plers, and super-naculum takers; this Bacchus, who is head warden of Vintners'-hall, ale-conner, mayor of all victualling-houses, the sole liquid benefactor to bawdy-houses; lanceprezade to red noses, and invincible adelantado over the armado of pimpled, deep-scarleted, rubified, and carbuncled faces

Hir. What of all this?

Spun. This boon Bacchanalian skinker, did I make legs to.

Hir. Scurvy ones, when thou wert drunk.

Spun. There is no danger of losing a man's ears by making these indentures; he that will not now and then be Calabingo, is worse than a Calamoothe. When I was a pagan, and kneeled to this Bacchus, I durst out-drink a lord; but your Christian lords out-bowl me. I was in hope to lead a sober life, when I was converted; but, now amongst the Christians, I can no sooner stagger out of one alehouse, but I reel into another; they have whole streets of nothing but drinking-rooms, and drabbing-chambers, jumbled together.

Hir. Bawdy Priapus, the first schoolmaster that taught butchers how to stick pricks in flesh, and make it swell, thou know'st, was the only ningle that I cared for under the moon; but, since I left him to follow a scurvy lady, what with her praying and our fasting, if now I come to a wench, and offer to use her anything hardly, (telling her, being a Christian, she must endure,) she presently handles me as if I were a clove, and cleaves me with disdain, as if I were a calf's head.

Spun. I see no remedy, fellow Hircius, but that thou and I must be half pagans, and half Christians; for we know very fools that are Christians.

Hir. Right: the quarters of Christians are good for nothing but to feed crows.

Spun. True: Christian brokers, thou know'st, are made up of the quarters of Christians; parboil one of these rogues, and he is not meat for a dog: no, no, I am resolved to have an infidel's heart, though in shew I carry a Christian's face.

Hir. Thy last shall serve my foot: so will I. Spun. Our whimpering lady and mistress sent me with two great baskets full of beef, mutton, veal, and goose, fellow Hircius-

Hir. And woodcock, fellow Spungius. Spun. Upon the poor lean ass-fellow, on which I ride, to all the almswomen: what think'st thou I have done with all this good cheer? Hir. Eat it; or be choked else.

Spun. Would my ass, basket and all, were in thy maw, if I did! No, as I am a demi-pagan, I sold the victuals, and coined the money into pottle pots of wine.

Hir. Therein thou shewed'st thyself a perfect demi-christian too, to let the poor beg, starve, and hang, or die of the pip. Our puling, snottynose lady sent me out likewise with a purse of money, to relieve and release prisoners :-Did I so, think you?

Spun. Would thy ribs were turned into grates of iron then.

Hir. As I am a total pagan, I swore they should be hanged first: for, sirrah Spungius, I lay at my old ward of lechery, and cried, a pox on your twopenny wards! and so I took scurvy common flesh for the money.

Spun. And wisely done; for our lady, sending it to prisoners, had bestowed it out upon lousy

:

knaves and thou, to save that labour, cast'st it away upon rotten whores.

Hir. All my fear is of that pink-an-eye jackan-apes boy, her page.

Spun. As I am a pagan from my cod-piece downward, that white-faced monkey frights me too. I stole but a dirty pudding, last day, out of an almsbasket, to give my dog when he was hungry, and the peaking chitty-face page hit me in the teeth with it.

Hir. With the dirty pudding! so he did me once with a cow-turd, which in knavery I would have crumb'd into one's porridge, who was half a pagan too. The smug dandiprat smells us out, whatsoever we are doing.

Spun. Does he? let him take heed I prove not his back-friend: I'll make him curse his smelling what I do.

Hir. 'Tis my lady spoils the boy; for he is ever at her tail, and she is never well but in his company.

Enter ANGELO with a book, and a taper lighted; seeing him, they counterfeit devotion.

Ang. O now your hearts make ladders of

Ang. Have you the baskets emptied, which your lady

Sent, from her charitable hands, to women
That dwell upon her pity?

