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About this text

  • Title: The Whore of Babylon (Quarto, 1607)
  • Editors: Frances E. Dolan, Anna Pruitt

  • 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
    Editors: Frances E. Dolan, Anna Pruitt
    Not Peer Reviewed

    The Whore of Babylon (Quarto, 1607)

    The Whore of Babylon.
    Titan. What then?
    Plain. Mary then doe all the gylt rapiers turne their Tobacco
    faces in the roome vpon me, and they puffe, they gape on a fre sh
    760man like so many stale Oy sters at a full tyde: then is there no
    salt to throw vpon them, and to make them leaue gaping, but
    this; to ca st off his cloake, hauing good cloathes vnderneath, si -
    ngle out some in the roome worse accou stred then himselfe, with
    him to walke boldly vp and downe strutting, laugh alowd at a-
    765ny thing, talke alowde of nothing, so they make a noise, it is no
    matter.
    Titan. You are growne Sirra an obseruer since you came out
    of Babylon.
    Plain. Troth mi stre s s e, I left villains and knaues there, & find
    770knaues & fooles here: for your Ordinary is your I sle of Gulles,
    your ship of fooles, your hospitall of incurable madmen: it is the
    field where your captaine and braue man is cal'd to the la st rec-
    koning, and is ouerthrown horse and foot: it is the onely schoole
    to make an hone st man a knaue: for Intelligencers may heare e-
    775nough there, to set twenty a begging of lands: it is the strange st
    Che s s e-board in the world.
    Titan. Why?
    Plain. Because in some games at Che s s e, knights are better
    then pawnes, but here a good pawne is better then a knight.
    780 Titan. Affoard our shores such wonders?
    Plain. Wonders? why this one little Cocke-pit, (for none come
    into it, but those that haue spurs) is able to shew all the follies of
    your kingdome, in a few Apes of the kingdome.
    Yitan. Haue we not in our Land Phy sitions
    785To purge these red impo stumes?
    Plain. Troth yes mi stre s s e; but I am Plaine dealing, and mu st
    speake truth, thou ha st many Phy sitions, some of thē sound men,
    bnt a number of them more sicke at heart, then a whole pari sh
    full of Patients: let them cure themselues fir st, & then they may
    790better know how to heale others: then haue you other fellowes
    that take vpon them to be Surgeons, and by letting out the cor-
    ruption of a State, and they let it out Ile be sworne; for some of
    them in places as big as this, and before a thousand people, rip
    vp the bowels of vice in such a bea stly manner, that (like women
    795at an Execution, that can endure to see men quartred aliue) the
    behol-