Monsieur D'Olive Act 1

Monsieur D'Olive.
Philip, the Duke.
St. Anne, Count.
Vaumont, Count.
Vandome.
Roderigue.
Mugeron.
Two pages
Pacque.
Dicque.
Cornelius, a Surgeon.
Fripper, a petty Broker.
[Jacqueline] the Duchess.
Hieronime, lady in waiting, cousin of Vandome.
Marcellina, Countess.
Eurione, her sister.
Licette, maid to Marcellina.
Servants, pages, sailors.

Act 1

ACTUS PRIMI SCENA PRIMA

Scene I.1 [Before the House of Vaumont.]
[Vandome, with servants and sailors laden.
Vaumont, another way walking.]

VANDOME: Convey your carriage to my brother-in-law's,
Th' Earl of Saint Anne, to whom and to my sister
Commend my humble service; tell them both
Of my arrival, and intent t'attend them.
When in the way I have performed fit duties
To Count Vaumont, and his most honored Countess.

SERVANT: We will, sir. This way, follow, honest sailors.
[Exeunt Servants, with sailors.]

VANDOME: Our first observance after any absence
Must be presented ever to our mistress,
As at our parting she should still be last. ... [I.1.10]
Hinc Amor ut circulus, from hence 'tis said
That love is like a circle, being th'efficient
And end of all our actions; which excited
By no worse object than my matchless mistress
Were worthy to employ us to that likeness.
And be the only ring our powers should beat.
Noble she is by birth, made good by virtue,
Exceeding fair, and her behavior to it
Is like a singular musician
To a sweet instrument, or else as doctrine ... [I.1.20]
Is the the soul that puts it into act,
And prints it full of admirable forms,
Without which 'twere an empty idle flame.
Her eminent judgment to dispose these parts
Sits on her brow and holds a silver sceptre.
With which she keeps time to the several musics
Placed in the sacred consort of her beauties:
Love's complete armory is managed in her
To stir affection, and the discipline
To check and to affright it from attempting ... [I.1.30]
Any attaint might disproportion her,
Or make her graces less than circular.
Yet her even carriage is as far from coyness
As from immodesty, in play, in dancing,
In suffering courtship, in requiting kindness;
In use of places, hours, and companies,
Free as the sun, and nothing more corrupted;
As circumspect as Cynthia in her vows,
And constant as the center to observe them;
Ruthful and bounteous, never fierce nor dull, ... [I.1.40]
In all her courses ever at the full.
These three years I have traveled, and so long
Have been in travail with her dearest sight,
Which now shall beautify the enamored light.
This is her house. What! The gates shut and clear
Of all attendants? Why, the house was wont
To hold the usual concourse of a Court,
And see, methinks, through the encurtained windows
(In this high time of day) I see light tapers.
This is exceeding strange! Behold the Earl, ... [I.1.50]
Walking in as strange sort before the door.
I'll know this wonder, sure. My honored lord!

VAUMONT: ~~~ You should be sure
To know a man your friend before you embraced him.

VANDOME: I hope my knowledge cannot be more sure
Than of your lordship's friendship.

VAUMONT: ~~~ No man's knowledge
Can make him sure of anything without him,
Or not within his power to keep or order.

VANDOME: I comprehend not this; and wonder much ... [I.1.60]
To see my most loved lord so much estranged.

VAUMONT: The truth is, I have done your known deserts
More wrong than with your right should let you greet me,
And in your absence, which makes worse the wrong,
And in your honor, which still makes it worse.

VANDOME: If this be all, my lord, the discontent
You seem to entertain is merely causeless;
Your free confession, and the manner of it,
Doth liberally excuse what wrong soever
Your misconduct could make you lay on me. ... [I.1.70]
And therefore, good my lord, discover it,
That we may take the spleen and corsie from it.

