THE HONEST WHORE
A monologue from the
play by Thomas
Dekker
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from The Chief Elizabethan Dramatists. Ed. William Allan
Neilson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911. |
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- HIPPOLITO: [Taking up a picture]
- My Infelice's face, her brow, her eye,
- The dimple on her cheek! And such sweet skill
- Hath from the cunning workman's pencil flown,
- These lips look fresh and lively as her own,
- Seeming to move and speak. 'Las, now I see
- The reason why fond women love to buy
- Adulterate complexion! Here 'tis read:
- False colors last after the true be dead.
- Of all the roses grafted on her cheeks,
- Of all the graces dancing in her eyes,
- Of all the music set upon her tongue,
- Of all that was past woman's excellence,
- In her white bosom--look!--a painted board
- Circumscribes all. Earth can no bliss afford.
- Nothing of her but this? This cannot speak,
- It has no lap for me to rest upon,
- No lip worth tasting; here the worms will feed,
- As in her coffin. Hence, then, idle art!
- True love's best pictured in a truelove's heart.
- Here art thou drawn, sweet maid, till this be dead,
- So that thou liv'st twice, twice art buriéd.
- Thou figure of my friend, lie there.
- What's here? [Takes up a skull]
- Perhaps this shrewd pate was my enemy's.
- 'Las, say it were! I need not fear him now!
- For all his boasts, his contumelious breath,
- His frowns, though dagger-pointed, all his plot,
- Though ne'er so mischievous, his Italian pills,
- His quarrels, and that common fence, his law,
- See, see, they're all eaten out! Here's not left one!
- How clean they're picked away to bare bone!
- How mad are mortals, then, to rear great names
- On tops of swelling houses, or to wear out
- Their fingers' ends in dirt, to scrape up gold,
- Not caring, so that sumpter horse, the back,
- Be hung with gaudy trappings! With what coarse,
- Yea, rags most beggarly, they clothe the soul!
- Yet, after all, their gayness looks thus foul.
- What fools are men to build a garish tomb,
- Only to save the carcass whilst it rots,
- To maintain 't long in stinking, make good carrion,
- But leave no good deeds to preserve them sound!
- For good deeds keep men sweet, long above ground.
- And must all come to this? Fools, wise, all hither?
- Must all heads thus at last be laid together?
- Draw me my picture then, thou grave neat workman,
- After this fashion, not like this. These colors
- In time, kissing but air, will be kissed off;
- But here's a fellow--that which he lays on
- Till doomsday alters not complexion.
- Death's best painter then; they that draw shapes
- And live by wicked faces are but God's apes.
- They come but near the life, and there they stay.
- This fellow draws life too; his art is fuller--
- The pictures which he makes are without color.
MORE
MONOLOGUES BY THOMAS DEKKER |
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