Πλουτοφθαλμία Πλουτογαμία. A pleasant comedy entituled Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery

Πλουτοφθαλμία Πλουτογαμία. A Pleasant Comedy, Intituled Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery. Translated out of Aristophanes his Plutus, by Thomas Randolph. Augmented and Published by F. I.

Dives Fabula sum satis superque:

At Pauper satis & super Poeta.

London, Printed in the Year 1651.

To the Truly Virtuous and Accomplished Gent. The Publisher of this Comedy Wisheth Health and Happiness Everlasting.

Noble Gent.

It was the happiness of my stars, to have known you long ago, as the very eye of our garden of England; all which both admire and love you. And it is the height of my ambition, to salute your hands, that love honesty, with the comedical advancement of honesty. I am confident, what Aristophanes and his translator have pencilled in this kind, you love to own, though drawn out in a weak skiagraphy. But you had rather see it performed in men’s lives, than personated on the stage; rather represented in action, than acted in speculative representations. I crave your courteous patronage, sufficient panoply even against envy itself. I prostrate it to your judicious test (at vacant hours) to approve of, and of myself too, who am

Your humble servant and admirer,

F. I.

The Preface to the Reader.

Reader,

This is a pleasant comedy, though some may judge it satirical: ’tis the more like Aristophanes the Father: besides, if it be biting, ’tis a biting age we live in; then, biting for biting. Again, Tom Randal, the adopted son of Ben Jonson, being the translator hereof, followed his father’s steps; they both of them loved sack, and harmless mirth, and here they show it; and I (that know myself) am not averse from it neither. This I thought good to acquaint thee with. Farewell.

Thine, F. I.

To His Worthy Friend, F. I. on the Setting Forth of this Excellent Comedy.

To join things so divided in this age,
Shows thy rare masterpiece of wit right sage.
Out of th’ Athenian Sea to draw it forth,
Commends not only learned skill, but worth.
I mean both Honesty and Wealth: so rare
Do these two planets in conjunction share
Of one man’s breast: Their divers aspects shine
Malign (like Saturn) in sextile or trine,
To each ingenuous soul. I know, our nation
Would fain obscure this luminous constellation:
But thou hast rescued it and set it free,
In the bright orb of Ingenuity.
Go on brave soul! Let each heroic spirit
Know ’tis allied to Riches as by merit.
Vindicate them: while muck-worm-minded men
Feel the sharp dint of thy incensed pen.
Doom them to dunghills; and thy potent scorn
Not lend them hose to put on head or horn!

The Argument or Subject of the Comedy.

Chremylus an honest decayed gentleman, willing to become rich, repaireth to the oracle of Apollo to enquire how he might compass his design: the oracle enjoineth him to follow that man whom he first met with, and never part from his company. The man he met is the old blind god of wealth disguised. After this, Chremylus calleth his poor (but honest) neighbours to partake of his happiness. The honest party rejoice at the news; rascals only and vitious persons are discontented. Plutus is led to the temple of Aesculapius, by whose art and help he recovereth his eye-sight. At this knaves are even mad, they murmur and complain exceedingly. Likewise the goddess Poverty, that aforetime had great power in the land, complaineth that her scepter is almost broken to pieces: thereupon she raiseth wars, but is routed; she also is vanquished in disputation of the necessity of Poverty. Knaves again salute Weeping-Cross, as well as penniless-bench. Nay, the Pope himself is even starved. Lastly, to vex them more, the god of wealth is introduced married to Honesty.

The Actors’ Names. Scene, London.

Plutus, the God Wealth.

Chremylus, an honest decayed Gentleman.

Carion his servant.

Blepsidemus, Friend to Chremylus.

Scrape-all.

Stiff.

Clodpole.   Four Country Swains.

Lackland.

Dull-pate, Son to Scrape-all.

Chremyla Wife to Chremylus.

Honesty, Daughter to a Scrivener.

Clip-Latin, a poor Curate.

Dicaeus, a rich Parson.

Penia Penniless, Goddess of Poverty.

Caradock.

Brun.

Higgen.    Soldiers.

Termook.

Mercurius, God of Theft.

Gogle, an Amsterdam-man.

Never-good, a Sequestrator.

Jupiter’s Vicar, the Pope.

Boy, servant to Gogle.

Neanias, a young Gallant.

Anus, an Old woman.

Aristophanes, the Poet.

Translator, T. R.

A crew of Tinkers, etc.

Ghost of Cleon.

Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery.

Act i. Scaen. i.

Enter Plutus stumbling on the Stage, after him Chremylus and Carion.

CARION

O bonny Jove, and the rest of the boon gods that dwell in the tippling-house of Olympus! There be metals and hard things in the world, but nothing so hard as to be bound prentice in Bedlam, and have a fool to one’s master: my very livery is faced with his worship’s foolery. Our condition is miserable; for if our masters but dine at the ordinary of mischief, the poor serving man is sure to be fed with the scraps of misfortune: we must share of our master’s misery, we are but tenants, they will not let us be freeholders to the petty lordships of our own corpusculous fortune; damnable fortune! How fatally hast thou sold the tenure of us, to him that will pay us our wages! ’Tis very true that I tell you: and now see the perverse effects of all. O how I could cuff Apollo! I have a quarrel to Apollo, that wry-legged, ridlding, fiddling god, that snorts out oracles from his guilded brundlet. They say, this same gaffer Phoebus is a good mountebank, and an excellent musician; but a deuce on him, it does not seem so, he has sent my master home so sick of melancholy, that I dare swear, this scurvy Tom Piper of Delphos did not play him so much as one fit of mirth, not a jig or Sellinger’s Round. And now see how he follows a blind puppy i’ th’ tail, contrary to law or reason: for we that have our eyes should lead, not follow the blind. The very dog in the chronicles, that had his eyes, stood upon his royal prerogative, of going before the blind beggar of Bethnal Green. Nor can he be content to do it himself, but he must make me too guilty of the same ignorance. If I but ask him a question, he hath not so much manners as my grannam’s sow; I cannot get him to grunt me an answer: yet I cannot choose but speak, though my hedge of teeth were a quickset, my tongue would through. You sir, that say you are my master, if you do not tell me why we follow this blundering guide, be sure, I will never leave vexing and tormenting you: you shall tell me, that you shall.

CHREMYLUS
O the age we live in! Sirrah, quintessence of impudence! To what a fine pass are you arrived?

CARION
Nay ’tis e’en so sir: your sword-and-buckler man must take the wit upon him for once.

CHREMYLUS
But if you do not learn your distance better; look, is not here a crab-tree cudgel? Beware of Weeping-Cross.

CARION
Master, I am privileged: do you see my feather? So long as I wear this, ’tis Shrove Tuesday with us prentices, perpetual Shrove Tuesday.

CHREMYLUS
But if I take off your feather, then we shall have you presently crest-fallen, and then my crab-tree tutor here may read a lecture of ethics to your saucy shoulders.

CARION
Why, and if it do sir; you shall find that I have as valiant shoulders as another man. Come exercise your cudgel: you masters are like Roman magistrates, you have rods of authority; yet try, see whether you or I will be first weary. Come you trifle, all the cudgels in Christendom, Kent, or New England, shall never make me quiet, till you show me who this is we follow. Why, sweet honey, sugar cinnamon, delicate master, if I did not wish you well, do you think I would be so inquisitive? In dud, la, you must tell me, and I shall be satisfied.

CHREMYLUS
Well, I have not the power to conceal thee any longer; for of all my servants, thou art so trusty, true-hearted, faithful and honest, that I dare swear there is not an arranter thief amongst ’um.

CARION
Now heaven bless your worship. I have always had your worship’s commendations, pray Jove I may deserve it! Proceed good, sir.

CHREMYLUS
Well, thus it is: in the days of my folly, I was a just, precise, and honest man.

CARION
’Twas in the days of your folly you were a precisian, I myself was almost half a one once, but I am converted.

CHREMYLUS
Well, being honest, I was by natural consequence very poor.

CARION
Who knew not that? Though I know not what your honesty was; yet I am sure there is never a gut in my belly but may swear for your poverty. Nay, and you had no more wit than to be honest in this wise age, ’twere pity but you should live and die a beggar.

CHREMYLUS
But others, such as your demure Cheaters,

CARION
That have the true goggle of Amsterdam;

CHREMYLUS
With some corrupted law-gowns, Ployden’s pupils,

CARION
That can plead on both sides for fees;

CHREMYLUS
With round-headed citizens, and cuckolds,

CARION
Ay, sir, and townsmen.

CHREMYLUS
These, I say, grew rich the while.

CARION
Damnable rich. Faith, master, such miracles have not ceased in these days: I have known many in these times have grown rich out of a poor estate, the devil knows how not I.

CHREMYLUS
Therefore I repaired to Delphos to ask counsel of Apollo, because I saw myself almost arrived at Gravesend, to know if I should bring up my son suitable to the thriving trades of this age we live in, viz. to be a sequestrator, or pettifogger, or informer, or flatterer, or belonging to knights o’ th’ post, or a committee-man’s clerk, or some such excellent rascal, clothing himself from top to toe in knavery, without a welt or guard of goodness about him. For I see, as the times go now, such thriving education will be the richest portion I can leave him.

CARION
Ay, sir, leave but your son, the legacy of dishonesty, and I will warrant him he shall out-thrive all Westminster Hall, and all—

To your demand what did Don Phoebus mutter?

What answer through his laurel-garland stutter?

CHREMYLUS
You shall hear. He bid me in plain terms, whomsoever I first met withal, him I should follow, and never leave his company till he came home.

CARION
And was this piece of darkness the first you met with? Now in my conscience he was begot at midnight, goodman midnight, and retains the quality of the season. None to meet but blindman-buff, that winks at all faults!

CHREMYLUS
This is the very man.

CARION
Troth, and he may tell you your fortune, gipsy-like, and all out of your pockets too; he may show you your destiny: he looks like one of the blind whelps of my old lady Chance. Ha, ha, ha! Master, though you be born to lands, I see a poor serving man may have as large inheritance of wit as a justice of peace. Why, an’t please your ignorance, any man of brains might easily understand the god’s meaning: why, he bids you bring up your son to claim the grand charter of the city, viz. to be as arrant a knave as his countrymen. For truly,

A blind man may see, though he never see more,

That the way to be honest, is the way to be poor.

CHREMYLUS
The oracle doth not tend that way; there is some greater mystery in it, if this old Cupid would but tell us who he is. Come let’s follow him close, perchance we may find out some other meaning.

CARION

On other meaning perchance we may pitch.

This is the way to be weary, though not to be rich.

Music. Exeunt ambo.

Act 1. Scaen. 2.

Enter Chremylus, Carion.

CARION
Master, we have run a terrible long wild-goose chase after this blind beetle: for my part I sweat every inch of me, one drop fetches another. As for my shoes, you must needs give me a new pair. Their ungodly souls are e’en ready to depart, they are giving up the ghost: And yet we walk like the emblem of silence; we have not put our blind gentleman-usher to any interrogatories. You sir, Homer the second! First I command you in fair terms tell us who you are: if commands will not serve the turn, my cudgel shall intreat you.

CHREMYLUS
You were best tell us quickly too.

PLUTUS
I tell you, the devil take you.

CARION
Do you hear what he says, master? The good old gentleman bids your worship good morrow.

CHREMYLUS
He speaks to thee that asked him so clownishly. Sir, if you like the behaviour of a civil gentleman, do me in courtesy the favour as to tell me who you are.

PLUTUS
Why, all the devils in hell, and as many more confound thee too.

CARION
Nay, nay, take him to you, master: keep your Apollo’s oracle to yourself; I have no share in it.

CHREMYLUS
Now if thou doest not tell me, by Ceres I will use thee like a villain as thou art.

PLUTUS
Good gentlemen, let me be beholding to you for one infinite favour.

CHREMYLUS
What's that?

PLUTUS
Why, to let me be rid of your company.

CARION
Master, be ruled by a wiser man than yourself, for once, and follow my counsel: let us take this same old Appius, that has lost the use of his natural spectacles, and carry him to the top of the castle-hill, and there leave him to tumble down and break his neck ere he come to the bottom.

CHREMYLUS
Let it be quickly then.

CARION
Ay, and then we’ll leave him to be hanged the next assizes, for being accessory to his own death.

PLUTUS
Nay, good merciful gentlemen!

CARION
Will you tell us then, you owl?

CHREMYLUS
You bird of the night, will you tell us?

PLUTUS
I will never tell you: for if you but once know who I am, ten thousand to one but you will do me some mischief, you will never let me go.

CHREMYLUS
By heaven we will, if you please.

PLUTUS
List then and give ear: for, as far as I can see, being blind, I am constrained to tell what I thought to have concealed. I am Plutus the rich god of wealth: my father was Pinchback Truepenny, the rich usurer of Islington; my mother, Mrs Silverside, an alderman’s widow: I was born in Golden Lane, christened at the Mint in the Tower; Banks the conjuror, and old Hobson the carrier were my godfathers.

CARION
As sure as can be, this Plutus god of wealth is a pure Welshman, born with his pedigree in his mouth, he speaks it so naturally. I’ll lay my life he was begot and bred in the silver mine that Middleton found in Wales.

CHREMYLUS
Thou hadst been a very rascal, if thou had’st not told us thy name had been Plutus the god of wealth.

CARION
God of wealth! Art thou he? O let me kiss thy silver golls!

CHREMYLUS
Thou art welcome to me too. But art thou Plutus god of wealth, and so miserably arrayed! O Phoebus, Apollo, o gods and devils, and Jupiter to boot! Art thou Plutus the rich son and heir to Pinchback Truepenny!

PLUTUS
I am he myself.

CARION
But art thou sure that thou thyself art thyself? Art thou he?

PLUTUS
I am the selfsame Plutus Rich, the selfsame son and heir to the selfsame Pinchback Truepenny: marry till my eyes are open, I shall never be heir apparent.

CHREMYLUS
Ay, but how camest thou so miserable nasty?

PLUTUS
Forth from Patrochus’ den, from hell at Westminster; conversing with some black ones there, whose faces since their baptism hath not been washed.

CHREMYLUS
And why goest thou so lamentably poor?

PLUTUS
Jupiter envying the good of miserable mortals, put me, poor soul, into these dismal dumps.

CHREMYLUS
Upon what occasion, pray thee.

PLUTUS

I’ll tell you,

In the minority of my youthful days

I took a humour, an ingenious humour,

To flee the company of rogues and rascals,

And unto honest men betake myself.

Jupiter spying this (mere out of envy)

Put out my eye-sight, that I might not know

Knaves from the honest, but to them might go.

CHREMYLUS
Was this from Jove? Why none but honest men

Honour his deity.

PLUTUS
Why what of that? This heathen god accepts

As well the pilgrim-salve of wicked men,

As the religious incense of the honest.

Thus does the lecherous god, that hath already

Cuckoldized half the world, and placed his bastards

By mortals’ fires, envy virtuous minds.

CHREMYLUS
To leave off versifying, if thou hadst thy eyesight,

Would’st thou be true to fly from vicious persons?

PLUTUS
Ay, I protest I would.

CHREMYLUS
And wholly employ thy eyes to pious uses.

To go to th’ company of honest and ingenuous souls.

PLUTUS
Only to them; for I have not seen

so much as one of them this many a day.

CARION
Why, what if you have not, you blind puppy-dog? What a wonder’s that? Why, I that have as good eyes as any man i’th’ company, can hardly find many: they have more wit nowadays than go abroad openly. Virtue by that means would become too cheap and common. I remember, I saw one once, but he died young for grief, that he had not wit enough to be a knave; everyone laughed at him for being out of fashion. Had he lived till now, I would h’ showed him at Fleet Bridge for a monster. I should have beggared the Beginnning o’ th’ World, the strange Birds from America, and the puppets too. I would have blown a trumpet tarantara, if any man or woman in town or city be affected with strange miracles, let them repair hither. Here within this place is to be seen a strange monster; a man that hath both his ears, and but one tongue; that cannot carry two faces under one hood; that has but one couple of hands, and on each hand five honest fingers. And what is more strange, he has but one heart; who dares, as if he were none of Adam’s posterity, be honest at this time o’ th’ year; and will give every man his due in spite of his teeth. Is not this as rare as a blazing star to look on?

PLUTUS
Well, now you have heard all; pray give me leave to be gone.

CHREMYLUS
Not so, by Jove; for now we have a greater desire to stay you than ever.

PLUTUS
I told you so, I thought you would be troublesome.

CHREMYLUS
Nay, I beseech you leave us not now; for though you should take Diogenes his lanthorn and candle and search from noon to night, you could not find an honester man from the Tropic of Cancer to Capricorn.

CARION
Sir, I will swear and be deposed for my master, he is as arrant a Cancer as any Capricorn in Christendom.

PLUTUS
I know they all promise fair, but when they have once got me, they lay aside their threadbare honesty; as if being grown rich, it were a disparagement to be virtuous any longer.

CARION
Yet all men are not knaves.

PLUTUS
Yes most, if not all, by Jove.

CARION
Pray sir, though you put my master in, let me be excepted. Body of me, call me knave in a crowd! If I be not revenged, and that soundly. You were best take heed of your general rules. Could not you have said (you blind buzzard) for aught I can see you may be one among the rest; but to speak it so peremptorily?

CHREMYLUS
Nay, if you but knew what you should gain by staying! Mark me, I can cure thee of thy blindness: I can do as great miracles as Enston waters.

PLUTUS
Truly, as blind as I am, I can see when I am well. Have my eyesight restored? I hope, I shall never live to see that day.

CHREMYLUS
What says the man?

CARION
He has a natural desire to be wretched, to play at blindman-buff all his life time. Good mole, what dost thou above ground?

PLUTUS
No, no, if Jupiter did but know of this project, he would powder me into a pretty pickle.

CHREMYLUS
Hear me man, he cannot souse thee worse than he has already, to make thee run stumbling o’er the world: I warrant, thy shins have cursed him a thousand times.

PLUTUS
I know not that, but methinks my buttocks begin to quake with very thought of him.

CHREMYLUS
I think so; but what the devil makes thee so timorous? I know if thou shouldest but recover thy eyesight, thou wouldst not value Jupiter’s command at three-halfpence, but break wind in his face to counter-thunder him.

PLUTUS
Nay, do not tell me so, good Wickedness.

CHREMYLUS
Have but patience, and I will plainly demonstrate that thy command is greater than any Nubicog Jupiter’s.

PLUTUS
Whose? Mine? Am I such a man, so powerful?

CHREMYLUS
Ay, though, if thou hadst but wit and eyes enough to see it; for first, I ask you, what does Jupiter reign by?

PLUTUS
Why, by that which he rained into Danae’s lap, a shower of silver.

CHREMYLUS
And who lent him that silver?

CARION
Why, who but Plutus; and yet the beggarly Jove pays him no use nor principal: well Jupiter, we shall have Plutus lodge you in Ludgate shortly, to take up your shop, and make your thunderbolts there, and cry lamentably, for the Lord’s sake, bread, bread for the poor prisoners; unless you can mortgage the golden or silver age to give better security to your creditor.

