1st Sear. Ay, marry must thou.
Adam. I am your man, I am for you, Sir, for I had rather be hanged than abide so long a fast. What! five days! Come, I'll untruss. Is your halter, and the gallows, the ladder, and all such furniture in readiness.
1st Sear. I warrant thee thou shalt want none of these.
Adam. But hear you, must I be hanged?
1st Sear. Ay, marry.
Adam. And for eating of meat. Then, friends, know ye by these presents, I will eat up all my meat, and drink up all my drink, for it shall never be said, I was hanged with an empty stomach.
It has been supposed that Greene was very indelicate in his language, as well as reckless in his life. But we cannot find in his plays anything very offensive, considering the date at which he wrote, and in the tract called "Greene's Funeralls," we read:—
His gadding Muse, although it ran of love,
Yet did he sweetly morralize his song;
Ne ever gaue the looser cause to laugh
Ne men of judgement for to be offended.
Greene died in "most woefull and rascall estate" at the house of a poor shoemaker near Dowgate. He had previously written his "Groat's-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance;" in which he warns his former companions and "gentlemen who spend their wits in making playes," to take warning by his fate. He could get none of his friends to visit him at the last but Mistress Appleby, and the mother of "his base sonne Infortunatus Greene." He gave the following note for his wife—whom he had not seen for six years—to the shoemaker:
"Doll, I charge thee by the love of our youth, and by my soule's rest, that thow wilte see this man paide; for if hee and his wife had not succoured me, I had died in the streetes.