Thus would I kiss my Love at every beck.
Thus would I sigh to see thee sweetly sleep;
And if thou wak'st not soon, thus would I weep;
And thus, and thus, and thus: thus much I love thee.
TETHYS' FESTIVAL [PLAYED AND PUBLISHED 1610].1 BY SAMUEL DANIEL
Song at a Court Masque.
Are they shadows that we see
And can shadows pleasure give?—
Pleasures only shadows be,
Cast by bodies we conceive;
And are made the things we deem
In those figures which they seem.-
But these pleasures vanish fast,
Which by shadows are exprest :-
Pleasures are not, if they last;
In their passing is their best.
Glory is most bright and gay
In a flash, and so away.
Feed apace then, greedy eyes,
On the wonder you behold;
Take it sudden as it flies,
Tho' you take it not to hold:
When your eyes have done their part,
Thought must lengthen it in the heart."
THE SILVER AGE. AN HISTORICAL PLAY [PLAYED 1612: PUBLISHED 1613]. BY THOMAS HEYWOOD
Proserpine seeking Flowers.
Pros. O may these meadows ever barren be, That yield of flowers no more variety!
Here neither is the White nor Sanguine Rose,
The Strawberry Flower, the Paunce, nor Violet;
[Not divided into Acts. See Grosart's ed. of Daniel, vol. iii., p. 320.]
2[For other extracts from Daniel see page 218.]
Methinks I have too poor a meadow chose :
Going to beg, I am with a Beggar met,
That wants as much as I. I should do ill
To take from them that need.-
Ceres, after the Rape of her Daughter.
Cer. Where is my fair and lovely Proserpine? Speak, Jove's fair Daughter, whither art thou stray'd? I've sought the meadows, glebes, and new-reap'd fields Yet cannot find my Child. Her scatter'd flowers, And garland half made I have lit upon;
But her I cannot spy. Behold the trace
Of some strange wagon,2 that hath scorcht the trees,
And singed the grass: these ruts the sun ne'er sear❜d.
Where art thou, Love, where art thou, Proserpine?—
She questions Triton for her Daughter.
thou that on thy shelly trumpet
Summons the sea-god, answer from the depth.
Trit. On Neptune's sea-horse with my concave trump
Thro' all the abyss I've shrill'd thy daughter's loss.
The channels clothed in waters, the low cities
In which the water-gods and sea-nymphs dwell,
I have perused; sought thro' whole woods and forests
Of leafless coral, planted in the deeps;
Toss'd up the beds of pearl; roused up huge whales,
And stern sea-monsters, from their rocky dens;
Those bottoms, bottomless; shallows and shelves,
And all those currents where th' earth's springs break in;
Those plains where Neptune feeds his porpoises,
Sea-morses, seals, and all his cattle else:
Thro' all our ebbs and tides my trump hath blazed her,
Yet can no cavern shew me Proserpine.3
Cer. Fair sister Earth, for all these beauteous fields,
Spread o'er thy breast; for all these fertile crops,
With which my plenty hath enrich'd thy bosom ;
For all those rich and pleasant wreaths of grain,
With which so oft thy temples I have crowned;
1[Pearson's ed., vol. iii., p. 135.]
3["If heaven nor sea, then search thy bosom earth."]
For all the yearly liveries, and fresh robes,
Upon thy summer beauty I bestow-
Shew me my Child!
Earth. Not in revenge, fair Ceres,
That your remorseless ploughs have rak't my breast,
Nor that your iron-tooth'd harrows print my face
So full of wrinkles; that you dig my sides
For marle and soil, and make me bleed my springs
Thro' all my open'd veins to weaken me-
Do I conceal your daughter. I have spread
My arms from sea to sea, look'd o'er my mountains,
Examin'd all my pastures, groves, and plains,
Marshes and wolds, my woods and champain fields,
My dens and caves--and yet, from foot to head,
I have no place on which the Moon1 doth tread.
Cer. Then, Earth, thou'st lost her; and for Proserpine,
I'll strike thee with a lasting barrenness.
No more shall plenty crown thy fertile brows;
I'll break thy ploughs, thy oxen murrain-strike:
With idle agues I'll consume thy swains
Sow tares and cockles in thy lands of wheat,
Whose spikes the weed and cooch-grass shall outgrow,
And choke it in the blade. The rotten showers
Shall drown thy seed, which the hot sun shall parch,
Or mildews rot; and what remains, shall be
A prey to ravenous birds.-Oh Proserpine !—
You Gods that dwell above, and you below,
Both of the woods and gardens, rivers, brooks,
Fountains and wells, some one among you all
Shew me her self or grave: to you I call.