CHREMYLUS
Ask, why do men sacrifice to Jove, if not for silver?

CARION
By heaven, for silver. No penny, no pater-noster, quoth the Pope. Does goodman Jupiter think we’ll pray, to wear out our Ssockings at knees for nothing?

No, of all prayers, this is the result,

Jove make me rich, or pray quicunque vult.

CHREMYLUS
Is not Plutus then the author of grand sacrifices? Where would the directory lie, if it were not for the new act of the priests’ maintenance? Nay, if we were to sacrifice a bull or ram, do you think the butcher would give it to the god for nothing? No, no, if Plutus should not purchase devotion with his coin, the Olympian kitchen would smell of nothing but Lent and fasting-days all the year after.

PLUTUS
Why, I pray, may I put Jupiter out of commons when I please?

CHREMYLUS
May you? I marry may you. Doest not thou maintain him? He lives at thy charges. Jupiter had not best anger thee, lest thou take an opinion and starve him.

PLUTUS
Say you so? Is it by my courtesy they sacrifice to Jove?

CHREMYLUS
Yes, altogether; for whom is he honoured by?

PLUTUS
By reverend priests.

CHREMYLUS
And dost thou think the Levitical men would not disband, if there were want of pay or tithes? It is most certain, money is the Catholic empress of the world, her commands are obeyed from Spain to the Indies.

CARION
’Tis true master, had I been rich (but I curse my Stars, I was born under the three-penny planet, never to be worth a groat), I should have scorned the degree of sword and buckler; but now for a little silver and a threadbare livery, I have sold the fee-simple of myself and my liberty, to any worshipful piece of folly that will undertake me.

CHREMYLUS
I have heard your gentilizians , your dainty curtezanas – in plain English, your arrant whores of Venice, such as are ready-stewed for any man’s appetite: if a poor man desire to sin a little, they presently sit cross-legged; but if a rich man tempt them, at the sound of his silver they cannot hold their water. Why, the whores of Pict-hatch, Turnbull, or the unmerciful bawds of Bloomsbury, under the degree of Plutus, will not let a man be acquainted with the sins of the suburbs. The pox is not so cheap as to be given gratis: the unconscionable queans have not so much charity left as to let you damn yourselves for nothing.

CARION
’Tis very true that my master tells you, for Plutarch reports in the life and death of Bess Broughton that she never unbuttoned to any of the guard for nothing.

CHREMYLUS
But you may think this is spoken only of bad men, such as have prostituted their souls to the world; as for good round — they desire not money, no good souls not they.

CARION
What then I pray?

CHREMYLUS
Why, this wishes for a good trooping-horse; that, for a fleet pack of hounds.

CARION
I, when they are ashamed to ask money in plain terms, they vail their avarice under some such mask or other: but he that wishes for a horse, makes silver the intent of his journey; and they that beg for hounds, ’tis money they hunt for.

CHREMYLUS
All arts and crafts ’mongst men were by thee invented. I, and the seven sciences (but for thee) they could never have been so liberal.

PLUTUS
O horse that I was, never to know my own strength till now!

CHREMYLUS
’Tis this that makes great Philip of Spain so proud.

CARION
Without thee (Plutus) the lawyer would not go to London on any terms.

CHREMYLUS
All the generals, Hopton and Montrose, are by thee maintained: troth, all the troopers or footmen without thee would never be contented with free-quarter only, there must come taxes, contributions and excise to boot.

Did not Will Summers break his wind for thee?

And Shakespeare therefore write his comedy?

All things acknowledge thy vast power divine,

(Great god of money) whose most powerful shine

Gives motion, life; day rises from thy sight.

Thy setting, though at noon, makes night.

Sole catholic cause of what we feel or see,

All in this all are but th’ effects of thee.

PLUTUS
O heavens! Can I do all these things you talk of? I’ll tide this wretched blindness of mine, that would never let me see what command or power I had: all the world for a pair of eyes and a looking-glass! Sure now the Delphian gate and I have good wits: for we jumped together in this opinion, that it is an excellent thing for a man to know himself – I shall love a Nosce teipsum as long as I live for this trick. Can I do all these things?

CHREMYLUS
All these? Ay, by heaven, canst thou, and millions more than these. Why there was never any man weary of thy company, o god of wealth! Thou art a welcome guest where ere thou comest. There is plenty of all things: plenty of love.

CARION
And plenty of white bread and butter.

CHREMYLUS
Plenty of honour.

CARION
And plenty of cheesecakes.

CHREMYLUS
Plenty of friends.

CARION
And plenty of bag-puddings.

CHREMYLUS
Plenty of servants.

CARION
And plenty of furmenty.

CHREMYLUS
Plenty of health.

CARION
And plenty of custards.

CHREMYLUS
Plenty of command.

CARION
And plenty of pease-porridge.

CHREMYLUS
Never any man has enough of thee. If he can change a groat, yet he despairs of a bed till he can get a tester. Then he procures a full jury of pence to be empanelled for the finding out of a shilling. That done, the ambitious niggard will fain usurp a crown, which must be made a noble one: and that is never safe, till it have a good angel to guard it. All this obtained, he cannot without a mark be reckoned a man of notice: nor has he a patch of a gentleman, till he be worth a piece.

CARION
The good old gentleman thinks he has jested all this while handsome grave gray-pated quibblets. Good heaven, what pretty things these wits are, when they are out of date!

CHREMYLUS
When the purse is full, the pouch gapes; and when the pouch hath his bellyful, the great chest yawns wide enough to swallow the Indies, and Goldsmith’s Hall, and the Devil to boot; and yet, when all is done, they think themselves as poor as Irus, if their estates do not outvalue Doomsday Book.

PLUTUS
You say true, sir: yet methinks I am afraid of one thing.

CHREMYLUS
What is that?

PLUTUS
That I shall never attain to that utopia you speak of, ’tis a country so hard to conquer; castles in the air are very impregnable.

CHREMYLUS
Sir, upon my word, let not that trouble you: do your endeavour, and I’ll warrant you shall see as perfectly as any Lynceus in Christendom.

PLUTUS
Than Lynceus! What was he?

CHREMYLUS
One that could see the very motes in the sun, and the least things in the world.

PLUTUS
I can see the least in the world already, I thank you for nothing: I can see less than any Lynceus living. But how canst thou, poor mortal worm, take off the sequestration of my eyesight, and restore me to perfect seeing again?

CHREMYLUS
Do not doubt it; for thy delinquent eyes

Shall be admitted to compound, and see most perfectly.

Be of good hope: the Delphian god hath sworn,

And therewithal brandish’d his Pythian laurel,

That Plutus should outlook the stars to blindness.

PLUTUS
Ha, ha, ha! How does he know so much? I never was acquainted with that same Apollo in my life. I remember I have been foxed at his Oracle at Temple Bar. I am afraid this Apollo is one of your fellow-jugglers.

CHREMYLUS
Cannot a man persuade you? Have not I said it?

PLUTUS
Well then, do you look to it.

CARION
So we had need, for you cannot yourself.

CHREMYLUS
Take you no care, I will do it though I die tomorrow before breakfast.

CARION
Marry and that were a miserable thing to go to the grave upon a fasting stomach. Pray master, when you take in hand the cure of Plutus his eyes, let poor Carion have a finger in it.

CHREMYLUS
A finger in it! That were the way to put out his eyes.

CARION
’Tis strange, master, you should have no more understanding: my meaning was, you would accept of my help, good Mr Chremylus.

CHREMYLUS
Well sirrah, we will; and some other fellow-partners too, some of our plundered neighbours that are enjoined for penance to fast four days a week, for having surfeited on too much honesty.

PLUTUS
Marry heaven forbid, I shall be ill holp up with such miserable helpers as they: the hungry rascals will go near to devour me quick like Irish cannibals. No, let me be blind still, that my eyes may never be conscious to the plundering of my flesh and bones in pieces. ’Twere a miserable spectacle for them to begin with.

CHREMYLUS
I warrant, you need not fear that: if they once grow rich, they’ll rather feed on roast-beef and marrow-bone pies, like committee men, than cosen the worms of so lean a carcass. Sirrah Carion, where be your couple of footmen?

CARION
Here master, what should I do?

CHREMYLUS
Run and call my honest poor neighbours, you shall find the miserable drudges tugging at the plough-tail for their landlords. No, now I think on’t, the excisemen came today and fetched them away for contribution. Go to them, you know the way to the office near Cuckold’s Pound, London. Tell them in their ears, that we have Plutus at home, and will share him amongst us: we’ll divide him into several messes, and each man take his part by seniority. But stay, do you hear: beware of knaves, and of veal.

CARION
Veal it seems is not so good. But what shall I do with this leg of mutton here? I dare not venture the safety of it amongst ’um; the villains carry dangerous teeth about ’um.

CHREMYLUS
We'll take care for that: meet me at home two hours hence. 

Exit Chremylus

CARION
O what a plot are we going about! I could laugh for joy.

Now may I forsake my dump,

And bestir my hobnail’d stump,

Skip about and risk and jump:

Honest men are turn’d up trump,

I shall find them in a lump,

But every knave must have a thump.

O, what a plot is this, to blow up all the knaves in a kingdom together, nay in all the world, put in Turks, Jews, pagans and infidels! Why, Catesby and Percy were punies, Garnet and Digby and Faux, if they had gone about such an honest gunpowder treason as this, they had never had their heads upon poles a daw-catching over the Parliament House. Well, they were hanged for knaves and fools; but we shall thrive, and be wise and worshipful, and honest too, for Carion’s a man in the plot.

This is a stratagem was never such,

That honest men alone now should be rich.

That honest men should thrive by right, not wrong.

London, take heed; for thou’lt be poor ere long.

Exit Carion.

Act 1. Scaen. 3.

Enter Scrape-all a Farmer, and Dull-pate his son.

SCRAPE-ALL
I live at Islington, and I have heard

Plutus is come to Westminster: sure, sure,

He'd take it ill if I forbear to visit him,

He knows I am his kinsman:

For I was kin to Pinchback Truepenny

His father, who did live at Islington,

An usurer almost next door to me.

Most opportunely here he comes, I see.

God save you sir! Your poor kinsman salutes you.

PLUTUS
Who’s this? My eyesight fails me;

What’s your name?

SCRAPE-ALL
Scrape-all your kinsman, lives at Islington.

PLUTUS
O I remember; are you honest now?

I have a humour to love honest men.

SCRAPE-ALL
The country thinks so, I’m converted lately:

Dull-pate my son is also here come with me.

PLUTUS
Of what profession is he?

SCRAPE-ALL
A parson verily.

PLUTUS
What would he have?

SCRAPE-ALL
A benefice, two or three,

An’t like your worship.

He’s a true Scrape-all, of the Scrape-alls’ blood;

True Dull-pate Scrape-all, he hath past the synod.

PLUTUS
O, has he so! I thought to have sent him thither.

I have few livings left now to bestow.

My golden prebends which I had at Paul’s,

You know are sunk i’ th’ dust: for other places

The best the synod has ’um. Yet your son

Dull-pate, I know he cannot want preferment,

He looks so learnedly, and goes in black too.

He may change habits, ’tis allow’d of now

As the world goes. Is he not a tradesman?

He’d thrive the better, if he can snuffle handsomely.

Was he ever train’d up at the universities?

SCRAPE-ALL
Yes out of both; that is, never of either.

PLUTUS
However he will be rich. Let him leap over

The steeple-houses, and teach in private;

His vails will be the fatter: tithes and cures

He must preach down as antichristian,

And take as much as both. He has an excellent name,

A thriving name! I think you said ’twas Dull-pate.

SCRAPE-ALL
Yes sir. Now thank your patron, and be gone.

DULL-PATE
Thankatus et Godamerciatus vester dignitas.

Exit Dull-pate.

SCRAPE-ALL
He gives your worship thanks and god-a-mercy.

PLUTUS
I have no skill in physiognomy:

But sure thou wilt be rich, Dull-pate, and wealthy.

SCRAPE-ALL
Uncle, we thank you: will it please you know

The entertainment of our poor cottage?

PLUTUS
No, it is against the complexion of my humour

To visit any man’s house: I never got

Any commodity by it in my life.

For if I chance to light into the clutches

Of some vile usurer, he buries me

Quick underground, or keeps me prisoner closely

In his old chests, where without sheets I lie,

But his indentures keep me company.

And if I fall into the prodigal hands

Of some mad roaring Tytire tu, he spends me

Upon his lecherous cockatrice; or playing

Throws me away at passage: so am I turn’d

Stark naked out of doors, with not so much

As a poor purse to make a nightcap of.

SCRAPE-ALL
It seems you never met with moderate men.

But this is my disposition: when occasion

Serveth, no man more liberal; when opportunity

Invites, no man more thrifty.

Come, let’s go in. O how my wife shall joy

At sight of thee, as much as for a French hood

Or taffata kirtle! Thou art my best beloved.

PLUTUS
I easily believe it.

SCRAPE-ALL
        Who would not tell thee

The truth of things, I wish that he were lousy

(Sweet rogue) at Beggar’s Bush, or else confin’d

To the perpetual regiment of Bridewell.

Come my dear uncle, come! O how I love

The silver-hairs of thy most delicate chin!

Though I be rich by wickedness and sin.

Exeunt ambo.

Finis Actus primi.

Act 2. Scaen. i.

Enter Carion, Clodpole, Lackland and Stiff, three rustics.

CARION
Come along you old hobnails. I’ll have your horses shod with gold of Ophir or Peru. Ha, you old muck-worms! I’ll make your hog-trough paunches so fat, that the leanest of you all shall outweigh the Archbishop of Spalato. What an Aesopical roaring lion am I, to lead this army of asses into the field! Come, my masters, old friends, you that have eat many a bushel of salt, I would say garlic in his company. Make haste you plough-lackeys, boors, his kinsmen. You, neighbour Lackland, set the best foot forward. And you goodman Clodpole, old snail with a slimy nose, if you make not haste, they will have done scrambling ere we come.

CLODPOLE
Now by the rood of my grannam’s soul, Ich go as vast as my legs will bear me. What would you have of an old man, that’s grown crazy?

CARION
Crazy!

CLODPOLE
Ay, crazy. Do you think a man that has one voot in the grave can trudge as vast as zuch a young knave as thou? When I was a stripling of thy age, I could have tricked it i’ vaith, Mr. Ficar knows, with the best of the parish.

LACKLAND
Neighbour, neighbour, I’ll tell you what I do devise you now, this is my ’pinion.

CARION
Your ’pinion, you goose? And what is your ’pinion?

LACKLAND
Marry, this is my ’pinion now: this saucy knave may do it to uflout us. ’Tis best to command of him what is his master’s contention in zending vor us now, la.

CARION
Why have not I told you? My master zends for you to change this nasty condition of yours into some delicate happiness. You shall be rich, you rogues, all of you justices of peaces, lords, emperors, or what is more, high-constables.

CLODPOLE
Very well said. But I will be none of his peaces nor lords; let me be a high-constable. I will have a new vlaile as zoon as I come to my honours, and thou shalt be next to exzeed me in my house of office.

LACKLAND
Ay, but neighbours, how shall this be defected? Let him dissolve us of that now, it seems not possetible, so it does not.

CARION
Why you villiagos, my master has brought home an old lame, rotten, mangy, toothless, sapless, bald-pate, rusty musty crusty fusty dusty old dotard, just such another as my neighbour Stiff or Lackland, or you Clodpole with a slimy nose, with a great bunchback.

LACKLAND
A bunchback! Nay then thou art a meszenger of gold. Hah neighbours, that was not a bunchback, I warrant you, la, they were huge bags of gold. That’s another ’pinion of mine, neighbours, what do you ’jecture in that?

CARION
You ’jecture like an ass: that bunch at his back was but a natural budget of old mischiefs.

LACKLAND
Do not think to play the jackanapes with me for nothing. Have I not here a good cudgel? If thou do, thou shalt be clapper-de-clawed.

CARION
I wonder what you take me for: what dishonesty did you ever know by me?

CLODPOLE
Dishonesty, zay you! None, not we. ’Tis a very honest monkey: yet I have zeen him, neighbours, zit in Bridewell, when the loving vetters have been close friends to his legs.

CARION
Very true; at the same time you were one of the justices of hell, Radamanthus had newly resigned his office to you.

CLODPOLE
Now the murrain founder thee, thou parlous wag, thus to ’buse thy betters! Sirrah, look you deveal unto us why your master hath vited us from our natural poccupations.

CARION
Prick up your ears then, and I will tell you. My master hath brought home Plutus to enrich you all. Thou shalt be mayor of the city; canst not thou sleep on the bench? Thou shalt be bailie; hast not thou wit enough to tell clocks? And all the rest of your frozen-bearded neighbours, understanding aldermen.

LACKLAND
Nay, zo they be aldermen, ’tis no matter vor understanding: ’tis a beggerly quality, vit for none but poor scholars and losophers. But has thy master got Plutus, and shall we all be rich in good zooth, Carion?

CARION Ay, in zooth neighbour Lackland, as rich as Midas, if you had but ass’s ears.

LACKLAND
Nay, vor if that be all, I shall do well enough I warrant you, mine are of a pretty length already: it does me good at the heart neighbours, zo it does.

STIFFE
Vaith, would Mr. Clip-Latin our ficar were here too. He’s an honest man, he reads common prayer, we can vollow him and understand him; he will not meddle with Diricksstories nor extrumperies. He has but poor twanty nobles a year, think of it neighbours.

CLODPOLE
Vaith and thou sayest right neighbour Stiff, and he gives us good destructions once a moneth, as good as a nomine.

LACKLAND
Ay, and I like him: He's none of the hum-drums, he’ll clap it up quickly, especially if there be a match at the alehouse.

CLODPOLE
Mass, and he’ll drink sack and claret as fast as any synod man.

STIFF
Ay, neighbours, and he’s none of them that be proud; he will not scorn to drink with his poor neighbours too: if Plutus would give him twice twanty nobles, I would not think it too much.

LACKLAND
I warrant, our proprietor would hang himself ’vore he would allow it.

CLODPOLE
Tis no matter, we’ll ’tition Plutus ourselves vor him.

STIFFE
Nay neighbours, and let’s tell him he’ll cursten and bury after the old way. I warrant, when Mr. Clip-Latin’s gone, we shall never have such a man again to fit the parish. Everyone loves him, but Never-Good the sequestrator, that—

LACKLAND
When Plutus comes, we’ll think of him. Vaith neighbours, shall we be rich? What will my neighbour Rent-All do? He’ll get him a satin doublet, and scorn his proud landlord: And Steal-All the tailor and Noise the ballad-singer will ride about in coaches, and all the rest of ’um too.Vaith, shall we have Plutus! shall we be rich! I shall e’en throw away my leather slops and my pitchforks. O it joices my heart! Neighbours, it is as good news as a pot of ale and a toast in a vrosty morning.

