WOODVIL
This keeping of open house acquaints a man with strange
companions.
(Enter, at another door, Three calling for Harry Freeman._)
Harry Freeman, Harry
Freeman.
He is not here.
Let us go look for him.
Where is Freeman?
Where is Harry?
(Exeunt the Three, calling for Freeman.)
WOODVIL Did you ever see such gentry? (laughing). These are they that fatten on ale and tobacco in a morning, drink burnt brandy at noon to promote digestion, and piously conclude with quart bumpers after supper, to prove their loyalty.
LOVEL
Come, shall we adjourn to the Tennis Court?
WOODVIL No, you shall go with me into the gallery, where I will shew you the Vandyke I have purchased. “The late King taking leave of his children.”
LOVEL
I will but adjust my dress, and attend you. (Exit
Lovel.)
JOHN WOODVIL (alone)
Now Universal England getteth
drunk
For joy that Charles, her
monarch, is restored:
And she, that sometime wore
a saintly mask,
The stale-grown vizor from
her face doth pluck,
And weareth now a suit of
morris bells,
With which she jingling goes
through all her towns and villages.
The baffled factions in their
houses sculk:
The common-wealthsman, and
state machinist,
The cropt fanatic, and fifth-monarchy-man,
Who heareth of these visionaries
now?
They and their dreams have
ended. Fools do sing,
Where good men yield God thanks;
but politic spirits,
Who live by observation, note
these changes
Of the popular mind, and thereby
serve their ends.
Then why not I? What’s
Charles to me, or Oliver,
But as my own advancement
hangs on one of them?
I to myself am chief.—I
know,
Some shallow mouths cry out,
that I am smit
With the gauds and shew of
state, the point of place,
And trick of precedence, the
ducks, and nods,
Which weak minds pay to rank.
’Tis not to sit
In place of worship at the
royal masques,
Their pastimes, plays, and
Whitehall banquetings,
For none of these,
Nor yet to be seen whispering
with some great one,
Do I affect the favours of
the court.
I would be great, for greatness
hath great power,
And that’s the fruit
I reach at.—
Great spirits ask great play-room.
Who could sit,
With these prophetic swellings
in my breast,
That prick and goad me on,
and never cease,
To the fortunes something
tells me I was born to?
Who, with such monitors within
to stir him,
Would sit him down, with lazy
arms across,
A unit, a thing without a
name in the state,
A something to be govern’d,
not to govern,
A fishing, hawking, hunting,
country gentleman?
(Exit.)
SCENE.—Sherwood Forest.