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