SCENE I.—A GROVE AND FOUNTAIN.

ENTER CUPID, AND MERCURY WITH HIS CADUCEUS, ON DIFFERENT SIDES.

CUP. Who goes there?

MER. ‘Tis I, blind archer.

CUP. Who, Mercury?

MER. Ay.

CUP. Farewell.

MER. Stay Cupid.

CUP. Not in your company, Hermes, except your hands were riveted at

your back.

MER. Why so, my little rover?

CUP. Because I know you have not a finger, but is as long as my

quiver, cousin Mercury, when you please to extend it.

MER. Whence derive you this speech, boy?

CUP. O! ‘tis your best polity to be ignorant. You did never steal

Mars his sword out of the sheath, you! nor Neptune’s trident! nor

Apollo’s bow! no, not you! Alas, your palms, Jupiter knows, they

are as tender as the foot of a foundered nag, or a lady’s face new

mercuried, they’ll touch nothing.

MER. Go to, infant, you’ll be daring still.

CUP. Daring! O Janus! what a word is there? why, my light

feather-heel’d coz, what are you any more than my uncle Jove’s

pander? a lacquey that runs on errands for him, and can whisper a

light message to a loose wench with some round volubility? wait

mannerly at a table with a trencher, warble upon a crowd a little,

and fill out nectar when Ganymede’s away? one that sweeps the god’s

drinking-room every morning, and sets the cushions in order again,

which they threw one at another’s head over night; can brush the

carpets, call the stools again to their places, play the crier of

the court with an audible voice, and take state of a president upon

you at wrestlings, pleadings, negociations, etc. Here’s the

catalogue of your employments, now! O, no, I err; you have the

marshalling of all the ghosts too that pass the Stygian ferry, and

I suspect you for a share with the old sculler there, if the truth

were known; but let that scape. One other peculiar virtue you

possess, in lifting, or leiger-du-main, which few of the house of

heaven have else besides, I must confess. But, methinks, that

should not make you put that extreme distance ‘twixt yourself and

others, that we should be said to “over-dare” in speaking to your

nimble deity. So Hercules might challenge priority of us both,

because he can throw the bar farther, or lift more join’d stools at

the arm’s end, than we. If this might carry it, then we, who have

made the whole body of divinity tremble at the twang of our bow,

and enforc’d Saturnius himself to lay by his curled front, thunder,

and three-fork’d fires, and put on a masking suit, too light for a

reveller of eighteen to be seen in—

MER. How now! my dancing braggart in decimo sexto! charm your

skipping tongue, or I’ll—

CUP. What! use the virtue of your snaky tip staff there upon us?

MER. No, boy, but the smart vigour of my palm about your ears.

You have forgot since I took your heels up into air, on the very

hour I was born, in sight of all the bench of deities, when the

silver roof of the Olympian palace rung again with applause of

the fact.

CUP. O no, I remember it freshly, and by a particular instance;

for my mother Venus, at the same time, but stoop’d to embrace you,

and, to speak by metaphor, you borrow’d a girdle of her’s, as you

did Jove’s sceptre while he was laughing; and would have done his

thunder too, but that ‘twas too hot for your itching fingers.

MER. ‘Tis well, sir.

CUP. I heard, you but look’d in at Vulcan’s forge the other day,

and entreated a pair of his new tongs along with you for company:

‘tis joy on you, i’ faith, that you will keep your hook’d talons in

practice with any thing. ‘Slight, now you are on earth, we shall

have you filch spoons and candlesticks rather than fail: pray Jove

the perfum’d courtiers keep their casting-bottles, pick-tooths, and

shittle-cocks from you, or our more ordinary gallants their

tobacco-boxes; for I am strangely jealous of your nails.

MER. Never trust me, Cupid, but you are turn’d a most acute

gallant of late! the edge of my wit is clean taken off with the

fine and subtile stroke of your thin-ground tongue; you fight with

too poignant a phrase, for me to deal with.

CUP. O Hermes, your craft cannot make me confident. I know my own

steel to be almost spent, and therefore entreat my peace with you,

in time: you are too cunning for me to encounter at length, and I

think it my safest ward to close.

MER. Well, for once, I’ll suffer you to win upon me, wag; but use

not these strains too often, they’ll stretch my patience. Whither

might you march, now?

CUP. Faith, to recover thy good thoughts, I’ll discover my whole

project. The huntress and queen of these groves, Diana, in regard

of some black and envious slanders hourly breathed against her, for

her divine justice on Acteon, as she pretends, hath here in the

vale of Gargaphie, proclaim’d a solemn revels, which (her godhead

put off) she will descend to grace, with the full and royal expense

of one of her clearest moons: in which time it shall be lawful for

all sorts of ingenious persons to visit her palace, to court her

nymphs, to exercise all variety of generous and noble pastimes; as

well to intimate how far she treads such malicious imputations

beneath her, as also to shew how clear her beauties are from the

least wrinkle of austerity they may be charged with.

MER. But, what is all this to Cupid?

CUP. Here do I mean to put off the title of a god, and take the

habit of a page, in which disguise, during the interim of these

revels, I will get to follow some one of Diana’s maids, where, if

my bow hold, and my shafts fly but with half the willingness and

aim they are directed, I doubt not but I shall really redeem the

minutes I have lost, by their so long and over nice proscription of

my deity from their court.

MER. Pursue it, divine Cupid, it will be rare.

CUP. But will Hermes second me?

MER. I am now to put in act an especial designment from my father

Jove; but, that perform’d, I am for any fresh action that offers

itself.

CUP. Well, then we part. [EXIT.]

MER. Farewell good wag.

Now to my charge.—Echo, fair Echo speak,

‘Tis Mercury that calls thee; sorrowful nymph,

Salute me with thy repercussive voice,

That I may know what cavern of the earth,

Contains thy airy spirit, how, or where

I may direct my speech, that thou may’st hear.

ECHO. [BELOW] Here.

MER. So nigh!

ECHO. Ay.

MER. Know, gentle soul, then, I am sent from Jove,

Who, pitying the sad burthen of thy woes,

Still growing on thee, in thy want of words

To vent thy passion for Narcissus’ death,

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