The New Inn | The Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson

Edited by Julie Sanders

Introduction

The New Inn was licensed for performance on 19 January 1629. Edmond Malone records witnessing this fact in the office book, no longer extant, of the Master of the Revels, Sir Henry Herbert (Bawcutt, 1996a, 167). The title-page of the 1631 edition states that it presents the play ‘As it was never acted, but most negligently played, by some, the King’s Servants. 1629’, which implies that the play was performed soon after licensing. Since most editors adhere to W. W. Greg’s argument (1926b) that Jonson favoured legal calendrical dating (with the year commencing on Lady Day, 25 March) for his post-1620 plays, this would suggest a performance date early in the legal year of 1629, in late March or early April. However, the second epilogue to The New Inn was clearly intended for a court performance which, according to its title, was never realized: ‘the play lived not in opinion to have it spoken’. But a performance at court in the Christmas season of 1629–30 would hardly have been likely when the play had already proved a resounding failure in the public theatre. This indicates that the play fell out of the repertoire before the end of the 1628–9 court season, proposing instead a date of January or February 1629 for the first performance (Butler, 2003, 60).

That first performance, by the company of the King’s Men at the Blackfriars Theatre, was a notorious failure. Jonson acknowledges as much, not only on the title-page, but in his ‘Dedication, To the Reader’ which makes it clear that he expects his readership to be more receptive than the Blackfriars audience: ‘there is more hope of thee than of a hundred fastidious impertinents who were there present the first day’ (3–4). His inclusion of further additional material in the printed version, including a lengthy ‘Argument’ setting out plot lines, a dramatis personae which attacks some of the original actors, alternative epilogues, and the ‘Ode to Himself’ (‘Come, leave the loathèd stage’, 6.310), is indication of considerable effort to ensure a positive response to the play in print.

The play was printed in octavo by Thomas Harper for Thomas Alchorne in 1631. The only one of Jonson’s plays to appear in octavo, it is possible that he chose this unusual format as a result of his disappointment with the early print gatherings of the folio editions of Bartholomew Fair, The Devil Is an Ass, and The Staple of News, which were being undertaken by John Beale for Robert Allott that same year (see the Textual Essay to Bartholomew Fair, Electronic Edition). These folio texts are notoriously variable in presentation and full of compositorial errors; Jonson commented on their poor quality in a letter to his patron William Cavendish, Earl of Newcastle (see Letter 15) which enclosed a presentation copy of The Devil Is an Ass. However, the dates do not entirely support the notion that the octavo was a response to the problems with Beale. The New Inn was entered on the Stationers’ Register on 17 April 1631; this would be early for Jonson to have become disillusioned with Beale, since The Staple of News was not even assigned to Allott until 7 September. An alternative is that The New Inn became a special case because of its poor theatrical reception: Jonson wished to vindicate his failed play by means of a separate publication, and was anxious about its fate in print. The choice of octavo format for printed plays was rare at this time, but it was cheaper and desirable for a risky publishing venture. The possibility remains, then, that Jonson turned to Allott and Beale to print the 1631 folios after the work on The New Inn had begun (this would explain the gap between the registration of The New Inn and The Staple of News). Possibly Alchorne and Harper were unable to handle a large folio project at this time – Harper’s printing house was extremely busy in 1631 – and Allott and Beale had both the capital and the space for such a large-scale commission (see the Textual Essays to Bartholomew Fair and The New Inn).

Whatever the precise reasons for Jonson’s choice of publisher and printer, Harper produced a remarkably clean text. There are relatively few stop-press corrections compared to the 1631 folio plays – although Jonson did make some changes on his own as the printing proceeded, including a character’s name – and the text, while lacking many performance details such as entrances and exits, is extremely coherent. The absence of stage directions suggests that the edition was set up from a holograph, rather than playhouse, copy. Evidence from collations suggests that Jonson was involved in the proofreading.

Jonson’s involvement in the proof corrections is indicated by the alteration of the chambermaid’s name from ‘Cicely’ to ‘Prudence’. The second epilogue (‘Another Epilogue’) complains that the audience had hissed at the first name (shortened to ‘Cis’). The precise cause of the offence is lost, although some scholars have argued that spectators detected an unintentional application to a specific contemporary court woman. The most likely suggestion, by E. E. Duncan-Jones (1996), is that the subject of the audience’s concern was Cicely Crofts, one of Henrietta Maria’s maids of honour; less plausibly, Fleay suggested Elizabeth Cecil, Lady Hatton (1891, 1.324–57). However, a single character name seems scarcely sufficient to damage a play’s reputation. Possibly the play’s anti-Spanish satire caused offence to a largely Hispanophile Caroline court. Certainly its debate on neoplatonism, although sustained, is too general to have been viewed as an indictment of any specific court practices. In truth, several Caroline playwrights suffered comparable audience hostility in the years 1628–33 (Butler, 1989, 301). The problem with The New Inn appears to be that Jonson took it so personally.

On the same day that The New Inn was licensed, one ‘Beniamin Ihonson’ was granted £5 by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster ‘in his sickness and want’ (Life Records, 77), and its critical history has become inextricably bound up with this image of Jonson in decline, its theatrical failure providing confirmation of the dramatist’s ailing fortunes. There were several contemporary poetic ripostes to Jonson’s defensive ‘Ode to Himself’ (reproduced in the Electronic Edition, Literary Record). The anonymous ‘The Country’s Censure on Ben Jonson’s New Inn’, which with its references to ‘Pru’ and the ‘Argument’ was clearly a response to the printed version, began with the unforgiving lines: ‘Listen, decaying Ben, and counsel hear, / Wits have their date and strength of brains may wear, / Age steeped in sack hath quenched thy enthean fire, / We pity now whom once we did admire’ (Literary Record). This image of a ‘decaying’ playwright gained further hold with Dryden’s late-seventeenth-century dismissal of Jonson’s late plays as ‘dotages’ (ed. S. H. Monk, 1956, 18.57), and the nineteenth century did not query this account. Gifford, describing Jonson as ‘the sick lion’ (5.296), made the unsubstantiated but influential claim that the play’s first performance was not heard to its conclusion. Only in the twentieth century did a gradual reassessment begin. The 1980s proved a critical watershed: Anne Barton’s seminal Ben Jonson, Dramatist (1984) made the case that the late plays were rich dramatic creations, evocative of their Caroline moment of production and significant in their nostalgia for a lost Elizabethan past. Michael Hattaway’s edition of The New Inn for the Revels plays series (1984) was heavily influenced by Barton’s thesis, as was the RSC’s production of the play in 1987 (see below). Subsequent studies have capitalized further on Barton’s pioneering work, drawing out the play’s extensive political and cultural inflections (Butler, 1992c), and attending to its relationships with the court circles surrounding Henrietta Maria (Tomlinson, 1992 and 2006; Sanders, 1996).

Textual parallels between The New Inn and an earlier play by John Fletcher, Love’s Pilgrimage (c. 1615–16, revised 1635?; published 1647), have also been the focus of critical scrutiny. Sir Glorious Tiptoe’s pointed attack on the Host’s attire (2.5.48–73) and Peck the ostler’s lengthy account of his abuse of guests’ horses (3.1.57–93 and 130–68) appear in altered form in the printed text of Love’s Pilgrimage. A payment was made by the King’s Men in 1635 for ‘renewing’ Love’s Pilgrimage. Malone, who possessed Herbert’s office book, suggested that the ‘renewer’ was James Shirley, commenting that ‘Shirley, who had the revisal of some of those pieces which were left imperfect by Fletcher, finding The New Inn unsuccessful, took the liberty to borrow a scene from it, which he inserted in Love’s Pilgrimage, when that play was revived, or as Sir Henry Herbert calls it renewed, in 1635’ (Bawcutt, 1996a, 194). But, as Bentley notes, Shirley worked for the Queen’s Men at this time (Bentley, JCS, 3.368–9), and it is unclear whether Malone was deducing his input on the basis of the evidence quoted above or whether he had access to additional information. Proceeding from the supposition that Malone’s notion of a reviser of Love’s Pilgrimage was correct, others have suggested Philip Massinger as a more likely candidate (Bawcutt, 1996a, 194; and see 2.5.48–73n.). The passages relating to The New Inn certainly serve no plot function in Love’s Pilgrimage, which might confirm the idea that they are later additions or interpolations, but they are also stand-alone exchanges in The New Inn. However, since Love’s Pilgrimage has a plot line involving corrupt inn-workers (two hosts and two hostesses are seen deceiving wealthy guests), scholars have also entertained the possibility that the borrowing was actually the other way round, and that Jonson adopted – and improved – the passages from Fletcher (Maxwell, 1939, 113–15). The most plausible account is that Malone was correct in all details except the identity of the reviser and that in 1635 The New Inn’s theatrical fate meant that its dialogue would have been regarded as ripe for reuse in this way.

Whatever its relationship to Fletcher’s play, The New Inn is embedded in the Caroline milieu. The drama unfolds in an inn called the Light Heart, situated in Barnet, which was in 1629 in the semi-rural environs of London. Here a group of guests gather to indulge in a day of sports. This consciously festive structure has led critics to describe the play as Jonson’s closest approach to the Shakespearean romance model. This is not necessarily a recessive move. With its plot lines of disguised daughters and reconciled lovers and families, and its neoplatonic themes of love and valour, The New Inn seems designed to appeal to Blackfriars audiences. Neoplatonism was a defining feature of Caroline culture in the 1630s, although its fluidity as a category or set of practices and beliefs in the 1620s needs acknowledgement. Critics debate whether Jonson was simply reflecting or parodying neoplatonic practice, although Hattaway suggests 1629 was too early for satire, since neoplatonism was yet to become fully established as a cult.

The chief exponent of the ideologies of beauty, love, and virtue associated with the movement was undoubtedly Charles I’s French consort, Queen Henrietta Maria. By means of her female-centred theatricals at Whitehall, Somerset House, Greenwich, and elsewhere, a courtly, and distinctively French, version of neoplatonism entered English cultural practice. Still, Henrietta Maria’s neoplatonism was only one strand of the movement, one inflected as much by Counter-Reformation zeal and her own devout Catholicism as by the Parisian salon culture that many more readily associated with it (Veevers, 1989; Britland, 2006). In early-seventeenth-century Paris, salons were essentially large rooms in private houses or hotels, which became the site of informal assemblies; these were frequently mixed-sex gatherings, but were invariably led by women. Salon culture facilitated female cultural agency, a fact compounded by the practice of idealizing women associated with Honoré d’Urfé’s L’Astrée, published in three volumes (1607–27), and the first English translation of which appeared in 1620. This author is cited in The New Inn (3.2.204). It is the world of salon culture that is most obviously suggested by Lady Frampul’s arrival at the inn, followed by several male suitors or ‘servants’ (1.5.53; the phrase was familiar from d’Urfé). It is possible that Jonson is satirizing this extreme form of woman worship in The New Inn, a text steeped in Platonic and neoplatonic frames of reference, although salon culture was not well established in 1620s London. The subsequent decade would witness several prominent elite female proponents of neoplatonism, including Lucy Percy Hay, Countess of Carlisle, and, Elizabeth, Lady Hatton, but the movement was, at most, emergent in 1629.

At the heart of any performance of The New Inn stand the third and fourth act sessions of the ‘Court of Love’, presided over by Prudence in her guise as carnival queen. In these mock-court gatherings, the melancholic Lord Lovel discourses on the topics of love and valour in the presence of the object of his affections, Lady Frampul. Jonson’s sources for these scenes were manifold. As well as the feasts of misrule that influenced Shakespearean romantic comedy, The New Inn’s mock-court alludes to medieval parliaments of love and Renaissance symposia. Medieval courts of love were actual assemblies in which noble men and women gathered to hear ‘questions’ of love debated (Hattaway, 1984, 30); often these were subsequently set in verse or song. There are records of such hearings taking place in Provence and Picardy as early as the twelfth century, although none survives from England. There are several literary examples of parliaments of love, including Andreas Capellanus’s Tractatus de Amore (thirteenth century) and Chaucer’s parody in The Parliament of Fowls. In Book 6 of Spenser’s The Faerie Queene Mirabell is tried by the court of Cupid. Hattaway helpfully connects Jonson’s Tiptoe with Spenser’s text, in which Mirabell’s companion is the squire Disdain who ‘did stride / At every step upon the tiptoes high’ (6.7.42–3). The seminal text on the subject of courts of love was, however, the Aresta Amorum, sive processus inter amantes cum decisionibus parlamenti (‘The Judgements of Love; or the process between lovers with the decisions of the court’), by Martial d’Auvergne (c. 1430–1508), best known in the seventeenth century by its non-Latinized French title Les Arrets D’Amours (‘The Judgements of Love’). This was a prose collection, with a prologue in verse, of 51 fictional lawsuits on questions of gallantry. Written c. 1455, it went through 35 editions between 1500 and 1734. Jonson may also have known a derivative work, Cupidon, or Plaidoyers et Arrets d’Amours Donnez en la Cour & Parquet de Cupidon (‘Speeches for the Defence and the Trials of Love Given in the Court and Prosecuting Chamber of Cupid’), published in Rouen in 1627 (Hattaway, 1984, 30). The use of legal sessions on love as a dramatic trope would certainly have been familiar to Jonson’s audiences. Marston’s The Fawn (1604) had featured one, as had, more recently, Massinger’s The Parliament of Love (1624).

Commencing the first session of the court, Lady Frampul instructs Lovel: ‘Tell us what love is, that we may be sure / There’s such a thing, and that it is in nature’ (3.2.57–8). The most sustained analogue for the dialogue that follows is Plato’s Symposium, as the characters themselves recognize (3.2.84–5, 203, 234–5). Humanist circles adopted Plato’s concept of a banquet at which the nature of love was debated. The literary product of one such gathering in Medici Florence, Marsilio Ficino’s Latin commentary on the Symposium (printed 1484) is a major source for Lovel’s speeches in Act 3, which contrast Ficino’s notions of ‘heavenly’ and ‘earthly’ love, along with Joannes Serranus’s translation of 1578 (Jonson’s copy of Serranus is extant; see 3.2.70–110n.). Ficino’s commentary, ‘an interpretative model which harmonized Plato . . . with Western Christianity’ (Baldwin and Hutton, 1994, 69), was a seminal text for Renaissance neoplatonists – indeed it was the origin of the phrase ‘Platonic love’ – and heavily influenced courtly, as well as literary, strands of neoplatonism, including the debate on love which takes place in Baldessare Castiglione’s The Book of the Courtier (1528), an additional source for The New Inn (see below).

Lovel’s discourses are also indebted to Stoic literature: in particular, in the speeches on valour (4.4) to Seneca’s moral essays De Ira (‘On Anger’) and De Constantia (‘On Firmness’). The importance of this material in the Jonsonian canon is indicated by the discussion between three characters in The Magnetic Lady (3.5.93–5). When Compass and Captain Ironside link fortitude with valour, Sir Diaphanous Silkworm assumes they have read The New Inn; his emphasis on the play as printed rather than performed is intriguing. Whether The New Inn wholeheartedly endorses Lovel’s viewpoints on either love or valour is, however, a matter for debate. For example, Lovel’s idealistic statements are always counterbalanced by another character. In Act 4, the counterpoint is provided by the stereotypical braggart soldier Tiptoe, suggesting that Lovel’s concepts of virtù are being endorsed. In the central act, the dividing line is less easily drawn. Lord Beaufort represents the anti-Platonic sensualist, a figure linked in the early modern mind to Ovid (as Beaufort confirms at 3.2.124). If the Platonic dialogue was associated with symposia or ‘philosophical feasts’ (3.2.123), gatherings of a cerebral and discursive nature, followers of Ovid were linked to the wholly more physical ‘banquets of sense’ (3.2.123–4n.; cf. Kermode, 1973). Jonson had, of course, represented one such banquet onstage in Poetaster (4.5). In The New Inn, Beaufort, the exponent of Ovidian philosophy, shares Tiptoe’s arrogance, and seems set to receive his comeuppance when it appears he has mistakenly married a boy dressed as a girl. ‘Frank’ will, however, turn out to be Laetitia, and of noble stock, to some extent proving Beaufort’s physical instincts correct. Scholars have suggested links between Lovel and Jonson’s patron William Cavendish, the Earl of Newcastle; his espousal of chivalric values and his skills at swordsmanship echo qualities accorded Cavendish in Jonson’s poetry (Und. 53, 59; see Barton, 1984, 301; Rowe, 1994, 197–212). But there are elements of Cavendish in Beaufort the Ovidian sensualist too (Raylor, 1999a, 435–6). Straightforward allegory is (as ever) far from Jonson’s aim. Belief systems are at turns admired and ridiculed, and scenes left open to interpretation.

Beaufort’s interruptions of Act 3 discussions disrupt the proceedings in a manner akin to Alcibiades’ interventions in the Symposium and Morello’s during Pietro Bembo’s speeches in Book 4 of Castiglione. The narrative structure of Castiglione’s text shares several aspects with The New Inn, not least the series of evening debates on subjects including love and valour, which are broken up by the arrival of new interlocutors or sceptical interventions. In The New Inn, these events are compressed into a single day, but the arrival of Pinnacia Stuff in the misappropriated dress effectively ends the first session (3.2.269–72). Barton has made fruitful connections between the ‘day’s sports’ of The New Inn and Castiglione’s Urbino, suggesting that Prudence’s role as mistress is comparable with that of Gonzaga’s Duchess (1984, 265–6, 270). Lady Frampul’s salonnière neoplatonism connects her, too, to the real-life Duchess on whom Castiglione based his character: Elisabetta Gonzaga ‘presided over soirées aided by her good friend and sister-in-law Emilia Pia’. In turn, Pia, another central female character in Castiglione, has much in common with Prudence: ‘Emilia Pia is acting in her official capacity as lieutenant to the Duchess, and . . . her interventions are necessary to keep harmony in the group’ (V. Cox, 1992, 87).

The inn gathering has one further analogue, with the entity and operations of theatre. The Host makes the parallel explicit by invoking the theatrum mundi trope during his discussions with Lovel (1.3.132–6; a sentiment echoed by Lady Frampul at 2.1.39). The play’s themes of disguise and mistaken identity add to its metatheatrical style. Not only is the Host a disguised lord, but, without his knowledge, resident in the inn are other concealed members of his family: his wife in the shape of the inebriated Irish nurse (who, to confuse matters further, is disguised by the Host as a Welsh herald’s widow), and the Host’s adopted son ‘Frank’, his true daughter Laetitia.

Clothing is a talismanic stage property in The New Inn. The dress commissioned by Lady Frampul for the day’s theatricals is worn onstage by Prudence but also by Pinnacia, the wife of the tailor, Nick Stuff. Pinnacia, we learn, regularly dresses up as a countess to indulge in rank-driven sexual fantasies with her husband, who in turn poses as a footman. The stripping off of their delusory costumes forms part of their punishment when their fetishistic appropriation of aristocratic women’s clothing is discovered. In the course of The New Inn, clothing is criticized, borrowed, misappropriated, removed, and ultimately restored; the Host asserts his true identity in Act 5 by reassuming his wardrobe. It is a peculiarly metatheatrical trope that identity in this play is so dependent on costume (cf. Partridge, 1957b, 396–409). The Blackfriars Theatre was in the London parish where the royal office of the Wardrobe was located, which provided costumes used in masques and ceremonials. Some of these costumes eventually found their way into the inventories of theatre companies such as the King’s Men, the fate which Lady Frampul has in mind for the dress she lends to Pru (2.1.35–6). The cultural capital of costume is vividly realized in any performance (cf. Jones and Stallybrass, 2000).

In his theatrum mundi speech, the Host suggests he is the audience for ‘the variety and throng of humours / And dispositions that come jostling in’ (1.3.134–5). His explicit reference to ‘humours’ has encouraged many critics to view this as a return by Jonson to the theories of his early drama. There is some truth in this; when The New Inn opens, we have a ‘jovial’ Host, the embodiment of sanguine humour, attempting to alter the mood of his melancholic guest. Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy had gone into its third edition just a year before The New Inn was performed, and Lovel is, in many respects, a version of the lover-melancholic that Burton details as a specific type (see Babb, 1951, 161–2). Yet in The New Inn many characters, including Lovel, move beyond being mere types into fully rounded creations (see, e.g., the exchange at 1.6.95–7).

In the same way that The New Inn moves beyond the confines of humours comedy, so the romance connotations of its setting – which equate to Jonson’s version of Shakespeare’s Arden (Barton, 1984, 259), a place where normal social rules are temporarily suspended – are counterbalanced by the social realism of the Barnet locale. Jonson observes the unities of time and place, even as he offers a detailed glimpse into the cultural geography of a Caroline inn (as distinct from a tavern or an alehouse, which were different grades of drinking establishment). Inns were expanding both in numbers and in terms of social function. Serving as the means by which news and post were distributed, they were the main ‘staging points along the trackways of the kingdom’ (P. Clark, 1983, 9). Innkeepers served as local postmasters, receiving news and commodities on behalf of guests. In The New Inn, Jug the tapster is several times called a ‘thoroughfare of news’ (see The Persons of the Play, 49). This is the world of carriers and post described by John Taylor in his remarkable pamphlet, The Carriers’ Cosmography (1637), which details which inn in London to take post to in order to reach specific corners of the kingdom. That these goods were sometimes purloined by hosts and their employees was another fact of early modern life, and The New Inn hints at such practices in its lengthy description of the ‘pranks of ale and hostelry’ (3.1.125) indulged in by some of the staff, including Fly the ‘parasite’ and Peck the ostler. Fly, who at one point the Host claims was signed over to him in the inventory, is notorious for being the ‘inflamer of the reckonings’ (Persons of the Play, 44), and the Host describes the stables and cellars – evocative offstage spaces, akin to the laboratory in The Alchemist and the dinner party of The Magnetic Lady – as Fly’s ‘schools’ for cozeners (2.5.34).

