Part 17 (1/2)

BOB. Signior, you abuse the excellency of your mistress and her fair sister. Fie, while you live avoid this prolixity.

MAT. I shall, sir; well, incipere dulce.

LOR. JU. How, incipere dulce? a sweet thing to be a fool indeed.

PROS. What, do you take incipere in that sense?

LOR. JU. You do not, you? 'Sblood, this was your villainy to gull him with a motte.

PROS. Oh, the benchers' phrase: pauca verba, pauca verba.

MAT. ”Rare creature, let me speak without offence, Would G.o.d my rude words had the influence To rule thy thoughts, as thy fair looks do mine, Then shouldst thou be his prisoner, who is thine.”

LOR. JU. 'Sheart, this is in Hero and Leander!

PROS. Oh ay: peace, we shall have more of this.

MAT. ”Be not unkind and fair: misshapen stuff Is of behaviour boisterous and rough”: How like you that, Signior? 'sblood, he shakes his head like a bottle, to feel an there be any brain in it.

MAT. But observe the catastrophe now, ”And I in duty will exceed all other, As you in beauty do excel love's mother.”

LOR. JU. Well, I'll have him free of the brokers, for he utters nothing but stolen remnants.

PROS. Nay, good critic, forbear.

LOR. JU. A pox on him, hang him, filching rogue, steal from the dead? it's worse than sacrilege.

PROS. Sister, what have you here? verses? I pray you let's see.

BIA. Do you let them go so lightly, sister?

HES. Yes, faith, when they come lightly.

BIA. Ay, but if your servant should hear you, he would take it heavily.

HES. No matter, he is able to bear.

BIA. So are a.s.ses.

HES. So is he.

PROS. Signior Matheo, who made these verses? they are excellent good.

MAT. O G.o.d, sir, it's your pleasure to say so, sir.

Faith, I made them extempore this morning.

PROS. How extempore?

MAT. Ay, would I might be d.a.m.n'd else; ask Signior Bobadilla.

He saw me write them, at the -- (pox on it) the Mitre yonder.