THE OLD FORTUNE THEATRE.

“Go let MusicCharm with her excellent voice an awful silenceThrough all this building, that her sphery soulMay, on the wings of air, in thousand forms,Invisibly fly, yet be enjoyed.”

The speeches of the earl in this play contain other rare imaginative touches, in strange contrast with the reckless farcical tenour of the piece generally.Sir Thomas Wyattis less satisfactory, a medley of absurd printer’s errors adding to the confusion of what was probably a confused work at best. Marston’s protest, as to the unfairness of taking seriously and critically plays which were hastily and carelessly written to meet the demand of the hour, must be remembered in judging plays like this. In addition to the plays which their authors revised and set forth with their deliberateimprimatur, many were written without any idea of publication; the playwrights looked upon them merely as a sort of journalism, which they did not wish to have judged by permanent artistic standards. It would be waste of time to deliberate over the exact share to be alloted to Dekker and Webster in these three plays. It will be noted, however, in the two comedies, that certain of the characters, as the Welsh captain and Hans inNorthward Ho, speak in a dialect suspiciously like that of the dialect parts in Dekker’s other plays.

For the next two or three years Dekker appears to have occupied himself again chiefly with prose. In 1608 appearedThe Bellman of London, which is a sort of unconventional cyclopedia of thieving and vagabondage, containing much curious information about the shady side of Elizabethan life. Its importance in relation to Dekker’s fondness for the same subject-maker in his plays, however, is somewhat lessened when we discover that the work is partly appropriated from a book first published about forty years before, in 1567, entitledA Caveat or Warning for Common Cursitors, vulgarly called Vagabonds; by Thomas Harman.The Bellman of Londonseems to have been successful; for it was followed the next year by a second book of the same kind,Lanthorn and Candle-light; or, The Bellman’s Second Night Walk: also in part taken from Harman. In 1609The Gull’s Horn-book, which has already been referred to, was published,—by far the most important and interesting of all Dekker’s prose works. Its value will be apparent from the passages already quoted, but to anyone who wishes to realise intimately the everyday life of the time, and its relation to Dekker’s own environment, the book is simply indispensable. The initial conception, like most of Dekker’s conceptions, was not original. The idea of it is taken from a Dutch book which Dekker had thought of translating into English verse, but, finding difficulties in the way, he decided instead to write a new prose work on the same lines. Theearlier parts of the book are the least reliable, as here Dekker made free use of the Dutch original; but from Chap. iv., “How a Gallant should behave Himself in Paul’s Walk,” onwards, the book is probably as true as it is humorously realistic in its descriptions, forming a delightful prose complement to the plays. The rest of Dekker’s prose works, interesting as they are in themselves, have not enough bearing upon the plays to warrant me in any lengthy examination of them. Between the two “Bellman” books appearedThe Dead Term; or, Westminster’s Complaint for Long Vacations and Short Terms, which, amid some extravagance, contains a great deal in the way of description of London life, which is picturesque and historically valuable. In 1609 two other works followed or precededThe Gull’s Horn-book. The most valuable of the two is entitled,Work for Armourers; or, the Peace is Broken, which contains some suggestive autobiographical references to Dekker’s delight in history, to the hard lot of poetry and the drama, and to many other matters, interesting, personally, in approaching its main fancifully treated thesis of the struggle betweenPoverty and Money.The Raven’s Almanack, the second of the two, is chiefly a budget of stories, with “A Song sung by an Old Woman in a Meadow,” which has something of Dekker’s rougher lyrical quality in it.

