Part 5 of 5
SCENE VII.
Antonio, Trincalo.
Ant. Wretched Antonio! hast been preserv'd so strangely
From foreign miseries, to be wrong'd at home?
Barr'd from thy house by the scorn of thine own children?
[Trincalo knocks.
But stay, there's one knocks boldly; 't may be some friend.
[Trincalo knocks again.
Dwell you here, gentleman?
Trin. He calls me gentleman:
See th' virtue of good clothes! All men salute,
Honour, respect, and reverence us.
Ant. Young gentleman,
Let me without offence entreat your name,
And why you knock?
Trin. How, sirrah saucebox, my name!
Or thou some stranger art or grossly ignorant,
That know'st not me. Ha! what art thou that ask'st it?
Ant. Be not in choler, sir.
Trin. Befits it me,
A gentleman of public reputation,
To stoop so low as satisfy the questions
Of base and earthly pieces like thyself?
What art thou? ha?
Ant. Th' unfortunate possessor of this house.
Trin. Thou liest, base sycophant, my worship owes it.
Ant. May be, my son hath sold it in my absence,
Thinking me dead. How long has't call'd you master?
Trin. 'Long as Antonio possess'd it
Ant. Which Antonio?
Trin. Antonio Anastasio.
Ant. That Anastasio,
That was drown'd in Barbary?
Trin. That Anastasio,
That selfsame man, am I: I 'scap'd by swimming,
And now return to keep my former promise
Of Flavia to Pandolfo; and, in exchange,
To take Sulpitia to my wife.
Ant. All this
I intended 'fore I went: but, sir, if I
Can be no other than myself, and you
Are that Antonio, you and I are one.
Trin. How? one with thee? speak such another syllable,
[Draws.
And, by the terror of this deadly steel,
That ne'er saw light, but sent to endless darkness
All that durst stand before't, thou diest.
Ant. Alas!
My weakness, grown by age and pains of travel,
Disarms my courage to defend myself;
I have no strength, but patience.
Trin. What art now?
[Threatens him.
Ant. Peter and Thomas, William, what you please.
Trin. What boldness madded thee to steal my name?
Ant. Sir, heat of wine.
Trin. And, sirrah, when y' are drunk,
Is there no person to put on but mine,
To cover your intended villanies?
Ant. But, good sir, if I be not I, who am I?
Trin. An ox, an ass, a dog.
Ant. Strange negligence
To lose myself! methinks I live and move—
Remember. Could the fearful apprehension
Or th' ugly fear of drowning so transform me?
Or did I die, and by Pythagoras' rule,
My soul's provided of another lodging?
Trin. Be what thou wilt, except Antonio:
'Tis death to touch that name.
Ant. Dangers at sea
Are pleasures, weigh'd with these home-injuries.
Was ever man thus scar'd beside himself?
0 most unfortunate Antonio!
At sea thou suffer'dst shipwreck of thy goods,
At land of thine own self. Antonio—
Or what name else they please—fly, fly to Barbary!
And rather there endure the foreign cruelty
Of fetters, whips, and Moors, than here at home
Be wrong'd and baffled by thy friends and children.
Trin. How! prating still? why, Timothy, begone,
Or draw, and lay Antonio down betwixt us?
Let fortune of the fight decide the question.
Here's a brave rogue, that in the king's highway
Offers to rob me of my good name. Draw!
Ant. These wrongs recall my strength, I am resolv'd:
Better die once, than suffer always. Draw!
Trin. Stay: understand'st thou well nice points of duel?
Art born of gentle blood and pure descent?
Was none of all thy lineage hang'd or cuckold,
Bastard or bastinado'd? Is thy pedigree
As long, as wide, as mine? for otherwise
Thou wert most unworthy; and 'twere loss of honour
In me to fight. More, I have drawn five teeth:
If thine stand sound, the terms are much unequal.
And, by strict laws of duel, I am excus'd
To fight on disadvantage.
Ant. This is some ass!
Trin. If we concur in all, write a formal challenge,
And bring thy second: meanwhile, I make provision
Of Calais sand, to fight upon securely. Ha!
[Exit Antonio.
SCENE VIII.
Lelio, Cricca, Trincalo.
Lel. Am I awake? or do deceitful dreams
Present to my wild fancy things I see not?
Cri. Sir, what amazement's this? Why wonder you?
Lel. See'st thou not Trincalo and Antonio?
Cri. O, strange! they're both here.
Lel. Didst not thou inform me
That Trincalo was turn'd to Antonio?
Which I believing, like a cursed son,
With most reproachful threats drove mine old father
From his own doors; and yet rest doubtful whether
This be the true Antonio: maybe, th' astrologer
Hath chang'd some other, and not Trincalo.
Cri. No, fear it not, 'tis plain: Albumazar
Hath cheated my old master of his plate.
For here's the farmer, as like himself as ever;
Only his clothes excepted. Trincalo.
Trin. Cricca, where's Trincalo? Dost see him here?
Cri. Yes, and as rank an ass as e'er he was.
Trin. Thou'rt much deceiv'd: thou neither see'st nor know'st me.
I am transform'd, transform'd.
Cri. Th' art still thyself.
Lelio, this farmer's half a fool, half knave;
And as Pandolfo did with much entreaty
Persuade him to transform, so, as much labour
Will hardly bring the coxcomb to himself,
That ne'er was out on't. Who art, if not he?
Trin. My name is Don Antonio: I am now going
To my own house, to give Pandolfo Flavia,
And Armellina to his farmer Trincalo.
How dar'st thou, Cricca (but a meaner servant),
Resemble me (a man of worth and worship),
To such a clown as Trincalo, a branded fool,
An ass, a laughing-stock to town and country?
Art not asham'd to name him with Antonio?
Lel. Do not thy actions, with thy rude behaviour,
Proclaim thee what thou art?
Cri. Notorious clown!
[Beats him.
Trin. Villain! th' hast broke my shoulders.
Lel. O, didst feel him?
Trin. Ay, with a pox.
Lel. Then th' art still Trincalo,
For, hadst thou been Antonio, he had smarted.
Trin. I feel it, as I am Antonio.
Cri. Fool! who loves Armellina?
Trin. 'Tis I, 'tis I.
Cri. Antonio never lov'd his kitchen-maid.
Trin. Well, I was taken for Antonio,
And in his name receiv'd ten pound in gold,
Was by his mistress entertain'd; but thou
Envy'st my happiness: if thou hast th' ambition
To rise as I have done, go to Albumazar,
And let him change thee to a knight or lord.
Cri. Note the strange power of strong imagination.
Trin. A world of engines cannot wrest my thoughts
From being a gentleman: I am one, and will be:
And, though I be not, yet will think myself so,
And scorn thee, Cricca, as a slave and servant.
[Exit.
SCENE IX.
Cricca, Lelio, Antonio.
Cri. 'Tis but lost labour to dissuade his dulness.
Believe me, that's your father.
Lel. When I drove him hence,
Spite of my blood, his reverend countenance
Struck me t' a deep compassion. To clear all,
I'll ask one question. Signior Antonio,
What money took you when you went your voyage?
Ant. As I remember, fourscore and fifteen pound
In Barbary gold. Had Lucio kept his word,
I had carried just a hundred.
Lel. Pardon me, father;
'Twas my blind ignorance, not want of duty,
That wrong'd you; all was intended for a farmer,
Whom an astrologer, they said, transform'd.
Ant. How, an astrologer?
Lel. When you parted hence,
It seems you promis'd Flavia to Pandolfo.
News of your death arriving, th' old gentleman
Importunes me to second what you purpos'd.
Consulting therefore with my friends and kindred:
Loth my young sister should be buried quick
I' th' grave of threescore years; by their advice
I fully did deny him. He chafes and storms,
And finds at length a cunning man, that promis'd
To turn his farmer to your shape, and thus
Possess your house, and give him Flavia:
Whereof I, warn'd, wrong'd you instead of Trincalo.
Ant. Then hence it came they call'd me Trincalo,
And talk'd of an astrologer; which names
Almost enrag'd me past myself and senses.
'Tis true I promis'd, but have oft repented it;
And much more since he goes about to cheat me.
He must not have her, sir.
Lel. I am glad y' are so resolv'd.
And since with us you find that match unequal,
Let's all entreat you to bestow your daughter
Upon his son Eugenio.
Ant. Son, at your pleasure,
Dispose of Flavia with my full consent.
Lel. And as you judge him worthy your daughter Flavia,
Think me no less of his Sulpitia.
Ant. I do, and ever had desire to match
Into that family; and now I find myself
Old, weak, unfit for marriage, you shall enjoy her,
If I can work Pandolfo by entreaty.
Cri. To deal with him with reason and entreaties,
Is to persuade a madman: for his love
Makes him no less. All speeches opposite
T' his fix'd desire and love-corrupted judgment
Seem extreme fooleries. Will he consent
To give his daughter to your son, and you
Deny him Flavia? Shall Eugenio
Expect or land or love from old Pandolfo,
Being his open rival? 'Tis impossible.
He sought to cosen [mislead by means of a petty trick or fraud; deceive; persuade or induce to do something by cajoling or wheedling.] you; therefore resolve
To pay him in's own money. Be but advis'd
By my poor counsel, and one stroke shall cut
The root of his designs, and with his arrows
Strike his own plot so dead, that ev'n Albumazar,
With all his stars and instruments, shall never
Give it fresh motion.
Ant. Cricca, to thy direction
We yield ourselves; manage us at thy pleasure.
Lel. Speak quickly, Cricca.
Cri. The ground of all this business
Is to catch Trincalo, and lock him fast,
Till I release him: next, that no man whisper
Th' least word of your return. Then will I home,
And with a cheerful look tell my old master,
That Trincalo—but stay, look where he comes!
Let's in, and there at leisure I'll inform you
From point to point. Lelio, detain him here,
Till I send Armellina down to second you.
Cross him in nothing; call him Antonio,
And good enough.
Lel. Fear not: let me alone.
[Exeunt Cricca and Antonio.
SCENE X.
Trincalo, Lelio.
Trin. This rascal Cricca, with his arguments
Of malice, so disturbs my gentle thoughts,
That I half doubt I am not what I seem:
But that will soon be clear'd; if they receive me
In at Antonio's house, I am Antonio.
Lel. Signior Antonio, my most loving father!
Bless'd be the day and hour of your return.
Trin. Son Lelio! a blessing on my child; I pray thee, tell me
How fares my servant Armellina? well?
Lel. Have you forgot my sister Flavia?
Trin. What, my dear daughter Flavia? No: but first
Call Armellina; for this day we'll celebrate
A gleek of marriages: Pandolfo and Flavia,
Sulpitia and myself, and Trincalo
With Armellina. Call her, good Lelio, quickly.
[Exit.
Trin. So: this is well, that Lelio
Confesses me his father. Now I am perfect—
Perfect Antonio.
SCENE XI.
Armellina, Trincalo.
Arm. Signior Antonio!
My long-expected master!
Trin. O Armellina!
Come, let me kiss thy brow like my own daughter.
Arm. Sir, 'tis too great a favour. I kiss your foot.
What, fall'n? alas! how feeble you are grown
With your long travel!
Trin. True, and being drown'd,
Nothing so griev'd me as to lose thy company:
But, since I am safe return'd, for thy good service
I'll help thee to a husband.
Arm. A husband, sir?
Some young and lusty youth, or else I'll none.
Trin. To one that loves thee dearly, dearly, wench:
A goodly man, like me in limbs and fashion.
Arm. Fie, an old man! how! cast myself away,
And be no nurse but his?
Trin. He's not like me
In years and gravity, but fair proportion;
A handsome, well-set man as I.
Arm. His name?
Trin. 'Tis Tom Trincalo of Totnam.
Arm. Signior Pandolfo's lusty farmer?
Trin. That's he.
Arm. Most unexpected happiness! 'tis the man
I more esteem than my own life: sweet master,
Procure that match, and think me satisfied
For all my former service without wages.
But, ah! I fear you jest. My poor unworthiness
Hopes not so great a fortune as sweet Trincalo.
No, wretched Armellina, in and despair:
Back to thy mournful dresser; there lament
Thy flesh to kitchen-stuff, and bones to ashes,
For love of thy sweet farmer.
Trin. Alas! poor soul,
How prettily she weeps for me! Wilt see him?
Arm. My soul waits in my eyes, and leaves my body
Senseless.
Trin. Then swear to keep my counsel.
Arm. I swear
By th' beauteous eyes of Trincalo.
Trin. Why, I am Trincalo.
Arm. Your worship, sir! why do you flout your servant,
Right worshipful Antonio, my reverend master?
Trin. Pox of Antonio! I am Tom Trincalo.
Why laugh'st thou?
Arm. 'Tis desire and joy
To see my sweetest.
Trin. Look upon me, and see him.
Arm. I say I see Antonio, and none other.
Trin. I am within, thy love; without, thy master.
Th' astrologer transform'd me for a day.
Arm. Mock not your poor maid, pray you, sir.
Trin. I do not.
Now would I break this head against the stones,
To be unchang'd; fie on this gentry! it sticks
Like birdlime or the pox. I cannot part with't:
Within I am still thy farmer Trincalo.
Arm. Then must I wait, till old Antonio
Be brought to bed of a young Trincalo;
Or flay you, and strip you to yourself again.
Trin. Carry me to your chamber. Try me there.
Arm. O, sir, by no means; but with my lovely farmer
I'd stay all night, and thank him.
Trin. Cross misfortune!
Accurs'd Albumazar and mad Pandolfo!
To change me thus, that, when I most desire
To be myself, I cannot. Armellina,
Fetch me a looking-glass.
Arm. To what end?
Trin. Fetch one.
Let my old master's business sink or swim,
This sweet occasion must not be neglected.
Now shall I know th' astrologer's skill. O wonderful!
Admir'd Albumazar in two transmutations!
Here's my old farmer's face. How in an instant
I am unchang'd, that was so long a-changing!
Here's my flat nose again, &c.
Now, Armellina, take thy lov'd Trincalo
To thy desired embracements; use thy pleasure,
Kiss him thy bellyful.
Arm. Not here in public.
T' enjoy too soon what pleaseth, is unpleasant:
The world would envy that my happiness.
Go in, I'll follow you, and in my bedchamber
We'll consummate the match in privacy.
Trin. Was not the face I wore far worse than this?
But for thy comfort, wench, Albumazar
Hath dyed my thoughts so deep i' th' grain of gentry,
'Tis not a glass can rob me of my good fashions
And gentleman-like garb. Follow, my dear.
Arm. I'll follow you. So, now y' are fast enough.
Trin. Help, Armellina, help! I am fall'n i' th' cellar:
Bring a fresh plantain leaf, I have broke my shin.
Arm. Thus have I caught m' a husband in a trap,
And in good earnest mean to marry him.
'Tis a tough clown, and lusty: he works day and night;
And rich enough for me, that have no portion
But my poor service. Well, he's something foolish;
The better can I domineer, and rule him
At pleasure. That's the mark and utmost height
We women aim at. I am resolv'd I'll have him.
SCENE XII.
Lelio, Cricca.
Lel. In, Armellina; lock up Trincalo.
Arm. I will, sir.
[Exit.
Lel. Cricca, for this thy counsel, if't succeed,
Fear not thy master's anger: I'll prefer thee,
And count thee as my genius or good fortune.
Cri. It cannot choose but take. I know his humour;
And can at pleasure feather him with hopes,
Making him fly what pitch I wish, and stoop,
When I show fowl.
Lel. But for the suit of clothes?
Cri. I'll throw them o'er your garden-wall.
Away.
Haste to Eugenio and Sulpitia,
Acquaint them with the business.
Lel. I go.
SCENE XIII.
Lelio, Sulpitia.
Lel. The hopeful issue of thy counsel, Cricca,
Brightens this ev'ning, and makes it more excel
The clearest day, than a grey morning doth
The blindest midnight, raising my amorous thoughts
To such a pitch of joy, that riches, honour,
And other pleasures, to Sulpitia's love
Appear like mole-hills to the moon.
Sul. Lelio!
Lel. O, there's the voice that in one note contains
All chords of music: how gladly she'll embrace
The news I give her and the messenger!
Sul. Soft, soft, y' are much mistaken; for in earnest,
I am angry, Lelio, and with you.
Lel. Sweetest, those flames
Rise from the fire of love, and soon will quench
I' th' welcome news I bring you.
Sul. Stand still, I charge you
By th' virtue of my lips; speak not a syllable,
As you expect a kiss should close my choler;
For I must chide you.
Lel. O my Sulpitia!
Were every speech a pistol charg'd with death,
I'd stand them all in hope of that condition.
Sul. First, sir, I hear you teach Eugenio
Too grave a wariness in your sister's love,
And kill his honest forwardness of affection
With your far-fet respects, suspicions, fears:
You have your maybes—"This is dangerous:
That course were better; for if so, and yet
Who knows? the event is doubtful; be advis'd,
'Tis a young rashness: your father is your father;
Take leisure to consider." Thus y' have consider'd
Poor Flavia almost to her grave. Fie, Lelio!
Had this my smallness undertook the business,
And done no more in four short winter's days
Than you in four months, I'd have vowed my maidenhead
To th' living tomb of a sad nunnery;
Which for your sake I loathe.
Lel. Sweet, by your favour——
Sul. Peace, peace: now y' are so wise, as if ye had eaten
Nothing but brains and marrow of Machiavel:
You tip your speeches with Italian motti [mottos],
Spanish refranes, and English quoth he's. Believe me,
There's not a proverb salts your tongue, but plants
Whole colonies of white hairs. O, what a business
These hands must have when you have married me,
To pick out sentences that over-year you!
Lel. Give me but leave.
Sul. Have I a lip? and you
Made sonnets on't? 'tis your fault, for otherwise
Your sister and Eugenio had been sure
Long time ere this.
Lel. But——
Sul. Stay, your cue's not come yet.
I hate as perfectly this grey-green of yours,
As Old Antonio's green-grey. Fie! wise lovers
Are most absurd. Were I not full resolved,
I should begin to cool mine own affection.
For shame, consider well your sister's temper.
Her melancholy may much hurt her. Respect her,
Or, spite of mine own love, I'll make you stay
Six months before you marry me.
[Lelio whispers.
This your so happy news? return'd, and safe?
Antonio yet alive?
[Lelio whispers.
And what then?
[Lelio whispers.
Well; all your business must be compassed
With winding plots and cunning stratagems.
Look to't; for if we be not married ere next morning,
By the great love that's hid in this small compass,
Flavia and myself will steal you both away,
To your eternal shame and foul discredit.
[Exit.
Lel. How prettily this lovely littleness
In one breath pleads her own cause and my sister's!
Chides me, and loves. This is that pleasing temper
I more admire than a continued sweetness
That over-satisfies: 'tis salt I love, not sugar.
[Exit.
ACT V., SCENE I.
Albumazar, Ronca, Furbo, Harpax.
Alb. How? not a single share of this great prize,
That have deserv'd the whole? was't not my plot
And pains, and you mere instruments and porters?
Shall I have nothing?
Ron. No, not a silver spoon.
Fur. Nor cover of a trencher-salt.
Har. Nor table-napkin.
Alb. Friends, we have kept an honest truth and faith
Long time amongst us: break not the sacred league,
By raising civil theft: turn not your fury
'Gainst your own bowels. Rob your careful master!
Are you not asham'd?
Ron. 'Tis our profession,
As yours astrology. "And in the days of old,
Good morrow, thief, as welcome was receiv'd,
As now Your worship." 'Tis your own instruction.
Fur. "The Spartans held it lawful, and th' Arabians,
So grew Arabia happy, Sparta valiant."
Har. "The world's a theatre of theft: great rivers
Rob smaller brooks; and them the ocean."
Alb. Have not I wean'd you up from petty larceny,
Dangerous and poor, and nurs'd you to full strength
Of safe and gainful theft? by rules of art
And principles of cheating made you as free
From taking as you went invisible;
And do ye thus requite me? this the reward
For all my watchful care?
Ron. We are your scholars,
Made by your help and our own aptness able
To instruct others. 'Tis the trade we live by.
You that are servant to divine astrology,
Do something worth her livery: cast figures,
Make almanacs for all meridians.
Fur. Sell perspicils and instruments of hearing:
Turn clowns to gentlemen; buzzards to falcons,
'ur-dogs to greyhounds; kitchen-maids to ladies.
Har. Discover more new stars and unknown planets:
Vent them by dozens, style them by the names
Of men that buy such ware. Take lawful courses,
Rather than beg.
Alb. Not keep your honest promise?
Ron. "Believe none, credit none: for in this city
No dwellers are but cheaters and cheatees."
Alb. You promis'd me the greatest share.
Ron. Our promise!
If honest men by obligations
And instruments of law are hardly constrain'd
T' observe their word, can we, that make profession
Of lawless courses, do't?
Alb. Amongst ourselves!
Falcons, that tyrannise o'er weaker fowl,
Hold peace with their own feathers.
Har. But when they counter
Upon one quarry, break that league, as we do.
Alb. At least restore the ten pound in gold I lent you.
Ron. "'Twas lent in an ill second, worser third,
And luckless fourth:" 'tis lost, Albumazar.
Fur. Saturn was in ascension, Mercury
Was then combust, when you delivered it.
'Twill never be restor'd.
Ron. "Hali, Abenezra,
Hiarcha, Brachman, Budda Babylonicus,"
And all the Chaldees and the Cabalists,
Affirm that sad aspect threats loss of debts.
Har. Frame by your azimuth Almicantarath,
An engine like a mace, whose quality
Of strange retractive virtue may recall
Desperate debts, and with that undo serjeants.
Alb. Was ever man thus baited by's own whelps?
Give me a slender portion, for a stock
To begin trade again.
Ron. 'Tis an ill course,
And full of fears. This treasure hath enrich'd us,
And given us means to purchase and live quiet
Of th' fruit of dangers past. When I us'd robbing,
All blocks before me look'd like constables,
And posts appear'd in shape of gallowses;
Therefore, good tutor, take your pupil's counsel:
'Tis better beg than steal; live in poor clothes
Than hang in satin.
Alb. Villains, I'll be reveng'd,
And reveal all the business to a justice!
Ron. Do, if thou long'st to see thy own anatomy.
Alb. This treachery persuades me to turn honest.
Fur. Search your nativity; see if the Fortunates
And Luminaries be in a good aspect,
And thank us for thy life. Had we done well,
We had cut thy throat ere this.
Alb. Albumazar,
Trust not these rogues: hence, and revenge.
Ron. Fellows, away; here's company. Let's hence.
[Exeunt.
SCENE II.
Cricca, Pandolfo.
Cri. Now, Cricca, mask thy countenance in joy;
Speak welcome language of good news, and move
Thy master, whose desires are credulous,
To believe what thou giv'st him. If thy design
Land at the haven 'tis bound for, then Lelio,
Eugenio, and their mistresses, are oblig'd
By oath t' assure a state of forty pounds
Upon thee for thy life.
Pan. I long to know
How my good farmer speeds; how Trincalo
Hath been receiv'd by Lelio.
Cri. Where shall I find him?
What we most seek still flies us; what's avoided,
Follows or meets us full. I am emboss'd
With trotting all the streets to find Pandolfo,
And bless him with good news.
Pan. This haste of Cricca
Abodes some good: doubtless my Trincalo,
Receiv'd for Antonio, hath given me Flavia.
Cricca!
Cri. Neither in Paul's, at home, nor in the Exchange,
Nor where he uses to converse! he's lost,
And must be cried.
Pan. Turn hither, Cricca; Cricca,
Seest me not?
Cri. Sir, the news, and haste to tell it,
Had almost blinded me. 'Tis so fortunate,
I dare not pour it all at once upon you,
Lest you should faint, and swoon away with joy:
Your transform'd Trincalo——
Pan. What news of him?
Cri. Enter'd as owner in Antonio's house——
Pan. On.
Cri. Is acknowledg'd by his daughter Flavia
And Lelio for their father.
Pan. Quickly, good Cricca!
Cri. And hath sent me in haste to bid you——
Pan. What?
Cri. Come with your son Eugenio——
Pan. And then?
Cri. That he may be a witness of your marriage.
But, sir, I see no signs of so large gladness
As I expected and this news deserv'd.
Pan. 'Tis here, 'tis here, within: all outward symptoms
And characters of joy are poor expressions
Of my great inward happiness. My heart's full,
And cannot vent the passions. Run, Cricca, run:
Run, as thou lov'st me; call Eugenio,
And work him to my purpose: thou canst do it.
Haste, call him instantly.
Cri. I fly, sir.
[Exit.
SCENE III.
Pandolfo.
How shall I recompense this astrologer,
This great Albumazar, through whose learned hands
Fortune hath prov'd th' effect of my best wishes,
And crown'd my hopes? Give him this chain?
Alas!
'Tis a poor thanks, short by a thousand links
Of his large merit. No, he must live with me
And my sweet Flavia at his ease and pleasure,
Wanting for nothing: and this very night
I'll get a boy, and he erect a figure
To calculate his fortunes. So, there's Trincalo
Antoniated, or Antonio Intrinculate.
SCENE IV.
Antonio, Pandolfo, Lelio, Eugenio.
Ant. Signior Pandolfo! welcome.
Lel. Your servant, sir.
Pan. Well-met, Antonio; my prayers and wishes
Have waited on you ever.
Ant. Thanks, dearest friend.
To speak my danger pass'd were to discourse
Of dead men at a feast. Such sad relations
Become not marriages. Sir, I am here
Return'd to do you service. Where's your son?
Pan. He'll wait upon you presently.
Eug. Signior Antonio!
Happily welcome.
Ant. Thanks, Eugenio.
How think you, gentlemen: were it amiss
To call down Flavia and Sulpitia,
That what we do may with a full consent
Be entertain'd of all?
Pan. 'Tis well-remember'd.
Eugenio, call your sister.
Ant. Lelio, call my daughter.
[Exeunt Lelio and Eugenio.
SCENE V.
Pandolfo, Antonio.
Pan. Wisely consider'd, Trincalo; 'tis a fair prologue
To the comedy ensuing. Now I confess
Albumazar had equal power to change
And mend thy understanding with thy body.
Let me embrace and hug thee for this service:
'Tis a brave onset: O my sweet Trincalo!
Ant. How like you the beginning?
Pan. 'Tis o' th' further side
All expectation.
Ant. Was't not right, and spoken
Like old Antonio?
Pan. 'Tis most admirable!
Were't he himself that spoke, he could not better't.
And for thy sake I wish Antonio's shape
May ever be thy house, and's wit thy inmate.
But where's my plate and cloth of silver?
Ant. Safe.
Pan. They come. Keep state, keep state, or all's discover'd.
SCENE VI.
Antonio, Pandolfo, Eugenio, Lelio, Flavia, Sulpitia.
Ant. Eugenio, Flavia, Lelio, and Sulpitia,
Marriages, once confirm'd and consummate,
Admit of no repentance. Therefore 'tis fitting
All parties with full freedom speak their pleasure,
Before it be too late.
Pan. Good! excellent!
Ant. Speak boldly, therefore. Do you willingly
Give full authority, that what I decree
Touching these businesses, you'll all perform?
Eug. I rest as you dispose: what you determine,
With my best power I ratify; and Sulpitia,
I dare be bold to promise, says no less.
Sul. Whate'er my father, brother, and yourself
Shall think convenient, pleaseth me.
Lel. In this,
As in all other service, I commit myself
To your commands; and so, I hope, my sister.
Fla. With all obedience: sir, dispose of me
As of a child that judgeth nothing good,
But what you shall approve.
Ant. And you, Pandolfo?
Pan. I, most of all. And for you know the minds
Of youth are apt to promise, and as prone
To repent after, 'tis my advice they swear
T' observe, without exception, your decree.
Fla. Content.
Sul. Content.
Pan. By all the powers that hear
Oaths, and rain vengeance upon broken faith,
I promise to confirm and ratify
Your sentence.
Lel. Sir, I swear no less.
Eug. Nor I.
Fla. The selfsame oath binds me.
Sul. And me the same.
Pan. Now, dear Antonio, all our expectation
Hangs at your mouth. None of us can appeal
From you to higher courts.
Ant. First, for preparative
Or slight præludium to the greater matches,
I must entreat you, that my Armellina
Be match'd with Trincalo. Two hundred crowns
I give her for her portion.
Pan. 'Tis done. Some relics
Of his old clownery and dregs o' th' country
Dwell in him still. How careful he provides
For himself first. [Aside.] Content: and more, I grant him
A lease for twenty pounds a year.
Ant. I thank you.
Gentlemen, since I feel myself much broken
With age and my late miseries, and too cold
To entertain new heat, I freely yield
Sulpitia, whom I lov'd, to my son Lelio.
Pan. How cunningly hath the farmer provided
T' observe the 'semblance of Antonio's person,
And keep himself still free for Armellina!
Ant. Signior Pandolfo, y' are wise, and understand
How ill hot appetites of unbridled youth
Become grey hairs. How grave and honourable
Were't for your age to be enamour'd
With the fair shape of virtue and the glory
Of our forefathers! Then would you blush to think
How by this dotage and unequal love
You stain their honour and your own. Awake!
Banish those wild affections, and by my example
Turn t' your reposed self.
Pan. To what purpose, pray you,
Serves this long proem? on to th' sentence.
Ant. Sir,
Conformity of years, likeness of manners,
Are Gordian knots that bind up matrimony:
Now, betwixt seventy winters and sixteen
There's no proportion, nor least hope of love.
Fie! that a gentleman of your discretion,
Crown'd with such reputation in your youth,
Should in your western days lose th' good opinion
Of all your friends, and run to th' open danger
Of closing the weak remnant of your days
With discontentment unrecoverable.
Pan. Rack me no more; pray you, let's hear the sentence.
Note how the ass would fright me, and endear
His service: intimating that his pow'r
May overthrow my hopes. [Aside.] Proceed to th' sentence.
Ant. These things consider'd, I bestow my daughter
Upon your son Eugenio, whose constant love,
With his so modest carriage, hath deserv'd her;
And, that you freeze not for a bed-fellow,
I marry you with patience.
Pan. Treacherous villain!
Accursed Trincalo! [Aside.] I'll—— But this no place;
He's too well back'd; but shortly, when the date
Of his Antonioship's expir'd, revenge
Shall sweeten this disgrace.
Ant. Signior Pandolfo,
When you recover yourself, lost desperately
In disproportion'd dotage, then you'll thank me
For this great favour. Be not obstinate:
Disquiet not yourself.
Pan. I thank you, sir.
[Exeunt all but Pandolfo.
SCENE VII.
Pandolfo.
And that you freeze not for a bed-fellow,
I marry you with patience! Traitorous villain!
Is't not enough to wrong me and betray me,
But 't must be done with scoffs? accursed Trincalo!
And me most miserable that, when I thought
T' embrace young Flavia, see her before my face
Bestow'd upon my son! my son—my rival!
This is Eugenio's plot and his friend Lelio's;
Who, with my servant Cricca, have conspir'd,
And suborn'd Trincalo to betray his master.
Why do I rage 'gainst any but myself,
That have committed such a serious business
To th' hands of a base clown and ignorant?
I see mine error, but no means to help it.
Only the sweetness of revenge is left me,
Which I must execute: th' hours of's gentry
Are now clean spent. I'll home, and there attend him.
[Exit.
SCENE VIII.
Trincalo drunk, but something recovered.
Trin. Welcome, old trusty Trincalo; good farmer, welcome! Give me thy hand; we must not part hereafter. Fie, what a trouble 'tis to be out of a man's self! If gentlemen have no pleasure but what I felt to-day, a team of horses shall not drag me out of my profession. There's nothing amongst them but borrowing, compounding for half their debts, and have their purse cut for the rest; cozened by whores, frighted with husbands, washed in wet hogsheads, cheated of their clothes, and falling in cellars for conclusion.
SCENE IX.
Pandolfo at the window, Trincalo.
Pan. O precious piece of villany! are you unchang'd?
How confident the rogue dares walk the streets!
Trin. And then such quarrelling! never a suit
I wore to-day but hath been soundly basted: only
this faithful country-case 'scaped fist-free; and, be
it spoken in a good hour, was never beaten yet,
since it came from fulling.
Pan. Base, treacherous villain!
[Beats him.
Trin. Is this the recompense of my day's work?
Pan. You marry me to patience! there's patience,
And that you freeze not, there's warm patience,
She's a good bed-fellow: have patience.
Trin. You'll beat me out on't, sir. How have I wrong'd you?
Pan. So as deserves th' expression of my fury,
With th' cruel'st tortures I can execute.
Trin. You kill me, sir.
Pan. Have patience.
Trin. Pray you, sir!
Pan. Seek not by humble penitence t' appease me:
Nothing can satisfy.
Trin. Farewell, humility;
Now am I beaten sober.
[Takes away Pandolfo's staff.
Shall age and weakness master my youth and strength?
Now speak your pleasure: what's my fault?
Pan. Dar'st deny
Thy own act, done before so many witnesses,
Suborn'd by others, and betray my confidence
With such a stony impudence?
Trin. I have been faithful
In all you trusted me.
Pan. To them, not me.
O, what a proem, stuff'd with grave advice
And learned counsel, you could show'r upon me
Before the thunder of your deadly sentence!
And give away my mistress with a scoff!
Trin. I give your mistress?
Pan. Didst not thou decree,
Contrary t' our compact, against my marriage?
Trin. Why, when was I your judge?
Pan. Just now here.
Trin. See your error!
Then was I fast lock'd in Antonio's cellar:
Where, making virtue of necessity,
I drank stark drunk, and waking, found myself
Cloth'd in this farmer's suit, as in the morning.
Pan. Didst not thou swear to enter Antonio's house,
And give me Flavia for my wife, and after,
Before my own face, gav'st her to my son?
Trin. Ha, ha, ha!
[Whilst Trincalo laughs and lets fall the staff, Pandolfo recovers it, and beats him.
Pan. Canst thou deny it?
Trin. Ha, ha, ha!
Have you got Mistress Patience? Ha, ha, ha!
Pan. Is not this true?
Trin. Ha, ha, ha!
Pan. Answer me.
Trin. Ha, ha, ha wan!
Pan. Was't not thus?
Trin. I answer: first,
I never was transform'd,
But gull'd, as you were, by th' astrologer,
And those that called me Antonio. To prove
This true, the gentleman you spoke with was Antonio—
The right Antonio, safely return'd from Barbary.
Pan. O me, what's this?
Trin. Truth itself.
Pan. Was't not thou that gav'st the sentence?
Trin. Believe me, no such matter:
I ne'er was gentleman, nor otherwise
Than what I am, unless 'twere when I was drunk.
Pan. How have I been deceiv'd! good Trincalo,
Pardon me, I have wrong'd thee.
Trin. Pardon you?
When you have beaten me to paste, Good Trincalo,
Pardon me!
Pan. I am sorry for't; excuse me.
Trin. I am sorry I can't excuse you. But I pardon you.
Pan. Now tell me, where's the plate and cloth of silver,
The gold and jewels, that the astrologer
Committed to thy keeping?
Trin. What plate, what jewels?
He gave me none. But, when he went to change me,
After a thousand circles and ceremonies,
He binds me fast upon a form, and blinds me
With a thick table-napkin. Not long after
Unbinds my head and feet, and gives me light;
And then I plainly saw that I saw nothing:
The parlour was clean swept of all was in't.
Pan. O me! O me!
Trin. What ails you, sir? what ails you?
Pan. I am undone! I have lost my love, my plate,
My whole estate, and with the rest myself.
Trin. Lose not your patience too. Leave this lamenting,
And lay the town; you may recover it.
Pan. 'Tis to small purpose. In, and hold thy peace.
[Exit Trincalo.
SCENE X.
Cricca, Pandolfo.
Cri. Where shall I find my master, to content him
With welcome news? he's here. News, news?
News of good fortune, joy, and happiness!
Pan. Cricca, my sadness is uncapable
Of better tidings: I am undone! most miserable!
Cri. Offend not your good luck, y' are now more fortunate
Than when you rose this morning: be merry, sir,
Cheer up yourself; y' have what you wish'd, fear nothing.
Pan. Maybe, Antonio newly repents himself,
With purpose to restore my Flavia.
Cricca, what is't? where's all this happiness?
Cri. Lock'd in Antonio's closet.
Pan. All alone?
Sure, that's my Flavia. Is not Eugenio
Suffer'd to enter?
Cri. Antonio keeps the key:
No creature enters but himself: all's safe,
And shall be so restor'd.
Pan. O my sweet Cricca!
Cri. And they that wrong'd you most extremely sorry,
Ready to yield you any satisfaction.
Pan. Is't possible they should so soon repent them,
That injur'd me so lately? tell me the manner
That caus'd them see their error.
Cri. I'll tell you, sir:
Being just now at old Antonio's house,
One thunders at the back-door, enters, presses
To speak in private with young Lelio;
Was instantly admitted: and think you, who?
'Twas your astrologer Albumazar.
When he had spoke awhile, Lelio and Antonio
In haste command me fetch a constable.
Pan. How can this story touch my happiness?
Cri. I up and down, through slimy ale-houses,
Cloudy tobacco-shops and vapouring taverns,
My mouth full of inquiry, at last found one.
Pan. What of all this? Is't possible a constable
Concerns my good?
Cri. And, following my directions,
Went to a tippling-house, where we took drinking
Three handsome fellows with a great chest, attach'd them,
And brought all to Antonio.
Pan. Well, what then?
Cri. These were the astrologer's intelligences that
Robb'd you through the south window.
Pan. I thought thou hadst spoke
Of Flavia's restoring.
Cri. I mean your plate
And treasure. Pray you, sir, is't not great happiness
To reobtain three thousand pounds in value,
Desperately lost? and you still doat and dream
Of Flavia who, by your own consent
And oath, is promised to your son Eugenio.
