Bawd. Your honour knows what 'tis to enough. Lys. Well; call forth, call forth. say well Boult. For flesh and blood, sir, white and red, shall see a rose; and she were a rose indeed, if she had but you Lys. What, pr'ythee? Boult. O, sir, I can be modest. Lys. That dignifies the renown of a bawd, no less than it gives a good report to an anchor3 to be chaste. Enter MARINA, Bawd. Here comes that which grows to the stalk; never plucked yet, I can assure you. Is she not a fair creature? Lys. 'Faith, she would serve after a long voyage Well, there's for you;-leave us. at sea. Bawd. I beseech your honour, give me leave: a word, and I'll have done presently. Lys. I beseech you, do. Bawd. First, I would have you note, this is an honourable man. [To MAR. whom she takes aside. Mar. I desire to find him so, that I may worthily note him. Bawd. Next, he's the governor of this country, and a man whom I am bound to. 3 The old copy, which both Steevens and Malone considered corrupt in this place, reads, "That dignifies the renown of a bawd, no less than it gives good report to a number to be chaste." I have ventured to substitute an anchor, i. e. A HERMIT or anchoret. The word being formerly written ancher, anchor, and even anker, it is evident that in old MSS. it might readily be mistaken for a number. The word is used by the Player Queen in Hamlet, Act iii. Sc. 2: An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope.' It is evident that some character contrasted to bawd is required by the context. Mar. If he govern the country, you are bound to him indeed; but how honourable he is in that, I know not. Bawd. 'Pray you, without any more virginal 4 fencing, will you use him kindly? He will line your apron with gold. Mar. What he will do graciously, I will thankfully receive. Lys. Have you done? Bawd. My lord, she's not paced 5 yet; you must take some pains to work her to your manage. Come, we will leave his honour and her together. [Exeunt Bawd, PANDER, and BOULT. Lys. Go thy ways.-Now, pretty one, how long have you been at this trade? Mar. What trade, sir? Lys. What I cannot name but I shall offend. Mar. I cannot be offended with my trade. Please you to name it. Lys. How long have you been of this profession? Lys. Did you go to it so young? Were you a gamester at five, or at seven? Mar. Earlier too, sir, if now I be one. Lys. Why, the house you dwell in, proclaims you to be a creature of sale. Mar. Do you know this house to be a place of such resort, and will come into it? I hear say, you are of honourable parts, and are the governor of this place. Lys. Why, hath your principal made known unto you who I am? 4 This uncommon adjective is again used in Coriolanus:— the virginal palms of your daughters.' 5 A term from the equestrian art; but still in familiar language applied to persons chiefly in a bad sense with its compound thorough-paced. 6 i. e. a wanton. See vol. iii. p. 330, note 21. Mar. Who is my principal? Lys. Why, your herb-woman; she that sets seeds and roots of shame and iniquity. O, you have heard something of my power, and so stand aloof for more serious wooing. But I protest to thee, pretty one, my authority shall not see thee, or else, look friendly upon thee. Come, bring me to some private place. Come, come. Mar. If you were born to honour, show it now; If put upon you, make the judgment good That thought you worthy of it, Lys. How's this? how's this?-Some more;be sage1. Mar. For me, That am a maid, though most ungentle fortune Lys. I did not think Thou could'st have spoke so well; ne'er dream'd thou could'st. Had I brought hither a corrupted mind, Thy speech had alter'd it. Hold, here's gold for thee: Mar. The gods preserve you! 7 Lysimachus must be supposed to say this sneeringly—' Proceed with your fine moral discourse.' 8 Clear is pure, innocent. Thus in The Two Noble Kinsmen :--For the sake Of clear virginity, be advocate So in The Tempest: - nothing but heart's sorrow, And a clear life ensuing.' Lys. For me, be you thoughten That I come with no ill intent; for to me A curse upon him, die he like a thief, That robs thee of thy goodness! If thou hear'st from me, It shall be for thy good. [AS LYSIMACHUS is putting up his Purse, BOULT enters. Boult. I beseech your honour, one piece for me. Lys. Avaunt, thou damned door-keeper! Your house, But for this virgin that doth prop it up, Would sink, and overwhelm you all. Away! [Exit LYSIMACHUS. Boult. How's this? We must take another course with you. If your peevish chastity, which is not worth a breakfast in the cheapest country under the cope 10, shall undo a whole household, let me be gelded like a spaniel. Come your ways. Mar. Whither would you have me? Boult. I must have your maidenhead taken off, or the common hangman shall execute it. Come your way. We'll have no more gentlemen driven away. Come your ways, I say. thy mother was A piece of virtue.' Tempest. So in Antony and Cleopatra, alluding to Octavia:'Let not the piece of virtue, which is set Betwixt us.' 10 i. e. under the cope or canopy of heaven. Boult. Worse and worse, mistress; she has here spoken holy words to the Lord Lysimachus. Bawd. O abominable! Boult. She makes our profession as it were to stink afore the face of the gods. Bawd. Marry, hang her up for ever! Boult. The nobleman would have dealt with her like a nobleman, and she sent him away as cold as a snowball; saying his prayers too. Bawd. Boult, take her away; use her at thy pleasure crack the glass of her virginity, and make the rest malleable 11. Boult. An if she were a thornier piece of ground than she is, she shall be ploughed 1o. Mar. Hark, hark, you gods! Bawd. She conjures: away with her. 'Would, she had never come within my doors! Marry, hang you! She's born to undo us. Will you not go the way of womankind? Marry come up, my dish of chastity with rosemary and bays 13! [Exit Bawd. Boult. Come, mistress; come your way with me. Mar. Whither would you have me? 'Boult. To take from you the jewel you hold so dear. 11 Steevens thinks that there may be some allusion here to a fact recorded by Dion Cassius, and by Pliny, b. xxxvi. ch. xxvi. ; but more circumstantially by Petronius. Var. Edit. p. 189. A skilful workman, who had discovered the art of making glass malleable, carried a specimen of it to Tiberius, who asked him if he alone was in possession of the secret. He replied in the affirmative; on which the tyrant ordered his head to be struck off immediately, lest his invention should have proved injurious to the workers in gold, silver, and other metals. The same story, however, is told in the Gesta Romanorum, c. 44. 12 Thus also in Antony and Cleopatra: 'She made great Cæsar lay his sword to bed, He plough'd her, and she cropp'd.' 13 Anciently many dishes were served up with this garniture, during the season of Christmas. The Bawd means to call her a piece of ostentatious virtue. |