_Alb._ O! ho! then thus frame your exterior shape To haughty form of elate majesty, As if you held the palsy-shaking head Of reeling chance under your fortune's belt 10 In strictest vassalage: grow big in thought, As swoln with glory of successful arms. _Pier._ If that be all, fear not; I'll suit it right. Who cannot be proud, stroke up the hair, and strut? _Alb._ Truth; such rank custom is grown popular; And now the vulgar fashion strides as wide, And stalks as proud upon the weakest stilts Of the slight'st fortunes, as if Hercules Or burly Atlas shoulder'd up their state. _Pier._ Good: but whom act you? 20 _Alb._ The necessity[36] of the play forceth me to act two parts: Andrugio, the distressed Duke of Genoa, and Alberto, a Venetian gentleman, enamoured on the Lady Rossaline; whose fortunes being too weak to sustain the port of her, he proved always disastrous in love; his worth being much underpoised by the uneven scale, that currents all things by the outward stamp of opinion. _Gal._ Well, and what dost thou play? _Bal._ The part of all the world. _Alb._ The part of all the world? What's that? 30 _Bal._ The fool. Ay, in good deed law now, I play Balurdo, a wealthy mountbanking burgomasco's heir of Venice. _Alb._ Ha! ha! one whose foppish nature might seem great, only for wise men's recreation; and, like a juiceless bark, to preserve the sap of more strenuous spirits. A servile hound, that loves the scent of forerunning fashion, like an empty hollow vault, still giving an echo to wit: greedily champing what any other well valued judgment had beforehand chew'd.[37] 40 _Foro._ Ha! ha! ha! tolerably good, good faith, sweet wag. _Alb._ Umph; why tolerably good, good faith, sweet wag? Go, go; you flatter me. _Foro._ Right; I but dispose my speech to the habit of my part. _Alb._ Why, what plays he? [_To_ FELICHE. _Feli._ The wolf that eats into the breasts of princes; that breeds the lethargy and falling sickness in honour; makes justice look asquint; and blinds[38] the eye of merited reward from viewing desertful virtue. 51 _Alb._ What's all this periphrasis, ha? _Feli._ The substance of a supple-chapt flatterer. _Alb._ O! doth he play Forobosco the Parasite? Good, i'faith. Sirrah, you must seem now as glib and straight in outward semblance as a lady's busk,[39] though inwardly as cross as a pair of tailors' legs; having a tongue as nimble as his needle, with servile patches of glavering flattery to stitch up the bracks[40] of unworthily honour'd-- 60