SCENE I.

_Outside_ Sir HUBERT SUBBOY'S _house, under_ BEATRICE'S _window_.

_Enter_ FREEVILL, _Pages with torches and Gentlemen with music_.

_Free._ The morn is yet but young. Here, gentlemen, This is my Beatrice' window--this the chamber Of my betrothèd dearest, whose chaste eyes, Full of loved sweetness and clear cheerfulness, Have gaged my soul to her enjoyings; Shredding away all those weak under-branches Of base affections and unfruitful heats. Here bestow your music to my voice.

[_A song._

_Enter_ BEATRICE _above_.

Always a virtuous name to my chaste love!

_Bea._ Loved sir, 10 The honour of your wish return to you. I cannot with a mistress' compliment, Forcèd discourses, or nice art of wit, Give entertain to your dear-wishèd presence: But safely thus,--what hearty gratefulness, Unsullen silence, unaffected modesty, And an unignorant shamefastness can express, Receive as your protested due. 'Faith, my heart, I am your servant. O let not my secure simplicity 20 Breed your mislike, as one quite void of skill; 'Tis grace enough in us not to be ill. I can some good, and, faith, I mean no hurt; Do not then, sweet, wrong sober ignorance. I judge you all of virtue, and our vows Should kill all fears that base distrust can move. My soul, what say you--still you love?

_Free._ Still! My vow is up above me, and, like time, Irrevocable: I am sworn all yours. No beauty shall untwine our arms, no face 30 In my eyes can or shall seem fair; And would to God only to me you might Seem only fair! Let others disesteem Your matchless graces, so might I safer seem; Envy I covet not. Far, far be all ostent-- Vain boasts of beauties, soft joys, and the rest: He that is wise pants on a private breast. So could I live in desert most unknown, Yourself to me enough were populous;[28] Your eyes shall be my joys, my wine that still 40 Shall drown my often cares; your only voice Shall cast a slumber on my list'ning sense; You, with soft lip, shall only ope mine eyes And suck their lids asunder; only you Shall make me wish to live, and not fear death, So on your cheeks I might yield latest breath. O he that thus may live and thus shall die, May well be envied of a deity.[29]

_Bea._ Dear, my loved heart, be not so passionate; Nothing extreme lives long. 50

_Free._ But not to be extreme[30]--nothing in love's extreme-- My love receives no mean.

_Bea._ I give you faith; and, prithee, since, poor soul! I am so easy to believe thee, make it much more pity to deceive me! Wear this slight favour in my remembrance.

[_Throweth down a ring to him._

_Free._ Which, when I part from, Hope, the best of life, ever part from me.

_Bea._ I take you and your word, which may ever live your servant. See, day is quite broke up--the best of hours. 61

_Free._ Good morrow, graceful mistress: our nuptial day holds.

_Bea._ With happy constancy a wishèd day.

[_Exit._

_Free._ Myself and all content rest with you.

_Enter_ MALHEUREUX.

_Mal._ The studious morn, with paler cheek, draws on The day's bold light. Hark how the free-born birds Carol their unaffected passions!

[_The nightingales sing._

Now sing they sonnets--thus they cry, We love! O breath of heaven! thus they, harmless souls, 70 Give entertain to mutual affects. They have no bawds, no mercenary beds, No polite restraints, no artificial heats, No faint dissemblings; no custom makes them blush, No shame afflicts their name. O you happy beasts! In whom an inborn heat is not held sin, How far transcend you wretched, wretched man, Whom national custom, tyrannous respects Of slavish order, fetters, lames his power, Calling that sin in us which in all things else 80 Is Nature's highest virtue. _O miseri quorum gaudia crimen habent!_ Sure Nature against virtue cross doth fall, Or virtue's self is oft unnatural. That I should love a strumpet! I, a man of snow! Now, shame forsake me--whither am I fallen! A creature of a public use! my friend's love, too! To live to be a talk to men--a shame To my professed virtue! O accursed reason, How many eyes hast thou to see thy shame, 90 And yet how blind once to prevent defame!