In 1611 Dekker and Middleton came together again, and wrote conjointlyThe Roaring Girl, avigorous comedy, whose heroine, Moll Cutpurse, goes about in the guise of a gallant, and wreaks summary vengeance upon offenders. In spite of her aggressive masculinity, she is somehow made in her way really attractive. Some of the scenes, as those in the “Sempster’s” shop, and those in which the Gallipots and Tiltyards go duck-hunting, are full of contemporary colour. The Mayoralty Pageant of 1612 has already been mentioned. In that year also appeared an absurd semi-allegorical dramatic fantasy by Dekker, founded upon Machiavelli’s “Belphegor,”—If this be not a Good Play the Devil is in it, in which Devils, Zanies, Friars, Dancing Girls, and other human and superhuman elements are wrought into a curious medley of utter nonsense with real humour and fancy. From 1613 to 1616, Oldys informs us that Dekker was in prison again. An interesting and pathetic letter exists from him to Alleyne, who must have acted generously towards him throughout; the letter is dated “King’s Bench, Sept. 12, 1616.” It is significant that in the first year of his re-imprisonment, he issued a very remarkable book of prayers, entitledThe Four Birds of Noah’s Ark, to the profound eloquence and power of devotional expression in which, as in “A Prayer for a Soldier,” Mr. Swinburne has paid a well-deserved tribute. WithA Strange Horse-Race, published also in 1613, were included the singular piece of humour,—“The Devil’s last Will and Testament,” and another prose fantasy, “The Bankrupt’s Banquet.” A much morenotable work isDekker his Dream, which is mainly in verse. It is a rough and unpolished piece of work, most interesting autobiographically, but full of vigorous and sometimes very imaginative descriptions, and with occasional fine passages, as two lines, taken almost at random, willtestify:—

“Each man was both the lion and the prey,And every corn-field an Aceldema.”

Dekker did not emerge again as a playwright until 1622, when he appears with still another collaborator, the last man whom one would have expected him to work with,—Massinger. They wrote togetherThe Virgin Martyr, which is, as might be expected, a patchwork of incongruous qualities. Dekker probably supplied both the weakest and the strongest parts of the play, the atrocious humorous passages, equally with the exquisitely tender scene, for instance, between Dorothea, the Virgin Martyr, and Angelo, “a good spirit, serving Dorothea in the habit of a Page.” This is the scene which won from Charles Lamb in his “Specimens of the Elizabethan Dramatists,” his unbounded tribute to Dekker’s genius; and as the scene can be turned to there, I need not repeat it here, as I should otherwise be inclined to do.

There is no record of the next five years of Dekker’s life. In 1628 and 1629 he again wrote the Mayoralty pageants under titleBritannia’s Honour, andLondon’s Tempe, which at best contain glimpses of his true quality. In 1631,Match Me in London, a comedy of court intrigue in civic life, has something of his real genius again. It was in the dedicatory note of this play, to “The Noble Lover, and deservedly beloved, of the Muses, Ludovick Carlisle, Esquire, Gentleman of the Bows, and Groom of the King and Queen’s Privy-Chamber,” that Dekker so pathetically referred to his voice, “Decaying with my Age.” But comparatively with some of the second-rate pieces of ten, and even twenty years before, there is little sign of decay.Match Me in Londonshows, it is true, the prose side of Dekker’s dramatic faculty, rather than its side of poetic exuberance; but the piece is as full of Dekker’s old picturesque realism and genial humanity, as ever. The street and shop scenes, supposed to be placed chiefly in Seville, might just as well be in London: Dekker transfers the ‘Counter’ there without hesitation, and except for occasional doubtful attempts at Spanish local colour, the whole play is as native as anything Dekker has done. The plot turns chiefly upon the attempt of the King to corrupt Tormiella, one of the brightest and most taking of all Dekker’s heroines, whose guileless fidelity to her husband is delicately portrayed. The usual sub-plot in which Don John, the King’s brother, conspires for the throne, is less inconsequent than most of Dekker’s supplementary plots, and the whole comedy is managed with a higher sense of dramatic form than Dekker often showed.Match Me inLondon, as being entirely Dekker’s own composition, certainly deserves to rank with his half-dozen best plays, and I am sorry that it was not possible to find room for it in this edition, although the same ground has already been partly covered in his other comedies.

