fair lady; I do also love to see her whom I shall choose for my heifer,* to be the first and principal in all fashions, precede all the dames at court by a fortnight, have council of tailors, lineners, lace-women, embroiderers; and sit with them sometimes twice a day upon French intelligences, and then come forth varied like nature, or oftener than she, and better by the help of art, her emulous servant. This do I affect: and how will you be able, lady, with this frugality of speech, to give the manifold but necessary instructions, for that bodice, these sleeves, those skirts, this cut, that stitch, this embroidery, that lace, this wire, those knots, that ruff, those roses, this girdle, that fan, the t'other scarf, these gloves? Ha! what say you, lady? Epi. [softly.] I'll leave it to you, sir. Mor. How, lady? pray you rise a note. Mor. Admirable creature! I will trouble you no more: I will not sin against so sweet a simplicity. Let me now be bold to print on those divine lips the seal of being mine.-Cutbeard, I give thee the lease of thy house free; thank me not but with thy leg. [Čutbeard shakes his head.] -I know what thou wouldst say, she's poor, and her friends deceased. She has brought a wealthy dowry in her silence, Cutbeard; and in *My heifer,] My yoke-mate. Morose is not over-delicate in his choice of terms for a wife: perhaps, he alludes to the proverbial expression. Judges, c. xiv. v. 18. 5 I know what thou wouldst say, &c.] This, as Upton observes, is taken from the Aulularia of Plautus: Me. Ejus cupio filiam Virginem mihi desponderi-Verba ne facias, soror: Scio quid dictura es, hanc esse pauperem. Hæc pauper placet. At the break Eunomia (like Cutbeard) shakes her head, which Megadorus interprets as a sign of disapprobation, and respect of her poverty, Cutbeard, I shall have her more loving and obedient, Cutbeard. Go thy ways, and get me a minister presently, with a soft low voice, to marry us; and pray him he will not be impertinent, but brief as he can; away: softly, Cutbeard. [Exit Cut.]-Sirrah, conduct your mistress into the dining-room, your now mistress. [Exit Mute followed by Epi.] O my felicity! how shall I be revenged on mine insolent kinsman, and his plots to fright me from marrying! This night I will get an heir, and thrust him out of my blood, like a stranger. He would be knighted, forsooth, and thought by that means to reign over me; his title must do it: No, kinsman, I will now make you bring me the tenth lord's and the sixteenth lady's letter, kinsman; and it shall do you no good, kinsman. Your knighthood itself shall come on its knees, and it shall be rejected; it shall be sued for its fees to execution, and not be redeem'd; it shall cheat at the twelve-penny ordinary, it knighthood, for its diet, all the term time, and teli tales for it in the vacation to the hostess; or it knighthood shall do worse, take sanctuary in Cole-harbour, and fast. It shall fright proceeds to obviate. The passage is thus translated by Thorn ton: "Meg. His daughter I would marry-Nay, nay, sister, "Speak not a word; I know what you would say, "She has no fortune. What of that? I like her." • Take sanctuary in Cole-harbour,] Cole, or more commonly Cold-harbour, was a very ancient building in the parish of Allhallows the Less, near the Thames. Stowe gives a long account of the various hands through which it passed, till it came to the earl of Shrewsbury, who, about the end of the sixteenth century, "took it down, and in place thereof builded a number of small tenements, now letten out for great rents to people of all sorts." It seems, at this time, to have been a place of retreat for debtors, gamesters, &c. There is considerable all it friends with borrowing letters; and when one of the fourscore hath brought it knighthood ten shillings, it knighthood shall go to the Cranes, or the Bear at the Bridge-foot, and be drunk in fear; it shall not have money to discharge one tavern-reckoning, to invite the old creditors to forbear it knighthood, or the new, that should be, to trust it knighthood. It shall be the tenth name in the bond to take up the commodity of pipkins and stone-jugs and the part thereof shall not furnish it knighthood forth for the attempting of a baker's widow, a brown baker's widow. It shall give it knighthood's name for a stallion, to all gamesome citizens wives, and be refused, when the master of a dancing-school, or how,* do you call him, the worst reveller in the town is