Complete Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker

by Thomas Dekker

  Enter FOLLY.

  Fol. Save you, gentlemen! ’Tis very cold; you live in frost; you’ve Winter still about you.

  Second Clown. What are you, sir?

  Fol. A courtier, sir; but, you may guess, a very foolish one, to leave the bright beams of my lord the prince to travel hither. I have an ague on me; do you not see me shake? Well, if our courtiers, when they come hither, have not warm young wenches, good wines and fires, to heat their blood, ‘twill freeze into an apoplexy. Farewell, frost! I’ll go seek a fire to thaw me; I’m all ice, I fear, already. [Exit.

  First Clown. Farewell, and be hanged! ere such as these shall eat what we have sweat for, we’ll spend our bloods. Come, neighbours, let’s go call our company together, and go meet this prince he talks so of.

  Third Clown. Some shall have but a sour welcome of it, if my crabtree cudgel hold here.

  Win. ’Tis, I see,

  Not in my power to alter destiny;

  You’re mad in your rebellious minds: but hear

  What I presage with understanding clear

  As your black thoughts are misty; take from me

  This, as a true and certain augury:

  This prince shall come, and, by his glorious side,

  Laurel-crowned conquest shall in triumph ride,

  Arm’d with the justice that attends his cause;

  You shall with penitence embrace his laws:

  He to the frozen northern clime shall bring

  A warmth so temperate as shall force the Spring

  Usurp my privilege, and by his ray

  Night shall be chang’d into perpetual day;

  Plenty and happiness shall still increase,

  As does his light; and turtle-footed peace

  Dance like a fairy through his realms, while all

  That envy him shall like swift comets fall,

  By their own fire consum’d; and glorious he,

  Ruling, as ‘twere, the force of destiny,

  Shall have a long and prosperous reign on earthy

  Then fly to heaven, and give a new star birth.

  A flourish. Enter RAYBRIGHT, HUMOUR, BOUNTY, and DELIGHT.

  But see, our star appears; and from his eye

  Fly thousand beams of sparkling majesty. —

  Bright son of Phœbus, welcome! I begin

  To feel the ice fall from my crisled skin;

  For at your beams the wagoner might thow

  His chariot, axled with Riphæan snow;

  Nay, the slow-moving North-star having felt

  Your temperate heat, his icicles would melt

  Ray, What bold rebellious caitiffs dare disturb

  The happy progress of our glorious peace,

  Contemn the justice of our equal laws,

  Profane those sacred rights which still must be

  Attendant on monarchal dignity?

  I came to frolic with you, and to cheer

  Your drooping souls by vigour of my beams;

  And have I this strange welcome? — Reverend Winter,

  I’m come to be your guest; your bounteous, free

  Condition does assure [me] I shall have

  A welcome entertainment

  Win. Illustrious sir! I am [not] ignorant

  How much expression my true zeal will want

  To entertain you fitly; yet my love

  And hearty duty shall be far above

  My outward welcome. To that glorious light

  Of heaven, the Sun, which chases hence the night,

  I am so much a vassal, that I’ll strive,

  By honouring you, to keep my faith alive

  To him, brave prince, th[r]ough you, who do inherit

  Your father’s cheerful heat and quickening spirit.

  Therefore, as I am Winter, worn and spent

  So far with age, I am Time’s monument,

  Antiquity’s example; in my zeal

  I from my youth a span of time will steal

  To open the free treasures of my court,

  And swell your soul with my delights and sport.

  Ray. Never till now

  Did admiration beget in me truly

  The rare-match’d twins at once, pity and pleasure.

  [Pity, that one]

  So royal, so abundant in earth’s blessings,

  Should not partake the comfort of those beams

  With which the Sun, beyond extent, doth cheer

  The other seasons; yet my pleasures with you,

  From their false charms, do get the start as far

  As heaven’s great lamp from every minor star.

  Boun. Sir, you can speak well; if your tongue deliver

  The message of your heart without some cunning

  Of restraint, we may hope to enjoy

  The lasting riches of your presence hence

  Without distrust or change.

