Thomas Heywood, by Thomas Heywood

“What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whence they came

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolved to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life.”

Master Francis Beaumont to Ben Jonson.

CONTENTS.

The world’s a theatre, the earth a stage,[1]

Which God and nature doth with actors fill:

Kings have their entrance in due equipage,

And some their parts play well, and others ill.

The best no better are (in this theátre),

Where every humour’s fitted in his kind;

This a true subject acts, and that a traitor,

The first applauded, and the last confined;

This plays an honest man, and that a knave,

A gentle person this, and he a clown,

One man is ragged, and another brave:

All men have parts, and each one acts his own.

She a chaste lady acteth all her life;

A wanton courtezan another plays;

This covets marriage love, that nuptial strife:

Both in continual action spend their days:

Some citizens, some soldiers, born to adventer,

Shepherds, and sea-men. Then our play’s begun

When we are born, and to the world first enter,

And all find exits when their parts are done.

If then the world a theatre present,

As by the roundness it appears most fit,

Built with star-galleries of high ascent,

In which Jehove doth as spectator sit,

And chief determiner to applaud the best,

And their endeavours crown with more than merit;

But by their evil actions dooms the rest

To end disgraced, whilst others praise inherit;

He that denies then theatres should be,

He may as well deny a world to me.

Thomas Heywood.[2]

THOMAS HEYWOOD.

“If I were to be consulted as to a reprint of our old English dramatists,” says Charles Lamb, “I should advise to begin with the collected plays of Heywood. He was a fellow actor and fellow dramatist with Shakespeare. He possessed not the imagination of the latter, but in all those qualities which gained for Shakespeare the attribute of gentle, he was not inferior to him—generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depths of passion; sweetness, in a word, and gentleness; Christianism, and true hearty Anglicism of feelings, shaping that Christianism, shine throughout his beautiful writings in a manner more conspicuous than in those of Shakespeare; but only more conspicuous, inasmuch as in Heywood these qualities are primary, in the other subordinate to poetry.” In another note Lamb calls Heywood a “prose Shakespeare.” Allowing for the exaggeration with which an enthusiastic love for our then neglected minor dramatists charged the criticism of Charles Lamb, this verdict is in many points a just one. Heywood, while he lacks the poetry, philosophy, deep insight into nature, and consummate art of Shakespeare—those qualities, in a word, which render Shakespeare supreme among dramatic poets—has a sincerity, a tenderness of pathos, and an instinctive perception of nobility, that distinguish him among the playwrights of the seventeenth century. Like Dekker, he wins our confidence and love. We keep a place in our affection for his favourite characters; they speak to us across two centuries with the voices of friends; while the far more brilliant masterpieces of many contemporary dramatists stir only our aesthetic admiration.[3]

Heywood, unlike many of his contemporaries, and in this respect notably unlike Dekker, seems to have kept tolerably free from joint composition. Of twenty-four plays, only two, The Late Lancashire Witches and Fortune by Land and Sea, were produced by him in collaboration, the former with Brome, and the latter with W. Rowley. Of all the playwrights of that period he was the most prolific. In 1633 he owned to having “had either an entire hand or at least a main finger” in two hundred and twenty dramas; and after that date others were printed, which may perhaps be reckoned in augmentation of this number. His literary fertility is proved by his Nine Books of Various History concerning Women, a folio of 466 pages, which appeared in 1624 with this memorandum: “Opus excogitatum inchoatum, explicitum, et typographo excusum inter septemdecem septimanas.” Kirkman, the book-seller, in his advertisement to the reader at the end of the second edition of his catalogue of plays, observes of Heywood that “he was very laborious; for he not only acted almost every day, but also obliged himself to write a sheet every day for several years together.” Besides composing dramas, he delighted in the labour of compilation, and had for some time on hand a Biographical Dictionary of all the poets, from the most remote period of the world’s history down to his own time. The loss of his MS. collections for this book is greatly to be regretted, since there was no man of that century better qualified by geniality and honesty of purpose for the task than the old playwright, who put into the lips of Apuleius:—

Even as it is, the few lines in Heywood’s Hierarchy of Angels on the nicknames of the poets of his day are among the raciest scraps of information which we possess about those dramatists. The miscellaneous nature of Heywood’s literary labours justifies us in classing him, together with Robert Greene, among the earliest professional littérateurs of our language. His criticism is often quite as valuable as his dramatic poetry. The whole of the running dialogue between Apuleius and Midas in Love’s Mistress, for example, contains a theory of the relation of poets to the public, while the prologues to A Challenge for Beauty and The Royal King and Loyal Subject are interesting as showing to what extent the dramatists of the Elizabethan age pursued their art with conscious purpose and comparison.

We may notice how careless, in common with many of his contemporaries, Heywood was concerning the fate of his dramatic writings. Plays, and comedies in particular, were written, not to be read and studied, but to be acted. This we should never forget while passing judgment upon the unequal work of the Elizabethan playwrights. In the Address to the Reader, prefixed to the English Traveller, Heywood complains that this tragi-comedy had been published without his consent, and apologises for coming forward to father it before the world, adding, not without a sly poke at Jonson and his school:—

In the preface to the Rape of Lucrece he repeats his complaints against the clandestine and unauthorised publication of his plays, with this declaration of his own habit of dealing with them:—

He then proceeds to show that the pirated editions of his plays in mangled copies have forced him to right himself before the public by superintending the issue of a certain number of his works. In the prologue to If you Know not Me, you Know Nobody, the same apology is reiterated in terms which throw a curious light upon the short-hand reporters of plays for the press, employed by piratical booksellers to the prejudice of authors and theatre managers:—

Of the twenty-three plays in Mr. Pearson’s collection, four—namely, the two parts of Edward IV. and the two parts of If you Know not Me, you Know Nobody—are histories of the old-fashioned sort, rudely dramatised from English chronicles, and seasoned with comic and pathetic episodes. Of the two series, Edward IV. has in it more of Heywood’s special quality; the interlude of the Tanner of Tamworth and the romance of Mistress Shore displaying his double power of dealing with drollery and passion in the simplest and most natural style. In truth, the second part of Edward IV., which begins with a dull, confused account of that king’s wars in France, becomes a romantic drama on the legend of Jane Shore. This is chiefly remarkable for the way in which Heywood sustains the character of Master Shore, who is the very mirror of sound English middle-class Christianity. The erring wife’s portrait is touched with striking, if somewhat sentimental, appeals to natural sympathy. Both are excellent examples of the dramatist’s homely art and honest humanity, though nothing can be balder and more artless than the manner of their death together on the stage. If you Know not Me, you Know Nobody is a chronicle of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, including her early dangers and the late glories of the defeat of the Armada. The whole series of scenes breathes the strongest English patriotism and the most enthusiastic Protestant feeling. It is a pity that, hastily and clumsily pieced together, a drama so interesting in its matter should almost be valueless as a work of art. It was published as a companion to S. Rowley’s When you See Me, you Know Me, which has been reprinted by Dr. Karl Elze.

The Late Lancashire Witches and the Wise Woman of Hogsdon are comedies of English life, without that element of romantic interest which Heywood usually added to the domestic drama. The plot of the latter play turns upon the quackeries and impostures of a professed fortune-teller; but to mention it in the same breath with Jonson’s Alchemist would be ridiculous. The Lancashire Witches, though it attempts, in one scene at least, to touch the deeper interest of witchcraft, deals for the most part only with the vulgar and farcical aspects of the subject. It has nothing in common with The Witch of Edmonton or Middleton’s Witch. A household turned topsy-turvy, a coursing-match spoiled, a farm-servant changed into a gelding, and a bridegroom bewitched with a charmed codpiece-point upon his wedding night, are among its insipid drolleries. In Fortune by Land and Sea, The English Traveller, The Fair Maid of the Exchange, and both parts of The Fair Maid of the West, Heywood displays to better advantage his predilection for homespun stories, dealing chiefly with the incidents of country life and the adventures of English captains on the high seas. Pure comedy and pure tragedy were neither of them suited to his genius. He required a subject in which the familiar events of English domestic life might be contrasted with the romantic episodes of sea-roving and of foreign travel. To interweave these motives with the addition of pathos and sentiment, was just what he could do successfully. No dramatist has painted more faithful home pictures. None have thrown more natural light upon the pursuits of English gentlemen in the first half of the seventeenth century. The merit of all these five plays is considerable. It would have been impossible even for Fletcher to realise a difficult scene with greater ease and delicacy than are displayed in the interview between young Geraldine and Wincott’s wife in The English Traveller. A pair of lovers, who have been parted, meet again and renew their old vows in the bedroom of the girl just made a wife. The calm strength and honourable feeling displayed by this Paolo and his Francesca in their perilous interview are the result of unsuspecting innocence and sweetness. If the situation is almost unnatural and disagreeable, the poet has contrived to invest it with the air of purity, reality, sincerity, and health. Fortune by Land and Sea is richer in scenes which reveal Heywood at his best. The opening of this play is one of his most vigorous transcripts from contemporary English country life. Frank Forrest, a daring and high-blooded youngster, evades his careful father, and flies off to a neighbouring tavern, less for the sake of drinking than in order to meet spirited companions. One of them picks a quarrel with him about his respect for his old father, and the boy is killed. The grief of old Forrest, the challenge given by the brother to Frank’s murderer, the duel that ensues, and young Forrest’s escape, are all set forth with photographic reality and force. Event huddles upon event, and the whole proceeds with the simplicity of truth. These scenes only form a prelude to the play, which, like most of Heywood’s, contains a double plot; but at the same time they are its salt. The Fair Maid of the West, a romantic drama in two parts, sets forth the adventures of the Devonshire Captain Spencer and his love Bess Bridges, who is introduced to us as the mistress of a Plymouth inn. It may be said in passing, that few tavern-scenes in our Elizabethan drama, not even those of Dekker, are better painted than those which form the introduction to Act I. Battles with pirates, slavery in Fez, and adventures in Florence form the staple of the drama, which must have presented many attractions to an English audience of the age of Stukeley, Sherley, and Drake. The Fair Maid of the Exchange is another play belonging to what the Germans style das bürgerliche Drama. To my mind its sentiment is sickly, and its story, in spite of many beautiful passages, disagreeable. Phillis is the Fair Maid; and the real hero of the piece is a cripple, who saves her from a ruffianly assault, and who falls in love with her. She returns his love; but Heywood had not the courage to develop this situation. Therefore he makes the cripple plead the cause of another suitor to the Fair Maid, who at the end of the play transfers her affections with a levity and a complacency that would be offensive in real life. The charm of this comedy consists in a certain air of April-morning freshness; it has, moreover, one of Heywood’s most exquisite songs, a lyric that deserves to rank with Dekker’s, and which is made for music: “Ye little birds that sit and sing.”

The seven plays on English domestic subjects which I have now enumerated, are all of them eclipsed in their own kind by Heywood’s masterpiece, A Woman Killed with Kindness. Leaving that, the finest bourgeois tragedy of our Elizabethan literature, for future comment, we come to another group of Heywood’s plays, which may perhaps be best described as romances. Of these, The Four Prentices of London, a juvenile performance of the poet, is both the least interesting, and by far the most extravagant. Guy, Eustace, Tancred, and Godfrey, the four sons of the Duke of Boulogne, and at the same time ’prentices in London shops, start off like Paladins, and win their laurels in the first Crusade. Whether this absurd play was intended, like Fletcher’s Knight of the Burning Pestle, for a parody of chivalrous romances, or whether, as its dedication to “the Honest and High-spirited ’Prentices, the Readers” seems to imply, it was meant for a hyperbolical compliment to the courage of London counter-jumpers, is not a very important matter. The latter is the more probable supposition. The plot is a tissue of sanguinary and sentimental adventures, with a certain admixture of good-humoured sarcasm on the London cits, that may have gratified their ’prentice-lads. The old quarto has for frontispiece a curious woodcut of the four knightly shop-boys. The Royal King and Loyal Subject is a drama with an ideal intention. Pretending to be founded upon English history, it really sets forth the contest of generosity between a monarch and one of his great nobles. In the course of this play Heywood has used some of the motives that add pathos to Patient Grissil; the King of England exposes the Lord Marshal to a series of humiliations and studied insults before, as a climax to the favour he intends to heap upon him, he unites his own family and that of his subject by a triple bond of marriage. The whole situation is better in conception than in execution. I take it to be one of Heywood’s earlier dramatic essays. A Challenge for Beauty tells the tale of a proud Portuguese Queen, who thinks herself the fairest woman of the world, but who is brought at the end of the play to admit that she is vanquished as much in beauty by an English lady as her husband’s captains are surpassed in courage and courtesy by English gentlemen. The most interesting portion of the drama is subordinate to the subject which supplies the title. The contest of generosity between a noble Spaniard, Valladaura, and an English captain, Montferrers, who has been sold into slavery together with a friend that he dearly loved, displays all that innate gentleness and chivalry which Lamb recognized as the fairest of Heywood’s characteristics. Valladaura finds his old enemy Montferrers in the slave-market, pays down his price, and sets him free. Montferrers cannot accept freedom while his friend remains a slave. Valladaura buys them both, taking Montferrers with him to remain, an honoured guest, in his own house. Now begins the duel of courtesy between the two men. Valladaura loves a lady, Petrocella, and beseeches the Englishman to plead his suit with her. Montferrers executes the task, though he also loves Petrocella, and discovers in the course of his wooing that she returns his passion. The use he makes of her avowal is to bind her over to accept the Spaniard’s suit. But Valladaura is no whit less chivalrous. He resigns the lady to the man who has deserved her best. Those who have not studied the working out of such strained situations in the Lustspiele of Heywood or of Fletcher, can hardly imagine what flesh and blood reality these poets gave to almost inconceivable improbabilities. The vigorous and natural play of passions under strange disguises and painful conditions—the hesitations of divided allegiance—confusions of sex—contradictory emotions, pleased our play-going ancestors; and the dramatists had the skill to display the truth of human nature beneath the mask and garb of romantic fantasies. Under other hands, or in an age of less directness, such motives would have been ridiculous or offensive. A Maidenhead well Lost, is a romance of this type with Italian characters. While challenging comparison with similar comedies by Fletcher, Ford, Massinger, and others, it is but a tasteless and feeble production. Heywood was so thorough an Englishman that, for the full exercise of his poetic faculty, he needed a subject smacking of his native soil.

Having now described Heywood’s Histories, Domestic Dramas, and Romances, it remains for me to speak of the fourth group into which his plays may be divided. At the same time, I should observe that these divisions are, after all, but incomplete and artificial. Many of those which I have classified as Domestic Dramas, for example, borrow largely from the element of romance, while two of them are virtually comedies of farcical intrigue. The Golden, Silver, Brazen, and Iron Ages form a series of four plays, in which Heywood has dramatised antique legends, following principally Homer and Ovid in the selection of his material. Though there are many passages of graceful poetry and of humorous burlesque in these long-winded mythologies, they cannot be said to have much value either as dramas or as descriptive poems. That Heywood felt a natural predilection for this kind of composition may be seen in the rhyming versions he has made of Lucian’s Dialogues. Some of these, especially the conversations of Jupiter with Ganymede, and of Juno with Jupiter, deserve attention for their plain, straightforward rendering into racy English of the witty Greek. Love’s Mistress, which is a dramatic translation of Apuleius’s tale of Cupid and Psyche, is written in the same mood. It takes the form of a long allegorical masque; and here the poetry is sustained throughout at a higher level. Last of all these classic dramas in my list comes the Rape of Lucrece. Here Heywood quits the epical or allegorical treatment of classical subject-matter for the domain of tragedy. Yet he has given to this episode of ancient Roman history more the form of a chronicle-play than of the legitimate drama.

It cannot be denied that the effects of negligence in composition and over-strained fertility are traceable in all that Heywood wrote. He has produced no masterpiece, no thoroughly sustained flight of fancy, no play perfect in form, and very few absolutely self-consistent characters. His finest passages seem to flow from him by accident, as the result of a temporary exaltation of his talent, rather than of settled purpose. His best scenes are improvised. Nor is it possible to evade the conclusion, quaintly phrased by Kirkman, that “many of his plays being composed loosely in taverns, occasions them to be so mean.” These defects, indeed, Heywood shared in common with his contemporaries. Not many dramatic compositions of the seventeenth century can boast of classical finish or of artistic unity. Yet there is in the best works of such men as Marlowe, Webster, Ford, and Fletcher, a natural completeness, an unstudied singleness of effect, which Heywood almost invariably misses. With all our affection for him, we are forced to admire his poetry in fragments and with reservations. Perhaps he shows to best advantage in the extracts made by Lamb.

No dramatist ever used less artifice. The subjects which he chose are either taken straight from real life, or else adopted crudely from the legends of ancient Greece and Rome. In each case Heywood’s manner and method are the same. He uses simple, easy English, and sets forth unaffected feeling. The scenes have no elaborate connexion. They cohere by juxtaposition. The language is never high-flown or bombastic; rarely rising to the height of poetical diction, and attaining to intensity only when the passion of the moment is overwhelming, it owes its occasional force to its sincerity.

His means of reaching the heart are of the simplest; yet they are often deep and effectual. He depends for his tragic effects upon no Até, no midnight horrors, no sarcastic knave. Yet his use of some mere name—Nan, Nan!—and his allusions to Christ and our religion, go straight to the very soul. His men are all gentlemen; and it may be said in passing that he had more understanding of men, especially high-spirited young men, than of women. Nothing could be finer than the bearing, for example, of young Forrest when he challenges Rainsford, or of Valladaura and Montferrers, or again of Frankford and Sir Charles Mountford in A Woman Killed with Kindness. Now and then he touches the spring of true poetic language, as in these phrases:—

The last line of this quotation is a splendid instance of the way in which the old dramatists heightened horror by connecting one terrific image with another of a different sort, yet no less terrible. The fury of a lunatic hideously rattling his drum with fantastic gestures rushes across our mind without distracting our attention from the anguish of the man who speaks the words. The simile does but add force to his bewilderment.

Though not a lyrist in any high sense of the word, Heywood at times produced songs remarkable for purity and freshness. To one of these in the Fair Maid of the Exchange I have already called attention. Not less beautiful is a morning ditty, which begins “Pack, clouds away,” in the Rape of Lucrece. The patriotic war-song in the First Part of King Edward IV., “Agincourt, Agincourt, know ye not Agincourt?” is full of fire; while a humorous catch, “The Spaniard loves his ancient slop,” must have been a favourite with the groundlings, since it occurs in both The Rape of Lucrece and A Challenge for Beauty. There is plenty of proof that Heywood could write good words for street melodies. That his English style is generally free, flowing, and vernacular admits of no question; yet such were the contradictions of the age in which he lived, that he must needs at intervals display his erudition by the pedantic coinage of new phrases. Such words as “trifurk,” to “diapason,” “sonance,” “cathedral state,” “tenebrous,” “mœchal,” “monomachy,” “obdure” for “obdurate,” all of which occur in The Rape of Lucrece, demand for their inventor the emetic which Jonson in The Poetaster administered to Marston, and prove conspicuously how a little learning on the lips of an honest playwright is a dangerous thing.

