The Fatal Dowry
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Title: The Fatal Dowry
Author: Philip Massinger
Nathaniel Field
Editor: Charles Lacy Lockert
Release date: October 23, 2013 [eBook #44015]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FATAL DOWRY ***
THE FATAL DOWRY
BY
PHILIP MASSINGER AND
NATHANIEL FIELD
EDITED, FROM THE ORIGINAL QUARTO,
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
A DISSERTATION
PRESENTED TO THE
FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
BY
CHARLES LACY LOCKERT, JR.
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, KENYON COLLEGE
PRESS OF
THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
LANCASTER, PA.
1918
Accepted by the Department of English, June, 1916
PREFACE
This critical edition of _The Fatal Dowry_ was undertaken as a Thesis
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. at
Princeton University. It was compiled under the guidance and direction
of Professor T. M. Parrott of that institution, and every page of
it is indebted to him for suggestion, advice, and criticism. I can
but inadequately indicate the scope of his painstaking and scholarly
supervision, and can even less adequately express my appreciation of
his ever-patient aid, which alone made this work possible.
I desire also to acknowledge my debt to Professor J. Duncan Spaeth
of Princeton University, for his valuable suggestions in regard to
the presentation of my material, notably in the Introduction; also to
Professor T. W. Baldwin of Muskingum College and Mr. Henry Bowman,
both of them then fellow graduate students of mine at Princeton, for
assistance on several occasions in matters of special inquiry; and to
Dr. M. W. Tyler of the Princeton Department of History for directing me
in clearing up a lego-historical point; and finally to the libraries of
Yale and Columbia Universities for their kind loan of needed books.
INTRODUCTION
In the Stationer’s Register the following entry is recorded under the
date of “30º Martij 1632:”
CONSTABLE Entred for his copy vnder the hands of Sir HENRY HERBERT
and master _SMITHWICKE_ warden a Tragedy called _the ffatall
Dowry_. Vj d.
In the year 1632 was published a quarto volume whose title-page was
inscribed: _The Fatall Dowry_: a Tragedy: As it hath been often Acted
at the Private House in Blackfriars, by his Majesties Servants.
Written by P. M. and N. F. London, Printed by John Norton, for Francis
Constable, and are to be sold at his shop at the Crane, in Pauls
Churchyard. 1632.
That the initials by which the authors are designated stand for Philip
Massinger and Nathaniel Field is undoubted.
LATER TEXTS
There is no other seventeenth century edition of _The Fatal Dowry_. It
was included in various subsequent collections, as follows:
I. _The Works of Philip Massinger_--edited by Thomas Coxeter,
1759--re-issued in 1761, with an introduction by T. Davies.
II. _The Dramatic Works of Philip Massinger_--edited by John Monck
Mason, 1779.
III. _The Plays of Philip Massinger_--edited by William Gifford, 1805.
There was a revised second edition in 1813, which is still regarded as
the Standard Massinger Text, and was followed in subsequent editions of
Gifford.
IV. _Modern British Drama_--edited by Sir Walter Scott, 1811. The text
of this reprint of _The Fatal Dowry_ is Gifford’s.
V. _Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford_--edited by Hartley Coleridge,
1840 (_et seq._). This follows the text of Gifford.
VI. _The Plays of Philip Massinger._ From the Text of William Gifford.
With the Addition of the Tragedy Believe as You List. Edited by Francis
Cunningham, 1867 (_et seq._). The Fatal Dowry in this edition, as in
the preceding, is a mere reprint of the Second Edition of Gifford.
VII. _Philip Massinger._ Selected Plays. (Mermaid Series.) Edited by
Arthur Symons, 1887-9 (_et seq._).
In addition to the above, _The Fatal Dowry_ appeared in _The Plays of
Philip Massinger_, adapted for family reading and the use of young
persons, by the omission of objectionable passages,--edited by Harness,
1830-1; and another expurgated version was printed in the _Mirror of
Taste and Dramatic Censor_, 1810. Both of these are based on the text
of Gifford.
The edition of Coxeter is closest of all to the Quarto, following even
many of its most palpable mistakes, and adding some blunders on its
own account. Mason accepts practically all of Coxeter’s corrections,
and supplies a great many more variants himself, not all of which are
very happy. Both these eighteenth century editors continually contract
for the sake of securing a perfectly regular metre (e. g.: _You’re_
for _You are_, I, i, 139; _th’ honours_ for _the honours_, I, ii, 35;
etc.), while Gifford’s tendency is to give the full form for even the
contractions of the Quarto, changing its _’em’s_ to _them’s_, etc.
Gifford can scarce find words sharp enough to express his scorn for his
predecessors in their lack of observance of the text of the Quarto,
yet he himself frequently repeats their gratuitous emendations when
the original was a perfectly sure guide, and he has almost a mania for
tampering with the Quarto on his own account. Symons’ _Mermaid_ text,
while based essentially on that of Gifford, in a number of instances
departs from it, sometimes to make further emendations, but more often
to go back from those of Gifford to the version of the original, so
that on the whole this is the best text yet published.
There has been a German translation by the Graf von Baudisson, under
the title of _Die Unselige Mitgift_, in his _Ben Jonson und seine
Schule_, Leipsig, 1836; and a French translation, in prose, under
the title of _La dot fatale_ by E. Lafond in _Contemporains de
Shakespeare_, Paris, 1864.
DATE
The date of the composition or original production of _The Fatal Dowry_
is not known. The Quarto speaks of it as having been “often acted,” so
there is nothing to prevent our supposing that it came into existence
many years before its publication. It does not seem to have been
entered in Sir Henry Herbert’s Office Book.[1] This would indicate its
appearance to have been prior to Herbert’s assumption of the duties of
his office in August, 1623. In seeking a more precise date we can deal
only in probabilities.[2]
The play having been produced by the King’s Men, a company in which
Field acted, it was most probably written during his association
therewith. This was formed in 1616; the precise date of his retirement
from the stage is not known. His name appears in the patent of March
27, 1619, just after the death of Burbage, and again and for the last
time in a livery list for his Majesty’s Servants, dated May 19, 1619.
It is absent from the next grant for livery (1621) and from the actors’
lists for various plays which are assigned to 1619 or 1620. We may
therefore assume safely that his connection with the stage ended before
the close of 1619. On the basis of probability, then, the field is
narrowed to 1616-19.[3]
More or less presumptive evidence may be adduced for a yet more
specific dating. During these years that Field acted with the King’s
Men, two plays appeared which bear strong internal evidence of being
products of his collaboration with Massinger and Fletcher: _The Knight
of Malta_ and _The Queen of Corinth_. While several parallels of
phraseology are afforded for _The Fatal Dowry_ by these (as, indeed, by
every one of the works of Massinger) they are not nearly so numerous
or so striking as similarities discoverable between it and certain
other dramas of the Massinger _corpus_. With none does the connection
seem so intimate as with _The Unnatural Combat_. Both plays open with
a scene in which a young suppliant for a father’s cause is counseled,
in passages irresistibly reminiscent of each other, to lay aside pride
and modesty for the parent’s sake, because not otherwise can justice
be gained, and it is the custom of the age to sue for it shamelessly.
Moreover, the offer by Beaufort and his associates to Malefort of any
boon he may desire as a recompense for his service, and his acceptance
of it, correspond strikingly in both conduct and language with the
conferring of a like favor upon Rochfort by the Court (I, ii, 258
ff.); while the request which Malefort prefers, that his daughter be
married to Beaufort Junior, and the language with which that young man
acknowledges this meets his own dearest wish, bear a no less patent
resemblance to the bestowal of Beaumelle upon Charalois (II, ii,
284-297). Now this last parallel is significant, because _The Unnatural
Combat_ is an unaided production of Massinger, while the analogue in
_The Fatal Dowry_ occurs in a scene that is by the hand of Field. The
similarity may, of course, be only an accident, but presumably it is
not. Then did Field borrow from Massinger, or did Massinger from Field?
The most plausible theory is that _The Unnatural Combat_ was written
immediately after _The Fatal Dowry_, when Massinger’s mind was so
saturated with the contents of the tragedy just laid aside that he was
liable to echo in the new drama the expressions and import of lines in
the old, whether by himself or his collaborator. That at any rate the
chronological relationship of the two plays is one of juxtaposition is
further attested by the fact that in minor parallelisms,[4] too, to
_The Fatal Dowry_, _The Unnatural Combat_ is richer than any other work
of Massinger.
Unfortunately _The Unnatural Combat_ is itself another play of whose
date no more can be said with assurance than that it preceeds the entry
of Sir Henry Herbert into office in 1623, though its crude horrors,
its ghost, etc., suggest moreover that it is its author’s initial
independent venture in the field of tragedy, his _Titus Andronicus_, an
ill-advised attempt to produce something after the “grand manner” of
half a generation back. Next in closeness to _The Fatal Dowry_ among
the works of Massinger as regards the number of its reminiscences of
phraseology stands his share of _The Virgin Martyr_; next in closeness
as regards the _strikingness_ of these parallels stands his share of
_The Little French Lawyer_. These two plays can be dated _circa_ 1620.
* * * * *
To sum up:
_The Fatal Dowry_ appears to antedate the installation of Sir Henry
Herbert in 1623.
It was probably written while Field was with the King’s Men; with whom
he became associated in 1616, and whom he probably quitted in 1619.
The indications point to its composition during the latter part of this
three-year period (1616-19), for it yields more and closer parallels
to _The Virgin Martyr_ and _The Little French Lawyer_, dated about
1620, than to _The Knight of Malta_ and _The Queen of Corinth_, dated
1617-8,--closer, indeed, than to any work of Massinger save one, _The
Unnatural Combat_, itself an undated but evidently early play, with
which its relationship is clearly of the most intimate variety.
* * * * *
The following (at best hazardously conjectural) scheme of sequence may
be advanced:
Fletcher and Massinger and Field together wrote _The Knight of Malta_
and _The Queen of Corinth_--according to received theory, in 1617 or
1618. Thereafter, the last two collaborators (desirous, perhaps, of
trying what they could do unaided and unshackled by the dominating
association of the chief dramatist of the day) joined hands in the
production of the tragedy which is the subject of our study. Then, upon
Field’s retirement, Massinger struck off, with _The Unnatural Combat_,
into unassisted composition; but we next find him, whether because he
recognized the short-comings of this turgid play or for other reasons,
again in double harness, at work upon _The Virgin Martyr_ and _The
Little French Lawyer_. On this hypothesis, _The Fatal Dowry_ would be
dated 1618-9.
SOURCES
No source is known for the main plot of _The Fatal Dowry_. A Spanish
original has been suspected, but it has never come to light. The stress
laid throughout the action on that peculiarly Spanish conception of
“the point of honor” (see under CRITICAL ESTIMATE, in consideration
of the character of Charalois) is unquestionably suggestive of the
land south of the Pyrenees, and we have an echo of _Don Quixote_
in the exclamation of Charalois (III, i, 441): “Away, thou curious
impertinent.” The identification, however, of the situation at Aymer’s
house in IV, ii with a scene in Cervantes’ _El viejo celoso_ (Obras
Completas De Cervantes, Tomo XII, p. 277) is extremely fanciful. The
only similarity consists in the circumstance that in both, while the
husband is on the stage, the wife, who, unknown to him, entertains
a lover in the next room, is heard speaking within. But this is a
spontaneous outcry on the part of Beaumelle, who does not suspect the
proximity of her husband, and her discovery follows, and from this
the denouement of the play; whereas in Cervantes’ _entremes_ the wife
deliberately calls in bravado to her niece, who is also on-stage, and
boasts of her lover,--and the husband thinks this is in jest, and
nothing comes of it but comedy.
The theme of the son’s redemption of his father’s corpse by his own
captivity is from the classical story of Cimon and Miltiades, as
narrated by Valerius Maximus, De dictis factisque memorabilibus, etc.
Lib. V, cap. III. De ingratis externorum: _Bene egissent Athenienses
cum Miltiade, si eum post trecenta millia Persarum Marathone devicta,
in exilium protinus misissent, ac non in carcere et vinculis mori
coegissent; sed, ut puto, hactenus saevire adversus optime meritum
abunde duxerunt: immo ne corpus quidem eius, sic expirare coacti
sepulturae primus mandari passi sunt, quam filius eius Cimon eisdem
vinculis se constrigendum traderet. Hanc hereditatem paternam maximi
ducis filius, et futurus ipse aetatis suae dux maximus, solam se
crevisse, catenas et carcerem, gloriari potuit._
In the version of Cornelius Nepos (Vitae, Cimon I) Cimon is
incarcerated against his will.
The action of the play is given the historical setting of the later
fifteenth century wars of Louis XI of France and Charles the Bold of
Burgundy, although this background is extremely hazy. The hero’s name
is the title which Charles bore while heir-apparent to the Duchy of
Burgundy; mention is made of Charles himself (“The warlike Charloyes,”
I, ii, 171), to Louis (“the subtill Fox of France, The politique
Lewis,” I, ii, 123-4), and to “the more desperate Swisse” (I, ii,
124), against whom Charles lost his life and the power of Burgundy
was broken; while the three great defeats he suffered at their hands,
Granson, Morat, Nancy, are named in I, ii, 170. Shortly after these
disasters the events which the play sets forth must be supposed to
occur; the parliament by which in our drama Dijon is governed was
established by Louis XI when he annexed Burgundy in 1477 and thereby
abolished her ducal independence.
COLLABORATION
It is doubtful if Massinger ever collaborated with any author whose
manner harmonized as well with his own as did Field’s. In his
partnership with Decker in _The Virgin Martyr_, the alternate hands
of the two dramatists afford a weird contrast.[5] His union with
Fletcher was less incongruous, but Fletcher was too much inclined to
take the bit between his teeth to be a comfortable companion in double
harness,[6] and at all times his volatile, prodigal genius paired ill
with the earnest, painstaking, not over-poetic moralist. But in Field
Massinger found an associate whose connection with himself was not only
congenial, but even beneficial, to the end that together they could
achieve certain results of which either was individually incapable;
just as it has been established was the case in the Middleton-Rowley
collaboration. To a formal element of verse different, indeed, from
Massinger’s, but not obtrusively so, a certain moral fibre of his
own (perhaps derived from his clerical antecedents), and a like
familiarity with stage technique, Field added qualities which Massinger
notably lacked, and thereby complemented him: a light and vigorous
(if sometimes coarse) comic touch as opposed to Massinger’s cumbrous
humor; a freshness and first-hand acquaintance with life as opposed to
Massinger’s bookishness; a capacity to visualize and individualize
character as opposed to Massinger’s weakness for drawing types rather
than people. The fruit of their joint endeavors testifies to a
harmonious, conscientious, and mutually respecting partnership.
In consideration of the above, it is surprising how substantially in
accord are most of the opinions that have been expressed concerning the
share of the play written by each author.
“A critical reader,” says Monck Mason, “will perceive that Rochfort
and Charalois speak a different language in the Second and Third Acts,
from that which they speak in the first and last, which are undoubtedly
Massinger’s; as is also Part of the Fourth Act, but not the whole of
it.”
Dr. Ireland, in a postscript to the text of _The Fatal Dowry_ in
Gifford’s edition, agrees with Mason in assigning the Second Act
to Field and also the First Scene of the Fourth Act; the Third
Act, however, he claims for Massinger, as well as that share of
the play with which Mason credits him. Fleay and Boyle, the chief
modern commentators who have taken up the question of the division
of authorship with the aid of metrical tests and other criteria,
agree fairly well with the speculations of their less scientific
predecessors, and adopt an intermediate, reconciling position on the
disputed Third Act, dividing it between the two dramatists.[7]
Boyle (_Englische Studien_, V, 94) assigns to Massinger Act I; Act III
as far as line 316; Act IV, Scenes ii, iii, and iv; and the whole of
Act V, with the exception of Scene ii, lines 80-120, which he considers
an interpolation of Field, whom he also believes to have revised the
latter part of I, ii (from _Exeunt Officers with Romont_ to end).
Fleay (_Chron. Eng. Dra._, I, 208) exactly agrees with this division
save that the latter part of I, ii, which Boyle believes emended by
Field, he assigns to that author outright; and that he places the
division in Act III twenty-seven lines later (Field after _Manent Char.
Rom._).
In my own investigation I have used for each Scene the following tests
to distinguish the hands of the two authors:
(_a_) Broad aesthetic considerations: the comparison of style and
method of treatment with the known work of either dramatist.
(_b_) The test of parallel phrases. Massinger’s habit of repeating
himself is notorious. I have gone through the entire body of his
work, both that which appears under his name, and that which has been
assigned to him by modern research in the Beaumont & Fletcher plays,
and noted all expressions I found analogous to any which occur in
_The Fatal Dowry_. I have done the same for Field’s work, examining
his two comedies, _Woman is a Weathercock_ and _Amends for Ladies_,
and Acts I and V of _The Knight of Malta_ and III and IV of _The
Queen of Corinth_, which the consensus of critical opinion recognizes
(in my judgment, correctly) as his. He is generally believed to have
collaborated also in _The Honest Man’s Fortune_, but the exact extent
of his work therein is so uncertain that I have not deemed it a proper
field from which to adduce evidence. His hand has been asserted by one
authority or another to appear in various other plays of the period,
he having served, as it were, the role of a literary scapegoat on whom
it was convenient to father any Scene not identified as belonging to
Beaumont, Fletcher, or Massinger; but there is no convincing evidence
for his participation in the composition of any extant dramas save the
above named.
(_c_) Metrical tests. I have computed the figures for _The Fatal Dowry_
in regard to double or feminine endings and run-on lines. Massinger’s
verse displays high percentages (normally 30 per cent, to 45 per cent.)
in the case of either. Field’s verse varies considerably in the matter
of run-on lines at various periods of his life, but the proportion of
them is always smaller than Massinger’s. His double endings average
about 18 per cent. I have also counted in each Scene the number
of speeches that end within the line, and that end with the line,
respectively. (Speeches ending with fragmentary lines are considered to
have mid-line endings.) This is declared by Oliphant (_Eng. Studien_,
XIV, 72) the surest test for the work of Massinger. “His percentage of
speeches,” he says, “that end where the verses end is ordinarily as low
as 15.” This is a tremendous exaggeration, but it is true that the
ratio of mid-line endings is much higher in Massinger than in any of
his contemporaries--commonly 2:1, or higher.
We find the First Scene of Act I one of those skillful introductions
to the action which the “stage-poet” knew so well how to handle, for
which reason, probably, he was generally intrusted with the initial
Scene of the plays in which he collaborated. Thoroughly Massingerian
are its satire upon the degenerate age and its grave, measured
style, rhetorical where it strives to be passionate, and replete
with characteristic expressions. Especially striking examples of the
dramatist’s well-known and never-failing _penchant_ for the recurrent
use of certain ideas and phrases are: _As I could run the hazard of a
check for’t._ (l. 10)--cf. [8]C-G. 87 b, 156 b, 327 b; D. V, 328; XI,
28;--_You shall o’ercome._ (l. 101)--cf. C-G. 230 b, 248 b, 392 a;--and
ll. 183-7--cf. C-G. 206 a, 63 a, 91 a, 134 b. The correspondence
between ll. 81-99 and the opening of _The Unnatural Combat_ has already
been remarked on, while further reminiscences of the same passage are
to be found elsewhere in Massinger (C-G. 104 a, 195 b). Metrical tests
show for the Scene 33 per cent. double endings and 29 per cent. run-on
lines, figures which substantiate the conclusions derivable from a
scrutiny of its style and content.[9]
In I, ii Massinger appears in his element, an episode permitting
opportunities for the forensic fervor which was his especial forte.
Such Scenes occur again and again in his plays: the conversion of
the daughters of Theophilus by the Virgin Martyr, the plea of the
Duke of Milan to the Emperor, of old Malefort to his judges in _The
Unnatural Combat_, of Antiochus to the Carthagenian senate in _Believe
as You List_. From the speech with which Du Croy opens court (I, ii,
1-3)--cf. the inauguration of the senate-house scene in _The Roman
Actor_, C-G. 197 b,
_Fathers conscript, may this our meeting be
Happy to Caesar and the commonwealth!_
--to the very end, it abounds with Massingerisms: _Knowing judgment_;
_Speak to the cause_; _I foresaw this_ (an especial favorite of the
poet’s); _Strange boldness!_; the construction, _If that curses_,
etc;--also cf. l. 117 ff. with
_To undervalue him whose least fam’d service
Scornes to be put in ballance with the best
Of all your Counsailes._
(_Sir John van Olden B._, Bullen’s _Old Plays_, II, 232.)
We have seen that the hand of Field has been asserted to appear in the
last half of this Scene. This is probably due to the presence here of
several rhymed couplets, which are uncommon in Massinger save as tags
at the end of Scenes or of impressive speeches, but not absolutely
unknown in his work; whereas Field employs them frequently--in
particular to set off a gnomic utterance. If Field’s indeed, they
can scarcely represent more than his revising touch here and there;
everything else in this part of the Scene bespeaks Massinger no less
clearly than does the portion which preceeds it. There continues the
same stately declamation, punctuated at intervals by brief comments
or replies, the same periodic sentence-structure, the same or even
greater frequency of characteristic diction. Massinger again and again
refers in his plays to the successive hardships of the summer’s heat
and winter’s frost (l. 184--cf. C-G. 168 b, 205 a, 392 b, 488 b);
_stand bound_ occurs literally scores of times upon his pages (three
times on C-G. 77 a alone);--typical also are _in their dreadful ruins
buried quick_ (l. 178--cf. C-G. 603 a, 625 a, _Sir John van Olden B._,
Bullin’s _Old Plays_, II, 209), _Be constant in it_ (l. 196--cf. C-G.