_Free._ _Diaboli virtus in lumbis est!_ Morrow, my friend. Come, I could make a tedious scene of this now; but what----Pah! thou art in love with a courtezan! Why, sir, should we loathe all strumpets, some men should hate their own mothers or sisters: a sin against kind, I can tell you.

_Mal._ May it beseem a wise man to be in love?

_Free._ Let wise men alone, 'twill beseem thee and me well enough. 100

_Mal._ Shall I not offend the vowe[d] band of our friendship?

_Free._ What, to affect that which thy friend affected? By Heaven, I resign her freely; the creature and I must grow off; by this time she has assure[d]ly heard of my resolved marriage, and no question swears "God's sacrament, ten towsand divells." I'll resign, i'faith.

_Mal._ I would but embrace her, hear her speak, and at the most, but kiss her.

_Free._ O friend, he that could live with the smoke of roast-meat might live at a cheap rate! 111

_Mal._ I shall ne'er prove heartily received; A kind of flat ungracious modesty, An insufficient dulness stains my 'haviour.

_Free._ No matter, sir; insufficiency and sottishness are much commendable in a most discommendable action: now could I swallow thee, thou hadst wont to be so harsh and cold: I'll tell thee,--hell and the prodigies of angry Jove are not so fearful to a thinking mind as a man without affection. Why, friend, philosophy and nature are all one; love is the centre in which all lines close, the common bond of being. 122

_Mal._ O but a chaste reservèd privateness, A modest continence!

_Free._ I'll tell thee what, take this as firmest sense:-- Incontinence will force a continence; Heat wasteth heat, light defaceth light, Nothing is spoiled but by his proper might. This is something too weighty for thy floor.

_Mal._ But howsoe'er you shade it, the world's eye 130 Shines hot and open on't; Lying, malice, envy, are held but slidings, Errors of rage, when custom and the world Calls lust a crime spotted with blackest terrors.

_Free._ Where errors are held crimes, crimes are but errors. Along, sir, to her; she's an arrant strumpet; and a strumpet is a sarpego, venom'd gonorrhy to man--things actually possessed [_Offers to go out, and suddenly draws back_]--yet since thou art in love,--and again, as good make use of a statue--a body without a soul, a carcass three months dead--yet since thou art in love----

_Mal._ Death, man! my destiny I cannot choose. 142

_Free._ Nay, I hope so. Again, they sell but only flesh, No jot affection; so that even in the enjoying, _Absentem marmoreamque putes_.[31] Yet since you needs must love----

_Mal._ Unavoidable, though folly--worse than madness!

_Free._ It's true; but since you needs must love, you must know this,-- He that must love, a fool and he must kiss.

_Enter_ COCLEDEMOY.

Master Cocledemoy, _ut vales, Domine_! 150

_Coc._ _Ago tibi gratias_, my worshipful friend, how does your friend?

_Free._ Out, you rascal!

_Coc._ Hang toasts, you are an ass; much o' your worship's brain lies in your calves; bread o' god, boy, I was at supper last night with a new-wean'd bulchin; bread o' god, drunk, horribly drunk--horribly drunk! there was a wench, one Frank Frailty, a punk, an honest polecat, of a clean instep, sound leg, smooth thigh, and the nimble devil in her buttock. Ah, feast o' grace! when saw you, Tysefew, or Master Caqueteur, that prattling gallant of a good draught, common customs, fortunate impudence, and sound fart? 163

_Free._ Away, rogue!

_Coc._ Hang toasts, my fine boy, my companion as worshipful.

_Mal._ Yes, I hear you are taken up with scholars and churchmen.

_Enter_ HOLIFERNES _the barber_.

_Coc._ _Quanquam_[32] _te, Marce, fili_, my fine boy.

