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The Old Law, or A New Way to Please You. La Loi des anciens, ou Comment vous plaire à nouveau, De Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, Philip Massinger. Texte établi, traduit, présenté et annoté par Antoine Ertlé

Act I

Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton and William Rowley
Translation(s):
Acte I [fr]

Full text

The Excellent Comedy called The Old Law, or, A New Way to Please You.

  • 1 Pour le choix du texte, voir la Note sur l'établissement du texte, Préface, supra. En notes figuren (...)

By Phil[ip] Massinger, Tho[mas] Middleton, William Rowley.1

PERSONS OF THE PLAY

[EVANDER], DUKE of EPIRE
CREON,
father to SIMONIDES SIMONIDES, CLEANTHES, two courtiers
LISANDER,
husband to EUGENIA and uncle to CLEANTHES
LEONIDES,
an old man, [father to CLEANTHES]
ANTIGONA,
mother to SIMONIDES, [wife to CREON]
HIPPOLITA,
wife to CLEANTHES
EUGENIA,
wife to LISANDER and [step]mother to PARTHENIA
PARTHENIA,
[step]daughter to EUGENIA, [daughter to] LISANDER
Courtiers
Lawyers
[GNOTHOS],
[the] clown
[CRATILUS], [the] executioner
Butler

Bailiff
Tailor
Cook
Drawer

[Parish] Clerk
Coachman
Footman
Guard

[Dancing master]
[AGATHA, the] clown's wife
[SIREN, a] wench
[Fiddlers, Officers, Servants]
[Old women]

The scene: EPIRE

Act I, scene i

Enter SIMONIDES and two Lawyers.

SIMONIDES
Is the law firm, sir?

FIRST LAWYER
The law! What more firm, sir,
More powerful, forcible, or more permanent?

SIMONIDES
By my troth, sir,
I partly do believe it. Conceive, sir,
You have indirectly answered my question;
I did not doubt the fundamental grounds
Of law in general for the most solid,
But this particular law that me concerns
Now, at the present, if that be firm and strong,
And powerful, and forcible, and permanent?
I am a young man that has an old father.

  • 2 senatus] Shaw ; senatum Q.
  • 3 reipublicae] Shaw ; republicae Q.

SECOND LAWYER
Nothing more strong, sir,
It is
Secundum statutum principis
Confirmatum cum voce senatus
2,
Et voce reipublicae3, nay, consummatum
Et exemplificatum
. Is it not in force
When diverse have already tasted it
And paid their lives for penalty?

SIMONIDES
'Tis true.
My father must be next;
this day completes
Full fourscore years upon him.

SECOND LAWYER
He's here then,
Sub poena statuti; hence I can tell him
Truer than all the physicians in the world,
He cannot live out tomorrow. This is
The most certain climacterical year;
'Tis past all danger, for there's no 'scaping it.
What age is your mother, sir?

SIMONIDES
Faith, near her days too;
Wants some two of three score.

FIRST LAWYER
So! She'll drop away
One of these days too. Here's a good age now
For those that have old parents and rich inheritance!

SIMONIDES
And, sir, 'tis profitable for others too:
Are there not fellows that lie bedrid in their offices
That younger men would walk lustily in?
Churchmen that even the second infancy
Hath silenc'd yet hath spun out their lives so long
That many pregnant and ingenious spirits
Have languished in their hoped reversions,
And died upon the thought? And, by your leave, sir,
Have you not places filled up in the law
By some grave senators that you imagine
Have held them long enough, and such spirits as you,
Were they removed, would leap into their dignities?

FIRST LAWYER
Dic quibus in terris, et eris mihi magnus Apollo.

SIMONIDES
But tell me, faith, your fair opinion:
Is it not a sound and necessary law,
This by the Duke enacted?

FIRST LAWYER
Never did Greece,
Our ancient seat of brave philosophers,
'Mongst all her
nomothetae and lawgivers,
Not when she flourished in her sevenfold sages
Whose living memory can never die,
Produce a law more grave and necessary.

SIMONIDES
I'm of that mind too.

  • 4 chreokopia] Q (crecopedi).
  • 5 seisactheia] Q (sisaithe[.]e).