The Rape of Lucrece, as I have before hinted, is nothing but the narrative of Livy divided into tableaux with no artistic consistency. It contains the whole story of Tullia’s ambition and the death of Servius, the journey of Brutus to Delphi, the fulfilment of the oracle, the betrayal of Gabii, the camp at Ardea, the crime of Tarquin, the rising of the Roman nobles, the war with Porsena, and the stories of Horatius and Scevola. The characters are devoid of personal reality. Lucrece herself is more a type of innocence than a true woman. Of the minor characters which fill out the play, by far the most original is Valerius. His part must have been a favourite with the London audience, for on the title-page we read: “with the several songs in their apt places by Valerius, the merry lord among the Roman peers.” Instead of fooling, sulking, or gaming, as the other nobles do beneath the Tarquin tyranny, he does nothing but sing. It is impossible to extract from him a word of sense in sober prose. But love songs, loose songs, drinking songs, dirges, street cries, a Scotch song, a Dutch song, and pastoral ditties, with rhymes on the names of public houses, public women, ale, wine, and so forth, flow from him in and out of season. He is the most striking instance of the licence with which the poets of the time were forced to treat their subjects for the sake of the gallery. Some of his verses are full of exquisite feeling; others are grossly coarse; some are comical, and others melancholy; but all are English. When Valerius first hears of the outrage offered to Lucrece, he breaks out into a catch of the most questionable kind, together with Horatius Cocles and a Clown. The whole matter is turned to ridicule, and it is difficult after this musical breakdown to read the tragedy except as a burlesque.

Love’s Mistress is a Masque in five acts rather than a play proper. In its day it enjoyed great popularity, for it was represented before James I. and his queen three times within the space of eight days. Its three prologues and one epilogue are remarkable even among the productions of that age for their fulsome flattery. The story of Cupid and Psyche, on which the Masque is founded, could not have failed to yield some beauties even to a far inferior craftsman than Heywood; and there are many passages of delicate and tender poetry scattered up and down the piece. Indeed, the whole is treated with an airy grace that has peculiar charm, while its abrupt contrasts and frequent changes must have made it a rare spectacle under the wise conduct of

Still, even in Love’s Mistress, Heywood betrays that lack of the highest artistic instinct, which we discover in almost all his work. He cannot manage the Court pageant with that exquisite tact which distinguishes the Endimion and the Sapho of Lyly. The whole play has a running commentary of criticism and exposition, conveyed in a dialogue between Apuleius, the author of the legend, and Midas, who personates stupidity. Apuleius explains the allegory as the action proceeds; Midas remains to the end the dull unappreciative boor, who “stands for ignorance,” and only cares for dancing clowns, or the coarse jests of buffoons. Apuleius is the type of the enthusiastic poet, whose wit is “aimed at inscrutable things beyond the moon.” Midas is the gross conceited groundling, who, turning everything he touches to dross, prefers Pan’s fool to Apollo’s chorus, and drives the god of light indignantly away. Both of them wear asses’ heads: Midas, because he grovels on the earth; Apuleius, because all human intellect proves foolish if it flies too far. There is much good-humoured irony in this putting of donkey’s ears on the poet’s head. This contrast between art and ignorance is paralleled by a series of subtle antitheses that pervade the play. Immortal Erôs finds a balance in the stupid clown, who boasts that Apollo has given him music, Cupid love, and Psyche beauty; but who remains untunable, unlovable, and hideous to the end. The juxtaposition of heaven and hell within our souls, the aspirations and the downfalls of our spirit, the nobility and the vileness of men around us, the perpetual contradiction between the region toward which we soar in our best moments, and the dull ground over which we have to plod in daily life: such are the metaphysical conceptions which underlie the shifting scenes and many-twinkling action of the masque. It would be unfair to institute any comparison between Love’s Mistress considered as a poem, and the delicate version of the legend in the Earthly Paradise. Yet there are touches of true poetry here and there throughout the play. The haunted house of Love which receives Psyche and where Echo and Zephyrus are her attendants, the visit of her three sisters, and the midnight awaking of wrathful Cupid, are all conceived with light and airy fancy. Cupid in his anger utters this curse on women:—

There is another aspect under which Love’s Mistress may be viewed—as a very early attempt at classical burlesque. Cupid, for example, is the naughty boy of Olympus. He describes Juno’s anger against Ganymede:—

This is, of course, very simple fooling. Yet it contains the germ of those more thorough-going parodies in which the present age delights.

The play in which Heywood showed for once that he was not unable to produce a masterpiece is A Woman Killed with Kindness. All his powers of direct painting from the English life he knew so well, his faculty for lifting prose to the border-ground of poetry by the intensity of the emotion which he communicates, his simple art of laying bare the very nerves of passion, are here exhibited in perfection. This domestic tragedy touches one like truth. Its scenes are of everyday life. Common talk is used, and the pathos is homely; not like Webster’s, brought from far. Tastes may differ as to the morality or the wholesomeness of the sentiment evolved in the last act. None, however, can resist its artless claim upon our sympathies. The story may be briefly told. Mr. Frankford, a country gentleman of good fortune, marries the sister of Sir Francis Acton, and receives into his house an agreeable gentleman of broken means called Wendoll. They live together happily till Wendoll, trusted to the full by Frankford, takes advantage of his absence to seduce his wife. Nicholas, a servant, who, with the instinct of a faithful dog, has always suspected the stranger, discovers and informs Frankford of his dishonour. Frankford obtains ocular proof of his wife’s guilt, and punishes her by sending her to live alone, but at ease, in a manor that belongs to him. There she pines away and dies at last, after a reconciliation with her injured husband.[4]

In the genre Heywood had predecessors, but none of his rivals surpassed him. The chief interest of the play centres in the pure, confiding, tender-hearted character of Frankford. His blithe contentment during the first months of marriage, and the generosity with which he opens his doors to Wendoll, form a touching prelude to the suspicions, indignantly repelled at first, which grow upon him after he has weighed the tale of his wife’s infidelity related by Nicholas. He resolves to learn the truth, if possible, by actual experience. Here is interposed an admirable scene, in which Frankford and his wife, with Wendoll and another gentleman, play cards. The dialogue is a long double entendre, skilfully revealing the tortures of a jealous husband’s mind and his suspicious misinterpretation of each casual word. When they rise from the card-table, Frankford instructs Nicholas to get him duplicate keys for all his rooms. Then he causes a message to be delivered to him on a dark and stormy evening, and sets off with his servant, intending to return at midnight unnoticed and unexpected. His hesitation on the threshold of his wife’s chamber is one of the finest turning-points of the dramatic action. At last he summons courage to enter, but returns immediately:—

Then, with a passionate stretching forth of his desire toward the impossible, which reveals the whole depth of his tenderness, he cries:—

“O God! O God! that it were possible

To undo things done; to call back yesterday!

That Time could turn up his swift sandy glass,

To untell the days, and to redeem these hours!

Or that the sun

Could, rising from the west, draw his coach backward,

Take from the account of time so many minutes,

Till he had all these seasons called again,

Those minutes, and those actions done in them,

Even from her first offence; that I might take her

As spotless as an angel in my arms!

But oh! I talk of things impossible,

And cast beyond the moon. God give me patience!

For I will in and wake them.”

The following scene, in which Frankford pleads with his guilty and conscience-stricken wife, is full of pathos. Its passion is simple and homefelt. Each question asked by Frankford is such as a wronged husband has the right to ask. Each answer given by the wife is broken in mere monosyllables more eloquent than protestation. We feel the whole, because not a word is strained or far-fetched, because the tenderness of Frankford is not merely sentimental, because he does not rave or tear his passion to tatters; finally, because in the profundity of his grief he still can call his wife by her pet name.

Mrs. Frankford is no Guinevere, nor, again, like Alice in Arden of Feversham, is she steeled and blinded by an overwhelming passion. Heywood fails to realise her character completely, producing, as elsewhere in his portraits of women, a weak and vacillating picture. She changes quite suddenly from love for her newly-wedded lord to light longing for Wendoll, and then back again to the remorse which eats her life away. Wendoll is drawn more powerfully. We see the combat in his soul between the sense of duty to his benefactor and the love which invades him like an ocean, drowning all the landmarks he had raised to warn him from the perilous ground. Adultery has been three times treated by Heywood. In The English Traveller Mrs. Wincott sins with the same limp and unexplained facility as Mrs. Frankford. In Edward IV. Jane Shore is meant to raise the same sentimental pity as Mrs. Frankford on her death-bed.

Thomas Heywood was a Lincolnshire man, presumably of good family, though I cannot find that the Visitations of that county record any pedigree of his name. No poet of his age showed a more intimate acquaintance with the habits of country gentlemen, and none was more imbued with the spirit of true gentleness. He was a Fellow of Peter House, Cambridge, where he probably acquired that learning which sat upon him so lightly. He began to write for the stage as early as 1596, and in 1598 we find him engaged as an actor and a sharer in Henslowe’s company. Little else is known about his life, and, though it is certain that he lived to a ripe age, we are ignorant of the date of his death. Like many authors of his period, he adopted a motto for his works, to which he adhered, placing on his title-pages, Aut prodesse solent aut delectare. We may still say, with truth, that what he has written almost invariably succeeds in both these aims. His plays are defiled with very few unpardonably coarse scenes, those to be found in A Royal King and Loyal Subject being an exception to prove the rule. While concluding these introductory remarks, I can only express my regret that the editor has not been able to include more pieces of Heywood in the Mermaid Series; for Heywood is essentially an author whom we love the better the more we read of him. It is impossible to rise from the perusal of his plays without being refreshed and invigorated. May the five here presented, out of the twenty-four which bear his name, induce students to carry their researches further. They will, I feel confident, discover that three other sets of five plays are no less worthy of perusal than the five here chosen for their recreation.

∵ The text of four of the plays contained in this volume is substantially that of Pearson’s reprint (1874); the exception is The Fair Maid of the West, reprinted from the edition by Collier, though I have felt it necessary to dissent from Collier’s readings in several places. For the convenience of the reader I have attempted to indicate the changes of scene in the whole of the plays, marking also the probable locality of each scene, and altering the rather vague and unsatisfactory stage directions of the old copies. My thanks are due to Mr. S. W. Orson for many valuable suggestions.

THE RED BULL THEATRE.

Heywood’s Plays were frequently acted on the stage of the Red Bull Theatre, of which Kirkman supplied an illustration in his collection of Drolls and Farces. This illustration has been reproduced as a frontispiece to the present volume. The theatre was one of the oldest in London; originally it was, as the name indicates, an inn yard, converted into a regular theatre during Elizabeth’s reign, and, like several contemporary playhouses, often used for other amusements; it was never considered a high-class theatre, but it was very popular. Its site was on a plot of ground, between the upper end of St. John Street and Clerkenwell Green, during the eighteenth century still called Red Bull Yard, and named Woodbridge Street at the beginning of the present century. In 1819 a writer who carefully investigated the matter could find no trace of the theatre; though he indicated a field of search by suggesting that its exact position might perhaps be set forth in existing leases.

Various companies played at the Red Bull at different times. In 1623 the Queen’s company (under the jurisdiction of the “now Earl of Leicester, then Lord Chamberlain of the Household of the said late Queen Anne of Denmark”) gave place to the Prince’s, so called after Prince Charles. In 1629, women actors (who also appeared at other theatres) played at the Red Bull. In 1639 the Red Bull Company got into trouble. A complaint was made to the king “that the stage-players of the Red Bull have lately, for many days together, acted a scandalous and libellous play, wherein they have audaciously reproached, and in a libellous manner traduced and personated, not only some of the Aldermen of the City of London and other persons of quality, but also scandalised and defamed the whole profession of Proctors belonging to the Court of Civil Law, and reflected upon the Government.” For this they received “exemplary punishment.” In the following year the company which had been playing at the Fortune Theatre changed to the Red Bull.

This was the only theatre that lived on until Restoration times, though not without many difficulties. Such items of information as the following (1655) are not uncommon:—“At the playhouse this week many were put to the rout by the soldiers.” “The actors, too,” Kirkman writes, “were commonly not only stripped, but many times imprisoned, till they paid such ransom as the soldiers should impose upon them.” Although the Red Bull survived the Commonwealth it succumbed soon after the Restoration. In 1660 Charles II. issued an order (not very rigorously carried out) for their suppression, as a concession to civic authorities. In 1661 Pepys wrote that “the clothes are very poor, and the actors but common fellows.” Better and more modern theatres arose, and in 1663 Davenant declared that “the Red Bull stands empty for fencers: there are no tenants in it but spiders.”

A WOMAN KILLED WITH
KINDNESS.

From two entries in Henslowe’s Diary the date when A Woman Killed with Kindness was written can be fixed with remarkable certainty. One entry runs:—“Paid, at the appointment of the Company, the 6th of March, 1603, unto Thomas Heywood, in full payment for his play, called A Woman Killed with Kindness, the sum of ... £3;” and the other—“Paid, at the appointment of Thomas Blackwood, the 7th of March, 1603, unto the tailor which made the black satin suit for the Woman Killed with Kindness the sum of ... 10s.” The earliest printed notice of the piece occurs in Middleton’s The Blacke Booke, 1604, where it is coupled with the Merry Devil of Edmonton:—“And being set out of the shop, ... she, by thy instructions, shall turn the honest simple fellow off at the next turning, and give him leave to see the Merry Devil of Edmonton, or A Woman Killed with Kindness, when his mistress is going herself to the same murder.” In 1607 the play was published, and a third edition appeared in 1617. It may be worth while to note that the title of the piece was a proverbial expression: compare, for instance, The Taming of the Shrew (to which Professor Dowden assigns the date 1597), iv. 1. 221:—

Professor Ward (English Dramatic Literature, ii. 114) refers also to Fletcher’s The Woman’s Prize, iii. 4:—

An interesting point in the history of this drama is the fact that it was quite recently revived by the Society of Dramatic Students, and revived, I believe, with signal success. Perhaps the only weak element in the five acts is the readiness with which the wife falls. I may add that the division of the play into acts and scenes is here attempted for the first time, at least in any edition of the piece.

THE PROLOGUE.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

A Serjeant, a Keeper, Officers, Falconers, Huntsmen, a Coachman, Carters, Servants, Musicians.

A WOMAN KILLED WITH
KINDNESS.

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I.—A Room in Frankford’s House.

Enter Master Frankford, Mistress Frankford, Sir Francis Acton, Sir Charles Mountford, Master Malby, Master Wendoll, and Master Cranwell.

SCENE II.—A Yard.

Enter Nicholas, Jenkin, Jack Slime, and Roger Brickbat, with Country Wenches, and two or three Musicians.

Come, Nick, take you Joan Miniver to trace withal; Jack Slime, traverse you with Cicely Milk-pail: I will take Jane Trubkin, and Roger Brickbat shall have Isbel Motley; and now that they are busy in the parlour, come, strike up; we’ll have a crash[7] here in the yard.

My humour is not compendious; dancing I possess not, though I can foot it; yet, since I am fallen into the hands of Cicely Milk-pail, I consent.

Truly Nick, though we were never brought up like serving courtiers, yet we have been brought up with serving creatures, ay, and God’s creatures too; for we have been brought up to serve sheep, oxen, horses, hogs, and such like: and, though we be but country fellows, it may be in the way of dancing we can do the horse-trick as well as serving-men.

O Slime, O Brickbat, do not you know that comparisons are odious? now we are odious ourselves too, therefore there are no comparisons to be made betwixt us.

Foot it quickly: if the music overcome not my melancholy, I shall quarrel; and if they do not suddenly strike up, I shall presently strike them down.

No quarrelling, for God’s sake: truly, if you do, I shall set a knave between ye.

So the dance will come cleanly off. Come, for God’s sake agree of something: if you like not that, put it to the musicians; or let me speak for all, and we’ll have “Sellenger’s round.”

[They dance. Nicholas whilst dancing speaks stately and scurvily, the rest after the country fashion.

SCENE III.—The Open Country.

Horns wind. Enter Sir Charles Mountford, Sir Francis Acton, Malby, Cranwell, Wendoll, Falconers, and Huntsmen.

[They divide themselves. Sir Charles Mountford, Cranwell, Falconer, and Huntsman, fight against Sir Francis Acton, Wendoll, his Falconer, and Huntsman; and Sir Charles’s side gets the better, beating the others away, and killing both of Sir Francis’s men. Exeunt all except Sir Charles.

ACT THE SECOND.

SCENE I.—Frankford’s Study.

O Nick, what gentleman is that comes to lie at our house? my master allows him one to wait on him, and I believe it will fall to thy lot.

Nich’las, where are you, Nich’las? you must come in, Nich’las, and help the young gentleman off with his boots.

Nay, ’tis no boot for me to deny it. My master hath given me a coat here, but he takes pains himself to brush it once or twice a day with a holly-wand.

Come, come, make haste, that you may wash your hands again, and help to serve in dinner.

You may see, my masters, though it be afternoon with you, ’tis but early days with us, for we have not dined yet: stay a little, I’ll but go in and help to bear up the first course, and come to you again presently.

SCENE II.—A Room in the Gaol.

SCENE III.—A Room in Frankford’s House.

What a strange humour is my new master in! pray God he be not mad: if he should be so, I should never have any mind to serve him in Bedlam. It may be he’s mad for missing of me.

Because you are my master; and if I have a mistress, I would be glad, like a good servant, to do my duty to her.

Marry, sir, her husband is riding out of town, and she went very lovingly to bring him on his way to horse.[18] Do you see, sir? here she comes, and here I go.

ACT THE THIRD.

SCENE I.—A Room in Sir Charles Mountford’s House.

SCENE II.—A Sitting-Room in Frankford’s House.

Enter Serving-Men, one with a voider and a wooden knife[23] to take away; another with the salt and bread; another with the table-cloth and napkins; another with the carpet:[24] Jenkin follows them with two lights.

So, march in order, and retire in battle array. My master and the guests have supped already, all’s taken away: here, now spread for the serving-men in the hall. Butler, it belongs to your office.

No, no; Master Wendoll, he’s a daily guest: I mean the gentleman that came but this afternoon.

His name’s Master Cranwell. God’s light, hark, within there, my master calls to lay more billets upon the fire. Come, come! Lord, how we that are in office here in the house are troubled! One spread the carpet in the parlour, and stand ready to snuff the lights; the rest be ready to prepare their stomachs. More lights in the hall there. Come, Nich’las.

Enter Frankford, brushing the crumbs from his clothes with a napkin, as newly risen from supper.

