SCENE IX.

SULPITIA, FLAVIA.

SUL. Flavia, I kiss your hands.

FLA. Sulpitia, I pray you pardon me; I saw you not.

SUL. I' faith, you have Some fixed thoughts draw your eyes inward, When you see not your friends before you.

FLA. True; and, I think, the same that trouble you.

SUL. Then 'tis the love of a young gentleman, And bitter hatred of an old dotard.

FLA. 'Tis so. Witness your brother Eugenio, and the rotten carcase of Pandolfo. Had I a hundred hearts, I should want room to entertain his love and the other's hate.

SUL. I could say as much, were't not sin to slander the dead. Miserable wenches! How have we offended our fathers, that they should make us the price of their dotage, the medicines of their griefs, that have more need of physic ourselves? I must be frostbitten with the cold of your dad's winter, that mine may thaw his old ice with the spring of your sixteen. I thank my dead mother, that left me a woman's will in her last testament. That's all the weapons we poor girls can use, and with that will I fight 'gainst father, friends, and kindred, and either enjoy Lelio, or die in the field in his quarrel.

FLA. Sulpitia, you are happy that can withstand your fortune with so merry a resolution.

SUL. Why should I twine mine arms to cables,[306] and sigh my soul to air? Sit up all night like a watching-candle,[307] and distil my brains through my eyelids. Your brother loves me, and I love your brother; and where these two consent, I would fain see a third to hinder us.

FLA. Alas! our sex is most wretched, nursed up from infancy in continual slavery. No sooner able to prey for ourselves, but they brail and hud us[308] so with sour awe of parents, that we dare not offer to bate[309] at our own desires. And whereas it becomes men to vent their amorous passions at their pleasure, we (poor souls) must rake up our affections in the ashes of a burnt heart, not daring to sigh without excuse of the spleen or fit of the mother.

SUL. I plainly will profess my love of Lelio. 'Tis honest, chaste, and stains not modesty. Shall I be married to Antonio, that hath been a soused sea-fish these three months? And if he be alive, comes home with as many impairs as a hunting gelding or a fallen pack-horse. No, no; I'll see him freeze to crystal first. In other things, good father, I am your most obedient daughter, but in this a pure woman. 'Tis your part to offer--mine to refuse, if I like not. Lelio's a handsome gentleman, young, fresh, rich, and well-fashioned; and him will Sulpitia have, or die a maid. And, i' faith, the temper of my blood tells me I never was born to so cold a misfortune. Fie, Flavia! fie, wench! [labour] no more with tears and sighs; cheer up. Eugenio, to my knowledge, loves you, and you shall have him; I say, you shall have him.

FLA. I doubt not of his love, but know no means how he dares work against so great a rival. Your father, in a spleen, may disinherit him.

SUL. And give't to whom? H' has none but him and me. What though he doat awhile upon your beauty, he will not prove unnatural to his son. Go to your chamber. My genius whispers in my ear, and swears this night we shall enjoy our loves, and with that hope farewell.

FLA. Farewell, Sulpitia. [_Exeunt._

FOOTNOTES:

[272] See note to "Green's Tu quoque," p. 200.

[273] Two playhouses. The _Fortune_ belonged to the celebrated Edward Alleyn, and stood in Whitecross Street. The _Red Bull_ was situated in St John Street.

