Bartholomew Fair
(Ben Jonson)
Write your abstract
here.
What do you lack, gentlemen, what is it you buy? Here
are
babies (dolls) for sale and gingerbread. If you walked
the
fair too much for the day, would you like your corns
cut by
a professional? Here's Nightingale a ballad singer
who'll
conspire with one working the crowd (at no extra
charge) to
cut your purse. Here's the stall of Ursula the pig
woman
who serves steaming pork out front and in the back---
tenderer flesh though only to rent, the flesh of babes
(dols).
Justice? there's a pretty bauble, but take care you
don't
land the wrong side of Justice Overdo's corrupted
undarstanding, or you might lose all, even your wits,
and
wonder the rest of your days stark mad. The bawds and
cutpurses who use the fair for their criminal advantage
will pity you, but scarcely the good justice, who has
always regarded compassion as nearer a vice than a
virtue.
Here's a pretty ward for sale! Justice Overdo, who
covets
her inheritable entails, is prepared to strike a
bargain
for her in marriage with a perfect idiot of fast-
diminishing wealth and respectable family. (This is
Bartholemew, who loves the fair because it's named for
him,
and drives his guardian to fury with his childish
antics.
He has no fewer than three of his purses cut by
Nightingale's accomplice Ezekiel Edgworth.)
Three respectable matrons (including Mistress Overdo)
are
at risk of being, not so much kidnapped as easily
reasoned
into Ursula's back stalls, because it represents a less
confining prostitution than they're habituated to in
marriage.
Do any at the Fair, vendors or visitors, have enough
self-
understanding to answer Lanthorn Leatherhead's repeated
question, strolling to peddle his wares: What do you
lack?
What is it you buy?
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