Pan. Forward.
Cri. Within this chest Antonio found your plate,
Gold jewels, cloth of silver, nothing perish'd,
But all safe lock'd, till you acknowledge it.
And since Albumazar of his own accord
Freely confess'd, and safe restor'd your treasure;
Since 'tis a day of jubilee and marriage,
Antonio would entreat you to release
And pardon the astrologer: thanking your fortune,
That hath restor'd you to your wealth and self.
Both which were lost i' th' foolish love of Flavia.
Pan. Reason hath clear'd my sight, and drawn the veil,
Of dotage, that so dark'd my understanding.
I clearly see the slavery of affections;
And how unsuitable my declining years
Are for the dawning youth of Flavia.
Let the best joys of Hymen compass her
And her young husband (my Eugenio),
With full content. And since Albumazar
By accident caus'd all this happiness,
I freely pardon him and his companions;
And haste to assist the marriages and feasts.
Cri. Why, now you show yourself a worthy gentleman.
[Exit Pandolfo.
SCENE XI.
Trincalo, Cricca.
Tri. Cricca, I overheard your news: all parts are pleas'd
Except myself. Is there no news for Trincalo?
Cri. Know'st it not? in and see: Antonio
Hath given thee Armellina with a portion—
Two hundred crowns; and old Pandolfo bound
By oath t' assure thee twenty pounds a year
For three lives.
Trin. Ha!
Cri. Come in.
Trin. I'll follow.
EPILOGUE
[Spoken by Trincalo].
Two hundred crowns? and twenty pound a year
For three good lives? Cargo hai, Trincalo!
My wife's extremely busy, dressing the supper
For these great marriages, and I not idle,
So that I cannot entertain you here,
As I would elsewhere. But if you come to Totnam
Some four days hence, and ask for Trincalo,
At th' sign o' th' Hogshead, I'll mortgage all my lives
To bid you welcome. You that love Trincalo,
And mean to meet, clap hands, and make 't a bargain.
Albumazar, by John Tomkis
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Re: Albumazar, by John Tomkis
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Re: Albumazar, by John Tomkis
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Part 1 of 3
The Astrologist
by Giambattista Della Porta
The Comedies
Curated by Vincenzo Spampanato
Second Volume
1911
Translated from Google translate
https://www.classicly.com/bibi/pre.html?book=2614.epub
INTERLOCUTORS
ALBUMAZAR astrologer
RONCA |
HARPOON | smart
GRAMIGNA |
PANDOLPH |
GUGLIELMO | old
CLAW servant
Vignarolo
EUGENIO son of Pandolfo |
LELIO son of William | Young people
ARTEMISIA daughter of Guglielmo |
SULPIZIA daughter of Pandolfo | young
BEVILONA courtesan
ARMELLINA servant.
The scene where the tale is represented is Naples.
ACT 1
SCENE I.
ALBUMAZAR astrologer, RONCA, HARPIO, GRAMIGNA smart.
ALBUMAZAR. O my dear comrades and comrades Ronca, Arpione and Gramigna, who in this most noble exercise of the busca, that is, to make his own what belongs to others, so admirably and so bravely have brought you with me - you, Ronca, purring; you, Harpoon, harpizing; and you, Gramigna, spreading your roots for everything and grinding what you grasp; - and like the new Solons - who by day attended to public affairs and by night wrote the laws of Athens - you virtuously spending the hours, the day undermining purses and falsifying coins, writings, trials and polize at the counter, and at night hunting down hoods and iron workers, making sentries in the streets to attack the doors of buildings and batteries to shops - which are our seven liberal arts : —As men of the most subtle wit and most valiant warriors who have always returned home triumphant and laden with hostile spoils and enemy trophies, and have achieved very great honors.
RONCA. And I have enjoyed some of the honors, that I was made king of Carthage, with the crown on his head surrounding the city on horseback, with reputation with the sound of trumpets, with the joy of the children and with the joy and competition of all the people, not missing those who chased the flies off my shoulders.
HARPOON. And I have been governor of it three times of Galilee, and with a scepter of forty palms in my hand I have administered justice to those peoples.
GRAMIGNA. Nor do I miss you: I would have been made king of Picardy, for playing he desired money and three clubs came to me, but Rubasco, our companion, in order to show himself a more valiant man than me, wanted to prevent me and took them from my hand.
RONCA. And like horses of good breed we carry the signs behind us, with bills and licenses expedited to the glory of our mestier.
ALBUMAZAR. And with the doctrine that I have taught you, you have made such happy progress in the art, how not to give credit to the words of others but always have an eye on your hands, do not wait for what is promised, do not have faith or keep faith or to give faith to the faiths of others, to have lies more ready than the tears of women, to always keep their warehouses set up under the tongue; because these are the condiments of our art and the merchandise that keep our warehouse open, reminding you that commodity is the mother of the thievery.
RONCA. Truly we confess, with such important and glorious memories we are not unworthy disciples of such a teacher; and as a sign, in the court of the thievery we have never had a sentence against.
ALBUMAZAR. Now from so honored principles - if the signs of physiognomy do not lie that you see in your decorated faces, like men of the first compass, - I have firm intention that you should ascend to higher degrees and make greater leaps and my backs to the greatest in the world, where I hope to see you will soon arrive as our works deserve.
RONCA. And we pray the heavens that you will be apart from our honors; and we confess that you praise and wish well beyond our merit, nor can we find such worthy words to thank you for the good cheer and good doctrine we have learned from you.
ALBUMAZAR. Just as it is great iniquity to keep silent about merit, so it is greater envy to restrict it with short turns of words. But I did not use this prologue with you to inanimate you in the enterprise, because I know that you need more restraint than spur; but to warn you that we are in Naples, a city full of thieves and crafty ones, and if they are born in other places, they rain there: but you have to stay in your brain more than usual.
GRAMIGNA. If all the people were birri, bargelli, villains, and the whole city were prisons, galleys, sedans and gallows, we will make it to score; and after our game there will remain a seminary of our peers.
ALBUMAZAR. He expected no other response from your generous minds, for I already see trophies and triumphs carved in your foreheads; nor will I be cheated of the great hopes of you. I am about to propose a party to you.
RONCA. Here I earn?
ALBUMAZAR. On the other hand I don't get tired.
RONCA. Here we are ready, or crazier and more beasts than ever!
ALBUMAZAR. As soon as I arrived here in Naples, I was requested by a certain Pandolfo, an old man rich in money and household furniture, who is in love; because if age dulls his brain, love takes it away from him in everything. And what matters is that he gives credence to astrology and necromancy: what more can be said? for if he were a Solomon, giving credit to this nonsense would be enough to make him the greatest beast in the world. Aim as far as human curiosity reaches or to put it better asinity! Now I, by making an astrologer who participates a little in the necromancer, who pinches the alchemist and the miller, with the help of my dear companions, I hope to leave memorable signs of our practice in his house, nor do I doubt the point of success.
RONCA. Those money and tapestries will be very acute incitements to us to be more right and more shrewd and more solicitous than ever.
ALBUMAZAR. Already from your thieves hints, crafty acts and mute zerghi I know the thought that ravages in the heart: be careful of my predictions and make them come true. Tell me what you mean; for, once we have acquired that we have the cupboard with him, we will make them a clearer and shinier house than a mirror.
RONCA. Wait to do your part well, because with us you will see effects that will advance your estimate.
ALBUMAZAR. Here he comes. Harpoon, move away, listen to what he says and tell me; Gramigna, hold up the door and see some miracle of mine narrated to him, because I will enter.
SCENE II.
OLD PANDOLPH, SERVANT CLAW, GRAMIGNA.
PANDOLPH. Clique, I want to make you aware of one of my secrets: and if your roguery, which you have used against me up to now, you will use it to give me satisfaction, you will take possession of your master and you will know me more loving than ever; for never before has such an opportunity occurred to me.
CLIQUE. What is the need for so many proems? it seems as if you now got to know me.
PANDOLPH. And because I've known you for a long time, that's why I used a lot of preface.
CLIQUE. For whom do you know me?
PANDOLPH. For a great man! If I were not a great scoundrel and if I had my tail behind, I would be a devil to a man, because you want to do more for my son Eugenio than for me.
CLIQUE. And if you have me in such esteem, donque not trust me, because I cannot be other than what I am.
PANDOLPH. You could wanting, it is in your being able to be; and therefore I said to you: "If you are so prudent and wise as you are a scoundrel, and you do for me what you try to do for my son, you will have other reward from me now, which you do not expect in time from my son." agreement with me and you will follow my desire, good for you; because if I realize that you do me yours, woe to you.
CLIQUE. Here I am as rascal as you say, to obey you and take every risk for your sake.
PANDOLPH. But because I doubt that this is in my favor as you become a good man, I want you to swear to me first.
CLIQUE. I swear to….
PANDOLPH. You don't know what to swear by, and you say: "I swear to."
CLIQUE. I swear everything you want and don't want.
PANDOLPH. Since you are so hasty to swear, you will be more willing not to observe.
CLIQUE. If I should well beg you not to trust me, despite the desire I have to serve you, I beg you to trust me.
PANDOLPH. Know, my dear Clique, that among the failings of my old age the greatest is love….
CLIQUE. What a mood of melancholy or madness!
PANDOLPH. Don't interrupt me: I know what you mean is that I'm seventy years old.
CLIQUE. This I wanted to tell you.
PANDOLPH. If I am old, I am cut with a good moon, and wood cut with a good moon lasts a long time strong and does not cause worms: "The old wine is better than the new", "Old hen makes good broth", "Old lard good soup".
CLIQUE. The fact is that you have neither lard nor wood nor wine nor hen.
PANDOLPH. Don't you know that proverb: "Sad that house where there is no old man"?
CLIQUE. Yes, for advice, but not for a husband. You will spoil your stomach.
PANDOLPH. I am of good complexion.
CLIQUE. You have to be of good brain; if not, you will make the death of the cricket dying on the hole.
PANDOLPH. The purse will make the old young look like the woman: I will give her double money.
CLIQUE. It is true that you will not pay for it except for duplicates.
PANDOLPH. The sickness that comes to you! I would like you to lighten me and not aggravate my troubles. So I told you at the beginning that you've always had a donkey.
CLIQUE. If I have had an ass in advising you, from now on I will have a wise man in keeping silent. To the masters it must be said that his vices and failings are virtues, if you want to hope useful; for doing the opposite is very dangerous. I would like you to take advantage of those advice with which you recommend your friends.
PANDOLPH. "There was always a great abundance of councilors and a famine of aids." I would like you more soon to excuse me than to take back: I want help and I do not advise. If you want to advise me, kill me and stop it soon: it is as possible to leave this whim as much as myself. In sum Artemisia….
CLIQUE. Artemisia? just grass for your teeth!
PANDOLPH. "On horseback, old tender grass."
CLIQUE. Well, you confess that you are a horse. What do you want woman? that there is a pimp?
PANDOLPH. I know that you could not do much more than be asked to pimp; but I want you as a helper.
CLIQUE. Say on.
PANDOLPH. You know that we agreed together with William, I give him Sulpizia my daughter as his wife, and he to me his daughter Artemisia, asking me to get married for two months, until he went and returned to Barbary….
CLIQUE. And couldn't he go to and from the barbershop in an hour?
PANDOLPH. How do you go to Africa in one hour?
CLIQUE. I thought the barbershop about having his beard shaved.
PANDOLPH. ... Now I was spending this time as best I could with the hope of his return, when here in the most beautiful of hopes comes new that is submerged in the sirti. How much pain I felt I leave it to you to consider.
CLIQUE. Follow.
PANDOLPH. Not being able to bear it any longer, I made her son Lelio ask for it, who made me answer that in his house they did not delight in antiques but modern ones, and many other insulting words. Neither love has grown cold to me because of so many injuries, nor can I stop loving it; but now an opportunity presents itself to me to achieve my desire in spite of Lelio….
CLIQUE. The opportunity I would have dear to understand.
PANDOLPH. … A certain Indian Todesco from beyond has arrived in Naples
Trabizond, from the end of the world, an admirable astrologer and necromancer; ...
CLIQUE. As a necromancer wants to acquire a name, he pretends to be from distant countries, as in ours there were no such beasts.
PANDOLPH. … And it is called meteoroscopic Albumazzaro….
CLIQUE. The name alone would be enough to make it appear without trial!
PANDOLPH. … As it is only in science, it is so only in name. First, I want to guess whether William is dead or alive. If he is dead, let him resurrect him for a day, until my marriage ends, and then let him return to die; ...
CLIQUE. And do you believe these lies?
PANDOLPH. I believe you, archcredo, overflowing.
CLIQUE. Don't you know that necromancy is the refreshment of those poor who find themselves in some overwhelming desire?
PANDOLPH. Overo that he transformed some person into William….
CLIQUE. That doesn't turn you into a beast!
PANDOLPH. … And that that would make my wedding. But of what I have told you, you do not need to publish it and banish it, because you would ruin my drawings, and then play with us scrognons without discretion and extraordinary blows: and you can already put them in the receipt book.
CLIQUE. I promise you to operate in all the little I can.
PANDOLPH. And I still miss a little, as long as I don't want to betray me. Now let's go to his house.
CLIQUE. The hour is late: it will be better to go there tomorrow.
PANDOLPH. The «tomorrow», the «I will» and the «I will go» are children of nothingness: we must go now.
CLIQUE. Now the old are resting.
PANDOLPH. The lover never rests.
CLIQUE. Find out who he is first, because maybe it will be some scammer.
PANDOLPH. Look not to say, because he means what is said about him and will make us go into visibleum.
CLIQUE. Who?
PANDOLPH. The astrologer.
CLIQUE. And what, are the astrologers Orlandi?
GRAMIGNA. (Harpoon, go home and tell Albumazzaro what you have heard, for I will remain at the door).
CLIQUE. Now let's go where you want.
PANDOLPH. Here is the house: ask him.
CLIQUE. He seems to me from Fuligno.
PANDOLPH. What does "fuligno" mean?
CLIQUE. "Worthy of a rope and a wood"!
SCENE III.
GRAMIGNA, PANDOLFO, CRACK.
GRAMIGNA. What are you asking?
PANDOLPH. Sète at home?
GRAMIGNA. I am servant of the divine astrologer.
CLIQUE. The astrologer will have drunk well, since he is made of wine.
GRAMIGNA. "Divine", that is, he knows about the stars, the heavens and celestial things, and why he guesses.
PANDOLPH. Will we be able to speak to your fortune teller?
GRAMIGNA. He has returned exhausted from the chase of spirits and intelligence, and has brought more than a hundred full jugs; and now he stands with quadrants, astrolabes and meteoroscopes and other instruments, observing the conjunction of the planets.
CLIQUE. So the planets join in the sky and impregnate themselves? and what do they give birth?
GRAMIGNA. Good influences when they are male, bad when they are female.
CLIQUE. What flows: of blood or cacaiole?
PANDOLPH. It says "influences" and not "flows", you beast! Will we have an audience after the observation?
GRAMIGNA. He will sit at the table to eat and drink.
PANDOLPH. What will you drink? what will you eat this morning?
GRAMIGNA. A Venus allessa and a roasted Mercury.
PANDOLPH. Why Venus first and then Mercury?
GRAMIGNA. He is a man beyond the natural.
CLIQUE. Beware that there is no other heat than sun.
PANDOLPH. Eating what do you drink?
GRAMIGNA. Liqueur of planets, dews of fixed stars, distillations of destinies, essential wings of fates, gravy of the heavens.
PANDOLPH. How do you collect them? how do you drink them?
GRAMIGNA. At night, when he is contemplating the sky, his great beard rains down on them, and he sucks and drinks them; the surplus is kept, for when it is thirsty, in certain large casks circled with zodiacs, equinoctial coluri and horizons; others in certain mid-barrel casks circled in the tropical and summer tropics; and others in certain barrels encircled by Arctic and Antarctic circles.
CLIQUE. What country is this your planet-eater and cacafow from?
GRAMIGNA. From a village of Lamagna called Leccardia.
PANDOLPH. Does he know when the luna nova strikes?
GRAMIGNA. Tonight will be the nova moon.
CLIQUE. What nova? what old? it is the same one that was made with the world.
PANDOLPH. How much do we have this year of golden number?
CLIQUE. Neither golden nor silver number can ever be found in my purse.
PANDOLPH. Young man, if mine is not unkind to ask, tell me some of his miracles.
GRAMIGNA. I will say wonderful things of amazement.
CLIQUE. As long as we see them.
GRAMIGNA. Bind women with a charm ...
CLIQUE. And I know how to bind them with a sound without a song.
GRAMIGNA. ... who follow you wherever you want: ...
CLIQUE. I tie a rope around her neck and drag them.
GRAMIGNA. ... I say with two words that says them inside the ears.
CLIQUE. I know certain words, one more powerful than the other, that if they don't effect the first, they do it to the second, and if not, to the third; which is very powerful. The first time I adjure them for ten ducats; if they refuse, per cent; and even if reluctant, for a thousand: and with this third conjuration I make the mountains trot, not that the women.
GRAMIGNA. He binds a man that he cannot use with his wife.
CLIQUE. I still tie him with a rope that he will not use with his wife or with others.
GRAMIGNA. It immediately gives birth to a man's head more horns than a deer.
CLIQUE. Every married woman knows how to do it.
GRAMIGNA. He makes men beasts, donkeys and beaks, and women cows and sows.
CLIQUE. They become us without his art every day.
GRAMIGNA. He makes infallible predictions.
CLIQUE. Always predicts badly for you to guess.
GRAMIGNA. It makes a water that plunging into man falls in love more.
CLIQUE. Each water has this effect, drowning in it.
GRAMIGNA. It makes you throw yourself from a prominent place without danger of breaking your legs.
CLIQUE. The executioner knows how to do it better than him: he throws him off the gallows without danger of his legs.
PANDOLPH. These are enough. I die if I don't see it: Clique, knock the door.
CLIQUE. I beat. Tic knock.
SCENE IV.
ALBUMAZAR, CRACK, PANDOLPH, GRAMIGNA.
ALBUMAZAR. Who the hell beats?
CLIQUE. You bring some in flesh and blood! He had to ward off now and was waiting for the devils, because he asks: "Who the devil is beating?" It's Farfarello.
GRAMIGNA. You have beaten too hard, because astrologers are lunatic.
PANDOLPH. Why "lunatic"?
GRAMIGNA. They always contemplate and talk to the moon.
ALBUMAZAR. I didn't go down sooner because he was speaking with a mercurial intelligence.
PANDOLPH. I leave the hands of your Strologheria, my dear master.
ALBUMAZAR. Well live est laetari! you have come early, in the best minute, in a very good second, in a very happy third, fourth and fifth, in nomine planetarum, stellarum, signorum et omnium caeli caelorum!
PANDOLPH. The stupendous fame of your valor calls us: we have come to receive a favor from you, and I beg you from that great man that you do not miss me, and I will have a singular obligation.
ALBUMAZAR. Here I am ready for charity.
CLIQUE. As long as it's not hairy!
ALBUMAZAR. You wish to know of a certain William whether dead or alive, who promised you Artemisia his daughter as a bride, and you Sulpizia to him in exchange, and then went to Barbary.
PANDOLPH. You took it off the tip of my tongue. But what reasons do I see now?
ALBUMAZAR. He already surmounted in the axes and poles of the celestial hinges and raved among the eccentrics, concentric and epicycles: he was looking for some happy points for you, ...
CLIQUE. Indeed for you, and are of skewers and pontiroli!
ALBUMAZAR. ... and if the sun had entered the sign of Cancer: ...
CLIQUE. The canchero and the fistula you eat!
PANDOLPH. You get the crab, Clique! it says "Cancer" and not "canchero".
CLIQUE. You and the canchero take the crab!
ALBUMAZAR. ... he is dead, very dead, because the directory beam is now in the sixth house, ...
CLIQUE. He says that you have to make a break behind your head, because you purge your bad moods.
ALBUMAZAR. ... and in the places of death his aphelion is day, ...
CLIQUE. Poor fellow! says he's dead and fete!
ALBUMAZAR. … And passes from the summer tropic to the embal….
CLIQUE. It is wrinkled and the boot hurts them!
ALBUMAZAR. … And the moon is already waning and is going to Capricorn.
CLIQUE. Beware, master, your wife! when the dull moon is horned and goes to capricorn, horns threaten you: you will be a cornucopia.
ALBUMAZAR. You are mad and present; and if you do not amend, I will make you repent of your madness and prosecution!
PANDOLPH. Shut up, beast! those words are Arabic and Turkish.
CLIQUE. Astrologer, what am I talking about?
ALBUMAZAR. I have seen a thousand appicates in my life, but I have not seen the worst and most betrayed physiognomy and ciera of yours; and if you were a little higher from the ground, I would say that you have already been attached. But if I remember correctly, the other day I saw someone fucking around the city: either you are it or he is you.
CLIQUE. If I have bad wax on the outside, I have good honey inside.
ALBUMAZAR. Wax to make candles: you will be able to prolong the gallows but you will not escape!
PANDOLPH. Yes good.
ALBUMAZAR. Ring the death bell.
PANDOLPH. He is not dead yet.
ALBUMAZAR. He will be killed shortly and his heart will have passed through a thousand points. And so you will know if I am a good or a bad astrologer; and when you have escaped it, then you mock me and the very powerful art of astrology.
PANDOLPH. Dear master, do not look at him who is half a fool, and yet he has taken this confidence with you. I beg you for its value that you do not aim at this madness; and make up for it if you can.
SCENE V.
RONCA, HARPION, CRACK, PANDOLPH, ALBUMAZAR.
RONCA. Ah, traitor, stop, where are you going?
HARPOON. Will I be so murdered by you?
CLIQUE. Ah, please, Mr. Albumazzaro!
ALBUMAZAR. Didn't I tell you?
RONCA. I will never leave you if I do not pass the heart of a thousand stings.
HARPOON. In the middle of the road, by day, murder so great!
RONCA. You will not escape my hands alive.
HARPOON. To me this, huh?
CLIQUE. Mercy mercy!
RONCA. Flee as much as you want, because we will reach you, you traitor.
CLIQUE. Oh oh!
PANDOLPH. Clique, what do you have that scream so loud?
CLIQUE. I'm dead, don't give me anymore, I'm already dead!
PANDOLPH. How did you die if you talk?
CLIQUE. We are close to dying, we have a little spirit left.
PANDOLPH. What do you have?
CLIQUE. I am pierced by more than a thousand points of daggers and swords: please, send for a surgeon!
PANDOLPH. Don't be afraid, no.
CLIQUE. Can't you see that I have more holes in my body than a sieve? the blood, guts, liver, lungs and heart are all outside.
PANDOLPH. Get up, you are healthy.
CLIQUE. How healthy if I have more than a hundred thousand wounds?
PANDOLPH. Where are the wounds, where are the holes? I still touch you all and there is nothing.
CLIQUE. I'm all a wound, a whole hole, everything you touch is a wound or hole, but you won't find anything.
PANDOLPH. I neither touch nor see a sore.
CLIQUE. Little by little, please, do not touch because you hurt me, do not let me die in advance.
PANDOLPH. I say you have no harm.
CLIQUE. If I get well I will never be a man again.
ALBUMAZAR. You are alive for me. Now arise, when that evil influence has passed, and woe to you if I had not remedied. Now go and mock the art of astrology!
CLIQUE. Call me a doctor to treat me.
ALBUMAZAR. I tell you that you are fine: get up.
CLIQUE. If it seems that he is doing well on the outside, on the inside I am all dead, oh oh!
PANDOLPH. Clique, you have no harm.
CLIQUE. Even though he talks and moves, I still can't believe he's alive.
My astrologer, I ask your forgiveness.
ALBUMAZAR. Learn to mock astrologers!
PANDOLPH. Let's follow, Mr. Albumazzaro.
ALBUMAZAR. And because the moon, as we said, passes from Capricorn into Aquarius and Pisces, your William died in the water and the fish ate him.
PANDOLPH. Now I would like….
ALBUMAZAR. I know better guess your heart than you yourself don't know. Would you like me to raise him up, and come back to his house and wait for the promise, and then come back to die?
PANDOLPH. This is my wish.
ALBUMAZAR. "Sed de privatione ad habitum non datur regressus": that is, with the breath of the stars and planets to raise a man from the ashes, oh what an effort, oh what manufacture! We need a planetary intelligence of the big ones, which are annoying and fantastic, like that of Jupiter and the Sun; and these sorts of spirits serve you as much as they are paid well: and if I want to be well served I must pay better, without the many difficulties that this undertaking brings with it.
PANDOLPH. As long as I am satisfied with my desire, I will not look at any expense.
ALBUMAZAR. We will do the same effect with the conjuring art. We will tower a low-handed intelligence, which requires little expense, and with the help of that we will make a servant or friend of yours take the form of William, and we will falsify only the semblant, that we do not know how to discern whether the true is false or the false true.
PANDOLPH. I beseech you, strain, my archprayer, my most necromantic astrologer, or my very most necromancer astrologer, that you take warm and loving protection from me; and as a reward I will give you this gold chain around my neck, which is worth five hundred scudi.
ALBUMAZAR. I will not let them do everything to help you.
PANDOLPH. I recommend my body and soul to you!
ALBUMAZAR. But stop, because while I am reasoning with you I have seen certain lines in the forehead, and it seems to me that all the stars are conspiring to harm you and are angry and angry against you….
PANDOLPH. Oh what are you saying! I am dead! Are you astonished?
ALBUMAZAR. … And because the lines are so colorful that they appear sanguine, the effect will soon be: a large stone will fall on your head, which will strip away all your flesh and bones and go off in the wind.
PANDOLPH. Blood shit! this is nothing but love: the heart beats so hard that it seems to be a drum. Astrologer, me vobis commendo.
ALBUMAZAR. Have patience: this is the rule of that planet of which you are prey.
PANDOLPH. Mercy, have mercy on me!
ALBUMAZAR. Know that the stars and planets are always warring with each other and making friendships and enmities, and if they were at peace for a moment, the world would fall apart. And how will we be able to oppose heaven that does not dispose of worldly things?
PANDOLPH. You with your wisdom….
ALBUMAZAR. Well Dixists, because the very wise Egyptian Ptolemy said: "Sapiens dominabitur astris." - Gramigna, drop down that hat and talars of Mercury, made under the bridge of Mercury ascending in his sign.
PANDOLPH. I will not leave everything today from your feet.
ALBUMAZAR. Here it is, place it on your head, and hold this martial image in your hand, imprinted when he happily ascended the horizon in the sign of Aries in March, on Tuesday, at the hour before Mars, which will make you free from all evil.
PANDOLPH. I gladly accept the grace you give me.
ALBUMAZAR. Come on, go, have the man you want to transform and return to me, for I will make you satisfied with your every desire.
PANDOLPH. So we do.
ALBUMAZAR. In the meantime, with my iscioteric instrument by way of azimuth and almicantarat, I will look for happy bridges for you.
PANDOLPH. Remain in peace!
ALBUMAZAR. Go: may the stars be propitious to you and fill your house with benign, propitious and fortunate influences!
SCENE VI.
PANDOLPH, CRACK.
PANDOLPH. Clique, in short, astrology is a great art: it aims how immediately in seeing me he guessed what was in my heart, and how he understood what you said a little while before and you mocked him and did not want to believe him. Here you have suffered penance, and sad you if I did not pray to him for your life.
CLIQUE. He did not really think he was a true astrologer: he thought he was some kind of rascal, as there are so many who pride themselves on being astrologers and deceive the vile plebs.
PANDOLPH. Blessed are you who have come out of danger, because it seems to me that from hour to hour the world falls on my head! For everything today I will not question. If anyone says to me: "You are a rascal," I will say: "I am a rogue and a half." What does that word matter? you have to live and make your own business.
CLIQUE. Go home soon.
PANDOLPH. I wish I had a bell on my head to be safer. Oh oh, I'm dead!
CLIQUE. O poor master, for several days you will not have pedochi in your head, because all will be beaten or fled for fear!
PANDOLPH. I doubt my brain didn't jump a mile out of my head.
CLIQUE. Even if it seems so to you, I hope it will be nothing if the same intervened to me.
PANDOLPH. Alas! that I don't make sure to get up.
CLIQUE. Arise, for the concealment made up of bridges of stars has defended you.
PANDOLPH. It seems to me that he has no harm, O archdoctor salamonissimo. His predictions have so inanimate me that I am assured of everything he promises me.
CLIQUE. Here we go.
ACT II
SCENE I.
VIGNAROLO, ARMELLINA servant.
VIGNAROLO. (Maladetto Love and that whore who shit him! Before he knew no other thought than to stay at the villa; and after I fell in love beastly, it seems to me that in the villa it is always winter, and spring to flee to the city to be with the my Armellina. I am resolved to tell you of my love and ask for it, because you have to say a few words to the women, then let the devil who always works do it. cheer up and say hello). I greet you a hundred thousand thousand times, Your Most Illustrious Lordship, Your Highness, Your Majesty.
ARMELLINA. Oh, how many titles! vignarolo.
VIGNAROLO. Aren't you my lady, my queen and my imperadora?
ARMELLINA. What are you bringing me, vignarolo?
VIGNAROLO. Answer the greeting first, then ask me what I'm wearing.
ARMELLINA. Answer me first: if you say that I am your imperadora, I can command you.
VIGNAROLO. I bring the present, half to the patron and half to you; and if you like it all, take it all.
ARMELLINA. Listen to me.
VIGNAROLO. Stop for a while, because I came from the villa on purpose to see you ...
ARMELLINA. Didn't you see me?
VIGNAROLO. … And talk to you again.
ARMELLINA. Didn't you talk to me?
VIGNAROLO. Let me speak.
ARMELLINA. What are you doing?
VIGNAROLO. I also reason, but I would like….
ARMELLINA. What would you like?
VIGNAROLO. Yes yes, do you know what I would like? that you loved me.
ARMELLINA. I don't like you bad for me.
VIGNAROLO. I know well that you do not love me: even if you do not love me.
ARMELLINA. So what would you like me to do?
VIGNAROLO. Take me for husband.
ARMELLINA. I am poor, I have no dowry to give you.
VIGNAROLO. The grandeur of your customs and your nature is enough for me.
ARMELLINA. I do not want anyone to take me: I want to stay as I am.
VIGNAROLO. If you want to stay as you are, you will become saved.
ARMELLINA. As?
VIGNAROLO. The vine as it stands alone falls to the ground and becomes savory: the woman is the vine, the man is the stake; if he does not have the pole where he rests, he is ill.
ARMELLINA. May you be impaled by the Turks!
VIGNAROLO. Ah, traitor, why do you curse me?
ARMELLINA. Prank it like that with you.
VIGNAROLO. And I take it from duty. I love no one in the world but you. All day I cry and torment myself, and for whom, ah? for you, she-wolf, bitch who eats my heart; and I could stay without loving you as much as make a donkey fly. If you want to be my wife, from the first day I make you a woman and a lady of all my clothes, I will put them in your hand so that you can handle them in your own way. Blessed are you, if you do it my way!
ARMELLINA. I want you to do it my way.
VIGNAROLO. Make yourself, if not mine, your way: everything comes back into one, as long as you don't stay outside. But I would like a grace from heaven.
ARMELLINA. And I another.
VIGNAROLO. What would you like?
ARMELLINA. What do you want?
VIGNAROLO. I would say it, but I'm afraid you will frown.
ARMELLINA. I am not angry: say it.
VIGNAROLO. Give me faith.
ARMELLINA. Here she is.
VIGNAROLO. Oh what a plump and plump hand!
ARMELLINA. Tell me, what would you like?
VIGNAROLO. I wish I was that piston I track in your mortar.
ARMELLINA. And I would like you to lick the mortar when I made the sauce. But I want to leave.
VIGNAROLO. The calf has left.
SCENE II.
PANDOLFO, VIGNAROLO.
PANDOLPH. (That rascal of Cricca is so afraid of those stab wounds that he does not want to be transformed into Guglielmo on account of no one: I have thought of the vignarolo, but I have no one to call him for).
VIGNAROLO. Master, good morning!
PANDOLPH. O vignarolo, who never reached the best time!
VIGNAROLO. "Like a lean horse with fresh grass."
PANDOLPH. I need you so much that I haven't had as much in my life; and if you want to serve me, you will be mine and I will be your fortune.
VIGNAROLO. Here I am to serve you.
PANDOLPH. An astrologer has come here who transforms men into other people. If you want to let yourself be transformed into a friend of mine, I will leave you three years of the rent you give me of your villa.
VIGNAROLO. And if I become another person, what will I need that profit? you will do it to that, not to me.
PANDOLPH. You will not be transformed until for twenty-four hours, and then you will return as before.
VIGNAROLO. And who can assure me that you will be back as before? because by transforming me, my person is lost, I would no longer be on the calendar and there would be no sign to the world that it had been there. Ninth.
PANDOLPH. It is no worse in the world than having to deal with animals as bad as you are: "if you ask them they become proud, if you beat them they harden"; no one knows how to deal with them, you coarse breed! I will do with them as they do with dogs: that, in order to make them pleasant and that I make them in the manner of their masters, they do not feed them and they take them hungry.
VIGNAROLO. At least, if I starve, I'll die what I am; but if I transform myself, I will worship in smoke, in wind.
PANDOLPH. Whoever does not seek to improve always lives miserable and mean, and is not valid for himself or for others. Do you know what the difference is between a wise and an ignorant one?
VIGNAROLO. No.
PANDOLPH. That the wise eat well, drink better, well dressed and always go for a walk; the ignorant, always barefoot, naked and dying of hunger and thirst, and always with difficulty and fatigue: because the wise know the opportunity to do stuff, he puts himself in danger once in order not to always struggle; the ignorant do not care for the useful nor do they provide themselves. "You have little sense and not even luck": if you know how to know her, happy you! Whoever recedes his fortune is unfortunate.
VIGNAROLO. Master, neither your flattery moves me nor your threats frighten me: becoming another is a kind of dying, and with dying I am not happy. I would tumble for your sake.
PANDOLPH. Oh, let the French sickness come to you!
VIGNAROLO. I'm not afraid of it coming to me.
PANDOLPH. Because?
VIGNAROLO. It came to me a long time ago and I am in possession of it.
PANDOLPH. If you have it, that you eat yourself and spoil it insin the bones, wretched you are! because if the bread you eat knew by whom it is eaten, it cries when it is under your teeth. I told you that you will not move from what you are, that your face will only be transformed for twenty-four hours: then you will leave that face taken and you will return to your old one. Consider that you will go in a mask for a day, just as if you were sleeping and in a dream it seemed to you to be William, and when you wake up in the morning you will find that vignarolo you were before. But what the hell can happen to you for this?
VIGNAROLO. I taking away that similarity and fooling the house of
William, am I the deceiver or not?
PANDOLPH. Not you but that likeness.
VIGNAROLO. And that similarity and I'm not all one thing?
PANDOLPH. No, because you will never be William, nor will you be William; but whoever thinks you are William will be deceived.
VIGNAROLO. I thought that it was necessary to undo and resolve the flesh and the bone, and then knead myself again and throw myself into Guglielmo's forms to become him.
PANDOLPH. Not many things, no.
VIGNAROLO. Who knows, maybe I'll agree. But how will I be transformed into
William, what have I to do?
PANDOLPH. You will enter his house; and the nations will estimate that you are master, they will obey you: you will dispose of Artemisia her daughter, to be my wife.
VIGNAROLO. Isn't this a half-pimp? I will lose my honor.
PANDOLPH. Have money, because honor doesn't matter.
VIGNAROLO. A heart tells me you do it; another, no. (Vignarolo, advise yourself a little. - Listen and do as I tell you. As soon as I am transformed, I will enter his house, I will enjoy Armellina. But if I am Guglielmo, Guglielmo will enjoy that sweetness, not the vignarolo: I will have done the hunt for others. No no, I will not do it on account of anyone, I will die sooner! Not so much còlera, vignarolo, slowly! I am alone and I question myself: better advised. ; if this opportunity passes, he will never come back. From vignarolo I will become a gentleman with wife and money, and from the villa I will pass to the city: I wipe the hoe, the spade, the plow, the oxen, even the pigs and the donkey So, you will resolve yourself, vignarolo, to a beautiful occasion: when I am inside, I will promise Armellina to the vignarolo, I will stipulate the chapters, I will promise them one hundred, two hundred or three hundred ducats; and when I return, I will go with the chapters in hand to find Armellina) . I will do it, yes yes, I am resolute.
PANDOLPH. Are you steadfast?
VIGNAROLO. Very resolute; but tell me that I want you to promise me another pleasure when I am in Guglielmo's house.
PANDOLPH. And to whom do I have to show myself courteous and loving if not to you who with all obedience show you serve me, especially if through you I will attain my Artemisia? Of course I won't pay you for ingratitude or disgrace.
VIGNAROLO. When I am inside and through my work you will recover your wife, I will promise Armellina his servant to the vignarolo; but when I have returned vignarolo to you, let me observe the promise by saying that I am now in the villa.
PANDOLPH. Here I am and with the person and with the stuff to serve you and place ships and horses to keep your promise, and I will be your champion.
VIGNAROLO. Come on, I regret it: the thing cannot succeed, it remains for me.
PANDOLPH. What do you say? what brain is yours?
VIGNAROLO. Come on, I want to serve you.
PANDOLPH. And I want to give you more than dowry of my two hundred ducats.
VIGNAROLO. Come on, as things go, let's go to the astrologer, because I want to transform myself.
PANDOLPH. And he always wants me to stay three months in bed and always eat macaroni.
VIGNAROLO. If it is not enough to transform me, unform me, reform me and conform me again.
