Pes. Now, doctor, may I visit your patient?
Doc. If't please your lordship: but he's instantly
To take the air here in the gallery
By my direction.
Pes. Pray thee, what's his disease?
Doc. A very pestilent disease, my lord,
They call lycanthropia.
Pes. What's that?
I need a dictionary to't.
Doc. I'll tell you.
In those that are possessed with't there o'erflows
Such melancholy humour they imagine
Themselves to be transformed into wolves;
Steal forth to churchyards in the dead of night,
And dig dead bodies up: as two nights since
One met the duke 'bout midnight in a lane
Behind Saint Mark's church, with the leg of a man
Upon his shoulder; and he howled fearfully;
Said he was a wolf, only the difference
Was, a wolf's skin was hairy on the outside,
His on the inside; bade them take their swords,
Rip up his flesh, and try: straight I was sent for,
And, having ministered to him, found his grace
Very well recovered.
Pes. I am glad on't.
Doc. Yet not without some fear
Of a relapse. If he grow to his fit again,
I'll go a nearer way to work with him
Than ever Paracelsus dreamed of; if
They'll give me leave, I'll buffet his madness out of him.
Stand aside; he comes.
Enter Ferdinand, Cardinal, Malatesti, and Bosola.
Ferd. Leave me.
Mal. Why doth your lordship love this solitariness?
Ferd. Eagles commonly fly alone: they are crows, daws, and starlings that flock together. Look, what's that follows me?
Mal. Nothing, my lord.
Ferd. Yes.
Mal. 'Tis your shadow.
Ferd. Stay it; let it not haunt me.
Mal. Impossible, if you move, and the sun shine.