A Prologue to Catiline, to be
Merrily spoken by Mrs Nell Gwyn:
in an Amazonian Habit
A woman's prologue! that is vent'rous news:
But we a Poet wanting, crav'd a. Muse.
Why should our brains lie fallow, as if they
Without his fire, were mere Promethean clay?
In nature's Plain-song wee may bear our parts
Although we want choice Descant, from the Arts,
Amongst Musicians: so the Philomel
May in wild notes, though not in rules excel
And when i'th weaker vessel wit doth lie;
Though into froth, it will work out & fly
But Gentlemen, you know our formal way
Although we're sure 'tis false, yet we must say
Nay Pish, nay Fye, in troth it is not good
When we the while think it not understood:
Catiline's Conspiracy: by B. JonsonSulla's Ghost
Dost thou not feel me Rome? not yet? is night
so heavy on thee, and my weight so light?
Can Sulla's Ghost arise within thy walls,
Less threatening, than an earthquake, the quick falls
Of thee & thine? shake not the frighted heads
Of thy steep towers? Or shrink to their first beds?
Or as their ruine the proud Tyber fills,
Make that swell up and drown thy seven proud hills?
What sleep is this doth seize thee, so like death,
And is not it? Wake feel her in my breath:
Behold I come, sent from the stygian sound,
As a dire vapour that had cleft the ground,
T'engender with the night, & blast the day:
Or like a Pestilence that should display Infection through the world, which thus I do
By Sulla's Ghost,
in Catiline (1.1.1-15),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 22r
Catiline
It is decree'd. Nor shall thy Fate, O Rome,
Resist my vow. Though hills were set on hills,
And seas met seas, to guard thee; I would through:
I'd plow up rocks, steep as the Alps, in dust;
And lave the Tyrrhene waters into clouds;
But I would reach thy head, thy head proud city.
The ills that I have done can not be safe,
But by attempting greater; and I feel
A spirit in me, chides my sluggish hands
And says, they have been innocent too long.
Was I a man bred great as Rome herself?
One, form'd for all her honours, all her glories?
Equal to all her titles? That could stand
close up, with Atlas; and sustain her name,
As strong, as he doeth heaven! and was I,
Of all her brood, mark'd out for the repulse
By her no voice, whom I stood candidate,
To be commander in the Pontick war?
I will hereafter call her stepdame ever.
If shee can lose her nature, I can lose
My piety; & in her stony entrails
Dig me a seat, where I will live again.
The labour of her womb, & be a burden,
weightier than all the prodigies, & Monster,
That shee hath teem'd with, since she first knew Mars.
By Catiline,
in Catiline (1.1.73-97),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 22v
Cat: speaking to Aurelia of Cethegus
Cethagus
Whose valour I have turn'd into his poison;
And praised so into daring, as he would
Go on upon the Gods, kiss lightning, wrest
At face of a full cloud, & stand his ire:
when I would bid him move
By Catiline,
in Catiline (1.1.140-146),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 22v
Lentulus Cethegus & Catiline
at their appointed meeting
It is, methinks, a morning full of Fate!
It riseth slowly, as her sullen care
Had all the weights of sleep & death hung at her!
She is not rosy-fingered, but swoll'n black!
Her face, is like a water turn'd to blood,
And her sick head is bound about with clouds,
As if she threatned night ere noon of day!
It does not look as it would have a hail,
Or health, wish'd in it, as on other morns.
By Lentulus,
in Catiline (1.1.191-201),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 23r
Cethagus seeing that the rest were not come early as was appointed Paulo post
Come, we all sleep; are mere dormice; Flies.
A little less than dead: more dullness hangs
on us, than on the morn. We are spirit-bound
In ribs of ice: Our whole bloods are one stone;
Though they burn, hot as fevers to our states.
By Cethegus,
in Catiline (1.1.210-227),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 23r
Oh the days
Of Sulla's sway, when the free sword took leave
Slaughter bestrid the streets, and strech'd himself
To seem more huge; whilst to his stained thighs
The gore he drew flow'd up: and caried down
Whole heaps of limbs, and bodies, through his arch
By Cethegus,
in Catiline (1.1.229-238),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 23v
The rugged Charon fainted
And ask'd a navy rather than a Boat
To ferry over the sad world that came:
The maws and dens of beasts, could not receive
The bodies, that those souls were frighted from
And e'en the graves were fill'd with them yet living
Whose flight and fear, had mix'd them with the dead.