2 a, 137 a, 237 a, 329 a), _Strange rashness!_, _It is my wonder_
(l. 293--cf. C-G. 26 b, 195 b; D. VIII, 438; XI, 34). Cf. also l. 156,
_To quit the burthen of a hopeless life,_
with C-G. 615 b,
_To ease the burthen of a wretched life._
And ll. 284-6,
_But would you had
Made trial of my love in anything
But this,_
with C-G. 286 a,
_I could wish you had
Made trial of my love some other way._
And again, ll. 301-3,
_and his goodness
Rising above his fortune, seems to me,
Princelike, to will, not ask, a courtesy._
with D. XI. 37,
_in his face appears
A kind of majesty which should command,
Not sue for favour._
and the general likeness of l. 258 ff. with C-G. 44 b-45 a, as above
noted. Nor do the verse tests reveal any break in the continuity of
the Scene; the figures for the first part are: double endings, 45 per
cent.; run-on lines, 33 per cent.--for the second part: double endings,
36 per cent.; run-on lines, 36 per cent.
Passing to the Second Act, we discover at once a new manner of
expression, in which the sentence has a looser structure, the verse
a quicker _tempo_, the poetry a striving now and again for a note of
lyric beauty which, although satisfactorily achieved in but few lines,
is by Massinger’s verse not even attempted. A liberal sprinkling
of rhymes appears. The Scene is a trifle more vividly conceived;
the emotions have a somewhat more genuine ring. Simultaneously,
resemblances to the phraseology of Massinger’s other plays become
infrequent; _and, to increase the wonder_, is almost the only reminder
of him in the whole of Scene i. On the other hand we must not expect
to find in the work of Field the same large number of recognizable
expressions as mark that of Massinger; for he was not nearly so given
to repeating himself, nor are there many of his plays extant from
which to garner parallels. The figure of speech with which Charalois
opens his funeral address [Field shows a great predilection for
“aqueous” similes and metaphors], the liberal use of oaths (_’Slid_,
_’Slight_), a reference (l. 137) to the Bermudas (also mentioned
in _Amends for Ladies_: M. 427), and the comparison to the oak and
pine (ll. 119-121--cf. a Field Scene of _The Queen of Corinth_: D. V,
436-7) are the only specific minutia to which a finger can be pointed.
The verse analysis testifies similarly to a different author from
that of Act I, double endings being 20 per cent., run-on lines 15 per
cent.--figures which are quite normal to Field.
To the actor-dramatist may be set down the prose of II, ii without
question. Massinger practically never uses prose, which is liberally
employed by Field, as is the almost indistinguishable prose-or-verse by
which a transition is made from one medium to the other. The dialogue
between Beaumelle and her maids is strikingly like that between two
“gentlewomen” in _The Knight of Malta_, I, ii--a Scene generally
recognized as by his hand; the visit of Novall Junior which follows
is like a page out of his earlier comedies. Notable resemblances are
ll. 177-8, _Uds-light! my lord, one of the purls of your band is,
without all discipline, fallen out of his rank_, with _I have seen him
sit discontented a whole play because one of the purls of his band was
fallen out of his reach to order again_. (_Amends for Ladies_, M. 455);
and l. 104, _they skip into my lord’s cast skins some twice a year_,
with _and then my lord_ (_like a snake_) _casts a suite every quarter,
which I slip into_: (_Woman is a Weathercock_, M. 374). The song, after
l. 131, recalls that in _Amends for Ladies_, M. 465.
Of the verse which follows, most of the observations made in regard to
the preceeding Scene are applicable. The comic touch in the midst of
Romont’s tirade (ll. 174-206) against old Novall, when the vehemence
of his indignation leads him to seek at every breath the epithet of
a different beast for his foe, is surely Field’s, not Massinger’s. A
Field scene of _The Queen of Corinth_, D. V, 438, parallels with its
_Thou a gentleman! thou an ass_, the construction of l. 276, while
there too is duplicated the _true-love knots_ of l. 314, though in a
rather grotesque connection. The verse tests are confirmative of Field:
21 per cent. double endings; 19 per cent, run-on lines. While a few
resemblances to phrases occurring somewhere in the works of Massinger
can be marked here and there in the 355 lines of the Scene, they are
not such as would demand consideration, nor are more numerous than
sheer chance would yield in the case of a writer so prolific as the
“stage-poet.” The parallel between ll. 284-297 and a passage from _The
Unnatural Combat_ is pointed out under the head of DATE, and one of
several possible explanations for this coincidence is there offered.
These lines in _The Fatal Dowry_ are as unmistakably Field’s as any
verse in the entire play; their short, abruptly broken periods and
their rapid flow are as characteristic of him as the style of their
analogue in _The Unnatural Combat_ is patently Massingerian.
Act III presents a more difficult problem. It will be noted that Fleay
and Boyle alike declare that its single long Scene is divided between
the two authors, but are unable to agree as to the point of division.
The first 316 lines are beyond question the work of Massinger. The tilt
between Romont and Beaumelle is conducted with that flood of rhetorical
vituperation by which he customarily attempts to delineate passion;
in no portion of the play is his diction and sentence-structure more
marked; and the parallels to passages elsewhere in his works reappear
with redoubled profusion. Indeed, they become too numerous for complete
citation; let it suffice to refer ll. 43-4 to D. III, 477; ll. 53-4 to
C-G. 173 a; ll. 80-3 to D. III, 481; l. 104 to C-G. 532 a; l. 116 to
C-G. 146 b; ll. 117-8 to D. VI, 294 and D. VI, 410; ll. 232-5 to C-G.
307 a, also to 475 b, and to D. VIII, 406; while the phrase, _Meet with
an ill construction_ (l. 238) is a common one with Massinger (cf. C-G.
76 a, 141 b, 193 b, 225 b, 339 b), as are such ironic observations as
the _Why, ’tis exceeding well_ of l. 293 (cf., e. g., 175 b). This part
of the Scene contains 45 per cent. double endings and 36 per cent.
run-on lines.
The last 161 lines of the Act with scarcely less certainty can be
established as Field’s, though on a first reading one might imagine,
from the wordiness of the vehement dialogue and the rather high ratio
(19:11) of speeches ending in mid-line, that the hand of Massinger
continues throughout. But the closest examination no longer will reveal
traces of that playwright’s distinctive handiwork, while a ratio of 17
per cent. for double endings and 28 per cent. for run-on lines, the
introduction of rhyme, the oaths, and the change from the previous
full-flowing declamation to shorter, more abrupt periods are vouchers
that this part of the Scene is from the pen of the actor-dramatist. We
can scarcely imagine the ponderous-styled Massinger writing anything
so easy and rapid as
_I’ll die first.
Farewell; continue merry, and high heaven
Keep your wife chaste._
Such phrases as _So I not heard them_ (l. 352) and _Like George
a-horseback_ (l. 433) in the loose structure of the one and the slangy
scurrility of the other, exhibit no kinship to his manner; l. 373,
_They are fools that judge me by my outward seeming_ recalls a Field
passage in _The Queen of Corinth_ (D. V, 444) _They are fools that hold
them dignified by blood_. There is here and there, moreover, a certain
violence of expression, a compressed over-trenchancy of phrase, that
brings to mind the rant of the early Elizabethans, and is found among
the Jacobeans only in the work of Rowley, Beaumont, and Field. For the
last named, this is notably exemplified in the opening soliloquy of
_The Knight of Malta_; we cannot but recognize the same touch here in
ll. 386-8:
_Thou dost strike
A deathful coldness to my heart’s high heat,
And shrink’st my liver like the calenture._
The _Something I must do_, which concludes the Act, is repeatedly
paralleled in Massinger’s plays, but a similar indefinite resolve is
expressed in _Woman is a Weathercock_ (M. 363), and it consequently
cannot be adduced as evidence of his hand. Immediately above, however
(ll. 494-6), we encounter, in the allusion to the Italian and Dutch
temperaments, a thought twice echoed by the “stage-poet” in plays of
not greatly later date, _The Duke of Milan_ and _The Little French
Lawyer_ (C-G. 90 a; D. III, 505). It may represent an interpolation by
Massinger; it may be merely that this rather striking conclusion to the
climatic speech of his collaborator’s scene so fixed itself on his mind
as to crop out afterwards in his own productions.
In the short disputed passage (ll. 317-343) which separates what is
undoubtedly Massinger’s from what is undoubtedly Field’s, it would
appear that both playwrights had a hand. The _’Sdeath and Gads me!_,
the play upon the word _currier_, and the phrase, _I shall be with
you suddenly_ (cf. _Q. of Cor._ D. V, 467) speak for Field; while
Massinger, on the other hand, parallels
_His back
Appears to me as it would tire a beadle;_
with
_A man of resolution, whose shoulders
Are of themselves armour of proof, against
A bastinado, and will tire ten beadles._--C-G. 186 b;
and the phrase “to sit down with a disgrace” occurs something like a
dozen times on his pages, especially frequently in the collaborated
plays--that is to say, in the earlier period of his work, to which
_The Fatal Dowry_ belongs. It is probable, and not unnatural, that
the labors of the partners in composition overlapped on this bit of
the Scene, but metrical analysis claims with as much certainty as
can attach to this test in the case of so short a passage that it is
substantially Massinger’s, and should go rather with what preceeds than
with what comes after it, the verse being all one piece with that of
the former section. It has 37 per cent. double endings and 41 per cent.
run-on lines.
IV, i, opens with a prose passage for all the world like that of
_Woman is a Weathercock_, I, ii, with its picture of the dandy, his
parasites, and the pert page who forms a sort of chorus with his
caustic _asides_; and writes itself down indisputably as by the same
author. Novall Junior and his coterie appear here as in their former
presentation in II, ii. We have again the same racy comedy, the same
faltering of the vehicle between verse and prose (see ll. 61-8;
137-153). After the clearing of the stage of all save Romont and young
Novall, uninterrupted verse ensues, which, despite a rather notable
parallel in _The Beggars’ Bush_, D. IX, 9 to l. 174, is evidently
Field’s also. An analogue of ll. 180-1 is discoverable in _Amends
for Ladies_ (M. 421), as is of the reference (l. 197) to “fairies’
treasure” in _Woman is a Weathercock_ (M. 344). Novall’s exclamation
(l. 182), _Pox of this gun!_ and his retort (l. 201), _Good devil to
your rogueship!_ are Fieldian, and the entire passage possesses a
vigor and an easy naturalness which declare his authorship. It is not
improbable, however, that his contribution ends with the fragmentary
l. 207, and that the remaining four lines of the Scene are a Massinger
tag. _The Maid of Honour_ (C-G. 28 a) furnishes a striking parallel
for ll. 208-9, while for 210-1 cf. C-G. 192 a. The metrical tests for
IV, i, confirm Field: 22 per cent. double endings; 22 per cent. run-on
lines.
With the next Scene the hand of Massinger is once more in evidence with
all its accustomed manifestations. One interested in his duplication of
characteristic phrasing may refer for comparison ll. 13-4 to C-G. 299
b; l. 17 to C-G. 241 a; ll. 24-6 to C-G. 547 b; ll. 29-30 to C-G. 425
b; l. 57 to C-G. 41 b, 70 b; l. 94 to C-G. 182 b. The Scene contains 32
per cent. double endings and 37 per cent. run-on lines. The authorship
of its two songs is less certain. Field was more given to song-writing
than was Massinger, and the second of this pair is reminiscent in its
conception of the Grace Seldom episode in _Amends for Ladies_ (II, i).
The short IV, iii is by Massinger. In evidence of him are its 36 per
cent. of double endings and 55 per cent. of run-on lines, its involved
sentence structure, and the familiar phrasing which makes itself
manifest even in so brief a passage (e. g.: _To play the parasite_,
l. 7--cf. V, iii, 78 and C-G. 334 b. Cf. also ll. 9-10 with D. III,
476; and l. 22 with C-G. 40 b, 153 a, 262 b.).
The same dramatist’s work continues through the last Scene of the Act.
This, the emotional climax of the play, representing a quasi-judicial
procedure, affords him abundant opportunity for fervid moralizing and
speech-making, of which he takes advantage most typically. Massinger
commonplaces are l. 29, _Made shipwreck of your faith_ (cf. C-G. 55 b,
235 a, 414 b); l. 56, _In the forbidden labyrinth of lust_ (cf. C-G.
298 b); l. 89, _Angels guard me!_ (cf. C-G. 59 b, 475 b); l. 118-9,
_and yield myself Most miserably guilty_ (cf. C-G. 61 b, 66 b, 130
a; D. VI, 354); etc.; while within a year or so of the time when he
wrote referring to “those famed matrons” (l. 70), he expatiated upon
them in detail (see _The Virgin Martyr_, C-G. 33 a). Yet more specific
parallels may be found: for l. 63 cf. C-G. 179 a; ll. 76-7, cf. C-G. 28
a; l. 78, cf. C-G. 32 b; ll. 162-3, cf. C-G. 3 b, in a passage wherein
there is a certain similarity of situation; l. 177, cf. D. IX, 7.
Were any further confirmation needed for Massinger’s authorship, the
metrical tests would supply it, with their 36 per cent. double endings
and 34 per cent. run-on lines.
The most cursory reading of V, i is sufficient to establish the
conviction that its author is not identical with that of the earlier
comic passages--is not Field, but Massinger. The humor, such as it is,
is of a graver, more restrained sort--satiric rather than burlesque; it
has lost lightness and verve, and approaches to high-comedy and even
to moralizing. One feels that the confession of the tailor-gallant is
no mere fun-making devise, but a caustic attack upon social conditions
against which the writer nurtured a grudge. Massingerian are such
expressions as _And now I think on’t better_ (l. 77--cf. C-G. 57 b,
468 a, 615 a; D. XI, 28), and _use a conscience_ (l. 90--cf. C-G. 444
a, 453 a), while the metrical evidence of 36 per cent. double endings
and 29 per cent. run-on lines fortifies a case concerning which all
commentators are in agreement. But despite the unanimity of critical
opinion hitherto, I am not sure that Field did not contribute a minor
touch here and there to the Scene. Such contribution, if a fact, must
have been small, for the Massinger flavor is unmistakable throughout;
yet in the _Plague on’t!_ and the _’Slid!_, in the play upon words
(ll. 13-4, 20-1, 44), which is rare with Massinger and common with
Field, in the line, _I only know_ [_thee_] _now to hate thee deadly_:
(cf. _Amends for Ladies_, M. 421: _I never more Will hear or see thee,
but will hate thee deadly._), we may, perhaps, detect a hint of his
hand.
Scene ii (which in the Quarto ends with the reconciliation of Charalois
and Romont, the entry of Du Croy, Charmi, etc. being marked as the
beginning of a third Scene, though the place is unchanged and the
action continuous, wherefore modern editors disregard the Quarto’s
division and count Scene ii as including all the remainder of the Act)
presents the usual distinctive earmarks of a Massinger passage. The
last third of it, however (ll. 80-121), has, on account of the presence
of several rhymes, been commonly assigned to Field. No doubt his hand
is here discernable; l. 118, _mark’d me out the way how to defend it_,
is scarcely a Massinger construction either; but I cannot think Field’s
presence here more than that of a reviser, just as in the latter half
of I, ii. The language remains more Massinger’s than Field’s; and while
the passage is over-short for metrical tests to be decisive, the 39
per cent. of double endings and 35 per cent. of run-on lines which it
yields (for the earlier part of the Scene the figures are respectively
28 per cent. and 35 per cent.) are corroborative of Massinger’s
authorship. Cf. also ll. 96-8 with this from _The Renegado_ (C-G. 157
a):
_This applause
Confirm’d in your allowance, joys me more
Than if a thousand full-cramm’d theatres
Should clap their eager hands._
Of the final Scene, V, iii, little need be said. It brings before us
again a court-room, with another trial, and continues the manner of
its predecessor, I, ii, as only Massinger can. His customary formulae,
_stand bound_, _play the parasite_, etc., are here; characteristic too
are his opposition of _wanton heat_ and _lawful fires_ (ll. 141-2--cf.
C-G. 37 b; D. V. 476), while further material for comparison may be
found in ll. 95-6 with _Respect_, _wealth_, _favour_, _the whole world
for a dower_ of _The Virgin Martyr_ (C-G. 6 b), and in ll. 165-7:
Char. _You must find other proofs to strengthen these
But mere presumptions._
Du Croy _Or we shall hardly
Allow your innocence._
with C-G. 39 a and b:
_You must produce
Reasons of more validity and weight
To plead in your defence, or we shall hardly
Conclude you innocent._
The last passage cited for comparison also exhibits another feature
normal to the work of this dramatist: the splitting of an observation,
frequently a single sentence, between two speakers; so ll. 38-9, and
again, l. 59. The Scene and play are rounded off with the pointing of a
moral, so indispensable to Massinger’s satisfaction.
To sum up, therefore, disregarding for practical purposes the slight
touches of Field in I, ii, ll. 146-_end_; III, i, ll. 317-343; V, ii,
ll. 80-_end_; and perhaps in V, i;--and the apparent Massinger touches
in IV, i, and possibly at one or two other points in the Field Scenes,
we may divide the play as follows:
MASSINGER: I; III, ll. 1-343; IV, ii, iii, iv; V.
FIELD: II; III, ll. 344-_end_; IV, i.
A metrical analysis of the play is appended in tabular form, in
which I have computed separately the figures for each portion of any
Scene on which there has been a question. It will be noted that the
single simple test of the mid-line speech-ending would, with but two
exceptions--one (III, i, c) doubtful, and the other (V, ii, b) too
short a passage to afford a fair test--have made a clean-cut and
correct determination of authorship in every case.
A = Scene
B = Prose Lines
C = Verse Lines
D = Double Endings
E = Per Cent.
F = Run-on Lines
G = Per Cent.
H = Fragmentary Lines
I = Rhymed Lines
J = Speeches Ending in Mid-line
K = Speeches Ending with Line
L = Author
==========+====+=====+=====+====+====+====+===+====+====+====+=========
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L
----------+----+-----+-----+----+----+----+---+----+----+----+---------
I, i | -- | 196 | 64 | 33 | 56 | 29 | 1 | 2 | 42 | 22 |Massinger
I, ii (a) | -- | 145 | 64 | 45 | 48 | 33 | 1 | 2 | 25 | 14 |Massinger
I, ii (b) | -- | 158 | 57 | 36 | 57 | 36 | 0 | 12 | 30 | 16 |Massinger
| | | | | | | | | | |(Field
| | | | | | | | | | |revision)
II, i | -- | 145 | 29 | 20 | 22 | 15 | 4 | 16 | 19 | 17 |Field
II, ii | 82 | 273 | 57 | 21 | 52 | 19 | 9 | 12 | 47 | 50 |Field
III, i (a)| -- | 316 | 142 | 45 |114 | 36 | 1 | 2 | 67 | 29 |Massinger
III, i (b)| -- | 27 | 10 | 37 | 11 | 41 | 3 | 0 | 13 | 6 |Massinger
| | | | | | | | | | |(with
| | | | | | | | | | |Field?)
III, i (c)| -- | 161 | 28 | 17 | 45 | 28 | 0 | 10 | 19 | 11 |Field
IV, i | 88 | 124 | 27 | 22 | 27 | 22 | 4 | 6 | 26 | 24 |Field
IV, ii | -- | 104 | 33 | 32 | 38 | 37 | 2 | 2 | 24 | 10 |Massinger
IV, iii | -- | 22 | 8 | 36 | 12 | 55 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 |Massinger
IV, iv | -- | 195 | 71 | 36 | 67 | 34 | 0 | 6 | 32 | 8 |Massinger
V, i | -- | 107 | 38 | 36 | 31 | 29 | 1 | 2 | 16 | 5 |Massinger
V, ii (a) | -- | 80 | 22 | 28 | 27 | 34 | 0 | 2 | 17 | 2 |Massinger
V, ii (b) | -- | 41 | 15 | 37 | 14 | 35 | 0 | 8 | 3 | 3 |Massinger
| | | | | | | | | | |(Field
| | | | | | | | | | |revision)
V, iii | -- | 229 | 98 | 43 | 50 | 22 | 0 | 4 | 34 | 19 |Massinger
----------+----+-----+-----+----+----+----+---+----+----+----+---------
CRITICAL ESTIMATE
No less an authority than Swinburne has pronounced _The Fatal Dowry_
the finest tragedy in the Massinger _corpus_. Certainly it would be
the most formidable rival of _The Duke of Milan_ for that distinction.
It occupies an anomalous position among the works of the “stage
poet.” His dramas are, as a rule, strongest in construction; he
went at play-making like a skillful architect, and put together and
moulded his material with steady hand. They are likely to be weakest
in characterization. Massinger could not get inside his figures and
endow them with the breath of life; they remain stony shapes chiseled
in severely angular and conventional lines, like some old Egyptian
bas-relief. But _The Fatal Dowry_ is strong in characterization and
defective in construction.
