Chapter 6

Enter OVID, JULIA, GALLUS, CYTHERIS, TIBULLUS, PLAUTIA, ALBIUS, CHLOE, TUCCA, CRISPINUS, HERMOGENES, PYRGUS, characteristically habited, as gods and goddesses.

Ovid. Gods and goddesses, take your several seats. Now, Mercury, move your caduceus, and, in Jupiter's name, command silence.

Cris. In the name of Jupiter, silence.

Her. The crier of the court hath too clarified a voice.

Gal. Peace, Momus.

Ovid. Oh, he is the god of reprehension; let him alone: 'tis his office. Mercury, go forward, and proclaim, after Phoebus, our high pleasure, to all the deities that shall partake this high banquet.

Cris. Yes, sir.

Gal. The great god, Jupiter,--[Here, and at every break in the line, Crispinus repeats aloud the words of Gallus.]--Of his licentious goodness,--Willing to make this feast no fast--From any manner of pleasure;--Nor to bind any god or goddess--To be any thing the more god or goddess, for their names:--He gives them all free license--To speak no wiser than persons of baser titles;--And to be nothing better, than common men, or women.--And therefore no god--Shall need to keep himself more strictly to his goddess--Than any man does to his wife:--Nor any goddess--Shall need to keep herself more strictly to her god--Than any woman does to her husband.--But, since it is no part of wisdom,--In these days, to come into bonds;--It shall be lawful for every lover--To break loving oaths,--To change their lovers, and make love to others,--As the heat of every one's blood,--And the spirit of our nectar, shall inspire.--And Jupiter save Jupiter!

Tib. So; now we may play the fools by authority.

Her. To play the fool by authority is wisdom.

Jul. Away with your mattery sentences, Momus; they are too grave and wise for this meeting.

Ovid. Mercury, give our jester a stool, let him sit by; and reach him one of our cates.

Tuc. Dost hear, mad Jupiter? we'll have it enacted, he that speaks the first wise word, shall be made cuckold. What say'st thou? Is it not a good motion?

Ovid. Deities, are you all agreed?

All, Agreed, great Jupiter.

Alb. I have read in a book, that to play the fool wisely, is high wisdom.

Gal. How now, Vulcan! will you be the first wizard?

Ovid. Take his wife, Mars, and make him cuckold quickly.

Tuc. Come, cockatrice.

Chloe. No, let me alone with him, Jupiter: I'll make you take heed, sir, while you live again; if there be twelve in a company, that you be not the wisest of 'em.

Alb. No more; I will not indeed, wife, hereafter; I'll be here: mum.

Ovid. Fill us a bowl of nectar, Ganymede: we will drink to our daughter Venus.

Gal. Look to your wife, Vulcan: Jupiter begins to court her.

Tib. Nay, let Mars look to it: Vulcan must do as Venus does, bear.

Tuc. Sirrah, boy; catamite: Look you play Ganymede well now, you slave. Do not spill your nectar; carry your cup even: so! You should have rubbed your face with whites of eggs, you rascal; till your brows had shone like our sooty brother's here, as sleek as a horn-book: or have steept your lips in wine, till you made them so plump, that Juno might have been jealous of them. Punk, kiss me, punk.

Ovid. Here, daughter Venus, I drink to thee.

Chloe. Thank you, good father Jupiter.

Tuc. Why, mother Juno! gods and fiends! what, wilt thou suffer this ocular temptation?

Tib. Mars is enraged, he looks big, and begins to stut for anger.

Her. Well played, captain Mars.

Tuc. Well said, minstrel Momus: I must put you in, must I? when will you be in good fooling of yourself, fidler, never?

Her. O, 'tis our fashion to be silent, when there is a better fool in place ever.

Tuc. Thank you, rascal.

Ovid. Fill to our daughter Venus, Ganymede, who fills her father with affection.

Jul. Wilt thou be ranging, Jupiter, before my face?

Ovid. Why not, Juno? why should Jupiter stand in awe of thy face, Juno?

Jul. Because it is thy wife's face, Jupiter.

