FIRST SERVINGMAN

Will’t please your lordship drink a cup of sack?

SECOND SERVINGMAN

Will’t please your honour taste of these conserves?

THIRD SERVINGMAN

What raiment will your honour wear today?

SLY I am Christophero Sly. Call not me ‘honour’ nor ‘lordship’. I ne’er drank sack in my life, and if you give me any conserves, give me conserves of beef. Ne’er ask me what raiment I’ll wear, for I have no more doublets than backs, no more stockings than legs, nor no more shoes than feet—nay, sometime more feet than shoes, or such shoes as my toes look through the over-leather.

LORD

Heaven cease this idle humour in your honour.

O that a mighty man of such descent,

Of such possessions and so high esteem,

Should be infused with so foul a spirit.

SLY What, would you make me mad? Am not I Christopher Sly—old Sly’s son of Burton Heath, by birth a pedlar, by education a cardmaker, by transmutation a bearherd, and now by present profession a tinker? Ask Marian Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot, if she know me not. If she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying‘st knave in Christendom. What, I am not bestraught; here’s—

THIRD SERVINGMAN

O, this it is that makes your lady mourn.

SECOND SERVINGMAN

O, this is it that makes your servants droop.

LORD

Hence comes it that your kindred shuns your house,

As beaten hence by your strange lunacy.

O noble lord, bethink thee of thy birth.

Call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment,

And banish hence these abject lowly dreams.

Look how thy servants do attend on thee,

Each in his office, ready at thy beck.

Wilt thou have music?

Music

Hark, Apollo plays,

And twenty caged nightingales do sing.

Or wilt thou sleep? We’ll have thee to a couch

Softer and sweeter than the lustful bed

On purpose trimmed up for Semiramis.

Say thou wilt walk, we will bestrew the ground.

Or wilt thou ride, thy horses shall be trapped,

Their harness studded all with gold and pearl.

Dost thou love hawking? Thou hast hawks will soar

Above the morning lark. Or wilt thou hunt,

Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them

And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth.

FIRST SERVINGMAN

Say thou wilt course, thy greyhounds are as swift

As breathed stags, ay, fleeter than the roe.

SECOND SERVINGMAN

Dost thou love pictures? We will fetch thee straight

Adonis painted by a running brook,

And Cytherea all in sedges hid,

Which seem to move and wanton with her breath

Even as the waving sedges play wi’th’ wind.

LORD

We’ll show thee Io as she was a maid,

And how she was beguiled and surprised,

As lively painted as the deed was done.

THIRD SERVINGMAN

Or Daphne roaming through a thorny wood,

Scratching her legs that one shall swear she bleeds,

And at that sight shall sad Apollo weep,

So workmanly the blood and tears are drawn.

LORD

Thou art a lord, and nothing but a lord.

Thou hast a lady far more beautiful

Than any woman in this waning age.

FIRST SERVINGMAN

And till the tears that she hath shed for thee

Like envious floods o’errun her lovely face

She was the fairest creature in the world;

And yet she is inferior to none.

SLY

Am I a lord, and have I such a lady?

Or do I dream? Or have I dreamed till now?

I do not sleep. I see, I hear, I speak.

I smell sweet savours, and I feel soft things.

Upon my life, I am a lord indeed,

And not a tinker, nor Christopher Sly.

Well, bring our lady hither to our sight,

And once again a pot o’th’ smallest ale.

SECOND SERVINGMAN

Will’t please your mightiness to wash your hands?

O, how we joy to see your wit restored!

O that once more you knew but what you are!

These fifteen years you have been in a dream,

Or when you waked, so waked as if you slept.

SLY

These fifteen years—by my fay, a goodly nap.

But did I never speak of all that time?

FIRST SERVINGMAN

O yes, my lord, but very idle words,

For though you lay here in this goodly chamber

Yet would you say ye were beaten out of door,

And rail upon the hostess of the house,

And say you would present her at the leet

Because she brought stone jugs and no sealed quarts.

Sometimes you would call out for Cicely Hacket.

SLY Ay, the woman’s maid of the house.

THIRD SERVINGMAN

Why, sir, you know no house, nor no such maid,

Nor no such men as you have reckoned up,

As Stephen Sly, and old John Naps of Greet,

And Peter Turf, and Henry Pimpernel,

And twenty more such names and men as these,

Which never were, nor no man ever saw.

SLY

Now Lord be thankèd for my good amends.

ALL Amen.

SLY I thank thee. Thou shalt not lose by it.

Enter Bartholomew the Page, as Lady, with attendants

BARTHOLOMEW

How fares my noble lord?

SLY

Marry, I fare well,

For here is cheer enough. Where is my wife?

BARTHOLOMEW

Here, noble lord. What is thy will with her?

SLY

Are you my wife, and will not call me husband?

My men should call me lord. I am your goodman.

BARTHOLOMEW

My husband and my lord, my lord and husband;

I am your wife in all obedience.

SLY

I know it well. (To the Lord) What must I call her?

LORD Madam.

SLY Al’ce Madam or Joan Madam?

LORD

Madam, and nothing else. So lords call ladies.

SLY

Madam wife, they say that I have dreamed,

And slept above some fifteen year or more.

BARTHOLOMEW