Read Ebook: A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume 09 by Dodsley Robert Compiler Hazlitt William Carew Editor

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Ebook has 1195 lines and 72616 words, and 24 pages

BOY, STAGEKEEPER, MOMUS, DEFENSOR.

STAGEKEEPER. A pox on't, this book hath it not in it: you would be whipped, thou rascal; thou must be sitting up all night at cards, when thou should be conning thy part.

BOY. It's all along on you; I could not get my part a night or two before, that I might sleep on it.

hotcockles or blindman-buff.

DEFENSOR. Some humours you shall see aimed at, if not well-resembled.

DEFENSOR. If the catastrophe please you not, impute it to the unpleasing fortunes of discontented scholars.

MOMUS. For catastrophe, there's never a tale in Sir John Mandeville or Bevis of Southampton, but hath a better turning.

STAGEKEEPER. What, you jeering ass! begone, with a pox!

MOMUS. You may do better to busy yourself in providing beer; for the show will be pitiful dry, pitiful dry. the wond'ring bench The lisping gallant might enjoy his wench; Or make some sire acknowledge his lost son: Found, when the weary act is almost done. Nor unto this, nor unto that our scene is bent; We only show a scholar's discontent. In scholars' fortunes, twice forlorn and dead, Twice hath our weary pen erst laboured; Making them pilgrims in Parnassus' Hill, Then penning their return with ruder quill. Now we present unto each pitying eye The scholars' progress in their misery: Refined wits, your patience is our bliss; Too weak our scene, too great your judgment is: To you we seek to show a scholar's state, His scorned fortunes, his unpity'd fate; To you: for if you did not scholars bless, Their case, poor case, were too-too pitiless. You shade the muses under fostering, And made them leave to sigh, and learn to sing.

THE NAMES OF THE ACTORS.

THE RETURN FROM PARNASSUS.

ACTUS I, SCAENA 1.

ACTUS I, SCAENA 2.

JUDICIO. What, Ingenioso, carrying a vinegar bottle about thee, like a great schoolboy giving the world a bloody nose?

INGENIOSO. Faith, Judicio, if I carry the vinegar bottle, it's great reason I should confer it upon the baldpated world: and again, if my kitchen want the utensils of viands, it's great reason other men should have the sauce of vinegar; and for the bloody nose, Judicio, I may chance, indeed, give the world a bloody nose, but it shall hardly give me a crack'd crown, though it gives other poets French crowns.

JUDICIO. I would wish thee, Ingenioso, to sheathe thy pen, for thou canst not be successful in the fray, considering thy enemies have the advantage of the ground.

INGENIOSO. Or rather, Judicio, they have the grounds with advantage, and the French crowns with a pox; and I would they had them with a plague too: but hang them, swads, the basest corner in my thoughts is too gallant a room to lodge them in. But say, Judicio, what news in your press? did you keep any late corrections upon any tardy pamphlets?

INGENIOSO. Marry, so I will, I warrant thee; if poverty press not too much, I'll correct no press but the press of the people.

JUDICIO. Would it not grieve any good spirits to sit a whole month knitting out a lousy, beggarly pamphlet, and, like a needy physician, to stand whole years tossing and tumbling the filth that falleth from so many draughty inventions as daily swarm in our printing-house.

INGENIOSO. Come, I think we shall have you put finger in the eye, and cry, O friends, no friends! Say, man, what new paper hobby-horses, what rattle-babies, are come out in your late May morris-dance?

JUDICIO. Fly my rhymes as thick as flies in the sun; I think there be never an alehouse in England, not any so base a maypole on a country green, but sets forth some poet's petronels or demi-lances to the paper wars in Paul's Churchyard.

INGENIOSO. And well too may the issue of a strong hop learn to hop all over England, when as better wits sit, like lame cobblers, in their studies. Such barmy heads will always be working, when as sad vinegar wits sit souring at the bottom of a barrel; plain meteors, bred of the exhalation of tobacco and the vapours of a moist pot, that soar up into the open air, when as sounder wit keeps below.

INGENIOSO. What's the name of it, I pray thee, Judicio?

JUDICIO. Look, it's here; "Belvidere."

INGENIOSO. What, a bell-wether in Paul's Churchyard! so called because it keeps a bleating, or because it hath the tinkling bell of so many poets about the neck of it? What is the rest of the title?

JUDICIO. "The Garden of the Muses."

INGENIOSO. What have we here, the poet garish, gaily bedecked, like fore-horses of the parish? What follows?

INGENIOSO. So I will, if thou wilt help me to censure them.

Edmund Spenser. Thomas Watson. Henry Constable. Michael Drayton. Thomas Lodge. John Davis. Samuel Daniel. John Marston. Kit Marlowe.

