Well, then, this is my counsell, thus standeth the case,
Perhaps such a fetche as may please your grace:
There is no more wayes but hap or hap not,
Either hap or els hapless, to knit up the knot:
And if you will hazard to venter what falles,
Perhaps that Haphazard will end all your thralles.
His distinctive note is this, that he tempts men by suggesting that they may offend and escape the consequences. In the end he falls into the pit that he has digged for others, and when his hap is to be hanged, like a true Vice he accepts the contretemps with jest and jape.
Yet despite the stock-in-trade that it takes over from Morality or Interlude, Appius and Virginia has specialties of its own that were better calculated to secure it custom in the period of the Renaissance. The author bestows most care on the main story, and makes a genuine attempt to bring out the human interest of the subject and the persons. In the opening scene he tries, in his well-meaning way, to give the impression of a home in which affection is the pervading principle, but in which affection itself is not allowed to run riot, but is restrained by prudence and obligation. Father, mother, and daughter sing a ditty in illustration of this sober love or its reverse, and always return to the refrain:
The trustiest treasure in earth, as we see,
Is man, wife, and children in one to agree;