I confess I find it hard to understand how anyone can seriously preferThe Wonder of a Kingdom, which appeared some few years later, toMatch Me in London, as Mr. J. A. Symonds has done. In the former we find Dekker for once working without any real pervading humanity; there are touches of his usual heartiness in it, but as a whole it is a heartless production—more a cold study of motives and passions than a sympathetic re-creation of them in forms of art. It was highly appropriate, indeed, that Dekker long before had been chosen as a champion to meet Ben Jonson, for the two men mark very clearly two types of poet and artist. Jonson in his plays worked largely from the mere curiosity about men’s passions and motives, he wrought conceptions which sprang too often from an analytical interest, rather than the emotional human impulse which drives the poet to reflect men’s strifes and destinies for simple love’s sake. With Dekker it was different. Without perhaps consciously realising it, he worked mainly from this impulse of the heart, putting himself passionately into all that he characterised, in his exuberant, careless way. For once, however, inThe Wonder of a Kingdom, heseems to have laid aside something of his natural kindliness. The episode of old Lord Vanni’s intrigue with Alphonsina is repulsive, unvisited as it is by even ordinary comedy retribution. It is only fair to allow, however, that Dekker’s kindlier quality crops up in some scenes of the play, and Hazlitt’s testimony to Gentili, “that truly ideal character of a magnificent patron,” may be set against the comment of the German critic, Dr. Schmidt, who has said very truly,—“That the youthful fire which fillsFortunatusis in this drama extinguished.”

Although the two remaining plays which Dekker wrote with Ford,The Sun’s DarlingandThe Witch of Edmonton, were not published till 1656 and 1658 respectively, they were certainly written and performed long beforeMatch Me in London, probably helping to fill up the five blank years following that in whichThe Virgin Martyrappeared.The Sun’s Darlingis a charming conception, inadequately wrought out, but nevertheless full of facile and exuberant poetic quality. The lyrics, especially, the best of which are undoubtedly Dekker’s, are so fresh and full of impulse that one inclines to think that they date back to the first half of his life. Some of these have found their way, infrequently, into the anthologies, as that beginning, “What bird so sings, yet so does wail,” and again the delightful country song, in which one can forgive the mixture of musk-roses and daffodils, haymaking and hunting, lambsand partridges, in defiance of all rustic tradition, for the sake of its catchingtune:—

“Hay-makers, rakers, reapers and mowers,Wait on your Summer Queen.Dress up with musk-rose her eglantine bowers,Daffodils strew the green....”

The hero of this Moral Masque, as the authors term it,—Raybright, “The Sun’s Darling,” is shown in progression through the seasons under the Sun’s guidance, which he perverts in his restless pursuit of sensuous pleasure. All these scenes are full of suggestions of beauty, but they are imperfectly realised. Exquisite passages occur, however, as in the scene where Spring, Health, Youth, and Delight appear to Raybright, and Spring, wooing him in vain, proffers him the bay-tree:—

“That tree shall now be thine, about it sitAll the old poets, with fresh laurel crowned,Singing in verse the praise of chastity.”

When it is too late, Raybright, filled with love for the Spring, is seized with remorse: so in turn all the seasons pass by, while Humour and Folly lead him always astray. The Sun’s peroration in addressing Raybright at the end of his foiled career is a solemn and profound, if rather fanciful, summing-up of life. AltogetherThe Sun’s Darlingforms a valuable later complement toOld Fortunatus, and it is only to be regretted that its authors did not bestow upon it the longer, patient labour which would have made it worthy of its conception.

