The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works (13 page)

The Wonderful Abstinence of the Marquis of Pisana, Yet Living

I have heard it justified for a truth by great personages, that the old Marquis of Pisana,
²⁷⁰
who yet lives, drinks not once in seven year; and I have read of one Andron of Argos,
that was so seldom thirsty, that he travelled over the hot, burning sands of Lybia, and never drank. Then why should our cold clime bring forth such fiery throats? Are we more thirsty than Spain and Italy, where the sun's force is doubled? The Germans and Low Dutch, methinks, should be continually kept moist with the foggy air and stinking mists that arise out of their fenny soil; but as their country is over-flown with water, so are their heads always overflown with wine, and in their bellies they have standing quagmires and bogs of English beer.

The Private Laws Amongst Drunkards

One of their breed it was that writ the book
De Arte Bibendi
,
²⁷¹
a worshipful treatise fit for none but Silenus and his ass
²⁷²
to set forth. Besides that volume, we have general rules and injunctions, as good as printed precepts, or statutes set down by Act of Parliament, that go from drunkard to drunkard; as still to keep your first man, not to leave any flocks in the bottom of the cup, to knock the glass on your thumb when you have done, to have some shoeing horn to pull on your wine, as a rasher off the coals or a red herring, to stir it about with a candle's end to make it taste better, and not to hold your peace while the pot is stirring.

The Eight Kinds of Drunkenness

Nor have we one or two kinds of drunkards only, but eight kinds. The first is ape drunk, and he leaps, and sings, and holloes, and danceth for the heavens. The second is lion drunk, and he flings the pots about the house, calls his hostess whore, breaks the glass windows with his dagger, and is apt to quarrel with any man that speaks to him. The third is swine drunk, heavy, lumpish, and sleepy, and cries
for a little more drink and a few more clothes. The fourth is sheep drunk, wise in his own conceit when he cannot bring forth a right word. The fifth is maudlin drunk when a fellow will weep for kindness in the midst of his ale, and kiss you, saying, ‘By God, captain, I love thee; go thy ways, thou dost not think so often of me as I do of thee; I would (if it pleased God) I could not love thee so well as I do.' And then he puts his finger in his eye and cries. The sixth is martin
²⁷³
drunk, when a man is drunk and drinks himself sober ere he stir. The seventh is goat drunk, when, in his drunkenness, he hath no mind but on lechery. The eighth is fox drunk, when he is crafty drunk, as many of the Dutchmen be, that will never bargain but when they are drunk. All these species, and more, I have seen practised in one company at one sitting, when I have been permitted to remain sober amongst them, only to note their several humours. He that plies any one of them hard, it will make him to write admirable verses, and to have a deep casting
²⁷⁴
head, though he were never so very a dunce before.

The Discommodities of Drunkenness

Gentlemen, all you that will not have your brains twice sodden, your flesh rotten with the dropsy, that love not to go in greasy doublets, stockings out at the heels, and wear alehouse daggers at your backs: forswear this slavering bravery, that will make you have stinking breaths, and your bodies smell like brewers' aprons; rather keep a snuff
²⁷⁵
in the bottom of the glass to light you to bed withal, than leave never an eye in your head to lead you over the threshold. It will bring you in your old age to be companions with none but porters and car-men, to talk out of a cage,
²⁷⁶
railing as drunken men are wont, a hundred boys wondering about them; and to die suddenly, as Fol
Long the fencer did, drinking
aqua vitæ
. From which (as all the rest) good Lord deliver Pierce Penniless.

The Complaint of Sloth

The nurse of this enormity (as of all evils) is Idleness, or Sloth, which, having no painful providence to set himself a-work, runs headlong, with the reins in his own hand, into all lasdviousness and sensuality that may be. Men, when they are idle, and know not what to do, saith one, ‘Let us go to the Stilliard
²⁷⁷
and drink Rhenish wine.' ‘Nay, if a man knew where a good whorehouse were,' said another, ‘it were somewhat like.' ‘Nay,' saith the third, ‘let us go to a dicing-house or a bowling-alley, and there we shall have some sport for our money.' To one of these three (‘at hand', quoth pick-purse) your evil angelship, master many-headed beast, conducts them.
Ubi quid agitur
,
²⁷⁸
betwixt you and their souls be it, for I am no drawer, box-keeper, or pander, to be privy to their sports.

