No More Learning

_Merc. _ [_Aside. _] That's a plaguy little devil; what a roguish eye she
has! I begin to like her strangely. She's the perquisite of my place
too; for my lady's waiting-woman is the proper fees of my lord's chief
gentleman. I have the privilege of a god too; I can view her naked
through all her clothes. Let me see, let me see;--I have discovered
something, that pleases me already.

_Jup. _ Let me not live, but thou art all enjoyment!
So charming and so sweet,
That not a night, but whole eternity,
Were well employed,
To love thy each perfection as it ought.

_Alcm. _ [_Kissing him. _] I'll bribe you with this kiss,
to stay a while.

_Jup. _ [_Kissing her. _] A bribe indeed that soon will bring me back;
But, to be just, I must restore your bribe.
How I could dwell for ever on those lips!
O, I could kiss them pale with eagerness!
So soft, by heaven! and such a juicy sweet,
That ripened peaches have not half the flavour.

_Alcm. _ Ye niggard gods! you make our lives too long;
You fill them with diseases, wants, and woes,
And only dash them with a little love,
Sprinkled by fits, and with a sparing hand:
Count all our joys, from childhood even to age,
They would but make a day of every year.
Take back your seventy years, the stint of life,
Or else be kind, and cram the quintessence
Of seventy years into sweet seventy days;
For all the rest is flat, insipid being.

_Jup. _ But yet one scruple pains me at my parting:
I love so nicely, that I cannot bear
To owe the sweets of love, which I have tasted,
To the submissive duty of a wife.
Tell me, and sooth my passion ere I go,
That, in the kindest moments of the night,
When you gave up yourself to love and me,
You thought not of a husband, but a lover?

_Alcm. _ But tell me first, why you would raise a blush
Upon my cheeks, by asking such a question?

_Jup. _ I would owe nothing to a name so dull
As husband is, but to a lover all.

_Alcm. _ You should have asked me then, when love and night,
And privacy, had favoured your demand.

_Jup. _ I ask it now, because my tenderness
Surpasses that of husbands for their wives.
O that you loved like me! then you would find
A thousand, thousand niceties in love.
The common love of sex to sex is brutal;
But love refined will fancy to itself
Millions of gentle cares, and sweet disquiets;
The being happy is not half the joy;
The manner of their happiness is all.
In me, my charming mistress, you behold
A lover that disdains a lawful title,
Such as of monarchs to successive thrones;
The generous lover holds by force of arms,
And claims his crown by conquest.

_Alcm. _ Methinks you should be pleased; I give you all
A virtuous and modest wife can give.

_Jup. _ No, no; that very name of wife and marriage
Is poison to the dearest sweets of love;
To please my niceness, you must separate
The lover from his mortal foe--the husband.
Give to the yawning husband your cold virtue;
But all your vigorous warmth, your melting sighs,
Your amorous murmurs, be your lover's part.

_Alcm. _ I comprehend not what you mean, my lord;
But only love me still, and love me thus,
And think me such as best may please your thought.

_Jup. _ There's mystery of love in all I say. --
Farewell; and when you see your husband next,
Think of your lover then.

[_Exeunt_ JUP. _and_ ALCM. _severally_;
PHÆD. _follows her_.

_Merc. _ [_Alone. _] Now I should follow him; but love has laid a
lime-twig for me, and made a lame god of me. Yet why should I love this
Phædra? She's interested, and a jilt into the bargain. Three thousand
years hence, there will be a whole nation of such women, in a certain
country, that will be called France; and there's a neighbour island,
too, where the men of that country will be all interest. O what a
precious generation will that be, which the men of the island shall
propagate out of the women of the continent! --

PHÆDRA _re-enters_.

And so much for prophecy; for she's here again, and I must love her, in
spite of me. And since I must, I have this comfort, that the greatest
wits are commonly the greatest cullies; because neither of the sexes
can be wiser than some certain parts about them will give them leave.

_Phæd. _ Well, Sosia, and how go matters?

_Merc. _ Our army is victorious.

_Phæd. _ And my servant, judge Gripus?

_Merc. _ A voluptuous gormand.

_Phæd. _ But has he gotten wherewithal to be voluptuous;
is he wealthy?

_Merc. _ He sells justice as he uses; fleeces the rich
rebels, and hangs up the poor.

