Beaumont & Fletcher: Introductory Material & The Woman Hater

John Addington Symonds, Blank Verse (1895), Kessinger, LLC, 2008

After a complete perusal of [Jonson’s] works I find very little of the fluent grace which belonged in so large a measure to Fletcher and to Shakespeare. 33

The melody which gives so chaste and elegant a beauty to these lines is invariable in the verse of Beaumont and Fletcher. We have too much of it there, and surfeit on sweets; for in a very short time we discover the trick of these great versifiers and learn to expect their luxurious alliterations, and repeated caesuras at the end of the fifth syllable. Their redundant and deficient lines, the sweetness long drawn out of their delicious cadences, become well known. Then the movement of their verse is not, like that of Shakespeare, self-evolved and thoroughly organic; it obeys a rule; luxury is sought for its own sake, and languor follows as a direct consequence of certain verbal mannerisms. Among these may be mentioned a decided preference for all words in which there is a predominance of liquids and of vowels. For instance, in this line: ‘Showers, hails, snows, frosts, and two-edged winds that prime the maiden blossoms’ there is no unlicensed redundancy of syllables; but the languor of getting through so many accumulated sounds produces a strange retardation of movement. Another peculiarity is the substitution of hendecasyllabic lines for the usual decasyllable blank verse through long periods of dialogue. In one scene of “Valentinian” there are fifty-five continuous lines, of which only five are decasyllabic verses, the rest being hendecasyllables; so that the license of the superfluous syllable, which is always granted in dramatic writing for the sake of variety, becomes, in its turn, far more cloying than a strict adherence to the five-footed verse. It is also noticeable that this weak ending is frequently constructed by the addition of some emphatic monosyllable…The natural consequence of these delays and languors in the rhythms is that the versification of Beaumont and Fletcher has always a meandering and rotary movement. It does not seem to leap or glide straight onward, but to return upon itself and wind and double. The following passage may be quoted as illustrative of its almost lyrical voluptuousness...The speech of Aspatia among her maidens is an excellent example of the more careful verse of Fletcher…There is enough variety and subtle melody in this without the usual effeminacy of Fletcher’s style…One more specimen of this most musical of poets may be allowed me… 34-38


George Saintsbury, A History of English Prosody From the Twelfth Century to the Present Day, Volume 2, MacMillan & Co., London, 1908

There are passages on passages in Beaumont and Fletcher themselves—notably that magnificent piece in The False One, which is one of the purplest patches in the coat of Elizabethan drama—where the hendecasyllable has it nearly all its own way, with no harm and much good. 54

[Beaumont and Fletcher] have trisyllabic feet, of course, but in comparison with Shakespeare’s these are few. Nor are they very fond of Alexandrines, though these do occur. On the other hand—and it is the great merit of their verse—they have learnt from Shakespeare, or found out for themselves, almost the full virtue of the varied pause and run-on sense, though they are less careful than he is to vary the variation. This varied pause and run-on sense, in fact, is almost necessary in order to carry of frequent redundance…In fact, the exquisiteness of their lyrics shows the very high prosodic degree which they, or one of them, probably Fletcher, had attained. 304

…the eccentricities of Donne—the “holes that you may put your hand in” that so did annoy Sir John Beaumont. 108

Tucker Brooke & Matthias A Shaaber, Book II, A Literary History of England, Ed. Albert Baugh, Appleton Century Crofts, New York, 1967

No more amiable personality than that of Francis Beaumont has recorded itself in English plays. He was the most original, the sanest, and probably the wittiest of the cavalier dramatists…If [The Knight of the Burning Pestle] is not the greatest dramatic burlesque in English, it is certainly the most genuinely mirth-provoking and the most genial. It gives a cavalier aristocrat’s view of the London middle class…without the least reflection upon their lives or characters. 572-3

Beaumont’s style is beautifully suited to these themes. It is in structure and emotional effect much like the style of Shakespeare’s last plays, rich in run-on lines and very sweetly modulated. It tends to elegiac and epigrammatic neatness, and, without being at all stilted or verbose, strikes one as being the veritable language of ladies and gentlemen such as society has not yet quite succeeded in developing. 573-4

It is an easy hand to detect, for Fletcher early developed an individual type of blank verse, marked by an enormous proportion (c. 90 percent) of end-stopped lines and an unprecedented number (c. 70 percent) of double or treble endings. His use of words is very diffuse, where Beaumont prided himself on being laconic. Fletcher makes his blank verse so conversational that his plays have no need of prose and are perhaps the most readable of all verse dramas. 574