The Witch of Edmonton, the second play inwhich Ford and Dekker worked conjointly, is so utterly different toThe Sun’s Darlingthat one finds it difficult to believe that the same hands can have been concerned in its production. Possibly the initial conception was Rowley’s, and though it would not be easy to differentiate his exact share in any special scene or passage, there is a considerable residuum which marks itself off as unlike the work of Dekker or Ford. Dekker’s share is more apparent. The scenes where Cuddy Banks and his fellow villagers disport themselves, some of those where the Witch herself appears, and again those of Susan’s love and sorrow, have by general critical consent been awarded to him. Part of the severer tragedy in the terrible hallucination of Mother Sawyer, however, which has generally been considered Dekker’s, I fancy bears the stamp of Ford. In his essay on Ford, Mr. Swinburne has essayed a comparison of the parts due severally to Dekker and to Ford, which is too important to be overlooked. He would assign the part of Mother Sawyer chiefly to Dekker. “In all this part of the play I trace the hand of Dekker; his intimate and familiar sense of wretchedness, his great and gentle spirit of compassion for the poor and suffering with whom his own lot in life was so often cast, in prison and out.” The part of Susan also, he allots to Dekker; and of the scene where Frank Thorney’s guilt is discovered, he remarks suggestively: “The interview of Frank with the disguised Winifred in this scene may be compared by thestudent of dramatic style with the parting of the same characters at the close; the one has all the poignant simplicity of Dekker, the other all the majestic energy of Ford.”

The dates of publication of the two last plays bring us far beyond the time of Dekker’s death, of which, however, we have no record at all. None of his prose works reach so late a period; the last isA Rod for Runaways, published in 1625. Collier, who always made his evidence go as far as possible, himself admits that there is no further trace of him after 1638, the year when Milton wroteLycidas, the year when Scotland was ominously signing the Covenant. In the further oncoming of the Civil War, Dekker disappears altogether, as uncertainly as he first entered the scene.

In summing up this strange life and its dramatic outcome, it is easily seen what is to be said on the adverse side. Dekker had, let us admit, great defects. He was the type of the prodigal in literature,—the kindhearted, irresponsible poet whom we all know, and love, and pardon seventy times seven. But it is sad to think that with a little of the common talent which every successful man of affairs counts as part of his daily equipment, he might have left a different record. He never attained the serious conception of himself and his dignity as a worker which every poet, every artist must have, who would take effect proportionate to his genius. He never seemed to become consciousin any enduring way of his artistic function, and he constantly threw aside, under pressure of the moment, those standards of excellence which none knew better than he how to estimate. But after all has been said, he remains, by his faults as well as by his faculties, one of the most individual, one of the most suggestive, figures of the whole Elizabethan circle. Because of the breath of simple humanity in them, his works leave a sense of brightness and human encouragement whose charm lingers when many more careful monuments of literary effort are forgotten. His artistic sincerity has resulted in a picture of life as he saw it, unequalled for its sentiment, for its living spirit of tears and laughter, as well as for its outspoken truth. His homely realism brings before us all the pleasant everyday bustle of the Elizabethan streets—the craftsmen and prentices, the citizens at their shop doors, the gallants in the Middle Aisle of St. Paul’s. The general feeling is that of a summer’s morning in the pleasant Cheapside of those days—more like the street of a little market-town than the Cheapside of to-day—where in the clear sunny air the alert cry of the prentices, “What do you lack?” rings out cheerily, and each small incident of the common life is touched with vivid colour. And if the night follows, dark and haunted by grim passions and sorrows, and the King’s Bench waits for poor poets not far away, this poet who had known the night and the prison only too well! sang so undauntedly, that the terrors of them fell away at the sound.

As he had this faith in the happy issue out of his own troubles, so Dekker looked unflinchingly as a poet upon the grim and dark side of human life, seeing it to emerge presently, bright in the higher vision of earth and Heaven. Much that at first seems gratuitously obscene and terrible in his dramatic presentation may in this way be accepted with the same vigorous apprehension of the comedy and tragedy of life, which he himself showed. The whole justification of his lifework, indeed, is to be found in these words of his, from the dedicatory epistle toHis Dream, which we may well take as his parting behest:—“So in these of mine, though the Devil be in the one, God is in the other: nay in both. What I send you, may perhaps seem bitter, yet it is wholesome; your best physic is not a julep; sweet sauces leave rotten bodies. There is a Hell named in our Creed, and a Heaven, and the Hell comes before; if we look not into the first, we shall never live in the last.”