  Ray. Winter’s sweet bride,

  All-conquering Bounty, queen of hearts, life’s glory,

  Nature’s perfection; whom all love, all serve;

  To whom Fortune even in extreme’s a slave;

  When I fall from my duty to thy goodness,

  Let me be rank’d as nothing!

  Boun. Come, you flatter me.

  Ray. I flatter you! why, madam, you are Bounty;

  Sole daughter to the royal throne of peace.

  Hum. [aside] He minds not me now.

  Ray. Bounty’s self!

  For you he is no soldier dares not fight;

  No scholar he that dares not plead your merits,

  Or study your best sweetness: should the Sun,’

  Eclips’d for many years, forbear to shine

  Upon the bosom of our naked pastures,

  Yet, where you are, the glories of your smiles

  Would warm the barren grounds, arm heartless misery,

  And cherish desolation.’Deed, I honour you,

  And, as all others ought to do, I serve you.

  Hum. Are these the rare sights, these the promis’d compliments?

  Win. Attendance on our revels! let Delight

  Conjoin the day with sable-footed night;

  Both shall forsake their orbs, and in one sphere

  Meet in soft mirth and harmless pleasures here:

  While plump Lyæus shall, with garland crown’d

  Of triumph-ivy, in full cups abound

  Of Cretan wine, and shall Dame Ceres call

  To wait on you at Winter’s festival;

  While gaudy Summer, Autumn, and the Spring

  Shall to my lord their choicest viands bring.

  We’ll rob the sea, and from the subtle air

  Fetch her inhabitants to supply our fare,

  That, were Apicius here, he in one night

  Should sate with dainties his strong appetite.

  Begin our revels, then, and let all pleasure

  Flow like the ocean in a boundless measure.

  [A flourish.

  Enter CONCEIT and DETRACTION.

  Con. Wit and pleasure, soft attention,

  Grace the sports of our invention.

  Detr. Conceit, peace! for Detraction

  Hath already drawn a faction

  Shall deride thee.

  Con. Antic, leave me!

  For in labouring to bereave me

  Of a scholar’s praise, thy dotage

  Shall be hiss’d at

  Detr. Here’s a hot age,

  When such petty penmen covet

  Fame by folly! On; I’ll prove it

  Scurvy by thy part, and try thee

  By thine own wit.

  Con. I defy thee;

  Here are nobler judges; wit

  Cannot suffer where they sit.

  Detr. Prithee, foolish Conceit, leave off thy set speeches, and come to the conceit itself in plain language. What goodly thing is’t, in the name of laughter?

  Con. Detraction, do thy worst. Conceit appears,

  In honour of the Sun, their fellow-friend,

  Before
thy censure: know, then, that the spheres

  Have for a while resign’d their orbs, and lend

  Their seats to the Four Elements, who join’d

  With the Four known Complexions, have aton’d

  A noble league, and severally put on

  Material bodies; here amongst ’em none

  Observes a difference: Earth and Air alike

  Are sprightly-active; Fire and Water seek

  No glory of pre-eminence; Phlegm and Blood,

  Choler and Melancholy, who have stood

  In contrarieties, now meet for pleasure,

  To entertain time in a courtly measure.

  Detr. Impossible and improper; first, to personate insensible creatures, and next, to compound quite opposite humours! fie, fie, fie! it’s abominable.

  Con. Fond ignorance, how dar’st thou vainly scan

  Impossibility? what reigns in man

  Without disorder, wisely mix’d by nature,

  To fashion and preserve so high a creature?

  Detr. Sweet sir, when shall our mortal eyes behold this new piece of wonder? We must gaze on the stars for it, doubtless.

  The scene opens, and discovers the Masquers (the Four Elements, Air, Fire, Water, and Earth; and the Four Complexions, Phlegm, Blood, Choler, and Melancholy) on a raised platform.

  Con. See, thus the clouds fly off and run in chase

  When the Sun’s bounty lends peculiar grace.

  Detr. Fine, i’ faith; pretty, and in good earnest: but, sirrah scholar, will they come down too?

  Con. Behold ’em well; the foremost represents

  Air, the most sportive of the Elements.

