Ben Jonson's THE CASE IS ALTERED: A Retelling (Free PDF)
Ben Jonson’s
The Case is Altered:
A Retelling
David Bruce
DEDICATED TO MOM AND DAD
Copyright 2021 by Bruce D. Bruce
Educate Yourself
Read Like A Wolf Eats
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Be Excellent to Each Other
Do you know a language other than English? If you do, I give you permission to translate this book, copyright your translation, publish or self-publish it, and keep all the royalties for yourself. (Do give me credit, of course, for the original retelling.)
I would like to see my retellings of classic literature used in schools. Teachers need not actually teach my retellings. Teachers are welcome to give students copies of my eBooks as background material. For example, if they are teaching Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, teachers are welcome to give students copies of my Virgil’s Aeneid:A Retelling in Prose and tell students, “Here’s another ancient epic you may want to read in your spare time.”
Books Then, Books Now, Books Forever
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cast of Characters 1
Chapter 1 4
Chapter 2 40
Chapter 3 67
Chapter 4 79
Chapter 5 125
Appendix A: About the Author 160
Appendix B: Some Books by David Bruce 161
CAST OF CHARACTERS
COUNT FERNEZE, a nobleman
PAOLO FERNEZE, his son, in love with Rachel de Prie
CAMILLO FERNEZE, the Count’s long-lost son
GASPAR, friend to Chamont
AURELIA, the Count’s daughter
PHOENIXELLA, another daughter
MAXIMILIAN, the general of the Milanese
CHAMONT, a French general, friend to Gaspar. Chamont’s father surprised Vicenza.
ANGELO, a lady’s man, friend to Paolo Ferneze
FRANCISCO COLONNIA, a visiting nobleman
VALENTINE, his servant
JAQUES DE PRIE, a miser
MELUN, former steward to Chamont’s father
RACHEL DE PRIE, Jaques’ daughter (perhaps biologically). The people who love, or claim to love, Rachel at various times are Paolo Ferneze, Onion, Christophero, Count Ferneze, and Angelo.
ISABEL, Chamont’s long-lost sister
JUNIPER, a cobbler
PETER ONION, groom [servant] of the hall to Count Ferneze
ANTONIO BALLADINO, pageant poet of Milan
CHRISTOPHERO, steward to Count Ferneze. Christophero’s nickname is Kit.
SEBASTIAN, MARTINO, VINCENTIO, BALTHASAR, servants to Count Ferneze
PACUE, Chamont’s French page
FINIO, Francisco’s Italian page
BOY, Paolo Ferneze’s servant, aka serving-boy
NUNTIUS, a messenger
SEWER (a servant who superintended the serving of the food)
SERVING-MEN
SOLDIERS
THE SCENE and TIME: MILAN in 1529
Notes
In this society, a person of higher rank would use “thou,” “thee,” “thine,” and “thy” when referring to a person of lower rank. (These terms were also used affectionately and between equals.) A person of lower rank would use “you” and “your” when referring to a person of higher rank.
“Sirrah” was a title used to address someone of a social rank inferior to the speaker. Friends, however, could use it to refer to each other.
This society believed that the mixture of four humors in the body determined one’s temperament. One humor could be predominant. The four humors are blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. If blood is predominant, then the person is sanguine (active, optimistic). If yellow bile is predominant, then the person is choleric (bad-tempered). If black bile is predominant, then the person is melancholic (sad). If phlegm is predominant, then the person is phlegmatic (calm, apathetic, indolent).
A humor can be a personal characteristic.
A humor can also be a fancy or a whim.
The word “wench” at this time was not necessarily negative. It was often used affectionately.
“The case is altered” means “The situation has changed.”
CHAPTER 1
— 1.1 —
Juniper, a cobbler, was sitting at work in his shop and singing a song about troubled love:
“Now, woeful wights [persons], give ear awhile,
“And mark the tenor [drift] of my style,
“Which shall such trembling hearts unfold
“As seldom hath [has] tofore [before] been told.
“Such chances rare and doleful [sorrowful] news.”
Peter Onion, the servant of the hall to Count Ferneze of Milan, Italy, came into Juniper’s shop in a hurry and said, “Fellow Juniper! Peace, in God’s name! Stop singing!”
Juniper continued to sing:
“As may attempt your wits to muse [contemplate].”
“Godso, listen, man!” Onion said. “A pox of God on you!”
“Godso” is a mild curse word.
Juniper continued to sing:
“And cause such trickling tears to pass,
“Except [Unless] your hearts be flint or brass.”
Hearts made of flint or brass are hard hearts.
“Juniper! Juniper!” Onion cried.
Juniper continued to sing:
“To hear the news which I shall tell,
“That in Castella [Castile] once befell.”
He then complained, “By God’s blood, where did thou learn to corrupt a man in the midst of a verse, ha?”
A comic character, Jupiter frequently made malapropisms. By “corrupt,” he meant “interrupt.”
Onion replied, “By God’s eyelid, man, the food service is ready to go up, man. You must slip on your coat and come in. We lack waiters pitifully.”
Although Juniper was a cobbler, he was being asked to put on a coat and assist in serving a meal to members of Count Ferneze’s household.
“That is a pitiful thing to hear, for now must I from a merry cobbler become a mourning creature,” Juniper said.
Count Ferneze’s wife, the Countess Ferneze, had recently died, and so Juniper would put a black coat.
“Well, you’ll come?” Onion asked.
“Presto,” Juniper said. “Quickly. Bah, a word to the wise. Away, fly, vanish! Go, irritating thing!”
The full proverb is “A word to the wise is enough.”
Onion exited, and Juniper sang:
“Lie there, the weeds [clothing] that I disdain to wear.”
Antonio Balladino, the pageant poet of Milan, entered the scene and said, “May God save you, Master Juniper.”
“What! Signor Antonio Balladino!” Juniper said. “Welcome, sweet ingle.”
An “ingle” is 1) a lover, especially a boy in a homosexual relation with an older man, or 2) a close friend.
“And how do you do, sir?” Antonio Balladino asked.
Putting on a black coat, Juniper said, “Indeed, you see, I am put to my shifts here as poor servants often are.”
A shift is 1) an article of clothing, or 2) a trick.
Juniper continued:
“Sirrah Antony, there’s one of my fellows mightily enamored of thee and, indeed, you slave, now that you have come, I’ll bring you together.”
The two men — Peter Onion and Antonio Balladino — had never met, and Juniper’s fellow was not feeling romantic amour for Antonio Balladino, so it’s more accurate to say that the person respected Antonio Balladino because of his reputation.
Juniper continued:
“It’s Peter Onion, the servant of the hall. Do you know him?”
“No, not yet, I assure you,” Antonio Balladino answered.
Juniper said:
“Oh, he is one as right of thy humor and disposition as may be, a plain, simple rascal, a true follower of the philosopher-theologian Duns Scotus.
“By the Virgin Mary, he has been a notable villain in his time. He is in love, sirrah, with a wench, and I haverecommended thee to him. Thou shall make him some pretty paradox or some allegory.”
Paradoxes are contradictions that contain truth.
Allegories are narratives with hidden spiritual or political meanings. In some works of art, a journey on a road may be allegorically interpreted as a journey through life.
“How does my coat sit? Well?”
“Aye, very well,” Antonio Balladino said.
Onion re-entered the scene and said, “Nay, Godso, fellow Juniper, come away!”
Juniper said:
“Are thou there, mad slave? Aye, come with a powder! Come impetuously!
“Sirrah fellow Onion, I must have you peruse this gentleman well and treat him with respect and kindness, as examples of why he deserves such respect and kindness shall be given.”
Juniper exited, and Onion turned to “this gentleman” — Antonio Balladino — and bowed.
“Nay, good master Onion, what do you mean? I pray you, sir, you are too respectful, in good faith,” Antonio Balladino said.
“I wish you would not think so, sir,” Onion said, “for although I have no learning, yet I honor a scholar in any ground of the earth, sir. Shall I request your name, sir?”
“My name is Antonio Balladino.”
“Balladino?” Onion said. “You aren’t the pageant poet to the city of Milan, sir, are you?”
Pageants were grand spectacles.
“I supply the place, sir, when a worse cannot be had, sir,” Antonio Balladino said.
A “worse” poet? Hmm. He was being humble, but what does this say about pageants?
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Onion said. “I love you the better for that, sir. By Jesu, you must pardon me; I didn’t recognize you, but I’d pray to be better acquainted with you, sir. I have seen some of your works.”
“I am at your service, good master Onion,” Antonio Balladino said. “But concerning this maiden whom you love, sir, who is she?”
“Oh, did my fellow Juniper tell you about her?” Onion said. “By the Virgin Mary, sir, she is, as one may say, only a poor man’s child, indeed; and as for my own part, I am no gentleman born, I must confess, but ‘My mind to me a kingdom is,’ truly.”
“My mind to me a kingdom is” is the title line of a poem by Edward Dyer.
“Truly, a very good saying,” Antonio Balladino said.
“It is somewhat stale, but that doesn’t matter,” Onion said.
“Oh, staler is the better,” Antonio Balladino said. “Such things are always like bread, which, the staler it is, the more wholesome.”
“This is but a hungry comparison, in my judgment,” Onion said.
A hungry comparison is a far-fetched comparison.
“Why, I’ll tell you, Master Onion, I use as much stale stuff, although I say it myself, as any man does in that kind, I am sure,” Antonio Balladino said. “Did you see the last pageant I set forth?”
“No, indeed, sir, but there goes a huge report on it,” Onion said. “It has caused a lot of talk.”
“Why, you shall be one of my Maecen-asses,” Antonio Balladino said. “I’ll give you one of the books. Oh, you’ll like it admirably.”
Maecenas was a patron of celebrated Roman authors such as Horace and Virgil. Onion could be Antonio Balladino’s patron by reading and saying good things about a printed copy of one of Antonio’s pageants.
“That’s certain,” Onion said.
It was certain that Onion would be a Maecen-ass.
Onion continued, “I’ll get my fellow Juniper to read it.”
Possibly, Onion was illiterate.
“Read it, sir?” Antonio Balladino said. “I’ll read it to you.”
“Tut, then I shall not choose but to like it,” Onion replied.
Antonio Balladino said:
“Why, look, sir, I write so plainly and keep that old decorum that you must of necessity like it. By the Virgin Mary, you shall have some now — as, for example, in plays — who will have every day new tricks and write you nothing but humors.”
Humors are dispositions such as being sanguine (active, optimistic), choleric (bad-tempered), melancholic (sad), or phlegmatic (calm, apathetic, indolent). A humor can also be a personal characteristic, or a fancy or whim.
Antonio Balladino continued:
“Indeed, this pleases the gentlemen, but the common sort, they don’t care for it. They don’t know what to make of it; they look for good matter, they do, and they are not edified with such trifles.”
“Humors” was a fashionable term at the time, and many plays used the term. Ben Jonson himself wrote the plays Every Man Out of His Humor and Every Man in His Humor.
“The common sort” are the less-educated members of the audience. They tended to like spectacle for the sake of spectacle.
“You are in the right,” Onion said. “I’ll not give a halfpenny to see a thousand of them. I was at one the last term, but if I ever see a more roguish thing, I am a piece of cheese and no onion. Nothing but kings and princes in it; the fool came out not a jot.”
Onion liked comic plays in which fools had major parts. Tragedies and histories without fools were not to his liking.
“True, sir, they would have me make such plays, but as I tell them, even if they would give me twenty pounds a play, I’ll not raise my style of writing,” Antonio Balladino said.
The going rate for plays was six pounds.
“No, it would be a vain thing if you should, sir,” Onion said.
“Tut, give me the penny, give me the penny. I don’t care for the gentlemen, I. Let me have a good ground,” Antonio Balladino said. “No matter for the pen; the plot shall carry it.”
The groundlings — the common sort — paid a penny to see a play. They stood on the ground and were not seated while watching the play.
“Indeed, that’s right,” Onion said. “You are in print — known — already as the best plotter.”
“Aye, I might also have been noted for dumb shows, too,” Antonio Balladino said.
Dumb shows were portions of plays with no dialogue.
“Aye, by the Virgin Mary, sir, I marvel that you were not,” Onion said. “Stand aside, sir, for a while.”
Antonio Balladino exited.
The Sewer — the servant who superintended the serving of the food — passed by, along with some half-dozen servants wearing mourning coats. All of them were carrying food and utensils.
Valentine, a servant of the visiting nobleman Francisco Colonnia, entered the scene.
“How are you now, friend?” Onion said. “Who are you there? Be uncovered. Take off your hat. Do you want to speak with any man here?”
“Aye, or else I must have returned you no answer,” Valentine said.
If he would not speak to Onion, he could not answer Onion’s question.
“Friend, you are somewhat too peremptory and cheeky,” Onion said. “Let’s crave your absence. Go. Now. Nay, never scorn my words; I am a little your better in this place.”
“I do acknowledge it,” Valentine said.
“Do you acknowledge it?” Onion said. “Nay, then, you shall go forth. I’ll teach you how you shall acknowledge it another time. Go to another place, leave. I must have the hall purged. No setting up of a rest here. Pack off. Begone.”
“I ask you, sir,” Valentine said. “Isn’t your name Onion?”
“I am your friend, according to how you treat me, and I am Master Onion. Say what you have to say.”
“Master Onion with a murrain — a plague!” Valentine said. “Come, come, put off this lion’s hide; your ears haverevealed you.”
In one of Aesop’s fables, an ass finds and wears a lion’s hide. The other animals are afraid of the ass until he brays with happiness at being feared, revealing his true identity.
Valentine then said to Peter Onion, “Why, Peter, don’t I know you, Peter?”
“Godso, Valentine!” Peter Onion said, recognizing him.
“Oh, can you recognize me now, sir?” Valentine said.
“Good Lord, sirrah, how thou are altered with thy travel!” Onion said.
“Nothing so much as thou are altered with thine office,” Valentine said. “But, sirrah Onion, is the Count Ferneze at home?”
“Ay, bully, he is above on the second floor, and the Lord Paolo Ferneze, his son, and Madam Aurelia and Madam Phoenixella, his daughters, are with him. But, oh, Valentine!”
In this society, the word “bully” was not negative. One could call a friend “bully.”
“How are thou now, man?” Valentine asked. “How are thou doing?”
“Indeed, I am sad, heavy, as a man of my coat ought to be,” Onion said.
He was wearing a black coat as a sign of mourning.
“Why, man, thou were merry enough just now,” Valentine said.
Onion replied:
“True, but as thou know,
“All creatures here sojourning
“Upon this wretched earth
“Sometimes have a fit of mourning
“As well as a fit of mirth.
“Oh, Valentine, my old lady is dead, man.”
“Dead!” Valentine said.
“Indeed,” Onion said.
“When did she die?” Valentine asked.
Onion replied:
“By the Virgin Mary, tomorrow shall be three months since she died. She was seen going to heaven, they say, about some five weeks ago.
“How are you now? Trickling tears, I see?”
Crying, Valentine said, “Indeed, thou have made me weep with this news.”
“Why, I have done but the part of an onion,” Onion said. “You must pardon me.”
Cutting onions makes one weep tears.
— 1.2 —
The Sewer again passed by with servers carrying food and utensils. The servants acknowledged Valentine with nods when they saw him. The Sewer and other servants exited.
Juniper entered from his cobbler’s shop and greeted Valentine and handed Onion a dish.
“What! Valentine?” Juniper said. “Fellow Onion, take my dish, please.”
Onion exited, carrying the dish.
Juniper said to Valentine, “You rogue, sirrah, tell me how thou are doing, sweet ingle?”
“Indeed, Juniper, the better to see thee thus frolic and be merry,” Valentine said.
“Nay, by God’s eyelid, I am no changeling, I am Juniper still.”
A changeling is a baby left by fairies in place of a human baby. Juniper was saying here that he is not an imposter.
Juniper continued, “I keep the pristinate: the original state. Ha, you mad hieroglyphic, when shall we swagger?”
Juniper’s education was lacking. He was using the word “hieroglyphic,” which refers to Egyptian pictorial writing, as a term of friendship.
“‘Hieroglyphic’?” Valentine said. “What do thou mean by that?”
“Mean?” Juniper said. “Godso, isn’t it a good word, man? What! Stand upon meaning with your friends? Pooh,absconde.”
The Latin word “absconde” means “put away.” Juniper wanted Valentine to put away — stop — such behavior.
“Why, but wait, wait,” Valentine said. “How long has this sprightly humor haunted thee?”
“Bah, humor?” Juniper said. “A foolish, natural gift we have in the equinoctial.”
A humor can be a passing fancy.
“Equinoctial” refers to the spring equinox and autumn equinox: the day when the lengths of the day and of the night are equal. Juniper’s use of the word was probably nonsensical, similar to much of his vocabulary. Or he may have been saying that people have a humor twice a year.
“Natural?” Valentine said. “By God’s eyelid, it may be supernatural, this.”
The way Juniper used words was not natural.
“Valentine, I ask you to ruminate thyself welcome,” Juniper said. “What, fortuna de la guerra.”
By “ruminate,” Juniper meant “consider.”
Fortuna de la guerra means “the fortune of war.”
The fortune of a war against words, yes.
“Oh, how pitifully are these words forced, as though they were pumped out from his belly!” Valentine said to himself.
“Sirrah ingle, I think thou have seen all the strange countries in Christendom since thou went,” Juniper said.
“I have seen some, Juniper,” Valentine said.
“You have seen Constantinople?” Juniper asked.
“Aye, that I have,” Valentine said.
“And Jerusalem, and the Indies, and Goodwin Sands, and the tower of Babylon, and Venice, and all?” Juniper said.
Most of these were places where foreign languages were spoken. Of course, foreign languages are unintelligible to those who cannot speak them.
Goodwin Sands was dangerous shoals near Kent, where English was spoken. But even English can be unintelligible when the speaker — e.g., Juniper — misuses words.
The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis is a mythological explanation of how different languages arose in the world. The word “babel” means “unintelligible sounds.”
Genesis 11:9 states, “Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth” (King James Bible).
“Aye, all of them,” Valentine said.
He then said to himself, “It’s no marvel if he has a nimble tongue, if he uses it to vault thus from one side of the world to another.”
“Oh, it’s a most heavenly thing to travel and see countries, especially at sea, if a man had a patent — the privilege — not to be sick,” Juniper said.
Valentine said to himself, “Oh, seasick jest, and full of the scurvy!”
Scurvy was a disease, caused by a Vitamin C deficiency, that frequently afflicted sailors, who often lacked access to fresh fruit.
— 1.3 —
Sebastian, Martino, Vincentio, and Balthasar entered the scene. They were servants to Count Ferneze. These servants should have been attending to serving the meal upstairs.
“Valentine, welcome, indeed,” Sebastian said. “How do thou do, sirrah?”
“How do you do, good Valentine?” Martino asked.
“Truly, Valentine, I am glad to see you,” Vincentio said.
“Welcome, sweet rogue,” Balthasar said.
“Before God, he never looked better in his life,” Sebastian said.
“And how is it, man?” Balthasar said. “What! Allo coraggio! Have courage!”
Valentine replied, “I was never better, gentlemen, indeed.”
“By God’s will, here comes the steward,” Juniper said.
Christophero, Count Ferneze’s steward, entered the scene.
“Why, how are you now, fellows, all here?” Christophero said. “And nobody to wait above now they are ready to rise from the table? Look smart, one or two of you, and go upstairs.”
Juniper, Martino, and Vincentio exited. Sebastian and Balthazar remained to talk with Valentine and Christophero.
Christophero said to Valentine, “Signor Francisco Colonnia’s serving-man, how does your good master?”
“He is in health, sir,” Valentine said. “He will be here soon.”
“Has he come home, then?” Christophero asked.
“Aye, sir, he is not more than six miles from here,” Valentine said. “He sent me before him to learn if Count Ferneze were here and then return word to him.”
“Yes, my lord is here,” Christophero said, “and you may tell your master he shall come very happily to take his leave of Lord Paolo Ferneze, who is now very quickly to depart with other noble gentlemen upon special service.”
Paolo Ferneze was Count Ferneze’s son. He was departing so he could perform military service.
“I will tell him, sir,” Valentino said.
“Please do,” Christophero said. “Fellows, give him something to drink.”
Christophero wanted the others to make Valentino welcome.
Christophero exited to attend to his duties upstairs.
“Sirs, what military service is it they are employed in?” Valentino asked.
“Why, against the French,” Sebastian said. “They mean to have a fling at Milan again, they say.”
The year was 1529, and in 1510, the French had besieged the Italian town of Vicenza, which is about forty miles west of Venice. The French were and had been trying to control northern Italy. From 1500 to 1515, the French had occupied Milan.
“Who leads our forces?” Valentine asked. “Can you tell me?”
“By the Virgin Mary, Signor Maximilian does that,” Sebastian said. “He is above us on the second floor now.”
“Maximilian of Vicenza?” Valentine asked.
“Aye, he,” Balthazar said. “Do you know him?”
“Know him?” Valentine said. “Oh, yes, he’s an excellently brave soldier.”
“Aye, so they say, but he is also one of the most vainglorious men in Europe,” Balthazar said.
“He is, indeed, by the Virgin Mary, exceedingly valiant,” Valentine said.
“And that is rare,” Sebastian said.
“What?” Balthazar asked.
“Why, to see a vainglorious man valiant,” Sebastian answered.
A vainglorious man is overly proud: He is vain and thinks himself glorious.
“Why, he is so. He is valiant, I assure you,” Valentine said.
Juniper returned and said:
“What, no further along with the drinking yet?
“Come on, you precious rascal, Sir Valentine. I’ll give you a health — a toast, indeed, for the heavens, you madcapriccio, hold, hook and line!”
A capriccio is a madcap: a fantastical person.
Fishermen can say, “Hold, hook and line,” when catching a fish. It was also a line said to encourage drinking.
— 1.4 —
Lord Paolo Ferneze, the son of Count Ferneze, entered the scene, with his serving-boy following him.
“Boy!” Paolo Ferneze said.
“My lord?” his serving-boy answered.
“Sirrah, go upstairs to Signor Angelo, and ask him, if he can, to devise some means to leave my father and come speak with me, ” Paolo Ferneze ordered.
Angelo was one of Paolo Ferneze’s friends.
“I will, my lord,” his serving-boy said as he exited.
Alone, Paolo Ferneze said to himself:
“Well, may heaven be auspicious in the event! For I do this against my genius, against my natural temperament, and yet my thoughts cannot propose a reason why I should fear or faint thus in my hopes of having one whom I love so dearly.”
Paolo Ferneze was in love with Rachel De Prie, the daughter of Jaques De Prie, who was reputed to be a beggar. Paolo worried about his hopes of having her, although he could think of no reason why he should fear that she would not return his love.
Paolo Ferneze was going to ask his friend Angelo to help him win Rachel De Prie. Angelo had always been a loyal friend, but now Paolo was wondering if he would continue to be loyal.
Angelo was a lady’s man, and Rachel was a lady.
Paolo Ferneze continued:
“Some spark it is, kindled within the soul, whose light yet breaks not to the outward sense, that propagates this timorous suspect.”
Paolo Ferneze felt some mistrust of Angelo, but he had no evidence that would justify his mistrust. It was simply a feeling that he could not justify.
Paolo Ferneze continued:
“Angelo’s actions have never carried any appearance of change or weakness. Then I injure him in being thus skeptical of his faith and loyalty to me.”
He looked up and said, “Oh, here he comes.”
Angelo and the serving-boy entered the scene.
“How are you now, sweet lord?” Angelo asked. “What’s the matter?”
Paolo Ferneze said to himself, “Good faith, his presence makes me half-ashamed of my straying thoughts.”
He ordered his serving-boy, “Sirrah, bestow yourself elsewhere.”
The serving-boy exited.
Paolo Ferneze then asked, “Signor Angelo, where is my father?”
“By the Virgin Mary, he is in the gallery, where Your Lordship left him,” Angelo answered.
The gallery was a walking space. Count Ferneze was taking a walk after his meal.
Paolo Ferneze said:
“That’s well. So then, Angelo, I will be brief.
“Since time forbids the use of circuitous speech, let how well you are received in my affection appear by this one instance only: that now I will deliver to your trust the dearest secrets treasured in my bosom.
“Dear Angelo, you are not just any man, but you are one whom my considered judgment has designated as the true, proper object of my soul.
“I don’t urge this to insinuate my desert, or to soften your tried temper with soft phrases — true friendship loathes such oily compliment — but my speech is enforced and comes from the abundance of that love that flows through all my spirits.”
The friendship of Paolo Ferneze and Angelo was well-established.
Angelo replied, “Before Your Lordship proceeds too far, let me be bold to intimate thus much: that whatsoever your wisdom has to expose, whether it is the weightiest, richest affair that ever was included in your breast, my faith and loyalty shall be equal to it it; if not —”
Paolo Ferneze interrupted, “— oh, no more! Those words have enthralled me with their sweet effects, so freely breathed and so responsible and answerable to that which I endeavored to extract, arguing a happy mixture of our souls.”
Angelo said, “Why, even if there were no such sympathy and union in feeling, sweet lord, yet the impressure — the mental impression — of those ample favors I have derived from your unmatched spirit would bind my faith to allduties.”
