Rob. O happy comfort! curses to the ground

First struck me: now with blessings I am crown'd'. Fos. Bread, bread, for the tender mercy, one penny for a loaf of bread.

Rob. I'll buy more blessings: take thou all my store;
I'll keep no coin and see my father poor.

Fos. Good angels guard you, sir, my prayers shall be
That Heaven may bless for this charity.

you

Rob. If he knew me, sure he would not say so:
Yet I have comfort, if by any means

I get a blessing from my father's hands.
How cheap are good prayers! a poor penny buys
That, by which man up in a minute flies
And mounts to heaven.

Enter STEPHEN.

O me, mine uncle sees me.

Steph. Now, sir, what makes you here
So near the prison ?

Rob. I was going, sir,

To buy meat for a poor bird I have,
That sits so sadly in the cage of late,
I think he'll die for sorrow.

Steph. So, sir:

Your pity will not quit your pains, I fear me.

I shall find that bird (I think) to be that churlish wretch
Your father, that now has taken

Shelter here in Ludgate. Go to, sir; urge me not,

You'd best; I have given you warning: fawn not on him,
Nor come not near him if
you I'll have my love.

Rob. 'Las! sir; that lamb

Were most unnatural that should hate the dam.

Steph. Lamb me no lambs, sir.

Rob. Good uncle, 'las! you know, when you lay here,
I succour'd you: so let me now help him.

Steph. Yes, as he did me;

To laugh and triumph at my misery.

You freed me with his gold, but 'gainst his will:
For him I might have rutted, and lain still.

So shall he now.

1 A blessing stolen at least as fairly as Jacob's was.

Rob. Alack the day!

Steph. If him thou pity, 'tis thine own decay.

Fos. Bread, bread, some charitable man remember the poor Prisoners, bread for the tender mercy, one penny.

Rob. O listen, uncle, that's my poor father's voice.

Steph. There let him howl. Get you gone, and come not near him.

Rob. O my soul,

What tortures dost thou feel! earth ne'er shall find
A son so true, yet forced to be unkind.

Robert disobeys his Uncle's injunctions, and again visits his Father.
FOSTER. WIFE. ROBERT.

Fos. Ha! what art thou? Call for the keeper there,
And thrust him out of doors, or lock me up.

Wife. O, 'tis your son.

Fos. I know him not.

I am no king, unless of scorn and woe:

Why kneel'st thou then? why dost thou mock me so?

Rob. O my dear father, hither am I come,

Not like a threatening storm to increase your wrack,
For I would take all sorrows from your back,

To lay them all on my own.

Fos. Rise, mischief, rise; away, and get thee gone.
Rob. O, if I be thus hateful to your eye,

I will depart, and wish I soon may die;
Yet let your blessing, sir, but fall on me.
Fos. My heart still hates thee.

Wife. Sweet husband.

Fos. Get you both gone;

That misery takes some rest that dwells alone.
Away, thou villain.

Rob. Heaven can tell ;

Ache but your finger, I to make it well

Would cut my hand off.

Fos. Hang thee, hang thee.

Wife. Husband.

Fos. Destruction meet thee. Turn the key there, ho.
Rob. Good sir, I'm gone, I will not stay to grieve you.
O, knew you, for your woes what pains I feel,
You would not scorn me so. See, sir, to cool

Your heat of burning sorrow, I have got
Two hundred pounds, and glad it is my lot
To lay it down with reverence at your feet;
No comfort in the world to me is sweet,
Whilst thus you live in moan.

Fos. Stay.

Rob. Good truth, sir, I'll have none of it back,
Could but one penny of it save my life.

Wife. Yet stay, and hear him: O, unnatural strife
In a hard father's bosom !

Fos. I see mine error now: O, can there grow
A rose upon a bramble? did there e'er flow
Poison and health together in one tide ?
I'm born a man: reason may step aside,
And lead a father's love out of the way:
Forgive me, my good boy, I went astray;
Look, on my knees I beg it: not for joy,
Thou bring'st this golden rubbish; which I spurn:
But glad in this, the heavens mine eye-balls turn,
And fix them right to look upon that face,
Where love remains with pity, duty, grace.
O, my dear wronged boy!

Rob. Gladness o'erwhelms

My heart with joy: I cannot speak.

Wife. Crosses of this foolish world

Did never grieve my heart with torments more
Than it is now grown light

With joy and comfort of this happy sight.

