English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600
_Ru_. Why how now my _Frenchified_ captain _Fowlweather_? by Cods ludd
thy Surname is never thought upon here, I perceive heeres nobody gives
thee any commendations.
_Fo_. Why this is the untravaild rudnes of our grose Englesh Ladies now;
would any _French_ Lady use a man thus thinke ye? be they any way so
uncivill, and fulsome? they say they weare fowle smockes, and course
smockes; I say they lie, and I will die int.
_Rud_. I, doe so, pray thee, thou shalt die in a very honorable cause,
thy countries generall quarrell right.
_Foul_. Their smockes, quoth you? a my word you shall take them up so
white, and so pure, so sweet, so Emphaticall, so mooving--
_Rud_. I marry Sir, I thinke they be continually moving.
_Foul_. But if their smockes were course or foule.
_Rud_. Nay I warrant thee thou carest not, so thou wert at them.
_Foul_. S'death they put not all their virtues in their smockes, or in
their mockes, or in their stewde cockes as our Ladies doe.
_Rud_. But in their stewd pox, thers all their gentilitie.
_Goos_. Nay, good Sir _Cutt_., doe not agravate him no more.
_Foul_. Then they are so kinde, so wise, so familiar, so noble, so sweet
in entertainment, that when you shall have cause to descourse or
sometimes to come neerer them; if your breath be ill, your teeth ill, or
any thing about you ill, why they will presently breake with ye, in
kinde sort, good termes, pretty experiments, and tell you plaine this;
thus it is with your breath, Sir, thus it is with your teeth, Sir, this
is your disease, and this is your medicine.
_Goos_. As I am true mortall Knight, it is most superlatively good, this.
_Foul_. Why this is courtly now, this is sweete, this plaine, this is
familiar, but by the Court of _France_, our peevish dames are so proud,
so precise, so coy, so disdainfull, and so subtill, as the _Pomonian_
Serpent, _mort dieu_ the Puncke of _Babylon_ was never so subtill.
_Rud_. Nay, doe not chafe so, Captaine.
_Foul_. Your _Frenchman_ would ever chafe, sir _Cutt_., being thus
movde.
_Rud_. What? and play with his beard so?
_Foul_. I and brystle, it doth expresse that passion of anger very full,
and emphaticall.
_Goos_: Nay good Knight if your _French_ wood brystle, let him alone, in
troth our Ladies are a little too coy, and subtill, Captaine, indeed.
_Foul_. Subtill, sir _Gyles Goosecappe_? I assure your soule, they are
as subtill with their suters, or loves, as the latine Dialect, where the
nominative Case, and the Verbe, the Substantive, and the Adjective, the
Verbe, and the [ad]Verbe, stand as far a sunder, as if they were perfect
strangers one to another, and you shall hardly find them out; but then
learne to Conster, and perse them, and you shall find them prepared and
acquainted, and agree together in Case, gender, and number.
_Goos_. I detest[6], Sir _Cutt_, I did not thinke he had bin halfe the
quintessence of a scholler he is.
_Foul_. Slydd there's not one of them truely emphaticall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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