Lipsalve’s chamber, and outside.
Enter Lipsalve[, undoubletted,] with his whip.
LIPSALVE
Fortune, devil’s turd i’ thy teeth! I’ll turn no more o’ thy wheel; art is above thy might. What though my project with Mistress Maria failed? More ways to the wood than one: there’s variety in love. It is believed I am out of town; my door is open, the hour is at hand; all things squared by the doctor’s rule; and now I look for the spirit to bring me warm comfort to clothe my nakedness, and that is Mistress Purge, the cordial of a Familist; and come quickly, good spirit, or else my teeth will chatter for thee.
Enter Gudgeon[,undoubletted,] with his [whip, outside the chamber].
GUDGEON
O the naked pastimes of love, the scourge of dullness, the purifier of uncleanness, and the hot-house of humanity! I have taken physic of Master Purge any time this twelve months to purge my humour upon’s wife, and I have ever found her so fugitive, from exercise to exercise, and from Family to Family, that I could never yet open the closestool of my mind to her; so that I may well say with Ovid, “Hei mihi, quod nullis amor est medicabilis herbis.” Now am I driven to prove the violent virtue of conjuration; if it hit, and that I yerk my Familist out of the spirit, I’ll hang up my scourge-stick for a trophy, and emparadize my thoughts; though the doctor go to the devil, ’tis no matter. Ha, let me see: Lipsalve’s door open, and himself out of town? Excellent doctor, soothsaying doctor, oraculous doctor!
Enter Glister above.
GLISTER
[Aside] I have taken up this standing to see my gallants play at barriers with scourge-sticks, for the honour of my punk. And in good time I see my brave spirits shining in bright armour, nakedly burning in the hell-fire of lechery, and ready for the hot encounter. Sound trumpets, the combatants are mounted.
Enter Gudgeon [into the chamber].
GUDGEON
The apparition! Mistress Purge peers through him; I see her.
LIPSALVE
The spirit appears! But he might have come sooner: I am numbed with cold, a shivering ague hath taken away my courage.
GLISTER
[Aside] They are afraid one of another; look how they tremble; the flesh and the devil strengthen ‘em! Ha, ha, ha!
GUDGEON
Has ‘a no cloven feet? What a laxative fever shakes me.
LIPSALVE
Will ‘a not carry me with him to hell? Well, I must venture: Clogmathos.
GUDGEON
My cue: Clogmathathos.
LIPSALVE
My cue: Garrazin.
GUDGEON
Garragas.
LIPSALVE
Garrazinos.
GUDGEON
Ton tetuphon.
LIPSALVE
Tes tetuphes.
BOTH
With a whirly twinos.
They lash one another.
Hold, hold, hold!
Gogs nowns, gogs blood!
A pox, a plague, the devil take you!
Truce, truce, I smart, I smart.
GLISTER
[Aside] Ha, ha, ha! O, for one of the hoops of my Cornelius’ tub!
I must needs be gone, I shall burst myself with laughing else.
Magic hath no such rule; men cannot find
Lust ever better handled in his kind.
Exit.
GUDGEON
What art thou? With the name of Jove I conjure thee!
LIPSALVE
With any name, saving the whip; I’ll no more of that conjuration, a plague on’t!
GUDGEON
Speak, art not a spirit in the likeness of my friend Lipsalve, that should transform thyself to Mistress Purge?
LIPSALVE
How, a spirit? I hope spirits have no flesh and blood; and I am sure thou hast drawn blood out of my flesh with the spirit of thy whip.
GUDGEON
Then shall we prove to be honest gulls, and the doctor an errant knave.
LIPSALVE
A plague upon him for a Glister! He has given our loves a suppositor with a recumbentibus. I’ll tell thee, sirrah —
GUDGEON
Tell not me, let me prevent thee; the wind shall not take the breath of our gross abuse; we feel the gullery. Therefore let us swear by our naked truths, and by the hilts of these our blades, our flesh-tamers, to be revenged upon that paraperopandentical doctor, that pocky doctor.
LlPSALVE
Agreed; we’ll cuckold him, that he shall not be able to put his head in at’s doors; and make his precise, puritanical and peculiar punk, his pothecary’s drug there, a known cockatrice to the world.
GUDGEON
If report catch this knavery, we have lost our reputations for ever; wherefore let’s be secret.
Ill tax we women of credulity,
When men are gull’d with such gross foppery.
LIPSALVE
Come, let us in and cover both our shames.
This conjuration to the world’s a novelty;
Gallants turn’d spirits and whipped for lechery.
Exeunt.