SCENE III.

_A Tavern._

_Enter_ SLIP _and_ NOOSE; TRIP, _with the truncheon of a staff torch, and_ DOIT _with a pantofle_;[493] BIDET, HOLOFERNES _following. The cornets sound._

_Bid._ Proclaim our titles!

_Do._ _Bosphoros Cormelydon Honorificacuminos Bidet!_

_Hol._ I think your majesty's a Welshman; you have a horrible long name.

_Bid._ Death or silence! Proceed!

_Do._ _Honorificacuminos Bidet, Emperor of Cracks,_[494] _Prince of Pages, Marquess of Mumchance,_[495] and sole Regent over a Bale_[496] _of False Dice_: to all his under-ministers health, crowns, sack, tobacco, and stockings uncrack'd above the shoe. 10

_Bid._ Ourself will give them their charge. Now let me stroke my beard, and I had it, and speak wisely, if I knew how. Most unconscionable, honest little, or little honest, good subjects, inform our person of your several qualities, and of the prejudice that is foisted upon you, that ourself may preview, prevent, and preoccupy the pestilent[497] dangers incident to all your cases.

_Do._ Here is a petition exhibited of the particular grievances of each sort of pages. 19

_Bid._ We will vouchsafe, in this our public session, to peruse them. Pleaseth your excellent wagship to be informed that the division of pages is tripartite (tripartite), or threefold: of pages, some be court-pages, others ordinary gallant pages, and the third apple-squires,[498] basket-bearers, or pages of the placket: with the last we will proceed first. Stand forth, page of the placket,[499] what is your mistress?

_Slip._ A kind of puritan.[500]

_Bid._ How live you? 29

_Slip._ Miserably, complaining to your crack-ship: though we have light mistresses, we are made the children and servants of darkness. What profane use we are put to, all these gallants more feelingly know than we can lively express; it is to be commiserated, and by your royal insight only to be prevented, that a male monkey and the diminutive of a man should be _synonima_, and no sense. Though we are the dross of your subjects, yet being a kind of page, let us find your celsitude kind and respective of our time-fortunes and birth's abuse: and so, in the name of our whole tribe of empty basket-bearers, I kiss your little hands. 41

_Bid._ Your case is dangerous, and almost desperate. Stand forth, ordinary gallant's page: what is the nature of your master?

_No._ He eats well and right slovenly; and when the dice favour him, goes in good clothes, and scours his pink colour silk stockings; when he hath any money, he bears his crowns; when he hath none, I carry his purse. He cheats well, swears better, but swaggers in a wanton's chamber admirably; he loves his boy and the rump of a cramm'd capon; and this summer hath a passing thrifty humour to bottle ale; as contemptuous as Lucifer, as arrogant as ignorance can make him, as libidinous as Priapus. He keeps me as his adamant, to draw metal after to his lodging: I curl his perriwig, paint his cheeks, perfume his breath; I am his froterer[501] or rubber in a hot-house, the prop of his lies, the bearer of his false dice; and yet for all this, like the Persian louse, that eats biting, and biting eats, so I say sighing,[502] and sighing say, my end is to paste up a _si quis_.[503] My master's fortunes are forced to cashier me, and so six to one I fall to be a pippin-squire. _Hic finis Priami!_--this is the end of pickpockets. 63

_Bid._ Stand forth, court-page: thou lookest pale and wan.

_Trip._ Most ridiculous Emperor.

_Bid._ O, say no more. I know thy miseries;--what betwixt thy lady, her gentlewoman, and thy master's late gaming, thou mayest look pale. I know thy miseries, and I condole thy calamities. Thou art born well, bred ill, but diest worst of all: thy blood most commonly gentle, thy youth ordinarily idle, and thy age too often miserable. When thy first suit is fresh, thy cheeks clear of court-soils, and thy lord fall'n out with his lady, so long may be he'll chuck thee under the chin, call thee good pretty ape, and give thee a scrap from his own trencher; but after, he never beholds thee but when thou squirest him with a torch to a wanton's sheets, or lights his tobacco-pipe; never useth thee but as his pander; never regardeth thee but as an idle burr that stick'st upon the nap of his fortune; and so, naked thou camest into the world, and naked thou must return.--Whom serve you? 81

_Hol._ A fool!

