Princes -- Lebanon -- Tyre -- Drama; Tragicomedy; Tyre (Lebanon) -- Drama
BOULT.
Master, I have gone through for this piece, you see: if you like her,
so; if not, I have lost my earnest.
BAWD.
Boult, has she any qualities?
BOULT.
She has a good face, speaks well and has excellent good clothes:
there’s no farther necessity of qualities can make her be refused.
BAWD.
What is her price, Boult?
BOULT.
I cannot be baited one doit of a thousand pieces.
PANDAR.
Well, follow me, my masters, you shall have your money presently. Wife,
take her in; instruct her what she has to do, that she may not be raw
in her entertainment.
[_Exeunt Pandar and Pirates._]
BAWD.
Boult, take you the marks of her, the colour of her hair, complexion,
height, her age, with warrant of her virginity; and cry ‘He that will
give most shall have her first.’ Such a maidenhead were no cheap thing,
if men were as they have been. Get this done as I command you.
BOULT.
Performance shall follow.
[_Exit._]
MARINA.
Alack that Leonine was so slack, so slow!
He should have struck, not spoke; or that these pirates,
Not enough barbarous, had not o’erboard thrown me
For to seek my mother!
BAWD.
Why lament you, pretty one?
MARINA.
That I am pretty.
BAWD.
Come, the gods have done their part in you.
MARINA.
I accuse them not.
BAWD.
You are light into my hands, where you are like to live.
MARINA.
The more my fault
To scape his hands where I was like to die.
BAWD.
Ay, and you shall live in pleasure.
MARINA.
No.
BAWD.
Yes, indeed shall you, and taste gentlemen of all fashions: you shall
fare well; you shall have the difference of all complexions. What! do
you stop your ears?
MARINA.
Are you a woman?
BAWD.
What would you have me be, an I be not a woman?
MARINA.
An honest woman, or not a woman.
BAWD.
Marry, whip the gosling: I think I shall have something to do with you.
Come, you’re a young foolish sapling, and must be bowed as I would have
you.
MARINA.
The gods defend me!
BAWD.
If it please the gods to defend you by men, then men must comfort you,
men must feed you, men stir you up. Boult’s returned.
Re-enter Boult.
Now, sir, hast thou cried her through the market?
BOULT.
I have cried her almost to the number of her hairs; I have drawn her
picture with my voice.
BAWD.
And I prithee tell me, how dost thou find the inclination of the
people, especially of the younger sort?
BOULT.
Faith, they listened to me as they would have hearkened to their
father’s testament. There was a Spaniard’s mouth so watered, that he
went to bed to her very description.
BAWD.
We shall have him here tomorrow with his best ruff on.
BOULT.
Tonight, tonight. But, mistress, do you know the French knight that
cowers i’ the hams?
BAWD.
Who, Monsieur Veroles?
BOULT.
Ay, he: he offered to cut a caper at the proclamation; but he made a
groan at it, and swore he would see her tomorrow.
BAWD.
Well, well, as for him, he brought his disease hither: here he does but
repair it. I know he will come in our shadow, to scatter his crowns in
the sun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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