Bel. And why did you so, sir?

Math. To keep the fashion: It's your only fashion now of your best rank of gallants, to make their tailors wait for their money; neither were it wisdom indeed to pay them upon the first edition of a new suit; for commonly the suit is owing for, when the linings are worn out, and there's no reason then that the tailor should be paid before the mercer.

Bel. Is this the suit the knight bestowed upon you?

Math. This is the suit, and I need not shame to wear it; for better men than I would be glad to have suits bestowed on them. It's a generous fellow,-but-pox on him-we, whose pericranions are the very limbecks and stillitories of good wit, and fly high, must drive liquor out of stale gaping oysters. Shallow knight! poor Squire Tinacheo: I'll make a wild Cataian 28 of forty such hang him, he's an ass, he's always sober.

Bel. This is your fault to wound your friends still.

Math. No faith, Front, Lodovico is a noble Slavonian: it's more rare to sec him in a woman's company, than for a Spaniard to go into England, and to challenge the English fencers there. One knocks,-See-La, fa, sol, la, fa, la, rustle in silks and sattins: there's music in this, and a taffety petticoat, it makes both fly high,-Catzo. Enter BELLAFRONT, after her ORLANDO like

himself, with four Men after him. Bel. Matheo? 'tis my father.

Math. Ha, father? it's no matter, he finds no tattered prodigals here.

Orl. Is not the door good enough to hold your blue coats? away, knaves. Wear not your clothes thread-bare at knees for me; beg heaven's blessing, not mine. Oh, cry your worship mercy, sir; was somewhat bold to talk to this gentlewoman, your wife here.

Math. A poor gentlewoman, sir.

Orl. Your pleasure be't, sir? umh, is this your palace?

Bel. Yes, and our kingdom, for 'tis our content. Orl. Its a very poor kingdom then; what, are all your subjects gone a sheep-shearing? not a maid? not a man? not so much as a cat? you keep a good house belike, just like one of your profession, every room with bare walls, and a half-headed bed to vault upon, as all your bawdyhouses are. Pray, who are your upholsters? Oh, the spiders, I see; they bestow hangings upon you.

Math. Bawdy-house! Zounds! sirBel. Oh, sweet Matheo, peace. Upon my knees

}

I do beseech you, sir, not to arraign me
For sins, which heaven, I hope, long since hath
pardoned.

Those flames, like lightning flashes, are so spent,
The heat no more remains, than where ships went,
Or where birds cut the air, the print remains.
Math. Pox on him, kneel to a dog!
Bel. She that's a whore

Lives gallant, fares well, is not, like me, poor;
I have now as small acquaintance with that sin,
As if I had never known it; that, never been.

Orl. No acquaintance with it! what maintains thee then? how dost live then? has thy husband any lands? any rents coming in, any stock going, any ploughs jogging, any ships sailing? hast thou any wares to turn, so much as to get a single penny by? yes, thou hast ware to sell, knaves are thy chapmen, and thy shop is hell.

Math. Do you hear, sir?

Orl. So, sir, I do hear, sir, more of you than you dream I do.

Math. You fly a little too high, sir.

Orl. Why, sir, too high?

Math. I have suffered your tongue, like 29 a bard cater tra, to run all this while, and have not stopt it.

Ibid. A. 4. S. 1:

Orl. Well, sir, you talk like a gamester. Math. If you come to bark at her, because she's a poor rogue; look you, here's a fine path, sir, and there, there the door.

Bel. Matheo?

Math. Your blue coats stay for you, sir. I love a good honest roaring boy, and soOrl. That's the devil.

Math. Sir, sir, I'll have no Joves in my house to thunder avaunt: she shall live and be maintained; when you, like a keg of musty sturgeon, shall stink. Where? in your coffin. How? be a musty fellow, and lousy.

Orl. I know she shall be maintained, but how? she like a quean, thou like a knave; she like a whore, thou like a thief.

Math. Thief! zounds, thief!

Bel. Good dearest Matheo.-Father! Math. Pox on you both, I'll not be braved: new sattin scorns to be put down with bare bawdy velvet. Thief!

Orl. Aye, thief; thou'rt a murtherer, a cheater, a whore-monger, a pot-hunter, a borrower, a beggar

Bel. Dear father

I shall be hanged too, for being in thy company; therefore, as I found you, I leave you.

Math. Kneel, and get money of him.

Orl. A knave and a quean, a thief, and a strumpet, a couple of beggars, a brace of baggages. Math. Hang upon him. Aye, aye, sir, fare you well; we are so: follow close-we are beggars— in sattin-to him.

Bel. Is this your comfort, when so many years You have left me frozen to death?

Orl. Freeze still, starve still.

Bel. Yes, so I shall; I must, I must and will. If as you say I'm poor, relieve me then, Let me not sell my body to base men. You call me strumpet, heaven knows I am none: Your cruelty may drive me to be one : Let not that sin be yours; let not the shame Of common whore live longer than my name. That cunning bawd, Necessity, night and day Plots to undo me; drive that hag away, Lest being at lowest ebb, as now I am, I sink for ever.

Orl. Lowest ebb, what ebb?

Bel. So poor, that, though to tell it be my
shame,

I am not worth a dish to hold my meat;
I am yet poorer, I want bread to eat.
Orl. It's not seen by your cheeks.
Math. I think she has read an homily to tickle
too the old rogue.

Orl. Want bread? there's sattin: bake that. Math. S'blood, make pasties of my clothes? Orl. A fair new cloke, stew that; an excellent gilt rapier.

Math. Will you eat that, sir?

Orl. I could feast ten good fellows with those hangers.

Math. The pox you shall.

