Gammer Gurton's Needle - Faculty & Staff Web Pages

Chat: Fie on the villain! Fie, fie! That makes us thus agree! 1
Gammer: Fie on him, knave, with all my heart! Now fie and fie again!
D. Rat: Now fie on him! May I best say, whom he hath almost slain!
[Scapethrift drags in Diccon]
Bailey: Lo where he cometh at hand. Belike he was not far!
Diccon! Here be two or three thy company cannot spare!
Diccon: God bless you – and you may be blessed, so many all at once!
Chat: Come, knave, it were a good deed to geld thee, by Cock's bones! 2
See'st not thy handiwork? Sir Rat, can ye forbear him? 3
Gammer Gurton's Needle 56
Diccon: A vengeance on those hands light! For my hands came not near him. 4
The whoreson priest hath lift[ed] the pot in some of these ale-wives' chairs,
That his head would not serve him, belike, to come down the stairs. 5
Bailey: Nay, soft! Thou mayst not play the knave and have this language, too! 6
If thou thy tongue bridle 7 awhile, the better mayst thou do.
Confess the truth, as I shall ask, and cease awhile to fable;
And for thy fault, I promise thee, thy handling shall be reasonable. 8
Hast thou not made a lie or two to set these two by the ears?
Diccon: What if I have? Five hundred such have I seen within these seven years.
I am sorry for nothing else but that I saw not the sport
Which was between them when they met, as they themselves report. 9
Bailey: The greatest thing [he points to Dr. Rat] – Master Rat! Ye see how he is dressed. 10
Diccon: What [the] devil need he [to] be groping so deep in good wife Chat's hens' nest?
1 Spoken sarcastically: Shame on the rascal who fooled us into fighting each other!
2 Geld thee, by Cock's bones: castrate you, by God's bones
3 Forbear him: stand him
4 That is, "Curse whoever beat him up! I didn't do it!"
5 The whoreson. . . stairs: This cursed priest has gotten so drunk, probably, in some ale-wife's house that he fell down the
stairs.
6 The Bailiff says, "You are already in trouble—don't add to it by slandering the priest."
7 Thy tongue bridle: control your tongue, be quiet
8 The Bailiff promises "If you will tell the truth and stop lying, the punishment for your tricks won't be so severe."
9 Diccon brazenly says that other people often lie—and that his only regret is that he didn't actually get to see Dr. Rat being
beaten.
10 Dressed: beaten