Crowding together to be counted wise,
I laugh because sweet Agripyne 's not there.
But weep because she is not anywhere;

And weep because (whether she be or not)

My love was ever and is still forgot: forgot, forgot, forgot. Gall. Draw back this stream: why should my Orleans

mourn?

Orl. Look yonder, Galloway, dost thou see that sun?
Nay, good friend, stare upon it, mark it well :
Ere he be two hours elder, all that glory

Is banish'd heaven, and then, for grief, this sky
(That's now so jocund) will mourn all in black.
And shall not Orleans mourn? alack, alack! .
O what a savage tyranny it were

To enforce Care laugh, and Woe not shed a tear!
Dead is my Love; I am buried in her scorn:
That is my sunset; and shall I not mourn?
Yes, by my troth I will.

Gall. Dear friend, forbear;

Beauty (like sorrow) dwelleth everywhere.
Rase out this strong idea of her face:
As fair as her's shineth in any place.
Orl. Thou art a traitor to that white and red,

Which sitting on her cheeks (being Cupid's throne)
Is my heart's soveraine: O, when she is dead,
This wonder (beauty) shall be found in none.
Now Agripyne's not mine, I vow to be
In love with nothing but deformity.

O fair Deformity, I muse all eyes

Are not enamour'd of thee: thou didst never
Murder men's hearts, or let them pine like wax
Melting against the sun of thy destiny;
Thou art a faithful nurse to chastity;
Thy beauty is not like to Agripyne's,
For cares, and age, and sickness her's deface,
But thine 's eternal: O Deformity,
Thy fairness is not like to Agripyne's,
For (dead) her beauty will no beauty have,
But thy face looks most lovely in the grave.

[The humour of a frantic lover is here done to the life. Orleans is as passionate an Inamorato as any which Shakspeare ever drew. He is

just such another adept in Love's reasons. world are with him

are a

The sober people of the

a swarm of fools

Crowding together to be counted wise.

He talks "pure Biron and Romeo," he is almost as poetical as they, quite as philosophical, only a little madder. After all, Love's sectaries reason unto themselves." We have gone retrograde in the noble heresy since the days when Sidney proselyted our nation to this mixed health and disease; the kindliest symptom yet the most alarming crisis in the ticklish state of youth; the nourisher and the destroyer of hopeful wits; the mother of twin-births, wisdom and folly, valour and weakness; the servitude above freedom; the gentle mind's religion; the liberal superstition.]

THE HONEST WHORE: A COMEDY, BY THOMAS DECKER.
Hospital for Lunatics.

There are of mad men, as there are of tame,

All humour'd not alike. We have here some
So apish and fantastick, play with a feather;

And, though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image
So blemish'd and defaced, yet do they act

Such antick and such pretty lunacies,

That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile.
Others again we have, like hungry lions,
Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies.-

Patience.

Patience! why, 'tis the soul of

peace:

Of all the virtues, 'tis nearest kin to heaven;
It makes men look like gods.-The best of men
That e'er wore earth about him was a Sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;
The first true gentleman that ever breathed.

THE SECOND PART OF THE HONEST WHORE.
BY THOMAS DECKER.

Bellafront, a reclaimed harlot, recounts some of the miseries of her

1

my

bread,

O, when the work of lust had earn'd
To taste it how I trembled, lest each bit
Ere it went down should choke me chewing it.
My bed seem'd like a cabin hung in hell,
The bawd hell's porter, and the lickorish wine
The pander fetch'd was like an easy fine
For which methought I leased away my soul;
And often times even in my quaffing-bowl
Thus said I to myself: I am a whore,

And have drunk down thus much confusion more.
when in the street

A fair young modest damsel1 I did meet,
She seem'd to all a dove, when I pass'd by,
And I to all a raven: every eye

That follow'd her, went with a bashful glance;
At me each bold and jeering countenance
Darted forth scorn: to her as if she had been
Some tower unvanquished would they vail;
'Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail :
She crown'd with reverend praises pass'd by them,
I though with face mask'd could not scape the hem;
For, as if Heaven had set strange marks on whores,
Because they should be pointing stocks to man,

