get in, and the birds that are within despair, and are
in a consumption, for fear they shall never get out.
Away, away, my lord!
[Exit BRACHIANO.
See, here he comes. This fellow by his apparel
Some men would judge a politician;

But call his wit in question, you shall find it
Merely an ass in's foot-cloth.1

Re-enter CAMILLO.2

How now,

brother!

What, travelling to bed to your kind wife?

Cam. I assure you, brother, no; my voyage lies

More northerly, in a far colder clime:

I do not well remember, I protest,

When I last lay with her.

Flam. Strange you should lose your count. Cam. We never lay together, but ere morning There grew a flaw3 between us.

Flam. 'Thad been your part

To have made up that flaw.

Cam. True, but she loathes

I should be seen in't.

Flam. Why, sir, what's the matter?

Cam. The duke, your master, visits me, I thank

And I perceive how, like an earnest bowler,

He very passionately leans that way

He should have his bowl run.

Flam. I hope you do not think—

[him ;

Cam. That noblemen bowl booty?' faith, his cheek

/ Housings.

2 It is hardly possible to mark with any certainty the stagebusiness of this play. Though Brachiano, who has just withdrawn into a "closet," appears again when Flamineo calls him (See p. 15), it would seem that the audience were to imagine that a change of scene took place here to another apartment, as Flamineo says (p. 13): "Sister, my lord attends you in the banqueting-house."-Dyce. 3 Quarrel. order to draw him on to

4 i.e. Allow an adversary to aim in continue playing.

Hath a most excellent bias; it would fain
Jump with my mistress.1

Flam. Will you be an ass,

Despite your Aristotle? or a cuckold,

Contrary to your Ephemerides,

Which shows you under what a smiling planet

You were first swaddled?

Cam.

Pew-wew, sir, tell not me

Of planets nor of Ephemerides:

A man may be made a cuckold in the day-time,
When the stars' eyes are out.

Flam. Sir, God b' wi' you;

I do commit you to your pitiful pillow
Stuffed with horn-shavings.

Might I advise you now, your only course

Were to lock up your wife.

Cam. 'Twere very good.

Flam. Bar her the sight of revels.

Flam. Let her not go to church, but like a hound In lyam' at your heels.

Cam. 'Twere for her honour.

Flam. And so you should be certain in one fort

Despite her chastity or innocence,

To be cuckolded, which yet is in suspense:

This is my counsel, and I ask no fee for't.

[night

Cam. Come, you know not where my night-cap wrings me.

Flam. Wear it o' the old fashion; let your large ears come through, it will be more easy :—nay, I will be bitter :-bar your wife of her entertainment : women are more willingly and more gloriously chaste when they are least restrained of their

liberty. It seems you would be a fine capricious mathematically jealous coxcomb; take the height of your own horns with a Jacob's staff1 afore they are up. These politic inclosures for paltry mutton make more rebellion in the flesh than all the provocative electuaries doctors have uttered2 since last jubilee. Cam. This doth not physic me.

Flam. It seems you are jealous: I'll show you the error of it by a familiar example. I have seen a pair of spectacles fashioned with such perspective art, that, lay down but one twelve pence o' the board, 'twill appear as if there were twenty; now, should you wear a pair of these spectacles, and see your wife tying her shoe, you would imagine twenty hands were taking up of your wife's clothes, and this would put you into a horrible causeless fury.

Cam. The fault there, sir, is not in the eyesight. Flam. True; but they that have the yellow jaundice think all objects they look on to be yellow. Jealousy is worser; her fits present to a man, like so many bubbles in a bason of water, twenty several crabbed faces; many times makes his own shadow his cuckold-maker. See, she comes.

Re-enter VITTORIA COROMBONA.

What reason have you to be jealous of this creature? what an ignorant ass or flattering knave might he be counted, that should write sonnets to her eyes, or call her brow the snow of Ida or ivory of Corinth, or compare her hair to the blackbird's bill, when 'tis liker the blackbird's feather! This is all; be wise, I

will make you friends; and you shall go to bed together. Marry, look you, it shall not be your seeking; do you stand upon that by any means: walk you aloof; I would not have you seen in't.

1 A measuring instrument.

2 Vended.

[CAMILLO retires.] Sister, my lord attends you in the banqueting-house. Your husband is wondrous

discontented.

Vit. Cor. I did nothing to displease him: I carved to him at supper-time.1

Flam. You need not have carved him, in faith; they say he is a capon already. I must now seemingly fall out with you. Shall a gentleman so well descended as Camillo, a lousy slave, that within this twenty years rode with the black guard2 in the duke's carriage, 'mongst spits and dripping-pans

Cam. Now he begins to tickle her.

Flam. An excellent scholar,-one that hath a head filled with calves-brains without any sage in them, come crouching in the hams to you for a night's lodging ?-that hath an itch in's hams, which like the fire at the glass-house hath not gone out this seven years. Is he not a courtly gentleman ?—when he wears white satin, one would take him by his black muzzle to be no other creature than a maggot. -You are a goodly foil, I confess, well set out— but covered with a false stone, yon counterfeit diamond.8

Cam. He will make her know what is in me.

Flam. Come, my lord attends you; thou shalt go to bed to my lord-

Cam.

hard.

Now he comes to't.

Flam. With a relish as curious as a vintner going to taste new wine.—I am opening your case [TO CAMILLO. Cam. A virtuous brother, o' my credit! Flam. He will give thee a ring with a philosopher's stone in it.

1 A mark of good-will.

2 The lowest menials who rode in the vehicles which carried the domestic utensils from mansion to mansion.

Flamineo's speeches are half-asides.

Cam. Indeed, I am studying alchymy.

Flam. Thou shalt lie in a bed stuffed with turtles' feathers; swoon in perfumed linen, like the fellow was smothered in roses. So perfect shall be thy happiness, that, as men at sea think land and trees and ships go that way they go, so both Heaven and earth shall seem to go your voyage. Shall't meet him; 'tis fixed with nails of diamonds to inevitable necessity.

Vit. Cor.

How shall's rid him hence ?

Flam. I will put the breeze in's tail,-set him gadding presently. [To CAMILLO] I have almost wrought her to it, I find her coming: but, might I advise you now, for this night I would not lie with her; I would cross her humour to make her more humble.

Cam.

Shall I, shall I ?

[ment.

Flam. It will show in you a supremacy of judgCam. True, and a mind differing from the tumultuary opinion; for, quæ negata, grata.

Flam. Right: you are the adamant1 shall draw her to you, though you keep distance off.

Cam. A philosophical reason.

Flam. Walk by her o' the nobleman's fashion, and tell her you will lie with her at the end of the progress."

Cam. [Coming forward]. Vittoria, I cannot be induced, or, as a man would say, incited

Vit. Cor. To do what, sir?

Cam. To lie with you to-night. Your silkworm useth to fast every third day, and the next following spins the better. To-morrow at night I am for you. Vit. Cor. You'll spin a fair thread, tiust to't. Flam. But, do you hear, I shall have you steal to her chamber about midnight.