STIFFE
I could give a penny for a Maypole to dance the morris vor arrant joy. Shall we be rich i’ vaith!

CARION
Now will I with the Cyclops sing, Threttanelo, Threttanelo.

Which Polyphemus erst did ring,

To the tune of Fortune my foe.

CHORUS
Threttanelo, Threttanelo:

And sing we all merrily, Threttanelo, Threttanelo.

CARION
Bleat you like ewes the while.

CHORUS
Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.

CARION
Like frisking kids full merrily go, Threttanelo, Threttanelo.

CHORUS
And sing we all—

CARION
Dance out your coats like lecherous goats, Threttanelo, Threttanelo!

CHORUS
And sing we all—

CARION
Let us this Cyclops seek:

To the place where he sleeps let us go, Threttanelo.

CARION
Put out as he lies

With a cowl-staff his eyes, Threttanelo.

CHORUS
And sing we all merrily,

And sing we all—

CARION
But now you shall see

I Circe will be,

And turn you to hogs ere I go, Threttanelo.

Go grunt you all now

Like your mother the sow, Threttanelo.

CHORUS
And sing we all---

And sing we all---

CARION
But come you pig-hogs, let us leave jesting. I restore you to your old metamorphosis, as you may see in the first leaf of Virgil’s Bucolics. I will go the next way to the cupboard, and fill my guts like an emperor. And then if you have any thing to ’mand me on a full stomach, you may ply me in what you please.

Music.

Exeunt omnes.

Act 2. Scaen. 2.

Enter Chremylus and Stiff, Clodpole, Lackland.

CHREMYLUS
Honest neighbours, welcome: I will not bid you good morrow now. That was my salutation in the days of poverty: that stinking complement never fitted my mouth, but when my breath smelt of onions and garlic. Gramercy, old blades, for coming. Let me hug you. O, what a sweet armful of friends is here! If you be but valiant now, and defend Plutus, the least of you all shall have wealth enough to confront Prester-John, and the Grand Signior too.

CLODPOLE
If that be all, my life for yours. Valiant! Why Mars himself was an arrant coward to me; I have beat him at vootball above twenty times. If you did but zee me once, I warrant you would call me goodman Hector as long as I lived for ’t. Did you not zee how I cuffed with Hercules for a two-penny loaf last Curmass? Let Plutus go! No, let me return again to onions and pease-porridge then, and never be acquainted with the happiness of a sirloin of roast-beef.

CHREMYLUS
Well neighbours, march in. I see Blepsidemus coming toward. He has heard of my good fortune, that makes him foot it so fast. In the days of my poverty all my friends went on crutches; they would come to me as fast as black snails: but now they can outrun dromedaries. This ’tis to be rich and now I have a rich loadstone lieth under my threshold that draws in all their iron spurs.

He that will have his friends about him tuck,

Must have th’ alluring bait of golden muck.

Exeunt omnes.

Act 2. Scaen. 3.

Enter Blepsidemus, Chremylus.

BLEPSIDEMUS
What should this be? Or by what means? ’Tis strange

That my friend Chremylus is grown so rich;

I scarce believe ’t, because I know him honest,

Yet every barber’s shop reports it boldly.

’Tis very strange he should grow rich o’ th’ sudden.

And then ’tis stranger far, that being grown wealthy,

He calls his poor friends to be partners with him;

I am sure, ’tis not the courtesy of England.

CHREMYLUS
Friend Blepsidemus, welcome; I am not the same beggarly Chremylus I was yesterday. Be merry, true-blue, be merry; thou art one of my friends too, I’ll put you all into a humor of thriving.

BLEPSIDEMUS

Are you so wealthy sir, as report speaks?

CHREMYLUS
So wealthy? ha, soft and fair. Cousin Blepsidemus, I shall be anon:

Things of great consequence have some danger in them.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Danger? What danger?

CHREMYLUS
Why, I’ll tell thee all. If we bring this busines to pass, we shall be brave blades, be drunk with sack and claret every day; glutted with roast-beef, pasties and marrow-bone pies: but if our hopes be frustrate, we are undone, we must to leeks and onions again.

BLEPSIDEMUS
All is not right, I fear, I do not like it,

Thus suddenly to thrive, and thus to fear;

Makes me suspect my judgement and his honesty.

CHREMYLUS
What honesty?

BLEPSIDEMUS
If those your sacrilegious hands have plundered

Apollo’s temple, and enrich’d your coffers

With gold and silver, ravish’d from the altars.

If you repent, yet do not mock your friends:

Perchance, you have invited all your neighbours

To hear you make a learned confession;

To shake hands from the ladder, and take leave

Of their dear Chremylus at the fatal tree:

No, you shall pardon me, I’m not in the humour,

To take a walk toward Paddington to-day.

CHREMYLUS
Marry heavens forbid! There’s no such cause nor matter.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Nay, trifle now no longer: ’tis too manifest.

CHREMYLUS
You do me wrong, thus to suspect a friend.

BLEPSIDEMUS
’Fore Jove, I think there’s not an honest man,

But drossy, earthy muckworm-minded vassals,

And these full soon mortgage their souls for silver:

Jove’s image for the state’s—

CHREMYLUS
By heaven I think thou art mad. Do thy naked brains want clothing, Blepsidemus? For I see thy wit is gone a-wool-gathering.

BLEPSIDEMUS
I see Chremylus is not Chremylus, for methinks

Who hath lost his honesty hath lost himself.

BLEPSIDEMUS
As sure as can be, some gib cat that died issueless has adopted thee for her heir, and bequeathed the legacy of her melancholy to thee. It is impossible thou should’st be so mad else.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Thy countenance so oft changing, and thy eyes’

Unconstant goggling call thee guilty, Chremylus,

Of a dishonest juggling soul.

CHREMYLUS
Nay, good raven, do not croak so. I know what your croaking tends to. Now if I had stolen anything, you and the devil would have put in for a share.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Do I do this to claim my share, what share?

CHREMYLUS
Come there is no such matter my fingers have not learned the sleight of hand. Picking and stealing is none of their profession.

BLEPSIDEMUS
O ’tis some learned distinction; what, you’ll say

You did not steal, you did but take’t away;

Well, ’tis not good to equivocate with a halter,

Gregory is a cunning disputant:

An argument of hemp is hardly answered.

CHREMYLUS
What melancholy devil has possessed thee? I am sure it is no merry one. This madness doth not smell of Edmonton.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Whom have you plundered then? Whose bung is nipped?

CHREMYLUS
No man’s.

BLEPSIDEMUS
O Hercules! Whose tongue speaks truth?

In what cold zone dwells naked honesty?

CHREMYLUS
I see, friend, you condemn me ere you know the truth.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Come, do not jest your neck into the noose,

Tell me betimes, that with the key of gold

I may lock up the vermin’s mouth. Informers

Are dangerous cattle, if they once but yawn;

As bad as sequestrators, but I’ll undertake.

CHREMYLUS
I will not have you undertake anything for me; you will be at too much charges: sir, my intent is to enrich all honest men.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Why, have you stolen so much?

CHREMYLUS
No faith, a little will serve the turn, there are so few of them. But sirrah, know I have Plutus himself at home.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Who, Plutus? God of wealth?

CHREMYLUS
The same, by heaven and hell.

BLEPSIDEMUS
What, heaven and hell by Westminster Hall, where lawyers and Parliament men eat French broth? Have you Plutus, by Vesta?

CHREMYLUS
Yes, and by Neptune too.

BLEPSIDEMUS
What Neptune? Neptune of the Sea?

CHREMYLUS
By Neptune of the Sea, or any other Neptune in Europe. He is the small-legged gentleman-usher’s god; for his chariot is drawn with calves.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Why do you not send him about among your friends?

CHREMYLUS
What, before he have recovered his eyesight?

BLEPSIDEMUS
Why, is Plutus blind?

CHREMYLUS
By Jove is he.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Nay, I did always think so; and that’s the reason he could never find the way to my house.

CHREMYLUS
But now he shall at a short-hand.

BLEPSIDEMUS
What, brachygraphy? Thomas Shelton’s art?

CHREMYLUS
No, I mean suddenly.

BLEPSIDEMUS
He shall be welcome: but why do you not get some skillful oculist for him? Have you never a chirurgeon about the town that hath eyes to sell of his own making?

CHREMYLUS
Now the ’spital-house on the Puck-fist tribe of them. If a man have but a cut finger, the cure of it shall be as long as the siege of Breda: physicians and surgeons are good for nothing but to fill graves and hospitals.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Sure then, that’s the reason none but sextons pray for them.

CHREMYLUS
No, I’ll have a better device; he shall go to the temple of Aesculapius.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Come let us make haste, to be rich as soon as we can. Dives qui fieri vult, Et cito vult fieri—

CHREMYLUS
We will get a Fieri facias of the lawyers. They pick all the wealth out of the countrymen’s pockets. Have but patience, I will warrant thee as rich as any alderman.

Offers to Ex.

Act 2. Scaen. 4.

Enter Penia and meets them.

PENIA
Must I needs meet you, you old dotards? Are you not ashamed of your gray coxcombs? you are going about a fine piece of impudence, to undo me and all my children. But I shall plague you for it.

CHREMYLUS
Now Hercules and his club defend me!

PENIA
I’ll cut your throats, and slit your impudent gurgulios, you calves at threescore: how dare you undertake such confederacy? But you shall throttle for’t, by all the ash-coloured cattle about me.

BLEPSIDEMUS
What creature is this with the red-ochre face? She looks as if she were begot by marking-stones.

CHREMYLUS
By stones sure: ’tis some Erynnis that is broke loose from the tragedy.

BLEPSIDEMUS
By Jeronimo, her looks are as terrible as Don Andraea, or the Ghost in Hamlet.

CHREMYLUS
Nay, ’tis rather one of Beelzebub’s heralds.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Why so?

CHREMYLUS
Why, doest thou not see how many severalcCoats are quartered in her arms?

PENIA
So, so, and who do you think I am?

BLEPSIDEMUS
Some bawd of Shoreditch, or Turnbull broker of maidenheads, etc.

CHREMYLUS
Why woman, why dost thou follow us? We have done thee no wrong.

PENIA
No, good honest scavengers, no wrong! By the skin betwixt my eyebrows, but I’ll make you know ’tis a wrong. Is it no wrong to cast me out of every place, and leave me nowhere to be in?

CHREMYLUS
Yes, thou shalt have the liberty of hell, and all good kindnesses the honest devils can do thee, for my sake. But what art thou? Why dost not thou tell us who thou art?

PENIA
One that will be soundly revenged on you all, for committing more than gunpowder treason against a poor woman, that hath not so much as a tooth in her head that means you any harm.

BLEPSIDEMUS
We will not trust so much as thy gums for all that. Who art thou?

PENIA
I am Poverty, Penia Poverty, eldest daughter of Asotus Spend-All, of Brecknockshire; one that hath kept house with you this thirty years and upwards; I have sat winter and summer at your great-grandfather’s table.

BLEPSIDEMUS
O Apollo and the rest of the ’spital-house gods! Tell me how I may run away.

CHREMYLUS
Nay, stay you cowardly drone.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Stay? No, not for the world, I will not keep Poverty company; there be vermin about her which I would be loth should cosen the worms of my carcass.

PENIA
Dare you grunt, you unethical rustics, being taken in the fact?

CHREMYLUS
Stay, coward, shall two men run away from one woman?

BLEPSIDEMUS
One woman! I, but ’tis Poverty; Penia Poverty, or Penia Pennyless.

No tiger so cruel: I had rather fight with Mall Cutpurse and my Lady Sands both together at quarterstaff.

CHREMYLUS
Good Blepsidemus, stay.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Good Chremylus, run away.

CHREMYLUS
Shall we leave Plutus thus?

BLEPSIDEMUS
How shall we resist this warlike Amazon, the valiantest of all tinkers’ trulls and doxies! She has made me pawn my bilbo-blade and rusty headpiece at the alehouse many a time in arrant policy. Let us run; there is no hope of safety but in footmanship. Our valour is clean contrary to Achilles’, for our greatest security lies in our heels. Let us run: stone walls are not defence enough, her hunger will break through and devour us.

CHREMYLUS
Take thy porridge-pot (man) for a helmet, thy ladle for a spear, and a sword of bacon, and thou art armed against Poverty cap-a-pie: and then Plutus shall come and cut her throat, and raise a trophy out of her miserable carcass.

PENIA
Dare you snarl, you curs, after the contriving such damnable injury?

BLEPSIDEMUS
What injury, you old beldame! We have not ravished thee, I am sure; thy beauty is not so much moving. Doest think we mean to lie with red ochre? To commit fornication with a red lattice? I know not what thy lower parts can do; but thy very forehead is able to burn us. Let thy salamander nose and lips live in perpetual flames, for me; Jove send thee everlasting fire! There is no Cupid in thy complexion: a man may look upon thee, without giving the flesh occasion to tempt the spirit: if all were made of the same clay thou art, adultery would be a stranger in England.

PENIA
O immortal gods, is it no injury to restore Plutus to his eyesight! Now, Furies, put out all your eyes, and then consume all the dogs in Christendom, that there may be none to lead you!

CHREMYLUS
What harm is it to you, if we study the catholic good of all mankind?

PENIA
What catholic good of mankind? I’m sure the Roman Catholic religion commands wilful poverty.

BLEPSIDEMUS
That is because Plutus is blind: his blindness is the cause of that devotion. But when Plutus can see again, we will kick you out of the universe, and leave you no place but the universities: marry, those you may claim by custom, ’tis your penniless bench; we give you leave to converse with sleeveless gowns and threadbare cassocks.

PENIA
But what if I persuade you it’s necessary that Poverty live amongst you?

BLEPSIDEMUS
Persuaded! We will not be persuaded; for we are persuaded not to be persuaded, though we be persuaded. Thus we are persuaded; and we will not be persuaded to persuade ourselves to the contrary, anyways being persuaded.

PENIA
If I do not, do what you will with me; leave me no place to rest in, but the empty study of that pitiful poet, that hath botched up this poor comedy with so many patches of his ragged wit, as if he meant to make Poverty a coat of it.

BLEPSIDEMUS
O Tumpana, kai Cophonas! Jack Dolophin and his kettledrum defend us.

CHREMYLUS
But if you be convicted and nonplussed, what punishment will you submit yourself unto?

PENIA
To any.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Ten deaths: other cats have but nine, Grimalkin herself. Let us be sure Poverty die outright, I begin to be bousy in her company. Let’s march.

Exeunt ambo.

PENIA
Yet I thank Jove I am better acquainted in city and country, than these think of. In the city many that go in gay-clothes know me; in the country I am known for taxes, excise and contributions: besides I have an army royal of royalists, that now live under the sequestration-planet, I shall muster them up if need be. But first I will go marshal up my forlorn-hopes of tatterdemallians, Welsh, English, Scots, and Irish. I hope to give these Round——a breakfast, all they vapour now; I hope to bring ’um under my dominion shortly.

Exit Penia.

Act 2. Scaen. 5.

Enter Scrape-All, Clodpole, Stiff, Dicaeus, and Poverty.

CLODPOLE
Naighbours, ich hear we must chop logic with Poverty; ’cha wonder what this logicking is, tid never know yet to- yere: they zay one gaffer Aristotle was the first vounder of it, a bots on him!

SCRAPE-ALL
’Cha remember my zon went to the ’varsity, and I ha heard him say a fine song:

Hang Brerwood and Carter in Crakanthorp’s garter,

Let Kekerman too bemoan us:

I’ll be no more beaten for greasie Jack Seaton,

And conning of Sandersonus.

At Oxford or Cambridge ’twould make a man a hungry to hear ’um talk of ’gisms and argations, and pretticables and predicaments, and gatur antecedens and proiums and postriorums, and probos and valleris. ’Cha think this logic a hard thing next to the black art.

STIFF
Neighbours, an’t be zo, what a murrain ails us! Why, shall we venture Plutus on pretticables and predicarments? Shall we lose all our hopes by an argo valleris? This is my ’pinion, this same Poverty will prove the best computant of ’um all: why, she cannot choose but repute (as mr. ficar says) very well, and most tregorically.

DICAEUS
‘Tregorically’? Categorically, neighbour; Sir John meant so, I warrant you.

STIFF
Why, tregorically, and catergolically; tre and cater, there’s but an ace difference, therefore bate me an ace, quoth Bolton, and I say she will repute very well and tregorically, for she hath ever kept company with scholars ever since my memory or my grannam’s either. No, let me take my catergorical flail in hand; and if I do not thresh her to death with lusty arguments, let me never live to problem again at a peaserick.

DICAEUS
Neighbours, be content. Poverty, stand you on one side, and I’ll stand on the other; for I will be opposite to you e diametro, and teach you to know your distance. Thus I dispute. The question is whether Plutus ought to receive his eyesight? I say ay, et sic probo.

If it be fit that good and honest men,

Whose souls are fraught with virtue, should possess

Riches and wealth, which Heaven did mean should be

The just reward of goodness: while proud Vice,

Stripp’d of her borrowed and usurped robes,

Should have her loathed deformities unmasqued;

And vitious men that spread their peacocks’ trains,

Have carcasses as naked as their souls.

But if once Plutus should receive his eyes,

And but discern ’twixt men, the world were chang’d:

Then goodness and full coffers, wealth and honesty

Might meet, embrace, and thrive, and kiss together;

While Vice with all her partners starves and pines,

Rotting to dirt and filth, leaving to hell

Black souls. Who better counsel can devise?

Ergo ’tis fit Plutus receive his eyes.

CLODPOLE
That argo has nettled her, I warrant. Thou shalt be Plutus his Professor for this. What has my she-Bellarmine now to answer?

DICAEUS
As the mad world goes now, who could believe

But purblind fate and chance did hold the sceptre

Of humane actions? Who beholds the miseries

Of honest mortals, and compares their fortunes

With the unsatiable pleasures of gross Epicures,

Whose bursten bags are glutted with the spoils

Of wretched orphans: who (I say) sees this,

But would almost turn atheist, and forswear

All heaven, all gods, all divine providence?

But if to Plutus we his eyes restore,

Good men shall grow in wealth, and knaves grow poor.

STIFF
In my ’pinion this simple-gism—

DICAEUS
Fie neighbour, ’tis a syllogism.

STIFF
Why simple and silly is all one: be what gism it will be, sure ’twas not in true mud and fig-tree, there was never a tar-box in the breech of it.

PENIA
O dotards, how easily you may be persuaded to die as arrant fools as you were born! If Plutus recover his eyesight, and distribute his riches equally, you shall see what will become of your anabaptistical anarchy: what arts or sciences would remain. If every Vulcan be as good as yourselves, what Smug will make your worships’ dripping-pans?

DICAEUS
Why he that makes the fire-shovels and ongs: or, if all fail, Quisque est fortunae suae faber, we’ll make our dripping pans ourselves: we can do more than that, we can preach to ourselves already.