By this hand, an honourable gentleman! I will not see him wronged.—Sir, I have served you long; you entertained me seven years before your beard.[26] You knew me, sir, before you knew my mistress.

Enter Mistress Frankford, Wendoll, Cranwell, Nicholas, and Jenkin, with cards, carpets, stools, and other necessaries.

A pair of cards,[28] Nicholas, and a carpet to cover the table. Where’s Cicely with her counters and her box? Candles and candlesticks there! Fie, we have such a household of serving creatures! unless it be Nick and I, there’s not one amongst them all can say bo to a goose. Well said,[29] Nick.

No, by my faith, sir; when you are together I sit out: it must be Mistress Frankford and I, or else it is no match.

’Tis no great matter neither. Come, Master Cranwell, shall you and I take them up?

I must look to you, Master Wendoll, for you will be playing false; nay, so will my wife too.

If Master Wendoll and my wife be together, there’s no playing against them at double hand.

ACT THE FOURTH.

SCENE I.—A Room in Old Mountford’s House.

SCENE II.—A Prison Cell.

Enter Sir Charles Mountford, with irons, his feet bare, his garments all ragged and torn.

SCENE III.—A Room in Frankford’s House.

It shall be done, forsooth, mistress. Where’s Spigot, the butler, to give us out salt and trenchers? [Exit.

SCENE IV.—Another part of the House.

My mistress and Master Wendoll, my master, sup in her chamber to-night. Cicely, you are preferred from being the cook to be chambermaid: of all the loves betwixt thee and me, tell me what thou thinkest of this?

Why, God make my mistress an honest woman! are not these good words? Pray God my new master play not the knave with my old master! is there any hurt in this? God send no villainy intended! and, if they do sup together, pray God they do not lie together! God make my mistress chaste, and make us all His servants! what harm is there in all this? Nay, more; here is my hand, thou shalt never have my heart unless thou say Amen.

My mistress sends that you should make less noise, to lock up the doors, and see the household all got to bed: you, Jenkin, for this night are made the porter to see the gates shut in.

Thus, by little and little, I creep into office. Come, to kennel, my masters, to kennel; ’tis eleven o’clock, already.

Quickly, for God’s sake, Jenkin, for I must carry them. I am neither pillow nor bolster, but I know more than both.

To bed, good Spigot; to bed, good honest serving-creatures; and let us sleep as snug as pigs in pease-straw.

SCENE V.—Outside Frankford’s House.

SCENE VI.—The Hall of Frankford’s House.

’Sblood, master, what, have you left them sleeping still? let me go wake them.

Enter Wendoll, running over the stage in a night-gown, Frankford after him with a sword drawn; a Maid-servant in her smock stays his hand, and clasps hold on him. Frankford pauses for a while.

O Lord, mistress, how comes this to pass? My master is run away in his shirt, and never so much as called me to bring his clothes after him.

ACT THE FIFTH.

SCENE I.—The Entrance to Sir Francis Acton’s House.

SCENE II.—A Room in Frankford’s House.

SCENE III.—A Country Road.

Enter Mistress Frankford, with Jenkin, Cicely, a Coachman, and three Carters.

Comfort, good mistress; you have watered your coach with tears already: you have but two mile now to go to your manor. A man cannot say by my old master Frankford as he may say by me, that he wants manors;[45] for he hath three or four, of which this is one that we are going to now.

Good mistress, be of good cheer; sorrow, you see, hurts you, but helps you not: we all mourn to see you so sad.

Would that had been the worst instrument that e’er you played on. My master commends him to ye; there’s all he can find that was ever yours: he hath nothing left that ever you could lay claim to but his own heart, and he could afford you that. All that I have to deliver you is this: he prays you to forget him, and so he bids you farewell.

What, my young master that fled in his shirt! How come you by your clothes again? You have made our house in a sweet pickle, ha’ ye not, think you? What, shall I serve you still, or cleave to the old house?

Marry, an you will not, another will: farewell, and be hanged! Would you had never come to have kept this coil[47] within our doors; we shall ha’ you run away like a sprite again. [Exit.

SCENE IV.—Before the Manor.

SCENE V.—A Room in the Manor.

Enter Sir Francis Acton, Susan, Sir Charles Mountford, Cranwell, and Malby; Jenkin and Cicely following them.

O Lord, sir, she no sooner heard that her brother and his friends were come to see how she did, but she, for very shame of her guilty conscience, fell into such a swoon, that we had much ado to get life into her.

O sir, I can assure you there’s no hope of life in her, for she will take no sustenance: she hath plainly starved herself, and now she is as lean as a lath. She ever looks for the good hour. Many gentlemen and gentlewomen of the country are come to comfort her.

SCENE VI.—Mistress Frankford’s Bedchamber.

Mistress Frankford in bed; enter Sir Charles Mountford, Sir Francis Acton, Malby, Cranwell, and Susan.

EPILOGUE.

THE FAIR MAID OF
THE WEST.
Part I.

The Fair Maid of the West, or a Girl worth Gold, “as it was lately acted before the king and queen with approved liking,” was first published (both parts) in 1631: it had been acted as early as 1617, and from the title-page we may conclude that it held the stage for some time. It probably represents the dramatisation of some already-existent story-book or ballad. “We should be sorry,” remarks Mr. Saintsbury,[1] “to lose The Fair Maid of the West, with its picture of Devonshire sailors, foreign merchants, kings of Fez, bashaws of various parts, Italian dukes, and what not. The two parts make anything but a good play, but they are decidedly interesting.” Only the first has here been given, as it is complete in itself, and the second part is of less value.

I have marked the changes of scene, and in one or two places have made trifling corrections in the text. For instance, in scene iv. of the first act, by reading “your hopes deceased,” and changing the punctuation, we get a very fair sense where Collier (who edited the play for the Shakespeare Society) was inclined to think that a line had dropped out.

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.

To the much worthy and my most respected
John Othow, Esquire,
Counsellor at Law, in the noble Society of Gray’s Inn.

Excuse this my boldness, I entreat you, and let it pass under the title of my love and respect, long devoted unto you; of which, if I endeavour to present the world with a due acknowledgement, without the sordid expectation of reward or servile imputation of flattery, I hope it will be the rather accepted. I must ingenuously acknowledge, a weightier argument would have better suited with your grave employment; but there are retirements necessarily belonging to all the labours of the body and brain. If in any such cessation you will deign to cast an eye upon this weak and unpolished poem, I shall receive it as a courtesy from you, much exceeding any merit in me, my good meaning only excepted. Thus wishing you healthful ability in body, untroubled content in mind, with the happy fruition of both the temporal felicities of the world present, and the eternal blessedness of the life future, I still remain as ever,

To the Reader.

Courteous Reader, my plays have not been exposed to the public view of the world in numerous sheets and a large volume, but singly, as thou seest, with great modesty and small noise. These comedies, bearing the title of The Fair Maid of the West, if they prove but as gracious in thy private reading as they were plausible in the public acting, I shall not much doubt of their success. Nor need they, I hope, much fear a rugged and censorious brow from thee, on whom the greatest and best in the kingdom have vouchsafed to smile. I hold it no necessity to trouble thee with the argument of the story, the matter itself lying so plainly before thee in acts and scenes, without any deviations or winding indents.

PROLOGUE.[2]

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

THE
FAIR MAID OF THE WEST.

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I.—A Street in Plymouth.

SCENE II.—In front of the Castle Tavern.

SCENE III.—A Room in the Castle Tavern.

Bess, you must fill some wine into the Portcullis; the gentlemen there will drink none but of your drawing.

Bess, you must needs come. The gentlemen fling pots, pottles, drawers, and all down stairs. The whole house is in an uproar.

One call my master, another fetch the constable. Here’s a man killed in the room.

Sure, about this bold Bettrice.[14] ’Tis not so much for the death of the man, but how shall we come by our reckoning?

SCENE IV.—The Hoe.

SCENE V.—The same.

Hautboys. A dumb show.[15] Enter General, Captains and the Mayor of Plymouth. At the other side petitioners with papers; amongst these the Drawers. The General gives them bags of money. All go off, saving the two Drawers.

’Tis well that we have gotten all the money due to my master. It is the commonest thing that can be, for these captains to score and to score; but when the scores are to be paid, non est inventus.

’Tis ordinary amongst gallants, now-a-days, who had rather swear forty oaths than only this one oath—“God, let me never be trusted!”

But if the captains would follow the noble mind of the general, before night there would not be one score owing in Plymouth.

Little knows Bess that my master hath got in these desperate debts. But she hath cast up her account, and is gone.

They say, to keep a tavern in Foy, and that Master Spencer hath given her a stock, to set up for herself. Well, howsoever, I am glad, though he killed the man, we have got our money.

ACT THE SECOND.

SCENE I.—Foy. The Windmill Tavern.

And in that time she hath almost undone all the other taverns: the gallants make no rendezvous now but at the Windmill.

Spite of them, I’ll have her. It shall cost me the setting on, but I’ll have her.

Easily or not, I’ll bid as fair and far as any man within twenty miles of my head, but I will put her to the squeak.

There shall be doings that shall make this Windmill my grand seat, my mansion, my palace, and my Constantinople.

I must know of what burden this vessel is. I shall not bear with her till she bear with me; and till then I cannot report her for a woman of good carriage.

Your old master, that dwelt here before my coming, hath turned over your years[16] to me.

Right, forsooth: before he was a vintner, he was a shoemaker, and left two or three turnovers more besides myself.

But eleven years, next grass, and then I am in hope of my freedom; for by that time I shall be at full age.

Forsooth, newly come into my teens. I have scraped trenchers this two years, and the next vintage I hope to be bar-boy.

My name is Clem: my father was a baker; and, by the report of his neighbours, as honest a man as ever lived by bread.

Below here, in the next crooked street, at the sign of the Leg. He was nothing so tall as I; but a little wee man, and somewhat huck-backed.

He was, indeed; and in that one year of his reign, I have heard them say, he bolted and sifted out more business than others in that office in many years before him.

Marry, the last dear year; for when corn grew to be at a high rate,[17] my father never doughed after.

Then I am sure you have heard he was an honest neighbour, and one that never loved to be meal-mouthed.

Well, sirrah, prove an honest servant, and you shall find me your good mistress. What company is in the Mermaid?[18]

There be four sea-captains. I believe they be little better than pirates, they be so flush of their ruddocks.[19]

Wot you what, mistress, how the two sailors would have served me, that called for the pound and a half of cheese?

When I brought them a reckoning, they would have had me to have scored it up. They took me for a simple gull, indeed, that would have had me to have taken chalk for cheese.

I’ll watch them for that; ’tis no time of night to use our bills. The gentlemen are no dwarfs; and with one word of my mouth I can tell them what is to be-tall.[20]

Because, as they came in by hab nab, so I will bring them in a reckoning at six and at sevens.

Then put sixpence more to it, and make it four shillings wine, though you bate it them in their meat.

Because of the old proverb, “What they want in meat, let them take out in drink.” Then, for twelve pennyworth of anchoves, eighteenpence.

Marry, very well, mistress: twelvepence anchoves, and sixpence oil and vinegar. Nay, they shall have a saucy reckoning.

Bread, beer, salt, napkins, trenchers, one thing with another; so the summa totalis is eight shillings and sixpence.

What needs that, forsooth? The gentlemen seem to be high-flown already. Send them in but another pottle of sack, and they will cast up the reckoning of themselves. Yes, I’ll about it. [Exit.

SCENE II.—Fayal.[21]

To imagine that in the same instant that one forfeits all his estate, another enters upon a rich possession. As one goes to the church to be married, another is hurried to the gallows to be hanged; the last having no feeling of the first man’s joy, nor the first of the last man’s misery. At the same time that one lies tortured upon the rack, another lies tumbling with his mistress over head and ears in down and feathers. This when I truly consider, I cannot but wonder why any fortune should make a man ecstasied.

These are my maxims; and were they as faithfully practised by others as truly apprehended by me, we should have less oppression, and more charity.

SCENE III.—A Field near Foy.

Now, am not I of many men’s minds; for, if you should do me wrong, I should not kill you, though I took you pissing against a wall.

What Mary Ambree was I cannot tell; but unless you were taller, you will come short of Long Meg.

I am bound in my indentures to keep my master’s secrets; and should I find a man in bed with you, I would not tell.

But, mistress, I could wish you to look to your long seams; fights are dangerous. But am not I in a sweet taking, think you?

Why, if you should swagger and kill anybody, I, being a vintner, should be called to the bar. [Exit.

SCENE IV.—Fayal.

ACT THE THIRD.

SCENE I.—Foy. A Street outside the Windmill Tavern.

SCENE II.—A Room in the Tavern.

Anon, anon, sir: please you see a room? What, you here, again! Now we shall have such roaring!

The best wine in the house for your worship; and I would call her, but I can assure you that she is either not stirring, or else not in case.

I think she hath not her smock on; for I think I saw it lie at her bed’s head.

Yes, sir, at the Raven in the High Street. I was at your lodging this morning for a pottle-pot.

If I do not put ratsbane into his wine, instead of sugar, say I am no true baker. [Exit.

I pray, forsooth, what shall I reckon for the jowl of ling[28] in the Portcullis?

The maid, forsooth, sent me to know whether you would have the shoulder of mutton roasted or sod.[30]

SCENE III.—A Street in Foy.

SCENE IV.—The Windmill Tavern.

Enter Clem and Sailors on one side: on the other, Roughman, who draws and beats them off; then re-enter Clem, and the Sailors, with Bess.

I assure you, mistress, most dissolutely:[34] he hath run this sailor three times through the body, and yet never touched his skin.

That troubles me.—[Notices the ring given to him by Spencer]—But I should know that ring.

You are welcome, gentleman. What wine will you drink? Claret, metheglin, or muscadine? Cider, or perry, to make you merry? Aragoosa,[37] or peter-see-me[38]? Canary, or charnico[39]? But, by your nose, sir, you should love a cup of malmsey: you shall have a cup of the best in Cornwall.

But if you prefer the Frenchman before the Spaniard, you shall have either here of the deep red grape, or the pallid white. You are a pretty tall gentleman; you should love high country wine: none but clerks and sextons love Graves wine. Or, are you a married man, I’ll furnish you with bastard,[40] white or brown, according to the complexion of your bedfellow.

You rogue, how many years of your prenticeship have you spent in studying this set speech?

The first line of my part was “Anon, anon, sir;” and the first question I answered to, was loggerhead, or blockhead—I know not whether.

Score a pottle of sack in the Crown, and see at the bar for some rotten eggs, to burn it: we must have one trick or other, to vent away our bad commodities. [Exit.

SCENE V.—A Bedroom in the Tavern.

ACT THE FOURTH.

SCENE I.—On Board a Spanish Vessel.

After an alarum, enter a Spanish Captain, with Sailors, bringing in an English Merchant, Spencer, and the Surgeon, prisoners.

SCENE II.—The Windmill Tavern.

Here’s the parchment; but if it be the lease of your house, I can assure you ’tis out.

[Reads.] “The last will and testament of Elzabeth Bridges; to be committed to the trust of the mayor and aldermen of Foy, and their successors for ever.

To Captain Goodlack, if he shall perform the business he’s employed in, five hundred pound.

And shall I take time, when time is, and let my mistress slip away? No; it shall be seen that my teeth are as strong to grind biscuit as the best sailor of them all, and my stomach as able to digest powdered beef and poor-john.[52] Shall I stay here to score a pudding in the Half-moon, and see my mistress at the mainyard, with her sails up and spread? No; it shall be seen that I, who have been brought up to draw wine, will see what water the ship draws, or I’ll bewray the voyage.

If I have so much courage! When did you see a black beard with a white liver, or a little fellow without a tall stomach? I doubt not but to prove an honour to all the drawers in Cornwall.

SCENE III.—Morocco. The Court.

SCENE IV.—On Board an English Ship.

Why? I was sent to the top-mast, to watch, and there I fell fast asleep. Bounce! quoth the guns; down tumbles Clem; and, if by chance my feet had not hung in the tackles, you must have sent to England for a bone-setter, for my neck had been in a pitiful taking.

Re-enter Bess, Roughman, Fawcett, Clem, &c., victorious. The Spaniards prisoners.

ACT THE FIFTH.

SCENE I.—Morocco. The Court.

[Hautboys. Re-enter Captain Goodlack and Roughman, with Bess Bridges, veiled, Fawcett, and Moors.]

[Reads.] “First, liberty for her and hers to leave the land at her pleasure. Next, safe-conduct to and from her ship, at her own discretion. Thirdly, to be free from all violence, either by the king or any of his people. Fourthly, to allow her mariners fresh victuals aboard. Fifthly, to offer no further violence to her person than what he seeks by kindly usage and free entreaty.”

It is not now as when Andrea lived, or rather Andrew, our elder journeyman. What, drawers become courtiers! Now may I speak with the old ghost in Jeronimo—

Nay; for mine own part, I hold myself as good a Christian in these clothes, as the proudest infidel of them all.

I will make bold to march in towards your banquet, and there comfit myself, and cast all caraways down my throat, the best way I have to conserve myself in health; and for your country’s sake, which is called Barbary, I will love all barbers and barberries the better.

Your gold doth bind me to you.—You may see what it is to be a sudden courtier: I no sooner put my nose into the court, but my hand itches for a bribe already.—What’s your business, my friend?

SCENE II.—The same.

Enter Mullisheg, Bess, Captain Goodlack, Roughman, Alcade, Joffer, with all the other train.

I am perfect in both your parts, without prompting. Mistress, here are two Christen friends of mine have forfeited ships and men to the black-a-morian king: now, one sweet word from your lips might get their release. I have had a feeling of the business already.

Mayst thou never want sweet water to wash thy black face in, most mighty monarch of Morocco.—Mistress, another friend; ay, and paid beforehand.

Must your black face be smouching my mistress’ white lips with a moorian![66] I would you had kissed her a—

Please your majesty, I see all men are not capable of honour: what he refuseth, may it please you to bestow on me.

No more of your honour, if you love me! Is this your Moorish preferment, to rob a man of his best jewels?

Davy do you call him? he may be called shavy; I am sure he hath tickled my current commodity. No more of your cutting honour, if you love me.

THE
ENGLISH TRAVELLER.

The English Traveller was first printed in 1633, and from the preface it would seem that the publication of the play was an accident; the date of its production (at the Cockpit in Drury Lane) we do not know. The bye-plot of the prodigal Lionel and his servant is borrowed from Plautus’ Mostellaria, which a century or more later was laid under contribution by Fielding in his Intriguing Chambermaid. Heywood may have known Plautus’ comedy in the original or in one of the Italian versions. The character of Young Geraldine deserves study: “he is,” says Professor Ward, “one of the truest gentlemen of Elizabethan comedy.” Mr. Saintsbury (Elizabethan Literature, p. 284) ranks The English Traveller with A Woman Killed with Kindness as Heywood’s best plays.

