerimont invites ‘Music of all sorts’ (3.7.2 SD) to play at Morose’s house in celebration of Morose’s marriage to Epicene.

Celebratory noise of this sort invigorates Jonson. Epicene equates such noise with festivity and celebration. By extension, noise is integral to the saturnalian spirit of Jonsonian comedy and of theatre itself. In these terms, Morose is the spoiler, the killjoy, like Malvolio in Twelfth Night. Morose’s wish to have perfect quiet in his own house might strike us objectively as a right to which he, as a property-owner, is entitled, and indeed some critics, including Edmund Wilson (1948), have detected an element of Jonsonian self-projection in the character. Yet in this play Morose’s wish is not reasonable. He is comically obsessive in his insistence that his servants communicate with him only through silent gestures. He is foolish to have his front door padded with quilted material to deaden the sound of knocking, or to shut up his windows against church bells. His admiration for Turkish sultans who reportedly demand unquestioning, mute obedience from their subjects smacks of oriental despotism. Indeed, Morose is a tyrant in his own house and in his notion of a husband’s autocratic dominance over his wife. Such a figure, in a satirical comedy, deserves a comeuppance.

Morose’s insistence on finding a silent wife (the ‘silent woman’ of the play’s subtitle) thus combines two ‘humours’ that the play wishes to satirize: an obsession with silence and an obsession with wifely obedience. Epicene seems to offer Morose both things. Like the husband in Molière’s later The School for Wives, Morose thinks he has found the perfect candidate. His barber, Cutbeard, has picked out for him a young lady who now resides in seclusion with the foppish poetaster, Jack Daw. When Morose interviews her to determine if she has any taste for extravagance, he is barely able to hear her voice at first. We know, of course, that Morose is being set up. Epicene is deceiving him on behalf of Morose’s attractive young nephew, Dauphine Eugenie, whom the old man wishes to cut out of an inheritance by marrying and producing children.

In the terms of the play’s implicit ‘code’ of comic justice, Morose gets what he deserves. Churlish old men have no right to frustrate the lives of their younger relatives by marrying young women. The marriage is a mismatch of January and May; a young woman cannot be expected to love Morose. He is buying her, and part of his motive is that of revenge against the youthful Dauphine for being young, carefree, and irreverent.

Morose also gets what he deserves when an especially noisy party is brought under his very roof. A craving like his for absolute silence demands comic reprisal in kind: noise in place of silence. Another ‘rule’ of this satirical comedy, then, is that the punishment must fit the crime; decorum is needed in choosing an appropriate style of torment for the figure of ridicule.

The persons of the play who administer these comeuppances are the young gentlemen, Dauphine and his friends Truewit and Clerimont. Clever, witty, self-possessed, they help direct our laughter towards the comic butts by showing us what is ridiculous in self-serving and hypocritical behaviour. At the same time, the wits are capable of cruel joking. Their device to trick La Foole and Daw into refusing a duel with each other is funny but humiliating, much more so than the comparable encounter between Viola/Cesario and Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (3.4). La Foole and Daw do deserve to be publicly exposed as hypocrites in their boasting of having made a sexual conquest of Epicene, but they are certainly egged on to make such a boast by the wits. Most of all, perhaps, the young gentlemen seem hard-edged to us because of their cynical view of women.

Clerimont, for one, is put off by women’s use of cosmetics. He comments distastefully on oiled lips, painting, perfuming, and a ‘pieced beauty’ (1.1.67) that is falsely contrived before a gentleman may be allowed to see the lady in the morning. Truewit takes the opposite view of preferring women when they are well made-up and artfully clothed, but his preference this way soon blends into a deep misogyny about women as temptresses and deceivers. Men, in his view, must learn to play artful games if they are to survive in the battle of the sexes. Men must learn to promise women anything while in fact delivering showy gifts of small value. A male wooer must learn how to flatter the lady and ingratiate himself with the lady’s maid, seducing her also if need be, plying both lady and servant with gifts as bribes.

Much of this worldly advice is to be found in Ovid’s Ars Amatoria (‘The Art of Love’), from whose pages Jonson adopts wholesale a catalogue of tricks and other advice to the young lover eager to learn the secret of how to seduce a woman. Truewit’s diatribe against marriage comes mainly from Juvenal’s sixth satire, with updated suggestions of the various ways a married man might choose to commit suicide (by jumping off London Bridge, or off a church steeple, or out of a garret window) rather than endure the endless miseries of the wife’s frivolous expenses and dreary cosmetic rituals, her gadding about, her ceaselessly chattering tongue, her choosiness as to when her husband may have sex with her, and her randy preference for other men (2.2.16–111). The misogynist satire, then, is rooted in classical sources, and thus has the imprimatur of learned antiquity. At the same time, it bespeaks a deep male anxiety about women. The wits may deplore Morose’s possessive fantasy of enjoying a young woman solely for the husband’s pleasure, but the young gentlemen are no less wary of the female sex. So is the henpecked Captain Otter. Epicene offers little encouragement to the notion that marriage might satisfy any mortals so misguided as to put their head in this particular noose.

Jonson’s other likely or possible sources for Epicene include several comedies – Pietro Aretino’s Marescalco (The Stablemaster, 1527, which Jonson appears to have consulted also in a Latin translation published in Paris in 1606), Machiavelli’s Clizia, and Aretino’s source, the Casina of Plautus – in which a misogynistic man discovers that he has married a boy and declares his impotence in a bid to be free of the marriage. Aretino’s play, with its satirical plot of torturing an elderly bachelor into such a marriage, would appear to be Jonson’s chief dramatic model; and he may well have learned also from Beaumont and Fletcher’s similarly plotted The Woman Hater, acted in 1606, published in 1607. For his comic scene of abortive quarrelling in Act 4 between Daw and La Foole, Jonson no doubt had in mind Shakespeare’s farcical depiction of the duel between Sir Andrew and Viola/Cesario, but a closer and more compatible model of gentlemanly hauteur offered itself in Sir Philip Sidney’s satirical account of the abortive quarrel between the cowardly braggarts Dametas and Clinias in Arcadia (3.13). Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae may have given Jonson a model for his Collegiate Ladies. No less central to Jonson’s purposes are two declamations by Libanius of Antioch, a sophist of the fourth century ad. One of them features an old man named Dyskalos – the Greek equivalent of the Latin morosus, peevish, morose – who has married a supposedly quiet woman only to discover, to his horror, that she can talk after all and that she has invited her noisy friends to the wedding banquet. Dyskalos appeals to a court that he be allowed to end his own life. In another discourse, a father disinherits his son for disrespectful laughter. As in other plays, Jonson freely borrows from classical sources, some of them unfamiliar enough to most readers to display the author’s considerable learning. Jonson then demonstrates how skilfully he can put together those disparate sources in a tightly constructed and richly complex design. This form of dramatic construction is at once congenial to Jonson’s learning and to his mastery of architectonics.

The Collegiate Ladies in Epicene seem calculated to confirm an anxious male’s most acute fears about women. If the dupes and the suave young gentlemen in Jonson’s play are alike wary and misogynistic, they are so not because men are their own worst enemies, imagining untrue things about women because of the men’s own insecurities. That is often the pattern in Shakespeare. In Epicene, the Collegiate Ladies bolster the sexist impression that women are just as bad as men imagine them to be. The Collegiate Ladies do in fact smear themselves with cosmetics, rise late in the forenoon to receive their admirers, live apart from their husbands, and band together to instruct neophytes in their ancient art of deception. They engage in a conspiracy against men that resurfaces, for instance, in Molière’s The Learned Ladies and The School for Wives, in Wycherley’s The Country Wife, and still other satirical comedies of the late seventeenth century that derive important elements of their satirical view of the battle of the sexes from Jonson’s seminal play. In Epicene the women are positively rapacious in their pursuit of a handsome and urbane young lover like Dauphine. They clamour for his attention, tell him lies about the others behind their backs, and issue him unambiguous invitations to their private chambers at an early morning hour or late in the evening.

Dauphine laughs off these attempted seductions, as do his friends, who give him credit for scoring so high in the ladies’ estimation, but the men are too suave to become emotionally tangled. The love game is an obsession in Epicene, and the young gentlemen are too disengaged to wish to be obsessed. They prefer their bachelor lives of betting on horses, spending freely on soft lodgings and fine clothes, visiting the ladies in the evening, and indeed having a mistress from time to time. Most of all, they enjoy competing with one another in thinking up clever ways to expose the follies of persons less sophisticated than themselves. The extent to which we are invited to share the gentlemen’s point of view in the play is an interesting question.

As Katharine Maus has argued (2002), the behaviour of both men and women in this play reflects social change in Jacobean England. Well-to-do persons, many of whom had previously found contentment and social status as landed gentry in a fixed, hierarchical social order, were increasingly flocking to the excitement of London and the court. In that exhilarating but abrasive environment, inherited social standing gave way as a standard for behaviour to competition in elegance and style. We see this socially competitive world in Epicene. Grooming and appearance take on an inordinate importance. Calculated self-presentation is the order of the day. Men deplore cosmetics and yet worry endlessly about how they are impressing others. Traditional forms of self-expression for men, in the military and in political leadership, are no longer essential, leaving a vacuum to be filled by drones who strive to outvie one another in dissipated gambling, feasting, and whoring. A lack of social function drives such persons to strive for self-creation. The situation is, if anything, worse for women, since they have so few opportunities in the first place. Hence they turn to practices of allurement and self-promotion as cultural poseurs. Since prestige no longer is to be achieved through motherhood and care for the family, the women exchange scandalous gossip, take lovers, and worry about the signs of aging in their faces.

Epicene’s most audacious theatrical stunt is its final revelation that Epicene is a boy, not a young woman as advertised to Morose and indeed to us as audience. We have been taken in by Jonson, much as the dupes in the play are taken in by the witty gentlemen. If we thought about it, we knew of course that the word ‘Epicene’ (or ‘Epicoene’, as Jonson spells it in its Latinate form) means a person of a sexually indeterminate nature. We were warned; the satirist always wants to give his victim a fighting chance before tripping him up, in order to be fair. Yet we may have assumed, as perhaps the first-night audience assumed, that ‘epicene’ refers to the sexual ambiguity of an all-boy acting company in which the part of a woman has to be played by a pre-adolescent male. One accepts a theatrical convention like this and assumes, for the duration of the performance, that the boy playing Epicene is a girl.

To be informed that Epicene is a boy after all is to be taken out of fictive suspension of disbelief into the ‘reality’ of the theatre and its conditions of performance. The revelation, of course, resolves the fictive plot: Morose is freed of his unwelcome marriage, his nephew Dauphine will have his inheritance after all, and La Foole and Daw are shown to be either hypocrites or catamites (or both, perhaps) in their claim to have had sex with Epicene before ‘her’ marriage. Yet it is by means of this coup de théâtre that Jonson makes best use of Epicene’s bisexual versatility. Jonson has the last laugh on us.

TO THE TRULY NOBLE, BY ALL TITLES,

Sir Francis Stuart

Sir,

My hope is not so nourished by example as it will conclude this dumb piece

should please you because it hath pleased others before, but by trust that, when

you have read it, you will find it worthy to have displeased none. This makes that

I now number you not only in the names of favour, but the names of justice, to 5

what I write, and do presently call you to the exercise of that noblest and manliest

virtue, as coveting rather to be freed in my fame by the authority of a judge than

the credit of an undertaker. Read, therefore, I pray you, and censure. There is not

a line or syllable in it changed from the simplicity of the first copy. And when you

shall consider, through the certain hatred of some, how much a man’s innocency 10

may be endangered by an uncertain accusation, you will, I doubt not, so begin to

hate the iniquity of such natures as I shall love the contumely done me, whose end

was so honourable as to be wiped off by your sentence.

Your unprofitable but true lover,

Ben Jonson 15

The Persons of the Play

MOROSE: a gentleman that loves no noise
DAUPHINE EUGENIE: a knight, his nephew
[NED] CLERIMONT: a gentleman, his friend
TRUEWIT: another friend
EPICENE: a young gentleman, supposed the Silent Woman 5
JOHN DAW: a knight, her servant
AMOROUS LA FOOLE: a knight also
THOMAS OTTER: a land- and sea-captain
CUTBEARD: a barber
MUTE: one of Morose’s servants 10
MADAM HAUGHTY, MADAM CENTAUR}, MISTRESS [DOL] MAVIS: Ladies Collegiates
MISTRESS TRUSTY, MRS OTTER: Lady Haughty’s woman

the Captain’s wife

}

Pretenders

PARSON [BOY and other] PAGES SERVANTS [MUSICIANS]

THE SCENE: LONDON 20

EPICENE, OR THE SILENT WOMAN

Prologue

Truth says, of old the art of making plays

Was to content the people, and their praise

Was to the poet money, wine, and bays.

But in this age a sect of writers are

That only for particular likings care, 5

And will taste nothing that is popular.

With such we mingle neither brains nor breasts;

Our wishes, like to those make public feasts,

Are not to please the cook’s tastes, but the guests’.

Yet if those cunning palates hither come, 10

They shall find guests’ entreaty and good room;

And, though all relish not, sure there will be some

That, when they leave their seats, shall make ’em say,

Who wrote that piece could so have wrote a play,

But that he knew this was the better way. 15

For, to present all custard or all tart,

And have no other meats to bear a part,

Or to want bread and salt, were but coarse art.

The poet prays you, then, with better thought

To sit, and, when his cates are all in brought, 20

Though there be none far-fet, there will dear-bought

Be fit for ladies: some for lords, knights, squires,

Some for your waiting-wench and city-wires,

Some for your men and daughters of Whitefriars.

Nor is it only while you keep your seat 25

Here that his feast will last; but you shall eat

A week at ord’naries on his broken meat,

If his muse be true,

Who commends her to you.

Another Occasioned by some person’s impertinent exception

The ends of all who for the scene do write

Are, or should be, to profit and delight;

And still ’t hath been the praise of all best times,

So persons were not touched, to tax the crimes.

Then, in this play which we present tonight, 5

And make the object of your ear and sight,

On forfeit of yourselves, think nothing true

Lest so you make the maker to judge you;

For he knows poet never credit gained

By writing truths, but things like truths well feigned. 10

If any yet will, with particular sleight

Of application, wrest what he doth write,

And that he meant or him or her will say,

They make a libel which he made a play.

1.1 [Enter] CLERIMONT [and] BOY.

He [Clerimont] comes out making himself ready.

CLERIMONT

Ha’ you got the song yet perfect I ga’ you, boy?

BOY

Yes, sir.

CLERIMONT

Let me hear it.

BOY

You shall, sir, but, i’faith, let nobody else.

CLERIMONT

Why, I pray? 5

BOY

It will get you the dangerous name of a poet in town, sir, besides me a perfect

deal of ill will at the mansion you wot of, whose lady is the argument of it,

where now I am the welcom’st thing under a man that comes there.

CLERIMONT

I think, and above a man too, if the truth were racked out of you.

BOY

No, faith, I’ll confess before, sir. The gentlewomen play with me and throw 10

me o’the bed, and carry me in to my lady, and she kisses me with her oiled face

and puts a peruke o’my head and asks me an I will wear her gown, and I say,

‘No.’ And then she hits me a blow o’the ear and calls me innocent, and lets me

go.

CLERIMONT

No marvel if the door be kept shut against your master, when the 15

entrance is so easy to you. Well, sir, you shall go there no more, lest I be fain to

seek your voice in my lady’s rushes a fortnight hence. Sing, sir.

Boy sings.

[Enter] TRUEWIT.

TRUEWIT

Why, here’s the man that can melt away his time, and never feels it!

What between his mistress abroad and his ingle at home, high fare, soft lodging,

fine clothes, and his fiddle, he thinks the hours ha’ no wings or the day 20

no post-horse. Well, sir gallant, were you struck with the plague this minute,

or condemned to any capital punishment tomorrow, you would begin then to

think and value every article o’your time, esteem it at the true rate, and give all

for’t.

CLERIMONT

Why, what should a man do? 25

TRUEWIT

Why, nothing, or that which, when ’tis done, is as idle: hearken after

the next horse race, or hunting match; lay wagers, praise Puppy, or Peppercorn,

Whitefoot, Franklin; swear upon Whitemane’s party; spend aloud, that

my lords may hear you; visit my ladies at night, and be able to give ’em the

character of every bowler or bettor o’the green. These be the things wherein 30

your fashionable men exercise themselves, and I for company.

CLERIMONT

Nay, if I have thy authority, I’ll not leave yet. Come, the other are

considerations when we come to have grey heads and weak hams, moist eyes

and shrunk members. We’ll think on ’em then; then we’ll pray, and fast.

TRUEWIT

Ay, and destine only that time of age to goodness which our want of 35

ability will not let us employ in evil?

CLERIMONT

Why, then ’tis time enough.

TRUEWIT

Yes, as if a man should sleep all the term and think to effect his business

the last day. Oh, Clerimont, this time, because it is an incorporeal thing

and not subject to sense, we mock ourselves the fineliest out of it, with vanity 40

and misery indeed, not seeking an end of wretchedness but only changing the

matter still.

CLERIMONT

Nay, thou’lt not leave now –

TRUEWIT

See but our common disease! With what justice can we complain that

great men will not look upon us, nor be at leisure to give our affairs such 45

dispatch as we expect, when we will never do it to ourselves, nor hear nor

regard ourselves!

CLERIMONT

Foh, thou hast read Plutarch’s Morals now, or some such tedious

fellow, and it shows so vilely with thee; ’fore God, ’twill spoil thy wit utterly.

Talk me of pins and feathers and ladies and rushes and such things, and leave 50

this stoicity alone till thou mak’st sermons.

TRUEWIT

Well, sir, if it will not take, I have learned to lose as little of my

kindness as I can. I’ll do good to no man against his will, certainly. When were

you at the college?

CLERIMONT

What college? 55

TRUEWIT

As if you knew not!

CLERIMONT

No, faith, I came but from court yesterday.

TRUEWIT

Why, is it not arrived there yet, the news? A new foundation, sir, here

i’the town, of ladies, that call themselves the collegiates: an order between

courtiers and country madams that live from their husbands and give 60

entertainment to all the wits and braveries o’the time, as they call ’em, cry down

or up what they like or dislike in a brain or a fashion with most masculine, or

rather hermaphroditical, authority, and every day gain to their college some

new probationer.

CLERIMONT

Who is the president? 65

TRUEWIT

The grave and youthful matron, the Lady Haughty.

CLERIMONT

A pox of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! There’s no man can

be admitted till she be ready nowadays – till she has painted and perfumed and

washed and scoured – but the boy here, and him she wipes her oiled lips upon

like a sponge. I have made a song – I pray thee hear it – o’the subject. 70

Song

[Singing]

BOY

Still to be neat, still to be dressed,

As you were going to a feast;

Still to be powdered, still perfumed:

Lady, it is to be presumed,

Though art’s hid causes are not found, 75

All is not sweet, all is not sound.

Give me a look, give me a face

That makes simplicity a grace;

Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:

Such sweet neglect more taketh me 80

Than all th’adulteries of art.

They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.

TRUEWIT

And I am clearly o’the other side: I love a good dressing before any

beauty o’the world. Oh, a woman is then like a delicate garden; nor is there one

kind of it: she may vary every hour, take often counsel of her glass, and choose 85

the best. If she have good ears, show ’em; good hair, lay it out; good legs, wear

short clothes; a good hand, discover it often; practise any art to mend breath,

cleanse teeth, repair eyebrows, paint, and profess it.

CLERIMONT

How, publicly?

TRUEWIT

The doing of it, not the manner: that must be private. Many things 90

that seem foul i’the doing do please, done. A lady should indeed study her

face when we think she sleeps; nor, when the doors are shut, should men

be enquiring; all is sacred within then. Is it for us to see their perukes put

on, their false teeth, their complexion, their eyebrows, their nails? You see

gilders will not work but enclosed. They must not discover how little serves, 95

with the help of art, to adorn a great deal. How long did the canvas hang afore

Aldgate? Were the people suffered to see the city’s Love and Charity while they

were rude stone, before they were painted and burnished? No. No more should

servants approach their mistresses but when they are complete and finished.

CLERIMONT

Well said, my Truewit.100

TRUEWIT

And a wise lady will keep a guard always upon the place, that she

may do things securely. I once followed a rude fellow into a chamber, where

the poor madam, for haste, and troubled, snatched at her peruke to cover her

baldness and put it on the wrong way.

CLERIMONT

Oh, prodigy! 105

TRUEWIT

And the unconscionable knave held her in compliment an hour, with

that reversed face, when I still looked when she should talk from the tother

side.

CLERIMONT

Why, thou shouldst ha’ relieved her.

TRUEWIT

No, faith, I let her alone, as we’ll let this argument, if you please, and 110

pass to another. When saw you Dauphine Eugenie?

CLERIMONT

Not these three days. Shall we go to him this morning? He is very

melancholic, I hear.

TRUEWIT

Sick o’the uncle, is he? I met that stiff piece of formality, his uncle,

yesterday, with a huge turban of nightcaps on his head, buckled over his ears. 115

CLERIMONT

Oh, that’s his custom when he walks abroad. He can endure no

noise, man.

TRUEWIT

So I have heard. But is the disease so ridiculous in him as it is

made? They say he has been upon divers treaties with the fishwives and

orange-women, and articles propounded between them. Marry, the 120

chimney-sweepers will not be drawn in.

CLERIMONT

No, nor the broom-men: they stand out stiffly. He cannot endure

a costermonger; he swoons if he hear one.

TRUEWIT

Methinks a smith should be ominous.

CLERIMONT

Or any hammer-man. A brazier is not suffered to dwell in the 125

parish, nor an armourer. He would have hanged a pewterer’s prentice once

upon a Shrove Tuesday’s riot for being o’that trade, when the rest were quit.

TRUEWIT

A trumpet should fright him terribly, or the hautboys?

CLERIMONT

Out of his senses. The waits of the city have a pension of him not to

come near that ward. [Indicating the Boy] This youth practised on him one night 130

like the bellman, and never left till he had brought him down to the door with

a long sword, and there left him flourishing with the air.

BOY

Why, sir, he hath chosen a street to lie in so narrow at both ends that it will

receive no coaches nor carts nor any of these common noises, and therefore

we that love him devise to bring him in such as we may, now and then, for his 135

exercise, to breathe him. He would grow resty else in his ease. His virtue would

rust without action. I entreated a bearward one day to come down with the

dogs of some four parishes that way, and, I thank him, he did, and cried his

games under Master Morose’s window till he was sent crying away with his

head made a most bleeding spectacle to the multitude. And another time a 140

fencer, marching to his prize, had his drum most tragically run through for

taking that street in his way, at my request.

TRUEWIT

A good wag. How does he for the bells?

CLERIMONT

Oh, i’the queen’s time he was wont to go out of town every Saturday

at ten o’clock, or on holiday eves. But now, by reason of the sickness, 145

the perpetuity of ringing has made him devise a room with double walls and

treble ceilings, the windows close shut and caulked, and there he lives by candlelight.

He turned away a man last week for having a pair of new shoes that

creaked. And this fellow waits on him now in tennis-court socks, or slippers

soled with wool, and they talk each to other in a trunk. – See who comes here. 150

1.2 [Enter] DAUPHINE.

DAUPHINE

How now, what ail you, sirs? Dumb?

TRUEWIT

Struck into stone, almost, I am here, with tales o’thine uncle. There

was never such a prodigy heard of.

DAUPHINE

I would you would once lose this subject, my masters, for my sake.

They are such as you are that have brought me into that predicament I am with 5

him.

TRUEWIT

How is that?

DAUPHINE

Marry, that he will disinherit me, no more. He thinks I and my

company are authors of all the ridiculous acts and monuments are told of him.

TRUEWIT

’Slid, I would be the author of more, to vex him. That purpose 10

deserves it; it gives thee law of plaguing him. I’ll tell thee what I would do: I

would make a false almanac, get it printed, and then ha’ him drawn out on

a Coronation Day to the Tower Wharf and kill him with the noise of the

ordnance. Disinherit thee? He cannot, man. Art not thou next of blood, and

his sister’s son? 15

DAUPHINE

Ay, but he will thrust me out of it, he vows, and marry.

TRUEWIT

How! That’s a more portent. Can he endure no noise, and will venture

on a wife?

CLERIMONT

Yes. Why, thou art a stranger, it seems, to his best trick yet. He

has employed a fellow this half year, all over England to hearken him out a 20

dumb woman, be she of any form or any quality, so she be able to bear children.

Her silence is dowry enough, he says.

TRUEWIT

But I trust to God he has found none.

CLERIMONT

No, but he has heard of one that’s lodged i’the next street to him,

who is exceedingly soft-spoken, thrifty of her speech, that spends but six 25

words a day. And her he’s about now, and shall have her.

TRUEWIT

Is’t possible! Who is his agent i’the business?

CLERIMONT

Marry, a barber, one Cutbeard, an honest fellow, one that tells

Dauphine all here.

TRUEWIT

Why, you oppress me with wonder! A woman and a barber, and love 30

no noise!

CLERIMONT

Yes, faith. The fellow trims him silently and has not the knack

with his shears or his fingers, and that continence in a barber he thinks so

eminent a virtue as it has made him chief of his counsel.

TRUEWIT

Is the barber to be seen, or the wench? 35

CLERIMONT

Yes, that they are.

TRUEWIT

I pray thee, Dauphine, let’s go thither.

DAUPHINE

I have some business now. I cannot, i’faith.

TRUEWIT

You shall have no business shall make you neglect this, sir. We’ll make

her talk, believe it; or, if she will not, we can give out at least so much as shall 40

interrupt the treaty; we will break it. Thou art bound in conscience, when he

suspects thee without cause, to torment him.

DAUPHINE

Not I, by any means. I’ll give no suffrage to’t. He shall never ha’ that

plea against me that I opposed the least fant’sy of his. Let it lie upon my stars

to be guilty, I’ll be innocent. 45

TRUEWIT

Yes, and be poor and beg. Do, innocent, when some groom of his has

got him an heir, or this barber, if he himself cannot. Innocent! – I pray thee,

Ned, where lies she? Let him be innocent still.

CLERIMONT

Why, right over against the barber’s, in the house where Sir John

Daw lies. 50

TRUEWIT

You do not mean to confound me!

CLERIMONT

Why?

TRUEWIT

Does he that would marry her know so much?

CLERIMONT

I cannot tell.

TRUEWIT

’Twere enough of imputation to her, with him. 55

CLERIMONT

Why?

TRUEWIT

The only talking sir i’th’town! Jack Daw! An he teach her not to

speak – God b’wi’you. I have some business too.

CLERIMONT

Will you not go thither, then?

