MOUNTNEY

Since we are guiltless, we the less dismay To see this sudden change possess cheer: For if it issue from your own conceits, Bred by suggestion of some envious thoughts: Your highness wisdom may suppress it straight. Yet tell us (good my Lord) what thought it is, That thus bereaves you of your late content, That in advise we may assist your grace, Or bend our forces to revive your spirits. What now Lord Valingford are you behind? The king had chosen you to go with him. The king may justly think we are to blame: But I imagined I might well be spared And that no other man had born my mind. Lord Valingford I tell thee as a friend, Love is the cause why I have stayed behind. Em the millers daughter of Manchester. Why not my Lord? I hope full well you know That love respects no difference of state So beauty serve to stir affection. But is that true? my Lord: I hope you do but jest. Nay never grieve: for if the cause be such To join our thoughts in such a Sympathy: All envy set aside: let us agree To yield to eithers fortune in this choice. For this good fortune, Venus be thou blessed, To meet my love, the mistress of my heart, Where time and place gives opportunity At full to let her understand my love. Fair mistress, since my fortune sorts so well: Hear you a word. What means this? Nay stay fair Em. Yet stay sweet love to whom I must disclose The hidden secrets of a lovers thoughts, Not doubting but to find such kind remorse As naturally you are inclined to. Whats that to me? I speak not sweet in person of my friend, But for my self, whom if that love deserve To have regard being honourable love: Not base affects of lose lascivious love: Whom youthful wantons play and dally with: But that unites in honourable bans of holy rites, And knits the sacred knot that Gods. Here Em cuts him off. What is she deaf? a great impediment. Yet remedies there are for such defects. Sweet Em, it is no little grief to me, To see where nature in her pride of art Hath wrought perfections rich and admirable. To thee my only joy. O plague of Fortune: O hell without compare. What boots it us to gaze and not enjoy? Valingford, so hardly I digest and injury Thou hast proffered me, as were not that I detest to do what stands Not with the honour of my name, Thy death should pay thy ransom of thy fault. Subtle thou art, and cunning in thy frawd, That giving me occasion of offence, Thou pickest a quarrel to excuse thy shame. Why Valingford, was it not enough for thee To be aryuall betwixt me and my love, But counsel her to my no small disgrace, That when I came to talk with her of love, She should seem deaf, as feigning not to hear. Thou knowest too well she hath: Wherein thou couldst not do me greater injury. The Like did I by thee. But are not these natural imp diments? With all my heart: Yet lets try the truth hereof. Father, well met. We are come to confer with you. This is no dissembling Valingford. Since fortune hath thus spitefully crossed our hope, Let us leave this guest and harken after our King: Who is at this day landed at Lirpoole. Exit Mountney. Content my Lord, invent the form. And I say this: and thereof will I lay and hundred pound. If that be true: then are we both deceived. I know full well, because they hang too hie. Nature unjust, in utterance of thy art, To grace a peasant with a Princes fame: Peasant am I so to misterm my love Although a millers daughter by her birth: Yet may her beauty and her virtues well suffice To hide the blemish of her birth in hell, Where neither envious eyes nor thought can pierce, But endless darkness ever smother it. Go William Conqueror and seek thy love, Whilst I draw back and court mine own the while: Decking her body with such costly robes As may become her beauty's worthiness, That so thy labors may be laughed to scorn, And she thou seekest in foreign regions, Be darkened and eclipsed when she arrives, By one that I have chosen nearer home. Fare well my love. Nay farewell life and all. Could I procure redress for this infirmity, It might be means she would regard my suit. I am acquainted with the Kings Physicians: Amongst the which, theres one mine honest friend, Seignior Alberto, a very learned man. His judgement will I have to help this ill. Ah Em, fair Em, if Art can make thee whole: I'll buy that sense for thee, although it cost me deer. But Mountney : stay, this may be but deceit, A matter feigned only to delude thee. And not unlike, perhaps by Valingford, He loves fair Em as well as I. As well as I? ah no, not half so well. Put case, yet may he be thine enemy, And give her counsel to dissemble thus. I'll try the event, and if it fallen out so? Friendship farewell: Love makes me now a foe. Exit Mountney.