The structural fault is less surprising when it is ascertained to be
fundamental--inevitable in the theme. The play breaks in the middle:
it is really composed of two stories; the first two Acts present and
resolve one action, while another, hitherto barely presaged, occupies
the last three, and is the proper story of the Fatal Dowry. Charalois’
self-immolation for the corpse of his heroic father, and his rescue
and reward by the great-hearted Rochfort, form a little play in
themselves--a brief but stately tragi-comedy, which is followed by
a tense drama of intrigue and retribution, of adultery and avenged
honor--itself complete in itself, for which we are prepared in the
first two Acts only by one figure, whose potentialities for disaster
are ominous if not obvious:--Beaumelle, of whom more later. This
plot-building by _enjambment_ precludes the slow, steady mounting of
suspense from the initial moment and inexorable gathering of doom which
are manifested in a well-conceived tragedy; yet crude, amorphous,
inorganic as it may seem--defying, as it does, unity of action--like
as it is to the earliest Elizabethan plays, which were concerned
with a single career rather than a single theme, it would appear
inevitably necessary, if a maximum effect is to be gained from the
given plot-material. Just as Wagner found it impossible to do justice
to the story of Siegfried without first presenting that of Siegmund
and Sieglinde, so the experiment of Rowe (who in re-working the story
for _The Fair Penitent_ relegated to expository dialogue the narration
of what corresponds to the first two Acts of _The Fatal Dowry_) sadly
demonstrated that unless the reader or audience actually sees, and
not merely hears about, Charalois’ previous devotion, Rochfort’s
generosity, and Romont’s loyalty, these characters do not attract to
themselves a full measure of sympathy, and the story of their later
vicissitudes is somehow unconvincing and falls flat.
Massinger and Field accepted frankly the structural awkwardness of
their plot as they had fashioned or found it. Making, apparently, no
attempt to obviate its essential duality, they went to work in the most
straightforward manner, and achieved, thanks in no small measure to
that same resolute directness of approach, a drama of so naturalistic
a tone as half to redeem its want of unity. _The Fatal Dowry_ is not
an Aristotelian tragedy with a definite beginning, middle, and end--it
is rather a cross-section of life. The unconventionality and vitality
of such a production are startling, and obtain a high degree of
verisimilitude.
Both authors seem to have been themselves inspired by their virile
theme to give to it their best work. The stately, somewhat monotonous
verse of Massinger, which never loses dignity and is so incapable of
expressing climaxes of passion, is once or twice almost forgotten,
or else rises to a majesty which transfigures it. Though forensic
declamation was always the especial forte of this dramatist, he
literally out-did himself in his management of the suit for the dead
Marshal’s body. The elaborate rhetoric of Charmi, checked by the stern
harshness of Novall Senior, the indignant outburst of Romont, and the
sad, yet noble calmness of Charalois’ speech in which he presses the
forlorn alternative, succeed one another with striking contrast; the
very flow of the verse changes with the speaker in a manner which
recalls the wonderful employment of this device by Shakespeare, as, for
example, in the First Act of _Othello_. In the final Scene of Act IV,
Massinger achieves a climax worthy of Fletcher himself;--save, perhaps,
the _denouement_ of _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_, and the great scene
in _The Duke of Milan_ in which Sforza’s faith in his Duchess is broken
down by aspersion after aspersion, until he slays her, only to learn
the terrible truth one instant later, it is the most dramatic situation
he ever worked up. Field, too, seems to have been on his mettle: his
verse is more trenchant, his care greater than in his two earlier
comedies; the lines (II, i, 126-7)
_My root is earthed, and I a desolate branch
Left scattered in the highway of the world,_
touch the high-water mark of his poetic endeavor.
Blemishes, indeed, are not unapparent. The episodic first Scene of Act
V is a rather stupid piece of pseudo-comedy by Massinger, which serves
no function adequate to justify its existence, while it interrupts the
thread of the main story at a point where its culminating intensity
does not, of right, permit such a diversion. Gifford in commenting upon
this Scene makes the amazing pronouncement that it serves “to prove
how differently the comic part of this drama would have appeared, if
the whole had fortunately fallen into the hands of Massinger.” Surely
never was criticism more fatuous.
But the most serious--indeed, the outstanding--defect of the play
is the easy readiness of Charalois to break with Romont. The calm,
unregretful placidity with which he untwists the long web of friendship
with a man who has stood by him through weal and woe, who has courted a
prison’s chains for his sake, shocks us, and repels us with its flinty
self-sufficiency. It is not that we know him to be wrong and Romont
to be right; suppose the high faith of Charalois in Beaumelle to be
entirely justified and the charge of Romont to be as groundless as it
is wildly delivered and unconvincing, yet there is no excuse for the
_immediacy_ with which, on the first revelation of what he himself
has demanded to know, the hero rejects, along with the report of his
friend, the friend himself, whose aim could have been only his best
interest. For the fault lies not in the situation, which is sound, but
in its over-hasty development. A little more length to the scene, a few
more speeches to either participant in the dialogue, a little longer
and more vituperative insistence on the part of Romont in the face
of Charalois’ warnings that he has gone far enough, and the quarrel
would have been thoroughly realized and developed. As it is, it comes
on insufficient provocation; the hero, at the moment when he should
excite regret and sympathy because of his blind, mistaken trust in his
unworthy wife, excites rather indignation; the later words of Romont
with which he justifies his unshaken loyalty to his comrade turn back
the mind perforce to that comrade’s lack of loyalty to _him_, and
unwittingly ring out as a judgment upon Charalois:
_That friendship’s raised on sand,
Which every sudden gust of discontent,
Or flowing of our passions can change,
As if it ne’er had been:_--
The faulty passage, it will be noted upon reference to the analysis
of shares in collaboration, is by the hand of Field. Unconvincing
precipitancy in the conduct of situations marks his work elsewhere,
notably in the _Amends for Ladies_.
As it has already been said, the strongest feature of the play is its
characterization. Almost every figure is, if not an individual, at
least a type so vitalized as to appear to take on life. One or two
touches, to be sure, of conventional Massingerian habits of thought
still cling about them; even the noblest cannot entirely forget to
consider how their conduct will pose them before the eyes of the world
and posterity. But apart from such slight occasional lapses, they may
truthfully be said to speak and move quite in the manner of real men
and women.
The hero, Charalois, is drawn as of a gentle, meditative, temperate,
and self-possessed disposition, in strong and effective contrast to his
friend. Though his military exploits are spoken of with admiration, and
Romont testifies that he can “pursue a foe like lightning,” he betrays
a certain readiness to yield to discouragement scarce to be expected
in the son of the great general. In consequence of these facts, he has
been described by some (notably Cunningham, in his Edition of Gifford,
Introduction, p. xiii;--cf. also Phelan, p. 61; and Beck, pp. 22-3) as
“a Hamlet whose mind has not yet been sicklied o’er by the pale cast
of thought,” and his long silence at the opening of Act I is compared
to that of the Danish Prince on his first appearance. But, in reality,
excess of pride is the chief reason of Charalois’ backwardness on this
occasion, and thereafter he acts promptly and efficiently always. The
same over-sensitive pride continues to manifest itself throughout
the play--when he is confronted with Rochfort’s generosity; when he
finds (III, i, 365 ff.) that it is he who is the object of the jests
of Novall Junior and his satellites (though scarce a breath earlier
he has chided Romont for noticing the yapping of such petty curs);
and in the viscissitudes of the catastrophe and its consequences. A
harmonious twin-birth with his pride, at once proceeding from it, bound
up with it, and on occasion over-weighing its scruples, is an extreme
punctiliousness at every turn to the dictates of that peculiarly
Spanish imperative, “the point of honor,”--a consideration so prominent
throughout the play as to have convinced many critics that the source
of the story, although still undiscovered, must have been Spanish.
These two traits--pride and an adherence to “the point of honor,” are
almost invariably the mainsprings of Charalois’ conduct. His pride
holds him back from supplicating in behalf of his father the clemency
of the unworthy ministers of the law, till he is persuaded by Romont
that honor not only permits but requires that he do so; he feels
that honor demands that he sacrifice himself to secure his father’s
burial, and he does it; that honor demands that he put away his friend
in loyalty to his wife, and he does it; that honor demands that he
slay the adulteress--and he does it; he even consents to lay bare the
details of his ignominious wrong before the eyes of men, because he is
brought to believe that “the point of honor” calls for a justification
of his course and the holding of it up as an example to the world.
It is a striking and consistent portrait--how unlike the usual
conventionally noble hero of romantic drama!
Romont, however, is the finest figure of the play. He draws to
himself rather more than his share of interest and sympathy, to the
detriment of the protagonist. Of a type common enough on the stage
of that day--the bluff, loyal soldier-friend of the hero--he is yet
so thoroughly individualized that we can discuss him and calculate
what he will do in given situations, even as with a character of
Shakespeare’s. The portrait suffers from no jarring inconsistencies;
almost his every utterance is absolutely in part, and adds its touch
to round out our conception of him. His negligence of his personal
appearance, his quick temper, his impulsiveness, his violence, his
lack of restraint, his fierce, uncompromising honesty, his devotion
to the “grave General dead” and his unshaken fidelity to the living
son, his flashes of unexpected tenderness, his homage for the
reverend virtue of Rochfort--a sort of child-like awe for what he
knows is finer if not of truer metal than his own rough spirit, his
ill-disguised scorn for Novall Junior and his creatures, “those dogs
in doublets,” his lack of tact which unfits him for effective service
in the delicate task of preserving Beaumelle’s honor, and dooms his
story to Charalois to disbelief and resentment, his prompt, fearless
decisiveness of action, the tumultuous flood of nervous and at times
eloquent speech which pours from his lips when he is aroused, yet
dies in his throat when he is lashed by a woman’s tongue--a flood of
speech which is most torrential when the situation is most doubtful
or hopeless of good issue, but which gives place to a self-possessed
terseness when he is quite sure of his ground:--all go to give detail
and reality to a character at once amazingly alive and irresistibly
attractive. “Romont is one of the noblest of all Massinger’s men,”
says Swinburne, “and Shakespeare has hardly drawn noble men more nobly
than Massinger.” To find a parallel creation who can over-match him in
vigor of presentation and theatrical efficiency, we must go back to the
Melantius of Beaumont and Fletcher. These two characters represent the
ultimate elaborations of the stock figure of the faithful friend and
blunt soldier; Melantius is the supreme romantic, Romont the supreme
realistic, development of the type.
Yet though Romont is the most compelling of the _dramatis personae_,
into none does Massinger enter more thoroughly than the noble figure of
Rochfort. Utter devotion to virtue, to which he had paid a life-long
fidelity, is the key-note of the nature of the aged Premier President,
and accordingly in him the deep-seated ethical seriousness of the
“stage-poet” found a congenial expression. A statelier dignity is wont
to echo in his lines than in the utterance of any other character; they
breathe an exalted calm, a graciousness, a grave courtesy, as though
the very spirit of their speaker had entered them.
An inability to judge the character of others was his great weakness--a
weakness which he himself realized, for he called upon Beaumont to
confirm the one strikingly sure, true appraisement which he exhibited,
his admiration for Charalois. Characteristically, this weakness seems
to have taken the form of a too-generous estimate of his fellows. This
caused him to bestow his vacated office upon the harsh and unjust
Novall, and to be blind to the disposition of his daughter, and the
danger that lay in her intimacy with Novall Junior. But if his kindly
nature saw the better side of even that contemptible young man, he at
least understood him well enough not to take him at all seriously as a
suitor for Beaumelle’s hand.
Of the Novalls, father and son, there is a much briefer presentation.
Yet even so, in the case of old Novall we have as masterly a sketch
as in Romont a detailed study. His every word is eloquent of his
stern, not to say _mean_, nature--curt and severe towards others, all
prejudice where he himself is concerned, inexorably malevolent against
those who incur his animosity. Yet it never enters his head to seek the
satisfaction of his hate in any way save through the law; for example,
he does not seize upon, or even think seriously of, Pontalier’s proffer
of private vengeance; the law is his sphere--he will abuse it to his
advantage, if he can, but he will not go outside of it. He is, in other
words, the Official Bureaucrat _par excellence_, and his enmity against
the martial house of the Charaloises and the rigor with which he is
said to “cross every deserved soldier and scholar,” and, on the other
hand, the detestation in which Romont holds him, are manifestations of
the feud of type against type. It has been suggested that the especial
fervor with which he is devoted to execration argues a prototype in
actual life, and that in him is to be recognized Sir Edward Coke,
notorious for the savage vindictiveness of his conduct towards Sir
Walter Raleigh.
Novall Junior, the cowardly, foppish, and unscrupulous gallant, though
a flimsy personality, affords once or twice, in the Fieldian prose,
rather good humor: e. g.--
_Nay, o’ my soul, ’tis so; what fouler object in the world, than to see
a young, fair, handsome beauty unhandsomely dighted, and incongruently
accoutred? or a hopeful chevalier unmethodically appointed in the
external ornaments of nature? For, even as the index tells us the
contents of stories, and directs to the particular chapters, even so
does the outward habit and superficial order of garments (in man or
woman) give us a taste of the spirit, and demonstratively point (as
it were a manual note from the margin) all the internal quality and
habiliment of the soul; and there cannot be a more evident, palpable,
gross manifestation of poor, degenerate, dunghilly blood and breeding,
than a rude, unpolished, disordered, and slovenly outside._ (IV, i,
48-60.)
Of the remaining characters, only two call for especial notice.
The three Creditors are a blemish upon the otherwise striking
verisimilitude of the play; they are impossible, inhuman monsters of
greed and relentlessness, who serve as vehicles for a kind of grotesque
comedy. A personal rancour on the part of the authors may have been
responsible for this presentation, as it is probable that they
themselves had had none-too-pleasant experiences with money-lenders.
Pontalier, however, is very well conceived and skillfully executed.
Occupying a relation to Novall Junior quite similar to that of Romont
to Charalois, he is yet differentiated from his parallel, while at
the same time he is kept free from any taint of the despicableness
and fawning servility which are chiefly prominent in the parasites of
the vicious and feather-brained young lord. There is something really
pathetic about this brave, honorable soldier, committed to the defense
of an unworthy benefactor, ranged on the side of wrong against right,
by his very best qualities: his noble sense of gratitude, his loyalty,
his devotion to what he conceives to be his duty. It will be observed
that he never joins with the rest of the group about Novall Junior in
their jibes against Charalois and Romont.
The last figure for consideration, and not the least important, is
Beaumelle. So general has been the misconception of her character that
it calls for a more detailed analysis than has been accorded to the
other personages of the drama, or than the place she occupies might
appear to warrant. That place, indeed, is not a striking one; she is
scarce more than a character of second rank, appearing in but few
scenes and speaking not many lines. Yet her part in the story is one
of such potentialities that in Rowe’s version of the same theme her
analogue becomes the central figure, and even in _The Fatal Dowry_ a
failure to understand her has probably been at the bottom of most of
the less favorable judgments that have been passed upon the play, while
those critics who appraise it higher yet acknowledge her to be its
one outstanding defect. “_The Fatal Dowry_,” says Saintsbury (_Hist.
Eng. Lit._, vol. ii, p. 400) “... is ... injured by the unattractive
character of the light-of-love Beaumelle before her repentance
(Massinger never could draw a woman).” She is declared by Swinburne to
be “too thinly and feebly drawn to attract even the conventional and
theatrical sympathy which Fletcher might have excited for a frail and
penitent heroine: and the almost farcical insignificance and baseness
of her paramour would suffice to degrade his not involuntary victim
beneath the level of any serious interest or pity.” If these and
similar pronouncements were well founded, the play as a cross-section
of life would have the great weakness of being unconvincing at a very
vital point. A study of the text, however, will discover Beaumelle
to be portrayed, in the brief compass of her appearance, in no
wise inadequately, but rather, if anything, somewhat beyond the
requirements of her dramatic function--will reveal her, not, indeed,
a personage of heroic proportions and qualities, but a young woman of
considerable naturalness, plausibility, and realistic convincingness.
The trouble has probably been that the critics of Beaumelle have
passed hastily over the very scurrilous prose scene in which she first
appears. They have looked on this passage as merely a piece of Fieldian
low-comedy, a coarse bit of buffoonery which pretends to no function
save that of humor, and can sustain not even this pretense. Nothing can
be further from the truth. The passage _is_ a piece of coarse comedy
such as Field had an over-fondness for writing; but it is something
more; in reality, a proper understanding of the heroine is conditioned
upon it.
Beaumelle is a young girl whose mother, we may infer, has long been
dead. The cares of the bench have been too great to allow her father
time for much personal supervision of her; she has had for associates
her two maids, and of these she not unnaturally finds the gay and
witty, but thoroughly depraved, Bellapert the more congenial, and
adopts her as her mentor and confidant. She is in love, after a
fashion--caught, like the impressionable, uncritical girl she is, by
the fair exterior of a young magnificent, whose elegant dress and
courtly show of devotion quite blind her to his real worthlessness--and
there is scant likelihood of her getting the man who has charmed
her fancy. Her disposition is high-spirited and wayward, but not
deliberately vicious; she has certain hazily defined ideals, mingled
with the same romantic mist through which the superfine dandy, Novall,
appears in her eyes a very Prince Charming: she “would meet love and
marriage both at once”; she desires to preserve her honor. She has
ideals, but she doubts their tangibility; she is in an unsettled
state of mind, questioning the fundamentals of conduct and social
relationships, in much need of good counsel. In that perilous mood
she talks with Bellapert--Bellapert, the dearest cabinet of her
secrets--Bellapert, the bribed instrument of Novall--and is told
by that worldly-wise wench that marriage almost never unites with
love, but must be used as a cloak for it; that honor is a foolish
fancy; that a husband is a master to be outwitted and despised. The
shaft sinks home all too surely; a visit at that very moment by
Beaumelle’s lover completes the conquest, when her father interrupts
their tete-a-tete--her father, who comes with the anouncement that
she must marry a man whom she does not even know! In the scene where
the destined bride and groom are brought face to face, she stands
throughout in stony silence quite as eloquent as the more famous
speechlessness of Charalois at the beginning of the play. She has
ever been “handmaid” to her father’s will; she realizes all her hopes
and fortunes “have reference to his liking;” and now she obeys, with
the bitter thought in her heart that Fate, in denying her her will,
has wronged Love itself (II, ii, 154); only when Charalois turns to
her with a direct question, “Fair Beaumelle, can you love me?” does
she utter a word--then from her lips a brief, desperate, “Yes, my
lord”--and a moment later (II, ii, 315) she is weeping silently. (Her
answer was honest in as far as she really did mean to give to the man
chosen for her husband her duty with her hand.) Then the voice of the
tempter whispers in her ear, she feels its tug at her heart, and with a
cry, “Oh, servant!--Virtue strengthen me!” she hurries from the room.
That is the situation at the end of the Second Act and first part of
the play; an appreciation of its significance makes the connection with
what follows less arbitrary and inorganic.
When Beaumelle next appears, in the Third Act, there has been a change.
We may imagine that she has had time to ponder those cynical maxims
of Bellapert on the natural course of romance. Her union has been
unwilling; she does not care for her husband; Novall appeals to her as
much as ever: with her eyes open, she deliberately chooses the path of
sin--because the enforced marriage which shattered her hopes must needs
appear to her the final demonstration of the correctness of her maid’s
contention (towards which she was already inclining) that she has been
foolishly impractical to dream of the satisfaction of her heart’s wish
through wedlock, but that it is by secret amour that love must be, and
is wont to be, enjoyed.
It may not be unreasonable to regard the resourcefulness and effrontery
which characterize her throughout the Third Act as the result of a sort
of mental intoxication, into which she has been lifted by her reckless
resolve and the consciousness of danger; at any rate she now shows
herself altogether too much for Romont; she finds a shrewdness and an
eloquence that carry her triumphant to the consummation of her desire.
When discovery ensues, her paramour is slain, and she herself is haled
to die, she is overcome--abruptly and, one might say, strangely--with
remorse and penitence. But it is not at all by one of those
theatrically convenient but psychologically absurd changes of heart so
frequent in the drama of that period; nothing, indeed, could be more
true to life. Novall Junior, coward and fop that he was, has hitherto
always borne himself in lordly fashion before her, even when they were
surprised by Romont; but now at last she beholds him stripped to the
shivering abjectness of his contemptible soul, that she may observe
his baseness. She sees him cowed and beaten and slain, while Charalois
(whom she never knew before their marriage nor has tried to understand
in the brief period of their wedlock) with his outraged honor and
irresistible prowess assumes to her eyes the proportions of a hero; and
with her girl’s romanticism[10] of nature, she bows down and worships
him. It is somewhat the same note that is struck by Thackeray in the
similar situation where Rawdon Crawley, returning home unexpectedly,
finds his wife with Lord Steyne and knocks the man down.
_It was all done before Rebecca could interpose. She stood there
trembling before him. She admired her husband, strong, brave,
victorious._
So it was with Beaumelle. Except for one brief cry of “Undone for
ever!” she utters no word from the moment of the surprise to the end
of the Scene. She hangs back, shrinking, for a moment, when ordered
into the coach with the dead body of her partner in guilt. “Come,” says
Charalois, in terrible jest, “you have taught me to say, you must and
shall.... You are but to keep him company you love--” and she obeys
mutely.
Thus, all contriteness, Beaumelle goes to her fate. It should be
observed how, even at the last, her tendency to romantic idealization
vehemently asserts itself; she looks fondly back (IV, iv, 53) to an
imagined time, which never really existed, when she was “good” and “a
part of” Charalois, made one with him through the virtuous harmony of
their minds!--no voice is more unfaltering than her own to pronounce
her doom as both righteous and necessary, and she conceives herself
to climb, by her ecstatic welcoming of death, into the company of the
ancient heroines and martyrs. In its realism of the commonplace and its
slightly ironic conception, it is the outline drawing of a character
that might have received elaborate portraiture at the hands of Flaubert.
