Well. As it appears, You are so, my grave uncle. Over. Village nurses Revenge their wrongs with curses; I'll not waste [Attempts to kill MARGARET. Lov. [coming forward.] Hold, for your own sake! Though charity to your daughter hath quite left you, Will you do an act, though in your hopes lost here, Can leave no hope for peace or rest hereafter? Over. Lord! thus I spit at thee, And at thy counsel; and again desire thee, Dares show itself, where multitude and example Lov. I am ready. L. All. Stay, sir, Contest with one distracted! Well. You'll grow like him, Should you answer his vain challenge. Over. Are you pale? Borrow his help, though Hercules call it odds, My fury cannot reach the coward hunters, Mar. Is't not brave sport? [Exit. Greedy. Brave sport! I am sure it has ta'en away my stomach; I do not like the sauce. All. Nay, weep not, dearest, Though it express your pity; what's decreed L. All. His threats move me No scruple, madam. Mar. Was it not a rare trick,' An it please your worship, to make the deed nothing? I can do twenty neater, if you please Well. I do believe thee; But first discover the quaint means you used Mar. They are mysteries Not to be spoke in public: certain minerals Besides, he gave me nothing, but still fed me With hopes and blows; and that was the inducement To this conundrum. If it please your worship Well. You are a rascal! he that dares be false Or favour from me; I will shun thy sight Greedy. I'll commit him, If you will have me, sir. Well. That were to little purpose; His conscience be his prison-Not a word, But instantly be gone. Ord. Take this kick with you. Amb. And this. Furn. If that I had my cleaver here, I would divide your knave's head. False servants still arrive at. Re-enter OVERREACIL L. All. Come again! Lov. Fear not, I am your guard. Well. His looks are ghastly. [Exit. Willdo. Some little time I have spent, under your favours, In physical studies, and if my judgment err not, He's mad beyond recovery; but observe him, And look to yourselves. Over. Why, is not the whole world Included in myself? to what use then Are friends and servants? Say there were a squadron Of pikes, lined through with shot, when I am mounted Upon my injuries, shall I fear to charge them? That come to bind my hands, and then to drag me Before the judgment-seat: now they are new shapes, And do appear like Furies, with steel whips [Rushes forward, and flings himself on the ground. Well. There's no help; Disarm him first, then bind him. Greedy. Take a mittimus, And carry him to Bedlam. Lov. How he foams! Well. And bites the earth! Willdo. Carry him to some dark room, There try what art can do for his recovery. Marg. Oh my dear father! [They force OVERREACH off. All. You must be patient, mistress. Lov. Here is a precedent to teach wicked men, That when they leave religion, and turn atheists, Their own abilities leave them. Pray you take comfort, I will endeavour you shall be his guardians Be it good or ill in law, I'll be an umpire All. What you shall determine, Well. "Tis the language That I speak too; but there is something else And payment of my debts, that I must practise. In my loose course; and until I redeem it Lov. Your suit is granted, And you loved for the motion. Well. [coming forward.] Nothing wants then But your allowance—and in that our all Is comprehended; it being known, nor we, Nor he that wrote the comedy, can be free, Without your manumission; which if you Grant willingly, as a fair favour due To the poet's, and our labours (as you may), For we despair not, gentlemen, of the play: We jointly shall profess your grace hath might To teach us action, and him how to write. 1 allowance-approval. [Exeunt. JOHN FORD. [THIS dramatist belonged to a good Devonshire family, being the second son of Thomas Ford of Ilsington, where he was born in April 1586. It is not known how he passed his early years till his appearance as a student of the Middle Temple, which he entered in November 1602. Here he seems diligently to have prosecuted his professional studies, ́and apparently was so successful in his career as a lawyer, as to be quite independent of literature as a source of income. Both in his student days and afterwards he appears to have led a sober, respectable, and somewhat retired life, exhibiting a marked contrast in this respect to most of his brother dramatists. He made his first appearance as an author in 1606, in the eighteenth year of his age, when he published an occasional poem, entitled Fame's Memorial, a tribute to the memory of Charles Blunt, Earl of Devonshire. His first essays in connection with the drama were made in conjunction with Webster, Dekker, and others. As Ford was quite independent of the stage for a livelihood, he wrote at his leisure, and more for love than reward. His first independent dramatic composition was The Lover's Melancholy, acted in 1628 and published in 1629, although possibly 'Tis Pity She's a Whore had possession of the stage previous to the former. This latter, along with The Broken Heart and Love's Sacrifice, made its appearance in print in 1633. Next year appeared a compact consecutive representation of a portion of English history,' under the title of Perkin Warbeck. This was followed in 1638 by a comedy, The Fancies Chaste and Noble, and in 1639 by his tragicomedy, The Lady's Trial. Besides these, Ford wrote a number of other dramas, now irrecoverably lost. It has been supposed that this dramatist died shortly after the publication of his last play (1639); although 'inquiries, too late to arrive at certainty, have scented a faint tradition that he withdrew to his native place, married, became a father, lived respected, and died at a good old age.' From the tenor of his works it has been