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_ ACT I - SCENE V
SCENE V.--QUEEN, GRIZZLE.
Queen.
[1]Teach me to scold, prodigious-minded Grizzle,
Mountain of treason, ugly as the devil,
Teach this confounded hateful mouth of mine
To spout forth words malicious as thyself,
Words which might shame all Billingsgate to speak.
[Footnote 1:
The countess of Nottingham, in the Earl of
Essex, is apparently acquainted with Dollallolla.]
Griz.
Far be it from my pride to think my tongue
Your royal lips can in that art instruct,
Wherein you so excel. But may I ask,
Without offence, wherefore my queen would scold?
Queen.
Wherefore? Oh! blood and thunder! han't you heard
(What every corner of the court resounds)
That little Thumb will be a great man made?
Griz. I heard it, I confess--for who, alas!
[1] Can always stop his ears?--But would my teeth,
By grinding knives, had first been set on edge!
[Footnote 1:
Grizzle was not probably possessed of that glew
of which Mr Banks speaks in his Cyrus.
I'll glew my ears to every word.]
Queen.
Would I had heard, at the still noon of night,
The hallalloo of fire in every street!
Odsbobs! I have a mind to hang myself,
To think I should a grandmother be made
By such a rascal!--Sure the king forgets
When in a pudding, by his mother put,
The bastard, by a tinker, on a stile
Was dropp'd.--O, good lord Grizzle! can I bear
To see him from a pudding mount the throne?
Or can, oh can, my Huncamunca bear
To take a pudding's offspring to her arms?
Griz.
Oh horror! horror! horror! cease, my queen,
[1] Thy voice, like twenty screech-owls, wracks my
brain.
[Footnote 1:
Screech-owls, dark ravens, and amphibious monsters,
Are screaming in that voice.--_Mary Queen of Scots_.]
Queen.
Then rouse thy spirit--we may yet prevent
This hated match.
Griz.
--We will[1]; nor fate itself,
Should it conspire with Thomas Thumb, should cause it.
I'll swim through seas; I'll ride upon the clouds;
I'll dig the earth; I'll blow out every fire;
I'll rave; I'll rant; I'll rise; I'll rush; I'll roar;
Fierce as the man whom[2] smiling dolphins bore
From the prosaick to poetick shore.
I'll tear the scoundrel into twenty pieces.
[Footnote 1:
The reader may see all the beauties of this speech
in a late ode called the Naval Lyrick.]
[Footnote 2:
This epithet to a dolphin doth not give one so clear an
idea as were to be wished; a smiling fish seeming a little more
difficult to be imagined than a flying fish. Mr Dryden is of
opinion that smiling is the property of reason, and that no
irrational creature can smile:
Smiles not allow'd to beasts from reason move.
--_State of Innocence_.]
Queen.
Oh, no! prevent the match, but hurt him not;
For, though I would not have him have my daughter,
Yet can we kill the man that kill'd the giants?
Griz.
I tell you, madam, it was all a trick;
He made the giants first, and then he kill'd them;
As fox-hunters bring foxes to the wood,
And then with hounds they drive them out again.
Queen.
How! have you seen no giants? Are there not
Now, in the yard, ten thousand proper giants?
Griz.
[1]Indeed I cannot positively tell,
But firmly do believe there is not one.
[Footnote 1:
These lines are written in the same key with those
in the Earl of Essex:
Why, say'st thou so? I love thee well, indeed
I do, and thou shalt find by this 'tis true.
Or with this in Cyrus:
The most heroick mind that ever was.
And with above half of the modern tragedies.]
Queen.
Hence! from my sight! thou traitor, hie away;
By all my stars I thou enviest Tom Thumb.
Go, sirrah! go, [1]hie away! hie!----thou art
A setting dog: be gone.
[Footnote 1:
Aristotle, in that excellent work of his which is very
justly stiled his masterpiece, earnestly recommends using
the terms of art, however coarse or even indecent they
may be. Mr Tate is of the same opinion.
Bru.
Do not, like young hawks, fetch a course about.
Your game flies fair.
Fra.
Do not fear it.
He answers you in your own hawking phrase.
--_Injured Love_.
I think these two great authorities are sufficient to justify
Dollallolla in the use of the phrase, "Hie away, hie!" when
in the same line she says she is speaking to a setting-dog.]
Griz.
Madam, I go.
Tom Thumb shall feel the vengeance you have raised.
So, when two dogs are fighting in the streets,
With a third dog one of the two dogs meets,
With angry teeth he bites him to the bone,
And this dog smarts for what that dog has done. _
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