Great-many-poison-mixer, come, and pour
Thy cruell’st poisons on this Potters’ floor,
Shivering their vessels; and themselves affect
With all the mischiefs possible to direct
‘Gainst all their beings, urg’d by all thy fiends.
Let Chiron likewise come; and all those friends
(The Centaurs) that Alcides’ fingers fled,
And all the rest too that his hand strook dead,
(Their ghosts excited) come, and macerate
These earthen men; and yet with further fate
Affect their Furnace; all their tear-burst eyes
Seeing and mourning for their miseries,
While I look on, and laugh their blasted art
And them to ruin. Lastly, if apart
Any lies lurking, and sees yet, his face
Into a coal let th’ angry fire embrace,
That all may learn by them, in all their lust,
To dare deeds great, to see them great and just.
EIRESIONE, OR, THE OLIVE BRANCH
The turrets of a man of infinite might,
Of infinite action, substance infinite,
We make access to; whose whole being rebounds
From earth to heaven, and nought but bliss resounds.
Give entry then, ye doors; more riches yet
Shall enter with me; all the Graces met
In joy of their fruition, perfect peace
Confirming all; all crown’d with such increase,
That every empty vessel in your house
May stand replete with all things precious;
Elaborate Ceres may your larders fill
With all dear delicates, and serve in still;
May for your son a wife make wish’d approach
Into your tow’rs, and rapt in in her coach
With strong-kneed mules; may yet her state prove staid,
With honour’d housewiferies; her fair hand laid
To artful loomworks; and her nak’d feet tread
The gum of amber to a golden bead.
But I’ll return; return, and yet not press
Your bounties now assay’d with oft access,
Once a year only, as the swallow prates
Before the wealthy Spring’s wide open gates.
Meantime I stand at yours, nor purpose stay
More time t’ entreat. Give, or not give, away
My feet shall bear me, that did never come
With any thought to make your house my home.
TO CERTAIN FISHER BOYS PLEASING HIM WITH INGENIOUS RIDDLES
Yet from the bloods even of your self-like sires
Are you descended, that could make ye heirs
To no huge hoards of coin, nor leave ye able
To feed flocks of innumerable rabble.
THE END OF ALL THE ENDLESS WORKS OF HOMER.
THE TRANSLATOR’S EPILOGUE
The work that I was born to do is done!
Glory to Him that the conclusion
Makes the beginning of my life; and never
Let me be said to live, till I live ever.
Where’s the outliving of my fortunes then,
Ye errant vapours of Fame’s Lernean fen,
That, like possess’d storms, blast all not in herd
With your abhorr’d heads; who, because cashier’d
By men for monsters, think men monsters all,
That are not of your pied Hood and your Hall,
When you are nothing but the scum of things,
And must be cast off; drones, that have no stings;
Nor any more soul than a stone hath wings?
Avaunt, ye hags! Your hates and scandals are
The crowns and comforts of a good man’s care;
By whose impartial perpendicular,
All is extuberance, and excretion all,
That you your ornaments and glories call.
Your wry mouths censure right! Your blister’d tongues,
That lick but itches! And whose ulcerous lungs
Come up at all things permanent and sound!
O you, like flies in dregs, in humours drown’d!
Your loves, like atoms, lost in gloomy air,
I would not retrieve with a wither’d hair.
Hate, and cast still your stings then, for your kisses
Betray but truth, and your applauds are hisses.
To see our supercilious wizards frown,
Their faces fall’n like fogs, and coming down,
Stinking the sun out, makes me shine the more;
And like a check’d flood bear above the shore,
That their profane opinions fain would set
To what they see not, know not, nor can let.
Yet then our learn’d men with their torrents come,
Roaring from their forc’d hills, all crown’d with foam,
That one not taught like them, should learn to know
Their Greek roots, and from thence the groves that grow,
Casting such rich shades from great Homer’s wings,
That first and last command the Muses’ springs.
Though he’s best scholar, that, through pains and vows
Made his own master only, all things knows.
Nor pleads my poor skill form, or learned place,
But dauntless labour, constant prayer, and grace.
And what’s all their skill, but vast varied reading?
As if broad-beaten highways had the leading
To Truth’s abstract, and narrow path, and pit;
Found in no walk of airy worldly wit.
And without Truth, all’s only sleight of hand,
Or our law-learning in a foreign land,
Embroidery spent on cobwebs, braggart show
Of men that all things learn, and nothing know.
For ostentation humble Truth still flies,
And all confederate fashionists defies.
