CHURMS. Before God, I must confess, your father is too cruel, To keep you thus sequester'd from the world, To spend your prime of youth thus in obscurity, And seek to wed you to an idiot fool, That knows not how to use himself: Could my deserts but answer my desires, I swear by Sol, fair Phoebus' silver eye, My heart would wish no higher to aspire, Than to be grac'd with Lelia's love. By Jesus, I cannot play the dissembler, And woo my love with courting ambages, Like one whose love hangs on his smooth tongue's end; But, in a word, I tell the sum of my desires, I love fair Lelia: By her my passions daily are increas'd; And I must die, unless by Lelia's love they be releas'd. LELIA. Why, Master Churms, I had thought that you had been my father's great councillor in all these actions. CHURMS. Nay, damn me, if I be: by heav'ns, sweet nymph, I am not! NURSE. Master Churms, you are one can do much with her father: and if you love as you say, persuade him to use her more kindly, and give her liberty to take her choice; for these made marriages prove not well. CHURMS. I protest I will. LELIA. So Lelia shall accept thee as her friend:-- Meanwhile, nurse, let's in: My long absence, I know, will make my father muse. [_Exeunt_ LELIA and NURSE. CHURMS. _So Lelia shall accept thee as her friend_:--who can but ruminate upon these words? Would she had said, her love: but 'tis no matter; first creep, and then go; now her friend: the next degree is Lelia's love. Well, I'll persuade her father to let her have a little more liberty. But soft; I'll none of that neither: so the scholar may chance cosen me. Persuade him to keep her in still: and before she'll have Peter Plod-all, she'll have anybody; and so I shall be sure that Sophos shall never come at her. Why, I'll warrant ye, she'll be glad to run away with me at length. Hang him that has no shifts. I promised Sophos to further him in his suit; but if I do, I'll be pecked to death with hens. I swore to Gripe I would persuade Lelia to love Peter Plod-all; but, God forgive me, 'twas the furthest end of my thought. Tut! what's an oath? every man for himself: I'll shift for one, I warrant ye. [_Exit_. _Enter_ FORTUNATUS _solus_. FORTUNATUS. Thus have I pass'd the beating billows of the sea, By Ithac's rocks and wat'ry Neptune's bounds: And wafted safe from Mars his bloody fields, Where trumpets sound tantara to the fight, And here arriv'd for to repose myself Upon the borders of my native soil. Now, Fortunatus, bend thy happy course Unto thy father's house, to greet thy dearest friends; And if that still thy aged sire survive, Thy presence will revive his drooping spirits, And cause his wither'd cheeks be sprent with youthful blood, Where death of late was portray'd to the quick. But, soft; who comes here? [_Stand aside_. _Enter_ ROBIN GOODFELLOW.