Describing the communities that populated inns in the early seventeenth century, Peter Clark notes that they ‘usually had a bevy of maids, tapsters, chamberlains, and ostlers to serve the multitude of guests’ (1983, 7). This could almost be the dramatis personae for The New Inn. As well as Fly, Jug, and Peck, we have Jordan the chamberlain and Pierce the drawer working below stairs, along with the Host’s son Frank (the employment of orphaned children as alehouse servants was a common occurrence: see P. Clark, 1983, 84). Among the guests the full social spectrum from coach drivers and chambermaids to socially affluent lords and ladies is present.

On stage, these various groups are demarcated in terms of the spaces they occupy and the roles they fulfil. Pierce and the other workers constantly react to calls and whistles, moving upstairs and downstairs, carrying drinks and supplies for the guests. Lady Frampul, who arrives with her dressing-up trunk and her maid, can afford to spend the day indulging in masquerade. Poorer guests, such as bankrupt Bartholomew Burst, are usually kept away from more affluent visitors. At times, though, the two worlds of upstairs and downstairs collide with startling results: for example, in Act 4 Lovel drives away the drunken ‘centaurs’ (4.2.101; 4.3.2) who have besieged Pinnacia. Pinnacia is still in her role of countess, but when her true rank is revealed to the company the rough justice meted out to her and her husband distinguishes the inn communities once more. In this scene, the valorization of aristocratic virtues would appear to be implicit, even if elsewhere the discourse of the servants, albeit unrepentant about the scams and deceptions they are carrying out, gestures at corruption across all sectors of society. Pinnacia hints at the social dialectic that the Light Heart manages to keep barely in check for the majority of the play in her designation of ‘fine company’ and ‘wild company’, berating her husband’s decision to bring her into such a place (4.2.92–7; cf. Hattaway, 1984, 21).

The Light Heart is an inclusive society, but to what extent it is a meritocracy is debatable. Although Fly inherits the inn from his master, most characters remain securely in their place at the close. The Frampul family will return to their aristocratic estate with lessons learned but with the social hierarchy essentially intact. The inn servants will continue in their work: Peck, Pierce, Jug, and Jordan are as much defined by their occupations as the objects of their trades provide their names. The one exception is Prudence the chambermaid, although even here Jonson inverts traditional romance expectations. In more conventional treatments, the morally superior Prudence, who has judged all events with equity and grace, would emerge as a long-lost princess or noblewoman and be awarded the prize of marriage with a prince or lord (Perdita’s trajectory in The Winter’s Tale), yet here she remains a chambermaid. Jonson does, however, opt to see her rewarded. The Host feels guilt at his failure to notice Prudence’s plight in the midst of the family reconciliation, and as recompense offers her a dowry, which Beaufort immediately doubles. And Jonson chooses not to end it there: in a gesture akin to France’s in marrying the dowerless Cordelia in King Lear, Latimer proposes marriage with no financial incentive required. Prudence, through sheer wisdom, ‘her virtue and her manners’, becomes a lady (5.5.144). This is Jonson’s most romantic gesture, although it comes nowhere near the inclusive ending created when the play was revived by the RSC in 1987. Director John Caird chose to bring all of the characters back onstage for a musical finale, whereas Jonson had composed closing celebrations that were exclusively aristocratic.

Perhaps because of those now notorious failed first performances, the stage history of The New Inn is brief. The play was not performed at all between 1629 and the beginning of the twentieth century, when the Old Vic Theatre company staged a production at the Chelsea Arts club (dir. C. R. Ashbee) in 1903 (H&S 9.252); no further details are known. The chambermaid’s part is a strong female role in a play distinguished by its range of women characters, a feature of Jonson’s Caroline drama that does suggest a changing theatrical context in the era of Henrietta Maria’s patronage of women’s performance at court. Certainly, Prudence proved a role of equal importance to Lady Frampul in the RSC’s 1987 revival.

That production endorsed the critical view of The New Inn as a Caroline play, opting for the lace collars and cavalier associations of 1630s costume. Stage space also proved highly significant: an imaginative deployment of trapdoors and staircases carefully demarcated the offstage spaces of elite characters and the cellars and kitchens from which the inn servants emerged. In this production, the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon provided the perfect location in which to realize the metatheatrical Light Heart. The use of different levels suggested perfectly the upstairs–downstairs community of the inn, and Sue Blane’s set of wooden steps, stairs, tables, and trenchers melded with the cherrywood space of the theatre, involving the audience in the action in the manner Jonson must have wished had been the case in the Blackfriars Theatre in 1629. What the RSC production confirmed beyond doubt in 1987 was that The New Inn works beautifully in performance. John Carlisle and Fiona Shaw as Lord Lovel and Lady Frampul offered a resonant portrayal of mature love that formed the core of the production, and Carlisle’s delivery of Lovel’s lengthy set-piece speeches on love and valour proved that these could function well in a live theatrical context without substantial editing. The vibrant and varied community of inn-workers and guests was realized in the hustle and bustle witnessed on stage, but also by means of the exquisitely individualized comic performances of roles such as Pierce, Fly, and Peck. These interpretations gave energy and point to Act 3, Scene 1 and comparable scenes, helping to make sense of the play and its carefully drawn inn society as a complex and interrelated whole and not just the sum of its parts.

THE DEDICATION,
TO THE READER

If thou be such, I make thee my patron and dedicate the piece to thee: if not so

much, would I had been at the charge of thy better literature. Howsoever, if thou

canst but spell and join my sense, there is more hope of thee than of a hundred

fastidious impertinents who were there present the first day, yet never made piece

of their prospect the right way. ‘What did they come for, then?’ thou wilt ask me. 5

I will as punctually answer: ‘To see and to be seen. To make a general muster of

themselves in their clothes of credit, and possess the stage against the play. To

dislike all, but mark nothing. And, by their confidence of rising between the acts

in oblique lines, make affidavit to the whole house of their not understanding

one scene.’ Armed with this prejudice, as the stage-furniture or arras-cloths, they 10

were there, as spectators, away. For the faces in the hangings and they beheld

alike. So I wish they may do ever. And do trust myself and my book rather to thy

rustic candour than all the pomp of their pride, and solemn ignorance to boot.

Fare thee well, and fall to. Read.

BEN JONSON 15

But first, the Argument.

The Argument

The Lord Frampul, a noble gentleman, well educated and bred a scholar in Oxford,

was married young to a virtuous gentlewoman, Sylly’s daughter of the south,

whose worth, though he truly enjoyed, he never could rightly value. But, as

many green husbands, given over to their extravagant delights and some peccant

humours of their own, occasioned in his over-loving wife so deep a melancholy 5

by his leaving her in the time of her lying-in of her second daughter, she having

brought him only two daughters, Frances and Laetitia, and out of her hurt fancy

interpreting that to be a cause of her husband’s coldness in affection – her not

being blessed with a son – took a resolution with herself, after her month’s time

and thanksgiving ritely in the church, to quit her home, with a vow never to 10

return till by reducing her lord she could bring a wished happiness to the family.

He, in the meantime returning and hearing of this departure of his lady,

began, though over-late, to resent the injury he had done her, and out of his cock-brained

resolution entered into as solemn a quest of her. Since when, neither of

them had been heard of. But the eldest daughter Frances, by the title of Lady 15

Frampul, enjoyed the state, her sister being lost young, and is the sole relict of

the family.

Act 1

Here begins our comedy.

This lady, being a brave, bountiful lady, and enjoying this free and plentiful estate, 20

hath an ambitious disposition to be esteemed the mistress of many servants, but

loves none. And hearing of a famous new inn that is kept by a merry host called

Goodstock, in Barnet, invites some lords and gentlemen to wait on her thither,

as well to see the fashions of the place as to make themselves merry with the

accidents on the by. It happens there is a melancholic gentleman, one Master 25

Lovel, hath been lodged there some days before in the inn, who, unwilling to be

seen, is surprised by the lady and invited by Prudence, the lady’s chambermaid,

who is elected governess of the sports in the inn for that day, and installed their

sovereign. Lovel is persuaded by the Host and yields to the lady’s invitation, which

concludes the first act, having revealed his quality before to the Host. 30

In the second act

Prudence and her lady express their anger conceived at the tailor, who had

promised to make Prudence a new suit and bring it home, as on the eve, against

this day. But he failing of his word, the lady had commanded a standard of her

own best apparel to be brought down, and Prudence is so fitted. The lady, being 35

put in mind that she is there alone without other company of women, borrows,

by the advice of Pru, the Host’s son of the house, whom they dress, with the

Host’s consent, like a lady, and send out the coachman with the empty coach, as

for a kinswoman of Her Ladyship’s, Mistress Laetitia Sylly, to bear her company.

Who, attended with his nurse, an old charwoman in the inn, dressed oddly by 40

the Host’s counsel, is believed to be a lady of quality and so received, entertained,

and love made to her by the young Lord Beaufort, etc. In the meantime, the Fly of

the inn is discovered to Colonel Glorious, with the militia of the house below the

stairs, in the drawer, tapster, chamberlain, and ostler, inferior officers, with the

coachman Trundle, Ferret, etc. And the preparation is made to the lady’s design 45

upon Lovel, his upon her, and the sovereign’s upon both.

Here begins, at the third act, the epitasis or business

of the play.

Lovel, by the dexterity and wit of the sovereign of the sports, Prudence, having

two hours assigned him of free colloquy and love-making to his mistress, one 50

after dinner, the other after supper, the court being set, is demanded by the Lady

Frampul what love is, as doubting if there were any such power or no. To whom

he, first by definition, and after by argument, answers, proving and describing the

effects of love so vively, as she, who had derided the name of love before, hearing

his discourse, is now so taken both with the man and his matter as she confesseth 55

herself enamoured of him and, but for the ambition she hath to enjoy the other

hour, had presently declared herself; which gives both him and the spectators

occasion to think she yet dissembles, notwithstanding the payment of her kiss,

which he celebrates. And the court dissolves upon a news brought of a new lady,

a newer coach, and a new coachman called Barnaby. 60

Act 4.

The house being put into a noise with the rumour of this new lady, and there

being drinking below in the court, the Colonel, Sir Glorious, with Bat Burst,

a broken citizen, and Hodge Huffle his champion, she falls into their hands

and, being attended but with one footman, is uncivilly entreated by them and a 65

quarrel commenced, but is rescued by the valour of Lovel; which beheld by the

Lady Frampul from the window, she is invited up for safety; where coming and

conducted by the Host, her gown is first discovered to be the same with the whole

suit which was bespoken for Pru, and she herself upon examination found to

be Pinnacia Stuff, the tailor’s wife, who was wont to be preoccupied in all his 70

customers’ best clothes by the footman her husband. They are both condemned

and censured, she stripped like a doxy and sent home afoot. In the interim the

second hour goes on, and the question, at suit of the Lady Frampul, is changed

from love to valour; which ended, he receives his second kiss, and by the rigour of

the sovereign falls into a fit of melancholy worse or more desperate than the first. 75

The fifth and last act is the catastrophe or knitting up of all, where Fly brings

word to the Host of the Lord Beaufort’s being married privately in the new stable

to the supposed lady, his son, which the Host receives as an omen of mirth; but

complains that Lovel is gone to bed melancholic, when Prudence appears dressed

in the new suit, applauded by her lady, and employed to retrieve Lovel. The Host 80

encounters them with this relation of Lord Beaufort’s marriage, which is seconded

by the Lord Latimer and all the servants of the house. In this while, Lord Beaufort

comes in and professes it, calls for his bed and bride-bowl to be made ready; the

Host forbids both, shows whom he hath married and discovers him to be his son,

a boy. The lord bridegroom confounded, the nurse enters like a frantic bedlam, 85

cries out on Fly, says she is undone in her daughter, who is confessed to be the

Lord Frampul’s child, sister to the other lady, the Host to be their father, she his

wife. He, finding his children, bestows them one on Lovel, the other on the Lord

Beaufort, the inn upon Fly, who had been a gypsy with him, offers a portion with

Prudence for her wit, which is refused and she taken by the Lord Latimer to wife 90

for the crown of her virtue and goodness. And all are contented.

The Scene: Barnet

The Persons of the Play

With some short characterism of the chief actors.

GOODSTOCK, the host (played well), alias the lord frampul. He pretends to be a gentleman and a scholar neglected by the times, turns host and keeps an inn, the sign of the Light Heart in Barnet; is supposed to have one only son, but is found to have none but two daughters, Frances and Laetitia, who was lost young, etc.5

LOVEL, a complete gentleman, a soldier, and a scholar, is a melancholy guest in the inn; first quarrelled, after much honoured and beloved by the Host. He is known to have been page to the old Lord Beaufort, followed him in the French wars, after a companion of his studies and left guardian to his son. He is assisted in his love to the Lady Frampul by the Host and the chambermaid 10 Prudence. He was one that acted well too.

FERRET, who is also called stoat and vermin, is Lovel’s servant, a fellow of a quick, nimble wit, knows the manners and affections of people, and can make profitable and timely discoveries of them.

FRANK, supposed a boy and the Host’s son, borrowed to be dressed for a lady, 15 and set up as a stale by Prudence to catch Beaufort or Latimer, proves to be laetitia, sister to Frances, and Lord Frampul’s younger daughter, stolen by a beggar-woman, shorn, put into a boy’s apparel, sold to the Host, and brought up by him as his son.

NURSE, a poor charwoman in the inn, with one eye, that tends the boy, is 20 thought the Irish beggar that sold him but is truly the Lady Frampul, who left her home melancholic and jealous that her lord loved her not because she brought him none but daughters, and lives unknown to her husband as he to her.

FRANCES, supposed the Lady Frampul, being reputed his sole daughter and 25 heir, the barony descending upon her, is a lady of great fortunes and beauty, but fantastical; thinks nothing a felicity but to have a multitude of servants and be called mistress by them, comes to the inn to be merry, with a chambermaid only, and her servants, her guests, etc.

PRUDENCE, the chambermaid, is elected sovereign of the sports in the inn, 30 governs all, commands, and so orders as the Lord Latimer is exceedingly taken with her, and takes her to his wife in conclusion.

LORD LATIMER and LORD BEAUFORT are a pair of young lords, servants and guests to the Lady Frampul, but as Latimer falls enamoured of Prudence, so doth Beaufort on the boy, the Host’s son, set up for Laetitia, the younger 35 sister, which she proves to be indeed.

SIR GLORIOUS TIPTOE, a knight and colonel, hath the luck to think well of himself, without a rival, talks gloriously of anything, but very seldom is in the right. He is the lady’s guest and her servant too, but this day utterly neglects his service, or that him. For he is so enamoured on the Fly of the inn 40 and the militia below stairs, with Hodge Huffle and Bat Burst, guests that come in, and Trundle, Barnaby, etc, as no other society relisheth with him.

FLY is the parasite of the inn, visitor-general of the house, one that had been a strolling gypsy but now is reclaimed to be inflamer of the reckonings.

PIERCE, the drawer, knighted by the colonel, styled sir pierce and young 45 anon, one of the chief of the infantry.

JORDAN, the chamberlain, another of the militia and an officer, commands the tertia of the beds.

JUG, the tapster, a thoroughfare of news.

PECK, the ostler. 50

BAT BURST, a broken citizen, an in-and-in man.

HODGE HUFFLE, a cheater, his champion.

NICK STUFF, the lady’s tailor.

PINNACIA STUFF, his wife.

TRUNDLE, a coachman. 55

BARNABY, a hired coachman.

STAGGERS, the smith.

TREE, the saddler.

}

Only talked on.

[FIDDLERS] 60

[SERVANTS]

The Prologue

You are welcome, welcome all, to the New Inn.

Though the old house, we hope our cheer will win

Your acceptation; we ha’ the same cook

Still, and the fat, who says you sha’ not look

Long for your bill of fare, but every dish 5

Be served in i’the time and to your wish.

If anything be set to a wrong taste,

’Tis not the meat there, but the mouth’s displaced;

Remove but that sick palate, all is well.

For this the secure dresser bade me tell, 10

Nothing more hurts just meetings than a crowd,

Or, when the expectation’s grown too loud,

That the nice stomach would ha’ this or that,

And being asked, or urged, it knows not what;

When sharp or sweet have been too much a feast, 15

And both outlived the palate of the guest.

Beware to bring such appetites to the stage;

They do confess a weak, sick, queasy age,

And a shrewd grudging too of ignorance,

When clothes and faces ’bove the men advance. 20

Hear for your health, then; but at any hand,

Before you judge, vouchsafe to understand,

Concoct, digest; if then it do not hit,

Some are in a consumption of wit

Deep, he dares say, he will not think that all – 25

For hectics are not epidemical.

1.1 [Enter] HOST [and] FERRET.

HOST

I am not pleased, indeed, you are i’the right;

Nor is my house pleased, if my sign could speak,

The sign o’the Light Heart. There you may read it;

So may your master too, if he look on’t.

A heart weighed with a feather, and outweighed too; 5

A brain-child o’mine own, and I am proud on’t!

And if His Worship think here to be melancholy

In spite of me or my wit, he is deceived;

I will maintain the rebus ’gainst all humours

And all complexions i’the body of man, 10

That’s my word, or i’the isle of Britain!

FERRET

You have reason, good mine Host.

HOST

Sir, I have rhyme too.

‘Whether it be by chance or art,

A heavy purse makes a light heart.’

There ’tis expressed! First, by a purse of gold, 15

‘A heavy purse’, and then two turtles, ‘makes’,

A heart with a light stuck in’t, ‘a light heart’!

Old Abbot Islip could not invent better,

Or Prior Bolton with his bolt and tun.

I am an innkeeper and know my grounds, 20

And study ’em; brain o’ man, I study ’em.

I must ha’ jovial guests to drive my ploughs

And whistling boys to bring my harvest home,

Or I shall hear no flails thwack. Here your master

And you ha’ been this fortnight, drawing fleas 25

Out of my mats and pounding ’em in cages

Cut out of cards, and those roped round with packthread

Drawn thorough bird-lime – a fine subtlety! –

Or poring through a multiplying glass

Upon a captived crab-louse or a cheese-mite, 30

To be dissected, as the sports of nature,

With a neat Spanish needle – speculations

That do become the age, I do confess! –

As measuring an ant’s eggs with the silkworm’s

By a fantastic instrument of thread 35

Shall give you their just difference, to a hair!

Or else recovering o’ dead flies with crumbs –

Another quaint conclusion i’the physics –

Which I ha’ seen you busy at through the key-hole,

But never had the fate to see a fly 40

Enter LOVEL.

Alive i’your cups or once heard, ‘Drink, mine Host’,

Or such a cheerful chirping charm come from you.

1.2

LOVEL

What’s that? What’s that?

FERRET

A buzzing of mine Host

About a fly! A murmur that he has.

HOST

Sir, I am telling your stoat here, Monsieur Ferret –

For that I hear’s his name – and dare tell you, sir,

If you have a mind to be melancholy and musty, 5

There’s Footman’s Inn at the town’s end, the stocks,

Or Carrier’s Place, at sign o’the Broken Wain,

Mansions of state! Take up your harbour there;

There are both flies and fleas, and all variety

Of vermin for inspection or dissection. 10

LOVEL

We ha’ set our rest up here, sir, i’your Heart.

HOST

Sir, set your heart at rest, you shall not do it,

Unless you can be jovial. Brain o’ man,

Be jovial first and drink, and dance and drink

Your lodging here, and wi’ your daily dumps, 15

Is a mere libel ’gain’ my house and me;

And, then, your scandalous commons –

LOVEL

How, mine Host?

HOST

Sir, they do scandal me, upo’ the road, here.

A poor quotidian rack o’ mutton, roasted

Dry, to be grated! And that driven down 20

With beer and buttermilk mingled together,

Or clarified whey instead of claret!

It is against my freehold, my inheritance,

My Magna Carta, cor laetificat,

To drink such balderdash or bonny-clabber! 25

Gi’ me good wine; or catholic or christian,

Wine is the word that glads the heart of man,

And mine’s the house of wine. ‘Sack’, says my bush;

‘Be merry and drink sherry’, that’s my posy!

For I shall never joy i’my Light Heart 30

So long as I conceive a sullen guest

Or anything that’s earthy!

LOVEL

Humorous Host!

HOST

I care not if I be.

LOVEL

But airy also,

Not to defraud you of your rights, or trench

Upo’ your privileges or great charter – 35

For those are every ostler’s language now –

Say you were born beneath those smiling stars

Have made you lord and owner of the Heart,

Of the Light Heart in Barnet; suffer us,

Who are more saturnine, t’enjoy the shade 40

Of your round roof yet.

HOST

Sir, I keep no shades

Nor shelters, I, for either owls or reremice.

1.3 Enter FRANK.

FERRET

He’ll make you a bird of night, sir.

(The Host speaks to his child o’ the by.)

HOST

Bless you, child –

[To them] You’ll make yourselves such.

LOVEL

That your son, mine Host?

HOST

He’s all the sons I have, sir.

LOVEL

Pretty boy!

Goes he to school?

FERRET

Oh, Lord, sir, he prates Latin

An ’twere a parrot or a play-boy.

LOVEL

Thou – 5

Commend’st him fitly.

FERRET

To the pitch he flies, sir.

He’ll tell you what is Latin for a looking-glass,

A beard-brush, rubber, or quick warming pan.

LOVEL

What’s that?

FERRET

A wench, i’the inn-phrase, is all these;

A looking-glass in her eye, 10

A beard-brush with her lips,

A rubber with her hand,

And a warming pan with her hips.

HOST

This in your scurril dialect. But my inn

Knows no such language.

FERRET

That’s because, mine Host, 15

You do profess the teaching him yourself.

HOST

Sir, I do teach him somewhat. By degrees

And with a funnel, I make shift to fill

The narrow vessel; he is but yet a bottle.

LOVEL

Oh, let him lose no time, though.

HOST

Sir, he does not. 20

LOVEL

And less his manners.

HOST

I provide for those too. –

Come hither, Frank, speak to the gentleman

In Latin. He is melancholy; say

I long to see him merry, and so would treat him.

FRANK

Subtristis visu’ es esse aliquantulum patri, 25

Qui te laute excipere, atque etiam tractare gestit.

