University of Virginia Library

Scene III.

DEVIL
Now, most sweet Sir, I have thee,
Thou shalt repent of thine audacity
Wherewith upheld, thus buoyantly and highly,
Thou spurrest thy desire to lawless deeds
Of bronze-brow'd arrogance, and darest thus
To climb into the solitary fold
Of thy good neighbour, and to cull the fleece
Which he esteemeth best—but I will prove
No tame, submissive, crouching centinel:
But I will take such fearful hold on thee,
As doth the wayward irritable crab
On the poor traveller—thou art thoughtless, young,
Full of high mettled hopes, hot blooded, sanguine,
With haughty self-sufficiency of nature,
Which is the attribute of thy green years
That brook not sober meditation.
Visions of happiness do float before thee,
Gay-gilded figures and most eloquent shapes,
Moulded by Fancy's gentle fingering
To the appearance of reality,
With youthful expectations and fond dreams,
All rendered sunlike by the light of youth,
Which glances on them, flit before thine eyes:
But these shall be pinch'd out of thee ere morn—
There shall be no sound place within thy person;
Thou shalt be all the colours of the rainbow,
With bruises, pinches, weals, ET COETERA;
And various as the motley colour'd slime,
Which floats upon the standing pool, wherein
Do breed all kinds of reptiles—creeping things,
Vile jellies and white spawn and loathsome newts.
But come descend, thou penthouse:
[Draws down his hood
Hither comes
One Pharmaceutus an apothecary,
A mad, drug-dealing, vile apothecary—
A thing of gallipots and boluses,
Lean, lanthorn-jaw'd, splay handed, pasty fac'd,
Hard favour'd and loose-jointed, ill proportion'd,
Whose hips do roll on castors, and whose love
Is nauseous as his physic—Faugh! I know not
How I can keep my character. But here
He comes and brings his fetid atmosphere
About his person.