PENIA
Who would cobble your shoes, or mend your honorable stockings?

DICAEUS
O there be sermon-makers enough can do that bravely: the only metaphysics they are beaten in, rem acu tangunt.

PENIA
Who would carry you up to London, if the wagon driver should think himself as good a man as his master?

DICAEUS
Why, we would ride thither on our own hackney-consciences.

PENIA
Nay if this were so, the very tailers though they damned you all to hell under their shopboards, would scorn to come to the making up of as good a man as Pericles Prince of Tyre.

DICAEUS
Marry that were a happy time for the Low Countries: the Spanish pike would not then be worth a bodkin.

PENIA
There would be no presbyters to directorise you, no laundresses to soap you, no ploughmen to feed you, no innkeepers to fox you, no sycophants to flatter you, no friends to cheat you. Ergo you have brought your hogs to a fair market.

STIFF
How she proves herself a sow in conclusion!

DICAEUS
’Twas in conclusion, that it might not be denied. Methinks Poverty disputes very poorly, and that’s a wonder; for likely the naked truth is on her side.

CLODPOLE
Yet she remembered an argo, and that made her argument not so weak and impudent: in my ’pinion this argo is a quarter-staff at least.

DICAEUS
And Poverty, what good turn can you do us, except it be to fill our ears with the bawlings of hungry brats and brawling bastards? No doubt you can bring us a flock of fleas and a herd of lice to store the pasture grounds of our miserable microcosms; the unmannerly hogs with hunger betimes to desire us to defer our breakfasts a fortnight longer. You can give us field-beds, with heaven for our canopy, and some charitable stones for our pillows. We need not expect the felicity of a horse to lie at rack and manger; but yet our asses and we must be content with the same provender. No roast-beef, no shoulders of mutton, no cheesecakes, no Machiavellian Florentines:

And whence our greatest grief does rise,

No plumb-porridge, nor no plumb-pudding pies.

Ergo (Poverty) I will answer your arguments at the whipping-post.

LACKLAND
That was strong and piercing for plumb-porridge: for truly one porringer of plumb-porridge is an argument more unanswerable than Campion’s ten reasons.

DICAEUS
Aliter probo sic. Your poor creatures have not wherewith to bury themselves; but it is not fit that the soul should go a-begging for the charges of the body’s funeral. Ergo falleris Domina Poverty.

PENIA
You do not dispute seriously, you put me off with trifling nugations. Thus I dispute. If I make men better than riches, I am to be preferred before riches. But I make men better: for poor men have the better consciences, because they have not so much guilt, I call their empty purses to witness. Aliter probo sic. I moralise men better than Plutus. Exempli gratia: Plutus makes men with puffed faces, dropsy bodies, bellies as big as the great tub at Heidelberg; noses by the virtue of Malmsey so full of rubies, that you may swear, had Poverty had dominion in their nativities, they had never had such rich faces: besides, they have eyes like turkey-cocks, double chins, flapdragon-cheeks, lips that may spare half an ell, and yet leave kissing room enough. Nay, ’tis the humour of this age, they think they shall never be great men, unless they have gross bodies. Marry, I keep men spare and lean, slender and nimble; mine are all diminutives, Tom Thumbs, not one Colossus, not one Garagantua amongst them; fitter to encounter the enemy by reason of their agility, in less danger of shot for their tenuity, and most expert in running away, such is their celerity. Ergo, Irus is a good soldier, and Midas is an ass.

SCRAPE-ALL
Troth, she has touched Midas; she has caught him by the worshipful ears.

DICAEUS
Nay ’tis no wonder if they be slender enough, you keep them with such spare diet: they have so much Lent and fasting-days, that they need not fear the danger of being as fat as committee-men. If a man should see a company of their lean carcasses assembled together, ’t would make him think Doomsday were come to town before its time.

PENIA
Moreover, that which is most noble is most preferrable. But Poverty is most noble. Minor I prove thus: whose houses are most ancient, those are most noble: but poverty’s houses are most ancient; for some of them are so old, like vicarage-houses, they are every hour in danger of falling.

CLODPOLE
What a silly woman’s this to talk of nobility houses! Does not she know we are all Levellers, there’s no nobility now.

STIFF
Neighbour, I think so too: I am an Unpundant too, I think.

DICAEUS
Nay, she does not dispute well. Her major was born in Bedlam, her minor was whipped in Bridewell. Ergo her conclusion is run out of her wits. For well said M. Rhombus, Ecce mulier blancata quasi lilium. Now I oppose her with a dilemma, alias the cuckold of arguments. My dilemma is this: citizens and townsmen are rich, for there’s the cornucopia; ergo, riches are better than poverty. Nay, if riches were not in some account, why would Jupiter be so rich? For you see he has engrossed to himself the golden age of Jacobuses, and the silver age of shillings and sixpences, and left us nothing but the brazen age of plundering and impudence; for tinkers’ tokens are gone away too. To conclude in one syllogism more, I will prove my tenet true by the example of Hecate queen of hell; she would turn the clerk of her kitchen out of his office, and not suffer him to be the devil’s manciple any longer, if he should bring any lean carcass or any carrion-soul to be served up at her table. Her chief dish is the larded soul of a plump usurer, basted with the dripping of a greasy alderman; the sauce being made with the brains of a great conger-headed lawyer, buttered with the grease of a well-fed committee-man, served up for want of saucers in the two ears of an unconscionable Scrivener. Ergo, Poverty, you may go and hang yourself.

PENIA
O for the Barbadoes! I have no place left for my entertainment.

DICAEUS
Come, brethren, let us kick her out of the universe.

PENIA
O, whither shall I betake myself!

DICAEUS
To the house of Charity.

PENIA
To the house of Charity? That’s an old ruined cold lodging, as bad as a correction house. Good your worships, take some pity on miserable Poverty!

DICAEUS
Did you ever hear such a solecism?

LACKLAND
Troth master, I never knew it in my life: all our parish was ever against it.

CLODPOLE
And ours too, and I think all England over.

DICAEUS
Poverty, then I say thou shalt have a justice of peace’s charity, the whipping-post; thou shalt be lashed under the statute of sturdy rogues and beggars: look for no pity, ’tis charity to pity those that are rich: go get you packing.

PENIA
Well, sirs, though you put Poverty away now, yet you or your heirs may be glad to send for me ere long.

Exit Poverty.

CLODPOLE
It shall be to the gallows then, by my consent: if you mean to prevent it, the best way is to go and pine away quickly.

STIFF
Farewell old rag of Babylon, for we must be rich, and therefore worshipful.

Exeunt omnes.

By your leave, Mr. Parson.

Music.

Act 2. Scaen. 6.

Enter Clip-Latin a Parson, Dicaeus a Parson, Clod-pole, Stiff, Scrape-All.

DICAEUS
Last night I laughed in my sleep. The Queen of Fairies tickled my nose with a tithe-pig’s tail. I dreamt of another benefice, and see how it comes about! Next morning Plutus the god of wealth comes to my house, and brings me an augmentation and a good fat living. He said he came to visit me: as sure as can be I am ordained to be rich at his visitation, ’tis better than the bishops or archdeacons. Now must I be one of the assembly, and walk demurely in a long black cloak at Westminster, forgetting all my Greek and Latin.

CLIP-LATIN
Faith brother, that have I done already: my name’s Clip-Latin truly; I read a homily, and pray by the service-book divinely.

DICAEUS
‘Divinely’, quoth ’a! Thou must take ex tempore in hand, or else thou wilt ne’er be rich in these days.

CLIP-LATIN
Do you hear, neighbours! Shall us leave the Common-Prayer?

STIFF
God forbid, Mr. Ficar! Why, ’twas writ in David’s time; and Thomas Sternhold and John Hopkins joined it to the psalms in those days, and turned it into such excellent metre, that I can sleep by it as well as any in the parish.

CLODPOLE
Besides, neighbour, we don’t know this new sect what they pray, we can’t vollow them in their extrumperies.

CLIP-LATIN
You see the case is clear, sir: I am for the king and the Prayer-Book.

STIFF
Well said, parson, we shall love thee the better for that, hold there still.

DICAEUS
Yet, brother, because thou art of our cloth, I’ll speak to Plutus for thee. Thou shalt have twenty pounds per annum standing stipend, and the love of thy parish because thou takest nothing of them, doest mark me? Twenty pounds, I say. I must be gone.

Exit. Dic.

CLIP-LATIN
A good saying and a rich. Now shall I surfeit in a satin cloak; from twenty nobles to twenty pounds! O brave!

SCRAPE-ALL
We are glad of it, vaith, Mr. Ficar.

CLIP-LATIN
Come neighbours, upon this good news, let’s chop up and to my host Snego’s, he’ll be glad to hear of it too. I am resolved to build no more sconces, but to pay my old tickets. Come let’s in and drink a cup of stingo.

STIFF
Vaith Vicar, thou givest us good destruction still.

Come in, come, come.

Act 2. Scaen. 7.

Enter Blepsidemus, Chremylus, Carion.

BLEPSIDEMUS
O the divinity of being rich! Now Plutus is come. But who is Plutus? Why, he is the nobleman’s tutor, the prince’s and State’s fleet of plate, the lawyer’s Littleton, the major and aldermens’ fur-gown, the justice’s warrant, the constable and bumbailie’s tip-staff, the astronomer’s blazing star, the mathematician’s record or counting table, the cavalier’s service-book, the Presbyterian’s directory, the Independent’s ex tempore, the Pope’s golden legend, the Friar’s nun, the Monk’s breviary, the worldling’s god, the Prelate’s canons, and Bishop’s oath, etc.— I could reckon more, but he is the very ladder to worship and honour. I must be rich, and therefore honourable, and proud, and grave.

CHREMYLUS
O gentleman-like resolution!

BLEPSIDEMUS
Yet now I think on’t, I will not be grave; for grave bodies do naturally descend to base conditions, which is clean contrary to the complexion of my humour; yet I will cry “Hum” with the best in the parish. I will understand as little as the wealthiest citizen of them all.

CHREMYLUS
Marry, and that’s a proud word, Blepsidemus.

BLEPSIDEMUS
I will sleep as soundly at church and snort as loud at sermons as the churchwarden himself, or the master of the company.

CHREMYLUS
O infinite ambition!

BLEPSIDEMUS
I will entertain none for my whores under the reputation of ladies, unless they be parson’s daughters.

CHREMYLUS
O, Because they may claim the benefit of the clergy!

BLEPSIDEMUS
I will deign none the honour of being my worship’s cuckolds, that is not a round-headed brother of the corporation.

CHREMYLUS
He’ll make it a principle of the City Charter. Horns of such making will be of as great esteem as the cap of maintenance.

BLEPSIDEMUS
Hereafter gentlemen, hereafter, I say, in contempt of a penny quart, I will throw Pisspot Lane in the face of Pie Corner: I will be foxed nowhere but at round-headed inns, that I may be honestly drunk, and carry it with the greater gravity and safety. The soul of sack and the flower of ale shall be my drink, that my very urine may be the quintessence of canary.

CHREMYLUS
Why then, Vespasian might desire no greater revenue than the reversion of your chamber-pot.

BLEPSIDEMUS
But come let us withdraw, and carry Plutus to the temple of Aesculapius; Carion make ready the necessaries, see you play the sumpter-horse with discretion. Let us make haste, for I long to be worshipful.

Come friends, this day gives period to our sorrow,

We will drown cares in bowls of sack tomorrow.

Exeunt ambo.

Act 3. Scaen. i.

Enter Penia Poverty, Higgen, Termock, Brun, Caradock, and an army of rogues.

PENIA
Soldiers, you see men Poverty despise

Since God of riches hath recover’d eyes;

Let us invade them now with might and main

And make them know their former state again;

March forth brave champions, though your noble valours

Be out at elbows, show yourselves to be

Patches of worth, rags of gentility.

Brave blades, array’d in dish-clouts, dirty plush,

Like the grave senators of Beggar’s Bush;

With Poverty, sole empress of your states,

Spend your best blood, you have no wealthy fates:

Methinks I see your valours, and espy

Each rag, a trophy of your victory.

Come Brun, thou worthy Scot of gallant race,

What though thou lost an arm at Chevy Chase,

Resume thy valour. And thou Caradock,

True leek of Wales, Pendragon’s noble stock

Stir up thy Welsh blood to encounter these,

With zeal as fervent as thy toasted cheese.

And thou brave Redshank too, Termock by name,

Wonder of Redshanks, and Hybernia’s fame.

To conquer these, or scatter them like chaff;

Or lick them up as glib as usquebaugh.

And Higgen thou, whose potent oratory

Makes Beggar’s Bush admire thy eloquent story,

Come bravely on and rescue me from danger,

Else Poverty to you will prove a stranger,

Which heavens forbid.

ALL
Poverty, poverty, poverty for our money!

PENIA
Nay, without money sirs, and be constant too.

ALL
Poverty, poverty, poverty, our patroness!

CARADOCK
Cat’s plutter a nailes; Her were best by her troth take very many heeds, how her make a commotion in her stomachs; if her ploud be but up twice and once, her will tug out her sword, and gads nigs, let her take very many heed, her will carbonado very much legs and arms. By St. Taffie, I’ll tear the most valiantest of them all into as arrant atoms as there be motes in the moon. Try he dare whose will; I tickle their hoopsir dominees, else, never let her sing hapatery, while she has live any longer. If her do not conquer them upside down, let her never while she lives in Heurope, God bless her, eat cause bobby with the man in the moon. Her coshen Merlin, her countryman, hath told her in a whisper, very a many much tale of her valour above fourscore and twenty years since.

PENIA
Bravely resolved; O how I love thy valour!

’Tis sweeter than metheglin, ay, all Canarvon cannot afford a comrade half so noble.

TERMOCK
And Termock vill shpend te besht ploud in hish heelsh in the servish.

PENIA
Renowned Termock, thanks from our princely self.

TERMOCK
Nay, keep ty tancks to thyself, Termock is ty trushty shubsheckt.

BRUN
And aies wos gang with thee, mon. Aies have bin a prupder gud man in the borders. Aies fought blith and bonny for the gewd Earl Douglas: Aies show thy foemen a Scutch trick. Aies mumble their crags like a sheep’s-head or coke’s-nose, Ais I do not let me bund to sup with nothing but perk and sow-baby.

PENIA
Well said brave Brun, hold but thy resolution,

And never a soldier breathing shall excel thee.

BRUN
Nays, mon, aif I cannot give ’um mickle rashers enough myself, aies gang home to my Bellibarne and get lusty martial barns, shall pell mell their noddles: What gars great Higgen?

HIGGEN
Attend, attend; I Higgen the grand orator

Begin to yawn, lend me your ass’s ears;

Give auscultation. Higgen, whose pike-staff rhetoric

Makes all the world obey your excellence

By cudgelling them with crab-tree eloquence.

By lusty doxies, there’s not a quire cove

Nobler than I in all the bowsing kens

That are twixt Hockly-’i-th’-hole and Islington.

By these good stampers, upper and nether duds;

I’ll nip from Ruffmans of the Harmanbeck,

Though glimmer’d in the fambles, I cly the chates:

I’ll stand the pad or mill, the church’s deneir.

Nip bungs, dupp gibbers leager, louse and bouse.

Liggen in strommel, in darkmans for pannum

Should the grand Ruffian come to mill me, I

Would scorn to shuttle from my Poverty.

PENIA
So, so, well spoke, my noble English tatter,

Lead up the vanguard, muster up an army,

An army royal of imperial lice.

HIGGEN
And I will be the Scanderbeg of the company,

The very Tamburlaine of this ragged rout;

Come, follow me my soldiers—–

BRUN
Yaws, grand captain, sir, suft and fair; gar away, there be gewd men in the company. Aies captain, for aies have more scutch lice, than thou hast English creepers, or he British goats about him.

HIGGEN
What then? My lice are of the noble breed,

Sprung from the Danes’, Saxons’ and Normans’ blood;

True English-born, all plump and all well savour’d:

Take warning then good sir, be not so proud,

As to compare your vermin sir, with ours.

TERMOCK
Pleash ty shit grash, let nedder nodder of them my shit empress have te plash of ty captain, I am te besht of edder odder. I have seen te fash of the vild Irish. Termock knows vat it is to fight in the bogs like a valiant costermonger, up to the nosh in ploud. Not to make much prittle and prattle to none purposh, Termock has fight under Oneale, for her King and Queen in te wars. Vat, I speak tish by te shoes of Patrick, if that Termock be the captain, thou shalt beat ty foes to pieces and pashes.

CARADOCK
Is Caradock no respected amongst her; her lice are petter a pedecree as the goodst of them all. Her lice come ap Shinkin, ap Shon, ap Owen, ap Richard, ap Morgan, ap Hugh, ap Brutus, ap Sylvius, ap Aeneas, and so up my shoulder. Ant her lice will not deshenerate from her petticree, pretious coles. Her ancestors fought in the wars of Troy, by this leck, as lustily as the lice of Troilus. Nay, by St Taffie, the lice of Hector, were but nits in comparison of her magnanimous lice. Do not disparage her nor her lice, if her love her guts in her pelly.

TERMOCK
But if Termock have no lish, sall he derefore not be te Captain? Posh on her lish. Termock hash none grash a Patrick; no such venemous tings vill preed in hish country.

HIGGEN
I will be captain, for my robes are martial:

True martial robes, full of uncureable wounds.

My doublet is adorned with thousand scars,

My breeches have endured more storms and tempests

Than any man’s that lies perdu for puddings.

I have kept sentinel every night this twelvemonth;

Beheaded ducks and geese, spitted the pigs,

And all to victual this camp of rogues.

CARADOCK
’Faith, and her clothes are as ancient a petticree as thine, her fery doublet is coshen sherman to utter Pendragon’s sherken, or else Caradock is a fery rogue by Saint Taffie.

PENIA
You shall not thus contend, who shall be captain;

I’ll do’t myself, come follow me brave soldiers.

BRUN
I faith! she is a brave virago, mon.

CARADOCK
By St. Taffie, she is an Amashon, a Deborah,

A Brunduca, a Joan of Oleance,

Pucelle de Dieu, a Moll Cutpurse, a Long Meg of Westminster.

TERMOCK
She sall be te captain, for all tee, or any odder in English lond.

HIGGEN
Whips on you all! Follow the feminine  gender?

Fight under th’ ensign of a petticoat?

An act unworthy such brave spirits as we:

Remember our old virtues, shall we forget

Our ancient valours? Shall we in this one action

Stain all our honour, blur our reputations?

Can men of such high fortunes deign to stoop

To such dishonourable terms? How can our thoughts

Give entertainment to such low designs?

My spirits yet are not dissolv’d to whey,

I have no soul, so poor as to obey,

To suffer a smock rampant to conduct me.

BRUN
Aif thou’s keep a mundring mandring, mon, I’se gang to Edinborow. The deil lead your army for Brun, aies no medle. Adieu, adieu.

CARADOCK
Ah Brun! Blerawhee, blerawhee.

