men in the street! I'll hang him with mine own hands! O wife! some rosa solis.1

Mistress Mul. Good husband, take comfort in the Lord; I'll play the devil, but I'll recover it. Have a good conscience, 'tis but a week's cutting 2 in the term! Mul. O, wife! O, wife! O, Jack! how does thy mother? Is there any fiddlers in the house?

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Mistress Mul. Yes, Master Creak's 3 noise? Mul. Bid 'em play, laugh, make merry; cast up my accounts, for I'll go hang myself presently. I will not curse, but a pox on Cocledemoy; he has poll'd and shaved me, he has trimm'd me! [Exeunt.

1 A cordial.

2 Mistress Mulligrub consoles her husband with the thought that in one week of term-time the fifteen pounds may be recovered by help of a little sharping (in the way of adulterating the liquors, frothing the cans, &c.).

3 So in 2 Henry IV, we have a mention of "Sneak's noise."

ACT III.

SCENE I.

Room in Sir HUBERT SUBBOYS' house.

Enter BEATRICE, CRISPINELLA and Nurse PUTIFER.

Put. Nay, good child o' love, once more Master Freevill's sonnet o' the kiss you gave him.

Bea. Sha't, good nurse:

Purest lips, soft banks of blisses,

Self alone deserving kisses;

O give me leave to, &c.

[Sings.

Cri. Pish! sister Beatrice, prithee read no more; my stomach o' late stands against kissing extremely.

Bea. Why, good Crispinella?

9

Cri. By the faith and trust I bear to my face, 'tis grown one of the most unsavoury ceremonies: body o' beauty! 'tis one of the most unpleasing injurious. customs to ladies: any fellow that has but one nose on his face, and standing collar and skirts also lined with taffety sarcenet, must salute us on the lips as familiarly— Soft skins save us! there was a stub-bearded John-a-Stile

with a ployden's face saluted me last day and struck his bristles through my lips; I ha' spent ten shillings in pomatum since to skin them again. Marry, if a nobleman or a knight with one lock visit us, though his unclean goose-turd-green 1 teeth ha' the palsy, his nostrils smell worse than a putrified marrowbone, and his loose beard drops into our bosom, yet we must kiss him with a cursy, a curse! for my part, I had as lieve they would break wind in my lips.

Bea. Fie, Crispinella, you speak too broad.

25

Cri. No jot, sister; let's ne'er be ashamed to speak what we be not ashamed to think: I dare as boldly speak venery as think venery.

Bea. Faith, sister! I'll begone if you speak so broad Cri. Will you so? Now bashfulness seize you, we pronounce boldly, robbery, murder, treason, which deeds must needs be far more loathsome than an act which is so natural, just, and necessary, as that of procreation; you shall have an hypocritical vestal virgin speak that with close teeth publicly, which she will receive with open mouth privately; for my own part, I consider nature without apparel; without disguising of custom or compliment, I give thoughts words, and words truth, and truth boldness; she whose honest freeness makes it her virtue to speak what she thinks will make it her necessity to think what is good. I love no prohibited things, and yet I would have nothing.

1 Old eds. "goose-turnd-greene."-"Merde oye. A Goose-turdgreene."-Cotgrave.

1

prohibited by policy, but by virtue; for as in the fashion of time those books that are call'd in are most in sale and request,1 so in nature those actions that are most prohibited are most desired.

47

Bea. Good quick sister, stay your pace; we are private, but the world would censure you, for truly severe modesty is women's virtue.

Cri. Fie, fie! virtue is a free, pleasant, buxom quality. I love a constant countenance well; but this froward ignorant coyness, sour austere lumpish uncivil privateness, that promises nothing but rough skins and hard stools; ha! fie on't, good for nothing but for nothing. Well, nurse, and what do you conceive of all this?

57

Put. Nay, faith, my conceiving days be done. Marry for kissing, I'll defend that; that's within my compass; but for my own part, here's Mistress Beatrice is to be married with the grace of God; a fine gentleman he is shall have her, and I warrant a strong; he has a leg like a post, a nose like a lion, a brow like a bull, and a beard of most fair expectation: this week you must marry him, and I now will read a lecture to you both, how you shall behave yourselves to your husbands the

1 Tacitus has the same sensible observation about prohibited books :"Convictum Veientonem Italia depulit [Nero] et libros exuri jussit, conquisitos lectitatosque, donec cum periculo parabantar: mox licentia habendi oblivionem attulit."-Ann., xiv. 50. But in these days of "anthropological" research a public censor of morals might to the advantage of the community be allowed to exercise authority. Discretion, of course, would have to be used; otherwise this edition of Marston might be called in; absit omen!

first month of your nuptial; I ha' broke my skull about it, I can tell you, and there is much brain in it.

Cri. Read it to my sister, good nurse, for I assure you I'll ne'er maṛry.

70

Marry! no,

Put. Marry, God forfend, what will you do then? Cri. Faith, strive against the flesh. faith, husbands are like lots in the lottery: you may draw forty blanks before you find one that has any prize in him. A husband generally is a careless, domineering thing, that grows like coral, which as long as it is under water is soft and tender, but as soon as it has got his branch above the waves is presently hard, stiff, not to be bowed but burst; so when your husband is a suitor and under your choice, Lord how supple he is, how obsequious, how at your service, sweet lady! Once married, got up his head above, a stiff, crooked, nobby, inflexible tyrannous creature he grows; then they turn like water, more you would embrace the less you hold. I'll live my own woman, and if the worst come to the worst, I had rather prove a wag than a fool. 86

Bea. O, but a virtuous marriage.

Cri. Virtuous marriage! there is no more affinity betwixt virtue and marriage than betwixt a man and his horse; indeed virtue gets up upon marriage sometimes, and manageth it in the right way; but marriage is of another piece, for as a horse may be without a man, and a man without a horse, so marriage, you know, is often without virtue, and virtue, I am sure, more oft without marriage. But thy match, sister-by my troth I think 'twill do well; he's a well-shaped, clean-lipp'd gentle

VOL. II.

D