_Hol._ Does[33] your worship want a barber-surgeon? 170

_Free._ Farewell, knave; beware the Mulligrubs.

[_Exeunt_ FREEVILL _and_ MALHEREUX.

_Coc._ Let the Mulligrubs beware the knave. What, a barber-surgeon, my delicate boy?

_Hol._ Yes, sir, an apprentice to surgery.

_Coc._[34] 'Tis, my fine boy. To what bawdy-house doth your master belong? What's thy name?

_Hol._ Holifernes Reinscure.

_Coc._ Reinscure! Good Master Holifernes, I desire your further acquaintance; nay, pray ye be covered, my fine boy: kill thy itch, and heal thy scabs. Is thy master rotten? 181

_Hol._ My father, forsooth, is dead----

_Coc._ _And laid in his grave. Alas! what comfort shall Peggy then have!_[35]

_Hol._ None but me, sir; that's my mother's son, I assure you.

_Coc._ Mother's son? A good witty boy, would live to read an homily well: and to whom are you going now?

_Hol._ Marry, forsooth, to trim Master Mulligrub the vintner. 190

_Coc._ Do you know Master Mulligrub?

_Hol._ My godfather, sir.

_Coc._ Good boy: hold up thy chops. I pray thee do one thing for me: my name is Gudgeon.

_Hol._ Good Master Gudgeon.

_Coc._ Lend me thy basin, razor, and apron.

_Hol._ O Lord, sir![36]

_Coc._ Well spoken; good English. But what's thy furniture worth?

_Hol._ O Lord, sir, I know not. 200

_Coc._ Well spoken; a boy of a good wit: hold this pawn; where dost dwell?

_Hol._ At the sign of the Three Razors, sir.

_Coc._ A sign of good shaving, my catastrophonical fine boy. I have an odd jest to trim Master Mulligrub, for a wager; a jest, boy; a humour. I'll return thy things presently. Hold!

_Hol._ What mean you, good Master Gudgeon?

_Coc._ Nothing, faith, but a jest, boy: drink that; I'll recoil presently. 210

_Hol._ You'll not stay long.

_Coc._ As I am an honest man. The Three Razors?

_Hol._ Ay, sir.

[_Exit_ HOLIFERNES.

_Coc._ Good; and if I shave not Master Mulligrub, my wit has no edge, and I may[37] go cack in my pewter. Let me see,--a barber: my scurvy tongue will discover me: must dissemble, must disguise; for my beard, my false hair; for my tongue--Spanish, Dutch or Welsh--no, a Northern barber; very good. Widow Reinscure's man, well; newly entertain'd, right; so, hang toasts! all cards have white backs, and all knaves would seem to have white breasts: so proceed now, worshipful Cocledemoy.

[_Exit_ COCLEDEMOY, _in his barber's furniture_.

[28] "It is impossible to resist the idea that Marston was here thinking of Shakespeare: 'Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company. For you, in my respect, are all the world.'"--_Halliwell._

[29] Ed. 1. "dietie,"--a recognised form of the word _deity_. See the index to _Old Plays_, ed. Bullen, _sub_ DIETY.

[30] I suggest the following arrangement:--

"_Free._ _Be not extreme!_ Nothing in love's extreme, my love receives No mean. _Bea._ I give you faith, and prithee since, Poor soul! I am so easy to believe thee, Make it much more [a] pity to deceive me."

[31] Martial, xi. 60.

[32] The opening words of Cicero's _De Officiis_.

[33] "Does ... surgeon" given to Cocledemoy in the old eds.

[34] Not marked in old eds.

[35] On 26th September 1588 "A ballad intytuled _Peggies Complaint for the Death of her Willye_" was entered in the Stationers' Registers: I suppose that Cocledemoy is quoting from this ballad. In _The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London,_ 1590 (Hazlitt's _Dodsley_, vi. 393), the ballad of "Peggy and Willy" is mentioned.

[36] See note 2, vol. i. p. 32.

[37] Omitted in ed. 2.