[The old play-writers are distinguished by an honest boldness of exhibition; they show every thing without being ashamed. If a reverse in fortune be the thing to be personified, they fairly bring us to the prisongrate and the alms-basket. A poor man on our stage is always a gentleman; he may be known by a peculiar neatness of apparel, and by wearing black. Our delicacy, in fact, forbids the dramatizing of distress at all. It is never shown in its essential properties1; it appears but as the adjunct

1 Guzman de Alfarache, in that good old book "The Spanish Rogue," has summed up a few of the properties of poverty:-"That poverty, which is not the daughter of the spirit, is but the mother of shame and reproach; it is a disreputation that drowns all the other good parts that are in man; it is a disposition to all kind of evil; it is man's most foe; it is a leprosy full of anguish; it is a way that leads unto hell; it is a sea wherein our

to some virtue, as something which is to be relieved, from the approbation of which relief the spectators are to derive a certain soothing of self-referred satisfaction. We turn away from the real essences of things to hunt after their relative shadows, moral duties: whereas, if the truth of things were fairly represented, the relative duties might be safely trusted to them. selves, and moral philosophy lose the name of a science.]

WOMEN BEWARE WOMEN: A TRAGEDY, BY THOMAS MIDDLETON.

Livia, the Duke's creature, cajoles a poor widow with the appearance of hospitality and neighbourly attentions, that she may get her daughterin-law (who is left in the mother's care in the son's absence) into her trains, to serve the Duke's pleasure.

LIVIA. WIDOW. A GENTLEMAN, Livia's guest.

Liv. Widow, come, come, I have a great quarrel to you;
Faith I must chide you that you must be sent for;
You make yourself so strange, never come at us,
And yet so near a neighbour, and so unkind;

patience is overwhelmed, our honour is consumed, our lives are ended, and our souls are utterly lost and cast away for ever. The poor man is a kind of money that is not current; the subject of every idle housewife's chat; the offscum of the people; the dust of the street, first trampled under foot and then thrown on the dunghill; in conclusion, the poor man is the rich man's ass. He dineth with the last, fareth of the worst, and payeth dearest: his sixpence will not go so far as a rich man's threepence; his opinion is ignorance; his discretion, foolishness; his suffrage, scorn; his stock upon the common, abused by many and abhorred of all. If he come in company, he is not heard; if any chance to meet him, they seek to shun him; if he advise, though never so wisely, they grudge and murmur at him; if he work miracles, they say he is a witch; if virtuous, that he goeth about to deceive; his venial sin is a blasphemy; his thought is made treason; his cause, be it never so just, it is not regarded; and, to have his wrongs righted, he must appeal to that other life. All men crush him; no man favoureth him; there is no man that will relieve his wants; no man that will comfort him in his miseries; nor no man that will bear him company, when he is all alone, and oppressed with grief. None help him; all hinder him; none give him, all take from him; he is debtor to none, and yet must make payment to all. O, the unfortunate and poor condition of him that is poor, to whom even the very hours are sold, which the clock striketh, and pays custom for the sunshine in August!"

Troth, you 're to blame; you cannot be more welcome To any house in Florence, that I'll tell you. Wid. My thanks must needs acknowledge so much, madam. Liv. How can you be so strange then? I sit here Sometimes whole days together without company, When business draws this gentleman from home, And should be happy in society

Which I so well affect as that of

yours.

I know you 're alone too; why should not we
Like two kind neighbours then supply the wants
Of one another, having tongue-discourse,
Experience in the world, and such kind helps,
To laugh down time and meet age merrily?
Wid. Age, madam! you speak mirth: 'tis at my door,
But a long journey from your ladyship yet.

Liv. My faith, I'm nine and thirty, every stroke, wench:
And 'tis a general observation

'Mongst knights; wives, or widows, we account ourselves
Then old, when young men's eyes leave looking at us.
Come, now I have thy company, I'll not part with it
Till after supper.

Wid. Yes, I must crave pardon, madam.

Liv. I swear you shall stay supper; we have no strangers,

woman,

None but my sojourners and I, this gentleman

And the young heir his ward; you know your company. Wid. Some other time I will make bold with you, madam. Liv. Faith she shall not go.

Do you think I'll be forsworn?

Wid. 'Tis a great while

Till supper-time; I'll take my leave then now, madam,
And come again in the evening, since your ladyship
Will have it so.

Liv. In the evening! by my troth, wench,

I'll keep you while I have you: you've great business

sure,

Were 't to me nɔw,

To sit alone at home: I wonder strangely
What pleasure you take in 't.
I should be ever at one neighbour's house
Or other all day long; having no charge,
Or none to chide you, if you go, or stay,