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.

For many reasons I am induced to present this Poem to your favourable acceptance; and not the least of them that alternate love and those frequent courtesies which interchangeably passed betwixt yourself and that good old gentleman, mine uncle (Master Edmund Heywood), whom you pleased to grace by the title of father. I must confess I had altogether slept (my weakliness and bashfulness discouraging me) had they not been wakened and animated by that worthy gentleman your friend and my countryman, Sir William Elvish, whom (who for his unmerited love many ways extended towards me,) I much honour; neither, sir, need you to think it any undervaluing of your worth to undertake the patronage of a poem in this nature, since the like hath been done by Roman Lælius, Scipio, Mæcenas, and many other mighty princes and captains; nay, even by Augustus Cæsar himself, concerning whom Ovid is thus read (De Tristi, lib. 2):

So highly were they respected in the most flourishing estate of the Roman Empire; and if they have been vilified of late by any separistical humorist (as in the now questioned Histrio-Mastix),[1] I hope by the next term (Minerva assistente) to give such satisfaction to the world, by vindicating many particulars in that work maliciously exploded and condemned, as that no gentleman of quality and judgment but shall therein receive a reasonable satisfaction. I am loth by tediousness to grow troublesome, therefore conclude with a grateful remembrance of my service, intermixed with myriads of zealous wishes for your health of body and peace of mind, with superabundance of earth’s blessings and Heaven’s graces, ever remaining,

TO THE READER.

If, Reader, thou hast of this play been an auditor, there is less apology to be used by entreating thy patience. This tragi-comedy (being one reserved amongst two hundred and twenty in which I have had either an entire hand, or at the least a main finger) coming accidentally to the press, and I having intelligence thereof, thought it not fit that it should pass as filius populi, a bastard without a father to acknowledge it. True it is, that my plays are not exposed unto the world in volumes, to bear the title of works, (as others); one reason is, that many of them by shifting and change of companies have been negligently lost; others of them are still retained in the hands of some actors, who think it against their peculiar profit to have them come in print; and a third, that it never was any great ambition in me, to be in this kind voluminously read. All that I have further to say at this time is only this: censure[2] I entreat as favourably as it is exposed to thy view freely. Ever

PROLOGUE.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

THE
ENGLISH TRAVELLER.

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I.—A Room in Old Wincott’s House.

Remember you! I have had so many memorandums from the multiplicities of your bounties, that not to remember you were to forgot myself; you are both most ingeniously and nobly welcome.

Because had I given your welcomes other attributes than I have done, the one being a soldier, and the other seeming a scholar, I should have lied in the first, and showed myself a kind of blockhead in the last.

Small doings at home, sir, in regard that the age of my master corresponds not with the youth of my mistress, and you know cold January and lusty May seldom meet in conjunction.

I do not think but this fellow in time may for his wit and understanding make almanacks.

Not so, sir, you being more judicious than I, I’ll give you the pre-eminence in that, because I see by proof you have such judgment in times and seasons.

Because you have so seasonably made choice to come so just at dinner-time. You are welcome, gentlemen; I’ll go tell my master of your coming. [Exit.

Dancing news, sir; for the meat stands piping hot upon the dresser, the kitchen’s in a heat, and the cook hath so bestirred himself that he’s in a sweat. The jack[5] plays music, and the spits turn round to’t.

And to supper too, sir: I know not how the day goes with you, but my stomach hath struck twelve, I can assure you that.

I’ll stand to’t, that in good hospitality there can be nothing found that’s ill: he that’s a good house-keeper keeps a good table, a good table is never without good stools, good stools seldom without good guests, good guests never without good cheer, good cheer cannot be without good stomachs, good stomachs without good digestion, good digestion keeps men in good health; and therefore, all good people that bear good minds, as you love goodness, be sure to keep good meat and drink in your houses, and so you shall be called good men, and nothing can come on’t but good, I warrant you. [Exit.

SCENE II.—A Room in Old Lionel’s House.

Rather ask, how your sweet carriage and court behaviour doth best grace you, for lovers regard not so much the outward habit as that which the garment covers.

To hear a woman that thinks herself so wise speak so foolishly; that knows well, and does ill.

I’ll tell thee, daughter: in that thou knowest thyself to be beloved of so many, and settlest thy affection only upon one. Doth the mill grind only when the wind sits in one corner, or ships only sail when it’s in this or that quarter? Is he a cunning fencer that lies but at one guard, or he a skilful musician that plays but on one string? Is there but one way to the wood, and but one bucket that belongs to the well? To affect one, and despise all other, becomes the precise matron, not the prostitute; the loyal wife, not the loose wanton. Such have I been as you are now, and should learn to sail with all winds, defend all blows, make music with all strings, know all the ways to the wood, and, like a good travelling hackney, learn to drink of all waters.

Well, look to’t when ’tis too late, and then repent at leisure, as I have done. Thou seest, here’s nothing but prodigality and pride, wantoning and wasting, rioting and revelling, spoiling and spending, gluttony and gormandising—all goes to havoc. And can this hold out? When he hath nothing left to help himself, how can he harbour thee? Look at length to drink from a dry bottle, and feed from an empty knapsack; look to’t, ’twill come to that.

Live to one man! a jest; thou mayst as well tie thyself to one gown; and what fool but will change with the fashion? Yes, do, confine thyself to one garment, and use no variety, and see how soon it will rot, and turn to rags.

ACT THE SECOND.

SCENE I.—A Room in Old Wincott’s House.

Who, I, sir? from a lodging of largess, a house of hospitality, and a palace of plenty; where there’s feeding like horses and drinking like fishes; where for pints, we’re served in pottles; and instead of pottle-pots, in pails; instead of silver tankards, we drink out of water-tankards; claret runs as freely as the cocks, and canary like the conduits of a coronation day; where there’s nothing but feeding and frolicking, carving in kissing, drinking and dancing, music and madding, fiddling and feasting.

They may be rather called reaks[11] than revels; as I came along by the door I was called up amongst them—he-gallants and she-gallants. I no sooner looked out, but saw them out with their knives, slashing of shoulders, mangling of legs, and lanching[12] of loins, till there was scarce a whole limb left amongst them.

One was hacking to cut off a neck; this was mangling a breast; his knife slipped from the shoulder, and only cut off a wing; one was picking the brains out of a head, another was knuckle-deep in a belly; one was groping for a liver, another searching for the kidneys. I saw one pluck the soul[13] from the body—goose that she was to suffer’t!; another pricked into the breast with his own bill—woodcock to endure it!

I know not that, but it seems one had a stomach, and another had a stomach; but there was such biting and tearing with their teeths, that I am sure I saw some of their poor carcasses pay for’t.

Alas, no! surgeons’ help was too late; there was no stitching up of those wounds, where limb was plucked from limb; nor any salve for those scars, which all the plaster of Paris cannot cure.

It seems it was first broached in the kitchen, certain creatures being brought in thither by some of the house. The cook, being a choleric fellow, did so towse them and toss them, so pluck them and pull them, till he left them as naked as my nail; pinioned some of them like felons; cut the spurs from others off their heels; then down went his spits, some of them he ran in at the throat, and out at the backside: about went his basting-ladle, where he did so besauce them that many a shrewd[14] turn they had amongst them.

They fared best, and did the least hurt that I saw, but for quietness-sake were forced to swallow what is not yet digested; yet every one had their share, and she that had least, I am sure, by this time hath her bellyful.

Marry, sir, at your next neighbour’s, Young Master Lionel, where there is nothing but drinking out of dry-vats, and healthing in half-tubs; his guests are fed by the belly, and beggars served at his gate in baskets. He’s the adamant of this age, the daffodil of these days, the prince of prodigality, and the very Cæsar of all young citizens.

Your gravity hath guessed aright: the chiefest that fell in this battle were wild fowl and tame fowl; pheasants were wounded instead of alfarez,[15] and capons for captains; anchoves stood for ancients, and caviare for corporals; dishes were assaulted instead of ditches, and rabbits were cut to pieces upon the rebellings;[16] some lost their legs, whilst other of their wings were forced to fly; the pioner undermined nothing but pie crust, and—

I was at the beginning of the battle; but here comes some, that it seems were at the rifling of the dead carcases; for by their mirth they have had part of the spoil.

Come what will, I’ll steal out of doors, and see the end of it, that’s certain. [Exit.

SCENE II.—Before Old Lionel’s House.

Enter, from the House, Young Lionel, Rioter, Blanda, Scapha, two Gallants, and two Wenches, as newly waked from sleep.

Enter Old Lionel, with Watermen, and two Servants with burdens and caskets.

ACT THE THIRD.

SCENE I.—The Dining Hall in Old Geraldine’s House.

Enter Old Geraldine, Young Geraldine, Wincott and his Wife, Delavil, and Prudentilla.

Re-enter Wincott and his Wife, Young Geraldine, and Prudentilla; the ladies wearing flowers.

SCENE II.—Before Old Lionel’s House.

Enter at one side Usurer and his Man; at the other, Old Lionel and his Servant; behind, Reignald.

SCENE III.—Barnet. A Street.

SCENE IV.—Inside a Tavern.

Oh, sir, you are the needle, and if the whole county of Middlesex had been turned to a mere bottle[35] of hay, I had been enjoined to have found you out, or never more returned back to my old master: there’s a letter, sir.

I shall, sir. This is market-day, and here acquaintance commonly meet; and whom have I encountered? my gossip Pint-pot, and brim-full; nay, I mean to drink with you before I part. And how doth all your worshipful kindred? your sister Quart, your pater Pottle (who was ever a gentleman’s fellow), and your old grandsire Gallon; they cannot choose but be all in health, since so many healths have been drunk out of them: I could wish them all here, and in no worse state than I see you are in at this present. Howsoever, gossip, since I have met you hand to hand, I’ll make bold to drink to you—nay, either you must pledge me, or get one to do’t for you, Do you open your mouth towards me? well, I know what you would say: “Here, Roger, to your master and mistress, and all our good friends at home. Gramercy, gossip, if I should not pledge thee, I were worthy to be turned out to grass, and stand no more at livery.” And now, in requital of this courtesy, I’ll begin one health to you and all your society in the cellar—to Peter Pipe, Harry Hogshead, Bartholomew Butt, and little Master Randal Rundlet, to Timothy Taster, and all your other great and small friends.

Ay, sir, ’tis very true; the letter speaks no more than he wished me to tell you by word of mouth.

I am something oblivious; your message would be the trulier delivered if it were set down in black and white.

ACT THE FOURTH.

SCENE I.—Outside Ricott’s House.

SCENE II.—The Garden of Old Wincott’s House.

This is the garden gate; and here am I set to stand sentinel, and to attend the coming of young master Geraldine. Master Delavil’s gone to his chamber, my mistress to hers. ’Tis now about midnight; a banquet prepared, bottles of wine in readiness, all the whole household at their rest, and no creature by this honestly stirring, saving I and my old master; he in a bye-chamber, prepared of purpose for their private meeting, and I here to play the watchman against my will! [Enter Young Geraldine.] Chavelah?[41] Stand! Who goes there?

That’s the word indeed; you have leave to pass freely without calling my corporal.

According to promise: the business is composed, and the servants disposed; my young mistress reposed; my old master, according as you proposed, attends you, if you be exposed, to give him meeting; nothing in the way being interposed, to transpose you to the least danger: and this I dare be deposed, if you will not take my word, as I am honest Roger.

Nay, by your leave, I that was late but a plain sentinel will now be your captain conductor: follow me.

SCENE III.—A Room in Old Wincott’s House.

Till the mouths of the bottles yawn directly upon the floor, and the bottoms turn their tails up to the ceiling; whilst there’s any blood in their bellies I’ll not leave them.

Talk you by yourselves, whilst I find something to say to this:[43] I have a tale to tell him shall make his stony heart relent. [Exit.

SCENE IV.—Another Room in the House.

SCENE V.—A Room in Old Lionel’s House.

Enter Reignald with a key in his hand, Young Lionel, Blanda, Scapha, Rioter, and two Gallants.

SCENE VI.—Outside Old Lionel’s House.

This is the house, but where’s the noise that was wont to be in’t? I am sent hither to deliver a note to two young gentlemen that here keep revel-rout; I remember it, since the last massacre of meat that was made in’t; but it seems that the great storm that was raised then is chased now. I have other notes to deliver, one to Master Ricott—and—I shall think on them all in order. My old master makes a great feast for the parting of young Master Geraldine, who is presently upon his departure for travel, and, the better to grace it, hath invited many of his neighbours and friends, where will be old Master Geraldine, his son, and I cannot tell how many. But this is strange; the gates shut up at this time o’ day! belike they are all drunk and laid to sleep; if they be, I’ll wake them, with a murrain! [Knocks.

Not so much change about me at this time as to change you a shilling into two testers.

And I advise thee, friend, for thine own good, stand not betwixt me and the gate, but give me leave to deliver my errand. Ho! Reignald, you mad rascal!

Ghosts! indeed there has been much walking in and about the house after midnight.

Yes, terrible noise, that none of the neighbours could take any rest for it. I have heard it myself.

My corporal oath; and you know, sir, a corporal is an office belonging to a soldier.

They say my old master’s come home; I’ll see if he will turn me out of doors, as the young man has done. I have laid rods in piss for somebody; scape Reignald as he can; and with more freedom than I durst late, I boldly now dare knock. [Knocks.

Enter Reignald with a horn in his pocket; the rest withdraw,[52] excepting Old Lionel.

Only to practise the nimbleness of my arms and legs, ere they prove your cords and fetters.

So the warrant in my master’s pocket will serve for my murder; and ever after shall my ghost haunt this house.

To burn houses is felony, and I’ll not out till I be fired out; but, since I am besieged thus, I’ll summon supplies unto my rescue. [He winds the horn.

The one you have nothing to do withal; here’s his ticket for his discharge: another for you, sir, to summon you to my master’s feast,—for you, and you,—where I charge you all to appear, upon his displeasure and your own apperils.

Good sir, for my sake! I resolved you truly concerning whooping, the noise, the walking, and the sprites, and for a need can show you a ticket for him too.

Come down, then, Reignald,—first on your hands and feet, and then on your knees to your master.—Now, gentlemen, what do you say to your inviting to my master’s feast?

ACT THE FIFTH.

SCENE I.—Outside Old Wincott’s House.

SCENE II.—A Room in Old Wincott’s House.

Enter Wincott, his Wife, the two Lionels, Owner, Delavil, Prudentilla, Reignald, and Rioter.

Re-enter Wincott, Old Geraldine, Young Geraldine, the two Lionels, Ricott, Owner, Prudentilla, and Reignald; also enter Clown.

He went presently[59] to the stable, put the saddle upon his horse, put his foot into the stirrup, clapped his spurs into his sides, and away he’s galloped, as if he were to ride a race for a wager.

THE WISE-WOMAN OF
HOGSDON.

The Wise-Woman of Hogsdon was printed in 1638. Of its history nothing is known; that it was popular is implied by the statement on the title-page—“As it hath been sundry times acted with great applause.” The technical cleverness of the last Act is noticeable. In the original editions the play is divided into acts but not into scenes. These are now indicated for the first time.

Hogsdon, i.e. Hoxton, in the parish of St. Leonard’s, Shoreditch, was described by Stow, in 1598, as “a large street with houses on both sides.” It was in the adjacent fields that the duel was fought between Ben Jonson and Gabriel Spenser, a player belonging to Henslowe’s company, which resulted in the death of the latter and put Jonson in peril of his life.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

THE WISE-WOMAN OF
HOGSDON.

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I.—A Room in a Tavern.

Enter, as newly come from play, Young Chartley, Sencer, Boyster, and Haringfield.

’Tis wool, but which of you dares say so?—[Aside.] I would fain pick a quarrel with them, to get some of my money again; but the slaves now they have got it, are too wise to part with it. I say it is not black.

I have nought to say to losers. Have I nothing left to set at a cast? Ay, finger, must you be set in gold, and not a jot of silver in my purse? A bale[1] of fresh dice! Ho, come at this ring!

That’s the winner’s phrase. Hold me play, or he that hath uncrowned me, I’ll take a speedy order with him.

Since you will needs, trip for the dice. I see it is hard to go a winner from this company.

The dice are mine. This diamond I value at twenty marks:[2] I’ll venture it at a throw.

Then at all. All’s mine. Nay, Master Boyster, I bar you: let us work upon the winners. Gramercy, cinques! Nay, though I owe you no quarrel, yet you must give me leave to draw.

Again, sweet dice. Nay, I bar swearing: gentlemen, let’s play patiently. Well, this at the candlestick, so— [He throws out.

Why, via! I think ’tis quicksilver; it goes and comes so fast: there’s life in this.

I’ll prove this hat of mine an helmet. Which of you here dares say the contrary?

Then come, put on your helmet; let’s leave this abominable game, and find out some better exercise. I cannot endure this chafing when men lose.

And there’s not a more testy waspish companion than thyself when thou art a loser, and yet thou must be vexing others with “Play patiently, gentlemen, and let’s have no swearing.”

A sign that I can give good counsel better than take it: but say, where be the prettiest wenches, my hearts?

Well remembered; this puts me in mind of an appointment I had with a gentlewoman of some respect.

I have you, sir, I have you; but I think you will never have her: ’tis Gratiana, the knight’s daughter in Gracious Street.[4] Have I touched you?

You have come somewhat near me, but touched me not. Master Haringfield, will you bear me company thither? Have you seen the gentlewoman, Master Chartley?

That she hath as other women have; that she goes for a maid, as others do, &c.[5]

No. I am in love; my head is full of proclamations. There is a thing called a virgin. Nature hath showed her art in making her. Court her I cannot, but I’ll do as I may.

You before, I’ll follow.—He thinks, with his blunt humour, to enter as far as I with my sharp. No, my true Trojan, no: there is a fair, sweet, modest rogue, her name is Luce; with this dandiprat, this pretty little ape’s face, is yon blunt fellow in love; and no marvel, for she hath a brow bewitching, eyes ravishing, and a tongue enchanting; and, indeed, she hath no fault in the world but one, and that is, she is honest; and were it not for that, she were the only sweet rogue in Christendom. As I live, I love her extremely, and to enjoy her would give anything; but the fool stands in her own light, and will do nothing without marriage. But what should I do marrying? I can better endure gyves than bands of matrimony. But in this meditation, I am glad I have won my money again. Nay, and she may be glad of it too; for the girl is but poor, and in my pocket I have laid up a stock for her,—’tis put to use already. And if I meet not with a dice-house or an ordinary by the way, no question but I may increase it to a sum. Well, I’ll unto the Exchange to buy her some pretty novelty: that done, I’ll visit my little rascal, and solicit instantly. [Exit.

SCENE II.—Before the Goldsmith’s Shop.

