Chapter 3

A ROOM IN SIR JOHN DAW'S HOUSE.

ENTER DAW, CLERIMONT, DAUPHINE, AND EPICOENE.

DAW: Nay, an she will, let her refuse at her own charges: 'tis nothing to me, gentlemen: but she will not be invited to the like feasts or guests every day.

CLER: O, by no means, she may not refuse--to stay at home, if you love your reputation: 'Slight, you are invited thither o' purpose to be seen, and laughed at by the lady of the college, and her shadows. This trumpeter hath proclaim'd you. [ASIDE TO EPICOENE.]

DAUP: You shall not go; let him be laugh'd at in your stead, for not bringing you: and put him to his extemporal faculty of fooling and talking loud, to satisfy the company. [ASIDE TO EPICOENE.]

CLER: He will suspect us, talk aloud.--'Pray, mistress Epicoene, let us see your verses; we have sir John Daw's leave: do not conceal your servant's merit, and your own glories.

EPI: They'll prove my servant's glories, if you have his leave so soon.

DAUP: His vain-glories, lady!

DAW: Shew them, shew them, mistress, I dare own them.

EPI: Judge you, what glories.

DAW: Nay, I'll read them myself too: an author must recite his own works. It is a madrigal of Modesty. Modest, and fair, for fair and good are near Neighbours, howe'er.--

DAUP: Very good.

CLER: Ay, is't not?

DAW: No noble virtue ever was alone, But two in one.

DAUP: Excellent!

CLER: That again, I pray, sir John.

DAUP: It has something in't like rare wit and sense.

CLER: Peace.

DAW: No noble virtue ever was alone, But two in one. Then, when I praise sweet modesty, I praise Bright beauty's rays: And having praised both beauty and modesty, I have praised thee.

DAUP: Admirable!

CLER: How it chimes, and cries tink in the close, divinely!

DAUP: Ay, 'tis Seneca.

CLER: No, I think 'tis Plutarch.

DAW: The dor on Plutarch, and Seneca! I hate it: they are mine own imaginations, by that light. I wonder those fellows have such credit with gentlemen.

CLER: They are very grave authors.

DAW: Grave asses! mere essayists: a few loose sentences, and that's all. A man would talk so, his whole age: I do utter as good things every hour, if they were collected and observed, as either of them.

DAUP: Indeed, sir John!

CLER: He must needs; living among the wits and braveries too.

DAUP: Ay, and being president of them, as he is.

DAW: There's Aristotle, a mere common-place fellow; Plato, a discourser; Thucydides and Livy, tedious and dry; Tacitus, an entire knot: sometimes worth the untying, very seldom.

CLER: What do you think of the poets, sir John?

DAW: Not worthy to be named for authors. Homer, an old tedious, prolix ass, talks of curriers, and chines of beef. Virgil of dunging of land, and bees. Horace, of I know not what.

CLER: I think so.

DAW: And so Pindarus, Lycophron, Anacreon, Catullus, Seneca the tragedian, Lucan, Propertius, Tibullus, Martial, Juvenal, Ausonius, Statius, Politian, Valerius Flaccus, and the rest--

CLER: What a sack full of their names he has got!

DAUP: And how he pours them out! Politian with Valerius Flaccus!

CLER: Was not the character right of him?

DAUP: As could be made, i'faith.

DAW: And Persius, a crabbed coxcomb, not to be endured.

DAUP: Why, whom do you account for authors, sir John Daw?

DAW: Syntagma juris civilis; Corpus juris civilis; Corpus juris canonici; the king of Spain's bible--

DAUP: Is the king of Spain's bible an author?

CLER: Yes, and Syntagma.

DAUP: What was that Syntagma, sir?

DAW: A civil lawyer, a Spaniard.

DAUP: Sure, Corpus was a Dutchman.

CLER: Ay, both the Corpuses, I knew 'em: they were very corpulent authors.

DAW: And, then there's Vatablus, Pomponatius, Symancha: the other are not to be received, within the thought of a scholar.

DAUP: 'Fore God, you have a simple learned servant, lady,-- in titles. [ASIDE.]

CLER: I wonder that he is not called to the helm, and made a counsellor!

DAUP: He is one extraordinary.

CLER: Nay, but in ordinary: to say truth, the state wants such.

DAUP: Why that will follow.

CLER: I muse a mistress can be so silent to the dotes of such a servant.