Whether we are to regard this consistent “study in little” as a
deliberate piece of work on the part of the authors, must remain a
matter of opinion. There is no similar figure elsewhere in the dramatic
output of Massinger, nor any quite so minutely conceived within the
same number of speech-lines in that of Field, and one could scarce
be blamed for believing that a number of hap-hazard, sketchy strokes
with which the collaborators dashed off a character whom they deemed
of no great importance, all so fell upon the canvas that, by a miracle
of chance, they went to form the lineaments of a real woman. The
discussion of the probability or possibility of such a hypothesis would
carry us very far afield, and would involve the question of the extent
to which all genius is unconscious and intuitive. But however that may
be, the _result_ of their labors remains the same, there to behold in
black and white, and Beaumelle, so far from being a poorly conceived
and unsatisfactory wanton who is the chief defect of the play, is
a figure of no mean verisimilitude who succeeds after a fashion in
linking together the loose-knit dual structure of the drama; to whose
main catastrophe she adds her own tragedy, a tragedy neither impressive
nor deeply stirring, it is true, for she is a petty spirit from whom
great tragedy does not proceed--but tragedy still--the eternal,
inevitable tragedy of false romanticism, that has found its culmination
in the person of Emma Bovary.
In this study of Beaumelle, _The Fatal Dowry_ has been subjected to
a much more intensive examination than it is the custom to bestow
upon the dramas of the successors of Shakespeare. The truth is that
the plays of the Jacobean period do not, as a rule, admit of such
analysis. In most of them, and especially in the plays of Massinger, he
who searches and probes them comes presently to a point beyond which
critical inquiry is stopped short with a desperate finality; be they
ever so strikingly splendid and glittering fair in their poetry and
their characterization, these dazzling qualities lie upon the surface,
and a few careful perusals exhaust their possibilities and tell us all
there is to know of them. But _The Fatal Dowry_, though less imposing
than a number of others, stands almost alone among its contemporaries
in sharing with the great creations of Shakespeare the power to open
new vistas, to present new aspects, to offer new suggestions, the
longer it is studied. Perhaps this is due to the fact that, as has
already been said, it is not so much a tragedy of the accepted type as
a cross-section of life.
How does it come about, we may well ask, that this play possesses
qualities so rare and so strangely at variance with those which are
normal to the work of Massinger--its masterly portrait-gallery of
_dramatis personae_ and its inexhaustible field for interpretation. We
can suspect an answer only in the complementary nature of the two minds
that went to fashion it--in the union in this one production of the
talents of Massinger and of Field.
A reference to the analysis of collaboration discloses that, so far
as the actual writing of the play goes, the figure of Novall Senior
is altogether the work of Massinger. His son, on the other hand, is
almost entirely the work of Field; in Massinger’s share he appears only
in the first part of III, i, and in the scene of his surprisal and
death. Indeed, both the young gallant himself and all his satellites
can safely be put down as creations of the actor-dramatist. They have
their parallels in his comedy of _Woman is a Weathercock_, down to the
page whose pert _asides_ of satiric comment are anticipated in the
earlier work by those of a youngster of identical kidney. The long
scene in which we are introduced to Beaumelle and given insight into
her character and mental attitude is Field’s throughout; thereafter she
has only to act out her already-revealed nature--first as the impudent
adulteress and later as the repentant sinner, in both of which roles
she affords Massinger excellent opportunities to display his favorite
powers of speech-making. Charalois, Romont, and Rochfort are treated at
length by both dramatists.
But in a harmonious collaboration, such as _The Fatal Dowry_ plainly
was, the contributions of the two authors cannot be identified with the
passages from their respective pens. Each must inevitably have planned,
suggested, criticised. The question remains whether we can in any
measure determine what part of the conception was due to each. Beyond
the Novall Junior group we cannot establish distinct lines of cleavage.
What we can do is to suggest the features of the finished product which
Field and Massinger brought severally to its making--to point out the
qualities of the two men which were joined to produce the play they
have given us.
The outstanding excellences of Massinger were a thorough grasp of the
architectonics of play-making in the building both of separate Act
and entire drama; an adherence to an essential unity of design and
treatment; a conscientious regard to the details of stage-craft; a
vehicle of dignified and at times noble verse, without violent conceits
or lapses into triviality, sustained, lucid, regular; and a genuine
eloquence in forensic passages. His chief weaknesses were a certain
stiffness of execution which made his plays appear always as structures
rather than organisms, a ponderous monotony of fancy, and an inability
to create or reproduce or understand human nature. His characters are
normally types, their qualities--honor, virtue, bravery, etc.--mere
properties which they can assume or lay aside at pleasure like
garments, their conduct governed more by the exigencies of plot than by
any conceivable psychology.
The weaknesses of Field--as revealed in his two independent
comedies--were of a nature more evasive, less capable of definition. A
tendency to weave too many threads into the action, an occasional hasty
and skimping treatment of his scenes which leaves them unconvincing
for lack of sufficient elaboration, and a general thinness of design
and workmanship are discoverable. Defects such as these could be
readily corrected by association with the single-minded, painstaking,
thorough Massinger. On the other hand he possessed a lightness of
touch, a blithe vigor, and a racy, though often obscene, humor foreign
to his colleague. What is more important, he possessed a considerable
first-hand knowledge of men and women, and an ability to put them in
his plays and endow them with something of life--not to conceive great
figures, such as dominate the imagination, but to reproduce with
vitality and freshness the sort of people he saw about him--in other
words, not to create but to depict; and furthermore Field seems to
have had a special gift for sketching them rather clearly in a very
brief compass.[11] Mr. Saintsbury was right in declaring that Massinger
never could draw a woman. But Field could, and the critic was rather
unfortunate in applying his broadly correct observation to the one
woman of Massinger’s in the delineation of whom he had Field to help
him!
With these facts in mind, the distinctive virtues of _The Fatal Dowry_
can be accounted for. Massinger here possessed a colleague who had
just those talents of insight and verve and grasp of life that were
denied his own plodding, bookishly learned mind. Not only young Novall
and his satellites, but Beaumelle certainly, and probably Pontalier
(whom Massinger would have been more likely to degrade to the baseness
of Novall’s other dependents) may be put down as essentially Field’s
creations, while in the case of the others he was ever at Massinger’s
elbow to guard him against blunders, if, indeed, their preliminary
mapping out of the rather obvious lines along which the action and
characters must develop were not of itself a sufficiently sure guide.
To Massinger, on the other hand, may safely be ascribed the basic
conception of such stately figures as Charalois and Rochfort, however
much Field may have been responsible for preserving them as fresh and
living portraits.
As to share in plot structure, in the absence of any known source,
we may conjecture that the germ from which the play evolved was the
conception of that situation by which Charalois, burdened as he is with
an immense debt of thankfulness to Rochfort, finds himself suddenly
called by the imperative demands of honor to do that which will
strike his benefactor to the heart. The grounding of the hero’s debt
of gratitude in the story of Miltiades and Cimon was probably the work
of Massinger, of whose veneration for things classic we have abundant
evidence, while to him also, we may believe, was due the shaping of the
story in such fashion that he had opportunity to exploit his greatest
gift in no less than two formal trials, one informal trial, and a
long Act besides given over almost exclusively to verbose disputes
and exhortations. The circumstances of the discovery of the amour of
Beaumelle and Novall, while penned by Massinger, are more likely an
invention of Field’s, not only as faintly reminiscent of his _Amends
for Ladies_, but as according better with the general spirit of his
work.
Several plays of the Massinger _corpus_ are more striking on first
acquaintance than _The Fatal Dowry_, and yet others surpass it in
regard to this feature or that. It has not the gigantic protagonist
of _A New Way to Pay Old Debts_, or the admirable structure of that
fine play, which works with ever-cumulating intensity to one final,
tremendous climax. It has not the impressiveness of _The Duke of
Milan_, or its sheer sweep of tragic passion and breathless intensity,
or anything so compelling as its great scene of gathering jealousy
that breaks forth at last in murder. Its verse is less poetic than
that of _The Maid of Honor_; it lacks the charm of _The Great Duke of
Florence_, and the ethical fervor of _The Roman Actor_. But in utter
reality, in convincing simulation of life, which holds good under the
most exhaustive study and makes that study forever continue to yield
new suggestions and new appreciations, and in abundance and inherent
truthfulness of detailed characterization, it stands alone, and these
sterling qualities must so outweigh its defects as to insure for it a
high place, not only among the productions of its authors, but among
the plays of the Jacobean Period as a whole.
STAGE HISTORY--ADAPTATIONS--DERIVATIVES
Beyond the statement on the title-page of the 1632 Quarto, that
_The Fatal Dowry_ had been “often acted at the Private House in
Blackfriars by his Majesties Servants,” nothing is known of its
early stage history. It was not revived after the Restoration, and
until the publication of the Coxeter edition of Massinger seems to
have been almost unknown. At last, in 1825, an emended version was
placed upon the boards by no less an actor than the great Macready.
January 5 of that year was the date, and Drury Lane the place, of
its initial performance, Macready himself taking the part of Romont,
Wallack--Charalois, Terry--Rochfort, and Mrs. W. West--Beaumelle. “The
play was well acted and enthusiastically applauded,” says Macready in
his _Reminiscences_ (p. 228); “its repetition for the following Tuesday
was hailed most rapturously; but Friday[12] came, and with it a crowded
house, to find me laboring under such indisposition that it was with
difficulty I could keep erect without support.” Macready’s serious
illness cut short the run of the play, and when he was at length (April
11) able to take it up again, the interest of the public had abated,
and it in consequence was repeated only a few times--seven being the
total number of its performances.
The variant of _The Fatal Dowry_ in which Macready acted was the work
of Sheil, and involved substantial divergences. Romont’s release from
prison follows immediately upon Novall Senior’s consent to his pardon,
and in consequence, together with his conversation with Rochfort, is
transferred from Act II to the close of Act I, while the redemption of
Charalois takes place at the funeral of his father, which concludes
Act II. For the scene between Beaumelle and her maids is substituted
another coloquy of similar import but chastened tone. A brief scene
of no especial significance is inserted at the beginning of Act III,
in the interval between which and the preceding Act three weeks
are supposed to have elapsed; the rest of Act III follows much the
same course as the original, save that the application of Romont to
Rochfort and his foiling by the stratagem of Beaumelle and Bellapert
are omitted. A really notable departure is found in the discovery of
the amour by Charalois. According to Sheil, Novall Junior and his
mistress attempt to elope, but the note which appoints their rendezvous
falls into Charalois’ hands, and he waits for the lovers and surprises
them, killing Novall off-stage. The Fifth Act opens with a scene of
a few lines only, in which Beaumont bears to Rochfort a request from
Charalois to meet him in the church yard. Then follows a lugubrious
scene in the dead of night beside the tomb of the hero’s father,
to which place are transferred the reconciliation between Charalois
and Romont, and the judgment of Rochfort! Beaumelle, however, does
not appear during the trial, and upon the paternal sentence of doom,
Charalois reveals her body, slain already by his hand. To the father
he vindicates his action in much the same words as in Massinger’s
last court-room scene, and then, on the appearance of Novall Senior
clamoring for vengeance and accompanied by the minions of the law,
stabs himself.
The version of Sheil follows with but occasional exceptions the
language of the original wherever possible. It makes some slight
changes in the minor characters.
Sheil’s redaction was also presented at Bath on February 18 and 21,
Romont being acted by Hamblin, Charalois by Warde, Beaumelle by Miss E.
Tree. “Hamblin never appeared to so much advantage--in the scene with
Novall he reminded one strongly of John Kemble,” says Genest (_Hist.
Dra. and Stage in Eng._, IX, 322).
At Sadler’s Wells, Samuel Phelps, who at that time was reviving a
number of the old dramas, took the stage in _The Fatal Dowry_ on August
27, 1845. This, however, was Sheil’s version, and not the original
play of Massinger and Field, as has been sometimes supposed. It ranked
as one of his four chief productions of that year. He, too, chose for
himself the part of Romont, which was considered by many his greatest
quasi-tragic role. Marston appeared as Charalois, G. Bennett as
Rochfort, and Miss Cooper as Beaumelle.
_The Fatal Dowry_ in substantially its own proper form does not appear
ever to have been acted after Jacobean times.
* * * * *
If the stage career of _The Fatal Dowry_ has been meagre, not so the
extent of its influence. Its literary parenthood begins before “the
closing of the theatres” and continues even to our own day. As early as
1638 it was echoed in _The Lady’s Trial_ of Ford. Here the figures of
Auria, Adurni, Aurelio, and Spinella correspond roughly with Charalois,
young Novall, Romont, and Beaumelle respectively. Auria has gone
to the wars, and in his absence his wife is pursued by Adurni, who
sits at table with her in private, when Aurelio breaks in upon them,
bursting open the doors. Spinella bitterly resents the intrusion and
the aspersions of the intruder, and when, on the return home of Auria,
Aurelio accuses her to him, it is without shaking his faith in her
loyalty. Here the analogy ends: spite of Auria’s incredulousness there
is no rupture between the friends; Spinella establishes her innocence;
and Adurni, while guilty enough in his intent against her, shows
himself thereafter to be an essentially noble youth, who will defend
to any length the lady’s honor which has become subject to question
through fault of his, and for this gallant reparation, is not only
forgiven, but even cherished ever after by the husband he had sought to
wrong.
The more steadily one regards the man John Ford and his work, the more
probable does it appear that the relationship between _The Fatal Dowry_
and _The Lady’s Trial_ is not one of mere reminiscence or influence,
but of direct parentage. That strange and baleful figure, who seems
almost a modern Decadent born out of his time, had a profound interest
in moral problems, to the study of which he brought morbid ethical
sensibilities scarce matched before the latter nineteenth century.
(Witness his conception, in _The Broken Heart_, of a loveless marriage
as tantamount to adultery.) Ford’s talent for invention was deficient
to the extent that he was hard put to it for plots. It is not at all
unlikely that he surveyed the Massingerian tragedy, and, repelled by
the conduct of its figures, exclaimed to himself: “I will write a play
to centre around a situation as incriminating as that of Act III of
_The Fatal Dowry_; but my personages will be worthier characters; I
will show a lady who, spite of appearances, is of stainless innocence
and vindicates her husband’s trust in the face of evidence; I will show
a friendship strong enough to endure an honestly mistaken aspersion put
upon the chastity of a wife, though the charge is not for one moment
credited; I will show that even the would-be seducer may be a fine
fellow at bottom, and set forth a generous emulation in magnanimity
between him and the husband. See how finely everything would work out
with the _right_ sort of people!” It is at least a plausible hypothesis.
Nicholas Rowe, who was the first modern editor of Shakespeare,
contemplated also an edition of Massinger, but gave up the project that
he might more safely plunder one of his plays. Rowe’s famous tragedy,
_The Fair Penitent_, was deliberately stolen from _The Fatal Dowry_.
It appeared in 1703, and spite of a ludicrous accident[13] which cut
short its first run, took rank as one of the most celebrated dramas of
the English stage. Rowe lived during the vogue of the “She-tragedy,”
while the canons of literary criticism of his day demanded a “regular,”
pseudo-classical form and a sententious tone. Accordingly, in his hands
the chief figure in the play, as is evidenced by the change in title,
becomes the guilty wife, here called Calista, who is “now the evil
queen of the heroic plays; now the lachrymose moralizer;” the theme is
indeed _her_ story, not Altamont’s (Charalois)--her seduction (prior
to the nuptuals and before the opening of the play), her grief, her
plight, her exposure, her death;--she holds the centre of the stage
to the very end. The number of the _dramatis personae_ is cut down
to eight; all touches of comedy are excised; and the double plot of
the original is unified by the bold stroke of throwing back to a time
before the opening of the play the entire episode of the unburied
corpse and the origin of the hero’s friendship with the father of the
heroine.
Discussions of the relative merits of _The Fair Penitent_ and its
source have been almost invariably acrimonious. Nor is this to be
wondered at, for after reading the old tragedy with its severe
dignity and noble restraint, one can scarce peruse without irritation
the cloyingly melifluous, emasculated verse of Rowe--by turns
grandiloquent and sentimental. The characterization of _The Fair
Penitent_ is, in the main, insipid, and while Rowe’s heroine holds a
commanding place in her drama to which Beaumelle does not pretend, the
latter is a great deal more natural, and indeed, for that matter, far
more truly a “penitent.” An exception to the general insipidity is
Lothario, who is the analogue of the insignificant Novall Junior--“the
gay Lothario”--whose very name has been ever since a synonym for
the graceful, graceless, devil-may-care libertine--whose figure has
been the prototype of a long line of similar characters in English
literature, beginning with Richardson’s Lovelace and not yet closed
with Anthony Hope’s Rupert of Hentzau. Beside this striking creation,
the seducer of Beaumelle shows poorly indeed; but it is doubtful if the
old dramatists would have consented to paint such an attractive rogue,
had they been able; they wanted their Novall to be just the cowardly,
dandyfied thing they made him. Beyond the portrait of Lothario, small
ground for praise can be found in _The Fair Penitent_. That part of the
action of _The Fatal Dowry_ which under Rowe’s treatment antedates the
rise of the curtain is narrated in the most stiffly mechanical sort
of exposition; the action is developed by such threadbare theatrical
devices as a lost letter and an overheard conversation; the voluble
speeches of the several characters are, throughout, declamatory
effusions almost unbelievably divorced from the apposite utterance of
any rational human being under the circumstances. An Altamont who has
been assured and reassured from his bride’s own lips of her aversion
for him can fling himself from a quarrel with his life-long friend in
hysterical defence of her, to seek solace in her arms--
_There if in any pause of love I rest
Breathless with bliss upon her panting breast,
In broken, melting accents I will swear,
Henceforth to trust my heart with none save her;_
a Sciolto who has given his daughter a dagger with which to end her
shame, and then has arrested her willing arm with the prayer that she
will not dispatch herself until he is gone from the sight of her, can
thereupon take leave of her with the statement:
_There is I know not what of sad presage
That tells me I shall never see thee more._
The play, which enjoyed an immense fame, high contemporary
appreciation, and a long career on the stage, remains a curious
memorial of the taste of a bygone day.
It is noteworthy that in _The Fair Penitent_ Horatio, as Romont in
all modern reproductions of _The Fatal Dowry_, is the great acting
part--not the husband.
In 1758 was produced at the Hay market a drama entitled _The Insolvent
or Filial Piety_, from the pen of Aaron Hill. In the preface it is
said--according to Genest (IV, 538)--“Wilks about 30 years before gave
an old manuscript play, called the _Guiltless Adulteress_, to Theo.
Cibber who was manager of what then was the Summer Company--after an
interval of several years this play was judged to want a revisal to
fit it for representation--Aaron Hill at the request of Theo. Cibber
almost new wrote the whole, and the last act was entirely his in
conduct, sentiment and diction.” In reality, _The Insolvent_ is _The
Fatal Dowry_ over again, altered to tragicomedy, and with the names of
the characters changed. The first two Acts of Hill’s play proceed much
after the manner of its prototype, with close parallels in language.
From thenceforward, however, the action diverges. The bride, Amelia,
resists the further attentions of her former sweetheart. They are none
the less observed and suspected by her husband’s friend, who speaks
of the matter to both her father and her lord. The former promises
to observe her with watchful eye; Chalons, the husband, is at first
resentful of the imputation, but presently yields to his friend’s
advice, that he pretend a two-days’ journey, from which he will return
unexpectedly. During his absence, his wife’s maid introduces the lover
into her mistress’ chamber while Amelia sleeps. There Chalons surprises
him kneeling beside the bed, and kills him. Amelia stabs herself, but
the confession of her maid reveals her innocence, and her wound is
pronounced not mortal.
It has been suggested (_Biographia Dramatica_, II, 228--quoted by
Phelan, p. 59, and Schwarz, p. 74) that in Hill’s _Zara_ (adaptation
of the _Zaire_ of Voltaire), also, Nerestan’s voluntary return to
captivity in order to end that of his friends, whom he lacked the means
to ransom with gold, was suggested by the behavior of Charalois; but
this can be no more than a coincidence, as it here but reproduces what
is in the French original.
