Early Modern Drama · Character Archetypes

TOURES

in The Two Maids of More-Clacke — Armin, Robert

Metadata

PlayThe Two Maids of More-Clacke
AuthorArmin, Robert
Year (catalogued)1609
First performance1606
Decade1600s
GenreComedy
Play typeBoys Professional
CompanyChildren of the King's Revels
Speech prefix(es)Tour. | Tou. | Toures.
Words1267
Characters6730
Typicality0.28 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP idA21411
BritDrama no.1577
ClusterCluster 10 — Mourners, mothers & doleful voices

Important excerpts

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

Full speech

Lost her glove? So she makes known. I'll find it to my everliving glory, And the next triumph, wear it in my elm Daring all gallants in defence to approve, S. William Vergirs Lady owes this glove. No, but the glove I sought not, I would found. We are betrayed, young Humill is at hand, Dance, and excuse it so. Content, a dance, and in again. Content, no dance, yet in again. It is ungently done to snatch her so. I. Here, Or where you dare, go seek in Brainford, go. Brainford? So slaves by violence do hurry hence, The rights of— Hear you that? Oh sir, no remedy, what Justice lives so free. And to her own is friending, How Gods-like the elder of the two, Stations the measure, it is a Jovial sighed, Where beauty gilds the pavement with her light. How sullen Saturn took her by the hand. With frosty feeling, in whose joy touch, She shrunk her hold, but with a jealous eye, She glanst on me, fearful that standers by Should be enriched with't: now she smiles me fair, Guilding my torture with and after hope. Thus moroliz'd, I season on my right, Her love thus challenged by inferior might. Boy, you understand me, though the liquour have renst me, remember your business boy. Boy where shall's have doings, I'll clout any woman's cauldren, boy. Pawn budget boy, I'll ring in boy, hay any work for a tinker, a ti, ti, tinker. Draw boy, homo armatus, boy, I'll pepper your pans, Where's my dog boy? I'll tickle your holes. Out of tune and temper too, thus can dainty liquour do. Sing boy. Shals not buss knight, shals not neb? Set down the heaviest load That ever true affection underwent, To you 'tis Like the Anchor of your ship, Heavy at first, but easily weighed seems light, To me, that not supports her bodies weight, 'Tis heart deep in the burden, & too po ̄ derous Sad, heavy is that load, whose leaden poize, Is as a sullen sorrow, too, too pressing. Dig ho this golden beach, whose glittering sands Shows with the sun as Diamonds set in gold, Fitly entombs a jewel of much worth, Whose living beauty stained all lapidary. And this nights tempest did a cruel deed, To take from me a valve of such price. Leaving your self and all, sometime, And yet me thinks death should not Take her from me, being scarce mine own. But newly wed, never bedded yet. So that the Ceremony burning bright, Himen yet hath his tapers flaming read. And the bold boastings of that good men breath. That all religiously made one of two. Hardly disgesled in the freezing cold, Little I thought the priests word being, ever, Should find his perjod in so short a time. You're the glove, which still I seek to wear Make me happy, match it to a pair. 'Tis rare to be a tinker boy, work enough, wench enough, and drink enough, is't not boy? I Master. Doctors came her pulse to feel, And Surgeons with their tools of steel, To dig, to delve, to find her pain, But all they did it was in vain, Still on her back this maiden lies, And with and open throat she cries. Oh stone, stone nam ne ra, stone ne nam ne ra stone. Old wives they made answer thus, Green sickness was most dangerous. And oatmeal eating is afood, That never yet did maiden good. Tut, tut, tut, 'tis nothing so, Still she cried out with pain and woe. Oh stone, stone ne nam ne ra, stone ne nam ne ra, stone Till she was delivered of a chopping boy, and all was as I am, Omne be. Knight, feast, knight, a good cellar keeper knight. I'll cusse thy daughter knight. Bear w'e me master, he that pines in grief, Lives as you sailors do, thinking at sea, Every storm ends, when flattery flouts you, So to our lovesick sorrow comes a calm, By ease of fancies, when 'tis furthest, And many times the weapon that does wound, Is salve, and Surgeon both, to make all found. All sitted, let me take my last farewell, I am all jelly in my tears and sighs, Wasted by waiting her untimely lose, So long I did consume in drops of woe, That contrary I laugh to think it so. He that weeps much, having no tears to spend, Smiles out the rest, but inwardly does rend, Oh God that I venturing so hard a chance, Should lose my dice, before my hand be out, 'Tis even so, in all things man intends The lose is ours, the winnings not our friends. Then thus, and this the last, Moll, I take leave yet on thy hersed self, Dead self, and self slain. Moll worser cest I am thy morning music, call thee up, To wedded rights, I lead thee to the Church, And there receive thee, dine with thee at noon, Dance all the after day, bring thee at night Into the wedding chamber, this is it. And here I leave thee to thy virgen slumber, Never attempted, as thy birth bestowed, Madam beginning, take it in thy end, So live thus die, only my married friend, And nothing else, gone art thou to a power, Which will with welcomes take thee, left I am To the world's cross, thy father who enraged, Will bitterly revenge thy death on me, But I will prove his martyr, se-thee Moll, Fool that I am to say so, here is all, Gowns, tire, all abiliments of thine, No rag shall rest remembrant in my view. To stir the embers of thy dying fire, I kiss thy key cold corpse, and with this key, Lock thee for ever up, farewell, farewell, My mouth the Church, my voice thy Parting knell. All cares that live and hear This bell to toule, Christianlike bid peace unto her soul. Prove on my Fortune's how so ere they stand, I hold my fairest fortune in my hand. Lovers talk any thing. Mote as I am of Lovers union, Contracted to a solitary life. By thus retaining singleness of heart: Changing all doubts that the world affords But one, so to thy sweetest self, Which only art idea of my thoughts: I vow a reconciled amity, Which violated, doos command my life To yield his interest to the shade of death, May be, your father alienates our choice, And shows as sunshine threatening rain, To the all-hoping harvest present. Which to make clear, the honourable word And fatherly regard in present office Have passed their speed in our attention. I know your father will receive their onset Soldierlike, joying the siege begun, Which though resisted, bids them gladly come. With my soul. Then never but in death. We Like it not. Live I to hear this? In disguise. That way or none I am thy Towers, being thus disguised, am come to steal thee, then be sudden Moll. Knight shals drink at door Like beggars? no, isle in knight see thy seller, is thy seller in dept, knight dare he not show his face? your black jacks are my elder bro the, knight, shals notshake hands with our brother's knight? Sir had I too hearts to melt this frozen fear, would thaw with passion, the drops distilled from our torme ̄ ted brain, witnessed by these sailors that interred her, knows how I parted with her when she died. She is. Or her ghost, a shadow or a substance.