[274] This alludes to the fashion then much followed, of wearing bands washed and dyed with _yellow starch_. The inventress of them was Mrs Turner, a woman of an infamous character; who, being concerned in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, was executed at Tyburn in a lawn ruff of her favourite colour. "With her," says Howell, in his "Letters," p. 19, edit. 1754, "I believe that yellow starch, which so much disfigured our nation, and rendered them so ridiculous and fantastic, will receive its funeral." And of the same opinion was Sir Simonds D'Ewes who, in [his "Autobiography," edit. Halliwell, p. 79], says, "Mrs Turner had first brought upp that vaine and foolish use of _yellow starch_, ... and therefore, when shee was afterwards executed at Tiburne, the hangman had his _bande_ and cuffs of the same couler, which made many, after that day, of either sex, to forbeare the use of that _coulered starch_, till at last it grew generallie to bee detested and disused." This execution happened in the year 1615; but the reformation predicted by Howell, and partly asserted by D'Ewes to have happened, was not the consequence, as will appear from the following passage, extracted from a pamphlet called "The Irish Hubbub, or the English Hue and Crie," by Barnaby Rich, 4º, 1622, p. 40: "Yet the open exclamation that was made by Turner's wife at the houre of her death, in the place where shee was executed, cannot be hidden, when, before the whole multitude that were there present, she so bitterly protested against the vanitie of those _yellow starcht bands_, that her outcries (as it was thought) had taken such impression in the hearts of her hearers, that _yellow starcht bands_ would have been ashamed (for ever after to have shewed themselves about the neckes, either of men that were wise, or women that were honest) but we see our expectations have failed us, for _they beganne even then to be more generall than they were before_." Again, p. 41: "You knowe tobacco is in great trading, but you shall be merchants, and onely for egges: for whereas one pipe of tobacco will suffice three or four men at once; now ten or twenty eggs will hardly suffice to starch one of these _yellow bands:_ a fashion that I thinke shortly will be as conversant amongst taylors, tapsters, and tinkers, as now they have brought tobacco. But a great magistrate, to disgrace it, enjoyned the hangman of London to become one of that fraternitie, and to follow the fashion; and, the better to enable him, he bestowed of him some benevolence to pay for his laundry: and who was now so briske, with a yellow feather in his hat, and a _yellow starcht band_ about his necke, walking in the streets of London, as was master hangman? so that my young masters, that have sithence fallen into that trimme, they doe but imitate the hangman's president, the which, how ridiculous a matter it is, I will leave to themselves to thinke on." And that the fashion prevailed some years after Mrs Turner's death may be proved from Sir Simon D'Ewes's relation of the procession of King James from Whitehall to the Parliament House, Westminster, 30th January 1620 [_i.e._, 1621]: "In the king's short progresse from Whitehall to Westminster, these passages following were accounted somewhat remarkable--And fourthlie, that, looking upp to one window, as he passed, full of gentlewomen or ladies, all in _yellow bandes_, he cried out aloud, 'A pox take yee, are yee ther?' at which, being much ashamed, they all withdrew themselves suddenlie from the window."

[275] When the king visited the different parts of the country.

When the court made those excursions, which were called Progresses, to the seats of the nobility and gentry, waggons and other carriages were impressed for the purpose of conveying the king's baggage, &c.--_Pegge._

This privilege in the crown was continued until the civil wars in the reign of Charles the First, and had been exercised in a manner very oppressive to the subject, insomuch that it frequently became the object of Parliamentary complaint and regulation. During the suspension of monarchy it fell into disuse, and King Charles II at the Restoration consented, for a consideration, to relinquish this as well as all other powers of purveyance and pre-emption. Accordingly, by stat. 12, Car. II. c. xxiv. s. 12, it was declared that no officer should in future take any cart, carriage, or other thing, nor summon or require any person to furnish any horses, oxen, or other cattle, carts, ploughs, wains, or other carriages, for any of the royal family, without the full consent of the owner. An alteration of this act was made the next year, wherein the rates were fixed which should be paid on these occasions, and other regulations were made for preventing the abuse of this prerogative.

[276] A burlesque on the speech of Hieronimo in "The Spanish Tragedy." See also note to "Green's Tu quoque," and the addition to it [xi. 248.]

[277] _i.e._, Towards bedtime. So in "Coriolanus"--

"And tapers burn'd to _bedward_."

--_Steevens._

[278] Pounded. See note to "The Ordinary," act v. sc. 4, [vol. xii.]

[279] [Edits., _appear speck and span gentlemen_.] _Speck and span new_ is a phrase not yet out of use; _span new_ occurs in Chaucer's "Troilus and Creseide," bk. iii. l. 1671--

"This tale was aie _span newe_ to beginne, Til that the night departed 'hem at winne."

This is thought a phrase of some difficulty. It occurs in Fuller's "Worthies," Herefordshire, p. 40, where we read of _spick and span new money_. A late friend of mine was willing to deduce it from spinning, as if it were a phrase borrowed from the clothing art, _quasi_ new spun from the spike or brooche. It is here written _speck and span_, and in all cases means _entire_. I deem it tantamount to every _speck and every span, i.e._, all over.--_Pegge._

In "Hudibras," Part I. c. 3, l. 397, are these lines--

"Then, while the honour thou hast got Is _spick and span new_, piping hot," &c.

