Act 2 — SCENE II.
Reading edition
A Street.
Enter the Country Wench’s Father.
Fath. Where shall I seek her now? O, if she knew
The dangers that attend on women’s lives,
She’d[1004] rather lodge under a poor thatch’d roof
Than under carved ceilings! She was my joy,
And all content that I receiv’d from life,
My dear and only daughter.
What says the note she left? let me again
With staider grief peruse it.
[Reads.] Father, wonder not at my so sudden departure, without your leave or knowledge. Thus, under pardon, I excuse it: had you had knowledge of it, I know you would have sought to restrain it, and hinder me from what I have long desired. Being now 442happily preferred to a gentleman’s service in London, about Holborn, if you please to send, you may hear well of me.
As false as she is disobedient!
I’ve made larger inquiry, left no place
Where gentry keeps[1005] unsought, yet cannot hear;
Which drives me most into a shameful fear.
Woe worth th’ infected cause that makes me visit
This man-devouring city! where I spent
My unshapen youth, to be my age’s curse,
And surfeited away my name and state
In swinish riots, that now, being sober,
I do awake a beggar: I may hate her:
Whose youth voids wine, his age is curs’d with water.
O heavens, I know the price of ill too well!
What the confusions are in whom they dwell,
And how soon maids are to their ruins won,
One minute, and eternally undone;
So in mine may it: may it not be thus!
Though she be poor, her honour’s precious.
May be my present form, and her fond[1006] fear,
May chase her from me, if her eye should get me;
And therefore, as my love and wants advise,
I’ll serve, until I find her, in disguise.
Such is my care to fright her from base evils,
I leave calm state to live amongst you, devils.
[Exit.
443