Digital Renaissance Editions

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    Not Peer Reviewed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)

    Lectori.

    liue vnder one law. How true Fortunes dyall hath gone whose
    Players (like so many clocks, haue struck my lines, and told the
    world how I haue spent my houres) I am not certaine, because
    mine eare stood not within reach of their Larums. But of
    0.070 this my knowledge cannot faile, that in such Consorts,
    many of the Instruments are for the mo st part out of tune,
    And no maruaile; for let the Poet set the note of his Nombers,
    euen to Apolloes owne Lyre, the Player will haue his owne Cro-
    chets, and sing false notes, in di spite of all the rules of Mu sick.
    0.075 It fares with these two, as it does with good stuffe and a badde
    Tayler: It is not mard in the wearing, but in the cutting out.
    The labours therfore of Writers are as vnhappie as the children
    of a bewtifull woman, being spoyld by ill nurses, within a month
    after they come into the world. What a number of throwes doe
    0.080 we endure eare we be deliuered? and yet euen then (tho that hea-
    uenly i ssue of our braine be neuer so faire and so well lymd,) is
    it made lame by the bad handling of them to whome it is put to
    learne to goe: if this of mine bee made a cripple by such meanes,
    yet di spise him not for that deformity which stuck not vpon him
    0.085 at his birth; but fell vpon him by mis-fortune, and in recompence
    of such fauour, you shall (if your Patience can suffer so long)
    heare now how himselfe can speake.