Ovid. What, shall a husband be afraid of his wife's face? will she paint it so horribly? we are a king, cotquean; and we will reign in our pleasures; and we will cudgel thee to death, if thou find fault with us.

Jul. I will find fault with thee, king cuckold-maker: What, shall the king of gods turn the king of good-fellows, and have no fellow in wickedness? This makes our poets, that know our profaneness, live as profane as we: By my godhead, Jupiter, 1 will join with all the other gods here, bind thee hand and foot, throw thee down into the earth and make a poor poet of thee, if thou abuse me thus.

Gal. A good smart-tongued goddess, a right Juno!

Ovid. Juno, we will cudgel thee, Juno: we told thee so yesterday, when thou wert jealous of us for Thetis.

Pyr. Nay, to-day she had me in inquisition too.

Tuc. Well said, my fine Phrygian fry; inform, inform. Give me some wine, king of heralds, I may drink to my cockatrice.

Ovid. No more, Ganymede; we will cudgel thee, Juno; by Styx we will.

Jul. Ay, 'tis well; gods may grow impudent in iniquity, and they must not be told of it

Ovid. Yea, we will knock our chin against our breast, and shake thee out of Olympus into an oyster-boat, for thy scolding.

Jul. Your nose is not long enough to do it, Jupiter, if all thy strumpets thou hast among the stars took thy part. And there is never a star in thy forehead but shall be a horn, if thou persist to abuse me.

Cris. A good jest, i'faith.

Ovid. We tell thee thou angerest us, cotquean; and we will thunder thee in pieces for thy cotqueanity.

Cris. Another good jest.

Alb. O, my hammers and my Cyclops! This boy fills not wine enough to make us kind enough to one another.

Tuc. Nor thou hast not collied thy face enough, stinkard.

Alb. I'll ply the table with nectar, and make them friends.

Her. Heaven is like to have but a lame skinker, then.

Alb. Wine and good livers make true lovers: I'll sentence them together. Here, father, here, mother, for shame, drink yourselves drunk, and forget this dissension; you two should cling together before our faces, and give us example of unity.

Gal O, excellently spoken, Vulcan, on the sudden!

Tib. Jupiter may do well to prefer his tongue to some office for his eloquence. Tuc. His tongue shall be gentleman-usher to his wit, and still go before it.

Alb. An excellent fit office!

Cris. Ay, and an excellent good jest besides.

Her. What, have you hired Mercury to cry your jests you make?

Ovid. Momus, you are envious.

Tuc. Why, ay, you whoreson blockhead, 'tis your only block of wit in fashion now-a-days, to applaud other folks' jests.

Her. True; with those that are not artificers themselves. Vulcan, you nod, and the mirth of the jest droops.

Pyr. He has filled nectar so long, till his brain swims in it.

Gal. What, do we nod, fellow-gods! Sound music, and let us startle our spirits with a song.

Tuc. Do, Apollo, thou art a good musician.

Gal. What says Jupiter?

Ovid. Ha! ha!

Gal. A song.

Ovid. Why, do, do, sing.

Pla. Bacchus, what say you?

Tib. Ceres?

Pla. But, to this song?

Tib. Sing, for my part.

Jul. Your belly weighs down your head, Bacchus; here's a song toward.

Tib. Begin, Vulcan.

Alb. What else, what else?

Tuc. Say, Jupiter

Ovid. Mercury---

Cris. Ay, say, say. [Music Alb. Wake! our mirth begins to die; Quicken it with tunes and wine. Raise your notes; you're out; fie, fie! This drowsiness is an ill sign. We banish him the quire of gods, That droops agen: Then all are men, For here's not one but nods.

Ovid. I like not this sudden and general heaviness amongst our godheads; 'tis somewhat ominous. Apollo, command us louder music, and let Mercury and Momus contend to please and revive our senses. [Music Herm. Then, in a free and lofty strain. Our broken tunes we thus repair; Cris. And we answer them again, Running division on the panting air; Ambo. To celebrate this, feast of sense, As free from scandal as offence. Herm. Here is beauty for the eye, Cris. For the ear sweet melody. Herm. Ambrosiac odours, for the smell, Cris. Delicious nectar, for the taste; Ambo. For the touch, a lady's waist; Which doth all the rest excel.

