Digital Renaissance Editions

About this text

  • Title: An Humorous Day's Mirth (Quarto 1, 1599)
  • Editor: Eleanor Lowe
  • Coordinating editor: Brett Greatley-Hirsch
  • General textual editor: Helen Ostovich
  • ISBN: 978-1-55058-513-1

    Copyright Digital Renaissance Editions. This text may be freely used for educational, non-profit purposes; for all other uses contact the Editor.
    Author: George Chapman
    Editor: Eleanor Lowe
    Peer Reviewed

    An Humorous Day's Mirth (Quarto 1, 1599)

    dayes mirth.
    women; now sir a plague vpon it, tis so ridiculous I can no
    920further: what poore asse was it that set this in my way? now
    if my father should be the man: Gods precious coles tis
    he.
    Lab. Good sonne go forward in this gentle humor, ob-
    serue this picture, it presents a maide of noble birth and ex-
    925cellent of parts, whom for our house and honor sake, I wish
    thou wouldst confesse to marrie.
    Dow. To marrie father? why we shall haue children.
    La. Why that's the ende of marriage, and the ioye of
    men.
    930Do. O how you are deceiued, you haue but me, & what
    a trouble am I to your ioy? but father, if you long to haue
    some fruite of me, see father I will creepe into this stuborne
    earth and mixe my flesh with it, and they shall breede
    grasse, to fat oxen, asses and such like, and when they in the
    935grasse the spring conuerts into beasts nourishment, then
    comes the fruite of this my body forth; then may you well
    say, seeing my race is so profitably increased, that good fat
    oxe, and that same large eard asse are my sonne sonnes, that
    caulfe with a white face is his faire daughter, with which,
    940when your fields are richly filled, then will my race content
    you, but for the ioyes of children, tush tis gone, children
    will not deserue, nor parents take it: wealth is the onely
    father & the child, and but in wealth no man hath any ioy.
    La. Some course deare sonne take for thy honor sake.
    945Dow. Then father heres a most excellent course.
    La. This is some comfort yet.
    Dow. If you will strait be gone and leaue me here, Ile
    stand as quietlye as anye lambe, and trouble none of you
    La. An haplesse man.
    950Le. How like you this humour yet my liege?
    King. As of a holy fury, not a frensie.
    Mor. See see my liege, he hath seene vs sure.
    King. Nay looke how he viewes Martia and makes
    him fine.
    955D 3 Le. Yea