Till drawing blood o' th' dames, like witches,
They're forthwith cur'd of their capriches.[1]
Some always thrive in their amours,
By pulling plasters off their sores;[2]20
As cripples do to get an alms,
Just so do they, and win their dames.
Some force whole regions, in despite
O' geography, to change their site;
Make former times shake hands with latter,25
And that which was before, come after;[3]
But those that write in rhyme still make
The one verse for the other's sake;
For one for sense, and one for rhyme,
I think's sufficient at one time.30
But we forget in what sad plight
We whilom[4] left the captiv'd Knight
And pensive Squire, both bruis'd in body
And conjur'd into safe custody.
Tir'd with dispute and speaking Latin,35
As well as basting and bear-baiting,
And desperate of any course
To free himself by wit or force.
His only solace was, that now
His dog-bolt[5] fortune was so low,40
- ↑ It was a vulgar notion that if you drew blood from a witch, she could not hurt you. Thus Cleveland, in his Rebel Scot:
Scots are like witches; do but whet your pen,
Scratch till the blood comes, they'll not hurt you then.
See also Shakspeare, Henry VI. Part I. Act i. sc. 5. - ↑ By showing their wounds to the ladies, who, it must remembered, in the times of chivalry, were instructed in surgery and the healing art. In the romance of Perceforest, a young lady sets the dislocated arm of a knight.
- ↑ A banter on these common faults of romance writers: even Shakspeare and Virgil have not wholly avoided them. The former transports his characters, in a quarter of an hour, from France to England: the latter has formed an intrigue between Dido and Æneas, who probably lived in very distant periods. The Spanish writers are rebuked for these violations of the unities in Don Quixote, ch. 21, where the canon speaks of having seen a play "in which the first act begins in Europe, the second in Asia, and the third in Africa."
- ↑ Var. Lately.
- ↑ In English, dog, in composition, like δυς in Greek, implies that the