TRUEWIT

Not with the danger to meet Daw, for mine ears. 60

CLERIMONT

Why, I thought you two had been upon very good terms.

TRUEWIT

Yes, of keeping distance.

CLERIMONT

They say he is a very good scholar.

TRUEWIT

Ay, and he says it first. A pox on him! A fellow that pretends only to

learning, buys titles, and nothing else of books in him. 65

CLERIMONT

The world reports him to be very learned.

TRUEWIT

I am sorry the world should so conspire to belie him.

CLERIMONT

Good faith, I have heard very good things come from him.

TRUEWIT

You may. There’s none so desperately ignorant to deny that:

would they were his own! God b’wi’you, gentlemen. 70[Exit.]

CLERIMONT

This is very abrupt!

1.3

DAUPHINE

Come, you are a strange open man to tell everything thus.

CLERIMONT

Why, believe it, Dauphine, Truewit’s a very honest fellow.

DAUPHINE

I think no other, but this frank nature of his is not for secrets.

CLERIMONT

Nay, then, you are mistaken, Dauphine. I know where he has been

well trusted, and discharged the trust very truly and heartily. 5

DAUPHINE

I contend not, Ned, but, with the fewer a business is carried, it is

ever the safer. Now we are alone, if you’ll go thither, I am for you.

CLERIMONT

When were you there?

DAUPHINE

Last night; and such a decameron of sport fallen out! Boccace never

thought of the like. Daw does nothing but court her, and the wrong way. He 10

would lie with her, and praises her modesty; desires that she would talk and be

free, and commends her silence in verses – which he reads and swears are the

best that ever man made. Then rails at his fortunes, stamps, and mutines why

he is not made a counsellor and called to affairs of state.

CLERIMONT

I pray thee, let’s go. I would fain partake this. – Some water, boy. 15

[Exit Boy.]

DAUPHINE

We are invited to dinner together, he and I, by one that came thither

to him, Sir La Foole.

CLERIMONT

Oh, that’s a precious manikin!

DAUPHINE

Do you know him?

CLERIMONT

Ay, and he will know you, too, if ere he saw you but once, though 20

you should meet him at church in the midst of prayers. He is one of the braveries,

though he be none o’the wits. He will salute a judge upon the bench and

a bishop in the pulpit, a lawyer when he is pleading at the bar, and a lady

when she is dancing in a masque, and put her out. He does give plays and suppers,

and invites his guests to ’em aloud, out of his window, as they ride by 25

in coaches. He has a lodging in the Strand for the purpose, or to watch when

ladies are gone to the china houses, or the Exchange, that he may meet ’em

by chance and give ’em presents, some two or three hundred pounds’ worth

of toys, to be laughed at. He is never without a spare banquet or sweetmeats in

his chamber, for their women to alight at and come up to, for a bait. 30

DAUPHINE

Excellent! He was a fine youth last night, but now he is much finer.

What is his Christian name? I ha’ forgot.

[Enter] BOY.

CLERIMONT

Sir Amorous La Foole.

BOY

The gentleman is here below that owns that name.

CLERIMONT

Heart, he’s come to invite me to dinner, I hold my life. 35

DAUPHINE

Like enough. Pray thee, let’s ha’ him up.

CLERIMONT

Boy, marshal him.

BOY

With a truncheon, sir?

CLERIMONT

Away, I beseech you. [Exit Boy.]

I’ll make him tell us his pedigree, now, and what meat he has to dinner, and 40

who are his guests, and the whole course of his fortunes, with a breath.

1.4 [Enter] LA FOOLE.

LA FOOLE

’Save, dear Sir Dauphine! Honoured Master Clerimont!

CLERIMONT

Sir Amorous! You have very much honested my lodging with your

presence.

LA FOOLE

Good faith, it is a fine lodging! Almost as delicate a lodging as mine.

CLERIMONT

Not so, sir. 5

LA FOOLE

Excuse me, sir, if it were i’the Strand, I assure you. I am come, Master

Clerimont, to entreat you wait upon two or three ladies to dinner today.

CLERIMONT

How, sir! Wait upon ’em? Did you ever see me carry dishes?

LA FOOLE

No, sir, dispense with me; I meant, to bear ’em company.

CLERIMONT

Oh, that I will, sir. The doubtfulness o’your phrase – believe it, 10

sir – would breed you a quarrel once an hour with the terrible boys, if you

should but keep ’em fellowship a day.

LA FOOLE

It should be extremely against my will, sir, if I contested with any

man.

CLERIMONT

I believe it, sir. Where hold you your feast? 15

LA FOOLE

At Tom Otter’s, sir.

DAUPHINE

Tom Otter? What’s he?

LA FOOLE

Captain Otter, sir. He is a kind of gamester, but he has had command,

both by sea and by land.

DAUPHINE

Oh, then, he is animal amphibium? 20

LA FOOLE

Ay, sir. His wife was the rich china-woman that the courtiers visited

so often, that gave the rare entertainment. She commands all at home.

CLERIMONT

Then she is Captain Otter?

LA FOOLE

You say very well, sir. She is my kinswoman, a La Foole by the mother

side, and will invite any great ladies for my sake. 25

DAUPHINE

Not of the La Fooles of Essex?

LA FOOLE

No, sir, the La Fooles of London.

CLERIMONT

[Aside to Dauphine] Now he’s in.

LA FOOLE

They all come out of our house, the La Fooles o’the north, the La

Fooles of the west, the La Fooles of the east, and south – we are as ancient a 30

family as any is in Europe – but I myself am descended lineally of the French La

Fooles – and we do bear for our coat yellow, or or, chequered azure and gules,

and some three or four colours more, which is a very noted coat and has some-times

been solemnly worn by divers nobility of our house – but let that go,

antiquity is not respected now – I had a brace of fat does sent me, gentlemen, 35

and half a dozen of pheasants, a dozen or two of godwits, and some other fowl,

which I would have eaten while they are good, and in good company – there

will be a great lady or two, my Lady Haughty, my Lady Centaur, Mistress Doll

Mavis – and they come o’purpose to see the silent gentlewoman, Mistress

Epicene, that honest Sir John Daw has promised to bring thither – and then 40

Mistress Trusty, my lady’s woman, will be there too, and this honourable

knight, Sir Dauphine, with yourself, Master Clerimont – and we’ll be very

merry, and have fiddlers, and dance – I have been a mad wag in my time, and

have spent some crowns since I was a page in court to my Lord Lofty, and after

my lady’s gentleman-usher, who got me knighted in Ireland, since it pleased 45

my elder brother to die – I had as fair a gold jerkin on that day as any was worn

in the Island Voyage or at Caliz, none dispraised, and I came over in it hither,

showed myself to my friends in court, and after went down to my tenants in

the country and surveyed my lands, let new leases, took their money, spent it

in the eye o’the land here upon ladies – and now I can take up at my pleasure. 50

DAUPHINE

Can you take up ladies, sir?

CLERIMONT

Oh, let him breathe, he has not recovered.

DAUPHINE

Would I were your half in that commodity –

LA FOOLE

No, sir, excuse me: I meant money, which can take up anything. I

have another guest or two to invite and say as much to, gentlemen. I’ll take 55

my leave abruptly, in hope you will not fail – Your servant. [Exit.]

DAUPHINE

We will not fail you, Sir precious La Foole; but she shall, that your

ladies come to see, if I have credit afore Sir Daw.

CLERIMONT

Did you ever hear such a windfucker as this?

DAUPHINE

Or such a rook as the other, that will betray his mistress to be seen! 60

Come, ’tis time we prevented it.

CLERIMONT

Go. [Exeunt.]

2.1 [Enter] MOROSE, [with a speaking tube, and] MUTE.

MOROSE

Cannot I yet find out a more compendious method than by this

trunk to save my servants the labour of speech and mine ears the discord of

sounds? Let me see: all discourses but mine own afflict me; they seem harsh,

impertinent, and irksome. – Is it not possible that thou shouldst answer me

by signs and I apprehend thee, fellow? Speak not, though I question you. You 5

have taken the ring off from the street door as I bade you? Answer me not by

speech but by silence, unless it be otherwise. (At the breaches, still the fellow makes

legs or signs.) Very good. And you have fastened on a thick quilt, or flock-bed, on

the outside of the door, that, if they knock with their daggers or with brick-bats

they can make no noise? But with your leg, your answer, unless it be otherwise. 10

[Mute makes a leg.] Very good. This is not only fit modesty in a servant,

but good state and discretion in a master. – And you have been with Cutbeard,

the barber, to have him come to me? [Mute makes a leg.] Good. And he will come

presently? Answer me not but with your leg, unless it be otherwise; if it be

otherwise, shake your head, or shrug. [Mute makes a leg.] So. Your Italian and 15

Spaniard are wise in these! And it is a frugal and comely gravity. – How long

will it be ere Cutbeard come? Stay! If an hour, hold up your whole hand; if

half an hour, two fingers; if a quarter, one. [Mute holds up one finger, bent.] Good:

half a quarter? ’Tis well. And have you given him a key to come in without

knocking? [Mute makes a leg.] Good. And is the lock oiled, and the hinges, today? 20

[Mute makes a leg.] Good. And the quilting of the stairs nowhere worn out and

bare? [Mute makes a leg.] Very good. I see by much doctrine and impulsion it

may be effected. Stand by. The Turk in this divine discipline is admirable,

exceeding all the potentates of the earth; still waited on by mutes, and all

his commmands so executed, yea, even in the war (as I have heard) and in his 25

marches, most of his charges and directions given by signs and with silence.

An exquisite art! And I am heartily ashamed and angry oftentimes that the

princes of Christendom should suffer a barbarian to transcend ’em in so high

a point of felicity. I will practise it hereafter.

One winds a horn without.

How now? Oh! Oh! What villain, what prodigy of mankind is that? Look. 30

[Exit Mute.]

[Horn sounds] again.

Oh! Cut his throat, cut his throat! What murderer, hellhound, devil can this

be?

[Enter MUTE.]

MUTE

It is a post from the court –

MOROSE

Out, rogue, and must thou blow thy horn, too?

MUTE

Alas, it is a post from the court, sir, that says he must speak with you, pain 35

of death –

MOROSE

Pain of thy life, be silent!

2.2 [Enter] TRUEWIT [booted and spurred, with a noose and post-horn in his hand].

TRUEWIT

By your leave, sir (I am a stranger here), is your name Master Morose?

Is your name Master Morose? Fishes! Pythagoreans all! This is strange! What

say you, sir, nothing? Has Harpocrates been here, with his club, among you?

Well, sir, I will believe you to be the man at this time: I will venture upon you,

sir. Your friends at court commend ’em to you, sir – 5

MOROSE

[Aside] O men! O manners! Was there ever such an impudence?

TRUEWIT

– and are extremely solicitous for you, sir.

MOROSE

Whose knave are you?

TRUEWIT

Mine own knave, and your compeer, sir.

MOROSE

[To Mute] Fetch me my sword – 10

TRUEWIT

[To Mute] You shall taste the one half of my dagger, if you do, groom,

[To Morose] and you the other if you stir, sir. Be patient, I charge you, in the

king’s name, and hear me without insurrection. They say you are to marry? To

marry! Do you mark, sir?

MOROSE

How then, rude companion! 15

TRUEWIT

Marry, your friends do wonder, sir, the Thames being so near

wherein you may drown so handsomely; or London Bridge at a low fall, with a

fine leap, to hurry you down the stream; or such a delicate steeple i’the town as

Bow, to vault from; or a braver height, as Paul’s; or, if you affected to do it nearer

home and a shorter way, an excellent garret window into the street; or a beam 20

in the said garret, with this halter (He shows him a halter), which they have sent,

and desire that you would sooner commit your grave head to this knot than

to the wedlock noose; or take a little sublimate and go out of the world like a

rat; or a fly (as one said) with a straw i’your arse: any way rather than to follow

this goblin matrimony. Alas, sir, do you ever think to find a chaste wife in these 25

times? Now? When there are so many masques, plays, puritan preachings, mad

folks, and other strange sights to be seen daily, private and public? If you had

lived in King Ethelred’s time, sir, or Edward the Confessor’s, you might perhaps

have found in some cold country hamlet, then, a dull frosty wench would

have been contented with one man; now they will as soon be pleased with one 30

leg or one eye. I’ll tell you, sir, the monstrous hazards you shall run with a wife.

MOROSE

Good sir, have I ever cozened any friends of yours of their land? Bought

their possessions? Taken forfeit of their mortgage? Begged a reversion from

’em? Bastarded their issue? What have I done that may deserve this?

TRUEWIT

Nothing, sir, that I know but your itch of marriage. 35

MOROSE

Why, if I had made an assassinate upon your father, vitiated your

mother, ravished your sisters –

TRUEWIT

I would kill you, sir, I would kill you if you had.

MOROSE

Why, you do more in this, sir. It were a vengeance centuple for all

facinorous acts that could be named to do that you do – 40

TRUEWIT

Alas, sir, I am but a messenger: I but tell you what you must hear.

It seems your friends are careful after your soul’s health, sir, and would have

you know the danger. But you may do your pleasure for all them; I persuade

not, sir. If, after you are married, your wife do run away with a vaulter, or the

Frenchman that walks upon ropes, or him that dances the jig, or a fencer for 45

his skill at his weapon, why, it is not their fault; they have discharged their

consciences when you know what may happen. Nay, suffer valiantly, sir, for

I must tell you all the perils that you are obnoxious to. If she be fair, young,

and vegetous, no sweetmeats ever drew more flies; all the yellow doublets and

great roses i’the town will be there. If foul and crooked, she’ll be with them 50

and buy those doublets and roses, sir. If rich, and that you marry her dowry, not

her, she’ll reign in your house as imperious as a widow. If noble, all her kindred

will be your tyrants. If fruitful, as proud as May and humorous as April; she

must have her doctors, her midwives, her nurses, her longings every hour,

though it be for the dearest morsel of man. If learned, there was never such a 55

parrot; all your patrimony will be too little for the guests that must be invited

to hear her speak Latin and Greek, and you must lie with her in those

languages too if you will please her. If precise, you must feast all the silenced

brethren once in three days, salute the sisters, entertain the whole family or

wood of ’em, and hear longwinded exercises, singings, and catechisings, which 60

you are not given to and yet must give for to please the zealous matron your wife,

who, for the holy cause, will cozen you over and above. You begin to sweat, sir?

But this is not half, i’faith. You may do your pleasure notwithstanding; as I said

before, I come not to persuade you.

(The Mute is stealing away.)

Upon my faith, master servingman, if you do stir, I will beat you. 65

MOROSE

Oh, what is my sin? What is my sin?

TRUEWIT

Then, if you love your wife, or rather dote on her, sir, oh, how

she’ll torture you! And take pleasure i’your torments! You shall lie with her

but when she lists; she will not hurt her beauty, her complexion; or it must

be for that jewel or that pearl when she does; every half hour’s pleasure must 70

be bought anew, and with the same pain and charge you wooed her at first.

Then, you must keep what servants she please, what company she will; that

friend must not visit you without her licence; and him she loves most she

will seem to hate eagerliest, to decline your jealousy, or feign to be jealous

of you first, and for that cause go live with her she-friend or cousin at the 75

college that can instruct her in all the mysteries of writing letters, corrupting

servants, taming spies; where she must have that rich gown for such a

great day, a new one for the next, a richer for the third; be served in silver;

have the chamber filled with a succession of grooms, footmen, ushers, and

other messengers, besides embroiderers, jewellers, tire-women, sempsters, 80

feathermen, perfumers; while she feels not how the land drops away, nor the

acres melt, nor foresees the change when the mercer has your woods for her

velvets; never weighs what her pride costs, sir, so she may kiss a page or a

smooth chin that has the despair of a beard; be a stateswoman, know all the

news, what was done at Salisbury, what at the Bath, what at court, what in 85

progress; or, so she may censure poets and authors and styles, and compare

’em, Daniel with Spenser, Jonson with the tother youth, and so forth; or be

thought cunning in controversies or the very knots of divinity; and have, often

in her mouth, the state of the question; and then skip to the mathematics and

demonstration; and answer in religion to one, in state to another, in bawdry 90

to a third.

MOROSE

Oh, oh!

TRUEWIT

All this is very true, sir. And then her going in disguise to that

conjurer and this cunning woman, where the first question is, how soon you

shall die? Next, if her present servant love her? Next that, if she shall have a 95

new servant? And how many? Which of her family would make the best bawd,

male or female? What precedence she shall have by her next match? And sets

down the answers, and believes ’em above the scriptures. Nay, perhaps she’ll

study the art.

MOROSE

Gentle sir, ha’ you done? Ha’ you had your pleasure o’me? I’ll think of 100

these things.

TRUEWIT

Yes, sir. And then comes reeking home of vapour and sweat with

going afoot, and lies in a month of a new face, all oil and birdlime, and rises in

asses’ milk, and is cleansed with a new fucus. – God b’wi’you sir. – One thing

more, which I had almost forgot. This too, with whom you are to marry, may 105

have made a conveyance of her virginity aforehand, as your wise widows do

of their states before they marry, in trust to some friend, sir. Who can tell? Or

if she have not done it yet, she may do, upon the wedding day, or the night

before, and antedate you cuckold. The like has been heard of in nature. ’Tis no

devised impossible thing, sir. God b’wi’you. I’ll be bold to leave this rope with 110

you, sir, for a remembrance. – Farewell, Mute. [Exit.]

MOROSE

[To Mute] Come, ha’ me to my chamber, but first shut the door.

The horn again.

Oh, shut the door, shut the door! Is he come again?

[Enter] CUTBEARD.

CUTBEARD

’Tis I, sir, your barber.

MOROSE

Oh, Cutbeard, Cutbeard, Cutbeard! Here has been a cut-throat with 115

me. Help me in to my bed, and give me physic with thy counsel. [Exeunt.]

2.3 [Enter SIR JOHN] DAW, CLERIMONT, DAUPHINE, [and] EPICENE.

DAW

[To Clerimont and Dauphine] Nay, an she will, let her refuse at her own

charges. ’Tis nothing to me, gentlemen. But she will not be invited to the like

feasts or guests every day.

CLERIMONT

Oh, by no means, she may not refuse – (They dissuade her privately)

to stay at home, if you love your reputation. ’Slight, you are invited 5

thither o’purpose to be seen and laughed at by the lady of the college and her

shadows. This trumpeter [Indicating Daw] hath proclaimed you.

DAUPHINE

[Aside to Epicene] You shall not go. Let him be laughed at in your stead

for not bringing you, and put him to his extemporal faculty of fooling and

talking loud to satisfy the company. 10

CLERIMONT

[Aside to Dauphine] He will suspect us; talk aloud. – Pray, Mistress

Epicene, let’s see your verses; we have Sir John Daw’s leave. Do not conceal your

servant’s merit and your own glories.

EPICENE

They’ll prove my servant’s glories, if you have his leave so soon.

DAUPHINE

His vainglories, lady! 15

DAW

Show ’em, show ’em, mistress; I dare own ’em.

EPICENE

[Presenting verses to Clerimont and Dauphine] Judge you what glories!

DAW

[Intercepting them] Nay, I’ll read ’em myself, too; an author must recite his

own works. It is a madrigal of modesty.

[He recites] ‘Modest and fair, for fair and good are near 20

Neighbours, howe’er’ –

DAUPHINE

Very good.

CLERIMONT

Ay, is’t not?

DAW

[Reciting] ‘No noble virtue ever was alone,

But two in one.’ 25

DAUPHINE

Excellent!

CLERIMONT

That again, I pray, Sir John.

DAUPHINE

It has something in’t like rare wit and sense.

CLERIMONT

Peace!

DAW

[Reciting] ‘No noble virtue ever was alone, 30

But two in one.

Then, when I praise sweet modesty, I praise

Bright beauty’s rays;

And, having praised both beauty and modesty,

I have praised thee.’ 35

DAUPHINE

Admirable!

CLERIMONT

How it chimes, and cries ‘tink’ i’the close, divinely!

DAUPHINE

Ay, ’tis Seneca.

CLERIMONT

No, I think ’tis Plutarch.

DAW

The dor on Plutarch and Seneca! I hate it. They are mine own imaginations, 40

by that light. I wonder those fellows have such credit with gentlemen!

CLERIMONT

They are very grave authors.

DAW

Grave asses! Mere essayists! A few loose sentences and that’s all. A man

would talk so his whole age; I do utter as good things every hour, if they were

collected and observed, as either of ’em. 45

DAUPHINE

Indeed, Sir John?

CLERIMONT

He must needs, living among the wits and braveries too.

DAUPHINE

Ay, and being president of ’em as he is.

DAW

There’s Aristotle, a mere commonplace fellow; Plato, a discourser;

Thucydides and Livy, tedious and dry; Tacitus, an entire knot, sometimes worth the 50

untying, very seldom.

CLERIMONT

What do you think of the poets, Sir John?

DAW

Not worthy to be named for authors. Homer, an old tedious prolix ass, talks

of curriers and chines of beef. Virgil, of dunging of land, and bees. Horace, of

I know not what. 55

CLERIMONT

I think so.

DAW

And so Pindarus, Lycophron, Anacreon, Catullus, Seneca the tragedian,

Lucan, Propertius, Tibullus, Martial, Juvenal, Ausonius, Statius, Politian,

Valerius Flaccus, and the rest –

CLERIMONT

[Aside to Dauphine] What a sackful of their names he has got! 60

DAUPHINE

[Aside to Clerimont] And how he pours ’em out! Politian with Valerius

Flaccus!

CLERIMONT

[Aside to Dauphine] Was not the character right of him?

DAUPHINE

[Aside to Clerimont] As could be made, i’faith.

DAW

And Persius, a crabbed coxcomb, not to be endured. 65

DAUPHINE

Why, whom do you account for authors, Sir John Daw?

DAW

Syntagma juris civilis, Corpus juris civilis, Corpus juris canonici, the King of

Spain’s Bible.

DAUPHINE

Is the King of Spain’s Bible an author?

CLERIMONT

Yes, and Syntagma. 70

DAUPHINE

What was that Syntagma, sir?

DAW

A civil lawyer, a Spaniard.

DAUPHINE

Sure, Corpus was a Dutchman.

CLERIMONT

Ay, both the Corpuses, I knew ’em; they were very corpulent

authors. 75

DAW

And then there’s Vatablus, Pomponatius, Symancha; the other are not to be

received within the thought of a scholar.

DAUPHINE

[To Epicene] ’Fore God, you have a simple learned servant, lady, in

titles.

CLERIMONT

I wonder that he is not called to the helm and made a councillor! 80

DAUPHINE

He is one extraordinary.

CLERIMONT

Nay, but in ordinary! To say truth, the state wants such.

DAUPHINE

Why, that will follow.

CLERIMONT

[To Epicene] I muse a mistress can be so silent to the dotes of such a

servant. 85

DAW

’Tis her virtue, sir. I have written somewhat of her silence too.

DAUPHINE

In verse, Sir John?

CLERIMONT

What else?

DAUPHINE

Why, how can you justify your own being of a poet, that so slight all

the old poets? 90

DAW

Why, every man that writes in verse is not a poet. You have of the wits that

write verses and yet are no poets. They are poets that live by it, the poor fellows

that live by it.

DAUPHINE

Why, would not you live by your verses, Sir John?

CLERIMONT

No, ’twere pity he should. A knight live by his verses? He did not 95

make ’em to that end, I hope.

DAUPHINE

And yet the noble Sidney lives by his, and the noble family not

ashamed.

CLERIMONT

Ay, he professed himself; but Sir John Daw has more caution. He’ll

not hinder his own rising i’the state so much! Do you think he will? – Your 100

verses, good Sir John, and no poems.

DAW

[Reciting]‘Silence in women is like speech in man,

Deny’t who can.’

DAUPHINE

Not I, believe it. Your reason, sir?

DAW

‘Nor is’t a tale 105

That female vice should be a virtue male,

Or masculine vice a female virtue be;

You shall it see

Proved with increase.

I know to speak and she to hold her peace.’ 110

Do you conceive me, gentlemen?

DAUPHINE

No, faith. How mean you ‘with increase’, Sir John?

DAW

Why, ‘with increase’ is when I court her for the common cause of mankind,

and she says nothing but consentire videtur, and in time is gravida.

DAUPHINE

Then this is a ballad of procreation? 115

CLERIMONT

A madrigal of procreation; you mistake.

EPICENE

[To Daw] Pray give me my verses again, servant.

DAW

If you’ll ask ’em aloud, you shall.

[Daw and Epicene walk aside with the poems.]

CLERIMONT

See, here’s Truewit again!

2.4 [Enter] TRUEWIT [with his post-horn].

CLERIMONT

Where hast thou been, in the name of madness, thus accoutred

with thy horn?

TRUEWIT

Where the sound of it might have pierced your senses with gladness,

had you been in ear-reach of it. Dauphine, fall down and worship me. I have

forbid the banns, lad. I have been with thy virtuous uncle and have broke the 5

match.

DAUPHINE

You ha’ not, I hope!

TRUEWIT

Yes, faith; an thou shouldst hope otherwise, I should repent me. This

horn got me entrance; kiss it. I had no other way to get in but by feigning to be

a post; but when I got in once, I proved none, but rather the contrary, turned 10

him into a post, or a stone, or what is stiffer, with thund’ring into him the

incommodities of a wife and the miseries of marriage. If ever Gorgon were seen

in the shape of a woman, he hath seen her in my description. I have put him off

o’that scent for ever. Why do you not applaud and adore me, sirs? Why stand

you mute? Are you stupid? You are not worthy o’the benefit. 15

DAUPHINE

[To Clerimont] Did not I tell you? Mischief! –

CLERIMONT

[To Truewit] I would you had placed this benefit somewhere else.

TRUEWIT

Why so?

CLERIMONT

’Slight, you have done the most inconsiderate, rash, weak thing

that ever man did to his friend. 20

DAUPHINE

Friend! If the most malicious enemy I have had studied to inflict an

injury upon me, it could not be a greater.

TRUEWIT

Wherein, for God’s sake? Gentlemen, come to yourselves again.

DAUPHINE

[To Clerimont] But I presaged thus much afore to you.

CLERIMONT

Would my lips had been soldered when I spake on’t! [To Truewit] 25

’Slight, what moved you to be thus impertinent?

TRUEWIT

My masters, do not put on this strange face to pay my courtesy: off

with this visor. Have good turns done you, and thank ’em this way?

