Mart. She is no spirit, sir; pray kiss her.

Be very gentle to him!

Thi. Stay!-She's warm;

[brightness,

And, by my life, the same lips! Tell me,
Are you the same Ordella still?

Mart. The same, sir,
[from ruin.
Whom Heav'ns and my good angel stay'd
Thi. Kiss me again!

Ord. The same still, still your servant.
Thi. 'Tis she! I know her now, Martell.
Sit down, sweet!
[slumber

Oh, bless'd and happiest woman!-A dead
Begins to creep upon me: oh, my jewel!

Enter Messenger and Memberge.

Ord. Oh, sleep, my lord!

Thi. My joys are too much for me!

Mess. Brunhalt, impatient of her constraint

to see

Protaldye tortur'd, has choak'd herself.
Mart. No more!
Her sins go with her!

Thi. Love I must die; I faint:
Close up my glasses!

Doctor. The queen faints too, and deadly.
Thi. One dying kiss!

Ord. My last, sir, and my dearest69 ! And now, close my eyes too!

Thi. Thou perfect woman!

Martell, the kingdom's yours: take Mem-
berge to you,

And keep my line alive! Nay, weep not, lady!
Take me! I go.

Ord. Take me too! Farewell, Honour!
[Die both.

2 Doctor. They're gone for ever.
Mart. The peace of happy souls go after
them!

Bear them unto their last beds, whilst I study
A tomb to speak their loves whilst old Time
lasteth.

I am your king in sorrows.

Omnes. We your subjects! [near us! Mart. De Vitry, for your services?°, be Whip out these instruments of this mad mo. ther [cause From court, and all good people; and, be She was born noble, let that title find her A private grave, but neither tongue nor honour?!

And now lead on!-They that shall read this story,

Shall find that Virtue lives in good, not glory.

[Exeunt omnes.

69 My last, sir, and my dearest.] There are two senses of this, which the reader will please to take his choice of. If the above points be right, fast and dearest relate to her kiss; if we point with the old editions (which the suspicion of another sense made me turn to) My last sir, and my dearest,

The sense will be, my last and dearest lord! For sir is often us'd in this its original sense.

Seward. Ordella had no other lords. The sense obviously is, 'Take my last kiss, and the most affectionate I ever gave.'

70 For your service.] Services was probably the original word here.

71 But neither tongue nor honour.] Both Mr. Theobald and Mr. Sympson would reject tongue here, and read tomb, but surely without sufficient reason: for tongue signifies the funeral oration, honour the escutcheons and other ceremonics of the funeral, together with the monument, or whatever may shew respect to the deceas'd. As to the character of Brunhalt, or Brunhaud, though it may perhaps be thought too shocking to appear upon the stage, history has still represented her as a worse devil than our poets have done. Thierry and Theodoret, or Theodibert, were her grand-children, whose father she had poison'd when he came of age, in order to keep the government in her own hands. She irritated Thierry against Theodibert, whom she caus'd him to slay, and then poison'd Thierry, in hopes that the states would have submitted to her government; but her horrid wickednesses being laid open to the peers of France, she was accus'd of having been the murdress of ten kings, beside debauching her grand-child Thierry, making him put away a virtuous wife, and providing him with misses. She was condemn'd to the rack, which she suffer'd three days, was then carry'd about the camp upon a camel's back, afterwards ty'd by the feet to a wild mare, and so dash'd in pieces.

Seward.

THE

THE WOMAN-HATER.

This Play was originally printed in quarto in the year 1607. It was afterwards revived by Sir William Davenant, who added a second title, Or, The Hungry Courtier, and wrote a new Prologue to it, printed in his Works, p. 239, and in the quarto of 1649. The title page of the latter edition ascribes it to both Authors: both the Original and Davenant's Prologues, however, speak of it as the production of but one; and Langbaine positively says it was one of those plays which Fletcher wrote alone. It has not been acted many years.

PROLOGUE.

