LUCRE.
Nay, Conscience, and you be bookish, I mean to leave ye;
And the cold ground to comfort your feet I bequeath ye;
Methink, you being so deeply learned may do well to keep a school.
Why, I have seen so cunning a clerk in time to prove a fool.
[Exeunt LUCRE and SIMONY.
SIMPLICITY.
Sirrah, if thou shouldst marry my lady, thou wouldst keep her brave,
For I think now thou art a plaguy rich knave.
DISSIMULATION.
Rich I am, but as for knave, keep [that] to thyself.
Come, give me my lady's gown, thou ass-headed elf.
SIMPLICITY.
Why, I'll go with thee, for I must dwell with my lady.
DISSIMULATION.
Pack hence away, [or] Jack Drum's entertainment:[203] she will
none of thee.
[Exit.
SIMPLICITY.
This is as my cousin and I went to Master Nemo's house:
There was nobody to bid a dog drink, or to change a man a louse.
But Lady Conscience—nay, who there?—scratch that name away!
Can she be a lady that is turned out of all her beray?[204]
Do not be call'd more lady, and if you be wise,
For everybody will mock you, and say you be not worth two butterflies.
CONSCIENCE.
What remedy, Simplicity? I cannot do withal.
But what shall we go do? or whereto shall we fall?
SIMPLICITY.
Why, to our victuals: I know nothing else we have to do?
And mark, if I cannot eat twenty times as much as you.
CONSCIENCE.
If I go lie in an inn, I shall be sore grieved to see
The deceit of the ostler, the polling of the tapster, as in most
houses of lodging they be.
If in a brewer's house, at the over-plenty of water and the scarceness
of malt I should grieve,
Whereby to enrich themselves all other with unsavoury thin drink
they deceive:
If in a tanner's house, with his great deceit in tanning;
If in a weaver's house, with his great cosening in weaving.
If in a baker's house, with light bread and very evil working;
If in a chandler's, with deceitful weights, false measures, selling
for a halfpenny that is scant worth a farthing;
And if in an alehouse, with the great resort of poor unthrifts,
that with swearing at the cards consume their lives,
Having greater delight to spend a shilling that way, than a groat
at home to sustain their needy children and wives.
For which I judge it best for me to get some solitary place,
Where I may with patience this my heavy cross embrace,
And learn to sell[220] broom, whereby to get my living,
Using that as a quiet mean to keep myself from begging.—
Wherefore, Simplicity, if thou wilt do the like,
Settle thyself to it, and with true labour thy living do seek.
[Exit CONSCIENCE.