Of every eye Derision thrusts out cheeks
Wrinkled with idiot laughter; every finger
Is like a dart shot from the hand of Scorn,
By which thy name is hurt, thy honour torn.
Orl. Laugh they at me, sweet Galloway?
Gall. Even at thee.

Orl. Ha, ha, I laugh at them: are they not mad,
That let my true true sorrow make them glad?
I dance and sing only to anger Grief,

That in his anger he might smite life down
With his iron fist: good heart! it seemeth then,
They laugh to see grief kill me: O fond Men,
You laugh at others' tears; when others smile,
You tear yourselves in pieces; vile, vile, vile.
Ha, ha, when I behold a swarm of Fools
Crowding together to be counted Wise,
I laugh because sweet Agripyne's not there.
But weep because she is not any where ;
And weep because (whether she be or not)

My love was ever and is still forgot; forgot, forgot,

forgot.

Gall. Draw back this stream: why should

mourn?

my Orleans

Orl. Look yonder, Galloway, dost thou see that sun? Nay, good friend, stare upon it, mark it well:

Ere he be two hours elder, all that glory

Is banish'd heaven, and then, for grief, this sky
(That's now so jocund) will mourn all in black.
And shall not Orleans mourn? alack, alack:
O what a savage tyranny it were

To enforce Care laugh, and Woe not shed a tear !
Dead is my Love; I am buried in her scorn:
That is my sunset; and shall I not mourn!
Yes by my troth I will.

Gall. Dear friend forbear;

Beauty (like Sorrow) dwelleth every where.
Rase out this strong idea of her face:

As fair as her's shineth in any place.

Is

Orl. Thou art a Traitor to that White and Red,
Which sitting on her cheeks (being Cupid's throne)
my heart's Soveraine: O when she is dead,
This wonder (beauty) shall be found in none.
Now Agripyne's not mine, I vow to be
In love with nothing but deformity.

O fair Deformity, I muse all eyes

Are not enamour'd of thee: thou did'st never
Murder men's hearts, or let them pine like wax
Melting against the sun of thy destiny;
Thou art a faithful nurse to Chastity;
Thy beauty is not like to Agripyne's,

For cares, and age, and sickness her's deface,
But thine's eternal: O Deformity,
Thy fairness is not like to Agripyne's,
For (dead) her beauty will no beauty have,
But thy face looks most lovely in the grave.

[The humour of a frantic Lover is here done to the life. Orleans is as passionate an Inamorato as any which Shakspeare ever drew. He is just such another adept in Love's reasons. The sober people of the world are with him

a swarm of fools

Crowding together to be counted wise.

He talks "pure Biron and Romeo," he is almost as poetical as they, quite as philosophical, only a little madder. After all, Love's Sectaries are a "reason unto themselves." We have gone retrograde in the noble Heresy since the days when Sidney proselyted our nation to this mixed health and disease; the kindliest symptom yet the most alarming crisis in the ticklish state of youth; the nourisher and the destroyer of hopeful wits; the mother of twin-births, wisdom and folly, valour and weakness; the servitude above freedom; the gentle mind's religion; the liberal superstition.]

THE HONEST WHORE; A COMEDY. BY
THOMAS DECKER.

Hospital for Lunatics.

There are of mad men, as there are of tame,
All humour'd not alike. We have here some

So apish and fantastick, play with a feather;
And, though 'twould grieve a soul to see God's image
So blemish'd and defac'd, yet do they act
Such antick and such pretty lunacies,
That, spite of sorrow, they will make
Others again we have, like hungry lions,
Fierce as wild bulls, untameable as flies.-

Patience.

you smile.

Patience! why, 'tis the soul of peace:
Of all the virtues, 'tis nearest kin to heaven;
It makes men look like gods.-The best of men
That e'er wore earth about him was a Sufferer,
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit;
The first true gentleman that ever breath'd.

THE SECOND PART OF THE HONEST WHORE.
BY THOMAS DECKER.

Bellafront, a reclaimed Harlot, recounts some of the miseries of her profession.

Like an ill husband, though I knew the same

To be my undoing, follow'd I that game.
Oh when the work of lust had earn'd my bread,
To taste it how I trembled, lest each bit

Ere it went down should choke me chewing it.

My bed seem'd like a cabin hung in hell,
The bawd hell's porter, and the lickorish wine
The pandar fetch'd was like an easy fine
For which methought I leas'd away my soul
And oftentimes even in my quaffing-bowl
Thus said I to myself: I am a Whore,

And have drunk down thus much confusion more.
-when in the street

A fair young modest damsel * I did meet,
She seem'd to all a Dove, when I pass'd by,
And I to all a Raven: every eye

That follow'd her, went with a bashful glance;
At me each bold and jeering countenance
Darted forth scorn: to her as if she had been
Some Tower unvanquished would they vail;
'Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail :
She crown'd with reverend praises pass'd by them,
I though with face mask'd could not 'scape the Hem;
For, as if heaven had set strange marks on whores,

This simple picture of Honour and Shame, contrasted without violence, and expressed without immodesty, is worth all the strong lines against the Harlot's Profession, with which both Parts of this play are offensively crowded. A Satyrist is always to be suspected, who, to make vice odious, dwells upon all its acts and minutest circumstances with a sort of relish and retrospective gust. But so near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn out Sinner is sometimes found to make the best Declaimer against Sin. The same highseasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a Moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men. No one will doubt, who reads Marston's Satires, that the Author in some part of his life must have been something more than a theorist in vice. Have we never heard an old preacher in the pulpit display such an insight into the mystery of ungodliness, as made us wonder with reason how a good man came by it? When Cervantes with such proficiency of fondness dwells upon the Don's library, who sees not that he has been a great reader of books of Knight Errantry? perhaps was at some time of his life in danger of falling into those very extravagancies which he ridicules so happily in his Hero?

Because they should be pointing stocks to man,
Drest up in civilest shape a Courtezan;

Let her walk saint-like noteless and unknown,
Yet she's betray'd by some trick of her own.

The happy Man.

He that makes gold his wife, but not his whore,
He that at noon day walks by a prison door,
He that in the Sun is neither beam nor moat,
He that's not mad after a petticoat,

He for whom poor men's curses dig no grave,
He that is neither Lord's nor Lawyer's slave,
He that makes This his sea and That his shore,
He that in 's coffin is richer than before,
He that counts Youth his sword and Age his staff,
He whose right hand carves his own epitaph,
He that upon his death bed is a Swan,
And dead, no Crow: he is a Happy Man *.

SATIRO-MASTIX, OR THE UNTRUSSING OF THE HUMOROUS POET, BY THOMAS DECKER.

The King exacts an oath from Sir Walter Terill to send his Bride Celestina to Court on the marriage night. Her Father, to save her honour, gives her a poisonous mixture which she swallows.

Cal. Why didst thou swear?

Ter. The King

Sat heavy on my resolution,

Till (out of breath) it panted out an oath.

*The turn of this is the same with Iago's definition of a Deserving Woman: "She that was ever fair and never proud, &c." The matter is superior.