’Tis no matter for my words, they are not many and those not very wise ones neither.

Morrow, Luce; in exchange of this kiss, see what I have brought thee from the Exchange.

Guess that by the circumstance: here’s a ring, wear’t for my sake; twenty angels, pocket them, you fool. Come, come, I know thou art a maid: say nay, and take them.[8]

Hark in thine ear, I’ll tell thee;—nay, hear me out. Is’t possible so soft a body should have so hard a soul? Nay, now I know my penance; you will be angry, and school me for tempting your modesty: a fig for this modesty! it hinders many a good man from many a good turn, and that’s all the good it doth. If thou but knew’st, Luce, how I love thee, thou wouldst be far more tractable. Nay, I bar chiding when you speak; I’ll stop thy lips if thou dost but offer an angry word—by this hand, I’ll do’t, and with this hand too. Go to now, what say you?

Honour! there’s another word to flap in a man’s mouth! Honour! what shouldst thou and I stand upon our honour, that were neither of us yet Right Worshipful?

I will,—as I am virtuous, I will.—[Aside.] I told you the second word would be marriage. It makes a man forfeit his freedom, and makes him walk ever after with a chain at his heels, or a jackanapes hanging at his elbow. Marriage is like Dædalus’s labyrinth, and, being once in, there’s no finding the way out. Well, I love this little property most intolerably, and I must set her on the last, though it cost me all the shoes in my shop.—Well, Luce, thou seest my stomach is come down: thou hast my heart already; there’s my hand.

Nay, I know not the way yet, but I hope to find it hereafter, by your good direction.

In the way of marriage, in the way of honesty, in the way that was never gone yet. I hope thou art a maid, Luce?

Father, save you! You have happened of an untoward son-in-law; here I am, how do you like me?

[Aside.] Then I perceive you are an old eavesdropper.—But what do you think of it, father?

Marry, even to-morrow by that we can see: nay, we’ll lose no more time; I’ll take order for that.

A month! thou canst not hire me to’t. Why, Luce, if thou beest hungry, canst thou stay a month from meat? Nay, if I see my diet before me, I love to fall to when I have a stomach. Here, buy thee a new smock; let’s have a new bed too, and look it be strong; there’s a box of rings and jewels, lay them up. Ha, sirrah! methinks the very name of wedlock hath brought me to a night-cap already, and I am grown civil on the sudden. There’s more money for dishes, platters, ladles, candlesticks, &c., as I shall find them set down in the inventory.

Ay, thereby hangs a tale. We will have no more at our marriage but myself, to say, “I take thee, Luce;” thou to say, “I, Luce, take thee, Robin;” the vicar to put us together; and you, father, to play the clerk, and cry “Amen.”

I would not for a world it should be known to my friends, or come to my father’s ear. It may be ten thousand pounds out of my way. For the present, therefore, this is my conceit:[9] let us be married privately, and Luce shall live like a maid still, and bear the name. ’Tis nothing, Luce: it is a common thing in this age to go for a maid, and be none. I’ll frequent the house secretly. Fear not, girl; though I revel abroad o’ days, I’ll be with thee to bring[10] o’ nights, my little whiting-mop.[11]

Scandal! what scandal? Why, to stop the mouth of all scandal, after some few days do I appear in my likeness, married man and honest housekeeper, and then what becomes of your scandal? Come, send for Master Vicar; and what we do, let’s do suddenly.

If you purpose to be so privately married, I know one excellent at such an exploit. Are you not acquainted with the Wise-woman of Hogsdon?

The same, but I hold her to be of no such condition. I will anon make a step thither, and punctually acquaint her with all our proceedings: she is never without a Sir John[12] at her elbow, ready for such a stratagem.

Heigh-ho! have I disguised myself, and stolen out of the country thus far, and can light of no better news to entertain me? Oh, this wild-headed, wicked Chartley, whom nothing will tame! To this gallant was I, poor gentlewoman, betrothed, and the marriage day appointed; but he, out of a fantastic and giddy humour, before the time prefixed, posts up to London. After him come I thus habited, and you see my welcome—to be an ear-witness of his second contracting. Modesty would not suffer me to discover myself, otherwise I should have gone near to have marred the match. I heard them talk of Hogsdon, and a wise-woman, where these aims shall be brought to action. I’ll see if I can insinuate myself into her service; that’s my next project: and now good luck of my side! [Exit.

ACT THE SECOND.

SCENE I.—Before the Wise-woman’s House.

Enter the Wise-woman, a Countryman with a urinal, two Citizens’ Wives, Taber, and a Kitchen-maid.

Ay, I warrant you, I think I can see as far into a mill-stone as another. You have heard of Mother Nottingham, who for her time was prettily well skilled in casting of waters; and after her, Mother Bomby; and then there is one Hatfield in Pepper Alley, he doth pretty well for a thing that’s lost. There’s another in Coleharbour, that’s skilled in the planets. Mother Sturton, in Golden Lane, is for fore-speaking;[14] Mother Phillips, of the Bankside, for the weakness of the back; and then there’s a very reverend matron on Clerkenwell Green, good at many things. Mistress Mary on the Bankside is for ’recting a figure;[15] and one (what do you call her?) in Westminster, that practiseth the book and the key, and the sieve and the shears: and all do well, according to their talent. For myself, let the world speak. Hark you, my friend, you shall take— [She whispers.

I have stolen out of my master’s house, forsooth, with the kitchen-maid, and I am come to know of you whether it be my fortune to have her or no.

Nay, if thou comest to know whether thou be’st a maid or no, I had best ask to know whether I be with child or no.

Withdraw into the parlour there; I’ll but talk with this other gentlewoman, and I’ll resolve you presently.

Come, Cicely, if she cannot resolve thee, I can; and in the case of a maidenhead do more than she, I warrant thee.

I would not have it known to my neighbours that I come to a wise-woman for any thing, by my truly.

Where are my brains? ’Tis true, you are a widow; and you dwell—let me see, I can never remember that place.

In, in: I’ll but read a little of Ptolemy and Erra Pater[16]; and when I have cast a figure, I’ll come to you presently. [Exeunt Citizens’ Wives.] Now, wag, what wouldst thou have?

[Aside.] If this were a wise-woman, she could tell that without asking. Now methinks I should come to know whether I were a boy or a girl.—Forsooth, I lack a service.

[Aside.] Now could I sigh, and say “Alas! this is some bawd trade-fallen, and out of her wicked experience is come to be reputed wise.” I’ll serve her, be’t but to pry into the mystery of her science.

A proper stripling, and a wise, I warrant him.—Here’s a penny for thee, I’ll hire thee for a year by the Statute of Winchester;[17] prove true and honest, and thou shalt want nothing that a good boy—

Here, wise-woman, you are out again: I shall want what a good boy should have, whilst I live.—Well, here I shall live both unknown, and my sex unsuspected. But whom have we here?

Come, Haringfield, now we have been drinking of Mother Red-cap’s ale, let us now go make some sport with the wise-woman.

We shall be thought very wise men of all such as shall see us go in to the wise-woman’s.

See, here she is. How now, witch! How now, hag! How now, beldam! You are the wise-woman, are you? and have wit to keep yourself warm enough, I warrant you.

You enchantress, sorceress, she-devil! you Madam Hecate, Lady Proserpine! you are too old, you hag, now, for conjuring up spirits yourself; but you keep pretty young witches under your roof, that can do that.

Forbear him till he have his senses about him, and I shall then hold thee for a wise-woman indeed: otherwise, I shall doubt thou hast thy name for nothing. Come, friend, away, if thou lovest me.

Away, you old dromedary! I’ll come one of these nights, and make a racket amongst your she-caterwaulers.

Now, bless me, he hath put me into such a fear, as makes all my bones to dance and rattle in my skin: I’ll be revenged on that swaggering companion.

Mistress, I wish you would; he’s a mere mad-cap, and all his delight is in misusing such reverend matrons as yourself.

Honest Jack, if thou couldst but devise how I might cry quittance with this cutting Dick[18] I will go near to adopt thee my son and heir.

My daughter, and a pretty smug-faced girl. I had a note but late from her, and she means to be with me in the evening: for I have bespoke Sir Boniface to marry her in the morning.

Oh, that’s a foul word! but I can tell you your fortune, as they say; I have some little skill in palmistry, but never had to do with the devil.

And had the devil never anything to do with thee? thou look’st somewhat like his dam. Look on me: canst tell what I ail?

Thou’rt a good grannam; and, but that thy teeth stand like hedge-stakes in thy head, I’d kiss thee. [Exit.

Pray will you in? Come hither, Jack; I have a new trick come into my head: wilt thou assist me in’t?

If it concern the crossing of the marriage with Mistress Luce, I’ll do’t, whate’er it be.

Thou shalt be tired like a woman. Can you make a curtsey, take small strides, simper, and seem modest? methinks thou hast a woman’s voice already.

I have conceited to have Luce married to this blunt gentleman, she mistaking him for Chartley; and Chartley shall marry thee, being a boy, and take thee for Luce. Will’t not be excellent?

Play but thy part as I’ll act mine. I’ll fit him with a wife, I warrant him.

SCENE II.—A Room in Sir Harry’s House.

Marry, sir knight, I saw them in sad[19] talk; but to say they were directly whispering, I am not able.

Nay, they did not greatly whisper, for I heard what was said, and what was said I have the wit to keep to myself.

I am loth to be called in question about men and women’s matters, but as soon as ever he saw your daughter I heard what was spoke.

Thanks, noble sir; and now I’ll tell you. Your daughter being walking to take the air of the fields, and I before her, whom should we meet just in the nick—

As well as my pipe can utter, you shall know, sir. This gentleman meeting with my young mistress full butt—imagine you were she, and I young Master Sencer; now there you come, and here I meet you; he comes in this manner, and puts off his hat in this fashion.

“Be with you,[20] fair gentlewoman;” and so goes quite away, and scarce so much as once looked back: and if this were language to offer to a young lady, judge you.

Save you, sir! my name is Sencer; I am a Northamptonshire gentleman, born to a thousand pound land by the year: I love your daughter, and I am come to crave your good-will.

I confess myself to have been in that action, but note the cause, sir: you could not have pleasured me so much, in giving me a piece of gold, as at the same time to help me to that Counter.

Nay, but hear me, sweet Sir Harry. Being somewhat late at supper at the Mitre, the doors were shut at my lodging; I knocked at three or four places more; all were a-bed, and fast; inns, taverns, none would give me entertainment. Now, would you have had me despaired, and lain in the streets? No, I bethought me of a trick worth two of that, and presently devised, having at that time a charge of money about me, to be lodged, and safely too.

Marry, thus: I had knocked my heels against the ground a good while, knew not where to have a bed for love or money. Now, what did I, but, spying the watch, went and hit the constable a good souse on the ear, who provided me of a lodging presently? and the next day, being brought before your worship, I was then sent thither back again, where I lay three or four days without control.

Why, sir, tell not me of your door, nor going out of it. Your company is fair and good, and so is your daughter’s; I’ll stay here this twelvemonth, ere I’ll offer to trouble your door.

Though I cannot, yet I have known an hare that could. But, knight, thou dost not forbid us thine house?

But, by thy favour, we may choose whether we will take any warning or no. Well, farewell, old knight! though thou forbid’st me thine house, I’ll honour thee, and extol thee; and, though thou keep’st me from thy daughter, thou shalt not hinder me to love her and admire her, and, by thy favour, sometimes to see her. A cat may look at a king, and so may I at her. Give me thine hand, knight; the next time I come into thy company, thou shalt not only bid me welcome, but hire me to stay with thee, and thy daughter.

’Tis a match; strike me luck. Wife that may be, farewell; father-in-law that must be, adieu. Taber, play before my friend and I will dance after.

I have played them away, if it please your worship; and yonder at the door attends a schoolmaster; you sent for him, if you remember, to teach my little young master and mistress.

Eques honoratus, ave salutatus! non video quid est in tergo, sed salve, bona virgo.

O ignorantia! what it is to deal with stupidity? Sir Henry, Sir Henry, hear me one word: I see, Preceptor legit, vos vero negligitis.

I think he saith we are a company of fools and nidgets;[25] but I hope you shall not find us such, Master Schoolmaster.

Sure, sir, this is some miller that comes to undermine you, in the shape of a schoolmaster.

Sir Boniface, if you come to live in our house, and be a familist amongst us, I shall desire your better acquaintance; your name and my physiognomy should have some consanguinity, good Sir Boniface.

Go with you to the ale-house? I like the motion well; I’ll make an excuse out of doors and follow you. I am glad yet, we shall have a good-fellow come into the house amongst us.

I know it, sweet knight, I know it. Then, virgo formosa et Domine gratiose valete.

ACT THE THIRD.

SCENE I.—A Room in the Wise-woman’s House.

I’ll be a mother to thee, no mistress. Come, lad, I must have thee sworn to the orders of my house, and the secrets thereof.

As I am an honest lad, I am yours to command. But, mistress, what mean all these women’s pictures, hanged here in your withdrawing-room?

I’ll tell thee, boy—marry, thou must be secret. When any citizens or young gentlemen come hither, under a colour to know their fortunes, they look upon these pictures, and which of them they best like, she is ready with a wet finger.[27] Here they have all the furniture belonging to a private-chamber,—bed, bed-fellow, and all. But mum! thou knowest my meaning, Jack.

But I see, coming and going, maids, or such as go for maids, some of them as if they were ready to lie down, sometimes two or three delivered in one night; then suddenly leave their brats behind them, and convey themselves into the city again:—what becomes of their children?

Those be kitchen-maids, and chamber-maids, and sometimes good men’s daughters, who, having catched a clap,[28] and growing near their time, get leave to see their friends in the country, for a week or so: then hither they come, and for a matter of money here they are delivered. I have a midwife or two belonging to the house, and one Sir Boniface, a deacon, that makes a shift to christen the infants; we have poor, honest, and secret neighbours, that stand for common gossips.[29] But dost not thou know this?

Why, in the night we send them abroad, and lay one at this man’s door, and another at that, such as are able to keep them; and what after becomes of them, we inquire not. And this is another string to my bow.

But, mistress, are you so cunning as you make yourself? you can neither write nor read: what do you with those books you so often turn over?

Why, tell[30] the leaves; for to be ignorant, and seem ignorant, what greater folly!

[Aside.] Believe me, this is a cunning woman; neither hath she her name for nothing, who out of her ignorance can fool so many that think themselves wise.—But wherefore have you built this little closet close to the door, where sitting, you may hear every word spoken by all such as ask for you?

True, and therefore I built it. If any knock, you must to the door and question them, to find what they come about,—if to this purpose, or to that. Now, they ignorantly telling thee their errand, which I, sitting in my closet, overhear, presently come forth, and tell them the cause of their coming, with every word that hath passed betwixt you in private; which they admiring, and thinking it to be miraculous, by their report I become thus famous.

This is no trade, but a mystery; and, were I a wise-woman, as indeed I am but a foolish boy, I need not live by your service. But, mistress, we lose ourselves in this discourse: is not this the morning in which I should be married?

Now, how had I forgot myself! Mistress Luce promised to be with me half an hour ago, but masked and disguised, and so shalt thou be too: here’s a black veil to hide thy face against the rest come.

Fear not me; I have as good a face in a mask as any lady in the land could wish to have. But to my heart,—he comes, or he comes not—now am I in a pitiful perplexity, until I see the event of all.

I warrant you, mistress.—That it happens so luckily, that my name should be Luce too, to make the marriage more firm!

No discovery of yourselves for a million! There’s Sir Boniface within—shall he blab who you are? besides, there’s a young heir that hath stolen a lord’s daughter from the Court, and would not have their faces seen for a world. Cannot you be content to fare well, and keep your own counsel? And see, yonder they come.

If the great heir and the young lady be so dainty of their complexions, they shall see, my sweet Luce, we can visard it with the best of them.

That gallant wench, if my grannam fable not, should be Luce; but what be those other?

You wrong me but to ask. Who but a young heir, and a lady of the Court? That’s Luce; take her, and keep your promise.

Now, Jack my boy, keep thine own counsel and countenance, and I shall cry quittance with my young gallant. Well, by this time Sir Boniface is at his book. But because there is a mistake, known only to my boy and myself, the marriage shall be no sooner ended but I’ll disturb them by some sudden outcry, and that too before they have leisure to unmask, and make known themselves one to another; for, if the deceit were known, I should fall into the danger of that young mad rascal. And now this double apprehension of the lord and the lady shall fetch me off from all. I know it is Sir Boniface’s custom to make short work, and hath dispatched by this. And now, wise-woman, try if thou canst bestir thyself like to a mad-woman.—Shift for yourselves! Warrants and pursuivants! Away! warrants and pursuivants! shift for yourselves!

Re-enter, as affrighted and amazed, Young Chartley, Boyster, Sir Boniface, Luce, and 2nd Luce.

Curro, curris, cucurri: my cheeks are all murrey,[32] and I am gone in an hurry. [Exit.

O sweet daughter, shift clothes with this lady. Nay, as thou lovest thy credit and mine, change habits—[They change their outer garments.]—So, if thou be’st taken in her garments, finding the mistake will let thee pass; and should they meet her in thine, not knowing her, would no way question her; and this prove to both your securities and my safety.

Ha, ha! let me hold my sides, and laugh. Here were even a plot to make a play on, but that Chartley is so fooled by my boy Jack: well, he’ll make a notable wag, I’ll warrant him. All the jest will be, if Boyster should meet with him in Luce’s habit, which he hath now on, he would think himself merely gulled and cheated; and should Chartley meet with Luce as she is now robed, he would be confident he had married her. Let me see how many trades have I to live by: first, I am a wise-woman, and a fortune-teller, and under that I deal in physic and fore-speaking, in palmistry, and recovering of things lost; next, I undertake to cure mad folks; then I keep gentlewomen lodgers, to furnish such chambers as I let out by the night; then I am provided for bringing young wenches to bed; and, for a need, you see I can play the match-maker.

SCENE II.—Before the Wise-woman’s House.

Why run away, and leave my wench behind? I’ll back. What have warrants and pursuivants to do with me? with me! why should I budge? why should I wear mask or visard? If lords or ladies offend, let lords and ladies answer. Let me better bethink me. Why should I play at hoodman-blind?[33] Hum: why marry in tenebris? ha! is there no trick in it? If my grannam should make me a younger brother now, and, instead of Luce, pop me off with some broken commodity, I were finely served: most sure I am to be in for better and worse; but with whom, Heaven and my grannam knows.

I am stolen out of doors, to see if I can meet my husband, with whom I purpose to make some sport, ere I suddenly disclose myself. What’s he?

Then you have no reason, but to enjoy both them and me too, and so you are like; I should be loth to divorce man and wife.