SECOND LAWYER
I will maintain, sir,
Draco's oligarchy, that the government
Of community reduced into few,
Fram'd a fair state; Solon's
chreokopia4,
That cut off poor men's debts to their rich creditors,
Was good and charitable, but not full allowed;
His
seisactheia5 did reform that error,
His honourable senate of
Areopagitae.
Lycurgus was more loose and gave too free
And licentious reins unto his discipline:
As that a young woman, in her husband's weakness,
Might choose her able friend to propagate,
That so the commonwealth might be supplied
With hope of lusty spirits. Plato did err,
And so did Aristotle, allowing
Lewd and luxurious limits to their laws.
But now our Epire, our Epire's Evander,
Our noble and wise prince, has hit the law
That all our predecessive students
Have missed, unto their shame.

Enter CLEANTHES.

SIMONIDES
Forbear the praise, sir;
'Tis in itself most pleasing. Cleanthes!
Oh lad, here's a spring for young plants to flourish!
The old trees must down [that] kept the sun from us;
We shall rise now, boy.

CLEANTHES
Whither, sir, I pray?
To the bleak air of storms, among those trees
Which we had shelter from?

SIMONIDES
Yes, from our growth,
Our sap, and livelihood, and from our fruit!
What? 'Tis not jubilee with thee yet, I think;
Thou lookst so sad on it. How old's thy father?

CLEANTHES
Jubilee? No, indeed, 'tis a bad year with me.

SIMONIDES
Prithee, how old's thy father? Then, I can tell thee.

CLEANTHES
I know not how to answer you, Simonides.
He's too old, being now exposed
Unto the rigour of a cruel edict,
And yet not old enough by many years,
'Cause I'd not see him go an hour before me.

SIMONIDES
These very passions I speak to my father.
Come, come, here's none but friends here, we may speak
Our insides freely; these are lawyers, man,
And shall be counsellors shortly.

CLEANTHES
They shall be now, sir,
And shall have large fees if they'll undertake
To help a good cause, for it wants assistance;
Bad ones, I know, they can insist upon.

FIRST LAWYER
Oh, sir, we must undertake of both parts,
But the good we have most good in.

CLEANTHES
Pray you, say,
How do you allow of this strange edict?

FIRST LAWYER
Secundum justitiam, by my faith, sir,
The happiest edict that ever was in Epire.

CLEANTHES
What, to kill innocents, sir? It cannot be;
It is no rule in justice there to punish.

FIRST LAWYER
Oh, sir, you understand a conscience, but not law.

CLEANTHES
Why, sir, is there so main a difference?

FIRST LAWYER
You'll never be good lawyer if you understand not that.

CLEANTHES
I think then 'tis the best to be a bad one.

  • 6 the sense] Shaw ; the sense both Q.
  • 7 Which speaks that] Shaw ; Which that speaks Q.

FIRST LAWYER
Why, sir, the very letter and the sense
6
Do both o'erthrow you in this statute,
Which speaks that
7 every man living to
Fourscore years, and women to threescore, shall then
Be cut off as fruitless to the republic,
And law shall finish what nature lingered at.

CLEANTHES
And this suit shall soon be dispatched in law?

FIRST LAWYER
It is so plain it can have no demur,
The church-book overthrows it.

CLEANTHES
And so it does,
The church-book overthrows it if you read it well.

FIRST LAWYER
Still you run from the law into error!
You say it takes the lives of innocents;
I say no, and so says common reason.
What man lives to fourscore and woman to three
That can die innocent?

CLEANTHES
A fine lawful evasion!
Good sir, rehearse the full statute to me.

SIMONIDES
Fie! That's too tedious; you have already
The full sum in the brief relation.

CLEANTHES
Sir, 'mongst many words may be found contradictions,
And these men dare sue and wrangle with a statute,
If they can pick a quarrel with some error.

SECOND LAWYER
Listen, sir, I'll gather it as brief as I can for you:
Anno primo Evandri, be it for the care and good of the commonwealth, for diverse necessary reasons that we shall urge, thus peremptorily enacted -

CLEANTHES
A fair pretence, if the reasons foul it not!

SECOND LAWYER
That all men living in our dominions of Epire in their decayed nature to the age of fourscore, or women to the age of threescore, shall on the same day be instantly put to death, by those means and instruments that a ormer proclamation had to this purpose, through our said territories dispersed -

CLEANTHES
There was no woman in this senate, certain.

  • 8 they be put to death] Shaw ; to be put to death Q.

