A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 08 — John Shaqi
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 08
General
A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 08
English drama
_Noctem peccatis et fraudibus objice nubem_.[18] There is no such fine
time to play the knave in as the night. I am a goose or a ghost, at
least; for what with turmoil of getting my fool's apparel, and care of
being perfect, I am sure I have not yet supp'd to-night. Will Summer's
ghost I should be, come to present you with "Summer's Last Will and
Testament." Be it so; if my cousin Ned will lend me his chain and his
fiddle. Other stately-pac'd Prologues use to attire themselves within: I
that have a toy in my head more than ordinary, and use to go without
money, without garters, without girdle, without hat-band, without points
to my hose, without a knife to my dinner, and make so much use of this
word without in everything, will here dress me without. Dick
Huntley[19] cries, Begin, begin: and all the whole house, For shame,
come away; when I had my things but now brought me out of the laundry.
God forgive me, I did not see my Lord before! I'll set a good face on
it, as though what I had talk'd idly all this while were my part. So it
is, _boni viri_, that one fool presents another; and I, a fool by nature
and by art, do speak to you in the person of the idiot of our
play-maker. He, like a fop and an ass, must be making himself a public
laughingstock, and have no thank for his labour; where other Magisterii,
whose invention is far more exquisite, are content to sit still and do
nothing. I'll show you what a scurvy Prologue he had made me, in an old
vein of similitudes: if you be good fellows, give it the hearing, that
you may judge of him thereafter.
THE PROLOGUE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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