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

’cause we would make known,
No country’s mirth is better than our own:
No clime breeds better matter for your whore,
Bawd, squire, impostor, many persons more,
Whose manners, now called humours, feed the stage;
And which have still been subject for the rage
Or spleen of comic writers. Though this pen
Did never aim to grieve, but better men;
Howe’er the age he lives in doth endure
The vices that she breeds, above their cure.
But when the wholesome remedies are sweet,
And in their working gain and profit meet,
He hopes to find no spirit so much diseased,
But will with such fair correctives be pleased:
For here he doth not fear who can apply.
If there be any that will sit so nigh
Unto the stream, to look what it doth run,
They shall find things, they’d think or wish were done;
They are so natural follies, but so shown,
As even the doers may see, and yet not own. Act I Scene I

A room in Lovewit’s house.

Face

Believ’t, I will.

Subtle

Thy worst. I fart at thee.

Dol Common

Have you your wits? Why, gentlemen! For love⁠—

Face

Sirrah, I’ll strip you⁠—

Subtle

What to do? Lick figs
Out at my⁠—

Face

Rogue, rogue!⁠—out of all your sleights.

Dol Common

Nay, look ye, sovereign, general, are you madmen?

Subtle

O, let the wild sheep loose. I’ll gum your silks
With good strong water, an you come.

Dol Common

Will you have
The neighbours hear you? Will you betray all?
Hark! I hear somebody.

Face

Sirrah⁠—

Subtle

I shall mar
All that the tailor has made, if you approach.

Face

You most notorious whelp, you insolent slave,
Dare you do this?

Subtle

Yes, faith; yes, faith.

Face

Why, who
Am I, my mongrel? Who am I?

Subtle

I’ll tell you,
Since you know not yourself.

Face

Speak lower, rogue.

Subtle

Yes, you were once (time’s not long past) the good,
Honest, plain, livery-three-pound-thrum, that kept
Your master’s worship’s house here in the Friars,
For the vacations⁠—

Face

Will you be so loud?

Subtle

Since, by my means, translated Suburb-Captain.

Face

By your means, Doctor Dog!

Subtle

Within man’s memory,
All this I speak of.

Face

Why, I pray you, have I
Been countenanced by you, or you by me?
Do but collect, sir, where I met you first.

Subtle

I do not hear well.

Face

Not of this, I think it.
But I shall put you in mind, sir;⁠—at Pie-corner,
Taking your meal of steam in, from cooks’ stalls,
Where, like the father of hunger, you did walk
Piteously costive, with your pinched-horn-nose,
And your complexion of the Roman wash,
Stuck full of black and melancholic worms,
Like powder corns shot at the artillery-yard.

Subtle

I wish you could advance your voice a little.

Face

When you went pinned up in the several rags
You had raked and picked from dunghills, before day;
Your feet in mouldy slippers, for your kibes;
A felt of rug, and a thin threaden cloak,
That scarce would cover your no buttocks⁠—

Subtle

So, sir!

Face

When all your alchemy, and your algebra,
Your minerals, vegetals, and animals,
Your conjuring, cozening, and your dozen of trades,
Could not relieve your corps with so much linen
Would make you tinder, but to see a fire;
I gave you countenance, credit for your coals,
Your stills, your glasses, your materials;
Built you a furnace, drew you customers,
Advanced all your black arts; lent you, beside,
A house to practise in⁠—

Subtle

Your master’s house!

Face

Where you have studied the more thriving skill
Of bawdry since.

Subtle

Yes, in your master’s house.
You and the rats here kept possession.
Make it not strange. I know you were one could keep
The buttery-hatch still locked, and save the chippings,
Sell the dole beer to aqua-vitae men,
The which, together with your Christmas vails
At post-and-pair, your letting out of counters,
Made you a pretty stock, some twenty marks,
And gave you credit to converse with cobwebs,
Here, since your mistress’ death hath broke up house.

Face

You might talk softlier, rascal.

Subtle

No, you scarab,
I’ll thunder you in pieces: I will teach you
How to beware to tempt a Fury again,
That carries tempest in his hand and voice.

Face

The place has made you valiant.

Subtle

No, your clothes.⁠—
Thou vermin, have I ta’en thee out of dung,
So poor, so wretched, when no living thing
Would keep thee company, but a spider, or worse?
Raised thee from brooms, and dust, and watering-pots,
Sublimed thee, and exalted thee, and fixed thee
In the third region, called our state of grace?
Wrought thee to spirit, to quintessence, with pains
Would twice have won me the philosopher’s work?
Put thee in words and fashion, made thee fit
For more than ordinary fellowships?
Given thee thy oaths, thy quarrelling dimensions,
Thy rules to cheat at horse-race, cock-pit, cards,
Dice, or whatever gallant tincture else?
Made thee a second in mine own great art?
And have I this for thanks! Do you rebel,
Do you fly out in the projection?
Would you be gone now?

Dol Common

Gentlemen, what mean you?
Will you mar all?

Subtle

Slave, thou hadst had no name⁠—

Dol Common

Will you undo yourselves with civil war?

Subtle

Never been known, past equi clibanum,
The heat of horse-dung, under ground, in cellars,
Or an alehouse darker than deaf John’s; been lost
To all mankind, but laundresses and tapsters,
Had not I been.

Dol Common

Do you know who hears you, Sovereign?

Face

Sirrah⁠—

Dol Common

Nay, General, I thought you were civil.

Face

I shall turn desperate, if you grow thus loud.

Subtle

And hang thyself, I care not.

Face

Hang thee, collier,
And all thy pots, and pans, in picture, I will,
Since thou hast moved me⁠—

Dol Common

O, this will o’erthrow all.

Face

Write thee up bawd in Paul’s, have all thy tricks
Of cozening with a hollow coal, dust, scrapings,
Searching for things lost, with a sieve and sheers,
Erecting figures in your rows of houses,
And taking in of shadows with a glass,
Told in red letters; and a face cut for thee,
Worse than Gamaliel Ratsey’s.

Dol Common

Are you sound?
Have you your senses, masters?

Face

I will have
A book, but barely reckoning thy impostures,
Shall prove a true philosopher’s stone to printers.

Subtle

Away, you trencher-rascal!

Face

Out, you dog-leech!
The vomit of all prisons⁠—

Dol Common

Will you be
Your own destructions, gentlemen?

Face

Still spewed out
For lying too heavy on the