Are. That can the river Arethusa do.
My streams you know, fair Goddess, issue forth
From Tartary by the Tenarian isles:
My head's in Hell where Stygian Pluto reigns,
There did I see the lovely Proserpine,
Whom Pluto hath rapt hence: behold her girdle,
Which on her way dropt from her lovely waist,
And scatter'd in my streams.-Fair Queen, adieu !
Crown you my banks with flowers, as I tell true.
1 Proserpine; who was also Luna in Heaven, Diana on Earth.
AN HISTORICAL PLAY [PUB
LISHED 1611]. BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Sibilla, the Wife of Saturn, is by him enjoined to slay the newborn Jupiter. None can do it for his smiles.
SIBILLA. VESTA. NURSE.
Sib. Mother, of all that ever mothers were
Most wretched! Kiss thy sweet babe ere he die,
That hath life only lent to suffer death.
Sweet Lad, I would thy father saw thee smile.
Thy beauty, and thy pretty infancy,
Would mollify his heart, were't hew'd from flint,
Or carved with iron tools from Corsic rock.
Thou laugh'st to think thou must be kill'd in jest.
Oh! if thou needs must die, I'll be thy murtheress,
And kill thee with my kisses, pretty knave.-
And canst thou laugh to see thy mother weep?
Or art thou in thy cheerful smiles so free,
In scorn of thy rude father's tyranny?1
I'll kiss thee ere I kill thee: for my life
The Lad so smiles, I cannot hold the knife.
Vest. Then give him me; I am his Grandmother,
And I will kill him gently: this sad office
Belongs to me, as to the next of kin.
Sib. For heaven's sake, when you kill him, hurt him not.
Vest. Come, little knave, prepare your naked throat
I have not heart to give thee many wounds,
My kindness is to take thy life at once.
Alack, my pretty Grandchild, smilest thou still?
I have lust to kiss, but have no heart to kill.
Nurse. You may be careless of the King's command,
But it concerns me; and I love my life
More than I do a Stripling's.2 Give him me,
I'll make him sure; a sharp weapon lend,
I'll quickly bring the Youngster to his end.-
Alack, my pretty knave, 'twere more than sin
With a sharp knife to touch thy tender skin.
O Madam, he's so full of angel grace,
I cannot strike, he smiles so in my face.
Sib. I'll wink, and strike; come, once more reach him hither; For die he must, so Saturn hath decreed:
'Las for a world I would not see him bleed.
[Forty-seven lines omitted.]
Vest. Ne shall he do. But swear me secrecy; The Babe shall live, and we be dangerless.1
THE REVENGE OF BUSSY D'AMBOIS.
BY GEORGE CHAPMAN, 1613
Plays and Players.
Guise. I would have these things
Brought upon Stages, to let mighty Misers
See all their grave and serious mischiefs play'd,
As once they were in Athens and old Rome.
Clermont. Nay, we must now have nothing brought on Stages But puppetry, and pied ridiculous antics.
Men thither come to laugh, and feed fool-fat;
Check at all goodness there, as being profaned:
When, wheresoever Goodness comes, she makes
The place still sacred, though with other feet
Never so much 'tis scandal'd and polluted.
Let me learn any thing, that fits a man,
In any Stables shewn, as well as Stages.-
Baligny. Why, is not all the World esteem'd a Stage?
Clermont. Yes, and right worthily; and Stages too
Have a respect due to them, if but only
For what the good Greek Moralist says of them :
"Is a man proud of greatness, or of riches?
Give me an expert Actor; I'll shew all
That can within his greatest glory fall:
Is a man 'fraid with poverty and lowness?
Give me an Actor; I'll shew every eye
What he laments so, and so much does fly:
The best and worst of both."-If but for this then,
To make the proudest outside, that most swells
With things without him, and above his worth,
See how small cause he has to be so blown up;
And the most poor man, to be griev'd with poorness;
Both being so easily borne by expert Actors:
The Stage and Actors are not so contemptful,
As every innovating Puritan,
[1 For other extracts from Heywood see note to page 100.]
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