TERMOCK
Ah Brun, Brun! Shulecrogh, fether vilt thou, fether vilt thou?

BRUN
What yaw doing mon to call Brun back; and you be fules, I’ll stay no longer.

CARADOCK
Ah Brun, Brun shall be captain, by all te green cheese in the moon. Brun shall be captain for Caradock, if her would not give place to Brun her heart were as hard as Flintshire.

TERMOCK
Brun sall be te besht in te company, if tere were a tousand tousand of ’um.

HIGGEN
I’ll not resign my right, I will be captain.

’Tis fit I should: hath not my valour oft

Been tried, at Bridewell and the whipping-post?

PENIA
Let Higgen then be captain, his sweet tongue

And powerfull rhetoric may persuade the rout.

CARADOCK
Cats plutter a nailes, Higgen shall be Captain for her Ears; yet Caradock will be valiant in spight of her Teeth.

Ho brave Captain Higgen!

OMNES
Higgen, a Higgen, a Higgen.

HIGGEN
So then soldiers, follow your leader: valiant Brun

Lead you the rear; you Termock shall command

The regiment of foot. Generous Caradock

Have you a care of the left-wing.

CARADOCK
O disparashment to her reputation! Brutus hish coshen look the whing. Think you her will flee away. Her will stand to it tooth and nail, while there be skin and bones in her pelly.

BRUN
Let the army gang to the deil. Aies no medle.

TERMOCK
Stay tere man, vat tou do Brun?

HIGGEN
My brave comradoes, knights of tatter’d fleece,

Like Falstaff’s regiment, you have one shirt among you.

Well seen in plund’ring money for the alehouse.

Such is the fruit of our domestic broils,

We are return’d to ancient poverty

Yet (seeing we are lousy) let us show our breeding.

Come, though we shrug, yet let’s not leave our calling:

Lieutenants rampant, bravely all train’d up

At the well skill’d artillery of Bridewell;

March on brave soldiers, you that ne’er turn’d back

To any terror but the beadle’s whip.

BRUN
St Andrew, St Andrew!

CARION
St Taffie, St Taffie!

HIGGEN
St George, St George!

TERMOCK
St Patrick, St Patrick!

PENIA
Saints are discarded.

But Andrew, Taffie, George, and Patrick too

May the whole mess of them be all propitious!

HIGGEN
If any do resist us, let us throw

Our crutches at them. I have here

An empty sleeve to strike out all their teeth,

Besides a mankin to wipe all our wounds.

Be valiant, and as erst the Spanish cobbler

Enjoin’d his eldest son upon his deathbed:

See you do nothing, that may ill beseem

The families you come of; let not the ashes

Of your dead ancestors blush at your dishonours;

Increase your glory of your house; for me

I’ll ne’er disgrace my noble progeny.

CARION
Caradock disgrash her petticree? No, by St Prutus’ bones; her will fight till her stand, while tere be legs in her beels. If her pe killed, her will not run away.

BRUN
Aies gar away? Aies not budge a foot by St Andrew.

TERMOCK
Termock disgrash hish fadders and mudders? Termock will stand while tere be breath in his breech.

Act 3. Scaen. 2.

Carion, Clodpole, Lackland, Stiff, Scrape-All, to them.

Carion whips them. They run.

PENIA
Higgen, Scanderbeg, Tamburlainw, grand Captain Higgen.

HIGGEN
Soldiers shift for yourselves. We are all routed.

PENIA
Is this you would not disgrace your noble progeny?

HIGGEN
My ancestors were all footmen. Running away will not disgrace my progeny.

Exit.

CARADOCK
O disgrash to peat St Taffie’s coshen! Use the true Pritish no petter?

PENIA
Caradock, will you and your lice disgrash her progeny? The vermin of Hector and Troilus would not do so for all Achilles’ Myrmidons.

CARION
Her do follow her petticree from head to foot: her grandsire Aeneas ran away before.

Exit. Carad.

BRUN
Marry ill tide thee, mon, use a mon of our nation no better.

PENIA
Generous Brun, I thought you would not have budged a foot by St Andrew.

BRUN
What of that woman? Aies no endure poverty,

The Scuts love mickle wealth better than so.

Exit Brun.

PENIA
Will Termock too disgrash his fadders and mudders?

TERMOCK
Termock runs for te credit of his heels to look the reshiment of foot.

Exit Ter.

PENIA
Now, woe is me, woe is my poverty!

That can find grace or mercy in few places.

What shall I do? If my whole army fly,

I must run too; if I stay here, I die.

Exit. Penia.

Act 3. Scaen. 3.

Carion and the rustics, Clodpole, Stiff, etc.

CARION
So now you see Carion for his valour may compare with Don Quixote or the Mirror of Chivalry. Come, come along you old fortunate rascals, you that in the days of Queen Richard fed upon nothing but barley-broth and puddings, you shall be rich you rogues all of you, feed hard at the council-table.

How daintily wilt thou become a scarlet gown, when such poor snakes as I shall come with cap and knee: “How does your good lordship? Did your honour sleep well tonight? How does Madam Kate and Madam Ciss, have their honours any morning-milk-cheese to sell? Will it please your lordship to command your servant to be drunk in your honours-wine-cellar? Your honour’s in all duties, and so I kiss your honour’s hand”.

CLODPOLE
Thou shalt kiss my honour’s tail. Then will I again say, “Fellow, how does thy honorable lord? Tell him he does not congenerate from the noble family he comes of: I would have some confabilitation with him concerning a hundred of his lordships pitch-forks. But I am going to the Bench, and with the committee to firk up the proud priests before us, and humble the country. Tell him Madam Kate is as sound as a kettle: thou shouldst have concoursed with her ladyship, but she is skimming her milk-bowls, and melting her dripping-pans as busy as a body-louse. Now fellow go into my wine-cellar to play on my sack-buts, and take no care for finding the way out again. But sirrah, see you drink my honour’s health”: you see I can tell what belongs to lordships, and what is more to good manners. But what’s the news abroad, my honest Coranto stilo novo sub form pauper?

CARION
I know not what to say, but that my master is emperor of Constantinople, a second Tamburlaine; we shall have nothing but glory, beef and bajazeths in every cupboard. Plutus has left stumbling; the puppy is nine days old, and can see perfectly. Gramercy Aesculapius! ’Tis pity but thou shouldst have a better beard than Apollo thy father. O Aesculapius, the very poultice of surgeons, and urinal of physicians!

CLODPOLE
Vaith neighbours, then let us make bonfires: this news is as sweet as zugar-zopps.

He sings.

My Jane and I full right merrily, this jollity will avouch,

To witness our mirth upon the green earth,

Together we’ll dance a clatter-do-pouch.

Clatter-de-pouch, clatter, etc.

LACKLAND
And then will I kiss thy Kate and my Cisse,

As soon as I rise from my couch.

The wenches I’ll tumble and merrily jumble,

Together we’ll dance a clatter-de-pouch.

CHORUS
Clatter-de-pouch, clatter-de—etc.

CARION
I’ll kiss if I can our dairymaid Nan,

Together we’ll billing be found:

Let every slouch dance clatter-de-pouch,

Together we’ll dance a Sellenger’s round.

LACKLAND
I will not be found at Sellenger’s round,

Although thou do call me a slouch.

Banks’s horse cannot prance a merrier dance

Than rumbling and jumbling a clatter-de-pouch,

Clatter-de etc.

CHORUS
Then rumbling etc.

Exeunt Clodpole, Lackland.

Enter Mrs Chremylus, manet Carion.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Here’s rumbling and jumbling indeed. I was spinning my daughter a new smock, and they keep such a noise I cannot sleep for ’um. Passion o’ my heart, I wonder what news there is abroad, and why that knave Carion makes no more haste home.

CARION
Now will I be an emperor, and contemn my mistress.

MRS CHREMYLUS

What news Carion?

CARION
I cannot answer them today, command the embassadors to attend our will tomorrow.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Why Carion, I say!

CARION
Go give him my gold chain and precious jewel.

MRS CHREMYLUS

What, are you mad?

CARION
And a rich cupboard of my daintiest plate.

Well, let me see what it will cost me now,

For to maintain some forty thousand men

In arms against the Turks.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Sirrah, do you know yourself?

CARION
Suppose I lend some twenty thousand millions.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Some twenty thousand puddings.

CARION
And send two hundred sail to conquer Spain, and Rupert too, and fright the Inquisition.

Out of their wits—

MRS CHREMYLUS

If any be out more than thou, I’ll be hanged.

CARION
The King of Poland does not keep his word:

And then my tenants for my custom-house

Are twenty hundred thousand pounds behind hand.

In Haberdasher’s Hall, or the Isle of Tripoly.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Take that for your Haberdasher’s Hall, or Isle of Tripoly.

She cuffs him.

CARION
Traitors; my guard! where are my beefeaters? O my old mistress, was it you? Why, are you not drunk with mirth? I was in good hope ere this to have seen you reeling in a French hood. Well, have at your old petticoat. Madam, I have news will ravish you, my dainty madam; a bushel of unmeasurable joy.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Then prithee tell thy comfortable message; and if it tickle me in the telling, I will give thee a pair of high-shoes more than thy quarter’s wages.

CARION
Listen then while I anatomise my whole discourse from the head to the heel.

MRS CHREMYLUS 

Nay good Carion, not to the heel.

CARION
But I will, though your heel were a Polonian, or a French heel, which is the fashion.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Nay do not molest me, Carion. I am very squeamish, and may chance have a qualm come over my stomach.

CARION
Then I begin. First we came to the god leading Plutus, then most miserable, but now as happy as Fortunatus his nightcap. First we made him a dipper, we ducked him over head and ears in water, we made him an anabaptist.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Alas poor soul, ’twas enough to have put him into an ague: one would not have used a water-spaniel more unmercifully.

CARION
No, nor a curst quean in a cucking-stool, mistress. You see what creatures these dippers are. I warrant when the young lasses were a dipping, the blind rogue could see that well enough. Well, mistress, coming to the temple of Aesculapius, where all the altars stood furnished with reeking pasties and hot pippin-pies, O, ’twas such sweet religion, my mouth watered at it. Just upon the hearth they were beathing a great black pudding, to stay the god’s stomach till breakfast. Here we laid Plutus in a cradle and rocked him asleep.

MRS CHREMYLUS

O the folly of such simpletons, lay an old man in a cradle!

CARION
And why not? Is he not a child the second time? Next, every man made his own bed: the liberal god allowed us fresh pease-straw.

MRS CHREMYLUS

And was there no more lame and impudent creatures at this ’spital-house?

CARION
Of all sorts, mistress. There was a young heir, newly crept out his wardship, that had been sick of a young lady three years and upwards.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Just as I am of Chremylus. Sirrah, seeing you are of good parts and properties, you may presume to come sometimes into my bedchamber.

CARION
No mistress, the dairymaid shall serve my turn. Next was a pretty waiting-gentlewoman, that with dreaming of her lord, was fallen into a terrible green-sickness.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Now, by my halidom, I could have cured that myself; if she be troubled with the maidenhead grief, I can give her as quick deliverance as any Esculapius in Europe.

CARION
Many lawyers were troubled with the itch in their fingers; many young heirs in a consumption; burst citizens so over-swell’d with interest-money, that they were in danger of breaking; many treasurers, sequestrators and receivers came for help, for they had received so much moneys, that they had lost their eyesight, and could not see to make accounts: there were townsmen came to have their brow-antlers knocked off, Presbyterians for the Directory, cavies for the service-book; some tradesmen and scholars, that had long fed upon costive usurers, being much bound, came to the temple to be made soluble.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Nay, if he be so good at it, I’ll go and see if he can cure me of my corns; they vex me so wonderfully, I cannot sleep for ’um.

CARION
Marry Jove forbid, mistress! Should your corns be cured, how should my master do for an almanac to foretell the weather? Pond, Booker, Allestree, Jeffry, Neve Gent, nay, nor Merlinus Anglicus, are not half so good astronomers as your ladyship’s prophetic toes.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Mass, if it be so, I shall save him two pence a year, rather than put him to the charges of an almanac. But was there any more?

CARION
Yes there were many country-lobs, that having surfeited on the glory-bacon of their milkmaids’ favours, were fain to repair to the next alehouse for purgations. Deaf scriveners came for their cares; silenced ministers to be cured of dumbness; many scholars of colleges, whose gowns having been sick divers years of the scurf, desired the god to do them the grace as to change the colour of that disease into the black jaundice.

MRS CHREMYLUS 

And did he cure them all?

CARION
All but Neoclides; a blind fellow, and yet such an arrant thief, that he stole all things he set his eyes on. To proceed: the monk put out the tallow-tapers, bid us sleep, and whatsoever hissing we heard, to see and say nothing. There we slept soundly, and in the honour of Aesculapius snorted most devoutly. Marry, I could not sleep: for there was an old woman with a pitcher of pease-porridge at her head lay next to me. Now I had a great zeal to devour the delicious pillow: but putting forth my hand, I espied the bald friar eating the religious cakes, and cracking of the consecrated nuts. So I thinking it a piece of divine charity, studied how to cheat the old beldame.

MRS CHREMYLUS

O sacrilegious varlet! Wert not afraid of the god?

CARION
Yes, lest he might cozen me of my pease-porridge. The woman perceiving me put forth her hand: then I fell a-hissing like a Winchester goose on St George’s dragon; the woman snatched back her fangs, and for very fear smelt like the perfume of a polecat: in the interim I supped up the porridge; and my belly being full, I laid my bones to rest.

MRS CHREMYLUS

And did not the god come yet?

CARION
O mistress, now comes the jest: when the god came near me, my devotions a posteriori sent him forth most ridiculous orisons; the pease-broth in me was so windy that I thought I had an Aeolus in my belly; my guts wambled, and on the sudden evaporated a clap or two of most unmannerly thunder, the very noise of it broke all the urinals in the ’spital-house, and saved Aesculapius the labour of casting Jupiter’s water; it frighted his poor apothecary out of his wits, as he was making Saturn a glister: and for the smell, Panacea told her father that she was sure it could not be frankincense.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Yes, but was not the god angry that you kept your backside no closer?

CARION
Who? He? ’Tis such a nasty numen, he would be glad if your close-stool were his alms-tub, that he might feed upon your meat at second hand.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Nay, but leave your windy discourse, and proceed with your tale.

CARION
At length two snakes appeared, and licked Plutus’ eyes: then Esculapius beating Argus his head in a mortar, tempered it with a look beyond Luther, well minced with the roasted apple of his eye: the whole confection boiled in a pint of crystalline humour, which being dropped into his eye with the feather of a peacock’s tail, he recovered his sight in the twinkling of an eye.

MRS CHREMYLUS

But how came the god of wealth blind?

CARION
How! Because honesty is like a puck-fist; he never met it but once, and it put out his eyes: besides, the rich rogue had too many pearls in his eyes.

MRS CHREMYLUS

And what are we the better now his eyesight is restored?

CARION
Why thus: none but honest people shall grow rich now; there’s the wonder: my master Chremylus shall be an earl, and you from the cream-pot of rusticity shall be churned into the honourable butter of a countess.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Nay, they were wont to call me countess before: and I shall do well enough for a countess, I warrant you. I thank my stars, I can spin as fine a thread for woollen, as any countess in England. Well Carion, now I am a countess, mistress ficar shall not sit above me in the church; I will have as fine a stammel-petticoat and rich stomacher as the proudest of them all. Prithee, Carion, go to the goldsmith, buy me a ring, and see it be well enamoured.

CARION
You would say enamelled. But mistress, what will you do now?

MRS CHREMYLUS

I will go in to present the god’s new eyes with a basket of pippins and a dozen of churchwardens.

Exeunt ambo.

Enter Plutus, Chremylus.

PLUTUS
Good morrow to the morn next to my gold:

First, bright Apollo, I salute thy rays,

And next the earth, Minerva’s sacred land.

Truly Cecropian soil, Athenian city.

How my soul blushes, and with grief remembers

My miserable blindness! Wretched Plutus,

Whose hood-wink’d ignorance made thy guilty feet

Stumble into the company of rascals,

Informers, sequestrators, pettifoggers,

Grave coxcombs, sycophants and unconscionable Corydons,

And citizens whose false conscience weigh’d too light

In their own scales, claim’d by a principal charter

The cornucopia proper to themselves.

When good just men, such as did venture lives

For country’s safety and the nation’s honour,

Were paid with their own wounds, and made those scars

Which were accounted once the marks of honour,

The miserable privilege of begging,

Scarce to have lodging in an hospital.

And those whose labours suffer nightly throes

To give their teeming brains deliverance

To enrich the land with learned merchandise

The sacred traffic of the soul, rich wisdom:

Starve in their studies, and like moths devour

The very leaves they read, scorn’d of the vulgar,

Nay, of the better sort too many times,

As if their knowledge were but learned wickedness,

And every smug could preach as well as they:

Nay, as if men were worse for academies.

But all shall be amended. I could tell

A tale of horror, and unmask foul actions;

Black as the night they were committed in.

I could unfold a Lerna, and with proofs

As clear as this dear light, could testify

How I unwilling kept them company.

CHREMYLUS
O heaven forbid! What wicked things are these?

Yet such there be, that flock into my company,

In swarms as if they would devour me quick,

That throng so fast, as if they’d crow’d my soul

Out of her house of clay: while every man

Employs his supple hams, and oily tongue

To feign’d compliments and importunate service.

I could not walk th’ Exchange today, but straight

Each head was bare, every officious knee

Bowed to my honour, and inquired my health;

And which is more intolerable, snow-white heads,

Whose every hair seem’d dyed in innocence.

With that one leg which was not yet i’th’ grave,

Crouch’d like so many tapsters. These springtide friends,

These swarming flies, bred by the summer’s heat;

Should but adversities black cloud appear,

With low’ring looks, theat’ning a winter’s storm,

Farewell my summer’s swallow: these are friends

To Chremylus’ cupboard, and affect (I see)

My oysters and my puddings, ’tis not me.

Exit.

Enter Mrs Chremylus.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Marry, God’s blessing o’ th’ thy soul! Now a hundred good morrows to thy eyes. I have brought thee a dish of pearmains and pippins, with a dish of lordings and lady-apples, and some of our country fruit, half a score of russetings.

PLUTUS
O ’tis unfit, my eyesight being restored,

To accept a kindness till I have bestowed one.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Marry and muff! I can be as stout as you if I please. Do you scorn my kindness?

PLUTUS
Apples and nuts, we’ll eat ’um by the fire,

Where the rude audience shall not laugh at us:

’Twere an absurdity in a comic poet

To make a muss of sweetmeats on the stage,

Throwing a handful of ridiculous nuts

To catch the popular breath and ignorant praise

Of preaching cobblers, carmen, tinkers, tailors.

