A ROOM IN LOVEWIT'S HOUSE.

ENTER FACE AND MAMMON.

FACE. O sir, you're come in the only finest time.—

MAM. Where's master?

FACE. Now preparing for projection, sir.
Your stuff will be all changed shortly.

MAM. Into gold?

FACE. To gold and silver, sir.

MAM. Silver I care not for.

FACE. Yes, sir, a little to give beggars.

MAM. Where's the lady?

FACE. At hand here. I have told her such brave things of you,
Touching your bounty, and your noble spirit—

MAM. Hast thou?

FACE. As she is almost in her fit to see you.
But, good sir, no divinity in your conference,
For fear of putting her in rage.—

MAM. I warrant thee.

FACE. Six men [sir] will not hold her down: and then,
If the old man should hear or see you—

MAM. Fear not.

FACE. The very house, sir, would run mad. You know it,
How scrupulous he is, and violent,
'Gainst the least act of sin. Physic, or mathematics,
Poetry, state, or bawdry, as I told you,
She will endure, and never startle; but
No word of controversy.

MAM. I am school'd, good Ulen.

FACE. And you must praise her house, remember that,
And her nobility.

MAM. Let me alone:
No herald, no, nor antiquary, Lungs,
Shall do it better. Go.

FACE [ASIDE]. Why, this is yet
A kind of modern happiness, to have
Dol Common for a great lady.

[EXIT.]

MAM. Now, Epicure,
Heighten thyself, talk to her all in gold;
Rain her as many showers as Jove did drops
Unto his Danae; shew the god a miser,
Compared with Mammon. What! the stone will do't.

She shall feel gold, taste gold, hear gold, sleep gold;
Nay, we will concumbere gold: I will be puissant,
And mighty in my talk to her.—
[RE-ENTER FACE, WITH DOL RICHLY DRESSED.]
Here she comes.

FACE. To him, Dol, suckle him.—This is the noble knight,
I told your ladyship—

MAM. Madam, with your pardon,
I kiss your vesture.

DOL. Sir, I were uncivil
If I would suffer that; my lip to you, sir.

MAM. I hope my lord your brother be in health, lady.

DOL. My lord, my brother is, though I no lady, sir.

FACE [ASIDE]. Well said, my Guinea bird.

MAM. Right noble madam—

FACE [ASIDE]. O, we shall have most fierce idolatry.

MAM. 'Tis your prerogative.

DOL. Rather your courtesy.

MAM. Were there nought else to enlarge your virtues to me,
These answers speak your breeding and your blood.

DOL. Blood we boast none, sir, a poor baron's daughter.

MAM. Poor! and gat you? profane not. Had your father
Slept all the happy remnant of his life
After that act, lien but there still, and panted,
He had done enough to make himself, his issue,
And his posterity noble.

DOL. Sir, although
We may be said to want the gilt and trappings,
The dress of honour, yet we strive to keep
The seeds and the materials.

MAM. I do see
The old ingredient, virtue, was not lost,
Nor the drug money used to make your compound.
There is a strange nobility in your eye,
This lip, that chin! methinks you do resemble
One of the Austriac princes.

FACE. Very like!
[ASIDE.]
Her father was an Irish costermonger.

MAM. The house of Valois just had such a nose,
And such a forehead yet the Medici
Of Florence boast.

DOL. Troth, and I have been liken'd
To all these princes.

FACE [ASIDE]. I'll be sworn, I heard it.

MAM. I know not how! it is not any one,
But e'en the very choice of all their features.

FACE [ASIDE]. I'll in, and laugh.

[EXIT.]

MAM. A certain touch, or air,
That sparkles a divinity, beyond
An earthly beauty!

DOL. O, you play the courtier.

MAM. Good lady, give me leave—

DOL. In faith, I may not,
To mock me, sir.

MAM. To burn in this sweet flame;
The phoenix never knew a nobler death.

