John Dryden - Delphi Poets Series

by John Dryden

  Elv. Spare your oaths and protestations; I know you gallants of the time have a mint at your tongue’s end to coin them.

  Lor. You know you cannot marry me; but, by heavens, if you were in a condition —

  Elv. Then you would not be so prodigal of your promises, but have the fear of matrimony before your eyes. In few words, if you love me, as you profess, deliver me from this bondage, take me out of Egypt, and I’ll wander with you as far as earth, and seas, and love, can carry us.

  Lor. I never was out at a mad frolic, though this is the maddest I ever undertook. Have with you, lady mine; I take you at your word; and if you are for a merry jaunt, I’ll try for once who can foot it farthest. There are hedges in summer, and barns in winter, to be found; I with my knapsack, and you with your bottle at your back: we will leave honour to madmen, and riches to knaves; and travel till we come to’ the ridge of the world, and then drop together into the next.

  Elv. Give me your hand, and strike a bargain. [He takes her hand, and kisses it.

  Lor. In sign and token whereof, the parties interchangeably, and so forth. — When should I be weary of sealing upon this soft wax?

  Elv. O heavens! I hear my husband’s voice.

  Enter Gomez.

  Gom. Where are you, gentlewoman? there’s something in the wind, I’m sure, because your woman would have run up stairs before me; but I have secured her below, with a gag in her chaps. — Now, 424 in the devil’s name, what makes this friar here again? I do not like these frequent conjunctions of the flesh and spirit; they are boding.

  Elv. Go hence, good father; my husband, you see, is in an ill humour, and I would not have you witness of his folly.

  [Lorenzo going.

  Gom. [Running to the door.] By your reverence’s favour, hold a little; I must examine you something better, before you go. — Heyday! who have we here? Father Dominick is shrunk in the wetting two yards and a half about the belly. What are become of those two timber logs, that he used to wear for legs, that stood strutting like the two black posts before a door? I am afraid some bad body has been setting him over a fire in a great cauldron, and boiled him down half the quantity, for a recipe. This is no father Dominick, no huge overgrown abbey-lubber; this is but a diminutive sucking friar. As sure as a gun, now, father Dominick has been spawning this young slender anti-christ.

  Elv. He will be found, there’s no prevention.[Aside.

  Gom. Why does he not speak? What! is the friar possessed with a dumb devil? if he be, I shall make bold to conjure him.

  Elv. He is but a novice in his order, and is enjoined silence for a penance.

  Gom. A novice, quotha! you would make a novice of me, too, if you could. But what was his business here? answer me that, gentlewoman, answer me that.

  Elv. What should it be, but to give me some spiritual instructions.

  Gom. Very good; and you are like to edify much from a dumb preacher. This will not pass, I must examine the contents of him a little closer. — O thou 425 confessor, confess who thou art, or thou art no friar of this world! — [He comes to Lorenzo, who struggles with him; his Habit flies open, and discovers a Sword; Gomez starts back.] — As I live, this is a manifest member of the church militant.

  Lor. [Aside.] I am discovered; now, impudence be my refuge. — Yes, faith, ’tis I, honest Gomez; thou seest I use thee like a friend; this is a familiar visit.

  Gom. What! colonel Hernando turned a friar! who could have suspected you of so much godliness?

  Lor. Even as thou seest, I make bold here.

  Gom. A very frank manner of proceeding; but I do not wonder at your visit, after so friendly an invitation as I made you. Marry, I hope you will excuse the blunderbusses for not being in readiness to salute you; but let me know your hour, and all shall be mended another time.

  Lor. Hang it, I hate such ripping up of old unkindness: I was upon the frolic this evening, and came to visit thee in masquerade.

  Gom. Very likely; and not finding me at home, you were forced to toy away an hour with my wife, or so.

  Lor. Right; thou speak’st my very soul.

  Gom. Why, am not I a friend, then, to help thee out? you would have been fumbling half an hour for this excuse. But, as I remember, you promised to storm my citadel, and bring your regiment of red locusts upon me for free quarters: I find, colonel, by your habit, there are black locusts in the world, as well as red.