Plot summary

Plot — The Two Maids of More-Clacke
Before the action, James Humil wrote to his wife from what he took to be his deathbed. Believing herself widowed, she made swift arrangements for her remarriage to Sir William Vergir, with the support of her son, who hoped to marry one of Sir William’s daughters, Now, on her way back from the wedding, she sees James in the street. She loses her glove, and offers a reward for its discovery: the person who finds . it will have the honour of deciding the festivities in celebration of her second marriage. This is a ruse to enable her to see James, who has found the glove. She tells him that, though she genuinely thought him dead, she contracted her second marriage as a means of paying his debts and securing a desirable match for ===== PAGE 471 ===== 1608 their son. She takes on James as a servant, and tells her second husband that she will only consummate the marriage once Young Humil is married to his elder daughter, Mary. Since both daughters are already engaged, Sir William tries to put off the fiancés by setting impossible conditions: Toures will only be allowed to marry Mary after she has died and come back to life; Young Filbon will get Tabitha only if he becomes a woman. Filbon sends a letter to Tabitha via Touch, Sir William’s servant, but the letter is found and Touch dismissed; Tabitha becomes estranged from her father. Toures visits Mary disguised as a tinker, and they go off to Putney to get married. Tabitha has two other suitors ~ Auditor, Toures’s father, and the Welsh knight Sir Robert, who is really Touch in disguise — but she tells them she is only interested in Filbon. The creation of Sir Robert is a ruse to allow Filbon access to her, despite her father’s opposition: when he releases her to be married to the Welsh knight, Touch hands over the role to Filbon. Toures and Mary are married, and escape by ship, but Mary falls ill during a storm at sea. She appears to die and is buried with all her possessions in a trunk on the beach in the Scilly Isles. The Governor of the Scillies digs up the trunk, thinking it booty, and finds her inside, still alive; he happens to be her uncle. Humil finds his mother in bed with James, and tells Vergir. He is unable to substantiate the charge of adultery because, by the time Vergir arrives to see for himself, James has left the bed (but is still in the room). Vergir suggests that Humil has slandered his mother, but is secretly impressed with his fidelity to his stepfather. However, he then discovers that his…