Volpone and Other Plays (50 page)

50         Good faith, now, she does blame you extremely, and says

You swore, and told her you had ta' en the pains

To dye your beard, and umber o' er your face,

Borrowed a suit and ruff, all for her love:

And then did nothing. What an oversight

And want of putting forward, sir, was this!

Well fare an old
harquebusier
yet,

Could prime his powder, and give fire, and hit,

All in a twinkling!

      
MAMMON
comes forth
.

MAMMON
:                    The whole nest are fled!

LOVEWIT
: What sort of birds were they?

MAMMON
:                                                          A kind of choughs,

60         Or thievish daws, sir, that have picked my purse

Of eight-score and ten pounds within these five weeks,

Beside my first materials; and my goods,

That lie i' the cellar, which I am glad they ha' left,

I may have home yet.

LOVEWIT
:                    Think you so, sir?

MAMMON
:                                                    Ay.

LOVEWIT
: By order of law, sir, but not otherwise.

MAMMON
: Not mine own stuff?

LOVEWIT
:                                      Sir, I can take no knowledge

That they are yours, but by public means.

If you can bring certificate that you were gulled of 'em,

Or any formal writ out of a court,

70        That you did cozen yourself, I will not hold them.

MAMMON
: I'll rather lose 'em.

LOVEWIT
:                                  That you shall not, sir,

By me, in troth. Upon these terms, they' re yours.

What, should they ha' been, sir, turned into gold, all?

MAMMON
:                                                                                       No.

I cannot tell. – It may be they should. – What then?

LOVEWIT
: What a great loss in hope have you sustained!

MAMMON
: Not I; the commonwealth has.

FACE
:                                                                  Ay, he would ha' built

The City new; and made a ditch about it

Of silver, should have run with cream from Hogsden;

That every Sunday in Moorfields the
younkers

80         And
tits
and tom-boys should have fed on, gratis.

MAMMON
: I will go mount a turnip-cart, and preach

The end o' the world within these two months. – Surly,

What! in a dream?

SURLY
:                    Must I needs cheat myself

With that same foolish vice of honesty?

Come, let us go and
hearken
out the rogues.

That Face I'll mark for mine, if e' er I meet him.

FACE
: If I can hear of him, sir, I'll bring you word

Unto your lodging; for in troth, they were strangers

To me; I thought 'em honest as myself, sir.

      [
Exeunt
SURLY
and
MAMMON
.]

      [
ANANIAS
and
TRIBULATION WHOLESOME
]
come forth
.

90   
TRIBULATION
: 'Tis well, the Saints shall not lose all yet. Go

And get some carts –

LOVEWIT
:                         For what, my zealous friends?

ANANIAS
: To bear away the portion of the righteous

Out of this den of thieves.

LOVEWIT
:                             What is that portion?

ANANIAS
: The goods,
sometimes
the orphans', that the Brethren

Bought with their silver pence.

LOVEWIT
:                                        What, those i' the cellar,

The knight Sir Mammon claims?

ANANIAS
:                                              I do defy

The wicked Mammon, so do all the Brethren.

Thou profane man! I ask thee with what conscience

Thou canst advance that idol against us

100      That
have the seal
? Were not the shillings numb' red

That made the pounds; were not the pounds told out

Upon the second day of the fourth week,

In the eighth month, upon the table dormant,

The year of the last patience of the Saints,

Six hundred and ten?

LOVEWIT
:                     Mine earnest vehement botcher,

And deacon also, I cannot dispute with you;

But if you get you not away the sooner,

I shall confute you with a cudgel.

ANANIAS
:                                                Sir!

TRIBULATION
: Be patient, Ananias.

ANANIAS
:                                               I am strong,

110       And will stand up, well girt, against an host

That threaten Gad in exile.

LOVEWIT
:                               I shall send you

To Amsterdam, to your cellar.

ANANIAS
:                                        I will pray there,

Against thy house. May dogs defile thy walls,

And wasps and hornets breed beneath thy roof,

This seat of falsehood, and this cave of coz' nage!

      [
Exeunt
ANANIAS
and
TRIBULATION WHOLESOME
.]

      
DRUGGER
enters
.

LOVEWIT
: Another, too?

DRUGGER
:                       Not I, sir, I am no Brother.

LOVEWIT
: Away, you Harry Nicholas! do you talk?

He beats him away
.

FACE
: No, this was Abel Drugger. (
To the
PARSON
) Good sir, go,

And satisfy him; tell him all is done.

120       He stayed too long a-washing of his face.

The Doctor, he shall hear of him at Westchester;

And of the Captain, tell him, at Yarmouth, or

Some good port-town else, lying for a wind.

     [
Exit
PARSON
.]

If you get off the angry child now, sir –

     [
Enter
KASTRIL
,
with his sister
,
DAME PLIANT
.]

KASTRIL
(
To his sister
.): Come on, you ewe, you have matched

     most sweetly, ha' you not?

