A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Ix Part 5

MRS ART. Sir, you may freely speak, whate'er it be, So that your speech suiteth with modesty.

FUL. To this now could I answer pa.s.sing well.

ANS. Mistress, I, pitying that so fair a creature--

FUL. Still fair, and yet I warn'd the contrary.

ANS. Should by a villain be so foully us'd, As you have been--

FUL. _As you have been_--ay, that was well put in!

ANS. If time and place were both convenient[9]-- Have made this bold intrusion, to present My love and service to your sacred self.

FUL. Indifferent, that was not much amiss.

MRS ART. Sir, what you mean by service and by love, I will not know; but what you mean by villain, I fain would know.

ANS. That villain is your husband, Whose wrongs towards you are bruited through the land.

O, can you suffer at a peasant's hands, Unworthy once to touch this silken skin, To be so rudely beat and buffeted?

Can you endure from such infectious breath, Able to blast your beauty, to have names Of such impoison'd hate flung in your face?

FUL. O, that was good, nothing was good but that; That was the lesson that I taught him last.

ANS. O, can you hear your never-tainted fame Wounded with words of shame and infamy?

O, can you see your pleasures dealt away, And you to be debarr'd all part of them, And bury it in deep oblivion?

Shall your true right be still contributed 'Mongst hungry bawds, insatiate courtesans?

And can you love that villain, by whose deed Your soul doth sigh, and your distress'd heart bleed?

FUL. All this as well as I could wish myself.

MRS ART. Sir, I have heard thus long with patience; If it be me you term a villain's wife, In sooth you have mistook me all this while, And neither know my husband nor myself; Or else you know not man and wife is one.

If he be call'd a villain, what is she, Whose heart and love, and soul, is one with him?

'Tis pity that so fair a gentleman Should fall into such villains' company.

O, sir, take heed, if you regard your life, Meddle not with a villain or his wife. [_Exit_.

FUL. O, that same word villain hath marr'd all.

ANS. Now where is your instruction? where's the wench?

Where are my hopes? where your directions?

FUL. Why, man, in that word villain you marr'd all.

To come unto an honest wife, and call Her husband villain! were he[10] ne'er so bad, Thou might'st well think she would not brook that name For her own credit, though no love to him.

But leave not thus, but try some other mean; Let not one way thy hopes make frustrate clean.

ANS. I must persist my love against my will; He that knows all things, knows I prove this will.

_Exeunt_.

ACT II., SCENE I.

_A School_.

_Enter_ AMINADAB, _with a rod in his hand, and_ BOYS _with their books_.

AMIN. Come, boys, come, boys, rehea.r.s.e your parts, And then, _ad prandium; jam, jam, incipe_!

1ST BOY. Forsooth, my lesson's torn out of my book.

AMIN. _Quae caceris chartis deseruisse decet_.

Torn from your book! I'll tear it from your breech.

How say you, Mistress Virga, will you suffer _Hic puer bonae[11] indolis_ to tear His lessons, leaves, and lectures from his book?

1ST BOY. Truly, forsooth, I laid it in my seat, While Robin Glade and I went into _campis_; And when I came again, my book was torn.

AMIN. _O mus_, a mouse; was ever heard the like?

1ST BOY. _O domus_, a house; master, I could not mend it.

2D BOY. _O pediculus_, a louse; I knew not how it came.

AMIN. All toward boys, good scholars of their times; The least of these is past his accidence, Some at _qui mihi_; here's not a boy But he can construe all the grammar rules.

_Sed ubi sunt sodales_? not yet come?

Those _tarde venientes_ shall be whipp'd.

_Ubi est_ Pipkin? where's that lazy knave?

He plays the truant every Sat.u.r.day; But Mistress Virga, Lady Willow-by,[12]

Shall teach him that _diluculo surgere Est saluberrimum_: here comes the knave.

_Enter_ PIPKIN.

1ST BOY. _Tarde, tarde, tarde_.

2D. BOY. _Tarde, tarde, tarde_.

AMIN. _Huc ades_, Pipkin--reach a better rod-- _Cur tam tarde venis_? speak, where have you been?

Is this a time of day to come to school?

_Ubi fuisti_? speak, where hast thou been?

PIP. _Magister, quomodo vales_?

AMIN. Is that _responsio_ fitting my demand?

PIP. _Etiam certe_, you ask me where I have been, and I say _quomodo vales_, as much as to say, come out of the alehouse.

AMIN. Untruss, untruss! nay, help him, help him!