A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 14
General
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 14
English drama
JOLLY. I advised him to settle no jointure but her old stills and
a box of instruments upon her. She hates a man with all his
limbs: a wooden leg, a crutch, and _fistula in ano_, wins her
heart. Her gentleman-usher broke his leg last dogdays merely to
have the honour to have her set it. A foul, rank rogue! and so
full of salt humours, that he posed a whole college of old women
with a gangrene, which spoiled the jest, and his ambling before
my lady, by applying a handsaw to his gart'ring-place; and now
the rogue wears booted bed-staves, and destroys all the young
ashes to make him legs.
SAD. I never saw such a nasty affection: she would ha' done well
in the incurable--a handmaid to have waited on the cripples.
JOLLY. She converses with naked men, and handles all their
members, though never so ill affected, and calls the fornication
charity. All her discourse to me was flat bawdry, which I could
not chide, but spoke as flat as she, till she rebuked me, calling
mine beastliness, and hers natural philosophy. By this day, if I
were to marry, I would as soon have chosen a drawn whore out of
mine own hospital, and cure the sins of her youth, as marry a
she-chirurgeon--one that, for her sins in her first husband's
days, cures all the crimes of her sex in my time. I would have
him call her Chiron, the Centaur's own daughter: a chirurgeon by
sire and dam, Apollo's own colt. She's red-haired too, like that
bonny beast with the golden mane and flaming tail.
SAD. You had a long discourse with her, Jolly: what was't about?
JOLLY. I was advising her to be divorced, and marry the man in
the almanac: 'twould be fine pastime for her to lick him whole.
SAD. By this day, I never saw such a mule as her husband is, to
bear with her madness. The house is a good house, and well
furnished.
JOLLY. Yes; but 'tis such a sight to see great French beds full
of found children, sons of bachelors, priests' heirs, Bridewell
orphans: there they lie by dozens in a bed, like sucking rabbits
in a dish, or a row of pins; and then they keep a whole dairy of
milch-whores to suckle them.
SAD. She is successful; and that spoils her, and makes her deaf
to counsel. I bad him poison two or three, to disgrace her; for
the vanity and pride of their remedies make those women more
diligent than their charity.
JOLLY. I asked him why he married her; and he confessed, if he
had been sound, he had never had her.
CON. He confessed she cured him of three claps before he married
her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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