Playes written by the thrice noble, illustrious and excellent princess, the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle.

Scene 2.

Enter the Lady Innocence, and her Maid.

PAssive.

Madam, you retire your self more to solitary than you were used to do.

Lady Innocence.

Because I find the world not only more foolish, but more wicked than I thought it was, but who would endure the world, or the worlds folly, since solitarinesse is sweet and melancholly?

Passive.

The truth is, that words pleaseth the world more than reason; and vice is exercised more than vertue.

Lady Innocence.

You say right, for words takes the world of man-kind by the ears, drawing them about even where they please; when reason is not heard, also vice will be imbraced, and vertue kickt away; thus words and vice will get a room, both in the head and heart, when reason and vertue are barr'd out, but if perchance they are crowded in, they are straight thrown out as unfit guests, or troublesome intruders.

Passive.

But Madam, let me advise you from so much solitude, for obscu∣rity shadows vertue, and buries beauty.

Lady Innocence.

And Solitude doth hide defects, as well as Excellencies.

Passive.

But you have no defects to hide.

Lady Innocence.

Nor Excellencies to divulge.

Enter the Lady Innocence, the Lord de l'Amour

Ex. Passive.

Lord de l'Amour.

Tis strange you can be so crafty in dissembling, and yet so young; for you appear to me to be innocently modest, and of a bashfull Na∣ture, and yet it is told me you are so impudently bold, speaking so wantonly, as it is a shame to Nature, which makes me fear you will prove disho∣nest.

Lady Innocence.

Perchance I might learn modest words, but not the significati∣on; yet surely I never spake such words I understood not, nor have I many speaking faults to accuse me.

Lord de l'Amour.

I am told you speak so knowingly of marriage, as if you were a mother of many children.

Lady Innocence.

The mystery of marriage I neither know, nor guesse at, neither do I know how children are bred or born.

Lord de l'Amour,

If you be so ignorant, you may loose your Virginity for want of knowledge and wit to keep it.

Lady Innocence.

I have been taught, none can be devirginated that suffers not immodest action, if so, I am a pure Virgin, and my thoughts are so in∣nocent, and my life so honest, as I wish the Chambers of my mind or soul, (which is the brain and the heart) were set open to your view; there should you see the pictures in the one, and read the letters in the other, for truth re∣cords all in the heart, and memory pencils all that the imaginations or Sen∣ses brings into the brain.

Lord de l'Amour.

I cannot but believe what is so confidently reported; but your words are such charms, as they inchant my angry passions, and makes my will a prisoner.

Lady Innocence.

Let reason, as a Knight of Chevalry, and truth as his E∣squire, set him free, and open the gates of understanding, then you might see vertue cloathed with white Innocency, and truth free from the bonds of falshood.

Lord de l'Amour.

So you were as wife as witty.

Lady Innocence.

Wisdome is built upon the Foundation of Experience; wherefore none can be wise but those that are old; but though I am too young to be wise, yet not to be vertously honest.

Lord de l'Amour.

Pray Heaven you prove so.

Ex.

Lady Innocency alone.

Heaven blesse my innocency from Thieves of slander, that strives to steal away my honest Fame.

Ex.