If it would send you hence the sooner, sir, For your incontinence, it hath deserv'd it Thoroughly, and thoroughly, and the plague to boot!- That look like frozen dish-clouts set on end! Corv. (aloud) Or like an old smoked wall, on which the rain Ran down in streaks! Mos. Excellent! I could stifle him. Corv. Do as you will; but I'll be gone. It is your presence makes him last so long. Corv. I pray you, use no violence. Be so: No, sir! why ? Why should you be thus scrupulous, pray you, sir? Corv. Nay, at your discretion. Mos. Well, good sir, begone. Corv. I will not trouble him now, to take my pearl. Mos. Puh! nor your diamond. What a needless care Is this afflicts you? Is not all here yours? Am not I here, whom you have made your creature, That owe my being to you? Grateful Mosca ! [Exit. CORV. Corv. To shoot him hence, but this. Volp. (leaping from his couch) My divine Mosca ! Thou hast to-day outgone thyself.-Prepare Me music, dances, banquets, all delights; The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasures, Than will Volpone. BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER. [See "Imagination and Fancy," page 207.] wwwwww SINCE expressing, in the above volume, the surprise which everybody feels at the astounding mixture of license and refinement displayed by these poets (for the grossness of earlier writers is but a simplicity compared with it), I have come to the conclusion that it was an excess of animal spirits, encouraged by the demand of the times, and the intoxication of applause. They were the sons of men of rank: they had been thrown upon the town in the heyday of their blood, probably with a turn for lavish expenditure; they certainly wanted money as they advanced, and were glad to get it of gross audiences; they had been taught to confound loyalty with servility, which subjected them to the dissolute influence of the court of James the First; they came among the actors and the playwrights, with advantages of position, perhaps of education and accomplishments, superior to them all: their confidence, their wit, their enjoyment was unbounded; every body was glad to hear what the gay gentlemen had to say; and forth they poured it accordingly, without stint or conscience. Beaumont died young; but Fletcher, who went writing on, appears to have taken a still greater license than his friend. The son of the bishop had probably been tempted to go farther out of bounds than the son of the judge; for Dr. Fletcher was not such a bishop as Grindall or Jewel. The poet might have been taught hypocrisy by his father; and, in despising it as he grew up, had gone to another extreme. The reader of the following scenes will observe the difference between the fierce weight of the satire of Volpone, in which poison and suffocation are brought in to aggravate, and the gayer caricature of Beaumont and Fletcher. It is equally founded on truth-equally wilful and superabundant in the treatment of it, but more light and happy. You feel that the writers enjoyed it with a gayer laugh. The pretended self-deception with which a coward lies to his own thoughts, -the necessity for support which induces him to apply to others as cowardly as himself for the warrant of their good opinion, and the fascinations of vanity which impels such men into the exposure which they fancy they have taken the subtlest steps to guard against, are most entertainingly set forth in the interview of Bassus with the two bullies, and the subsequent catastrophe of all three in the hands of Bacurius. The nice balance of distinction and difference in which the bullies pretend to weigh the merits of kicks and beatings, and the impossibility which they affect of a shadow of imputation against their valours, or even of the power to assume it hypothetically, are masterly plays of wit of the first order. The scenes entitled Duke and No Duke are less perfect writing, but they would be still more effective in representation. The folly is "humoured to the top of its bent;" and the idea of Marine's being deprived of his titles by the whisk of a sword, besides being a good practical jest, is a startling reduction of such honours to their first principles. THE PHILOSOPHY OF KICKS AND BEATINGS. From the play of "KING AND NO KING." Bessus, a beaten poltroon, applies to a couple of professional bullies, also poltroons, to sit in judgment on his case, and testify to his character for valour. They accompany him to the house of Bacurius to do so, and bring an unexpected certificate on the whole party. Scene, a room in the house of BESSUS. Enter BESSUS, two Swordmen, and a Boy. Bes. You 're very welcome, both! Some stools there, boy; And reach a table. Gentlemen o' th' sword, Pray sit, without more compliment. Begone, child! Because I understand you wise and valiant. 1 Sw. We understand ourselves, sir. Bes. Nay, gentlemen, and dear friends o' the sword, No compliment, I pray; but to the cause I hang upon, which, in few, is my honour. 2 Sw. You cannot hang too much, sir, for your honour. But to your cause. Be wise and speak the truth. Bes. My first doubt is, my beating by my prince. 1 Sw. Stay there a little, sir; Do you doubt a beating? Or, have you had a beating by your prince? Bes. Gentlemen, o' th' sword, my prince has beaten me. 2 Sw. Brother, what think you of this case? 1 Sw. If he has beaten him, the case is clear. 2 Sw. If he have beaten him, I grant the case. But how? we cannot be too subtle in this business. I say, but how? Bes. Even with his royal hand. 1 Sw. Was it a blow of love, or indignation? Bes. 'Twas twenty blows of indignation, gentlemen ; Besides two blows o' th' face. Sw. Those blows o' th' face have made a new cause on 't; The rest were but an honourable rudeness. 2 Sw. Two blows o' th' face, and given by a worse man, I must confess, as the swordmen say, had turn'd The business: Mark me, brother, by a worse man : But, being by his prince, had they been ten, And those ten drawn ten teeth, besides the hazard |