DAUPHINE

’Fore heaven, you have undone me. That which I have plotted for

and been maturing now these four months you have blasted in a minute. Now I 30

am lost, I may speak. This gentlewoman [Indicating Epicene] was lodged here

by me o’purpose, and, to be put upon my uncle, hath professed this obstinate

silence for my sake, being my entire friend, and one that, for the requital of

such a fortune as to marry him, would have made me very ample conditions;

where now all my hopes are utterly miscarried by this unlucky accident. 35

CLERIMONT

Thus ’tis when a man will be ignorantly officious, do services, and

not know his why. I wonder what courteous itch possessed you! You never did

absurder part i’your life, nor a greater trespass to friendship, to humanity.

DAUPHINE

Faith, you may forgive it best; ’twas your cause principally.

CLERIMONT

I know it. Would it had not! 40

[Enter] CUTBEARD.

DAUPHINE

How now, Cutbeard? What news?

CUTBEARD

The best, the happiest that ever was, sir. There has been a mad gentleman

with your uncle this morning – [Indicating Truewit] I think this be the

gentleman – that has almost talked him out of his wits with threatening him

from marriage – 45

DAUPHINE

On, I pray thee.

CUTBEARD

And your uncle, sir, he thinks ’twas done by your procurement;

therefore he will see the party you wot of presently, and if he like her, he says,

and that she be so inclining to dumb as I have told him, he swears he will marry

her today, instantly, and not defer it a minute longer. 50

DAUPHINE

Excellent! Beyond our expectation!

TRUEWIT

Beyond your expectation? By this light, I knew it would be thus.

DAUPHINE

Nay, sweet Truewit, forgive me.

TRUEWIT

No, I was ‘ignorantly officious’, ‘impertinent’. This was the ‘absurd’,

‘weak’ part. 55

CLERIMONT

Wilt thou ascribe that to merit, now, was mere fortune?

TRUEWIT

Fortune? Mere providence. Fortune had not a finger in’t. I saw it

must necessarily in nature fall out so; my genius is never false to me in these

things. Show me how it could be otherwise.

DAUPHINE

Nay, gentlemen, contend not, ’tis well now. 60

TRUEWIT

Alas, I let him go on with ‘inconsiderate’ and ‘rash’ and what he

pleased.

CLERIMONT

Away, thou strange justifier of thyself, to be wiser than thou wert

by the event!

TRUEWIT

Event! By this light, thou shalt never persuade me but I foresaw it as 65

well as the stars themselves.

DAUPHINE

Nay, gentlemen, ’tis well now. Do you two entertain Sir John Daw

with discourse while I send her away with instructions.

TRUEWIT

I’ll be acquainted with her, first, by your favour.

[The gentlemen approach Daw and Epicene.]

CLERIMONT

[Presenting Truewit to Epicene] Master Truewit, lady, a friend of ours. 70

TRUEWIT

I am sorry I have not known you sooner, lady, to celebrate this

rare virtue of your silence.

[She curtsies.]

CLERIMONT

[To Truewit] Faith, an you had come sooner, you should ha’ seen

and heard her well celebrated in Sir John Daw’s madrigals.

[Exeunt Epicene, Dauphine, and Cutbeard unobserved.]

TRUEWIT

Jack Daw, God save you! When saw you La Foole? 75

DAW

Not since last night, Master Truewit.

TRUEWIT

That’s miracle! I thought you two had been inseparable.

DAW

He’s gone to invite his guests.

TRUEWIT

Godso, ’tis true. What a false memory have I towards that man! I am

one. I met him e’en now upon that he calls his delicate fine black horse, rid into 80

a foam with posting from place to place and person to person to give ’em the

cue –

CLERIMONT

Lest they should forget?

TRUEWIT

Yes. There was never poor captain took more pains at a muster to

show men than he, at this meal, to show friends. 85

DAW

It is his quarter-feast, sir.

CLERIMONT

What, do you say so, Sir John?

TRUEWIT

Nay, Jack Daw will not be out, at the best friends he has, to the talent

of his wit. Where’s his mistress, to hear and applaud him? Is she gone?

DAW

Is Mistress Epicene gone? 90

CLERIMONT

Gone afore with Sir Dauphine, I warrant, to the place.

TRUEWIT

Gone afore! That were a manifest injury, a disgrace and a half, to

refuse him at such a festival time as this, being a bravery and a wit too.

CLERIMONT

Tut, he’ll swallow it like cream. He’s better read in jure civili than

to esteem anything a disgrace is offered him from a mistress. 95

DAW

Nay, let her e’en go. She shall sit alone and be dumb in her chamber a week

together, for John Daw, I warrant her. Does she refuse me?

CLERIMONT

No, sir, do not take it so to heart. She does not refuse you, but a

little neglect you. – Good faith, Truewit, you were too blame to put it into his

head that she does refuse him. 100

TRUEWIT

She does refuse him, sir, palpably, however you mince it. An I were as

he, I would swear to speak ne’er a word to her today for’t.

DAW

By this light, no more I will not.

TRUEWIT

Nor to anybody else, sir.

DAW

Nay, I will not say so, gentlemen. 105

CLERIMONT

[To Truewit] It had been an excellent happy condition for the company

if you could have drawn him to it.

DAW

I’ll be very melancholic, i’faith.

CLERIMONT

As a dog, if I were as you, Sir John.

TRUEWIT

Or a snail, or a hog-louse. I would roll myself up for this day, in troth; 110

they should not unwind me.

DAW

By this pick-tooth, so I will.

CLERIMONT

[Aside to Truewit] ’Tis well done. He begins already to be angry with

his teeth.

DAW

Will you go, gentlemen? 115

CLERIMONT

Nay, you must walk alone, if you be right melancholic, Sir John.

TRUEWIT

Yes, sir, we’ll dog you, we’ll follow you afar off. [Exit Daw.]

CLERIMONT

Was there ever such a two yards of knighthood, measured out by

time, to be sold to laughter?

TRUEWIT

A mere talking mole! Hang him. No mushroom was ever so fresh. A 120

fellow so utterly nothing as he knows not what he would be.

CLERIMONT

Let’s follow him. But first let’s go to Dauphine – he’s hovering

about the house – to hear what news.

TRUEWIT

Content. [Exeunt.]

2.5[Enter] MOROSE, EPICENE [masked], CUTBEARD, [and] MUTE.

MOROSE

Welcome, Cutbeard. Draw near with your fair charge, and in her ear

softly entreat her to unmask. [Epicene unmasks.] So. – Is the door shut? [Mute

makes a leg.] Enough. – Now, Cutbeard, with the same discipline I use to my

family I will question you. As I conceive, Cutbeard, this gentlewoman is she

you have provided and brought in hope she will fit me in the place and person 5

of a wife? Answer me not but with your leg, unless it be otherwise.

[Cutbeard makes a leg.] Very well done, Cutbeard. I conceive besides, Cutbeard, you

have been pre-acquainted with her birth, education, and qualities, or else you

would not prefer her to my acceptance in the weighty consequence of marriage.

[Cutbeard tries to answer.] This I conceive, Cutbeard. Answer me not but 10

with your leg, unless it be otherwise. [Cutbeard makes a leg.] Very well done, Cutbeard.

Give aside now a little, and leave me to examine her condition and aptitude

to my affection. (He goes about her and views her.) She is exceeding fair and of

a special good favour; a sweet composition or harmony of limbs; her temper of

beauty has the true height of my blood. The knave hath exceedingly well fitted 15

me without; I will now try her within. – Come near, fair gentlewoman. Let not

my behaviour seem rude, though unto you, being rare, it may haply appear

strange. (She curtsies.) Nay, lady, you may speak, though Cutbeard and my man

might not, for of all sounds only the sweet voice of a fair lady has the just

length of mine ears. I beseech you, say, lady; out of the first fire of meeting 20

eyes, they say, love is stricken. Do you feel any such motion suddenly shot into

you from any part you see in me? Ha, lady? (Curtsy.) Alas, lady, these answers

by silent curtsies from you are too courtless and simple. I have ever had my

breeding in court, and she that shall be my wife must be accomplished with

courtly and audacious ornaments. Can you speak, lady? 25

EPICENE

(She speaks softly.) Judge you, forsooth.

MOROSE

What say you, lady? Speak out, I beseech you.

EPICENE

[A little louder] Judge you, forsooth.

MOROSE

O’my judgement, a divine softness! But can you naturally, lady, as

I enjoin these by doctrine and industry, refer yourself to the search of my 30

judgement, and (not taking pleasure in your tongue, which is a woman’s

chiefest pleasure) think it plausible to answer me by silent gestures, so long as

my speeches jump right with what you conceive? (Curtsy.) Excellent! Divine!

If it were possible she should hold out thus! Peace, Cutbeard, thou art made

for ever, as thou hast made me, if this felicity have lasting. But I will try her 35

further. – Dear lady, I am courtly, I tell you, and I must have mine ears banqueted

with pleasant and witty conferences, pretty girds, scoffs, and dalliance

in her that I mean to choose for my bed-fere. The ladies in court think it a

most desperate impair to their quickness of wit and good carriage if they cannot

give occasion for a man to court ’em, and, when an amorous discourse is 40

set on foot, minister as good matter to continue it as himself. And do you alone

so much differ from all them that what they with so much circumstance affect

and toil for to seem learned, to seem judicious, to seem sharp and conceited

you can bury in yourself with silence, and rather trust your graces to the fair

conscience of virtue than to the world’s or your own proclamation? 45

EPICENE

[Faintly] I should be sorry else.

MOROSE

What say you, lady? Good lady, speak out.

EPICENE

I should be sorry else.

MOROSE

That sorrow doth fill me with gladness! Oh, Morose, thou art happy

above mankind! Pray that thou mayest contain thyself. I will only put her to 50

it once more, and it shall be with the utmost touch and test of their sex. –

But hear me, fair lady: I do also love to see her whom I shall choose for my

heifer to be the first and principal in all fashions, precede all the dames at court

by a fortnight, have her council of tailors, lineners, lace-women, embroiderers,

and sit with ’em sometimes twice a day upon French intelligences, and 55

then come forth varied like Nature, or oft’ner than she, and better by the help

of Art, her emulous servant. This do I affect. And how will you be able, lady,

with this frugality of speech, to give the manifold but necessary instructions

for that bodice, these sleeves, those skirts, this cut, that stitch, this embroidery,

that lace, this wire, those knots, that ruff, those roses, this girdle, that fan, the 60

tother scarf, these gloves? Ha! What say you, lady?

EPICENE

[Faintly] I’ll leave it to you, sir.

MOROSE

How, lady? Pray you, rise a note.

EPICENE

I leave it to wisdom and you, sir.

MOROSE

Admirable creature! I will trouble you no more; I will not sin against 65

so sweet a simplicity. Let me now be bold to print, on those divine lips, the

seal of being mine. [He kisses her.] Cutbeard, I give thee the lease of thy house

free. Thank me not but with thy leg. [Cutbeard makes a leg.] I know what thou

wouldst say: she’s poor, and her friends deceased. She has brought a wealthy

dowry in her silence, Cutbeard; and in respect of her poverty, Cutbeard, I shall 70

have her more loving and obedient, Cutbeard. Go thy ways and get me a minister

presently, with a soft, low voice to marry us, and pray him he will not be

impertinent, but brief as he can. Away! Softly, Cutbeard. [Exit Cutbeard.]

[To Mute] Sirrah, conduct your mistress into the dining room, your now-

mistress. 75[Exeunt Mute and Epicene.]

Oh, my felicity! How I shall be revenged on mine insolent kinsman and his

plots to fright me from marrying! This night I will get an heir, and thrust him

out of my blood like a stranger. He would be knighted, forsooth, and thought

by that means to reign over me; his title must do it. No, kinsman, I will now

make you bring me the tenth lord’s and the sixteenth lady’s letter, kinsman, 80

and it shall do you no good, kinsman. Your knighthood itself shall come on

its knees, and it shall be rejected; it shall be sued for its fees to execution and

not be redeemed; it shall cheat at the twelvepenny ordinary, it knighthood,

for its diet all the term time, and tell tales for it in the vacation to the hostess;

or it knighthood shall do worse, take sanctuary in Coleharbour and fast. 85

It shall fright all it friends with borrowing letters, and, when one of the

four score hath brought it knighthood ten shillings, it knighthood shall go

to the Cranes or the Bear at the Bridge-foot and be drunk in fear. It shall not

have money to discharge one tavern reckoning, to invite the old creditors to

forbear it knighthood, or the new that should be to trust it knighthood. It 90

shall be the tenth name in the bond, to take up the commodity of pipkins and

stone jugs, and the part thereof shall not furnish it knighthood forth for the

attempting of a baker’s widow, a brown baker’s widow. It shall give it knighthood’s

name for a stallion to all gamesome citizens’ wives and be refused,

when the master of a dancing school or (how do you call him?) the worst reveller 95

in the town is taken; it shall want clothes, and, by reason of that, wit, to

fool to lawyers. It shall not have hope to repair itself by Constantinople, Ireland,

or Virginia; but the best and last fortune to it knighthood shall be to

make Doll Tearsheet or Kate Common a lady, and so it knighthood may eat.

[Exit.]

2.6 [Enter] TRUEWIT, DAUPHINE, [and] CLERIMONT.

TRUEWIT

Are you sure he is not gone by?

DAUPHINE

No. I stayed in the shop ever since.

CLERIMONT

But he may take the other end of the lane.

DAUPHINE

No, I told him I would be here at this end; I appointed him hither.

TRUEWIT

What a barbarian it is to stay, then! 5

DAUPHINE

Yonder he comes.

[Enter] CUTBEARD.

CLERIMONT

And his charge left behind him, which is a very good sign,

Dauphine.

DAUPHINE

How now, Cutbeard, succeeds it or no?

CUTBEARD

Past imagination, sir, omnia secunda; you could not have prayed to 10

have had it so well. Saltat senex, as it is i’the proverb; he does triumph in his

felicity; admires the party! He has given me the lease of my house, too! And I

am now going for a silent minister to marry ’em, and away.

TRUEWIT

’Slight, get one o’the silenced ministers. A zealous brother would

torment him purely. 15

CUTBEARD

Cum privilegio, sir.

DAUPHINE

Oh, by no means, let’s do nothing to hinder it now. When ’tis done

and finished, I am for you, for any device of vexation.

CUTBEARD

And that shall be within this half hour, upon my dexterity, gentlemen.

Contrive what you can, in the meantime, bonis avibus. 20[Exit.]

CLERIMONT

How the slave doth Latin it!

TRUEWIT

It would be made a jest to posterity, sirs, this day’s mirth, if ye will.

CLERIMONT

Beshrew his heart that will not, I pronounce.

DAUPHINE

And for my part. What is’t?

TRUEWIT

To translate all La Foole’s company and his feast hither, today, to 25

celebrate this bride-ale.

DAUPHINE

Ay, marry, but how will’t be done?

TRUEWIT

I’ll undertake the directing of all the lady guests thither, and then the

meat must follow.

CLERIMONT

For God’s sake, let’s effect it. It will be an excellent comedy of 30

affliction, so many several noises.

DAUPHINE

But are they not at the other place already, think you?

TRUEWIT

I’ll warrant you, for the college-honours, one o’their faces has not the

priming colour laid on yet, nor the other her smock sleeked.

CLERIMONT

Oh, but they’ll rise earlier than ordinary to a feast. 35

TRUEWIT

Best go see and assure ourselves.

CLERIMONT

Who knows the house?

TRUEWIT

I’ll lead you. Were you never there yet?

DAUPHINE

Not I.

CLERIMONT

Nor I. 40

TRUEWIT

Where ha’ you lived, then? Not know Tom Otter!

CLERIMONT

No. For God’s sake, what is he?

TRUEWIT

An excellent animal, equal to your Daw or La Foole, if not transcendent,

and does Latin it as much as your barber. He is his wife’s subject; he calls

her princess, and, at such times as these, follows her up and down the house 45

like a page, with his hat off, partly for heat, partly for reverence. At this instant,

he is marshalling of his bull, bear, and horse.

DAUPHINE

What be those, in the name of Sphinx?

TRUEWIT

Why, sir, he has been a great man at the Bear Garden in his time, and

from that subtle sport has ta’en the witty denomination of his chief carousing 50

cups. One he calls his bull, another his bear, another his horse. And then he

has his lesser glasses that he calls his deer and his ape, and several degrees of

’em too, and never is well, nor thinks any entertainment perfect, till these be

brought out and set o’the cupboard.

CLERIMONT

For God’s love! We should miss this if we should not go. 55

TRUEWIT

Nay, he has a thousand things as good, that will speak him all day. He

will rail on his wife, with certain commonplaces, behind her back; and to her

face –

DAUPHINE

No more of him. Let’s go see him, I petition you. [Exeunt.]

3.1 [Enter] OTTER [and] MRS OTTER; TRUEWIT, CLERIMONT, [and] DAUPHINE [presently enter also and stand aside, unobserved by Otter and Mrs Otter].

OTTER

Nay, good princess, hear me pauca verba.

MRS OTTER

By that light, I’ll ha’ you chained up with your bulldogs and bear-

dogs if you be not civil the sooner. I’ll send you to kennel, i’faith. You were

best bait me with your bull, bear, and horse! Never a time that the courtiers or

collegiates come to the house but you make it a Shrove Tuesday! I would have 5

you get your Whitsuntide velvet cap and your staff i’your hand to entertain

’em; yes, in troth, do.

OTTER

Not so, princess, neither, but under correction, sweet princess, gi’ me

leave – these things I am known to the courtiers by. It is reported to them for

my humour, and they receive it so and do expect it. Tom Otter’s bull, bear, and 10

horse is known all over England, in rerum natura.

MRS OTTER

’Fore me, I will na-ture ’em over to Paris Garden and na-ture you

thither too, if you pronounce ’em again. Is a bear a fit beast, or a bull, to mix

in society with great ladies? Think, i’your discretion, in any good polity?

OTTER

The horse, then, good princess. 15

MRS OTTER

Well, I am contented for the horse. They love to be well horsed, I

know. I love it myself.

OTTER

And it is a delicate fine horse, this. Poetarum Pegasus. Under correction,

princess, Jupiter did turn himself into a – taurus or bull, under correction,

good princess. 20

MRS OTTER

By my integrity, I’ll send you over to the Bankside, I’ll commit you

to the Master of the Garden, if I hear but a syllable more. Must my house or

my roof be polluted with the scent of bears and bulls when it is perfumed for

great ladies? Is this according to the instrument, when I married you? That I

would be princess and reign in mine own house, and you would be my subject25

and obey me? What did you bring me should make you thus peremptory?

Do I allow you your half-crown a day to spend where you will among your

gamesters, to vex and torment me at such times as these? Who gives you your

maintenance, I pray you? Who allows you your horsemeat and man’s meat?

Your three suits of apparel a year? Your four pair of stockings, one silk, three 30

worsted? Your clean linen, your bands, and cuffs when I can get you to wear

’em? ’Tis mar’l you ha’ ’em on now. Who graces you with courtiers or great

personages to speak to you out of their coaches and come home to your house?

Were you ever so much as looked upon by a lord or a lady before I married you,

but on the Easter or Whitsun holidays? And then out at the Banqueting House 35

window, when Ned Whiting or George Stone were at the stake?

TRUEWIT

[Aside to Clerimont and Dauphine] For God’s sake, let’s go stave her off

him.

MRS OTTER

Answer me to that. And did not I take you up from thence, in an

old greasy buff doublet with points, and green velvet sleeves out at the elbows? 40

You forget this.

TRUEWIT

[Aside to his companions] She’ll worry him if we help not in time.

MRS OTTER

[Seeing the gentlemen] Oh, here are some o’the gallants! [To Otter]

Go to, behave yourself distinctly and with good morality, or, I protest, I’ll take

away your exhibition. 45

3.2

TRUEWIT

[Coming forward] By your leave, fair Mistress Otter, I’ll be bold to enter

these gentlemen in your acquaintance.

MRS OTTER

It shall not be obnoxious or difficil, sir.

TRUEWIT

[To Otter] How does my noble captain? Is the bull, bear, and horse

in rerum natura still? 5

OTTER

Sir, Sic visum superis.

MRS OTTER

[To Otter] I would you would but intimate ’em, do. Go your ways

in, and get toasts and butter made for the woodcocks. That’s a fit province for

you. [Exit Otter.]

[The gentlemen converse privately among themselves.]

CLERIMONT

Alas, what a tyranny is this poor fellow married to! 10

TRUEWIT

Oh, but the sport will be anon, when we get him loose.

DAUPHINE

Dares he ever speak?

TRUEWIT

No Anabaptist ever railed with the like licence. But mark her

language in the meantime, I beseech you.

MRS OTTER

[Addressing them] Gentlemen, you are very aptly come. My cousin, 15

Sir Amorous, will be here briefly.

TRUEWIT

In good time, lady. Was not Sir John Daw here, to ask for him and the

company?

MRS OTTER

I cannot assure you, Master Truewit. Here was a very melancholy

knight in a ruff, that demanded my subject for somebody – a gentleman, 20

I think.

CLERIMONT

Ay, that was he, lady.

MRS OTTER

But he departed straight, I can resolve you.

DAUPHINE

What an excellent choice phrase this lady expresses in!

TRUEWIT

Oh, sir, she is the only authentical courtier, that is not naturally bred 25

one, in the city.

MRS OTTER

You have taken that report upon trust, gentlemen.

TRUEWIT

No, I assure you, the court governs it so, lady, in your behalf.

MRS OTTER

I am the servant of the court and courtiers, sir.

TRUEWIT

They are rather your idolaters. 30

MRS OTTER

Not so, sir.

[Enter] CUTBEARD.

[The gentlemen consult with him out of hearing of Mrs Otter.]

DAUPHINE

How now, Cutbeard? Any cross?

CUTBEARD

Oh, no, sir: omnia bene. ’Twas never better o’the hinges, all’s sure. I

have so pleased him with a curate that he’s gone to’t almost with the delight

he hopes for soon. 35

DAUPHINE

What is he for a vicar?

CUTBEARD

One that has catched a cold, sir, and can scarce be heard six inches

off, as if he spoke out of a bulrush that were not picked, or his throat were full

of pith – a fine, quick fellow and an excellent barber of prayers. I came to tell

you, sir, that you might omnem movere lapidem (as they say), be ready with your 40

vexation.

DAUPHINE

Gramercy, honest Cutbeard. Be thereabouts with thy key to let us

in.

CUTBEARD

I will not fail you, sir. Ad manum. [Exit.]

TRUEWIT

Well, I’ll go watch my coaches. 45

CLERIMONT

Do, and we’ll send Daw to you, if you meet him not. [Exit Truewit.]

MRS OTTER

[Joining the gentlemen’s company] Is Master Truewit gone?

DAUPHINE

Yes, lady. There is some unfortunate business fallen out.

MRS OTTER

So I judged by the physiognomy of the fellow that came in; and I

had a dream last night too of the new pageant and my Lady Mayoress, which 50

is always very ominous to me. I told it my Lady Haughty t’other day, when

Her Honour came hither to see some china stuffs; and she expounded it out of

Artemidorus, and I have found it since very true. It has done me many affronts.

CLERIMONT

Your dream, lady?

MRS OTTER

Yes, sir, anything I do but dream o’the city. It stained me a damask 55

tablecloth, cost me eighteen pound at one time, and burnt me a black satin

gown as I stood by the fire at my Lady Centaur’s chamber in the college another

time. A third time, at the Lord’s masque, it dropped all my wire and my ruff

with wax candle, that I could not go up to the banquet. A fourth time, as I was

taking coach to go to Ware to meet a friend, it dashed me a new suit all over (a 60

crimson satin doublet and black velvet skirts) with a brewer’s horse, that I was

fain to go in and shift me, and kept my chamber a leash of days for the anguish

of it.

DAUPHINE

These were dire mischances, lady.

CLERIMONT

I would not dwell in the city an ’twere so fatal to me. 65

MRS OTTER

Yes, sir, but I do take advice of my doctor, to dream of it as little as

I can.

DAUPHINE

You do well, Mistress Otter.

[Enter] DAW. [Clerimont takes him aside.]

MRS OTTER

Will it please you to enter the house farther, gentlemen?

DAUPHINE

And your favour, lady. But we stay to speak with a knight, Sir John 70

Daw, who is here come. We shall follow you, lady.

MRS OTTER

At your own time, sir. It is my cousin Sir Amorous his feast –

DAUPHINE

I know it, lady.

MRS OTTER

And mine together. But it is for his honour, and therefore I take no

name of it more than of the place. 75

DAUPHINE

You are a bounteous kinswoman.

MRS OTTER

Your servant, sir. [Exit.]

3.3

[Clerimont and Daw come forward to join Dauphine.]

CLERIMONT

Why, do not you know it, Sir John Daw?

DAW

No, I am a rook if I do.

CLERIMONT

I’ll tell you, then: she’s married by this time! And whereas you

were put i’the head that she was gone with Sir Dauphine, I assure you Sir

Dauphine has been the noblest, honestest friend to you that ever gentleman 5

of your quality could boast of. He has discovered the whole plot, and made

your mistress so acknowledging and indeed so ashamed of her injury to you

that she desires you to forgive her, and but grace her wedding with your

presence today. She is to be married to a very good fortune, she says – his uncle, old

Morose – and she willed me in private to tell you that she shall be able to do 10

you more favours, and with more security now, than before.

DAW

Did she say so, i’faith?

CLERIMONT

Why, what do you think of me, Sir John! Ask Sir Dauphine.

DAW

Nay, I believe you. – Good Sir Dauphine, did she desire me to forgive her?

DAUPHINE

I assure you, Sir John, she did. 15

DAW

Nay, then, I do with all my heart, and I’ll be jovial.

CLERIMONT

Yes, for look you, sir, this was the injury to you: La Foole intended

this feast to honour her bridal day, and made you the property to invite the

college ladies and promise to bring her; and then at the time she should have

appeared (as his friend) to have given you the dor. Whereas now Sir Dauphine 20

has brought her to a feeling of it, with this kind of satisfaction, that you shall

bring all the ladies to the place where she is and be very jovial; and there she

will have a dinner, which shall be in your name, and so disappoint La Foole,

to make you good again and (as it were) a saver i’the main.

DAW

As I am a knight, I honour her and forgive her heartily. 25

CLERIMONT

About it, then, presently. Truewit is gone before to confront the

coaches and to acquaint you with so much if he meet you. Join with him, and

’tis well.

[Enter] LA FOOLE.

See, here comes your antagonist, but take you no notice, but be very jovial.

LA FOOLE

Are the ladies come, Sir John Daw, and your mistress? 30[Exit Daw.]

Sir Dauphine! You are exceeding welcome, and honest Master Clerimont.

Where’s my cousin? Did you see no collegiates, gentlemen?