Ovid. Ay, this has waked us. Mercury, our herald; go from ourself, the great god Jupiter, to the great emperor Augustus Caesar, and command him from us, of whose bounty he hath received the sirname of Augustus, that, for a thank-offering to our beneficence, he presently sacrifice, as a dish to this banquet, his beautiful and wanton daughter Julia: she's a curst quean, tell him, and plays the scold behind his back; therefore let her be sacrificed. Command him this, Mercury, in our high name of Jupiter Altitonans.

Jul. Stay, feather-footed Mercury, and tell Augustus, from us, the great Juno Saturnia; if he think it hard to do as Jupiter hath commanded him, and sacrifice his daughter, that he had better do so ten times, than suffer her to love the well-nosed poet, Ovid; whom he shall do well to whip or cause to be whipped, about the capitol, for soothing her in her follies. [ Enter AUGUSTUS CAESAR, MECAENAS, HORACE, LUPUS, HISTRIO, MINUS, and Lictors. Caes. What sight is this? Mecaenas! Horace! say? Have we our senses? do we hear and see? Or are these but imaginary objects Drawn by our phantasy! Why speak you not? Let us do sacrifice. Are they the gods? [Ovid and the rest kneel. Reverence, amaze, and fury fight in me. What, do they kneel! Nay, then I see 'tis true I thought impossible: O, impious sight! Let me divert mine eyes; the very thought Everts my soul with passion: Look not, man, There is a panther, whose unnatural eyes Will strike thee dead: turn, then, and die on her With her own death. [Offers to kill his daughter. Mec. Hor. What means imperial Caesar?

Caes. What would you have me let the strumpet live That, for this pageant, earns so many deaths?

Tuc. Boy, slink, boy. [Exeunt Tucca and Pyrgus. Pyr. Pray Jupiter we be not followed by the scent, master.

Caes. Say, sir, what are you?

Alb. I play Vulcan, sir.

Caes. But what are you, sir?

Alb. Your citizen and jeweller, sir.

Caes. And what are you, dame?

Chloe. I play Venus, forsooth.

Caes. I ask not what you play, but what you are.

Chloe. Your citizen and jeweller's wife, sir.

Caes. And you, good sir? [Exit. Caes. O, that profaned name!--- And are these seemly company for thee, [To Julia. Degenerate monster? All the rest I know, And hate all knowledge for their hateful sakes. Are you, that first the deities inspired With skill of their high natures and their powers, The first abusers of their useful light; Profaning thus their dignities in their forms, And making them, like you, but counterfeits? O, who shall follow Virtue and embrace her, When her false bosom is found nought but air? And yet of those embraces centaurs spring, That war with human peace, and poison men.--- Who shall, with greater comforts comprehend Her unseen being and her excellence; When you, that teach, and should eternise her, Live as she were no law unto your lives, Nor lived herself, but with your idle breaths? If you think gods but feign'd, and virtue painted, Know we sustain an actual residence, And with the title of an emperor, Retain his spirit and imperial power; By which, in imposition too remiss, Licentious Naso, for thy violent wrong, In soothing the declined affections Of our base daughter, we exile thy feet From all approach to our imperial court, On pain of death; and thy misgotten love Commit to patronage of iron doors; Since her soft-hearted sire cannot contain her.

Cris. Your gentleman parcel-poet, sir.

Mec. O, good my lord, forgive! be like the gods.

Hor. Let royal bounty, Caesar, mediate.

Caes. There is no bounty to be shew'd to such As have no real goodness: bounty is A spice of virtue; and what virtuous act Can take effect on them, that have no power Of equal habitude to apprehend it, But live in worship of that idol, vice, As if there were no virtue, but in shade Of strong imagination, merely enforced? This shews their knowledge is mere ignorance, Their far-fetch'd dignity of soul a fancy, And all their square pretext of gravity A mere vain-glory; hence, away with them! I will prefer for knowledge, none but such As rule their lives by it, and can becalm All sea of Humour with the marble trident Of their strong spirits: others fight below With gnats and shadows; others nothing know. [Exeunt.