Complete Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker
Page 66
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CLOWN
Why, I never eat cheese in m life, and if I should but cry, “Foh,” when ’tis a toasting, should have my throat cut before my face and be ne’er the wiser.
VOLTIMAR
A servingman’s life thou see’st walks but upon rotten crutches.
CLOWN
Crutches, when I see a horse that has done good to his country lie dead in a cart to be carried to the doghouse, think I to myself there’s the reward of service.
VOLTIMAR
A good observation
CLOWN
Or when I spy a cat hang’d for some petty crime that has been an excellent hunter, say I, “Here’s the fag end of a poor soldier that has rid his country of enemies.
VOLTIMAR
You rascal; compare a soldier to a cat?
CLOWN
Oh dear, Captain, cry you mercy.I did not mind you.I’ll be no longer a creature, what sift soever I put myself to.
VOLTIMAR
What then?
CLOWN
A mere animal rather; there’s one image of invention if you could carve me into’t I were made forever.
VOLTIMAR
What image?
CLOWN
Get the king’s or some of his lords’ letters to create me chronicler.
VOLTIMAR
Chronicler?Thou’rt not fit for’t.Th’ast no learning nor wit to do it.
CLOWN
No wit?I must put out nothing but once in ten year.In meantime I can creep into opinion by balductum rhymes and play scrap fooleries.Wit?An arrant ass may carry that burden and never kick for it.
VOLTIMAR
Since th’art so set upon it, I’ll speak and warrant thee the title of a chronicler.
CLOWN
The name, the foolish style is all I desire to climb over.
VOLTIMAR
When any of your collections are mellow, show ’em to the king.I muse they come not.
CLOWN
Who, captain?
VOLTIMAR
The embassador’s man, and the Irish footman new come over.We promis’d to be merry here in my chamber for a spurt or so; they are a couple of honest-hearted mad rascals.
Enter EDMOND and ELDRED.
CLOWN
See, Captain.
VOLTIMAR
Welcome!
EDMOND
By did hawnd, Capten Voltimar, de king bid me seek for dee and to come away apace to him.
VOLTIMAR
Time enough.Since we are met, I’ll steal out of the king’s glass one quarter of an hour to be jovial.
ELDRED
But where is wine and good sear to be jawful and pipes and fiddles to shake our heel at?
VOLTIMAR
Your good seer, look you, is in bottles.Here’s my armoury. These are headpieces will fit you.
CLOWN
With a murrain.
VOLTIMAR
And now you talk of fiddling.A musician dwells at very next wall.I’ll step to him, entertain thou these gentleman the whilst, as we drink they shall sound.
EDMOND
Crees sa me if I hear de pipes go I cannot forbear to dance an Irish hay.
ELDRED
As good hay in Wales, Rees ap Meridith was dance too.
CLOWN
Hey then for England!If my legs stand still, hang me.
VOLTIMAR
Good sport, I’ll go string the music for you. [Exit.
CLOWN
I’th’meantime, because ’tis service to be idle, pray Master Reese ap Shon, what is the reason that we Englism men, when the cuckoo is upon entrance, say the Welsh Embassador is coming?
ELDRED
Let any rascal son of whores come into Cardigan, Flint, Morioneth, Clamorgan, or Brecknock and dare prade so.Was such a mighty wonder to see an embassador of Wales?Why has her not had kings and queens and prave princes of Wales?
EDMOND
‘I’faat hast tow.
ELDRED
But I now can tell you, for many summers ago out valiant comragues and fierce Prittons about cuckoo times come, and with Welse hook hack and hoff and mawl your English porderers, and so fright the ‘ymen that they to still their wrawling bastards cry out, hush’d the Welse embassador comes.
CLOWN
I am satisfied.Now, Master Crammo, one question to you.What is the reason all the chimney sweepers in England are for the most part Irish?
EDMOND
I shall tell de why.Saint Patrick, dow know’st keeps purgatory
ELDRED
’Tis prave answer.
CLOWN
And I hug thee sweet Tory for it.
Enter VOLTIMAR.
VOLTIMAR
I give but the Q and the music speaks.I cannot stay.Come, on your knees.A health to King Athelstane!
ELDRED
Was pledge her in no liquors, but her own country’s whey to metheglin.
VOLTIMAR
There’s metheglin for you.
EDMOND
And I’faat’la I shall pledge King Aplestanes in usque bah or nothing.
VOLTIMAR
There’s usqua for you.
CLOWN
I’ll pledge it in ale, in aligant, cider, perry, metheglin, usquebagh, minglium, manglum, purr, in him, mum, aquam, quaquam, claret, or sacum, for an Englishman is a horse that drinks of all waters.
VOLTIMAR
To’t then.When? [Flourish.
CLOWN
Off.
ELDRED
Super naglums. [Dance.
EDMOND
Hey, for Saint Patrick’s honour!
ELDRED
Saint Tavy for Wales!
CLOWN
Saint George for England!
VOLTIMAR
Enough, drink what you will.I must hence. [Exit.
EDMOND
Kara magus.
CLOWN
This dancing jogs all my dinner out of my belly.I am as hungry as a huntsman; and now I talk of meat, why does a Welshman love a toasted cheese so well?
ELDRED
Why does cockney pobell love toast and putter so well?
CLOWN
And why onions and leeks you?
ELDRED
And why a whore’s plind seeks you?Awl countries love one tevices or others.
CLOWN
True.You love freeze and goats, and Welsh hooks, and whey and flannel and fighting.
ELDRED
And you love udcocks, and praveries, and kanaveries, and fiddling and fistings and prave ences with rotten trenches, and a great teal of prabbings, but little fightings.
CLOWN
One for one, and what loves my Irishman here?
EDMOND
‘I’faat’la, I love shamrocks, bonny clabbo, soft bogs, a great many cows, a garron, an Irish harp, clean trooses, and a dart.
CLOWN
But not a fart.
EDMOND
In dy nose, in dy teet, all de farts let in Ireland are put into bottles for Englshmen to drink off.A pos upon dy nyes, by dis hawnd, I shall trust my skeen into dy rotten guts when agen tow anger me. [Exit.
PENDA
[Within.] What, Reese, wa ho ap shon!
ELDRED
Was here, was here. [Exit.
CLOWN
So; now pump I for invention full sea swell
Of wit that I may write a chronicle. [Exit.
Act Four, Scene Three
ENTER COLCHESTER, WINCHESTER, and KENT.
COLCHESTER
It’s a strange creature,
A daughter and so disobedient.
Her brains are wilder than a troubled sea,
No cloud is so unsettled.She’s an engine
Driven by a thousand wheels; a German clock
Never going true.
That shows she’s a right woman.
WINCHESTER
She and the widow whom the king so dotes on
I hear have met and parleyed, and sure their breath
Lows down all that we build.
KENT
One glib-tongu’d woman
Is a shrew witch to another.
COLCHESTER
’Tis voic’d for certain
That now she’s grown so mad to have the Welshman,
The king is quite lost to her.
KENT
Maybe she longs
To study all the neighbouring languages.
WINCHESTER
’Tis now no wonder that a king took captive
Her maiden honour when to a new-come stranger
She yields without assault.I do not think
She understands his lofty British tongue;
He courts her sure by signs.
KENT
Hang me for a sign then.A Welshman makes signs to a woman?
COLCHESTER
All’s one what signs he makes, for a dumb man
May woo a woman if his face be good;
An able promising body; a neat leg,
To have such bits alone.Now, this Welsh lord
Is all this:rich, and well-form’d, a air outside,
A mind nobly furnished, the match were fit
But that our heap’d-up wrongs are slav’d by it.
It brands both us and our posterity
To have a daughter strumpeted, a kinswoman
Texted upon dishonourable file,
A grandchild branded with a bastard’s name.
We must not therefore swallow it.
KENT
We will not.
Should we do nothing, out opposed faction
Might jeer us to our faces; common people
Revile us, call us cowards.
COLCHESTER
Saucy wits
Will dip their pens in gall and whet base rhymes
To stab out fames more than to mend out crimes.
WINCHESTER
What’s to be done then?
COLCHESTER
This is to be done:
You know that staring soldier came for the prince
And we deni’d him.
KENT
Had we not cause?
COLCHESTER
And yet
On more weigh’d council you, my lord, hold it fit
To leave him in’s father’s hands.I think he has not
A knife to cut his own heart.I’ll presently
Write to the king that since ’tis his high pleasure
To snatch the distaff of my daughter’s fate
And cut her golden thread, we all consent
To this her second fortune.He’ll think us quiet,
Nor shall he spellhard letters on our brows.
The night before the marriage is a masque;
We’ll all to court and when the winds lie still
And not a leaf of murmeration stirs —
Suspicion sealing up her hundred eyes —
Than break we forth, light lightening from a cloud
And force him feel our fury.
WINCHESTER
Feel what fury?
Though he has struck a dagger through my sides,
Be but a finger held up at his life,
My breast shall be a wall to beat back danger
From him on your own heads.
COLCHESTER
My lord of Winchester,
Our arrows fly not at his life.
WINCHESTER
Do fairly what you will do, I am yours.
KENT
Not doing so, leave us.
COLCHESTER
We’ll only to the king’s masque add our dance
And veil our wrongs in smother’d ignorance. [Exeunt
Act Five, Scene One
Flourish.Enter KING, CORNWALL, and CHESTER.
