Outside a tennis court
Enter Fontinell from tennis, and Truepenny with him.
FONTINELL
Am I so happy then?
TRUEPENNY
Nay, sweet monsieur.
FONTINELL
O boy, thou hast new-wing’d my captiv’d soul!
Now to my fortune all the Fates may yield,
For I have won where first I lost the field.
TRUEPENNY
Why, sir, did my mistress prick you with the Spanish needle of her love, before I summon’d you from her to this parley?
FONTINELL
Doubts thou that, boy?
TRUEPENNY
Of mine honesty, I doubt extremely, for I cannot see the little god’s tokens upon you. There is as much difference between you and a lover as between a cuckold and a unicorn.
FONTINELL
Why, boy?
TRUEPENNY
For you do not wear a pair of ruffled, frowning, ungartered stockings, like a gallant that hides his small-timber’d legs with a quail-pipe boot. Your hose stands upon too many points, and are not troubled with that falling sickness which follows pale, meagre, miserable, melancholy lovers. Your hands are not groping continually.
FONTINELL
Where, my little observer?
TRUEPENNY
In your greasy pocket, sir, like one that wants a cloak for the rain, and yet is still weather-beaten. Your hat nor head are not of the true heigh-ho block, for it should be broad-brimm’d, limber, like the skin of a white pudding when the meat is out, the facing fatty, the felt dusty, and not enter’d into any band; but your hat is of the nature of a loose, light, heavy-swelling wench, too strait-laced. I tell you, Monsieur, a lover should be all loose from the sole of the foot rising upward, and from the bases or confines of the slop falling downwards. If you were in my mistress’s chamber, you should find othergates privy signs of love hanging out there.
FONTINELL
Have your little eyes watch’d so narrowly?
TRUEPENNY
Oh sir, a page must have a cat’s eye, a spaniel’s leg, a whore’s tongue (a little tasting of the cog), a catchpole’s hand (what he grips is his own), and a little, little body.
FONTINELL
Fair Violetta, I will wear thy love,
Like this French order, near unto my heart.
Via for fate! Fortune, lo, this is all.
At grief’s rebound I’ll mount, although I fall.
Enter Camillo and Hipolito from tennis, Doyt and Dandiprat with their cloaks and rapiers.
CAMILLO
Now, by Saint Mark, he’s a most treacherous villain.
Dare the base Frenchman’s eye gaze on my love?
HIPOLITO
Nay, sweet rogue, why wouldst thou make his face a vizard, to have two loopholes only? When he comes to a good face, may he not do with his eyes what he will? ‘Sfoot, if I were as he, I’d pull them out, and if I wist they would anger thee.
CAMILLO
Thou add’st heat to my rage; away, stand back.
Dishonored slave, more treacherous than base,
This is the instance of my scorn’d disgrace.
FONTINELL
Thou ill-advis’d Italian, whence proceeds
This sudden fury?
CAMILLO
Villain, from thee.
HIPOLITO
Hercules
Stand between them!
FONTINELL
Villain? By my blood!
I am as free-born as your Venice duke!
Villain? Saint Dennis and my life to boot,
Thy lips shall kiss this pavement or my foot.
HIPOLITO
Your foot? With a pox! I hope y’are no pope, sir. His lips shall kiss my sister’s soft lip, and thine, the tough lip of this. Nay, sir, I do but shew you that I have a tool. Do you hear, Saint Dennis? But that we both stand upon the narrow bridge of honour, I should cut your throat now, for pure love you bear to my sister, but that I know you would set out a throat.
CAMILLO
Wilt thou not stab the peasant
That thus dishonors both thyself and me?
HIPOLITO
Saint Mark set his marks upon me then. Stab? I’ll have my shins broken, ere I’ll scratch so much as the skin off a’ the law of arms. Shall I make a Frenchman cry O! before the fall of the leaf? Not I, by the cross of this Dandiprat.
DANDIPRAT
If you will, sir, you shall coin me into a shilling.
HIPOLITO
I shall lay too heavy a cross upon thee then.
CAMILLO
Is this a time to jest? Boy, call my servants.
DOYT
Gentlemen, to the dresser!
Enter serving-men.
CAMILLO
You rogue, what dresser? Seize on Fontinell,
And lodge him in a dungeon presently.
FONTINELL
He steps upon his death that stirs a foot.
CAMILLO
That shall I try; as in the field before
I made thee stoop, so here I’ll make thee bow.
FONTINELL
Thou played’st the soldier then, the villain now.
Camillo and his men set upon him, get him down and disweapon him, and hold him fast.
FONTINELL
Treacherous Italians!
CAMILLO
Hale him to a dungeon.
