Digital Renaissance Editions

About this text

  • Title: An Humorous Day's Mirth (Modern)
  • 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 (Modern)

    An Humorous Day始s Mirth
    0.01[Scene 1]
    1Enter the Count Labervele in his shirt and night-gown with two jewels in his hand.
    Labervele
    Yet hath the morning sprinkled thr始out the clouds
    5But half her tincture, and the soil of night
    Sticks still upon the bosom of the air.
    Yet sleep doth rest my love for nature始s debt,
    And through her window and this dim twilight
    Her maid, nor any waking I can see.
    This is the holy green, my wife始s close walk,
    — To which not any 10but herself alone
    Hath any key, only that I have clapped
    Her key in wax and made this counterfeit —
    To the which I steal access
    To work this rare and politic device.
    Fair is my wife, and young and delicate,
    Although too religious in the purist sort;
    But pure religion being but 15mental stuff,
    And sense, indeed, all for itself,
    Is to be doubted; that, when an object comes
    Fit to her humour, she will intercept
    Religious letters sent unto her mind,
    And yield unto the motion of her blood.
    Here have I brought, then, two rich agates for her,
    Graven with two posies of mine own 20devising,
    For poets I始ll not trust, nor friends, nor any.
    She longs to have a child, which yet, alas,
    I cannot get, yet long as much as she,
    And not to make her desperate, thus I write
    In this fair jewel, though it simple be,
    Yet 始tis mine own, that meaneth well enough:
    Despair not of children,
    Love 25with the longest;
    When man is at the weakest,
    God is at the strongest.
    I hope 始tis plain and knowing. In this other, that I write:
    God will reward her a thousandfold
    That takes what age can, and not what age would.
    I hope 始tis pretty and pathetical.
    Well, even here
    [Puts jewels down]
    Lie both together till my love arise
    And let her 30think you fall out of the skies.
    I will to bed again.
    Exit.