Orl. I shall not, till thou beggest, think thou art poor;

And when thou beggest, I'll feed thee at my door,

As I feed dogs, with bones; till then beg, Borrow, pawn, steal, and hang, turn bawd, When thou'rt no whore :-my heart-strings sure Would crack, were they strained more.

Exit.

Math. This is your father, your damnedconfusion light upon all the generation of you! he can come bragging hither with four white herrings at's tail, in blue coats without roes in their bellies, but I may starve ere he give me so much as a cob. 30

Bel. What tell you me of this? alas.
Math. Go trot after your dad, do you capitu

late, I'll pawn not for you, I'll not steal to be hanged for such an hypocritical close common harlot; away, you dog-Brave yfaith! Udsfoot! give me some meat.

Bel. Yes, sir.

[Exit. Math. Goodman slave, my man, too, is galloped to the devil a'the t'other side. Pacheco, I'll checo you: Is this your dad's day? England, they say, is the only hell for horses, and only Paradise for women; pray, get you to that Paradise, because you're called an Honest Whore. There they live none but honest whores, with a pox! Marry, here, in our city, all our sex are but footcloth nags; the master no sooner lights, but the man leaps into the saddle,

Enter BELLAFRONT, with Meat. Bel. Will you sit down, I pray, sir? Math. I could tear, by the Lord! his flesh, and eat his midriff in salt, as I eat this.-Must I choke. My father Friscobaldo! I shall make a pitiful hog-louse of you, Orlando, if you fall once into my fingers.-Here's the savouriest meat; I have got a stomach with chafing. What rogue should tell him of those two pedlers? A plague choke him, and gnaw him to the bare bones!Come, fill.

Bel. Thou sweatest with very anger, good sweet: Vex not; 'las 'tis no fault of mine.

Math. Where didst buy this mutton? I never felt better ribs.

Bel. A neighbour sent it me.

Enter ORLANDO.

Math. Hah, neighbour? foh, my mouth stinks! You whore, do you beg victuals for me? Is this sattin doublet to be bombasted 3 with broken meat? [Takes up the Stool.

Orl. What will you do, sir? Math. Beat out the brains of a beggarly[Exit BELLAFRONT. Orl. Beat out an ass's head of your own:Away, mistress!-Zounds! do but touch one hair of her, and I'll so quilt your cap with old iron, that your coxcomb shall ache the worse these seven years for't: Does she look like a roasted rabbit, that you must have the head for the brains?

Math. Ha, ha! Go out of my doors, you rogue, away! Four marks, trudge.

Orl. Four marks? no, sir, my twenty pounds that you have made fly high, and I am gone.

Math. Must I be fed with chippings? you're best get a clap-dish, 32 and say you're proctor to some Spittal-house. Where hast thou been, Pacheco? Come hither, my little turkey-cock.

Orl. I cannot abide, sir, to see a woman wronged; not I.

Math. Sirrah, here was my father-in-law to-day.
Orl. Pish, then you're full of crowns.

Math. Hang him, he would have thrust crowns upon me, to have fallen in again, but I scorn cast clothes, or any man's gold.

Orl. But mine; how did he brook that, sir? Math. Oh, swore like a dozen of drunken tinkers; at last, growing foul in words, he and four of his men drew upon me, sir.

Orl. In your house? would I had been by.

Math. I made no more ado, but fell to my old lock, and so thrashed my blue coats, and old crabtree-face my father-in-law, and then walked like a lion in my grate.

Orl. Oh, noble master!

Math. Sirrah, he could tell me of the robbing the two pedlers, and that warrants are out for us both.

32 Clapdish.-"

Again, in Churchyard's Challenge, 1593, p. 143 :

Orl. Good sir, I like not those crackers.
Math Crackhalter, wo't set thy foot to mine?
On How, sir, at drinking?

Math. We'll pull that old crow, my father: rob thy master. I know the house, thou the servants; the purchase 33 is rich, the plot to get it easy the dog will not part from a bone.. a Onl. Pluck't out of his throat, then: I'll snarl for one, if this can bite.

Math. Say no more, say no more, old cole; meet me anon at the sign of the Shipwreck. Orl. Yes, sir.

Math. And dost hear, man?—the Shipwreck. ms in sette197. [Exit. Orl. Thou'rt at the Shipwreck now, and like a Swimmer 、 · Bold, but unexpert, with those waves dost play, Whose dalliance, whore-like, is to cast thee away.

1

'Tis a brave battle to encounter sin.

Hip. You men that are to fight in the same war To which I'm prest, and plead at the same bar, To win a woman, if you would have me speed, Send all your wishes.

Bel. No doubt you're heard, proceed.

Hip. To be a harlot,-that you stand upon,— The very name's a charm to make you one. Harlot was a dame of so divine

And ravishing touch, that she was concubine 3+ To an English king: her sweet bewitching eye, Did the king's heart-strings in such love-knots tie, That even the coyest was proud when she could hear

Men say, Behold, another harlot there. And, after her, all women that were fair Were harlots called, as to this day some are: | Besides, her dalliance she so well does mix, That she's in Latin called the Meretrix. Thus for the name; for the profession, this; Who lives in bondage, lives laced; the chief bliss This world below can yield, is liberty; And who, than whores, with looser wings dare fly? As Juno's proud bird spreads the fairest tail, So does a strumpet hoist the loftiest sail.

She's no man's slave, men are her slaves; her eye

Moves not on wheels screwed up with jealousy. She, horsed or coached, does merry journies make, Free as the sun in his gilt zodiac;

As bravely does she shine, as fast she's driven, But stays not long in any house of heaven;

The Alchemist, A. 4. S. 7 ;

66