34
THE ALCHEMIST.
Unto the doctor? How shall we, sir, trust you
In the other matter? can we ever think,
When you have won five or six thousand pound,
You'll send us shares in't, by this rate?
Dap.By Jove, sir,
I'll win ten thousand pound, and send you half.
I'fac's no oath.[1]
Sub.No, no, he did but jest.
Face.Go to. Go thank the doctor: he's your friend,
To take it so.
Dap.I thank his worship.
Face.So!
Another angel.
Dap.Must I?
Face.Must you! 'slight,
What else is thanks? will you be trivial?—Doctor,[Dapper gives him the money.]
When must he come for his familiar?
Dap.Shall I not have it with me?
Sub.O, good sir!
There must a world of ceremonies pass;
- ↑ I' fac's no oath.] An allusion, perhaps, to the petty salvos by which the Puritans contrived to evade the charge of swearing: unless it be rather aimed at the strictness with which the Masters of the Revels affected to revise the language of the stage. That some revision was but too necessary, is abundantly clear; but these tasteless and officious tyrants acted with little discrimination, and were always more ready to prove their authority than their judgment. The most hateful of them, sir Henry Herbert, in his examination of the Wits of D'avenant, had marked, it appears, a number of harmless interjections, which might have subjected the poet to some punishment: but the good natured Charles interfered, and sir Henry has thus recorded his spleen and disappointment. "The kinge is pleased to take faith, death, slight, &c., for asseverations, and no oathes—to which 1 doe humbly submit as my master's judgment; but under favour do conceive them to be oathes, and enter them here, to declare my submission and opinion."