LOVEL

Pulchre.

HOST

Tell him, I fear it bodes us some ill luck,

His too reservedness.

FRANK

Veretur pater,

Ne quid nobis mali ominis apportet iste

Nimis præclusus vultus.

LOVEL

Belle. A fine child! 30

You wou’ not part with him, mine Host?

HOST

Who told you

I would not?

LOVEL

I but ask you.

HOST

And I answer:

To whom? For what?

LOVEL

To me, to be my page.

HOST

I know no mischief yet the child hath done,

To deserve such a destiny.

LOVEL

Why?

HOST

Go down, boy, 35

And get your breakfast. [Exeunt Frank and Ferret.]

Trust me, I had rather

Take a fair halter, wash my hands, and hang him

Myself, make a clean riddance of him, than –

LOVEL

What?

HOST

Than damn him to that desperate course of life.

LOVEL

Call you that desperate, which by a line 40

Of institution from our ancestors

Hath been derived down to us, and received

In a succession, for the noblest way

Of breeding up our youth in letters, arms,

Fair mien, discourses, civil exercise, 45

And all the blazon of a gentleman?

Where can he learn to vault, to ride, to fence,

To move his body gracefuller, to speak

His language purer, or to tune his mind

Or manners more to the harmony of nature 50

Than in these nurseries of nobility?

HOST

Ay, that was when the nursery’s self was noble,

And only virtue made it, not the market,

That titles were not vented at the drum

Or common outcry; goodness gave the greatness, 55

And greatness worship. Every house became

An academy of honour, and those parts –

We see departed in the practice now,

Quite from the institution.

LOVEL

Why do you say so?

Or think so enviously? Do they not still 60

Learn there the centaurs’ skill, the art of Thrace,

To ride, or Pollux’ mystery, to fence;

The Pyrrhic gestures, both to dance and spring

In armour, to be active for the wars;

To study figures, numbers, and proportions, 65

May yield ’em great in counsels and the arts

Grave Nestor and the wise Ulysses practised;

‘To make their English sweet upon their tongue’,

As reverend Chaucer says?

HOST

Sir, you mistake;

To play Sir Pandarus, my copy hath it, 70

And carry messages to Madam Cressid;

Instead of backing the brave steed o’ mornings,

To mount the chambermaid; and for a leap

O’the vaulting horse, to ply the vaulting house;

For exercise of arms, a bale of dice, 75

Or two or three packs of cards, to show the cheat

And nimbleness of hand; mistake a cloak

From my lord’s back, and pawn it; ease his pockets

Of a superfluous watch, or geld a jewel

Of an odd stone, or so; twinge three or four buttons 80

From off my lady’s gown. These are the arts

Or seven liberal deadly sciences

Of pagery, or rather paganism,

As the tides run. To which, if he apply him,

He may, perhaps, take a degree at Tyburn 85

A year the earlier, come to read a lecture

Upon Aquinas at St Thomas a Waterings,

And so go forth a laureate in hemp circle!

LOVEL

You’re tart, mine Host, and talk above your seasoning,

O’er what you seem; it should not come, methinks, 90

Under your cap, this vein of salt and sharpness,

These strikings upon learning now and then!

How long have you, if your dull guest may ask it,

Drove this quick trade of keeping the Light Heart,

Your mansion, palace here, or hostelry? 95

HOST

Troth, I was born to somewhat, sir, above it.

LOVEL

I easily suspect that. Mine Host, your name?

HOST

They call me Goodstock.

LOVEL

Sir, and you confess it,

Both i’your language, treaty, and your bearing.

HOST

Yet all, sir, are not sons o’the white hen; 100

Nor can we, as the songster says, come all

To be wrapped soft and warm in Fortune’s smock

When she is pleased to trick or trump mankind.

Some may be coats, as in the cards, but then

Some must be knaves, some varlets, bawds, and ostlers, 105

As aces, deuces, cards o’ ten, to face it

Out i’the game which all the world is.

LOVEL

But

It being i’your free will, as ’twas, to choose

What parts you would sustain, methinks a man

Of your sagacity, and clear nostril, should 110

Have made another choice than of a place

So sordid as the keeping of an inn,

Where every jovial tinker, for his chink,

May cry, ‘Mine Host, to crambe! Give us drink,

And do not slink, but skink, or else you stink!’ 115

‘Rogue’, ‘Bawd’, and ‘Cheater’ call you by the surnames,

And known synonyma of your profession.

HOST

But if I be no such, who then’s the rogue,

In understanding, sir, I mean? Who errs?

Who tinkleth then, or personates Tom Tinker? 120

Your weasel here may tell you I talk bawdy

And teach my boy it; and you may believe him,

But, sir, at your own peril if I do not,

And at his too, if he do lie and affirm it.

No slander strikes, less hurts, the innocent. 125

If I be honest, and that all the cheat

Be of myself in keeping this Light Heart,

Where I imagine all the world’s a play;

The state and men’s affairs, all passages

Of life, to spring new scenes, come in, go out, 130

And shift and vanish; and if I have got

A seat to sit at ease here i’ mine inn

To see the comedy, and laugh and chuck

At the variety and throng of humours

And dispositions that come jostling in 135

And out still, as they one drove hence another –

Why, will you envy me my happiness

Because you are sad and lumpish? Carry a loadstone

I’your pocket to hang knives on, or jet rings

T’entice light straws to leap at ’em? Are not taken 140

With the alacrities of an host? ’Tis more

And justlier, sir, my wonder why you took

My house up, Fiddlers’ Hall, the seat of noise

And mirth, an inn here, to be drowsy in

And lodge your lethargy in the Light Heart, 145

As if some cloud from court had been your harbinger,

Or Cheapside debtbooks, or some mistress’ charge,

Seeing your love grow corpulent, gi’t a diet

By absence – some such mouldy passion!

LOVEL

[Aside] ’Tis guessed unhappily.

[Enter FERRET.]

FERRET

Mine Host, you’re called. 150

HOST

I come, boys. [Exit Host.]

LOVEL

Ferret, have not you been ploughing

With this mad ox, mine Host, nor he with you?

FERRET

For what, sir?

LOVEL

Why, to find my riddle out.

FERRET

I hope you do believe, sir, I can find

Other discourse to be at than my master, 155

With hosts and ostlers.

LOVEL

If you can, ’tis well.

Go down and see who they are come in, what guests,

And bring me word. [Exit Ferret.]

1.4

LOVEL

O love, what passion art thou!

So tyrannous and treacherous! First t’enslave

And then betray all that in truth do serve thee!

That not the wisest nor the wariest creature

Can more dissemble thee than he can bear 5

Hot burning coals in his bare palm or bosom,

And less conceal, or hide thee, than a flash

Of inflamed powder, whose whole light doth lay it

Open to all discovery, even of those

Who have but half an eye, and less of nose! 10

An host to find me! Who is, commonly,

The log, a little o’this side the signpost!

Or, at the best, some round-grown thing, a jug

Faced with a beard, that fills out to the guests

And takes in fro’ the fragments o’their jests! 15

But I may wrong this out of sullenness,

Or my mistaking humour. Pray thee, fant’sy,

Be laid again. And, gentle melancholy,

Do not oppress me; I will be as silent

As the tame lover should be, and as foolish. 20

1.5 [Enter] HOST.

HOST

My guest, my guest, be jovial, I beseech thee.

I have fresh golden guests, guests o’the game,

Three coachful! Lords and ladies new come in!

And I will cry them to thee and thee to them,

So I can spring a smile but i’this brow, 5

That like the rugged Roman alderman,

Old master Gross, surnamed Agelastos,

Was never seen to laugh but at an ass.

Enter FERRET.

FERRET

Sir, here’s the Lady Frampul —

LOVEL

How!

FERRET

And her train:

Lord Beaufort and Lord Latimer, the Colonel 10

Tiptoe, with Mistress Pru the chambermaid,

Trundle the coachman–

LOVEL

Stop! Discharge the house

And get my horses ready; bid the groom

Bring ’em to the back gate. [Exit Ferret.]

HOST

What mean you, sir?

LOVEL

To take fair leave, mine Host.

HOST

I hope, my guest, 15

Though I have talked somewhat above my share

At large, and been i’the altitudes, th’extravagants,

Neither myself nor any of mine have gi’n you

The cause to quit my house thus on the sudden.

LOVEL

No, I affirm it, on my faith. Excuse me 20

From such a rudeness; I was now beginning

To taste and love you, and am heartily sorry

Any occasion should be so compelling

To urge my abrupt departure thus. But –

Necessity’s a tyrant and commands it. 25

HOST

She shall command me first to fire my bush,

Than break up house; or if that will not serve,

To break with all the world; turn country bankrupt

I’ mine own town upo’ the market day,

And be protested for my butter and eggs 30

To the last bodge of oats and bottle of hay.

Ere you shall leave me, I will break my Heart;

Coach and coach-horses, lords and ladies, pack!

All my fresh guests shall stink! I’ll pull my sign down,

Convert mine inn to an almshouse, or a spital 35

For lazars or switch-sellers; turn it to

An academy o’ rogues, or gi’t away

For a free school to breed up beggars in

And send ’em to the canting universities,

Before you leave me.

LOVEL

Troth, and I confess 40

I am loath, mine Host, to leave you; your expressions

Both take and hold me. But in case I stay,

I must enjoin you and your whole family

To privacy, and to conceal me. For

The secret is, I would not willingly 45

See or be seen to any of this ging,

Especially the lady.

HOST

Brain o’ man,

What monster is she, or cockatrice in velvet,

That kills thus?

LOVEL

Oh, good words, mine Host. She is

A noble lady, great in blood and fortune; 50

Fair, and a wit! But of so bent a fant’sy

As she thinks naught a happiness but to have

A multitude of servants; and to get them,

Though she be very honest, yet she ventures

Upon these precipices that would make her 55

Not seem so to some prying, narrow natures.

We call her, sir, the Lady Frances Frampul,

Daughter and heir to the Lord Frampul.

HOST

Who?

He that did live in Oxford first a student,

And after married with the daughter of –

LOVEL

Sylly. 60

HOST

Right; of whom the tale went to turn puppet-master —

LOVEL

And travel with young Goose the motion-man —

HOST

And lie and live with the gypsies half a year

Together, from his wife.

LOVEL

The very same,

The mad Lord Frampul! And this same is his daughter, 65

But as cock-brained as e’er the father was!

There were two of ’em, Frances and Laetitia;

But Lettice was lost young, and, as the rumour

Flew then, the mother upon it lost herself.

A fond weak woman, went away in a melancholy; 70

Because she brought him none but girls, she thought

Her husband loved her not. And he, as foolish,

Too late resenting the cause given, went after

In quest of her and was not heard of since.

HOST

A strange division of a family! 75

LOVEL

And scattered, as i’the great confusion!

HOST

But yet the lady, th’heir, enjoys the land.

LOVEL

And takes all lordly ways how to consume it

As nobly as she can, if clothes and feasting,

And the authorized means of riot will do it. 80

HOST

She shows her extract, and I honour her for it.

1.6 [Enter] FERRET.

FERRET

Your horses, sir, are ready and the house

Dis –

LOVEL

Pleased, thou think’st?

FERRET

I cannot tell; discharged

I am sure it is.

LOVEL

Charge it again, good Ferret,

And make unready the horses. Thou know’st how:

Chalk and renew the rondels. I am now 5

Resolved to stay.

FERRET

I easily thought so,

When you should hear what’s purposed.

LOVEL

What?

FERRET

To throw

The house out o’the window!

HOST

Brain o’ man,

I shall ha’ the worst o’that! Will they not throw

My household stuff out first? Cushions and carpets, 10

Chairs, stools, and bedding? Is not their sport my ruin?

LOVEL

Fear not, mine Host, I am not o’the fellowship.

FERRET

I cannot see, sir, how you will avoid it;

They know already, all, you are i’the house.

LOVEL

Who know?

FERRET

The lords; they have seen me and inquired it. 15

LOVEL

Why were you seen?

FERRET

Because indeed I had

No medicine, sir, to go invisible;

No fern-seed in my pocket, nor an opal

Wrapped in a bay-leaf i’my left fist

To charm their eyes with.

HOST

[To Lovel] He does give you reasons 20

As round as Gyges’ ring, which, say the ancients,

Was a hoop ring; and that is, round as a hoop!

LOVEL

You will ha’ your rebus still, mine Host.

HOST

I must.

FERRET

My lady, too, looked out o’the window and called me.

Enter PRUDENCE.

And see where Secretary Pru comes from her, 25

Employed upon some embassy unto you –

HOST

I’ll meet her if she come upon employment. –

Fair lady, welcome as your Host can make you.

PRUDENCE

Forbear, sir. I am first to have mine audience,

Before the compliment. This gentleman 30

Is my address to.

HOST

And it is in state.

PRUDENCE

[To Lovel] My lady, sir, as glad o’the encounter

To find a servant here, and such a servant,

Whom she so values, with her best respects

Desires to be remembered, and invites 35

Your nobleness to be a part today

Of the society and mirth intended

By her and the young lords, your fellow-servants,

Who are alike ambitious of enjoying

The fair request; and to that end have sent 40

Me their imperfect orator to obtain it.

Which if I may, they have elected me

And crowned me with the title of a sovereign

Of the day’s sports devisèd i’the inn,

So you be pleased to add your suffrage to it. 45

LOVEL

So I be pleased, my gentle mistress Prudence?

You cannot think me of that coarse condition

T’envy you anything.

HOST

That’s nobly said,

And like my guest!

LOVEL

[To Prudence] I gratulate Your Honour,

And should with cheer lay hold on any handle 50

That could advance it. But for me to think

I can be any rag or particle

O’your lady’s care, more than to fill her list –

She being the lady that professeth still

To love no soul or body but for ends 55

Which are her sports, and is not nice to speak this

But doth proclaim it in all companies –

Her Ladyship must pardon my weak counsels,

And weaker will, if it decline t’obey her.

PRUDENCE

Oh, Master Lovel, you must not give credit 60

To all that ladies publicly profess,

Or talk o’the volley unto their servants.

Their tongues and thoughts oft-times lie far asunder.

Yet, when they please, they have their cabinet-counsels

And reserved thoughts, and can retire themselves 65

As well as others.

HOST

Ay, the subtlest of us!

All that is born within a lady’s lips –

PRUDENCE

Is not the issue of their hearts, mine Host.

HOST

Or kiss or drink afore me.

PRUDENCE

[To Lovel] Stay, excuse me;

Mine errand is not done. Yet, if Her Ladyship’s 70

Slighting or disesteem, sir, of your service

Hath formerly begot any distaste,

Which I not know of, here I vow unto you

Upon a chambermaid’s simplicity,

Reserving still the honour of my lady, 75

I will be bold to hold the glass up to her,

To show Her Ladyship where she hath erred

And how to tender satisfaction,

So you vouchsafe to prove but the day’s venture.

HOST

[To Lovel] What say you, sir? Where are you? Are you within? 80

[He knocks Lovel on the chest.]

LOVEL

Yes, I will wait upon her and the company.

HOST

It is enough, Queen Prudence. I will bring him,

And o’this kiss. [He kisses her. Exit Prudence.]

I longed to kiss a queen!

LOVEL

There is no life on earth but being in love!

There are no studies, no delights, no business, 85

No intercourse, or trade of sense or soul,

But what is love! I was the laziest creature,

The most unprofitable sign of nothing,

The veriest drone, and slept away my life

Beyond the dormouse till I was in love! 90

And, now, I can outwake the nightingale,

Outwatch an usurer and outwalk him too,

Stalk like a ghost that haunted ’bout a treasure,

And all that fancied treasure, it is love!

HOST

But is your name Love-ill, sir, or Love-well? 95

I would know that.

LOVEL

I do not know’t myself

Whether it is. But it is love hath been

The hereditary passion of our house,

My gentle Host, and, as I guess, my friend.

The truth is, I have loved this lady long 100

And impotently, with desire enough

But no success; for I have still forborne

To express it in my person to her.

HOST

How then?

LOVEL

I ha’ sent her toys, verses, and anagrams,

Trials o’ wit, mere trifles she has commended, 105

But knew not whence they came, nor could she guess.

HOST

This was a pretty riddling way of wooing!

LOVEL

I oft have been, too, in her company;

And looked upon her a whole day; admired her;

Loved her, and did not tell her so; loved still, 110

Looked still and loved; and loved, and looked, and sighed;

But, as a man neglected, I came off

And unregarded –

HOST

Could you blame her, sir,

When you were silent and not said a word?

LOVEL

Oh, but I loved the more; and she might read it 115

Best in my silence, had she been –

HOST

As melancholic

As you are. Pray you, why would you stand mute, sir?

LOVEL

Oh, thereon hangs a history, mine Host.

Did you ever know, or hear, of the Lord Beaufort,

Who served so bravely in France? I was his page 120

And, ere he died, his friend. I followed him,

First i’the wars; and i’the times of peace

I waited on his studies, which were right.

He had no Arthurs, nor no Rosicleers,

No Knights o’the Sun, nor Amadis de Gauls, 125

Primalions and Pantagruels, public nothings;

Abortives of the fabulous, dark cloister,

Sent out to poison courts and infest manners;

But great Achilles’, Agamemnon’s acts,

Sage Nestor’s counsels, and Ulysses’ sleights, 130

Tydides’ fortitude, as Homer wrought them

In his immortal fant’sy, for examples

Of the heroic virtue. Or, as Virgil,

That master of the epic poem, limned

Pious Aeneas, his religious prince, 135

Bearing his aged parent on his shoulders,

Rapt from the flames of Troy with his young son.

And these he brought to practise and to use.

He gave me first my breeding, I acknowledge,

Then showered his bounties on me, like the Hours 140

That open-handed sit upon the clouds

And press the liberality of heaven

Down to the laps of thankful men. But then

The trust committed to me at his death

Was above all, and left so strong a tie 145

On all my powers as time shall not dissolve,

Till it dissolve itself, and bury all!

The care of his brave heir, and only son!

Who being a virtuous, sweet, young, hopeful lord

Hath cast his first affections on this lady. 150

And though I know and may presume her such

As out of humour will return no love,

And therefore might indifferently be made

The courting-stock for all to practise on,

As she doth practise on all us, to scorn, 155

Yet, out of a religion to my charge

And debt professed, I ha’ made a self-decree

Ne’er to express my person, though my passion

Burn me to cinders.

HOST

Then you’re not so subtle

Or half so read in love-craft as I took you. 160

Come, come, you are no phoenix; an you were,

I should expect no miracle from your ashes.

Take some advice; be still that rag of love

You are. Burn on till you turn tinder.

This chambermaid may hap to prove the steel 165

To strike a spark out o’the flint, your mistress,

May beget bonfires yet. You do not know

What light may be forced out and from what darkness.

LOVEL

Nay, I am so resolved, as still I’ll love

Though not confess it.

HOST

That’s, sir, as it chances; 170

We’ll throw the dice for it. Cheer up!

LOVEL

I do. [Exeunt.]

2.1 [Enter] LADY [FRAMPUL and] PRUDENCE, [pinning her lady’s gown on herself].

LADY FRAMPUL

Come, wench, this suit will serve; dispatch, make ready.

It was a great deal with the biggest for me,

Which made me leave it off after once wearing.

How does it fit? Will’t come together?

PRUDENCE

[Struggling with the gown] Hardly.

LADY FRAMPUL

Thou must make shift with it. Pride feels no pain. 5

Girt thee hard, Pru. Pox o’this errant tailor!

He angers me beyond all mark of patience.

These base mechanics never keep their word

In anything they promise.

PRUDENCE

’Tis their trade, madam,

To swear and break; they all grow rich by breaking 10

More than their words; their honesties and credits

Are still the first commodity they put off.

LADY FRAMPUL

And worst, it seems, which makes ’em do’t so often.

If he had but broke with me, I had not cared,

But with the company, the body politic – 15

PRUDENCE

Frustrate our whole design, having that time,

And the materials in so long before!

LADY FRAMPUL

And he to fail in all and disappoint us!

The rogue deserves a torture –

PRUDENCE

To be cropped

With his own scissors.

LADY FRAMPUL

Let’s devise him one. 20

PRUDENCE

And ha’ the stumps seared up with his own cering candle!

LADY FRAMPUL

Close to his head, to trundle on his pillow!

I’ll ha’ the lease of his house cut out in measures.

PRUDENCE

And he be strangled with ’em?

LADY FRAMPUL

No, no life

I would ha’ touched, but stretched on his own yard 25

He should be a little, ha’ the strappado.

PRUDENCE

Or an ell of taffeta

Drawn thorough his guts by way of clyster and fired

With aqua-vitae?

LADY FRAMPUL

Burning i’the hand

With the pressing iron cannot save him.

PRUDENCE

Yes,

Now I have got this on, I do forgive him 30

What robes he should ha’ brought.

LADY FRAMPUL

Thou art not cruel,

Although strait-laced I see, Pru!

PRUDENCE

This is well.

LADY FRAMPUL

’Tis rich enough, but ’tis not what I meant thee.

I would ha’ had thee braver than myself,

And brighter far. ’Twill fit the players yet, 35

When thou hast done with it, and yield thee somewhat.

PRUDENCE

That were illiberal, madam, and mere sordid

In me, to let a suit of yours come there.

LADY FRAMPUL

Tut, all are players and but serve the scene. Pru,

Dispatch; I fear thou dost not like the province, 40

Thou art so long a-fitting thyself for it.

Here is a scarf to make thee a knot finer.

[Handing her a scarf.]

PRUDENCE

You send me a-feasting, madam.

LADY FRAMPUL

Wear it, wench.

PRUDENCE

Yes, but with leave o’Your Ladyship, I would tell you

This can but bear the face of an odd journey. 45

LADY FRAMPUL

Why, Pru?

PRUDENCE

A lady of your rank and quality

To come to a public inn, so many men,

Young lords, and others i’your company,

And not a woman but myself, a chambermaid!