Massinger’s contribution to the “Beaumont-Fletcher” Folios is in bulk very considerably larger than Beaumont’s; but in the plays he wrote with Fletcher Massinger was never the controlling partner…It is usually [Fletcher] who handles the great scenes of climax or boisterous nonsense, and who conceives the most original characters, while Massinger, who is one of the world’s finest dramatic technicians, attends usefully to the openings and closes and the general coherence. 577

Three plays only, The Scornful Lady (1616), A King and No King (1619), and Philaster (1620) , were printed during Fletcher’s lifetime as the joint-productions of himself and Beaumont; and the title-pages of those three dramas set forth that they were written by “Beaumont and Fletcher”,—the name of Beaumont standing first, either because he was known to have composed the larger portion of them, or because that precedence was considered as a mark of respect due to a deceased writer. At a later date no one was willing to disturb an arrangement which had become familiar to the reader… (The Works of Beaumont & Fletcher, V1, vii, Some Account of The Lives and Writings of Beaumont and Fletcher).

We are told by Fletcher’s biographers that he pursued his studies at the university with diligence and success. His plays, indeed, though containing various graceful recollections of the classic writers, evince no traces of superior scholarship; but we cannot therefore infer that he had not attained it: among our early dramatists several might be named, who were questionably masters of a deep and extensive eruditions, which, however, is but faintly reflected in their scenes. [Footnote: e.g. Chapman and Heywood. See their undramatic works.] (V1, xviii-xix)

We are told by Dryden that “Beaumont was so accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson, while he lived, submitted all his writings to his censure, and ’tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots” [On Dram. Poesy,--Prose Works, Vol. i. P. ii. p. 100, ed. Malone] For this report there may have been some foundation; but Dryden was accustomed to write on such subjects very much at random, and with very imperfect knowledge. (xxv)

The shafts of criticism had not yet assailed The Arcadia of Sidney; it was still the delight of thousands when it furnished the groundwork of the drama next to be mentioned,—Cupid’s Revenge. (xxxvi)

While the custom of acting only a single piece a day prevailed almost constantly at our early theatres, the manages, for the sake of a little variety, occasionally brought forward that peculiar species of entertainment which consisted of several short and distinct plays repressed within another play, and which occupied no longer time in the exhibition than a common drama. Concerning performances of this kind, —Three Plays in One, Four Plays in One, and Five Plays in One,—various notices are extant; but no specimen [footnote: That is, no complete specimen. A Yorkshire Tragedy (attributed to Shakespeare) is termed on the title-page All’s One, or, One of the foure Plaies in One, &c.: but the other three do not exist] of them remains except the Four Plays, or Moral Representations in One which we have among the works of Beaumont and Fletcher. In the composition of these Four Plays, the date of which is uncertain, there is every reason to believe that both our poets were concerned. They are entitled The Triumph of Honour, The Triumph of Love, The Triumph of Death, and The Triumph of Time, and they are introduced into a fifth play (a mere frame to contain them) as successive representations at the nuptials of the King and Queen of Portugal. (xxxix-xl)

The Captain appears to have been first acted either towards the end of 1612, or early the following year…It seems to have been the unassisted work of Fletcher…Leila boldly avows to her father the passion she has conceived for him, and as boldly argues in defense of its lawfulness. This is perhaps the most odious incident in any of our early dramas. Ford and Massinger, indeed, (not to mention others,) have written plays on the subject of incestuous love; but those are tragedies of the deepest horror, and in them the guilty parties are visited with signal punishment. Fletcher’s Leila is, on the contrary, a character in a broad comedy; and her father, though at first so indignant that he threatens to destroy her, seems afterwards to regard the overture she had made to him as little more than an indiscretion arising from the heat of youthful blood! (xlii)

Wit without Money…was one of those alluded to by Dryden when he said that Beaumont and Fletcher “understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better [than Shakespeare]; whose wild debaucheries, and quickness of wit in repartees, no poet before them could paint as they have done.” [On Dram. Poesy,--Prose Works, Vol. i. P. ii. p. 100, ed. Malone] (xliv)

