Sir, is the King at leisure to speak Spanish with a poor Soldier?
BALTHAZAR No, Sirah, you, no! You Don with the ochre face, I wish to have thee but on a breach, stifling with smoke and fire. And for thy no, but whiffing gunpowder out of an iron pipe, I would but ask thee if thou would'st on, and if thou did'st cry no, thou should'st read Canon Law. I'd make thee roar, and wear cut-beaten-satin. I would pay thee though thou payest not thy mercer. Mere Spanish jennets! <15>
COCKADILLO I am no ear picker To sound his hearing that way.
BALTHAZAR That's his ear picker. Your name, I pray.
COCKADILLO Don Cockadillio If, soldier, thou hast suits to beg at court, I shall descend so low as to betray Thy paper to the hand Royal.
BALTHAZAR I beg, you whorson muscod <16>! My petition is written on my bosom in red wounds.
BALTHAZAR You yellowhammer, why, shaver: that such poor things as these, only made up of tailor's shreds and merchant's silken rags and 'pothecary drugs to lend their breath sophisticated smells, when their rank guts stink worse than cowards in the heat of battle. Such whaleboned- doublet rascals, that owe more to laundresses and seamsters for laced linen than all their race from their great grand-father to this their reign, in clothes were ever worth. These excrements of silk worms! Oh that such flies do buzz about the beams of Majesty, like earwigs tickling a King's yielding ear with that court-organ, flattery, when a soldier must not come near the court gates twenty score, but stand for want of clothes, though he win towns, amongst the almsbasket-men! His best reward being scorned to be a fellow to the blackguard. Why should a soldier, being the world's right arm, be cut thus by the left, a courtier? Is the world all ruff and feather and nothing else? Shall I never see a tailor give his coat with a difference from a gentleman?
KING My Balthazar! Let us make haste to meet thee. How art thou altered? Do you not know him?
ALANZO Yes Sir, the brave soldier Employed against the Moors
KING Half turned Moor! I'll honour thee, reach him a chair, that table And now, Aeneas-like, let thine own trumpet Sound forth thy battle with those slavish Moors.
BALTHAZAR My music is a Cannon, a pitched field my stage, Furies the actors, blood and vengeance the scene, death the story, a sword imbrued with blood, the pen that writes, and the poet a terrible buskined <17> tragical fellow, with a wreath about his head of burning match instead of bays.