Upon which Dr Grey has this note: "Mr Ray observes ('English Proverbs,' 2d edit. p. 270), that this proverbial phrase, according to Mr Howel, comes from _spica_, an ear of corn: but rather, says he, as I am informed from a better author, _spike_ is a sort of _nail_, and _spawn_ the _chip_ of a boat; so that it is all one as to say, every _chip_ and _nail_ is new. But I am humbly of opinion that it rather comes from _spike_, which signifies a _nail_, and a _nail_ in measure is the 16th part of a yard; and _span_, which is in measure a quarter of a yard, or nine inches; and all that is meant by it, when applied to a new suit of clothes, is that it has been just measured from the piece by the _nail_ and _span_." See the expression in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair," act iii. sc. 5. [See Nares, edit. 1859; Hazlitt's "Proverbs," 1869; and Wedgwood's "Dictionary of English Etymology," all in _v._]

[280] [Edits., _Hilech_.] The name of Ursa Major in Greek.--_Pegge._

[281] A famous Indian philosopher (Fabricius, p. 281); but why he terms him a Babylonian I cannot conceive.--_Pegge._

[282] See [Suckling's Works, by Hazlitt, ii. 4.]

[283] I believe this word should be Artenosoria, the doctrine of Antidotes; unless we should read Artenasoria in allusion to Tallicotius and his method of making supplemental noses, referred to by Butler in "Hudibras."--_Pegge._

[284] Coskinomancy is the art of divining by a sieve.--_Pegge._

[285] It was not known then, I presume, that Venus had her increase and decrease.--_Pegge._

[286] The Greek word for _Plenilunium_.--_Pegge._

[287] All people then wore bands.--_Pegge._

[288] i.e., Bottles out of which liquid perfumes were anciently cast or thrown.--_Steevens._ They are mentioned in "Lingua," [ix. 419.]

[289] See note to the "Antiquary," [act iv. sc. 1, vol. xiii.]

[290] These, and what follows are terms of falconry; _flags_, in particular, are the second and baser order of feathers in the hawk's wing (Chambers's "Dictionary").--_Pegge._

[291] The _sear_ is the yellow part between the beak and the eyes of the hawk.--_Pegge._

[292] They usually carried the keys of their cabinets there.--_Pegge._

[293] The first 4º inserts the name of _Cricca_ for that of Trincalo, which is decidedly wrong.--_Collier._

[294] An instrument chiefly used for taking the altitude of the pole, the sun, or stars, at sea.

[295] A name given to such instruments as are used for observing and determining the distances, magnitudes, and places of the heavenly bodies.

[296] A term to express the points or horns of the moon, or other luminary.

[297] With astrologers, is a temporary power they imagine the planets have over the life of any person.

[298] The centre of the sun. A planet is said to be in _cazimi_ when it is not above 70 degrees distant from the body of the sun.

[299] [Old copy, _And_.]

[300] Sir Thomas Wyat, in his celebrated letter to John Poines, has a passage much in point--

"To ioyne the meane with ech extremitie, With nearest vertue ay to cloke the vice. And as to purpose likewise it shall fall To presse the vertue that it may not rise, As _dronkennesse good-felowship to call_."

--_Collier._

[301] _Almuten,_ with astronomers, is the lord of a figure, or the strongest planet in a nativity. _Alchochoden_ is the giver of life or years, the planet which bears rule in the principal places of an astrological figure when a person is born; so that his life may be expected longer or shorter, according to the station, &c., of this planet.

[302] "To _impe_," says Blount, "is a term most usual among falconers, and is when a feather in a hawkes wing is broken, and another piece imped or graffed on the stump of the old." "_Himp_ or _imp,_ in the British language, is _surculus_ a young graffe or twig; thence _impio_, the verb to innoculate or graff. Hence the word to _imp_ is borrowed by the English; first, surely, to graff trees, and thence translated to _imping_ feathers." See also Mr Steevens's note on "King Richard II.," act ii. sc. 1.

[303] _Me_ is omitted in the two quartos.--_Collier._

[304] _To_, the sign of the infinitive, is often omitted, and the verse requires it should be expunged here.--_Pegge._ Both the quartos read as in the text.--_Reed._

[305] Mr Reed allowed this line to stand--

"Whom all intelligence _have_ drown'd this three months."

The restoration of the true reading also restores the grammar of the passage.--_Collier._

[306] The same thought occurs in Shakespeare's "Love's Labour's Lost,"