A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09
General
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09
English drama
WILL CRICKET.
Faith, that's honestly spoken. Say after me: I, Peg Pudding, promise
thee, William Cricket, that I'll hold thee for my own sweet lily, while
I have a head in mine eye and a face on my nose, a mouth in my tongue
and all that a woman should have from the crown of my foot to the sole
of my head. I'll clasp thee and clip thee, coll thee and kiss thee,
till I be better than nought and worse than nothing. When thou art ready
to sleep, I'll be ready to snort; when thou art in health, I'll be in
gladness; when thou art sick, I'll be ready to die; when thou art mad,
I'll run out of my wits, and thereupon I strike thee good luck. Well
said, i' faith. O, I could find in my hose to pocket thee in my heart!
Come, my heart of gold, let's have a dance at the making up of this
match. Strike up, Tom Piper. [_They dance_.
Come, Peg, I'll take the pains to bring thee homeward; and at twilight
look for me again.
[_Exeunt_.
_Enter_ ROBIN GOODFELLOW _and_ PETER PLOD-ALL.
ROBIN GOODFELLOW.
Come hither, my honest friend. Master Churms told me you had a suit to
me; what's the matter?
PETER PLOD-ALL.
Pray ye, sir, is your name Robin Goodfellow?
ROBIN GOODFELLOW.
My name is Robin Goodfellow.
PETER PLOD-ALL.
Marry, sir, I hear you're a very cunning man, sir, and sir reverence of
your worship, sir, I am going a-wooing to one Mistress Lelia, a
gentlewoman here hard by. Pray ye, sir, tell me how I should behave
myself, to get her to my wife, for, sir, there is a scholar about her;
now, if you can tell me how I should wipe his nose of her, I would
bestow a fee of you.
ROBIN GOODFELLOW.
Let me see't, and thou shalt see what I'll say to thee. [_He gives him
money_.] Well, follow my counsel, and, I'll warrant thee, I'll give thee
a love-powder for thy wench, and a kind of _nux vomica_ in a potion
shall make her come off, i' faith.
PETER PLOD-ALL.
Shall I trouble you so far as to take some pains with me? I am loth to
have the dodge.
ROBIN GOODFELLOW.
Tush! fear not the dodge. I'll rather put on my flashing red nose and my
flaming face, and come wrapped in a calf's skin, and cry _Bo bo_. I'll
fray the scholar, I warrant thee. But first go to her, try what thou
canst do; perhaps she'll love thee without any further ado. But thou
must tell her thou hast a good stock, some hundred or two a year, and
that will set her hard, I warrant thee; for, by the mass, I was once in
good comfort to have cosened a wench, and wott'st thou what I told her?
I told her I had a hundred pound land a year in a place, where I have
not the breadth of my little finger. I promised her to enfeoff her in
forty pounds a year of it, and I think of my conscience, if I had had
but as good a face as thine, I should have made her have cursed the time
that ever she see it. And thus thou must do: crack and lie, and face,
and thou shalt triumph mightily.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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