Act 2 Scene 1
Enter Balthazar, [having been] slighted by the Dons.
Balthazar Thou god of good apparel, what strange fellows are bound to do thee honour. Mercer’s <12> books show men’s devotions to thee. Heaven cannot hold a saint so stately. Do not my dons know me because I’m poor in clothes? Stood my beaten tailor plaiting my rich hose, my silk stocking man drawing upon my Lordship’s courtly calf pairs of imbroidered things, whose golden clocks strike deeper to the faithful shop-keeper’s heart, than into mine to pay him. Had my barber perfumed my lousy thatch here and poked out me tusks more stiff than are a cats muschatoes <13>, these pied-winged butterflies had known me then. Another fly-boat! <14> Save thee illustrious Don.
Enter Don Rodrigo.
Sir, is the King at leisure to speak Spanish with a poor Soldier?
RODRIGO
No
BALTHAZAR No, Sirah, you, no! You Don with the ochre face, I wish to have thee but on a breach, stifling with smoke and fire. And for thy no, but whiffing gunpowder out of an iron pipe, I would but ask thee if thou would’st on, and if thou did’st cry no, thou should’st read Canon Law. I’d make thee roar, and wear cut-beaten-satin. I would pay thee though thou payest not thy mercer. Mere Spanish jennets! <15>
Enter Cockadillio.
Signor, is the King at leisure?
COCKADILLO
To do what?
BALTHAZAR
To hear a soldier speak.
COCKADILLO
I am no ear picker
To sound his hearing that way.
BALTHAZAR
Are you of court sir?
COCKADILLO
Yes, the King’s barber.
BALTHAZAR
That’s his ear picker. Your name, I pray.
COCKADILLO
Don Cockadillio
If, soldier, thou hast suits to beg at court,
I shall descend so low as to betray
Thy paper to the hand Royal.
BALTHAZAR I beg, you whorson muscod <16>! My petition is written on my bosom in red wounds.
COCKADILLO
I am no barber-surgeon.
Exit Cockadillio.
BALTHAZAR You yellowhammer, why, shaver: that such poor things as these, only made up of tailor’s shreds and merchant’s silken rags and ‘pothecary drugs to lend their breath sophisticated smells, when their rank guts stink worse than cowards in the heat of battle. Such whaleboned-doublet rascals, that owe more to laundresses and seamsters for laced linen than all their race from their great grand-father to this their reign, in clothes were ever worth. These excrements of silk worms! Oh that such flies do buzz about the beams of Majesty, like earwigs tickling a King’s yielding ear with that court-organ, flattery, when a soldier must not come near the court gates twenty score, but stand for want of clothes, though he win towns, amongst the almsbasket-men! His best reward being scorned to be a fellow to the blackguard. Why should a soldier, being the world’s right arm, be cut thus by the left, a courtier? Is the world all ruff and feather and nothing else? Shall I never see a tailor give his coat with a difference from a gentleman?
Enter King, Alanzo, Carlo, Cockadillio.
KING
My Balthazar!
Let us make haste to meet thee. How art thou altered?
Do you not know him?
ALANZO
Yes Sir, the brave soldier
Employed against the Moors
KING
Half turned Moor!
I’ll honour thee, reach him a chair, that table
And now, Aeneas-like, let thine own trumpet
Sound forth thy battle with those slavish Moors.
BALTHAZAR My music is a Cannon, a pitched field my stage, Furies the actors, blood and vengeance the scene, death the story, a sword imbrued with blood, the pen that writes, and the poet a terrible buskined <17> tragical fellow, with a wreath about his head of burning match instead of bays.
KING
On to the battle.
BALTHAZAR ’Tis here without bloodshed. This our main battalia, that the van, this the vaw <18>, these the wings, here we fight, there they fly, here they insconce <19>, and here our sconces <20> lay seventeen moons on the cold earth.
KING
This satisfies my eye, but now my ear
Must have his music too. Describe the battle.
BALTHAZAR The battle? Am I come from doing to talking? The hardest part for a soldier to play is to prate well. Our tongues are fifes, drums, petronels <21>, muskets, culverin <22> and cannon. These are our roarers, the clocks which we go by are our hands. Thus we reckon ten, our swords strike eleven and when steel targets of proof clatter one against another, then ’tis noon that’s the height and the heat of the day of battle.
KING
So.