fine imputation to our country!
Well, go your ways, and stay in the next room.
This fucus was too coarse
too; it’s no matter.—
Good sir, you’ll give them entertainment?
[Exeunt Nano and Waiting-women.
Volp. The storm comes toward me.
Lady P. [goes to the couch.] How does my Volpone?
Volp. Troubled with noise, I cannot sleep; I dreamt
That a strange fury enter’d, now, my house,
And, with
the dreadful tempest of her breath,
Did cleave my roof asunder.
Lady P. Believe me, and I
Had the most fearful dream, could I remember’t—
Volp. Out on my fate! I have given her the occasion
How to torment me: she will tell me her’s.
[Aside.
Lady P. Me thought, the golden mediocrity,
Polite and delicate—
Volp. O, if you do love me,
No more: I sweat, and suffer, at the mention
Of any dream; feel how I tremble
yet.
Lady P. Alas, good soul! the passion of the heart.
Seed-pearl were good now, boil’d with syrup of apples,
Tincture
of gold, and coral, citron-pills,
Your elicampane root, myrobalanes—
Volp. Ah me, I have ta’en a grass-hopper by the wing!
[Aside.
Lady P. Burnt silk, and amber: You have muscadel
Good in the house—
Volp. You will not drink, and part?
Lady P. No, fear not that. I doubt, we shall not get
Some English saffron, half a dram would serve;
Your
sixteen cloves, a little musk, dried mints,
Bugloss, and barley-meal—
Volp. She’s in again!
Before I feign’d diseases, now I have one.
[Aside.
Lady P. And these applied with a right scarlet cloth.
Volp. Another flood of words! a very torrent!
[Aside.
Lady P. Shall I, sir, make you a poultice?
Volp. No, no, no,
I’m very well, you need prescribe no more.
Lady P. I have a little studied physic; but now,
I’m all for music, save, in the forenoons,
An hour or two
for painting. I would have
A lady, indeed, to have all, letters and arts,
Be able to discourse, to write, to
paint,
But principal, as Plato holds, your music,
And so does wise Pythagoras, I take it,
Is your true rapture: when
there is concent
In face, in voice, and clothes: and is, indeed,
Our sex’s chiefest ornament.
Volp. The poet
As old in time as Plato, and as knowing,
Says, that your highest female grace is silence.
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