For I am witness, being your bed-fellow,
Both to the daily and the nightly service
You do unto the deity of love

In vows, sighs, tears, and solitary watches:
He never serves him with such sacrifice,
Yet hath his bow and shafts at his command.
Love's service is much like our humourous lords,
Where minions carry more than their servitors:
The bold and careless servant still obtains:
The modest and respectful nothing gains:
You never see your love, unless in dreams :
He, Hymen, puts in whole possession:

What different stars reign'd when your loves were born:
He forc'd to wear the willow, you the horn!
But, brother, are you not asham'd to make
Yourself a slave to the base lord of love;
Begot of fancy, and of beauty born:
And what is beauty?-a mere quintessence,
Whose life is not in being-but in seeming,
And therefore is not to all eyes the same;
But, like a couzening picture, which one way
Shews like a crow, another like a swan.
And upon what ground is this beauty drawn?
Upon a woman-a most brittle creature,
And would to God (for my part) that were all.

Fortunio. But tell me, brother, did you never love?
Rynaldo. You know I did; and was belov'd again:

And that of such a dame as all men deem'd

Honour'd, and made me happy in her favours.
Exceeding fair she was not; and yet fair
In that she never studied to be fairer

Than nature made her: beauty cost her nothing.
Her virtues were so rare they would have made
An Ethiop beautiful; at least, so thought
By such as stood aloof, and did observe her

With credulous eyes. But what they were, indeed,
I'll spare to blaze, because I loved her once,
Only I found her such, as, for her sake,

I vow eternal wars against their whole sex:
Inconstant shuttle-cocks ;-loving fools and jesters;
Men rich in dirt; and titles sooner won

With the most vile, than the most virtuous :

Found true to none: if one, amongst whole hundreds,
Chance to be chaste, she is so proud withall,

Wayward and rude, that one of unchaste life
Is oftentimes approv'd a worthier wife.
Undress'd, sluttish, nasty to their husbands;
Spung'd up, adorn'd, and painted to their lovers:
All day in ceaseless uproar in their households
If all the night their husbands have not pleas'd them;
Like hounds, most kind, being beaten and abus'd;
Like wolves, most cruel, being kindliest used.

Fortunio. Fie: thou profan'st the deity of their sex.
Rynaldo. Brother, I read that Egypt heretofore
Had temples of the richest fame on earth,
Much like this goodly edifice of woman:
With alabaster pillars were those temples
Upheld and beautified, and so are women:
Most curiously glaz'd, and so are women:
Cunningly painted too, and so are women:
But when a stranger view'd those fanes within,
Instead of god and goddeses, he should find
A painted fowl, a fury, or a serpent,

And such celestial parts have women.

Fortunio. Rynaldo, the poor fox that lost his tail Persuaded others also to lose theirs :

Thyself, for one, perhaps, that for desert
Or some defect in thy attempts refused thee,
Revil'st the whole sex: beauty, love, and all:
I tell thee, love is nature's second son,
Causing a spring of virtues where she shines ;
And as without the sun, the world's great eye,
All colours, beauties, both of art and nature,
Are given in vain to men; so, without love,
All beauties bred in women are in vain ;
All virtues born in men lie buried;

For love informs us as the sun doth colours:
And as the sun, reflecting his warm beams
Against the earth, begets all fruits and flowers;
So love, fair shining in the inward man,
Brings forth in him the honourable fruits
Of valour, wit, virtue, and haughty thoughts;
Brave resolution, and divine discourse:
O, 'tis the paradise-the heaven of earth:
And didst thou know the comforts of two hearts

In one delicious harmony united,

As to joy, one joy; and think both one thought;
Live both one life, and therein double life;

To see their souls meet at an interview;

In their bright eyes,-at parley in their lips;
Their language, kisses; and t'observe the rest—
Touches, embraces, and each circumstance
Of all love's most unmatched ceremonies,
Thou would'st abhor thy tongue for blasphemy.
O, who can comprehend how sweet love tastes,
But he that hath been present at its feasts."

There are other whole scenes which we could with pleasure extract, particularly that in which Gostanzo pretends to discard his son; but as this play is more accessible than some of the others, we shall content ourselves with producing a few isolated passages.

The jealousy of the weak Cornelio, who is for ever tormenting himself with the suspicion of his wife's infidelity, is delineated with a masterly hand-not the "green-eyed monster" of the impassioned Othello, but the teazing maggot that infests the brain of a fool. Coming upon his wife Gazetta, who is singing and working, he thus opens a scene of considerable

power:

"Cor. A prettie work. I pray what flowers are these?
Gaz. The pansy this.

Cor. O that's for lover's thoughts.