Good men and true; stand together; hear your censure. What's thy judgment of Spenser?

JUDICIO. A sweeter swan than ever sung in Po, A shriller nightingale than ever bless'd The prouder groves of self-admiring Rome. Blithe was each valley, and each shepherd proud, While he did chant his rural minstrelsy: Attentive was full many a dainty ear, Nay, hearers hung upon his melting tongue, While sweetly of his Fairy Queen he sung; While to the waters' fall he tun'd for fame, And in each bark engrav'd Eliza's name: And yet for all this unregarding soil Unlac'd the line of his desired life, Denying maintenance for his dear relief; Careless care to prevent his exequy, Scarce deigning to shut up his dying eye.

INGENIOSO. Pity it is that gentler wits should breed, Where thickskin chuffs laugh at a scholar's need. But softly may our honour's ashes rest, That lie by merry Chaucer's noble chest. But, I pray thee, proceed briefly in thy censure, that I may be proud of myself; as in the first, so in the last, my censure may jump with thine.--Henry Constable, Samuel Daniel, Thomas Lodge, Thomas Watson.

JUDICIO. Sweet Constable doth take the wond'ring ear, And lays it up in willing prisonment: Sweet honey-dropping Daniel doth wage War with the proudest big Italian, That melts his heart in sugar'd sonneting; Only let him more sparingly make use Of others' wit, and use his own the more, That well may scorn base imitation. For Lodge and Watson, men of some desert, Yet subject to a critic's marginal; Lodge for his oar in ev'ry paper boat, He, that turns over Galen ev'ry day, To sit and simper Euphues' Legacy.

INGENIOSO. Michael Drayton?

JUDICIO. Drayton's sweet muse is like a sanguine dye, Able to ravish the rash gazer's eye.

INGENIOSO. However, he wants one true note of a poet of our times, and that is this: he cannot swagger it well in a tavern, nor domineer in a hothouse. John Davis?

JUDICIO. Acute John Davis, I affect thy rhymes, That jerk in hidden charms these looser times; Thy plainer verse, thy unaffected vein, Is graced with a fair and sweeping train.

INGENIOSO. Lock and Hudson?

JUDICIO. Lock and Hudson, sleep, you quiet shavers, among the shavings of the press, and let your books lie in some old nooks amongst old boots and shoes; so you may avoid my censure.

INGENIOSO. Why, then, clap a lock on their feet, and turn them to commons. John Marston?

JUDICIO. What, Monsieur Kinsayder, lifting up your leg, and pissing against the world? put up, man, put up, for shame! Methinks he is a ruffian in his style, Withouten bands or garters' ornament: He quaffs a cup of Frenchman's Helicon; Then roister doister in his oily terms, Cuts, thrusts, and foins, at whomsoever he meets, And strews about Ram-Alley meditations. Tut, what cares he for modest close-couch'd terms, Cleanly to gird our looser libertines? Give him plain naked words, stripp'd from their shirts, That might beseem plain-dealing Aretine. Ay, there is one, that backs a paper steed, And manageth a penknife gallantly, Strikes his poinardo at a button's breadth, Brings the great battering-ram of terms to towns; And, at first volley of his cannon-shot, Batters the walls of the old fusty world.

INGENIOSO. Christopher Marlowe?

JUDICIO. Marlowe was happy in his buskin'd muse; Alas! unhappy in his life and end: Pity it is that wit so ill should dwell Wit lent from heav'n, but vices sent from hell.

INGENIOSO. Our theatre hath lost, Pluto hath got, A tragic penman for a dreary plot. Benjamin Jonson?

JUDICIO. The wittiest fellow of a bricklayer in England.

INGENIOSO. A mere empiric, one that gets what he hath by observation, and makes only nature privy to what he indites; so slow an inventor, that he were better betake himself to his old trade of bricklaying; a bold whoreson, as confident now in making of a book, as he was in times past in laying of a brick. William Shakespeare?

JUDICIO. Who loves Adonis' love or Lucrece' rape, His sweeter verse contains heart-robbing life, Could but a graver subject him content, Without love's foolish, lazy languishment.

INGENIOSO. Churchyard? Hath not Shore's wife, although a light-skirts she, Giv'n him a chaste, long-lasting memory?

JUDICIO. No; all light pamphlets once I finden shall, A Churchyard and a grave to bury all! Thomas Nash.

INGENIOSO. Ay, here is a fellow, Judicio, that carried the deadly stock in his pen, whose muse was armed with a gag-tooth, and his pen possessed with Hercules' furies.

JUDICIO. Let all his faults sleep with his mournful chest, And then for ever with his ashes rest: His style was witty, though he had some gall, Something he might have mended; so may all: Yet this I say that, for a mother-wit, Few men have ever seen the like of it.

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