All soot and embers! odious as thy work!
I now begin to doubt if ever Grace,
Or goddess, could be patient of thy face.
Thou woo Minerva! or to wit aspire!
'Cause thou canst halt with us in arts and fire!
Son of the Wind! for so thy mother, gone
With lust, conceived thee; father thou hadst none.
When thou wert born, and that thou look'dst at
She durst not kiss, but flung thee from her breast;
And so did Jove, who ne'er meant thee his cup;
No marvel the clowns of Lemnos took thee up!
For none but smiths would have made thee a god.
Some alchemist there may be yet, or odd
'Squire of the squibs, against the pageant-day,
May to thy name a Vulcanale say;
And for it lose his eyes with gunpowder,
As th' other may his brains with quicksilver.
Well fare the wise men yet, on the Bankside,
My friends, the watermen! they could provide
Against thy fury, when, to serve their needs,
They made a Vulcan of a sheaf of reeds,
Whom they durst handle in their holiday coats,
And safely trust to dress, not burn their boats.
But, O those reeds! thy mere disdain of them,
Made thee beget that cruel stratagem,
Which some are pleased to style but thy mad
prank,
Against the Globe, the glory of the Bank;
63 Alluding to the burning of the Globe Theatre on the
Which, though it were the fort of the whole
Flanked with a ditch, and forced out of a marish,
I saw with two poor chambers 4 taken in,
And razed; ere thought could urge this might
have been!
See the World's ruins! nothing but the piles
Left, and wit since to cover it with tiles.
The brethren they straight noised it out for
'Twas verily some relic of the stews;
And this a sparkle of that fire let loose,
That was raked up in the Winchestrian goose
Bred on the Bank in time of Popery,
When Venus there maintained in mystery.
Bankside, on the 29th June, 1613. The occurrence took place during the performance of a play called All is True, representing some passages in the reign of Henry VIII During one of the scenes, exhibiting a masque at the house of Cardinal Wolsey, some cannons were fired off upon the entrance of the king, and the ignited materials striking the thatch with which the building was covered, the flames rapidly spread, and in less than an hour the house was burned to the ground. - B.
64 The two small cannons used on the occasion of the performance. - B.
65 It was under the Protestant régime of Henry VIII. that the dens of vice which had previously covered the Bankside were abolished by proclamation. Hence the allusion to "the Bank in time of Popery." The place was within the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester, and any one who had become contaminated by frequenting it was nicknamed a Winchester goose. — B.
But others fell, with that conceit, by the ears,
And cried it was a threatening to the bears,
And that accursed ground, the Paris-garden:
Nay, sighed a sister, 'twas the nun, Kate Arden,
Kindled the fire! but, then did one return,
No fool would his own harvest spoil or burn!
If that were so, thou rather wouldst advance
The place that was thy wife's inheritance.
O no, cried all, Fortune, for being a whore,
'Scaped not his justice any jot the more:
He burned that idol of the Revels too." 67
Nay, let Whitehall with revels have to do,
Though but in dances, it shall know his power;
There was a judgment shown too in an hour.68
66 Paris-garden was used for bear-baiting as early as the reign of Henry VIII. A fatal accident occurred there on a Sunday, 13th January, 1582-83, when one of the galleries, crowded with spectators, broke down, and many persons were killed. A theatre was afterwards built on the ground, in which Dekker (Satiromastix, 1602) asserts that Ben Jonson acted. B.
67 The Fortune Theatre, in Golding-lane, Whitecrossstreet, was erected in 1599, by Edward Alleyn and his wife's step-father, Philip Henslowe; and was destroyed by fire on Sunday night, 14th December, 1621. The house, built of wood, was consumed, together with the entire wardrobe of the actors, and their plays, in two hours. A more substantial theatre of brick was raised on its site in 1623. — B.
68 Alluding to the destruction by fire of the old Banqueting-house at Whitehall on the 12th January, 1618-19. A second fire consumed the greater part of the palace towards the water side in 1691; and a third conflagration, still more destructive in its effects, occurred there on the 4th January, 1697-98.-B.
He is right Vulcan still! he did not spare
Troy, though it were so much his Venus' care.
Fool, wilt thou let that in example come?
Did not she save from thence to build a Rome?
And what hast thou done in these petty spites,
More than advanced the houses and their rites?
I will not argue thee, from those, of guilt,
For they were burned but to be better built:
'Tis true, that in thy wish they were destroyed,
Which thou hast only vented, not enjoyed.
So wouldst thou've run upon the rolls by
And didst invade part of the commonwealth,
In those records, which, were all chronicles
Would be remembered by Six Clerks to one.
But say all six, good men, what answer ye?
Lies there no writ out of the Chancery
Against this Vulcan? no injunction,
No order, no decree? though we be gone
At common-law, methinks in his despite,
A court of equity should do us right.
But to confine him to the brew-houses,
The glass-house, dye-vats, and their furnaces;
To live in sea-coal, and go forth in smoke;
Or, lest that vapor might the city choke,
Condemn him to some brick-kilns, or some hill-
Foot (out of Sussex) to an iron-mill;
69 Alluding to a fire which took place in the Six Clerks' office.
Or in small fagots have him blaze about
Vile taverns, and the drunkards piss him out;
Or in the bell-man's lanthorn, like a spy,
Burn to a snuff, and then stink out, and die:
I could invent a sentence, yet were worse;
But I'll conclude all in a civil curse:
Pox on your flameship, Vulcan! if it be
To all as fatal as 't hath been to me,
And to Paul's steeple; which was unto us
'Bove all your fireworks had at Ephesus,
Or Alexandria; 70 and, though a divine.
Loss, remains yet as unrepaired as mine.
Would you had kept your forge at Etna still! And there made swords, bills, glaives, and arms your fill:
Maintained the trade at Bilboa, or elsewhere,
Struck in at Milan with the cutlers there;
Or stayed but where the friar and you first met,
Who from the devil's arse did guns beget;
Or fixed in the Low Countries, where you might
On both sides do your mischiefs with delight:
Blow up and ruin, mine and countermine,
Make your petards and grenades, all your fine
Engines of murder, and enjoy the praise
Of massacring mankind so many ways!
We ask your absence here, we all love peace,
And pray the fruits thereof and the increase;
So doth the king, and most of the king's men
70 The burning of the Temple of Diana, and the Alexandrian Library.
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