ACT II. SCENE I.-A Room in ALBIUS'S House. Enter ALBIUS and CRISPINUS. Albius. ASTER CRISPINUS, you are welcome: pray use a stool, sir. Your cousin Cytheris will come down presently. We are so busy for the receiving of these courtiers here, that I can scarce be a minute with myself, for thinking of them: Pray you sit, sir; pray you sit, sir. Crisp. I am very well, sir. Never trust me, but you are most delicately seated here, full of sweet delight and blandishment! an excellent air, an excellent air! Alb. Ay, sir, 'tis a pretty air. These courtiers run in my mind still; I must look out. For Jupiter's sake, sit, sir; or please you walk into the garden? There's a garden on the back-side. Crisp. I am most strenuously well, I thank you, sir. Alb. Much good do you, sir. Enter CHLOE, with two Maids. Chloe. Come, bring those perfumes forward a little, and strew some roses and violets here: Fie! here be rooms savour the most pitifully rank that ever I felt. I cry the gods mercy, [sees ALBIUS] my husband's in the wind of us! Alb. Why, this is good, excellent, excellent! well said, my sweet Chloe; trim up your house most obsequiously. Chloe. For Vulcan's sake, breathe somewhere else : in troth, you overcome our perfumes exceedingly; you are too predominant. Alb. Hear but my opinion, sweet wife. Chloe. A pin for your pinion! In sincerity, if you be thus fulsome to me in every thing, I'll be divorced. Gods my body! you know what you were before I married you; I was a gentlewoman born, I; I lost all my friends to be a citizen's wife, because I heard, indeed, they kept their wives as fine as ladies; and that we might rule our husbands like ladies, and do what we listed; do you think I would have married you, else? Alb. I acknowledge, sweet wife :-she speaks the best of any woman in Italy, and moves as mightily; which makes me, I had rather she should make bumps on my head, as big as my two fingers, than I would offend her. But, sweet wife Chloe. Yet again! Is it not grace enough for you, that I call you husband, and you call me wife; but you must still be poking me, against my will, to things? Alb. But you know, wife, here are the greatest ladies, and gallantest gentlemen of Rome, to be entertained in our house now; and I would fain advise thee to entertain them in the best sort, i'faith, wife. Chloe. In sincerity, did you ever hear a man talk so idly? You would seem to be master! you would have your spoke in my cart! you would advise me to entertain ladies and gentlemen! Because you can marshal your pack-needles, horse-combs, hobbyhorses, and wall-candlesticks in your warehouse better than I, therefore you can tell how to entertain ladies and gentlefolks better than I! Alb. O, my sweet wife, upbraid me not with that; gain savours sweetly from any thing;1 he that respects to get, must relish all commodities alike, and admit no difference between oade and frankincense,2 or the most precious balsamum and a tar-barrel. 3 Chloe. Marry, foh! you sell snuffers too, if you be remember'd; but I pray you let me buy them out of your hand; for, I tell you true, I take it highly in snuff, to learn how to entertain gentlefolks of you, at these years, i'faith. Alas, man, there was not a gentleman came to your house in your t'other wife's time, I hope! nor a lady, nor music, nor masques! Nor you nor your house were so much as spoken of, before I disbased myself, from my hood and my farthingal, to these bum-rowls and your whalebone bodice. Alb. Look here, my sweet wife; I am mum, my dear mummia, my balsamum, my spermaceti, and my very city of She has the most best, true, femi nine wit in Rome! Cris. I have heard so, sir; and do most vehe 1 Gain savours sweetly from any thing.] When Jonson thus gave us the meaning of the Latin saying, Lucri bonus est odor ex re qualibet, he forgot that the occasion from which it took its rise was much posterior to the age in which the persons of his drama lived. WHAL. Whalley alludes to the well-known anecdote of Vespasian: the words of the text, however, are a proverbial sentence as old in the world as the love of gain. The merit of Vespasian's jest consists in the practical application of them. 2 admit no difference between oade, &c.] i. e. "woad, a plant much cultivated in this country for the use of dyers." Dict. The blue tinct with which the ancient Britons stained their bodies, is said to have been obtained from this vegetable. 3 Marry, foh! you sell snuffers too, &c.] These, with the articles enumerated above, seem rather awkwardly placed in a jeweller's shop but trades were fewer, and less accurately defined, in Jonson's days; hence these collections of heterogeneous wares were to be found in every street. Chloe is a confirmed punster. mently desire to participate the knowledge of her fair features. Alb. Ah, peace; you shall hear more anon; be not seen yet, I pray you; not yet: observe. [Exit. Chloe. 'Sbody! give husbands the head a little more, and they'll be nothing but head shortly: What's he there? I Maid. I know not, forsooth. 2 Maid. Who would you speak with, sir? Cris. I would speak with my cousin Cytheris. 2 Maid. He is one, forsooth, would speak with his cousin Cytheris. Chloe. Is she your cousin, sir? Cris. [coming forward.] Yes, in truth, forsooth, for fault of a better. Chloe. She is a gentlewoman. Cris. Or else she should not be my cousin, I assure you. Chloe. Are you a gentleman born? Cris. That I am, lady; you shall see mine arms, if it please you. Chloe. No, your legs do sufficiently shew you are a gentleman born, sir; for a man borne upon little legs, is always a gentleman born." A man borne upon little legs is always a gentleman born.] To this fashionable characteristic of a fine gentleman, there are innumerable allusions in our old writers; thus Browne, "If small legs wan Ever the title of a gentleman, His did acquire it." And Beaumont and Fletcher, -Brit. Past. lib. 2. "I'll never trust long chins and little legs again; And see Massinger, vol. iv. 278. Decker, in his Gulls Hornbook, evidently refers to this passage. "Now, sir, if the writer" (of the comedy) "be a fellow that hath had a flurt at your mistress, or hath brought either your feather or your red beard, or your little Cris. Yet, I pray you, vouchsafe the sight of my arms, mistress; for I bear them about me, to have them seen: My name is Crispinus, or Cri-spinas indeed; which is well expressed in my arms; a face crying in chief; and beneath it a bloody toe, between three thorns pungent. 5 Chloe. Then you are welcome, sir: now you are a gentleman born, I can find in my heart to welcome you; for I am a gentlewoman born too, and will bear my head high enough, though 'twere my fortune to marry a tradesman." Cris. No doubt of that, sweet feature; your carriage shews it in any man's eye, that is carried upon you with judgment. Re-enter ALbius. Alb. Dear wife, be not angry. Alb. Hear me but one thing; let not your maids set cushions in the parlour windows, nor in the diningchamber windows; nor upon stools, in either of them, legs, on the stage, you shall disgrace him worse than by tossing him in a blanket, or giving him the bastinado in a taverne, if, in the middle of his play, you rise," &c. Here Decker retorts on Jonson; the blanketting alludes to the punishment inflicted on him in the Satiromastix, and the bastinadoing to a circumstance of which (whether true or not) several hints are to be found in the same play. 5 My name is Crispinus, or Cri-spinas indeed; which is well expressed in my arms, &c.] There is probably some personal allusion here, which is now lost. Whatever it was, it seems to have distressed Decker, for he strives to parry the attack by introducing a miserable witticism of his own-" as for Crispinus, that Crispineass," &c. These barbarous attempts upon names, under the title of anagrams, were among the amusements of scholars in Jonson's time: he, however, seems to have had a fixed contempt for them. 6 to marry a tradesman.] The quarto reads-to marry a flat-cap, a term of contempt usually applied to a citizen. See vol. i. |