MAT. "Rare creature, let me speak without offence,
Would God my rude words had the influence
To rule thy thoughts, as thy fair looks do mine,
Then shouldst thou be his prisoner, who is thine."
LOR. JU. 'Sheart, this is in Hero and Leander!
PROS. Oh ay: peace, we shall have more of this.
MAT. "Be not unkind and fair: misshapen stuff
Is of behaviour boisterous and rough":
How like you that, Signior? 'sblood, he shakes his head
like a bottle, to feel an there be any brain in it.
MAT. But observe the catastrophe now,
"And I in duty will exceed all other,
As you in beauty do excel love's mother."
LOR. JU. Well, I'll have him free of the brokers, for
he utters nothing but stolen remnants.
PROS. Nay, good critic, forbear.
LOR. JU. A pox on him, hang him, filching rogue, steal
from the dead? it's worse than sacrilege.
PROS. Sister, what have you here? verses? I pray you
let's see.
BIA. Do you let them go so lightly, sister?
HES. Yes, faith, when they come lightly.
BIA. Ay, but if your servant should hear you, he would
take it heavily.
HES. No matter, he is able to bear.
BIA. So are asses.
HES. So is he.
PROS. Signior Matheo, who made these verses? they are
excellent good.
MAT. O God, sir, it's your pleasure to say so, sir.
Faith, I made them extempore this morning.
PROS. How extempore?
MAT. Ay, would I might be damn'd else; ask Signior Bobadilla.
He saw me write them, at the -- (pox on it) the Mitre yonder.
MUS. Well, an the Pope knew he cursed the Mitre it were
enough to have him excommunicated all the taverns in the town.
STEP. Cousin, how do you like this gentleman's verses?
LOR. JU. Oh, admirable, the best that ever I heard.
STEP. By this fair heavens, they are admirable,
The best that ever I heard.
[ENTER GIULIANO.]
GIU. I am vext I can hold never a bone of me still,
'Sblood, I think they mean to build a Tabernacle here, well?
PROS. Sister, you have a simple servant here, that crowns
your beauty with such encomiums and devices, you may see what
it is to be the mistress of a wit that can make your
perfections so transparent, that every blear eye may look
through them, and see him drowned over head and ears in the
deep well of desire. Sister Biancha, I marvel you get you
not a servant that can rhyme and do tricks too.
GIU. O monster! impudence itself! tricks!
BIA. Tricks, brother? what tricks?
HES. Nay, speak, I pray you, what tricks?
BIA. Ay, never spare any body here: but say, what tricks?
HES. Passion of my heart! do tricks?
PROS. 'Sblood, here's a trick vied, and revied: why, you
monkeys, you! what a cater-wauling do you keep! has he not
given you rhymes, and verses, and tricks?
GIU. Oh, see the devil!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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