ACT I., SCENE 1.

_Enter the_ CAPTAIN _in choler, and_ WANTON.

CAPT. No more; I'll sooner be reconciled to want or sickness than that rascal: a thing that my charity made sociable; one that when I smiled would fawn upon me, and wag his stern, like starved dogs; so nasty, the company cried foh! upon him, he stunk so of poverty, ale, and bawdry. So poor and despicable, when I relieved him, he could not avow his calling for want of a cassock, but stood at corners of streets and whispered gentlemen in the ear as they passed, and so delivered his wants like a message; which being done, the rogue vanished, and would dive at Westminster like a dabchick, and rise again at Temple-gate. The ingenuity of the rascal, his wit being snuffed by want, burnt clear then, and furnished him with a bawdy jest or two, to take the company; but now the rogue shall find he has lost a patron.

WAN. As I live, if I had thought you would have been in such a fury, you should never have known it.

CAPT. Treacherous rogue! he has always railed against thee to me, as a danger his friendship ought to give me warning of, and nightly cried, Yet look back, and hunt not, with good-nature and the beauties of thy youth, that false woman; but hear thy friend, that speaks from sad experience.

WAN. Did he say this?

CAPT. Yes, and swears ye are as unsatiate as the sea, as covetous, and as ungrateful: that you have your tempests too, and calms more dangerous than it.

WAN. Was the slave so eloquent in his malice?

CAPT. Yes, faith, and urged you (for your part) were never particular, and seldom sound.

WAN. Not sound! why, he offered to marry me, and swore he thought I was chaste, I was so particular; and proved it, that consent was full marriage by the first institution, and those that love and lie together, and tell, have fulfilled all ceremonies now.

CAPT. Did he offer to marry thee?

WAN. Yes, yes.

CAPT. If ever then I deserved from thee, or if thou be'st dear to thyself, as thou hast anything thou hop'st shall be safe or sound about thee, I conjure thee, take my counsel: marry him, to afflict him.

WAN. Marry him?

CAPT. If I have any power, I shall prevail. Thou know'st he has a fat benefice, and leave me to plague him till he give it me to be rid of thee.

WAN. Will you not keep me then?

CAPT. I keep thee! prythee, wilt thou keep me? I know not why men are such fools to pay: we bring as much to the sport as women. Keep thee! I'd marry thee as soon; why, _that's wedding sin_: no, no keeping, I: that you are not your own, is all that prefers you before wives.

WAN. I hope this is not real.

CAPT. Art thou such a stranger to my humour? why, I tell thee I should hate thee if I could call thee mine, for I loathe all women within my knowledge; and 'tis six to four, if I knew thy sign, I'd come there no more. A strange mistress makes every night a new; and these are your pleasing sins. I had as lief be good, as sin by course.

WAN. Then I am miserable.

CAPT. Not so, if you'll be instructed, and let me pass like a stranger when you meet me.

WAN. But have you these humours?

CAPT. Yes, faith; yet, if you will observe them, though you marry him, I may perchance be your friend: but you must be sure to be coy; for to me the hunting is more pleasant than the quarry.[194]

WAN. But, if I observe this, will you be my friend hereafter?

CAPT. Firm as the day. Hark, I hear him [_The_ PARSON _calls within_.]; I knew he would follow me. I gave him a small touch that wakened his guilt. Resolve to endear yourself to him, which you may easily do by taking his part when I have vexed him. No dispute; resolve it, or, as I live, here I disclaim thee for ever.

WAN. 'Tis well; something I'll do.

[_Exit_ WANTON.

CAPT. Open the door, I say, and let me in: your favourite and his tithes shall come no more here.

_Enter_ PARSON.

PAR. Yes, but he shall; 'tis not you, nor your braced drum, shall fright me hence, who can command the souls of men. I have read divine Seneca: thou know'st nothing but the earthly part, and canst cry to that, Faces about.[195]

CAPT. Thou read Seneca! thou steal'st his cover to clothe thee, naked and wicked, that for money wouldst sell the share of the Twelve, and art allowed by all that know thee fitter to have been Judas than Judas was, for treachery.

PAR. Rail, do rail, my illiterate captain, that can only abuse by memory; and should I live till thou couldst read my sentence, I should never die.

CAPT. No, ungrateful, live till I destroy thee; and, thankless wretch, did all my care of thee deserve nothing but thy malice and treacherous speaking darkly still? with thy fine, _No, not he_, when any malicious discourse was made of me; and by thy false faint, _No, faith; confess_, in thy denials, whilst thy smiling excuses stood a greater and more dangerous evidence against me than my enemies' affidavits could have done.

PAR. I'll lie for never a lean soldier of you all.

CAPT. I have for thee, slave, when I have been wondered at for keeping company with such a face: but they were such as knew thee not; all which thy looks deceived, as they did me: they are so simple, they'd cosen a jury, and a judge that had wit would swear thou liedst, should thou confess what I know to be true, and award Bedlam for thee; 'tis so strange and so new a thing to find so much Rogue lodge at the sign of the Fool.

PAR. Leave this injurious language, or I'll lay off my cassock; for nothing shall privilege your bragger's tongue to abuse me, a gentleman, and a soldier ancienter than thyself.

CAPT. Yes, thou wert so: and now I think on't, I'll recount the cause which, it may be, thou hast forgot, through thy variety of sins. It was a hue-and-cry that followed thee a scholar, and found thee a soldier.

PAR. Thou liest: thou and Scandal have but one tongue; hers dwells with thy coward's teeth.

CAPT. O, do you rage? nay, I'll put the cause in print too: I am but a scurvy poet, yet I'll make a ballad shall tell how like a faithful disciple you followed your poor whore till her martyrdom in the suburbs.

PAR. I'll be revenged for this scandal.

CAPT. Then shall succeed thy flight from the university, disguised into captain, only the outside was worse buff, and the inside more atheist than they; furnished with an insolent faith, uncharitable heart, envious as old women, cruel and bloody as cowards: thus armed at all points, thou went'st out, threatening God, and trembling at men.

PAR. I'll be revenged, thou poor man of war, I'll be revenged.

_Enter_ WANTON.

WAN. And why so bitter? Whose house is this? Who dares tell this story?

CAPT. Why, sweet, hath he not treacherously broke into our cabinet, and would have stol'n thee thence? by these hilts, I'll hang him; and then I can conclude my ballad with _take warning, all Christian people, by the same_: I will, you lean slave; I'll prosecute thee, till thou art fain to hide in a servitor's gown again, and live upon crumbs with the robin redbreasts that haunt the hall (your old messmates). Do you snarl? I'll do't, I will, and put thee to fight with the dogs for the bones that but smell of meat--those that your hungry students have polished with their teeth.

WAN. If you do this, good captain, lieutenant, and company (for all your command, I think, is within your reach)--I say, if you dare do this, I shall sing a song of one that bad stand,[196] and made a carrier pay a dear rent for a little ground upon his majesty's highway.

CAPT. How now, Mistress Wanton! what's this? what's this?

PAR. This! 'tis matter for a jury; I'll swear, and positively. I'll hang thee, I'll do't, by this hand: let me alone to swear the jury out of doubt.

CAPT. But you are in jest, Mistress Wanton, and will confess (I hope) this is no truth.

WAN. Yes, sir, as great a truth as that you are in your unpaid-for scarlet. Fool! didst think I'd quit such a friend and his staid fortune, to rely upon thy dead pay and hopes of a second covenant?

CAPT. His fortune! what is't? th' advowson of Tyburn deanery?

PAR. No, nor rents brought in by long staff-speeches, that ask alms with frowns, till thy looks and speech have laid violent hands upon men's charity.

WAN. Let him alone; I'll warrant, he'll never be indicted of drawing anything but his tongue against a man.

CAPT. Very good.

PAR. Dear Mistress Wanton, you have won my heart, and I shall live to doat upon you for abusing this impetuous captain. Will you listen to my old suit? will you marry me, and vex him? say, dare you do't without more dispute?

CAPT. 'Twas a good question; she that dares marry thee, dares do anything: she may as safely lie with the great bell upon her, and his clapper is less dangerous than thine.

WAN. Why, I pray?

CAPT. What a miserable condition wilt thou come to? his wife cannot be an honest woman; and if thou shouldst turn honest, would it not vex thee to be chaste and poxed[197]--a saint without a nose? what calendar will admit thee by[198] an incurable slave that's made of rogue's flesh? consider that.

WAN. Why, that's something yet; thou hast nothing but a few scars and a little old fame to trust to; and that scarce thatches your head.

CAPT. Nay, then I see thou art base, and this plot not accident. And now I do not grudge him thee; go together, 'tis pity to part you, whore and parson, as consonant----

WAN. As whore and captain.

CAPT. Take her, I'll warrant her a breeder. I'll prophesy she shall lie with thy whole congregation, and bring an heir to thy parish; one that thou may'st enclose the common by his title, and recover it by common law.

PAR. That's more than thy dear dam could do for thee, thou son of a thousand fathers, all poor soldiers: rogues that ought mischiefs, no midwives, for their birth. But I cry thee mercy, my patron has an estate of old iron by his side, with the farm of old ladies he scrapes a dirty living from.

WAN. He earn from an old lady: hang him, he's only wicked in his desires; and for adultery he cannot be condemned, though he should have the vanity to betray himself. God forgive me for belying him so often as I have done; the weak-chined slave hired me once to say I was with child by him.

CAPT. This is pretty. Farewell; and may the next pig thou farrow'st have a promising face, without the dad's fool or gallows in't, that all may swear, at first sight, that's a bastard; and it shall go hard, but I'll have it called mine. I have the way; 'tis but praising thee, and swearing thou art honest before I am asked: you taught me the trick.

PAR. Next levy I'll preach against thee, and tell them what a piece you are. Your drum and borrowed scarf shall not prevail; nor shall you win with charms, half-ell long (hight ferret riband) the youth of our parish, as you have done.[199]

CAPT. No, lose no time: prythee, study and learn to preach, and leave railing against the surplice, now thou hast preached thyself into linen. Adieu, Abigail! adieu, heir-apparent to Sir Oliver Mar-text! to church, go; I'll send a beadle shall sing your epithalamium.

PAR. Adieu, my captain of a tame band. I'll tell your old lady how you abused her breath, and swore you earned your money harder than those that dig in the mines for't. [_Exit_ CAPTAIN.] A fart fill thy sail, captain of a galley foist.[200] He's gone: come, sweet, let's to church immediately, that I may go and take my revenge: I'll make him wear thin breeches.

WAN. But if you should be such a man as he says you are, what would my friends say when they hear I have cast myself away?

PAR. He says! hang him, lean, mercenary, provand[201] rogue: I knew his beginning, when he made the stocks lousy, and swarmed so with vermin, we were afraid he would have brought that curse upon the country. He says! but what matters what he says? a rogue by sire and dam! his father was a broad, fat pedlar, a what-do-you-lack, sir? that haunted good houses, and stole more than he bought: his dam was a gipsy, a pilfering, canting Sybil in her youth, and she suffered in her old age for a witch. Poor Stromwell, the rogue was a perpetual burthen to her, she carried him longer at her back than in her belly; he dwelt there, till she lost him one night in the great frost upon our common, and there he was found in the morning candied in ice--a pox of their charity that thawed him! You might smell a rogue then in the bud: he is now run away from his wife.

WAN. His wife?

PAR. Yes, his wife; why, do you not know he's married according to the rogues' liturgy? a left-handed bridegroom. I saw him take the ring from a tinker's dowager.

WAN. Is this possible?

PAR. Yes, most possible, and you shall see how I'll be revenged on him: I will immediately go seek the ordinance against reformadoes.

WAN. What ordinance?

PAR. Why, they do so swarm about the town, and are so destructive to trade and all civil government, that the state has declared no person shall keep above two colonels and four captains (of what trade soever) in his family; for now the war is done, broken breech, woodmonger, ragman, butcher, and linkboy (comrades that made up the ragged regiment in this holy war), think to return and be admitted to serve out their times again.

WAN. Your ordinance will not touch the captain, for he is a known soldier.

PAR. He a captain! an apocryphal modern one, that went convoy once to Brentford with those troops that conducted the contribution-puddings in the late holy war, when the city ran mad after their russet Levites, apron-rogues with horn hands. Hang him, he's but the sign of a soldier; and I hope to see him hanged for that commission, when the king comes to his place again.

WAN. You abuse him now he's gone; but----

PAR. Why, dost thou think I fear him? No, wench, I know him too well for a cowardly slave, that dares as soon eat his fox,[202] as draw it in earnest: the slave's noted to make a conscience of nothing but fighting.

WAN. Well, if you be not a good man and a kind husband----

PAR. Thou knowest the proverb, as happy as the parson's wife during her husband's life.

[_Exeunt._