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

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 why that should so be, no cause can be found, But only by reason that the earth is round.
HUMANITY.
That reason proveth the earth at the least, One ways to be round, I cannot gainsay, As for to account from the east to the west; But yet, notwithstanding all that, it may Lese his roundness by some other way.
STUDIOUS DESIRE.
Nay, no doubt it is round everywhere, Which I could prove, thou shouldst not say nay, If I had thereto any time and leisure; But I know a man called Experience, Of divers