The Project Gutenberg ebook of The Works of John Marston, edited by A. H. Bullen.

[349] In the margin of old eds., opposite the title, is printed “Vexat censura columbas.” (Juvenal, Sat. ii. 63.)

[350] So ed. 1.—Ed. 2. “ragged.”

[351] “I suppose this is a word coined from tod, a certain weight of sheep’s wool. He seems willing to intimate that the duke, &c., are mutton-mongers. The meaning of laced mutton is well known.”—Steevens.—Not at all satisfactory.

[352] Old eds. “Howle againe”—printed as part of the text.

[353] So ed. 2.—Ed. 1. “pray.”

[354] “Within herself”—added in ed. 2.

[355] “The church”—added in ed. 2.

[356] “Of”—added in ed. 2.

[357] Omitted in ed. 2.

[358] Omitted in ed. 2.

[359] “I am weary ... now”—added in ed. 2.

[360] There is an allusion to the old superstition (which Ben Jonson has amusingly illustrated in The Devil is an Ass, v. 5), that a person possessed by the devil was able to converse in various tongues.

[361] A term of contempt for a sordid old man.—Cf. The Widow, ii. 2:—“Hear you me that, old huddle" (Middleton, v. 165).

[362] Ed. 2. “Penlolians.”

[363] “Monkeys, apes, stellions, lizards, wasps, ichneumons, swallows, sparrows, muskins, hedge-sparrows feed on spiders,” says Dr. Muffet in one of his delightful chapters on spiders in The Theater of Insects (Topsel’s Nat. Hist., ed. 1658, p. 1073).

[364] The housings of a horse.

[365] Mistress (Ital.).

[366] Added in ed. 2.

[367] The cry of the ape-ward when the ape was to climb the pole and display his feats of agility.

[368] The sport of Running at the Ring, in which the tilter tried to drive the point of his spear through a suspended ring.

[369] This word is used in the Duchess of Malfi, ii. 1 :—“The fins of her eyelids look most teeming blue!”

[370] “Greater than Great, great, great, great Pompey! Pompey the Huge!”—Love’s Labour Lost, v. 2.

[371] Cuckold (Ital.).

[372] Unshell.

[373] Obscene exclamation (from the Italian).

[374] “Nay, to select ... freeze but to think it” (ll. 146 -188).—This passage was added in ed. 2.

[375] See Skeat’s Etym. Dict. s. KICKSHAWS.

[376] For “should show” old ed. gives “shue should.”

[377] This speech was added in ed. 2.

[378] Ed. 2. “in middest.”

[379] Added in ed. 2.

[380] “O the father ... my dear Castilio” (ll. 256-303).—This passage was added in ed. 2.

[381] Old ed. “on.”

[382] Old ed. “burstes.”

[383] An allusion to Baldessar Castiglione, author of the famous book of manners, Il Cortese, which was translated into English (in 1561) by Sir Thomas Hoby.

[384] Ed. 1. “insinuating.”

[385] Ed. 1. “lights.”

[386] “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form, and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!”—Hamlet, act ii. sc. 2.

Enter Ferneze ushering Aurelia, Emilia and Maquerelle bearing up her train, Bianca attending: then exeunt Emilia and Bianca.

Fer. Possible!
What can be strange in him that’s drank with favour,[387]
Grows insolent with grace?—Speak, Maquerelle, speak.

Maq. To speak feelingly, more, more richly in solid sense than worthless words, give me those jewels of your ears to receive my enforced duty. As for my part, ’tis well known I can put up [388] anything [Ferneze privately feeds Maquerelle’s hands with jewels during this speech]; can bear patiently with any man: but when I heard he wronged your precious sweetness, I was enforced to take deep offence. ’Tis most certain he loves Emilia with high appetite: and, as she told me (as you know we women impart our secrets one to another), when she repulsed his suit, in that he was possessed with your endeared grace, Mendoza most ingratefully renounced all faith to you. 16

Maq. By heaven, witch, dried biscuit; and contested blushlessly he loved you but for a spurt or so.

