Dion. "Then be converted, be con- Grace, let me rescue you out of the hands verted." of the stranger.

Enter Quarlous in Troubleall's clothes, as spread. First Rabbi Busy, thou superlubefore, and Dame Purecraft.

natical hypocrite;--[to Leatherhead.] Next thou other extremity, thou profane professor of puppetry, little better than poetry: mad[to Whit.] Then thou strong debaucher and seducer of youth; witness this easy and honest young man, [pointing to Edg.]

Over. Stand you there.

Quar. Where you please, sir.
Mrs. Over. [waking.] O, lend me a
bason, I am sick, I am sick! where's Master
Overdo? Bridget, call hither my Adam.
Over. How!

[He is shamed and silenced. Whit. Dy very own wife, i' fait, worshipful Adam.

Mrs. Over. Will not my Adam come at

me! shall I see him no more then?

forget your other name of Overdo, and invite us all to supper. There you and I will compare our discoveries, and drown the memory of all enormity in your biggest bowl at home.

Cokes. How now, Numps, have you lost it? I warrant 'twas when thou wert in the stocks. Why dost not speak!

Waspe. I will never speak while I live again, for aught I know.

Over. Nay, Humphrey, if I be patient, you must be so too; this pleasant conceited gentleman hath wrought upon my judgpray you take care of your sick friend, Mistress Alice, and my good friends all

Quar. And no enormities.

Over. I invite you home with me to my house to supper: I will have none fear to go along, for my intents are ad correctionem, non ad destructionem; ad ædificandum, non ad diruendum: so lead on.

Cokes. Yes, and bring the actors along, we'll have the rest of the play at home.

Quar. Sir, why do you not go on with the enormity? are you oppressed with it? I'll help you: hark you, sir, in your ear-ment, and prevailed. Your innocent young man, you have ta'en such care of all this day, is a cut-purse, that hath got all your brother Cokes's things, and helped you to your beating and the stocks; if you have a mind to hang him now, and shew him your magistrate's wit, you may: but I should think it were better recovering the goods, and to save your estimation in him. I thank you, sir, for the gift of your ward, Mistress Grace; look you, here is your hand and seal, by the way. Master Winwife, give you joy, you are Palemon, you are possessed of the gentlewoman, but she must pay me value, here's warrant for it. And, honest madman, there's thy gown and cap again; I thank thee for my wife. Nay, I can be mad, sweetheart, [to Mrs. Pure.] when I please still; never fear me; and careful Numps, where's he? I thank him for my licence. Waspe. How!

Quar. 'Tis true, Numps.
Waspe. I'll be hanged then.

Quar. Look in your box, Numps.-Nay, sir, [to Overdo.] stand not you fixed here, like a stake in Finsbury, to be shot at, or the whipping-post in the Fair, but get your wife out o' the air, it will make her worse else: and remember you are but Adam, flesh and blood! you have your frailty,

1 Whether this play pleased the king we have no means of ascertaining. James indeed disliked the Puritans, and must have been gratified with the well drawn portraiture of them in Zealof-the-Land Busy: but it is not altogether so certain that he would take delight in the strong ridicule thrown upon the controversies with them in the dispute between the Rabbi and puppet Dionysius. He had himself entered into more than one theological contest with them, and with a deplorable blindness in regard to their real object, always expected, poor man, in some auspicious moment to reconcile them to the Establishment in Church and State by the force of his own reasoning.

Dr. Johnson observes of the Merry Wives of
VOL. II.

EPILOGUE.

[Exeunt.

Your Majesty hath seen the play, and you
Can best allow it from your ear and view.
You know the scope of writers, and what

store

Of leave is given them, if they take not more,
And turn it into iicence: you can tell
If we have used that leave you gave us well:
Or whether we to rage or licence break,
Or be profane, or make profane men speak:
This is your power to judge, great sir,
and not

The envy of a few. Which if we have got,
We value less what their dislike can bring,
If it so happy be, t' have pleased the
King.'

Windsor, that "it is remarkable for the number of the personages, who exhibit more characters appropriated and discriminated than perhaps can be found in any other play:" while the author of the Biographia Dramatica remarks, with far more accuracy (for Johnson knew nothing of our poet) that Bartholomew Fair exhibits perhaps the greatest assemblage of characters that ever was brought together within the compass of one single piece.