LADY FRAMPUL

Thou doubt’st to be over-laid, Pru? Fear it not; 50

I’ll bear my part and share with thee i’the venture.

PRUDENCE

Oh, but the censure, madam, is the main:

What will they say of you, or judge of me,

To be translated thus, ’bove all the bound

Of fitness or decorum?

LADY FRAMPUL

How now, Pru! 55

Turned fool upo’ the sudden, and talk idly

I’thy best clothes? Shoot bolts and sentences

T’affright babies with? As if I lived

To any other scale than what’s my own,

Or sought myself, without myself, from home? 60

PRUDENCE

Your Ladyship will pardon me my fault;

If I have over-shot, I’ll shoot no more.

LADY FRAMPUL

Yes, shoot again, good Pru. I’ll ha’ thee shoot,

And aim and hit; I know ’tis love in thee,

And so I do interpret it.

PRUDENCE

Then, madam, 65

I’d crave a farther leave.

LADY FRAMPUL

Be it to licence,

It sha’ not want an ear, Pru. Say, what is it?

PRUDENCE

A toy I have, to raise a little mirth

To the design in hand.

LADY FRAMPUL

Out with it, Pru,

If it but chime of mirth.

PRUDENCE

Mine Host has, madam, 70

A pretty boy i’the house, a dainty child,

His son, and is o’Your Ladyship’s name too, Francis,

Whom if Your Ladyship would borrow of him

And give me leave to dress him as I would,

Should make the finest lady and kinswoman 75

To keep you company, and deceive my lords

Upo’ the matter, with a fountain o’ sport.

LADY FRAMPUL

I apprehend thee, and the source of mirth

That it may breed; but is he bold enough,

The child, and well assured?

PRUDENCE

As I am, madam, 80

Have him in no suspicion more than me.

[Enter HOST.]

Here comes mine Host; will you but please to ask him,

Or let me make the motion?

LADY FRAMPUL

Which thou wilt, Pru.

2.2

HOST

Your Ladyship and all your train are welcome.

LADY FRAMPUL

I thank my hearty Host.

HOST

So is your sovereignty.

Madam, I wish you joy o’your new gown.

LADY FRAMPUL

It should ha’ been, my Host, but Stuff, our tailor,

Has broke with us; you shall be o’the counsel. 5

PRUDENCE

He will deserve it, madam. – My lady has heard

You have a pretty son, mine Host; she’d see him.

LADY FRAMPUL

Ay, very fain; I prithee let me see him.

HOST

Your Ladyship shall presently. [Calling] Ho!

PIERCE

[Within] Anon!

HOST

Bid Frank come hither, Anon, unto my lady. 10

[To Lady Frampul] – It is a bashful child, homely brought up

In a rude hostelry. But the Light Heart,

It is his father’s, and it may be his.

[Enter] FRANK.

Here he comes. – Frank, salute my lady.

FRANK

I do

What, madam, I am designed to by my birthright 15

As heir of the Light Heart: bid you most welcome.

LADY FRAMPUL

And I believe your ‘most’, my pretty boy,

Being so emphased by you.

FRANK

Your Ladyship,

If you believe it such, are sure to make it.

LADY FRAMPUL

Prettily answered! Is your name Francis?

FRANK

Yes. 20

LADY FRAMPUL

I love mine own the better.

FRANK

If I knew yours,

I should make haste to do so too, good madam.

LADY FRAMPUL

It is the same with yours.

FRANK

Mine then acknowledgeth

The lustre it receives by being named after.

LADY FRAMPUL

You will win upon me in compliment.

FRANK

By silence. 25

LADY FRAMPUL

A modest and a fair well-spoken child.

HOST

Her Ladyship shall have him, sovereign Pru,

Or what I have beside; divide my Heart

Between you and your lady. Make your use of it;

My house is yours, my son is yours. Behold, 30

I tender him to your service. – Frank, become

What these brave ladies would ha’ you. [To Lady Frampul] Only this:

There is a charwoman i’the house, his nurse,

An Irish woman I took in a beggar,

That waits upon him; a poor silly fool, 35

But an impertinent and sedulous one

As ever was; will vex you on all occasions,

Never be off, or from you, but in her sleep,

Or drink, which makes it. She doth love him so,

Or rather dote on him. Now, for her, a shape, 40

As we may dress her – and I’ll help – to fit her

With a tuftaffeta cloak, an old French hood,

And other pieces heterogene enough.

PRUDENCE

We ha’ brought a standard of apparel down

Because this tailor failed us i’the main. 45

HOST

She shall advance the game.

PRUDENCE

About it, then,

And send but Trundle hither, the coachman, to me.

HOST

I shall. [Aside to Prudence] But Pru, let Lovel ha’ fair quarter.

PRUDENCE

The best. [Exit Host.]

LADY FRAMPUL

Our Host, methinks, is very gamesome!

PRUDENCE

How like you the boy?

LADY FRAMPUL

A miracle!

PRUDENCE

Good madam, 50

But take him in and sort a suit for him;

I’ll give our Trundle his instructions,

And wait upon Your Ladyship i’the instant.

LADY FRAMPUL

But, Pru, what shall we call him when we ha’ dressed him?

PRUDENCE

My Lady Nobody, anything, what you will. 55

LADY FRAMPUL

Call him Laetitia, by my sister’s name,

And so ’twill mind our mirth too we have in hand.

[Exeunt Lady Frampul and Frank.]

2.3 [Enter] TRUNDLE.

PRUDENCE

Good Trundle, you must straight make ready the coach

And lead the horses out but half a mile

Into the fields, whither you will, and then

Drive in again, with the coach-leaves put down,

At the back gate and so to the backstairs, 5

As if you brought in somebody to my lady,

A kinswoman that she sent for. Make that answer

If you be asked, and give it out i’the house so.

TRUNDLE

What trick is this, good Mistress Secretary,

You’d put upon us?

PRUDENCE

Us? Do you speak plural? 10

TRUNDLE

Me and my mares are us.

PRUDENCE

If you so join ’em,

Elegant Trundle, you may use your figures.

I can but urge it is my lady’s service.

TRUNDLE

Good Mistress Prudence, you can urge enough.

I know you are secretary to my lady, 15

And Mistress Steward.

PRUDENCE

You’ll still be trundling,

And ha’ your wages stopped now at the audit.

TRUNDLE

’Tis true, you are Gentlewoman o’the Horse too,

Or what you will beside, Pru. I do think it

My best t’obey you.

PRUDENCE

And I think so too, Trundle. 20[Exeunt.]

2.4 [Enter] BEAUFORT [and] LATIMER.

BEAUFORT

Why, here’s return enough of both our ventures,

If we do make no more discovery.

LATIMER

What,

Than o’this parasite?

BEAUFORT

Oh, he’s a dainty one.

The parasite o’the house.

[Enter] HOST.

LATIMER

Here comes mine Host.

HOST

My lords, you both are welcome to the Heart. 5

BEAUFORT

To the Light Heart, we hope.

LATIMER

And merry, I swear.

We never yet felt such a fit of laughter

As your glad Heart hath offered us sin’ we entered.

BEAUFORT

How came you by this property?

HOST

Who? My Fly?

BEAUFORT

Your Fly, if you call him so.

HOST

Nay, he is that. 10

And will be still.

BEAUFORT

In every dish and pot?

HOST

In every cup and company, my lords.

A creature of all liquors, all complexions:

Be the drink what it will, he’ll have his sip.

LATIMER

He’s fitted with a name.

HOST

And he joys in’t. 15

I had him, when I came to take the inn here,

Assigned me over in the inventory

As an old implement, a piece of household stuff,

And so he doth remain.

BEAUFORT

Just such a thing

We thought him.

LATIMER

Is he a scholar?

HOST

Nothing less. 20

But colours for it, as you see, wears black,

And speaks a little tainted, fly-blown Latin

After the school.

BEAUFORT

Of Stratford o’the Bow:

For Lily’s Latin is to him unknow.

LATIMER

What calling has he?

HOST

Only to call in, 25

Inflame the reckoning; bold to charge a bill,

Bring up the shot i’the rear, as his own word is.

BEAUFORT

And does it in the discipline of the house,

As corporal o’the field, maestro del campo?

HOST

And visitor-general of all the rooms; 30

He has formed a fine militia for the inn, too.

BEAUFORT

And means to publish it?

HOST

With all his titles.

Some call him Deacon Fly, some Doctor Fly,

Some Captain, some Lieutenant; but my folks

Do call him Quartermaster Fly, which he is. 35

2.5 [Enter] TIPTOE [and] FLY.

TIPTOE

Come, Quartermaster Fly.

HOST

Here’s one already

Hath got his titles.

TIPTOE

Doctor!

FLY

Noble colonel!

No doctor, yet a poor professor of ceremony

Here i’the inn, retainer to the Host;

I discipline the house.

TIPTOE

Thou read’st a lecture 5

Unto the family here; when is thy day?

FLY

This is the day.

TIPTOE

I’ll hear thee, and ha’ thee a doctor;

Thou shalt be one, thou hast a doctor’s look!

A face disputative, of Salamanca.

HOST

[To Latimer and Beaufort] Who’s this?

LATIMER

The glorious Colonel Tiptoe, Host. 10

BEAUFORT

One talks upon his tiptoes, if you’ll hear him.

TIPTOE

Thou hast good learning in thee, macte Fly.

FLY

And I say macte to my colonel.

HOST

[Aside] Well macted of ’em both.

BEAUFORT

They are matched, i’faith.

TIPTOE

But, Fly, why macte?

FLY

Quasi magis aucte, 15

My honourable colonel.

TIPTOE

What, a critic?

HOST

There’s another accession, Critic Fly.

LATIMER

I fear a taint here i’the mathematics.

They say lines parallel do never meet;

He has met his parallel in wit and schoolcraft. 20

BEAUFORT

They side, not meet, man; mend your metaphor,

And save the credit of your mathematics.

TIPTOE

But, Fly, how cam’st thou to be here, committed

Unto this inn?

FLY

Upon suspicion o’drink, sir;

I was taken late one night, here, with the tapster 25

And the under-officers, and so deposited.

TIPTOE

I will redeem thee, Fly, and place thee better,

With a fair lady.

FLY

A lady, sweet Sir Glorious?

TIPTOE

A sovereign lady. Thou shalt be the bird

To sovereign Pru, queen of our sports, her Fly, 30

The Fly in household, and in ordinary;

Bird of her ear, and she shall wear thee there!

A Fly of gold, enamelled, and a school-Fly.

HOST

The schools, then, are my stables or the cellar,

Where he doth study deeply, at his hours, 35

Cases of cups – I do not know how spiced

With conscience – for the tapster and the ostler: as

Whose horses may be cozened, or what jugs

Filled up with froth? That is his way of learning.

TIPTOE

[To Fly] What antiquated feather’s that, that talks? 40

FLY

The worshipful Host, my patron, Master Goodstock,

A merry Greek and cants in Latin comely,

Spins like the parish top.

TIPTOE

I’ll set him up, then.

[To Host] Art thou the dominus?

HOST

Factotum here, sir.

TIPTOE

Host real o’the house, and cap of maintenance? 45

HOST

The lord o’the Light Heart, sir, cap-à-pie,

Whereof the feather is the emblem, colonel,

Put up with the ace of hearts!

TIPTOE

But why in cuerpo?

I hate to see an host, and old, in cuerpo.

HOST

Cuerpo? What’s that?

TIPTOE

Light, skipping hose and doublet – 50

The horse-boy’s garb! Poor blank and half-blank cuerpo,

They relish not the gravity of an host,

Who should be king-at-arms and ceremonies

In his own house; know all to the goldweights.

BEAUFORT

Why, that his fly doth for him here, your bird. 55

TIPTOE

But I would do it myself, were I my Host;

I would not speak unto a cook of quality,

Your Lordship’s footman, or my lady’s Trundle,

In cuerpo! If a dog but stayed below,

That were a dog of fashion, and well-nosed, 60

And could present himself, I would put on

The Savoy chain about my neck, the ruff

And cuffs of Flanders, then the Naples hat,

With the Rome hatband, and the Florentine agate,

The Milan sword, the cloak of Genoa set 65

With Brabant buttons, all my given pieces –

Except my gloves, the natives of Madrid –

To entertain him in; and compliment

With a tame coney, as with a prince that sent it!

HOST

The same deeds, though, become not every man. 70

What fits a colonel will not fit an host.

TIPTOE

Your Spanish host is never seen in cuerpo,

Without his paramentos, cloak, and sword.

FLY

Sir,

He has the father of swords within, a long-sword,

Blade Cornish, styled of Sir Rud Hudibras. 75

TIPTOE

And why a long sword, bully bird? Thy sense?

FLY

To note him a tall man and a master of fence.

TIPTOE

But doth he teach the Spanish way of Don Lewis?

FLY

No, the Greek master, he.

TIPTOE

What call you him?

FLY

Euclid.

TIPTOE

Fart upon Euclid! He is stale and antique; 80

Gi’ me the moderns.

FLY

Sir, he minds no moderns.

‘Go by, Hieronimo!’

TIPTOE

What was he?

FLY

The Italian

That played with Abbot Antony i’the Friars,

And Blinkinsops the bold.

TIPTOE

Ay, marry, those

Had fencing names; what are become o’them? 85

HOST

They had their times, and we can say they were.

So had Carranza his, so hath Don Lewis.

TIPTOE

Don Lewis of Madrid is the sole master

Now of the world!

HOST

But this o’the other world.

Euclid demonstrates! He, he’s for all; 90

The only fencer of name now in Elysium.

FLY

He does it all by lines and angles, colonel,

By parallels and sections, has his diagrams.

BEAUFORT

Wilt thou be flying, Fly?

LATIMER

At all; why not?

The air’s as free for a fly as for an eagle. 95

BEAUFORT

A buzzard he is in his contemplation!

TIPTOE

Euclid a fencer, and in the Elysium!

HOST

He played a prize last week with Archimedes,

And beat him, I assure you.

TIPTOE

Do you assure me?

For what?

HOST

For four i’the hundred. Gi’ me five 100

And I assure you again.

TIPTOE

Host peremptory,

You may be ta’en. But where, whence had you this?

HOST

Upo’ the road. A post that came from thence,

Three days ago, here, left it with the tapster.

FLY

Who is indeed a thoroughfare of news, 105

Jack Jug with the great belly, a witty fellow!

HOST

Your bird here heard him.

TIPTOE

[To Fly] Did you hear him, bird?

HOST

[To Fly] Speak i’the faith of a fly. [Exit.]

FLY

Yes, and he told us

Of one that was the Prince of Orange’s fencer –

TIPTOE

Stevinus?

FLY

Sir, the same, had challenged Euclid 110

At thirty weapons, more than Archimedes

E’er saw, and engines most of his own invention.

TIPTOE

This may have credit and chimes reason, this!

If any man endanger Euclid, bird,

Observe (that had the honour to quit Europe 115

This forty year) ’tis he. He put down Scaliger.

FLY

And he was a great master.

BEAUFORT

Not of fence, Fly.

TIPTOE

Excuse him, lord, he went o’the same grounds.

BEAUFORT

On the same earth, I think, with other mortals?

TIPTOE

I mean, sweet lord, the mathematics. Basta! 120

When thou know’st more, thou wilt take less green honour.

He had his circles, semicircles, quadrants –

FLY

He writ a book o’the quadrature o’the circle,

TIPTOE

Cyclometria, I read –

BEAUFORT

[Aside to Latimer] The title only.

LATIMER

And indice.

BEAUFORT

If it had one; of that, quaere. 125

What insolent, half-witted things these are!

LATIMER

So are all smatterers insolent and impudent.

BEAUFORT

They lightly go together.

LATIMER

’Tis my wonder

Two animals should hawk at all discourse thus,

Fly every subject to the mark or retrieve – 130

BEAUFORT

And never ha’ the luck to be i’the right.

LATIMER

’Tis some folk’s fortune.

BEAUFORT

Fortune’s a bawd

And a blind beggar; ’tis their vanity,

And shows most vilely!

TIPTOE

I could take the heart now

To write unto Don Lewis into Spain, 135

To make a progress to the Elysian Fields

Next summer –

BEAUFORT

And persuade him die for fame

Of fencing with a shadow! Where’s mine Host?

I would he had heard this bubble break, i’faith.

2.6 [Enter] HOST [with] PRUDENCE [richly dressed], FRANK [dressed as a woman], NURSE, [and] LADY [FRAMPUL].

HOST

Make place! Stand by for the queen regent, gentlemen.

TIPTOE

[To Fly] This is thy queen that shall be, bird, our sovereign.

BEAUFORT

Translated Prudence!

[He reaches out to touch her.]

PRUDENCE

Sweet my lord, hand off;

It is not now as when plain Prudence lived

And reached Her Ladyship –

HOST

The chamberpot. 5

PRUDENCE

The looking-glass, mine Host; lose your house metaphor!

You have a negligent memory indeed;

Speak the host’s language. Here’s a young lord

Will make’t a precedent else.

LATIMER

Well acted, Pru!

HOST

First minute of her reign! What will she do 10

Forty year hence? God bless her!

PRUDENCE

[To Beaufort] If you’ll kiss

Or compliment, my lord, behold a lady,

[She indicates Frank.]

A stranger, and my lady’s kinswoman.

BEAUFORT

I do confess my rudeness, that had need

To have mine eye directed to this beauty. 15

FRANK

It was so little as it asked a perspicil.

BEAUFORT

Lady, your name?

FRANK

My lord, it is Laetitia.

BEAUFORT

Laetitia! A fair omen, and I take it!

[He kisses her.]

Let me have still such lettuce for my lips –

But that o’your family, lady?

FRANK

Sylly, sir. 20

BEAUFORT

My lady’s kinswoman?

FRANK

I am so honoured.

HOST

[Aside to Lady Frampul] Already it takes!

LADY FRAMPUL

[Aside to Host] An excellent fine boy.

NURSE

He is descended of a right good stock, sir.

BEAUFORT

[To Host] What’s this? An antiquary?

HOST

An antiquity

By the dress, you’d swear! An old Welsh herald’s widow; 25

She’s a wild Irish born, sir, and a hybrid

That lives with this young lady a mile off here,

And studies Vincent against York.

BEAUFORT

She’ll conquer,

If she read Vincent. Let me study her.

[He observes the Nurse.]

HOST

She’s perfect in most pedigrees, most descents. 30

BEAUFORT

[Aside] A bawd, I hope, and knows to blaze a coat.

HOST

And judgeth all things with a single eye.

Fly, come you hither. [Aside to Fly] No discovery

Of what you see to your Colonel Toe, or Tip, here,

But keep all close, though you stand i’the way o’ preferment. 35

Seek it off from the road, no flattery for’t,

No lick-foot, pain of losing your proboscis,

My lickerish Fly.

TIPTOE

[To Fly] What says old velvet-head?

FLY

He will present me himself, sir, if you will not.

TIPTOE

Who, he present? What? Whom? An host, a groom, 40

Divide the thanks with me? Share in my glories?

Lay up. I say no more.

HOST

Then silence, sir,

And hear the sovereign.

TIPTOE

Ostlers to usurp

Upon my Sparta or province, as they say?

No broom but mine!

HOST

Still, colonel, you mutter! 45

TIPTOE

I dare speak out, as cuerpo.

FLY

Noble colonel –

TIPTOE

And carry what I ask –

HOST

Ask what you can, sir,

So’t be i’the house.

TIPTOE

I ask my rights and privileges,

And though for form I please to call’t a suit,

I have not been accustomed to repulse. 50

PRUDENCE

No, sweet Sir Glorious, you may still command –

HOST

[Aside] And go without.

PRUDENCE

But yet, sir, being the first,

And called a suit, you’ll look it shall be such

As we may grant.

LADY FRAMPUL

It else denies itself.

PRUDENCE

You hear the opinion of the court.

TIPTOE

I mind 55

No court opinions.

PRUDENCE

’Tis my lady’s, though.

TIPTOE

My lady is a spinster at the law,

And my petition is of right.

PRUDENCE

What is it?

TIPTOE

It is for this poor learnèd bird.

HOST

The Fly?

TIPTOE

Professor in the inn, here, of small matters. 60

[The others comment aside, out of Tiptoe’s hearing.]

LATIMER

How he commends him!

HOST

As to save himself in him.

LADY FRAMPUL

So do all politics in their commendations.

HOST

This is a state-bird, and the verier fly!

TIPTOE

[To them] Hear him problematize –

PRUDENCE

Bless us, what’s that?

TIPTOE

Or syllogize, elenchize.

LADY FRAMPUL

Sure, petards 65

To blow us up.

LATIMER

Some enginous strong words!

HOST

He means to erect a castle i’the air

And make his fly an elephant to carry it.

TIPTOE

Bird of the arts he is, and Fly by name.

PRUDENCE

Buzz!

HOST

Blow him off, good Pru, they’ll mar all else. 70

TIPTOE

The sovereign’s honour is to cherish learning.

PRUDENCE

What, in a fly?

TIPTOE

In anything industrious.

PRUDENCE

But flies are busy!

LADY FRAMPUL

Nothing more troublesome,

Or importune.

TIPTOE

There’s nothing more domestic,

Tame, or familiar, than your fly in cuerpo. 75

HOST

That is, when his wings are cut, he is tame indeed, else

Nothing more impudent and greedy, licking –

LADY FRAMPUL

Or saucy, good Sir Glorious.

PRUDENCE

Leave your advocateship,

Except that we shall call you Orator Fly,

And send you down to the dresser and the dishes. 80

HOST

A good flap, that!

PRUDENCE

Commit you to the steam!

LADY FRAMPUL

Or else condemn you to the bottles.

PRUDENCE

And pots.

There is his quarry.

HOST

He will chirp far better,

Your bird, below.

LADY FRAMPUL

And make you finer music.

PRUDENCE

His buzz will there become him.

TIPTOE

[To Fly] Come away. 85

Buzz in their faces. Give ’em all the buzz,

Dor in their ears and eyes; hum, dor, and buzz!

I will statuminate and underprop thee.

