The glistering beams which do abroad appear I scorn'd to crowd among the muddy throng There shall you see troops of chaste Goddesses, The standers by being the fair workmanship. And. O, how my soul is rapt to a Third Heaven! I'll travel sure, and live with none but Kings. Amp. But tell me, father, have you in all Courts Beheld such glory, so majestical, In all perfection, no way blemished? Fort. In some Courts shall you see Ambition Sit, piecing Dedalus' old waxen wings; But being clapt on, and they about to fly, Even when their hopes are busied in the clouds, [Act ii., Sc. 2.] Orleans to his friend Galloway defends the passion with which (being a prisoner in the English king's Court) he is enamoured to frenzy of the king's daughter Agripyna. ORLEANS. GALLOWAY. Orl. This music makes me but more out of tune. O Agripyna! Gall. Gentle friend, no more. Thou sayest Love is a madness: hate it then, Orl. O, I love that Madness, Even for the name's sake. Gall. Let me tame this frenzy, By telling thee thou art a prisoner here, Orl. If he do, why so do I. Gall. Love is ambitious and loves Majesty. Orl. Dear friend, thou art deceived: Love's voice doth sing As sweetly in a beggar as a king. Gall. Dear friend, thou art deceiv'd: O bid thy soul Lift up her intellectual eyes to heaven, And in this ample book of wonders read, Of what celestial mould, what sacred essence, Her self is form'd: the search whereof will drive And in sweet tune set that which none inherits. Gall. O call this madness in: see, from the windows Is like a dart shot from the hand of Scorn, Orl. Ha, ha, I laugh at them: are they not mad, My love was ever and is still forgot: forgot, forgot, forgot. Gall. Draw back this stream: why should my Orleans mourn? Ere he be two hours elder, all that glory Is banish'd heaven, and then, for grief, this sky To enforce Care laugh, and Woe not shed a tear! my sunset; and shall I not mourn! Yes, by my troth I will. Gall. Dear friend, forbear; Beauty (like Sorrow) dwelleth everywhere. As fair as her's shineth in any place. Orl. Thou art a Traitor to that White and Red, O fair Deformity, I muse all eyes Are not enamour'd of thee: thou didst never [Act iii., Sc. 1.] Orleans is as passionate He is just such another adept The humour of a frantic Lover is here done to the life. an Inamorato as any which Shakspeare ever drew. in Love's reasons. The sober people of the world are with him 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. themselves." After all, Love's Sectaries are a "reason unto Sidney proselyted our nation to this mixed health and disease; the kindliest sympWe have gone retrograde in the noble Heresy since the days when tom 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. 1[Mr. Swinburne suggests "disdain." Nineteenth Century, Jan., 1887.] THE HONEST WHORE. A COMEDY [PUBLISHED 1604]. BY THOMAS DECKER [PART I.] Hospital for Lunatics. There are of mad men, as there are of tame, And, though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image Such antick and such pretty lunacies, That, spite of sorrow, they will make you smile. Patience. Patience! why, 'tis the soul of peace: [Act v., Sc. 2.1] [Act. v., Sc. 2.] WHORE THE SECOND PART OF THE HONEST [EARLIEST EXTANT EDITION 163012 BY THOMAS DECKER Bellafront, a reclaimed harlot, recounts some of the miseries of her profession. Like an ill husband, though I knew the same Ere it went down should choke me chewing it. [Mermaid Series, Decker, edited Rhys.] "[Not divided into Acts.] Thus said I to myself: I am a Whore, And have drunk down thus much confusion more.1 when in the street A fair young modest damsel2 I did meet, She seem'd to all a Dove, when I pass'd by, That follow'd her, went with a bashful glance; every sail : She crown'd with reverend praises passed by them, Let her walk saint-like noteless and unknown, The happy Man. He that makes gold his wife, but not his whore, He for whom poor men's curses dig no grave, [Act iv., Sc. 1.3] He that counts Youth his sword and Age his staff, [Seven and a half lines omitted.] But so near 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. always to be suspected, who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and A Satyrist is minutest circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective gust. 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 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 in other men. 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? [Edited Rhys.] |