A room in Lovewit's house.
Enter FACE, in a captain's uniform, with his sword drawn, and Subtle with a vial, quarrelling, and followed by Dol Common.
FACE.
Believe 't, I will.
SUBTLE.
Thy worst. I fart at thee.
DOL COMMON.
Have you your wits? Why, gentlemen! For love.
FACE.
Sirrah, I'll strip you.
SUBTLE.
What to do? Lick figs
Out at my—
FACE.
Rogue, rogue!—out of all your sleights.
DOL COMMON.
Nay, look ye, sovereign, general, are you madmen?
SUBTLE.
O, let the wild sheep loose. I'll gum your silks
With good strong water, an you come.
DOL COMMON.
Will you have
The neighbours hear you? Will you betray all?
Hark! I hear somebody.
FACE.
Sirrah.
SUBTLE.
I shall mar
All that the tailor has made, if you approach.
FACE.
You most notorious whelp, you insolent slave,
Dare you do this?
SUBTLE.
Yes, faith; yes, faith.
FACE.
Why, who
Am I, my mungrel? Who am I?
SUBTLE.
I'll tell you.
Since you know not yourself.
FACE.
Speak lower, rogue.
SUBTLE.
Yes, you were once (time's not long past) the good,
Honest, plain, livery-three-pound-thrum, that kept
Your master's worship's house here in the Friars,
For the vacations.
FACE.
Will you be so loud?
SUBTLE.
Since, by my means, translated suburb-captain.
FACE.
By your means, doctor dog!
SUBTLE.
Within man's memory,
All this I speak of.
FACE.
Why, I pray you, have I
Been countenanced by you, or you by me?
Do but collect, sir, where I met you first.
SUBTLE.
I do not hear well.
FACE.
Not of this, I think it.
But I shall put you in mind, sir; —at Pie-corner,
Taking your meal of steam in, from cooks' stalls,
Where, like the father of hunger, you did walk
Piteously costive, with your pinch'd-horn-nose,
And your complexion of the Roman wash,
Stuck full of black and melancholic worms,
Like powder corns shot at the artillery-yard.
SUBTLE.
I wish you could advance your voice a little.
FACE.
When you went pinn'd up in the several rags
You had raked and pick'd from dunghills, before day;
Your feet in mouldy slippers, for your kibes;
A felt of rug, and a thin threaden cloke,
That scarce would cover your no buttocks.
SUBTLE.
So, sir!
FACE.
When all your alchemy, and your algebra,
Your minerals, vegetals, and animals,
Your conjuring, cozening, and your dozen of trades,
Could not relieve your corps with so much linen
Would make you tinder, but to see a fire;
I gave you countenance, credit for your coals,
Your stills, your glasses, your materials;
Built you a furnace, drew you customers,
Advanced all your black arts; lent you, beside,
A house to practise in.
SUBTLE.
Your master's house!
FACE.
Where you have studied the more thriving skill
Of bawdry since.
SUBTLE.
Yes, in your master's house.
You and the rats here kept possession.
Make it not strange. I know you were one could keep
The buttery-hatch still lock'd, and save the chippings,
Sell the dole beer to aqua-vitae men,
The which, together with your Christmas vails
At post-and-pair, your letting out of counters,
Made you a pretty stock, some twenty marks,
And gave you credit to converse with cobwebs,
Here, since your mistress' death hath broke up house.
FACE.
You might talk softlier, rascal.
SUBTLE.
No, you scarab,
I'll thunder you in pieces: I will teach you
How to beware to tempt a Fury again,
That carries tempest in his hand and voice.
FACE.
The place has made you valiant.
SUBTLE.
No, your clothes.
Thou vermin, have I ta'en thee out of dung,
So poor, so wretched, when no living thing
Would keep thee company, but a spider, or worse?
Rais'd thee from brooms, and dust, and watering-pots,
Sublimed thee, and exalted thee, and fix'd thee
In the third region, call'd our state of grace?
Wrought thee to spirit, to quintessence, with pains
Would twice have won me the philosopher's work?