If they scorn us, let us scorn them – we’ll find

The Thoroughfare below, and quaere him. 90

Leave these relicts, Buzz; they shall see that I,

Spite of their jeers, dare drink, and with a fly. [Exeunt Tiptoe and Fly.]

LATIMER

A fair remove at once of two impertinents!

Excellent Pru, I love thee for thy wit,

No less than state.

PRUDENCE

One must preserve the other. 95

[Enter] LOVEL. [The others do not address him at first.]

LADY FRAMPUL

Who’s here?

PRUDENCE

Oh, Lovel, madam, your sad servant.

LADY FRAMPUL

Sad? He is sullen still, and wears a cloud

About his brows; I know not how to approach him.

PRUDENCE

I will instruct you, madam, if that be all;

Go to him and kiss him.

LADY FRAMPUL

How, Pru?

PRUDENCE

Go and kiss him, 100

I do command it.

LADY FRAMPUL

Thou’rt not wild, wench?

PRUDENCE

No,

Tame and exceeding tame, but still your sovereign.

LADY FRAMPUL

Hath too much bravery made thee mad?

PRUDENCE

Nor proud.

Do what I do enjoin you. No disputing

Of my prerogative with a front or frown; 105

Do not detrect; you know th’authority

Is mine, and I will exercise it swiftly

If you provoke me.

LADY FRAMPUL

I have woven a net

To snare myself in! [To Lovel] Sir, I am enjoined

To tender you a kiss, but do not know 110

Why or wherefore, only the pleasure royal

Will have it so and urges. Do not you

Triumph on my obedience, seeing it forced thus.

There ’tis. [She kisses him.]

LOVEL

And welcome. [Aside] Was there ever kiss

That relished thus, or had a sting like this, 115

Of so much nectar, but with aloes mixed?

PRUDENCE

No murmuring nor repining; I am fixed.

LOVEL

[Aside] It had, methinks, a quintessence of either,

But that which was the better drowned the bitter.

How soon it passed away! How unrecovered! 120

The distillation of another soul

Was not so sweet! And till I meet again

That kiss, those lips, like relish, and this taste,

Let me turn all consumption and here waste!

PRUDENCE

The royal assent is passed and cannot alter. 125

LADY FRAMPUL

You’ll turn a tyrant.

PRUDENCE

Be not you a rebel;

It is a name alike odious.

LADY FRAMPUL

You’ll hear me?

PRUDENCE

No, not o’this argument.

Would you make laws and be the first that break ’em?

The example is pernicious in a subject, 130

And of your quality, most.

LATIMER

Excellent princess!

HOST

Just queen!

LATIMER

Brave sovereign!

HOST

A she-Trajan, this!

BEAUFORT

What is’t? Proceed, incomparable Pru!

I am glad I am scarce at leisure to applaud thee.

LATIMER

[To Beaufort] It’s well for you, you have so happy expressions. 135

LADY FRAMPUL

Yes, cry her up with acclamations, do,

And cry me down, run all with sovereignty!

Prince Power will never want her parasites.

PRUDENCE

Nor Murmur her pretences. – Master Lovel,

For so your libel here or bill of complaint, 140

Exhibited in our high court of sovereignty

At this first hour of our reign, declares

Against this noble lady a disrespect

You have conceived, if not received, from her –

HOST

Received; so the charge lies in our bill. 145

PRUDENCE

We see it, his learnèd counsel; leave your plaining.

We that do love our justice above all

Our other attributes, and have the nearness

To know your extraordinary merit,

As also to discern this lady’s goodness, 150

And find how loath she’d be to lose the honour

And reputation she hath had in having

So worthy a servant, though but for few minutes,

Do here enjoin –

HOST

Good!

PRUDENCE

Charge, will, and command

Her Ladyship, pain of our high displeasure 155

And the committing an extreme contempt

Unto the court, our crown and dignity –

HOST

Excellent sovereign, and egregious Pru!

PRUDENCE

To entertain you for a pair of hours –

Choose when you please, this day – with all respects 160

And valuation of a principal servant,

To give you all the titles, all the privileges,

The freedoms, favours, rights, she can bestow –

HOST

Large, ample words, of a brave latitude!

PRUDENCE

Or can be expected from a lady of honour 165

Or quality, in discourse, access, address –

HOST

Good.

PRUDENCE

Not to give ear or admit conference

With any person but yourself; nor there,

Of any other argument but love,

And the companion of it, gentle courtship, 170

For which your two hours’ service, you shall take

Two kisses –

HOST

Noble!

PRUDENCE

For each hour, a kiss,

To be ta’en freely, fully, and legally,

Before us, in the court here and our presence –

HOST

Rare!

PRUDENCE

But those hours passed, and the two kisses paid, 175

The binding caution is never to hope

Renewing of the time or of the suit

On any circumstance.

HOST

A hard condition!

LATIMER

Had it been easier, I should have suspected

The sovereign’s justice.

HOST

Oh, you are servant, 180

My lord, unto the lady and a rival:

In point of law, my lord, you may be challenged.

LATIMER

I am not jealous!

HOST

Of so short a time

Your Lordship needs not, and being done in foro.

PRUDENCE

What is the answer?

HOST

He craves respite, madam, 185

To advise with his learnèd counsel.

PRUDENCE

Be you he,

And go together quickly.

[Lovel and Host walk aside.]

LADY FRAMPUL

You are no tyrant?

PRUDENCE

If I be, madam, you were best appeal me!

LATIMER

Beaufort –

BEAUFORT

[Preoccupied with Frank] I am busy, prithee let me alone;

I have a cause in hearing too.

LATIMER

At what bar? 190

BEAUFORT

Love’s Court o’ Requests!

LATIMER

Bring’t into the sovereignty;

It is the nobler court, afore Judge Pru,

The only learnèd mother of the law

And lady o’ conscience too!

BEAUFORT

’Tis well enough

Before this Mistress of Requests where it is. 195

[He converses aside with the Nurse.]

HOST

[To Lovel, as they talk aside] Let ’em not scorn you. Bear up, Master Lovel,

And take your hours and kisses. They are a fortune.

LOVEL

Which I cannot approve and less make use of.

HOST

Still i’this cloud! Why cannot you make use of?

LOVEL

Who would be rich to be so soon undone? 200

The beggar’s best is wealth he doth not know,

And but to show it him inflames his want.

HOST

Two hours at height?

LOVEL

That joy is too too narrow

Would bound a love so infinite as mine;

And being passed leaves an eternal loss. 205

Who so prodigiously affects a feast

To forfeit health and appetite to see it?

Or but to taste a spoonful would forgo

All gust of delicacy ever after?

HOST

These yet are hours of hope.

LOVEL

But all hours following 210

Years of despair, ages of misery!

Nor can so short a happiness but spring

A world of fear with thought of losing it;

Better be never happy than to feel

A little of it, and then lose it ever. 215

HOST

I do confess it is a strict injunction;

But then the hope is it may not be kept.

A thousand things may intervene. We see

The wind shift often, thrice a day sometimes;

Decrees may alter upon better motion 220

And riper hearing. The best bow may start,

And th’ hand may vary. Pru may be a sage

In law, and yet not sour. Sweet Pru, smooth Pru,

Soft, debonair, and amiable Pru

May do as well as rough and rigid Pru; 225

And yet maintain her venerable Pru,

Majestic Pru, and serenissimus Pru.

Try but one hour first, and as you like

The loose o’that, draw home and prove the other.

LOVEL

If one hour could the other happy make, 230

I should attempt it –

HOST

Put it on, and do.

LOVEL

Or in the blest attempt that I might die!

HOST

Ay, marry, there were happiness indeed,

Transcendent to the melancholy meant.

It were a fate above a monument 235

And all inscription to die so; a death

For emperors to enjoy, and the kings

Of the rich East to pawn their regions for,

To show their treasure, open all their mines,

Spend all their spices to embalm their corpse, 240

And wrap the inches up in sheets of gold

That fell by such a noble destiny!

And for the wrong to your friend, that fear’s away;

He rather wrongs himself, following fresh light,

New eyes to swear by. If Lord Beaufort change, 245

It is no crime in you to remain constant.

And upon these conditions, at a game

So urged upon you.

PRUDENCE

[Interrupting their conversation] Sir, your resolution –

HOST

How is the lady affected?

PRUDENCE

Sovereigns use not

To ask their subjects’ suffrage where ’tis due, 250

But where conditional.

[Latimer and the Host talk aside.]

HOST

A royal sovereign!

LATIMER

And a rare stateswoman. I admire her bearing

In her new regiment.

HOST

[To Lovel] Come, choose your hours.

Better be happy for a part of time

Than not the whole, and a short part than never. 255

Shall I appoint ’em, pronounce for you?

LOVEL

Your pleasure.

HOST

[To Prudence] Then he designs his first hour after dinner,

His second after supper. Say ye? Content?

PRUDENCE

Content.

LADY FRAMPUL

I am content.

LATIMER

Content.

FRANK

Content.

BEAUFORT

[Returning to the others] What’s that? I am content too.

LATIMER

You have reason. 260

You had it on the by, and we observed it.

NURSE

Trot’, I am not content; in fait’ I am not.

HOST

[To Nurse] Why art not thou content, good Shelee-nien?

NURSE

He tauk so desperate, and so debausht,

So bawdy like a courtier and a lord,

God bless him, one that tak’th tobacco. 265

HOST

Very well mixed.

What did he say?

NURSE

Nay, nothing to the purposh,

Or very little, nothing at all to purposh.

HOST

Let him alone, Nurse.

NURSE

I did tell him of Serly

Was a great family come out of Ireland, 270

Descended of O’Neill, MacCon, MacDermot,

MacMurrough, but he marked not.

HOST

Nor do I.

Good queen of heralds, ply the bottle and sleep. [Exeunt.]

3.1 [Enter] TIPTOE, FLY, [and] JUG.

TIPTOE

I like the plot of your militia well!

It is a fine militia, and well ordered,

And the division’s neat! ’Twill be desired

Only the expressions were a little more Spanish;

For there’s the best militia o’the world! 5

To call ’em tertias – tertia of the kitchen,

The tertia of the cellar, tertia of the chamber,

And tertia of the stables.

FLY

That I can, sir,

And find out very able, fit commanders

In every tertia.

TIPTOE

Now you are i’the right! 10

As i’the tertia o’the kitchen, yourself

Being a person elegant in sauces,

There to command as prime maestro del campo,

Chief master of the palate, for that tertia;

Or the cook under you, ’cause you are the marshal, 15

And the next officer i’the field to the Host.

Then for the cellar, you have young Anon

Is a rare fellow – what’s his other name?

FLY

Pierce, sir.

TIPTOE

Sir Pierce. I’ll ha’ him a cavalier.

Sir Pierce Anon will pierce us a new hogshead! 20

And then your thoroughfare, Jug here, his alferez,

An able officer. Gi’ me thy beard, round Jug,

I take thee by this handle [He pulls him by the beard.], and do love

One of thy inches! I’the chambers, Jordan, here;

He is the don del campo o’the beds. 25

And for the stables, what’s his name?

FLY

Old Peck.

TIPTOE

Maestro del campo Peck! His name is curt,

A monosyllabe, but commands the horse well.

FLY

Oh, in an inn, sir, we have other horse;

Let those troops rest a while. Wine is the horse 30

That we must charge with here.

TIPTOE

Bring up the troops,

Or call, sweet Fly; ’tis an exact militia,

And thou an exact professor. Lipsius Fly

Thou shalt be called, and Jouse –

[Enter] FERRET [and] TRUNDLE.

Jack Ferret! Welcome,

Old trench-master, and colonel o’the pioneers, 35

What canst thou bolt us now? A coney or two

Out of Tom Trundle’s burrow here, the coach?

This is the master of the carriages!

How is thy driving, Tom; good as ’twas?

TRUNDLE

It serves my lady, and our officer Pru. 40

Twelve mile an hour! Tom has the old trundle still.

TIPTOE

I am taken with the family here, fine fellows,

Viewing the muster roll.

TRUNDLE

They are brave men.

FERRET

And of the Fly-blown discipline all, the quartermaster!

TIPTOE

The Fly’s a rare bird in his profession. 45

Let’s sip a private pint with him. I would have him

Quit this light sign of the Light Heart, my bird,

And lighter house – it is not for his tall

And growing gravity, so cedar-like,

To be the second to an host in cuerpo 50

That knows no elegancies – use his own

Dictamen and his genius; I would have him

Fly high and strike at all.

[Enter] PIERCE.

Here’s young Anon too.

PIERCE

What wine is’t, gentlemen, white or claret?

TIPTOE

White,

My brisk Anon.

PIERCE

I’ll draw you Juno’s milk 55

That dyed the lilies, colonel.

TIPTOE

Do so, Pierce. [Exit Pierce.]

[Enter PECK.]

PECK

A plague of all jades! What a clap he has gi’n me!

FLY

Why, how now, cousin?

[He takes Peck aside.]

TIPTOE

Who’s that?

FERRET

The ostler.

[Fly and Peck converse privately.]

FLY

What ail’st thou, cousin Peck?

PECK

Oh, me, my haunches!

As sure as you live, sir, he knew perfectly 60

I meant to cozen him. He did leer so on me,

And then he sneered, as who would say, ‘Take heed, sirrah’;

And when he saw our half-peck, which you know

Was but an old court-dish, lord, how he stamped!

I thought ’t had been for joy, when suddenly 65

He cuts me a back caper with his heels

And takes me just o’the crupper. Down come I

And my whole ounce of oats! Then he neighed out

As if he had a mare by the tail.

FLY

Troth, cousin,

You are to blame to use the poor dumb Christians 70

So cruelly, defraud ’em o’their dimensum.

Yonder’s the colonel’s horse (there I looked in)

Keeping our Lady’s Eve! The devil a bit

He has got, sin’ he came in yet! There he stands,

And looks and looks, but ’tis your pleasure, coz, 75

He should look lean enough.

PECK

He has hay before him.

FLY

Yes, but as gross as hemp, and as soon will choke him

Unless he eat it buttered. He’d four shoes,

And good ones, when he came in; it is a wonder

With standing still he should cast three.

PECK

Troth, Quartermaster, 80

This trade is a kind of mystery that corrupts

Our standing manners quickly; once a week

I meet with such a brush to mollify me,

Sometimes a brace, to awake my conscience,

Yet still I sleep securely.

FLY

Cousin Peck, 85

You must use better dealing, faith, you must.

PECK

Troth, to give good example to my successors,

I could be well content to steal but two girths

And now and then a saddle-cloth, change a bridle

For exercise, and stay there.

FLY

If you could, 90

There were some hope on you, coz. But the fate is

You’re drunk so early you mistake whole saddles –

Sometimes a horse.

PECK

Ay, there’s –

[Enter PIERCE with wine.]

FLY

The wine. Come, coz,

I’ll talk with you anon.

PECK

Do. Lose no time,

Good quartermaster.

[They return to the others.]

TIPTOE

There are the horse come, Fly. 95

FLY

Charge! In boys, in.

[Enter] JORDAN.

Lieutenant o’the ordnance,

Tobacco, and pipes.

TIPTOE

Who’s that? Old Jordan, good!

A comely vessel and a necessary.

New-scoured he is. Here’s to thee, marshal Fly.

In milk, my young Anon says. [He drinks.]

PIERCE

Cream o’the grape 100

That dropped from Juno’s breasts and sprung the lily!

I can recite your fables, Fly. Here is too

The blood of Venus, mother o’the rose!

[Music heard from within.]

JORDAN

The dinner is gone up.

[Whistle sounded within.]

JUG

I hear the whistle.

JORDAN

Ay, and the fiddlers. We must all go wait. 105

PIERCE

Pox o’this waiting, quartermaster Fly.

FLY

When chambermaids are sovereigns, wait their ladies.

Fly scorns to breathe –

PECK

Or blow upon them, he.

PIERCE

Old parcel Peck, art thou there? How now, lame?

PECK

Yes, faith: it is ill halting afore cripples; 110

I ha’ got a dash of a jade here, will stick by me.

PIERCE

Oh, you have had some fant’sy, fellow Peck;

Some revelation –

PECK

What?

PIERCE

To steal the hay

Out o’the racks again –

FLY

I told him so,

When the guests’ backs were turned.

PIERCE

Or bring his peck 115

The bottom upwards, heaped with oats, and cry

‘Here’s the best measure upon all the road!’ When,

You know, the guest put in his hand to feel

And smell to the oats, that grated all his fingers

Upo’ the wood –

PECK

Mum!

PIERCE

And found out your cheat. 120

PECK

I ha’ been i’the cellar, Pierce.

PIERCE

You were then there,

Upo’ your knees, I do remember it,

To ha’ the fact concealed. I could tell more:

Soaping of saddles, cutting of horse tails,

And cropping – pranks of ale and hostelry – 125

FLY

Which he cannot forget, he says, young knight,

No more than you can other deeds of darkness

Done i’the cellar.

TIPTOE

Well said, bold professor.

FERRET

We shall ha’ some truth explained.

PIERCE

We are all mortal,

And have our visions.

PECK

Truly, it seems to me 130

That every horse has his whole peck, and tumbles

Up to the ears in litter.

FLY

When, indeed,

There’s no such matter, not a smell of provender.

FERRET

Not so much straw as would tie up a horse-tail!

FLY

Nor anything i’the rack but two old cobwebs, 135

And so much rotten hay as had been a hen’s nest!

TRUNDLE

And yet he’s ever apt to sweep the mangers.

FERRET

But puts in nothing.

PIERCE

These are fits and fancies

Which you must leave, good Peck.

FLY

And you must pray

It may be revealed to you at some times 140

Whose horse you ought to cozen, with what conscience,

The how, and when. A parson’s horse may suffer –

PIERCE

Whose master’s double beneficed. Put in that.

FLY

A little greasing i’the teeth; ’tis wholesome,

And keeps him in a sober shuffle.

PIERCE

His saddle too 145

May want a stirrup.

FLY

And, it may be sworn,

His learning lay o’ one side, and so broke it.

PECK

They have ever oats i’their cloak-bags to affront us.

FLY

And therefore ’tis an office meritorious

To tithe such soundly.

PIERCE

And a grazier’s may – 150

FERRET

Oh, they are pinching puckfists!

TRUNDLE

And suspicious –

PIERCE

Suffer before the master’s face, sometimes.

FLY

He shall think he sees his horse eat half a bushel –

PIERCE

When the sleight is, rubbing his gums with salt

Till all the skin come off, he shall but mumble, 155

Like an old woman that were chewing brawn,

And drop ’em out again.

TIPTOE

Well argued, cavalier.

FLY

It may do well, and go for an example.

But, coz, have care of understanding horses,

Horses with angry heels, nobility horses, 160

Horses that know the world; let them have meat

Till their teeth ache, and rubbing till their ribs

Shine like a wench’s forehead. They are devils else,

Will look into your dealings.

PECK

For mine own part,

The next I cozen o’ the pampered breed, 165

I wish he may be foundered.

FLY

Foun-de-red.

Prolate it right.

PECK

And of all four, I wish it;

I love no crupper compliments.

PIERCE

Whose horse was it?

PECK

Why, Master Burst’s.

PIERCE

Is Bat Burst come?

PECK

An hour

He has been here.

TIPTOE

What, Burst?

PIERCE

Master Barthol’mew Burst. 170

One that hath been a citizen, since a courtier,

And now a gamester; hath had all his whirls

And bouts of fortune, as a man would say,

‘Once a bat, and ever a bat!’ A reremouse

And bird o’ twilight, he has broken thrice. 175

TIPTOE

Your better man, the Geno’way proverb says;

Men are not made of steel.

PIERCE

Nor are they bound

Always to hold.

FLY

Thrice honourable colonel!

Hinges will crack –

TIPTOE

Though they be Spanish iron.

PIERCE

He is a merchant still, adventurer 180

At in-and-in, and is our thoroughfare’s friend.

TIPTOE

Who, Jug’s?

PIERCE

The same, and a fine gentleman

Was with him.

PECK

Master Huffle.

PIERCE

Who, Hodge Huffle?

TIPTOE

What’s he?

PIERCE

A cheater, and another fine gentleman,

A friend o’the chamberlain’s, Jordan’s. Master Huffle, 185

He is Burst’s Protection.

FLY

Fights and vapours for him.

PIERCE

He will be drunk so civilly –

FLY

So discreetly –

PIERCE

And punctually! Just at his hour.

FLY

And then

Call for his jordan with that hum and state

As if he pissed the Politics!

PIERCE

And sup 190

With his tuftaffeta night-gear here so silently!

FLY

Nothing but music!

PIERCE

A dozen of bawdy songs.

TIPTOE

And knows the general this?

FLY

Oh no, sir, dormit,

Dormit patronus, still; the master sleeps.

They’ll steal to bed.

PIERCE

In private, sir, and pay 195

The fiddlers with that modesty next morning.

FLY

Take a disjune of muscadel and eggs!

PIERCE

And pack away i’their trundling cheats like gypsies!

TRUNDLE

Mysteries, mysteries, Ferret.

FERRET

Ay, we see, Trundle,

What the great officers in an inn may do; 200

I do not say the officers of the Crown,

But the Light Heart.

TIPTOE

I’ll see the Bat and Huffle.

FERRET

I ha’ some business, sir, I crave your pardon –

TIPTOE

What?

FERRET

To be sober. [Exit.]

TIPTOE

Pox, go, get you gone then.

Trundle shall stay.

TRUNDLE

No, I beseech you, colonel, 205

Your Lordship has a mind to be drunk private

With these brave gallants; I will step aside

Into the stables and salute my mares. [Exit.]

PIERCE

Yes, do, and sleep with ’em. Let him go, base whipstock.

He’s as drunk as a fish now, almost as dead. 210

TIPTOE

Come, I will see the flickermouse, my Fly. [Exeunt.]

3.2 [Musicians enter and play. Enter] PRUDENCE, ushered by the HOST, [and] takes her seat of judicature. [Enter] NURSE, FRANK, [and] the two lords BEAUFORT and LATIMER, [who] assist of the bench. FERRET, TRUNDLE, [JUG and JORDAN, are in attendance.]