A long interval, and finally, in the dawn of the twentieth century,
there appeared the next and latest recrudescence of _The Fatal
Dowry_. This was _Der Graf von Charolais, ein Trauerspiel_, by
Richard Beer-Hofmann, disciple of the Neo-Romantic School or
_Vienna Decadents_, a coterie built about the leadership of Hugo
von Hofmannsthal. Beer-Hofmann’s play--a five-Act tragedy in blank
verse--was produced for the first time at the Neue Theatre, Berlin, on
December 24, 1904, and was received with considerable acclaim. Unlike
Rowe, he gives full credit to his source, from which he has drawn no
less extensively than the author of _The Fair Penitent_. Unlike Rowe,
he goes back to the old dramatists in the matter of construction,
placing upon the stage once more the episode of the unburied corpse
and the noble son; he even outdoes _The Fatal Dowry_ in this respect,
by allowing the first half of his plot three Acts instead of two, with
only two Acts for the amour and its tragic consequences. In his hands
the hero again becomes the central figure; in fact, the three principal
versions of this _donnee_ suggest by their titles their respective
viewpoints: _The Fatal Dowry_; _The Fair Penitent_; _Der Graf von
Charolais_. DER GRAF VON CHAROLAIS, be it observed;--this new redaction
is no longer the tale of a “fatal dowry;” no longer is the first part
of the dual theme merely introductory and accessory--it is coördinate
with the second. Beer-Hofmann has sought to achieve a kind of unity
from his double plot by making his fundamental theme not the adulterous
intrigue, but _the destiny of Charolais_, thus converting the play
into a Tragedy of Fate, which pursues the hero inexorably through all
his life. This strictly classical _motif_ animating the _donnee_ of a
Jacobean play reproduced in the twentieth century presents, as might
be expected, the aspect of an exotic growth, which is not lessened by
the extreme sensuousness of treatment throughout, such as has always
been one of the cardinal and distinctive qualities of the Decadent
School the world over. But as a contrast in the dramatic technique
and verse of Jacobean and modern times, _Der Graf von Charolais_ is
extremely interesting. The difference is striking between the severe
simplicity of three centuries ago, and the elaborate stagecraft of
to-day, its insistence on detail, and studied care in the portraiture
of minor characters. Yet minutia do not make tragedy, and while their
superficial realism and the congeniality of the contemporary point of
view undeniably lend to Beer-Hofmann’s redaction a palatability and a
power to interest and appeal which its original does not possess to
the modern reader, yet a discriminating critic will turn back to the
old play with a feeling that, for all its stiffness and conventions,
he breathes there a more vital air. To the enrichment of his theme
Beer-Hofmann contributes every ingenious effect possible to symbolism,
delicate suggestion, and scenic device; this exterior decoration is
gorgeous in its color and seductive warmth, but no amount of such stuff
can compensate for the fundamental flaw in the crucial episode of
his tragedy. In spite of the care which he has lavished on the scene
between his heroine and her seducer, the surrender of the wife--three
years married, a mother, and loving both husband and child--remains
insufficiently motivated and sheerly inexplicable, and by this vital,
inherent defect the play must fall. Moreover, it lacks a hero. Romont
can no longer play the main part he did in former versions; he is
reduced to a mere shadow. In a tragedy of Fate, which blights a man’s
career, phase by phase, with persistent, relentless hand, that man
must necessarily be the central figure, and, of right, _should_ be an
imposing figure--a protagonist at once gigantic and appealing, who will
draw all hearts to him in pity and terror at the helpless, hopeless
struggle of over-matched greatness and worth; whereas Charolais--
The case of Charolais is peculiar. _A priori_ we should expect him
to be just such a personage, yet his conduct throughout is best
explainable as that of a man dominated, not by noble impulses,
but by an extreme egoism--a man acutely responsive alike to his
sense-impressions and his feverish imagination, and possessed of an
exaggerated squeamishness towards the ugly and the unpleasant. When,
in the First Act, he bursts into tears, he confesses it is not for his
father that he weeps, but for his own hard lot; he suffers from his
repugnance to the idea of his father’s corpse rotting above ground--a
repugnance so intolerable to him that he will yield his liberty to
escape it. He purposes to cashier the innkeeper because the sight of
the lecherous patrons of his hostelry has disgusted him, and he alters
his resolve and forgives the fellow, not from any considerations of
mercy, but because the mental picture of the man’s distress tortures
him. And by similar personal repugnances reacting on egoism is his
behavior in the denouement to be accounted for, and in this light
becomes logically credible and clearly understood. Few practices are
more hazardous or unjust than judging an artist by his objective
creations; but an ignoble protagonist, as Charolais is represented,
is in such ill accord with any conceivable purpose on the part of
Beer-Hofmann, and so unlikely to have been intended by him, that one
cannot help strongly suspecting that the author unconsciously projected
himself into the character and thus revealed his own nature and point
of view. In any case he has presented for his hero a whimperer who can
command neither our sympathy nor our respect when he cries above the
bodies of his benefactor and her who is that benefactor’s daughter, his
own wife, and the mother of his child:
_Ist dies Stück denn aus,
Weil jene starb? Und ich? An mich denkt keiner?_
We have come a long way from Massinger and Field and the early
seventeenth century. The shadow of the old dramatists reaches far,
even to our own time; we have seen their play redeveloped, but never
improved upon, by pseudo-classicist, and popularizer, and Decadent
hyper-aesthete. That which was the vulnerable point in the original
production--its two-fold plot--has been still for every imitator a
stone of stumbling. Rowe tried to escape it by the suppression of the
antecedent half, and the fraction which remained in his hand was an
artificial thing without the breath of life, that had to be attenuated
and padded out with speechifying to fill the compass of its five Acts.
Beer-Hofmann tried to escape it by superimposing an idea not proper
to the story, and beneath the weight of this his tragedy collapsed in
the middle, for its addition over-packed the drama, and left him not
room enough to make convincing the conduct of his characters. The first
essayers, who attacked in straightforward fashion their unwieldy theme,
succeeded best; all attempts to obviate its essential defect have
marred rather than mended. Perhaps the theme is by its nature unsuited
to dramatic treatment, and yet there is much that is dramatic about
that theme, as is evinced by the fact that playwrights have been unable
to let it lie.
EDITOR’S NOTE ON TEXT
The present text aims to reproduce exactly the Quarto edition of 1632,
retaining its punctuation, spelling, capitals, italics, and stage
directions--amending only the metrical alignment.[14] Mere mistakes
of printing--inverted and broken letters--are restored, but are duly
catalogued in the foot notes. The division into scenes, as made by
Gifford, and his affixment of the _locus_ of each, are inserted into
the text, inclosed in brackets. In the foot notes are recorded all
variants of all subsequent editions. Differences of punctuation are
given, if they could possibly alter the meaning, but not otherwise--nor
mere differences _in wording_ of stage directions, nor differences in
spelling, nor elision for metre. In the Quarto the elder Novall is
sometimes designated before his lines as _Novall Senior_, sometimes
merely as _Novall_--no confusion is possible, since he and his son are
never on the stage at the same time. Gifford and Symons always write
_Novall Senior_, while Coxeter and Mason write _Novall_ alone in I, i,
and _Novall Senior_ thereafter. I have not thought it worth while to
note the variants of the several texts on this point.
Q.--The Quarto--1632
C.--Coxeter’s edition, 1759
M.--Monck Mason’s edition, 1779
G.--Gifford’s [2nd.] edition, 1813
S.--Symons’ (Mermaid) edition, 1893
f.--and all later editions
s.d.--stage direction
THE FATALL DOWRY:
A TRAGEDY:
_As it hath beene often Acted at the Priuate
House in Blackefryers, by his
Maiesties Seruants._
_Written by P. M. and N. F._
LONDON,
Printed by IOHN NORTON, for FRANCIS
CONSTABLE, and are to be iold at his
shop at the _Crane_, in _Pauls Churchyard_.
1632.
_Charalois._
_Romont._
_Charmi._
_Nouall Sen._
_Liladam._
_DuCroy._
_Rochfort._
_Baumont._
_Pontalier._
_Malotin._
_Beaumelle._
_Florimel._ }
_Bellapert._}
_Aymer._
_Nouall Jun._
_Aduocates._
_Creditors 3._
_Officers._
_Priest._
_Taylor._
_Barber._
_Perfumer._
[Page.]
[Presidents, Captains, Soldiers, Mourners, Gaoler, Bailiffs,
Servants.]
The Fatall Dowry:
A Tragedy:
_Act. primus._
_Scaena prima:_
[_A Street before the Court of Justice_]
_Enter_ Charaloyes _with a paper_, Romont, Charmi.
_Charmi_ Sir, I may moue the Court to serue your will,
But therein shall both wrong you and my selfe.
_Rom._ Why thinke you so sir?
_Charmi._ ’Cause I am familiar
With what will be their answere: they will say,
’Tis against law, and argue me of Ignorance 5
For offering them the motion.
_Rom._ You know not, Sir,
How in this cause they may dispence with Law,
And therefore frame not you their answere for them,
But doe your parts.
_Charmi._ I loue the cause so well,
As I could runne, the hazard of a checke for ’t. 10
_Rom._ From whom?
_Charmi._ Some of the bench, that watch to give it,
More then to doe the office that they fit for:
But giue me (sir) my fee.
_Rom._ Now you are Noble.
_Charmi._ I shall deserue this better yet, in giuing
My Lord some counsell, (if he please to heare it) 15
Then I shall doe with pleading.
_Rom._ What may it be, sir?
_Charmi._ That it would please his Lordship, as the presidents,
And Counsaylors of Court come by, to stand
Heere, and but shew your selfe, and to some one
Or two, make his request: there is a minute 20
When a mans presence speakes in his owne cause,
More then the tongues of twenty aduocates.
_Rom._ I haue vrg’d that.
_Enter_ Rochfort: _DuCroye_.
_Charmi._ Their Lordships here are coming,
I must goe get me a place, you’l finde me in Court,
And at your seruice
_Exit Charmi._
_Rom._ Now put on your Spirits. 25
_Du Croy._ The ease that you prepare your selfe, my Lord,
In giuing vp the place you hold in Court,
Will proue (I feare) a trouble in the State,
And that no slight one.
_Roch._ Pray you sir, no more.
_Rom._ Now sir, lose not this offerd means: their lookes 30
Fixt on you, with a pittying earnestnesse,
Inuite you to demand their furtherance
To your good purpose.--This such a dulnesse
So foolish and vntimely as--
_Du Croy._ You know him.
_Roch._ I doe, and much lament the sudden fall 35
Of his braue house. It is young _Charloyes_.
Sonne to the Marshall, from whom he inherits
His fame and vertues onely.
_Rom._ Ha, they name you.
_Du Croye._ His father died in prison two daies since.
_Roch._ Yes, to the shame of this vngrateful State; 40
That such a Master in the art of warre,
So noble, and so highly meriting,
From this forgetfull Country, should, for want
Of meanes to satisfie his creditors,
The summes he tooke vp for the generall good, 45
Meet with an end so infamous.
_Rom._ Dare you euer
Hope for like opportunity?
_Du Croye._ My good Lord!
_Roch._ My wish bring comfort to you.
_Du Croye._ The time calls vs.
_Roch._ Good morrow Colonell.
_Exeunt Roch. Du Croye._
_Rom._ This obstinate spleene,
You thinke becomes your sorrow, and sorts wel 50
With your blacke suits: but grant me wit, or iudgement,
And by the freedome of an honest man,
And a true friend to boote, I sweare ’tis shamefull.
And therefore flatter not your selfe with hope,
Your sable habit, with the hat and cloake, 55
No though the ribons helpe, haue power to worke ’em
To what you would: for those that had no eyes,
To see the great acts of your father, will not,
From any fashion sorrow can put on,
Bee taught to know their duties.
_Char._ If they will not, 60
They are too old to learne, and I too young
To giue them counsell, since if they partake
The vnderstanding, and the hearts of men,
They will preuent my words and teares: if not,
What can perswasion, though made eloquent 65
With griefe, worke vpon such as haue chang’d natures
With the most sauage beast? Blest, blest be euer
The memory of that happy age, when iustice
Had no gards to keepe off wrongd innocence,
From flying to her succours, and in that 70
Assurance of redresse: where now (_Romont_)
The damnd, with more ease may ascend from Hell,
Then we ariue at her. One Cerberus there
Forbids the passage, in our Courts a thousand,
As lowd, and fertyle headed, and the Client 75
That wants the sops, to fill their rauenous throats,
Must hope for no accesse: why should I then
Attempt impossibilities: you friend, being
Too well acquainted with my dearth of meanes,
To make my entrance that way?
_Rom._ Would I were not. 80
But Sir, you haue a cause, a cause so iust,
Of such necessitie, not to be deferd,
As would compell a mayde, whose foot was neuer
Set ore her fathers threshold, nor within
The house where she was borne, euer spake word, 85
Which was not vshered with pure virgin blushes,
To drowne the tempest of a pleaders tongue,
And force corruption to giue backe the hire
It tooke against her: let examples moue you.
You see great men in birth, esteeme and fortune, 90
Rather then lose a scruple of their right,
Fawne basely vpon such, whose gownes put off,
They would disdaine for Seruants.
_Char._ And to these
Can I become a suytor?
_Rom._ Without losse,
Would you consider, that to game their fauors, 95
Our chastest dames put off their modesties,
Soldiers forget their honors, vsurers
Make sacrifice of Gold, poets of wit,
And men religious, part with fame, and goodnesse?
Be therefore wonne to vse the meanes, that may 100
Aduance your pious ends.
_Char._ You shall orecome.
_Rom._ And you receiue the glory, pray you now practise.
’Tis well.
_Enter Old Nouall, Liladam, & 3 Creditors._
_Char._ Not looke on me!
_Rom._ You must haue patience----
Offer’t againe.
_Char._ And be againe contemn’d?
_Nou._ I know whats to be done.
_1 Cred._ And that your Lordship 105
Will please to do your knowledge, we offer, first
Our thankefull hearts heere, as a bounteous earnest
To what we will adde.
_Nou._ One word more of this
I am your enemie. Am I a man
Your bribes can worke on? ha?
_Lilad._ Friends, you mistake 110
The way to winne my Lord, he must not heare this,
But I, as one in fauour, in his sight,
May harken to you for my profit. Sir,
I pray heare em.
_Nou._ Tis well.
_Lilad._ Obserue him now.
_Nou._ Your cause being good, and your proceedings so, 115
Without corruption; I am your friend,
Speake your desires.
_2 Cred._ Oh, they are charitable,
The Marshall stood ingag’d vnto vs three,
Two hundred thousand crownes, which by his death
We are defeated of. For which great losse 120
We ayme at nothing but his rotten flesh,
Nor is that cruelty.
_1 Cred._ I haue a sonne,
That talkes of nothing but of Gunnes and Armors,
And sweares hee’ll be a soldier, tis an humor
I would diuert him from, and I am told 125
That if I minister to him in his drinke
Powder, made of this banquerout Marshalls bones,
Provided that the carcase rot aboue ground
’Twill cure his foolish frensie.
_Nou._ You shew in it
A fathers care. I haue a sonne my selfe, 130
A fashionable Gentleman and a peacefull:
And but I am assur’d he’s not so giuen,
He should take of it too, Sir what are you?
_Char._ A Gentleman.
_Nou._ So are many that rake dunghills.
If you haue any suit, moue it in Court. 135
I take no papers in corners.
_Rom._ Yes
As the matter may be carried, and hereby
To mannage the conuayance----Follow him.
_Lil._ You are rude. I say, he shall not passe.
_Exit Nouall, Char: and Aduocates_
_Rom._ You say so.
On what assurance? 140
For the well cutting of his Lordships cornes,
Picking his toes, or any office else
Neerer to basenesse!
_Lil._ Looke vpon mee better,
Are these the ensignes of so coorse a fellow?
Be well aduis’d.
_Rom._ Out, rogue, do not I know, (_Kicks him_) 145
These glorious weedes spring from the sordid dunghill
Of thy officious basenesse? wert thou worthy
Of anything from me, but my contempt,
I would do more then this, more, you Court-spider.
_Lil._ But that this man is lawlesse;
he should find that I am valiant. 150
_1 Cred._ If your eares are fast,
Tis nothing. Whats a blow or two? As much--
_2 Cred._ These chastisements, as vsefull are as frequent
To such as would grow rich.
_Rom._ Are they so Rascals?
I will be-friend you then.
_1 Cred._ Beare witnesse, Sirs. 155
_Lil._ Trueth, I haue borne my part already, friends.
In the Court you shall haue more.
_Exit._
_Rom._ I know you for
The worst of spirits, that striue to rob the tombes
Of what is their inheritance, from the dead.
For vsurers, bred by a riotous peace: 160
That hold the Charter of your wealth & freedome,
By being Knaues and Cuckolds that ne’re prayd,
But when you feare the rich heires will grow wise,
To keepe their Lands out of your parchment toyles:
And then, the Diuell your father’s cald vpon, 165
To inuent some ways of _Luxury_ ne’re thought on.
Be gone, and quickly, or Ile leaue no roome
Vpon your forhead for your hornes to sprowt on,
Without a murmure, or I will vndoe you;
For I will beate you honest.
_1 Cred._ Thrift forbid. 170
We will beare this, rather then hazard that.
_Ex: Creditor._
_Enter Charloyes._
_Rom._ I am some-what eas’d in this yet.
_Char._ (Onely friend)
To what vaine purpose do I make my sorrow,
Wayte on the triumph of their cruelty?
Or teach their pride from my humilitie, 175
To thinke it has orecome? They are determin’d
What they will do: and it may well become me,
To robbe them of the glory they expect
From my submisse intreaties.
_Rom._ Thinke not so, Sir,
The difficulties that you incounter with, 180
Will crowne the vndertaking--Heaven! you weepe:
And I could do so too, but that I know,
Theres more expected from the sonne and friend
Of him, whose fatall losse now shakes our natures,
Then sighs, or teares, (in which a village nurse 185
Or cunning strumpet, when her knaue is hangd,
May ouercome vs.) We are men (young Lord)
Let vs not do like women. To the Court,
And there speake like your birth: wake sleeping justice,
Or dare the Axe. This is a way will sort 190
With what you are. I call you not to that
I will shrinke from my selfe, I will deserue
Your thankes, or suffer with you--O how bravely
That sudden fire of anger shewes in you!
Give fuell to it, since you are on a shelfe, 195
Of extreme danger suffer like your selfe.
_Exeunt._
[SCENE II]
[_The Court of Justice_]
_Enter Rochfort_, _Nouall Se. Charmi_, _Du Croye_,
_Aduocates_, _Baumont_, _and Officers_, _and 3. Presidents_.
_Du Croye._ Your Lordship’s seated. May this meeting proue prosperous
to vs, and to the generall good
Of _Burgundy_.
_Nou. Se._ Speake to the poynt.
_Du Croy._ Which is,
With honour to dispose the place and power
Of primier President, which this reuerent man 5
Graue _Rochfort_, (whom for honours sake I name)
Is purpos’d to resigne a place, my Lords,
In which he hath with such integrity,
Perform’d the first and best parts of a Iudge,
That as his life transcends all faire examples 10
Of such as were before him in _Dijon_,
So it remaines to those that shall succeed him,
A President they may imitate, but not equall.
_Roch._ I may not sit to heare this.
_Du Croy._ Let the loue
And thankfulnes we are bound to pay to goodnesse, 15
In this o’recome your modestie.
_Roch._ My thankes
For this great fauour shall preuent your trouble.
The honourable trust that was impos’d
Vpon my weaknesse since you witnesse for me,
It was not ill discharg’d, I will not mention, 20
Nor now, if age had not depriu’d me of
The little strength I had to gouerne well,
The Prouince that I vndertooke, forsake it.
_Nou._ That we could lend you of our yeeres.
_Du Croy._ Or strength.
_Nou._ Or as you are, perswade you to continue 25
The noble exercise of your knowing iudgement.
_Roch._ That may not be, nor can your Lordships goodnes,
Since your imployments haue confer’d vpon me
Sufficient wealth, deny the vse of it,
And though old age, when one foot’s in the graue, 30
In many, when all humors else are spent
Feeds no affection in them, but desire
To adde height to the mountaine of their riches:
In me it is not so, I rest content
With the honours, and estate I now possesse, 35
And that I may haue liberty to vse,
What Heauen still blessing my poore industry,
Hath made me Master of: I pray the Court
To ease me of my burthen, that I may
Employ the small remainder of my life, 40
In liuing well, and learning how to dye so.
_Enter Romont, and Charalois._
_Rom._ See sir, our Aduocate.
_Du Croy._ The Court intreats,
Your Lordship will be pleasd to name the man,
Which you would haue your successor, and in me,
All promise to confirme it.
_Roch._ I embrace it, 45
As an assurance of their fauour to me,
And name my Lord Nouall.
_Du Croy._ The Court allows it.
_Roch._ But there are suters waite heere, and their causes
May be of more necessity to be heard,
And therefore wish that mine may be defer’d, 50
And theirs haue hearing.
_Du Croy._ If your Lordship please
To take the place, we will proceed.
_Charm._ The cause
We come to offer to your Lordships censure,
Is in it selfe so noble, that it needs not
Or Rhetorique in me that plead, or fauour 55
From your graue Lordships, to determine of it.
Since to the prayse of your impartiall iustice
(Which guilty, nay condemn’d men, dare not scandall)
It will erect a trophy of your mercy
With married to that Iustice.
_Nou. Se._ Speaks to the cause. 60
_Charm._ I will, my Lord: to say, the late dead Marshall
The father of this young Lord heer, my Clyent,
Hath done his Country great and faithfull seruice,
Might taske me of impertinence to repeate,
What your graue Lordships cannot but remember, 65
He in his life, become indebted to
These thriftie men, I will not wrong their credits,
By giuing them the attributes they now merit,
And fayling by the fortune of the warres,
Of meanes to free himselfe, from his ingagements, 70
He was arrested, and for want of bayle
Imprisond at their suite: and not long after
With losse of liberty ended his life.
And though it be a Maxime in our Lawes,
All suites dye with the person, these mens malice 75
In death find matter for their hate to worke on,
Denying him the decent Rytes of buriall,
Which the sworne enemies of the Christian faith
Grant freely to their slaues; may it therefore please
Your Lordships, so to fashion your decree, 80
That what their crueltie doth forbid, your pittie
May giue allowance to.
_Nou. Se._ How long haue you Sir
Practis’d in Court?
_Charmi._ Some twenty yeeres, my Lord.
_Nou. Se._ By your grosse ignorance it should appeare,
Not twentie dayes.
_Charmi._ I hope I haue giuen no cause 85
In this, my Lord--
_Nou. Se._ How dare you moue the Court,
To the dispensing with an Act confirmd
By Parlament, to the terror of all banquerouts?
Go home, and with more care peruse the Statutes:
Or the next motion fauoring of this boldnesse, 90
May force you to leape (against your will)
Ouer the place you plead at.
_Charmi._ I foresaw this.
_Rom._ Why does your Lordship thinke, the mouing of
A cause more honest then this Court had euer
The honor to determine, can deserue 95
A checke like this?
_Nou. Se._ Strange boldnes!
_Rom._ Tis fit freedome:
Or do you conclude, an aduocate cannot hold
His credit with the Iudge, vnlesse he study
His face more then the cause for which he pleades?
_Charmi._ Forbeare.
_Rom._ Or cannot you, that haue the power 100
To qualifie the rigour of the Lawes,
When you are pleased, take a little from
The strictnesse of your fowre decrees, enacted
In fauor of the greedy creditors
Against the orethrowne debter?