MRS CHREMYLUS

Nay, ’tis e’en true, the good old gentleman speaks very wisely; you may believe him, if you please. I’ll be sworn, this morning, the lay clergy, while they were a-preaching at Bell Alley in Coleman Street, I came by with my basket; the hungry rascals in pure zeal had like to eat up my gingerbread, had there not been popish pictures upon it; I had much ado to keep them from scrambling my apples too, had not the sets of my old ruffe looked like so many organ pipes and frighted them. But faith rakehells, (an’ you mend not your manners) I’ll complain to Mr Goodwin and the ’mittees too. Come in good gentleman, though I have never a tooth in my head, yet I’ll crack nuts with my gums but I’ll bear thee company.

Exeunt ambo.

Finis Actus Tertii.

Act 4. Scaen. 1.

Carion Solus.

CARION
To be rich is the daintiest pleasure in the world; especially, to grow rich without venturing the danger of Tyburn or whipping. Every cupboard is full of custards, the hogsheads replenished with sparkling sacks. The veriest Gippo in the house will not drink a degree under muscadine. All the porridge-pots are arrant Barbary gold. All the vessels in the house, from the basin and ewer to the chamber-pot and vinegar bottle, are of Middleton’s silver. The kitchen and buttery is entire ivory, the very purity of the elephant’s tooth. The sink is paved with the rich rubies, and incomparable carbuncles of Sir John Oldcastle’s nose. The conduit runs as good rosewater as any is in Aristotle’s well. The dish clouts are cloth of tissue, and from the skirts of every scullion drop melting streams of ambergris. We the poor servants play at even and odd with archangels, and at cross and pile for Jacobuses, in a humour to out-Philip the King of Spain. My master is sacrificing a sow, a goat, and a ram for joy; but I could not endure the house, there is such a smoke from the reeking of the roast, that though it please my stomach, my eyes are offended with it.

Enter Gogle and his boy carrying his shoes and cloak.

GOGLE
Boy, follow me, for I have a zeal to be rich;

My devotion leads me in the righteous path

To Plutus god of wealth. Prophane poverty

Is a Carthusian, and a grand delinquent,

One o’th’ malignant party up in arms

Against the well-affected.

CARION
Say brother, who are you, whose righteous shoes conduct you hither?

GOGLE
Ananias Gogle, verily.

A devout brother, that hath oft been plundered

By wicked persecution: but last night

My dreaming spirit foretold I should be rich

And happy made by revelation.

CARION
Gogle, or Cogle, a Geneva brother

Of sanctified snuffling, a pure elder

O’ th’ precise cut, or else past ordinances.

GOGLE
No, but a zealous saint of Amsterdam,

Whose nose is forward to promote the cause;

Crosses are Romish idols, yet misfortune

Has put so many dismal crosses on me,

Till every cross was spent, and sent away

On superstitious pilgrimages: fie upon’t,

That zeal and ignorance should be convertible.

CARION
What would you have, dear brother? For I think

I have heard you exercise at Bell Alley.

GOGLE
’Tis true, but yet

I come to Plutus’ conventicle now.

’Tis he can cure my troubles, he brings joy

To the fraternity of Amsterdam,

To the Geneva brotherhood, and the saints

Whose pure devotions feed on Bunbury cakes:

He can restore my wealth, give me abundance

Of holy gold and silver purified,

Increase my talents spent upon the sisters,

That I may thrive again as did my father

That reverent saint Gogle, Patience Hypomone

A holy tailor and a venerable parson.

CARION
Say brother, may a tailor be a parson?

GOGLE
’Tis very fit: for first, his sacred parchment

Can take the measure of religion;

And from the cloth of a good conscience

Make up a suit for honest conversation:

Sewed with the thread of goodness, stitched i’th’ seams

With twisted silk of piety and innocence;

Lined with good thoughts and charitable actions:

The sacred shreds and snips of holy kersey

May chance to mend the garments of the righteous,

If Satan come to rend their guiltless robes.

CARION
But were you not in miserable condition,

Before that Plutus came to speak amongst you?

He speaks with golden eloquence, believe’t:

For now your zealous bags are full again

With holy silver, and good brotherly gold;

You cannot fall to desperation,

Having so many angels to defend you.

GOGLE
Yea certes: therefore now I find god Plutus

Has made me collector of his contributions.

I must needs thrive, therefore I take occasion

To give the god the greatest gratulation.

CARION
But tell me, zealous brother, why doth that boy

Carry that saint-like cloak, and upright shoes?

GOGLE
Cloaks are for saints; they preach in cloaks all now:

Gowns are all Popes: no sermons without cloaks.

This holy cloak and I these thirteen years

Have freez’d together, and these upright shoes;

Not upright once, till their ungodly soles

That always went awry, were rightly mended

By a religious conscionable cobbler,

With leather liquor’d in most zealous tears.

These shoes, I say, ten winters and three more

Have traced the conventicles of the brethren.

These shoes, this cloak I come to dedicate

To Plutus, in requital of his kindness.

CARION
What, your shoes come for consecration?

GOGLE
Now fie upon your popish consecration!

This cloak is not a rag of Babylon.

I offer these as presents: this same is

A well-affected cloak; and zealous shoes,

Never prophaned with irreligious toes.

Such precious gifts they are, such devout presents,

He cannot but accept them verily.

Enter Never-Good.

Never-good
O hone! A cree! O hone!

My empty purse and belly weep for sorrow,

And every string and gut pours lamentations.

I was a sequestrator once, and used

To find occasions of delinquency

Committed against the state, like a promoter.

But now my guts have sequestered my belly,

And let it out to others. Wretched state

Of them that die in famine! But in me

Jerusalem’s dearth is here epitomiz’d.

CARION
Garret Ostle Bridge was down, welladay, welladay.

Never-good
As I was wont to inform against malignants,

So now my guts give informations

Against my teeth and stomach. Wretched Ne’er-Be-Good!

I now must pine and starve at Penniless Bench,

Who starved orphans and delinquent prisoners,

Like a committee’s marshal. Now I see

What ’tis to want a little honesty.

Oh that the philosophers truly had defined

The moon green cheese! I would desire the man

That dwells in such a blessed habitation,

To roast me one poor piece before I die,

That for my epitaph men might write this note,

Our sequestrator had a Welshman’s throat.

GOGLE
Now verily I find by revelation,

This is a varlet of no honest fashion;

Who ’cause he had no honest occupation,

Is fall’n into most wretched tribulation.

Never-good
O hunger, hunger! Now good sky fall quickly,

Or I shall die ere it rain larks. Who could

Endure to have his goods confiscate thus

By the blind puppy Plutus! Well, young Cerberus,

I’ll hire the Furies to pull out thy eyes,

And once more put thee to the trade of stumbling.

CARION
This is a rascal deserves to ride up Holborn,

And take a pilgrimage to the triple tree,

To dance in Hemp Derrick’s coranto:

Let’s choke him with Welsh parsley.

Never-good
Good friend be merciful, choke me

with puddings and a rope of sausages,

And I will thank you here and after death;

For I shall die I fear for want of choaking.

Where is the god that promised golden mountains

T’enrich us all: is this the gold he gives me?

He has not left me coin enough to purchase

A mess of pottage, like my brother Esau.

Empson and Dudley, happy were you two

Being the prime sequestrators of your age,

That you were hang’d before this day of famine.

I pine and starve, live to outlive myself,

Turn ghost before I die. Blind fornicator

Plutus hath sequestered the sequestrator.

GOGLE
I tell thee out of zeal to th’ cause thou liest.

Never-good
So my good zealous brother of ignorance,

And what says your Amsterdam nose? You think

That every man turns factor for the devil,

A reprobate, that comes not every night

To hear your fine reformed basket-maker

Preach in his wicker pulpit? You shall not think

To have my money thus, you shall not think it.

Prate any longer here, mutter again,

And I will make thy pretty brotherly soul

Come snuffling through thy sanctified nostrils.

CARION
Never-Good, I know was always fierce.

Never-good
Yes indeed sir, for now my paunch is empty;

I’d have you know, I have an excellent stomach.

CARION

I will do what I can to make this flesh

To have a combat with this furious spirit.

Ananias Gogle, do you see this heretic

How he triumphs against the lay-preaching brotherhood?

Go to him man, and beat him.

GOGLE
’Tis a strong reprobate. He would sequester me

Were I not for the cause. I will not touch him,

He will defile my purest hands; he is

A lump of vile corruption. Breathe th’ other way;

Thy very breath’s infectious, and it smells

As if thou hadst caught the pox of the whore of Babylon.

Never-good
So sir, you dare not fight.

GOGLE
I will not fight. It is thy policy to have me fight,

That I might kill thee, and pollute my hands

With swinish blood. No, no, I will not fight

To make myself unsanctified.

I will dispute with thee, nose against nose,

And valiantly I dare to snuffle with thee,

In the defence of silver purified.

Never-good
Would Plutus had no better champion to defend him!

Then such as only snuffle in the cause.

I would presume by my own proper valour

To make a breach into the strongest cupboard,

Were it as strong as Basing House or Bristol.

GOGLE
Avaunt, thou synagogue of iniquity,

I see thou art o’ th’ popish tribe: necessity

Does make thy guts take Purgatory penance,

Brings thee to shrift and shift, makes thy teeth observe

Unconscionable Fridays, prophane fasting-days,

With Lent and antichristian Emberweeks.

Never-good
’Tis much against my conscience, my devotion

Lies toward the kitchen. If I change my faith,

I will turn fat Presbyter or Anabaptist.

I never loved this heresy of fasting,

Plutus has put me out of commons. Yet my nose

Smells the delicious odour of roast-beef.

CARION
What doest thou smell?

Never-good
I say, I smell some cavalier’s roast-beef.

CARION
Out on thee varlet, I warrant thoud’st fain sequester it.

If the despair of dining vex thee thus,

I can acquaint thee with a liberal duke

That keeps an open house.

Never-good
I charge thee by the love thou bearest thy stomach,

By all the happiness of eating puddings,

And every pie thou meanest to eat at Christmas,

To tell me who—

GOGLE
Now out upon thee for a roguish heretic!

’Tis not a Christmas, ’tis a nativity pie.

That superstitious name, I know, is banish’d

Out of all England, holly and ivy too.

CARION
Why? Go to Paul’s, Duke Humphrey wants a guest;

If his rooms now be clean from soldiers’ horse-dung,

There you may stay and walk your bellyful:

Bid yourself welcome, never pay your ordinary,

Nor say no grace, but thank yourself for hunger.

Never-good
O misery of men, that I the health

And lover of my country should thus pine

And die for want of porridge! See you chimney,

What sweet perfumes, what comfortable smoke

It breathes; that very smoke doth smell of mutton.

Well, I shall die, and all the worms will curse me

For bringing so lean a carcass to the grave.

GOGLE
Answer to me.

Never-good
What, to those narrow breeches?

GOGLE
Do not prophane my breeches. For these breeches

I tell thee were in fashion in the primitive Church.

Answer to me.

Never-good
What, will you catechise me?

GOGLE
Art thou a farmer?

Never-good
No, heaven forbid, I am not mad,

To live by dung and horse-turds.

GOGLE
Art thou a merchant?

Never-good
’Faith I can walk the Exchange,

Put on an Indian face, spit China fashion,

Discourse of new-found worlds, call Drake a gander,

Ask if they hear news of my fleet of ships

That sail’d by land through Spain to the Antipodes

To fetch Westphalia bacon. I can discourse

Of shorter ways to th’ Indies, spend my judgment

On the plantation of the Summer Isles.

Censure Guiana voyage, dream of plots,

To bring Argier by shipping unto Dover.

Then of Prince Rupert’s ships, and how the Pope

May make St Dunstan draw the devil to th’ peak,

To make him kiss his own breech.

This can I talk with merchants, in the close

Invite myself to dinner at their houses,

And borrow money ne’er to be repaid

Till the return of my silver fleet from Persia.

GOGLE
Now fie upon thee, hast thou no vocation,

No honest calling? Then art thou not a lawyer?

Never-good
No faith, I am not; yet know a trick

To bring my neighbours into needless suits,

And undertake their actions: make ’um pay

For such a motion at the Dog’s-head Tavern

A mark or two; disburse a piece or two

For affidavits at the Mitre: sell ’um

For twenty shillings an injunction,

Writs of rebellion, chancery decrees,

A nisi prius, or a latitat.

CARION
Poor souls, they have very hard words for their money.

Never-good
When this is done, I sit and laugh at them:

Then they may buy a writ of execution

And go and hang themselves. For I feed on them

All the term long, live with them in vacation,

Cheating them by bills of return.

GOGLE
Vile rascal, hast thou no other shift?

Never-good
Faith yes, sometimes

I feed on one and twenties, cheat young heirs,

Bringing them acquainted with some cozening scrivener,

To ease them of the burden of too much earth.

Sometimes I woo old widows, go a-suiting

Unto the thirds of an alderman’s estate;

Sometimes prick up myself and grow familiar

With the proud wealthy citizens’ wanton wives,

And by the fortitude of my back maintain

Both back and belly.

GOGLE
O sink of sin, and boggards of corruption!

Hast thou no honest calling?

Never-good
Yes I have: I know a trick to snuffle at Bell Alley,

Rail at the steeple-houses, and the popish bishops,

And the tithe-scraping priests, Sir John Presbyters.

GOGLE
Out on thee villain, foe to the holy cassocks.

I do remember thee in the archbishop’s time,

Thou madest me stand i’ th’ popish pillory

With Prynne and Burton, only for speaking

A little sanctified treason.

CARION
But we will be reveng’d; we’ll have him drag’d

Through all the town by alewives, and then hang’d up

Upon a sign-post, for conspiring with

Sir Giles Mompessons, in the persecution

Of innocent tapsters.

GOGLE
Come, seeing he has no zeal nor ardent love,

Let’s strip him naked, till he freeze and grow

As cold as charity.

Never-good
What will you plunder me?Wwhere’s your warrant, ho?

Do, sanctified thieves, plunder: yet I shall live

To see my little Anabaptist come

To his twelve godfathers, thence to the ladder;

Where having nosed a tedious psalm or two

The holy hemp must gird your sanctified windpipe,

While you in honour of the righteous cause

With a wry mouth salute the souls at Paddington,

And turn a Tyburn saint.

GOGLE
Pull off his profane and irreligious doubler,

Anathematise his breeches, excommunicate

His impious shirt: there’s not a rag about him,

But is heretical, full of Babylon lice,

Like the foul smock of Austria.

Never-good
So, do it if you dare: that I may live

To see your fine precise Geneva breeches

Hang in the hangman’s wardrobe. Ho, bear witness.

CARION
Nay faith your witness is not here: a mandrake

Has frighted him: the hue and cry was up

’Twas time to trust the safety of his neck

Unto the swiftness of his heels. Come, come,

Uncase. So now Ananias Gogle

Lend me your cloak to cloak this sycophant.

GOGLE
My cloak! His Romish carcass shall not be arrayed

In these pure innocent robes: shall any bastards

Of the vile generation of Pope Joan

Defile my cloak, that has these thirteen years

Wip’d my beloved nose, whose very snot

Is reverencd’ by the brethren? No, he may bring

These garments to the mass, prophane ’um there,

And make my cloak a reprobate, and commit

Adultery with the seven hills: besides,

He is an idol; and I verily think

It were idolatry to let this cloak

Embrace a pagan. No, good cloak, ne’er turn

Apostate from the faith of Amsterdam.

Good cloak, be not a-kin to Julian’s jerkin:

Though thou be threadbare, thou shalt ne’er be turn’d;

No, no, ’tis fitter Plutus have thee.

CARION
No, Plutus shall have this, ’tis fresh and new:

Your cloak is threadbare; your too fervent zeal

Has almost made it tinder.

GOGLE
What, Plutus have his cloak! Oh ’tis the skin

Of a pernicious snake. O Popery!

A profane cope, or the levitical smock,

I mean a surplice, is not more unlawful.

CARION
As it is now: but wipe your nose on’t thrice,

’Tis sanctified; you know the brotherly snot

Has enthusiastic operations in’t.

GOGLE
I am persuaded. Let him have it then.

But what shall be decreed of my upright shoes?

CARION
We’ll hang them on his head. How his brow-antlers

Become their furniture! By St Hugh’s bones,

He looks like the very ghost of a shoemaker’s shop.

GOGLE
O swear not by St Hugh, that canonis’d cobbler.

Come holy brother, let us drag him hence.

Never-good
Do, scundrels, do: but if I once come a sequestering,

I’ll go to Dr Faustus, true son and heir

To Beelzebub, whom the great devil begot

Upon a Succubus, on midsummer eve,

As hell was sowing fern-seed. This Dr Faustus,

The Mephistopheles of his age, the wonder

And the sole Asmodeus of his times,

Shall by his necromantic skill (Fortune my foe)

In the black art lend me his Termagant,

Old Almeroth, or Cantimeropus,

Or some familiar else an hour or two.

Thence I’ll to Phlegethon, and with him drink

A cup of hell’s flapdragon, and returning

Spew fire and brimstone into Plutus’ face,

To roast the rotten apples of his eyes

With Stygian flames that I revomitise.

Exit Never-Good.

GOGLE
We fear not Dr Faustus: his landlord Lucifer

Says that his lease with him is out of date;

Nor will he let him longer tenant be

To the twelve houses of astrology.

CARION
Let Dr Faustus do his worst. Let me see if this Termagant can help you to your clothes again.

Enter Anus.

CARION
But stay, what worm-eaten hag is this? Holy brother, let’s away to bo-peep, we shall be seen else. Do you not perceive that old beldame of Lapland, that looks as if she had sail’d thither in an eggshell, with a wind in the corner of her handkercher? I am not so much afraid of Dr Faustus, as of that witch of Endor.

Exeunt Gogle, Carion.

Act 4. Scaen. 3.

Anus sola.

Anus
Hey ho! Methinks I am sick with lying alone last night. Well, I will scratch out the eyes of this same rascally Plutus god of wealth, that has undone me. Alas poor woman! Since the shop of Plutus his eyes has been open, what abundance of misery has befallen thee! Now the young gallant will no longer kiss thee nor embrace thee: but thou poor widow must lie comfortless in a solitary pair of sheets, having nothing to cover thee but the lecherous rug and the bawdy blankets. O that I were young again! How it comforts me to remember the death of my maidenhead! Alas, poor woman, they contemn old age, as if our lechery was out of date. They say we are cold: methinks that thought should make um take compassion of us, and lie with us, if not for love, for charity. They say we are dry: so much the more capable of Cupid’s fire; while young wenches, like green wood, smoke before they flame. They say we are old: why then, experience makes us more expert. They tell us our lips are wrinkled: why that in kissing makes the sweeter titillation. They swear we have no teeth: why then, they need not fear biting. Well, if our lease of lechery be out, yet methinks we might purchase a night-labourer for his day’s wages. I will be reveng’d of this same Plutus, that wrongs the orphans, and is so uncharitable to the widows. Ho, ho, who’s within here?

Enter Scrape-All.

SCRAPE-ALL
Who’s there?

Anus
A maid against her will this fourscore years. Goddy-godden, good father: pray, which is the house where Plutus lives?