GENTLEMEN, inductions are out of date, and a Prologue in verse is as stale as a black velvet cloak, and a bay garland; therefore you shall have it plain prose, thus: if there be any amongst you that come to hear lascivious scenes, let them depart; for I do pronounce this, to the utter discomfort of all two-penny gallery-men, you shall have no bawdry in it: or if there be any lurking amongst you in corners, with table-books, who have some hope to find fit matter to feed his malice on, let them clasp them up, and slink away, or stay and be converted. For he that made this Play means to please auditors so, as he may be an auditor himself hereafter, and not purchase them with the dear loss of his cars. I dare not call it Comedy or Tragedy; 'tis perfectly neither: a Play it is, which was meant to make you laugh; how it will please you, is not written in my part: for though you should like it to-day, perhaps yourselves know not how you should digest it to-morrow. Some things in it you may meet with, which are out of the common road: a duke there is, and the scene lies in Italy, as those two things lightly we never miss. But you shall not find in it the ordinary aid over-worn trade of jesting at lords, and courtiers, and citizens, without taxation of any particular or new vice by them found out, but at the persons of them: such, he, that made this, thinks vile, and for his own part vows, that he did never think, but that a lord, lordborn, might be a wise man, and a courtier an honest man2.

PROLOGUE AT THE REVIVAL.

LADIES, take't as a secret in your ear,
Instead of homage, and kind welcome here,
I heartily could wish you all were gone;
For if you stay, good faith, we are un-
donc.

Alas! you now expect, the usual ways
Of our address, which is your sex's praise;
But we to-night, unluckily, must speak
Such things will make your lovers' heart-
strings break,

Inductions.] Such as precede Cynthia's Revels, Bartholomew-Fair, The Taming of the Shrew, and many other plays of that period. By the former of those we learn, that it was usual for the speaker of a prologue, in those times, to be habited in a black cloak: it is possible the custom of dressing in black, which continued to be the fashion for prologuespeakers until very lately, was derived from hence. R.

From this prologue as well as a thousand other passages in our authors, it is very evident that their plays were in the age they liv'd remarkable for the decency and delicacy of their language; though several of their expressions are become now very gross, and are apt to give offence to modest ears; but they ought to be judged by the fashion of the age they Lived in, not by that which now reigns. Sewurd.

THE WOMAN-HATER.

Be-lie
your virtues, and your beauties stain,
With words, contriv'd long since, in your
disdain.

Tis strange you stir not yet; not all this while
Lift up your fans to hide a scornful smile;
Whisper, or jog your lords to steal away,
So leave us t'act, unto ourselves, our play:
Then sure, there may be hope, you can
subdue

Your patience to endure an act or two;
Nay more, when you are told our poet's rage
Pursues but one example, which that age
Wherein he liv'd produc'd; and we rely
Not on the truth, but the variety.

His muse believ'd not what she then did write;
Her wings were wont to make a nobler flight,

[Act 1. Scene 13

Soar'd high, and to the stars your sex did
raise;

For which, full twenty years he wore the bays.
'Twas he reduc'd Evadne from her scorn,
And taught the sad Aspatia how to mourn;
Gave Arethusa's love a glad relief;
And inade Panthea elegant in grief.
If those great trophies of his noble muse
Cannot one humour 'gainst your sex excuse,
Which we present to-night, you'll find a way
How to make good the libel in our play:
So you are cruel to yourselves; whilst he
(Safe in the fame of his integrity)
Will be a prophet, not a poet thought,
And this fine web last long, tho' loosely
wrought.

Into our sight how gently doth she slide,
Hiding her chaste cheeks, like a modest bride,
With a red veil of blushes; as is she 3,
Even such all modest virtuous women be!
Why thinks your lordship I am up so soon?

Lucio. About some weighty state-plot.

Duke. And what thinks

Your knighthood of it?

Arr. I do think, to cure

[wealth.

Some strange corruptions in the common
Duke. You're well conceited of yourselves,

to think

I chuse you out to bear me company
In such affairs and business of state:
But am not I a pattern for all princes,
That break my soft sleep for any subjects'
Am I not careful? very provident?"
[good?

Lucio. Your grace is careful.

