The Alchemist, Ben Jonson [great novels .TXT] 📗

  A ROOM IN LOVEWIT'S HOUSE.

  ENTER FACE AND MAMMON.

  FACE. O sir, you're come in the only finest time.—

  MAM. Where's master?

  FACE. Now preparing for projection, sir.
  Your stuff will be all changed shortly.

  MAM. Into gold?

  FACE. To gold and silver, sir.

  MAM. Silver I care not for.

  FACE. Yes, sir, a little to give beggars.

  MAM. Where's the lady?

  FACE. At hand here. I have told her such brave things of you,
  Touching your bounty, and your noble spirit—

  MAM. Hast thou?

  FACE. As she is almost in her fit to see you.
  But, good sir, no divinity in your conference,
  For fear of putting her in rage.—

  MAM. I warrant thee.

  FACE. Six men [sir] will not hold her down: and then,
  If the old man should hear or see you—

  MAM. Fear not.

  FACE. The very house, sir, would run mad. You know it,
  How scrupulous he is, and violent,
  'Gainst the least act of sin. Physic, or mathematics,
  Poetry, state, or bawdry, as I told you,
  She will endure, and never startle; but
  No word of controversy.

  MAM. I am school'd, good Ulen.

  FACE. And you must praise her house, remember that,
  And her nobility.

  MAM. Let me alone:
  No herald, no, nor antiquary, Lungs,
  Shall do it better. Go.

  FACE [ASIDE]. Why, this is yet
  A kind of modern happiness, to have
  Dol Common for a great lady.

  [EXIT.]

  MAM. Now, Epicure,
  Heighten thyself, talk to her all in gold;
  Rain her as many showers as Jove did drops
  Unto his Danae; shew the god a miser,
  Compared with Mammon. What! the stone will do't.

  She shall feel gold, taste gold, hear gold, sleep gold;
  Nay, we will concumbere gold: I will be puissant,
  And mighty in my talk to her.—
  [RE-ENTER FACE, WITH DOL RICHLY DRESSED.]
  Here she comes.

  FACE. To him, Dol, suckle him.—This is the noble knight,
  I told your ladyship—

  MAM. Madam, with your pardon,
  I kiss your vesture.

  DOL. Sir, I were uncivil
  If I would suffer that; my lip to you, sir.

  MAM. I hope my lord your brother be in health, lady.

  DOL. My lord, my brother is, though I no lady, sir.

  FACE [ASIDE]. Well said, my Guinea bird.

  MAM. Right noble madam—

  FACE [ASIDE]. O, we shall have most fierce idolatry.

  MAM. 'Tis your prerogative.

  DOL. Rather your courtesy.

  MAM. Were there nought else to enlarge your virtues to me,
  These answers speak your breeding and your blood.

  DOL. Blood we boast none, sir, a poor baron's daughter.

  MAM. Poor! and gat you? profane not. Had your father
  Slept all the happy remnant of his life
  After that act, lien but there still, and panted,
  He had done enough to make himself, his issue,
  And his posterity noble.

  DOL. Sir, although
  We may be said to want the gilt and trappings,
  The dress of honour, yet we strive to keep
  The seeds and the materials.

  MAM. I do see
  The old ingredient, virtue, was not lost,
  Nor the drug money used to make your compound.
  There is a strange nobility in your eye,
  This lip, that chin! methinks you do resemble
  One of the Austriac princes.

  FACE. Very like!
  [ASIDE.]
  Her father was an Irish costermonger.

  MAM. The house of Valois just had such a nose,
  And such a forehead yet the Medici
  Of Florence boast.

  DOL. Troth, and I have been liken'd
  To all these princes.

  FACE [ASIDE]. I'll be sworn, I heard it.

  MAM. I know not how! it is not any one,
  But e'en the very choice of all their features.

  FACE [ASIDE]. I'll in, and laugh.

  [EXIT.]

  MAM. A certain touch, or air,
  That sparkles a divinity, beyond
  An earthly beauty!

  DOL. O, you play the courtier.

  MAM. Good lady, give me leave—

  DOL. In faith, I may not,
  To mock me, sir.

  MAM. To burn in this sweet flame;
  The phoenix never knew a nobler death.

  DOL. Nay, now you court the courtier, and destroy
  What you would build. This art, sir, in your words,
  Calls your whole faith in question.

  MAM. By my soul—

  DOL. Nay, oaths are made of the same air, sir.

  MAM. Nature
  Never bestow'd upon mortality
  A more unblamed, a more harmonious feature;
  She play'd the step-dame in all faces else:
  Sweet Madam, let me be particular—

  DOL. Particular, sir! I pray you know your distance.