_Nou. Se._ Sirra, you that prate 105
Thus sawcily, what are you?
_Rom._ Why Ile tell you,
Thou purple-colour’d man, I am one to whom
Thou owest the meanes thou hast of sitting there
A corrupt Elder.
_Charmi._ Forbeare.
_Rom._ The nose thou wearst, is my gift, and those eyes 110
That meete no obiect so base as their Master,
Had bin, long since, torne from that guiltie head,
And thou thy selfe slaue to some needy Swisse,
Had I not worne a sword, and vs’d it better
Then in thy prayers thou ere didst thy tongue. 115
_Nou. Se._ Shall such an Insolence passe vnpunisht?
_Charmi._ Heere mee.
_Rom._ Yet I, that in my seruice done my Country,
Disdaine to bee put in the scale with thee,
Confesse my selfe vnworthy to bee valued
With the least part, nay haire of the dead Marshall, 120
Of whose so many glorious vndertakings,
Make choice of any one, and that the meanest
Performd against the subtill Fox of France,
The politique _Lewis_, or the more desperate Swisse,
And ’twyll outwaygh all the good purpose, 125
Though put in act, that euer Gowneman practizd.
_Nou. Se._ Away with him to prison.
_Rom._ If that curses,
Vrg’d iustly, and breath’d forth so, euer fell
On those that did deserue them; let not mine
Be spent in vaine now, that thou from this instant 130
Mayest in thy feare that they will fall vpon thee,
Be sensible of the plagues they shall bring with them.
And for denying of a little earth,
To couer what remaynes of our great soldyer:
May all your wiues proue whores, your factors theeues, 135
And while you liue, your riotous heires vndoe you,
And thou, the patron of their cruelty.
Of all thy Lordships liue not to be owner
Of so much dung as will conceale a Dog,
Or what is worse, thy selfe in. And thy yeeres, 140
To th’ end thou mayst be wretched, I wish many,
And as thou hast denied the dead a graue,
May misery in thy life make thee desire one,
Which men and all the Elements keepe from thee:
I haue begun well, imitate, exceed. 145
_Roch._ Good counsayle were it, a prayse worthy deed.
_Ex. Officers with Rom._
_Du Croye._ Remember what we are.
_Chara._ Thus low my duty
Answeres your Lordships counsaile. I will vse
In the few words (with which I am to trouble
Your Lordships eares) the temper that you wish mee. 150
Not that I feare to speake my thoughts as lowd,
And with a liberty beyond _Romont_:
But that I know, for me that am made vp
Of all that’s wretched, so to haste my end,
Would seeme to most, rather a willingnesse 155
To quit the burthen of a hopelesse life,
Then scorne of death, or duty to the dead.
I therefore bring the tribute of my prayse
To your seueritie, and commend the Iustice,
That will not for the many seruices 160
That any man hath done the Common wealth
Winke at his least of ills: what though my father
Writ man before he was so, and confirmd it,
By numbring that day, no part of his life,
In which he did not seruice to his Country; 165
Was he to be free therefore from the Lawes,
And ceremonious forme in your decrees?
Or else because he did as much as man
In those three memorable ouerthrowes
At _Granson_, _Morat_, _Nancy_, where his Master, 170
The warlike _Charloyes_ (with whose misfortunes
I beare his name) lost treasure, men and life,
To be excus’d, from payment of those summes
Which (his owne patri mony spent) his zeale,
To serue his Countrey, forc’d him to take vp? 175
_Nou. Se._ The president were ill.
_Chara._ And yet, my Lord, this much
I know youll grant; After those great defeatures,
Which in their dreadfull ruines buried quick, _Enter officers._
Courage and hope, in all men but himselfe,
He forst the proud foe, in his height of conquest, 180
To yield vnto an honourable peace.
And in it saued an hundred thousand liues,
To end his owne, that was sure proofe against
The scalding Summers heate, and Winters frost,
Illayres, the Cannon, and the enemies sword, 185
In a most loathsome prison.
_Du Croy._ Twas his fault
To be so prodigall.
_Nou. Se._ He had frô the state
Sufficent entertainment for the Army.
_Char._ Sufficient? My Lord, you sit at home,
And though your fees are boundlesse at the barre: 190
Are thriftie in the charges of the warre,
But your wills be obeyd. To these I turne,
To these soft-hearted men, that wisely know
They are onely good men, that pay what they owe.
_2 Cred._ And so they are.
_1 Cred._ ’Tis the City Doctrine, 195
We stand bound to maintaine it.
_Char._ Be constant in it,
And since you are as mercilesse in your natures,
As base, and mercenary in your meanes
By which you get your wealth, I will not vrge
The Court to take away one scruple from 200
The right of their lawes, or one good thought
In you to mend your disposition with.
I know there is no musique in your eares
So pleasing as the groanes of men in prison,
And that the teares of widows, and the cries 205
Of famish’d Orphants, are the feasts that take you.
That to be in your danger, with more care
Should be auoyded, then infectious ayre,
The loath’d embraces of diseased women,
A flatterers poyson, or the losse of honour. 210
Yet rather then my fathers reuerent dust
Shall want a place in that faire monument,
In which our noble Ancestors lye intomb’d,
Before the Court I offer vp my selfe
A prisoner for it: loade me with those yrons 215
That haue worne out his life, in my best strength
Ile run to th’ incounter of cold hunger,
And choose my dwelling where no Sun dares enter,
So he may be releas’d.
_1 Cred._ What meane you sir?
_2 Aduo._ Onely your fee againe: ther’s so much sayd 220
Already in this cause, and sayd so well,
That should I onely offer to speake in it,
I should not bee heard, or laught at for it.
_1 Cred._ ’Tis the first mony aduocate ere gaue backe,
Though hee sayd nothing.
_Roch._ Be aduis’d, young Lord, 225
And well considerate, you throw away
Your liberty, and ioyes of life together:
Your bounty is imployd vpon a subiect
That is not sensible of it, with which, wise man
Neuer abus’d his goodnesse; the great vertues 230
Of your dead father vindicate themselues,
From these mens malice, and breake ope the prison,
Though it containe his body.
_Nou. Se._ Let him alone,
If he loue Lords, a Gods name let him weare ’em,
Prouided these consent.
_Char._ I hope they are not 235
So ignorant in any way of profit,
As to neglect a possibility
To get their owne, by seeking it from that
Which can returne them nothing, but ill fame,
And curses for their barbarous cruelties. 240
_3 Cred._ What thinke you of the offer?
_2 Cred._ Very well.
_1 Cred._ Accept it by all meanes: let’s shut him vp,
He is well-shaped and has a villanous tongue,
And should he study that way of reuenge,
As I dare almost sweare he loues a wench, 245
We haue no wiues, nor neuer shall get daughters
That will hold out against him.
_Du Croy._ What’s your answer?
_2 Cred._ Speake you for all.
_1 Cred._ Why let our executions
That lye vpon the father, bee return’d
Vpon the sonne, and we release the body. 250
_Nou. Se._ The Court must grant you that.
_Char._ I thanke your Lordships,
They haue in it confirm’d on me such glory,
As no time can take from me: I am ready,
Come lead me where you please: captiuity
That comes with honour, is true liberty. 255
_Exit Charmi, Cred. & Officers._
_Nou. Se._ Strange rashnesse.
_Roch._ A braue resolution rather,
Worthy a better fortune, but howeuer
It is not now to be disputed, therefore
To my owne cause. Already I haue found
Your Lordships bountifull in your fauours to me; 260
And that should teach my modesty to end heere
And presse your loues no further.
_Du Croy._ There is nothing
The Court can grant, but with assurance you
May aske it and obtaine it.
_Roch._ You incourage
A bold Petitioner, and ’tis not fit 265
Your fauours should be lost. Besides, ’tas beene
A custome many yeeres, at the surrendring
The place I now giue vp, to grant the President
One boone, that parted with it. And to confirme
Your grace towards me, against all such as may 270
Detract my actions, and life hereafter,
I now preferre it to you.
_Du Croy._ Speake it freely.
_Roch._ I then desire the liberty of _Romont_,
And that my Lord _Nouall_, whose priuate wrong
Was equall to the iniurie that was done 275
To the dignity of the Court, will pardon it,
And now signe his enlargement.
_Nou. Se._ Pray you demand
The moyety of my estate, or any thing
Within my power, but this.
_Roch._ Am I denyed then--
My first and last request?
_Du Croy._ It must not be. 280
_2 Pre._ I haue a voyce to giue in it.
_3 Pre._ And I.
And if perswasion will not worke him to it,
We will make knowne our power.
_Nou. Se._ You are too violent,
You shall haue my consent--But would you had
Made tryall of my loue in any thing 285
But this, you should haue found then--But it skills not.
You haue what you desire.
_Roch._ I thanke your Lordships.
_Du Croy._ The court is vp, make way.
_Ex. omnes, praeter Roch. & Beaumont._
_Roch._ I follow you--_Baumont_.
_Baum._ My Lord.
_Roch._ You are a scholler, _Baumont_,
And can search deeper into th’ intents of men, 290
Then those that are lesse knowing--How appear’d
The piety and braue behauior of
Young _Charloyes_ to you?
_Baum._ It is my wonder,
Since I want language to expresse it fully;
And sure the Collonell--
_Roch._ Fie! he was faulty-- 295
What present mony haue I?
_Baum._ There is no want
Of any summe a priuate man has use for.
_Roch._ ’Tis well:
I am strangely taken with this _Charaloyes_;
Me thinkes, from his example, the whole age
Should learne to be good, and continue so. 300
Vertue workes strangely with vs: and his goodnesse
Rising aboue his fortune, seemes to me
Princelike, to will, not aske a courtesie.
_Exeunt._
_Act. secundus._
_Scæna prima:_
[_A Street before the Prison_]
_Enter Pontalier_, _Malotin_, _Baumont_.
_Mal._ Tis strange.
_Baum._ Me thinkes so.
_Pont._ In a man, but young,
Yet old in iudgement, theorique, and practicke
In all humanity (and to increase the wonder)
Religious, yet a Souldier, that he should
Yeeld his free liuing youth a captiue, for 5
The freedome of his aged fathers Corpes,
And rather choose to want lifes necessaries,
Liberty, hope of fortune, then it should
In death be kept from Christian ceremony.
_Malo._ Come, ’Tis a golden president in a Sonne, 10
To let strong nature haue the better hand,
(In such a case) of all affected reason.
What yeeres sits on this Charolois?
_Baum._ Twenty eight,
For since the clocke did strike him 17 old
Vnder his fathers wing, this Sonne hath fought, 15
Seru’d and commanded, and so aptly both,
That sometimes he appear’d his fathers father,
And neuer lesse then’s sonne; the old man’s vertues
So recent in him, as the world may sweare,
Nought but a faire tree, could such fayre fruit beare. 20
_Pont._ But wherefore lets he such a barbarous law,
And men more barbarous to execute it,
Preuaile on his soft disposition,
That he had rather dye aliue for debt
Of the old man in prison, then he should 25
Rob him of Sepulture, considering
These monies borrow’d bought the lenders peace,
And all their meanes they inioy, nor was diffus’d
In any impious or licencious path?
_Bau._ True: for my part, were it my fathers trunke, 30
The tyrannous Ram-heads, with their hornes should gore it,
Or, cast it to their curres (than they) lesse currish,
Ere prey on me so, with their Lion-law,
Being in my free will (as in his) to shun it.
_Pont._ Alasse! he knowes him selfe (in pouerty) lost: 35
For in this parciall auaricious age
What price beares Honor? Vertue? Long agoe
It was but prays’d, and freez’d, but now a dayes
’Tis colder far, and has, nor loue, nor praise,
Very prayse now freezeth too: for nature 40
Did make the heathen, far more Christian then,
Then knowledge vs (lesse heathenish) Christian.
_Malo._ This morning is the funerall.
_Pont._ Certainely!
And from this prison ’twas the sonnes request
That his deare father might interment haue. 45
_Recorders Musique,_
See, the young sonne interd a liuely graue.
_Baum._ They come, obserue their order.
_Enter Funerall. Body borne by 4. Captaines and Souldiers,
Mourners, Scutchions, and very good order. Charolois, and Romont
meet it. Char. speaks. Rom. weeping, solemne Musique, 3 Creditors._
_Char._ How like a silent streame shaded with night,
And gliding softly with our windy sighes;
Moues the whole frame of this solemnity! 50
Teares, sighs, and blackes, filling the simily,
Whilst I the onely murmur in this groue
Of death, thus hollowly break forth! Vouchsafe
To stay a while, rest, rest in peace, deare earth,
Thou that brought’st rest to their vnthankfull lyues, 55
Whose cruelty deny’d thee rest in death:
Heere stands thy poore Executor thy sonne,
That makes his life prisoner, to bale thy death;
Who gladlier puts on this captiuity,
Then Virgins long in loue, their wedding weeds: 60
Of all that euer thou hast done good to,
These onely haue good memories, for they
Remember best, forget not gratitude.
I thanke you for this last and friendly loue.
And tho this Country, like a viperous mother, 65
Not onely hath eate vp vngratefully
All meanes of thee her sonne, but last thy selfe,
Leauing thy heire so bare and indigent,
He cannot rayse thee a poore Monument,
Such as a flatterer, or a vsurer hath. 70
Thy worth, in euery honest brest buyldes one,
Making their friendly hearts thy funerall stone.
_Pont._ Sir.
_Char._ Peace, O peace, this sceane is wholy mine.
What weepe ye, souldiers? Blanch not, _Romont_ weepes. 75
Ha, let me see, my miracle is eas’d,
The iaylors and the creditors do weepe;
Euen they that make vs weepe, do weepe themselues.
Be these thy bodies balme: these and thy vertue
Keepe thy fame euer odoriferous, 80
Whilst the great, proud, rich, vndeseruing man,
Aliue stinkes in his vices, and being vanish’d,
The golden calfe that was an Idoll dect
With marble pillars Iet, and Porphyrie,
Shall quickly both in bone and name consume, 85
Though wrapt in lead, spice, Searecloth and perfume
_1 Cred._ Sir.
_Char._ What! Away for shame: you prophane rogues
Must not be mingled with these holy reliques:
This is a Sacrifice, our showre shall crowne 90
His sepulcher with Oliue, Myrrh and Bayes
The plants of peace, of sorrow, victorie,
Your teares would spring but weedes.
_1 Cred._ Would they not so?
Wee’ll keepe them to stop bottles then:
_Rom._ No; keepe ’em
For your owne sins, you Rogues, till you repent: 95
You’ll dye else and be damn’d.
_2 Cred._ Damn’d, ha! ha, ha.
_Rom._ Laugh yee?
_3 Cred._ Yes faith, Sir, weel’d be very glad
To please you eyther way.
_1 Cred._ Y’are ne’re content,
Crying nor laughing.
_Rom._ Both with a birth shee rogues.
_2 Cred._ Our wiues, Sir, taught vs. 100
_Rom._ Looke, looke, you slaues, your thanklesse cruelty
And sauage manners, of vnkind _Dijon_,
Exhaust these flouds, and not his fathers death.
_1 Cred._ Slid, Sir, what would yee, ye’are so cholericke?
_2 Cred._ Most soldiers are so yfaith, let him alone: 105
They haue little else to liue on, we haue not had
A penny of him, haue we?
_3 Cred._ ’Slight, wo’d you haue our hearts?
_1 Cred._ We haue nothing but his body heere in durance
For all our mony.
_Priest._ On.
_Char._ One moment more,
But to bestow a few poore legacyes, 110
All I haue left in my dead fathers rights,
And I haue done. Captaine, weare thou these spurs
That yet ne’re made his horse runne from a foe.
Lieutenant, thou, this Scarfe, and may it tye
Thy valor, and thy honestie together: 115
For so it did in him. Ensigne, this Curace
Your Generalls necklace once. You gentle Bearers,
Deuide this purse of gold, this other, strow
Among the poore: tis all I haue. _Romont_,
(Weare thou this medall of himselfe) that like 120
A hearty Oake, grew’st close to this tall Pine,
Euen in the wildest wildernese of war,
Whereon foes broke their swords, and tyr’d themselues;
Wounded and hack’d yee were, but neuer fell’d.
For me my portion prouide in Heauen: 125
My roote is earth’d, and I a desolate branch
Left scattered in the high way of the world,
Trod vnder foot, that might haue bin a Columne,
Mainly supporting our demolish’d house,
This would I weare as my inheritance. 130
And what hope can arise to me from it,
When I and it are both heere prisoners?
Onely may this, if euer we be free,
Keepe, or redeeme me from all infamie.
_Song. Musicke._
_1 Cred._ No farther, looke to ’em at your owne perill. 135
_2 Cred._ No, as they please: their Master’s a good man.
I would they were the _Burmudas_.
_Saylor._ You must no further.
The prison limits you, and the Creditors
Exact the strictnesse.
_Rom._ Out you wooluish mungrells!
Whose braynes should be knockt out, like dogs in Iuly, 140
Leste your infection poyson a whole towne.
_Char._ They grudge our sorrow: your ill wills perforce
Turnes now to Charity: they would not haue vs
Walke too farre mourning, vsurers reliefe
Grieues, if the Debtors haue too much of griefe. 145
_Exeunt._
[SCENE II]
[_A Room in Rochfort’s House._]
_Enter Beaumelle_: _Florimell_: _Bellapert_.
_Beau._ I prithee tell me, _Florimell_, why do women marry?
_Flor._ Why truly Madam, I thinke, to lye with their husbands.
_Bella._ You are a foole: She lyes, Madam, women marry husbands,
To lye with other men. 5
_Flor._ Faith eene such a woman wilt thou make. By this
light, Madam, this wagtaile will spoyle you, if you take
delight in her licence.
_Beau._ Tis true, _Florimell_: and thou wilt make me too good
for a yong Lady. What an electuary found my father out for 10
his daughter, when hee compounded you two my women?
for thou, _Florimell_, art eene a graine to heauy, simply for a
wayting Gentlewoman.
_Flor._ And thou _Bellapert_, a graine too light.
_Bella._ Well, go thy wayes goodly wisdom, whom no body 15
regards. I wonder, whether be elder thou or thy hood: you
thinke, because you serue my Laydes mother, are 32 yeeres
old which is a peepe out, you know.
_Flor._ Well sayd, wherligig.
_Bella._ You are deceyu’d: I want a peg ith’ middle. 20
Out of these Prerogatiues! you thinke to be mother of the
maydes heere, & mortifie em with prouerbs: goe, goe, gouern
the sweet meates, and waigh the Suger, that the wenches
steale none: say your prayers twice a day, and as I take it, you
haue performd your function. 25
_Flor._ I may bee euen with you.
_Bell._ Harke, the Court’s broke vp. Goe helpe my old Lord
out of his Caroch, and scratch his head till dinner time.
_Flor._ Well.
_Exit._
_Bell._ Fy Madam, how you walke! By my mayden-head 30
you looke 7 yeeres older then you did this morning: why,
there can be nothing vnder the Sunne vanuable, to make you
thus a minute.
_Beau._ Ah my sweete Bellapert thou Cabinet
To all my counsels, thou dost know the cause 35
That makes thy Lady wither thus in youth.
_Bel._ Vd’d-light, enioy your wishes: whilst I liue,
One way or other you shall crowne your will.
Would you haue him your husband that you loue,
And can’t not bee? he is your seruant though, 40
And may performe the office of a husband.
_Beau._ But there is honor, wench.
_Bell._ Such a disease
There is in deed, for which ere I would dy.--
_Beau._ Prethee, distinguish me a mayd & wife.
_Bell._ Faith, Madam, one may beare any mans children, 45
Tother must beare no mans.
_Beau._ What is a husband?
_Bell._ Physicke, that tumbling in your belly, will make you
sicke ith’ stomacke: the onely distinction betwixt a husband
and a seruant is: the first will lye with you, when he please;
the last shall lye with you when you please. Pray tell me, 50
Lady, do you loue, to marry after, or would you marry, to
loue after.
_Beau._ I would meete loue and marriage both at once.
_Bell._ Why then you are out of the fashion, and wilbe contemn’d;
for (Ile assure you) there are few women i’th world, 55
but either they haue married first, and loue after, or loue
first, and marryed after: you must do as you may, not as you
would: your fathers will is the Goale you must fly to: if a
husband approach you, you would haue further off, is he your
loue? the lesse neere you. A husband in these days is but a 60
cloake to bee oftner layde vpon your bed, then in your
bed.
_Baum._ Humpe.
_Bell._ Sometimes you may weare him on your shoulder,
now and then vnder your arme: but seldome or neuer let him 65
couer you: for ’tis not the fashion.
_Enter y. Nouall_, _Pontalier_, _Malotin_, _Lilladam_, _Aymer_.
_Nou._ Best day to natures curiosity,
Starre of _Dijum_, the lustre of all _France_,
Perpetuall spring dwell on thy rosy cheekes,
Whose breath is perfume to our Continent, 70
See _Flora_ turn’d in her varieties.
_Bell._ Oh diuine Lord!
_Nou._ No autumne, nor no age euer approach
This heauenly piece, which nature hauing wrought,
She lost her needle and did then despaire, 75
Euer to work so liuely and so faire.
_Lilad._ Vds light, my Lord one of the purles of your band
is (without all discipline falne) out of his ranke.
_Nou._ How? I would not for a 1000 crownes she had seen’t.
Deare _Liladam_, reforme it. 80
_Bell._ O Lord: _Per se_, Lord, quintessence of honour,
shee walkes not vnder a weede that could deny thee any
thing.