taken: it shall want clothes, and by reason of that, wit, to fool to lawyers. It shall not have hope to repair itself by Constantinople, Ireland, or Virginia;† but the best and last fortune to it knighthood shall be to make Dol Tear-sheet, or Kate Common a lady, and so it knighthood may eat. [Exit. humour in this long monologue of Morose; but his ungenerous triumph over the imaginary distresses of his nephew, cannot be justified; and fully warrants the plot meditated against him in return. This might possibly be what the poet intended by it. * Or how, do you call him, &c.] From the manner in which this is printed in the old copies, I should take it to be personal, and one Howe to be pointed at, as the "worst reveller," &c. + To repair itself by Constantinople, Ireland, or Virginia;] This alludes probably to James's schemes for establishing order in Ireland, one of which was the grant of lands about this time, to English settlers, in the province of Ulster; and to the revival of the colonies in Virginia, whither two bodies of planters had just been sent, one in 1608, the other in 1609. What is meant by Constantinople is not so easy to guess. Sir Puntarvolo, we know, (Every Man out of his Humour,) took five to one upon the return of himself, his dog, and cat, from thence; but it is more likely that the poet refers to some circumstances SCENE IV. A Lane, near Morose's House. Enter TRUEWIT, DAUPHINE and CLERIMONT. True. Are you sure he is not gone by? Daup. No, I staid in the shop ever since. Cler. But he may take the other end of the lane. Daup. No, I told him I would be here at this end: I appointed him hither. True. What a barbarian it is to stay then! Cler. And his charge left behind him, which is a very good sign, Dauphine. Enter CUTBEARD. Daup. How now, Cutbeard! succeeds it, or no? Cut. Past imagination, sir, omnia secunda; you could not have pray'd to have had it so well. Saltat sener, as it is in the proverb; he does triumph in his felicity, admires the party! he has given me the lease of my house too! and I am now going for a silent minister to marry them, and away. True. Slight! get one of the silenced ministers;" a zealous brother would torment him purely. Cut. Cum privilegio, sir. respecting the Turkey company, established in the preceding reign. Slight! get one of the silenced ministers:] Alluding, says Grey, to the non-conformist clergy silenced in the year 1604, Daup. O, by no means; let's do nothing to hinder it now: when 'tis done and finished, I am for you, for any device of vexation. Cut. And that shall be within this half hour, upon my dexterity, gentlemen. Contrive what you can in the mean time, bonis avibus. [Exit. Cler. How the slave doth Latin it!" True. It would be made a jest to posterity, sirs, this day's mirth, if ye will. Cler. Beshrew his heart that will not, I pro nounce. Daup. And for my part. What is it? True. To translate all La-Foole's company, and his feast thither, to-day, to celebrate this bride-ale.* 66 after the Hampton-court conference. Calderwood observes, "That in the second year of king James, three hundred ministers were either silenced, or deprived of their benefices, or ex"communicated, or cast into prison, or forced to leave their ' own country." "But Dr. Heylin, and Mr. Foulis, in answer, tell us," that only forty-nine were deprived upon all occasions, as appears by the rolls brought in to archbishop Bancroft "before his death; which in a realm containing nine thousand 66 parishes, was no great matter." 66 This statement, which is abridged from a former note, though imperfect, and, I suspect, inaccurate, may yet suffice for a general view of Jonson's meaning. It may perhaps be added, that however great the number of silenced non-conformists might be, it was surpassed in a ten-fold degree by that of the deprived ministers of the church during the puritanical persecution which followed. Dissenters (of whatever denomination) have seldom "borne their faculties meekly," in the day of success, or thought it necessary to copy the moderation and forbearance which they experienced while yet the feebler party. 8 How the slave doth Latin it!] This is an artful preparation for the part which Cutbeard is destined to play in the last Act. See also what is said of captain Otter below. * To celebrate this bride-ale.] This marriage festival. Our old writers frequently use ale, in composition, for a merrymeeting. Separately, it commonly stands for an ale-house. |