VAUMONT: Then hear a strange report and reason why
I did you this repented injury.
You know my wife is by the rights of courtship
Your chosen mistress, and she not disposed
(As other ladies are) to entertain
Peculiar terms with common acts of kindness;
But (knowing in her more than women's judgment
That she should nothing wrong her husband's right, ... [I.1.80]
To use a friend, only for virtue chosen,
With all the rights of friendship) took such care
After the solemn parting to your travel,
And spake of you with such exceeding passion,
That I grew jealous, and with rage excepted
Against her kindness, utterly forgetting
I should have weighed so rare a woman's words
As duties of a free and friendly justice,
Not as the headstrong and incontinent vapors
Of other ladies' bloods, enflamed with lust; ... [I.1.90]
Wherein I injured both your innocencies,
Which I approve, not out of flexible dotage
By any cunning flatteries of my wife,
But in impartial equity, made apparent
Both by mine own well-weighed comparison
Of all her other manifest perfections
With this one only doubtful levity,
And likewise by her violent apprehension
Of her deep wrong and yours, for she hath vowed
Never to let the common pandress light ... [I.1.100]
(Or any doom as vulgar) censure her
In any action she leaves subject to them,
Never to fit the day with her attire,
Nor grace it with her presence, nourish in it
(Unless with sleep) nor stir out of her chamber;
And so hath muffled and mewed up her beauties
In never-ceasing darkness, never sleeping
But in the day, transformed by her to night,
With all sun banished from her smothered graces;
And thus my dear and most unmatched wife ... [I.1.110]
That was a comfort and a grace to me,
In every judgment, every company,
I, by false jealousy, have no less than lost,
Murthered her living, and entombed her quick.

VANDOME: Conceit it not so deeply, good my lord;
Your wrong to me or her was no fit ground
To bear so weighty and resolved a vow
From her incensed and abused virtues.

VAUMONT: There could not be a more important cause
To fill her with a ceaseless hate of light, ... [I.1.120]
To see it grace gross lightness with full beams,
And frown on continence with her oblique glances:
As nothing equals right to virtue done,
So is her wrong past all comparison.

VANDOME: Virtue is not malicious; wrong done her
Is righted ever when men grant they err.
But doth my princely mistress so contemn
The glory of her beauties and the applause
Give to the worth of her society,
To let a voluntary vow obscure them? ... [I.1.130]

VAUMONT: See all her windows and her doors made fast,
And in her chamber lights for night enflamed;
Now others rise, she takes her to her bed.

VANDOME: This news is strange; heaven grant I be encountered
With better tidings of my other friends!
Let me be bold, my lord, t'inquire the state
Of my dear sister, in whose self and me
Together the whole hope of our family,
Survives with her dear and princely husband,
Th' Earl of Saint Anne.

VAUMONT: ~~~ Unhappy that I am, ... [I.1.140]
I would to heaven your most welcome steps
Had brought you first upon some other friend,
To be the sad relator of the changes
Chanced [in] your three years' most lamented absence.
Your worthy sister, worthier far of heaven
Than this unworthy hell of passionate earth,
Is taken up amongst her fellow stars.

VANDOME: Unhappy man that ever I returned,
And perished not ere these news pierced mine ears!

VAUMONT: Nay, be not you, that teach men comfort, grieved; ... [I.1.150]
I know hour judgment will set willing shoulders
To the known burthens of necessity,
And teach your willful brother patience,
Who strives with Death, and from his caves of rest
Retains his wife's dead corpse amongst the living;
For with the rich sweets of restoring balms
He keeps her looks as fresh as if she lived,
And in his chamber (as in life attired)
She in a chair sits leaning on her arm,
As if she only slept; and at her feet ... [I.1.160]
He, like a mortified hermit clad,
Sits weeping out his life, as having lost
All his life's comfort; and that, she being dead
(Who was his greatest part) he must consume
As in an apoplexy struck with death.
Nor can the Duke nor Duchess comfort him,
Nor messengers with consolatory letters
From the kind King of France, who is allied
To her and you. But to lift all his thoughts
Up to another world where she expects him, ... [I.1.170]
He feeds his ears with soul-exciting music,
Solemn and tragical, and so resolves
In those sad accents to exhale his soul.