Both, and neither; I was a lad last night, but in the morning I was conjured into a lass; and, being a girl now, I shall be translated to a boy anon. Here’s all I can at this time say for myself. Farewell. [Exit.

Yes, and be hanged withal! O for some gunpowder to blow up this witch, this she-cat, this damned sorceress! Oh, I could tear her to fitters[36] with my teeth! Yet I must be patient, and put up all, lest I be made a jeer to such as know me. Fooled by a boy! Go to! of all the rest, the girl Luce must not know it. [Exit.

So, now am I the same man I was yesterday. Who can say I was disguised? or who can distinguish my condition now, or read in my face, whether I be a married man or a bachelor?

This storm is then well past, and now convey yourself home as privately as you can; and see you make this known to none but your father.

The name of Luce hath been ominous to me: one Luce I should have married in the country, and, just the night before, a toy[37] took me in the head, and mounting my horse, I left capons, ducks, geese, poultry, wildfowl, father, and bride, and all, and posted up to London, where I have ever since continued bachelor, till now. And now—

Nay, on, I prithee, fellow, on! my father will wonder where I have been visiting. Now, what had I forgot! Taber, there’s money; go to the goldsmith’s, bid him send me my fan, and make a quick return. On, fellow, on.

Her fan at the goldsmith’s! now had I forgot to ask her his name, or his sign; but I will after to know. [Exit.

Your business? You should be one, though not of my cognisance, yet of my condition,—a serving-creature, as I take it: pray what’s your will with me?

You may call her what you please; but if you call her otherwise than in the way of honesty, you may perchance hear on’t.

Why, sir, I call her as it shall best please me; sometimes young lady, sometimes young mistress; and what hath any man to do with that?

Ay, marry, sir, you speak to purpose, and I can resolve you: her name is Gratiana. But all this while I have forgot my mistress’ fan. [Exit.

Gratiana! oft have I heard of her, but saw her not till now: ’tis a pretty wench, a very pretty wench,—nay, a very, very, very pretty wench. But what a rogue am I, of a married man—nay, that have not been married this six hours, and to have my shittle-wits run a wool-gathering already! What would poor Luce say if she should hear of this? I may very well call her poor Luce, for I cannot presume of five pounds to her portion. What a coxcomb was I, being a gentleman, and well derived, to match into so beggarly a kindred! What needed I to have grafted in the stock of such a choke-pear, and such a goodly popering[38] as this to escape me! Escape me, said I? if she do, she shall do it narrowly. But I am married already, and therefore it is not possible, unless I should make away my wife, to compass her. Married! why, who knows it? I’ll outface the priest, and then there is none but she and her father, and their evidence is not good in law; and if they put me in suit, the best is, they are poor, and cannot follow it. Ay, marry, sir, a man may have some credit by such a wife as this. I could like this marriage well, if a man might change away his wife, still as he is a-weary of her, and cope[39] her away like a bad commodity; if every new moon a man might have a new wife, that’s every year a dozen. But this “Till death us do part” is tedious. I will go a-wooing to her, I will; but how shall I do for jewels and tokens? Luce hath mine in her custody, money and all. Tush, I’ll juggle them from her well enough. See, here she comes.

Thou’rt sad, thou’rt sad, Luce: what, melancholy already, ere thou hast had good cause to be merry, and knew’st what sport was!

Alas, poor fool! I am sorry for thee, but yet cannot help thee, as I am a gentleman. Why, say, Luce, thou losest now forty shillings worth of credit, stay but a time, and it shall bring thee in a thousand pounds worth of commodity.

Why, so now, these be good words: I knew these storms would have a shower, and then they would cease. Now, if your anger be over, hear me.

Stay but a month, ’tis but four weeks—nay, ’tis February, the shortest month of the year—and in that time I shall be at full age; and the land being entailed, my father can disinherit me of nothing. Is your spleen down now? Have I satisfied you? Well, I see you choleric hasty men are the kindest when all is done. Here’s such wetting of handkerchiefs! he weeps to think of his wife; she weeps to see her father cry! Peace, fool! we shall else have thee claim kindred of the woman killed with kindness.[40]

That may be helped.—Now, Luce, your father’s pacified, will you be pleased? I would endure a quarter’s punishment for thee, and wilt not thou suffer a poor month’s penance for me? ’Tis but eight and twenty days, wench; thou shalt fare well all the time, drink well, eat well, lie well: come, one word of comfort at the latter end of the day.

Gramercy, wench; thou shalt wear this chain no longer for that word; I’ll multiply the links in such order that it shall have light to shine about thy neck oftener than it doth: this jewel—a plain Bristowe[41] stone, a counterfeit. How base was I, that coming to thee in the way of marriage, courted thee with counterfeit stones! Thou shalt wear right, or none. Thou hast no money about thee, Luce?

Fetch it.—[Exit Luce.]—Let me see, how much branched[42] satin goes to a petticoat? and how much wrought velvet to a gown? then for a beaver for the city, and a black bag for the country: I’ll promise her nothing, but if any such trifles be brought home, let her not thank me for them. [Re-enter Luce with the bag.] Gramercy, Luce.—Nay, go in, Gravity and Modesty; ten to one but you shall hear of me ere you see me again.

Why, do not I know you, and do not I know her? I doubt you’ll wish shortly that I had never known either of you: now, what sayst thou, my sweet Luce?

What a pagan am I, to practise such villainy against this honest Christian! If Gratiana did not come into my thoughts, I should fall into a vein to pity her. But now that I talk of her, I have a tongue to woo her, tokens to win her; and that done, if I do not find a trick both to wear her and weary her, it may prove a piece of a wonder.—Thou seest, Luce, I have some store of crowns about me: there are brave things to be bought in the city; Cheapside and the Exchange afford variety and rarity. This is all I will say now, but thou mayst hear more of me hereafter. [Exit.

ACT THE FOURTH.

SCENE I.—A Room in Sir Harry’s House.

May it please thee, right worshipful, to understand that there are some at the gate who dance a turn or two without, and desire to be admitted to speak with you within.

Nay, sir, there are two scholars, and they are spouting Latin one against the other; and in my simple judgment the stranger is the better scholar, and is somewhat too hard for Sir Boniface: for he speaks louder, and that you know is ever the sign of the most learning, and he also hath a great desire to serve your worship.

Enter Taber, ushering in Sir Boniface, and Sencer, disguised like a pedant.

Et tu, domine calve, iterum atque iterum salve. Amo amas amavi. Sweet lady, Heaven save ye!

This approves him to be excellent, but I thank my breeding I understand not a word.

No more of that nec corde. Noble knight, he wishes you nec corde; think of that.

Est mihi bene nostrum, thou wouldst say, in Gotham; for my part, Sir Harry, I can read service and marry, Que genus et flexum, though I go in Genes[46] fustian; scalpellum et charta, I was not brought up at plough and cart; I can teach Qui mihi, and neither laugh nor tee-hee; sed as in presenti, if your worship at this present, Iste, ista, istud, will do me any good, to give me legem pone in gold or in money, Piper atque papaver, I’ll deserve it with my labour.

Nominativo hic prediculus, his words are most ridiculous; but tu thou, qui the which, deridest those that be rich, construe hanc sententiam, construe me this sentence: Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines.

Est modus in rebus, there is mud in the rivers; sunt certi denique fines, and certain little fishes.

Kartere Moosotropos poluphiltate phile poetatis Tes Logikes retoon, ouch elachiste sophoon. That is as much as to say, in our materna lingua, I will make you, Sir Boniface, confess yourself an ass in English, speak open and broad words, for want of Latin, and denique entreat me to resolve such questions as I shall ask you in our modern tongue.

Sir Boniface is sick already and calls for a posset; no marvel, being so threatened.

You, Boniface, decline me I am a no after the first conjugation, amo amavi, vocito vocitavi, Titubo Titubavi?

Most true, most true, vos estis, ut ego sum testis, that what he confessed is as true as the pestis.

Attend again, proceed me with this verse of reverend Cato: Si deus est animus.

Facile and easy, more fit for the pupil than the preceptor. What’s Latin for this earth? Tellus.

And I say, I will not tell you what is Latin for the earth, unless you yield me victor.

Of another gallant, noble sir, that pretends to have business both with you and my mistress.

Noble knight, whilst you peruse that [Hands Sir Harry a letter], sweet lady, tell me how you like this? [Kisses Gratiana.

To the word wooer let me add the name speeder; my father hath written to your father, and the cause of his writing at this present is to let you understand that he fears you have lived a maid too long; and therefore, to prevent all diseases incident to the same, as the green sickness and others, he sent me, like a skilful physician, to take order with you against all such maladies. If you will not credit me, list but how fervently my father writes in my behalf.

[Reads.] “He is my only son, and she, I take it, your only daughter. What should hinder then to make a match between them?” Well, ’tis well, ’tis good, I like it. “I will make her jointure three hundred pounds a year.”

How say you by that, sweet lady? three hundred pounds a year, and a proper man to boot?

Nay, then, ’tis time to speak. Shall I stand here waiting like a coxcomb, and see her given away before my face? Stay your hand, Sir Harry; and let me claim my promise.

SCENE II.—The Street outside the Goldsmith’s Shop.

[Enter Sir Harry, Haringfield, Young Chartley leading Gratiana by the arm, Taber, and Attendants.]

If it were in a man, it were nothing, but the falling sickness in a woman is dangerous. [Enter Luce’s Father.] My tother father-in-law! Now shall I be utterly shamed. If he assure to know me, I’ll outface him.

SCENE III.—Outside the Wise-woman’s House.

Now or never, look about thee, Sencer: to-morrow is the marriage day, which to prevent lies not within the compass of my apprehension; therefore I have thus disguised myself, to go to the looming woman’s, the fortune-teller’s, the anything, the nothing. This over-against Mother Redcap’s is her house; I’ll knock.

I say I have not lost anything, but wit and time, and neither of those she can help me to.

Then you belike are crossed in love, and come to know what success you shall have.

Now am I as angry as thou art timorous; and now to vent on the next thing I meet—Oh, ’tis the door. [Knocks.

In some private talk with a gentleman. I’ll fetch her to you presently. [Exit.

You tell me your name is Sence; I knew it before: and that Chartley is to be married, I could have told it you.

Ay, but you tell me that Chartley before to-morrow shall be disappointed of his wife; make that good, thou shalt have twenty angels.

I’ll do’t: stand aside; I’ll have but a word or two with this gentlewoman, and I am for you presently.

My husband marry another wife to-morrow! O changeable destiny! no sooner married to him, but instantly to lose him! Nor doth it grieve me so much that I am a wife, but that I am a maid too; to carry one of them well is as much as any is bound to do, but to be tied to both is more than flesh and blood can endure.

Where’s this witch, this hag, this beldam, this wizard? And have I found thee!—thus then will I tear, mumble, and maul thee!

Now, trot, now, grannam, what canst thou say for thyself?—What, Luce here! Be patient, and put up thou; she must not see the end.

You would prevent young Chartley’s marriage? you shall: hark in your ear. [Whispers.

You would enjoy Luce as your wife, and lie with her to-morrow night? Hark in your ear. [Whispers.

Away! you shall enjoy him, you are married, Luce, away! you shall see Chartley discarded from Gratiana. Sencer, begone! And if I fail in any of these or the rest, I lay myself open to all your displeasures.

SCENE IV.—A Room in Sir Harry’s House.

Enter Sir Boniface, and Taber carrying a trencher of broken meat and a napkin.

Fie, fie, what a time of trouble is this! To-morrow is my mistress to be married, and we serving-men are so puzzled.

I have a letter for him. You seem to be a gentleman yourself; acquaint him with my attendance, and I shall rest yours in all good offices.

Sir Boniface, pray keep the gentleman company. I will first acquaint your lips with the virtue of the cellar. [Exit.

Most heartily welcome: your courtesy, I beseech you; ply it off, I entreat you. Pray, Sir Boniface, keep the gentleman company, till I acquaint my young master with his business. [Exit.

Gentlemen, the ladies call upon you to dance; they will be out of measure displeased, if, dinner being done, you be not ready to lead them a measure.

Fie, Sir Boniface! have you forgot yourself? Whilst you are in the hall, there’s never a whetstone for their wits in the parlour.

[To Sencer, who hands him a letter.] To me, sir! from whom? A letter! To her “most dear, most loving, most kind friend Master Chartley, these be delivered.” Sure from some wench or other. I long to know the content.

[Aside.] Now to cry quittance with you for my “farewell, learned Sir Timothy.”

Good news, as I live! there’s for thy pains, my good Sir Pandarus.[53] Hadst thou brought me word my father had turned up his heels, thou couldst scarcely have pleased me better. [Reads.] “Though I disclaim the name of wife, of which I account myself altogether unworthy, yet let me claim some small interest in your love. This night I lie at the house where we were married—the Wise-Woman’s I mean—where my maidenhead is to be rifled: bid fair for it, and enjoy it; see me this night or never. So may you, marrying Gratiana, and loving me, have a sweet wife and a true friend. This night or never. Your quondam wife, hereafter your poor sweetheart, no other, Luce.” So, when I am tired with Gratiana, that is when I am past grace with her, I can make my rendezvous. I’ll not slip this occasion, nor sleep till I see her. Thou art an honest lad, and mayst prove a good pimp in time. Canst thou advise me what colour[54] I may have to compass this commodity?

Feign some news that such a piece of land is fallen to you, and you must instantly ride to take possession of it; or, which is more probable, cannot you persuade them you have received a letter that your father lies a-dying?

You rogue, I would he did; but the name of that news is called “too good to be true.”

Enough: if ever I prove knight-errant thou shalt be mine own proper squire. For this, thou hast fitted me with a plot. Do but wait here; note how I will manage it.—Taber, my horse, for I must ride to-night.

Nay, Grace, now’s no time to stand on scrupulous parting. Knewest thou my business—

Save you, gentlewoman! I have a message to deliver to one Mistress Gratiana; this should be the knight’s house, her father.

ACT THE FIFTH.

SCENE I.—A Street near Sir Harry’s House.

Disperse yourselves; inquire about the taverns, ordinaries, bowl-alleys, tennis-courts, gaming-houses; for there, I fear, he will be found.

You shall not find us at six and at seven, I’ll warrant you: good health to your worship.

SCENE II.—The Principal Room in the Wise-woman’s House, leading to several small rooms, all of which look into it.

Enter the Wise-woman, Sencer as a Serving-man, Luce and her Father, and 2nd Luce in Boy’s clothes.

Here, sweet mistress; I know the place well ever since I was here to know my fortune.

Your ladyship is most lovingly welcome. A low stool for the gentlewoman, boy. I made bold to send to you to take view of such a piece of work as I presume you have seldom seen the like.

SCENE III.—An Inner Room in the same.

SCENE IV.—The Principal Room in the same.

Enter the Wise-woman, Sencer and Luce. To them enter 2nd Luce and Old Chartley.

Now they are placed in several rooms, that look into this one. Were Chartley come we had all our company.

Come, come away with this wailing in woe; if thou put’st finger in the eye a little longer, I shall plunge in pain too presently.

Dost thou not know she’s rich? Why, you fool, as soon as I have got her dower, it is but giving her a dram, or a pill to purge melancholy, to make her turn up her heels, and then with all that wealth come I to live with thee, my sweet rascal.

Thou canst not properly call me past Grace, for I never enjoyed thee yet. I cannot tell whether I blush or no, but I have now at this time more Grace than I can tell what to do with.

Who but the old dotard thy father, who when I was honestly married to a civil maid, he persuaded me to leave her? I was loth at first, but after entreating, urging, and offering me large proffers, I must confess I was seduced to come a-wooing to thee.

Ay, thy father, Grace. And were he here would justify it to the old dotard’s face.

Plots, plots! I can but cry you mercy both. Say that I have done you wrong, I can be but sorry for it. But, indeed, to clear you, and lay the fault where it ought to be, all this comes from mine own father in the country, who hearing I had married with Luce, sends me word, of his blessing,[61] to be divorced from her, and to come a suitor to your daughter. I think you have his hand and seal to show.

Heyday, if you get one word more of me to-night but scurvy looks, I’ll give you leave to hang me.

Bad company hath been the shame of me. I was as virtuously given as any youth in Europe, till I fell into one Boyster’s company; ’tis he that hath done all the harm upon me.

I had best bite out my tongue, and speak no more. What shall I do, or what shall I say? There is no outfacing them all. Gentlemen, fathers, wives, or what else, I have wronged you all. I confess it that I have—what would you more? Will any of you rail of me? I’ll bear it. Will any of you beat me? So they strike not too hard, I’ll suffer it. Will any of you challenge me? I’ll answer it. What would you have me say or do? One of these I have married, the other I have betrothed, yet both maids for me. Will you have me take one, and leave the tother? I will. Will you have me keep them both? I will.

What, you here too? Nay, then, I see all my good friends are met together. Wilt thou have me, Luce? I am thy husband, and had I not loved thee better than Grace, I had not disappointed the marriage day to-morrow.

Wilt thou have me, Grace?—for had I not loved thee better than Luce, I would never after I had married her been contracted to thee.

Then, neither married man, widower, nor bachelor, what’s to be done? Here’s even the proverb verified—between two stools, the tail goes to ground.

Now I bethink me, this our meeting here is wondrous strange. Call in the gentlewoman that owns this house.

Have patience, and in the end we’ll pay you all. Your worships are most heartily welcome. I made bold to send for you, and you may see to what end, which was to discover unto you the wild vagaries of this wanton wag-pasty—a wild oats I warrant him—and, Sir Harry, that your daughter hath scaped this scouring, thank this gentleman, and then make of him as he deserves.

There’s one gone already; but this is my wife, and her I’ll keep in spite both of the devil and his dam.

That is the gentleman [pointing to Boyster],—accept him, Luce; and you the like of her—nay, I’ll make it good. This gentleman married you visarded, you him disguised, mistaking him for Chartley, which none but my boy Jack was privy to: after she changed her habit with him, as you with Jack; and you in Mistress Luce’s habit—

Enough, sir: if I should say I would become a new man, you would not take my word; if I should swear I would amend my life, you would not take mine oath; if I should bind myself to become an honest man, you would scarce take my bond.

Then see, sir: when to all your judgments I see me past grace, do I lay hold of grace, and here begin to retire myself. This woman hath lent me a glass, in which I see all my imperfections, at which my conscience doth more blush inwardly than my face outwardly; and now I dare confidently undertake for myself I am honest.

Then I dare confidently undertake to help you to a wife who desires to have an honest man or none. Look on me well: simple though I stand here, I am your wife. Blush not at your folly, man. Perhaps I have more in me than you expect from me.

You and I have been better acquainted, and yet search me not too far, lest you shame me; look on me well—nay better, better yet;—I’ll assure you I left off a petticoat when I put on these breeches. What say you now? [She scatters her hair.