_Phæd. _ Then, while he has money, he may make love to me. Has he sent
me no token?

_Merc. _ Yes, a kiss; and by the same token I am to give it you, as a
remembrance from him.

_Phæd. _ How now, impudence! A beggarly serving-man presume to kiss me?

_Merc. _ Suppose I were a god, and should make love to you?

_Phæd. _ I would first be satisfied, whether you were a poor god, or a
rich god.

_Merc. _ Suppose I were Mercury, the god of merchandise?

_Phæd. _ What! the god of small wares, and fripperies, of pedlers and
pilferers?

_Merc. _ How the gipsy despises me! [_Aside. _

_Phæd. _ I had rather you were Plutus, the god of money; or Jupiter, in
a golden shower: there was a god for us women! he had the art of making
love. Dost thou think that kings, or gods either, get mistresses by
their good faces? no, it is the gold, and the presents they can make;
there is the prerogative they have over their fair subjects.

_Merc. _ All this notwithstanding, I must tell you, pretty Phædra, I am
desperately in love with you.

_Phæd. _ And I must tell thee, ugly Sosia, thou hast not wherewithal to
be in love.

_Merc. _ Yes, a poor man may be in love, I hope.

_Phæd. _ I grant a poor rogue may be in love, but he can never make
love. Alas, Sosia, thou hast neither face to invite me, nor youth to
please me, nor gold to bribe me; and, besides all this, thou hast a
wife, poor miserable Sosia! --What, ho, Bromia!

_Merc. _ O thou merciless creature, why dost thou conjure up that sprite
of a wife?

_Phæd. _ To rid myself of that devil of a poor lover. Since you are so
lovingly disposed, I'll put you together to exercise your fury upon
your own wedlock. --What, Bromia, I say, make haste; here is a vessel of
yours, full freighted, that is going off without paying duties.

_Merc. _ Since thou wilt not let me steal custom, she shall have all the
cargo I have gotten in the wars; but thou mightst have lent me a little
creek, to smuggle in.

_Phæd. _ Why, what have you gotten, good gentleman soldier, besides a
legion of---- [_Snaps her fingers. _

_Merc. _ When the enemy was routed, I had the plundering of a tent.

_Phæd. _ That is to say, a house of canvas, with moveables of
straw. --Make haste, Bromia! ----

_Merc. _ But it was the general's own tent.

_Phæd. _ You durst not fight, I am certain; and therefore came last in,
when the rich plunder was gone beforehand. --Will you come, Bromia?

_Merc. _ Pr'ythee, do not call so loud:--A great goblet, that holds a
gallon.

_Phæd. _ Of what was that goblet made? answer quickly, for I am just
calling very loud----Bro--

_Merc. _ Of beaten gold. Now, call aloud, if thou dost not like the
metal.

_Phæd. _ Bromia. [_Very softly. _

_Merc. _ That struts in this fashion, with his arms a-kimbo, like a city
magistrate; and a great bouncing belly, like a hostess with child of a
kilderkin of wine. Now, what say you to that present, Phædra?

_Phæd. _ Why, I am considering----

_Merc. _ What, I pr'ythee?

_Phæd. _ Why, how to divide the business equally; to take the gift, and
refuse the giver, thou art so damnably ugly, and so old.

_Merc. _ Now the devil take Jupiter, for confining me to this ungodly
shape to-day! [_Aside. _] but Gripus is as old and as ugly too.

_Phæd. _ But Gripus is a person of quality, and my lady's uncle; and if
he marries me, I shall take place of my lady. --Hark, your wife! she has
sent her tongue before her. I hear the thunderclap already; there is a
storm approaching.

_Merc. _ Yes, of thy brewing; I thank thee for it. O how I should hate
thee now, if I could leave loving thee!

_Phæd. _ Not a word of the dear golden goblet, as you hope for--you know
what, Sosia.

_Merc. _ You give me hope, then----

_Phæd. _ Not absolutely hope neither; but gold is a great cordial in
love matters; and the more you apply of it, the better. --[_Aside. _] I
am honest, that is certain; but when I weigh my honesty against the
goblet, I am not quite resolved on which side the scale will turn.
[_Exit_ PHÆD.

