English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600
_Eug_. Why, _Clarence_ is your judgement bent to show
A common lovers passion? let the World,
That lives without a hart, and is but showe,
Stand on her empty, and impoisoned forme,
I knowe thy kindenesse and have seene thy hart
Clest [Cleft?] in my uncles free and friendly lippes,
And I am only now to speake and act
The rite's due to thy love: oh, I cood weepe
A bitter showre of teares for thy sicke state,
I cood give passion all her blackest rites
And make a thousand vowes to thy deserts.
But these are common, knowledge is the bond,
The seale, and crowne of our united mindes;
And that is rare and constant, and for that,
To my late written hand I give thee this.
See, heaven, the soule thou gau'st is in this hand.
This is the Knot of our eternitie,
Which fortune, death, nor hell, shall ever loose.
_Enter Bullaker, Iack, Wil_.
_Ia_. What an unmannerly tricke is this of thy Countesse to give the
noble count her uncle the slippe thus?
_Wil_. Vnmannerlie, you villaynes? O that I were worthy to weare a
Dagger to any purpose for thy sake?
_Bul_. Why young Gentlemen, utter your anger with your fists.
_Wil_. That cannot be, man, for all fists are shut you know and utter
nothing; and besides I doe not thinke my quarrell just for my Ladies
protection in this cause, for I protest she does most abhominablie
miscarrie her selfe.
_Ia_. Protest, you sawsie Iacke, you! I shood doe my country, and
Court-ship good service to beare thy coalts teeth out of thy head, for
suffering such a reverend word to passe their guarde; why, the oldest
Courtier in the World, man, can doe noe more then protest.
_Bul_. Indeede, Page, if you were in _Fraunce_, you wood be broken upon
a wheele for it, there is not the best _Dukes_ sonne in _France_ dares
say I protest, till he be one and thirty yeere old at least, for the
inheritance of that word is not to be possest before.
_Wil_. Well, I am sorry for my presumtion then, but more sory for my
Ladies, marie most sorry for thee good Lord _Momford_, that will make us
most of all sory for our selves, if wee doe not fynde her out.
_Ia_. Why, alas, what shood wee doe? all the starres of our heaven see,
we seeke her as fast as we can if she be crept into a rush we will seeke
her out or burne her.
_Enter Momford_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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