A room in Dryfat’s house.
Enter Dryfat and Club disguised [as a proctor and a crier, respectively].
DRYFAT
Come Club, come, there’s a merry fray towards; we shall see the death of melancholy; wherein thou and I must call a grand jury of jests together, and pass upon them with the club law.
CLUB
Now as I am O the crier, and yet but a young club, I have not yet practised that law; you have a whole dryfat on’t; I pray you instruct me.
DRYFAT
Why, ’tis a law enacted, by the common council of statute-caps, to qualify the rage of the time, to follow, to call back, and sometimes to encounter gentlemen when they run in arrearages; I tell thee there’s no averment against our book-cases. ’Tis the law called make-peace; it makes them even when they are at odds; it shows ‘em a flat case as plain as a pack-staff, that is, knocks ‘em down without circumstance.
CLUB
Ay, marry, I like that law well; ’tis studied with the turning of a hand. There’s no quiddits nor pedlar’s French in’t; there needs no book for th’ exposition o’ th’ terms; ’tis as easily learned as the felling of wood and getting of children; all is but laying on load the downright blow.
DRYFAT
Ay, and by the way of exhortation it prints this moral sentence on their costards, in capital letters, “Agree, for the law is costly”.
CLUB
Good, good. But all this while there’s no doctor thought on; we must have one to arbitrate.
DRYFAT
Why, Master Gerardine, man, has his name for the purpose; he shall be called Doctor Stickler; lupus est in fabula, here he comes.
Enter Gerardine.
GERARDINE
How now, lads, does our conceit cotton? Ha’ you summoned your wits from wool-gathering? Are you fraught with matter for this merriment?
DRYFAT
Full, full; we are in labour, man, and we shall die without midwifery.
CLUB
We are ravished with delight, like the wench that was got with child against her stomach. O, but if we could wrest this smock law now in hand to our club law, it were excellent.
DRYFAT
Easily, easily; all shall be called the club law.
GERARDINE
As how?
DRYFAT
Why, thus. Club is the crier, I am [Poppin] the proctor and you Stickler the doctor; he calls them to appear, I must be of their counsel and you must attone them, put ‘em together. We may know their cases and be in their elements, mark you me, but they cannot be in ours. Tut, none knows our secrets; we can speak fustian above their understanding, and make asses’ ears attentive. I’ll play Ambodexter, tell ‘em ’tis a plain case and put ‘em down with the club law; so that, as Club said well e’en now, our knavery is as near allied as felling of wood and getting of children.
GERARDINE
Excellent, excellent. By this they are at hand: let’s bear these things like ourselves; I’ll withdraw and put on my habiliments, and then enter for the doctor.
DRYFAT
Do so; they come, they come!
Exit Gerardine. Enter Glister and Purge.
Welcome, Master Doctor Glister and Master Purge; there’s a commission to be sat upon this day, to open a passage for imprisoned truth, concerning acts yet in tenebris.
GLISTER
True; I am brought hither by the malice of my wife.
PURGE
And I have a just appeal against my wife.
GLISTER
Master [Poppin], so I think you are called, I understand you have the law at your fingers’ ends.
DRYFAT
I can box cases, and scold and scratch it out amongst them.
GLISTER
Indeed, fame reports you to be a good trumpeter of causes; I must retain you, sir, to sound mine.
DRYFAT
My sackbut shall do it most pathetically; tell me, in brief, the nature of your case.
GLISTER
Faith, sir, a scandalous letter devised to wrong my reputation, about a bastard in the country which should be mine.
DRYFAT
About a bastard in the country which should be yours? Hum; ’tis very like you then, it should seem.
GLISTER
O no, sir, understand me, only fathered upon me.
DRYFAT
Only fathered upon you cum nemini obtrudi potest. I understand you, and like you well too, you do not flatter yourself in your own case, no, ’tis not good; well, what more?
GLISTER
And about my niece, got with child in my own house.
DRYFAT
Byrlady, burdens of some weight, which you make light of! You deny?
GLISTER
What else, sir? I have reason.
DRYFAT
I know it well, I take you for no beast. Believe me, Master Doctor, denial and reason are two main grounds; stand upon them, and you cannot err. Your case, Master Purge?
