A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 9 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 508 pages of information about A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 9.

A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 9 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 508 pages of information about A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 9.

PEG. 
Faith, I care not greatly if I do.

WILL CRICKET. 
Care not greatly if I do?  What an answer’s that?  If thou wilt say, I,
Peg, take thee, William, to my spruse husband—­

PEG. 
Why, so I will.  But we must have more company for witnesses first.

    [Enter Dancers and Piper.]

WILL CRICKET. 
That needs not.  Here’s good store of young men and maids here.

PEG. 
Why, then, here’s my hand.

WILL CRICKET.  Faith, that’s honestly spoken.  Say after me:  I, Peg Pudding, promise thee, William Cricket, that I’ll hold thee for my own sweet lily, while I have a head in mine eye and a face on my nose, a mouth in my tongue and all that a woman should have from the crown of my foot to the sole of my head.  I’ll clasp thee and clip thee, coll thee and kiss thee, till I be better than nought and worse than nothing.  When thou art ready to sleep, I’ll be ready to snort; when thou art in health, I’ll be in gladness; when thou art sick, I’ll be ready to die; when thou art mad, I’ll run out of my wits, and thereupon I strike thee good luck.  Well said, i’ faith.  O, I could find in my hose to pocket thee in my heart!  Come, my heart of gold, let’s have a dance at the making up of this match.  Strike up, Tom Piper. [They dance.  Come, Peg, I’ll take the pains to bring thee homeward; and at twilight look for me again.
                      [Exeunt.

Enter ROBIN GOODFELLOW and PETER PLOD-ALL.

ROBIN GOODFELLOW. 
Come hither, my honest friend.  Master Churms told me you had a suit to
me; what’s the matter?

PETER PLOD-ALL. 
Pray ye, sir, is your name Robin Goodfellow?

ROBIN GOODFELLOW. 
My name is Robin Goodfellow.

PETER PLOD-ALL.  Marry, sir, I hear you’re a very cunning man, sir, and sir reverence of your worship, sir, I am going a-wooing to one Mistress Lelia, a gentlewoman here hard by.  Pray ye, sir, tell me how I should behave myself, to get her to my wife, for, sir, there is a scholar about her; now, if you can tell me how I should wipe his nose of her, I would bestow a fee of you.

ROBIN GOODFELLOW.  Let me see’t, and thou shalt see what I’ll say to thee. [He gives him money.] Well, follow my counsel, and, I’ll warrant thee, I’ll give thee a love-powder for thy wench, and a kind of nux vomica in a potion shall make her come off, i’ faith.

PETER PLOD-ALL. 
Shall I trouble you so far as to take some pains with me?  I am loth to
have the dodge.

ROBIN GOODFELLOW.  Tush! fear not the dodge.  I’ll rather put on my flashing red nose and my flaming face, and come wrapped in a calf’s skin, and cry Bo bo.  I’ll fray the scholar, I warrant thee.  But first go to her, try what thou canst do; perhaps she’ll love thee without any further ado.  But thou must tell her thou hast a good stock, some hundred or two a year, and

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A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 9 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.