SCENE III. A room in the prison

Enter Jailer, Wooer and Doctor.

DOCTOR. Her distraction is more at some time of the moon, than at other some, is it not?

JAILER. She is continually in a harmless distemper, sleeps little, altogether without appetite, save often drinking, dreaming of another world, and a better; and what broken piece of matter soe’er she’s about, the name Palamon lards it, that she farces every business withal, fits it to every question.

Enter Jailer’s Daughter.

Look where she comes; you shall perceive her behaviour.

DAUGHTER. I have forgot it quite. The burden on ’t was “Down-a, down-a,” and penned by no worse man than Geraldo, Emilia’s schoolmaster. He’s as fantastical, too, as ever he may go upon’s legs, for in the next world will Dido see Palamon, and then will she be out of love with Æneas.

DOCTOR. What stuff’s here? Poor soul!

JAILER. Even thus all day long.

DAUGHTER. Now for this charm that I told you of: you must bring a piece of silver on the tip of your tongue, or no ferry. Then if it be your chance to come where the blessed spirits are, there’s a sight now! We maids that have our livers perished, cracked to pieces with love, we shall come there, and do nothing all day long but pick flowers with Proserpine. Then will I make Palamon a nosegay; then let him mark me—then.

DOCTOR. How prettily she’s amiss! Note her a little further.

DAUGHTER. Faith, I’ll tell you, sometime we go to barley-break, we of the blessed. Alas, ’tis a sore life they have i’ th’ other place—such burning, frying, boiling, hissing, howling, chattering, cursing—O, they have shrewd measure; take heed! If one be mad, or hang or drown themselves, thither they go; Jupiter bless us! And there shall we be put in a cauldron of lead and usurers’ grease, amongst a whole million of cutpurses, and there boil like a gammon of bacon that will never be enough.

DOCTOR. How her brain coins!

DAUGHTER. Lords and courtiers that have got maids with child, they are in this place. They shall stand in fire up to the navel and in ice up to the heart, and there th’ offending part burns and the deceiving part freezes. In troth, a very grievous punishment, as one would think, for such a trifle. Believe me, one would marry a leprous witch to be rid on ’t, I’ll assure you.

DOCTOR. How she continues this fancy! ’Tis not an engraffed madness, but a most thick, and profound melancholy.

DAUGHTER. To hear there a proud lady and a proud city wife howl together! I were a beast an I’d call it good sport. One cries “O this smoke!” th’ other, “This fire!”; one cries, “O, that ever I did it behind the arras!” and then howls; th’ other curses a suing fellow and her garden house.

[Sings.] I will be true, my stars, my fate, &c.

[Exit Jailer’s Daughter.]

JAILER. What think you of her, sir?

DOCTOR. I think she has a perturbed mind, which I cannot minister to.

JAILER. Alas, what then?

DOCTOR. Understand you she ever affected any man ere she beheld Palamon?

JAILER. I was once, sir, in great hope she had fixed her liking on this gentleman, my friend.

WOOER. I did think so too, and would account I had a great penn’orth on’t, to give half my state, that both she and I at this present stood unfeignedly on the same terms.

DOCTOR. That intemperate surfeit of her eye hath distempered the other senses. They may return and settle again to execute their preordained faculties, but they are now in a most extravagant vagary. This you must do: confine her to a place where the light may rather seem to steal in than be permitted. Take upon you, young sir, her friend, the name of Palamon; say you come to eat with her, and to commune of love. This will catch her attention, for this her mind beats upon; other objects that are inserted ’tween her mind and eye become the pranks and friskins of her madness. Sing to her such green songs of love as she says Palamon hath sung in prison. Come to her stuck in as sweet flowers as the season is mistress of, and thereto make an addition of some other compounded odours which are grateful to the sense. All this shall become Palamon, for Palamon can sing, and Palamon is sweet and every good thing. Desire to eat with her, carve her, drink to her, and still among intermingle your petition of grace and acceptance into her favour. Learn what maids have been her companions and play-feres, and let them repair to her with Palamon in their mouths, and appear with tokens, as if they suggested for him. It is a falsehood she is in, which is with falsehoods to be combated. This may bring her to eat, to sleep, and reduce what’s now out of square in her into their former law and regiment. I have seen it approved, how many times I know not, but to make the number more I have great hope in this. I will, between the passages of this project, come in with my appliance. Let us put it in execution and hasten the success, which, doubt not, will bring forth comfort.

[Exeunt.]

ACT V