A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Ix Part 27

How now, my little knave? Quelle nouvelle, monsieur?

RICHARDETTO.

There's a fellow with a nightcap on his head, an urinal in his hand, would fain speak with Master Theodore.

JAQUES.

Parle Francois, mon pet.i.t garcon.

RICHARDETTO.[70]

Ici un homme, avec le bonnet de nuit sur la tete, et un urinal en la main, que veut parler avec Maistre Theodore.

JAQUES.

Fort bien.

THEODORE.

Jaques, a bonne heure.

[_Exeunt_.

ACTUS I., SCAENA 6.

FUROR POETICUS; _and presently after enters_ PHANTASMA.

FUROR POETICUS, _rapt with contemplation_.

Why, how now, pedant Phoebus?[71] are you smouching Thaly on her tender lips? There, hoi! peasant, avaunt! Come, pretty short-nosed nymph. O sweet Thalia, I do kiss thy foot. What, Clio? O sweet Clio! Nay, prythee, do not weep, Melpomene. What, Urania, Polyhymnia, and Calliope!

let me do reverence to your deities.

[PHANTASMA _pulls him by the sleeve_.

I am your holy swain that, night and day, Sit for your sakes, rubbing my wrinkled brow, Studying a month for a epithet.

Nay, silver Cynthia, do not trouble me; Straight will I thy Endymion's story write, To which thou hastest me on day and night.

You light-skirt stars, this is your wonted guise, By gloomy light perk out your doubtful heads; But when Dan[72] Phoebus shows his flas.h.i.+ng snout, You are sky-puppies;[73] straight your light is out.

PHANTASMA.

So ho, Furor!

Nay, prythee, good Furor, in sober sadness--

FUROR.

Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo.

PHANTASMA.

Nay, sweet Furor,--ipsae te, t.i.tyre, pinus--

FUROR.

Ipsi te fontes, ipsa haec arbusta vocarunt.

Who's that runs headlong on my quill's sharp point, That, wearied of his life and baser breath, Offers himself to an Iambic verse?

PHANTASMA.

Si, quoties peccant homines, sua fulmina mittat Jupiter, exiguo tempore inermis erit.

FUROR.

What slimy, bold, presumptuous groom[74] is he, Dares with his rude, audacious, hardy chat Thus sever me from sky-bred[75] contemplation?

PHANTASMA.

_Carmina vel coelo possunt deducere lunam_.

FUROR.

O Phantasma! what, my individual[76] mate?

PHANTASMA.

_O, mihi post nullos, Furor, memorande sodales_!

FUROR.

Say, whence comest thou? sent from what deity?

From great Apollo or sly Mercury?

PHANTASMA.

I come from the little Mercury Ingenioso: for, _Ingenio pollet, cui vim natura negavit_.

FUROR.

Ingenioso?

He is a pretty inventor of slight prose; But there's no spirit in his grov'lling speech.

Hang him, whose verse cannot outbelch the wind, That cannot beard and brave Dan Aeolus; That, when the cloud of his invention breaks, Cannot outcrack the scarecrow thunderbolt.

Hang him, I say![77]

PHANTASMA.

_Pendo, pependi; tendo, tetendi; pedo, pepedi_. Will it please you, Master Furor, to walk with me? I promise to bring you to a drinking-inn in Cheapside, at the sign of the Nag's Head; for

_Tempore lenta pati fraena docentur equi_.

FUROR.

Pa.s.s thee before, I'll come incontinent.

PHANTASMA.

Nay, faith, Master Furor, let's go together, _quoniam convenimus ambo_.

FUROR.

Let us march on unto the house of fame; There, quaffing bowls of Bacchus' blood full nimbly, Indite a-tiptoe strutting poesy.

[_They offer the way one to the other_.

PHANTASMA.

_Quo me, Bacche, rapis tui plenum?

Tu major: tibi me est aequum parere, Menalca_.

ACTUS II., SCAENA 1.