Ernest Rhys

Note: Students of Dekker will find Pearson’s Edition of his Plays in 4 Vols., published in 1873, and Dr. Grosart’s edition of his Non-Dramatic Works, in 5 Vols., published in the Huth Library, 1885-6, sufficient for all ordinary purposes. There are no notes, however, in Dr. Grosart’s reprint, and the notes to the plays in Pearson’s edition are few and far between. Mr. Swinburne’s article on Dekker (Nineteenth Century, January, 1887), will be found valuable also.

(SeeFrontispiece.)

The original Fortune Theatre was built on the site of an old timber house standing in a large garden near Golden Lane, Cripplegate, and said to have been formerly a nursery for Henry the Eighth’s children, who were sent to this then suburban spot for the benefit of the air. Edward Alleyn the actor acquired the lease of the house and grounds on December 22, 1599, and, early the following year, supported by the Lord Admiral (the Earl of Nottingham), to whose company of players he belonged, he, in conjunction with Henslowe, his father-in-law, employed Peter Streete to build there “a newe house and stadge for a Plaiehowse” for the sum of £440.

Alleyn notes his acquisition of the lease and his expenditure upon the new theatre in the followingterms:—

“What the Fortune cost me Novemb., 1599 [1600].First for the leas to Brew, £240.Then for the building the playhouse, £520.For other privat buildings of myn owne, £120.So in all it has cost me for the leasse, £880.Bought the inheritance of the land of the Gills of the Ile of Man, which is the Fortune, and all the howses in Whight crosstrett and Gowlding lane, in June, 1610, for the some of £340.Bought in John Garretts lease in revertion from the Gills for 21 years, for £100.So in all itt cost me £1320.Blessed be the Lord God everlasting.”

“What the Fortune cost me Novemb., 1599 [1600].

First for the leas to Brew, £240.

Then for the building the playhouse, £520.

For other privat buildings of myn owne, £120.

So in all it has cost me for the leasse, £880.

Bought the inheritance of the land of the Gills of the Ile of Man, which is the Fortune, and all the howses in Whight crosstrett and Gowlding lane, in June, 1610, for the some of £340.

Bought in John Garretts lease in revertion from the Gills for 21 years, for £100.

So in all itt cost me £1320.

Blessed be the Lord God everlasting.”

It was at the Fortune that Alleyn’s fame as an actor reached its height. He was especially popular in the character of Barabas in Marlowe’sJew of Malta, which he revived at the new theatre. Here also many of the plays written in the whole or part by Dekker were originally performed, as Dekker generally wrote for the Lord Admiral’s company, who played regularly at the Fortune under Alleyn and Henslowe’s management, while the Lord Chamberlain’s company, with whom Shakespeare and Burbadge were associated, played at the Globe.

Some twenty years after the erection of the theatre Alleyn records in his diary under date December 9, 1621, “This night, att 12 of ye clock, ye Fortune was burnt.” The year following the theatre was rebuilt, and leased by Alleyn to various persons, he having then decided to retire from the stage. On the suppression of the theatres by the Puritans the inside of the Fortune was destroyed by a company of soldiers, and the lessees failed to pay their rent, whereby a considerable loss was sustained by the authorities of Dulwich College, in whom the property of the Fortune was vested. This eventually led to the Court of Assistants ordering the more dilapidated portions of the theatre to be pulled down, and to their leasing the ground belonging to it for building purposes. So recently, however, as the year 1819, the front of the old theatre was still standing, as represented in the frontispiece to the present volume—a reduced copy of an engraving in Wilkinson’s “Londina.”