_Bid._ Thou art my happiest subject: the service of a fool is the only blessed'st slavery that ever put on a chain and a blue coat; they know not what nor for what they give, but so they give 'tis good, so it be good they give; fortunes are ordain'd for fools, as fools are for fortune, to play withal, not to use: hath he taken an oath of allegiance--is he of our brotherhood yet?

_Hol._ Not yet, right _venerable Honorificac-cac-cac-cacu-minos Bidet_! but as little an infant as I am I will, and with the grace of wit I will deserve it. 92

_Bid._ You must perform a valorous, virtuous, and religious exploit first, in desert of your order.

_Hol._ What is't?

_Bid._ Cozen thy master; he is a fool, and was created for men of wit, such as thyself, to make use of.

_Hol._ Such as myself? Nay, faith, for wit, I think, for my age, or so--But on, sir. 99

_Bid._ That thou mayst the easier purge him of superfluous blood, I will describe thy master's constitution. He loves and is beloved of himself, and one more, his dog. There is a company of unbraced, untruss'd rutters[504] in the town, that crinkle in the hams, swearing their flesh is their only living, and when they have any crowns, cry "God a mercy, Mol!" and shrugging, "let the cock-holds[505] pay for't;" intimating that their maintenance flows from the wantonness of merchants' wives, when in troth the plain troth is, the plain and the stand, or the plain stand and deliver, delivers them all their living. These comrades have persuaded thy master that there's no way to redeem his peach-colour satin suit from pawn but by the love of a citizen's wife; he believes it: they flout him, he feeds them; and now 'tis our honest and religious meditation that he feed us, Holofernes Puppi. 115

_Hol._ Pippo, and shall please you.

_Bid._ Pippo, 'tis our will and pleasure thou suit thyself like a merchant's wife; leave the managing of the sequence unto our prudence.

_Hol._ Or unto our Prudence; truly she is a very witty wench, and hath a stammel[506] petticoat with three guards[507] for the nonce; but for your merchant's wife, alas! I am too little, speak too small, go too gingerly: by my troth I fear I shall look too fair. 124

_Bid._ Our majesty dismounteth, and we put off our greatness; and now, my little knaves, I am plain Crack. As I am Bosphoros Carmelydon Honorificacuminos Bidet, I am imperious, honour sparkles in mine eyes; but as I am Crack, I will convey,[508] crossbite,[509] and cheat upon Simplicius. I will feed, satiate, and fill your paunches; replenish, stuff, or furnish your purses: we will laugh when others weep--sing when others sigh--feed when others starve--and be drunk when others are sober. This is my charge at the loose.[510] As you love our brotherhood, avoid true speech, square dice, small liquor, and above all, those two ungentlemanlike protestations of indeed and verily. And so, 137 Gentle Apollo, touch thy nimble string; Our scene is done; yet 'fore we cease, we sing.

[_The Song, and exeunt._

[493] Slipper.--It was part of a page's duty to carry the pantofles of his master or mistress. On entering service he was said to be "sworn to the pantofle."

[494] _Crack_ was a common term for a pert boy.

[495] A game at cards.

[496] Pair of dice.--It would seem that to cog a die was a favourite form of roguery among pages. Nashe, in an address to "the dapper messieurs pages of the court," prefixed to _The Unfortunate Traveller_ (1594), says:--"Thirdly, it shall be lawful for any whatsoever to play with false dice in a corner."

[497] So ed. 2.--ed. 1. "pustulent."

[498] Attendant on a lady of pleasure.

[499] Petticoat.

[500] Cant term for a whore.

[501] Cf. _Every Man out of His Humour_, iv. 4:--"Let a man sweat once a week in a hot-house, and be well rubb'd and _froted_ with a good plump juicy wench and sweet linen, he shall ne'er ha' the pox."

[502] Old eds. "sithing and sithing."

[503] _i.e._, an advertisement for a situation: see Nares' Glossary. The middle aisle of Paul's was the favourite place for the display of such advertisements.

[504] Properly a German trooper (_reiter_ or _reuter_); but the term was also applied to a roistering gallant.

[505] So ed. 1.--Ed. 2. "cuckolds."

[506] Red.

[507] Facings, trimmings.

[508] Pilfer.

[509] Cozen.

[510] "At the loose"--at my dismissal of you. _Loose_ was a term in archery for the discharging of an arrow.