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_ ACT II - SCENE VII
SCENE VII.--GLUMDALCA, TOM THUMB, HUNCAMUNCA
Glum.
[1]I need not ask if you are Huncamunca.
Your brandy-nose proclaims----
[Footnote 1:
I know some of the commentators have imagined that Mr
Dryden, in the altercative scene between Cleopatra and
Octavia, a scene which Mr Addison inveighs against with
great bitterness, is much beholden to our author. How
just this their observation is I will not presume to determine.]
Hunc.
I am a princess;
Nor need I ask who you are.
Glum.
A giantess;
The queen of those who made and unmade queens.
Hunc.
The man whose chief ambition is to be
My sweetheart hath destroy'd these mighty giants.
Glum.
Your sweetheart? Dost thou think the man who once
Hath worn my easy chains will e'er wear thine?
Hunc.
Well may your chains be easy, since, if fame
Says true, they have been tried on twenty husbands.
[1]The glove or boot, so many times pull'd on,
May well sit easy on the hand or foot.
[Footnote 1:
"A cobling poet indeed," says Mr D.; and yet I believe we
may find as monstrous images in the tragick authors: I'll
put down one:
Untie your folded thoughts, and let them dangle loose as a
bride's hair.---Injured Love.
Which line seems to have as much title to a milliner's
shop as our author's to a shoemaker's.]
Glum.
I glory in the number, and when I
Sit poorly down, like thee, content with one,
Heaven change this face for one as bad as thine.
Hunc.
Let me see nearer what this beauty is
That captivates the heart of men by scores.
[Holds a candle to her face.]
Oh! Heaven, thou art as ugly as the devil.
Glum.
You'd give the best of shoes within your shop
To be but half so handsome.
Hunc.
Since you come
[1]To that, I'll put my beauty to the test:
Tom Thumb, I'm yours, if you with me will go.
[Footnote 1:
Mr L---- takes occasion in this place to commend the
great care of our author to preserve the metre of blank
verse, in which Shakspeare, Jonson, and Fletcher, were
so notoriously negligent; and the moderns, in imitation
of our author, so laudably observant:
Then does
Your majesty believe that he can be
A traitor?--_Earl of Essex_.
Every page of Sophonisba gives us instances of this excellence.]
Glum.
Oh! stay, Tom Thumb, and you alone shall fill
That bed where twenty giants used to lie.
Thumb.
In the balcony that o'erhangs the stage,
I've seen a whore two 'prentices engage;
One half-a-crown does in his fingers hold,
The other shews a little piece of gold;
She the half-guinea wisely does purloin,
And leaves the larger and the baser coin.
Glum.
Left, scorn'd, and loathed for such a chit as this;
[1] I feel the storm that's rising in my mind,
Tempests and whirlwinds rise, and roll, and roar.
I'm all within a hurricane, as if
[2] The world's four winds were pent within my carcase.
[3] Confusion, horror, murder, guts, and death!
[Footnote 1:
Love mounts and rolls about my stormy mind.
---Aurengzebe.
Tempests and whirlwinds thro' my bosom move.
---Cleomenes.]
[Footnote 2:
With such a furious tempest on his brow,
As if the world's four winds were pent within
His blustering carcase.
---Anna Bullen.]
[Footnote 3:
Verba Tragica.] _
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