A Select Collection of Old English Plays Volume Ix Part 120

WIFE. Given me a dowry too.

BUT. And that he knew, Your sin was his, the punishment his due.

SCAR. All this is here: Is heaven so gracious to sinners then?

BUT. Heaven is, and has his gracious eyes, To give men life, not life-entrapping spies.

SCAR. Your hand--yours--yours--to my soul: to you a kiss; In troth I am sorry I have stray'd amiss; To whom shall I be thankful? all silent?

None speak? whist! why then to G.o.d, That gives men comfort as he gives his rod; Your portions I'll see paid, and I will love you, You three I'll live withal, my soul shall love you!

You are an honest servant, sooth you are; To whom? I, these, and all must pay amends; But you I will admonish in cool terms, Let not promotion's hope be as a string, To tie your tongue, or let it loose to sting.

DOC. From hence it shall not, sir.

SCAR. Then husbands thus shall nourish with their wives.

[_Kiss_.

ILF. As thou and I will, wench.

SCAR. Brothers in brotherly love thus link together [_Embrace_.

Children and servants pay their duty thus.

[_Bow and kneel_.

And are all pleas'd?

ALL. We are.

SCAR. Then, if all these be so, I am new-wed, so ends all marriage woe; And, in your eyes so lovingly being wed, We hope your hands will bring us to our bed.

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Baldwin's "Old English Drama," 2 vols. 12mo.

[2] From the similarity of the names, it seems the author originally intended to make Young Lusam the son of Old Lusam and brother of Mistress Arthur, but afterwards changed his intention: in page 13 the latter calls him a stranger to her, although he is the intimate friend of her husband.

[3] [Old copy, _walk_.]

[4] Busk-point, the lace with its tag which secured the end of the busk, a piece of wood or whalebone worn by women in front of the stays to keep them straight.

[5] [Old copies, _Study_.]

[6] [Old copy, _watch_.]

[7] [Old copies, _dream_.]

[8] [All Fuller's speeches must be supposed to be _Asides_.]

[9] [Old copies give this line to Fuller.]

[10] Old copies, _she_.

[11] Old copies, _bene_; but the schoolmaster is made to blunder, so that _bene_ may, after all, be what the author wrote.

[12] The rod, made of a willow-wand.

[13] Old copy, _how_.

[14] [Old copies, _laid_.]

[15] [A quotation.]

[16] _Christ-cross_, the alphabet.

[17] [The sense appears to be, for this not being perfect poison, as his (the pedant's) meaning is to poison himself, some covetous slave will sell him real poison.]

[18] [Old copies, _seem'd_.]

[19] [Old copies, _First_.]

[20] [Ma.s.singer, in his "City Madam," 1658, uses this word in the sense of _above the law_. Perhaps Young Arthur may intend to distinguish between a civil and religious contract.]

[21] [See Hazlitt's "Proverbs," 1869, p. 90.]

[22] [i.e., The _h.o.a.r_-frost.]

[23] [Old copy, _flies upon_.]

[24] [This line has been seriously corrupted, and it might be impossible to restore the true reading. The old copies have: _Ask, he knew me, a means_, &c.]

[25] [Having, however, been written and acted some years before it was printed in 1606.]

[26] _Sloughing hotc.o.c.kles_ is a sport still retained among children.

The diversion is of long standing, having been in use with the ancients.

See Pollux, lib. ix. In the copy it is spelt _slauging_.

[27] Old copy, _which_.

[28] [So in Wybarne's "New Age of Old Names," 1609, p. 12: "But stay, my friend: Let it be first manifest that my Father left Land, and then we will rather agree at home, then suffer the Butler's Boxe to winne all."

The phrase occurs again in "Ram Alley," 1611.]

[29] [So the old copy, and rightly. Forne is a contracted form of _beforne_, a good old English word. Hawkins printed _fore_.]

[30] Query, if this be not a fling at Shakespeare? See "Cymbeline."