SECOND LAWYER
That these men, being past their bearing arms to aid and defend their country, past their manhood and livelihood to propagate any further issue to their posterity, and, as well, past their counsels (which overgrown gravity is now run into dotage) to assist their country; to whom, in common reason, nothing should be so wearisome as their own lives; as, it may be supposed, [they are] tedious to their successive heirs, whose times are spent in the good of their country, yet, wanting the means to maintain it, and are like to grow old before their inheritance born to them come to their necessary use, [and they be put to death8]. For the which are the women, for that they were never defence to their country, never by counsel admitted to the assist of government of their country, only necessary to the propagation of posterity, and, now, at the age of threescore, to be past that good and all their goodness; it is thought fit, then, a quarter abated from the more worthy member, [they] be put to death as is before recited. Provided the for the just and impartial execution of this our statute, the example shall first begin in and about our court, which ourself will see carefully performed, and not for a full month following extend any further into our dominions. Dated the sixth of the second month at our Palace Royal in Epire.

CLEANTHES
A fine edict, and very fairly gilded!
And is there no scruple in all these words
To demur the law upon occasion?

SIMONIDES
Pox, 'tis an unnecessary inquisition!
Prithee, set him not about it.

SECOND LAWYER
Troth, none, sir.
It is so evident and plain a case
There is no succour for the defendant.

CLEANTHES
Possible can nothing help in a good case?

FIRST LAWYER
Faith, sir, I do think there may be a hole
Which would protract delay, if not remedy.

CLEANTHES
Why, there's some comfort in that. Good sir, speak it.

FIRST LAWYER
Nay, you must pardon me for that, sir.

SIMONIDES
Prithee, do not;
It may ope a wound to many sons and heirs
That may die after it.

CLEANTHES
Come, sir, I know
How to make you speak. Will this do it?

FIRST LAWYER
I will afford you my opinion, sir.

CLEANTHES
Pray you, repeat the literal words, expressly
The time of death.

SIMONIDES
'Tis an unnecessary question; prithee, let it alone.

SECOND LAWYER
Hear his opinion; 'twill be fruitless, sir.
That men at the age of fourscore and women at threescore shall the same day be put to death.

FIRST LAWYER
Thus I help the man to twenty-one years more.

CLEANTHES
That were a fair addition.

  • 9 'tis infancy] Shaw ; his infancy Q.

FIRST LAWYER
Mark it, sir: we say man is not at age
Till he be one-and-twenty; before,'tis infancy
9
And adolescency. Nor, by that addition,
Fourscore he cannot be till a hundred and one.

SIMONIDES
Oh, poor evasion!
He's fourscore years old, sir.

FIRST LAWYER
That helps more, sir.
He begins to be old at fifty; so, at fourscore,
He's but thirty years old. So, believe it, sir,
He may be twenty years in declination,
And so long may a man linger and live by it.

SIMONIDES
The worst hope of safety that e'er I heard!
Give him his fee again, 'tis not worth two dinars.

FIRST LAWYER
There's no law for restitution of fees, sir.

Enter CREON and ANTIGONA.

CLEANTHES
No, no, sir, I meant it lost when 'twas given.

SIMONIDES
No more, good sir,
Here are ears unnecessary for your doctrine.

FIRST LAWYER
I have spoke out my fee and I have done, sir.

SIMONIDES
Oh, my dear father!

CREON
Tush! Meet me not in exclaims;
I understand the worst and hope no better.
A fine law! If this hold, white heads will be cheap
And many watchmen's places will be vacant;
Forty of 'em I know my seniors,
That did due deeds of darkness too.
Their country Has watched 'em a good turn for it and ta'en 'em
Napping now. The fewer hospitals will serve too;
Many may be used for stews and brothels,
And those people will never trouble 'em to fourscore.

ANTIGONA
Can you play and sport with sorrow, sir?

CREON
Sorrow for what, Antigona? For my life?
My sorrow is, I have kept it so long well
With bringing it up unto so ill an end.
I might have gently lost it in my cradle,
Before my nerves and ligaments grew strong
To bind it faster to me.

SIMONIDES
For mine own sake
I should have been sorry for that.

  • 10 Been basely lost in his star's ignorance] Shaw ; Am basely lost in my star's ignorance Q.