  Elv. When comes my share of the reckoning to be called for?[Aside.

  Lor. Give me thy hand; thou art the honestest, 426 kind man! — I was resolved I would not out of thy house till I had seen thee.

  Gom. No, in my conscience, if I had staid abroad till midnight. But, colonel, you and I shall talk in another tone hereafter; I mean, in cold friendship, at a bar before a judge, by the way of plaintiff and defendant. Your excuses want some grains to make them current: Hum, and ha, will not do the business. — There’s a modest lady of your acquaintance, she has so much grace to make none at all, but silently to confess the power of dame Nature working in her body to youthful appetite.

  Elv. How he got in I know not, unless it were by virtue of his habit.

  Gom. Ay, ay, the virtues of that habit are known abundantly.

  Elv. I could not hinder his entrance, for he took me unprovided.

  Gom. To resist him.

  Elv. I’m sure he has not been here above a quarter of an hour.

  Gom. And a quarter of that time would have served the turn. O thou epitome of thy virtuous sex! Madam Messalina the second, retire to thy apartment: I have an assignation there to make with thee.

  Elv. I am all obedience.[Exit Elvira.

  Lor. I find, Gomez, you are not the man I thought you. We may meet before we come to the bar, we may; and our differences may be decided by other weapons than by lawyers’ tongues. In the mean time, no ill treatment of your wife, as you hope to die a natural death, and go to hell in your bed. Bilbo is the word, remember that and tremble. —

  [He’s going out.

  Enter Dominick.

  Dom. Where is this naughty couple? where are you, in the name of goodness? My mind misgave me, and I durst trust you no longer with yourselves: Here will be fine work, I’m afraid, at your next confession.

  Lor. [Aside.] The devil is punctual, I see; he has paid me the shame he owed me; and now the friar is coming in for his part too.

  Dom. [Seeing Gom.] Bless my eyes! what do I see?

  Gom. Why, you see a cuckold of this honest gentleman’s making; I thank him for his pains.

  Dom. I confess, I am astonished!

  Gom. What, at a cuckoldom of your own contrivance! your head-piece, and his limbs, have done my business. Nay, do not look so strangely; remember your own words, — Here will be fine work at your next confession. What naughty couple were they whom you durst not trust together any longer? — when the hypocritical rogue had trusted them a full quarter of an hour; — and, by the way, horns will sprout in less time than mushrooms.

  Dom. Beware how you accuse one of my order upon light suspicions. The naughty couple, that I meant, were your wife and you, whom I left together with great animosities on both sides. Now, that was the occasion, — mark me, Gomez, — that I thought it convenient to return again, and not to trust your enraged spirits too long together. You might have broken out into revilings and matrimonial warfare, which are sins; and new sins make work for new confessions.

  Lor. Well said, i’faith, friar; thou art come off thyself, but poor I am left in limbo.[Aside.

  Gom. Angle in some other ford, good father, you shall catch no gudgeons here. Look upon the prisoner at the bar, friar, and inform the court what you know concerning him; he is arraigned here by the name of colonel Hernando.

  Dom. What colonel do you mean, Gomez? I see no man but a reverend brother of our order, whose profession I honour, but whose person I know not, as I hope for paradise.

  Gom. No, you are not acquainted with him, the more’s the pity; you do not know him, under this disguise, for th
e greatest cuckold-maker in all Spain.

  Dom. O impudence! O rogue! O villain! Nay, if he be such a man, my righteous spirit rises at him! Does he put on holy garments, for a cover-shame of lewdness?

  Gom. Yes, and he’s in the right on’t, father: when a swinging sin is to be committed, nothing will cover it so close as a friar’s hood; for there the devil plays at bo-peep, — puts out his horns to do a mischief, and then shrinks them back for safety, like a snail into her shell.

  Lor. It’s best marching off, while I can retreat with honour. There’s no trusting this friar’s conscience; he has renounced me already more heartily than e’er he did the devil, and is in a fair way to prosecute me for putting on these holy robes. This is the old church-trick; the clergy is ever at the bottom of the plot, but they are wise enough to slip their own necks out of the collar, and leave the laity to be fairly hanged for it.

