Epicoene; Or, The Silent Woman - LightNovelsOnl.com
You're reading novel online at LightNovelsOnl.com. Please use the follow button to get notifications about your favorite novels and its latest chapters so you can come back anytime and won't miss anything.
TRUE: A very cheap cure, madam.
[ENTER TRUSTY.]
HAU: Ay, 'tis very feasible.
MRS. OTT: My lady call'd for you, mistress Trusty: you must decide a controversy.
HAU: O, Trusty, which was it you said, your father, or your mother, that was cured with the Sick Man's Salve?
TRUS: My mother, madam, with the Salve.
TRUE: Then it was the sick woman's salve?
TRUS: And my father with the Groat's-worth of Wit. But there was other means used: we had a preacher that would preach folk asleep still; and so they were prescribed to go to church, by an old woman that was their physician, thrice a week--
EPI: To sleep?
TRUS: Yes, forsooth: and every night they read themselves asleep on those books.
EPI: Good faith, it stands with great reason. I would I knew where to procure those books.
MOR: Oh!
LA-F: I can help you with one of them, mistress Morose, the Groat's-worth of Wit.
EPI: But I shall disfurnish you, sir Amorous: can you spare it?
LA-F: O, yes, for a week, or so; I'll read it myself to him.
EPI: No, I must do that, sir: that must be my office.
MOR: Oh, oh!
EPI: Sure he would do well enough, if he could sleep.
MOR: No, I should do well enough, if you could sleep. Have I no friend that will make her drunk? or give her a little laudanum?
or opium?
TRUE: Why, sir, she talks ten times worse in her sleep.
MOR: How!
CLER: Do you not know that, sir? never ceases all night.
TRUE: And snores like a porpoise.
MOR: O, redeem me, fate; redeem me, fate! For how many causes may a man be divorced, nephew?
DAUP: I know not, truly, sir.
TRUE: Some divine must resolve you in that, sir, or canon-lawyer.
MOR: I will not rest, I will not think of any other hope or comfort, till I know.
[EXIT WITH DAUPHINE.]
CLER: Alas, poor man!
TRUE: You'll make him mad indeed, ladies, if you pursue this.
HAU: No, we'll let him breathe now, a quarter of an hour or so.
CLER: By my faith, a large truce!
HAU: Is that his keeper, that is gone with him?
DAW: It is his nephew, madam.
LA-F: Sir Dauphine Eugenie.
HAU: He looks like a very pitiful knight--
DAW: As can be. This marriage has put him out of all.
LA-F: He has not a penny in his purse, madam.
DAW: He is ready to cry all this day.
LA-F: A very shark; he set me in the nick t'other night at Primero.
TRUE: How these swabbers talk!
CLER: Ay, Otter's wine has swell'd their humours above a spring-tide.
HAU: Good Morose, let us go in again. I like your couches exceeding well; we will go lie and talk there.
[EXEUNT HAU., CEN., MAV., TRUS., LA-FOOLE, AND DAW.]
EPI [FOLLOWING THEM.]: I wait on you, madam.
TRUE [STOPPING HER.]: 'Slight, I will have them as silent as signs, and their post too, ere I have done. Do you hear, lady-bride?
I pray thee now, as thou art a n.o.ble wench, continue this discourse of Dauphine within; but praise him exceedingly: magnify him with all the height of affection thou canst;--I have some purpose in't: and but beat off these two rooks, Jack Daw and his fellow, with any discontentment, hither, and I'll honour thee for ever.
EPI: I was about it here. It angered me to the soul, to hear them begin to talk so malepert.
TRUE: Pray thee perform it, and thou winn'st me an idolater to thee everlasting.
EPI: Will you go in and hear me do't?