PANDOLPH. I know that the kisses that Armellina will give you will be heard for a mile.
VIGNAROLO. Oh, let us go quickly, please, because I am consumed, I am consumed and I die!
PANDOLPH. Stop! where are you going? that is not the way to wrath the astrologer.
VIGNAROLO. I'm amazed, I don't know where I'm going.
PANDOLPH. There he is. Monsignor, we are all ready.
SCENE III.
ALBUMAZZAR, PANDOLFO, VIGNAROLO, GRAMIGNA.
ALBUMAZZAR. And arrived at a good point in astrology: because if the Sun were your father, mother Venus, the sister Moon, Saturn your ancestor, Mars uncle, brother Jupiter and Mercury your consobrino, they would not have placed themselves in more chosen places in the sky to favor you and to spread their happy influences upon you, both in ascending and in the middle of heaven, all in corners, in congestions and very happy aspects of triune and sextile; and in luck, buried in weak and low-lying places.
PANDOLPH. We are well aware of your worth: that you force the heavens to do it your way. Here is the one who wants to transform.
ALBUMAZZAR. Good natured.
VIGNAROLO. My master, nothing hurts me.
ALBUMAZZAR. Give grace of this to the Maker of the sky, of the stars, celestial planetary influences, who made you man, who by the power of his intellect is penetrating his natural secrets.
PANDOLPH. I beg you that as soon as possible we can begin the work.
ALBUMAZZAR. First of all it is necessary to find an earthly room which faces the east, which is the most benign part of the sky; that has no windows to the west; ...
GRAMIGNA. (That "east" is the best place, because from that east we will remove the robbe of the house; that "west" is its opposite, because it will only give us words).
ALBUMAZZAR. ... and that he converses in everything in the north: because, according to the opinion of Zoroaster, son of Persian Oromasio, Iarca bracmane, gymnosophist Tespione, Abbari hyperborean, Hermes Trismegistus, Babylonian Buddha, and all Chaldeans and Kabbalists, the bad influences of sky come from the north, which is the back part of the sky….
GRAMIGNA. (And especially when that wind cannot be restricted and comes out on the back street, which closes between two round mountains of the sphere of the moon, with humid influences).
PANDOLPH. O most great wisdom, O most wonderful astrology!
GRAMIGNA. (With those bizarre names he filled her with fear and amazement!).
ALBUMAZZAR. … And even if the northern window opens into some deserted alley, it wouldn't be so bad.
GRAMIGNA. (He is designating the windows where we can have the stuff, but each window will be northern for him).
PANDOLPH. I will take you to my house, and you will elect the room you like.
ALBUMAZZAR. Now, declining from goethey to theurgy, pharmacy, necromancy, necromancy, notorious art and other vain and superstitious sciences, we will attach ourselves to the conjuring art that deludes and persuades the eyes, which makes one see one thing for the other….
GRAMIGNA. (Already peddling his wares, gossip and lies and carrots in fury).
ALBUMAZZAR. ... And because the Moon is that planet in the sky that transforms itself into several forms - since from the neomenia in seven days up to the dichotome, and from the dichotome in seven other days to the panselino, and in seven others from the full moon to the dichotome, and in as many to the panselino, —we will use that in our operation; ...
PANDOLPH. Oh very high things!
GRAMIGNA. (However, carrots already come in).
ALBUMAZZAR. … Because with her showing herself in various forms, she shows men of intellect that she alone can make this most marvelous metamorphosis….
PANDOLPH. Oh what very high causes!
ALBUMAZZAR. ... So that room must first be decorated with very fine white lunar drapes, and if they were of silver cloth, much better; ...
GRAMIGNA. (Those cloths will make you triumph for many days).
ALBUMAZZAR. ... the earth covered with white and thin linens; ...
GRAMIGNA. (For shirts, handkerchiefs, socks and pedals).
ALBUMAZZAR. … An altar in the middle of the room, with silver vases, basins, bowls, candlesticks and stoppers; and if there were some gold vessels it would not be bad, for the brotherhood that the Sun had with the Moon and for more honorary: ...
GRAMIGNA. (He wants them to be enough for us for many more months).
ALBUMAZZAR… because with such whiteness and purity the lunar influences lure themselves, because this device is made for the Moon….
GRAMIGNA. (Indeed for us, because they will allure us and provoke more than the Sun and the Moon).
ALBUMAZZAR. ... They still need white lunar animals for the sacrifice and for certain other ceremonies, like a milk calf but all white, but even if it had some small spots, it doesn't matter: ...
GRAMIGNA. (And even though it was all black, even though we will eat it, do not doubt).
ALBUMAZZAR. ... so some capons, pigeons and white wines to sprinkle on the fire, such as chiarelli, Grechi, Vernaccia, and the older and brighter the better, and with what greater abundance the easier it will be to succeed: that in these things " whoever spends the most spends ", and" if it is not done today it is not done in a hundred years ", because it is the maximum conjunction of planets.
GRAMIGNA. (Oh blessed be such an astrologer! For without good wines the banquet could not have been successful; and loaded with robbe and food we will leave Naples happily).
PANDOLPH. How am I going to do that I don't have so many drapes in the house or so many silvers?
ALBUMAZZAR. You can take them out on loan, as they will only be needed for four hours and can be returned to the owners immediately. And if there were some fresh and white proofs and other white fruits, they would be by the way.
GRAMIGNA. (And it takes the hairdresser again).
PANDOLPH. Everything will be done.
ALBUMAZZAR. But be aware that, after the work is done, I want the gold chain promised me as alms for my labors.
PANDOLPH. Things are too expensive.
ALBUMAZZAR. So much the sweetness of love will be more expensive, because they cost; nor do love and greed go well together.
PANDOLPH. Come on! I promise, after you have transformed the servant, give you what I promised you.
GRAMIGNA. (Hell, you sate him! I doubt too much asking won't make them lose it all).
ALBUMAZZAR. Now let's go to the election of the rooms, then give me leave to go get ready.
PANDOLPH. Let us go quickly, because «the soon is the owner of the shops.» - Vignarolo, do not leave here or say a word to a man about what you have heard, even if life goes there.
VIGNAROLO. And if you killed me I would not leave here, nor if I got my tongue out I would speak.
SCENE IV.
CRICK, VIGNAROLO.
CLIQUE. Vignarolo, what are you doing?
VIGNAROLO. Castles in the air.
CLIQUE. About what?
VIGNAROLO. The master has commanded me not to tell a man.
CLIQUE. Tell me I'm a beast.
VIGNAROLO. No no: you know that I am secreted by me; How long must it be that the master commanded me?
CLIQUE. I don't want to know if you prayed to me well.
VIGNAROLO. If I don't say it, it could be that he did a postmaking in my body and cracked me.
CLIQUE. But also….
VIGNAROLO. The astrologer wants to transform me into William: I will enter his house, I will give Artemisia to the master as wife and Armellina to the vignarolo.
CLIQUE. You said well that you build castles in the air that will end in smoke. But where are they?
VIGNAROLO. They entered the house to elect the room for the transformation.
CLIQUE. (Alas, the thing goes hot! The astrologer will certainly have the effect: the old man will have Artemisia in spite of his son and his brother Lelio! It is not a waste of time: find him and inform him of the fact, and we will repair this accident. I'll try if I can disuader this ass first). But tell me: how do you put yourself in such danger? because in the undoing of the person there is the danger of life.
VIGNAROLO. There is no danger, no.
CLIQUE. Of course? if you cut your finger you feel so much pain, what will it be when everything is undone? The master, with very great promises that he made me, could not catch me: he caught us you who are a beast.
VIGNAROLO. It comes very convenient to me.
CLIQUE. From this commodity it becomes very inconvenient: desire makes you fall, and to delight your appetites you will run into some bad luck.
VIGNAROLO. The owner recommended it to me and I want to do it.
CLIQUE. The bad with them make it bad: mostly they fall on those who make it up.
VIGNAROLO. I tie the donkey where the master wants.
CLIQUE. I doubt that this "ass" and this "ligare" are not a halter that binds you and strangles your neck; because beyond the danger of undoing, as the lump sum turns out, his son Lelio with the court will make you suffer penance.
VIGNAROLO. That Guglielmo I pair will suffer, not that vignarolo I am.
CLIQUE. (He thinks he is a donkey, but I think he is a donkey. But here they come out. I don't want them to see them together: I will go and avisarò Lelio and Eugenio completely).
SCENE V.
ALBUMAZAR, PANDOLFO, VIGNAROLO.
ALBUMAZAR. The house is very by the way. I will go to take my weapons, astrolabes, meteoroscopes, and due to azimuth and almicantarat I will prepare the necessary things. You go and take away the silverware and vestments on loan and the other things I have told you, and let it be ordered in the house for the room to be cleared and then furnished.
PANDOLPH. What you ordered will be done immediately.
ALBUMAZAR. Vo and I will fly here shortly.
PANDOLPH. Go happy! —Vignarolo, tell Sulpizia to drop down the damask decorations with those gold lace and all my silver, and to clear the room and decorate it all; and fly back.
VIGNAROLO. So I will do.
PANDOLPH. O happy me, o blessed astrologer! here I am at what I have ever desired: to possess Artemisia as a spouse. Cancaro! if life goes there. And that hour never seems to me; oh, how late is the vignarolo!
VIGNAROLO. Here I am!
PANDOLPH. Come with me to bring silver vases that I will have my friends lend me, the animals and those liquors.
VIGNAROLO. I come.
The Astrologist
by Giambattista Della Porta
The Comedies
Curated by Vincenzo Spampanato
Second Volume
1911
Translated from Google translate
https://www.classicly.com/bibi/pre.html?book=2614.epub
[L]ong before the ninth century the chronological system of the Hindus was as complete, or rather, perfectly the same as it is now; for Albumazar, who was contemporary with the famous Almamun, and lived at his court at Balac or Balkh, had made the Hindu antiquities his particular study. He was also a famous astronomer and astrologer, and had made enquiries respecting the conjunctions of the planets, the time of the creation of the world, and its duration, for astrological purposes; and he says, that the Hindus reckoned from the Flood to the Hejira 720,634,442,715 days, or 3725 years.* [See Bailly's Astron. Anc. p. 30. and Mr. Davis's Essay in the second volume of the Asiatick Researches, p. 274.]
Here is a mistake, which probably originates with the transcriber or translator, but it may be easily rectified. The first number, though somewhat corrupted, is obviously meant for the number of days from the creation to the Hejira; and the 3725 years are reckoned from the beginning of the Cali-yug to the Hejira. It was then the opinion of Albumazar, about the middle of the ninth century, that the aera of the Cali-yug coincided with that of the Flood. He had, perhaps, data which no longer exist, as well as Abul-Fazil in the time of Akbar. Indeed, I am sometimes tempted to believe, from some particular passages in the Puranas, which are related in the true historical style, that the Hindus have destroyed, or at least designedly consigned to oblivion, all genuine records, as militating against their favourite system. In this manner the Romans destroyed the books of Numa, and consigned to oblivion the historical books of the Etrurians, and I suspect also those of the Turdktani in Spain....
Megasthenes was a native of Persia, and enjoyed the confidence of Sibyrtius* [Arrian, B. 5., p. 203.], governor of Arachosia, (now the country of Candahar and Gazni,) on the part of Seleucus. Sibyrtius sent him frequently on the embassies to Sandrocuptos. When Seleucus nvaded India, Megasthenes enjoyed also the confidence of that monarch, who sent him, in the character of ambassador, to the court of the king of Prachi. We may safely conclude, that Megasthenes was a man of no ordinary abilities, and as he spent the greatest part of his life in India, either at Candahar or in the more interior parts of it; and, as from his public character, he must have been daily conversing with the most distinguished persons in India, I conceive, that if the Hindus, of that day, had laid claim to so high an antiquity, as those of the present, he certainly would have been acquainted with their pretensions, as well as with those of the Egyptians and Chaldaeans; but, on the contrary, he was astonished to find a singular conformity between the Hebrews and them in the notions about the beginning of things, that is to say, of ancient history. At the same time, I believe, that the Hindus, at that early period, and, perhaps, long before, had contrived various astronomical periods and cycles, though they had not then thought of framing a civil history, adapted to them. Astrology may have led them to suppose so important and momentous an event as the creation must have been connected with particular conjunctions of the heavenly bodies; nor have the learned in Europe been entirely free from such notions. Having once laid down this position, they did not know where to stop; but the whole was conducted in a most clumsy manner, and their new chronology abounds with the most gross absurdities; of this, they themselves are conscious, for, though willing to give me general ideas of their chronology, they absolutely forsook me, when they perceived my drift in a stricter investigation of the subject.
The loss of Megathenes' works is much to be lamented. From the few scattered fragments, preserved by the ancients, we learn that the history of the Hindus did not go back above 5042 years. The MSS. differ; in some we read 6042 years; in others 5042 and three months, to the invasion of India by Alexander. Megasthenes certainly made very particular enquiries, since he noticed even the months. Which is the true reading, I cannot pretend to determine; however, I inclined believe, it is 5042, because it agrees best with the number of years assigned by Albumazar, as cited by Mr. Bailly, from the creation to the flood. This famous astronomer, whom I mentioned before, had derived his ideas about the time of the creation and of the flood, from the learned Hindus he had consulted; and He assigns 2226 years, between what the Hindus call the last renovation of the world, and the flood. This account from Megasthenes and Albumazar, agrees remarkably well with the computation of the Septuagint. I have adopted that of the Samaritan Pentateuch, as more conformable to such particulars as I have found in the puranas; I must confess, however, that some particular circumstances, if admitted, seem to agree best with the computations of the Septuagint: besides, it is very probable, that the Hindus, as well as ourselves, had various computations of the times we are speaking of.
-- On the Chronology of the Hindus, by Captain Francis Wilford, Asiatic Researches, Vol. V, P. 241, 1799
Albumazar, also spelled Albumasar, orAbū Maʿshar, (born Aug. 10, 787, Balkh, Khorāsān [now in Afghanistan]—died March 9, 886, al-Wāsit, Iraq), leading astrologer of the Muslim world, who is known primarily for his theory that the world, created when the seven planets were in conjunction in the first degree of Aries, will come to an end at a like conjunction in the last degree of Pisces.
Albumazar’s reputation as an astrologer was immense, both among his contemporaries and in later times. He was the archetype of the knavish astrologer in the play Lo astrologo (1606) by the Italian philosopher and scientist Giambattista della Porta. This play was the basis for Albumazar by Thomas Tomkis, which was revived by the English poet John Dryden in 1668. Albumazar’s principal works include Kitāb al-Madkhal al-Kabīr ʿalā ʿilm aḥkām al-nujūm (“Great Introduction to the Science of Astrology”), Kitāb al-qirānāt (“Book of Conjunctions”), and Kitāb taḥāwīl sinī al-ʿālam (“Book of Revolutions of the World-Years”).
-- Albumazar, by Britannica
INTERLOCUTORS
ALBUMAZAR astrologer
RONCA |
HARPOON | smart
GRAMIGNA |
PANDOLPH |
GUGLIELMO | old
CLAW servant
Vignarolo
EUGENIO son of Pandolfo |
LELIO son of William | Young people
ARTEMISIA daughter of Guglielmo |
SULPIZIA daughter of Pandolfo | young
BEVILONA courtesan
ARMELLINA servant.
The scene where the tale is represented is Naples.
ACT 1
SCENE I.
ALBUMAZAR astrologer, RONCA, HARPIO, GRAMIGNA smart.
ALBUMAZAR. O my dear comrades and comrades Ronca, Arpione and Gramigna, who in this most noble exercise of the busca, that is, to make his own what belongs to others, so admirably and so bravely have brought you with me - you, Ronca, purring; you, Harpoon, harpizing; and you, Gramigna, spreading your roots for everything and grinding what you grasp; - and like the new Solons - who by day attended to public affairs and by night wrote the laws of Athens - you virtuously spending the hours, the day undermining purses and falsifying coins, writings, trials and polize at the counter, and at night hunting down hoods and iron workers, making sentries in the streets to attack the doors of buildings and batteries to shops - which are our seven liberal arts : —As men of the most subtle wit and most valiant warriors who have always returned home triumphant and laden with hostile spoils and enemy trophies, and have achieved very great honors.
RONCA. And I have enjoyed some of the honors, that I was made king of Carthage, with the crown on his head surrounding the city on horseback, with reputation with the sound of trumpets, with the joy of the children and with the joy and competition of all the people, not missing those who chased the flies off my shoulders.
HARPOON. And I have been governor of it three times of Galilee, and with a scepter of forty palms in my hand I have administered justice to those peoples.
GRAMIGNA. Nor do I miss you: I would have been made king of Picardy, for playing he desired money and three clubs came to me, but Rubasco, our companion, in order to show himself a more valiant man than me, wanted to prevent me and took them from my hand.
RONCA. And like horses of good breed we carry the signs behind us, with bills and licenses expedited to the glory of our mestier.
ALBUMAZAR. And with the doctrine that I have taught you, you have made such happy progress in the art, how not to give credit to the words of others but always have an eye on your hands, do not wait for what is promised, do not have faith or keep faith or to give faith to the faiths of others, to have lies more ready than the tears of women, to always keep their warehouses set up under the tongue; because these are the condiments of our art and the merchandise that keep our warehouse open, reminding you that commodity is the mother of the thievery.
RONCA. Truly we confess, with such important and glorious memories we are not unworthy disciples of such a teacher; and as a sign, in the court of the thievery we have never had a sentence against.
ALBUMAZAR. Now from so honored principles - if the signs of physiognomy do not lie that you see in your decorated faces, like men of the first compass, - I have firm intention that you should ascend to higher degrees and make greater leaps and my backs to the greatest in the world, where I hope to see you will soon arrive as our works deserve.
RONCA. And we pray the heavens that you will be apart from our honors; and we confess that you praise and wish well beyond our merit, nor can we find such worthy words to thank you for the good cheer and good doctrine we have learned from you.
ALBUMAZAR. Just as it is great iniquity to keep silent about merit, so it is greater envy to restrict it with short turns of words. But I did not use this prologue with you to inanimate you in the enterprise, because I know that you need more restraint than spur; but to warn you that we are in Naples, a city full of thieves and crafty ones, and if they are born in other places, they rain there: but you have to stay in your brain more than usual.
GRAMIGNA. If all the people were birri, bargelli, villains, and the whole city were prisons, galleys, sedans and gallows, we will make it to score; and after our game there will remain a seminary of our peers.
ALBUMAZAR. He expected no other response from your generous minds, for I already see trophies and triumphs carved in your foreheads; nor will I be cheated of the great hopes of you. I am about to propose a party to you.
RONCA. Here I earn?
ALBUMAZAR. On the other hand I don't get tired.
RONCA. Here we are ready, or crazier and more beasts than ever!
ALBUMAZAR. As soon as I arrived here in Naples, I was requested by a certain Pandolfo, an old man rich in money and household furniture, who is in love; because if age dulls his brain, love takes it away from him in everything. And what matters is that he gives credence to astrology and necromancy: what more can be said? for if he were a Solomon, giving credit to this nonsense would be enough to make him the greatest beast in the world. Aim as far as human curiosity reaches or to put it better asinity! Now I, by making an astrologer who participates a little in the necromancer, who pinches the alchemist and the miller, with the help of my dear companions, I hope to leave memorable signs of our practice in his house, nor do I doubt the point of success.
RONCA. Those money and tapestries will be very acute incitements to us to be more right and more shrewd and more solicitous than ever.
ALBUMAZAR. Already from your thieves hints, crafty acts and mute zerghi I know the thought that ravages in the heart: be careful of my predictions and make them come true. Tell me what you mean; for, once we have acquired that we have the cupboard with him, we will make them a clearer and shinier house than a mirror.
RONCA. Wait to do your part well, because with us you will see effects that will advance your estimate.
ALBUMAZAR. Here he comes. Harpoon, move away, listen to what he says and tell me; Gramigna, hold up the door and see some miracle of mine narrated to him, because I will enter.
SCENE II.
OLD PANDOLPH, SERVANT CLAW, GRAMIGNA.
PANDOLPH. Clique, I want to make you aware of one of my secrets: and if your roguery, which you have used against me up to now, you will use it to give me satisfaction, you will take possession of your master and you will know me more loving than ever; for never before has such an opportunity occurred to me.
CLIQUE. What is the need for so many proems? it seems as if you now got to know me.
PANDOLPH. And because I've known you for a long time, that's why I used a lot of preface.
CLIQUE. For whom do you know me?
PANDOLPH. For a great man! If I were not a great scoundrel and if I had my tail behind, I would be a devil to a man, because you want to do more for my son Eugenio than for me.
CLIQUE. And if you have me in such esteem, donque not trust me, because I cannot be other than what I am.
PANDOLPH. You could wanting, it is in your being able to be; and therefore I said to you: "If you are so prudent and wise as you are a scoundrel, and you do for me what you try to do for my son, you will have other reward from me now, which you do not expect in time from my son." agreement with me and you will follow my desire, good for you; because if I realize that you do me yours, woe to you.
CLIQUE. Here I am as rascal as you say, to obey you and take every risk for your sake.
PANDOLPH. But because I doubt that this is in my favor as you become a good man, I want you to swear to me first.
CLIQUE. I swear to….
PANDOLPH. You don't know what to swear by, and you say: "I swear to."
CLIQUE. I swear everything you want and don't want.
PANDOLPH. Since you are so hasty to swear, you will be more willing not to observe.
CLIQUE. If I should well beg you not to trust me, despite the desire I have to serve you, I beg you to trust me.
PANDOLPH. Know, my dear Clique, that among the failings of my old age the greatest is love….
CLIQUE. What a mood of melancholy or madness!
PANDOLPH. Don't interrupt me: I know what you mean is that I'm seventy years old.
CLIQUE. This I wanted to tell you.
PANDOLPH. If I am old, I am cut with a good moon, and wood cut with a good moon lasts a long time strong and does not cause worms: "The old wine is better than the new", "Old hen makes good broth", "Old lard good soup".
CLIQUE. The fact is that you have neither lard nor wood nor wine nor hen.
PANDOLPH. Don't you know that proverb: "Sad that house where there is no old man"?
CLIQUE. Yes, for advice, but not for a husband. You will spoil your stomach.
PANDOLPH. I am of good complexion.
CLIQUE. You have to be of good brain; if not, you will make the death of the cricket dying on the hole.
PANDOLPH. The purse will make the old young look like the woman: I will give her double money.
CLIQUE. It is true that you will not pay for it except for duplicates.
PANDOLPH. The sickness that comes to you! I would like you to lighten me and not aggravate my troubles. So I told you at the beginning that you've always had a donkey.
CLIQUE. If I have had an ass in advising you, from now on I will have a wise man in keeping silent. To the masters it must be said that his vices and failings are virtues, if you want to hope useful; for doing the opposite is very dangerous. I would like you to take advantage of those advice with which you recommend your friends.
PANDOLPH. "There was always a great abundance of councilors and a famine of aids." I would like you more soon to excuse me than to take back: I want help and I do not advise. If you want to advise me, kill me and stop it soon: it is as possible to leave this whim as much as myself. In sum Artemisia….
CLIQUE. Artemisia? just grass for your teeth!
PANDOLPH. "On horseback, old tender grass."
CLIQUE. Well, you confess that you are a horse. What do you want woman? that there is a pimp?
PANDOLPH. I know that you could not do much more than be asked to pimp; but I want you as a helper.
CLIQUE. Say on.
PANDOLPH. You know that we agreed together with William, I give him Sulpizia my daughter as his wife, and he to me his daughter Artemisia, asking me to get married for two months, until he went and returned to Barbary….
CLIQUE. And couldn't he go to and from the barbershop in an hour?
PANDOLPH. How do you go to Africa in one hour?
CLIQUE. I thought the barbershop about having his beard shaved.
PANDOLPH. ... Now I was spending this time as best I could with the hope of his return, when here in the most beautiful of hopes comes new that is submerged in the sirti. How much pain I felt I leave it to you to consider.
CLIQUE. Follow.
PANDOLPH. Not being able to bear it any longer, I made her son Lelio ask for it, who made me answer that in his house they did not delight in antiques but modern ones, and many other insulting words. Neither love has grown cold to me because of so many injuries, nor can I stop loving it; but now an opportunity presents itself to me to achieve my desire in spite of Lelio….
CLIQUE. The opportunity I would have dear to understand.
PANDOLPH. … A certain Indian Todesco from beyond has arrived in Naples
Trabizond, from the end of the world, an admirable astrologer and necromancer; ...
CLIQUE. As a necromancer wants to acquire a name, he pretends to be from distant countries, as in ours there were no such beasts.
PANDOLPH. … And it is called meteoroscopic Albumazzaro….
CLIQUE. The name alone would be enough to make it appear without trial!
PANDOLPH. … As it is only in science, it is so only in name. First, I want to guess whether William is dead or alive. If he is dead, let him resurrect him for a day, until my marriage ends, and then let him return to die; ...
CLIQUE. And do you believe these lies?
PANDOLPH. I believe you, archcredo, overflowing.
CLIQUE. Don't you know that necromancy is the refreshment of those poor who find themselves in some overwhelming desire?
PANDOLPH. Overo that he transformed some person into William….
CLIQUE. That doesn't turn you into a beast!
PANDOLPH. … And that that would make my wedding. But of what I have told you, you do not need to publish it and banish it, because you would ruin my drawings, and then play with us scrognons without discretion and extraordinary blows: and you can already put them in the receipt book.
CLIQUE. I promise you to operate in all the little I can.
PANDOLPH. And I still miss a little, as long as I don't want to betray me. Now let's go to his house.
CLIQUE. The hour is late: it will be better to go there tomorrow.
PANDOLPH. The «tomorrow», the «I will» and the «I will go» are children of nothingness: we must go now.
CLIQUE. Now the old are resting.
PANDOLPH. The lover never rests.
CLIQUE. Find out who he is first, because maybe it will be some scammer.
PANDOLPH. Look not to say, because he means what is said about him and will make us go into visibleum.
CLIQUE. Who?
PANDOLPH. The astrologer.
CLIQUE. And what, are the astrologers Orlandi?
GRAMIGNA. (Harpoon, go home and tell Albumazzaro what you have heard, for I will remain at the door).
CLIQUE. Now let's go where you want.
PANDOLPH. Here is the house: ask him.
CLIQUE. He seems to me from Fuligno.
PANDOLPH. What does "fuligno" mean?
CLIQUE. "Worthy of a rope and a wood"!
SCENE III.
GRAMIGNA, PANDOLFO, CRACK.
GRAMIGNA. What are you asking?
PANDOLPH. Sète at home?
GRAMIGNA. I am servant of the divine astrologer.
CLIQUE. The astrologer will have drunk well, since he is made of wine.
GRAMIGNA. "Divine", that is, he knows about the stars, the heavens and celestial things, and why he guesses.
PANDOLPH. Will we be able to speak to your fortune teller?
GRAMIGNA. He has returned exhausted from the chase of spirits and intelligence, and has brought more than a hundred full jugs; and now he stands with quadrants, astrolabes and meteoroscopes and other instruments, observing the conjunction of the planets.
CLIQUE. So the planets join in the sky and impregnate themselves? and what do they give birth?
GRAMIGNA. Good influences when they are male, bad when they are female.
CLIQUE. What flows: of blood or cacaiole?
PANDOLPH. It says "influences" and not "flows", you beast! Will we have an audience after the observation?
GRAMIGNA. He will sit at the table to eat and drink.
PANDOLPH. What will you drink? what will you eat this morning?
GRAMIGNA. A Venus allessa and a roasted Mercury.
PANDOLPH. Why Venus first and then Mercury?
GRAMIGNA. He is a man beyond the natural.
CLIQUE. Beware that there is no other heat than sun.
PANDOLPH. Eating what do you drink?
GRAMIGNA. Liqueur of planets, dews of fixed stars, distillations of destinies, essential wings of fates, gravy of the heavens.
PANDOLPH. How do you collect them? how do you drink them?
GRAMIGNA. At night, when he is contemplating the sky, his great beard rains down on them, and he sucks and drinks them; the surplus is kept, for when it is thirsty, in certain large casks circled with zodiacs, equinoctial coluri and horizons; others in certain mid-barrel casks circled in the tropical and summer tropics; and others in certain barrels encircled by Arctic and Antarctic circles.
CLIQUE. What country is this your planet-eater and cacafow from?
GRAMIGNA. From a village of Lamagna called Leccardia.
PANDOLPH. Does he know when the luna nova strikes?
GRAMIGNA. Tonight will be the nova moon.
CLIQUE. What nova? what old? it is the same one that was made with the world.
PANDOLPH. How much do we have this year of golden number?
CLIQUE. Neither golden nor silver number can ever be found in my purse.
PANDOLPH. Young man, if mine is not unkind to ask, tell me some of his miracles.
GRAMIGNA. I will say wonderful things of amazement.
CLIQUE. As long as we see them.
GRAMIGNA. Bind women with a charm ...
CLIQUE. And I know how to bind them with a sound without a song.
GRAMIGNA. ... who follow you wherever you want: ...
CLIQUE. I tie a rope around her neck and drag them.
GRAMIGNA. ... I say with two words that says them inside the ears.
CLIQUE. I know certain words, one more powerful than the other, that if they don't effect the first, they do it to the second, and if not, to the third; which is very powerful. The first time I adjure them for ten ducats; if they refuse, per cent; and even if reluctant, for a thousand: and with this third conjuration I make the mountains trot, not that the women.
GRAMIGNA. He binds a man that he cannot use with his wife.
CLIQUE. I still tie him with a rope that he will not use with his wife or with others.
GRAMIGNA. It immediately gives birth to a man's head more horns than a deer.
CLIQUE. Every married woman knows how to do it.
GRAMIGNA. He makes men beasts, donkeys and beaks, and women cows and sows.
CLIQUE. They become us without his art every day.
GRAMIGNA. He makes infallible predictions.
CLIQUE. Always predicts badly for you to guess.
GRAMIGNA. It makes a water that plunging into man falls in love more.
CLIQUE. Each water has this effect, drowning in it.
GRAMIGNA. It makes you throw yourself from a prominent place without danger of breaking your legs.
CLIQUE. The executioner knows how to do it better than him: he throws him off the gallows without danger of his legs.
PANDOLPH. These are enough. I die if I don't see it: Clique, knock the door.
CLIQUE. I beat. Tic knock.
SCENE IV.
ALBUMAZAR, CRACK, PANDOLPH, GRAMIGNA.
ALBUMAZAR. Who the hell beats?
CLIQUE. You bring some in flesh and blood! He had to ward off now and was waiting for the devils, because he asks: "Who the devil is beating?" It's Farfarello.
GRAMIGNA. You have beaten too hard, because astrologers are lunatic.
PANDOLPH. Why "lunatic"?
GRAMIGNA. They always contemplate and talk to the moon.
ALBUMAZAR. I didn't go down sooner because he was speaking with a mercurial intelligence.
PANDOLPH. I leave the hands of your Strologheria, my dear master.
ALBUMAZAR. Well live est laetari! you have come early, in the best minute, in a very good second, in a very happy third, fourth and fifth, in nomine planetarum, stellarum, signorum et omnium caeli caelorum!
PANDOLPH. The stupendous fame of your valor calls us: we have come to receive a favor from you, and I beg you from that great man that you do not miss me, and I will have a singular obligation.
ALBUMAZAR. Here I am ready for charity.
CLIQUE. As long as it's not hairy!
ALBUMAZAR. You wish to know of a certain William whether dead or alive, who promised you Artemisia his daughter as a bride, and you Sulpizia to him in exchange, and then went to Barbary.
PANDOLPH. You took it off the tip of my tongue. But what reasons do I see now?
ALBUMAZAR. He already surmounted in the axes and poles of the celestial hinges and raved among the eccentrics, concentric and epicycles: he was looking for some happy points for you, ...
CLIQUE. Indeed for you, and are of skewers and pontiroli!
ALBUMAZAR. ... and if the sun had entered the sign of Cancer: ...
CLIQUE. The canchero and the fistula you eat!
PANDOLPH. You get the crab, Clique! it says "Cancer" and not "canchero".
CLIQUE. You and the canchero take the crab!
ALBUMAZAR. ... he is dead, very dead, because the directory beam is now in the sixth house, ...
CLIQUE. He says that you have to make a break behind your head, because you purge your bad moods.
ALBUMAZAR. ... and in the places of death his aphelion is day, ...
CLIQUE. Poor fellow! says he's dead and fete!
ALBUMAZAR. … And passes from the summer tropic to the embal….
CLIQUE. It is wrinkled and the boot hurts them!
ALBUMAZAR. … And the moon is already waning and is going to Capricorn.
CLIQUE. Beware, master, your wife! when the dull moon is horned and goes to capricorn, horns threaten you: you will be a cornucopia.
ALBUMAZAR. You are mad and present; and if you do not amend, I will make you repent of your madness and prosecution!
PANDOLPH. Shut up, beast! those words are Arabic and Turkish.
CLIQUE. Astrologer, what am I talking about?
ALBUMAZAR. I have seen a thousand appicates in my life, but I have not seen the worst and most betrayed physiognomy and ciera of yours; and if you were a little higher from the ground, I would say that you have already been attached. But if I remember correctly, the other day I saw someone fucking around the city: either you are it or he is you.
CLIQUE. If I have bad wax on the outside, I have good honey inside.
ALBUMAZAR. Wax to make candles: you will be able to prolong the gallows but you will not escape!
PANDOLPH. Yes good.
ALBUMAZAR. Ring the death bell.
PANDOLPH. He is not dead yet.
ALBUMAZAR. He will be killed shortly and his heart will have passed through a thousand points. And so you will know if I am a good or a bad astrologer; and when you have escaped it, then you mock me and the very powerful art of astrology.
PANDOLPH. Dear master, do not look at him who is half a fool, and yet he has taken this confidence with you. I beg you for its value that you do not aim at this madness; and make up for it if you can.
SCENE V.
RONCA, HARPION, CRACK, PANDOLPH, ALBUMAZAR.
RONCA. Ah, traitor, stop, where are you going?
HARPOON. Will I be so murdered by you?
CLIQUE. Ah, please, Mr. Albumazzaro!
ALBUMAZAR. Didn't I tell you?
RONCA. I will never leave you if I do not pass the heart of a thousand stings.
HARPOON. In the middle of the road, by day, murder so great!
RONCA. You will not escape my hands alive.
HARPOON. To me this, huh?
CLIQUE. Mercy mercy!
RONCA. Flee as much as you want, because we will reach you, you traitor.
CLIQUE. Oh oh!
PANDOLPH. Clique, what do you have that scream so loud?
CLIQUE. I'm dead, don't give me anymore, I'm already dead!
PANDOLPH. How did you die if you talk?
CLIQUE. We are close to dying, we have a little spirit left.
PANDOLPH. What do you have?
CLIQUE. I am pierced by more than a thousand points of daggers and swords: please, send for a surgeon!
PANDOLPH. Don't be afraid, no.
CLIQUE. Can't you see that I have more holes in my body than a sieve? the blood, guts, liver, lungs and heart are all outside.
PANDOLPH. Get up, you are healthy.
CLIQUE. How healthy if I have more than a hundred thousand wounds?
PANDOLPH. Where are the wounds, where are the holes? I still touch you all and there is nothing.
CLIQUE. I'm all a wound, a whole hole, everything you touch is a wound or hole, but you won't find anything.
PANDOLPH. I neither touch nor see a sore.
CLIQUE. Little by little, please, do not touch because you hurt me, do not let me die in advance.
PANDOLPH. I say you have no harm.
CLIQUE. If I get well I will never be a man again.
ALBUMAZAR. You are alive for me. Now arise, when that evil influence has passed, and woe to you if I had not remedied. Now go and mock the art of astrology!
CLIQUE. Call me a doctor to treat me.
ALBUMAZAR. I tell you that you are fine: get up.
CLIQUE. If it seems that he is doing well on the outside, on the inside I am all dead, oh oh!
PANDOLPH. Clique, you have no harm.
CLIQUE. Even though he talks and moves, I still can't believe he's alive.
My astrologer, I ask your forgiveness.
ALBUMAZAR. Learn to mock astrologers!
PANDOLPH. Let's follow, Mr. Albumazzaro.
ALBUMAZAR. And because the moon, as we said, passes from Capricorn into Aquarius and Pisces, your William died in the water and the fish ate him.
PANDOLPH. Now I would like….
ALBUMAZAR. I know better guess your heart than you yourself don't know. Would you like me to raise him up, and come back to his house and wait for the promise, and then come back to die?
PANDOLPH. This is my wish.
ALBUMAZAR. "Sed de privatione ad habitum non datur regressus": that is, with the breath of the stars and planets to raise a man from the ashes, oh what an effort, oh what manufacture! We need a planetary intelligence of the big ones, which are annoying and fantastic, like that of Jupiter and the Sun; and these sorts of spirits serve you as much as they are paid well: and if I want to be well served I must pay better, without the many difficulties that this undertaking brings with it.
PANDOLPH. As long as I am satisfied with my desire, I will not look at any expense.
ALBUMAZAR. We will do the same effect with the conjuring art. We will tower a low-handed intelligence, which requires little expense, and with the help of that we will make a servant or friend of yours take the form of William, and we will falsify only the semblant, that we do not know how to discern whether the true is false or the false true.
PANDOLPH. I beseech you, strain, my archprayer, my most necromantic astrologer, or my very most necromancer astrologer, that you take warm and loving protection from me; and as a reward I will give you this gold chain around my neck, which is worth five hundred scudi.
ALBUMAZAR. I will not let them do everything to help you.
PANDOLPH. I recommend my body and soul to you!
