The Alchemist, Ben Jonson [best short novels TXT] 📗

my means. Sweet Dol,
You must go tune your virginal, no losing
O’ the least time: and, do you hear? Good action.
Firk, like a flounder; kiss, like a scallop, close;
And tickle him with thy mother tongue. His great
Verdugoship has not a jot of language;
So much the easier to be cozened, my Dolly.
He will come here in a hired coach, obscure,
And our own coachman, whom I have sent as guide,
No creature else.
Knocking without.
Who’s that? Exit Dol. Subtle

It is not he?

Face

O no, not yet this hour.

Re-enter Dol. Subtle

Who is’t?

Dol Common

Dapper,
Your clerk.

Face

God’s will then, Queen of Fairy,
On with your tire; and, Doctor, with your robes.

Exit Dol.

Let’s dispatch him for God’s sake.

Subtle

’Twill be long.

Face

I warrant you, take but the cues I give you,
It shall be brief enough.
Goes to the window.
’Slight, here are more!
Abel, and I think the angry boy, the heir,
That fain would quarrel.

Subtle

And the widow?

Face

No,
Not that I see. Away!

Exit Subtle. Enter Dapper.

O sir, you are welcome.
The Doctor is within a moving for you;
I have had the most ado to win him to it!⁠—
He swears you’ll be the darling of the dice:
He never heard her Highness dote till now.
Your aunt has given you the most gracious words
That can be thought on.

Dapper

Shall I see her Grace?

Face

See her, and kiss her too.⁠—

Enter Drugger, followed by Kastril.

What, honest Nab!
Hast brought the damask?

Drugger

No, sir; here’s tobacco.

Face

’Tis well done, Nab; thou’lt bring the damask too?

Drugger

Yes: here’s the gentleman, Captain, master Kastril,
I have brought to see the Doctor.

Face

Where’s the widow?

Drugger

Sir, as he likes, his sister, he says, shall come.

Face

O, is it so? Good time. Is your name Kastril, sir?

Kastril

Ay, and the best of the Kastrils, I’d be sorry else,
By fifteen hundred a year. Where is the Doctor?
My mad tobacco-boy, here, tells me of one
That can do things: has he any skill?

Face

Wherein, sir?

Kastril

To carry a business, manage a quarrel fairly,
Upon fit terms.

Face

It seems, sir, you are but young
About the town, that can make that a question.

Kastril

Sir, not so young, but I have heard some speech
Of the angry boys, and seen them take tobacco;
And in his shop; and I can take it too.
And I would fain be one of ’em, and go down
And practise in the country.

Face

Sir, for the duello,
The Doctor, I assure you, shall inform you,
To the least shadow of a hair; and show you
An instrument he has of his own making,
Wherewith no sooner shall you make report
Of any quarrel, but he will take the height on’t
Most instantly, and tell in what degree
Of safety it lies in, or mortality.
And how it may be borne, whether in a right line,
Or a half circle; or may else be cast
Into an angle blunt, if not acute:
And this he will demonstrate. And then, rules
To give and take the lie by.

Kastril

How! To take it?

Face

Yes, in oblique he’ll show you, or in circle;
But never in diameter. The whole town
Study his theorems, and dispute them ordinarily
At the eating academies.

Kastril

But does he teach
Living by the wits too?

Face

Anything whatever.
You cannot think that subtlety, but he reads it.
He made me a Captain. I was a stark pimp,
Just of your standing, ’fore I met with him;
It is not two months since. I’ll tell you his method:
First, he will enter you at some ordinary.

Kastril

No, I’ll not come there: you shall pardon me.

Face

For why, sir?

Kastril

There’s gaming there, and tricks.

Face

Why, would you be
A gallant, and not game?

Kastril

Ay, ’twill spend a man.

Face

Spend you! It will repair you when you are spent:
How do they live by their wits there, that have vented
Six times your fortunes?

Kastril

What, three thousand a-year!

Face

Ay, forty thousand.

Kastril

Are there such?

Face

Ay, sir,
And gallants yet. Here’s a young gentleman
Points to Dapper.
Is born to nothing⁠—forty marks a year,
Which I count nothing:⁠—he is to be initiated,
And have a fly of the Doctor. He will win you,
By unresistible luck, within this fortnight,
Enough to buy a barony. They will set him
Upmost, at the Groom porter’s, all the Christmas:
And for the whole year through, at every place,
Where there is play, present him with the chair;
The best attendance, the best drink; sometimes
Two glasses of Canary, and pay nothing;
The purest linen, and the sharpest knife,
The partridge next his trencher: and somewhere
The dainty bed, in private, with the dainty.
You shall have your ordinaries bid for him,
As playhouses for a poet; and the master
Pray him aloud to name what dish he affects,
Which must be buttered shrimps: and those that drink
To no mouth else, will drink to his, as being
The goodly president mouth of all the board.

Kastril

Do you not gull one?

Face

’Ods my life! Do you think it?
You shall have a cast commander, (can but get
In credit with a glover, or a spurrier,
For some two pair of either’s ware aforehand,)
Will, by most swift posts, dealing with him,
Arrive at competent means to keep himself,
His punk and naked boy, in excellent fashion,
And be admired for’t.

Kastril

Will the Doctor teach this?

Face

He will do more, sir: when your land is gone,
As men of spirit hate to keep earth long,
In a vacation, when small money is stirring,
And ordinaries suspended till the term,
He’ll show a perspective, where on one side
You shall behold the faces and the persons
Of all sufficient young heirs in town,
Whose bonds are current for commodity;
On th’ other side, the merchants’ forms, and others,
That without help of any second broker,
Who would expect a share, will trust such parcels:
In the third square, the very street and sign
Where the commodity dwells, and does but wait
To be delivered, be it pepper, soap,
Hops, or tobacco, oatmeal, woad, or cheeses.
All which you may so handle, to enjoy
To your own use, and never stand obliged.

Kastril

I’faith! Is he such a fellow?

Face

Why, Nab here knows him.
And then for making matches for rich widows,
Young gentlewomen, heirs, the fortunat’st man!
He’s sent