HUSBAND. Sometimes at home at cards they play,
Sometimes at this game, sometimes at that;
They need not with sadness to pass the day,
Nor yet to sit still, or stand in one plat.
WIFE. And as for us wives, occasions do move
Sometimes with our gossips to make good cheer,
Or else we did not, as did us behove,
For certain days and weeks in the year.
HUSBAND. I think that a man might spend a whole day,
Declaring the joys and endless bliss,
Which married persons receive alway,
If they love faithfully, as meet it is.
WIFE. Wives cannot choose but love earnestly,
If that their husbands do all things well;
Or else, my sweetheart, we shall espy,
That in quietness they cannot dwell.
HUSBAND. If they do not, it may be a shame,
For I love you heartily, I you assure:
Or else I were truly greatly to blame,
Ye are so loving, so kind and demure.
WIFE. I trust that with neither hand or foot
Ye shall see any occasion by me:
But that I love you even from the heart-root,
And during my life so intend to be.
HUSBAND. Who then merry marriage can discommend,
And will not with Aristotle in his Ethics[346] agree?
But will say, that misery is the end,
When otherwise I find it to be:
A politic man will marry a wife,
As the philosopher makes declaration,
Not only to have children by his life,
But also for living, help, and sustentation.
WIFE. Who will not with H'erocles plainly confess,
That mankind to society is wholly adjoining,
And in this society nevertheless
Of worthy wedlock took the beginning:
Without the which no city can stand,
Nor household be perfect in any land?
HUSBAND. Pythagoras, Socrates, and Crates also,
Which truly were men of very small substance,
As I heard my father tell long ago,
Did take them wives with a safe conscience;
And dwelled together, supposing that they
Were unto philosophy nother stop nor stay.
WIFE. Yea, what can be more according to kind,
Than a man to a woman himself to bind?