Chapter XII: Act V: Scene I

_A Room in_ GLISTER’S _House_.

_Enter_ GLISTER _and_ MISTRESS GLISTER.

MIS. G. This was your colour[369] to keep her close;
but what cloak ha’ you for her’s and your own shame?
What, your own niece, your brother’s daughter, besides
your bastard in the country!

GLI. Wife, range not too far, I would advise you; come
home in time: vex me not beyond sufferance; the
two-edged sword of thy tongue hath drawn blood o’ me.
Patience, I say: thou art all this while in an error.
MIS. G. No, thou hast been all this while in an urinal;
thou hast gone out of thy compass in women’s waters:
you’re a conjuror, forsooth, and can rouse your spirits
into circles. Ah, you old fornicator, that ever I saw
that red beard of thine! now could I rail against thy
complexion: I think, in my conscience, the traces and
caparison of Venus’ coach are made o’ red hairs; which
may be a true emblem that no flaxen stuff or tanned
white leather draws love like ’em: I think thou
manuredest thy chin with the droppings of eggs and
muskadine before it bristled. A shame take thee and thy
loadstone! But ’tis no matter; master Placket the
paritor[370] has cited you, and you shall answer it.
GLI. O the raging jealousy of a woman! Do you hear,
wife? I will shew myself a man of sense, and answer you
with silence; or like a man of wisdom, speak in brief: I
say you are a scold, and beware the cucking-stool.[371]
[_Exit._
MIS. G. I say you are a ninnihammer, and beware the
cuckoo; for as sure as I have ware, I’ll traffic with
the next merchant venturer: and in good time here
come[372] gallants of the right trade.

_Enter_ LIPSALVE _and_ GUDGEON, _and_ GLISTER _behind
watching them_.

LIP. All alone, mistress Glister? meditating who shall
be your next child’s father?
GUD. Indeed, methinks, that should be one end of her
thought, an’t be but to cry quittance with her husband,
of whose abuse the town rings.
GLI. Flax and fire, flax and fire! here are fellows come
in the nick, to light their matches at my tinder.
[_Aside._
LIP. He tells you true, mistress Glister: the doctor
hath made you ordinary in our ordinaries; satires whet
their tooths, and steep rods in piss, epigrams lie in
poetry’s pickle, and we shall have rhyme out of all
reason against you.
GUD. Ere long he will take up his station at a
stationer’s, where we shall see him do penance in a
sheet at least.
MIS. G. O, I am nettled! my patience is so provoked,
that I must doff my modesty: what shall I do? if ye be
honest gentlemen, counsel me in my revenge, teach me
what to do, make my case your own.
LIP. Why, you are in the common road of revenge: take
which hand you will, you cannot go out o’ your way; ’tis
as soon taken as time by his forepart.
GUD. Faith, since he has strook with the sword, strike
you with the scabbard; in plain terms, cuckold him: you
may as easily do’t as lie down o’ your bed.
GLI. This gear cottens,[373] i’faith. [_Aside._
MIS. G. I apprehend you, gentlemen. Lord, how much
better are two heads than one to make one large head!
LIP. You say true, mistress Glister: there’s help
required in grafting; and how happily we come to tender
our service! Let our pretence be to take physic of the
doctor; and that he may with as much ease minister to us
as we to you, we’ll take a lodging in his house.
GUD. How say you to this? is the colour[374] good?
does’t like[375] you?
MIS. G. Passing well: the colour is so good, that you
shall wear my favour out o’ the same piece.
LIP. Excellent, excellent!—Now shall we be revenged for
the whipping.—Mistress Glister, let me be your first
man.
GUD. Nay, soft, sir, I plied her as soon as you.
GLI. I should have an oar in her boat too by right.
_Aside._
LIP. How ill-advised were you to marry one with a red
beard!
MIS. G. O master Lipsalve, I am not the first that has
fallen under that ensign! there’s no complexion more
attractive in this time for women than gold and red
beards: such men are all liver.[376]
GUD. Ay, but small heart, and less honesty.
LIP. Yes, they are honest too in some kind, for they’ll
beg before they’ll steal.
GUD. That’s true; for, for one that holds up his hand at
the sessions, you shall have ten come into the bawdy
court.
GLI. Was ever beard so back-bitten? this were enough
to make red beards turn medley, and dash ’em clean
out of countenance; but I hope, like mine, they fear
no colours. And[377] you were ten courtiers, I’ll
front you: I must give you physic, with a pox! well,
if I pepper ye not, call me doctor Doddipoll.[378]
[_Aside._]—Master Lipsalve and master Gudgeon, you
are heartily welcome; I am very glad to see you
well.
LIP. O master doctor, your salutation is very
suspicious!
GLI. Why, master Lipsalve?
LIP. It can scarce be hearty, for physicians are rather
glad to see men ill than well.
GLI. Not so, sir; you must distinguish of men; though
this I know, virtue is not the end of all science,
which commonly keeps the professor poor; some study
questuary[379] and gainful arts, and every one would
thrive in’s calling: but, i’faith, gentlemen, what
wind drives you hither?
GUD. The wind-colic, master doctor, or some such
disease.
GLI. But not the stone-colic?
LIP. O no, sir, we have no obstructions in those parts;
we are loose enough there.
GLI. If you were troubled with that, my wife can tell
you of an excellent remedy.
GUD. We need it not, we need it not: but indeed, master
doctor, for some private infirmities (which our waters
shall make known to you), we desire to take some physic
of you for a few days; and to that end we would take a
lodging in your house during the time.
LIP. Shall we entreat your favour?
GLI. No entreaty, gentlemen; you shall command me to
search the very profundity of my skill for you.—Have
them in, wife, and shew them their lodging.—I will think
upon another receipt, and follow you immediately.
GUD. And, i’faith, we shall requite your pains to the
full.
[_Exeunt_ MIS. GLISTER, LIPSALVE, _and_ GUDGEON.
GLI. To the fool, you mean: I know you ha’ the horn of
plenty for me, which you would derive unto me from the
liberality of your bawdies,[380] not your minds. Here
are lords that, having learned the O P Q of courtship,
travel up and down among citizens’ wives, to shew their
learning and bringing up; as if the city were not
already a good proficient in the court horn-book: yes, I
warrant, they have heads as capable as other men; ay,
and some of them can wisely say with the philosopher,
that in knowing all, they know nothing. Well, because I
am of the livery, and pay scot and lot amongst you, do
but observe how I’ll fetch over my gallants for your
sakes. They say I am of the right hair; and, indeed,
they may stand to’t, and hold the position good, saving
with my wife.—Soft; are they not at _pro_ and _contra_
already? I know they are hot-spurs, and I must have an
eye to the main. They have been whipt already for
lechery, and yet the pride of the flesh pricks ’em.
Well, I must in: I’ve[381] given them such a pill
Shall take ’em down; for lust must have his fill.
[_Exit._

