A YORK-SHIRE TRAGEDY
Page: 3

Dice, and voluptuous meetings, midnight Revels,
Taking his bed with surfetts: Ill beseeming
The ancient honor of his house and name!
And this not all: but that which kills me most,
When he recounts his Losses and false fortunes,
The weakness of his state so much dejected,
Not as a man repentant, but half mad,
His fortunes cannot answer his expense:
He sits and sullenly locks up his Arms,
Forgetting heaven looks downward, which makes him
Appear so dreadful that he frights my heart,
Walks heavily, as if his soul were earth:
Not penitent for those his sins are past,
But vext his money cannot make them last:--
A fearful melancholy, ungodly sorrow.
Oh yonder he comes, now in despite of ills
I'll speak to him, and I will hear him speak,
And do my best to drive it from his heart.

[Enter Husband.]

HUSBAND.
Pox oth Last throw! it made
Five hundred Angels vanish from my sight.
I'm damnd, I'm damnd: the Angels have forsook me.
Nay, tis certainly true: for he that has
No coin is damnd in this world: he's gone, he's gone.

WIFE.
Dear husband.

HUSBAND.
Oh! most punishment of all, I have a wife.

WIFE.
I do intreat you as you love your soul,
Tell me the cause of this your discontent.

HUSBAND.
A vengeance strip thee naked! thou art cause,
Effect, quality, property, thou, thou, thou!

[Exit.]

WIFE.
Bad, turnd to worse! both beggery of the soul,
As of the body. And so much unlike
Him self at first, as if some vexed spirit
Had got his form upon him.--

[Enter Husband again.]

He comes again.
He says I am the cause; I never yet
Spoke less then words of duty, and of love.

HUSBAND.
If marriage be honourable, then Cuckolds are honourable, for
they cannot be made without marriage. Fool! what meant I to
marry to get beggars? now must my eldest son be a knave or
nothing; he cannot live uppot'h fool, for he will have no
land to maintain him: that mortgage sits like a snaffle upon
mine inheritance, and makes me chaw upon Iron. My second
son must be a promoter, and my third a thief, or an underputter,
a slave pander.
Oh beggery, beggery, to what base uses dost thou put a man!