THE SHOEMAKER’S HOLIDAY; OR A PLEASANT COMEDY OF THE GENTLE CRAFT.

The shoemaker’s holiday, or a Pleasant Comedy of the Gentle Craft, was first published in 1599, as we learn from a passage in Henslowe’s Diary; but the earliest known edition is the quarto of 1600, which describes the play as “acted before the Queen’s most excellent Maiestie New-years day at night last, by the right honourable the Earle of Nottingham, Lord High Admirall of England, his seruants.” Other editions followed in 1610, 1618, and 1657. Of modern editions, Germany has produced the only one which is at all reliable, and upon this edition, admirably collated and edited by Drs. Karl Warnke and Ludwig Proescholdt, and published at Halle in 1886, the present reprint is based, the excellence of text, notes and introduction, leaving little beyond the modernising and some elucidation here and there to be done.

Dekker appears to have had a collaborator in the play in Robert Wilson, the actor, who is said to have created the part of Firk on its performance, but although Wilson may have provided some of the situations and dialogue, the credit of the play as a whole is undoubtedly Dekker’s.The Shoemaker’s Holidayis the first of Dekker’s plays, in order of publication, which has survived, although according to Henslowe he began to write for the stage in 1596.

The conception of Simon Eyre, the Shoemaker, is taken from a real person of that name, who, according to Stow, was an upholsterer, and afterwards a draper. He built Leadenhall in 1419, as referred to by Dekker in Act V.,Sc. 5, became Sheriff of London in 1434, was elected Lord Mayor in 1445, and died in 1459. About his character nothing certain is known. “It may well be,” say the editors of the Halle edition, “that long after Eyre’s death the builder of Leadenhall was supposed to have been a shoemaker himself, merely because Leadenhall was used as a leather-market. This tradition was probably taken up by the poet, who formed out of it one of the most popular comedies of the age.”

Kind gentlemen and honest boon companions, I present you here with a merry-conceited Comedy, calledThe Shoemaker’s Holiday, acted by my Lord Admiral’s Players this present Christmas before the Queen’s most excellent Majesty, for the mirth and pleasant matter by her Highness graciously accepted, being indeed no way offensive. The argument of the play I will set down in this Epistle: Sir Hugh Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, had a young gentleman of his own name, his near kinsman, that loved the Lord Mayor’s daughter of London; to prevent and cross which love, the Earl caused his kinsman to be sent Colonel of a company into France: who resigned his place to another gentleman his friend, and came disguised like a Dutch shoemaker to the house of Simon Eyre in Tower Street, who served the Mayor and his household with shoes: the merriments that passed in Eyre’s house, his coming to be Mayor of London, Lacy’s getting his love, and other accidents, with two merry Three-men’s-songs. Take all in good worth that is well intended, for nothing is purposed but mirth; mirth lengtheneth long life, which, with all other blessings, I heartily wish you. Farewell!

As it was pronounced before the Queen’s Majesty.

As wretches in a storm (expecting day),With trembling hands and eyes cast up to heaven,Make prayers the anchor of their conquered hopes,So we, dear goddess, wonder of all eyes,Your meanest vassals, through mistrust and fearTo sink into the bottom of disgraceBy our imperfect pastimes, prostrate thusOn bended knees, our sails of hope do strike,Dreading the bitter storms of your dislike.Since then, unhappy men, our hap is such,That to ourselves ourselves no help can bring,But needs must perish, if your saint-like ears(Locking the temple where all mercy sits)Refuse the tribute of our begging tongues:Oh grant, bright mirror of true chastity,From those life-breathing stars, your sun-like eyes,One gracious smile: for your celestial breathMust send us life, or sentence us to death.

