Prev | Current Page 190 | Next

Pope, Alexander, 1688-1744

"A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 2"


We deck them, we trim them with gorgeous array,
We pamper and feed them, and keep them so gay,
That in the end of all this they be our foes.
We bass them, [we] kiss them, we look round about;
We marvel and wonder to see them so lean;
We ever anon do invent and seek out
To make them go tricksy,[318] gallant, and clean:
Which is nothing else but the very provoking
To all unthriftiness, vice, and iniquity;
It puffeth them up, it is an alluring
Their fathers and mothers at length to defy.
Which thing mine own son doth plainly declare,
Whom I always entirely have loved;
He was so my joy, he was so my care,
That now of the same I am despised.
And how he is hence from me departed,
He hath no delight with me to dwell;
He is not merry, until he be married,
He hath of knavery took such a smell.[319]
But yet seeing that he is my son,
He doth me constrain bitterly to weep,
I am not (methink) well till I be gone;
For this place I can no longer keep.
[_Here the Rich Man goeth out, and the two Cooks
cometh in; first the one, and then the other_.
THE MAN-COOK.
Make haste, Blanche, blab it out, and come away,
For we have enough to do all this whole day;
Why, Blanche, blab it out, wilt thou not come,
And knowest what business there is to be done?
If thou may be set with the pot at thy nose,
Thou carest not how other matters goes;
Come away, I bid thee, and tarry no longer,
To trust to thy help I am much the better!
THE MAID-COOK.


Pages:
178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202