Maq. Nay, he is the rustiest-jawed,[389] the foulest-mouthed knave in railing against our sex: he will rail against [390] women—

Maq. Why, when Emilia scorned his base unsteadiness, the black-throated rascal scolded, and said— 30

Maq. Why, that, at four, women were fools; at fourteen, drabs; at forty, bawds; at fourscore, witches; and [at] a hundred, cats.

Fer. But as for poor Ferneze’s fixèd heart,
Was never shadeless meadow drier parch’d
Under the scorching heat of heaven’s dog, 40
Than is my heart with your enforcing eyes.

Fer. Your smiles have been my heaven, your frowns my hell:
O, pity, then! grace should with beauty dwell.

Aurel. I will love thee, be it but in despite
Of that Mendoza:—witch!—Ferneze,—witch!—
Ferneze, thou art the duchess’ favourite:
Be faithful, private: but ’tis dangerous.

Fer. His love is lifeless that for love fears breath: 50
The worst that’s due to sin, O, would ’twere death!

Aurel. Enjoy my favour. I will be sick instantly and take physic: therefore in depth of night visit—

Maq. Visit her chamber, but conditionally you shall not offend her bed: by this diamond!

Men. Madam, your excellency is graciously encountered: I have been writing passionate flashes in honour of—

Aurel. Out, villain, villain!
O judgment, where have been my eyes? what
Bewitch’d election made me dote on thee? 80
What sorcery made me love thee? But, be gone;
Bury thy head. O, that I could do more
Than loath thee! hence, worst of ill!
No reason ask, our reason is our will.[392]

Men. Women! nay, Furies; nay, worse; for they torment only the bad, but women good and bad. Damnation of mankind! Breath, hast thou praised them for this? and is’t you, Ferneze, are wriggled into smock-grace? sit sure. O, that I could rail against these monsters in nature, models of hell, curse of the earth, women! that dare attempt anything, and what they attempt they care not how they accomplish; without all premeditation or prevention; rash in asking, desperate in working, impatient in suffering, extreme in desiring, slaves unto appetite, mistresses in dissembling, only constant in unconstancy, only perfect in counterfeiting: their words are feigned, their eyes forged, their sighs [393] dissembled, their looks counterfeit, their hair false, their given hopes deceitful, their very breath artificial: their blood is their only god; bad clothes, and old age, are only the devils they tremble at. That I could rail now! 102

Men. I! Come, come, sit; here’s my bare heart to thee,
As steady as is the centre to this [394] glorious world:
And yet, hark, thou art a cornuto,—but by me?

Men. Do not, do not with tart and spleenful breath
Lose him can lose thee. I offend my duke!
Bear record, O ye dumb and raw-air’d nights,
How vigilant my sleepless eyes have been 120
To watch the traitor! record, thou spirit of truth,
With what debasement I ha’ thrown myself
To under offices, only to learn
The truth, the party, time, the means, the place,
By whom, and when, and where thou wert disgrac’d!
And am I paid with slave? hath my intrusion
To places private and prohibited,
Only to observe the closer passages,
Heaven knows with vows of revelation,
Made me suspected, made me deem’d a villain? 130
What rogue hath wrong’d us?

Men. Err! ’tis too mild a name: but err and err,
Run giddy with suspect, ’fore through me thou know
That which most creatures, save thyself, do know:
Nay, since my service hath so loath’d reject,
’Fore I’ll reveal, shalt find them clipt together.

Men. The fitter to make a cornuto:[395] would your brows were most plain too! 140

Men. At women, true: why, what cold fleam [396] could choose,
Knowing a lord so honest, virtuous,
So boundless loving, bounteous, fair-shap’d, sweet,
To be contemn’d, abus’d, defam’d, made cuckold?
Heart! I hate all women for’t: sweet sheets, wax lights, antic bedposts, cambric smocks, villainous curtains, arras pictures, oiled hinges, and all the [397] tongue-tied lascivious witnesses of great creatures’ wantonness,—what salvation can you expect? 150

Men. Take’t: why, Ferneze is the man, Ferneze: I’ll prove’t; this night you shall take him in your sheets: will’t serve?

Men. God! how weak a lord are you! 160
Why, do you think there is no more but so?

