FORTUNE BY LAND AND SEA. A COMEDY. BY T. HEYWOOD AND W. ROWLEY. [PUBLISHED 1655: PROBABLY WRITTEN BY 1603]

Old Forest forbids his Son to sup with some riotous gallants; who goes notwithstanding, and is slain.

SCENE. A Tavern.

RAINSWORTH, FOSTER, GOODWIN. To them enters FRANK
FOREST.

Rain. Now, Frank, how stole you from your father's arms
You have been school'd, no doubt. Fie, fie upon't.

Ere I would live in such base servitude

To an old greybeard; 'sfoot I'd hang myself.

1 The original distinction of Beer from the old Drink of our Forefathers, which was made without that ingredient.

[Dodsley, ed. Hazlitt, vol. xii.]

A man cannot be merry, and drink drunk,

But he must be control'd by gravity.

Frank. O pardon him; you know, he is my father.

And what he doth is but paternal love.

Though I be wild, I'm not yet so past reason

His person to despise, though I his counsel
Cannot severely follow.

Rain. 'Sfoot, he is a fool.
Frank. A fool! you are a―

Fost. Nay, gentlemen

Frank. Yet I restrain my tongue,

Hoping you speak out of some spleenful rashness,
And no deliberate malice; and it may be

You are sorry that a word so unreverent,
To wrong so good an aged gentleman,

Should pass you unawares.

Rain. Sorry, Sir Boy! you will not take exceptions ?
Frank. Not against you with willingness, whom I
Have loved so long. Yet you might think me a
Most dutiless and ungracious son to give

my

Smooth countenance unto father's wrong.
Come, I dare swear

"Twas not your malice, and I

Let's frame some other talk.

take it so.

Hear, gentlemen—

Rain. But hear me, Boy! it seems, Sir, you are angry—

Frank. Not thoroughly yet

Rain. Then what would anger thee?

Frank. Nothing from you.

Rain. Of all things under heaven

What would'st thou loathest have me do?

Frank. I would

Not have you wrong my reverent father; and

I hope you will not.

Rain. Thy father's an old dotard.

Frank. I would not brook this at a monarch's hand,

Much less at thine.

Rain. Aye, Boy? then take you that.

Frank. Oh, I am slain.

Good. Sweet Cuz, what have you done? Shift for yourself.

Rain. Away.

Enter Two DRAWERS.

1st Dr. Stay the gentlemen, they have killed a man!

O sweet Mr. Francis. One run to his father's.

[Exeunt.

2nd Dr. Hark, hark! I hear his father's voice below, 'tis ten to

VOL. IV.-27

one he is come to fetch him home to supper, and now he
carry him home to his grave.

Enter the HOST, OLD FOREST, and SUSAN, his daughter.
Host. You must take comfort, Sir.

For. Is he dead, is he dead, girl?

Sus. Oh dead, Sir, Frank is dead.

For. Alas, alas, my boy! I have not the heart

To look upon his wide and gaping wounds.

Pray tell me, Sir, does this appear to you
Fearful and pitiful-to you that are

A stranger to my dead boy?

Host. How can it otherwise?

For. O me most wretched of all wretched men !

If to a stranger his warm bleeding wounds

Appear so grisly and so lamentable,

How will they seem to me that am his father?
Will they not hale my eye-brows from their rounds,
And with an everlasting blindness strike them?
Sus. Oh, Sir, look here.

For. Dost long to have me blind?

Then I'll behold them, since I know thy mind.
Oh me!

Is this my son that doth so senseless lie,

And swims in blood? my soul shall fly with his

Unto the land of rest. Behold I crave,

Being kill'd with grief, we both may have one grave.
Sus. Alas, my father's dead too! gentle Sir,
Help to retire his spirits, over travail'd

With age and sorrow.

Host. Mr. Forest

Sus. Father

For. What says my girl? good morrow. That you are up so early? call up

Frank;

What's a clock,

Tell him he lies too long a bed this morning.
He was wont to call the sun up, and to raise
The early lark, and mount her 'mongst the clouds.
Will he not up? rise, rise, thou sluggish boy.

