Enter Spider.
Sev. Mr. Spider, I have a part for you; but I am afraid you have too good an air, too much dignity in your person, to do it well.
Spi. Oh, I warrant you they never put me to act anything in tragedy, though my genius and temper is altogether for great and sublime things.
Sev. No doubt on't, Mr. Spider, but you must be content at present to do me a courtesy, and still keep in comedy; for you are to be a tapster.
Spi. What! when Mr. Dotterell (as I apprehend) is to be a ghost, am I to be but a tapster?
Sev. Why, you are to be a tapster to the inn in which he is to be a ghost, so that he's in a manner in your keeping. All the ghosts in inns are kept there by the tapster or chamberlain; now you are to be both in this inn that I imagine.
Spi. Oh! oh! I begin to conceive you. I am to be a live tapster, and Mr. Dotterell is to be the ghost of a dead man that died in the inn and left a power of money behind, and so haunts the house because his own cousin had not—I understand it very well—Look you, Mr. Dotterell, it was I and my master contrived to kill this gentleman for the great bag of money he brought into our house. Come, come, we'll go in and consider how to act these parts, without giving Mr. Severn any more trouble about it.
Sev. But there is another thing that, I fear, will go much against you; and that is, you are to be excessively saucy.
Spi. No, I shall make no scruple of that if he proves an unmannerly guest, I'll warrant you.—But, Mr. Dotterell, let us go and lay our heads together.
Sev. Now, gentlemen, you are going out in your own persons, and no man living can tell which of you should take place. Certainly, Mr. Spider, you are somebody or other; and, Mr. Dotterell, so are you. Now I would fain know which of you is to take place.