A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09
General
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09
English drama
COM. SEN. I cannot stay so long; we have consulted about you, and find
your cause to stand upon these terms and conditions. The number of the
Senses in this world is answerable to the first[295] bodies in the great
world: now, since there be but fire in the universe, the four elements
and the pure substance of the heavens, therefore there can be but five
Senses in our Microcosm, correspondent to those; as the sight to the
heavens, hearing to the air, touching to the earth, smelling to the
fire, tasting to the water, by which five means only the understanding
is able to apprehend the knowledge of all corporeal substances:
wherefore we judge you to be no sense simply: only thus much we from
henceforth pronounce, that all women for your sake shall have six
senses--that is, seeing hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and the
last and feminine sense, the sense of speaking.
GUS. I beseech your lordship and your assistants (the only cause of our
friendship) to grace my table with your most welcome presence this night
at supper.
COM. SEN. I am sorry I cannot stay with you: you know we may by no means
omit our daily attendance at the court, therefore I pray you pardon us.
GUS. I hope I shall not have the denial at your hands, my masters, and
you, my Lady Lingua. Come, let us drown all our anger in a bowl of
hippocras[296].
[_Exeunt_ SENSUS _omnes exteriores_.
COM. SEN. Come, Master Register, shall we walk?
MEM. I pray you, stay a little. Let me see! ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
PHA. How now, Memory, so merry? what, do you trouble yourself with two
palsies at once, shaking and laughing?
MEM. 'Tis a strange thing that men will so confidently oppose themselves
against Plato's great year.
PHA. Why not?
MEM. 'Tis as true an opinion as need be; for I remember it very readily
now, that this time 49,000 years ago all we were in this very place, and
your lordship judged the very same controversy, after the very same
manner, in all respects and circumstances alike.
COM. SEN. 'Tis wondrous strange.
ANA. By the same token you held your staff in your right hand, just as
you do now; and Master Phantastes stood wondering at you, gaping as wide
as you see him.
PHA. Ay, but I did not give you a box on the ear, sirrah, 49,000 years
ago, did I? [_Snap_.]
ANA. I do not remember that, sir.
PHA. This time Plato's twelvemonth to come, look you save your cheeks
better.
COM. SEN. But what entertainment had we at court for our long staying?
MEM. Let's go, I'll tell you as we walk.
PHA. If I do not seem pranker[297] now than I did in those days, I'll be
hanged.
[_Exeunt omnes interiores Sensus: manet_ LINGUA.
SCAENA OCTAVA.
LINGUA, MENDACIO.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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