The Barber and the Curling Iron

Morose: “That cursed barber!”

Truewit: Yes faith, a cursed wretch indeed sir.”

Morose: “I have married his cittern that’s common to all men. Some plague, above the plague—“

Truewit: “All Egypt’s ten plagues.”

Morose: Revenge me on him.

Truewit: ‘Tis very well, sir. If you laid on a curse or two more, I’ll assure you he’ll bear ‘em. As, that he may get the pox with seeking to cure it, sir? Or that while he is curling another man’s hair, his own may drop off? Or for burning some male bawd’s lock, he may have his brain beat out with the curling iron?

Morose: No, let the wretch live wretched. May he get the itch, and his shop so lousy as no man dare come at him, nor he come at no man.

Truewit: Aye, and if he would swallow all his balls for pills, let not them purge him.

Morose: Let his warming pan be ever cold.

Truewit: A perpetual frost underneath it, sir.

Moreose: Let him never hope to see fire again.

Truewit: But in hell, sir.

Morose: His chairs be always empty, his scissors rust, and his combs mould in their cases.

Truewit: Very dreadful that! And may he lose the invention, sir, of carving lanterns in paper.

Morose: Let there be no bawd carted that year to employ a basin of his but let him be glad to eat his sponge for bread.

Truewit: And drink lotium [stale urine used by barbers] to it, and much good do him.

Morose: Or for want of bread—

Truewit: Eat ear-wax, sir. I’ll help you. Or draw his own teeth and add them to the lute string.

Morose: No, beat the old ones to powder, and make bread of them.

Truewit.: Yes, make meal o’ the millstones.

Morose: May all the botches and burns that he has cured on others break out upon him.

Truewit: And he now forget the cure of ‘em in himself, sir; or if he do remember it, let him ha’ scraped all his linen into lint fo ‘it, and have not a rag left him to set up with.

Morose: Let him never set up again, but have the gout in his hands forever. Now, no more, sir.

Truewit: O that last was too high set! You might go less with him i’ faith, and be revenged enough; as, that he be never able to new-paint his pole—

Morose: Good sir, no more. I forgot myself.

Truewit: Or want credit to take up with a comb-maker—

Morose: No more, sir.

Truewit: Or having broken his glass in a former despair, fall now into a much greater, of ever getting another—

Morose: I beseech you, no more.

Turewit: Or that he never be trusted with trimming any but chimney-sweepers—

Morose: Sir—

Truewit: Or may he cut a collier’s throat with his razor, by chance-medley, and yet hang for’t.

Morose: I will forgive him, rather than hear any more. I beseech you, sir.

Ben Jonson, The Silent Woman (1609)