There, if your thoughts can apprehend the form
Of Violetta, dote on her rare feature;
Or if your proud flesh with a sparing diet
Can still retain her swelling spritefulness,
Then court instead of her the croaking vermin
That people that most solitary vault.
HIPOLITO
But sirrah Camillo, wilt thou play the wise and venerable bearded master constable and commit him indeed, because he would be meddling in thy precinct, and will not put off the cap of his love to the brown bill of thy desires? Well, thou hast given the law of arms a broken pate already; therefore, if thou wilt needs turn broker and be a cutthroat too, do. For my part, I’ll go get a sweetball and wash my hands of it.
CAMILLO
Away with him; my life shall answer it.
FONTINELL
To prison must I then? Well, I will go,
And with a light-wing’d spirit insult o’er woe,
For in the darkest hell on earth, I’ll find
Her fair idea to content my mind.
Yet France and Italy with blistered tongue
Shall publish thy dishonour in my wrong.
Oh, now how happy wert thou, couldst thou lodge me
Where I could leave to love her?
CAMILLO
By heaven I can.
FONTINELL
Thou canst? O happy man!
This [is] a kind of new invented law:
First feed the axe, after produce the saw.
Her heart no doubt will thy affections feel,
For thou’lt plead sighs in blood, and tears in steel.
Boy, tell my love her love thus sighing spake:
I’ll vail my crest to death, for her dear sake.
Exit [Fontinell, guarded by serving-men].
CAMILLO
Boy? What boy is that?
HIPOLITO
Is’t you, Sir Pandarus, the broking knight of Troy? Are your two legs the pair of trestles for the Frenchman to get up upon my sister?
TRUEPENNY
By the Nine Worthies, worthy gallants, not I. I, a gentleman for convenience? I, Sir Pandarus? Would Troy then were in my breeches, and I burnt worse than poor Troy. Sweet signior, you know, I know, and all Venice knows that my mistress scorns double-dealing with her heels.
HIPOLITO
With her heels? O, here’s a sure pocket dag, and my sister shoots him off snipsnap at her pleasure. Sirrah Mephostophiles, did not you bring letters from my sister to the Frenchman?
TRUEPENNY
Signior, no.
CAMILLO
Did not you fetch him out of the tennis court?
TRUEPENNY
No, point, per ma foy. You see I have many tongues speak for me.
HIPOLITO
Did not he follow your crackship, at a beck given?
TRUEPENNY
Ita, true, certes, he spied, and I spitting thus, went thus.
HIPOLITO
But were stay’d thus.
TRUEPENNY
You hold a’ my side, and therefore I must needs stick to you. ’Tis true; I going, he followed, and following, finger’d me, just as your worship does now. But I struggled and straggled, and wriggled and wraggled, and at last cried vale, valete, as I do now, with this fragment of rhyme:
My lady is grossly fall’n in love, and yet her waist is slender;
Had I not slipp’d away, you would have made my buttocks tender.
Exit.
DANDIPRAT
Shall Doyt and I play the bloodhounds and after him?
CAMILLO
No, let him run.
HIPOLITO
Not for this wager of my sister’s love; run. Away, Dandiprat; catch Truepenny and hold him. Thyself shall pass more currant.
DANDIPRAT
I fly, sir; your Dandiprat is as light as a clipp’d angel.
Exit.
HIPOLITO
Nay, God’s lid, after him, Camillo. Reply not, but away.
CAMILLO
Content; you know where to meet.
Exit.
HIPOLITO
For I know that the only way to win a wench is not to woo her; the only way to have her fast is to have her loose. The only way to triumph over her is to make her fall; and the way to make her fall —
DOYT
Is to throw her down.
HIPOLITO
Are you so cunning, sir?
DOYT
O Lord, sir, and have so perfit a master.
HIPOLITO
Well, sir, you know the gentlewoman that dwells in the midst of Saint Mark’s Street.
DOYT
Midst of Saint Mark’s Street, sir?
HIPOLITO
A pox on you! The flea-bitten-fac’d lady.
DOYT
Oh, sir, the freckle-cheek Madonna; I know her, signior, as well —
HIPOLITO
Not as I do, I hope, sir.
DOYT
No, sir, I’d be loath to have such inward acquaintance with her as you have.
HIPOLITO
Well, sir, slip, go presently to her, and from me deliver to her own white hands Fontinell’s picture.
DOYT
Indeed, sir, she loves to have her chamber hung with the pictures of men.
HIPOLITO
She does. I’ll keep my sister’s eyes and his painted face asunder. Tell her besides, the masque holds and this the night, and nine the hour. Say we are all for her; away.
DOYT
And she’s for you all, were you an army.
Exeunt.