There can be little doubt that the most unblushing licentiousness both in conversation and practice prevailed among the courtiers of James the First:...In this respect they sinned more grievously than any of their contemporary play-wrights…The example of Charles the First is generally supposed to have given a higher tone to the morals of our nobility and gentry; yet, shortly before the death of that monarch, we find Lovelace extolling the art with which in the present play a veil of seeming modesty is thrown over obscenity;
“View here a loose thought said with such a grace,
Minerva might have spoke in Venus’ face;
So well disguis’d, that’twas conceiv’d by none
But Cupid had Diana’s linen on” [Commend. Poems, vol.i.xxv.] :--
it would be curious to know what was Lovelace’s idea of downright coarseness!...If Dryden and the other dramatists of Charles the Second’s time did not equal their predecessors in open licentiousness (and of that they have a tolerable share), they far exceeded them in wanton innuendoes and allusions. (xlvii-xlviii)

We are ignorant at what period [Beaumont] became a husband: but I am inclined to fix the date of his marriage about 1613. His wife was Ursula, daughter and coheir to Henry Isley of Sundridge in Kent. The Isleys had been long settled in that parish, and were a family of some note: it would seem, however, that before the time of Beaumont’s marriage much of their property had passed into other hands. Beaumont died on the 6th of March, 1615-1616, and was buried, on the 9th of that month, at the entrance of St. Benedict’s Chapel, in Westminster Abbey, near the Earl of Middlesex’s monument. It is said that he had not completed his thirtieth year. (li-lii)

The Woman’s Prize, or, The Tamer Tamed…It is wholly by Fletcher.—This comedy forms a sequel to The Taming of the Shrew… (lxiv)

Coleridge, however,--if we may credit the report of his sayings,--perceived no imperfections in the Beggar’s Bush: “I could read it,” he exclaimed, “from morning to night: how sylvan and sunshiny it is!” [Footnote: Table Talk,ii. 119, ed. 1835. I cannot help suspecting that Mr. Nelson Coleridge mistook the name of the play, and that his uncle mention, not the Beggar’s Bush, but The Faithful Shepherdess.] (lxix)

A Wife for a Month…its model,--the concluding scene of Shakespeare’s King John…With the occasional beauty of diction, the wailings of Alphonso are a succession of extravagances and conceits; and they are spun out to a length which must necessarily have weakened their impressiveness, had they been ever so truthful. Shakespeare, with his usual judgment, gave comparatively few speeches to the dying king…The dialogue of this drama is generally spirited, and has much of Fletcher’s rapid eloquence and flowing versification. (lxxi)

Rule a Wife and Have a Wife is better known than any play in this collection, for (with some alterations) it still proves an attractive entertainment on the stage…Fletcher…fell a victim to the plague, which was then prevalent in the metropolis. He died, before completing his forty-sixth year… (lxxii)

…congratulate thy own happiness, that, in this silence of the stage, thou hast a liberty to read these inimitable plays, to dwell and converse in these immortal groves, which were only shewed our fathers in a conjuring-glass, as suddenly removed as represented; the landscrap is now brought home by this optic… (V1, To the Reader. Prefixed to the Folio of 1647. iv, James Shirley)

…and, when thou art sick of this cure, (for the excess of delight may too much dilate thy soul,) thou shalt meet almost in every leaf a soft purling passion or spring of sorrow… (V1, To the Reader. Prefixed to the Folio of 1647. v, James Shirley)

Not to detain or prepare thee longer, be as capricious and sick-brained as ignorance and malice can make thee, here thou art rectified; or be as healthful as the inward calm of an honest heart, learning, and temper, can state thy disposition, yet this book may be thy fortunate concernment and companion. (V1, To the Reader. Prefixed to the Folio of 1647. v, James Shirley)

Fletcher, to thee we do not only owe
All these good plays, but those of others too;
Thy wit repeated, does support the stage,
Credits the last, and entertains this age.

(V1, Upon Master John Fletcher’s Plays, by Edmund Waller, xxiii)


That fate should be so merciful to me,
To let me live t’have said, I have read thee?

(V1, To Fletcher Revived, by Richard Lovelace, xxiv)


How I do fear myself, that am not worth
The least indulgent thought thy pen drops forth!
At once thou mak’st me happy, and unmak’st,
And giving largely to me, more thou tak’st.

(V1, To Master Francis Beaumont (Then Living). by Ben Jonson, xlvi)
If there be any amongst you that come to hear lascivious scenes, let them depart; for I do pronounce this, to the utter discomfort of all two-penny gallery-men, you shall have no bawdry in it:… (V1, The Woman Hater, Prologue, v)

Duke: ’Tis now the sweetest time for sleep; the night’s
Scarce spent: Arrigo, what’s o’clock?
Arrigo: Past four.
Duke: Is it so much, and yet the morn not up?

