SCENE V.

_To them_ SIR THOMAS BITEFIG, CREDULOUS.

MEAN. God save you, good Sir Thomas.

SIR T. Save you, sir.

MEAN. Your welcome, Master Credulous.

CRE. Come hither: Whither do you steal now? What! Where's your cloak?

AND. Going to foils e'en now, I put it off.

MEAN. To tell you truth, he hath lost it at doublets.

CRE. With what a lie you'd flap me in the mouth! Thou hast the readiest invention To put off anything: thou hadst it from Thy mother, I'll be sworn: 't ne'er came from me.

MEAN. Peace, as you love yourself: if that the knight Should once perceive that he were given to gaming, 'Twould make him break the match off presently.

CRE. Sir Thomas, here's my son; he may be yours, If you please to accept him.

AND. Father, don't Give me away for this: try me once more.

SIR T. I like his person well enough, if that You'll make him an estate convenient.

MEAN. He hath more in him, sir, than he can show. He hath one fault: he's something covetous.

SIR T. Marry, a very commendable fault.

CRE. He is descended of no great high blood: He hath a house, although he came of none. His grandfather was a good livery-man, Paid scot and lot, old Timothy Credulous My father--though I say it, that should not.

SIR T. I don't regard this thing that you call blood; 'Tis a mere name, a sound.

MEAN. Your worship speaks Just like yourself: methinks he's noble That's truly rich. Men may talk much of lines, Of arms, of blood, of race, of pedigree: Houses, descents and families; they are But empty noise, God knows; the idle breath Of that puff nothing, honour; formal words, Fit for the tongues of men that ne'er knew yet What stem, what gentry, nay, what virtue lies In great revenues.

SIR T. Well and pithy said! You may work on my daughter, and prevail For that young stripling. 'Tis a foolish wench, An unexperienc'd girl; she'd like to have been Caught by Sir Robert Littleworth's son, if that I had not banish'd him my house; a youth Honest enough, I think, but that he's poor; Born to more name than fortune.

CRE. He is safe For ever wooing. I have laid his father Out of harm's way; there's picking meat for him, And God knows where he's gone: he hath not been Seen this long while; he's, sure, turn'd vagabond; No sight of him since the arrest of his father. Andrew, address yourself to good Sir Thomas.

AND. 'Slid, father, you're the strangest man--I won't.

CRE. As God shall mend me, thou'rt the proudest thing---- Thou can'st not compliment, but in caparisons.

AND. What's that to you? I'd fain say something yet, But that I can't, my losses do so vex me.

CRE. Come, think not on't, my boy; I'll furnish thee.

AND. Sir, though----

CRE. Nay, to't, I say: help him, sir, help him.

AND. Sir, though without my cloak at this time-- To-morrow I shall have one--give me leave Barely to say I am your servant, sir---- In hose and doublet.

CRE. I'll do what you told me.

HEAR. Take heed: if that you do't, he'll guess you're given To idle spendings, and so cross the match. I will invite him as to myself.

CRE. Do so.

HEAR. Sir Thomas, if you'll please so far to grace us, As be a guest to-morrow here, we shall Study hereafter to deserve the favour.

SIR T. Although I do not use to eat at ordinaries; Yet to accept your courtesy, good friends, I'll break my wonted custom.

HEAR. You shall have it With a free heart.

SIR T. If I thought otherwise, I do assure you, I'd not venture hither. [_Exeunt._

FOOTNOTES:

[137] _i.e._, Prize [or acquisition.]--_Collier._

[138] _March-pane_ was a confection made of pistachio nuts, almonds, sugar, &c., formerly in high esteem, and a constant article in the deserts of our ancestors. See the notes of Dr Gray, Mr Hawkins, and Mr Steevens, to "Romeo and Juliet," act i. sc. 5.

[139] This is called a St Stephen's pudding: it used formerly to be provided at St John's College, Cambridge, uniformly on St Stephen's day.--_Pegge._

[140] See [Suckling's Works, by Hazlitt, ii. 33.]

[141] Or, caveare. Giles Fletcher, in his "Russe Commonwealth," 1591, p. 11, says: "In Russia they have divers kinds of fish, very good and delicate: as the Bellouga or Bellougina, of four or five elnes long; the Ostrina or Sturgeon, but not so thicke nor long. These four kinds of fish breed in the Volgha, and are catched in great plenty, and served thence into the whole realme for a great food. Of the roes of these foure kinds, they make very great store of _Icary_, or caveary."

