THE FAMILY OF LOVE

A monologue from the play by Thomas Middleton


  • NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from The Family of Love. Thomas Middleton. London: John Helmes, 1608.
  • PURGE: The grey-eyed morning braves me to my face, and calls me sluggard. 'Tis time for tradesmen to be in their shops; for he that tends well his shop, and hath an alluring wife with a graceful what d'ye lack? shall be sure to have good doings, and good doings is that that crowns so many citizens with the horns of abundance. My wife, by ordinary course, should this morning have been at the Family, but now her soft pillow hath given her counsel to keep her bed: master doctor should indeed minister to her; to whose pills she is so much accustomed, that now her body looks for them as duly as the moon shakes off the old and borrows new horns. I smile to myself to hear our knights and gallants say how they gull us citizens, when, indeed, we gull them, or rather thy gull themselves. Here they come in term-time, hire chambers, and perhaps kiss our wives: well, what lose I by that? God's blessing on's heart, I say still, that makes much of my wife! for they were very hard-favored that none could find in's heart to love but ourselves: drugs would be dog-cheap, but for my private well-practiced doctor and such customers. Tut, jealousy is a hell; and they that will thrive must utter their wares as they can, and wink at small faults.

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