And as some sharp-brow’d doctor, English born,
In much learn’d Latin idioms can adorn
A verse with rare attractions, yet become
His English Muse like an Arachnean loom,
Wrought spite of Pallas, and therein bewrays
More tongue than truth, begs, and adopts his bays;
So Ostentation, be he never so
Larded with labour to suborn his show,
Shall sooth within him but a bastard soul,
No more heaven heiring than, Earth’s son, the mole,
But as in dead calms emptiest smokes arise,
Uncheck’d and free, up straight into the skies;
So drowsy Peace, that in her humour steeps
All she affects, lets such rise while she sleeps.
Many, and most men, have of wealth least store,
But none the gracious shame that fits the poor.
So most learn’d men enough are ignorant,
But few the grace have to confess their want,
Till lives and learnings come concomitant.
Far from men’s knowledges their lives’-acts flow;
Vainglorious acts then vain prove all they know.
As night the life-inclining stars best shows,
So lives obscure the starriest souls disclose.
For me, let just men judge by what I show
In acts expos’d how much I err or know;
And let not envy make all worse than nought,
With her mere headstrong and quite brainless thought,
Others, for doing nothing, giving all
,
And bounding all worth in her bursten gall.
God and my dear Redeemer rescue me
From men’s immane and mad impiety,
And by my life and soul (sole known to Them)
Make me of palm, or yew, an anadem.
And so my sole God, the Thrice-Sacred-Trine,
Bear all th’ ascription of all me and mine.
Supplico tibi, Domine, Pater, et Dux rationis nostræ, ut nostræ nobilitatis recordemur quâ Tu nos ornasti; et ut Tu nobis præstó sis, ut iis qui per sese moventur; ut et à corporis contagio, brutorumque affectuum, repurgemur, eosque superemus, atque regamus, et, sicut decet, pro instrumentis iis utamur. Deinde, ut nobis adjumento sis, ad accuratam rationis nostræ correctionem, et conjunctionem cum iis qui verè sunt per lucem veritatis. Et tertiùm, Salvatori supplex oro, ut ab oculis animorum nostrorum, caliginem prorsus abstergas, ut norimus bene qui Deus, aut mortalis, habendus. Amen.
Sine honore vivam, nulloque numera ero.
FINIS
The Comedies
The Rose playhouse mislabelled ‘The Globe’ from Visscher’s ‘View of London’, 1616. Several of Chapman’s plays were first performed at the Rose Theatre, the first of several playhouses to be situated in Bankside, Southwark, where Shakespeare and his Company would later build The Globe.
A 1593 map showing The Rose in relation to the Bear Garden on Bankside.
AN HUMOROUS DAY’S MIRTH
First performed by the Admiral’s Men at the Rose Theatre, this comedy has been identified with the “Humours” play that the company acted on 1 May 1597, as described in a contemporary letter by Dudley Carleton. A 1598 inventory of the Admiral’s properties lists items of clothing in the costumes of specific characters in the play. The 1599 quarto, the only edition of the play in the seventeenth century, was printed and published by Valentine Simmes, who is generally recognised as one of the best London printers of his generation, having printed nine Shakespeare quartos in the 1597–1604 period.
Chapman’s play was the first Elizabethan humours comedy, drawing its material from the traditional theory of human physiology and psychology. The subgenre would gain its greatest prominence in the works of Ben Jonson — most notably in Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Every Man Out of His Humour (1599). Other dramatists of the era also worked in the humours vein, including John Fletcher in The Humorous Lieutenant (c. 1619) and James Shirley in The Humorous Courtier (1631).
Chapman’s comic characters illustrate various extremes of imbalance of humours: Dowsecer is melancholic and misanthropic; Dariotto is a fashion-obsessed courtier; Florilla is a Puritan wife whose Puritanism quickly fails the test; Cornelius is an upstart gentleman jealous of his wife. These and other characters reveal their vulnerability to folly by the end of the play. Chapman’s protagonist Lemot acts as the central figure, presiding over the outrageous humour.
CONTENTS
Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
Scene 6
Scene 7
Scene 8
Scene 9
Scene 10
Scene 11
Scene 12
Scene 13
Scene 14
Scene 1
Enter the Count Labervele in his shirt and night-gown with two jewels in his hand.
Labervele
Yet hath the morning sprinkled thr’out the clouds
But half her tincture, and the soil of night
Sticks still upon the bosom of the air.
Yet sleep doth rest my love for nature’s debt,
And through her window and this dim twilight
Her maid, nor any waking I can see.
This is the holy green, my wife’s close walk,
To which not any but herself alone
Hath any key, only that I have clapped
Her key in wax and made this counterfeit —
To the which I steal access
To work this rare and politic device.
Fair is my wife, and young and delicate,
Although too religious in the purist sort;
But pure religion being but mental stuff,
And sense, indeed, all for itself,
Is to be doubted; that, when an object comes
Fit to her humour, she will intercept
Religious letters sent unto her mind,
And yield unto the motion of her blood.
