A Select Collection of Old English Plays Part 65

TIM. Surly sir, your design?

HAX. To ruin your design, illicentiate playwright. Down with your bills, sir.

TIM. Your bill cannot do it, sir.

HAX. But my commission shall, sir. Can you read, sir?

TIM. Yes, sir, and write too, else were I not fit for this employment.

[_He reads the paper._

TRIL. With what a scurvy, screwed look the myrmidon eyes him! He will surely bastinado our comedian out of his laureate periwig.

Hold him tug, poet, or thou runs thy poetical pinnace on a desperate shelf!

TIM. What bugbear has your terrible blades.h.i.+p brought us here? A mandate from one of our own society to blanch the credit of our comedy! You're in a wrong box, sir; this will not do't.

HAX. You dare not disobey it!

TIM. Dare not! A word of high affront to a professed Parna.s.sian!

I dare exchange in pen with you and your penurious poetaster's pike; and if your valour or his swell to that height or heat as it will admit no other cooler but a downright scuffle, let wit perish and fall a-wool-gathering, if with a cheerful brow I leave not the precious rills of Hippocrene, and wing my course for Campus Martius.

HAX. 'Slid, this Musaeus is a Martialist; and if I had not held him a feverish white-livered staniel,[108] that would never have encountered any but the Seven Sisters, that knight of the sun[109] who employed me should have done his errand himself.

Well, I would I were out of his clutches! The only way, then, is to put on a clear face, lest I bring a storm upon myself.

[_Aside._] Virtuous sir, what answer will your ingenuity be pleased to return by your most humble and obsequious va.s.sal?

TIM. Ho! sir, are you there with you[r] bears? How this Gargantua's spirit begins to thaw! Sirrah, you punto[110] of valour!

HAX. I have, indeed, puissant sir, been in my time rallied amongst those blades; but it has been my scorn of late to engage my tuck upon unjust grounds.

TIM. Tucca, thy valour is infinitely beholden to thy discretion.

But, pray thee, resolve me: art thou made known to the purport of thine errand?

HAX. In part I am.

TIM. And partly I will tell thee; this squirt-squib wherewith that pragmatical monopolist Nasutius Neapolita.n.u.s has here employed thee to obstruct our action shall be received and returned with as much scorn as it was sent us with spiteful impudence! Let him come if he like; he may trouble himself and his own impoverished patience, but we shall slight him on our stage, and tax him of frontless insolence.

HAX. You shall do well, sir.

TIM. Well or ill, sir, we will do it. Pray, tell me, brave spark, what Archias may this be who takes thus upon him to excise the revenues of our theatral pleasure to his purse? Be his monopolising brains of such extent as they have power to engross all inventions to his coffer, all our stage-action to his exchequer?

HAX. I would be loth to praise him too much, because your transcendent self prize[s] him so little; but his travels have highly improved his expression.

TIM. We know it, don, and he knows it too, to his advantage. But no man knows the issue of his travel better than Timon. It is true, he addressed his course for Malagasco; but for what end?--to learn hard words, school himself in the Utopian tongue; and, to close up all, he sticked not, Xerxes-like, to deface bridges in the ruins whereof, poor gentleman, he irreparably suffered.

HAX. To my knowledge, he speaks no more than authentic truth; for I myself, in my own proper person, got a snap by a Neapolitan ferret at the very same time; ever since which hot ?tnean service my legs have been taught to pace iambics, and jadishly to interfere upon any condition.

[_Aside._

TIM. Thus much for your despatch. Only this: be it your civility, valiant don, to present my service to his naked savages, monkeys, baboons, and marmosets, advising, withal, your master of the bear-yard, that he henceforth content his hydroptic thoughts with his own box-holders; and, lest he lose by his outlandish properties, be it his care to pick out some doxies of his own, lest those she-sharks whom he has employed upon that trading occasion abuse his confidence.

HAX. Your commands, sir, shall be observed with all punctuality.

TIM. Do so, brave don, lest I call you to account, and return your wages with a bastinado. But withal tell that c.o.c.kspur, your magnificent Mecaenas, that he keep at home, and distemper not our stage with the fury of his visits, lest he be encountered by my little terriers, which will affright him more than all his Spanish gipsies.

HAX. Account me, invincible sir, your most serviceable slave upon all interests. Well, I have secured my crazy bulk as well from a basting as ever mortal did; and if ever I be put on such desperate adventures again, let this weak radish body of mine become stuck round with cloves, and be hung up for a gammon of Westphalia bacon to all uses and purposes.

[_Aside._

[_Exit._

TRIL. So, you have conjured down the spirit of one furious haxter!

SCENE IV.

_Enter_ BOY.

TIM. And just so must all our tavern tarmagons be used, or they'll trepan you, as they did that old scarified friar, whose bitter experiences furnished with ability enough to discover their carriage and his feverish distemper.

BOY. Sir, all our boxes are already stored and seated with the choicest and eminentest damosellas that all Seville can afford.

Besides, sir, all our galleries and ground-stands are long ago furnished. The groundlings within the yard grow infinitely unruly.

TIM. Go to, boy; this plebeian incivility must not precipitate the course of our action. How oft have they sounded?

BOY. They're upon the last sound; but our expectance of that great Count, whose desires are winged for us, foreflow our entry.

TIM. These comic presentments may properly resemble our comet apparitions, where their first darting begets impressions of an affectionate wonder or prophetic astonishment. The world, I must confess, is a ball racketed above the line and below into every hazard: but whimseys and careers challenge such influence over the judgment of our gallant refined wits; as their fancies must be humoured, and their humours tickled, or they leave our rooms discontented. So as the comedian's garden must find lettuce for all lips, or the disrelished poet must be untrussed, and paid home with a swingeing censure. This must be my fate; for I can expect no less from these satirical madams, whose ticklish resentment of their injured honour will make them kick before they be galled. But Timon is armed _cap-a-pie_ against all such feminine a.s.sailants. They shall find my scenes more modest than some of their actions have merited; and I must tell thee one thing by the way, my ingenious Trillo--that I never found more freedom in my sprightly genius, than in the very last night, when I set my period to this living fancy. But time and conveniences of the stage enjoin me to leave thee; make choice of thy place, and expect the sequel.

[Sidenote: _Extrema nocte nullam scaenis feliciorem reperi._--Afran.]

TRIL. May your acts live to a succeeding age, And the Ladies Alimony enrich your stage.

[_Exeunt._

_After the third sound_--

PROLOGUE.

_Madams, you're welcome; though our poet show A severe brow, it is not meant to you.

Your virtues, like your features, they are such, They neither can be priz'd nor prais'd too much: Lov'd and admir'd wheres'ever you are known, Scorning to mix Platonics with your own: Sit with a pleasing silence, and take view Of forms vermillion'd in another hue.

Who make free traffic of their nuptial bed, As if they had of fancy surfeited: Who come not here to hear our comic scenes, But to complete imaginary dreams With realler conceptions. If you mind them, Their new loves stand before, old loves behind them: And from that prospect this_ impresa _read, Rich pearls show best when they are set in lead.

Such be your blameless beauties, which comply With no complexion but a native dye, Apt for a spousal hug, and, like rich ore, Admit one choice impression and no more.

Those faces only merit our esteem, Seem what they be, and be the same they seem.

For they who beauty clothe with borrow'd airs, May well disclaim them, being none of theirs.

Here shall you see Nature adorn'd with skill, And if this do not please, sure, nothing will._