AKER.  Poor Akercock was fain to fly her sight,
For never an hour but she laid on me;
Her tongue and fist walked all so nimbly.

PLU.  Doth then, Belphegor, this report of thine
Against all women hold in general?

BEL.  Not so, great prince:  for, as ’mongst other creatures,
Under that sex are mingled good and bad. 
There are some women virtuous, chaste, and true;
And to all those the devil will give their due. 
But, O, my dame, born for a scourge[482] to man! 
For no mortality [I] would endure that,
Which she a thousand times hath offered me.

PLU.  But what new shapes are those upon thy head?

BEL.  These are the ancient arms of cuckoldry,
And these my dame hath kindly left to me;
For which Belphegor shall be here derided,
Unless your great infernal majesty
Do solemnly proclaim, no devil shall scorn
Hereafter still to wear the goodly horn.

PLU.  This for thy service I will grant thee freely: 
All devils shall, as thou dost, like horns wear,
And none shall scorn Belphegor’s arms to bear. 
And now, Malbecco, hear thy latest doom. 
Since that thy first reports are justified
By after-proofs, and women’s looseness known,
One plague more will I send upon the earth! 
Thou shalt assume a light and fiery shape,
And so for ever live within the world;
Dive into women’s thoughts, into men’s hearts;
Raise up false rumours and suspicious fears;
Put strange inventions into each man’s mind;
And for these actions they shall always call thee
By no name else but fearful Jealousy. 
Go, Jealousy, begone; thou hast thy charge;
Go, range about the world that is so large. 
And now, for joy Belphegor is return’d,
The furies shall their tortures cast away,
And all hell o’er we’ll make it holiday.

      [It thundereth and lightneth.  Exeunt omnes.

FINIS.

FOOTNOTES: 

[1] Cooper’s “Athenae Cantabrig,” ii. 306.

[2] Nash seems to have boasted of his birth earlier than the date of his “Lenten Stuff,” for G. Harvey, in his “Four Letters,” &c., 1592, says:  “I have enquired what speciall cause the pennyless gentleman hath to brag of his birth, which giveth the woeful poverty good leave, even with his Stentor’s voice, and in his rattling terms, to revive the pitiful history of Lazarillo de Thormes.”

[3] Not of Hertfordshire, a mistake originally made by Shiel in his “Lives of the Poets,” thence copied into Berkenhout’s “Biographia Literaria,” and subsequently into the last edition of the “Biographia Dramatica.” [It is copied also by the editor of a reprint of Nash and Marlowe’s “Dido,” 1825.]

[4] Sig.  Q 4.