What's that? A columbine ?

Gaz. No, that thankless flower fits not my garden.

Cor. Hem! yet it may mine :

This were a pretty present for some friend,
Some gallant courtier-as for Dareothe.

One that adores you in his soul, I know.”

Act II. sc. 1.

His wife, Gazetta, gives a description of her husband's jealous uneasiness, which provokes a very pretty comparison, though a homely one, from her friend Gratiana.

"Gazetta. There's no man's eye fixt on me but doth pierce My husband's soul; if any ask my welfare,

He strait doubts treason practis'd to his bed;
Fancies, but to himself, all likelihoods
Of my wrong to him, and lays all on me
For certain truths; yet seeks he, with his best,
To put disguise on all his jealousy,

Fearing, perhaps, lest it may teach me that
Which otherwise I should not dream upon :
Yet lives he still abroad, at great expence;
Turns merely gallant from his farmer's state;

Uses all games and recreations;

Runs races with the gallants of the court;
Feasts them at home, and entertains them costly;
And then upbraids me with this company.

Gratiana. Indeed such love is like a smoky fire
In a cold morning: though the fire be cheerful,
Yet is the smoke so sour and cumbersome,
Twere better lose the fire than find the smoke.
Such an attendant then as smoke to fire,

Is jealousy to love; better want both

Than have both.”

Valerio, a gay and dissolute young fellow, by acting the clown before his father, deludes him into the idea, that he a sober, vigilant man of business. When the stern old man desires his son to conduct a lady into the house, who is, in fact, the young man's wife, unknown to the father, his awkwardness provokes the miser into a description of his own accomplishments when he was his son's age, in a vein of coarse pleasantry.

"Gostanzo. Go, dame, conduct 'em in.
Ah, errant sheep's head, hast thou liv'd thus long
And dar'st not look a woman in the face?
Though I desire especially to see

My son a husband, shall I therefore have him

Turn absolute cullion. Let's see. Kiss thy hand.

Thou kiss thy hand: thou wip'st thy mouth: by th' mass,
Fie on thee, clown. They say the world's grown finer;
But I, for my part, never saw young men
Worse fashion'd and brought, than now a-days.
S'foot, when myself was young, was I not kept
As far from court as you? I think I was ;
And yet my father, on a time, invited
The dutchess to his house. I being then
About five and twenty years of age,
Was thought the only man to entertain her.

I had my congé :-plant myself of one leg:
Draw back the other with a deep-fetched honour.
Then, with a belle regard, advant mine eye
With boldness, on her visnomy.

Your dancers all were counterfeit to me:

And for discourse, in my fair mistress' presence,

I did not, as you barren gallants do,

Fill my discourses up, drinking-tobacco;
But on the present, furnish'd evermore

With stale and practis'd speeches-as, sometimes,
What is't o'clock?-What stuff's this petticoat?—
What cost the making ?-What the fringe and all ?—
And what she had under her petticoat?

And such like witty compliments. And for need,
I could have written as good prose and verse

As the most beggarly poet of 'em all,
Either acrostic, exordion,

Epithalamions, satires, epigrams,
Sonnets in dozens, or your quatorzanies;
In any rhyme, masculine, feminine,

Or sarnciella, or couplets, blank verse.

Y'are but bench whistlers now-a-days, to them

That were in our times. Well, about your husbandry
Go, for l'faith th' art fit for nothing else."

This same Valerio who, in his father's country house, is esteemed a pattern of frugality and good husbandry, when in town, where he contrives by stealth to pass the greater part of his time, is a rakish royster, put to his wit's end to escape the bailiffs. He gives an account of a victory he obtained over this honorable fraternity, in a strain of ludicrous exaggeration.

"Valerio. Foot, a man

Cannot so soon, for want of almanacks,

Forget his day-but three or four bare months;
But straight he sees a sort of corporals

To lie in ambuscado to surprize him.

Dariotto. Well, thou hadst happy fortune to escape 'em.
Valerio. But they thought 'twas happier to 'scape me.

I, walking in the place where men's law suits
Are heard and pleaded, not so much as dreaming
Of any such encounter, steps me forth

Their valiant foreman, with the word, I 'rest you:
I made no more ado, but laid these paws
Close on his shoulders; tumbling him to earth:
And there sat he, on his posteriors,

Like a baboon; and, turning me about,

I straight espied the whole troop issuing on me.
I stept me back, and drawing my old friend here,
Made to the midst of them; and all unable
To endure the shock, all rudely fell in rout,
And down the stairs they ran with such a fury,
As, meeting with a troop of lawyers there,
Mann'd with their clients, some ten, some twenty,