CREON
In my youth
I was a soldier, no coward in my age,
I never turned my back upon my foe;
I have felt nature's winter sicknesses,
Yet ever kept a lively sap in me
To greet the cheerful spring of health again.
Dangers on horseback, on foot, by water,
I have 'scaped to this day; and yet this day,
Without all help of casual accidents,
Is only deadly to me 'cause it numbers
Fourscore years to me. Where's the fault now?
I cannot blame time, nature, nor my stars,
Nor aught but tyranny. Even kings themselves
Have sometimes tasted an even fate with me.
He that has been a soldier all his days,
And stood in personal opposition
'Gainst darts and arrows, the extremes of heat,
And pinching cold, has treacherously at home
In his secured quiet, by a villain's hand
[Been] basely lost in [his] star's ignorance
10O;
And so must I die by a tyrant's sword.

FIRST LAWYER
Oh, say not so, sir, it is by the law!

CREON
And what's that, sir, but the sword of tyranny
When it is brandished against innocent lives?
I'm now upon my deathbed, sir, and 'tis fit
I should unbosom my free conscience,
And show the faith I die in. I do believe
'Tis tyranny that takes my life.

SIMONIDES [Aside]
Would it were gone
By one means or other. What a long day
Will this be ere night!

CREON
Simonides.

  • 11 Here I sit] Q (Here sit ---).

SIMONIDES
Here I sit
11, weeping.

CREON
Wherefore dost thou weep?

CLEANTHES [Aside]
'Cause you make no more haste to your end.

SIMONIDES
How can you question nature so unjustly?
I had a grandfather, and then had not you
True filial tears for him?

CLEANTHES [Aside]
Hypocrite!
A disease of drought dry up all pity from him
That can dissemble pity with wet eyes!

CREON
Be good unto your mother, Simonides,
She must be now your care.

ANTIGONA
To what end, sir?
The bell of this sharp edict tolls for me
As it rings out for you. I'll be as ready,
With one hour's stay, to go along with you.

CREON
Thou must not, woman. There are years behind
Before thou canst set forward in this voyage,
And nature sure will now be kind to all.
She has a quarrel in it, a cruel law
Seeks to prevent her, she'll therefore fight in't
And draw out life even to her longest thread.
Thou art scare fifty-five.

ANTIGONA
So many morrows!
Those five remaining years I'll turn to days,
To hours, or minutes, for thy company.
'Tis fit that you and I, being man and wife,
Should walk together arm in arm.

SIMONIDES [Aside]
I hope they'll go together, I would they would, i'faith,
Then would her thirds be saved too. The day goes away, sir.

CREON
Why, wouldst thou have me gone, Simonides?

SIMONIDES
Oh, my heart! Would you have me gone before you, sir?
You give me such a deadly wound.

CLEANTHES [Aside]
Fine rascal!

SIMONIDES
Blemish my duty so with such a question?
Sir, I would haste me to the Duke for mercy:
He that's above the law may mitigate
The rigour of the law. How a good meaning
May be corrupted by misconstruction!

CREON
Thou corrup'st mine; I did not think thou meanest so.

CLEANTHES [Aside]
You were in the more error.

SIMONIDES
The words wounded me.

CLEANTHES [Aside]
'Twas pity thou died'st not on't.

SIMONIDES
I have been ransacking the helps of law,
Conferring with these learned advocates,
If any scruple, cause, or wrested sense
Could have been found out to preserve your life,
It had been bought, though with your full estate,
Your life's so precious to me. But there is none.

  • 12 thrown her] Q (threw her).

FIRST LAWYER
Sir, we have canvassed it from top to toe,
Turned it upside down, thrown her12 on her side,
Nay, opened and dissected all her entrails,
Yet can find none. There's nothing to be hoped
But the Duke's mercy.

SIMONIDES [Aside]
I know the hope of that:
He did not make the law for that purpose.

CREON
Then to his hopeless mercy last I go.
I have so many precedents before me,
I must call it hopeless. Antigona,
See me delivered up unto my deathsman,
And then we'll part; five years hence I'll look for thee.

SIMONIDES [Aside]
I hope she'll not stay so long behind you.

CREON
Do not bait him an hour by grief and sorrow,
Since there's a day prefixed, haste it not.
Suppose me sick, Antigona, dying now,
Any disease thou wilt may be my end,
Or when death's slow to come, say tyrants send.

Exeunt.

SIMONIDES
Cleanthes, if you want money, tomorrow use me;
I'll trust you while your father's dead.

