Leath. Well, luck and Saint Bartholomew! out with the sign of our invention, in the name of wit, and do you beat the drum the while: all the foul i’ the Fair, I mean all the dirt in Smithfield,—that’s one of master Littlewit’s carwhitchets now—will be thrown at our banner to-day, if the matter does not please the people. O the motions that I Lanthorn Leatherhead have given light to, in my time, since my master Pod died! Jerusalem was a stately thing, and so was Nineveh, and the city of Norwich, and Sodom and Gomorrah, with the rising of the prentices, and pulling down the bawdy-houses there upon Shrove-Tuesday; but the Gun-powder plot, there was a get-penny! I have presented that to an eighteen or twenty pence audience, nine times in an afternoon. Your home-born projects prove ever the best, they are so easy and familiar; they put too much learning in their things now o’ days: and that I fear will be the spoil of this. Littlewit! I say, Micklewit! if not too mickle! look to your gathering there, goodman Filcher.
Filch. I warrant you, sir.
Leath. An there come any gentlefolks, take two-pence apiece, Sharkwell.
Shark. I warrant you, sir, three-pence an we can.
[Exeunt.
SCENE II.—Another part of the Fair.
Enter OVERDO, disguised like a Porter.
Over. This latter disguise, I have borrow’d of a porter, shall carry me out to all my great and good ends; which however interrupted, were never destroyed in me: neither is the hour of my severity yet come to reveal myself, wherein, cloud-like, I will break out in rain and hail, lightning and thunder, upon the head of enormity. Two main works I have to prosecute: first, one is to invent some satisfaction for the poor kind wretch, who is out of his wits for my sake, and yonder I see him coming, I will walk aside, and project for it.
Enter WINWIFE and GRACE.
Winw. I wonder where Tom Quarlous is, that he returns not: it may be he is struck in here to seek us.