ALBUMAZAR. But stop, because while I am reasoning with you I have seen certain lines in the forehead, and it seems to me that all the stars are conspiring to harm you and are angry and angry against you….
PANDOLPH. Oh what are you saying! I am dead! Are you astonished?
ALBUMAZAR. … And because the lines are so colorful that they appear sanguine, the effect will soon be: a large stone will fall on your head, which will strip away all your flesh and bones and go off in the wind.
PANDOLPH. Blood shit! this is nothing but love: the heart beats so hard that it seems to be a drum. Astrologer, me vobis commendo.
ALBUMAZAR. Have patience: this is the rule of that planet of which you are prey.
PANDOLPH. Mercy, have mercy on me!
ALBUMAZAR. Know that the stars and planets are always warring with each other and making friendships and enmities, and if they were at peace for a moment, the world would fall apart. And how will we be able to oppose heaven that does not dispose of worldly things?
PANDOLPH. You with your wisdom….
ALBUMAZAR. Well Dixists, because the very wise Egyptian Ptolemy said: "Sapiens dominabitur astris." - Gramigna, drop down that hat and talars of Mercury, made under the bridge of Mercury ascending in his sign.
PANDOLPH. I will not leave everything today from your feet.
ALBUMAZAR. Here it is, place it on your head, and hold this martial image in your hand, imprinted when he happily ascended the horizon in the sign of Aries in March, on Tuesday, at the hour before Mars, which will make you free from all evil.
PANDOLPH. I gladly accept the grace you give me.
ALBUMAZAR. Come on, go, have the man you want to transform and return to me, for I will make you satisfied with your every desire.
PANDOLPH. So we do.
ALBUMAZAR. In the meantime, with my iscioteric instrument by way of azimuth and almicantarat, I will look for happy bridges for you.
PANDOLPH. Remain in peace!
ALBUMAZAR. Go: may the stars be propitious to you and fill your house with benign, propitious and fortunate influences!
SCENE VI.
PANDOLPH, CRACK.
PANDOLPH. Clique, in short, astrology is a great art: it aims how immediately in seeing me he guessed what was in my heart, and how he understood what you said a little while before and you mocked him and did not want to believe him. Here you have suffered penance, and sad you if I did not pray to him for your life.
CLIQUE. He did not really think he was a true astrologer: he thought he was some kind of rascal, as there are so many who pride themselves on being astrologers and deceive the vile plebs.
PANDOLPH. Blessed are you who have come out of danger, because it seems to me that from hour to hour the world falls on my head! For everything today I will not question. If anyone says to me: "You are a rascal," I will say: "I am a rogue and a half." What does that word matter? you have to live and make your own business.
CLIQUE. Go home soon.
PANDOLPH. I wish I had a bell on my head to be safer. Oh oh, I'm dead!
CLIQUE. O poor master, for several days you will not have pedochi in your head, because all will be beaten or fled for fear!
PANDOLPH. I doubt my brain didn't jump a mile out of my head.
CLIQUE. Even if it seems so to you, I hope it will be nothing if the same intervened to me.
PANDOLPH. Alas! that I don't make sure to get up.
CLIQUE. Arise, for the concealment made up of bridges of stars has defended you.
PANDOLPH. It seems to me that he has no harm, O archdoctor salamonissimo. His predictions have so inanimate me that I am assured of everything he promises me.
CLIQUE. Here we go.
ACT II
SCENE I.
VIGNAROLO, ARMELLINA servant.
VIGNAROLO. (Maladetto Love and that whore who shit him! Before he knew no other thought than to stay at the villa; and after I fell in love beastly, it seems to me that in the villa it is always winter, and spring to flee to the city to be with the my Armellina. I am resolved to tell you of my love and ask for it, because you have to say a few words to the women, then let the devil who always works do it. cheer up and say hello). I greet you a hundred thousand thousand times, Your Most Illustrious Lordship, Your Highness, Your Majesty.
ARMELLINA. Oh, how many titles! vignarolo.
VIGNAROLO. Aren't you my lady, my queen and my imperadora?
ARMELLINA. What are you bringing me, vignarolo?
VIGNAROLO. Answer the greeting first, then ask me what I'm wearing.
ARMELLINA. Answer me first: if you say that I am your imperadora, I can command you.
VIGNAROLO. I bring the present, half to the patron and half to you; and if you like it all, take it all.
ARMELLINA. Listen to me.
VIGNAROLO. Stop for a while, because I came from the villa on purpose to see you ...
ARMELLINA. Didn't you see me?
VIGNAROLO. … And talk to you again.
ARMELLINA. Didn't you talk to me?
VIGNAROLO. Let me speak.
ARMELLINA. What are you doing?
VIGNAROLO. I also reason, but I would like….
ARMELLINA. What would you like?
VIGNAROLO. Yes yes, do you know what I would like? that you loved me.
ARMELLINA. I don't like you bad for me.
VIGNAROLO. I know well that you do not love me: even if you do not love me.
ARMELLINA. So what would you like me to do?
VIGNAROLO. Take me for husband.
ARMELLINA. I am poor, I have no dowry to give you.
VIGNAROLO. The grandeur of your customs and your nature is enough for me.
ARMELLINA. I do not want anyone to take me: I want to stay as I am.
VIGNAROLO. If you want to stay as you are, you will become saved.
ARMELLINA. As?
VIGNAROLO. The vine as it stands alone falls to the ground and becomes savory: the woman is the vine, the man is the stake; if he does not have the pole where he rests, he is ill.
ARMELLINA. May you be impaled by the Turks!
VIGNAROLO. Ah, traitor, why do you curse me?
ARMELLINA. Prank it like that with you.
VIGNAROLO. And I take it from duty. I love no one in the world but you. All day I cry and torment myself, and for whom, ah? for you, she-wolf, bitch who eats my heart; and I could stay without loving you as much as make a donkey fly. If you want to be my wife, from the first day I make you a woman and a lady of all my clothes, I will put them in your hand so that you can handle them in your own way. Blessed are you, if you do it my way!
ARMELLINA. I want you to do it my way.
VIGNAROLO. Make yourself, if not mine, your way: everything comes back into one, as long as you don't stay outside. But I would like a grace from heaven.
ARMELLINA. And I another.
VIGNAROLO. What would you like?
ARMELLINA. What do you want?
VIGNAROLO. I would say it, but I'm afraid you will frown.
ARMELLINA. I am not angry: say it.
VIGNAROLO. Give me faith.
ARMELLINA. Here she is.
VIGNAROLO. Oh what a plump and plump hand!
ARMELLINA. Tell me, what would you like?
VIGNAROLO. I wish I was that piston I track in your mortar.
ARMELLINA. And I would like you to lick the mortar when I made the sauce. But I want to leave.
VIGNAROLO. The calf has left.
SCENE II.
PANDOLFO, VIGNAROLO.
PANDOLPH. (That rascal of Cricca is so afraid of those stab wounds that he does not want to be transformed into Guglielmo on account of no one: I have thought of the vignarolo, but I have no one to call him for).
VIGNAROLO. Master, good morning!
PANDOLPH. O vignarolo, who never reached the best time!
VIGNAROLO. "Like a lean horse with fresh grass."
PANDOLPH. I need you so much that I haven't had as much in my life; and if you want to serve me, you will be mine and I will be your fortune.
VIGNAROLO. Here I am to serve you.
PANDOLPH. An astrologer has come here who transforms men into other people. If you want to let yourself be transformed into a friend of mine, I will leave you three years of the rent you give me of your villa.
VIGNAROLO. And if I become another person, what will I need that profit? you will do it to that, not to me.
PANDOLPH. You will not be transformed until for twenty-four hours, and then you will return as before.
VIGNAROLO. And who can assure me that you will be back as before? because by transforming me, my person is lost, I would no longer be on the calendar and there would be no sign to the world that it had been there. Ninth.
PANDOLPH. It is no worse in the world than having to deal with animals as bad as you are: "if you ask them they become proud, if you beat them they harden"; no one knows how to deal with them, you coarse breed! I will do with them as they do with dogs: that, in order to make them pleasant and that I make them in the manner of their masters, they do not feed them and they take them hungry.
VIGNAROLO. At least, if I starve, I'll die what I am; but if I transform myself, I will worship in smoke, in wind.
PANDOLPH. Whoever does not seek to improve always lives miserable and mean, and is not valid for himself or for others. Do you know what the difference is between a wise and an ignorant one?
VIGNAROLO. No.
PANDOLPH. That the wise eat well, drink better, well dressed and always go for a walk; the ignorant, always barefoot, naked and dying of hunger and thirst, and always with difficulty and fatigue: because the wise know the opportunity to do stuff, he puts himself in danger once in order not to always struggle; the ignorant do not care for the useful nor do they provide themselves. "You have little sense and not even luck": if you know how to know her, happy you! Whoever recedes his fortune is unfortunate.
VIGNAROLO. Master, neither your flattery moves me nor your threats frighten me: becoming another is a kind of dying, and with dying I am not happy. I would tumble for your sake.
PANDOLPH. Oh, let the French sickness come to you!
VIGNAROLO. I'm not afraid of it coming to me.
PANDOLPH. Because?
VIGNAROLO. It came to me a long time ago and I am in possession of it.
PANDOLPH. If you have it, that you eat yourself and spoil it insin the bones, wretched you are! because if the bread you eat knew by whom it is eaten, it cries when it is under your teeth. I told you that you will not move from what you are, that your face will only be transformed for twenty-four hours: then you will leave that face taken and you will return to your old one. Consider that you will go in a mask for a day, just as if you were sleeping and in a dream it seemed to you to be William, and when you wake up in the morning you will find that vignarolo you were before. But what the hell can happen to you for this?
VIGNAROLO. I taking away that similarity and fooling the house of
William, am I the deceiver or not?
PANDOLPH. Not you but that likeness.
VIGNAROLO. And that similarity and I'm not all one thing?
PANDOLPH. No, because you will never be William, nor will you be William; but whoever thinks you are William will be deceived.
VIGNAROLO. I thought that it was necessary to undo and resolve the flesh and the bone, and then knead myself again and throw myself into Guglielmo's forms to become him.
PANDOLPH. Not many things, no.
VIGNAROLO. Who knows, maybe I'll agree. But how will I be transformed into
William, what have I to do?
PANDOLPH. You will enter his house; and the nations will estimate that you are master, they will obey you: you will dispose of Artemisia her daughter, to be my wife.
VIGNAROLO. Isn't this a half-pimp? I will lose my honor.
PANDOLPH. Have money, because honor doesn't matter.
VIGNAROLO. A heart tells me you do it; another, no. (Vignarolo, advise yourself a little. - Listen and do as I tell you. As soon as I am transformed, I will enter his house, I will enjoy Armellina. But if I am Guglielmo, Guglielmo will enjoy that sweetness, not the vignarolo: I will have done the hunt for others. No no, I will not do it on account of anyone, I will die sooner! Not so much còlera, vignarolo, slowly! I am alone and I question myself: better advised. ; if this opportunity passes, he will never come back. From vignarolo I will become a gentleman with wife and money, and from the villa I will pass to the city: I wipe the hoe, the spade, the plow, the oxen, even the pigs and the donkey So, you will resolve yourself, vignarolo, to a beautiful occasion: when I am inside, I will promise Armellina to the vignarolo, I will stipulate the chapters, I will promise them one hundred, two hundred or three hundred ducats; and when I return, I will go with the chapters in hand to find Armellina) . I will do it, yes yes, I am resolute.
PANDOLPH. Are you steadfast?
VIGNAROLO. Very resolute; but tell me that I want you to promise me another pleasure when I am in Guglielmo's house.
PANDOLPH. And to whom do I have to show myself courteous and loving if not to you who with all obedience show you serve me, especially if through you I will attain my Artemisia? Of course I won't pay you for ingratitude or disgrace.
VIGNAROLO. When I am inside and through my work you will recover your wife, I will promise Armellina his servant to the vignarolo; but when I have returned vignarolo to you, let me observe the promise by saying that I am now in the villa.
PANDOLPH. Here I am and with the person and with the stuff to serve you and place ships and horses to keep your promise, and I will be your champion.
VIGNAROLO. Come on, I regret it: the thing cannot succeed, it remains for me.
PANDOLPH. What do you say? what brain is yours?
VIGNAROLO. Come on, I want to serve you.
PANDOLPH. And I want to give you more than dowry of my two hundred ducats.
VIGNAROLO. Come on, as things go, let's go to the astrologer, because I want to transform myself.
PANDOLPH. And he always wants me to stay three months in bed and always eat macaroni.
VIGNAROLO. If it is not enough to transform me, unform me, reform me and conform me again.
PANDOLPH. I know that the kisses that Armellina will give you will be heard for a mile.
VIGNAROLO. Oh, let us go quickly, please, because I am consumed, I am consumed and I die!
PANDOLPH. Stop! where are you going? that is not the way to wrath the astrologer.
VIGNAROLO. I'm amazed, I don't know where I'm going.
PANDOLPH. There he is. Monsignor, we are all ready.
SCENE III.
ALBUMAZZAR, PANDOLFO, VIGNAROLO, GRAMIGNA.
ALBUMAZZAR. And arrived at a good point in astrology: because if the Sun were your father, mother Venus, the sister Moon, Saturn your ancestor, Mars uncle, brother Jupiter and Mercury your consobrino, they would not have placed themselves in more chosen places in the sky to favor you and to spread their happy influences upon you, both in ascending and in the middle of heaven, all in corners, in congestions and very happy aspects of triune and sextile; and in luck, buried in weak and low-lying places.
PANDOLPH. We are well aware of your worth: that you force the heavens to do it your way. Here is the one who wants to transform.
ALBUMAZZAR. Good natured.
VIGNAROLO. My master, nothing hurts me.
ALBUMAZZAR. Give grace of this to the Maker of the sky, of the stars, celestial planetary influences, who made you man, who by the power of his intellect is penetrating his natural secrets.
PANDOLPH. I beg you that as soon as possible we can begin the work.
ALBUMAZZAR. First of all it is necessary to find an earthly room which faces the east, which is the most benign part of the sky; that has no windows to the west; ...
GRAMIGNA. (That "east" is the best place, because from that east we will remove the robbe of the house; that "west" is its opposite, because it will only give us words).
ALBUMAZZAR. ... and that he converses in everything in the north: because, according to the opinion of Zoroaster, son of Persian Oromasio, Iarca bracmane, gymnosophist Tespione, Abbari hyperborean, Hermes Trismegistus, Babylonian Buddha, and all Chaldeans and Kabbalists, the bad influences of sky come from the north, which is the back part of the sky….
GRAMIGNA. (And especially when that wind cannot be restricted and comes out on the back street, which closes between two round mountains of the sphere of the moon, with humid influences).
PANDOLPH. O most great wisdom, O most wonderful astrology!
GRAMIGNA. (With those bizarre names he filled her with fear and amazement!).
ALBUMAZZAR. … And even if the northern window opens into some deserted alley, it wouldn't be so bad.
GRAMIGNA. (He is designating the windows where we can have the stuff, but each window will be northern for him).
PANDOLPH. I will take you to my house, and you will elect the room you like.
ALBUMAZZAR. Now, declining from goethey to theurgy, pharmacy, necromancy, necromancy, notorious art and other vain and superstitious sciences, we will attach ourselves to the conjuring art that deludes and persuades the eyes, which makes one see one thing for the other….
GRAMIGNA. (Already peddling his wares, gossip and lies and carrots in fury).
ALBUMAZZAR. ... And because the Moon is that planet in the sky that transforms itself into several forms - since from the neomenia in seven days up to the dichotome, and from the dichotome in seven other days to the panselino, and in seven others from the full moon to the dichotome, and in as many to the panselino, —we will use that in our operation; ...
PANDOLPH. Oh very high things!
GRAMIGNA. (However, carrots already come in).
ALBUMAZZAR. … Because with her showing herself in various forms, she shows men of intellect that she alone can make this most marvelous metamorphosis….
PANDOLPH. Oh what very high causes!
ALBUMAZZAR. ... So that room must first be decorated with very fine white lunar drapes, and if they were of silver cloth, much better; ...
GRAMIGNA. (Those cloths will make you triumph for many days).
ALBUMAZZAR. ... the earth covered with white and thin linens; ...
GRAMIGNA. (For shirts, handkerchiefs, socks and pedals).
ALBUMAZZAR. … An altar in the middle of the room, with silver vases, basins, bowls, candlesticks and stoppers; and if there were some gold vessels it would not be bad, for the brotherhood that the Sun had with the Moon and for more honorary: ...
GRAMIGNA. (He wants them to be enough for us for many more months).
ALBUMAZZAR… because with such whiteness and purity the lunar influences lure themselves, because this device is made for the Moon….
GRAMIGNA. (Indeed for us, because they will allure us and provoke more than the Sun and the Moon).
ALBUMAZZAR. ... They still need white lunar animals for the sacrifice and for certain other ceremonies, like a milk calf but all white, but even if it had some small spots, it doesn't matter: ...
GRAMIGNA. (And even though it was all black, even though we will eat it, do not doubt).
ALBUMAZZAR. ... so some capons, pigeons and white wines to sprinkle on the fire, such as chiarelli, Grechi, Vernaccia, and the older and brighter the better, and with what greater abundance the easier it will be to succeed: that in these things " whoever spends the most spends ", and" if it is not done today it is not done in a hundred years ", because it is the maximum conjunction of planets.
GRAMIGNA. (Oh blessed be such an astrologer! For without good wines the banquet could not have been successful; and loaded with robbe and food we will leave Naples happily).
PANDOLPH. How am I going to do that I don't have so many drapes in the house or so many silvers?
ALBUMAZZAR. You can take them out on loan, as they will only be needed for four hours and can be returned to the owners immediately. And if there were some fresh and white proofs and other white fruits, they would be by the way.
GRAMIGNA. (And it takes the hairdresser again).
PANDOLPH. Everything will be done.
ALBUMAZZAR. But be aware that, after the work is done, I want the gold chain promised me as alms for my labors.
PANDOLPH. Things are too expensive.
ALBUMAZZAR. So much the sweetness of love will be more expensive, because they cost; nor do love and greed go well together.
PANDOLPH. Come on! I promise, after you have transformed the servant, give you what I promised you.
GRAMIGNA. (Hell, you sate him! I doubt too much asking won't make them lose it all).
ALBUMAZZAR. Now let's go to the election of the rooms, then give me leave to go get ready.
PANDOLPH. Let us go quickly, because «the soon is the owner of the shops.» - Vignarolo, do not leave here or say a word to a man about what you have heard, even if life goes there.
VIGNAROLO. And if you killed me I would not leave here, nor if I got my tongue out I would speak.
SCENE IV.
CRICK, VIGNAROLO.
CLIQUE. Vignarolo, what are you doing?
VIGNAROLO. Castles in the air.
CLIQUE. About what?
VIGNAROLO. The master has commanded me not to tell a man.
CLIQUE. Tell me I'm a beast.
VIGNAROLO. No no: you know that I am secreted by me; How long must it be that the master commanded me?
CLIQUE. I don't want to know if you prayed to me well.
VIGNAROLO. If I don't say it, it could be that he did a postmaking in my body and cracked me.
CLIQUE. But also….
VIGNAROLO. The astrologer wants to transform me into William: I will enter his house, I will give Artemisia to the master as wife and Armellina to the vignarolo.
CLIQUE. You said well that you build castles in the air that will end in smoke. But where are they?
VIGNAROLO. They entered the house to elect the room for the transformation.
CLIQUE. (Alas, the thing goes hot! The astrologer will certainly have the effect: the old man will have Artemisia in spite of his son and his brother Lelio! It is not a waste of time: find him and inform him of the fact, and we will repair this accident. I'll try if I can disuader this ass first). But tell me: how do you put yourself in such danger? because in the undoing of the person there is the danger of life.
VIGNAROLO. There is no danger, no.
CLIQUE. Of course? if you cut your finger you feel so much pain, what will it be when everything is undone? The master, with very great promises that he made me, could not catch me: he caught us you who are a beast.
VIGNAROLO. It comes very convenient to me.
CLIQUE. From this commodity it becomes very inconvenient: desire makes you fall, and to delight your appetites you will run into some bad luck.
VIGNAROLO. The owner recommended it to me and I want to do it.
CLIQUE. The bad with them make it bad: mostly they fall on those who make it up.
VIGNAROLO. I tie the donkey where the master wants.
CLIQUE. I doubt that this "ass" and this "ligare" are not a halter that binds you and strangles your neck; because beyond the danger of undoing, as the lump sum turns out, his son Lelio with the court will make you suffer penance.
VIGNAROLO. That Guglielmo I pair will suffer, not that vignarolo I am.
CLIQUE. (He thinks he is a donkey, but I think he is a donkey. But here they come out. I don't want them to see them together: I will go and avisarò Lelio and Eugenio completely).
SCENE V.
ALBUMAZAR, PANDOLFO, VIGNAROLO.
ALBUMAZAR. The house is very by the way. I will go to take my weapons, astrolabes, meteoroscopes, and due to azimuth and almicantarat I will prepare the necessary things. You go and take away the silverware and vestments on loan and the other things I have told you, and let it be ordered in the house for the room to be cleared and then furnished.
PANDOLPH. What you ordered will be done immediately.
ALBUMAZAR. Vo and I will fly here shortly.
PANDOLPH. Go happy! —Vignarolo, tell Sulpizia to drop down the damask decorations with those gold lace and all my silver, and to clear the room and decorate it all; and fly back.
VIGNAROLO. So I will do.
PANDOLPH. O happy me, o blessed astrologer! here I am at what I have ever desired: to possess Artemisia as a spouse. Cancaro! if life goes there. And that hour never seems to me; oh, how late is the vignarolo!
VIGNAROLO. Here I am!
PANDOLPH. Come with me to bring silver vases that I will have my friends lend me, the animals and those liquors.
VIGNAROLO. I come.
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Re: Albumazar, by John Tomkis
by admin » Wed Jan 05, 2022 1:20 am
Part 2 of 3
SCENE VI.
EUGENIO, LELIO young, CRICCA servant.
EUGENIO. These are also the great wonders that you tell about them, and I am not enough to believe them.
LELIO. Who is this who works so great wonders?
CLIQUE. A newly printed astrologer, who with his astrologeries astrologers all men.
LELIO. What does astrology have to do with transforming one man into another?
CLIQUE. What do I know? I couldn't tell you so much that he didn't stay there anymore to tell you about it.
LELIO. What do You know?
CLIQUE. I saw it with these eyes.
LELIO. The eyes sometimes see things that never were.
EUGENIO. And you want us to believe that you have seen it?
CLIQUE. If I haven't seen it with my own eyes, let me never see again!
EUGENIO. He wants us to see the moon in the well.
LELIO. Shall we, dear Eugene, be so little in matters that our fathers in such inconvenient things would like to know more than we do? and that we want to leave the brides without wanting to help us? Let us wake up ourselves: even those who drown, strive their arms and legs so as not to allow themselves to die; however, in this storm of love we shake our hands with our feet so as not to leave ourselves worse than to die and so as not to have to suffer from our negligence and not having done what humanly can do.
EUGENIO. I do not think it is greater misery than where we are, since father and son, all aim at a sign; nor can I imagine myself as for so many reprimands that you have given them, although he does not stop asking you for it.
LELIO. Every hour, every moment from different friends and relatives makes me talk, always with new proposals or new offers; nor can I give him so many repulsions as he offers himself with more advantageous parties. I did not want to insult him with more harsh words and unsuitable ways so as not to disconcert our business.
EUGENIO. And is it possible that we do not have a friend, a relative who makes us aware of this love of hers, that an eighty-five-year-old man wants a girl of ten seven years old for his wife?
LELIO. It is not for lack of friends or relatives; but no one wants to get entangled or interposed between fathers and children.
EUGENIO. Wouldn't that be a good clique, whom he trusts so much and listens to his advice?
LELIO. He should be given a safe conduct for his back: because he is so mad in this madness of his that, as soon as he enters to dissuade him, he goes into anger and plays with sticks, so that his desires must be seconded and promised to help him; but he got it all at once.
EUGENIO. But I am so murdered by fate that I would like to be cruel against myself; and if he were other than my father, with my hands I would tower him before me.
LELIO. Shall we therefore despair? we must remedy with some remedy.
EUGENIO. Clique, we hope in you: teach us that we are your disciples.
CLIQUE. We must not hope for anything other than luck, which usually finds a way to relieve man in his greatest troubles when one does not even think, and lowers those who are more secure.
EUGENIO. Clique, can you bear that the best pearl falls into the mouth of the saddest pig?
LELIO. O fatigue, o scattered footsteps, and then scattered so bitterly!
EUGENIO. What do you say? what do you think? speak a little.
CLIQUE. Here we need not think much or talk much: the very thing brings us a remedy; and if I am opposed to the master, forgive me, for it seems to me out of servitude to leave to serve young people who have to live longer, to serve old people who have to die shortly.
EUGENIO. Get me out of such great danger.
CLIQUE. It would be really great danger if we were not alerted; but knowing everything, the danger ceases.
EUGENIO. And how?
CLIQUE. When William is seen coming into the house with humble and compassionate words, saying that he has escaped the shipwreck and has come home, away, chase him away, and not wanting to leave, what a stick!
LELIO. It would not be better to take it and keep it in good custody; and how did he return to his form, place him in the hand of justice and have him punished?
CLIQUE. No, because the master would estimate that the eagle had come out of me, and I would bring the penance that he already promised me this morning. Not many advice: ask those of the house who, wanting William to enter the house, chase him away as soon as possible.
LELIO. So it will be done: I will go home to inform everyone of the fact; you leave, because you are not seen with us and they enter into suspicion.
EUGENIO. So do it.
LELIO. Mr. Eugenio, please.
EUGENIO. Signor Lelio, your servant.
SCENE VII.
EUGENIUS, CRACK, ARTEMISY.
EUGENIO. Clique, recommend me to my Artemisia.
CLIQUE. Recommend it yourself. Did you not realize that while you were reasoning with your brother, that he dreamed of you from the window?
EUGENIO. I see discovering my sun: and like the sun rising in the morning, the world comes to lighten and make itself beautiful, which was before it dark and full of horror; so appearing you, my clearest sun, the darkness and bitterness of my heart all become illustrious, and fills my heart with sweetness.
ARTEMISIA. Be the well-found, spirit of my soul!
EUGENIO. Welcome, sweetest support of my life! It seems to me that you are unwilling.
ARTEMISIA. And still desperate, since in a long time I do not see any spark of light with which you enliven the hope of being yours.
EUGENIO. Madam, despair is a betrayal of oneself; however, do not cry if you love me, because with your tears you consume my life, which, if you do not dry them quickly, will soon make me faint.
ARTEMISIA. Deh! let me cry and die again, because he is not a person so desperate that he has no hope of hoping, except I, who have nothing but hope except in death as the only remedy for my ills.
EUGENIO. Ah, madam, having always known you with a high heart, great strength and excellent mind, how do you allow yourselves to be so overcome by pain?
ARTEMISIA. On the contrary, if you love me, you must cry with me, because when two lovers cry their common misfortunes it is an outlet for their passions.
EUGENIO. But why do you grieve so much?
ARTEMISIA. At first I'm afraid you don't love me.
EUGENIO. Ah, proud star, and how can such a bad thought fall in you if you know for sure that I love you rightly and our love is mutual? And if you could open your chest you would see a temple in whose altar my heart always burns in sacrifice before the idol of your beauty, which is such that it amazes not only the world but the very nature that created you, then adorned. of so many means of honors and costumes, which compete with beauty and the titles of magnificence have already been acquired. Your merits are such that they deserve another man who is not me; but because I know only your merits, for the great love that I bring them, it seems to me that I may deserve them.
ARTEMISIA. If so, why do I see so much tepidity in you in soliciting my wedding? You agree with my brother Lelio. Don't you see that delay could cause you some trouble?
EUGENIO. Don't you consider, madam, that I have a competing father in my love? and if I see myself in so many difficulties and respect for my father, even Amor does not allow me to change my will. The father tries to deprive me of what is owed to me out of love; I pray and reprove your brother, and I doubt for too much importance to be troubling them: we have suffered a lot, we suffer a little more. It is not a valiant thing to want the crown and the triumph before I have fought: we suffer, because Love will crown us with our suffering.
ARTEMISIA. My father does not want to give me to wife if he does not obtain Sulpizia from you: he wants to buy your sister's love with my ransom and wants me to be the price of his desires. He wants to make use of me for the medicine of his illness, of me who am sick and I need medicine for myself in my illness; and me, miserable! I can do nothing but bitterly cry, sigh and consume myself.
EUGENIO. Give yourselves peace, because perhaps Love will console you.
ARTEMISIA. That "maybe" is a meager hope. More it seems that from hour to hour I see my father William appear, who is not dead and who wants me to marry Pandolfo: and this night I dreamed of returning safe and sound from the shipwreck, of what I have got so scared that it won't be good for me for a year. But please hurry up and drive me out of so much anguish.
EUGENIO. It is not necessary, madam, to have the téma of dreams, which arise in us from those effects which we greatly fear and desire. If dreams were successful, I would be happy: how many times have I dreamed with you and failed? I would rather my dreams succeed than your dreams.
ARTEMISIA. Dear master, I doubt my father will not come. God knows with what heart I leave you! I kiss your hands; and because I can't kiss your hands, I'm looking for you a favor.
EUGENIO. Here I am very ready to serve you.
ARTEMISIA. Give me your gloves; for by kissing them it will seem to me to kiss your hands, and by dressing my hands you ask me to hold your hands tight.
EUGENIO. Here they are; and give me yours as a reward, so that I may feel that same sweetness as yours, which you say I hear from mine.
ARTEMISIA. Here they are: and please Heaven that as we exchanged gloves, so we exchanged hearts, that as mine is made his, so his be made mine.
CLIQUE. Let's finish it, Signor Eugenio, let's go away.
EUGENIO. Ouch, what a hard departure!
SCENE VIII.
ARTEMISIA, SULPIZIA young.
ARTEMISIA. Mrs Sulpizia, I kiss your hands.
SULPICE. O Signora Artemisia, forgive me, for I hadn't seen you.
ARTEMISIA. Are you perhaps in a state of trouble in your soul, since you do not see the people who stand before you?
SULPICE. It really is as you say; and I esteem that the same troubles that trouble you also trouble me: that both afflict the same evil.
ARTEMISIA. Miserable me, what sorrow did I ever do to my father, that deserves that I give me that old and rotting dead man of your father for a husband? Is this the prize of the obedience that I have brought them so many years? But the people should not be surprised when they hear that we poor things are taking some escapes, because our fathers are the cause.
SULPICE. Of course these old people go further in age so much they don't even see their brains: too much living makes them dazed and they don't know what they are doing. The condition of us poor women is wretched and unhappy; and it is rightly said in that house where a female is born! Indeed our mothers should, when we are born, drown us, being born into the world for a portrait of all human disasters. Since we are born we have always been confined within four walls as in continuous prisons, under the severe laws and rigid threats of fathers, mothers, brothers and relatives, and especially when we are in love; because where men, conversing with people, convey those lively thoughts that make them always vigilant in loves, it is up to us to bury them in their hearts, nor less to let them out with a minimum sigh, which I don't know how we don't burst out of pain.
ARTEMISIA. And the worst is that, wanting to marry, they want to give us a husband to their taste, or for their particular interests to give us as a husband one, with whom we have to live until death, against our will, saying that having clothed us with these members it is strength that we are ubiquitous. It is sad if we answer one word to the contrary! we are the presumptuous, cheeky and with a head full of crickets! And so, since the husband is not at our will, we must always be in discord wills and in a perpetual war; and yet they shouldn't grieve, if we take off one as we like, we take off one as we like.
SULPICE. What law is this of having founded honor in the actions of us poor women? where men, in order to be wiser and of greater strength to resist their appetites, vent their amorous passions, always find new amusements with different women, committing adultery and rapes in their own way; and if we petty ones are aware of any mention or embassy, immediately: "Kill, kill, kill; swords, daggers, knives! - What a bad law this is!
ARTEMISIA. Eh, sister, men have made these laws in their own way; if it were up to us, we made it to ours. But we are very unhappy for now: without reminding us of our misfortunes, we think about something else. Please tell me if you ever talk to your brother about me.
SULPICE. Always of you.
ARTEMISIA. What does it say about this fact?
SULPICE. He blasphemes his cruel fate, the mad moods of his father, and is consumed in lamentations, in sorrows. But Lelio, when you talk to them about me, who answers?
ARTEMISIA. Tears and sighs; and I well believe that if Amor does not help him in this extreme point, that his days will be short.
SULPICE. Please recommend me to him.
ARTEMISIA. And I beg you to do the same with me to yours.
ACT III.
SCENE I.
PANDOLPH, CRACK.
PANDOLPH. Now while the astrologer is transforming the vignarolo, Cricca, I want to tell you my thoughts.
CLIQUE. Of you.
PANDOLPH. My heart is not enough to give the astrologer the gold chain I promised him.
CLIQUE. Those who have promised wait.
PANDOLPH. I confess that I was too voluntary, and I regret it.
CLIQUE. I was amazed that, being so stingy, you have to give five hundred scudi once.
PANDOLPH. If I am stingy, I am stingy so as to be able to be liberal when necessary; for those who are always liberal have nothing to do with the last. But the desire to possess Artemisia would have made me give my life, not that the stuff.
CLIQUE. There is a thought on my mind how with your honor you can deny it.
PANDOLPH. I doubt you don't mean how much we talk now.
CLIQUE. What do we lose in tempting him? if he succeeds, we will earn five hundred scudi.
PANDOLPH. Say up quickly.
CLIQUE. When he comes out to inform us that the vignarolo is transformed, I will keep him reasoning with me; you go into the room and hide some silver vessels, and then you come out choleric and angry, shouting that the silver has been taken away. He will say it is not true, we will say yes; in the end, after much conflict, you will say that you will not give him the chain if he does not return the vases to you, threatening him again to accuse him at the court.
PANDOLPH. What if the deception is discovered?
CLIQUE. We will put the blame on the winemaker who has good shoulders.
PANDOLPH. I do not mind your thought and I am willing to follow it.
CLIQUE. But the point is and the importance of the shop in knowing how to pretend choleric, anger and disgust, and shout loud and terrible.
PANDOLPH. Leave it to me to pretend, and if I don't do it naturally, my damage, five hundred ducats. Blood shit! I will let the screams go out from my heels; but you must help me to agree.
CLIQUE. I will not fail: in your hands is the gain and loss of five hundred ducats if you can pretend well.
PANDOLPH. No more, because he does not understand how much we reason. But here it comes out.
SCENE II.
ALBUMAZAR, PANDOLFO, CRACK.
ALBUMAZAR. Pandolfo, here, soon you will have transformed the vignarolo.
CLIQUE. Is it not then completely transformed?
ALBUMAZAR. The whole body is already transformed, but only one foot and hands are missing.
CLIQUE. Tell me, Mr. astrologer, how long will the vignarolo last in the figure of William?
ALBUMAZAR. For a natural day.
CLIQUE. And are there also the days against nature?
ALBUMAZAR. The natural day if you mean twenty-four hours.
CLIQUE. And that against nature?
ALBUMAZAR. When the sun comes towards us before us and the days are great, they are natural; when they go back and are short, they go against nature.
PANDOLPH. Alas, alas, alas!
CLIQUE. Oh what a great cry!
PANDOLPH. At such a great blow have I no reason to give such a great cry?
CLIQUE. What have you got, master?
PANDOLPH. Alas, I am dead, I am completely ruined!
CLIQUE. And how? (The principle is fine). What are you sorry about?
PANDOLPH. The room is completely free of vestments and silver!
CLIQUE. (Well, very well! You pretend a lot of the natural).
PANDOLPH. Canchero, which I do not pretend, I say from duty: the whole room has been cleared of me!
CLIQUE. (Shout louder for you to be better heard).
PANDOLPH. I couldn't scream as much as I need to: he stole what he had and didn't have!
CLIQUE. (Ha, ha, ha! I can't hold laughter as well as pretend!).
PANDOLPH. I have been stolen from mine and that of others!
CLIQUE. (Make an effort to shout).
PANDOLPH. I have no more voice, hell! and I miss the voice, the breath and the soul.
CLIQUE. (Ah, ah, ah, who doesn't laugh?).
PANDOLPH. With this laugh of yours, my anger grows: the room has remained clearer than a mirror!
CLIQUE. (And you say out of wits?).
PANDOLPH. From damn sense! the window to the east is open and broken, and I doubt that the robbe has been raised from there.
CLIQUE. (This was that "east" so inimical to you: the door from the west was yours that you placed the robbe on, and the east door took the robbe away from you).
ALBUMAZAR. Pandolfo, what have you got that shout so loudly?
PANDOLPH. All the equipment has been removed from the room!
ALBUMAZAR. Hope well.
PANDOLPH. How can I hope for good, seeing bad?
ALBUMAZAR. I handed over the silver cloths and vases to the winemaker, I closed them in that other nearby room so that they are well looked after. Stop here, because soon you will see him appear out here transformed into William and he will give you everything back.
PANDOLPH. Now what shall we do in the meantime?
ALBUMAZAR. We will go for a walk for half an hour; then come back, open the room and you will find your vignarolo transformed into everything; and then I'll come for the promise for the chain.
PANDOLPH. So we will do.
SCENE III.
ALBUMAZAR, RONCA, GRAMIGNA, HARPIO.
ALBUMAZAR. Ronchilio, Gramigna, Harpoon, come out here.
RONCA. Here we are, what do you want?
ALBUMAZAR. We have already achieved what we desired: there is little left to accomplish. You, Ronchilio, wait here for the winemaker who comes out of his room, pretend to be William's friend, give him these ten ducats saying that you should give him, to make him believe more that he is Guglielmo.