DAW: 'Tis her virtue, sir. I have written somewhat of her silence too.

DAUP: In verse, sir John?

CLER: What else?

DAUP: Why? how can you justify your own being of a poet, that so slight all the old poets?

DAW: Why? every man that writes in verse is not a poet; you have of the wits that write verses, and yet are no poets: they are poets that live by it, the poor fellows that live by it.

DAUP: Why, would not you live by your verses, sir John?

CLER: No, 'twere pity he should. A knight live by his verses? he did not make them to that end, I hope.

DAUP: And yet the noble Sidney lives by his, and the noble family not ashamed.

CLER: Ay, he profest himself; but sir John Daw has more caution: he'll not hinder his own rising in the state so much. Do you think he will? Your verses, good sir John, and no poems.

DAW: Silence in woman, is like speech in man, Deny't who can.

DAUP: Not I, believe it: your reason, sir.

DAW: Nor, is't a tale, That female vice should be a virtue male, Or masculine vice a female virtue be: You shall it see Prov'd with increase; I know to speak, and she to hold her peace. Do you conceive me, gentlemen?

DAUP: No, faith; how mean you "with increase," sir John?

DAW: Why, with increase is, when I court her for the common cause of mankind; and she says nothing, but "consentire videtur": and in time is gravida.

DAUP: Then this is a ballad of procreation?

CLER: A madrigal of procreation; you mistake.

EPI: 'Pray give me my verses again, servant.

DAW: If you'll ask them aloud, you shall. [WALKS ASIDE WITH THE PAPERS.]

[ENTER TRUEWIT WITH HIS HORN.]

CLER: See, here's Truewit again!--Where hast thou been, in the name of madness! thus accoutred with thy horn?

TRUE: Where the sound of it might have pierced your sense with gladness, had you been in ear-reach of it. Dauphine, fall down and worship me: I have forbid the bans, lad: I have been with thy virtuous uncle, and have broke the match.

DAUP: You have not, I hope.

TRUE: Yes faith; if thou shouldst hope otherwise, I should repent me: this horn got me entrance; kiss it. I had no other way to get in, but by faining to be a post; but when I got in once, I proved none, but rather the contrary, turn'd him into a post, or a stone, or what is stiffer, with thundering into him the incommodities of a wife, and the miseries of marriage. If ever Gorgon were seen in the shape of a woman, he hath seen her in my description: I have put him off o' that scent for ever.--Why do you not applaud and adore me, sirs? why stand you mute? are you stupid? You are not worthy of the benefit.

DAUP: Did not I tell you? Mischief!--

CLER: I would you had placed this benefit somewhere else.

TRUE: Why so?

CLER: 'Slight, you have done the most inconsiderate, rash, weak thing, that ever man did to his friend.

DAUP: Friend! if the most malicious enemy I have, had studied to inflict an injury upon me, it could not be a greater.

TRUE: Wherein, for Gods-sake? Gentlemen, come to yourselves again.

DAUP: But I presaged thus much afore to you.

CLER: Would my lips had been solder'd when I spake on't. Slight, what moved you to be thus impertinent?

TRUE: My masters, do not put on this strange face to pay my courtesy; off with this visor. Have good turns done you, and thank 'em this way!

DAUP: 'Fore heav'n, you have undone me. That which I have plotted for, and been maturing now these four months, you have blasted in a minute: Now I am lost, I may speak. This gentlewoman was lodged here by me o' purpose, and, to be put upon my uncle, hath profest this obstinate silence for my sake; being my entire friend, and one that for the requital of such a fortune as to marry him, would have made me very ample conditions: where now, all my hopes are utterly miscarried by this unlucky accident.

CLER: Thus 'tis when a man will be ignorantly officious, do services, and not know his why; I wonder what courteous itch possest you. You never did absurder part in your life, nor a greater trespass to friendship or humanity.

DAUP: Faith, you may forgive it best: 'twas your cause principally.

CLER: I know it, would it had not.

[ENTER CUTBEARD.]

DAUP: How now, Cutbeard! what news?

CUT: The best, the happiest that ever was, sir. There has been a mad gentleman with your uncle, this morning, [SEEING TRUEWIT.] --I think this be the gentleman--that has almost talk'd him out of his wits, with threatening him from marriage--

DAUP: On, I prithee.