SCENE II.

_Another Room in_ GLISTER’S _House_.

_Enter_ MARIA _above_.[382]

MAR. Now nature’s pencil and the hand of time
Give[383] life and limb to generation’s act,
My shame and guilt in wordless notes appear,
The argument of scorn. O now I stand
The theme and comment to each liberal[384] tongue,
Whilst hope breeds comfort, and fear threats my wrong!
O Gerardine, how oft thy lively figure,
Deeply[385] impressed in my yielding temper,
Assures me thou art mine! how fancy paints
Thy true proportion in my troubled sleep,
Because sole subject of my daily thoughts!
O, if thy vows prove feign’d and thou unjust,
I say and swear in men there is no trust!

_Enter_ GERARDINE.

GER. Thus have I past the round[386] and court of
guard,
Without the word:[387] either conceit is strong,
Or else the body where true love’s confin’d
Walks as a spirit and doth force his way
Through greatest dangers, frightful to those eyes
That wait to intercept him.—Maria?
How like to Cynthia, in her silver orb,
She seems to me, attended by love’s lamp,
Whose mutual influence and soul’s sympathy
Do[388] shew heaven’s model in mortality.
MAR. Gerardine?
Aurora, now the blushing sun approaches,[389]
Dart[s] not more comfort to this universe
Than thou to me: most acceptably come!
The art of number cannot count the hours
Thou hast been absent.
GER. Infinity of love
Holds no proportion with arithmetic.
Think not, Maria, but my heart retains
A deep impression of such thoughts as these.
I have been forging of a mirthful plot
To celebrate our wish’d conjunction,
Which now digested, come to summon thee
To be an actress in the comedy.
MAR. How, where, when? speak, mine ears are quick to
hear;
I stand on thorns already to be there.
GER. At Dryfat’s house, the merchant, there’s our
scene,
Whose sequel, if I fail not in intent,
Shall answer our desires and each content.
But when sawest thou Lipsalve and Gudgeon, our two
gallants?
MAR. They are here in the house, so handled by mine
uncle, that they are the pitifullest patients that ever
you beheld.
GER. No matter, he serves them in their kind: they were
infamous in the court, and now are grown as notorious in
the city: they may happily prove particles in our sport,
and fit subjects for laughter.