DAUPHINE

Collegiates! Do you not hear, Sir Amorous, how you are abused?

LA FOOLE

How, sir!

CLERIMONT

Will you speak so kindly to Sir John Daw, that has done you such 35

an affront?

LA FOOLE

Wherein, gentlemen? Let me be a suitor to you to know, I beseech

you.

CLERIMONT

Why, sir, his mistress is married today to Sir Dauphine’s uncle,

your cousin’s neighbour, and he has diverted all the ladies and all your company 40

thither to frustrate your provision and stick a disgrace upon you. He was

here, now, to have enticed us away from you, too, but we told him his own, I

think.

LA FOOLE

Has Sir John Daw wronged me so inhumanly?

DAUPHINE

He has done it, Sir Amorous, most maliciously and treacherously; 45

but if you’ll be ruled by us, you shall quit him, i’faith.

LA FOOLE

Good gentlemen! I’ll make one, believe it. How, I pray?

DAUPHINE

Marry, sir, get me your pheasants and your godwits and your best

meat, and dish it in silver dishes of your cousin’s presently, and say nothing,

but clap me a clean towel about you, like a sewer, and, bare-headed, march 50

afore it with a good confidence (’tis but over the way, hard by) and we’ll second

you, where you shall set it o’the board, and bid ’em welcome to’t, which

shall show ’tis yours and disgrace his preparation utterly; and for your cousin,

whereas she should be troubled here at home with care of making and giving

welcome, she shall transfer all that labour thither and be a principal guest 55

herself, sit ranked with the college-honours, and be honoured, and have her

health drunk as often, as bare, and as loud as the best of ’em.

LA FOOLE

I’ll go tell her presently. It shall be done, that’s resolved. [Exit.]

CLERIMONT

I thought he would not hear it out but ’twould take him.

DAUPHINE

Well, there be guests and meat now; how shall we do for music? 60

CLERIMONT

The smell of the venison going through the street will invite one

noise of fiddlers or other.

DAUPHINE

I would it would call the trumpeters thither.

CLERIMONT

Faith, there is hope; they have intelligence of all feasts. There’s

good correspondence betwixt them and the London cooks. ’Tis twenty to one 65

but we have ’em.

DAUPHINE

’Twill be a most solemn day for my uncle, and an excellent fit of

mirth for us.

CLERIMONT

Ay, if we can hold up the emulation betwixt Foole and Daw, and

never bring them to expostulate. 70

DAUPHINE

Tut, flatter ’em both (as Truewit says) and you may take their

understandings in a purse-net. They’ll believe themselves to be just such men as

we make ’em, neither more nor less. They have nothing, not the use of their

senses, but by tradition.

He [LA FOOLE] enters like a sewer.

CLERIMONT

See! Sir Amorous has his towel on already. [To La Foole] Have you 75

persuaded your cousin?

LA FOOLE

Yes, ’tis very feasible; she’ll do anything, she says, rather than the La

Fooles shall be disgraced.

DAUPHINE

She is a noble kinswoman. It will be such a pestling device, Sir

Amorous! It will pound all your enemy’s practices to powder and blow him up 80

with his own mine, his own train.

LA FOOLE

Nay, we’ll give fire, I warrant you.

CLERIMONT

But you must carry it privately, without any noise, and take no

notice by any means –

[Enter] OTTER.

OTTER

Gentlemen, my princess says you shall have all her silver dishes, festinate; 85

and she’s gone to alter her tire a little and go with you –

CLERIMONT

And yourself too, Captain Otter.

DAUPHINE

By any means, sir.

OTTER

Yes, sir, I do mean it. But I would entreat my cousin Sir Amorous, and

you gentlemen, to be suitors to my princess that I may carry my bull and my 90

bear, as well as my horse.

CLERIMONT

That you shall do, Captain Otter.

LA FOOLE

My cousin will never consent, gentlemen.

DAUPHINE

She must consent, Sir Amorous, to reason.

LA FOOLE

Why, she says they are no decorum among ladies. 95

OTTER

But they are decora, and that’s better, sir.

CLERIMONT

Ay, she must hear argument. Did not Pasiphae, who was a queen,

love a bull? And was not Callisto, the mother of Arcas, turned into a bear and

made a star, Mistress Ursula, i’the heavens?

OTTER

Oh, God, that I could ha’ said as much! I will have these stories painted 100

i’the Bear Garden, ex Ovidii Metamorphosi.

DAUPHINE

Where is your princess, Captain? Pray be our leader.

OTTER

That I shall, sir.

CLERIMONT

Make haste, good Sir Amorous. [Exeunt.]

3.4 [Enter] MOROSE, EPICENE, PARSON, [and] CUTBEARD.

MOROSE

[Giving the Parson a gratuity] Sir, there’s an angel for yourself, and a

brace of angels for your cold. Muse not at this manage of my bounty. It is fit

we should thank Fortune, double to Nature, for any benefit she confers upon

us. Besides, it is your imperfection, but my solace.

PARSON

(Speaks as having a cold) I thank Your Worship, so is it mine, now. 5

MOROSE

What says he, Cutbeard?

CUTBEARD

He says, praesto, sir. Whensoever Your Worship needs him, he can

be ready with the like. He got this cold with sitting up late and singing

catches with cloth-workers.

MOROSE

No more. I thank him. 10

PARSON

God keep Your Worship, and give you much joy with your fair spouse.

Umh, umh! (He coughs.)

MOROSE

Oh, oh! Stay, Cutbeard! Let him give me five shillings of my money

back. As it is bounty to reward benefits, so is it equity to mulct injuries. I will

have it. [Cutbeard and the Parson confer.] What says he? 15

CUTBEARD

He cannot change it, sir.

MOROSE

It must be changed.

CUTBEARD

[Aside to the Parson] Cough again.

MOROSE

What says he?

CUTBEARD

He will cough out the rest, sir. 20

PARSON

(Again) Umh, umh, umh!

MOROSE

Away, away with him, stop his mouth! Away; I forgive it. –

[Exit Cutbeard, taking the Parson with him.]

EPICENE

Fie, Master Morose, that you will use this violence to a man of the

church!

MOROSE

How! 25

EPICENE

It does not become your gravity or breeding (as you pretend in court)

to have offered this outrage on a waterman, or any more boisterous creature,

much less on a man of his civil coat.

MOROSE

You can speak, then!

EPICENE

Yes, sir. 30

MOROSE

Speak out, I mean.

EPICENE

Ay, sir. Why, did you think you had married a statue, or a motion only?

One of the French puppets, with the eyes turned with a wire? Or some

innocent out of the hospital, that would stand with her hands thus, and a

plaice mouth, and look upon you? 35

MOROSE

Oh, immodesty! A manifest woman! [Calling] What, Cutbeard!

EPICENE

Nay, never quarrel with Cutbeard, sir; it is too late now. I confess

it doth bate somewhat of the modesty I had when I writ simply maid; but

I hope I shall make it a stock still competent to the estate and dignity of your

wife. 40

MOROSE

She can talk!

EPICENE

Yes, indeed, sir.

MOROSE

[Calling] What, sirrah! – None of my knaves there?

[Enter MUTE.]

Where is this impostor Cutbeard?

[Mute makes signs.]

EPICENE

Speak to him, fellow, speak to him. I’ll have none of this coacted, 45

unnatural dumbness in my house, in a family where I govern. [Exit Mute.]

MOROSE

She is my regent already! I have married a Penthesilea, a Semiramis,

sold my liberty to a distaff!

3.5 [Enter] TRUEWIT.

TRUEWIT

Where’s Master Morose?

MOROSE

Is he come again? Lord have mercy upon me!

TRUEWIT

I wish you all joy, Mistress Epicene, with your grave and honourable

match.

EPICENE

I return you the thanks, Master Truewit, so friendly a wish deserves. 5

MOROSE

She has acquaintance, too!

TRUEWIT

God save you, sir, and give you all contentment in your fair choice

here. Before I was the bird of night to you, the owl, but now I am the

messenger of peace, a dove, and bring you the glad wishes of many friends, to the

celebration of this good hour. 10

MOROSE

What hour, sir?

TRUEWIT

Your marriage hour, sir. I commend your resolution, that – not with-

standing all the dangers I laid afore you, in the voice of a night-crow – would

yet go on and be yourself. It shows you are a man constant to your own ends,

and upright to your purposes, that would not be put off with left-handed cries. 15

MOROSE

How should you arrive at the knowledge of so much?

TRUEWIT

Why, did you ever hope, sir, committing the secrecy of it to a barber,

that less than the whole town should know it? You might as well ha’ told it

the conduit, or the bake-house, or the infantry that follow the court, and with

more security. Could your gravity forget so old and noted a remnant as lippis et 20

tonsoribus notum? Well, sir, forgive it yourself now, the fault, and be communicable

with your friends. Here will be three or four fashionable ladies from the

college to visit you presently, and their train of minions and followers.

MOROSE

[Calling] Bar my doors! Bar my doors! Where are all my eaters, my

mouths now? 25

[Enter SERVANTS.]

Bar up my doors, you varlets!

EPICENE

He is a varlet that stirs to such an office. Let ’em stand open. I would

see him that dares move his eyes toward it. Shall I have a barricado made

against my friends, to be barred of any pleasure they can bring in to me with

honourable visitation? 30[Exeunt Servants.]

MOROSE

Oh, Amazonian impudence!

TRUEWIT

Nay, faith, in this, sir, she speaks but reason, and methinks is more

continent than you. Would you go to bed so presently, sir, afore noon? A man

of your head and hair should owe more to that reverend ceremony, and not

mount the marriage bed like a town bull or a mountain goat, but stay the 35

due season and ascend it then with religion and fear. Those delights are to

be steeped in the humour and silence of the night, and give the day to other

open pleasures and jollities of feast, of music, of revels, of discourse. We’ll have

all, sir, that may make your Hymen high and happy.

MOROSE

Oh, my torment, my torment! 40

TRUEWIT

Nay, if you endure the first half hour, sir, so tediously, and with this

irksomeness, what comfort or hope can this fair gentlewoman make to herself

hereafter, in the consideration of so many years as are to come –

MOROSE

Of my affliction. Good sir, depart, and let her do it alone.

TRUEWIT

I have done, sir. 45

MOROSE

That cursed barber!

TRUEWIT

Yes, faith, a cursed wretch indeed, sir.

MOROSE

I have married his cittern, that’s common to all men. Some plague

above the plague –

TRUEWIT

All Egypt’s ten plagues – 50

MOROSE

Revenge me on him!

TRUEWIT

’Tis very well, sir. If you laid on a curse or two more, I’ll assure you

he’ll bear ’em. As, that he may get the pox with seeking to cure it, sir? Or, that

while he is curling another man’s hair, his own may drop off? Or, for burning

some male bawd’s lock, he may have his brain beat out with the curling 55

iron?

MOROSE

No, let the wretch live wretched. May he get the itch, and his shop so

lousy as no man dare come at him, nor he come at no man!

TRUEWIT

Ay, and if he would swallow all his balls for pills, let not them purge

him. 60

MOROSE

Let his warming pan be ever cold!

TRUEWIT

A perpetual frost underneath it, sir.

MOROSE

Let him never hope to see fire again!

TRUEWIT

But in hell, sir.

MOROSE

His chairs be always empty, his scissors rust, and his combs mould in 65

their cases!

TRUEWIT

Very dreadful, that! And may he lose the invention, sir, of carving

lanterns in paper.

MOROSE

Let there be no bawd carted that year to employ a basin of his, but let

him be glad to eat his sponge for bread! 70

TRUEWIT

And drink lotium to it, and much good do him.

MOROSE

Or, for want of bread –

TRUEWIT

Eat ear-wax, sir. I’ll help you. Or, draw his own teeth and add them

to the lute-string.

MOROSE

No, beat the old ones to powder and make bread of them. 75

TRUEWIT

Yes, make meal o’the millstones.

MOROSE

May all the botches and burns that he has cured on others break out

upon him!

TRUEWIT

And he now forget the cure of ’em in himself, sir, or, if he do remember

it, let him ha’ scraped all his linen into lint for’t, and have not a rag left 80

him to set up with.

MOROSE

Let him never set up again, but have the gout in his hands for ever!

Now, no more, sir.

TRUEWIT

Oh, that last was too high set! You might go less with him, i’faith, and

be revenged enough; as, that he be never able to new-paint his pole – 85

MOROSE

Good sir, no more. I forgot myself.

TRUEWIT

Or, want credit to take up with a comb-maker –

MOROSE

No more, sir.

TRUEWIT

Or, having broken his glass in a former despair, fall now into a much

greater of ever getting another – 90

MOROSE

I beseech you, no more.

TRUEWIT

Or, that he never be trusted with trimming of any but chimney

sweepers –

MOROSE

Sir –

TRUEWIT

Or, may he cut a collier’s throat with his razor, by chance-medley, and 95

yet hang for’t!

MOROSE

I will forgive him rather than hear any more. I beseech you, sir.

3.6 [Enter] DAW, [conducting] HAUGHTY, CENTAUR, MAVIS, [and]TRUSTY.

DAW

This way, madam.

MOROSE

Oh, the sea breaks in upon me! Another flood! An inundation! I shall

be o’erwhelmed with noise. It beats already at my shores. I feel an earthquake

in myself for’t.

DAW

[Kissing Epicene] Give you joy, mistress. 5

MOROSE

Has she servants, too?

DAW

[To Epicene] I have brought some ladies here to see and know you.

(She kisses them severally as he presents them.) My Lady Haughty; this, my Lady Centaur;

Mistress Doll Mavis; Mistress Trusty, my Lady Haughty’s woman. Where’s your

husband? Let’s see him. Can he endure no noise? Let me come to him. 10

MOROSE

What nomenclator is this?

TRUEWIT

Sir John Daw, sir, your wife’s servant, this.

MOROSE

A Daw, and her servant! Oh, ’tis decreed, ’tis decreed of me, an she have

such servants. [He starts to leave.]

TRUEWIT

Nay, sir, you must kiss the ladies; you must not go away now. They 15

come toward you to seek you out.

HAUGHTY

I’faith, Master Morose, would you steal a marriage thus, in the midst

of so many friends, and not acquaint us? Well, I’ll kiss you, notwithstanding

the justice of my quarrel. [To Epicene] You shall give me leave, mistress, to use a

becoming familiarity with your husband. [She kisses Morose.] 20

EPICENE

Your Ladyship does me an honour in it, to let me know he is so worthy

your favour, as you have done both him and me grace to visit so unprepared a

pair to entertain you.

MOROSE

Compliment! Compliment!

EPICENE

But I must lay the burden of that upon my servant here. 25

HAUGHTY

It shall not need, Mistress Morose; we will all bear, rather than one

shall be oppressed.

MOROSE

I know it, and you will teach her the faculty if she be to learn it.

[Morose stands aside. The ladies converse out of his hearing.]

HAUGHTY

Is this the silent woman?

CENTAUR

Nay, she has found her tongue since she was married, Master Truewit 30

says.

[Truewit joins them.]

HAUGHTY

Oh, Master Truewit! Save you. What kind of creature is your bride

here? She speaks, methinks.

TRUEWIT

Yes, madam, believe it, she is a gentlewoman of very absolute

behaviour and of a good race. 35

HAUGHTY

And Jack Daw told us she could not speak.

TRUEWIT

So it was carried in plot, madam, to put her upon this old fellow, by

Sir Dauphine, his nephew, and one or two more of us; but she is a woman of

an excellent assurance and an extraordinary happy wit and tongue. You shall

see her make rare sport with Daw ere night. 40

HAUGHTY

And he brought us to laugh at her!

TRUEWIT

That falls out often, madam, that he that thinks himself the master

wit is the master fool. I assure Your Ladyship, ye cannot laugh at her.

HAUGHTY

No, we’ll have her to the college. An she have wit, she shall be one of

us. – Shall she not, Centaur? We’ll make her a collegiate. 45

CENTAUR

Yes, faith, madam, and Mavis and she will set up a side.

TRUEWIT

Believe it, madam, and Mistress Mavis, she will sustain her part.

MAVIS

I’ll tell you that when I have talked with her and tried her.

HAUGHTY

Use her very civilly, Mavis.

MAVIS

So I will, madam. 50

[She walks aside with Epicene.]

MOROSE

[To himself, still not hearing their conversation] Blessed minute, that they

would whisper thus ever!

TRUEWIT

In the meantime, madam, would but Your Ladyship help to vex him

a little. You know his disease; talk to him about the wedding ceremonies, or

call for your gloves, or – 55

HAUGHTY

Leave me alone. Centaur, help me. [Calling to Morose] Master

bride-groom, where are you?

MOROSE

[To himself] Oh, it was too miraculously good to last!

HAUGHTY

We see no ensigns of a wedding here, no character of a bride-ale.

Where be our scarves and our gloves? I pray you, give ’em us. Let’s know 60

your bride’s colours and yours, at least.

CENTAUR

Alas, madam, he has provided none.

MOROSE

Had I known Your Ladyship’s painter, I would.

HAUGHTY

He has given it you, Centaur, i’faith. But do you hear, Master

Morose, a jest will not absolve you in this manner. You that have sucked 65

the milk of the court and from thence have been brought up to the very

strong meats and wine of it, been a courtier from the biggin to the nightcap,

as we may say, and you to offend in such a high point of ceremony as this, and

let your nuptials want all marks of solemnity! How much plate have you lost

today (if you had but regarded your profit), what gifts, what friends, through 70

your mere rusticity!

MOROSE

Madam –

HAUGHTY

Pardon me, sir, I must insinuate your errors to you. No gloves? No

garters? No scarves? No epithalamium? No masque?

DAW

Yes, madam, I’ll make an epithalamium. I promised my mistress; I have 75

begun it already. Will Your Ladyship hear it?

HAUGHTY

Ay, good Jack Daw.

MOROSE

[To Haughty] Will it please Your Ladyship command a chamber and be

private with your friend? You shall have your choice of rooms to retire to after;

my whole house is yours. I know it hath been Your Ladyship’s errand into the 80

city at other times, however now you have been unhappily diverted upon me;

but I shall be loath to break any honourable custom of Your Ladyship’s. And

therefore, good madam –

EPICENE

Come, you are a rude bridegroom to entertain ladies of honour in this

fashion. 85

CENTAUR

He is a rude groom, indeed.

TRUEWIT

By that light, you deserve to be grafted and have your horns reach

from one side of the island to the other. Do not mistake me, sir. I but speak

this to give the ladies some heart again, not for any malice to you.

MOROSE

[Indicating Truewit] Is this your bravo, ladies? 90

TRUEWIT

As God help me, if you utter such another word, I’ll take mistress

bride in, and begin to you in a very sad cup, do you see? Go to; know your

friends and such as love you.

3.7 [Enter] CLERIMONT [leading in a number of MUSICIANS].

CLERIMONT

By your leave, ladies. Do you want any music? I have brought you

variety of noises. – Play, sirs, all of you.

Music of all sorts.

MOROSE

Oh, a plot, a plot, a plot, a plot upon me! This day I shall be their anvil

to work on; they will grate me asunder. ’Tis worse than the noise of a saw!

CLERIMONT

No, they are hair, resin, and guts. I can give you the receipt. 5

TRUEWIT

[To the Musicians] Peace, boys.

CLERIMONT

[To the Musicians] Play, I say.

TRUEWIT

Peace, rascals! [The Musicians stop.] [To Morose] You see who’s your

friend now, sir? Take courage; put on a martyr’s resolution. Mock down all

their attemptings with patience. ’Tis but a day, and I would suffer heroically. 10

Should an ass exceed me in fortitude? No. You betray your infirmity with your

hanging dull ears, and make them insult. Bear up bravely and constantly.

LA FOOLE passes over, sewing the meat [with SERVANTS followed by DAUPHINE and MRS OTTER].

Look you here, sir, what honour is done you unexpected by your nephew: a

wedding dinner come, and a knight sewer before it, for the more reputation,

and fine Mistress Otter, your neighbour, in the rump or tail of it. 15

MOROSE

Is that Gorgon, that Medusa, come? Hide me, hide me!

TRUEWIT

I warrant you, sir, she will not transform you. Look upon her with

a good courage. Pray you entertain her and conduct your guests in. No? –

Mistress Bride, will you entreat in the ladies? Your bridegroom is so shamefaced

here – 20

EPICENE

[To Haughty] Will it please Your Ladyship, madam?

HAUGHTY

With the benefit of your company, mistress.

EPICENE

[To Daw] Servant, pray you perform your duties.

DAW

And glad to be commanded, mistress.

CENTAUR

[To Mavis] How like you her wit, Mavis? 25

MAVIS

Very prettily, absolutely well.

MRS OTTER

’Tis my place.

MAVIS

You shall pardon me, Mistress Otter.

MRS OTTER

Why, I am a collegiate.

MAVIS

But not in ordinary. 30

MRS OTTER

But I am.

MAVIS

We’ll dispute that within. [Exeunt ladies, escorted by Daw.]

CLERIMONT

Would this had lasted a little longer!

TRUEWIT

And that they had sent for the heralds!

[Enter OTTER.]

Captain Otter, what news? 35

OTTER

I have brought my bull, bear, and horse in private, and yonder are the

trumpeters without, and the drum, gentlemen.

The drum and trumpets sound.

MOROSE

Oh, oh, oh!

OTTER

And we will have a rouse in each of ’em anon, for bold Britons, i’faith.

[The drum and trumpets sound again.]

MOROSE

Oh, oh, oh! 40[Exit.]

ALL

Follow, follow, follow! [Exeunt.]

4.1 [Enter] TRUEWIT [and] CLERIMONT.

TRUEWIT

Was there ever poor bridegroom so tormented? Or man, indeed?

CLERIMONT

I have not read of the like in the chronicles of the land.

TRUEWIT

Sure, he cannot but go to a place of rest after all this purgatory.

CLERIMONT

He may presume it, I think.

TRUEWIT

The spitting, the coughing, the laughter, the neezing, the farting, 5

dancing, noise of the music, and her masculine and loud commanding, and

urging the whole family, makes him think he has married a Fury.

CLERIMONT

And she carries it up bravely.

TRUEWIT

Ay, she takes any occasion to speak; that’s the height on’t.

CLERIMONT

And how soberly Dauphine labours to satisfy him that it was none 10

of his plot!

TRUEWIT

And has almost brought him to the faith i’the article.

[Enter] DAUPHINE.

Here he comes. – Where is he now? What’s become of him, Dauphine?

DAUPHINE

Oh, hold me up a little! I shall go away i’the jest else. He has got

on his whole nest of nightcaps, and locked himself up i’the top o’the house, 15

as high as ever he can climb from the noise. I peeped in at a cranny and saw

him sitting over a crossbeam o’the roof, like him o’the saddler’s horse in Fleet

Street, upright; and he will sleep there.

CLERIMONT

But where are your collegiates?

DAUPHINE

Withdrawn with the bride in private. 20

TRUEWIT

Oh, they are instructing her i’the college grammar. If she have

grace with them, she knows all their secrets instantly.

CLERIMONT

Methinks the Lady Haughty looks well today, for all my dispraise

of her i’the morning. I think I shall come about to thee again, Truewit.

TRUEWIT

Believe it, I told you right. Women ought to repair the losses time and 25

years have made i’their features with dressings. And an intelligent woman,

if she know by herself the least defect, will be most curious to hide it, and

it becomes her. If she be short, let her sit much, lest when she stands she be

thought to sit. If she have an ill foot, let her wear her gown the longer and her

shoe the thinner. If a fat hand and scald nails, let her carve the less, and act in 30

gloves. If a sour breath, let her never discourse fasting, and always talk at her

distance. If she have black and rugged teeth, let her offer the less at laughter,

especially if she laugh wide and open.

CLERIMONT

Oh, you shall have some women, when they laugh, you would

think they brayed, it is so rude, and – 35

TRUEWIT

Ay, and others that will stalk i’their gait like an ostrich, and take huge

strides. I cannot endure such a sight. I love measure i’the feet and number i’the

voice; they are gentlenesses that ofttimes draw no less than the face.

DAUPHINE

How cam’st thou to study these creatures so exactly? I would thou

wouldst make me a proficient. 40

TRUEWIT

Yes, but you must leave to live i’your chamber then a month together

upon Amadis de Gaul or Don Quixote, as you are wont, and come abroad where

the matter is frequent, to court, to tiltings, public shows and feasts, to plays,

and church sometimes; thither they come to show their new tires too, to see

and to be seen. In these places a man shall find whom to love, whom to play 45

with, whom to touch once, whom to hold ever. The variety arrests his judgement.

A wench to please a man comes not down dropping from the ceiling, as

he lies on his back droning a tobacco pipe. He must go where she is.

DAUPHINE

Yes, and be never the near.

TRUEWIT

Out, heretic! That diffidence makes thee worthy it should be so. 50

CLERIMONT

He says true to you, Dauphine.

DAUPHINE

Why?

TRUEWIT

A man should not doubt to overcome any woman. Think he can vanquish

’em, and he shall; for, though they deny, their desire is to be tempted.

Penelope herself cannot hold out long. Ostend, you saw, was taken at last. You 55

must persevere and hold to your purpose. They would solicit us, but that they

are afraid. Howsoever, they wish in their hearts we should solicit them. Praise

’em, flatter ’em; you shall never want eloquence or trust. Even the chastest

delight to feel themselves that way rubbed. With praises you must mix kisses,

too. If they take them, they’ll take more. Though they strive, they would be 60

overcome.

CLERIMONT

Oh, but a man must beware of force.

TRUEWIT

It is to them an acceptable violence, and has oft-times the place of

the greatest courtesy. She that might have been forced, an you let her go free

without touching, though she then seem to thank you, will ever hate you after, 65

and, glad i’the face, is assuredly sad at the heart.

CLERIMONT

But all women are not to be taken all ways.

TRUEWIT

’Tis true, no more than all birds or all fishes. If you appear learned to

an ignorant wench, or jocund to a sad, or witty to a foolish, why, she presently

begins to mistrust herself. You must approach them i’their own height, their 70

own line, for the contrary makes many that fear to commit themselves to noble

and worthy fellows run into the embraces of a rascal. If she love wit, give verses,

though you borrow ’em of a friend or buy ’em to have good. If valour, talk

of your sword and be frequent in the mention of quarrels, though you be

staunch in fighting. If activity, be seen o’your barbary often, or leaping over 75

stools for the credit of your back. If she love good clothes or dressing, have your

learned council about you every morning, your French tailor, barber, linener,

etc. Let your powder, your glass, and your comb be your dearest acquaintance.

