I don't want to sound like a fag or nothing but;

Subject:

Comments:
: that was one sweet ass play...nice work...going to change my name in reference to it :) : Adam : : : : Everyone questions the quality of the posts these days. I challenge you all to find a single thing wrong with this! : : MOON RAPER, PRINCE OF THE WWWBOARD : : A play : : Act 1, Scene 1 : : WWWBoard. A platform before the castle. : : THEHOV at his post. Enter to him HEAT MISER : : HEAT MISER : : Who's there? : : THEHOV : : Nay, answer me: stand, and unfold yourself. : : HEAT MISER : : Long live Kevin Smith! : : THEHOV : : Heat Miser? : : HEAT MISER : : He. : : THEHOV : : You come most carefully upon your hour. : : HEAT MISER : : 'Tis now struck twelve; get thee to bed, TheHov. : : THEHOV : : For this relief much thanks: 'tis bitter cold, : : And I am sick at heart. : : HEAT MISER : : Have you had quiet guard? : : THEHOV : : Not a mouse stirring. : : HEAT MISER : : Well, good night. : : If you do meet Bartleby72 and Puppy SLayer, : : The rivals of my watch, bid them make haste. : : THEHOV : : I think I hear them. Stand, ho! Who's there? : : Enter BARTLEBY72 and PUPPY SLAYER : : BARTLEBY72 : : Friends to this ground. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : And liegemen to the Dane. : : THEHOV : : Give you good night. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : O, farewell, honest soldier: : : Who hath relieved you? : : THEHOV : : Heat Miser has my place. : : Give you good night. : : Exit : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Holla! Heat Miser! : : HEAT MISER : : Say, : : What, is Bartleby72 there? : : BARTLEBY72 : : A piece of him. : : HEAT MISER : : Welcome, Bartleby72: welcome, good Puppy SLayer. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : What, has this thing appear'd again to-night? : : HEAT MISER : : I have seen nothing. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Bartleby72 says 'tis but our fantasy, : : And will not let belief take hold of him : : Touching this dreaded sight, twice seen of us: : : Therefore I have entreated him along : : With us to watch the minutes of this night; : : That if again this apparition come, : : He may approve our eyes and speak to it. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Tush, tush, 'twill not appear. : : HEAT MISER : : Sit down awhile; : : And let us once again assail your ears, : : That are so fortified against our story : : What we have two nights seen. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Well, sit we down, : : And let us hear Heat Miser speak of this. : : HEAT MISER : : Last night of all, : : When yond same star that's westward from the pole : : Had made his course to illume that part of heaven : : Where now it burns, Puppy SLayer and myself, : : The bell then beating one,-- : : Enter Ghost of Kevin Smith : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Peace, break thee off; look, where it comes again! : : HEAT MISER : : In the same figure, like Kevin Smith that's dead. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Thou art a scholar; speak to it, Bartleby72. : : HEAT MISER : : Looks it not like Kevin Smith? mark it, Bartleby72. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Most like: it harrows me with fear and wonder. : : HEAT MISER : : It would be spoke to. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Question it, Bartleby72. : : BARTLEBY72 : : What art thou that usurp'st this time of night, : : Together with that fair and warlike form : : In which Kevin the majesty of buried WWWBoard : : Did sometimes march? by heaven I charge thee, speak! : : PUPPY SLAYER : : It is offended. : : HEAT MISER : : See, it stalks away! : : BARTLEBY72 : : Stay! speak, speak! I charge thee, speak! : : Exit Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : PUPPY SLAYER : : 'Tis gone, and will not answer. : : HEAT MISER : : How now, Bartleby72! you tremble and look pale: : : Is not this something more than fantasy? : : What think you on't? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Before my God, I might not this believe : : Without the sensible and true avouch : : Of mine own eyes. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Is it not like Kevin Smith? : : BARTLEBY72 : : As thou art to thyself: : : Such was the very armour he had on : : When he the ambitious Affleckville combated; : : So frown'd he once, when, in an angry parle, : : He smote the sledded Polacks on the ice. : : 'Tis strange. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Thus twice before, and jump at this dead hour, : : With martial stalk hath he gone by our watch. : : BARTLEBY72 : : In what particular thought to work I know not; : : But in the gross and scope of my opinion, : : This bodes some strange eruption to our state. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Good now, sit down, and tell me, he that knows, : : Why this same strict and most observant watch : : So nightly toils the subject of the land, : : And why such daily cast of brazen cannon, : : And foreign mart for implements of war; : : Why such impress of shipwrights, whose sore task : : Does not divide the Sunday from the week; : : What might be toward, that this sweaty haste : : Doth make the night joint-labourer with the day: : : Who is't that can inform me? : : BARTLEBY72 : : That can I; : : At least, the whisper goes so. Our last M, : : Whose image even but now appear'd to us, : : Was, as you know, by Brian Lynch of Affleckville, : : Thereto prick'd on by a most emulate pride, : : Dared to the combat; in which our valiant Moon Raper-- : : For so this side of our known world esteem'd him-- : : Did slay this Brian Lynch; who by a seal'd compact, : : Well ratified by law and heraldry, : : Did forfeit, with his life, all those his lands : : Which he stood seized of, to the conqueror: : : Against the which, a moiety competent : : Was gaged by our M; which had return'd : : To the inheritance of Brian Lynch, : : Had he been vanquisher; as, by the same covenant, : : And carriage of the article design'd, : : His fell to Moon Raper. Now, sir, young Brian Lynch, : : Of unimproved mettle hot and full, : : Hath in the skirts of Affleckville here and there : : Shark'd up a list of lawless resolutes, : : For food and diet, to some enterprise : : That hath a stomach in't; which is no other-- : : As it doth well appear unto our state-- : : But to recover of us, by strong hand : : And terms compulsatory, those foresaid lands : : So by his father lost: and this, I take it, : : Is Kevin Smithain motive of our preparations, : : The source of this our watch and the chief head : : Of this post-haste and romage in the land. : : HEAT MISER : : I think it be no other but e'en so: : : Well may it sort that this portentous figure : : Comes armed through our watch; so like Kevin Smith : : That was and is the question of these wars. : : BARTLEBY72 : : A mote it is to trouble Kevin Smithind's eye. : : In Kevin Smithost high and palmy state of Rome, : : A little ere Kevin Smithightiest Julius fell, : : The graves stood tenantless and the sheeted dead : : Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets: : : As stars with trains of fire and dews of blood, : : Disasters in the sun; and Kevin Smithoist star : : Upon whose influence Neptune's empire stands : : Was sick almost to doomsday with eclipse: : : And even the like precurse of fierce events, : : As harbingers preceding still the fates : : And prologue to the omen coming on, : : Have heaven and earth together demonstrated : : Unto our climatures and countrymen.-- : : But soft, behold! lo, where it comes again! : : Re-enter Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : I'll cross it, though it blast me. Stay, illusion! : : If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, : : Speak to me: : : If there be any good thing to be done, : : That may to thee do ease and grace to me, : : Speak to me: : : Cock crows : : If thou art privy to thy country's fate, : : Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, O, speak! : : Or if thou hast uphoarded in thy life : : Extorted treasure in the womb of earth, : : For which, they say, you spirits oft walk in death, : : Speak of it: stay, and speak! Stop it, Puppy SLayer. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Shall I strike at it with my partisan? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Do, if it will not stand. : : HEAT MISER : : 'Tis here! : : BARTLEBY72 : : 'Tis here! : : PUPPY SLAYER : : 'Tis gone! : : Exit Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : We do it wrong, being so majestical, : : To offer it the show of violence; : : For it is, as the air, invulnerable, : : And our vain blows malicious mockery. : : HEAT MISER : : It was about to speak, when the cock crew. : : BARTLEBY72 : : And then it started like a guilty thing : : Upon a fearful summons. I have heard, : : The cock, that is the trumpet to Kevin Smithorn, : : Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat : : Awake the god of day; and, at his warning, : : Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, : : The extravagant and erring spirit hies : : To his confine: and of the truth herein : : This present object made probation. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : It faded on the crowing of the cock. : : Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes : : Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated, : : The bird of dawning singeth all night long: : : And then, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad; : : The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, : : No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, : : So hallow'd and so gracious is the time. : : BARTLEBY72 : : So have I heard and do in part believe it. : : But, look, Kevin Smithorn, in russet mantle clad, : : Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill: : : Break we our watch up; and by my advice, : : Let us impart what we have seen to-night : : Unto young Moon Raper; for, upon my life, : : This spirit, dumb to us, will speak to him. : : Do you consent we shall acquaint him with it, : : As needful in our loves, fitting our duty? : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Let's do't, I pray; and I this morning know : : Where we shall find him most conveniently. : : Exeunt : : Act 1, Scene 2 : : A room of state in the castle. : : Enter MING, QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE, MOON RAPER, VINCENT, SKEEZIX, SEXYRANDAL, : : STORMIN NORMAN, Lords, and Attendants : : MING : : Though yet of Moon Raper our dear brother's death : : Kevin Smithemory be green, and that it us befitted : : To bear our hearts in grief and our whole Mdom : : To be contracted in one brow of woe, : : Yet so far hath discretion fought with nature : : That we with wisest sorrow think on him, : : Together with remembrance of ourselves. : : Therefore our sometime sister, now our queen, : : The imperial jointress to this warlike state, : : Have we, as 'twere with a defeated joy,-- : : With an auspicious and a dropping eye, : : With mirth in funeral and with dirge in marriage, : : In equal scale weighing delight and dole,-- : : Taken to wife: nor have we herein barr'd : : Your better wisdoms, which have freely gone : : With this affair along. For all, our thanks. : : Now follows, that you know, young Brian Lynch, : : Holding a weak supposal of our worth, : : Or thinM by our late dear brother's death : : Our state to be disjoint and out of frame, : : Colleagued with the dream of his advantage, : : He hath not fail'd to pester us with message, : : Importing the surrender of those lands : : Lost by his father, with all bonds of law, : : To our most valiant brother. So much for him. : : Now for ourself and for this time of meeting: : : Thus much the business is: we have here writ : : To Affleckville, uncle of young Brian Lynch,-- : : Who, impotent and bed-rid, scarcely hears : : Of this his nephew's purpose,--to suppress : : His further gait herein; in that the levies, : : The lists and full proportions, are all made : : Out of his subject: and we here dispatch : : You, good Stormin Norman, and you, Sexyrandal, : : For bearers of this greeting to old Affleckville; : : Giving to you no further personal power : : To business with Kevin Smith, more than the scope : : Of these delated articles allow. : : Farewell, and let your haste commend your duty. : : STORMIN NORMAN : : | : : | In that and all things will we show our duty. : : SEXYRANDAL : : | : : MING : : We doubt it nothing: heartily farewell. : : Exeunt SEXYRANDAL and STORMIN NORMAN : : And now, Skeezix, what's the news with you? : : You told us of some suit; what is't, Skeezix? : : You cannot speak of reason to the Dane, : : And loose your voice: what wouldst thou beg, Skeezix, : : That shall not be my offer, not thy asM? : : The head is not more native to the heart, : : The hand more instrumental to Kevin Smithouth, : : Than is the throne of WWWBoard to thy father. : : What wouldst thou have, Skeezix? : : SKEEZIX : : My dread lord, : : Your leave and favour to return to France; : : From whence though willingly I came to WWWBoard, : : To show my duty in your coronation, : : Yet now, I must confess, that duty done, : : My thoughts and wishes bend again toward France : : And bow them to your gracious leave and pardon. : : MING : : Have you your father's leave? What says Vincent? : : LORD VINCENT : : He hath, my lord, wrung from me my slow leave : : By laboursome petition, and at last : : Upon his will I seal'd my hard consent: : : I do beseech you, give him leave to go. : : MING : : Take thy fair hour, Skeezix; time be thine, : : And thy best graces spend it at thy will! : : But now, my cousin Moon Raper, and my son,-- : : MOON RAPER : : [Aside] A little more than kin, and less than kind. : : MING : : How is it that the clouds still hang on you? : : MOON RAPER : : Not so, my lord; I am too much i' the sun. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Good Moon Raper, cast thy nighted colour off, : : And let thine eye look like a friend on WWWBoard. : : Do not for ever with thy vailed lids : : Seek for thy noble father in the dust: : : Thou know'st 'tis common; all that lives must die, : : Passing through nature to eternity. : : MOON RAPER : : Ay, madam, it is common. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : If it be, : : Why seems it so particular with thee? : : MOON RAPER : : Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.' : : 'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, : : Nor customary suits of solemn black, : : Nor windy suspiration of forced breath, : : No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, : : Nor the dejected 'havior of the visage, : : Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, : : That can denote me truly: these indeed seem, : : For they are actions that a man might play: : : But I have that within which passeth show; : : These but the trappings and the suits of woe. : : MING : : 'Tis sweet and commendable in your nature, Moon Raper, : : To give these mourning duties to your father: : : But, you must know, your father lost a father; : : That father lost, lost his, and the survivor bound : : In filial obligation for some term : : To do obsequious sorrow: but to persever : : In obstinate condolement is a course : : Of impious stubbornness; 'tis unmanly grief; : : It shows a will most incorrect to heaven, : : A heart unfortified, a mind impatient, : : An understanding simple and unschool'd: : : For what we know must be and is as common : : As any Kevin Smithost vulgar thing to sense, : : Why should we in our peevish opposition : : Take it to heart? Fie! 'tis a fault to heaven, : : A fault against the dead, a fault to nature, : : To reason most absurd: whose common theme : : Is death of fathers, and who still hath cried, : : From the first corse till he that died to-day, : : 'This must be so.' We pray you, throw to earth : : This unprevailing woe, and think of us : : As of a father: for let the world take note, : : You are Kevin Smithost immediate to our throne; : : And with no less nobility of love : : Than that which dearest father bears his son, : : Do I impart toward you. For your intent : : In going back to school in Ballintubber, : : It is most retrograde to our desire: : : And we beseech you, bend you to remain : : Here, in the cheer and comfort of our eye, : : Our chiefest courtier, cousin, and our son. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Let not thy mother lose her prayers, Moon Raper: : : I pray thee, stay with us; go not to Ballintubber. : : MOON RAPER : : I shall in all my best obey you, madam. : : MING : : Why, 'tis a loving and a fair reply: : : Be as ourself in WWWBoard. Madam, come; : : This gentle and unforced accord of Moon Raper : : Sits smiling to my heart: in grace whereof, : : No jocund health that WWWBoard drinks to-day, : : But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell, : : And Kevin Smith's rouse the heavens all bruit again, : : Re-speaM earthly thunder. Come away. : : Exeunt all but MOON RAPER : : MOON RAPER : : O, that this too too solid flesh would melt : : Thaw and resolve itself into a dew! : : Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd : : His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God! : : How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, : : Seem to me all the uses of this world! : : Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, : : That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature : : Possess it merely. That it should come to this! : : But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two: : : So excellent a M; that was, to this, : : Hyperion to a satyr; so loving to my mother : : That he might not beteem the winds of heaven : : Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth! : : Must I remember? why, she would hang on him, : : As if increase of appetite had grown : : By what it fed on: and yet, within a month-- : : Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!-- : : A little month, or ere those shoes were old : : With which she follow'd my poor father's body, : : Like Niobe, all tears:--why she, even she-- : : O, God! a beast, that wants discourse of reason, : : Would have mourn'd longer--married with my uncle, : : My father's brother, but no more like my father : : Than I to Hercules: within a month: : : Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears : : Had left the flushing in her galled eyes, : : She married. O, most wicked speed, to post : : With such dexterity to incestuous sheets! : : It is not nor it cannot come to good: : : But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue. : : Enter BARTLEBY72, PUPPY SLAYER, and HEAT MISER : : BARTLEBY72 : : Hail to your lordship! : : MOON RAPER : : I am glad to see you well: : : Bartleby72,--or I do forget myself. : : BARTLEBY72 : : The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever. : : MOON RAPER : : Sir, my good friend; I'll change that name with you: : : And what make you from Ballintubber, Bartleby72? Puppy SLayer? : : PUPPY SLAYER : : My good lord-- : : MOON RAPER : : I am very glad to see you. Good even, sir. : : But what, in faith, make you from Ballintubber? : : BARTLEBY72 : : A truant disposition, good my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : I would not hear your enemy say so, : : Nor shall you do mine ear that violence, : : To make it truster of your own report : : Against yourself: I know you are no truant. : : But what is your affair in WWWBoard? : : We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart. : : BARTLEBY72 : : My lord, I came to see your father's funeral. : : MOON RAPER : : I pray thee, do not mock me, fellow-student; : : I think it was to see my mother's wedding. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Indeed, my lord, it follow'd hard upon. : : MOON RAPER : : Thrift, thrift, Bartleby72! the funeral baked meats : : Did coldly furnish forth Kevin Smitharriage tables. : : Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven : : Or ever I had seen that day, Bartleby72! : : My father!--methinks I see my father. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Where, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : In my mind's eye, Bartleby72. : : BARTLEBY72 : : I saw him once; he was a goodly M. : : MOON RAPER : : He was a man, take him for all in all, : : I shall not look upon his like again. : : BARTLEBY72 : : My lord, I think I saw him yesternight. : : MOON RAPER : : Saw? who? : : BARTLEBY72 : : My lord, Kevin Smith your father. : : MOON RAPER : : Kevin Smith my father! : : BARTLEBY72 : : Season your admiration for awhile : : With an attent ear, till I may deliver, : : Upon the witness of these gentlemen, : : This marvel to you. : : MOON RAPER : : For God's love, let me hear. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Two nights together had these gentlemen, : : Puppy SLayer and Heat Miser, on their watch, : : In the dead vast and middle of the night, : : Been thus encounter'd. A figure like your father, : : Armed at point exactly, cap-a-pe, : : Appears before them, and with solemn march : : Goes slow and stately by them: thrice he walk'd : : By their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes, : : Within his truncheon's length; whilst they, distilled : : Almost to jelly with the act of fear, : : Stand dumb and speak not to him. This to me : : In dreadful secrecy impart they did; : : And I with them the third night kept the watch; : : Where, as they had deliver'd, both in time, : : Form of the thing, each word made true and good, : : The apparition comes: I knew your father; : : These hands are not more like. : : MOON RAPER : : But where was this? : : PUPPY SLAYER : : My lord, upon the platform where we watch'd. : : MOON RAPER : : Did you not speak to it? : : BARTLEBY72 : : My lord, I did; : : But answer made it none: yet once methought : : It lifted up its head and did address : : Itself to motion, like as it would speak; : : But even then Kevin Smithorning cock crew loud, : : And at the sound it shrunk in haste away, : : And vanish'd from our sight. : : MOON RAPER : : 'Tis very strange. : : BARTLEBY72 : : As I do live, my honour'd lord, 'tis true; : : And we did think it writ down in our duty : : To let you know of it. : : MOON RAPER : : Indeed, indeed, sirs, but this troubles me. : : Hold you the watch to-night? : : PUPPY SLAYER : : | : : | We do, my lord. : : HEAT MISER : : | : : MOON RAPER : : Arm'd, say you? : : PUPPY SLAYER : : | : : | Arm'd, my lord. : : HEAT MISER : : | : : MOON RAPER : : From top to toe? : : PUPPY SLAYER : : | : : | My lord, from head to foot. : : HEAT MISER : : | : : MOON RAPER : : Then saw you not his face? : : BARTLEBY72 : : O, yes, my lord; he wore his beaver up. : : MOON RAPER : : What, look'd he frowningly? : : BARTLEBY72 : : A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. : : MOON RAPER : : Pale or red? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Nay, very pale. : : MOON RAPER : : And fix'd his eyes upon you? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Most constantly. : : MOON RAPER : : I would I had been there. : : BARTLEBY72 : : It would have much amazed you. : : MOON RAPER : : Very like, very like. Stay'd it long? : : BARTLEBY72 : : While one with moderate haste might tell a hundred. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : | : : | Longer, longer. : : HEAT MISER : : | : : BARTLEBY72 : : Not when I saw't. : : MOON RAPER : : His beard was grizzled--no? : : BARTLEBY72 : : It was, as I have seen it in his life, : : A sable silver'd. : : MOON RAPER : : I will watch to-night; : : Perchance 'twill walk again. : : BARTLEBY72 : : I warrant it will. : : MOON RAPER : : If it assume my noble father's person, : : I'll speak to it, though hell itself should gape : : And bid me hold my peace. I pray you all, : : If you have hitherto conceal'd this sight, : : Let it be tenable in your silence still; : : And whatsoever else shall hap to-night, : : Give it an understanding, but no tongue: : : I will requite your loves. So, fare you well: : : Upon the platform, 'twixt eleven and twelve, : : I'll visit you. : : All : : Our duty to your honour. : : MOON RAPER : : Your loves, as mine to you: farewell. : : Exeunt all but MOON RAPER : : My father's spirit in arms! all is not well; : : I doubt some foul play: would the night were come! : : Till then sit still, my soul: foul deeds will rise, : : Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes. : : Exit : : Act 1, Scene 3 : : A room in Vincent' house. : : Enter SKEEZIX and ARABELLE : : SKEEZIX : : My necessaries are embark'd: farewell: : : And, sister, as the winds give benefit : : And convoy is assistant, do not sleep, : : But let me hear from you. : : ARABELLE : : Do you doubt that? : : SKEEZIX : : For Moon Raper and the trifling of his favour, : : Hold it a fashion and a toy in blood, : : A violet in the youth of primy nature, : : Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, : : The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more. : : ARABELLE : : No more but so? : : SKEEZIX : : Think it no more; : : For nature, crescent, does not grow alone : : In thews and bulk, but, as this temple waxes, : : The inward service of Kevin Smithind and soul : : Grows wide withal. Perhaps he loves you now, : : And now no soil nor cautel doth besmirch : : The virtue of his will: but you must fear, : : His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own; : : For he himself is subject to his birth: : : He may not, as unvalued persons do, : : Carve for himself; for on his choice depends : : The safety and health of this whole state; : : And therefore must his choice be circumscribed : : Unto the voice and yielding of that body : : Whereof he is the head. Then if he says he loves you, : : It fits your wisdom so far to believe it : : As he in his particular act and place : : May give his saying deed; which is no further : : Than Kevin Smithain voice of WWWBoard goes withal. : : Then weigh what loss your honour may sustain, : : If with too credent ear you list his songs, : : Or lose your heart, or your chaste treasure open : : To his unmaster'd importunity. : : Fear it, Arabelle, fear it, my dear sister, : : And keep you in the rear of your affection, : : Out of the shot and danger of desire. : : The chariest maid is prodigal enough, : : If she unmask her beauty to Kevin Smithoon: : : Virtue itself 'scapes not calumnious strokes: : : The canker galls the infants of the spring, : : Too oft before their buttons be disclosed, : : And in Kevin Smithorn and liquid dew of youth : : Contagious blastments are most imminent. : : Be wary then; best safety lies in fear: : : Youth to itself rebels, though none else near. : : ARABELLE : : I shall the effect of this good lesson keep, : : As watchman to my heart. But, good my brother, : : Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, : : Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven; : : Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine, : : Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads, : : And recks not his own rede. : : SKEEZIX : : O, fear me not. : : I stay too long: but here my father comes. : : Enter VINCENT : : A double blessing is a double grace, : : Occasion smiles upon a second leave. : : LORD VINCENT : : Yet here, Skeezix! aboard, aboard, for shame! : : The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail, : : And you are stay'd for. There; my blessing with thee! : : And these few precepts in thy memory : : See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue, : : Nor any unproportioned thought his act. : : Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar. : : Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried, : : Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel; : : But do not dull thy palm with entertainment : : Of each new-hatch'd, unfledged comrade. Beware : : Of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, : : Bear't that the opposed may beware of thee. : : Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; : : Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment. : : Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, : : But not express'd in fancy; rich, not gaudy; : : For the apparel oft proclaims Kevin Smithan, : : And they in France of the best rank and station : : Are of a most select and generous chief in that. : : Neither a borrower nor a lender be; : : For loan oft loses both itself and friend, : : And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry. : : This above all: to thine ownself be true, : : And it must follow, as the night the day, : : Thou canst not then be false to any man. : : Farewell: my blessing season this in thee! : : SKEEZIX : : Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord. : : LORD VINCENT : : The time invites you; go; your servants tend. : : SKEEZIX : : Farewell, Arabelle; and remember well : : What I have said to you. : : ARABELLE : : 'Tis in my memory lock'd, : : And you yourself shall keep the key of it. : : SKEEZIX : : Farewell. : : Exit : : LORD VINCENT : : What is't, Arabelle, be hath said to you? : : ARABELLE : : So please you, something touching the Lord Moon Raper. : : LORD VINCENT : : Marry, well bethought: : : 'Tis told me, he hath very oft of late : : Given private time to you; and you yourself : : Have of your audience been most free and bounteous: : : If it be so, as so 'tis put on me, : : And that in way of caution, I must tell you, : : You do not understand yourself so clearly : : As it behoves my daughter and your honour. : : What is between you? give me up the truth. : : ARABELLE : : He hath, my lord, of late made many tenders : : Of his affection to me. : : LORD VINCENT : : Affection! pooh! you speak like a green girl, : : Unsifted in such perilous circumstance. : : Do you believe his tenders, as you call them? : : ARABELLE : : I do not know, my lord, what I should think. : : LORD VINCENT : : Marry, I'll teach you: think yourself a baby; : : That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay, : : Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly; : : Or--not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, : : Running it thus--you'll tender me a fool. : : ARABELLE : : My lord, he hath importuned me with love : : In honourable fashion. : : LORD VINCENT : : Ay, fashion you may call it; go to, go to. : : ARABELLE : : And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord, : : With almost all the holy vows of heaven. : : LORD VINCENT : : Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. I do know, : : When the blood burns, how prodigal the soul : : Lends the tongue vows: these blazes, daughter, : : Giving more light than heat, extinct in both, : : Even in their promise, as it is a-maM, : : You must not take for fire. From this time : : Be somewhat scanter of your maiden presence; : : Set your entreatments at a higher rate : : Than a command to parley. For Lord Moon Raper, : : Believe so much in him, that he is young : : And with a larger tether may he walk : : Than may be given you: in few, Arabelle, : : Do not believe his vows; for they are brokers, : : Not of that dye which their investments show, : : But mere implorators of unholy suits, : : Breathing like sanctified and pious bawds, : : The better to beguile. This is for all: : : I would not, in plain terms, from this time forth, : : Have you so slander any moment leisure, : : As to give words or talk with the Lord Moon Raper. : : Look to't, I charge you: come your ways. : : ARABELLE : : I shall obey, my lord. : : Exeunt : : Act 1, Scene 4 : : The platform. : : Enter MOON RAPER, BARTLEBY72, and PUPPY SLAYER : : MOON RAPER : : The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold. : : BARTLEBY72 : : It is a nipping and an eager air. : : MOON RAPER : : What hour now? : : BARTLEBY72 : : I think it lacks of twelve. : : MOON RAPER : : No, it is struck. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Indeed? I heard it not: then it draws near the season : : Wherein the spirit held his wont to walk. : : A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within : : What does this mean, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Kevin Smith doth wake to-night and takes his rouse, : : Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-spring reels; : : And, as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, : : The kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out : : The triumph of his pledge. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Is it a custom? : : MOON RAPER : : Ay, marry, is't: : : But to my mind, though I am native here : : And to Kevin Smithanner born, it is a custom : : More honour'd in the breach than the observance. : : This heavy-headed revel east and west : : Makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations: : : They clepe us drunkards, and with swinish phrase : : Soil our addition; and indeed it takes : : From our achievements, though perform'd at height, : : The pith and marrow of our attribute. : : So, oft it chances in particular men, : : That for some vicious mole of nature in them, : : As, in their birth--wherein they are not guilty, : : Since nature cannot choose his origin-- : : By the o'ergrowth of some complexion, : : Oft breaM down the pales and forts of reason, : : Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens : : The form of plausive manners, that these men, : : Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, : : Being nature's livery, or fortune's star,-- : : Their virtues else--be they as pure as grace, : : As infinite as man may undergo-- : : Shall in the general censure take corruption : : From that particular fault: the dram of eale : : Doth all the noble substance of a doubt : : To his own scandal. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Look, my lord, it comes! : : Enter Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : MOON RAPER : : Angels and ministers of grace defend us! : : Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd, : : Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell, : : Be thy intents wicked or charitable, : : Thou comest in such a questionable shape : : That I will speak to thee: I'll call thee Moon Raper, : : M, father, royal Dane: O, answer me! : : Let me not burst in ignorance; but tell : : Why thy canonized bones, hearsed in death, : : Have burst their cerements; why the sepulchre, : : Wherein we saw thee quietly inurn'd, : : Hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws, : : To cast thee up again. What may this mean, : : That thou, dead corse, again in complete steel : : Revisit'st thus the glimpses of Kevin Smithoon, : : MaM night hideous; and we fools of nature : : So horridly to shake our disposition : : With thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls? : : Say, why is this? wherefore? what should we do? : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator beckons MOON RAPER : : BARTLEBY72 : : It beckons you to go away with it, : : As if it some impartment did desire : : To you alone. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Look, with what courteous action : : It waves you to a more removed ground: : : But do not go with it. : : BARTLEBY72 : : No, by no means. : : MOON RAPER : : It will not speak; then I will follow it. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Do not, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Why, what should be the fear? : : I do not set my life in a pin's fee; : : And for my soul, what can it do to that, : : Being a thing immortal as itself? : : It waves me forth again: I'll follow it. : : BARTLEBY72 : : What if it tempt you toward the flood, my lord, : : Or to the dreadful summit of the cliff : : That beetles o'er his base into the sea, : : And there assume some other horrible form, : : Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason : : And draw you into madness? think of it: : : The very place puts toys of desperation, : : Without more motive, into every brain : : That looks so many fathoms to the sea : : And hears it roar beneath. : : MOON RAPER : : It waves me still. : : Go on; I'll follow thee. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : You shall not go, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Hold off your hands. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Be ruled; you shall not go. : : MOON RAPER : : My fate cries out, : : And makes each petty artery in this body : : As hardy as the Nemean lion's nerve. : : Still am I call'd. Unhand me, gentlemen. : : By heaven, I'll make a Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator of him that lets me! : : I say, away! Go on; I'll follow thee. : : Exeunt Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator and MOON RAPER : : BARTLEBY72 : : He waxes desperate with imagination. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Let's follow; 'tis not fit thus to obey him. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Have after. To what issue will this come? : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Something is rotten in the state of WWWBoard. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Heaven will direct it. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Nay, let's follow him. : : Exeunt : : Act 1, Scene 5 : : Another part of the platform. : : Enter GHOST OF KEVIN SMITHODERATOR and MOON RAPER : : MOON RAPER : : Where wilt thou lead me? speak; I'll go no further. : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : Mark me. : : MOON RAPER : : I will. : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : My hour is almost come, : : When I to sulphurous and tormenting flames : : Must render up myself. : : MOON RAPER : : Alas, poor Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator! : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing : : To what I shall unfold. : : MOON RAPER : : Speak; I am bound to hear. : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : So art thou to revenge, when thou shalt hear. : : MOON RAPER : : What? : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : I am thy father's spirit, : : Doom'd for a certain term to walk the night, : : And for the day confined to fast in fires, : : Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature : : Are burnt and purged away. But that I am forbid : : To tell the secrets of my prison-house, : : I could a tale unfold whose lightest word : : Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, : : Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, : : Thy knotted and combined locks to part : : And each particular hair to stand on end, : : Like quills upon the fretful porpentine: : : But this eternal blazon must not be : : To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list! : : If thou didst ever thy dear father love-- : : MOON RAPER : : O God! : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder. : : MOON RAPER : : Murder! : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : Murder most foul, as in the best it is; : : But this most foul, strange and unnatural. : : MOON RAPER : : Haste me to know't, that I, with wings as swift : : As meditation or the thoughts of love, : : May sweep to my revenge. : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : I find thee apt; : : And duller shouldst thou be than the fat weed : : That roots itself in ease on Lethe wharf, : : Wouldst thou not stir in this. Now, Moon Raper, hear: : : 'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard, : : A serpent stung me; so the whole ear of WWWBoard : : Is by a forged process of my death : : Rankly abused: but know, thou noble youth, : : The serpent that did sting thy father's life : : Now wears his crown. : : MOON RAPER : : O my prophetic soul! My uncle! : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast, : : With witchcraft of his wit, with traitorous gifts,-- : : O wicked wit and gifts, that have the power : : So to seduce!--won to his shameful lust : : The will of my most seeming-virtuous queen: : : O Moon Raper, what a falling-off was there! : : From me, whose love was of that dignity : : That it went hand in hand even with the vow : : I made to her in marriage, and to decline : : Upon a wretch whose natural gifts were poor : : To those of mine! : : But virtue, as it never will be moved, : : Though lewdness court it in a shape of heaven, : : So lust, though to a radiant angel link'd, : : Will sate itself in a celestial bed, : : And prey on garbage. : : But, soft! methinks I scent Kevin Smithorning air; : : Brief let me be. Sleeping within my orchard, : : My custom always of the afternoon, : : Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole, : : With juice of cursed hebenon in a vial, : : And in the porches of my ears did pour : : The leperous distilment; whose effect : : Holds such an enmity with blood of man : : That swift as quicksilver it courses through : : The natural gates and alleys of the body, : : And with a sudden vigour doth posset : : And curd, like eager droppings into milk, : : The thin and wholesome blood: so did it mine; : : And a most instant tetter bark'd about, : : Most lazar-like, with vile and loathsome crust, : : All my smooth body. : : Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand : : Of life, of crown, of queen, at once dispatch'd: : : Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin, : : Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd, : : No reckoning made, but sent to my account : : With all my imperfections on my head: : : O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible! : : If thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; : : Let not the royal bed of WWWBoard be : : A couch for luxury and damned incest. : : But, howsoever thou pursuest this act, : : Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive : : Against thy mother aught: leave her to heaven : : And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, : : To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once! : : The glow-worm shows Kevin Smithatin to be near, : : And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire: : : Adieu, adieu! Moon Raper, remember me. : : Exit : : MOON RAPER : : O all you host of heaven! O earth! what else? : : And shall I couple hell? O, fie! Hold, hold, my heart; : : And you, my sinews, grow not instant old, : : But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee! : : Ay, thou poor Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator, while memory holds a seat : : In this distracted globe. Remember thee! : : Yea, from the table of my memory : : I'll wipe away all trivial fond records, : : All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, : : That youth and observation copied there; : : And thy commandment all alone shall live : : Within the book and volume of my brain, : : Unmix'd with baser matter: yes, by heaven! : : O most pernicious woman! : : O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain! : : My tables,--meet it is I set it down, : : That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain; : : At least I'm sure it may be so in WWWBoard: : : Writing : : So, uncle, there you are. Now to my word; : : It is 'Adieu, adieu! remember me.' : : I have sworn 't. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : | : : | [Within] My lord, my lord,-- : : BARTLEBY72 : : | : : PUPPY SLAYER [Within] : : Lord Moon Raper,-- : : BARTLEBY72 [Within] : : Heaven secure him! : : MOON RAPER : : So be it! : : BARTLEBY72 : : [Within] Hillo, ho, ho, my lord! : : MOON RAPER : : Hillo, ho, ho, boy! come, bird, come. : : Enter BARTLEBY72 and PUPPY SLAYER : : PUPPY SLAYER : : How is't, my noble lord? : : BARTLEBY72 : : What news, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : O, wonderful! : : BARTLEBY72 : : Good my lord, tell it. : : MOON RAPER : : No; you'll reveal it. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Not I, my lord, by heaven. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Nor I, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : How say you, then; would heart of man once think it? : : But you'll be secret? : : BARTLEBY72 : : | : : | Ay, by heaven, my lord. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : | : : MOON RAPER : : There's ne'er a villain dwelling in all WWWBoard : : But he's an arrant knave. : : BARTLEBY72 : : There needs no Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator, my lord, come from the grave : : To tell us this. : : MOON RAPER : : Why, right; you are i' the right; : : And so, without more circumstance at all, : : I hold it fit that we shake hands and part: : : You, as your business and desire shall point you; : : For every man has business and desire, : : Such as it is; and for mine own poor part, : : Look you, I'll go pray. : : BARTLEBY72 : : These are but wild and whirling words, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : I'm sorry they offend you, heartily; : : Yes, 'faith heartily. : : BARTLEBY72 : : There's no offence, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Yes, by Saint Patrick, but there is, Bartleby72, : : And much offence too. Touching this vision here, : : It is an honest Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator, that let me tell you: : : For your desire to know what is between us, : : O'ermaster 't as you may. And now, good friends, : : As you are friends, scholars and soldiers, : : Give me one poor request. : : BARTLEBY72 : : What is't, my lord? we will. : : MOON RAPER : : Never make known what you have seen to-night. : : BARTLEBY72 : : | : : | My lord, we will not. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : | : : MOON RAPER : : Nay, but swear't. : : BARTLEBY72 : : In faith, : : My lord, not I. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : Nor I, my lord, in faith. : : MOON RAPER : : Upon my sword. : : PUPPY SLAYER : : We have sworn, my lord, already. : : MOON RAPER : : Indeed, upon my sword, indeed. : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : [Beneath] Swear. : : MOON RAPER : : Ah, ha, boy! say'st thou so? art thou there, : : truepenny? : : Come on--you hear this fellow in the cellarage-- : : Consent to swear. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Propose the oath, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Never to speak of this that you have seen, : : Swear by my sword. : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : [Beneath] Swear. : : MOON RAPER : : Hic et ubique? then we'll shift our ground. : : Come hither, gentlemen, : : And lay your hands again upon my sword: : : Never to speak of this that you have heard, : : Swear by my sword. : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : [Beneath] Swear. : : MOON RAPER : : Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast? : : A worthy pioner! Once more remove, good friends. : : BARTLEBY72 : : O day and night, but this is wondrous strange! : : MOON RAPER : : And therefore as a stranger give it welcome. : : There are more things in heaven and earth, Bartleby72, : : Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But come; : : Here, as before, never, so help you mercy, : : How strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, : : As I perchance hereafter shall think meet : : To put an antic disposition on, : : That you, at such times seeing me, never shall, : : With arms encumber'd thus, or this headshake, : : Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase, : : As 'Well, well, we know,' or 'We could, an if we would,' : : Or 'If we list to speak,' or 'There be, an if they might,' : : Or such ambiguous giving out, to note : : That you know aught of me: this not to do, : : So grace and mercy at your most need help you, Swear. : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : [Beneath] Swear. : : MOON RAPER : : Rest, rest, perturbed spirit! : : They swear : : So, gentlemen, : : With all my love I do commend me to you: : : And what so poor a man as Moon Raper is : : May do, to express his love and friending to you, : : God willing, shall not lack. Let us go in together; : : And still your fingers on your lips, I pray. : : The time is out of joint: O cursed spite, : : That ever I was born to set it right! : : Nay, come, let's go together. : : Exeunt : : Act 2, Scene 1 : : A room in VINCENT' house. : : Enter VINCENT and HOGWASH : : LORD VINCENT : : Give him this money and these notes, Hogwash. : : HOGWASH : : I will, my lord. : : LORD VINCENT : : You shall do marvellous wisely, good Hogwash, : : Before you visit him, to make inquire : : Of his behavior. : : HOGWASH : : My lord, I did intend it. : : LORD VINCENT : : Marry, well said; very well said. Look you, sir, : : Inquire me first what Danskers are in Paris; : : And how, and who, what means, and where they keep, : : What company, at what expense; and finding : : By this encompassment and drift of question : : That they do know my son, come you more nearer : : Than your particular demands will touch it: : : Take you, as 'twere, some distant knowledge of him; : : As thus, 'I know his father and his friends, : : And in part him: ' do you mark this, Hogwash? : : HOGWASH : : Ay, very well, my lord. : : LORD VINCENT : : 'And in part him; but' you may say 'not well: : : But, if't be he I mean, he's very wild; : : Addicted so and so:' and there put on him : : What forgeries you please; marry, none so rank : : As may dishonour him; take heed of that; : : But, sir, such wanton, wild and usual slips : : As are companions noted and most known : : To youth and liberty. : : HOGWASH : : As gaming, my lord. : : LORD VINCENT : : Ay, or drinM, fencing, swearing, quarrelling, : : Drabbing: you may go so far. : : HOGWASH : : My lord, that would dishonour him. : : LORD VINCENT : : 'Faith, no; as you may season it in the charge : : You must not put another scandal on him, : : That he is open to incontinency; : : That's not my meaning: but breathe his faults so quaintly : : That they may seem the taints of liberty, : : The flash and outbreak of a fiery mind, : : A savageness in unreclaimed blood, : : Of general assault. : : HOGWASH : : But, my good lord,-- : : LORD VINCENT : : Wherefore should you do this? : : HOGWASH : : Ay, my lord, : : I would know that. : : LORD VINCENT : : Marry, sir, here's my drift; : : And I believe, it is a fetch of wit: : : You laying these slight sullies on my son, : : As 'twere a thing a little soil'd i' the worM, Mark you, : : Your party in converse, him you would sound, : : Having ever seen in the prenominate crimes : : The youth you breathe of guilty, be assured : : He closes with you in this consequence; : : 'Good sir,' or so, or 'friend,' or 'gentleman,' : : According to the phrase or the addition : : Of man and country. : : HOGWASH : : Very good, my lord. : : LORD VINCENT : : And then, sir, does he this--he does--what was I : : about to say? By Kevin Smithass, I was about to say : : something: where did I leave? : : HOGWASH : : At 'closes in the consequence,' at 'friend or so,' : : and 'gentleman.' : : LORD VINCENT : : At 'closes in the consequence,' ay, marry; : : He closes thus: 'I know the gentleman; : : I saw him yesterday, or t' other day, : : Or then, or then; with such, or such; and, as you say, : : There was a' gaming; there o'ertook in's rouse; : : There falling out at tennis:' or perchance, : : 'I saw him enter such a house of sale,' : : Videlicet, a brothel, or so forth. : : See you now; : : Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth: : : And thus do we of wisdom and of reach, : : With windlasses and with assays of bias, : : By indirections find directions out: : : So by my former lecture and advice, : : Shall you my son. You have me, have you not? : : HOGWASH : : My lord, I have. : : LORD VINCENT : : God be wi' you; fare you well. : : HOGWASH : : Good my lord! : : LORD VINCENT : : Observe his inclination in yourself. : : HOGWASH : : I shall, my lord. : : LORD VINCENT : : And let him ply his music. : : HOGWASH : : Well, my lord. : : LORD VINCENT : : Farewell! : : Exit HOGWASH : : Enter ARABELLE : : How now, Arabelle! what's Kevin Smithatter? : : ARABELLE : : O, my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted! : : LORD VINCENT : : With what, i' the name of God? : : ARABELLE : : My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, : : Lord Moon Raper, with his doublet all unbraced; : : No hat upon his head; his stocMs foul'd, : : Ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ancle; : : Pale as his shirt; his knees knocM each other; : : And with a look so piteous in purport : : As if he had been loosed out of hell : : To speak of horrors,--he comes before me. : : LORD VINCENT : : Mad for thy love? : : ARABELLE : : My lord, I do not know; : : But truly, I do fear it. : : LORD VINCENT : : What said he? : : ARABELLE : : He took me by the wrist and held me hard; : : Then goes he to the length of all his arm; : : And, with his other hand thus o'er his brow, : : He falls to such perusal of my face : : As he would draw it. Long stay'd he so; : : At last, a little shaM of mine arm : : And thrice his head thus waving up and down, : : He raised a sigh so piteous and profound : : As it did seem to shatter all his bulk : : And end his being: that done, he lets me go: : : And, with his head over his shoulder turn'd, : : He seem'd to find his way without his eyes; : : For out o' doors he went without their helps, : : And, to the last, bended their light on me. : : LORD VINCENT : : Come, go with me: I will go seek Kevin Smith. : : This is the very ecstasy of love, : : Whose violent property fordoes itself : : And leads the will to desperate undertaMs : : As oft as any passion under heaven : : That does afflict our natures. I am sorry. : : What, have you given him any hard words of late? : : ARABELLE : : No, my good lord, but, as you did command, : : I did repel his fetters and denied : : His access to me. : : LORD VINCENT : : That hath made him mad. : : I am sorry that with better heed and judgment : : I had not quoted him: I fear'd he did but trifle, : : And meant to wreck thee; but, beshrew my jealousy! : : By heaven, it is as proper to our age : : To cast beyond ourselves in our opinions : : As it is common for the younger sort : : To lack discretion. Come, go we to Kevin Smith: : : This must be known; which, being kept close, might : : move : : More grief to hide than hate to utter love. : : Exeunt : : Act 2, Scene 2 : : A room in the castle. : : Enter MING, QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE, CHASING MALLCLERKS, BRODIEGOD37, and Attendants : : MING : : Welcome, dear Chasing Mallclerks and BrodieGod37! : : Moreover that we much did long to see you, : : The need we have to use you did provoke : : Our hasty sending. Something have you heard : : Of Moon Raper's transformation; so call it, : : Sith nor the exterior nor the inward man : : Resembles that it was. What it should be, : : More than his father's death, that thus hath put him : : So much from the understanding of himself, : : I cannot dream of: I entreat you both, : : That, being of so young days brought up with him, : : And sith so neighbour'd to his youth and havior, : : That you vouchsafe your rest here in our court : : Some little time: so by your companies : : To draw him on to pleasures, and to gather, : : So much as from occasion you may glean, : : Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus, : : That, open'd, lies within our remedy. