Complete Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker
Page 149
MONOPOLY
No, in troth, ’tis no matter; ‘twill away in play. Let me see the bond; let me see when this money is to be paid. The tenth of August. The first day that I must tender this money is the first of dog-days.
SCRIVENER
I fear ‘twill be hot staying for you in London then.
TENTERHOOK
Scrivener, take home the bond with you. [Exit Scrivener.
Will you stay till dinner, sir? Have you any partridge, Moll?
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
No, in troth, heart; but an excellent pickled goose, a new service. Pray you, stay.
MONOPOLY
Sooth, I cannot. By this light, I am so infinitely, so unboundably beholding to you.
TENTERHOOK
Well, signior, I’ll leave you. My cloak, there.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
When will you come home, heart?
TENTERHOOK
In troth, self, I know not. A friend of yours and mine hath broke.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
Who, sir?
TENTERHOOK
Master Justiniano, the Italian.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
Broke, sir!
TENTERHOOK
Yea, sooth. I was offered forty yesterday upon the Exchange, to assure a hundred.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
By my troth, I am sorry.
TENTERHOOK
And his wife is gone to the party.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
Gone to the party! Oh, wicked creature!
TENTERHOOK
Farewell, good Master Monopoly. I prithee visit me often.[Exit.
MONOPOLY
Little Moll, send away the fellow.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
Philip, Philip.
CASHIER
Here, forsooth.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
Go into Bucklesbury and fetch me two ounces of preserved melons. Look there be no tobacco taken in the shop when he weighs it.
CASHIER
Ay, forsooth. [Exit.
MONOPOLY
What do you eat preserved melons for, Moll?
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
In troth, for the shaking of the heart. I have sometimes such a shaking, and downwards such a kind of earthquake, as it were.
MONOPOLY
Do you hear, let your man carry home my money to the ordinary and lay it in my chamber. But let him not tell my host that it is money. I owe him but forty pound and the rogue is hasty; he will follow me when he thinks I have money, and pry into me as crows perch upon carrion, and when he hath found it out, prey upon me as heralds do upon funerals.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
Come, come, you owe much money in town. When you have forfeited your bond, I shall ne’er see you more.
MONOPOLY
You are a monkey. I’ll pay him ‘fore’s day. I’ll see you tomorrow then.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
By my troth, I love you very honestly. You were never the gentleman offered any uncivility to me, which is strange, methinks, in that one comes from beyond seas. Would I had given a thousand pound, I could not love thee so!
MONOPOLY
Do you hear? You shall feign some scurvy disease or other, and go to the bath next spring. I’ll meet you there.
Enter MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE and MISTRESS WAFER.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
By your leave, sweet Mistress Tenterhook.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
Oh, how dost, partner?
MONOPOLY
Gentlewomen, I stayed for a most happy wind, and now the breath from your sweet, sweet lips should set me going. Good Mistress Honeysuckle, good Mistress Wafer, good Mistress Tenterhook, I will pray for you, that neither rivalship in loves, pureness of painting, or riding out of town, not acquainting each other with it, be a cause your sweet beauties do fall out and rail upon one another.
MISTRESS WAFER
Rail, sir! We do not use to rail.
MONOPOLY
Why, mistress, railing is your mother tongue, as well as lying.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
But do you think we can fall out?
MONOPOLY
In troth, beauties, as one spake seriously, that there was no inheritance in the amity of princes, so think I of women. Too often interviews amongst women, as amongst princes, breed envy oft to other’s fortune. There is only in the amity of women an estate for will, and every puny knows that is no certain inheritance.
MISTRESS WAFER
You are merry, sir.
MONOPOLY
So may I leave you, most fortunate gentlewoman. [Exit.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
Love shoots here.
MISTRESS WAFER
Tenterhook, what gentleman is that gone out? Is he a man?
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
Oh, God, and an excellent trumpeter. He came lately from the university, and loves city dames only for their victuals. He hath an excellent trick to keep lobsters and crabs sweet in summer, and calls it a device to prolong the days of shellfish, for which I do suspect he hath been clerk to some nobleman’s kitchen. I have heard he never loves any wench till she be as stale as Frenchmen eat their wildfowl. I shall anger her.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
How stale, good Mistress Nimblewit?
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
Why, as stale as a country hostess, and Exchange sempster, or a court laundress.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
He is your cousin. My, how your tongue runs!
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
Talk and make a noise, no matter to what purpose. I have learned that with going to puritan lectures. I was yesterday at a banquet. Will you discharge my ruffs of some wafers? And how doth thy husband, Wafer?
MISTRESS WAFER
Faith, very well.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
He is just like a torchbearer to maskers; he wears good clothes and is ranked in good company, but he doth nothing. Thou art fain to take all and pay all.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
The more happy she. Would I could make such an ass of my husband too! I hear say he breeds thy child in his teeth every year.
MISTRESS WAFER
In faith, he doth.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
By my troth, ’tis pity but the fool should have the other two pains incident to the head.
MISTRESS WAFER
What are they?
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
Why the headache and the hornache. I heard say that he would have had thee nurs’d thy child thyself too.
