Wake she or sleep, your eyes so charm, Holidays, high days, gipsy-fairs, [pairs. When kisses are fairings, and hearts meet in THE GIPSY LIFE. BRAVE RAVE Don, cast your eyes on our gipsy fashions: In our antique hey de guize* we go beyond all nations; Plump Dutch at us grutch, so do English, so do French; He that lopest on the ropes, show me such another wench. We no camels have to show, nor elephant with growt head; We can dance, he cannot go, because the beast is corn fed; No blind bears shedding tears, for a collier's whipping; Apes nor dogs, quick as frogs, over cudgels skipping. Jacks-in-boxes, nor decoys, puppets, nor such poor things, Nor are we those roaring boys that cozen fools with gilt rings; § For an ocean, not such a motion as the city Nineveh, Dancing, singing, and fine ringing, you these sports shall hear and see. * A country dance. + Leaps. + Great. § Ring-dropping, a gulling trick, which consisted in dropping a paper of brass rings, washed over with gold, on the pavement, and picking it up in the presence of a person likely to be swindled into the purchase of them. It is one of the cheats upon countrymen described by Sir John Fielding, in the last century, in his Extracts from the Penal Laws, and is still practised in the streets of London. BEN JONSON, FLETCHER, AND MIDDLETON. How OW round the world goes, and every thing that's in it! The tides of gold and silver ebb and flow in a minute: From the usurer to his sons, there a current swiftly runs; From the sons to queans in chief, from the gallant to the thief; From the thief unto his host, from the host to husband men; From the country to the court; and so it comes to us again. How round the world goes, and every thing that's in it! The tides of gold and silver ebb and flow in a minute. THOMAS DEKKER. [AN industrious dramatist in the reign of James I., chiefly distinguished by having been engaged in a literary quarrel with Ben Jonson, who satirized him under the name of Crispinus, an indignity for which Dekker took ample revenge in his Satiro-mastix; or, the Untrussing of a Humorous Poet. Dekker must not be estimated from Jonson's character of him. He wrote a great number of plays, and was joined in several by Webster, Ford, and others. His pieces are remarkably unequal. His plots are not always well chosen, and are generally careless in construction. But in occasional scenes he rises to an unexpected height of power, and exhibits a range of fancy that fairly entitles him to take rank with the majority of his contemporaries.] OLD FORTUNATUS. [First printed in 1600.] VIRTUE AND VICE. IRTUE'S branches wither, virtue pines, Vice hath golden cheeks, O pity, pity! O pity, pity! Virtue weeping dies! Vice laughs to see her faint, alack the time! O pity, pity, pity! mourn, not sing; T. DEKKER AND R. WILSON. [WILSON was an actor of humorous parts, and one of the boon companions over the 'Mermaid wine,' alluded to by Beaumont, in his verses to Ben Jonson : 'Filled with such moisture, in most grievous qualms He was considered by Meres one of the best comedywriters of his time. He wrote, however, only one entire piece, The Cobbler's Prophecy; but assisted Chettle, Dekker, and others, in the composition of several.] THE SHOEMAKER'S HOLIDAY; OR, THE GENTLE CRAFT. 1594. THE SUMMER'S QUEEN. O, To Fmon, of May, thd so green, so green,' so THE month of May, the merry month of May, O, and then did I unto my true love say, [green! Entreats thee, sweet Peggy, to hear thy true love's tale: But O, I spy the cuckoo, the cuckoo, the cuckoo ; SAINT HUGH! YOLD'S the wind, and wet's the rain, Ill is the weather that bringeth no gain, Troll the bowl, the jolly nut-brown bowl, Down-a-down, hey, down-a-down, DEKKER, CHETTLE, AND HAUGHTON. And here kind, &c. Cold's the wind, and wet's the rain, 179 THOMAS DEKKER, HENRY CHETTLE, AND [THE names of Chettle and Haughton are attached to a great number of plays, generally in conjunction with those of other writers. It is difficult to determine their respective merits; but as far as any speculation may be founded upon such evidence of their independent labours as can be traced with certainty, Chettle had a more serious vein than Haughton, whose special force lay in comedy. How this joint authorship was conducted, we have no means of ascertaining. The likelihood is that in most cases there was one principal writer, with whom the subject may have originated, and that when he had completed his design, either as a sketch or a finished work, the others filled in, added, retrenched, or altered. If there be any weight in this supposition, the largest share in the comedy of Patient Grissell should perhaps be assigned to Dekker, whose name stands first of the three in the entry acknowledging a payment in earnest of the play, in Henslowe's Diary. The story of Patient Grissell was first thrown into a narrative shape by Boccaccio; and the earliest drama on the subject was brought upon the stage by the French, in 1393. About 1538, Richard Radcliffe, a schoolmaster in Hertfordshire, wrote a play called Patient Griselde, founded on Boccaccio, of which nothing has survived but the name. Dekker and his coadjutors may probably have been to some |