The introduction of these foreign delicacies is ridiculed by several writers of the times; as Ben Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels," act iii. sc. 1: "Come; let us go and taste some light dinner, a dish of sliced _caviare_, or so."

And in Marston's "What you Will," act ii. sc. 1--

"A man can scarce put on a tuckt-up cap, A button'd frizado sute; scarce eate good meate, Anchovies, _caviare_, but hee's satired, And term'd phantasticall."

[142] The malacoton is one of the late _peaches_. So in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair"--

"A soft velvet head like a _mellicotton_."

--_Steevens._

[143] _Olived_ is a term of cookery. In Murrell's "New Book of Cookery," [1630,] is a receipt to make an _olive_-pie to be eaten hot. _Olives_ are _collops_ of any meat.--_Steevens._

[144] Cartwright has fetched most of his antiquated terms from Chaucer. I have therefore given the explanation of them from Mr Tyrwhitt's excellent glossary on that author.

[145] [For God's sake.]

[146] Snub, reprove.--_T._

[147] Think, suppose.--_T._

[148] A prater.--_T._

[149] Fr. _Goliardus_, or Goliardensis, Lat. "This jovial sect seems to have been so called from Golias, the [representative] name of a man of wit, toward the end of the 12th century, [under which pass] "Apocalypsis Goliæ" and other pieces, in burlesque Latin rhymes, some of which have been falsely attributed to Walter Mapes. In several authors of the 13th century, quoted by Du Cange, the Goliardi are classed with the _joculatores_ or _buffones_."--_T._ [See "Poems of Walter Mapes," edit. Wright, p. ix. _et seq._]

[150] Left.--_T._

[151] So in Chaucer's "Reve's Prologue," v. 3880--

"Yet in our ashen cold is fire yreken." --_Steevens._

On this last line Mr Tyrwhitt observes: "There is so great a resemblance between this line and the following in 'Gray's Elegy,' [edit. Mitford, i. 106]--

"Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires,"

that I should certainly have considered the latter as an imitation, if Mr Gray himself had not referred us to the 169 (170) sonnet of Petrarch, as his original 'Ch'i veggio nel pensier,' &c.

[152] Surely.--_T._

[153] Very ill.--_T._

[154] Uncertain.--_T._

[155] Unspotted.--_T._

[156] Wantonness.--_T._

[157] Jargon, chattering.--_T._

[158] Spotted.--_T._

[159] Call, name.--_T._

[160] A nurse.--_T._

[161] [Might.]

[162] Is she called.--_T._

[163] Dreamed.--_T._

[164] Tremble or quake.--_T._

[165] Dream.--_T._

[166] Combeth.--_T._

[167] Pick as a hawk does his feathers.--_T._

[168] Worthy.--_T._

[169] Named.--_T._

[170] ["Both aces, the lowest throw upon the dice."--Dyce's "Shakespeare Glossary," 1868.]

[171] High men and low men are false dice. See Florio's "Dictionary," 1598, _v._ Pise. These terms so very oft occur in our ancient dramatic writers, that to quote examples would be endless.

[172] The epithet _black_ does not agree with Sir Kenelm Digby's "Discourse touching the Cure of Wounds by the Power of Sympathy," 4th edition, 1664, p. 104: "I told her sundry stories upon this subject; as that of the Queen of Ethiopia, who was delivered of a white boy; which was attributed to a picture of the Blessed Virgin, which she had always near the tester of her bed, whereunto she bore great devotion. I urged another, of a woman who was brought to bed of a child all hairy, because of a portrait of St John the Baptist in the wilderness, where he wore a coat of camel's hair."

Perhaps the original reading is the true one, and the corruption lies in the former line. I would read--

"It works upon that which is not as yet: The little Ethiop infant _would have_ been _Black_ in his cradle, had he not been first White in the mother's strong imagination."

The compositor's eye might have caught _had not_ from the following line--a very common accident. Without this emendation we have too much of _not_ and _had not_ in the course of three verses.--_Steevens's note_ (_altered_.) [Cartwright and Digby probably derived the story of the Ethiop mother and her white offspring from a common source; but Digby's work was not published till several years after Cartwright's death.]

[173] See Sir Kenelm Digby's "Discourse," p. 6.

[174] [Old copy, _who_. Mr Collier's correction.]

[175] From Bishop Corbet's "Iter Boreale," this town appears to have been inhabited chiefly by Puritans. Mr Dodd, mentioned in act iv. sc. 3, was minister there.