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

my purse
Of eight score and ten pounds within these five weeks,
Beside my first materials; and my goods,
That lie in the cellar, which I am glad they have left,
I may have home yet. Lovewit

Think you so, sir?

Sir Epicure Mammon

Ay.

Lovewit

By order of law, sir, but not otherwise.

Sir Epicure Mammon

Not mine own stuff!

Lovewit

Sir, I can take no knowledge
That they are yours, but by public means.
If you can bring certificate that you were gulled of them,
Or any formal writ out of a court,
That you did cozen yourself, I will not hold them.

Sir Epicure Mammon

I’ll rather lose them.

Lovewit

That you shall not, sir,
By me, in troth: upon these terms, they are yours.
What! Should they have been, sir, turned into gold, all?

Sir Epicure Mammon

No,
I cannot tell⁠—It may be they should.⁠—What then?

Lovewit

What a great loss in hope have you sustained!

Sir Epicure Mammon

Not I, the Commonwealth has.

Face

Ay, he would have built
The city new; and made a ditch about it
Of silver, should have run with cream from Hogsden;
That every Sunday, in Moorfields, the younkers,
And tits and tomboys should have fed on, gratis.

Sir Epicure Mammon

I will go mount a turnip-cart, and preach
The end of the world, within these two months. Surly,
What! In a dream?

Pertinax Surly

Must I needs cheat myself,
With that same foolish vice of honesty!
Come, let us go and hearken out the rogues:
That Face I’ll mark for mine, if e’er I meet him.

Face

If I can hear of him, sir, I’ll bring you word,
Unto your lodging; for in troth, they were strangers
To me, I thought them honest as myself, sir.

Exeunt Mammon and Surly. Re-enter Ananias and Tribulation. Tribulation Wholesome

’Tis well, the saints shall not lose all yet. Go,
And get some carts⁠—

Lovewit

For what, my zealous friends?

Ananias

To bear away the portion of the righteous
Out of this den of thieves.

Lovewit

What is that portion?

Ananias

The goods sometimes the orphan’s, that the Brethren
Bought with their silver pence.

Lovewit

What, those in the cellar,
The knight Sir Mammon claims?

Ananias

I do defy
The wicked Mammon, so do all the Brethren,
Thou profane man! I ask thee with what conscience
Thou canst advance that idol against us,
That have the seal? Were not the shillings numbered,
That made the pounds; were not the pounds told out,
Upon the second day of the fourth week,
In the eighth month, upon the table dormant,
The year of the last patience of the saints,
Six hundred and ten?

Lovewit

Mine earnest vehement botcher,
And deacon also, I cannot dispute with you:
But if you get you not away the sooner,
I shall confute you with a cudgel.

Ananias

Sir!

Tribulation Wholesome

Be patient, Ananias.

Ananias

I am strong,
And will stand up, well girt, against an host
That threaten Gad in exile.

Lovewit

I shall send you
To Amsterdam, to your cellar.

Ananias

I will pray there,
Against thy house: may dogs defile thy walls,
And wasps and hornets breed beneath thy roof,
This seat of falsehood, and this cave of cozenage!

Exeunt Ananias and Tribulation. Enter Drugger. Lovewit

Another too?

Drugger

Not I, sir, I am no Brother.

Lovewit

Beats him. Away, you Harry Nicholas! Do you talk?

Exit Drugger. Face

No, this was Abel Drugger. Good sir, go,

To the Parson.

And satisfy him; tell him all is done:
He stayed too long a washing of his face.
The Doctor, he shall hear of him at Westchester;
And of the Captain, tell him, at Yarmouth, or
Some good port town else, lying for a wind.

Exit Parson.

If you can get off the angry child, now, sir⁠—

Enter Kastril, dragging in his sister. Kastril

Come on, you ewe, you have matched most sweetly,
have you not?
Did not I say, I would never have you tupped
But by a dubbed boy, to make you a lady tom?
’Slight, you are a mammet! O, I could touse you, now.
Death, mun’ you marry, with a pox!

Lovewit

You lie, boy;
As sound as you; and I’m aforehand with you.

Kastril

Anon!

Lovewit

Come, will you quarrel? I will feize you, sirrah;
Why do you not buckle to your tools?

Kastril

Od’s light,
This is a fine old boy as e’er I saw!

Lovewit

What, do you change your copy now? Proceed;
Here stands my dove: stoop at her, if you dare.

Kastril

’Slight, I must love him! I cannot choose, i’faith,
An I should be hanged for’t! Sister, I protest,
I honour thee for this match.

Lovewit

O, do you so, sir?

Kastril

Yes, an thou canst take tobacco and drink, old boy,
I’ll give her five hundred pound more to her marriage,
Than her own state.

Lovewit

Fill a pipe full, Jeremy.

Face

Yes; but go in and take it, sir.

Lovewit

We will⁠—
I will be ruled by thee in anything, Jeremy.

Kastril

’Slight, thou art not hidebound, thou art a jovy boy!
Come, let us in, I pray thee, and take our whiffs.

Lovewit

Whiff in with your sister, brother boy.

Exeunt Kastril and Dame Pliant.

That master
That had received such happiness by a servant,
In such a widow, and with so much wealth,
Were very ungrateful, if he would not be
A little indulgent to that servant’s wit,
And help his fortune, though with some small strain
Of his own candour.
Advancing.
—“Therefore, gentlemen,
And kind spectators, if I have outstript
An old man’s gravity, or strict canon, think
What a young wife and a good brain may do;
Stretch age’s truth sometimes, and crack it too.
Speak for thyself, knave.”

Face

“So I will, sir.”

Advancing to the front of the stage.

“Gentlemen,
My part a little fell in this last scene,
Yet ’twas decorum. And though I am clean
Got off from Subtle, Surly, Mammon, Dol,
Hot Ananias, Dapper, Drugger, all
With whom I traded: yet I put myself
On you, that are my country: and this pelf
Which I have got, if you do quit me, rests
To feast you often, and invite new guests.”

Colophon

The Alchemist
was published in 1612 by
Ben Jonson.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
B. Timothy Keith,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2003 by
Amy E. Zelmer, Robert Prince, Sue