_Merc. _ [_Aloud. _] Farewell, Phædra; remember me to my wife, and tell
her----

_Enter_ BROMIA.

_Brom. _ Tell her what, traitor? that you are going away without seeing
her?

_Merc. _ That I am doing my duty, and following my master.

_Brom. _ 'Umph! --so brisk, too! your master did his duty to my lady
before he parted: He could leave his army in the lurch, and come
galloping home at midnight to have a lick at the honey-pot; and steal
to-bed as quietly as any mouse, I warrant you. My master knew what
belonged to a married life; but you, sirrah--you trencher-carrying
rascal--you worse than dunghill-cock; that stood clapping your wings,
and crowing without doors, when you should have been at roost, you
villain--

_Merc. _ Hold your peace, dame Partlet, and leave your cackling; my
master charged me to stand centry without doors.

_Brom. _ My master! I dare swear thou beliest him; my master is more
a gentleman than to lay such an unreasonable command upon a poor
distressed married couple, and after such an absence too. No, there is
no comparison between my master and thee, thou sneaksby.

_Merc. _ No more than there is betwixt my lady and you, Bromia. You and
I have had our time in a civil way, spouse, and much good love has been
betwixt us; but we have been married fifteen years, I take it; and that
hoighty toighty business ought, in conscience, to be over.

_Brom. _ Marry come up, my saucy companion! I am neither old nor ugly
enough to have that said to me.

_Merc. _ But will you hear reason, Bromia? my lord and my lady are yet
in a manner bride and bridegroom; they are in honey-moon still: do but
think, in decency, what a jest it would be to the family, to see two
venerable old married people lying snug in a bed together, and sighing
out fine tender things to one another!

_Brom. _ How now, traitor, darest thou maintain that I am past the age
of having fine things said to me?

_Merc. _ Not so, my dear; but certainly I am past the age of saying them.

_Brom.
_ Thou deservest not to be yoked with a woman of honour, as I am,
thou perjured villain.

_Merc. _ Ay, you are too much a woman of honour, to my sorrow; many a
poor husband would be glad to compound for less honour in his wife, and
more quiet. Pr'ythee, be but honest and continent in thy tongue, and do
thy worst with every thing else about thee.

_Brom. _ Thou wouldst have a woman of the town, wouldst thou! to be
always speaking my husband fair, to make him digest his cuckoldom
more easily! wouldst thou be a wittol, with a vengeance to thee? I am
resolved I'll scour thy hide for that word.

[_Holds up her ladle at him. _

_Merc. _ Thou wilt not strike thy lord and husband, wilt thou?

_Brom. _ Since thou wilt none of the meat, 'tis but justice to give thee
the bastings of the ladle.

[_She courses him about. _

Merc. [_Running about. _] Was ever poor deity so hen-pecked as I am!
nay, then 'tis time to charm her asleep with my enchanted rod, before I
am disgraced or ravished.

[_Plucks out his Caduceus, and strikes her
upon the shoulder with it. _

_Brom. _ What, art thou rebelling against thy anointed wife! I'll make
thee--how now--What, has the rogue bewitched me! I grow dull and
stupid on the sudden--I can neither stir hand nor foot--I am just like
him--I have lost the use of all my--members--[_Yawning. _]--I can't so
much as wag my tongue--neither, and that's the last liv--ing part about
a--woman-- [_Falls down. _

MERCURY _alone_.

Lord, what have I suffered for being but a counterfeit married man one
day! If ever I come to this house as a husband again--then--and yet
that then was a lie too; for, while I am in love with this young gipsy,
Phædra, I must return. But lie thou there, thou type of Juno; thou that
wantest nothing of her tongue, but the immortality. If Jupiter ever let
thee set foot in heaven, Juno will have a rattling second of thee; and
there will never be a fair day in heaven or earth after it:

For two such tongues will break the poles asunder;
And, hourly scolding, make perpetual thunder.
[_Exit_ MERCURY.



ACT III.


SCENE I. --_Before_ AMPHITRYON'S _Palace_.

AMPHITRYON _and_ SOSIA.

