2 CHILD. Ay, sir, if you'll give me sixpence, I'll fetch you one.

3 CHILD. For what, I pray thee? what shall I do with it?

2 CHILD. O lord, sir! will you betray your ignorance so much?

why throne yourself in state on the stage, as other gentlemen use, sir.

3 CHILD. Away, wag; what would'st thou make an implement of me?

'Slid, the boy takes me for a piece of perspective, I hold my life, or some silk curtain, come to hang the stage here! Sir crack, I am none of your fresh pictures, that use to beautify the decayed dead arras in a public theatre.

2 CHILD. 'Tis a sign, sir, you put not that confidence in your good clothes, and your better face, that a gentleman should do, sir. But I pray you sir, let me be a suitor to you, that you will quit our stage then, and take a place; the play is instantly to begin.

3 CHILD. Most willingly, my good wag; but I would speak with your author: where is he?

2 CHILD. Not this way, I a.s.sure you sir; we are not so officiously befriended by him, as to have his presence in the tiring-house, to prompt us aloud, stamp at the book-holder, swear for our properties, curse the poor tireman, rail the music out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespa.s.s we commit, as some author would, if he had such fine enghles as we. Well, 'tis but our hard fortune!

3 CHILD. Nay, crack, be not disheartened.

2 CHILD. Not I sir; but if you please to confer with our author, by attorney, you may, sir; our proper self here, stands for him.

3 CHILD. Troth, I have no such serious affair to negotiate with him; but what may very safely be turn'd upon thy trust. It is in the general behalf of this fair society here that I am to speak; at least the more judicious part of it: which seems much distasted with the immodest and obscene writing of many in their plays.

Besides, they could wish your poets would leave to be promoters of other men's jests, and to way-lay all the stale apothegms, or old books they can hear of, in print or otherwise, to farce their scenes withal. That they would not so penuriously glean wit from every laundress or hackney-man; or derive their best grace, with servile imitation, from common stages, or observation of the company they converse with; as if their invention lived wholly upon another man's trencher. Again, that feeding their friends with nothing of their own, but what they have twice or thrice cooked, they should not wantonly give out, how soon they had drest it; nor how many coaches came to carry away the broken meat, besides hobby-horses and foot-cloth nags.

2 CHILD. So, sir, this is all the reformation you seek?

3 CHILD. It is; do not you think it necessary to be practised, my little wag?

2 CHILD. Yes, where any such ill-habited custom is received.

3 CHILD. O (I had almost forgot it too), they say, the umbrae, or ghosts of some three or four plays departed a dozen years since, have been seen walking on your stage here; take heed boy, if your house be haunted with such hobgoblins, 'twill fright away all your spectators quickly.

2 CHILD. Good, sir; but what will you say now, if a poet, untouch'd with any breath of this disease, find the tokens upon you, that are of the auditory? As some one civet-wit among you, that knows no other learning, than the price of satin and velvets: nor other perfection than the wearing of a neat suit; and yet will censure as desperately as the most profess'd critic in the house, presuming his clothes should bear him out in it. Another, whom it hath pleased nature to furnish with more beard than brain, prunes his mustaccio; lisps, and, with some score of affected oaths, swears down all that sit about him; "That the old Hieronimo, as it was first acted, was the only best, and judiciously penn'd play of Europe". A third great-bellied juggler talks of twenty years since, and when Monsieur was here, and would enforce all wits to be of that fashion, because his doublet is still so. A fourth miscalls all by the name of fustian, that his grounded capacity cannot aspire to. A fifth only shakes his bottle head, and out of his corky brain squeezeth out a pitiful learned face, and is silent.

3 CHILD. By my faith, Jack, you have put me down: I would I knew how to get off with any indifferent grace! here take your cloak, and promise some satisfaction in your prologue, or, I'll be sworn we have marr'd all.

2 CHILD. Tut, fear not, child, this will never distaste a true sense: be not out, and good enough. I would thou hadst some sugar candied to sweeten thy mouth.

THE THIRD SOUNDING.

PROLOGUE.

If gracious silence, sweet attention, Quick sight, and quicker apprehension, The lights of judgment's throne, shine any where, Our doubtful author hopes this is their sphere; And therefore opens he himself to those, To other weaker beams his labours close, As loth to prost.i.tute their virgin-strain, To every vulgar and adulterate brain.