VANDOME: Oh, what a second ruthless sea of woes
Wracks me within my haven and on the shore!
What shall I do? Mourn, mourn, with them that mourn.
And make my greater woes their less expel;
This day I'll consecrate to sighs and tears,
And in this next even, which is my mistress' morning,
I'll greet her, wond'ring at her willful humors, ... [I.1.180]
And with rebukes, breaking out of my love
And duty to her honor, make her see
How much her too much curious virtue wrongs her.

VAUMONT: Said like the man the world hath ever held you!
Welcome as new lives to us; our good now
Shall wholly be ascribed and trust to you.
[Exeunt. Enter Roderique and Mugeron.]

MUGERON: See, see, the virtuous Countess hath bidden our day
good night; her stars are now visible. When was any lady
seen to be so constant in her vow, and able to forbear the
society of men so sincerely? ... [I.1.190]

RODERIGUE: Never in this world, at least exceeding seldom.
What shame it is for men to see women so far surpass them;
for when was any man known (out of judgment) to perform
so staid an abstinence from the society of women?

RODERIGUE: What an excellent creature an honest woman is!
I warrant you the Countess and her virgin sister spend all
their times in contemplation, watching to see the sacred
spectacles of the night, when other ladies lie drowned in sleep
or sensuality. Is't not so, thinkst? ... [I.1.200]

RODERIGUE: Come, come, let's forget we are courtiers, and talk
like honest men, tell truth, and shame all travelers and
tradesmen. Thou believ'st all's natural beauty that shows
fair, though the painter enforce it, and suffer'st in soul, I know,
for the honorable lady.

MUGERON: Can any heart of adamant not yield in compassion
to see spotless innocency suffer such bitter penance?

RODERIGUE: A very fit stock to graff on! Tush, man, think
what she is, think where she lives, think on the villainous ... [I.1.210]
cunning of these times! Indeed, did we live now in old Saturn's
time, when women had no other art than what Nature taught
'em (and yet there needs little art, I wis, to teach a woman
to dissemble); when luxury was unborn, at least untaught the
art to steal from a forbidden tree; when coaches, when periwigs
and painting, when masks and masking, in a word, when
court and courting was unknown, an easy mist might then,
perhaps, have wrought upon my sense, as it does not on the
poor Countess and thine.

RODERIGUE: I tell thee, Mugeron, the Flesh is grown so great
with the Devil, as there's but a little honesty left i'th' World.
That that is, is in lawyers, they engross all. 'Sfoot, what
gave the first fire to the Count's jealousy?

RODERIGUE: Honorable affection: First she's an ill huswife
of her honor, that puts it upon construction. But the ... [I.1.230]
presumption was violent against her: no speech but of
Vandome, no thought but of his memory, no mirth but in his
company, besides the free intercourse of letters, favors, and
other entertainments, too too manifest signs that her heart
went hand-in-hand with her tongue.

RODERIGUE: Ay, ay, a Court term for I wot what! 'Slight,
Vandome, the stallion of the Court, her devoted servant and,
forsooth, loves her honorably! Tush, he's a fool that believes
it! For my part I love to offend in the better part still, and ... [I.1.240]
that is, to judge charitably. But now, forsooth, to redeem
her honor she must by a laborious and violent kind of purgation
rub off the skin to wash out the spot; turn her chamber
to a cell, the sun into a taper, and (as if she lived in another
world among the Antipodes) make our night her day, and our
day her night, that under this curtain she may lay his jealousy
asleep, while she turns poor Argus to Actaeon, and makes his
sheets common to her servant Vandome.

MUGERON: Vandome? Why, he was met i'th' street but
even now, newly arrived after three years' travel. ... [I.1.250]

RODERIGUE: Newly arrived? He has been arrived this
twelve-month, and has ever since lien close in his mistress'
cunning darkness at her service.