RONCA. And do you want me to lose the ten ducats?
ALBUMAZAR. Which? what a donkey! You, Harpoon, take them off with that counterfeit arm. You, Gramigna, find Bevilona, that cunning whore: pretending to be a gentlewoman in love with Guglielmo; you call him to eat and to sunbathe with her; and this to make him believe that it is that William. And keep him happy and keep him for two hours.
RONCA. Why two hours?
ALBUMAZAR. Between these two hours you, Gramigna, take the robbe to the pier, take a frigate and load it with all the robbe. Then, go to Cerriglio and have these animals prepared well and these precious liqueurs; take the Bevilona to the tavern, because, after having raised the flasks well, we can enjoy the triumph of our cunning. Then, at night, let's embark for Rome with all the loot.
RONCA. Where are you going?
ALBUMAZAR. To shear another sheep that wants to fix the quicksilver with herbal sauces: it will increase the number of jokers and our booty.
GRAMIGNA. So we will do.
ALBUMAZAR. Use adulterous beards, poultices and other languages, that you are not known for those same. But while I am waiting for the common profit of another gain, that you ate without me and stole my share, since you are shameless thieves, without law and without faith, that you would robb yourself when you had no one else to rob.
GRAMIGNA. Would it be new perhaps? didn't you teach us?
ALBUMAZAR. With your measure you measure all the others: "the thing will go from gypsy to Jew".
GRAMIGNA. Do now as I knew you now. Come on, let's go.
SCENE IV.
VIGNAROLO, RONCA.
VIGNAROLO. (Oh beautiful thing to be transformed into another! I thought it was transformed between flesh and skin; but now as I am so transformed in my face I still feel transformed in my brain. I have nothing left of vignarolo but the appetite and being in love with Armellina. I am sure that no one will know me, since I myself no longer know myself. Oh what a marvelous thing! I would like to go to William's house to serve the master; but it seems that I am not assured).
RONCA. Oh, Mr. William, you are welcome back a thousand times!
How long has it been since you arrived in Naples?
VIGNAROLO. You are well found! Now from the trip.
RONCA. We already mourned you for dead.
VIGNAROLO. I am safe and at your command.
RONCA. Do you remember your lordship, when you lent me ten ducats, that the birri took me to prison?
VIGNAROLO. Mister yes, mister yes, I remember.
RONCA. When I came to your house to return them, the news of your shipwreck came to you: and not being able to return them to you, it was necessary to keep them on his return. But since you are back safe and sound, here they are, for I doubt you need them.
VIGNAROLO. How, that I will need it!
RONCA. I thank you for your kindness; I recommend it to you.
VIGNAROLO. Oh blessed be that point at which I transformed myself into William, because, having never in my life been able to mate a pug when he was a vignarolo, now, being William, I earned ten ducats at one point!
SCENE V.
HARPIO, VIGNAROLO.
HARPOON. I have seen you disembark from the ship just now, Signor Guglielmo, of which I am so happy that I cannot contain myself not to embrace and kiss you.
VIGNAROLO. And with the same effect I kiss you very lovingly. But what is your name?
HARPOON. Don't you remember Harpoon who was so dear to you?
VIGNAROLO. Yes well, now I remember, my dear Harpoon.
HARPOON. I thank the good fortune of the sea that gave it the grace to see us again.
VIGNAROLO. How are you?
HARPOON. If you have become a doctor, you ask me how he is? However it may be, I am always at your command. Forgive me, I cannot contain myself that I do not embrace you and kiss you again, and I feel so much joy that I have no language to express it.
VIGNAROLO. (While he hugged me I felt my bag shake. He felt his hands and arms around my neck: if someone from behind did not take it away from me, I would not know who he was. But there is no other here).
HARPOON. Did you suffer great discomfort on the journey, dear William?
VIGNAROLO. Many, my dearest Harpoon. (I also see his hands out, and yet I feel my purse being removed).
HARPOON. Come on, I recommend you. See you again, thank you for your liberality.
VIGNAROLO. And I kiss your hands. (I didn't give them anything and he says he thanks my liberality!). Alas alas, my bag! alas, my money, sir Harpoon!
HARPOON. Here I am, what do you want?
VIGNAROLO. Show me your hand.
HARPOON. Here she is.
VIGNAROLO. Where is the other one?
HARPOON. Here she is.
VIGNAROLO. Where is the other one?
HARPOON. What do you want me to have a hundred hands?
VIGNAROLO. Which is the right?
HARPOON. Here is the right.
VIGNAROLO. The left?
HARPOON. Here is the left.
VIGNAROLO. Where are the two hands?
HARPOON. How many times do you want to see them? perhaps the dangers of travel make you fernetic?
VIGNAROLO. Oh, stop! o thief, o bag cutter, o Harpoon, really Harpoon, because like a harpoon you have harpooned! Oh how he disappeared! But how could he have thus been able to stretch out his limbs and twist his arms, like the bagatellieri who make people see and dot? or maybe he took it off me with his feet? Now I know that I am a donkey: didn't he say that his name was Harpoon and that he wanted to snatch my purse? Why let me arpizarla? Of course, I must be the vignarolo and not Guglielmo!
HARPOON. Mr. Guglielmo, what have you got?
VIGNAROLO. A scammer stole a bag with ten ducats from me.
HARPOON. I am sorry I cannot help you for my misfortune!
VIGNAROLO. Indeed for my, for me alone!
HARPOON. How was it done?
VIGNAROLO. With a thief just like yours; but he kept a poultice to his eyes like those placed on corncobs. May the Cancaro eat such a race of men!
HARPOON. I recommend to you.
SCENE VI.
BEVILONA courtesan, VIGNAROLO.
BEVILONA. O life, or contentment, or half of my soul! Mr. Guglielmo, welcome back a thousand times!
VIGNAROLO. With whom are you reasoning, beautiful young man?
BEVILONA. With the master of my person, of my life, of all my good!
VIGNAROLO. What have I to do with you?
BEVILONA. What you like to do; and if you command me to do you a little pleasure, I will give you a lot of it.
VIGNAROLO. (This must be some merchant who keeps an open warehouse of her wares. She is some in love with Guglielmo: since I resemble Guglielmo, she takes me as an exchange. I want to go in with her: what can I lose? made a mistake to say that he did not know her: I will amend it as I can). My lady, I wanted to joke with you a little, to see if you had denied me for my departure.
BEVILONA. Do I deny myself about you, who after your departure remained more alive in my soul than there was itself? nor, as news of your death, could one of those sparks which lit up by the hand of Love in my breast ever be extinguished?
VIGNAROLO. And for your sake I have been really troubled with fantasy. I am now in Naples, and before he went to my house, he had gone to yours. Donque, do you have a husband?
BEVILONA. And you don't know? that good friend of yours.
VIGNAROLO. Yes, yes, I know him well; what if he comes back in the meantime?
BEVILONA. How are you so respectful? I have never seen you so warm as now. Come in.
VIGNAROLO. I will follow you. (O happy William, how happy you were; and o happy me, enjoying it in his stead! The world is no more pleasure than becoming another).
SCENE VII.
GRAMIGNA, BEVILONA, VIGNAROLO.
GRAMIGNA. (The vignarolo must already be on kisses: I want to spoil him and taste a little of his business). Tic knock.
BEVILONA. Olá, who beats?
GRAMIGNA. Don Giovanni Termosiglia Caravaschal of Seville!
VIGNAROLO. (Oh how many people!).
BEVILONA. (He is none other than my husband. Oh he came in a bad way!).
VIGNAROLO. (He named many people).
BEVILONA. (It has not as many names as it has devils in its body: oh wretched me! Mr. Guglielmo, try to save yourselves, jump for that window).
VIGNAROLO. (Open the back door of the garden for me, it will be dearer to me).
BEVILONA. (It cannot be opened, because it carries the keys).
VIGNAROLO. (What have I donque to do to escape out?).
BEVILONA. (Jump for that window).
VIGNAROLO. (God forbid! It's too high: do you want me to break my leg?).
BEVILONA. (A leg more or less does not matter).
GRAMIGNA. Mujer, why did you die so much?
BEVILONA. Now, my husband.
VIGNAROLO. (Evvi any other way to escape?).
BEVILONA. (Nothing else, mean me!).
VIGNAROLO. Por cierto que must be some in love, pues que non abre soon.
BEVILONA. (I can't delay any longer: we have to open it. There is a barrel vòta, which in my own way I can put and put away the bottom).
GRAMIGNA. If I don't abreis presto, enviaré esta puerta per tierra.
BEVILONA. The rope of the latch is broken: drop down to open it.
(Soon, dear William!).
VIGNAROLO. (Fo what I can!).
GRAMIGNA. (He must have already entered the barrel: we will keep him at least for two hours so that he does not go home, and we will have a good time about his business). It comes now. ¿Mujer, que haceis?
BEVILONA. Here it is open; what a hurry, husband? don't want to give me time to go down?
GRAMIGNA. Tengo pressa porque I mercado an onza de vino: es menester ora limpiarla donde es da ponerse, because it will be here just now. Piglia, Bevilona, from outside.
BEVILONA. Let us do this for today: we will do it tomorrow.
GRAMIGNA. Es menester hacerlo now.
BEVILONA. I don't have the strength to bring her out here.
GRAMIGNA. Yo te ayudaré - abre the door; non es menester so much fuerza, here it is desclavada. Quiero limpiarla.
BEVILONA. You go for the wine, because I will wash it.
GRAMIGNA. Yo la limpiaré, because now it will be here the wine. It draws aquí agua bulliente to clear it up.
BEVILONA. Where is the hot water now to wash it?
GRAMIGNA. Toma what is in the fuego to limpiar los pez.
BEVILONA. I can not now, because I am stracca.
GRAMIGNA. If yo tomaré a stake, I'll give you fifty.
VIGNAROLO. (Miserable me, what will I do? Will I burn everything?).
GRAMIGNA. Eres una mujer muy soberbia, non quere alzar algo sin palos.
BEVILONA. Here is the water.
GRAMIGNA. Ponla por este aguiero, from here, deja hacer á mi.
BEVILONA. Done.
GRAMIGNA. Tomais vos de una parte, yo de la otra, y menealla a little.
BEVILONA. No more no more, because I can't!
GRAMIGNA. Bien sta, now the quiero send to the navy.
SCENE VIII.
RONCA, GRAMIGNA, VIGNAROLO.
RONCA. What do you want from me, missere?
GRAMIGNA. Che me traes esta curba to the marina.
RONCA. I'll take it wherever you want, as long as you pay me.
GRAMIGNA. Back to medium real.
RONCA. I don't want a pug, if you want me to carry it on your head; but if you give me less, I'll take it rolling to your side.
GRAMIGNA. Traela como quieres.
RONCA. I'll carry it rolling.
GRAMIGNA. Camina, because I will sell atrás.
VIGNAROLO. (Oh poor vignarolo, how much better it was for you to stay at the villa in your form than to want to transform yourself into something else!).
ACT IV.
SCENE I.
GUGLIELMO old, alone.
GUGLIELMO. Here, with heaven's favor, from such a cruel shipwreck, St.John was saved to my homeland. O country, how many tears have I spread remembering you! I don't know how alive I am for the great pain I suffered there, seeing myself far from you! Now how much I owe to the heavens, that despite so many tears I am allowed to see you again! They put me, who, wanting to go to Barbaria to settle the accounts with one of my correspondents and live the rest of my life idle and happy, had to deal with death: because, being close to the sirti, fiercely struck by a fierce storm and given in those rocks of the sand, the wood was opened in a thousand parts and I was made a slave of the Moors; then, redeemed, I took refuge in my homeland! Therefore, having gone through innumerable troubles, I can innumerably thank the sky that sees me safe. I want to go to my house.
SCENE II.
CRACK, GUGLIELMO.
CLIQUE. (Oh God, what do I see? Now isn't this the vignarolo transformed into William, whose figure so perfectly represents the figurative that I would not be able to discern whether he was the vignarolo or the vignarolo him?).
GUGLIELMO. (I see one who is amazed at my return: perhaps, considering me dead, he is amazed that so unexpectedly appears before him).
CLIQUE. (Oh marvelous might of the stars, oh marvelous art of astrology, or who was not deceived of this? Look at yourselves, husbands who have beautiful women, for their lovers in your form enjoy them; beware, rich, because you possess so much gold, silver, joys and money in the house, that thieves, transforming themselves into your effigy, open the chests and take away your money: now everyone can come to the safe thief of what he wants).
GUGLIELMO. (I remember seeing him and reasoning with him several times; but I can't remember who he is).
CLIQUE. (I would like to make fun of him a little; but Guglielmo seems so natural to me that I don't dare).
GUGLIELMO. (Already I remember who he is). O Clique, may you be well found! How is Pandolfo my friend?
CLIQUE. I rejoice in the growth of your state: that Pandolfo is your master, now he has become your friend.
GUGLIELMO. What does my dear Clique say?
CLIQUE. Welcome back from a distant country, because already submerged in the sea you were mourned for dead!
GUGLIELMO. I can say that it is renato: my shipwreck was so dangerous!
CLIQUE. (Ah, ah, look at the clumsy with how much grace and prosopopeia he reasons: now what could William himself say or do?). Oh may the cancaro eat you!
GUGLIELMO. Now this is a bad way to proceed: hold your hands and speak with more reverence: who do you plan to deal with?
CLIQUE. (Aim at this rascal, who in body, in soul is thought to be transformed into William! Do so as if I were not aware of the deception).
GUGLIELMO. (I cannot imagine myself as a scoundrel servant, like this man, who took such boldness with me: how the rascal laughs!).
CLIQUE. (See how he tightens his lips so as not to laugh at the scoundrel, and his eyes flash with laughter!). Ah, ah, ah!
GUGLIELMO. I wish I knew what you laugh at; if not, I will resent your master.
CLIQUE. I laugh that you are so well transformed into another form.
GUGLIELMO. That? this is something worthy of great wonder, if the dangers of death so close, the affection of the servants that I suffered among the deaths and the discomforts of the journey would have transformed another person than mine, who am a poor old man and am sooner worthy of pity what about rice?
CLIQUE. (Mira that the vignarolo has left the bestiality of the villa and become wise of the city!). Now go to Guglielmo's house and make the effect you have to, because it makes you sure that you will be received by William himself.
GUGLIELMO. And if in my house I will not be received for the same
William, where do I hope to be received most?
CLIQUE. (And is it possible that this beast does not realize that he is still the vignarolo he was before?
GUGLIELMO. (I don't know where this laugh of his and this mockery of me is born. He acts as if he had never known me for what I am and what I was).
CLIQUE. It seems to me that you do not want to understand it: you are the vignarolo, and I know it better than you do not know it yourself.
GUGLIELMO. I don't know what he tells you about the vignarolo.
CLIQUE. Aren't you the vignarolo then?
GUGLIELMO. I am and never was.
CLIQUE. This nieghi?
GUGLIELMO. I deny it, because it is false.
CLIQUE. And do you deny it?
GUGLIELMO. And yet I deny and strangle it.
CLIQUE. Aren't you the vignarolo, with the name of the devil?
GUGLIELMO. Son Guglielmo, with the name of a hundred devils!
CLIQUE. I want to call the master, so that he will come again to laugh with me a little and be amazed.
SCENE III.
PANDOLPH, CRACK, GUGLIELMO.
PANDOLPH. I don't know why you cry so much, or Clique.
CLIQUE. Don't you see your vignarolo transformed into Guglielmo, and so transformed into Guglielmo that the true is overcome by the false, because the false is more true than the true?
PANDOLPH. (O stupendous wonder! And is it possible that astrology could do so much? I see the simulacrum and the image of William so natural that, if it were done in print or inside the shapes, it could not be more similar. a shield is not as similar to another shield as he is to William).
GUGLIELMO. O my dearest Pandolfo, so loved and desired to see!
PANDOLPH. (I don't mind the principle. Aim with what nice grace the rascal reasons! Dear William, how were you saved from shipwreck?
GUGLIELMO. Know that to go to Barbary, embark me on a Dubrovnik ship. The master who hired it was his boss's man; and although he was advised by all the sailors he did not leave at such a time that he threatened a storm, yet he wanted to leave with the storm. The ship set up the sirti; and the master was the first to die and pay the penalty of his temerity and daring….
PANDOLPH. (What a beautiful story he invented! How beautifully the villain tells the story!).
GUGLIELMO. … The corsairs came and made them prisoners; I escaped and they took me again; I redeemed myself, I arrived home to safety.
CLIQUE. You went to Barbary to shave that debtor of yours, and the sea had you to shave your life and all your clothes.
GUGLIELMO. I went to Barbaria to collect my credits.
CLIQUE. You went to the Barberia to shave and were shaved. (Let's leave the bays, ask them about the silver and the vestments).
PANDOLPH. Ben, my vignarolo, where are the silver and the vestments that the astrologer gave you?
GUGLIELMO. I don't know what you say.
PANDOLPH. Are you kidding or are you talking out of your mind?
GUGLIELMO. From the best you have. Is this time for jokes?
PANDOLPH. Now this is another matter. Tell me, where is the silver?
GUGLIELMO. Do you ask me?
PANDOLPH. Who do you want me to ask?
GUGLIELMO. What silver do you say?
PANDOLPH. Who gave you the astrologer after you were transformed.
GUGLIELMO. What astrologer, what transformation?
PANDOLPH. Now this is another devil, two thousand silver shields: that would make me angry!
CLIQUE. Ah, ah, ah! aim that laughs! the traitor wants to joke with you.
PANDOLPH. Canchero! these are bad jokes. And it seems that he has become more pale soon.
CLIQUE. Think of the thief who, if he was transformed into Guglielmo, will never again have to become a vignarolo and make us stay still in silver.
PANDOLPH. He doesn't have much malice, he's a beast.
CLIQUE. And the bestials are wont to be malicious; but I would be more beastly than he if I let myself be made fun of by one of his peers. Tell me, aren't you the vignarolo?
GUGLIELMO. I say that I am Guglielmo not the vignarolo.
PANDOLPH. Indeed you are both, the vignarolo and Guglielmo, that is, the masked vignarolo in Guglielmo.
GUGLIELMO. I am none other than William, and it is not now carnival that I go in masks. I have no other mask than the one nature made me.
CLIQUE. I cannot believe that excessive bestiality is enough to make a wise man.
PANDOLPH. Let's go back to silver: what will you answer me?
GUGLIELMO. I don't know what to answer you, because I don't know anything about what you say.
PANDOLPH. I don't want a wife anymore. Let's go back to the astrologer, so you can go back to what you were before and give me back the silver.
CLIQUE. (Stop, master: the door of Guglielmo's house opens and Armellina the servant comes out. Let him enter the house and see what effect it will have; because he cannot escape from it, and what you want to do now you can always do. that you want. Let's start from him, because we do not suspect the deception).
PANDOLPH. (I will stick to your advice).
CLIQUE. Vignarolo, the door of Guglielmo's house is already open. Don't you see your sweetheart Armellina and her daughter? come on, enter the house.
GUGLIELMO. Blessed be the heavens that took away from you, for they had worn me out with I don't know what vignarolo or what silver!
SCENE IV.
ARTEMISIA, GUGLIELMO, ARMELLINA.
ARTEMISIA. (I see the vignarolo transformed into Guglielmo, who comes straight home. Alas! I think my father is the same and I want to give him the bay a little!).
GUGLIELMO. (Well thank the skies that I see my house!). Tic knock.
ARTEMISIA. Who beats, olá?
GUGLIELMO. O Artemisia, dear daughter, open to me, may you be blessed!
ARTEMISIA. "Dear daughter," says the rascal: ah, ah, ah!
GUGLIELMO. Don't you know your father William?
ARTEMISIA. Who William?
GUGLIELMO. Who William? your father.
ARTEMISIA. Were you where is my father William?
GUGLIELMO. Where is your father then?
ARTEMISIA. He died and submerged under the waves.
GUGLIELMO. I am that dead and submerged!
ARTEMISIA. Ben, I don't deal with dead and submerged.
GUGLIELMO. Open to me, dear daughter!
ARTEMISIA. Will I open? I'll take a good look at it: I feel all pissed off.
GUGLIELMO. And of what?
ARTEMISIA. Let a dead and submerged talk and come home.
GUGLIELMO. Open up, please!
ARTEMISIA. You will now be resolved by the sea or you are putrefied, and I can smell your body so far, oibò, fiú!
GUGLIELMO. Open, I am as alive as before!
ARTEMISIA. How do I live, if we have reasoned with so many eyewitnesses, when would you submerge yourself with the ship and die?
GUGLIELMO. Deh, open and not many words!
ARMELLINA. (Mistress, let me joke a little). Who is down there? what are you asking?
GUGLIELMO. Open, my Armellina.
ARMELLINA. If you come from a warm home, you need some freshening up.
GUGLIELMO. I need the disease that God gives you!
ARMELLINA. Good words in the house of others!
GUGLIELMO. You moved my còlera; and if you don't open me, I'll throw the doors on the ground.
ARMELLINA. With a little water we will refresh your còlera.
GUGLIELMO. When I enter I will break your arms with a stick.
ARMELLINA. Take this refreshment off!
GUGLIELMO. Ah, filthy, mangy, lousy!
ARMELLINA. I washed your head of filth, ringworm and lice.
GUGLIELMO. If I don't pay you, you can overwhelm me again! I don't know that he keeps me from breaking and breaking doors and killing you with sticks.
SCENE V.
LELIO, ARMELLINA, GUGLIELMO.
LELIO. (I don't know who Armellina thinks about: it seems to me a foreigner). Who are you talking to?
ARMELLINA. With the soul of your father, who wants to enter our house by force.
LELIO. I see how my father looks. Oh how much he looks like him! If Cricca hadn't told me about it before, who would be enough to make me believe it was the vignarolo? Certainly it will be some spirit of hell that forced the astrologer to come in such form.
GUGLIELMO. (They will make me so angry with the winemaker and the astrologer that they would make me submerge myself again in the sea! By whom do I hope to be recognized if my own son does not know me?).
LELIO. Oh might of the sciences! how big they are! Now who would be enough to believe that the powerful influences of the stars gave birth to so much variety? To change a man into another form! I would like to mock and mock him, but he seems to me so much like my father that the reverence of his appearance retains me.
GUGLIELMO. (Oh at least I had another boss to knock this into a wall!). O son, if you do not know what your father looks like, consider that the heat of the sun has made my skin a little black and frizzy, and my eyes stuck in my forehead for the discomfort of the journey and of the country; and even though the features of the face have changed, consider the air of the semblant that cannot be lost: at least consider the wound in the hand that you helped me to heal it years ago.
LELIO. He, who transformed the vignarolo into Guglielmo, transformed the person of the vignarolo with the same wound that Guglielmo had; otherwise he will not be transformed.
GUGLIELMO. Son, I don't know what other certainty I can give you that he is your father.
LELIO. (He moved me to compassion, nor do I know why). Come on, go away with these tidings of yours; and once again do not be daring with these transformations of yours to come to the house of good men: for the first time be forgiven yourself. We know very well who you are and what purpose you came here for; and if he had proposed well in his soul to beat you very well, the reverence which I bring to the likeness of my dearest father forbids me. Go about your business, so that I, in order not to be bothered by your importunity, was forced to do what I told you; because if the astrologer who transformed you had predicted that you were to receive blows, perhaps once more he would have predicted the true prediction. And since you don't want to leave, I'll leave.
GUGLIELMO. I still want to leave and yield to iniquitous luck!
SCENE VI.
VIGNAROLO alone.
VIGNAROLO. Our life is just like slices of presciutto: a little thin and a little fat, a little bit of pleasure and a little bit of displeasure. When he was in the villa, he thought that the life of all gentlemen was happiness; but now I have proved that they still have their cancheri and cacasangui. He was very happy that he had earned ten ducats and called by that lady in exchange for Guglielmo; but the ten ducats were taken from me and the lady cost me a lot, because with difficulty I escaped from the hands of that Spaniard. Now before some other misfortune happens to me, I want to go to Guglielmo's house; and immediately upon entering, I will have Armellina promised to be a wife to the winemaker and make the instruments, so that when I leave being William, he will take her away from me as his wife. Oh, cancaro! I fear being discovered by others for vignarolo, and now I discover myself; and what with so much diligence he wants to hide is made clear to everyone. I am alone and I speak as if accompanied. "Listen, vignarolo, and do as I tell you." Ben, what are you saying? what do you want me to do? "Go to William's house and enter it with reputation; then begin to do your own business first, then the master's facts: that Armellina marry the vignarolo and then Artemisia with the master. But if they don't want to, what will you do? I will take Armellina by force and make us the master of Artemisia. "Ah, traitora Armellina, now I will return to you the words you spoke to me this morning!" I want to go and knock on the door and not hold back any longer, so that the time does not pass and the vignarolo would return without doing anything.
SCENE VII.
GUGLIELMO, VIGNAROLO.
GUGLIELMO. (Wretched me, what must I do, because, having come to my homeland with so much effort, can't I enter my house? But I see someone trying to enter: it will be some friend; I will recommend myself to him).
VIGNAROLO. Tick, knock, knock.
GUGLIELMO. Gentleman, are you at home?
VIGNAROLO. (He calls me a "gentleman", he honors me: since I look well dressed he thinks I'm a gentleman. It is a beautiful thing to be rich: everyone honors you, greets you, touches your hand, stops to reason with you, accompanies you until at home and asks you how you are. He calls me a "gentleman", which neither me nor anyone of my kin should be given the name).
GUGLIELMO. Gentleman, who are you knocking at this door?
VIGNAROLO. Answer me first: who are you that you ask me?
GUGLIELMO. My dear master, do not enter the còlera: please say you, who are you?
VIGNAROLO. I have no account to a vile man like you are; but you who want to know who you are, who are you?
GUGLIELMO. The master of this house!
VIGNAROLO. You lie that you are its master, because I am its master.
GUGLIELMO. (Maybe my son will have sold it to him). How much is it that you are master of it?
VIGNAROLO. I have been its master since that time when I was its master
William.
GUGLIELMO. Who William?
VIGNAROLO. Of the Anastasis.
GUGLIELMO. William Anastasio? the one who went to Barbaria to settle his reason with that companion of his and submerged himself in the gulf?
VIGNAROLO. What you say.
GUGLIELMO. Now if William submerged himself in that gulf, how is he now alive in the city?
VIGNAROLO. Clumsy! because I was saved by swimming.
GUGLIELMO. (What does he say?).
VIGNAROLO. And I had promised Artemisia to Pandolfo for wife, and he to me Sulpizia his daughter.
GUGLIELMO. (Cancaro! This is me too: and he says all that I am and he knows all my secrets, as he had my person and my spirit). But to have you, young man, that I am William, and I am the one who went to Barbaria to settle the accounts with that companion of mine, and I promised my daughter to Pandolfo; but if I am and cannot be anything other than I, and you are and cannot be other than William, all two will be William and all two will be one.
VIGNAROLO. If you say more such words, I will beat you with a pole like walnuts are beaten. What an asinity! if we are duo, you and me, how are we one?
GUGLIELMO. At least tell me if I've become you and you have become me.
VIGNAROLO. And even there! shut up and do better for yourself.
GUGLIELMO. Can you make it not what I am? and isn't it Guglielmo?
VIGNAROLO. Come on, take away, William; receive, William!
GUGLIELMO. Oh oh! I am sorry that due to the travails of the journey I am so feeble and frail as a person who cannot defend myself.
VIGNAROLO. Now tell me if you are William! since I cannot do it with good words that you are not, I will do it with sticks.
GUGLIELMO. May the heavens wish that I was not William or that I had never been, and that I were you and you me, that I give and you receive the fights!
VIGNAROLO. Tell me now, who are you?
GUGLIELMO. I am what you want me to be: Pietro, Giovanni, Martino.
VIGNAROLO. And why did you say a little while ago that you were Guglielmo?
GUGLIELMO. He had been drinking in a tavern and was drunk.
VIGNAROLO. Since you are no longer William, who are you?
GUGLIELMO. Your slave, your servant.
VIGNAROLO. I never saw you or knew you, you are neither my slave nor my servant.
GUGLIELMO. But let's talk about grace with good reason: if I'm not William, who am I?
VIGNAROLO. If you don't know who you are, I don't even know: you are a horse, an ox, a donkey.
GUGLIELMO. Sir yes, if we were in the time of Pythagoras, I would say that when I submerged I died and my soul entered another body and I am another. I would like to know who I am.
VIGNAROLO. You are a truffle!
GUGLIELMO. I'm cool: this is really a great thing; to me it also seems to be that William from before. I am not dead: I see, I speak, I move; or perhaps when I was submerged, for the great fear I had when I saw death so close to me, I had become another, and I must find another person to be any?
VIGNAROLO. No more words: either go away or ask me a question!
GUGLIELMO. I will not question you.
VIGNAROLO. Leave and do not say anymore that you are William.
GUGLIELMO. Oh great misfortune and never more understood, that a man has lost himself and does not know who he is! And this disgrace seems to me greater than the first; and so that time cannot put an end to my misery, let him be driven out of my house by saying that he is someone else, and then find someone else who says that he is me. O all you wretched and wretched who are in the world, run to see my misfortune, because all yours will seem null to you! Or chains, or prisons, or lashes received by the Moors, how truly you were sweeter to me; O perils of the sea, how much you were more sweet to me; O sea, my capital enemy, why did you leave me alive, you have placed me in these troubles! I went to Barbaria to buy money, and I lost myself; to settle accounts with my partner, I left the person there. It was better to lose the stuff and save myself: from myself alone I defended myself from the sea and I did not know how to defend myself from those who robbed me of myself!
SCENE VI.
EUGENIO, LELIO young, CRICCA servant.
EUGENIO. These are also the great wonders that you tell about them, and I am not enough to believe them.
LELIO. Who is this who works so great wonders?
CLIQUE. A newly printed astrologer, who with his astrologeries astrologers all men.
LELIO. What does astrology have to do with transforming one man into another?
CLIQUE. What do I know? I couldn't tell you so much that he didn't stay there anymore to tell you about it.
LELIO. What do You know?
CLIQUE. I saw it with these eyes.
LELIO. The eyes sometimes see things that never were.
EUGENIO. And you want us to believe that you have seen it?
CLIQUE. If I haven't seen it with my own eyes, let me never see again!
EUGENIO. He wants us to see the moon in the well.
LELIO. Shall we, dear Eugene, be so little in matters that our fathers in such inconvenient things would like to know more than we do? and that we want to leave the brides without wanting to help us? Let us wake up ourselves: even those who drown, strive their arms and legs so as not to allow themselves to die; however, in this storm of love we shake our hands with our feet so as not to leave ourselves worse than to die and so as not to have to suffer from our negligence and not having done what humanly can do.
EUGENIO. I do not think it is greater misery than where we are, since father and son, all aim at a sign; nor can I imagine myself as for so many reprimands that you have given them, although he does not stop asking you for it.
LELIO. Every hour, every moment from different friends and relatives makes me talk, always with new proposals or new offers; nor can I give him so many repulsions as he offers himself with more advantageous parties. I did not want to insult him with more harsh words and unsuitable ways so as not to disconcert our business.
EUGENIO. And is it possible that we do not have a friend, a relative who makes us aware of this love of hers, that an eighty-five-year-old man wants a girl of ten seven years old for his wife?
LELIO. It is not for lack of friends or relatives; but no one wants to get entangled or interposed between fathers and children.
EUGENIO. Wouldn't that be a good clique, whom he trusts so much and listens to his advice?
LELIO. He should be given a safe conduct for his back: because he is so mad in this madness of his that, as soon as he enters to dissuade him, he goes into anger and plays with sticks, so that his desires must be seconded and promised to help him; but he got it all at once.
EUGENIO. But I am so murdered by fate that I would like to be cruel against myself; and if he were other than my father, with my hands I would tower him before me.
LELIO. Shall we therefore despair? we must remedy with some remedy.
EUGENIO. Clique, we hope in you: teach us that we are your disciples.
CLIQUE. We must not hope for anything other than luck, which usually finds a way to relieve man in his greatest troubles when one does not even think, and lowers those who are more secure.
EUGENIO. Clique, can you bear that the best pearl falls into the mouth of the saddest pig?
LELIO. O fatigue, o scattered footsteps, and then scattered so bitterly!
EUGENIO. What do you say? what do you think? speak a little.
CLIQUE. Here we need not think much or talk much: the very thing brings us a remedy; and if I am opposed to the master, forgive me, for it seems to me out of servitude to leave to serve young people who have to live longer, to serve old people who have to die shortly.
EUGENIO. Get me out of such great danger.
CLIQUE. It would be really great danger if we were not alerted; but knowing everything, the danger ceases.
EUGENIO. And how?
CLIQUE. When William is seen coming into the house with humble and compassionate words, saying that he has escaped the shipwreck and has come home, away, chase him away, and not wanting to leave, what a stick!
LELIO. It would not be better to take it and keep it in good custody; and how did he return to his form, place him in the hand of justice and have him punished?
CLIQUE. No, because the master would estimate that the eagle had come out of me, and I would bring the penance that he already promised me this morning. Not many advice: ask those of the house who, wanting William to enter the house, chase him away as soon as possible.
LELIO. So it will be done: I will go home to inform everyone of the fact; you leave, because you are not seen with us and they enter into suspicion.
EUGENIO. So do it.
LELIO. Mr. Eugenio, please.
EUGENIO. Signor Lelio, your servant.
SCENE VII.
EUGENIUS, CRACK, ARTEMISY.
EUGENIO. Clique, recommend me to my Artemisia.
CLIQUE. Recommend it yourself. Did you not realize that while you were reasoning with your brother, that he dreamed of you from the window?
EUGENIO. I see discovering my sun: and like the sun rising in the morning, the world comes to lighten and make itself beautiful, which was before it dark and full of horror; so appearing you, my clearest sun, the darkness and bitterness of my heart all become illustrious, and fills my heart with sweetness.
ARTEMISIA. Be the well-found, spirit of my soul!
EUGENIO. Welcome, sweetest support of my life! It seems to me that you are unwilling.
ARTEMISIA. And still desperate, since in a long time I do not see any spark of light with which you enliven the hope of being yours.
EUGENIO. Madam, despair is a betrayal of oneself; however, do not cry if you love me, because with your tears you consume my life, which, if you do not dry them quickly, will soon make me faint.
ARTEMISIA. Deh! let me cry and die again, because he is not a person so desperate that he has no hope of hoping, except I, who have nothing but hope except in death as the only remedy for my ills.
EUGENIO. Ah, madam, having always known you with a high heart, great strength and excellent mind, how do you allow yourselves to be so overcome by pain?
ARTEMISIA. On the contrary, if you love me, you must cry with me, because when two lovers cry their common misfortunes it is an outlet for their passions.
EUGENIO. But why do you grieve so much?
ARTEMISIA. At first I'm afraid you don't love me.
EUGENIO. Ah, proud star, and how can such a bad thought fall in you if you know for sure that I love you rightly and our love is mutual? And if you could open your chest you would see a temple in whose altar my heart always burns in sacrifice before the idol of your beauty, which is such that it amazes not only the world but the very nature that created you, then adorned. of so many means of honors and costumes, which compete with beauty and the titles of magnificence have already been acquired. Your merits are such that they deserve another man who is not me; but because I know only your merits, for the great love that I bring them, it seems to me that I may deserve them.
ARTEMISIA. If so, why do I see so much tepidity in you in soliciting my wedding? You agree with my brother Lelio. Don't you see that delay could cause you some trouble?
EUGENIO. Don't you consider, madam, that I have a competing father in my love? and if I see myself in so many difficulties and respect for my father, even Amor does not allow me to change my will. The father tries to deprive me of what is owed to me out of love; I pray and reprove your brother, and I doubt for too much importance to be troubling them: we have suffered a lot, we suffer a little more. It is not a valiant thing to want the crown and the triumph before I have fought: we suffer, because Love will crown us with our suffering.
ARTEMISIA. My father does not want to give me to wife if he does not obtain Sulpizia from you: he wants to buy your sister's love with my ransom and wants me to be the price of his desires. He wants to make use of me for the medicine of his illness, of me who am sick and I need medicine for myself in my illness; and me, miserable! I can do nothing but bitterly cry, sigh and consume myself.
EUGENIO. Give yourselves peace, because perhaps Love will console you.
ARTEMISIA. That "maybe" is a meager hope. More it seems that from hour to hour I see my father William appear, who is not dead and who wants me to marry Pandolfo: and this night I dreamed of returning safe and sound from the shipwreck, of what I have got so scared that it won't be good for me for a year. But please hurry up and drive me out of so much anguish.
EUGENIO. It is not necessary, madam, to have the téma of dreams, which arise in us from those effects which we greatly fear and desire. If dreams were successful, I would be happy: how many times have I dreamed with you and failed? I would rather my dreams succeed than your dreams.
ARTEMISIA. Dear master, I doubt my father will not come. God knows with what heart I leave you! I kiss your hands; and because I can't kiss your hands, I'm looking for you a favor.
EUGENIO. Here I am very ready to serve you.
ARTEMISIA. Give me your gloves; for by kissing them it will seem to me to kiss your hands, and by dressing my hands you ask me to hold your hands tight.
EUGENIO. Here they are; and give me yours as a reward, so that I may feel that same sweetness as yours, which you say I hear from mine.
ARTEMISIA. Here they are: and please Heaven that as we exchanged gloves, so we exchanged hearts, that as mine is made his, so his be made mine.
CLIQUE. Let's finish it, Signor Eugenio, let's go away.
EUGENIO. Ouch, what a hard departure!
SCENE VIII.
ARTEMISIA, SULPIZIA young.
