Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - the Humourous Lieutenant eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 122 pages of information about Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10).

Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - the Humourous Lieutenant eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 122 pages of information about Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10).
And let them fight their shares; spur to destruction,
You cannot miss the way:  be bravely desperate,
And your young friends before ye, that lost this battel,
Your honourable friends, that knew no order,
Cry out, Antigonus, the old Antigonus,
The wise and fortunate Antigonus,
The great, the valiant, and the fear’d Antigonus,
Has sent a desperate son, without discretion
To bury in an hour his age of honour.

Dem.  I am ashamed.

Leo.  ’Tis ten to one, I die with ye: 
The coward will not long be after ye;
I scorn to say I saw you fall, sigh for ye,
And tell a whining tale, some ten years after
To boyes and girles in an old chimney corner,
Of what a Prince we had, how bravely spirited;
How young and fair he fell:  we’l all go with ye,
And ye shall see us all, like sacrifices
In our best trim, fill up the mouth of ruine. 
Will this faith satisfie your folly? can this show ye
’Tis not to die we fear, but to die poorly,
To fall, forgotten, in a multitude? 
If you will needs tempt fortune now she has held ye,
Held ye from sinking up.

Dem.  Pray do not kill me, These words pierce deeper than the wounds I suffer, The smarting wounds of loss.

Leo.  Ye are too tender;
Fortune has hours of loss, and hours of honour,
And the most valiant feel them both:  take comfort,
The next is ours, I have a soul descries it: 
The angry bull never goes back for breath
But when he means to arm his fury double. 
Let this day set, but not the memorie,
And we shall find a time:  How now Lieutenant?

Enter Lieutenant.

Lieu.  I know not:  I am mall’d:  we are bravely beaten, All our young gallants lost.

Leo.  Thou art hurt.

Lieu.  I am pepper’d,
I was i’th’ midst of all:  and bang’d of all hands: 
They made an anvile of my head, it rings yet;
Never so thresh’d:  do you call this fame?  I have fam’d it;
I have got immortal fame, but I’le no more on’t;
I’le no such scratching Saint to serve hereafter;
O’ my conscience I was kill’d above twenty times,
And yet I know not what a Devil’s in’t,
I crawled away, and lived again still; I am hurt plaguily,
But now I have nothing near so much pain Colonel,
They have sliced me for that maladie.

Dem.  All the young men lost?

Lie.  I am glad you are here:  but they are all i’th’ pound sir,
They’l never ride o’re other mens corn again, I take it,
Such frisking, and such flaunting with their feathers,
And such careering with their Mistres favours;
And here must he be pricking out for honour,
And there got he a knock, and down goes pilgarlick,
Commends his soul to his she-saint, and Exit
Another spurs in there, cryes make room villains,
I am a Lord, scarce spoken, but with reverence
A Rascal takes him o’re the face, and fells him;
There lyes the Lord, the Lord be with him.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (2 of 10) - the Humourous Lieutenant from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.