Time calls me hence: adieu; prepare to meet.
MAR. I shall outstrip the nimblest in my feet.
[_Exeunt severally._

SCENE III.

_A Room in_ DRYFAT’S _House_.

_Enter_ DRYFAT _disguised as a proctor, and_ CLUB _as a
crier_.

DRY. Come, Club, come, there’s a merry fray
towards;[390] we shall see the death of melancholy;
wherein thou and I must call a grand jury of jests
together, and pass upon them with the club law.
CLUB. Now, as I am O the crier, and yet but a young
club, I have not yet practised that law: you have a
whole dryfat on’t; I pray you, instruct me.
DRY. Why, ’tis a law enacted, by the common council of
statute-caps,[391] to qualify the rage of the time, to
follow, to call back, and sometimes to encounter
gentlemen when they run in arrearages; I tell thee,
there’s no averment against our book-cases. ’Tis the law
called make-peace: it makes them even when they are at
odds; it shews ’em a flat case as plain as a pack-staff,
that is, knocks ’em down without circumstance.
CLUB. Ay, marry, I like that law well; ’tis studied with
the turning of a hand: there’s no quiddits nor pedlar’s
French[392] in’t; there needs no book for th’ exposition
o’ th’ terms; ’tis as easily learned as the felling of
wood and getting of children; all is but laying on load
the downright blow.
DRY. Ay, and by the way of exhortation it prints this
moral sentence on their costards,[393] in capital
letters, _Agree, for the law is costly_.
CLUB. Good, good: but all this while there’s no doctor
thought on; we must have one to arbitrate.
DRY. Why, master Gerardine, man, has his name for the
purpose: he shall be called doctor Stickler: _lupus est
in fabula_, here he comes.

_Enter_ GERARDINE.

GER. How now, lads? does our conceit cotten?[394] ha’
you summoned your wits from woolgathering? are you
fraught with matter for this merriment?
DRY. Full, full: we are in labour, man, and we shall die
without midwifery.
CLUB. We are ravished with delight, like the wench that
was got with child against her stomach. O, but[395] if
we could wrest this smock-law now in hand to our
club-law, it were excellent!
DRY. Easily, easily: all shall be called the club-law.
GER. As how?
DRY. Why, thus. Club is the crier; I am Poppin[396] the
proctor; and you Stickler the doctor: he calls them to
appear; I must be of their counsel, and you must attone
them.[397] We may know their cases and be in their
elements, mark you me, but they cannot be in ours. Tut,
none knows our secrets: we can speak fustian above their
understanding, and make asses’ ears attentive. I’ll play
Ambidexter,[398] tell ’em ’tis a plain case, and put ’em
down with the club-law; so that, as Club said well e’en
now, our knavery is as near allied as felling of wood
and getting of children.
GER. Excellent, excellent! By this they are at hand:
let’s bear these things like ourselves: I’ll withdraw
and put on my habiliments, and then enter for the
doctor.
DRY. Do so: they come, they come. [_Exit_ GERARDINE.

_Enter_ GLISTER _and_ PURGE.