DOL. Nay, now you court the courtier, and destroy
What you would build. This art, sir, in your words,
Calls your whole faith in question.

MAM. By my soul—

DOL. Nay, oaths are made of the same air, sir.

MAM. Nature
Never bestow'd upon mortality
A more unblamed, a more harmonious feature;
She play'd the step-dame in all faces else:
Sweet Madam, let me be particular—

DOL. Particular, sir! I pray you know your distance.

MAM. In no ill sense, sweet lady; but to ask
How your fair graces pass the hours? I see
You are lodged here, in the house of a rare man,
An excellent artist; but what's that to you?

DOL. Yes, sir; I study here the mathematics,
And distillation.

MAM. O, I cry your pardon.
He's a divine instructor! can extract
The souls of all things by his art; call all
The virtues, and the miracles of the sun,
Into a temperate furnace; teach dull nature
What her own forces are. A man, the emperor
Has courted above Kelly; sent his medals
And chains, to invite him.

DOL. Ay, and for his physic, sir—

MAM. Above the art of Aesculapius,
That drew the envy of the thunderer!
I know all this, and more.

DOL. Troth, I am taken, sir,
Whole with these studies, that contemplate nature.

MAM. It is a noble humour; but this form
Was not intended to so dark a use.
Had you been crooked, foul, of some coarse mould
A cloister had done well; but such a feature
That might stand up the glory of a kingdom,
To live recluse! is a mere soloecism,
Though in a nunnery. It must not be.
I muse, my lord your brother will permit it:
You should spend half my land first, were I he.
Does not this diamond better on my finger,
Than in the quarry?

DOL. Yes.

MAM. Why, you are like it.
You were created, lady, for the light.
Here, you shall wear it; take it, the first pledge
Of what I speak, to bind you to believe me.

DOL. In chains of adamant?

MAM. Yes, the strongest bands.
And take a secret too—here, by your side,
Doth stand this hour, the happiest man in Europe.

DOL. You are contended, sir!

MAM. Nay, in true being,
The envy of princes and the fear of states.

DOL. Say you so, sir Epicure?

MAM. Yes, and thou shalt prove it,
Daughter of honour. I have cast mine eye
Upon thy form, and I will rear this beauty
Above all styles.

DOL. You mean no treason, sir?

MAM. No, I will take away that jealousy.
I am the lord of the philosopher's stone,
And thou the lady.

DOL. How, sir! have you that?

MAM. I am the master of the mystery.
This day the good old wretch here o' the house
Has made it for us: now he's at projection.
Think therefore thy first wish now, let me hear it;
And it shall rain into thy lap, no shower,
But floods of gold, whole cataracts, a deluge,
To get a nation on thee.

DOL. You are pleased, sir,
To work on the ambition of our sex.

MAM. I am pleased the glory of her sex should know,
This nook, here, of the Friars is no climate
For her to live obscurely in, to learn
Physic and surgery, for the constable's wife
Of some odd hundred in Essex; but come forth,
And taste the air of palaces; eat, drink
The toils of empirics, and their boasted practice;
Tincture of pearl, and coral, gold, and amber;
Be seen at feasts and triumphs; have it ask'd,
What miracle she is; set all the eyes
Of court a-fire, like a burning glass,
And work them into cinders, when the jewels
Of twenty states adorn thee, and the light
Strikes out the stars! that when thy name is mention'd,
Queens may look pale; and we but shewing our love,
Nero's Poppaea may be lost in story!
Thus will we have it.

DOL. I could well consent, sir.
But, in a monarchy, how will this be?
The prince will soon take notice, and both seize
You and your stone, it being a wealth unfit
For any private subject.

MAM. If he knew it.

DOL. Yourself do boast it, sir.

MAM. To thee, my life.

DOL. O, but beware, sir! You may come to end
The remnants of your days in a loth'd prison,
By speaking of it.

MAM. 'Tis no idle fear.
We'll therefore go withal, my girl, and live
In a free stat