Take more care for the ornament of your head than the safety, and wish the

commonwealth rather troubled than a hair about you. That will take her. 80

Then, if she be covetous and craving, do you promise anything and perform

sparingly; so shall you keep her in appetite still. Seem as you would give, but

be like a barren field that yields little, or unlucky dice to foolish and hoping

gamesters. Let your gifts be slight and dainty rather than precious. Let cunning

be above cost. Give cherries at time of year, or apricots, and say they were 85

sent you out o’the country, though you bought ’em in Cheapside. Admire her

tires; like her in all fashions; compare her in every habit to some deity; invent

excellent dreams to flatter her, and riddles. Or, if she be a great one, perform

always the second parts to her: like what she likes, praise whom she praises,

and fail not to make the household and servants yours, yea, the whole family, 90

and salute ’em by their names – ’tis but light cost if you can purchase ’em

so – and make her physician your pensioner, and her chief woman. Nor will it

be out of your gain to make love to her, too, so she follow, not usher, her lady’s

pleasure. All blabbing is taken away when she comes to be a part of the crime.

DAUPHINE

On what courtly lap hast thou late slept, to come forth so sudden 95

and absolute a courtling?

TRUEWIT

Good faith, I should rather question you that are so heark’ning after

these mysteries. I begin to suspect your diligence, Dauphine. Speak, art thou

in love in earnest?

DAUPHINE

Yes, by my troth am I. ’Twere ill dissembling before thee. 100

TRUEWIT

With which of ’em, I pray thee?

DAUPHINE

With all the collegiates.

CLERIMONT

Out on thee! We’ll keep you at home, believe it, i’the stable, an you

be such a stallion.

TRUEWIT

No. I like him well. Men should love wisely, and all women: some 105

one for the face, and let her please the eye; another for the skin, and let her

please the touch; a third for the voice, and let her please the ear; and where the

objects mix, let the senses so, too. Thou wouldst think it strange if I should

make ’em all in love with thee afore night!

DAUPHINE

I would say thou hadst the best philtre i’the world, and couldst do 110

more than Madam Medea or Doctor Forman.

TRUEWIT

If I do not, let me play the mountebank for my meat while I live, and

the bawd for my drink.

DAUPHINE

So be it, I say.

4.2 [Enter] OTTER [with his cups], DAW, [and] LA FOOLE. [MUSICIANS are at hand.]

OTTER

Oh, Lord, gentlemen, how my knights and I have missed you here!

CLERIMONT

Why, Captain, what service? What service?

OTTER

To see me bring up my bull, bear, and horse to fight.

DAW

Yes, faith, the Captain says we shall be his dogs to bait ’em.

DAUPHINE

A good employment. 5

TRUEWIT

Come on, let’s see a course, then.

LA FOOLE

I am afraid my cousin will be offended if she come.

OTTER

Be afraid of nothing. – Gentlemen, I have placed the drum and the trumpets,

and one to give ’em the sign when you are ready. [The Musicians prepare to

play. Otter produces his cups and distributes them.] Here’s my bull for myself, and 10

my bear for Sir John Daw, and my horse for Sir Amorous. Now, set your foot to

mine and yours to his, and –

LA FOOLE

Pray God my cousin come not!

OTTER

Saint George and Saint Andrew! Fear no cousins. [To the Musicians.]

Come, sound, sound. Et rauco strepuerunt cornua cantu. 15

[Drum and trumpets sound. They drink.]

TRUEWIT

Well said, Captain, i’faith! Well fought at the bull!

CLERIMONT

[To Daw] Well held at the bear!

TRUEWIT

Low, low, Captain.

DAUPHINE

Oh, the horse has kicked off his dog already.

LA FOOLE

I cannot drink it, as I am a knight. 20

TRUEWIT

Godso, off with his spurs, somebody.

LA FOOLE

It goes again’ my conscience. My cousin will be angry with it.

DAW

[Finishing his cup] I ha’ done mine.

TRUEWIT

You fought high and fair, Sir John.

CLERIMONT

At the head. 25

DAUPHINE

Like an excellent bear-dog.

CLERIMONT

[Aside to Daw] You take no notice of the business, I hope.

DAW

[Aside to Clerimont] Not a word, sir. You see we are jovial.

OTTER

Sir Amorous, you must not equivocate. It must be pulled down, for all

‘my cousin’. 30

CLERIMONT

[Aside to La Foole] ’Sfoot, if you take not your drink, they’ll think you

are discontented with something. You’ll betray all if you take the least notice.

LA FOOLE

[Aside to Clerimont] Not I. I’ll both drink and talk, then. [He drinks.]

OTTER

You must pull the horse on his knees, Sir Amorous. Fear no cousins. Jacta

est alea. 35

TRUEWIT

[Aside to Clerimont and Dauphine] Oh, now he’s in his vein, and bold.

The least hint given him of his wife now will make him rail desperately.

CLERIMONT

[Aside to Truewit] Speak to him of her.

TRUEWIT

[Aside to Dauphine] Do you, and I’ll fetch her to the hearing of it. [Exit.]

DAUPHINE

Captain he-Otter, your she-Otter is coming, your wife. 40

OTTER

Wife! Buzz. Titivilitium. There’s no such thing in nature. I confess, gentlemen,

I have a cook, a laundress, a house-drudge, that serves my necessary

turns and goes under that title; but he’s an ass that will be so uxorious to tie his

affections to one circle. Come, the name dulls appetite. Here, replenish again:

another bout. [The cups are filled again.] Wives are nasty, sluttish animals – 45

DAUPHINE

Oh, Captain!

OTTER

As ever the earth bare, tribus verbis. Where’s Master Truewit?

DAW

He’s slipped aside, sir.

CLERIMONT

But you must drink and be jovial.

DAW

Yes, give it me. 50

LA FOOLE

And me, too.

DAW

Let’s be jovial.

LA FOOLE

As jovial as you will.

OTTER

[Pouring more drink, and exchanging their cups] Agreed. Now you shall ha’

the bear, cousin, and Sir John Daw the horse, and I’ll ha’ the bull still. Sound, 55

Tritons o’the Thames! Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero –

[They drink.]

MOROSE

(Speaks from above, the trumpets sounding) Villains, murderers, sons of the

earth, and traitors, what do you there?

CLERIMONT

Oh, now the trumpets have waked him we shall have his company.

OTTER

A wife is a scurvy clogdogdo, an unlucky thing, a very foresaid bear whelp, 60

without any good fashion or breeding: mala bestia.

His wife [accompanied by TRUEWIT] is brought out to hear him.

[Otter remains unaware of her presence.]

DAUPHINE

Why did you marry one, then, Captain?

OTTER

A pox! I married with six thousand pound, I. I was in love with that. I

ha’ not kissed my Fury these forty weeks.

CLERIMONT

The more to blame you, Captain. 65

TRUEWIT

[Aside to Mrs Otter] Nay, Mistress Otter, hear him a little first.

OTTER

She has a breath worse than my grandmother’s, profecto.

MRS OTTER

[Aside to Truewit] Oh, treacherous liar! Kiss me, sweet Master

Truewit, and prove him a slandering knave.

TRUEWIT

[Aside to her] I’ll rather believe you, lady. 70

OTTER

And she has a peruke that’s like a pound of hemp made up in shoe-

threads.

MRS OTTER

[Aside] Oh, viper, mandrake!

OTTER

A most vile face, and yet she spends me forty pound a year in mercury

and hog’s bones. All her teeth were made i’the Blackfriars, both her eyebrows 75

i’the Strand, and her hair in Silver Street. Every part o’the town owns a piece

of her.

MRS OTTER

[Aside] I cannot hold!

OTTER

She takes herself asunder still, when she goes to bed, into some twenty

boxes, and about next day noon is put together again, like a great German 80

clock; and so comes forth and rings a tedious larum to the whole house, and

then is quiet again for an hour, but for her quarters. – Ha’ you done me right,

gentlemen?

MRS OTTER

(She falls upon him and beats him) No, sir, I’ll do you right with my

quarters, with my quarters! 85

OTTER

Oh, hold, good princess!

TRUEWIT

[To the Musicians] Sound, sound!

[Drum and trumpets sound.]

CLERIMONT

A battle, a battle!

MRS OTTER

[To Otter] You notorious, stinkardly bearward! Does my breath

smell? 90

OTTER

Under correction, dear princess. – Look to my bear and my horse,

gentlemen.

MRS OTTER

Do I want teeth and eyebrows, thou bulldog?

TRUEWIT

[To the Musicians] Sound, sound still!

[They sound again.]

OTTER

No, I protest, under correction – 95

MRS OTTER

Ay, now you are under correction you protest; but you did not

protest before correction, sir. Thou Judas, to offer to betray thy princess! I’ll

make thee an example –

MOROSE descends with a long sword.

MOROSE

I will have no such examples in my house, Lady Otter.

MRS OTTER

Ah – 100

MOROSE

Mistress Mary Ambree, your examples are dangerous.

[Exeunt Mrs Otter, Daw, and La Foole rapidly.]

Rogues, hellhounds, Stentors! Out of my doors, you sons of noise and tumult,

begot on an ill May Day, or when the galley-foist is afloat to Westminster!

A trumpeter could not be conceived but then!

[He drives out the Musicians.]

DAUPHINE

What ails you, sir? 105

MOROSE

They have rent my roof, walls, and all my windows asunder with their

brazen throats. [Exit.]

TRUEWIT

Best follow him, Dauphine.

DAUPHINE

So I will. [Exit.]

CLERIMONT

Where’s Daw and La Foole? 110

OTTER

They are both run away, sir. – Good gentlemen, help to pacify my

princess, and speak to the great ladies for me. Now must I go lie with the

bears this fortnight, and keep out o’the way till my peace be made, for this

scandal she has taken. Did you not see my bullhead, gentlemen? [He searches.]

CLERIMONT

Is’t not on, Captain? 115

TRUEWIT

[To Clerimont] No, but he may make a new one, by that is on.

OTTER

[Finding the bullhead] Oh, here ’tis. An you come over, gentlemen, and ask

for Tom Otter, we’ll go down to Ratcliffe and have a course, i’faith, for all these

disasters. There’s bona spes left.

TRUEWIT

Away, Captain! Get off while you are well. 120[Exit Otter.]

CLERIMONT

I am glad we are rid of him.

TRUEWIT

You had never been, unless we had put his wife upon him. His

humour is as tedious at last as it was ridiculous at first.

4.3 [Enter] HAUGHTY, MRS OTTER, MAVIS, DAW, LA FOOLE, CENTAUR, [and] EPICENE. Truewit [and] Clerimont [stand aside, observing].

HAUGHTY

We wondered why you shrieked so, Mistress Otter.

MRS OTTER

Oh, God, madam, he came down with a huge long naked weapon

in both his hands, and looked so dreadfully! Sure he’s beside himself.

MAVIS

Why, what made you there, Mistress Otter?

MRS OTTER

Alas, Mistress Mavis, I was chastising my subject, and thought 5

nothing of him.

DAW

[To Epicene] Faith, mistress, you must do so too. Learn to chastise. Mistress

Otter corrects her husband so, he dares not speak but under correction.

LA FOOLE

And with his hat off to her. ’Twould do you good to see.

HAUGHTY

In sadness, ’tis good and mature counsel. [To Epicene] Practise it, 10

Morose. I’ll call you ‘Morose’ still now, as I call ‘Centaur’ and ‘Mavis’; we four

will be all one.

CENTAUR

[To Epicene] And you’ll come to the college and live with us?

HAUGHTY

Make him give milk and honey.

MAVIS

Look how you manage him at first, you shall have him ever after. 15

CENTAUR

Let him allow you your coach and four horses, your woman, your

chambermaid, your page, your gentleman-usher, your French cook, and four

grooms.

HAUGHTY

And go with us to Bedlam, to the china houses, and to the Exchange.

CENTAUR

It will open the gate to your fame. 20

HAUGHTY

Here’s Centaur has immortalized herself with taming of her wild

male.

MAVIS

Ay, she has done the miracle of the kingdom.

EPICENE

But ladies, do you count it lawful to have such plurality of servants,

and do ’em all graces? 25

HAUGHTY

Why not? Why should women deny their favours to men? Are they

the poorer, or the worse?

DAW

Is the Thames less for the dyer’s water, mistress?

LA FOOLE

Or a torch, for lighting many torches?

TRUEWIT

Well said, La Foole. [Aside] What a new one he has got! 30

CENTAUR

They are empty losses women fear in this kind.

HAUGHTY

Besides, ladies should be mindful of the approach of age, and let no

time want his due use. The best of our days pass first.

MAVIS

We are rivers that cannot be called back, madam. She that now excludes

her lovers may live to lie a forsaken beldame in a frozen bed. 35

CENTAUR

’Tis true, Mavis. And who will wait on us to coach, then, or write,

or tell us the news then? Make anagrams of our names, and invite us to the

Cockpit and kiss our hands all the play-time, and draw their weapons for our

honours?

HAUGHTY

Not one. 40

DAW

Nay, my mistress is not altogether unintelligent of these things. Here be in

presence have tasted of her favours.

CLERIMONT

[Aside to Truewit] What a neighing hobby-horse is this!

EPICENE

[To Daw] But not with intent to boast ’em again, servant. [To Haughty]

And have you those excellent receipts, madam, to keep yourselves from bearing 45

of children?

HAUGHTY

Oh, yes, Morose. How should we maintain our youth and beauty

else? Many births of a woman make her old, as many crops make the earth

barren.

4.4 [Enter] MOROSE [and] DAUPHINE

[conversing privately. Truewit joins them.]

MOROSE

Oh, my cursed angel, that instructed me to this fate!

DAUPHINE

Why, sir?

MOROSE

That I should be seduced by so foolish a devil as a barber will make!

DAUPHINE

I would I had been worthy, sir, to have partaken your counsel. You

should never have trusted it to such a minister. 5

MOROSE

Would I could redeem it with the loss of an eye, nephew, a hand, or any

other member!

DAUPHINE

Marry, God forbid, sir, that you should geld yourself to anger your

wife.

MOROSE

So it would rid me of her! And that I did supererogatory penance in 10

a belfry at Westminster Hall, i’the Cockpit, at the fall of a stag, the Tower

Wharf – what place is there else? – London Bridge, Paris Garden, Billingsgate,

when the noises are at their height and loudest. Nay, I would sit out a play that

were nothing but fights at sea, drum, trumpet, and target!

DAUPHINE

I hope there shall be no such need, sir. Take patience, good uncle. 15

This is but a day, and ’tis well worn too, now.

MOROSE

Oh, ’twill be so for ever, nephew, I foresee it, for ever. Strife and tumult

are the dowry that comes with a wife.

TRUEWIT

I told you so, sir, and you would not believe me.

MOROSE

Alas, do not rub those wounds, Master Truewit, to blood again; ’twas 20

my negligence. Add not affliction to affliction. I have perceived the effect of it

too late in Madam Otter.

EPICENE

[Approaching Morose] How do you, sir?

MOROSE

Did you ever hear a more unnecessary question? As if she did not

see! – Why, I do as you see, empress, empress. 25

EPICENE

You are not well, sir. You look very ill. Something has distempered

you.

MOROSE

Oh, horrible, monstrous impertinencies! Would not one of these have

served? [To Truewit] Do you think, sir? Would not one of these have served?

TRUEWIT

Yes, sir, but these are but notes of female kindness, sir – certain tokens 30

that she has a voice, sir.

MOROSE

Oh, is’t so? Come, an’t be no otherwise – [To Epicene] What say you?

EPICENE

How do you feel yourself, sir?

MOROSE

Again that!

TRUEWIT

Nay, look you, sir: you would be friends with your wife upon unconscionable 35

terms, her silence –

EPICENE

[To Morose] They say you are run mad, sir.

MOROSE

Not for love, I assure you, of you; do you see?

[He behaves threateningly.]

EPICENE

Oh, lord, gentlemen! Lay hold on him, for God’s sake!

[Truewit and Clerimont restrain Morose.]

What shall I do? Who’s his physician (can you tell?) that knows the state of his 40

body best, that I might send for him? [To Morose] Good sir, speak. I’ll send for

one of my doctors, else.

MOROSE

What, to poison me, that I might die intestate and leave you possessed

of all?

EPICENE

Lord, how idly he talks, and how his eyes sparkle! He looks green 45

about the temples! Do you see what blue spots he has?

CLERIMONT

Ay, it’s melancholy.

EPICENE

Gentlemen, for heaven’s sake, counsel me. Ladies! [To Daw] Servant,

you have read Pliny and Paracelsus. Ne’er a word now to comfort a poor

gentlewoman? Ay, me! What fortune had I, to marry a distracted man? 50

DAW

I’ll tell you, mistress –

TRUEWIT

[Aside to Clerimont and Dauphine] How rarely she holds it up!

MOROSE

[Struggling to break free] What mean you, gentlemen?

EPICENE

[To Daw] What will you tell me, servant?

DAW

The disease in Greek is called μανὶα, in Latin insania, furor, vel exstasis 55

melancholica, that is, egressio, when a man ex melancholico evadit fanaticus.

MOROSE

Shall I have a lecture read upon me alive?

DAW

But he may be but phreneticus yet, mistress, and phrenetis is only delirium

or so –

EPICENE

Ay, that is for the disease, servant; but what is this to the cure? We are 60

sure enough of the disease.

MOROSE

[Struggling] Let me go!

TRUEWIT

Why, we’ll entreat her to hold her peace, sir.

MOROSE

Oh, no. Labour not to stop her. She is like a conduit-pipe that will gush

out with more force when she opens again. 65

HAUGHTY

[To Epicene] I’ll tell you, Morose, you must talk divinity to him

altogether, or moral philosophy.

LA FOOLE

Ay, and there’s an excellent book of moral philosophy, madam, of

Reynard the Fox and all the beasts, called Doni’s Philosophy.

CENTAUR

There is, indeed, Sir Amorous La Foole. 70

MOROSE

Oh, misery!

LA FOOLE

I have read it, my Lady Centaur, all over to my cousin here.

MRS OTTER

Ay, and ’tis a very good book as any is of the moderns.

DAW

Tut, he must have Seneca read to him, and Plutarch, and the ancients; the

moderns are not for this disease. 75

CLERIMONT

Why, you discommended them too, today, Sir John.

DAW

Ay, in some cases; but in these they are best, and Aristotle’s Ethics.

MAVIS

Say you so, Sir John? I think you are deceived; you took it upon trust.

HAUGHTY

Where’s Trusty, my woman? I’ll end this difference. I prithee, Otter,

call her. Her father and mother were both mad when they put her to me. 80

[Exit Mrs Otter.]

MOROSE

I think so. – Nay, gentlemen, I am tame. This is but an exercise, I know,

a marriage ceremony, which I must endure.

HAUGHTY

And one of ’em – I know not which – was cured with The Sick Man’s

Salve, and the other with Greene’s Groatsworth of Wit.

TRUEWIT

A very cheap cure, madam. 85

HAUGHTY

Ay, it’s very feasible.

[Enter MRS OTTER with TRUSTY.]

MRS OTTER

My lady called for you, Mistress Trusty. You must decide a

controversy.

HAUGHTY

Oh, Trusty, which was it you said, your father or your mother, that

was cured with The Sick Man’s Salve? 90

TRUSTY

My mother, madam, with the Salve.

TRUEWIT

Then it was The Sick Woman’s Salve.

TRUSTY

And my father with the Groatsworth of Wit. But there was other means

used: we had a preacher that would preach folk asleep still; and so they were

prescribed to go to church by an old woman that was their physician, thrice 95

a week –

EPICENE

To sleep?

TRUSTY

Yes, forsooth; and every night they read themselves asleep on those

books.

EPICENE

Good faith, it stands with great reason. I would I knew where to 100

procure those books.

MOROSE

Oh!

LA FOOLE

I can help you with one of ’em, Mistress Morose: the Groatsworth

of Wit.

EPICENE

But I shall disfurnish you, Sir Amorous. Can you spare it? 105

LA FOOLE

Oh, yes, for a week or so; I’ll read it myself to him.

EPICENE

No, I must do that, sir; that must be my office.

MOROSE

Oh, oh!

EPICENE

Sure, he would do well enough if he could sleep.

MOROSE

No, I should do well enough if you could sleep. – Have I no friend that 110

will make her drunk, or give her a little laudanum, or opium?

TRUEWIT

Why, sir, she talks ten times worse in her sleep.

MOROSE

How!

CLERIMONT

Do you not know that, sir? Never ceases all night.

TRUEWIT

And snores like a porpoise. 115

MOROSE

Oh, redeem me, fate, redeem me, fate! – For how many causes may a

man be divorced, nephew?

DAUPHINE

I know not, truly, sir.

TRUEWIT

Some divine must resolve you in that, sir, or canon lawyer.

MOROSE

I will not rest, I will not think of any other hope or comfort, till I know. 120

[Exeunt Morose and Dauphine.]

CLERIMONT

Alas, poor man!

TRUEWIT

You’ll make him mad indeed, ladies, if you pursue this.

HAUGHTY

No, we’ll let him breathe now a quarter of an hour or so.

CLERIMONT

By my faith, a large truce.

HAUGHTY

Is that his keeper that is gone with him? 125

DAW

It is his nephew, madam.

LA FOOLE

Sir Dauphine Eugenie.

CENTAUR

He looks a very pitiful knight –

DAW

As can be. This marriage has put him out of all.

LA FOOLE

He has not a penny in his purse, madam – 130

DAW

He is ready to cry all this day.

LA FOOLE

A very shark. He set me i’the nick t’other night at primero.

TRUEWIT

[Aside to Clerimont] How these swabbers talk!

CLERIMONT

[Aside to Truewit] Ay, Otter’s wine has swelled their humours above

a spring tide. 135

HAUGHTY

[To Epicene] Good Morose, let’s go in again. I like your couches

exceeding well; we’ll go lie and talk there.

EPICENE

I wait on you, madam. [Exeunt Daw, La Foole, and the ladies.]

[Truewit detains Epicene.]

TRUEWIT

’Slight, I will have ’em as silent as signs, and their posts too, ere I ha’

done. Do you hear, lady bride? I pray thee now, as thou art a noble wench, 140

continue this discourse of Dauphine within, but praise him exceedingly. Magnify

him with all the height of affection thou canst – I have some purpose in’t – and

but beat off these two rooks, Jack Daw and his fellow, with any discontentment

hither, and I’ll honour thee for ever.

EPICENE

I was about it, here. It angered me to the soul to hear ’em begin to talk 145

so malapert.

TRUEWIT

Pray thee, perform it, and thou winn’st me an idolater to thee

everlasting.

EPICENE

Will you go in and hear me do it?

TRUEWIT

No, I’ll stay here. Drive ’em out of your company; ’tis all I ask, which 150

cannot be any way better done than by extolling Dauphine, whom they have

so slighted.

EPICENE

I warrant you. You shall expect one of ’em presently. [Exit.]

CLERIMONT

What a cast of kestrels are these, to hawk after ladies thus!

TRUEWIT

Ay, and strike at such an eagle as Dauphine. 155

CLERIMONT

He will be mad when we tell him. Here he comes.

4.5 [Enter] DAUPHINE.

CLERIMONT

Oh, sir, you are welcome.

TRUEWIT

Where’s thine uncle?

DAUPHINE

Run out o’doors in’s nightcaps to talk with a casuist about his

divorce. It works admirably.

TRUEWIT

Thou wouldst ha’ said so an thou hadst been here. The ladies have 5

laughed at thee most comically since thou went’st, Dauphine.

CLERIMONT

And asked if thou wert thine uncle’s keeper.

TRUEWIT

And the brace of baboons answered, ‘Yes’, and said thou wert a

pitiful poor fellow and didst live upon posts, and hadst nothing but three suits

of apparel and some few benevolences that lords ga’ thee to fool to ’em and 10

swagger.

DAUPHINE

Let me not live, I’ll beat ’em. I’ll bind ’em both to grand madam’s

bedposts and have ’em baited with monkeys.

TRUEWIT

Thou shalt not need; they shall be beaten to thy hand, Dauphine. I

have an execution to serve upon ’em, I warrant thee, shall serve. Trust my plot. 15

DAUPHINE

Ay, you have many plots! So you had one to make all the wenches in

love with me.

TRUEWIT

Why, if I do not yet afore night, as near as ’tis, and that they do

not every one invite thee and be ready to scratch for thee, take the mortgage

of my wit. 20

CLERIMONT

’Fore God, I’ll be his witness! Thou shalt have it, Dauphine; thou

shalt be his fool for ever if thou dost not.

TRUEWIT

Agreed. Perhaps ’twill be the better estate. Do you observe this

gallery? Or rather lobby, indeed? Here are a couple of studies, at each end one:

here will I act such a tragicomedy between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, 25

Daw and La Foole. Which of ’em comes out first will I seize on. You two shall

be the chorus behind the arras, and whip out between the acts and speak. If I

do not make ’em keep the peace for this remnant of the day, if not of the year, I

have failed once. – I hear Daw coming. Hide and do not laugh, for God’s sake.

[Clerimont and Dauphine hide behind the arras.]

[Enter] DAW.

DAW

Which is the way into the garden, trow? 30

TRUEWIT

Oh, Jack Daw! I am glad I have met with you. In good faith, I must

have this matter go no further between you. I must ha’ it taken up.

DAW

What matter, sir? Between whom?

TRUEWIT

Come, you disguise it: Sir Amorous and you. If you love me, Jack,

you shall make use of your philosophy now for this once and deliver me your 35

sword. This is not the wedding the centaurs were at, though there be a she-one

here. The bride has entreated me I will see no blood shed at her bridal; you saw

her whisper me erewhile.

DAW

[Delivering his sword] As I hope to finish Tacitus, I intend no murder.

TRUEWIT

Do you not wait for Sir Amorous? 40

DAW

Not I, by my knighthood.

TRUEWIT

And your scholarship, too?

DAW

And my scholarship, too.

TRUEWIT

[Returning the sword] Go to. Then I return you your sword and ask you

mercy; but put it not up, for you will be assaulted. I understood that you had 45

apprehended it and walked here to brave him, and that you had held your life

contemptible in regard of your honour.

DAW

No, no, no such thing, I assure you. He and I parted now as good friends as

could be.

TRUEWIT

Trust not you to that visor. I saw him since dinner with another face. 50

I have known many men in my time vexed with losses, with deaths, and with

abuses, but so offended a wight as Sir Amorous did I never see or read of. For

taking away his guests, sir, today, that’s the cause, and he declares it behind

your back, with such threat’nings and contempts! He said to Dauphine, you

were the arrant’st ass – 55

DAW

Ay, he may say his pleasure.

TRUEWIT

And swears you are so protested a coward that he knows you will

never do him any manly or single right, and therefore he will take his course.

