University of Virginia Library

Scene IV

Enter PHARMACEUTUS.
[Devil]
Welcome, gentle Sir.

PHARMACEUTUS
Welcome, fair lady, may the bloom of joy
And the medicinal virtue of all health
Spread the fair carpet of thy roseate face
With its gay colouring.

DEVIL
(aside).
How cursedly
He stinks of assafœtida. Art cold?
Dost shake and shiver?

PHARMACEUTUS
Marry do I.

DEVIL
What?
Dids't not escape the tempest?

PHARMACEUTUS
No, i'faith,
I am half palsied with frigidity,
I'm below zero, I am perfect ice
Congeal'd to all intents and purposes,
My nose, my ears, and each particular toe,
Will quit their station—hark! my grinders chatter
Like castanets, or fulling mills. Let's in—
And hark ye, some of Magus's brown stout;
I'll smoke a pipe of comfortable shag-tail
By the fireside with thee. Wilt let us in?

DEVIL
Ay, presently.

PHARMACEUTUS
'Sdeath, Madam, instantly!
Or thaw me with a look, a loving look
From the full lustre of thy melting eyes!
'Sblood! thou art hooded and pent up as tightly
As a sea-urchin.

DEVIL
Is't not fitting, prithee?
Dids't thou not talk of nose dropping?

PHARMACEUTUS
Ay, Madam,
The storm hath left a chill i' the air, 'tis damp,
Rheumatic mists are whitening in the marshes,
And pale-fac'd Ague wanders all abroad.
But let us enter; eh?

[Here ANTONIO half opens the cottage door and exclaims
ANTONIO
Where art thou, fair one?

DEVIL
Here, sirrah, with this gentleman!

ANTONIO
(coming forward)
How now!
What! with this scurvy rascal, this poor drug,
This compound of all ugliness, this dog,
This Ipecacuanha, this emetic,
This wall-eyed monster, this anomaly,
This piece of speckled parchment, this vile patchwork,
Whose sallow and carbuncled face resembles
A red design upon a yellow ground?

PHARMACEUTUS
Pills! plasters! powders! poultices! what now!

ANTONIO
Sirrah! I'll knock thy grinders down thy throat.

PHARMACEUTUS
(staggering backwards)
Bole! Borax! Blister! Balsam! Bark! What now?

ANTONIO
Thou hocus-pocus of deformity!
Thou scum! thou outcast of society!

PHARMACEUTUS
Galls! Garlick! ginger! guiacum! what now?

ANTONIO
I'll punch thee into jelly—scatter thee
To the four Winds of Heav'n—thou scarcerow, thou!

DEVIL
Good words—sweet words, Antonio, prithee.

PHARMACEUTUS
Bless thee,
My honey of squills, my oil of almonds, bless thee!
Thou hast a good heart.

ANTONIO
How! you sorry rascal!
Do you make love to the lady?

PHARMACEUTUS
Mercy on us!
The man is mad—he must be blooded.

ANTONIO
How
Do'st prate, thou vile anatomy? Bind up
Thy jaws or by the Devil and his dam
I'll make a gap within thy villainous throat
And pour libations of thy wretched blood
Unto this Goddess. What! thou fulsome scrag!
Would'st thou make love with that untoward chin
Hook'd and turn'd upwards like a Chinese shoe?

PHARMACEUTUS
Beshrew my heart but thou art wondrous mad,
Mad as a March hare, and as hot as Cowhage
Without molasses.

ANTONIO
Hang dog!

DEVIL
Peace, Antonio!
Why, thou art 80, man, by Reaumur's scale,
And more than twice as much by Fahrenheit,
And the unconquerable turbulence
And violent usage of your fiery temper,
Expanded by the heat of passion,
Will burst the tube of temperance. Methinks
I am afraid to look upon you, lest
Your head should part in twain, and thence should issue
The subtle fluid which distends you so.

ANTONIO
Thou fairest excellence of what is most
Excelling in all nature! loveliest mixture
Of all that is most lovely! is it tolerable
That this sad miscreant, this uncouth Behemoth,
Thus monstrous in his vanity of mind,
And loathsome in deformity of person,
Each, render'd still more horrible by each,
When thus contrasted—is it tolerable
That he should raise the base and abject scum
Of his vile thoughts so high, and thus presume
To come within the rich and glorious sphere
Of thine attractions? Fie! it must not be.

DEVIL
Did I not say that thou wert hotly rais'd
By thine inexorable fire of anger
As high as “WATER-BOIL”?

ANTONIO
No—by the Law!
It is but “SUMMER-HEAT.”

DEVIL
I prithee cloak not
Thy faults beneath the colouring of fair names,
Nor modify the wild unevenness
Of thy capricious disposition
With sounds of softest import: for i'faith
Thy Spirits boil at least!

ANTONIO
That fusty wretch
Hath roused them up to fermentation.

PHARMACEUTUS
Sir,
You are as bitter as Alum.

ANTONIO
You, as foul
As your own fœtid pills.

PHARMACEUTUS
And you as brisk
As bottled beer.

ANTONIO
Do you chop logic with me
You dunderhead?

PHARMACEUTUS
Who? I, Sir? No, Sir.