CLEANTHES
Why, here's a villain
Able to corrupt a thousand by example!
Does the kind root bleed out his livelihood
In parent distribution to his branches,
Adorning them with all his glorious fruits,
Proud that his pride is seen when he's unseen?
And must not gratitude descend again
To comfort his old limbs in fruitless winter?
Improvident, at least partial Nature,
Weak woman in this kind, who in thy last
Teeming still forgets the former, ever making
The burden of thy last throes the dearest
Darling; oh, yet in noble man, reform it,
And make us better than those vegetives
Whose souls die within 'em! Nature, as thou art old,
If love and justice be not dead in thee,
Make some the pattern of thy piety
Lest all do turn unnaturally against thee,
And thou be blamed for our oblivions

Enter LEONIDES and HIPPOLITA.

And brutish reluctations! Ay, here's the ground
Whereon my filial faculties must build
An edifice of honour or of shame To all mankind.

HIPPOLITA
You must avoid it, sir,
If there be any love within yourself.
This is far more than fate of a lost game
That another venture may restore again;
It is your life, which you should not subject
To any cruelty if you can preserve it.

CLEANTHES
Oh dearest woman, thou hast now doubled
A thousand times thy nuptial dowry to me!
Why, she whose love is but derived from me,
Is got before me in my debted duty.

HIPPOLITA
Are you thinking such a resolution, sir?

CLEANTHES
Sweetest Hippolita, what love taught thee
To be so forward in so good a cause?

HIPPOLITA
Mine own pity, sir, did first instruct me,
And then your love and power did both command me.

CLEANTHES
They were all blessed angels to direct thee
And take their counsel. How do you fare, sir?

LEONIDES
Never better, Cleanthes; I have conceived
Such a new joy within this old bosom
As I did never think would there have entered.

CLEANTHES
Joy call you it! Alas, 'tis sorrow, sir,
The worst of all sorrows, sorrow unto death.

LEONIDES
Death? What's that, Cleanthes? I thought not on't;
I was in contemplation of this woman.
'Tis all thy comfort, son; thou hast in her
A treasure invaluable, keep her safe.
When I die, sure 'twill be a gentle death,
For I will die with wonder of her virtues,
Nothing else shall dissolve me.

CLEANTHES
'Twere much better, sir,
Could you prevent their malice.

LEONIDES
I'll prevent 'em
And die the way I told thee, in the wonder
Of this good woman. I tell thee there's few men
Have such a child; I must thank thee for her.
That the stronger tie of wedlock should do more
Than nature in her nearest ligaments
Of blood and propagation! I should ne'er
Have begot such a daughter of my own.
A daughter-in-law? Law were above nature
Were there more such children.

CLEANTHES
This admiration
Helps nothing to your safety; think of that, sir.

LEONIDES
Had you heard her, Cleanthes, but labour
In the search of means to save my forfeit life,
And knew the wise and sound preservations
That she found out, you would redouble all
My wonder in your love to her.

CLEANTHES
The thought, the very thought claims all that from me
And she's now possessed of it. But, good sir,
If you have aught received from her advice,
Let's follow it, or else let's better think
And take the surest course.

LEONIDES
I'll tell thee one:
She counsels me to fly my severe country,
Turn all into treasure, and there build up
My decaying fortunes in a safer soil,
Where Epire's law cannot claim me.

CLEANTHES
And, sir, I apprehend it as safest course,
And may be easily accomplished.
Let us be all most expeditious;
Every country where we breathe will be our own
Or better soil. Heaven is the roof of all,
And now, as Epire's situate by this law,
There is 'twixt us and heaven a dark eclipse.

HIPPOLITA
Oh, then avoid it, sir! These sad events
Follow those black predictions.

LEONIDES
I prithee, peace!
I do allow thy love, Hippolita,
But must not follow it as counsel, child;
I must not shame my country for the law.
This country here hath bred me, brought me up,
And shall I now refuse a grave in her?
I'm in my second infancy, and children
Ne'er sleep so sweetly in their nurse's cradle
As in their natural mother's.

HIPPOLITA
Ay, but sir,
She is unnatural; then the stepmother
Is to be preferred before her.

LEONIDES
Tush! She shall
Allow it me despite of her entrails.
Why, do you think how far from judgment 'tis
That I should travel forth to seek a grave
That is already digged for me at home,
Nay, perhaps find it in my way to seek it?
How have I then sought a repentant sorrow?
For your dear loves, how have I banished you
From your country ever? With my base attempt,
How have I beggared you in wasting that
Which only for your sakes I bred together?
Buried my name in Epire, which I built
Upon this frame to live forever in?
What a base coward shall I be to fly
From that enemy which every minute meets me,
And thousand odds he had not long vanquished me
Before this hour of battle! Fly my death?
I will not be so false unto your states,
Nor fainting to the man that's yet in me;
I'll meet him bravely. I cannot, this knowing, fear
That when I am gone hence, I shall be there.
Come, I have days of preparation left.