“What!” Paolo Ferneze said. “Favors, Angelo? Oh, don’t speak about them. They are mere paintings — they are only shows — and they import no merit. Is my true friendship for you apparent to you? On that friendship my hopes are placed. Faith that is bought with favors cannot last.”
True love and true friendship cannot be purchased.
Paolo’s serving-boy entered the room and said, “My lord!”
“What is it now?” Paolo asked.
“You are sought for all about the house inside,” the serving-boy said. “The Count, your father, calls for you.”
Paolo Ferneze said:
“God, what cross, contrary events thwart my purposes! Now my father will violently fret and grieve because I am absent.
“Boy, say I will come soon.”
His serving-boy exited.
Paolo said, “Sweet Angelo, I cannot now speak about particulars; I must serve the time. The main point of all this is, I am in love.”
He startled.
“Why does Your Lordship startle?” Angelo asked.
“I thought I heard my father coming here,” Paolo said. “Listen!”
“I don’t hear anything,” Angelo said. “It was only your imagination, surely.”
“No,” Paolo said.
“There is no sound, I assure Your Lordship,” Angelo said.
“I would work safely and securely,” Paolo said.
He was worried that his father would find out that he was in love with Rachel de Prie. His father was likely to disapprove.
“Why, has he no knowledge of it — your being in love — then?” Angelo asked.
Paolo said:
“Oh, no. No creature yet knows it except yourself in a third person — only you, I, and Rachel know — and believe me, friend, the world does not contain now another spirit to whom I would reveal it.
“Listen! Listen!”
Some servants were calling for him inside Count Ferneze’s house, “Signor Paolo! Lord Ferneze!”
“A plague upon those brazen-throated slaves!” Angelo said. “What, are they mad, do you think?”
Paolo said:
“Alas, don’t blame them. Their services are, clock-like, to be set backward and forward at their lord’s command.
“You know that my father is wayward and unreasonable, and his humor must not receive a check, for then all objects feed both his grief and his impatience; and those affections in him are like powder, apt to inflame with every little spark and blow up reason.
“Therefore, Angelo, be at peace.”
From inside the house came voices:
Count Ferneze said, “Why, this is ‘excellent’! Isn’t he in the garden?”
“I don’t know, my lord,” Christophero replied.
“See if he is,” Count Ferneze said. “Call him.”
Paolo said, “He is coming this way. Let’s withdraw a little distance.”
Paolo and Angelo exited.
The servants called from inside the house: “Signor Paolo! Lord Ferneze! Lord Paolo!”
— 1.5 —
Count Ferneze, Maximilian, Aurelia, Phoenixella, Sebastian, and Balthasar entered the scene. Maximilian was the general of the Milanese. Aurelia and Phoenixella were Count Ferneze’s daughters. Sebastian and Balthasar were two of the Count’s servants.
“Where should he be, do you think?” Count Ferneze said. “Did you look in the armory?”
The armory was where weapons were stored.
“No, my lord,” Sebastian answered.
“No? Why, go there!” Count Ferneze said. “Oh, who would keep such drones?”
He was complaining about his servants.
Sebastian and Balthasar exited.
Martino, another of the Count’s servants, entered the scene.
“How are things now?” Count Ferneze asked. “Have you found him?”
“No, my lord,” Martino answered.
“‘No, my lord.’ I shall have shortly all my family speak nothing but ‘No, my lord,’” Count Ferneze said. “Where is Christophero?”
Christophero entered the scene.
Count Ferneze looked at Martino and said, “Look how he just stands there! You sleepy knave!”
Martino exited.
Count Ferneze asked Christophero, “Isn’t my son in the garden?”
“No, my good lord,” Christophero answered.
“Your ‘good lord’? Oh, how this smells of fennel!” Count Ferneze said.
In this society, the herb fennel was associated with flattery.
Sebastian and Balthazar entered the scene.
“You have been in the garden, it appears,” Count Ferneze said. “Well? Well?”
“We cannot find him, my lord,” Balthazar said.
“He is not in the armory,” Sebastian said.
“He isn’t?” Count Ferneze said. “He is nowhere, is he?”
“Count Ferneze!” Maximilian said.
“Signor?” Count Ferneze replied.
“Preserve your patience, honorable count,” Maximilian said.
“Patience?” Count Ferneze said. “A saint would lose his patience to be crossed as I am with a sort of motley brains.”
The motley brains, according to the Count, were those of his servants.
The word “motley’ described the clothing worn by Fools.
Common sayings of the times stated, “Enough to vex a saint” and “Enough to make a saint swear.”
Onion entered the scene as the Count continued, “See, see, how like a nest of rooks they stand, gaping on one another.”
According to the Count, his servants were standing around and staring at each other with open mouths.
A rook is 1) a crow, or 2) a simpleton.
Seeing Onion, Count Ferneze said, “Now, Diligence, what news bring you?”
When giving Onion the name “Diligence,” Count Ferneze was being sarcastic.
“If it please Your Honor —” Onion began.
“Tut, tut, leave off pleasing of my honor,” Count Ferneze said. “Diligence, you double — you act deceitfully, you act double-faced — with me. Come.”
Onion said to himself, “What! Does he find fault with ‘please His Honor’? By God’s wounds, it has begun a serving-man’s speech ever since I belonged to the blue order.”
Servants normally wore blue coats, but now, as a sign of mourning, they were wearing black coats.
Onion continued speaking to himself, “I don’t know how it may show, now I am in black, but —”
“What’s that you mutter, sir?” Count Ferneze asked. “Will you proceed?”
Onion began, “If it like Your good Lordship —”
“Yet more!” Count Ferneze complained. “God’s precious!”
Onion said to himself, “What! Doesn’t this please him, either?”
“What are you saying, Sir Knave?” Count Ferneze said sarcastically.
Onion said out loud, “By the Virgin Mary, I say that Your Lordship would be best to set me to school again to learnhow to deliver a message.”
“What!” Count Ferneze said. “Do you take exception at and argue with me, then?”
“Exception?” Onion said. “I take no exceptions but, by Godso, your humors and moods —”
“Bah,” Count Ferneze said. “You are a rascal. Hold your tongue.”
“Your Lordship’s poor servant, I am,” Onion said.
“Don’t tempt my patience,” Count Ferneze said.
“Why, I hope I am no spirit, am I?” Onion said.
“No spirit” means “no devil.” Devils tempt people, and Onion was tempting Count Ferneze to lose his temper.
Maximilian said to Count Ferneze, “My lord, command your steward to correct and discipline the slave.”
“Slave” meant “servant.”
“Correct him?” Onion said. “By God’s blood, come and correct him if you have a mind to it. Correct him! That’s a good jest, indeed. The steward and you both, come and correct him.”
Count Ferneze said to his other servants, “Nay, see, away with him. Pull his cloth over his ears.”
Stripping a servant of his coat was a way to fire a servant.
“Cloth?” Onion said. “You tell me of your cloth?”
He took off his black coat and said, “Here’s your cloth. If I mourn a minute longer, I am the rottenest onion that ever spoke with a tongue!”
The other servants thrust him outside.
Onion was fired; he left his black coat behind.
Maximilian said, “What do you call your hind, Count Ferneze?”
A hind is a servant.
“His name is Onion, signor,” the Count answered.
“I thought him some such saucy rascal,” Maximilian said.
“Signor Maximilian!” the Count said, shocked by the word “saucy,” which he did not regard as applying to Onion.
“Sweet lord?” Maximilian replied.
“Let me entreat you that you would not regard any contempt flowing from such a spirit to be so rude, so barbarous,” Count Ferneze said.
Count Ferneze actually liked Onion. The firing was temporary, and such firings probably happened frequently.
Maximilian said, “Most noble count, under your favor —”
“Under your favor” was a polite way to introduce a statement the hearer was unlikely to like.
Count Ferneze interrupted:
“Why, I’ll tell you, signor, Onion will bandy with me word for word — nay, more, he will put me to silence, strike me perfectly dumb, and so amaze me that often I don’t know whether to check or cherish his presumption.
“Therefore, good signor —”
Maximilian interrupted, “— sweet lord, know that I am not now to learn how to manage my affections, feelings, and emotions. I have observed and know the difference between a base wretch and a true man. I can distinguish them. The property of the wretch is, he would hurt and cannot; the property of the man is, he can hurt and will not.”
Aurelia laughed, and Count Ferneze now said to her, “Bah, my merry daughter. Oh, these looks agree well with your clothing, don’t they?”
She was wearing black, the color of mourning, because her mother had died.
Juniper entered the room while talking to Onion, who remained outside, “Tut, leave it to me.”
Looking at Maximilian, he said to Count Ferneze, “By your favor — if you don’t mind — this is the gentleman, I think.”
Using and misusing his vocabulary, he then said to Maximilian, “Sir, you appear to be an honorable gentleman. I understand and could wish for my own part that things were condent [conducted] otherwise than they are.”
Speaking about Onion, he said, “But, the world knows, a foolish fellow, somewhat proclive [headlong] and hasty; hedid it — spoke rashly — in a prejudicate [precipitant, and in such a way as to cause you to judge him before you know him] humor. By the Virgin Mary, now, upon better computation [consideration], he wanes, he melts, his poor eyes are in a cold sweat.
“Right noble signor, you can have only compunction. I love the man; tender [give] your compassion.”
“Compunction” is a feeling of guilt or distress that prevents or follows an evil action.
“Does any man here understand this fellow?” Maximilian asked.
“Oh, God, sir, I may say frustra to the comprehension of your intellection,” Juniper said.
The Latin frustra means “in vain.”
Juniper was criticizing Maximilian’s inability to understand him.
“Before the Lord, I swear that he speaks all in riddles, I think,” Maximilian said. “I must have a comment before I can conceive him.”
A comment? To understand Juniper, one needs an entire commentary.
“Why, he asks to have his fellow, Onion, pardoned, and you must grant it, signor,” Count Ferneze said.
“Oh, with all my soul, my lord,” Maximilian said. “Is that his proposition? Is that what he wants?”
Juniper said, “Aye, sir, and we shall retort [return] these kind favors with all the alacrity of spirit we can, sir, as may be most expedient [fit] as well for the quality [generosity] as the cause [decision, also a legal case]; until that time, in spite of this compliment [your kindness in listening to my words], I rest, a poor cobbler, servant to my honorable lord here, your friend, and Juniper.”
Juniper exited.
“His name is Juniper?” Maximilian asked.
“Aye, signor,” Count Ferneze answered.
“He is a sweet youth,” Maximilian said. “His tongue has a happy turn when he sleeps.”
“Aye, for then it rests,” Count Ferneze replied.
Paolo Ferneze, Francisco Colonnia, Angelo, and Valentine entered the scene.
Maximilian said to Paolo, “Oh, sir, you’re welcome. Why, God be thanked you are found at last.”
He then greeted Francisco Colonnia, “Signor Colonnia, truly you are welcome. I am glad to see you, sir, so well returned.”
Francisco Colonnia replied, “I gladly thank Your Honor; yet, indeed, I am sorry for such a cause of sadness as has possessed Your Lordship in my absence.”
He was referring to the death of the Countess Ferneze.
Count Ferneze replied, “Oh, Francisco, you knew her — Countess Ferneze — and what she was!”
“She was a wise and honorable lady,” Francisco Colonnia said.
Count Ferneze said:
“Aye, wasn’t she?
“Well, don’t weep because she is gone.
“Passion’s dulled eye can make two griefs of one.
“Whomever Death marks out to die, neither virtue nor blood can save.
“Princes and beggars, all must feed the grave.”
Maximilian asked, “Are your horses and men ready, Lord Paolo?”
“Aye, signor, they wait for us at the gate,” Paolo replied.
Maximilian said, “Well, that is good.”
He said to Count Ferneze’s two daughters, Aurelia and Phoenixella, “Ladies, I will take my leave of you. May your fortunes be as yourselves: fair.”
He said to Paolo, “Come, let us get on horseback.”
He then said, “Count Ferneze, I bear a spirit full of thanks for all your honorable courtesies.”
“Sir, I could wish the number and value of them more in respect of your deservings,” Count Ferneze said. “But, Signor Maximilian, please, let me have a word with you in private.”
They walked to the side and talked.
Aurelia said to Paolo, “Indeed, brother, you are provided with a general — Maximilian — yonder. Curse my heart if I would not wish myself to become a man if I had Fortunatus’ hat here and go with you just to enjoy his presence.”
Fortunatus’ magic hat took the wisher wherever he or she wished to go.
“Why, do you love him so well, sister?” Paolo asked.
“No, by my faith, but I have such an odd, singular, pretty apprehension of his humor that I think that I am even tickled with the idea of it,” Aurelia said. “Oh, he is a fine man.”
“And I think another man may be as fine as he is,” Angelo said.
“Oh, Angelo, do you think I would urge any comparison against you?” Aurelia said. “No, I am not so ill-bred as to be adefamer of your worthiness. Believe me, if I hadn’t some hope of your abiding with us, I would never desire to not wear black while I lived, and I would learn to speak in the nose and turn Puritan immediately.”
Angelo could abide with Aurelia and her close relatives if he married her sister, Phoenixella.
The stereotype of Puritans was that they spoke through their nose, always wore black, and always lacked humor.
“I thank you, lady,” Angelo said. “I know you can flout, mock, and jeer.”
“Come, do you take it that way?” Aurelia said. “Indeed, you wrong me.”
Francisco Colonnia and Phoenixella spoke together a short distance away from the others.
Colonnia said, “Aye, but madam, thus to renounce all the feelings of pleasure may make your sadness seem too muchaffected and put on for show, and then the proper and true grace of it is lost.”
Phoenixella said:
“Indeed, sir, if I did put on this sadness only when I was outside and in society, and if I were merry and quick-humored in private, then it might seem affected and abhorred.
“But as my looks appear, such is my spirit, drowned up with confluence of grief and melancholy which like rivers run through all my veins, quenching the pride and fervor of my blood.”
Maximilian and Count Ferneze talked apart from the others. Count Ferneze was worried about his son’s going to war.
Maximilian said, “My honorable lord, no more. There is the honor of my blood engaged for your son’s safety.”
“Signor, don’t blame me for looking after and being concerned about Paolo’s safety so much,” Count Ferneze said. “He is my only son, and that word ‘only’ has with its strong and repercussive, reverberating sound struck my heart cold, and given it a deep wound.”
Maximilian said, “Why, but wait a moment, I ask you. Has Your Lordship ever had any more sons than this?”
“Why, haven’t you heard the story, Maximilian?” Count Ferneze asked.
“Let my sword fail me, then, if I have heard it,” Maximilian said.
Count Ferneze said:
“I had one other son, younger born than this one, Paolo, by twice as many hours as would fill the circle of a year; his name was Camillo, whom in that black and fearful night I lost.”
His lost son Camillo and his son Paolo were separated by two years.
“It is now nineteen years ago at least, and yet the memory of it sits as fresh within my brain as if it were but yesterday.”
Count Ferneze continued:
“It was that night wherein the great Chamont, the general for France, surprised Vicenza.”
Vicenza had no previous notice or warning of the attack.
Count Ferneze continued:
“I think the horror of that clamorous shout his soldiers gave when they attained the wall still tingles in my ear.
“I think I see with what amazed looks, distracted thoughts, and confused minds, we who were citizens confronted one another. Every street was filled with bitter, self-tormenting cries, and happy was that foot that first could press the flowery champaign — meadow — bordering on Verona.
“Here I, employed about my dear wife’s safety, whose soul is now in peace, lost my Camillo, who surely was murdered by the barbarous soldiers, or else I should have heard something — my heart is great.
“Sorrow is faint, and passion makes me sweat.”
His young son Camillo apparently died in the fighting when the French forces took control of Vicenza.
Maximilian said:
“Don’t grieve, sweet count. Comfort your spirits. You have a son, Paolo, a noble gentleman. He stands face to face with honor as his equal. As for his safety, let that be no question. I am the master of my fortune and he shall share my fortune with me.”
He then said loudly:
“Farewell, my honorable lord.
“Ladies, once more, adieu.”
He said to Aurelia, “As for yourself, madam, you are a most splendid creature. I tell you so, be not proud of it, I love you.”
He then said, “Come, Lord Paolo, let’s mount our horses.”
Paolo said, “Adieu, good Signor Francisco. Farewell, sister.”
Francisco was Francisco Colonnia.
Everyone departed, going in different directions, except for Maximilian, Paolo Ferneze, and Angelo.
Angelo said quietly to Paolo, “How shall we get him to leave?”
He was referring to Maximilian. Angelo and Paolo wished to speak privately.
Paolo replied quietly, “Why, easily enough.”
He said out loud, “Sweet Signor Maximilian, I have some small reason to stay here briefly. If it may please you, just go on horseback ahead of me. I’ll overtake you before your troops be ranged and set in order.”
“Your proposal does taste well,” Maximilian said. “Lord Ferneze, I go.”
He exited.
Paolo said to Angelo, “Now, if my love, fair Rachel, were so happy as just to look forth and come here.”
Rachel de Prie entered the scene.
Seeing her, Paolo said, “Look, fortune gives grace to me, before I can request it!”
He asked Rachel, “How are you now, my love? Where is your father?”
“He has gone away from home, my lord,” Rachel de Prie said.
“That’s well,” Paolo said.
“Aye, but I fear he’ll immediately return,” she said.
Paolo started to leave.
Rachel asked, “Are you now going, my most honored lord?”
“Aye, my sweet Rachel,” Paolo said.
Angelo said to himself, “Before God, she is a sweet wench.”
Paolo said, “Rachel, I hope I shall not need to urge the sacred purity of our affections, as if it hung in trial or suspense, since in our hearts and by our mutual vows it is confirmed and sealed in sight of heaven.”
Rachel cried.
“Nay, do not weep,” Paolo said.
She startled.
Paolo said:
“Why do you startle? Don’t fear, my love. Your father cannot have returned so soon.
“Aye, please, do not look so sorrowfully. Thou shall lack nothing.”
“No? Is your presence nothing?” Rachel said. “I shall lack that, and lacking that, I shall lack everything, for your presence is everything to me.”
Paolo said:
“Content thee, sweetheart. Be content and happy.
“I have made choice here of a loyal friend, this gentleman, on whose zealous love I do repose more than on all the world, with the exception of thy beauteous self; and to him I have committed my dear care of thee, as if I had committed it to my genius — my attendant spirit — or my other soul.”
Paolo continued:
“Receive him, gentle love, and what lacks my absence causes, his presence shall supply.
“The time is envious of our longer stay. I must leave.
“Farewell, dear Rachel.”
Rachel replied:
“My most dear lord, adieu.
“May Heaven and honor crown your deeds and you!”
She exited.
Paolo said, “Tell me truly, Angelo. How do thou like her?”
“Truly, I like her well, my lord, but shall I speak my mind?” Angelo replied.
“Aye, please do,” Paolo said.
Angelo said, “She is derived too meanly to be the wife to such a noble person as yourself, in my judgment.”
Rachel was lowly born, while Paolo was the son of a Count.
Paolo said:
“Nay, then, thy judgment is too mean-spirited, I see.
“Haven’t thou ever read, in differentiating good from evil, ‘It is better to shine in virtue than in blood?’”
A proverb stated, “Virtue is the true nobility.”
“Come, you are so sententious, my lord,” Angelo said.
Jaques de Prie, Rachel’s father, entered the scene.
Seeing him, Paolo said to Angelo, “Here comes her father.”
He then asked, “How are thou, good Jaques?”
Angelo greeted him: “May God save thee, Jaques.”
Jaques was suspicious at being greeted so well: “What should this mean?”
He called, “Rachel, open the door.”
Rachel locked the doors when her father was not at home.
Jaques exited.
Angelo said, “By God’s blood, how the poor slave looks, as though he had been haunted by the spirit, Lar, or seen the ghost of some great Satrapas, wrapped in an unsavory sheet.”
A spirit is a ghost.
A Lar is a protective household god, worshipped by the Romans.
A satrap was a provincial governor in wealthy ancient Persia.
Ghosts appearing on stage wore sheets.
Paolo said:
“I wonder that he did not speak to us; likely he was amazed, coming so suddenly and unprepared upon us.
“Well, let’s go.”
CHAPTER 2
— 2.1 —
Alone in his house, Jaques De Prie, the father of Rachel, said to himself:
“So now enough, my heart; beat now no more, at least for this cause of fright. What a cold sweat flowed on my brows and over all my bosom!
“Had I not reason to be frightened? To behold my door beset with unthrifts, and myself outside?”
“Unthrifts” are unthrifty people. In Jaques’ opinion, Paolo and Angelo were unthrifts.
Jaques continued:
“Why, Jaques, was there nothing in the house worth a continual eye, a vigilant thought, a watcher whose head should never nod, nor eyes once wink?
“Look on my coat, my thoughts, worn quite threadbare, which time could never cover with a nap, and by it learn never with naps of sleep to smother your thoughts of that which you keep.”
Jaques’ coat was threadbare, and so were his thoughts.
Jaques continued:
“But yet, I marvel why these gallant youths spoke to me so fairly, when I am thought to be a beggar!
“The goal of flattery is gain or lechery.
“If they seek gain from me, then they must think that I am rich, but they do not think that.
“As for their other goal, which is satisfaction of lechery, their goal is in my beautiful daughter, if it be in anything.
“And, by your leave, her beauty may tell them my beggary counterfeits because her neatness flows from some store of wealth, which breaks my coffers with this same engine: love for my own child.”
Although everyone thought of him as a poor beggar, Jaques was a rich miser who had money and seldom spent it, but he did spend it on his daughter, who was well-dressed.
Jaques continued:
“But this is answered: ‘Beggars will keep fine their daughters, being fair, though they themselves pine.’
“Well, then, their lecherous interest is for her, aye, it is surely for her, and I make her so brisk, smart, and finely dressed for some of them so that I might live alone with my gold once she is married.
“Oh, gold is a sweet companion, kind and true! A man may trust it when his father, brother, friend, or wife cheats him.
“Oh, wondrous wealth! That which makes all men false is true itself.
“But now this maiden is but supposed and thought to be my daughter, for I, being steward to a lord of France, of great estate and wealth, called Lord Chamont, once he had gone into the wars, I stole his treasure — but don’t overhear this, anything! — I stole his treasure, and I stole his daughter, who was only two years old, because the little girl loved me so much that she would leave the nurse herself to come into my arms, and, if I had left her, the child would surely have died.”
This Lord Chamont was the older Chamont: the one who had surprised Vicenza.
Jaques gave no reason for why “the child would surely have died.” This may just be an excuse for kidnapping her.
Jaques continued:
“Now herein I was kind and had a conscience. And, since her lady mother, who died in childbed delivering her, loved me surpassingly well, it may be the case that nature fashioned this affection, both in the child and her. But anyone who ransacks tombs and defaces the dead is ill-bred.
“I’ll therefore say no more; suppose the rest.”
Jaques may have had an affair with the Lady Chamont, Rachel’s mother. Perhaps Rachel really was his daughter and not Lord Chamont’s.
Jaques continued:
“Here have I changed my form, my name, and hers, and I live obscurely, to enjoy more safely my dearest treasure.
“But I must go outside.”
He called, “Rachel!”
Rachel appeared and asked, “What is your pleasure, sir?”
“Rachel, I must go outside,” Jaques said. “Lock thyself in, but yet take out the key, so that whosoever peeps in at the keyhole may yet imagine there is no one at home.”
“I will, sir,” Rachel said.
Jaques said:
“But, listen, Rachel.
“Say that a thief should come and peep in at the keyhole and not see the key; he would conclude indeed that no one was at home and so break in all the sooner.
“Open the door, Rachel, set it open, daughter. But sit in the doorway thyself and talk aloud, as if there were some more people in the house with thee.
“Put out the fire, kill the chimney’s heart, so that it may breathe no more than a dead man.
“The more we spare, my child, the more we gain.”
He exited.
— 2.2 —
Christophero, Juniper, and Onion talked together.
“What does my fellow Onion say?” Christophero said. “Come on.”
“All of a house, sir, but no fellows,” Onion said. “You are my lord’s steward.”
Onion was pointing out that although Christophero and he were servants in the same household, they were not fellows — that is, they were not equals. As Count Ferneze’s steward, Christophero ranked higher than Onion.
“But I ask you, what do you think of love, sir?” Onion said.
“Of love, Onion?” Christophero said. “Why, it’s a very honorable humor.”
“Nay, if it is only worshipful, I don’t care,” Onion said.
In this society, “Your Honor” is a higher, better title than “Your Worship.”
“Bah, it’s honorable,” Juniper said. “Don’t recoil from the conceit — the idea — of the gentleman.”
“But in truth, sir,” Onion said, “you shall do well to think well of love, for in my opinion, it thinks well of you, I assure you.”
“Gramercy — thanks — fellow Onion, I do think well of love,” Christophero said. “Thou are in love, are thou?”
“Partly, sir, but I am ashamed to say wholly,” Onion said.
“Well, I will further it in thee to any honest woman or maiden, the best I can,” Christophero said.
Using and misusing his vocabulary as usual, Juniper said, “Why, now you come near Onion, sir. Onion does vail [take off his hat], he does remunerate [recompense], he does chaw the cud [ruminate] in the kindness of an honest imperfection [malapropism for ‘intervention’] by Your Worship.”
In other words, Onion wants your help, which you have agreed to give him.
“But who is it thou love, fellow Onion?” Christophero asked.