  MAM. In no ill sense, sweet lady; but to ask
  How your fair graces pass the hours? I see
  You are lodged here, in the house of a rare man,
  An excellent artist; but what's that to you?

  DOL. Yes, sir; I study here the mathematics,
  And distillation.

  MAM. O, I cry your pardon.
  He's a divine instructor! can extract
  The souls of all things by his art; call all
  The virtues, and the miracles of the sun,
  Into a temperate furnace; teach dull nature
  What her own forces are. A man, the emperor
  Has courted above Kelly; sent his medals
  And chains, to invite him.

  DOL. Ay, and for his physic, sir—

  MAM. Above the art of Aesculapius,
  That drew the envy of the thunderer!
  I know all this, and more.

  DOL. Troth, I am taken, sir,
  Whole with these studies, that contemplate nature.

  MAM. It is a noble humour; but this form
  Was not intended to so dark a use.
  Had you been crooked, foul, of some coarse mould
  A cloister had done well; but such a feature
  That might stand up the glory of a kingdom,
  To live recluse! is a mere soloecism,
  Though in a nunnery. It must not be.
  I muse, my lord your brother will permit it:
  You should spend half my land first, were I he.
  Does not this diamond better on my finger,
  Than in the quarry?

  DOL. Yes.

  MAM. Why, you are like it.
  You were created, lady, for the light.
  Here, you shall wear it; take it, the first pledge
  Of what I speak, to bind you to believe me.

  DOL. In chains of adamant?

  MAM. Yes, the strongest bands.
  And take a secret too—here, by your side,
  Doth stand this hour, the happiest man in Europe.

  DOL. You are contended, sir!

  MAM. Nay, in true being,
  The envy of princes and the fear of states.

  DOL. Say you so, sir Epicure?

  MAM. Yes, and thou shalt prove it,
  Daughter of honour. I have cast mine eye
  Upon thy form, and I will rear this beauty
  Above all styles.

  DOL. You mean no treason, sir?

  MAM. No, I will take away that jealousy.
  I am the lord of the philosopher's stone,
  And thou the lady.

  DOL. How, sir! have you that?

  MAM. I am the master of the mystery.
  This day the good old wretch here o' the house
  Has made it for us: now he's at projection.
  Think therefore thy first wish now, let me hear it;
  And it shall rain into thy lap, no shower,
  But floods of gold, whole cataracts, a deluge,
  To get a nation on thee.

  DOL. You are pleased, sir,
  To work on the ambition of our sex.

  MAM. I am pleased the glory of her sex should know,
  This nook, here, of the Friars is no climate
  For her to live obscurely in, to learn
  Physic and surgery, for the constable's wife
  Of some odd hundred in Essex; but come forth,
  And taste the air of palaces; eat, drink
  The toils of empirics, and their boasted practice;
  Tincture of pearl, and coral, gold, and amber;
  Be seen at feasts and triumphs; have it ask'd,
  What miracle she is; set all the eyes
  Of court a-fire, like a burning glass,
  And work them into cinders, when the jewels
  Of twenty states adorn thee, and the light
  Strikes out the stars! that when thy name is mention'd,
  Queens may look pale; and we but shewing our love,
  Nero's Poppaea may be lost in story!
  Thus will we have it.

  DOL. I could well consent, sir.
  But, in a monarchy, how will this be?
  The prince will soon take notice, and both seize
  You and your stone, it being a wealth unfit
  For any private subject.

  MAM. If he knew it.

  DOL. Yourself do boast it, sir.

  MAM. To thee, my life.

  DOL. O, but beware, sir! You may come to end
  The remnants of your days in a loth'd prison,
  By speaking of it.

  MAM. 'Tis no idle fear.
  We'll therefore go withal, my girl, and live
  In a free state, where we will eat our mullets,
  Soused in high-country wines, sup pheasants' eggs,
  And have our cockles boil'd in silver shells;
  Our shrimps to swim again, as when they liv'd,
  In a rare butter made of dolphins' milk,
  Whose cream does look like opals; and with these
  Delicate meats set ourselves high for pleasure,
  And take us down again, and then renew
  Our youth and strength with drinking the elixir,
  And so enjoy a perpetuity
  Of life and lust! And thou shalt have thy wardrobe
  Richer than nature's, still to change thy self,
  And vary oftener, for thy pride, than she,
  Or art, her wise and almost-equal servant.

  [RE-ENTER FACE.]

  FACE. Sir, you are too loud. I hear you every word
  Into the laboratory. Some fitter place;
  The garden, or great chamber above. How like you her?

  MAM. Excellent! Lungs. There's for thee.

  [GIVES HIM MONEY.]

  FACE. But do you hear?