Men. Nay, then, will I presume to counsel you:
It should be thus. You with some guard upon the sudden
Break into the princess’ chamber: I stay behind,
Without the door, through which he needs must pass:
Ferneze flies; let him: to me he comes; he’s kill’d
By me, observe, by me: you follow: I rail,
And seem to save the body. Duchess comes,
On whom (respecting her advancèd birth, 170
And your fair nature), I know, nay, I do know,
No violence must be us’d; she comes: I storm,
I praise, excuse Ferneze, and still maintain
The duchess’ honour: she for this loves me.
I honour you; shall know her soul, you mine:
Then naught shall she contrive in vengeance
(As women are most thoughtful in revenge)
Of her Ferneze, but you shall sooner know’t
Than she can think’t. Thus shall his death come sure,
Your duchess brain-caught: so your life secure. 180

Pietro. It is too well: my bosom and my heart
When nothing helps, cut off the rotten part.

Men. Who cannot feign friendship can ne’er produce the effects of hatred. Honest fool duke! subtle lascivious duchess! silly novice Ferneze! I do laugh at ye. My brain is in labour till it produce mischief, and I feel sudden throes, proofs sensible, the issue is at hand.
As bears shape young, so I’ll form my device,
Which grown proves horrid: vengeance makes men wise.

[387] “With favour”—omitted in some copies of ed. 2.

[388] Omitted in ed. 2.

[389] Ed. 2. “rustiest jade.”

[390] Ed. 1. “agen.”

[391] Ed. 1. “of.”

[392] Ed. 1. gives:—

“No reason else, my reason is my will.”

[393] Old eds. “sights” (and, as Dyce remarks, so the word was sometimes written).

[394] Ed. 1. “this center to this.”—Ed. 2. “this centre to the.”

[395] Ed. 2. “cuckolde.”

[396] Phlegm.

[397] Ed. 1. “ye.”

Pass. Yes, I can sing, fool, if you’ll bear the burden; and I can play upon instruments, scurvily, as gentlemen do. O, that I had been gelded! I should then have been a fat fool for a chamber, a squeaking fool for a tavern, and a private fool for all the ladies.

Mal. You are in good case since you came to court, fool: what, guarded, guarded![399] 9

Pass. Yes, faith, even as footmen and bawds wear velvet, not for an ornament of honour, but for a badge of drudgery; for, now the duke is discontented, I am fain to fool him asleep every night.

Pass. Horrible sore eyes; and so hath every cuckold, for the roots of the horns spring in the eyeballs, and that’s the reason the horn of a cuckold is as tender as his eye, or as that growing in the woman’s forehead twelve years since,[400] that could not endure to be touched. The duke hangs down his head like a columbine. 22

Pass. As the Welshman stole rushes when there was nothing else to filch; only to keep begging in fashion.

Pass. Faith, I utter small fragments, as your knight courts your city widow with jingling [402] of his gilt spurs, advancing his bush-coloured beard,[403] and taking tobacco: this is all the mirror of their knightly complements.[404] Nay, I shall talk when my tongue is a-going once; ’tis like a citizen on horseback, evermore in a false gallop. 33

Pass. Faith, I was wont to salute her as our English women are at their first landing in Flushing;[405] I would call her whore: but now that antiquity leaves her as an old piece of plastic [406] to work by, I only ask her how her rotten teeth fare every morning, and so leave her. She was the first that ever invented perfumed smocks for the gentlewomen, and woollen shoes, for fear of creaking for the visitant. She were an excellent lady, but that her face peeleth like Muscovy glass.[407] 43

Mal. And how doth thy old lord, that hath wit enough to be a flatterer, and conscience enough to be a knave?

Pass. O, excellent: he keeps beside me fifteen jesters, to instruct him in the art of fooling, and utters their jests in private to the duke and duchess: he’ll lie like to your Switzer or lawyer; he’ll be of any side for most money. 50

Pass. As your fiddler when he is paid.—He’ll thrive, I warrant you, while your young courtier stands like Good-Friday in Lent; men long to see it, because more fatting days come after it; else he’s the leanest and pitifullest actor in the whole pageant. Adieu, Malevole.

Mal. [Aside.] O world most vile, when thy loose vanities,
Taught by this fool, do make the fool seem wise!