  Detr. A nimble rascal, I warrant him some alderman’s son; wondrous giddy and light-headed; one that blew his patrimony away in feather and tobacco.

  Con. The next near him is Fire.

  Detr. A choleric gentleman, I should know him; a younger brother and a great spender, but seldom or never carries any money about him: he was begot when the sign was in Taurus, for he roars like a bull, but is indeed a bell-wether.

  Con. The third in rank is Water.

  Detr. A phlegmatic cold piece of stuff: his father, methinks, should be one of the dunce-table, and one that never drunk strong beer in’s life but at festivaltimes; and then he caught the heart-burning a whole vacation and half a term after.

  Con. The fourth is Earth.

  Detr. A shrewd plotting-pated fellow, and a great lover of news. I guess at the rest: Blood is placed near Air, Choler near Fire; Phlegm and Water are sworn brothers, and so are Earth and Melancholy.

  Con. Fair nymph of harmony, be it thy task

  To sing them down, and rank them in a masque.

  A SONG:

  During which the Masquers descend upon the stage, and take their places for the dance.

  See, the Elements conspire:

  Nimble Air does court the Earth,

  Water does commix with Fire,

  To give our prince’s pleasure birth;

  Each delight, each joy, each sweet

  In one composition meet,

  All the seasons of the year;

  Winter does invoke the Spring

  Summer does in pride appear,

  Autumn forth its fruits doth bring,

  And with emulation pay

  Their tribute to this holiday;

  In which the Darling of the Sun is come,

  To make this place a new Elysium.

  [A dance. Exeunt Masquers.

  Win. How do these pleasures please?

  Hum. Pleasures!

  Boun. Live here,

  And be my lord’s friend; and thy sports shall vary

  A thousand ways; invention shall beget

  Conceits as curious as the thoughts of change

  Can aim at

  Hum. Trifles! Progress o’er the year

  Again, my Raybright: therein like the Sun;

  As he in heaven runs his circular course,

  So thou on earth run thine; for to be fed

  With stale delights breeds dulness and contempt:

  Think on the Spring.

  Ray. She was a lovely virgin.

  Win. My royal lord,

  Without offence, be pleas’d but to afford

  Me give you my true figure; do not scorn

  My age, nor think, ‘cause I appear forlorn,

  I serve for no use: ’tis my sharper breath

  Does purge gross exhalations from the earth;

  My frosts and snows do purify the air

  From choking fogs, make the sky clear and fair:

  And though by nature cold and chill I be,

  Yet I am warm in bounteous charity;

  And can, my lord, by grave and sage advice,

  Bring you to th’ happy shades of Paradise.

  Ray. That wonder! O, can you bring me thither?

  Win. I can direct and point you out a path.

  Hum. But where’s the guide?

  Quicken thy spirits, Raybright; I’ll not leave thee;

  Well run the selfsame race again, that happiness:

  These lazy, sleeping, tedious Winter’s nights

  Become not noble action.

  Ray. To the Spring

  I am resolv’d. [Recorders

  The SUN appears above.

  O, what strange light appears?

  The Sun is up, sure.

  Sun. Wanton Darling, look,

  And worship with amazement.

  Omnes. Gracious lord!

  Sun. Thy sands are number’d, and thy glass of frailty

  Here runs out to the last. — Here in this mirror

  Let man behold the circuit of his fortunes;

  The season of the Spring dawns like the Morning,

  Bedewing Childhood with unrelish’d beauties

  Of gaudy sights; the Summer, as the Noon,

  Shines in delight of Youth, and ripens strength

  To Autumn’s Manhood; here the Evening grows,

  And knits-up all felicity in folly:

  Winter at last draws-on the Night of Age;

  Yet still a humour of some novel fancy

  Untasted or untried puts-off the minute

  Of resolution, which should bid farewell

  To a vain world of weariness and sorrows.