This play is placed by Milton, or his nephew, nearly on a level with those exquisite dramas, the Fox and the Alchemist; and not unjustly, for it abounds in powerful satire, no less than in wit and humour; and the characters, numerous as they are, are all kept distinct from one

P

another, and supported with a minuteness of dramatis personæ, though I cannot refrain from attention which has probably never been ex-observing that there is scarcely one of then ceeded. That the humour is of no elevated which does not manifest a degree of skill, little kind must be admitted; but it is suited to the if at all inferior to that displayed in the character persons; and the poet has prepared his reader of Cokes. Even the trifling part of Troubleall, for the manners and the language which he in any other writer than Jonson, would be is about to adopt in the introductory verses. thought deserving of praise, for its correct deThat his choice of a subject was judicious, all lineation of a particular species of insanity, too may not be disposed to grant; but none will inoffensive for fear, and too slight for commisedeny that he has treated it with consummate ration. ability. Of Busy enough has been said. Cokes is unquestionably the most finished picture of a simpleton that the mimetic art ever produced. With sufficient natural powers to take from us all sense of uneasiness at his exposure, he is for ever wantoning on the verge of imbecility. His childish but insatiable curiosity, his eagerness to possess every object within his reach, his total abandonment of himself to every amusement that offers, his incapacity of receiving more than one of two events at a time, with his anxious fears that the other will escape him, joined to the usual concomitants of folly, selfishness, cunning, and occasional fits of obstinacy, tend altogether to form a character infinitely amusing, and fully sufficient (in the hands of Nokes) to justify the "merry monarch" for the unusual glee with which he is reported to have witnessed its representation.

I have no design to analyse the rest of the

"

ADDITIONAL NOTE TO

[I remarked in a note (vol. i. p. 412 6) that Gifford, although he had held the plough, appeared to be very ignorant about horses and their treatment. Had he not been so he would, I think, have struck out the word thy in the following sentence at p. 163, or else have inserted a suitable word between "thy" and grass. It is nonsense as it stands in the text. "I'll have this belly of thine taken up, and [thy] grass scoured, wench." In the same way he has neglected, in his note p. 168 a, to give any explanation of the maladies with which Knockem describes Ursula as being afflicted in her unscalded leg. It is only necessary to refer to Markham's Maister-peece, containing all knowledge belonging to Smith, Farrier, or Horseleech, to obtain the fullest information.

No small part of the mirth of this play arises from the ridiculous mortifications to which the various characters are subjected by the ingenious progress of the plot. The confident and careful Numps is tricked and disgraced on every occasion. Cokes is stript in succession of everything valuable, even to his clothes, and makes his last appearance nearly in a state of nudity. The wise justice is in a maze of dupery from the first scene to the last. The widow-hater marries an ancient trillibub of that description. In a word, there is scarcely one of the numerous dramatis persone who does not furnish his share of entertainment by appearing in situations directly opposite to his pretensions.

From the success which attended this play, the epiphonema "O rare Ben Jonson!" (afterwards placed on his tombstone), is said to have been first given to our author.

PP. 163 a, AND 168 a.

1. "A Mallander is a sort of dry scab, growing
in the form of lines or streaks overthwart the
very tough or inward bent of the knee, and
hath hard hair with stubborn roots like swines'
bristles." 2. "The Scratches, Crepanches or
Rats-tayls, being all but one sorrance, are long,
scabby and dry chaps or rifts, growing right up
and down, and overthwart on the hind-legs, just
from the fetlock unto the end of the curb.'
"The Crown scab breeds round about the
corners of the hoof, and is a cankerous and
painful sorance.' 4. "The Quitter-bone is a
hard round swelling upon the cronet of the hoof,
betwixt the heel and the quarter." I believe
the name of Knockem to be equivalent to our
Knacker.-F. C.]

3.

The Devil is an Ass.