CUT: And your uncle, sir, he thinks 'twas done by your procurement; therefore he will see the party you wot of presently: and if he like her, he says, and that she be so inclining to dumb as I have told him, he swears he will marry her, to-day, instantly, and not defer it a minute longer.

DAUP: Excellent! beyond our expectation!

TRUE: Beyond our expectation! By this light, I knew it would be thus.

DAUP: Nay, sweet Truewit, forgive me.

TRUE: No, I was ignorantly officious, impertinent: this was the absurd, weak part.

CLER: Wilt thou ascribe that to merit now, was mere fortune?

TRUE: Fortune! mere providence. Fortune had not a finger in't. I saw it must necessarily in nature fall out so: my genius is never false to me in these things. Shew me how it could be otherwise.

DAUP: Nay, gentlemen, contend not, 'tis well now.

TRUE: Alas, I let him go on with inconsiderate, and rash, and what he pleas'd.

CLER: Away, thou strange justifier of thyself, to be wiser than thou wert, by the event!

TRUE: Event! by this light, thou shalt never persuade me, but I foresaw it as well as the stars themselves.

DAUP: Nay, gentlemen, 'tis well now. Do you two entertain sir John Daw with discourse, while I send her away with instructions.

TRUE: I will be acquainted with her first, by your favour.

CLER: Master True-wit, lady, a friend of ours.

TRUE: I am sorry I have not known you sooner, lady, to celebrate this rare virtue of your silence.

[EXEUNT DAUP., EPI., AND CUTBEARD.]

CLER: Faith, an you had come sooner, you should have seen and heard her well celebrated in sir John Daw's madrigals.

TRUE [ADVANCES TO DAW.]: Jack Daw, God save you! when saw you La-Foole?

DAW: Not since last night, master Truewit.

TRUE: That's a miracle! I thought you two had been inseparable.

DAW: He is gone to invite his guests.

TRUE: 'Odso! 'tis true! What a false memory have I towards that man! I am one: I met him even now, upon that he calls his delicate fine black horse, rid into a foam, with posting from place to place, and person to person, to give them the cue--

CLER: Lest they should forget?

TRUE: Yes: There was never poor captain took more pains at a muster to shew men, than he, at this meal, to shew friends.

DAW: It is his quarter-feast, sir.

CLER: What! do you say so, sir John?

TRUE: Nay, Jack Daw will not be out, at the best friends he has, to the talent of his wit: Where's his mistress, to hear and applaud him? is she gone?

DAW: Is mistress Epicoene gone?

CLER: Gone afore, with sir Dauphine, I warrant, to the place.

TRUE: Gone afore! that were a manifest injury; a disgrace and a half: to refuse him at such a festival-time as this, being a bravery, and a wit too!

CLER: Tut, he'll swallow it like cream: he's better read in Jure civili, than to esteem any thing a disgrace, is offer'd him from a mistress.

DAW: Nay, let her e'en go; she shall sit alone, and be dumb in her chamber a week together, for John Daw, I warrant her. Does she refuse me?

CLER: No, sir, do not take it so to heart; she does not refuse you, but a little neglects you. Good faith, Truewit, you were to blame, to put it into his head, that she does refuse him.

TRUE: Sir, she does refuse him palpably, however you mince it. An I were as he, I would swear to speak ne'er a word to her to-day for't.

DAW: By this light, no more I will not.

TRUE: Nor to any body else, sir.

DAW: Nay, I will not say so, gentlemen.

CLER: It had been an excellent happy condition for the company, if you could have drawn him to it. [ASIDE.]

DAW: I'll be very melancholY, i'faith.

CLER: As a dog, if I were as you, sir John.

TRUE: Or a snail, or a hog-louse: I would roll myself up for this day, in troth, they should not unwind me.

DAW: By this pick-tooth, so I will.

CLER: 'Tis well done: He begins already to be angry with his teeth.

DAW: Will you go, gentlemen?

CLER: Nay, you must walk alone, if you be right melancholy, sir John.

TRUE: Yes, sir, we'll dog you, we'll follow you afar off.

[EXIT DAW.]

CLER: Was there ever such a two yards of knighthood measured out by time, to be sold to laughter?

TRUE: A mere talking mole, hang him! no mushroom was ever so fresh. A fellow so utterly nothing, as he knows not what he would be.

CLER: Let's follow him: but first, let's go to Dauphine, he's hovering about the house to hear what news.

TRUE: Content.

[EXEUNT.]