Digital Renaissance Editions

About this text

  • Title: The Honest Whore, Part 1 (Quarto 2, 1604)
  • Editor: Joost Daalder
  • 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 2, 1604)

    THE CONVERTED
    1095As many by one harlot, maym'd and dismembred,
    As would ha stuft an Hospitall: this I might
    Apply to you, and perhaps doe you right:
    O y'are as base as any beast that beares,
    Your body is ee'ne hirde, and so are theirs.
    1100For gold and sparkling iewels, (if he can)
    Youle let a Iewe get you with christian:
    Be he a Moore, a Tartar, tho his face
    Looke vglier then a dead mans scull,
    Could the diuel put on a humane shape,
    1105If his purse shake out crownes, vp then he gets,
    Whores will be rid to hell with golden bits:
    So that y'are crueller then Turkes, for they
    Sell Christians onely, you sell your selues away.
    Why those that loue you, hate you: and will terme you
    1110Lickerish damnation: wish themselues halfe sunke
    After the sin is laid out; and ee'ne curse
    Their fruitlesse riot, (for what one begets
    Another poisons) lust and murder hit,
    A tree being often shooke, what fruit can knit?
    1115Bell. O me vnhappy!
    Hip. I can vexe you more;
    A harlot is like Dunkirke, true to none,
    Swallowes both English, Spanish, fulsome Dutch,
    Blacke-doord Italian, last of all the French,
    1120And he sticks to you faith: giues you your diet,
    Brings you acquainted, first with monsier Doctor,
    And then you know what followes.
    Bell. Misery.
    Ranke, stinking, and most loathsome misery.
    1125Hip. Me thinks a toad is happier then a whore,
    That with one poison swells, with thousands more
    The other stocks her veines: harlot? fie! fie,
    You are the miserablest Creatures breathing,
    The very slaues of nature: marke me else,
    1130You put on rich attires, others eyes weare them,
    You eat, but to supply your blood with sin,
    And this strange curse ee'ne haunts you to your graues.
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