English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600
_Bal_. I begge, you whorson muscod! my petition
Is written on my bosome in red wounds.
_Cock_. I am no Barbar-Surgeon.
[_Exit_.
_Bal_. You yellow-hammer! why, shaver!
That such poore things as these, onely made up
Of Taylors shreds and Merchants Silken rags
And Pothecary drugs (to lend their breaths
Sophisticated smells, when their ranke guts
Stink worse than cowards in the heat of battaile)
--Such whalebond-doublet-rascals that owe more
To Landresses and Sempstress for laced Linnen
Then all their race, from their great grand-father
To this their reigne, in clothes were ever worth;
These excrements of Silke-wormes! oh that such flyes
Doe buzze about the beames of Majesty!
Like earwigs tickling a kings yeelding eare
With that Court-Organ (Flattery), when a souldier
Must not come neere the Court gates twenty score,
But stand for want of clothes (tho he win Towns)
Amongst the Almesbasket-men! his best reward
Being scorn'd to be a fellow to the blacke gard[188].
Why shud a Souldier, being the worlds right arme,
Be cut thus by the left, a Courtier?
Is the world all Ruffe and Feather and nothing else?
Shall I never see a Taylor give his coat with a difference from a
gentleman?
_Enter King, Alanzo, Carlo, Cockadillio_.
_King_. My _Baltazar_!
Let us make haste to meet thee: how art thou alter'd!
Doe you not know him?
_Alanz_. Yes, Sir; the brave Souldier
Employed against the Moores.
_King_. Halfe turn'd Moore!
I'le honour thee: reach him a chair--that Table:
And now _Aeneas_-like let thine own Trumpet
Sound forth thy battell with those slavish Moores.
_Bal_. My musicke is a Canon; a pitcht field my stage; Furies the
Actors, blood and vengeance the scaene; death the story; a sword
imbrued with blood the pen that writes; and the Poet a terrible
buskind Tragical fellow with a wreath about his head of burning
match instead of Bayes.
_King_. On to the Battaile!
_Bal_. 'Tis here, without bloud-shed: This our maine Battalia, this
the Van, this the Vaw[189], these the wings: here we fight, there they
flye; here they insconce, and here our sconces lay 17 Moours on the
cold earth.
_King_. This satisfies mine eye, but now mine eare
Must have his musicke too; describe the battaile.
_Bal_. The Battaile? Am I come from doing to talking? The hardest part
for a Souldier to play is to prate well; our Tongues are Fifes, Drums,
Petronels, Muskets, Culverin and Canon; these are our Roarers; the
Clockes which wee goe by are our hands: thus we reckon tenne, our
swords strike eleven, and when steele targets of proofe clatter one
against another, then 'tis noone; that's the height and the heat of
the day of battaile.
_King_. So.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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