ANTONIO
Sirrah!
If thou presumest to give thy fool's tongue
The damning license of a repartee,
I'll have the substance of thy cursed brains
Pounded and beat up in a red-hot mortar
And with a burning pestle; of thine hide
Will I make ass-skin breeches.

PHARMACEUTUS
Mercy on us!
The man is hypochondriack or hysterical—
Here! here! bring spirits of hartshorn and burnt feathers
And clap hot bricks to's feet!

ANTONIO
I'll knit thee up,
And thou shalt hang in the mid-air as prettily
As a vile cur that sucks hen's eggs, while I
Will sing thy parting elegy, and thou
Shalt beat the due observance of the time
With thy unwieldy toes! Thou shalt be balanc'd
As neatly as a difficult case between
Two able pleaders!

DEVIL
Fie, Antonio, fie!
Excess of violence becomes thee not,
It sits as ill upon thy shoulders as
Love on an old maid with a hump-back.

ANTONIO
Or
On this same Pharmaceutus. Ha! ha! ha!

PHARMACEUTUS
Now by Hippocrates, by Galen, Celsus
And the great Boerhaave—the dazzling sun
And star of Medical science—I do think
Thy wits are on the turn. Let's feel thy pulse,
Is't feverish or low? Give me a fleshbrush
That I may rub thee into sense—

ANTONIO
How now!
Thou most illiterate whelp, thou bristly cub,
Whom thy great Mother Bear hath never lick'd
To ought that may be called proportion!
Why! thou dead idiot, woulds't thou thus behave
As I were mad? in troth and faith I were so
If I should bear with thee. I should deserve
Commission of lunacy preferr'd against me
By the Lord Mayor.

PHARMACEUTUS
Fair Sir, I do presume
That you have heard the useful apothegm
That “Anger is short madness.”

ANTONIO
Villainous wretch—

PHARMACEUTUS
Here! pills of aloes! rhubarb! spanish soap!

ANTONIO
Would'st thou not madden ought beneath the sun
With thine accursed clucking?

PHARMACEUTUS
Gentle Sir,
Be not enraged—the stormy voice of wrath,
The lifting of the hand, the clenched fist,
And the wild glare of the tumultuous eye,
The broken interrupted words, which sound
Hollowly, like a bruis'd tin-kettle

ANTONIO
Oaf!

PHARMACEUTUS
Th'inflation of the fiery cheeks, blown up
With wind of idle passion, whence proceeds
The flushing of the face like the red clouds
Upon a blowy morning—

ANTONIO
Loon!

DEVIL
Be still,
Antonio, let us hear him out.

PHARMACEUTUS
All these
Betoken anger which is madness. These
Disorder all the animal functions, these
Puzzle the progress of the chyle and hurt
The process of digestion.

ANTONIO
Curses on thee!
When the next sessions sit, i' faith I'll have thee
Indicted for a publick nuisance to
His Majesty's loving subjects.

PHARMACEUTUS
Now, by Galen,
Thou art as fine a subject for Phlebotomy
As ever came to my inspection.
I prithee let me breathe a vein, 'twill do thee
An ample service.
[Here ANTONIO raises his fist to strike him
No—no—not the hand!
I never bleed there, look ye, here's my instrument,
The neck, the nape o' th'neck, Sir!

ANTONIO
The grim'd Imps
Of Hell arrest thee at the Devil's suit!
The red fiend ride thee into Chancery,
Which is the worst curse I can vent upon thee!

DEVIL
A most ungentlemanly wish, Antonio,
Deserving objurgation—A propos,
The Devil is an ill thing to be jested with;
What if he should be standing by thee now,
Speaking as I do—dress'd as I am? What
If HIS TENEBRIOUS BITUMENSHIP
Should be in hearing o' thee?

ANTONIO
Why, my Amoret,
Thou art an angel and he dare not venture—

DEVIL
A fallen one, I grant ye.

ANTONIO
If a fallen one,
So many sparks of thine ethereal nature
Yet linger round thee as to make thy presence
A portion of the Heaven thou hast fallen from.

DEVIL
Older and wiser, my good counsellor,
An hour may change thy humour.

ANTONIO
Ay, the section
Of one small minute (if 'twere spent with thee)
Nay, the minutest point of time in which
The inconceivable velocity
Of light can travel thro' one barley-corn
Of the blue Ether, were enough to raise me
(Providing always it were spent with thee)
From out my present humour, which is that
Of the strong sea when in its ridg'd advance
Bruised by the inroad of a vassal river,
Or an enchaféd plaintiff face to face
With the defendant.

DEVIL
In the mind of youth
And pertinacious inexperience
A hasty judgment sheweth like green fruit!
The more unripe and immature it be,
The harder clings it to its parent bough.

ANTONIO
Thou art the first o' thy sex that e'er found fault with
The judgment of that man who call'd thee “Angel.”
I am immutable in nothing, save
The love I bear thee—but behold who is't
Comes swaggering hither? Why, what wants he here?
Methinks he seems a sailor by his swing;
His hat is cocked obliquely on his brow,
One eye is null and void or shut in waggery,
The never failing tokens of a rascal—
His arms are fix'd a kimbo, his left cheek
Protruded by a quid—what varlet's this?
Why wends he hither?