SCRAPE-ALL
Marry, follow your nose, you may smell out the door, my little damsel of fifteen, but fifteen times over. In my ’pinion, this young lass would make a pretty Maid Marian in a comedy to be presented before Plutus.

Anus
Now god save all. By your leave sweet grandsire! I will call forth some of the house.

SCRAPE-ALL
What need that? Cannot I serve the turn?

Anus
No, marry, can you not. Nay, as old as I am, I will not bestow my widow’s maidenhead at second hand on such a frosty Nestor. I will have March or April; I scorn to commit fornication with December.

SCRAPE-ALL
Nay good Autumn, do not misconceive me: I asked if I could not bear in your errand or no. But I see master Chremylus coming.

Enter Chremylus.

Anus
Alas good sir! I have endured the most unjust and unsufferable injuries, since Plutus has regained his eyesight, as ever poor woman did since the days of Queen Edmund. Alas sir, life is not life without natural recreation.

CHREMYLUS
How’s this? Some promoter of the feminine gender!

Anus
No, by my chastity, but an honest matron of Turnbull, that have paid scot and lot there these fourscore years, yet never was so abused as now.

CHREMYLUS
What abuse?

Anus
Unsufferable abuse, intolerable injuries.

CHREMYLUS
Speak, what injuries?

Anus
An injury unspeakable.

CHREMYLUS
What is it?

Anus
Alas sir, ’tis lying alone. O the misery of lying alone! would I had been below ground ere I had seen this minute of adversity. Ah Turnbull Grove, shall I never more be beholding to thy charitable shades! Ah ’twas a good world when the nunneries stood: o their charitable thoughts that took so much compassion on poor women, to found such zealous bawdy-houses! Had not Cromwell been an eunuch, he had never persuaded the destruction of such places set up for such uses. ’Twas a good world too in the days of Queen Mary: a poor woman might have desired a kindness from a lusty friar in auricular confession. But Plutus’ eyes are like Basilisk’s, they strike us dead with adversity.

CHREMYLUS
What ails this skinful of lechery? Alas poor grannam, dost thou grieve because thou wantest money to go drink with thy gossips?

Anus
Ah, do not mock me sir: ’tis love, parlous love that has so enflamed my heart with bavins of desire, that I am afraid he will make me the very bonfire of affection.

CHREMYLUS
What meant the knavish Cupid to set this old charcoal on fire?

Anus
I’ll tell you sir: there was a young gallant about the town, one Neanias.

CHREMYLUS
I know him.

Anus
He being a younger brother, had no lands in ’tail tenure, but city widows. He was but poor; but as fine a well-favour’d gentleman, it did me good at heart to look on him. I ministered those things he wanted; and he recompensed my kindness in mutual love: as I supplied his wants, so he succoured my necessities with all possible activity; I would not have changed him for Stamford, though he jumped the best in London.

CHREMYLUS
And what did this pretty pimp usually beg of you?

Anus
Not much: for he reverenced me wonderfully, partly for love, but more for venerable antiquity. Sometime he would beg a cloak.

CHREMYLUS
To cover his knavery.

Anus
Sometimes a pair of boots.

CHREMYLUS
To exercise his horsemanship.

Anus
Sometimes a peck or two of corn.

CHREMYLUS
For which he paid a bushel of affection.

Anus
Now and then a kirtle for his sister, a petticoat and French hood for his mother. Not much: all the good turns I did him in the day, the conscionable youth requited ere midnight.

CHREMYLUS
This was nothing indeed: it seems he did reverence you, (as you say) partly for love, but more for your venerable antiquity.

Anus
Nay, he would tell me too, that he did not ask these things for his midnight wages, but only in love. He would not endure to wear anything, but what I paid for, out of a mere desire to remember me.

CHREMYLUS
This was infinite affection! Could he not endure to wear anything but what you paid for? ’Twas dear love this, pretty love tricks ’faith; you may see, how the wanton youth was enflamed with your beauty.

Anus
I but now, the unconstant wag has not the same measure of respect; I sent him a custard yesterday, and he would not accept of it, because it quaked like my worm-eaten—. I sent him other sweetmeats too, but he returned me answer, that certainly I had breathed on them, for they smelt of my gums. Moreover, he bid me despair of a night-labourer, and never more expect him at midnight again. For Plutus has made him rich without me; adding withal, that once I was young: Ostend was once a pretty town. The Milesians in the days of yore were valiant: and in the days of King Henry, the English were sturdy fellows at the battle of Agincourt.

CHREMYLUS
Faith, I commend the stripling for his wit. ’Tis none of the worst conditions. Now he is rich, he will have the best and plumpest cockatrice of the city; when he was poor he was content with porridge. There be many of that profession, that maintain themselves by hugging the skin and bones of an alderman’s widow.

Anus
I, but erst, he would have come everyday to my door.

CHREMYLUS
Perchance a-begging.

Anus
No, only to hear the melody of my voice.

CHREMYLUS
Like enough, it could not choose but please him to hear what excellent music your Jew’s trump could make, now all your teeth are out.

Anus
If he had but seen me sad and melancholy, he would have kissed me with such a feeling of my sorrow, and have called me his chuck and Helena.

CHREMYLUS
’Twas only to have one of Leda’s eggs to his supper.

Anus
How oft has he praised my fingers?

CHREMYLUS
’Twas when he looked for something at your hands.

Anus
Many a time has he sworn that my skin smelt sweeter than a musk cat.

CHREMYLUS
He meant a polecat: did you not believe him? ’Twas when his nose first smelt of hippocras, or else the perfume of your white leather was so strong, he could not endure it.

Anus
O how it comforts me to remember how he would call my eyes pretty sparkling ones.

CHREMYLUS
’Twas cause they pinked like the snuff of a candle. Faith the gentleman had his wits about him: he knew how to get the old wives’ provision, the viaticum she had prepared to carry her to Graves-End.

Anus
Therefore, my friend, Plutus is to blame to promise relief, when he does us such intolerable damages. How do you think I can endure to lie alone, when so many sprites are walking? How shall I keep off the nightmare, or defend myself against the temptations of an incubus?

CHREMYLUS
Alas good relic of antiquity! Pay thy fine and take a new lease of lust. Faith, I pity thee; what wouldst thou have him do if he were here?

Anus
Marry, that since I have deserved so well of him, that he do me one kindness for another. Good old gentlemen, either let him restore me my goods, or stand to his bargain. The conditions not performed, the obligation is of none effect: my lawyer resolves me, I may recover of him.

CHREMYLUS
Noverint universi per praesentes, your lawyer is a coxcomb. Did he not do his duty every night? I warrant you, he had as lief have tugged at an oar as a —–. In my mind, he has performed his part of the obligation.

Anus
But he promised never to forsake me as long as I lived.

CHREMYLUS
No more he has not; why? Thou art now dead: thy flesh is mortified, only thy impotent lust has outlived thee a twelve month or two. Thou art but a mere carcass, nothing but worms’ meat.

Anus
Indeed grief has almost melted me into dust and ashes. Half-putrefied I walk up and down like the picture of death’s-head in a charnel-house. But see, yonder’s my gamester, my cock o’ th’ game: he’s marching to some banquet or other: ’tis Shrove Tuesday with him, but Lent with me. O grief, to be bound from flesh!

CHREMYLUS
It seems he is going to a feast, by his torch and garland.

Enter Neanias.

Neanias
I’ll kiss the old hag no more,

  She has no moisture in her:

If ever I lie with a lass ere I die,

  It shall be a youthful sinner.

Give me a lass that is young,

  I ask no greater blessing:

I’ll ne’er lie again with fourscore-and-ten,

  A carcass not worth the pressing.

I will not embrace her again,

  To set the town on a scoffing:

I’ll never make more death-widow a whore,

  And cuckold the innocent coffin.

Who’s this? Good morrow Venus, o good morrow

Old duck, old Helen! Tell me, sweet Helen,

How hast thou done this three thousand year, young pullet!

How hast thou done ere since the wars of Troy?

Has the cuckold Menelaus cast his horns?

But what old goat is this? ’Tis Agamemnon.

You Agamemnon, is your Clytemnestra

As old as Helen? Tell me, old Helen, tell me,

When do the lecherous worms and thee begin

To act adultery in the winding-sheets?

Anus
What says my duck; wouldst have me go to bed?

Neanias
What, my old sweetheart! How comest thou grey so soon?

Thou canst not be so grey; I will not suffer’t,

I will not be deceived, I will pull off

Thy cozening periwig.

Anus
So sir: I was not grey when I gave you my smock off my back to make you nightcaps. You swore I could not be above fifteen, when I translated my stammel petticoat into the masculine gender, to make your worship a pair of scarlet breeches.

Neanias
I shall never abide an almanac while I live:

The Julian account’s an arrant coxcomb;

But the bissextile is an arrant villain.

I will curse every bissextile in the county of Europe.

Thou couldst not possibly be grey so soon,

Except a hundred leap years had conspired

To jump together, to make thee old o’ th’ sudden.

CHREMYLUS
He talks as if he had not seen you since the Conquest:

How many Jubilees past since he was last with you?

Anus
Now fie upon him! How long do you say? ’Tis no longer than yesterday, by the faith of a woman, since he had the fruition of me, and swore I was as young as Hecuba.

CHREMYLUS
Then it is not with him as it is with others: for being drunk, he hath the use of his eyes more perfect than when he was sober.

Anus
No, the peevish fellow, now he is drunk, he sees double, and thinks me twice as old as I am.

Neanias
O Neptune, and the other grey-bearded gods,

Can you with all the arithmetic of heaven

Number the wrinkles of this beldame’s forehead?

These many ruts and furrows in thy cheek

Proves thy old face to be but champion-ground,

Till’d with the plough of age, well muck’d with sluttery:

’Tis time for thy lust to lie sallow now.

Can any man endure to spend his youth

In kissing winter’s frozen lips? Can veins

That swell with active blood, endure th’ embraces

Of such cold ice? Go and prepare thy coffin,

Think on thy winding-sheet. When I was poor,

Cold limbs and empty guts persuaded me

To lie with skin and bones. Necessity,

As cruel as Mezentius’ tyranny,

Made me commit adultery with a carcass,

A putrefied corpse, a bawd o’ th’ charnel-house.

But now good dust and ashes, pardon me,

These arms shall never more embrace thy corpse.

Thou stews of clay, thou mud-wall of mortality,

Go rot and moulder; and if thy impotent lust

Must needs be satisfied, know hell is a hot house,

Perchance some hot-rein’d devil may undertake thee;

I’ll lend a halfpenny to pay Charon’s boat-hire.

No, I will now choose me a good plump lass,

As moist as April, and as hot as May,

Whose damask cheek shall make the roses blush,

Whose lips at every kiss shall strike a heat

Into my veins, breathing through all my soul

An air as warm and sweet as the perfumes

That smoking rise from the dead phoenix’ nest.

Now come my boon companions,

  And let us jovial be:

Though th’ Indies be the King of Spain’s,

  We are as rich as he.

As rich as any King of Spain,

  In mirth, if not in wealth:

Boy, fill me then a bowl of sack,

  I’ll drink my mistress’ health.

My mistress is but fifteen,

  Her lips is all my bliss:

Go tell her I will come at night,

  And then prepare to kiss.

You my she-Nestor may go snort the while,

Or kiss your monkey. I will take my torch,

Set her on fire, and let her smoke to Acheron.

Anus
O fire, fire! Shall I die no better a death than the top of Paul’s steeple?

CHREMYLUS
Nay, take heed how you set your torch too near her; one spark will set her a-flaming, for she is made up of saltpetre, very gun-powder well dried and ready pruned, mere touchwood, and as dry as any tavern-bush.

Neanias
’Tis true, she’ll quickly take; the fire of lust

Has turn’d her into tinder, some of hell’s brimstone,

But to make matches, and she’ll fit the devil

For a whole tinderbox. Come my dainty girl,

Let us be friends; why should we two fall out?

Sweet be not angry, I do love thee better

Than water-gruel: come, let’s play together.

Anus
Now blessing on thy heart! What play shall we play, that which we played at t’other night?

Neanias
Here, take these nuts.

Anus
Alas my honey, I am past cracking.

Neanias
They are to play with.

Anus
What play?

Neanias
Even or odd, guess you.

Anus
What shall I guess?

Neanias
How many teeth there be in thy head.

CHREMYLUS
I’ll guess for her; perchance three or four.

Neanias
Then you have left, pay your nuts: she has but one,

An o’erworn grinder; ’tis a gentle beast,

She has forgot to bite; good innocent gums,

They cannot hurt— no danger in her mouth,

Till she eat brawn. — Her charitable tongue,

Like the old Rebels of Northamptonshire,

Cannot endure hedges of teeth should stand

To make her mouth enclosure.

Anus
Well sir, you may abuse me: but by cock and pie (God forgive me that I should swear), were I as young as I have been, these nails that by a good token have not been pared since eighty-eight, should have scratched your face till it had been a dominical one, and as full of red letters as any Pond’s Almanac in Christendom, ’twere suitable to your prognosticating nose. I think you are mad; would any but an Orlando or Jeronimo have used a poor woman so? Do you think I will endure to be your bucking-tub to be washed with the dregs of your wit?

Neanias
He did you a courtesy, that would wash you soundly.

CHREMYLUS
O by no means: why, she is painted, sir.

If you should wash her, then my lady’s fucus

Would drop away; her ceruse and pomatum

Being rubb’d off, would to the world betray

The rugged wrinkles of her slabber’d face.

Take but the white-loam from this old mud-wall,

And she will look worse than Gamaliel Ratsey.

Anus
Are you a bedlam too, old frosty squire?

Are you fourscore, and yet your wit an infant

Not come to age? Come, I will be your guardian.

She beats him.

CHREMYLUS
Good Mr. Neanias, sweet young master,

If you do not save me from this Medusa,

Her Gorgon’s head will turn me to a stone bottle,

And then throw me at myself, to make me beat out my own brains.

Neanias
Nay take her to yourself, old impudent goat,

To ravish a maid before her sweetheart’s face,

O most inhumane! Yet you may do’t for me,

I will resign my interest: so farewell.

Much joy unto you both. O Hymen, Hymen,

What a fine couple of sweet loves are here,

To keep their wedding in the grave, and get

A son and heir for Doomsday—

Anus
No prithee do not think so, I swear by Venus I would have none but thee, though Pegasus and Bucephalus came a-wooing to me.

Neanias
Yes you may have him: yet I cannot leave thee

Without a tear to quench my flames of love.

He weeps.

Well now farewell: live happy in his love,

Venus and Cupid bless your marriage sheets,

And let you snort this hundred years together.

I’ll grieve the while, and sack’s best virtue try,

To drown my cares: sorrow (you know) is dry.

CHREMYLUS
Nay, by Hecate you shall not put a trick on me thus. I have not outlived my wits: I were mad if I would run myself into another Scylla, having such a dangerous Charybdis of my own at home. Good Mr. Neanias, I did not think she had been your mistress: I will not for all the world do you such a wrong as to be your corrival; love her alone for me.

Neanias
Yes to be dor’d. Good wickedness, no more:

Do not intreat me to endure the noose;

I shall go marry her, be the fool her husband,

But you will come and kiss her; send your men,

Your serving men to fox me in your cellar,

While you the while shall cuckold me at home:

O what a brave Actaeon should  I be!

What have you ne’er a journeyman, or bailie

To put her off to? Or, if all fail, no chaplain?

I am no freeman, therefore the city charter

Will not grant me the privilege of such harness;

Pray bear your cap of maintenance yourself.

CHREMYLUS
Come leave this jesting, I’ll endure’t no longer;

I will not let you hate this pretty lass.

’Slife it may prove her death: these wanton girls

Are very subject to eat chalk and coals.

’Slid, too much grief for you, with thoughts of love,

May chance to generate the green sickness in her.

Neanias
Nay, I do love her dearly, wondrous dearly,

Her eyes are Cupid’s Grub Street: the blind archer

Makes his love-arrows there; bright glow-worms’ eyes,

No rotten wood outshines their glorious lustre,

Fain would I kiss her.

Anus
Faith, and thou shalt, my little periwinkle.

Neanias
No, heaven me bless!

I am not worthy of such happiness.

CHREMYLUS
Yet she accuses you.

Neanias
How, accuses me? what heinous fault,

What sin, what sacrilege have I committed

Against the reliquies of her martyr’d beauty?

CHREMYLUS
You mocked her, she says, you told her, the Milesians were valiant in the days of yore. Faith, do not hit her in the teeth with contumelious proverbs.

Neanias
Hit her i’th’ teeth, why ’tis impossible:

Hit her i’th’ gums we may, but no man living

Can hit her in the teeth with anything.

I’ll not fight for her, take her to yourself.

CHREMYLUS
Pray, good sir.

Neanias
I reverence your age; ’tis your grey hairs

That are such potent suitors, ’twere a sin

To deny anything to a snow-white head.

None else but only you should have obtained her;

Therefore rejoice, be gone, and stink together.

CHREMYLUS
I know your meaning, you are weary of your stale whore, you deal with her even as they do with horses, when they are no longer fit for the saddle, turn them over to the carmen.

Anus
I will not live with any but with thee.

Neanias
But what an ass am I thus long to talk

With an old bawd, that lost her maidenhead

Above two thousand years before Deucalion’s flood,

Who living as long a whore, turn bawd in the days of King Lud?

CHREMYLUS
Nay, since you have drunk of the wine, you must be content with the lees.

Neanias
Ay, but her lees are bitter, sour as verjuice,

Mere vinegar, vinegar; I will sell her

For two pence a quart, vinegar, vinegar, in a wheelbarrow.

I will go in and sacrifice my garland to Plutus.

Anus
I’ll go in too, I have some business with Plutus.

Neanias
But now I think on’t, I will not go in.

Anus
My business is not much, I care not greatly,

If I stay with thee.

CHREMYLUS
Come young man, be of good courage, she cannot ravish thee.

Neanias
I believe that too.

Anus
Go in, I’ll follow thee i’th’ heels, I warrant thee.

CHREMYLUS
She sticks to him as close as a cockle.

Neanias
Come beldame follow me,

And in my footsteps tread.

Then set up shop in Turnbull Street

And turn a bawd ere thou art dead.

And when thou art dead;

This shall of thee be said,

Thou livedst a whore, and diedst a bawd,

In hell the devil’s chambermaid.

Act 5. Scaen. 1.

Mercurius knocking.

CARION
Who’s this that knocks, the door so hard! What, nobody? Can they walk invisible? I’ll lay my life this is a piece of St Dunstan’s ghost that pulls me by the nose so? Good ghost, mistake me not, I am not the devil, I am honest Carion every inch on me. Well, I see the doors can cry for nothing, I see nobody, I’ll go in again.

Mercurius
So ho, ho, ho, Carion, Carion, Carion stay, I say, stay.

CARION
Stay let my nose alone, ’twill abide no jesting; sir, was it you, that was so saucy with my master’s doors to knock them so peremptorily? they shall bring an action of battery against you.