PURGE
First take your fee, Master [Poppin], that you may have the more feeling, and urge it home when you come to’t. Mine is a discovery of my wife’s iniquity at the Family of Love.
DRYFAT
Otherwise called the House of Venery, where they hunger and thirst for’t.
PURGE
True, sir; you have heard of the Hole in the Wall, where they assemble together in the day-time, like so many bees under a hive?
DRYFAT
Come home crura thymo plena, and lodge among hornets, is’t not so?
PURGE
I cannot tell, sir; but for my part, I am much noted as I go.
DRYFAT
No doubt of that, sir; your wife can furnish you with notes out of her cotations.
CLUB
Ay, and give him a two-tagged point to tie ‘em together.
DRYFAT
But how came you to detect her?
PURGE
Why, thus, sir: getting the word, I dogged her to the Family where, closing with her, I whispered so pleasing a tale in her ear that I got from her her wedding ring; and here ’tis.
DRYFAT
Well, out of that ring we will wring matter that shall carry meat i’ th’ mouth. But what witness or proof can you produce to make good your wife’s iniquity and your own cuckoldry?
PURGE
Master Lipsalve and Master Gudgeon, who were her companions at that same time.
DRYFAT
Very good; are they cited in the quorum nomina?
CLUB
They will be here, sir.
GLISTER
If they be, they will bewray all.
DRYFAT
So much the better; ‘twill savour well for Master Purge.
PURGE
You understand my case now?
GLISTER
And mine too, sir?
DRYFAT
I do, I do; they are as different as a doctor and a dunce, a man and a beast. Here’s the compendium; yours, Master Doctor, stands upon the negative; and yours, Master Purge, upon the affirmative; pauca sapienti, I ha’t, I ha’t.
PURGE
Mine is very current, sir; I can show you good guilt.
DRYFAT
Ay, marry, there spoke an angel; gilt’s current indeed; let me feel’t, let me feel’t.
PURGE
I mean, my wife’s guilt.
GLISTER
Master Poppin, you shall have innocence to speak for me.
DRYFAT
Tut, innocence is a fool, I care not for’s company; I can speak enough without him.
GLISTER
Then, I hope, you will be as good to us as the five-finger at maw.
DRYFAT
No, rather as Hercules, to lip-labour ‘em with the club law; tut, let me alone.
Enter Mistress Glister, Mistress Purge and Maria.
MISTRESS GLISTER
O, you are here, sir? I have brought you a full barn to glut your greedy appetite; if you have any maw, feed here till you choke again. Now shall I see the whole carcass of your knavery ripped up; if thou hast any grace, now will thy red beard turn white upon’t.
MISTRESS PURGE
O, how have I been toss’d from post to pillar
In this libidinous world. The yoke I bear
Is so uneven, as if an innocent lamb
And a mad hare-brain’d ox should draw together.
But I must have patience, there’s no remedy.
DRYFAT
There’s some difference between these two tempers.
GLISTER
I would give a hundred pounds my wife had so gentle a spirit.
PURGE
My wife must needs be gentle, for she can bear double.
Enter Gerardine [disguised as a doctor of law].
DRYFAT
Here comes Master Doctor; now rig up your vessels, every one to his tackling.
GERARDINE
Good day to all at once, and peace amongst you. Fie, how I sweat; I think Vulcan ne’er toiled so at his anvil as I have done, and all to make maid’s water to slake Cupid’s fire, and to turn his shafts from the feather-bed to the bed-post, from the heart to the heel. Come, Master Poppin, shall we to this gear?
DRYFAT
Reverend doctor, we have stayed your coming. Crier, cry silence! Master Doctor, I have heard in general terms the tales of Master Doctor Glister and Master Purge, which have in mutual manner jumped into the quagmire of my mind; out of which quagmire, by your enforcement and mine own duty, I pluck them up by the ears, and thus, in naked apparance, I present them.
GERARDINE
Ad rem, ad rem, Master Poppin. Leave your allegories, your metaphors and circumlocutions, and to the point.
DRYFAT
Then briefly thus: I have compared their tales, how short they will come of their wives’ I know not; and first for Mistress Purge. Crier, call Mistress Purge.