CLEANTHES
Good sir, hear me;
I have a genius that has prompted me
And I have almost formed it into words.
'Tis done, pray you observe 'em; I can conceal you
And yet not leave your country.

LEONIDES
Tush, it cannot be
Without a certain peril on us all.

CLEANTHES
Danger must be hazarded rather than accept
A sure destruction. You have a lodge, sir,
So far remote from way of passengers
That seldom any mortal eye does greet with it;
And, yes, so sweetly situate with thickets
Built with such cunning labyrinths within,
As if the provident heavens, forseeing cruelty,
Had bid you frame it to this purpose only.

LEONIDES
Fie, fie, 'tis dangerous, and treason too,
To abuse the law.

HIPPOLITA
'Tis holy care, sir,
Of your dear life, which is your own to keep
But not your own to lose, either in will
Or negligence.

CLEANTHES
Call you it treason, sir?
I had been then a traitor unto you
Had I forgot this. Beseech you, accept of it;
It is secure and a duty to yourself.

LEONIDES
What a coward will you make me!

CLEANTHES
You mistake,
'Tis noble courage! Now you fight with death
And yield not to him till you stoop under him.

LEONIDES
This must needs open to discovery,
And then what torture follows?

  • 13 But as I have] Shaw ; But as have Q.

CLEANTHES
By what means, sir?
Why, there's but one body in all this counsel
Which cannot betray itself. We two are one,
One soul, one body, one heart, that think all one thought;
And yet we two are not completely one,
But as I have
13 derived myself from you.
Who shall betray us where there is no second?

  • 14 Plead weakness] Shaw ; Plead weak Q.

HIPPOLITA
You must not mistrust my faith, though my sex
Plead weakness
14 and frailty for me.

LEONIDES
Oh, I dare not.
But where's the means that must make answer for me?
I cannot be lost without a full account,
And what must pay that reckoning?

CLEANTHES
Oh, sir, we will keep solemn obits for your funeral;
We'll seem to weep and seem to joy withal
That death so gently has prevented you
The law's sharp rigour; and this no mortal ear
Shall participate the knowledge of.

LEONIDES
Ha, ha, ha!
This will be sportive fine demur
If the error be not found.

CLEANTHES
Pray doubt of none.
Your company and best provision
Must be no further furnished than by us,
And, in the interim, your solitude
May converse with heaven, and fairly prepare
Which was too violent and raging
Thrown headlong on you.

LEONIDES
Still there are some doubts
Of the discovery, yet I do allow it.

HIPPOLITA
Will you not mention now the cost and charge
Which will be in your keeping.

LEONIDES
That will be somewhat
Which you might save too.

CLEANTHES
With his will against him,
What foe is more to man than man himself?
Are you resolved, sir?

LEONIDES
I am, Cleanthes.
If by this means I do get a reprieve
And cozen death awhile, when he shall come
Armed in his own power to give the blow,
I'll smile upon him then, and laughing go.

Exeunt.

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Notes

1 Pour le choix du texte, voir la Note sur l'établissement du texte, Préface, supra. En notes figurent les principales variantes et corrections (voir Bibliographie, supra).

2 senatus] Shaw ; senatum Q.

3 reipublicae] Shaw ; republicae Q.

4 chreokopia] Q (crecopedi).

5 seisactheia] Q (sisaithe[.]e).

6 the sense] Shaw ; the sense both Q.

7 Which speaks that] Shaw ; Which that speaks Q.

8 they be put to death] Shaw ; to be put to death Q.

9 'tis infancy] Shaw ; his infancy Q.

10 Been basely lost in his star's ignorance] Shaw ; Am basely lost in my star's ignorance Q.

11 Here I sit] Q (Here sit ---).

12 thrown her] Q (threw her).

13 But as I have] Shaw ; But as have Q.

14 Plead weakness] Shaw ; Plead weak Q.

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References

Electronic reference

Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, Act IÉtudes Épistémè [Online], 11 | 2007, Online since 01 April 2007, connection on 18 April 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/933; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/episteme.933

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About the authors

Philip Massinger

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Thomas Middleton

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William Rowley

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Copyright

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The text only may be used under licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. All other elements (illustrations, imported files) are “All rights reserved”, unless otherwise stated.

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