“Palamon! Alas no! he’s in heaven—where am I now? Yonder’s the sea, and there’s a ship; how’t tumbles! And there’s a rock lies watching under water; Now, now, it beats upon it; now, now, now, There’s a leak sprung, a sound one; how they cry! Spoom her before the wind, you’ll lose all else; Up with a course or two, and back about, boys; Good night, good night; ye’re gone. I’m very hungry: Would I could find a fine frog! he would tell me News from all parts o’ the world; then would I make A careck of a cockle-shell, and sail By east and north-east to the King of Pygmies, For he tells fortunes rarely.”
She leaves us again, breaking into the first of her mad songs:
“For I’ll cut my green coat a foot above my knee; Hey nonny, nonny, nonny.”
Up to this point the character of the Gaoler’s Daughter is not unworthy of Shakespeare, but Fletcher could not keep at so high a level for long. More than any of his contemporaries he creates mad folk for the purpose of embellishing his comedies; in this play, having developed a situation with many fine capabilities, he proceeds to rush in and spoil his own work in the worst possible way. The luckless girl is introduced into a rustic scene[84:2] and made to sing for the delectation of some peasants, to exchange coarse banter with them, and even to join in their morris. From this time forward the underplot is hopelessly degraded, both by its being drawn out to an absurd length and by its ending in the coarsest of scenes which leads to what we are asked to believe is the girl’s complete restoration to sanity.
The Wooer first acquaints the Gaoler with his sweetheart’s complaint.[85:1] We learn that it has been preceded by the natural irritation which is common in such cases, and that she has answered her father’s questions:
“So childishly, So sillily, as if she were a fool, An innocent.”
Since we have last seen her, her senses have quite gone. She constantly repeats phrases which tell of her trouble—“Palamon is gone,” “Palamon, fair Palamon,” and the like. She even plagiarises Desdemona, and sings nothing but “Willow, willow, willow.” She has been playing and garlanding herself with flowers; now she weeps, now smiles, now sings; reckless of danger, she sits by a lake, and attempts to drown herself at the Wooer’s approach. She appears at length[85:2] and carries on the same kind of conversation, fancifully constructing long trains of imagination from the smallest incidents. While ever and anon the theme of Palamon recurs: he is still in love with her—“a fine young gentleman,” and he “lies longing” for her in the wood.