Spun. Emptied them! yes; I'd be loth to have my belly so empty: yet, I am sure, I munched not one bit of them neither.

Ang. And went your money to the prisoners? Hir. Went! no; I carried it, and with these fingers paid it away.

Ang. What way? the devil's way, the way of The way of hot damnation, way of lust? [sin, And you, to wash away the poor man's bread, In bowls of drunkenness?

Spun. Drunkenness ! yes, yes, I use to be drunk; our next neighbour's man, called Christopher, hath often seen me drunk, hath he not ?

Hir. Or me given so to the flesh: my cheeks speak my doings.

Ang. Avaunt, ye thieves, and hollow hypocrites! Your hearts to me lie open like black books, And there I read your doings.

Spun. And what do you read in my heart? Hir. Or in mine? come, amiable Angelo, beat the flint of your brains.

Spun. And let's see what sparks of wit fly out to kindle your cerebrum.

Ang. Your names even brand you; you are
Spungius call'd,

And like a spunge, you suck up lickerish wines,
Till your soul reels to hell.

Spun. To hell! can any drunkard's legs carry him so far?

Ang. For blood of grapes you sold the widows' food.

And, starving them, 'tis murder; what's this but hell?

Hircius your name, and goatish is your nature;
You snatch the meat out of the prisoner's mouth,
To fatten harlots: is not this hell too?
No angel, but the devil, waits on you.

Spun. Shall I cut his throat?

Hir. No; better burn him, for I think he is a witch but sooth, sooth him.

Spun. Fellow Angelo, true it is, that falling into the company of wicked he-christians, for my part

Hir. And she ones, for mine, we have them swim in shoals hard by

Spun. We must confess, I took too much out of the pot; and he of t'other hollow commodity.

Hir. Yes, indeed, we laid Jill on both of us; we cozen'd the poor; but 'tis a common thing : many a one, that counts himself a better Christian than we two, has done it, by this light!

Spun. But pray, sweet Angelo, play not the tell-tale to my lady; and, if you take us creeping into any of these mouse-holes of sin any more, let cats flay off our skins.

Hir. And put nothing but the poison'd tails of rats into those skins.

Ang. Will you dishonour her sweet charity, Who saved you from the tree of death and shame ? Hir. Would I were hang'd, rather than thus be told of my faults!

Spun. She took us, 'tis true, from the gallows; yet I hope she will not bar yeoman sprats to have their swing.

Ang. She comes,-beware, and mend.

Hir. Let's break his neck, and bid him mend.

Enter DOROTHEA,

Dor. Have you my messages, sent to the poor, Deliver'd with good hands, not robbing them Of any jot was theirs?

Spun. Rob them, lady! I hope neither my fellow nor I am thieves.

Hir. Delivered with good hands, madam! else let me never lick my fingers more when I eat butter'd fish.

Dor. Who cheat the poor, and from them pluck their alms,

Pilfer from heaven; and there are thunderbolts, From thence to beat them ever. Do not lie; Were you both faithful, true distributers ?

Spun. Lie, madam! what grief is it to see you turn swaggerer, and give your poor-minded rascally servants the lie!

Dor. I'm glad you do not; if those wretched people,

Tell you they pine for want of any thing,

Whisper but to mine ear, and you shall furnish

them.

Dor. Thy voice sends forth such music, that
I never

Was ravish'd with a more celestial sound.
Were every servant in the world like thee,
So full of goodness, angels would come down
To dwell with us: thy name is Angelo,
And like that name thou art; get thee to rest,
Thy youth with too much watching is opprest.

Ang. No, my dear lady, I could weary stars,
And force the wakeful moon to lose her eyes,
By my late watching, but to wait on you.
When at your prayers you kneel before the altar,
Methinks I'm singing with some quire in heaven,
So blest I hold me in your company:
Therefore, my most loved mistress, do not bid
Your boy, so serviceable, to get hence;
For then you break his heart.