MISTRESS WAFER
That he would, truly.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
Why, there’s a policy of husbands to keep their wives in. I do assure you, if a woman of any markable face in the world gave her child suck, look how many wrinkles be in the nipple of her breast, so many will be in her forehead, by that time twelvemonth. But, sirrah, we are come to acquaint thee with an excellent secret. We two learn to write.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
To write!
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
Yes, believe it, and we have the finest schoolmaster, a kind of Precisian, and yet an honest knave too. By my troth, if thou beest a good wench, let him teach thee. Thou mayst send him of any errand, and trust him with any secret — nay, to see how demurely he will bear himself before our husbands, and how jocund when their backs are turn’d.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
For God’s love, let me see him!
MISTRESS WAFER
Tomorrow we’ll send him to thee. Till then, sweet Tenterhook, we leave thee, wishing thou mayest have the fortune to change thy name often.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
How! Change my name?
MISTRESS WAFER
Ay, for thieves and widows love to shift many names, and make sweet use of it too.
MISTRESS TENTERHOOK
Oh, you are a wag indeed! G
ood Wafer, remember my schoolmaster. Farewell, good Honeysuckle.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
Farewell, Tenterhook. [Exeunt.
Act Two, Scene One
ENTER BONIFACE, AN Apprentice, bearing his master’s cloak and cap, singing. Enter HONEYSUCKLE in his nightcap, trussing himself.
HONEYSUCKLE
Boniface, make an end of my cloak and cap.
BONIFACE
I have dispatch’d ’em, sir. Both of them lie flat as your mercy.
HONEYSUCKLE
‘Fore God, methinks my joints are nimbler every morning since I came over than they were before. In France, when I rise, I was so stiff, and so stark, I would ha’ srown my legs had been wooden pegs. A constable new-chosen kept not such a peripatetical gait, but now I’m as limber as an ancient that has flourished in the rain, and as active as a Norfolk tumbler.
BONIFACE
You may see what change of pastureis able to do.
HONEYSUCKLE
It makes fat calves in Rumney Marsh, and lean knaves in London; therefore, Bonifice, keep your ground. God’s my pity, my forehead has more crumples than the back part of a counsellor’s gown, when another rides upon his neck at the bar. Boniface, take my helmet. Give your mistress my nightcap. Are my antlers swol’n so big that my biggen pinches my brows? So, request her to make my headpiece a little wider.
BONIFACE
How much wider, sir?
HONEYSUCKLE
I can allow her almost an inch. Go, tell her so, very near an inch.
BONIFACE
If she be a right citizen’s wife, now her husband shall be given her an inch, sh’ess take an ell. Or a yard at least.
Enter JUSTINIANO, the Merchant, like a writing mechanical pedant.
HONEYSUCKLE
Master Parenthesis! Salve, salve, domine.
JUSTINIANO
Salve tu quoque; jubeo te salvere plurimum.
HONEYSUCKLE
No more plurimums, if you love me. Latin whole-meats are now minced, and served in for English gallimawfries. Let us therefore, cut our own uplandish neats’ tongues, and talk like regenerate Britons.
JUSTINIANO
Your worship is welcome to England. I poured out orisons for your arrival.
HONEYSUCKLE
Thanks, good Master Parenthesis; and que nouvelles? What news flutters abroad? Do jackdaws dung the top of Paul’s steeple still?
JUSTINIANO
The more is the pity, if any daws do come into the temple, as I fear they do.
HONEYSUCKLE
They say Charing Cross is fallen down since I went to Rochelle; but that’s no such wonder. ’Twas old, and stood awry, as most part of the world can tell. And though it lack under-propping, yet, like great fellows at a wrestling, when their heels are once flying up, no man will save ’em; down they fall, and there let them lie, though they were bigger than the guard. Charing Cross was old, and old things must shrink as well as new northern cloth.
JUSTINIANO
Your worship is in the right way, verily; they must so. But a number of better things between Westminster Bridge and Temple Bar, both of a worshipful and honourable erection, are fallen to decay, and have suffered putrefaction since Charing fell, they were not of half so long standing as the poor wry-necked monument.
HONEYSUCKLE
Who’s within there? One of you call up your mistress! Tell here here’s her writing schoolmaster. I had not thought, Master Parenthesis, you had been such an early stirrer.
JUSTINIANO
Sir, your vulgar and forepenny-penman, that, like your London sempsters, keep open shop, and sell learning by retail, may keep their beds and lie at their pleasure. But we that edify in private and traffic by wholesale must be up with the lark, because, like country attorneys, we are to shuffle up many matters in a forenoon. Certes, Master Honeysuckle, I would sing Laus Deo, so I may but please all those that come under my fingers; for it is my duty and function, perdy, to be fervent in my vocation.
HONEYSUCKLE
Your hand. I am glad our city has so good, so necessary, and so laborious a member in it; we lack painful and expert penmen among us. Master Parenthesis, you teach of our merchants, sir, do you not?
JUSTINIANO
Both wives, maids, and daughters; and I thank God the very worst of them lie by very good men’s sides. I pick out a poor living amongst ’em, and I am thankful for it.
HONEYSUCKLE
Trust me, I am not sorry. How long have you exercised this quality?
