MACI. Nay, not altogether so, sir; the knight must have his hundred pound
repaid, that will help too; and then six score pounds for a diamond, you
know where. These be things will weigh, monsieur, they will weigh.
FAST. O heaven!
MACI. What! do you sigh? this is to 'kiss the hand of a countess', to
'have her coach sent for you', to 'hang poniards in ladies' garters', to
'wear bracelets of their hair', and for every one of these great favours to
'give some slight jewel of five hundred crowns, or so'; why, 'tis nothing.
Now, monsieur, you see the plague that treads on the heels o' your foppery:
well, go your ways in, remove yourself to the two-penny ward quickly, to
save charges, and there set up your rest to spend sir Puntarvolo's hundred
pound for him. Away, good pomander, go!
[EXIT FASTIDIOUS.
Why here's a change! now is my soul at peace:
I am as empty of all envy now,
As they of merit to be envied at.
My humour, like a flame, no longer lasts
Than it hath stuff to feed it; and their folly
Being now raked up in their repentant ashes,
Affords no ampler subject to my spleen.
I am so far from malicing their states,
That I begin to pity them. It grieves me
To think they have a being. I could wish
They might turn wise upon it, and be saved now,
So heaven were pleased; but let them vanish, vapours! --
Gentlemen, how like you it? has't not been tedious?
COR. Nay, we have done censuring now.
MIT. Yes, faith.
MACI. How so?
COR. Marry, because we'll imitate your actors, and be out of our humours.
Besides, here are those round about you of more ability in censure than we,
whose judgments can give it a more satisfying allowance; we'll refer you to
them.
[EXEUNT CORDATUS AND MITIS.
MACI. [COMING FORWARD.] Ay, is it even so? -- Well, gentlemen, I should
have gone in, and return'd to you as I was Asper at the first; but by
reason the shift would have been somewhat long, and we are loth to draw
your patience farther, we'll entreat you to imagine it. And now, that you
may see I will be out of humour for company, I stand wholly to your kind
approbation, and indeed am nothing so peremptory as I was in the beginning:
marry, I will not do as Plautus in his 'Amphytrio', for all this, 'summi
Jovis causa plaudite'; beg a plaudite for God's sake; but if you, out of
the bounty of your good-liking, will bestow it, why, you may in time make
lean Macilente as fat as sir John Falstaff.
[EXIT.
THE EPILOGUE
AT THE
PRESENTATION BEFORE QUEEN ELIZABETH
BY MACILENTE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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