42. Alchemy’s Daughter

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SCENE 1

LYDIA stands in a pillory, center stage, facing the audience – a placard hanging below her head reads: Ugly Conjures The Devil.

ANNA is standing beside her.

SIR TRIVIUS and JOHNSON enter, walking across the stage (Covent Garden). They stop to look at LYDIA. SIR TRIVIUS makes a face at her.

  

SIR TRIVIUS

What causa finalis is she stood there for?
Defiling this, our peace and view. What say?
She farted here, perhaps? Before some lord?
Abusing Covent Garden air anew?

JOHNSON

She conjured Satan, I would aim. Or whored.

SIR TRIVIUS

That thing a callet, Jay? You’ve lost your wits.
No dog, nay rat would near an ugly toad like that.

ANNA

Why gentlemen, the sum of it: Without a mask she left from her abode.

JOHNSON

That’s all? The cruelty of law these days.

SIR TRIVIUS

What cruelty? To mask a fulsome face?
You jest, my friend, or else your judgment’s gummed.
Too many hours aside your fumes and fires.

ANNA

You want a fire within your walls awhile?
To set your fancy and your hair ablaze?

SIR TRIVIUS

[indicating himself]  A degradation this shall never bear.

LYDIA

A pity how adversity is wasted on
The rich and selfish. Sad, the wisdom lost.

JOHNSON

A point she makes. There is a mind in there.

SIR TRIVIUS

You think you have a salve to bring it forth?

JOHNSON

Much more than that…. Go fleer, you doubting Luke.
A potion that bewrays her comeliness.

SIR TRIVIUS

With all your alchemy, and algebra,
Your minerals, vegetals, and animals,
You’ve gained but little to abate the kibes
That plague your very feet. Thou art a quack, Jay, Heaven knows.

JOHNSON

Baboons know more than thou, Sir Trivius,
of charms and alchemy.

SIR TRIVIUS

Tut. Say not what you will regret anon.

LYDIA

I’ll drink what drink you’ll have me drink, Kind Sir,
An it repels the contours of my face.

JOHNSON

She has a faith in me your worship lacks.

SIR TRIVIUS

Advise the plain and vulgar one she is.
And say again the same to me straight-eyed.

JOHNSON

One never slanders friend nor foe who owns
A working knowledge of the ancient crafts.

SIR TRIVIUS

You dare, O rare! to threaten me? A knight?

JOHNSON

No threat intended, only sage advice.

SIR TRIVIUS

A challenge, then?

JOHNSON

A test, if you should care
To call it so.

SIR TRIVIUS

A “test” …. And what’s the set?

JOHNSON

If I can make a maid of her so fair
That she doth briefly catch your eye, what then?

SIR TRIVIUS

Much! Then. An hundred fifty marks.

JOHNSON

And if,
So fair you wish to walk with her awhile?

SIR TRIVIUS

Why, double the amount. Three hundred marks.

JOHNSON

And if you have desire to be her servant?

SIR TRIVIUS

Your game is gone absurd, my friend. Absurd.
No common lace could tempt me as a lover.

JOHNSON

Five hundred marks? As peevish as it sounds?

LYDIA

[to JOHNSON]  Powerful men make powerful judgments, yes?
I could forgive the likes of such a man.

 

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