No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).
Full speech
Alas Sir, I do but defend my own. Nay could be well-contented to fit down With some (though unjust) lose. I judge it best. Though with some prejudice to buy my rest. Not a penny, till you have done't. (I never knew't in any of your Tribe. the event be what it will, I'll give no bribe.) Sir, as I Like your end—God and my cause, Are coat of steel, gainst the sharp fangs of laws. Stay till you catch them master Bromley. Well, somewhat this my falling state relieves: That honesty speeds well even amongst thieves I long to hear from London; how my suit Ends, or depends: if lost, I'm lost with it. Who would trust any bars this tottering world Can plot to fortify our wheeling states! When the strong doors of Justice may be broke, Or lifted from the hinges by the force Of politic engines: or the safest lock Be picked with a false key. Yes: or of mercy, I must hope no partly. I know you, and your wants. My wife was once your Parents servant. That were too lavish yielding to your woe. I am but poor, troubles have made me so, Yet of that small lifeblood, which my drenched state Has left it by the Laws sharp surgery, Embrace a portion, as your needs require; And I may give. Here comes your enemies Son. It's welcome. I have the better means to succour these. How Sir? murder me? What ground for this suspicion find your thoughts? What will you counsel me? Here's my own case and counterfeit; by this danger less plummet, we may found the depth of his more close and intricate stratagems. Do you think, that he would do me violence a sleep? would he not wake me to some conference? Faith, in your constancy lightens all grief. She never hears you mentioned, but she startles: As if your name Like some celestial fire Quickened her slow-pac'd spirits with new life. I never knew virtue and beauty meet In a more happy mixture. I remove. Happy prevention! Sager lives, And hearty thanks for your forced kindness gives.
Plot summary
Plot — The Honest Lawyer
Richard Vaster’s lands are mortgaged to Gripe the usurer for £300. Jealously believing himself to have been cuckolded, he sells his wife Florence to the bawd and innkeeper Marmaid, claiming her to be his sister. He then challenges Benjamin Gripe, the usurer’s son, to a duel, and pretends to be killed; the remorseful Benjamin is determined to make amends by looking after Vaster’s family. Valentine sets himself up as a phoney doctor and is asked to cure Gripe’s gout, which entails driving a large nail through the affected toe. While Gripe is inconvenienced by the nail, Valentine steals his purse and keys. Gripe also sends Benjamin to foreclose on Vaster’s mortgage; when Benjamin asks him to give the bereaved family a three-month respite, he is disinherited. Surprisingly, the nail does indeed drive out the gout. Curfew has passed himself off as the deputy Abbot of Newnham after the death of the real deputy, his brother, and he uses the abbey as a base for highway robbery. His first two victims are Valentine and the disguised Vaster, who both prove as rascally as he; the three of them end up going into partnership. They proceed to rob travellers: Vaster happily relieves Gripe of his money, but lets Benjamin off with an injunction to be good to the Vaster family. Whenever they leave anyone tied up on the road, Florence comes out of the nearby inn and releases them. She is proving a 1614 disappointment to Marmaid ~ all her clients seem to end up with a new moral outlook on prostitution — so the bawd allows Benjamin, the landlord, to take her away. He lodges her at his father’s house under an assumed name, Widow Sorrow. Valentine makes an affray at the inn, and is arrested. The justice before whom he is brought happens to be Gripe, who lets him off, because he has developed another medical complaint: inability to urinate. Valentine proposes using gunpowder to blow open the urinary tract, and again the treatment is surprisingly successful. Robert and Anne, Vaster’s son and daughter, are destitute, but nobody will give them any money, not even Bromley, Vaster’s former steward who owes everything to the family. Benjamin sends Robert to see ‘Widow Sorrow’, and falls in love with Anne. Robert soon identifies the widow as his mother, but suspects that her presence in the usurer’s household confirms his father’s suspicions of her adultery. When he threatens her with violence, Gripe has him committed to prison. The usurer attempts to seduce the widow, and gives her the…