John Barth - The Sot-Weed Factor

"The moral to that," Bertrand said, "is, Who hath skirts of straw must needs stay clear of fire."

"Moral! Thou'rt a proper priest to speak of morals! Enough now: who said Out, out, strumpet Fortune, Shakespeare or Marlowe? I've two bob on't with Captain Meech, that thinks him such a scholar."

Alarmed lest his servant give the game away, either by his reply or by his conduct, Ebenezer was about to interrupt with the answer, but Bertrand gave him no opportunity.

"Captain Meech, is't!" he exclaimed, with a teasing frown and a sidelong look. "I'll bet two bob myself that for any bruise o' mine ye've three of his to sit on!"

Miss Robotham and Ebenezer both protested, the latter genuinely.

"No? Take a pound on't, then," Bertrand laughed. "My pound against your shilling. But mind, I must see the proof myself!" He then asked what poet she'd bet on, offering to swear that man had penned the line.

"The Laureate hath not his peer for gallantry," Ebenezer observed with relief to Miss Robotham's youthful back. "And in sooth, if chivalry be served, what matters it that William — "

"Oh no," the girl protested, cutting him off, "I'll have no favors from you, Mister Laureate, for I well know what 'twill cost me in the end! Besides which, I know the answers for a fact, and want no more than to hav't confirmed:

Out, out, thou strumpet Fortune! All you gods

In general synod take away her power.

Knock all her spokes and fellies out,

And bowl the round nave down the hill of Heaven,

As low as to the fiends!"

"Well done, well done!" Ebenezer applauded. "The Player himself pleased Hamlet no more with't than you — "

"Marry, all those knaves and strumpets!" Bertrand exclaimed. "Whoever wrote it is a randy wight, now, ain't he? To speak the truth, young lady, I might have scratched it out myself, for aught I know."

"If you please, ma'am!" Ebenezer cried, aghast at Bertrand's ignorance and the peril of the situation. This time he forced himself between them and took her arm as though to lead her off. "You must forgive my rudeness, but I cannot let you annoy the Laureate farther!"

"Annoy him!" Miss Robotham snatched her arm away. "Me annoy him!"

"I quite commend your interest in verse, which is rare enough e'en in a London girl," the poet went on, speaking rapidly and glancing about to see if others were watching them, "and 'tis no reflection on your rearing that you presume so on this great man's gallantry, seeing thou'rt from the plantations; yet I must explain — "

"Hear the wretch!" Miss Robotham applied for sympathy first to an imaginary audience and then specifically to Captain Meech, whom she saw approaching from aft. "I ask Mr. Cooke a civil question, and this fellow calls me a mannerless bumpkin!"

"Never mind him," the Captain said good-humoredly, not without a brief scowl at the offender. "Who wins the bet?"

"Oh, everybody knows 'twas Shakespeare wrote it," she said, "but Mr. Cooke's as great a tease as you: he swears 'twas he himself."

"Grand souls are ever wont to speak in epigrams," Ebenezer explained desperately. "Haply it seemed a mere tease on the face of't, but underneath 'tis deep enough a thought: the Laureate means that one great poet feels such kinship with another, in's service of the Muse, 'tis as if Will Shakespeare and Eben Cooke were one and the same man!"

"My loss, then," sighed the Captain, more in reply to Miss Robotham's remark than to Ebenezer's. "Henceforth," he promised Bertrand, "I'll stick to my last and leave learning to the learned."

"Heav'n forbid!" Bertrand laughed. He had paid no heed whatever to Ebenezer's previous alarm. "I lose enough on your seamanship without betting against ye in the pool!"

Captain Meech then declaring with a wink that all his money was in his quarters, Miss Robotham strode off on his arm to collect her winnings.

Bertrand looked after them enviously. "By God, that is a saucy piece!"

" 'Tis all up with us!" Ebenezer groaned, as soon as the couple was out of earshot. "You've spiked our guns for fair!" He turned again to the ocean and buried his face in his hands.

"What? Not a bit of't! Did ye see how she purred when I chucked her chin?"

"You treated her like a two-shilling tart!"

"No more than what she is," Bertrand said. "D'ye think she's playing at cards with Meech right now?"

"But her father is Colonel Robotham of Talbot County, that used to sit on the Maryland Council!"

Bertrand was unimpressed. "I know him well enough. Yet 'tis a queer father will hear his daughter prate of knaves and strumpets, I must say, and recite her smutty verses at the table."

"God save us!" cried the Laureate. "If you don't discover us with your blunders, you'll have us horsewhipped for your behavior! Speak no more of the valet's refinement, i'God; I've seen enough of't, and of his ignorance!"

"Ah now, compose thyself," said Bertrand. " 'Twas the Laureate I was playing, not the valet, or ye'd have seen refinement and to spare. I knew what I was about."

"You knew — "

"As for this same raillery and bookish converse your fine folk set such store by," he went on testily, "any gentleman's gentleman like myself that hath stood off a space and seen it whole can tell ye plainly the object of't, which is: to sound out the other fellow's sentiments on a matter and then declare a cleverer sentiment yourself. The difference here 'twixt simple and witty folk, if the truth be known, is that your plain man cares much for what stand ye take and not a fart for why ye take it, while your smart wight leaves ye whate'er stand ye will, sobeit ye defend it cleverly. Add to which, what any valet can tell ye, most things men speak of have but two sides to their name, and at every rung on the ladder of wit ye hear one held forth as gospel, with the other above and below."

"Ladder of wit! What madness is this?" Ebenezer demanded.

"No madness save the world's, sir. Take your wig question, now, that's such a thing in London: whether to wear a bob or a full-bottom peruke. Your simple tradesman hath no love for fashion and wears a bob on's natural hair the better to labor in; but give him ten pound and a fortnight to idle, he'll off to the shop for a great French shag and a ha'peck of powder, and think him the devil's own fellow! Then get ye a dozen such idlers; the sharpest among 'em will buy him a bob wig with lofty preachments on the tyranny of fashion — haven't I heard 'em! — and think him as far o'er his full-bottomed fellows as they o'er the merchants' sons and bob-haired 'prentices. Yet only climb a rung the higher, and it's back to the full-bottom, on a sage that's seen so many crop-wigs feigning sense, he knows 'tis but a pose of practicality and gets him a name for the cleverest of all by showing their sham to the light of day. But a grade o'er him is the bob again, on the pate of some philosopher, and over that the full-bottom, and so on. Or take your French question: the rustical wight is all for England and thinks each Frenchman the Devil himself, but a year in London and he'll sneer at the simple way his farm folk reason. Then comes a man who's traveled that road who says, 'Plague take this foppish shill-I, shall-I! When all's said and done 'tis England to the end!'; and after him your man that's been abroad and vows 'tis not a matter of shill-I, shall-I to one who's traveled, for no folk are cleverer than the clever French, 'gainst which your English townsman's but a bumpkin. Next yet's the man who's seen not France alone but every blessed province on the globe; he says 'tis the novice traveler sings such praise for Paris — the man who's seen 'em all comes home to England and carries all's refinement in his heart. But then comes your grand skeptical philosopher, that will not grant right to either side; and after him a grander, that knows no side is right but takes sides anyway for the clever nonsense of't; and after him your worldly saint, that says he's past all talk of wars and kings fore'er, and gets him a great name for virtue. And after him — "