Welcome, master doctor Glister and master Purge: there’s
a commission to be sat upon this day, to open a passage
for imprisoned truth, concerning acts yet _in tenebris_.
GLI. True; I am brought hither by the malice of my wife.
PUR. And I have a just appeal against my wife.
GLI. Master Poppin[399]—so I think you are called—I
understand you have the law at your fingers’ ends.
DRY. I can box cases, and scold and scratch it out
amongst them.
GLI. Indeed, fame reports you to be a good trumpeter of
causes: I must retain you, sir, to sound mine.
DRY. My sackbut shall do it most pathetically: tell me,
in brief, the nature of your case.
GLI. Faith, sir, a scandalous letter devised to wrong my
reputation, about a bastard in the country which should
be mine.
DRY. About a bastard in the country which should be
yours? hum,—’tis very like you then, it should seem.
GLI. O no, sir! understand me, only fathered upon me.
DRY. Only fathered upon you _cum nemini[400] obtrudi
potest_: I understand you, and like you well too, you do
not flatter yourself in your own case, no, ’tis not
good: well, what more?
GLI. And about my niece, got with child in my own house.
DRY. Byrlady,[401] burdens of some weight, which you
make light of! you deny?
GLI. What else, sir? I have reason.
DRY. I know it well, I take you for no beast: believe
me, master doctor, denial and reason are two main
grounds; stand upon them, and you cannot err.—Your case,
master Purge?
PUR. First take your fee, master Poppin,[402] that you
may have the more feeling, and urge it home when you
come to’t. [_Gives money._] Mine is a discovery of my
wife’s iniquity at the Family of Love.
DRY. Otherwise called the House of Venery, where they
hunger and thirst for’t.
PUR. True, sir: you have heard of the Hole in the Wall,
where they assemble together in the daytime, like so
many bees under a hive?
DRY. Come home _crura thymo plena_, and lodge among
hornets, is’t not so?
PUR. I cannot tell, sir; but, for my part, I am much
noted as I go.
DRY. No doubt of that, sir; your wife can furnish you
with notes out of her cotations.[403]
CLUB. Ay, and give him a two-tagged point[404] to tie
’em together.
DRY. But how came you to detect her?
PUR. Why, thus, sir: getting the word, I dogged her to
the Family, where, closing with her, I whispered so
pleasing a tale in her ear, that I got from her her
wedding-ring; and here ’tis.
DRY. Well, out of that ring we will wring matter that
shall carry meat i’ th’ mouth. But what witness or proof
can you produce to make good your wife’s iniquity and
your own cuckoldry?
PUR. Master Lipsalve and master Gudgeon, who were her
companions at that same time.
DRY. Very good.—Are they cited in the _quorum nomina_?
CLUB. They will be here, sir.
GLI. If they be, they will bewray[405] all.
DRY. So much the better; ’twill savour well for master
Purge.
PUR. You understand my case now?
GLI. And mine too, sir?
DRY. I do, I do: they are as different as a doctor and a
dunce, a man and a beast: here’s the compendium; yours,
master doctor, stands upon the negative; and yours,
master Purge, upon the affirmative: _pauca sapienti_, I
ha’t, I ha’t.
PUR. Mine is very current, sir; I can shew you good
guilt.
DRY. Ay, marry, there spoke an angel;[406] gilt’s[407]
current, indeed: let me feel’t, let me feel’t.
PUR. I mean, my wife’s guilt.
GLI. Master Poppin, you shall have innocence to speak
for me.
DRY. Tut, innocence is a fool, I care not for’s company;
I can speak enough without him.
GLI. Then, I hope, you will be as good to us as the
five-finger at maw.[408]

DRY. No, rather as Hercules, to lip-labour ’em with the
club-law: tut, let me alone.

_Enter_ MISTRESS GLISTER, MISTRESS PURGE, _and_ MARIA.

MIS. G. O, are you here, sir? I have brought you a full
barn to glut your greedy appetite: if you have any maw,
feed here till you choke again. Now shall I see the
whole carcass of your knavery ript up: if thou hast any
grace, now will thy red beard turn white upon’t.
MIS. P. O how have I been toss’d from post to pillar
In this libidinous world! The yoke I bear
Is so uneven, as if an innocent lamb
And a mad hare-brain’d ox should draw together:
But I must have patience, there’s no remedy.
DRY. There’s some difference between these two tempers.
GLI. I would give a hundred pounds my wife had so gentle
a spirit. [_Aside._
PUR. My wife must needs be gentle, for she can bear
double. [_Aside._

_Re-enter_ GERARDINE, _disguised as a doctor_.