By Cethegus,
in Catiline (1.1.248-253),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 23v
Catiline & Cethegus, talking afterCatiline's disappointment of Consulship
Repulse upon repulse? An inmate Consul>
That I could reach the axle where the pins are,
Which bolt this frame; that I might pull 'em out
And pluck all into chaos with my self.
By Catiline,
in Catiline (3.1.192-200),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 23v
Cicero after his discourse FulviaCatiline's counsels to him
Is there a heaven; and gods, and can it be
They should so slowly hear, so slowly see!
Hath Jove no thunder? Or is Jove become
Stupid as thou art? O near-wretched Rome,
When both thy senate, and thy Gods do sleep,
And neither thine, nor their own states do keep!
What will awake thee, heaven? What can excite
Thine anger if this practice be too Light?
His former drifts partake of former crimes
But this last plot was only Catiline's
Oh that it were his last. But he before
Had safely doen so much, he'll still dare more.
By Cicero,
in Catiline (3.2.1-11),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 23v
Cicero after his discourse with Fulvia & Curius concerning the conspiracy
O Rome in what a sickness art thou fallen!
How dangerous and deadly! when thy head
Is drown'd in sleep, and all thy body fev'ry!
No noise, no pulling, no vexation wakes thee,
Thy Lethargy is such: or if by chance,
Thou heavest thy eyelids up, thou dost forget
Sooner than thou wert told, thy proper danger
I did unreverently, to blame the gods,
By Cicero,
in Catiline (3.2.204-211),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 23v
Who wake for thee, though thou snore to thy selfe
Is it not strange, thou shouldst be so diseas'd
And so secure; But more that thy first symptoms
Of such a Malady should not rise but
From any worthy Member, but a base
And common strumpet, worthless to be nam'd
A hair or part of the! Think think hereafter
How much the Gods upbraid thy foule neglect.
They could have wrought by nobler ways have struck
Thy foes with forked lightning; or ram'd thunder,
Thrown hills upon them in the act: have sent
Death like a damp to all their families;
Or caus'd their consciences to burst But
when they will show the, what thou art, and make
A scornful difference twixt their power & there
They help thee by such aids, as geese, & Harlots
By Cicero,
in Catiline (3.2.212-230),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 24v
Catiline to Aurelia Exhorting her to persuadethe citizens wives to draw their husbands into the plot
Promise 'em states & Empires,
And men for lovers made of better clay,
Than ever the old potter Titan knew.
By Catiline,
in Catiline (3.3.51-53),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 24v
Catiline to Lentulus begirt you Pompey's house, to seize his sons alive, for they are they must make our peace with him all else cut off
As tarquin did the poppy heads or mowers
A Field of Thistles, or else up, as plough
Do barren lands; and strike together flints
And clods; the ungrateful senate and the people
May weigh with yours though horror leapt herself
Into the scale; but in your violent acts,
The fall of torrents, and the noise of tempests
The boiling of Charybdis: the sea's wildness.
The eating force of flames, and wings of winds,
Be all outwrought by your transcendant Furies
It had been done ere this had I been consul
By Catiline,
in Catiline (3.3.153-167),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 24v
Catiline
May my brain
Resolve to water, and my blood turn phlegm
My hands drop off, unworthy of my sword,
And that be inspired, of itself to rip.
My breast for my lost entrails when I leave
A soul that will not serve, and who will are
The same with slaves; such clay I dare not fear.
By Catiline,
in Catiline (3.3.250-256),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 25r
The Alobroges seeing diverse senators passing by trembling and quaking after the thundering and lightning
Can these men fear? who are not only ours,
But the worlds masters? then I see the gods
upbraid our sufferings; or would humble them,
whose names we trembled at beyond the alps:
of all that pass I do not see a face
worthy a man, that dares look up and stand;
One thunder out: but downward all like beasts
Running away from every flash is made.
