TRIL. If your wish had proved true, no doubt but your orchard would have rendered you store of medlars. But your hour, sir, your hour. TIM. You know, Trillo, our theatral time to a minute. One thing I must tell you, and you will attest it upon our presentment, that never was any stage, since the first erection of our ancient Roman amphitheatres, with suitable properties more accurately furnished, with choicer music more gracefully accommodated, nor by boys, though young, with more virile spirits presented. TRIL. I'm already noosed in your poetical springe, and shall henceforth wish, for your sake, that all crop-eared histriomastixes, who cannot endure a civil, witty comedy, but by his racked exposition renders it downright drollery, may be doomed to Ancyrus, and skip there amongst satyrs for his rough and severe censure. TIM. Parnassus is a debtor to thee, Trillo, for thy clear and serene opinion of the Muses and their individual darling; of which, meaning to imprint our addresses all the better in your memory, our stage presents ever the most lively and lovely fancy:-- "Where th' stage breathes lines, scenes, subject, action fit, Th' age must admire it, or it has no wit." TRIL. Yet I have heard, Timon, that you were sometimes stoical, and could not endure the noise of an interlude, but snuff at it, as the satyr did at the first sight of fire. TIM. All this is most authentically true; but shall I unbosom myself ingeniously[106] to thee, my dear Trillo? As his hate to woman made Eupolis eat nettle pottage, so became I fired in my spirit. My experience of a shrew drove me to turn the shrewd comedian; and yet all our boxes are stored with complete doxies; nay, some, whose carriage give life to this day's action. TRIL. May the poet's day prove fair and fortunate! Full audience and honest door-keepers. I shall, perchance, rank myself amongst your gallery-men. TIM. We shall hold our labours incomparably heightened by the breath of such approved judgments. _Enter_ MESSENGER. MES. Sir, here is a proud, peremptory, pragmatical fellow, newly come into our tiring-room, who disturbs our preparation, vowing, like a desperate haxter,[107] that he has express command to seize upon all our properties. TIM. The devil he has! What furious Mercury might this be? MES. Nay, sir, I know not what he may be; but, sure, if he be what he seems to be, he can be no less than one of our city Hectors; but I hope your spirit will conjure him, and make him a Clinias. He speaks nothing less than braving, buff-leather language, and has made all our boys so feverish, as if a quotidian ague had seized on them. TIM. Sure, it is one of our trepanning decoys, sent forth for a champion to defend those ladies' engaged honour, whom our stage is this day to present! This shall not serve their turn. Call him in; we will collar him. TRIL. Ha-ha-ha! This will prove rare sport, to see how the poet's genius will grapple with this bawdry! SCENE III. _Enter_ HAXTER.