Summary
Act III
Scene 1
In the Old Jewry at the Windmill Tavern, Matthew, Wellbred, and Bobadil convene. Matthew tells Wellbred they were looking for him and Bobadil cuts in to say something of Downright, but Wellbred will hear no ill words about his brother. Matthew tells Wellbred he thinks Downright does not “carry himself like a gentleman of / fashion” (39) but Wellbred laughs that few do.
Edward and Stephen enter. Wellbred greets Edward jovially, and Edward laughs that the letter Wellbred sent him was surely something. He also says the man who brought him the letter was certainly “no ordinary beast” (39), for how could anyone confuse himself and his father? He tells Wellbred his father saw the letter before he did.
Amused, Wellbred asks what Knowell thought. Edward replies he does not know, but can guess the old man thinks they are both dissolute. Wellbred dismisses that, saying such a thought will soon vanish. He turns to his two “hang-by’s” (40) but then asks who the silent man is with Edward. Everyone is introduced, and Stephen proclaims himself “somewhat / melancholy” but that “you [Wellbred] shall command me, sir, in whatsoever / is incident to a gentleman” (40).
Matthew asks Stephen if he is really given to melancholy, and when Stephen says yes, Matthew ventures that it is only “your fine humour, sir, your true / melancholy breeds your perfect fine wit, sir” (41). As for himself, he adds, when he gets a bit of melancholy he takes up his pen to write. Matthew suggests Stephen take up his study to be melancholy within.
Wellbred asks Bobadil why he seems so pensive, and Edward notes that Bobadil is melancholy as well. Bobadil explains that he was thinking of something that took place ten years ago tomorrow: seven hundred men lost their lives at the “beleag’ring of Strigonium” (41). Edward asks if he was truly there, and Bobadil replies that he was the first to enter the breach and was almost slain.
Bobadil continues to narrate his experience, and shows them his trusty Toledo rapier. Stephen comments that he has one too, and when he shows Bobadil, Bobadil laughs that it is not one. Wellbred asks Stephen where he bought it, and Stephen grumbles that it was from a “scurvy rogue soldier” (43). He is extremely angry, and threatens harm to the man if he ever meets him again.
Brainworm enters, disguised as before. Stephen confronts him about the rapier and Brainworm promptly confesses. Briainworm asks Edward for a word. Amused, Edward asks if he has another fake Toledo to sell him. Brainworm pulls him aside and tells him who he really is, and that Edward’s father is on his way.
Edward announces to Wellbred that Knowell is coming, and that this man is actually Brainworm. Wellbred decides Brainworm will come with them and that Edward ought to keep his spirits high, because there is no way their wits can be so dull that “one old plodding brain can outstrip / us all” (45).
Scene 2
In the Old Jewry at Kitely’s warehouse, Kitely asks Cash if his client is ready for him and has the money, and Cash says yes. Cash leaves to fetch his master’s cloak.
Kitely continues to bemoan his situation, chastising himself: “Who will not judge him worthy to be robb’d / That sets his doors wide open to a thief / And shows the felon where his treasure lies?” (45). He decides he cannot leave, but when Cash returns and tells him the scrivener will be there with the bonds, he is in agony over what to do.
Finally Kitely turns to Cash and asks if he can trust him as he thinks he can. Cash proclaims that if a servant’s duty can be called love, then Kitely has it. After some wavering, Kitely finally decides to trust him, but is concerned that for some reason Cash does not want to swear not to say anything. Perhaps he has some concealed purpose, for why would he not “choose / But lend an oath to all this protestation?” (47). After all, Kitely muses, he has heard Cash wear before.
Kitely finally asks outright if he will swear and Cash says later. Kitely decides he knows Cash well enough and tells him that if Wellbred brings other gentlemen to the house, to let him know at Justice Clement’s straight away. He does not have time to tell him the whole secret, which he reminds Cash of, but he still must not say anything at all about this conversation to Dame Kitely.
Kitely leaves, and Cash is left alone. He sees Cob enter, complaining about fasting days. Kitely asks him about his choler, which Cob interprets as “collar.” Cash has no time for Cob’s whining, though, for he sees Matthew and other men come in with Wellbred, and knows he has to send a messenger to Kitely.
Wellbred and Edward are marveling and laughing over Brainworm’s disguise and duping of Stephen. Cash pops back in, anguished that he cannot find a messenger. Wellbred asks if Kitely is within and Cash replies no but Downright is. Wellbred asks where Kitely is and Cash says he thinks Justice Clement’s. Cash leaves again.
Edward asks who Clement is, and Wellbred replies that he is a “city magis- / trate, a Justice here, an excellent good lawyer, and a great / scholar: but the only mad, merry old fellow in Europe!” (52). Edward remembers Wellbred pointing him out the other day, and says he had a “strange presence” (52).
Cash wanders in again, calling for the servants. Bobadil asks him to light a match for them but Cash says he has no time, and wanders out again.
Bobadil takes out the Trinidado weed, and extols its merits to the men as “the most sovereign / and precious weed that ever the earth tendered to the use / of man” (53). Edward laughs that “This speech would ha’ done decently in a tobacco / trader’s mouth!” (53).
Cash re-enters with Cob, telling Cob where to find Kitely. Cash then runs out. Cob looks at the men getting ready to smoke and grumbles that he finds no merit in it, for all it does is “choke a man and fill him full of smoke and / embers” (54). Four people died last week, he recalls, and thinks “it will stifle them all in the end, / as many as use it” (54).
Enraged at these comments, Bobadil starts to hit Cob with a cudgel and the others yell at him to stop. Cash comes back with a match, and is ordered to take Cob away. Bobadil rages that Cob is a “whorson filthy slave, a dung-worm, an excre- / ment” (54).