MUGERON: Fie o' the Devil! Who will not Envy slander?
Oh, the miserable condition of her sex, born to live under all
constructions. If she be courteous, she's thought to be wanton;
if she be kind, she's too willing; if coy, too willful; if she
be modest, she's a clown; if she be honest, she's a fool;
[Enter D'Olive.] and so he is. [pointing to D'Olive.]

RODERIGUE: What, Monsieur D'Olive, the only admirer of wit ... [I.1.260]
and good words!

D'OLIVE: Morrow, wits, morrow, good wits! My little parcel
of wit, I have rods in piss for you. How dost, Jack? May
I call you Sir Jack yet?

MUGERON: You may, sir; Sir's as commendable an addition
as Jack, for ought I know.

RODERIGUE: Go to, you may cover; we have taken notice of
your embroidered beaver.

D'OLIVE: Look you, by heaven, th'art one of the maddest bitter ... [I.1.270]
slaves in Europe; I do but wonder how I made shift to love
thee all this while.

D'OLIVE: Good, i'faith, but bitter! Oh, you mad slaves, I
think you had Satyrs to your sires, yet I must love you. I
must take pleasure in you; and, i'faith, tell me, how is't?
Live, I see, you do, but how, but how, wits?

D'OLIVE: Good, sooth! But, indeed, to say truth, time
was when the sons of the Muses had the privilege to live
only by their wits; but times are altered, monopolies are
now called in, and wit's become a free trade for all sorts to
live by: lawyers live by wit, and they live worshipfully;
soldiers live by wit, and they live honorably; panders live
by wit, and they live honestly. In a word, there are few
trades but live by wit; only bawds and midwives live by
women's labors, as fools and fiddlers do by making mirth, ... [I.1.290]
pages and parasites by making legs, painters and players
by making mouths and faces. Ha, does't well, wits?

RODERIGUE: Faith, thou followest a figure in thy jests as
country gentlemen follow fashions, when they be worn
threadbare.

D'OLIVE: Well, well, let's leave these wit skirmishes, and
say, when shall we meet?

D'OLIVE: Tush, man! I mean at my chamber, where we
may take free use of ourselves, that is, drink sack, and talk ... [I.1.300]
satire, and let our wits run the wild-goose chase over Court
and country. I will have my chamber the rendezvous of
all good wits, the shop of good words, the mint of good jests,
an ordinary of fine discourse: critics, essayists, linguists,
poets, and other professors of that faculty of wit, shall at
certain hours i'th' day resort thither; it shall be a second
Sorbonne, where all doubts or differences of learning, honor,
duellism, criticism, and poetry shall be disputed. And how,
wits, do ye follow the Court still?

RODERIGUE: Close at heels, sir; and, I can tell you, you have ... [I.1.310]
much to answer for your stars that you do not so too.

RODERIGUE: Why, sir, the Court's as 'twere the stage; and
they that have a good suit of parts and qualities, ought to
press thither to grace them, and receive their due merit.

D'OLIVE: Tush! Let the Court follow me; he that soars
too near the sun, melts his wings many times. As I am, I
possess myself, I enjoy my liberty, my learning, my wit;
as for wealth and honor let 'em go, I'll not lose my
learning to be a lord, nor my wit to be an alderman. ... [I.1.320]

D'OLIVE: And what! You stand gazing at this comet
here, and admire it, I dare say.

RODERIGUE: But I wonder how she entertains time in that
solitary cell; does she not take tobacco, think you?

D'OLIVE: She does, she does; others make it their physic,
she makes it her food: her sister and she take it by turn,
first one, then the other, and Vandome ministers to them ... [I.1.330]
both.

MUGERON: How sayest thou by that Helen of Greece, the
Countess' sister? There were a paragon, Monsieur D'Olive,
to admire and marry too.