_Amph. _ Now, sirrah, follow me into the house; thou shalt be convinced
at thy own cost, villain! What horrible lies hast thou told me! such
improbabilities, such stuff, such nonsense! --that the monster, with
two long horns, that frighted the great king, and the devil at the
stone-cutter's, are truths to these. [8]

_Sos. _ I am but a slave, and you are master; and a poor man is always
to lie when a rich man is pleased to contradict him: but, as sure as
this is our house--

_Amph. _ So sure 'tis thy place of execution. --Thou art not made for
lying neither.

_Sos. _ That's certain; for all my neighbours say I have an honest face;
or else they would never call me cuckold, as they do.

_Amph. _ I mean thou hast not wit enough to make a lie that will hang
together: thou hast set up a trade that thou hast not stock enough to
manage. O that I had but a crab-tree cudgel for thy sake!

_Sos. _ How, a cudgel, said you! the devil take Jupiter for inventing
that hard-hearted, merciless, knobby wood.

_Amph. _ The bitterness is yet to come: thou hast had but a half dose of
it.

_Sos. _ I was never good at swallowing physic; and my stomach wambles
at the very thought of it. But, if I must have a second beating, in
conscience let me strip first, that I may show you the black and blue
streaks upon my sides and shoulders. I am sure I suffered them in your
service.

_Amph. _ To what purpose wouldst thou show them?

_Sos. _ Why, to the purpose that you may not strike me upon the sore
places; and that, as he beat me the last night cross-ways, so you would
please to beat me long-ways, to make clean work on't, that at least my
skin may look like chequer-work.

_Amph. _ This request is too reasonable to be refused. But, that all
things may be done in order, tell me over again the same story, with
all the circumstances of thy commission, that a blow may follow in due
form for every lie. To repetition, rogue; to repetition.

_Sos. _ No; it shall be all a lie, if you please; and I'll eat my words,
to save my shoulders.

_Amph. _ Ay, sirrah, now you find you are to be disproved; but 'tis too
late. To repetition, rogue; to repetition.

_Sos. _ With all my heart, to any repetition but the cudgel. But
would you be pleased to answer me one civil question? Am I to use
complaisance to you, as to a great person that will have all things
said your own way? or am I to tell you the naked truth alone, without
the ceremony of a farther beating?

_Amph. _ Nothing but the truth, and the whole truth; so help thee,
cudgel!

_Sos. _ That's a damned conclusion of a sentence: but, since it must be
so--back and sides, at your own peril! --I set out from the port in an
unlucky hour; the dusky canopy of night enveloping the hemisphere. --

_Amph. _ [Strikes him. ] _Imprimis_, for fustian:--now proceed.

_Sos. _ I stand corrected: In plain prose then,--I went darkling, and
whistling to keep myself from being afraid; mumbling curses betwixt my
teeth, for being sent at such an unnatural time of night.

_Amph. _ How, sirrah, cursing and swearing against your lord and master!
take-- [_Going to strike. _

_Sos. _ Hold, sir--pray, consider if this be not unreasonable to strike
me for telling the whole truth, when you commanded me: I'll fall into
my old dog-trot of lying again, if this must come of plain dealing.

_Amph. _ To avoid impertinences make an end of your journey, and come to
the house;--what found you there, a god's name?

_Sos. _ I came thither in no god's name at all, but in the devil's name;
I found before the door a swinging fellow, with all my shapes and
features, and accoutred also in my habit.

_Amph. _ Who was that fellow?

_Sos. _ Who should it be, but another Sosia! a certain kind of other me:
who knew all my unfortunate commission, precisely to a word, as well as
I Sosia; as being sent by yourself from the port upon the same errand
to Alcmena.

_Amph. _ What gross absurdities are these?

_Sos. _ O Lord, O Lord, what absurdities! --as plain as any packstaff.
That other me had posted himself there before me, me. --You won't give
a man leave to speak poetically now; or else I would say, that I was
arrived at the door just before I came thither.

_Amph. _ This must either be a dream or drunkenness, or madness in thee.
Leave your buffooning and lying; I am not in humour to bear it, sirrah.

_Sos. _ I would you should know I scorn a lie, and am a man of honour
in every thing but just fighting. I tell you once again, in plain
sincerity and simplicity of heart, that, before last night, I never
took myself but for one single individual Sosia; but, coming to our
door, I found myself, I know not how, divided, and, as it were, split
into two Sosias.

_Amph. _ Leave buffooning: I see you would make me laugh, but you play
the fool scurvily.