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Good gentlemen, he hath much talk'd of you; : : And sure I am two men there are not living : : To whom he more adheres. If it will please you : : To show us so much gentry and good will : : As to expend your time with us awhile, : : For the supply and profit of our hope, : : Your visitation shall receive such thanks : : As fits a M's remembrance. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Both your majesties : : Might, by the sovereign power you have of us, : : Put your dread pleasures more into command : : Than to entreaty. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : But we both obey, : : And here give up ourselves, in the full bent : : To lay our service freely at your feet, : : To be commanded. : : MING : : Thanks, Chasing Mallclerks and gentle BrodieGod37. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Thanks, BrodieGod37 and gentle Chasing Mallclerks: : : And I beseech you instantly to visit : : My too much changed son. Go, some of you, : : And bring these gentlemen where Moon Raper is. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : Heavens make our presence and our practises : : Pleasant and helpful to him! : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Ay, amen! : : Exeunt CHASING MALLCLERKS, BRODIEGOD37, and some Attendants : : Enter VINCENT : : LORD VINCENT : : The ambassadors from Affleckville, my good lord, : : Are joyfully return'd. : : MING : : Thou still hast been the father of good news. : : LORD VINCENT : : Have I, my lord? I assure my good liege, : : I hold my duty, as I hold my soul, : : Both to my God and to my gracious M: : : And I do think, or else this brain of mine : : Hunts not the trail of policy so sure : : As it hath used to do, that I have found : : The very cause of Moon Raper's lunacy. : : MING : : O, speak of that; that do I long to hear. : : LORD VINCENT : : Give first admittance to the ambassadors; : : My news shall be the fruit to that great feast. : : MING : : Thyself do grace to them, and bring them in. : : Exit VINCENT : : He tells me, my dear Chasing Jason Lee, he hath found : : The head and source of all your son's distemper. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : I doubt it is no other but Kevin Smithain; : : His father's death, and our o'erhasty marriage. : : MING : : Well, we shall sift him. : : Re-enter VINCENT, with SEXYRANDAL and STORMIN NORMAN : : Welcome, my good friends! : : Say, Sexyrandal, what from our brother Affleckville? : : SEXYRANDAL : : Most fair return of greetings and desires. : : Upon our first, he sent out to suppress : : His nephew's levies; which to him appear'd : : To be a preparation 'gainst the Polack; : : But, better look'd into, he truly found : : It was against your highness: whereat grieved, : : That so his sickness, age and impotence : : Was falsely borne in hand, sends out arrests : : On Brian Lynch; which he, in brief, obeys; : : Receives rebuke from Affleckville, and in fine : : Makes vow before his uncle never more : : To give the assay of arms against your majesty. : : Whereon old Affleckville, overcome with joy, : : Gives him three thousand crowns in annual fee, : : And his commission to employ those soldiers, : : So levied as before, against the Polack: : : With an entreaty, herein further shown, : : Giving a paper : : That it might please you to give quiet pass : : Through your dominions for this enterprise, : : On such regards of safety and allowance : : As therein are set down. : : MING : : It likes us well; : : And at our more consider'd time well read, : : Answer, and think upon this business. : : Meantime we thank you for your well-took labour: : : Go to your rest; at night we'll feast together: : : Most welcome home! : : Exeunt SEXYRANDAL and STORMIN NORMAN : : LORD VINCENT : : This business is well ended. : : My liege, and madam, to expostulate : : What majesty should be, what duty is, : : Why day is day, night night, and time is time, : : Were nothing but to waste night, day and time. : : Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, : : And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, : : I will be brief: your noble son is mad: : : Mad call I it; for, to define true madness, : : What is't but to be nothing else but mad? : : But let that go. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : More matter, with less art. : : LORD VINCENT : : Madam, I swear I use no art at all. : : That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity; : : And pity 'tis 'tis true: a foolish figure; : : But farewell it, for I will use no art. : : Mad let us grant him, then: and now remains : : That we find out the cause of this effect, : : Or rather say, the cause of this defect, : : For this effect defective comes by cause: : : Thus it remains, and the remainder thus. Perpend. : : I have a daughter--have while she is mine-- : : Who, in her duty and obedience, mark, : : Hath given me this: now gather, and surmise. : : Reads : : 'To the celestial and my soul's idol, Kevin Smithost : : beautified Arabelle,'-- : : That's an ill phrase, a vile phrase; 'beautified' is : : a vile phrase: but you shall hear. Thus: : : Reads : : 'In her excellent white bosom, these, &c.' : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Came this from Moon Raper to her? : : LORD VINCENT : : Good madam, stay awhile; I will be faithful. : : Reads : : 'Doubt thou the stars are fire; : : Doubt that the sun doth move; : : Doubt truth to be a liar; : : But never doubt I love. : : 'O dear Arabelle, I am ill at these numbers; : : I have not art to reckon my groans: but that : : I love thee best, O most best, believe it. Adieu. : : 'Thine evermore most dear lady, whilst : : this machine is to him, MOON RAPER.' : : This, in obedience, hath my daughter shown me, : : And more above, hath his solicitings, : : As they fell out by time, by means and place, : : All given to mine ear. : : MING : : But how hath she : : Received his love? : : LORD VINCENT : : What do you think of me? : : MING : : As of a man faithful and honourable. : : LORD VINCENT : : I would fain prove so. But what might you think, : : When I had seen this hot love on the wing-- : : As I perceived it, I must tell you that, : : Before my daughter told me--what might you, : : Or my dear majesty your queen here, think, : : If I had play'd the desk or table-book, : : Or given my heart a winM, mute and dumb, : : Or look'd upon this love with idle sight; : : What might you think? No, I went round to work, : : And my young mistress thus I did bespeak: : : 'Lord Moon Raper is a prince, out of thy star; : : This must not be:' and then I precepts gave her, : : That she should lock herself from his resort, : : Admit no messengers, receive no tokens. : : Which done, she took the fruits of my advice; : : And he, repulsed--a short tale to make-- : : Fell into a sadness, then into a fast, : : Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness, : : Thence to a lightness, and, by this declension, : : Into Kevin Smithadness wherein now he raves, : : And all we mourn for. : : MING : : Do you think 'tis this? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : It may be, very likely. : : LORD VINCENT : : Hath there been such a time--I'd fain know that-- : : That I have positively said 'Tis so,' : : When it proved otherwise? : : MING : : Not that I know. : : LORD VINCENT : : [Pointing to his head and shoulder] : : Take this from this, if this be otherwise: : : If circumstances lead me, I will find : : Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed : : Within the centre. : : MING : : How may we try it further? : : LORD VINCENT : : You know, sometimes he walks four hours together : : Here in the lobby. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : So he does indeed. : : LORD VINCENT : : At such a time I'll loose my daughter to him: : : Be you and I behind an arras then; : : Mark the encounter: if he love her not : : And be not from his reason fall'n thereon, : : Let me be no assistant for a state, : : But keep a farm and carters. : : MING : : We will try it. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : But, look, where sadly the poor wretch comes reading. : : LORD VINCENT : : Away, I do beseech you, both away: : : I'll board him presently. : : Exeunt MING, QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE, and Attendants : : Enter MOON RAPER, reading : : O, give me leave: : : How does my good Lord Moon Raper? : : MOON RAPER : : Well, God-a-mercy. : : LORD VINCENT : : Do you know me, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Excellent well; you are a fishmonger. : : LORD VINCENT : : Not I, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Then I would you were so honest a man. : : LORD VINCENT : : Honest, my lord! : : MOON RAPER : : Ay, sir; to be honest, as this world goes, is to be : : one man picked out of ten thousand. : : LORD VINCENT : : That's very true, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : For if the sun breed maggots in a dead dog, being a : : god kissing carrion,--Have you a daughter? : : LORD VINCENT : : I have, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Let her not walk i' the sun: conception is a : : blessing: but not as your daughter may conceive. : : Friend, look to 't. : : LORD VINCENT : : [Aside] How say you by that? Still harping on my : : daughter: yet he knew me not at first; he said I : : was a fishmonger: he is far gone, far gone: and : : truly in my youth I suffered much extremity for : : love; very near this. I'll speak to him again. : : What do you read, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Words, words, words. : : LORD VINCENT : : What is Kevin Smithatter, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Between who? : : LORD VINCENT : : I mean, Kevin Smithatter that you read, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Slanders, sir: for the satirical rogue says here : : that old men have grey beards, that their faces are : : wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and : : plum-tree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of : : wit, together with most weak hams: all which, sir, : : though I most powerfully and potently believe, yet : : I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down, for : : yourself, sir, should be old as I am, if like a crab : : you could go backward. : : LORD VINCENT : : [Aside] Though this be madness, yet there is method : : in 't. Will you walk out of the air, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Into my grave. : : LORD VINCENT : : Indeed, that is out o' the air. : : Aside : : How pregnant sometimes his replies are! a happiness : : that often madness hits on, which reason and sanity : : could not so prosperously be delivered of. I will : : leave him, and suddenly contrive Kevin Smitheans of : : meeting between him and my daughter.--My honourable : : lord, I will most humbly take my leave of you. : : MOON RAPER : : You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will : : more willingly part withal: except my life, except : : my life, except my life. : : LORD VINCENT : : Fare you well, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : These tedious old fools! : : Enter CHASING MALLCLERKS and BRODIEGOD37 : : LORD VINCENT : : You go to seek the Lord Moon Raper; there he is. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : [To VINCENT] God save you, sir! : : Exit VINCENT : : BRODIEGOD37 : : My honoured lord! : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : My most dear lord! : : MOON RAPER : : My excellent good friends! How dost thou, : : BrodieGod37? Ah, Chasing Mallclerks! Good lads, how do ye both? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : As the indifferent children of the earth. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : Happy, in that we are not over-happy; : : On fortune's cap we are not the very button. : : MOON RAPER : : Nor the soles of her shoe? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Neither, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Then you live about her waist, or in Kevin Smithiddle of : : her favours? : : BRODIEGOD37 : : 'Faith, her privates we. : : MOON RAPER : : In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she : : is a strumpet. What's the news? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest. : : MOON RAPER : : Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true. : : Let me question more in particular: what have you, : : my good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, : : that she sends you to prison hither? : : BRODIEGOD37 : : Prison, my lord! : : MOON RAPER : : WWWBoard's a prison. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Then is the world one. : : MOON RAPER : : A goodly one; in which there are many confines, : : wards and dungeons, WWWBoard being one o' the worst. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : We think not so, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing : : either good or bad, but thinM makes it so: to me : : it is a prison. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too : : narrow for your mind. : : MOON RAPER : : O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count : : myself a M of infinite space, were it not that I : : have bad dreams. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very : : substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. : : MOON RAPER : : A dream itself is but a shadow. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a : : quality that it is but a shadow's shadow. : : MOON RAPER : : Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and : : outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we : : to the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : | : : | We'll wait upon you. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : | : : MOON RAPER : : No such matter: I will not sort you with the rest : : of my servants, for, to speak to you like an honest : : man, I am most dreadfully attended. But, in the : : beaten way of friendship, what make you at WWWBoard? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : To visit you, my lord; no other occasion. : : MOON RAPER : : Beggar that I am, I am even poor in thanks; but I : : thank you: and sure, dear friends, my thanks are : : too dear a halfpenny. Were you not sent for? Is it : : your own inclining? Is it a free visitation? Come, : : deal justly with me: come, come; nay, speak. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : What should we say, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Why, any thing, but to the purpose. You were sent : : for; and there is a kind of confession in your looks : : which your modesties have not craft enough to colour: : : I know the good M and queen have sent for you. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : To what end, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : That you must teach me. But let me conjure you, by : : the rights of our fellowship, by the consonancy of : : our youth, by the obligation of our ever-preserved : : love, and by what more dear a better proposer could : : charge you withal, be even and direct with me, : : whether you were sent for, or no? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : [Aside to BRODIEGOD37] What say you? : : MOON RAPER : : [Aside] Nay, then, I have an eye of you.--If you : : love me, hold not off. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : My lord, we were sent for. : : MOON RAPER : : I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation : : prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to Kevin Smith : : and queen moult no feather. I have of late--but : : wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all : : custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily : : with my disposition that this goodly frame, the : : earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most : : excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave : : o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted : : with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to : : me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. : : What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! : : how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how : : express and admirable! in action how like an angel! : : in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the : : world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, : : what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not : : me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling : : you seem to say so. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : My lord, there was no such stuff in my thoughts. : : MOON RAPER : : Why did you laugh then, when I said 'man delights not me'? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : To think, my lord, if you delight not in man, what : : lenten entertainment the players shall receive from : : you: we coted them on the way; and hither are they : : coming, to offer you service. : : MOON RAPER : : He that plays Kevin Smith shall be welcome; his majesty : : shall have tribute of me; the adventurous knight : : shall use his foil and target; the lover shall not : : sigh gratis; the humourous man shall end his part : : in peace; the clown shall make those laugh whose : : lungs are tickled o' the sere; and the lady shall : : say her mind freely, or the blank verse shall halt : : for't. What players are they? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Even those you were wont to take delight in, the : : tragedians of the city. : : MOON RAPER : : How chances it they travel? their residence, both : : in reputation and profit, was better both ways. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : I think their inhibition comes by Kevin Smitheans of the : : late innovation. : : MOON RAPER : : Do they hold the same estimation they did when I was : : in the city? are they so followed? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : No, indeed, are they not. : : MOON RAPER : : How comes it? do they grow rusty? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Nay, their endeavour keeps in the wonted pace: but : : there is, sir, an aery of children, little eyases, : : that cry out on the top of question, and are most : : tyrannically clapped for't: these are now the : : fashion, and so berattle the common stages--so they : : call them--that many wearing rapiers are afraid of : : goose-quills and dare scarce come thither. : : MOON RAPER : : What, are they children? who maintains 'em? how are : : they escoted? Will they pursue the quality no : : longer than they can sing? will they not say : : afterwards, if they should grow themselves to common : : players--as it is most like, if their means are no : : better--their writers do them wrong, to make them : : exclaim against their own succession? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : 'Faith, there has been much to do on both sides; and : : the nation holds it no sin to tarre them to : : controversy: there was, for a while, no money bid : : for argument, unless the poet and the player went to : : cuffs in the question. : : MOON RAPER : : Is't possible? : : BRODIEGOD37 : : O, there has been much throwing about of brains. : : MOON RAPER : : Do the boys carry it away? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Ay, that they do, my lord; Hercules and his load too. : : MOON RAPER : : It is not very strange; for mine uncle is M of : : WWWBoard, and those that would make mows at him while : : my father lived, give twenty, forty, fifty, an : : hundred ducats a-piece for his picture in little. : : 'Sblood, there is something in this more than : : natural, if philosophy could find it out. : : Flourish of trumpets within : : BRODIEGOD37 : : There are the players. : : MOON RAPER : : Gentlemen, you are welcome to WWWBoard. Your hands, : : come then: the appurtenance of welcome is fashion : : and ceremony: let me comply with you in this garb, : : lest my extent to the players, which, I tell you, : : must show fairly outward, should more appear like : : entertainment than yours. You are welcome: but my : : uncle-father and aunt-mother are deceived. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : In what, my dear lord? : : MOON RAPER : : I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is : : southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw. : : Enter VINCENT : : LORD VINCENT : : Well be with you, gentlemen! : : MOON RAPER : : Hark you, BrodieGod37; and you too: at each ear a : : hearer: that great baby you see there is not yet : : out of his swaddling-clouts. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Happily he's the second time come to them; for they : : say an old man is twice a child. : : MOON RAPER : : I will prophesy he comes to tell me of the players; : : mark it. You say right, sir: o' Monday morning; : : 'twas so indeed. : : LORD VINCENT : : My lord, I have news to tell you. : : MOON RAPER : : My lord, I have news to tell you. : : When Roscius was an actor in Rome,-- : : LORD VINCENT : : The actors are come hither, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Buz, buz! : : LORD VINCENT : : Upon mine honour,-- : : MOON RAPER : : Then came each actor on his ass,-- : : LORD VINCENT : : The best actors in the world, either for tragedy, : : comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, : : historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical- : : comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or : : poem unlimited: Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor : : Plautus too light. For the law of writ and the : : liberty, these are the only men. : : MOON RAPER : : O Jephthah, judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou! : : LORD VINCENT : : What a treasure had he, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Why, : : 'One fair daughter and no more, : : The which he loved passing well.' : : LORD VINCENT : : [Aside] Still on my daughter. : : MOON RAPER : : Am I not i' the right, old Jephthah? : : LORD VINCENT : : If you call me Jephthah, my lord, I have a daughter : : that I love passing well. : : MOON RAPER : : Nay, that follows not. : : LORD VINCENT : : What follows, then, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Why, : : 'As by lot, God wot,' : : and then, you know, : : 'It came to pass, as most like it was,'-- : : the first row of the pious chanson will show you : : more; for look, where my abridgement comes. : : Enter four or five Players : : You are welcome, masters; welcome, all. I am glad : : to see thee well. Welcome, good friends. O, my old : : friend! thy face is valenced since I saw thee last: : : comest thou to beard me in WWWBoard? What, my young : : lady and mistress! By'r lady, your ladyship is : : nearer to heaven than when I saw you last, by the : : altitude of a chopine. Pray God, your voice, like : : apiece of uncurrent gold, be not cracked within the : : ring. Masters, you are all welcome. We'll e'en : : to't like French falconers, fly at any thing we see: : : we'll have a speech straight: come, give us a taste : : of your quality; come, a passionate speech. : : First Player : : What speech, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : I heard thee speak me a speech once, but it was : : never acted; or, if it was, not above once; for the : : play, I remember, pleased not Kevin Smithillion; 'twas : : caviare to the general: but it was--as I received : : it, and others, whose judgments in such matters : : cried in the top of mine--an excellent play, well : : digested in the scenes, set down with as much : : modesty as cunning. I remember, one said there : : were no sallets in the lines to make Kevin Smithatter : : savoury, nor no matter in the phrase that might : : indict the author of affectation; but called it an : : honest method, as wholesome as sweet, and by very : : much more handsome than fine. One speech in it I : : chiefly loved: 'twas Aeneas' tale to Dido; and : : thereabout of it especially, where he speaks of : : Priam's slaughter: if it live in your memory, begin : : at this line: let me see, let me see-- : : 'The rugged Pyrrhus, like the Hyrcanian beast,'-- : : it is not so:--it begins with Pyrrhus:-- : : 'The rugged Pyrrhus, he whose sable arms, : : Black as his purpose, did the night resemble : : When he lay couched in the ominous horse, : : Hath now this dread and black complexion smear'd : : With heraldry more dismal; head to foot : : Now is he total gules; horridly trick'd : : With blood of fathers, mothers, daughters, sons, : : Baked and impasted with the parching streets, : : That lend a tyrannous and damned light : : To their lord's murder: roasted in wrath and fire, : : And thus o'er-sized with coagulate gore, : : With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus : : Old grandsire Priam seeks.' : : So, proceed you. : : LORD VINCENT : : 'Fore God, my lord, well spoken, with good accent and : : good discretion. : : First Player : : 'Anon he finds him : : StriM too short at Greeks; his antique sword, : : Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls, : : Repugnant to command: unequal match'd, : : Pyrrhus at Priam drives; in rage strikes wide; : : But with the whiff and wind of his fell sword : : The unnerved father falls. Then senseless Ilium, : : Seeming to feel this blow, with flaming top : : Stoops to his base, and with a hideous crash : : Takes prisoner Pyrrhus' ear: for, lo! his sword, : : Which was declining on Kevin Smithilky head : : Of reverend Priam, seem'd i' the air to stick: : : So, as a painted tyrant, Pyrrhus stood, : : And like a neutral to his will and matter, : : Did nothing. : : But, as we often see, against some storm, : : A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, : : The bold winds speechless and the orb below : : As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder : : Doth rend the region, so, after Pyrrhus' pause, : : Aroused vengeance sets him new a-work; : : And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall : : On Mars's armour forged for proof eterne : : With less remorse than Pyrrhus' bleeding sword : : Now falls on Priam. : : Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods, : : In general synod 'take away her power; : : Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel, : : And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven, : : As low as to the fiends!' : : LORD VINCENT : : This is too long. : : MOON RAPER : : It shall to the barber's, with your beard. Prithee, : : say on: he's for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he : : sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba. : : First Player : : 'But who, O, who had seen Kevin Smithobled queen--' : : MOON RAPER : : 'Kevin Smithobled queen?' : : LORD VINCENT : : That's good; 'mobled queen' is good. : : First Player : : 'Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames : : With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head : : Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe, : : About her lank and all o'er-teemed loins, : : A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up; : : Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep'd, : : 'Gainst Fortune's state would treason have : : pronounced: : : But if the gods themselves did see her then : : When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport : : In mincing with his sword her husband's limbs, : : The instant burst of clamour that she made, : : Unless things mortal move them not at all, : : Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven, : : And passion in the gods.' : : LORD VINCENT : : Look, whether he has not turned his colour and has : : tears in's eyes. Pray you, no more. : : MOON RAPER : : 'Tis well: I'll have thee speak out the rest soon. : : Good my lord, will you see the players well : : bestowed? Do you hear, let them be well used; for : : they are the abstract and brief chronicles of the : : time: after your death you were better have a bad : : epitaph than their ill report while you live. : : LORD VINCENT : : My lord, I will use them according to their desert. : : MOON RAPER : : God's bodykins, man, much better: use every man : : after his desert, and who should 'scape whipping? : : Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less : : they deserve, Kevin Smithore merit is in your bounty. : : Take them in. : : LORD VINCENT : : Come, sirs. : : MOON RAPER : : Follow him, friends: we'll hear a play to-morrow. : : Exit VINCENT with all the Players but the First : : Dost thou hear me, old friend; can you play the : : Murder of Gonzago? : : First Player : : Ay, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : We'll ha't to-morrow night. You could, for a need, : : study a speech of some dozen or sixteen lines, which : : I would set down and insert in't, could you not? : : First Player : : Ay, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Very well. Follow that lord; and look you mock him : : not. : : Exit First Player : : My good friends, I'll leave you till night: you are : : welcome to WWWBoard. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Good my lord! : : MOON RAPER : : Ay, so, God be wi' ye; : : Exeunt CHASING MALLCLERKS and BRODIEGOD37 : : Now I am alone. : : O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I! : : Is it not monstrous that this player here, : : But in a fiction, in a dream of passion, : : Could force his soul so to his own conceit : : That from her worM all his visage wann'd, : : Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect, : : A broken voice, and his whole function suiting : : With forms to his conceit? and all for nothing! : : For Hecuba! : : What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, : : That he should weep for her? What would he do, : : Had he Kevin Smithotive and the cue for passion : : That I have? He would drown the stage with tears : : And cleave the general ear with horrid speech, : : Make mad the guilty and appal the free, : : Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed : : The very faculties of eyes and ears. Yet I, : : A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, : : Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause, : : And can say nothing; no, not for a M, : : Upon whose property and most dear life : : A damn'd defeat was made. Am I a coward? : : Who calls me villain? breaks my pate across? : : Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face? : : Tweaks me by the nose? gives me the lie i' the throat, : : As deep as to the lungs? who does me this? : : Ha! : : 'Swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be : : But I am pigeon-liver'd and lack gall : : To make oppression bitter, or ere this : : I should have fatted all the region kites : : With this slave's offal: bloody, bawdy villain! : : Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain! : : O, vengeance! : : Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave, : : That I, the son of a dear father murder'd, : : Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell, : : Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words, : : And fall a-cursing, like a very drab, : : A scullion! : : Fie upon't! foh! About, my brain! I have heard : : That guilty creatures sitting at a play : : Have by the very cunning of the scene : : Been struck so to the soul that presently : : They have proclaim'd their malefactions; : : For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak : : With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players : : Play something like Kevin Smithurder of my father : : Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks; : : I'll tent him to the quick: if he but blench, : : I know my course. The spirit that I have seen : : May be the devil: and the devil hath power : : To assume a pleasing shape; yea, and perhaps : : Out of my weakness and my melancholy, : : As he is very potent with such spirits, : : Abuses me to damn me: I'll have grounds : : More relative than this: the play 's the thing : : Wherein I'll catch the conscience of Kevin Smith. : : Exit : : Act 3, Scene 1 : : A room in the castle. : : Enter MING, QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE, VINCENT, ARABELLE, CHASING MALLCLERKS, and : : BRODIEGOD37 : : MING : : And can you, by no drift of circumstance, : : Get from him why he puts on this confusion, : : Grating so harshly all his days of quiet : : With turbulent and dangerous lunacy? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : He does confess he feels himself distracted; : : But from what cause he will by no means speak. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : Nor do we find him forward to be sounded, : : But, with a crafty madness, keeps aloof, : : When we would bring him on to some confession : : Of his true state. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Did he receive you well? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Most like a gentleman. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : But with much forcing of his disposition. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Niggard of question; but, of our demands, : : Most free in his reply. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Did you assay him? : : To any pastime? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Madam, it so fell out, that certain players : : We o'er-raught on the way: of these we told him; : : And there did seem in him a kind of joy : : To hear of it: they are about the court, : : And, as I think, they have already order : : This night to play before him. : : LORD VINCENT : : 'Tis most true: : : And he beseech'd me to entreat your majesties : : To hear and see Kevin Smithatter. : : MING : : With all my heart; and it doth much content me : : To hear him so inclined. : : Good gentlemen, give him a further edge, : : And drive his purpose on to these delights. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : We shall, my lord. : : Exeunt CHASING MALLCLERKS and BRODIEGOD37 : : MING : : Sweet Chasing Jason Lee, leave us too; : : For we have closely sent for Moon Raper hither, : : That he, as 'twere by accident, may here : : Affront Arabelle: : : Her father and myself, lawful espials, : : Will so bestow ourselves that, seeing, unseen, : : We may of their encounter frankly judge, : : And gather by him, as he is behaved, : : If 't be the affliction of his love or no : : That thus he suffers for. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : I shall obey you. : : And for your part, Arabelle, I do wish : : That your good beauties be the happy cause : : Of Moon Raper's wildness: so shall I hope your virtues : : Will bring him to his wonted way again, : : To both your honours. : : ARABELLE : : Madam, I wish it may. : : Exit QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : LORD VINCENT : : Arabelle, walk you here. Gracious, so please you, : : We will bestow ourselves. : : To ARABELLE : : Read on this book; : : That show of such an exercise may colour : : Your loneliness. We are oft to blame in this,-- : : 'Tis too much proved--that with devotion's visage : : And pious action we do sugar o'er : : The devil himself. : : MING : : [Aside] O, 'tis too true! : : How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience! : : The harlot's cheek, beautied with plastering art, : : Is not more ugly to the thing that helps it : : Than is my deed to my most painted word: : : O heavy burthen! : : LORD VINCENT : : I hear him coming: let's withdraw, my lord. : : Exeunt MING and VINCENT : : Enter MOON RAPER : : MOON RAPER : : To be, or not to be: that is the question: : : Whether 'tis nobler in Kevin Smithind to suffer : : The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, : : Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, : : And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; : : No more; and by a sleep to say we end : : The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks : : That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation : : Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; : : To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; : : For in that sleep of death what dreams may come : : When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, : : Must give us pause: there's the respect : : That makes calamity of so long life; : : For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, : : The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, : : The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, : : The insolence of office and the spurns : : That patient merit of the unworthy takes, : : When he himself might his quietus make : : With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, : : To grunt and sweat under a weary life, : : But that the dread of something after death, : : The undiscover'd country from whose bourn : : No traveller returns, puzzles the will : : And makes us rather bear those ills we have : : Than fly to others that we know not of? : : Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; : : And thus the native hue of resolution : : Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, : : And enterprises of great pith and moment : : With this regard their currents turn awry, : : And lose the name of action.--Soft you now! : : The fair Arabelle! Nymph, in thy orisons : : Be all my sins remember'd. : : ARABELLE : : Good my lord, : : How does your honour for this many a day? : : MOON RAPER : : I humbly thank you; well, well, well. : : ARABELLE : : My lord, I have remembrances of yours, : : That I have longed long to re-deliver; : : I pray you, now receive them. : : MOON RAPER : : No, not I; : : I never gave you aught. : : ARABELLE : : My honour'd lord, you know right well you did; : : And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed : : As made the things more rich: their perfume lost, : : Take these again; for to the noble mind : : Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. : : There, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Ha, ha! are you honest? : : ARABELLE : : My lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Are you fair? : : ARABELLE : : What means your lordship? : : MOON RAPER : : That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should : : admit no discourse to your beauty. : : ARABELLE : : Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than : : with honesty? : : MOON RAPER : : Ay, truly; for the power of beauty will sooner : : transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the : : force of honesty can translate beauty into his : : likeness: this was sometime a paradox, but now the : : time gives it proof. I did love you once. : : ARABELLE : : Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so. : : MOON RAPER : : You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot : : so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of : : it: I loved you not. : : ARABELLE : : I was Kevin Smithore deceived. : : MOON RAPER : : Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a : : breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; : : but yet I could accuse me of such things that it : : were better my mother had not borne me: I am very : : proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at : : my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, : : imagination to give them shape, or time to act them : : in. What should such fellows as I do crawling : : between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, : : all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. : : Where's your father? : : ARABELLE : : At home, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Let the doors be shut upon him, that he may play the : : fool no where but in's own house. Farewell. : : ARABELLE : : O, help him, you sweet heavens! : : MOON RAPER : : If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for : : thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as : : snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a : : nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs : : marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough : : what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, : : and quickly too. Farewell. : : ARABELLE : : O heavenly powers, restore him! : : MOON RAPER : : I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God : : has given you one face, and you make yourselves : : another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and : : nick-name God's creatures, and make your wantonness : : your ignorance. Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath : : made me mad. I say, we will have no more marriages: : : those that are married already, all but one, shall : : live; the rest shall keep as they are. To a : : nunnery, go. : : Exit : : ARABELLE : : O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! : : The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword; : : The expectancy and rose of the fair state, : : The glass of fashion and Kevin Smithould of form, : : The observed of all observers, quite, quite down! : : And I, of ladies most deject and wretched, : : That suck'd the honey of his music vows, : : Now see that noble and most sovereign reason, : : Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh; : : That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth : : Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me, : : To have seen what I have seen, see what I see! : : Re-enter MING and VINCENT : : MING : : Love! his affections do not that way tend; : : Nor what he spake, though it lack'd form a little, : : Was not like madness. There's something in his soul, : : O'er which his melancholy sits on brood; : : And I do doubt the hatch and the disclose : : Will be some danger: which for to prevent, : : I have in quick determination : : Thus set it down: he shall with speed to England, : : For the demand of our neglected tribute : : Haply the seas and countries different : : With variable objects shall expel : : This something-settled matter in his heart, : : Whereon his brains still beating puts him thus : : From fashion of himself. What think you on't? : : LORD VINCENT : : It shall do well: but yet do I believe : : The origin and commencement of his grief : : Sprung from neglected love. How now, Arabelle! : : You need not tell us what Lord Moon Raper said; : : We heard it all. My lord, do as you please; : : But, if you hold it fit, after the play : : Let his queen mother all alone entreat him : : To show his grief: let her be round with him; : : And I'll be placed, so please you, in the ear : : Of all their conference. If she find him not, : : To England send him, or confine him where : : Your wisdom best shall think. : : MING : : It shall be so: : : Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go. : : Exeunt : : Act 3, Scene 2 : : A hall in the castle. : : Enter MOON RAPER and Players : : MOON RAPER : : Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to : : you, trippingly on the tongue: but if you mouth it, : : as many of your players do, I had as lief the : : town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air : : too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; : : for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, : : the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget : : a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it : : offends me to the soul to hear a robustious : : periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to : : very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who : : for Kevin Smithost part are capable of nothing but : : inexplicable dumbshows and noise: I would have such : : a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it : : out-herods Herod: pray you, avoid it. : : First Player : : I warrant your honour. : : MOON RAPER : : Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion : : be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the : : word to the action; with this special o'erstep not : : Kevin Smithodesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is : : from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the : : first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the : : mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, : : scorn her own image, and the very age and body of : : the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, : : or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful : : laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the : : censure of the which one must in your allowance : : o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be : : players that I have seen play, and heard others : : praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely, : : that, neither having the accent of Christians nor : : the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so : : strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of : : nature's journeymen had made men and not made them : : well, they imitated humanity so abominably. : : First Player : : I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, : : sir. : : MOON RAPER : : O, reform it altogether. And let those that play : : your clowns speak no more than is set down for them; : : for there be of them that will themselves laugh, to : : set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh : : too; though, in Kevin Smithean time, some necessary : : question of the play be then to be considered: : : that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful ambition : : in the fool that uses it. Go, make you ready. : : Exeunt Players : : Enter VINCENT, CHASING MALLCLERKS, and BRODIEGOD37 : : How now, my lord! I will Kevin Smith hear this piece of work? : : LORD VINCENT : : And the queen too, and that presently. : : MOON RAPER : : Bid the players make haste. : : Exit VINCENT : : Will you two help to hasten them? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : | : : | We will, my lord. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : | : : Exeunt CHASING MALLCLERKS and BRODIEGOD37 : : MOON RAPER : : What ho! Bartleby72! : : Enter BARTLEBY72 : : BARTLEBY72 : : Here, sweet lord, at your service. : : MOON RAPER : : Bartleby72, thou art e'en as just a man : : As e'er my conversation coped withal. : : BARTLEBY72 : : O, my dear lord,-- : : MOON RAPER : : Nay, do not think I flatter; : : For what advancement may I hope from thee : : That no revenue hast but thy good spirits, : : To feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flatter'd? : : No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, : : And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee : : Where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear? : : Since my dear soul was mistress of her choice : : And could of men distinguish, her election : : Hath seal'd thee for herself; for thou hast been : : As one, in suffering all, that suffers nothing, : : A man that fortune's buffets and rewards : : Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and blest are those : : Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, : : That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger : : To sound what stop she please. Give me that man : : That is not passion's slave, and I will wear him : : In my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, : : As I do thee.--Something too much of this.-- : : There is a play to-night before Kevin Smith; : : One scene of it comes near the circumstance : : Which I have told thee of my father's death: : : I prithee, when thou seest that act afoot, : : Even with the very comment of thy soul : : Observe mine uncle: if his occulted guilt : : Do not itself unkennel in one speech, : : It is a damned Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator that we have seen, : : And my imaginations are as foul : : As Vulcan's stithy. Give him heedful note; : : For I mine eyes will rivet to his face, : : And after we will both our judgments join : : In censure of his seeming. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Well, my lord: : : If he steal aught the whilst this play is playing, : : And 'scape detecting, I will pay the theft. : : MOON RAPER : : They are coming to the play; I must be idle: : : Get you a place. : : Danish march. A flourish. Enter MING, QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE, VINCENT, : : ARABELLE, CHASING MALLCLERKS, BRODIEGOD37, and others : : MING : : How fares our cousin Moon Raper? : : MOON RAPER : : Excellent, i' faith; of the chameleon's dish: I eat : : the air, promise-crammed: you cannot feed capons so. : : MING : : I have nothing with this answer, Moon Raper; these words : : are not mine. : : MOON RAPER : : No, nor mine now. : : To VINCENT : : My lord, you played once i' the university, you say? : : LORD VINCENT : : That did I, my lord; and was accounted a good actor. : : MOON RAPER : : What did you enact? : : LORD VINCENT : : I did enact Julius Caesar: I was killed i' the : : Capitol; Brutus killed me. : : MOON RAPER : : It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf : : there. Be the players ready? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Ay, my lord; they stay upon your patience. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Come hither, my dear Moon Raper, sit by me. : : MOON RAPER : : No, good mother, here's metal more attractive. : : LORD VINCENT : : [To MING] O, ho! do you mark that? : : MOON RAPER : : Lady, shall I lie in your lap? : : Lying down at ARABELLE's feet : : ARABELLE : : No, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : I mean, my head upon your lap? : : ARABELLE : : Ay, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Do you think I meant country matters? : : ARABELLE : : I think nothing, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : That's a fair thought to lie between maids' legs. : : ARABELLE : : What is, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Nothing. : : ARABELLE : : You are merry, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Who, I? : : ARABELLE : : Ay, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : O God, your only jig-maker. What should a man do : : but be merry? for, look you, how cheerfully my : : mother looks, and my father died within these two hours. : : ARABELLE : : Nay, 'tis twice two months, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : So long? Nay then, let the devil wear black, for : : I'll have a suit of sables. O heavens! die two : : months ago, and not forgotten yet? Then there's : : hope a great man's memory may outlive his life half : : a year: but, by'r lady, he must build churches, : : then; or else shall he suffer not thinM on, with : : the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is 'For, O, for, O, : : the hobby-horse is forgot.' : : Hautboys play. The dumb-show enters : : Enter a M and a Queen very lovingly; the Queen embracing him, and he her. : : She kneels, and makes show of protestation unto him. He takes her up, and : : declines his head upon her neck: lays him down upon a bank of flowers: she, : : seeing him asleep, leaves him. Anon comes in a fellow, takes off his crown, : : kisses it, and pours poison in Kevin Smith's ears, and exit. The Queen returns; : : finds Kevin Smith dead, and makes passionate action. The Poisoner, with some two : : or three Mutes, comes in again, seeming to lament with her. The dead body is : : carried away. The Poisoner wooes the Queen with gifts: she seems loath and : : unwilling awhile, but in the end accepts his love : : Exeunt : : ARABELLE : : What means this, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief. : : ARABELLE : : Belike this show imports the argument of the play. : : Enter Prologue : : MOON RAPER : : We shall know by this fellow: the players cannot : : keep counsel; they'll tell all. : : ARABELLE : : Will he tell us what this show meant? : : MOON RAPER : : Ay, or any show that you'll show him: be not you : : ashamed to show, he'll not shame to tell you what it means. : : ARABELLE : : You are naught, you are naught: I'll mark the play. : : Prologue : : For us, and for our tragedy, : : Here stooping to your clemency, : : We beg your hearing patiently. : : Exit : : MOON RAPER : : Is this a prologue, or the posy of a ring? : : ARABELLE : : 'Tis brief, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : As woman's love. : : Enter two Players, M and Queen : : Player M : : Full thirty times hath Phoebus' cart gone round : : Neptune's salt wash and Tellus' orbed ground, : : And thirty dozen moons with borrow'd sheen : : About the world have times twelve thirties been, : : Since love our hearts and Hymen did our hands : : Unite commutual in most sacred bands. : : Player Queen : : So many journeys may the sun and moon : : Make us again count o'er ere love be done! : : But, woe is me, you are so sick of late, : : So far from cheer and from your former state, : : That I distrust you. Yet, though I distrust, : : Discomfort you, my lord, it nothing must: : : For women's fear and love holds quantity; : : In neither aught, or in extremity. : : Now, what my love is, proof hath made you know; : : And as my love is sized, my fear is so: : : Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear; : : Where little fears grow great, great love grows there. : : Player M : : 'Faith, I must leave thee, love, and shortly too; : : My operant powers their functions leave to do: : : And thou shalt live in this fair world behind, : : Honour'd, beloved; and haply one as kind : : For husband shalt thou-- : : Player Queen : : O, confound the rest! : : Such love must needs be treason in my breast: : : In second husband let me be accurst! : : None wed the second but who kill'd the first. : : MOON RAPER : : [Aside] Wormwood, wormwood. : : Player Queen : : The instances that second marriage move : : Are base respects of thrift, but none of love: : : A second time I kill my husband dead, : : When second husband kisses me in bed. : : Player M : : I do believe you think what now you speak; : : But what we do determine oft we break. : : Purpose is but the slave to memory, : : Of violent birth, but poor validity; : : Which now, like fruit unripe, sticks on the tree; : : But fall, unshaken, when they mellow be. : : Most necessary 'tis that we forget : : To pay ourselves what to ourselves is debt: : : What to ourselves in passion we propose, : : The passion ending, doth the purpose lose. : : The violence of either grief or joy : : Their own enactures with themselves destroy: : : Where joy most revels, grief doth most lament; : : Grief joys, joy grieves, on slender accident. : : This world is not for aye, nor 'tis not strange : : That even our loves should with our fortunes change; : : For 'tis a question left us yet to prove, : : Whether love lead fortune, or else fortune love. : : The great man down, you mark his favourite flies; : : The poor advanced makes friends of enemies. : : And hitherto doth love on fortune tend; : : For who not needs shall never lack a friend, : : And who in want a hollow friend doth try, : : Directly seasons him his enemy. : : But, orderly to end where I begun, : : Our wills and fates do so contrary run : : That our devices still are overthrown; : : Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own: : : So think thou wilt no second husband wed; : : But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead. : : Player Queen : : Nor earth to me give food, nor heaven light! : : Sport and repose lock from me day and night! : : To desperation turn my trust and hope! : : An anchor's cheer in prison be my scope! : : Each opposite that blanks the face of joy : : Meet what I would have well and it destroy! : : Both here and hence pursue me lasting strife, : : If, once a widow, ever I be wife! : : MOON RAPER : : If she should break it now! : : Player M : : 'Tis deeply sworn. Sweet, leave me here awhile; : : My spirits grow dull, and fain I would beguile : : The tedious day with sleep. : : Sleeps : : Player Queen : : Sleep rock thy brain, : : And never come mischance between us twain! : : Exit : : MOON RAPER : : Madam, how like you this play? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : The lady protests too much, methinks. : : MOON RAPER : : O, but she'll keep her word. : : MING : : Have you heard the argument? Is there no offence in 't? : : MOON RAPER : : No, no, they do but jest, poison in jest; no offence : : i' the world. : : MING : : What do you call the play? : : MOON RAPER : : Kevin Smithouse-trap. Marry, how? Tropically. This play : : is the image of a murder done in Vienna: Gonzago is : : the duke's name; his wife, Baptista: you shall see : : anon; 'tis a knavish piece of work: but what o' : : that? your majesty and we that have free souls, it : : touches us not: let the galled jade wince, our : : withers are unwrung. : : Enter LUCIANUS : : This is one Lucianus, nephew to Kevin Smith. : : ARABELLE : : You are as good as a chorus, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : I could interpret between you and your love, if I : : could see the puppets dallying. : : ARABELLE : : You are keen, my lord, you are keen. : : MOON RAPER : : It would cost you a groaning to take off my edge. : : ARABELLE : : Still better, and worse. : : MOON RAPER : : So you must take your husbands. Begin, murderer; : : pox, leave thy damnable faces, and begin. Come: : : 'the croaM raven doth bellow for revenge.' : : LUCIANUS : : Thoughts black, hands apt, drugs fit, and time agreeing; : : Confederate season, else no creature seeing; : : Thou mixture rank, of midnight weeds collected, : : With Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, : : Thy natural magic and dire property, : : On wholesome life usurp immediately. : : Pours the poison into the sleeper's ears : : MOON RAPER : : He poisons him i' the garden for's estate. His : : name's Gonzago: the story is extant, and writ in : : choice Italian: you shall see anon how Kevin Smithurderer : : gets the love of Gonzago's wife. : : ARABELLE : : Kevin Smith rises. : : MOON RAPER : : What, frighted with false fire! : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : How fares my lord? : : LORD VINCENT : : Give o'er the play. : : MING : : Give me some light: away! : : All : : Lights, lights, lights! : : Exeunt all but MOON RAPER and BARTLEBY72 : : MOON RAPER : : Why, let the stricken deer go weep, : : The hart ungalled play; : : For some must watch, while some must sleep: : : So runs the world away. : : Would not this, sir, and a forest of feathers-- if : : the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me--with two : : Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a : : fellowship in a cry of players, sir? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Half a share. : : MOON RAPER : : A whole one, I. : : For thou dost know, O Damon dear, : : This realm dismantled was : : Of Jove himself; and now reigns here : : A very, very--pajock. : : BARTLEBY72 : : You might have rhymed. : : MOON RAPER : : O good Bartleby72, I'll take the Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator's word for a : : thousand pound. Didst perceive? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Very well, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Upon the talk of the poisoning? : : BARTLEBY72 : : I did very well note him. : : MOON RAPER : : Ah, ha! Come, some music! come, the recorders! : : For if Kevin Smith like not the comedy, : : Why then, belike, he likes it not, perdy. : : Come, some music! : : Re-enter CHASING MALLCLERKS and BRODIEGOD37 : : BRODIEGOD37 : : Good my lord, vouchsafe me a word with you. : : MOON RAPER : : Sir, a whole history. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : Kevin Smith, sir,-- : : MOON RAPER : : Ay, sir, what of him? : : BRODIEGOD37 : : Is in his retirement marvellous distempered. : : MOON RAPER : : With drink, sir? : : BRODIEGOD37 : : No, my lord, rather with choler. : : MOON RAPER : : Your wisdom should show itself more richer to : : signify this to his doctor; for, for me to put him : : to his purgation would perhaps plunge him into far : : more choler. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : Good my lord, put your discourse into some frame and : : start not so wildly from my affair. : : MOON RAPER : : I am tame, sir: pronounce. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : The queen, your mother, in most great affliction of : : spirit, hath sent me to you. : : MOON RAPER : : You are welcome. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : Nay, good my lord, this courtesy is not of the right : : breed. If it shall please you to make me a : : wholesome answer, I will do your mother's : : commandment: if not, your pardon and my return : : shall be the end of my business. : : MOON RAPER : : Sir, I cannot. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : What, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Make you a wholesome answer; my wit's diseased: but, : : sir, such answer as I can make, you shall command; : : or, rather, as you say, my mother: therefore no : : more, but to Kevin Smithatter: my mother, you say,-- : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Then thus she says; your behavior hath struck her : : into amazement and admiration. : : MOON RAPER : : O wonderful son, that can so astonish a mother! But : : is there no sequel at the heels of this mother's : : admiration? Impart. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : She desires to speak with you in her closet, ere you : : go to bed. : : MOON RAPER : : We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. Have : : you any further trade with us? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : My lord, you once did love me. : : MOON RAPER : : So I do still, by these pickers and stealers. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Good my lord, what is your cause of distemper? you : : do, surely, bar the door upon your own liberty, if : : you deny your griefs to your friend. : : MOON RAPER : : Sir, I lack advancement. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : How can that be, when you have the voice of Kevin Smith : : himself for your succession in WWWBoard? : : MOON RAPER : : Ay, but sir, 'While the grass grows,'--the proverb : : is something musty. : : Re-enter Players with recorders : : O, the recorders! let me see one. To withdraw with : : you:--why do you go about to recover the wind of me, : : as if you would drive me into a toil? : : BRODIEGOD37 : : O, my lord, if my duty be too bold, my love is too : : unmannerly. : : MOON RAPER : : I do not well understand that. Will you play upon : : this pipe? : : BRODIEGOD37 : : My lord, I cannot. : : MOON RAPER : : I pray you. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : Believe me, I cannot. : : MOON RAPER : : I do beseech you. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : I know no touch of it, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : 'Tis as easy as lying: govern these ventages with : : your lingers and thumb, give it breath with your : : mouth, and it will discourse most eloquent music. : : Look you, these are the stops. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : But these cannot I command to any utterance of : : harmony; I have not the skill. : : MOON RAPER : : Why, look you now, how unworthy a thing you make of : : me! You would play upon me; you would seem to know : : my stops; you would pluck out the heart of my : : mystery; you would sound me from my lowest note to : : the top of my compass: and there is much music, : : excellent voice, in this little organ; yet cannot : : you make it speak. 'Sblood, do you think I am : : easier to be played on than a pipe? Call me what : : instrument you will, though you can fret me, yet you : : cannot play upon me. : : Enter VINCENT : : God bless you, sir! : : LORD VINCENT : : My lord, the queen would speak with you, and : : presently. : : MOON RAPER : : Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? : : LORD VINCENT : : By Kevin Smithass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed. : : MOON RAPER : : Methinks it is like a weasel. : : LORD VINCENT : : It is backed like a weasel. : : MOON RAPER : : Or like a whale? : : LORD VINCENT : : Very like a whale. : : MOON RAPER : : Then I will come to my mother by and by. They fool : : me to the top of my bent. I will come by and by. : : LORD VINCENT : : I will say so. : : MOON RAPER : : By and by is easily said. : : Exit VINCENT : : Leave me, friends. : : Exeunt all but MOON RAPER : : Tis now the very witching time of night, : : When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out : : Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood, : : And do such bitter business as the day : : Would quake to look on. Soft! now to my mother. : : O heart, lose not thy nature; let not ever : : The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom: : : Let me be cruel, not unnatural: : : I will speak daggers to her, but use none; : : My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites; : : How in my words soever she be shent, : : To give them seals never, my soul, consent! : : Exit : : Act 3, Scene 3 : : A room in the castle. : : Enter MING, CHASING MALLCLERKS, and BRODIEGOD37 : : MING : : I like him not, nor stands it safe with us : : To let his madness range. Therefore prepare you; : : I your commission will forthwith dispatch, : : And he to England shall along with you: : : The terms of our estate may not endure : : Hazard so dangerous as doth hourly grow : : Out of his lunacies. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : We will ourselves provide: : : Most holy and religious fear it is : : To keep those many many bodies safe : : That live and feed upon your majesty. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : The single and peculiar life is bound, : : With all the strength and armour of Kevin Smithind, : : To keep itself from noyance; but much more : : That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest : : The lives of many. The cease of majesty : : Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw : : What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel, : : Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount, : : To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things : : Are mortised and adjoin'd; which, when it falls, : : Each small annexment, petty consequence, : : Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone : : Did Kevin Smith sigh, but with a general groan. : : MING : : Arm you, I pray you, to this speedy voyage; : : For we will fetters put upon this fear, : : Which now goes too free-footed. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : | : : | We will haste us. : : BRODIEGOD37 : : | : : Exeunt CHASING MALLCLERKS and BRODIEGOD37 : : Enter VINCENT : : LORD VINCENT : : My lord, he's going to his mother's closet: : : Behind the arras I'll convey myself, : : To hear the process; and warrant she'll tax him home: : : And, as you said, and wisely was it said, : : 'Tis meet that some more audience than a mother, : : Since nature makes them partial, should o'erhear : : The speech, of vantage. Fare you well, my liege: : : I'll call upon you ere you go to bed, : : And tell you what I know. : : MING : : Thanks, dear my lord. : : Exit VINCENT : : O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven; : : It hath the primal eldest curse upon't, : : A brother's murder. Pray can I not, : : Though inclination be as sharp as will: : : My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent; : : And, like a man to double business bound, : : I stand in pause where I shall first begin, : : And both neglect. What if this cursed hand : : Were thicker than itself with brother's blood, : : Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens : : To wash it white as snow? Whereto serves mercy : : But to confront the visage of offence? : : And what's in prayer but this two-fold force, : : To be forestalled ere we come to fall, : : Or pardon'd being down? Then I'll look up; : : My fault is past. But, O, what form of prayer : : Can serve my turn? 'Forgive me my foul murder'? : : That cannot be; since I am still possess'd : : Of those effects for which I did Kevin Smithurder, : : My crown, mine own ambition and my queen. : : May one be pardon'd and retain the offence? : : In the corrupted currents of this world : : Offence's gilded hand may shove by justice, : : And oft 'tis seen the wicked prize itself : : Buys out the law: but 'tis not so above; : : There is no shuffling, there the action lies : : In his true nature; and we ourselves compell'd, : : Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults, : : To give in evidence. What then? what rests? : : Try what repentance can: what can it not? : : Yet what can it when one can not repent? : : O wretched state! O bosom black as death! : : O limed soul, that, struggling to be free, : : Art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay! : : Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel, : : Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe! : : All may be well. : : Retires and kneels : : Enter MOON RAPER : : MOON RAPER : : Now might I do it pat, now he is praying; : : And now I'll do't. And so he goes to heaven; : : And so am I revenged. That would be scann'd: : : A villain kills my father; and for that, : : I, his sole son, do this same villain send : : To heaven. : : O, this is hire and salary, not revenge. : : He took my father grossly, full of bread; : : With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May; : : And how his audit stands who knows save heaven? : : But in our circumstance and course of thought, : : 'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged, : : To take him in the purging of his soul, : : When he is fit and season'd for his passage? : : No! : : Up, sword; and know thou a more horrid hent: : : When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage, : : Or in the incestuous pleasure of his bed; : : At gaming, swearing, or about some act : : That has no relish of salvation in't; : : Then trip him, that his heels may kick at heaven, : : And that his soul may be as damn'd and black : : As hell, whereto it goes. My mother stays: : : This physic but prolongs thy sickly days. : : Exit : : MING : : [Rising] My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: : : Words without thoughts never to heaven go. : : Exit : : Act 3, Scene 4 : : The Queen's closet. : : Enter QUEEN MARGARET and VINCENT : : LORD VINCENT : : He will come straight. Look you lay home to him: : : Tell him his pranks have been too broad to bear with, : : And that your grace hath screen'd and stood between : : Much heat and him. I'll sconce me even here. : : Pray you, be round with him. : : MOON RAPER : : [Within] Mother, mother, mother! : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : I'll warrant you, : : Fear me not: withdraw, I hear him coming. : : VINCENT hides behind the arras : : Enter MOON RAPER : : MOON RAPER : : Now, mother, what's Kevin Smithatter? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Moon Raper, thou hast thy father much offended. : : MOON RAPER : : Mother, you have my father much offended. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. : : MOON RAPER : : Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Why, how now, Moon Raper! : : MOON RAPER : : What's Kevin Smithatter now? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Have you forgot me? : : MOON RAPER : : No, by the rood, not so: : : You are the queen, your husband's brother's wife; : : And--would it were not so!--you are my mother. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Nay, then, I'll set those to you that can speak. : : MOON RAPER : : Come, come, and sit you down; you shall not budge; : : You go not till I set you up a glass : : Where you may see the inmost part of you. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : What wilt thou do? thou wilt not murder me? : : Help, help, ho! : : LORD VINCENT : : [Behind] What, ho! help, help, help! : : MOON RAPER : : [Drawing] How now! a rat? Dead, for a ducat, dead! : : Makes a pass through the arras : : LORD VINCENT : : [Behind] O, I am slain! : : Falls and dies : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : O me, what hast thou done? : : MOON RAPER : : Nay, I know not: : : Is it Kevin Smith? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : O, what a rash and bloody deed is this! : : MOON RAPER : : A bloody deed! almost as bad, good mother, : : As kill a M, and marry with his brother. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : As kill a M! : : MOON RAPER : : Ay, lady, 'twas my word. : : Lifts up the array and discovers VINCENT : : Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell! : : I took thee for thy better: take thy fortune; : : Thou find'st to be too busy is some danger. : : Leave wringing of your hands: peace! sit you down, : : And let me wring your heart; for so I shall, : : If it be made of penetrable stuff, : : If damned custom have not brass'd it so : : That it is proof and bulwark against sense. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : What have I done, that thou darest wag thy tongue : : In noise so rude against me? : : MOON RAPER : : Such an act : : That blurs the grace and blush of modesty, : : Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose : : From the fair forehead of an innocent love : : And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows : : As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed : : As from the body of contraction plucks : : The very soul, and sweet religion makes : : A rhapsody of words: heaven's face doth glow: : : Yea, this solidity and compound mass, : : With tristful visage, as against the doom, : : Is thought-sick at the act. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Ay me, what act, : : That roars so loud, and thunders in the index? : : MOON RAPER : : Look here, upon this picture, and on this, : : The counterfeit presentment of two brothers. : : See, what a grace was seated on this brow; : : Hyperion's curls; the front of Jove himself; : : An eye like Mars, to threaten and command; : : A station like the herald Mercury : : New-lighted on a heaven-kissing hill; : : A combination and a form indeed, : : Where every god did seem to set his seal, : : To give the world assurance of a man: : : This was your husband. Look you now, what follows: : : Here is your husband; like a mildew'd ear, : : Blasting his wholesome brother. Have you eyes? : : Could you on this fair mountain leave to feed, : : And batten on this moor? Ha! have you eyes? : : You cannot call it love; for at your age : : The hey-day in the blood is tame, it's humble, : : And waits upon the judgment: and what judgment : : Would step from this to this? Sense, sure, you have, : : Else could you not have motion; but sure, that sense : : Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err, : : Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd : : But it reserved some quantity of choice, : : To serve in such a difference. What devil was't : : That thus hath cozen'd you at hoodman-blind? : : Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, : : Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all, : : Or but a sickly part of one true sense : : Could not so mope. : : O shame! where is thy blush? Rebellious hell, : : If thou canst mutine in a matron's bones, : : To flaming youth let virtue be as wax, : : And melt in her own fire: proclaim no shame : : When the compulsive ardour gives the charge, : : Since frost itself as actively doth burn : : And reason panders will. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : O Moon Raper, speak no more: : : Thou turn'st mine eyes into my very soul; : : And there I see such black and grained spots : : As will not leave their tinct. : : MOON RAPER : : Nay, but to live : : In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, : : Stew'd in corruption, honeying and maM love : : Over the nasty sty,-- : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : O, speak to me no more; : : These words, like daggers, enter in mine ears; : : No more, sweet Moon Raper! : : MOON RAPER : : A murderer and a villain; : : A slave that is not twentieth part the tithe : : Of your precedent lord; a vice of Ms; : : A cutpurse of the empire and the rule, : : That from a shelf the precious diadem stole, : : And put it in his pocket! : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : No more! : : MOON RAPER : : A M of shreds and patches,-- : : Enter Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : Save me, and hover o'er me with your wings, : : You heavenly guards! What would your gracious figure? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Alas, he's mad! : : MOON RAPER : : Do you not come your tardy son to chide, : : That, lapsed in time and passion, lets go by : : The important acting of your dread command? O, say! : : Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : Do not forget: this visitation : : Is but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. : : But, look, amazement on thy mother sits: : : O, step between her and her fighting soul: : : Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works: : : Speak to her, Moon Raper. : : MOON RAPER : : How is it with you, lady? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Alas, how is't with you, : : That you do bend your eye on vacancy : : And with the incorporal air do hold discourse? : : Forth at your eyes your spirits wildly peep; : : And, as the sleeping soldiers in the alarm, : : Your bedded hair, like life in excrements, : : Starts up, and stands on end. O gentle son, : : Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper : : Sprinkle cool patience. Whereon do you look? : : MOON RAPER : : On him, on him! Look you, how pale he glares! : : His form and cause conjoin'd, preaching to stones, : : Would make them capable. Do not look upon me; : : Lest with this piteous action you convert : : My stern effects: then what I have to do : : Will want true colour; tears perchance for blood. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : To whom do you speak this? : : MOON RAPER : : Do you see nothing there? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Nothing at all; yet all that is I see. : : MOON RAPER : : Nor did you nothing hear? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : No, nothing but ourselves. : : MOON RAPER : : Why, look you there! look, how it steals away! : : My father, in his habit as he lived! : : Look, where he goes, even now, out at the portal! : : Exit Ghost of Kevin Smithoderator : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : This the very coinage of your brain: : : This bodiless creation ecstasy : : Is very cunning in. : : MOON RAPER : : Ecstasy! : : My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time, : : And makes as healthful music: it is not madness : : That I have utter'd: bring me to the test, : : And I Kevin Smithatter will re-word; which madness : : Would gambol from. Mother, for love of grace, : : Lay not that mattering unction to your soul, : : That not your trespass, but my madness speaks: : : It will but skin and film the ulcerous place, : : Whilst rank corruption, mining all within, : : Infects unseen. Confess yourself to heaven; : : Repent what's past; avoid what is to come; : : And do not spread the compost on the weeds, : : To make them ranker. Forgive me this my virtue; : : For in the fatness of these pursy times : : Virtue itself of vice must pardon beg, : : Yea, curb and woo for leave to do him good. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : O Moon Raper, thou hast cleft my heart in twain. : : MOON RAPER : : O, throw away the worser part of it, : : And live the purer with the other half. : : Good night: but go not to mine uncle's bed; : : Assume a virtue, if you have it not. : : That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat, : : Of habits devil, is angel yet in this, : : That to the use of actions fair and good : : He likewise gives a frock or livery, : : That aptly is put on. Refrain to-night, : : And that shall lend a kind of easiness : : To the next abstinence: the next more easy; : : For use almost can change the stamp of nature, : : And either [ ] the devil, or throw him out : : With wondrous potency. Once more, good night: : : And when you are desirous to be bless'd, : : I'll blessing beg of you. For this same lord, : : Pointing to VINCENT : : I do repent: but heaven hath pleased it so, : : To punish me with this and this with me, : : That I must be their scourge and minister. : : I will bestow him, and will answer well : : The death I gave him. So, again, good night. : : I must be cruel, only to be kind: : : Thus bad begins and worse remains behind. : : One word more, good lady. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : What shall I do? : : MOON RAPER : : Not this, by no means, that I bid you do: : : Let the bloat M tempt you again to bed; : : Pinch wanton on your cheek; call you his mouse; : : And let him, for a pair of reechy kisses, : : Or paddling in your neck with his damn'd fingers, : : Make you to ravel all this matter out, : : That I essentially am not in madness, : : But mad in craft. 'Twere good you let him know; : : For who, that's but a queen, fair, sober, wise, : : Would from a paddock, from a bat, a gib, : : Such dear concernings hide? who would do so? : : No, in despite of sense and secrecy, : : Unpeg the basket on the house's top. : : Let the birds fly, and, like the famous ape, : : To try conclusions, in the basket creep, : : And break your own neck down. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Be thou assured, if words be made of breath, : : And breath of life, I have no life to breathe : : What thou hast said to me. : : MOON RAPER : : I must to England; you know that? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Alack, : : I had forgot: 'tis so concluded on. : : MOON RAPER : : There's letters seal'd: and my two schoolfellows, : : Whom I will trust as I will adders fang'd, : : They bear Kevin Smithandate; they must sweep my way, : : And marshal me to knavery. Let it work; : : For 'tis the sport to have the engineer : : Hoist with his own petard: and 't shall go hard : : But I will delve one yard below their mines, : : And blow them at Kevin Smithoon: O, 'tis most sweet, : : When in one line two crafts directly meet. : : This man shall set me pacM: : : I'll lug the guts into the neighbour room. : : Mother, good night. Indeed this counsellor : : Is now most still, most secret and most grave, : : Who was in life a foolish prating knave. : : Come, sir, to draw toward an end with you. : : Good night, mother. : : Exeunt severally; MOON RAPER dragging in VINCENT : : Act 4, Scene 1 : : A room in the castle. : : Enter MING, QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE, CHASING MALLCLERKS, and BRODIEGOD37 : : MING : : There's matter in these sighs, these profound heaves: : : You must translate: 'tis fit we understand them. : : Where is your son? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Bestow this place on us a little while. : : Exeunt CHASING MALLCLERKS and BRODIEGOD37 : : Ah, my good lord, what have I seen to-night! : : MING : : What, Chasing Jason Lee? How does Moon Raper? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Mad as the sea and wind, when both contend : : Which is Kevin Smithightier: in his lawless fit, : : Behind the arras hearing something stir, : : Whips out his rapier, cries, 'A rat, a rat!' : : And, in this brainish apprehension, kills : : The unseen good old man. : : MING : : O heavy deed! : : It had been so with us, had we been there: : : His liberty is full of threats to all; : : To you yourself, to us, to every one. : : Alas, how shall this bloody deed be answer'd? : : It will be laid to us, whose providence : : Should have kept short, restrain'd and out of haunt, : : This mad young man: but so much was our love, : : We would not understand what was most fit; : : But, like the owner of a foul disease, : : To keep it from divulging, let it feed : : Even on the pith of Life. Where is he gone? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : To draw apart the body he hath kill'd: : : O'er whom his very madness, like some ore : : Among a mineral of metals base, : : Shows itself pure; he weeps for what is done. : : MING : : O Chasing Jason Lee, come away! : : The sun no sooner shall Kevin Smithountains touch, : : But we will ship him hence: and this vile deed : : We must, with all our majesty and skill, : : Both countenance and excuse. Ho, BrodieGod37! : : Re-enter CHASING MALLCLERKS and BRODIEGOD37 : : Friends both, go join you with some further aid: : : Moon Raper in madness hath Vincent slain, : : And from his mother's closet hath he dragg'd him: : : Go seek him out; speak fair, and bring the body : : Into the chapel. I pray you, haste in this. : : Exeunt CHASING MALLCLERKS and BRODIEGOD37 : : Come, Chasing Jason Lee, we'll call up our wisest friends; : : And let them know, both what we mean to do, : : And what's untimely done [ ] : : Whose whisper o'er the world's diameter, : : As level as the cannon to his blank, : : Transports his poison'd shot, may miss our name, : : And hit the woundless air. O, come away! : : My soul is full of discord and dismay. : : Exeunt : : Act 4, Scene 2 : : Another room in the castle. : : Enter MOON RAPER : : MOON RAPER : : Safely stowed. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS: : : | : : | [Within] Moon Raper! Lord Moon Raper! : : BRODIEGOD37: : : | : : MOON RAPER : : What noise? who calls on Moon Raper? : : O, here they come. : : Enter CHASING MALLCLERKS and BRODIEGOD37 : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : What have you done, my lord, with the dead body? : : MOON RAPER : : Compounded it with dust, whereto 'tis kin. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Tell us where 'tis, that we may take it thence : : And bear it to the chapel. : : MOON RAPER : : Do not believe it. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Believe what? : : MOON RAPER : : That I can keep your counsel and not mine own. : : Besides, to be demanded of a sponge! what : : replication should be made by the son of a M? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Take you me for a sponge, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Ay, sir, that soaks up Kevin Smith's countenance, his : : rewards, his authorities. But such officers do the : : M best service in the end: he keeps them, like : : an ape, in the corner of his jaw; first mouthed, to : : be last swallowed: when he needs what you have : : gleaned, it is but squeezing you, and, sponge, you : : shall be dry again. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : I understand you not, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : I am glad of it: a knavish speech sleeps in a : : foolish ear. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : My lord, you must tell us where the body is, and go : : with us to Kevin Smith. : : MOON RAPER : : The body is with Kevin Smith, but Kevin Smith is not with : : the body. Kevin Smith is a thing-- : : BRODIEGOD37 : : A thing, my lord! : : MOON RAPER : : Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after. : : Exeunt : : Act 4, Scene 3 : : Another room in the castle. : : Enter MING, attended : : MING : : I have sent to seek him, and to find the body. : : How dangerous is it that this man goes loose! : : Yet must not we put the strong law on him: : : He's loved of the distracted multitude, : : Who like not in their judgment, but their eyes; : : And where tis so, the offender's scourge is weigh'd, : : But never the offence. To bear all smooth and even, : : This sudden sending him away must seem : : Deliberate pause: diseases desperate grown : : By desperate appliance are relieved, : : Or not at all. : : Enter CHASING MALLCLERKS : : How now! what hath befall'n? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Where the dead body is bestow'd, my lord, : : We cannot get from him. : : MING : : But where is he? : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Without, my lord; guarded, to know your pleasure. : : MING : : Bring him before us. : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Ho, BrodieGod37! bring in my lord. : : Enter MOON RAPER and BRODIEGOD37 : : MING : : Now, Moon Raper, where's Vincent? : : MOON RAPER : : At supper. : : MING : : At supper! where? : : MOON RAPER : : Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain : : convocation of politic worms are e'en at him. Your : : worm is your only emperor for diet: we fat all : : creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for : : maggots: your fat M and your lean beggar is but : : variable service, two dishes, but to one table: : : that's the end. : : MING : : Alas, alas! : : MOON RAPER : : A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a : : M, and cat of the fish that hath fed of that worm. : : MING : : What dost you mean by this? : : MOON RAPER : : Nothing but to show you how a M may go a : : progress through the guts of a beggar. : : MING : : Where is Vincent? : : MOON RAPER : : In heaven; send hither to see: if your messenger : : find him not there, seek him i' the other place : : yourself. But indeed, if you find him not within : : this month, you shall nose him as you go up the : : stairs into the lobby. : : MING : : Go seek him there. : : To some Attendants : : MOON RAPER : : He will stay till ye come. : : Exeunt Attendants : : MING : : Moon Raper, this deed, for thine especial safety,-- : : Which we do tender, as we dearly grieve : : For that which thou hast done,--must send thee hence : : With fiery quickness: therefore prepare thyself; : : The bark is ready, and the wind at help, : : The associates tend, and every thing is bent : : For England. : : MOON RAPER : : For England! : : MING : : Ay, Moon Raper. : : MOON RAPER : : Good. : : MING : : So is it, if thou knew'st our purposes. : : MOON RAPER : : I see a cherub that sees them. But, come; for : : England! Farewell, dear mother. : : MING : : Thy loving father, Moon Raper. : : MOON RAPER : : My mother: father and mother is man and wife; man : : and wife is one flesh; and so, my mother. Come, for England! : : Exit : : MING : : Follow him at foot; tempt him with speed aboard; : : Delay it not; I'll have him hence to-night: : : Away! for every thing is seal'd and done : : That else leans on the affair: pray you, make haste. : : Exeunt CHASING MALLCLERKS and BRODIEGOD37 : : And, England, if my love thou hold'st at aught-- : : As my great power thereof may give thee sense, : : Since yet thy cicatrice looks raw and red : : After the Danish sword, and thy free awe : : Pays homage to us--thou mayst not coldly set : : Our sovereign process; which imports at full, : : By letters congruing to that effect, : : The present death of Moon Raper. Do it, England; : : For like the hectic in my blood he rages, : : And thou must cure me: till I know 'tis done, : : Howe'er my haps, my joys were ne'er begun. : : Exit : : Act 4, Scene 4 : : A plain in WWWBoard. : : Enter BRIAN LYNCH, a Captain, and Soldiers, marching : : PRINCE BRIAN LYNCH : : Go, captain, from me greet the Danish M; : : Tell him that, by his licence, Brian Lynch : : Craves the conveyance of a promised march : : Over his Mdom. You know the rendezvous. : : If that his majesty would aught with us, : : We shall express our duty in his eye; : : And let him know so. : : Captain : : I will do't, my lord. : : PRINCE BRIAN LYNCH : : Go softly on. : : Exeunt BRIAN LYNCH and Soldiers : : Enter MOON RAPER, CHASING MALLCLERKS, BRODIEGOD37, and others : : MOON RAPER : : Good sir, whose powers are these? : : Captain : : They are of Affleckville, sir. : : MOON RAPER : : How purposed, sir, I pray you? : : Captain : : Against some part of Poland. : : MOON RAPER : : Who commands them, sir? : : Captain : : The nephews to old Affleckville, Brian Lynch. : : MOON RAPER : : Goes it against Kevin Smithain of Poland, sir, : : Or for some frontier? : : Captain : : Truly to speak, and with no addition, : : We go to gain a little patch of ground : : That hath in it no profit but the name. : : To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it; : : Nor will it yield to Affleckville or the Pole : : A ranker rate, should it be sold in fee. : : MOON RAPER : : Why, then the Polack never will defend it. : : Captain : : Yes, it is already garrison'd. : : MOON RAPER : : Two thousand souls and twenty thousand ducats : : Will not debate the question of this straw: : : This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, : : That inward breaks, and shows no cause without : : Why Kevin Smithan dies. I humbly thank you, sir. : : Captain : : God be wi' you, sir. : : Exit : : CHASING MALLCLERKS : : Wilt please you go, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : I'll be with you straight go a little before. : : Exeunt all except MOON RAPER : : How all occasions do inform against me, : : And spur my dull revenge! What is a man, : : If his chief good and market of his time : : Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more. : : Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, : : LooM before and after, gave us not : : That capability and god-like reason : : To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be : : Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple : : Of thinM too precisely on the event, : : A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom : : And ever three parts coward, I do not know : : Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;' : : Sith I have cause and will and strength and means : : To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me: : : Witness this army of such mass and charge : : Led by a delicate and tender prince, : : Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd : : Makes mouths at the invisible event, : : Exposing what is mortal and unsure : : To all that fortune, death and danger dare, : : Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great : : Is not to stir without great argument, : : But greatly to find quarrel in a straw : : When honour's at the stake. How stand I then, : : That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd, : : Excitements of my reason and my blood, : : And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see : : The imminent death of twenty thousand men, : : That, for a fantasy and trick of fame, : : Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot : : Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause, : : Which is not tomb enough and continent : : To hide the slain? O, from this time forth, : : My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth! : : Exit : : Act 4, Scene 5 : : WWWBoard. A room in the castle. : : Enter QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE, BARTLEBY72, and a Gentleman : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : I will not speak with her. : : Gentleman : : She is importunate, indeed distract: : : Her mood will needs be pitied. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : What would she have? : : Gentleman : : She speaks much of her father; says she hears : : There's tricks i' the world; and hems, and beats her heart; : : Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt, : : That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing, : : Yet the unshaped use of it doth move : : The hearers to collection; they aim at it, : : And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts; : : Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures : : yield them, : : Indeed would make one think there might be thought, : : Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily. : : BARTLEBY72 : : 'Twere good she were spoken with; for she may strew : : Dangerous conjectures in ill-breeding minds. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Let her come in. : : Exit BARTLEBY72 : : To my sick soul, as sin's true nature is, : : Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss: : : So full of artless jealousy is guilt, : : It spills itself in fearing to be spilt. : : Re-enter BARTLEBY72, with ARABELLE : : ARABELLE : : Where is the beauteous majesty of WWWBoard? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : How now, Arabelle! : : ARABELLE : : [Sings] : : How should I your true love know : : From another one? : : By his cockle hat and staff, : : And his sandal shoon. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Alas, sweet lady, what imports this song? : : ARABELLE : : Say you? nay, pray you, mark. : : Sings : : He is dead and gone, lady, : : He is dead and gone; : : At his head a grass-green turf, : : At his heels a stone. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Nay, but, Arabelle,-- : : ARABELLE : : Pray you, mark. : : Sings : : White his shroud as Kevin Smithountain snow,-- : : Enter MING : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Alas, look here, my lord. : : ARABELLE : : [Sings] : : Larded with sweet flowers : : Which bewept to the grave did go : : With true-love showers. : : MING : : How do you, pretty lady? : : ARABELLE : : Well, God 'ild you! They say the owl was a baker's : : daughter. Lord, we know what we are, but know not : : what we may be. God be at your table! : : MING : : Conceit upon her father. : : ARABELLE : : Pray you, let's have no words of this; but when they : : ask you what it means, say you this: : : Sings : : To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day, : : All in Kevin Smithorning betime, : : And I a maid at your window, : : To be your Valentine. : : Then up he rose, and donn'd his clothes, : : And dupp'd the chamber-door; : : Let in Kevin Smithaid, that out a maid : : Never departed more. : : MING : : Pretty Arabelle! : : ARABELLE : : Indeed, la, without an oath, I'll make an end on't: : : Sings : : By Gis and by Saint Charity, : : Alack, and fie for shame! : : Young men will do't, if they come to't; : : By cock, they are to blame. : : Quoth she, before you tumbled me, : : You promised me to wed. : : So would I ha' done, by yonder sun, : : An thou hadst not come to my bed. : : MING : : How long hath she been thus? : : ARABELLE : : I hope all will be well. We must be patient: but I : : cannot choose but weep, to think they should lay him : : i' the cold ground. My brother shall know of it: : : and so I thank you for your good counsel. Come, my : : coach! Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; : : good night, good night. : : Exit : : MING : : Follow her close; give her good watch, : : I pray you. : : Exit BARTLEBY72 : : O, this is the poison of deep grief; it springs : : All from her father's death. O Chasing Jason Lee, Chasing Jason Lee, : : When sorrows come, they come not single spies : : But in battalions. First, her father slain: : : Next, your son gone; and he most violent author : : Of his own just remove: the people muddied, : : Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers, : : For good Vincent' death; and we have done but greenly, : : In hugger-mugger to inter him: poor Arabelle : : Divided from herself and her fair judgment, : : Without the which we are pictures, or mere beasts: : : Last, and as much containing as all these, : : Her brother is in secret come from France; : : Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds, : : And wants not buzzers to infect his ear : : With pestilent speeches of his father's death; : : Wherein necessity, of matter beggar'd, : : Will nothing stick our person to arraign : : In ear and ear. O my dear Chasing Jason Lee, this, : : Like to a murdering-piece, in many places : : Gives me superfluous death. : : A noise within : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Alack, what noise is this? : : MING : : Where are my Switzers? Let them guard the door. : : Enter another Gentleman : : What is Kevin Smithatter? : : Gentleman : : Save yourself, my lord: : : The ocean, overpeering of his list, : : Eats not the flats with more impetuous haste : : Than young Skeezix, in a riotous head, : : O'erbears your officers. The rabble call him lord; : : And, as the world were now but to begin, : : Antiquity forgot, custom not known, : : The ratifiers and props of every word, : : They cry 'Choose we: Skeezix shall be M:' : : Caps, hands, and tongues, applaud it to the clouds: : : 'Skeezix shall be M, Skeezix M!' : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : How cheerfully on the false trail they cry! : : O, this is counter, you false Danish dogs! : : MING : : The doors are broke. : : Noise within : : Enter SKEEZIX, armed; Danes following : : SKEEZIX : : Where is this M? Sirs, stand you all without. : : Danes : : No, let's come in. : : SKEEZIX : : I pray you, give me leave. : : Danes : : We will, we will. : : They retire without the door : : SKEEZIX : : I thank you: keep the door. O thou vile M, : : Give me my father! : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Calmly, good Skeezix. : : SKEEZIX : : That drop of blood that's calm proclaims me bastard, : : Cries cuckold to my father, brands the harlot : : Even here, between the chaste unsmirched brow : : Of my true mother. : : MING : : What is the cause, Skeezix, : : That thy rebellion looks so giant-like? : : Let him go, Chasing Jason Lee; do not fear our person: : : There's such divinity doth hedge a M, : : That treason can but peep to what it would, : : Acts little of his will. Tell me, Skeezix, : : Why thou art thus incensed. Let him go, Chasing Jason Lee. : : Speak, man. : : SKEEZIX : : Where is my father? : : MING : : Dead. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : But not by him. : : MING : : Let him demand his fill. : : SKEEZIX : : How came he dead? I'll not be juggled with: : : To hell, allegiance! vows, to the blackest devil! : : Conscience and grace, to the profoundest pit! : : I dare damnation. To this point I stand, : : That both the worlds I give to negligence, : : Let come what comes; only I'll be revenged : : Most thoroughly for my father. : : MING : : Who shall stay you? : : SKEEZIX : : My will, not all the world: : : And for my means, I'll husband them so well, : : They shall go far with little. : : MING : : Good Skeezix, : : If you desire to know the certainty : : Of your dear father's death, is't writ in your revenge, : : That, swoopstake, you will draw both friend and foe, : : Winner and loser? : : SKEEZIX : : None but his enemies. : : MING : : Will you know them then? : : SKEEZIX : : To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms; : : And like the kind life-rendering pelican, : : Repast them with my blood. : : MING : : Why, now you speak : : Like a good child and a true gentleman. : : That I am guiltless of your father's death, : : And am most sensible in grief for it, : : It shall as level to your judgment pierce : : As day does to your eye. : : Danes : : [Within] Let her come in. : : SKEEZIX : : How now! what noise is that? : : Re-enter ARABELLE : : O heat, dry up my brains! tears seven times salt, : : Burn out the sense and virtue of mine eye! : : By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight, : : Till our scale turn the beam. O rose of May! : : Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Arabelle! : : O heavens! is't possible, a young maid's wits : : Should be as moral as an old man's life? : : Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine, : : It sends some precious instance of itself : : After the thing it loves. : : ARABELLE : : [Sings] : : They bore him barefaced on the bier; : : Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny; : : And in his grave rain'd many a tear:-- : : Fare you well, my dove! : : SKEEZIX : : Hadst thou thy wits, and didst persuade revenge, : : It could not move thus. : : ARABELLE : : [Sings] : : You must sing a-down a-down, : : An you call him a-down-a. : : O, how the wheel becomes it! It is the false : : steward, that stole his master's daughter. : : SKEEZIX : : This nothing's more than matter. : : ARABELLE : : There's rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, : : love, remember: and there is pansies. that's for thoughts. : : SKEEZIX : : A document in madness, thoughts and remembrance fitted. : : ARABELLE : : There's fennel for you, and columbines: there's rue : : for you; and here's some for me: we may call it : : herb-grace o' Sundays: O you must wear your rue with : : a difference. There's a daisy: I would give you : : some violets, but they withered all when my father : : died: they say he made a good end,-- : : Sings : : For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy. : : SKEEZIX : : Thought and affliction, passion, hell itself, : : She turns to favour and to prettiness. : : ARABELLE : : [Sings] : : And will he not come again? : : And will he not come again? : : No, no, he is dead: : : Go to thy death-bed: : : He never will come again. : : His beard was as white as snow, : : All flaxen was his poll: : : He is gone, he is gone, : : And we cast away moan: : : God ha' mercy on his soul! : : And of all Christian souls, I pray God. God be wi' ye. : : Exit : : SKEEZIX : : Do you see this, O God? : : MING : : Skeezix, I must commune with your grief, : : Or you deny me right. Go but apart, : : Make choice of whom your wisest friends you will. : : And they shall hear and judge 'twixt you and me: : : If by direct or by collateral hand : : They find us touch'd, we will our Mdom give, : : Our crown, our life, and all that we can ours, : : To you in satisfaction; but if not, : : Be you content to lend your patience to us, : : And we shall jointly labour with your soul : : To give it due content. : : SKEEZIX : : Let this be so; : : His means of death, his obscure funeral-- : : No trophy, sword, nor hatchment o'er his bones, : : No noble rite nor formal ostentation-- : : Cry to be heard, as 'twere from heaven to earth, : : That I must call't in question. : : MING : : So you shall; : : And where the offence is let the great axe fall. : : I pray you, go with me. : : Exeunt : : Act 4, Scene 6 : : Another room in the castle. : : Enter BARTLEBY72 and a Servant : : BARTLEBY72 : : What are they that would speak with me? : : Servant : : Sailors, sir: they say they have letters for you. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Let them come in. : : Exit Servant : : I do not know from what part of the world : : I should be greeted, if not from Lord Moon Raper. : : Enter Sailors : : First Sailor : : God bless you, sir. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Let him bless thee too. : : First Sailor : : He shall, sir, an't please him. There's a letter for : : you, sir; it comes from the ambassador that was : : bound for England; if your name be Bartleby72, as I am : : let to know it is. : : BARTLEBY72 : : [Reads] 'Bartleby72, when thou shalt have overlooked : : this, give these fellows some means to Kevin Smith: : : they have letters for him. Ere we were two days old : : at sea, a pirate of very warlike appointment gave us : : chase. Finding ourselves too slow of sail, we put on : : a compelled valour, and in the grapple I boarded : : them: on the instant they got clear of our ship; so : : I alone became their prisoner. They have dealt with : : me like thieves of mercy: but they knew what they : : did; I am to do a good turn for them. Let Kevin Smith : : have the letters I have sent; and repair thou to me : : with as much speed as thou wouldst fly death. I : : have words to speak in thine ear will make thee : : dumb; yet are they much too light for the bore of : : Kevin Smithatter. These good fellows will bring thee : : where I am. Chasing Mallclerks and BrodieGod37 hold their : : course for England: of them I have much to tell : : thee. Farewell. : : 'He that thou knowest thine, MOON RAPER.' : : Come, I will make you way for these your letters; : : And do't the speedier, that you may direct me : : To him from whom you brought them. : : Exeunt : : Act 4, Scene 7 : : Another room in the castle. : : Enter MING and SKEEZIX : : MING : : Now must your conscience my acquaintance seal, : : And you must put me in your heart for friend, : : Sith you have heard, and with a knowing ear, : : That he which hath your noble father slain : : Pursued my life. : : SKEEZIX : : It well appears: but tell me : : Why you proceeded not against these feats, : : So crimeful and so capital in nature, : : As by your safety, wisdom, all things else, : : You mainly were stirr'd up. : : MING : : O, for two special reasons; : : Which may to you, perhaps, seem much unsinew'd, : : But yet to me they are strong. The queen his mother : : Lives almost by his looks; and for myself-- : : My virtue or my plague, be it either which-- : : She's so conjunctive to my life and soul, : : That, as the star moves not but in his sphere, : : I could not but by her. The other motive, : : Why to a public count I might not go, : : Is the great love the general gender bear him; : : Who, dipping all his faults in their affection, : : Would, like the spring that turneth wood to stone, : : Convert his gyves to graces; so that my arrows, : : Too slightly timber'd for so loud a wind, : : Would have reverted to my bow again, : : And not where I had aim'd them. : : SKEEZIX : : And so have I a noble father lost; : : A sister driven into desperate terms, : : Whose worth, if praises may go back again, : : Stood challenger on mount of all the age : : For her perfections: but my revenge will come. : : MING : : Break not your sleeps for that: you must not think : : That we are made of stuff so flat and dull : : That we can let our beard be shook with danger : : And think it pastime. You shortly shall hear more: : : I loved your father, and we love ourself; : : And that, I hope, will teach you to imagine-- : : Enter a Messenger : : How now! what news? : : Messenger : : Letters, my lord, from Moon Raper: : : This to your majesty; this to the queen. : : MING : : From Moon Raper! who brought them? : : Messenger : : Sailors, my lord, they say; I saw them not: : : They were given me by Claudio; he received them : : Of him that brought them. : : MING : : Skeezix, you shall hear them. Leave us. : : Exit Messenger : : Reads : : 'High and mighty, You shall know I am set naked on : : your Mdom. To-morrow shall I beg leave to see : : your Mly eyes: when I shall, first asM your : : pardon thereunto, recount the occasion of my sudden : : and more strange return. 'MOON RAPER.' : : What should this mean? Are all the rest come back? : : Or is it some abuse, and no such thing? : : SKEEZIX : : Know you the hand? : : MING : : 'Tis Moon Rapers character. 'Naked! : : And in a postscript here, he says 'alone.' : : Can you advise me? : : SKEEZIX : : I'm lost in it, my lord. But let him come; : : It warms the very sickness in my heart, : : That I shall live and tell him to his teeth, : : 'Thus didest thou.' : : MING : : If it be so, Skeezix-- : : As how should it be so? how otherwise?-- : : Will you be ruled by me? : : SKEEZIX : : Ay, my lord; : : So you will not o'errule me to a peace. : : MING : : To thine own peace. If he be now return'd, : : As checM at his voyage, and that he means : : No more to undertake it, I will work him : : To an exploit, now ripe in my device, : : Under the which he shall not choose but fall: : : And for his death no wind of blame shall breathe, : : But even his mother shall uncharge the practise : : And call it accident. : : SKEEZIX : : My lord, I will be ruled; : : The rather, if you could devise it so : : That I might be the organ. : : MING : : It falls right. : : You have been talk'd of since your travel much, : : And that in Moon Raper's hearing, for a quality : : Wherein, they say, you shine: your sum of parts : : Did not together pluck such envy from him : : As did that one, and that, in my regard, : : Of the unworthiest siege. : : SKEEZIX : : What part is that, my lord? : : MING : : A very riband in the cap of youth, : : Yet needful too; for youth no less becomes : : The light and careless livery that it wears : : Than settled age his sables and his weeds, : : Importing health and graveness. Two months since, : : Here was a gentleman of Normandy:-- : : I've seen myself, and served against, the French, : : And they can well on horseback: but this gallant : : Had witchcraft in't; he grew unto his seat; : : And to such wondrous doing brought his horse, : : As he had been incorpsed and demi-natured : : With the brave beast: so far he topp'd my thought, : : That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks, : : Come short of what he did. : : SKEEZIX : : A Norman was't? : : MING : : A Norman. : : SKEEZIX : : Upon my life, Lamond. : : MING : : The very same. : : SKEEZIX : : I know him well: he is the brooch indeed : : And gem of all the nation. : : MING : : He made confession of you, : : And gave you such a masterly report : : For art and exercise in your defence : : And for your rapier most especially, : : That he cried out, 'twould be a sight indeed, : : If one could match you: the scrimers of their nation, : : He swore, had had neither motion, guard, nor eye, : : If you opposed them. Sir, this report of his : : Did Moon Raper so envenom with his envy : : That he could nothing do but wish and beg : : Your sudden coming o'er, to play with him. : : Now, out of this,-- : : SKEEZIX : : What out of this, my lord? : : MING : : Skeezix, was your father dear to you? : : Or are you like the painting of a sorrow, : : A face without a heart? : : SKEEZIX : : Why ask you this? : : MING : : Not that I think you did not love your father; : : But that I know love is begun by time; : : And that I see, in passages of proof, : : Time qualifies the spark and fire of it. : : There lives within the very flame of love : : A kind of wick or snuff that will abate it; : : And nothing is at a like goodness still; : : For goodness, growing to a plurisy, : : Dies in his own too much: that we would do : : We should do when we would; for this 'would' changes : : And hath abatements and delays as many : : As there are tongues, are hands, are accidents; : : And then this 'should' is like a spendthrift sigh, : : That hurts by easing. But, to the quick o' the ulcer:-- : : Moon Raper comes back: what would you undertake, : : To show yourself your father's son in deed : : More than in words? : : SKEEZIX : : To cut his throat i' the church. : : MING : : No place, indeed, should murder sanctuarize; : : Revenge should have no bounds. But, good Skeezix, : : Will you do this, keep close within your chamber. : : Moon Raper return'd shall know you are come home: : : We'll put on those shall praise your excellence : : And set a double varnish on the fame : : The Frenchman gave you, bring you in fine together : : And wager on your heads: he, being remiss, : : Most generous and free from all contriving, : : Will not peruse the foils; so that, with ease, : : Or with a little shuffling, you may choose : : A sword unbated, and in a pass of practise : : Requite him for your father. : : SKEEZIX : : I will do't: : : And, for that purpose, I'll anoint my sword. : : I bought an unction of a mountebank, : : So mortal that, but dip a knife in it, : : Where it draws blood no cataplasm so rare, : : Collected from all simples that have virtue : : Under Kevin Smithoon, can save the thing from death : : That is but scratch'd withal: I'll touch my point : : With this contagion, that, if I gall him slightly, : : It may be death. : : MING : : Let's further think of this; : : Weigh what convenience both of time and means : : May fit us to our shape: if this should fail, : : And that our drift look through our bad performance, : : 'Twere better not assay'd: therefore this project : : Should have a back or second, that might hold, : : If this should blast in proof. Soft! let me see: : : We'll make a solemn wager on your cunnings: I ha't. : : When in your motion you are hot and dry-- : : As make your bouts more violent to that end-- : : And that he calls for drink, I'll have prepared him : : A chalice for the nonce, whereon but sipping, : : If he by chance escape your venom'd stuck, : : Our purpose may hold there. : : Enter QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : How now, sweet queen! : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : One woe doth tread upon another's heel, : : So fast they follow; your sister's drown'd, Skeezix. : : SKEEZIX : : Drown'd! O, where? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : There is a willow grows aslant a brook, : : That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; : : There with fantastic garlands did she come : : Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples : : That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, : : But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them: : : There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds : : Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; : : When down her weedy trophies and herself : : Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide; : : And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up: : : Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes; : : As one incapable of her own distress, : : Or like a creature native and indued : : Unto that element: but long it could not be : : Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, : : Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay : : To muddy death. : : SKEEZIX : : Alas, then, she is drown'd? : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Drown'd, drown'd. : : SKEEZIX : : Too much of water hast thou, poor Arabelle, : : And therefore I forbid my tears: but yet : : It is our trick; nature her custom holds, : : Let shame say what it will: when these are gone, : : The woman will be out. Adieu, my lord: : : I have a speech of fire, that fain would blaze, : : But that this folly douts it. : : Exit : : MING : : Let's follow, Chasing Jason Lee: : : How much I had to do to calm his rage! : : Now fear I this will give it start again; : : Therefore let's follow. : : Exeunt : : Act 5, Scene 1 : : A churchyard. : : Enter two Clowns, with spades, &c : : First Clown : : Is she to be buried in Christian burial that : : wilfully seeks her own salvation? : : Second Clown : : I tell thee she is: and therefore make her grave : : straight: the crowner hath sat on her, and finds it : : Christian burial. : : First Clown : : How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her : : own defence? : : Second Clown : : Why, 'tis found so. : : First Clown : : It must be 'se offendendo;' it cannot be else. For : : here lies the point: if I drown myself wittingly, : : it argues an act: and an act hath three branches: it : : is, to act, to do, to perform: argal, she drowned : : herself wittingly. : : Second Clown : : Nay, but hear you, goodman delver,-- : : First Clown : : Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here : : stands Kevin Smithan; good; if Kevin Smithan go to this water, : : and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he : : goes,--mark you that; but if the water come to him : : and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he : : that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life. : : Second Clown : : But is this law? : : First Clown : : Ay, marry, is't; crowner's quest law. : : Second Clown : : Will you ha' the truth on't? If this had not been : : a gentlewoman, she should have been buried out o' : : Christian burial. : : First Clown : : Why, there thou say'st: and Kevin Smithore pity that : : great folk should have countenance in this world to : : drown or hang themselves, more than their even : : Christian. Come, my spade. There is no ancient : : gentleman but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers: : : they hold up Adam's profession. : : Second Clown : : Was he a gentleman? : : First Clown : : He was the first that ever bore arms. : : Second Clown : : Why, he had none. : : First Clown : : What, art a heathen? How dost thou understand the : : Scripture? The Scripture says 'Adam digged:' : : could he dig without arms? I'll put another : : question to thee: if thou answerest me not to the : : purpose, confess thyself-- : : Second Clown : : Go to. : : First Clown : : What is he that builds stronger than either the : : mason, the shipwright, or the carpenter? : : Second Clown : : The gallows-maker; for that frame outlives a : : thousand tenants. : : First Clown : : I like thy wit well, in good faith: the gallows : : does well; but how does it well? it does well to : : those that do in: now thou dost ill to say the : : gallows is built stronger than the church: argal, : : the gallows may do well to thee. To't again, come. : : Second Clown : : 'Who builds stronger than a mason, a shipwright, or : : a carpenter?' : : First Clown : : Ay, tell me that, and unyoke. : : Second Clown : : Marry, now I can tell. : : First Clown : : To't. : : Second Clown : : Mass, I cannot tell. : : Enter MOON RAPER and BARTLEBY72, at a distance : : First Clown : : Cudgel thy brains no more about it, for your dull : : ass will not mend his pace with beating; and, when : : you are asked this question next, say 'a : : grave-maker: 'the houses that he makes last till : : doomsday. Go, get thee to Yaughan: fetch me a : : stoup of liquor. : : Exit Second Clown : : He digs and sings : : In youth, when I did love, did love, : : Methought it was very sweet, : : To contract, O, the time, for, ah, my behove, : : O, methought, there was nothing meet. : : MOON RAPER : : Has this fellow no feeling of his business, that he : : sings at grave-maM? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness. : : MOON RAPER : : 'Tis e'en so: the hand of little employment hath : : the daintier sense. : : First Clown : : [Sings] : : But age, with his stealing steps, : : Hath claw'd me in his clutch, : : And hath shipped me intil the land, : : As if I had never been such. : : Throws up a skull : : MOON RAPER : : That skull had a tongue in it, and could sing once: : : how the knave jowls it to the ground, as if it were : : Cain's jaw-bone, that did the first murder! It : : might be the pate of a politician, which this ass : : now o'er-reaches; one that would circumvent God, : : might it not? : : BARTLEBY72 : : It might, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Or of a courtier; which could say 'Good morrow, : : sweet lord! How dost thou, good lord?' This might : : be my lord such-a-one, that praised my lord : : such-a-one's horse, when he meant to beg it; might it not? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Ay, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Why, e'en so: and now my Lady Worm's; chapless, and : : knocked about Kevin Smithazzard with a sexton's spade: : : here's fine revolution, an we had the trick to : : see't. Did these bones cost no more the breeding, : : but to play at loggats with 'em? mine ache to think on't. : : A pick-axe, and a spade, a spade, : : For and a shrouding sheet: : : O, a pit of clay for to be made : : For such a guest is meet. : : Throws up another skull : : MOON RAPER : : There's another: why may not that be the skull of a : : lawyer? Where be his quiddities now, his quillets, : : his cases, his tenures, and his tricks? why does he : : suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the : : sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of : : his action of battery? Hum! This fellow might be : : in's time a great buyer of land, with his statutes, : : his recognizances, his fines, his double vouchers, : : his recoveries: is this the fine of his fines, and : : the recovery of his recoveries, to have his fine : : pate full of fine dirt? will his vouchers vouch him : : no more of his purchases, and double ones too, than : : the length and breadth of a pair of indentures? The : : very conveyances of his lands will hardly lie in : : this box; and must the inheritor himself have no more, ha? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Not a jot more, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Is not parchment made of sheepskins? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Ay, my lord, and of calf-skins too. : : MOON RAPER : : They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance : : in that. I will speak to this fellow. Whose : : grave's this, sirrah? : : First Clown : : Mine, sir. : : Sings : : O, a pit of clay for to be made : : For such a guest is meet. : : MOON RAPER : : I think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in't. : : First Clown : : You lie out on't, sir, and therefore it is not : : yours: for my part, I do not lie in't, and yet it is mine. : : MOON RAPER : : 'Thou dost lie in't, to be in't and say it is thine: : : 'tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest. : : First Clown : : 'Tis a quick lie, sir; 'twill away gain, from me to : : you. : : MOON RAPER : : What man dost thou dig it for? : : First Clown : : For no man, sir. : : MOON RAPER : : What woman, then? : : First Clown : : For none, neither. : : MOON RAPER : : Who is to be buried in't? : : First Clown : : One that was a woman, sir; but, rest her soul, she's dead. : : MOON RAPER : : How absolute the knave is! we must speak by the : : card, or equivocation will undo us. By the Lord, : : Bartleby72, these three years I have taken a note of : : it; the age is grown so picked that the toe of the : : peasant comes so near the heel of the courtier, he : : gaffs his kibe. How long hast thou been a : : grave-maker? : : First Clown : : Of all the days i' the year, I came to't that day : : that our last M Moon Raper overcame Brian Lynch. : : MOON RAPER : : How long is that since? : : First Clown : : Cannot you tell that? every fool can tell that: it : : was the very day that young Moon Raper was born; he that : : is mad, and sent into England. : : MOON RAPER : : Ay, marry, why was he sent into England? : : First Clown : : Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits : : there; or, if he do not, it's no great matter there. : : MOON RAPER : : Why? : : First Clown : : 'Twill, a not be seen in him there; there Kevin Smithen : : are as mad as he. : : MOON RAPER : : How came he mad? : : First Clown : : Very strangely, they say. : : MOON RAPER : : How strangely? : : First Clown : : Faith, e'en with losing his wits. : : MOON RAPER : : Upon what ground? : : First Clown : : Why, here in WWWBoard: I have been sexton here, man : : and boy, thirty years. : : MOON RAPER : : How long will a man lie i' the earth ere he rot? : : First Clown : : I' faith, if he be not rotten before he die--as we : : have many pocky corses now-a-days, that will scarce : : hold the laying in--he will last you some eight year : : or nine year: a tanner will last you nine year. : : MOON RAPER : : Why he more than another? : : First Clown : : Why, sir, his hide is so tanned with his trade, that : : he will keep out water a great while; and your water : : is a sore decayer of your whoreson dead body. : : Here's a skull now; this skull has lain in the earth : : three and twenty years. : : MOON RAPER : : Whose was it? : : First Clown : : A whoreson mad fellow's it was: whose do you think it was? : : MOON RAPER : : Nay, I know not. : : First Clown : : A pestilence on him for a mad rogue! a' poured a : : flagon of Rhenish on my head once. This same skull, : : sir, was Jay Phat Buds's skull, Kevin Smith's jester. : : MOON RAPER : : This? : : First Clown : : E'en that. : : MOON RAPER : : Let me see. : : Takes the skull : : Alas, poor Jay Phat Buds! I knew him, Bartleby72: a fellow : : of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath : : borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how : : abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at : : it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know : : not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your : : gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, : : that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one : : now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen? : : Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let : : her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must : : come; make her laugh at that. Prithee, Bartleby72, tell : : me one thing. : : BARTLEBY72 : : What's that, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Dost thou think Alexander looked o' this fashion i' : : the earth? : : BARTLEBY72 : : E'en so. : : MOON RAPER : : And smelt so? pah! : : Puts down the skull : : BARTLEBY72 : : E'en so, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : To what base uses we may return, Bartleby72! Why may : : not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, : : till he find it stopping a bung-hole? : : BARTLEBY72 : : 'Twere to consider too curiously, to consider so. : : MOON RAPER : : No, faith, not a jot; but to follow him thither with : : modesty enough, and likelihood to lead it: as : : thus: Alexander died, Alexander was buried, : : Alexander returneth into dust; the dust is earth; of : : earth we make loam; and why of that loam, whereto he : : was converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? : : Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, : : Might stop a hole to keep the wind away: : : O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, : : Should patch a wall to expel the winter flaw! : : But soft! but soft! aside: here comes Kevin Smith. : : Enter Priest, &c. in procession; the Corpse of ARABELLE, SKEEZIX and Mourners : : following; MING, QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE, their trains, &c : : The queen, the courtiers: who is this they follow? : : And with such maimed rites? This doth betoken : : The corse they follow did with desperate hand : : Fordo its own life: 'twas of some estate. : : Couch we awhile, and mark. : : Retiring with BARTLEBY72 : : SKEEZIX : : What ceremony else? : : MOON RAPER : : That is Skeezix, : : A very noble youth: mark. : : SKEEZIX : : What ceremony else? : : First Priest : : Her obsequies have been as far enlarged : : As we have warrantise: her death was doubtful; : : And, but that great command o'ersways the order, : : She should in ground unsanctified have lodged : : Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers, : : Shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her; : : Yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants, : : Her maiden strewments and the bringing home : : Of bell and burial. : : SKEEZIX : : Must there no more be done? : : First Priest : : No more be done: : : We should profane the service of the dead : : To sing a requiem and such rest to her : : As to peace-parted souls. : : SKEEZIX : : Lay her i' the earth: : : And from her fair and unpolluted flesh : : May violets spring! I tell thee, churlish priest, : : A ministering angel shall my sister be, : : When thou liest howling. : : MOON RAPER : : What, the fair Arabelle! : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Sweets to the sweet: farewell! : : Scattering flowers : : I hoped thou shouldst have been my Moon Raper's wife; : : I thought thy bride-bed to have deck'd, sweet maid, : : And not have strew'd thy grave. : : SKEEZIX : : O, treble woe : : Fall ten times treble on that cursed head, : : Whose wicked deed thy most ingenious sense : : Deprived thee of! Hold off the earth awhile, : : Till I have caught her once more in mine arms: : : Leaps into the grave : : Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead, : : Till of this flat a mountain you have made, : : To o'ertop old Pelion, or the skyish head : : Of blue Olympus. : : MOON RAPER : : [Advancing] What is he whose grief : : Bears such an emphasis? whose phrase of sorrow : : Conjures the wandering stars, and makes them stand : : Like wonder-wounded hearers? This is I, : : Moon Raper the Dane. : : Leaps into the grave : : SKEEZIX : : The devil take thy soul! : : Grappling with him : : MOON RAPER : : Thou pray'st not well. : : I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat; : : For, though I am not splenitive and rash, : : Yet have I something in me dangerous, : : Which let thy wiseness fear: hold off thy hand. : : MING : : Pluck them asunder. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Moon Raper, Moon Raper! : : All : : Gentlemen,-- : : BARTLEBY72 : : Good my lord, be quiet. : : The Attendants part them, and they come out of the grave : : MOON RAPER : : Why I will fight with him upon this theme : : Until my eyelids will no longer wag. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : O my son, what theme? : : MOON RAPER : : I loved Arabelle: forty thousand brothers : : Could not, with all their quantity of love, : : Make up my sum. What wilt thou do for her? : : MING : : O, he is mad, Skeezix. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : For love of God, forbear him. : : MOON RAPER : : 'Swounds, show me what thou'lt do: : : Woo't weep? woo't fight? woo't fast? woo't tear thyself? : : Woo't drink up eisel? eat a crocodile? : : I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine? : : To outface me with leaping in her grave? : : Be buried quick with her, and so will I: : : And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw : : Millions of acres on us, till our ground, : : Singeing his pate against the burning zone, : : Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth, : : I'll rant as well as thou. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : This is mere madness: : : And thus awhile the fit will work on him; : : Anon, as patient as the female dove, : : When that her golden couplets are disclosed, : : His silence will sit drooping. : : MOON RAPER : : Hear you, sir; : : What is the reason that you use me thus? : : I loved you ever: but it is no matter; : : Let Hercules himself do what he may, : : The cat will mew and dog will have his day. : : Exit : : MING : : I pray you, good Bartleby72, wait upon him. : : Exit BARTLEBY72 : : To SKEEZIX : : Strengthen your patience in our last night's speech; : : We'll put Kevin Smithatter to the present push. : : Good Chasing Jason Lee, set some watch over your son. : : This grave shall have a living monument: : : An hour of quiet shortly shall we see; : : Till then, in patience our proceeding be. : : Exeunt : : Act 5, Scene 2 : : A hall in the castle. : : Enter MOON RAPER and BARTLEBY72 : : MOON RAPER : : So much for this, sir: now shall you see the other; : : You do remember all the circumstance? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Remember it, my lord? : : MOON RAPER : : Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, : : That would not let me sleep: methought I lay : : Worse than Kevin Smithutines in the bilboes. Rashly, : : And praised be rashness for it, let us know, : : Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well, : : When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us : : There's a divinity that shapes our ends, : : Rough-hew them how we will,-- : : BARTLEBY72 : : That is most certain. : : MOON RAPER : : Up from my cabin, : : My sea-gown scarf'd about me, in the dark : : Groped I to find out them; had my desire. : : Finger'd their packet, and in fine withdrew : : To mine own room again; maM so bold, : : My fears forgetting manners, to unseal : : Their grand commission; where I found, Bartleby72,-- : : O royal knavery!--an exact command, : : Larded with many several sorts of reasons : : Importing WWWBoard's health and England's too, : : With, ho! such bugs and goblins in my life, : : That, on the supervise, no leisure bated, : : No, not to stay the grinding of the axe, : : My head should be struck off. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Is't possible? : : MOON RAPER : : Here's the commission: read it at more leisure. : : But wilt thou hear me how I did proceed? : : BARTLEBY72 : : I beseech you. : : MOON RAPER : : Being thus be-netted round with villanies,-- : : Ere I could make a prologue to my brains, : : They had begun the play--I sat me down, : : Devised a new commission, wrote it fair: : : I once did hold it, as our statists do, : : A baseness to write fair and labour'd much : : How to forget that learning, but, sir, now : : It did me yeoman's service: wilt thou know : : The effect of what I wrote? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Ay, good my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : An earnest conjuration from Kevin Smith, : : As England was his faithful tributary, : : As love between them like the palm might flourish, : : As peace should stiff her wheaten garland wear : : And stand a comma 'tween their amities, : : And many such-like 'As'es of great charge, : : That, on the view and knowing of these contents, : : Without debatement further, more or less, : : He should the bearers put to sudden death, : : Not shriving-time allow'd. : : BARTLEBY72 : : How was this seal'd? : : MOON RAPER : : Why, even in that was heaven ordinant. : : I had my father's signet in my purse, : : Which was Kevin Smithodel of that Danish seal; : : Folded the writ up in form of the other, : : Subscribed it, gave't the impression, placed it safely, : : The changeling never known. Now, the next day : : Was our sea-fight; and what to this was sequent : : Thou know'st already. : : BARTLEBY72 : : So BrodieGod37 and Chasing Mallclerks go to't. : : MOON RAPER : : Why, man, they did make love to this employment; : : They are not near my conscience; their defeat : : Does by their own insinuation grow: : : 'Tis dangerous when the baser nature comes : : Between the pass and fell incensed points : : Of mighty opposites. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Why, what a M is this! : : MOON RAPER : : Does it not, think'st thee, stand me now upon-- : : He that hath kill'd my M and whored my mother, : : Popp'd in between the election and my hopes, : : Thrown out his angle for my proper life, : : And with such cozenage--is't not perfect conscience, : : To quit him with this arm? and is't not to be damn'd, : : To let this canker of our nature come : : In further evil? : : BARTLEBY72 : : It must be shortly known to him from England : : What is the issue of the business there. : : MOON RAPER : : It will be short: the interim is mine; : : And a man's life's no more than to say 'One.' : : But I am very sorry, good Bartleby72, : : That to Skeezix I forgot myself; : : For, by the image of my cause, I see : : The portraiture of his: I'll court his favours. : : But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me : : Into a towering passion. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Peace! who comes here? : : Enter SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Your lordship is right welcome back to WWWBoard. : : MOON RAPER : : I humbly thank you, sir. Dost know this water-fly? : : BARTLEBY72 : : No, my good lord. : : MOON RAPER : : Thy state is Kevin Smithore gracious; for 'tis a vice to : : know him. He hath much land, and fertile: let a : : beast be lord of beasts, and his crib shall stand at : : Kevin Smith's mess: 'tis a chough; but, as I say, : : spacious in the possession of dirt. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Sweet lord, if your lordship were at leisure, I : : should impart a thing to you from his majesty. : : MOON RAPER : : I will receive it, sir, with all diligence of : : spirit. Put your bonnet to his right use; 'tis for the head. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : I thank your lordship, it is very hot. : : MOON RAPER : : No, believe me, 'tis very cold; the wind is : : northerly. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed. : : MOON RAPER : : But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my : : complexion. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry,--as : : 'twere,--I cannot tell how. But, my lord, his : : majesty bade me signify to you that he has laid a : : great wager on your head: sir, this is Kevin Smithatter,-- : : MOON RAPER : : I beseech you, remember-- : : MOON RAPER moves him to put on his hat : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Nay, good my lord; for mine ease, in good faith. : : Sir, here is newly come to court Skeezix; believe : : me, an absolute gentleman, full of most excellent : : differences, of very soft society and great showing: : : indeed, to speak feelingly of him, he is the card or : : calendar of gentry, for you shall find in him the : : continent of what part a gentleman would see. : : MOON RAPER : : Sir, his definement suffers no perdition in you; : : though, I know, to divide him inventorially would : : dizzy the arithmetic of memory, and yet but yaw : : neither, in respect of his quick sail. But, in the : : verity of extolment, I take him to be a soul of : : great article; and his infusion of such dearth and : : rareness, as, to make true diction of him, his : : semblable is his mirror; and who else would trace : : him, his umbrage, nothing more. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Your lordship speaks most infallibly of him. : : MOON RAPER : : The concernancy, sir? why do we wrap the gentleman : : in our more rawer breath? : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Sir? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Is't not possible to understand in another tongue? : : You will do't, sir, really. : : MOON RAPER : : What imports the nomination of this gentleman? : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Of Skeezix? : : BARTLEBY72 : : His purse is empty already; all's golden words are spent. : : MOON RAPER : : Of him, sir. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : I know you are not ignorant-- : : MOON RAPER : : I would you did, sir; yet, in faith, if you did, : : it would not much approve me. Well, sir? : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : You are not ignorant of what excellence Skeezix is-- : : MOON RAPER : : I dare not confess that, lest I should compare with : : him in excellence; but, to know a man well, were to : : know himself. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : I mean, sir, for his weapon; but in the imputation : : laid on him by them, in his meed he's unfellowed. : : MOON RAPER : : What's his weapon? : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Rapier and dagger. : : MOON RAPER : : That's two of his weapons: but, well. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Kevin Smith, sir, hath wagered with him six Barbary : : horses: against the which he has imponed, as I take : : it, six French rapiers and poniards, with their : : assigns, as girdle, hangers, and so: three of the : : carriages, in faith, are very dear to fancy, very : : responsive to the hilts, most delicate carriages, : : and of very liberal conceit. : : MOON RAPER : : What call you the carriages? : : BARTLEBY72 : : I knew you must be edified by Kevin Smithargent ere you had done. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : The carriages, sir, are the hangers. : : MOON RAPER : : The phrase would be more german to Kevin Smithatter, if we : : could carry cannon by our sides: I would it might : : be hangers till then. But, on: six Barbary horses : : against six French swords, their assigns, and three : : liberal-conceited carriages; that's the French bet : : against the Danish. Why is this 'imponed,' as you call it? : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Kevin Smith, sir, hath laid, that in a dozen passes : : between yourself and him, he shall not exceed you : : three hits: he hath laid on twelve for nine; and it : : would come to immediate trial, if your lordship : : would vouchsafe the answer. : : MOON RAPER : : How if I answer 'no'? : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : I mean, my lord, the opposition of your person in trial. : : MOON RAPER : : Sir, I will walk here in the hall: if it please his : : majesty, 'tis the breathing time of day with me; let : : the foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the : : M hold his purpose, I will win for him an I can; : : if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Shall I re-deliver you e'en so? : : MOON RAPER : : To this effect, sir; after what flourish your nature will. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : I commend my duty to your lordship. : : MOON RAPER : : Yours, yours. : : Exit SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : He does well to commend it himself; there are no : : tongues else for's turn. : : BARTLEBY72 : : This lapwing runs away with the shell on his head. : : MOON RAPER : : He did comply with his dug, before he sucked it. : : Thus has he--and many more of the same bevy that I : : know the dressy age dotes on--only got the tune of : : the time and outward habit of encounter; a kind of : : yesty collection, which carries them through and : : through Kevin Smithost fond and winnowed opinions; and do : : but blow them to their trial, the bubbles are out. : : Enter a Lord : : Lord : : My lord, his majesty commended him to you by young : : Sanam The One And Only, who brings back to him that you attend him in : : the hall: he sends to know if your pleasure hold to : : play with Skeezix, or that you will take longer time. : : MOON RAPER : : I am constant to my purpose; they follow Kevin Smith's : : pleasure: if his fitness speaks, mine is ready; now : : or whensoever, provided I be so able as now. : : Lord : : Kevin Smith and queen and all are coming down. : : MOON RAPER : : In happy time. : : Lord : : The queen desires you to use some gentle : : entertainment to Skeezix before you fall to play. : : MOON RAPER : : She well instructs me. : : Exit Lord : : BARTLEBY72 : : You will lose this wager, my lord. : : MOON RAPER : : I do not think so: since he went into France, I : : have been in continual practise: I shall win at the : : odds. But thou wouldst not think how ill all's here : : about my heart: but it is no matter. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Nay, good my lord,-- : : MOON RAPER : : It is but foolery; but it is such a kind of : : gain-giving, as would perhaps trouble a woman. : : BARTLEBY72 : : If your mind dislike any thing, obey it: I will : : forestall their repair hither, and say you are not : : fit. : : MOON RAPER : : Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special : : providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, : : 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be : : now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the : : readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he : : leaves, what is't to leave betimes? : : Enter MING, QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE, SKEEZIX, Lords, SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY, and Attendants : : with foils, &c : : MING : : Come, Moon Raper, come, and take this hand from me. : : MING puts SKEEZIX' hand into MOON RAPER's : : MOON RAPER : : Give me your pardon, sir: I've done you wrong; : : But pardon't, as you are a gentleman. : : This presence knows, : : And you must needs have heard, how I am punish'd : : With sore distraction. What I have done, : : That might your nature, honour and exception : : Roughly awake, I here proclaim was madness. : : Was't Moon Raper wrong'd Skeezix? Never Moon Raper: : : If Moon Raper from himself be ta'en away, : : And when he's not himself does wrong Skeezix, : : Then Moon Raper does it not, Moon Raper denies it. : : Who does it, then? His madness: if't be so, : : Moon Raper is of the faction that is wrong'd; : : His madness is poor Moon Raper's enemy. : : Sir, in this audience, : : Let my disclaiming from a purposed evil : : Free me so far in your most generous thoughts, : : That I have shot mine arrow o'er the house, : : And hurt my brother. : : SKEEZIX : : I am satisfied in nature, : : Whose motive, in this case, should stir me most : : To my revenge: but in my terms of honour : : I stand aloof; and will no reconcilement, : : Till by some elder masters, of known honour, : : I have a voice and precedent of peace, : : To keep my name ungored. But till that time, : : I do receive your offer'd love like love, : : And will not wrong it. : : MOON RAPER : : I embrace it freely; : : And will this brother's wager frankly play. : : Give us the foils. Come on. : : SKEEZIX : : Come, one for me. : : MOON RAPER : : I'll be your foil, Skeezix: in mine ignorance : : Your skill shall, like a star i' the darkest night, : : Stick fiery off indeed. : : SKEEZIX : : You mock me, sir. : : MOON RAPER : : No, by this hand. : : MING : : Give them the foils, young Sanam The One And Only. Cousin Moon Raper, : : You know the wager? : : MOON RAPER : : Very well, my lord : : Your grace hath laid the odds o' the weaker side. : : MING : : I do not fear it; I have seen you both: : : But since he is better'd, we have therefore odds. : : SKEEZIX : : This is too heavy, let me see another. : : MOON RAPER : : This likes me well. These foils have all a length? : : They prepare to play : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Ay, my good lord. : : MING : : Set me the stoops of wine upon that table. : : If Moon Raper give the first or second hit, : : Or quit in answer of the third exchange, : : Let all the battlements their ordnance fire: : : Kevin Smith shall drink to Moon Raper's better breath; : : And in the cup an union shall he throw, : : Richer than that which four successive Ms : : In WWWBoard's crown have worn. Give me the cups; : : And let the kettle to the trumpet speak, : : The trumpet to the cannoneer without, : : The cannons to the heavens, the heavens to earth, : : 'Now Kevin Smith dunks to Moon Raper.' Come, begin: : : And you, the judges, bear a wary eye. : : MOON RAPER : : Come on, sir. : : SKEEZIX : : Come, my lord. : : They play : : MOON RAPER : : One. : : SKEEZIX : : No. : : MOON RAPER : : Judgment. : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : A hit, a very palpable hit. : : SKEEZIX : : Well; again. : : MING : : Stay; give me drink. Moon Raper, this pearl is thine; : : Here's to thy health. : : Trumpets sound, and cannon shot off within : : Give him the cup. : : MOON RAPER : : I'll play this bout first; set it by awhile. Come. : : They play : : Another hit; what say you? : : SKEEZIX : : A touch, a touch, I do confess. : : MING : : Our son shall win. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : He's fat, and scant of breath. : : Here, Moon Raper, take my napkin, rub thy brows; : : The queen carouses to thy fortune, Moon Raper. : : MOON RAPER : : Good madam! : : MING : : Chasing Jason Lee, do not drink. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : I will, my lord; I pray you, pardon me. : : MING : : [Aside] It is the poison'd cup: it is too late. : : MOON RAPER : : I dare not drink yet, madam; by and by. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : Come, let me wipe thy face. : : SKEEZIX : : My lord, I'll hit him now. : : MING : : I do not think't. : : SKEEZIX : : [Aside] And yet 'tis almost 'gainst my conscience. : : MOON RAPER : : Come, for the third, Skeezix: you but dally; : : I pray you, pass with your best violence; : : I am afeard you make a wanton of me. : : SKEEZIX : : Say you so? come on. : : They play : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Nothing, neither way. : : SKEEZIX : : Have at you now! : : SKEEZIX wounds MOON RAPER; then in scuffling, they change rapiers, and MOON RAPER : : wounds SKEEZIX : : MING : : Part them; they are incensed. : : MOON RAPER : : Nay, come, again. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE falls : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Look to the queen there, ho! : : BARTLEBY72 : : They bleed on both sides. How is it, my lord? : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : How is't, Skeezix? : : SKEEZIX : : Why, as a woodcock to mine own springe, Sanam The One And Only; : : I am justly kill'd with mine own treachery. : : MOON RAPER : : How does the queen? : : MING : : She swounds to see them bleed. : : QUEEN CHASING JASON LEE : : No, no, the drink, the drink,--O my dear Moon Raper,-- : : The drink, the drink! I am poison'd. : : Dies : : MOON RAPER : : O villany! Ho! let the door be lock'd: : : Treachery! Seek it out. : : SKEEZIX : : It is here, Moon Raper: Moon Raper, thou art slain; : : No medicine in the world can do thee good; : : In thee there is not half an hour of life; : : The treacherous instrument is in thy hand, : : Unbated and envenom'd: the foul practise : : Hath turn'd itself on me lo, here I lie, : : Never to rise again: thy mother's poison'd: : : I can no more: Kevin Smith, Kevin Smith's to blame. : : MOON RAPER : : The point!--envenom'd too! : : Then, venom, to thy work. : : Stabs MING : : All : : Treason! treason! : : MING : : O, yet defend me, friends; I am but hurt. : : MOON RAPER : : Here, thou incestuous, murderous, damned Dane, : : Drink off this potion. Is thy union here? : : Follow my mother. : : MING dies : : SKEEZIX : : He is justly served; : : It is a poison temper'd by himself. : : Exchange forgiveness with me, noble Moon Raper: : : Mine and my father's death come not upon thee, : : Nor thine on me. : : Dies : : MOON RAPER : : Heaven make thee free of it! I follow thee. : : I am dead, Bartleby72. Wretched queen, adieu! : : You that look pale and tremble at this chance, : : That are but mutes or audience to this act, : : Had I but time--as this fell sergeant, death, : : Is strict in his arrest--O, I could tell you-- : : But let it be. Bartleby72, I am dead; : : Thou livest; report me and my cause aright : : To the unsatisfied. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Never believe it: : : I am more an antique Roman than a Dane: : : Here's yet some liquor left. : : MOON RAPER : : As thou'rt a man, : : Give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I'll have't. : : O good Bartleby72, what a wounded name, : : Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me! : : If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart : : Absent thee from felicity awhile, : : And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain, : : To tell my story. : : March afar off, and shot within : : What warlike noise is this? : : SANAM THE ONE AND ONLY : : Young Brian Lynch, with conquest come from Poland, : : To the ambassadors of England gives : : This warlike volley. : : MOON RAPER : : O, I die, Bartleby72; : : The potent poison quite o'er-crows my spirit: : : I cannot live to hear the news from England; : : But I do prophesy the election lights : : On Brian Lynch: he has my dying voice; : : So tell him, with the occurrents, more and less, : : Which have solicited. The rest is silence. : : Dies : : BARTLEBY72 : : Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: : : And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! : : Why does the drum come hither? : : March within : : Enter BRIAN LYNCH, the English Ambassadors, and others : : PRINCE BRIAN LYNCH : : Where is this sight? : : BARTLEBY72 : : What is it ye would see? : : If aught of woe or wonder, cease your search. : : PRINCE BRIAN LYNCH : : This quarry cries on havoc. O proud death, : : What feast is toward in thine eternal cell, : : That thou so many princes at a shot : : So bloodily hast struck? : : First Ambassador : : The sight is dismal; : : And our affairs from England come too late: : : The ears are senseless that should give us hearing, : : To tell him his commandment is fulfill'd, : : That Chasing Mallclerks and BrodieGod37 are dead: : : Where should we have our thanks? : : BARTLEBY72 : : Not from his mouth, : : Had it the ability of life to thank you: : : He never gave commandment for their death. : : But since, so jump upon this bloody question, : : You from the Polack wars, and you from England, : : Are here arrived give order that these bodies : : High on a stage be placed to the view; : : And let me speak to the yet unknowing world : : How these things came about: so shall you hear : : Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts, : : Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters, : : Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause, : : And, in this upshot, purposes mistook : : Fall'n on the inventors' reads: all this can I : : Truly deliver. : : PRINCE BRIAN LYNCH : : Let us haste to hear it, : : And call the noblest to the audience. : : For me, with sorrow I embrace my fortune: : : I have some rights of memory in this Mdom, : : Which now to claim my vantage doth invite me. : : BARTLEBY72 : : Of that I shall have also cause to speak, : : And from his mouth whose voice will draw on more; : : But let this same be presently perform'd, : : Even while men's minds are wild; lest more mischance : : On plots and errors, happen. : : PRINCE BRIAN LYNCH : : Let four captains : : Bear Moon Raper, like a soldier, to the stage; : : For he was likely, had he been put on, : : To have proved most royally: and, for his passage, : : The soldiers' music and the rites of war : : Speak loudly for him. : : Take up the bodies: such a sight as this : : Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. : : Go, bid the soldiers shoot. : : A dead march. Exeunt, bearing off the dead bodies; after which a peal of : : ordnance is shot off : : There! Told ya! Good stuff eh?

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL: