Enter Servants, preparing for an Entertainment.
roland.
Help me with this wine, Stephano.
stephano.
Help thee? yea, my wishes be thy help. I hope thou wilt have unhelped speed.
roland.
Truce to thy wit, comrade, for it helpeth me not, save an' my fingers to this cudgel, and thine hide to a basting.
stephano.
Nay, spare thy wit, and thy cudgel to boot: mine hide endureth it not tenderly. If I should wince, thou mightest come to harm. A dainty flagon this: would that thy mouth were as dry as my lips, and our bellies had changed occupants! Thy lazy body would be lighter, methinks, and I better able to carry thee.——
roland.
The Lady Hermione! Oh, how I do love her sweet face, Stephano! She smiles an' it were so temptingly when she speaks! "Good Roland," says she, "give me of that wine."—"Kind Roland, do go to the bath, and carry my little spaniel:"—or thus, "Honest master Roland, pray take my basket, and bring me thy master's garden mittens." This house, I trow, Stephano, she makes like to some gay palace, when she visits it; as pleasant and full of goodness as the Duke's pantry, who comes to the feast to-day. She was here some two years agone, and I thought I should have pined away at heart when she left.
stephano.
Tush! thou star-stricken marmoset! Is she not a woman? Are not all women as full of deceit as their grandmothers? Is not Eve's flesh upon the bones of the very best jade in Christendom? and this blowzy-bell of thine, beshrew me, has no better a covering than the rest of 'em. This dainty hoyden thou delightest to worship, man, can be as chary of her winning looks as any of her sisterhood; and if I have not seen a storm brewing in her face, I have seen a water-spout in her eye, marry, which is almost fathomless. Mark me, Roland; if any good comes of her mummery, I am no true prophet, that's all.
roland.
Envious in this, I do guess, Stephano. Why does she not smile on thee—eh? Thy stupid face, seamed like a beggar's coat; thy marvellous bright eyes and small nostrils; or, mayhap, I might the rather mean, thy marvellous bright nostrils and small eyes, make tears come into her delicate organs by sympathy, like the stroke of a dull razor. I tell thee, man, she cannot smile fronting thy mis-shapened countenance. I know many gentlewomen that bear not an ugly serving-man about them; and the delicate Hermione, I should bethink me, hath aversion to such.—I like her the better, Stephano, for thine ugliness.
stephano.
Thou mis-shapen cur, time serves not to correct thee. What! dost brag if thy grinning leer provoke her mirth? "Sweet Roland," ah, "good Roland," put thy nose to the curling irons, and twist thy mouth with thy garters. I can tell thee, "Master Roland," this favourite hath her privy counsellors, and she not a wit loth to trust 'em. Ah, ah! "honest Roland," perhaps thou didst help her to the terrace key o' yesternight; and it was "kind Roland, fetch me"—oh, her pretty spaniel was it, "Master Roland?"
roland.
Nay, thou art in jest. Sawest thou the Lady Hermione with the key last night?