PRUDENCE

Here set the hour; but first produce the parties,

And clear the court. The time is now of price.

HOST

Jug, get you down, and Trundle, get you up.

You shall be crier; Ferret here, the clerk.

Jordan, smell you without, till the ladies call you; 5

Take down the fiddlers too. Silence that noise

Deep i’the cellar, safe. [Exeunt Jug, Jordan, and musicians.]

PRUDENCE

Who keeps the watch?

HOST

Old Shelee-nien here is the Madam Tell-clock.

NURSE

No, fait’ and trot’, sweet maister, I shall sleep;

I’fait’, I shall.

BEAUFORT

I prithee, do then, screech-owl. 10

She brings to mind the fable o’the dragon

That kept the Hesperian fruit. Would I could charm her!

HOST

Trundle will do it with his hum. – Come, Trundle.

Precede him, Ferret, i’the form.

FERRET

Oyez, oyez, oyez. trundle Oyez, etc. 15

Whereas there hath been awarded, Whereas, etc.

By the Queen Regent of Love, By the Queen, etc.

In this high court of sovereignty, In this high, etc.

Two special hours of address, Two special, etc.

To Herbert Lovel, appellant, To Herbert, etc. 20

Against the Lady Frampul, defendant, Against the, etc.

Herbert Lovel, come into the court, Herbert Lovel, etc.

Make challenge to thy first hour, Make, etc.

And save thee and thy bail. And save, etc.

Enter LOVEL, [and sits at one side of the stage].

HOST

Lo, louting, where he comes into the court! 25

Clerk of the sovereignty, take his appearance

And how accoutered, how designed he comes!

FERRET

’Tis done. Now, crier, call the Lady Frampul,

And by the name of,

Frances, Lady Frampul, defendant, trundle. Frances, etc. 30

Come into the court, Come into the, etc.

Make answer to the award, Make answer, etc.

And save thee and thy bail. And save thee, etc.

Enter LADY [FRAMPUL, and sits on the opposite side of the stage, confronting Lovel].

HOST

She makes a noble and a just appearance.

Set it down likewise, and how armed she comes. 35

PRUDENCE

Usher of Love’s court, give ’em their oath

According to the form, upon Love’s missal.

HOST

Arise, and lay your hands upon the book.

Herbert Lovel, appellant, and Lady Frances Frampul, defendant, you shall

swear upon the liturgy of love, Ovid De Arte Amandi, that you neither have, 40

ne will have, nor in any wise bear about you, thing or things, pointed or

blunt, within these lists, other than what are natural and allowed by the

court: no enchanted arms or weapons, stones of virtue, herb of grace, charm,

character, spell, philtre, or other power than Love’s only, and the justness

of your cause. So help you Love, his mother, and the contents of this book. 45

Kiss it.

[Lovel and Lady Frampul kiss the book.]

Return unto your seats. – Crier, bid silence.

TRUNDLE

Oyez, Oyez, Oyez.

FERRET

I’the name o’the sovereign of Love, trundle I’the, etc.

Notice is given by the court, Notice is, etc. 50

To the appellant and defendant, To the appellant,

etc.

That the first hour of address proceeds, That the, etc.

And Love save the sovereign! And Love, etc.

TRUNDLE

Every man or woman keep silence, pain of imprisonment.

PRUDENCE

Do your endeavours, in the name of Love. 55

LOVEL

To make my first approaches, then, in love.

LADY FRAMPUL

Tell us what love is, that we may be sure

There’s such a thing, and that it is in nature.

LOVEL

Excellent lady, I did not expect

To meet an infidel, much less an atheist 60

Here in Love’s lists! Of so much unbelief

To raise a question of his being –

HOST

Well charged!

LOVEL

I rather thought, and with religion think,

Had all the character of love been lost,

His lines, dimensions, and whole signature 65

Razed and defaced with dull humanity,

That both his nature and his essence might

Have found their mighty instauration here,

Here where the confluence of fair and good

Meets to make up all beauty. For what else 70

Is love, but the most noble, pure affection

Of what is truly beautiful and fair?

Desire of union with the thing beloved?

BEAUFORT

Have the assistants of the court their votes

And writ of privilege to speak them freely? 75

PRUDENCE

Yes, to assist, but not to interrupt.

BEAUFORT

Then I have read somewhere, that man and woman

Were in the first creation both one piece,

And being cleft asunder, ever since

Love was an appetite to be rejoined. 80

As for example –

[He kisses Frank.]

NURSE

Cra-mo-cree! What meansh’tou?

BEAUFORT

Only to kiss and part.

HOST

So much is lawful.

LATIMER

And stands with the prerogative of Love’s court.

LOVEL

It is a fable of Plato’s in his Banquet,

And uttered there by Aristophanes. 85

HOST

’Twas well remembered here, and to good use.

But on with your description what love is:

Desire of union with the thing beloved.

LOVEL

I meant a definition. For I make

The efficient cause, what’s beautiful and fair; 90

The formal cause, the appetite of union;

The final cause, the union itself.

But larger, if you’ll have it, by description,

It is a flame and ardour of the mind,

Dead in the proper corpse, quick in another’s, 95

Transfers the lover into the loved.

The he or she that loves engraves or stamps

Th’idea of what they love, first in themselves;

Or, like to glasses, so their minds take in

The forms of their belov’d, and them reflect. 100

It is the likeness of affections

Is both the parent and the nurse of love.

Love is a spiritual coupling of two souls,

So much more excellent as it least relates

Unto the body; circular, eternal, 105

Not feigned, or made, but born; and then, so precious,

As naught can value it but itself; so free

As nothing can command it but itself;

And in itself so round and liberal

As where it favours, it bestows itself. 110

BEAUFORT

And that do I. [To Frank] Here my whole self I tender,

According to the practice o’the court.

NURSE

Ay, ’tish a naughty practish, a lewd practish;

Be quiet, man, dou shalt not leip her here.

BEAUFORT

Leap her? I lip her, foolish queen at arms; 115

Thy blazon’s false. Wilt thou blaspheme thine office?

LOVEL

But we must take and understand this love

Along still as a name of dignity,

Not pleasure.

HOST

[To Beaufort] Mark you that, my light young lord?

LOVEL

True love hath no unworthy thought, no light, 120

Loose, unbecoming appetite or strain,

But fixèd, constant, pure, immutable.

BEAUFORT

I relish not these philosophical feasts;

Give me a banquet o’sense like that of Ovid:

A form to take the eye; a voice, mine ear; 125

Pure aromatics to my scent; a soft,

Smooth, dainty hand to touch; and for my taste

Ambrosiac kisses to melt down the palate.

LOVEL

They are the earthly, lower form of lovers

Are only taken with what strikes the senses, 130

And love by that loose scale. Although I grant

We like what’s fair and graceful in an object,

And, true, would use it, in the all we tend to,

Both of our civil and domestic deeds;

In ordering of an army, in our style, 135

Apparel, gesture, building, or what not,

All arts and actions do affect their beauty.

But put the case: in travel I may meet

Some gorgeous structure, a brave frontispiece,

Shall I stay captive i’the outer court, 140

Surprised with that, and not advance to know

Who dwells there and inhabiteth the house?

There is my friendship to be made, within,

With what can love me again; not with the walls,

Doors, windows, architrabes, the frieze, and coronice. 145

My end is lost in loving of a face,

An eye, lip, nose, hand, foot, or other part,

Whose all is but a statue, if the mind

Move not, which only can make the return.

The end of love is to have two made one 150

In will and in affection, that the minds

Be first inoculated, not the bodies.

BEAUFORT

Gi’ me the body, if it be a good one.

[He kisses Frank.]

FRANK

Nay, sweet my lord, I must appeal the sovereign

For better quarter, if you hold your practice. 155

TRUNDLE

Silence, pain of imprisonment! Hear the court.

LOVEL

The body’s love is frail, subject to change,

And alters still with it; the mind’s is firm,

One and the same, proceedeth first from weighing

And well examining what is fair and good, 160

Then what is like in reason, fit in manners;

That breeds good will, good will desire of union.

So knowledge first begets benevolence,

Benevolence breeds friendship, friendship love;

And where it starts or steps aside from this, 165

It is a mere degenerous appetite,

A lost, oblique, depraved affection,

And bears no mark or character of love.

LADY FRAMPUL

How am I changed! By what alchemy

Of love or language am I thus translated! 170

His tongue is tipped with the philosopher’s stone,

And that hath touched me thorough every vein!

I feel that transmutation o’my blood,

As I were quite become another creature,

And all he speaks, it is projection! 175

PRUDENCE

Well feigned, my lady; now her parts begin!

LATIMER

And she will act ’em subtly.

PRUDENCE

She fails me else.

LOVEL

Nor do they trespass within bounds of pardon

That, giving way and licence to their love,

Divest him of his noblest ornaments, 180

Which are his modesty and shamefacedness;

And so they do that have unfit designs

Upon the parties they pretend to love.

For what’s more monstrous, more a prodigy,

Than to hear me protest truth of affection 185

Unto a person that I would dishonour?

And what’s a more dishonour than defacing

Another’s good with forfeiting mine own,

And drawing on a fellowship of sin?

From note of which, though for a while we may 190

Be both kept safe by caution, yet the conscience

Cannot be cleansed. For what was hitherto

Called by the name of love becomes destroyed

Then with the fact; the innocency lost,

The bating of affection soon will follow; 195

And love is never true that is not lasting,

No more than any can be pure or perfect

That entertains more than one object. Dixi.

LADY FRAMPUL

Oh, speak and speak for ever! Let mine ear

Be feasted still, and filled with this banquet! 200

No sense can ever surfeit on such truth;

It is the marrow of all lovers’ tenets!

Who hath read Plato, Heliodore, or Tatius,

Sidney, d’Urfé, or all Love’s fathers, like him?

He’s there the Master of the Sentences, 205

Their school, their commentary, text, and gloss,

And breathes the true divinity of Love!

PRUDENCE

Excellent actor! How she hits this passion!

LADY FRAMPUL

Where have I lived in heresy so long

Out o’the congregation of Love, 210

And stood irregular by all his canons?

LATIMER

But do you think she plays?

PRUDENCE

Upo’ my sovereignty,

Mark her anon.

LATIMER

I shake, and am half jealous.

LADY FRAMPUL

What penance shall I do, to be received

And reconcilèd to the church of Love? 215

Go on procession barefoot to his image,

And say some hundred penitential verses

There, out of Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressid?

Or to his mother’s shrine vow a wax candle

As large as the town maypole is, and pay it? 220

Enjoin me anything this court thinks fit,

For I have trespassed, and blasphemèd Love.

I have, indeed, despised his deity,

Whom, till this miracle wrought on me, I knew not.

Now I adore Love, and would kiss the rushes 225

That bear this reverend gentleman, his priest,

If that would expiate – but I fear it will not.

For though he be somewhat struck in years and old

Enough to be my father, he is wise,

And only wise men love; the other covet. 230

I could begin to be in love with him,

But will not tell him yet because I hope

T’enjoy the other hour with more delight,

And prove him farther.

PRUDENCE

Most Socratic lady!

Or if you will, ironic. Gi’ you joy 235

O’your Platonic love here, Master Lovel.

[To Lady Frampul] But pay him his first kiss yet, i’the court,

Which is a debt and due, for the hour’s run.

LADY FRAMPUL

How swift is time, and slyly steals away

From them would hug it, value it, embrace it! 240

I should have thought it scarce had run ten minutes,

When the whole hour is fled. [To Lovel] Here, take your kiss, sir,

Which I most willing tender you in court.

[She kisses Lovel.]

BEAUFORT

And we do imitate –

[He kisses Frank.]

LADY FRAMPUL

And I could wish

It had been twenty – so the sovereign’s 245

Poor narrow nature had decreed it so –

But that is past, irrevocable, now;

She did her kind according to her latitude –

PRUDENCE

Beware you do not conjure up a spirit

You cannot lay.

LADY FRAMPUL

I dare you! Do your worst. 250

Show me but such an injustice; I would thank you

To alter your award.

LATIMER

Sure she is serious!

I shall have another fit of jealousy;

I feel a grudging!

HOST

[To Lovel] Cheer up, noble guest!

We cannot guess what this may come to yet; 255

The brain of man or woman is uncertain.

LOVEL

Tut, she dissembles! All is personated

And counterfeit comes from her. If it were not,

The Spanish monarchy, with both the Indies,

Could not buy off the treasure of this kiss, 260

Or half give balance for my happiness.

HOST

Why, as it is yet, it glads my Light Heart

To see you roused thus from a sleepy humour

Of drowsy, accidental melancholy,

And all those brave parts of your soul awake 265

That did before seem drowned and buried in you,

That you express yourself as you had backed

The muse’s horse, or got Bellerophon’s arms!

[Enter FLY.]

What news with Fly?

FLY

News of a newer lady,

A finer, fresher, braver, bonnier beauty, 270

A very bona-roba and a bouncer

In yellow, glistering, golden satin!

LADY FRAMPUL

Pru,

Adjourn the court.

PRUDENCE

Cry, Trundle!

TRUNDLE

Oyez, any man or woman, that hath any personal attendance to give

unto the court: keep the second hour, and Love save the Sovereign! 275[Exeunt.]

4.1 [Enter] JUG, BARNABY, [and] JORDAN.

JUG

Oh, Barnaby!

JORDAN

Welcome, Barnaby! Where hast thou been?

BARNABY

I’the foul weather.

JUG

Which has wet thee, Ban.

BARNABY

As dry as a chip! Good Jug, a cast o’thy name,

As well as thy office; two jugs!

JUG

By and by. [Exit Jug.]

JORDAN

What lady’s this thou hast brought here?

BARNABY

A great lady! 5

I know no more; one that will try you, Jordan.

She’ll find your gauge, your circle, your capacity.

How does old Staggers the smith, and Tree the saddler?

Keep they their penny-club, still?

JORDAN

And th’old catch too

Of ‘Whoop Barnaby’ –

BARNABY

Do they sing at me? 10

JORDAN

They’re reeling at it in the parlour now.

[Enter JUG with wine.]

BARNABY

I’ll to ’em. Gi’ me a drink first.

JORDAN [Handing Barnaby a drink]

Where’s thy hat?

BARNABY

I lost it by the way – [He drinks.] Gi’ me another.

JUG

A hat?

BARNABY

A drink.

JUG

Take heed of taking cold, Ban –

BARNABY

The wind blew’t off at Highgate, and my lady 15

Would not endure me ’light to take it up,

But made me drive bare-headed i’the rain.

JORDAN

That she might be mistaken for a countess?

BARNABY

Troth, like enough! She might be an o’er-grown duchess,

For aught I know.

JUG

What, with one man?

BARNABY

At a time – 20

They carry no more, the best of ’em.

JORDAN

Nor the bravest.

BARNABY

And she is very brave!

JORDAN

A stately gown

And petticoat she has on!

BARNABY

Ha’ you spied that, Jordan?

You’re a notable peerer, an old rabbi

At a smock’s hem, boy.

JUG

As he is chamberlain, 25

He may do that by his place.

JORDAN

What’s her squire?

BARNABY

A toy, that she allows eight-pence a day.

A slight mannet, to port her up and down.

Come, show me to my playfellows, old Staggers

And father Tree.

JORDAN

Here, this way, Barnaby. 30[Exeunt.]

4.2 [Enter] TIPTOE, BURST, HUFFLE, [and] FLY.

TIPTOE

Come, let’s take in fresco here one quart.

BURST

Two quarts, my man-of-war, let’s not be stinted!

HUFFLE

[Calling] Advance three jordans, varlet o’the house.

TIPTOE

[Aside to Fly] I do not like your Burst, bird; he is saucy.

Some shopkeeper he was?

FLY

Yes, sir.

TIPTOE

I knew it. 5

A broke-winged shopkeeper? I nose ’em straight.

He had no father, I warrant him, that durst own him:

Some foundling in a stall, or the church porch,

Brought up i’the Hospital, and so bound prentice,

Then master of a shop, then one o’th’ inquest, 10

Then breaks out bankrupt, or starts alderman;

The original of both is a church porch –

FLY

Of some, my colonel.

TIPTOE

Good faith, of most

O’your shop citizens; they’re rude animals!

And let ’em get but ten mile out o’ town, 15

Th’out-swagger all the wapentake.

FLY

What’s that?

TIPTOE

A Saxon word to signify the hundred.

[Enter PIERCE, who sets down the drinks and exits.]

BARNABY

Come, let us drink, Sir Glorious, some brave health

Upon our tiptoes.

TIPTOE

[Raising his glass] To the health o’the Bursts!

BURST

Why Bursts?

TIPTOE

Why Tiptoes?

BURST

Oh, I cry you mercy! 20

TIPTOE

It is sufficient.

HUFFLE

What is so sufficient?

TIPTOE

To drink to you is sufficient.

HUFFLE

On what terms?

TIPTOE

That you shall give security to pledge me.

HUFFLE

So you will name no Spaniard, I will pledge you.

TIPTOE

I rather choose to thirst, and will thirst ever, 25

Than leave that cream of nations un-cried up.

Perish all wine and gust of wine!

[He throws his drink at Huffle.]

HUFFLE

How, spill it?

Spill it at me?

TIPTOE

I reck not, but I spilt it.

FLY

Nay, pray you be quiet, noble bloods.

BURST

No Spaniards

I cry, with my cousin Huffle.

HUFFLE

Spaniards? Pilchers! 30

TIPTOE

Do not provoke my patient blade. It sleeps

And would not hear thee; Huffle, thou art rude

And dost not know the Spanish composition.

BURST

What is the recipe? Name the ingredients.

TIPTOE

Valour –

BURST

Two ounces!

TIPTOE

Prudence –

BURST

Half a dram! 35

TIPTOE

Justice –

BURST

A pennyweight!

TIPTOE

Religion –

BURST

Three scruples!

TIPTOE

And of a gravedàd –

BURST

A face-full!

TIPTOE

He carries such a dose of it in his looks,

Actions, and gestures, as it breeds respect

To him from savages, and reputation 40

With all the sons of men.

BURST

Will it give him credit

With gamesters, courtiers, citizens, or tradesmen?

TIPTOE

He’ll borrow money on the stroke of his beard,

Or turn of his mustaccio! His mere cuello,

Or ruff about his neck, is a bill of exchange 45

In any bank in Europe! Not a merchant

That sees his gait but straight will furnish him

Upon his pace!

HUFFLE

I have heard the Spanish name

Is terrible to children in some countries,

And used to make them eat their bread and butter, 50

Or take their wormseed.

TIPTOE

Huffle, you do shuffle.

[Enter] to them STUFF [and] PINNACIA [richly dressed].

BURST

’Slid, here’s a lady!

HUFFLE

And a lady gay!

TIPTOE

A well-trimmed lady!

HUFFLE

Let’s lay her aboard.

BURST

Let’s hail her first.

TIPTOE

[To Pinnacia] By your sweet favour, lady –

STUFF

Good gentlemen, be civil; we are strangers. 55

BURST

An you were Flemings, sir!

HUFFLE

Or Spaniards!

TIPTOE

They’re here have been at Seville i’their days,

And at Madrid too!

PINNACIA

He is a foolish fellow.

I pray you mind him not; he is my Protection.

TIPTOE

In your protection he is safe, sweet lady. 60

So shall you be in mine.

HUFFLE

A share, good colonel.

TIPTOE

Of what?

HUFFLE

Of your fine lady! [To Pinnacia] I am Hodge;

My name is Huffle.

TIPTOE

Huffling Hodge, be quiet.

BURST

And I pray you, be you so, glorious colonel.

Hodge Huffle shall be quiet.

HUFFLE

[Sings] ‘A lady gay, gay. 65

For she is a lady gay, gay, gay. For she’s a lady gay.’

TIPTOE

Bird o’the vespers, vespertilio Burst,

You are a gentleman o’the first head,

But that head may be broke, as all the body is,

Burst, if you tie not up your Huffle, quickly. 70

HUFFLE

Tie dogs, not man.

BURST

Nay, pray thee, Hodge, be still.

TIPTOE

This steel here rides not on this thigh in vain.

HUFFLE

Show’st thou thy steel and thigh, thou glorious dirt?

Then Hodge sings ‘Samson’, and no ties shall hold.

[They fight. Enter] PIERCE, JUG, [and] JORDAN to them.

PIERCE

Keep the peace, gentlemen; what do you mean? 75

TIPTOE

I will not discompose myself for Huffle.

[Exeunt all, fighting, except Pinnacia and Stuff.]

PINNACIA

You see what your entreaty and pressure still

Of gentlemen to be civil doth bring on?

A quarrel, and perhaps manslaughter! You

Will carry your goose about you still, your planing-iron, 80

Your tongue to smooth all! Is not here fine stuff?

STUFF

Why, wife?

PINNACIA

Your wife! Ha’ not I forbidden you that?

Do you think I’ll call you husband i’this gown,

Or anything in that jacket but Protection?

Here, tie my shoe and show my vellute petticoat 85

And my silk stocking! Why do you make me a lady

If I may not do like a lady in fine clothes?

STUFF

Sweetheart, you may do what you will with me.

PINNACIA

Ay, I knew that at home, what to do with you.

But why was I brought hither? To see fashions? 90

STUFF

And wear them too, sweetheart, but this wild company –

PINNACIA

Why do you bring me in wild company?

You’d ha’ me tame and civil in wild company?

I hope I know wild company are fine company,

And in fine company, where I am fine myself, 95

A lady may do anything, deny nothing

To a fine party. I have heard you say’t.

[Enter] to them PIERCE.

PIERCE

There are a company of ladies above

Desire Your Ladyship’s company, and to take

The surety of their lodgings, from the affront 100

Of these half-beasts, were here e’en now, the centaurs.

PINNACIA

Are they fine ladies?

PIERCE

Some very fine ladies.

PINNACIA

As fine as I?

PIERCE

I dare use no comparisons,

Being a servant, sent –

PINNACIA

Spoke like a fine fellow!

