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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.
    Twixt her and thee: whats beautie but a coarse?
    What but faire sand-dust are earths purest formes:
    Queenes bodies are but trunckes to put in wormes.
    75Mathew Speake no more sentences, my good lord, but slip
    hence; you see they are but fits, ile rule him I warrant ye. I, so,
    treade gingerly, your Grace is heere somewhat too long alrea-
    dy. Sbloud the jeast were now, if having tane some knockes
    o'th pate already, he should get loose againe, and like a madde
    80Oxe, tosse my new blacke cloakes into the kennell. I must hu-
    mour his lordship: my lord Hipolito, is it in your stomacke to
    goe to dinner?
    Hipolito Where is the body?
    Matheo The body, as the Duke spake very wisely, is gone
    85to be wormd.
    Hipolito I cannot rest, ile meete it at next turne,
    Ile see how my love lookes, Mathaeo holds him ins armes
    Mathaeo How your love lookes? worse than a scarre-crowe,
    wrastle not with me: the great felow gives the fall for a duckat.
    90Hipolito I shall forget my selfe.
    Mathaeo Pray do so, leave your selfe behinde your selfe, and
    go whither you will. Sfoote, doe you long to have base roags
    that maintaine a saint Anthonies fire in their noses (by nothing
    but two peny Ale) make ballads of you? if the Duke had but so
    95much mettle in him, as is in a coblers awle, he would ha beene a
    vext thing: he and his traine had blowne you vp, but that their
    powlder haz taken the wet of cowards: youle bleed three pot-
    tles of Aligant, by this light, if you follow em, and then wee
    shall have a hole made in a wrong place, to have Surgeons roll
    100thee vp like a babie in swadling clowts.
    Hipolito What day is to day, Mathaeo?
    Mathaeo Yea mary, this is an easie question: why to day is,
    let me see, thurseday. Hipolito Oh, thurseday.
    Mathaeo Heeres a coile for a dead commoditie, sfoote wo-
    105men when they are alive are but dead commodities, for you
    shall have one woman lie vpon many mens hands.
    Hipolito Shee died on monday then.
    Mathaeo And thats the most villainous day of all the weeke
    to die in: and she was wel, and eate a messe of water-grewel on
    A 3 monday