KING
Cornwall.
CORNWALL
My lord.
KING
Why shines not bravery
Throughout our court in rich habiliments
Of glory?Chester.
CHESTER
Sir.
KING
Be it proclaim’d
That whosoe’er presents most curious sports
Of art or charg’d to grace out nuptial feasts
Shall have a large reward.We will be royal.
CHESTER
I’ll undertake the task.
KING
Do and be speedy.
Enter WINCHESTER like a friar leading the PRINCE veiled.
WINCHESTER
Angels of peace wait round about th
Great Athelstane the king.
KING
Whence art thou, friar?
WINCHESTER
Few words I have
KING
Yes, we’ll hear it.
WINCHESTER
A sad creature cross’d in life
For being neither mad nor wife,
Hath left the world at last, and reads
Her better hopes upon her beads.
She thinks no more what she hath been,
Nor dreams what ’tis to be a queen,
For goes her beauty, youth, and state
‘T’embrace a holier happier fate.
By prayers, sighs, she weeps, she dies,
To live a saint in paradise.
Armante’s requiem ’tis I sing,
Once lov’d by Athelstane the king.
The sad Armante, who though strange
Hath made a heaven sweet exchange.
Instead of marrying pomp and glory,
Married her to a monastery.
One only token sends she here,
More dear than life or what’s most dear,
The pawn of her first troth, her son,
The prince, ’tis he.Lo, I have done. [Unveils him.
She bids thee of this child make store
For she shall never see thee more.
What else she said the boy can tell,
I’ll to by beads.Now, king, farewell. [Exit.
KING
Stay, father, gentle father, holy man.
OMNES
He’s trudg’d away, sir.
KING
Gone already?Strange,
Exceeding strange.
OMNES
Unlook’d for.
KING
Welcome, boy.
Thy mother turn’d a nun; she, who lately
Seem’d pliant to the pleasures we presented,
Not alter’d on a sudden?’Tis a riddle
I understand not yet.
PRINCE
I have a message ‘tee,
And ’tis her last.
KING
What, pretty boy?
PRINCE
She prays ye,
You’d use me kindly; truly I can scarce
Refrain from crying to remember how
Unhandsomely we parted.“Oh, my child,”
My mother, my good mother, said, and ‘deed, la,
She wept too when she spoke it, “now, my boy,
Thou art lost, forever lost, to me, the world,
Thy birth, thy friends, thou has not one friend left.
Go to thy father, child, thy cruel father.”
She bad me ask your blessing too.Pray, give it me,
Father, your blessing.
KING
For thy mother’s sake,
I’ll keep a blessing for thee, boy, a great one.
Rise.’Tis a good child.
PRINCE
But ‘dee love me indeed?
KING
Heartily, heartily.
PRINCE
I
f, cause my blood is yours,
You think my life may be some dange, ‘tee,
Or that my mother-in-law, when next you marry,
Cannot abide me, yet I’ll do the best
I can to please her; but these stepmothers,
They say do seldom love their husbands’ children.
Or if for being your heir some wicked people
Give you bad counsel that I must not row
To be a man, for growing too fast upwards,
< nto s for >
KING
Pestilent ape,
His mother taught him this.Fie, boy, no more.
I will be loving, thou shall find it.
PRINCE
Shall I?
Indeed, I never went to bed but e’er
I slept, I pray’d for the good king my father.
I never rose but e’er I had my breakfast,
I said “Heaven bledd my father.”That is you.
There was no hurt in this?
CORNWALL
Well prated, little one.
KING
Enough.I will be tender o’er thee, boy;
As tender as thy mother.
PRINCE
Will ye, think ye?
Enter CARINTHA and VOLTIMAR.
CARINTHA
Where’s now this royal lover?
KING
My Carintha,
Melt here all passions from me, my soul’s empress.
CARINTHA
And when’s this day forsooth, this day of queenship?
I’ll make a goodly fool.
KING
Be not impatient.
Thy glories and my joys shall be the fuller.
VOLTIMAR
Now for a shower of rain downright; there’s a horrible clap of thunder towards.Take heed of lightening, king.You are in danger of being blasted.
PRINCE
What angry woman’s this?Bless me, her looks
Affright me, father king.
CARINTHA
Your bastard here?
I thought I was your mockery.Why lives he
To be my torment?
KING
Prithee, sweet —
PRINCE
How’s this?
‘Las, what must I do now?
CORNWALL
I like not this.
CHESTER
Nor I.
CARINTHA
Hast thou nor heart nor hands?
KING
Carintha —
CARINTHA
How say by that?Give me the brat; I’ll have him,
T’shall save ye charges too.Oh, I am vex’d,
Not yet dispatch.‘A shall with me.
KING
You must not.
Will you undo all what I strive to build
For your advancement?