A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09
General
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 09
English drama
SIR RADERIC.
It's a foul oversight, that a man of worship cannot keep a wench in his
house, but there must be muttering and surmising. It was the wisest
saying that my father ever uttered, that a wife was the name of
necessity, not of pleasure; for what do men marry for, but to stock
their ground, and to have one to look to the linen, sit at the upper end
of the table, and carve up a capon; one that can wear a hood like a
hawk, and cover her foul face with a fan. But there's no pleasure
always to be tied to a piece of mutton; sometimes a mess of stewed broth
will do well, and an unlaced rabbit is best of all. Well, for mine own
part, I have no great cause to complain, for I am well-provided of three
bouncing wenches, that are mine own fee-simple; one of them I am
presently to visit, if I can rid myself cleanly of this company. Let me
see how the day goes [_he pulls his watch out_]. Precious coals! the
time is at hand; I must meditate on an excuse to be gone.
RECORDER.
The which, I say, is grounded on the statute I spake of before, enacted
in the reign of Henry VI.
AMORETTO.
It is a plain case, whereon I mooted[111] in our Temple, and that was
this: put case, there be three brethren, John a Nokes, John a Nash, and
John a Stile. John a Nokes the elder, John a Nash the younger, and John
a Stile the youngest of all. John a Nash the younger dieth without issue
of his body lawfully begotten. Whether shall his lands ascend to John a
Nokes the elder, or descend to John a Stile the youngest of all? The
answer is, the lands do collaterally descend, not ascend.
RECORDER.
Very true; and for a proof hereof I will show you a place in Littleton
which is very pregnant in this point.
ACTUS IV., SCAENA 2.
_Enter_ INGENIOSO, FUROR, PHANTASMA.
INGENIOSO.
I'll pawn my wits, that is, my revenues, my land, my money, and
whatsoever I have, for I have nothing but my wit, that they are at hand.
Why, any sensible snout may wind Master Amoretto and his pomander,
Master Recorder and his two neat's feet that wear no socks, Sir Raderic
by his rammish complexion; _Olet Gorgonius hircum, sicut Lupus in
fabula_. Furor, fire the touch-box of your wit: Phantasma, let your
invention play tricks like an ape: begin thou, Furor, and open like a
flap-mouthed hound: follow thou, Phantasma, like a lady's puppy: and as
for me, let me alone; I'll come after, like a water-dog, that will shake
them off when I have no use of them. My masters, the watchword is given.
Furor, discharge.
FUROR to SIR RADERIC.
The great projector of the thunderbolts,
He that is wont to piss whole clouds of rain
Into the earth, vast gaping urinal,
Which that one-ey'd subsizer of the sky,
Dan Phoebus, empties by calidity;
He and his townsmen planets brings to thee
Most fatty lumps of earth's fecundity.[112]
SIR RADERIC.
Why, will this fellow's English break the Queen's peace?
I will not seem to regard him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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