CLUB
Rebecca Purge, wife to Peter Purge, pothecary, appear upon thy purgation, upon pain of excommunication.
MISTRESS PURGE
Here I am. O time’s impiety!
Hither I come from out the harmless fold
To have my good name eaten up by wolves.
See how they grin! Well, the weak must to the wall;
I must bear wrong, but shame shall them befall.
GERARDINE
Who is her accuser?
DRYFAT
Her own husband, upon the late discovery of a crew of narrow-[ruffed], strait-laced, yet loose-bodied dames, with a rout of omnium-gatherums, assembled by the title of the Family of Love; which, Master Doctor, if they be not punished and suppressed by our club law, each man’s copyhold will become freehold, specialities will turn to generalities, and so from unity to parity, from parity to plurality, and from plurality to universality; their wives, the only ornaments of their houses, and of all their wares, goods, and chattel[s], the chief moveables, will be made common.
PURGE
Most voluble and eloquent proctor!
GERARDINE
Byrlady, these enormities must and shall be redressed, otherwise I see their charter will be infringed, and their ancient staff of government the club (from whence we derive our law of castigation), this club, I say, they seeming nothing less than men by their fore-part, will be turned upon their own heads. Speak, Rebecca Purge: art thou one of this Family? Hast thou ever known the body of any man there or elsewhere concupiscentically?
MISTRESS PURGE
No, M[aster] Doctor, those are but devices of the wicked to trap the innocent; but I thank my spirit I have fear before my eyes, which my husband sees not, because something hangs in’s light.
PURGE
[Aside] That’s my horns. She flouts me to my face, and I will not endure it. I shall carry her mark to my grave. — Master Doctor, she has given me that, that Aesculapius, were he now extant, could not heal, nor edax rerum take away.
GERARDINE
Produce your witness, [Master] Purge, and blow not your own horn.
PURGE
Master Lipsalve and Master Gudgeon, let them be called.
CLUB
Laurence Lipsalve and Gregory Gudgeon, late of hic et ubique, in the county of nusquam, gentlemen, come into the court and give your evidence, upon pain of that which shall ensue.
Enter Lipsalve and Gudgeon.
GLISTER
Here they come, in pain I warrant them. How works your physic, gallants? Do you go well to the ground? Now cuckold the doctor! Wife, who’s your first man now? Now strike with the scabbard! Ha, ha, ha!
GUDGEON
A villainous doctor.
LIPSALVE
Mountebank, you’re a rascal, and we will cast about to be revenged.
DRYFAT
Cast about this way and bewray what you can concerning Mistress Purge, who stands here upon her purgation, either to prove mundified or contaminated, according to the tenor-piece of your principal evidence. First give ‘em the book.
CLUB
Come, lay your hands upon the book. You shall speak and aver no more, nor wade no farther into the cream-pots of this woman’s crime, than the naked truth and the cart-rope of your conscience shall conduct you, so help you the contents. Kiss the book.
LIPSALVE
Alas, we are not in case to answer largely; but if you will have our evidence in brief, I think I kissed her at the Family some three times, once at coming, once at going, and once in the midst; otherwise never knew her dishonestly.
PURGE
Ay, mark that middle kiss, Master Doctor.
GUDGEON
And for my part, I have been more mortified by her than ever I was provoked.
GERARDINE
How say you to this, Master Purge? Your witness is weak, and, sir-reverence on [it], without sounder proof, they may depart to the close-stool whence they came, and you to your pothecary’s shop.
PURGE
No, Master Doctor, I have another bolt to shoot that shall strike her dead; she shall not have a word to say.
DRYFAT
Answer me to this, Mistress Purge; where’s your wedding ring?
MISTRESS PURGE
My wedding ring? Why, what should I do with unnecessary things about me, when the poor begs at my gate ready to starve? Is it not better, as I learned last lecture, to send my substance before me, where I may find it, than to leave it behind me, where I must forego it? Yes, verily; wherefore, to put you out of doubt, I have given that ring to charitable uses.
DRYFAT
Nay, now she falters. My client can shew that ring, got from her at the Family, when these two courtling[s] had at the same time beleaguered her fort.
GERARDINE
This alters the case clean. What starting-hole ha’ you now, Mistress Purge?