JUSTINIANO
Come Michael-tide next, this thirteen year.
HONEYSUCKLE
And how does my wife profit under you, sir? Hope you to do any good upon her?
JUSTINIANO
Master Honeysuckle, I am in great hope she will fructify. I will do my best, for my part; I can do no more than another man can.
HONEYSUCKLE
Pray, sir, ply her. She is capable of anything.
JUSTINIANO
So far as my poor talent can stretch, it shall not be hidden from her.
HONEYSUCKLE
Does she hold her pen well yet?
JUSTINIANO
She leans somewhat too hard upon her pen yet, sir, but practice and animadversion will break will break her from that.
HONEYSUCKLE
Then she grubs her pen?
JUSTINIANO
It’s but my pains to mend the neb again.
HONEYSUCKLE
And whereabouts is she now, Master Parenthesis? She was talking of you this morning, and commending you in her bed, and told me she was past her letters.
JUSTINIANO
Truly, sir, she took her letters very suddenly, and is now in her minims.
HONEYSUCKLE
I would she were in her crotchets too, Master Parenthesis. Ha, ha! I must talk merrily, sir.
JUSTINIANO
Sir, so long as your mirth be void of all squirrility, ’tis not unfit for your calling. I trust, ere few days be at an end, to have her fall to her joining, for she has her letters ad unguem; her A, her great B, and her great C, very right; D, and E, delicate; her double F of a good length, but that it straddles a little too wide; at the G very cunning.
HONEYSUCKLE
Her H is full, like mine. A goodly big H.
JUSTINIANO
But her double L as well; her O of a reasonable size; at her P and Q, neither merchant’s daughter, alderman’s wife, young country gentlewoman, nor courtier’s mistress, can match her.
HONEYSUCKLE
And how her U?
JUSTINIANO
U, sir! She fetches up U best of all. Her single U she can fashion two or three ways, but her double U is as I would wish it.
HONEYSUCKLE
And, faith, who takes it faster, my wife or Mistress Tenterhook?
JUSTINIANO
Oh, your wife, by odds. She’ll take more in one hour than I can fasten either upon Mistress Tenterhook or Mistress Wafer, or Mistress Flapdragon, the brewer’s wife, in three.
Enter MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE.
HONEYSUCKLE
Do not thy cheeks burn, sweet chuckaby, for we are talking of thee.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
No, goodness, I warrant. You have few citizens speak well of their wives behind their backs; but to their faces they’ll cog worse and be more suppliant than clients that sue in forma paper. How does my master? Troth, I am a very tyrant. Have you your ruler about you, master? For, look you, I go clean awry.
JUSTINIANO
A small fault. Most of my scholars do so. Look you, sir, do not you think your wife will mend, mark her dashes, and her strokes, and her breakings, and her bindings?
HONEYSUCKLE
She knows what I have promised her if she do mend. Nay, by my fay, Jude, this is well. If you would not fly out thus, but keep your line.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
I shall in time, when my hand is in. Have you a new pen for me, master? For, by my truly, my old one
is stark naught, and will cast no ink. Whither are you going, lamb?
HONEYSUCKLE
To the Custom-house, to the ’Change, to my warehouse, to divers places.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
Good Cole, tarry not past eleven, for you turn my stomach from my dinner.
HONEYSUCKLE
I will make more haste home than a stipendiary Switzer does after he’s paid. Fare you well, Master Parenthesis.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
I am so troubled with the rheum too! Mouse, what’s good for’t?
HONEYSUCKLE
How often I have told you you must get a patch! I must hence.[Exit.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
I think, when all’s done, I must follow his counsel, and take a patch. I’d have had one long ere this, bur for disfiguring my face; yet I have noted that a mastic patch upon some woman’s temples hath been the very rheum of beauty.
JUSTINIANO
Is he departed? Is old Nestor marched into Troy?
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
Yes, you mad Greek, the gentleman’s gone.
JUSTINIANO
Why then, clap up copy-books, down with pens, hang up ink-horns. And now, my sweet Honeysuckle, see what golden-wing’d bee from Hybla flies humming with crura thymo plena, which he will empty in the hive of your bosom.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
From whom?
JUSTINIANO
At the skirt of that sheet, in black work, is wrought his name. Break not up the wildfowl till anon, and then feed upon him in private. There’s other irons i’th’fire, more sacks are coming to the mill. Oh, you sweet temptations of the sons of Adam, I commend you, extol you, magnify you! Were I a poet, by Hippocrene I swear — which was a certain well where all the Muses watered — and by Parnassus eke I swear, I would rhyme you to death with praises, for that you can be content to lie with old men all night or their money, and walk to your gardens with young men i’th’daytime for your pleasure. Oh, you delicate damnations, you do but as I would do! Were I the properest, sweetest, plumpest cherry-cheek’d, coral-lipp’d woman in a kingdom, I would not dance after one man’s pipe.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
And why?
JUSTINIANO
Especially after an old man’s.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
And why, pray?
JUSTINIANO
Especially after an old citizen’s.
MISTRESS HONEYSUCKLE
Still, and why?
JUSTINIANO