The King.The Earl of Cornwall.Sir Hugh Lacy, Earl of Lincoln.Rowland Lacy, otherwiseHans,}His Nephews.AskewSir Roger Oateley, Lord Mayor of London.MasterHammon}Citizens of London.MasterWarnerMasterScottSimon Eyre, the Shoemaker.Roger, commonly calledHodge[4]}Eyre’sJourneymen.FirkRalphLovell, a Courtier.Dodger, Servant to theEarl of Lincoln.A Dutch Skipper.A Boy.Courtiers, Attendants, Officers, Soldiers, Hunters, Shoemakers, Apprentices, Servants.Rose, Daughter ofSir Roger.Sybil, her Maid.Margery, Wife ofSimon Eyre.Jane, Wife ofRalph.SCENE—LondonandOld Ford.

Rowland Lacy, otherwiseHans,}His Nephews.Askew

MasterHammon}Citizens of London.MasterWarnerMasterScott

Roger, commonly calledHodge[4]}Eyre’sJourneymen.FirkRalph

Rose, Daughter ofSir Roger.Sybil, her Maid.Margery, Wife ofSimon Eyre.Jane, Wife ofRalph.SCENE—LondonandOld Ford.

SCENE—LondonandOld Ford.

THE SHOEMAKER’S HOLIDAY

Enter theLord Mayorand theEarl of Lincoln.

Lincoln.My lord mayor, you have sundry timesFeasted myself and many courtiers more:Seldom or never can we be so kindTo make requital of your courtesy.But leaving this, I hear my cousin LacyIs much affected to your daughter Rose.

L. Mayor.True, my good lord, and she loves him so wellThat I mislike her boldness in the chase.

Lincoln.Why, my lord mayor, think you it then a shame,To join a Lacy with an Oateley’s name?

L. Mayor.Too mean is my poor girl for his high birth;Poor citizens must not with courtiers wed,Who will in silks and gay apparel spendMore in one year than I am worth, by far:Therefore your honour need not doubt my girl.

Lincoln.Take heed, my lord, advise you what you do!A verier unthrift lives not in the world,Than is my cousin; for I’ll tell you what:’Tis now almost a year since he requestedTo travel countries for experience;I furnished him with coin, bills of exchange,Letters of credit, men to wait on him,Solicited my friends in ItalyWell to respect him. But to see the end:Scant had he journeyed through half Germany,But all his coin was spent, his men cast off,His bills embezzled,[5]and my jolly coz,Ashamed to show his bankrupt presence here,Became a shoemaker in Wittenberg,A goodly science for a gentlemanOf such descent! Now judge the rest by this:Suppose your daughter have a thousand pound,He did consume me more in one half year;And make him heir to all the wealth you have,One twelvemonth’s rioting will waste it all.Then seek, my lord, some honest citizenTo wed your daughter to.

L. Mayor.I thank your lordship.(Aside) Well, fox, I understand your subtilty.As for your nephew, let your lordship’s eyeBut watch his actions, and you need not fear,For I have sent my daughter far enough.And yet your cousin Rowland might do well,Now he hath learned an occupation;And yet I scorn to call him son-in-law.

Lincoln.Ay, but I have a better trade for him:I thank his grace, he hath appointed himChief colonel of all those companiesMustered in London and the shires about,To serve his highness in those wars of France.See where he comes!—

EnterLovell,Lacy,andAskew.

Lovell, what news with you?

Lovell.My Lord of Lincoln, ’tis his highness’ will,That presently your cousin ship for FranceWith all his powers; he would not for a million,But they should land at Dieppe within four days.

Lincoln.Go certify his grace, it shall be done.[ExitLovell.Now, cousin Lacy, in what forwardnessAre all your companies?

Lacy.All well prepared.The men of Hertfordshire lie at Mile-end,Suffolk and Essex train in Tothill-fields,The Londoners and those of Middlesex,All gallantly prepared in Finsbury,With frolic spirits long for their parting hour.

L. Mayor.They have their imprest,[6]coats, and furniture;[7]And, if it please your cousin Lacy comeTo the Guildhall, he shall receive his pay;And twenty pounds besides my brethrenWill freely give him, to approve our lovesWe bear unto my lord, your uncle here.