DRY. Here comes master doctor: now rig up your vessels,
every one to his tackling.
GER. Good day to all at once, and peace amongst you!—
Fie, how I sweat! I think Vulcan ne’er toiled so at his
anvil as I have done, and all to make maid’s water to
slake Cupid’s fire, and to turn his shafts from the
feather-bed to the bed-post, from the heart to the
heel.—
Come, master Poppin, shall we to this gear?[409]
DRY. Reverend doctor, we have stayed your coming.—Crier,
cry silence.
CLUB. Silence![410]
DRY. Master doctor, I have heard in general terms the
tales of master doctor Glister and master Purge, which
have in mutual manner jumped into the quagmire of my
mind; out of which quagmire, by your enforcement and
mine own duty, I pluck them up by the ears, and thus, in
naked apparance,[411] I present them.
GER. _Ad rem, ad rem_, master Poppin; leave your
allegories, your metaphors, and circumlocutions, and to
the point.
DRY. Then briefly thus: I have compared their tales,—how
short they will come of their wives’ I know not: and
first for mistress Purge.—Crier, call mistress Purge.
CLUB. Rebecca Purge, wife to Peter Purge, ’pothecary,
appear upon thy purgation, upon pain of excommunication.
MIS. P. Here I am,—O time’s impiety!—
Hither I come from out the harmless fold
To have my good name eaten up by wolves:
See, how they grin! Well, the weak must to the wall;
I must bear wrong, but shame shall them befall.
GER. Who is her accuser?
DRY. Her own husband, upon the late discovery of a crew
of narrow-ruffed,[412] strait-laced, yet loose-bodied
dames, with a rout[413] of omnium-gatherums, assembled
by the title of the Family of Love: which, master
doctor, if they be not punished and suppressed by our
club-law, each man’s copyhold will become freehold,
specialities will turn to generalities, and so from
unity to parity, from parity to plurality, and from
plurality to universality; their wives, the only
ornaments of their houses, and of all their wares,
goods, and chattel[s], the chief moveables, will be made
common.
PUR. Most voluble and eloquent proctor!
GER. Byrlady,[414] these enormities must and shall be
redressed, otherwise I see their charter will be
infringed, and their ancient staff of government the
club, from whence we derive our law of castigation,—this
club, I say (they seeming nothing less than men by their
fore-part), will be turned upon their own heads.—Speak,
Rebecca Purge; art thou one of this Family? hast thou
ever known the body of any man there or elsewhere
concupiscentically?
MIS. P. No, master doctor, those are but devices of the
wicked to trap the innocent; but I thank my spirit I
have fear before my eyes, which my husband sees not,
because something hangs in’s light.
PUR. That’s my horns; she flouts me to my face, and I
will not endure it: I shall carry her mark to my grave.
[_Aside._]—Master doctor, she has given me that, that
Æsculapius, were he now extant, could not heal, nor
_edax rerum_[415] take away.
GER. Produce your witness, master Purge, and blow not
your own horn.
PUR. Master Lipsalve and master Gudgeon, let them be
called.
CLUB. Lawrence Lipsalve and Gregory Gudgeon, late of
_hic et ubique_, in the county of _nusquam_, gentlemen,
come into the court and give your evidence, upon pain of
that which shall ensue.