I would thou wert one; I’d not then deny thee. 105

But thank thy lady. [Exit Pierce.]

[Enter] to them HOST.

HOST

Madam, I must crave you

To afford a lady a visit, would excuse

Some harshness o’the house you have received

From the brute guests.

PINNACIA

This’s a fine old man!

I’d go with him an he were a little finer! 110

STUFF

You may, sweetheart; it is mine Host.

PINNACIA

Mine Host!

HOST

Yes, madam, I must bid you welcome.

PINNACIA

Do, then.

STUFF

But do not stay.

PINNACIA

I’ll be advised by you, yes! [Exeunt.]

4.3 [Enter] LATIMER, BEAUFORT, LADY [FRAMPUL], PRUDENCE, FRANK, [and NURSE].

LATIMER

What more than Thracian barbarism was this?

BEAUFORT

The battle o’the centaurs with the Lapiths!

LADY FRAMPUL

There is no taming o’the monster drink.

LATIMER

But what a glorious beast our Tiptoe showed!

He would not discompose himself, the Don! 5

Your Spaniard ne’er doth discompose himself.

BEAUFORT

Yet how he talked and roared i’the beginning!

PRUDENCE

And ran as fast as a knocked marrowbone –

BEAUFORT

So they did all at last, when Lovel went down

And chased ’em ’bout the court.

LATIMER

For all’s Don Lewis, 10

Or fencing after Euclid!

LADY FRAMPUL

I ne’er saw

A lightning shoot so as my servant did;

His rapier was a meteor, and he waved it

Over ’em like a comet as they fled him!

I marked his manhood! Every stoop he made 15

Was like an eagle’s at a flight of cranes

(As I have read somewhere).

BEAUFORT

Bravely expressed.

LATIMER

And like a lover!

LADY FRAMPUL

Of his valour, I am!

He seemed a body rarified to air,

Or that his sword and arm were of a piece, 20

They went together so!

[Enter] HOST with [PINNACIA].

Here comes the lady.

BEAUFORT

A bouncing bona-roba, as the Fly said.

FRANK

She is some giantess! I’ll stand off

For fear she swallow me.

LADY FRAMPUL

Is not this our gown, Pru,

That I bespoke of Stuff?

PRUDENCE

It is the fashion! 25

LADY FRAMPUL

Ay, and the silk! Feel, sure it is the same!

PRUDENCE

And the same petticoat, lace and all!

LADY FRAMPUL

I’ll swear it.

How came it hither? Make a bill of inquiry.

PRUDENCE

[To Pinnacia] You’ve a fine suit on, madam, and a rich one!

LADY FRAMPUL

And of a curious making!

PRUDENCE

And a new! 30

PINNACIA

As new as day.

LATIMER

[To the others] She answers like a fishwife.

PINNACIA

I put it on since noon, I do assure you.

PRUDENCE

Who is your tailor?

LADY FRAMPUL

Pray you, your fashioner’s name?

PINNACIA

My fashioner is a certain man o’mine own.

He’s i’the house; no matter for his name. 35

HOST

Oh, but to satisfy this bevy of ladies,

Of which a brace here longed to bid you welcome.

PINNACIA

He’s one, in truth, I title my Protection.

[To Host] Bid him come up.

HOST

[Calling] Our new lady’s Protection!

[To Pinnacia] What is Your Ladyship’s style?

PINNACIA

Countess Pinnacia. 40

HOST

[Calling] Countess Pinnacia’s man, come to your lady!

[Enter] STUFF.

PRUDENCE

Your Ladyship’s tailor, Master Stuff!

LADY FRAMPUL

How, Stuff?

He the Protection?

HOST

Stuff looks like a remnant.

STUFF

[Falling to his knees] I am undone, discovered!

PRUDENCE

’Tis the suit, madam,

Now without scruple. And this some device 45

To bring it home with.

PINNACIA

[To Stuff] Why upon your knees?

Is this your lady godmother?

STUFF

Mum, Pinnacia,

It is the Lady Frampul, my best customer.

LADY FRAMPUL

What show is this that you present us with?

STUFF

I do beseech Your Ladyship, forgive me. 50

She did but ’say the suit on.

LADY FRAMPUL

Who? Which she?

STUFF

My wife, forsooth.

LADY FRAMPUL

How? Mistress Stuff? Your wife!

Is that the riddle?

PRUDENCE

We all looked for a lady,

A duchess or a countess at the least.

STUFF

She is my own lawfully begotten wife 55

In wedlock. We ha’ been coupled now seven years.

LADY FRAMPUL

And why thus masked? You like a footman, ha?

And she your countess?

PINNACIA

To make a fool of himself,

And of me, too.

STUFF

I pray thee, Pinnace, peace.

PINNACIA

Nay, it shall out, since you have called me wife 60

And openly dis-ladied me! Though I am dis-countessed

I am not yet dis-countenanced. These shall see.

HOST

Silence!

PINNACIA

It is a foolish trick, madam, he has;

For though he be your tailor, he is my beast.

I may be bold with him and tell his story. 65

When he makes any fine garment will fit me,

Or any rich thing that he thinks of price,

Then must I put it on and be his countess

Before he carry it home unto the owners.

A coach is hired, and four horse; he runs 70

In his velvet jacket thus to Romford, Croydon,

Hounslow, or Barnet, the next bawdy road;

And takes me out, carries me up, and throws me

Upon a bed –

LADY FRAMPUL

Peace, thou immodest woman!

[To the others] She glories in the bravery o’the vice. 75

LATIMER

’Tis a quaint one!

BEAUFORT

A fine species

Of fornicating with a man’s own wife,

Found out by – what’s his name?

LATIMER

Master Nick Stuff.

HOST

The very figure of preoccupation

In all his customers’ best clothes.

LATIMER

He lies 80

With his own succuba in all your names.

BEAUFORT

And all your credits.

HOST

Ay, and at all their costs.

LATIMER

This gown was then bespoken for the sovereign?

BEAUFORT

Ay, marry, was it.

LADY FRAMPUL

And a main offence

Committed ’gainst the sovereignty, being not brought 85

Home i’the time; beside the profanation,

Which may call on the censure of the court.

HOST

Let him be blanketed. Call up the quartermaster.

Deliver him o’er to Fly.

STUFF

Oh, good my lord!

HOST

Pillage the pinnace.

LADY FRAMPUL

Let his wife be stripped. 90

BEAUFORT

Blow off her upper deck!

LATIMER

Tear all her tackle!

LADY FRAMPUL

Pluck the polluted robes over her ears,

Or cut them all to pieces. Make a fire o’them!

PRUDENCE

To rags and cinders burn th’idolatrous vestures!

[Enter FLY with other servants.]

HOST

Fly and your fellows, see that the whole censure 95

Be throughly executed.

FLY

We’ll toss him bravely

Till the stuff stink again.

HOST

And send her home,

Divested to her flannel, in a cart.

LATIMER

And let her footman beat the basin afore her.

FLY

The court shall be obeyed.

HOST

Fly and his officers 100

Will do it fiercely.

STUFF

Merciful Queen Pru!

PRUDENCE

I cannot help you. [Exit Fly with Stuff and Pinnacia.]

BEAUFORT

Go thy ways, Nick Stuff,

Thou hast nicked it for a fashioner of venery.

LATIMER

For his own hell, though he run ten mile for’t.

PRUDENCE

Oh, here comes Lovel for his second hour. 105

BEAUFORT

And after him, the type of Spanish valour.

4.4 [Enter to them] LOVEL [carrying a paper, followed by] TIPTOE.

LADY FRAMPUL

Servant, what have you there?

LOVEL

A meditation,

Or rather a vision, madam, and of beauty,

Our former subject.

LADY FRAMPUL

Pray you let us hear it.

LOVEL

‘It was a beauty that I saw,

So pure, so perfect, as the frame 5

Of all the universe was lame

To that one figure, could I draw

Or give least line of it a law!

A skein of silk without a knot!

A fair march made without a halt! 10

A curious form without a fault!

A printed book without a blot.

All beauty, and without a spot.’

LADY FRAMPUL

They are gentle words, and would deserve a note

Set to ’em as gentle.

LOVEL

I have tried my skill 15

To close the second hour, if you will hear them;

My boy by that time will have got it perfect.

LADY FRAMPUL

Yes, gentle servant. [Aside] In what calm he speaks

After this noise and tumult, so unmoved,

With that serenity of countenance 20

As if his thoughts did acquiesce in that

Which is the object of the second hour

And nothing else!

PRUDENCE

Well then, summon the court.

LADY FRAMPUL

I have a suit to the sovereign of Love,

If it may stand with the honour of the court, 25

To change the question but from love to valour,

To hear it said but what true valour is,

Which oft begets true love.

LATIMER

It is a question

Fit for the court to take true knowledge of,

And hath my just assent.

PRUDENCE

Content.

BEAUFORT

Content. 30

FRANK

Content. I am content. Give him his oath.

HOST

Herbert Lovel, thou shalt swear upon The Testament of Love to make answer

to this question propounded to thee by the court, what true valour is; and

therein to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So

help thee Love, and thy bright sword at need. 35

LOVEL

So help me Love, and my good sword at need!

It is the greatest virtue, and the safety

Of all mankind; the object of it is danger.

A certain mean ’twixt fear and confidence:

No inconsiderate rashness, or vain appetite 40

Of false encount’ring formidable things;

But a true science of distinguishing

What’s good or evil. It springs out of reason,

And tends to perfect honesty; the scope

Is always honour and the public good: 45

It is no valour for a private cause.

BEAUFORT

No? Not for a reputation?

LOVEL

That’s man’s idol

Set up ’gainst God, the maker of all laws,

Who hath commanded us we should not kill;

And yet we say we must for reputation. 50

What honest man can either fear his own,

Or else will hurt another’s reputation?

Fear to do base, unworthy things is valour;

If they be done to us, to suffer them

Is valour too. The office of a man 55

That’s truly valiant is considerable

Three ways: the first is in respect of matter,

Which still is danger; in respect of form,

Wherein he must preserve his dignity;

And in the end, which must be ever lawful. 60

LATIMER

But men, when they are heated and in passion,

Cannot consider.

LOVEL

Then it is not valour.

I never thought an angry person valiant;

Virtue is never aided by a vice.

What need is there of anger and of tumult, 65

When reason can do the same things, or more?

BEAUFORT

Oh, yes, ’tis profitable, and of use;

It makes us fierce and fit to undertake.

LOVEL

Why, so will drink make us both bold and rash,

Or frenzy, if you will; do these make valiant? 70

They are poor helps, and virtue needs them not.

No man is valianter by being angry,

But he that could not valiant be without;

So that it comes not in the aid of virtue

But in the stead of it.

LATIMER

He holds the right. 75

LOVEL

And ’tis an odious kind of remedy

To owe our health to a disease.

TIPTOE

If man

Should follow the dictamen of his passion,

He could not ’scape –

BEAUFORT

To discompose himself.

LATIMER

According to Don Lewis!

HOST

Or Carranza! 80

LOVEL

[To Tiptoe] Good Colonel Glorious, whilst we treat of valour,

Dismiss yourself.

LATIMER

You are not concerned.

LOVEL

Go drink,

And congregate the ostlers and the tapsters,

The under-officers o’your regiment;

Compose with them, and be not angry valiant! Tiptoe goes out. 85

BEAUFORT

How does that differ from true valour?

LOVEL

Thus:

In the efficient, or that which makes it,

For it proceeds from passion, not from judgement;

Then brute beasts have it, wicked persons – there

It differs in the subject; in the form, 90

’Tis carried rashly and with violence;

Then i’the end, where it respects not truth

Or public honesty, but mere revenge.

Now, confident and undertaking valour

Sways from the true two other ways, as being 95

A trust in our own faculties, skill, or strength,

And not the right or conscience o’the cause

That works it; then i’the end, which is the victory

And not the honour.

BEAUFORT

But the ignorant valour

That knows not why it undertakes, but doth it 100

T’escape the infamy merely –

LOVEL

Is worst of all;

That valour lies i’the eyes o’the lookers on,

And is called valour with a witness.

BEAUFORT

Right.

LOVEL

The things true valour is exercised about

Are poverty, restraint, captivity, 105

Banishment, loss of children, long disease;

The least is death. Here valour is beheld,

Properly seen; about these it is present,

Not trivial things, which but require our confidence.

And yet to those we must object ourselves, 110

Only for honesty; if any other

Respect be mixed, we quite put out her light.

And as all knowledge, when it is removed

Or separate from justice, is called craft

Rather than wisdom, so a mind affecting 115

Or undertaking dangers for ambition

Or any self pretext, not for the public,

Deserves the name of daring, not of valour,

And over-daring is as great a vice

As over-fearing.

LATIMER

Yes, and often greater. 120

LOVEL

But as it is not the mere punishment,

But cause that makes a martyr, so it is not

Fighting or dying, but the manner of it

Renders a man himself. A valiant man

Ought not to undergo or tempt a danger 125

But worthily, and by selected ways:

He undertakes with reason, not by chance.

His valour is the salt to his other virtues;

They are all unseasoned without it. The waiting-maids,

Or the concomitants of it, are his patience, 130

His magnanimity, his confidence,

His constancy, security, and quiet;

He can assure himself against all rumour,

Despairs of nothing, laughs at contumelies,

As knowing himself advancèd in a height 135

Where injury cannot reach him nor aspersion

Touch him with soil!

LADY FRAMPUL

Most manly uttered all!

As if Achilles had the chair in valour,

And Hercules were but a lecturer!

Who would not hang upon those lips for ever, 140

That strike such music? I could run on them;

But modesty is such a schoolmistress

To keep our sex in awe.

PRUDENCE

Or you can feign,

My subtle and dissembling lady mistress!

LATIMER

I fear she means it, Pru, in too good earnest! 145

LOVEL

The purpose of an injury, ’tis to vex

And trouble me. Now, nothing can do that

To him that’s valiant. He that is affected

With the least injury is less than it.

It is but reasonable to conclude 150

That should be stronger still which hurts than that

Which is hurt. Now, no wickedness is stronger

Than what opposeth it: not Fortune’s self,

When she encounters virtue, but comes off

Both lame and less. Why should a wise man, then, 155

Confess himself the weaker, by the feeling

Of a fool’s wrong? There may an injury

Be meant me; I may choose if I will take it.

But we are now come to that delicacy

And tenderness of sense, we think an insolence 160

Worse than an injury, bear words worse than deeds;

We are not so much troubled with the wrong

As with the opinion of the wrong. Like children,

We are made afraid with visors. Such poor sounds

As is the lie or common words of spite, 165

Wise laws thought never worthy a revenge;

And ’tis the narrowness of human nature,

Our poverty and beggary of spirit,

To take exception at these things. He laughed at me!

He broke a jest! A third took place of me! 170

How most ridiculous quarrels are all these?

Notes of a queasy and sick stomach, labouring

With want of a true injury. The main part

Of the wrong is our vice of taking it.

LATIMER

Or our interpreting it to be such. 175

LOVEL

You take it rightly. If a woman or child

Give me the lie, would I be angry? No,

Not if I were i’my wits; sure I should think it

No spice of a disgrace. No more is theirs,

If I will think it, who are to be held 180

In as contemptible a rank or worse.

I am kept out a masque, sometime thrust out,

Made wait a day, two, three, for a great word,

Which, when it comes forth, is all frown and forehead;

What laughter should this breed, rather than anger, 185

Out of the tumult of so many errors,

To feel with contemplation mine own quiet!

If a great person do me an affront,

A giant of the time, sure I will bear it

Or out of patience or necessity. 190

Shall I do more for fear than for my judgement?

For me now to be angry with Hodge Huffle,

Or Burst, his broken charge, if he be saucy,

Or our own type of Spanish valour, Tiptoe –

Who, were he now necessited to beg, 195

Would ask an alms like Conde Olivares –

Were just to make myself such a vain animal

As one of them. If light wrongs touch me not,

No more shall great; if not a few, not many.

There’s naught so sacred with us but may find 200

A sacrilegious person, yet the thing is

No less divine ’cause the profane can reach it.

He is shot-free in battle is not hurt,

Not he that is not hit. So he is valiant

That yields not unto wrongs, not he that ’scapes ’em. 205

They that do pull down churches and deface

The holiest altars cannot hurt the godhead.

A calm, wise man may show as much true valour

Amidst these popular provocations

As can an able captain show security 210

By his brave conduct through an enemy’s country.

A wise man never goes the people’s way,

But, as the planets still move contrary

To the world’s motion, so doth he to opinion.

He will examine if those accidents, 215

Which common fame calls injuries, happen to him

Deservedly or no: come they deservedly,

They are no wrongs, then, but his punishments;

If undeservedly, and he not guilty,

The doer of them first should blush, not he. 220

LATIMER

Excellent!

BEAUFORT

Truth, and right!

FRANK

An oracle

Could not have spoken more!

LADY FRAMPUL

Been more believed!

PRUDENCE

The whole court runs into your sentence, sir!

And see, your second hour is almost ended.

LADY FRAMPUL

It cannot be! Oh, clip the wings of Time, 225

Good Pru, or make him stand still with a charm.

Distil the gout into it, cramps, all diseases

T’arrest him in the foot and fix him here.

Oh, for an engine to keep back all clocks,

Or make the sun forget his motion! 230

If I but knew what drink the Time now loved,

To set my Trundle at him, mine own Barnaby!

PRUDENCE

Why, I’ll consult our Shelee-nien Thomas.

[She shakes the Nurse.]

NURSE

Er grae Chreest!

BEAUFORT

Wake her not.

NURSE

Tower een cuppan

D’usque bagh doone.

PRUDENCE

Usque bagh’s her drink. 235

But ’twi’ not make the Time drunk.

HOST

As’t hath her.

Away with her, my lord, but marry her first. [Exeunt Beaufort and Frank.]

PRUDENCE

Ay, that’ll be sport anon, too, for my lady.

But she hath other game to fly at yet;

The hour is come. [To Lady Frampul] Your kiss.

LADY FRAMPUL

My servant’s song, first. 240

PRUDENCE

I say the kiss, first; and I so enjoined it;

At your own peril do, make the contempt.

LADY FRAMPUL

[To Lovel] Well, sir, you must be paid, and legally.

[She kisses him.]

PRUDENCE

Nay, nothing, sir, beyond.

LOVEL

One more – I except!

This was but half a kiss, and I would change it. 245

PRUDENCE

The court’s dissolved, removed, and the play ended.

No sound or air of love more; I decree it.

LOVEL

From what a happiness hath that one word

Thrown me, into the gulf of misery!

To what a bottomless despair! How like 250

A court removing or an ended play

Shows my abrupt precipitate estate;

By how much more my vain hopes were increased

By these false hours of conversation!

Did not I prophesy this of myself, 255

And gave the true prognostics? O my brain,

How art thou turned, and my blood congealed,

My sinews slackened, and my marrow melted,

That I remember not where I have been,

Or what I am? Only my tongue’s on fire, 260

And, burning downward, hurls forth coals and cinders

To tell this temple of love will soon be ashes!

Come Indignation, now, and be my mistress;

No more of Love’s ingrateful tyranny,

His wheel of torture and his pits of bird-lime, 265

His nets of nooses, whirlpools of vexation,

His mills to grind his servants into powder.

I will go catch the wind first in a sieve,

Weigh smoke and measure shadows, plough the water

And sow my hopes there, ere I stay in love. 270

LATIMER

[Aside] My jealousy is off. I am now secure.

LOVEL

Farewell the craft of crocodiles, woman’s piety

And practice of it, in this art of flattering

And fooling men! I ha’ not lost my reason,

Though I have lent myself out for two hours, 275

Thus to be baffled by a chambermaid,

And the good actor, her lady, afore mine Host

Of the Light Heart here, that hath laughed at all –

HOST

Who, I?

LOVEL

Laugh on, sir, I’ll to bed and sleep,

And dream away the vapour of love, if th’house 280

And your leer drunkards let me.

[Exeunt all but Lady Frampul, Prudence, and Nurse.]

LADY FRAMPUL

Pru.

PRUDENCE

Sweet madam?

LADY FRAMPUL

Why would you let him go thus?

PRUDENCE

In whose power

Was it to stay him, prop’rer than my lady’s?

LADY FRAMPUL

Why in your lady’s? Are not you the sovereign?

PRUDENCE

Would you in conscience, madam, ha’ me vex 285

His patience more?

LADY FRAMPUL

No, but apply the cure,

Now it is vexed.

PRUDENCE

That’s but one body’s work.

Two cannot do the same thing handsomely.

LADY FRAMPUL

But had you not the authority absolute?

PRUDENCE

And were not you i’ rebellion, Lady Frampul, 290

From the beginning?

LADY FRAMPUL

I was somewhat froward,

I must confess, but frowardness sometime

Becomes a beauty, being but a visor

Put on. You’ll let a lady wear her mask, Pru!

PRUDENCE

But how do I know when Her Ladyship is pleased 295

To leave it off, except she tell me so?

LADY FRAMPUL

You might ha’ known that by my looks and language,

Had you been or regardant or observant.

One woman reads another’s character

Without the tedious trouble of deciphering, 300

If she but give her mind to’t; you knew well

It could not sort with any reputation

Of mine to come in first, having stood out

So long, without conditions for mine honour.

PRUDENCE

I thought you did expect none, you so jeered him, 305

And put him off with scorn –

LADY FRAMPUL

Who, I, with scorn?

I did express my love to idolatry rather,

And so am justly plagued, not understood.

PRUDENCE

I swear I thought you had dissembled, madam,

And doubt you do so yet.

LADY FRAMPUL

Dull, stupid wench! 310

Stay i’thy state of ignorance still, be damned,

An idiot chambermaid! Hath all my care,

My breeding thee in fashion, thy rich clothes,

Honours, and titles wrought no brighter effects

On thy dark soul than thus? Well! Go thy ways. 315

Were not the tailor’s wife to be demolished,

Ruined, uncased, thou should’st be she, I vow.

PRUDENCE

[Tearing off her gown] Why, take your spangled properties, your

gown,

And scarves.

