SIMONY.
Who is that?
USURY.
Marry, Master Davy Dissimulation, a good helper, and our old acquaintance.
SIMPLICITY.
Now all the cards in the stock are dealt about,
The four knaves in a cluster comes ruffling out.
SIMONY.
What, Fraud and Dissimulation! happily found out.
I marvel what piece of work you two go about.
FRAUD.
Faith, sir, we met by chance, and towards London are bent.
USURY.
And to London we hie: it is our chiefest intent,
To see if we can get entertainment of the Ladies or no.
DISSIMULATION.
And for the selfsame matter even thither we go.
SIMONY.
Then, we are luckily well-met; and, seeing we wish all for one thing,
I would we our wills and wishing might win.
SIMPLICITY.
Yes, they will be sure to win the devil and all,
Or else they'll make a man to spew out his gall.
O that vild[157] Usury! he lent my father a little money, and for
breaking one day
He took the fee-simple of his house and mill quite away:
And yet he borrowed not half a quarter as much as it cost;
But I think, if it had been a shilling, it had been lost.
So he kill'd my father with sorrow, and undoed me quite.
And you deal with him, sirs, you shall find him a knave full of spite.
And Simony—A-per-se-A-Simony—too, he is a knave for the nonce:
He loves to have twenty livings at once;
And if he let an honest man, as I am, to have one,
He'll let it so dear that he shall be undone.
And he seeks to get parsons' livings into his hand,
And puts in some odd dunce that to his payment will stand:
So, if the parsonage be worth forty or fifty pound a year,
He will give one twenty nobles to mumble service once a month there.
SIMONY and USURY both.
What rascal is he, that speaketh by us such villainy?