Sus. Alas, he cannot, father.

For. Cannot, why?

Sus. Do you not see his bloodless colour pale? For. Perhaps he's sickly, that he looks so pale. Sus. Do you not feel his pulse no motion keep, How still he lies?

For. Then is he fast asleep.

may

Sus. Do you not see his fatal eye-lid close?
For. Speak softly; hinder not his soft repose.
Sus. Oh see you not these purple conduits run?
Know you these wounds?

For. Oh me! my murder'd son !

Y. For. Sister!

Enter young MR. FOREST.

Sus. O brother, brother!

Y. For. Father, how cheer you, Sir? why, you were wont
To store for others comfort, that by sorrow

Were any ways distress'd. Have you all wasted,
And spared none to yourself?

0. For. O Son, Son, Son,

See, alas, see where thy brother lies.

He dined with me to-day, was merry, merry,

Oh see,

Aye, that corpse was; he that lies here, see here,
Thy murder'd brother and my son was.
Dost thou not weep for him?

Y. For. I shall find time;

When you have took some comfort, I'll begin
To mourn his death, and scourge the murderer's sin.
O. For. Oh, when saw father such a tragic sight,
And did outlive it? never, son, ah never,

From mortal breast ran such a precious river.

Y. For. Come, father, and dear sister, join with me;
He owed a death, and he hath paid that debt.
Let us all learn our sorrows to forget.

[Act i., Sc. 1.']

If I were to be consulted as to a Reprint of our Old English Dramatists, I should advise to begin with the collected Plays of Heywood. He was a fellow Actor, and fellow Dramatist, with Shakspeare. He possessed not the imagination of the latter; but in all those qualities which gained for Shakspeare the attribute of gentle, he was not inferior to him. Generosity, courtesy, temperance in the depths of passion; sweetness, in a word, and gentleness; Christianism; and true hearty Anglicism of feelings, shaping that Christianism; shine throughout his beautiful writings in a manner more conspicuous than in those of Shakspeare, but only more conspicuous, inasmuch as in Heywood these qualities are primary, in the other subordinate to poetry. I love them both equally, but Shakspeare has most of my wonder. Heywood should be known to his countrymen, as he deserves. His plots are almost invariably English. I am sometimes jealous, that Shakspeare laid so few of his scenes at home. I laud Ben Jonson, for that in one instance having framed the first draught of his Every Man in his Humour in Italy, he changed the scene, and Anglicised his characters. The names of them in the First Edition, may not be unamusing.

How say you, Reader? Do not Master Kitely, Mistress Kitely, Master Knowell, Brainworn, etc. read better than these Cisalpines?

THE GAME AT CHESS. A COMEDY. BY THOMAS MIDDLETON, 1624

Popish Priest to a great Court Lady, whom he hopes to make a Convert of.

Let me contemplate;

With holy wonder season my access,

And by degrees approach the sanctuary

Of unmatch'd beauty, set in grace and goodness.
Amongst the daughters of men I have not found
A more Catholical aspect. That eye

Doth promise single life, and meek obedience.
Upon those lips (the sweet fresh buds of youth)
The holy dew of prayer lies, like pearl
Dropt from the opening eyelids of the morn
Upon the bashful rose. How beauteously
A gentle fast (not rigorously imposed)

Would look upon that cheek; and how delightful
The courteous physic of a tender penance,
(Whose utmost cruelty should not exceed
The first fear of a bride), to beat down frailty!

[Act i., Sc. 1.1]

THE VIRGIN WIDOW. A

COMEDY, 1649.

THE

ONLY PRODUCTION, IN THAT KIND, OF FRANCIS QUARLES [1592-1644], AUTHOR OF THE EMBLEMS [1635]

Song.

How blest are they that waste their weary hours

In solemn groves and solitary bowers,

[Bullen's ed., vol. vii. For other extracts from Middleton see note to page 144.]