Lacy.I thank your honour.

Lincoln.Thanks, my good lord mayor.

L. Mayor.At the Guildhall we will expect your coming.[Exit.

Lincoln.To approve your loves to me? No subtilty!Nephew, that twenty pound he doth bestowFor joy to rid you from his daughter Rose.But, cousins both, now here are none but friends,I would not have you cast an amorous eyeUpon so mean a project as the loveOf a gay, wanton, painted citizen.I know, this churl even in the height of scornDoth hate the mixture of his blood with thine.I pray thee, do thou so! Remember, coz,What honourable fortunes wait on thee:Increase the king’s love, which so brightly shines,And gilds thy hopes. I have no heir but thee,—And yet not thee, if with a wayward spiritThou start from the true bias of my love.

Lacy.My lord, I will for honour, not desireOf land or livings, or to be your heir,So guide my actions in pursuit of France,As shall add glory to the Lacys’ name.

Lincoln.Coz, for those words here’s thirty Portuguese[8]And, nephew Askew, there’s a few for you.Fair Honour, in her loftiest eminence,Stays in France for you, till you fetch her thence.Then, nephews, clap swift wings on your designs:Begone, begone, make haste to the Guildhall;There presently I’ll meet you. Do not stay:Where honour beckons, shame attends delay.[Exit.

Askew.How gladly would your uncle have you gone!

Lacy.True, coz, but I’ll o’erreach his policies.I have some serious business for three days,Which nothing but my presence can dispatch.You, therefore, cousin, with the companies,Shall haste to Dover; there I’ll meet with you:Or, if I stay past my prefixèd time,Away for France; we’ll meet in Normandy.The twenty pounds my lord mayor gives to meYou shall receive, and these ten Portuguese,Part of mine uncle’s thirty. Gentle coz,Have care to our great charge; I know, your wisdomHath tried itself in higher consequence.

Askew.Coz, all myself am yours: yet have this care,To lodge in London with all secrecy;Our uncle Lincoln hath, besides his own,Many a jealous eye, that in your faceStares only to watch means for your disgrace.

Lacy.Stay, cousin, who be these?

EnterSimon Eyre,Margeryhis wife,Hodge,Firk,Jane,andRalphwith a pair of shoes.[9]

Eyre.Leave whining, leave whining! Away with this whimpering, this puling, these blubbering tears, and these wet eyes! I’ll get thy husband discharged, I warrant thee, sweet Jane; go to!

Hodge.Master, here be the captains.

Eyre.Peace, Hodge; hush, ye knave, hush!

Firk.Here be the cavaliers and the colonels, master.

Eyre.Peace, Firk; peace, my fine Firk! Stand by with your pishery-pashery,[10]away! I am a man of the best presence; I’ll speak to them, an they were Popes.—Gentlemen, captains, colonels, commanders! Brave men, brave leaders, may it please you to give me audience. I am Simon Eyre, the mad shoemaker of Tower Street; this wench with the mealy mouth that will never tire, is my wife, I can tell you; here’s Hodge, my man and my foreman; here’s Firk, my fine firking journeyman, and this is blubbered Jane. All we come to be suitors for this honest Ralph. Keep him at home, and as I am a true shoemaker and a gentleman of the gentle craft, buy spurs yourselves, and I’ll find ye boots these seven years.

Marg.Seven years, husband?

Eyre.Peace, midriff, peace! I know what I do. Peace!

Firk.Truly, master cormorant, you shall do God good service to let Ralph and his wife stay together. She’s a young new-married woman; if you take her husband awayfrom her a night, you undo her; she may beg in the day-time; for he’s as good a workman at a prick and an awl, as any is in our trade.

Jane.O let him stay, else I shall be undone.

Firk.Ay, truly, she shall be laid at one side like a pair of old shoes else, and be occupied for no use.

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