(V1, The Woman Hater, 1.1.p.11)


The Woman Hater

Duke: You are my friends, and you shall have the cause;
I break my sleeps thus soon so see a wench.

(TWH, 1.1.p.12)


Duke: Sister to count Valore: she’s a maid
Would make a prince forget his throne and state,
And lowly kneel to her: the general fate
Of all mortality, is hers to give;

(TWH, 1.1.p.12)


Duke:…With thee I will be plain:
We princes do use to prefer many for nothing, and to take particular and free knowledge almost in nature of acquaintance, of many whom we do use only for our pleasure; and do give largely to numbers, more out of policy to be thought liberal, and by that means to make the people strive to deserve our love, than to reward any particular desert of theirs to whom we give; and do suffer ourselves to hear flatterers, more for recreation than for love of it, though we seldom hate it:
And yet we know all these; and when we please,
Can touch the wheel, and turn their names about.

(TWH, 1.1.p.13)


Duke: Thou Cytherean goddess, that delights
In stirring glances, and art still thyself
More toying than thy team of sparrows be;

(TWH, 1.1.p.14)


Lazarillo: What an excellent thing did God bestow upon man, when he did give him a good stomach!

(TWH, 1.2.p.14-15)


Lazarillo: Give it me [Reads.] A bill of all the several services this day appointed for every table in the court.
Ay, this is it on which my hopes rely;
Within this paper all my joys are clos’d.
Boy, open it, and read it with reverence.

(TWH, 1.2.p.16)


Lazarilly: If poor unworthy I may come to eat
Of this most sacred dish, I here do vow
(If that blind huswife Fortune will bestow
But means on me) to keep a sumptuous house;

(TWH, 1.2.p.17)


Oriana: Ay, but they say one shall see fine sights at the court.
Valore: I’ll tell you what you shall see. You shall see many faces of man’s making, for you shall find very few as God left them: and you shall see many legs too; amongst the rest you shall behold one pair, the feet of which were in times past sockless, but are now, through the change of time (that alters all things), very strangely become the legs of a knight and a courter;…

(TWH, 1.3.p.18)


Valore: And they will praise your virtues; beware that:
The only way to turn a woman whore,
Is to commend her chastity. You’ll go?

(TWH, 1.3.p.19)


Duke: “May it please your grace, to take note of a gentleman, well read, deeply learned, and throughly grounded in the hidden knowledge of all salads and potherbs whatsoever.”

(TWH, 1.3.p.23)


Gondarino: Thou art a filthy, impudent whore; a woman, a very woman!
Oriana: Ha, ha, ha!
Gondarino: Begot when thy father was drunk.
Oriana: Your lordship hath a good wit.

(TWH, 2.1.p.27)


Valore: But let me not condemn her too rashly, without weighing the matter. She’s a young lady; she went forth early this morning with a waiting-woman and a page or so; this is no garden-house [footnote: i.e. summer-house. Buildings of this kind abounded formerly in the suburbs of London, and were often used as places of intrigue.] : in my conscience, she went forth with no dishonest intent;…

(TWH, 2.1.p.32)


Valore: Lazarillo, the Duke stays: wilt thou lose this opportunity?
Lazarillo: How must I speak to him?
Valore: ’Twas well thought of. You must not talk to him
As you do to an ordinary man,
Honest plain sense, but you must wind about him:
For example; if he should ask you what o’clock it is,
You must not say, “If it please your grace, ’tis nine;”
But thus, “Thrice three o’clock, so please my sovereign;”
Or thus, “Look how many Muses there doth dwell
Upon the sweet banks of the learned well,
And just so many strokes the clock hath struck;”
And so forth: and you must now and then enter
Into a description.

(TWH, 2.1.p.34)


Lazarillo:…Now no more shalt thou need to scramble for thy meat, nor remove thy stomach with the court; but thy credit shall command thy heart’s desire, and all novelties shall be sent as presents unto thee.

(TWH, 2.1.p.36)


Valore: I hate to leave my friend in his extremities.
Lazarillo: ’Tis noble in you: then I take your hand,
And do protest, I do not follow this
For any malice or for private ends,
But with a love as gentle and as chaste
As that a brother to his sister bears;
And if I see this fish-head yet unknown,
The last words that my dying father spake,
Before his eye-strings brake, shall not of me
So often be remember’d as our meeting.
Fortune attend me, as my ends are just,
Full of pure love and free from servile lust!

(TWH, 2.1.p.37)


Gondarino:…he’ll bring you to ’em. [Footnote: Old eds “him.” These words are frequently confounded by the early printers.]