“By the Virgin Mary, a poor man’s daughter, but none of the honestest, I hope,” Onion answered.
“Honest” means “chaste.” Onion loved a poor man’s daughter, and he hoped that she was not overly chaste.
“Why, wouldn’t thou have her honest and chaste?” Christophero asked.
“Oh, no, for then I am sure she would not have me,” Onion replied. “The woman I love is Rachel de Prie.”
“Why, she has the name — and the reputation — of a very virtuous maiden,” Christophero said.
Prie is French for “pray.”
“So she is, sir; but the fellow talks in quiddits, he does,” Juniper said.
“The fellow” is Onion, and “quiddits” is a malapropism for “quibbles” and “quiddities.”
“Quiddities” are peculiarities, and quibbles are plays on words.
Christophero asked Onion, “What do thou want me to do in the matter?”
“Do nothing, sir, I pray you, but speak for me,” Onion said.
He wanted Christophero to say good things about him to Rachel.
“In what manner?” Christophero asked.
“My fellow Juniper can tell you, sir,” Onion replied.
Juniper said to Christophero, “Why, speak as thus, sir: Your Worship may commend him for a fellow fit for consanguinity, and may say that he shakes with desire of procreation, or so.”
“Consanguinity” means “blood mingling” and is a euphemism for sex.
“That would not be so good to tell her, I think,” Christophero said.
“No, sir? Why so, sir?” Juniper asked.
He then gave some examples of what Christophero could say to Rachel in Onion’s behalf:
“What if you should say to her, ‘Corroborate thyself, sweet soul; let me distinguish thy paps with my fingers, divine Mumps, pretty Pastorella,’” Juniper said.
“Corroborate” means “confirm.” Here it may mean, “Corroborate that you are loved.”
“Distinguish thy paps” means “feel thy breasts.”
“Mumps” is an affectionate nickname, and “Pastorella” is a name for a shepherdess.
Juniper continued with a suggestion of what Christophero could say to Rachel in Onion’s behalf:
“‘Look thou so sweet and bounteous? Comfort my friend here.’”
The kind of comfort could be sexual in nature. The “friend” could be between Onion’s legs.
Christophero said, “Well, I perceive that you wish I should say something that may do him grace and show him in a good light and further his desires, and that, you can be sure, I will.”
“I thank you, sir. May God save your life, I pray to God, sir,” Onion said.
“Your Worship is too good to live long,” Juniper said to Christophero.
A proverb stated, “Those whom God loves do not live long.”
“You’ll contaminate me no service?” Juniper asked.
“‘Contaminate’?” Christophero said. “‘Command,’ thou meant to say. No, good Juniper.”
“May you have health and wealth, sir,” Juniper said.
Onion and Juniper exited.
Alone, Christophero said to himself, “This wench — Rachel — I will solicit for myself, letting my lord and master — Count Ferneze — in on the secret. And if he seconds me with his consent, I will proceed, as I have long before this thought her a worthy choice to make my wife.”
He exited.
— 2.3 —
Aurelia and Phoenixella talked together.
Aurelia said:
“Make room for a pair of matrons colored black!”
They were wearing black clothing to show mourning for their dead mother: Countess Ferneze, who had died three months ago. Both had heavily mourned, but Aurelia was beginning to come out of her grief.
Aurelia continued:
“How motherly my mother’s death has made us!
“I wish I had some girls now to bring up. Oh, I could make a wench so virtuous that she would say grace for every bit of food and gape — open her mouth — no wider than a wafer’s thickness. And she should make French curtsies so very low that every touch should turn her over backward.”
The wench could fall backward and lie on her back with her legs wide open.
Phoenixella replied, “Sister, these merry words do not become your mourning attire, nor your having lost a mother. Our virtuous mother’s death should imprint deeper effects of sorrow in us than may be worn out in so little time.”
Aurelia said, “Sister, indeed, you take too much tobacco. It makes you as black within as you are without.”
Tobacco smoke colors lungs black.
Aurelia then said, “What, true-stitch, sister? Are both your sides alike?”
True-stitch is a type of embroidery that is the same on both sides. Phoenixella’s two sides — inside and outside — are both somber.
Aurelia continued, “Be of a slighter, less fussy work for, on my word, you shall be sold as dear, or rather dearer, if you are less fussy.”
If Phoenixella were to stop being melancholy, she would be sold — that is, married — and make a better match than if she stayed melancholy.
Aurelia continued:
“Will you be bound to customs and to rites?
“Shed profitable tears, weep when it benefits you, or else do all things as you are inclined.
“‘Eat when your stomach is hungry,’ says the physician, ‘Not at eleven and six, the usual hours for meals.’
“So if your mood is now affected with this heaviness, give me the reins and don’t hold back. Do as I do in this my appetite for pleasure.
“It is precisianism — Puritanism — to alter with austere judgment that which is given by nature.”
In other words: Our nature is to seek pleasure, and we ought not to restrain that nature without good reason. Mourning is a good reason, but mourning must at some time come to an end.
Aurelia continued:
“I wept, you saw, too, when my mother died, for then I found it easier to do so, and fitter with my mood than not to weep.
“But now it is otherwise. Another time perhaps I shall have such deep thoughts of her that I shall weep afresh, some twelve months from now, and I will weep, if I am so disposed, and put on black as grimly then as now.
“Let the mind — our mood — go always with the body’s stature — our body’s inclination!
“Judgment is fit for judges; give me nature.”
Aurelia believed that we ought to mourn when we are sorrowful, and we ought to show joy when we are happy.
— 2.4 —
Francisco Colonnia and Angelo entered the scene.
“See, Signor Angelo, here are the ladies,” Francisco Colonnia said. “Go and comfort one; I’ll go to the other and comfort her.”
“Therefore I come, sir,” Angelo said. “I’ll go to the eldest.”
Aurelia was the elder of the two sisters.
Angelo said, “God save you, ladies. These sad moods of yours, which make you choose these solitary walks, are hurtful for your beauties.”
“If we had them,” Aurelia said.
Aurelia was being modest when saying that she and her sister could not claim to be beautiful.
They split into two couples: Angelo and Aurelia, and Francisco Colonnia and Phoenixella.
Angelo said to Aurelia, “Come, that condition might be for your hearts when you protest faith, since we cannot see them. But this same heart of beauty, your sweet face, is in my eye always.”
He was saying that he could not see into the sisters’ hearts, so perhaps such a comment as she had made was appropriate when referring to the sisters’ hearts, but nevertheless the sisters were obviously beautiful.
A person’s face can be beautiful, and yet the same person’s heart can lack beauty, as when the woman rejects a man’s love.
Because the sisters had been mourning, they had not been concerned with love and romance.
“Oh, you cut my heart with your sharp eye,” Aurelia said.
“Nay, lady, that’s not so,” Angelo said. “Your heart’s too hard.”
“My beauty’s heart?” Aurelia asked.
“Oh, no,” Angelo said, “I mean that regent of affection — that ruler of love — madam, which tramples on all love with such contempt in this fair breast.”
The ruler of love was Aurelia’s hard heart.
“No more,” Aurelia said. “Your drift is savored: I understand your words’ meaning. I had rather seem hard-hearted —”
Angelo interrupted, “— than hard-favored and ugly? Is that your meaning, lady?”
“Bah, sir,” Aurelia said. “Your wits are fresh, I know; they need no spur.”
The word “fresh” means 1) saucy, and 2) well-rested.
“And therefore you will ride them,” Angelo said.
This kind of riding can be sexual riding.
“Say that I do,” Aurelia said. “They will not tire, I hope.”
“No, not with you,” Angelo said. “Listen, sweet lady.”
They talked quietly.
Francisco Colonnia said to Phoenixella, “It is very much a pity, madam, that you should have any reason to retain this sign and appearance of grief and mourning, much less the thing designed.”
In other words: It is very much a pity that you show signs of mourning and that you have reason to show such signs.
“Griefs are more fit for ladies than their pleasures,” Phoenixella said.
“That is for such ladies as follow nothing but pleasures,” Francisco Colonnia said.
Some women who pursue only pleasure should sometimes feel grief. No ladies should always feel grief.
Colonnia continued:
“But you ladies who temper them so well with virtues, using your griefs so, it would prove them to be pleasures, and you would seem to be in a situation of griefs and pleasures equally pleasant.”
Phoenixella said:
“Sir, so I do now.
“It is the excess of either that I strive so much to shun in all my tried, tested, and proved endeavors.
“Although perhaps to a general eye I may appear most wedded to my griefs, yet my mind forsakes no taste of pleasure — I mean that happy pleasure of the soul, divine and sacred contemplation of that eternal and most glorious bliss proposed as the crown to our souls.”
“I will be silent,” Francisco Colonnia said. “Yet that I may serve but as a decade in the art of memory, to put you always in mind of your own virtues when your too serious thoughts make you too sad, accept me as your servant, honored lady.”
One popular memorization technique of the time put items to be memorized into sets of ten. Each set of ten was called a decade.
Francisco Colonnia wanted to be Phoenixella’s servant — that is, her male admirer.
Phoenixella replied, “Those ceremonies are too common, Signor Francis, for your uncommon gravity and judgment, and they are fitting only for those who are nothing but ceremony.”
According to Phoenixella, his love-talk consisted of clichés, and such love-talk is fitting only for those who are just talk.
Angelo said to Aurelia, “Come, I will not sue stalely to be your servant; but I will use a new term: Will you be my refuge?”
He would still be her male admirer, but without using the word “servant.”
“Your refuge?” Aurelia said. “Why, sir?”
“So that I might fly to you when all else fails me,” Angelo said.
“If you are good at flying, be my plover,” Aurelia said.
A plover is a bird, and the word “plover” is slang for “fool.”
Angelo replied, “Nay, take away the ‘p.’”
Take away the “p,” and “plover” becomes “lover.”
“Tut, then you cannot fly,” Aurelia said.
“I’ll promise you that I’ll borrow Cupid’s wings,” Angelo said.
Aurelia replied:
“By the Mass, then I fear you’ll do strange things.
“I pray you [Please], blame me not if I suspect you;
“Your own confession simply doth [does] detect you.
“Nay, if you be so great in Cupid’s books [lists of lovers],
“It’ll make me jealous. You can with your looks,
“I warrant [promise] you, inflame a woman’s heart,
“And at your pleasure take love’s golden dart [golden arrow]
“And wound the breast of any virtuous maid [maiden].
“Would I [I wish I] were hence [away from here]! Good faith, I am afraid
“You can constrain one, ere [before] they be aware,
“To run mad for your love.”
Angelo said, “Oh, this is rare [splendid]!”
— 2.5 —
Count Ferneze entered the scene and said, “Close, intimate, and secret with my daughters, gentlemen? Well done. It is like yourselves and in accordance with your characters. Nay, lusty Angelo, don’t let my presence make you balk your sport. I will not break a minute of discourse between you and one of your fair mistresses.”
“One of my mistresses?” Angelo said. “Why, does Your Lordship think I have so many?”
“Many?” Count Ferneze said. “No, Angelo, I do not think thou have many. Some fourteen I hear thou have, even of our worthiest dames of any note in Milan.”
“Nay, my good lord, fourteen?” Angelo said. “It is not so.”
“By the Mass, that it is,” Count Ferneze said.
He gave Angelo a piece of paper and said, “Here are their names to show fourteen or fifteen to one. Good Angelo, you need not be ashamed of any of them. They are all attractive and fashionable women.”
“By God’s blood, you are such a lord!” Angelo said.
He started to go, but Count Ferneze said, “Nay, stay, sweet Angelo. I am disposed to be a little more jocular than I usually am.”
Angelo exited.
Count Ferneze said:
“He’s gone, he’s gone. I have disgraced him shrewdly.
“Daughters, take heed of him; he’s a wild youth. Be careful about what he says to you, and don’t believe him. He will swear love to everyone he sees.
“Francisco, give them advice, good Francisco; I dare trust thee with both my daughters, but him with neither of my daughters.”
“Your Lordship yet may trust both of them with him,” Francisco Colonnia said.
“Well, go on your ways,” Count Ferneze said. “Away!”
Everyone except Count Ferneze exited.
— 2.6 —
Christophero entered the scene.
“How are you now, Christopher?” Count Ferneze asked. “What is the news with you?”
“I have a humble request to ask Your good Lordship,” Christophero answered.
“A request, Christopher?” Count Ferneze asked. “What request, I ask you?”
“I would crave pardon at Your Lordship’s hands if my request seems vain or simple or foolish in your sight,” Christophero said.
“I’ll pardon all simplicity, Christopher,” Count Ferneze said. “What is thy request?”
“Perhaps being now so old a bachelor, I shall seem half unwise to bend myself in strict affection to a poor young maiden,” Christophero said.
“Does your request concern love, Christopher?” Count Ferneze asked. “Are thou disposed to marry? Why, it is well.”
“Aye, but Your Lordship may imagine now that I, who am steward of Your Honor’s house, once I am married, will more concern myself with the maintenance of my wife and of my charge than with the due discharge of my place and office,” Christophero said.
“No, no, Christopher, I know thee to be honest,” Count Ferneze said.
Christophero said, “In good faith, my lord, Your Honor may suspect that I would put my family first, before yourself, but —”
Count Ferneze interrupted, “— then I should wrong thee. Thou have always been honest and true, and thou will still be honest and true, I know.”
“Aye, but often marriage alters men, and you may fear it will alter me, my lord,” Christophero said. “But before it should alter me, I will undergo ten thousand different deaths.”
“I know it, man,” Count Ferneze said. “Who would thou have as thy wife, I ask?”
“Rachel de Prie, if Your good Lordship will grant me your consent,” Christophero answered.
“Rachel de Prie? What! The poor beggar’s daughter?” Count Ferneze said. “She’s a very beautiful maiden, however poor, and thou have my consent, with all my heart.”
“I humbly thank Your Honor,” Christophero said. “I’ll now ask her father for permission to marry her.”
“Do so, Christophero,” Count Ferneze said. “Thou shall do well.”
Christophero exited.
Alone, Count Ferneze said to himself:
“It is strange, she being so poor, that he should love her, but this is stranger — that I myself should love her!
“I spied her lately at her father’s door, and if I did not see in her sweet face gentle birth and nobleness, never again believe anything I say.
“But Love wrought this persuasion that she is gentle and noble in me, that love being created with the maiden’s looks. For where Love is, he thinks his basest object gentle and noble.
“I am deep in love, and I shall be forced to wrong my honest steward, for I must sue and seek her for myself.
“However much my duty to my late dead wife and my own dear renown holds sway,
“I’ll go to her father straightaway.
“Love hates delays.”
— 2.7 —
Onion, Juniper, Valentine, Sebastian, Balthasar, and Martino talked together. All of them were servants, but Valentine served Francisco Colonnia while the others served Count Ferneze.
Onion said, “Come on, indeed, let’s have some exercise or other, my hearts. Fetch the hilts.”
Martino exited.
The hilts were supposedly the hilts of swords and daggers, but Martino would bring them cudgels, aka clubs.
“Fellow Juniper, will thou play?” Onion asked.
This kind of “play” was fighting with cudgels.
Juniper replied, “I cannot resolve [satisfy] you. It is as I am fitted with the ingenuity, quantity, or quality of the cudgel.”
He was perhaps claiming to be well versed in the art of fighting with cudgels. With Juniper’s use and misuse of words, it’s hard to tell.
Since the ingenuity of a cudgel is that of a stick of wood, perhaps he was telling the truth when he said that he was “fitted with the ingenuity […] of the cudgel.”
The quantity of a cudgel is one, and Juniper was one man.
The quality of a cudgel is regarded as less than the quality of a sword, and Juniper’s social quality was less than that of gentlemen, who wore swords.
“Why, do thou bastinado the poor cudgel with terms?” Valentino asked.
The word “bastinado” means “hit with a stick or cudgel.”
Juniper replied, “Oh, ingle, I have the phrases, man, and the anagrams, and the epitaphs [malapropism for ‘epigrams’ or ‘epithets’ or both] befitting the mystery of the noble science.”
Anagrams are words that are made of the letters of other words. E.g., “satin” is an anagram of “saint.” Epigrams are short, witty sayings or poems. E.g., “Man proposes but God disposes.” Epithets are descriptive words or phrases. E.g., Homer’s “wine-dark sea.”
“I’ll be hanged if Juniper were not misbegotten by some fencer,” Onion said.
“Sirrah Valentine, you can resolve — satisfy — me now,” Sebastian said. “Do they in other countries have their masters of defense as we have here in Italy?”
Masters of defense are fencing masters.
“Oh, Lord, aye, especially they in Utopia,” Valentine, who had traveled, replied. “There they perform their prizes and challenges — that is, participate in a fencing match — with as great ceremony as the Italian or any nation else.”
“Indeed?” Balthasar said. “How is the manner of it, for God’s love, good Valentine?”
Juniper said, “Ingle, please, make recourse to us. We are thy friends and familiars, sweet ingle.”
“Familiars” are 1) intimate associates and friends, and 2) attendant evil spirits such as the familiars of the witches in Macbeth.
Valentine said, “Why, thus, sir —”
Onion interrupted, “God-a-mercy, good Valentine, nay, go on.”
“God-a-mercy” means “thank you.”
Juniper said, “Silentium, bonus socius Onionus.”
Juniper meant by the Latin words, “Be silent, good friend Onion; however, for “be silent,” he was using a noun instead of the imperative verb he should have been using.
Juniper continued, “Good fellow, Onion, don’t be so ingenious and turbulent.”
He then said to Valentine, “So, sir. And how? How, sweet ingle?”
Valentine said, “By the Virgin Mary, first they are brought to the public theatre.”
“What?” Juniper said. “Have they theatre there in Utopia?”
“Theatres?” Valentine said. “Aye, and plays, too, both tragedy and comedy, and set forth with as much state as can be imagined.”
“By Godso, a man is nobody until he has travelled,” Juniper said.
In Ben Jonson’s time, travelers told exaggerated stories about the places they had visited.
Actually, Valentine’s Utopia sounds remarkably like the theater scene in Ben Jonson’s day.
“And how are their plays?” Sebastian said. “As ours are, extemporal?”
“Oh, no, they are all premeditated things, and some of them very good, indeed,” Valentine said. “My master used to visit them often when he was there.”
“Why, how, now, are they in a place where any man may see them?” Balthasar asked.
Valentine said:
“Aye, in the common theatres, I tell you.
“But the sport at a new play is to observe the sway and variety of opinion that passes judgment on the play. A man shall have such a confused mixture of judgment poured out in the throng there, as ridiculous as laughter itself. One says he does not like the writing; another does not like the plot; another does not like the acting.
“And sometimes a fellow who doesn’t come into a theater there past once in five years, at a Parliament time or so, will be as deep-mired in censuring as the best, and swear by God’s foot he would never stir his foot to see a hundred such as that is.”
Parliament time is when Parliament is in session. A man might come to London then on business and take the time to see a play.
“I must travel to see these things,” Onion said. “I shall never think well of myself otherwise.”
Juniper said, “Fellow Onion, I’ll bear thy charges [pay thy way] if thou will but pilgrimize it [go as a pilgrim] along with me to the land of Utopia.”
“Why, but I think such rooks — fools — as these should be ashamed to judge,” Sebastian said.
“Not a whit,” Valentine said. “The rankest stinkard of them all will take it upon himself as peremptorily as if he had written himself in artibus magister.”
In artibus magister is a Master of Arts, one who holds a Master of Arts degree.
“And do they stand to a popular censure — judgment — for anything they present?” Sebastian asked.
The plays are always judged.
Valentine said, “Aye, always, always, and the people generally are very acceptive and receptive and apt to applaud any meritable and meritorious work; but there are two sorts of persons who most commonly are infectious to a whole auditory.”
According to Valentine, two sorts of people were unhealthy for anyone who heard them. They infected their hearers with bad opinions.
“Who are they?” Balthasar asked.
“Aye, come, let’s know them,” Juniper requested.
“It would be good if they were noted and known,” Onion said.
Valentine said, “By the Virgin Mary, one is the rude, barbarous crew, a people who have no brains and yet grounded judgments. These will hiss anything that mounts above their grounded capacities.”
Valentine was describing the groundlings, who paid a penny to stand and watch a play. They had poor literary educations.
He continued, “But the others are worth the observation, indeed.”
The others asked, “Who are they? What kind of people are they?”
“Indeed, there are a few capricious gallants.”
They were young gentlemen who were subject to whims.
“‘Capricious’?” Juniper said. “Wait, that word’s for me.”
It is a word he liked, and one he would use.
Valentine continued:
“And they have taken such a habit of dislike in all things that they will approve nothing, be it never so clever and witty or elaborate, but they will sit dispersed, making faces and spitting, wagging their upright ears, and cry, ‘Filthy! Filthy,’ simply uttering their own condition describing themselves and using their contorted and twisted countenances instead of a Vice to turn the good countenances and gazes of all who shall sit near them from what they behold.”
The capricious gallants acted in such a way to make the audience look at them instead of the actors on stage.
Medieval morality plays had a character called the Vice who attempted to turn men from good to evil.
Onion said, “Oh, that’s well said.”
Martino returned carrying cudgels.
Onion said to Martino, “Lay them down.”
He then asked, “Come, sirs, who plays? Fellow Juniper, Sebastian, Balthasar? Somebody take them up, come.”
“Ingle Valentine?” Juniper said, suggesting that Valentine be a fighter.
“Not I, sir,” Valentine said. “I don’t claim to have knowledge of the art of fighting.”
“Sebastian?” Juniper suggested.
“Balthasar?” Sabastian suggested.
“Who, I?” Balthasar said.
“Come, just one bout of fighting,” Onion said. “I’ll give thee a cudgeling, indeed.”
“Why, here’s Martino,” Balthasar said.
“Bah, he?” Onion said. “Alas, he cannot play — fight — a whit, man.”
Juniper said:
“That’s all one. That makes no difference. No more could you in stata quo prius.”
He meant, “in the former state,” but the correct Latin is in statu quo prius.
Juniper continued:
“Martino, play with him. Every man has his beginning and conduction [malapropism for ‘conclusion’].”
“Won’t you hurt me, fellow Onion?” Martino asked.
“Hurt thee?” Onion said. “No. If I do, put me among pot-herbs and chop me to pieces.”
Pot-herbs are herbs that go in the cooking pot.
“Come on,” Onion invited.
Juniper said:
“By your favor, sweet bullies [companions], give them room. Back!
“So, Martino, do not look so thin and feeble upon the matter.”
Onion and Martino fought with cudgels.
Onion said:
“Ha, well played.
“Fall over to my leg now; so, to your guard again. Excellent!
“To my head now. Make home your blow; don’t spare me, make it home.
“Good! Good again!”
Martino then struck Onion on the head with a cudgel.
“Why, how are you now, Peter Onion?” Sebastian asked.
“Godso, Onion has caught a bruise,” Valentine said.
Juniper said, “Coraggio! Courage! Don’t be capricious. What?”
“Capricious?” Onion said. “Not I. I scorn to be capricious for a scratch. Martino must have another bout with me. Come!”
Onion was bleeding from his wound, and so Valentine, Sebastian, and Balthasar said, “No! No! Play no more! Play no more!”
Bleeding, Onion said, “Bah, it’s nothing, a fillip, a trifle, a lucky blow. Fellow Juniper, please, get me a plantain. I had much rather play with one who had skill.”
Plaintains were broad leaves that were used to stop bleeding.
“By my truth, fellow Onion, it was against my will for me to hurt you,” Martino said.
“Nay, that’s not so,” Onion said. “It was against my head. But come, we’ll have one bout more.”
“Not a bout, not even a stroke,” Juniper said.
All except Onion said, “No more! No more!”
Martino exited.
Juniper said, “Why, I’ll give you a demonstration of how the injury came about.”
In demonstrating how the injury occurred, Juniper used fencing terms and pretended the cudgels were swords and daggers. Fencers used a rapier to attack and a dagger to ward off attacks.
Juniper said to Onion, “Thou opened the dagger to falsify over with the back sword trick, and he interrupted before he could fall to the close.”
Onion replied, “No, no, I know best how it was, better than any man here. I felt his play presently, for, look here” — he demonstrated — “I gathered my strength upon him thus, thus — do you see? — for the double lock and took it single on the head.”
“Double lock” means “with both hilts”: the hilt of the sword and the hilt of the dagger.
“He says very truly,” Valentine said. “He took it single on the head.”
Onion was hit once on his head with the cudgel.
“Come, let’s go,” Sebastian said.
Martino returned with a cobweb and said, “Here, fellow Onion, here’s a cobweb.”
In this society, people used cobwebs to stop bleeding.
“What, a cobweb, Martino?” Onion said. “I will have another bout of fighting with you. By God’s wounds, do you first break my head and then give me a plaster — a bandage — in scorn? Come to it, I will have a bout of fighting with you.”
Martino said, “God’s my witness —”
“Tut, your witness cannot serve,” Onion said.
Juniper said, “By God’s blood, why, what, thou aren’t lunatic, are thou? If thou are lunatic, get thee gone, Mephistopheles!”
In this society, lunatics were thought to be possessed by evil spirits, and so Juniper was pretending to exorcize Onion.
Juniper continued, “Say the sign should be in Aries now, as it may be for all of us, where were your life? Answer me that.”
Aries the Ram is a sign of the Zodiac.