Arr. Very provident,

[working plots

3 As if she.] This nonsensical lection is in all editions but the first quarto.

Duke. Nay, knew you how my serious

4 My serious working plots.] I never think it right to discard good sense because another reading appears preferable, but a compound word, secret-working, occurr'd at first sight, and was rejected as unnecessary, 'till reading three lines below Arrigo's answer,

You secretly will cross some other state,

which seems to imply something of secrecy being mention'd before, the conjecture seem'd much more probable. Seward,

Concern

[cause; You are my friends, and you shall have the I break my sleeps thus soon to see a wench. Lucio. You're wondrous careful for your subjects' good!

Arr. You are a very loving prince indeed! Duke. This care I take for them, when their dull eyes

Are clos'd with heavy slumbers.

Arr. Then you rise

To see your wenches.

Lucio. What Milan beauty hath the pow'r To charm her sovereign's eyes*, and break his sleeps?

Duke. Sister to count Valore! she's a maid Would make a prince forget his throne and state,

And lowly kneel to her: the general fate
Of all mortality, is hers to give;
As she disposeth, so we die and live.
Lucio. My lord, the day grows clear; the
court will rise.
[heads,

Duke. We stay too long.-Is the umbrana's
As we commanded, sent to the sad Gonda-

Our general?

Arr. "Tis sent.

[rino,

Arr. 'Tis in the chamber of Lazarillo.
Duke. Lazarillo? what is he?

Arr. A courtier, my lord;

And one that I wonder your grace knows not,
for
[predecessors,
He hath follow'd your court, and your
last
From place to place, any time this seven year,
As faithfully as your spits and your dripping-

Of meat, that have been in the court, e'er
since
[can thrust
Our great-grandfather's time; and when he
In at no table, he makes his meat of that.
Lucio. The very saine, my lord.

Duke. A courtier call'st thou him?
Believe me, Lucio, there be many such
About our court, respected, as they think,
Ev'n by ourself. With thee I will be plain:
We princes do use to prefer many for no-
thing,

And to take particular and free knowledge,
Almost in the nature of acquaintance, of
many

Whom we do use only for our pleasures;
And do give largely to numbers,

More out of policy to be thought liberal,
And by that means to make the people
strive

To deserve our love, than to reward
Any particular desert of theirs

[hear

To whom we give! and do suffer ourselves to
Flatterers, more for recreation

Than for love of it, tho' we seldom hate it:
And yet we know all these; and when we
please,

[about. Can touch the wheel, and turn their names Lucio. I wonder they that know their states so well,

Should fancy such base slaves.

Duke. Thou wonder'st, Lucio? [Milau,
Dost not thou think, if thou wert duke of
Thou shouldst be flatter'd?

Lucio. I know, my lord, I would not.
Duke. Why, so I thought 'till I was duke;
I thought

I should have left me no more flatterers
Than there are now plain-dealers; and yet,
For all this my resolution, I am most
Palpably flatter'd: the poor man may loath
Covetousness and fiattery, but fortune will
Alter the mind when the wind turns; there
may

Be well a little conflict, but it will drive
The billows before it. Arrigo, it grows late;
For see, fair Tethys hath undone the bars
To Phoebus' team; and his unrival'd light
Hath chas'd the morning's modest blush away:
Now must we to our love. Bright Paphian

Her sovereign eyes.] First quarto and Seward read as in text.

5 The umbrana.] In another passage, this fish is called an umbrane; and is probably the same which Cotgrave describes in the following manner, under the name of an umbrine: A great-eyed, round-tongued, small-toothed, and holesome sea-fish, which hath certaine 'barres over crosse her backe, and growing often to the bignesse of a maigre, is sometimes taken for it.' Florio, in his Worlde of Wordes,' folio, 1598, voce umbrine, calls it a kinde of fish, which some take to be the halybut;' and Cotgrave, who, as before, says it is sometimes taken for a maigre, gives the following account of the latter: A great and skalie fish, having a wattle on his chinne, two holes on the top of his beake neere his eyes; and two stones within his head of some vertue (as is supposed) against the cholicke: the French do tearme him thus, not because he is leane, but because by the whitenesse of his flesh he seems so; howsoever, and howsoever he be dressed, Le is reasonable good meat.' R.