Being the bosom lover2 of my lord, The husbandry and manage of my house, Until her husband and my lord's return: There is a monastery two miles off, And there we will abide. I do desire you, Not to deny this imposition; The which my love, and some necessity, Now lays upon you. Lor. Madam, with all my heart I shall obey you in all fair commands. Por. My people do already know my mind, Lor. Fair thoughts, and happy hours, attend on you. Jes. I wish your ladyship all heart's content. Por. I thank you for your wish, and am well pleas'd To wish it back on you: fare you well, Jessica.— [Exeunt JESSICA and LORENZO. 2 This word was anciently applied to those of the same sex who had an esteem for each other. Ben Jonson concludes one of his letters to Dr. Donne, by telling him he is his true lover. So in Coriolanus: 'I tell thee, fellow, Thy general is my lover.' See also Shakspeare's Sonnets, passim. Now, Balthazar, As I have ever found thee honest, true, So let me find thee still: Take this same letter, In speed to Padua; see thou render this And, look, what notes and garments he doth give thee, Bring them, I pray thee, with imagin'd speed 3 Unto the tranect 4, to the common ferry Which trades to Venice-waste no time in words, But get thee gone: I shall be there before thee. Balth. Madam, I go with all convenient speed. [Exit. Por. Come on, Nerissa; I have work in hand, That you yet know not of: we'll see our husbands, Before they think of us. Ner. Shall they see us? Por. They shall, Nerissa; but in such a habit, That they shall think we are accomplished With what we lack. I'll hold thee any wager, When we are both accouter'd like young men, I'll prove the prettier fellow of the two, And wear my dagger with the braver grace: And speak, between the change of man and boy, With a reed voice; and turn two mincing steps 3 i. e. with the celerity of imagination. So in the Chorus preceding the third act of K. Henry V.: Thus with imagin'd wing our swift scene flies.' Again in Hamlet: Swift as meditation.' We still say, as swift as thought.' · 4 This word can only be illustrated at present by conjecture. It evidently implies the name of a place where the passage-boat set out, and is in some way derived from Tranáre, Ital. To pass or swim over:' perhaps, therefore, Tranetto signified a little fording place or ferry, and hence the English word Tranect, but no other instance of its use has yet occurred. Rowe substituted traject, but the old copies concur in reading tranect, and there is therefore no pretence for change. Into a manly stride; and speak of frays, Which I denying, they fell sick and died; And wish, for all that, that I had not kill'd them: That men shall swear, I have discontinued school Above a twelvemonth:-I have within my mind A thousand raw tricks of these bragging Jacks, Which I will practise. Ner. Why, shall we turn to men? Por. Fye; what a question's that, If thou wert near a lewd interpreter? But come, I'll tell thee all my whole device When I am in my coach, which stays for us At the park gate; and therefore haste away, For we must measure twenty miles to-day. [Exeunt. SCENE V. The same. A Garden. Enter LAUNCELOT and JESSICA. Laun. Yes, truly: for, look you, the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children; therefore, I 5 Some of the commentators had strained this innocent phrase to a wanton meaning. Mr. Gifford, in a note on Jonson's Silent Woman, p. 470, has clearly shown, by ample illustration, that it signified nothing more than I could not help it.' So in the Morte Arthur, 'None of them will say well of you, nor none of them will doe battle for you, and that shall be great slaunder for you in this court. Alas! said the queen, I cannot doe withall.' Part III. c. 108. In The Little French Lawyer, Dinant, who is reproached by Clerimont for not silencing the music, which endangered his safety, replies: 'I cannot do withal; I have spoke and spoke; I am betrayed and lost too.' promise you, I fear you'. I was always plain with you, and so now I speak my agitation of the matter: Therefore, be of good cheer; for, truly, I think, you are damn'd. There is but one hope in it that can do you any good; and that is but a kind of bastard hope neither. Jes. And what hope is that, I pray thee? Laun. Marry, you may partly hope that your father got you not, that you are not the Jew's daugh ter. Jes. That were a kind of bastard hope, indeed; so the sins of my mother should be visited upon me. Laun. Truly then I fear you are damn'd both by father and mother; thus when I shun Scylla, your father, I fall into Charybdis, your mother: well, you are gone both ways. Jes. I shall be saved by my husband; he hath made me a Christian. Laun. Truly, the more to blame he; we were Christians enough before; e'en as many as could well live, one by another: This making of Christians will raise the price of hogs; if we grow all to be pork-eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money. Enter LORENZO. Jes. I'll tell my husband, Launcelot, what you say; here he comes. So in K. Richard III. The king is sickly, weak, and melancholy, And his physicians fear him mightily.' 2 Alluding to the well known line: 'Incidis in Scyllam, cupiens vitare Charybdim.' The author of which was unknown to Erasmus but was pointed out by Galeottus Martius. It is in the Alexandreis of Philip Gaultier, who flourished at the commencement of the 13th Century. Nothing is more frequent than this proverb in our old English writers. Lor. I shall grow jealous of you shortly, Launcelot, if you thus get my wife into corners. Jes. Nay, you need not fear us, Lorenzo; Launcelot and I are out: he tells me flatly, there is no mercy for me in heaven, because I am a Jew's daughter: and he says you are no good member of the commonwealth; for, in converting Jews to Christians, you raise the price of pork. Lor. I shall answer that better to the commonwealth, than you can the getting up of the negro's belly: the Moor is with child by you, Launcelot. Laun. It is much, that the Moor should be more 3 than reason: but if she be less than an honest woman, she is, indeed, more than I took her for. Lor. How every fool can play upon the word! I think, the best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence; and discourse grow commendable in none only but parrots.-Go in, sirrah; bid them prepare for dinner. Laun. That is done, sir; they have all stomachs. Lor. Goodly lord, what a wit-snapper are you! then bid them prepare dinner. Laun. That is done too, sir; only, cover is the word. Lor. Will you cover then, sir? Laun. Not so, sir, neither; I know my duty. Lor. Yet more quarrelling with occasion! Wilt thou show the whole wealth of thy wit in an instant? I pray thee, understand a plain man in his plain meaning: go to thy fellows; bid them cover the 3 Milton's quibbling epigram has the same kind of humour to boast of 'Galli ex concubitu gravidam te, Pontia, Mori, So in The Fair Maid of the West, 1631: And for you Moors thus much I mean to say, |