Dame K. [spies her husband, and runs to him.]
O, sir, have I fore-stall'd your honest market,
Found your close walks? You stand amazed now, do you?
I'faith, I am glad I have smok'd you yet at last.
What is your jewel, trow? In, come, let's see her;
Fetch forth your housewife, dame; if she be fairer,
In any honest judgment, than myself,
I'll be content with it: but she is change,
She feeds you fat, she soothes your appetite,
And you are well! Your wife, an honest woman,
Is meat twice sod to you, sir! O, you treachour!
Know. She cannot counterfeit thus palpably.
Kit.
Out on thy more than strumpet impudence!
Steal'st thou thus to thy haunts? and have I taken
Thy bawd and thee, and thy companion,
This hoary-headed letcher, this old goat,
Close at your villainy, and would'st thou 'scuse it
With this stale harlot's jest, accusing me?
O, old incontinent, [to Knowell.] dost thou not shame,
When all thy powers in chastity are spent,
To have a mind so hot? and to entice,
And feed the enticements of a lustful woman?
Dame K. Out, I defy thee, I, dissembling wretch!
Kit.
Defy me, strumpet! Ask thy pander here,
Can he deny it; or that wicked elder?
Know. Why, hear you, sir.
Kit.
Tut, tut, tut; never speak:
Thy guilty conscience will discover thee.
Know. What lunacy is this, that haunts this man?
Kit.
Well, good wife bawd, Cob's wife, and you,
That make your husband such a hoddy-doddy;
And you, young apple-squire, and old cuckold-maker;
I'll have you every one before a justice:
Nay, you shall answer it, I charge you go.
Know.
Marry, with all my heart, sir, I go willingly;
Though I do taste this as a trick put on me,
To punish my impertinent search, and justly,
And half forgive my son for the device.
Kit. Come, will you go?
Dame K. Go! to thy shame believe it.
Enter Cob.
Cob. Why, what's the matter here, 'what's here to do?
Kit.
O; Cob, art thou come? I have been abused,
And in thy house; was never man so wrong'd!
Cob. 'Slid, in my house, my master Kitely! who wrongs you in
my house? '
Kit.
Marry, young lust in old, and old in young here:
Thy wife's their bawd, here have I taken them.
Cob. How, bawd! is my house come to that? Am I preferr'd thither?
Did I not charge you to keep your doors shut, Isbel? and---you
let them lie open for all comers! [Beats his wife.
Know. Friend, know some cause, before thou beat'st thy wife.
This is madness in thee.
Cob. Why, is there no cause?
Kit.
Yes, I'll shew cause before the justice, Cob:
Come, let her go with me.
Cob. Nay, she shall go.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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