Math. Your blue coats stay for you, sir. I love a good honest roaring boy, and soOrl. That's the devil.

Math. Sir, sir, I'll have no Joves in my house to thunder avaunt: she shall live and be maintained; when you, like a keg of musty sturgeon, shall stink. Where? in your coffin. How? be a musty fellow, and lousy.

Orl. I know she shall be maintained, but how? she like a quean, thou like a knave; she like a whore, thou like a thief.

Math. Thief! zounds, thief!

Bel. Good dearest Matheo.-Father! Math. Pox on you both, I'll not be braved: new sattin scorns to be put down with bare bawdy velvet. Thief!

Orl. Aye, thief; thou'rt a murtherer, a cheater, a whore-monger, a pot-hunter, a borrower, a beggar

I shall be hanged too, for being in thy company; therefore, as I found you, I leave you.

Math. Kneel, and get money of him. Orl. A knave and a quean, a thief, and a strumpet, a couple of beggars, a brace of baggages. Math. Hang upon him. Aye, aye, sir, fare you well; we are so: follow close-we are beggarsin sattin-to him.

Bel. Is this your comfort, when so many years You have left me frozen to death?

Orl. Freeze still, starve still.

Bel. Yes, so I shall; I must, I must and will. If as you say I'm poor, relieve me then, Let me not sell my body to base men. You call me strumpet, heaven knows I am none: Your cruelty may drive me to be one : Let not that sin be yours; let not the shame Of common whore live longer than my naine. That cunning bawd, Necessity, night and day Plots to undo me; drive that hag away, Lest being at lowest ebb, as now I am, I sink for ever.

Orl. Lowest ebb, what ebb?

Bel. So poor, that, though to tell it be my
shame,

I am not worth a dish to hold my meat;
I am yet poorer, I want bread to eat.
Orl. It's not seen by your cheeks.
Math. I think she has read an homily to tickle
too the old rogue.

Orl. Want bread? there's sattin: bake that. Math. S'blood, make pasties of my clothes? Orl. A fair new cloke, stew that; an excellent gilt rapier.

Math. Will you eat that, sir?

Orl. I could feast ten good fellows with those hangers.

Math. The pox you

shall.

Orl. I shall not, till thou beggest, think thou

art poor;

And when thou beggest, I'll feed thee at my door,

As I feed dogs, with bones; till then beg, Borrow, pawn, steal, and hang, turn bawd, When thou'rt no whore :-my heart-strings sure Would crack, were they strained more.

[Exit.

Math. This is your father, your damned— confusion light upon all the generation of you! he can come bragging hither with four white herrings at's tail, in blue coats without roes in their bellies, but I may starve ere he give me so much as a cob. 30

Bel. What tell you me of this? alas.
Math. Go trot after your dad, do you capitu

late, I'll pawn not for you, I'll not steal to be hanged for such an hypocritical close common harlot; away, you dog-Brave yfaith! Udsfoot! give me some meat.

Bel. Yes, sir.

[Erit. Math. Goodman slave, my man, too, is galloped to the devil a'the t'other side. Pacheco, I'll checo you: Is this your dad's day? England, they say, is the only hell for horses, and only Paradise for women; pray, get you to that Paradise, because you're called an Honest Whore. There they live none but honest whores, with a pox! Marry, here, in our city, all our sex are but footcloth nags; the master no sooner lights, but the man leaps into the saddle.

Enter BELLAFRONT, with Meat. Bel. Will you sit down, I pray, sir? Math. I could tear, by the Lord! his flesh, and eat his midriff in salt, as I eat this.-Must I choke. My father Friscobaldo! I shall make a pitiful hog-louse of you, Orlando, if you fall once into my fingers.-Here's the savouriest meat; I have got a stomach with chafing. What rogue should tell him of those two pedlers? A plague choke him, and gnaw him to the bare bones!Come, fill.

Bel. Thou sweatest with very anger, good sweet: Vex not; las 'tis no fault of mine.

Math. Where didst buy this mutton? I never felt better ribs.

Bel. A neighbour sent it me.

Enter ORLANDO.

Math. Hah, neighbour? foh, my mouth stinks! You whore, do you beg victuals for me? Is this sattin doublet to be bombasted 3 with broken meat? [Takes up the Stool.

Orl. What will you do, sir? Math. Beat out the brains of a beggarly[Exit BELLAFRONT. Orl. Beat out an ass's head of your own :Away, mistress!-Zounds! do but touch one hair of her, and I'll so quilt your cap with old iron, that your coxcomb shall ache the worse these seven years for't: Does she look like a roasted rabbit, that you must have the head for the brains?

Math. Ha, ha! Go out of my doors, you rogue, away! Four marks, trudge.

Orl. Four marks? no, sir, my twenty pounds that you have made fly high, and I am gone.

Math. Must I be fed with chippings? you're best get a clap-dish, 32 and say you're proctor to some Spittal-house. Where hast thou been, Pacheco? Come hither, my little turkey-cock.

Orl. I cannot abide, sir, to see a woman wronged; not I.

Math. Sirrah, here was my father-in-law to-day.
Orl. Pish, then you're full of crowns.

Math. Hang him, he would have thrust crowns upon me, to have fallen in again, but I scorn cast clothes, or any man's gold.

Orl. But mine; how did he brook that, sir? Math. Oh, swore like a dozen of drunken tinkers; at last, growing foul in words, he and four of his men drew upon me, sir.

Orl. In your house? would I had been by.

Math. I made no more ado, but fell to my old lock, and so thrashed my blue coats, and old crabtree-face my father-in-law, and then walked like a lion in my grate.

