Thomas Dekker, The Stratford-Upon-Avon Library 4

Thomas Dekker, The Stratford-Upon-Avon Library 4, Harvard 1968

Well I mean, if well ‘tis taken (The Bellman’s Cry, poem in Lanthorne and Candle-light; Or The Bell-mans second Nights walke)

What more makes a man to loathe that mongrel madness, that half-English, half-Dutch sin, drunkenness, than to see a common drunkard acting his beastly scenes in the open street? (English Villainies Discovered by Lantern and Candlelight, 177)

Being the best and ablest gardener to week the republic (182)

...the courageous stag or the nimble-footed deer; these are the noblest hunters and they exercise the noblest game; these by following the chase get strength of body, a free and undisquieted mind, magnanimity of spirit, alacrity of heart and an unwearisomeness to break through the hardest labours. Their pleasures are not insatiable but are contented to be kept within limits, for these hunt within parks enclosed or within bounded forests. (210)

Will you walk a turn or two in your orchard or garden? I would there confer. (226)

Beezlebub keeps the register book of all the bawds, panders and coutesans (233)

When the Devil takes the anatomy of all damnable sins he looks only upon her body. When she dies he sits as her coroner. When her soul comes to Hell all shun that there as they fly from a body struck with the plague here. She hath her door-keeper and she herself is the Devil’s chambermaid. / And yet, for all this that she’s so dangerous and detestable, when she hath croaked like a raven on the eves then comes she into the house like a dove: when her villainies, like the moat about a castle, are rank, thick and muddy with standing long together, then to purge herself is she drained out of the suburbs as though her corruption were there left behind her, and as a clear stream is let into the City. (234)