Early Modern Drama · Character Archetypes

PHILOMUSE

in What You Will

Metadata

PlayWhat You Will
Year (catalogued)1607
First performance1607
Decade1600s
GenreComedy
Play typeProfessional;Boys Professional
CompanyChildren of Paul's (second) (?)
Speech prefix(es)Phy. | Phy, | Phy
Words354
Characters1946
Typicality0.27 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP idA07081
BritDrama no.1283
ClusterCluster 22 — Ghosts, curses & horror voices

Important excerpts

No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).

Full speech

Faith Doricus, thy brain boils, keel it, keel it, or all the fat's in the fire: in the name of Phœbus, what merry Genius haunts thee to day, thy lips play with Feathers. Pish for shame, stint thy idle chat. If what? believe it Doricus his spirit, Is higher blooded then to quake and pant At the report of Skoffes Artillery; Shall he be crestfallen, if some looser brain, In flux of wit vnciuely befilth His slight composures? shall his bosom faint If drunken Censure belch out Sour breath, From Hatreds surfeit on his labours front? Nay say some half a dozen rancorous breasts Should plant themselves on purpose to discharge Impostumed malice on his latest Scene Shall his resolve be struck through with the blirt, Of a goose breath? What imperfect born? What short lived Meteor ? what cold hearted Snow Would melt in dolour? cloud his mudded eyes Sink down his jaws, if that some iuicles husk Some boundless ignorance should on sudden shoot His gross knob'd burbolt, with thats not so good, Mew, blirt, would, would, light Chaffy stuff? Why gentle spirits what lose waving fane? What any thing would thus be skru'd about With each slight touch of odd Phantasmatas? No let the feeble palseid lamer joints, Lean on opinions crutches, let the— Nay gentle Doricus. Pew nay then — What you will. Faith perfectly neither, but even What you will, a slight toy, lightly composed, to swiftly finished, ill plotted, worse writ ten, I fear me worst acted, and indeed What you will. If yowl stay but a little I'll accompany you, I have in gaged my self to the Author to give a kind of inductive speech to his Comedy. Tut I have vowed it, I am double charged, go of as't 'twill, I'll set fire to it. Nay pree thee stay, slid the female presence; the Gente letza; the women will put me out. Oh Oh I beseech you Sir reclaim his wits, My Master's mad, stark mad, alas for love, Fantastical. Look where he coms: Oh map of boundless woe! Yes Sir. So they say Sir,

Plot summary

Plot — What You Will
Only three months after her husband Albano was reported dead in a sea battle, Celia has many suitors. Tomorrow she intends to marry Laverdure, a French knight; but Alban.o 's brothers, Randolfo and Adrian, disapprove. After fruitlessly petitioning the noctumal. party-loving Duke to stop the wedding, thcr decide to make it illegitimate by introducing an impostor, a perfumer named Francisco, to pose as Albano, claiming that he did not die after all; but Laverdure's page Bidet witnesses their scheming and warns his master. In fact, Albano survived. On his return to Venice he is unimpressed to hear that his supposedly faithful and loving wife is getting married again so soon; but when he accosts Laverdure, he is taken for Francisco. Even his own brothers take him for the disguised perfumer, so he begins to believe that he has indeed become Francisco by metempsychosis. He interrupts the performance of a play at court to protest at the way he has been treated, and the Duke assures everyone that he really is Albano. He decides to forgive everyone, including Laverdure and Celia. In the sub-plot, Simplicius saves the schoolboy Holofernes Pippo from a thrashing and takes him on as his page. A group of pages trick Simplicius into arranging an assignation with a merchant's wife, who turns out to be Holofemes in disguise.