Part 96 (1/2)

JOLLY. And they have reason; for if they have the grace to be kind, he that loves the s.e.x may be theirs.

CARE. When your constant lover, if a woman have a mind to him, and be blessed with so much grace to discover it, he, out of the n.o.ble mistake of honour hates her for it, and tells it perchance, and preaches reason to her pa.s.sion, and cries: Miserable beauty, to be so unfortunate as to inhabit in so much frailty!

CAPT. This counsel makes her hate him more than she loved before.

These are troubles those that love are subject to; while we look on and laugh, to see both thus slaved, while we are free.

CARE. My prayers still shall be, Lord deliver me from love.

CAPT. 'Tis plague, pestilence, famine, sword, and sometimes sudden death.

SAD. Yet I love, I must love, I will love, and I do love.

CAPT. In the present tense.

WID. No more of this argument, for love's sake.

CAPT. By any means, madam, give him leave to love: and you are resolved to walk tied up in your own arms, with your love as visible in your face as your mistress's colours in your hat; that any porter at Charing Cross may take you like a letter at the carrier's, and having read the superscription, deliver Master Sad to the fair hands of Mistress or My Lady Such-a-one, lying at the sign of the Hard Heart.

PLEA. And she, if she has wit (as I believe she hath), will scarce pay the post for the packet.

WID. Treason! how now, niece? join with the enemy?

[_They give the_ CAPTAIN _wine_.

CAPT. A health, Ned: what shall I call it?

CARE. To Master Sad! he needs it that avows himself a lover.

SAD. Gentlemen, you have the advantage, the time, the place, the company; but we may meet when your wits shall not have such advantage as my love.

PLEA. No more of love, I am so sick on't.

CON. By your pardon, mistress, I must not leave love thus unguarded: I vow myself his follower.

JOLLY. Much good may love do him. Give me a gla.s.s of wine here.

Will, let them keep company with the blind boy. Give us his mother, and let them preach again: Hear that will, he has good luck persuades me 'tis an ugly sin to lie with a handsome woman.

CAPT. A pox upon your nurse; she frighted me so, when I was young, with stories of the devil, I was almost fourteen ere I could prevail with reasons to unbind my reason, it was so slaved to faith and conscience. She made me believe wine was an evil spirit, and fornication, like the wh.o.r.e of Babylon, a fine face, but a dragon under her petticoats, and that made me have a mind to peep under all I met since.

WID. Fie, fie! for shame, do not talk so: are you not ashamed to glory in sin, as if variety of women were none?

JOLLY. Madam, we do not glory in fornication; and yet I thank G.o.d, I cannot live without a woman.

CAPT. Why, does your ladys.h.i.+p think it a sin to lie with variety of handsome women? If it be, would I were the wicked'st man in the company.

PLEA. You have been marked for an indifferent sinner that way, captain.

CAPT. Who, I? no, faith, I was a fool; but, and I were to begin again, I would not do as I have done. I kept one, but if ever I keep another, hang me; nor would I advise any friend of mine to do it.

JOLLY. Why, I am sure 'tis a provident and safe way: a man may always be provided and sound.