Mercurius
If you had not come quickly, I would have broke them open. Go run, call forth your master and mistress, the men and the maids, yourself, the dog and the bitch, the cat and the kitlings, the sow and the pigs.

CARION
My master and mistress, the bastards their children, the men and the maids, myself, the dog and the bitch, the cat and kitlings I will call forth: but the sow and pigs would desire you to have them excused, they are not at leisure. Why what’s the matter?

Mercurius
Why Jupiter will put you all into a sack together, and toss you into Barathrum, terrible Barathrum.

CARION
Barathrum? What’s Barathrum?

Mercurius
Why, Barathrum is Pluto’s boggards: you must be all thrown into Barathrum.

CARION
I had rather the messenger were you know what. Mercury, why what wrong have we done Jupiter? I remember he has many a time soured our drink with his thundering, but we have done him no injury, but once I broke his shins at football in Tuttle.

Mercurius
’Tis worse than so; y’are guilty of a sin

That hell would fear to own. Since Aesculapius

That urinal, restored god Plutus’ eyes,

Men have almost forgot to sacrifice:

But they were wont to offer hasty-puddings,

Spice-cakes and many dainties; nay, I know

Some that have spent whole hecatombs of beef

To give the gods their gawdies: now they’d be glad

To eat the very brewis of the pottage;

A rump or flap of mutton were a fee

For Jove’s own breakfast; for a rib of beef,

Though it smelt of every Gippo’s scabby fingers,

May any scullion be chief cook of heaven.

Men have (I say) forgot to sacrifice.

CARION
And shall: beggarly Jove does not deserve it.

He never did us good: we are not beholding

To any of your lousy gods. Old Plutus,

Plutus has purchased our devotion,

Gold is the saint we reverence.

Mercurius
Nay faith I care not for the other gods,

Let them go stink and starve; let cuckold Vulcan

Go earn his meat by making spits and dripping-pans,

And with his tinker’s budget and his trull

Venus, may mend one hole and make ten for it.

Let Phoebus turn Welsh harper, go a begging,

And sing St Taffy for a barley-crust.

Let Cupid go to Grub Street, and turn archer:

Venus may set up at Pict-hatch or Bloomsbury;

Juno turn oyster-quean, and scold at Billinsgate;

Bacchus may make a drawer at a tavern,

Call for Canary for the man i’th’ moon.

Minerva has been always poor: brain-bastards

Were never born to many lands. Great Jove

May pawn his thunderbolts for oaten-cakes.

For them I care not, but these guts of mine:

Is it not pity Mercury should pine?

CARION
Nay now I see thou hast some wit in thy pericranium.

Mercurius
Whilom the alewives and the fat-bumm’d hostesses

Would give me jugs of ale without excise,

Fill’d to the brim, no nick nor froth upon them:

Besides they’d make me froises and flapjacks too,

Feed me with puddings, give me broken meat

And many dainty morsels for to eat.

O shall I never more begrease my chops

With glorious bits of bacon! Shall Mercurius

Stretch forth his legs for want of buttermilk?

CARION
Nay, this injustice thou deserv’st to see,

For injuring those that have done good for thee.

Mercurius
Alack and welladay,

Shall I never the custard see,

Which the fourth day of every month

Was consecrate unto me?

CARION
Alack and welladay,

In vain doest thou pray as I fear:

The custard is a deaf god,

And cannot so quickly hear.

Mercurius
If custard cannot hear,

Come shoulder of mutton to me,

Black-pudding also with pudding-pies,

And a mess of furmenty.

CARION
Alack poor Mercury!

For thy case I do much condole.

Thou never shalt steal again any meal

Or spitchcock at Hockly-i’-th’-hole.

Come faith, since Thieving is out of fashion (doest remember when thou stolest Apollo’s spectacles and Vulcan’s crutches?), learn to beg. Suppose I am a rich gentleman, and thou a lame fellow; perchance I may be in the humour to give thee something.

Mercurius
Kind gentleman, for the Lord’s sake bestow something on a poor lame cripple, that has halted before his best friends upward and downward, any time this dozen years: this leg, I’ll stand to it, has been lame ever since the last dearth of corn, god be with it. Heaven preserve your limbs, Jove keep your feet out o’th’ setters, your legs out o’th’ stocks, your heads out o’th’ pillory, your necks out o’th’ halters, and other such infirmities poor mortality is subject to. May you never know what ’tis to want till you are in poverty. Good gentlemen, take compassion on a wretched mortal, that has been troubled with a deadness in his arms, that he has not had the lawful use of his hands in picking and stealing this many hours.

CARION
Sirrah, sirrah, you must have the lash;

I’ll have you whipp’d for a vagrant person.

Mercurius
This is a justice of peace’s charity: if this be that you’d be in the humour to give, pray keep it to yourself.

CARION
Faith, act a poor soldier: men are charitable to men of arms.

Mercurius
A word with you generous sir. Noble sir, thou seemest to be a man of worship, and I am one that have seen the face of the enemy in my days, and ventured a bloody nose in defence of my country. Good sir, lend me a crown till the next taking of Basing House, and by all the cold iron about me, you shall be presently paid upon the surrender. Noble gentleman, do not make known my necessities; I would have scorned to have asked such a kindness of Hopton or Montrose; I had rather have starved in the leaguer, and fed upon nothing but sword and buckler; and yet Hopton is a noble fellow, many a timber-piece have I spent in his company.

CARION
What service hast thou been in?

Mercurius
Hot service sir, supping at the very mouth of the martial porridge-pot, I have scalled my lips with kissing valour. Did you never hear how I routed a regiment of Ormond’s foot?

CARION
Never sir, how I pray?

Mercurius
Sir, by this good sword if it be not true, I am an arrant liar, and never saw the wars in my life. Sir, I advanced my spear, ran with a furious tilt at them, and unhorsed every man.

CARION
Of the regiment of foot.

Mercurius
You are in the right sir, ’twas by a metaphor. Then sir the ensigns of my reputation being displayed; a valiant Frenchman, he was born at Madrid in Spain ——

CARION
By a metaphor.

Mercurius
Challenged me the duel at backsword: we met at the first thrust of the rapier.

CARION
By a metaphor.

Mercurius
He shot me clean through the body.

CARION
By a metaphor still, the rapier shot you through.

Mercurius
On my credit sir, ’twas a musket-bullet: for when the fort saw me have the best on’t, they levelled a cannon at me ready charged.

CARION
By a metaphor, with a musket-bullet.

Mercurius
And shot off both my arms. That being done, I caught him by the throat with my right hand.

CARION
When your arms were off.

Mercurius
Drew out my weapon with my left, and cut off his head. I was proceeding to have run him through, but he asked my pardon, and I was merciful and saved his life.

CARION
When his head was off.

Mercurius
You will not believe me now, if the self-same man be as live as I. Prince Rupert knows what service I did at Marston Moor when I run away. But now to be contemned! O poverty, foe to valour!

CARION
Thy valour? Thou look’st as if thou hadst no stomach at all.

Mercurius
Would I had a roasted ox to encounter with. I have showed my valour in Bohemia against the imperialists, in Poland against the Turks, in Holland against the Spaniards, in Utopia against the Roundheads, and is it questioned in England? I was once a fresh-water soldier, but I was seasoned at the salt Isle of Ré: there was my masterpiece of valour.

CARION
What was that I pray?

Mercurius
Why sir, I fought courageously; I was in all the dangerous services, and had misfortunes in all. First sir, I was drowned in the landing, had both my legs shot off in the assault, and ran away in the retreat as all the rest did.

CARION
How? when your legs were shot off in the assault?

Mercurius
What of that? have I not wings on my doublet?

CARION
Why then, you did not run, you did but fly?

Mercurius
Flying is running away by a metaphor.

CARION
Come thou wilt get nothing by this lying warfare. Let me try the gipsy.

Mercurius
From AEEgypt have I come

With Solomon for my guide:

By chiromancy I can tell

  What fortunes thee betide.

A Chaldee me begot,

Old Talmud was his name;

In hieroglyphics he excell’d,

Through Nilus ran his fame.

Come let me see thy hand,

Thou wives hast yet had none;

But bastinadoes at a time

About threescore and one.

He picks Carion’s pocket.

CARION
Well, thou art an arrant gipsy: at what neighbour’s house didst thou learn this? ’Sfoot, how camest thou to know it? I had just threescore and one indeed. Well, I will give thee something: But o Mercury, my purse! Plutus his blessing is run out of my pockets. I will have you hanged, you rogue. There were seven thirteen-pence-halfpennies, would have paid the hangman for above half a dozen of you. Good Mercury, thou shalt see what I’ll do for thee.

Mercurius
Well, if you will entertain me into your family, there’s your purse again, and take heed how you meet with gypsies.

CARION
Entertain thee? Why, what canst thou do?

Mercurius
Why, let me be your porter. I have a Janus’ heart, though not two faces.

CARION
A porter! Canst thou grumble soundly at a rich man’s gate to keep out the poor almsmen? Canst thou bark like grisly Cerberus? No, ’twill not do, my master needs no surly bandogs, we shall keep open house. The office of porter is thrust out of doors.

Mercurius
Make me your merchant.

CARION
We dare not: get you to the Straits of Gibraltar, we need no busy factors, we have wealth enough; we will have no merchants, we shall not sleep for them at nights, they will dream of nothing but new Americas, drink the Canaries, snort out Terra Incognitas, nose the Bermudas, ravish Virginia, talk of the Fortunate Islands, or choke us up with Terra del Fuego’s. No, no, I will have none of our family walk like the Antipodes with his heels upwards; if he should fall headlong into heaven, he might put out the man in the moon’s candle, and leave him to find his way to bed in the dark.

Mercurius
Let me be your fool to make you merry.

CARION
A fool! Let me see: we are all rich, and therefore likely we must have some fools amongst us. But what need that, we have as good, we have some of them that fortune favours.

Mercurius
Then let me be your juggler.

CARION
Not for Zorobabel’s nightcap. These hocus-pocusses seldom come aloft for their master’s advantage. You think to pick our pockets by sleight of hand, and show us a trick for our money: I do not like these feats of activity; therefore presto, be gone, we will have no jugglers.

Mercurius
Then let me be your poet: I’ll make you shows and masques, comedies and tragedies, pastorals, piscatorial sonnets, cantos, madrigals and ballads, till you are so tickled with laughter, that you cannot stand.

CARION
A poet! No, ’tis a little too beggarly a trade; and ’tis a solecism if wit should meet with wealth in these days. Fie upon’t, I can’t endure jestings, poetical furies, I had as lief they should break wind backward. Your rank wits will abuse their betters. And for shows, rascally shows, ’tis pity they are not hang’d for their impudence: there cannot be a gross sin in a congregation, but some men’s vinegar-brains must be a-rubbing of it. I warrant if I should but marry a townsman’s daughter today, they’d make an Actaeaeon of me by tomorrow, dub me knight of the forked order. Poor shallow scoundrels there be that never drank any Helicon above a penny a quart, and yet venture to make ballads as lousy as themselves. Wry-mouth’d villains, who cannot answer to the question, if they should be asked how many of their empty noddles go to the making up of a complete coxcomb. But yet I do love a show, if it be a merry one. Well, thou shalt be our household poet, for household chaplains are now out of date like old almanacs; every man can now say grace, and preach, and say prayers to themselves, or (which is better) forget to say any at all. Well, get thee in, prepare things fitting for the sacrifice. If this fellow had not good store of trades, he had missed of all preferment. Well now, this poet shall make ballads on all the hypocrites of the town, he shall rhyme all the Anabaptists out of their wits.

Enter Attorney, Tinker, Miller, Tailor, Shoemaker, &c.

Attorney
O that Plutus his eyes were scratched out! I can have no more fees for latitat’s nor outlawries.

Tinker
Nay, I am a lad of metal, of all that but gold and silver, can make no profit of my brass nor Latin: there’s no need of making more holes than one now, and that’s a wicked one for my neck to slip into.

Miller
My double toll fails me, o this grinds me to pieces.

Tailor
O ’tis the worst stitch that was ever sewed with the needle of misfortune. O iron age, that like the ostrich makes me feed on my own goose!

ShoEmaker
O this false cordwainer, Plutus, that stretches the leather of my flesh on the tree of fatality; that unmercifully puts me into the stocks of adversity, and gives me no relief at the last.

Tailor
Nay he has made me so slender, that I can measure me by my own yard, three quarters-quarter and half-nail. This crosse-legged infelicity, sharper than my needle, makes me eat my own cabbage.

ShoEmaker
Nothing but a general insurrection like a shoeing-horn can draw on help. Let us combine and patch together.

Omnes
Agreed, agreed.   

Exeunt.

Enter Dull-pate solus.

DULL-PATE
It is a sign Plutus has lost his eyes, when Dull-pates grow rich: if my name had not been Dull-pate, I had lost half my preferment. It is thought I have as many ecclesiastical livings as Spalato had in England; never a fat benefice falls nowadays, but I catch it up; I can have ’um now without lustful simony, in taking bishops’ kinswomen into the bargain. I have often wondered how it comes about that my head is so black, but the hairs of my chin gray: a merry fellow once told me, ’twas because I used my chops more than my brains. ’Tis true indeed, I fare well, because I was born under a rich constellation, but the learned sort under a poor planet. As for example, here comes the Pope, Jupiter’s vicar. — Bless thy wicked Holiness! Thou, the devil, cardinal Richelieu, and the French faction at Court, have brought all the wars into England.

Enter Pope solus.

Pope
Who can instruct me which is Chremylus’ house?

DULL-PATE
Grave reverend father, what’s the matter with you?

How does your Holiness?

Pope
Ill as ill may be,

Since Plutus’ eyesight is restored.

DULL-PATE
What is the cause of this your heaviness,

Doth the proud Emperor refuse to kiss

Your sacred toe? Or does it vex your Boniface

To lose your Peter-pence? What is the cause

Great Catholic bishop, monarch of the Church,

The supreme judge ecclesiastical,

That you are thus perplex’d? Why do you not curse ’um

With your bell, book, and candle, that molest you?

Pope
O I am dead with hunger, a saucy hunger,

With heresy as bad as Arianism,

Gnaws on my sacred guts. I the great father

And prince of Rome have not a crust,

Not a brown crust to gnaw on. Jove’s own vicar,

Nay Jove himself on earth, would beg on knees

For one small piece of sausage. This sad morn,

For a broil’d sprat I pawn’d my triple crown,

And now for one red-herring will I mortgage

All Peter’s large possessions.

DULL-PATE
Ha, ha! Great Pope, can your pontificial teeth

Be glad to gnaw upon a Catholic tripe?

Can your great metropolitan stomach feed

On a hog’s cheek? ’Tis strange, methinks, that you

Being the universal bishop, should not

Have one poor porridge-pot in all your diocese,

Never a soul in Limbo ready fried?

Is all the roast in Purgatory spent?

Are all your bulls devoured? Faith, kill a bull,

Good Pope, a bull, to make your Holiness beef.

There must be meat somewhere or other sure,

Or can you open heaven and hell at pleasure;

And cannot Peter’s keys unlock the cupboard?

Why sure our Lady’s milk is not all spent,

No relics left, nor chips o’th’ Cross to feed on?

Sure at Loreto or at Compostela.

None of the capuchins at Somerset House?

How can it be an’t please your Holiness?

Pope
O no: since Plutus hath received his eyes,

Indulgencies are grown cheap, and at no price:

An absolution for a rape made now

Is nothing worth.

Give me but one poor crust before I faint,

And I will canonise thee for a saint.

DULL-PATE
Or let me purchase for a mutton-bone

Your apostolical benediction.

Pope
A mess of broth or rib of beef from thee,

In my esteem shall meritorious be.

DULL-PATE
Nay I will have it more, such a donation

Shall be a work of supererogation.

Pope
O how I thirst!

DULL-PATE
Mi reverende pater, cannot you drink a cup of holy water?

Now you that could drink Tiber dry, and more,

Cannot obtain a jug upon the score.

Go try, they’ll hardly trust you for a drop

At the Pope’s Head, Mitre, or Cardinal’s Cap,

Or any place; ’tis money draws the tap.

Pope
So irreligious are these ages grown,

They think it charity to rob the clergy.

How comes it that you dare with impudence

Deny the priests their tithes?

DULL-PATE
O, easily sir. A learned antiquary that has search’d

The breech of Saturn for antiquities;

Proves by a reason an infallible reason,

With bugle-horn writ in the Saxon tongue,

That neither aepraedial, nor personal tithes

Are due ex jure divino: and you know

The clergy bishops, your old quondam patrons

Are voted down too, and ever since w’ have learnt

A liberty of conscience to pay no tithes.

We hear some teach too, they are antichristian,

Like steeple-houses; hence we learn to be

Too cunning now for your Apostolic See.

Pope
Now worms devour that antiquary’s nose,

And those that preach against all steeple-houses;

That pour in papers half consumed with moths,

To prove some absurd opinions feign’d to be

Found in the walls of some old nunnery,

But o! My guts wish for a benedicite!

DULL-PATE
Wilt please your Holiness to call a synod?

You may chance to catch trouts in the Council of Trent.

Pope
O I do smell the scent of pippin-pies.

DULL-PATE
You do indeed, your Holiness’ nose I see,

Has the true spirit of infallibility,

I find you cannot err. What would you do,

To be of our house now to have free quarter?

Pope
I would resign my right to heaven and hell.

DULL-PATE
Te-he-he, well said good Pope Innocent.

But that’s too much, resign your heaven only,

Retain your right to hell; your title there

Is held unquestionable. Well now,

Stay here a while, and sing a merry song

As we to Plutus go, and I will free

Thy guts from the Purgatory of fasting.

Enter Anus.

Anus
Is this the Pope? Goddy-godden good father.

I do not come unto thy Holiness

To beg a license to eat flesh on Fridays;

But I desire thy apostolical curse

On a young man that has abused me grossly;

May it please thy catholicness, the perjur’d boy

Swore to lie with me while he lived, but he

Grown rich does think to buy out perjury.

Now good your Holiness give him not absolution.

Pope
Would he were here; for three pence I could sell him

A general remission of his sins:

I am almost famish’d for want of customers.

DULL-PATE
Go woman, fetch the choir in for sacrifice.

(But bid them bring no copes nor organs with them)

And I will get his Holiness to command him

To lie with thee this night what e’er come on’t.

It is enjoin’d him for his penance, is’t not?

Anus
It is, an’t please your Holiness.

Pope
Anything shall please my Holiness, if you give me

But the least hopes to feed my Holiness:

’Tis a lean Holiness, as the world goes now.

DULL-PATE
’Tis strange that you, the shepherd of all Europe

Should not have one fat lamb in all your flock.

What say, if I give you a leg of mutton?

Pope
Remission of sins, whate’er they be.

DULL-PATE
But what if I have sworn to give thee nothing?

Pope
My Holiness shall give thee absolution.