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

bring him to despair.
[Exeunt O. ART. and O. LUS.
Y. LUS. Sweet saint! continue still this patience, For time will bring
him to true penitence. Mirror of virtue! thanks for my good cheer-- A
thousand thanks.
MRS ART. It is so much too dear; But you are welcome for my
husband's sake; His guests shall have best welcome I can make.
Y. LUS. Than marriage nothing in the world more common; Nothing
more rare than such a virtuous woman. [Exit.
MRS ART. My husband in this humour, well I know, Plays but the
unthrift; therefore it behoves me To be the better housewife here at
home; To save and get, whilst he doth laugh and spend: Though for
himself he riots it at large, My needle shall defray my household's
charge. [She sits down to work in front of the house.
FUL. Now, Master Anselm, to her, step not back; Bustle yourself, see
where she sits at work; Be not afraid, man; she's but a woman, And
women the most cowards seldom fear: Think but upon my former
principles, And twenty pound to a drachm,[7] you speed.

ANS. Ay, say you so?
FUL. Beware of blushing, sirrah, Of fear and too much eloquence! Rail
on her husband, his misusing her, And make that serve thee as an
argument, That she may sooner yield to do him wrong. Were it my case,
my love and I to plead, I have't at fingers' ends: who could miss the
clout, Having so fair a white, such steady aim. This is the upshot: now
bid for the game.
[ANSELM advances.
ANS. Fair mistress, God save you!
FUL. What a circumstance Doth he begin with; what an ass is he, To
tell her at the first that she is fair; The only means to make her to be
coy! He should have rather told her she was foul, And brought her out
of love quite with herself; And, being so, she would the less have car'd,
Upon whose secrets she had laid her love. He hath almost marr'd all
with that word fair. [Aside.[8]]
ANS. Mistress, God save you!
FUL. What a block is that, To say, God save you! is the fellow mad?
Once to name God in his ungodly suit.
MRS ART. You are welcome, sir. Come you to speak with me Or with
my husband? pray you, what's your will?
FUL. She answers to the purpose; what's your will? O zounds, that I
were there to answer her.
ANS. Mistress, my will is not so soon express'd Without your special
favour, and the promise Of love and pardon, if I speak amiss.
FUL. O ass! O dunce! O blockhead! that hath left The plain broad
highway and the readiest path, To travel round about by circumstance:
He might have told his meaning in a word, And now hath lost his
opportunity. Never was such a truant in love's school; I am asham'd that

e'er I was his tutor.
MRS ART. Sir, you may freely speak, whate'er it be, So that your
speech suiteth with modesty.
FUL. To this now could I answer passing well.
ANS. Mistress, I, pitying that so fair a creature--
FUL. Still fair, and yet I warn'd the contrary.
ANS. Should by a villain be so foully us'd, As you have been--
FUL. _As you have been_--ay, that was well put in!
ANS. If time and place were both convenient[9]-- Have made this bold
intrusion, to present My love and service to your sacred self.
FUL. Indifferent, that was not much amiss.
MRS ART. Sir, what you mean by service and by love, I will not know;
but what you mean by villain, I fain would know.
ANS. That villain is your husband, Whose wrongs towards you are
bruited through the land. O, can you suffer at a peasant's hands,
Unworthy once to touch this silken skin, To be so rudely beat and
buffeted? Can you endure from such infectious breath, Able to blast
your beauty, to have names Of such impoison'd hate flung in your face?
FUL. O, that was good, nothing was good but that; That was the lesson
that I taught him last.
ANS. O, can you hear your never-tainted fame Wounded with words of
shame and infamy? O, can you see your pleasures dealt away, And you
to be debarr'd all part of them, And bury it in deep oblivion? Shall your
true right be still contributed 'Mongst hungry bawds, insatiate
courtesans? And can you love that villain, by whose deed Your soul
doth sigh, and your distress'd heart bleed?

FUL. All this as well as I could wish myself.
MRS ART. Sir, I have heard thus long with patience; If it be me you
term a villain's wife, In sooth you have mistook me all this