I will defend the feminine to death,
And ding[42] his spirit to the verge of hell,
That dares divulge a lady’s prejudice!
[Exeunt Matzagente, Forobosco, and Balurdo.[43]
Feli. Rampum scrampum, mount tufty Tamburlaine!
What rattling thunderclap breaks from his lips?
Alb. O! ’tis native to his part. For acting a modern[44] braggadoch under the person of Matzagente, the Duke of Milan’s son, it may seem to suit with good fashion of coherence. 99
Pier. But methinks he speaks with a spruce Attic accent of adulterate Spanish.
Alb. So ’tis resolv’d. For Milan being half Spanish, half high Dutch, and half Italians, the blood of chiefest houses is corrupt and mongrel’d; so that you shall see a fellow vain-glorious for a Spaniard, gluttonous for a Dutchman, proud for an Italian, and a fantastic idiot for all. Such a one conceit this Matzagente.
Feli. But I have a part allotted me, which I have neither able apprehension to conceit, nor what I conceit gracious ability to utter. 110
Gal. Whoop, in the old cut![45] Good, show us a draught of thy spirit.
Feli. ’Tis steady and must seem so impregnably fortressed with his own content that no envious thought could ever invade his spirit; never surveying any man so unmeasuredly happy, whom I thought not justly hateful for some true impoverishment; never beholding any favour of Madam Felicity gracing another, which his well-bounded content persuaded not to hang in the front of his own fortune; and therefore as far from envying any man, as he valued all men infinitely distant from accomplished beatitude. These native adjuncts appropriate to me the name of Feliche. But last, good, thy humour. 124
[Exeunt Piero, Alberto, and Galeatzo.[46]