ARTEMISIA. Mrs Sulpizia, I kiss your hands.
SULPICE. O Signora Artemisia, forgive me, for I hadn't seen you.
ARTEMISIA. Are you perhaps in a state of trouble in your soul, since you do not see the people who stand before you?
SULPICE. It really is as you say; and I esteem that the same troubles that trouble you also trouble me: that both afflict the same evil.
ARTEMISIA. Miserable me, what sorrow did I ever do to my father, that deserves that I give me that old and rotting dead man of your father for a husband? Is this the prize of the obedience that I have brought them so many years? But the people should not be surprised when they hear that we poor things are taking some escapes, because our fathers are the cause.
SULPICE. Of course these old people go further in age so much they don't even see their brains: too much living makes them dazed and they don't know what they are doing. The condition of us poor women is wretched and unhappy; and it is rightly said in that house where a female is born! Indeed our mothers should, when we are born, drown us, being born into the world for a portrait of all human disasters. Since we are born we have always been confined within four walls as in continuous prisons, under the severe laws and rigid threats of fathers, mothers, brothers and relatives, and especially when we are in love; because where men, conversing with people, convey those lively thoughts that make them always vigilant in loves, it is up to us to bury them in their hearts, nor less to let them out with a minimum sigh, which I don't know how we don't burst out of pain.
ARTEMISIA. And the worst is that, wanting to marry, they want to give us a husband to their taste, or for their particular interests to give us as a husband one, with whom we have to live until death, against our will, saying that having clothed us with these members it is strength that we are ubiquitous. It is sad if we answer one word to the contrary! we are the presumptuous, cheeky and with a head full of crickets! And so, since the husband is not at our will, we must always be in discord wills and in a perpetual war; and yet they shouldn't grieve, if we take off one as we like, we take off one as we like.
SULPICE. What law is this of having founded honor in the actions of us poor women? where men, in order to be wiser and of greater strength to resist their appetites, vent their amorous passions, always find new amusements with different women, committing adultery and rapes in their own way; and if we petty ones are aware of any mention or embassy, immediately: "Kill, kill, kill; swords, daggers, knives! - What a bad law this is!
ARTEMISIA. Eh, sister, men have made these laws in their own way; if it were up to us, we made it to ours. But we are very unhappy for now: without reminding us of our misfortunes, we think about something else. Please tell me if you ever talk to your brother about me.
SULPICE. Always of you.
ARTEMISIA. What does it say about this fact?
SULPICE. He blasphemes his cruel fate, the mad moods of his father, and is consumed in lamentations, in sorrows. But Lelio, when you talk to them about me, who answers?
ARTEMISIA. Tears and sighs; and I well believe that if Amor does not help him in this extreme point, that his days will be short.
SULPICE. Please recommend me to him.
ARTEMISIA. And I beg you to do the same with me to yours.
ACT III.
SCENE I.
PANDOLPH, CRACK.
PANDOLPH. Now while the astrologer is transforming the vignarolo, Cricca, I want to tell you my thoughts.
CLIQUE. Of you.
PANDOLPH. My heart is not enough to give the astrologer the gold chain I promised him.
CLIQUE. Those who have promised wait.
PANDOLPH. I confess that I was too voluntary, and I regret it.
CLIQUE. I was amazed that, being so stingy, you have to give five hundred scudi once.
PANDOLPH. If I am stingy, I am stingy so as to be able to be liberal when necessary; for those who are always liberal have nothing to do with the last. But the desire to possess Artemisia would have made me give my life, not that the stuff.
CLIQUE. There is a thought on my mind how with your honor you can deny it.
PANDOLPH. I doubt you don't mean how much we talk now.
CLIQUE. What do we lose in tempting him? if he succeeds, we will earn five hundred scudi.
PANDOLPH. Say up quickly.
CLIQUE. When he comes out to inform us that the vignarolo is transformed, I will keep him reasoning with me; you go into the room and hide some silver vessels, and then you come out choleric and angry, shouting that the silver has been taken away. He will say it is not true, we will say yes; in the end, after much conflict, you will say that you will not give him the chain if he does not return the vases to you, threatening him again to accuse him at the court.
PANDOLPH. What if the deception is discovered?
CLIQUE. We will put the blame on the winemaker who has good shoulders.
PANDOLPH. I do not mind your thought and I am willing to follow it.
CLIQUE. But the point is and the importance of the shop in knowing how to pretend choleric, anger and disgust, and shout loud and terrible.
PANDOLPH. Leave it to me to pretend, and if I don't do it naturally, my damage, five hundred ducats. Blood shit! I will let the screams go out from my heels; but you must help me to agree.
CLIQUE. I will not fail: in your hands is the gain and loss of five hundred ducats if you can pretend well.
PANDOLPH. No more, because he does not understand how much we reason. But here it comes out.
SCENE II.
ALBUMAZAR, PANDOLFO, CRACK.
ALBUMAZAR. Pandolfo, here, soon you will have transformed the vignarolo.
CLIQUE. Is it not then completely transformed?
ALBUMAZAR. The whole body is already transformed, but only one foot and hands are missing.
CLIQUE. Tell me, Mr. astrologer, how long will the vignarolo last in the figure of William?
ALBUMAZAR. For a natural day.
CLIQUE. And are there also the days against nature?
ALBUMAZAR. The natural day if you mean twenty-four hours.
CLIQUE. And that against nature?
ALBUMAZAR. When the sun comes towards us before us and the days are great, they are natural; when they go back and are short, they go against nature.
PANDOLPH. Alas, alas, alas!
CLIQUE. Oh what a great cry!
PANDOLPH. At such a great blow have I no reason to give such a great cry?
CLIQUE. What have you got, master?
PANDOLPH. Alas, I am dead, I am completely ruined!
CLIQUE. And how? (The principle is fine). What are you sorry about?
PANDOLPH. The room is completely free of vestments and silver!
CLIQUE. (Well, very well! You pretend a lot of the natural).
PANDOLPH. Canchero, which I do not pretend, I say from duty: the whole room has been cleared of me!
CLIQUE. (Shout louder for you to be better heard).
PANDOLPH. I couldn't scream as much as I need to: he stole what he had and didn't have!
CLIQUE. (Ha, ha, ha! I can't hold laughter as well as pretend!).
PANDOLPH. I have been stolen from mine and that of others!
CLIQUE. (Make an effort to shout).
PANDOLPH. I have no more voice, hell! and I miss the voice, the breath and the soul.
CLIQUE. (Ah, ah, ah, who doesn't laugh?).
PANDOLPH. With this laugh of yours, my anger grows: the room has remained clearer than a mirror!
CLIQUE. (And you say out of wits?).
PANDOLPH. From damn sense! the window to the east is open and broken, and I doubt that the robbe has been raised from there.
CLIQUE. (This was that "east" so inimical to you: the door from the west was yours that you placed the robbe on, and the east door took the robbe away from you).
ALBUMAZAR. Pandolfo, what have you got that shout so loudly?
PANDOLPH. All the equipment has been removed from the room!
ALBUMAZAR. Hope well.
PANDOLPH. How can I hope for good, seeing bad?
ALBUMAZAR. I handed over the silver cloths and vases to the winemaker, I closed them in that other nearby room so that they are well looked after. Stop here, because soon you will see him appear out here transformed into William and he will give you everything back.
PANDOLPH. Now what shall we do in the meantime?
ALBUMAZAR. We will go for a walk for half an hour; then come back, open the room and you will find your vignarolo transformed into everything; and then I'll come for the promise for the chain.
PANDOLPH. So we will do.
SCENE III.
ALBUMAZAR, RONCA, GRAMIGNA, HARPIO.
ALBUMAZAR. Ronchilio, Gramigna, Harpoon, come out here.
RONCA. Here we are, what do you want?
ALBUMAZAR. We have already achieved what we desired: there is little left to accomplish. You, Ronchilio, wait here for the winemaker who comes out of his room, pretend to be William's friend, give him these ten ducats saying that you should give him, to make him believe more that he is Guglielmo.
RONCA. And do you want me to lose the ten ducats?
ALBUMAZAR. Which? what a donkey! You, Harpoon, take them off with that counterfeit arm. You, Gramigna, find Bevilona, that cunning whore: pretending to be a gentlewoman in love with Guglielmo; you call him to eat and to sunbathe with her; and this to make him believe that it is that William. And keep him happy and keep him for two hours.
RONCA. Why two hours?
ALBUMAZAR. Between these two hours you, Gramigna, take the robbe to the pier, take a frigate and load it with all the robbe. Then, go to Cerriglio and have these animals prepared well and these precious liqueurs; take the Bevilona to the tavern, because, after having raised the flasks well, we can enjoy the triumph of our cunning. Then, at night, let's embark for Rome with all the loot.
RONCA. Where are you going?
ALBUMAZAR. To shear another sheep that wants to fix the quicksilver with herbal sauces: it will increase the number of jokers and our booty.
GRAMIGNA. So we will do.
ALBUMAZAR. Use adulterous beards, poultices and other languages, that you are not known for those same. But while I am waiting for the common profit of another gain, that you ate without me and stole my share, since you are shameless thieves, without law and without faith, that you would robb yourself when you had no one else to rob.
GRAMIGNA. Would it be new perhaps? didn't you teach us?
ALBUMAZAR. With your measure you measure all the others: "the thing will go from gypsy to Jew".
GRAMIGNA. Do now as I knew you now. Come on, let's go.
SCENE IV.
VIGNAROLO, RONCA.
VIGNAROLO. (Oh beautiful thing to be transformed into another! I thought it was transformed between flesh and skin; but now as I am so transformed in my face I still feel transformed in my brain. I have nothing left of vignarolo but the appetite and being in love with Armellina. I am sure that no one will know me, since I myself no longer know myself. Oh what a marvelous thing! I would like to go to William's house to serve the master; but it seems that I am not assured).
RONCA. Oh, Mr. William, you are welcome back a thousand times!
How long has it been since you arrived in Naples?
VIGNAROLO. You are well found! Now from the trip.
RONCA. We already mourned you for dead.
VIGNAROLO. I am safe and at your command.
RONCA. Do you remember your lordship, when you lent me ten ducats, that the birri took me to prison?
VIGNAROLO. Mister yes, mister yes, I remember.
RONCA. When I came to your house to return them, the news of your shipwreck came to you: and not being able to return them to you, it was necessary to keep them on his return. But since you are back safe and sound, here they are, for I doubt you need them.
VIGNAROLO. How, that I will need it!
RONCA. I thank you for your kindness; I recommend it to you.
VIGNAROLO. Oh blessed be that point at which I transformed myself into William, because, having never in my life been able to mate a pug when he was a vignarolo, now, being William, I earned ten ducats at one point!
SCENE V.
HARPIO, VIGNAROLO.
HARPOON. I have seen you disembark from the ship just now, Signor Guglielmo, of which I am so happy that I cannot contain myself not to embrace and kiss you.
VIGNAROLO. And with the same effect I kiss you very lovingly. But what is your name?
HARPOON. Don't you remember Harpoon who was so dear to you?
VIGNAROLO. Yes well, now I remember, my dear Harpoon.
HARPOON. I thank the good fortune of the sea that gave it the grace to see us again.
VIGNAROLO. How are you?
HARPOON. If you have become a doctor, you ask me how he is? However it may be, I am always at your command. Forgive me, I cannot contain myself that I do not embrace you and kiss you again, and I feel so much joy that I have no language to express it.
VIGNAROLO. (While he hugged me I felt my bag shake. He felt his hands and arms around my neck: if someone from behind did not take it away from me, I would not know who he was. But there is no other here).
HARPOON. Did you suffer great discomfort on the journey, dear William?
VIGNAROLO. Many, my dearest Harpoon. (I also see his hands out, and yet I feel my purse being removed).
HARPOON. Come on, I recommend you. See you again, thank you for your liberality.
VIGNAROLO. And I kiss your hands. (I didn't give them anything and he says he thanks my liberality!). Alas alas, my bag! alas, my money, sir Harpoon!
HARPOON. Here I am, what do you want?
VIGNAROLO. Show me your hand.
HARPOON. Here she is.
VIGNAROLO. Where is the other one?
HARPOON. Here she is.
VIGNAROLO. Where is the other one?
HARPOON. What do you want me to have a hundred hands?
VIGNAROLO. Which is the right?
HARPOON. Here is the right.
VIGNAROLO. The left?
HARPOON. Here is the left.
VIGNAROLO. Where are the two hands?
HARPOON. How many times do you want to see them? perhaps the dangers of travel make you fernetic?
VIGNAROLO. Oh, stop! o thief, o bag cutter, o Harpoon, really Harpoon, because like a harpoon you have harpooned! Oh how he disappeared! But how could he have thus been able to stretch out his limbs and twist his arms, like the bagatellieri who make people see and dot? or maybe he took it off me with his feet? Now I know that I am a donkey: didn't he say that his name was Harpoon and that he wanted to snatch my purse? Why let me arpizarla? Of course, I must be the vignarolo and not Guglielmo!
HARPOON. Mr. Guglielmo, what have you got?
VIGNAROLO. A scammer stole a bag with ten ducats from me.
HARPOON. I am sorry I cannot help you for my misfortune!
VIGNAROLO. Indeed for my, for me alone!
HARPOON. How was it done?
VIGNAROLO. With a thief just like yours; but he kept a poultice to his eyes like those placed on corncobs. May the Cancaro eat such a race of men!
HARPOON. I recommend to you.
SCENE VI.
BEVILONA courtesan, VIGNAROLO.
BEVILONA. O life, or contentment, or half of my soul! Mr. Guglielmo, welcome back a thousand times!
VIGNAROLO. With whom are you reasoning, beautiful young man?
BEVILONA. With the master of my person, of my life, of all my good!
VIGNAROLO. What have I to do with you?
BEVILONA. What you like to do; and if you command me to do you a little pleasure, I will give you a lot of it.
VIGNAROLO. (This must be some merchant who keeps an open warehouse of her wares. She is some in love with Guglielmo: since I resemble Guglielmo, she takes me as an exchange. I want to go in with her: what can I lose? made a mistake to say that he did not know her: I will amend it as I can). My lady, I wanted to joke with you a little, to see if you had denied me for my departure.
BEVILONA. Do I deny myself about you, who after your departure remained more alive in my soul than there was itself? nor, as news of your death, could one of those sparks which lit up by the hand of Love in my breast ever be extinguished?
VIGNAROLO. And for your sake I have been really troubled with fantasy. I am now in Naples, and before he went to my house, he had gone to yours. Donque, do you have a husband?
BEVILONA. And you don't know? that good friend of yours.
VIGNAROLO. Yes, yes, I know him well; what if he comes back in the meantime?
BEVILONA. How are you so respectful? I have never seen you so warm as now. Come in.
VIGNAROLO. I will follow you. (O happy William, how happy you were; and o happy me, enjoying it in his stead! The world is no more pleasure than becoming another).
SCENE VII.
GRAMIGNA, BEVILONA, VIGNAROLO.
GRAMIGNA. (The vignarolo must already be on kisses: I want to spoil him and taste a little of his business). Tic knock.
BEVILONA. Olá, who beats?
GRAMIGNA. Don Giovanni Termosiglia Caravaschal of Seville!
VIGNAROLO. (Oh how many people!).
BEVILONA. (He is none other than my husband. Oh he came in a bad way!).
VIGNAROLO. (He named many people).
BEVILONA. (It has not as many names as it has devils in its body: oh wretched me! Mr. Guglielmo, try to save yourselves, jump for that window).
VIGNAROLO. (Open the back door of the garden for me, it will be dearer to me).
BEVILONA. (It cannot be opened, because it carries the keys).
VIGNAROLO. (What have I donque to do to escape out?).
BEVILONA. (Jump for that window).
VIGNAROLO. (God forbid! It's too high: do you want me to break my leg?).
BEVILONA. (A leg more or less does not matter).
GRAMIGNA. Mujer, why did you die so much?
BEVILONA. Now, my husband.
VIGNAROLO. (Evvi any other way to escape?).
BEVILONA. (Nothing else, mean me!).
VIGNAROLO. Por cierto que must be some in love, pues que non abre soon.
BEVILONA. (I can't delay any longer: we have to open it. There is a barrel vòta, which in my own way I can put and put away the bottom).
GRAMIGNA. If I don't abreis presto, enviaré esta puerta per tierra.
BEVILONA. The rope of the latch is broken: drop down to open it.
(Soon, dear William!).
VIGNAROLO. (Fo what I can!).
GRAMIGNA. (He must have already entered the barrel: we will keep him at least for two hours so that he does not go home, and we will have a good time about his business). It comes now. ¿Mujer, que haceis?
BEVILONA. Here it is open; what a hurry, husband? don't want to give me time to go down?
GRAMIGNA. Tengo pressa porque I mercado an onza de vino: es menester ora limpiarla donde es da ponerse, because it will be here just now. Piglia, Bevilona, from outside.
BEVILONA. Let us do this for today: we will do it tomorrow.
GRAMIGNA. Es menester hacerlo now.
BEVILONA. I don't have the strength to bring her out here.
GRAMIGNA. Yo te ayudaré - abre the door; non es menester so much fuerza, here it is desclavada. Quiero limpiarla.
BEVILONA. You go for the wine, because I will wash it.
GRAMIGNA. Yo la limpiaré, because now it will be here the wine. It draws aquí agua bulliente to clear it up.
BEVILONA. Where is the hot water now to wash it?
GRAMIGNA. Toma what is in the fuego to limpiar los pez.
BEVILONA. I can not now, because I am stracca.
GRAMIGNA. If yo tomaré a stake, I'll give you fifty.
VIGNAROLO. (Miserable me, what will I do? Will I burn everything?).
GRAMIGNA. Eres una mujer muy soberbia, non quere alzar algo sin palos.
BEVILONA. Here is the water.
GRAMIGNA. Ponla por este aguiero, from here, deja hacer á mi.
BEVILONA. Done.
GRAMIGNA. Tomais vos de una parte, yo de la otra, y menealla a little.
BEVILONA. No more no more, because I can't!
GRAMIGNA. Bien sta, now the quiero send to the navy.
SCENE VIII.
RONCA, GRAMIGNA, VIGNAROLO.
RONCA. What do you want from me, missere?
GRAMIGNA. Che me traes esta curba to the marina.
RONCA. I'll take it wherever you want, as long as you pay me.
GRAMIGNA. Back to medium real.
RONCA. I don't want a pug, if you want me to carry it on your head; but if you give me less, I'll take it rolling to your side.
GRAMIGNA. Traela como quieres.
RONCA. I'll carry it rolling.
GRAMIGNA. Camina, because I will sell atrás.
VIGNAROLO. (Oh poor vignarolo, how much better it was for you to stay at the villa in your form than to want to transform yourself into something else!).
ACT IV.
SCENE I.
GUGLIELMO old, alone.
GUGLIELMO. Here, with heaven's favor, from such a cruel shipwreck, St.John was saved to my homeland. O country, how many tears have I spread remembering you! I don't know how alive I am for the great pain I suffered there, seeing myself far from you! Now how much I owe to the heavens, that despite so many tears I am allowed to see you again! They put me, who, wanting to go to Barbaria to settle the accounts with one of my correspondents and live the rest of my life idle and happy, had to deal with death: because, being close to the sirti, fiercely struck by a fierce storm and given in those rocks of the sand, the wood was opened in a thousand parts and I was made a slave of the Moors; then, redeemed, I took refuge in my homeland! Therefore, having gone through innumerable troubles, I can innumerably thank the sky that sees me safe. I want to go to my house.
SCENE II.
CRACK, GUGLIELMO.
CLIQUE. (Oh God, what do I see? Now isn't this the vignarolo transformed into William, whose figure so perfectly represents the figurative that I would not be able to discern whether he was the vignarolo or the vignarolo him?).
GUGLIELMO. (I see one who is amazed at my return: perhaps, considering me dead, he is amazed that so unexpectedly appears before him).
CLIQUE. (Oh marvelous might of the stars, oh marvelous art of astrology, or who was not deceived of this? Look at yourselves, husbands who have beautiful women, for their lovers in your form enjoy them; beware, rich, because you possess so much gold, silver, joys and money in the house, that thieves, transforming themselves into your effigy, open the chests and take away your money: now everyone can come to the safe thief of what he wants).
GUGLIELMO. (I remember seeing him and reasoning with him several times; but I can't remember who he is).
CLIQUE. (I would like to make fun of him a little; but Guglielmo seems so natural to me that I don't dare).
GUGLIELMO. (Already I remember who he is). O Clique, may you be well found! How is Pandolfo my friend?
CLIQUE. I rejoice in the growth of your state: that Pandolfo is your master, now he has become your friend.
GUGLIELMO. What does my dear Clique say?
CLIQUE. Welcome back from a distant country, because already submerged in the sea you were mourned for dead!
GUGLIELMO. I can say that it is renato: my shipwreck was so dangerous!
CLIQUE. (Ah, ah, look at the clumsy with how much grace and prosopopeia he reasons: now what could William himself say or do?). Oh may the cancaro eat you!
GUGLIELMO. Now this is a bad way to proceed: hold your hands and speak with more reverence: who do you plan to deal with?
CLIQUE. (Aim at this rascal, who in body, in soul is thought to be transformed into William! Do so as if I were not aware of the deception).
GUGLIELMO. (I cannot imagine myself as a scoundrel servant, like this man, who took such boldness with me: how the rascal laughs!).
CLIQUE. (See how he tightens his lips so as not to laugh at the scoundrel, and his eyes flash with laughter!). Ah, ah, ah!
GUGLIELMO. I wish I knew what you laugh at; if not, I will resent your master.
CLIQUE. I laugh that you are so well transformed into another form.
GUGLIELMO. That? this is something worthy of great wonder, if the dangers of death so close, the affection of the servants that I suffered among the deaths and the discomforts of the journey would have transformed another person than mine, who am a poor old man and am sooner worthy of pity what about rice?
CLIQUE. (Mira that the vignarolo has left the bestiality of the villa and become wise of the city!). Now go to Guglielmo's house and make the effect you have to, because it makes you sure that you will be received by William himself.
GUGLIELMO. And if in my house I will not be received for the same
William, where do I hope to be received most?
CLIQUE. (And is it possible that this beast does not realize that he is still the vignarolo he was before?
GUGLIELMO. (I don't know where this laugh of his and this mockery of me is born. He acts as if he had never known me for what I am and what I was).
CLIQUE. It seems to me that you do not want to understand it: you are the vignarolo, and I know it better than you do not know it yourself.
GUGLIELMO. I don't know what he tells you about the vignarolo.
CLIQUE. Aren't you the vignarolo then?
GUGLIELMO. I am and never was.
CLIQUE. This nieghi?
GUGLIELMO. I deny it, because it is false.
CLIQUE. And do you deny it?
GUGLIELMO. And yet I deny and strangle it.
CLIQUE. Aren't you the vignarolo, with the name of the devil?
GUGLIELMO. Son Guglielmo, with the name of a hundred devils!
CLIQUE. I want to call the master, so that he will come again to laugh with me a little and be amazed.
SCENE III.
PANDOLPH, CRACK, GUGLIELMO.
PANDOLPH. I don't know why you cry so much, or Clique.
CLIQUE. Don't you see your vignarolo transformed into Guglielmo, and so transformed into Guglielmo that the true is overcome by the false, because the false is more true than the true?
PANDOLPH. (O stupendous wonder! And is it possible that astrology could do so much? I see the simulacrum and the image of William so natural that, if it were done in print or inside the shapes, it could not be more similar. a shield is not as similar to another shield as he is to William).
GUGLIELMO. O my dearest Pandolfo, so loved and desired to see!
PANDOLPH. (I don't mind the principle. Aim with what nice grace the rascal reasons! Dear William, how were you saved from shipwreck?
GUGLIELMO. Know that to go to Barbary, embark me on a Dubrovnik ship. The master who hired it was his boss's man; and although he was advised by all the sailors he did not leave at such a time that he threatened a storm, yet he wanted to leave with the storm. The ship set up the sirti; and the master was the first to die and pay the penalty of his temerity and daring….
PANDOLPH. (What a beautiful story he invented! How beautifully the villain tells the story!).
GUGLIELMO. … The corsairs came and made them prisoners; I escaped and they took me again; I redeemed myself, I arrived home to safety.
CLIQUE. You went to Barbary to shave that debtor of yours, and the sea had you to shave your life and all your clothes.
GUGLIELMO. I went to Barbaria to collect my credits.
CLIQUE. You went to the Barberia to shave and were shaved. (Let's leave the bays, ask them about the silver and the vestments).
PANDOLPH. Ben, my vignarolo, where are the silver and the vestments that the astrologer gave you?
GUGLIELMO. I don't know what you say.
PANDOLPH. Are you kidding or are you talking out of your mind?
GUGLIELMO. From the best you have. Is this time for jokes?
PANDOLPH. Now this is another matter. Tell me, where is the silver?
GUGLIELMO. Do you ask me?
PANDOLPH. Who do you want me to ask?
GUGLIELMO. What silver do you say?
PANDOLPH. Who gave you the astrologer after you were transformed.
GUGLIELMO. What astrologer, what transformation?
PANDOLPH. Now this is another devil, two thousand silver shields: that would make me angry!
CLIQUE. Ah, ah, ah! aim that laughs! the traitor wants to joke with you.
PANDOLPH. Canchero! these are bad jokes. And it seems that he has become more pale soon.
CLIQUE. Think of the thief who, if he was transformed into Guglielmo, will never again have to become a vignarolo and make us stay still in silver.
PANDOLPH. He doesn't have much malice, he's a beast.
CLIQUE. And the bestials are wont to be malicious; but I would be more beastly than he if I let myself be made fun of by one of his peers. Tell me, aren't you the vignarolo?
GUGLIELMO. I say that I am Guglielmo not the vignarolo.
PANDOLPH. Indeed you are both, the vignarolo and Guglielmo, that is, the masked vignarolo in Guglielmo.
GUGLIELMO. I am none other than William, and it is not now carnival that I go in masks. I have no other mask than the one nature made me.
CLIQUE. I cannot believe that excessive bestiality is enough to make a wise man.
PANDOLPH. Let's go back to silver: what will you answer me?
GUGLIELMO. I don't know what to answer you, because I don't know anything about what you say.
PANDOLPH. I don't want a wife anymore. Let's go back to the astrologer, so you can go back to what you were before and give me back the silver.
CLIQUE. (Stop, master: the door of Guglielmo's house opens and Armellina the servant comes out. Let him enter the house and see what effect it will have; because he cannot escape from it, and what you want to do now you can always do. that you want. Let's start from him, because we do not suspect the deception).
PANDOLPH. (I will stick to your advice).
CLIQUE. Vignarolo, the door of Guglielmo's house is already open. Don't you see your sweetheart Armellina and her daughter? come on, enter the house.
GUGLIELMO. Blessed be the heavens that took away from you, for they had worn me out with I don't know what vignarolo or what silver!
SCENE IV.
ARTEMISIA, GUGLIELMO, ARMELLINA.
ARTEMISIA. (I see the vignarolo transformed into Guglielmo, who comes straight home. Alas! I think my father is the same and I want to give him the bay a little!).
GUGLIELMO. (Well thank the skies that I see my house!). Tic knock.
ARTEMISIA. Who beats, olá?
GUGLIELMO. O Artemisia, dear daughter, open to me, may you be blessed!
ARTEMISIA. "Dear daughter," says the rascal: ah, ah, ah!
GUGLIELMO. Don't you know your father William?
ARTEMISIA. Who William?
GUGLIELMO. Who William? your father.
ARTEMISIA. Were you where is my father William?
GUGLIELMO. Where is your father then?
ARTEMISIA. He died and submerged under the waves.
GUGLIELMO. I am that dead and submerged!
ARTEMISIA. Ben, I don't deal with dead and submerged.
GUGLIELMO. Open to me, dear daughter!
ARTEMISIA. Will I open? I'll take a good look at it: I feel all pissed off.
GUGLIELMO. And of what?
ARTEMISIA. Let a dead and submerged talk and come home.
GUGLIELMO. Open up, please!
ARTEMISIA. You will now be resolved by the sea or you are putrefied, and I can smell your body so far, oibò, fiú!
GUGLIELMO. Open, I am as alive as before!
ARTEMISIA. How do I live, if we have reasoned with so many eyewitnesses, when would you submerge yourself with the ship and die?
GUGLIELMO. Deh, open and not many words!
ARMELLINA. (Mistress, let me joke a little). Who is down there? what are you asking?
GUGLIELMO. Open, my Armellina.
ARMELLINA. If you come from a warm home, you need some freshening up.
GUGLIELMO. I need the disease that God gives you!
ARMELLINA. Good words in the house of others!
GUGLIELMO. You moved my còlera; and if you don't open me, I'll throw the doors on the ground.
ARMELLINA. With a little water we will refresh your còlera.
GUGLIELMO. When I enter I will break your arms with a stick.
ARMELLINA. Take this refreshment off!
GUGLIELMO. Ah, filthy, mangy, lousy!
ARMELLINA. I washed your head of filth, ringworm and lice.
GUGLIELMO. If I don't pay you, you can overwhelm me again! I don't know that he keeps me from breaking and breaking doors and killing you with sticks.
SCENE V.
LELIO, ARMELLINA, GUGLIELMO.
LELIO. (I don't know who Armellina thinks about: it seems to me a foreigner). Who are you talking to?
ARMELLINA. With the soul of your father, who wants to enter our house by force.
LELIO. I see how my father looks. Oh how much he looks like him! If Cricca hadn't told me about it before, who would be enough to make me believe it was the vignarolo? Certainly it will be some spirit of hell that forced the astrologer to come in such form.
GUGLIELMO. (They will make me so angry with the winemaker and the astrologer that they would make me submerge myself again in the sea! By whom do I hope to be recognized if my own son does not know me?).
LELIO. Oh might of the sciences! how big they are! Now who would be enough to believe that the powerful influences of the stars gave birth to so much variety? To change a man into another form! I would like to mock and mock him, but he seems to me so much like my father that the reverence of his appearance retains me.
GUGLIELMO. (Oh at least I had another boss to knock this into a wall!). O son, if you do not know what your father looks like, consider that the heat of the sun has made my skin a little black and frizzy, and my eyes stuck in my forehead for the discomfort of the journey and of the country; and even though the features of the face have changed, consider the air of the semblant that cannot be lost: at least consider the wound in the hand that you helped me to heal it years ago.
LELIO. He, who transformed the vignarolo into Guglielmo, transformed the person of the vignarolo with the same wound that Guglielmo had; otherwise he will not be transformed.
GUGLIELMO. Son, I don't know what other certainty I can give you that he is your father.
LELIO. (He moved me to compassion, nor do I know why). Come on, go away with these tidings of yours; and once again do not be daring with these transformations of yours to come to the house of good men: for the first time be forgiven yourself. We know very well who you are and what purpose you came here for; and if he had proposed well in his soul to beat you very well, the reverence which I bring to the likeness of my dearest father forbids me. Go about your business, so that I, in order not to be bothered by your importunity, was forced to do what I told you; because if the astrologer who transformed you had predicted that you were to receive blows, perhaps once more he would have predicted the true prediction. And since you don't want to leave, I'll leave.
GUGLIELMO. I still want to leave and yield to iniquitous luck!
SCENE VI.
VIGNAROLO alone.
VIGNAROLO. Our life is just like slices of presciutto: a little thin and a little fat, a little bit of pleasure and a little bit of displeasure. When he was in the villa, he thought that the life of all gentlemen was happiness; but now I have proved that they still have their cancheri and cacasangui. He was very happy that he had earned ten ducats and called by that lady in exchange for Guglielmo; but the ten ducats were taken from me and the lady cost me a lot, because with difficulty I escaped from the hands of that Spaniard. Now before some other misfortune happens to me, I want to go to Guglielmo's house; and immediately upon entering, I will have Armellina promised to be a wife to the winemaker and make the instruments, so that when I leave being William, he will take her away from me as his wife. Oh, cancaro! I fear being discovered by others for vignarolo, and now I discover myself; and what with so much diligence he wants to hide is made clear to everyone. I am alone and I speak as if accompanied. "Listen, vignarolo, and do as I tell you." Ben, what are you saying? what do you want me to do? "Go to William's house and enter it with reputation; then begin to do your own business first, then the master's facts: that Armellina marry the vignarolo and then Artemisia with the master. But if they don't want to, what will you do? I will take Armellina by force and make us the master of Artemisia. "Ah, traitora Armellina, now I will return to you the words you spoke to me this morning!" I want to go and knock on the door and not hold back any longer, so that the time does not pass and the vignarolo would return without doing anything.
SCENE VII.
GUGLIELMO, VIGNAROLO.
GUGLIELMO. (Wretched me, what must I do, because, having come to my homeland with so much effort, can't I enter my house? But I see someone trying to enter: it will be some friend; I will recommend myself to him).
VIGNAROLO. Tick, knock, knock.
GUGLIELMO. Gentleman, are you at home?
VIGNAROLO. (He calls me a "gentleman", he honors me: since I look well dressed he thinks I'm a gentleman. It is a beautiful thing to be rich: everyone honors you, greets you, touches your hand, stops to reason with you, accompanies you until at home and asks you how you are. He calls me a "gentleman", which neither me nor anyone of my kin should be given the name).
GUGLIELMO. Gentleman, who are you knocking at this door?
VIGNAROLO. Answer me first: who are you that you ask me?
GUGLIELMO. My dear master, do not enter the còlera: please say you, who are you?
VIGNAROLO. I have no account to a vile man like you are; but you who want to know who you are, who are you?
GUGLIELMO. The master of this house!
VIGNAROLO. You lie that you are its master, because I am its master.
GUGLIELMO. (Maybe my son will have sold it to him). How much is it that you are master of it?
VIGNAROLO. I have been its master since that time when I was its master
William.
GUGLIELMO. Who William?
VIGNAROLO. Of the Anastasis.
GUGLIELMO. William Anastasio? the one who went to Barbaria to settle his reason with that companion of his and submerged himself in the gulf?
VIGNAROLO. What you say.
GUGLIELMO. Now if William submerged himself in that gulf, how is he now alive in the city?
VIGNAROLO. Clumsy! because I was saved by swimming.
GUGLIELMO. (What does he say?).
VIGNAROLO. And I had promised Artemisia to Pandolfo for wife, and he to me Sulpizia his daughter.
GUGLIELMO. (Cancaro! This is me too: and he says all that I am and he knows all my secrets, as he had my person and my spirit). But to have you, young man, that I am William, and I am the one who went to Barbaria to settle the accounts with that companion of mine, and I promised my daughter to Pandolfo; but if I am and cannot be anything other than I, and you are and cannot be other than William, all two will be William and all two will be one.
VIGNAROLO. If you say more such words, I will beat you with a pole like walnuts are beaten. What an asinity! if we are duo, you and me, how are we one?
GUGLIELMO. At least tell me if I've become you and you have become me.
VIGNAROLO. And even there! shut up and do better for yourself.
GUGLIELMO. Can you make it not what I am? and isn't it Guglielmo?
VIGNAROLO. Come on, take away, William; receive, William!
GUGLIELMO. Oh oh! I am sorry that due to the travails of the journey I am so feeble and frail as a person who cannot defend myself.
VIGNAROLO. Now tell me if you are William! since I cannot do it with good words that you are not, I will do it with sticks.
GUGLIELMO. May the heavens wish that I was not William or that I had never been, and that I were you and you me, that I give and you receive the fights!
VIGNAROLO. Tell me now, who are you?
GUGLIELMO. I am what you want me to be: Pietro, Giovanni, Martino.
VIGNAROLO. And why did you say a little while ago that you were Guglielmo?
GUGLIELMO. He had been drinking in a tavern and was drunk.
VIGNAROLO. Since you are no longer William, who are you?
GUGLIELMO. Your slave, your servant.
VIGNAROLO. I never saw you or knew you, you are neither my slave nor my servant.
GUGLIELMO. But let's talk about grace with good reason: if I'm not William, who am I?
VIGNAROLO. If you don't know who you are, I don't even know: you are a horse, an ox, a donkey.
GUGLIELMO. Sir yes, if we were in the time of Pythagoras, I would say that when I submerged I died and my soul entered another body and I am another. I would like to know who I am.
VIGNAROLO. You are a truffle!
GUGLIELMO. I'm cool: this is really a great thing; to me it also seems to be that William from before. I am not dead: I see, I speak, I move; or perhaps when I was submerged, for the great fear I had when I saw death so close to me, I had become another, and I must find another person to be any?
VIGNAROLO. No more words: either go away or ask me a question!
GUGLIELMO. I will not question you.
VIGNAROLO. Leave and do not say anymore that you are William.
GUGLIELMO. Oh great misfortune and never more understood, that a man has lost himself and does not know who he is! And this disgrace seems to me greater than the first; and so that time cannot put an end to my misery, let him be driven out of my house by saying that he is someone else, and then find someone else who says that he is me. O all you wretched and wretched who are in the world, run to see my misfortune, because all yours will seem null to you! Or chains, or prisons, or lashes received by the Moors, how truly you were sweeter to me; O perils of the sea, how much you were more sweet to me; O sea, my capital enemy, why did you leave me alive, you have placed me in these troubles! I went to Barbaria to buy money, and I lost myself; to settle accounts with my partner, I left the person there. It was better to lose the stuff and save myself: from myself alone I defended myself from the sea and I did not know how to defend myself from those who robbed me of myself!
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Re: Albumazar, by John Tomkis
by admin » Sun Jan 09, 2022 4:58 am
Part 3 of 3
SCENE VIII.
LELIO, CRICCA, VIGNAROLO.
LELIO. Alas, what do I see? which is what I picture?
CLIQUE. What is your reason for such wonder?
