SLY
For God’s sake! a pot of small ale.
FIRST SERVANT
Will’t please your lordship drink a cup of sack?
SECOND SERVANT
Will’t please your honour taste of these conserves?
THIRD SERVANT
What raiment will your honour wear today?
SLY
I am Christophero Sly; call not me honour nor lordship. I drank sack in my life; and if you give me any conserves, give me conserves of beef. ask me what raiment I’ll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet: nay, sometime more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the over-leather.
LORD
Heaven cease this idle in your honour!
O, that a mighty man of such descent,
Of such possessions, and so high esteem,
Should be infused with so foul a spirit!
SLY
What! would you make me mad? Am not I Christopher Sly, old Sly’s son of Burton-heath; by birth a pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bear-herd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat ale-wife of Wincot, if she know me not: if she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lyingest in Christendom. What! I am not bestraught. Here’s—
THIRD SERVANT
O! this it is that makes your lady mourn.
SECOND SERVANT
O! this is it that makes your servants droop.
LORD
comes it that your kindred shuns your house,
As beaten by your strange lunacy.
O noble lord, bethink of birth,
Call home ancient thoughts from banishment,
And banish these abject lowly dreams.
Look how servants do attend on ,
Each in his office ready at beck:
Wilt have music? Hark! Apollo plays,
LORD
And twenty caged nightingales do sing:
Or wilt sleep? We’ll have to a couch
Softer and sweeter than the lustful bed
On purpose trimm’d up for Semiramis.
Say wilt walk: we will bestrew the ground:
Or wilt ride? horses shall be trapp’d,
Their harness studded all with gold and pearl.
love hawking? hawks will soar
Above the morning lark: or wilt hunt?
hounds shall make the welkin answer them
And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth.
FIRST SERVANT
Say wilt course; greyhounds are as swift
As breathed stags; ay, fleeter than the roe.
SECOND SERVANT
love pictures? We will fetch straight
Adonis painted by a running brook,
And Cytherea all in sedges hid,
Which seem to move and wanton with her breath
Even as the waving sedges play with wind.
LORD
We’ll show Io as she was a maid
And how she was beguiled and surpris’d,
As lively painted as the deed was done.
THIRD SERVANT
Or Daphne roaming through a thorny wood,
Scratching her legs, that one shall swear she bleeds
And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep,
So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn.
LORD
art a lord, and nothing but a lord:
a lady far more beautiful
Than any woman in this waning age.
FIRST SERVANT
And, till the tears that she shed for
Like envious floods o’er-run her lovely face,
She was the fairest creature in the world;
And yet she is inferior to none.
SLY
Am I a lord? and have I such a lady?
Or do I dream? Or have I dream’d till now?
I do not sleep: I see, I hear, I speak;
I smell sweet savours, and I feel soft things:
Upon my life, I am a lord indeed;
And not a tinker, nor Christophero Sly.
Well, bring our lady to our sight;
And once again, a pot o’ the smallest ale.
SECOND SERVANT
Will’t please your mightiness to wash your hands?
SECOND SERVANT
O, how we joy to see your wit restor’d!
O, that once more you knew but what you are!
These fifteen years you have been in a dream,
Or, when you wak’d, so wak’d as if you slept.
SLY
These fifteen years! by my fay, a goodly nap.
But did I never speak of all that time?
FIRST SERVANT
O! yes, my lord, but very idle words;
For though you lay here in this goodly chamber,
Yet would you say were beaten out of door,
And rail upon the hostess of the house,
And say you would present her at the leet,
Because she brought stone jugs and no seal’d quarts.
Sometimes you would call out for Cicely Hacket.
SLY
Ay, the woman’s maid of the house.
THIRD SERVANT
Why, sir, you know no house nor no such maid,
Nor no such men as you have reckon’d up,
As Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of Greece,
And Peter Turph, and Henry Pimpernell;
And twenty more such names and men as these,
Which never were, nor no man ever saw.
SLY
Now, Lord be thanked for my good amends!
ALL
Amen.
SLY
I thank ; not lose by it.
PAGE
How fares my noble lord?
SLY
Marry, I fare well; for here is cheer enough.
Where is my wife?
PAGE
Here, noble lord: what is will with her?
SLY
Are you my wife, and will not call me husband?
My men should call me lord: I am your goodman.
PAGE
My husband and my lord, my lord and husband;
I am your wife in all obedience.
SLY
I know it well. What must I call her?
LORD
Madam.
SLY
Alice madam, or Joan madam?
LORD
Madam, and nothing else; so lords call ladies.
SLY
Madam wife, they say that I have dream’d
And slept above some fifteen year or more.
PAGE
Ay, and the time seems thirty unto me,
Being all this time abandon’d from your bed.
SLY
much. Servants, leave me and her alone.
Madam, undress you, and come now to bed.
PAGE
Thrice noble lord, let me entreat of you
To pardon me yet for a night or two;
Or, if not so, until the sun be set:
For your physicians have expressly charg’d,
In peril to incur your former malady,
That I should yet absent me from your bed:
I hope this reason stands for my excuse.
SLY
Ay, it stands so that I may hardly tarry so long; but I would be loath to fall into my dreams again: I will therefore tarry in despite of the flesh and the blood.
MESSENGER
Your honour’s players, hearing your amendment,
Are come to play a pleasant comedy;
For so your doctors hold it very meet,
Seeing too much sadness congeal’d your blood,
And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy:
Therefore they thought it good you hear a play,
And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.
SLY
Marry, I will; let them play it. Is not a commonty a Christmas gambold or a tumbling-trick?
PAGE
No, my good lord; it is more pleasing stuff.
SLY
What! household stuff?
PAGE
It is a kind of history.
SLY
Well, we’ll see’t. Come, madam wife, sit by my side and let the world slip: we shall be younger.