A chamber in Sweetball’s house
Enter Barber, Ralph, Boy.
BARBER
So, friend, I’ll now dispatch you presently. Boy, reach me my dismembering instrument and let my [cauterizer] be ready, and, hark you, snip snap!
BOY
Ay, sir.
BARBER
See if my [lixivium], my fomentation be provided first, and get my rollers, bolsters, and pledgets arm’d.
RALPH
Nay, good sir, dispatch my business first; I should not stay from my shop.
BARBER
You must have a little patience, sir, when you are a patient; if [praeputium] be not too much perish’d, you shall lose but little by it, believe my art for that.
RALPH
What’s that, sir?
BARBER
Marry, if there be exulceration between [praeputium] and glans, by my faith, the whole penis may be endanger’d as far as os [pubis].
RALPH
What’s this you talk on, sir?
BARBER
If they be gangren’d once, testiculi, vesica, and all may run to mortification.
RALPH
What a pox does this barber talk on?
BARBER
O fie, youth, pox is no word of art: morbus Gallicus, or Neopolitamus had been well. Come, friend, you must not be nice; open your griefs freely to me.
RALPH
Why, sir, I open my grief to you: I want my money.
BARBER
Take you no care for that: your worthy cousin has given me part in hand, and the rest I know he will upon your recovery, and I dare take his word.
RALPH
‘Sdeath, where’s my ware?
BARBER
Ware! That was well: the word is cleanly, though not artful. Your ware is that I must see.
RALPH
My [tabine] and cloth of tissue!
BARBER
You will neither have tissue nor issue if you linger in your malady; better a member cut off than endanger the whole microcosm.
RALPH
Barber, you are not mad?
BARBER
I do begin to fear you are subject to subeth, unkindly sleeps, which have bred oppilations in your brain. Take heed, the symptoma will follow, and this may come to frenzy: begin with the first cause, which is the pain of your member.
RALPH
Do you see my yard, barber?
BARBER
Now you come to the purpose; ’tis that I must see indeed.
RALPH
You shall feel it, sir. Death, give me my fifty pounds or my ware again, or I’ll measure out your anatomy by the yard!
BARBER
Boy, my cauterizing iron red-hot!
Exit Boy [and re-enter with iron].
BOY
’Tis here, sir.
BARBER
If you go further, I take my dismembering knife.
RALPH
Where’s the knight, your cousin? The thief! And the tailor with my cloth of gold and tissue?
BOY
The gentleman that sent away his man with the stuffs is gone a pretty while since; he has carried away our new brush.
BARBER
O, that brush hurts my heart’s side! Cheated! Cheated! He told me that your virga had a burning-fever.
RALPH
A pox on your virga, barber!
BARBER
And that you would be bashful and asham’d to show your head.
RALPH
I shall so hereafter, but here it is; you see yet my head, my hair, and my wit, and here are my heels that I must show to my master if the cheaters be not found. And barber, provide thee plasters: I will break thy head with every basin under the pole!
Exit Ralph.
BARBER
Cool the [lixivium] and quench the cauterizer;
I am partly out of my wits and partly mad.
My razor’s at my heart: these storms will make
My sweetballs stink, my harmless basins shake.
Exeunt.