For I would never more look on you. Take Your jewel t'ye!—and, youth, keep under wing, Or-boy !-boy! Tha. If commands be of no force, Let me entreat thee, Menaphon. Fie, fie, Parthenophill! have I deserv'd To be thus used? Par. I do protest Men. You shall not; Henceforth I will be free, and hate my bondage. Enter AMETHus. Amet. Away, away to court! The prince is pleas'd To see a Masque to-night; we must attend him: 'Tis near upon the time.-How thrives your suit? Men. The judge, your sister, will decide it shortly. Tha. Parthenophill, I will not trust you from [Exeunt. me. SCENE III. A Room in the Palace. Enter PALADOR, SOPHRONOS, ARETUS, nad CORAX; Servants with Torches. Cor. Lights and attendance! I will shew your highness A trifle of mine own brain. If you can, Imagine you were now in the university, You'll take it well enough; a scholar's fancy, Pal. We will observe it. Soph. Yes, and grace it too, sir, For Corax else is humorous and testy. Are. By any means; men singular in art, Have always some odd whimsey more than usual. Pal. The name of this conceit. Cor. Sir, it is called The Masque of Melancholy. Cor. Madness rather In several changes. Melancholy is The root, as well of every apish frenzy, Laughter and mirth, as dulness. Pray, my lord, Hold, and observe the plot; (Gives PAL. a paper) 'tis there express'd In kind, what shall be now express'd in action.— 7 A quab; a very quab.] An unfledged bird, a nestling: metaphorically, any thing in an imperfect, unfinished state. In the first sense, the word is still used in that part of Devonshire where Ford was born, and, perhaps, in many other places. Ford has here introduced one of those Interludes in which the old stage so much delighted. The various characters of these apish frenzies," as he calls them, he has taken from Burton's Melancholy; the book to which he refers in a former scene. He cannot be said to have improved what he has borrowed, which, on the contrary, reads better in Burton's pages than his own. What delight the audience may have gathered from the fantastic garb and action of his crazy monologists, I know not; but even here they must have missed the wild and tumultuous extravagance of Beaumont and Fletcher's Love's Pilgrimage, and even the more impressive moodiness of Broome's Northern Luss. Enter AMETHUS, MENAPHON, THAMASTA, and No interruption;-take your places quickly; [Flourish. Enter RHETIAS, his Face whited, black shag Hair, long Nails; with a piece of raw Meat. Rhe. Bow, bow! wow, wow! the moon's eclipsed; I'll to the church-yard and sup. Since I turn'd wolf, I bark, and howl and dig up graves; I will never have the sun shine again: 'tis midnight, deep dark midnight,-get a prey, and fall to-I have catch'd thee now.—Arre !— Cor. This kind is called Lycanthropia, sir; when men conceive themselves wolves.' Pal. Here I find it. [Looking at the paper. Enter PELIAS, with a Crown of Feathers, antickly rich. Pel. I will hang 'em all, and burn my wife. Was I not an emperor? my hand was kiss'd, and ladies lay down before me. In triumph did I ride with my 9 Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls cucubirth, others lupicism insanians, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves, or some such beasts, &c.- Anatomy of Melancholy, vol. i. p. 13. This, and the extracts which follow, are all taken from what Burton calls the fourth subsection of the first partition of his Synopsis." Here is more than enough, I suspect, to satisfy the most curious reader; if not, he may turn to the pages which I have marked. nobles about me, till the mad dog bit me; I fell, and I fell, and I fell. It shall be treason by statute for any man to name water, or wash his hands, throughout all my dominions: break all the looking-glasses, I will not see my horns; my wife cuckolds me; she is a whore, a whore, a whore, a whore! Pal. Hydrophobia' term you this? Cor. And men possess'd so, shun all sight of water; Sometimes, if mix'd with jealousy, it renders them Incurable, and oftentimes brings death. Enter a PHILOSOPHER in black Rags, with a Copper Chain, an old Gown half off, and a Book. Phi. Philosophers dwell in the moon. Speculation and theory girdle the world about, like a wall. Ignorance, like an atheist, must be damn'd in the pit. am very, very poor, and poverty is the physic for the soul; my opinions are pure and perfect. Envy is a monster, and I defy the beast. I Cor. Delirium this is call'd, which is mere dotage,' 1 66 Hydrophobia is a kinde of madnesse, well known in every village, which comes by the biting of a mad dogge, or scratching, saith Aurelianus, or touching, or smelling alone sometimes, as Schenkius proves: so called, because the parties affected cannot endure the sight of water, or any liquor, supposing still they see a mad dogge in it. And which is more wonderfull, though they be very dry (as in this malady they are,) they will rather dye than drinke.' - vol. i. p. 14. Dotage, fatuity, or folly, is a common name to all the following species, as some will have it. Laurentius and Altomarus comprehend madnesse, melancholy, and the rest under this name, and call it the summum genus of them all. If it be distinguished Sprung from ambition first, and singularity, Enter GRILLA, in a rich Gown, great Fardingale, great Ruff, a Muff, Fan, and Coxcomb3 on her Head. Gril. Yes forsooth, and no forsooth; is not this fine! I pray your blessing, gaffer. Here, here, here did he give me a shough, and cut off's tail! Buss, buss, nuncle, and there's a pum for daddy. Cor. You find this noted there, phrenitis.' Pal. True. Cor. Pride is the ground on't; it reigns most in women. from them, it is natural or ingenite, which comes by some defect of the organs, and over-moist braine, as we see in our common fooles; and is for the most part intended or remitted in most men, and thereupon some are wiser than other; or els it is acquisite, an appendix, or symptome of some other disease, which comes or goes; or if it continue, a signe of melancholy itselfe."Ibid. p. 11. 3 Coxcomb.] i. e. a fool's cap. 4 Did he give me a shough.] A shock-dog, a water-spaniel. It is mentioned in Macbeth's catalogue of dogs, and in Nashe's Lenten Stuffe-"a brindle-tail tike, or shough, or two. "Phrenitis (which the Greeks derive from the word oon) is a disease of the mind, with a continual madnesse or dotage, which hath an acute feauer annexed, or els an inflammation of the braine, or the membranes or cells of it, with an acute fever, which causeth madnesse or dotage. It differs from melancholy and madnesse, because their dotage is without an ague: this continuall, with waking or memory decayed, &c. Melancholy is most part silent, this clamorous, and many such like differences are assigned by physitians." -Ibid. P. 12. |