A Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 298 pages of information about A Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 1.

A Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 298 pages of information about A Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 1.

Petron.  Why, thou requir’st some instance of the eye.  Wilt thou goe with me, then, and see that world Which either will returne thy old delights, Or square thy appetite anew to theirs?

Anton.  Nay, I had rather farre believe thee here;
Others ambition such discoveries seeke. 
Faith, I am satisfied with the base delights
Of common men.  A wench, a house I have,
And of my own a garden:  Ile not change
For all your walkes and ladies and rare fruits.

Petron.  Your pleasures must of force resign to these: 
In vaine you shun the sword, in vaine the sea,
In vaine is Nero fear’d or flattered. 
Hether you must and leave your purchast houses,
Your new made garden and your black browd wife,
And of the trees thou hast so quaintly set,
Not one but the displeasant Cipresse shall
Goe with thee.[90]

Anton.  Faith ’tis true, we must at length; But yet, Petronius, while we may awhile We would enjoy them; those we have w’are sure of, When that thou talke of’s doubtful and to come.

Petron.  Perhaps thou thinkst to live yet twenty yeeres,
Which may unlookt for be cut off, as mine;
If not, to endlesse time compar’d is nothing. 
What you endure must ever, endure now;
Nor stay not to be last at table set. 
Each best day of our life at first doth goe,
To them succeeds diseased age and woe;
Now die your pleasures, and the dayes you[91] pray
Your rimes and loves and jests will take away. 
Therefore, my sweet, yet thou wilt goe with mee,
And not live here to what thou wouldst not see.

Enan.  Would y’have me then [to] kill my selfe, and die, And goe I know not to what places there?

Petron.  What places dost thou feare?  Th’ill-favoured lake they tell thee thou must passe, And the[92] blacke frogs that croake about the brim?

Enan.  O, pardon, Sir, though death affrights a woman, Whose pleasures though you timely here divine, The paines we know and see.

Petron.  The paine is lifes; death rids that paine away.  Come boldly, there’s no danger in this foord; Children passe through it.  If it be a paine You have this comfort that you past it are.

Enan.  Yet all, as well as I, are loath to die.

Petron.  Judge them by deed, you see them doe’t apace.

Enan.  I, but ’tis loathly and against their wils.

Petron.  Yet know you not that any being dead
Repented them and would have liv’d againe. 
They then there errors saw and foolish prayers,
But you are blinded in the love of life;
Death is but sweet to them that doe approach it. 
To me, as one that tak’n with Delphick rage,
When the divining God his breast doth fill,
He sees what others cannot standing by,
It seemes a beauteous and pleasant thing.—­
Where is my deaths Phisitian?

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Project Gutenberg
A Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.