Put thee in words and fashion, made thee fit
For more than ordinary fellowships?
Giv'n thee thy oaths, thy quarrelling dimensions,
Thy rules to cheat at horse-race, cock-pit, cards,
Dice, or whatever gallant tincture else?
Made thee a second in mine own great art?
And have I this for thanks! Do you rebel,
Do you fly out in the projection?
Would you be gone now?
DOL COMMON.
Gentlemen, what mean you?
Will you mar all?
SUBTLE.
Slave, thou hadst had no name.
DOL COMMON.
Will you undo yourselves with civil war?
SUBTLE.
Never been known, past equi clibanum,
The heat of horse-dung, under ground, in cellars,
Or an ale-house darker than deaf John's; been lost
To all mankind, but laundresses and tapsters,
Had not I been.
DOL COMMON.
Do you know who hears you, sovereign?
FACE.
Sirrah.
DOL COMMON.
Nay, general, I thought you were civil.
FACE.
I shall turn desperate, if you grow thus loud.
SUBTLE.
And hang thyself, I care not.
FACE.
Hang thee, collier,
And all thy pots, and pans, in picture, I will,
Since thou hast moved me.
DOL COMMON.
O, this will o'erthrow all.
FACE.
Write thee up bawd in Paul's, have all thy tricks
Of cozening with a hollow cole, dust, scrapings,
Searching for things lost, with a sieve and sheers,
Erecting figures in your rows of houses,
And taking in of shadows with a glass,
Told in red letters; and a face cut for thee,
Worse than Gamaliel Ratsey's.
DOL COMMON.
Are you sound?
Have you your senses, masters?
FACE.
I will have
A book, but barely reckoning thy impostures,
Shall prove a true philosopher's stone to printers.
SUBTLE.
Away, you trencher-rascal!
FACE.
Out, you dog-leech!
The vomit of all prisons.
DOL COMMON.
Will you be
Your own destructions, gentlemen?
FACE.
Still spew'd out
For lying too heavy on the basket.
SUBTLE.
Cheater!
FACE.
Bawd!
SUBTLE.
Cow-herd!
FACE.
Conjurer!
SUBTLE.
Cut-purse!
FACE.
Witch!
DOL COMMON.
O me!
We are ruin'd, lost! Have you no more regard
To your reputations? Where's your judgment? 'Slight,
Have yet some care of me, of your republic.
FACE.
Away, this brach! I'll bring thee, rogue, within
The statute of sorcery, tricesimo tertio
Of Harry the Eighth: ay, and perhaps thy neck
Within a noose, for laundring gold and barbing it.
DOL COMMON.
Snatches face's sword.
You'll bring your head within a cockscomb, will you?
And you, sir, with your menstrue.
Dashes subtle's Vial out of his hand.
Gather it up.
'Sdeath, you abominable pair of stinkards,
Leave off your barking, and grow one again,
Or, by the light that shines, I'll cut your throats.
I'll not be made a prey unto the marshal,
For ne'er a snarling dog-bolt of you both.
Have you together cozen'd all this while,
And all the world, and shall it now be said,
You've made most courteous shift to cozen yourselves?
To face.
You will accuse him! You will "bring him in
Within the statute!" Who shall take your word?
A whoreson, upstart, apocryphal captain,
Whom not a Puritan in Blackfriars will trust
So much as for a feather:
To Subtle.
And you, too,
Will give the cause, forsooth! You will insult,
And claim a primacy in the divisions!
You must be chief! As if you only had
The powder to project with, and the work
Were not begun out of equality?
The venture tripartite? All things in common?
Without priority? 'Sdeath! You perpetual curs,
Fall to your couples again, and cozen kindly,
And heartily, and lovingly, as you should,
And lose not the beginning of a term,
Or, by this hand, I shall grow factious too,
And take my part, and quit you.
END OF EXTRACT
Published by Les Éditions de Londres
© 2013 — Les Éditions de Londres
ISBN : 978-1-909782-33-4