D'OLIVE: Tush! Tell me not of choice; if I stood affected
that way, I would choose my wife as men do Valentines,
blindfold, or draw cuts for them, for so I shall be sure not
to be deceived in choosing: for take this of me, there's ... [I.1.340]
ten times more deceit in women than in horseflesh; and I
say still that a pretty well-paced chambermaid is the only
fashion; if she grow full or fulsome, give her but sixpence
to buy her a handbasket, and send her the way of all flesh;
there's no more but so.

D'OLIVE: Oh me! What a hell 'tis for a man to be tied
to the continual charge of a coach with the appurtenances,
horse, men, and so forth; and then to have a man's house
pestered with a whole country of guests, grooms, panders, ... [I.1.350]
waiting-maids, etc! I careful to please my wife, she careless
to displease me, shrewish if she be honest, intolerable
if she be wise, imperious as an empress, all she does must
be law, all she says gospel. Oh, what a penance 'tis to
endure her! I glad to forbear still, all to keep her loyal,
and yet perhaps when all's done, my heir shall be like my
horsekeeper! Fie on't! The very thought of marriage
were able to cool the hottest liver in France.

RODERIGUE: Well, I durst venture twice the price of your gilt
cony's-wool we shall have you change your copy ere a ... [I.1.360]
twelve-month's day.

MUGERON: We must have you dubbed o'the' order, there's no
remedy! You that have unmarried done such honorable
service in the commonwealth, must needs receive the honor
due to't in marriage.

RODERIGUE: For if he can prove his father was free o'th' order,
and that he was his father's son, then by the laudable custom
of the city, he may be a cuckold by his father's copy, ... [I.1.370]
and never serve for't.

MUGERON: Nay, how can he plead that, when tis as well
known his father died a bachelor?

D'OLIVE: Why, this is right; here's wit canvassed out on's ... [I.1.380]
coat into's jacket; the string sounds ever well that rubs not
too much o'th' frets; I must love your wits, I must take
pleasure in you. Farewell, good wits; you know my
lodging; make an errant thither now and then, and save
your ordinary; do, wits, do!

D'OLIVE: O God, sir, you wrong me to think I can be troubled
with wit; I love a good wit as I love myself; if you need
a brace or two of crowns at any time, address but your
sonnet, it shall be as sufficient as your bond at all times. I ... [I.1.390]
carry half a score birds in a cage, shall ever remain at your
call. Farewell, wits; farewell, good wits.! [Exit.]

RODERIGUE: Farewell, the true map of a gull! By heaven, he
shall to th' Court! 'Tis the perfect model of an impudent
upstart, the compound of a poet and a lawyer; he shall
sure to th' Court.

RODERIGUE: He shall to't, that's certain; the Duke had a
purpose to despatch some one or other to the French King,
to entreat him to send for the body of his niece, which the ... [I.1.400]
melancholy Earl of Saint Anne, her husband, hath kept so
long unburied, as meaning one grave should entomb himself
and her together.

MUGERON: A very worthy subject for an ambassage, as
D'Olive is for an ambassador agent, and 'tis as suitable to
his brain as his parcel-gift beaver to his fools' head.

RODERIGUE: Well, it shall go hard, but he shall be employed.
Oh, 'tis a most accomplished ass, the mongrel of a gull and
a villain, the very essence of his soul is pure villainy; the
substance of his brain, foolery; one that believes nothing ... [I.1.410]
from the stars upward. A pagan in belief, an epicure beyond
belief; prodigious in lust, prodigal in wasteful expense, in
necessary most penurious; his wit is to admire and imitate,
his grace is to censure and detract. He shall to th' Court,
i'faith, he shall thither! I will shape such employment
for him as that he himself shall have no less contentment
in making mirth to the whole Court than the Duke and the
whole Court shall have pleasure in enjoying his presence.
A knave, if he be rich, is fit to make an officer; as a fool, if
he be a knave, is fit to make an intelligencer. [Exeunt.] ... [I.1.420]

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