THE DEVIL IS AN ASS.] This comedy was acted in 1616, by the King's Servants at Blackfriars, but not put to the press till many years afterwards, when it appeared in the folio of 1631. The editor of the Biographia Dramatica, who had but to open this volume to ascertain the true date, chooses rather to copy Langbaine, who is of no authority in this respect, and assign it to a later period. There is, indeed, another edition in folio, 1641, but it is of no authority, or even value, being full of errors. In noticing the date of Bartholomew Fair, I had occasion to observe that Jonson appeared to concern himself little, if at all, with the printing of the plays in the present collection; and the Devil is an Ass, as well as the Staple of News, furnishes no slight proof of it. In the folio, 1616, which the author certainly revised, he is altogether sparing of his marginal directions, while the dramas just mentioned abound in them. They are, however, of the most trite and trifling nature; they tell nothing that is not told in action, and generally in the same words, and are upon the whole such a worthless incumbrance on the page, that the reader will thank me for discarding them altogether. They bear no trace of the poet's hand.

This comedy was revived immediately after the Restoration, and, as Downes informs us, "much to the satisfaction of the town." It originally appeared with this motto, from Horace:

"Ficta voluptatis causâ, sint proxima veris.”

THE PROLOGUE.

THE DEVIL IS AN ASS: that is, to-day,
The name of what you are met for, a new play.
Yet, grandees, would you were not come to grace
Our matter, with allowing us no place.

Though you presume Satan a subtle thing,
And may have heard he's worn in a thumb-ring;
Do not on these presumptions force us act
In compass of a cheese-trencher. This tract
Will ne'er admit our Vice, because of yours.
Anon, who worse than you, the fault endures

That yourselves make? when you will thrust and spurn,
And knock us on the elbows; and bid, turn;

As if, when we had spoke, we must be gone,

Or, till we speak, must all run in, to one,

Like the young adders, at the old one's mouth!

Would we could stand due north, or had no south,

If that offend; or were Muscovy glass,3

That you might look our scenes through as they pass.
We know not how to affect you. If you'll come

To see new plays, pray you afford us room,

And shew this but the same face you have done
Your dear delight, The Devil of Edmonton.4
Or, if for want of room it must miscarry,

"Twill be but justice that your censure tarry,

Till you give some: and when six times you have seen't,
If this play do not like,5 the Devil is in't.

The Devil is an Ass.] This is said by the prologue pointing to the title of the play, which, as was then the custom, was painted in large letters, and placed in some conspicuous part of the stage. The remainder of the prologue alludes to a practice common at that period to all the theatres-namely, that of crowding the stage with stools for the accommodation of the spectators, who were thus admitted into the court, yea, even to the very throne of King Cambyses." 2 Worn in a thumb-ring;] Nothing was more common, as we learn from Lilly, than to carry about familiar spirits, shut up in rings, watches, sword-hilts, and other articles of dress. Lest the reader should be in pain for the close confinement of the demon in the text, it may be proper to mention that the thumb-rings of Jonson's days were set with jewels of an extraordinary size. Frequent mention of them occurs in our old dramatists: from which, however, we might be led to conclude that they were more affected by magistrates and grave citizens than necromancers. The fashion of wearing these weighty ornaments was prevalent in Addison's time. "It is common," he says, "for a stale virgin to set up a shop in a place where she is not known, where the large thumb-ring, supposed to be given her by her husband, quickly recommends her to some wealthy neighbour, who takes a liking to the jolly widow that would have overlooked the venerable spinster."-Spec. No. 614.

3 Or were Muscovy glass,]" About the river Dwyna, towards the North Sea, there groweth a soft rocke, which they call Slude; this they cut into pieces, and so tear it into thin flakes, which naturally it is apt for, and so use it for glasse lanthorns, and such like."-Fletcher's Russe Commonwealth. 1591. This is Jonson's Muscovy glass.

The Devil of Edmonton.] This pleasant old comedy had been several years on the stage when this was written, being incidentally noticed as a popular piece in 1604. It is absurdly attributed to Shakspeare by Kirkman, and there wanted nothing perhaps but the knowledge of this sneer at it by Jonson (see vol. ii. p. 146), to induce the commentators to print it among his works. One of them indeed observes that it is unworthy of our great poet; but it ill becomes any of those who burthened his reputation with such trash as Pericles and Titus Andronicus, to raise scruples about the present play.

Oldys ascribes The Merry Devil of Edmonton to Drayton; but it bears no resemblance to any of his published works; and if Lingua be the production of (Tony) Antony Brewer, he also must be relieved from the charge of writing it, notwithstanding the initials T. B. in the title-page.

If this play do not like, &c.] i.e., please. The quibble in the text had already furnished Decker with a title for his play of Belphegor.