Bell. Oh, I pray do, if you be gentlemen:
I pray, depart the house: beshrew the door
For being so easily entreated! faith,
I lent but little ear unto your talk;
My mind was busied otherwise, in troth,
And so your words did unregarded pass:
Let this suffice,—I am not as I was.
Flu. I am not what I was? no, I’ll be sworn thou art not: for thou wert honest at five, and now thou’rt a punk at fifteen: thou wert yesterday a simple whore, and now thou’rt a cunning, cony-catching baggage to day.
Bell. I’ll say I’m worse; I pray, forsake me then:
I do desire you leave me, gentlemen.
And leave yourselves: O be not what you are,
Spendthrifts of soul and body!
Let me persuade you to forsake all harlots,
Worse than the deadliest poisons, they are worse:
For o’er their souls hangs an eternal curse.
In being slaves to slaves, their labours perish;
They’re seldom blest with fruit; for ere it blossoms,
Many a worm confounds it.
They have no issue but foul ugly ones,
That run along with them, e’en to their graves:
For, ’stead of children, they breed rank diseases,
And all you gallants can bestow on them,
Is that French infant, which ne’er acts, but speaks:
What shallow son and heir, then, foolish gallants,
Would waste all his inheritance, to purchase
A filthy, loathed disease? and pawn his body
To a dry evil: that usury’s worst of all,
When th’ interest will eat out the principal.
Mat. ’Sfoot, she gulls ’em the best! this is always her fashion, when she would be rid of any company that she cares not for, to enjoy mine alone. [Aside.
Flu. What’s here? instructions, admonitions, and caveats? Come out, you scabbard of vengeance.
Mat. Fluello, spurn your hounds when they fist, you shall not spurn my punk, I can tell you: my blood is vexed.
Flu. Pox a’ your blood: make it a quarrel.
Mat. You’re a slave! will that serve turn?
Pio. ’Sblood, hold, hold!
Cas. Matheo, Fluello, for shame, put up!