“He says well, Onion,” Sebastian said.
“Aye, indeed, he does,” Valentine said.
Juniper said to Onion, “Come, come, you are a foolish naturalist [natural, aka fool]. Go, get a white of an egg and a little flax, and close the breach of the head. It is the most conducible [conducive] thing that can be.”
He then said, “Martino, do not insinuate [presume] upon your good fortune, but play an honest part and carry away the bucklers.”
“To carry away the bucklers” means “To come off as a winner.”
Martino picked up the cudgels, and all exited.
CHAPTER 3
— 3.1 —
Alone, Angelo said to himself:
“My young and naïve friend, Paolo Ferneze, bound me with mighty, solemn conjurations and oaths to be true to him in his love to Rachel and to solicit the remembrance of him always in his forced absence. That is, he wants me to keep his memory alive in Rachel’s mind! That’s likely to happen, indeed! True to my friend in cases of affection?”
The word “case” can mean female genitals.
Angelo continued:
“In women’s cases? What a jest it is! How silly he is who imagines it! Any man is an ass who will keep his promises strictly in anything that checks and hinders his private pleasure, chiefly in love.
“By God’s blood, am I not a man? Haven’t I eyes that are as free to look, and blood to be inflamed, as well as his? And when it is so, shall I not pursue my own love’s longings, but promote my friend’s love longings instead?
“Aye, he is a good fool who would do that. Do so, go ahead and hang me then, because I swore to protect his interest in Rachel.
“Alas, who does not know that lovers’ perjuries are ridiculous?”
A proverb stated, “Jove laughs at lovers’ perjuries.”
Angelo continued:
“Have at thee, Rachel!”
“Have at thee” meant “Get ready for an attack” — or, in this case, “Get ready for an ‘attack.’”
Angelo continued:
“I’ll go court her for sure, for now I know her father is abroad and out of the house.”
Jaques entered the scene.
Angelo said to himself, “By God’s blood! Look, he is here. Oh, what damned luck this is! This labor’s lost. I must by no means see him.”
He exited the scene, singing the nonsense syllables, “Tau, dery, dery.”
Or perhaps the syllables meant “Taw-dry, —dry.” Some of Angelo’s thoughts were tawdry indeed.
— 3.2 —
Alone, Jaques said to himself:
“Mischief and hell! What is this man, a spirit? Does he haunt my house’s ghost? Always at my door? He has been at my door; he has been in, in my dear door. I pray to God that my gold is safe!”
Jaques had earlier seen Paolo Ferneze and Angelo near his door.
Christophero entered the scene.
Jaques said, “God’s pity, here’s another!”
He called to his daughter, “Rachel! Ho, Rachel!”
Christophero walked up to him and said, “May God save you, honest father.”
Jaques again called to his daughter, “Rachel! By God’s light, come to me! Rachel, Rachel!”
He exited into his house.
“Now in God’s name, what is ailing him?” Christophero said. “This is strange! He loves his daughter so, I’ll wager my life, that he’s afraid, having been now abroad, that I come to seek her love unlawfully.”
Jaques re-entered the scene after checking on his gold at home and said, “It’s safe! It’s safe. They have not robbed my treasure.”
Christophero said, “Don’t let it seem offensive to you, sir —”
Jaques said to himself, “‘Sir’? God’s my life! ‘Sir,’ ‘sir,’ does he call me ‘sir’?”
“Good father, listen to me,” Christophero said.
“You are ’most welcome, sir,” Jaques said.
He said to himself, “I meant ‘almost.’”
He then said out loud, “And does Your Worship want to speak to me? Would you abase yourself by speaking to me?”
“It is not abasing, father,” Christophero said. “My intent is to do further honor to you, sir, than only speak to you. I want to be your son-in-law.”
Jaques said to himself, “My gold is in his nostrils! He has smelt it. Break, breast! Break, heart! Fall on the earth, my entrails, with this same bursting astonishment! He knows about my gold; he knows about all my treasure.”
He then said out loud, “How do you know, sir? Whereby do you guess?”
“Guess at what, sir?” Christophero asked. “What do you mean?”
Jaques said, “I ask, if it please Your gentle Worship, how you know — I mean, how I should make Your Worship know — that I have nothing — to give with my poor daughter? I have nothing. The very air, bounteous to every man, is scanty to me, sir.”
“I do think, good father, you are just poor,” Christophero said.
Jaques said to himself, “He thinks so. Listen! He just ‘do think’ so! He does not think so; he knows about all my treasure.”
He went inside his house to check on his treasure and see if it was still safe.
Alone, Christophero said to himself, “Poor man, he is so overjoyed to hear that his daughter may be better bestowed than he had hoped that between fear and hope, if I mean honestly, he is thus passionate.”
Christophero thought that a marriage between Rachel and him was a much better marriage for Rachel than her father, Jaques, could have hoped for.
Jaques returned, saying to himself, “Yet, all is safe within. Is no one outside? Nobody is breaking down my walls?”
“What do you say, father?” Christophero asked. “Shall I have your daughter? Do you agree to let me marry her?”
“I have no dowry to bestow upon her,” Jaques said.
“I don’t expect one, father,” Christophero said.
“That is well,” Jaques said. “Then I ask Your Worship to make no question of that which you wish for. You can marry my daughter. It is too much favor to me — it is more than I deserve.”
Christophero said to himself, “I’ll leave him now to give his passions a chance to breathe and calm down. Once his emotions are settled down, I will fetch his daughter. I shall but excite his emotions too much if I speak to him now.”
Christophero exited.
Jaques said:
“So, he’s gone.
“I wish that all were dead and gone,
“So that I might live with my dear gold alone!”
— 3.3 —
Count Ferneze entered the scene.
Seeing Jaques, he said, “Here is the poor old man.”
Seeing Count Ferneze, Jaques said to himself, “Bah, on my soul, another! Is he coming here?”
“Be not dismayed, old man,” Count Ferneze said. “I come to cheer you.”
Jaques said to himself, “He is coming to me, by heaven! Turn ribs to brass, turn voice into a trumpet to rattle out the battles of my thoughts! One comes to hold me in talk, while the other robs me.”
He went inside his house to check on his treasure and see if it was still safe.
Count Ferneze said, “He has forgotten who I am, surely. What should this mean? He fears that my authority and my lack of a wife will take his daughter from him to defame her and ruin her reputation. He who has nothing on earth but one poor daughter may make this frenzy of care to keep her.”
Of course, Count Ferneze wanted to marry Rachel, but Jaques did not know that.
Jaques returned and said, “And yet, it is safe. They intend not to use force but to use fawning, coming here to flatter me. I shall easily know by his next question if he thinks that I am rich.”
He then said out loud, “Whom do I see? My good lord!”
He knelt before Count Ferneze.
“Stand up, good father,” Count Ferneze said.
Jaques stood up.
Count Ferneze said, “I don’t call thee father because of thy age but because I gladly wish to be thy son-in-law, in honorable marriage with thy beauteous daughter.”
Jaques said to himself, “Oh, so, so, so, so, so, this is for gold! Now it is sure. My daughter’s neatness makes them believe that I am rich.”
Rachel was well dressed.
Jaques said out loud, “No, my good lord, I’ll tell you all, how my poor, hapless daughter got that attire she wears from top to toe.”
“Why, father, this is nothing,” Count Ferneze said. “That doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, yes, it does, my good lord,” Jaques said.
“Indeed, it does not,” Count Ferneze said.
“Nay, sweet lord, pardon me,” Jaques said. “Do not pretend it doesn’t matter. Hear your poor beadsman speak.”
A beadsman recites prayers for a patron, counting the prayers on rosary beads. Here, Jaques meant that he was a humble servant to the Count.
Jaques continued, “It is requisite that I, so entirely a beggar, account for things that surpass my calling.”
If he were a beggar, then why was his daughter dressed so well?
Jaques said:
“She was born to enjoy nothing underneath the sun except the sun. If she had more than other beggars, she would be envied. I will tell you, then, how she acquired all she wears.
“Her warm shoes, God knows, a kind maiden gave her, seeing her go barefoot on a cold, frosty morning, may God reward the kind maiden!
“Her homely stockings —”
Count Ferneze said:
“Father, I’ll hear no more. Thou explain too much with thy too particular answer for thy daughter, who deserves a thousand times as much.
“I’ll be thy son-in-law, and she shall wear the attire of countesses.”
“Oh, my good lord, don’t mock the poor,” Jaques said. “Doesn’t Your Lordship remember that poverty is the precious gift of God, as well as riches?”
Mathew 5:3 states, “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for their’s is the kingdom of heaven” (King James Version).
He knelt and said, “Tread upon me rather than mock my poorness.”
“Rise, I say,” Count Ferneze said. “When I mock poverty, may the heavens then make me poor!”
Jaques stood up.
— 3.4 —
Nuntius, a messenger, entered the scene.
Nuntius said to himself, “See, here’s the Count Ferneze. I will tell him about the hapless accident and bad luck of his brave son, so that he may seek the sooner to ransom him.”
Jaques exited.
Nuntius said to Count Ferneze, “God save Your Lordship!”
“You are very welcome, sir,” Count Ferneze said.
“I wish I brought such news as might deserve such a welcome,” Nuntius said.
“What! Do you bring me ill news?” Count Ferneze asked.
“It is ill news, my lord, yet it is such news as the usual chance of war affords, and for which all men are prepared who engage in it, and those who do not engage in it, except in the persons of their friends, or in their children,” Nuntius said.
A proverb stated, “The chance of war is uncertain.”
People who engage in war can be victorious, defeated, killed, maimed, or taken prisoner.
“Ill news about my son?” Count Ferneze said. “My dear and only son, I’ll lay my soul. Aye, me, I am curst! The thought of his death wounds me, and the report of it will kill me quite.”
“It is not so ill, my lord,” Nuntius said.
“What is the news, then?” Count Ferneze asked.
“He has been taken prisoner, and that’s all,” Nuntius said.
Count Ferneze said:
“That’s enough, enough.
“I set my thoughts on love, on servile love, and forget my virtuous wife.
“I don’t feel the dangers, the bonds and wounds of my own flesh and blood, and therein I am a madman, therein I am plagued with the most just affliction under heaven.”
He felt guilty because he had been thinking about getting married and had not been thinking about the danger that his son was in because his son was a soldier.
Count Ferneze asked, “Has Maximilian been taken prisoner, too?”
“Nay, my good lord, he has returned with prisoners,” Nuntius said.
“Is it possible?” Count Ferneze said. “Can Maximilian return and view my face without my son, for whom he swore to take such care as for himself?”
“My lord, no amount of care and concern can change the events of war,” Nuntius said.
Count Ferneze said:
“Oh, in what tempests do my fortunes sail, still wracked and ruined with winds more foul and contrary than any northern gust or southern squall that ever yet enforced the sea to gape open and swallow the poor merchant’s merchandise up!
“First, in Vicenza I lost my first son.
“Next, here in Milan, I lost my most dear and loved lady, my wife.
“And now, my Paolo, prisoner to the French, which last, being printed with my other griefs, makes so huge a volume that my breast cannot contain them.
“But this is my love: I gave my love to Rachel and not to my son! Heaven has thrown this vengeance on me most deservedly, even if it were for nothing but the wronging of my steward.”
Count Ferneze had wished to wrong his steward, Christophero, by marrying Rachel after giving Christophero permission to marry her.
“My lord, since money — just money — may redress the worst of this misfortune, don’t be grieved,” Nuntius said. “Prepare his ransom, and your noble son shall greet your cheered eyes with the more honor.”
His was a problem that could be solved with money, and many other things are more valuable than money.
The larger the ransom, the more honor because the ransom showed how highly the prisoner was valued.
“I will prepare his ransom,” Count Ferneze said. “Gracious heaven, grant his imprisonment may be his worst fate — honored and soldier-like imprisonment — and that he is not manacled and made a drudge to his proud foe! And here I vow never to dream of unseemly, shameful amorous toys, nor aim at other joy on earth except the fruition of my only son: the pleasure of getting my son back safely.”
They exited.
— 3.5 —
Jaques came out of his house. He was carrying his gold and a scuttle — a container — full of horse dung.
Not seeing Count Ferneze, Jaques said:
“He’s gone. I knew it. This is our hot lover!
“I will believe them, aye. They may come in like simple wooers and be arrant thieves, and I would not know them. What servile villainies men will do for gold is not to be told.”
Referring to his gold, he said:
“Oh, it began to have a huge, strong smell, which, lying so long together in a place, I’ll give it ventilation.”
It must have acquired a huge, strong smell because Paolo Ferneze, Angelo, Christophero, and now Count Ferneze had been coming around his house. They must have smelled the gold.
Jaques continued:
“It shall have trick enough, and if the devil, which envies and is jealous of all goodness, has told them about my gold and where I kept it, I’ll set his burning nose once more to work, to smell where I removed it.”
He uncovered his gold and said, “Here it is! I’ll hide it and cover it with this horse dung.”
He buried his gold and covered it with horse dung.
Jaques continued:
“Who will suppose that such a precious nest is crowned with such a dunghill full of excrement?”
He now referred to his gold as if it were a child of his:
“Go in, my dear life. Sleep sweetly, my dear child, scarcely lawfully begotten, but yet gotten, and that’s enough.
“Rot, all hands that come near thee, except my own!
“Burn out, all eyes that see thee, except my own!
“All thoughts of thee be poison to their enamored hearts, except my own!”
He now referred to his gold as it were his ruler:
“I’ll take no leave, sweet prince, great emperor, but see thee every minute, king of kings.
“I’ll not be rude to thee and turn my back in going from thee, but go backward out, with my face toward thee, with humble curtsies.
“No one is within. No one overlooks my wall.
“To have gold and to have it safe, is all.”
As he exited, he kept facing and bowing to his gold.
CHAPTER 4
— 4.1 —
Maximilian, Chamont (who had taken the identity of Gaspar), Gaspar (who had taken the identity of Chamont), and Pacue entered the scene. Some soldiers attending Maximilian also arrived.
Chamont and Gaspar were Maximilian’s prisoners of war. They had exchanged identities because Chamont was a general, Chamont and Gaspar were friends, and Gaspar wanted to protect Chamont in case generals were not well treated. They had exchanged clothing so that Gaspar was dressed like a French general.
Pacue was a comic character, a boy who was likely to reveal Chamont’s and Gaspar’s identities through carelessness.
Maximilian said to Gaspar, who had taken the identity of Chamont, “Lord Chamont, and your valiant friend there, I cannot say ‘welcome’ to Milan. Your thoughts and that word are not musical and are not in harmony. But I can say you have come to Milan.”
Pacue said, “Mort Dieu!”
[By God’s death!]
He was laughing because Maximilian did not know his prisoners’ true identities.
Wanting Pacue to be quiet, Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) said sharply, “Garçon!”
The French word means, “Boy!”
Maximilian said, “Gentlemen — I would call an emperor so — you are now my prisoners. I am sorry. By the Virgin Mary, I say this: Spit in the face of your fortunes, for your treatment shall be honorable.”
He would treat his prisoners well.
Count Ferneze had prayed for the French to treat Paolo, his son who had been taken prisoner, well.
Gaspar (disguised as Chamont) said, “We know it, Signor Maximilian. The fame and reputation of all your actions sounds nothing else but perfect honor from Honor’s swelling cheeks.”
The artistic personification of Honor blows a trumpet to proclaim itself.
Maximilian had a reputation for behaving honorably.
“It shall do so still, I assure you, and I will give you reason why,” Maximilian said. “There is in this last battle, you know, a noble gentleman of our party and a truly valiant, semblably — similar to you — prisoner to your general as your honored selves to me, for whose safety this tongue has given warrant to his honorable father, the Count Ferneze.”
Who is “your general”? Chamont, whom Maximilian thought he was talking to (but he was actually talking to Gaspar), was a French general, but he had been captured. Paolo was now in the custody of another French general.
Because Paolo Ferneze had been taken prisoner, he was in a similar position as Maximilian’s two prisoners. Maximilian wanted Paolo to be treated well, and so out of empathy (and, no doubt, honor), he would treat his two prisoners well.
Maximilian asked, “Do you understand me?”
“Aye, signor,” Gaspar (disguised as Chamont) said.
“Well, then I must tell you, your ransoms will be to redeem him,” Maximilian said. “What do you think? What is your answer?”
The two men would be traded for Paolo Ferneze: Two men would be the ransom for one man.
Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) replied:
“By the Virgin Mary, with my lord’s leave here, I say, signor, this free and ample offer you have made agrees well with your honor, but not ours, for I don’t think other than that Chamont is as well born as is Ferneze. Then, if I am not mistaken, he scorns to have his worth so underprized that it should need an adjunct — an extra person — in exchange of any equal fortune.”
He was objecting that Chamont was so valuable a prisoner that he ought to be exchanged for Paolo: one man ought to be exchanged for one man. To add Gaspar to the ransom would be to undervalue Chamont. It would insult Chamont.
Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) continued:
“Noble signor, I am a soldier and I love Chamont. Before I would bruise his reputation with the least ruin of my own reputation in this vile kind, these legs should rot with irons, this body pine in prison until the flesh dropped from my bones in flakes like withered leaves, in the heart of autumn, from a stubborn oak.”
If Gaspar (disguised as Chamont) were exchanged for Paolo, that would leave the real Chamont a prisoner. He, however, would not be mistreated.
Maximilian said to Chamont (disguised as Gaspar), “Monsieur Gaspar — I take it that Gaspar is your name — don’t misunderstand me. I will trample on the heart, on the soul of him who shall say I will wrong you. What I purpose you cannot now know, but you shall know, and, doubt not, to your contentment.”
Maximilian would treat Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) well.
Maximilian then said to Gaspar (disguised as Chamont), “Lord Chamont, I will leave you. While I go in and present myself to the honorable count, until my return, so please you, your noble feet may measure this private, pleasant, and most princely walk.”
He then ordered, “Soldiers, watch them and respect them.”
Maximilian exited, and the soldiers guarded the prisoners. The soldiers were close to the prisoners but not so close that they could overhear their conversation.
Pacue said with a heavy French accent, “Oh, ver’ bon! [very good!] Excellenta gull [fool]! He take-a my Lord Chamont for Monsieur Gaspra and Monsieur Gaspra for my Lord Chamont! Oh, dis be excellent for make-a me laugha. Ha, ha, ha. Oh, my heart tickle-a!”
Gaspar (disguised as Chamont) said to Chamont (disguised as Gaspar):
“Aye, but Your Lordship does not know what hard fate might have pursued us; therefore, howsoever, the exchanging of our names was necessary, and we must now be careful to maintain this error strongly, which our own trick has thrust into their ignorant understandings.
“For should we, on the promise of this good fortune, appear again as ourselves — our real selves — it would both create in them a kind of anger and, perhaps, invert those honorable courses they intend.”
They needed to remain in disguise lest Maximilian become angry and treat them badly.
Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) said:
“True, my dear Gaspar, but this hang-by — this hanger-on, this Pacue — here will at one time or other, on my soul, reveal us and our trick.
“A secret in his mouth is like a wild bird put into a cage, whose door no sooner opens but it is out.”
He then said to Pacue, “But, sirrah, if I just learn thou have uttered this secret —”
“Uttera vat [what], Monsieur?” Pacue asked.
“That he is Gaspar and I am truly Chamont,” Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) said.
“Oh, pardonnez-moi, ’fore my tongue shall put out de secreta, shall breed de cankra [canker, open sore] in my mouth!” Pacue said.
“Don’t speak so loudly, Pacue!” Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) said.
“Faugh, you shall not hear de fool, for all your long ear [long ears],” Pacue said to the soldiers, but so quietly that they could not hear him. The long ears were asses’ ears.
He then said to Gaspar (disguised as Chamont), “Regard [Look], monsieur, you be de Chamont, Chamont be Gaspra.”
— 4.2 —
Count Ferneze, Maximilian, Francisco, Aurelia, Phoenixella, and Finio entered the scene. Finio was Francisco Colonnia’s young Italian page.
Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) and Gaspar (disguised as Chamont) talked together quietly, apart from the others.
“Quiet, here comes Maximilian,” Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) said.
“Oh, it’s likely that old man is the Count Ferneze,” Gaspar (disguised as Chamont) said.
“Are those his daughters, do you think?” Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) asked.
“Aye, to be sure, I think they are,” Gaspar (disguised as Chamont) said.
“’Fore God, the taller is a gallant lady,” Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) said.
The taller lady was Aurelia.
“Both ladies are gallant, believe me,” Gaspar (disguised as Chamont) said.
Maximilian pointed to Gaspar (disguised as Chamont), and said to Count Ferneze, “Truly, my honorable lord, Chamont was the father of this man.”
The elder Chamont had surprised Vicenza in 1510. His son bore his name: Lord Chamont, the friend of Gaspar.
“Oh, that may be, for when I lost my son, this man was but young, it seems,” Count Ferneze said.
“This man” was Gaspar (disguised as Chamont).
“Indeed, had Camillo lived, he would have been about the same age as this man, my lord,” Francisco Colonnia said.
Camillo was Count Ferneze’s long-lost son.
“He would have been, indeed,” Count Ferneze said. “Well, speak no more of him.”
Maximilian said to Francisco Colonnia, “Signor, perceive you the error? It was no good office in us to stretch the remembrance of so dear a loss.”
He then said, “Count Ferneze, let summer sit in your eye. Let there be no clouds or rain — let there be no tears. Look cheerfully, sweet count. Will you do me the honor to confine this noble spirit within the circle of your arms?”
Would he hug “this noble spirit”?
The noble spirit was Gaspar (disguised as Chamont).
Chamont was the son of the man who had surprised Vicenza, causing a battle in which Count Ferneze had lost his son.
Count Ferneze was unwilling to hug “this noble spirit,” but he did say, “Honored Chamont, reach me your valiant hand.”
He and Gaspar (disguised as Chamont), shook hands.
Count Ferneze then said:
“I could have wished some happier occurrence had introduced us to each other and had made the way to this mutual knowledge and acquaintanceship we each have with the other, but surely it is the pleasure of our fates that we should thus be wrecked on Fortune’s wheel.
“Let us prepare with steeled and settled patience to tread on Fortune’s torment, and, with minds confirmed, welcome the worst of the malice of Lady Fortune.”
Count Ferneze had suffered the loss of his son, and Gaspar (disguised as Chamont) had suffered being taken prisoner. Count Ferneze was recommending that they both stoically endure their fates.
Maximilian said to Count Ferneze: “Noble lord, this is the situation.”
He gestured toward Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) and said, “I have here, in my honor, set this gentleman free without ransom. He is now himself the master of his own destiny; his valor has deserved it, in the eye of my judgment.”
He then said to Chamont disguised as Gaspar, “Monsieur Gaspar, you are dear to me. Fortuna non mutat genus.”
The Latin proverb was “Fortune does not change kind.”
In other words: Good fortune does not change a bad man, who will remain bad. And bad fortune will not change a good man, who will remain good. Also, a nobly born man or woman will remain noble, despite his or her fortune/luck.
The proverb may not always be true, but events will show that the real Gaspar was and is a good man; the bad fortune in his past has not changed him.
Maximilian then said, “But let’s get to the main point.”
He said to Gaspar (disguised as Chamont), “If it may square with Your Lordship’s liking and his love, I could desire that he [Chamont disguised as Gaspar] were now immediately employed to go to your noble general and propose the exchange of Paolo Ferneze for yourself [Gaspar disguised as Chamont]. It is a business that requires the tender hand of a friend.”
Count Ferneze said, “Aye, and it would be with more speed effected if he would undertake it.”
“That is true, my lord,” Maximilian said.
He then said to Chamont (disguised as Gaspar), “Monsieur Gaspar, how stand you disposed to this motion? Do you agree with it?”
Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) replied, “My duty must attend His Lordship’s will.”
Maximilian then asked Gaspar (disguised as Chamont), “What does the Lord Chamont say?”
Gaspar (disguised as Chamont) replied, “My will then approves what these have urged. I agree with this proposal.”
Maximilian said, “Why, there is good harmony, good music, in this.”
He then said to Chamont (disguised as Gaspar), “Monsieur Gaspar, you shall waste no time. Only, I will give you a bowl of rich wine to the health of your general, another to the success of your journey, and a third to the love of my sword.”
They would drink together.
Maximilian then ordered, “Pass!”
“Pass” was an order for the soldiers to leave, too.
Everyone except Aurelia and Phoenixella exited.
Aurelia said:
“Why, how are you now, sister? In a motley muse?”
A motley muse is a variegated mood, one in which conflicting emotions exist.
Aurelia continued:
“Come on, there’s something in the wind — there’s something happening, I see. Indeed, this brown study — this reverie — suits not with your black.”
A brown study is a reverie; it occurs when someone is absorbed in his or her thoughts.
“Your clothing and your thoughts are of two colors.”
Her clothing was black, but her mood was light.
Phoenixella replied, “In good faith, I think that this young Lord Chamont [Gaspar, disguised as Chamont] resembles my mother. Sister, doesn’t he resemble our mother?”
“That is a motherly fancy and opinion,” Aurelia said. “Oh, blind excuse, blinder than Love himself!”
Aurelia believed that her sister had fallen in love.
Love, aka Cupid, is depicted blindfolded.
Aurelia continued, “Well, sister, well, Cupid has taken his stand in both your eyes — you have fallen in love. The case is altered.”