_Sos. _ That may be; but, if I am a fool, I am not the only fool in this
company.

_Amph. _ How now, impudence! I shall----

_Sos. _ Be not in wrath, sir; I meant not you: I cannot possibly be
the only fool; for, if I am one fool, I must certainly be two fools;
because, as I told you, I am double.

_Amph. _ That one should be two, is very probable!

_Sos. _ Have you not seen a six-pence split into two halves, by some
ingenious school-boy, which bore on either side the impression of the
monarch's face? Now, as those moieties were two three-pences, and yet
in effect but one six-pence----

_Amph. _ No more of your villainous tropes and figures.

_Sos. _ Nay, if an orator must be disarmed of his similitudes----

_Amph. _ A man had need of patience, to endure this gibberish! be brief,
and come to a conclusion.

_Sos. _ What would you have, sir? I came thither, but the t'other I was
before me; for that there was two _I_'s, is as certain, as that I have
two eyes in this head of mine. This _I_, that am here, was weary: the
t'other _I_ was fresh; this _I_ was peaceable, and t'other _I_ was a
hectoring bully _I_.

_Amph. _ And thou expect'st I should believe thee?

_Sos. _ No; I am not so unreasonable; for I could never have believed it
myself, if I had not been well beaten into it: but a cudgel, you know,
is a convincing argument in a brawny fist. What shall I say, but that
I was compelled, at last, to acknowledge myself! I found that he was
very I, without fraud, cozen, or deceit. Besides, I viewed myself, as
in a mirror, from head to foot; he was handsome of a noble presence, a
charming air, loose and free in all his motions; and saw he was so much
I, that I should have reason to be better satisfied with my own person,
if his hands had not been a little of the heaviest.

_Amph. _ Once again, to a conclusion: Say you passed by him, and entered
into the house.

_Sos. _ I am a friend to truth, and say no such thing; he defended the
door, and I could not enter.

_Amph. _ How, not enter?

_Sos. _ Why, how should I enter? unless I were a spirit, to glide by
him, and shoot myself through locks, and bolts, and two-inch boards.

_Amph. _ O coward! Didst thou not attempt to pass?

_Sos. _ Yes, and was repulsed and beaten for my pains.

_Amph. _ Who beat thee?

_Sos. _ I beat me.

_Amph. _ Didst thou beat thyself?

_Sos. _ I don't mean _I_, here: but the absent _Me_ beat me here present.

_Amph. _ There's no end of this intricate piece of nonsense.

_Sos. _ 'Tis only nonsense, because I speak it, who am a poor fellow;
but it would be sense, and substantial sense, if a great man said it,
that was backed with a title, and the eloquence of ten thousand pounds
a-year.

_Amph. _ No more; but let us enter:--Hold! my Alcmena is coming out, and
has prevented me: how strangely will she be surprised to see me here so
unexpectedly!

_Enter_ ALCMENA _and_ PHÆDRA.

_Alcm. _ [_To_ PHÆD. ] Make haste after me to the temple; that we may
thank the gods for this glorious success, which Amphitryon has had
against the rebels--O heaven!

[_Seeing him. _

_Amph. _ Those heavens, and all the blessed inhabitants,
[_Saluting her. _
Grant, that the sweet rewarder of my pains
May still be kind, as on our nuptial night!

_Alcm. _ So soon returned!

_Amph. _ So soon returned! Is this thy welcome home?
[_Stepping back. _
So soon returned, says I am come unwished.
This is no language of desiring love:
Love reckons hours for months, and days for years;
And every little absence is an age.

_Alcm. _ What says my lord?

_Amph. _ No, my Alcmena, no:
True love by its impatience measures time,
And the dear object never comes too soon.

_Alcm. _ Nor ever came you so, nor ever shall;
But you yourself are changed from what you were,
Palled in desires, and surfeited of bliss.
Not so I met you at your last return;
When yesternight I flew into your arms,
And melted in your warm embrace.

_Amph. _ How's this?

_Alcm. _ Did not my soul even sparkle at my eyes,
And shoot itself into your much-loved bosom?
Did I not tremble with excess of joy?
Nay agonize with pleasure at your sight,
With such inimitable proofs of passion,
As no false love could feign?

_Amph.