The falling world could not deserve such baseness.
It is our base petitionary breath
That blows them to this greatness which this prick
would soon let out if we were bold and wretched;
When they have taken all we have our goods.
Crops, lands, and houses, they will leave us this.
A weapon and an arme will still be found.
Though naked left and lower than the ground.
By First Allobrox,
in Catiline (4.1.1-32),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 25r
Cethegus seeingthe Alobrogi, who came for to help the conspiracy
Can these or such be any aid to us?
Look they, as they were built to shake the world.
Or be of moment to our enterprise?
A thousand such as they are could not make
One atom of our souls. They should be men
Worth heaven's fear, that looking up but thus
Would make Jove stand upon his guard and draw
Himself within his thunder; which amaz'd
He should discharge in vain, & they unhurt.
Or if they near, like Capaneus and Thebes.
They should hang dead upon the highest spires
And ask the second bolt to be thrown down.
Why Lentulus talk the so long? This time
Had been enough t'have scatter'd all the stars
Despair of day on any light but ours.
By Cethegus,
in Catiline (4.5.40-55),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 25v
Catiline in his speech to his soldiers. Paulo post
The sword must both direct and cut a passage.
I only therefore wish the when the strike,
To have the valours and your souls about the
And think the carry in your labouring hands
The things the seek glory and liberty.
By Catiline,
in Catiline (5.4.24-28),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 25v
Methinks I see Death and the Furies waiting
What we will do; & all the heave at leisure
For the great spectacle. Draw then your swords.
And if our destiny envy our virtue
The honour of the day, let us take care
To sell ourselves at such a price as may
Undo the world to buy us; and make fate
while she tempt ours, fear her own estate.
By Catiline,
in Catiline (5.4.46-53),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 26r
Cethegus when he was condemned to Die by the consul
Oh the whore fortune & her bawds the Fates
That put these tricks on men that knew the way
To death by a sword. Strangle me I may sleep:
I shall grow angry with the god else.
By Cethegus,
in Catiline (5.5.181-184),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 26r
Petreius gives an account of the Success of the battle. The End
The straits and needs of Catiline being such
As he must fight with one of the two armies
That then had near inclos'd him. It pleas'd Fate
To make us the object of his desperate choice
Wherein the danger almost peised the honour.
And as he riss the day grew black with him;
And Fate descended nearer to the earth,
As if she meant to hide the name of things
Under her wings, and make the world her quarry.
At this we rous'd lest one small minutes stay
Had left it to be enquir'd what Rome was.
And (as we ought) arm'd with the confidence
Of our great cause, in form of battle stood.
Whilst Catiline came on, not with the face
Of any man but of a public ruin:
His countenance was a Civil war itself
And all his host had standing in their looks.
The paleness of the death that was to come.
Yet cried they out like vultures, and urge'd on
As if they would precipitate our Fates.
Nor stayed we longer for 'em but himself
struck the first stroke, and with it fled a life.
which cuts it seemed a narrow neck of land
Had broke between two mighty seas and either
Flow'd into other. For so did the slaughter:
And whirl'd about as when two violent tides
Meet and not yield. The Furies stood on hills,
Circling the place and trembling to see men
Do More than they: whilst pity left the field
Grieved for that side, that in so bad a cause.
They knew not what a crime their valour was
The sun stood still and was behind the cloud
The battle made seen sweating to drive up
His fright'd horse, whom still the noise drove backward
And now had fierce Enyo like a flame
consum'd all it could reach, and then itself;
Had not the fortune of the commonwealth
Come Pallas-like to every Roman thought.
Which Catiline seeing, and that now his troops
Cover'd the earth they had fought on with their trunks
Ambitious of great fame to crown his ill
collected all his fury and ran in.
Arm'd with a glory high as his despair
into our battle like a Libyan lion
upon his Hunters scornful of our weapons.
Careless of wounds, plucking down lives about him
Till he had circled in himself with death
Then fell he to t'embrace it where it lay
And as in that rebellion 'gainst the gods
Minerva holding forth Medusa's head
One of the giant brethren felt himself
Grow marble at the killing sight and now
almost made stone began t'enquire what flint
what rock it was that crept through all his limbs
And ere he could think more was that he fear'd
So Catiline, at the sight of Rome in us
Became his tomb: yet did his look retain
Some of his fierceness, & his hand still mov'd
As if he laboured yet to grasp the state
With those rebellious part.