Orl. Oh, noble master!

Math. Sirrah, he could tell me of the robbing the two pedlers, and that warrants are out for us both,

Again, in Churchyard's Challenge, 1593, p. 143 :

Orl. Good sir, I like not those crackers.
Math. Crackhalter, wo't set thy foot to mine?
Orl. How, sir, at drinking?

Math. We'll pull that old crow, my father: rob thy master. I know the house, thou the servants; the purchase 33 is rich, the plot to get it easy: the dog will not part from a bone. Orl. Pluck't out of his throat, then: I'll snarl for one, if this can bite.

Math. Say no more, say no more, old cole; meet me anon at the sign of the Shipwreck. Orl. Yes, sir.

Math. And dost hear, man?—the Shipwreck. [Exit.

Orl. Thou'rt at the Shipwreck now, and like a swimmer

Bold, but unexpert, with those waves dost play, Whose dalliance, whore-like, is to cast thee away.

Enter HIPOLITO and BELLAFRONT.

And here's another vessel, better fraught,
But as ill-manned, her sinking will be wrought,
If rescue come not; like a man of war
I'll therefore bravely out; somewhat I'll do,
And either save them both, or perish too.

[Exit.

Hip. It is my fate to be bewitched by those

'Tis a brave battle to encounter sin.

Hip. You men that are to fight in the same war To which I'm prest, and plead at the same bar, To win a woman, if you would have me speed, Send all your wishes.

Bel. No doubt you're heard, proceed.

Hip. To be a harlot,-that you stand upon,— The very name's a charm to make you one. Harlot was a dame of so divine

And ravishing touch, that she was concubine 3+
To an English king: her sweet bewitching eye,
Did the king's heart-strings in such love-knots tie,
That even the coyest was proud when she could
hear

Men say, Behold, another harlot there.
And, after her, all women that were fair
Were harlots called, as to this day some are:
Besides, her dalliance she so well does mix,
That she's in Latin called the Meretrix.
Thus for the name; for the profession, this;
Who lives in bondage, lives laced; the chief bliss
This world below can yield, is liberty;
And who, than whores, with looser wings dare fly?
As Juno's proud bird spreads the fairest tail,
So does a strumpet hoist the loftiest sail.

She's no man's slave, men are her slaves; her

eye

Moves not on wheels screwed up with jealousy. She, horsed or coached, does merry journies make, Free as the sun in his gilt zodiac;

As bravely does she shine, as fast she's driven, But stays not long in any house of heaven;

But shifts from sign to sign her amorous prizes, More rich being when she's down, than when she rises.

In brief, gentlemen haunt them, soldiers fight for them,

Few men but know them, few or none abhor them;

Thus, for sport sake, speak I, as to a woman, Whom, as the worst ground, I would turn to

common:

But you I would enclose for mine own bed.

Bel. So should a husband be dishonoured. Hip. Dishonoured! not a whit: to fall to one, Besides your husband, is to fall to none, For one no number is.

Bel. Faith, should you take

Hip. You should not feed so, but with me alone.
Bel. If I drink poison by stealth, is't not all one?
Is't not rank poison still with you alone!
Nay, say you spied a courtezan, whose soft side
To touch, you'd sell your birth-right for one kiss,
Be racked; she's won, you're sated; what follows
this?

Oh, then, you curse that bawd that told you in,
(The night) you curse your lust, you loath the sin,
You loath her very sight, and ere the day
Arise, you rise glad when you're stolen away.
Even then, when you are drunk with all her sweets,
There's no true pleasure in a strumpet's sheets.
Women, whom lust so prostitutes to sale,
Like dancers upon ropes, once seen are stale.
Hip. If all the threads of harlots' lives are spun

You so long loved the trade?

Bel. If all the threads

Of harlots' lives be fine as you would make them,
Why do not you persuade your wife turn whore,
And all dames else to fall before that sin?
Like an ill husband, though I knew the same
To be my undoing, followed I that game.
Oh, when the work of lust had earned my bread,
To taste it, how I trembled, lest each bit,
Ere it went down, should choke me, chewing it!
My bed seemed like a cabin hung in hell;
The bawd, hell's porter; and the liquorish wine
The pander fetched, was like an easy fine,
For which, methought, I leased away my soul;
And oftentimes, even in my quaffing bowl,
Thus said I to myself, I am a whore,
And have drunk down thus much confusion more.

Hip. It is a common rule, and 'tis most true, Two of one trade never love; no more do you. Why are you sharp 'gainst that you once profest? Bel. Why doat you ou that, which you did once

detest?

I cannot, seeing she's woven of such bad stuff,
Set colours on a harlot base enough.
Nothing did make me, when I loved them best,
To loath them more than this: when in the street
A fair young modest damsel I did meet,
She seemed to all a dove, when I passed by,
And I to all a raven; every eye
That followed her, went with a bashful glance;
At me, each bold and jeering countenance
Darted forth scorn: to her, as if she had been
Some tower unvanquished, would they vail;
'Gainst me swoln rumour hoisted every sail.
She, crown'd with reverend praises, passed by
them;

I, though with face maskt, could not scape the hem;
For, as if heaven had set strange marks on whores,
Because they should be pointing stocks to man,
Drest up in civilest shape, a courtezan

Let her walk saint-like, noteless, and unknown, Yet she's betray'd by some trick of her own. Were harlots therefore wise, they'd be sold dear; For men account them good but for one year; And then like almanacks, whose dates are gone, They are thrown by, and no more lookt upon.