JAI.  Soft, let me feel my bag.  O, here is meat,
That I put up at Retford for my dog: 
I care not greatly if I give thee[232] this.

WAR.  I prythee, do.

JAI.[233] Yet let me search my conscience for it first: 
My dog’s my servant, faithful, trusty, true;
But Warman was a traitor to his lord,
A reprobate, a rascal and a Jew,
Worser than dogs, of men to be abhorr’d! 
Starve, therefore, Warman; dog, receive thy due. 
Follow me not, lest I belabour you,
You half-fac’d groat, you thick-cheek’d chittyface;
You Judas-villain! you that have undone
The honourable Robert Earl of Huntington. [Exit.

WAR.  Worse than a dog the villain me respects,
His dog he feeds, me in my need rejects. 
What shall I do? yonder I see a shed,
A little cottage, where a woman dwells,
Whose husband I from death delivered: 
If she deny me, then I faint and die. 
Ho! goodwife Thompson!

WOM.  What a noise is there? 
A foul shame on ye! is it you that knock’d?

WAR.  What, do you know me then?

WOM.  Whoop! who knows not you? 
The beggar’d, banish’d Shrieve of Nottingham,
You that betray’d your master:  is’t not you? 
Yes, a shame on you! and forsooth ye come,
To have some succour here, because you sav’d
My unthrift husband from the gallow-tree. 
A pox upon you both! would both for me
Were hang’d together.  But soft, let me see;
The man looks faint:  feel’st thou indeed distress?

WAR.  O, do not mock me in my heaviness.

WOM.  Indeed, I do not.  Well, I have within
A caudle made, I will go fetch it him. [Exit.

WAR.  O blessed woman! comfortable word! 
Be quiet, entrails, you shall be reliev’d.

    Enter WOMAN.[234]

WOM.  Here, Warman, put this hempen caudle o’er thy head. 
See downward yonder is thy master’s walk;
And like a Judas, on some rotten tree,
Hang up this rotten trunk of misery,
That goers-by thy wretched end may see. 
Stirr’st thou not, villain? get thee from my door;
A plague upon thee, haste and hang thyself. 
Run, rogue, away! ’tis thou that hast undone
Thy noble master, Earl of Huntington.
                                     [Exit.

WAR.  Good counsel and good comfort, by my faith. 
Three doctors are of one opinion,
That Warman must make speed to hang himself. 
The last hath given a caudle comfortable,
That to recure my griefs is strong and able: 
I’ll take her medicine, and I’ll choose this way,
Wherein, she saith, my master hath his walk;
There will I offer life for treachery,
And hang, a wonder to all goers-by. 
But soft! what sound harmonious is this? 
What birds are these, that sing so cheerfully,
As if they did salute the flowering spring? 
Fitter it were with tunes more dolefully
They shriek’d out sorrow, than thus cheerly sing. 
I will go seek sad desperation’s cell;
This is not it, for here are green-leav’d trees. 
Ah, for one winter-bitten bared bough,
Whereon a wretched life a wretch would lese. 
O, here is one!  Thrice-blessed be this tree,
If a man cursed may a blessing give.