[Aside.] My boy turned girl! I hope she’ll keep my counsel. From henceforth I’ll never entertain any servant but I’ll have her searched.

Father, call me once again your son, and, Sir Harry, me your friend; Sencer, a hand, and Mistress Grace, a heart, in honourable love. Where I have wronged you, Luce, forgive; impute my errors to my youth, not me. With Grace I interchange an embrace; with you, Luce, a parting buss. I wish you all joy. Divide my heart amongst you—thou my soul!

THE RAPE OF LUCRECE.

An edition of The Rape of Lucrece was published in 1608; two other editions followed in 1609, and others again in 1630 and 1638. It was acted at the Red Bull in Clerkenwell. In the old copies neither the acts nor the scenes, excepting in the case of the senate scenes, are marked; in the present reprint the divisions are given, it is hoped, with approximate correctness.

To the Reader.

It hath been no custom in me of all other men (courteous readers) to commit my plays to the press; the reason though some may attribute to my own insufficiency, I had rather subscribe, in that, to their severe censure, than by seeking to avoid the imputation of weakness, to incur greater suspicion of honesty: for, though some have used a double sale of their labours, first to the stage, and after to the press, for my own part I here proclaim myself ever faithful in the first, and never guilty of the last. Yet since some of my plays have (unknown to me, and without any of my direction) accidentally come into the printer’s hands, and therefore so corrupt and mangled (copied only by the ear) that I have been as unable to know them as ashamed to challenge them, this therefore I was the willinger to furnish out in his native habit: first being by consent; next because the rest have been so wronged, in being published in such savage and ragged ornaments. Accept it, courteous gentlemen, and prove as favourable readers as we have found you gracious auditors.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

THE RAPE OF LUCRECE.

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I.—The Senate-house.

Enter Tarquin, Tullia, Sextus, Aruns, Lucretius, Valerius, Poplicola, and Senators before them.

No doubt, Collatine, no doubt, here’s a giddy and drunken world; it reels; it hath got the staggers; the commonwealth is sick of an ague, of which nothing can cure her but some violent and sudden affrightment.

The wife of Tarquin would be a queen—nay, on my life, she is with child till she be so.

And longs to be brought to bed of a kingdom. I divine we shall see scuffling to-day in the Capitol.

If there be any difference among the princes and Senate, whose faction will Valerius follow?

Oh, Collatine, I am a true citizen, and in this I will best show myself to be one, to take part with the strongest. If Servius o’ercome, I am liegeman to Servius; and if Tarquin subdue, I am for vive Tarquinius.

Valerius, no more, this talk does but keep us from the sight of this solemnity: by this the princes are entering the Capitol: come, we must attend.

SCENE II.—The same.

Enter Tarquin, Tullia, Sextus, Aruns, Lucretius on one side: Brutus meeting them on the other very humorously.[5]

Then what makest thou here, or he, or he? O Jupiter! if this command be kept strictly, we shall have empty benches: get you home, you that are here, for here will be nothing to do this day. A general concourse of wise men! ’twas never seen since the first chaos. Tarquin, if the general rule have no exceptions, thou wilt have an empty consistory.

How powerful am I, you Roman deities, that am able to trouble her that troubles a whole empire! Fools exempted, and women admitted! laugh, Democritus.[7] But have you nothing to say to madmen?

Then out of doors with Tarquin. What’s he that may sit in a calm valley, and will choose to repose in a tempestuous mountain, but a madman? that may live in tranquillous pleasures, and will seek out a kingdom’s care, but a madman? who would seek innovation in a commonwealth in public, or be overruled by a curst[8] wife in private, but a fool or a madman? Give me thy hand, Tarquin; shall we two be dismissed together from the Capitol?

Nay, soft, soft, good blood of the Tarquins, let’s have a few cold words first, and I am gone in an instant. I claim the privilege of the nobility of Rome, and by that privilege my seat in the Capitol. I am a lord by birth, my place is as free in the Capitol as Horatius, thine; or thine, Lucretius; thine, Sextus; Aruns, thine; or any here: I am a lord, and you banish all the lord fools from the presence. You’ll have few to wait upon the king, but gentlemen. Nay, I am easily persuaded then—hands off! since you will not have my company, you shall have my room.

SCENE III.—A Public Place in Rome.

Who, I your kinsman! though I be of the blood of the Tarquins, yet no cousin, gentle prince.

No; I was cousin to the Tarquins when they were subjects, but dare claim no kindred as they are sovereigns; Brutus is not so mad, though he be merry, but he hath wit enough to keep his head on his shoulders.

Why do you, my lord, thus lose your hours, and neither profess war nor domestic profit? the first might beget you love, the other riches.

Because I would live. Have I not answered you? because I would live. Fools and madmen are no rubs[16] in the way of usurpers; the firmament can brook but one sun, and for my part I must not shine: I had rather live an obscure black than appear a fair white to be shot at. The end of all is, I would live. Had Servius been a shrub, the wind had not shook him: or a madman, he had not perished. I covet no more wit nor employment than as much as will keep life and soul together—I would but live.

You are satirical, cousin Brutus: but to the purpose. The king dreamt a strange and ominous dream last night, and, to be resolved of the event, my brother Sextus and I must to the oracle.

And, because we would be well accompanied, we have got leave of the king that you, Brutus, shall associate us, for our purpose is to make a merry journey on’t.

To make you merry: I shall, nay, I would make you merry, or tickle you till you laugh. The oracle! I’ll go to be resolved of some doubts private to myself: nay, princes, I am so much endeared both to your loves and companies, that you shall not have the power to be rid of me. What limits have we for our journey?

Collatine is troubled with the common disease of all new-married men; he’s sick of the wife: his excuse is, forsooth, that Lucrece will not let him go: but you, having neither wife nor wit to hold you, I hope will not disappoint us.

ACT THE SECOND.

SCENE I.—A Street in Rome.

Fortune, I embrace thee, that thou hast assisted me in finding my master; the gods of good Rome keep my lord and master out of all bad company!

Would you ha’ court news, camp news, city news, or country news, or would you know what’s the news at home?

The news at court is, that a small leg and a silk stocking is in the fashion for your lord, and the water that God Mercury makes[21] is in request with your lady. The heaviness of the king’s wine makes many a light head, and the emptiness of his dishes many full bellies; eating and drinking was never more in use; you shall find the baddest legs in boots, and the worst faces in masks. They keep their old stomachs still: the king’s good cook hath the most wrong; for that which was wont to be private only to him is now usurped among all the other officers; for now every man in his place, to the prejudice of the master cook, makes bold to lick his own fingers.

The greatest news in the camp is that there is no news at all; for being no camp at all, how can there be any tidings from it?

The senators are rich, their wives fair, credit grows cheap, and traffic dear, for you have many that are broke; the poorest man that is may take up what he will, so he will be but bound—to a post till he pay the debt. There was one courtier lay with twelve men’s wives in the suburbs, and pressing farther to make one more cuckold within the walls, and being taken with the manner,[22] had nothing to say for himself but this—he that made twelve made thirteen.

There is no news there but at the ale-house; there’s the most receipt. And is it not strange, my lord, that so many men love ale that know not what ale is?

Why, ale is a kind of juice made of the precious grain called malt; and what is malt? Malt’s M A L T; and what is M A L T? M much, A ale, L little, T thrift; that is, much ale, little thrift.

My lady must needs speak with you about earnest business, that concerns her nearly, and I was sent in all haste to entreat your lordship to come away.

Ay, marry, sir, the way into her were a way worth following, and that’s the reason that so many serving-men that are familiar with their mistresses have lost the name of servitors, and are now called their masters’ followers. Rest you merry!

SCENE II.—The Temple at Delphi.

Enter Apollo’s Priests, with tapers; after them, Aruns, Sextus, and Brutus, with their oblations, all kneeling before the Oracle.

The blood of the slaughtered sacrifice made this floor as slippery as the place where Tarquin treads; ’tis glassy and as smooth as ice: I was proud to hear the oracle so gracious to the blood of the Tarquins, and so I fell.

I fear not the madman Brutus; and for Aruns, let me alone to buckle[25] with him: I’ll be the first at my mother’s lips for a kingdom.

If the madman have not been before you, Sextus. If oracles be oracles, their phrases are mystical; they speak still in clouds. Had he meant a natural mother he would not ha’ spoke it by circumstance.

Tullia, if ever thy lips were pleasing to me, let it be at my return from the oracle.

If a kiss will make me a king, Tullia, I will spring to thee, though through the blood of Sextus.

Earth, I acknowledge no mother but thee; accept me as thy son, and I shall shine as bright in Rome as Apollo himself in his temple at Delphos.

SCENE III.—The Senate-house.

Enter Tarquin, Tullia, and Collatine, Scevola, Horatius, Lucretius, Valerius, Nobles.

I will. We went from hither when we went from hence, arrived thither when we landed there, made an end of our prayers when we had done our orisons, when thus quoth Phœbus: “Tarquin shall be happy whilst he is blest, govern while he reigns, wake when he sleeps not, sleep when he wakes not, quaff when he drinks, feed when he eats, gape when his mouth opens, live till he die, and die when he can live no longer.” So Phœbus commends him to you.

Adding withal, that to depose the late king, which in others had been arch-treason, in Tarquin was honour; what in Brutus had been usurpation, in Tarquin was lawful succession; and for Tullia, though it be parricide for a child to kill her father, in Tullia it was charity by death to rid him of all his calamities. Phœbus himself said she was a good child—and shall not I say as he says?—to tread upon her father’s skull,

If Tullia will send Brutus abroad for news, and after at his return not endure the telling of it, let Tullia either get closer ears, or get for Brutus a stricter tongue.

What, weeping-ripe, Lucretius! possible? Now lords, lads, friends, fellows, young madcaps, gallants, and old courtly ruffians, all subjects under one tyranny, and therefore should be partners of one and the same unanimity, shall we go single ourselves by two and two, and go talk treason? then ’tis but his yea, and my nay, if we be called to question. Or shall’s go use some violent bustling to break through this thorny servitude? or shall we every man go sit like a man in desperation, and with Lucretius weep at Rome’s misery. Now am I for all things, anything, or nothing. I can laugh with Scevola, weep with this good old man, sing “Oh hone hone” with Valerius, fret with Horatius Cocles, be mad like myself, or neutrize with Collatine. Say, what shall’s do?

I am of Collatine’s mind now. Valerius, sing us a bawdy song, and make’s merry: nay, it shall be so.

The time that should have been seriously spent in the state-house, I ha’ learnt securely to spend in a wenching-house, and now I profess myself anything but a statesman.

We ha’ been mad lords long, now let us be merry lords. Horatius, maugre thy melancholy, and Lucretius, in spite of thy sorrow, I’ll have a song. A subject for the ditty?

Nay, you shall stay, Horatius; Lucretius, so shall you; he removes himself from the love of Brutus that shrinks from my side till we have had a song of all the pretty suburbians:[30] sit round. When, Valerius?

The rest we’ll hear within. What offence is there in this, Lucretius? what hurt’s in this, Horatius? is it not better to sing with our heads on than to bleed with our heads off? I ne’er took Collatine for a politician till now. Come, Valerius; we’ll run over all the wenches in Rome, from the community of lascivious Flora to the chastity of divine Lucrece; come, good Horatius.

SCENE IV.—A Room in the House of Collatine.

Indeed, madam, for my own part I wish Mistress Mirable well, as one fellow servant ought to wish to another, but to say that ever I flung any sheep’s eyes in her face—how say you, Mistress Mirable, did I ever offer it?

For my own part, madam, as I am a true Roman by nature, though no Roman by my nose, I never spent the least lip-labour on Mistress Mirable, never so much as glanced, never used any winking or pinking, never nodded at her—no, not so much as when I was asleep; never asked her the question so much as what’s her name: if you can bring any man, woman, or child, that can say so much behind my back as “For he did but kiss her, for I did but kiss her, and so let her go,” let my Lord Collatine, instead of plucking my coat, pluck my skin over my ears and turn me away naked, that wheresoever I shall come I may be held a raw serving-man hereafter.

If ever I knew what belongs to these cases, or yet know what they mean; if ever I used any plain dealing, or were ever worth such a jewel, would I might die like a beggar! If ever I were so far read in my grammar as to know what an interjection is, or a conjunction copulative, would I might never have good of my qui quæ quod! Why, do you think, madam, I have no more care of myself, being but a stripling, than to go to it at these years? Flesh and blood cannot endure it; I shall even spoil one of the best faces in Rome with crying at your unkindness.

I ha’ done. See if you can spy your lord returning from the court, and give me notice what strangers he brings home with him.

SCENE V.—Outside the House of Collatine.

Come, Valerius, let’s hear, in our way to the house of Collatine, that you went late hammering of concerning the taverns in Rome.

Courtesy strangely requited; this none but the son of Tarquin would have enterprised.

I like it, I applaud it; this will come to somewhat in the end; when Heaven has cast up his account, some of them will be called to a hard reckoning. For my part, I dreamt last night I went a-fishing.

My lords, the best plum-porridge in all Rome cools for your honours; dinner is piping hot upon the table, and if you make not the more haste you are like to have but cold cheer: the cook hath done his part, and there’s not a dish on the dresser but he has made it smoke for you; if you have good stomachs, and come not in while the meat is hot, you’ll make hunger and cold meet together.

My lord Valerius, I have even a suit to your honour. I ha’ not the power to part from you without a relish, a note, a tone; we must get an air betwixt us.

And be everlastingly bound to your honour. I am now forsaking the world and the devil, and somewhat leaning towards the flesh; if you could but teach me how to choose a wench fit for my stature and complexion, I should rest yours in all good offices.

But, God’s me! am I trifling here with you, and dinner cools o’ the table, and I am called to my attendance! O my sweet Lord Valerius!

ACT THE THIRD.

SCENE I.—The Senate-house.

Enter Sextus, Aruns, Brutus, Collatine, Valerius, Scevola, Cocles, with Soldiers, drum and colours. They march over the stage, and congee to the King and Queen.

SCENE II.—The Camp before Ardea.

Stir not, for if thou dost I’ll broach thee straight upon this pike. The word?

Pass;—stay, who walks the round to-night? the general, or any of his captains?

Pass freely; I this night must stand ’twixt them and danger. The time of night?

SCENE III.—Inside Sextus’s Tent. A banquet prepared.

What shall’s do? Come, a health to the general’s health; and Valerius, that sits the most civilly, shall begin it; I cannot talk till my blood be mingled with this blood of grapes. Fill for Valerius. Thou shouldst drink well, for thou hast been in the German wars; if thou lovest me, drink upse freeze.[38]

Nay, since Brutus has spoke the word, the first health shall be imposed on you, Valerius; and if ever you have been Germanized, let it be after the Dutch fashion.

Since you will needs enforce a high-German health, look well to your heads, for I come upon you with this Dutch tassaker[39]: if you were of a more noble science than you are, it will go near to break your heads round.

Gramercies, Valerius; came this high-German health as double as his double ruff, I’d pledge it.

Were it in Lubeck or double-double beer, their own natural liquor, I’d pledge it were it as deep as his ruff: let the health go round about the board, as his band goes round about his neck. I am no more afraid of this Dutch fashion than I should be of the heathenish invention.

I must entreat you spare me, for my brain brooks not the fumes of wine; their vaporous strength offends me much.

I would have none spare me, for I’ll spare none. Collatine will pledge no health unless it be to his Lucrece.

Sextus, sit fast; for I proclaim myself a woman’s champion, and shall unhorse thee else.

For my own part, I’m a married man, and I’ll speak to my wife to thank thee, Brutus.

I cannot say but that I have a good wife too, and I love her: but if she were in heaven, beshrew me if I would wish her so much hurt as to desire her company upon earth again; yet, upon my honour, though she be not very fair, she is exceeding honest.

Ha, ha! all captains, and stand upon the honesty of your wives! Is’t possible, think you,

I should not show I loved my wife, not to take her part in her absence: I hold her inferior to none.

Then mount cheval! Brutus, this night take you the charge of the army. I’ll see the trial of this wager: ’twould do me good to see some of them find their wives in the arms of their lovers, they are so confident in their virtues. Brutus, we’ll interchange goodnight; be thou but as provident o’er the army as we (if our horses fail not) expeditious in our journey. To horse, to horse!

SCENE IV.—A Room in the House of Collatine.

Madam, the Lord Turnus his man was thrice for you here, to have entreated you home to supper; he says his lord takes it unkindly he could not have your company.

Nothing does me good, but that if my wife were watching, all theirs were wantoning, and if I ha’ lost, none can brag of their winnings.

Now, Collatine, to yours; either Lucrece must be better employed than the rest, or you content to have her virtues rank with the rest.

Soft, soft, let’s steal upon her as upon the rest, lest having some watch-word at our arrival, we may give her notice to be better prepared: nay, by your leave, Collatine, we’ll limit you no advantage.

If I make not mine learn to live by the prick of her needle for this, I’m no Roman.

If one woman among so many bad may be found good, if a white wench may prove a black swan, it is Lucrece; her beauty hath relation to her virtue, and her virtue correspondent to her beauty, and in both she is matchless.

Stay, the wager was as well which of our wives was fairest too; it stretched as well to their beauty as to their continence. Who shall judge that?

That can none of us, because we are all parties. Let Prince Sextus determine it, who hath been with us, and been an eye-witness of their beauties.

He must: we have but idled from the camp, to try a merry wager about their wives, and this at the hazard of the King’s displeasure, should any man be missing from his charge. The powers that govern Rome make divine Lucrece for ever happy! Good-night.

But, Valerius, what thinkest thou of the country girls from whence we came, compared with our city wives whom we this night have tried?

Lucrece shall pardon him: we ha’ took our leaves of our wives, nor shall Collatine be before us, though our ladies in other things come behind you.

SCENE V.—The Road to Ardea.

He’s for the city, we for the camp. The night makes the way tedious and melancholy; prithee a merry song to beguile it.

Nay, my lord, I heard them all have a conceit of an Englishman—a strange people, in the western islands—one that for his variety in habit, humour, and gesture, puts down all other nations whatsoever; a little of that, if you love me.

Good Valerius, this has brought us even to the skirts of the camp. Enter, lords.

ACT THE FOURTH.

SCENE I.—A Room in the House of Collatine.

SCENE II.—Another Room in the same.

Soft, soft; not too loud; imagine we were now going on the ropes with eggs at our heels; he that hath but a creaking shoe I would he had a crick in his neck; tread not too hard for disturbing[56] Prince Sextus.

I wonder the prince would ha’ none of us stay in his chamber and help him to bed.

What an ass art thou to wonder! there may be many causes: thou know’st the prince is a soldier, and soldiers many times want shift: who can say whether he have a clean shirt on or no? for any thing that we know he hath used staves-acre[57] o’ late, or hath ta’en a medicine to kill the itch. What’s that to us? we did our duty to proffer our service.

