A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. III | Page 7

am sure, or else hang them.
Foul. Why, what if I be harty Commendations? come, come, sweete Knights, lead the way.
Rud. O Lorde Sir, alwayes after my harty Commendations.
Foul. Nay then you conquer me with precedent, by the autenticall forme of all Iustice letters. [_Alloun. Exeunt_.
Ia. Here's a most sweet Gudgeon swallowed, is there not?
Will. I but how will they disgest it, thinkest thou when they shall finde our Ladies not there?
Ia. I have a vaunt-currying[11] devise shall make them digest it most healthfully.
[Exeunt.

SCENA QUARTA.
_Enter Clarence, Musicians_.
Cla. Worke on, sweet love; I am not yet resolved T'exhaust this troubled spring of vanities And Nurse of perturbations, my poore life, And therefore since in every man that holds This being deare, there must be some desire, Whose power t'enjoy his object may so maske The judging part, that in her radyant eyes His estimation of the World may seeme Vpright, and worthy, I have chosen love To blind my Reason with his misty hands And make my estimative power beleive I have a project worthy to imploy What worth so ever my whole man affordes: Then sit at rest, my soule, thou now hast found The end of thy infusion; in the eyes Of thy divine Eugenia looke for Heaven. Thanks gentle friends. [A song to the Violls. Is your good Lord, and mine, gon up to bedd yet?
Enter Momford.
Mom. I do assure ye not, sir, not yet, nor yet, my deepe, and studious friend; not yet, musicall Clarence.
Cla. My Lord?
Mom. Nor yet, thou sole divider of my Lordshippe.
Cla. That were a most unfit division, And farre above the pitch of my low plumes; I am your bold, and constant guest my Lord.
Mom. Far, far from bold, for thou hast known me long Almost these twenty yeeres, and halfe those yeeres Hast bin my bed-fellow; long time before This unseene thing, this thing of naught indeed, Or Atome cald my Lordshippe shind in me, And yet thou mak'st thy selfe as little bould To take such kindnes, as becomes the Age And truth of our indissolable love, As our acquaintance sprong but yesterday; Such is thy gentle, and too tender spirit.
Cla. My _Lord_, my want of Courtship makes me feare I should be rude, and this my meane estate Meetes with such envie, and detraction, Such misconstructions and resolud misdoomes Of my poore worth, that should I be advaunce'd Beyond my unseene lowenes, but one haire, I should be torne in peeces with the Spirits That fly in ill-lungd tempests through the world, Tearing the head of vertue from her shoulders If she but looke out of the ground of glorie. Twixt whom and me, and every worldly fortune There fights such sowre, and curst _Antipathy_, So waspish and so petulant a Starre, That all things tending to my grace or good Are ravisht from their object, as I were A thing created for a wildernes, And must not thinke of any place with men.
Mom. O harke you Sir, this waiward moode of yours Must sifted be, or rather rooted out. Youle no more musick Sir?
Cla. Not now, my Lord.
Mom. Begon my masters then to bedd, to bedd.
Cla. I thanke you, honest friends.
[Exeunt Musicians.
Mo. Hence with this book, and now, _Mounsieur Clarence_, me thinks plaine and prose friendship would do excellent well betwixt us: come thus, Sir, or rather thus, come. Sir, tis time I trowe that we both liv'd like one body, thus, and that both our sides were slit, and concorporat with Organs fit to effect an individuall passage even for our very thoughts; suppose we were one body now, and I charge you beleeve it; whereof I am the hart, and you the liver.
Cla. Your Lordship might well make that division[12], if you knew the plaine song.
Mo. O Sir, and why so I pray?
Cla. First because the heart, is the more worthy entraile, being the first that is borne, and moves, and the last that moves, and dies; and then being the Fountaine of heate too: for wheresoever our heate does not flow directly from the hart to the other Organs there, their action must of necessity cease, and so without you I neither would nor could live.
Mom. Well Sir, for these reasons I may be the heart, why may you be the liver now?
Cla. I am more then asham'd, to tell you that my Lord.
Mom. Nay, nay, be not too suspitious of my judgement in you I beseech you: asham'd friend? if your love overcome not that shame, a shame take that love, I saie. Come sir, why may you be the liver?
Cla. The plaine, and short truth is (my _Lord_) because I am all liver, and turn'd lover.
Mom. Lover?
Cla. Lover, yfaith my Lord.
Mom. Now I prethee let me leape out of my skin for joy: why thou