  [Aside and exit.

  Gom. Follow your leader, friar; your colonel is trooped off, but he had not gone so easily, if I durst have trusted you in the house behind me. Gather up your gouty legs, I say, and rid my house of that huge body of divinity.

  Dom. I expect some judgment should fall upon you, for your want of reverence to your spiritual director: Slander, covetousness, and jealousy, will weigh thee down.

  Gom. Put pride, hypocrisy, and gluttony into your scale, father, and you shall weigh against me: Nay, an sins come to be divided once, the clergy puts in for nine parts, and scarce leaves the laity a tithe.

  Dom. How dar’st thou reproach the tribe of Levi?

  Gom. Marry, because you make us laymen of the tribe of Issachar. You make asses of us, to bear your burthens. When we are young, you put panniers upon us with your church-discipline; and when we are grown up, you load us with a wife: after that, you procure for other men, and then you load our wives too. A fine phrase you have amongst you to draw us into marriage, you call it — settling of a man; just as when a fellow has got a sound knock upon the head, they say — he’s settled: Marriage is a settling-blow indeed. They say every thing in the world is good for something; as a toad, to suck up the venom of the earth; but I never knew what a friar was good for, till your pimping shewed me.

  Dom. Thou shalt answer for this, thou slanderer; thy offences be upon thy head.

  Gom. I believe there are some offences there of your planting. [Exit Dom.] Lord, Lord, that men should have sense enough to set snares in their warrens to catch polecats and foxes, and yet —

  Want wit a priest-trap at their door to lay,

  For holy vermin that in houses prey.[Exit Gom.

  SCENE III. — A Bed Chamber.

  Leonora, and Teresa.

  Ter. You are not what you were, since yesterday;

  Your food forsakes you, and your needful rest;

  You pine, you languish, love to be alone;

  Think much, speak little, and, in speaking, sigh:

  When you see Torrismond, you are unquiet;

  But, when you see him not, you are in pain.

  Leo. O let them never love, who never tried!

  They brought a paper to me to be signed;

  Thinking on him, I quite forgot my name,

  And writ, for Leonora, Torrismond.

  I went to bed, and to myself I thought

  That I would think on Torrismond no more;

  Then shut my eyes, but could not shut out him.

  I turned, and tried each corner of my bed,

  To find if sleep were there, but sleep was lost.

  Fev’rish, for want of rest, I rose, and walked,

  And, by the moon-shine, to the windows went;

  There, thinking to exclude him from my thoughts,

  I cast my eyes upon the neighbouring fields,

  And, ere I was aware, sighed to myself, —

  There fought my Torrismond.

  Ter. What hinders you to take the man you love?

  The people will be glad, the soldiers shout,

  And Bertran, though repining, will be awed.

  Leo. I fear to try new love,

  As boys to venture on the unknown ice,

  That crackles underneath them while they slide.

  Oh, how shall I describe this growing ill!

  Betwixt my doubt and love, methinks I stand

  Altering, like one that waits an ague fit;

  And yet, would this were all!

  Ter. What fear you more?

  Leo. I am ashamed to say, ’tis but a fancy.

  At break of day, when dreams, they say, are true,

  A drowzy slumber, rather than a sleep,

  Seized on my senses, with long watching worn:

  Methought I stood on a wide river’s bank,

  Which I must needs o’erpass, but knew not how;

  When, on a sudden, Torrismond appeared,

  Gave me his hand, and led me lightly o’er,

  Leaping and bounding on the billows’ heads,

  ‘Till safely we had reached the farther shore.

  Ter. This dream portends some ill which you shall ‘scape.

  Would you see fairer visions, take this night

  Your Torrismond within your arms to sleep;

  And, to that end, invent some apt pretence

  To break with Bertran: ‘twould be better yet,

  Could you provoke him to give you the occasion,

  And then, to throw him off.

  Enter Bertran at a distance.

