A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09
General
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09
English drama
AUD. This is the rarest and most exquisite:
Most spherical, divine, angelical;
But since your duller ears cannot perceive it,
May it please your lordship to withdraw yourself
Unto this neighbouring grove: there shall you see
How the sweet treble of the chirping birds,
And the soft stirring of the moved leaves,
Running delightful descant to the sound
Of the base murmuring of the bubbling brook[274],
Becomes a concert of good instruments;
While twenty babbling echoes round about,
Out of the stony concave of their mouths,
Restore the vanished music of each close,
And fill your ears full with redoubled pleasure.
COM. SEN. I will walk with you very willingly, for I grow weary of
sitting. Come, Master Register and Master Phantastes.
[_Exeunt_ OMNES.
ACTUS QUARTUS, SCAENA PRIMA.
MENDACIO, ANAMNESTES, HEURESIS.
MEN. Prythee, Nam, be persuaded: is't not better to go to a feast, than
stay here for a fray?
ANA. A feast? dost think Auditus will make the judges a feast?
MEN. Faith, ay. Why should he carry them to his house else?
ANA. Why, sirrah, to hear a set or two of songs: 'slid, his banquets are
nothing but fish, all sol, sol, sol.[275] I'll teach thee wit, boy;
never go thee to a musician's house for junkets, unless thy stomach lies
in thine ears; for there is nothing but commending this song's delicate
air, that ode's dainty air, this sonnet's sweet air, that madrigal's
melting air, this dirge's mournful air: this church air, that chamber
air: French air, English air, Italian air. Why, lad, they be pure
camelions; they feed only upon air.
MEN. Camelions? I'll be sworn some of your fiddlers be rather camels,
for by their good wills they will never leave eating.
ANA. True, and good reason, for they do nothing all the day but stretch
and grate their small guts. But, O, yonder's the ape Heuresis; let me
go, I prythee.
MEN. Nay, good-now, stay a little, let's see his humour.
HEU. I see no reason to the contrary, for we see the quintessence of
wine will convert water into wine; why therefore should not the elixir
of gold turn lead into pure gold? [_Soliloquises_.]
MEN. Ha, ha, ha, ha! He is turned chemic, sirrah; it seems so by his
talk.
HEU. But how shall I devise to blow the fire of beechcoals with a
continual and equal blast? ha? I will have my bellows driven with a
wheel, which wheel shall be a self-mover.
ANA. Here's old turning[276]; these chemics, seeking to turn lead into
gold, turn away all their own silver.
HEU. And my wheel shall be geometrically proportioned into seven or nine
concave encircled arms, wherein I will put equal poises: ay, ay; [Greek:
heureka, heureka] I have it, I have it, I have it.
MEN. Heuresis!
HEU. But what's best to contain the quicksilver, ha?
ANA. Do you remember your promise, Heuresis?
HEU. It must not be iron; for quicksilver is the tyrant of metals, and
will soon fret it.
ANA. Heuresis? Heuresis?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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