Pass. Ay, as a pettifogger by his buckram bag. I am as common in the court as an hostess’s lips in the country; knights, and clowns, and knaves, and all share me: the court cannot possibly be without me. Adieu, Malevole.

[398] This scene was added in ed. 2.

[399] Ornamented with guards or facings.—The coats of fools were commonly guarded.

[400] “The woman with the horn in her forehead was probably Margaret Griffith, wife of David Owen, of Llan Gaduain, in Montgomery. A portrait of her is in existence, prefixed to a scarce pamphlet, entitled, ‘A miraculous and monstrous, but yet most true and certayne Discourse of a Woman, now to be seen in London, of the age of threescore yeares or thereabouts, in the midst of whose forehead there groweth out a crooked Horne of four ynches long. Imprinted at London, by Thomas Orwin, and are to be sold by Edward White, dwelling at the little north dore of Paules Church, at the signe of the Gun, 1588.’”—Gilchrist.

[401] To beg a person for a fool was to apply to be made guardian of a person who had been legally proved to be an idiot. It was in the king’s power to grant the custody of an idiot’s person and the profits of his estate to any subject.

[402] Gallants prided themselves on wearing spurs that jingled. Middleton, after elaborately describing a young prodigal’s attire, adds:—“Lastly, he walked the chamber with such a pestilent jingle that his spurs over-squeaked the lawyer" (Works, viii. 71). So Chapman in Monsieur D’Olive:—“You may hear them (the gallants) half a mile ere they come at you—six or seven make a perfect morice-dance; they need no bells, their spurs serve their turn.”

[403] This is the reading of Dyce’s copy of ed. 2. Other copies read:— “Faith, I utter small fragments as your knight courtes your Citty widow with something of his guilt: some aduancing his high-colored beard,” &c.

[404] Accomplishments.

[405] “At this time Flushing was in the hands of the English as part of the security for money advanced by Queen Elizabeth to the Dutch. The governor and garrison were all Englishmen.”—Reed.

[406] Model in wax or clay.

[407] Talc.—Reed quotes from Giles Fletcher’s Russe Commonwealth, 1591, p. 10:—“In the province of Corelia, and about the river Duyna towards the North-sea, there groweth a soft rock which they call Slude. This they cut into pieces, and so tear it into thin flakes, which naturally it is apt for, and so use it for glasse lanthorns and such like. It giveth both inwards and outwards a clearer light then glasse, and for this respect is better than either glasse or horne; for that it neither breaketh like glasse, nor yet will burne like the lanthorne.”

ACT II.

Enter Mendoza with a sconce,[408] to observe Ferneze’s entrance, who, whilst the act is playing, enters unbraced, two Pages before him with lights; is met by Maquerelle and conveyed in; the Pages [409] are sent away.

Men. He’s caught, the woodcock’s head is i’ the noose.
Now treads Ferneze in dangerous path of lust,
Swearing his sense is merely [410] deified:
The fool grasps clouds, and shall beget Centaurs:
And now, in strength of panting faint delight,
The goat bids heaven envy him. Good goose,
I can afford thee nothing
But the poor comfort of calamity, pity.
Lust’s like the plummets hanging on clock-lines,
Will ne’er ha’ done till all is quite undone; 10
Such is the course salt sallow lust doth run;
Which thou shalt try. I’ll be reveng’d. Duke, thy suspect;
Duchess, thy disgrace; Ferneze, thy rivalship;
Shall have swift vengeance. Nothing so holy,
No band of nature so strong,
No law of friendship so sacred,
But I’ll profane, burst, violate, ’fore I’ll
Endure disgrace, contempt, and poverty.
Shall I, whose very hum struck all heads bare,
Whose face made silence, creaking of whose shoe 20
Forc’d the most private passages fly ope,
Scrape like a servile dog at some latch’d door?
Learn how to make a leg, and cry “Beseech ye,
Pray ye, is such a lord within?” be aw’d
At some odd usher’s scoff’d formality?
First sear my brains! Unde cadis, non quo, refert;[411]
My heart cries, “Perish all!” How! how! what fate
Can once avoid revenge, that’s desperate?
I’ll to the duke: if all should ope—if! tush,
Fortune still dotes on those who cannot blush. 30