(TWH, 2.1.p.37)


Gondarino: What madness possesseth thee, that thou canst imagine me a fit man to entertain ladies? I tell thee, I do use to tear their hair, to kick them, and to twinge their noses, if they be not careful in avoiding me.
Oriana: Your lordship may descant upon your own behaviour as please you, but I protest, so sweet and courtly it appears in my eye, that I mean not to leave you yet.

(TWH, 2.1.p.37-38)


Gondarino: Is such a thing as this allow’d to live?
What power hath let thee loose upon the earth
To plague us for our sins? Out of my doors!

(TWH, 2.1.p.38)


Julia: What the devil dost thou in black?
Pandar: As all solemn professors of settled courses do, cover my knavery with it.

(TWH, 2.2.p.39)


And can it be that this most perfect creature,
This image of his Maker, well-squar’d man,
Should leave the handfast that he had of grace,
To fall into a woman’s easy arms?

(TWH, 3.1.p.40) [handfast: i.e. hold, connextion with]


Oriana:…to work upon him; whether he will soonest be moved with wantonness, singing, dancing, or (being passionately) with scorn; or with sad and serious looks, cunningly mingled with sighs, with smiling, lisping, kissing the hand, and making short curtsies;…

(TWH, 3.1.p.40-41)


Gondarino:…Stand and reveal thyself;
Tell why thou followest me? I fear thee,
As I fear the place thou camest from, hell.

(TWH, 3.1.p.41)

Oriana:…Are you not yet
Relenting? ha’ you blood and spirit in those veins?
You are no image, though you be as hard
As marble: sure, you have no liver; if you had,
’Twould send a lively and desiring heat
To every member. Is not this miserable?
A thing so truly form’d, shap’d out by symmetry,
Has all the organs that belong to man,
And working too, yet to shew all these
Like dead motions moving upon wires?

(TWH, 3.1.p.42) [The liver was anciently imagined to be the residence of love.]


Gondarino: Let me be ’nointed with honey and turn’d
Into the sun, to be stung to death with horse-flies!
Hearest thou, thou breeder? here I will sit,
And, in despite of thee, I will say nothing.

(TWH, 3.1.p.43)


Gondarino: To ha’ my hair curled by an idle finger,
My cheeks turn tabors and be play’d upon,

(TWH, 3.1.p.43)


Gondarino:…for I will run from that smooth, smiling, witching, cozening, tempting, damning face of thine, as far as I can find any land, where I will put myself into a daily course of curses for thee and all thy family.

(TWH, 3.1.p.43)


Gondarino: ’Tis true; and if your grace, that hath the sway
Of the whole state, will suffer this lewd sex,
These women, to pursue us to our homes,
Not to be pray’d nor to be rail’d away,
But they will woo, and dance, and sing,
And, in a manner looser than they are
By nature (which should seem impossible),
To throw their arms on our unwilling necks—

(TWH, 3.1.p.45)


Gondarino: Are women grown so mankind? [masculine] must they be wooing?
I have a plot shall blow her up; she flies, she mounts!
I’ll teach her ladyship to dare my fury!
I will be known and fear’d, and more truly hated
Of women than an eunuch. She’s here again:

(TWH, 3.1.p.46)


Oriana: Gondarino? are you Milan’s general, that
Great bugbear Bloody-bones, at whose very name
All women, from the lady to the laundress,
Shake like a cold fit?

(TWH, 3.1.p.48)


First Intelligencer: Why, have not many men been raised from
This worming trade, first to gain good access
To great men, then to have commissions out
For search, and lastly to be worthily nam’d
At a great arraignment? Yes; and why not we?
They that endeavour well deserve their fee.

(TWH, 3.2.p.50)


Valore:…No; thou shalt live and know
Thy full desires; Hunger, thy ancient foe,
Shall be subdu’d; those guts that daily tumble
Through air and appetite, shall cease to rumble;

(TWH, 3.2.p.50)


Valore: Let it go! Hast not thou been held to have some wit in the court, and to make fine jests upon country-people in progress-time? and wilt thou lose this opinion for the cold head of a fish? I say, let it go! I’ll help thee to as good a dish of meat.

(TWH, 3.2.p.51)


Second Intelligencer:…burn the palace, kill the Duke, and poison his privy-council!

(TWH, 3.2.p.53)


Valore: If you could be drawn to affect beef, venison, or foul, ’twould be far the better.
Lazarillo: I do beseech your lordship’s patience!
I do confess that, in this heat of blood,
I have contemn’d all dull and grosser meats;
But I protest I do honour a chine of beef, I do reverence a loin of veal; but, good my lord, give me leave a little to adore this!

