Androgyno. Of that an obstreperous lawyer bereft me.
Nano. O wonderful change, when sir lawyer forsook thee! For Pythagore's sake, what body then took thee?
Androgyno. A good dull mule.
Nano. And how! by that means Thou wert brought to allow of the eating of beans?
Androgyno. Yes.
Nano. But from the mule into whom didst thou pass?
Androgyno. Into a very strange beast, by some writers called
an ass;
By others, a precise, pure, illuminate brother,
Of those devour flesh, and sometimes one another;
And will drop you forth a libel, or a sanctified lie,
Betwixt every spoonful of a Nativity [30] pie.
Nano then admonishes Androgyno to quit that profane nation. Androgyno answers that he gladly remains in the shape of a fool and a hermaphrodite. To the question of Nano, as to whether he likes remaining a hermaphrodite in order to 'vary the delight of each sex,' Androgyno replies:—
Alas, those pleasures be stale and forsaken;
No 't is your fool wherewith I am so taken,
The only one creature that I can called blessed;
For all other forms I have proved most distressed.
Nano. Spoke true, as thou wert in Pythagoras still.
This learned opinion we celebrate will,…