Mac. Ill, well, straight, crooked,—I know not how.
Theoph. Once more;
—Thy head is full of windmills:—when doth the princess
Bestow herself on noble Antoninus?
Mac. I know not.
Theoph. No! thou art the manuscript,
Where Antoninus writes down all his secrets:
Honest Macrinus, tell me.
Mac. Fare you well, sir.[Exit.
Harp. Honesty is some fiend, and frights him hence;
A many courtiers love it not.
Theoph. What piece
Of this state-wheel, which winds up Antoninus,
Is broke, it runs so jarringly? the man
Is from himself divided: O thou, the eye,
By which I wonders see, tell me, my Harpax,
What gad-fly tickles this Macrinus so,
That, flinging up the tail, he breaks thus from me.
Harp. Oh, sir, his brain-pan is a bed of snakes,
Whose stings shoot through his eye-balls, whose poisonous spawn
Ingenders such a fry of speckled villanies,
That, unless charms more strong than adamant
Be used, the Roman angel's[36] wings shall melt,
And Cæsar's diadem be from his head
Spurn'd by base feet; the laurel which he wears,
Returning victor, be enforced to kiss
That which it hates, the fire. And can this ram,
This Antoninus-Engine, being made ready
To so much mischief, keep a steady motion?—
His eyes and feet, you see, give strange assaults.
Theoph. I'm turn'd a marble statue at thy language,
Which printed is in such crabb'd characters,
It puzzles all my reading: what, in the name
Of Pluto, now is hatching?
Harp. This Macrinus,
The line is[37], upon which love-errands run
'Twixt Antoninus and that ghost of women,
The bloodless Dorothea; who in prayer
And meditation, mocking all your gods,
Drinks up her ruby colour: yet Antoninus
Plays the Endymion to this pale-faced Moon,
Courts, seeks to catch her eyes—