Dor. Be nigh me still, then :

In golden letters down I'll set that day,
Which gave thee to me. Little did I hope
To meet such worlds of comfort in thyself,
This little, pretty body; when I, coming
Forth of the temple, heard my beggar-boy,
My sweet-faced, godly beggar-boy, crave an alms,
Which with glad hand I gave, with lucky hand! —
And, when I took thee home, my most chaste
bosom,

Methought, was fill'd with no hot wanton fire,
But with a holy flame, mounting since higher,
On wings of cherubins, than it did before.

Ang. Proud am I, that my lady's modest eye So likes so poor a servant.

Theoph. What piece

[hence;

Of this state-wheel, which winds up Antoninus,

Is broke, it runs so jarringly? the man
Is from himself divided: O thou, the eye,
By which I wonders see, tell me, my Harpax,
What gad-fly tickles this Macrinus so,
That, flinging up the tail, he breaks thus from me.
Harp. Oh, sir, his brain-pan is a bed of snakes,
Whose stings shoot through his eye-balls, whose
poisonous spawn

Ingenders such a fry of speckled villainies,
That, unless charms more strong than adamant
Be used, the Roman angel's wings shall melt,
And Cæsar's diadem be from his head
Spurn'd by base feet; the laurel which he wears,
Returning victor, be enforced to kiss

That which it hates, the fire. And can this ram,
This Antoninus-Engine, being made ready
To so much mischief, keep a steady motion ?—
His eyes and feet, you see, give strange assaults.
Theoph. I'm turn'd a marble statue at thy lan-
guage,

Which printed is in such crabb'd characters,
It puzzles all my reading: what, in the name
Of Pluto, now is hatching?

Harp. This Macrinus,

The line is, upon which love-errands run
'Twixt Antoninus and that ghost of women,
The bloodless Dorothea; who in prayer
And meditation, mocking all your gods,
Drinks up her ruby colour: yet Antoninus
Plays the Endymion to this pale-faced Moon,
Courts, seeks to catch her eyes-

Theoph. And what of this?

Harp. These are but creeping billows, Not got to shore yet: but if Dorothea Fall on his bosom, and be fired with love, (Your coldest women do so),-had you ink Brew'd from the infernal Styx, not all that blackCan make a thing so foul, as the dishonours, [ness Disgraces, buffetings, and most base affronts Upon the bright Artemia, star o' the court, Great Cæsar's daughter.

Theoph. I now conster thee.

Theoph. Eats through Cæsarea's heart like liquid poison.

Have I invented tortures to tear Christians, To see but which, could all that feel hell's torments

Have leave to stand aloof here on earth's stage,
They would be mad till they again descended,
Holding the pains most horrid of such souls,
May-games to those of mine; has this my hand
Set down a Christian's execution

In such dire postures, that the very hangman
Fell at my foot dead, hearing but their figures;
And shall Macrinus and his fellow-masquer
Strangle me in a dance?

Harp. No :-on; I hug thee,

For drilling thy quick brains in this rich plot Of tortures 'gainst these Christians: on; I hug thee !

Theoph. Both hug and holy me: to this DoroFly thou and I in thunder.

Harp. Not for kingdoms

[thea,

Piled upon kingdoms: there's a villain page
Waits on her, whom I would not for the world
Hold traffic with; I do so hate his sight,
That, should I look on him, I must sink down.
Theoph. I will not lose thee then, her to con-

SCENE III.-A Room in DOROTHEA's House.
Enter DOROTHEA, MACRINUS, and ANGELO.
Dor. My trusty Angelo, with that curious eye
Of thine, which ever waits upon my business,
I prithee watch those my still-negligent servants,
That they perform my will, in what's enjoin'd them
To the good of others; else will you find them flies,
Not lying still, yet in them no good lies:
Be careful, dear boy.

Ang. Yes, my sweetest mistress.
Dor. Now, sir, you may go on.
Mac. I then must study

[Exit.