_Baum._ Prethy peace, wench, thou dost but blow the fire,
that flames too much already. 85
_Lilad. Aym. trim Nouall, whilst Bell her Lady._
_Aym._ By gad, my Lord, you haue the diuinest
Taylor of Christendome; he hath made
you looke like an Angell in your cloth of Tissue doublet.
_Pont._ This is a three-leg’d Lord, ther’s a fresh assault, oh
that men should spend time thus! 90
See see, how her blood driues to her heart, and straight
vaults to her cheekes againe.
_Malo._ What are these?
_Pont._ One of ’em there the lower is a good, foolish, knauish
sociable gallimaufry of a man, and has much taught 95
my Lord with singing, hee is master of a musicke house: the
other is his dressing blocke, vpon whom my Lord layes all
his cloathes, and fashions, ere he vouchsafes ’em his owne
person; you shall see him i’th morning in the Gally-foyst, at
noone in the Bullion, i’th euening in Quirpo, and all night 100
in--
_Malo._ A Bawdy house.
_Pont._ If my Lord deny, they deny, if hee affirme, they affirme:
they skip into my Lords cast skins some twice a yeere,
and thus they liue to eate, eate to liue, 105
and liue to prayfe my Lord.
_Malo._ Good sir, tell me one thing.
_Pont._ What’s that?
_Malo._ Dare these men euer fight, on any cause?
_Pont._ Oh no, ’t would spoyle their cloathes, and put their 110
bands out of order.
_Nou._ _Mrs_, you heare the news: your father has resign’d
his Presidentship to my Lord my father.
_Malo._ And Lord Charolois vndone foreuer.
_Pont._ Troth, ’tis pity, sir.
A brauer hope of so assur’d a father 115
Did neuer comfort _France_.
_Lilad._ A good dumbe mourner.
_Aym._ A silent blacke.
As if he had come this Christmas from St. _Omers_.
_Nou._ Oh fie vpon him, how he weares his cloathes!
To see his friends, and return’d after Twelfetyde. 120
_Lilad._ His Colonell lookes fienely like a drouer.
_Nou._ That had a winter ly’n perdieu i’th rayne.
_Aym._ What, he that weares a clout about his necke,
His cuffes in’s pocket, and his heart in’s mouth?
_Nou._ Now out vpon him!
_Beau._ Seruant, tye my hand. 125
How your lips blush, in scorne that they should pay
Tribute to hands, when lips are in the way!
_Nou._ I thus recant, yet now your hand looks white
Because your lips robd it of such a right.
_Mounsieur Aymour_, I prethy sing the song 130
Deuoted to my _Mrs._
_Cant._ _Musicke._
_After the Song, Enter Rochfort, & Baumont._
_Baum._ Romont will come, sir, straight.
_Roch._ ’Tis well.
_Beau._ My Father.
_Nouall._ My honorable Lord.
_Roch._ My Lord _Nouall_ this is a vertue in you.
So early vp and ready before noone, 135
That are the map of dressing through all _France_.
_Nou._ I rise to say my prayers, sir, heere’s my Saint.
_Roch._ Tis well and courtly; you must giue me leaue,
I haue some priuate conference with my daughter,
Pray vse my garden, you shall dine with me. 140
_Lilad._ Wee’l waite on you.
_Nou._ Good morne vnto your Lordship,
Remember what you haue vow’d----to his _Mrs._
_Exeunt omnes praeter Roch. Daug._
_Beau._ Performe I must.
_Roch._ Why how now _Beaumelle_, thou look’st not well.
Th’ art sad of late, come cheere thee, I haue found
A wholesome remedy for these mayden fits, 145
A goodly Oake whereon to twist my vine,
Till her faire branches grow vp to the starres.
Be neere at hand, successe crowne my intent,
My businesse fills my little time so full,
I cannot stand to talke: I know, thy duty 150
Is handmayd to my will, especially
When it presents nothing but good and fit.
_Beau._ Sir, I am yours. Oh if my teares proue true, _Exit Daug_
Fate hath wrong’d loue, and will destroy me too.
_Enter Romont keeper_
_Rom._ Sent you for me, sir?
_Roch._ Yes.
_Rom._ Your Lordships pleasure? 155
_Roch._ Keeper, this prisoner I will see forth comming
Vpon my word--Sit downe good Colonell. _Exit keeper._
Why I did wish you hither, noble sir,
Is to aduise you from this yron carriage,
Which, so affected, _Romont_, you weare, 160
To pity and to counsell yee submit
With expedition to the great _Nouall_:
Recant your sterne contempt, and slight neglect
Of the whole Court, and him, and opportunity,
Or you will vndergoe a heauy censure 165
In publique very shortly.
_Rom._ Hum hum: reuerend sir,
I haue obseru’d you, and doe know you well,
And am now more affraid you know not me,
By wishing my submission to _Nouall_,
Then I can be of all the bellowing mouthes 170
That waite vpon him to pronounce the censure,
Could it determine me torments, and shame.
Submit, and craue forgiuenesse of a beast?
Tis true, this bile of state weares purple Tissue.
Is high fed, proud: so is his Lordships horse, 175
And beares as rich Caparisons. I know,
This Elephant carries on his back not onely
Towres, Castles, but the ponderous republique,
And neuer stoops for’t, with his strong breath trunk
Snuffes others titles, Lordships, Offices, 180
Wealth, bribes, and lyues, vnder his rauenous iawes.
Whats this vnto my freedome? I dare dye;
And therefore aske this Cammell, if these blessings
(For so they would be vnderstood by a man)
But mollifie one rudenesse in his nature, 185
Sweeten the eager relish of the law,
At whose great helme he sits: helps he the poore
In a iust businesse? nay, does he not crosse
Euery deserued souldier and scholler,
As if when nature made him, she had made 190
The generall Antipathy of all vertue?
How sauagely, and blasphemously hee spake
Touching the Generall, the graue Generall dead,
I must weepe when I thinke on’t.
_Roch._ Sir
_Rom._ My Lord,
I am not stubborne, I can melt, you see, 195
And prize a vertue better then my life:
For though I be not learnd, I euer lou’d
That holy Mother of all issues, good,
Whose white hand (for a Scepter) holds a File
To pollish roughest customes, and in you 200
She has her right: see, I am calme as sleepe,
But when I thinke of the grosse iniuries
The godlesse wrong done, to my Generall dead,
I raue indeed, and could eate this Nouall
A lsoule-esse Dromodary.
_Roch._ Oh bee temperate, 205
Sir, though I would perswade, I’le not constraine:
Each mans opinion freely is his owne,
Concerning any thing or any body,
Be it right or wrong, tis at the Iudges perill.
_Enter Baumond,_
_Bau._ These men, Sir, waite without, my Lord is come too. 210
_Roch._ Pay ’em those summes vpon the table, take
Their full releases: stay, I want a witnesse:
Let mee intreat you Colonell, to walke in,
And stand but by, to see this money pay’d,
It does concerne you and your friends, it was 215
The better cause you were sent for, though sayd otherwise.
The deed shall make this my request more plaine.
_Rom._ I shall obey your pleasure Sir, though ignorant
To what is tends?
_Exit Seruant: Romont. Enter Charolois_
_Roch._ Worthiest Sir, 220
You are most welcome: fye, no more of this:
You haue out-wept a woman, noble Charolois.
No man but has, or must bury a father.
_Char._ Graue Sir, I buried sorrow, for his death,
In the graue with him. I did neuer thinke 225
Hee was immortall, though I vow I grieue,
And see no reason why the vicious,
Vertuous, valiant and vnworthy man
Should dye alike.
_Roch._ They do not.
_Char._ In the manner
Of dying, Sir, they do not, but all dye, 230
And therein differ not: but I haue done.
I spy’d the liuely picture of my father,
Passing your gallery, and that cast this water
Into mine eyes: see, foolish that I am,
To let it doe so.
_Roch._ Sweete and gentle nature, 235
How silken is this well comparatiuely
To other men! I haue a suite to you Sir.
_Char._ Take it, tis granted.
_Roch._ What?
_Char._ Nothing, my Lord.
_Roch._ Nothing is quickly granted.
_Char._ Faith, my Lord,
That nothing granted, is euen all I haue, 240
For (all know) I haue nothing left to grant.
_Roch._ Sir, ha’ you any suite to me? Ill grant
You something, any thing.
_Char._ Nay surely, I that can
Giue nothing, will but sue for that againe. 245
No man will grant mee any thing I sue for.
But begging nothing, euery man will giue’t.
_Roch._ Sir, the loue I bore your father, and the worth
I see in you, so much resembling his.
Made me thus send for you. And tender heere 250
_Drawes a Curtayne._
What euer you will take, gold, Iewels, both,
All, to supply your wants, and free your selfe.
Where heauenly vertue in high blouded veines
Is lodg’d, and can agree, men should kneele downe,
Adore, and sacrifice all that they haue; 255
And well they may, it is so seldome seene.
Put off your wonder, and heere freely take
Or send your seruants. Nor, Sir, shall you vse
In ought of this, a poore mans fee, or bribe,
Vniustly taken of the rich, but what’s 260
Directly gotten, and yet by the Law.
_Char._ How ill, Sir, it becomes those haires to mocke?
_Roch._ Mocke? thunder strike mee then.
_Char._ You doe amaze mee:
But you shall wonder too, I will not take
One single piece of this great heape: why should I 265
Borrow, that haue not meanes to pay, nay am
A very bankerupt, euen in flattering hope
Of euer raysing any. All my begging,
Is _Romonts_ libertie.
_Enter Romont. Creditors loaden with mony. Baumont._
_Roch._ Heere is your friend,
Enfranchist ere you spake. I giue him you, 270
And Charolois. I giue you to your friend
As free a man as hee; your fathers debts
Are taken off.
_Char._ How?
_Rom._ Sir, it is most true.
I am the witnes.
_1 Cred._ Yes faith, wee are pay’d.
_2 Cred._ Heauen blesse his Lordship, I did thinke him wiser. 275
_3 Cred._ He a states-man, he an asse Pay other mens debts?
_1 Cred._ That he was neuer bound for.
_Rom._ One more such
Would saue the rest of pleaders.
_Char._ _Honord Rochfort._
Lye still my toung and bushes, cal’d my cheekes,
That offter thankes in words, for such great deeds. 280
_Roch._ Call in my daughter: still I haue a suit to you.
_Baum. Exit._
Would you requite mee.
_Rom._ With his life, assure you.
_Roch._ Nay, would you make me now your debter, Sir.
This is my onely child: what shee appeares, _Enter Baum. Beau._
Your Lordship well may see her education 285
Followes not any: for her mind, I know it
To be far fayrer then her shape, and hope
It will continue so: if now her birth
Be not too meane for Charolois, take her
This virgin by the hand, and call her wife, 290
Indowd with all my fortunes: blesse me so,
Requite mee thus, and make mee happier,
In ioyning my poore empty name to yours,
Then if my state were multiplied ten fold.
_Char._ Is this the payment, Sir, that you expect? 295
Why, you participate me more in debt,
That nothing but my life can euer pay,
This beautie being your daughter, in which yours
I must conceiue necessitie of her vertue
Without all dowry is a Princes ayme, 300
Then, as shee is, for poore and worthlesse I,
How much too worthy! Waken me, _Romont_,
That I may know I dream’t and find this vanisht
_Rom._ Sure, I sleepe not.
_Roch._ Your sentence life or death.
_Char._ Faire Beaumelle, can you loue me?
_Beau._ Yes, my Lord. 305
_Enter Nouall, Ponta. Malotine, Lilad. Aymer. All salute_
_Char._ You need not question me, if I can you.
You are the fayrest virgin in _Digum_,
And _Rochfort_ is your father.
_Nou._ What’s this change?
_Roch._ You met my wishes, Gentlemen.
_Rom._ What make
These dogs in doublets heere?
_Beau._ A Visitation, Sir. 310
_Char._ Then thus, Faire _Beaumelle_, I write my faith
Thus seale it in the sight of Heauen and men.
Your fingers tye my heart-strings with this touch
In true-loue knots, which nought but death shall loose.
And yet these eares (an Embleme of our loues) 315
Like Cristall riuers indiuidually
Flow into one another, make one source,
Which neuer man distinguish, lesse deuide:
Breath, marry, breath, and kisses, mingle soules
Two hearts, and bodies, heere incorporate: 320
And though with little wooing I haue wonne
My future life shall be a wooing tyme.
And euery day, new as the bridall one.
Oh Sir I groane vnder your courtesies,
More then my fathers bones vnder his wrongs, 325
You _Curtius_-like, haue throwne into the gulfe,
Of this his Countries foule ingratitude,
Your life and fortunes, to redeeme their shames.
_Roch._ No more, my glory, come, let’s in and hasten
This celebration.
_Rom. Mal. Pont. Bau._ All faire blisse vpon it. 330
_Exeunt Roch. Char. Rom. Bau. Mal._
_Nou._ Mistresse.
_Beau._ Oh seruant, vertue strengthen me.
Thy presence blowes round my affections vane:
You will vndoe me, if you speake againe.
_Exit Beaum._
_Lilad. Aym._ Heere will be sport for you. This workes.
_Exeunt Lilad. Aym._
_Nou._ Peace, peace,
_Pont._ One word, my Lord _Nouall_.
_Nou._ What, thou wouldst mony; there. 335
_Pont._ No, Ile none, Ile not be bought a slaue,
A Pander, or a Parasite, for all
Your fathers worth, though you haue sau’d my life,
Rescued me often from my wants, I must not
Winke at your follyes: that will ruine you. 340
You know my blunt way, and my loue to truth:
Forsake the pursuit of this Ladies honour,
Now you doe see her made another mans,
And such a mans, so good, so popular,
Or you will plucke a thousand mischiefes on you. 345
The benefits you haue done me, are not lost,
Nor cast away, they are purs’d heere in my heart,
But let me pay you, sir, a fayrer way
Then to defend your vices, or to sooth ’em.
_Nou._ Ha, ha, ha, what are my courses vnto thee? 350
Good Cousin _Pontalier_, meddle with that
That shall concerne thyselfe.
_Exit Nouall._
_Pont._ No more but scorne?
Moue on then, starres, worke your pernicious will.
Onely the wise rule, and preuent your ill.
_Exit. Hoboyes._
_Here a passage ouer the Stage, while the Act is playing for the
Marriage of Charalois with Beaumelle, &c._
_Actus tertius._
_Scaena prima._
[_A Room in Charalois’ House_]
_Enter Nouall Iunior, Bellapert._
_Nou. Iu._ Flie not to these excuses: thou hast bin
False in thy promise, and when I haue said
Vngratefull, all is spoke.
_Bell._ Good my Lord,
But heare me onely.
_Nou._ To what purpose, trifler?
Can anything that thou canst say, make voyd 5
The marriage? or those pleasures but a dreame,
Which _Charaloyes_ (oh _Venus_) hath enioyd?
_Bell._ I yet could say that you receiue aduantage,
In what you thinke a losse, would you vouchsafe me
That you were neuer in the way till now 10
With safety to arriue at your desires,
That pleasure makes loue to you vnattended
By danger or repentance?
_Nou._ That I could.
But apprehend one reason how this might be,
Hope would not then forsake me.
_Bell._ The enioying 15
Of what you most desire, I say th’ enioying
Shall, in the full possession of your wishes,
Confirme that I am faithfull.
_Nou._ Giue some rellish
How this may appeare possible.
_Bell._ I will
Rellish, and taste, and make the banquet easie: 20
You say my Ladie’s married. I confesse it,
That Charalois hath inioyed her, ’tis most true
That with her, hee’s already Master of
The best part of my old Lords state. Still better,
But that the first, or last, should be your hindrance, 25
I vtterly deny: for but obserue me:
While she went for, and was, I sweare, a Virgin,
What courtesie could she with her honour giue
Or you receiue with safety--take me with you,
When I say courtesie, doe not think I meane 30
A kisse, the tying of her shoo or garter,
An houre of priuate conference: those are trifles.
In this word courtesy, we that are gamesters point at
The sport direct, where not alone the louer
Brings his Artillery, but vses it. 35
Which word expounded to you, such a courtesie
Doe you expect, and sudden.
_Nou._ But he tasted
The first sweetes, _Bellapert_.
_Bell._ He wrong’d you shrewdly,
He toyl’d to climbe vp to the _Phoenix_ nest,
And in his prints leaues your ascent more easie. 40
I doe not know, you that are perfect Crittiques
In womens bookes, may talke of maydenheads.
_Nou._ But for her marriage.
_Bell._ ’Tis a faire protection
’Gainst all arrests of feare, or shame for euer.
Such as are faire, and yet not foolish, study 45
To haue one at thirteene; but they are mad
That stay till twenty. Then sir, for the pleasure,
To say Adulterie’s sweeter, that is stale.
This onely is not the contentment more,
To say, This is my Cuckold, then my Riuall. 50
More I could say--but briefly, she doates on you,
If it proue otherwise, spare not, poyson me
With the next gold you giue me.
_Enter Beaumely_
_Beau._ Hows this seruant,
Courting my woman?
_Bell._ As an entrance to
The fauour of the mistris: you are together 55
And I am perfect in my qu.
_Beau._ Stay _Bellapert_.
_Bell._ In this I must not with your leaue obey you.
Your Taylor and your Tire-woman waite without
And stay my counsayle, and direction for
Your next dayes dressing. I haue much to doe, 60
Nor will your Ladiship know, time is precious,
Continue idle: this choise Lord will finde
So fit imployment for you.
_Exit Bellap._
_Beau._ I shall grow angry.
_Nou._ Not so, you haue a iewell in her, Madam.
_Enter againe._
_Bell._ I had forgot to tell your Ladiship 65
The closet is priuate and your couch ready:
And if you please that I shall loose the key,
But say so, and tis done.
_Exit Bellap._
_Baum._ You come to chide me, seruant, and bring with you
Sufficient warrant, you will say and truely, 70
My father found too much obedience in me,
By being won too soone: yet if you please
But to remember, all my hopes and fortunes
Had reuerence to this likening: you will grant
That though I did not well towards you, I yet 75
Did wisely for my selfe.
_Nou._ With too much feruor
I haue so long lou’d and still loue you, Mistresse,
To esteeme that an iniury to me
Which was to you conuenient: that is past
My helpe, is past my cure. You yet may, Lady, 80
In recompence of all my dutious seruice,
(Prouided that your will answere your power)
Become my Creditresse.
_Beau._ I vnderstand you,
And for assurance, the request you make
Shall not be long vnanswered. Pray you sit, 85
And by what you shall heare, you’l easily finde,
My passions are much fitter to desire,
Then to be sued to.
_Enter Romont and Florimell._
_Flor._ Sir, tis not enuy
At the start my fellow has got of me in
My Ladies good opinion, thats the motiue 90
Of this discouery; but due payment
Of what I owe her Honour.
_Rom._ So I conceiue it.
_Flo._ I haue obserued too much, nor shall my silence
Preuent the remedy--yonder they are,
I dare not bee seene with you. You may doe 95
What you thinke fit, which wil be, I presume,
The office of a faithfull and tryed friend
To my young Lord.
_Exit Flori._
_Rom._ This is no vision: ha!
_Nou._ With the next opportunity.
_Beau._ By this kisse,
And this, and this.
_Nou._ That you would euer sweare thus. 100
_Rom._ If I seeme rude, your pardon, Lady; yours
I do not aske: come, do not dare to shew mee
A face of anger, or the least dislike.
Put on, and suddaily a milder looke,
I shall grow rough else.
_Nou._ What haue I done, Sir, 105
To draw this harsh vnsauory language from you?
_Rom._ Done, Popinjay? why, dost thou thinke that if
I ere had dreamt that thou hadst done me wrong,
Thou shouldest outliue it?
_Beau._ This is something more
Then my Lords friendship giues commission for. 110
_Nou._ Your presence and the place, makes him presume
Vpon my patience.
_Rom._ As if thou ere wer’t angry
But with thy Taylor, and yet that poore shred
Can bring more to the making vp of a man,
Then can be hop’d from thee: thou art his creature, 115
And did hee not each morning new create [thee]
Thou wouldst stinke and be forgotten. Ile not change
On syllable more with thee, vntill thou bring
Some testimony vnder good mens hands,
Thou art a Christian. I suspect thee strongly, 120
And wilbe satisfied: till which time, keepe from me.
The entertaiment of your visitation
Has made what I intended on a businesse.
_Nou._ So wee shall meete--Madam.
_Rom._ Vse that legge again,
And Ile cut off the other.
_Nou._ Very good. 125
_Exit Nouall._
_Rom._ What a perfume the Muske-cat leaues behind him!
Do you admit him for a property,
To saue you charges, Lady.
_Beau._ Tis not vselesse,
Now you are to succeed him.
_Rom._ So I respect you,
Not for your selfe, but in remembrance of, 130
Who is your father, and whose wife you now are,
That I choose rather not to vnderstand
Your nasty scoffe then,--
_Beau._ What, you will not beate mee,
If I expound it to you. Heer’s a Tyrant
Spares neyther man nor woman.
_Rom._ My intents 135
Madam, deserue not this; nor do I stay
To be the whetstone of your wit: preserue it
To spend on such, as know how to admire
Such coloured stuffe. In me there is now speaks to you
As true a friend and seruant to your Honour, 140
And one that will with as much hazzard guard it,
As euer man did goodnesse.--But then Lady,
You must endeauour not alone to bee,
But to appeare worthy such loue and seruice.
_Beau._ To what tends this?
_Rom._ Why, to this purpose, Lady, 145
I do desire you should proue such a wife
To _Charaloys_ (and such a one hee merits)
As Caesar, did hee liue, could not except at,
Not onely innocent from crime, but free
From all taynt and suspition.
_Beau._ They are base 150
That iudge me otherwise.
_Rom._ But yet bee carefull.
