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  • Title: The Honest Whore, Part 1 (Quarto 1, 1604)
  • Editor: Joost Daalder
  • Contributing editor: Brett Greatley-Hirsch
  • Coordinating editor: Brett Greatley-Hirsch
  • General textual editor: Eleanor Lowe
  • ISBN: 978-1-55058-490-5

    Copyright Digital Renaissance Editions. This text may be freely used for educational, non-profit purposes; for all other uses contact the Editor.
    Authors: Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton
    Editor: Joost Daalder
    Peer Reviewed

    The Honest Whore, Part 1 (Quarto 1, 1604)

    The Honest Whore.
    Fustigo By this welkin that heere roares? I will, or else
    300let me never know what a secret is: why sister do you thinke
    Ile cunni-catch you, when you are my coosen? Gods my life,
    then I were a starke Asse, if I fret not his guts, beg me for a
    foole.
    Viola Be circumspect, and do so then, farewell.
    305Fust. The Tortoys sister? Ile stay there; forty duckats. Exit.
    Viola Thither Ile send: this law can none deny,
    Women must have their longings, or they die. Exit.
    Gasparo the Duke, Doctor Benedicke, two seruants.
    Duke Give charge that none do enter, locke the doores;
    310And fellowes, what your eyes and eares receave,
    Vpon your lives trust not the gadding aire
    To carry the least part of it: the glasse, the houre-glasse.
    Doctor Heere my Lord.
    Duke. Ah, tis meere spent.
    315But Doctor Benedick, does your Art speake truth?
    Art sure the soporiferous streame will ebbe,
    And leave the Christall banks of her white body
    (Pure as they were at first) iust at the houre?
    Doctor Iust at the houre my Lord.
    320Duke Vncurtaine her.
    Softly sweete Doctor: what a coldish heate
    Spreads over all her bodie.
    Doctor Now it workes:
    The vitall spirits that by a sleepie charme
    325Were bound vp fast, and threw an icie rust
    On her exterior parts, now gin to breake:
    Trouble her not my Lord.
    Duke Some stooles, you calld
    For musicke, did you not? Oh ho, it speakes,
    330It speakes, watch sirs her waking, note those sands,
    Doctor sit downe: A Dukedome that should wey mine
    Owne downe twice, being put into one scale:
    And that fond desperate boy Hipolito,
    Making the weight vp, should not (at my hands)
    335Buy her i'th tother, were her state more light
    Than hers, who makes a dowrie vp with almes.
    B 2 Doctor