A new arithmetic, to sum up the virtues
Which Antoninus gracefully become.
There is in him so much man, so much goodness,
So much of honour, and of all things else,
Which make our being excellent, that from his store
He can enough lend others; yet, much ta'en from
The want shall be as little, as when seas [him,
Lend from their bounty, to fill up the poorness
Of needy rivers.

Dor. Sir, he is more indebted

To you for praise, than you to him that owes it. Mac. If queens, viewing his presents paid to the

whiteness

Of your chaste hand alone, should be ambitious
But to be parted in their numerous shares ;
This he counts nothing: could you see main armies
Make battles in the quarrel of his valour,
That 'tis the best, the truest; this were nothing:
The greatness of his state, his father's voice,
And arm, awing Cæsarea, he ne'er boasts of;
The sunbeams which the emperor throws upon him,
Shine there but as in water, and gild him
Not with one spot of pride: no, dearest beauty,
All these, heap'd up together in one scale,
Cannot weigh down the love he bears to you,
Being put into the other.

Sap. Confusion on thee,

Music more pleasing.

Anton. Has your ear, Macrinus,

Heard none, then?

Mac. None I like.

Anton. But can there be

In such a noble casket, wherein lie

Beauty and chastity in their full perfections,
A rocky heart, killing with cruelty

A life that's prostrated beneath your feet?

Dor. I am guilty of a shame I yet ne'er knew, Thus to hold parley with you ;-pray, sir, pardon.

[Going.

Anton. Good sweetness, you now have it, and

shall go:

Be but so merciful, before your wounding me
With such a mortal weapon as Farewell,
To let me murmur to your virgin ear,
What I was loth to lay on any tongue
But this mine own.

Dor. If one immodest accent

Fly out, I hate you everlastingly.

Anton. My true love dares not do it.
Mac. Hermes inspire thee!

Enter above, ARTEMIA, SAPRITIUS, THEOPHILUS,
SPUNGIUS, and HIRCIUS.

Spun. So, now, do you see?--Our work is done; the fish you angle for is nibbling at the hook, and therefore untruss the cod-piece-point of our reward, no matter if the breeches of conscience fall about our heels.

Theoph. The gold you earn is here; dam up And no words of it. [your mouths,

Hir. No; nor no words from you of too much damning neither. I know women sell themselves daily, and are hacknied out for silver: why may not we, then, betray a scurvy mistress for gold?

Spun. She saved us from the gallows, and, only to keep one proverb from breaking his neck, we'll hang her.

Theoph. 'Tis well done; go, go, you're my fine white boys.

Spun. If your red boys, 'tis well known more ill-favoured faces than ours are painted. Sap. Those fellows trouble us.

Anton. Your mocks are great ones; none beneath the sun

Will I be servant to.-On my knees I beg it,
Pity me, wondrous maid.

Sap. I curse thy baseness.
Theoph. Listen to more.

Dor. O kneel not, sir, to me.

Anton. This knee is emblem of an humbled

Artem. Is that the idol, traitor, which thou Trampling upon my beauty? [kneel'st to,

Theoph. Sirrah, bandog!

Wilt thou in pieces tear our Jupiter

For her? our Mars for her? our Sol for her?-
A whore! a hell-hound! In this globe of brains,
Where a whole world of furies for such tortures
Have fought, as in a chaos, which should exceed,
These nails shall grubbing lie from skull to skull,
To find one horrider than all, for you,
You three!

Artem. Threaten not, but strike: quick vengeance flies

Into my bosom; caitiff! here all love dies.

[Exeunt above.

Anton. O! I am thunderstruck! We are both o'erwhelm'd

Mac. With one high-raging billow.

Dor. You a soldier,

And sink beneath the violence of a woman!

Anton. A woman! a wrong'd princess. From

such a star

Blazing with fires of hate, what can be look'd for, But tragical events? my life is now

The subject of her tyranny.

Dor. That fear is base,

Of death, when that death doth but life displace Out of her house of earth; you only dread