DAW

I’ll give him any satisfaction, sir – but fighting.

TRUEWIT

Ay, sir, but who knows what satisfaction he’ll take? Blood he thirsts 60

for, and blood he will have; and whereabouts on you he will have it, who knows

but himself?

DAW

I pray you, Master Truewit, be you a mediator.

TRUEWIT

[Opening a door] Well, sir, conceal yourself then in this study till I

return. Nay, you must be content to be locked in; for, for mine own reputation 65

I would not have you seen to receive a public disgrace, while I have the matter

in managing. – Godso, here he comes! (He puts him up [and closes the door, conversing through it].)

Keep your breath close, that he do not hear you sigh.

[Speaking loudly, as though conversing with La Foole.] In good faith, Sir Amorous, he is not

this way. I pray you be merciful; do not murder him; he is a Christian as good as 70

you. You are armed as if you sought a revenge on all his race! – Good Dauphine,

get him away from this place. I never knew a man’s choler so high but he would

speak to his friends, he would hear reason. [Speaking through the door.] Jack Daw!

Jack Daw! Asleep?

DAW

[Within] Is he gone, Master Truewit? 75

TRUEWIT

Ay. Did you hear him?

DAW

Oh, God! Yes.

TRUEWIT

[Aside] What a quick ear fear has!

[Daw comes forth from his now-unlocked door.]

DAW

But is he so armed as you say?

TRUEWIT

Armed? Did you ever see a fellow set out to take possession? 80

DAW

Ay, sir.

TRUEWIT

That may give you some light to conceive of him; but ’tis nothing to

the principal. Some false brother i’the house has furnished him strangely. Or

if it were out o’the house, it was Tom Otter.

DAW

Indeed, he’s a captain and his wife is his kinswoman. 85

TRUEWIT

He has got somebody’s old two-hand sword, to mow you off at the

knees. And that sword hath spawned such a dagger! But then he is so hung

with pikes, halberds, petronels, calivers, and muskets that he looks like a justice

of peace’s hall; a man of two thousand a year is not ’sessed at so many

weapons as he has on. There was never fencer challenged at so many several 90

foils. You would think he meant to murder all Saint Pulchre’s parish. If he

could but victual himself for half a year in his breeches, he is sufficiently armed

to overrun a country.

DAW

Good lord, what means he, sir? I pray you, Master Truewit, be you a

mediator. 95

TRUEWIT

Well, I’ll try if he will be appeased with a leg or an arm; if not, you

must die once.

DAW

I would be loath to lose my right arm, for writing madrigals.

TRUEWIT

Why, if he will be satisfied with a thumb or a little finger, all’s one to

me. You must think I’ll do my best. 100

DAW

Good sir, do.

He [Truewit] puts him [Daw] up again [behind the door], and then [Clerimont and Dauphine] come forth.

CLERIMONT

What hast thou done?

TRUEWIT

He will let me do nothing, man; he does all afore me. He offers his

left arm.

CLERIMONT

His left wing, for a Jack Daw. 105

DAUPHINE

Take it, by all means.

TRUEWIT

How! Maim a man for ever for a jest? What a conscience hast thou?

DAUPHINE

’Tis no loss to him; he has no employment for his arms but to eat

spoon meat. Beside, as good maim his body as his reputation.

TRUEWIT

He is a scholar and a wit, and yet he does not think so. But he loses no 110

reputation with us, for we all resolved him an ass before. – To your places

again.

CLERIMONT

I pray thee, let me be in at the other a little.

TRUEWIT

Look, you’ll spoil all. These be ever your tricks.

CLERIMONT

No, but I could hit of some things that thou wilt miss, and thou 115

wilt say are good ones.

TRUEWIT

I warrant you. I pray, forbear; I’ll leave it off else.

DAUPHINE

Come away, Clerimont.

[Clerimont and Dauphine conceal themselves again.]

[Enter] LA FOOLE.

TRUEWIT

Sir Amorous!

LA FOOLE

Master Truewit! 120

TRUEWIT

Whither were you going?

LA FOOLE

Down into the court to make water.

TRUEWIT

By no means, sir. You shall rather tempt your breeches.

LA FOOLE

Why, sir?

TRUEWIT

[Opening the other door] Enter here, if you love your life. 125

LA FOOLE

Why? Why?

TRUEWIT

Question till your throat be cut, do. Dally till the enraged soul find

you.

LA FOOLE

Who’s that?

TRUEWIT

Daw it is. Will you in? 130

LA FOOLE

Ay, ay, I’ll in. What’s the matter?

TRUEWIT

Nay, if he had been cool enough to tell us that, there had been some

hope to atone you, but he seems so implacably enraged.

LA FOOLE

’Slight, let him rage. I’ll hide myself.

TRUEWIT

Do, good sir. But what have you done to him within that should 135

provoke him thus? You have broke some jest upon him afore the ladies –

LA FOOLE

Not I, never in my life broke jest upon any man. The bride was

praising Sir Dauphine, and he went away in snuff, and I followed him – unless he

took offence at me in his drink erewhile, that I would not pledge all the horse

full. 140

TRUEWIT

By my faith, and that may be; you remember well. But he walks the

round up and down, through every room o’the house, with a towel in his

hand, crying, ‘Where’s La Foole? Who saw La Foole?’ And when Dauphine and

I demanded the cause, we can force no answer from him but ‘O revenge, how

sweet art thou! I will strangle him in this towel’ – which leads us to conjecture 145

that the main cause of his fury is for bringing your meat today, with a towel

about you, to his discredit.

LA FOOLE

Like enough. Why, an he be angry for that, I’ll stay here till his anger

be blown over.

TRUEWIT

A good, becoming resolution, sir. If you can put it on o’the sudden. 150

LA FOOLE

Yes, I can put it on. Or, I’ll away into the country presently.

TRUEWIT

How will you get out o’the house, sir? He knows you are i’the house,

and he’ll watch you this se’ennight but he’ll have you. He’ll outwait a sergeant

for you.

LA FOOLE

Why, then, I’ll stay here. 155

TRUEWIT

You must think how to victual yourself in time, then.

LA FOOLE

Why, sweet Master Truewit, will you entreat my cousin Otter to send

me a cold venison pasty, a bottle or two of wine, and a chamber pot?

TRUEWIT

A stool were better, sir, of Sir A-jax his invention.

LA FOOLE

Ay, that will be better, indeed, and a pallet to lie on. 160

TRUEWIT

Oh, I would not advise you to sleep by any means.

LA FOOLE

Would you not, sir? Why, then, I will not.

TRUEWIT

Yet there’s another fear –

LA FOOLE

Is there, sir? What is’t?

TRUEWIT

[Trying the door] No, he cannot break this door with his foot, sure. 165

LA FOOLE

I’ll set my back against it, sir. I have a good back.

TRUEWIT

But then if he should batter –

LA FOOLE

Batter! If he dare, I’ll have an action of batt’ry against him.

TRUEWIT

Cast you the worst. He has sent for powder already, and what he will

do with it, no man knows – perhaps blow up the corner o’the house where 170

he suspects you are. Here he comes! In quickly! (He feigns as if one were present,

to fright the other, who is run in to hide himself.) [Truewit speaks at La Foole’s door.] I

protest, Sir John Daw, he is not this way. What will you do? Before God, you

shall hang no petard here. I’ll die rather. Will you not take my word? I never

knew one but would be satisfied. [To La Foole] Sir Amorous, there’s no standing 175

out. He has made a petard of an old brass pot, to force your door. Think upon

some satisfaction or terms to offer him.

LA FOOLE

[Within] Sir, I’ll give him any satisfaction. I dare give any terms.

TRUEWIT

You’ll leave it to me, then?

LA FOOLE

Ay, sir. I’ll stand to any conditions. 180

TRUEWIT

(He calls forth Clerimont and Dauphine) How now, what think you, sirs?

Were’t not a difficult thing to determine which of these two feared most?

CLERIMONT

Yes, but this fears the bravest; the other a whiniling dastard, Jack

Daw! But La Foole, a brave, heroic coward! And is afraid in a great look and a

stout accent. I like him rarely. 185

TRUEWIT

Had it not been pity these two should ha’ been concealed?

CLERIMONT

Shall I make a motion?

TRUEWIT

Briefly. For I must strike while ’tis hot.

CLERIMONT

Shall I go fetch the ladies to the catastrophe?

TRUEWIT

Umh? Ay, by my troth. 190

DAUPHINE

By no mortal means. Let them continue in the state of ignorance

and err still, think ’em wits and fine fellows as they have done. ’Twere sin to

reform them.

TRUEWIT

Well, I will have ’em fetched, now I think on’t, for a private purpose

of mine. Do, Clerimont, fetch ’em and discourse to ’em all that’s passed, and 195

bring ’em into the gallery here.

DAUPHINE

This is thy extreme vanity, now. Thou think’st thou wert undone if

every jest thou mak’st were not published.

TRUEWIT

Thou shalt see how unjust thou art presently. – Clerimont, say it was

Dauphine’s plot. 200[Exit Clerimont.]

Trust me not if the whole drift be not for thy good. There’s a carpet i’the next

room; put it on, with this scarf over thy face and a cushion o’thy head, and be

ready when I call Amorous. Away! [Exit Dauphine.]

[Calling] John Daw!

[Daw comes forth from his now-unlocked door.]

DAW

What good news, sir? 205

TRUEWIT

Faith, I have followed and argued with him hard for you. I told him

you were a knight and a scholar, and that you knew fortitude did consist magis

patiendo quam faciendo, magis ferendo quam feriendo.

DAW

It doth so indeed, sir.

TRUEWIT

And that you would suffer, I told him. So at first he demanded, by my 210

troth, in my conceit, too much.

DAW

What was it, sir?

TRUEWIT

Your upper lip and six o’your foreteeth.

DAW

’Twas unreasonable.

TRUEWIT

Nay, I told him plainly, you could not spare ’em all. So, after long 215

argument – pro et con, as you know – I brought him down to your two butter-

teeth, and them he would have.

DAW

Oh, did you so? Why, he shall have ’em.

[Enter, above, HAUGHTY, CENTAUR, MAVIS, MRS OTTER, EPICENE, TRUSTY, and CLERIMONT.]

TRUEWIT

But he shall not, sir, by your leave. The conclusion is this, sir –

because you shall be very good friends hereafter, and this never to be remembered 220

or upbraided, besides that he may not boast he has done any such thing

to you in his own person: he is to come here in disguise, give you five kicks in

private, sir, take your sword from you and lock you up in that study, during

pleasure. Which will be but a little while; we’ll get it released presently.

DAW

Five kicks? He shall have six, sir, to be friends. 225

TRUEWIT

Believe me, you shall not overshoot yourself to send him that word

by me.

DAW

Deliver it, sir. He shall have it with all my heart, to be friends.

TRUEWIT

Friends? Nay, an he should not be so, and heartily too, upon these

terms, he shall have me to enemy while I live. Come, sir, bear it bravely. 230

DAW

Oh, God, sir, ’tis nothing.

TRUEWIT

True. What’s six kicks to a man that reads Seneca?

DAW

I have had a hundred, sir.

TRUEWIT

[Calling] Sir Amorous! – No speaking to one another, or rehearsing

old matters. 235

Dauphine comes forth [disguised] and kicks him [Daw].

DAW

[Counting the kicks] One, two, three, four, five. I protest, Sir Amorous, you

shall have six.

TRUEWIT

Nay, I told you should not talk. [To Dauphine] Come, give him six, an

he will needs. [Dauphine kicks Daw a sixth time.] Your sword. [Daw surrenders his sword.]

Now, return to your safe custody. You shall presently meet afore the 240

ladies, and be the dearest friends one to another. [Exit Daw into his room.]

[To Dauphine] Give me the scarf now; thou shalt beat the other bare-faced.

Stand by. [Dauphine, giving Truewit the scarf, retires.]

[Calling] Sir Amorous! [Truewit unlocks La Foole’s door.]

[La Foole comes forth.]

LA FOOLE

What’s here? A sword? 245

TRUEWIT

I cannot help it, without I should take the quarrel upon myself. Here

he has sent you his sword –

LA FOOLE

I’ll receive none on’t.

TRUEWIT

And he wills you to fasten it against a wall, and break your head in

some few several places against the hilts. 250

LA FOOLE

I will not; tell him roundly. I cannot endure to shed my own blood.

TRUEWIT

Will you not?

LA FOOLE

No. I’ll beat it against a fair flat wall, if that will satisfy him; if not,

he shall beat it himself, for Amorous.

TRUEWIT

Why, this is strange starting off, when a man undertakes for you! I 255

offered him another condition. Will you stand to that?

LA FOOLE

Ay, what is’t?

TRUEWIT

That you will be beaten in private.

LA FOOLE

Yes. I am content, at the blunt.

TRUEWIT

Then you must submit yourself to be hoodwinked in this scarf and 260

be led to him, where he will take your sword from you and make you bear a

blow over the mouth, gules, and tweaks by the nose, sans nombre.

LA FOOLE

I am content. But why must I be blinded?

TRUEWIT

That’s for your good, sir; because if he should grow insolent upon

this and publish it hereafter to your disgrace (which I hope he will not do) you 265

might swear safely and protest he never beat you, to your knowledge.

LA FOOLE

Oh, I conceive.

TRUEWIT

I do not doubt but you’ll be perfect good friends upon’t, and not dare

to utter an ill thought one of another in future.

LA FOOLE

Not I, as God help me, of him. 270

TRUEWIT

Nor he of you, sir. If he should – [Truewit binds La Foole’s eyes with the

scarf, and leads him forward.] Come, sir. [Calling, as though to Daw.] All hid, Sir John!

DAUPHINE enters to tweak him. [He takes La Foole’s sword from him.]

LA FOOLE

Oh, Sir John, Sir John. Oh, o–o–o–o–o–oh –

TRUEWIT

Good Sir John, leave tweaking; you’ll blow his nose off.

[Exit Dauphine with the two swords.]

[To La Foole] ’Tis Sir John’s pleasure you should retire into the study. Why, now 275

you are friends. All bitterness between you, I hope, is buried; you shall come

forth by and by, Damon and Pythias upon’t, and embrace with all the

rankness of friendship that can be. [Exit La Foole through his door.]

[Exeunt the ladies and Clerimont above.]

I trust we shall have ’em tamer i’their language hereafter.

[Enter DAUPHINE.]

Dauphine, I worship thee. – God’s will, the ladies have surprised us. 280

4.6 [Enter below] HAUGHTY, CENTAUR, MAVIS, MRS OTTER, EPICENE,
[and] TRUSTY, [with CLERIMONT], having discovered part of the past scene above.

[The ladies talk among themselves, apart from the gentlemen.]

HAUGHTY

Centaur, how our judgements were imposed on by these adulterate

knights!

CENTAUR

Nay, madam, Mavis was more deceived than we; ’twas her commendation

uttered ’em in the college.

MAVIS

I commended but their wits, madam, and their braveries. I never looked 5

toward their valours.

HAUGHTY

Sir Dauphine is valiant and a wit too, it seems.

MAVIS

And a bravery, too.

HAUGHTY

Was this his project?

MRS OTTER

So Master Clerimont intimates, madam. 10

HAUGHTY

[To Epicene] Good Morose, when you come to the college, will you

bring him with you? He seems a very perfect gentleman.

EPICENE

He is so, madam, believe it.

CENTAUR

But when will you come, Morose?

EPICENE

Three or four days hence, madam, when I have got me a coach and 15

horses.

HAUGHTY

No, tomorrow, good Morose. Centaur shall send you her coach.

MAVIS

Yes, faith, do, and bring Sir Dauphine with you.

HAUGHTY

She has promised that, Mavis.

MAVIS

He is a very worthy gentleman in his exteriors, madam. 20

HAUGHTY

Ay, he shows he is judicial in his clothes.

CENTAUR

And yet not so superlatively neat as some, madam, that have their

faces set in a brake!

HAUGHTY

Ay, and have every hair in form!

MAVIS

That wear purer linen than ourselves, and profess more neatness than 25

the French hermaphrodite!

EPICENE

Ay, ladies, they, what they tell one of us, have told a thousand, and are

the only thieves of our fame, that think to take us with that perfume, or with

that lace, and laugh at us unconscionably when they have done.

HAUGHTY

But Sir Dauphine’s carelessness becomes him. 30

CENTAUR

I could love a man for such a nose!

MAVIS

Or such a leg!

CENTAUR

He has an exceeding good eye, madam.

MAVIS

And a very good lock.

CENTAUR

Good Morose, bring him to my chamber first. 35

MRS OTTER

Please Your Honours to meet at my house, madam?

TRUEWIT

[To Dauphine] See how they eye thee, man! They are taken, I warrant

thee.

HAUGHTY

[Approaching the gentlemen] You have unbraced our brace of knights

here, Master Truewit. 40

TRUEWIT

Not I, madam; it was Sir Dauphine’s engine, who, if he have

disfurnished Your Ladyship of any guard or service by it, is able to make the place

good again in himself.

HAUGHTY

There’s no suspicion of that, sir. [She kisses Dauphine.]

CENTAUR

[To Mavis] Godso, Mavis, Haughty is kissing. 45

MAVIS

[To Centaur] Let us go, too, and take part.

[They approach the gentlemen.]

HAUGHTY

But I am glad of the fortune – beside the discovery of two such empty

caskets – to gain the knowledge of so rich a mine of virtue as Sir Dauphine.

CENTAUR

We would be all glad to style him of our friendship and see him at the

college. 50

MAVIS

He cannot mix with a sweeter society, I’ll prophesy, and I hope he himself

will think so.

DAUPHINE

I should be rude to imagine otherwise, lady.

TRUEWIT

[Aside to Dauphine] Did not I tell thee, Dauphine? Why, all their actions

are governed by crude opinion, without reason or cause. They know not why 55

they do anything but as they are informed, believe, judge, praise, condemn,

love, hate, and – in emulation one of another – do all these things alike. Only

they have a natural inclination sways ’em generally to the worst when they are

left to themselves. But pursue it, now thou hast ’em.

HAUGHTY

[To Epicene] Shall we go in again, Morose? 60

EPICENE

Yes, madam.

CENTAUR

We’ll entreat Sir Dauphine’s company.

TRUEWIT

Stay, good madam, the interview of the two friends, Pylades and

Orestes. I’ll fetch ’em out to you straight.

HAUGHTY

Will you, Master Truewit? 65

DAUPHINE

Ay, but, noble ladies, do not confess in your countenance or outward

bearing to ’em any discovery of their follies, that we may see how they

will bear up again, with what assurance and erection.

HAUGHTY

We will not, Sir Dauphine.

CENTAUR, MAVIS

Upon our honours, Sir Dauphine. 70

TRUEWIT

[Speaking confidentially at La Foole’s door] Sir Amorous, Sir Amorous! The

ladies are here.

LA FOOLE

[Within] Are they?

TRUEWIT

Yes, but slip out by and by as their backs are turned and meet Sir John

here, as by chance, when I call you. [He goes to Daw’s door.] Jack Daw! 75

DAW

[Within] What say you, sir?

TRUEWIT

Whip out behind me suddenly, and no anger i’your looks to your

adversary. Now, now!

[LA FOOLE and DAW slip out from separate doors.]

LA FOOLE

Noble Sir John Daw! Where ha’ you been?

DAW

To seek you, Sir Amorous. 80

LA FOOLE

[Bowing] Me? I honour you.

DAW

[Bowing in reply] I prevent you, sir.

CLERIMONT

[To Dauphine and Truewit] They have forgot their rapiers!

TRUEWIT

Oh, they meet in peace, man.

DAUPHINE

[To Daw] Where’s your sword, Sir John? 85

CLERIMONT

And yours, Sir Amorous?

DAW

Mine? My boy had it forth to mend the handle e’en now.

LA FOOLE

And my gold handle was broke, too, and my boy had it forth.

DAUPHINE

Indeed, sir? [To Clerimont and Truewit] How their excuses meet!

CLERIMONT

[To Dauphine and Truewit] What a consent there is i’the handles! 90

TRUEWIT

[To Clerimont and Dauphine] Nay, there is so i’the points, too, I

warrant you.

MRS OTTER

[Seeing Morose] Oh, me! Madam, he comes again, the madman.

Away! [Exeunt hastily the ladies, Daw, and La Foole.]

4.7 [Enter]MOROSE [carrying two swords]; he had found the two swords drawn within.

MOROSE

What make these naked weapons here, gentlemen?

TRUEWIT

Oh, sir, here hath like to been murder since you went. A couple of

knights fallen out about the bride’s favours; we were fain to take away their

weapons, your house had been begged by this time else –

MOROSE

For what? 5

CLERIMONT

For manslaughter, sir, as being accessory.

MOROSE

And for her favours?

TRUEWIT

Ay, sir, heretofore, not present. – Clerimont, carry ’em their swords

now. They have done all the hurt they will do. [Exit Clerimont with the swords.]

DAUPHINE

Ha’ you spoke with a lawyer, sir? 10

MOROSE

Oh, no! There is such a noise i’the court that they have frighted me

home with more violence than I went. Such speaking and counter-speaking,

with their several voices of citations, appellations, allegations, certificates,

attachments, inter’gatories, references, convictions, and afflictions indeed

among the doctors and proctors, that the noise here is silence to’t! A kind of 15

calm midnight.

TRUEWIT

Why, sir, if you would be resolved indeed, I can bring you hither a

very sufficient lawyer and a learned divine that shall inquire into every least

scruple for you.

MOROSE

Can you, Master Truewit? 20

TRUEWIT

Yes, and are very sober grave persons, that will dispatch it in a

chamber with a whisper or two.

MOROSE

Good sir, shall I hope this benefit from you and trust myself into your

hands?

TRUEWIT

Alas, sir! Your nephew and I have been ashamed and oft-times 25

mad since you went, to think how you are abused. Go in, good sir, and lock

yourself up till we call you. We’ll tell you more anon, sir.

MOROSE

Do your pleasure with me, gentlemen. I believe in you, and that

deserves no delusion.

TRUEWIT

You shall find none, sir – 30[Exit Morose.]

but heaped, heaped plenty of vexation.

DAUPHINE

What wilt thou do now, wit?

TRUEWIT

Recover me hither Otter and the barber if you can, by any means,

presently.

DAUPHINE

Why? To what purpose? 35

TRUEWIT

Oh, I’ll make the deepest divine and gravest lawyer out o’them two,

for him –

DAUPHINE

Thou canst not, man; these are waking dreams.

TRUEWIT

Do not fear me. Clap but a civil gown with a welt o’the one, and

a canonical cloak with sleeves o’the other, and give ’em a few terms i’their 40

mouths: if there come not forth as able a doctor and complete a parson for

this turn as may be wished, trust not my election. And I hope, without

wronging the dignity of either profession, since they are but persons put on, and for

mirth’s sake, to torment him. The barber smatters Latin, I remember.

DAUPHINE

Yes, and Otter too. 45

TRUEWIT

Well, then, if I make ’em not wrangle out this case to his no comfort,

let me be thought a Jack Daw or La Foole or anything worse. Go you to your

ladies, but first send for them.

DAUPHINE

I will. [Exeunt.]

5.1 [Enter] LA FOOLE, CLERIMONT, [and] DAW.

LA FOOLE

Where had you our swords, Master Clerimont?

CLERIMONT

Why, Dauphine took ’em from the madman.

LA FOOLE

And he took ’em from our boys, I warrant you.

CLERIMONT

Very like, sir.

LA FOOLE

Thank you, good Master Clerimont. Sir John Daw and I are both 5

beholden to you.

CLERIMONT

Would I knew how to make you so, gentlemen.

DAW

Sir Amorous and I are your servants, sir.

[Enter] MAVIS.

MAVIS

Gentlemen, have any of you a pen and ink? I would fain write out a riddle

in Italian for Sir Dauphine to translate. 10

CLERIMONT

Not I, in troth, lady. I am no scrivener.

DAW

I can furnish you, I think, lady.

[Daw and Mavis walk aside; Daw produces pen and ink.]

CLERIMONT

He has it in the haft of a knife, I believe.

LA FOOLE

No, he has his box of instruments.

CLERIMONT

Like a surgeon! 15

LA FOOLE

For the mathematics: his square, his compasses, his brass pens, and

black lead, to draw maps of every place and person where he comes.

CLERIMONT

How, maps of persons?

LA FOOLE

Yes, sir, of Nomentack, when he was here, and of the Prince of

Moldavia, and of his mistress, Mistress Epicene. 20

CLERIMONT

Away! He has not found out her latitude, I hope.

LA FOOLE

You are a pleasant gentleman, sir. [Exit Mavis.]

[Daw rejoins the others.]

CLERIMONT

Faith, now we are in private, let’s wanton it a little and talk waggishly.

– Sir John, I am telling Sir Amorous here that you two govern the ladies;

where’er you come, you carry the feminine gender afore you. 25

DAW

They shall rather carry us afore them if they will, sir.

CLERIMONT

Nay, I believe that they do, withal; but that you are the prime men

in their affections, and direct all their actions –

DAW

Not I; Sir Amorous is.

LA FOOLE

I protest, Sir John is. 30

DAW

As I hope to rise i’the state, Sir Amorous, you ha’ the person.

LA FOOLE

Sir John, you ha’ the person, and the discourse too.

DAW

Not I, sir. I have no discourse – and then you have activity, beside.

LA FOOLE

I protest, Sir John, you come as high from Tripoli as I do every whit,

and lift as many joint-stools and leap over ’em, if you would use it – 35

CLERIMONT

Well, agree on’t together, knights, for, between you, you divide

the kingdom or commonwealth of ladies’ affections. I see it and can perceive a

little how they observe you and fear you, indeed. You could tell strange stories,

my masters, if you would, I know.

DAW

Faith, we have seen somewhat, sir. 40

LA FOOLE

That we have: velvet petticoats and wrought smocks or so.

DAW

Ay, and –

CLERIMONT

Nay, out with it, Sir John. Do not envy your friend the pleasure of

hearing, when you have had the delight of tasting.

DAW

Why – ah – do you speak, Sir Amorous. 45

LA FOOLE

No, do you, Sir John Daw.

DAW

I’faith, you shall.

LA FOOLE

I’faith, you shall.

DAW

Why, we have been –

LA FOOLE

In the great bed at Ware together in our time. On, Sir John. 50

DAW

Nay, do you, Sir Amorous.

CLERIMONT

And these ladies with you, knights?

LA FOOLE

No, excuse us, sir.

DAW

We must not wound reputation.

LA FOOLE

No matter; they were these or others. Our bath cost us fifteen pound 55

when we came home.

CLERIMONT

Do you hear, Sir John, you shall tell me but one thing truly, as you

love me.