(TWH, 3.2.p.54)


Gondarino:…for how familiar a thing is it with the poets of our age, to extol their whores (which they call mistresses) with heavenly praises…

(TWH, 4.1.p.60)


Gondarino: Man never doth remember how great his offences are, till he do meet with one of you that plagues him for them.

(TWH, 4.1.p.62)


Gondarino: But I will bring you where she now intends
Not to be virtuous:…

(TWH, 4.1.p.64)


Pandar:…make yourself apt for courtship, stroke up your stockings, lost not an inch of your legs’ goodness:…

(TWH, 4.2.p.66)


Mercer:…posies for chimneys…

(TWH, 4.2.p.67; posies for chimneys: Inscriptions on different parts of the house, and particularly on chimnies, containing instructions


Lazarillo: The misery of man may fitly be compared to a didapper [bird], who, when she is under water, past our sight, and indeed can seem no more to us, rises again, shakes but herself, and is the same she was;…

(TWH, 4.2.68)


Boy. Muffle yourself in your cloak, by any means; ’tis a received thing among gallants, to walk to their lechery as though they had the rheum. ’Twas well you brought not your horse.
Lazarillo. Why, boy?
Boy. Faith, sir, ’tis the fashion of our gentry to have their horses wait at door like men, while the beasts their masters are within at rack and manger; …

(TWH, 4.2.69)


Lazarillo. …if thou be’st
Returning to thy first being, thy mother sea,
There will I seek thee forth: earth, air, nor fire,
Nor the black shades below shall bar my sight,

(TWH, 4.2.70)

Second Intelligencer. Amen. Sir, sir,
This cannot save that stiff neck from the halter.
Julia. Gentlemen, I am glad you have discovered him: he should not have eaten under my roof for twenty pounds; and surely I did not like him when he called for fish. [“In King Lear, one of Kent’s articles of self-recommendation is, that he eats no fish: the following explanation is there given by Warburton.—‘In Queen Elizabeth’s time the papist were esteemed, and with good reason, enemies to the government. Hence the proverbial phrase of, he’s an honest man, and eats no fish, to signify he’s a friend to the government and a protestant. …And Marston’s Dutch Courtezan: ‘I trust I am none of the wicked that eats fish a Fridays.’”—Ed. 1778. Perhaps, Warburton is right.

(TWH, 4.2.74)


Gondarino. All I can say, or may, is said already:
She is unchaste, or else I have no knowledge,
I do not breathe nor have the use of sense.

(TWH, 5.2.83)


Gondarino. Let her sit near her shame! it better fits her.
Call back the blood that made your stream in nearness,
And turn the current to a better use:
’Tis too much mudded; I do grieve to know it.

(TWH, 5.2.84)


Gondarino. Had not your grace and her kind brother been
Within level of her eye, you should have had a hotter
Volley from her, more full of blood and fire,
Ready to leap the window where she stood;
So truly sensual is her appetite.

(TWH, 5.2.84)


Valore. …our healthful state
Needs no such leeches to suck out her blood.

(TWH, 5.2.87)


Pandar. Do wisely, sir, and bid your own friends; your whole wealth will scarce feast all hers: neither is it for your credit to walk the streets with a woman so noted; get you home, and provide her clothes; let her come an hour hence with an hand-basket, and shift herself; she’ll serve to sit at the upper end of the table, and drink to your customers.

(TWH, 5.3.88)


Lazarillo. I pray thee, let me be delivered of the joy I am so big with: I do feel that high heat within me, that I begin to doubt whether I be mortal.

(TWH. 5.4.90)


Arrigo. Then, lady, you must know, you are held unhonest:
The Duke, your brother, and your friends in court,
With too much grief condemn you; though to me
The fault deserves not to be paid with death.

(TWH. 5.5.92)


Gondarino. Come not too near me! I have a breath will poison ye;
My lungs are rotten and my stomach raw;
I am much given to belching: hold off, as you love sweet airs!
Ladies, by your first night’s pleasure I conjure you,
As you would have your husbands proper men,
Strong backs and little legs; as you would have’em hate
Your waiting-woman—
Oriana. Sir, we must court you, till we have obtain’d
Some little favour from those gracious eyes;
’Tis but a kiss a-piece.

(TWH. 5.5.96)

Gondarino. Nay, now thou art come, I know it is
The devil’s jubilee; hell is broke loose!—

(TWH. 5.5.98)