SCENE V.

QUEEN, GRIZZLE.

_Queen._ Teach me to scold, prodigious-minded Grizzle,[105] Mountain of treason, ugly as the devil, Teach this confounded hateful mouth of mine To spout forth words malicious as thyself, Words which might shame all Billingsgate to speak.

_Griz._ Far be it from my pride to think my tongue Your royal lips can in that art instruct, Wherein you so excel. But may I ask, Without offence, wherefore my queen would scold?

_Queen._ Wherefore? Oh! blood and thunder! han't you heard (What ev'ry corner of the court resounds) That little Thumb will be a great man made?

_Griz._ I heard it, I confess--for who, alas! Can[106] always stop his ears?--But would my teeth, By grinding knives, had first been set on edge!

_Queen._ Would I had heard, at the still noon of night, The hallalloo of fire in every street! Odsbobs! I have a mind to hang myself, To think I should a grandmother be made By such a rascal!--Sure the king forgets When in a pudding, by his mother put, The bastard, by a tinker, on a stile Was dropp'd.--Oh, good lord Grizzle! can I bear To see him from a pudding mount the throne? Or can, oh can, my Huncamunca bear To take a pudding's offspring to her arms?

_Griz._ Oh, horror! horror! horror! cease, my queen. Thy voice, like twenty screech-owls, wracks my brain.[107]

_Queen._ Then rouse thy spirit--we may yet prevent This hated match.

_Griz._ We will; nor fate itself,[108] Should it conspire with Thomas Thumb, should cause it. I'll swim through seas; I'll ride upon the clouds: I'll dig the earth; I'll blow out every fire; I'll rave; I'll rant; I'll rise; I'll rush; I'll roar; Fierce as the man whom smiling[109] dolphins bore From the prosaic to poetic shore. I'll tear the scoundrel into twenty pieces.

_Queen._ Oh, no! prevent the match, but hurt him not; For, though I would not have him have my daughter, Yet can we kill the man that killed the giants?

_Griz._ I tell you, madam, it was all a trick; He made the giants first, and then he killed them; As fox-hunters bring foxes to the wood, And then with hounds they drive them out again.

_Queen._ How! have you seen no giants? Are there not Now in the yard ten thousand proper giants?

_Griz._ Indeed I cannot positively tell,[110] But firmly do believe there is not one.

_Queen._ Hence! from my sight! thou traitor, hie away; By all my stars! thou enviest Tom Thumb. Go, sirrah! go, hie[111] away! hie!----thou art A setting-dog: begone.

_Griz._ Madam, I go. Tom Thumb shall feel the vengeance you have raised. So, when two dogs are fighting in the streets, With a third dog one of the two dogs meets, With angry teeth he bites him to the bone, And this dog smarts for what that dog has done.