Detraction’s a bold monster, and feares not
To wound the fame of Princes, if it find
But any blemish in their liues to worke on.
But Ile bee plainer with you: had the people 155
Bin learnd to speake, but what euen now I saw,
Their malice out of that would raise an engine
To ouerthrow your honor. In my fight
(With yonder pointed foole I frighted from you)
You vs’d familiarity beyond 160
A modest entertaynment: you embrac’d him
With too much ardor for a stranger, and
Met him with kisses neyther chaste nor comely:
But learne you to forget him, as I will
Your bounties to him, you will find it safer 165
Rather to be vncourtly, then immodest.
_Beau._ This prety rag about your necke shews well,
And being coorse and little worth, it speakes you,
As terrible as thrifty.
_Rom._ Madam.
_Beau._ Yes.
And this strong belt in which you hang your honor 170
Will out-last twenty scarfs.
_Rom._ What meane you, Lady?
_Beau._ And all else about you Cap a pe
So vniforme in spite of handsomnesse,
Shews such a bold contempt of comelinesse,
That tis not strange your Laundresse in the League, 175
Grew mad with loue of you.
_Rom._ Is my free counsayle
Answerd with this ridiculous scorne?
_Beau._ These obiects
Stole very much of my attention from me,
Yet something I remember, to speake truth,
Deceyued grauely, but to little purpose, 180
That almost would haue made me sweare, some Curate
Had stolne into the person of _Romont_,
And in the praise of goodwife honesty,
Had read an homely.
_Rom._ By thy hand.
_Beau._ And sword,
I will make vp your oath, twill want weight else. 185
You are angry with me, and poore I laugh at it.
Do you come from the Campe, which affords onely
The conuersation of cast suburbe whores,
To set downe to a Lady of my ranke,
Lymits of entertainment? 190
_Rom._ Sure a Legion has possest this woman.
_Beau._ One stampe more would do well: yet I desire not
You should grow horne-mad, till you haue a wife.
You are come to warme meate, and perhaps cleane linnen:
Feed, weare it, and bee thankefull. For me, know, 195
That though a thousand watches were set on mee,
And you the Master-spy, I yet would vse,
The liberty that best likes mee. I will reuell,
Feast, kisse, imbreace, perhaps grant larger fauours:
Yet such as liue vpon my meanes, shall know 200
They must not murmur at it. If my Lord
Bee now growne yellow, and has chose out you
To serue his Iealouzy that way, tell him this,
You haue something to informe him:
_Exit Beau._
_Rom._ And I will.
Beleeue it wicked one I will. Heare, Heauen, 205
But hearing pardon mee: if these fruts grow
Vpon the tree of marriage, let me shun it,
As a forbidden sweete. An heyre and rich,
Young, beautifull, yet adde to this a wife,
And I will rather choose a Spittle sinner 210
Carted an age before, though three parts rotten,
And take it for a blessing, rather then
Be fettered to the hellish slauery
Of such an impudence.
_Enter Baumont with writings._
_Bau._ Collonell, good fortune
To meet you thus: you looke sad, but Ile tell you 215
Something that shall remoue it. Oh how happy
Is my Lord _Charaloys_ in his faire bride!
_Rom._ A happy man indeede!--pray you in what?
_Bau._ I dare sweare, you would thinke so good a Lady,
A dower sufficient.
_Rom._ No doubt. But on. 220
_Bau._ So faire, so chaste, so vertuous: so indeed
All that is excellent.
_Rom._ Women haue no cunning
To gull the world.
_Bau._ Yet to all these, my Lord
Her father giues the full addition of
All he does now possesse in _Burgundy_: 225
These writings to confirme it, are new seal’d
And I most fortunate to present him with them,
I must goe seeke him out, can you direct mee?
_Rom._ You’l finde him breaking a young horse.
_Bau._ I thanke you.
_Exit Baumont._
_Rom._ I must do something worthy _Charaloys_ friendship. 230
If she were well inclin’d to keepe her so,
Deseru’d not thankes: and yet to stay a woman
Spur’d headlong by hot lust, to her owne ruine,
Is harder then to prop a falling towre
With a deceiuing reed.
_Enter Rochfort._
_Roch._ Some one seeke for me, 235
As soone as he returnes.
_Rom._ Her father! ha?
How if I breake this to him? sure it cannot
Meete with an ill construction. His wisedome
Made powerfull by the authority of a father,
Will warrant and giue priuiledge to his counsailes. 240
It shall be so--my Lord.
_Roch._ Your friend _Romont_:
Would you ought with me?
_Rom._ I stand so engag’d
To your so many fauours, that I hold it
A breach in thankfulnesse, should I not discouer,
Though with some imputation to my selfe, 245
All doubts that may concerne you.
_Roch._ The performance
Will make this protestation worth my thanks.
_Rom._ Then with your patience lend me your attention
For what I must deliuer, whispered onely
You will with too much griefe receiue.
_Enter Beaumelle, Bellapert._
_Beau._ See wench! 250
Vpon my life as I forespake, hee’s now
Preferring his complaint: but be thou perfect,
And we will fit him.
_Bell._ Feare not mee, pox on him:
A Captaine turne Informer against kissing?
Would he were hang’d vp in his rusty Armour: 255
But if our fresh wits cannot turne the plots
Of such a mouldy murrion on it selfe;
Rich cloathes, choyse faire, and a true friend at a call,
With all the pleasures the night yeelds, forsake vs.
_Roch._ This in my daughter? doe not wrong her.
_Bell._ Now. 260
Begin. The games afoot, and wee in distance.
_Beau._ Tis thy fault, foolish girle, pinne on my vaile,
I will not weare those iewels. Am I not
Already matcht beyond my hopes? yet still
You prune and set me forth, as if I were 265
Againe to please a suyter.
_Bell._ Tis the course
That our great Ladies take.
_Rom._ A weake excuse.
_Beau._ Those that are better seene, in what concernes
A Ladies honour and faire same, condemne it.
You waite well, in your absence, my Lords friend 270
The vnderstanding, graue and wise _Romont_.
_Rom._ Must I be still her sport?
_Beau._ Reproue me for it.
And he has traueld to bring home a iudgement
Not to be contradicted. You will say
My father, that owes more to yeeres then he, 275
Has brought me vp to musique, language, Courtship,
And I must vse them. True, but not t’offend,
Or render me suspected.
_Roch._ Does your fine story
Begin from this?
_Beau._ I thought a parting kisse
From young _Nouall_, would haue displeasd no more 280
Then heretofore it hath done; but I finde
I must restrayne such fauours now; looke therefore
As you are carefull to continue mine,
That I no more be visited. Ile endure
The strictest course of life that iealousie 285
Can thinke secure enough, ere my behauiour
Shall call my fame in question.
_Rom._ Ten dissemblers
Are in this subtile deuill. You beleeue this?
_Roch._ So farre that if you trouble me againe
With a report like this, I shall not onely 290
Iudge you malicious in your disposition,
But study to repent what I haue done
To such a nature.
_Rom._ Why, ’tis exceeding well.
_Roch._ And for you, daughter, off with this, off with it:
I haue that confidence in your goodnesse, I, 295
That I will not consent to haue you liue
Like to a Recluse in a cloyster: goe
Call in the gallants, let them make you merry,
Vse all fit liberty.
_Bell._ Blessing on you.
If this new preacher with the sword and feather 300
Could proue his doctrine for Canonicall,
We should haue a fine world.
_Exit Bellapert._
_Roch._ Sir, if you please
To beare your selfe as fits a Gentleman,
The house is at your seruice: but if not,
Though you seeke company else where, your absence 305
Will not be much lamented--
_Exit Rochfort._
_Rom._ If this be
The recompence of striuing to preserue
A wanton gigglet honest, very shortly
’Twill make all mankinde Panders--Do you smile,
Good Lady Loosenes? your whole sex is like you, 310
And that man’s mad that seekes to better any:
What new change haue you next?
_Beau._ Oh, feare not you, sir,
Ile shift into a thousand, but I will
Conuert your heresie.
_Rom._ What heresie? Speake.
_Beau._ Of keeping a Lady that is married, 315
From entertayning seruants.--
_Enter Nouall Iu._ _Malatine_, _Liladam_, _Aymer_, _Pontalier_.
O, you are welcome,
Vae any meanes to vexe him,
And then with welcome follow me.
_Exit Beau_
_Nou._ You are tyr’d
With your graue exhortations, Collonell.
_Lilad._ How is it? Fayth, your Lordship may doe well, 320
To helpe him to some Church-preferment: ’tis
Now the fashion, for men of all conditions,
How euer they haue liu’d; to end that way.
_Aym._ That face would doe well in a surplesse.
_Rom._ Rogues,
Be silent--or--
_Pont._ S’death will you suffer this? 325
_Rom._ And you, the master Rogue, the coward rascall,
I shall be with you suddenly.
_Nou._ _Pontallier_,
If I should strike him, I know I shall kill him:
And therefore I would haue thee beate him, for
Hee’s good for nothing else.
_Lilad._ His backe 330
Appeares to me, as it would tire a Beadle,
And then he has a knotted brow, would bruise
A courtlike hand to touch it.
_Aym._ Hee lookes like
A Curryer when his hides grown deare.
_Pont._ Take heede
He curry not some of you.
_Nou._ Gods me, hee’s angry. 335
_Rom._ I breake no Iests, but I can breake my sword
About your pates.
_Enter Charaloyes and Baumont._
_Lilad._ Heeres more.
_Aym._ Come let’s bee gone,
Wee are beleaguerd.
_Nou._ Looke they bring vp their troups.
_Pont._ Will you sit downe
With this disgrace? You are abus’d most grosely. 340
_Lilad._ I grant you, Sir, we are, and you would haue vs
Stay and be more abus’d.
_Nou._ My Lord, I am sorry,
Your house is so inhospitable, we must quit it.
_Exeunt. Manent. Char. Rom._
_Cha._ Prethee _Romont_, what caus’d this vprore?
_Rom._ Nothing.
They laugh’d and vs’d their scuruy wits vpon mee. 345
_Char._ Come, tis thy Iealous nature: but I wonder
That you which are an honest man and worthy,
Should softer this suspition: no man laughes;
No one can whisper, but thou apprehend’st
His conference and his scorne reflects on thee: 350
For my part they should scoffe their thin wits out,
So I not heard ’em, beate me, not being there.
Leaue, leaue these fits, to conscious men, to such
As are obnoxious, to those foolish things
As they can gibe at.
_Rom._ Well, Sir.
_Char._ Thou art know’n 355
Valiant without detect, right defin’d
Which is (as fearing to doe iniury,
As tender to endure it) not a brabbler,
A swearer.
_Rom._ Pish, pish, what needs this my Lord?
If I be knowne none such, how vainly, you 360
Do cast away good counsaile? I haue lou’d you,
And yet must freely speake; so young a tutor,
Fits not so old a Souldier as I am.
And I must tell you, t’was in your behalfe
I grew inraged thus, yet had rather dye, 365
Then open the great cause a syllable further.
_Cha._ In my behalfe? wherein hath _Charalois_
Vnfitly so demean’d himselfe, to giue
The least occasion to the loosest tongue,
To throw aspersions on him, or so weakely 370
Protected his owne honor, as it should
Need a defence from any but himselfe?
They are fools that iudge me by my outward seeming,
Why should my gentlenesse beget abuse?
The Lion is not angry that does sleepe 375
Nor euery man a Coward that can weepe.
For Gods sake speake the cause.
_Rom._ Not for the world.
Oh it will strike disease into your bones
Beyond the cure of physicke, drinke your blood,
Rob you of all your rest, contract your sight, 380
Leaue you no eyes but to see misery,
And of your owne, nor speach but to wish thus
Would I had perish’d in the prisons iawes:
From whence I was redeem’d! twill weare you old,
Before you haue experience in that Art, 385
That causes your affliction.
_Cha._ Thou dost strike
A deathfull coldnesse to my hearts high heate,
And shrinkst my liuer like the _Calenture_.
Declare this foe of mine, and lifes, that like
A man I may encounter and subdue it 390
It shall not haue one such effect in mee,
As thou denouncest: with a Souldiers arme,
If it be strength, Ile meet it: if a fault
Belonging to my mind, Ile cut it off
With mine owne reason, as a Scholler should 395
Speake, though it make mee monstrous.
_Rom._ Ile dye first.
Farewell, continue merry, and high Heauen
Keepe your wife chaste.
_Char._ Hump, stay and take this wolfe
Out of my brest, that thou hast lodg’d there, or
For euer lose mee.
_Rom._ Lose not, Sir, your selfe. 400
And I will venture--So the dore is fast. _Locke the dore._
Now noble _Charaloys_, collect your selfe,
Summon your spirits, muster all your strength
That can belong to man, sift passion,
From euery veine, and whatsoeuer ensues, 405
Vpbraid not me heereafter, as the cause of
Iealousy, discontent, slaughter and ruine:
Make me not parent to sinne: you will know
This secret that I burne with.
_Char._ Diuell on’t,
What should it be? _Romont_, I heare you wish 410
My wifes continuance of Chastity.
_Rom._ There was no hurt in that.
_Char._ Why? do you know
A likelyhood or possibility vnto the contrarie?
_Rom._ I know it not, but doubt it, these the grounds
The seruant of your wife now young _Nouall_, 415
The sonne vnto your fathers Enemy
(Which aggrauates my presumption the more)
I haue been warnd of, touching her, nay, seene them
Tye heart to heart, one in anothers armes,
Multiplying kisses, as if they meant 420
To pose Arithmeticke, or whose eyes would
Bee first burnt out, with gazing on the others.
I saw their mouthes engender, and their palmes
Glew’d, as if Loue had lockt them, their words flow
And melt each others, like two circling flames, 425
Where chastity, like a Phoenix (me thought) burn’d,
But left the world nor ashes, nor an heire.
Why stand you silent thus? what cold dull flegme,
As if you had no drop of choller mixt
In your whole constitution, thus preuailes, 430
To fix you now, thus stupid hearing this?
_Cha._ You did not see ’em on my Couch within,
Like George a horse-backe on her, nor a bed?
_Rom._ Noe.
_Cha._ Ha, ha.
_Rom._ Laugh yee? eene so did your wife,
And her indulgent father.
_Cha._ They were wife. 435
Wouldst ha me be a foole?
_Rom._ No, but a man.
_Cha._ There is no dramme of manhood to suspect,
On such thin ayrie circumstance as this
Meere complement and courtship. Was this tale
The hydeous monster which you so conceal’d? 440
Away, thou curious impertinent
And idle searcher of such leane nice toyes.
Goe, thou sedicious sower of debate:
Fly to such matches, where the bridegroome doubts:
He holds not worth enough to counteruaile 445
The vertue and the beauty of his wife.
Thou buzzing drone that ’bout my eares dost hum,
To strike thy rankling sting into my heart,
Whose vemon, time, nor medicine could asswage.
Thus doe I put thee off, and confident 450
In mine owne innocency, and desert,
Dare not conceiue her so vnreasonable,
To put _Nouall_ in ballance against me,
An vpstart cran’d vp to the height he has.
Hence busiebody, thou’rt no friend to me, 455
That must be kept to a wiues iniury,
_Rom._ Ist possible? farewell, fine, honest man,
Sweet temper’d Lord adieu: what Apoplexy
Hath knit fence vp? Is this _Romonts_ reward?
Beare witnes the great spirit of my father, 460
With what a healthfull hope I administer
This potion that hath wrought so virulently,
I not accuse thy wife of act, but would
Preuent her _Praecipuce_, to thy dishonour,
Which now thy tardy sluggishnesse will admit. 465
Would I had seene thee grau’d with thy great Sire,
Ere liue to haue mens marginall fingers point
At Charaloys, as a lamented story.
An Emperour put away his wife for touching
Another man, but thou wouldst haue thine tasted 470
And keepe her (I thinke.) Puffe. I am a fire
To warme a dead man, that waste out myselfe.
Bleed--what a plague, a vengeance i’st to mee,
If you will be a Cuckold? Heere I shew
A swords point to thee, this side you may shun, 475
Or that: the perrill, if you will runne on,
I cannot helpe it.
_Cha._ Didst thou neuer see me
Angry, _Romont_?
_Rom._ Yes, and pursue a foe
Like lightening
_Char._ Prethee see me so no more.
I can be so againe. Put vp thy sword, 480
And take thy selfe away, lest I draw mine.
_Rom._ Come fright your foes with this: sir, I am your friend,
And dare stand by you thus.
_Char._ Thou art not my friend,
Or being so, thou art mad, I must not buy
Thy friendship at this rate; had I iust cause, 485
Thou knowst I durst pursue such iniury
Through fire, ayre, water, earth, nay, were they all
Shuffled againe to _Chaos_, but ther’s none.
Thy skill, _Romont_, consists in camps, not courts.
Farewell, vnciuill man, let’s meet no more. 490
Heere our long web of friendship I vntwist.
Shall I goe whine, walke pale, and locke my wife
For nothing, from her births free liberty,
That open’d mine to me? yes; if I doe
The name of cuckold then, dog me with scorne. 495
I am a _Frenchman_, no _Italian_ borne.
_Exit._
_Rom._ A dull _Dutch_ rather: fall and coole (my blood)
Boyle not in zeal of thy friends hurt, so high,
That is so low, and cold himselfe in’t. Woman,
How strong art thou, how easily beguild? 500
How thou dost racke vs by the very hornes?
Now wealth I see change manners and the man:
Something I must doe mine owne wrath to asswage,
And note my friendship to an after-age.
_Exit._
_Actus quartus._
_Scaena prima._
[_A Room in Nouall’s House_]
_Enter Nouall Iunior, as newly dressed, a Taylor, Barber, Perfumer,
Liladam, Aymour, Page._
_Nou._ Mend this a little: pox! thou hast burnt me. oh fie
vpon’t, O Lard, hee has made me smell (for
all the world) like a flaxe, or a red headed womans chamber:
powder, powder, powder.
_Perf._ Oh sweet Lord! 5
_Nouall sits in a chaire,_
_Page._ That’s his Perfumer.
_Barber orders his haire,_
_Tayl._ Oh deare Lord,
_Perfumer giues powder,_
_Page._ That’s his Taylor.
_Taylor sets his clothese._
_Nou._ Monsieur _Liladam_, _Aymour_, how allow you the
modell of these clothes? 10
_Aym._ Admirably, admirably, oh sweet Lord! assuredly
it’s pity the wormes should eate thee.
_Page._ Here’s a fine Cell; a Lord, a Taylor, a Perfumer, a
Barber, and a paire of Mounsieurs: 3 to 3, as little will in the
one, as honesty in the other. S’foote ile into the country 15
againe, learne to speake truth, drinke Ale, and conuerse with
my fathers Tenants; here I heare nothing all day, but
vpon my soule as I am a Gentleman, and an honest
man.
_Aym._ I vow and affirme, your Taylor must needs be an expert 20
Geometrician, he has the Longitude, Latitude, Altitude,
Profundity, euery Demension of your body, so exquisitely,
here’s a lace layd as directly, as if truth were a
Taylor.
_Page._ That were a miracle. 25
_Lila._ With a haire breadth’s errour, ther’s a shoulder
piece cut, and the base of a pickadille in _puncto_.
_Aym._ You are right, Mounsieur his vestaments fit: as if
they grew vpon him, or art had wrought ’em on the same
loome, as nature fram’d his Lordship as if your Taylor were 30
deepely read in Astrology, and had taken measure of your
honourable body, with a _Iacobs_ staffe, an _Ephimerides_.
_Tayl._ I am bound t’ee Gentlemen.
_Page._ You are deceiu’d, they’ll be bound to you, you must 35
remember to trust ’em none.
_Nou._ Nay, fayth, thou art a reasonable neat Artificer, giue
the diuell his due.
_Page._ I, if hee would but cut the coate according to the
cloth still. 40
_Nou._ I now want onely my misters approbation, who is
indeed, the most polite punctuall Queene of dressing in all
_Burgundy_. Pah, and makes all other young Ladies appeare,
as if they came from boord last weeke out of the country,
Is’t not true, Liladam? 45
_Lila._ True my Lord, as if any thing your Lordship could
say, could be othewrise then true.
_Nou._ Nay, a my soule, ’tis so, what fouler obiect in the
world, then to see a young faire, handsome beauty, vnhandsomely
dighted and incongruently accoutred; or a hopefull 50
_Cheualier_, vnmethodically appointed, in the externall ornaments
of nature? For euen as the Index tels vs the contents
of stories, and directs to the particular Chapters, euen so
does the outward habit and superficiall order of garments
(in man or woman) giue vs a tast of the spirit, and 55
demonstratiuely poynt (as it were a manuall note from the margin)
all the internall quality, and habiliment of the soule, and
there cannot be a more euident, palpable, grosse manifestation
of poore degenerate dunghilly blood, and breeding, then
rude, vnpolish’d, disordered and slouenly outside. 60
_Page._ An admirable! lecture. Oh all you gallants, that hope
to be saued by your cloathes, edify, edify.
_Aym._ By the Lard, sweet Lard, thou deseru’st a pension
o’ the State.
_Page._ O th’ Taylors, two such Lords were able to spread 65
Taylors ore the face of a whole kingdome.
_Nou._ Pox a this glasse! it flatters, I could find in my heart
to breake it.
_Page._ O saue the glasse my Lord, and breake their heads,
they are the greater flatterers I assure you. 70
_Aym._ Flatters, detracts, impayres, yet put it by,
Lest thou deare Lord (_Narcissus_-like) should doate
Vpon thyselfe, and dye; and rob the world
Of natures copy, that she workes forme by.
_Lila._ Oh that I were the Infanta Queene of Europe,
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