And what should we enter farther into his thoughts? Come, shall’s to bed? I am as drowsy as a dormouse, and my head is as heavy as though I had a night-cap of lead on.

And my eyes begin to glue themselves together. I was till supper was done altogether for your repast, and now after supper I am only for your repose: I think, for the two virtues of eating and sleeping, there’s never a Roman spirit under the cope of Heaven can put me down.

For shame! what a conjuring and caterwauling keep you here, that my lady cannot sleep! you shall have her call by and by, and send you all to bed with a witness.

SCENE III.—Lucrece’s Bedchamber.

SCENE IV.—An Anteroom in Collatine’s House.

What’s o’clock, trow? my lord bade me be early ready with my gelding, for he would ride betimes in the morning: now had I rather be up an hour before my time than a minute after, for my lord will be so infinitely angry if I but oversleep myself a moment that I had better be out of my life than in his displeasure: but soft, some of my Lord Collatine’s men lie in the next chamber; I care not if I call them up, for it grows towards day. What, Pompey, Pompey!

I would my Lord Sextus and you were both in the hay-loft, for Pompey can take none of his natural rest among you; here’s e’en “Ostler, rise, and give my horse another peck of hay.”

Well, Pompey was born to do Rome good in being so kind to the young prince’s gelding, but if for my kindness in giving him pease and oats he should kick me, I should scarce say “God-a-mercy, horse.” But come, I’ll go with thee to the stable.

SCENE V.—Sextus’s Chamber in Collatine’s House.

SCENE VI.—The Camp at Ardea.

What, so early, Valerius, and your voice not up yet? thou wast wont to be my lark, and raise me with thy early notes.

I was never so hard set yet, my lord, but I had ever a fit of mirth for my friend.

Prithee, let’s hear it then while we may, for I divine thy music and my madness are both short-lived; we shall have somewhat else to do ere long, we hope, Valerius.

Methinks our wars go not well forwards, Horatius: we have greater enemies to bustle with than the Ardeans, if we durst but front them.

Then we married men should have the advantage of the bachelors, Horatius, especially such as have revelling wives, those that can caper in the city while their husbands are in the camp. Collatine, why are you so sad? the thought of this should not trouble you, having a Lucrece to your bedfellow.

Will you survey your forces, and give order for a present assault? Your soldiers long to be tugging with the Ardeans.

“Thank you.” “No.” “Well; I’ll to my tent.” Get thee to thy tent, and a coward go with thee, if thou hast no more spirit to a speedy encounter.

Neither; to pursue a fool in his humour is the next way to make him more humorous. I’ll not be guilty of his folly; thank you, no! Before I wish him health again when he is sick of the sullens, may I die, not like a Roman, but like a runagate!

Nay, if he be dying, as I could wish he were, I’ll ring out his funeral peal; and this it is.

Did nobody see my lord Collatine? Oh! my lady commends her to you; here’s a letter.

Fie upon’t! never was poor Pompey so overlaboured as I have been. I think I have spurred my horse such a question, that he is scarce able to wig or wag his tail for an answer; but my lady bade me spare for no horse-flesh, and I think I have made him run his race.

My lords, the princely Sextus has been at home, but what he hath done there I may partly mistrust, but cannot altogether resolve you: besides, my lady swore me that whatsoever I suspected I should say nothing.

If thou wilt not say thy mind, I prithee sing thy mind, and then thou mayst save thine oath.

Indeed, I was not sworn to that; I may either laugh out my news or sing ’em, and so I may save mine oath to my lady.

ACT THE FIFTH.

SCENE I.—A Room in the House of Collatine.

Enter Brutus, Collatinus, Horatius, Scevola, and Valerius on one side, Lucretius on the other.

SCENE II.—The Outskirts of Rome.

Alarum. Enter Tarquin and Tullia flying, pursued by Brutus and the Romans with drums and colours. Porsenna, Aruns and Sextus meet and join with Tarquin and Tullia. Brutus and the Romans advance; they make a stand.

SCENE III.—A Bridge across the Tiber.

Alarum. The Romans are beaten off. Enter Brutus, Horatius, Valerius, Scevola, Lucretius and Collatine.

Alarum. Enter Tarquin, Porsenna, and Aruns, with their pikes and targeters.

SCENE IV.—Inside Porsenna’s Tent.

SCENE V.—A Public Place in Rome.

SCENE VI.—Outside Rome.

Alarum. Enter Tarquin with an arrow in his breast, Tullia with him, pursued by Collatine, Lucretius, Scevola.

[Alarum; they fight with single swords, and, being deadly wounded and panting for breath, they strike at each other with their gauntlets and fall.

To the Reader.

Because we would not that any man’s expectation should be deceived in the ample printing of this book, lo, Gentle Reader, we have inserted these few songs, which were added by the stranger that lately acted Valerius his part, in form following.

Round and sound, all of a colour; buy a very fine marking stone, marking stone; round and sound, all of a colour; buy a very fine marking stone, a very very fine!

Bread and—meat—bread—and meat, for the ten—der—mercy of God, to the poor pris—ners of Newgate, four—score and—ten—poor—prisoners!

Buy a mat, a mil-mat, mat, or a hassock for your pew, a stopple for your close-stool, or a pesock to thrust your feet in!

Here lies a company of very poor women in the dark dungeon, hungry, cold, and comfortless night and day! Pity the poor women in the dark dungeon!

FOOTNOTES

INTRODUCTION FOOTNOTES.

[3] Until recently, Heywood’s plays were only accessible piecemeal and in parts. Dodsley’s collection contained two; Dilke’s contained three, and Baldwyn’s two. Between 1842 and 1851, the Old Shakespeare Society produced altogether twelve; while Mr. Halliwell in 1853 printed the Lancashire Witches separately. At last, in 1874 Mr. John Pearson issued a complete edition in six volumes. Since that date another play in MS. by Heywood, The Captives, was discovered and printed by Mr. A. H. Bullen in the last volume of his Old Plays (1885).

[4] With this main-plot Heywood has interwoven a subordinate and independent story. To dwell upon this under-plot would be superfluous. Yet I may point out that it is borrowed from an Italian Novella by Illicini, the incidents of which Heywood carefully transferred to English scenes. In like manner The Captive, consists of a main-plot borrowed from the Mostellaria of Plautus and an under-plot adapted from a novella of the Neapolitan, Masuccio. See my Shakspere’s Predecessors (p. 462), and a letter written by me to the Academy (Dec. 12, 1885).

A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS FOOTNOTES.

[1] “The Shaking of the Sheets” a popular tune to which many ballads ware set. Here a double entente is intended.

[2] “In a good time that man both wins and woos, That takes his wife down in her wedding shoes.” a proverbial saying.

[3] frets the points at which a string is to be stopped in a lute or guitar.—Halliwell.

[6] be stirring early with the lark to-morrow did Heywood remember Shakespeare’s “Stir with the lark to-morrow, gentle Norfolk”?

[8] “Rogero”, “The Beginning of the World”, “John come kiss me now.”... the tunes here mentioned are all more or less familiar from other passages in the old dramatists.

[9] sowse we have here a number of not very intelligible terms borrowed from falconry. “At the sowse” was said of a bird when the hawk swooped straight down upon it.

[17] enter over the stage they evidently pass through the gallery above and leave the stage to Wendoll.

[22] from the grate alluding obviously to the debtors’ prisons; the lines remind us at once of Pickwick.

[23] wooden knife with which the scraps were swept into the voider or basket.

[30] noddy said to have been something like cribbage; of the other games mentioned accounts are easily accessible, while it would be superfluous to comment on the various quibbles.

[38] cast beyond the moon a proverbial expression for anything extravagant or out of reach.

[39] patience perforce “patience perforce,” a phrase when some evil must be endured.—Halliwell.

[40] like the angel’s hand, Hast stayed me from a bloody sacrifice alluding to Gen. xxii. 10, 11.

[41] uncivil kern “kern” signified in general any uncivilised person: used especially of the Irish.

[44] rebato a species of ruff for the neck: the wire would be used to stiffen it.

[48] gotten those perfect tongues i.e. acquired those tongues perfectly (French, German and Italian).

[51] filled ‘filled’ is equivalent perhaps to ‘filled in,’ i.e. on the tomb.

THE FAIR MAID OF THE WEST FOOTNOTES.

[3] Roughman “Ruffman” in the old edition, in which, also, “Fawcett” is spelled “Forset.”

[6] the fleet’s bound for the Islands the so-called “Island Voyage” (1597) was against the Azores and Spanish East and West Indies.

[11] Graves wine i.e. from the Graves district of Gascony, so called from the pebbly character of the soil, and to-day celebrated for its red, but more especially for its white wines.

[12] snick-up a term of contempt, as much as to say, “Go and be hanged.”

[15] dumb show “intended to denote the departure of the General (the Earl of Essex) and his followers.”—Collier.

[17] corn grew to be at a high rate we learn from Stow that in 1596 wheat was six, seven, and eight shillings per bushel; the dearth continued and increased in 1597.—Collier.

[23] Mary Ambree a famous English heroine, with whom Long Meg is sometimes associated.

[28] jowl of ling the fish so-called, which had been served to the guests in the Portcullis.

[34] dissolutely he means “resolutely.” Slender makes the same blunder (Mer. Wives, i., 1).

[37] Aragoosa query “Saragossa,” which produces a large quantity of common wine.

[40] bastard bastard was the name of a sweet Mediterranean wine: a time-honoured joke.

[46] bragging Thrasos i.e. boasters, Thraso being a braggart in one of Terence’s plays.

[53] hautboys long i.e. they are to play for some time so as to admit of fresh stage arrangements for the coming scenes.

[58] you that made Paul’s to stink an allusion to the unsavoury exploit of a Spaniard, often referred to at this period.

THE ENGLISH TRAVELLER FOOTNOTES.

[1] Histrio-Mastix by William Prynne: published in 1633. The full title of this bitter Puritan treatise was Histrio-Mastix, the Player’s Scourge, or Actor’s Tragædie.

[7] speck ... whig a species of inferior drink, made from whey, and drunk by the lower classes in place of small beer. The exact nature of “speck” is unknown.

[9] burnt wine burnt wine, it will be remembered, was much affected by Pepys.

[19] “This piece of pleasant exaggeration gave rise to the title of Cowley’s Latin play, Naufragium Joculare, and furnished the idea of the best scene in it.”—Charles Lamb.

[22] Bermoothes “Bermoothes” is the usual form of “Bermudas” in the old dramatists.

[35] bottle bundle; Cotgrave has: “boteler, to botle or bundle up, to make into botles or bundles.”

[39] mainprize a technical term: a writ of mainprize was sent to the sheriff, directing him to take sureties for a prisoner.

[40] shrievalty it was customary for the sheriff to have posts in front of his house, to which notices were affixed.

[45] no quarrels to unkindness no quarrels are so bitter as those caused by unkindness.

[46] goes in at one door, and comes out at another the old stage was wanting in moveable scenery. The audience had to suppose that when Young Geraldine re-entered, he was outside Mistress Wincott’s chamber.

[55] Fortune play-house the first theatre of this name, built by Henslowe and Alleyn, was burnt down in 1621: another theatre was erected on the site in 1622, and in old views of the latter a rudely carved figure, presumably of Fortune, is noticeable on the front of the house.—(See frontispiece to Dekker’s Plays in this series.)

THE WISE-WOMAN OF HOGSDON FOOTNOTES.

[5] “&c.,” here and elsewhere, means that the actor may add more to the same effect, if he please.

[8] say nay, and take them “maids say nay, and take it,” was a proverbial saying.

[10] I’ll be with thee to bring... in this phrase—of which Dyce says that no satisfactory explanation has been given—“to bring,” has apparently the force of “wholly” or “thoroughly.”

[16] Erra Pater usually the name of a certain mythical astrologer of the “Wandering Jew” type; sometimes, however, as here, applied to an almanac.

[17] Statute of Winchester the celebrated Statute passed in 1285: to what clause in the Statute reference is made is not clear.

[18] cutting Dick a bully of the time: “cutting” often has the sense of “swaggering.”

[21] the Counter there were two prisons of this name, one in Wood Street, the other in the Poultry.

[23] Jack Drum’s entertainment “Tom or John Drum’s Entertainment, a phrase signifying ill-treatment, or turning an unwelcome guest out of doors.”—Halliwell.

[24] Sir Boniface “sir” was applied to all University men who had taken their B.A. degree.

[27] ready with a wet finger i.e. with as much ease as any light substance is caught up by moistening one’s finger.

[38] choke-pear ... popering a pear brought from Poperingues in Flanders; the choke-pear was a coarse variety.

[40] the woman killed with kindness an obvious allusion to Heywood’s own masterpiece.

[44] I was, sir, of Peterhouse there is a tradition that Heywood himself was a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge.

[45] I proceeded in Oxford i.e. to his degree, his college, as he tells us, being Brazenose.

[47] Lusty Juventus there is an old interlude entitled Lusty Juventus, printed about the year 1560.

[48] St. George’s Fields ... Tuttle, Finsbury he mentions three well-known duelling resorts.

[49] Stafford law “he has had a trial in Stafford Court” was a way of saying “he has been beaten or ill-treated,” Cotgrave. Florio uses the expression “Stafford-law”=braccesca licenza.

[53] Sir Pandarus Pandarus was the prince of go-betweens; hence the word “pander.”

[56] Cheap Cross at Cheapside, with a statue of the Virgin on it. It was removed in 1643, by Puritan influence, on account of the reverence which it received from Catholics.

[59] It is to be understood that the occupants of the various inner rooms see and hear all that transpires between Young Chartley and Luce without being themselves seen or heard.

THE RAPE OF LUCRECE FOOTNOTES.

[2] balm the consecrated oil used at coronations. Shakespeare has the expression: “’Tis not the balm, the sceptre and the ball.”

[11] he was: by power divine the old editions miss the point by reading “he was by power divine.”

[21] the water that God Mercury makes i.e. a cosmetic lotion containing mercury.

[22] being taken with the manner caught in the act. Cowel says, “manner or mainour denotes the thing that a thief taketh or stealeth.”

[30] suburbians the suburbs of London were formerly the chief resort of loose women.

[33] with Duke Humphrey dine i.e. not dine at all. “This phrase is said to have arisen from part of the public walks in Old St. Paul’s called Duke Humphrey’s walk, where those who were without the means of defraying their expenses at a tavern were accustomed to walk in hope of procuring an invitation.”—Halliwell.

[36] Attalia Heywood was probably thinking of Horace’s Attalicæ condiciones.

[38] upse freeze strong beer, imported from Friesland: hence to drink upse freeze was to drink hard.

[41] lavoltoes a dance in the course of which the woman, after being turned round several times, sprang up as high as she could with her partner’s assistance.

[48] There is no dash in the original; the singer evidently substituted the refrain for the omitted word.

[53] chapine chapines were shoes with very high soles, worn by ladies to make them look tall.

[63] This catch, which jokes in such a ribald fashion over Tarquin’s crime, furnishes a pointed example of the way in which the dramatists of the period pandered to the tastes of the less refined among their audiences.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.

The six volume Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood, published by J. Pearson in 1874, was consulted for many of the corrections listed below.

Relabel footnote markers, collect footnotes at the end of the text, and add an entry to the TOC.

Change (Such words as “trifulk,” ... “tenébrous,”) to trifurk and tenebrous, respectfully.

(a3s1) “The host is now/Upon their march....” change the speaker from Lucretius to Tarquin. (Lucretius never entered this scene).

(a3s5) “Terry, derry, &c.” (3rd to last line in song) delete the first comma.

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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Thomas Heywood

THOMAS HEYWOOD

CONTENTS.

THOMAS HEYWOOD.

THE RED BULL THEATRE.

A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS.

THE PROLOGUE.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS.

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I.—A Room in Frankford’s House.

SCENE II.—A Yard.

SCENE III.—The Open Country.

ACT THE SECOND.

SCENE I.—Frankford’s Study.

SCENE II.—A Room in the Gaol.

SCENE III.—A Room in Frankford’s House.

ACT THE THIRD.

SCENE I.—A Room in Sir Charles Mountford’s House.

SCENE II.—A Sitting-Room in Frankford’s House.

ACT THE FOURTH.

SCENE I.—A Room in Old Mountford’s House.

SCENE II.—A Prison Cell.

SCENE III.—A Room in Frankford’s House.

SCENE IV.—Another part of the House.

SCENE V.—Outside Frankford’s House.

SCENE VI.—The Hall of Frankford’s House.

ACT THE FIFTH.

SCENE I.—The Entrance to Sir Francis Acton’s House.

SCENE II.—A Room in Frankford’s House.

SCENE III.—A Country Road.

SCENE IV.—Before the Manor.

SCENE V.—A Room in the Manor.

SCENE VI.—Mistress Frankford’s Bedchamber.

EPILOGUE.

THE FAIR MAID OF THE WEST. Part I.

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.

To the Reader.

PROLOGUE.[2]

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

THE FAIR MAID OF THE WEST.

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I.—A Street in Plymouth.

SCENE II.—In front of the Castle Tavern.

SCENE III.—A Room in the Castle Tavern.

SCENE IV.—The Hoe.

SCENE V.—The same.

ACT THE SECOND.

SCENE I.—Foy. The Windmill Tavern.

SCENE II.—Fayal.[21]

SCENE III.—A Field near Foy.

SCENE IV.—Fayal.

ACT THE THIRD.

SCENE I.—Foy. A Street outside the Windmill Tavern.

SCENE II.—A Room in the Tavern.

SCENE III.—A Street in Foy.

SCENE IV.—The Windmill Tavern.

SCENE V.—A Bedroom in the Tavern.

ACT THE FOURTH.

SCENE I.—On Board a Spanish Vessel.

SCENE II.—The Windmill Tavern.

SCENE III.—Morocco. The Court.

SCENE IV.—On Board an English Ship.

ACT THE FIFTH.

SCENE I.—Morocco. The Court.

SCENE II.—The same.

THE ENGLISH TRAVELLER.

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.

TO THE READER.

PROLOGUE.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

THE ENGLISH TRAVELLER.

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I.—A Room in Old Wincott’s House.

SCENE II.—A Room in Old Lionel’s House.

ACT THE SECOND.

SCENE I.—A Room in Old Wincott’s House.

SCENE II.—Before Old Lionel’s House.

ACT THE THIRD.

SCENE I.—The Dining Hall in Old Geraldine’s House.

A WOMAN KILLED WITH
KINDNESS.

A WOMAN KILLED WITH
KINDNESS.

THE FAIR MAID OF
THE WEST.
Part I.

THE
FAIR MAID OF THE WEST.

THE
ENGLISH TRAVELLER.

THE
ENGLISH TRAVELLER.

THE WISE-WOMAN OF
HOGSDON.

THE WISE-WOMAN OF
HOGSDON.