If I were to paint Sloth (as I am not seen in the sweetening
²⁷⁹
by Saint John the Evangelist I swear I would draw it like a stationer that I know, with his thumb under his girdle, who, if a man come to his stall and ask him for a book, never stirs his head or looks upon him, but stands stone still and speaks not a word; only with his little finger points backwards to his boy, who must be his interpreter, and so all the day, gaping like a dumb image, he sits without motion, except at such times as he goes to dinner or supper; for then he is as quick as other three, eating six times every day.
*
If I would range abroad, and look in at sluggards' keyholes, I should find a number lying abed to save charges of
ordinaries, and in winter, when they want firing, losing half a week's commons together, to keep them warm in the linen. And hold you content, this summer an under-meal
²⁸⁰
of an afternoon long doth not amiss to exercise the eyes withal. Fat men and farmers' sons, that sweat much with eating hard cheese and drinking old wine, must have some more ease than young boys that take their pleasure all day running up and down.

Which is Better of the Idle Glutton, or Vagrant Unthrift

Setting jesting aside, I hold it a great, disputable question, which is a more evil man, of him that is an idle glutton at home, or a reckless unthrift abroad? The glutton at home doth nothing but engender diseases, pamper his flesh unto lust, and is good for none but his own gut. The unthrift abroad exerciseth his body at dancing school, fence school, tennis, and all such recreations; the vintners, the victuallers, the dicing-houses, and who not, get by him. Suppose he lose a little now and then at play, it teacheth him wit: and how should a man know to eschew vices, if his own experience did not acquaint him with their inconveniences?
Omne ignotum pro magnifico est
:
²⁸¹
that villainy we have made no assays in, we admire. Besides my vagrant reveller haunts plays and sharpens his wits with frequenting the company of poets; he emboldens his blushing face by courting fair women on the sudden, and looks into all estates by conversing with them in public places. Now tell me whether of these two, the heavy-headed, gluttonous house-dove, or this lively, wanton, young gallant, is like to prove the wiser man, and better member in the commonwealth? If my youth might not be thought partial, the fine qualified gentleman, although unstaid, should carry it clean away from the lazy clownish drone.

The Effects of Sloth

Sloth in nobility, courtiers, scholars, or any men, is the chiefest cause that brings them in contempt. For, as industry and unfatigable toil raiseth mean persons from obscure houses to high thrones of authority, so sloth and sluggish security causeth proud lords to tumble from the towers of their starry descents, and be trod underfoot of every inferior besonian.
²⁸²
Is it the lofty treading of a galliard, or fine grace in telling of a love tale amongst ladies, can make a man reverenced of the multitude? No, they care not for the false glistering of gay garments, or insinuating courtesy of a carpet peer;
²⁸³
but they delight to see him shine in armour, and oppose himself to honourable danger, to participate a voluntary penury with his soldiers, and relieve part of their wants out of his own purse. That is the course he that will be popular must take, which, if he neglect, and sit dallying at home, nor will be awaked by any indignities out of his love-dream, but suffer every upstart groom to defy him, set him at nought, and shake him by the beard unrevenged, let him straight take orders and be a churchman, and then his patience may pass for a virtue; but otherwise, he shall be suspected of cowardice, and not cared for of any.

The Means to Avoid Sloth

The only enemy to Sloth is contention and emulation; as to propose one man to myself, that is the only mirror of our age, and strive to out-go him in virtue. But this strife must be so tempered, that we fall not from the eagerness of praise, to the envying of their persons; for then we leave running to the goal of glory, to spurn at a stone that lies in our way; and so did Atalanta,
²⁸⁴
in the midst of her course, stoop to take up the golden apple that her enemy scattered in her way, and was out-run by Hippomenes. The contrary to this contention and emulation is security, peace, quiet, tranquillity;
when we have no adversary to pry into our actions, no malicious eye whose pursuing our private behaviour might make us more vigilant over our imperfections than otherwise we would be.