Here have I brought, then, two rich agates for her,
Graven with two posies of mine own devising,
For poets I’ll not trust, nor friends, nor any.
She longs to have a child, which yet, alas,
I cannot get, yet long as much as she,
And not to make her desperate, thus I write
In this fair jewel, though it simple be,
Yet ’tis mine own, that meaneth well enough:
Despair not of children,
Love with the longest;
When man is at the weakest,
God is at the strongest.
I hope ’tis plain and knowing. In this other, that I write:
God will reward her a thousandfold
That takes what age can, and not what age would.
I hope ’tis pretty and pathetical.
Well, even here
[Puts jewels down]
Lie both together till my love arise
And let her think you fall out of the skies.
I will to bed again.
Exit.
Scene 2
Enter Lemot and Colinet.
Lemot
How like thou this morning, Colinet? What, shall we have a fair day?
Colinet
The sky hangs full of humour, and I think we shall have rain.
Lemot
Why, rain is fair weather when the ground is dry and barren, especially when it rains humour, for then do men like hot sparrows and pigeons open all their wings ready to receive them.
Colinet
Why, then, we may chance to have a fair day, for we shall spend it with so humorous acquaintance as rains nothing but humour all their lifetime.
Lemot
True, Colinet, over which will I sit like an old king in an old-fashion play, having his wife, his council, his children, and his fool about him, to whom he will sit and point very learnedly as followeth:
My council grave, and you my noble peers,
My tender wife, and you my children dear,
And thou my fool —
Colinet
Not meaning me, sir, I hope.
Lemot
No, sir, but thus will I sit, as it were, and point out all my humorous companions.
Colinet
You shall do marvellous well, sir.
Lemot
I thank you for your good encouragement. But, Colinet, thou shalt see Catalian bring me hither an odd gentleman presently to be acquainted withal, who in his manner of taking acquaintance will make us excellent sport.
Colinet
Why, Lemot, I think thou sendest about of purpose for young gallants to be acquainted withal, to make thyself merry in the manner of taking acquaintance.
Lemot
By heaven I do, Colinet, for there is no better sport than to observe the complement, for that’s their word, complement, do you mark, sir?
Colinet
Yea, sir, but what humour hath this gallant in his manner of taking acquaintance?
Lemot Marry thus, sir: he will speak the very selfsame word to a syllable after him of whom he takes acquaintance, as if I should say, ‘I am marvellous glad of your acquaintance’, he will reply, ‘I am marvellous glad of your acquaintance’. ‘I have heard much good of your rare parts and fine carriage’; ‘I have heard much good of your rare parts and fine carriage’. So long as the complements of a gentleman last, he is your complete ape.
Colinet
Why, this is excellent.
Nay, sirrah, here’s the jest of it: when he is past this gratulation, he will retire himself to a chimney or a wall standing folding his arms thus; and go you and speak to him so far as the room you are in will afford you, you shall never get him from that most gentlemanlike set or behaviour.
Colinet
This makes his humour perfect. I would he would come once.
Enter Catalian and Blanvel.
Lemot
[Aside to Colinet] See where he comes. Now must I say, Lupus est in fabula, for these Latin ends are part of a gentleman and a good scholar.
Catalian
Oh, good morrow Monsieur Lemot. Here is the gentleman you desired so much to be acquainted withal.
Lemot
He is marvellous welcome. [To Blanvel] I shall be exceeding proud of your acquaintance.
Blanvel
I shall be exceeding proud of your acquaintance.
Lemot
I have heard much good of your rare parts and fine carriages.
Blanvel
I have heard much good of your rare parts and fine carriages.
Lemot
I shall be glad to be commanded by you.
Blanvel
I shall be glad to be commanded by you.
Lemot
I pray do not you say so.
Blanvel
I pray do not you say so.
Lemot
Well, gentlemen, this day let’s consecrate to mirth. And Colinet, you know, no man better, that you are mightily in love with lovely Martia, daughter to old Foyes.
Colinet
I confess it. Here are none but friends.
Lemot
Well then, go to her this morning in Countess Moren’s name, and so perhaps you may get her company, though the old churl be so jealous that he will suffer no man to come at her but the vain gull Labesha for his living sake, and he, as yet, she will not be acquainted withal.
Colinet
Well, this I’ll do, whatsoever come on it.
Lemot
Why nothing but good will come of it, ne’er doubt it man.
Catalian
[Aside to Lemot] He hath taken up his stand. Talk a little further and see an you can remove him.
Lemot
[Aside] I will, Catalian. [Aloud] Now, Monsieur Blanvel, mark, I pray.
Blanvel
I do, sir, very well, I warrant you.
Lemot
You know the old Count Labervele hath a passing fair young lady, that is a passing foul Puritan?
The Complete Poetical Works of George Chapman Page 176