English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 -- History and criticism
_Cor._ This rosemary is wither’d; pray, get fresh;
I would have these herbs grow up in his grave
When I am dead and rotten. Reach the bays;
I’ll tie a garland here about his head;
’T will keep my boy from lightning. This sheet
I have kept this twenty year, and every day
Hallow’d it with my prayers. I did not think
He should have wore it.
_Zanche._ Look you who are yonder.
_Cor._ O, reach me the flowers.
_Zanche._ Her ladyship’s foolish.
_Lady._ Alas, her grief
Hath turn’d her child again!
_Cor._ You ’re very welcome:
There’s rosemary for you; and rue for you;
[_To_ Flamineo.
Heart’s-ease for you; I pray make much of it:
I have left more for myself.
_Fran. de’ Med._ Lady, who’s this?
_Cor._ You are, I take it, the grave-maker.
_Flam._ So.
_Zanche._ ’T is Flamineo.
_Cor._ Will you make me such a fool? Here’s a white hand:
Can blood so soon be wash’d out? Let me see:
When screech-owls croak upon the chimney-tops,
And the strange cricket i’ the oven sings and hops,
When yellow spots do on your hands appear,
Be certain then you of a corse shall hear.
Out upon ’t, how ’t is speckled! h’as handled a toad, sure.
Cowslip-water is good for the memory:
Pray, buy me three ounces of ’t.
_Flam._ I would I were from hence.
_Cor._ Do you hear, sir?
I’ll give you a saying which my grandmother
Was wont, when she heard the bell toll, to sing o’er
Unto her lute.
_Flam._ Do, an you will, do.
_Cor._ ‘Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren,
[Cornelia _doth this in several forms of distraction_.
Since o’er shady groves they hover,
And with leaves and flowers do cover
The friendless bodies of unburied men.
Call unto his funeral dole
The ant, the field-mouse, and the mole,
To rear him hillocks that shall keep him warm,
And (when gay tombs are robb’d) sustain no harm,
But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men,
For with his nails he’ll dig them up again.’
They would not bury him ’cause he died in a quarrel;
But I have an answer for them:
‘Let holy church receive him duly,
Since he paid the church-tithes truly.’
His wealth is summ’d, and this is all his store;
This poor men get, and great men get no more.
Now the wares are gone, we may shut up shop.
Bless you all, good people!
[_Exeunt_ Cornelia, Zanche, _and_ Ladies.
_Flam._ I have a strange thing in me, to the which
I cannot give a name, without it be
Compassion. I pray, leave me.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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