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Thy wrongèd Auria is come home with glory !22
Prepare a welcome to uncrown the greatness

Of his prevailing fates.

Spin.

Whiles you, belike,

Are furnish'd with some news for entertainment,
Which must become your friendship, to be knit
More fast betwixt your souls by my removal
Both from his heart and memory!

Adur.

To triumph on a lady's injur'd fame,

Without a proof or warrant!

Fut.

Faith? Christianity?

Piero.

Rich conquest,

Have I life, sir?

Put me on the rack,

Peace, factors

The wheel, or the galleys, if

Aurel.

In merchandise of scorn! your sounds are deadly.— Castanna, I could pity your consent

To such ignoble practice; but I find

Coarse fortunes easily seduc'd, and herein

All claim to goodness ceases.

Cast.

Use your tyranny.

Spin. What rests behind for me? out with it!
Aurel.

Becoming such a forfeit of obedience;

Hope not that any falsity in friendship

Horror,

Can palliate a broken faith; it dares not.
Leave in thy prayers, fair, vow-breaking wanton,
To dress thy soul [a]new, whose purer whiteness
Is sullied by thy change from truth to folly.

22 Thy wronged Auria is come home with glory!] Ford seldom embarrasses himself with the unities either of time or place; nor is his conduct in this respect, perhaps, a matter of much importance. Auria's "triumphant exploits" must have occupied a space worth noticing; and his return might easily, had the author been so pleased, been transferred to the opening of the next act; though this, after all, would only have relieved one improbability among many.

A fearful storm is hovering; it will fall ;
No shelter can avoid it: let the guilty

Sink under their own ruin.

[Exit.

[blocks in formation]

I will stand champion for your honour, hazard

All what is dearest to me.

Spin.
Mercy, heaven!
Champion for me, and Auria living! Auria!
He lives; and for my guard, my innocence,
As free as are my husband's clearest thoughts,
Shall keep off vain constructions. I must beg
Your charities; sweet sister, yours, to leave me ;
I need no followers23 now: let me appear
Or mine own lawyer, or in open court,—
Like some forsaken client,-in my suit
Be cast for want of honest plea-O, misery!

[Exit.

Adur. Her resolution's violent ;-quickly follow. Cast. By no means, sir: you've follow'd her already, I fear, with too much ill success, in trial Of unbecoming courtesies, your welcome Ends in so sad a farewell.

Adur.

I will stand

The roughness of th' encounter like a gentleman,
And wait ye to your homes, whate'er befall me.

23 followers] The 4to has "fellowes." D.

[Exeunt.

ACT III.

SCENE I. The street before MARTINO's house.

Enter FULGOSO and GUZMAN.

Ful. I say, Don, brother mine, win her and wear her:

And so will I: if 't be my luck to lose her,

I lose a pretty wench, and there's the worst on't.

Guz. Wench said ye? most mechanically, faugh! Wench is your trull, your blowse, your dowdy; but, Sir brother, he who names my queen of love Without his bonnet vail'd, or saying grace

As at some paranymphal feast, is rude,

Not vers'd in literature.

Dame Amoretta,

So am I too;

Lo, I am sworn thy champion!

Ful.

Can, as occasion serves, if she turn scurvy,

Unswear myself again, and ne'er change colours.
Pish, man! the best, though call 'em ladies, madams,
Fairs, fines, and honeys, are but flesh and blood,
And now and then too, when the fit's come on 'em,
Will prove themselves but flirts and tirliry-puffkins.1
Guz. Our choler must advance.
Ful.

Dost long for a beating? Shall's try a slash? here's that shall do't; [draws] I'll

tap

A gallon of thy brains, and fill thy hogshead

1 tirliry-puffkins.] Puffkin is formed from puff (a worthless fungous excrescence, a dust-ball), precisely as whiskin is from whisk, and has degenerated, by a similar process, into a term of low ribaldry. See vol. ii. p. 236.

With two of wine for't.

Guz.

Not in friendship, brother. Ful. Or whistle thee into an ague: hang't, Be sociable; drink till we roar and scratch; Then drink ourselves asleep again :—the fashion! Thou dost not know the fashion.

Guz.

Her fair eyes,

Like to a pair of pointed beams drawn from
The sun's most glorious orb, do dazzle sight
Audacious to gaze there; then over those
A several bow of jet securely twines
In semicircles; under them two banks
Of roses red and white, divided by
An arch of polish'd ivory, surveying
A temple from whence oracles proceed
More gracious than Apollo's, more desir'd
Than amorous songs of poets softly tun'd.
Ful. Heyday! what's this?

Guz.

All

O, but those other parts,

Ful. All!-hold there, I bar play under board, My part yet lies therein; you never saw

The things you wire-draw thus.

Guz.

[But] I have dreamt Of every part about her, can lay open Her several inches as exactly-mark it— As if I had took measure with a compass,

A rule, or yard, from head to foot.

Ful.

And all this in a dream!

Guz.

O, rare!

A very dream.

Ful. My waking brother soldier is turn'd

Into a sleeping carpenter, or tailor

Which goes for half a man.

Enter BENATZI, as an outlaw; LEVIDOLCHE at a window above.

What's he? [seeing Benatzi]; bear up!

Ben. Death of reputation, the wheel, strappado, galleys, rack, are ridiculous fopperies; goblins to fright babies. Poor lean-souled rogues! they will swoon at the scar of a pin; one tear dropped from their harlot's eyes breeds earthquakes in their bones.

Ful. Bless us! a monster, patch'd of dagger-bom

bast,

His eyes like copper-basins; he has chang'd
Hair with a shag-dog.

Guz.
Let us, then, avoid him,
Or stand upon our guard; the foe approaches.

Ben. Cutthroats by the score abroad, come home, and rot in fripperies.2 Brave man-at-arms, go turn pander, do; stalk for a mess of warm broth-damnable! honourable cuts are but badges for a fool to vaunt; the raw-ribbed apothecary poisons cum privilegio, and is paid. O, the commonwealth of beasts is most politicly ordered!

Guz. Brother, we'll keep aloof; there is no valour In tugging with a man-fiend.

Ful.

I defy him.

It gabbles like I know not what ;—believe it,
The fellow's a shrewd fellow at a pink.3

2 rot in fripperies.] The speaker alludes to the neglect shown the poor disbanded soldier on his return from the wars. At home, he says, they are suffered to rot in cast clothes, rags. [Fripperies generally means "old clothes-shops," but here "old clothes." D.]

3 This fellow's a shrewd fellow at a pink.] i. e. at fighting, at a duel. He judges from the rugged appearance of Benatzi, and his fierce strutting language. He is described above as an outlaw; by which nothing more seems meant than a disbanded soldier in rags, as in our author's age was too commonly the case, formidable from arms, and desperate from necessity [pink, a stab. D.].

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