This simple picture of honour and shame, contrasted without violence, and expressed without immodesty, is worth all the strong lines against the harlot's profession, with which both Parts of this play are offensively crowded. A satirist is always to be suspected, who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective gust. But so near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men. No one will doubt, who reads Marston's Satires, that the author in some part of his life must have been something more than a theorist in vice. Have we never heard an old preacher in the pulpit display such an insight into the mystery of ungodliness, as made us wonder with reason how a good man came by it? When Cervantes with such proficiency of fondness dwells upon the Don's library, who sees not that he has been a great reader of books of knight errantry? perhaps was at some time of his life in danger of falling into those very extravagances which he ridicules so happily in his hero ?

Drest up in civilest shape a courtezan,

Let her walk saint-like noteless and unknown,
Yet she's betray'd by some trick of her own.
The happy man.

He that makes gold his wife, but not his whore,
He that at noonday walks by a prison door,
He that in the sun is neither beam nor moat,
He that's not mad after a petticoat,

He for whom poor men's curses dig no grave,
He that is neither lord's nor lawyer's slave,
He that makes This his sea and That his shore,
He that in 's coffin is richer than before,

He that counts Youth his sword and Age his staff,
He whose right hand carves his own epitaph,
He that upon his death-bed is a swan,

And dead, no crow: he is a Happy Man.

[The turn of this is the same with Iago's definition of a Deserving Woman: "She that was ever fair and never proud," &c. The matter is superior.]

SATIRO-MASTIX, OR THE UNTRUSSING OF THE
HUMOROUS POET, BY THOMAS DECKER.

The king exacts an oath from Sir Walter Terill to send his bride Calestina to court on the marriage night. Her father, to save her honour, gives her a poisonous mixture which she swallows.

TERILL. CELESTINA. FATHER.

Cal. Why didst thou swear?

Ter. The king

Sat heavy on my resolution,

Till (out of breath) it panted out an oath.

Cal. An oath! why, what 's an oath ? 'tis but the smoke
Of flame and blood; the blister of the spirit
Which riseth from the steam of rage, the bubble
That shoots up to the tongue and scalds the voice;
(For oaths are burning words.) Thou sworest but one,
'Tis frozen long ago: if one be number'd,
What countrymen are they, where do they dwell,
That speak naught else but oaths?

Ter. They're men of hell.

An oath! why 'tis the traffic of the soul,
'Tis law within a man; the seal of faith,
The bond of every conscience; unto whom
We set our thoughts like hands: yea, such a one
I swore, and to the king: a king contains
A thousand thousand; when I swore to him,
I swore to them; the very hairs that guard
His head will rise up like sharp witnesses
Against my faith and loyalty: his eye

Would straight condemn me: argue oaths no more;
My oath is high, for to the king I swore.

Cal. Must I betray my chastity, so long

Clean from the treason of rebelling lust?
O husband, O my father, if poor I

Must not live chaste, then let me chastely die.
Fath. Ay, here's a charm shall keep thee chaste, come, come.
Old time hath left us but an hour to play

Our parts; begin the scene; who shall speak first?
O I, I play the king, and kings speak first:
Daughter, stand thou here, thou son Terill there:
We need no prologue, the king entering first
He's a most gracious prologue: marry, then
For the catastrophe or epilogue,

There's one in cloth of silver, which no doubt
Will please the hearers well when he steps out;

His mouth is fill'd with words: see where he stands:
He'll make them clap their eyes besides their hands.
But to my part: suppose who enters now,

A king whose eyes are set in silver; one
That blusheth gold, speaks music, dancing walks,
Now gathers nearer, takes thee by the hand,
When straight thou thinkst the very orb of heaveL
Moves round about thy fingers; then he speaks,
Thus-thus-I know not how.

Cel. Nor I to answer him.

Fath. No, girl! know'st thou not how to answer him?
Why, then the field is lost, and he rides home
Like a great conqueror: not answer him!
Out of thy part already! foil'd the scene!
Disrank'd the lines! disarm'd the action!