MISTRESS PURGE
E’en the sanctuary of a safe conscience. Now truly, truly, however he came by that ring, by my Sisterhood, I gave it to the relief of the distressed Geneva.
PURGE
How! To the relief of the distressed Geneva? Justice, Master Doctor! I may now decline victus, victa, victum; one word more shall overthrow her. I myself was a Familist that day, who, more jealous than zealous in devotion, thrust in amongst the rest (as I had most right) on purpose to sound her, to find out the knavery. Short tale to make, I got her ring, and here it is: let her deny it if she can; and what more I discovered non est nunc narrandi locus.
MISTRESS PURGE
Husband, I see you are hoodwinked in the right use of feeling and knowledge, as if I knew you not then as well as the child knows his own father! Look in the posy of my ring: does it not tell you that we two are one flesh? And hath not fellow-feeling taught us to know one another as well by night as by day? Husband, husband, will you do as the blind jade, break your neck down a hill because you see it not? Ha’ you no light of nature in that flesh of yours? Now, as true as I live, Master Doctor, I had a secret operation, and I knew him then to be my husband e’en by very instinct.
PURGE
Impudence, dost not blush? Art not ashamed to lie so abominable?
MISTRESS PURGE
No, husband, rather be you ashamed of your own weakness; for, for my part, I neither fear nor shame what man can do unto me.
GERARDINE
Master Purge, I see you have spent your pith; therefore best make a full point at the ring, and attend our pleasure. Master [Poppin], proceed to the rest.
DRYFAT
Crier, call Doctor Glister.
CLUB
Doctor Glister, alias suppositor doctor of physic, appear upon thy purgation, upon the belly-pain that may ensue therein.
GLISTER
Here, Master Doctor.
GERARDINE
Who is his accuser?
DRYFAT
His clamorous wife, who seems to enforce a separation about a bastard in the country, which should be his, only fathered upon him.
GERARDINE
What proof of that?
MISTRESS GLISTER
Proof unanswerable, Master Doctor, the nurse’s letter: let it be read; but first observe his countenance: it may be his blushing will bewray his guilt.
GERARDINE
Now by this light, I thought it had indeed, but I see ’tis but the reflection of his beard. Read the letter, Master [Poppin].
[DRYFAT]
[Reads] “After my hearty commendations remembered unto your worshipful doctorship, trusting in God that you are as well as I was at the making hereof, thanks be to him therefor. The cause of my writing unto you at this time is to let you understand that your little son is turned a ragged colt, a very stripling; for, being now stripped of all his clothing, his backside wants a tail-piece, commends itself to your fatherly consideration. Woe worth the time that ever I gave suck to a child that came in at the window, God knows how. Yet if you did but see how like the pert, little, red-headed knave is to his father, and how like a cock-sparrow he mouses and touses my little Bess already, you would take him for your own, and pay me my hire. I write not of the want of one thing, for I want all things; wherefore take some speedy order, or else as naked as he came from the mother will I send him to the father. From Pis. the xxii of —
Your poor nurse, Thomasine Tweedles.”
GLISTER
Master Doctor, truth needs not the foil of rhetoric; I will only in monosyllaba answer for myself, as sometimes a wise man did: such and such things are laid to my charge, which I deny; you may think of me what you please, but I am as innocent in this as the child new-born.
GERARDINE
Why, there’s partly a confession. The child we know is innocent, and not new-born neither, for it should seem by the letter he is able to call his dad knave.
GLISTER
You take me wrong, Master [Doctor].
DRYFAT
Under correction, thus much can I say for my client’s justification: indeed he hath travelled well in the beating of pulses, and hath been much conversant in women’s jordans; but he had ever a care to raise his patient being before cast down. His charitable disposition hath been such to poor folk, that he never took above fourpence for the casting of a water, which good custom was so well known among all his patients, that if sixpence were at any time offered him, they might be bold to ask and have twopence again. He hath been so skilful and painful withal in the cure of the green sickness, that, of my knowledge, he hath risen at all hours in the night to pleasure maids that have had it. And for that foul-mouthed disease, termed by a fine phrase — a pox on’t, what d’ye call’t? O, the grincomes — at that he hath played his doctor’s prize, and writes nil ultra to all [mountebanks]; so that the wise woman in Pissing Alley, nor she in Do-little Lane, are more famous for good deeds than he. Then, Master Doctor, out of these presumptions, besides his flat denial (a more infallible ground), you may gather his innocence, and let him have his purgation.
