COB. Marry, sir, both black and blue, colour enough, I
warrant you, I have it here to shew your worship.
CLEM. What is he that gave you this, sirrah?
COB. A gentleman in the city, sir.
CLEM. A gentleman? what call you him?
COB. Signior Bobadilla.
CLEM. Good: But wherefore did he beat you, sirrah?
how began the quarrel 'twixt you? ha: speak truly,
knave, I advise you.
COB. Marry, sir, because I spake against their vagrant
tobacco, as I came by them: for nothing else.
CLEM. Ha, you speak against tobacco? Peto, his name.
PET. What's your name, sirrah?
COB. Oliver Cob, sir, set Oliver Cob, sir.
CLEM. Tell Oliver Cob he shall go to the jail.
PET. Oliver Cob, master Doctor says you shall go to the jail.
COB. Oh, I beseech your worship, for God's love, dear master
Doctor.
CLEM. Nay, God's precious! an such drunken knaves as you are
come to dispute of tobacco once, I have done: away with him.
COB. Oh, good master Doctor, sweet gentleman.
LOR. SE. Sweet Oliver, would I could do thee any good; master
Doctor, let me intreat, sir.
CLEM. What? a tankard-bearer, a thread-bare rascal, a beggar,
a slave that never drunk out of better than piss-pot metal in
his life, and he to deprave and abuse the virtue of an herb so
generally received in the courts of princes, the chambers of
nobles, the bowers of sweet ladies, the cabins of soldiers:
Peto, away with him, by God's passion, I say, go to.
COB. Dear master Doctor.
LOR. SE. Alas, poor Oliver.
CLEM. Peto: ay: and make him a warrant, he shall not go,
I but fear the knave.
COB. O divine Doctor, thanks, noble Doctor, most dainty
Doctor, delicious Doctor.
[EXEUNT PETO WITH COB.]
CLEM. Signior Lorenzo: God's pity, man,
Be merry, be merry, leave these dumps.
LOR. SE. Troth, would I could, sir: but enforced mirth
(In my weak judgment) has no happy birth.
The mind, being once a prisoner unto cares,
The more it dreams on joy, the worse it fares.
A smiling look is to a heavy soul
As a gilt bias to a leaden bowl,
Which (in itself) appears most vile, being spent
To no true use; but only for ostent.
CLEM. Nay, but, good Signior, hear me a word, hear me a word,
your cares are nothing; they are like my cap, soon put on,
and as soon put off. What? your son is old enough to govern
himself; let him run his course, it's the only way to make
him a staid man: if he were an unthrift, a ruffian, a
drunkard, or a licentious liver, then you had reason: you had
reason to take care: but being none of these, God's passion,
an I had twice so many cares as you have, I'd drown them all
in a cup of sack: come, come, I muse your parcel of a soldier
returns not all this while.
[EXEUNT.]
ACT III. SCENE IV.
ENTER GIULIANO, WITH BIANCHA.
GIU. Well, sister, I tell you true: and you'll find
it so in the end.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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