Digital Renaissance Editions

About this text

  • Title: The Honest Whore, Part 2 (Quarto 1, 1630)
  • 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.
    Author: Thomas Dekker
    Editor: Joost Daalder
    Not Peer Reviewed

    The Honest Whore, Part 2 (Quarto 1, 1630)

    The Honest Whore.
    I would not die like a rich man, to carry nothing away saue
    a winding sheete:
    But like a good man, to leaue Orlando behind me.
    315I sowed leaues in my Youth, and I reape now Bookes in
    my Age.
    I fill this hand, and empty this, and when the bell shall toll
    for me, if I proue a Swan & go singing to my nest, why so?
    If a Crow! throw me out for carrion, & pick out mine eyes,
    320May not old Friscabaldo (my Lord) be merry now! ha?
    Hip. You may, would I were partner in your mirth.
    Orla. I haue a little,
    Haue all things;
    I haue nothing; I haue no wife, I haue no child, haue no
    325 chick, and why should not I be in my Iocundare?
    Hip. Is your wife then departed?
    Orla. She's an old dweller in those high Countries,
    Yet not from me,
    Here, she's here: but before me, when a Knaue and a Queane
    330are married, they commonly walke like Serieants together:
    but a good couple are seldome parted.
    Hip. You had a Daughter too sir, had you not?
    Orla. Oh my Lord! this old Tree had one Branch, (and
    but one Branch growing out of it) It was young, it was
    335faire, it was straight; I prumde it daily, drest it carefully,
    kept it from the winde, help'd it to the Sunne, yet for all
    my skill in planting, it grew crooked, it bore Crabs; I
    hewed it downe,
    What's become of it, I neither know, nor care.
    340Hip. Then can I tell you whats become of it;
    That Branch is witherd.
    Orl. So 'twas long agoe.
    Hip. Her name I thinke was Bellafront, she's dead.
    Orlando. Ha? dead?
    345Hip. Yes, what of her was left, not worth the keeping,
    Euen in my sight was throwne into a Graue.
    Orl. Dead! my last and best peace goe with her, I see
    deaths a good trencherman, he can eat course homely meat,
    as