GERARDINE
No, Master [Poppin], it is not so to be foisted off.
MISTRESS GLISTER
Nay, Master Doctor, what say you to his own niece, that looks big upon him? An arrow that sticks for the upshot against all comers; which by his restraint of her from Master Gerardine, an honest gentleman that loved her, and upon that colour from the sight and intercourse of other men, must by all presumptions be his own act.
GERARDINE
O monstrous! This [is] a foul blot in your tables indeed.
GLISTER
Wife, thou hast no shame nor womanhood in thee; thy conscience knows me.
MISTRESS GLISTER
True of thy flesh, who knows not that? Thy beard speaks for thee. Ay, ay, thou liest by me like a stone, but abroad th’art like a stone-horse, you old [limb]-lifter!
DRYFAT
Cease your clamour, and attend my speech. Most worshipful, reverend and judicial doctor, for the quickening of your memory I will give you a breviat of all that hath been spoken. Master Doctor Glister hath a cradleful and a bellyful, you see, thrust upon him; and Master Purge a headful. Your wife is an angry honeyless wasp, whose sting I hope you need not fear, and yours carries honey in her mouth, but her sting makes your forehead swell. Your wife makes you deaf with the shrill treble of her tongue; and yours makes you horn-mad with the tenor of her tale. In fine, Master Doctor’s refuge is his conscience, and Master Purge runs at his wife’s ring.
GERARDINE
Summa totalis, a good audit ha’ you made, Master [Poppin]. Now attend my arbitrement. For you gallants, though you have incurred the danger of the law by using counterfeit keys, and putting your hands into the wrong pocket, yet because I see you punished and purged already, my advice is, that you learn the A B C of better manners. Go back and tell how you have been used in the city; and being thus scoured, keep yourselves clean and the bed undefiled. For you, Master Purge, because I see your evidence insufficient, and indeed too weak, to foil your wife’s uprightness, and seeing jealousy and unkindness hath only made her a stranger in your land of Ham, my counsel is that you readvance your standard, give her new press-money.
PURGE
You may enjoin me, sir, but —
GERARDINE
But not at me, man; I will enjoin you, and conjoin you, and briefly thus: you have your ring that has made this combustion and uproar; that keep still: wear it; and here, by my edict, be it proclaimed to all that are jealous, to wear their wives’ ring still on their fingers, as best for their security, and the only charm against cuckoldry.
PURGE
Then, wife, at Master Doctor’s enjoinment, so thou wilt promise me to come no more at the Family, I receive thee into the lists of my favour.
MISTRESS PURGE
Truly husband, my love must be free still to God’s creatures; yea, nevertheless preserving you still as the head of my body, I will do as the spirit shall enable me.
GERARDINE
Go to; thou hast a good wife, and there an end. Upon you, Master Doctor, being solicited by so apparent proof, I can do no less than pronounce a severe sentence. And yet, i’faith, the reverence of your calling and profession doth somewhat check my austerity; what if Master Gerardine, by my persuasion, would yet be induced to take your niece, and father the child? Would you launch with a thousand pound, besides her father’s portion?
GLISTER
Master Doctor, I would, were it but to redeem her lost good name.
GERARDINE
Then, foreknowing what would happen, I thought good, in Master Gerardine’s name, to have this bond ready, which if you seal to, he shall take her with all faults.
GLISTER
That will I instantly. [Seals the bond] So, this is done; which together with my niece do I deliver by these presents to the use of Master Gerardine.
GERARDINE
He thanks you heartily, and lets you know,
Gerardine, Dryfat and Club discover themselves.
That Indian mines and Tagus’ glistering ore
To this bequest were unto me but poor.
GLISTER
What? Gerardine, Dryfat and Club!
DRYFAT AND CLUB
The very same. You are welcome to our club law!
GERARDINE
Cease admiration here. What doubt remains
I’ll satisfy at full. Now join with me
For approbation of our Family.