A large Barn with folding doors.  In it a number of Cavaliers drinking at various rude tables.  Some women are interspersed among them.  Many are playing at dice, &c.  Their arms are piled in a corner.

1st Cav. [Sings]

   Noll’s red nose,
   In a bumper here goes
 To Beelzebub his own master;
   With the pikes at his flank
   Of our foremost rank,
 And the devil to find him plaster,
   Fairfax and Harrison,
   On them our malison. 
 But drink and sing
 A health to the KING—­
   Gentlemen! steady,
   Fill, now be ready.

All. He shall have his own again!

[Shouting and huzzaing.]

A Cav. A toast! gentlemen.  “Noll’s nose a-fire, and the devil’s youngest daughter to baste it with aqua-vitae!”

All. Ha! ha!

A Cav. Would that Goring’s moonrakers might come across the snuffling organ and cut it off.  We would have it by way of pavillon.  Thou, Frank Howard! shouldst carry it as senior cornet.  Thou wouldst be like curly-headed David with the spoils of the Philistine drum-major Goliah.  Led on by its light we’d march direct to Whitehall, our trumpets sending dismay to the virtue of the starched coifs of the round rosy rogues of London.

A Cav. [Arranging his love-lock.] Plague on’t, I don’t think their virtue would tremble at the chance.

Anoth.  Cav. Lord! what rumpling of sober dimities!  Poor little plump partridges, they cannot help their forced puritanism.—­But all women are for king and cavalier in their hearts.

[Two Cavaliers advance with angry gestures to the front of the stage.]

1st Cav. I tell thee, Wilmington! ’twas I she did regard.

2nd Cav. And I tell thee that thou thinkest wrong.  I know she loves me.

1st Cav. Did she tell thee so?

2nd Cav. This kerchief was hers.

1st Cav. Bah!  Thou didst steal it from thy mother, boy!  Go home and return it to her.

2nd Cav. Ha!

3rd Cav. Who is this piece of goods—­she at the White Dragon?

1st Cav. Nay, a mercer’s daughter.  Wouldst like the address?  She entertaineth well.

2nd Cav. How!  ’Tis false!

1st Cav. I met her yestereen, and she said thou shouldst have been a canting Psalmsinger.  Thou art so innocent a youth.

2nd Cav. Hell’s fire!  I’ll not bear this.  I tell thee she waved her hand to me from her lattice, and dropped this kerchief.

1st Cav. And to me she gave her garter when I left her.

2nd Cav. To hang thyself?  Nay, thou liest!

1st Cav. [Strikes him down.] Take that, thou fool!

[He rises, they draw.  Closing in of the Cavaliers near, confusion.]