_Enter_ LIPSALVE _and_ GUDGEON.
GLI. Here they come, in pain I warrant them.—How works
your physic, gallants? do you go well to the ground? now
cuckold the doctor!—Wife, who’s your first man now?—now
strike[416] with the scabbard! ha, ha, ha!
GUD. A villanous doctor!
LIP. Mountebank, you’re a rascal, and we will cast
about[417] to be revenged.
DRY. Cast about this way and bewray[418] what you can
concerning mistress Purge, who stands here upon her
purgation, either to prove mundified or contaminated,
according to the tenor-piece of your principal
evidence.—First give ’em the book.
CLUB. Come, lay your hands upon the book: you shall
speak and aver no more, nor wade no farther into the
cream-pots of this woman’s crime, than the naked truth
and the cart-rope of your conscience shall conduct you,
so help you the contents! Kiss the book.[419]
LIP. Alas, we are not in case to answer largely! but if
you will have our evidence in brief, I think I kissed
her at the Family some three times, once at coming, once
at going, and once in the midst; otherwise never knew
her dishonestly.
PUR. Ay, mark that middle kiss, master doctor.
GUD. And for my part, I have been more mortified by her
than ever I was provoked.
GER. How say you to this, master Purge? your witness is
weak, and, sir-reverence[420] on[’t], without sounder
proof, they may depart to the close-stool whence they
came, and you to your ’pothecary’s shop.
PUR. No, master doctor, I have another bolt to shoot
that shall strike her dead; she shall not have a word to
say.
DRY. Answer me to this, mistress Purge; where’s your
wedding-ring?
MIS. P. My wedding-ring? why, what should I do with
unnecessary things about me, when the poor begs at my
gate ready to starve? Is it not better, as I learned
last lecture, to send my substance before me, where I
may find it, than to leave it behind me, where I must
forego it? Yes, verily: wherefore, to put you out of
doubt, I have given that ring to charitable uses.
DRY. Nay, now she falters: my client can shew that ring,
got from her at the Family, when these two courtling[s]
had at the same time beleaguered her fort.
GER. This alters the case clean.—What starting-hole ha’
you now, mistress Purge?
MIS. P. E’en the sanctuary of a safe conscience: now,
truly, truly, however he came by that ring, by my
sisterhood, I gave it to the relief of the distressed
Geneva.
PUR. How? to the relief of the distressed Geneva?—
Justice, master doctor! I may now decline _victus_,
_victa_, _victum_; one word more shall overthrow her. I
myself was a Familist that day, who, more jealous than
zealous in devotion, thrust in amongst the rest (as I
had most right), on purpose to sound her, to find out
the knavery: short tale to make, I got her ring, and
here it is; let her deny it if she can: and what more I
discovered _non est nunc narrandi locus_.
MIS. P. Husband, I see you are hoodwinked in the right
use of feeling and knowledge,—as if I knew you not[421]
then as well as the child knows his own father! Look in
the posy of my ring: does it not tell you that we two
are one flesh? and hath not fellow-feeling taught us to
know one another as well by night as by day? Husband,
husband, will you do as the blind jade, break your neck
down a hill because you see it not? ha’ you no light of
nature in that flesh of yours?—Now, as true as I live,
master doctor, I had a secret operation, and I knew him
then to be my husband e’en by very instinct.
PUR. Impudence, dost not blush? art not ashamed to lie
so abominable?
MIS. P. No, husband, rather be you ashamed of your own
weakness; for, for my part, I neither fear nor shame
what man can do unto me.
GER. Master Purge, I see you have spent your pith;
therefore best make a full point at the ring, and attend
our pleasure.—Master Poppin,[422] proceed to the rest.
DRY. Crier, call doctor Glister.
CLUB. Doctor Glister, alias suppositor doctor[423] of
physic, appear upon thy purgation, upon the belly-pain
that may ensue thereon.[424]
GLI. Here, master doctor.
GER. Who is his accuser?
DRY. His clamorous wife, who seems to enforce a
separation about a bastard in the country, which should
be his, only fathered upon him.
GER. What proof of that?
MIS. G. Proof unanswerable, master doctor, the
nurse’s letter: let it be read; but first observe
his countenance; it may be his blushing will bewray
his guilt.
GER. Now, by this light, I thought it had indeed, but I
see ’tis but the reflection of his beard.—Read the
letter, master Poppin.[425]
DRY.[426] [_reads_] _After my hearty commendations
remembered unto your worshipful doctorship, trusting in
God that you are as well as I was at the making hereof,
thanks be to him therefor! the cause of my writing unto
you at this time is to let you understand that your
little son is turned a ragged colt, a very stripling;
for, being now stript of all his clothing, his backside
wants a tail-piece, commends itself to your fatherly
consideration. Woe worth the time that ever I gave suck
to a child that came in at the window, God knows how!
Yet if you did but see how like the pert, little,
red-headed knave is to his father, and how like a
cock-sparrow he mouses and touses my little Bess
already, you would take him for your own, and pay me my
hire. I write not of the want of one thing, for I want
all things; wherefore take some speedy order, or else as
naked as he came from the mother will I send him to the
father. From Pis.[427] the xxii of —— Your poor nurse_,
THOMASINE TWEEDLES.
GLI. Master doctor, truth needs not the foil of
rhetoric; I will only in _monosyllaba_ answer for myself
(as sometimes a wise man did): such and such things are
