Author: John Webster

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eat meat seldom, and that makes them so valiant. But how shall I know whether the people take me for an eminent fellow? Bosola I will teach a trick to know it: give out you lie a-dying, and if you hear the common people curse you, be sure you are taken for one of the prime nightcaps.29 Enter an Old Lady. You come from painting now. Old Lady From what? Bosola Why, from your scurvy face-physic. To behold thee not painted inclines somewhat near a miracle. These in thy face here were deep ruts and foul sloughs the last progress.30 There was a lady in France that, having had the smallpox, flayed the skin off her face to make it more level; and whereas before she looked like a nutmeg-grater, after she resembled an abortive hedgehog. Old Lady Do you call this painting? Bosola No, no, but you call [it] careening31 of an old morphewed32 lady, to make her disembogue33 again: there’s roughcast phrase to your plastic.34 Old Lady It seems you are well acquainted with my closet. Bosola

One would suspect it for a shop of witchcraft, to find in it the fat of serpents, spawn of snakes, Jews’ spittle, and their young children’s ordure; and all these for the face. I would sooner eat a dead pigeon taken from the soles of the feet of one sick of the plague, than kiss one of you fasting. Here are two of you, whose sin of your youth is the very patrimony of the physician; makes him renew his foot-cloth with the spring, and change his high-pric’d courtesan with the fall of the leaf. I do wonder you do not loathe yourselves. Observe my meditation now.

What thing is in this outward form of man
To be belov’d? We account it ominous,
If nature do produce a colt, or lamb,
A fawn, or goat, in any limb resembling
A man, and fly from’t as a prodigy:
Man stands amaz’d to see his deformity
In any other creature but himself.
But in our own flesh though we bear diseases
Which have their true names only ta’en from beasts⁠—
As the most ulcerous wolf and swinish measle⁠—
Though we are eaten up of lice and worms,
And though continually we bear about us
A rotten and dead body, we delight
To hide it in rich tissue: all our fear,
Nay, all our terror, is, lest our physician
Should put us in the ground to be made sweet.⁠—

Your wife’s gone to Rome: you two couple, and get you to the wells at Lucca to recover your aches. I have other work on foot.

Exeunt Castruccio and Old Lady.

I observe our duchess
Is sick a-days, she pukes, her stomach seethes,
The fins of her eyelids look most teeming blue,35
She wanes i’ the cheek, and waxes fat i’ the flank,
And, contrary to our Italian fashion,
Wears a loose-bodied gown: there’s somewhat in’t.
I have a trick may chance discover it,
A pretty one; I have bought some apricocks,
The first our spring yields.

Enter Antonio and Delio, talking together apart. Delio

And so long since married?
You amaze me.

Antonio

Let me seal your lips forever:
For, did I think that anything but th’ air
Could carry these words from you, I should wish
You had no breath at all.⁠—Now, sir, in your contemplation?
You are studying to become a great wise fellow.

Bosola O, sir, the opinion of wisdom is a foul tetter36 that runs all over a man’s body: if simplicity direct us to have no evil, it directs us to a happy being; for the subtlest folly proceeds from the subtlest wisdom: let me be simply honest. Antonio

I do understand your inside.

Bosola

Do you so?

Antonio

Because you would not seem to appear to th’ world
Puff’d up with your preferment, you continue
This out-of-fashion melancholy: leave it, leave it.

Bosola Give me leave to be honest in any phrase, in any compliment whatsoever. Shall I confess myself to you? I look no higher than I can reach: they are the gods that must ride on winged horses. A lawyer’s mule of a slow pace will both suit my disposition and business; for, mark me, when a man’s mind rides faster than his horse can gallop, they quickly both tire. Antonio

You would look up to heaven, but I think
The devil, that rules i’ th’ air, stands in your light.

Bosola O, sir, you are lord of the ascendant,37 chief man with the duchess: a duke was your cousin-german remov’d. Say you were lineally descended from King Pepin, or he himself, what of this? Search the heads of the greatest rivers in the world, you shall find them but bubbles of water. Some would think the souls of princes were brought forth by some more weighty cause than those of meaner persons: they are deceiv’d, there’s the same hand to them; the like passions sway them; the same reason that makes a vicar go to law for a tithe-pig, and undo his neighbours, makes them spoil a whole province, and batter down goodly cities with the cannon. Enter Duchess and Ladies. Duchess

Your arm, Antonio: do I not grow fat?
I am exceeding short-winded.⁠—Bosola,
I would have you, sir, provide for me a litter;
Such a one as the Duchess of Florence rode in.

Bosola

The duchess us’d one when she was great with child.

Duchess

I think she did.⁠—Come hither, mend my ruff:
Here, when? thou art such a tedious lady; and
Thy breath smells of lemon-pills: would thou hadst done!
Shall I swoon under thy fingers? I am
So troubled with the mother!38

Bosola

Aside. I fear too much.

Duchess

I have heard you say that the French courtiers
Wear their hats on ’fore that king.

Antonio

I have seen it.

Duchess

In the presence?

Antonio

Yes.

Duchess

Why should not we bring up that fashion?
’Tis ceremony more than duty that consists
In the removing of a piece of felt.
Be you the