In this alone, his Muse her sweetness hath, She shuns the print of any beaten path; And proves new ways to come to learned ears: Pied ignorance she neither loves, nor fears.

Nor hunts she after popular applause, Or foamy praise, that drops from common jaws The garland that she wears, their hands must twine, Who can both censure, understand, define What merit is: then cast those piercing rays, Round as a crown, instead of honour'd bays, About his poesy; which, he knows, affords Words, above action; matter, above words.

ACT I

SCENE I.--A GROVE AND FOUNTAIN.

ENTER CUPID, AND MERCURY WITH HIS CADUCEUS, ON DIFFERENT SIDES.

CUP. Who goes there?

MER. 'Tis I, blind archer.

CUP. Who, Mercury?

MER. Ay.

CUP. Farewell.

MER. Stay Cupid.

CUP. Not in your company, Hermes, except your hands were riveted at your back.

MER. Why so, my little rover?

CUP. Because I know you have not a finger, but is as long as my quiver, cousin Mercury, when you please to extend it.

MER. Whence derive you this speech, boy?

CUP. O! 'tis your best polity to be ignorant. You did never steal Mars his sword out of the sheath, you! nor Neptune's trident! nor Apollo's bow! no, not you! Alas, your palms, Jupiter knows, they are as tender as the foot of a foundered nag, or a lady's face new mercuried, they'll touch nothing.

MER. Go to, infant, you'll be daring still.

CUP. Daring! O Ja.n.u.s! what a word is there? why, my light feather-heel'd coz, what are you any more than my uncle Jove's pander? a lacquey that runs on errands for him, and can whisper a light message to a loose wench with some round volubility? wait mannerly at a table with a trencher, warble upon a crowd a little, and fill out nectar when Ganymede's away? one that sweeps the G.o.d's drinking-room every morning, and sets the cushions in order again, which they threw one at another's head over night; can brush the carpets, call the stools again to their places, play the crier of the court with an audible voice, and take state of a president upon you at wrestlings, pleadings, negociations, etc. Here's the catalogue of your employments, now! O, no, I err; you have the marshalling of all the ghosts too that pa.s.s the Stygian ferry, and I suspect you for a share with the old sculler there, if the truth were known; but let that scape. One other peculiar virtue you possess, in lifting, or leiger-du-main, which few of the house of heaven have else besides, I must confess. But, methinks, that should not make you put that extreme distance 'twixt yourself and others, that we should be said to "over-dare" in speaking to your nimble deity. So Hercules might challenge priority of us both, because he can throw the bar farther, or lift more join'd stools at the arm's end, than we. If this might carry it, then we, who have made the whole body of divinity tremble at the tw.a.n.g of our bow, and enforc'd Saturnius himself to lay by his curled front, thunder, and three-fork'd fires, and put on a masking suit, too light for a reveller of eighteen to be seen in--

MER. How now! my dancing braggart in decimo s.e.xto! charm your skipping tongue, or I'll--

CUP. What! use the virtue of your snaky tip staff there upon us?

MER. No, boy, but the smart vigour of my palm about your ears.

You have forgot since I took your heels up into air, on the very hour I was born, in sight of all the bench of deities, when the silver roof of the Olympian palace rung again with applause of the fact.

CUP. O no, I remember it freshly, and by a particular instance; for my mother Venus, at the same time, but stoop'd to embrace you, and, to speak by metaphor, you borrow'd a girdle of her's, as you did Jove's sceptre while he was laughing; and would have done his thunder too, but that 'twas too hot for your itching fingers.

MER. 'Tis well, sir.

CUP. I heard, you but look'd in at Vulcan's forge the other day, and entreated a pair of his new tongs along with you for company: 'tis joy on you, i' faith, that you will keep your hook'd talons in practice with any thing. 'Slight, now you are on earth, we shall have you filch spoons and candlesticks rather than fail: pray Jove the perfum'd courtiers keep their casting-bottles, pick-tooths, and s.h.i.ttle-c.o.c.ks from you, or our more ordinary gallants their tobacco-boxes; for I am strangely jealous of your nails.

MER. Never trust me, Cupid, but you are turn'd a most acute gallant of late! the edge of my wit is clean taken off with the fine and subtile stroke of your thin-ground tongue; you fight with too poignant a phrase, for me to deal with.