laid to my charge, which I deny; you may think of me
what you please, but I am as innocent in this as the
child new-born.
GER. Why, there’s partly a confession: the child, we
know, is innocent, and not new-born neither, for it
should seem by the letter he is able to call his dad
knave.
GLI. You take me wrong, master doctor.[428]
DRY. Under correction, thus much can I say for my
client’s justification. Indeed he hath travelled well in
the beating of pulses, and hath been much conversant in
women’s Jordans; but he had ever a care to raise
his patient being before cast down: his charitable
disposition hath been such to poor folk, that he never
took above fourpence for the casting of a water, which
good custom was so well known among all his patients,
that if sixpence were at any time offered him, they
might be bold to ask and have twopence again. He hath
been so skilful and painful withal in the cure of the
green sickness, that, of my knowledge, he hath risen at
all hours in the night to pleasure maids that have had
it: and for that foul-mouthed disease, termed by a
fine phrase—a pox on’t, what d’ye call’t? O, the
grincomes[429]—at that he hath played his doctor’s
prize, and writes _nil ultra_ to all mountebanks; so
that the wise woman in Pissing-Alley, nor she in
Do-little-Lane, are more famous for good deeds than he.
Then, master doctor, out of these presumptions, besides
his flat denial (a more infallible ground), you may
gather his innocence, and let him have his purgation.
GER. No, master Poppin,[430] it is not so to be foisted
off.
MIS. G. Nay, master doctor, what say you to his own
niece, that looks big upon him? an arrow that sticks for
the upshot against all comers; which by his restraint of
her from master Gerardine, an honest gentleman that
loved her, and upon that colour[431] from the sight and
intercourse of other men, must, by all presumptions, be
his own act.
GER. O monstrous! this is a foul blot in your
tables[432] indeed.
GLI. Wife, thou hast no shame nor womanhood in thee; thy
conscience knows me.
MIS. G. True of thy flesh, who knows not that? thy
beard speaks for thee: ay, ay, thou liest by me like a
stone, but abroad thou’rt like a stone-horse, you old
limb-lifter![433]
DRY. Cease your clamour, and attend my speech.—Most
worshipful, reverend, and judicial doctor, for the
quickening of your memory, I will give you a breviat of
all that hath been spoken. Master doctor Glister hath a
cradleful and a bellyful, you see, thrust upon him; and
master Purge a headful.—Your wife is an angry honeyless
wasp, whose sting, I hope, you need not fear,—and yours
carries honey in her mouth, but her sting makes your
forehead swell:—your wife makes you deaf with the shrill
treble of her tongue,—and yours makes you horn-mad with
the tenor of her tale.—In fine, master doctor’s refuge
is his conscience, and master Purge runs at his wife’s
ring.[434]
GER. _Summa totalis_, a good audit ha’ you made,
master Poppin.[435]—Now attend my arbitrement. For
you, gallants, though you have incurred the danger
of the law by using counterfeit keys, and putting
your hands into the wrong pocket, yet because I see
you punished and purged already, my advice is, that
you learn the A B C of better manners: go back and
tell how you have been used in the city; and being
thus scoured, keep yourselves clean, and the bed
undefiled.—For you, master Purge, because I see your
evidence insufficient, and indeed too weak, to foil
your wife’s uprightness, and seeing jealousy and
unkindness have[436] only made her a stranger in
your land of Ham, my counsel is, that you readvance
your standard, give her new press-money.
PUR. You may enjoin me, sir, but——
GER. But not at me, man: I will enjoin you, and conjoin
you, and briefly thus. You have your ring that has made
this combustion and uproar: that keep still; wear it;
and here, by my edict, be it proclaimed to all that are
jealous, to wear their wives’ ring[s] still on their
fingers, as best for their security, and the only charm
against cuckoldry.
PUR. Then, wife, at master doctor’s enjoinment,[437] so
thou wilt promise me to come no more at the Family, I
receive thee into the lists of my favour.
MIS. P. Truly, husband, my love must be free still to
God’s creatures: yea, nevertheless, preserving you still
as the head of my body, I will do as the spirit shall
enable me.
GER. Go to, thou hast a good wife, and there[’s] an
end.—Upon you, master doctor, being solicited by so
apparent proof, I can do no less than pronounce a severe
sentence; and yet, i’faith, the reverence of your
calling and profession doth somewhat check my austerity:
what if master Gerardine, by my persuasion, would yet be
induced to take your niece, and father the child? would
you launch with a thousand pound, besides her father’s
portion?
GLI. Master doctor, I would, were it but to redeem her
lost good name.
GER. Then, foreknowing what would happen, I thought
good, in master Gerardine’s name, to have this bond
ready, which if you seal to, he shall take her with all
faults.
GLI. That will I instantly. [_Seals the bond._]
So, this is done; which, together with my niece, do
I deliver by these presents to the use of master
Gerardine.
GER. He thanks you heartily, and lets you know,
[GERARDINE, DRYFAT, _and_ CLUB _discover
themselves_.
That Indian mines and Tagus’ glistering ore
To this bequest were unto me but poor.
GLI. What? Gerardine, Dryfat, and Club!
DRY. The very[438] same.
CLUB. You are welcome to our club-law.
GER. Cease admiration here: what doubt remains
I’ll satisfy at full. Now join with me
For approbation of our Family.