LELIO. You don't see my father and the vignarolo, the true and the false
William?
CLIQUE. Yes, I see them.
LELIO. Didn't you tell me that the vignarolo is transformed into my father? and I giving credit to your words I chased my father from home, thinking he was the vignarolo. Here is the one and the other: I don't know if that William I am talking about is true or false William.
CLIQUE. So it really is; and I am more amazed than you.
LELIO. You crave, you rave.
CLIQUE. We have been doubly mocked by the astrologer, and of transformation and of silver; and now he will have escaped: and I doubt that I am no more a true astrologer than he is.
LELIO. How will we be able to clarify this? Aim how my poor father is painful!
CLIQUE. O vignarolo, o vignarolo!
VIGNAROLO. Aim at this beast that knows me.
CLIQUE. Answer, vignarolo.
VIGNAROLO. Cricca, do you see the vignarolo?
CLIQUE. That I don't have the eyes with which one can I see?
VIGNAROLO. And you don't see?
CLIQUE. Yes, I see you.
VIGNAROLO. You neither see me nor know me; but you listen to speak and you know me by voice: because how do you want to know me, if I am someone else?
CLIQUE. I say you are what you were before.
VIGNAROLO. So you see me, Clique?
CLIQUE. How do you not want me to see you? (O Lelio, I guessed it: this vignarolo is a good ignoramus, and if he is half a donkey, the other half is a beast; and if Pandolfo has worked hard to persuade him that he wants to transform himself into Guglielmo, now he must work hard for another make him believe it is what it was before). Who are you then?
VIGNAROLO. I am Guglielmo and I want to enter my house, give Artemisia to my master and Armellina to the vignarolo.
CLIQUE. And the acts, the proceeding and the words give me ample faith that you are that winemaker you were before. Aren't you ashamed to say that you are William?
VIGNAROLO. I would be ashamed of doing a bad thing, but in entering the house and disposing of my things I do not do a bad thing.
CLIQUE. You are well aware that you are not Guglielmo.
VIGNAROLO. And if I'm not Guglielmo, what has happened to the vignarolo?
CLIQUE. The first draft and the stem of your person was the vignarolo, then the color and the semblance above was of Guglielmo: that color and that appearance of Guglielmo disappeared, and the person of the vignarolo that was before has remained.
VIGNAROLO. Enough enough, I know you're trying to persuade me it's not
William.
CLIQUE. Do you want me to let you know who you are?
VIGNAROLO. Please.
CLIQUE. (O galley, you cry without him!). Come on, take this off!
VIGNAROLO. O canchero you eat! with your fist you ruined my shoulder.
CLIQUE. Did you feel the blow, you piece of beast?
VIGNAROLO. Heartfelt!
CLIQUE. Donque you are the vignarolo: because if you were Guglielmo, Guglielmo must have heard it and not the vignarolo.
VIGNAROLO. Indeed, however, I heard it because I am Guglielmo; if it were the vignarolo, the vignarolo had heard it and not Guglielmo.
CLIQUE. I gave it to the vignarolo and not to Guglielmo. But tell me, who is in love with Armellina, the vignarolo or Guglielmo?
VIGNAROLO. The vignarolo.
CLIQUE. Tell me, do you love Armellina now or not?
VIGNAROLO. I love and tear her.
CLIQUE. So you are the vignarolo, babuazzo, because Guglielmo does not love his massara.
VIGNAROLO. Already I start to enter.
CLIQUE. Manigoldone, if Guglielmo is submerged and dead or is no longer in the world, if you were Guglielmo you would have died or a person of wind or air; but because I see you and touch you, you are the vignarolo.
VIGNAROLO. You have by fate tangled my brain that I am doubtful whether it is Guglielmo or the vignarolo; but if I am already transformed and I am not Guglielmo, who am I? I'll be lost and I'll be some other man or some beast.
CLIQUE. You did not become a beast because you always hunker down.
VIGNAROLO. I was esteemed William by one of his debtors, because he gave me ten ducats that he owed them, and by a sweetheart of his, and I was esteemed by all Guglielmo; but because you are envious of my happiness and you would not want me to be better than you, you tire yourself with so many reasons to give me to understand that it is not him. But I am Guglielmo in spite of you. Envy gnaws at you: crack of envy in your own way, teh, teh! But even if you are so envious of it, go to the astrologer who transformed me, and let yourself be transformed again.
CLIQUE. How much can the power of the imagination!
VIGNAROLO. The world is not enough to free me from such a sweet thought of being William: I am here and I want to be there; and if I were not there, it would seem to me to be. Now I am going to his house and then I will know if I will have been Guglielmo or the vignarolo.
SCENE IX.
LELIO, CRICCA, GUGLIELMO.
CLIQUE. (Signor Lelio, he is of that ancient line of Bartolomeo Colione: persuading him that he is not Guglielmo is a waste of time. But be sure that this is your father).
LELIO. (When I chased him away from home, he felt a certain remorse of that insult in his heart; but I want to ask him anything to make sure of it). Tell me, Signor Guglielmo, when you left for Barberia, how much money did you bring with you for the convenience of the trip?
GUGLIELMO. Two hundred and fifty ducats, since I could not accomplish three hundred because Avareggio, our relative, lost his word.
LELIO. (This is my father very certain, because others could not have known this). Forgive me, dear father, if I was so foolish not to notice before….
GUGLIELMO. I cannot believe that you are so quick to believe that he is your father, because so many adverse events of fortune make it clear to me that you know me for some previous prodigies against me.
LELIO. An astrologer was the cause of it all.
GUGLIELMO. Who astrologer?
LELIO. When you left Naples, you promised Artemisia to Pandolfo; then came the news of your death, Pandolfo asked me for the promise made to her by you. To all friends and relatives it seemed inconvenient that a man of such an age should expect the promise: I denied it. He found an astrologer who promised him to transform his vignarolo into your effigy, and under your name to enter the house and give him the bride promised to him; but I having been warned of the deception before, believing I would drive out the vignarolo, I have driven you away.
GUGLIELMO. But today they gave me everything for the head of the "astrologer" and the "vignarolo", and they were a bait that kindled the fire of anger in my chest. Well it is true that I promised it, but I regretted it a thousand times later.
LELIO. Father, that you have esteemed Pandolfo so old and deserving husband of your daughter, I must not and cannot believe it; but why do you say that you were of this opinion, I would think it was given to Eugenio his son, who is much more deserving of it.
GUGLIELMO. Son, do what you like with Artemisia, for I will not be against you in anything.
CLIQUE. If you have judged Eugenio worthy of your daughter, Signor Lelio di Sulpizia, his daughter, will still be worthy.
GUGLIELMO. I am delighted with all of your contentment: I have always had the desire to have a kinship with Pandolfo.
CLIQUE. You will be very happy with your unexpected arrival. To persuade Pandolfo to leave Artemisia is a gamble to lose; and it will come with annoying terms, because it is so crazy that it is close to throwing stones. I have thought of a way that with his own hands he will cut off the root of his not very honest desires, and untie with his hands that knot with which he thought to tie us: the arrows will turn against the archer, and we will remain rich for his loss and happy for his misfortune.
GUGLIELMO. Say it with grace, because I have always known you as a man of great spirit.
CLIQUE. I estimate that your coming, as much as it is for our benefit, so much makes our deception beautiful.
GUGLIELMO. Beautiful deception is what is woven with design and then succeeds.
CLIQUE. He thinks quite certain that the vignarolo is transformed in you, and he has sent it to your house to have the effect. I will go and give him the news that he has been received inside and that Artemisia wants to give him as a wife to everyone's satisfaction, as long as they are content to keep to his word. Therefore, considering it certain that you are the vignarolo, he will accept the offer; and in the presence of all we will make you swear; and sworn, you can say that it will be more convenient to give Artemisia to Eugenio and Sulpicia to Lelio, because old decrepit wives of sixteen are not suitable.
GUGLIELMO. Oh beautiful thought, very subtle and cunning indeed!
LELIO. He will not be able to imagine the most beautiful stretch! take away any delay.
CLIQUE. Plan; "He who is impatient of delay should fall"; but if we want the deception to succeed, we must not go chirping that Guglielmo is back. And you keep the vignarolo at home, so that Pandolfo does not see him insin so much that you have not had weddings. Here lies the victory of the fact; and let us leave so that he does not come and see us reason together, because it would be to give him suspicion of some plot woven against him. I will go and tell him that the vignarolo has entered the house and that Lelio is happy to do the will of his father: which he will believe, as what he wishes, and he will easily take the oath.
LELIO. How will I keep the vignarolo?
CLIQUE. He will come very certain into your house: lock him in a room until the brides are made yours.
LELIO. I wish that while the prison will take revenge for the disgust he has given him.
CLIQUE. The pleasure we will take from the pleasant joke of the vignarolo will be the revenge of his ignorance.
LELIO. Now that the second fortune our desires, let us go, father, to give this joy to Artemisia.
GUGLIELMO. Here we go.
CLIQUE. But here is the vignarolo who comes straight home: let's mock him a little.
LELIO. Leave it to us.
SCENE X.
VIGNAROLO, ARMELLINA.
VIGNAROLO. (This evil clique with his reasons had confused my brain by saying that he was the vignarolo and not Guglielmo, who had little less persuaded me; but I know his malicious and roguish nature. Then I will be clear of the truth, if I will be received in Guglielmo's house for the same or for the vignarolo). The door opens and Armellina comes out.
ARMELLINA. O William, dear master, stoned at the welcome!
VIGNAROLO. O dear Armellina, how much I have longed to see you! I pray heaven may see you with one eye, if I did not wish to see you! I would like you to see my heart open, to know how much I love you.
ARMELLINA. Heaven wanted, especially by the hand of the executioner!
VIGNAROLO. Let me at least kiss you on the forehead as a daughter.
ARMELLINA. Good will is enough; but I want to kiss your feet.
VIGNAROLO. Oh canchero! that you made me fall, you choked me!
ARMELLINA. Come to the house to have breakfast, because you are tired and you must need it. (He has already received the breakfast starter).
VIGNAROLO. Know, my Armellina, that every little thing hurt me, when I was submerged, that I never had to see you.
ARMELLINA. When, master, you plunged into the sea, did you see no swordfish passing you from side to side, and the razorfish cutting your face, and the whales swallowing you alive?
VIGNAROLO. If I had met these, they would have wounded me or died.
But as soon as I'm rested a little, I want to marry you.
ARMELLINA. And who do you want to give me? some handsome young man?
VIGNAROLO. A person who dies for you: he is of your similarity, of height and features like me, very similar to me.
ARMELLINA. He will therefore be as old as you are. God forbid! you don't want old; if I happen, it does it to have children like the others.
VIGNAROLO. I am not saying that he is as old as I am, but of my stature, and very similar except in old age. It will always make you stay in the villa; you will eat chickens, pigeons, pork, ricotta and fruits of all kinds.
ARMELLINA. Tell me, is he young?
VIGNAROLO. He is young.
ARMELLINA. Tell me who he is, quick.
VIGNAROLO. The vignarolo.
ARMELLINA. Could I be that Vignarolo of Pandolfo? because I love it as much as life and I would be delighted.
VIGNAROLO. That's it, that's me.
ARMELLINA. Are you that? if you are William, how are you?
VIGNAROLO. O beast! - tell me. That, I say; but I am Guglielmo.
ARMELLINA. I am in love with that vignarolo and I die for him.
VIGNAROLO. Do you want to see it?
ARMELLINA. How much life.
VIGNAROLO. What would you pay to whoever showed it to you?
ARMELLINA. Myself.
VIGNAROLO. If you want to keep me secret, I'll let you see me.
ARMELLINA. Here is your faith.
VIGNAROLO. I am the vignarolo.
ARMELLINA. You want to mock me; sète Guglielmo.
VIGNAROLO. If I am not the vignarolo, may I eat wolves and be found in the middle of the woods to the sound of flies! Are you laughing?
ARMELLINA. I laugh at the desire I have to see him.
VIGNAROLO. I tell you that when you see me, you see him.
ARMELLINA. And yet I tell you that, seeing William, I see you and not the vignarolo.
VIGNAROLO. Oh be bad when I changed! I am Guglielmo on the outside but on the inside I am the vignarolo, because a certain astrologer has transformed me.
ARMELLINA. You want to make a joke.
VIGNAROLO. My language is so intricate that I cannot speak. I would like to get rid of it and I cannot, I would like to put my head in the wall to return to what it was before. Now this is a disgrace never seen again! I tell you, my Armellina, that inside I am the vignarolo.
ARMELLINA. So why should we expect William to give birth and be a vignarolo, or skin yourselves to get him out of it?
VIGNAROLO. Give me free field in a room, for you will know what I tell you.
ARMELLINA. I don't want to go to the room with the masters; I would go there with the vignarolo, yes well alone or alone.
VIGNAROLO. O traitorous fortune, or traitor astrologer, or murderous master, who you made me transform into another person; because now I would like to be what I was before and I can't be there! You refuse what you want, and you don't know what you have: let's go to the room and we'll be alone until tomorrow, until you return to my figure.
ARMELLINA. I am happy. Enter first, Signor Guglielmo.
VIGNAROLO. Within; follow me, my dear Armellina.
ARMELLINA. (I don't know if Lelio has arranged the echelon to make it slip by their feet).
VIGNAROLO. Alas, you closed the door on my face, you died of me!
ARMELLINA. Forgive me for grace, because the wind has taken it from my hand.
VIGNAROLO. He holds the door open while I sift, for the stairs are dark.
ARMELLINA. I hold. Here it is steep.
VIGNAROLO. Alas alas! I am dead!
ARMELLINA. What have you, my dear master?
VIGNAROLO. I missed an echelon and I slipped with all my feet and broke my shoulder!
ARMELLINA. Come in, for we will anoint you with a little oak fat.
VIGNAROLO. Alas! alas!
ARMELLINA. You've already had dinner, now a horse's back meal is being prepared on the shoulders of fifty sticks.
ACT V.
SCENE I.
CRACK, PANDOLPH.
CLIQUE. (I will go to the master and give him the good news; I will try to make him believe it, although I am sure it will last little effort, because he will want more to believe it than I to make him believe it).
PANDOLPH. I would like to know who made the vignarolo.
CLIQUE. (I will make a view not to see him and I will make sight wish to find him to let him enter more well). Alas, who never finds what one seeks and one always encounters whoever seeks: I cannot find my master to give him such good news!
PANDOLPH. Veggio Cricca; I seem to understand that you want to give me good news: I have it for a prodigy of my good.
CLIQUE. I walked in such a hurry to find it that I can hardly catch my breath; the shoes have made penance of them which are all broken.
PANDOLPH. He says it in a loud voice, with a wide and cheerful mouth: a sign of a cheerful thing. Certainly the vignarolo will have been received for Guglielmo and will have granted me Artemisia as a wife. I want to understand it better: o Clique, o Clique!
CLIQUE. There is no one at home or in the square or on the spot where one can practice.
PANDOLPH. Clique, turn here, can't you see me?
CLIQUE. Master, the joy is so great that I could not see you: I searched every hole to find you.
PANDOLPH. That? Am I a crab or a mouse you look for holes to find me? Tell me soon, what good news do you bring me?
CLIQUE. I want to give it to you little by little so that you do not diminish for joy.
The vignarolo ...
PANDOLPH. What?
CLIQUE. ... he has already mastered the house; ...
PANDOLPH. Oh what joy! speak soon.
CLIQUE. ... and sends you to say ...
PANDOLPH. What? don't let me die.
CLIQUE. … That you come with your son Eugenio….
PANDOLPH. And then?
CLIQUE. … So that he will consent to your marriage.
PANDOLPH. Well well! I'm leaving now with my son Eugenio.
CLIQUE. Master, you do not show as much joy as I esteemed.
PANDOLPH. If I keep quiet with my mouth, I cry with my heart: joy has occupied my feelings so much that I don't know where I am. Walk, run, fly!
CLIQUE. I walked, ran and flew so much to give you the good news that I would have won the pallium; but where do you want me to run, chimneys and flights?
PANDOLPH. Find Eugenio; and you, who know his humor, dispose of him because you are happy with William's will.
CLIQUE. Oh how lovers are quick to follow their desires!
PANDOLPH. Come on soon, what are you doing? clap your hands.
CLIQUE. You have to walk with your feet, not your hands.
PANDOLPH. I feel faint.
CLIQUE. You get lost in happiness.
PANDOLPH. Thinking that I have to meet Artemisia, I die.
CLIQUE. What would you do if you had to deal with a bull, if having to deal with a cow you die?
PANDOLPH. Alas, the astrologer was able to find the happy point to transform the vignarolo! And because he carried himself so faithfully with me, I will make him happy all the time of his life, just as I will live with my desired Artemisia. But here is the vine-grower entangled or William invignarolato: if there is no one, his son estimates that he is his father.
SCENE II.
GUGLIELMO, PANDOLFO, LELIO, EUGENIO, ARTEMISIA, SULPIZIA.
GUGLIELMO. My dear Pandolfo is well found!
PANDOLPH. And you welcome, my much desired William! As the same desire has spurred on both, you to leave and I to desire your return; so luck had it that we will meet again with the utmost satisfaction of both, if well that you made me wait, eh?
GUGLIELMO. Eh, brother, I have suffered so many difficulties that wanting to tell them I would move to compassion; but because I am here safe, I am ready and willing to use your services more than ever.
PANDOLPH. And I am very ready to obey everything that is commanded me by you. But where is my son Eugenio?
GUGLIELMO. He will be here shortly, as I have sent for him. Here he comes.
EUGENIO. You are welcome, Signor Guglielmo!
GUGLIELMO. You are well found, Eugenio, my dear son! But because we are all ready here, it is good that our daughters will come again, so that they may still be happy with what we have to do.
PANDOLPH. Oh how very well you say! Eugenio, go up and call Sulpizia.
GUGLIELMO. And you, Lelio, my son, call Artemisia.
PANDOLPH. (Oh good vignarolo, with what a beautiful prologue you began! The obligation I will have to the astrologer will be greater, who transformed him de face, improved him in intellect).
GUGLIELMO. Here we are ready.
LELIO. And the rest of us even in time.
GUGLIELMO. Dear Pandolfo and you, dear children, if we want to deal with matters of marriages, which end with life, and the errors that are committed in those are irremediable, it is quite right that they are dealt with with the consent of all the parties and that each one says his free and open opinion, so as not to say after the fact: "He must have said so, he must have done so….
PANDOLPH. Very well, dear Guglielmo.
GUGLIELMO. ... And yet I did not want to deal with marriages except in the presence and with the consent of our sons and daughters, who after our deaths will have to succeed our faculty; so that after our deaths they may not speak ill of us and curse us, as we see most children do when they feel any disgust at the cause of their fathers. But I want them to give their free consent to this sentence of mine and give me each of you authority in particular to be able to determine it; otherwise I am not going to say a word in this fact.
EUGENIO. For me, Mr. Guglielmo, I have the power to determine these marriages as you please, and I will be very patient at any of his sentences, however it may be; and so says my sister Sulpizia.
SULPICE. I confirm everything my brother says.
LELIO. And I, my dear father, as I have been most ubiquitous to you all my life, so I will be there in this and in whatever else you command me; and the same one promises you Artemisia my sister.
ARTEMISIA. I am happy with everything my father and brother are happy with.
GUGLIELMO. And you, Mr. Pandolfo?
PANDOLPH. And me first of all. And for greater certainty of my will, knowing how much youthful spirits are ready and light to promise and then to repent, I want the promises to be confirmed, so that we don't have to rebuke and argue: - He didn't mean it that way, he didn't think of me as.
ARTEMISIA. Oh how well it says!
LELIO. Indeed very well!
PANDOLPH. I want to be the first to swear. And I swear the sentence, which will come out of your mouth, always have it for installment and firm and observe it in every way.
EUGENIO. And I archjury of it.
LELIO. And I slaughter it.
SULPICE. I swear to observe everything I am commanded by my father.
ARTEMISIA. And I want to observe him at the same time, more than if he were my father.
PANDOLPH. Now, dear William, everyone hangs from your mouth, they expect nothing but your sentence: you are the judge, the wheel and the whole court, and your decree will be final.
GUGLIELMO. Monsieur Pandolfo, you are not like young people, who like beasts no longer aim beyond snatching their sensual appetites; but in that age when the heat of concupiscence is already extinguished, they should not be awakened by invigorating them with new fires of filthy and dishonest thoughts but mortifying the concupiscence. Wake up from this earthly love in which you have slept a long time, and open your eyes to the light of truth; and if you cannot with your own virtue, fall in love with the glory that will lift you up, for the mother of true glory is your own virtue. Connect with your elders, with their greatness, and try to imitate them with all your studies; of your father who was a portrait and an image of the good life, and with how many worthy and honest habits he raised you: and that this life is very unworthy of the gravity and prudence of which you gave so much foreboding in your youth, hence the honor past should spur you on to higher degrees of honor….
PANDOLPH. What does this practice have to do with the sentence you have to give?
GUGLIELMO. … And you well know that the main things that are sought in marriage are the conformities of the ages and customs; nor should sons or daughters be raped to whomever we want. Now consider what conformity of age there is between you and my daughter, since she is sixteen years old and you eighty, that there could be twice a grandson. Consider what the people will say, that a gentleman like you, well-born, adorned with wise friezes of honor and lived with such splendor of life, and then at the last age to want to marry: either that you are old foolish or that the brain goes for a walk. , and other more vituperative insults. Consider that of course the young hate the old; and that a man worn out by time cannot stand at the hammer with a young girl, if only for another reason, at least for the dishonesty of the fact and for the example, which is given to young people, of little modesty….
PANDOLPH. Let's finish it with grace.
GUGLIELMO. … I want my daughter Artemisia to be the wife of your son Eugene; and Sulpizia your daughter, having first judged her worthy of me, be the wife of my son Lelio: the one because both are in the first flowers of their youth, the other because they loved each other very modestly for a long time, and we will not do so. great wrong to their most honest loves. And you, Mr. Pandolfo, embrace patience and marry it! ...
PANDOLPH. I thank you that with so much praise you heal the wounds that rain blood. (Ah, traitor vignarolo, out of good respect I keep my hands and tongue in the presence of these!).
GUGLIELMO. … And remembering the betrayals of the first wife, you would have to abhor the second; for the people do not say that you are a hard-mouthed horse, for not having tamed the first, you seek the second. I know well that it won't be long before you regret it; so, having to repent of it, it will be better that you do not take it off….
PANDOLPH. (If I don't make you repent! These twenty-four hours will soon end and you will be back as before).
GUGLIELMO. … My dear Pandolfo, be more reasonable than obstinate sooner, and do not worry yourself and others with your disproportionate loves; and if you return to yourself, you will know that the sentence given by me is in your favor and more on purpose for you. Listen to me.
PANDOLPH. Oh devil, or thirty devils, or traitor, or goofy hound dog, if I don't make you suffer penance, may I die in quarter! You have nestled me: already the pain and the breathlessness is so much that they squeeze my heart that I don't know how not to die. O traitor and maladetto love, o rude femine, o traitorous old age! my son kept himself with Lelio, with Cricca and with the vignarolo, they suborned him, and they got around me with their tricks and deceptions, because they all turned against me. When he thought I had bought the prize of a famous and illustrious victory, I find myself a loser. O skies, o stars, o iniquitous world, o unequal fortune! but why should I complain of the sky and the stars, of the world and of fortune, if not of myself who have been a minister of my evil? for a thing of such importance I ought not to have committed in the hands of a rascal, rude, ignorant, traitor. I know the error when I have no more remedy: I have nothing left of comfort but revenge. I let myself be mocked, offended and betrayed by those who are not good to offend and betray an ant. These arms and hands of mine have been cut off if I do not take revenge! if I should die I will wait for him, I will find him, I will punish him in my own way!
SCENE III.
VIGNAROLO, PANDOLFO.
VIGNAROLO. Luck was all against me today.
PANDOLPH. And now more than ever, villain, scoundrel, traitor, murderer!
VIGNAROLO. O miserable and unhappy me, what do you want to do?
PANDOLPH. Make me miserable and unhappy as you have made me miserable and unhappy!
VIGNAROLO. Do I deserve this reward from you?
PANDOLPH. That reward you gave to me!
VIGNAROLO. Deh! not ..., deh! not…, for love….
PANDOLPH. For the devil's sake!
VIGNAROLO. Why are you insulting me?
PANDOLPH. Because you did it to me: "the injury that is received is the daughter of the injury that was done before". I insult you by not killing you, and in order not to insult you I want to kill you! And this I wanted: that no one can pass on that I do not treat you as you deserve.
VIGNAROLO. Alas! alas!
PANDOLPH. Does it hurt you that I don't do what you deserve?
VIGNAROLO. What have I done to you?
PANDOLPH. Do you still ask me what you did to me?
VIGNAROLO. Why do you want to kill me?
PANDOLPH. To draw your heart from your chest and drink your blood!
VIGNAROLO. The reason?
PANDOLPH. Wanting to give you the reason is wanting to pass on time to listen to your apologies: the reason is that I want to draw your guts!
VIGNAROLO. Do you want to experience all your strengths against me?
PANDOLPH. Because he is not a man who does not try to do the worst he can with all his might.
VIGNAROLO. To your factor?
PANDOLPH. To my destroyer. Neither with these words will you escape life, neither repenting nor seeking forgiveness takes place next to me.
VIGNAROLO. What have I done to you?
PANDOLPH. Do you have the heart to talk, traitor?
VIGNAROLO. What betrayal did I ever do to you?
PANDOLPH. Do you deny it now, villain?
VIGNAROLO. I deny it, because I never made treason.
PANDOLPH. Now pretend to be a fool, because by being a fool you have always deceived me.
VIGNAROLO. I do not pretend to be a fool or a deception, neither is it my duty nor is it suitable for you.
PANDOLPH. Now more than ever deceives and jokes.
VIGNAROLO. I am not making fun of you, nor if I wanted to, I could do it. Speak to me clearly or hold the knife so much to my throat.
PANDOLPH. Now what would you say if he had not been in the presence of witnesses?
VIGNAROLO. And why are you witnesses, but I am telling the truth.
PANDOLPH. So betray those who trust in your faith?
VIGNAROLO. I have been faithful to you in everything that has been committed to my faith.
PANDOLPH. You've been loyal to them, not me!
VIGNAROLO. In what have I failed you in faith?
PANDOLPH. And do you want to know in what you have been unfaithful to me?
VIGNAROLO. The cause?
PANDOLPH. It is lost; and you gave me against the sentence. Could you have made me worse? you stuck the knife in my heart, you killed me; and for so bad a sentence that you have made to escape from your mouth, worse or worse will escape from my hands!
VIGNAROLO. What "cause", what "sentence" do you say?
PANDOLPH. To make me lose my bride. And what am I going to do with my life without her?
VIGNAROLO. How much I have done everything I have done for your satisfaction.
PANDOLPH. Of that satisfaction that you have given me, I will pay you in punishing you as I do; and if I don't kill you, it's for lack of strength, not of will.
VIGNAROLO. It was not my fault but your fate.
PANDOLPH. What was bad for you, do not attribute it to fate.
VIGNAROLO. I have done what I have known; and if I had known more, the more I would have done.
PANDOLPH. You have been sadder than he thought; you have done so much the fool with me, only to deceive me: in the end then the fault is all yours.
VIGNAROLO. Hold back my anger a little, so that I can tell my reasons.
PANDOLPH. Say what you want.
VIGNAROLO. I would like to know what you regret about me, if I have tired everything today for your sake?
PANDOLPH. Because you have sentenced me against in favor of others!
VIGNAROLO. Shut up now: when I was judge or counsel that he had given sentence against you in favor of others?
PANDOLPH. Shut up now: "that Artemisia was married to my son, and Sulpizia to Lelio."
VIGNAROLO. Do you want me to speak or not to speak?
PANDOLPH. I want you to talk so much that you die!
VIGNAROLO. But you shut up.
PANDOLPH. But you shut up, loose talk to me. You promised me to enter Guglielmo's house and give me Artemisia as a bride, and then you gave her to Eugenio. You made one for me, I another one for you: we are pacts paid and the matches are canceled.
VIGNAROLO. If you are not silent, we will never agree.
PANDOLPH. Talk to your ailment!
VIGNAROLO. And I answer you that I was never transformed into William by the astrologer; and the one you spoke to is the real William, who has returned from Barbaria today.
PANDOLPH. Alas, what do you say?
VIGNAROLO. How much has passed.
PANDOLPH. So, wasn't it you who gave me the sentence?
VIGNAROLO. Didn't I say I was never more than I am now?
PANDOLPH. If so, forgive me, my vignarolo!
VIGNAROLO. Blood shit! after giving me two hours, you say: "Forgive me!" Your forgiveness does not enter my body: is it taking away the pain?
PANDOLPH. If you don't want to forgive me, I'll forgive you.
VIGNAROLO. I don't want your forgiveness, because I don't deserve it.
PANDOLPH. Forgive me, because I deserve it. But where are the silver and the drapes that the astrologer gave you?
VIGNAROLO. What silver, what drapes?
PANDOLPH. Now this would be another devil!
VIGNAROLO. When he said he wanted to transform me, he blindfolded me; and when he took off the blindfold, I found the room cleared.
PANDOLPH. Alas! alas! alas!
VIGNAROLO. What are you crying about?
PANDOLPH. Of the bride I have lost, of the silver and the loss of myself!
VIGNAROLO. What's the use of crying? be quick, delay will not take away the remedy.
PANDOLPH. O unhappy me more than there are men in the world! I go to see the astrologer, although the undertaking is to be desperate. You come in and be quiet.
VIGNAROLO. I go in and keep quiet.
SCENE IV.
ASTROLOGIST, GRAMIGNA, HARPO, RONCA.
ASTROLOGER. (I have been to Cerriglio and I have not found the device or my crafty ones: I doubt that I have not crafty myself. Of course I did not do it on my own: trust the thieves! But here they are). You are welcome!
RONCA. I doubt you will be the misguided one.
ASTROLOGER. Good day, my dear disciples, you deserve it!
GRAMIGNA. Bad day and bad year to our dear teacher, because I know you deserve it!
ASTROLOGER. If you don't deserve it, I'll take it off and don't give it to you.
RONCA. We will be more courteous than you because we give it to you, and we will not be able to take it off because we have already given it.
ASTROLOGER. What about Sfrattacampagna?
RONCA. He stole his share and evicted the countryside.
ASTROLOGER. And my share?
HARPOON. We all did our debt: Ronca purred her, Gramigna sgramignata and I harped; and we go eastward as men of that country.
ASTROLOGER. Won't you give it to me then?
RONCA. It is already common, it can't go back anymore.
ASTROLOGER. I doubt they want to do it to me.
GRAMIGNA. Do not doubt it: and we have already done it for you.
HARPOON. And you, who thought to plant the banner on the tower of Babylon, will remain planted for the ornament of a saloon, for the trophy of a gallows and for a ring of ropes.
ASTROLOGER. Don't you want to give me my part?
RONCA. We would not be thieves if we did not know how to steal from you: we are your disciples, and you have given us a doctorate.
ASTROLOGER. And friendship?
HARPOON. What friendship is between thieves? seems that from mo you begin to know us?
ASTROLOGER. What about faith?
HARPOON. What is faith? the first thing that you taught us, was that we should disband the faith from us; nor have we ever known what it is.
ASTROLOGER. And the promise?
RONCA. If the promises are not observed among good men, nor with so many writings, witnesses and instroments, how do you seek the observance of the promise among thieves?
ASTROLOGER. I worked so hard today to earn….
RONCA. A pair of forks! and it does not seem small to you that we give you life, that we do not kill you or give you the power of justice.
ASTROLOGER. Thank you.
HARPOON. We don't have to thank ourselves if we do it for ordinary.
ASTROLOGER. Your sufficiency makes me believe it; but you disciples should not do this to your teacher.
RONCA. This time the disciples knew more than the teacher: we young people teach you that you are old with years and deceit.
ASTROLOGER. Do you give me permission to say a word to you?
RONCA. In a hundred, because we are more yours than you of the devil.
ASTROLOGER. This mercy of yours will make me become a good man.
HARPOON. It cannot be that you are doing so much wrong to the gallows that awaits you.
ASTROLOGER. Ah, traitor heaven!
HARPOON. To you, who are an astrologer, the heavens have deceived you.
ASTROLOGER. And it's the worst: deceived by you.
HARPOON. Now you see it: you had to think about it first.
ASTROLOGER. Oh God, oh God! indeed, that late I realize who you are.
RONCA. Have we been with you a long time and you haven't met any?
ASTROLOGER. But I will make you repent, I will accuse you; and I don't care to be hanged to have you hanged.
RONCA. We have had the pardon for us and accused you of it: and we have testified against you of so many rogues that a thousandth part would be enough to have you hanged, quartered and burned. A thousand hang from the gallows that have not done so many evil as you; we have all loaded them on top of you.
ASTROLOGER. And can I bear that load?
RONCA. You will bear it more when the executioner loads you over your shoulders!
ASTROLOGER. To you, to you! And don't you want to give me at least something?
RONCA. But, for having been our teacher, we want to make you a charity, give you so much that you buy an arm of rope to strangle you; over bridges the way between feet and escape.
ASTROLOGER. I must also go with God.
HARPOON. If that doesn't sound like a little, go with the devil again.
ASTROLOGER. Remember the joke you gave me.
RONCA. Remember where you belong. Flee quickly, escape the gallows that is in front of you at the present time and you do not see it: everything is beer and pride and rascal for you, and woe to you if you do not fly!
SCENE V.
CRACK, PANDOLPH.
CLIQUE. (But where will I find the master to give him this good news, that the silver is recovered by the astrologer? I want to look for a tip. But here he is, he comes). Master, joy, joy!
PANDOLPH. The joys cannot understand me filled with so many calamities, because the bad luck has filled me with so many miseries.
CLIQUE. Do not offend your good fortune with these curses, but share with me in joy, because with the breath of the good news bad luck will disappear from you.
PANDOLPH. I'll do it if I have that much power. (Certainly he will bring me news that they have withdrawn from the sentence and did not grant them Artemisia). Tell me, what joy is this?
CLIQUE. The most desired by you.
PANDOLPH. Come on, tell me so much joy: maybe they have changed their minds and want to give it back to me?
CLIQUE. They will give you back what you have lost.
PANDOLPH. Will they return it?
CLIQUE. They will return.
PANDOLPH. Why then had they denied giving it to me?
CLIQUE. To tôrsela for them; but they did not like it, and in the end it will be yours too.
PANDOLPH. So when will they give it back to me?
CLIQUE. Now, when you want.
PANDOLPH. Why don't we go flying? why keep me in words?
CLIQUE. I won't deal with it unless you promise me a tip first.
PANDOLPH. Be promised what you will be able to ask me, and still extraordinary.
CLIQUE. You see my cape that has only lost its hair, that all the water of the holy wood and the sarsaparilla of Peru will not be enough to give it back to us.
PANDOLPH. Arai hoods, socks and breeches, and how much you will know how to ask me.
CLIQUE. But I must first treat you in what way you have recovered it.
PANDOLPH. I don't care about the way: I just need it to be mine.
CLIQUE. Leaving that I was with you, I was going to the piazza dell'Olmo. On the way I meet a man of a very treacherous life: he was aiming at me and I was aiming at him, and he was also aiming at me….
PANDOLPH. What has the joy you want to give me to do here?
CLIQUE. Listen up…. I stop and he stops, I pretend to leave and he goes into a shop. I step forward to know who he is and I see a multitude inside. I approach closer. I see a man with a notable beard who kept him tied up by many people, and everyone was shouting: "Beers, beers! ...
PANDOLPH. And is it possible that these beers go to my purpose?
CLIQUE. … I come out to find other beers, and for all of Naples I can't meet a single one. And when I flee them the meeting for every step….
PANDOLPH. Let's leave the de birri reasoning, as you have said enough.
CLIQUE. ... Not being able to find beer, I return to the place and I see that the one who had this was the astrologer ...
PANDOLPH. What astrologer? what are you talking about?
CLIQUE. About the astrologer who stole the silverware from us.
PANDOLPH. I was thinking of Artemisia and thought she was thinking about her! What did they want to give me back?
CLIQUE. The argentaria.
PANDOLPH. Cancaro eats you and argentaria!
CLIQUE. It is not enough for you to have lost so many robes; and it is the worst of the joke that has been made to you: and even with the thought of Artemisia? Didn't you swear by oath to give it to your son?
PANDOLPH. Go ahead.
CLIQUE. I do not go back or forward, because the deception is yours…. And so the drapes and vestments and robes are handed over in the power of a good man, until you come to recognize them and receive them.
PANDOLPH. What will happen to the astrologer? shouldn't I take revenge, get upset?
CLIQUE. Weed the revenge in the purchase of robes and receive his lump sum as a joke as almost everyone has taken it: it is enough for you not to have lost anything, and this time to have had more luck than sense.
PANDOLPH. Losing those, he was completely ruined; and since reason has removed that veil from my eyes which made me blind, I know how badly he who is the servant of his appetites does: and I really know better to be suitable for my son than for me. I no longer want a wife; and I already banish from myself all the hopes of the world, and for penance I will remain for my disproportionate desire, which I will blush every time I hear about it.
CLIQUE. Come on, master, so that tardiness does not offend you.
PANDOLPH. Let us go quickly to recover the robes and then we will wait for the sponsorships of the children. You, license them.
CLIQUE. Spectators, the story is over: give the usual applause you gave to the other three sisters.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
INDEX
Olimpia pag. 1
The Cintia 91
The two rival brothers 195
The astrologer. 303
SCENE VIII.
LELIO, CRICCA, VIGNAROLO.