“The case is altered” means “The situation has changed.”
“And what of that?” Phoenixella asked.
Aurelia said, “Nay, nothing but a saint, another Bridget, one who for a face, aka reputation, would put down Vesta, in whose looks swim the very sweetest cream of modesty. And now are you to turn tippet?”
Saint Bridget of Ireland refused to marry, and she lived in a religious cell. In doing so, she did not follow Vesta, goddess of the hearth. The hearth is the center of family life.
A “tippet” is a garment. “To turn tippet” was then-current slang for “to change one’s behavior.” In a bad sense, a turn-tippet is a turncoat or renegade.
Phoenixella had been mourning and refusing to feel pleasure, but now she was falling in love.
Aurelia then said, “Ha, ha, will you give a packing-penny to virginity?”
A penny was a gift given to someone whose presence was unwanted, such as a beggar. They were given a penny so they would pack off.
Aurelia continued, “I thought you’d dwell so long in Cyprus isle that you’d worship Madam Venus eventually.”
Phoenixella had been wearing the mourning fabric called cypress for a long time, and now Aurelia was joking that she had finally started to worship the goddess of sexual love: Venus, who was born on the island of Cyprus.
Aurelia said, “But, come, the strongest fall, and why not you?”
Phoenixella frowned and Aurelia said, “Nay, do not frown.”
“Bah, you fool, adieu,” Phoenixella said.
She exited.
Alone, Aurelia said to herself:
“Well, I may jest or so, but Cupid knows that my falling in love is as bad or worse than hers.
“Oh, Monsieur Gaspar [Chamont (disguised as Gaspar)], if thou are a man, don’t be afraid to court me! Do but speak. Challenge thy right and wear it, for I swear, until thou arrived, never came affection here.”
She wanted Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) to pursue her.
— 4.3 —
Pacue and Finio talked together. Pacue was Chamont’s French page, and Finio was Francisco Colonnia’s Italian page. Both were comic characters, and both were boys.
Finio said, “Come on, my sweet, finical Pacue, the very prime — the first — of pages, here’s an excellent place for us to practice in. Nobody sees us here. Come, let’s get to it.”
They were going to practice courtly etiquette: hand-kissing, deep bowing, the saying of formulaic protestations, and so on. Their gestures shall not be described in any kind of detail; some of them perhaps ought not to be done in public.
Onion entered the scene.
Pacue replied to Finio, “Contenta. Regardez, vous le premier.”
[I am content with that. Look, you go first.]
“Sirrah Finio!” Onion said.
“Mort Dieu, le pesant,” Pacue said.
[My God, I am weighing it — I am considering my answer.]
“Did thou see Valentine?” Onion asked.
“Valentine?” Finio said. “No.”
“No?” Onion said.
He started to leave.
“No,” Finio said. “Sirrah Onion, where are you going?”
“Oh, I am vexed!” Onion said. “He who would trust any of these lying travelers —”
Travelers frequently told outrageous lies about their travels.
Finio interrupted, “— please, stay, good Onion.”
Pacue said, “Monsieur Onion, venez ça, come hidera, je vous prie [come here, come hither, I beg you]. By gar [By God], me ha’ see [I have seen] two, tree, four hundra tousand [hundred thousand] of your cousin hang. “
Onions for sale were strung on a rope in the marketplace. (And some people named Onion were occasionally hung as punishment for their crimes.)
Pacue continued, “Lend me your hand; shall pray for know you bettra.”
[Shake hands with me. I desire to know you better].
Onion shook his hand and replied, “I thank you, good Signor Parlez-vous.”
He then said quietly to himself, “Oh, that I were in another world, in the Indies or somewhere, so that I might have room to laugh!”
Overhearing Onion, Pacue said, “Ah, oui, fort bien.”
[Ah, yes, very well.]
He then said to Finio, “Stand. You be dere now; me will come to you. Bonjour, monsieur.”
Pacue and Finio now practiced one form of greeting each other.
They embraced each other under the arm.
“Good morrow, good signor,” Finio said.
Pacue replied, “By gar, be mush glad for see you.”
[By God, I am very glad to see you.]
“I return you most kind thanks, sir,” Finio said.
Amused by their practicing courtly etiquette, Onion said to himself, “What! What! By God’s blood, this is rare!”
Overhearing Onion, Pacue said, “Nay, shall make you say ‘rare’ by and by.”
“Rare” can mean “splendid.”
Pacue and Finio now practiced another form of greeting each other.
They embraced each other over the shoulder: one arm over the other’s shoulder, and one arm under the other’s shoulder.
Pacue said, “Regard [Look], Monsieur Finio.”
“Signor Pacue!” Finio said,
“Dieu vous garde [God save you], monsieur,” Pacue said,
“God save you, sweet signor,” Finio replied.
Pacue then asked, “Monsieur Onion, is it not fort bien [very good]?”
Onion misheard bien as “bean.”
Onion said, “‘Bean,’ said he? I wish that I were in debt of a pottle of beans; I could do as much.”
A pottle is two quarts.
For two quarts of beans — enough to pay off the debt — Onion would act as Finio and Pacue were acting.
“Welcome, signor,” Finio said. “What’s next?”
What was the next form of greeting they would practice?
Pacue replied, “Oh, here, vois de grand admiration, as should meet perchance, Monsieur Finio!”
[Oh, here, see the grand admiration, if we should meet by chance, Monsieur Finio!]
Pacue performed an exaggerated act of courtesy, one that Onion would soon comment on.
Finio bowed back and said, “Monsieur Pacue!”
Pacue said, “Jesu! By gar, who think we shall meet here?”
[Jesus! By God, who would have thought that we two would meet here?]
“By this hand, I am not a little proud of it, sir,” Finio said.
Onion said, “This trick is only for the chamber; it cannot be cleanly done in public.”
Some acts of etiquette, such as embracing someone’s knees, are more intimate than others.
Pacue said, “Well, what say you for dis, den, Monsieur?”
He demonstrated a courteous gesture.
“Nay, please, sir,” Finio said.
“Par ma foi, vous bien encounters!” Pacue said.
[By my faith, you are good at encounters!]
“What do you mean, sir?” Finio said. “Let your glove alone.”
Pacue had used the glove in the greeting.
“Comment se porte la santé?” Pacue said.
[How is your health?]
“Indeed, exceeding well, sir,” Finio said.
“Trot, be mush joy for hear,” Pacue said.
[Truly, it gives me much joy to hear that.]
“And how is it with you, sweet Signor Pacue?” Finio asked.
“Fait, comme vous voyez,” Pacue answered.
[Truly, it is as you can see.]
Onion said, “Young gentlemen, spirits of blood [gentlemen of courage and breeding], if ever you’ll taste of a sweet piece of mutton, do Onion a good turn now.”
Mutton means both 1) a kind of food, and 2) a sexually available woman.
Pacue asked, “Quoi? Quoi? Parlez, monsieur, what is it?”
[What? What? Speak, monsieur, what is it?]
“Indeed, teach me one of these tricks,” Onion requested.
He wanted to learn one of their greetings even though he was not in debt for a pottle of beans..
Pacue answered, “Oh, me shall do presently. Stand you dere; you signor, dere; myself is here. So, fort bien [very good]. Now I parle to Monsieur Onion, Onion parle to you, you speaka to me, so, and as you parle, change the bonnet [remove your hat], Monsieur Onion.”
Parle meant “speak.”
They greeted one another with comically extravagant gestures.
“Monsieur Finio!” Onion said.
“Monsieur Pacue!” Finio said.
“Pray, be covera,” Pacue said.
[Please, put your hat back on.]
“Nay, I beseech you, sir,” Onion said.
“What do you mean?” Finio asked.
“Pardon-moi, shall be so,” Pacue said.
“Oh, God, sir,” Onion said.
“Not I, in good faith, sir,” Finio said.
“By gar, you must,” Pacue said.
Onion said to Pacue, “It shall be as you wish.”
Pacue and Finio had been arguing about whether Onion should or should not wear his hat. Pacue wanted him to wear his hat; Finio did not.
Onion had agreed to wear his hat.
“Nay, then, you wrong me,” Finio said.
Onion said, “Well, if ever I come to be great —”
Some people rise and become great men.
Pacue interrupted, “— you be big enough for de Onion already.”
“I mean a great man,” Onion said.
“Then thou would be a monster,” Finio said.
Onion said:
“Well, God doesn’t know what fortune may do.
“Command me; use me from the sole to the crown and the crown to the sole, meaning not only from the crown of the head and the sole of the foot, but also the foot of the mind and the crowns of the purse.”
Presumably the “foot of the mind” has a sole, or soul.
Onion continued:
“I cannot stay now, young gentlemen, but — time was, time is, and time shall be.”
They exited.
— 4.4 —
Chamont (disguised as Gaspar) and Gasper (disguised as Chamont) talked together. Chamont, a free man, was leaving, while Gaspar, a prisoner, was staying. Chamont was going to arrange a prisoner exchange that would free Gaspar. They were talking privately with no one around to overhear them.
Chamont said:
“Sweet Gaspar, I am sorry we must part, but strong necessity forces it to happen.
“Don’t let the time seem long to you, my friend, until my return, for I swear by our love — the sacred sphere wherein our souls are knit — I will endeavor to effect this business of the prisoner exchange with all industrious care and happy speed.”
Gasper replied, “My lord, these declarations would come well to one less capable of deserving your favor than I, in whom your merit is confirmed with such authentical and grounded proofs.”
“Well, I will use up no more time. Gaspar, adieu,” Chamont said.
“Farewell, my honored lord,” Gasper said.
“Commend me to the lady, Aurelia, my good Gaspar,” Chamont said.
“I would have remembered that, even if you had not,” Gasper said.
“Once more, adieu, sweet Gaspar,” Chamont said.
“My good lord!” Gasper said.
Gasper exited.
Chamont said:
“Thy virtues are more precious than thy name.”
Jasper is a precious gemstone.
Chamont continued:
“Kind gentleman! I would not sell thy love for all the earthly objects that my eyes have ever tasted. Surely, thou are nobly born, however fortune has obscured thy birth, for native honor sparkles in thine eyes.
“How may I bless the time wherein Chamont, my honored father, did surprise Vicenza, where this my friend, known by no name, was found, being then a child and scarcely able to speak, to whom my father gave this name of Gaspar, and my father considered Gaspar as his own until his — my father’s — death.
“Since that time we two have shared our mutual fortunes with equal spirits and, except for death’s rude hand, no violence shall dissolve this sacred bond.”
Gaspar was a gentleman by nature. Was he also a gentleman by birth?
— 4.5 —
Juniper was in his cobbler’s shop, singing. Onion walked over to him.
Peter Onion said, “Fellow Juniper, no more of thy songs and sonnets, sweet Juniper, no more of thy hymns and madrigals. Thou sing, but I sigh.”
“What’s the matter, Peter, ha?” Juniper asked. “What, in an academy still, still in sable and costly black array, ha?”
University scholars wore black robes.
“Please, rise,” Onion said. “Mount, mount, sweet Juniper, for I go down the wind and yet I puff, for I am vexed.”
Juniper stood up, but part of Onion’s meaning was metaphorical.
“Down the wind” meant “in the direction of the wind.” Onion was being blown in a certain direction — toward Rachel — by Love.
“Ha, bully, vexed?” Juniper said. “What, intoxicate? Is thy brain in a quintessence, an idea, a metamorphosis, an apology?”
In other words, is your brain in a turmoil?
Juniper continued, “Ha, rogue? Come, this love feeds upon thee, I see by thy cheeks, and this love drinks healths of vermilion tears, I see by thine eyes.”
Onion’s cheeks were hollow, a sign of unrequited love. His eyes were red and teary.
“Healths” are “toasts.” So are “carouses.”
“I confess Cupid’s carouse,” Onion said. “He plays super negulum with my liquor of life.”
Super ungulem means “on the fingernail.” Drinkers would pour the last couple of drops on their left thumbnail to show that the cup was empty.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, supernaculum means “to the last drop.” Cupid, aka Love, has drunk Onion’s vital life essence to the last drop.
“Tut, thou are a goose to be Cupid’s gull, aka fool,” Juniper said. “Bah, no more of these contemplations and calculations, thoughts and schemes. Don’t mourn, for Rachel’s thine own.”
“As for that, let the higher powers work,” Onion said. “But, sweet Juniper, I am not grieved on account of her, and yet I am grieved on account of her in a second person or, if not so, yet in a third.”
The “second person” would turn out to be Valentine, as Onion would soon make known.
“What! Second person?” Juniper said. “Away! Away! In the crotchets already? What’s the longitude and latitude? Where are you? What second, what person, huh?”
“Juniper, I’ll betray and expose myself before thee, for thy company is sweet to me,” Onion said, “but I must entreat thy helping hand in the case.”
Juniper replied, “Tut, no more of this surquedry — this arrogance and presumption. I am thine own, ad unguem [to the fingernail, aka to the end], upsy Friese, pell mell.”
“Upsy Friese” means the Frisian way of drinking deeply.
“Pell mell” means “in a disordered rush.”
Juniper then asked, “Come, what case, what case?”
“Case” can mean 1) female genitalia, 2) matter, and/or 3) a legal case.
“As for the case, it may be any man’s case as well as mine — Rachel, I mean — but I’ll meddle with her soon,” Onion said.
One meaning of “meddle with” is “have sex with.”
Onion continued, “In the meantime, Valentine is the man who has wronged me.”
“What! My ingle wrong thee?” Juniper said. “Is it possible?”
“Your ingle?” Onion said. “Hang him, infidel! Well, and if I am not revenged on him, let Peter Onion, by the infernal gods, be turned to a leek or a scallion! I spoke to him about a ditty for this handkerchief.”
He had spoken to Valentine about writing a poesy to be embroidered on a handkerchief that would be given to Rachel as a gift.
“Why, hasn’t he done it?” Juniper asked.
“Done it?” Onion said. “Not a verse, I swear by this hand.”
“Oh, in diebus illis!” Juniper said.
In diebus illis is Latin for “in those days.” It basically means, “Once upon a time.”
Juniper continued:
“Oh, preposterous! Well, come, be blithe. The best inditer — writer — of them all is sometimes dull.
“Fellow Onion, pardon my ingle. He is a man, and he has imperfections and declinations as other men have. His muse sometimes cannot curvet nor prognosticate and come off, as it should.”
“Imperfectons” are faults.
By “declinations,” Juniper may have meant “instances of declining to do something.” In this case, it meant not keeping a promise.
“Curvet nor prognosticate” meant “dance nor prophesy.” In other words, Valentine’s muse sometimes takes the day off.
Juniper continued:
“No matter. I’ll hammer out a paraphrase for thee myself.”
He meant that he would wrote a short poesy for Onion.
“No, sweet Juniper, no,” Onion said. “Danger breeds delay; love makes me choleric. I can bear it no longer.”
The proverb actually is this: “Delay breeds danger.”
“Not bear what, my mad meridian slave, not bear what?” Juniper asked.
“Meridian” means “relating to noon,” when the sun is at its highest. Jupiter is using the word to mean “supreme.”
“I can’t bear Cupid’s burden, which is love,” Onion said. “It is too heavy, too tolerable [he meant ‘intolerable’]. And as for the handkerchief and the posey, I will not trouble thee. But if thou will go with me into her father’s backside, old Jaques’ backside, and speak for me to Rachel, I will not be ingratitude [be ungrateful]. The old man is abroad — out of his house — and all.”
“Backside” can mean “the backyard of the house.” You already know the other meaning.
“Are thou sure of it?” Juniper asked.
“As sure as a legal obligation,” Onion said.
“Let’s leave, then,” Juniper said. “Come, we spend time in a vain circumference [useless dilly-dallying]. Trade, I cashier [dismiss] thee until tomorrow. Fellow Onion, for thy sake I finish this workaday [workday].”
He was going to take the day off so he could help Onion.
Onion said, “God-a-mercy, thank you, and for thy sake I’ll at any time make a holiday and take a day off so I can help you.”
— 4.6 —
Angelo and Rachel talked together.
Angelo said, “Nay, I say to thee, Rachel, I come to comfort thee. Don’t be so sad.”
“Oh, Signor Angelo,” Rachel said, “no comfort but Paolo’s presence can remove this sadness from my heart.”
Angelo said:
“Nay, then, you’re fond, and you lack that strength of judgment and election that should be attendant on your years and form and body shape.”
“Fond” can mean “foolish” or “in love.”
Angelo continued, “Will you, because your lord has been taken prisoner, blubber and weep and keep a peevish stir, as though you would turn turtle with the news?”
Turtledoves have a mournful cry.
Angelo continued:
“Come, come, be wise.
“By God’s blood, let’s say that your lord dies, and you go mar your face as you begin to do now with your mourning, what would you do, do you think? Who would care for you?
“But this is how it is:
“When nature will bestow her gifts on such as don’t know how to use them, you find some who, had they but one quarter of your fair beauty, they would make it show a little otherwise than you do this, or they would see the face-painter [cosmetician] twice an hour.
“And I commend them, aye, who can use the art of cosmetology with such good skill and judgment.”
“You talk idly,” Rachel said. “If this is your best comfort for me, keep it still. My senses cannot feed on such sour delicacies.”
“And why, sweetheart?” Angelo said.
“Nay, stop, good signor,” Rachel said.
“Come, I have sweeter foods yet in store,” Angelo said.
Juniper, out of sight but within hearing, said to Onion, “Aye, in any case.”
He then called, “Mistress Rachel!”
“Rachel?” Angelo said.
“For God’s pity, Signor Angelo, I hear my father!” Rachel said. “Leave, for God’s sake!”
Angelo said, “By God’s blood, I am between the impulse to go and the impulse to stay, I think. This is twice now I have been interrupted thus.”
Earlier, in 2.5, Rachel’s father had interrupted his intended pursuit of Rachel.
Angelo exited.
Rachel said, “I pray to God that Angelo does not meet my father!”
She thought that the man calling her — who was actually Juniper — was her father.
— 4.7 —
Onion and Juniper entered Jaques’ backside, aka backyard.
“Oh, splendid! She’s yonder,” Onion said.
Rachel exited.
“Oh, terrible! She’s gone,” Onion said.
Juniper said, “Yea, so nimble in your dilemmas and your hyperboles? ‘Hey, my love,’ ‘Oh, my love,’ ‘At the first sight,’ by the Mass.”
“At the first sight” is “love at first sight.”
Onion said, “Oh, how she scudded! Oh, how she darted nimbly! Oh, sweet, hurried scud! Oh, sweet movement! How she tripped! Oh, delicate trip-and-go!”
To “scud” is to “move briskly.”
A “scud” is a brisk movement.
A scut, which Onion may have been thinking of, is 1) a rabbit’s or deer’s short tail, or 2) female genitalia.
A trip is a skip or a light, quick walk.
“Come, thou are enamored with the influence of her profundity,” Juniper said.
Rachel’s “profundity” may be her fundament, or backside.
He continued, “But, sirrah, listen a little.”
“Oh, rare!” Onion said. “What! What! Surpassing, indeed. What is it! What is it!”
“What will thou say now if Rachel were to stand now and play hity-tity through the keyhole to behold the equipage of thy person?” Juniper asked.
In other words, what if Rachel is standing behind the door and playing bo-peep with her eyes through the keyhole in order to observe Onion’s “equipage.”
The equipage is appurtenances. What appurtenances? Perhaps a bulge in his pants.
“Oh, sweet equipage!” Onion said. “Try, good Juniper, tickle her, talk, talk. Oh, drare!”
“Drare” is a portmanteau word combining “dare” and “rare.” He wanted to take a chance for a splendid outcome. If Rachel were behind the door, and if Juniper could speak the right words to her, then Rachel could become Onion’s wife.
Juniper called through the door, “Mistress Rachel!”
He said to Onion, “Watch then in case her father comes.”
He called, “Rachel, Madonna, Rachel!”
He then said to Onion, “No answer.”
“Say I am here, Onion or Peter or so,” Peter Onion said.
“No, I’ll knock,” Juniper said. “We’ll not stand upon horizons and tricks but fall roundly to the matter.”
“Horizons” are “orisons” or “entreaties.”
“Fall roundly” may mean “fall into a round,” or “‘fall’ into a vagina.”
He knocked.
“Well said, sweet Juniper,” Onion said. “Horizons? Hang ’em! Knock, knock!”
From inside the house, Rachel said, “Who’s there? Father?”
“Father?” Juniper said. “No, and yet a father, if you please to be a mother.”
Onion wanted to be the father of her children.
“Well said, Juniper,” Onion said. “Speak to her again: a smack or two more of the mother.”
Juniper called to Rachel, “Do you hear, sweet soul, sweet Rhadamant, sweet https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/case/facing/Machiavel? One word, Melpomone. Are you at leisure?”
Rhadamant is a judge in the Land of the Dead. Machivel is Machiavelli, who had the reputation of being unscrupulous when it came to politics. Melopomone is the Muse of Tragedy.
Not many, if any, women would want to be called Rhadamant, Machivel, or Melopomone.
“At leisure?” Rachel said. “To do what?”
“To do what?” Juniper said. “To do nothing but be liable to the ecstasy of true love’s exigent or so. You smell [detect] my meaning?”
“Exigent” means “necessity,” but Onion thought that Juniper had said “excrement.”
“Smell?” Onion said. “Filthy, fellow Juniper, filthy! Smell? Oh, most odious!”
“How ‘filthy’?” Juniper said.
“Filthy, by this finger!” Onion said. “Smell? Smell a rat, smell a pudding.”
“To smell a rat” means “to smell trouble.”
“Pudding” can mean 1) entrails, or 2) a food consisting of a stuffed stomach or other entrail.
“Away!” Onion said.
He wanted Juniper to get away from Rachel’s door and let him do the talking.
Onion continued, “These tricks are for trulls. A plain wench loves plain dealing and straight talking. I’ll https://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/benjonson/k/works/case/facing/go talk to her, myself. Smell, to a marchpane wench!”
A trull is a prostitute.
“Marchpane” is marzipan, a sweet dish. Rachel is a sweet wench.
“With all my heart,” Juniper said. “I’ll be legitimate and silent as an apple-squire. I’ll see nothing and say nothing.”
By “legitimate,” Juniper may have meant “intimate.”
An apple-squire is a pimp.
Juniper was saying that he would be as quiet as a pimp standing at a door behind which a prostitute and her customer were transacting “business.”
“Sweetheart! Sweetheart!” Onion called to Rachel.
“And bag pudding,” Juniper said. “Ha, ha, ha!”
A bag pudding is a pudding that has been boiled in a bag.
Juniper had mentioned together a sweet heart and a bag pudding (stuffed stomach or other entrail).
Not my kind of humor, but Juniper thought his joke was funny.
Jaques, Rachel’s father, called, “What, Rachel, my girl? What, Rachel!”
“By God’s eyelid!” Onion said.
“What, Rachel!” Jaques called.
“Here I am,” Rachel answered from behind the door.
“What rakehell calls Rachel?” Onion said. “Oh, treason to my love!”
He had not recognized her father’s voice.
A “rakehell” is a scoundrel.
“It’s her father, on my life,” Juniper said. “How shall we entrench and edify [hide and fortify] ourselves from him?”
“Oh, coney-catching Cupid!” Onion said.
A coney can be 1) a rabbit, 2) a fool, or 3) a lady.
Cupid, aka Love, makes fools of many people.
Jaques entered the scene and said, “What? In my backside? Where? What did they come for?”
There were two possible answers: 1) Rachel, and 2) his gold.
Onion climbed a tree.
Jaques said, “Where are they? Rachel! Thieves! Thieves!”
He seized Juniper and said, “Stay, villain, slave!”
He called, “Rachel, untie my dog!”
He then said to Juniper, “Nay, thief, thou cannot escape.”
“I beg you, sir,” Juniper said.
“A pitiful Onion!” Onion said, hiding in the tree. “I wish that thou had a rope!”
Onions for sale in the marketplace were strung on a string.
“Why, Rachel!” Jaques said. “When will you do what I say? Let loose my dog! Garlic, my mastiff! Let him loose, I say!”
“For God’s sake, hear me speak!” Juniper said. “Keep your cur tied up!”
“I don’t fear Garlic,” Onion said to himself. “He’ll not bite Onion, his kinsman. I pray to God he comes out, and then they’ll not smell me.”
“Well, then, deliver,” Jaques said. “Come, deliver, slave.”
“Deliver” means “give me your valuables,” as in a highwayman’s order to “stand [still] and deliver [your valuables].”
Jaques thought that Juniper had stolen his gold, and he wanted his gold back.
“What should I deliver?” Juniper asked.
“Oh, thou would have me tell thee, would thou?” Jaques said. “Show me thy hands. What do thou have in thy hands?”
Juniper held out his hands and said, “Here are my hands.”
“Wait,” Jaques said. “Aren’t thy fingers’ ends begrimed with dirt? No, thou have wiped them.”
Jaques was afraid that Juniper had dug up his gold.
“Wiped them?” Juniper asked.
“Aye, thou villain!” Jaques said. “Thou are a subtle knave. Take off thy shoes. Come, I will see them.”
He called, “Give me a knife here, Rachel.”
He then told Juniper, “I’ll rip the soles.”
In the tree, Onion said to himself, “It’s doesn’t matter. He’s a cobbler; he can mend them.”
“What, are you mad?” Juniper asked. “Are you detestable? Would you make an anatomy of me? Do you think that I am not true orthography?”
“Anatomy” is a body used for dissecting.
“Orthography” is the study of proper spelling.
“‘Orthography’? ‘Anatomy’?” Jaques said.
Like most people, he frequently did not understand Juniper.
“For God’s sake, be not so inviolable [‘unable to be violated,’ but Juniper meant ‘impervious to argument’],” Juniper said. “I am no ambuscade [person lying in ambush]. What predicament [situation] call you this? Why do you intimate [hint] so much?”
Jaques patted Juniper’s body, searching for gold, and said, “I can feel nothing.”
Onion said to himself, “By our Lady, but Onion feels something.”
He may have felt danger.
Jaques said to Juniper, “Wait, sir, you are not yet gone. I have not yet finished. Shake your legs, come, and your arms. Be brief, wait.”
Juniper shook his arms and legs, but no gold fell to the ground.
Jaques began searching Juniper’s breeches, whose then-current style was wide and baggy and stuffed with hair.
Jaques said, “Let me see these drums, these kilderkins [casks], these bombard slops [baggy trousers]. What is it crams — stuffs — them so?”
Jaques thought that his gold might be hidden in Juniper’s wide, baggy trousers.
“Nothing but hair,” Juniper said.
“That’s true,” Jaques said, finishing his search of Juniper’s trousers.
He then began to search Juniper’s hair, saying, “I had almost forgot this rug, this hedgehog’s nest, this hay-mow, this bear’s skin, this heath, this furze-bush.”
A “hay-mow” is a hay-stack.
A “heath” is uncultivated land.
“Oh, let me go!” Juniper said. “You tear my hair, you revolve [spin about] my brains and understanding!”
Jaques said to himself:
“Heart, thou are somewhat eased. Half of my fear has taken its leave of me; the other half still keeps possession in despite of hope, until these amorous eyes of mine court my fair gold.
“Dear, I come to thee!”
He then said to Juniper, “Fiend, why are thou not gone? Leave, my soul’s vexation! Satan, go hence! Why do thou stare at me? Why do thou stay? Why do thou pore — stare — on the ground with thievish eyes? What do thou see there, thou cur? What do thou stare open-mouthed at? Go away from my house!”
He called, “Rachel, send Garlic forth!”
“I am gone, sir, I am gone,” Juniper said. “For God’s sake, stop!”
Juniper exited.
“Pack off and thank God thou escape so well away!” Jaques said.
Still in the tree, Onion said to himself, “If I escape from this tree, Destinies, I defy you.”
The three Destinies are the Three Fates. One Fate spins the thread of life, a second Fate measures the thread of life, and the third Fate cuts the thread of life.
Thinking himself alone, Jaques said to himself:
“I cannot see by any characters — signs — written on this earth that any felonious foot has taken acquaintance of this hallowed ground.
“No one sees me.
“Knees, do homage to your lord — to your gold.”
He knelt and dug up the gold.
Seeing the gold, he said:
“It is safe. It is safe. It lies and sleeps so soundly that it would do one good to look on it. If this bliss should be given to any man who has much gold, justly to say, ‘It is safe,’ then I say, ‘It is safe.’
“Oh, what a heavenly round — a circular dance — these two words dance within me and without — outside — me!
“First, I think them, and then I speak them, then I watch — heed and listen to — their sound, and drink it greedily with both my ears, then think, then speak, then drink their sound again, and racket round about this body’s court these two sweet words: ‘It is safe.’
“Wait, I will feed my other senses.”
Jaques smelled the gold and said, “Oh, how sweet it smells!”
Still in the tree, Onion said, “I marvel he doesn’t smell Onion, being so near it.”
Burying the gold, Jaques said:
“Down to thy grave again, thou beauteous ghost!
“Angels, men say, are spirits; spirits are invisible. Bright angels, are you so?
“Be you invisible to every eye, except only these eyes of mine.”
Angels are 1) attendant spirits, and 2) coins.
Jaques then said:
“Sleep. I’ll not break your rest, although you break mine because I worry about you.
“Dear saints, adieu, adieu!
“My feet part from you, but my soul dwells with you.”
Jaques exited.
“Has he gone?” Onion asked himself
Climbing down from the tree, Onion said:
“Oh, Fortune my friend, and not Fortune my foe,
“I come down to embrace thee and kiss thy great toe!”
Juniper returned to Jaques’ backyard and said, “Fellow Onion? Peter?”
“Fellow Juniper!” Peter Onion said.
Juniper said, “What, has the old panurgo gone, departed, cosmographied, ha?”
A “panurgo” is a deceitful old man.
By “cosmographied,” Juniper meant that Jaques had vanished into the cosmos.
“Oh, aye, and listen, sirrah,” Onion said.
Then he reconsidered telling Juniper about the gold: “Shall I tell him? No.”
Juniper said, “Nay, be brief and declare. Stand not upon conundrums now. Thou know what contagious [malapropism for ‘outrageous’] speeches I have suffered for thy sake. If he should come again and invent me here —”
The Latin invenire means “locate” or “encounter.”
Juniper meant that he was worried that Jaques would find him here.
Onion said to himself, “He says the truth; he suffered for my sake. I will tell him.”
He said out loud, “Sirrah Juniper —”
Then he reconsidered: “And yet I will not.”
“What do thou say, sweet Onion?” Juniper asked.
Onion said, “If thou had smelled the scent of me when I was in the tree, thou would not have said so.”
Juniper would not have told Jaques where Onion was hiding.
Onion continued, “But, sirrah, the case is altered with me. My heart has given love a box of the ear — a smash on the side of the head — made him kick up the heels, indeed.”
One meaning of “kick up the heels” is to trip someone.
The gold had made Onion fall out of love. He wanted the gold more than he wanted Rachel.
Juniper said, “Do thou say that to me, mad Greek? How did that happen? How did that chance to happen?”
Greeks were proverbially madcap.
Onion said to himself, “I cannot hold it inside myself.”
He then said out loud, “Juniper, have an eye. Look. Keep an eye on the door. Watch for Jaques.”
He dug up the gold, which was hidden under horse dung.
Then he said:
“The old proverb’s true, I see: ‘Gold is but muck.’
“Nay, Godso, Juniper, look to the door! An eye to the main chance! Here, you slave, have an eye!”
The main chance was the main issue: the chance to get rich by stealing the gold. The way to do that was to keep an eye out for Jaques.
“O inexorable, O infallible, O intricate, divine, and superficial Fortune!” Juniper said, looking at the gold.
The word “superficial” seems not to go with the other adjectives. “Sufficient” is more appropriate. Or “super-sufficient.”
“Nay, it will be sufficient soon,” Onion said. “Here, look here!”
“O insolent good luck!” Juniper said.
Another odd use of an adjective.
Perhaps Juniper meant “insolvent good luck,” or “good luck to someone who is insolvent.”
Juniper asked, “How did thou produce the intelligence [gain the knowledge] of the gold minerals?”
“I’ll tell you that soon,” Onion said.
He handed Juniper some gold and said, “Here, make shift, do your best, convey, cram.”
In other words, hide the gold on your person.
“I’ll teach you, Jaques, how you shall call for Garlic again, indeed,” Onion said.
Juniper said, “By God’s blood, what shall we do with all this? We shall never bring it to a consumption.”
In other words, they would never be able to spend this much money. There was too much wealth to consume in spending.
“Consumption?” Onion said. “Why, we’ll be most sumptuously attired, man.”
“By this gold, I will have three or four most stigmatical suits soon,” Jaques said.
“Stigmatical” means “villainous.”
In this culture, there were rules saying that people could not dress above their social class. If Juniper and Onion were to wear sumptuous clothing, they would breaking those rules. For them, such clothing would be a stigma: a mark of infamy.
“I’ll go in my footcloth,” Onion said. “I’ll turn gentleman.”
A “footcloth” is an ornamental cloth for a horse. Onion meant that he would ride a horse that wore a footcloth, but it sounded as if Onion would be wearing the footcloth.
“So will I,” Juniper said.
“But what badge shall we display?” Onion asked. “What cullison?”
Badges and cullisance were signs of nobility.
Juniper answered, “As for that, let’s use the infidelity and commiseration [corruption and sympathetic consideration] of some harrot [herald] of arms; he shall give us a gudgeon.”
Juniper was using the word “gudgeon,” which is a kind of fish, but he had meant the word “scutcheon,” which refers to a shield that displays a coat of arms.
A herald could be bribed to give them a coat of arms; the herald could take the bribe and say that he gave them the coat of arms out of sympathetic consideration for them.
“A ‘gudgeon’?” Onion said. “A scutcheon, thou should say, man.”
“A scutcheon or a gudgeon,” Juniper said. “All is one and the same.”
“Well, our arms are good enough,” Onion said. “Let’s look to our legs.”
They had decided to get coats of arms; now they needed to run away.
“I am content,” Juniper said. “I agree. We’ll be jogging.”
They would be jogging their body as they ran. They would also be jingling the gold coins.
“Rachel, we retire,” Onion said. “Garlic, God be with you.”
“Farewell, sweet Jaques,” Juniper said.
“Farewell, sweet Rachel,” Onion said.
He then said about Garlic, “Sweet dog, adieu.”
They exited Jaques’ backyard.
— 4.8 —
Maximilian, Count Ferneze, Aurelia, Phoenixella, and Pacue talked together.
The scheme of Gaspar and Chamont exchanging identities had been discovered. Maximilian, Count Ferneze, and the others knew now that Chamont, a noble, had been released, and that Gaspar still remained as their prisoner. Now Count Ferneze worried that Paolo, his son, would not be ransomed because why would the French exchange Paolo, the son of a Count, for a nobody like Gaspar.
Maximilian and Count Ferneze were in the middle of an argument.
Maximilian said, “Nay, but sweet Count —”
“Away!” Count Ferneze said. “Leave! I’ll hear no more. Never was a man so palpably abused: My son has been so basely marketed and sold, and I myself am made the subject of your mirth and scorn.”
“Count Ferneze, you tread too hard upon my patience,” Maximilian said. “Don’t persist, I advise Your Lordship.”
“I will persist, and to thee I speak,” Count Ferneze said. “Thou, Maximilian, thou have injured me.”
“Before the Lord —” Maximilian began.
“Sweet signor —” Aurelia began.
“Oh, my father!” Phoenixella said.
“Lady, let your father thank your beauty,” Maximilian said to Phoenixella.
Maximilian could fight Count Ferneze as an act of honor: Count Ferneze had insulted his honor. Phoenixella, however, was beautiful and Maximilian liked her, and so Maximilian would grant her wish that the two men would not fight.
Pacue said to himself, “By gar [god], me shall be hang for tella dis same. Me tella mademoiselle, she tell her fadera [father].”
Which mademoiselle? Aurora? Phoenixella? Don’t know.
As Chamont and Gaspar had feared, Pacue had told the secret.
Count Ferneze complained, “The true Chamont set free, and one left here, of no descent, clad barely in his name!”
Gaspar was noble in nature, but he had no name — no family — of nobility, as far as anyone knew.
Count Ferneze said to Pacue, “Sirrah boy, come here, and be sure you speak the simple truth.”
“Oh, pardonnez-moi [excuse me], monsieur,” Pacue said.
“Come, leave your ‘pardons’ and directly say what villain is the same who has usurped the honored name and person of Chamont,” Count Ferneze ordered.
“Oh, monsieur, no point villain, brave chevalier, Monsieur Gaspar!” Pacue said.
“No point villain” means “no villain at all.” The French “ne … point” means “not at all.”
“Monsieur Gaspar!” Count Ferneze said. “On what occasion did they exchange their names? What was their policy — their plot — or their pretext?”
“Me can no tell, par ma foi [by my faith], monsieur,” Pacue said.
“My honorable lord —” Maximilian began.
Count Ferneze interrupted, “Tut, tut, be silent!”
“Silent? Count Ferneze, I tell thee, if Amurath, the ruthless great Turk, were here, I would speak and he should hear me!” Maximilian said.
“So will I not,” Count Ferneze said.
“By my father’s hand, but thou shall, count,” Maximilian said. “I say, until this instant I was never touched — hurt — in my reputation. Hear me. You shall know that you have wronged me, and I will make you acknowledge it. If I cannot, my sword shall.”
“By heaven, I will not hear you,” Count Ferneze said. “I will stop my ears. My senses loathe the savor of thy breath. It is poison to me. I say, I will not hear you. What shall I know? It is you who have injured me. What will you make? Make me acknowledge it?”
He went to the door and ordered, “Fetch forth that Gaspar, that base, wicked counterfeit.”
Some serving-men entered the room with Gaspar.
Count Ferneze said to Maximilian, “I’ll make him to your face prove your wrongs. I’ll make him show that you have wronged me.”
He then said to Gaspar, “Come on, false substance, shadow to Chamont! Had you no one else to work upon and trick but me? Was I your fittest project? Well, confess what you intended by this secret plot, and by whose policy it was contrived. Speak the truth, and you will be treated courteously. But speak deceitfully to me, and you must resolve to suffer the most extreme torment that I can inflict.”
“My honored lord, hear me with patience,” Gaspar said. “Neither hope of favor nor the fear of torment shall sway my tongue from uttering the truth.”
“It is well,” Count Ferneze said. “Proceed, then.”
Gaspar said, “The morning before this battle did begin, wherein my Lord Chamont and I were captured, we vowed one mutual fortune, good or bad, that day should be embraced of us both, and, thinking that things might turn out badly after we had made our vow, we there concluded to exchange our names.”
One way for things to turn out badly would be for both of them to be taken prisoner. Since Chamont was a general, he might face bad treatment. Paolo was willing to share that bad treatment or even to take it on himself, and so he and Chamont had exchanged names.
“Then Maximilian mistook you for Chamont,” Count Ferneze said.
“True, noble lord,” Gaspar said.
“It is false, ignoble wretch!” Count Ferneze said. “It was but a plot to betray my son.”
“Count, thou liest in thy bosom, count!” Maximilian said.
These were fighting — dueling — words.
“Lie?” Count Ferneze said.
“Nay, I beseech you, honored gentlemen,” Gaspar said. “Don’t let the untimely ruin of your love follow as a consequence of these slight occurrents. Be assured, Chamont’s return will heal these wounds again and break the points of your too piercing thoughts.”
Maximilian and Count Ferneze were fighting with words, but their fight was unnecessary because soon Chamont would return and bring Paolo with him. So Gaspar said, but Count Ferneze did not believe him.
Count Ferneze said:
“Return? Aye, when? When will Chamont return? He’ll come to fetch you, will he? Aye, it is likely. Ha! You’d have me think so; that’s your devious trick.
“No, no, young gallant, your trick is stale. You cannot feed me with so vain a hope.”
“My lord, I am not feeding you with a vain hope,” Gaspar said. “I know assuredly that he will return and bring your noble son along with him.”
“Aye, I dare bet my soul he will return,” Maximilian said.
“Oh, impudent derision, open scorn, intolerable wrong!” Count Ferneze said. “Isn’t it enough that you have played upon me and fooled me all this while, but still to mock me, still to jest at me?”
He said to his serving-men, “Fellows, take him away.”
He said to Gaspar, “Thou ill-bred slave, who sets no difference between a noble spirit and thy own slavish humor, do not think but I’ll take worthy vengeance on thee, wretch.”
Gaspar said:
“Alas, these threats are idle, like the wind,
“And breed no terror in a guiltless mind.”
Count Ferneze replied, “Nay, thou shall lack no torture: Know that and be ready to be tortured.”
He ordered his serving-men, “Take him away!”
Gaspar said:
“I welcome the worst. I suffer for a friend.
“Your tortures will, but my love shall never, end.”
Maximilian, Aurelia, Phoenixella, and Pacue remained.
Phoenixella said to herself about the absent Gaspar:
“Alas, poor gentleman! My father’s rage is too extreme, too stern and violent. Oh, I wish that I knew, with all my strongest powers, how to remove it from thy patient breast! But that I cannot do.”
She wanted her father not to be angry at the patient – calm and collected — Gaspar.
Phoenixella continued:
“Yet my willing heart shall minister, in spite of tyranny, to thy misfortune. Something there is in him who does force this strange affection with more than common rapture in my breast.
“For, being but Gaspar, he is still as dear
“To me as when he did as Chamont appear.”
She loved him when she thought he was Chamont; she still loved him when she knew he was Gaspar.
Aurelia said, “But in all seriousness, signor, do you think Chamont will return?”
“Do I see your face, lady?” Maximilian answered.
Yes, he saw her face, and yes, he thought that Chamont would return.
“Aye, to be sure, if love has not blinded you,” Aurelia said.
Maximilian said, “That is a question; but I will assure you, no, I am not blinded by love. I can see, and yet love is in my eye. Well, the Count, your father, simply has dishonored me, and this steel shall engrave it on his burgonet.”
A burgonet is a kind of helmet.
Count Ferneze had called him a liar; by doing so, he had dishonored him.
“Nay, sweet signor,” Aurelia said.
“Lady, I prefer my reputation to my life, but you shall rule me,” Maximilian said. “Come, let’s march.”
“I’ll follow, signor,” Aurelia said.
Maximilian exited with Phoenixella and Pacue.
Alone, Aurelia said to herself:
“Oh, sweet queen of love, Venus, sovereign of all my thoughts, and thou, fair Fortune, who, more to honor my affections, have thus translated Gaspar to Chamont!
“Let both your flames now burn in one bright sphere and give true light to my aspiring hopes!
“Hasten Chamont’s return! Let him love me,
“Even if father, friends, and all the world reject me.”
CHAPTER 5
— 5.1 —
Angelo and Christophero talked together. Christophero’s nickname was Kit, and he was carrying gold coins.
Angelo said:
“Sigh for a woman? Would I fold my arms, rave in my sleep, talk idly being awake, pine and look pale, make love-walks in the night, to steal cold comfort — small consolation — from a day-star’s eyes?”
In this culture, folded arms were a sign of melancholy.
Literally, the day-star is the sun; metaphorically, it is Rachel.
Angelo continued:
“Kit, thou are a fool. Will thou be wise? Then, lad, renounce this boy-god Cupid’s foolish idolatry. Don’t insist on compliment and wooing tricks.
“Thou love old Jaques’ daughter, do thou?”
“Love her?” Christophero asked.
“Come, come, I know you do,” Angelo said. “Be ruled and take my advice, and she’s thine own. Thou will say her father Jaques, the old beggar, has pledged his word to thee that none but thou shall be his son-in-law?”
“He has,” Christophero said.
Angelo said:
“He has? Will thou believe him and be made a rook — a fool — to wait on such an antique weathercock? Why, he is more inconstant than the sea; his thoughts, chameleon-like, change every minute.”
These three things change: weathervanes, the sea, and chameleons. According to Angelo, a fourth thing also changes: Jaques.
Angelo continued:
“No, Kit, work soundly. Steal the wench away, wed her and bed her, and, when that is done, then say to Jaques, ‘Shall I be your son-in-law?’
“But come, to our plot. Where is this gold?”
Showing him some gold coins, Angelo said, “Here, Signor Angelo.”
Angelo said:
“Bestow it. Bid thy hands shed golden drops. Let these bald French crowns be uncovered in open sight to do obeisance to Jaques’ staring eyes when he steps forth.”
The French crowns — gold coins — will shine like French heads — heads made bald because of the French disease: syphilis.
Angelo continued:
“Jaques, the needy beggar, will be glad of gold. So now keep aloof, and, as he treads this gilded path, stretch out his ambling hopes with scattering more and more gold that he will walk after to collect, and, as thou go, cry, ‘Jaques! Jaques!’”
“Tush, leave it to me,” Christophero said.
Angelo said:
“First I’ll play the ghost. I’ll call him out of his house but not be seen.
“Kit, stand to the side.”
“But, Signor Angelo, where will yourself and Rachel wait for me, after the trick has ended?” Christophero asked.
“By the Mass, that’s a good question,” Angelo said. “At the old priory behind Saint Foy’s.”
A priory is a monastery or a nunnery.
“Agreed; there is no better place,” Christophero said. “I’ll meet you there.”
He withdrew, dropping gold coins on the ground.
Angelo said to himself, “Do, good fool, do, but I’ll not meet you there. Now to this trick.”
He stepped to the side to hide himself and called, “Jaques! Jaques! What! Jaques!”
From inside his house, Jaques said, “Who calls? Who’s there?”
“Jaques!” Angelo called.
Jaques asked, “Who calls?”
Angelo said to Christophero, who was Count Ferneze’s steward, “Steward, he comes, he comes.”
He called again, “Jaques!”
Jaques stepped out of his house and said, “What voice is this? Nobody here? Wasn’t I called? I was, and one cried ‘Jaques’ with a hollow voice. I was deceived.”
He saw a gold coin and said, “No, I was not deceived. See, see, it was an angel that called me forth! Gold, gold, man-making gold!”
A man with much gold is a made man.
Jaques saw another gold coin and said, “Another star! Do they drop from heaven? No, no, my house, I hope, is haunted with a fairy! My dear Lar, my household god, my fairy. On my knees.”
He knelt, all the better to pick up the gold.
In this society, fairies were reputed to sometimes strew gold around.
Lars are protective household spirits.
Christophero called, “Jaques!”
He exited, leaving a trail of gold coins behind him so that Jaques would follow them, pick them up, and leave his daughter, Rachel, unattended.
Jaques said, “My Lar calls me! Oh, sweet voice, musical as the spheres! See, see, more gold!”
In Ptolemaic astronomy, the planets and stars were encased in spheres that moved around the Earth. These spheres made music: the Music of the Spheres. This music was thought to be beautiful.
Out of sight, Christophero called, “Jaques!”
Rachel entered the scene.
“What, Rachel, Rachel!” Jaques said. “Lock my door. Look after my house.”
Christophero called again, “Jaques!”
“Shut fast my door,” Jaques said to Rachel.
He picked up a gold coin, “A golden crown! Jaques shall be a king.”
He exited.
Angelo said to himself about Jaques, “To a fool’s paradise that path will bring thee and thy household Lar.”
“What does my father mean?” Rachel said to herself. “I wonder what strange mood he is in?”
Angelo came out of hiding, walked over to her and said, “Come, sweet soul, stop wondering. Don’t be startled. It was I who laid this plot to get thy father out of the house.”
“Oh, Angelo!” Rachel said.
“O me no O’s, but listen,” Angelo said. “My lord, your love, Paolo Ferneze, has returned from war. He lingers at Pont Valerio, and from thence by post at the most recent midnight I was entreated to accompany you thither. Do not insist on replies. A horse is saddled for you, if you will go, and I am at your service. If you will stay, why, so be it.”
A pont is a bridge.
“Oh, Angelo, every minute is a day until my Ferneze comes to me,” Rachel said. “Come, we’ll go, sir.”
She exited.
Angelo said to himself:
“Sweet soul, I guess thy meaning by thy looks. At Pont Valerio thou shall see thy love, but not Ferneze.
“Steward Christophero, fare you well. You wait for Rachel, too. When will you see her, can you tell?”
The answer to “When will you see her, can you tell?” is “Never.”
Angelo exited.
Jaques returned and said:
“Oh, in what a golden circle have I danced!”
Fairies were thought to dance in circles.
Jaques continued:
“Milan, these odorous and enflowered fields are none of thine. No, here’s Elysium. Here blessed ghosts do walk.”
Elysium is the part of the Land of the Dead where the good souls go to enjoy the afterlife.
Jaques continued:
“This is the court and glorious palace where the god of gold shines like the sun of sparkling majesty.”
Plutus is the god of gold and other forms of wealth.
Jaques said to the gold coins he had picked up:
“Oh, fair-feathered, my red-breasted birds, come fly with me!”
Angels have wings, and another kind of angels is gold coins.
In this society, the color of gold was sometimes called red.
Jaques continued:
“I’ll bring you to a choir, whose consort — musical harmony — being sweetened with your sound, the music will be fuller, and each hour these ears shall banquet with your harmony.”
He sang, “Oh! Oh! Oh!”
He then left to go to his backyard and dig up his gold so he could add these new gold coins.
Christophero entered the scene and said to himself, “At the old priory behind Saint Foy’s, that was the place of our appointment, I am sure. I hope he will not make me lose my gold, and mock me, too. Perhaps they are within. I’ll knock.”
He knocked at Jaques’ door.
Discovering that his gold was gone, Jaques said to himself, “Oh, God, the case is altered!”
Christophero called, “Rachel! Angelo! Signor Angelo!”
Jaques said, “Angels? Aye, where? My angels? Where’s my gold? Why, Rachel —”
He then said to Christophero, “Oh, thou thievish cannibal! Thou eat my flesh in the stealing of my gold!”
“What gold?” Christophero asked.
“What gold!” Jaques said.
He called, “Rachel, call help! Come forth!”
Jaques then said to Christophero, “I’ll rip thine entrails but I’ll have my gold!”
He called, “Rachel, why don’t thou come? I am ruined!”
He said to himself, “Woe, me, she doesn’t speak.”
He said to Christophero, “Thou have slain my child!”
He exited into his house.
Christophero said to himself:
“Is the man possessed, do you suppose? This is strange.
“Rachel, I see, has gone with Angelo.
“Well, I’ll once again go to the priory, and see if I can meet them.”
Christophero exited.