  Leo. My stars have sent him;

  For, see, he comes. How gloomily he looks!

  If he, as I suspect, have found my love,

  His jealousy will furnish him with fury,

  And me with means, to part.

  Bert. [Aside.] Shall I upbraid her? Shall I call her false?

  If she be false, ’tis what she most desires.

  My genius whispers me, — Be cautious, Bertran!

  Thou walkest as on a narrow mountain’s neck,

  A dreadful height, with scanty room to tread.

  Leo. What business have you at the court, my lord?

  Bert. What business, madam?

  Leo. Yes, my lord, what business?

  ’Tis somewhat, sure, of weighty consequence,

  That brings you here so often, and unsent for.

  Bert. ’Tis what I feared; her words are cold enough,

  To freeze a man to death. [Aside.] — May I presume

  To speak, and to complain?

  Leo. They, who complain to princes, think them tame:

  What bull dares bellow, or what sheep dares bleat,

  Within the lion’s den?

  Bert. Yet men are suffered to put heaven in mind

  Of promised blessings; for they then are debts.

  Leo. My lord, heaven knows its own time when to give;

  But you, it seems, charge me with breach of faith!

  Bert. I hope I need not, madam;

  But as, when men in sickness lingering lie,

  They count the tedious hours by months and years, —

  So, every day deferred, to dying lovers,

  Is a whole age of pain!

  Leo. What if I ne’er consent to make you mine?

  My father’s promise ties me not to time;

  And bonds, without a date, they say, are void.

  Bert. Far be it from me to believe you bound;

  Love is the freest motion of our minds:

  O could you see into my secret soul,

  There might you read your own dominion doubled,

  Both as a queen and mistress. If you leave me,

  Know I can die, but dare not be displeased.

  Leo. Sure you affect stupidity, my lord;

  Or give me cause to think, that, when you lost

  Three battles to the Moors, you coldly stood

  As unconcerned as now.

  Bert. I did my best;

  Fate was not in my power.

  Leo. And, with the like tame gravity, you saw

  A raw young warrior take your baffled work,
/>   And end it at a blow.

  Bert. I humbly take my leave; but they, who blast

  Your good opinion of me, may have cause

  To know, I am no coward.[He is going.

  Leo. Bertran, stay.

  [Aside.] This may produce some dismal consequence

  To him, whom dearer than my life I love.

  [To him.] Have I not managed my contrivance well,

  To try your love, and make you doubt of mine?

  Bert. Then, was it but a trial?

  Methinks I start as from some dreadful dream,

  And often ask myself if yet I wake. —

  This turn’s too quick to be without design;

  I’ll sound the bottom of’t, ere I believe.[Aside.

  Leo. I find your love, and would reward it too,

  But anxious fears solicit my weak breast.

  I fear my people’s faith;

  That hot-mouthed beast, that bears against the curb,

  Hard to be broken even by lawful kings,

  But harder by usurpers.

  Judge then, my lord, with all these cares opprest,

  If I can think of love.

  Bert. Believe me, madam,

  These jealousies, however large they spread,

  Have but one root, the old imprisoned king;

  Whose lenity first pleased the gaping crowd;

  But when long tried, and found supinely good,

  Like Æsop’s Log, they leapt upon his back.

  Your father knew them well; and, when he mounted,

  He reined them strongly, and he spurred them hard:

  And, but he durst not do it all at once,

  He had not left alive this patient saint,

  This anvil of affronts, but sent him hence

  To hold a peaceful branch of palm above,

  And hymn it in the quire.

  Leo. You’ve hit upon the very string, which, touched.

  Echoes the sound, and jars within my soul; —

  There lies my grief.

  Bert. So long as there’s a head,

  Thither will all the mounting spirits fly;

  Lop that but off, and then —

  Leo. My virtue shrinks from such an horrid act.

  Bert. This ’tis to have a virtue out of season.

  Mercy is good, a very good dull virtue;

  But kings mistake its timing, and are mild,

  When manly courage bids them be severe:

  Better be cruel once, than anxious ever.

  Remove this threatening danger from your crown,