inferred that Ford was of a somewhat irritable and melancholy temperament; and this opinion gets some countenance from a contemporary distich which photographs him thus: 'Deep in a dump John Ford was alone got, With folded arms and melancholy hat.' Various estimates have been formed of Ford as a dramatist, although nearly all critics agree that he is inferior to Massinger, Jonson, and Fletcher; Weber, however, thinking that he excels them all in point of pathetic effect. Hazlitt does not admire him, and says truly, that the general characteristic of his style is an artificial elaborateness, and, of course, along with all others, reprobates his morbid love of repulsive plots, low characters, and filthy language. Mr. Hartley Coleridge speaks of him thus :-' He disowned all courtship of the vulgar taste; we might therefore suppose that the horrible stories which he has embraced in 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, The Broken Heart, and Love's Sacrifice, were his own choice, and his own taste. But it would be unfair from hence to conclude that he delighted in the contemplation of vice and misery, as vice and misery. He delighted in the sensation of intellectual power, he found himself strong in the imagination of crime and of agony; his moral sense was gratified by indignation at the dark possibilities of sin, by compassion for rare extremes of suffering. He abhorred vice-he admired virtue; but 460 ordinary vice or modern virtue were, to him, as light wine to a dram-drinker. His genius was a telescope, ill-adapted for neighbouring objects, but powerful to bring within the sphere of vision, what nature has wisely placed at an unsociable distance. Passion must be incestuous or adulterous, grief must be something more than martyrdom, before he could make them big enough to be seen. Unquestionably he displayed great power in these horrors, which was all he desired; but had he been "of the first order of poets," he would have found and displayed superior power in "familiar matter of to-day," in failings to which all are liable, virtues which all may practise, and sorrows for which all may be the better.' After much consideration we have deemed The Lady's Trial most suitable for insertion in these pages.] THE LADY'S TRIAL: ACTED BY BOTH THEIR MAJESTIES' SERVANTS AT THE PRIVATE HOUSE IN DRURY LANE. FIDE HONOR.1 London. 1639. TO MY DESERVINGLY HONOURED JOHN WYRLEY, ESQUIRE, AND TO THE VIRTUOUS AND RIGHT WORTHY GENTLEWOMAN MRS. MARY WYRLEY, HIS WIFE, THIS SERVICE. THE inequality of retribution turns to a pity, when there is not ability sufficient for acknowledgment. Your equal respects may yet admit the readiness of endeavour, though the very hazard in it betray my defect. I have enjoyed freely acquaintance with the sweetness of your dispositions, and can justly account, from the nobleness of them, an evident distinction betwixt friendship and friends. The latter (according to the practice of compliment) are usually met with, and often without search; the other, many have searched for, I have found. which, though I partake a benefit of the fortune, For yet to you, most equal pair, must remain the honour of that bounty. In presenting this issue of some less serious hours to your tuition, I appeal from the severity of censure to the mercy of your judgments; and shall rate it at a higher value than when it was mine own, if you only allow it the favour of adoption. Thus, as your happiness in the fruition of each other's love proceeds to a constancy; so the truth of mine shall appear less unshaken, as you shall please to continue in your good opinions. JOHN FORD. A Room in the House of AURIA. Enter PIERO and FUTELLI at opposite doors. Gallant of gallants, Genoa's Piero! Piero. Italy's darling, Europe's joy, and so forth! The newest news unvamp'd.1 Fut. I am no foot-post, No pedlar of Avisos, no monopolist Fut. Auria, who lately Wedded and bedded to the fair Spinella, Tired with the enjoyments of delights, is hasting To cuff the Turkish pirates in the service Of the great Duke of Florence. Piero. Does not carry His pretty thing along. Piero. That's thou and I; Futelli, sirrah, and Piero.-Blockhead! To run from such an armful of pleasures, Fut. Wicked, Shameful and cowardly, I will maintain. Piero. Is all my signor's hospitality, Huge banquetings, deep revels, costly trappings, Shrunk to a cabin, and a single welcome To beverage and biscuit? Fut. Hold thy peace, man; It makes for us. He comes; let's part demurely. [They take different sides. 1 unvamp'd. I have not met with this singular word. To vamp, is to cover an old thing with a new part, and the word in the text, therefore, signifies uncovered, disclosed. Perhaps we should read unvamp't-i.e. disclose it.-WEBER. 2 trouls-passes or goes round. The meaning is, "What is the common talk?' Enter ADURNI and AURIA. Adur. We wish thee, honour'd Auria, life and safety; Return crown'd with a victory, whose wreath Of triumph may advance thy country's glory, Worthy your name and ancestors! Aur. My lord, I shall not live to thrive in any action Piero. I present you My service for a farewell; let few words Excuse all arts of compliment. Fut. For my own part, Kill or be kill'd (for there's the short and long Call me your shadow's hench-boy. Aur. Gentlemen, My business urging on a present haste, Enforceth short reply. Adur. We dare not hinder [on't), Your resolution wing'd with thoughts so constant. All happiness! Piero and Fut. Contents! [Exeunt ADURNI, PIERO, and FUTELLI. Aur. So leave the winter'd people of the north, The minutes of their summer, when the sun Departing leaves them in cold robes of ice, As I leave Genoa. Enter TRELCATIO, SPINELLA, and CASTANNA. Will force our sleeps to steal upon our stories. |