Jaques returned and said:
“It is too true, thou have made away with my child, Rachel, and thou have my gold!
“Oh, what hyena called me out of doors?
“The thief is gone! My gold’s gone! Rachel’s gone!
“All’s gone except I, who expend my cries in vain,
“But I’ll go from here, too, and die, or end this pain.”
— 5.2 —
Juniper, Onion, Finio, and Valentine talked together.
Valentine was Francisco Colonnia’s serving-man, and Finio was Colonnia’s Italian page.
Juniper and Onion were both wearing fine clothes, and they were pretending to be fine gentlemen. In fact, they thought that they were fine gentlemen. They wore rapiers and used dueling terms.
Pretending to fight a duel, Juniper said, “By God’s wounds, let me go! Hai, cazzo!”
Hai is an Italian word said when thrusting a sword; it means “You have it!” Cazzo is Italian slang for “penis.”
Juniper shouted, “Catch him alive! I call, I call, boy. I come, I come, sweetheart.”
Onion said to Finio, “Page, hold my rapier while I hold my friend here.”
He gave his rapier to Finio.
Valentine said to himself about Juniper and Onion, “Oh, here’s a sweet metamorphosis: a couple of buzzards turned into a pair of peacocks.”
“Signor Onion, lend me thy boy to unhang — take off — my rapier,” Juniper said.
Finio was acting as Onion’s page.
Onion said, “Signor Juniper, for once or so you may borrow him, but the truth is you must inveigle and tempt, as I have done, my lord’s page here, a poor follower of mine.”
Onion had tempted Finio to become his page.
Juniper said, “Heigh-ho! Your page, then, shall not be superintendent upon me?”
Juniper used the word “superintendent” to mean “be super intent” on serving him.
Juniper added, “He shall not be addicted?”
The verb “addict” means someone who devotes himself to the service of another person. The adjective “addicted” means “had been attached by compulsion to a person.”
Juniper then said, “He shall not be incident, he shall not be incident, he shall not be incident, shall he?”
The noun “incident” means “likely to attach itself to something.” The adjective “incident” means “naturally attaching.”
Juniper drew his rapier and thrust it.
“Oh, sweet Signor Juniper!” Finio said.
“By God’s blood, stand away, princox — saucy boy! Do not aggravate my joy,” Juniper said.
“Nay, good master Onion,” Valentine said, seeing that Onion was ready to duel Juniper.
Taking back his rapier from Finio, Onion said, “Nay, if he have the heart to draw my blood, let him come.”
“I’ll slice you, Onion, I’ll slice you!” Juniper shouted.
“I’ll cleave you, Juniper!” Onion shouted.
“Why, stop, stop, ho!” Valentine said. “What do you mean?”
“Let him come, ingle,” Juniper replied.
He said to Finio, “Stand by, boy.”
He then said, “His alabaster blood cannot fear me.”
“Alabaster” means white. Alabaster blood is cowardly blood.
By “cannot fear me,” Juniper meant, “cannot make me afraid.” Readers can be forgiven for thinking Juniper’s words meant, “Even a coward cannot be afraid of me.”
“Why, listen, sweet signor,” Finio said to Juniper. “Let there not be any contention between my master and you about me. If you want a page, sir, I can help you to a proper, handsome stripling.”
“Can thou?” Juniper said. “What parentage, what ancestry, what genealogy is he?”
“A French boy, sir,” Finio said.
“Has he his French linguist [Juniper meant ‘language’], has he?” Juniper said.
“Aye, sir,” Finio replied.
“Then, transport [bring] him,” Juniper said. “Here’s a crusado for thee.”
He gave Finio a crusado: a Portuguese coin.
“You will not embezzle my servant with your benevolence, will you?” Onion said. “Wait, boy, there’s a portmanteau for thee.”
A portague — the word Onion meant — is a different Portuguese coin.
“Lord, sir!” Finio said.
This was a good tip.
“Do take it, boy,” Onion said. “It’s three pounds, ten shillings, a portmanteau.”
Finio took the money and said, “I thank Your Lordship.”
Finio exited.
Juniper said to Valentine, “Sirrah ningle [a favorite], thou are a traveler, and I honor thee. Please, discourse. Cherish thy muse; discourse.”
“On what topic, sir?” Valentine asked.
“Discourse on whatever topic thou will,” Juniper said. “By God’s blood, hang sorrow.”
“Please, Valentine, assoil [clear up for] me one thing,” Onion said.
“It would be a pity to soil you, sir, in your new apparel,” Valentine said.
“By the Mass, thou say the truth,” Onion said. “Apparel makes a man forget himself.”
Onion was wearing fine apparel, and he had forgotten that he was not a gentleman.
“Begin,” Juniper said. “Find your tongue, ningle.”
Valentine said to himself, “Now I will gull — fool — these ganders splendidly.”
Travelers often told outrageous lies. Valentine was not an exception.
He said to Onion and Juniper, “Gentlemen, having in my peregrination through Mesopotamia —”
“Speak legibly [intelligibly],” Juniper said.
Seeing some people coming, he said, “This game’s gone, without the great mercy of God. Here’s a fine tragedy, indeed.”
Valentine would not be able to tell his lies.
Seeing Finio returning with a boy (Pacue) who might become his paid page, Juniper pulled out some money and said, “There’s a Kaiser’s royal. By God’s eyelid, neither king nor Kaiser shall —”
A Caesar’s rial is a gold coin.
— 5.3 —
Finio, Pacue, Balthasar, and Martino entered the scene. Pacue was Chamont’s French page. Balthasar and Martino were two of Count Ferneze’s serving-men.
“Where? Where? Finio, where are they?” Balthasar asked.
He was looking for Juniper and Onion.
Juniper said to Valentine, “Wait a while. I’ll be with you soon.”
“Oh, here’s the page, Signor Juniper,” Onion said.
Pacue was supposed to become Juniper’s new page.
“What did Monsieur Onion say, boy?” Juniper asked.
Finio asked Juniper, “What did you say, sir?”
“Tread out, boy,” Juniper said to Pacue.
“Tread out” means “walk on a path.” This path was to follow Juniper and be his page.
“Take up, you mean, sir,” Finio said.
“Take up” means “take up service,” aka “begin work.”
“Tread out, I say,” Juniper repeated.
He preferred his own way of saying “Work for me.”
Juniper then thanked Finio for his help: “So, I thank you. Is this the boy?”
The boy was Pacue, whom Juniper wanted to hire to be his page.
“Oui, Monsieur,” Pacue said.
“Who gave you that name?” Juniper asked.
“Give me de name? Vat name?” Pacue said.
“He thought your name is ‘We,’” Onion said. “Young gentleman, you must do more than his legs can do for him: bear with him, sir.”
“Sirrah, give me instance of your carriage,” Juniper said.
“Carriage” is bodily deportment. Juniper wanted to see how Pacue carried himself.
“You’ll serve my turn, won’t you?” Juniper asked Pacue.
“Serve my turn” means “serve me.”
Misunderstanding Juniper, Pacue thought that “serve my turn” was a kind of pirouette or other dance move.
“Vat? Turn upon the toe?” Pacue asked.
“Oh, signor, no,” Finio said.
“Page, will you follow me?” Juniper asked. “I’ll give you good exhibition [maintenance, income].”
“Exhibition” also likely included new clothing: new livery, aka distinctive clothing that showed for whom the page worked.
“By gar, shall not alone follow you, but shall lead you, too,” Pacue said.
“Follow you” meant “be your servant,” but the servant would also lead Juniper — that is, manipulate him into acting as the servant wanted him to.
“Plaguy boy! He soothes his humor and flatters him,” Onion said. “These French villains have pocky wits.”
“Pocky” means “pockmarked.” Smallpox made skin pockmarked.
“Here, disarm me,” Juniper said. “Take my semitary [scimitar].”
Pacue took Juniper’s rapier.
“Oh, splendid!” Valentine said to himself. “This would be a splendid man, if he had a little travel.”
Valentine then said out loud, “Balthasar, Martino, take off your shoes and bid Juniper to cobble them.”
“Friends, friends, but pardon me for fellows,” Juniper said. “I am no more in occupation, no more in corporation [business].”
Juniper was no longer a cobbler, and so he was no longer a fellow to Balthasar and Martino, although they were still his friends.
Juniper continued, “It is so, pardon me. The case is altered. This is law, but I’ll stand to nothing.”
“Stand to nothing” means “submit to nothing, including legal judgments.”
“Fait, so me tink,” Pacue said.
[Indeed, so I think.]
“Well, then, God save the Duke’s Majesty!” Juniper said. “Is this any harm now? Speak, is this any harm now?”
“No, nor good neither,” Onion said. “By God’s blood!”
“Do you laugh at me?” Juniper asked Valentine. “Do you laugh at me? Do you laugh at me?”
“Aye, sir, we do,” Valentine said.
“You do, indeed?” Juniper asked.
“Aye, indeed, sir,” Valentine said.
Juniper said, “It is sufficient.”
He then ordered Pacue, “Page, carry my purse; dog me. Follow me closely like a dog at heel.”
In this society, pages would carry the purse, aka money-holder, for the gentleman they served.
Juniper exited.
“Gentlemen, don’t leave him,” Onion said. “You see in what state he is. He is not in adversity; his purse is full of money. Don’t leave him!”
They exited.
— 5.4 —
Angelo and Rachel talked together on the road to Pont Valerio.
“Nay, gentle Rachel!” Angelo said.
“Go away! Forbear!” Rachel said. “Ungentle Angelo, don’t touch my body with those impious hands that like hot irons sear my trembling heart and make it hiss at your disloyalty.”
Chamont and Paolo Ferneze entered the scene, but Angelo and Rachel did not notice them. Chamont and Paolo watched Angelo and Rachel quietly.
Rachel continued, “Was this your scheme, to use Ferneze’s name? Was he your fittest decoy and bait? Oh, wild dishonor!”
Paolo said quietly to Chamont, “Wait, noble sir!”
He wanted to hear what Angelo and Paolo would say to each other.
Angelo said to Rachel, “By God’s blood, how like a puppet you talk now! You are being melodramatic! Dishonor? What dishonor? Come, come, fool. Nay, then, I see you’re peevish. By God’s heart, dishonor? To have you go to a priest and marry you, and put you in an honorable state?”
He was claiming to want to marry Rachel.
“To marry me?” Rachel said. “Oh, Heaven, can it be that men should live with such unfeeling souls, without either touch or conscience of religion, or that their warping appetites should spoil those honored appearances that the true seal of friendship had set upon their faces?”
“Do you hear me?” Angelo said. “What is the need of all this commotion? Tell me, will you have me or not?”
“I’ll have you gone, and I’ll have you leave me, if you would,” Rachel said.
“Leave you?” Angelo said. “I was cursed — bewitched — to bring you here and make so fair an offer to a fool. A pox upon you! Why should you be coy? What good thing have you in you to be proud of? Are you anything other than a beggar’s daughter because you have beauty? Oh, God’s light, a blast!”
A blast is a withered blossom. Blossoms bloom and then wither. Beauty blooms and then fades.
“Aye, Angelo,” Paolo said.
Another thing that can be blasted is a friendship.
“You scornful baggage, you worthless woman,” Angelo said. “I loved thee not as much as now I hate thee!”
Rachel knelt and prayed, “Upon my knees, you heavenly powers, I thank you, which thus have tamed his wild affections.”
Angelo said to himself, “This will not do. I must again make an attempt upon her.”
And her honor.
He had already made a successful attempt — attack — on his own honor.
He said out loud, “Rachel, oh, I wish that thou saw my heart, or did behold the place from whence that scalding sigh found a vent! Rachel, by Jesu, I love thee as my soul. Rachel, sweet Rachel!”
“What, again returned to this violent passion?” Rachel said.
“Do but hear me!” Angelo said. “By heaven, I love you, Rachel.”
“Please, forbear! Stop!” Rachel said. “Oh, I wish that my Lord Ferneze were but here!”
Angelo said, “By God’s blood, if he were, what would he do?”
Paolo stepped forward, slapped Angelo, and said, “This is what he would do, base villain!”
“My dear lord!” Rachel said.
Paolo said to Angelo:
“Thou monster, thou are even the soul of treachery! Oh, what dishonored title of reproach may my tongue spit in thy deserved face? I think my very presence should invert the steeled — hardened — organs of those traitorous eyes, to take into thy heart and pierce it through.
“Do thou turn thy eyes on the ground? Wretch, dig a grave with their sharp points to hide thy abhorred head!”
Eyes were thought to emit beams that enabled them to see. Angelo’s eyes (and the rest of him) were hardened spiritually and their beams were sharp enough to pierce his own heart and dig his own grave.
Paolo said to Rachel, “Sweet love, the wrongs done to thee have been too violent since my departure from thee, I perceive, but now true comfort shall again appear and, like an armed guardian angel, guard thee and keep thee safe from all the assaults of covered — covert — villainy.”
He said to Chamont, “Come, monsieur, let’s go and leave this wretch to his despair.”
Angelo began, “My noble Ferneze —”
Paolo interrupted:
“What, can thou speak to me, and not have thy tongue, forced with the torment of thy guilty soul, break that infected circle of thy mouth, like the rude clapper of a crazed bell?
“I, who in thy bosom lodged my soul, with all her train of secrets, thinking them to be as safe and richly entertained as in a prince’s court or tower of strength, and thou to prove a traitor to my trust, and basely to expose it! Oh, this world!”
Angelo tried again to speak: “My honorable lord —”
Paolo again interrupted, “— the very owl, which other birds do stare and wonder at, shall hoot at thee, and snakes in every bush shall deafen your ears with their —”
In other words: Owls are strange creatures, but they will hoot at you, Angelo, who are stranger than they are. And snakes are deaf, but they will deafen you (by hissing at you).
“Nay, my good lord,” Chamont said. “Give an end to your passionate anger.”
“You shall see that I will redeem your lost opinion,” Angelo said.
Rachel said to Paolo, “My lord, believe him.”
“Come, be satisfied,” Chamont advised Paolo. “Sweet lord, you know our haste. Let us get on horseback. The time for my promised return is past. Be friends again. Take him along with you.”
“Come, Signor Angelo,” Paolo said. “Hereafter prove more true and loyal.”
They exited.
— 5.5 —
Count Ferneze, Maximilian, and Francisco Colonnia talked together.
Count Ferneze said, “Tut, Maximilian, as for your honored self, I am persuaded; but no words shall turn away the edge of purposed vengeance on that wretch: Gaspar.”
He then ordered his men-servants, “Come, bring him forth to execution.”
His man-servants brought in Gaspar, who was tied with ropes.
Count Ferneze said, “I’ll hang him for my son; he shall not escape, even if he had a hundred lives.”
He then said to Gaspar, “Tell me, vile slave, do thou think that I love my son? Is he my flesh? Is he my blood, my life? And shall all these — my flesh, my blood, my life — be tortured for thy sake, and not be revenged?”
He ordered his man-servants, “Truss up and hang the villain.”
“My lord, there is no law to confirm this action,” Maximilian said. “It is dishonorable.”
“Dishonorable, Maximilian?” Count Ferneze said. “It is dishonorable in Chamont. The day of his prefixed return is past, and he — Gaspar — shall pay for it.”
“My lord, my lord, use your most extreme vengeance,” Gaspar said. “I’ll be glad to suffer ten times more for such a friend.”
“Oh, resolute and peremptory — utter — wretch!” Count Ferneze said.
“My honored lord, let us entreat a word with you,” Francisco Colonnia said.
“I’ll hear no more,” Count Ferneze said. “I say he shall not live. I myself will hang him.”
Count Ferneze advanced threateningly, but seeing an apparition, he stopped.
He said:
“Wait, what appearance is this that stands between him and me and stops my hand?
“What miracle is this? It is my own imagination that carves this impression in me, my soft nature, which always has retained such foolish pity of the most abject creature’s misery that my soft nature abhors it! What a child am I to have a child! Woe to me! My son! My son!”
Christophero entered the scene and said to himself, “Oh, my dear love, Rachel, what has become of thee? What unjust absence lay thou on my breast like weights of lead, when swords are at my back that run me through with thy unkind flight? My gentle disposition grows wild. I shall run frantic. Oh, my love, my love!”
Jaques entered the scene and said to himself, “My gold, my gold, my life, my soul, my heaven! What has become of thee? See, I’ll impart my miserable loss to my good lord.”
He then said out loud to Count Ferneze, “Let me have search, my lord! My gold is gone!”
Count Ferneze said, “My son — Christophero, do you think it is possible that I ever shall behold my son’s face again?”
Christophero said to Jaques, “Oh, father, where’s my love? Were you so careless as to let an unthrift — a dissolute person — steal away your child?”
Jaques said to Count Ferneze, “I know Your Lordship may find out where is my gold. For God’s sake, pity me. Justice, sweet lord!”
Count Ferneze said, “Now that they have young Chamont, Christophero, surely they never will restore my son.”
Christophero said to Jaques, “Who would have thought you could have been so careless as to lose your only daughter?”
Jaques said to himself, “Who would think that, looking after my gold with such hare’s eyes, which are always open — aye, even when they sleep — I thus should lose my gold?”
This society believed that rabbits kept their eyes open even when asleep.
He said to Count Ferneze, “My noble lord, what says Your Lordship?”
“Oh, my son! My son!” Count Ferneze said.
“My dearest Rachel!” Christophero said.
“My most honey — sweet — gold!” Jaques said.
“Hear me, Christophero!” Count Ferneze said.
“Nay, hear me, Jaques!” Christophero said.
“Hear me, most honored lord!” Jaques said to Count Ferneze.
“What rule is here?” Maximilian said. “What can bring order here?”
“Oh, God, that we should let Chamont escape!” Count Ferneze said.
Aurelia and Phoenixella entered the scene.
“Aye, and that Rachel, such a virtuous maiden, should be thus stolen away!” Christophero said.
“And that my gold, being so hid in earth, should be found out!” Jaques said.
“Oh, confusion of languages, and yet no tower of Babel!” Maximilian said.
According to the Bible, people had attempted but failed to build a tower — the tower of Babel — that would reach heaven. To stop the building of the tower, God made the people speak different languages so that they could not work together.
Francisco Colonnia said to Aurelia and Phoenixella, “Ladies, beshrew and curse me if you come not fit and ready to make a jangling consort. Will you laugh to see three constant passions?”
In this society, a consort is a company of musicians. In this society, a noise is also a company of musicians. The three constant passions were making a lot of noise.
The three constant passions were 1) the Count’s for his son, 2) Christophero’s for Rachel, and 3) Jaques’ for his gold.
“Stand by,” Maximilian said. “I will interrogate them.”
He said to Count Ferneze, “Sweet count, will you be comforted?”
Count Ferneze said, “It cannot be but he — Paolo — is handled the most cruelly that ever any noble prisoner was.”
He was still worried that his son was being cruelly mistreated as a prisoner of war.
Maximilian said to Christophero, “Steward, go cheer my lord: Count Ferneze.”
Still preoccupied with his passion, Christophero said, “Well, if Rachel took her flight willingly —”
Maximilian said to Jaques, “Sirrah, do you speak touching your daughter’s flight?”
Jaques had been speaking about his literal gold, but Maximilian and the others did not know that because Jaques was a beggar. Therefore, Maximilian thought that Rachel was his figurative gold.
Jaques said, “Oh, that I could so soon forget to know the thief again who had my gold, my gold!”
“Isn’t this purely a matter for wonder?” Maximilian said.
Count Ferneze said to Gaspar, “Oh, thou base wretch, I’ll drag thee through the streets, and, as a monster, make thee wondered at.”
Balthasar entered the room and walked over to Count Ferneze, who asked, “What is it now?”
Balthasar whispered to him that Paolo, his son, was coming.
Phoenixella said to Gaspar, “Sweet gentleman, how too unworthily are thou thus tortured!”
She then said, “Brave Maximilian, pity the poor youth and appease my father.”
Count Ferneze said, “What! My son Paolo has returned? Oh, Maximilian, Francisco, daughters! Tell Paolo to come here!”
— 5.6 —
Chamont, Paolo Ferneze, Rachel, Angelo, and some servants entered the scene.
Still disbelieving, Count Ferneze said to Balthasar, “Aren’t thou mocking me?”
Seeing his son, he said, “Oh, my dear Paolo, welcome!”
“My Lord Chamont!” Maximilian said.
“My Gaspar!” Chamont said.
“Rachel!” Christophero said.
“My gold, Rachel, my gold!” Jaques said.
“Somebody tell the beggar to cease his noise,” Count Ferneze said about Jaques.
Christophero said:
“Oh, Signor Angelo, would you deceive your honest friend — me — who simply trusted you?
“Well, Rachel, I am glad thou are here again.”
Angelo said to Christophero, “Indeed, she is not for you, steward.”
Jaques said to Phoenixella, “I beseech you, madam, urge your father to find my gold.”
“I will soon,” Phoenixella said. “Good Jaques, be content and calm.”
Aurelia said, “Now, God-a-mercy — thank you! — Lady Fortune and sweet Venus! Let Cupid do his part, and all is well.”
She wanted Cupid to bring Chamont and her together.
“I think my heart’s in heaven with this comfort,” Phoenixella said.
She was happy because Gaspar would be spared.
Seeing that Gaspar had been about to be hanged, Chamont said, “Is this the true Italian courtesy?”
He then said to Count Ferneze, “Ferneze, were you tortured thus in France? By my soul’s safety!”
Count Ferneze had not been tortured in France when Chamont’s father had taken Vicenza. Why then was he torturing — even executing — Gaspar?
Count Ferneze knelt before Chamont, a much younger man, and said, “My most noble lord, I do beseech Your Lordship.”
He was begging for forgiveness.
Paolo’s ropes were untied.
Chamont said, “Honored Count, don’t wrong your age with the flexure of a knee. I do impute it to those cares and griefs that did torment you in the absence of your son.”
Rising, Count Ferneze said, “Oh, worthy gentlemen, I am ashamed that my extreme affection to my son should give my honor so uncured a maim. But my first son, being in Vicenza lost —”
“What! In Vicenza? Did you lose a son there? About what time, my lord?” Chamont asked.
“Oh, the same night wherein your noble father took the town,” Count Ferneze said.
“How long ago is that since, my lord? Can you remember?” Chamont asked.
“It is now well-nigh upon the twentieth year,” Count Ferneze answered.
“And how old was he then?” Chamont asked.
“I cannot tell,” Count Ferneze said. “Between the years of three and four, I take it.”
“Had he no special note in his attire or otherwise that you can call to mind?” Chamont asked.
Count Ferneze answered, “I cannot well remember his attire, but I have often heard his mother say he had about his neck a tablet given to him by the Emperor Sigismund, his godfather, with this inscription under the figure of a silver globe: In minimo mundus.”
A tablet is an inscribed medal or inscribed piece of wood.
The Latin motto means: “In the smallest thing, the whole world.”
“What did you call your son, my lord?” Chamont asked.
“Camillo, Lord Chamont,” Count Ferneze answered.
Chamont said to Gaspar, “Then, you are no more my Gaspar, but Camillo! Take notice of and pay respect to your father, for Count Ferneze is, in fact, your father.”
Chamont then said to all present:
“Gentlemen, don’t stand amazed.”
He produced a medal and said:
“Here is a tablet with that inscription found about his neck that night and in Vicenza by my father, who, being ignorant what name he had, christened him Gaspar. Nor did I reveal this secret until this hour to any man.”
Crying, Count Ferneze said, “Oh, happy revelation! Oh, blessed hour! Oh, my Camillo!”
“Oh, strange!” Phoenixella said. “My brother!”
Francisco Colonnia said, “Maximilian, see how the abundance of his joy drowns him — Count Ferneze — in tears of gladness.”
“Oh, my boy!” Count Ferneze said to Camillo/Gaspar. “Forgive thy father’s late austerity and harshness.”
Maximilian said, “My lord, I delivered as much before, but Your Honor would not be persuaded. I will hereafter give more credit to my visions. I dreamt of this.”
“I can be still no longer, my good lord,” Jaques said. “Do a poor man some grace among all your joys.”
“Why, what’s the matter, Jaques?” Count Ferneze asked.
Jaques said, “I am robbed, I am ruined, my lord, robbed and ruined! A heap of thirty thousand golden crowns was stolen from me in one minute and, I fear, by the help of her who calls me father! But she’s none of mine. Therefore, sweet lord, let her be tortured to confess the truth.”
“More wonders yet!” Maximilian said.
“What! Jaques! Isn’t Rachel, then, thy daughter?” Count Ferneze asked.
“No, I legally disclaim her. I spit at her,” Jaques said. “She is a harlot, and her customers — your son, this gallant named Angelo, and your steward here — have all been partners with her in my despoil. They have taken my riches, no less than thirty thousand golden crowns.”
“Jaques, Jaques, this is impossible!” Count Ferneze said. “How should thou come to the possession of so huge a heap of coins, you being always a known beggar?”
Jacques said to himself, “Oh! Alas! I have betrayed myself with my own tongue. The case is altered.”
He began to leave.
“Someone stop him there!” Count Ferneze ordered.
Maximilian said:
“What! Does he intend to depart?
“Count Ferneze, upon my soul, this beggar is a counterfeit. Interrogate him.”
He then asked Jaques, “Did thou lose gold?”
“Oh, no, I lost no gold,” Jaques lied.