DAW

If I can, I will, sir.

CLERIMONT

You lay in the same house with the bride here? 60

DAW

Yes, and conversed with her hourly, sir.

CLERIMONT

And what humour is she of? Is she coming and open, free?

DAW

Oh, exceeding open, sir. I was her servant, and Sir Amorous was to be.

CLERIMONT

Come, you have both had favours from her? I know and have

heard so much. 65

DAW

Oh, no, sir.

LA FOOLE

You shall excuse us, sir. We must not wound reputation.

CLERIMONT

Tut, she is married now, and you cannot hurt her with any report,

and therefore speak plainly: how many times, i’faith? Which of you led first?

Ha? 70

LA FOOLE

Sir John had her maidenhead, indeed.

DAW

Oh, it pleases him to say so, sir, but Sir Amorous knows what’s what as well.

CLERIMONT

Dost thou, i’faith, Amorous?

LA FOOLE

In a manner, sir.

CLERIMONT

Why, I commend you, lads. Little knows Don Bridegroom of this. 75

Nor shall he, for me.

DAW

Hang him, mad ox.

CLERIMONT

Speak softly; here comes his nephew with the Lady Haughty. He’ll

get the ladies from you, sirs, if you look not to him in time.

LA FOOLE

Why, if he do, we’ll fetch ’em home again, I warrant you. 80[Exeunt.]

5.2 [Enter] HAUGHTY [and] DAUPHINE.

HAUGHTY

I assure you, Sir Dauphine, it is the price and estimation of your

virtue only that hath embarked me to this adventure, and I could not but make

out to tell you so; nor can I repent me of the act, since it is always an argument

of some virtue in ourselves that we love and affect it so in others.

DAUPHINE

Your Ladyship sets too high a price on my weakness. 5

HAUGHTY

Sir, I can distinguish gems from pebbles –

DAUPHINE

[Aside] Are you so skilful in stones?

HAUGHTY

And howsoever I may suffer in such a judgement as yours, by admitting

equality of rank or society with Centaur or Mavis –

DAUPHINE

You do not, madam. I perceive they are your mere foils. 10

HAUGHTY

Then are you a friend to truth, sir. It makes me love you the more. It

is not the outward but the inward man that I affect. They are not apprehensive

of an eminent perfection, but love flat and dully.

CENTAUR

[Within] Where are you, my Lady Haughty?

HAUGHTY

[Calling] I come presently, Centaur. – My chamber, sir, my page shall 15

show you; and Trusty, my woman, shall be ever awake for you. You need not

fear to communicate anything with her, for she is a Fidelia. I pray you wear

this jewel for my sake, Sir Dauphine.

[She presents him with a favour.]

[Enter] CENTAUR.

Where’s Mavis, Centaur?

CENTAUR

Within, madam, a-writing. I’ll follow you presently. I’ll but speak a 20

word with Sir Dauphine. [Exit Haughty.]

DAUPHINE

With me, madam?

CENTAUR

Good Sir Dauphine, do not trust Haughty, nor make any credit to her,

whatever you do besides. Sir Dauphine, I give you this caution: she is a perfect

courtier and loves nobody but for her uses, and for her uses she loves all. 25

Besides, her physicians give her out to be none o’the clearest; whether she pay

’em or no, heav’n knows. And she’s above fifty, too, and pargets! See her in a

forenoon.

[Enter] MAVIS [with a paper].

Here comes Mavis, a worse face than she! You would not like this by

candlelight. If you’ll come to my chamber one o’these mornings early, or late in an 30

evening, I’ll tell you more. – Where’s Haughty, Mavis?

MAVIS

Within, Centaur.

CENTAUR

What ha’ you there?

MAVIS

An Italian riddle for Sir Dauphine. [She hands the paper to Dauphine.] You

shall not see it, i’faith, Centaur. – Good Sir Dauphine, solve it for me. I’ll call 35

for it anon. [Exeunt Mavis and Centaur.]

[Enter] CLERIMONT.

CLERIMONT

How now, Dauphine? How dost thou quit thyself of these

females?

DAUPHINE

’Slight, they haunt me like fairies, and give me jewels here. I cannot

be rid of ’em. 40

CLERIMONT

Oh, you must not tell, though.

DAUPHINE

Mass, I forgot that. I was never so assaulted. One loves for virtue,

and bribes me with this. [He shows Haughty’s jewel.] Another loves me with caution,

and so would possess me. A third brings me a riddle here; and all are jealous

and rail each at other. 45

CLERIMONT

A riddle? Pray le’ me see’t. (He reads the paper.)

‘Sir Dauphine,

I chose this way of intimation for privacy. The ladies here, I know, have both

hope and purpose to make a collegiate and servant of you. If I might be so honoured

as to appear at any end of so noble a work, I would enter into a fame of 50

taking physic tomorrow and continue it four or five days or longer, for your

visitation.

Mavis.’

By my faith, a subtle one! Call you this a riddle? What’s their plain dealing,

trow? 55

DAUPHINE

We lack Truewit to tell us that.

CLERIMONT

We lack him for somewhat else, too: his knights reformados are

wound up as high and insolent as ever they were.

DAUPHINE

You jest.

CLERIMONT

No drunkards, either with wine or vanity, ever confessed such stories 60

of themselves. I would not give a fly’s leg in balance against all the women’s

reputations here, if they could be but thought to speak truth; and for the bride,

they have made their affidavit against her directly –

DAUPHINE

What, that they have lain with her?

CLERIMONT

Yes, and tell times and circumstances, with the cause why and the 65

place where. I had almost brought ’em to affirm that they had done it today.

DAUPHINE

Not both of ’em?

CLERIMONT

Yes, faith. With a ‘sooth’ or two more I had effected it. They would

ha’ set it down under their hands.

DAUPHINE

Why, they will be our sport, I see, still, whether we will or no. 70

5.3 [Enter] TRUEWIT.

TRUEWIT

Oh, are you here? Come, Dauphine. Go, call your uncle presently. I

have fitted my divine and my canonist, dyed their beards and all; the knaves

do not know themselves, they are so exalted and altered. Preferment changes

any man. Thou shalt keep one door and I another, and then Clerimont in the

midst, that he may have no means of escape from their cavilling when they 5

grow hot once. And then the women (as I have given the bride her instructions)

to break in upon him i’the l’envoi. Oh, ’twill be full and twanging! Away, fetch

him. [Exit Dauphine.]

[Enter] OTTER [disguised as a civil lawyer, and] CUTBEARD [as a canon lawyer].

Come, Master Doctor and Master Parson, look to your parts now and discharge

’em bravely. You are well set forth; perform it as well. If you chance to be out, 10

do not confess it with standing still or humming or gaping one at another, but

go on and talk aloud and eagerly, use vehement action, and only remember

your terms and you are safe. Let the matter go where it will; you have many

will do so. But at first be very solemn and grave like your garments, though

you loose yourselves after and skip out like a brace of jugglers on a table. – 15

Here he comes! Set your faces, and look superciliously while I present you.

[Enter] DAUPHINE [and] MOROSE.

MOROSE

Are these the two learned men?

TRUEWIT

Yes, sir. Please you salute ’em?

MOROSE

Salute ’em? I had rather do anything than wear out time so unfruitfully,

sir. I wonder how these common forms, as ‘God save you’ and ‘You are 20

welcome’, are come to be a habit in our lives? Or ‘I am glad to see you!’ – when

I cannot see what the profit can be of these words, so long as it is no whit better

with him whose affairs are sad and grievous that he hears this salutation.

TRUEWIT

’Tis true, sir. We’ll go to the matter, then. – Gentlemen, Master Doctor

and Master Parson, I have acquainted you sufficiently with the business for 25

which you are come hither. And you are not now to inform yourselves in the

state of the question, I know. This is the gentleman who expects your resolution,

and therefore, when you please, begin.

OTTER

[To Cutbeard] Please you, Master Doctor.

CUTBEARD

[To Otter] Please you, good Master Parson. 30

OTTER

I would hear the canon law speak first.

CUTBEARD

I must give place to positive divinity, sir.

MOROSE

Nay, good gentlemen, do not throw me into circumstances. Let your

comforts arrive quickly at me, those that are. Be swift in affording me my

peace, if so I shall hope any. I love not your disputations or your court tumults. 35

And that it be not strange to you, I will tell you. My father, in my education,

was wont to advise me that I should always collect and contain my mind, not

suffering it to flow loosely, that I should look to what things were necessary

to the carriage of my life and what not, embracing the one and eschewing the

other. In short, that I should endear myself to rest and avoid turmoil, which 40

now is grown to be another nature to me. So that I come not to your public

pleadings or your places of noise – not that I neglect those things that make for

the dignity of the commonwealth, but for the mere avoiding of clamours and

impertinencies of orators that know not how to be silent. And for the cause

of noise am I now a suitor to you. You do not know in what a misery I have 45

been exercised this day, what a torrent of evil! My very house turns round with

the tumult! I dwell in a windmill! The perpetual motion is here, and not at

Eltham.

TRUEWIT

Well, good Master Doctor, will you break the ice? Master Parson will

wade after. 50

CUTBEARD

Sir, though unworthy and the weaker, I will presume.

OTTER

’Tis no presumption, Domine Doctor.

MOROSE

Yet again!

CUTBEARD

Your question is, for how many causes a man may have divortium

legitimum, a lawful divorce. First, you must understand the nature of the word 55

‘divorce’, a divertendo –

MOROSE

No excursions upon words, good Doctor; to the question briefly.

CUTBEARD

I answer, then: the canon law affords divorce but in few cases, and

the principal is in the common case, the adulterous case. But there are duodecim

impedimenta, twelve impediments (as we call ’em), all which do not dirimere contractum, 60

but irritum reddere matrimonium, as we say in the canon law, not take

away the bond but cause a nullity therein.

MOROSE

I understood you before. Good sir, avoid your impertinency of

translation.

OTTER

He cannot open this too much, sir, by your favour. 65

MOROSE

Yet more!

TRUEWIT

Oh, you must give the learned men leave, sir. – To your impediments,

Master Doctor.

CUTBEARD

The first is impedimentum erroris.

OTTER

Of which there are several species. 70

CUTBEARD

Ay, as error personae.

OTTER

If you contract yourself to one person, thinking her another.

CUTBEARD

Then, error fortunae.

OTTER

If she be a beggar, and you thought her rich.

CUTBEARD

Then, error qualitatis. 75

OTTER

If she prove stubborn or headstrong, that you thought obedient.

MOROSE

How? Is that, sir, a lawful impediment? One at once, I pray you,

gentlemen.

OTTER

Ay, ante copulam, but not post copulam, sir.

CUTBEARD

Master Parson says right. Nec post nuptiarum benedictionem. It doth 80

indeed but irrita reddere sponsalia, annul the contract; after marriage it is of no

obstancy.

TRUEWIT

Alas, sir, what a hope are we fall’n from by this time!

CUTBEARD

The next is conditio: if you thought her freeborn and she prove a

bondwoman, there is impediment of estate and condition. 85

OTTER

Ay, but Master Doctor, those servitudes are sublatae now among us

Christians.

CUTBEARD

By your favour, Master Parson –

OTTER

You shall give me leave, Master Doctor.

MOROSE

Nay, gentlemen, quarrel not in that question; it concerns not my case. 90

Pass to the third.

CUTBEARD

Well, then, the third is votum: if either party have made a vow of

chastity. But that practice, as Master Parson said of the other, is taken away

among us, thanks be to discipline. The fourth is cognatio: if the persons be of

kin, within the degrees. 95

OTTER

Ay, do you know what the degrees are, sir?

MOROSE

No, nor I care not, sir; they offer me no comfort in the question, I am

sure.

CUTBEARD

But there is a branch of this impediment may, which is cognatio spiritualis.

If you were her godfather, sir, then the marriage is incestuous. 100

OTTER

That comment is absurd and superstitious, Master Doctor. I cannot

endure it. Are we not all brothers and sisters, and as much akin in that as

godfathers and goddaughters?

MOROSE

Oh, me! To end the controversy, I never was a godfather, I never was a

godfather in my life, sir. Pass to the next. 105

CUTBEARD

The fifth is crimen adulterii: the known case. The sixth, cultus disparitas,

difference of religion. Have you ever examined her what religion she

is of?

MOROSE

No. I would rather she were of none than be put to the trouble of it.

OTTER

You may have it done for you, sir. 110

MOROSE

By no means, good sir. On to the rest. Shall you ever come to an end,

think you?

TRUEWIT

Yes, he has done half, sir. – On to the rest. – Be patient and expect, sir.

CUTBEARD

The seventh is vis: if it were upon compulsion or force.

MOROSE

Oh, no, it was too voluntary, mine; too voluntary. 115

CUTBEARD

The eighth is ordo: if ever she have taken holy orders.

OTTER

That’s superstitious, too.

MOROSE

No matter, Master Parson. Would she would go into a nunnery yet!

CUTBEARD

The ninth is ligamen: if you were bound, sir, to any other before.

MOROSE

I thrust myself too soon into these fetters. 120

CUTBEARD

The tenth is publica honestas: which is inchoata quaedam affinitas.

OTTER

Ay, or affinitas orta ex sponsalibus, and is but leve impedimentum.

MOROSE

I feel no air of comfort blowing to me in all this.

CUTBEARD

The eleventh is affinitas ex fornicatione.

OTTER

Which is no less vera affinitas than the other, Master Doctor. 125

CUTBEARD

True, quae oritur ex legitimo matrimonio.

OTTER

You say right, venerable Doctor. And nascitur ex eo, quod per conjugium duae

personae efficiuntur una caro –

MOROSE

Heyday, now they begin.

CUTBEARD

I conceive you, Master Parson. Ita per fornicationem aeque est verus 130

pater, qui sic generat –

OTTER

Et vere filius qui sic generatur –

MOROSE

What’s all this to me?

CLERIMONT

[Aside to Truewit and Dauphine] Now it grows warm.

CUTBEARD

The twelfth and last is si forte coire nequibis. 135

OTTER

Ay, that is impedimentum gravissimum. It doth utterly annul and annihilate,

that. If you have manifestam frigiditatem, you are well, sir.

TRUEWIT

Why, there is comfort come at length, sir. Confess yourself but a man

unable, and she will sue to be divorced first.

OTTER

Ay, or if there be morbus perpetuus et insanabilis, as paralysis, elephantiasis, 140

or so –

DAUPHINE

Oh, but frigiditas is the fairer way, gentlemen.

OTTER

You say troth, sir, and as it is in the canon, Master Doctor.

CUTBEARD

I conceive you, sir.

CLERIMONT

[Aside] Before he speaks. 145

OTTER

That a boy or child under years is not fit for marriage because he cannot

reddere debitum. So your omnipotentes –

TRUEWIT

[Aside to Otter] Your ‘impotentes’, you whoreson lobster.

OTTER

Your impotentes, I should say, are minime apti ad contrahenda matrimonium.

TRUEWIT

[Aside to Otter] ‘Matrimonium?’ We shall have most unmatrimonial 150

Latin with you. ‘Matrimonia’, and be hanged.

DAUPHINE

[Aside to Truewit] You put ’em out, man.

CUTBEARD

But then there will arise a doubt, Master Parson, in our case, post

matrimonium, that frigiditate praeditus – do you conceive me, sir?

OTTER

Very well, sir. 155

CUTBEARD

Who cannot uti uxore pro uxore may habere eam pro sorore.

OTTER

Absurd, absurd, absurd, and merely apostatical.

CUTBEARD

You shall pardon me, Master Parson, I can prove it.

OTTER

You can prove a will, Master Doctor, you can prove nothing else.

Does not the verse of your own canon say, Haec socianda vetant conubia, facta 160

retractant –

CUTBEARD

I grant you, but how do they retractare, Master Parson?

MOROSE

[Aside] Oh, this was it I feared.

OTTER

In aeternum, sir.

CUTBEARD

That’s false in divinity, by your favour. 165

OTTER

’Tis false in humanity to say so. Is he not prorsus inutilis ad thorum? Can he

praestare fidem datam? I would fain know.

CUTBEARD

Yes, how if he do convalere?

OTTER

He cannot convalere; it is impossible.

[Morose struggles to escape.]

TRUEWIT

[To Morose] Nay, good sir, attend the learned men; they’ll think you 170

neglect ’em else.

CUTBEARD

Or, if he do simulare himself frigidum, odio uxoris, or so?

OTTER

I say he is adulter manifestus, then.

DAUPHINE

[To his friends] They dispute it very learnedly, i’faith.

OTTER

And prostitutor uxoris, and this is positive. 175

MOROSE

[To Truewit] Good sir, let me escape.

TRUEWIT

You will not do me that wrong, sir?

OTTER

And therefore if he be manifeste frigidus, sir –

CUTBEARD

Ay, if he be manifeste frigidus, I grant you –

OTTER

Why, that was my conclusion. 180

CUTBEARD

And mine, too.

TRUEWIT

[To Morose] Nay, hear the conclusion, sir.

OTTER

Then, frigiditatis causa –

CUTBEARD

Yes, causa frigiditatis –

MOROSE

Oh, mine ears! 185

OTTER

She may have libellum divortii against you.

CUTBEARD

Ay, divortii libellum she will sure have.

MOROSE

Good echoes, forbear.

OTTER

If you confess it.

CUTBEARD

Which I would do, sir – 190

MOROSE

I will do anything –

OTTER

And clear myself in foro conscientiae –

CUTBEARD

Because you want indeed –

MOROSE

Yet more?

OTTER

Exercendi potestate. 195

5.4 [Enter] EPICENE, HAUGHTY, CENTAUR, MAVIS, MRS OTTER, DAW, [and] LA FOOLE.

EPICENE

I will not endure it any longer. Ladies, I beseech you help me. This is

such a wrong as never was offered to poor bride before. Upon her marriage

day, to have her husband conspire against her, and a couple of mercenary

companions to be brought in for form’s sake to persuade a separation! –

If you had blood or virtue in you, gentlemen, you would not suffer such 5

earwigs about a husband, or scorpions to creep between man and wife –

MOROSE

Oh, the variety and changes of my torment!

HAUGHTY

Let ’em be cudgelled out of doors by our grooms.

CENTAUR

I’ll lend you my footman.

MAVIS

We’ll have our men blanket ’em i’the hall. 10

MRS OTTER

As there was one at our house, madam, for peeping in at the door.

DAW

Content, i’faith.

TRUEWIT

Stay, ladies and gentlemen, you’ll hear before you proceed?

MAVIS

I’d ha’ the bridegroom blanketed too.

CENTAUR

Begin with him first. 15

HAUGHTY

Yes, by my troth.

MOROSE

Oh, mankind generation!

DAUPHINE

Ladies, for my sake forbear.

HAUGHTY

Yes, for Sir Dauphine’s sake.

CENTAUR

He shall command us. 20

LA FOOLE

He is as fine a gentleman of his inches, madam, as any is about the

town, and wears as good colours when he list.

TRUEWIT

[To Morose] Be brief, sir, and confess your infirmity; she’ll be afire to be

quit of you; if she but hear that named once, you shall not entreat her to stay.

She’ll fly you like one that had the marks upon him. 25

MOROSE

Ladies, I must crave all your pardons –

TRUEWIT

Silence, ladies.

MOROSE

For a wrong I have done to your whole sex in marrying this fair and

virtuous gentlewoman –

CLERIMONT

Hear him, good ladies. 30

MOROSE

Being guilty of an infirmity which, before I conferred with these

learned men, I thought I might have concealed –

TRUEWIT

But now being better informed in his conscience by them, he is to

declare it and give satisfaction by asking your public forgiveness.

MOROSE

I am no man, ladies. 35

ALL

How!

MOROSE

Utterly unabled in nature, by reason of frigidity, to perform the duties

or any the least office of a husband.

MAVIS

Now, out upon him, prodigious creature!

CENTAUR

Bridegroom uncarnate! 40

HAUGHTY

And would you offer it to a young gentlewoman?

MRS OTTER

A lady of her longings?

EPICENE

Tut, a device, a device, this; it smells rankly, ladies. A mere comment of

his own.

TRUEWIT

Why, if you suspect that, ladies, you may have him searched. 45

DAW

As the custom is, by a jury of physicians.

LA FOOLE

Yes, faith,’twill be brave.

MOROSE

Oh, me, must I undergo that?

MRS OTTER

No, let women search him, madam; we can do it ourselves.

MOROSE

Out on me, worse! 50

EPICENE

No, ladies, you shall not need. I’ll take him with all his faults.

MOROSE

Worst of all!

CLERIMONT

Why, then, ’tis no divorce, Doctor, if she consent not?

CUTBEARD

No, if the man be frigidus, it is de parte uxoris that we grant libellum

divortii in the law. 55

OTTER

Ay, it is the same in theology.

MOROSE

Worse, worse than worst!

TRUEWIT

Nay, sir, be not utterly disheartened; we have yet a small relic of hope

left, as near as our comfort is blown out. – Clerimont, produce your brace of

knights. What was that, Master Parson, you told me in errore qualitatis, e’en 60

now? [Aside to Dauphine] Dauphine, whisper the bride that she carry it as if she

were guilty and ashamed.

OTTER

Marry, sir, in errore qualitatis (which Master Doctor did forbear to urge) if

she be found corrupta, that is, vitiated or broken up, that was pro virgine desponsa,

espoused for a maid – 65

MOROSE

What then, sir?

OTTER

It doth dirimere contractum and irritum reddere too.

TRUEWIT

[To Morose] If this be true, we are happy again, sir, once more. Here are

an honourable brace of knights that shall affirm so much.

[Clerimont leads forward Daw and La Foole.]

DAW

Pardon us, good Master Clerimont. 70

LA FOOLE

You shall excuse us, Master Clerimont.

CLERIMONT

Nay, you must make it good now, knights. There is no remedy; I’ll

eat no words for you, nor no men. You know you spoke it to me?

DAW

Is this gentlemanlike, sir?

TRUEWIT

[Aside to Daw] Jack Daw, he’s worse than Sir Amorous, fiercer a great 75

deal. [Aside to La Foole] Sir Amorous, beware! There be ten Daws in this

Clerimont.

LA FOOLE

[Aloud] I’ll confess it, sir.

DAW

Will you, Sir Amorous? Will you wound reputation?

LA FOOLE

I am resolved. 80

TRUEWIT

So should you be, too, Jack Daw. [Aside to him] What should keep you

off? She is but a woman, and in disgrace. He’ll be glad on’t.

DAW

[Aside to Truewit] Will he? I thought he would ha’ been angry.

CLERIMONT

You will dispatch, knights. It must be done, i’faith.

TRUEWIT

Why, an it must, it shall, sir, they say. They’ll ne’er go back. [To Daw and La Foole] 85

Do not tempt his patience.

DAW

[To Morose] It is true indeed, sir.

LA FOOLE

[To Morose] Yes, I assure you, sir.

MOROSE

What is true, gentlemen? What do you assure me?

DAW

That we have known your bride, sir – 90

LA FOOLE

In good fashion. She was our mistress, or so –

CLERIMONT

Nay, you must be plain, knights, as you were to me.

OTTER

Ay, the question is, if you have carnaliter or no.

LA FOOLE

Carnaliter? What else, sir?

OTTER

It is enough: a plain nullity. 95

EPICENE

I am undone, I am undone!

MOROSE

Oh, let me worship and adore you, gentlemen!

EPICENE

I am undone!

MOROSE

Yes, to my hand, I thank these knights. Master Parson, let me thank

you otherwise. [He gives him money.] 100

CENTAUR

And ha’ they confessed?

MAVIS

Now, out upon ’em, informers!

TRUEWIT

You see what creatures you may bestow your favours on, madams.

HAUGHTY

[To Epicene] I would except against ’em as beaten knights, wench, and

not good witnesses in law. 105

MRS OTTER

Poor gentlewoman, how she takes it!

HAUGHTY

[To Epicene] Be comforted, Morose. I love you the better for’t.

CENTAUR

So do I, I protest.

CUTBEARD

But gentlemen, you have not known her since matrimonium?

DAW

Not today, Master Doctor. 110

LA FOOLE

No, sir, not today.

CUTBEARD

Why, then, I say, for any act before, the matrimonium is good and

perfect, unless the worshipful bridegroom did precisely before witness demand

if she were virgo ante nuptias.

EPICENE

No, that he did not, I assure you, Master Doctor. 115

CUTBEARD

If he cannot prove that, it is ratum conjugium, notwithstanding

the premisses. And they do no way impedire. And this is my sentence; this I

pronounce.

OTTER

[To Morose] I am of Master Doctor’s resolution, too, sir, if you made not

that demand ante nuptias. 120

MOROSE

Oh, my heart! Wilt thou break? Wilt thou break? This is worst of all

worst worsts that hell could have devised! Marry a whore! And so much noise!

DAUPHINE

Come, I see now plain confederacy in this doctor and this parson

to abuse a gentleman. You study his affliction. I pray be gone, companions.

[To Clerimont and Truewit] And, gentlemen, I begin to suspect you for having 125

parts with ’em. [To Morose] Sir, will it please you hear me?

MOROSE

Oh, do not talk to me! Take not from me the pleasure of dying in

silence, nephew.

DAUPHINE

Sir, I must speak to you. I have been long your poor despised kinsman,

and many a hard thought has strengthened you against me; but now 130

it shall appear if either I love you or your peace, and prefer them to all the

world beside. I will not be long or grievous to you, sir. If I free you of this

unhappy match absolutely and instantly after all this trouble, and almost in

your despair now –

MOROSE

It cannot be. 135

DAUPHINE

– sir, that you be never troubled with a murmur of it more, what

shall I hope for or deserve of you?

MOROSE

Oh, what thou wilt, nephew! Thou shalt deserve me and have me.

DAUPHINE

Shall I have your favour perfect to me, and love hereafter?

MOROSE

That and anything beside. Make thine own conditions. My whole 140

estate is thine. Manage it; I will become thy ward.

DAUPHINE

Nay, sir, I will not be so unreasonable.

EPICENE

Will Sir Dauphine be mine enemy too?

DAUPHINE

You know I have been long a suitor to you, uncle, that out of your

estate, which is fifteen hundred a year, you would allow me but five hundred 145

during life and assure the rest upon me after, to which I have often by myself

and friends tendered you a writing to sign, which you would never consent or

incline to. If you please but to effect it now –

MOROSE

Thou shalt have it, nephew. I will do it, and more.

DAUPHINE

If I quit you not presently and for ever of this cumber, you shall 150

have power instantly, afore all these, to revoke your act, and I will become

whose slave you will give me to for ever.

MOROSE

Where is the writing? I will seal to it – that, or to a blank, and write

thine own conditions.