LELIO. Alas, what do I see? which is what I picture?
CLIQUE. What is your reason for such wonder?
LELIO. You don't see my father and the vignarolo, the true and the false
William?
CLIQUE. Yes, I see them.
LELIO. Didn't you tell me that the vignarolo is transformed into my father? and I giving credit to your words I chased my father from home, thinking he was the vignarolo. Here is the one and the other: I don't know if that William I am talking about is true or false William.
CLIQUE. So it really is; and I am more amazed than you.
LELIO. You crave, you rave.
CLIQUE. We have been doubly mocked by the astrologer, and of transformation and of silver; and now he will have escaped: and I doubt that I am no more a true astrologer than he is.
LELIO. How will we be able to clarify this? Aim how my poor father is painful!
CLIQUE. O vignarolo, o vignarolo!
VIGNAROLO. Aim at this beast that knows me.
CLIQUE. Answer, vignarolo.
VIGNAROLO. Cricca, do you see the vignarolo?
CLIQUE. That I don't have the eyes with which one can I see?
VIGNAROLO. And you don't see?
CLIQUE. Yes, I see you.
VIGNAROLO. You neither see me nor know me; but you listen to speak and you know me by voice: because how do you want to know me, if I am someone else?
CLIQUE. I say you are what you were before.
VIGNAROLO. So you see me, Clique?
CLIQUE. How do you not want me to see you? (O Lelio, I guessed it: this vignarolo is a good ignoramus, and if he is half a donkey, the other half is a beast; and if Pandolfo has worked hard to persuade him that he wants to transform himself into Guglielmo, now he must work hard for another make him believe it is what it was before). Who are you then?
VIGNAROLO. I am Guglielmo and I want to enter my house, give Artemisia to my master and Armellina to the vignarolo.
CLIQUE. And the acts, the proceeding and the words give me ample faith that you are that winemaker you were before. Aren't you ashamed to say that you are William?
VIGNAROLO. I would be ashamed of doing a bad thing, but in entering the house and disposing of my things I do not do a bad thing.
CLIQUE. You are well aware that you are not Guglielmo.
VIGNAROLO. And if I'm not Guglielmo, what has happened to the vignarolo?
CLIQUE. The first draft and the stem of your person was the vignarolo, then the color and the semblance above was of Guglielmo: that color and that appearance of Guglielmo disappeared, and the person of the vignarolo that was before has remained.
VIGNAROLO. Enough enough, I know you're trying to persuade me it's not
William.
CLIQUE. Do you want me to let you know who you are?
VIGNAROLO. Please.
CLIQUE. (O galley, you cry without him!). Come on, take this off!
VIGNAROLO. O canchero you eat! with your fist you ruined my shoulder.
CLIQUE. Did you feel the blow, you piece of beast?
VIGNAROLO. Heartfelt!
CLIQUE. Donque you are the vignarolo: because if you were Guglielmo, Guglielmo must have heard it and not the vignarolo.
VIGNAROLO. Indeed, however, I heard it because I am Guglielmo; if it were the vignarolo, the vignarolo had heard it and not Guglielmo.
CLIQUE. I gave it to the vignarolo and not to Guglielmo. But tell me, who is in love with Armellina, the vignarolo or Guglielmo?
VIGNAROLO. The vignarolo.
CLIQUE. Tell me, do you love Armellina now or not?
VIGNAROLO. I love and tear her.
CLIQUE. So you are the vignarolo, babuazzo, because Guglielmo does not love his massara.
VIGNAROLO. Already I start to enter.
CLIQUE. Manigoldone, if Guglielmo is submerged and dead or is no longer in the world, if you were Guglielmo you would have died or a person of wind or air; but because I see you and touch you, you are the vignarolo.
VIGNAROLO. You have by fate tangled my brain that I am doubtful whether it is Guglielmo or the vignarolo; but if I am already transformed and I am not Guglielmo, who am I? I'll be lost and I'll be some other man or some beast.
CLIQUE. You did not become a beast because you always hunker down.
VIGNAROLO. I was esteemed William by one of his debtors, because he gave me ten ducats that he owed them, and by a sweetheart of his, and I was esteemed by all Guglielmo; but because you are envious of my happiness and you would not want me to be better than you, you tire yourself with so many reasons to give me to understand that it is not him. But I am Guglielmo in spite of you. Envy gnaws at you: crack of envy in your own way, teh, teh! But even if you are so envious of it, go to the astrologer who transformed me, and let yourself be transformed again.
CLIQUE. How much can the power of the imagination!
VIGNAROLO. The world is not enough to free me from such a sweet thought of being William: I am here and I want to be there; and if I were not there, it would seem to me to be. Now I am going to his house and then I will know if I will have been Guglielmo or the vignarolo.
SCENE IX.
LELIO, CRICCA, GUGLIELMO.
CLIQUE. (Signor Lelio, he is of that ancient line of Bartolomeo Colione: persuading him that he is not Guglielmo is a waste of time. But be sure that this is your father).
LELIO. (When I chased him away from home, he felt a certain remorse of that insult in his heart; but I want to ask him anything to make sure of it). Tell me, Signor Guglielmo, when you left for Barberia, how much money did you bring with you for the convenience of the trip?
GUGLIELMO. Two hundred and fifty ducats, since I could not accomplish three hundred because Avareggio, our relative, lost his word.
LELIO. (This is my father very certain, because others could not have known this). Forgive me, dear father, if I was so foolish not to notice before….
GUGLIELMO. I cannot believe that you are so quick to believe that he is your father, because so many adverse events of fortune make it clear to me that you know me for some previous prodigies against me.
LELIO. An astrologer was the cause of it all.
GUGLIELMO. Who astrologer?
LELIO. When you left Naples, you promised Artemisia to Pandolfo; then came the news of your death, Pandolfo asked me for the promise made to her by you. To all friends and relatives it seemed inconvenient that a man of such an age should expect the promise: I denied it. He found an astrologer who promised him to transform his vignarolo into your effigy, and under your name to enter the house and give him the bride promised to him; but I having been warned of the deception before, believing I would drive out the vignarolo, I have driven you away.
GUGLIELMO. But today they gave me everything for the head of the "astrologer" and the "vignarolo", and they were a bait that kindled the fire of anger in my chest. Well it is true that I promised it, but I regretted it a thousand times later.
LELIO. Father, that you have esteemed Pandolfo so old and deserving husband of your daughter, I must not and cannot believe it; but why do you say that you were of this opinion, I would think it was given to Eugenio his son, who is much more deserving of it.
GUGLIELMO. Son, do what you like with Artemisia, for I will not be against you in anything.
CLIQUE. If you have judged Eugenio worthy of your daughter, Signor Lelio di Sulpizia, his daughter, will still be worthy.
GUGLIELMO. I am delighted with all of your contentment: I have always had the desire to have a kinship with Pandolfo.
CLIQUE. You will be very happy with your unexpected arrival. To persuade Pandolfo to leave Artemisia is a gamble to lose; and it will come with annoying terms, because it is so crazy that it is close to throwing stones. I have thought of a way that with his own hands he will cut off the root of his not very honest desires, and untie with his hands that knot with which he thought to tie us: the arrows will turn against the archer, and we will remain rich for his loss and happy for his misfortune.
GUGLIELMO. Say it with grace, because I have always known you as a man of great spirit.
CLIQUE. I estimate that your coming, as much as it is for our benefit, so much makes our deception beautiful.
GUGLIELMO. Beautiful deception is what is woven with design and then succeeds.
CLIQUE. He thinks quite certain that the vignarolo is transformed in you, and he has sent it to your house to have the effect. I will go and give him the news that he has been received inside and that Artemisia wants to give him as a wife to everyone's satisfaction, as long as they are content to keep to his word. Therefore, considering it certain that you are the vignarolo, he will accept the offer; and in the presence of all we will make you swear; and sworn, you can say that it will be more convenient to give Artemisia to Eugenio and Sulpicia to Lelio, because old decrepit wives of sixteen are not suitable.
GUGLIELMO. Oh beautiful thought, very subtle and cunning indeed!
LELIO. He will not be able to imagine the most beautiful stretch! take away any delay.
CLIQUE. Plan; "He who is impatient of delay should fall"; but if we want the deception to succeed, we must not go chirping that Guglielmo is back. And you keep the vignarolo at home, so that Pandolfo does not see him insin so much that you have not had weddings. Here lies the victory of the fact; and let us leave so that he does not come and see us reason together, because it would be to give him suspicion of some plot woven against him. I will go and tell him that the vignarolo has entered the house and that Lelio is happy to do the will of his father: which he will believe, as what he wishes, and he will easily take the oath.
LELIO. How will I keep the vignarolo?
CLIQUE. He will come very certain into your house: lock him in a room until the brides are made yours.
LELIO. I wish that while the prison will take revenge for the disgust he has given him.
CLIQUE. The pleasure we will take from the pleasant joke of the vignarolo will be the revenge of his ignorance.
LELIO. Now that the second fortune our desires, let us go, father, to give this joy to Artemisia.
GUGLIELMO. Here we go.
CLIQUE. But here is the vignarolo who comes straight home: let's mock him a little.
LELIO. Leave it to us.
SCENE X.
VIGNAROLO, ARMELLINA.
VIGNAROLO. (This evil clique with his reasons had confused my brain by saying that he was the vignarolo and not Guglielmo, who had little less persuaded me; but I know his malicious and roguish nature. Then I will be clear of the truth, if I will be received in Guglielmo's house for the same or for the vignarolo). The door opens and Armellina comes out.
ARMELLINA. O William, dear master, stoned at the welcome!
VIGNAROLO. O dear Armellina, how much I have longed to see you! I pray heaven may see you with one eye, if I did not wish to see you! I would like you to see my heart open, to know how much I love you.
ARMELLINA. Heaven wanted, especially by the hand of the executioner!
VIGNAROLO. Let me at least kiss you on the forehead as a daughter.
ARMELLINA. Good will is enough; but I want to kiss your feet.
VIGNAROLO. Oh canchero! that you made me fall, you choked me!
ARMELLINA. Come to the house to have breakfast, because you are tired and you must need it. (He has already received the breakfast starter).
VIGNAROLO. Know, my Armellina, that every little thing hurt me, when I was submerged, that I never had to see you.
ARMELLINA. When, master, you plunged into the sea, did you see no swordfish passing you from side to side, and the razorfish cutting your face, and the whales swallowing you alive?
VIGNAROLO. If I had met these, they would have wounded me or died.
But as soon as I'm rested a little, I want to marry you.
ARMELLINA. And who do you want to give me? some handsome young man?
VIGNAROLO. A person who dies for you: he is of your similarity, of height and features like me, very similar to me.
ARMELLINA. He will therefore be as old as you are. God forbid! you don't want old; if I happen, it does it to have children like the others.
VIGNAROLO. I am not saying that he is as old as I am, but of my stature, and very similar except in old age. It will always make you stay in the villa; you will eat chickens, pigeons, pork, ricotta and fruits of all kinds.
ARMELLINA. Tell me, is he young?
VIGNAROLO. He is young.
ARMELLINA. Tell me who he is, quick.
VIGNAROLO. The vignarolo.
ARMELLINA. Could I be that Vignarolo of Pandolfo? because I love it as much as life and I would be delighted.
VIGNAROLO. That's it, that's me.
ARMELLINA. Are you that? if you are William, how are you?
VIGNAROLO. O beast! - tell me. That, I say; but I am Guglielmo.
ARMELLINA. I am in love with that vignarolo and I die for him.
VIGNAROLO. Do you want to see it?
ARMELLINA. How much life.
VIGNAROLO. What would you pay to whoever showed it to you?
ARMELLINA. Myself.
VIGNAROLO. If you want to keep me secret, I'll let you see me.
ARMELLINA. Here is your faith.
VIGNAROLO. I am the vignarolo.
ARMELLINA. You want to mock me; sète Guglielmo.
VIGNAROLO. If I am not the vignarolo, may I eat wolves and be found in the middle of the woods to the sound of flies! Are you laughing?
ARMELLINA. I laugh at the desire I have to see him.
VIGNAROLO. I tell you that when you see me, you see him.
ARMELLINA. And yet I tell you that, seeing William, I see you and not the vignarolo.
VIGNAROLO. Oh be bad when I changed! I am Guglielmo on the outside but on the inside I am the vignarolo, because a certain astrologer has transformed me.
ARMELLINA. You want to make a joke.
VIGNAROLO. My language is so intricate that I cannot speak. I would like to get rid of it and I cannot, I would like to put my head in the wall to return to what it was before. Now this is a disgrace never seen again! I tell you, my Armellina, that inside I am the vignarolo.
ARMELLINA. So why should we expect William to give birth and be a vignarolo, or skin yourselves to get him out of it?
VIGNAROLO. Give me free field in a room, for you will know what I tell you.
ARMELLINA. I don't want to go to the room with the masters; I would go there with the vignarolo, yes well alone or alone.
VIGNAROLO. O traitorous fortune, or traitor astrologer, or murderous master, who you made me transform into another person; because now I would like to be what I was before and I can't be there! You refuse what you want, and you don't know what you have: let's go to the room and we'll be alone until tomorrow, until you return to my figure.
ARMELLINA. I am happy. Enter first, Signor Guglielmo.
VIGNAROLO. Within; follow me, my dear Armellina.
ARMELLINA. (I don't know if Lelio has arranged the echelon to make it slip by their feet).
VIGNAROLO. Alas, you closed the door on my face, you died of me!
ARMELLINA. Forgive me for grace, because the wind has taken it from my hand.
VIGNAROLO. He holds the door open while I sift, for the stairs are dark.
ARMELLINA. I hold. Here it is steep.
VIGNAROLO. Alas alas! I am dead!
ARMELLINA. What have you, my dear master?
VIGNAROLO. I missed an echelon and I slipped with all my feet and broke my shoulder!
ARMELLINA. Come in, for we will anoint you with a little oak fat.
VIGNAROLO. Alas! alas!
ARMELLINA. You've already had dinner, now a horse's back meal is being prepared on the shoulders of fifty sticks.
ACT V.
SCENE I.
CRACK, PANDOLPH.
CLIQUE. (I will go to the master and give him the good news; I will try to make him believe it, although I am sure it will last little effort, because he will want more to believe it than I to make him believe it).
PANDOLPH. I would like to know who made the vignarolo.
CLIQUE. (I will make a view not to see him and I will make sight wish to find him to let him enter more well). Alas, who never finds what one seeks and one always encounters whoever seeks: I cannot find my master to give him such good news!
PANDOLPH. Veggio Cricca; I seem to understand that you want to give me good news: I have it for a prodigy of my good.
CLIQUE. I walked in such a hurry to find it that I can hardly catch my breath; the shoes have made penance of them which are all broken.
PANDOLPH. He says it in a loud voice, with a wide and cheerful mouth: a sign of a cheerful thing. Certainly the vignarolo will have been received for Guglielmo and will have granted me Artemisia as a wife. I want to understand it better: o Clique, o Clique!
CLIQUE. There is no one at home or in the square or on the spot where one can practice.
PANDOLPH. Clique, turn here, can't you see me?
CLIQUE. Master, the joy is so great that I could not see you: I searched every hole to find you.
PANDOLPH. That? Am I a crab or a mouse you look for holes to find me? Tell me soon, what good news do you bring me?
CLIQUE. I want to give it to you little by little so that you do not diminish for joy.
The vignarolo ...
PANDOLPH. What?
CLIQUE. ... he has already mastered the house; ...
PANDOLPH. Oh what joy! speak soon.
CLIQUE. ... and sends you to say ...
PANDOLPH. What? don't let me die.
CLIQUE. … That you come with your son Eugenio….
PANDOLPH. And then?
CLIQUE. … So that he will consent to your marriage.
PANDOLPH. Well well! I'm leaving now with my son Eugenio.
CLIQUE. Master, you do not show as much joy as I esteemed.
PANDOLPH. If I keep quiet with my mouth, I cry with my heart: joy has occupied my feelings so much that I don't know where I am. Walk, run, fly!
CLIQUE. I walked, ran and flew so much to give you the good news that I would have won the pallium; but where do you want me to run, chimneys and flights?
PANDOLPH. Find Eugenio; and you, who know his humor, dispose of him because you are happy with William's will.
CLIQUE. Oh how lovers are quick to follow their desires!
PANDOLPH. Come on soon, what are you doing? clap your hands.
CLIQUE. You have to walk with your feet, not your hands.
PANDOLPH. I feel faint.
CLIQUE. You get lost in happiness.
PANDOLPH. Thinking that I have to meet Artemisia, I die.
CLIQUE. What would you do if you had to deal with a bull, if having to deal with a cow you die?
PANDOLPH. Alas, the astrologer was able to find the happy point to transform the vignarolo! And because he carried himself so faithfully with me, I will make him happy all the time of his life, just as I will live with my desired Artemisia. But here is the vine-grower entangled or William invignarolato: if there is no one, his son estimates that he is his father.
SCENE II.
GUGLIELMO, PANDOLFO, LELIO, EUGENIO, ARTEMISIA, SULPIZIA.
GUGLIELMO. My dear Pandolfo is well found!
PANDOLPH. And you welcome, my much desired William! As the same desire has spurred on both, you to leave and I to desire your return; so luck had it that we will meet again with the utmost satisfaction of both, if well that you made me wait, eh?
GUGLIELMO. Eh, brother, I have suffered so many difficulties that wanting to tell them I would move to compassion; but because I am here safe, I am ready and willing to use your services more than ever.
PANDOLPH. And I am very ready to obey everything that is commanded me by you. But where is my son Eugenio?
GUGLIELMO. He will be here shortly, as I have sent for him. Here he comes.
EUGENIO. You are welcome, Signor Guglielmo!
GUGLIELMO. You are well found, Eugenio, my dear son! But because we are all ready here, it is good that our daughters will come again, so that they may still be happy with what we have to do.
PANDOLPH. Oh how very well you say! Eugenio, go up and call Sulpizia.
GUGLIELMO. And you, Lelio, my son, call Artemisia.
PANDOLPH. (Oh good vignarolo, with what a beautiful prologue you began! The obligation I will have to the astrologer will be greater, who transformed him de face, improved him in intellect).
GUGLIELMO. Here we are ready.
LELIO. And the rest of us even in time.
GUGLIELMO. Dear Pandolfo and you, dear children, if we want to deal with matters of marriages, which end with life, and the errors that are committed in those are irremediable, it is quite right that they are dealt with with the consent of all the parties and that each one says his free and open opinion, so as not to say after the fact: "He must have said so, he must have done so….
PANDOLPH. Very well, dear Guglielmo.
GUGLIELMO. ... And yet I did not want to deal with marriages except in the presence and with the consent of our sons and daughters, who after our deaths will have to succeed our faculty; so that after our deaths they may not speak ill of us and curse us, as we see most children do when they feel any disgust at the cause of their fathers. But I want them to give their free consent to this sentence of mine and give me each of you authority in particular to be able to determine it; otherwise I am not going to say a word in this fact.
EUGENIO. For me, Mr. Guglielmo, I have the power to determine these marriages as you please, and I will be very patient at any of his sentences, however it may be; and so says my sister Sulpizia.
SULPICE. I confirm everything my brother says.
LELIO. And I, my dear father, as I have been most ubiquitous to you all my life, so I will be there in this and in whatever else you command me; and the same one promises you Artemisia my sister.
ARTEMISIA. I am happy with everything my father and brother are happy with.
GUGLIELMO. And you, Mr. Pandolfo?
PANDOLPH. And me first of all. And for greater certainty of my will, knowing how much youthful spirits are ready and light to promise and then to repent, I want the promises to be confirmed, so that we don't have to rebuke and argue: - He didn't mean it that way, he didn't think of me as.
ARTEMISIA. Oh how well it says!
LELIO. Indeed very well!
PANDOLPH. I want to be the first to swear. And I swear the sentence, which will come out of your mouth, always have it for installment and firm and observe it in every way.
EUGENIO. And I archjury of it.
LELIO. And I slaughter it.
SULPICE. I swear to observe everything I am commanded by my father.
ARTEMISIA. And I want to observe him at the same time, more than if he were my father.
PANDOLPH. Now, dear William, everyone hangs from your mouth, they expect nothing but your sentence: you are the judge, the wheel and the whole court, and your decree will be final.
GUGLIELMO. Monsieur Pandolfo, you are not like young people, who like beasts no longer aim beyond snatching their sensual appetites; but in that age when the heat of concupiscence is already extinguished, they should not be awakened by invigorating them with new fires of filthy and dishonest thoughts but mortifying the concupiscence. Wake up from this earthly love in which you have slept a long time, and open your eyes to the light of truth; and if you cannot with your own virtue, fall in love with the glory that will lift you up, for the mother of true glory is your own virtue. Connect with your elders, with their greatness, and try to imitate them with all your studies; of your father who was a portrait and an image of the good life, and with how many worthy and honest habits he raised you: and that this life is very unworthy of the gravity and prudence of which you gave so much foreboding in your youth, hence the honor past should spur you on to higher degrees of honor….
PANDOLPH. What does this practice have to do with the sentence you have to give?
GUGLIELMO. … And you well know that the main things that are sought in marriage are the conformities of the ages and customs; nor should sons or daughters be raped to whomever we want. Now consider what conformity of age there is between you and my daughter, since she is sixteen years old and you eighty, that there could be twice a grandson. Consider what the people will say, that a gentleman like you, well-born, adorned with wise friezes of honor and lived with such splendor of life, and then at the last age to want to marry: either that you are old foolish or that the brain goes for a walk. , and other more vituperative insults. Consider that of course the young hate the old; and that a man worn out by time cannot stand at the hammer with a young girl, if only for another reason, at least for the dishonesty of the fact and for the example, which is given to young people, of little modesty….
PANDOLPH. Let's finish it with grace.
GUGLIELMO. … I want my daughter Artemisia to be the wife of your son Eugene; and Sulpizia your daughter, having first judged her worthy of me, be the wife of my son Lelio: the one because both are in the first flowers of their youth, the other because they loved each other very modestly for a long time, and we will not do so. great wrong to their most honest loves. And you, Mr. Pandolfo, embrace patience and marry it! ...
PANDOLPH. I thank you that with so much praise you heal the wounds that rain blood. (Ah, traitor vignarolo, out of good respect I keep my hands and tongue in the presence of these!).
GUGLIELMO. … And remembering the betrayals of the first wife, you would have to abhor the second; for the people do not say that you are a hard-mouthed horse, for not having tamed the first, you seek the second. I know well that it won't be long before you regret it; so, having to repent of it, it will be better that you do not take it off….
PANDOLPH. (If I don't make you repent! These twenty-four hours will soon end and you will be back as before).
GUGLIELMO. … My dear Pandolfo, be more reasonable than obstinate sooner, and do not worry yourself and others with your disproportionate loves; and if you return to yourself, you will know that the sentence given by me is in your favor and more on purpose for you. Listen to me.
PANDOLPH. Oh devil, or thirty devils, or traitor, or goofy hound dog, if I don't make you suffer penance, may I die in quarter! You have nestled me: already the pain and the breathlessness is so much that they squeeze my heart that I don't know how not to die. O traitor and maladetto love, o rude femine, o traitorous old age! my son kept himself with Lelio, with Cricca and with the vignarolo, they suborned him, and they got around me with their tricks and deceptions, because they all turned against me. When he thought I had bought the prize of a famous and illustrious victory, I find myself a loser. O skies, o stars, o iniquitous world, o unequal fortune! but why should I complain of the sky and the stars, of the world and of fortune, if not of myself who have been a minister of my evil? for a thing of such importance I ought not to have committed in the hands of a rascal, rude, ignorant, traitor. I know the error when I have no more remedy: I have nothing left of comfort but revenge. I let myself be mocked, offended and betrayed by those who are not good to offend and betray an ant. These arms and hands of mine have been cut off if I do not take revenge! if I should die I will wait for him, I will find him, I will punish him in my own way!
SCENE III.
VIGNAROLO, PANDOLFO.
VIGNAROLO. Luck was all against me today.
PANDOLPH. And now more than ever, villain, scoundrel, traitor, murderer!
VIGNAROLO. O miserable and unhappy me, what do you want to do?
PANDOLPH. Make me miserable and unhappy as you have made me miserable and unhappy!
VIGNAROLO. Do I deserve this reward from you?
PANDOLPH. That reward you gave to me!
VIGNAROLO. Deh! not ..., deh! not…, for love….
PANDOLPH. For the devil's sake!
VIGNAROLO. Why are you insulting me?
PANDOLPH. Because you did it to me: "the injury that is received is the daughter of the injury that was done before". I insult you by not killing you, and in order not to insult you I want to kill you! And this I wanted: that no one can pass on that I do not treat you as you deserve.
VIGNAROLO. Alas! alas!
PANDOLPH. Does it hurt you that I don't do what you deserve?
VIGNAROLO. What have I done to you?
PANDOLPH. Do you still ask me what you did to me?
VIGNAROLO. Why do you want to kill me?
PANDOLPH. To draw your heart from your chest and drink your blood!
VIGNAROLO. The reason?
PANDOLPH. Wanting to give you the reason is wanting to pass on time to listen to your apologies: the reason is that I want to draw your guts!
VIGNAROLO. Do you want to experience all your strengths against me?
PANDOLPH. Because he is not a man who does not try to do the worst he can with all his might.
VIGNAROLO. To your factor?
PANDOLPH. To my destroyer. Neither with these words will you escape life, neither repenting nor seeking forgiveness takes place next to me.
VIGNAROLO. What have I done to you?
PANDOLPH. Do you have the heart to talk, traitor?
VIGNAROLO. What betrayal did I ever do to you?
PANDOLPH. Do you deny it now, villain?
VIGNAROLO. I deny it, because I never made treason.
PANDOLPH. Now pretend to be a fool, because by being a fool you have always deceived me.
VIGNAROLO. I do not pretend to be a fool or a deception, neither is it my duty nor is it suitable for you.
PANDOLPH. Now more than ever deceives and jokes.
VIGNAROLO. I am not making fun of you, nor if I wanted to, I could do it. Speak to me clearly or hold the knife so much to my throat.
PANDOLPH. Now what would you say if he had not been in the presence of witnesses?
VIGNAROLO. And why are you witnesses, but I am telling the truth.
PANDOLPH. So betray those who trust in your faith?
VIGNAROLO. I have been faithful to you in everything that has been committed to my faith.
PANDOLPH. You've been loyal to them, not me!
VIGNAROLO. In what have I failed you in faith?
PANDOLPH. And do you want to know in what you have been unfaithful to me?
VIGNAROLO. The cause?
PANDOLPH. It is lost; and you gave me against the sentence. Could you have made me worse? you stuck the knife in my heart, you killed me; and for so bad a sentence that you have made to escape from your mouth, worse or worse will escape from my hands!
VIGNAROLO. What "cause", what "sentence" do you say?
PANDOLPH. To make me lose my bride. And what am I going to do with my life without her?
VIGNAROLO. How much I have done everything I have done for your satisfaction.
PANDOLPH. Of that satisfaction that you have given me, I will pay you in punishing you as I do; and if I don't kill you, it's for lack of strength, not of will.
VIGNAROLO. It was not my fault but your fate.
PANDOLPH. What was bad for you, do not attribute it to fate.
VIGNAROLO. I have done what I have known; and if I had known more, the more I would have done.
PANDOLPH. You have been sadder than he thought; you have done so much the fool with me, only to deceive me: in the end then the fault is all yours.
VIGNAROLO. Hold back my anger a little, so that I can tell my reasons.
PANDOLPH. Say what you want.
VIGNAROLO. I would like to know what you regret about me, if I have tired everything today for your sake?
PANDOLPH. Because you have sentenced me against in favor of others!
VIGNAROLO. Shut up now: when I was judge or counsel that he had given sentence against you in favor of others?
PANDOLPH. Shut up now: "that Artemisia was married to my son, and Sulpizia to Lelio."
VIGNAROLO. Do you want me to speak or not to speak?
PANDOLPH. I want you to talk so much that you die!
VIGNAROLO. But you shut up.
PANDOLPH. But you shut up, loose talk to me. You promised me to enter Guglielmo's house and give me Artemisia as a bride, and then you gave her to Eugenio. You made one for me, I another one for you: we are pacts paid and the matches are canceled.
VIGNAROLO. If you are not silent, we will never agree.
PANDOLPH. Talk to your ailment!
VIGNAROLO. And I answer you that I was never transformed into William by the astrologer; and the one you spoke to is the real William, who has returned from Barbaria today.
PANDOLPH. Alas, what do you say?
VIGNAROLO. How much has passed.
PANDOLPH. So, wasn't it you who gave me the sentence?
VIGNAROLO. Didn't I say I was never more than I am now?
PANDOLPH. If so, forgive me, my vignarolo!
VIGNAROLO. Blood shit! after giving me two hours, you say: "Forgive me!" Your forgiveness does not enter my body: is it taking away the pain?
PANDOLPH. If you don't want to forgive me, I'll forgive you.
VIGNAROLO. I don't want your forgiveness, because I don't deserve it.
PANDOLPH. Forgive me, because I deserve it. But where are the silver and the drapes that the astrologer gave you?
VIGNAROLO. What silver, what drapes?
PANDOLPH. Now this would be another devil!
VIGNAROLO. When he said he wanted to transform me, he blindfolded me; and when he took off the blindfold, I found the room cleared.
PANDOLPH. Alas! alas! alas!
VIGNAROLO. What are you crying about?
PANDOLPH. Of the bride I have lost, of the silver and the loss of myself!
VIGNAROLO. What's the use of crying? be quick, delay will not take away the remedy.
PANDOLPH. O unhappy me more than there are men in the world! I go to see the astrologer, although the undertaking is to be desperate. You come in and be quiet.
VIGNAROLO. I go in and keep quiet.
SCENE IV.
ASTROLOGIST, GRAMIGNA, HARPO, RONCA.
ASTROLOGER. (I have been to Cerriglio and I have not found the device or my crafty ones: I doubt that I have not crafty myself. Of course I did not do it on my own: trust the thieves! But here they are). You are welcome!
RONCA. I doubt you will be the misguided one.
ASTROLOGER. Good day, my dear disciples, you deserve it!
GRAMIGNA. Bad day and bad year to our dear teacher, because I know you deserve it!
ASTROLOGER. If you don't deserve it, I'll take it off and don't give it to you.
RONCA. We will be more courteous than you because we give it to you, and we will not be able to take it off because we have already given it.
ASTROLOGER. What about Sfrattacampagna?
RONCA. He stole his share and evicted the countryside.
ASTROLOGER. And my share?
HARPOON. We all did our debt: Ronca purred her, Gramigna sgramignata and I harped; and we go eastward as men of that country.
ASTROLOGER. Won't you give it to me then?
RONCA. It is already common, it can't go back anymore.
ASTROLOGER. I doubt they want to do it to me.
GRAMIGNA. Do not doubt it: and we have already done it for you.
HARPOON. And you, who thought to plant the banner on the tower of Babylon, will remain planted for the ornament of a saloon, for the trophy of a gallows and for a ring of ropes.
ASTROLOGER. Don't you want to give me my part?
RONCA. We would not be thieves if we did not know how to steal from you: we are your disciples, and you have given us a doctorate.
ASTROLOGER. And friendship?
HARPOON. What friendship is between thieves? seems that from mo you begin to know us?
ASTROLOGER. What about faith?
HARPOON. What is faith? the first thing that you taught us, was that we should disband the faith from us; nor have we ever known what it is.
ASTROLOGER. And the promise?
RONCA. If the promises are not observed among good men, nor with so many writings, witnesses and instroments, how do you seek the observance of the promise among thieves?
ASTROLOGER. I worked so hard today to earn….
RONCA. A pair of forks! and it does not seem small to you that we give you life, that we do not kill you or give you the power of justice.
ASTROLOGER. Thank you.
HARPOON. We don't have to thank ourselves if we do it for ordinary.
ASTROLOGER. Your sufficiency makes me believe it; but you disciples should not do this to your teacher.
RONCA. This time the disciples knew more than the teacher: we young people teach you that you are old with years and deceit.
ASTROLOGER. Do you give me permission to say a word to you?
RONCA. In a hundred, because we are more yours than you of the devil.
ASTROLOGER. This mercy of yours will make me become a good man.
HARPOON. It cannot be that you are doing so much wrong to the gallows that awaits you.
ASTROLOGER. Ah, traitor heaven!
HARPOON. To you, who are an astrologer, the heavens have deceived you.
ASTROLOGER. And it's the worst: deceived by you.
HARPOON. Now you see it: you had to think about it first.
ASTROLOGER. Oh God, oh God! indeed, that late I realize who you are.
RONCA. Have we been with you a long time and you haven't met any?
ASTROLOGER. But I will make you repent, I will accuse you; and I don't care to be hanged to have you hanged.
RONCA. We have had the pardon for us and accused you of it: and we have testified against you of so many rogues that a thousandth part would be enough to have you hanged, quartered and burned. A thousand hang from the gallows that have not done so many evil as you; we have all loaded them on top of you.
ASTROLOGER. And can I bear that load?
RONCA. You will bear it more when the executioner loads you over your shoulders!
ASTROLOGER. To you, to you! And don't you want to give me at least something?
RONCA. But, for having been our teacher, we want to make you a charity, give you so much that you buy an arm of rope to strangle you; over bridges the way between feet and escape.
ASTROLOGER. I must also go with God.
HARPOON. If that doesn't sound like a little, go with the devil again.
ASTROLOGER. Remember the joke you gave me.
RONCA. Remember where you belong. Flee quickly, escape the gallows that is in front of you at the present time and you do not see it: everything is beer and pride and rascal for you, and woe to you if you do not fly!
SCENE V.
CRACK, PANDOLPH.
CLIQUE. (But where will I find the master to give him this good news, that the silver is recovered by the astrologer? I want to look for a tip. But here he is, he comes). Master, joy, joy!
PANDOLPH. The joys cannot understand me filled with so many calamities, because the bad luck has filled me with so many miseries.
CLIQUE. Do not offend your good fortune with these curses, but share with me in joy, because with the breath of the good news bad luck will disappear from you.
PANDOLPH. I'll do it if I have that much power. (Certainly he will bring me news that they have withdrawn from the sentence and did not grant them Artemisia). Tell me, what joy is this?
CLIQUE. The most desired by you.
PANDOLPH. Come on, tell me so much joy: maybe they have changed their minds and want to give it back to me?
CLIQUE. They will give you back what you have lost.
PANDOLPH. Will they return it?
CLIQUE. They will return.
PANDOLPH. Why then had they denied giving it to me?
CLIQUE. To tôrsela for them; but they did not like it, and in the end it will be yours too.
PANDOLPH. So when will they give it back to me?
CLIQUE. Now, when you want.
PANDOLPH. Why don't we go flying? why keep me in words?
CLIQUE. I won't deal with it unless you promise me a tip first.
PANDOLPH. Be promised what you will be able to ask me, and still extraordinary.
CLIQUE. You see my cape that has only lost its hair, that all the water of the holy wood and the sarsaparilla of Peru will not be enough to give it back to us.
PANDOLPH. Arai hoods, socks and breeches, and how much you will know how to ask me.
CLIQUE. But I must first treat you in what way you have recovered it.
PANDOLPH. I don't care about the way: I just need it to be mine.
CLIQUE. Leaving that I was with you, I was going to the piazza dell'Olmo. On the way I meet a man of a very treacherous life: he was aiming at me and I was aiming at him, and he was also aiming at me….
PANDOLPH. What has the joy you want to give me to do here?
CLIQUE. Listen up…. I stop and he stops, I pretend to leave and he goes into a shop. I step forward to know who he is and I see a multitude inside. I approach closer. I see a man with a notable beard who kept him tied up by many people, and everyone was shouting: "Beers, beers! ...
PANDOLPH. And is it possible that these beers go to my purpose?
CLIQUE. … I come out to find other beers, and for all of Naples I can't meet a single one. And when I flee them the meeting for every step….
PANDOLPH. Let's leave the de birri reasoning, as you have said enough.
CLIQUE. ... Not being able to find beer, I return to the place and I see that the one who had this was the astrologer ...
PANDOLPH. What astrologer? what are you talking about?
CLIQUE. About the astrologer who stole the silverware from us.
PANDOLPH. I was thinking of Artemisia and thought she was thinking about her! What did they want to give me back?
CLIQUE. The argentaria.
PANDOLPH. Cancaro eats you and argentaria!
CLIQUE. It is not enough for you to have lost so many robes; and it is the worst of the joke that has been made to you: and even with the thought of Artemisia? Didn't you swear by oath to give it to your son?
PANDOLPH. Go ahead.
CLIQUE. I do not go back or forward, because the deception is yours…. And so the drapes and vestments and robes are handed over in the power of a good man, until you come to recognize them and receive them.
PANDOLPH. What will happen to the astrologer? shouldn't I take revenge, get upset?
CLIQUE. Weed the revenge in the purchase of robes and receive his lump sum as a joke as almost everyone has taken it: it is enough for you not to have lost anything, and this time to have had more luck than sense.
PANDOLPH. Losing those, he was completely ruined; and since reason has removed that veil from my eyes which made me blind, I know how badly he who is the servant of his appetites does: and I really know better to be suitable for my son than for me. I no longer want a wife; and I already banish from myself all the hopes of the world, and for penance I will remain for my disproportionate desire, which I will blush every time I hear about it.
CLIQUE. Come on, master, so that tardiness does not offend you.
PANDOLPH. Let us go quickly to recover the robes and then we will wait for the sponsorships of the children. You, license them.
CLIQUE. Spectators, the story is over: give the usual applause you gave to the other three sisters.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
INDEX
Olimpia pag. 1
The Cintia 91
The two rival brothers 195
The astrologer. 303
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