“Is what I said not true?” Maximilian asked.
Count Ferneze asked Jaques, “How did thou first lose thirty thousand crowns, and now thou lost no gold? Was Rachel first thy child, and is she now not thy daughter? Sirrah Jaques, you know how far our Milan laws extend for the punishment of liars.”
“Aye, my lord,” Jaques answered.
He said to himself, “What shall I do? I have no starting-holes.”
Starting-holes are literally holes in which hunted prey takes refuge. For human beings, they are figuratively places of refuge.
Jaques begged, “Monsieur Chamont, stand and take a place as my honored lord. Be my protector.”
“For what, old man?” Chamont asked.
“Ill-gotten goods never thrive,” Jaques said. “I played the thief and now I am robbed myself. I am not as I seem, Jaques de Prie, nor was I born a beggar, as I am, but formerly I served as steward to your noble father.”
“What! Are you Melun, who robbed my father’s treasure and stole my sister?”
Melun/Jaques replied, “Aye, aye, that treasure is lost, but Isabel, your beauteous sister, here survives in Rachel. And, therefore, on my knees —”
He knelt.
Maximilian said, “Wait, Jaques [Melun], wait. The case still alters.”
Count Ferneze said, “Fair Rachel is sister to the Lord Chamont!”
Angelo said to Christophero, “Steward, your cake is dough, as well as mine.”
“Your cake is dough” means “your hopes are disappointed.”
Paolo said, “I see that honor’s flames cannot be hid, no more than lightning in the blackest cloud.”
Angelo was now doing the right thing: acknowledging that Isabel/Rachel was lost to him and letting Christophero know that she was lost to him as well. Isabel/Rachel and Paolo belonged together.
“So then, sirrah, it is true that you have lost this gold?” Maximilian asked.
“Aye, worthy signor, thirty thousand crowns,” Melun/Jaques said.
“By the Mass, who was it who told me that a couple of my serving-men were become gallants recently?” Count Ferneze asked.
“By the Virgin Mary, it was I, my lord,” Francisco Colonnia said. “My serving-man told me.”
Onion and Juniper, both wearing fine clothing well above their station in life, entered the scene.
“What is this now? What pageant is this?” Maximilian asked.
“Come, Signor Onion, let’s not be ashamed to appear,” Juniper said. “Keep your state. Keep your dignity. Don’t look ambiguous now.”
“Don’t look ambiguous” meant “look like one thing only: a gentleman.”
“I won’t look ambiguous, while I am in this suit of clothing,” Onion said.
“Lordings, equivalence to you all,” Juniper said.
He meant that Onion and he were equal to them now.
“We thought good to be so good as to see you, gentlemen,” Onion said.
“What? Monsieur Onion?” Maximilian said.
“How are thou doing, good captain?” Onion asked.
“What, are my hinds turned gentlemen?” Count Ferneze asked.
Hinds are servants.
“Hinds, sir?” Onion said. “By God’s blood, if that word — hinds — will bear legal action, it shall cost us a thousand pounds apiece but we’ll be revenged.”
“Will thou sell thy lordship, count?” Juniper asked Count Ferneze.
“What! Peasants purchase lordships?” Count Ferneze said.
“Is that any novels, sir?” Juniper asked.
By “novels,” he meant “news.”
“Oh, transmutation of elements!” Maximilian said. “It is certified you had pages.”
Alchemists believed in the transmutation of elements; they believed that they could transmute base metals such as iron and bronze into precious metals such as gold and silver. Onion and Juniper had been transmuted from members of the working class to (pseudo-)members of the nobility. They even had pages: boys who served them.
“Aye, sir, but it is known they proved ridiculous,” Juniper said. “They did pilfer, they did purloin, they did procrastinate our purses, for the which wasting of our stock we have put them to the stocks.”
Procrastinate? They seem to have wasted no time in helping themselves to their new masters’ wealth.
The stocks were devices of punishments that would immobilize an offender’s head, and/or hands, and/or feet.
“And thither shall you two go immediately,” Count Ferneze said. “These are the villains who stole Jaques’ gold. Take them away and set them in the stocks with their serving-men!”
“Onion, you will now be peeled,” Maximilian said.
“The case is altered now,” Francisco Colonnia said.
“My good lord! My good lord!” Onion said.
Juniper said to Onion, “Away, scoundrel! Do thou fear a little elocution? Shall we be confiscate [have our property confiscated] now? Shall we droop now? Shall we be now in helogabalus?”
Heliogabalus was a corrupt Roman emperor.
Possibly, Juniper thought that “Helogabalus” was a location: Helot-opolis, the city of Helots. In ancient Sparta, helots were in an intermediate social class between ordinary slaves and free citizens.
Juniper and Onion had tried to be noblemen but had failed. Now they were going in the stocks as if they were beggars. Then they would return to the intermediate social class between nobles and beggars.
“Peace, peace, stop thy gabbling and chattering,” Onion said.
“Take them away, away with them,” Count Ferneze said. “What’s this they prate?”
Some serving-men exited with Juniper and Onion.
Count Ferneze continued, “Keep the knaves securely restrained in the stocks. Strict inquisition shall presently be made for Jaques’ gold, to be disposed at the pleasure of Chamont.”
“She is your own, Lord Paolo, if your father will give his consent,” Chamont said.
“She” was Chamont’s sister: Isabel/Rachel.
“How are things now, Christophero?” Angelo said. “The case is altered.”
“With you as well as me,” Christophero said. “I am content, sir.”
Since Rachel was now Isabel, the sister of a noble, she was no longer wife-material for Christophero.
Count Ferneze said to Chamont, “With all my heart. And in exchange of her, if with your fair acceptance it may stand, I tender my Aurelia to your love.”
Aurelia’s prayer had come true: She and Chamont would be wed.
Chamont said to Count Ferneze:
“I take her from Your Lordship with all thanks, and I bless the hour wherein I was made a prisoner, for the fruition of this present fortune, so full of happy and unlooked-for joys.”
He then said to Melun/Jaques, “Melun, I pardon thee, and, as for the treasure, recover it, and hold it as thine own. It is enough for me to see my sister live in the circle of young Ferneze’s arms, my friend Gaspar/Camillo, the son of such a noble father, and my unworthy self, enraptured above all, by being the lord to so divine a dame.”
Maximilian said, “Well, I will now swear the case is altered.”
Maximilian said to Aurelia:
“Lady, fare you well; I will subdue my affections for you.”
Maximilian said to Phoenixella:
“Madam, as for you, you are a professed virgin, and I will be silent.”
Phoenixella had shown no outward signs of romantic love. Indeed, the one person she loved that way had turned out to be her long-lost brother.
Maximilian said to Count Ferneze:
“My honorable Lord Ferneze, it shall become you at this time not to be frugal, but bounteous and open-handed; your fortune has been so to you.”
Maximilian said to Chamont:
“Lord Chamont, you are now no stranger. You must be made welcome. You have a fair, amiable, and splendid lady.
Maximilian said to Paolo and Camillo/Gaspar:
“But Signor Paolo, Signor Camillo, I know you are valiant; be loving.”
Maximilian said to Isabel/Rachel:
“Lady, I must be better known to you.”
Maximilian said to Christophero and Angelo:
“Signors, as for you, I pass you not, though I let you pass, for in truth I pass not for you.”
One meaning of “pass” is “care about.”
Maximilian was going to let Christophero and Angelo’s error pass, although he did not care for them. Their error, and the reason Maximilian did not care for them, was that they had pursued Isabel (Rachel), who was above them.
Also, of course, although Maximilian did not know this, they had pursued Isabel (Rachel) in a devious way, stealing her from her presumed father, not getting her love first, and in Angelo’s case, lying to her.
Maximilian then concluded:
“Lovers, go to your nuptials.
“Lordings, go to your dances.
“March fair and walk briskly, all, for a fair March is worth a king’s ransom.”
A dry March meant a good harvest. A proverb stated, “A bushel of March dust is worth a king’s ransom.”
APPENDIX A: ABOUT THE AUTHOR
It was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly a cry rang out, and on a hot summer night in 1954, Josephine, wife of Carl Bruce, gave birth to a boy — me. Unfortunately, this young married couple allowed Reuben Saturday, Josephine’s brother, to name their first-born. Reuben, aka “The Joker,” decided that Bruce was a nice name, so he decided to name me Bruce Bruce. I have gone by my middle name — David — ever since.
Being named Bruce David Bruce hasn’t been all bad. Bank tellers remember me very quickly, so I don’t often have to show an ID. It can be fun in charades, also. When I was a counselor as a teenager at Camp Echoing Hills in Warsaw, Ohio, a fellow counselor gave the signs for “sounds like” and “two words,” then she pointed to a bruise on her leg twice. Bruise Bruise? Oh yeah, Bruce Bruce is the answer!
Uncle Reuben, by the way, gave me a haircut when I was in kindergarten. He cut my hair short and shaved a small bald spot on the back of my head. My mother wouldn’t let me go to school until the bald spot grew out again.
Of all my brothers and sisters (six in all), I am the only transplant to Athens, Ohio. I was born in Newark, Ohio, and have lived all around Southeastern Ohio. However, I moved to Athens to go to Ohio University and have never left.
At Ohio U, I never could make up my mind whether to major in English or Philosophy, so I got a bachelor’s degree with a double major in both areas, then I added a Master of Arts degree in English and a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy. Yes, I have my MAMA degree.
Currently, and for a long time to come (I eat fruits and veggies), I am spending my retirement writing books such as Nadia Comaneci: Perfect 10, The Funniest People in Comedy, Homer’s Iliad: A Retelling in Prose, and William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Retelling in Prose.
By the way, my sister Brenda Kennedy writes romances such as A New Beginning and Shattered Dreams.
Ben Jonson's THE CASE IS ALTERED: A Retelling (Free PDF)
SOME BOOKS BY DAVID BRUCE
(Lots of FREE PDFs)
RETELLINGS OF A CLASSIC WORK OF LITERATURE
Ben Jonson’s The Alchemist: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/731768
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZEHJnB1_5RpznJDgrdO9Fzkz0R5nqF6n/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s The Arraignment, or Poetaster: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1144681
Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/759774
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SIoalHNdD99q9jKmXO3kVvh8ydxB4to8/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s The Case is Altered: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1112743
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WHn6mnGPDbZlTus6A644w0TCg_QoNDE4/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s Catiline’s Conspiracy: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1098400
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uQOLh10ExHMrx9z-P-5qUxaHc2CQTD0x/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/953165
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17vGtkBruVyQ09aeFtVStum9NCixZtfN1/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s Epicene: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1073045
Ben Jonson’s Every Man in His Humor: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1104946
Ben Jonson’s Every Man Out of His Humor: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1121591
Ben Jonson’s The Fountain of Self-Love, or Cynthia’s Revels: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1129496
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-fdVc1npRztXd35ghACIA5SMMo060w8b/view?usp=sharing
Ben Jonson’s The New Inn: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1081049
Ben Jonson’s The Staple of News: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1088627
Ben Jonson’s Volpone, or the Fox: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/745087
Christopher Marlowe’s Complete Plays: Retellings
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/911460
Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/871108
Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus: Retellings of the 1604 A-Text and of the 1616 B-Text
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/824058
Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/904128
Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/880308
Christopher Marlowe’s The Rich Jew of Malta: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/909794
Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Parts 1 and 2: Retellings
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/890081
Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/238180
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16MC3INNAzLtjT4TqGtUmxBKYmp6Lnc5k/view?usp=sharing
Dante’s Inferno: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/89244
Dante’s Purgatory: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/210951
Dante’s Paradise: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/238110
The Famous Victories of Henry V: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/781086
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yj-AAS0oRbapdSeAw33gg6k2il78N7Yu/view?usp=sharing
From the Iliad to the Odyssey: A Retelling in Prose of Quintus of Smyrna’s Posthomerica
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/287203
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hRMimR9VchgFI7q5nBKmE6udiotCzq7c/view?usp=sharing
George Peele’s The Arraignment of Paris: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/942964
George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1006013
George’s Peele’s David and Bathsheba, and the Tragedy of Absalom: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/993326
George’s Peele’s Edward I: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1061540
George Peele’s The Old Wives’ Tale: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/918341
George-A-Greene, The Pinner of Wakefield: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1108197
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18MYbD9wENgFqSMC_s-PijXsorVQguFWx/view?usp=sharing
The History of King Leir: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/800724
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MdkCVAtxuWZrgkCNMwrJ2uDLNDwjnFBk/view?usp=sharing
Homer’s Iliad: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/264676
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18tiAjtd5a6Qil0FHIss2UpCEacizaij3/view?usp=sharing
Homer’s Odyssey: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/87553
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rn5b3A6TFJngdZ_DC0daL9jZBToiSy-P/view?usp=sharing
Jason and the Argonauts: A Retelling in Prose of Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/337653
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11fFWYrzu_YBK_Zb8aYQkYDvj5tDjSYPw/view?usp=sharing
The Jests of George Peele: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1064210
John Ford: Eight Plays Translated into Modern English
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/989979
John Ford’s The Broken Heart: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/792090
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PVkKm5BxBYE8uUY9IzcjdEQZ5ipGmxlm/view?usp=sharing
John Ford’s The Fancies, Chaste and Noble: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/989291
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19JQQmLv_b3Oy3N3yhRpQM0b5ymAFh_zy/view?usp=sharing
John Ford’s The Lady’s Trial: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/985699
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16F0PoPepXJJAX2RBn2lVK1Apvp6gwO9g/view?usp=sharing
John Ford’s The Lover’s Melancholy: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/946285
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DTu7EkdqS8PEuljstF4KMnW9d3S5CiXc/view?usp=sharing
John Ford’s Love’s Sacrifice: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/925020
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aE9jUQfe3e4acoJ63kIaqY57Mi9hrJja/view?usp=sharing
John Ford’s Perkin Warbeck: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/937190
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14GOL5rPf6lcYb-e7ml9_BDzcFufbPjo1/view?usp=sharing
John Ford’s The Queen: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/930049
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14GOL5rPf6lcYb-e7ml9_BDzcFufbPjo1/view?usp=sharing
John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/771031
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V9aUtdKeYWY6DRoVimK-Vq6J8a6DL9JN/view?usp=sharing
John Webster’s The White Devil: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1000808
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19zCtHbfGVamswILTd8MUDWC1pabCUEs8/view?usp=sharing
King Edward III: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/814530
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_gqk9Es--Qvi8EjqY_4OztVsCiVJcQ0j/view?usp=sharing
The Merry Devil of Edmonton: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/957047
Robert Greene’s Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/915455
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bX1a4cbdne38rgJ2sy4A4_8SIQ_ljnCW/view?usp=sharing
The Taming of a Shrew: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1052341
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10FsrQNk4Z1TAbiW_5VCD303VnEZqR6tP/view?usp=sharing
Tarlton’s Jests: A Retelling
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/772884
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QcGqnBsSPsRdPwctADo6DytHqZSyDMkG/view?usp=sharing
The Trojan War and Its Aftermath: Four Ancient Epic Poems
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/486330
Virgil’s Aeneid: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/277646
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yl8jYM0EJwB99WnoNlZRQEIms6UJIpFW/view?usp=sharing
William Shakespeare’s 5 Late Romances: Retellings in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/724666
William Shakespeare’s 10 Histories: Retellings in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/776868
William Shakespeare’s 11 Tragedies: Retellings in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/776890
William Shakespeare’s 12 Comedies: Retellings in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/715562
William Shakespeare’s 38 Plays: Retellings in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/777062
William Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV, aka Henry IV, Part 1: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/396839
William Shakespeare’s 2 Henry IV, aka Henry IV, Part 2: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/502075
William Shakespeare’s 1 Henry VI, aka Henry VI, Part 1: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/675826
William Shakespeare’s 2 Henry VI, aka Henry VI, Part 2: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/687115
William Shakespeare’s 3 Henry VI, aka Henry VI, Part 3: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/694202
William Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/660279
William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/561440
William Shakespeare’s As You Like It: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/411180
William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/474177
William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/651995
William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/607757
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/521558
William Shakespeare’s Henry V: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/494583
William Shakespeare’s Henry VIII: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/702433
William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/417297
William Shakespeare’s King John: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/667943
William Shakespeare’s King Lear: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/549148
William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labor’s Lost: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/640495
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/371976
William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/530136
William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/485384
William Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/510046
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/389517
William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/432053
William Shakespeare’s Othello: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/469501
William Shakespeare’s Pericles, Prince of Tyre: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/588726
William Shakespeare’s Richard II: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/633694
William Shakespeare’s Richard III: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/598141
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/385811
William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/424622
William Shakespeare’s The Tempest: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/437521
William Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/626171
William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/569421
William Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/617533
William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/404123
William Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/575743
William Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/712849
William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale: A Retelling in Prose
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/539561
OTHER FICTION
Candide’s Two Girlfriends (Adult)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/247531
The Erotic Adventures of Candide (Adult)
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/249299
Honey Badger Goes to Hell — and Heaven
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/306009
I Want to Die — Or Fight Back
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/83479
“School Legend: A Short Story”
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1123252
“Why I Support Same-Sex Civil Marriage”
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34568
CHILDREN’S BIOGRAPHY
Nadia Comaneci: Perfect Ten
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/96982
PERSONAL FINANCE
How to Manage Your Money: A Guide for the Non-Rich
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/469305
ANECDOTE COLLECTIONS
250 Anecdotes About Opera
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/310277
250 Anecdotes About Religion
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106782
250 Anecdotes About Religion: Volume 2
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106861
250 Music Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/427367
Be a Work of Art: 250 Anecdotes and Stories
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/105419
Boredom is Anti-Life: 250 Anecdotes and Stories
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/156495
The Coolest People in Art: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97814
The Coolest People in the Arts: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/159914
The Coolest People in Books: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98030
The Coolest People in Comedy: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98364
Create, Then Take a Break: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/254240
Don’t Fear the Reaper: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98212
The Funniest People in Art: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99002
The Funniest People in Books: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99313
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/105652
The Funniest People in Books, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/105939
The Funniest People in Comedy: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/99159
The Funniest People in Dance: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/98588
The Funniest People in Families: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108542
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108809
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108821
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 4: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108830
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 5: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108841
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 6: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108857
The Funniest People in Movies: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34647
The Funniest People in Music: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/100442
The Funniest People in Music, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/100473
The Funniest People in Music, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/100544
The Funniest People in Neighborhoods: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106442
The Funniest People in Relationships: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108060
The Funniest People in Sports: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107239
The Funniest People in Sports, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107576
The Funniest People in Television and Radio: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/106234
The Funniest People in Theater: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/104257
The Funniest People Who Live Life: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107847
The Funniest People Who Live Life, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108564
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds, Volume 1: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34822
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/35011
Maximum Cool: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97550
The Most Interesting People in Movies: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108582
The Most Interesting People in Politics and History: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108392
The Most Interesting People in Politics and History, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108398
The Most Interesting People in Politics and History, Volume 3: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108422
The Most Interesting People in Religion: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107097
The Most Interesting People in Sports: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/107857
The Most Interesting People Who Live Life: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108598
The Most Interesting People Who Live Life, Volume 2: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108801
Reality is Fabulous: 250 Anecdotes and Stories
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/209963
Resist Psychic Death: 250 Anecdotes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/97267
Seize the Day: 250 Anecdotes and Stories
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/96869
PHILOSOPHY FOR THE MASSES
Philosophy for the Masses: Ethics
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374071
Philosophy for the Masses: Metaphysics and More
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/374629
Philosophy for the Masses: Religion
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/376026
DISCUSSION GUIDE SERIES
Dante’s Inferno: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/342391
Dante’s Paradise: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/345337
Dante’s Purgatory: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/344723
Forrest Carter’s The Education of Little Tree: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/340944
Homer’s Iliad: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/364356
Homer’s Odyssey: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/360552
Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/352848
Jerry Spinelli’s Maniac Magee: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339978
Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/340610
Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal”: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/352048
Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339002
Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339120
Lloyd Alexander’s The Castle of Llyr: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/338589
Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339720
Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/350434
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/348104
Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/351719
Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/349030
Nancy Garden’s Annie on My Mind: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/339564
Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/356224
Virgil, “The Fall of Troy”: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/356868
Virgil’s Aeneid: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/358529
Voltaire’s Candide: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/346971
William Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/355953
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/354870
William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/355465
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/354231
William Sleator’s Oddballs: A Discussion Guide
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/353345
***
GOOD DEEDS SERIES (PLURAL)
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 1
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qQ-aJ4kjGQti20c3G2CPm1zile51Yd-5/view?usp=sharing
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 2
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h1ZaZEixmzjGLHI5_57AwTFuQ02g8lL3/view?usp=sharing
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 3
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12iOTDEzHV6P576LGAijcPQgpt1ogax0R/view?usp=sharing
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 4
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z0-CAMz-4ulX29CAIHNU16Z912eNqt-v/view?usp=sharing
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 5
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y7DlPdu-eZwA23gEHPT2YWMT0W5r8eu7/view?usp=sharing
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 6
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zHZv2iTHQnbVY0n_LihTWXKOvUr4_hyr/view?usp=sharing
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4
The Kindest People Who Do Good Deeds: Volume 7
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FSCTtviio4xrX7e07-OuAgYpxmWlIPuk/view?usp=sharing
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com/4
***
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 1
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GfiQMNnQ4G0CHGt1AZQQIPODV596k30j/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 2
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OHcETsSaWbIhFPIZWeW0laO6mdHVbcph/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 3
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XZCFlAWhtXPnf35OGlUoh991i05D0Bs0/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 4
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cj8yIDLmFFG6dGzLpoVE3RrQ3-LhKV0d/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 5
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LxqLrwm898Chg3mnRY2NiGZA4FkFdOXR/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 6
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PmAxX5C-viQF0GfIpsM7mTtsyQ9lfm8J/view?usp=sharing
You’ve Got to Be Kind: Volume 7
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Bq_SmSf4rsWdtqA7p0kN9tJ5ip3gqEht/view?usp=sharing
***
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 1)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FqbObI95XKwIr1QWn0lBFDSNsIENTR9B/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 2)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QWF5bRarJBauD7Qdb-_99K9UuQBL_fZ7/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 3)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gUUA4ms-CX7BvVlOaNmpYswPN-eBfKIa/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 4)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BXLhqmY1qOEaF4u5IMRpSCm7H6jy2mj_/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 5)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Pks6XXM4T-r_r4cBBSmUIlP0jARS8i-0/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 6)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ohXsEp79jwf8OdlIXI7I3nPIotjX5wWb/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Be Excellent to Each Other (Volume 7)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_orz__RY0T3A-kpa7fpbS8koDwp0I91p/view?usp=sharing
***
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 1)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13X4KOLTIvPVwSBo1ijX0aJABB8wbgZyT/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 2)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wbRuc4G0EdFeM4UVWk6LwbxDKkF19T2s/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 3)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ksyO9KnAJ6yGpK5CNMY12Ry9HTQ9vxm1/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 4)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NuAM7qAb_XLRGHxUTMLrm2PhOfjU7Fk8/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 5)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T5HB-AwL4S61aj4lLK3K5Q0ulgQbarR7/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 6)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PYx6MyYI9YY_RKCv3nUZnENwv0jIxfRn/view?usp=sharing
The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 7)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I8aphNRXnok_slWALv8s8TjJ344sZVml/view?usp=sharing
***
COMPOSITION PROJECTS
Composition Project: Writing an Autobiographical Essay
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1138445
Composition Project: Writing a Hero-of-Human-Rights Essay
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/481598
Composition Project: Writing a Problem-Solving Letter
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1138745
TEACHING
How to Teach the Autobiographical Essay Composition Project in 9 Classes
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/487660
***
IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD SERIES (Stories and Anecdotes and Opinions)
It’s a Wonderful World: Volumes 1-7
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/690
***
THE RELATIONSHIP BOOKS SERIES
The Relationship Books (Volume 1-8)
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/674
BE KIND AND BE USEFUL SERIES (Stories and Anecdotes and Opinions)
Be Kind and Be Useful: Volumes 1-4)
https://wordpress.com/page/davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com/686
***
BRUCE’S MUSIC RECOMMENDATIONS SERIES
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: Volumes 1-8
https://anecdotesandmusic.wordpress.com/2022/04/26/bruces-music-recommendations-free-pdfs/
***
davidbruceblog #1
http://davidbruceblog.wordpress.com/
davidbruceblog #2
https://davidbrucemusic.wordpress.com
davidbruceblog #3
https://cosplayvideos.wordpress.com
davidbruceblog #4
https://davidbruceblog4.wordpress.com
David Bruce Books: Free PDFs
davidbrucebooks: EDUCATE YOURSELF
https://davidbruceblog429065578.wordpress.com
Anecdotes, Arts, Books, and Music
https://anecdotesandmusic.wordpress.com
George Peele: English Dramatist
https://georgepeeleenglishdramatist.wordpress.com
David Bruce’s Books at Blogspot
https://davidbrucebooks.blogspot.com
David Bruce’s Books at WIX
https://bruceb22.wixsite.com/website/blog
David Bruce’s Books at Smashwords
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/bruceb
David Bruce’s Books at Apple Books
https://itunes.apple.com/ie/artist/david-bruce/id81470634
David Bruce’s Books at Kobo
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/search?query=david%20bruce&fcsearchfield=Author
David Bruce’s Books at Barnes and Noble
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