English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600; Greene, Robert, 1558-1592
_Alvi._ Villains, why skink you unto this fellow?
He makes me blithe and merry in my thoughts:
Heard you not that the king hath given command,
That all be drunk this day within his court
In quaffing to the health of Alvida?
[_Drink given to_ ADAM.
_Enter_ JONAS.
_Jonas._ Repent, repent, ye men of Nineveh, repent!
The Lord hath spoke, and I do cry it out,
There are as yet but forty days remaining,
And then shall Nineveh be overthrown:
Repent, ye men of Nineveh, repent!
_Rasni._ What fellow's this, that thus disturbs our feast
With outcries and alarums to repent?
_Adam._ O sir, 'tis one Goodman Jonas, that is come from Jericho; and
surely I think he hath seen some spirit by the way, and is fallen out
of his wits, for he never leaves crying night nor day. My master heard
him, and he shut up his shop, gave me my indenture, and he and his wife
do nothing but fast and pray.
_Jonas._ Repent, ye men of Nineveh, repent!
_Rasni._ Come hither, fellow: what art, and from whence comest thou?
_Jonas._ Rasni, I am a prophet of the Lord,
Sent hither by the mighty God of hosts,
To cry destruction to the Ninevites.
O Nineveh, thou harlot of the world,
I raise thy neighbours round about thy bounds,
To come and see thy filthiness and sin!
Thus saith the Lord, the mighty God of hosts:
Your king loves chambering and wantonness;
Whoredom and murder do distain his court;
He favoureth covetous and drunken men;
Behold, therefóre, all like a strumpet foul,
Thou shalt be judg'd and punish'd for thy crime;
The foe shall pierce the gates with iron ramps,
The fire shall quite consume thee from above,
The houses shall be burnt, the infants slain,
And women shall behold their husbands die.
Thine eldest sister is Samaria,[120]
And Sodom on thy right hand seated is.
Repent, ye men of Nineveh, repent!
The Lord hath spoke, and I do cry it out,
There are as yet but forty days remaining,
And then shall Nineveh be overthrown.
[_Offers to depart._
_Rasni._ Stay, prophet, stay.
_Jonas._ Disturb not him that sent me;
Let me perform the message of the Lord. [_Exit._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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