_Cri._ Faith, strive against the flesh. Marry! no, faith, husbands are like lots in the lottery: you may draw forty blanks before you find one that has any prize in him. A husband generally is a careless, domineering thing, that grows like coral, which as long as it is under water is soft and tender, but as soon as it has got his branch above the waves is presently hard, stiff, not to be bowed but burst; so when your husband is a suitor and under your choice, Lord how supple he is, how obsequious, how at your service, sweet lady! Once married, got up his head above, a stiff, crooked, nobby, inflexible tyrannous creature he grows; then they turn like water, more you would embrace the less you hold. I'll live my own woman, and if the worst come to the worst, I had rather prove a wag than a fool. 86 _Bea._ O, but a virtuous marriage. _Cri._ Virtuous marriage! there is no more affinity betwixt virtue and marriage than betwixt a man and his horse; indeed virtue gets up upon marriage sometimes, and manageth it in the right way; but marriage is of another piece, for as a horse may be without a man, and a man without a horse, so marriage, you know, is often without virtue, and virtue, I am sure, more oft without marriage. But thy match, sister--by my troth I think 'twill do well; he's a well-shaped, clean-lipp'd gentleman, of a handsome, but not affected, fineness, a good faithful eye, and a well-humour'd cheek; would he did not stoop in the shoulders, for thy sake. See, here he is. _Enter_ FREEVILL _and_ TYSEFEW. _Free._ Good day, sweet! 100 _Cri._ Good morrow, brother! nay, you shall have my lip. Good morrow, servant! _Tyse._ Good morrow, sweet life! _Cri._ Life! dost call thy mistress life? _Tyse._ Life! yes, why not life? _Cri._ How many mistresses hast thou? _Tyse._ Some nine. _Cri._ Why then thou hast nine lives, like a cat. _Tyse._ Mew, you would be taken up for that. 109 _Cri._ Nay, good, let me still sit; we low statures love still to sit, lest when we stand we may be supposed to sit. _Tyse._ Dost not wear high cork shoes--chopines?[55] _Cri._ Monstrous ones: I am, as many other are, pieced above and pieced beneath. _Tyse._ Still the best part in the---- _Cri._ And yet all will scarce make me so high as one of the giants'[56] stilts that stalks before my Lord Mayor's pageant: _Tyse._ By the Lord, so I thought 'twas for something Mistress Joyce jested at thy high insteps. 121 _Cri._ She might well enough, and long enough, before I would be ashamed of my shortness: what I made or can mend myself I may blush at; but what nature put upon me, let her be ashamed for me, I ha' nothing to do with it. I forget my beauty. _Tyse._ Faith, Joyce is a foolish bitter creature.