  The powers from whom man does derive the pedigree

  Of his creation, with a royal bounty

  Give him Health, Youth, Delight, for free attendants

  To rectify his carriage: to be thankful

  Again to them, man should cashier his riots,

  His bosom [‘s] whorish sweetheart, idle Humour,

  His Reason’s dangerous seducer, Folly. Then shall,

  Like four straight pillars, the Four Elements

  Support the goodly structure of mortality;

  Then shall the Four Complexions, like four heads

  Of a clear river, streaming in his body,

  Nourish and comfort every vein and sinew;

  No sickness of contagion, no grim death

  Or deprivation of Health’s real blessings,

  Shall then affright the creature built by Heaven,

  Reserv’d to immortality. Henceforth

  In peace go to our altars, and no more

  Question the power of supernal greatness,

  But give us leave to govern as we please

  Nature and her dominion, who from us

  And from our gracious influence hath both being

  And preservation: no replies, but reverence.

  Man hath a double guard, if time can win him, —

  Heaven’s power above him, his own peace within him.

  [Exeunt.

  The Bloody Banquet (1639)

  In collaboration with Thomas Middleton

  The Bloody Banquet was not entered into the Stationers’ Register, but in August 1639 the play was listed as the property of William Beeston and his acting troupe was permitted to perform it. Beeston was an actor and theatre manager, who mostly w
orked during the Caroline era. He was the son of the well-known theatre impresario Christopher Beeston, who established the Cockpit theatre in 1616. The Bloody Banquet was first published in quarto in 1639 by Thomas Cotes — a prominent London printer during the period — with the work attributed to ‘T.D’ on the title page. During the seventeenth century, Dekker was suggested as the author of the play and in the nineteenth century Thomas Drue was posited as the possible playwright despite there being little besides his initials to support the idea of his authorship. In 1925, E. H. C. Oliphant argued the play was a collaboration between Dekker and Middleton and this claim was later supported by both David Lake (The Canon of Thomas Middleton Plays, Cambridge University Press, 1975) and Macdonald P Jackson (Editing, Attribution Studies, and ‘Literature Online: A New Resource for Research in Renaissance’, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, Vol. 37). It has been asserted that the work was written in the first decade of the seventeenth century, but that significant revisions were made to it before it was published in 1639.

  The tragedy opens with the King of Lydia being usurped by the King of Cilicia. The new ruler is known as the Tyrant; he has a beautiful young wife whom he keeps imprisoned and under constant supervision. Zenarchus, the Tyrant’s son, manages to persuade his father to allow the old King’s son Tymethes, to remain at court, which pleases the Tyrant’s daughter, who is in love with the former prince. There is a plot involving the old King and his allies attempting to exact revenge on the Tyrant, while the New Queen and Tymethes become embroiled in a liaison, which leads to the horrendous and suitably named bloody banquet of the title. In Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (ed Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, Oxford University Press, 2010) Julia Gasper and Gary Taylor highlight Middleton and Dekker’s repurposing of Greek myths about cannibalism. An obvious source is Seneca’s tragedy Thyestes; the titular character is deceived into consuming his own children. Ovid’s telling of the legend of Philomela, an important inspiration for Shakespeare’s own cannibalism tragedy — Titus Andronicus — is another example of the ‘banquet myth’. (Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, ed Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, OUP, 2010, p637).

  There were subtle changes made by Renaissance dramatists to the classical myths, often due to the differences between Christian and classical culture. The critics outline a couple of significant alterations: one is the change from male to female in regards to the banqueter, revealing interesting medieval ideas about gender and the ‘role of the female’ ( p639).However, what is striking in The Bloody Banquet is the nuanced and somewhat sympathetic depiction of the young Queen. Many of the central characters are unscrupulous and revolting, but the Queen’s actions — infidelity and the murder of her lover after asking him to kneel to pray — are horrific by seventeenth century moral standards, and yet Middleton and Dekker choose not to solely condemn the Queen as a figure of unrepentant evil. As Gasper argues, the playwrights show the abhorrent treatment of the new Queen by her ‘Tyrant’ husband, and portray her actions as attempts of self-preservation. They refuse to ‘confine moral blame to the woman’ and also highlight the ‘pressures and constraints which can lead men or women to resort to duplicity’( p640).