A Select Collection of Old English Plays, vol 1 | Page 8

put to oblivion My
doctrine, this man, called Studious Desire, With thee shall have
continual habitation, Thee still to exhort more science to acquire. For
the more that thou desirest to know anything, Therein thou seemest the
more a man to be; For that man that desireth no manner cunning, All
that while no better than a beast is he. Why been the eyes made, but
only to see, The legs, to bear the body of a creature? So everything is
made to do his nature; So likewise reason, wit, and understanding, Is
given to thee, man, for that thou shouldst indeed Know thy Maker and
cause of thine own being, And what the world is, and whereof thou
dost proceed; Wherefore, it behoveth thee of very need The cause of
things first for to learn, And then to know and laud the high God eterne.
HUMANITY.
O glorious Lord and Prince most pleasant! Greatly am I now holden
unto thee, So to illumine my mind, that was ignorant, With such noble
doctrine as thou hast here shown me; Wherefore I promise, upon my
fidelity, My diligence to do to keep in memory, And thee for to honour
still perpetually.
STUDIOUS DESIRE.
And sith it hath pleased thy grace to admit Me upon this man to give
attendance, With thy doctrine here shown I shall quicken his wit, And
daily put him in remembrance; His courage and desire I shall also
enhance, So that his felicity shall be most of all To study and to search

for causes natural.
NATURE.
Well, then, for a season I will depart, Leaving you together here both
twain; What I have shown, man, print well in thine heart,[13] And
mark well this figure that here shall remain, Whereby thou mayest
perceive many things more plain Concerning the matter I spoke of
before; And when that I shall resort here again, Of high points of
cunning I shall show thee more.
STUDIOUS DESIRE.
Now, Humanity, call to your memory The cunning points that Nature
hath declared; And though he has shown divers points and many Of the
elements so wondersly[14] formed Yet many other causes there are
would be learned, As to know the generation of things all Here in the
earth, how they be engendered, As herbs, plants, well-springs, stone,
and metal.
HUMANITY.
Those things to know for me be full expedient, But yet in those points
which Nature late showed me, My mind in them as yet is not content,
For I can no manner wise perceive nor see, Nor prove by reason why
the earth should be In the middes of the firmament hanging so small,
And the earth with the water to be round withal.
STUDIOUS DESIRE.
Me thinketh myself, as to some of those points I could give a sufficient
solution; For, first of all, thou must needs grant this, That the earth is so
deep, and bottom hath none, Or else there is some gross thing it
standeth upon, Or else that it hangeth, thou must needs consent, Even
in the middes of the firmament.
HUMANITY.

What then? go forth with thine argument.
STUDIOUS DESIRE.
Then mark well, in the day or in a winter's night, The sun and moon,
and stars celestial, In the east first they do appear to thy sight, And after
in the west they do down fall, And again in the morrow next of all,
Within twenty-four hours they be come just To the east point again,
where thou sawest them first. Then if the earth should be of endless
deepness, Or should stand upon any other gross thing, It should be an
impediment, doubtless, To the sun, moon, and stars in their moving;
Therefore, in reason, it seemeth most convenient The earth to hang in
the middes of the firmament.
HUMANITY.
Thine argument in that point doth me confound, That thou hast made,
but yet it proveth not right That the earth by reason should be round;
For though the firmament, with his stars bright, Compass about the
earth each day and night, Yet the earth may be plane, peradventure,
Quadrant, triangle, or some other figure.
STUDIOUS DESIRE.
That it cannot be plane I shall well prove thee: Because the stars, that
arise in the orient, Appear more sooner to them that there be, Than to
the other dwelling in the Occident. The eclipse is thereof a plain
experiment Of the sun or moon which, when it doth fall, Is never one
time of the day in places all; Yet the eclipse generally is alway In the
whole world as one time being; But when we, that dwell here, see it in
the midday, They in the west parts see it in the morning, And they in
the east behold it in the evening; And