EPICENE

Oh, me, most unfortunate, wretched gentlewoman! 155

HAUGHTY

Will Sir Dauphine do this?

EPICENE

[Weeping] Good sir, have some compassion on me.

MOROSE

Oh, my nephew knows you, belike. Away, crocodile!

CENTAUR

He does it not, sure, without good ground.

DAUPHINE

[Giving Morose the documents] Here, sir. 160

MOROSE

Come, nephew, give me the pen. I will subscribe to anything, and seal

to what thou wilt for my deliverance. Thou art my restorer. [He signs and returns the documents.]

Here, I deliver it thee as my deed. If there be a word in it lacking

or writ with false orthography, I protest before – I will not take the advantage.

DAUPHINE

Then here is your release, sir. 165

(He takes off Epicene’s peruke.)

You have married a boy, a gentleman’s son that I have brought up this half year

at my great charges, and for this composition which I have now made with

you. – What say you, Master Doctor? This is justum impedimentum, I hope, error

personae?

OTTER

Yes, sir, in primo gradu. 170

CUTBEARD

In primo gradu.

He [Dauphine] pulls off their beards and disguise.

DAUPHINE

I thank you, good Doctor Cutbeard and Parson Otter. [To Morose] You

are beholden to ’em, sir, that have taken this pains for you; and my friend,

Master Truewit, who enabled ’em for the business. Now you may go in and

rest, be as private as you will, sir. I’ll not trouble you till you trouble me with 175

your funeral, which I care not how soon it come. [Exit Morose.]

Cutbeard, I’ll make your lease good. Thank me not but with your leg, Cut-

beard. [Cutbeard bows.] And Tom Otter, your princess shall be reconciled to

you. – How now, gentlemen? Do you look at me?

CLERIMONT

A boy? 180

DAUPHINE

Yes. Mistress Epicene.

TRUEWIT

Well, Dauphine, you have lurched your friends of the better half of

the garland, by concealing this part of the plot! But much good do it thee;

thou deserv’st it, lad. And, Clerimont, for thy unexpected bringing in these

two to confession, wear my part of it freely. – Nay, Sir Daw and Sir La Foole, 185

you see the gentlewoman that has done you the favours! We are all thankful to

you, and so should the womankind here, specially for lying on her, though not

with her! You meant so, I am sure? But that we have stuck it upon you today

in your own imagined persons, and so lately, this Amazon, the champion of

the sex, should beat you now thriftily for the common slanders which ladies 190

receive from such cuckoos as you are. You are they that, when no merit or for-

tune can make you hope to enjoy their bodies, will yet lie with their reputations

and make their fame suffer. Away, you common moths of these and all

ladies’ honours! Go, travel to make legs and faces, and come home with some

new matter to be laughed at. You deserve to live in an air as corrupted as that 195

wherewith you feed rumour. [Exeunt Daw and La Foole.]

Madams, you are mute upon this new metamorphosis! But here stands

she that has vindicated your fames. Take heed of such insectae hereafter. And

let it not trouble you that you have discovered any mysteries to this young

gentleman. He is – almost – of years, and will make a good visitant within 200

this twelvemonth. In the meantime we’ll all undertake for his secrecy, that can

speak so well of his silence.

[Truewit comes forward.]

Spectators, if you like this comedy, rise cheerfully, and, now Morose is gone in,

clap your hands. It may be that noise will cure him, at least please him. [Exeunt.]

THE END 205

This comedy was first

acted in the year

1609

by the Children of Her Majesty’s

Revels. 210

The principal comedians were:

nathan field william barksted

giles carie william penn

hugh attwell richard allen

john smith john blaney 215

With the allowance of the Master of Revels.

SOURCES

The following passages, chiefly from Ovid, Juvenal, and Libanius, are Jonson’s primary sources for the passages indicated. The information is gathered together in most cases by Gifford and H&S. The translations are mine.

1.1.35–6 Cf. Seneca, De Brevitate Vitae, 3.5:

Non pudet te reliquias vitae tibi reservare et id solum tempus bonae menti destinare, quod in nullam rem conferri possit? Quam serum est tunc vivere incipere, cum desinendum est! Aren’t you ashamed to reserve for yourself only the last remnant of life, and to devote to wise thoughts only such time as cannot be conferred on other matters? How late it is to begin to live truly only when life is about to cease!

1.1.71–82 Cf. Anthologia Latina, Codex Vossianus, A 86, at Leyden, first published by Scaliger in Publii Virgilii Maronis Appendix (Lyons, 1572), p. 208:

Semper munditias, semper, Basilissa, decores,

Semper compositas arte recente comas,

Et comptos semper cultus, unguentaque semper,

Omnia sollicita compta videre manu

Non amo. Neglectim mihi se quae comit amica

Se det, et ornatus simplicitate valet.

Vincula ne cures capitis discussa soluti,

Nec ceram in faciem: mel habet illa suum.

Fingere se semper non est confidere amori;

Qui quod saepe decor, cum prohibetur, adest?

I do not love, Basilissa, always to see neatness, always elegance, always hair artfully and freshly done up, always an elegant style of dress and always cosmetics, everything ordered with solicitous care. Let the young woman give herself to me who dresses carelessly and who prevails by the simplicity of her attire. Do not fret about headbands that have come unfastened, or about cosmetic wax for the face; your face has honey of its own. Always to be fussing with one’s appearance is to show lack of confidence in the power of love. Isn’t the grace of ornament often there when it is forbidden?

Jonson may have consulted this poem directly or else a redaction in Pithou’s Epigrammata et Poemata Vetera (Paris, 1590) or from other versions appended to early editions of Petronius’s Satyricon (Paris, 1585 and 1587 and still more). Other renditions of the thought of this poem in English include Robert Herrick’s ‘A sweet disorder in the dress’ (Hesperides, 1648) and Richard Flecknoe’s ‘Portrait of Mary Duchess of Richmond’ (Heroic Portraits, 1660).

1.1.83–8 Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 3.135, 139–40:

Nec genus ornatus unum est: quod quamque decebit

Elegat, et speculum consulat ante suum.

Longa probat facies capitis discrimina puri . . .

Exiguum summa nodum sibi fronte relinqui,

Ut pateant aures, ora rotunda volunt.

Nor is there only one kind of adornment: let each woman choose that which lends grace to her, consulting her own mirror. An elongated face does better with a parting upon the head left unadorned . . . Round faces prefer a small knot on the top of the head, allowing the ears to show.

1.1.90–9 Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 3.217–18, 225–34:

Ista dabunt formam, sed erunt deformia visu:

Multaque, dum fiunt, turpia, facta placent; . . .

Tu quoque dum coleris, nos te dormire putemus;

Aptius a summa conspiciere manu.

Cur mihi nota tuo causa est candoris in ore?

Claude forem thalami! quid rude prodis opus?

Multa viros nescire decet; pars maxima rerum

Offendat, si non interiora tegas.

Aurea quae splendent ornato signa theatro,

Inspice, quam tenuis: bractea ligna tegat;

Sed neque ad illa licet populo, nisi facta, venire.

Such things will bestow beauty, all right, but will be unseemly to look at while they are being fashioned: many things that seem unsightly in the doing are pleasing when done . . . And so, when you are making yourself up, let us think you are asleep; better to be seen when the last touches are completed. Why must the cause of the whiteness of your cheek be known? Keep shut your chamber door! Why show unfinished work? Many things are better not known; the greatest part of your business would offend, were it not that you hide your secrets within. If one inspects too closely the gilded images in the theatre, those images will be scorned. Foil covers mere wood. People should not be permitted to approach such things till they are finished; by the same token, only when men are absent should beauty be shaped.

1.1.101–8 Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 3.243–6:

Quae male crinita est, custodem in limine ponat,

Orneturve Bonae semper in aede deae.

Dictus eram subito cuidam venisse puellae:

Turbida perversas induit illa comas.

Any woman unfortunate in her hair should set a guard at her door, or do her attire always in the temple of the Good Goddess [where no man may enter]. One time I was announced suddenly to a young woman, who, in her perturbation, put on her head of hair all awry.

1.1.124–7 Cf. Libanius, 8:

καὶ μὴν τῶν γε ἐργαστηρίων͵ ὅσα μὲν ἄκμονα καὶ σφύραν ἔχει καὶ κτύπους͵ φυγῇ φεύγω͵ τὰ ἀργυροκοπεῖα͵ τὰ χαλκεῖα͵ πολλὰ ἕτερα. I take to my heels also to get away from all the workshops that have hammers and anvils and noise – that is to say, silversmiths, bronze-smiths, and many other trades.

Jonson used the 1597 Paris edition of Libanius entitled Declamatio Lepidissima, with a Latin translation by Frederic Morel or Morellus, and seems to have consulted the Latin as well as the Greek.

2.2.16–23 Marry . . . noose Cf. Juvenal, Satires, 6.28–32:

certe sanus eras; uxorem, Postume, ducis?

dic, qua Tisiphone, quibus exagitare colubris?

ferre potes dominam salvis tot restibus ullam,

cum pateant altae caligantesque fenestrae,

cum tibi vicinum se praebeat Aemilius pons?

Postumus, you who were once so sane: are you taking a wife? Tell me, what Tisiphone, what snakes are driving you mad? Can you submit to the domination of a wife when ropes are available to hang yourself with, or high windows to jump out of, or the Aemilian bridge offering itself near at hand?

2.2.55–8 If learned . . . please her Cf. Juvenal, Satires, 6.187–91:

omnia Graece,

cum sit turpe magis nostris nescire Latine;

hoc sermone pavent, hoc iram gaudia curas,

hoc cuncta effundunt animi secreta: quid ultra?

concumbunt Graece.

Our women speak nothing but Greek, even though it is a great shame for our people not to know Latin. All that they fear and are angry about, their joys and their troubles, all the secrets of their inmost hearts – what else? all tumbles out in Greek.

2.2.67–71 Then . . . first Cf. Juvenal, Satires, 6.206–10:

si tibi simplicitas uxoria, deditus uni

est animus, summitte caput cervice parata

ferre iugum. Nullam invenies quae parcat amanti:

ardeat ipsa licet, tormentis gaudet amantis

et spoliis.

If you dote on your wife, being devoted to one woman only, then bow your head and submit your neck to the yoke. Never will you find a woman who will show any mercy to such a lover. Even if she herself is burning with desire, she takes pleasure in tormenting and plundering the man who loves her.

2.2.86–7 or, so . . . so forth Jonson updates Juvenal, Satires, 6.434–7:

Illa tamen gravior, quae cum discumbere coepit,

laudat Vergilium, periturae ignoscit Elissae,

committit vates et comparat, inde Maronem

atque alia parte in trutina suspendit Homerum.

Most unendurable of all is the woman who, as soon as she has sat down at table, begins to praise Virgil, makes excuses for the dying Dido, and sets the ancient poets in competition with her comparisons, putting Virgil on one side of the balancing scales and Homer on the other.

2.2.102–4 And then . . . fucus Cf. Juvenal, Satires, 6.461–3, 467–70:

Interea foeda aspectu ridendaque multo

pane tumet facies aut pinguia Poppaeana

spirat, et hinc miseri viscantur labra mariti . . .

tandem aperit vultum et tectoria prima reponit,

incipit agnosci, atque illo lacte fovetur

propter quod secum comites educit asellas

exul Hyperboreum si dimittatur ad axem.

Meanwhile she absurdly puffs out her face with lumps of dough; she reeks of pungent cosmetics [named after Nero’s wife Poppaea], which cling to the lips of her poor husband . . . In good time her face starts to appear, as she peels off the first layer of plaster and begins to be recognizable; and then she bathes in that milk for which she takes a herd of she-asses in her train if sent away to the North Pole.

4.1.5–7 Libanius, 11:

ἦν μὲν γὰρ οὐδ’ ἐκεῖνα μέτρια͵ κρότος πολύς͵ γέλως σφοδρός͵ ὄρχησις ἀσχήμων͵ ὑμεναῖος νοῦν οὐκ ἔχων· ἅπαντα πανταχόθεν͵ ἡνίκα ἡγούμην ταύτην τὴν ’Εριννῦν͵ συνέρρει κατὰ τοὺς χειμάρρους͵ ὅσοι συμπίπτοντες εἰς ἀλλήλους ἐξαὶσιον παρέχονται δοῦπον. What happened at the time was itself not easy to bear: the loud applause, the storms of laughter, the indecent dances, the idiotic wedding-song. When I married my Fury, all these things came together, like the torrents that merge into each other to make their monstrous roar.

4.1.25–6 Women . . . dressings Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 2.677–8:

Illae munditiis annorum damna rependunt,

Et faciunt cura, ne videantur anus.

Women recompense the harm of the years with neatness and elegance, and take care not to appear old.

4.1.26–33 And . . . open Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 3.261–3, 271, 275–80:

Rara tamen mendo facies caret: occule mendas,

Quaque potes, vitium corporis abde tui.

Si brevis es, sedeas, ne stans videare sedere . . .

Pes malus in nivea semper celetur aluta . . .

Exiguo signet gestu, quodcumque loquetur,

Cui digiti pingues et scaber unguis erit.

Cui gravis oris odor, numquam ieiuna loquatur,

Et semper spatio distet ab ore viri.

Si niger, aut ingens, aut non erit ordine natus

Dens tibi, ridendo maxima damna feres.

Yet rare is the face lacking a blemish: hide blemishes, so far as you are able to hide any bodily defect. If you are short, be sure to sit, lest while standing you appear to be sitting still . . . Let a poorly shaped foot be hidden always in a snow-white sandal . . . Let a woman with fat fingers and rough nails speak with the fewest possible gestures. One who has bad breath should never speak before eating, and should stand away from her lover’s face. If you have a tooth that is black or crooked, laughing will cost you dear.

4.1.34–5 Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria 3.287, 289–90:

Est, quae perverso distorqueat ora cachinno . . .

Illa sonat raucum quiddam atque inamabile ridet,

Ut rudit a scabra turpis asella mola.

One woman will distort her face with a hideous, immoderate laughter . . . She laughs in a raucous and unlovely way, as when a bad-spirited she-ass brays by the rough millstone.

4.1.36–8 Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 3.299–304:

Est et in incessu pars non contempta decoris:

Allicit ignotos ille fugatque viros.

Haec movet arte latus, tunicisque fluentibus auras

Accipit, extensos fertque superba pedes:

Illa velut coniunx Umbri rubicunda mariti

Ambulat, ingentes varica fertque gradus.

In the stride as well there is no small element of charm: it either attracts or repels new male acquaintances. One woman swivels her hips artfully, and greets the breeze with flowing robe, as she proudly places her dainty steps; another woman walks like the sun-burnished wife of an Umbrian, in long, awkward strides.

4.1.41–8 Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 1.43–4, 49–50, 89–92, 97–9:

Haec tibi non tenues veniet delapsa per auras:

Quaerenda est oculis apta puella tuis . . .

Tu quoque, materiam longo qui quaeris amori,

Ante frequens quo sit disce puella loco . . .

Sed tu praecipue curvis venare theatris:

Haec loca sunt voto fertiliora tuo.

Illic invenies quod ames, quod ludere possis,

Quodque semel tangas, quodque tenere velis . . .

Sic ruit in celebres cultissima femina ludos:

Copia iudicium saepe morata meum est.

Spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectentur ut ipsae.

This girl will not come gliding down to you as though out of thin air; she must be sought after, the girl who is suitable in your eyes . . . . You too, you who seek a person you can love with an enduring love, must first learn where it is that maidens are to be found . . . But most of all do your hunting in the round theatres: these places will prove most fertile in the fulfilling of your vows. There you will find what you desire, something you can play at, something either to taste once or cling to if you wish . . . thus do the best-dressed women hasten to the well-attended games: their huge numbers have often made my judgement falter. They come to see and to be seen.

4.1.55–6 Penelope . . . purpose Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 1.1.477–86:

Penelopen ipsam, persta modo, tempore vinces:

Capta vides sero Pergama, capta tamen.

In time, if only you persevere, you will vanquish Penelope herself; you see, Pergamum fell only belatedly, but it did fall.

4.1.56–7 They would . . . solicit them Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 1.483–6:

Forsitan et primo veniet tibi littera tristis,

Quaeque roget, ne se sollicitare velis.

Quod rogat illa, timet; quod non rogat, optat, ut instes;

Insequere, et voti postmodo compos eris.

Perhaps at first a disconsolate letter will come to you, asking you please not to press your suit. What she asks, she fears; what she does not ask, she desires: that you go on. Pursue her, and soon you will have gained what you desire.

4.1.57–61 Praise ’em . . . overcome Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 1.623–4, 663–6:

Delectant etiam castas praeconia formae;

Virginibus curae grataque forma sua est . . .

Quis sapiens blandis non misceat oscula verbis?

Illa licet non det, non data sume tamen.

Pugnabit primo fortassis, et ‘improbe’ dicet:

Pugnando vinci se tamen illa volet.

Even chaste young women take pleasure in hearing their charms extolled; even virgins regard their beauty with concern and delight . . . What wise man will neglect to mingle kisses with his blandishments? Even if she does not bestow kisses willingly, take what she does not give. At first she may struggle and cry ‘You wretch!’; nonetheless she will wish herself vanquished in the fight.

4.1.63–6 Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 1.673–8:

Vim licet appelles: grata est vis ista puellis:

Quod iuvat, invitae saepe dedisse volunt.

Quaecumque est veneris subita violata rapina,

Gaudet, et inprobitas muneris instar habet.

At quae cum posset cogi, non tacta recessit.

Ut simulet vultu gaudia, tristis erit.

You may employ force: force is pleasing to women. Often they will seem unwilling to give the thing they wish in fact to give. The woman taken by storm in a sudden assault is pleased to be assaulted; she regards the impudence as a compliment. The woman on the other hand who is allowed to retire untouched when she might have been forced, even though she puts on a face of joy, will nonetheless be unhappy.

4.1.67–72 But . . . rascal Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 1.755–6, 763–70:

sed sunt diversa puellis

Pectora: mille animos excipe mille modis . . .

Hic iaculo pisces, illa capiuntur ab hamis:

Hic cava contento retia fune trahunt.

Nec tibi conveniet cunctos modus unus ad annos:

Longius insidias cerva videbit anus.

Si doctus videare rudi, petulansve pudenti,

Diffidet miserae protinus illa sibi.

Inde fit, ut quae se timuit committere honesto,

Vilis ad amplexus inferioris eat.

But varied are the hearts of young women; employ a thousand stratagems to entrap a thousand hearts . . . Some fish are caught with spears, others with hooks, still others are dredged in bulging nets with taut ropes. And do not let one method suit all ages: an adult female deer will keep a wary eye on the net from afar. If you seem overly learned to the simple-minded, or lascivious to the prudish, the object of your attentions will immediately lapse into a hopeless diffidence. And thus it comes about that the woman who fears to commit herself to a honourable man allows herself to fall into the embraces of a wretch.

4.1.81–4 Then . . . gamesters Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 1.443–4, 449–52:

Promittas facito: quid enim promittere laedit?

Pollicitis dives quilibet esse potest . . .

At quod non dederis, semper videare daturus:

Sic dominum sterilis saepe fefellit ager:

Sic, ne perdiderit, non cessat perdere lusor,

Et revocat cupidas alea saepe manus.

Make promises. What is there to lose in promising? In promises it is possible for anyone to be wealthy . . . But what you haven’t actually given you can seem to be ever on the point of giving. In just the same way a barren field often deceives the owner, and similarly unlucky dice entice the gambler forward by his fear of losing, with the result that he continues to lose.

4.1.84–6 Let . . . Cheapside Cf. Ars Amatoria, 2.261–6:

Nec dominam iubeo pretioso munere dones:

Parva, sed e parvis callidus apta dato.

Dum bene dives ager, dum rami pondere nutant,

Adferat in calatho rustica dona puer.

Rure suburbano poteris tibi dicere missa,

Illa vel in Sacra sint licet empta via.

Nor do I bid you give your mistress costly gifts: they can be small, so long as they are chosen cunningly and aptly. At the harvest time of year, when branches hang heavy with their fruit, let your slave bring rustic gifts to her in a basket. You can tell her they were sent to you from your suburban estate, even though you bought them in the Sacred Way.

4.1.90–2 fail not . . . so Cf. Ars Amatoria, 2.251–4:

Nec pudor ancillas, ut quaeque erit ordine prima,

Nec tibi sit servos demeruisse pudor.

Nomine quemque sou (nulla est iactura) saluta,

Iunge tuis humiles, ambitiose, manus.

Don’t be ashamed to pay flattering attention to her maids, according to their rank in the household, or to her servants. Greet each of them by name; nothing is lost by doing that. Clasp their lowborn and ambitious hands in yours.

4.1.92–4 chief woman . . . crime Cf. Ars Amatoria, 1.351–2, 383–6, 389–90:

Sed prius ancillam captandae nosse puellae

Cura sit: accessus molliet illa tuos . . .

Si tamen illa tibi, dum dat recipitque tabellas,

Corpore, non tantum sedulitate placet,

Fac domina potiare prius, comes illa sequatur:

Non tibi ab ancilla est incipienda venus . . .

tollitur index,

Cum semel in partem criminis ipsa venit.

But first of all take care to acquaint yourself with the maidservant of the woman you would win; she is the one who will make your approach easy . . . Yet while she is shuttling back and forth with your letters, if her body begins to please you more than her sedulousness as go-between, be sure to win the mistress first and let the servant follow after; do not begin your love-making with the maidservant . . . The informer is removed from the picture once she comes to share in the crime.

4.3.26–31 Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 3.93–4, 98:

Quis vetet adposito lumen de lumine sumi?

Quisve cavo vastas in mare servet aquas?

. . . damnis munera vestra carent.

What forbids you to take light from a light that is set before you? Or who would attempt to guard the vast waters of the full sea? . . . There can be no loss in your giving.

4.3.32–5 Cf. Ovid, Ars Amatoria, 3.59–64, 69–70:

Venturae memores iam nunc estote senectae:

Sic nullum vobis tempus abibit iners.

Dum licet, et vernos etiamnum educitis annos,

Ludite: eunt anni more fluentis aquae;

Nec quae praeteriit, iterum revocabitur unda,

Nec quae praeteriit, hora redire potest . . .

Tempus erit, quo tu, quae nunc excludis amantes,

Frigida deserta nocte iacebis anus.

Have in mind now the old age that is sure to come; in that way, no hour will slip by you unused. While you can, and while you still enjoy the springtime of your life, make sport, for the years pass by like flowing water. Neither the wave that has passed by, nor an hour of life, can be recalled . . . The time will come when you who now exclude your lovers will lie a-nights a cold and lonely old woman.

4.4.28–31 Cf. Libanius, 13:

ἀναστὰς ἄπειμι περὶ τὴν προμνηστρίαν· καὶ τί τοῦτό ἐστιν ἠρώτων νυμϕὴ ῥήματα ἀφίησιν ἐπὶ τῇς πρώτης νυκτός ναί ϕησι͵ ϕιλτροῦ σημεῖον τοῦτό ἐστι͵ καὶ ἅμα τῇσ ϕωνῇς ἐπίδειξις σὺ δ’ ἀγριώτερος εἶ͵ ἐχρῇν δ’ οὐχ οὕτως ἔχειν πείθομαι πάλιν I went to see the matchmaker, who had arranged the marriage. ‘What’s all this?’ I said. ‘My bride is talking on the first night, and such a lot too.’ ‘Yes’, she said, ‘that’s a sign of love, and a way of displaying her voice.’

4.4.64–5 She . . . again Cf. Libanius, 19:

ὥσπερ γὰρ οἱ τοὺς κρούνους ἐπισχόντες, εἶτ’ ἀφελόντες τὸ κωλύον͵ σφοδροτέραν εἰργάσαντο τὴν φοράν· οὕτως ἐγὼ μικρὸν ἀναστείλας τὴν φωνήν͵ μεῖζον ἐπεσπασάμην τὸ ῥεῖθρον For just as the restraining of a spring makes the flow all the more violent when the obstruction is removed, even thus, by attempting to restrain her voice even slightly, I drew down a more violent stream upon myself.

5.3.19–23 Cf. Libanius, 7:

καὶ μὴν ἐκεῖνο δεῖν ἐξελάσαι τῇς ἀγορᾶς τὸ τῦς προσρήσεως οὐκ οίδ’ ὅθεν εἰς τὸν βίον ἐπελθόν͵ τὸν δεῖνα χαίρειν· οὐ γὰρ ἔγωγε μὰ τοὺς θεοὺς ὁρῶ τοῦ ῥήματος τὸ κέρδος οὐ γὰρ ᾧ γε λύπης ἀξίως ἔχει τὰ πράγματα͵ βεγτίω παρὰ τὸ χαὶρειν ἀκοῦσαι γὶγνεται And there’s another thing calculated to drive a man out of the agora: it’s the practice, that has somehow come into our lives, of greeting people by saying ‘Have a nice day.’ I don’t for the life of me see the advantage of this. Nobody in a painful situation is any the better for being told to ‘Have a nice day.’

5.3.36–44 My father . . . silent Cf. Libanius, 6:

ἐμοὶ δ’ ὁ πατήρ͵ ὦ βουλή παρῄνει τὸν νοῦν συνάγειν καὶ συνέχειν͵ καὶ μὴ συγχωρεῖν διαχεῖσθαι. διορᾶν τῶν ἐν τῶν βίῳ τά τε ἀναγκαῖα καὶ τὰ μή καὶ τῶν μὲν ἔχεσθαι͵ τῶν δ’ ἀπέχεσθαι· τιμᾰν τὴν ἡσυχίαν͵ φεύγειν τὰς ταραχάς ἃ καὶ ποιῶν͵ ὦ βουλή διατελῶ τῶν ἐκκλησιῶν οὐ μάλα κοινωνῶν͵ οὐ διὰ τὸ τῶν κοινῇᾐ συμφερόντων ἀμελεῖν͵ ἀλλὰ διὰ τὰς τῶν οὐ δυναμένων σιγῇσαι βοὰς ῥητόρων. My father, Members of Council, advised me always to collect and control my thoughts, and not to allow them to wander; to discern the necessary and the unnecessary in life and cling to the one and shun the other; and to honour quietness and avoid disturbance. And this, Members of Council, is what I continue to do: I take no part in assemblies, not because I neglect our common interests, but because of the shouting of speakers who are incapable of silence.

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

Epicene, or The Silent Woman (1609-10)

Edited by David Bevington

INTRODUCTION

TO THE TRULY NOBLE, BY ALL TITLES,

Sir Francis Stuart

The Persons of the Play

EPICENE, OR THE SILENT WOMAN

Prologue

Another Occasioned by some person’s impertinent exception

SOURCES