The men smoke, and wonder where Matthew went. Wellbred says he must have gone to salute his mistress with verse, and they all decide to go listen.
Scene 3
On Colman Street at Justice Clement’s house, Cob, acting as messenger, is telling Kitely who is at his house. Kitely mourns that it is a “swarm, a swarm” (56). He wishes he had never married because before he was free, and now he is a slave and a cuckold. He asks Cob how his wife and sister welcomed them and Cob says he does not know. He asks Cob which one kissed his wife first and Cob responds that he does not know, and left the men only with their tobacco. Kitely thinks there might still be time, then, and orders Cob to come with him. Kitely exits.
Cob says aloud that he is preparing his revenge against Bobadil, who laid in his house and borrowed money from his wife all so he could buy such filthy tobacco.
Justice Clement, Knowell, and Clement’s man Roger Formal enter. Clement is surprised Kitely is gone, and Cob introduces himself as a poor neighbor of his worship’s. He says he dwells at the sign of the water-tankard and comes here to “crave the / the peace of your worship” (58)—specifically, a warrant.
Clement is intrigued and asks for further information. Cob says the man is Captain Bobadil and he has wronged him. Clement asks how the quarrel began and Cob says all he did is speak about the tobacco the man and others were using. Clement asks what Cob’s name is, and after Cob replies, Clement turns to Formal and tells him to arrest Cob.
Cob is stunned and begins protesting heatedly. Clement declares that one cannot rail against “the virtue of an herb so / generally receiv’d in the courts of princes, the chambers / of nobles, the bowers of sweet ladies, the cabins of soldiers!” (59). Cob cries out for justice again, and Clement sighs that Cob will not go to jail and can have his warrant.
After Formal leads out Cob, Clement tells Knowell to stop bothering him about his son, who is old enough to live his own life. He suggests letting Edward run his course, which is the only way to “make him a staid man” (59).
Analysis
In Act Three, Kitely worries further about his wife, descending more and more into jealousy. Bobadil, Matthew, and Stephen continue to prove themselves ridiculous in their boasting, hubris, and ignorance. Wellbred and Edward delight in Brainworm’s disguises and schemes, and Cob makes his case against tobacco to the Judge.
In regards to this last plot point, Cob’s distaste for tobacco and Clement’s response about its ubiquity and popularity are telling of this moment in the late 16th century. Returning from his voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus brought some of this “weed” back home to Europe. It was not only pleasant to smoke but was also believed to harbor medicinal value. Thus, the production, distribution, and consumption of tobacco exploded during the subsequent century of exploration and colonization of the New World, forming a cornerstone of the increasing trans-Atlantic trade. Cob gives voice to tobacco’s dangerous qualities (which, ironically, come across as obnoxious and petty in the text but actually bear out as true when we consider the health hazards of smoking), saying, “It’s good for / nothing but to choke a man and fill him full of smoke and / embers: there were four died of one house, last week, / with taking of it, and two more the bell went for, yester- / night” (54). Clement has no patience for such a ridiculous complaint, frightening Cob for his silliness by threatening to put him in jail and claiming that it is absurd to “deprave and abuse the virtue of an herb so / generally receiv’d in the courts of princes, the chambers / of nobles, the bowers of sweet ladies, the cabins of soldiers!” (59).
Clement’s appearance in the play signals that there is someone of import, of authority, who might eventually have to intervene to keep the humour-motivated characters in line. He lives on Colman Street, a known respectable neighborhood in London, and by providing that bit of information, Jonson shows just how important moving the play to London from Florence (its initial 1598 setting) was for appealing to the audience’s knowledge and sensibilities and heightening their enjoyment and amusement.
Critic Ralph Alan Cohen takes each of the main characters and explains what their location means for them. To return to Clement, he explains that the area was known as a Puritan one, and was close to the Guildhall; this links Clement “more closely to the religion and government of mercantile London” and bestows upon him a “particularly civic responsibility.” Knowell lives in Hoxton, a suburb north of London. He is well-to-do, and this geographic association “[enhances] Knowell’s character as a plain country gentleman suspicious of the city and its temptations.” Brainworm is from the Moorfields, an area south of Hoxton and once a retreat/resort of sorts now become “a haunt of beggars, specifically lunatics from Bedlam, adjacent to the fields.” The place has connotations of “soldiering, rascality, and beggary,” which are all “embodied in the protean figure of Brainworm (whose name even suggests the lunacy of Bedlam.” Cob’s house does not have an exact location, but it is described by various characters as obscure but tidy, most likely near the conduit within Moorgate because it was a water source.
As for the young men, Wellbred is “true London gallant.” He took up frequent residence in the Windmill Tavern, an actual popular tavern familiar to the London audience. Bobadil is a Pauls-man, a disreputable and notorious disgraced soldier. Jonson contrasts “between the hardworking and honest laborer [Cob] who keeps a poor but ‘cleanly’ house and the fraudulent parasite [Bobadil] who sleeps there on a bench and does not pay his rent.”
Kitely and Downright represent the “quintessence of London’s bourgeois society, the urban counterpart to Knowell.” They are very middle-class, and Kitely seems suspicious of the leisure class. He is also in Old Jewry Lane, reinforcing his role as a merchant. The audience of the time would see that “the grasping and parsimonious nature of the jealous merchant fits the Renaissance stereotype of the Jew.”
Jonson’s very specific locating of his characters also makes their movement from place to place more plausible and unifies the action: “By locating all the persons and actions in a small area, Jonson creates the illusion of a naturally evolving and unified plot.”