By Petreius,
in Catiline (5.5.210-271),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 26r
Sejanus speaks.
by you that fools call gods
Hang all the like with your prodigious signs
Fill earth with monsters, drop the scorpion down
Out of the Zodiac, or the fiercer Lion
shake off the loosened globe from her long hinge
Roll all the world in darkness; and let loose
With forked fire and unpitied die
Who fears is worthy of calamity.
By Sejanus,
in Sejanus His Fall (5.1.390-399),
Ben Jonson
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 28r
Sir P. Sidney The Speech of Rombus a school master
Now the thunder thumping Jove transfund his
dotes into your excellent formosity, which have with
your resplendent beams thus segregated the enmity
of these rural animals: I am Potentissima domina, a
school master, that is to say a pedagogue, one not
a little versed in disciplinating of the juvental fry
wherein (to my laud I say it) I use such geometrical
proportion, as neither wanted mansuetude nor correction
for so it is described. Parcere subjectos & debellire superbos.
Yet hath not the pulchritude of my virtues, protected
me from the contaminating hands of these Plebeians
for coming solummodo to have parted their sanguinolent
fray, they yielded me no more Reverence than if
I had been a Pecorius Asinus. I, even I, that am, who I am Dixi verbus sapiento satum est. But what
said that Trojan Aeneas when he sojourned in the surging
sulks of the sandiferous seas, Haec olim memonasse
juvebit. Well well, ad propositos revertebo, the
puritie of your verity is, that a certain Pulchra
Puella profecto, elected and constituted, by the integrated
determination of all this topographical region, as
the sovreign lady of this Dame May 's month,
hath been quodammodo hunted, as you would say pursued
by two, abrace, a couple, a cast of young men to
whom the crafty coward cupid had inquam delivered his
dire dolourous dart.
O Tempori, O moribus. in profession a child, in dignity a
woman, in years a ladie in ceteris a maid, should thus
turpify the reputation of my doctrine with the
superscription of a fool O Tempori, o moribus.
By Rombus,
in The Lady of May (95-134),
Sir Philip Sidney
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 29r
Heu, Ehem, hei, Insipidum, Inscitium, vulgorum &
populorum. Why the brute Nebulons, have you had my
corpusculum so long among you, and cannot yet tell how
to edify an argument? addent and throw your ears
to me, for I am gravidated with child, till I have
doctrinated your blumbeous cerebrosities. First you
must divisionate your point, quasi you should cut a cheese into two particles; for thus must I inform
my speech, to your obtruse conceptions. Exemplum
gratia. Either Therion must conquer this dame Maia 's Nymph, or Espilus must overthrow her & yet
secundum their dignity, which must also be
subdivisionated into three equal species. either
according to the penetrancy of their singing, or the
meliority of their functions, or lastly the superancy
of their merits. De singing satis. Nunc are you
to argumentate of the qualifieing of their estate
first, and then whether hath more Infernally, I
mean deeply deserved .
By Rombus,
in The Lady of May (282-301),
Sir Philip Sidney
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 29v
O tace, tace or all the fat will be ignified first let
me dilucidate the very intrinsical marrowbone of the
matter. He doth ye a certain rhetorical invasion
into the point, as if indeed he had conference with
his lambs, but the truth is he doth equitate you in
your mean time master Rixus. for thus he saith that
sheep are good ergo the shepherd is good. an
enthymome a loco contingentibris as my finger &
my thumb are contingentes: Again he saith who
liveth well are good but shepherd lies well
Ergo they are good, a syllogism in Darius
King of Persia a conjugatus but do
you but acquiescate to my exhortation and you shall
extinguish him: Tell him his major is a Knave, his
minor is a fool, and his conclusion both & ecce homo
blancatus quasi lilium.
By Rombus,
in The Lady of May (343-359),
Sir Philip Sidney
in British Library Sloane MS 161, f. 29v