Did not I say, I would never ha' you tupped

But by a
dubbed boy
, to make you a lady-tom?

'Slight, you are a
mammet
! O, I could touse you now.

Death, mun you marry with a pox!

LOVEWIT
:                                                 You lie, boy;

130    As sound as you; and I' m aforehand with you.KASTRIL: Anon

LOVEWIT
: Come, will you quarrel? I will
feize
you, sirrah;

Why do you not buckle to vour tools?

KASTRIL
:                                                            God's light,

This is a fine old boy as e' er I saw!

LOVEWIT
: What, do you change your copy now? Proceed;

Here stands my dove;
stoop
at her if you dare.

KASTRIL
: 'Slight, I must love him! I cannot choose, i' faith, An' I should be hanged for 't! Suster, I protest, I honour thee for this match.

LOVEWIT
:               O, do you so, sir?

KASTRIL
: Yes, an' thou canst take tobacco and drink, old boy,

140 I'll give her five hundred pound more to her marriage,

Than her own state.

LOVEWIT
: Fill a pipe full, Jeremy.

FACE
: Yes; but go in and take it, sir.

LOVEWIT
:                       We will.

I will be ruled by thee in anything, Jeremy.

KASTRIL
: 'Slight, thou art not hide-bound, thou art a
jovy
boy!

Come, let's in, I pray thee, and take our whiffs.

LOVEWIT
: Whiff in with your sister, brother boy.

[
Exeunt
KASTRIL
and
DAME PLIANT
.]

                                                             That master

That had received such happiness by a servant,

In such a widow, and with so much wealth,

Were very ungrateful, if he would not be

130          A little indulgent to that servant's wit,

And help his fortune, though with some small strain

Of his own
candour
.

[
Advancing to address the audience
.]

Therefore, gentlemen,

And kind spectators, if I have outstripped

An old man's gravity, or strict canon, think

What a young wife and a good brain may do:

Stretch age's truth sometimes, and crack it too.

Speak for thyself, knave.

FACE
: So I will, sir.

[
Advancing also
.]          Gentlemen,

My part a little fell in this last scene,

Yet 'twas
decorum
. And though I am clean

Got off from Subtle, Surly, Mammon, Dol, 160

Hot Ananias, Dapper, Drugger, all

With whom I traded; yet I put myself

On you, that are my
country
; and this pelf

Which I have got, if you do quit me, rests,

To feast you often, and invite new guests.

[
Exeunt
.]

THE END

Bartholomew Fair
was first acted by the Lady Elizabeth's Men at the Hope Theatre, Bankside, on 31 October 1614, and was played at Court the following day. It was acted after the Restoration, and much liked by that indefatigable playgoer, Samuel Pepys. An anti-Puritan farce based in part on Jonson's play was staged before King Charles II, greatly to the annoyance of Puritan divines. The play was only intermittently performed in the eighteenth century until 1731, and after that time it seems to have completely disappeared from the theatrical repertory, save for one adaptation acted in 1735. Bartholomew Fair itself was last held in 1855. The Phoenix Society gave a single performance of the play in Oxford in 1921. The Marlowe Society of Cambridge produced the play in 1947, and undergraduates at Oxford performed it in 1962. The very large cast makes frequent professional performances unlikely, but in 1950 the Old Vic Company, under the direction of George Devine, acted the comedy on the great open stage of the Assembly Hall of the Church of Scodand in Edinburgh during the Festival, and later brought the production to the Waterloo Road. Mark Dignam played Busy and Roger Livesey Justice Overdo; Alec Chines and Robert Eddison were especially good as the testy Humphrey Wasp and the ninny Bartholomew Cokes.

The action of the play takes place in one day: the Feast of St Bartholomew (i.e. 24 August), presumably 1614. The comedy opens early in the morning and ends with Justice Overdo magnanimously inviting the entire
dramatis personae
home to supper. The first act is set in Litlewit's house, and requires no scenic elaboration; the rest of the entertainment takes place at the Fair. The stalls, booths, and stocks may have been on view throughout Act 1 in the Jacobean performances; it is moré likely that at the
end of Act 1 they were erected in full view of the audience by the characters of the Fair themselves, before, after, or even during Justice Overdo's soliloquy. (The official accounts for the second performance – at the Court of King James – include sums of money for ‘Canvas for the Boothes and other necessaries for a play called Bartholomew Fair'.) The transformation scene at Edinburgh whereby the Assembly Hall became the bustling Fair was one of the most striking effects in Devine's production. In any performance characters can retreat into their own stalls when not required, and Ursula's booth, centrally located for most of the play, serves as a curtained ‘discovery-place' in which Mistress Litlewit and Mistress Overdo are eventually revealed in the party scene. It is up to individual directors to decide such things as whether the stocks remain on-stage throughout Aa Iv. Leatherhead's puppet–theatre seems to be re-erected in the central position during Act v, while the real audience and the audience-within-the-play look on.