THE FAWN, A COMEDY:
BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 1606.

In the Preface to this play, the poet glances at some of the playwrights of his time, with a handsome acknowledgment, notwithstanding, of their

excellences.

"...for my own interest for once, let this be printed, that of men of my own addiction I love most, pity some, hate none; for let me truly say, I once only loved myself, for loving them, and surely I shall ever rest so constant to my first affection, that let their ungentle combinings, discourteous whisperings, never so treacherously labour to undermine my unfenced reputation, I shall (as long as I have being) love the least of their graces, and only pity the greatest of their vices.

THE WONDER OF WOMEN, OR THE TRAGEDY OF SOPHONISBA.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

Description of the witch Erictho.

HERE in this desert, the great soul of charms,
Dreadful Erictho lives, whose dismal brow
Contemns all roofs, or civil coverture.

Forsaken graves and tombs, the ghosts forced out,
She joys to inhabit.

A loathsome yellow leanness spreads her face,
A heavy hell-like paleness loads her cheeks,
Unknown to a clear heaven; but if dark winds
Or thick black clouds drive back the blinded stars,

When her deep magic makes forced heaven quake
And thunder, spite of Jove,-Erictho then

From naked graves stalks out, heaves proud her head
With long unkemb'd hair loaden, and strives to snatch
The night's quick sulphur; then she bursts up tombs
From half-rot sear-cloths, then she scrapes dry gums
For her black rites; but when she finds a corse
But newly graved, whose entrails are not turn'd
To slimy filth, with greedy havoc then

She makes fierce spoil, and swells with wicked triumph
To bury her lean knuckles in his eyes;

Then doth she gnaw the pale and o'er-grown nails
From his dry hand; but if she find some life
Yet lurking close, she bites his gelid lips,

And, sticking her black tongue in his dry throat,
She breathes dire murmurs, which enforce him bear
Her baneful secrets to the spirits of horror.

Her cave.

Hard by the reverent ruins

Of a once glorious temple rear'd to Jove,
Whose very rubbish (like the pitied fall
Of virtue much unfortunate) yet bears
A deathless majesty, though now quite rased,
Hurl'd down by wrath and lust of impious kings,
So that, where holy Flamens wont to sing
Sweet hymns to heaven, there the daw and crow,
The ill-voiced raven, and still-chattering pye,
Sends out ungrateful sounds and loathsome filth;
Where statues and Jove's acts were vively 1 limn'd,
Boys with black coals draw the veil'd parts of nature
And lecherous actions of imagin'd lust;

1

Where tombs and beauteous urns of well-dead men Stood in assured rest, the shepherd now

Unloads his belly, corruption most abhorr'd

1 livelily.

Mingling itself with their renowned ashes :

There once a charnel-house, now a vast cave,
Over whose brow a pale and untrod grove
Throws out her heavy shade, the mouth thick arms
Of darksome yew, sun-proof, for ever choke;
Within rests barren darkness, fruitless drought
Pines in eternal night; the steam of hell
Yields not so lazy air: there, that 's her cell.

WHAT YOU WILL, A COMEDY:
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

Venetian Merchant.

No knights;

But one (that title off) was even a prince,
A sultan Solyman; thrice was he made,
In dangerous arms, Venice Providetore.
He was a merchant; but so bounteous,
Valiant, wise, learned, all so absolute,
That naught was valued praiseful excellent,
But in it was he most praiseful excellent.
O, I shall ne'er forget how he went clothed.
He would maintain 't a base ill-us'd fashion,
To bind a merchant to the sullen habit
Of precise black; chiefly in Venice state,
Where merchants gilt the top 1;

And therefore should you have him pass the bridge
Up the Rialto like a soldier

In a black beaver belt, ash colour plain,
A Florentine cloth-of-silver jerkin, sleeves
White satin cut on tinsel, then long stock.

1 "Her whose merchant sons were kings."-Collins,

French panes embroider'd, goldsmith's work, O
God!

Methinks I see him now how he would walk;
With what a jolly presence he would pace

Round the Rialto!1

Scholar and his Dog.

I was a scholar seven useful springs
Did I deflower in quotations

Of cross'd opinions 'bout the soul of man.
The more I learnt the more I learnt to doubt :
Delight my spaniel slept, whilst I baus'd leaves,
Toss'd o'er the dunces, pored on the old print
Of titled words, and still my spaniel slept.
Whilst I wasted lamp-oil, baited my flesh,
Shrunk up my veins, and still my spaniel slept.
And still I held converse with Zabarell,
Aquinas, Scotus, and the musty saw
Of antick Donate, still my spaniel slept.
Still went on went I; first, an sit anima,

Then, an it were mortal. O hold, hold! at that
They 're at brain-buffets, fell by the ears amain
Pell-mell together-still my spaniel slept.
Then whether 'twere corporeal, local, fix'd,

1 To judge of the liberality of these notions of dress we must advert to the days of Gresham, and the consternation which a phænomenon habited like the merchant here described would have excited among the flat round caps, and cloth stockings, upon Change, when those "original arguments or tokens of a citizen's vocation were in fashion not more for thrift and usefulness than for distinction and grace.' The blank uniformity to which all professional distinctions in apparel have been long hastening, is one instance of the decay of symbols among us, which whether it has contributed or not to make us a more intellectual, has certainly made us a less imaginative people. Shakspeare knew the force of signs:-"a malignant and a turban'd Turk." "This meal-cap miller," says the author of God's Revenge against Murder, to express his indignation at an atrocious outrage committed by the miller Pierot upon the person of the fair Marieta.

Extraduce; but whether 't had free will
Or no, hot philosophers

Stood banding factions all so strongly propp'd,
I stagger'd, knew not which was firmer part;
But thought, quoted, read, observ'd, and pried,
Stuff'd noting-books, and still my spaniel slept.
At length he waked and yawn'd, and by yon sky,
For aught I know he knew as much as I.

Preparations for Second Nuptials.

Now is Albano's1 marriage-bed new hung
With fresh rich curtains! Now are my valence
up,

Imbost with orient pearl, my grandsire's gift!
Now are the lawn sheets fumed with violets,
To fresh the pall'd lascivious appetite :

Now work the cooks, the pastry sweats with slaves;
The march-panes glitter now, now, the musicians
Hover with nimble sticks o'er squeaking crowds,2
Tickling the dried guts of a mewing cat.

The tailors, starchers, semsters, butchers, poulterers, Mercers-all, all- -none think on me.

THE INSATIATE COUNTESS, A

TRAGEDY:

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

ISABELLA (the countess), after a long series of crimes of infidelity to her husband and of murder, is brought to suffer on a scaffold. ROBERTO, her husband, arrives to take a last leave of her.

Roberto. Bear record, all you blessed saints in heaven,
I come not to torment thee in thy death;
For of himself he 's terrible enough.

1 Albano, the first husband, speaks; supposed dead.
2 Fiddles.