That state or kingdom that is in league with all the world and hath no foreign sword to vex it, is not half so strong or confirmed to endure as that which lives every hour in fear of invasion. There is a certain waste of the people for whom there is no use, but war; and these men must have some employment still to cut them off.
Nam si foras hostem non habent, domi invenient
:
²⁸⁵
if they have no service abroad, they will make mutinies at home. Or if the affairs of the state be such as cannot exhale all these corrupt excrements, it is very expedient they have some light toys to busy their heads withal cast before them as bones to gnaw upon, which may keep them from having leisure to intermeddle with higher matters.

The Defence of Plays

To this effect the policy of plays is very necesary, howsoever some shallow-brained censurers (not the deepest searchers into the secrets of government) mightily oppugn them. For whereas the afternoon being the idlest time of the day, wherein men that are their own masters (as gentlemen of the Court, the Inns of the Court, and the number of captains and soldiers about London) do wholly bestow themselves upon pleasure; and that pleasure they divide (how virtuously it skills
²⁸⁶
not) either into gaming, following of harlots, drinking, or seeing a play: is it not then better, since of four extremes all the world cannot keep them but they will choose one, that they should betake them to the least, which is plays? Nay, what if I prove plays to be no extreme, but a rare exercise of virtue? First, for the subject of them: for the most part it is borrowed out of our English
Chronicles, wherein our forefathers' valiant acts, that have lain long buried in rusty brass and worm-eaten books, are revived, and they themselves raised from the grave of oblivion, and brought to plead their aged honours in open presence: than which, what can be a sharper reproof to these degenerate effeminate days of ours?

How would it have joyed brave Talbot,
²⁸⁷
the terror of the French, to think that after he had lain two hundred years in his tomb, he should triumph again on the stage and have his bones new embalmed with the tears of ten thousand spectators at least (at several times), who, in the tragedian that represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh bleeding!

I will defend it against any cullion,
²⁸⁸
or club-fisted usurer of them all, there is no immortality can be given a man on earth like unto plays. What talk I to them of immortality, that are the only underminers of honour, and do envy any man that is not sprung up by base brokery like themselves? They care not if all the ancient houses were rooted out, so that, like the burgomasters of the Low Countries, they might share the government amongst them as states, and be quarter-masters of our monarchy. All arts to them are vanity; and if you tell them what a glorious thing it is to have Henry the Fifth represented on the stage, leading the French king prisoner, and forcing both him and the Dolphin
²⁸⁹
to swear fealty, ‘Aye, but,' will they say, ‘what do we get by it?', respecting neither the right of fame that is due to true nobility deceased, nor what hopes of eternity are to be proposed to adventurous minds, to encourage them forward, but only their execrable lucre, and filthy, unquenchable avarice.

They know when they are dead they shall not be brought upon the stage for any goodness, but in a merriment of the Usurer and the Devil, or buying arms of the herald, who gives them the lion, without tongue, tail, or tallents
²⁹⁰
, because his master, whom he must serve, is a townsman, and
a man of peace, and must not keep any quarrelling beasts to annoy his honest neighbours.

The Use of Plays

In plays, all cozenages,
²⁹¹
all cunning drifts over-gilded with outward holiness, all stratagems of war, all the cankerworms that breed on the rust of peace, are most lively anatomized. They shew the ill success of treason, the fall of hasty climbers, the wretched end of usurpers, the misery of civil dissension, and how just God is evermore in punishing of murder. And to prove every one of these allegations, could I propound the circumstances of this play and that play, if I meant to handle this theme otherwise than
obiter
.
²⁹²
What should I say more? They are sour pills of reprehension, wrapped up in sweet words.

The Confutation of Citizens' Objections Against Players