English drama -- 17th century; English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600
_Cam._ That noblemen bowl booty?[22] faith, his cheek
Hath a most excellent bias; it would fain
Jump with my mistress.[23]
_Flam._ Will you be an ass,
Despite your Aristotle? or a cuckold,
Contrary to your Ephemerides,
Which shows you under what a smiling planet
You were first swaddled?
_Cam._ Pew-wew, sir, tell not me
Of planets nor of Ephemerides:
A man may be made a cuckold in the day-time,
When the stars' eyes are out.
_Flam._ Sir, God b' wi' you;
I do commit you to your pitiful pillow
Stuffed with horn-shavings.
_Cam._ Brother,--
_Flam._ God refuse me,
Might I advise you now, your only course
Were to lock up your wife.
_Cam._ 'Twere very good.
_Flam._ Bar her the sight of revels.
_Cam._ Excellent.
_Flam._ Let her not go to church, but like a hound
In lyam[24] at your heels.
_Cam._ 'Twere for her honour.
_Flam._ And so you should be certain in one fortnight
Despite her chastity or innocence,
To be cuckolded, which yet is in suspense:
This is my counsel, and I ask no fee for't.
_Cam._ Come, you know not where my night-cap wrings me.
_Flam._ Wear it o' the old fashion; let your large ears come through,
it will be more easy:--nay, I will be bitter:--bar your wife of her
entertainment: women are more willingly and more gloriously chaste when
they are least restrained of their liberty. It seems you would be a
fine capricious mathematically jealous coxcomb; take the height of your
own horns with a Jacob's staff[25] afore they are up. These politic
inclosures for paltry mutton make more rebellion in the flesh than all
the provocative electuaries doctors have uttered[26] since last jubilee.
_Cam._ This doth not physic me.
_Flam._ It seems you are jealous: I'll show you the error of it by a
familiar example. I have seen a pair of spectacles fashioned with such
perspective art, that, lay down but one twelve pence o' the board,
'twill appear as if there were twenty; now, should you wear a pair of
these spectacles, and see your wife tying her shoe, you would imagine
twenty hands were taking up of your wife's clothes, and this would put
you into a horrible causeless fury.
_Cam._ The fault there, sir, is not in the eyesight.
_Flam._ True; but they that have the yellow jaundice think all objects
they look on to be yellow. Jealousy is worser; her fits present to a
man, like so many bubbles in a bason of water, twenty several crabbed
faces; many times makes his own shadow his cuckold-maker. See, she
comes.
_Re-enter_ VITTORIA COROMBONA.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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