Home > Authors Index > Ben Jonson > Epicoene; or, The Silent Woman > This page
Epicoene; or, The Silent Woman, a play by Ben Jonson |
||
Act 2 - Scene 2.3 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ A ROOM IN MOROSE'S HOUSE. ENTER MOROSE AND MUTE, FOLLOWED BY CUTBEARD WITH EPICOENE. MOR. Welcome Cutbeard! draw near with your fair charge: and in her ear softly entreat her to unmasthey. [EPI. TAKES OFF HER MASK.] --So! Is the door shut? [MUTE MAKES A LEG.] --Enough. Now, Cutbeard, with the same discipline I use to my family, I will question you. As I conceive, Cutbeard, this gentlewoman is she you have provided, and brought, in hope she will fit me in the place and person of a wife? Answer me not, but with your leg, unless it be otherwise: [CUT. MAKES A LEG.] --Very well done, Cutbeard. I conceive, besides, Cutbeard, you have been pre-acquainted with her birth, education, and qualities, or else you would not prefer her to my acceptance, in the weighty consequence of marriage. [CUT. MAKES A LEG.] --This I conceive, Cutbeard. Answer me not but with your leg, unless it be otherwise. [CUT. BOWS AGAIN.] --Very well done, Cutbeard. Give aside now a little, and leave me to examine her condition, and aptitude to my affection. [HE GOES ABOUT HER, AND VIEWS HER.] --She is exceeding fair, and of a special good favour; a sweet composition or harmony of limbs: her temper of beauty has the true height of my blood. The knave hath exceedingly well fitted me without: I will now try her within. Come near, fair gentlewoman: let not my behaviour seem rude, though unto you, being rare, it may haply appear strange. [EPICOENE CURTSIES.] --Nay, lady, you may speak, though Cutbeard and my man, might not; for, of all sounds, only the sweet voice of a fair lady has the just length of mine ears. I beseech you, say, lady; out of the first fire of meeting eyes, they say, love is stricken: do you feel any such motion suddenly shot into you, from any part you see in me? ha, lady? [EPICOENE CURTSIES.] --Alas, lady, these answers by silent curtsies from you are too courtless and simple. I have ever had my breeding in court: and she that shall be my wife, must be accomplished with courtly and audacious ornaments. Can you speak, lady?
MOR. What say you, lady? speak out, I beseech you. EPI. Judge you, forsooth. MOR. On my judgment, a divine softness! But can you naturally, lady, as I enjoin these by doctrine and industry, refer yourself to the search of my judgment, and, not taking pleasure in your tongue, which is a woman's chiefest pleasure, think it plausible to answer me by silent gestures, so long as my speeches jump right with what you conceive? [EPI. CURTSIES.] --Excellent! divine! if it were possible she should hold out thus! Peace, Cutbeard, thou art made for ever, as thou hast made me, if this felicity have lasting: but I will try her further. Dear lady, I am courtly, I tell you, and I must have mine ears banqueted with pleasant and witty conferences, pretty girls, scoffs, and dalliance in her that I mean to choose for my bed-phere. The ladies in court think it a most desperate impair to their quickness of wit, and good carriage, if they cannot give occasion for a man to court 'em; and when an amorous discourse is set on foot, minister as good matter to continue it, as himself: And do you alone so much differ from all them, that what they, with so much circumstance, affect and toil for, to seem learn'd, to seem judicious, to seem sharp and conceited, you can bury in yourself with silence, and rather trust your graces to the fair conscience of virtue, than to the world's or your own proclamation?
MOR. What say you lady? good lady, speak out. EPI. I should be sorry else. MOR. That sorrow doth fill me with gladness. O Morose, thou art happy above mankind! pray that thou mayest contain thyself. I will only put her to it once more, and it shall be with the utmost touch and test of their sex. But hear me, fair lady; I do also love to see her whom I shall choose for my heifer, to be the first and principal in all fashions; precede all the dames at court by a fortnight; have council of tailors, lineners, lace-women, embroiderers, and sit with them sometimes twice a day upon French intelligences; and then come forth varied like nature, or oftener than she, and better by the help of art, her emulous servant. This do I affect: and how will you be able, lady, with this frugality of speech, to give the manifold but necessary instructions, for that bodice, these sleeves, those skirts, this cut, that stitch, this embroidery, that lace, this wire, those knots, that ruff, those roses, this girdle, that fanne, the t'other scarf, these gloves? Ha! what say you, lady? EPI [SOFTLY]: I'll leave it to you, sir. MOR. How, lady? pray you rise a note. EPI. I leave it to wisdom and you, sir. MOR. Admirable creature! I will trouble you no more: I will not sin against so sweet a simplicity. Let me now be bold to print on those divine lips the seal of being mine.--Cutbeard, I give thee the lease of thy house free: thank me not but with thy leg [CUTBEARD SHAKES HIS HEAD.] --I know what thou wouldst say, she's poor, and her friends deceased. She has brought a wealthy dowry in her silence, Cutbeard; and in respect of her poverty, Cutbeard, I shall have her more loving and obedient, Cutbeard. Go thy ways, and get me a minister presently, with a soft low voice, to marry us; and pray him he will not be impertinent, but brief as he can; away: softly, [EXIT CUTBEARD.] --Sirrah, conduct your mistress into the dining-room, your now mistress. [EXIT MUTE, FOLLOWED BY EPI.] --O my felicity! how I shall be revenged on mine insolent kinsman, and his plots to fright me from marrying! This night I will get an heir, and thrust him out of my blood, like a stranger; he would be knighted, forsooth, and thought by that means to reign over me; his title must do it: No, kinsman, I will now make you bring me the tenth lord's and the sixteenth lady's letter, kinsman; and it shall do you no good, kinsman. Your knighthood itself shall come on its knees, and it shall be rejected; it shall be sued for its fees to execution, and not be redeem'd; it shall cheat at the twelvepenny ordinary, it knighthood, for its diet, all the term- time, and tell tales for it in the vacation to the hostess; or it knighthood shall do worse, take sanctuary in Cole-harbour, and fast. It shall fright all its friends with borrowing letters; and when one of the fourscore hath brought it knighthood ten shillings, it knighthood shall go to the Cranes, or the Bear at the Bridge-foot, and be drunk in fear: it shall not have money to discharge one tavern-reckoning, to invite the old creditors to forbear it knighthood, or the new, that should be, to trust it knighthood. It shall be the tenth name in the bond to take up the commodity of pipkins and stone jugs: and the part thereof shall not furnish it knighthood forth for the attempting of a baker's widow, a brown baker's widow. It shall give it knighthood's name, for a stallion, to all gamesome citizens' wives, and be refused; when the master of a dancing school, or how do you call him, the worst reveller in the town is taken: it shall want clothes, and by reason of that, wit, to fool to lawyers. It shall not have hope to repair itself by Constantinople, Ireland, or Virginia; but the best and last fortune to it knighthood shall be to make Dol Tear-Sheet, or Kate Common a lady: and so it knighthood may eat. [EXIT.] _ |
||