LADY FRAMPUL

Pru, Pru, what dost thou mean?

PRUDENCE

I will not buy this play-boy’s bravery 320

At such a price, to be upbraided for it,

Thus, every minute.

LADY FRAMPUL

Take it not to heart so.

PRUDENCE

The tailor’s wife? There was a word of scorn!

LADY FRAMPUL

It was a word fell from me, Pru, by chance.

PRUDENCE

Good madam, please to undeceive yourself. 325

I know when words do slip and when they are darted

With all their bitterness. Uncased? Demolished?

An idiot chambermaid, stupid and dull?

Be damned for ignorance? I will be so,

And think I do deserve it, that and more, 330

Much more I do. [She weeps.]

[Enter] HOST.

LADY FRAMPUL

Here comes mine Host! No crying,

Good Pru. – Where is my servant Lovel, Host?

HOST

You ha’ sent him up to bed. Would you would follow him,

And make my house amends!

LADY FRAMPUL

Would you advise it?

HOST

I would I could command it. My Light Heart 335

Should leap till midnight.

LADY FRAMPUL

Pray thee, be not sullen,

I yet must ha’ thy counsel. [To Prudence] Thou shalt wear, Pru,

The new gown yet.

PRUDENCE

After the tailor’s wife?

LADY FRAMPUL

Come, be not angry or grieved; I have a project. [Exeunt Lady Frampul and Prudence.]

HOST

Wake, Shelee-nien Thomas!

[He shakes the Nurse.]

Is this your heraldry 340

And keeping of records, to lose the main?

Where is your charge?

NURSE

Gra Chreest!

HOST

Go ask th’oracle

O’the bottle at your girdle; there you lost it.

You are a sober setter of the watch. [Exeunt.]

5.1 [Enter] HOST [and] FLY.

HOST

Come, Fly, and legacy, the bird o’the Heart;

Prime insect of the inn, professor, quartermaster,

As ever thou deservedst thy daily drink,

Paddling in sack and licking i’the same,

Now show thyself an implement of price 5

And help to raise a nap to us out of nothing.

Thou sawst ’em married?

FLY

I do think I did,

And heard the words, ‘I, Philip, take thee Laetice.’

I gave her too, was then the father Fly,

And heard the priest do his part far as five nobles 10

Would lead him i’the lines of matrimony.

HOST

Where were they married?

FLY

I’the new stable.

HOST

Ominous!

I ha’ known many a church been made a stable,

But not a stable made a church till now.

I wish ’em joy. Fly, was he a full priest? 15

FLY

He bellied for it, had his velvet sleeves

And his branched cassock, a side sweeping gown,

All his formalities, a good crammed divine!

I went not far to fetch him – the next inn,

Where he was lodged – for the action.

HOST

Had they a licence? 20

FLY

Licence of love, I saw no other; and purse

To pay the duties both of church and house.

The angels flew about.

HOST

Those birds send luck,

And mirth will follow. I had thought to ha’ sacrificed

To merriment tonight i’my Light Heart, Fly, 25

And like a noble poet to have had

My last act best, but all fails i’the plot.

Lovel is gone to bed; the Lady Frampul

And sovereign Pru fallen out; Tiptoe and his regiment

Of mine-men all drunk dumb, from his whoop Barnaby 30

To his hoop Trundle; they are his two tropics.

No project to rear laughter on but this,

The marriage of Lord Beaufort with Laetitia.

[He sees Lady Frampul and Prudence approaching.]

Stay, what’s here? The satin gown redeemed,

And Pru restored in’t, to her lady’s grace! 35

FLY

She is set forth in’t, rigged for some employment!

HOST

An embassy at least!

FLY

Some treaty of state!

HOST

’Tis a fine tack about, and worth the observing.

[FLY and HOST stand aside.]

5.2 [Enter] LADY [FRAMPUL with] PRUDENCE [magnificently dressed].

LADY FRAMPUL

Sweet Pru, ay, now thou art a queen indeed!

These robes do royally and thou becom’st ’em,

So they do thee. Rich garments only fit

The parties they are made for; they shame others.

How did they show on Goody Tailor’s back? 5

Like a caparison for a sow, God save us!

Thy putting ’em on hath purged and hallowed ’em

From all pollution meant by the mechanics.

PRUDENCE

Hang him, poor snip, a secular shop-wit!

H’hath nought but his shears to claim by, and his measures; 10

His prentice may as well put in for his needle

And plead a stitch.

LADY FRAMPUL

They have no taint in ’em

Now o’the tailor.

PRUDENCE

Yes, of his wife’s haunches,

Thus thick of fat; I smell ’em, o’the ’say.

LADY FRAMPUL

It is restorative, Pru! With thy but chafing it, 15

A barren hind’s grease may work miracles.

Find but his chamber door, and he will rise

To thee! Or, if thou pleasest, feign to be

The wretched party herself, and com’st unto him

In forma pauperis to crave the aid 20

Of his knight-errant valour to the rescue

Of thy distressèd robes! Name but thy gown

And he will rise to that.

PRUDENCE

I’ll fire the charm first.

I had rather die in a ditch with Mistress Shore,

Without a smock, as the pitiful matter has it, 25

Than owe my wit to clothes, or ha’ it beholden.

HOST

Still spirit of Pru!

FLY

And smelling o’the sovereign!

PRUDENCE

No, I will tell him as it is indeed;

I come from the fine, froward, frampul lady,

One was run mad with pride, wild with self-love, 30

But, late encountering a wise man who scorned her,

And knew the way to his own bed without

Borrowing her warming pan, she hath recovered

Part of her wits, so much as to consider

How far she hath trespassed, upon whom, and how. 35

And now sits penitent and solitary

Like the forsaken turtle, in the volary

Of the Light Heart, the cage she hath abused,

Mourning her folly, weeping at the height

She measures with her eye from whence she is fallen 40

Since she did branch it on the top o’the wood.

LADY FRAMPUL

I prithee, Pru, abuse me enough, that’s use me

As thou think’st fit – any coarse way, to humble me;

Or bring me home again or Lovel on.

Thou dost not know my sufferings, what I feel. 45

My fires and fears are met; I burn and freeze;

My liver’s one great coal, my heart shrunk up

With all the fibres, and the mass of blood

Within me is a standing lake of fire

Curled with the cold wind of my gelid sighs, 50

That drive a drift of sleet through all my body

And shoot a February through my veins.

Until I see him, I am drunk with thirst

And surfeited with hunger of his presence.

I know not whe’r I am or no, or speak, 55

Or whether thou dost hear me.

PRUDENCE

Spare expressions.

I’ll once more venture for Your Ladyship,

So you will use your fortunes reverently.

LADY FRAMPUL

Religiously, dear Pru. Love and his mother,

I’ll build them several churches, shrines, and altars, 60

And overhead I’ll have, in the glass windows,

The story of this day be painted round

For the poor laity of love to read;

I’ll make myself their book, nay, their example,

To bid them take occasion by the forelock 65

And play no after-games of love hereafter.

HOST

[Coming forward with Fly] And here your Host and’s Fly witness your vows.

And like two lucky birds bring the presage

Of a loud jest: Lord Beaufort married is.

LADY FRAMPUL

Ha!

FLY

All-to-be-married.

PRUDENCE

To whom? Not your son? 70

HOST

The same, Pru. If Her Ladyship could take truce

A little with her passion, and give way

To their mirth now running –

LADY FRAMPUL

Runs it mirth, let’t come;

It shall be well received and much made of it.

PRUDENCE

We must of this; it was our own conception. 75

5.3 [Enter] LATIMER to them.

LATIMER

Room for green rushes! Raise the fiddlers, chamberlain;

Call up the house in arms!

HOST

This will rouse Lovel.

FLY

And bring him on too.

LATIMER

Shelee-nien Thomas

Runs like a heifer bitten with the breeze

About the court, crying on Fly and cursing. 5

FLY

For what, my lord?

LATIMER

Yo’were best hear that from her;

It is no office, Fly, fits my relation.

[Seeing others approach.]

Here come the happy couple! – Joy, Lord Beaufort!

FLY

And my young lady too!

HOST

Much joy, my lord!

5.4 [Enter] BEAUFORT, FRANK, [FERRET, JORDAN, PIERCE, JUG, Fiddlers, and a] Servant to them.

BEAUFORT

I thank you all; I thank thee, Father Fly.

Madam, my cousin, you look discomposed.

I have been bold with a salad after supper

O’your own lettuce here.

LADY FRAMPUL

You have, my lord.

But laws of hospitality and fair rites 5

Would have made me acquainted.

BEAUFORT

I’your own house,

I do acknowledge; else I much had trespassed.

But in an inn, and public, where there is licence

Of all community, a pardon o’ course

May be sued out.

LADY FRAMPUL

It will, my lord, and carry it. 10

I do not see how any storm or tempest

Can help it now.

PRUDENCE

The thing being done and past,

You bear it wisely and like a lady of judgement.

BEAUFORT

She is that, Secretary Pru.

PRUDENCE

Why secretary,

My wise lord? Is your brain lately married? 15

BEAUFORT

Your reign is ended, Pru; no sovereign now.

Your date is out, and dignity expired.

PRUDENCE

I am annulled. How can I treat with Lovel

Without a new commission?

LADY FRAMPUL

Thy gown’s commission.

HOST

Have patience, Pru; expect. Bid the lord joy. 20

PRUDENCE

And this brave lady too. I wish them joy.

PIERCE

Joy!

JORDAN

Joy!

JUG

All joy!

HOST

Ay, the house full of joy!

FLY

Play the bells; fiddlers, crack your strings with joy!

[Music plays.]

PRUDENCE

But Lady Lettice, you showed a neglect

Un-to-be-pardoned to’ards my lady, your kinswoman, 25

Not to advise with her.

BEAUFORT

Good politic Pru,

Urge not your state-advice, your after-wit;

’Tis near upbraiding. – Get our bed ready, chamberlain,

And, Host, a bride-cup. You have rare conceits

And good ingredients; ever an old host 30

Upo’ the road has his provocative drinks.

LATIMER

[Aside to Beaufort] He is either a good bawd or a physician.

BEAUFORT

’Twas well he heard you not; his back was turned. –

A bed, the genial bed! A brace of boys

Tonight I play for.

PRUDENCE

Give us points, my lord. 35

BEAUFORT

Here, take ’em, Pru, my codpiece point and all.

I ha’ clasps, my Lettice’ arms. [To Servants] Here, take ’em, boys.

[He throws off his doublet, etc.]

What, is the chamber ready? Speak! Why stare you

On one another?

JORDAN

No, sir.

BEAUFORT

And why no?

JORDAN

My master has forbid it. He yet doubts 40

That you are married.

BEAUFORT

Ask his vicar general,

His Fly here.

FLY

I must make that good, they are married.

HOST

But I must make it bad, my hot young lord.

Gi’ him his doublet again; the air is piercing.

[To Beaufort] You may take cold, my lord. See whom you ha’ married, 45

Your Host’s son, and a boy!

[He pulls off Frank’s headdress.]

FLY

You are abused.

LADY FRAMPUL

Much joy, my lord!

PRUDENCE

If this be your Laetitia,

She’ll prove a counterfeit mirth and a clipped lady.

SERVANT

A boy, a boy; my lord has married a boy!

LATIMER

Raise all the house in shout and laughter: a boy! 50

HOST

Stay, what is here? – Peace, rascals, stop your throats!

5.5 [Enter] NURSE to them.

NURSE

That maggot, worm, that insect! Oh, my child,

My daughter! Where’s that Fly? I’ll fly in his face,

The vermin. Let me come to him.

FLY

Why, Nurse Shelee?

NURSE

Hang thee, thou parasite, thou son of crumbs

And orts! Thou hast undone me and my child, 5

My daughter, my dear daughter.

HOST

What means this?

NURSE

Oh, sir, my daughter, my dear child is ruined

By this your Fly here: married in a stable,

And sold unto a husband.

HOST

Stint thy cry,

Harlot, if that be all. Didst thou not sell him 10

To me for a boy? And broughtst him in boy’s rags

Here to my door to beg an alms of me?

NURSE

I did, good master, and I crave your pardon.

But ’tis my daughter, and a girl.

HOST

Why saidst thou

It was a boy, and soldst him then to me 15

With such entreaty for ten shillings, carline?

NURSE

Because you were a charitable man,

I heard, good master, and would breed him well;

I would ha’ giv’n him you for nothing gladly.

Forgive the lie o’my mouth! It was to save 20

The fruit o’my womb. A parent’s needs are urgent,

And few do know that tyrant o’er good natures.

But you relieved her and me too, the mother,

And took me into your house to be the nurse,

For which heaven heap all blessings on your head 25

Whilst there can one be added!

HOST

Sure thou speak’st

Quite like another creature than th’ hast lived

Here i’the house, a Shelee-nien Thomas,

An Irish beggar.

NURSE

So I am, God help me.

HOST

What art thou? Tell; the match is a good match 30

For aught I see. – Ring the bells once again.

BEAUFORT

Stint, I say, fiddlers!

[He starts to leave.]

LADY FRAMPUL

No going off, my lord.

BEAUFORT

Nor coming on, sweet lady, things thus standing!

FLY

[To Host] But what’s the heinousness of my offence,

Or the degrees of wrong you suffered by it, 35

In having your daughter matched thus happily

Into a noble house, a brave young blood

And a prime peer o’the realm?

BEAUFORT

Was that your plot, Fly?

Gi’ me a cloak; take her again among you.

I’ll none of your Light Heart fosterlings, no inmates, 40

Supposititious fruits of an Host’s brain

And his Fly’s hatching, to be put upon me.

There is a royal court o’the Star Chamber

Will scatter all these mists, disperse these vapours,

And clear the truth. Let beggars match with beggars. 45

That shall decide it; I will try it there.

NURSE

Nay then, my lord, it’s not enough, I see,

You are licentious, but you will be wicked.

You’re not alone content to take my daughter

Against the law, but, having taken her, 50

You would repudiate and cast her off

Now at your pleasure, like a beast of power,

Without all cause or colour of a cause

That or a noble or an honest man

Should dare t’ except against, her poverty. 55

Is poverty a vice?

BEAUFORT

Th’age counts it so.

NURSE

God help Your Lordship, and your peers that think so,

If any be! If not, God bless them all,

And help the number o’the virtuous,

If poverty be a crime. You may object 60

Our beggary to us as an accident,

But never deeper, no inherent baseness.

And I must tell you now, young lord of dirt,

As an incensèd mother, she hath more

And better blood running i’those small veins 65

Than all the race of Beauforts have in mass,

Though they distil their drops from the left rib

Of John o’Gaunt.

HOST

[To Nurse] Old mother o’ records,

Thou know’st her pedigree, then; whose daughter is she?

NURSE

The daughter and co-heir to the Lord Frampul, 70

This lady’s sister!

LADY FRAMPUL

Mine? What is her name?

NURSE

Laetitia.

LADY FRAMPUL

That was lost?

NURSE

The true Laetitia.

LADY FRAMPUL

Sister! O gladness! Then you are our mother?

NURSE

I am, dear daughter.

LADY FRAMPUL

[Kneeling] On my knees, I bless

The light I see you by.

NURSE

And to the author 75

Of that blest light, I ope my other eye,

Which hath almost now seven year been shut

Dark, as my vow was, never to see light

Till such a light restored it as my children

Or your dear father, who, I hear, is not. 80

BEAUFORT

Give me my wife. I own her now, and will have her.

HOST

But you must ask my leave first, my young lord;

Leave is but light. – Ferret, go bolt your master,

Here’s gear will startle him. [Exit Ferret.]

I cannot keep

The passion in me. I am e’en turned child, 85

And I must weep. – Fly, take away mine Host;

[He removes his disguise.]

My beard and cap here from me, and fetch my lord. [Exit Fly.]

[To Beaufort] I am her father, sir, and you shall now

Ask my consent before you have her. [To Nurse] Wife,

My dear and loving wife! My honoured wife! 90

Who here hath gained but I? I am Lord Frampul,

The cause of all this trouble. I am he

Have measured all the shires of England over,

Wales and her mountains, seen those wilder nations

Of people in the Peak and Lancashire; 95

Their pipers, fiddlers, rushers, puppet-masters,

Jugglers, and gypsies, all the sorts of canters,

And colonies of beggars, tumblers, ape-carriers,

For to these savages I was addicted,

To search their natures and make odd discoveries! 100

And here my wife, like a she-Mandeville,

Ventured in disquisition after me.

[Enter FLY, carrying Lord Frampul’s robes.]

NURSE

I may look up, admire; I cannot speak

Yet to my lord.

HOST

Take heart and breath; recover.

Thou hast recovered me, who here had coffined 105

Myself alive in a poor hostelry

In penance of my wrongs done unto thee,

Whom I long since gave lost.

NURSE

So did I you,

Till, stealing mine own daughter from her sister,

I lighted on this error hath cured all. 110

BEAUFORT

And in that cure include my trespass, mother,

And father, for my wife –

HOST

No, the Star Chamber.

BEAUFORT

Away with that! You sour the sweetest lettuce

Was ever tasted.

HOST

Gi’ you joy, my son,

Cast her not off again.

[Enter LOVEL.]

Oh, call me father, 115

Lovel, and this your mother if you like.

But take your mistress first, my child. I have power

To give her now, with her consent; her sister

Is given already to your brother Beaufort.

LOVEL

Is this a dream now, after my first sleep? 120

Or are these fant’sies made i’the Light Heart

And sold i’the New Inn?

HOST

Best go to bed

And dream it over all. Let’s all go sleep,

Each with his turtle. – Fly, provide us lodgings,

Get beds prepared; you’re master now o’the inn, 125

The Lord o’the Light Heart. I give it you.

[To the others] Fly was my fellow gypsy. All my family,

Indeed, were gypsies, tapsters, ostlers, chamberlains,

Reducèd vessels of civility.

But here stands Pru neglected, best deserving 130

Of all that are i’the house or i’my Heart,

Whom though I cannot help to a fit husband,

I’ll help to that will bring one: a just portion.

I have two thousand pound in bank for Pru,

Call for it when she will.

BEAUFORT

And I as much. 135

HOST

There’s somewhat yet: four thousand pound! That’s better

Than sounds the proverb ‘Four bare legs in a bed’.

LOVEL

Me and her mistress she hath power to coin

Up into what she will.

LADY FRAMPUL

Indefinite Pru!

LATIMER

But I must do the crowning act of bounty! 140

HOST

What’s that, my lord?

LATIMER

Give her myself, which here,

By all the holy vows of love, I do.

Spare all your promised portions; she is a dowry

So all-sufficient in her virtue and her manners

That fortune cannot add to her.

PRUDENCE

My lord, 145

Your praises are instructions to mine ears,

Whence you have made your wife to live your servant.

HOST

[Calling] Lights! Get us several lights!

LOVEL

Stay. Let my mistress

But hear my vision sung, my dream of beauty

Which I have brought, prepared, to bid us joy 150

And light us all to bed; ’twill be instead

Of airing of the sheets with a sweet odour.

HOST

’Twill be an incense to our sacrifice

Of love tonight, where I will woo afresh,

And, like Maecenas, having but one wife, 155

I’ll marry her every hour of life hereafter.

They go out, with a song.

THE EPILOGUE

Plays in themselves have neither hopes nor fears;

Their fate is only in their hearers’ ears.

If you expect more than you had tonight,

The maker is sick and sad. But do him right;

He meant to please you, for he sent things fit 5

In all the numbers, both of sense and wit,

If they ha’ not miscarried! If they have,

All that his faint and falt’ring tongue doth crave

Is that you not impute it to his brain.

That’s yet unhurt, although, set round with pain, 10

It cannot long hold out. All strength must yield.

Yet judgement would the last be i’the field

With a true poet. He could have haled in

The drunkards and the noises of the inn

In his last act, if he had thought it fit 15

To vent you vapours in the place of wit.

But better ’twas that they should sleep or spew

Than in the scene to offend or him or you.

This he did think, and this do you forgive:

Whene’er the carcass dies, this art will live. 20

And had he lived the care of king and queen,

His art in something more yet had been seen.

But mayors and shrieves may yearly fill the stage;

A king’s or poet’s birth do ask an age.

[Second epilogue]

Another Epilogue there was made for the play in the poet’s defence,
but the play lived not in opinion to have it spoken.

A jovial host and lord of the New Inn,

Clept the Light Heart, with all that passed therein,

Hath been the subject of our play tonight,

To give the King and Queen and court delight;

But then we mean the court above the stairs 5

And past the guard: men that have more of ears

Than eyes to judge us, such as will not hiss

Because the chambermaid was namèd Cis.

We think it would have served our scene as true

If, as it is, at first we’d called her Pru, 10

For any mystery we there have found,

Or magic in the letters or the sound.

She only meant was for a girl of wit,

To whom her lady did a province fit;

Which she would have discharged and done as well 15

Had she been christened Joyce, Grace, Doll, or Nell.

Ode to Himself

The just indignation the author took at the vulgar censure of his play by some malicious spectators begat this following Ode to Himself.

[Ode to Himself]

THE END

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

The New Inn, or The Light Heart

Edited by Julie Sanders

Introduction

THE DEDICATION,
TO THE READER

The Argument

The Scene: Barnet

The Persons of the Play

With some short characterism of the chief actors.

The Prologue

THE EPILOGUE

[Second epilogue]

Another Epilogue there was made for the play in the poet’s defence,
but the play lived not in opinion to have it spoken.

Ode to Himself

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

The New Inn, or The Light Heart

Edited by Julie Sanders

Introduction

THE DEDICATION, TO THE READER

The Argument

The Scene: Barnet

The Persons of the Play

With some short characterism of the chief actors.

The Prologue

THE EPILOGUE

[Second epilogue]

Another Epilogue there was made for the play in the poet’s defence, but the play lived not in opinion to have it spoken.

Ode to Himself

THE DEDICATION,
TO THE READER

Another Epilogue there was made for the play in the poet’s defence,
but the play lived not in opinion to have it spoken.